Kitabı oku: «No Quarter!», sayfa 8
Chapter Nineteen
In the Midst of a Mob
The people who had followed the soldiers were still outside the haw-haw; a file of troopers having been stationed by its gate to prevent their passing through. They could easily have sprung over out of the fosse, but for some reason seemed not to care for it.
Lunsford, after dismounting, had rushed up into the porch, but too late to hinder the shutting of the door; at which he was now thundering and threatening to adopt the alternative he had been dared to.
“We shall certainly break it in,” he cried out in a loud voice, “if not opened instantly.”
This elicitating no response from inside, he added, —
“Burst it in, men! Knock it to pieces!”
At which the sergeant and a file of troopers, now also in the porch, commenced hammering away with the butts of their dragon-muzzled muskets. But they might as well have attempted to batter down the walls themselves. Not the slightest impression could they make on the strong oaken panels. They were about to desist, when something besides that caused them suddenly to suspend their strokes, Lunsford himself commanding it. He at the same time sprang down from the porch and back to his saddle, calling on them to do likewise.
Odd as might seem his abrupt abandonment of the door-breaking design, there was no mystery in it. A cry sent up by the crowd of people had given him notice of something new; and that something he now saw in the shape of four horsemen sweeping round from the rear of the house. These were also outside the haw-haw, having crossed it by another causeway at back. A second shout greeted them as they got round to the front, and drew bridle in the midst of the crowd – a cheer in which new voices joined; those of the Ruardean men, just arrived upon the ground.
“Foresters?” cried Sir Richard, as they gathered in a ring around him, “will you allow Ambrose Powell to be plundered – your best friend? And by Sir John Wintour – your worst enemy?”
“No – never! That we won’t?” answered a score of voices.
“Well, the soldiers you see there are Sir John’s, from Lydney, though wearing the King’s uniform?”
“We know ’em – too well!”
“Have seen their ugly faces afore.”
“Curse Sir John, an’ the King too?” were some of the responses showered back. Then one, delivering himself in less disjointed but equally ungrammatical phrase, took up the part of spokesman, saying, —
“We’ve niver had a hour o’ peace since Sir John Wintour ha’ been head man o’ the Forest. He’ve robbed us o’ our rights that be old as the Forest itself, keeps on robbin’ us; claims the mines, an’ the timber, an’ the grazin’ as all his own. An’ the deer, too! Yes, the deer; the wild anymals as should belong to everybody free-born o’ the Manor o’ Saint Briavel’s. I’m that myself, an’ stan’ up here afore ye all to make protest agaynst his usurpins.”
That the speaker was Rob Wilde might be deduced from allusion to the deer, pronounced with special emphasis. And he it was.
“We join you in your protest, Rob; an’ll stan’ by you!” cried one.
“Yes! All of us!” exclaimed another.
“An’ we’ll help enforce it,” came from a third. “If need be, now on the spot. We only want some ’un as’ll show us the way – tell us what to do.”
At this all eyes turned on Sir Richard. Though personally a stranger to most of them, all knew him by name, and something more – knew how he had declared for Parliament and people, against King and Court, and that it was no mere private quarrel between him and Sir John Wintour which had caused him to speak as he had done.
“Theer be the gentleman who’ll do all that,” said Rob, pointing to the knight. “The man to help us in gettin’ back our rights an’ redressin’ our wrong. If he can’t, nobody else can. But he can and will. He ha’ told some o’ us, as much.”
Another huzza hailed this declaration, for they knew Rob spoke with authority. And their excitement rose to a still higher pitch, when the knight, responding, said, —
“My brave Foresters! Thanks for the confidence you give me. I know all your grievances, and am ready to do what I can to help you in righting them. And it had best begin now, on the spot, as some one has just said. Are you ready to back me in teaching these usurpers a lesson?”
“Ready! That we be, every man o’ us.”
“Try us, an’ see!”
“Only let’s ha’ the word from you, sir, an’ well fall on ’em at once!”
“We’re Foresters; we an’t afeerd o’ no soldiers – not sich raws as them, anyhow.”
