although but a simple squire, he could, on this side the fog of
tradition, which nearer or further shrouds all origin, count a longer
descent than any of the titled families in the county, not excluding the
earl of Worcester himself. His character also would have gone far to
support any assertion he might have chosen to make as to the purity of
his strain. A notable immobility of nature--his friends called it
firmness, his enemies obstinacy; a seeming disregard of what others
might think of him; a certain sternness of manner--an unreadiness, as it
were, to open his door to the people about him; a searching regard with
which he was wont to peruse the face of anyone holding talk with him,
when he seemed always to give heed to the looks rather than the words of
him who spoke; these peculiarities had combined to produce a certain awe
of him in his inferiors, and a dislike, not unavowed, in his equals.
With his superiors he came seldom in contact, and to them his behaviour
was still more distant and unbending. But, although from these causes he
was far from being a favourite in the county, he was a man of such known
and acknowledged probity that, until of late, when party spirit ran high
and drew almost everybody, whether of consequence or not, to one side or
the other, there was nobody who would not have trusted Roger Heywood to
the uttermost. Even now, foes as well as friends acknowledged that he
was to be depended upon; while his own son looked up to him with a
reverence that in some measure overshadowed his affection. Such a
character as this had necessarily been slow in formation, and the
opinions which had been modified by it and had reacted upon it, had been
as unalterably as deliberately adopted. But affairs had approached a
crisis between king and parliament before one of his friends knew that
there were in his mind any opinions upon them in process of
formation--so reserved and monosyllabic had been his share in any
conversation upon topics which had for a long time been growing every
hour of more and more absorbing interest to all men either of