which he thought of nothing less in all the world, came to him from the Committee of Both Kingdoms.’[1]
‘The night before’ must mean, to all appearance, the 22d of April. How Cromwell instantly took horse; plunged into Oxfordshire, and on the 24th, at Islip Bridge, attacked and routed this said Convoy; and the same day, ‘merely by dragoons’ and fierce countenance, took Bletchington House, for which poor Colonel Windebank was shot, so angry were they: all this is known from Clarendon, or more authentically from Rushworth;[2] and here now is Cromwell’s own account of it.
‘Committee of Both Kingdoms,’ first set up in February gone a year, when the Scotch Army came to help, has been the Executive in the War-department ever since; a great but now a rapidly declining authority. Sits at Derby House: Four Scotch; Twenty-one English, of whom Six a quorum. Johnston of Warriston is the notablest Scotchman; among the leading English are Philip Lord Wharton and the Younger Vane.[3]
‘Watlington’ is in the Southeast nook of Oxfordshire; a day’s march from Windsor. ‘Major-General Browne’ commands at Abingdon; a City Wood-merchant once; a zealous soldier, of Presbyterian principles at present. The rendezvous at Watlington took place on Wednesday night; the 25th of April is Friday.
- ↑ Sprigge’s Anglia Rediviva (London, 1647), p. 10. Sprigge was one of Fairfax’s Chaplains; his Book, a rather ornate work, gives florid but authentic and sufficient account of this New-Model Army in all its features and operations, by which ‘England had ‘come alive again.’ A little sparing in dates; but correct where they are given. None of the old Books is better worth reprinting.—For some glimmer of notice concerning Joshua Sprigge himself, see Wood in voce,—and disbelieve altogether that ‘Nat. Fiennes’ had anything to do with this Book.
- ↑ vi. 23-4.
- ↑ List, and light as to its appointment, in Commons Journals (7th Feb. 1643-4) iii. 391; Baillie, ii. 141 et sæpius. Its Papers and Correspondence, a curious set of records, lie in very tolerable order in the State-Paper Office.
