party eagerly sought the opportunity of despoiling the lands and surprising the persons of their adversaries. The two great armies, in defiance of the prohibitions of their leaders, plundered wherever they came, and their example was faithfully copied by the smaller bodies of armed men in other districts. The intercourse between distant parts of the country was interrupted; the operations of commerce were suspended; and every person possessed of property was compelled to contribute after a certain rate to the support of that cause which obtained the superiority in his neighbourhood. In Oxford and its vicinity, in the four northern counties, in Wales, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, the royalists triumphed without opposition; in the metropolis, and the adjoining counties, on the southern and eastern coast, the superiority of the parliament was equally decisive. But in many parts the adherents of both were intermixed in such different proportions, and their power and exertions were so variously affected by the occurrences of each succeeding day, that it became difficult to decide which of the two parties held the preponderance. But there were four counties, those of York, Chester, Devon, and Cornwall, in which the leaders had[a] already learned to abhor the evils of civil dissension. They met on both sides, and entered into engagements to suspend their political animosities, to aid each other in putting down the disturbers of the public peace, and to oppose the introduction, of any armed force, without the joint consent both of the king and the parliament. Had the other counties followed the example, the war would have been ended almost as soon as it began. But this was a consummation which the patriots deprecated. They pronounced such engagements [Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Dec. 23.] derogatory from the authority of parliament; they absolved their partisans from the obligations into which they had entered; and they commanded them once more to unsheath the sword in the cause of their[a] God and their country.[1]