He was active in promoting the famous remonstrance, which was the signal for all the ensuing commotions; and when, after a long debate, it was carried by a small majority, he told Lord Falkland, that if the question had been lost, he was resolved next day to have converted into ready money the remains of his fortune, and immediately to have left the kingdom.

Nor was this resolution, he said, peculiar to himself: many others of his party he knew to be equally determined.
He was no less than forty-three years of age when he first embraced the military profession; and by force of genius, without any master, he soon became an excellent officer; though perhaps he never reached the fame of a consummate commander.

He raised a troop of horse; fixed his quarters in Cambridge; exerted great severity towards that university which zealously adhered to the royal party; and showed himself a man who would go all lengths in favor of that cause which he had espoused.

He would not allow his soldiers to perplex their heads with those subtleties of fighting by the king's authority against his person, and of obeying his majesty's commands signified by both houses of parliament: he plainly told them, that if he met the king in battle, he would fire a pistol in his face as readily as against any other man.

His troop of horse he soon augmented to a regiment; and he first instituted that discipline, and inspired that spirit, which rendered the parliamentary armies in the end victorious.