Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/239

Rh of Merton College, and received his death-volley with a soldier’s stoicism. The Son of Secretary Windebank, who fled beyond seas long since.

How Cromwell, sending off his new guns and stores to Abingdon, now shot across westward to ‘Radcot Bridge’ or ‘Bampton-in-the-Bush’; and on the 26th gained a new victory there; and on the whole made a rather brilliant sally of it :—this too is known from Clarendon, or more authentically from Rushworth; but only the concluding unsuccessful part of this, the fruitless Summons to Farringdon, has left any trace in autograph.

1em ''Sir,—I summon you to deliver into my hands the House wherein you are, and your Ammunition, with all things else there; together with your persons, to be disposed of as the Parliament shall appoint. Which if you refuse to do, you are to expect the utmost extremity of war. I rest, your servant,'' OLIVER CROMWELL.

This Governor, ‘Roger Burgess,’ is not to be terrified with fierce countenance and mere dragoons; he refuses. Cromwell condenses himself about Farringdon Town, ‘sends for infantry’ (but, we fear, gets none), and again summons:

Sir,—I understand by forty or fifty poor men whom you forced into your House, that you have many there whom you cannot arm, and who are not serviceable to you.