This skirmish probably had two important results. It hastened the arrival of Cromwell in West Lincolnshire, and it impelled Hotham, whose influence over his father was unbounded, to meditate treachery to the Parliament. On May 3 Cromwell, who had been scheming for a combined movement with Lord Grey of Groby and others against Newark, wrote from Stamford to the Lincoln Committee, entreating them to send their forces for that purpose to rendezvous at Grantham. But his efforts were fruitless. Lord Grey was anxious to protect Leicester, and the Lincoln troops were slow to move. Early in May Colonel Cavendish gained another small success near Grantham, surprising the “rebels” in their quarters and taking many prisoners; but within a week he suffered a reverse at the hands of Cromwell and his newly-trained cavalry, though they had but twelve troops to his twenty-five. The encounter took place on the Grantham and Newark road, and is thus described by Cromwell himself:— “After we had stood a little above musket-shot, the one body from the other, and the dragoons had fired on both sides for the space of half an hour or more, they not advancing towards us, we agreed to charge them. And advancing the body after many shots on both sides, we came on with our troops at a pretty round trot—they standing firm to receive us, and our men charging fiercely upon them, by God’s providence they were immediately routed and ran all away, and we had the execution of them two or three miles. We took forty-five prisoners ... and rescued many prisoners whom they had lately taken of ours, and we took four or five of their colours.”[119] One consequence of this fight seems to have been that Grantham, whose real sympathy had been shown by its electing two of the stoutest Puritan members, returned to its allegiance to Parliament. With some of the wisdom that is born of the event, Dr. Gardiner says that “the whole fortune of the Civil War was in this nameless skirmish.”[120] But the statement of a biographer of Cromwell,[121] in magnifying the victory, that “never again did the Newarkers range the country with impunity,” is plainly false. The “wasps’ nest” itself remained unattacked; and a month later (June 11) we find Cavendish and his men in Mid-Lincolnshire taking toll of the household stuff, deer, and cattle of Sir William Armyne, one of the Grantham members, and “damnifying him” to the extent of £500.[122] In the same month they had a brush with the enemy at Louth, where the parish register records the burial of “three strangers, being souldgeres slaine at a scrimish”; and perhaps this was the occasion when Sir Charles Bolle of Thorpe Hall, an ardent Cavalier, only escaped capture by hiding under the bridge near the gaol, over which the Roundhead troopers galloped in search of him.