offence to be charged upon him,—that must in a judicial way receive determination. I know you will not think it fit my Lord should discharge an Officer of the Field but in a regulate way. I question whether you or I have any precedent for that.
I have not farther to trouble you:—but rest, your humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL.[1]
Adjoined to this Letter, as it now lies,—in its old repository at Kimbolton, copied and addressed in the enigmatic way above mentioned,—there is, written in a Clerk’s hand, but corrected in the hand which copied the Letter, a confused loud-spoken recriminatory Narrative, of some length, about the Second Battle of Newbury; touching also, in a loud confused way, on the case of Packer and others:—evidently the raw-material of the Earl’s Speech in defence of himself,[2] in the time of the Self-denying Ordinance; of which the reader will hear by and by. Assiduous Crawford had provided the Earl with these helps to prove Cromwell an insubordinate person, and what was equally terrible, a favourer of Anabaptists. Of the Letter, Crawford, against whom also there lay accusations, retains the Original; but furnishes this Copy;—of which, unexpectedly, we too have now obtained a reading.
This sharp Letter may be fancied to procure the Lieutenant-Colonel’s reinstatement; who, we have some intimation, does march with his regiment again, in hopes to take the Western Towns of Lincolnshire. Indeed Lieutenant-Colonel Packer, if this were verily Packer as he seems to be, became a distinguished Colonel afterwards, and gave Oliver himself some trouble with his Anabaptistries.[3] In the Letter itself, still more in the confused Papers adjoined to it, of Major-General Crawford’s writing, there is evidence enough of smouldering fire-elements in my Lord’s Eastern-Association Army! The Lieutenant-
