and many shot fired at us out of the windows, I caused my men to attack it, resolving to make them an example for the rest; which they did, and breaking open the doors, they killed all they found there without distinction; and I appeal to the world if they were to blame.

If the parliament committee, or the Scotch deputies, were here, they ought to have been quiet, since the town was taken; but they began with us, and, I think, brought it upon themselves. This is the whole case, so far as came within my knowledge, for which his majesty was so much abused.

We took here Colonel Gray and Captain Hacker, with about three hundred prisoners, and about three hundred more were killed. This was the last day of May, 1645.

His majesty, having given over Oxford for lost, continued here some days, viewed the town, ordered the fortifications to be augmented, and prepared to make it the seat of war.

Prince Rupert commanded the right wing of the horse, Sir Marmaduke Langdale the left, and the king the main body. Of the enemy, Fairfax and Skippon led the body, Cromwell and Rossiter the right, and Ireton the left. The numbers of both armies so equal as not to differ five hundred men, save that the king had most horse by about one thousand, and Fairfax most foot by about five hundred. The number was in each army about eighteen thousand men.

The armies coming close up, tne wings engaged first. The prince with his right wing charged with his wonted fury, and drove all the parliament's wing of horse, one division excepted, clear out of the field. Ireton, who commanded this wing, to give him his due, rallied often, and fought like a lion; but our wing bore down all before them, and pursued them with a terrible execution.

The king had now a small, but gallant army, all brave tried soldiers, and seemed eager to engage the new-modelled army; and his majesty, hearing that Sir Thomas Fairfax, having raised the siege of Oxford, advanced towards him, fairly saved him the trouble of a long march, and met him half way.

The army lay at Daventry, and Fairfax at Towcester, about eight miles off. Here the king sent away six hundred horse, with three thousand head of cattle, to relieve his people in Oxford; the cattle he might have spared better than the

men.

Fate and the king's opinion determined the council, and it was resolved to fight. Accordingly the van, in which was Prince Rupert's brigade of horse, of which my regiment was a part, countermarched early in the morning.

By five o'clock the whole army, in order of battle, began to discover the enemy from the rising grounds, about a mile from Naseby, and moved towards them. They were drawn up on a little ascent in a large common fallow field, in a line extended from one side of the field to the other, the field something more than a mile over; our army in the same order, in a line, with the

reserves.

Cromwell, who commanded the parliament's right wing, charged Sir Marmaduke Langdale with extraordinary fury; but he, an old tried soldier, stood firm and received the charge with equal gallantry, exchanging all their shot, carbines, and pistols, and then fell on sword in

hand.

Rositer and Whaley had the better on the point of the wing, and routed two divisions of horse, pushing them behind the reserves, where they rallied, and charged again, but were at last defeated; the rest of the horse now charged in the flank retreated fighting, and were pushed behind the reserves of foot.

While this was doing, the foot engaged with equal fierceness, and for two hours there was a terrible fire. The king's foot, backed with gallant officers, and full of rage at the rout of their horse, bore down the enemy's brigade, led by Skippon. The old man wounded, retreated bleeding to their reserves.

All the foot, except the general's brigade, were thus driven into the reserves, where their officers

rallied them, and brought them on to a fresh charge; and here the horse, having driven our horse about a quarter of a mile from the foot, faced about, and fell in on the rear of the foot.

Had our right wing done thus, the day had been secured; but Prince Rupert, according to his custom, following the flying enemy, never concerned himself with the safety of those behind; and yet he returned sooner than he had done in like cases too.

At our return we found all in confusion, our

foot broken, all but one brigade, which, though charged in front, flank, and rear, could not be broken, till Sir Thomas Fairfax himself came up to the charge with fresh men, and then they were rather cut in pieces than beaten; for they stood with their pikes charged every way to the last extremity.

to us.

The officers about the king advised his majesty rather to draw off; for, since our foot were lost, it would be too much odds to expose the horse to the fury of their whole army, and would but be sacrificing his best troops, without any hopes of success.

The king, though with great regret at the loss of his foot, yet seeing there was no other hope, took this advice, and retreated in good order to Harborough, and from thence to Leicester. (Note 25.)

This was the occasion of the enemy having so great a number of prisoners; for the horse being thus gone off, the foot had no means to make their retreat, and were obliged to yield themselves. Ireton now made the captain his prisoner, but gave him his liberty for the kindness he before had received from him.

Cromwell and Rositer, with all the enemy's horse, followed us as far as Leicester, and killed all that they could lay hold on. The king, ex

pecting the enemy would come to Leicester, removed to Ashby de la Zouch, where we had some time to recollect ourselves.

