heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

I
9 6
THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
slur on his late eminent services, and was cordially supported by his son.
Mutually exasperated, they opened secret
communications with the Earl of
Newcastle, at whose suggestion Captain Hotham went to the Queen in
Holland to treat for the surrender of the town. At her direction, Lady
Bland came over to Hull to confer with Sir John, and tried to tamper with
Mr. William Stiles, the vicar of the High Church ;
but the worthy ecclesiastic
was too prudent to commit himself to any such dangerous course,
and simply pointed out to her the inexpediency of clergymen and ladies
letters of Fairfax in which his destruction
interfering in matters of state.
But Digby came again, and eventually clenched the matter by shewing
Hotham some intercepted
In fact, the Parliament had " smelt a rat " from
had been resolved upon.
the evident abatement in young Hotham's zeal, and other circumstances
which had been brought to their knowledge; and, adopting a similar policy,
persuaded a kinsman of Sir John's, a staunch Puritan, to ingratiate himself
into his confidence, and having elicited his secret design, to betray
it to them.
On this, Captain Hotham was ordered to march with his troop to
Nottingham, where he was at once arrested by Oliver Cromwell, then only
a colonel in the forces, and committed to the castle ;
but he, sending his
servant, John Kaye, to the Queen, effected his escape. On his arrival at
Hull a council was called by Sir John, and a complaint made to the
Parliament of his son's false accusation and imprisonment. But their only
answer was to direct Captain Mayer, of the Hercules man-of-war, then lying
in the harbour, to consult with Sir Matthew Boynton (Sir John's brotherin-law)
and the Mayor, and bring Sir John, Captain Hotham, and their
adherents prisoners to London.
Captain Mayer on this sent 100 men before daylight, surprised the
castle and blockhouse, overpowered Colonel Lyard, and, assisted by
1,500 of the inhabitants and soldiers, secured Captain Hotham and placed
a guard on the governor's house. Sir John, however, escaped by a back
way, borrowed a horse of a man whom he met in the town, and started
for his house at Scorborough. Finding no ferry-boat either at Stone Ferry
or Waghen, he rode on to Beverley, where he found seven or eight hundred
mounted men in arms, and was immediately arrested by their commander,
his nephew, Colonel Boynton, sent by Sir Matthew for that very purpose,
who taking hold of his horse's
" bridle, said, Sir John, you are my prisoner,
" and though I revere you as my relative, I am obliged with reluctance to
" waive all respect on that account and arrest you as a traitor to the
" state." After an ineffectual effort to escape by dashing through the
soldiers, he was knocked off his horse by a blow from a musket on the
head, and conveyed bleeding and wounded into Hull. Soon after, together