during the Great Rebellion. 



307 



pickets caught sight of a straggler, and too hurriedly sounded 

 an alarm. It was a race for life. The cavaliers galloped away 

 at full speed, Sadler in close pursuit, and ran, almost without 

 pause, a distance of fifteen miles, horses and riders exhausted by the 

 heat of the weather and their fruitless midnight foray, and ready 

 to drop every moment. They reached Rowde, and then ventured 

 to loose rein, leaving as they thought their enemies far behind 

 them. Here Dowett made the injudicious proposal that they 

 should rest awhile before returning to quarters ; but scarcely had 

 they unbridled their horses, and stretched themselves luxuriously 

 on the new mown hay, than Sadler was upon them with his 

 dragoons, hacking and slashing in all directions. Some leaped a 

 ditch, and eventually got safe into the castle — fifteen were captured, 

 among them Dowett's brother — forty-five horses lost. 



Many sanguinary skirmishes took place this summer in and 

 around Chippenham. As often as the town was abandoned by the 

 royalists, immediately a detachment from Malmesbury took pos- 

 session. But like Calne and Melksham, being a wide straggling 

 place, it required a larger body of troops than could be spared, to 

 defend it. In June, a large draft of men from Malmesbury, taking 

 up the Chippenham detachment on its way, invested Lacock Abbey 

 for a fortnight, and then made a furious effort to storm. They 

 were beaten off with heavy loss, and fell back on Chippenham. 

 Col. Boville, the Lacock general, in his turn sallied out with Lord 

 Hopton's horse, and ravaged all the country round, till one day 

 venturing too near Chalfield House, which for a long time had 

 been a stronghold of the Parliament, in an unguarded moment he 

 was attacked by the infantry stationed there, and lost ninety-five 

 horses. This was a most serious mishap : nevertheless Boville 

 held Lacock, and entered heartily into a bold proposal to attack 

 Col. Eyres in Chippenham. " They resolved," says the journalist, 

 " to give Chippenham a sound alarm, and as that was answered to 

 i proceed further." On Aug. 12th, Sir James Long marched out of 

 Devizes with a small company of fifty foot and a troop of horse, 

 1 and joined Boville at Lacock. Boville's fragment of cavalry con- 

 1 sisted only of twenty men — these he committed to Capt. Cook, 



VOL. XII. — NO. XXXVI. Z 



