He knew the handwriting; it was that of Katharine: he knew the book; he remembered the Sabbath morning when she first presented it to her cousin Arthur. He thought upon that glimpse which he had caught of his pupil’s countenance in the battle, and he shuddered with apprehensions.
CHAP. X.
Although the malice of the hypocrite Daws had been disappointed by the result of his wicked artifices at Cheddar fair, and the worthy Noble had been saved from the injury and ruin which a lawless rabble were instigated to inflict on that peaceful man of God, yet Daws, being unsuspected and secure from detection, did not relax his efforts for the persecution and ejectment of Noble.
He contrived to have him haled before a committee of religious inquiry which visited those parts soon after; but here again he was baffled: for one of the commissioners being pricked in his conscience by observing the godly simplicity of the good parson of Cheddar, and the sincerity of his love to the blessed Saviour of the world, procured his dismissal from that ordeal unharmed. Nevertheless Daws continued to work secretly for his own ends, and gave himself no rest in the pursuit of his great object. He had the reputation of great strictness and sanctity as a minister,—and the outward man imposed upon many; in his heart he cared not for the souls of men; his sins were those which often and long escape the detection of the world, and which can be indulged under the cloak of religious zeal without exciting the suspicions of any, but those honest and sagacious persons who can detect a character by indications of its spirit too slight and fine to be admitted as important by the multitude. He was avaricious and tyrannical: money was his idol; and to subject the minds of a congregation was his next delight. From his pulpit he dealt forth the most fierce and cruel fulminations against all unbelievers. Nor was he without many trembling followers, whom he scolded and comforted, according to the caprice of his own temper.
In his creed, the prayers and alms of any one who did not exactly entertain his notions of faith were sins, and would be visited as such. Now Parson Noble was a minister who bowed his knees before the Father of mercies as a self-abased sinner, confessing himself without grace or strength to will or to do, save of God’s free mercy, communicated through and for Christ’s sake. He taught all his people that if they asked the gifts and graces of repentance and faith in that precious name they could not be denied, and should never be sent empty away: to proclaim the message of peace and reconciliation was his delight; to invite all freely, to tell of a pardon to the human race, which, under the present dispensation of mercy, was the common right of all who were willing to accept it, was his constant practice; and he showed them plainly that if they came not to the light, it was because they loved darkness; because they could not part with their sins, and shrunk from the Gospel as a rule of life. “Love,” he would say, “worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Love is keeping the commandments: God is love, from whom they came. Jesus is love, by whom they were taught, magnified, and perfectly obeyed, that in his sacrifice of himself, as a pure and spotless victim, we might have an all-sufficient atonement, and hope towards a God who had taken our nature upon him, and been manifest in the flesh.” Now Daws held that Noble was a blind leader of the blind, and that both would fall into the ditch; and he desired, first, the proceeds of Cheddar living in his pocket, and, next, the gratification of telling the flock of Noble that they were one and all in the broad road to destruction.
Nor did this insidious priest fail to spread all sorts of calumnies about the poor unconscious vicar, and to irritate many furious zealots against him. He kept up a constant correspondence with a political partisan in London, to whom he gave much information on local and county matters, stretching his invention not a little when he had to tell any thing against the Royalists of those parts. By this means he got a name as a person well affected to the Parliament, and greatly interested in the cause of religious liberty.
It so happened, that, in the November immediately following the breaking out of the war, and the great battle of Keinton, a body of Parliamentarian horse being quartered in his neighbourhood, Daws found a fit instrument for his purposes on Cheddar, in a most furious and bigotted fanatic, who commanded a troop of horse. This man was easily persuaded that he could not render a more acceptable service to God than by destroying with fire and sword all places, all persons, and all things, which were, in his own view, defiled, and idolatrous, and impure; and he therefore sallied forth against the church and the parson of Cheddar as he would against a temple and a priest of Baal.
