Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/39

 a figure, as during the struggles in the 17th century, between monarchy and republicanism. The successful resistance which it made against the attempts of the royal forces, who were frequently foiled before its walls, has been said to be the commencement of that train of misfortunes which followed the unhappy Charles with little interruption from the year 1643, and were only closed by his untimely death; and a parliamentarian orator of the time declared, that "the standing out of this place made it the vertical point in the civil war; for from that time the enemies more and more declined." Nothing, indeed, can evince the supineness and languor with which the royal cause was supported on this occasion, so much as the comparative advantages which the besiegers possessed over the citizens, and the miserable termination of their attempt upon the place—an army of thirty thousand men well appointed, and commanded by the king in person and the most celebrated of his generals, opposed to a garrison of fifteen hundred men, ill-conditioned, and worse supplied, which only possessed three barrels of gunpowder at the time of its relief; loitering five and twenty days before the walls of the city, losing one thousand men in its ditches, and at last retreating from the place in the night before a body