when He gives courage to your soldiers to attempt hard things. His goodness in this is much to be acknowledged: for the Castle was well manned with Six-hundred-and-eighty horse and foot, there being near Two-hundred gentlemen, officers, and their servants; well victualled, with fifteen hundred-weight of cheese, very great store of wheat and beer; near twenty barrels of powder, seven pieces of cannon; the works were exceeding good and strong. It’s very likely it would have cost much blood to have gained it by storm. We have not lost twelve men: this is repeated to you, that God may have all the praise, for it’s all His due.—Sir, I rest, your most humble servant,
‘Lieutenant-General Cromwell’s Secretary,’ who brings this Letter, gets 501. for his good news.[2] By Sprigge’s account,[3] he appears to have been ‘Mr. Hugh Peters, this Secretary. Peters there makes a verbal Narrative of the affair, to Mr. Speaker and the Commons, which, were not room so scanty, we should be glad to insert.
It was at this surrender of Winchester that certain of the captive enemies having complained of being plundered contrary to Articles, Cromwell had the accused parties, six of his own soldiers, tried . being all found guilty, one of them by lot was hanged, and the other five were marched off to Oxford, to be there disposed of as the Governor saw fit. The Oxford Governor politely returned the five prisoners, ‘with an acknowledgment of the Lieutenant-General’s nobleness.’[4]
Basing House, Pawlet Marquis of Winchester’s Mansion, stood, as the ruined heaps still testify, at a small distance from Basingstoke in Hampshire. It had long infested the
