The night fell dark as Hades, and tempestuous
withal. The winds wailed mournfully at intervals,
at intervals shrieked out with savage fury; and as
the giant clouds were driven reelingly across the
firmament, blotting the faint light of the winking
stars, fierce bursts of hail and rain came dashing to
the earth, and ceased as suddenly as they commenced.
And ever and anon the thunder growled
remotely, but with a sullen rolling that seemed almost
continuous, such was the length and frequency
of the strong peals—and lightnings flashed on

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every side the heaven, now in broad, quivering
sheets of ghastly light, that transiently displayed
the ragged edges of each fleeting storm-cloud in
distinct relief, and now in wavy lines of most intense
and life-like fire, rushing athwart the rack
from zenith to horizon. Yet, turbulent as was the
night aloft the city, and ominous as showed the
gathering of the elements, still more alarming was
the turbulence that reigned in the full streets, and
more portentous was the concourse of the armed
and angry citizens. The train-bands had been
mustered in the early evening, with arquebuse and
pike, their lighted matches gleaming on all sides
through the murky darkness, and the heavy trampling
of their companies everywhere audible, as
they marched to and fro, vainly desirous to allay
the tumult which had arisen instantly on the arrival
of the accused members, seeking protection in
the guarded precincts of the city. From sunset
until dawn the mayor patrolled the streets with
his assistant magistrates, vainly endeavouring to
quell the terrified and savage populace, with whom
each court and alley, from the purlieus of Alsatia
quite to the Tower, was blockaded and beset—all
armed as chance had ordered it, some with the
perfect implements of modern warfare, others with
weapons obsolete and strange, brown-bills, and
glaives, and maces. Chains were made fast
athwart the most frequented avenues; and barricades
of stone and timber, heaped rudely but effectively
together, above which yawned the mouth
of many a ponderous cannon, would have presented
no small obstacles to any who should dare invade
the sacred limits of the city. Huge bonfires
blazed in every quarter, torches and flambeaux
streamed and wavered in each gust of wind, casting
a singular and ruddy glare upon the pallid faces

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and unusual weapons of the unwashed artisans who
formed the bulk of the assemblage; though they
were mingled here and there with grave and well-attired
burghers, their morions and gorgets wildly
at variance with their civic garbs and golden chains—
with young and ruffling templars, to whom aught
savouring of frolic or of fight was most congenial—
and with sad-visaged and morose soldadoes, in
suits of buff, tarnished and soiled by service, girded
with broad-swords of unwieldy length, fresh from
the German wars or the Low Countries, then, as in
every after age, the battle-field of Europe—all
keeping up, throughout the livelong night, a dissonance
of tongues as loud and jarring as ever rent
the air around the heaven-defying Babel. At times
a sudden panic would run through the crowd, none
knowing whom to trust or whom to flee—a cry
would ring above the mingled din—“The cavaliers!
The cavaliers! Fly! Fly! The king and his
wild cavaliers are up to fire the city!” and, without
waiting to inquire or to hear, the mob would
rush they knew not whither, trampling the aged
and the feeble under foot, and turning oftentimes
the very weapons they had belted on to guard their
liberties against each other in the blind and reeling
rout. And now, with words of fire and gestures
of defiance, some bolder spirit would brave the
panic-stricken throng, and rally it and lead it back,
with brandished arms and inflamed features, to
meet the foemen who existed only in their imaginations,
maddened with terror and excitement.

Nor was the panic and confusion slighter within
the royal palace. Between the hapless king and
his perfidious consort, distrust—recrimination—
wrath—followed by feigned repentance on the one
hand—uxorious pardon on the other! Among the
counsellors, dismay and doubt—high words, and

