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Updated: June 25, 2025
Under the protection of this mighty potentate, therefore, the good people of Little Britain sleep in peace. Temple Bar is an effectual barrier against all interior foes; and as to foreign invasion, the Lord Mayor has but to throw himself into the Tower, call in the trainbands, and put the standing army of Beef-eaters under arms, and he may bid defiance to the world!
They were then carried up to London, under the guard of a large body of regular troops and militia. In the coach with the Duke was an officer whose orders were to stab the prisoner if a rescue were attempted. At every town along the road the trainbands of the neighbourhood had been mustered under the command of the principal gentry.
From morning to night the ears of a stranger are greeted by the tinkling of the convent bells, and his eyes saluted by processions of devotees, whose adoration and levity seem to keep equal pace, and succeed each other in turns. "Do you want to make your son sick of soldiering? Shew him the Trainbands of London on a field-day."
Strong bodies of the trainbands, regularly relieved, mounted guard round Westminster Hall. The gates of the King's palace were daily besieged by a furious multitude whose taunts and execrations were heard even in the presence chamber, and who could scarcely be kept out of the royal apartments by the gentlemen of the household.
Every man should be at his post, and Richard Verney, Lieutenant of his shire, and Colonel of the trainbands, is many leagues from the danger which threatens the colony, and with his face to the west. He must on, but Major Carrington must go back to do his duty to the King, and Anthony Nash must not desert his flock.
But now came a great noise of trumpets and hautboys and drums, and the great pageant came streaming up towards Ludgate, a troop of Oliver's own Body-guard on iron-grey chargers clearing the way, which they did with scant respect for the lives and limbs of the crowd, and with very little scruple either in bruising the Trainbands with their horses' hoofs and the flat of their broadswords.
It was not forgotten that Hampden and Pym had been protected from lawless tyranny by the London trainbands; that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the London trainbands had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that, in the movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfall of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal part.
In August 1643 he sate down before the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the garrison, with a determination such as had not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The trainbands of the City volunteered to march wherever their services might be required.
The color had come back to his lip and cheek, and the flash to his eye. His hand went to his sword hilt. "I shall not draw mine, my lord," I told him. "I keep troth." He stared at me with a frown that suddenly changed into a laugh, forced and unnatural enough. "Then go thy ways, and let me go mine!" he cried. "Be complaisant, worthy captain of trainbands and Burgess from a dozen huts!
At this business late, and then home; where a great deal of serious talk with my wife about the sad state we are in, and especially from the beating up of drums this night for the trainbands upon pain of death to appear in arms to-morrow morning with bullet and powder, and money to supply themselves with victuals for a fortnight; which, considering the soldiers drawn out to Chatham and elsewhere, looks as if they had a design to ruin the City and give it up to be undone; which, I hear, makes the sober citizens to think very sadly of things.
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