MY LORDS,--After the sending away of our letters of last friday, we were acquainted the next morning, which we heard nothing of the night before, that about that time a mischance happened to the lord protector, which might have been, in all likelihood, very fatal unto him, if God had not wonderfully preserved him; as we are informed the manner of it to be thus. His highness, only accompanied with Secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take the air in Hyde Park, where he caused some dishes of meat to be brought; where he made his dinner, and, afterwards, had a desire to drive the coach himself, having put only the secretary into it, being those six horses, which the earl of Oldenburgh had presented unto his highness, who drove pretty handsomely for some time; but, at last, provoking those horses too much with the whip, they grew unruly, and run so fast that the postillion could not hold them in; whereby his highness was flung out of the coach box upon the pole, upon which he lay with his body, and, afterwards, fell upon the ground. His foot getting hold in the tackling, he was carried away a good while in that posture, during which a pistol went off in his pocket; but, at last, he got his foot clear, and so came to escape, the coach passing away without hurting him. He was presently brought home, and let blood; and, after some rest taken, he is now pretty well again. The secretary, being hurt on his ancle with leaping out of the coach, hath been forced to keep his chamber hitherto, and been unfit for any business; so that we have not been able to further or expedite any business this week.” Larwood, in his _Story of the London Parks_, gives quotations from two poetical lampoons, which I have not been able to verify, and, therefore, give them on his authority. And, he says, there was a poem called _The Jolt_, by Sir John Birkenhead, treating of this accident. The first quotation he gives he does not say whence it is taken, and is as follows: “Every day and hour has shown us his power, And now he has shown us his art. His first reproach was a fall from a coach-- And his next will be from a cart.” A pleasant allusion to his probable fate, for a criminal who was to be hanged, was taken to the gallows on a cart, and, the halter being round his neck, the horse was whipped, and the cart being drawn from under him, the unfortunate man was left swinging. The other quotation, he says, occurs in a ballad called, “Old England is now a brave Barbary.” “But Noll, a rank rider, gets first in the saddle, And make her show tricks, curvate and rebound; She quickly perceived he rode widdle-waddle, And, like his coach-horses, threw his Highness to the ground.”