"Have they forgotten," he said, "that we have won Marston Moor and Naseby for them? that we have been marching through the land all these years, and not left a godly homestead nor a family the worse for us throughout the length and breadth of the country? A man might think it was we who sacked Leicester and plundered and burnt villages and farms far and wide. They should have heard the prayers our poor men poured forth by the camp-fires on the battle-fields where we shed our blood for them. Such prayers as might well-nigh lift the roofs from their great vaults of churches, and belike the great stone also from their hearts. Men creeping easily among streets, praying safely as long as they like behind walls, and sleeping every night on feather-beds, might be the better for a good stretch now and then in one of our Cromwell's marches, and a hard bed on the moors, and a good look right up into the sky, beyond the roofs, and the clouds, and the stars, and the Covenants and Confessions." Roger also chafed much at the citizens, but most of all at their misunderstanding of General Cromwell. All that autumn, said Roger, the General, with Ireton, Vane, and Harry Marten, and other faithful men, were labouring hard to establish peace on a lasting foundation, as the proposals of the army proved. They would have provided that His Majesty's person, the queen, and the royal issue should be restored to honour and all personal rights; that the royal authority over the militia should be subject to the advice of Parliament for ten years; that all civil penalties for ecclesiastical offences (for instance, whether for using or disusing the Common Prayer), should be removed; that some old decayed boroughs should be disfranchised, and the representation be made more equal; that parliaments should last two years, not to be dissolved except by their own consent, unless they had sat one hundred and twenty days; that grand jurymen should be chosen in some impartial way, and not at the discretion of the sheriff. But no man would have it so. The Levellers in the army clamoured for justice on the "Chief Delinquent," and declared that General Cromwell had betrayed them to the king. There was a mutiny which Cromwell himself barely succeeded in quelling. The Presbyterians would not give up the right to enforce the Covenant. The king carried on negotiations at the same time with General Cromwell, with the Presbyterians, and with the Irish Papists; intending, as was showed, alas! too surely, from intercepted letters, to be true to none, except, perchance, the last. On November the 12th, early in the morning, the news flashed through the city, cried from street to street, that the king had fled from Hampton Court; and Roger, who was with us, that morning, said,-- "Once more General Cromwell would have saved the king and the country. But the king will not be saved. Now he must turn wholly to the country."