The apprentices were ready to join in any movement which might bring back the pleasant times of old.

Cavaliers now openly showed themselves in the streets, and London was indeed ripe for an insurrection against the sovereignty which the army had established over the nation.

Had the king at this time escaped from Hampton Court, and ridden into London at the head of only twenty gentlemen, and issued a proclamation appealing to the loyalty of the citizens, and promising faithfully to preserve the rights of the people, and to govern constitutionally, he would have been received with acclamation.

The majority of Parliament would have declared for him, England would have received the news with delight, and the army alone would not have sufficed to turn the tide against him.

Unhappily for Charles, he had no more idea now than at the commencement of the war of governing constitutionally, and instead thinking of trusting himself to the loyalty and affection of his subjects, he was meditating an escape to France.