“Enough!” cried the knight, his eyes aglow as with triumph already achieved; for he now felt assured of it. Over two hundred of the Foresters against less than a sixth of that number of Lunsford’s hirelings, he had no fear for the result, if fight they must. So, when he placed himself at their head, with Eustace Trevor by his side, their two armed attendants behind, and rode up to the gate guarded by the two troopers, he made no request for these to open it and let them pass in, but a demand, with sword unsheathed, and at back a forest of pikes to enforce it.
The guards at once gave way. Had they not, in another instant they would have been hoisted out of their saddles on the blades of weapons with shafts ten feet long. Alive to this danger, they briskly abandoned their post, giving the Foresters free passage through the gate.
During all this time the ex-Lieutenant of the Tower had scarce moved an inch from the spot where he remounted his horse. When he saw the four horsemen coming around the house, heard the enthusiastic shout hailing them, at the same time caught sight of the pikes and barbed halberds, whose blades of steel gleamed above the heads of the huzzaing crowd, his heart sank within him. For this brutal monster, “Bloody Lunsford” as he afterwards came to be called, was craven as cruel. He had swaggered at the front door as inside the Parliament House by the King’s command; but there was no King at his back now, and his swaggering forsook him on the instant. He knew something of the character of the Foresters – his raw recruits knew them better – at a glance saw his troop overmatched, and, if it came to fighting, would be overpowered. But there was no fight, either in himself or his following; and all sat in their saddles sullen and scowling, but cowed-like as wolves just taken in a trap.
Chapter Twenty
“No Quarter!”
Straight on to the soldiers rode Sir Richard Eustace Trevor by his side, their mounted servants behind; the men afoot following close after in a surging mass. These, soon as well through the gate, extended line to right and left, turning the troop until they had it hemmed in on every side. Nor was it altogether the movement of a mob, but evidently under direction, Rob Wilde appearing to guide it more by signs and signals than any spoken words. However managed, the troopers now saw themselves environed by pikes and other pointed things – a very chevaux de frise– held in the hands of men whose faces showed no fear of them. For the country had not yet been cursed by a standing army, and in the eyes of the citizen the soldier was not that formidable thing as since, and now. Rather was the fear on the side of Lunsford’s party, most of whom, Foresters themselves of the inferior sort, knew the men who stood confronting them.
Up to this moment no word had been spoken by their commanding officer, save some muttered speech he exchanged with Reginald Trevor. Nor did he now break the silence, leaving that to the intruders.
“Captain, or, as I understand you are now called, Colonel Lunsford,” said Sir Richard, drawing up in front of him, “by the way you’re behaving you appear to think yourself in the Low Countries, with rights of free forage and plunder. Let me tell you, sir, this is England, where such courses are not yet in vogue; and to be hoped never will be, even though a King authorise, ay, command them. But I command you, in the name of the people, to desist from them, or take the consequence.”
Under such smart of words it might be supposed that a professional soldier and King’s officer would have dared death itself, or any odds against him. It was of this the muttered speech had been passing between him and Reginald Trevor, the latter urging him to risk it and fall on. Whatever else, he was no dastard, and, though he had once given way on that same spot, it was not from cowardice, but ruled by a sentiment very different.
In vain his attempt to inspire his superior officer with courage equalling his own; no more would he have been successful with their followers, as he could see by looking along the line of faces, most of them showing dread of that threatening array of miscellaneous weapons, and a reluctance to engage them.
In fine, the ex-Lieutenant of the Tower made lip his mind to live a little longer, even at the risk of being stigmatised as a poltroon. But, not instantly declaring himself – too confused and humiliated for speech – Sir Richard went on, —
“No doubt, sir, your delicate sense of humanity will restrain you from a conflict in which your soldiers must be defeated and their blood spilled uselessly – innocent lambs as they appear to be.”
The irony elicited laughter from the Foresters; for a more forbidding set of faces than those of the troopers could not well have been seen anywhere.
“But,” continued the knight, “if you decline to withdraw without showing how skilfully you can yourself handle a sword, I’m willing to give you the opportunity. You’ve had it from me before, and refused. But you may be a braver man, and think yourself a better swordsman now; so I offer it again.”
