protection in
the Isle of Man.

Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, Colonel Gerard, and above 400
gentlemen, all officers of horse, lay their commissions down, and
seizing upon Wootton House for a retreat, make proposals to the
Parliament to leave the kingdom, upon their parole not to return again
in arms against the Parliament, which was accepted, though afterwards
the prince declined it. I sent my man post to the prince to be
included in this treaty, and for leave for all that would accept of
like conditions, but they had given in the list of their names, and
could not alter it.

This was a sad time. The poor remains of the king's fortunes went
everywhere to wreck. Every garrison of the enemy was full of the
Cavalier prisoners, and every garrison the king had was beset with
enemies, either blocked up or besieged. Goring and the Lord Hopton
were the only remainders of the king's forces which kept in a body,
and Fairfax was pushing them with all imaginable vigour with his whole
army about Exeter and other parts of Devonshire and Cornwall.

In this condition the king left Newark in the night, and got to
Oxford. The king had in Oxford 8000 men, and the towns of Banbury,
Farringdon, Donnington Castle, and such places as might have been
brought together in twenty-four hours, 15,000 or 20,000 men, with
which, if he had then resolved to have quitted the place,
and collected the forces in Worcester, Hereford, Lichfield,
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and all the small castles and garrisons he had
thereabouts, he might have had near 40,000 men, might have beaten
the Scots from Newark, Colonel Jones from Chester, and all, before
Fairfax, who was in the west, could be able to come to their relief.
And this his Majesty's friends in North Wales had concerted; and, in
order to it, Sir Jacob Ashby gathered what forces he could, in our
parts, and attempted to join the king at Oxford, and to have proposed
it to him; but Sir Jacob was entirely routed at Stow-on-the-Wold, and
taken prisoner, and of 3000 men not above 600 came to Oxford.

All the king's garrisons dropped one by one; Hereford, which had stood
out against the whole army of the Scots, was surprised by six men and
a lieutenant dressed up for country labourers, and a constable pressed
to work, who cut the guards in pieces, and let in a party of the
enemy. Chester was reduced by famine, all the attempts the king made
to relieve it being frustrated.

Sir Thomas Fairfax routed the Lord Ho