That some spirits no stress of circumstances can attune to war, the case of William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, will attest. Sir Edward Hyde and Harvey had charge of the two young princes, Charles and James, during the battle. In the heat of the thunder of cannon, and the rain of shot, Harvey was found seated comfortably under a hedge, reading Virgil; though he consented, when urged, to retire into a place of greater safety. The result of that day is well known. Both sides claimed the victory; but the advantage, in absolute fact, was to the Royalists. The ghosts of the slain in that day’s fight are still said to haunt the old scene of battle; and some three months after the event, “apparitions and sundry noyses of war and battels” are recorded to have been seen and heard on Edgehill. The faces of Sir Edmund Verney, the King’s standard-bearer, and of many of the other “incorporeal substances,” destroyed in the flesh, were recognised. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IX THE FATE OF KINGS. ONLY ONCE AGAIN. THE CROWN JEWELS. A LOYAL VASSAL. “THE VAIN SHADOW OF A KING.” SLANDER. TEMPTATION SCORNED. MORE ARDOUR THAN DISCRETION Charles, from the first day of his reign, had never known real peace of mind or enjoyed a sense of security. The words put into the mouth of his predecessor by Shakespeare, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” were ever, from first to last, realised by him to the full. Till that head lay severed from his body in its coffin at Whitehall, it found no rest. One by one he lost, by circumstances—generally the circumstance of violent death—the friendship and counsel of those dearest to him. Strafford and Laud had perished on the scaffold, and now he was called upon to part with the Queen. In 1642, on the 10th of January, he left his palace of Whitehall, whose doors he never again entered but to step upon the scaffold. A little later he was at Windsor, and from thence it was arranged her Majesty should repair to Holland, ostensibly for the purpose of taking over her daughter, Henrietta Maria—still but a child—to the Prince of Orange, who had married her six months previously. The real object of the journey was however, to purchase arms and ammunition, and to seek the aid and support of the Continental Powers. The Queen took with her the Crown jewels to pawn or to sell, in order to raise money for the purchase of war supplies. After accompanying her to Dover, where she embarked for the Continent, Charles had gone northwards, and established himself at York, there to wait the issue of negotiations. That the issue of these could be doubtful, the most earnest desirers of peace could hardly hope. The breach, daily widening for so long, left no choice but to declare civil war; but both parties shrank from the blame of throwing down the gauntlet. Finally, it