stituted mean and loathsome king-craft for frank
and open English policy, the gray-haired soldier, navigator,
statesman--for he had shone in each capacity--retired, as his
ancestors had done before him, during the reigns of the seventh and
eighth Henrys, to the peaceful shades and innocent pleasures of
Ditton-in-the-Dale.

So true, however, was he to the time-honored principles of his high
race, so loyally did he bring up his son, so firmly did he strengthen
his youthful mind with all maxims, and all laws of honor, linking the
loyal subject to the rightful king, that no sooner had the troubles
broken out between the misguided monarch and his rebellious
Parliament--although the veteran of Elizabeth had fallen asleep long
before, full of years and honors--than his young heir, Osborn
Fitz-Henry, displayed the cognizance of his old house, mustered his
tenantry, and set foot in stirrup, well nigh the first, to withdraw it
the very last, of the adherents of the hapless Charles. So long did he
resist in arms, so pertinaciously did he uphold the authority of the
first Charles, so early did he rise again in behalf of the second,
that he was noted by the Parliament as an incorrigible and most
desperate malignant; and, had it not been that, by his gallantry in
the field, and his humanity when the strife was ended, he had won the
personal good-will of Cromwell, it is most likely that it would have
gone hard with his fortunes if not with his life.

After the restoration, he was of course neglected by the fiddling,
gambling, wenching, royal buffoon, who succeeded the royal martyr, and
whose necessities he had supplied, when an outcast pauper exile in a
foreign land, from the proceeds of those very estates which he had so
nearly lost in fighting for his crown.

Osborn Fitz-Henry, too, was gathered to his fathers. He died little
advanced beyond the prime of life, worn out with the toil he had
undergone in the camp, and shattered by the wounds which he had
received on almost every battle-field from Edge-Hill to Dunbar and
Worcester.

He had, however, married very young, before the breaking out of the
rebellion, and had lived to see not his son only a noble and superior
man, ready to fill his place when vacant, and in it uphold the honor
of his family, but his son's children also advancing fast toward
maturity.

Allan Fitz-Henry, the son of Charles' stout partisan, the grandson of
Elizabeth's warrior, was the head of the house, wh