To the clamours of London he had been long accustomed.

They had been raised against him, sometimes unjustly, and sometimes vainly.

He had repeatedly braved them, and might brave them still.

But that Oxford, the scat of loyalty, the head quarters of the Cavalier army, the place where his father and brother had held their court when they thought themselves insecure in their stormy capital, the place where the writings of the great republican teachers had recently been committed to the flames, should now be in a ferment of discontent, that those highspirited youths who a few months before had eagerly volunteered to march against the Western insurgents should now be with difficulty kept down by sword and carbine, these were signs full of evil omen to the House of Stuart.

The warning, however, was lost on the dull, stubborn, self-willed tyrant.