Churchill Quote

I've discovered the provenance of Churchill's famous quote:

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

 

The sentence appears in a speech delivered on the 20th of August, 1940, in the midst of the Battle of Britain.

 

Wikipedia devotes an entire entry to the Churchill's coinage (here) but does not mention any precedent or inspiration.

I'm reading Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples where, in Book Five: "The New World", Chapter Fourteen: "The Personal Rule",  there occurs a passage:

For some days little happened, but one morning a Scottish horseman, watering his horse in the river, came too near the English outposts.  Some one pulled a trigger; the shot when home; the imprudent rider was wounded; all the Scots cannon fired and all the English army fled.  A contemporary wrote that "Never so many ran from so few with less ado."

Since we know Churchill completed much of History before 1940, I think it's plain that at the time of his speech he was familiar with (and fond of) the 1640 quote, and appropriated the rhetoric formula precisely 300 years later.

And in a delightful twist, English cowardice become English heroism!