From Northampton the same correspondent writes informing his friend that on Wednesday a fast was kept at Coventry--which is described as a city, having four steeples, three churches, and two parishes, and not long since, but one priest--where they heard two sermons, but before the third was ended an "alarum" came for them to march. By ten o'clock they got their regiments together, and about two in the morning proceeded towards Northampton.[311] The military pillaged the parson of Barby, and brought him away prisoner with his surplice and other relics. At Long Buckby the soldiers had hard quarters, insomuch that they were glad to "dispossess the very swine, and as many as could quartered in the church." Some stragglers sallied into the neighbourhood of the town, and returned "in state, clothed in surplice, hood, and cap, representing the Bishop of Canterbury." On Friday morning, Mr. Obediah Sedgwick "gave a worthy sermon," and Wharton's company marched rank and file to hear him. Mr. John Sedgwick had been appointed to preach in the afternoon, but news having arrived that Prince Rupert had plundered Harborough, and fired some adjacent towns, this circumstance spoiled the service. On Sabbath morning Mr. Marshall, "that worthy champion of Christ," preached, and in the afternoon Mr. Ash officiated. These by their sermons "subdued and satisfied more malignant spirits than 1,000 armed men could have done, so that we have great hopes of a blessed union." [Sidenote: _Troops on the March._] Writing from Worcester (September 26th), Wharton complains of the barbarity practised by the cavaliers--relating how they stripped, stabbed, and slashed the dead, and then states that on Sabbath morning, his fellow-soldiers entered a vault of the college where his Excellency was to hear a sermon, and found secreted there eleven barrels of gunpowder and a pot of bullets. It is added that his Excellency prohibited any soldier to plunder churches or private houses under pain of death. In another communication, (dated September 30th), after an interesting account of the situation, buildings, and curiosities of the city, he paints its moral and spiritual condition, in most frightful colours, as so vile, and the country so base, so papistical, so atheistical, and abominable that it resembled Sodom, and was the very emblem of Gomorrah, and doubtless worse than either Algiers or Malta, a very den of thieves, and a refuge for all the hell-hounds in the country. Though the citizens cried _peccavi_ their practical motto was _iterum faciam_; but they only did as they were taught by Dr. Prideaux, lately made bishop, and by other popish priests, who had all run away. [Sidenote: 1642, October.]