310 



The Wiltshire Com pounder '8. 



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 earl}' 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 o£ 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 



