“The miseries and calamities which of late have happened in this confused place of England are so many that they furnish the discourse both of this and of other nations, who, notwithstanding, are not able to express them all. I shall now relate you only two, befalling within these few days, and to this end, that, by the true report of these (which, by men of sundry passions, may be prevented), others of the like nature, if it please God, may be prevented. Of the one, I have certaine information; of the other, I myselfe was an eye-witness. The first happened, at Acton, some six miles distant from London, where lived a gentleman, reported and believed to be different in religion (as too many nowadays are, which we know to be the cause of all our evils) from the Church of England; but in the voice of most of his neighbours, a sober, moderate, and charitable-minded man. This gentleman, having in his house no more but one ancient gentlewoman, his kinswoman, whom he intrusted as his housekeeper, with one serving man and maide, had his house besett with divers companies of soldiers, who had listed themselves for the service of the King and Parliament, and were in pay and command under officers; where, after they had forced him to open the gates by threatning words, they entered the house, and so strangely despoiled him that they left him not a bed, bedstead, table, doore, or glasse window, chest, trunk, or the smallest utensil, but sold all for very small prices before his servants’ faces, some of them having forced him before on foote to London; and for his bills, bonds, letters, and other writings the most part they tore in pieces, and strewed them about the house; others some they sent up to London. He hath, with much industry and long time, rarely furnished a plot of ground with the choicest flowers and outlandish trees which he could procure, which they plucked up by the roots, as many as they could, and the rest left so desolate that, whereas it was thought the finest and most curious garden in all those parts, there is now left nothing but the ruines of Art and Nature.