On the day on which old Noble was ejected from Cheddar, with many circumstances of cruelty and hardship, he arose, as usual, with some fears, but with unshaken trust in the goodness and mercy of an all-wise and almighty Father. The day was cold, and not a sunbeam was admitted through the cloud and gloom which brooded over all things. It chanced that the stout and resolute old franklin Blount had determined that his grandchild should be publicly baptized at the same ancient font at which his own venerable forehead had been signed with the sign of the cross. There was some doubt in the mind of his son-in-law, Hargood, whether it was prudent at that moment of busy persecution, on the part of the county committee, to make so open a display of devout attachment to the hallowed ceremony of a christening. His loving daughter, from a tender apprehension about her infant’s safety, if any thing should fall out amiss, would have stolen to church, at the earliest possible hour, and in the most quiet manner. However, habits of submission to her father, formed by an admiration of his character, were of so long a growth, and so deeply rooted, that the remonstrance of her fears was not ventured on; indeed Blount would have held it craven to yield to the timid suggestions of prudence, where he looked to a principle in his conduct. It is not improbable that some shadow of a domestic tragedy had been cast upon the old man’s solitary thoughts; for, within a few days past, there had been observable in his manner a mixture of severity and gentleness at once strange and affecting. He had twice been found in the large oak parlour alone, reading from the Book of Martyrs, which was there chained upon a tall desk. It is true that on both these occasions he had whistled and walked away quick; but it was afterwards remembered. Howbeit, at ten o’clock in the forenoon, there issued from the porch of the franklin’s old mansion a small party consisting of about eight persons, male and female: one of the last bore in her arms an infant so folded up and hidden in a large mantle of thick white woollen, that nothing but a little outline of the babe could be seen, and not a breath of the keen wintry wind could penetrate to its tender frame. They moved slowly, and in a formal order up the long straggling street; and all the villagers who met them by the way, or looked at them from their doors, saluted them with bows and good words, but with evident and anxious wonder. A faithful woodman ventured to go close and whisper to Master Blount that he was just come in from Axbridge, and saw some of the rascal Roundheads mustering, and that he heard say, at the Old Pack-horse Inn, that they were going to march for Wells by the road of Cheddar. “Well, let them come,” said the franklin; “we are not doing any thing to be ashamed of: let them see us doing as their forefathers did before us, and redden in the face for their own falsehood; ‘church and king’ is an old cry and a good one: out upon the knaves!—God will defend his own.”
The party went forward; and having reached the churchyard, passed into the church by the low chancel door, walked down the great aisle, and turned into the southern transept. Here stood the font; here the worthy parson awaited them, and his wife also, who was by a promise of long date to stand as godmother to the child. The old stone font, round which this pious family were assembled, had long been an object of great veneration to the inhabitants of Cheddar. It was octagonal in form, and supported upon a clustered shaft of Purbeck marble. The compartments on its sides were sculptured with scenes from Holy Writ. In one was represented the circumcision of Christ; in another the same blessed Lord was figured in manhood, with a little child in his arms, and his disciples standing round: through age and injury the subjects in the other compartments were no longer discernible.
Above the font was a window of painted glass, which, as there was no light of the sun to illuminate its gorgeous groups, did only present to the eye a dim cold grandeur;—a grave and visionary glory, through which, as in the pages of unaccomplished prophecy, might be caught bright glimpses of pale and celestial faces, and yet garments crimson withal, as though they had been rolled in blood.
In this solemn light, and around this sacred font, the family of Blount reverently kneeled, and the service proceeded. The babe lay still and unconscious in the arms of the old franklin’s wife; and nothing told of its young life but a soft breath from parted lips, and a faint flush upon a waxen cheek. By its side knelt the fair mother, delicate and colourless, with eyes bent on the ground, and a forehead over which fears flitted, and disturbed her prayers.
Of all the party none save the sweet infant was so calm as Blount himself. Upon the throne of the old man’s heart his God was seated, and his soul was at peace. In fancy and in spirit he was again the subject of that holy rite. When Noble took the babe in his arms, and it opened its blue eyes and stretched out its little helpless hands, and as it felt the sprinkled water, and was signed with the sign of the cross, gave that little cry for which mother and nurse listen so fondly, a few large tears dropped from the eyelids of the stalwart franklin, and the voice of Noble faltered a little as he saw them fall. The solemn declaration by which the child is received into Christ’s flock was completed, and was responded to by the deep and fervent Amen of Blount, and the gentler tones of those around him; and the good parson was proceeding to the thanksgiving that follows, when that fearful sound, which is made up of the trampling of horses, and the rattle of harness, and the blast of the trumpet, was heard at the church doors in the opposite transept. Their heavy leaves were thrown open with a sudden and violent crash, and two of the horsemen rode into the body of the church, accompanied by three severe and sour looking persons in sad coloured doublets, and narrow crowned hats, and followed by some low rabble, with whom, in fear and curiosity, a few of the good folk of Cheddar intermingled.
“I have a message for thee, thou priest of Baal,—thou blind leader of the blind,—thou whited wall,” said he, whose caparisons bespoke him the chief, laying the flat of his sword with a smart stroke upon the neck of Noble. “Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting: thou must come with me; thy mummeries and thy knaveries shall no more pollute the sanctuary.”
