Cromwell himself was present at this hurling match, according to the _Moderate Intelligencer_ of April 26--May 4, 1654. “This day there was a hurling match of a great ball by fifty Cornish gentlemen on the one side, and fifty on the other; one party played in red caps, and the other in white. There was present his Highness the Lord Protector, many of the Privy Council, and divers eminent gentlemen, to whose view was presented great agility of body, and most neat and exquisite wrestling at every meeting of one with the other, which was ordered with such dexterity, that it was to show more the strength, vigour and nimbleness of their bodies, than to endanger their persons. The ball they played withal was silver, and designed for that party which did win the goal.” But, if Cromwell could drive the coach of State, he could not always manage to drive his own, and there is one memorable instance of his coming to grief in Hyde Park, in 1654, in endeavouring so to do, the story of which is thus told by General Ludlow (who was no friend to the Protector) in his Memoirs.[19] “In the mean time, _Cromwel_ having assumed the whole Power of the Nation to himself, and sent Ambassadors and Agents to Foreign States, was courted again by them, and presented with the Rarities of several Countries; amongst the rest the Duke of _Holstein_ made him a Present of a Set of gray _Frizeland_ Coach-Horses, with which taking the Air in the Park, attended only with his Secretary _Thurlow_, and Guard of Janizaries, he would needs take the place of the Coachman, not doubting but the three pair of Horses he was about to drive would prove as tame as the three Nations which were ridden by him: and, therefore, not contented with their ordinary pace, he lashed them very furiously. But they, unaccustomed to such a rough Driver, ran away in a Rage, and stop’d not till they had thrown him out of the box, with which Fall, his Pistol fired in his Pocket, tho without any hurt to himself; by which he might have been instructed how dangerous it was to intermeddle with those things wherein he had no Experience.” In Thurloe’s _State Papers_ (vol. ii. p, 652) there is another account of this accident, in a letter, dated October 16, 1654 (N.S.), from “The _Dutch_ embassadors in _England_, to the States General.