2. These risings being desperate, with vast disadvantages, and always
suppressed, ruined all our friends; the remnants of the Cavaliers were
lessened, the stoutest and most daring were cut off, and the king's
interest exceedingly weakened, there not being less than 30,000 of
his best friends cut off in the several attempts made at Maidstone,
Colchester, Lancashire, Pembroke, Pontefract, Kingston, Preston,
Warrington, Worcester, and other places. Had these men all reserved
their fortunes to a conjunction with the Scots, at either of the
invasions they made into this kingdom, and acted with the conduct and
courage they were known masters of, perhaps neither of those Scots
armies had been defeated.
But the impatience of our friends ruined all; for my part, I had as
good a mind to put my hand to the ruin of the enemy as any of them,
but I never saw any tolerable appearance of a force able to match the
enemy, and I had no mind to be beaten and then hanged. Had we let them
alone, they would have fallen into so many parties and factions, and
so effectually have torn one another to pieces, that whichsoever party
had come to us, we should, with them, have been too hard for all the
rest.
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