The chief strength the king had in these parts was at Newark, and the Parliament were very earnest with the Scots to march southward and to lay siege to Newark; and while the Parliament pressed them to it, and they sat still and delayed it, several heats began, and some ill blood between them, which afterwards broke out into open war.  The English reproached the Scots with pretending to help them, and really hindering their affairs.  The Scots returned that they came to fight for them, and are left to be starved, and can neither get money nor clothes.  At last they came to this, the Scots will come to the siege if the Parliament will send them money, but not before.  However, as people sooner agree in doing ill than in doing well, they came to terms, and the Scots came with their whole army to the siege of Newark.

The king, foreseeing the siege, calls his friends about him, tells them he sees his circumstances are such that they can help him but little, nor he protect them, and advises them to separate.  The Lord Digby, with Sir Marmaduke Langdale, with a strong body of horse, attempt to get into Scotland to join with Montrose, who was still in the Highlands, though reduced to a low ebb, but these gentlemen are fallen upon on every side and routed, and at last, being totally broken and dispersed, they fly to the Earl of Derby’s protection in the Isle of Man.

Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, Colonel Gerard, and above 400 gentlemen, all officers of horse, lay their commissions down, and seizing upon Wootton House for a retreat, make proposals to the Parliament to leave the kingdom, upon their parole not to return again in arms against the Parliament, which was accepted, though afterwards the prince declined it.  I sent my man post to the prince to be included in this treaty, and for leave for all that would accept of like conditions, but they had given in the list of their names, and could not alter it.

This was a sad time.  The poor remains of the king’s fortunes went everywhere to wreck.  Every garrison of the enemy was full of the Cavalier prisoners, and every garrison the king had was beset with enemies, either blocked up or besieged.  Goring and the Lord Hopton were the only remainders of the king’s forces which kept in a body, and Fairfax was pushing them with all imaginable vigour with his whole army about Exeter and other parts of Devonshire and Cornwall.

In this condition the king left Newark in the night, and got to Oxford.  The king had in Oxford 8000 men, and the towns of Banbury, Farringdon, Donnington Castle, and such places as might have been brought together in twenty-four hours, 15,000 or 20,000 men, with which, if he had then resolved to have quitted the place, and collected the forces in Worcester, Hereford, Lichfield, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and all the small castles and garrisons he had thereabouts, he might have had near 40,000 men, might have beaten the Scots from Newark, Colonel Jones from Chester,