ng made for
twenty days. Had the king been endowed with any sense of the danger of
his position, or any desire to treat in a straightforward and honest
manner with his opponents, peace might now have been secured. But the
unfortunate monarch was seeking to cajole his foes rather than to treat
with them, and his own papers, afterward discovered, show too plainly
that the concessions which he offered were meant only to be kept so long
as it might please him. The twenty precious days were frittered away in
disputes. The king would grant one day concessions which he would
revoke the next. The victories which Montrose was gaining in the north
had roused his hopes, and the evil advice of his wife and Prince Rupert,
and the earnest remontrances which he received from Montrose against
surrendering to the demands of Parliament, overpowered the advice of his
wiser counselors. At the end of twenty days the negotiations ceased, and
the commissioners of Parliament returned to London, convinced that there
was no hope of obtaining a permanent peace with a man so vacillating and
insincere as the king.

Herbert had been with his father at Uxbridge, as the regiment of foot to
which he belonged was on guard here, and it was with a heavy heart that
he returned to London, convinced that the war must go on, but forboding
as great a disaster to the country in the despotism which he saw the
Independents would finally establish as in the despotism of King
Charles.

There was a general gloom in the city when the news of the unsuccessful
termination of the negotiations became known. The vast majority of the
people were eagerly desirous of peace. The two years which the war had
already lasted had brought nothing save ruin to trade and general
disaster, and the great body of the public who were not tinged with the
intense fanaticism of the Independents, and who did not view all
pleasure and enjoyment in life as sinful, longed for the merry old days
when Englishmen might smile without being accused of sin, and when life
was not passed solely in prayer and exhortation. Several small riots had
broken out in London; but these were promptly suppressed. Among the
'prentice boys, especially, did the spirit of revolt against the gloomy
asceticism of the time prevail, and there can be little doubt that if at
this period, or for a long time subsequent, the king could have appeared
suddenly in the city at the head of a few score troops, he would have
been w