all the others.' 1 A genuine King among men, Mr. Harvey. The divinest sight this world sees,-when it is privileged to see such, and not be sickened with the unholy apery of such! He is just now upon an 'engagement,' or complicated concern, 'very difficult.'

To the Honourable Sir Arthur Haselridge at Newcastle or elsewhere : These. Haste, haste

We are upon an Engagement very difficult. The Enemy hath blocked up our way at the Pass at Copperspath, through which we cannot get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the Hills that we know not how to come that without great difficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination.

way

I perceive your forces are not in a capacity for present relief.2 wherefore (whatever becomes of us) it will be well for you to get what forces you can together; and the South to help what they can. The business nearly concerneth all good people. If your forces had been in a readiness to have fallen upon the back of Copperspath, it might have occasioned supplies to have come to us; but the only wise God knows what is best. All shall work for good. Our spirits are comfortable (praised be the Lord), though our present condition be as it is. And indeed we have much hope in the Lord; of whose mercy we have had large experience.1

3

Indeed do you get together what forces you can against them.

1 Passages in his Highness's last Sickness, already referred to. [Carlyle gives these words as a quotation, but they are his own, not Harvey's. The passage he had in his mind is on pp. 8, 9, of the pamphlet].

2[Carlyle altered this to "release," but Cromwell evidently means; able to relieve us, by falling upon the back of Copperspath.]

3 minds.

4

[ History possesses no finer picture of the fortitude of the man of action, with eyes courageously open to dark facts closing round him, yet with alacrity, vigilance, and a kind of cheerful hope, taking thought for every detail of the business of the day." Morley's Cromwell, p. 318.]

Send to friends in the south to help with more. Let H. Vane know what I write. I would not make it public, lest danger should accrue thereby. You know what use to make hereof. Let me hear from you. I rest,

Your servant,

OLIVER CROMWELL.

'P.S.' It's difficult for me to send to you. Let me hear from 'you' after 'you receive this.'*

The base of Oliver's 'Dunbar Peninsula,' as we have called it (or Dunbar Pinfold where he is now hemmed in, upon an entanglement very difficult'), extends from Belhaven Bay on his right, to Brocksmouth House on his left; 'about a mile and a half from sea to sea. Brocksmouth House, the Earl (now Duke) of Roxburgh's mansion, which still stands there, his soldiers now occupy as their extreme post on the left. As its name indicates, it is the mouth or issue of a small Rivulet, or Burn, called Brock, Brocksburn; which, springing from the Lammermoor, and skirting David Lesley's Doon Hill, finds its egress here into the sea. The reader who would form an image to himself of the great Tuesday 3d of September 1650, at Dunbar, must note well this little Burn. It runs in a deep grassy glen, which the Southcountry Officers in those old Pamphlets describe as a 'deep ditch,

* Communicated by John Hare, Esquire, Rosemount Cottage, Clifton. The MS. at Clifton is a Copy, without date; but has this title in an old hand; 'Copy of 'an original Letter of Oliver Cromwell, written with his own hand, the day before 'the Battle of Dunbarr, to Sir A. Haselridge.'--Note to Second Edition. Found since (1846), with the Postscript, printed from the Original, in Brand's History of Newcastle (London, 1789), ii. 479.--Note to Third Edition. AutographOriginal found now (May 1847); in the possession of R. Ormston, Esq., Newcastleon-Tyne. See postea, p. 113, and Appendix, No. 18. [The present editor is indebted to R. Welford, Esq., of Newcastle-on-Tyne for the following information concerning this and the three later letters to Hesilrige. "The letters from Oliver Cromwell were published in a booklet bearing the following title: Four Letters from Oliver Cromwell to Sir Arthur Heselridge, Governor of Newcastle-uponTyne. From the original letters in the possession of Robert Ormston, Newcastleon-Tyne. Printed at the Courant Office, Pilgrim Street, by J. Blackwell and Co., 1847. In my copy, after the word Ormston, some one has written, 'now of Sir A. G. Hazlerig, Bart.,' indicating that the originals had been handed over to the family by Mr. Ormston, who was a land agent, and represented the family in the north of England. In a sort of preface we are told The first of these letters, dated September 2, is rightly described in the endorsement as written entirely by Oliver Cromwell. In the other three letters the signatures and the words " My service to the dear lady" are the only words in his writing.'"]

forty feet in depth, and about as many in width,'-ditch dug out by the little Brook itself, and carpeted with greensward, in the course of long thousands of years. It runs pretty close by the foot of Doon Hill; forms, from this point to the sea, the boundary of Oliver's position: his force is arranged in battle-order along the left bank of this Brocksburn, and its grassy glen; he is busied all Monday, he and his Officers, in ranking them there. 'Before sunrise on Monday' Lesley sent down his horse from the Hill-top, to occupy the other side of this Brook; 'about four in the afternoon' his train came down, his whole Army gradually came down; and they now are ranking themselves on the opposite side of Brocksburn,-on rather narrow ground; cornfields, but swiftly sloping upwards to the steep of Doon Hill. This goes on, in the wild showers and winds of Monday 2d September 1650, on both sides of the Rivulet of Brock. Whoever will begin the attack, must get across this Brook and its glen first; a thing of much disadvantage.

