no THE HISTORY OF NEWMARKET. [Book VIII. 



service (which came over-night into the Road) made 

 above loo great shot at the houses in the Quay, for 

 two houres shooting crosse-barre-shot, and bullets of 

 1 2lb. weight, all of them aiming so near as they could, 

 at the house where the Queen lay : insomuch that her 

 Sacred Majesty was forced to make what haste she 

 could out of her bed, and to get under an hill to save 

 her life from the fury of these bloody Rebels, who 

 endeavoured to murther her. — But God Almighty 

 preserved her Majesty both by Sea and Land." 



When differences first broke out between the Long 

 Parliament and the army, the latter organized them- 

 selves at Newmarket this year, under a 



1647. , ^ -^ 



Newmarket, peculiar kind of representative government. 



Rendezvous of rr^i • ^ j •^ c ai ^ i 



the Army on ^ ^^y appomted a council 01 orhcers to be 

 the Heath, as it wcre a house of peers, and a sort of 



Arrival of ^ r it 



Oliver Crom- senate, composed of common soldiers or 

 ^®^^' subalterns, termed agitators, to whom two 

 or three were selected by each regiment, and who 

 might be termed a military house of commons. In 

 consequence of the deliberations of this hopeful as- 

 sembly, they seized the person of the king, bid defiance 

 to the Parliament by whom they had been levied and 

 paid, and having met by general rendezvous on the 

 heath* (June 14, 1647), presumably to see the races, 



* During the agitation in the army which succeeded in the seizing of 

 the king's person, Cromwell remained in London, professing his attach- 

 ment to the Commons, and lamenting that he incurred the suspicion of 

 the army for his attachment to the privileges of the house ; but finding 

 his professions disbelieved, he suddenly left London with precipitation, 

 and, placing himself at the head of the army, encouraged them in their 

 designs and pretensions. His arrival had a dramatic effect. He came 

 to the heath at full speed, " upon a flea-bitten horse, threw himself on the 



