118. _Gloucester saved from the King's Mines._--In Sir Kenelm Digby's
_Treatise of Bodies_, ch. xxviii. sec. 4., is this passage:
"The trampling of men and horses in a quiet night, will be heard
some miles off.... Most of all if one set a drum smooth upon the
ground, and lay one's ear to the upper edge of it," &c.
On which the copy in my possession (ed. 1669) has the following marginal
note in a cotemporary hand:
"Thus Gloucester was saved from the King's mines by y'e drum of a
drunken dru[=m]er."
To what event does this refer, and where shall I find an account of it?
It evidently happened during the civil wars, but Clarendon has no
mention of it.