His avoidance of all share in the task of punishing, by fine and imprisonment, those of his old friends and country neighbours who thought that the duty of loyalty to the Crown was still a duty, however glaring the faults of the man who, for the time, wore the Crown, was the primary offence given by Sir Thomas COTTON to the busy patriots who would fain have had him work with them as a fellow-sequestrator. His illness (as I have said) was doubtless real enough; but he also disliked the work, and took no pains to conceal his dislike. Medical advisers told him that Bedfordshire—where he also had property—was a better county than Huntingdonshire for a man who suffered from chronic ague and low fever. But Sir Thomas needed no adviser to tell him that, under the existing circumstances of the country and the times, Eyworth would be a much more satisfactory abode than Conington for a quiet-loving man who had other duties than those of a soldier, who abhorred civil war with all his soul, and who ardently desired such a solution of the current issues as would neither make the King a mere dependent on his Parliament, nor make the Parliament an absolute ruler over the kingdom. Sir Thomas went into Bedfordshire. Lady COTTON continued to abide at Conington. Very soon after his departure she received a summons, addressed to her husband, and couched exactly in these words: ‘You are assessed eight hundred pounds, according to an Ordinance of Parliament. [Sidenote: 1643. 16 August.] The King and Parliament hath present use of these monies. Therefore, we pray you, send it up to us at Huntingdon on Saturday next.’ Before the receipt of this very summary ‘assessment’ many of Sir Thomas COTTON’S horses, with a good deal of farm produce and other property, had been already seized, by measures more summary still. Meanwhile Sir Thomas had committed no act of delinquency; he had simply removed himself into another county. Payment was refused. [Sidenote: The Proceedings of the Huntingdonshire Sequestrators at Conington.]