All the accounts that reached them from the youth told of the iron tyranny which was being exercised throughout England.

Everywhere good and sincere men were being driven from their vicarages to live how best they might, for refusing to accept the terms of the convention.

Everywhere their places were filled with men at once ignorant, bigoted, and intolerant; holy places were desecrated; the cavalry of the Commons was stabled in St.Paul's; the colored windows of the cathedrals and churches were everywhere destroyed; monuments were demolished; and fanaticism of the narrowest and most stringent kind was rampant.
During the time they spent at the castle the lads were greatly amused in watching the sports and exercises of the Highlanders.

These consisted in throwing great stones and blocks of wood, in contests with blunted claymores, in foot races, and in dances executed to the wild and strange music of the bagpipes--music which Jacob declared was worse than the caterwauling upon the housetops in Cheapside.
The lads had deferred their journey south owing to the troubled state of the country, and the fact that the whole of the south of Scotland was in the hands of the convention.

They were therefore waiting an opportunity for taking ship and traveling by sea into Wales, where the followers of the king were in the ascendency.