This was such a false step of the Parliament’s generals, that all the people cried shame of them.  The Parliament appointed a committee to inquire into it.  Cromwell accused Manchester, and he Waller, and so they laid the fault upon one another.  Waller would have been glad to have charged it upon Essex, but as it happened he was not in the army, having been taken ill some days before.  But as it generally is when a mistake is made, the actors fall out among themselves, so it was here.  No doubt it was as false a step as that of Cornwall, to let the king fetch away his baggage and cannon in the face of three armies, and never fire a shot at them.

The king had not above 8000 foot in his army, and they above 25,000.  Tis true the king had 8000 horse, a fine body, and much superior to theirs; but the foot might, with the greatest ease in the world, have prevented the removing the cannon, and in three days’ time have taken the castle, with all that was in it.

Those differences produced their self-denying ordinance, and the putting by most of their old generals, as Essex, Waller, Manchester, and the like; and Sir Thomas Fairfax, a terrible man in the field, though the mildest of men out of it, was voted to have the command of all their forces, and Lambert to take the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s troops in the north, old Skippon being Major-General.

This winter was spent on the enemy’s side in modelling, as they called it, their army, and on our side in recruiting ours, and some petty excursions.  Amongst the many addresses I observed one from Sussex or Surrey, complaining of the rudeness of their soldiers, from which I only observed that there were disorders among them as well as among us, only with this difference, that they, for reasons I mentioned before, were under circumstances to prevent it better than the king.  But I must do the king’s memory that justice, that he used all possible methods, by punishment of soldiers, charging, and sometimes entreating, the gentlemen not to suffer such disorders and such violences in their men; but it was to no purpose for his Majesty to attempt it, while his officers, generals, and great men winked at it; for the licentiousness of the soldier is supposed to be approved by the officer when it is not corrected.

The rudeness of the Parliament soldiers began from the divisions among their officers; for in many places the soldiers grew so out of all discipline and so unsufferably rude, that they, in particular, refused to march when Sir William Waller went to Weymouth.  This had turned to good account for us, had these cursed Scots been out of our way, but they were the staff of the party; and now they were daily solicited to march southward, which was a very great affliction to the king and all his friends.

One booty the king got at this time, which was a very seasonable assistance to his affairs, viz., a great merchant ship, richly laden at London, and bound to the East Indies, was, by the seamen, brought into Bristol, and delivered up to the king.  Some merchants in Bristol offered the king L40,000 for her, which his Majesty ordered should be accepted, reserving only thirty great guns for his own use.