The taunt was torture itself to the man in whose teeth it was flung. All the more from the cheering and jibes of the Foresters, who seemed thoroughly to enjoy seeing Sir John Wintour’s bullies thus brought to book. And still more that in the window above were two feminine faces, one of them that he had been so late admiring, the ladies evidently listening.
Notwithstanding all, Lunsford could not screw up courage for a combat he had once before declined, and now the second time shunned it, saying, —
“Sir Richard Walwyn, I am not here for the settlement of private quarrels. When the time fits for it I shall answer the challenge you say is repeated, but which I deny. My business at present is with Mr Ambrose Powell, as Deputy-Commissioner of Array, to collect the King’s dues from him. Since he’s refused to pay them, and I have no orders, nor wish, to use violence, so far as shedding blood, it but remains for me to take back his answer to my superiors.”
It was such a ludicrous breakdown of his late blustering, and withdrawal of demand, that the Foresters hailed it with a loud huzza, mingled with laughter and satirical speech.
When their cheering had ceased, so that he could be heard, Sir Richard rejoined, —
“Yes; that is the best thing you can do. And the sooner you set about it the better for both yourself and your men, as you may be aware without further warning.”
It was like giving the last kick to a cur, and as a cur Tom Lunsford took it, literally turning tail – that of his horse – upon Hollymead House.
Out through the haw-haw gate rode he, his troop behind, every man-jack of them looking cowed and crestfallen as himself.
Alone Reginald Trevor held high front, retiring with angry reluctance, as a lion driven from its quarry by hunters too numerous to be resisted. But he passed not away without holding speech with his cousin, on both sides bitterly recriminative.
“So you’ve turned your back upon the King!”
It was Reginald who said this, having spurred up alongside the other before parting.
“Rather say the King has turned his back upon the people,” was Eustace’s rejoinder. “After such behaviour as I’ve just been witness to, by his orders and authority, I think I am justified in turning my back upon him.”
“Oh! that’s your way of putting it. Well; it may justify you in the eyes of your new friends here – very warm friends all at once?” – this with a sneer – “but what will your father think? He won’t like it, I’m sure.”
“I daresay he won’t. If not, I can’t help it.”
“And don’t seem to care either! How indifferent you’ve grown to family feeling! and in such a short space of time. You used to pass for the most affectionate of sons – a very paragon of filial duty; and now – ”
“And now,” interrupted the ex-courtier, becoming impatient at being thus lectured, “whatever I may be, I’m old enough, and think myself wise enough, to manage my own affairs, without needing counsel from any one – even from my sage cousin, Reginald.”
“As you like, Eust. But you’ll repent what you’re doing, yet.”
“If I should, Rej, it won’t be with any blame to you. You can go your way, as I will mine.”
“Ah! Yours will bring you to ruin – like enough your neck upon the block or into a halter!”
“I’ll risk that. If there’s to be hanging and beheading – which I hope there will not – it needn’t be all on one side. So far, that you are on hasn’t had the advantage in the beheading line, and’s not likely. They who struck off Strafford’s head might some day do the same with the King’s own. And he would deserve it, going on in this way.”
“By Heaven?” cried Reginald, now becoming infuriated, “the King will wear his head, and crown too, long enough to punish every traitor – every base renegade as yourself.”
The angry bitterness of his speech was not all inspired by loyalty to King or throne. Those fair faces above had something to do with it; for the ladies were still there, listening, and he knew it.
Never was Eustace Trevor nearer to drawing sword, not to do it. But it was his kinsman – cousin; how could he shed his blood? That, too, late so freely, generously offered in his defence! Still, to be stigmatised as a “base renegade,” he could not leave such speech unanswered, nor the anger he felt unexpressed.
“If you were not my cousin, Rej, I would kill you!”
He spoke in a low tone, trembling with passion.
“You kill me! Ha-ha! Then try, if you like – if you dare!”
And the King’s officer made a movement as if to unsheath his sword.
“You know I dare. But I won’t. Not here – not now.”
It was with the utmost effort Eustace Trevor controlled himself. He only succeeded by thinking of what had been before. For it was no feeling of fear that hindered him crossing his sword with his cousin, but the sentiment hitherto restraining him.
