My Copy, two Copies, of this Letter I owe to kind friends, who have carefully transcribed it from the Original at Lord Gosford’s. The present Lady Gosford is ‘granddaughter of Sir Robert Barnard,’ to whose lineal ancestor the Letter is addressed. The date of time is given; there never was any date or address of place,—which probably means that it was written in Huntingdon and addressed to Huntingdon, where Robert Barnard, who became Recorder of the place, is known to have resided. Oliver, in the month of January 1642-3, is present in the Fen-country, and all over the Eastern Association, with his troop or troops; looking after disaffected persons; ready to disperse royalist assemblages, to seize royalist plate, to keep down disturbance, and care in every way that the Parliament Cause suffer no damage.[1] A Lieutenant and party have gone to take some survey of Robert Barnard, Esquire; Robert Barnard, standing on the right of injured innocence, innocent till he be proved guilty, protests: Oliver responds as here, in a very characteristic way.
It was precisely in these weeks, that Oliver from Captain became Colonel: Colonel of a regiment of horse, raised on his own principles so far as might be, in that ‘Eastern Association’; and is henceforth known in the Newspapers as Colonel Cromwell. Whether on this 23d of January, he was still Captain, or had ceased to be so, no extant accessible record apprises us. On the 2d March 1642-3, I have found him named as ‘Col. Cromwell,’[2] and hitherto not earlier. He is getting ‘men of religion’ to serve in this Cause—or at least would fain get such if he might.
CAMBRIDGE
In the end of February 1642-3, ‘Colonel’ Cromwell is at Cambridge; ‘great forces from Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk’