Behind Oliver's ranks, between him and Dunbar, stand his tents; sprinkled up and down, by battalions, over the face of this Peninsula;' which is a low though very uneven tract of ground; now in our time all yellow with wheat and barley in the autumn season, but at that date only partially tilled,-describable by Yorkshire Hodgson as a place of plashes and rough bent-grass; terribly beaten by showery winds that day, so that your tent will hardly stand. There was then but one Farm-house on this tract, where now are not a few: thither were Oliver's Cannon sent this morning; they had at first been lodged in the Church,' an edifice standing then as now somewhat apart, 'at the south end of Dunbar." We have notice of only one other small house,' belike some poor shepherd's homestead, in Oliver's tract of ground: it stands close by the Brock Rivulet itself, and in the bottom of the little glen; at a place where the banks of it flatten themselves out into a slope passable for carts: this of course, as the one 'pass' in that quarter, it is highly important to seize. Pride and Lambert lodged 'six horse and fifteen foot' in this poor hut early in the morning Lesley's horse came across, and drove them out; killing some and taking three prisoners; '—and so got possession of this pass and hut; but did not keep it. Among the three

[See the old picture plan, reproduced in Mr. Firth's paper on Dunbar and his argument that the "small house" stood not on the Dunbar but on the Berwick side of the stream (p. 33, note). Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1900.]

prisoners was one musketeer, 'a very stout man, though he has but a wooden arm,' and some iron hook at the end of it, poor fellow. He fired thrice,' not without effect, with his wooden arm; and was not taken without difficulty: a handfast stubborn man; they carried him across to General Lesley to give some account of himself. In several of the old Pamphlets, which agree in all the details of it, this is what we read:

The

'General David Lesley (old Leven,' the other Lesley, 'being ' in the Castle of Edinburgh, as they relate 1), asked this man, If 'the Enemy did intend to fight? He replied, "What do you 'think we come here for? We come for nothing else!". ""Soldier," says Lesley, "how will you fight, when you have 'shipped half of your men, and all your great guns? 'Soldier replied, "Sir, if you please to draw down your men, you 'shall find both men and great guns too!"-A most dogged handfast man, this with the wooden arm, and iron hook on it! 'One of the Officers asked, How he durst answer the General so 'saucily? He said, "I only answer the question put to me!" Lesley sent him across, free again, by a trumpet: he made his way to Cromwell; reported what had passed, and added doggedly, He for one had lost twenty shillings by the business,-plundered from him in this action. 'The Lord General gave him thereupon two pieces,' which I think are forty shillings; and sent him away rejoicing.2-This is the adventure at the 'pass' by the shepherd's hut in the bottom of the glen, close by Brocksburn itself.

And now farther, on the great scale, we are to remark very specially that there is just one other 'pass' across the Brocksburn; and this is precisely where the London road now crosses it; about a mile east from the former pass, and perhaps two gunshots west from Brocksmouth House. There the great road then as now crosses the Burn of Brock; the steep grassy glen, or 'broad ditch forty feet deep,' flattening itself out here once more into a passable slope: passable, but still steep on the southern or Lesley side, still mounting up there, with consider

1 Old Leven is here, if the Pamphlet knew; but only as a volunteer and without command, though nominally still General-in-chief.

2 Cadwell the Army's Messenger's Narrative to the Parliament (in Carte's Ormond Papers, i. 382). Given also, with other details, in King's Pamphlets, small 4to, no. 478, §§ 9, 7, 10; no. 479, § 1 ; &c. &c. [E. 612, 613.]

able acclivity, into a high table-ground, out of which the Doon Hill, as outskirt of the Lammermoor, a short mile to your right, gradually gathers itself. There, at this 'pass,' on and about the present London road, as you discover after long dreary dim examining, took place the brunt or essential agony of the Battle of Dunbar long ago. Read in the extinct old Pamphlets, and ever again obstinately read, till some light rise in them, look even with unmilitary eyes at the ground as it now is, you do at last obtain small glimmerings of distinct features here and there,which gradually coalesce into a kind of image for you; and some spectrum of the Fact becomes visible; rises veritable, face to face, on you, grim and sad in the depths of the old dead Time. Yes, my travelling friends, vehiculating in gigs or otherwise over that piece of London road, you may say to yourselves, Here without monument is the grave of a valiant thing which was done under the Sun; the footprint of a Hero, not yet quite undistinguishable, is here!—

"The Lord General about four o'clock,' says the old Pamphlets, 'went into the Town to take some refreshments,' a hasty late dinner, or early supper, whichever we may call it; 'and very soon returned back,'-having written Sir Arthur's Letter, I think, in the interim.2 Coursing about the field, with enough of things to order; walking at last with Lambert in the Park or Garden of Brocksmouth House, he discerns that Lesley is astir on the Hill-side; altering his position somewhat. That Lesley in fact is coming wholly down to the basis of the Hill, where his horse had been since sunrise: coming wholly down to the edge of the Brook and glen, among the sloping harvest-fields there; and also is bringing up his left wing of horse, most part of it, towards his right; edging himself, 'shogging,' as Oliver calls it, his whole line more and more to the right!3 His meaning is, to get hold of

1[But see note 3 below.]

2[Dr. Gardiner thinks that it must have been written early in the morning, as there is no hint in it of Leslie's movement down the hill, but when Cromwell sent it off, enclosed in another letter written on the 4th, he speaks of it as written on "the 2nd of this month, which was the evening before the fight." Possibly however he uses the word in the sense of the "eve of the fight," i.e., the day before. (See Letter CXLI. below.)]

[Mr. Firth, by the help of the picture plan of the battle before mentioned (found amongst the Clarke MSS.) has come definitely to the conclusion that as Leslie descended the northern face of Doon Hill, he did actually "shogg" his horse more and more to the right, i.e., to the east, and that his lines ran facing the sea and at right angles to the burn. Thus Cromwell's main attack would be made, not at the pass over the stream, but by passing in front of the Scotch forces, where the road