t assault the army made upon
them, when Colonel Pride, with his regiment, garbled the House, as
they called it. At that time a fair opportunity offered; but it was
omitted till it was too late. That insult upon the House had been
attempted the year before, but was hindered by the little insurrection
of the royal party, and the sooner they had fallen out, the better.

2. These risings being desperate, with vast disadvantages, and always
suppressed, ruined all our friends; the remnants of the Cavaliers were
lessened, the stoutest and most daring were cut off, and the king's
interest exceedingly weakened, there not being less than 30,000 of
his best friends cut off in the several attempts made at Maidstone,
Colchester, Lancashire, Pembroke, Pontefract, Kingston, Preston,
Warrington, Worcester, and other places. Had these men all reserved
their fortunes to a conjunction with the Scots, at either of the
invasions they made into this kingdom, and acted with the conduct and
courage they were known masters of, perhaps neither of those Scots
armies had been defeated.

But the impatience of our friends ruined all; for my part, I had as
good a mind to put my hand to the ruin of the enemy as any of them,
but I never saw any tolerable appearance of a force able to match the
enemy, and I had no mind to be beaten and then hanged. Had we let them
alone, they would have fallen into so many parties and factions, and
so effectually have torn one another to pieces, that whichsoever party
had come to us, we should, with them, have been too hard for all the
rest.

This was plain by the course of things afterwards; when the
Independent army had ruffled the Presbyterian Parliament, the soldiery
of that party made no scruple to join us, and would have restored the
king with all their hearts, and many of them did join us at last.

And the consequence, though late, ended so; for they fell out so
many times, army and Parliament, Parliament and army, and alternately
pulled one another down so often till at last the Presbyterians who
began the war, ended it, and, to be rid of their enemies, rather than
for any love to the monarchy, restored King Charles the Second, and
brought him in on the very day that they themselves had formerly
resolved the ruin of his father's government, being the 29th of May,
the same day twenty years that the private cabal in London concluded
their secret league with the Scots, to embroil his father King Charles
the Fi