The Journal of Joachim Hane: containing his escapes and sufferings during his employment by Oliver Cromwell in France from November 1653 to February 1654Hane, Joachim
History
The Journal of Joachim Hane: containing his escapes and sufferings during his employment by Oliver Cromwell in France from November 1653 to February 1654
Hane, Joachim
France -- Foreign relations -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- France
whole house tooke an alarum, but I having now before me a great hole to
get out by would make no stay to looke for the issue of that alarum but
ran a pace till I gott without the bounds of that vineyard.
Thus in the midst of my greatest trouble I received comfort againe,
though it was but such as in relation to a better condition was
comparable to dispare it selfe, for although I had drawne my foot out of
the snare yet knew not where to fix my biding but must of necessity fall
into another againe. I was become like a ship that upon a tempestuous
sea hath lost his rudder and sailes and can no more be guided by the
discretion of the steersman to any harbour of safty, but left to the
mercyless waves to be overtourned and swallowed up in the deepe, to be
cast upon the rocks of despaire. Even so was I at this instant deprived
of all hope and counsell to direct my course either to the right or left
for safety, seing nothing but signes of unavoidable destruction round
about me.
Being thus at liberty againe to seeke another hiding place I walked or
rather crawled upon my pittifull feet out of one feild into another, not
knowing nor careing which way I went, till againest day I lit on another
barne which stood by itself about a stones cast from the dwelling house.
Coming to this barne I found a little haystack piled up against a wall
the which, the weather being very ill, was a great invitation to me to
take up my lodging on the top of it, perswadeing my selfe that no body
would suspect or seeke me theire. In this confidence I made shift to get
to the top of it, and having prepared me a place wherin I might lye both
secret and warme I fell presently a sleepe, not wakeing till about nyne
of the clock. Being wakened I saw two country fellows at the barne doore
standing on purpose to watch least I should get away before those came
for whom they had sent to aprehend me. Here the comfort my last nights
escape had gotten in me was tourned into dispaire againe, although I
knew not by what meanes or after what manner I had beene discovered so
soone, only I ghesed that either some body had seene me goe into the
barne, or else the servants when they came to feed a couple of oxen
which stood in a pertition made in the corner of the barne had heard me
make some noyse in my hard sleepe. How ever it came these same fellows
thought themselves very sure of me, mocking and jearing with my
pittifull condition, and demanding of me why I would rather come to be
taken in their barne then their neighbours house which was but halfe a
mile from thence. I had bewitched their neighbours eyes, but I should
not bewitch theirs. With such and the like jeasts they passed their tyme
till the good wife of the house called them to dinner; then they went to
the dwelling house, and fetched their meat, with an intent to dine
without the doore that so they might both eate and have an eye to the
prisoner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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