“Dost thou not fear God?” said the meek but undaunted Noble, with a firm voice and unshrinking mien. “Dost thou not fear God, that thus thou comest to his holy temple? To what manner of man was it told, that it were better for him a millstone were tied about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones? I tell thee, the angel of that helpless babe doth, even now, behold the face of his Father, which is in heaven, and beareth witness against thee.—Go forth. I myself will follow thee, whithersoever thou wouldest, be it to judgment or to death; but this hoof-clatter in the courts of the Lord is a most abominable sin.”
“Now will I do so, and yet more, thou hypocrite, thou whitened sepulchre!” so saying, the fanatic plunged his spurs into the flanks of his frightened war-horse, but the fretted and gallant beast did only rear, and chafe, and champ the bit. Meanwhile, the young mother, with her child in her bosom, and the other women round her, had sunk back into the corner of the transept in terror. Old Blount and his son-in-law interposed between the horsemen and Noble, and demanded of them loudly to quit the sacred building.
“I ask ye not,” said he, “as Christians, for that ye cannot be, but for your manhood’s sake, to suffer, that these poor terrified women pass forth with the infant in peace; for ourselves, though we be unarmed, we will abide your wrath as best we may.”
“Let not thine eye pity,” said a harsh voice from behind the horsemen: “blessed be he that taketh her children and dasheth them against the stones. Woe to the idolaters! woe!—The priest shall be slain at the altar, and the water of the Babylonish font shall be red with the blood of sacrifice.”
The frenzied zeal of the willing fanatic being thus excited, he urged on his powerful steed, and raised his glittering sword. The hot animal by a weighty plunge came breast upon the font, and overthrew and brake it, and the consecrated water was spilled upon the ground. At this sight old Blount, with the strong arm of a Samson, caught at the bridle, and threw back the horse and his rider with so violent a force, that the hoofs slipped upon the smooth pavement, and they fell together; and before they had risen, the old man had caught up a heavy bar of wood near him, and raising the ponderous weapon with both hands, aimed so true and so deadly a blow at the sacrilegious chief that he never moved after; and the life-blood ran from his mouth and ears, and flowing onward, mingled with the water from the BROKEN FONT.
Every voice was silenced,—every foot was rivetted there where it stood. All were hushed and motionless, and every face looked ghastly. During this awful pause, the aged franklin, exhausted by the mighty and energetic deed, fell back against a seat, and, sinking into it, turned pale, and his eye-sight became dim. Noble went over and took his hand in alarm, and eagerly inquired, “What is this? what is this? Are you wounded?”
“No,” he faintly answered, “not wounded, but—this is—death. Heavenly Father, forgive me, for thy dear Son’s sake, for I knew not what I did.”
His wife and daughter and his sons now gathered round him; but he was dying, and his words were few. He tried to kiss his infant grandchild, and he said to Noble, with a heavy sigh,—
“Your trials are coming:—I count myself happy, and commit my own dear family and yours to him who remembers mercy in judgment;” and now, letting fall his head on his wife’s bosom, he breathed a few times in a struggling convulsive manner, and his spirit returned to the God who gave it.
CHAP. XI.
The close of the December following the battle of Keinton found Cuthbert in winter quarters at Warwick. His regiment marched into that city on the day before Christmas-day; and, as soon as the men were distributed in their quarters, he walked towards Milverton, from that natural impulse which inclines us all to revisit any spot where we have passed a part, however small, of our mysterious lives.
It was a bright, clear, invigorating day: the ground was firm under the foot, and, though the sun shone out in a cloudless sky, there was so hard a frost that the pathways were clean. The trees glittered in the sun’s rays like frosted silver, and the face of nature looked healthy and cheerful, like the winter season of a hale old age.
The step of Cuthbert was not so fast or active as travellers use in such weather. He walked like one who reluctantly takes exercise, and in company in which he takes no pleasure. He was alone, indeed, but with care and doubt for his companions. Since the battle, he had been advanced to the command of a company of musketeers, and Maxwell had distinguished him by particular attentions. Randal was still his more constant associate; and the petty and disagreeable perplexities to which he had been at first subjected by the uncongenial persons with whom he had been thrown, and by the novelty of the duties to which he had been called, had altogether vanished: for in three months habits are formed, and we become accustomed to any mode of life. To be accustomed, however, is not to be reconciled to it. But this was the least, and the most trifling and despised ingredient in the bitter cup from which Cuthbert daily drank,—his conscience was not at peace. He drugged it with an opium, extracted, by a very common process, from the precepts and the promises of Scripture; but there was not a day of his life that it did not awake to some doubts and horrors, and the same medicine, dangerous where it is unskilfully applied, was taken to excess. He felt himself embarked in a black ship, with a wild and motley crew, and he dared not own to himself that he mistrusted those who navigated the vessel. Her way was through gloom and danger, and the voyage might, after all, end in shipwreck.
