Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

74
HAMPTON COURT
of their own accord, without either authority (as
some aver) or countenance of the general, upon fair
pretences had frequent consultations; but intermeddling
with affairs of State, were not unlike those
that like to fish in troubled waters, and being men
very popular in the army, had thence their impulse
and approbation. What the results of councils
amongst them was, who was, or by what spirits
agitated ? Yet about this time the House was rent
and the Speaker went unto the army, which soon after
marched through London to the Tower, to which was
committed the Lord Mayor and other dissenting
citizens; in which confusion the King proposing a
treaty, the Agitators, in opposition, published a book
intituled " An Agreement of the People which concerned
his Majesty's Person and Safety." But thence
(as was well known) several things in it designed were
rumoured, which fomented parties and created jealousies
and fears, and by some artifice insinuated,and
a representation by letter gave his Majesty an occasion
of going from Hampton Court in the night,
and in disguise, with two grooms of his Majesty's
bed-chamber, Mr. Asburnham and Mr. Legge, as
also Sir John Berkeley, and about the middle of
November, an. 1647, passed through a private door
into the park, where no sentinel was, and at Thames
Ditton crossed the river, to the amazement of the
Commissioners, who had not the least fore-knowledge
of the King's fears or intentions, and no less to the
astonishment of the Lords and others, his Majesty's