The tactics to be next followed were hotly disputed. The Court faction was anxious to unite the two armies, but,--for other reasons than the important one that Maurice, in that case, could have been only a colonel,--Rupert prevailed {119} against this counsel. Maurice was therefore ordered to march with foot and cannon after Lord Carnarvon, who was besieging Dorchester. It was said by the Court that, had Maurice marched more slowly, Carnarvon would have succeeded better. For Maurice "was thought to incline so wholly to the soldier, that he neglected any consideration of the country."[41] Fear of him roused the people of the country to active opposition. The licence of his soldiers--though admitted even by Clarendon to have been "reported greater than it was"--alienated the county, and Carnarvon took the Prince's conduct "so ill" that he threw up his commission and returned to Oxford.[42] Maurice thus left to labour alone, took Exeter and Weymouth, over the governorship of which he had a second quarrel with Hertford, who, though absent, was still nominally Lord Lieutenant of the western counties; on this occasion the King favoured Hertford, who triumphed accordingly. In October Maurice took Dartmouth, but effected little else of importance. Handicapped by a long and dangerous attack of influenza--"the new disease,"[43] it was called then--he besieged Lyme and Plymouth for months without success, and lost a good deal of reputation in the process. In accordance with Rupert's scheme of campaign, the King should now have pushed on with the main army to London. But to render this plan successful it was necessary that Newcastle should sweep down from the North, and Maurice or Hopton, come to meet him from the West; the strength of local feeling prevented any such resolute and united action. Newcastle's northern troops would not leave their own counties exposed to hostile garrisons and hostile armies, in order to assist the King in a distant part of the country. In the same way the men of Cornwall and Devon refused to quit their own territory, and for the King {120} to push on alone to London was absolutely useless. He was therefore forced to fall back on the old plan of conquering the country piecemeal, town by town, village by village; and accordingly, August 10th, he laid siege to Gloucester. Massey, then governor of Gloucester, had once served under Legge, and now sent word to him that he would surrender the city to the King, but not to Rupert. This message was the chief cause of the siege that followed; but Massey, either from inability or change of purpose, did not keep his engagement. Rupert held aloof from the siege altogether. No doubt he was disappointed at the rejection of his own more sweeping measures, and when he found that he would not even be allowed to assault the town, he declined to command at all. He could not, however, resist lingering about the trenches in a private capacity, and while so doing,