310 The Wiltshire Compounders. 
charged upon him consisted in his having deserted the Parliament 
at Westminster, and sat in the King’s Parliament at Oxford. He 
soon made his escape from the latter, and petitioned as early as 
November, 1645. The papers comprising his case are very numerous, 
but the following narrative will sufficiently declare it. Being en- 
trusted, as he tells us, with great personal estate for the payment of 
divers legacies to young children and others, he was over-persuaded 
by their importunities to quit London and go into the country for 
the preservation of the same; but before these affairs could be 
adjusted a party of Royalists seized upon his person and kept him 
prisoner till he consented to sit in the Oxford assembly. But, as he 
went thither unwillingly; so he retired himself thence on the first 
opportunity. Ascertaining that the vote was coming on which 
branded the Westminster Parliament as traitorous, which vote, he 
declares, he did from his heart abhor and detest, he took prompt 
measures for immediate escape ; and accordingly, on the morning of 
Monday, 11th March, 1644, he got out of Oxford, in company with 
his servant, Dobson Hall, and rode twenty miles, as far as Pirton, 
in Wilts; and on the following day he reached his own house at 
Calne, where he quietly remained two months, namely, till Colonel 
Massey’s celebrated inroad upon the county in the summer of that 
year. Massey, at that time Governor of Gloucester for the Parlia- 
ment, commenced his expedition by first taking Beverstone Castle, 
near Tetbury, and then Malmesbury; and deputing an adjutant 
named Edward Freeman to dislodge a body of Cavaliers from 
Chippenham, he himself passed on to Devizes and levelled the 
fortifications around that town. Captain Freeman, meanwhile, 
while near Calne, was informed by a servant of Mr. Lowe that that 
gentleman was at home and anxious to deliver himself up to the 
Parliament. He accordingly went at once to Mr. Lowe’s house and 
received his submission, an action which a large body of Mr. Lowe’s 
neighbours seemed disposed to resist, and threatened a rescue. Mr, 
Lowe assured them that it was all right, and he was then permitted 
to ride away with his new friends to Malmesbury. Thence he 
passed to London, and in the parish Church of All Hallows in 
Honey Lane took the solemn league and covenant in the presence 
