I desire may be employed to the best advantage; therefore my advice is, that you would employ your Twelve-score Pounds to buy pistols and saddles, and I will provide Four-score horses; for 400l. more will not raise a troop of horse. As for the muskets that are bought, I think the Country will take them of you. Pray raise honest godly men, and I will have them of my regiment. As for your Officers, I leave it as God shall or hath directed to choose;—and rest, your loving friend, OLIVER CROMWELL[1]
Gainsborough was directly taken, after this relief of it; Lord Willoughby could not resist the Newarkers with Newcastle at their head. Gainsborough is lost, Lincoln is lost; unless help come speedily, all is like to be lost. The following Letter, with its enclosure from the Lord Lieutenant Willoughby of Parham, speaks for itself. Read the Enclosure first.
‘TO MY NOBLE FRIEND COLONEL CROMWELL, AT HUNTINGDON: THESE
‘Noble Sir,—Since the business of Gainsborough, the hearts of our men have been so deaded that we have lost most of them by running away. So that we were forced to leave Lincoln upon a sudden:—and if I had not done it then, I should have been left alone in it. So that now I am at Boston; where we are very poor in strength;—so that without some speedy supply, I fear we shall not hold this long neither.
‘My Lord General, I perceive, hath writ to you, To draw all the forces together. I should be glad to see it: for if
- ↑ Fairfax Correspondence (London, 1849), iii. 56: the Original is Autograph; address quite gone; docketed ‘Colonel Cromwell’s Letter to’ (in regard to) ‘the Bachelors and Maids, 2d August 1643, from Huntingdon.’
