Thus see we how these ugly furious spirits
Of warre are cloth’d, colour’d, and disguis’d,
With stiles of vertue, honour, zeale, and merits,
Whose owne complexion, well anatomis’d,
A mixture is of pride, rage, avarice,
Ambition, lust, and every tragicke vice.
LORD BROOKE.
It is now necessary to relate that treatment of George Juxon to which
old Margery alluded in the last chapter. For six weeks after the first
visit of the Parliamentary soldiers to Old Beech he successfully
maintained his post, and continued to officiate every Sabbath among
his people. His house, indeed, had been often beset by small parties
of soldiers or by other godly reformers deputed to arrest him, but he
was so beloved by the villagers that he was always warned, and was
thus enabled to escape their hands or evade their search; nor were any
of these parties of a strength sufficient for attempting acts of
violence upon the church or the parsonage. Indeed one of them was
fairly braved and driven away by Juxon himself, disguised like a
farmer, and aided by his faithful friend the blacksmith and half a
dozen more. One Sabbath morning, as he was out upon the watch, in the
disguise of a belted woodman, he met a party coming to seize him about
a mile from Old Beech, and, having put them on a wrong scent, went
joyfully home, and preached to a glad and attentive congregation.
However, his popularity and his very name were offences too great in
the sight of the Roundheads of Coventry to suffer him much longer to
elude his enemies. A squadron of horse made a sudden march from that
city on a Sunday afternoon, and surprised both pastor and flock while
engaged at divine service. They rode into the churchyard; and having
there dismounted, their commander, followed by a dozen or more
officers and troopers, entered the church with their steel caps on
their heads, and, by the noise of their steps, would have drowned the
voice of Juxon if he had not instantly made a pause to consider his
best course. One look at the leader of this band satisfied him that
any appeal to the spirit of love and of a sound mind would be vain;
and a glance through the window had shown him that any resistance by
force on the present occasion would only expose his people to a very
great calamity.
The commander of the troops was no other than Sir Roger Zouch.
Accordingly Juxon said, with a loud voice, “My Christian brethren, the
worship of God in this place being thus interrupted, I dismiss you to
your homes.” His manly tone caused an attention on the part of the
soldiery, which produced a short and silent pause, and, taking
advantage of this, he solemnly pronounced the blessing with which the
service of the church always concludes. Sir Roger, after stammering
with anger, now broke out most violently, “Peace, peace! thou criest
peace where there is no peace, thou son of perdition. Come out of thy
calves’ coop, and make an end of thy pottage. I know thee, who thou
art; thy very name savoureth of all evil: take him out, thou good and
faithful soldier of the cross, Zachariah Trim, and that book of
abomination with him, and make my passage to yon pulpit pure;--verily
I will speak a word to these poor, perishing, and neglected people.”
If it had not been for Juxon’s discretion at this moment the church
would soon have become a scene of blood; for the stout blacksmith,
seeing Zachariah move towards the desk with an action as if he would
lay hands on Juxon, interposed with so hasty and resolute a manner, as
caused Zachariah to step back two or three paces and draw his sword.
His example was instantly followed by many comrades; and the shrieks
of alarm among the women and children were dreadful. But Juxon came
forth in a collected mood, and so spoke, that the swords were returned
to their scabbards, and his people submitted, though in fear yet in
silence, while the few among them, who, like the blacksmith, were
ready for any hazards, forebore any further attempt at resistance.
Sir Roger ascended the pulpit, put down his steel cap by his side,
poured forth a long, rambling, confused prayer, took out his pocket
Bible, and preached for two hours; till the sweat streamed down his
bony cheeks, and his voice became hoarser than any raven that ever
croaked his sad predictions at a sick man’s window. Juxon listened
with profound and with indignant astonishment to his wild and
blasphemous perversions of divine truth; but he was comforted, as far
as his own flock was concerned, in the consciousness that they were
better instructed than to be moved by his fanaticism. His manner
corresponded with his matter; and if he had not been accompanied by
too many and too formidable and ready ministers of his violent will he
would only have excited sentiments of disgust and ridicule. But as he
thundered forth his curses upon the church in which the poor villagers
had been brought up, and described her by a flood of reproachful names
and epithets, of which last, Babylonish was the most gentle, no one
could listen to his ravings without serious fears that they were a
plain preface to deeds of crime. It was, therefore, with a heart full
of devout and sincere thanksgiving for his people that Juxon heard
this strange and fierce iconoclast promise with solemnity that their
houses and their little property should be respected, and that no one
of them should suffer any harm from his soldiers; but that he would
take away with him their blind and wicked guide, and would only purge
and purify the polluted temple and the priest’s dwelling.
The surplice and hood of Juxon had been torn from his back before this
precious discourse began, and he had been placed in custody between
two armed troopers, with pistols in their hands, and was frequently
addressed by the heated Sir Roger in those words which are applied
both in the Old Testament and the New to false and unfaithful
teachers. All this he had borne with a calm and admirable
courage,--feeling within the answer of a good conscience, and
supported by an unshaken faith in a God of wisdom and love.
