Gabriel, remembering how galling the prosecution of his own father had been, remembering, too, how Peter Waghorn’s old father lay dead at Bosbury, a victim of the same overbearing _régime_, could not but rejoice in the people’s triumph. The only marvel was that they had so long endured the intolerable tyranny--a tyranny which, during the last eleven years, had driven twenty thousand English Puritans to seek a new home in America.
Meanwhile the King had found himself between the devil and the deep sea; Strafford’s infamous scheme of debasing the coinage had been checkmated by the firmness of the London merchants in the summer. It was impossible to raise money anymore after the illegal fashion of the past eleven years, and, hemmed in by his angry Scotch subjects in the north and his indignant English subjects in the south, Charles at length, in his speech to the great Council assembled in the hall of the Deanery at York, announced the issue of writs for a Parliament to meet on November the third.
Sir Robert Harley lost no time in establishing his son and Gabriel Harford in chambers at Lincoln’s Inn, then returned once more to Brampton to be again elected one of the Members for Herefordshire.
It was the turn of the tide, and during October, before the Parliament met, the impatience of the people was no longer to be restrained. The High Commission Court, where so many cruel sentences had been passed, was invaded on the 22nd by an angry mob; sentence was about to be pronounced on a separatist, but the proceedings were not allowed to be carried on, the angry populace seized the books, broke down the benches and flung the furniture out of doors. It was all in vain that Laud called on the Court of Star Chamber to punish these disturbers; his influence over the Court had been utterly swept away by the passion of an outraged people.
It was not until November that Gabriel rode down to the house at Notting-hill, where old Madam Harford lived, for on his arrival in London she had been taking the waters at Tunbridge. In some trepidation he drew rein before the doorway of a square red-brick mansion standing on the crest of the hill, and was ushered into a very pleasant room where the lady of the house sat, not at her spinning-wheel or her embroidery-frame, but at a well-contrived reading-desk, poring over a great folio.