"'Why dost thou, tyrant, boast thyself,
Thy wicked works to praise?'"
The king's presence of mind.
As the congregation were about to commence the singing, the king cast his eye along the page, and found in the fifty-sixth hymn one which he thought would be more appropriate. He rose, and said, in a very audible manner, "We will sing the fifty-sixth Psalm:
"'Have mercy, Lord, on me I pray,
For men would me devour.'"
The congregation, moved by a sudden impulse of religious generosity extremely unusual in those days, immediately sang the psalm which the king had chosen.
The king receives letters from the queen.
While he was at Holmby the king used sometimes to go, escorted by a guard, to certain neighboring villages where there were bowling-greens. One day, while he was going on one of these excursions, a man, in the dress of a laborer, appeared standing on a bridge as he passed, and handed him a packet. The commissioners who had charge of Charles—for some of them always attended him on these excursions—seized the man. The packet was from the queen. The king told the commissioners that the letter was only to ask him some question about the disposal of his son, the young prince, who was then with her in Paris. They seemed satisfied, but they sent the disguised messenger to London, and the Parliament committed him to prison, and sent down word to dismiss all Charles's own attendants, and to keep him thenceforth in more strict confinement.
The army.