{1} This stanza is omitted in most collections. Walker was a colonel in
the parliamentary army; and afterwards a member of the Committee of
Safety.
{2} The Directory for the Public Worship of God, ordered by the Assembly
of Divines at Westminster in 1644, to supersede the Book of Common
Prayer.
{3} The Earl of Thomond.
{4} The Excise, first introduced by the Long Parliament, was
particularly obnoxious to the Tory party. Dr Johnson more than a hundred
years later shared all the antipathy of his party to it, and in his
Dictionary defined it to be “a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and
adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by
those to whom excise is paid.”
{5} Henry the Eighth. The comparison is made in other ballads of the
age. To play old Harry with any one is a phrase that seems to have
originated with those who suffered by the confiscation of church
property.
{6} The Marquis of Winchester, the brave defender of his house at
Basing, had been made prisoner by Cromwell at the storming of that house
in 1645. Waller had been foiled in his attempt on this place in the year
preceding.—T. W.
{7} Sir John Ogle, one of the Royalist commanders, who was intrusted
with the defence of Winchester Castle, which he surrendered on conditions
just before the siege of Basing House.—T. W.
{8} Wren, bishop of Ely, was committed to the Tower in 1641, accused
with high “misdemeanours” in his diocese.
{9} David Jenkins, a Welsh Judge, who had been made prisoner at the
taking of Hereford, and committed first to Newgate and afterwards to the
Tower. He refused to acknowledge the authority of the Parliament, and
was the author of several tracts published during the year (while he was
prisoner in the Tower), which made a great noise.—T. W.
{10} Sir Francis Wortley, Bart., was made a prisoner in 1644, at the
taking of Walton House, near Wakefield, by Sir Thomas Fairfax.
{11} Sir Edward Hales, Bart., of Woodchurch, in Kent, had been member
for Queenborough in the Isle of Sheppey. He was not a Royalist.
{12} Sir George Strangways, Bart., according to the marginal note in the
original. Another of the name, Sir John Strangways, was taken at the
surrender of Sherborne Castle.
{13} Sir Henry Bedingfield, Bart., of Norfolk; Sir Walter Blount, Bart.,
of Worcester; and Sir Francis Howard, Bart., of the North, were committed
to the Tower on the 22nd of January, 1646.
{14} The horrible barbarities committed by the Irish rebels had made the
Catholics so much abhorred in England, that every English member of that
community was suspected of plotting the same massacres in England.—T. W.
{15} Sir John Hewet, of Huntingdonshire, was committed to the Tower on
the 28th of January, 1645(–6).
{16} Sir Thomas Lunsford, Bart., the celebrated Royalist officer, was
committed to the Tower on the 22nd of January, 1646. The violence and
barbarities which he and his troop were said to have perpetrated led to
the popular belief that he was in the habit of eating children.
From Fielding and from Vavasour,
Both ill-affected men;
From Lunsford eke dilver us,
That eateth up children.
Loyal Songs, ed. 1731, i. 38.