Page:History of the life & sufferings of the Rev. John Welch (1).pdf/23

 That they should enjoy the liberty of their religion, their civil privileges, and their walls should not be demolished: only the king desired for his honours that he might enter the city with his servants in a friendly manner. This the city thought fit to grant, and the king with a few more entered the city for a short time.

But within a short time thereafter the war was renewed, and then Mr. Welch told the inhabitants of the city, that now their cup was full, and they should no more escape; which accordingly came to pass, for the king took the town, and as soon as ever it fell into his hand, he commanded Vitry, the captain of his guard, to enter the town, and preserve his minister from all danger; and then were horses and waggons provided for Mr. Welch, remove him and his family for Rochel, where he remained till he obtained liberty to come to England, and his friends made hard suit, that he might be permitted to return to Scotland; because the physicians declared there was no other way to preserve his life, but by the freedom he might have in his native air. But to this king James would never yield, protesting he should never be able to establish his beloved bishops in Scotland, if Mr. Welch were permitted to return thither; so he languished at London a considerable time, his disease was judged by some to have a tendency to a sort of leprosy; physicians say he had been poisoned; a langour he had, together with a great weakness in his knees, caused by his continual kneeling at prayer: by which it came to pass, that though he was able to move his knees, and to walk, yet he was wholly insensible in them, and the flesh became hard like a sort of horn. But when in the time of his