Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/22

Cromwell in Ireland untilled and make it fruitful for man. They do not intend to defend themselves by arms." To all of which Authority, in shape of the—local justices and two troops of horse, answers by riding at them, dragging them to prison, pillory, and the rest of it.

But that did not end the matter. "It is serious," said somebody, speaking of the situation when troops and people sympathise, "it is serious when the extinguisher takes fire;" and now, here in the south of England, the extinguisher, represented by "the troops of horse," began to show symptoms of catching fire from the peasants. And in no part of the Army was the fraternising sympathy more noticeable than among the regiments which had been selected for the Irish war.

In order to upset the Parliament, Cromwell, a year before, secretly incited the officers and soldiers of the Army to mutiny. "They now," says Hume, "practised against their officers the same lesson which they had been taught against the Parliament." Whalley's regiment is mutinous in London; Scroop's, Harrison's, Ireton's, and Skippon's regiments are on the warpath in Salisbury, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire. They want their pay, and the end of this bogus Parliament. The old chains, they say, have been 10