Kingly prerogative on the one hand and Parliamentary privilege on the other appealed to "the push of pike."

1641. A committee was appointed by the House to investigate cases of vigorous execution of the levying of ship-money: on a report from the said committee by Sir Edward Hungerford, order was given to arrest as offenders in a very high nature Edmund Brinsden [of Marlborough ?] William Blackden constable of Whorwelsdown Hundred, Michael Tidcombe of the Devizes, and William Smyth. 7th January. Michael Tidcombe was an attorney of Devizes, and Mayor of the Borough in 1643. His official connexion with the Royalists brought him, as we shall hereafter see, into great trouble.

"It is almost universally admitted, that the King's attempt to seize the five members of the Commons, in the House itself, was the commencement of the war. It was certainly the very act which immediately led to it. From that moment, compromise was impossible, resistance was indispensable." Carey's Memorials, xxxiii. The first military movements in Wiltshire were the simultaneous actions, of the King's party on the one hand, putting the "commission of array" in execution; and on the other, the nomination of the Earl of Pembroke as Lord-lieutenant of Wilts, Somerset and Gloucestershire to raise the Militia in the Parliament's behalf. This was in August 1642. The principal depots of the North Wilts Militia were Devizes and Malmesbury; though lines of fortification were not drawn around either of these places till the war had considerably advanced. On the 25th of August the Earl wrote to the House, to say that he had succeeded in putting the Militia in execution in divers hundreds; that he found an extraordinary appearance, with great numbers of volunteers; the county generally expressing their firm and constant resolution to aid and assist the Parliament on all occasions. The command in chief of the Wiltshire forces, together with the executive ordinance to raise moneys in this county, was committed by the Earl to Sir Edward Baynton; who,

either as a guarantee of his good faith, or more probably seeking a securer asylum for his treasures than Bromham Hall seemed to furnish, forthwith transferred the bulk of his moveable personal property, consisting of several trunks full of plate and money, to the Isle of Wight, which at that moment was under the government of his friend the Earl of Pembroke. Sir Edward's nomination to so important a post in the county of Wilts was manifestly dictated by feelings of personal regard, the knight having already held military office under two Earls of Pembroke for twenty years past; for though he was not destitute of the influence which wealth and long standing in the county gave to his family, yet the reputation which he at the same time bore among good fellows, or as they were then termed "roaring boys," seems to have been felt as unfitting him for the post of leader at so momentous a crisis. Such at least may be gathered from the general tenour of the newspaper reports. It was not therefore without a certain basis of truth that a set of charges were levelled against him from some private press, in the form of a letter purporting to be written by a Devizes burgess, and representing Sir Edward's conduct in this town as capricious, tyrannical, and unpopular. That the entire letter, as such, is a forgery, there can be no doubt; though it is possible enough that its sentiments were held by some of the townsfolk; and equally credible that the actions attributed to Baynton were matters of fact, such as his committing the mayor to prison for uttering the King's proclamation, punishing a boy for firing a squib, and causing the borough officials to be placed in the stocks which he had just ordered them to repair.

The compiler of Rushworth's Collection, observes in his preface, referring to the numerous literary forgeries of the hour-"Such practices and the experience I had thereof, and the impossibility of any man in after ages to ground a true history by relying on the printed pamphlets in our days, which passed the press while it was without control, obliged

me to all the pains and charges I have been at, to make a great collection; and while things were fresh in memory, to separate truth from falsehood."

The letter from Devizes is not in Rushworth; neither is another letter, similar in style and spirit, which about the same time came professedly from Marlborough. Both of them look very like the performances of Edward Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon); and as that writer boasts in his autobiography of his skill in this fictitious species of composition, it is no uncharitableness to give him the benefit of the invention.1

A LETTER sent from Devizes to a friend in Salisbury, printed for W. Webb, 1643.

Shewing the condition of the town, the affections of the inhabitants, and the behaviour of Sir Edward Baynton.

"SIR, I received your letter by Master R. C. which you seem to have writ in such an agony of spirit, that truly I should have wondered at such emphatical expressions had I not measured out your grief with mine own. For, whether by sympathy or chance, you seem so well acquainted with the anguish of my soul, that I read my own thoughts in a truer character of your pen than I am able to give myself. Together with your letter I received your token, which, though sent to me, yet my wife desired me to resign the thanking part to her; because it did her so much honour at her child's christening, which, as it was born a prisoner, (for what they call a garrison may by a truer phrase be styled a gaol) so it was not long ere it obtained an enlargement: for the Epiphany brought it into the world, and the Purification sent it out again. I will not say my turn is next; but yet I must tell you that when they have taken away our livelihoods, I know not what afterwards will content them but our lives. For Sir Edward Baynton hath lorded it with such an exquisite tyranny that he hath converted more to the King's side by persecution than I have been able to win either by my rhetoric or my reason: so that many of our inhabitants whom his cruelty found rebellious, it hath rendered loyal. 'Tis true indeed the town hath entertained them [the Parliament's forces]: but to the best sort, I am sure, as they were never invited, so they are not welcome. Nor can you so properly say that we let them into the town, as that we were not provided to keep them out. We had given up our hands to his Majesty's service, as we have always done our hearts, but that we lay as naked' as that truth we side with. Nay,

1 Meaning that the town was un- otherwise they would have declared provided with lines of fortification; for the King.

we would yet leave our houses to lose our lives with the King were we not narrowly observed, not only by a Janus who hath two eyes, but by an Argus who is all eyes; and did not their garrison serve as well to keep us in the town as to keep the King out of it. Now, Sir, when the King shall take this town, as I doubt not but he will, because it will be hard to mow down the tares without cutting some corn, I could wish that Mr. Mayor,' of whose loyalty I shall tell you anon, might give up a catalogue of such men who have been zealously well-affected to the King's cause, lest our misfortune be punished like their sin; and lest we suffer, like the stork in the fable, only for being in the company of those unlucky birds. I confess it is better that we should fall in the common confusion of the town, than that they should longer be industrious in their own calamity, by lifting their hands against their head. Yet it is a miserable happiness which the tragedian so much commends, omnia secum consumpta ferre; and 'tis pity (though to be dispensed with) that in the hurry and confusion of a conquering siege, we should suffer by the King's forces who have so long suffered for them. And what our sufferings are, you may guess by this, that we are by so much in a poorer condition than those that have least, by how much we are more liable to the loss of all. Did his proud knightship amerce us to nineteen parts of our estates, we might call the twentieth ours: but alas we are become mere stewards of our own; and are made accountable for so much more than we were ever worth, that the reputation we have with creditors doth only purchase this good to us-to be less worth than nothing.

1 Richard Pearce was Mayor in 1642. Michael Tidcombe in 1643, both of them, royalists. The writer of the above letter would say, and perhaps with truth, that it was by compulsion that Mr. Mayor figured in the previous autumn as an agent

for the Parliament, when he arrested one Thomas Rowe a servant of Lord Cottington on suspicion that he was the bearer of intelligence between his master and the Lord Strange, and sent him in custody to London. Commons Journals 30 Sep. 1642.