Pray now buy some: I love a ballad in print, a’ life; for
then we are sure they are true.
_Winter’s Tale._
Although the good parson of Cheddar was as yet unmolested, and
continued his ministrations in peace, he was far too sagacious not to
perceive the growing strength of Parliament, and never partook of
those extravagant hopes, which, upon the arrival of the Marquis of
Hertford, at the city of Wells, animated so many of the gentlemen and
the clergy in Somersetshire. But he gave such attendance at the
meetings of a public nature as was necessary to show plainly the part
which he had taken,--and he set a faithful example of loyalty in his
parish. The son and the son-in-law of old Blount the franklin, and
most of the yeomen of Cheddar, offered their services to the Marquis,
and repaired to his quarters well mounted and armed.--It was a deeply
mortifying reflection to Noble and his wife that their son Cuthbert
had joined the forces of the Parliament, and was already in arms
against his king. Their spirits were far more depressed by this
consideration than by any other. Compared to this heavy trial all
others, which could possibly arrive, seemed light and undeserving of
careful or anxious deprecation; but for this one chastisement, they
humbled themselves before God daily with tears and supplications.
Nevertheless they sorrowed not as without hope, and they did not
murmur. They knew that their prayers were poured out before a Father
of mercies, who heareth always, and gives or withholds the blessing
implored, with a wisdom that cannot err, and with a mysterious love.
Therefore they were enabled to preserve a calm and resigned aspect
before the village, and before their household, though plain Peter and
the good maidens were not to be deceived as to their silent
sufferings; for master did not notice the flowers and birds in the
garden so much now, and walked up and down thinking, instead of
talking pleasant; and mistress had not looked after her
fruit-preserves and her home-made wines this year with the heart she
used to do; and, worst sign of all, the dinner was often carried away
hardly touched by either. The apprehensions of Noble as to the
progress of disaffection to the royal cause proved but too well
founded. The private agents and emissaries of the Parliament party
wrought underhand to persuade the people, that, by the commission of
array, a great part of the estates of all substantial yeomen and
freeholders would be taken from them, alleging, that some lords had
said that “twenty pounds by the year was enough for every peasant to
live on;” and they further said, that all the meaner and poorer sort
of people were appointed by the same commission to pay a tax of one
day’s labour in every week to the King. These reports, however little
deserving of credit, were received by the more ignorant with implicit
belief, and circulated by the interested and designing with most
persevering activity. The people were thus taught that, if they did
not adhere to the Parliament, and submit to the ordinance for the
militia, they would soon be no better than slaves to the lords, and
the victims of a most cruel oppression.
The ignorance and credulity of the vulgar were by these arts widely
and successfully imposed upon; but the population of Cheddar was
preserved from these corrupting falsehoods by the prudence of Noble.
He early obtained a copy of the commission of array, which was written
in Latin, and having translated it with fidelity, distributed copies
from house to house. The word of the good parson was ever held in
reverence by his flock, therefore, with few exceptions, and those
confined to the worst characters in the village, his account of the
matter was received as true; while in many other places the crafty
supporters of the levelling party, taking advantage of the commissions
being in Latin, translated it into what English they pleased, and
abused simple folk in the manner related.
While the Marquis of Hertford maintained himself at Wells all things
continued quiet at Cheddar; but as Noble had foreseen, there was soon
a very powerful party brought against him, and he was compelled to
retire, before the increasing forces and the active officers of the
Parliament, to Sherborne, in Dorsetshire.
Master Daws, the artful and the covetous enemy of Noble, who had been
already baffled in his endeavour to drag him before a committee, and
whose eyes were steadily fixed upon the living of Cheddar, had not
been inactive while the Royalists lay at Wells.
