It was a sweet spring day, soft and balmy as summer, and any one looking across the green meadows and smiling uplands of Hayslope, now so full of the promise of early fruitfulness, would have wondered what could make the farm-labourers appear so gloomy, and the women-folk sigh instead of singing at their work, if he knew nothing of what was going on a few miles away. It was the year 1644, and for two long years civil war had been raging in England, and now two rival Parliaments were sitting, the one presided over by the King meeting at Oxford, while that in London.
