The Civil Wars. 2)'hZ 



forces were ranged on either side of an imaginary line ^ drawn 

 between Scarborough and Southampton, and strange to say the 

 same line would have divided the Yorkists from the Lancas- 

 trians in the Wars of the Roses. Those who lived east of this 

 line were generally found' on the side of the Parliament, those 

 on the west side, with the exception of the town populations 

 of Bristol and Gloucester, on that of the king. It is difficult 

 to find an adequate reason for this phenomenon. East Anglia, 

 or the Associated Counties, as that part of England came to be 

 called, had recently been inundated with a flood of Flemish 

 refugees. Kent and other southern counties had been simi- 

 larly intruded upon by the persecuted French Huguenots, and 

 it is possible that the religious views of both sects had thrown 

 these portions of England into an antagonistic attitude to the 

 High Church tendencies of the Royal party. Mixed up with 

 religious feeling might also have been the subject of finance. 

 The Flemish weavers had made Norfolk next to Middlesex 

 the wealthiest English county. The poorest counties were the 

 northern and western,^ and it is a curious circumstance that 

 all the wealthier parts of England should have espoused the 

 Parliamentary side, while all the poorest parts were in league 

 with the king. It was then no class struggle that ensued ; 

 sentiment, religious as well as social, was largely mixed up 

 with class grievances. All the copyholders did not join the 

 Parliamentary standard because they had failed to wring from 

 Charles's father their enfranchisement ; nor did all the peers 

 espouse the king's cause, because in him they saw the safe- 

 guard of their feudal dues. There was just the same curious 

 admixture of classes as there is now in the political parties of 

 Conservative and Liberal, of which Royalist and Roundhead 

 were the progenitors. 



There is no necessity to linger over the scenes of Marston, 

 Naseby and Whitehall. There was war over the face of the 

 land, but happily neither murder nor rapine, though every 

 atrocity, even cannibalism, was imputed at the time to the 

 cavalier horse.^ Hundreds of estates were confiscated, numbers 



' Rogers, Prices and Agriculture, introd. ch., vol. v. 



2 Id., Ibid. » Vide Note C, to Sir Walter Scott, Woodstock. 



