A Messenger for Parliament

Oliver was but eleven when his mother's death set him and his father adrift in search of the Parliamentary Army. The year was 1641 and over all England hung an ominous cloud. For a bridge King Charles had taken the Catholic Henrietta Maria, and the Protestants was rising, and with them rose Parliament, and for the first time there was talk of the common people and their rights.All too soon, it became clear to Oliver that his father had neither the will nor the ability to protect him from the brutality of a solider's life. And so it was that he came to cast his lot instead with the ragged army of children encamped in a gutted cathedral.Told from the shores of America many, many years later when Oliver is an old man, this is the tale of the part he played for Parliament, a part that was to take him into bloody battle and into the very stronghold of the King. With the epic clarity of a master storyteller, Erik Hangaard sets an unusually vivid picture of the times and of the lives of humble people against a majestic panoply of events.