demanded the same in his Majesty’s name, to be governed by him Sir John Owen, as essential for his Majesty’s occasions at that time. High-sniffing, indignant refusal on the part of Williams: impetuous capture and forcible possession on the part of Owen. Hot Williams, blown all to flame hereby, applied to Colonel Mitton, the Parliamentary Colonel of those parts; said to him, ‘Expel me this intolerable Owen; Owen out, I will hold this Castle for the Parliament and you,—his Majesty seems nearly done with fighting now.’ A thing difficult to explain completely to the Royalist mind: Bishop Hacket has his own ados with it; and in stupid Saunderson[1] and others it is one loud howl, ‘Son of the morning, how art thou fallen!’—
Explained or not, ‘my Lord of York’ does hold Conway Castle, on those terms, at this date; is taking a certain charge of North Wales in his busy way; and has even been corresponding with Cromwell on the subject. They had known one another in old years: Buckden, the Bishop of Lincoln’s House, is in the neighbourhood of Huntingdon; where Cromwell, it is understood, used occasionally to wait upon him; pleading for oppressed Lecturers and the like,—the Bishop having, from political or other biases, a kind of lenity for Puritans.
Cromwell is very brief with him here; courteous as to an old neighbour rather in eclipse; but evidently wishing to have no unnecessary business with the Governor of Conway. We see he could on occasion jocosely claim ‘kindred’ with him, as himself a ‘Williams’: and that perhaps is the chief interest of this small Document, which the reader will now abundantly understand.
FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MY LORD OF YORK: THESE
My Lord,—Your Advices will be seriously considered by us. We shall endeavour, to our uttermost, so to settle the affairs of
- ↑ History of Charles I.