He had, it is true, seldom ventured from home for fear his precious
carcass might receive some weighty mark of the wrath or merriment of a
royal trooper, though he might have gone to and fro in his clerical
garb as safe as an innocent child: but conscience made a coward of
him; for he had employed the period of his confinement to his house in
preparing certain lying and inflammatory papers, which, through the
agency of a near relation, who was a scrivener’s clerk at Bristol, he
procured to be secretly printed in that city. These papers were of the
most indecent and outrageous nature, directed chiefly against
prelacy, and all supporters of the church of England and the episcopal
form of government. Now, this scrivener’s clerk, though he knew and
despised the hypocrisy of Master Daws, and laughed at all religion,
whether real or pretended, lent himself as a most ready agent in this
charitable work. “There are diversities of gifts, my dear Matty,” said
his crafty uncle Daws in the letter which accompanied his manuscript
libels,--“diversities of gifts, but the same spirit:--thou hast a
lively wit, and a playful hand with thy pencil; prithee put a little
device of some facetious kind at the head of each of these
papers,--such an one as may be easily struck off in a wood-cut of the
kind, which the profane Italians call caricature: but what need I say
more? Thou knowest what I would have:--see thou do it. I wish to have
them done before Cheddar fair, which is held, thou knowest, at the
latter end of September. They are a bigoted, base, priest-ridden herd
of swine in that parish, and as blind as the moles and the bats:--we
must let in a little light on them:--see thou do it broadly.”
The sharp-visaged, pale-faced nephew grinned as he read his worthy
uncle’s epistle, and secretly resolved at once to gratify the mean
desire expressed in it, and to amuse himself, at his uncle’s expense,
when it was too late for him to make any alteration should he detect
it. Of the ungainly figure, and the hideous features of his uncle, he
had caricatures without number; and as they were so strongly marked,
that the rudest engraver of a wooden block could not fail to copy them
faithfully, he determined that the long visage of Daws himself should
find a place in his performance.
The fair-day of Cheddar was that one day in the year which was always
most trying to Noble. All the other holydays were home festivals, and
were kept by the villagers among themselves, being seldom intruded on
by strangers; but the annual fair always brought with it a herd of
idle vagabonds from Bristol, and other towns within a convenient
distance, and seldom terminated without many profligate, disgusting
scenes, or an open brawl. The state of public affairs, and the
presence of a Puritan force in Somersetshire, had such an effect on
the fairs throughout the county this autumn, that they were in general
but thinly attended, and little or no business was done among the
farmers and dealers, by whom they were commonly frequented.
Nevertheless, fairs were too important in the social economy to the
convenience of the people to be wholly suspended. Therefore, on the
appointed morning, early in September, a pleasant peal of five bells
(not as yet silenced by force or law) gave due notice from the tower
of Cheddar church that the day of fairings and gilt gingerbread had
arrived; but although a certain quantity of booths had been erected,
only one, and that but scantily supplied, was set apart for the
profane display of those glittering temptations. Among the farm
servants standing for hire, there were no stout young carters with
their whips, no hale shepherds with their crooks and green sprigs in
their hats; and though there was no lack of maids, yet, as they
crowded together, they looked lonesome and sad, and their bonny brown
hair was not tied up with ribands. The few children present were held
fast by the hand, and led by their parents to see the common purchases
made for the household; but even in these matters the traffic was
dull. There were, indeed, a few cattle; a few pens of sheep; some
piles of Cheddar and other Somersetshire cheese; a store of salted
meats; one stall with fair garnishes of pewter for the cupboard;
another with wooden bowls, and trenchers, and vessels for the dairy;
and one great one, at which groceries, cloths, linens, and articles of
hardware, were promiscuously set forth, and where the neighbouring
housewives were wont to lay in their store of useful necessaries for
the coming year. But now it was so uncertain what a day might bring
forth, that not many cared to make their annual outlay.
It might be supposed, that, in such unsettled times, mountebanks,
tumblers, and conjurers could hardly reckon on a sufficient harvest of
pence to find them in beer and shoe leather; but some of them still
ventured their exhibitions, and with a ready wit practised boldly,
wherever they came, upon the popular prejudices of the hour, and lent
themselves to the crafty suggestions of the designing, who well knew
that the vulgar mind may be artfully seduced to join in the ridicule
of those very persons and things, which, in its better moments, it has
respected.
