wanted to snatch the command from the hands of General Leslie. By the time the army reached Worcester--which the King had selected for his last throw in the game of war--the army had fallen into a state of perfect demoralization. Discord prevailed amongst the officers, and confusion amongst the men. The image of iron and clay fell to pieces at the first shock. Cromwell, who had followed the Royalists from Scotland, dashed down upon them by the banks of the river Severn, ere they were aware of his approach. The King suddenly, as he was dining at noon, heard of a battle, and rushed out of the house, only to find a body of his own horsemen already in retreat. They nearly rode over his sacred person, and paid no attention whatever to his loud war cry. The Ironsides swept all before them. Leslie reached Yorkshire with only 1,500 Covenanters; and the rest of the troops were scattered over the country--blown about like the chaff of the summer threshing floor. [Sidenote: 1651, May.] If some English Presbyterians could not conscientiously fight for the King, others could not conscientiously fight against him. The Covenant, according to the fairest interpretation of it, together with their own old English sentiments, constrained them to maintain their loyalty to the crown. Regarding the father's execution as a murder, they declined to help the regicides in their designs upon his son. Dr. Samuel Annesley, John Wesley's grandfather, was a type of this class. He refused to send a horse against his Majesty at Worcester, and despatched a servant at night from a distance of forty miles to secure the church keys, in order that no schismatical ministers might hold a thanksgiving service in his church in celebration of Cromwell's victory. Several times he denounced the General as the "arrantest hypocrite" that ever pestered the Church of Christ; as one intent on pulling "down others only to make his own way to the throne," for which demonstrations before "some of note in the army" he was "necessitated to quit a parsonage worth between £200 and £300 per annum."[40] [Sidenote: 1651, July.] In the spring of 1651, as Charles did penance for the recovery of the throne, he had Presbyterian friends in London and elsewhere plotting for the same end. They despatched letters to raise money and arms on his behalf; and some of these letters, conveyed in a vessel driven by a storm into the harbour of the town of Ayr, fell into Cromwell's hands. [Sidenote: _Love's Trial._]