and had a command in the Parliament's army, but did not achieve any great distinction; indeed he seems rather to have lacked the qualities that generals are made of. Early in the summer of 1643 he seized Gainsborough, and held it for the Parliament; but on the news reaching the Marquis of Newcastle, he despatched a force out of Yorkshire under General Cavendish, who laid siege to the town, whereupon, Cromwell, who had just taken Burleigh House, the seat of the Cecils, hastened with his Huntingdonshire troopers, and a few regiments of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire horse to the relief of the beleaguered garrison, and attacked and defeated the Royalist forces, Cavendish being killed in the encounter. In connection with Lord Willoughby's occupation of Gainsborough an incident occurred which is worth recording. On the capture of the town several persons of rank were made prisoners, including Robert Pierrepoint, Earl of Kingston, surnamed the "Good." When it was known that the Royalists were advancing, Willoughby, to prevent the Earl's escape, had him placed in a pinnace and conveyed to Hull. While on the voyage Cavendish, in ignorance that so distinguished a companion in arms was on board, ordered his men to fire upon the vessel, and an unlucky shot struck his lordship and killed him on the spot. Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, in her "Memoirs" of her husband, gives the popular version of the story, from which it appears that when Kingston was first invited to join the Royalists, "he made a serious imprecation on himself: 'When,' said he, 'I take arms with the King against the Parliament, or with the Parliament against the King, let a cannon bullet divide me between them,'" "which God," she says, "was pleased to bring to pass a few months after; for he, going into Gainsborough, and there taking up arms for the King, was surprised by my Lord Willoughby, and, after a handsome defence of himself, yielded, and was put prisoner into a pinnace, and sent down the river to Hull, when my Lord Newcastle's army, marching along the shore, shot at the pinnace, and, being in danger, the Earl of Kingston went up upon the deck to show himself, and to prevail on them to forbear shooting; but as soon as he appeared a cannon bullet flew from the King's army and divided him in the middle, being then in the Parliament's pinnace; who thus perished according to his own unhappy imprecation."