whose walls the king, arriving with an armed force, was refused
admittance by Sir John Hotham, who held the place for the Parliament.
This was the signal for the outbreak of the war, and each party
henceforth strained every nerve to arm themselves and to place their
forces in the field.

The above is but a brief sketch of the circumstances which led the
Cavaliers and Puritans of England to arm themselves for civil war. Many
details have been omitted, the object being not to teach the history of
the time, but to show the general course of events which had led to so
broad and strange a division between the people of England. Even now,
after an interval of two hundred years, men still discuss the subject
with something like passion, and are as strong in their sympathies
toward one side or the other as in the days when their ancestors took up
arms for king or Commons.

It is with the story of the war which followed the conversation of Harry
Furness and Herbert Rippinghall that we have to do, not with that of the
political occurrences which preceded it. As to these, at least, no
doubts or differences of opinion can arise. The incidents of the war,
its victories and defeats, its changing fortunes, and its final triumph
are matters beyond the domain of politics, or of opinion; and indeed
when once the war began politics ceased to have much further sway. The
original questions were lost sight of, and men fought for king or
Parliament just as soldiers nowadays fight for England or Prance,
without in any concerning themselves with the original grounds of
quarrel.