“Oh, well!” rejoined Reginald. “We’ll meet again – may be on the field of battle. And if so, by G – ! I’ll make you rue this – show you no mercy!”
“You will when you’re asked for it.”
“You needn’t ask. When you see my sword out, you’ll hear the cry, ‘No Quarter!’”
“When I hear that, I’ll cry it too.”
Not another word passed between them, Reginald wheeling round and galloping off after the soldiers. And from that hour, in his heart, full of jealous vengeance, the resolve, should he ever encounter his cousin in the field of fight, to show him no quarter!
Chapter Twenty One
War in Full Fury
An interval of some weeks after the scenes described, and the war, long imminent, was on. All over England men had declared cause and taken sides; the battle of Edgehill had been fought, and blood spilled in various encounters elsewhere. For besides the two chief forces in the field, 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 country gentry retired within the walled towns; they who did not, fortifying their houses when there was a plausibility of being able to defend them, and garrisoning them with their friends and retainers. The roads were no longer safe for peaceful travellers, but the reverse. When parties met upon them, strangers to one another, it was with the hail, “Who are you for – King or Parliament?” If the answers were adverse, it was swords 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 parties that divided the nation, one cannot help observing the wonderful similitude of their sentiments then as now – almost a parallelism. In those centres where the cavaliers or malignants held sway, their modern representatives – Tories and Jingoes – are still in the ascendant. With some changes and exceptions, true; places which have themselves changed by increase in population, wealth, refinement, and enlightenment – in short, all the adjuncts of civilisation. And in all these, or nearly all, the altered political sentiment has been from the bad to the better, from the low belief in Divine rights and royal prerogatives to a higher faith in the rights of the people, if not its highest and purest form – Republicanism.
From this standard rather has there been retrogression since that glorious decade when it was the Government of England. At the Restoration its spirit, with many of its staunchest upholders, took flight to a land beyond the Atlantic, there to breathe freely, live a new life, call into existence and nourish a new nation, ere long destined to dictate the policy and control the action of every other, in the civilised world. This “sure as eggs are eggs;” unless the old leaven of human wickedness – not inherent in man’s heart, as shallow thinkers say, but inherited from an ancestry debased by the rule of prince and priest – unless the old weeds of this manhood’s debasement spring up again from the old seeds and roots, despite all tramplings down and teachings to the contrary.
It may be so. The devil is still alive on the earth, busy as ever misleading and corrupting the sons of men; in many places and countries, alas! too triumphantly successful, even in that land outre mer, over the Atlantic.
At the breaking out of our so-called, but miscalled, “Great Rebellion,” in the belt of shires bordering Wales, the Royalists were in the majority; perhaps not so much in numbers as in strength and authority. The same with Wales itself; not from any natural belief in, or devotion to, the thing called “Crown,” but because this spirited people were under the domination of certain powerful and wealthy proprietors of the Royalist party, who controlled their action, as their political leanings. Of this Monmouthshire offers an apt illustration, where the Earl of Worcester, Ragland’s lord, held undisputed sway to the remotest corners of the county.
Still, Wales was not all for the King; and where such influence failed to be exerted, as in Pembroke and Glamorgan in the south, and some shires and districts of the north, the natural instincts of the Welsh prompted them to declare for liberty, as they have lately done at the polls. From any stigma that may have attached to them in the seventeenth century they have nobly redeemed themselves in the nineteenth.
Of the bordering counties, Salop, as might be expected, stood strong for the King. The subserviency of its people – for centuries bowing head and bending knee to the despotic Lords of the Marches, who held court at Ludlow – had become part of their nature; hence an easy transfer of their obeisance to Royalty direct.
The shire of Worcester, closely connected with Salop in trade and other relationships, largely shared its political inclinings; the city of Worcester itself being noted as a nest of “foul malignants,” till purged of them by the “crowning mercy.”
