" For two years
longer, he wanders through Germany still watching the course of the
war and then returns to England, soon to take part in another war at
home, namely the Civil War, in which the English people were divided
into two great parties according as they supported King Charles I or
the members of the Long Parliament who opposed him. According to the
_Memoirs_, the Cavalier "went into arms" without troubling himself "to
examine sides." Defoe probably considered this attitude as typical
of many of the Cavalier party, and, of course, loyalty to the king's
person was one of their strongest motives. The Cavalier does not enter
largely into the causes of the war. What he gives us is a picture of
army life in that troubled period. It will be well, however, to bear
in mind the chief facts in the history of the times.
From the beginning of his reign, Charles had had trouble with his
parliaments, which had already become very restless under James I.
Charles's parliaments disapproved of his foreign policy and their
unwillingness to grant subsidies led him to fall back on questionable
methods of raising money, especially during the eleven years
(1629--1640) in which he ruled without a parliament.
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