eld.

Charles I. seems to have taken pity on the suffering inventor; and on
his earnest petition, setting forth the great advantages to the nation
of his invention, from which he had as yet derived no advantage, but
only losses, sufferings, and persecution, the King granted him a
renewal of his patent[6] in the year 1638; three other gentlemen
joining him as partners, and doubtless providing the requisite capital
for carrying on the manufacture after the plans of the inventor. But
Dud's evil fortune continued to pursue him. The patent had scarcely
been securedere the Civil War broke out, and the arts of peace must at
once perforce give place to the arts of war. Dud's nature would not
suffer him to be neutral at such a time; and when the nation divided
itself into two hostile camps, his predilections being strongly
loyalist, he took the side of the King with his father. It would
appear from a petition presented by him to Charles II. in 1660, setting
forth his sufferings in the royal cause, and praying for restoral to
certain offices which he had enjoyed under Charles I., that as early as
the year 1637 he had been employed by the King on a mission into
Scotland,[7] in the train of the Marquis of Hamilton, the King's
Commissioner. Again in 1639, leaving his ironworks and partners, he
accompanied Charles on his expedition across the Scotch border, and was
present with the army until its discomfiture at Newburn near Newcastle
in the following year.

The sword was now fairly drawn, and Dud seems for a time to have
abandoned his iron-works and followed entirely the fortunes of the
king. He was sworn surveyor of the Mews or Armoury in 1640, but being
unable to pay for the patent, another was sworn in in his place. Yet
his loyalty did not falter, for in the beginning of 1642, when Charles
set out from London, shortly after the fall of Strafford and Laud, Dud
went with him.[8] He was present before Hull when Sir John Hotham shut
its gates in the king's face; at York when the royal commissions of
array were sent out enjoining all loyal subjects to send men, arms,
money, and horses, for defence of the king and maintenance of the law;
at Nottingham, where the royal standard was raised; at Coventry, where
the townspeople refused the king entrance and fired upon his troops
from the walls; at Edgehill, where the first great but indecisive
battle was fought between the contending parties; in short, as Dud
Dudley states in his