over onto the Isle of Wight, and that he had been received by the governor with marks of respect.  They, therefore, again returned to Southampton, and there took a boat for Cowes.  Leaving his followers there, Harry rode to Newport, and saw the king.  The latter said that for the present he had altogether changed his mind about escaping to France, and that Sir John Berkeley would start at once to negotiate with the heads of the army.  He begged Harry to go to London, and to send him from time to time sure news of the state of feeling of the populace.

Taking his followers with him, Harry rode to London, disguised as a country trader.  He held communication with many leading citizens, as well as with apprentices and others with whom he could get into conversation in the streets and public resorts.  He found that the vast majority of the people of London were longing for the overthrow of the rule of the Independents, and for the restoration of the king.  The preachers were as busy as ever haranguing people in the streets, and especially at Paul’s Cross.  In the cathedral of St. Paul’s the Independent soldiers had stabled their horses, to the great anger of many moderate people, who were shocked at the manner in which those who had first begun to fight for liberty of conscience now tyrannized over the consciences and insulted the feelings of all others.  Harry and his followers mixed among the groups, and aided in inflaming the temper of the people by passing jeering remarks, and loudly questioning the statements of the preachers.  These, unaccustomed to interruption, would rapidly lose temper, and they and their partisans would make a rush through the crowd to seize their interrogators.  Then the apprentices would interfere, blows would be exchanged, and not unfrequently the fanatics were driven in to take refuge with the troops in St. Paul’s.  Harry found a small printer of Royalist opinions, and with the assistance of Jacob, strung together many doggerel verses, making a scoff of the sour-faced rulers of England, and calling upon the people not to submit to be tyrannized over by their own paid servants, the army.  These verses were then set in type by the printer, and in the evening, taking different ways, they distributed them in the streets to passers-by.

Day by day the feeling in the city rose higher, as the quarrels at Westminster between the Independents, backed by the army and the Presbyterian majority, waxed higher and higher.  All this time the king was negotiating with commissioners from the army, and with others sent by the Scots, one day inclining to one party, the next to the other, making promises to both, but intending to observe none, as soon as he could gain his ends.

On Sunday, the 9th of April, Harry and his friends strolled up to Moor Fields to look at the apprentices playing bowls there.  Presently from the barracks of the militia hard by a party of soldiers came out, and ordered them to desist, some of the soldiers seizing upon the bowls.