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mutual reproaches, and all the vehement disorder
that ensues on the adoption and discomfiture of evil
counsels! Digby and Lunsford wearying Charles,
faint-hearted now and dubious, for permission to
assail the city gates, and drag the impeached traitors
forth from their stronghold at point of partisan
and pike!—Others deploring the rash steps already
taken, and protesting against farther violence!—
and some, the nobler and more upright spirits—
Falkland, and Hyde, and their associates—holding
themselves aloof in deep, resentful sorrow, that all
their wisdom had been wasted, and themselves distrusted
and deceived. Never a longer night was
followed by a sadder morning; for, although daylight
calmed the terror and the tumult, it allayed
nothing of the concentrated wrath, diminished nothing
of the jealous apprehensions entertained by
either party. After a short debate, the parliament,
both lords and commons, adjourned for several
days, appointing a committee to sit constantly,
mornings and afternoons, at Merchants' Hall, within
the city walls, where they might be secure from
farther outrage, and free to devise means for vindication
of their members, and safeguard of their violated
rights. Edgar, informed of the commotions,
and anxious for the safety of the city, called for his
horse the moment after the adjournment, and, with
some six or seven followers, well mounted and
equipped, rode up the Strand—a scattered street
at that day, occupied by the suburban dwellings of
the rich and noble, with terraced gardens sloping
downward to the Thames—full of calm resolution,
and intending instantly to volunteer his aid for putting
down the riots, and establishing some governance
of law. When he reached Temple-Bar the
gates were closed with bolt and chain, a powerful
band of musketeers, with gun and bandoleers,

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manning its loops, and mustering at every window that
overlooked the area before it. But, at announcement
of his quality and name, the bolts were drawn,
the heavy leaves unfolded, and he entered amid
presented arms and muttered greetings of the sentinels.
With a pleased eye he saw at once that
order was restored; suspicion still prevailed, and
vigilance, but tumult and confusion had given way
to wise and watchful regulation. The shops were
shut, and business was suspended, it is true, and
all men who went forth wore weapons; but the
trained-bands patrolled the streets, with magistrates
at the head of every company, no less to enforce
internal quiet than to resist external force. Scarce
had he ridden twenty yards within the gate ere a
fresh summons roused the wardens, and a king's
messenger, after some parley, was admitted, and
conducted by a file of infantry to hearing of the
aldermen, then sitting at the Guildhall. The business
on which Ardenne came directing him to the
same quarter, and strong anxiety to learn the future
movements of the court still farther prompting him,
he at once wheeled to the rear of this small band,
and, passing onward with them, was ushered in
without delay to the mayor's presence, and, in
consideration of his place in parliament, accomodated
with a seat whence he might witness the
proceedings of the day, and lend his counsel, if
need were, to these the magnates of the city. To
his astonishment, as to that, indeed, of all, the messenger
announced that his majesty was already entering
his coach to wait upon the mayor, when he
had left Whitehall; and that he prayed that dignitary
to call a common council on the instant. Sir
Richard Gourney, the then holder of that office,
although inclined not slightly to the principles of
the decided royalists, disclaiming, as did all the

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wiser of the party, any participation in, or knowledge
of, a course which, now that it had failed,
they all professed to disapprove, was careful to
display no symptom of subserviency; perhaps, indeed,
he truly felt that wrong had been committed,
and was sincere, as he was evidently faithful to his
trust, in the determination to maintain inviolate the
privileges of which he was the guardian. The
council was at the time in session, and scarcely
had the messenger withdrawn before the king arrived—
not with the armed and dissolute attendants
who had convoyed him to the halls of parliament,
but with some two or three lords only, and those
of the most moderate among his partisans. The
shouts that ran like wildfire along the crowded
streets, mingled with groans and yells—the cries,
“Privilege! Privilege of parliament!”—announced
his presence at the doors of the Guildhall before
he had alighted from his coach, and clearly proved
the temper of the now thoroughly-aroused and fearless
multitude; while, as a token of the perfect
mastery of the law even at that moment of tremendous
and wellnigh unparalleled excitement, a
daring pamphlet-writer, who had thrown into the
monarch's coach a paper, bearing inscribed the
scriptural watchword, “To your tents, O Israel,”
was instantly committed for contempt. The city
dignitaries rose indeed from their seats on the
king's entrance; they tendered to him all—all, to
the most minute particulars—that was his due of
reverence and ceremonial greeting; but there was
no heart-inspired applause—no loyal, spirit-stirring
cry, “God save the king!”—no smile—no welcome!
Strange it may seem, yet he had hoped indeed, infatuated
man, that he should now succeed in gaining
the authorities to yield their honoured guests
to his demand; and so commenced what he

