_PEACE AFTER STORM._
The Judge was gone; the prisons were emptying fast; men began to
breathe again after their long terror; those who had fled their homes,
and had been living in hiding in terror of their lives, came out once
more, and appeared to gladden the hearts of their friends. It was said
that a general pardon would now be issued to all those who had not
suffered, and that the terrible time was over at last. The King, we
heard, had been excellently well pleased by what his Lord Chief-Justice
had done in the West, and soon rewarded him with the Chancellorship, as
had always been believed. I think perhaps it was the knowledge of these
things which went far to stir the hearts of the people against their
sovereign, and to pave the way three years later for the bloodless
revolution which set a Protestant and a Constitutional ruler upon the
throne in place of the Papist tyrant. I sometimes think that had we of
the West Country had more patience, and had we waited till the time was
ripe, we might have been called patriots and saviours of our country
instead of rebels and traitors, to be massacred and hanged by the
hundred. But then, again, I have learned to doubt whether the Duke of
Monmouth would ever have been received by the nation, or have made a
wise ruler had he been so received. Men who best understand him and the
matter say that he could never have made good his title to the throne,
that he was not born in wedlock, and that the people would never have
suffered a sovereign with a stain upon his birth. Queen Mary with her
good husband proved a kind and a wise ruler, and beneath her gentle
sway peace, order, liberty, and prosperity were quickly restored; and
yet there be men who even now talk as though the Duke or his son might
yet come back to put forward a claim, and many declare that he never
died upon the scaffold, but that he was personated to the very last by
a devoted follower.
All this is looking ahead. In the days of which I speak we had no
knowledge of the good times to come. We breathed indeed, feeling that
the iron hand of military and judicial vengeance was relaxed from our
throat; but it seemed to us then as if the bloody James were seated all
the more firmly upon his throne.
And now what shall I tell next of all the events that followed in such
quick succession? Perhaps whilst my mind is upon the subject I will
speak of Mr. Blewer and the vengeance which fell upon him for his
cruelty to a Taunton boy.
I have mentioned before good Bishop Ken, who did so much to ease the
condition of prisoners, and who was beloved throughout all his diocese.
He came to visit Taunton not long after these things had happened;
and going into the prison, he found poor Will in a sad state still,
although greatly better than he had been.
It chanced, as luck would have it, that I was with him when the Bishop
came; for Will's case had excited much comment in the town, and he was
permitted to see his friends and enjoy many small privileges, which
indeed his state demanded. And after the kindly Bishop had spoken to
the boy, and had prayed beside him a beautiful prayer, he asked me
how he came into so sad a state. Then I told him everything I knew,
striving to hold my wrath in check, as was due to my superior, but
scarce able to keep it from breaking out when I spoke of Mr. Blewer.
I thought that the Lord Bishop's face grew stern as he listened, and I
hoped that some punishment might fall upon the man who was a disgrace
to the sacred calling he had embraced; and in truth I was not mistaken
in this, as I will proceed to tell.
I think it was the next day that the Bishop and Mr. Axe were walking
together through the town, and talking of many things--Mr. Axe, as I
have many times said, being a reverend and godly man, well thought of
by all, a loyal servant to the King, and a lover of order, but always
on the side of mercy and justice.
Well, as these walked and talked there came towards them Mr. Blewer,
mincing and bowing, and plainly resolved to gain the notice of the Lord
Bishop; for he had an eye to promotion to some office in the Church,
and trusted that he might gain the good-will of this good man, and so
be appointed to some living. As he approached, the Bishop looked at
him, asking his companion who the person was who evidently desired to
attract his notice. Mr. Axe replied with some brevity and coldness that
his name was Mr. Blewer, and that he had been living for some time in
Taunton, appointed by Mr. Harte to assist in the services of St. Mary's
Church.
At the sound of that name the Bishop's fine face became very stern; and
as Mr. Blewer came up with mincing steps and hat in hand, believing
that the Bishop had paused to permit his approach, he fixed his eyes
upon him, and spoke in a tone that all the bystanders could hear.
"Mr. Blewer," he said, "I have heard of you before. Indeed I have had
it in my thoughts to summon you to my presence."
"My lord, you do me too much honour!" was the delighted answer, as the
creature stood bowing and mincing before the Bishop, his evil face
wearing its expression of submissive adulation, such as had been seen
upon it in presence of the Lord Chief-Justice. "It is very true that I
have done all in my poor power in the cause of law and righteousness
during these troubled days, but I had scarce hoped that my poor
services would have reached the ears of my gracious lord."
