"Alas, sweet heart, these are no new words to me. Your people seem to arrange many things others fight about, by talking about them. And it is difficult for me to say what words mean with you. But these words are indeed terribly familiar to me. And in my country they would certainly mean war." And that night I well remember the perplexity that crossed my prayers, whether in praying as usual for the king I might not be praying against the Parliament, and against my Father and Roger, and the nation; until after debating the matter in my own mind for some time, I came to the conclusion that on whatever dark mountains scattered, and by whatever deep waters divided, to Him there is still "One flock, one Shepherd," and that however ill I knew how to ask, He knew well what to give. LETTICE DAVENANT'S DIARY. (_From another source._) "_York_, _April_, 1642.--It has actually begun at last. The rebellion has begun. Sir John Hotham (Sir I hesitate to call him, for what knight is worthy the name who turns his disloyal sword against the very Fountain of knighthood and of all honor?) has closed the gates of Hull against the summons--against the very voice and person of His Sacred Majesty. At once the king withdrew to Beverley, and under the shadow of the grand old Minster proclaimed the false knight a traitor. "The rebellion has begun, but every one says it cannot last long. Next Christmas at latest must see us all at peace again; the nation once more at the feet of the king. My Mother says like a prodigal child; Sir Launcelot says like a beaten hound. Mobs, says he, like dogs, can only learn to obey by being suffered to rebel a little, and then being whipped for it. (I like not well this talk of Sir Launcelot. If the nation is like a hound, at what point in the nation does the dog-nature begin, and the human end?) Speaking so, I told him, we might include ourselves. But he laughed, and said, such discerning of spirits required no miraculous gift. Moreover, he said, the king himself had once compared the Parliaments to 'cats, to be tamed when young but cursed when old;' and had called his sailors in the Thames who offered to guard the Parliament 'water-rats.' If the king said so, I confess I think His Majesty might have chosen more courtly similes. But I do not believe he did. I will never believe any evil of His Majesty, whoever says it, scarcely if I were to see it myself, for my eye? might be deceived. "Only I should be sorely vexed if they heard these things at Netherby; because they never said rough things of any one. Especially now I am not there to explain things. For I am not allowed to write to them, nor to see them again, until things are right again in the country; which makes me write this.