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.
To return to the woes which our young captives witnessed in their
melancholy tour through the seat of civil war.--The houses of the
nobility and gentry were either abandoned or converted into places of
strength, fortified for the defence of the inhabitants. Occasionally
they passed over what had recently been a field of battle. The
newly-formed hillocks pointed out the number of the slain; broken
weapons and torn habiliments still more indubitably identified the
mournful history; or flocks of ravens and other carrion birds hovering
over the slightly-covered relics of a noble war-horse, which had been
unearthed by foxes, presented a more savage picture of carnage.
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