Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/459

1549.] army was Welsh, the Vicar of St Thomas's; a parish through which the railroad passes by the river-side in front of the town. A worthy parish priest of the old type, Welsh was at once a good believing Catholic, a stout wrestler and cudgel-player, a famous shot with bow, crossbow, and handgun—'a good woodman and a hardy,' who had brought down in his day many a noble buck in the glens of Haldon, and levelled, it is likely, many a ranger from Powderham with his quarter-staif; 'such a one as would not give his head for the polling, nor his beard for the washing;' and withal 'very courteous and gentle of demeanour, and of honest parentage.'

This man for his sins had been a great hater of the Prayer-book, and a special doer in the siege. He had saved life more than once, but he had also taken life. 'One Kingsmill, a tanner of Chagford,' was taken by the rebels with a letter from the mayor to Lord Russell, and brought before him for judgment. The vicar laboured in his priestly calling to make his prisoner a rebel, and not succeeding, had hanged him on an elmtree outside the west gate of the city. And now his own time was come. 'It was pity of him,' men thought, for he had fine gifts and a fine nature; but there was no help for it; Kingsmill's death lay at his door; a court-martial found it there; and he accepted his fate like a gentleman. A beam was run out from St Thomas's church tower, from which they swung him off into the air; and there Hooker saw him hanging in chains in 'his Popish apparel,' 'a holy-water bucket and sprinklers, a sacring bell, and a pair of