were men that had the fear of God; and gradually lost all other fear. ‘Truly they were never beaten at all,’ says he.—Meanwhile:
1643
August 21st. The shops of London are all shut for certain days:[1] Gloucester is in hot siege; nothing but the obdurate valour of a few men there prevents the King, with Prince Rupert, called also Prince Robert and Prince Robber, from riding roughshod over us.[2] The City, with much emotion, ranks its Trained Bands under Essex; making up an Army for him, despatches him to relieve Gloucester. He marches on the 26th; steadily along, in spite of rainy weather and Prince Rupert; westward, westward: on the night of the tenth day, September 5th, the Gloucester people see his signal-fire flame up, amid the dark rain, ‘on the top of Presbury Hill’;—and understand that they shall live and not die. The King ‘fired his huts,’ and marched off without delay. He never again had any real chance of prevailing in this War. Essex, having relieved the West, returns steadily home again, the King’s forces hanging angrily on his rear; at Newbury in Berkshire, he had to turn round, and give them battle,—First Newbury Battle, 20th September 1643,—wherein he came off rather superior.[3] Poor Lord Falkland, in his ‘clean shirt,’ was killed here. This steady march, to Gloucester and back again, by Essex, was the chief feat he did during the War; a considerable feat, and very characteristic of him, the slow-going, inarticulate, indignant, somewhat elephantine man.
Here, however, in the interim, are some glimpses of the Associated Counties; of the ‘listing’ that now goes on there, a thing attended with its own confused troubles.