This was the most fatal action of the whole war; not so much for the loss of our cannon, aminunition, and baggage, of which the enemy boasted so much, but it was impossible for the king ever to retrieve it: the foot, the best that ever he was master of, could never be supplied; his army in the west was exposed to certain ruin, the north overrun with the Scots; in short, the case grew desperate, and the king was once upon the point of bidding us all disband, and shift for ourselves.

We lost in this fight about two thousand slain, and the parliament near as many, but the prisoners were a greater number; the whole body of foot being, as I have said, dispersed, there were four thousand five hundred prisoners, besides four hundred officers, two thousand horses, twelve pieces of cannon, fifty barrels of powder, all the king's baggage, coaches, most of his servants,and his secretary, with his cabinet of letters, of which the parliament made great improvement, and basely enough caused his private letters between his majesty and the queen, her majesty's letters to the king, and other secret affairs, to be printed.

After this fatal blow, being retreated, as I have said, to Ashby de la Zouch, in Leicestershire, the king ordered us to divide; his majesty, with a body of horse, about three thousand, went to Lichfield, and through Cheshire into North Wales; and Sir Marmaduke Langdale, with about two thousand five hundred, went to Newwark.

The king remained in Wales for several months; and though the length of the war had almost drained that country of men, yet the

king raised a great many men there, recruited his horse, and got together six or seven regiments of foot, which seemed to look like the beginning of a new army.

I had frequent discourses with his majesty in this low ebb of his affairs, and he would often wish he had not exposed his army at Naseby.

I took the freedom once to make a proposition to his majesty, which, if it had taken effect, I verily believe would have given a new turn to his affairs; and that was, at once to slight all his garrisons in the kingdom, and give private orders to all the soldiers in every place to join in bodies, and meet at two general rendezvous, which I would have appointed to be at Bristol and at West Chester.

I demonstrated how easily all the forces might reach these two places; for both being strong and very wealthy, and both sea-ports, he would have a free communication by sea with Ireland, and with his friends abroad; and having Wales entirely his own, he might yet have an opportunity to make good terms for himself, or else have another fair field with the enemy.

Upon a calculation of his troops in several garrisons, and small bodies dispersed about, I convinced the king, by his own accounts, that he might have two complete armies, each of twentyfive thousand foot, eight thousand horse, and two thousand dragoons; that Lord Goring and Lord Hopton might ship all their forces, and come by sea in two tides, and be with him in a shorter time than the enemy could follow.

With two such bodies he might face the enemy, and make a day of it; but now his men were only sacrificed, and eaten up by piece-meal in a party war, and spent their lives and estates to do him no service: that if the parliament garri. soned the towns and castles he should quit, they would lesson their army, and not dare to seek him in the field; and if they did not, but left them open, then it would be no loss to him, but he might possess them as often as he pleased.

This advice I pressed with such arguments, that the king was once going to dispatch orders for the doing it; but to be irresolute in counsel is always the companion of a declining fortune: the king was doubtful, and could not resolve till it was too late.

And yet, though the king's forces were very low, his majesty was resolved to make one adventure more, and it was a strange one; for, with but a handful of men, he made a desperate || march almost two hundred and fifty miles in the middle of the whole kingdom, compassed about with armies and parties innumerable, traversed the heart of his enemy's country, entered their associated counties, where no army had ever yet come; and, in spite of all their victorious troops facing and following him, alarmed even London itself, and returned safe to Oxford.

His majesty continued in Wales from the battle at Naseby till the 5th or 6th of August, and till he had an account from all parts of the progress of his enemies, and the posture of his own affairs.

Here he found that the enemy being hard pressed in Somersetshire by Lord Goring and Lord Hopton's forces, who had taken Bridgewater and distressed Taunton, which was now at

the point of surrender, they had ordered Fairfax and Cromwell, and the whole army, to march westward to relieve the town; which they did, and Goring's troops were worsted, and himself wounded at the fight at Langport.

The Scots, who were always the dead weight upon the king's affairs, having no more work to do in the north, were, at the parliament's desire, advanced southward, and then ordered away towards South Wales, and were set down to the siege of Hereford.

Here this famous Scotch army spent several months in a fruitless siege, ill-provided of ammunition and worse with money; and having sat near three months before the town, and done little but eaten up the country round them, upon the repeated accounts of the progress of the Marquis of Montrose in that kingdom, and pressing instances of their countrymen, they resolved to raise their siege and go home to relieve their friends.

