Thus one imprudent thing on one hand produced
another of the other hand, till the king was obliged to leave them to
themselves, for fear of being mobbed into something or other unworthy
of himself.
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.
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