Page:The histories of Launceston and Dunheved, in the county of Cornwall.djvu/308

276 THE CASTLE. The borough accounts disclose that on this day the town presented to the Parliamentary General [the recording angel discourteously calls him " S r Thomas Feare Fox "] "2 suger loafts," at a cost of 15 s. 2d. Poor Richard Carou, whom we lately found serving the town arms, required a shroud on this same 27th February. He may have been one of the two who " were slaine " in the attack at midnight of the 25th. Sprigge continues : Saturday, the 2&th. His Excellency [Fairfax] had intelligence that Saltash was quit by the enemy, and their works left un- demolished. That the Governor of Mount Edgcombe was resolved to conclude upon a treaty negotiated by Master Peters. [This was the celebrated Hugh Peters, a native of Fowey, who at this time was distinguished as a zealous Parliamentary partisan.] The army was ordered this day to quarters, and advanced four or five miles towards Bodman. . . . Zord's-day, March 1st. It happened to be a bitter cold frost. The randezvouz of the army was that day about six miles from Launceston, upon the moores. A party of horse being sent out, discovered the enemies scouts, and not farre from Saint Blisland took eight of them, belonging to a guard of three hundred horse, which they kept but a little before our army. ... In the meantime Captains Farmer and Woggan, with a company of dragoons, had engaged the enemy as they were marching from a house which they had taken near Camelford to the army. Whereupon a party of two thousand horse were commanded under the Lieutenant-General [Cromwell] to fetch off our dragoons, but before the horse came up, they had acquitted themselves well. The enemy was retired, and they were coming on to the army. . . . This night (March 1st) his Excellency had intelligence, that the enemy had quit Bodman about ten at night, horse and foot retreating yet further West, and that Lord Hopton (otherwise Sir Ralph Hopton) brought up the reare, most of the men (poore creatures) being drunk when they went away, to mend their hard fortune. . . . Fairfax and the army for a while lay at Bodmin, and then continued their march after Hopton.