This proposal made the Earl of Worcester’s party more eager for the siege than before, for they had no mind to a blockade which would leave the country to maintain the troops all the summer; and of all men the prince did not please them, for, he having no extraordinary character for discipline, his company was not much desired even by our friends.  Thus, in an ill hour, ’twas resolved to sit down before Gloucester.  The king had a gallant army of 28,000 men whereof 11,000 horse, the finest body of gentlemen that ever I saw together in my life; their horses without comparison, and their equipages the finest and the best in the world, and their persons Englishmen, which, I think, is enough to say of them.

According to the resolution taken in the council of war, the army marched westward, and sat down before Gloucester the beginning of August.  There we spent a month to the least purpose that ever army did.  Our men received frequent affronts from the desperate sallies of an inconsiderable enemy.  I cannot forbear reflecting on the misfortunes of this siege.  Our men were strangely dispirited in all the assaults they gave upon the place; there was something looked like disaster and mismanagement, and our men went on with an ill will and no resolution.  The king despised the place, and thinking to carry it sword in hand, made no regular approaches, and the garrison, being desperate, made therefore the greater slaughter.  In this work our horse, who were so numerous and so fine, had no employment.  Two thousand horse had been enough for this business, and the enemy had no garrison or party within forty miles of us, so that we had nothing to do but look on with infinite regret upon the losses of our foot.

The enemy made frequent and desperate sallies, in one of which I had my share.  I was posted upon a parade, or place of arms, with part of my regiment, and part of Colonel Goring’s regiment of horse, in order to support a body of foot, who were ordered to storm the point of a breastwork which the enemy had raised to defend one of the avenues to the town.  The foot were beat off with loss, as they always were; and Massey, the governor, not content to have beaten them from his works, sallies out with near 400 men, and falling in upon the foot as they were rallying under the cover of our horse, we put ourselves in the best posture we could to receive them.  As Massey did not expect, I suppose, to engage with any horse, he had no pikes with him, which encouraged us to treat him the more rudely; but as to desperate men danger is no danger, when he found he must clear his hands of us, before he could despatch the foot, he faces up to us, fires but one volley of his small shot, and fell to battering us with the stocks of their muskets in such a manner that one would have thought they had been madmen.