the very time, too, when he was promising to make
Cromwell and Ireton noblemen, if they would help him up to his old
height, he was writing to the Queen that he meant to hang them. They
both afterwards declared that they had been privately informed that such
a letter would be found, on a certain evening, sewed up in a saddle which
would be taken to the Blue Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover; and that
they went there, disguised as common soldiers, and sat drinking in the
inn-yard until a man came with the saddle, which they ripped up with
their knives, and therein found the letter. I see little reason to doubt
the story. It is certain that Oliver Cromwell told one of the King's
most faithful followers that the King could not be trusted, and that he
would not be answerable if anything amiss were to happen to him. Still,
even after that, he kept a promise he had made to the King, by letting
him know that there was a plot with a certain portion of the army to
seize him. I believe that, in fact, he sincerely wanted the King to
escape abroad, and so to be got rid of without more trouble or danger.
That Oliver himself had work enough with the army is pretty plain; for
some of the troops were so mutinous against him, and against those who
acted with him at this time, that he found it necessary to have one man
shot at the head of his regiment to overawe the rest.

The King, when he received Oliver's warning, made his escape from Hampton
Court; after some indecision and uncertainty, he went to Carisbrooke
Castle in the Isle of Wight. At first, he was pretty free there; but,
even there, he carried on a pretended treaty with the Parliament, while
he was really treating with commissioners from Scotland to send an army
into England to take his part. When he broke off this treaty with the
Parliament (having settled with Scotland) and was treated as a prisoner,
his treatment was not changed too soon, for he had plotted to escape that
very night to a ship sent by the Queen, which was lying off the island.

He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from Scotland. The
agreement he had made with the Scottish Commissioners was not favourable
enough to the religion of that country to please the Scottish clergy; and
they preached against it. The consequence was, that the army raised in
Scotland and sent over, was too small to do much; and that, although it
was helped by a rising of the Royalists in England and by good soldiers