The enemy was in great pain for Sir William Brereton and his forces, and expresses rode night and day to the Scots in the north, and to the parties in Lancashire to come to his help.  The prince, who used to be rather too forward to fight than otherwise, could not be persuaded to make use of this opportunity, but loitered, if I may be allowed to say so, till the Scots, with a brigade of horse and 2000 foot, had joined him; and then ’twas not thought proper to engage them.

I took this opportunity to go to Shrewsbury to visit my father, who was a prisoner of war there, getting a pass from the enemy’s governor.  They allowed him the liberty of the town, and sometimes to go to his own house upon his parole, so that his confinement was not very much to his personal injury.  But this, together with the charges he had been at in raising the regiment, and above L20,000 in money and plate, which at several times he had lent, or given rather to the king, had reduced our family to very ill circumstances; and now they talked of cutting down his woods.

I had a great deal of discourse with my father on this affair; and, finding him extremely concerned, I offered to go to the king and desire his leave to go to London and treat about his composition, or to render myself a prisoner in his stead, while he went up himself.  In this difficulty I treated with the governor of the town, who very civilly offered me his pass to go for London, which I accepted, and, waiting on Prince Rupert, who was then at Worcester, I acquainted him with my design.  The prince was unwilling I should go to London; but told me he had some prisoners of the Parliament’s friends in Cumberland, and he would get an exchange for my father.  I told him if he would give me his word for it I knew I might depend upon it, otherwise there was so many of the king’s party in their hands, that his Majesty was tired with solicitations for exchanges, for we never had a prisoner but there was ten offers of exchanges for him.  The prince told me I should depend upon him; and he was as good as his word quickly after.

While the prince lay at Worcester he made an incursion into Herefordshire, and having made some of the gentlemen prisoners, brought them to Worcester; and though it was an action which had not been usual, they being persons not in arms, yet the like being my father’s case, who was really not in commission, nor in any military service, having resigned his regiment three years before to me, the prince insisted on exchanging them for such as the Parliament had in custody in like circumstances.  The gentlemen seeing no remedy, solicited their own case at the Parliament, and got it passed in their behalf; and by this means my father got his liberty, and by the assistance of the Earl of Denbigh got leave to come to London to make a composition as a delinquent for his estate.  This they charged at L7000, but by the assistance of the same noble person he got off for L4000.  Some members of the committee moved very kindly that my father should oblige me to quit the king’s service, but that, as a thing which might be out of his power, was not insisted on.