THE SIEGE OF PLYMOUTH. 251 
But one attempt has been made to present a complete view of the 
Siege operations, and that necessarily an outline only. Other 
essays to deal with this subject have been founded upon the basis 
of some one or two of the quaint contemporary pamphlets, in 
which narratives of different episodes of the Siege are set forth, 
and are therefore very fragmentary. My aim is to present a 
complete view of the entire series of sieges and blockades extend- 
ing from the autumn of 1642 to the spring of 1646, which, for 
convenience’ sake, we group under the one common title of ‘the 
Siege.” My materials are drawn from the general historians of the 
time — Clarendon, Whitelock, Rushworth, Dugdale, Vicars, Saun- 
derson ; from the old Siege tracts; from the Domestic State Papers 
in the Public Record Office for the years under record, which are 
not yet calendered, but which I have carefully gone through; from 
the registers of St. Andrew Church, which I was readily per- 
mitted to examine by the Vicar, the Rev. C. T. Wilkinson—having 
in that examination the ready aid of Mr. White, the clerk; from 
our Corporate Archives, for access whereto I am indebted to the 
courtesy of Mr. Whiteford, our Town Clerk; from the family 
muniments of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, by his lordship’s 
kindness; and from sundry other sources which do not here call 
for special mention. With these preliminaries I begin my narrative. 
At the commencement of the differences between Charles and 
his Parliament, the general feeling in the West was unmistakably 
on the side of the latter. No other part of the kingdom contri- 
buted so many leading men to the popular ranks in the House of 
Commons. Sir John Eliot, of St. Germans, one of the purest and 
most high-minded of patriots, died under kingly persecution. The 
great Pym was burgess for Tavistock; Strode sat for Plympton ; 
and as Hampden once represented Grampound, we western folk 
can claim three of the great five whom Charles if he could would 
have made share Eliot’s fate. Plymouth itself was strongly Puritan, 
as well as Parliamentary in its leanings. Yet one of the members 
whom it elected to the Long Parliament—Robert Trelawny— was 
so determined a Royalist, that he was expelled the House, in 1641, 
for saying that it could not appoint a guard for itself without the 
king’s consent, on pain of high treason. In his stead, Sir John 
Yonge was chosen. Trelawny was a merchant; and when hostili- 
ties were imminent, placed his vessels at the disposal of the king, 
and had a quantity of his goods removed to the royal garrisons at 
