The Earl’s gift of a horse to his son Frank had been made at a psychological moment. For Frank, at sixteen, was not over robust, and Robyn, not much more than twelve, was scarcely fitted to defend his King and Country; and they must have just watched their three elder brothers, Dungarvan, Kynalmeaky and Broghill, ride off in great spirits from Stalbridge to join the King at Newcastle or York. War was in the air, and rumours of war; and Stalbridge Manor and Sherborne Castle, and the villages of Dorsetshire and all the great families in England, were astir, as day by day and week by week the troops of English horse and foot were moving northwards to engage against what the old Earl turned off so lightly in his diary as the “Covenanting, rebelleows Skots.” In January 1639 a circular letter had been sent out in King Charles’ name to all the English nobility, asking them to state how far and in what manner they were ready to assist the Scottish Expedition; and week by week, according to their means and their political inclinations, the English nobles—Laudians and Puritans alike—had been sending in their answers: £1000, and twenty horse; twenty horse and attendance in person or by substitute; £1000 in lieu of horse; £500 and twelve horse; and so on.[62] And some gave willingly, and some gave grudgingly, and some evaded promising to give anything; and one or two were brave enough to refuse—and to give their reasons why. Even at Court there was “much contrarity”; it was a case of “soe many men soe many opinions.”[63] Wentworth, over in Ireland, had written offering his King £2000, and if necessary more to his “uttermost farthing”. And the Earl of Cork, at Stalbridge, had not done badly either, though he seems to have had his reservations about this levying of money and troops. His neighbour, the Earl of Bristol, at Sherborne, was one of those who had evaded promising anything in the meantime. But in February and March Dungarvan and Barrymore had been in London, and just at this time also Kynalmeaky and Broghill had arrived back in London with M. Marcombes. During this visit to London Dungarvan had been led into an undertaking to serve his King in the Scottish Expedition: a rash undertaking, made without his father’s “privitie”; “an unadvised engagement” is the Earl’s comment in his diary. But all the same the Earl supplied his son and heir with £3000 to raise and arm a troop of a hundred horse—a magnificent subscription, which at the time caused much talk at the Court of Whitehall. Lord Barrymore, at the same time, had been commissioned by the King to hurry across to Ireland with letters to Wentworth, and to “raise and press” a thousand Irishmen, foot-soldiers, into the King’s service against the Scots.