The king, who was willing to be rid of the Scots upon good terms, and therefore to hasten them, and lest they should pretend to push on the siege to take the town first, gave it out that he was resolved with all his forces to go into Scotland and join Montrose; and so, having secured Scotland, to renew the war from thence.

And accordingly his majesty marched northwards with a body of four thousand horse; and, had the king really done this, and with that body of horse marched away, for he had the start of all his enemies by above a fortnight's march, he had then had the fairest opportunity for a general turn of all his affairs that he ever had in all the latter part of this war.

For Montrose, a gallant, daring soldier, who, from the least shadow of force in the furthest corner of his country, had, rolling like a snowball, spread all over Scotland, was come into the south parts, and had summoned Edinburgh, frightened away their statesmen, beaten their soldiers at Dundee and other places; and letters and messengers on the heels of one another repeated their cries to their brethren in England, to lay before them the sad condition of the country, and to hasten the army to their relief. The Scotch lords of the enemy's party fled to Berwick, and the Chancellor of Scotland went himself to General Lesly to press him for help.

In this extremity of affairs Scotland lay when we marched out of Wales. The Scots, at the siege of Hereford, hearing the king was gone northward with his horse, concluded he was gone directly for Scotland, and immediately sent Lesly with four thousand horse and foot to follow, but did not yet raise the siege.

But the king, still irresolute, turned away to the eastward, and went to Lichfield, where he showed his resentment at Colonel Hastings for his easy surrender of Leicester.

In this march the enemy took heart; we had troops of horse on every side upon us, like hounds started at a fresh stag. Lesly, with the Scots and a strong body, followed in our rear; Major-General Poyntz, Sir John Gell, Colonel Rositer, and others, in our way; they pretended to be ten thousand horse, and yet never dared to face us. The Scots made one attempt upon a

troop which stayed a little behind, and took some prisoners; but when a regiment of our horse faced them they retired.

At a village near Lichfield another party of about a thousand horse attacked my regiment; we were on the left of the army, and at a little too far a distance. I happened to be with the king at that time, and my lieutenant-colonel with me, so that the major had charge of the regiment; he made a very handsome defence, but sent messengers for speedy relief; we were on a march, and therefore all ready, and the king ordered me a regiment of dragoons and three hundred horse, and the body halted to bring us off, not knowing how strong the enemy might be.

When I came to the place I found my major hard laid to, but fighting like a lion; the enemy had broke in upon him in two places, and had routed one troop, cutting them off from the body, and had made them all prisoners.

Upon this I fell in with the 300 horse, and cleared my major from a party who charged him in the flank; the dragoons immediately alighting, one party of them came upon my wing, and saluting the enemy with their muskets, put them to a stand; the other party of dragoons wheeling to the left, endeavoured to get behind them.

The enemy perceiving that they should be overpowered, retreated in as good order as they could, but left us most of our prisoners, and about thirty of their own. We lost fifteen of our men and the enemy about forty, chiefly by the fire of our dragoons in their retreat.

In this posture we continued our march; and though the king halted at Lichfield, which was a dangerous article, having so many of the enemy's troops upon his hands, and this time gave them opportunity to get into a body; yet the Scots, with their general, Lesly, resolving for the north, the rest of the troops were not able to face us, till having ravaged the enemy's country through Staffordshire, Warwick, Leicester, and Nottinghamshire, we came to the leaguer before Newark.

The king was once more on the mind to have gone into Scotland, and called a council of war for that purpose; but then it was resolved by all hands that it would be too late to attempt it; for the Scots and Major-general Poyntz were before us, and several strong bodies of horse in our rear; and there was no venturing now, nnless any advantage presented to rout one of those parties which attended us.

Upon these and like considerations we resolved for Newark; on our approach the forces which blocked up that town drew off, being too weak to oppose us; for the king had now about 5,000 horse and dragoons, besides 300 horse and dragoons he took with him from Newark.

We halted at Newark to assist the garrison, or give them time rather to furnish themselves from the country with what they wanted, which they were very diligent in doing; for in two days they filled a large island which lies under the town, between the two branches of the Trent, with sheep, oxen, cows, and horses, an incredible number; and our affairs being now something desperate, we were not very nice in our usage

of the country; for really if it was not with a resolution both to punish the enemy and enrich ourselves, no man can give any rational account why this desperate journey was undertaken.

It is certain the Newarkers, in the respite they gained by our coming, got about 50,000l. from the country round them, in corn, cattle, money, and other plunder.

