Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/244

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210
PART II. FIRST CIVIL WAR
[14 JUNE

gence that the Enemy’s Body, with 60 carriages, was upon his march towards the Association, 8 miles on this side Harborough, last night at 4 of the clock.[1]

The Original, a hasty, blotted Paper, with the Signatures in two unequal columns (as imitated here), and with the Postscript crammed hurriedly into the corner, and written from another inkbottle as is still apparent,—represents to us an agitated scene in the old Committee-rooms at Cambridge that Friday. In Rushworth (see vi. 36-8), of the same date, and signed by the same parties, with some absentees (Oliver among them, probably now gone on other business) and more new arrivals,—is a Letter to Fairfax himself, urging him to speed over, and help them in their peril. They say, ‘We had formerly written to the Counties to raise their Horse and Dragoons, and have now written,’ as above for one instance, ‘to quicken them.’—The Suffolk and other Horse, old Ironsides not hindmost, did muster; and in about a week hence there came other news from ‘this side Harborough last night’!



LETTER XXIX

NASEBY

The old Hamlet of Naseby stands yet, on its old hill-top, very much as it did in Saxon days, on the Northwestern border of Northamptonshire; some seven or eight miles from Market-Harborough in Leicestershire; nearly on a line, and nearly midway, between that Town and Daventry. A peaceable old Hamlet, of some eight-hundred souls; clay cottages for labourers, but neatly thatched and swept; smith’s shop, saddler’s shop, beer-shop, all in order; forming a kind of square, which leads off Southwards into two long streets: the

  1. Original, long stationary at Ipswich, is now (Jan. 1849) the property of John Wodderspoon, Esq., Mercury Office, Norwich.