From the day of the battle, he was never seen to smile by any one; and from the severity of his thoughts, his countenance had gathered a sad yet stern complexion, which was not unsuitable to his present fortunes.
In a sort of hope that the sight of Milverton House might beguile his melancholy, might soothe him, by reviving sweet images of past and precious hours, and building, as he walked along, a new fabric of happy and peaceful liberty for his distracted country, he reached the well known gates of the once hospitable mansion. Absorbed in his reflections, he never raised his eyes to direct them towards the house, till he stood at the very portal. The gates lay upon the ground; the noble edifice was a blackened and a yawning ruin. A sudden and terrific thunder clap, bursting from a serene sky, could not so painfully have startled him. All around was silent—desolately, dreadfully silent; and the sun was bright, and the stony skeleton of the vast dwelling was black. He poured a passionate cry to God: he fell down upon the earth, and petitioned feverishly that the evil one might not hunt him to despair.
When he had in some measure recovered his composure, he rose and walked through the lonely and roofless ruins. The rubbish, which had fallen in when the floors and ceilings of the upper chambers gave way, or were consumed, had been disturbed, and removed in large quantities, to be sifted for any valuable metals which they might contain, so that he could make his way without difficulty, and could still trace distinctly all the lower apartments.
Near the fire-place in the large kitchen, on a part of the wall that had only been scorched, might still be read one of those rude and homely posies which were the delight of our honest forefathers, and might be found alike in the manor-house and the humbler cottage of the husbandman:—
And upon the other side of the fire-place was written up,—
These posies brought more to Cuthbert’s mind than the memory of the happy Christmas he had once passed within these very walls. The lines, which he had known from his boyhood, were taken from old Thomas Tusser’s Book of Husbandry, the favourite manual of the old franklin Blount, and a work of which he remembered his father had always been very fond, and which stood upon the book-shelf at Cheddar next the Country Parson of Master George Herbert. All these recollections came upon him at once, and overwhelmed his spirit. He was totally ignorant of all that had been lately enacted at Cheddar, and of the present situation of his father. He had not heard of or from his parents for several months; but his fears for their safety had been quieted by a promise, that especial orders should be sent to all the forces of the Parliament to respect both the persons and the dwellings of all such relations of the officers and men serving the Parliament as did not take up arms against them, whatever might be their known sentiments on affairs of church and state.
How far this line of forbearance had been broken through, and how violently, the ruins around most plainly declared; for he was well assured that Francis Heywood would have omitted no precaution which could possibly have availed to protect the property of Sir Oliver; nor had he been present with the division by whom this wanton crime was effected would he have failed to repress it. But when “Havoc!” is once cried, and the dogs of war are once let slip, who shall, who can, restrain them, but he who sitteth in the circle of the heavens?
His fancy became bewildered with the thought of his mother’s grief, and the dangers to which she might possibly be exposed, and of the possibility that his father might be suffering the penalty of some bitter persecution by his adherence to the royal cause. He, as was his wont in all extremities of doubt and sorrow, betook himself to the only source of true comfort, when men are guided by the Spirit of truth to a right use of it:—he drew from the bosom of his doublet a small Bible. He implored direction from above; and yet, when he had done so, yielded to the petty superstition of opening the sacred volume suddenly, and taking the first text that presented itself to his eye for his counsellor. The words which he thus read were, “Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.” He smote upon his breast with agony, perused the chapter of James the Apostle, from whence it was taken, and that which followed. All his resolutions were staggered and shaken. He was in a mood to unbuckle his sword, and to find a lodge in some wilderness where man could not penetrate. “Yet,” said he aloud, as pleading his own cause before the invisible throne, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I am not moved by the spirit that lusteth to envy in this great contention against apostasy and spiritual wickedness in high places.” In the fervour and agitation of his appeal his Bible fell from his hand, and when he took it up, it opened at that same epistle at the beginning of it; and reading there that he was to count it all joy falling into divers temptations, and that the trying of his faith worked patience, he was again as suddenly recovered to steadfastness, in what he blindly persuaded himself was the battle of the Lord; thus giving a most sad practical proof that he was a waverer, tossed and driven to and fro like a wave of the sea. What further doubts and changes might have coloured his meditations, and his prayers in that desolate and afflicting scene, had he been left alone to brood over all his fears, it is not possible to say; but he was roused and interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the paved path, which led up from the terrace towards the principal entrance, the steps of which yet remained. He stood aside, that the intruder, whoever it might be, should not discover him. To his surprise, it was no other than old Margery of the sand pit. She turned towards the offices as soon as she entered the Hall, and went winding her way through heaps of rubbish, towards an outhouse in the court-yard, the roof of which was still entire. Her aspect, and the echo of her staff and of her footsteps, in that solitary ruin, were very strange and affecting. Afraid of too suddenly alarming the aged and unhappy being, he followed her with light and noiseless steps to the low building, which she entered. Of the two small windows that gave it light one was half open, and having gained it, he could see and hear what was passing within. Laying down her bag and staff, she seated herself on a very low stool, close by the little fire-place, and applied her breath to the embers. The white ashes flew off, and laid bare the glowing embers. To these she applied a few dry sticks which she had brought with her, and a warm and cheerful flame, accompanied by a light crackling noise, soon blazed comfortably before her.
