These proceedings began to alarm the gentry and nobility of England; for, however willing we were to have evil counsellors removed, and the government return to a settled and legal course, according to the happy constitution of this nation, and might have been forward enough to have owned the king had been misled, and imposed upon to do things which he had rather had not been done, yet it did not follow, that all the powers and prerogatives of the crown should devolve upon the Parliament, and the king in a manner be deposed, or else sacrificed to the fury of the rabble.
The heats of the House running them thus to all extremes, and at last to take from the king the power of the militia, which indeed was all that was left to make him anything of a king, put the king upon opposing force with force; and thus the flame of civil war began.
However backward I was in engaging in the second year's expedition against the Scots, I was as forward now, for I waited on the king at York, where a gallant company of gentlemen as ever were seen in England, engaged themselves to enter into his service; and here some of us formed ourselves into troops for the guard of his person.
The king having been waited upon by the gentry of Yorkshire, and having told them his resolution of erecting his royal standard, and received from them hearty assurances of support, dismisses them, and marches to Hull, where lay the train of artillery, and all the arms and ammunition belonging to the northern army which had been disbanded. But here the Parliament had been beforehand with his Majesty, so that when he came to Hull, he found the gates shut, and Sir John Hotham, the governor, upon the walls, though with a great deal of seeming humility and protestations of loyalty to his person, yet with a positive denial to admit any of the king's attendants into the town. If his Majesty pleased to enter the town in person with any reasonable number of his household, he would submit, but would not be prevailed on to receive the king as he would be received, with his forces, though those forces were then but very few.
The king was exceedingly provoked at this repulse, and indeed it was a great surprise to us all, for certainly never prince began a war against the whole strength of his kingdom under the circumstances that he was in. He had not a garrison, or a company of soldiers in his pay, not a stand of arms, or a barrel of powder, a musket, cannon or mortar, not a ship of all the fleet, or money in his treasury to procure them; whereas the Parliament had all his navy, and ordnance, stores, magazines, arms, ammunition, and revenue in their keeping. And this I take to be another defect of the king's counsel, and a sad instance of the distraction of his affairs, that when he saw how all things were going to wreck, as it was impossible but he should see it, and 'tis plain he did see it, that he should not long enough before it came to extremities secure the navy, magazines, and stores of war, in the hands of his trusty servants, that would have been sure to have preserved them for his use, at a time when he wanted them.
It cannot be supposed but the gentry of England, who generally preserved their loyalty for their royal master, and at last heartily showed it, were exceedingly discouraged at first when they saw the Parliament had all the means of making war in their own hands, and the king was naked and destitute either of arms or ammunition, or money to procure them. Not but that the king, by extraordinary application, recovered the disorder the want of these things had thrown him into, and supplied himself with all things needful.
But my observation was this, had his Majesty had the magazines, navy, and forts in his own hand, the gentry, who wanted but the prospect of something to encourage them, had come in at first, and the Parliament, being unprovided, would have been presently reduced to reason. But this was it that balked the gentry of Yorkshire, who went home again, giving the king good promises, but never appeared for him, till by raising a good army in Shropshire and Wales, he marched towards London, and they saw there was a prospect of their being supported.
In this condition the king erected his standard at Nottingham, 22nd August 1642, and I confess, I had very melancholy apprehensions of the king's affairs, for the appearance to the royal standard was but small. The affront the king had met with at Hull, had balked and dispirited the northern gentry, and the king's affairs looked with a very dismal aspect. We had expresses from London of the prodigious success of the Parliament levies, how their men came in faster than they could entertain them, and that arms were delivered out to whole companies listed together, and the like. And all this while the king had not got together a thousand foot, and had no arms for them neither. When the king saw this, he immediately despatches five several messengers, whereof one went to the Marquis of Worcester into Wales; one went to the queen, then at Windsor; one to the Duke of Newcastle, then Marquis of Newcastle, into the north; one into Scotland; and one into France, where the queen soon after arrived to raise money, and buy arms, and to get what assistance she could among her own friends. Nor was her Majesty idle, for she sent over several ships laden with arms and ammunition, with a fine train of artillery, and a great many very good officers; and though one of the first fell into the hands of the Parliament, with three hundred barrels of powder and some arms, and one hundred and fifty gentlemen, yet most of the gentlemen found means, one way or other, to get to us, and most of the ships the queen freighted arrived; and at last her Majesty came herself, and brought an extraordinary supply both of men, money, arms, &c., with which she joined the king's forces under the Earl of Newcastle in the north.
Finding his Majesty thus bestirring himself to muster his friends together, I asked him if he thought it might not be for his Majesty's service to let me go among my friends, and his loyal subjects about Shrewsbury? "Yes," says the king, smiling, "I intend you shall, and I design to go with you myself." I did not understand what the king meant then, and did not think it good manners to inquire, but the next day I found all things disposed for a march, and the king on horseback by eight of the clock; when calling me to him, he told me I should go before, and let my father and all my friends know he would be at Shrewsbury the Saturday following. I left my equipages, and taking post with only one servant, was at my father's the next morning by break of day. My father was not surprised at the news of the king's coming at all, for, it seems, he, together with the royal gentry of those parts, had sent particularly to give the king an invitation to move that way, which I was not made privy to, with an account what encouragement they had there in the endeavours made for his interest. In short, the whole country was entirely for the king, and such was the universal joy the people showed when the news of his Majesty's coming down was positively known, that all manner of business was laid aside, and the whole body of the people seemed to be resolved upon the war.
As this gave a new face to the king's affairs, so I must own it filled me with joy; for I was astonished before, when I considered what the king and his friends were like to be exposed to. The news of the proceedings of the Parliament, and their powerful preparations, were now no more terrible; the king came at the time appointed, and having lain at my father's house one night, entered Shrewsbury in the morning. The acclamations of the people, the concourse of the nobility and gentry about his person, and the crowds which now came every day into the standard, were incredible.