in his house, the money collected for the royalists had been placed on his table, and the letters received, and the answers to be returned, had been read in his hearing.  After judgment,[b] both he and his friends presented[c] petitions in his favour; respite after respite was obtained and the parliament, as if it had feared to decide without instructions, referred[d] the case to Cromwell in Scotland.  That general was instantly assailed with letters from both the friends and the foes of Love; he was silent; a longer time was granted by the house; but he returned no answer, and the unfortunate minister lost his head[e] on Tower-hill with the constancy and serenity of a martyr.  Of his associates, only one, Gibbons, a citizen, shared his fate.[2]

[Footnote 1:  “It is plaine unto mee that they doe not judge us a lawfull magistracy, nor esteeme anything treason that is acted by them to destroy us, in order to bring the king of Scots as heed of the covenant.”—­Vane to Cromwell, of “Love and his brethren.”  Milton’s State Papers, 84.]

[Footnote 2:  Milton’s State Papers, 50, 54, 66, 75, 76.  Whitelock, 492, 493, 495, 500.  State Trials, v. 43-294.  Heath, 288, 290.  Leicester’s Journal, 107, 115, 123.  A report, probably unfounded, was spread that Cromwell granted him his life, but the despatch was waylaid, and detained, or destroyed by the Cavaliers, who bore in remembrance Love’s former hostility to the royal cause.—­Kennet, 185.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1651.  May 7.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1651.  June 5.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1651.  June 11.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1651.  July 15.] [Sidenote e:  A.D. 1651.  August 22.]

2.  To Charles it had been whispered by his secret advisers that the war between the parliament and the Scots would, by withdrawing the attention of the council from Ireland, allow the royal party to resume the ascendancy in that kingdom.  But this hope quickly vanished.  The resources of the commonwealth were seen to multiply with its wants; and its army in Ireland was daily augmented by recruits in the island, and by reinforcements from England.  Ireton, to whom Cromwell, with the title of lord deputy, had left[a] the chief command, pursued with little interruption the career of his victorious predecessor.  Sir Charles Coote met the men of Ulster at Letterkenny; after a long and sanguinary action they were defeated; and the next day their leader, MacMahon, the warrior bishop of Clogher, was made prisoner by a fresh corps of troops from Inniskilling.[1] Lady Fitzgerald, a name as illustrious in the military annals of Ireland as that of Lady Derby in those of England, defended the fortress of Trecoghan, but neither the efforts of Sir Robert Talbot within, nor the gallant attempt of Lord Castlehaven without, could prevent its surrender.[2] Waterford, Carlow, and Charlemont accepted honourable conditions, and the garrison of Duncannon, reduced to a handful of men by the ravages of the plague, opened its gates[b] to the enemy.[3] Ormond, instead of facing