afterwards Duchess of Orleans, and mother of the Duchess Dowager of Savoy, commonly known in the French style by the title of Madame Royal. They had secured Salisbury, Sherborn Castle, Weymouth, Winchester, and Basing-house, and commanded the whole country, except Bridgewater and Taunton, Plymouth and Lynn; all which places they held blocked up. The king was also entirely master of all Wales, Monmouthshire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and all the towns from Windsor up the Thames to Cirencester, except Reading and Henley; and of the whole Severn, except Gloucester.

The Earl of Newcastle had garrisons in every strong place in the north, from Berwick-upon-Tweed, to Boston in Lincolnshire, and Newark-upon-Trent, Hull only excepted, whither the Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas were retreated, their troops being routed and broken, Sir Thomas Fairfax, his baggage, with his lady and servants, taken prisoners, and himself hardly escaping.

And now a great council of war was held in the king's quarters, what enterprise to go upon; and it happened to be the very same day when the parliament were in a serious debate what should become of them, and whose help they should seek? And indeed they had cause for it; and had our counsels been as ready and well grounded as theirs, we had put an end to the war in a month's time.

In this council the king proposed the marching to London, to put an end to the parliament, and encourage his friends and loyal subjects in Kent, who were ready to rise for him; and showed us letters from the Earl of Newcastle, whereir he offered to join his majesty with a detachment of four thousand horse, and eight thousand foot, if his majesty thought fit to march southward, and yet leave forces sufficient to guard the north from any invasion. I confess, when I saw the scheme the king had himself drawn for this attempt, I felt an unusual satisfaction in my mind, from the hopes that we might bring this war to some tolerable end; for I professed myself on all occasions heartily weary of fighting with friends, brothers, neighbours, and acquaintance; and I made no question, but this motion of the king's would effectually bring the parliament to reason.

All men seemed to like the enterprise but the Earl of Worcester; who, on particular views for securing the country

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behind, as he called it, proposed the taking in the town of Gloucester and Hereford first. He made a long speech of the danger of leaving Massey, an active bold fellow, with a strong party, in the heart of all the king's quarters, ready on all occasions to sally out, and surprise the neighbouring garrisons, as he had done Sudley Castle and others; and of the ease and freedom to all those western parts, to have them fully cleared of the enemy. Interest presently backs this advice, and all those gentlemen whose estates lay that way, or whose friends lived about Worcester, Shrewsbury, Bridgenorth, or the borders; and who, as they said, had heard the frequent wishes of the country to have the city of Gloucester reduced, fell in with this advice, alleging the consequence it was of for the commerce of the country, to have the navigation of the Severn free, which was only interrupted by this one town from the sea up to Shrewsbury, &c.

I opposed this, and so did several others: Prince Rupert was vehemently against it; and we both offered, with the troops of the county, to keep Gloucester blocked up during the king's march for London, so that Massey should not be able to stir.

This proposal made the Earl of Worcester's party more eager for the siege than before; for they had no mind to a blockade, which would lead the county to maintain the troops all the summer; and of all men, the prince did not please them; for he having no extraordinary character for discipline, his company was not much desired even by our friends. Thus, in an ill hour, it was resolved to sit down before Gloucester. The king had a gallant army of twenty-eight thousand men, whereof eleven thousand horse, the finest body of gentlemen that ever I saw together in my life; their horses without comparison, and their equipages the finest and the best in the world, and their persons Englishmen, which, I think, is enough to say of them.

According to the resolution taken in the council of war, the army marched westward, and sat down before Gloucester the beginning of August. There we spent a month to the least purpose that ever army did; our men received frequent affronts from the desperate sallies of an inconsiderable enemy. I cannot forbear reflecting on the misfortunes of this siege; our men were strangely dispirited in all the assaults they

gave upon the place; there was something looked like disaster and mismanagement, and our men went on with an ill-will and no resolution. The king despised the place, and meaning to carry it sword in hand, made no regular approaches, and the garrison being desperate, made therefore the greater slaughter. In this work our horse, who were so numerous and so fine, had no employment. Two thousand horse had been enough for this business, and the enemy had no garrison or party within forty miles of us; so that we had nothing to do but look on with infinite regret, upon the losses of our foot.

