CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
WAR IN FULL FURY.
An interval of some weeks after the scenes described, and the war, longimminent, was on. All over England men had declared cause and takensides; the battle of Edgehill had been fought, and blood spilled invarious encounters elsewhere. For besides the two chief forces in thefield, every shire, almost every hundred, had its parties and partisans,who waged _la petite guerre_ with as much vigour, and more virulence,than the grand armies with generals commanding. Many of the countrygentry retired within the walled towns; they who did not, fortifyingtheir houses when there was a plausibility of being able to defend them,and garrisoning them with their friends and retainers. The roads wereno longer safe for peaceful travellers, but the reverse. When partiesmet upon them, strangers to one another, it was with the hail, "Who areyou for--King or Parliament?" If the answers were adverse, it wasswords out, and a conflict, often commencing with the cry, "No Quarter!"to end in retreat, surrender, or death.
Looking at the allegiance of the respective shires to the two partiesthat divided the nation, one cannot help observing the wonderfulsimilitude of their sentiments then as now--almost a parallelism. Inthose centres where the cavaliers or malignants held sway, their modernrepresentatives--Tories and Jingoes--are still in the ascendant. Withsome changes and exceptions, true; places which have themselves changedby increase in population, wealth, refinement, and enlightenment--inshort, all the adjuncts of civilisation. And in all these, or nearlyall, the altered political sentiment has been from the bad to thebetter, from the low belief in Divine rights and royal prerogatives to ahigher faith in the rights of the people, if not its highest and purestform--Republicanism.
From this standard rather has there been retrogression since thatglorious decade when it was the Government of England. At theRestoration its spirit, with many of its staunchest upholders, tookflight to a land beyond the Atlantic, there to breathe freely, live anew life, call into existence and nourish a new nation, ere longdestined to dictate the policy and control the action of every other, inthe civilised world. This "sure as eggs are eggs;" unless the oldleaven of human wickedness--not inherent in man's heart, as shallowthinkers say, but inherited from an ancestry debased by the rule ofprince and priest--unless the old weeds of this manhood's debasementspring up again from the old seeds and roots, despite all tramplingsdown and teachings to the contrary.
It may be so. The devil is still alive on the earth, busy as evermisleading and corrupting the sons of men; in many places and countries,alas! too triumphantly successful, even in that land _outre mer_, overthe Atlantic.
At the breaking out of our so-called, but miscalled, "Great Rebellion,"in the belt of shires bordering Wales, the Royalists were in themajority; perhaps not so much in numbers as in strength and authority.The same with Wales itself; not from any natural belief in, or devotionto, the thing called "Crown," but because this spirited people wereunder the domination of certain powerful and wealthy proprietors of theRoyalist party, who controlled their action, as their politicalleanings. Of this Monmouthshire offers an apt illustration, where theEarl of Worcester, Ragland's lord, held undisputed sway to the remotestcorners of the county.
Still, Wales was not all for the King; and where such influence failedto be exerted, as in Pembroke and Glamorgan in the south, and someshires and districts of the north, the natural instincts of the Welshprompted them to declare for liberty, as they have lately done at thepolls. From any stigma that may have attached to them in theseventeenth century they have nobly redeemed themselves in thenineteenth.
Of the bordering counties, Salop, as might be expected, stood strong forthe King. The subserviency of its people--for centuries bowing head andbending knee to the despotic Lords of the Marches, who held court atLudlow--had become part of their nature; hence an easy transfer of theirobeisance to Royalty direct.
The shire of Worcester, closely connected with Salop in trade and otherrelationships, largely shared its political inclinings; the city ofWorcester itself being noted as a nest of "foul malignants," till purgedof them by the "crowning mercy."
As for Hereford county, with its semi-pastoral, semi-agriculturalpopulation, it espoused the side natural to such; which, I need hardlysay, was not that of liberty. Throughout all ages, and in allcountries, the bucolic mind has been the most easily misled, and givenstrongest support to tyranny and obstruction. But for it the slimyImperialism of France would never have existed, and but for the same theslimier imitation of it in England would not have been attempted.Luckily, on this side of the English Channel there is not so much of thebase material as on the other. When the Jew of Hughenden travestiedcountry squire, patronising and bestowing prize smock-frocks on poor oldDick Robinson, he mistook the voting influence of Dick's farmer-master.It no longer controls the destinies of this land, and will never more doso if the Parliament now in power but acts up to the spirit which has soplaced it. _Nous verrons_!
