"When impious men held sway and wasted Church and shrine."
LORD SELBORNE.
Patience, in her tight little white cap, sat spinning by the door,
rocking the cradle with her foot, while Rusha sometimes built what she
called houses with stones, sometimes trotted to look down the lane to
see whether father and the lads were coming home from market.
Presently she brought word, "Stead is coming. He is leading Whitefoot,
but I don't see father and Jeph."
Patience jumped up to put her wheel out of the way, and soon she saw
that it was only Steadfast leading the old mare with the large crooks or
panniers on either side. She ran to meet him, and saw he looked rather
pale and dazed.
"What is it, Stead? Where's daddy?"
"Gone up to Elmwood! They told us in town that some of the soldiers and
the folk of that sort were gone out to rabble cur church and our parson,
and father is Churchwarden, you know. So he said he must go to see what
was doing. And he bade me take Whitefoot home and give you the money,"
said Steadfast, producing a bag which Patience took to keep for her
father.
She watched very anxiously, and so did Stead, while relieving Whitefoot
of her panniers and giving her a rub down before turning her out to get
her supper.
It was not long however before Kenton and Jeph both appeared, the one
looking sad, the other sulky. "Too late," Jeph muttered, "and father
won't let me go to see the sport."
"Sport, d'ye call it?" said Kenton. "Aye, Stead, you may well gape at
what we have seen--our good parson with his feet tied to his stirrups on
a sorry nag, being hauled off to town like a common thief!"
"Oh!" broke from the children, and Patience ventured to ask, "But what
for, father?"
"They best know who did it," said the Churchwarden. "Something they said
of a scandalous minister, as though his had not ever been a godly life
and preaching. These be strange times, children, and for the life of me,
I know not what it all means. How now, Jeph, what art idling there
for? There's the waggon to be loaded for to-morrow with the faggots I
promised Mistress Lightfoot."
Jeph moved away, murmuring something about fetching up the cows, to
which his father replied, "That was Steadfast's work, and it was not
time yet."
In fact Jeph was very curious to know what was going on in the village.
If there was any kind of uproar, why should not he have his part in
it? It was just like father to hinder him, and he had a great mind to
neglect the faggots and go off to the village. He was rather surprised,
and a good deal vexed to see his father walking along on the way to the
pasture with Steadfast.
It was for the sake of saying "Aye, boy, best not go near the sorry
sight! They would not let good Master Holworth speak with me; but I
saw he meant to warn me to keep aloof lest Tim Green or the like should
remember as how I'm Churchwarden."
"Did they ask after those things?" inquired Steadfast in a lowered
voice.
"I can't say. But on your life, lad, not a word of them!"
After work was done for the evening, Jeph and Stead were too eager
to know what had happened to stay at home. They ran across the bit of
moorland to the village street and the grey church, whose odd-shaped
steeple stood up among the trees. Already they could see that the great
west window was broken, all the glass which bore the picture of the Last
Judgment, and the Archangel Michael weighing souls in the balance was
gone!
"Yes," said Tom Oates, leaping over two or three tombstones to get to
them. "'Twas rare sport, Jeph Kenton. Why were you not there too?"
"At Bristol with father," replied Jeph.
"Worse luck for you. The red coat shot the big angel right in the eye,
and shivered him through, and we did the rest with stones. I sent one
that knocked the wing of him right off. You should have seen me, Stead!
And old Clerk North was running about crying all the time like a baby.
He'll never whack us over the head again!"
"What was the good?" said Steadfast.
"You never saw better sport," said the boys.
And indeed, since, when once begun, destruction and mischief are apt to
be only too delightful to boys, they had thoroughly and thoughtlessly
delighted in knocking down the things they had been taught to respect. A
figure of a knight in a ruff kneeling on a tomb had had its head
knocked off, and one of the lads heaved the bits up to throw at the last
fragment of glass in the window.
"What do you do that for?" asked Stead.
"'Tis worshipping of idols," said a somewhat graver lad. "'Break down
their idols,' the man in the black gown said, 'and burn their graven
images in the fire.'"
"But we never worshipped them," said Stead.
"Pious preacher said so," returned the youth, "and mighty angered was
he with the rails." (Jeph and Will were sparring with two fragments of
them.) "'Down with them,' he cried out, so as it would have done your
heart good to hear him."
"And the parson is gone! There will be no hearing the catechism on
Sundays!" cried Ralph Wilkes, making a leap over the broken font.
"Good luck for you, Ralph," cried the others. "You, that never could
tell how many commandments there be."
"Put on your hat, Stead," called out another lad. "We've done with all
that now, and the parson is gone to prison for it."
"No, no," shouted Tom Oates, "'twas for making away with the Communion
things."
"I heard the red coat say they had a warrant against scandalous
ministers," declared Ralph Wilkes.
"I heard the man with the pen and ink-horn ask for the popish vessels,
as he called them, and not a word would the parson say," said Oates.
"I'd take my oath he has hid them somewheres," replied Jack Beard, an
ill-looking lad.
"What a windfall they would be for him as found them!" observed Wilkes.
"I'd like to look over the parsonage house," said Jeph.
"No use. Old dame housekeeper has locked herself in, as savage as a bear
with a sore head."
"Besides, they did turn over all the parson's things and made a bonfire
of all his popish books. The little ones be dancing their rounds about
it still!"
Stead had heard quite enough to make him very uneasy, and wish to get
home with his tidings to his father. There was a girl standing by with a
baby in her arms, and she asked:
"What will they do to our minister?"
"Put him in Little Ease for a scandalous minister," was the ready
answer. "But he _is_ a good man. He gave us all broth when father had
the fever!"
"And who will give granny and me our Sunday dinner?" said a little boy.
"But there'll be no more catechising. Hurrah!" cried Oates, "hurrah!"
"'Tis rank superstition, said the red coat, Hurrah!" and up went their
caps. "Halloa, Stead Kenton, not a word to say?"
"He likes being catechised, standing as he does like a stuck pig, and
answering never a word," cried Jack.
"I do," said Steadfast, "and why not?"
"Parson's darling! Parson's darling!" shouted the boys. "A malignant!
Off with him." They had begun to hustle him, when Jeph threw himself
between and cried:
"Hit Steadfast, and you must hit me first."
"A match, a match!" they cried, "Jeph and Jack."
Stead had no fears about Jeph conquering, but while the others stood
round to watch the boxing, he slipped away, with his heart perplexed and
sad. He had loved his minister, and he never guessed how much he cared
for his church till he saw it lying desolate, and these rude lads
rejoicing in the havoc; while the words rang in his ears, "And now they
break down all the carved work thereof with axes and with hammers."