We may as well dispose of the Hothams once for all; albeit to do so will make it necessary to anticipate considerably beyond the period of Newcastle’s campaign with which we are now dealing. Although long, the following statement of the whole affair of the Hothams by Sir Hugh Cholmley is worth reading, especially as the writer had been on intimate terms both with the Hothams and with Newcastle. Yet it may be that the statement should be taken cum grano salis; as Cholmley probably felt considerable resentment towards the Hothams for regarding him as a base renegade from the Parliamentary cause in which he had at one time shown so much zeal.
“An Original, endorsed by Clarendon ‘Sir Hugh Cholmley’s Memorials’.[65]
“If Sir John Hotham could have been assured of what he had done or said in Parliament, and received into grace and favour,”—Cholmley seems to mean: If he could have been assured that what he had said in Parliament in the past would have been forgiven him and that he would be received into grace and favour by the King—“he might have been made a faithful and serviceable person; the denying of which (or at least answering it coldly) was a great motive to his undertaking that employment at Hull....
[65] Clarendon State Papers, 181.
“Sir John Hotham, when he departed from London, gave assurance to some of his nearest friends, that he would not deny the King entrance into Hull, and surely had not done it, but that he was informed by some person near the King, in case he permitted his Majesty entrance, he would lose his head; and it is conceived the same person did most prompt the King to go to Hull....
“The Earl of Newcastle had not been long with his forces in Yorkshire, when there began a treaty between him and young Hotham; whom together with his father they sought to draw to the King’s party.
Sir Marmaduke Langdale, a great friend of young Hotham’s,[66] was the mover between him and the Earl; and this was sooner laid hold on, in that the Lord Fairfax was now made a General for the Parliament of the forces of Yorkshire, and some adjacent counties; which discontented old Hotham, and though the son had as much as in reason he could expect (and more than fell to his share), being made Lieutenant General to Fairfax, yet he was not well pleased.
[66] But see Hotham’s letter of 22 March, to Newcastle, p. 89.
“The Queen’s army coming to Bridlington had brought such a magazine of arms and ammunition, my Lord of Newcastle’s army began to be very formidable and young Hotham having retired himself (and those forces which belonged to him and his father) from the Lord Fairfax, and being then at Beverley, began to have fresh notions of treating; and thereupon makes a journey for one night to the Earl at Bridlington, upon colour and pretences of a change of prisoners; there he demanded his father to be made a Viscount, and himself a Baron, that they might have £20,000 in money, and a Patent to the father to be Governor of Hull during his life”;—this was, indeed, the very converse of the system of purchasing peerages mentioned in an early chapter—“all which, as it would have been granted, so probably accepted, but that in this nick of time, Sir John received some assurance of the Scots coming into England, and that young Hotham (by his alliance and friendship with the Wrays) was chosen General of Lincolnshire; yet both parties made this advantage by the treaty, that as the Lord Newcastle forebore to come near Hull and Beverley, so young Hotham, though he had above 1,000 horse and dragoons, did not interrupt the Lord Newcastle’s march from Bridlington; which might easily have been done, his army being over-charged with baggage, and the season so tempestuous that his forces were very much dispersed.