Attempt > Volume 3

THE ATTEMPT. 195
Castle, a battery on Arthur's seat and a communication with Leith. So Cromwell
had to wait. The weather was wet; sickness was spreading through his army, un¬
protected as it was; provisions were failing, and no new supplies to be had; so
leaving altogether the camp he had set up on the Pentland Hills, he betook himself
to Dunbar, that he might, at least, be near his ships. Thereupon Lesley rushed out
of Edinburgh, dogged his steps, and hemmed him in there.
Cromwell's fortune was forsaking him. Lesley was in good spirits; he had
everything his own way; his army of three-and-twenty thousand fresh men, twice
as many as Cromwell's; his position was perfect, stretched along the mile and a-half
that forms the opening into the mainland of the promontory of Dunbar, upon which
Cromwell was imprisoned. He kejDt the hills right in front of it, and the pass of
Cockbui'nspath, the only available way of return into England. Thus it was on the
second of September 1650, so that Cromwell was even forced to write to Sir Arthur
Haselrig, at Berwick, to come and attack the rear and fi'ee the Cockburnspath, to
make way for sujiplies.
" He lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty ;
and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination But the
only wise God knoweth what is best."
The hills alluded to are the Lammermuirs, through whose boggy passes, in such
a boggy season, his army could not have marched, even had he been able to elude
Lesley's troops. From the Doon Hill, the outmost slope of the Lammermuirs, the
Brocksburn runs down to the sea, and then formed the southern boundary of Crom¬
well's position. Whoever should begin the attack, would have to cross the ravine
of this deep-scooped bum in the face of manifold disadvantages. A shepherd's hoiise
stood at one spot where the banks became lower, and were passable even for carts.
Pride and Lambert had taken possession of it; but Lesley's horse drove them out,
to be repulsed in their turn. Only one other pass was there, a mile east from the
former one, and situated just at the place where the London Road now crosses the
burn. Near it lay Brocksmouth House, the family mansion of the Earl of Roxburgh,
which was occupied by Cromwell's soldiers as their extreme post to the left.
Lesley's plan was to take this pass and house, and he would be free to attack
and annihilate Cromwell at will. For this purpose, on the evening of this second
day of September, he moved his forces downward from the Doon Hill. Oliver's
eagle eye and active mind immediately took in every movement, and every cause and
effect thereof. He, too, had laid a plan. He saw the advantage now lay with tlie