It was as if in spirit they met around the grave of the martyred Sir John Eliot, and would do or say nothing to dishonour the grave to which since last they met he had been brought for liberty. But no portion of the hoarded treasure could the king force or cajole from their grasp. The court insisted on supplies. The Parliament insisted on grievances. And on May the 5th, the king dissolved the Parliament. My Father's voice trembled with emotion when he heard it. "They would have saved him!" he said. "They would have saved the country and the king!" Said Aunt Dorothy grimly, "The king prefers armies to parliaments; and no doubt he will have his choice." A second royal army was raised by enforcing ship-money, seizing the pepper of the Indian merchants, and compelling loans, filling the towns and cities with angry men who dared not resist, and the prisons with brave men who dared. And to rouse the country further, the queen appealed publicly for aid to the Roman Catholics, whilst Archbishop Laud demanded contributions of the clergy. Earl Strafford, recalled from Ireland, was appointed commander-in-chief. The court endeavoured also to enkindle the fury of the old Border war-memories; but the Borderers were brethren in the faith, and, refusing to hate each other, combined in hating the bishops. The second army melted like the first, after some little heartless fighting in a cause they hated; having distinguished itself mainly by shouting its sympathy with the Puritan preachers in the various towns through which it passed; by insisting on testing whether its commanders were Papists before it would follow them to the field; and by draining the king's treasury, so that he could proceed no further without once more looking to the dreaded guardians of the gold. "They meet in a different temper from the last," my Father said, as we walked home from the village, where we had eagerly hastened to meet the flying Post, who galloped from one patriot's house to another with printed sheets and letters containing the account of the king's opening speech on the 3d of November; "as different as the sweet May days of promise during which the Little Parliament debated, from the gray fogs which creep along the Fens before our eyes to-day. Summer, and hope, and restitution brightened before that April Parliament. Over this lower winter, storms, and retribution; slow clearing of the stubble-fields of centuries, stern ploughing of the soil for better harvests, not to be reaped, perchance, by the hands that sow." For the six months between had been ill-filled by the court party.