"Sir," answered the good Bishop, with gathering sternness, "the less
you speak of righteousness the better, for there has been little of
it in your conduct during these troubled days. Sir, think you that at
a time when every man calling himself the servant of God should have
been straining every nerve in the cause of mercy and tenderness,
it is for the clergy to disgrace themselves by acts of selfishness,
rapacity, and barbarity which make all honest men shudder and breathe
forth curses? Nay, sir, answer me not. It is for me to speak and for
you to listen. I have heard of you, Mr. Blewer. I have heard how you
persecuted an innocent maiden, and how you cajoled and bribed a certain
high personage to grant you her hand in marriage, not for any love you
bore her--for you had openly boasted that you would rid yourself of
her in a year's time--but because she had money, which you desired to
possess; and how she was only saved from your malice by the merciful
hand of death. Sir, you are as guilty of that sweet and tender maiden's
death as though you had slain her with your own hands. Small wonder
that the very thought of being placed for life in such cruel hands
caused that deadly fever of which she quickly died. I blush with shame
to think that one who has dared to take upon himself the sacred calling
and the holy office of the priesthood could ever thus disgrace both
himself and his calling!"
"My lord, my lord, you have been misinformed. Some enemy has been
wickedly slandering me. Alas! in this evil town a godly man has but too
many foes. I swear that I loved the maid--that I would have made her
the best of husbands. My lord, I have been cruelly maligned. There is
no man in Taunton with a tenderer heart than mine. God be my witness
that I speak the truth!"
The Bishop raised his hand in stern displeasure. "Sir," he said, "take
not that Holy Name to profane it by falsehood. Can a man who will
drink himself drunk with the Lord Jeffreys and his boon companions,
and join with him in profane swearing and ribald jesting--can he be a
fit spouse for a godly and a pure maid, to whom evil is but a name?
Mr. Blewer, think not to deceive me by false swearing; I know too
much of you and of your practices. And as though it was not enough to
seek to wreck the life of this maiden, you must seek also to do to
death in a most cruel and barbarous manner a lad whose only fault has
been a boyish lack of discretion. Sir, my blood tingles in my veins
at the thought of this thing. Were our prisons not crowded enough
with men taken in the very act of rebellion, that you must needs lay
an accusation against a young lad of excellent character for a mere
indiscretion, and get him also incarcerated in those filthy dens,
to languish there for weeks? And having done this, and having borne
witness which gained for the poor child a whipping far in excess of his
fault, what fiend possessed you to carry a tale to the Judge in his
cups, and gain for the boy such handling that his life has barely been
saved by the exertions of his friends and the leniency of the prison
authorities, themselves ashamed of such a deed? Man, man, I almost
forget myself in anger as I think of this thing. You calling yourself
a priest and servant of the Most High God, a minister of His children,
a messenger of peace and righteousness--you to show yourself such a
monster of cruelty that the blood curdles at the tale of your deeds!
Go, sir; let me never see you again. And do not dare ever to pollute
a pulpit, or perform any holy office in the diocese over which I
reign, lest I take upon myself to excommunicate you, as in the good old
days of ecclesiastical discipline would have been done for a far less
offence than yours!"
And the good Bishop walked on with a stern face, leaving the miscreant
he had so worthily lashed with his tongue cowering and shivering with
rage and fear, his face livid with passion and disappointment, and
his hands nervously clutching at the cane he carried, as though in an
instinctive longing to lay it about the shoulders of some innocent
victim.
Not daring to follow, or to say another word to the good Bishop, who
was known to be a most tender-hearted man, and whose scathing rebuke
was therefore far more telling than it would have been in the lips of
the military Bishop Mew, who had actually taken the field in person,
the wretched creature lingered staring after the retreating figures
until they had turned the next corner, and then, gnashing his teeth in
impotent shame and rage, he turned towards his own lodgings, and made
as though he would have retired thither.
But he was not destined to attain this shelter so speedily as he had
thought. A crowd had gathered in the street to hear the Bishop's
reprimand, and murmurs of applause and approval had greeted every
scathing rebuke. The very fact that the Bishop had not scrupled to
speak thus in public to a clergyman showed how greatly his indignation
had been aroused; and as the evil creature turned to leave the scene of
his humiliation, he found himself suddenly confronted by the brawny
blacksmith who had given him a taste of his tongue on another occasion.
"Ho, ho, Sir Priest! so the good Lord Bishop is not a friend to
drunkenness and debauchery and savage cruelty! And so the discipline of
the Church is relaxed, is it, and its evil servants cannot be touched?
Sure that must be a sore matter of regret to so righteous a man as
good Mr. Blewer.--Friends," and here he turned his face with a not too
pleasant grin upon it towards the crowd now pressing closely round,
"since the good gentleman here is debarred from the discipline of the
Church, suppose we good citizens give him a taste of such discipline as
our town cudgels can bestow."
A yell of delight answered this suggestion, and a hundred staffs were
immediately waved in the air. Mr. Blewer's face turned a livid green
tint, and he looked at his tormentor with a sickly smile, fumbling in
his pocket the while.
