further increased by the wholesale desertion of his men. The exhaustion of the country was making it harder than ever to find food and quarters for the soldiers. In Dorsetshire the peasants were already rising, under the name of "Clubmen," to oppose the encroachments of both armies. And the Royalist officers disputed among themselves over the supplies wrung from the impoverished country. From Camden, Colonel Howard simply returned Rupert's order to share his district with another regiment, "resolving to keep nothing by me that shall hang me," he explained; and he went on to assert that even his rival colonel "blushed to see the unreasonableness" of the Prince's order. "What horrid crime have I committed, or what brand of cowardice lies upon me and my men that we are not thought worthy of a subsistence? Shall the Queen's seventy horse have {165} Westmester hundred, Tewkesbury hundred, and God knows what other hundreds, and yet share half with me in Rifsgate, who has, at this very present, a hundred horse and five hundred foot, besides a multiplicity of officers? Sir, at my first coming hither, the gentry of these parts looked upon me as a man considerable, and had already raised me sixty horse towards a hundred, and a hundred foot, and were continuing to raise me a greater number. But at the sight of this order of your Highness I resolved to disband them, and to come to Oxford where I'll starve in more security. But finding my Lieutenant-Colonel forced to come to your Highness and to tell his sad condition, I find him so well prepared with sadness of his own, that I cannot but think he will deliver my grievances rarely. As I shall find myself encouraged by your Highness, I will go on and raise more forces. Ever submitting all my proceedings to your Highness's orders--_bar starving, since I am resolved to live._"[32]