“I wonder where the master is this blessed day,” were her first words, “and Mistress Kate, that was God’s angel to me, and the rest of them. Wherever they are, Christ comfort them, and bless them: they were good friends to me, and to many. I never came to the gate, and went away without a measure of meal and a kind word; and it was a good day for my poor soul when the beautiful lady first talked to me:”—she stopped, and put on another stick or two;—“and Parson Juxon, that made me leave the pit, and gave me a bit of a cot to myself at Old Beech, where he and I would have been now but for the wars and the villainies of those devils that burned his house over his head, and made a bonfire to roast me, if it had not been God’s will to make ’em fall out about it. They called me ‘a child of hell,’ I mind:—well, it is not the first time—many a score times gentle and simple have called me the same, till within the last two years, and I thought it was all over, and I got to heaven already; but there’s a weary bit yet for me. I hope it wo’n’t be long. Now, if parson was here, he’d scold and look pleasant at me, and say, ‘God’s time’s the best time, Margery.’ Well, now, I’ve lost him—God’s will be done. I’ve been a poor sinful body all my days; but I never harmed any more than a curse might, and little ill could that do to any but my own poor self. It’s well it couldn’t; for if it had been able to kill, I should have sent it after many a one, and might again. God help me! I’ll be burnt for a witch some day yet; and, truth to say, I’ve many a time wished I was one,—but that’s all over. I say the Lord’s Prayer different now.”
Here she clasped and raised her lean and withered hands, and said it in a humble whisper on her knees.
Cuthbert was agitated terribly; but he dared not speak, he dared not enter.
“Who shall say,” thought his better mind, “who shall say that the blessed One, who taught his disciples thus to pray, is not present, dimly seen, perhaps, but felt with secret reverence and affection?”
Her prayer said, the old woman put a little earthen pot on the fire, and again seated herself on the stool by the side of it.
“Ah! it’s no merry Christmas,” said she, “here, or any where else; but I have known a worse; and I think this is safe hiding, for the folk all think the place haunted. Well, I must thank God, and make the best of it.”
As she ended these words, she began humming the air of an old Christmas carol, and at last sung, in the mournful voice of age, this ancient fragment:—
At the close he went to the door, and before he entered called her gently by name. The tone of voice in which he spoke had the effect which he intended, and, without any cry of alarm, she rose up quietly and turned round; but she no sooner beheld his military dress than her terror became excessive. It was quite in vain that he attempted to bring himself to her recollection: the fear of being dragged forth and led to the stake was uppermost, and entirely bewildered her. In his person she saw only one of those from whose hands she had so recently escaped, and her shrieks and implorations were agonising to hear. To relieve her he quitted the ruin; and before he was many hundred yards from it had the pain of seeing her on the far side of it hobbling fast towards the cover of the adjoining wood for concealment. He walked to his quarters in a miserable and dejected mood; and as he passed an open church which had apparently been occupied by Parliamentary soldiers, he went in for a moment. It was empty: the tombs and monuments had been broken and their inscriptions defaced: not a pane of glass in the tall windows had escaped destruction: a painting over the altar had been hacked to pieces; and, as if in mockery, the tables of God’s commandments were left on either side plainly legible, and above, in the midst, might be seen, in letters of gold, the words of that message of mercy which the angels of God sang to the shepherds keeping watch by night, when they announced the advent of Messiah,—Peace on earth,—good will towards man.
CHAP. XII.
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.