“Immediately after this young Hotham goes to be General for the Parliament in Lincolnshire, so that the treaty was off the hinge, till such time as he was laid hold of at Nottingham by Cromwell, which the father did so much resent as he did not only write to the close committee in a menacing style for his son’s enlargement, but was otherwise so passionate in words and deportment that it gave the Parliament a great suspicion of him.... In the interim young Hotham breaks loose from Cromwell, and comes to Hull where the father and son think it very opportune to renew the treaty with my Lord of Newcastle; and thereupon Sir John writes that letter, which was after (at the battle of York) taken in my Lord’s cabinet,” i.e. Newcastle’s, “and cost both the Hothams their heads.”...
It is a matter of English history that Sir John Hotham and his son were arrested, imprisoned for many months in London, tried, and beheaded. And it is a somewhat remarkable fact—journalists would call it “the irony of fate”—that Sir John Hotham, who had been one of the first to express a wish in Parliament for proceedings against Archbishop Laud, should have been executed a few days before that Archbishop. Possibly a knowledge of this fact may have helped to mitigate the sadness of the last days of Laud.
During the months dealt with in a portion of the present chapter;—to be exact, on the 17th of April, 1643,—Newcastle lost his first wife. It is scarcely possible that he can have been with her when she died; but of her illness and death, the collector of these historical odds and ends has been unable to discover any details.
CHAPTER IX.
In April Newcastle learned that the enemy’s General of cavalry was going to leave Cawood Castle for the west of Yorkshire; so he dispatched Goring, with a strong body of horse, to attack him on his march. Goring, a really able General when sober, overtook the Parliamentary cavalry and surprised their rear by a sudden charge, at Bramham Moor, or, as it was sometimes called, Seacroft Moor, and completely routed them, although their numbers were greater than his and in spite of their being under the command of Fairfax himself. If the Duchess’s story is true, Goring’s Horse killed many of the enemy, and took about 800 prisoners whom, with ten or twelve colours, they carried to York.
Lord Fairfax wrote[67] of this engagement: “Here our men, thinking themselves secure, were more careless in keeping order; and, whilst their officers were getting them out of houses where they sought for drink (it being an extream hot day)”—apparently it was one of the enemy’s drunken days and one of Goring’s sober days—“the enemy got, by another way into the Moore, as soon as we,” and then he candidly acknowledges the complete rout. Indeed he says: “Some officers, with me, made our retreat with much difficulty”.
[67] Masère’s Select Tracts, p. 422.
This was an important victory to the credit of Goring; but the glory of his surprising Fairfax in April was sadly tarnished in May by his being surprised in his turn by Fairfax. Newcastle had taken Wakefield in April and had left it under the protection of Goring and his Horse. The enemy quietly approached and entered that town at night. Night is usually a bad time, and a town a bad place, for a drunkard: be this as it may, Goring was taken prisoner with most of his men and horses, and the enemy “possessed themselves of the whole Magazine, which was a very great loss and hindrance to my Lords designs, it being the Moity of his Army, and most of his Ammunition”.[68]