Returning to the times of England's greatest glory, and the shire ofHereford, this, though strongly Royalist, was not wholly so. Many ofthe common people, especially on the Gloucester shire side, wereotherwise disposed, and among the gentry were several noble exceptions,as the Kyrles, Powells, and Hoptons; and noblest of all. Sir RobertHarley, of Brampton Bryan--relentless iconoclast. If the name of SirRichard Walwyn be not found in the illustrious list, it is because thewriter of romance has thought fit to bestow upon this valiant knight afictitious _nom de guerre_.
But the western shire entitled to highest honours for its action in thisgrand throe of the nation's troubles was undoubtedly Gloucester--glorious Gloucester. When the lamp of liberty was burning dim and lowelsewhere over the land, it still shone bright upon the Severn's banks;a very blaze in its two chief cities, Gloucester and Bristol. In bothit was a beacon, holding out hope to the friends of freedom, near andafar, struggling against its foes, in danger of being whelmed, asmariners by the maddened ocean.
To the latter city, as a seaport, the simile may be more appropriate,though the former is equally entitled to a share in its credit. ButBristol most claims our attention now, as it was in 1642, under themayoralty of Aldworth. A main _entrepot_ and emporium of commerce withthe outside world, it was naturally emancipated from the narrow-mindedviews and prejudices of our insular nationality; not a few of itscitizens having so far become enlightened as to believe the world hadnot been created solely for the delectation of royal sybarites, and thesuffering of their subjects and slaves. Indeed, something more than themajority of the citizens of Bristol held this belief; and, as aconsequence, showed their preference for the Parliament at the earliesthour that preferences came to be declared. So, when Colonel Essex, sonof the Earl of like name--Lord General of the Parliamentary army--wassent thither commissioned as its military governor, no one offered todispute his authority; instead, he was received with open arms.
But ere long the free-thinking Bristolians made a discovery, which notonly surprised but alarmed them. Neither more nor less than that theman deputed by the Parliament to protect and guard their interestsshowed rather the disposition to betray them. If living in these days,Colonel Essex would have been a Whig, with a leaning towards Toryism.As Governor of Bristol in 1642 he inclined so far to Cavalierism as tomake boast of not being a Crophead, while further favouring those whowore their locks long and prated scornfully of Puritans and Quakers. Atthe time there was a host of these long-haired gentry in Bristol,prisoners whom Stamford had taken at Hereford, under _parole_, and theindulgent colonel not only kept their company, but joined them overtheir cups in sneers at the plebeian Roundheads, who lacked thegentility of blackguardism.
Luckily for the good cause, the tongue of this semi-renegade outran hisprudence; his talk proving too loud to escape being heard by theParliament, whose ears it soon reached, with the result that one fineevening, while in carousal with some of his Cavalier friends, he wassummoned to the door, to see standing there a man of stern mien, whosaid,--
"C
olonel Essex! 'Tis my disagreeable duty to place you under arrest."
"Place me under arrest!" echoed the military governor of Bristol, hiseyes in amazement swelling up in their sockets. "What madman are you,sirrah?"
"Not so much madman as you may be supposing. Of my name, as also reasonfor intruding upon you so inopportunely, I take it this will besufficient explanation."
At which the stern man handed him a piece of folded parchment, stampedwith a grand seal--not the King's, but one bearing the insignia of theParliament.
With shaking fingers Essex broke it open and read:--
"_This to make known that our worthy and well-trusted servant, ColonelNathaniel Fiennes, has our commission to undertake the government of ourgood and faithful city of Bristol, and we hereby direct and do commandthat all persons submit and yield due obedience to the lawful authorityso holden by him_.
"_Signed_, _Lenthal_."
The astonished colonel made some vapouring protest in speech, but not byaction. For the son of Lord Saye and Sele had not come thitherunattended. At his back was a _posse_ of stalwart fellows--soldiers,who, that same morning, were under the orders of him now being placed inarrest, but, having learnt there was a change of commanding officers,knew better than to refuse obedience to the new one.
So the deposed governor, forced to part company with his _convives_, wascarried off to prison as a common malefactor. He, too, the son of theEarl of Essex, Lord General of the Parliamentary army--the Parliamentitself having ordered it! Verily, these were days when men feared notto arraign and punish--unlucky times for tyrants and traitors! To haveconcealed a deficit of four thousand pounds in the national exchequer_then_ would have been a more dangerous deception than to waste as manymillions _now_, without being able to render account of them.