Among the prisoners so taken was a Royalist major who had had a deep hand
in the Maidstone insurrection, named John Gifford, a man who was destined
in the time to come to run a remarkable career. Only, to-day, the day
after the battle, he has no prospect before him but the gallows. On the
night before his execution, by the courtesy of Fairfax, Gifford's sister
was permitted to visit her brother in his prison. The soldiers were
overcome with weariness and sleep after the engagement, and Gifford's
sister so managed it that her brother got past the sentries and escaped
out of the town. He lay hid for some days in the ditches and thickets
around the town till he was able to escape to London, and thence to the
shelter of some friends of his at Bedford. Gifford had studied medicine
before he entered the army, and as soon as he thought it safe he began to
practise his old art in the town of Bedford. Gifford had been a
dissolute man as a soldier, and he became, if possible, a still more
scandalously dissolute man as a civilian. Gifford's life in Bedford was
a public disgrace, and his hatred and persecution of the Puritans in that
town made his very name an infamy and a fear.
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