Now the nephew of Daws had been a most willing and active agent in
forwarding the objects of his uncle; for he had not only procured his
libellous papers to be printed, but he had provided them each with a
caricature engraving on wood; and he had, in like manner, caused
certain ribald songs to be headed for distribution at Cheddar fair; so
that they who could not read the slanders and calumnies contained in
the printed matter might see them pictured to their senses. Nor did he
stop here; but he procured a base fellow, the son of a drunken
saddler, who was a noted posture master in Bristol, to carry these
papers and prints to Cheddar on the fair day, and to commend them to
the people. This knave, taking with him a merriman and a fire-eater to
assist him in attracting a crowd, repaired thither, and about noon
began his operations on a scaffold near the market cross. They had
been followed by a rabble of disorderly persons, among whom the report
of some fun at Cheddar fair had been already spread by the rogues
engaged on the occasion.
Master Daws, who had been advised by his nephew of the preparations
that were made for bringing the church and its ministers into contempt
before the population of Cheddar, walked to the village at an early
hour in company with his nephew, under the pretence of buying a
hundred weight of cheese and a salted mutton; and, though the day was
fine, he took care to appear in the blue Geneva cloak, which was
commonly worn by the Puritan divines. Having engaged an upper room in
a public house facing the market place, he had no sooner stalked
through the vacant crowd, and made his purchases, than he retired to
feast his malignant envy from the window of this chamber.
The sound of the pipe and tabor, and the nasal tones of Master
Merriman, soon gathered all the idle folk in the fair round the
mountebank’s scaffold. The fool began with their favourite egg-dance;
and they stood with gaping mouths to see him hop about on one leg, and
then, being blindfolded, dance backwards and forwards between the eggs
without touching one of them: their mouths gaped yet wider, as this
performer was succeeded by the fire-eater, who, after commencing by
the trick of drawing forth from his mouth yard after yard of ribands,
as if his stomach had been a riband loom, put a bundle of lighted
matches into his mouth, and blew the smoke of the sulphur through his
nostrils. Last came the posture-master, whose art consisted in making
all sorts of uncouth faces, and exhibiting in a natural but shocking
manner every species of deformity and dislocation. Now he showed a
huge rising of his left shoulder; now shifted the deformity into the
other; now represented a humpback; accompanying these changes of his
figure with sundry comical contortions of countenance, to which the
crowd responded in roars of laughter. Having thus got them into good
humour for his purpose, he went on to imitate the cries and voices of
sundry animals and birds; the crow of the cock, the gabble of the
geese, the gobble of the turkey, the quaak of the duck, the squeak of
the sucking pig, the bleat of the lamb, the grunt of the old sow, and
the braying of the ass. The crowd was on the broad grin while he went
through these imitations. He now therefore disappeared for a minute,
leaving the merriman to amuse them, by way of interlude, with a
jocular dance, and returned in robes made of coarse materials to
imitate those of a bishop. His figure was stuffed out to Falstaff-like
proportions; his hands were crossed with due gravity; he had plumpers
in his cheeks; and he forthwith began to intone an anthem with
burlesque solemnity. The words were in mockery of the coronation
anthem; and the petition for the growth of the King’s beard, and the
shaving thereof, was delivered in all those varieties of note which he
had before given when mimicking the animals of the farm-yard. He thus
excited the mirth of the rabble vastly. He closed this mischievous
performance by a comic song about tithes; and, after imitating the
squeak of a sucking pig, and the clack of a hen, he produced upon the
stage, by sleight of hand, as if from his paunch, a basket filled with
curious samples of the small tithe, in which the tenth egg was not
forgotten. His place was now taken by the mountebank, who professed to
be appointed grand physician to the state, and purifier of the church.
The fool stood by his side making all the uncouth faces which he could
think of, taken, it must be confessed, most chiefly from the sour
_kill-joys_ of the time; and holding a large bundle of printed papers,
each headed by a wood-cut, he distributed them down among the people
for due consideration of pence and farthings dropped into his cap.
These papers, though ridiculous devices were prefixed to them,
contained a venom of no laughable matter, and were eagerly bought up.
