Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/605

 names for the general. They gave it, and a guard presently returned for Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, and Sir Bernard Gascoigne. The butchers had come into the crowded slaughter-house, and dragged out their selected victims. The men were brought before Fairfax, who (instigated as Clarendon thinks by the inflexible Ireton) told them that after so long and obstinate a defence, it was necessary, for the example of others, that the peace of the kingdom should be no more disturbed, and that some military justice should be done;—those three men must be presently put to death, and they were instantly led into a yard contiguous, where three files of musketeers were drawn up ready for the dreadful duty.

Sir Bernard Gascoigne was a gentleman of Florence, who had just English enough to explain that he required only pen, ink, and paper, so that he might write a letter to the Grand Duke to explain how he had lost his life, and who should inherit his estates. Sir Charles Lucas, the younger brother of a lord, and the heir to his title, had been bred up in the Low Countries, and had served in the cavalry. "He was very brave," says Clarendon, "and in the day of battle a gallant man to look upon and follow, but at all other times and places of a nature not to be lived with, of an ill understanding, of a rough and proud nature, which made him during the time of their being in Colchester more intolerable than the siege, or any fortune that threatened them. Yet they all desired to accompany him in his death." Lisle, compared with Lucas, was as summer to winter. Though fierce to lead and certain to be followed, he had "the softest and most gentle nature imaginable, loved all, and beloved of all, and without a capacity to have an enemy."

When the news of the cruel resolution reached the prisoners, the cavaliers were deeply moved, and Lord Capel instantly prevailed on an officer of their guard to carry a letter to Fairfax, entreating him either to forbear the execution, or that all of them, being equally guilty, might undergo the same sentence. The answer was only an order to the officer to carry out his order, reserving the Italian to the last. The three cavaliers were led forth into the castle courtyard. The men fired, and Lucas fell dead. Seeing that, Sir George Lisle ran to the body, embraced it, kissed the stern rugged face, then stood up, looked at the soldiers' faces, and thinking the men were too far off, told them to come nearer. One of the musqueteers exclaimed:

"I'll warrant you, sir, we hit you."

Lisle replied, smiling:

"Friends, I have been nearer you when you have missed me."

Thereupon they all fired at him, and under that shower of fiery lead he fell instantly without uttering a word. Sir Barnard Gascoigne had already stripped off his doublet, and was expecting his turn, when the officer told him he had orders to carry him back to his friends, "for which mercy he cared not a whit." The council of war had feared that if his life was taken, their friends or children for several generations would be in danger when travelling in Italy.

When, what Clarendon calls, "the bloody sacrifice," was completed, Fairfax and the chief officers went to the town hall to visit the surviving prisoners. The Puritan general treated the Earl of Norwich and Lord Capel courteously, apologised for the necessities of military justice, but said that the lives of all the rest were safe, and that they should be all well treated and disposed of as the Parliament directed. Lord Capel's high courage could not endure this; he bade the Puritans finish their work, and show them the same rigour; upon which there were, says Clarendon, "two or three sharp and bitter replies between him and Ireton, which cost Capel his life a few months after." While in the Tower Capel made a daring escape, but was soon recaptured and beheaded, together with the Duke of Hamilton and the Earl of Holland, on a scaffold before Westminster Hall.

The ruins of Colchester Castle still exist. It is stated to have been built by Edward the Elder. It stands on an eminence to the north of the high street. The splayed loopholed windows and square flat buttresses show Norman work. On the south side courses of Roman tiles and herring-bone work intersect the clay-stone walls: the labels and groins are of Kentish rag or Purbeck stone, all dyed with weather stains and furred with coloured mosses. The western side, Mr. Walcott says, measures one hundred and sixty-six feet, the walls are thirty feet broad at the foundation, and are flanked with north-east and north-west towers. In the south-east bastion is a chapel, now a militia armoury. In the keep were two suites of apartments; the walls of the gateway are all that is left of the approach. The great south gate is still preserved, and there are still visible the grooves for the portcullis and the niche for the warder. There is an earth rampart round the Roman wall on the north and east sides. During the siege the choir of St. Botolph's was destroyed by Fairfax's cannon. St. Martin's Church and St. John's Abbey also suffered greatly, and all the fortifications of Colchester were subsequently dismantled. The Balkon gate and other portions of the old wall are full of round Roman tiles from old Camalodunum, and they gleam out red from among the glossy green ivy.

—it weren't in our home paddock—neither were it in the Four Acre, which the fences are not all I could desire, and cattle, if restless, and out of yummer with flies and what not, has been know'd to work through. Don't let none o' you be startled. Now, then. 'Twere in Spain, actiwally in Spain! If hanybody had ventered to tell me that I, James Lufkin, should one day travel to Sarah Gosser, I should have felt inclined for to punch his head, as