"Very good, very good, my merry friend. Thou art quite a wag in thy
way," he gasped in his coward terror at the ring of fierce faces around
him. "An excellent jest in truth, and one which I will myself tell to
the good Bishop when I go to clear myself in his sight of the slanders
he has heard against me. All friends of the people have enemies who
malign them, and so it has been with me. Here, my good fellow, take
that, and bid your friends disperse. I am a man of peace; let us have
no unseemly disturbance here in the streets."
He would have pressed a golden guinea into the blacksmith's hand, but
that honest rogue turned away with an expression of scorn and disgust.
"Thy money perish with thee!" he cried, in a great access of wrath; and
bringing down his heavy staff upon the shoulders of the luckless Mr.
Blewer, he shouted out, "Take that, thou coward and craven monster of
cruelty! take that and that, and think of Will Wiseman! Would I could
break every bone in that wretched body of thine!"
With a yell of pain and terror, and an agonized cry for the
watch--which, however, never came--the wretched man sprang away and
hurled himself through the crowd, every man of which, who was armed
with a stick, hit him a blow as he passed, and every woman snatched
at his coat or scratched his face, till his clothing was half torn
off his back, and his face was running down with blood; and every one
who struck him called out in savage accents, "Remember Will Wiseman!"
or, "Take that for Will's sake!" or some phrase like that, till the
wretched man must have wished from the very ground of his heart that
he had let Will Wiseman alone. And when I heard the story, and how Mr.
Blewer had been beaten almost into a jelly ere he reached the shelter
of his house, I felt indeed that Will had been avenged, and that God
had wrought vengeance even by the hands of the lawless and violent men.
Nor was any notice taken of this outrage by the authorities. I think
both the Mayor and the magistrates felt that Mr. Blewer had only met
his due. The rebuke of the Bishop was known to them, and there was no
desire to take up the cudgels for a creature of such evil notoriety.
All the town was sick of bloodshed and confusion, and was breathing
once more in the hope of quieter days to come. To raise an inquiry and
to punish the ringleaders of the mob would only stir the city into
anger and even rebellion once again. So Mr. Blewer made his plaint
in vain, and got no redress; and it was said of him that he went to
Bristol as soon as he was able to travel, and drunk himself to death
there before the year was ended; but of this I know nothing certain. I
never saw the miserable creature again, and I can only think it very
like him to come to such an end after the disappointments and the
violent usage he had received.
The news of this discomfiture of his enemy, and of the vengeance taken
upon him by the citizens, did much to hearten up poor Will after his
long illness. I told him the story myself as he lay on his pallet bed
upon his face--for his poor back was still all raw, and it would be
long before his wounds would be healed. But the old spirit was coming
back into my comrade, and I saw his eyes glow and flash just in the old
way.
"O good Jem Truslove, good Jem Truslove! methinks I can see and hear
him! O Dicon, it were a thousand pities I was not there to see it with
mine own eyes! Had it been somebody else, how I would have thrashed him
mine own self! So they made him remember Will Wiseman, did they? Ah,
it was good of them! it was indeed a kindly act! Dicon, methinks after
all he may have done me a good turn yet, for all that he meant to have
killed me: for the Governor was here yesterday after thou hadst gone,
and he told me that so soon as I could be moved I was free to go back
to my friends; that my sentence had terminated, and that he was sorry I
had been so roughly handled. Now that that monster of a Judge is gone,
men are ashamed to think what he made them do. They are sick to death
of bloodshed and cruelty, and would fain save all his victims from the
fate he desired for them."
This indeed was very true. The Bloody Assizes, as men began to call
them, had produced an indelible impression all over this West Country.
The gentry, who had been all along against the rising for the Duke, and
had joined hands with the party of order, on seeing the horrible and
bloody vengeance taken upon the wretched inhabitants of their towns and
villages, experienced a revulsion of feeling, and a great hatred of the
King who could rejoice in and applaud such wholesale slaughter. They
had believed that the ringleaders would of necessity suffer death--that
was a necessary consequence of such an act of rebellion; but after the
Duke had been beheaded, and after the rising had been so completely
quelled, it was said by all moderate and merciful men that but a slight
punishment should be inflicted upon the mass of lesser prisoners, who
had been led away by ignorance and enthusiasm misplaced, and were like
sheep following one another they knew not whither.
