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Both Lords and Commons then petitioned the King to allow the magazines at Hull to be removed to the Tower of London; and when the King was slow in sending a reply, they ordered Hotham to dispatch them there at once.

Clarendon (Hist., vol. I, part II. book v.) describes Sir John Hotham as “by his nature and education a rough and rude man, of great covetousness, of great pride, and great ambition; without any bowels of good nature, or the least sense or touch of generosity; his parts were not quick and sharp, but composed, and he judged well; he was a man of craft, and more likely to deceive than be cozened.” “He had been first induced to sympathise with the Parliament against the King,” adds Clarendon, “by his particular malice against the Earl of Strafford;” he had been imprisoned, probably as he suspected at the instigation of Strafford, for complaining in Parliament at the King’s demands for large subsidies for the army; and he had formally ranged himself upon the Parliamentary side; but the Parliamentary leaders “well knew that he was not possessed with their principles in any degree,” that, although he had considered Laud guilty of treason, he was a zealous supporter of Church and State, and that he had been “terrified” by certain votes against sheriffs and deputy-lieutenants passed in the House of Commons. “Therefore they sent his son, a member likewise of the House, and in whom they confided, to assist him, or rather to be a spy upon his father. And this was the first essay they made of their Sovereign Power over the Militia and the Forts.” As will appear later, the son was in reality more royalist in his inclinations than the father upon whom he was to spy.