olutely undertaken by the army,
and as resolutely sustained by the citizens and garrison.

* Whitlocke, p. 69. May, book iii. p. 91.

* Rush. vol. vi. p. 287. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 315. May,
book iii. p. 96.

When intelligence of the siege of Gloucester arrived in London, the
consternation among the inhabitants was as great as if the enemy were
already at their gates. The rapid progress of the royalists threatened
the parliament with immediate subjection: the factions and discontents
among themselves in the city, and throughout the neighboring counties,
prognosticated some dangerous division or insurrection. Those
parliamentary leaders, it must be owned, who had introduced such mighty
innovations into the English constitution, and who had projected so much
greater, had not engaged in an enterprise which exceeded their courage
and capacity. Great vigor, from the beginning, as well as wisdom, they
had displayed in all their counsels; and a furious, headstrong body,
broken loose from the restraint of law, had hitherto been retained in
subjection under their authority, and firmly united by zeal and passion,
as by the most legal and established government. A small committee,
on whom the two houses devolved their power, had directed all their
military operations, and had preserved a secrecy in deliberation, and
a promptitude in execution, beyond what the king, notwithstanding the
advantages possessed by a single leader, had ever been able to attain.
Sensible that no jealousy was by their partisans entertained against
them, they had on all occasions exerted an authority much more despotic
than the royalists, even during the pressing exigencies of war,
could with patience endure in their sovereign. Whoever incurred their
displeasure, or was exposed to their suspicions, was committed to
prison, and prosecuted under the notion of delinquency: after all the
old jails were full, many new ones were erected; and even the ships were
crowded with the royalists, both gentry and clergy, who anguished below
decks, and perished in those unhealthy confinements: they imposed taxes,
the heaviest and of the most unusual nature, by an ordinance of the two
houses; they voted a commission for sequestrations; and they seized,
wherever they had power, the revenues of all the king's party;[*] and
knowing that themselves, and all their adherents, were, by resisting
the prince, exposed to the penalties of law, they resolved, by a se