This unexpected stroke quite unnerved him. That a prince of his family, an
officer whose reputation for courage and fidelity was unblemished, should
surrender in the third week of the siege an important city, which he had
promised to maintain for four months, appeared to him incredible. His mind
was agitated with suspicion and jealousy. He knew not whether to attribute
the conduct of his nephew to cowardice, or despondency, or disaffection;
but he foresaw and lamented its baneful influence on the small remnant of
his followers. In the anguish of his mind[b] he revoked the commission
of the prince, and commanded him to quit the kingdom; he instructed the
council to watch his conduct, and on the first sign of disobedience to take
him into custody; and he ordered the arrest of his friend Colonel Legge,
and appointed Sir Thomas Glenham to succeed Legge, as governor of Oxford.
"Tell my sone," he says in a letter to Nicholas, "that I shall lesse
grieeve to hear that he is knoked in the head, than that he should doe so
meane an act as is the rendering of Bristoll castell and fort upon the
termes it was."[2]
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 230. May. Guthrie, 194. Baillie, ii. 156, 157,
273. This defeat perplexed the theology of that learned man.
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