ew 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.

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 i