'74 LIFE OF RICHARD BARTER. all these marches and sieges, Baxter was with his regiment, pursu- ing with characteristic zeal his scheme of preachingdown, and ar- guing down, that radical and revolutionary spirit, from which he anticipated the most disastrous results. " By this time," headds, "Colonel Whalley, though Cromwell's kinsman, and commander of the trusted regiment, grew odious among the sectarian commanders at the head-quarters, formy sake; and was called a Presbyterian, though neither he nor I were of that judgment in several points. When he had brought the city to a necessity of present yielding, two 'or three daysbefore it yield- ed, Colonel Rainsboroughwas sent from Oxford, which had yield- ed, with some regiments of foot, to command, in chief; partly that he might be governor there, and not Whalley, when the city was surrendered. So when it was yielded, Rainsboroughwas govern- or, to head and gratify the sectaries, and settle city and county in their way ; but the committee of the county were forWhalley, and lived in distaste with Rainsborough, and the sectaries prospered there no further than Worcester city itself, a place which deserved such a judgment; but all the country was free from their infection. "All this while, as I had friendly converse with the sober part, so I was still employed with the rest, as before, in preaching, con- ference, and disputing against their confounding errors ; and inall places where we went, the sectarian soldiers much infected the country, by their pamphlets and converse. The people, admiring the conquering army, were ready to receive whatsoever they com- mended to, them ; and it was the way of the faction to speak what they spake, as the sense of the army, and to make the people believe that whateveropinion they vented, which one in forty of the army owned not, was the army's opinion. Whenwe quarter- ed at Agmondesham, in Buckinghamshire, some sectaries of Ches- ham had set up a public meeting as for conference, to propagate their opinions through all the country; and this in the church, by the encouragement of an ignorant sectarian lecturer, one Bramble, whom they had got in, while Dr. Crook, the pastor, and Mr. Rich- ardson, his curate, durst not contradict them. When this public talking -day came, Bethel's troopers, (then Capt. Pitchford's,) with other sectarian soldiers, must be there to confirm the Chesham men, and make men believe that the army wasfor them. I thought it my duty to be there also, and took divers sober officers with me, to let them see that more of the army were against them than for them. Itook the reading pew, andPitchford's cornet and troopers took the gallery.. And there I found a crowded congregation of poor, well-meaning people, who came in the simplicity of their hearts to be deceived. Then did the leader ofthe Cheshammen begin, and. afterwards Pitchford's soldiers set in, and I alone dis-
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