Rupert did not spare his indignation. He quarrelled freely with Percy, by letter. He left Digby's epistles unanswered,[52] and he slighted Wilmot. He accused the King of treating without his knowledge; which, said his distracted uncle, was a "damnable ley."[53] The truth was that the French Ambassador had proposed to ascertain what terms the Parliament might be likely to offer, and the King had consented to his so doing. Richmond hastened to explain matters to the Prince. "I should have told you before," he concluded, "but I forgot it; and but little knowledge is lost by it. It was ever my opinion that nothing would come of it, and so it remains still for anything I can hear, and I converse sometimes with good company."[54] But Rupert was not easily appeased; the supposed treaty was but one grievance among many, and ere long a letter from Digby had raised a new storm. The patient Duke as usual { 125} received his fiery cousin's complaints, and again took up his pen to pacify him. "Upon the receipt of your letter," he wrote, "perceiving that, from a hint taken of a letter from Lord Digby, you were in doubt that, in Oxford, there might be wrong judgments made of you and of your business, I made it my diligence to clear with the King, who answers the same for the Queen.... Considering the jealousy might have grown from some doubtful expressions in the letter you mention, I spoke with the party, (_i.e._ Digby) who seemed much grieved at it, and assured me he writ only the advice of such intelligence as was brought hither, and for information to make use of as you best could upon the place. Yesterday one brought me your commission to peruse.... I looked it well over, and I think it is well drawn."[55] The last sentence shows that Richmond did not confine his services to mediating between the Prince and his enemies, but watched over his cousin's more material interests with anxious care.
During all this time Rupert was not very far distant from Oxford. He had taken Bedford, and recaptured Cirencester, and would have held Newport Pagnell, thus cutting London off from the north; but during his absence in Bedfordshire, orders from Oxford drew off Louis Dyves whom he had left in charge at Newport Pagnell, and the place was seized by Essex. In the same way Vavasour's scheme for blockading Gloucester was ruined. "Sir, I am now in a good way, if no alteration come from Court,"[56] he wrote early in December. But the vexatious "alteration" came, and his plan failed. Hastings lamented that his lack of arms made "the service I ought to do the King very difficult;"[57] and everywhere despondency prevailed. "The truth is," wrote Ralph Hopton from Alresford, "the duty of this service here would be insupportable, were it { 126} not in this cause, where there is so great a necessity of prevailing through all difficulties, or of suffering them to prevail, which cannot be thought of in good English."[58]
