A Copy of Lieutenant General Crumwels Letter, Read in the Houſe of Commons. And other Letters Of a great and BLOODY FIGHT neere PRESTON. THE Scots Army totally Defeated by Lieutenant Generall Crumwell. VVith the particulars of the Fight, on Thurſday, Friday, and Saturday laſt.
THeſe being true Copies, are thought fit to bee Printed and publiſhed for the ſatisfaction of the whole Kingdome, one of them ſigned
Printed by Robert Ibbitſon, in Smithfield, neer the Queenes-head Tavern, 1648.
IT hath pleaſed God, this day, to ſhew a great mercy to this poore kingdome, by making the Army ſucceſſefull againſt the common Enemy. We lay the laſt night at Mr. Sherburns, of Stamerhurſt, about 9 miles from Preſton, which was within three miles of the Scots quarters, we advanced this morning betime towards Preſton, with a deſire to engage the2 Enemy, and by that time our forlorn had engaged the enemy, we were about foure miles from Preſton, and thereupon wee advanced with the whole Army; and the Enemy being drawn out upon a Moore betwixt us & the Town, the Armies on both ſides ingaged, and after a very ſharpe diſpute, continuing for three or foure houres, it pleaſed God to inable us to give the Enemy a defeat, which I hope we ſhall improve by Gods aſſiſtance, to their utter ruine, and in this ſervice your Countrymen have not the leaſt ſhare, which wee cannot expreſſe by particular, having not time to take an accounts of the ſlain, and the priſoners, but we can aſſure you we have many priſoners, and many of thoſe of quality, and many ſlain, and the Army diſipated. A principall part whereof (with Duke Hambleton) is on the South ſide of Ribb, and Darwentbridge, and wee lying with the greateſt part of the Army cloſe to them nothing hindring engageing of that part of the Enemies Army but the night; It will be our care that they ſhall not paſſe over any Ford beneath the Bridge, to goe Northward, nor to come over betwixt us and Whaley, we underſtand that three Companies of Col. Generall Aſhton are at Whalley, we have 7 Troops of Horſe and Dragoons, that we beleeve all at or neer Cl•thero. This night I have ſent order expreſly to them to march to Whalley, to joyne with thoſe Companies that you ſhall improve of your Country Forces, toward the ruine of thoſe enemies: you perceive by this how things ſtand, by this means the enemy is broken, moſt of the Horſe being gone Northward, and wee3 having ſent a conſiderable party at the very heeles of them, and the Enemy having loſt almoſt all their Ammunition, and neer 4000 Armes, ſo that the greateſt part of the Foot are naked: Therefore in order to this work we deſire you to raiſe your County, and to improve thoſe forces for the totall ruine of the enemy, which way ſoever they goe. And if you ſhall accordingly doe your part, doubt not of their totall ruine. Wee thought fit to ſpeed this unto you, to the end you may not bee troubled if they ſhall march towards you, but improve your intereſt aforeſaid. And that you may give glory to God for this unſpeakable mercy from
LIeutenant Generall Crumwell ſent a Letter to the Committee here, a copy whereof you will receive incloſed; we had alſo other Letters from other Officers, which gives us advertiſements of a glorious victory obtained againſt the Scots, and Engliſh Cavaliers. Lieutenant Generall Crumwell having falne down with his Army (after conjunction with4 Collonell Gen. Lambert) out of Yorkeſhire, by Clithero, towards the Scots: upon Thurſday laſt engaged with them neer to Preſton. Hee hath given them a very great rout, taken 4000 Armes, moſt of their Ammunition, many priſoners, whereof divers of quality, and is ſtill in purſuite, adding every houre to the number of the ſlain, and priſoners, and of divers of the Scots that are diſpierſed in 6, 8, or 10 in a company, the Country people riſe and knock them in the head, where they meet with them; and Lieutenant Generall Crumwells horſe are at the very heeles of the Scots horſe, that are fled Northwards; the reſt of their horſe, and body of foot (which eſcaped by reaſon of the night) being ill armed, quartered with Duke Hambleton, between Wygon and Preſton, being about 8 or 9000. The Lieutenant Generalls Army went towards Preſton to waite on them, I hope they will have their fatall blow, for their perfideouſneſſe, to be an example to Generations to come hereafter. We have had the Country hereabouts in Armes this week, and hope to prevent the Scots paſſage this way. Cheſhire5 alſo, I doubt not but will be in readineſſe to ſtop them about Warrington. Another party is about Whaley, in Blackburn Hundred.
Sir, I beſeech you, if any ſhew themſelves ſo little lovers of England, as to ſpeak or move for a ceſſation, to oppoſe it: Let us not adde the further guilt of blood of friends, upon our ſelves.
Yeſterday being Friday, Lieutenant Genrall Crumwell having kild and taken diverſe of the Scots, diſperſed their body ſeverall wayes, The greateſt part of them fled towards Warrington, and our Forces ſtill purſuing them; divers of the Country Forces being joyned to aſſiſt Lieutenant Generall Crumwell. Some of the Scots were laſt night at Lansford on Cheſhire ſide, our Army is at their heels: The greateſt execution yeſterday was about Standiſh Moore, where divers were kild and taken, and amongſt them many conſiderable men, both Scatch and Engliſh, Duke Hambleton was laſt night in Wygan.
This morning they are at them again, freſh priſoners brought in hourely, and Armes in abundance. The poore Country people being6 over joyed at this great deliverance, wherein the Lord hath been wonderfully ſeen, in delivering us from this faithleſſe inſulting cruell people.
Mancheſterthe 19 of Auguſt, 1648
(EEBO-TCP ; phase 2, no. A80882)
Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 162139)
Images scanned from microfilm: (Thomason Tracts ; 73:E460[17])
Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.
EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO.
EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org).
The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source.
Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data.
Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so.
Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor.
The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines.
Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements).
Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site.
This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Searching, reading, printing, or downloading EEBO-TCP texts is reserved for the authorized users of these project partner institutions. Permission must be granted for subsequent distribution, in print or electronically, of this EEBO-TCP Phase II text, in whole or in part.