the commissioners turned aside, and, as they withdrew, were [Footnote 1: The correspondence is in the Journals, ibid.] greeted with continual cries of "Justice, justice, we demand justice."[1] From this regiment they proceeded to each of the others. In every instance the same ceremony was repeated, and always with the same result. No one now could doubt that both officers and men were joined in one common league; and that the link which bound them together was the "solemn engagement."[2] Both looked upon that engagement as the charter of their rights and liberties. No concession or intrigue, no partiality of friendship or religion, could seduce them from the faith which they had sworn to it. There were, indeed, a few seceders, particularly the captains, and several of the lord general's life-guard; but after all, the men who yielded to temptation amounted to a very inconsiderable number, in comparison with the immense majority of those who with inviolable fidelity adhered to the engagement, and, by their resolution and perseverance, enabled their leaders to win for them a complete, and at the same time a bloodless victory. 3. On the next day a deputation of freeholders from the county of Norfolk, and soon afterwards similar deputations from the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Herts, and Buckingham, waited with written addresses upon Fairfax. They lamented that now, when the war with the king was concluded, peace had not brought with it the blessings, the promise of which by the parliament had induced them to submit to the evils and privations of war; a disappointment that could be attributed only to the obstinacy with which certain individuals clung to the emoluments of office [Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 518. Whitelock, 251. Holles, 252.] [Footnote 2: Nottingham's Letter in the Lords' Journals, ix. 253.] and the monopoly of power. To Fairfax, therefore, under God, they appealed to become the saviour of his country, to be the mediator between it and the two houses. With this view, let him keep his army together, till he had brought the incendiaries to condign punishment, and extorted full redress of the grievances so severely felt both by the army and the people.[1]