A HISTORY OF DORSET 



the field for a few weeks yet, he was ordered to join Waller, and both to 

 march to the capture of Bristol. 



All this time Goring was before Taunton. Before Cromwell came, he 

 took the opportunity to make a dash for Waller at Shaftesbury and Gilling- 

 ham. He ' beat up his quarters ' twice in one week, thus costing the 

 Parliament the palpably exaggerated loss of a thousand men.^ A slight 

 success of Goring's over Cromwell the same month (March, 1645) was also 

 exaggerated by the Royalists till it became a defeat of some magnitude.* 

 Tradition of a Cromwellian skirmish lingers still at Fordington.* The 

 Royalists made it into a defeat of Cromwell, with all his own horse and the 

 united forces from Taunton, Poole, and Weymouth, 4,000 in all, Goring's 

 own numbers being put at 1,500.* But Goring was notoriously untrust- 

 worthy, particularly where his vanity was concerned, and even Clarendon 

 makes but little of it.^ It is true that Goring received congratulations on his 

 victory* from Sir Francis Mackworth ; but Mackworth had at this time 

 need of his help in procuring supplies. Cromwell himself, not needing the 

 support of exaggeration or falsehood, though he does not mention this 

 particular skirmish, tells a different tale of a few days later : ' General Goring 

 would not stand us, but marched away upon our appearance.'^ 



Waller gave up his command 17 April (1645), at his own earnest wish 

 and in obedience to the Second Self-Denying Ordinance, and took his seat 

 in the House. Early in May Goring left Somerset to join the king at 

 Oxford. Fairfax, in command of the New Model, arrived at Blandford on 

 the 7th, marching to the relief of Taunton.' Meanwhile Charles and Rupert 

 marched freely out of Oxford to go north ; Fairfax was sent back to besiege 

 Oxford, and Goring went back as supreme Royalist commander in the west. 



Even there the king's star was waning. After Naseby (13 June) it was 

 a question how long he could continue to keep an army in the field. The 

 reorganization of the Parliamentary forces had been but the last link in a 

 chain which began with the resentment against plunderings of the royal 

 troops. And in the west the summer of 1645 was memorable for the 

 struggle between the representatives of these two forces. The New Model 

 Army, which expressed dependence upon the professional soldier, and not the 

 county levy, had to contend with the Clubmen, who originated in hostility 

 to the war as it affected non-combatants.' The movement known as that of 

 the Clubmen was strongest in the three south-western counties of Dorset, 

 Wilts, and Somerset. In Somerset it was not in line with the feeling in Dorset 



' Clarendon, op. cit. ix. 



^ Merc. Aulk. 29 March, App. 11, 12, 19 : ' Mercurius Aulicus, the Oxford organ, remains untrust- 

 worthy to the end ' ; Gardiner, His!. Gt. Civil fFar, i, p. vi. 



* Moule, Old Dorset, 199. See Ludloiv Memoirs (ed. Firth), i, 471. 



' Goring to Culpepper, 30 March, 1645, gives the same figures. Clarendon MSS. No. 1856. The 

 account in Mercurius Aulicus is taken in ioto from this letter. 



* Hist, of the RebeKon, v, 143 (ed. 1826). ' Clarendon MSS. No. 1855. 

 ^Cromwell's Letters (ed. 1888). Letter xix, 130. See also Carte, Ormonde Papers, i, 79; Commons Joum. 



9 April, 1645 ; Whitelocke, op. cit. 411-12 ; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1644-5, PP- 376> 3^4, 393- 



*' The state of Dorset when H.E. Sir Thomas Fairfax marched forth. The king had Portland Castle 

 and Island, Corfe Castle and Sherborne Castle. The Parliament had the port towns of Poole, Lyme, and 

 Weymouth.' S'pixggc, Anglia Rediviva, x\\, 16, 17. 



* For the presence of foreign mercenaries in Dorset among the royal troops, see Clarendon MSS. 1738 

 (4); Whitelocke, Memoirs, 171 ; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1643, 24 Nov.; Merc. AuRc. 3 Oct. 1644. A Copie of the 

 King's Message, 1644 (printed by the Dorset Standing Committee, and obviously unfair). For similar evils 

 from the other side see the admissions of Essex in Cal. S.P. Dom. 1642, p. 402, and ibid. 1644, p. 335. 



15S 