The nephew of old Daws had been at little pains to rack his invention
for the subject of these curious cuts. On one, he had engraven the
figure of a fox, vested in canonicals, with a crosier in his hand and
a mitre on his head, hanging upon a tree, with a flock of geese and
other fowl beneath chattering at him; on another, he had represented a
fox in chains, with his right paw on a bag of money, and a monkey at
prayers by his side, trying to steal it away. On the next was given
the figure of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, bearing a close resemblance
to his own uncle, puffing a large fire with a pair of bellows, on
which was inscribed “Groans and sighs;” while above was depicted an
owl, with a wolf and a lamb joining in prayers. By a self-deception
not uncommon, Master Daws had not the slightest suspicion that the
said wolf bore any likeness to himself, and, to the secret diversion
of his nephew, he gave a most ghastly smile of approval as he looked
over the rude caricatures, three of which we have described. The time
was now come for directing the wayward crowd to a stronger expression
of their contempt for the church than laughter. Accordingly, the
nephew of Daws descended among them, and proposed that they should
burn a bishop’s effigy before the parson’s house. While the effigy was
preparing, the people stood in groups reading the papers; and sundry
charitable suggestions were made by the baser among them. “Let’s get
into his cellar,” said one, “and drink a little of the sacrament
wine.”--“Let’s lay hold of the church plate,” said another:--“Or give
the parson a ride on old Bruin here,” was the cruel proposal of a
third, pointing to a huge bear in a string, led by a wandering
showman. All things were soon ready; and, led by the posture master in
front, and guided behind by the mischievous nephew of Master Daws, off
the rabble moved, noisy and half drunk, and ready for all evil. They
had no sooner reached the yew-tree in the churchyard, and were
advancing towards the wicket, than out rushed an old beggar, stumping
on his wooden leg, followed by plain Peter and two more old labourers,
and immediately behind them, as if in pursuit, a fine young bull. The
old beggar, who was no other than the worn-out veteran before
mentioned, shouted, “_Mad bull!_” at the top of his voice, with an
earnestness and passion that made him at once believed; and the crowd
fled, tumbling over each other, as they ran, in inextricable
confusion: nor were they allowed time to detect the deception
practised on them; for the old soldier and plain Peter slipping behind
the frightened beast, and goading him forward, he performed his
friendly office as well as the maddest of all bulls, and very
effectually dispersed the mob, and defeated their base and cruel
intentions for that day. Master Daws, who had from his post of
observation at the window witnessed the scenes in the market-place
with the most malignant satisfaction, as soon as the crowd marched off
towards the vicarage with the effigy, and he saw the coast clear,
could not repress his curiosity, and, stealing down, followed afar off
to watch their operations. In the luckless moment of their panic and
flight, he was so terrified and puzzled, that he could not regain the
house, but ran with the crowd, and was thrown down by a pig; nor was
this the worst, for it so happened that a man, leading a monkey, fell
at the same moment, and jocko flew upon Daws and bit his right ear,
till he screamed for agony: beyond this, however, and the tearing of
his clothes, he sustained no injury. A worse fate waited the
posture-master, the bear being infuriated at the hubbub, and having
broken away from his master, seized him fiercely, and embraced him in
a hug so fatal, that it produced contortions of countenance and a
dislocation of bones very different from those he had so lately been
exhibiting, and left him a cripple for life. The warning of his
master’s danger had been communicated to plain Peter, that very
morning, by the grateful old soldier, who had come to that fair with
no other intention than rendering this service, he having heard a
whisper of the intended doings in a tap at Bristol. It so chanced that
old Noble was confined to the house by a sprain of the ankle, and his
mistress was not well; so Peter kept from them all mention of these
fears. The stratagem he adopted for putting the mob to flight was
suggested by the old soldier, and cheerfully aided by a neighbouring
farmer and two of his servants. Thus was the worthy parson protected
in peace, and kept safe from the strife of tongues and the violence of
a base rabble, throughout a day that was very threatening:
unconscious himself how Daws had been undermining him, he had passed
it in a frame of mind more than usually composed.
Daws and his nephew continued their retreat without staying to pay
their reckoning at the public-house. The greater part of the crowd,
finding themselves on the road to Axbridge, proceeded there, to make
up for their disappointment at Cheddar by a riot at that place
instead. So few, indeed, returned, after they had got beyond the reach
of danger, to find out the truth of it, and they squabbled so much
among themselves, that Master Blount and the villagers were able to
prevent further disturbance at that time. Before evening all the
strange rabble departed; and the sun set on Cheddar as tranquilly as
in happier times.