Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/181

 they were immediately routed, and ran all away, and we had the execution of them two or three miles.

''I believe some of our soldiers did kill two or three men apiece in the pursuit; but what the number of dead is we are not certain. We took forty-five Prisoners, besides divers of their horse and arms, and rescued many Prisoners whom they had lately taken of ours; and we took four or five of their colours. “I rest”'' * * *

On inquiry at Grantham, there is no vestige of tradition as to the scene of this skirmish; which must have been some two miles out on the Newark road. Thomas May, a veracious intelligent man, but vague as to dates, mentions two notable skirmishes of Cromwell’s ‘near to Grantham,’ in the course of this business; one especially in which ‘he defeated a strong party of the Newarkers, where the odds of number on their side was so great that it seemed almost a miraculous victory’: that probably is the one now in question. Colonel Cromwell, we farther find, was very ‘vigilant of all sallies that were made, and took many men and colours at several times’; and did what was in Colonel Cromwell;—but could not take Newark at present. One element or other of the combination always fails. Newark, again and again besieged, did not surrender until the end of the War. At present, it is terribly wet weather, for one thing; ‘thirteen days of continual rain.’

The King, as we observed, is in Oxford: Treaty, of very slow gestation, came to birth in March last, and was carried on there by Whitlocke and others till the beginning of April; but ended in absolute nothing. The King still continues in Oxford,—his head-quarters for three years to come. The