Of Cornet Joseph Clarke of the Ironsides

It may be, my dear grandchildren, that at one time or another I have
told you nearly all the incidents which have occurred during my
adventurous life. To your father and to your mother, at least, I know
that none of them are unfamiliar. Yet when I consider that time wears
on, and that a grey head is apt to contain a failing memory, I am
prompted to use these long winter evenings in putting it all before you
from the beginning, that you may have it as one clear story in your
minds, and pass it on as such to those who come after you. For now that
the house of Brunswick is firmly established upon the throne and that
peace prevails in the land, it will become less easy for you every year
to understand how men felt when Englishmen were in arms against
Englishmen, and when he who should have been the shield and the
protector of his subjects had no thought but to force upon them what
they most abhorred and detested.

My story is one which you may well treasure up in your memories, and
tell again to others, for it is not likely that in this whole county of
Hampshire, or even perhaps in all England, there is another left alive
who is so well able to speak from his own knowledge of these events, or
who has played a more forward part in them. All that I know I shall
endeavour soberly and in due order to put before you. I shall try to
make these dead men quicken into life for your behoof, and to call back
out of the mists of the past those scenes which were brisk enough in the
acting, though they read so dully and so heavily in the pages of the
worthy men who have set themselves to record them. Perchance my words,
too, might, in the ears of strangers, seem to be but an old man's
gossip. To you, however, who know that these eyes which are looking at
you looked also at the things which I describe, and that this hand has