As for Hereford county, with its semi-pastoral, semi-agricultural population, it espoused the side natural to such; which, I need hardly say, was not that of liberty. Throughout all ages, and in all countries, the bucolic mind has been the most easily misled, and given strongest support to tyranny and obstruction. But for it the slimy Imperialism of France would never have existed, and but for the same the slimier imitation of it in England would not have been attempted. Luckily, on this side of the English Channel there is not so much of the base material as on the other. When the Jew of Hughenden travestied country squire, patronising and bestowing prize smock-frocks on poor old Dick Robinson, he mistook the voting influence of Dick’s farmer-master. It no longer controls the destinies of this land, and will never more do so if the Parliament now in power but acts up to the spirit which has so placed it. Nous verrons!
Returning to the times of England’s greatest glory, and the shire of Hereford, this, though strongly Royalist, was not wholly so. Many of the common people, especially on the Gloucester shire side, were otherwise disposed, and among the gentry were several noble exceptions, as the Kyrles, Powells, and Hoptons; and noblest of all. Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Bryan – relentless iconoclast. If the name of Sir Richard Walwyn be not found in the illustrious list, it is because the writer of romance has thought fit to bestow upon this valiant knight a fictitious nom de guerre.
But the western shire entitled to highest honours for its action in this grand throe of the nation’s troubles was undoubtedly Gloucester – glorious Gloucester. When the lamp of liberty was burning dim and low elsewhere over the land, it still shone bright upon the Severn’s banks; a very blaze in its two chief cities, Gloucester and Bristol. In both it was a beacon, holding out hope to the friends of freedom, near and afar, struggling against its foes, in danger of being whelmed, as mariners 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. But Bristol most claims our attention now, as it was in 1642, under the mayoralty of Aldworth. A main entrepôt and emporium of commerce with the outside world, it was naturally emancipated from the narrow-minded views and prejudices of our insular nationality; not a few of its citizens having so far become enlightened as to believe the world had not been created solely for the delectation of royal sybarites, and the suffering of their subjects and slaves. Indeed, something more than the majority of the citizens of Bristol held this belief; and, as a consequence, showed their preference for the Parliament at the earliest hour that preferences came to be declared. So, when Colonel Essex, son of the Earl of like name – Lord General of the Parliamentary army – was sent thither commissioned as its military governor, no one offered to dispute his authority; instead, he was received with open arms.
But ere long the free-thinking Bristolians made a discovery, which not only surprised but alarmed them. Neither more nor less than that the man deputed by the Parliament to protect and guard their interests showed 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 to make boast of not being a Crophead, while further favouring those who wore their locks long and prated scornfully of Puritans and Quakers. At the time there was a host of these long-haired gentry in Bristol, prisoners whom Stamford had taken at Hereford, under parole, and the indulgent colonel not only kept their company, but joined them over their cups in sneers at the plebeian Roundheads, who lacked the gentility of blackguardism.
Luckily for the good cause, the tongue of this semi-renegade outran his prudence; his talk proving too loud to escape being heard by the Parliament, whose ears it soon reached, with the result that one fine evening, while in carousal with some of his Cavalier friends, he was summoned to the door, to see standing there a man of stern mien, who said, —
“Colonel Essex! ’Tis my disagreeable duty to place you under arrest.”
“Place me under arrest!” echoed the military governor of Bristol, his eyes 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 reason for intruding upon you so inopportunely, I take it this will be sufficient explanation.”
At which the stern man handed him a piece of folded parchment, stamped with a grand seal – not the King’s, but one bearing the insignia of the Parliament.
With shaking fingers Essex broke it open and read: —
“This to make known that our worthy and well-trusted servant, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes, has our commission to undertake the government of our good and faithful city of Bristol, and we hereby direct and do command that all persons submit and yield due obedience to the lawful authority so holden by him.
“Signed, Lenthal.”
The astonished colonel made some vapouring protest in speech, but not by action. For the son of Lord Saye and Sele had not come thither unattended. At his back was a posse of stalwart fellows – soldiers, who, that same morning, were under the orders of him now being placed in arrest, 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, was carried off to prison as a common malefactor. He, too, the son of the Earl of Essex, Lord General of the Parliamentary army – the Parliament itself having ordered it! Verily, these were days when men feared not to arraign and punish – unlucky times for tyrants and traitors! To have concealed a deficit of four thousand pounds in the national exchequer then would have been a more dangerous deception than to waste as many millions now, without being able to render account of them.
