will say, ‘He is God’s to dispose of, and guide for’; and there you will leave him.
My love to the dear little Lady, better “to me” than the child. The Lord bless you both. My love and service to all Friends high and low; if you will, to my Lord and Lady Mulgrave and Will Hill. I am truly, your faithful friend and humblest servant,
During these very days, perhaps it was exactly two days after, ‘on Monday last,‘ if that mean 4th September,[2]—Monro, lying about Appleby, has a party of horse ‘sent into the Bishopric’; firing divers houses’ thereabouts, and not forgetting to plunder the Lord Wharton’s tenants’ by the road: Cromwell penetrating towards Berwick, yet still at a good distance, scatters this and other predatory parties rapidly enough to Appleby, as it were by the very wind of him; like a coming mastiff smelt in the gale by vermin. They are swifter than he, and get to Scotland, by their dexterity and quick scent, unscathed. ‘Across to Kelso,‘ about September 8th.[3]
Mulgrave in those years is a young Edmund Sheffield, of whom, except that he came afterwards to sit in the Council of State, and died a few days before the Protector, History knows not much.—‘Will Hill’ is perhaps William Hill, a Puritan Merchant in London, ruined out of a large estate’ by lending for the public service; who, this Summer, and still in this very month, is dunning the Lords and Commons, the Lords with rather more effect, to try if they cannot give him some kind of payment, or shadow of an attempt at payment,—he having long lain in jail for want of his money. A zealous religious, and now destitute and insolvent man; known to Oliver;—and suggests himself along with the Mulgraves by the contrast of ‘Friends high and low.‘ Poor Hill did, after infinite struggling, get some kind of snack at the Bishops’ Lands by and by.[4]
