Sir James Tillie, Knight, of Pentillie Castle by Tamar and High Sheriff of
Cornwall, was an amiable gentleman of indolent habits and no great stock of
brains. On receiving Sandercock's message and instant appeal for help, he
cursed his Under-Sheriff for a drunken bungler, and reluctantly prepared
to ride West and restore order.
"Piers is a good fellow and a man of parts," he told his wife;
"but he gives up too much of his time to parliamenteering, and lets
his neighbourhood get out of hand. I protest, my dear, the miners down
there are little better than naked savages, and the substantial farmers
but a degree better. Here's a fellow, if you please, who answers the law
with armed violence--a man, too, of education, as education goes.
Sandercock's a coward. On his own showing the gun was loaded blank, and
by this time no doubt Master Stephen is quaking at his own temerity and
wondering how to save his skin. A few firm words, and he'll be meek as a
lamb. What surprises me is that a man of affairs like Piers should lose
his head and endorse Sandercock's sweating post; but I always say that, if
the gentlemen of England are to maintain their influence, they should live
on their own acres." From this it will be seen that Sir James was a
prolix rather than a clear thinker.
He took an affectionate leave of his wife, and travelling by easy stages
with a single groom for escort, on the third day reached Nansclowan, where
Sir John and his lady made him welcome.
"You have ridden ahead of your force?" said Sir John pleasantly.
"My force?"
"How many are you bringing?"
"I don't quite take you. Eh? 'Soldiers'? My dear fellow--an affair of
this kind--you surely didn't expect me to make myself ridiculous by
marching through Cornwall with a regiment!"
"You mean to say that you've brought none?"
"Oh, to serve a writ on a yeoman!" and Sir James laughed heartily.
"Look here, Tillie, you shall ride over with me to-morrow at daybreak
and look at the place. The man has sixty stout farmers at his back.
They know that the soldiery has been sent for, and for five days they've
been working like niggers. The front of the house is loopholed, and along
the rear, which was their weak point, they've opened a trench six feet
wide by six deep. By to-night's report they have even begun as outworks
two barricades across the high-road, and no traffic may pass without
permission."
"It seems to me your part of the world needs looking after," Sir James
exclaimed testily.
Sir John ignored this shaft. "You'd better ride over to Pendennis Castle
to-morrow and borrow as many men as the garrison can spare you."
"A score should be plenty," said Sir James. "It's astonishing--or so I've
always heard--what a few trained men will do against irregulars."
"Treble the number, and you may save bloodshed," was Sir John's advice.
Early next morning, after a cursory inspection of the defences, the
Sheriff rode over to Pendennis and held consultation with the Governor.
The Governor, who had fifty men in garrison, agreed that twenty would
suffice for the job; so twenty were told off, under command of a sergeant,
and that same afternoon marched with Sir James to Nansclowan. On their
way through Wendron church-town they were hissed and pelted with lumps of
turf; but this hint of popular feeling made slight impression on the
sanguine Sheriff, who had convinced himself that the resistance of Steens
would collapse at the sight of his redcoats.
Having rested them at Nansclowan for the night, he led them forth at
dawn and along the high-road to within fifty yards of the barricade which
the defenders had drawn across it. There was no thought of tactics.
He consulted for a minute with the sergeant, who knew nothing of the
strength of the defence except from gossip (which he disbelieved), and the
soldiers were ordered to charge.
Sir John Piers, seated on horseback a few paces off, had a mind to
ride forward and protest. To his mind the order spelt sheer lunacy.
The barrier, to begin with, stood close on twenty feet high, built of
rough timbers staked in the ground and densely packed with furze.
Nothing could be seen behind it but the top of the second barrier,
which at fifty yards distance guarded the approach from Helleston.
This nearer one stretched across the road from hedge to hedge, and, though
none were perceptible, loopholes there must be and eyes watching every
movement of the soldiers.
But Sir John had already this morning proved himself a false prophet.
All the way from Nansclowan he had been assuring the Sheriff that the
whole country would be advertised of the red-coats' arrival and agog for a
fray; that he would have not only the defenders of Steens to deal with but
a sympathetic mob outside, and likely enough a large one. Nothing of the
sort! They had overtaken indeed a few stragglers on the road: a knot of
boys had kept pace with them and halted a furlong behind, climbing the
hedges and waiting to see the fun. But Steens itself stood apparently
desolate. In the fields around not even a stray group of sightseers could
Sir John perceive. It puzzled him completely; and the Sheriff, after
demanding in gently satirical accents to be shown the whereabouts of the
promised mob, had somewhat pointedly ignored him and consulted with the
sergeant alone.
