29 MARCH 1946, Page 4

It sounds as if something more than chance had carried

Mr. Isaac Foot, President of the Cromwell Society, to the Lord Mayoralty of Plymouth precisely three hundred years after the siege of Plymouth by the Royalist forces was raised and the Protector himself came to the Western port—in March, 1646—to celebrate the deliverance. The Lord Mayor, I gather, has leaped to the occasion, and among other things has, very' appropriately, lectured the boys and girls of Plymouth on a famous event in their town's history. Plymouth, like Portsmouth and Hull, owed its success to the fact that the Navy stood firm for the Parliament, so.that beleaguered ports could be victualled by sea—not that Plymouth thought the Navy did all it might have in that respect. * * * *