away before the Action begun; and he could never have any
Dependance upon them during the two Days they were with him'.
Although greatly disappointed that he had arrived too late
to save Edinburgh, Cope was determined to bring the enemy
to action at the earliest possible moment. By the evening
of Tuesday, l7th September, the infantry and most of the artillery
had been got ashore, and the disembarkation was completed
the following afternoon, but because the dragoons were 'so
fatigued they could not march', the army remained at Dunbar
overnight. As a cavalryman, the condition in which the two
regiments had joined him cannot have escaped Cope's eye, but
possibly in deference to the memory of Gardiner, he made little
reference to it at his 'Examination'. Gardiner himself, as
Fowke's Brigade-Major testified, had no such inhibitions,
and while at Dunbar he expressed his views to at least two
of his acquaintances with the greatest of freedom.
One of them was General Lord Mark Kerr, who, finding that
he had arrived too late to take up his command as Governor
of Edinburgh Castle, was on his way back to Berwick. Having
been one of Cope's unsuccessful rivals for the post of Commander-in-Chief,
although 'very solicitous to have it', he was probably a not
unsympathetic listener. He wrote:
| |
* Upon my getting there [Dunbar], I met
with Coil: Gardner who complain'd much of the retreat,
I may say run a way, of the two Regts of Dragoons from
the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, which he said had ruin'd
his Regt-, were his Words. And in conversation with
my old Acquaintance he said that there has been the
oddest proceedings and Blunders that ever were heard
of, these were his Words. I ask'd him what he believed
would be their Operations now; he said he believed Sir
Jnš Cope would fight to retrieve what had been past,
upon which I shak'd my Head, but really don't remember
what I said, but Coil Gardner added he believed they
should beat them. I had no sooner shifted than I found
Sir Jnš Cope standing by me, he complain'd that the
Rebels would get both Arms and Ammunition by being in
Possession of Edinburgh. He communicated nothing more
to me, and I having no Power to Command bid God bless
them and set out.' |
Cope, as he well knew, had other enemies besides the Jacobites.
Later the same day young Carlyle visited the Colonel, who
was |
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