105 [The Swedes hired anno 1644, to invade the King of Denmark, provided to assist his nephew, the King of England.]
115 Hopkins] Hannah only knew for a certainty that the scoundrel Matthew was 'swum' for a wizard, and had to put a 'probably' as to his being executed. There seems to be no doubt (see D.N.B.) that the great and glorious 'Herb Pantagruelion' had its own, and that Hopkins was hanged in 1647, before the date of this poem. But in that distracted time King, like his editor, may easily have been unaware of it.
117 An early literary use of 'cad' for assistant or understrapper.
142 Instead of 'for' Hannah, who very seldom meddled with his text, suggested 'from'. The temptation is obvious, but I think 'for' is possible, and therefore preferable as lectio difficilior.
160 Military Justice] [See the letter sent to Edward Earl of Manchester, Speaker of the House of Peers, pro tempore, from T. Fairfax, dated August 29, 1648, at Hieth.] According to Royalist accounts there were, even in Parliament, speakers bold enough and impartial enough to object to this letter, and to give voice to the common belief that the execution was either an act of private vengeance, or a deliberate affront to the King, or a device to make the pending negotiations with him impossible. It must be remembered that it was three months before the 'Purge' had deprived the Commons of the last remnant of independence or representative quality.
170 petty tyrannies] [Wat Tyler and his complices' design was to take away the King and chief men, and to erect petty tyrannies to themselves in every shire. And already one Littistar, a dyer, had taken upon him in Norfolk the name of King of Commons, and Robert Westborn in Suffolk, Richard II, anno 1381. Speed.] This note from Speed is not exactly quoted and Hannah corrected it, but the variations are of no importance.
176 There is no doubt about the selling of prisoners as convict-slaves to the West Indies (if not, as Rigby proposed, to Algiers) by the Roundheads after the second Civil War. Unluckily James II—born in this and other cases to be the curse of English Royalism—took the reproach away from the other side by authorizing the practice after Sedgmoor.
179 The particular bearer of this name of evil repute in Parliamentary history was Alexander Rigby (1594-1650). He had a brother, Joseph, whose politics were as bad as his own, but who survived the Restoration, and seems to have had a touch of the 'crank' in him. I have not yet come across his Drunkard's Prospective (1656), but it should be agreeable.
183 The savagery of the two-to-one victors at Naseby—especially towards the hapless so-called 'Irishwomen' camp followers—is beyond question, but it does not seem proved that there was much selling of prisoners then. As for St. Fagan's in the second Civil War the case is different, and justifies the following note in the original: 'At St. Fagan's in Glamorganshire, near Cardiff, the Welsh unarmed were taken in very great numbers, and sold for twelve pence apiece to certain merchants, who bought them for slaves to their plantations.'
188 aspers] A Turkish coin of the smallest value: the 120th part of a piastre or dollar.