Chapter 27 - No Quarter! by Mayne Reid
A City of Refuge
Of the Foresters who figure in our tale, Rob Wilde, Jerky Jack, and Winny were not the only ones who had found their way into Bristol. Most of Sir Richard Walwyn’s troopers were Foresters. But the master of Hollymead was himself there, with his daughters, their maid Gwenthian, and others of the family servants.
Why he had exchanged his Forest home for a residence in town—that, too, in a city under military occupation, threatened with siege and all its inconveniences—has been already in part explained. With the commencement of hostilities country life became unsafe, more especially for people of quality and those who had anything to lose. Parties of armed men penetrated into the most remote districts, demanding contributions and levying them—at first in the name of the King. Naturally, this aroused the spirit of retaliation, and dictated reprisals; so that in time both sides became more or less blamable for filibusterism. The weight of evidence, however, shows that, as a rule, the Parliamentarian officers did all in their power to restrain, while those of the Royalist army not only encouraged but gloried in it—themselves taking a hand. A Prince had set them the lesson, making robbery fashionable, and they were neither backward nor slow in profiting by it.
As a sample of the spirit in which the Cavaliers made war, thus wrote Sir John, afterwards Lord Byron—the same truculent ruffian already alluded to, commanding a body of the King’s horse—“I put them all to the sword, which I find to be the best way to proceed with these kind of people, for mercy to them is cruelty.”
The gallant defenders of Barthomley Church were “these kind of people,” whom this monster, ungrammatical as inhuman, had massacred to a man!
Fighting under such faith, no wonder the lex talionis soon displayed itself on both sides, and in bitterest, most relentless form. Not only had the main routes of travel become unsafe, but sequestered country roads; while the sanctity of private houses was invaded, and women subjected to insult, oft even to the disregarding of their honour. This was conspicuously the case in the districts where the Cavaliers had control, no decent woman daring to show herself abroad. Even high-born ladies feared encountering them, if having father or brother on the Parliamentary side. Some dames, however, who favoured their side, were bold and free enough with them; and a very incarnation of female shamelessness was the strumpet following of Rupert.
As known, Ambrose Powell had at first thought of fortifying Hollymead, and holding it with his servants, retainers, and such of the Foresters as he could rally around him; of whom he had reason to believe many would respond to his call. The haw-haw around the house was suggestive of his doing so—itself an outer line of defence, which could be easily strengthened. It but needed a parapet of gabions, or fascines, to render it unassailable, save in the face of a scathing fire. And he had the wherewith to deliver this, having long expected the coming storm, and stored up materials to meet it. One of the chambers of Hollymead House was a very armoury and ordnance room, full of the best weapons of the time, which his great wealth had enabled him to provide—muskets of the snap-hans fire, pistols, pikes, and halberds. They but wanted putting into hands capable of making efficient use of them.
And he himself had but waited for Sir Richard Walwyn’s advice, as to whether he should attempt holding Hollymead, or abandon it. He knew he must do one or the other. His partisanship, long since proclaimed and known beyond the borders of the Forest, with the echoes returning, so admonished him.
“Could it be held, think you?” he asked of the soldier knight, on the evening of his arrival with Eustace Trevor—Sir Richard and his host alone closeted in conversation.
“Impossible!” was the answer, backed up by convincing reasons. “Were it a structure of stone, I might say Yes, easily enough; with a force numerous enough to garrison it. But those wooden beams, and roofs dry as tinder—they’d be set ablaze by the first arrow sent at them.”
The reader may fancy Sir Richard’s allusion to arrows was a figure of speech, or anachronism. It was neither. For this primitive weapon, almost universal among savage men, was not then obsolete, or out of the hands of the civilised. In the army of Essex—the Lord General himself—was a corps of bowmen; and others elsewhere. The belief in the bent yew stick and feathered shaft, that had gained for England such renown at Cressy and Agincourt, was still strong in the days of her more glorious struggle—the Great Rebellion.
But it was not to shafts of this kind the knight had reference; instead, arrows projected from muskets and arquebusses for setting fire to assailed forts and houses—a species of ordnance which then formed part of the equipment of every well-appointed corps d’armée.
With the master of Hollymead the argument was conclusive. He saw his house could not be held, with any hope of successful defence, if attacked by a force strong and determined. And that such would come against it he had been as good as sure, ever since that hour when Reginald Trevor placed in his hands the letter of Loan by Privy Seal—altogether sure, when Lunsford, later, came to make the levy itself.
Only a day or two longer had he remained in it, to pack up his plate, with other cherished penates, and have them transmitted to a place of safety—to Gloucester—the nearest city promising asylum to the harried partisans of the Parliament—going thither himself with his family.
He had, however, made but short stay there. The seaport of Bristol beyond was a “city of refuge” more to his mind, because of a house in it that offered him hospitality—a sister’s—and under its roof he and his were sojourning on that night of dread danger, averted almost as soon as apprehended.
Nor in that crisis was the refugee from Dean Forest himself inactive. When men stood gazing with eyes full of keen apprehension at the fire-glare over Durdham Down, Ambrose Powell was moving briskly through Bristol’s streets, urging its citizens to arm and defend it. Along with him a clergyman, who added his appeal with eloquent tongue and passionate speech. He was Tombes, of Leominster, who had been mobbed in that town of woolstaplers, and driven out of it by drunken roughs; no doubt the progenitors of those who in the late Parliamentary election in like manner dishonoured themselves.
To Darwin’s transmutation and improvement theory, the human animals of Leominster seem to be an exception; especially as regards the improvement, for its Jingo cur of to-day is rather a falling off from the quality of his prototype—the Cavalier wolf of the Great war time.