"Thank heaven the common people are true to him still, as they took him from Newcastle to Holmby House the simple peasants flocked round to see him and bless him, and to feel the healing touch of his sacred hand for the king's evil. Sir Harry Marten, a rebel and a republican, made a profane jest thereon, and said, 'The touch of the great seal would do them as much good.' But no one relished the scurrilous jest. And the blessings and prayers of the poor followed the king everywhere. Yes; it is the common people and the nobles that honour true greatness. The Scribes and Pharisees, I am persuaded, sprang from the middle-order yeomen, craftsmen, chapmen. "Tithing mint and devouring widows' houses," are just base, weeping, unpunishable middle-station sins. The troubles of this middle class are wretched, low, carking money-troubles. The sorrows of the high and low are natural ennobling sorrows; bereavement, pain, and death. It is the sordid middle order that envies the great. The common people reverence them when on high places, and generously pity them when brought low. My Mother says, belike the sorrows of their king shall yet move the honest heart of the nation to a reverent pity, and thus back to loyalty, and so, as so often in great conflicts, more be won through suffering than through success. "_April_, 1647.--We are to pay our last penalty. Our old hall is declared to be a perilous nest of traitors and cradle of insurrection. A rebel garrison is to be quartered on us. "Our expedition to Holmby, has led to two results; it offended some of the people in authority among the rebels, and thereby caused them to take possession of the hall; and it so taxed my mother's wasted strength that she is unfit for any journey, so that we must even stay and suffer the presence of these insolent and rebellious men in our home. "_April, Davenant Hall_.--Mr. Drayton hath been here to-day. He looked pale and thin from the long imprisonment he has had, and he hath lost his right arm--a sore loss to him who ever took such pleasure in his geometrical instruments, and played the viol-di-gambo so masterly. "He gave a slight start when he saw my mother, and there was a kind of anxious compassionate reverence in his manner towards her which makes me uneasy. I fear he deems her sorely changed, and ofttimes I have feared the same. But then this mourning garb which she will never more lay aside, and her dear gray hair, which I love, put back like an Italian Madonna from her forehead, in itself makes a difference. Although I think her eyes never looked so soft and beautiful as now. The golden hair of youth, and all its brilliant colour, seems to me scarcely so fair as this silver hair of hers, with the soft pale hues on her cheeks.