[Illustration: KING CHARLES I. AT THE BEVERLEY GATE, KINGSTON-UPON-HULL, A.D. 1642.] To the offer of the King, that he would leave all his train outside the Gate, with the exception of twenty horse, the Governor proved equally unresponsive. From eleven o’clock till four o’clock the parleying of King and Governor went on. Then the King ‘retired to a little house without the walls, and after an hour’s stay returned’ and demanded a final answer. Would Sir John Hotham admit the King to ‘a town and fort of our own, wherein our own magazine lay;’ or would he forthwith be proclaimed a traitor? Sir John chose the latter alternative, and was at once proclaimed guilty of high treason by the King’s heralds. Then the King withdrew to Beverley, and the first act of open hostility between Parliament and King was ended. The Great Civil War had, in fact, begun. XXII. HOW HULL WAS TWICE BESIEGED. The events of April 23rd, 1642, were immediately followed by the sending of letters to Parliament. Sir John Hotham forwarded an account of how he had obeyed the orders of Parliament to the best of his ‘understanding and utmost endeavours, though with some hazard of being misconceived by His Majesty’; while the King wrote demanding that ‘his said town and magazine might be immediately delivered up unto him, and that such severe exemplary proceedings should be taken against those persons who had offered him that insupportable affront, as by the law was provided.’ To the King’s letter no reply was given. But in reply to that of Sir John Hotham a deputation of members was sent to thank him and the soldiers under him for their services. Two warships were ordered to sail immediately to Hull under the command of the Earl of Warwick; and the following resolutions were passed by the two Houses:— (1) That Sir John Hotham has done nothing but in obedience to the commands of both Houses of Parliament. (2) That this declaring Sir John Hotham a traitor—being a Member of the House of Commons—is a high breach of the privilege of Parliament. Copies of these resolutions, and of the ‘Declaration’ which accompanied them, were printed and spread abroad among the people. So also, from a printing-press established in St. William’s College at York, were issued pamphlets giving the King’s version of recent affairs. In one of these King Charles states his views in these words:— We would fain be answered, what title any subject of our kingdom has to his house or land that we have not to our town of Hull? Or what right has he to his money, plate, or jewels, that we have not to our magazine or munition there? If we had ever such a title we would know when we lost it? And if that magazine and munition, bought with our own money, were ever ours, when and how the property went out of us?