ll. 11-28. The date of this incident is uncertain. Professor Firth believes it to have happened when the House resolved that Colonel Goring 'deserved very well of the Commonwealth, and of this House', for his discovery of the army plot, June 9, 1641 (Journals of the House of Commons, vol. ii, p. 172).
Page 85, l. 18. the leaguer before Gloster. The siege of Gloucester was raised by the Earl of Essex on September 8, 1643. Clarendon had described it (vol. iii, pp. 167 ff.) just before he came to the account of Falkland.
Page 86, l. 1. the battell, i.e. of Newbury, September 20, 1643. How Falkland met his death is told in Byron's narrative of the fight: 'My Lord of Falkland did me the honour to ride in my troop this day, and I would needs go along with him, the enemy had beat our foot out of the close, and was drawne up near the hedge; I went to view, and as I was giving orders for making the gap wide enough, my horse was shott in the throat with a musket bullet and his bit broken in his mouth so that I was forced to call for another horse, in the meanwhile my Lord Falkland (more gallantly than advisedly) spurred his horse through the gapp, where both he and his horse were immediately killed.' See Walter Money, The Battles of Newbury, 1884, p. 52; also p. 93.
A passage in Whitelocke's Memorials, ed. 1682, p. 70, shows that he had a presentiment of his death: 'The Lord Falkland, Secretary of State, in the morning of the fight, called for a clean shirt, and being asked the reason of it, answered, that if he were slain in the Battle, they should not find, his body in foul Linnen. Being diswaded by his friends to goe into the fight, as having no call to it, and being no Military Officer, he said he was weary of the times, and foresaw much misery to his own Countrey, and did beleive be should be out of it ere night, and could not be perswaded to the contrary, but would enter into the battle, and was there slain.'
22.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 51-4; Life, ed. 1759, pp. 19-23.
This is Falkland in his younger days, amid the hospitable pleasures of
Tew, before he was overwhelmed in politics and war.
Page 86, l. 20. he, i.e. Clarendon.
Page 88, l. 2. the two most pleasant places, Great Tew (see p. 72, l. 30) and Burford, where Falkland was born. He sold Burford in 1634 to William Lenthall, the Speaker of the Long Parliament: see p. 91, l. 5.
Page 89, l. 2. He married Lettice, daughter of Sir Richard Morrison of Tooley Park, Leicestershire. His friendship with her brother Henry is celebrated in an ode by Ben Jonson, 'To the immortall memorie, and friendship of that noble paire, Sir Lucius Cary, and Sir H. Morison' (Under-woods, 1640, p. 232).