and sent to the Tower. Charles looked upon Eliot as the cause of the boldness of the Commons; he hated him and was determined to punish him severely. But crowds of distinguished men of all ranks flocked to the Tower to visit and sympathise with Eliot. After a while the prisoners were brought up for trial, charged with causing sedition and riot. They were sentenced to pay heavy fines and to stay in prison till they had owned to their offence and promised good behaviour for the future. The way was made easy for all but Eliot to submit. For him Charles had no mercy. He was only thirty-eight, in the prime of life, with wife and children in a happy home in Cornwall. But he would not deny his principles even that he might see that home again. Without a murmur, with the patience of a true hero, he submitted to his prison life. When, after the trial, he was taken back to the Tower, he was handed over by the official who had charge of him to the Lieutenant with these words, "I have brought you this worthy knight whom I borrowed of you some months ago, and now do repay him again." Eliot wrote to a friend rejoicing that he was free from courts of justice and left to the observance only of himself.

Charles did not grow any more merciful to him as time went on. Two years afterwards, hearing rumours that people came to consult Eliot in the Tower on political questions, he caused an order to be sent limiting the number of persons who might visit him. In the cold Christmas weather, Eliot's lodgings were changed to a room in which he wrote that "candlelight might be suffered, but scarce fire." His health

was soon broken by his imprisonment, but his thoughts dwelt chiefly on God's love and goodness. When he grew worse, he wrote to Charles and asked leave to be set at liberty till he had recovered his health; then he would come back to prison. Charles did not heed his entreaty, and Eliot spoke no word of anger against him for his hard-heartedness. One of his last acts was to send for a painter to paint his thin worn face, that his descendants might know how he looked as a sufferer in the cause of freedom. His brave spirit passed away to rest after he had been nearly three years in prison. Even after his death Charles would not forgive him, and refused to allow his son to have his body to bury in his native place.

XL.

CROMWELL'S IRONSIDES.

A.D. 1644.

WHEN the differences between Charles I. and his Parliament ended in actual war, men thought at first that one battle would decide the quarrel, for the King had neither money nor arms. But they were quite mistaken. Many who had blamed Charles I.'s conduct thought it wrong to fight against their King, and in the hope that now at last he had learned that he must govern according to the laws, they hastened to help him. The first great battle fought between the two parties

But the soldiers How could it be

was a victory for neither side, but, on the whole, the advantage was on the King's side in the beginning of the war. There was one man amongst the soldiers of the Parliament who understood the reason of the King's success. This was Oliver Cromwell, then a colonel in the army. "The soldiers of the Parliament," he said, "are most of them old decayed serving men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows." in the King's army were gentlemen's sons. hoped that the spirits of base and mean fellows would ever be able to stand against gentlemen with honour, courage, and resolution in them? Cromwell felt sure that the troops of the Parliament would go on being beaten unless they could get men with the spirit of godliness to fight for them—that spirit would make them go as far as the gentlemen were likely to go. The King's soldiers, the Cavaliers, were fighting for their King; Cromwell wished to make the Parliament's soldiers, the Roundheads, feel that they were fighting for their God. When Cromwell told his idea to his friend John Hampden, he thought it a very good notion, but not one that it was possible to carry out. Cromwell, however, was not discouraged. He answered that he felt that he himself could do somewhat in the matter, and he set to work to do what he could.

He began to raise a regiment of horse in the eastern counties, from which he himself was sprung. These men soon got the name of Ironsides, so famous were they for the firmness with which they fought. They were for the most part yeomen—that is, small farmers who owned the land on which they themselves worked-and yeomen's sons. Cromwell took