him, made no more publick attempts, though they continued that private mallice, which was the natural! product of that antipathie there was, bctwecne his vertues and their vices.' Neither was it his case only; allmost all the parliament garrisons were infested and disturb'd with like factious little people, insomuch that many worthy gentlemen were wearied out of their commands, and opprest by a -certeine meane sort of people in the house, whom to distinguish from the more honQrable gentlemen, they call'd Worsted Stockiug JJ1en. Some as violently eurb'd their comm ittees, as the committees factiously molested them.' Nor was the faction only in particular garrisons, but the parliament house itselfc began to fall into the two greate oppositions, of Prcsbytery and Independency: and, as if discord had infected the whole English ayre with an epidemicall heartburning and dissention in a ll places, even the king's councells and garrisons were as f~tctiously devided. The king's commissioners and the governor at Newark fell into such high discontents, that Sr. Richard Biron, the governor, was changed, and Sr. Richard Willis put into his place. m This accident of the bridges put an end to that vexatious persecution wherewith the governor had had many sore exercises of his wisedome, patience, and courage, and many experiences of God's mercy and goodnesse, supporting him in all his trialls, and bearing him up against all discouragements, not only k It must almost have exhausted the patience of the reader, and certainly have excited his highest indignation to follow through all thei r mazes the crafty and atrocious persecutors of Col. Hutchinson; at the same time that it must have been a great ·Consolation to him to see integrity supported by discretion · thus work out its own preservation. VVe may now congratulate him on emerging from these mists and intricacies, and finding himself iu open field and day-light, where the colonel's nobler virtues can display themselves. 1 These were but the natural consequences of a state of revolution. Did these worsted-stocking men bear no likeness to tbe J acobins of modern days? m The same who afterwards became a spy for Cromwell; a bad substitute for the loyal Biron!
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=