Note 86 — Chapter V · The Crisis. January to June, 1643.

"A punctuall relation of the passages in Lancashire this weeke, etc." ("C.W.T.," p. 79). Lancashire's "Valley of Achor" ("C.W.T.," p. 127). "Discourse," p. 24. "Certaine Informations," No. 6, Feb. 20-27. The first and last of these accounts make allegations of treachery but not the other two; and the "Valley of Achor" would not have omitted the charge if it had not been quite baseless. The "Discourse" ascribes the disaster to "want of heedfulnesse," and the "Valley of Achor" is still more definite: "It dispossessed them by the help of Powder to which their disorders laid a Train fired by their neglected matches, or by that great Souldiers' Idoll, Tobacco." "O that this thundering alarm might ever sound in the eares of our Swearing, Cursing, Drunken, Tobacco-abusing Commanders and Souldiers unto unfaigned Repentance. For do they think that those upon whom the Tower fell and slew them, were sinners above the rest of the Army?"

In his "Pilgrimages to Old Homes" (1906), p. 84, Mr. Fletcher Moss says that it was the gate house into the second court which was blown up; but it would rather seem to have been the Tower itself, which then crowned the building on its eastern side.