this they ‘possessed a magazine in Leadenhall,’ and then ‘beat drums on the water to invite the seamen for God and king Charles.’ The next day a couple of regiments crushed the tumult. All the time a general lawless riot was spreading over Kent, got up by malignants, who circulated a rumour that the parliament meant to hang two men in every town. [1] [Whitelock, ii. 313.] [2] [April 10, Rushworth, vii. 1051.] {329} If such things could happen where the parliament could make itself felt most quickly, we may imagine the popular condition in regions where there was the same ignorance, the same liability to panic, the same tendency to tippling and gaming not on Sundays only, for malignants to work on in the interest of ‘God and king Charles,’ and where no voice from the republican headquarters ever penetrated. ‘The inconstant, irrational, image-doting rabble,’ as the proud republicans called it, which, when the king was being brought from Newcastle to Holmby, had thronged his path to be touched for the evil, which eagerly bought up fifty editions in twelve months of the Eikon Basilikè with the picture of the king at his prayers, was constant enough in two feelings, of which the republicans would have done well to take account, a reverence for familiar names, and a resentment against virtues which profess to be other than customary and commonplace. It was at once the merit and the weakness of the commonwealth’s men that they irritated these feelings at every point. ‘Before them shone a glorious world, Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled To music suddenly;’ [1]