Project Gutenberg's The Children of the New Forest, by Captain Marryat

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Title: The Children of the New Forest

Author: Captain Marryat

Release Date: May 21, 2007 [EBook #21558]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Children of the New Forest, by Captain Marryat.

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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are
among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still
in print.

Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.

"The Children of the New Forest" was published in 1847, the
twenty-fourth book to flow from Marryat's pen, and the last published
whilst he was still alive. It was written for children, and has been
phenomenally succesful: it is still in print over 150 years later.

This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted
in 2003, and again in 2005.

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THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT.

CHAPTER ONE.

The circumstances which I am about to relate to my juvenile readers took
place in the year 1647. By referring to the history of England of that
date they will find that King Charles the First, against whom the
Commons of England had rebelled, after a civil war of nearly five years,
had been defeated, and was confined as a prisoner at Hampton Court. The
Cavaliers, or the party who fought for King Charles, had all been
dispersed, and the Parliamentary army under the command of Cromwell were
beginning to control the Commons.

It was in the month of November in this year that King Charles,
accompanied by Sir John Berkely Ashburnham and Legg, made h