From hence we broke into Lincolnshire, and the king lay at Belvoir Castle, and from thence to Stamford. The swiftness of our march was a terrible surprise to the enemy; for our van being at a village on the great road called Stilton, the country people fled into the isle of Ely, and every way, as if all were lost. Indeed our dragoons treated the country very coarsely, and all our men in general made themselves rich.

Between Stilton and Huntingdon we had a small bustle with some of the association troops of horse, but they were soon routed, and fled to Huntingdon, where they gave such an account of us to their fellows, that they did not think fit to stay for us, but left their foot to defend themselves as well as they could.

While this was doing in the van, a party fron Burleigh house,near Stamford,the seat of the Earl of Exeter, pursued four troops of our horse, who, straggling towards Peterborough, and committing some disorders there, were surprised before they could get into a posture of fighting; and encumbered, as I suppose, with their plunder, they were entirely routed, lost most of their horses, and were forced to come away on foot; but finding themselves in this condition, they got into a body in the enclosures, and in that posture turning dragoons, they lined the hedges, and fired upon the enemy with their carbines.

This way of fighting, though not very pleasant to troopers, put the enemy's horse to some stand, and encouraged our men to venture into a village where the enemy had secured forty of their horse; and boldly charging the guard, they beat them off and recovered those horses; the rest made their retreat good to Wandsford bridge; but we lost near a hundred horses, and twelve of our men taken prisoners.

The next day the king took Huntingdon; the foot which were left in the town, as I observed by their horse, had posted themselves at the foot of the bridge, and fortified the pass with such things as the haste and shortness of the time would allow, and in this posture they seemed resolute to defend themselves.

I confess, had they in time planted a good force here, they might have put a full stop to our little army; for the river is large and deep, the country on the left marshy, full of drains and ditches, and unfit for horse, and we must have either turned back, or took the right hand into Bedfordshire; but there not being above four hundred foot, and they forsaken of their horse, the resistance they made was to no other purpose than to give us occasion to knock them on the head, and plunder the town.

However, they defended the bridge, as I have said, and opposed our passage. I was this day in the van, and our forlorn hope having entered Huntingdon without any great resistance till they came to the bridge, finding it barricaded, they sent me word. I caused the troops to halt,

and rode up to the forlorn to view the countenance of the enemy, and found, by the posture they had put themselves in, that they resolved to sell us the passage as dear as they could.

I sent to the king for some dragoons, and gave him an account of what I observed of the enemy, and that I judged them to be a thousand men, for 1 could not particularly see their numbers.

Accordingly the king ordered five hundred dragoons to attack the bridge, commanded by a major; the enemy had two hundred musketeers placed on the bridge, their barricade served them for a breast-work on the front, and the low walls on the bridge served to secure their flanks; two bodies of their foot were placed on the opposite banks of the river, and a reserve stood in the highway on the rear.

The number of their men could not have been better ordered, and they wanted not courage answerable to the conduct of the party. They were commanded by one Bennet, a resolute officer, who stood in the front of his men on the bridge, with a pike in his hand.

Before we began to fall on, the king ordered to view the river, to see if it was nowhere passable, or any boat to be had; but the river being not fordable, and the boats all secured on the other side, the attack was resolved on, and the dragoons fell on with extraordinary bravery.

The foot defended themselves obstinately, and beat off our dragoons twice; and though Bennet was killed upon the spot, and, after him, his lieutenant, yet their officers relieving them with fresh men, they would certainly have beat us all off, had not a venturous fellow, one of our dragoons, thrown himself into the river, swam over, and, in the midst of a shower of musketbullets, cut the rope which tied a great flat-bottom boat, and brought her safe over.

With the help of this boat I got over a hundred troopers first, and then their horses; and with this party fell in with one of the small bodies of foot that were posted on that side, and having routed them, and, after them, the reserve which stood in the road, I made up to the other party; they stood their ground, and having rallied the runaways of both the other parties, charged me with their pikes, and brought me to a retreat; but by this time the king had sent over three hundred men more, and they coming up to me, the foot retreated.

Those on the bridge, finding how it was, and having no supplies sent them, fainted, and filed; and the dragoons rushing forward, most of them were killed; about one hundred and fifty of the enemy were killed, of which all the officers at the bridge; the rest ran away.

The town suffered for it; for our men left them little of anything they could carry. Here we halted, and raised contributions, took money of the country, and of the open towns, to exempt them from plunder.

Twice we faced the town of Cambridge, and several of our officers advised his majesty to storm it; but having no foot, and but one thousand two hundred dragoons, wiser heads diverted him from it; and leaving Cambridge on the left, wo marched to Woburn, in Bedfordshire, and our parties raised money all over the country, quite into Hertfordshire, within five miles of St Alban's