The sending down of the bloodiest and most iniquitous Judge upon
the bench with authority to massacre wholesale, and the unbridled
ferocity with which he had carried out his bloody task, had thoroughly
displeased and disgusted all moderate and merciful men; and the
honours heaped upon the bloody wretch by his admiring sovereign on his
return had added to the universal execration in which he was held. All
mercy that was possible was therefore fearlessly shown now to those
who had escaped the peril of the law, or lay under some sentence like
that of Will Wiseman. Other men--ay, and women too--had been condemned
to be whipped through various places at intervals; but the magistrates
took it upon themselves to release them after a very small part of the
punishment had been inflicted. A sense of peace and security settled
down upon a region so long rent by faction and fear. The citizens felt
that the gentry were at heart with them in their indignation against
the King, and in their desire after purer government; and although at
the moment there was no thought of any fresh rising, the people began
to whisper that a deliverer would come some day, and that the oppressed
nation would turn as one man, and hurl the bloody tyrant from his
throne.
So although there was mourning and woe in too many homes in Taunton,
yet there was rejoicing in others; and amongst these latter was the
house of Master Simpson, which was gladdened by the return of the
master, on the very day when poor Will Wiseman had been got back, after
having been so long away and suffered so much.
I had brought him back myself in a coach which my uncle had sent from
our inn; and I had made him comfortable upon a couch, and Lizzie and
her aunt were hanging over him and asking him all manner of questions,
and making as much of him as though he had indeed been their brother
and nephew, when we were startled by a heavy footfall up the flagged
garden walk (for the impulse of fear was still strong within us, and
we were easily alarmed at any unexpected sound), and Lizzie suddenly
uttered a little scream of ecstasy, and the next moment had sprung
right into her father's arms.
Oh, what a clatter of tongues and clamour of voices there was,
everybody speaking at once, and nobody able to listen till the first
joyful excitement had passed!
Master Simpson--he would never let himself be called Captain again--had
a long story to tell us of his narrow escapes from the bands of
soldiers after the fatal field of Sedgemoor. He had been amongst those
who had made such a gallant stand upon the edge of the rhine, and had
fired volley after volley into the surprised and disordered ranks of
the enemy long after the Duke had fled at the instance of Lord Grey,
and in fact until every round of ammunition had been used. He confirmed
the story told me by the poor soldier in the ditch, that if the
ammunition-waggons had but come up, and the cavalry had but re-formed
even at a distance and shown something of a front, the day might easily
have been ours. He spoke bitterly of Lord Grey, and declared that if
Lord Vere had been there things would have gone very differently. But
I have often thought since that Lord Grey was scarce as much to blame
as our people always said. I doubt whether the untrained horses would
have stood the sound of firing had their riders been never so stout
of heart. It is a long time before the mettlesome creatures can be
made to understand that they must face the flash of fire-arms and the
terrible noise and smell. Sometimes it takes two years before a horse
is seasoned; and these animals had been but a few weeks at most with
the army, and had only smelt powder once or twice before.
Yet if the horses would not stand, their riders should have sent on the
ammunition as fast as possible, instead of spreading dismay through
the rear of the army and keeping back both the waggons and the rest of
the foot. There was nothing to excuse the confusion which their rout
created in the rear of the army. But what boots it to talk of these
matters now? The day was lost, and Master Simpson, slightly wounded
and greatly exhausted, had crawled into a ditch to hide himself, and
was passed over by the soldiers in their first search. Afterwards he
got up and slunk away in an opposite direction from Bridgewater, and
received much kindness at a woodman's hut, where the people took care
of him for several days, and where he healed him of his wound. Then
fearing to remain so near to the scene of Colonel Kirke's activity, he
fled towards Philip's Norton, knowing the country from having traversed
it before but recently; and many narrow escapes did he have of falling
into the hands of the soldiers. But fortune favoured him, and he
escaped each time, though once he was up hiding in the rafters of an
old barn, whilst the soldiers were eating and sleeping on the ground
beneath him; and he almost gave himself up for lost once, when the beam
creaked beneath his weight, and somebody called out, "Is anybody up
there? Speak, man, or I fire!"
He did not, however, speak, nor did the soldier fire. The men laughed,
and the officer swore at them for waking him up; and so they settled to
their slumbers again.
That was the nearest shave he had, but many were his perils; and
Lizzie sat holding his hand, and looking into his face with eyes full
of terror and ecstasy; whilst the aunt bustled about to get the best
supper the town could produce upon a sudden, and Master Simpson turned
to Will and made him tell all his history.
He shook his head, and his face looked stern as he heard of the cruel
Judge; but it brightened as he heard how Mr. Blewer had been served,
and said, rubbing his hands together,--
"Good lads of Taunton, good brother citizens, would I had been there to
add a sounding blow to theirs! Would that we could serve the Judge the
same! Would that he might be at the mercy of the West Country lads some
day!"
"Somehow," said Will slowly, as he lay white and thin upon his couch, a
strange light coming slowly into his eyes as he spoke--"somehow I seem
to think that I shall have my turn some day even with Judge Jeffreys! I
think that I shall avenge upon him the wrongs of our people before he
lays down his wicked life!"