trusty servants, he had
fooled them all; and that once they had a mind to have closed with him;
but, upon something that happened, fell off from that design. Orrery,
finding them in good humor, and being alone with them, asked if he
might presume to desire to know why they would once have closed with his
majesty, and why they did not. Cromwell very freely told him, he would
satisfy him in both his queries. The reason, says he, why we would
have closed with the king was this: we found that the Scotch and
Presbyterians began to be more powerful than we, and were likely to
agree with him, and leave us in the lurch. For this reason, we thought
it best to prevent them, by offering first to come in upon reasonable
conditions; but whilst our thoughts were taken up with this subject,
there came a letter to us from one of our spies, who was of the king's
bedchamber, acquainting us, that our final doom was decreed that very
day; that he could not possibly learn what it was, but we might discover
it, if we could but intercept a letter sent from the king to the queen,
wherein he informed her of his resolution; that this letter was sown
up in the skirt of a saddle, and the bearer of it would come with the
saddle upon his head, about ten of the clock that night, to the Blue
Boar in Holborn, where he was to take horse for Dover. The messenger
knew nothing of the letter in the saddle, though some in Dover did.
'We were at Windsor,' said Cromwell, 'when we received this letter; and
immediately upon the receipt of it, Ireton and I resolved to take one
trusty fellow with us, and to go in troopers' habits to that inn. We did
so; and leaving our man at the gate of the inn, (which had a wicket only
open to let persons in and out,) to watch and give us notice when any
man came in with a saddle, we went into a drinking-stall. We there
continued, drinking cans of beer, till about ten of the clock, when our
sentinel at the gate gave us notice that the man with the saddle was
come. We rose up presently, and just as the man was leading out his
horse saddled, we came up to him with drawn swords, and told him we
were to search all that went in and out there: but as he looked like
an honest man, we would only search his saddle, and so dismiss him.
The saddle was ungirt; we carried it into the stall where we had been
drinking and ripping open one of the skirts, we there found the letter
we wanted. Having thus got it into our hands, we delivered the man