Of the bordering counties, Salop, as might be expected, stood strong for the King. The subserviency of its people--for centuries bowing head and bending knee to the despotic Lords of the Marches, who held court at Ludlow--had become part of their nature; hence an easy transfer of their obeisance to Royalty direct. The shire of Worcester, closely connected with Salop in trade and other relationships, largely shared its political inclinings; the city of Worcester itself being noted as a nest of "foul malignants," till purged of them by the "crowning mercy." As for Hereford county, with its semi-pastoral, semi-agricultural population, it espoused the side natural to such; which, I need hardly say, was not that of liberty. Throughout all ages, and in all countries, the bucolic mind has been the most easily misled, and given strongest support to tyranny and obstruction. But for it the slimy Imperialism of France would never have existed, and but for the same the slimier imitation of it in England would not have been attempted. Luckily, on this side of the English Channel there is not so much of the base material as on the other. When the Jew of Hughenden travestied country squire, patronising and bestowing prize smock-frocks on poor old Dick Robinson, he mistook the voting influence of Dick's farmer-master. It no longer controls the destinies of this land, and will never more do so if the Parliament now in power but acts up to the spirit which has so placed it. _Nous verrons_! Returning to the times of England's greatest glory, and the shire of Hereford, this, though strongly Royalist, was not wholly so. Many of the common people, especially on the Gloucester shire side, were otherwise disposed, and among the gentry were several noble exceptions, as the Kyrles, Powells, and Hoptons; and noblest of all. Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Bryan--relentless iconoclast. If the name of Sir Richard Walwyn be not found in the illustrious list, it is because the writer of romance has thought fit to bestow upon this valiant knight a fictitious _nom de guerre_. But the western shire entitled to highest honours for its action in this grand throe of the nation's troubles was undoubtedly Gloucester-- glorious Gloucester. When the lamp of liberty was burning dim and low elsewhere over the land, it still shone bright upon the Severn's banks; a very blaze in its two chief cities, Gloucester and Bristol. In both it was a beacon, holding out hope to the friends of freedom, near and afar, struggling against its foes, in danger of being whelmed, as mariners by the maddened ocean.