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esteemed a mild, conciliatory harangue, requiring
their surrender—full of false statements of his veneration
and regard, in all past time, for England's
laws and liberties—of his affection for the Protestant
religion—of his enforcement of the penal statutes
against the dreaded papists—and no less full
of promises, unmeaning, insincere, and empty, concerning
his intentions for the future. Little applause
and no obedience followed! Baffled a second
time, and yet more deeply mortified, he left
the Guildhall—but, desirous still of pleasing, and
imagining, short-sighted and deluded prince, that,
by a slender show of condescension, he could efface
the recollection of so many arbitrary acts against
the corporate and individual interests of the city,
he vouchsafed to one—the worse affected toward
his person—of the sheriffs the honour of dining at
his house;—was served, together with his retinue,
with more than courtly luxury—with all respect
and honour, paid, not to himself, but to the station
which he so ill occupied—but with no semblance
of that glad alacrity, that honest and ungrudging
heart-service, which is well worth a world of bended
knees and hollow ceremonial;—and in the evening—
harassed in spirit and fatigued in body, irritated
by the reproachful hootings of the multitude
that jarred, at every instant of his homeward progress,
on his reluctant ear, and hopeless now of compassing
his tyrannical ends—retired to his palace,
there to give impotent and childish vent to his indignant
spleen, by publishing a proclamation against
all men who should presume to harbour or conceal
the persons whom he had previously denounced as
traitors. Days passed away; each marked by
some bold resolution of the commons — by increased
tokens of the deep respect and admiration
entertained by the great bulk of the metropolis

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toward the vindicators of its rights—and by some
weak and useless aggravation of his former measures
on the part of the misguided and wife-governed
monarch. A week had scantly rolled above
their heads, before the house, conscious of its own
strength, and knowing the entire impotence of the
king's party, determined to bring back their members
to Westminster, as being men against whom
no legitimate or constitutional charge was pending;
and preparation of unwonted splendour and extent
was made for reconducting them in triumph to
their seats. The news might not escape the ears
of Charles, bruited as it was all joyously abroad
through every class of persons, and pleasing as it
was to nearly all—for not a few, even of those who
heretofore had backed him with their voices and
opinions in all his troubles, and who in after days
as faithfully assisted him with life and fortune,
were not entirely sorry for the occurrence of a
marked reverse, which might, they fondly hoped,
avail to check him in his inordinate and reckless
cravings—cravings which, to their own eyes, they
could not now disguise or palliate—for power, unconstitutional
at least, if not tyrannical and absolute.
Bitter—most bitter—were his feelings, as
he went, ungreeted by one loyal acclamation—his
absence unlamented by one loyal tear—forth from
the palace of his fathers—almost alone in actual
fact, but absolutely so in sentiment—the queen, for
whose sake mainly he had embroiled himself with
his true-hearted subjects, ungratefully and spitefully
upbraiding him, not for the folly of his measures,
but for his failure in their execution—his
courtiers, who had urged him on to every fresh
aggression, and lauded every new caprice, now silent
and dejected—and the very guards who rode
before his coach dispirited and crest-fallen.

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Bitter—most bitter—were his feelings; but it
was not with the bitterness of manly and upright
repentance—not with the bitterness upspringing
from the sense of wrong committed, and resulting
in a promise of amendment—but with the bitterness
of discontent and disappointment, of unholy
wishes frustrated, and merited reverses sullenly
remembered. Such were the feelings of that bad
monarch and unhappy man as he drove forth—that
so he might avoid the triumph of his disaffected
subjects—after the shades of early evening had already
gathered dark and cold about the misty
streets, toward Hampton Court, as virtually exiled
from the metropolis of his oppressed and
groaning country, and from the jeoparded, dishonoured
throne of his forefathers, as from the hearts
of his once loving subjects.

But the sun rose upon a nobler and more glorious
spectacle—a spectacle rife with great blessings
for the present, and brilliant omens for the future—
the spectacle of a vast people, free and united!
victorious, not by the sword, nor over slain and mutilated
carcasses—but by the strength of popular
opinion, founded on the broad base of justice—animated
by the deathless love of liberty—and directed
by such a knot of patriots as England in no
other age had witnessed! On came the fair procession,
marshalled by loud, triumphant music, and
the yet louder shouts of honest and exulting myriads;
gay with a thousand flags and banners flaunting
to the wintry sun, which wore, on that proud
morning, his brightest and most gorgeous aspect;
guarded by all the sober strength of civil discipline,
and all the orderly and bright array of the well-trained
militia of the city; not fluttering, indeed,
with tasselled scarfs or many-coloured plumes,
but well equipped with morions of steel, polished

