Harry was much blamed by the college men when he said that he had been drawn into the fray by protecting a Puritan.

But when his new friends learned that he was as thoroughly Royalist as themselves, and that his father had gone with a troop to Nottingham, they took a more favorable view of his action, but still assured him that it was the height of folly to interfere to protect a rebel from the anger of the townspeople.
"But, methinks," Harry said, "that it were unwise in the extreme to push matters so far here.

In Oxford the Royalists have it all their own way, and can, of course, at will assault their Puritan neighbors.

But it is different in most other towns.

There the Roundheads have the upper hand and might retort by doing ill to the Cavaliers there.