“It is the Lord,” he said within himself, “let him do what seemeth him
good,”--and all the unuttered petitions which his heart sent up to
the throne of grace were for the spiritual and temporal preservation
of his little flock.
When Sir Roger concluded his sermon, he gave forth one of those
psalms, which, being directed against idolatry, he considered as
appropriate to the work he now meditated. It was sung in loud and
harsh notes by his gloomy looking troopers, after which, descending
into the body of the church, he directed fire to be brought, and
burned the Book of Common Prayer before the communion table; heaping
on the same fire all those rags and fragments of the whore of Babylon,
as he was pleased to designate pulpit and altar cloth, and all the
decent vestments of the minister.
At this gross outrage, Juxon burst forth with a holy zeal, in a most
earnest tone of faithful remonstrance; but he was instantly gagged in
a painful mode, and was forced in this state to witness their after
proceedings.
The people were now forcibly driven out of the church, and as many
troopers as could find room were directed to come in and stable there
for the night. The order was obeyed with tumultuous joy; and they had
no sooner taken possession of their once sacred quarters, than they
began and completed the work of demolition,--breaking the coloured
windows, destroying the tombs, and crowning their work of hell by
bringing in a baggage ass, and baptizing it with mock ceremonies at
the font. This last work was not witnessed by Sir Roger, who was
busily superintending the burning of poor George Juxon’s library, and
of many _curiosa_ in the way of antiquities, which his father had
collected in foreign countries, and bequeathed to him at his death.
It so chanced, that the first thing on which the eyes of Sir Roger
rested, when he entered the parsonage, was a glass case, or cabinet,
in which, among other ancient relics, was a small crucifix,
exquisitely wrought in ivory. The sight of this inflamed his zeal to
the boiling pitch; and declaring that so great an abomination could
only be punished by the utter destruction of the dwelling in which it
was found, he called in two or three assistants, whom he judged
qualified to overlook the books on the shelves, to the end that any
godly ones might be saved from the general ruin;--declaring, at the
same time, that all the silver, and the gold, and the raiment, and the
furniture, and the pictures, and the vessels, of what sort soever,
whether in hall or kitchen, were polluted, and must be consumed, and
denouncing the wrath of God on any of his followers who should
presume, like Achan, to appropriate a single article of the unhallowed
heap. Accordingly, on the lawn before the windows, a huge fire was
made of all these goods, which were cast forth from the windows; the
shell only of the house being spared for the use of such godly
minister as the Parliament might appoint.
The attention of Sir Roger and the few zealots with him was confined
to the contents of the library: not a few valuables, however, from
other parts of the mansion, were stolen and secreted by the sly rogues
of the squadron. But it so chanced that, as the house was spared, in a
concealed recess, behind a false wainscot, his family plate and a few
heirlooms were preserved. Of five hundred volumes, however, only
three copies of the Bible, also one work in folio, two small thin
quartos, and a heap of loose pamphlets of a controversial nature,
written by Puritans, escaped the sentence of fire. Upon the same pile,
and doomed to blaze in the same flame, were thrown fine copies of the
ancient fathers; the works of sound Protestant divines, and ponderous
lives and legends of Romish saints; the tomes of Bacon, and old
worthless folios on astrology and divination; the plays and poems
produced by the genius of a Shakspeare and a Spenser, and the
interminable and prosaic romances which, in the preceding age, our
ancestors had found leisure and patience to peruse.
During the night, Juxon was confined as a prisoner in one of the
out-houses in his own yard, and, in the morning, he was mounted on a
lean, bony cart-horse, without saddle or bridle, and led by a small
escort to Warwick, where, before he was committed to the gaol of the
Castle, he was subjected to the odious and vile insults of an
examination before a Committee of Religion. Three witnesses appeared
against him: two of these were base knaves from his own parish, and
the third was from Coventry.
Thomas Slugg, the first of these, a lazy hypocrite, who found it
easier to affect the office of an itinerant singer of psalms than to
dig, deposed that Parson Juxon was an enemy to all godly persons, and
a teacher of falsehoods, caring nothing for the souls of his people;
and, as a proof, stated that, when, on one occasion, he, the witness,
had asked him, “whether there were many or few that should be saved?”
he had turned his back upon him, and entered the church saying,--
“What is that to thee? follow thou me.”
Another, who was a turned-off journeyman of the blacksmith’s, deposed
that he saw Parson Juxon one day in a field behind his own garden
casting the bar and hammer; and that he, the parson, threw a bar, and
a heavy stone, and a sledge hammer, and that the smith, and two
farmers, and one Strong, a warrener, threw against him.
The third was no other than the witch-finder from Coventry, who swore
that the parson consorted with dealers in magic and the black art;
that books on those arts were found in his house, and burned (this was
confirmed eagerly by some of the escort), and that he even kept in his
pay and service a notorious witch named Yellow Margery.
