Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/184

 ‘Lay not too much upon a poor gentleman,’—who is really doing what he can; shooting swiftly, now hither, now thither, wheresoever the tug of difficulty lies; struggling very sore, as beseems the Son of Light and Son of Adam, not to be vanquished by the mud-element!

Intricate struggles; sunk almost all in darkness now:—of which take this other as a token, gathered still luminous from the authentic but mostly inane opacities of the Commons Journals’: ‘21 June 1643, Mr Pym reports from the Committee of the Safety of the Kingdom,’ our chief authority at present, to this effect, That Captain Hotham, son of the famed Hull Hotham, had, as appeared by Letters from Lord Grey and Colonel Cromwell, now at Nottingham, been behaving very ill; had plundered divers persons without regard to the side they were of; had, on one occasion, ‘turned two pieces of ordnance against Colonel Cromwell’; nay, once, when Lord Grey’s quartermaster was in some huff with Lord Grey, ‘about oats,’ had privily offered to the said quartermaster that they two should draw out their men, and have a fight for it with Lord Grey;—not to speak of frequent correspondences with Newark, with Newcastle, and the Queen now come back from Holland: wherefore he is arrested there in Nottingham, and locked up for trial.

This was on the Wednesday, this report of Pym’s: and, alas, while Pym reads it, John Hampden, mortally wounded four days ago in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field, lies dying at Thame;—died on the Saturday following!

‘On Thursday July the 27th,’ on, or shortly before that day, ‘news reach London’ that Colonel Cromwell has taken Stamford,—retaken it, I think; at all events taken it. Whereupon the Cavaliers from Newark and Belvoir Castle