for him.  At his advancing so far as Bridgnorth, Sir William Brereton fled up into Lancashire; the Scots brigades who were with him retreated into the north, while yet the king was above forty miles from them, and all things lay open for conquest.  The new generals, Fairfax and Cromwell, lay about Oxford, preparing as if they would besiege it, and gave the king’s army so much leisure, that his Majesty might have been at Newcastle before they could have been half way to him.  But Heaven, when the ruin of a person or party is determined, always so infatuates their counsels as to make them instrumental to it themselves.

The king let slip this great opportunity, as some thought, intending to break into the associated counties of Northampton, Cambridge, Norfolk, where he had some interests forming.  What the design was, we knew not, but the king turns eastward, and marches into Leicestershire, and having treated the country but very indifferently, as having deserved no better of us, laid siege to Leicester.

This was but a short siege; for the king, resolving not to lose time, fell on with his great guns, and having beaten down their works, our foot entered, after a vigorous resistance, and took the town by storm.  There was some blood shed here, the town being carried by assault; but it was their own faults; for after the town was taken, the soldiers and townsmen obstinately fought us in the market-place; insomuch that the horse was called to enter the town to clear the streets.  But this was not all; I was commanded to advance with these horse, being three regiments, and to enter the town; the foot, who were engaged in the streets, crying out, “Horse, horse.”  Immediately I advanced to the gate, for we were drawn up about musket-shot from the works, to have supported our foot in case of a sally.  Having seized the gate, I placed a guard of horse there, with orders to let nobody pass in or out, and dividing my troops, rode up by two ways towards the market-place.  The garrison defending themselves in the market-place, and in the churchyard with great obstinacy, killed us a great many men; but as soon as our horse appeared they demanded quarter, which our foot refused them in the first heat, as is frequent in all nations, in like cases, till at last they threw down their arms, and yielded at discretion; and then I can testify to the world, that fair quarter was given them.  I am the more particular in this relation, having been an eye-witness of the action, because the king was reproached in all the public libels, with which those times abounded, for having put a great many to death, and hanged the committee of the Parliament, and some Scots, in cold blood, which was a notorious forgery; and as I am sure there was no such thing done, so I must acknowledge I never saw any inclination in his Majesty to cruelty, or to act anything which was not practised by the general laws of war, and by men of honour in all nations.

But the matter of fact, in respect to the garrison, was as I have related; and, if they had thrown down their arms sooner, they had had mercy sooner; but it was not for a conquering army, entering a town by storm, to offer conditions of quarter in the streets.