The enemy made frequent and desperate sallies, in one of which I had my share. I was posted upon a parade, or place of arms, with part of my regiment, and part of Colonel Goring's regiment of horse, in order to support a body of foot, who were ordered to storm the point of a breastwork which the enemy had raised to defend one of the avenues to the town. The foot were beat off with loss, as they always were; and Massey, the governor, not content to have beaten them from his works, sallies out with near four hundred men, and, falling in upon the foot as they were rallying under the cover of our horse, we put ourselves in the best posture we could to receive them. As Massey did not expect, I suppose, to engage with any horse, he had no pikes with him, which encouraged us to treat him the more rudely; but as to desperate men danger is no danger, when he found he must clear his hands of us before he could despatch the foot, he faces up to us, fires but one volley of his small shot, and fell to battering us with the stocks of their muskets in such a manner that one would have thought they had been madmen.

We at first despised this way of clubbing us, and, charging through them, laid a great many of them upon the ground; and, in repeating our charge, trampled more of them under our horses' feet; and wheeling thus continually, beat them off from our foot, who were just upon the point of disbanding. Upon this they charged us again with their fire, and at one volley killed thirty-three or thirty-four men and horses; and had they had pikes with them, I know not what we should have done with them. But at last charging through them again, we divided them; one part of them,

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being hemmed in between us and our own foot, were cut in pieces to a man; the rest, as I understood afterwards, retreated into the town, having lost three hundred of their men.

In this last charge I received a rude blow from a stout fellow on foot, with the butt-end of his musket, which perfectly stunned me and fetched me off from my horse; and had not some near me took care of me, I had been trod to death by our own men. But the fellow being immediately killed, and my friends finding me alive, had taken me up, and carried me off some distance, where I came to myself again, after some time, but knew little of what I did or said that night. This was the reason why I say I afterwards understood the enemy retreated; for I saw no more what they did then; nor indeed was I well of this blow for all the rest of the summer, but had frequent pains in my head, dizzinesses and swimming, that gave me some fears the blow had injured the scull, but it wore off again; nor did it at all hinder my attending my charge.

This action, I think, was the only one that looked like a defeat given the enemy at this siege; we killed them near three hundred men, as I have said, and lost about sixty of our troopers.

All this time, while the king was harassing and weakening the best army he ever saw together during the whole war, the parliament generals, or rather preachers, were recruiting theirs; for the preachers were better than drummers to raise volunteers, zealously exhorting the London dames to part with their husbands, and the city to send some of their trained-bands to join the army for the relief of Gloucester; and now they began to advance towards us.

The king, hearing of the advance of Essex's army, who by this time was come to Aylesbury, had summoned what forces he had within call to join him; and, accordingly, he received three thousand foot from Somersetshire, and, having battered the town for thirty-six hours, and made a fair breach, resolves upon an assault, if possible to carry the town before the enemy came up. The assault was begun about seven in the evening, and the men boldly mounted the breach; but, after a very obstinate and bloody dispute, were beaten out again by the besieged with great loss.

Being thus often repulsed, and the Earl of Essex's army approaching, the king calls a council of war, and proposed

to fight Essex's army. The officers of the horse were for fighting; and, without doubt, we were superior to him both in number and goodness of our horse, but the foot were not in an equal condition; and the colonels of foot representing to the king the weakness of their regiments, and how their men had been baulked and disheartened at this cursed siege, the graver counsel prevailed, and it was resolved to raise the siege, and retreat towards Bristol, till the army was recruited. Pursuant to this resolution, the 5th of September, the king, having before sent away his heavy cannon and baggage, raised the siege, and marched to Berkley Castle. The Earl of Essex came the next day to Birdlip hills; and understanding, by messengers from Colonel Massey, that the siege was raised, sends a recruit of two thousand five hundred men into the city, and followed us himself with a great body of horse.

This body of horse showed themselves to us once in a large field fit to have entertained them in; and our scouts having assured us they were not above four thousand, and had no foot with them, the king ordered a detachment of about the same number to face them. I desired his majesty to let us have two regiments of dragoons with us, which was then eight hundred men in a regiment, lest there might be some dragoons among the enemy, which the king granted, and accordingly we marched, and drew up in view of them. They stood their ground, having, as they supposed, some advantage of the manner they were posted in, and expected we would charge them. The king, who did us the honour to command this party, finding they would not stir, calls me to him, and ordered me, with the dragoons and my own regiment, to take a circuit round by a village to a certain lane, where in their retreat they must have passed, and which opened to a small common on the flank, with orders, if they engaged, to advance and charge them in the flank. I marched immediately; but though the country about there was almost all enclosures, yet their scouts were so vigilant that they discovered me, and gave notice to the body; upon which their whole party moved to the left, as if they intended to charge me, before the king with his body of horse could come; but the king was too vigilant to be circumvented so; and, therefore, his majesty, perceiving this, sends away three regiments of horse to second me, and a messenger