regiment, if it please you to bestow his Troop on him, I am confident he will serve you faithfully. So, by God’s assistance, will your most humble servant,
OLIVER CROMWELL.[1]
The ‘Vermuyden’ mentioned here, who became Colonel Vermuyden, is supposed to be a son of the Dutch Engineer who drained the Fens. ‘Colonel Sidney’ is the celebrated Algernon; he was nominated in the ‘Model,’ but is ‘leaving his regiment’; having been appointed Governor of Chichester.[2] Captain Rawlins does obtain a Company of Horse; under ‘Colonel Sir Robert Pye.’[3]—Colonel Montague, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, has a Foot-Regiment here. Hugh Peters is ‘Chaplain to the Train.’
Fairfax, with his New-Model Army, has been beleaguering Oxford for some time past; but in a loose way, and making small progress hitherto. The King, not much apprehensive about Oxford, is in the Midland Counties; has just stormed Leicester (‘last night of May,’ says Clarendon,[4] a terrible night, and still more terrible ‘daybreak’ and day following it), which perhaps may itself relieve Oxford. His Majesty is since at halt, or in loose oscillating movement, ‘hunting’ on the hills, ‘driving large herds of cattle before him,’—nobody, not even himself, yet knows whitherward. Whitherward? This is naturally a very agitating question for the neighbouring populations; but most of all intensely agitating for the Eastern Association,—though Cromwell, in that Huntingdon Letter, occupied with Ely and other Garrisons, seems to take it rather quietly. But two days later, we have trace of him at
