, after
the battle of Bradock. Rupert, in like manner, had prayers before every
division at Marston Moor. To be sure, we cannot always vouch for the
quality of these prayers, when the chaplain happened to be out of the
way and the colonel was his substitute. "O Lord," petitioned stout Sir
Jacob Astley, at Edgehill, "thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if
I forget thee, do not thou forget me!"--after which, he rose up, crying,
"March on, boys!"

And as the Puritans had not the monopoly of prayer, so the Cavaliers did
not monopolize plunder. Of course, when civil war is once begun, such
laxity is mere matter of self-defence. If the Royalists unhorsed the
Roundheads, the latter must horse themselves again, as best they could.
If Goring "uncattled" the neighborhood of London, Major Medhope must
be ordered to "uncattle" the neighborhood of Oxford. Very possibly
individual animals were identified with the right side or the wrong
side, to be spared or confiscated in consequence;--as in modern Kansas,
during a similar condition of things, one might hear men talk of a
pro-slavery colt, or an anti-slavery cow. And the precedent being
established, each party could use the smallest excesses of the other
side to palliate the greatest of its own. No use for the King to hang
two of Rupert's men for stealing, when their commander could urge in
extenuation the plunder of the house of Lady Lucas, and the indignities
offered by the Roundheads to the Countess of Rivers. Why spare the
churches as sanctuaries for the enemy, when rumor accused that enemy
(right or wrong) of hunting cats in those same churches with hounds, or
baptizing dogs and pigs in ridicule of the consecrated altars? Setting
aside these charges as questionable, we cannot so easily dispose of
the facts which rest on actual Puritan testimony. If, even after the
Self-denying Ordinance, the "Perfect Occurrences" repeatedly report
soldiers of the Puritan army, as cashiered for drunkenness, rudeness to
women, pilfering, and defrauding innkeepers, it is inevitable to infer
that in earlier and less stringent times they did the same undetected or
unpunished. When Mrs. Hutchinson describes a portion of the soldiers on
her own side as "licentious, ungovernable wretches,"--when Sir Samuel
Luke, in his letters, depicts the glee with which his men plunder
the pockets of the slain,--when poor John Wolstenholme writes to
head-quarters that his own compatriots have seized all his hay