But this last favour had to be sent to him, as we find from his instructions to Edward Bosdon, accompanied by a letter to his Majesty, dated the 21st of March, 1644. We are here enabled to clear up a mystery which has hitherto hung over this portion of his personal history, through a very humble source, fortunately preserved in the Letter Book of Sir William Brereton, now in the British Museum, wherein is the copy of a letter from John Bythell, apparently the commander of the “Peter,” bound for Dublin. The circumstance is too interesting to epitomise, and might suffer in graphic description by any attempt to curtail its minute particulars intended to interest his father and family. From this document we learn that the party left Carnarvon for Dublin on the 25th of March, 1645:-- [L]“John Bythell his letter to his father Rich: Bythell, in Wyre hall. Wherein the much admired Providence of God is to be observed in commanding the seas, &c. “Loving Father and Mother,-- “My duty remembered unto you, and my love to my brother Peter and my sister. These are to certify you that I am in health, but am very sorry that I have such an occasion as this to write to you of. But I pray you be not dismayed nor discouraged, for I trust that that God that hath preserved me from my child-hood, and brought me into these troubles, will in his good time deliver me from them again. For when I went into a place into Wales, called Carnarvon, with a small barque laden with corn, intending to go for Dublin, which [where] it was my fortune to stay some six weeks for a wind; in the interim there came some great men from Oxford, and pressed the barque for the King’s service to carry them to Dublin, and said if I did deny they would throw my corn overboard; and they being of that power forced the barque to go out with them. There was the Lord Herbert, and the Lord John Somerset, the Lord Herbert’s brother, and many knights and colonels and captains, all being strangers to me. But as it seemed, and so it fell out, God was not pleased to grant them a passage, for we left Carnarvon upon the 25th day of March, being our Ladyday, with a very fair wind, although north-east, and as fair a day as possibly could be. But when we came over the bar of Carnarvon the wind began to calm, and to come to the south and south-east. And when we had not sailed past three or four leagues, but the wind came to the south-west, and began to blow very hard about two or three of the clock in the next morning, so that we could not possibly get the Holyhead; and it increased more and more still, insomuch that when we came to the Skerries the storm grew to that [remorselessness?] that the barque had much ado to recover for being swallowed up in those great waves. But when we had passed the Skerries the wind grew greater and greater, and with much ado we recovered the shore with the [ship], but could not possibly gain any harbour, but were driven to the main sea.