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till they shone out like silver, and stout buff-coats,
all service-like and uniform—with their puissant
pikes thick as a grove of pines, their broad heads
glinting back the sunbeams — and arquebuses
clearly burnished as when they left the armory.
Fifty in front they marched, in close and serried
order, striding along with regular and sturdy steps,
rank after rank, each as a single man—with that
erect, undaunted bearing which belongs only to the
free; and with the tranquil eye and calm though
proud expression which mark the disciplined, lawloving
citizen, and not the fierce, unruly democrat.
The companies were all arrayed beneath the civic
banners of their respective wards, and headed by
their captains, mounted well on strong and serviceable
chargers, and gallantly equipped in scarlet
cassocks and steel corslets. Behind this stately
host, preceded by the bearers of his mace and
sword, and all the glittering insignia of city pomp,
Sir Richard Gourney rode along, curbing a splendid
courser, whose footcloth, blazoned with rich
armorial bearings, almost swept the ground, sorely,
as it would seem, against his will, to slow procession
pace; then, two and two, in flowing robes of
scarlet, with chains of gold about their necks, and
tall white feathers floating above their velvet bonnets,
the sheriffs and the aldermen advanced!—and
then, received by acclamations that were heard for
many a mile around, clad in their ordinary garbs,
and wearing in their grave demeanour no tokens
of undue importance or unfitting exultation, the denounced
patriots rode steadily along; and, headed
by their speaker, the whole house of commons followed.
No banners waved above them—no gorgeous
dresses pointed them for public admiration—
no high assumption called the eye to them—yet,
as they swept slowly forward, a band of gentlemen

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—mostly of noble, all of reputable birth—chosen
for worth and wisdom to be the delegates of a great
people—of a people the most manly, and intelligent,
and free of the wide universe—they could
not but have attracted the eye and fixed the untaught
admiration of the most stolid or most slavish;
what then must they have done when they
were passing before those whose liberties they had
asserted at the risk of all that men hold dear?

Close trooping in the rear of these another strong
battalion of the train-bands marched—several brigades
of field artillery, huge, cumbrous iron guns,
with tumbrils following and matches lighted, rattled
and groaned over the rugged pavements, and
a long train of well-appointed horse of each denomination
then in use—the heavy cuirassiers, with
helmets, breast and back pieces, poldrons and taslets
of bright polished steel, bearing long two-edged
broad-swords, and pistolets with barrels full
two feet in length—mounted arquebusiers, with
short but ponderous matchlocks and formidable rapiers—
lancers, with no defensive arms save morion
and gorget, and no weapons save their spears of
fifteen feet and light curved sabres, in imitation of
the Polish horse, already celebrated in the German
wars—a splendid cavalcade, brought up the rear.
While thousands and tens of thousands—strong
men and tottering children, matrons and hoary-headed
sires, and maidens delicate and tender—
the vast population of the city and its suburbs
poured out to meet their champions, hindering
their progress by their living masses, and clinging
even to the horses they bestrode, with fervent
prayers and blessings, and with tears of holy
joy, and waving kerchiefs, and exulting shouts, to
greet the people's friends; and with wild curses
on the king and on his cavaliers, concerning whom

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they oft and sneeringly inquired, “Where be they
now, and whither have they fled?” Meanwhile
adown the Thames another pomp was floating, toward
the stairs at Westminster, second, if second,
only to the landward show—hundreds of lighters,
pinnaces, and long-boats, dressed up with waist-cloths
and with streamers, laden with musketry
and ordnance, manned by a host of British mariners,
whose meteor flag even then “had braved, a
thousand years, the battle and the breeze,” furrowed
the broad and placid river; while ever and
anon the salvos of their cannon, thundering above
the din and clamours of the mighty concourse, announced
to the disheartened monarch, even in his
sad retreat at Hampton, the failure of his insolent
aggressions, and the triumphant testimony borne by
his indignant subjects to the untiring efforts and
undaunted resolution of those noble spirits, whom
his oppressive madness had converted, step by step,
from the most steady guardians to the most constant
foemen of his person and his crown.

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