As in small matters accuracy is of vital consequence, let me correct a
mistake which I made, writing in a hurry, in my last communication about
the two Gorings (Vol. ii., p. 65.). The Earl of Norwich was not under
sentence of death, as is there stated, on January 8, 1649. He was then a
prisoner: he was not tried and sentenced till March.[2]
The following notice of the son's quarrels with his brother cavaliers
occurs in a letter printed in Carte's bulky appendix to his bulky _Life
of the Duke of Ormond_. As this is an unread book, you may think it
worth while to print the passage, which is only confirmatory of
Clarendon's account of the younger Goring's proceedings in the West of
England in 1645. The letter is from Arthur Trevor to Ormond, and dated
Launceston, August 18, 1645.
"Mr. Goring's army is broken and all his men in disorder. He
hates the council here, and I find plainly there is no love
lost; they fear he will seize on the Prince, and he, that they
will take him: what will follow hereupon may be foretold,
without the aid of the wise woman on the bank. Sir John
Colepeper was at Court lately to remove him, to the discontent
of many. In short, the war is at an end in the West; each one
looks for a ship, and nothing more.
"Lord Digby and Mr. Goring are not friends; Prince Rupert yet
goes with Mr. Goring, but how long that will hold, I dare not
undertake, knowing both their constitutions."
It will be observed that the writer of the letter, though a cavalier,
here calls him _Mr. Goring_, when as his father was created Earl of
Norwich in the previous year, he was _Lord Goring_ in cavalier
acceptation.
He is indiscriminately called Mr. Goring and Lord Goring in passages of
letters by cavaliers relating to the campaign in the West of 1645, which
occur in Carte's _Collection of Letters_ (vol. i. pp. 59, 60. 81. 86.).
A number of letters about the son, Lord Goring's proceedings in the West
in 1645 are printed in the third volume of Mr. Lister's _Life of Lord
Clarendon_.
The Earl of Norwich's second son, Charles, who afterwards succeeded as
second earl, commanded a {87} brigade under his brother in the West in
1645. (Bulstrode's _Memoirs_, p. 142.; Carte's _Letters_, i. 116. 121.)
Some account of the father, Earl of Norwich's operations against the
parliament in Essex in 1648, is given in a curious autobiography of
Arthur Wilson, the author of the _History of James I_., which is printed
in Peck's _Desiderata Curiosa_, book xi. part 5. Wilson was living at
the time in Essex.
An interesting fragment of a letter from Goring the son to the Earl of
Dorset, written apparently as he was on the point of retiring into
France, and dated Pondesfred, January 26, 1646, is printed in Mr. Eliot
Warburton's _Memoirs of Prince Rupert_, iii. 215.
Mr. Warburton, by the way, clearly confounds the father with the son
when he speaks of the Earl of Norwich's trial and reprieve (iii. 408.).
Three letters printed in Mr. W.'s second volume (pp. 172. 181, 182.),
and signed "Goring", are probably letters of the father's, but given by
Mr. Warburton to the son.
I perceive also that Mr. Bell, the editor of the lately published
_Fairfax Correspondence_, has not avoided confusion between the father
and son. In the first volume of the correspondence relating to the civil
war (p. 281.), the editor says, under date January, 1646,--
"Lord Hopton in the meanwhile has been appointed to the command
in Cornwall, superseding Goring. Also has been sent off on
several negociations to France."
Goring went off to France on his own account; his father was at that
time Charles I.'s ambassador at the court of France.
I should like to know the year in which a letter of Goring the son's,
printed by Mr. Bell in vol. i. p. 23., was written, if it can be
ascertained. As printed, it is dated "Berwick, June 22." Is _Berwick_
right? Is there a bath there? The letter is addressed to Sir Constantine
Huygens, and in it is this passage--
"I have now my lameness so much renewed that I cannot come to
clear myself; as soon as the bath has restored me to my
strength, I shall employ it in his Highness's service, if he
please to let me return into the same place of his favour that I
thought myself happy in before."
I should expect that this letter was written from France after Goring's
abrupt retreat into that country. It is stated that the letter comes
from Mr. Bentley's collection.
The Earl of Norwich was in Flanders in November 1569, and accompanied
the Dukes of York and Gloucester from Brussels to Breda. (Carte's
_Letters_, ii. 282.)