Hill near Arthur's Seat, looking upon us, but not attempting any thing.

And thus you have an account of the present occurrences. Your most humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL.*

The scene of this Tuesday's skirmish, and cannonade across bogs, has not been investigated; though an antiquarian Topographer might find worse work for himself. Rough Hodgson, very uncertain in his spellings, calls it Gawger Field, which will evidently take us to Gogar on the western road there. The Scotch Editor of Hodgson says farther, 'The Water of Leith lay between the two Armies;' which can be believed or not ;which indeed turns out to be unbelievable. Yorkshire Hodgson's troop received an ugly cannon-shot while they stood at prayers; just with the word Amen, came the ugly cannon-shot singing, but it hurt neither horse nor man. We also gave them an English shout' at one time, along the whole line, 36 making their Castle-rocks and Pentlands ring again; but could get no Battle out of them, for the bogs.

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The

Here, in reference to those matters, is an Excerpt which, in spite of imperfections, may be worth transcribing. English Army lay' at first 'near Musselburgh, about Stony 'Hill. But shortly after, they marched up to Braid House,' to Braid Hills, to Pentland Hills, Colinton and various other Hills and Houses in succession; and the Scots Army, being put in some readiness, marched up to Corstorphine Hill. But because the English feared it was too near the Castle of Edinburgh, they would not hazard battle there. Wherefore both Armies marched to Gogar, Tuesday August 27th; and played ' each upon other with their great guns: but because of Gogar 'Burn (Brook) and other ditches betwixt the Armies, they could not join battle. Next day, about midday,' more precisely Wednesday about ten or eleven o'clock, 'the English began to ' retire; and went first to their Leaguer at Braid Hills,' within a mile of Edinburgh as their General says. 'The English removing, the Scots followed by Corstorphine the long gate' (roundabout road),—which is hard ground, and out of shotrange. 'The English,' some of them, 'marched near to Mus'selburgh; and, in the mid night, planted some guns in NidNewspapers (in Parliamentary History, xix. 339). 36 Hodgson, p. 141.

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dry the Scots having marched about the Hill of Arthur's 'Seat, towards Craigmillar, there planted some guns against ⚫ those in Niddry ;'37—and in fact, as we have seen, were drawn up on Arthur's Seat on the morrow morning, looking on amid the rain, and not attempting anything.

The Lord General writes this Letter at Musselburgh on Friday the 30th, the morrow after his return: and directly on the heel of it there is a Council of War held, and an important resolution taken. With sickness, and the wild weather coming on us, rendering even victual uncertain, and no Battle to be had, we clearly cannot continue here. Dunbar, which has a harbour, we might fortify for a kind of citadel and winter-quarter; let us retire at least to Dunbar, to be near our sole friends in this country, our Ships. On the morrow evening, Saturday the 31st, the Lord General fired his huts, and marched towards Dunbar. At sight whereof Lesley rushes out upon him; has his vanguard in Prestonpans before our rear got away. Saturday night through Haddington, and all Sunday to Dunbar, Lesley hangs, close and heavy, on Cromwell's rear; on Sunday night bends southward to the hills that overlook Dunbar, and hems him in there. As will be more specially related in the next fascicle of Letters.

LETTERS CXXXIX.-CXLVI.

BATTLE OF DUNBAR.

THE Small Town of Dunbar stands, high and windy, looking down over its herring-boats, over its grim old Castle now much honeycombed,—on one of those projecting rock-promontories with which that shore of the Frith of Forth is niched and vandyked, as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful sea; good land too, now that the plougher understands his trade; a grim niched barrier of whinstone sheltering it from the chafings and tumblings of the big blue German Ocean. Seaward St. Abb's Head, of whinstone, bounds your horizon to the east, not very far off;

37 Collections by a Private Hand, at Edinburgh, from 1650 to 1661 (Woodrow MSS.), printed in Historical Fragments on Scotch Affairs from 1635 to 1664 (Edinburgh, 1832), Part i. pp. 27-8.

west, close by, is the deep bay, and fishy little village of Belhaven the gloomy Bass and other rock-islets, and farther the Hills of Fife, and foreshadows of the Highlands, are visible as you look seaward. From the bottom of Belhaven bay to that of the next sea-bight St. Abb's-ward, the Town and its environs form a peninsula. Along the base of which peninsula, 'not much above a mile and a half from sea to sea,' Oliver Cromwell's Army, on Monday 2d of September 1650, stands ranked, with its tents and Town behind it,—in very forlorn circumstances. This now is all the ground that Oliver is lord of in Scotland. His Ships lie in the offing, with biscuit and transport for him; but visible elsewhere in the Earth no help.

Landward as you look from the Town of Dunbar there rises, some short mile off, a dusky continent of barren heath Hills; the Lammermoor, where only mountain-sheep can be at home. The crossing of which, by any of its boggy passes, and brawling stream-courses, no Army, hardly a solitary Scotch Packman could attempt, in such weather. To the edge of these Lammermoor Heights, David Lesley has betaken himself; lies now along the outmost spur of them,—a long Hill of considerable height, which the Dunbar people call the Dun, Doon, or sometimes for fashion's sake the Down, adding to it the Teutonic Hill likewise, though Dun itself in old Celtic signifies Hill. On this Doon Hill lies David Lesley with the victorious Scotch Army, upwards of Twenty-thousand strong; with the Committees of Kirk and Estates, the chief Dignitaries of the Country, and in fact the flower of what the pure Covenant in this the Twelfth year of its existence can still bring forth. There lies he since Sunday night, on the top and slope of this Doon Hill, with the impassable heath-continents behind him; embraces, as within outspread tiger-claws, the base-line of Oliver's Dunbar peninsula; waiting what Oliver will do. Cockburnspath with its ravines has been seized on Oliver's left, and made impassable; behind Oliver is the sea; in front of him Lesley, Doon Hill, and the heath-continent of Lammermoor. Lesley's force is of Three-and-twenty-thousand,1 in spirits as of men chasing, Oliver's about half as many, in spirits as of men chased. What is to become of Oliver?

1

27,000 say the English Pamphlets; 16,000 foot and 7,000 horse, says Sir Edward Walker (p. 182), who has access to know.

LETTER CXXXIX.

HASELRIG, as we know, is Governor of Newcastle. Oliver on Monday writes this Note; means to send it off, I suppose, by sea. Making no complaint for himself, the remarkable Oliver; doing, with grave brevity, in the hour the business of the hour. 'He was a strong man,' so intimates Charles Harvey, who knew him in the dark perils of war, in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire, when it had gone ' out in all the others. '2 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 Haselrig, at Newcastle or elsewhere: These. Haste, haste.

DEAR SIR,

'Dunbar,' 2d September 1650.

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 way without great difficulty, and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination.

I perceive, your forces are not in a capacity for present release. 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

2 Passages in his Highness's last Sickness, already referred to.

3 minds.

hope in the Lord; of whose mercy we have had large experience.

Indeed, do you get together what forces you can against them. 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 South-country Officers in those old Pamphlets describe as a 'deep ditch, 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

* Communicated by John Hare, Esquire, Rosemont 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. Autograph Original found now (May 1847); in the possession of R. Ormston, Esq., Newcastle-on-Tyne. See postea, p. 50, and Appendix, No. 19.