the
timid and lukewarm have wavered? Though the great questions were fairly
clear, the way to solve them, and the end to which any way would lead,
were dark and gloomy. It is an error to think that the Civil War was a
sudden outbreak, a short struggle on simple issues between two sharply
divided parties, assured of their beliefs and interests. The French
Revolution was that, or nearly that; but our revolutions are managed
deliberately, and lead to conclusive and permanent results: the art of
revolution belongs to the English race.

In Oxford there must have been much bewilderment and questioning among
citizens and gownsmen when Lord Say and Seale, the new Lord-Lieutenant
of the county appointed by the Parliament, came into the town on
September 14, 1642, and ordered that the works and trenches made by the
scholars should be demolished; yet next day he "sent a drumme up and
downe the towne for volunteers to serve the King and Parliament." What
did that mean? Almost any answer might have been given to the question.
His lordship's opinions soon became clearer than his puzzling
proclamation; on September the 24th he sent for the Heads of Houses to
rebuke them for having "broken the peace and quiet of the University,"
so much broken it that "they had nowe left no face of a Universitie, by
taking up armes and the like courses." He had before this interview
"caused diverse popish bookes and pictures taken out of churches, and of
papish houses, here and abroad, to be burned in the street over against
the signe of the Starre, where his Lordship laye." We know not what is
meant by "papish bookes and pictures," but the Puritan Lord Say may not
have discriminated sharply between them and the books and ornaments of
the High Party in the Church of England.

For seven or eight weeks before the battle of Edgehill, Oxford swarmed
with soldiers. It had been held for a fortnight by the King's men, who
were succeeded by the Parliamentary troopers brought in by Lord Say.
Some disturbances took place, in which the soldiers from Puritan London
especially distinguished themselves: one of them, when flushed with wine
presented by the Mayor "too freely," went so far as to "discharge a
brace of bulletts at the stone image of Our Lady over the church St
Mairie's parish, and at one shott strooke off her hed, and the hed of
her child which she held in her right arme: another discharged his
musket at the image of our Saviour over All Soule's gate, a