Juxon listened to these charges with a grave smile, and made no reply.
Hereupon one of the commissioners observed, in great wrath,--
“That he was a most godless and obstinate Malignant, as was plain to
see by his laughing, and the redness of his face; and that if not
drunk, he was merry; but that a gaol and bread and water would soon
take away the colour from his cheeks, and bring down the naughtiness
of his spirit.”
They forthwith committed him to Warwick Castle, as a soul-destroying
hypocrite, who held communion with idle and lewd fellows, and
consorted with witches; and they appointed one Mr. Blackaby, a true
brother, and bold as a lion for the faith, to succeed him at Old
Beech, directing that he should be protected in his settlement by a
detachment from the garrison, until the stubborn people of that
village were reduced to submit heartily to God and the Parliament.
The room of the Castle to which Juxon was now removed was a large
comfortless apartment with damp stone walls and no fire, containing
about fourteen other prisoners, ten of whom were, like himself,
incumbents. The two windows of this room looked down upon the river,
which washed the very walls of the Castle; and the windows were not
only securely barred, but even were it possible to force that
obstacle, the fall being very great, any notion of the escape of a
prisoner would have been judged an idle fear. However, the faithful
blacksmith and George Juxon’s groom had followed the escort into
Warwick, and watched the courageous parson as he walked with an
upright carriage and manly step between the guards who took him to
prison.
Having gained information concerning the part of the Castle in which
he was confined, they laid a plan for his deliverance, which, from
their knowledge of his strength and activity, they thought possible,
though extremely difficult.
They conveyed to him in a loaf of brown bread, which was sent by one
of the charity children of the place, and was given him without
suspicion, a small cord, of sufficient strength to bear his weight, a
small steel saw, and a phial of aqua-fortis.
It was not possible to conceal this from his fellow-prisoners, nor
could he desire to do so. They promised secrecy, but dissuaded him
from the attempt. That it was very perilous, he well knew; but he
resolved upon it at once. In the afternoon of the day on which he
received the cord, he saw the blacksmith standing on the river bank in
the opposite meadow. The man did not pretend to take any notice of the
Castle, but stripped off his clothes and plunged into the water; and
it being a cold frosty day, he was loudly laughed at by a group of
soldiers standing on the bridge. He swam out into the middle of the
stream and back again; then putting on his clothes, he disappeared.
By two o’clock on the following morning Juxon had cut away a bar, and
made fast his cord. Amid the breathless good wishes of his
fellow-prisoners he began to descend, clad only in a pair of stout
drawers and his shirt. The cord, though strong enough, was so small,
that it cut his hands like a knife; but he got safely down to within
twelve feet of the water, and from hence dropped into the river; and
gaining the opposite side, was helped up the bank by the stout arm of
his faithful blacksmith, and hurried to a hedge, behind which he found
dry clothes and his groom with two horses. To dress himself, to snap a
hunter’s mouthful, and to take one draught of cordial spirit from the
leathern bottle of his servant, was the glad work of a few minutes;
and by eight o’clock on the same morning he was forty miles on the
road to Shrewsbury. Among other friends at the royal head-quarters he
found Sir Charles Lambert and Arthur Heywood, and at once resolved to
follow the fortunes of the camp as a volunteer chaplain to the
regiment of horse with which they were serving. He was present with
them in the battle of Keinton; and though decided himself not to use
arms, he rode upon the flank of the regiment when it charged.
The horse of Sir Charles being killed under him, Juxon alighted, in an
exposed and perilous position, and instantly gave his own to remount
his friend. Here it was that, soon after, the gallant boy Arthur,
returning wounded from the front, fell fainting from his saddle; and
his frightened horse flying fast away, he would have been left
helpless on the field before the advancing enemy, had not Juxon been a
witness of his distress and danger. Hastening to the bleeding boy, he
lifted him on his back, and so carried him a mile and a half to the
top of Edge Hill, where a surgeon dressed his hurt, and pronounced it
to be severe, but not dangerous, or likely to be attended with loss of
limb or any very serious consequences. Having seen Arthur placed
safely in a cart with other wounded officers going to a village in the
rear, Juxon remained upon the hill, to which the royal army retired
at sunset; and, as he saw Sir Charles and his own favourite roan horse
coming safely back at the head of a squadron which had suffered severe
losses, his heart swelled thankfully within him. He shook the hand of
Sir Charles with a tearful cordiality; and they ate their cold and
scanty supper by a little fire in the open fields, with sentiments of
gratitude and of piety at once elevated and pure. The crown of England
was hanging as it were on a bush, and they were among its guardians.
Moreover, there was in both their bosoms a fine consciousness of what
was passing in their respective hearts:--to see the noble and
miraculous change in a man whom he had once, and with reason,
despised, was a rich reward to Juxon,--while Sir Charles sat in the
presence of his friend with the sweet and gracious feeling that he had
been to him as a guardian angel and as a voice from Heaven.