One could tell how he had carried packets to the Queen at the risk of his life; a second how he had lost his eyes and his arms in the King's service; a third how he had been tossed and tumbled up and down, and was tried eleven times for his life, and how he was brought to the foot of the gallows, and yet after all escaped with his life; and a fourth, how he had lost £2,000, had been turned out of doors, had been burnt with matches, and carried to Worcester, and kept there under guard, whence he had fled, had been obliged to take to trees for a hiding place in the day time, and then to travel all night, had been caught and sent to the gatehouse, and sentenced to be shot, and had then got out of prison during sermon time, and lived three weeks in an enemy's haymow, and limped on crutches to Bristol, and so escaped. The widows of soldiers, too, talked of being plundered, stripped, and whipped, of their banished children, and of their own poverty and hardships; in all which stories, though there might be not a little exaggeration, there was also not a little truth.[361] [Sidenote: _Episcopalian Loyalty._] The loyalty of these persons, as we have said, is prominently exhibited in the little Prayer Book before us; and from its pages we quote the following remarkable petitions for Prince Charles:-- "O blessed Lord God, who hast in Thy fatherly care and goodness taken our late gracious Sovereign into Thy peace, and left the inheritance of his throne and sceptre to his firstborn, we beseech Thee to prepare and instruct him for so high and so weighty a calling. Be Thou pleased, out of the riches of Thy treasure, to pour Thy wisdom into his heart, to command that double portion of his father's spirit to rest upon him--the head of Solomon and the heart of David--and withal the meekness and true Christian charity, the inward calmness, and placability of spirit, that may arm him thoroughly against all the provocations of an unthankful people; that he may come and reign amongst us, as a tender compassionate father of all his kingdoms, carry them, as Moses did Thy people, in his arms, from a desert to Canaan, and go in and out before them with that conduct which Thy pillar of fire and cloud afforded them. Lord, be Thou his light and his guide, his counsellor and protector, his shield and his exceeding great reward; keep him from all the designs of the enemies of his and our peace; preserve him as the apple of thine own eyes; and because of the great strait and difficulties which are now before him, the obstructions which none but Thine especial interposition can remove, Lord, fasten his heart, and the eyes and hearts of all his counsellors steadfastly and unanimously upon Thee, to keep close to Thy ways and rule, and be Thou continually assistant to them, that without the effusion of any more blood, if it be Thy sacred will, he may attain to a peaceable possession and establishment in his inheritance; erect his