The soldiers charged well, holding their fire. And, again to Sir John's
flat astonishment, no volley met them. They reached the foot of the
barricade and began demolishing it, dragging out the furze-faggots,
tearing a passage through.
In less than a minute they had laid open a gap: and with that the mystery
was clear. Leaping through, they found themselves in the midst of a
cheerful and entirely passive crowd, lining the road in front of Steens'
wall, the gate of which had been closed with large baulks of timber from
the mines. The crowd numbered perhaps three hundred, and included men,
women and children. Groups of them squatted by the roadside or sat in the
hedges, quietly sharing out their breakfasts; and one and all, as the
Sheriff rode in through the gap on his grey horse, greeted him with
laughter, as a set of children might laugh over an innocent practical
joke.
Sir James lost his temper, and roughly ordered his soldiers to clear the
road. There was no difficulty about this. The men withdrew most
obligingly, collecting their breakfast cans, helping their wives and
children over the hedge, laughing all the while. They scattered over the
fields in front of Steens and sat down again in groups to watch.
To disperse them farther with his handful of soldiers would be waste of
time, and the Sheriff turned his attention to the house, which faced him
grim and silent.
He rode up to the gate, and rattling upon it with his riding-whip,
demanded admittance. There was no answer. He looked along the wall to
right and left, and for the first time began to understand that the place
was strong and his force perhaps inadequate. He could not retreat in the
face of ridicule, and so--to gain time--ordered the barricade to be burnt.
The soldiers set to work, and soon had two fine bonfires blazing, and the
Sheriff withdrew up the road with his sergeant to consult Sir John, the
pair of them a trifle shamefacedly. Sir James tried to ease his own smart
by an innuendo or two on the lawlessness of the West and the
responsibility of its Justices of the Peace.
Sir John took his sneers very quietly. "My dear Tillie," said he,
"I am with you to support the law, and you will remember that I advised
your bringing thrice your strength. But I tell you that the law is doing
this man a wrong, that all these people are convinced of it, and are
innocently scandalised to see me here; and that I at this moment am
undoing myself in their esteem, destroying a good feeling of over thirty
years' growth, and all for a cause I detest. Get that into your head; and
then, if you will, we'll ride round and examine the defences."
Meanwhile, as if the bonfires had given a signal to half the population of
West Cornwall, the roads were beginning to swarm with people. They poured
down from the north and up from the south, they spread over the fields and
lined the hedges. They carried no weapons, they made no demonstration of
anger. There was no attempt to hustle or even to jeer at the red-coats,
who stood with grounded arms in a clear space of the roadway and fretted
under the slow curious scrutiny of thousands, of eyes. Neighbours nodded
and "passed the time of day,": acquaintances from the two coasts of the
Duchy met, exchanged greetings and enquiries, lit their pipes and strolled
about together. It might have been a gathering for a horse-race or a game
of hurling, but for the extreme orderliness of the throng and a note of
strained expectancy in its buzz of talk; and the likeness was strengthened
about nine o'clock, when, in the broad field to the south-west, half a
dozen merchants began to erect their sweet-meat booths or "standings,"--
always an accompaniment of Cornish merrymaking.
It was just then that Sir James rode back from his reconnaissance. He had
fetched a circuit of Steens without discovering a weak spot, and his
temper had steadily risen with the increase of the crowd. His dignity now
stood fairly at stake. He moved his soldiers up the road and gave orders
to attack the gate.
As they fell into rank, an old man, perched on the hedge hard by, rose
lazily and turned to the crowd on the far side. "Here, help me down, some
of ye," said he; "I knawed that there Sheriff was a fool the moment I set
eyes on 'en."
Sir James heard and rode straight on. If a fool, he was no coward.
The soldiers carried axes at their belts, and, dismounting, he led them up
to the gate and showed them where to attack. Blow after blow rained on
the stout timbers. At length two fell crashing.
And then from a breastwork within, drawn across the flagged pathway of the
courtlage, a ragged volley rang out and a dozen bullets swept the opening.
In the crowd across the road many women screamed. Two red-coats dropped,
one of them striking the ironwork of the gate with his forehead. A third
ran back into the road, stared about him, flung up his arms and tumbled
dead. The man who had fallen against the gate lifted himself by its bars,
sank again, and was dragged aside by his comrades. The third soldier lay
curled in a heap and did not stir.
Across the smoke floating through the entrance Sir James looked at the
sergeant. His own coat-cuff had been shorn through by a bullet.
The sergeant shook his head.
With a motion of his hand he gave the order to desist. In silence the
soldiers picked up their dead and wounded and began their retreat, the
crowd pressing forward to watch them--a line of faces peering through the
hazel-boughs. It neither cheered nor hissed.
As the enemy drew off, hundreds climbed down into the road and crowded
around the pools of blood, gazing but saying little.