For my part, I went home fully contented, since
I could do my royal master no better service, that I had come off no
worse.
The enemy going now on in a full current of success, and the king
reduced to the last extremity, and Fairfax, by long marches, being
come back within five miles of Oxford, his Majesty, loth to be cooped
up in a town which could on no account hold long out, quits the town
in a disguise, leaving Sir Thomas Clemham governor, and being only
attended with Mr Ashburnham and one more, rides away to Newark, and
there fatally committed himself to the honour and fidelity of the
Scots under General Leven.
There had been some little bickering between the Parliament and the
Scots commissioners concerning the propositions which the Scots were
for a treaty with the king upon, and the Parliament refused it. The
Parliament, upon all proposals of peace, had formerly invited the king
to come and throw himself upon the honour, fidelity, and affection of
his Parliament. And now the king from Oxford offering to come up
to London on the protection of the Parliament for the safety of his
person, they refused him, and the Scots differed from them in it, and
were for a personal treaty.
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