CharlesI. Naval Expeditions , &c of English, Book III*

found so much Wine in his own House,and Store of Vineyards thereabouts ,might imagine there was Wine in theother Houses also : And if he had sentsome of his General-Officers, to havesearched the Houses near the Quarter,and there either to have staved (£) allthe Wine he found, or else set suchGuards upon it, as the Soldiers mightnot have come at it; As also, to haveset such Guards about his own House,and taken such Order there, as nonecould have come by any Wine, but byhis Order, and so have taken away allMeans from the Soldiers to be drunk,he had done much better, than,neglect-ing that, after to cast a Blemish uponthe Colonels and chief Officers, as ifthey had not done their Duties, inkeeping their Men from Drunken-ness.

At this Quarter, and within Night,my Lord of Essex finding no Guardsset out on the Avenues, nor any Orderfor it, (/) tho' it did not so properlyconcern him, but should have beenmy Lord Mar/haPs own Care, or theSerjeant-Major-General’s, yet came andacquainted his Lordship therewith;Who, without ever visiting the Ave-nues in Person, {m) gave his LordshipOrder, in general, to advance somesmall Guards before the Troops; Butleft the Particulars to his Discretion.This Night also, we had no Word gi-ven out ’till one or two o’Clock atNight, {n) whose Fault it was we knownot; But we wondered that we shouldhave one at Plymouth, where we had no

Enemy nor Army, but in the Land, 1625.dispersed in the Villages, and none inan Army in Spain : At last we had onein three Words, which was, Heavenbless us.

This Night, the Soldiers, being for Great jyfir-the most Part much distempered, full ders ensue.of Wine, and in Want of Victuals,came in Troops to my Lord MarshalsHouse, pressed to come in on all Sides,and those small Guards he had therewere not sufficient to keep them out,nor remained there then any Respect tothe chief Officers. The Extremity ofthis was about one o’Clock in theNight, when there were most of theLords and Colonels with his Lordship,who all assisted him in restraining thoseInsistencies, and were contented, toge-ther with my Lord Marshal, to endure >insolent and contemptuous Languagefrom the Soldiers, who said : " God" save King Charles, &V. He allow-" ed us Victuals; But for the Lord" Marshal, and the Rest, they cared" not; Victuals they would have, or" they would pull them out of the" House.

The whole Army was in Disorder,which troubled the Lord Marshal, andall of us; And for the present we knewnot how to help it. The Soldiers wereenraged like so many Beasts; But wehad Patience, and kept them out of theHouse as well as we could. The Restof the Night, neither my Lord Mar-shal, nor any of us, took much Rest.

We were all much cast down, and themore, because we knew our Soldiers

had

where they broke in at four Places that I had setGuards upon. When I went to visit one Guard,the other would be drunk before I came back a-gain. If any of these Gentlemen can tell me of anArmy kept in Order, where Wine was, I willconfess my Ignorance. Have not we had the Ex-amples of Armies under Sir John Norris , SirFrancis Drake, Sir Richard Hawkins, my Lordof Cumberland, my Lord Fere, and Sir ConyersClifford, and many others, which have been liableto this Mischance ? These are more than suf-ficient to prove how dangerous Wine is to anArmy : But if these great Commanders (whoseSword I am not worthy to carry after them)could not avoid this Inconvenience, I may be ex-cused. I can fay no more, but that I did neverimagine, so barren an Island, as that was, couldhave made so much Wine.

(£) He that put in this does not know, thatthe Serjeant-Major-General spent almost a wholeNight in staving the Wine ; I am afraid he wasasleep when he should have been waking.

, (/) This I fear is mistaken on Purpose; Forto some of the Colonels, I shewed it myself, toSir John Prowd, and gave Order to the Serjeant-Major-Genera], to fee that all the Reft did the

like, which no Colonel of Understanding wouldhave omitted, being for his own Safety, and soordinary a Thing : And in my Absence it belong’dto my Lord of EJsex.

(m) I DID visit all the Avenues, the Serjeant-Major-General being with me: For I made theQuarter, which was not for me to do, neither toset out Guards. But by this Discourse, I find,that he who presses this was not by when it wasacted.

(») I would know whether that Colonel senthis Serjeant-Major for the Word, to the Serjeant-Major-General: And if it was demanded of himand he gave it not, let him answer for it, For I wasno Serjeant-Major. But I would have this marked,that if these Things should have been neglected,(as I assure myself they were not) yet none ofthese Fault-finders ever complained to me, asthey should have done, if they had regarded hisMajesty's Service, as well as they did to find outErrors: But His Majesty, and my Lord Duke(of Buckingham ) mark'd how these ill Humoursdiscovered themselves at Plymouth. They couldnot hide it: For such Men are like Foxes, whoare the craftiest of all Beasts .- But there arcmore of their Skins fold than of any other,