The conspiracy having been nipped in the bud, and the conspirators in
prison, Bristol again breathed freely. The approaches to it were once
more open, the thwarted Royalists having withdrawn to a distance; so
that Jerky Jack might have made the return trip to Gloucester with a
despatch stuck in the band of his hat safe as it inside his wooden leg.
But swifter messengers traversed that road now, cleared of the enemy at
both ends, and on both sides of the river Severn.
He who had effected this clearance was Sir William Waller, jocularly
styled "William the Conqueror," from the succession of victories he had
late achieved. Also was he known as the "Night Owl;" a sobriquet due to
his habit of making nocturnal expeditions that oft took the Royalists by
surprise. No Crophead he, but a Cavalier in the true sense; a very
Paladin--withal a Christian gentleman. He had separated from slow-going
Lord General, and made one of his bold dashes down to the shires
bordering Wales; first relieving Gloucester, which was in a manner
besieged by the Monmouthshire levies of Lord Herbert. The besiegers
were not only brushed off, but the main body of them either killed or
captured; only a scant residue escaping to their fastnesses beyond the
Wye; whither the "Conqueror" followed, chastising them still further.
Returning across the Forest of Dean, he outwitted the Royalist troops
under Prince Maurice; and, once were setting face westward, raided
through Herefordshire on to its chief city--which he captured, with a
flock of foul birds that had been roosting there ever since its
abandonment by the Parliamentarians under the silly Stamford.
But the "Night Owl" himself was not the bird to remain long on perch
anywhere; and, gathering up his captured game--a large bag, including
some of Herefordshire's best blood, as the Scudamores, Conningsbys, and
Pyes--he rounded back to Gloucester, and on to Bristol.
Not to tarry here, either. Soon as he had disembarrassed himself of his
captive train--committed to the keeping of Fiennes--he was off again
into Somersetshire, there to measure swords with Maurice and the Marquis
of Hertford. As he rode out through the Bath gate at the head of a
troop of steel-clad cuirassiers--"Hesselrig's Lobsters"--the citizens of
Bristol felt more confident of safety than ever since the strife began.
For now they were assured against danger, outside as within. Internal
treason had been awed, the traitors cowed and crushed, by what had
befallen the conspirators of March the Seventh. The two chiefs of them,
Yeomans and Boucher, had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to
death--a sentence soon afterwards carried into execution. Grand efforts
were made to get them off; the King himself, by letter, threatening to
retaliate upon the poor captives taken at Cirencester--such of them as
remained unmurdered. Old Patrick, Earl of Forth, his Majesty's
Lieutenant-General, was put forward as the writer of the barbarous
epistle. But canny Scot and accomplished soldier as his lordship might
be, in a polemical contest he was no match for the lawyer, Fiennes, who
flung the threat back in his teeth, saying:
"The men we have tried and condemned are not soldiers, but spies and
conspirators. The prisoners you took at Cirencester are prisoners of
war. I would have you observe the distinction. And know, too, that for
every hair of their heads that falls, I will hang ten of your curled
Cavaliers--make Bristol a shambles of them."
Though not Nathaniel Fiennes's exact words, they convey his meaning very
near. And he could and would have acted up to them, as the King and his
counsellors knew. So, whether or not they deemed his argument rational,
it was unanswerable, or at all events unanswered, by a counter-threat;
and the Cirencester prisoners were spared execution, while the Bristol
conspirators went to the scaffold.
Much has been made of the King's forbearance in this affair by those who
did not, or would not, comprehend the motive. It was pure fear, not
humanity--fear of a still more terrible retaliation. At that time the
Parliament held ten prisoners for one in the hands of the Royalists--men
of such rank and quality, his Majesty dared not put their lives in
peril, much less let them be sacrificed. He had his revenge in secret,
however, since under his very nose at Oxford many of the hapless
captives from Cirencester miserably perished, through the torturing
treatment of the Royal Provost-Marshal, Smith.
Finally, the "two State martyrs"--as Yeomans and Boucher have been
styled by the Royalist writers--were strung up, protesting their
innocence to the last, for all they were little believed. The evidence
adduced at their trial clearly proved intent to shed the blood of their
fellow-citizens; else why were they and their co-conspirators armed?
Independent of this, their design of handing over Bristol to the rule of
Prince Rupert and his ruffians meant something more than the mere
spilling of blood in a street conflict--it involved the sack and pillage
of peaceful homes, the violation of women, rapine and ruin in every way.
It was only on getting the details of the trial that the Bristolians
became fully sensible of the danger they had so narrowly escaped;
convinced then, as Captain Birch worded it, that they had been standing
upon a mine.
Notwithstanding all these occurrences and circumstances running counter
to the Royal cause, against which the tide seemed to have turned, within
Montserrat House--as the late Monsieur Lalande had named his dwelling--
was no interruption of the festive scenes already alluded to. Its
guests were as numerous, its gaieties gay and frequent as ever. For, to
speak truth, the political _bias_ of the planter's widow, as that of her
daughter, was but skin deep. Hair had much to do with it; and, like
enough, had the Parliamentarian officers but worn theirs a little
longer, submitted it to the curling tongs, and given themselves to
swearing and swaggering, in a genteel Cavalier way, they would have been
more welcome to the hospitality of her house.
Still not all of them were denied it; for not all were of the Roundhead
type. Among them were many gentlemen of high birth and best manners,
some affecting as fine feathers as the Cavaliers themselves. For the
"Self-denying Ordinance" had not yet been ordained, nor the
Parliamentary army moulded to the "new model."
In view of certain people sojourning in Montserrat House, it need scarce
be said that Sir Richard Walwyn and Eustace Trevor were visitors there.
Even without reference to the predilections of Madame or Mademoiselle,
they could not well be excluded. But there was no thought of excluding
them; both were unmistakably eligible, and one of them most welcome, for
reasons that will presently appear. They had arrived in Bristol only a
short while antecedent to its state of semi-siege, the Powells having
long preceded them thither. And now that the approaches were again
open, most of their time was spent keeping them so; the troop with the
"big sergeant," and standard showing a crown impaled upon a sword, once
more displaying its prowess in encounters with the Cavaliers. After
Rupert had disappeared from that particular scene, Prince Maurice, with
his _corps d'armee_, began to manoeuvre upon it, swinging round
southward into Somersetshire to unite his force with that of Hertford.
To hang upon his skirts, and harass his outposts, was the work of Sir
Richard Walwyn; a duty which often carried him and his Foresters afar
from the city, and kept them away weeks at a time.
He was just returning to it when Waller passed through. But, entering
by a different route and gate from that taken by the latter going out,
he missed him. Like enough but for this he would have been commanded
along. For the "Conqueror" had carried off with him the _elite_ of the
troops quartered in Bristol, almost stripping it of a garrison, to the
no small annoyance of Nathaniel Fiennes. Glad was the Governor that the
troop with the "big sergeant" had escaped such requisition--overjoyed
his eyes to see that banner, bearing the emblem of a crown with sword
stuck through it once more waving before the Castle gate.