Series 1 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (Second volume)

READE S RELATION
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my escape which if I had not done, I had that night bin
murdred. I will not say my lord Calender had a hand in my
discovery, but through the aforesaid James Wallace it was
made knowne to the Comissioners that I acted for his Majestic,
but how it came to the Comissioners knoweledge and the manner
of my escape, it makeing a longe relaccion I will not here
inserte it.
The English Comissioners by their instruccions from the
Parliament cannot be discovered to have any perticular
designes by faccion to carry on their worke in Scotland, but by
their privat combinnacion with the Lord Say, Mr. Pierepont,
Sir Oliver St. Johns and others, with whome they held joynt
corespondence and from them receaved continuall instrucions
(which had I not bin so sudd inly betrayed I had had full
possession of them), they left no way unattempted whereby to
devide the Scots into parties, and to this end they bribed the
Clergie, which allthough I did not pay them the monie (that
Capt. Fox their Steward didx) yet I writt the letter to London,
which certified that the Ministers had had their incoragement,
and I doe verily beleive that the Army that went out of
Scotland into England had no combinacion in generall with
the Parliament of England, nor no intercorse with their
Comissioners, but I doe as verily beleive that the intencion of
that Army (by all circumstances and observacions I tooke
thereof) was really for the Conquest of England, and in parte
knowne to the Parliament and their Comissioners. Of which
Comissioners I found Charles Earle of Nottingham to be
imployed only to fill up their number, and Henry Earle of
Stanford, the other Comissioner for the House of Lords, for
that he had bin formerly Comissioner there,2 with Mr. Robert
Goodwin and Mr. William Ashhurst as Presbitterian, and so
likely to receave the greatest creditt. Mr. Brian Stapleton,
one that would be sure to act against the Kinge, his principle
being that it is most fitting the Kingdome of England
1 Edward Fox, who succeeded Reade as secretary. Guthry in his Memoirs
(p. 213) makes the same allegations of bribery against the English Commissioners.
2 Charles Howard (1616-1681), third Earl of Nottingham, was son of the
famous Lord Howard of Effingham (Collins’s Peerage, iv. 277). For a life of the
Earl of Stamford, see Dictionary of National Biography, xxiii. 187.