Beside the mortification of thus viewing the strength of a party whom they hoped to find weak, disjointed, and inefficient, our young captives had the misery of hearing the royal cause every where vilified, and the Sovereign's personal character traduced. Among the King's misfortunes his inability to pay his army, or to supply it with necessaries, was most injurious to his success. His forces were chiefly raised and kept together by the private fortunes and influence of loyal noblemen and gentry, many of whom, even members of the house of Peers, served as privates, receiving neither honour nor reward, except the generous satisfaction of conscious duty. The situation of those who ranged themselves on this side without funds for their own support, was most precarious, the King being compelled to tax the few places which preserved their allegiance with their entire maintenance. The weekly assessment laid upon the nation by the house of Commons being granted by the constitutional purse-bearer, took the name of a lawful impost; but every demand of His Majesty might be construed into an exaction. Fearful to indispose the minds of subjects, pecuniary levies were cautiously resorted to; hence the officers were compelled to connive at plunder, and the destitute soldier often had no other means to supply his imperious wants. For the same reasons discipline was relaxed; every man who had largely contributed to the King's cause felt himself independent of his authority. Obliged beyond all probable power of remuneration, the Prince saw himself surrounded by men who had forfeited their estates, renounced their comforts, and risked their lives to support a tottering throne. Yet still they were subject to human passions, and liable to have those passions heightened by the free manners of camps, while the unhappy circumstances of the cause for which they fought exonerated them from those strict restraints that are so peculiarly necessary in an army, where right must always be less respected than power, and where severe privations, and the frail tenure by which life is held, are ever urged as motives to a licentious enjoyment of the present hour. While from these causes such relaxed discipline prevailed in a royal garrison, as generally to indispose the neighbourhood to its politics, the parliamentary officers felt bound to each other by the common fears of guilt, knowing that success alone could preserve them from the penalties of treason. Their soldiers being well supplied with every thing, had no excuse for plundering; and all acts of violence were punished with severity by those who, though of small consideration in their original situations compared with the King's officers, yet still held a natural command over the lowest vulgar, of whom the parliamentary rank and file were composed.