"Some few friends reverently buried him in Barking Church to the words of the old burial-service, prohibited by the Parliament a few days before. All honour to them." Said Aunt Gretel, when my Father had finished reading this letter,-- "It is a great pity the martyrs should not all be on the right side. It would make it so very much easier to know which is the right." "Martyrs on the wrong side," exclaimed Aunt Dorothy, indignantly; "you might as well talk of orthodox heretics." But my Father replied,-- "If obedience is better than sacrifice, then obedience is the best part of the sacrifice of martyrdom; and may we not trust that the Master may accept the act of obedience even of some who misread the word of command?" The next day he left us for London, and we saw him no more for many months. On the 29th of January, commissioners of the Parliament and of the king met at Uxbridge to negotiate for peace. But they did not get on at all. Dr. Stewart syllogistically defended the divine right of Episcopacy, and Dr. Henderson the divine right of the Presbyterial government. My Lord Hertford and my Lord Pembroke would have passed this by, to proceed to the particular points to be settled; but the divines declined to be hurried, insisting on disputing syllogistically "as became scholars." So, after twenty days, Dr. Stewart and Dr. Henderson, being each confirmed in their conviction of his own orthodoxy, the commissioners separated with no further result. One evening, indeed, it is said, the king had consented to honourable terms; but in the night a letter came from Montrose announcing Royalist victories, and in the morning His Majesty retracted the concessions of the evening. Meanwhile the two armies continued fighting; not in two large bodies, but in scattered skirmishes, sieges, surprises, all over the country, making well-nigh every quiet home in England a sharer in the misery and tumult of the war. The moral difference between the forces of the Parliament and the king became, it was said, more obvious. It could scarce be otherwise. War must make men firmer in virtues or more desperate in sin. Men must get less and less human with years of plundering, and indulgence in every selfish sinful pleasure. No good woman durst venture near the Royalist army, my Father said, and vice and profaneness were scarcely punished; whereas in the Parliament camp, as in a well-ordered city, passage was safe, and traffic free. It was the armies of the great Gustavus and that of Wallenstein over again. I think it would be blasphemy to deem such differences can have no weight in a world where God is King.