entourage of Charles I.

But Nature who had given Marmaduke boundless ambition, had failed to
bestow on him those attributes which would have helped him on towards
its satisfaction. He was neither sufficiently prepossessing to please an
heiress, nor sufficiently witty and brilliant to catch the royal eye or
the favor of his uncle, the present Earl of Northallerton. His efforts
in the direction of advantageous matrimony had earned for him at Court
the nickname of "The Sparrowhawk." But even these efforts had soon to be
relinquished for want of the wherewithal.

The doting mother no longer could supply him with a sufficiency of money
to vie with the rich gallants at the Court, and the savings which Sir
Jeremy had been patiently accumulating with a view to freeing the Acol
estates from mortgage went instead to rescue young Marmaduke from a
debtor's prison.

Poor Sir Jeremy did not long survive his disappointment. Marmaduke
returned to Acol Court only to find his mother a broken invalid, and his
father dead.

Since then it had been a perpetual struggle against poverty and debt, a
bitter revolt against Fate, a burning desire to satisfy ambition which
had received so serious a check.

When the great conflict broke out between King and Parliament, he threw
himself into it, without zest and without conviction, embracing the
cause of the malcontents with a total lack of enthusiasm, merely out of
disappointment--out of hatred for the brilliant Court and circle in
which he had once hoped to become a prominent figure.