Ellwood himself, who thus described his new acquaintance, was a young man too at that time, of good education and scholarly tastes. He became later the friend of a certain Mr. John Milton, who thought sufficiently well of his judgment to allow him to read his poetry before it was published, and to ask him what he thought of it; even, occasionally, to act upon his suggestions. Ellwood, therefore, was clearly the possessor of a sober judgment, and not a likely person to be carried away by the glib words of a wandering preacher. Yet that 'brisk young man,' Edward Burrough, did not only 'reach him' with his 'ready tongue,' he also completely 'convinced' him, and altered his whole life: Ellwood returned to his family ready to suffer hardship if need be on behalf of his newly-found faith. Ellwood's own adventures, however, do not concern us here, but those of the young man who convinced him. Edward Burrough was one of the best loved and most valiant of all those 'Valiant Sixty' ministers who went forth throughout the length and breadth of England, in 1654, on their new, wonderful enterprise of 'Publishing Truth.' If Edward Burrough was still 'young and brisk' when Ellwood first came across him, he must have been yet younger and brisker on that summer's day, five years earlier, when he left his home in Westmorland in order to 'conquer London.' This was an ambitious undertaking truly for any man, however brisk and ready of tongue. It is true that the London of those long-ago days of the Commonwealth, before the Great Fire, was a much more compact city than the gigantic, overgrown London of to-day. Instead of 'sprawling over five or six counties,'[21] and containing six or seven million inhabitants, London was then a comparatively small place, its population, though rapidly increasing, did not yet number one million. 'An old map of the year 1610 shows us that London and Westminster were then two neighbouring cities surrounded by meadows. "Totten Court" was an outlying country village. Oxford Street is marked on this map as "The way to Uxbridge," and runs between meadows and pastures. The Tower, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Church, ... and some other landmarks are indeed there, but it is curious to read the accounts given by the chronicles of the day of its narrow and dirty streets, in which carts and coaches jostled one another, and foot passengers found it difficult to get along at all.... When the King went to Parliament, faggots were thrown into the ruts in the streets through which he passed, to make it easier for his state coach to drive over the uneven roads!'[22] Nevertheless this gay little countrified town of timbered houses, surrounded by meadows and orchards, and overlooked by the green heights of 'Hamsted' and Primrose Hill, was then as now the Capital City of England. And England under Oliver Cromwell was one of the most powerful of the States of Europe.