Note 344 — Chapter X
Reading edition
The resolution to disband Fairfax's regiment next Tuesday at Chelmsford passed 16th May 1647, by 136 to 115; Algernon Sidney being a teller of the noes. Commons' Journals. In these votes the house, that is, the presbyterian majority, acted with extreme imprudence; not having provided for the payment of the army's arrears at the time they were thus disbanding them. Whitelock advised Hollis and his party not to press the disbanding; and on finding them obstinate, drew off, as he tells us, from that connection, and came nearer to Cromwell. P. 248. This, however, he had begun to do rather earlier. Independently of the danger of disgusting the army, it is probable that, as soon as it was disbanded, the royalists would have been up in arms. For the growth of this discontent, day by day, peruse Whitelock's Journal for March and the three following months, as well as the Parliamentary History.