the Enemy from three miles short of Harborough to nine beyond, even to the sight of Leicester, whither the King fled.
Sir, this is none other but the hand of God; and to Him alone belongs the glory, wherein none are to share with Him. The General served you with all faithfulness and honour: and the best commendation I can give him is, That I daresay he attributes all to God, and would rather perish than assume to himself. Which is an honest and a thriving way:—and yet as much for bravery may be given to him, in this action, as to a man. Honest men served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for. In this he rests, who is your most humble servant,
John Bunyan, I believe, is this night in Leicester,—not yet writing his Pilgrim’s Progress on Paper, but acting it on the face of the Earth, with a brown matchlock on his shoulder. Or rather, without the matchlock just at present; Leicester and he having been taken the other day. ‘Harborough Church’ is getting ‘filled with prisoners’ while Oliver writes,—and an immense contemporaneous tumult every where going on!
The ‘honest men who served you faithfully’ on this occasion are the considerable portion of the Army who have not yet succeeded in bringing themselves to take the Covenant. Whom the Presbyterian Party, rigorous for their own formula, call ‘Schismatics,’ ‘Sectaries,’ ‘Anabaptists,’ and other hard names; whom Cromwell, here and elsewhere, earnestly pleads for. To Cromwell, perhaps as much as to another, order was lovely, and disorder hateful; but he discerned better than some
- ↑ Harl. Mss. no. 7502, art. 5. p. 7; Rushworth, vi. 45.
