Constitutional history -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History -- 1689-1714 -- Sources; Great Britain -- History -- Restoration, 1660-1688 -- Sources
The King came down to Salisbury, and sent his troops twenty miles
farther; whereupon the Prince, leaving Devonshire and Exeter under
Seymour's government, with a small garrison and the heavy artillery
under Colonel Gibson, who was made Deputy Governor as to the military
part, advanced with his army; and understanding that some officers of
note (Lord Cornbury, Colonel Langston, and others) designed to come over
and bring their men with them, but that they could not depend on their
subalterns, he ordered a body of his men to advance, and favour their
revolt. The parties were within two miles of one another, when the
whisper ran about that they were betrayed, which put them in such
confusion that many rode back, though one whole regiment, and about a
hundred besides, came over in a body, which gave great encouragement to
the Prince's party, and (as it was managed by the flatterers) was made
an instance to the King of his army's fidelity to him, since those who
attempted to lead their regiments away were forced to do it by
stratagem, which, as soon as they perceived, they deserted their leaders
and came back.
But all this would not pacify the King's uneasy mind. His spirits sank,
his blood was in such a fermentation that it gushed out of his nose
several times a day, and with this hurry of thought and dejection of
mind all things about him began to put on a gloomy aspect. The spies
that he sent out took his money, but never returned to bring him any
information; so that he knew nothing but what common report told him,
which magnified the number of his enemies, and made him believe the
Prince was coming upon him before he had moved from Exeter. The city of
London, he heard, was unquiet; the Earls of Devonshire and Danby and
Lord Lumley were drawing great bodies of men in Yorkshire; the Lord
Delamere had a regiment in Cheshire; York and Newcastle had declared for
the Prince; and the bulk of the nation did so evidently discover their
inclinations for him, that the King saw he had nothing to trust to but
his army; and the army, he began to fear, was not to be relied on. In
conclusion, when he heard that Lord Churchill and the Duke of Grafton
(who was one of King Charles's sons by the Duchess of Cleveland), and
the most gallant of all he had, were gone to the Prince, and soon after
that Prince George, the Duke of Ormond, and the Lord Drumlanrig, eldest
son to the Duke of Queensberry, had forsaken him, he was quite
confounded, and not knowing whom to depend on any longer, or what
further designs might be against him, he instantly went to London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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