Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/168

 The ‘Meeting at Laystoff,‘ or Lowestoff in Suffolk, is mentioned in all the old Books; but John Cory, Merchant Burgess of Norwich shall first bring us face to face with it, Assiduous Sir Symond got a copy of Mr. Cory’s Letter, one of the thousand Letters which Honourable Members listened to in those mornings; and here now is a copy of it for the reader,—news all fresh and fresh, after waiting two hundred and two years. Colonel Cromwell is in Norwich: old Norwich becomes visible and audible, the vanished moments buzzing again with old life,—if the reader will read well. Potts, we should premise, and Palgrave, were lately appointed Deputy Lieutenants of Norwich City; Cory I reckon to be almost a kind of Quasi-Mayor, the real Mayor having lately been seized for Royalism; Knyvett of Ashwellthorpe we shall perhaps transiently meet again. The other royalist gentlemen also are known to antiquaries of that region, and what their ‘seats’ and connexions were: but our reader here can without damage consider merely that they were Sons of Adam, furnished in general with due seats and equipments; and read the best he can

‘Norwich, 17° Martii 1642.

‘Right honourable and worthy Sir,—I hope you came in due time to the end of your journey in health and safety; which I shall rejoice to hear. Sir, I might spare my labour in now writing; for I suppose you are better informed from other hands; only to testify my respects:

‘Those sent out on Monday morning, the 13th, returned that night, with old Mr. Castle of Raveningham, and some arms of his, and of Mr. Loudon’s of Alby, and of Captain