Cromwell in Ireland
ministers and another colonel, been "expounding some places of Scripture exceedingly well and pertinent to the occasion") has gathered "an estate of two thousand a year (worth about £8,000 now), besides engrossing great offices, and encroaching upon his under officers, and maintains his coach and family at a height as if they had been born to a principality." So it is with a hundred others in less degree who go by in all the bravery of buff and scarlet. To the multitude they are only beggars on horseback; and they are riding to the devil; for twelve years later not a few of them will be gathered on this same Charing Cross spot, from which they have pulled the emblem of Christianity—and the hangman will be busy at his hideous work upon them.
On August the 10th Cromwell reached Milford Haven, having delayed long in Bristol. Here news reached him of Jones' victory over Ormond at Dublin. We know now how largely this "rout of Rathmines," as it was called, was brought about by bribery and treachery; we know too how, as usual, the prisoners taken, although they had surrendered on terms of life, were put to death—many of them after they had been brought within the town.
On the 13th August Cromwell writes
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