were heard the noises of drunken revelry, from others the
curses of gamblers. In truth the place was merely a gay suburb of the
capital. The King, as was amply proved two years later, had greatly
miscalculated. He had forgotten that vicinity operates in more ways than
one. He had hoped that his army would overawe London: but the result of
his policy was that the feelings and opinions of London took complete
possession of his army. [113]

Scarcely indeed had the encampment been formed when there were rumours
of quarrels between the Protestant and Popish soldiers. [114] A little
tract, entitled A humble and hearty Address to all English Protestants
in the Army, had been actively circulated through the ranks. The writer
vehemently exhorted the troops to use their arms in defence, not of the
mass book, but of the Bible, of the Great Charter, and of the Petition
of Right. He was a man already under the frown of power. His character
was remarkable, and his history not uninstructive.

His name was Samuel Johnson. He was a priest of the Church of England,
and had been chaplain to Lord Russell. Johnson was one of those persons
who are mortally hated by their opponents, and less loved than respected
by their allies. His morals were pure, his religious feelings ardent,
his learning and abilities not contemptible, his judgment weak,
his temper acrimonious, turbulent, and unconquerably stubborn. His
profession made him peculiarly odious to the zealous supporters of
monarchy; for a republican in holy orders was a strange and almost an
unnatural being. During the late reign Johnson had published a book
entitled Julian the Apostate. The object of this work was to show
that the Christians of the fourth century did not hold the doctrine
of nonresistance. It was easy to produce passages from Chrysostom and
Jerome written in a spirit very different from that of the Anglican
divines who preached against the Exclusion Bill. Johnson, however, went
further. He attempted to revive the odious imputation which had, for
very obvious reasons, been thrown by Libanius on the Christian soldiers
of Julian, and insinuated that the dart which slew the imperial renegade
came, not from the enemy, but from some Rumbold or Ferguson in the Roman
ranks. A hot controversy followed. Whig and Tory disputants wrangled
fiercely about an obscure passage, in which Gregory of Nazianzus praises
a pious Bishop who was going to bastinado somebody. The Whigs maintained