“Whether when Colonel Pride goes to quarter with old Nick, the Proverb will not be verified, ‘Pride feels no cold’?” Although the Royalists ventured to proclaim their opinions, though they openly wore ribbons or badges in their hats, they were not so strong as the Parliamentary party; they had to take their part in the fortification of the avenues and approaches to London, and they had to pay their share in the weekly tax of £10,000 imposed upon the City. In “A True Relation of two Merchants of London who were taken prisoners by the Cavaliers and of the Misery they and the other Puritans endured”—a pamphlet of 1642—I think we have one of those documents, of which Napoleon so well understood the use, which were meant to stimulate enmity and provoke wrath. It is an interesting paper, but one remarks that the only cruelty endured by the two merchants was due to a smoky chimney; that they report various hangings, but they were not themselves hanged; and various slashings of ears, but they brought their own away with them; and, as is common in such documents, they report the evil case of the enemy and their resolution to destroy the City of London when they get in. I take an extract from it as follows:— “Warre hath seemed alwayes sweet to those who have been unexperienced with it, who, blinded with its flourish and its glory, observe not the tragicall events that doe attend it. Of all war the civill is most grievous, where all the obligations of friendship and nature lye cancelled in one another’s blood, and violated by their hands who should bee most carefull to preserve them. In civill warres there hath been no greater stickler than religion, whose innocent and sacred garment hath been too often traduced to palliate all dissolute and bloody acts, and (as if heaven suffered flatterers as well as Princes) religion and loyalty have been induced to beleeve they are protected most by those men who most dangerously and most closely doe oppose them, and who, while both are trampled on them by them, doe still cry out, For God and the King. Every day brings in many sad demonstrations concerning this subject; the burning of houses, the pillaging of goods, the violating of all lawes, both divine and humane, have been arguments written in blood by too many swords. What I shall now relate concerning the sufferings of these two Gentlemen, who were taken by the Cavaliers, and what outrages they have performed in the time of their durance, will bee a compendious mixture of all distresses in one story, wherein I shall bee carefull to satisfie the reader with the manner of it, as myselfe with the truth, not doubting but it will find as much beliefe in the reader as it hath done compassion in the writer.