Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/279

Rh together drove them away from it. Equivocations, spasmodic obstinacies, and blindness to the real state of facts, must have an end.—

The following Seven Letters, of little or no significance for illustrating public affairs, are to carry us over a period of most intricate negotiation; negotiation with the Scots, managed manfully on both sides, otherwise it had ended in quarrel; negotiations with the King; infinite public and private negotiations;—which issue at last in the Scots marching home with 200,000l. as ‘a fair instalment of their arrears, in their pocket; and the King marching, under escort of Parliamentary Commissioners, to Holmby House in Northamptonshire, to continue in strict though very stately seclusion, ‘on 50l. a day,’ and await the destinies there.

, of Ashwellthorpe in Norfolk, is one of the unfortunate Royalist Gentlemen whom Cromwell laid sudden hold of at Lowestoff some years ago, and lodged in the Castle of Cambridge,—suddenly snuffing-out their Royalist light in that quarter. Knyvett, we conclude, paid his ‘contribution,’ or due fine, for the business; got safe home again; and has lived quieter ever since. Of whom we promised the reader some transitory glimpse once more.

Here accordingly is a remarkable Letter to him, now first adjusted to its right place in this Series. The Letter used to be in the possession of the Lords Berners, whose ancestor this Knyvett was, one of whose seats this Ashwellthorpe in Norfolk still is. With them, however, there remains nothing but a Copy now, and that without date, and otherwise not quite correct. Happily it had already gone forth in print with date and address in full;—has been found among the lumber and innocent marine-stores of Sylvanus Urban, communicated, in an incidental way, by ‘a Gentleman at Shrewsbury,’ who, in