From the time that she was in safety the king's tone to the Parliament began (it was thought) to change. Always chivalrously regardful of her, and in different to danger for himself (for none of his father's timidity could ever be charged to him), he began to give more open answers to the popular demands. He hoped also, it was said, much from the queen's eloquence and exertions in his cause on the Continent. It was his misfortune, my Father said, that any favourable turn in his affairs made him unyielding; and thus it happened that he only came to terms when his cause was at the worst, so that his treaties had the double disadvantage of being made under the most adverse circumstances, and with men who knew from repeated experience that not one of his most sacred promises would be kept if he could help it. Such virtues as he possessed seemed always to come into action at the wrong moment; his courage when it could only kindle irritation; his graciousness when it could only inspire contempt. The queen being safely out of the country, and the king safely out of the capital, from his refuge at York came the renewal of the old irritating demand for tonnage and poundage, rooting the opposition firmer than ever in the irrevocable distrust of the royal word. The demand of the king for the old usurpations was met by the assertion of the Parliament of old rights, with the demand for new powers to secure these; by the assertion of the power of the purse, and the demand for power over the militia. But to us women at Netherby all these negotiations and fencings between the king and the Parliament sounded so much like what had gone on for so long, everything was couched in such orderly and constitutional language, that it was difficult to think anything more than Protestations, Remonstrances, Breach of Privilege, and Protests for Privilege, would ever come of it. The first thing that roused me to the sense that it might end not in words but in battles, was the news that reached us one April evening that the king had gone in person with three hundred horsemen to the gates of Hull, and had summoned Sir John Hotham to surrender the city; that Sir John had refused to surrender or to admit the king's troops (offering all loyal courtesy at the same time to the king himself); that the king and his three hundred had thereon gone off baffled to Beverly, and there proclaimed Sir John Hotham a traitor. That night I said to Aunt Gretel,-- "This seems to me altogether to introduce a new set of terms and things. Instead of Protestations and Remonstrances, we hear of Summonses and Surrenders. The king and his cavaliers repulsed from the closed gates of one of his own cities! Aunt Gretel, these are new words to us; does not this look like war?" And she replied, in a tremulous voice,--