“I had heard as much,” Harry answered.  “It is a heavy weight to be placed on your shoulders, Herbert.”

“Yes,” he said, “I am growing learned in wools, and happily the business is not falling off in my hands.”

It was characteristic of the civil war in England that during the whole time of its existence the affairs of the country went on as usual.  Business was conducted, life and property were safe, and the laws were enforced just as before.  The judges went their circuits undisturbed by the turmoil of the times, acting under the authority alike of the Great Seals of the King and Parliament.  Thus evildoers were repressed, crime put down, and the laws of the land administered just as usual, and as if no hostile armies were marching and fighting on the fair fields of England.  In most countries during such troubled times, all laws have been at an end, bands of robbers and disbanded soldiers have pillaged and ruined the country, person and property alike have been unsafe, private broils and enmities have broken forth, and each man has carried his life in his hand.  Thus, even in Abingdon, standing as it did halfway between the stronghold of the crown at Oxford, and the Parliament army at Reading, things remained quiet and tranquil.  Its fairs and markets were held as usual, and the course of business went on unchecked.

On his return to Oxford Harry learned that the king, with a portion of the army, was to set out at once for Gloucester, to compel that city, which had declared for the Commons, to open its gates.  With a force of thirteen thousand men the king moved upon Gloucester.  When he arrived outside its walls, on the 10th of August, he sent a summons to the town to surrender, offering pardon to the inhabitants, and demanding an answer within two hours.  Clarendon has described how the answer was returned.  “Within less than the time described, together with a trumpeter, returned two citizens from the town with lean, pale, sharp, and bad visages, indeed, faces so strange and unusual, and in such a garb and posture, that at once made the most severe countenances merry, and the most cheerful heart sad, for it was impossible such ambassadors could bring less than a defiance.  The men, without any circumstance of duty or good manners, in a pert, shrill, undismayed accent, said that they brought an answer from the godly city of Gloucester to the king, and were so ready to give insolent and seditious answers to any questions, as if their business were chiefly to provoke the king to violate his own safe-conduct.”  The answers which these strange messengers brought was that the inhabitants and soldiers kept the city for the use of his majesty, but conceived themselves “only bound to obey the commands of his majesty signified by both houses of Parliament.”  Setting fire to the houses outside their walls, the men of Gloucester prepared for a resolute resistance.  The walls were strong and well defended, and the king