<119> I doubt not but many pens and tongues utter, after many fashions, the report of our late unfortunate journey, but yet I thought it not amiss to write you this brief narration of it; which I may say, quæque ipse miserrima vidi, et quorum pars una fui.<120> On Sunday last the governor marched with one and twenty companies, or colours, (for indeed some of them were but mere colours of companies, having sixty for a hundred and fifty,) from Tulsk, eight miles beyond Roscommon, to the abbey of Boyle, some fourteen miles; and hearing belike that the enemy was but weak in the Curlews, and that they expected not his coming; (because captain Cosby the very day before came from Boyle towards Roscommon:) on this account the governor, God bless him, resolved to possess the Pare that night, being two miles from the abbey. This was against the minds of most of the captains: the soldiers being weary and fasting, insomuch that they spake for meat ere they went up, but the governor promised them they should have beef enough at night, and so drew them on: but many, God wot, lost their stomachs before supper. The order was this:—Captain Lister led the forlorn hope;<121> Sir Alexander Ratcliff and his regiment had the vanguard; my Lord of Dublin led the battle; Sir Arthur Savage, the rear; the horse were appointed to stand in a little pasture at the foot of the hill, to the intent that, when the Pare had been cleared, they might have come up. After our men had gone up the hill and entered part of the Pare, the rebels began to play upon them from a barricade that they had made; but our men soon beat them from it, and Sir Alexander Radcliff very bravely beat them out of a thin wood into a bog on the left side of the Pare; and we who stood at the foot of the hill might see them, and all men thought the Pare had been ours. But after the skirmish had lasted an hour and half very hot, and our shot had expended all our powder; the vanguard wheeled about in such a fashion, that, what with that, and some strange and causeless fear, that fell upon our men, the vanguard fell into the battle;<128> and in conclusion all fell in rout, and no man could stay them. The governor himself, labouring to turn them, lost his breath, his voice, his strength, and last of all, his life;<122> or, which is worse, in the rebels' hands, and none could force him off. How it can be answered at home by such as it concerned most I know not, but so vile and base a part I think was never played among so many men, that have been thought of some desert. But now, the horse standing at the foot of the hill, and seeing through the woods and glades some disorder, though not suspecting so ill as it was, charged up the hill another way that lay on the left: if it may be called a way, that had stones in it six or seven feet broad, lying above ground, and plashes of bogs between them. But with this charge we made the enemy retire; whereby all the foot and colours came off; but we bought this small reputation (if so it will be taken) very dearly, for our own commander of the horse had his arm broken with a shot, and had another shot through his clothes, and some seven or eight horse more killed and several proper men. Captain [John] Jephson was next to Sir Griffith Markham in the head of Lord Southampton's troops, and charged very gallantly. I would not for all the land I have, but I had been well horsed. I verily think the idle faith which possesses the Irishry, concerning magic and witchcraft, seized our men and lost the victory. For when my cousin Sir H. Harington, in a treacherous parley with Rory Og,<123> a notable rebel, was taken and conveyed to his habitation a prisoner; his friends not complying with the terms offered for his ransom, sent a large band to his rescue, which the rebel seeing to surround his house, rose in his shirt, and gave Sir Henry fourteen grievous wounds, then made his way through the whole band and escaped, notwithstanding his walls were only mud.<124> Such was their panic, as verily thinking he effected all by dint of witchery, and had by magic compelled them not to touch him. And this belief doth much daunt our soldiers when they come to deal with the Irishry, as I can well perceive from their discourse. You will hear more from other captains of further advances:
            So I rest, to all command,

            JOHN HARINGTON.

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