CHAPTER XIX. OF A BRAWL IN THE NIGHT
Decimus Saxon refused to avail himself of Master Timewell’s house and table for the reason, as I afterwards learned, that, the Mayor being a firm Presbyterian, he thought it might stand him in ill stead with the Independents and other zealots were he to allow too great an intimacy to spring up between them. Indeed, my dears, from this time onward this cunning man framed his whole life and actions in such a way as to make friends of the sectaries, and to cause them to look upon him as their leader. For he had a firm belief that in all such outbreaks as that in which we were engaged, the most extreme party is sure in the end to gain the upper hand. ‘Fanatics,’ he said to me one day, ‘mean fervour, and fervour means hard work, and hard work means power.
