Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/220

210[January 30, 1869] losing six ships. Van Tromp then sailed through the Channel proudly, with a broom at his masthead to show that he had swept the English from the seas. Blake, however, was no man to bear this; three months after he swooped at a Dutch convoy of merchantmen of eighty vessels, and captured eleven men-of-war and thirty merchantmen—a glorious prize. Blake was as honest as he was brave, and after all the galleons and plate vessels he had taken did not leave five hundred pounds behind him. The Royalists cast Blake's bones out of Westminster Abbey, but they could not erase his name from our history.

Straight as a black-plumed arrow the crow bears on from Bridgewater to the Isle of Athelney, once a swampy forest, where King Alfred sheltered himself for a year in a neatherd's cottage from the Danes. From these river-side marshes he made those forays on the Danes that culminated in his great Wiltshire victory. While at Athelney, tradition has it that he lost a favourite jewel of gold and enamel, which had been fastened to a necklace. Dropped in the underwood, trodden into the river sand, fallen among the rushes or the ferns, the ornament remained for centuries in the Athelney earth, unclaimed, unseen, till, extraordinary to relate, it was turned up by chance in the seventeenth century. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum, and is one of our most precious relics. Oval in shape, and of Byzantine workmanship, it bears the inscription, "Alfred had me made."

The crow pauses over Halswell House to recal an old tradition about the Tyntes—an old crusading tradition it is, for the family has been planted here on the Milverton road longer than the oaks of their domain. The first Tynte, a young knight of the Arundel family, fought bravely at Ascalon, riding down the Saracens till the white housings of his horse were bordered crimson deep with Infidel blood. Richard Cœur de Lion, who had observed him hewing among the Moslem sabres, declared that the maiden knight had borne himself like a lion, and had done work enough for six crusaders, whereupon he conferred on him for arms, a lion argent on a field gules, between six crosslets of the first, and for motto, "Tynctus cruore Saraceno."

The crow flies faster as it approaches Taunton, till its broad wings flap rejoicingly over the pleasant town above the river Tone. The landscape is purely English; the vale, studded with orchards, is green with pastures, cottages, manor-houses, and village spires are scattered over it "in gay abundance" to the very foot of the blue Quantock and Blackdown hills, that rise like huge waves in the far horizon. Taunton used to be famous for its cloth manufacture, and the vale was so fertile with "the zun and zoil" alone, that there was a quaint Somersetshire saying mentioned by Fuller: Ch' was born at Taunton Dean; where should I be born else?

The crow has only to alight on St. Mary's rich-carved tower to gather up as many legends as there are grains of wheat in a corn-field. Early in the civil wars the town was besieged by Sir Richard Granville and eight thousand licentious and rapacious Cavaliers, while Cromwell was busy at Windsor preparing for the blow shortly to be struck at Naseby. Taunton, tormented with ceaseless fire, though half taken and half burned, still held out under Blake. Many an anxious reconnoitre must Blake have made in those days from St. Mary's or St. James's towers to see where the enemy swarmed thicker round the earthworks, where the cannon blazed most, or where the hot sally of the townsmen was being most strenuously pushed forward towards the Royalist tents. Colonel Weldon was at last sent by Fairfax with four thousand men, and Granville, dreading the approach of the main Puritan body, raised the siege. From St. Mary's towers Blake must have seen, with calm delight, the enemy's masses of foot slowly loosen and scatter over the valley. But the fever had only slackened for an interval. Granville, reinforced by three thousand horse, under the dashing Goring, soon again advanced to Taunton, and shut up Weldon and his men in the half ruined town. After the heavy blow at Naseby, Fairfax, however, drove Goring's Cavaliers from Taunton, beat them at Lamport, and took Bridgewater, with a king's garrison of two thousand six hundred men.

In this second siege, when the Cavaliers were again raging round the town, Blake behaved like a Roman of the old rock. The streets round the Priory and King Ina's Castle were soon mere hulks of shattered walls and half destroyed roofs. Ten thousand Cavaliers raged outside the ramparts, shouting for the blood of these resolute and dangerous Puritans. Shot and powder grew rapidly scarce, and the fire from the town perceptibly slackened, except at those volcanic moments when Goring tried to storm. Food, too, grew scarce. No droves of oxen now from the valley, no fat sheep from Mendip Downs. The soldiers became pale and hollow-eyed, the women silent and hopeless, the children querulous and fretful. Blake had already announced his intention of putting the garrison on rations of horseflesh. There was only one hog left in the town, and this animal was too useful to be eaten. Poor wretch! led round the walls daily, it was whipped at intervals, to induce the Cavaliers to think that fresh supplies had been secretly thrown in.

The people's spirit never failed. As for Blake, he swore he would eat his boots before he surrendered, though the enemy had shown their fierce faces already at a practicable breach, and had even planted cannon in part of the suburbs. At last the storm begun to clear; one May day the enemy's fire relaxed. There were shouts and counter shouts; the king's banners receded; the tents were lifted. Fairfax came dashing in. The town was relieved; the siege was over. That eleventh of May remained a festival for a century after that. After the Restoration, when every turncoat was drinking the king's