Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/221

Charles Dickens] health on his knees, the Taunton men kept this holiday with stubborn faith and truth. The court, vexed at this, and roused by Tory remonstrances from Somersetshire, filled up the Taunton moat, and demolished the wall that held held out so gallantly, backed by the brave Somersetshire hearts behind it. The puritanical fervour was kept up in Taunton by the preaching and exhortation of that celebrated Dissenter, Joseph Alleine, author of the still well-known tract "The Alarm to the Unconverted." He was thrown into prison by the Cavaliers, and died worn out by toil and persecution; but his precepts were not forgotten.

No wonder, then, that when Monmouth arrived he was eagerly welcomed as a deliverer from the Papists. Every door and window in Taunton was adorned with flowers. The men wore green boughs in their hats. A procession of girls presented Monmouth with an embroidered flag woven with royal emblems. It was here evil advisers urged the son of Lucy Walters to allow himself to be proclaimed king in the market-place; King Monmouth—within twenty-four hours he had set a price on the head of his hook-nosed uncle, and forbidden people to pay the usurper's taxes. As the doomed army marched on the twenty-first of June from Taunton, Ferguson, the duke's worst adviser, spy and a conspirator, waved his sword and cried out to the Taunton townspeople in the craziness of vanity—

"Look at me—you have heard of me. I am Ferguson, the famous Ferguson, the Ferguson for whose head many hundred pounds have been offered."

And this was the duke's prime minister—fitting minister for such a pretender!

After Sedgemoor, the dreadful vengeance of James fell fiercely on Taunton. Faversham left at Bridgewater, Colonel Percy Kirke, a cruel licentious soldier, who had served against the Moors at Tangier, and acquired there all the African's sensuality and hardheartedness. He had persecuted the Jews, flogged, and even murdered, his soldiers, and extorted bribes; his regiment, the most savage and dissolute in the service, was known ironically as Kirke's Lambs. They bore on their flag a Paschal Lamb as a sign they had fought against the Infidel. Taunton trembled when this monster entered the town, followed by two carts full of wounded and groaning rebels, and by a drove of pale prisoners chained two and two. That same night many of Monmouth's men were hung without a trial from the sign-post of the White Hart. No shrive, no leave-taking. They were strangled like dogs by the mocking and brutal soldiers. The officers of Kirke's regiment caroused at the windows while the executions went on, and drunk a health every time a rebel was thrown from the ladder. When the poor wretches' legs quivered, Colonel Kirke ordered the drums to strike up. "We'll give the rebels," he said, "music for their dancing."

One poor fellow they hung and cut down twice. Each time he was asked if he repented of his treason, and on his saying no, that if the thing was to do again, he would do it, they hove him up. The third time they let him die, and so ended his agony. The butcher who quartered the bodies that were to be sent to the villages all round Sedgemoor stood ankle-deep in blood. One degraded fellow suspected of leaning to Monmouth, they compelled to assist in steeping the rebels' limbs in pitch. Macaulay in his powerful way says: "He afterwards returned to his plough, but a mark like that of Cain was upon him. He was known through his village by the horrible name of Tom Boilman. The rustics long continued to relate that though he had by his sinful and shameful deed saved himself from the vengeance of the Lambs, he had not escaped the vengeance of a higher power. In a great storm he flew for shelter under an oak, and was there struck dead by lightning." It is said that Kirke put one hundred prisoners to death, the week which followed the battle. The savage was at last recalled by James, chiefly because he had sold safe conducts to rich fugitives, who were willing to embark for New England.

But Taunton had no reason to rejoice when the sound of Kirke's drums died away down the valley, for the Bloody Assize was about to commence, and Jefferies had just accepted the Great Seal. King James, in parting, had presented him with a blood-stone ring, earnest of future favours. In Hampshire he had condemned an amiable lady to be burned alive for merely sheltering two fugitives. It was reported that at Dorchester, when the clergyman preached mercy in an assize sermon, Jefferies had grimly grinned. In a few days after he hung seventy-four persons. He advanced by degrees to the full harvest of death. All the time the judicial butchery was going on, he swore, blustered, laughed, and joked like a drunken man. He roared that he could smell a Presbyterian forty miles off. "That impudent rebel," he shouted to a contumacious prisoner, "to reflect on the king's evidence! I see thee, villain—I see thee already with the halter round thy neck." One poor trembling wretch said he was on the parish. "Then I'll ease the parish of the burden," Jefferies said, "hang him!" He even boasted that he had hung more traitors than all the judges since the Conquest. Many of the rebels died very bravely. Abraham Holmes, an old Cromwellian, having had his arm shattered at Sedgemoor, amputated it himself, and apologised for going awkwardly up the ladder. A lad of family named Hewling died with such calm fortitude, that his conduct touched even the soldiers.

When Jefferies entered Taunton, the pen where the sheep to be slaughtered lay thickest, he declared openly in his charge that it would not be his fault if he did not depopulate the place. The poor girls who had presented the standard to Monmouth were all thrown into prison, though some of the poor little things were children under ten years of age. They had only carried the flag at the request of their