No Quarter! Part 17

"So you've turned your back upon the King!"

It was Reginald who said this, having spurred up alongside the other before parting.

"Rather say the King has turned his back upon the people," was Eustace's rejoinder. "After such behaviour as I've just been witness to, by his orders and authority, I think I am justified in turning my back upon him."

"Oh! that's your way of putting it. Well; it may justify you in the eyes of your new friends here--very warm friends all at once?"--this with a sneer--"but what will your father think? He won't like it, I'm sure."

"I daresay he won't. If not, I can't help it."

"And don't seem to care either! How indifferent you've grown to family feeling! and in such a short s.p.a.ce of time. You used to pa.s.s for the most affectionate of sons--a very paragon of filial duty; and now--"

"And now," interrupted the ex-courtier, becoming impatient at being thus lectured, "whatever I may be, I'm old enough, and think myself wise enough, to manage my own affairs, without needing counsel from any one-- even from my sage cousin, Reginald."

"As you like, Eust. But you'll repent what you're doing, yet."

"If I should, Rej, it won't be with any blame to you. You can go your way, as I will mine."

"Ah! Yours will bring you to ruin--like enough your neck upon the block or into a halter!"

"I'll risk that. If there's to be hanging and beheading--which I hope there will not--it needn't be all on one side. So far, that you are on hasn't had the advantage in the beheading line, and's not likely. They who struck off Strafford's head might some day do the same with the King's own. And he would deserve it, going on in this way."

"By Heaven?" cried Reginald, now becoming infuriated, "the King will wear his head, and crown too, long enough to punish every traitor--every base renegade as yourself."

The angry bitterness of his speech was not all inspired by loyalty to King or throne. Those fair faces above had something to do with it; for the ladies were still there, listening, and he knew it.

Never was Eustace Trevor nearer to drawing sword, not to do it. But it was his kinsman--cousin; how could he shed his blood? That, too, late so freely, generously offered in his defence! Still, to be stigmatised as a "base renegade," he could not leave such speech unanswered, nor the anger he felt unexpressed.

"If you were not my cousin, Rej, I would kill you!"

He spoke in a low tone, trembling with pa.s.sion.

"_You_ kill _me_! Ha-ha! Then try, if you like--if you dare!"

And the King's officer made a movement as if to unsheath his sword.

"You know I dare. But I won't. Not here--not now."

It was with the utmost effort Eustace Trevor controlled himself. He only succeeded by thinking of what had been before. For it was no feeling of fear that hindered him crossing his sword with his cousin, but the sentiment hitherto restraining him.

"Oh, well!" rejoined Reginald. "We'll meet again--may be on the field of battle. And if so, by G--! I'll make you rue this--show you no mercy!"

"You will when you're asked for it."

"You needn't ask. When you see my sword out, you'll hear the cry, 'No Quarter!'"

"When I hear that, I'll cry it too."

Not another word pa.s.sed between them, Reginald wheeling round and galloping off after the soldiers. And from that hour, in his heart, full of jealous vengeance, the resolve, should he ever encounter his cousin in the field of fight, to show him no quarter!

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

WAR IN FULL FURY.

An interval of some weeks after the scenes described, and the war, long imminent, was on. All over England men had declared cause and taken sides; the battle of Edgehill had been fought, and blood spilled in various encounters elsewhere. For besides the two chief forces in the field, every s.h.i.+re, almost every hundred, had its parties and partisans, who waged _la pet.i.te guerre_ with as much vigour, and more virulence, than the grand armies with generals commanding. Many of the country gentry retired within the walled towns; they who did not, fortifying their houses when there was a plausibility of being able to defend them, and garrisoning them with their friends and retainers. The roads were no longer safe for peaceful travellers, but the reverse. When parties met upon them, strangers to one another, it was with the hail, "Who are you for--King or Parliament?" If the answers were adverse, it was swords out, and a conflict, often commencing with the cry, "No Quarter!"

to end in retreat, surrender, or death.

Looking at the allegiance of the respective s.h.i.+res to the two parties that divided the nation, one cannot help observing the wonderful similitude of their sentiments then as now--almost a parallelism. In those centres where the cavaliers or malignants held sway, their modern representatives--Tories and Jingoes--are still in the ascendant. With some changes and exceptions, true; places which have themselves changed by increase in population, wealth, refinement, and enlightenment--in short, all the adjuncts of civilisation. And in all these, or nearly all, the altered political sentiment has been from the bad to the better, from the low belief in Divine rights and royal prerogatives to a higher faith in the rights of the people, if not its highest and purest form--Republicanism.

From this standard rather has there been retrogression since that glorious decade when it was the Government of England. At the Restoration its spirit, with many of its staunchest upholders, took flight to a land beyond the Atlantic, there to breathe freely, live a new life, call into existence and nourish a new nation, ere long destined to dictate the policy and control the action of every other, in the civilised world. This "sure as eggs are eggs;" unless the old leaven of human wickedness--not inherent in man's heart, as shallow thinkers say, but inherited from an ancestry debased by the rule of prince and priest--unless the old weeds of this manhood's debas.e.m.e.nt spring up again from the old seeds and roots, despite all tramplings down and teachings to the contrary.

It may be so. The devil is still alive on the earth, busy as ever misleading and corrupting the sons of men; in many places and countries, alas! too triumphantly successful, even in that land _outre mer_, over the Atlantic.

At the breaking out of our so-called, but miscalled, "Great Rebellion,"

in the belt of s.h.i.+res bordering Wales, the Royalists were in the majority; perhaps not so much in numbers as in strength and authority.

The same with Wales itself; not from any natural belief in, or devotion to, the thing called "Crown," but because this spirited people were under the domination of certain powerful and wealthy proprietors of the Royalist party, who controlled their action, as their political leanings. Of this Monmouths.h.i.+re offers an apt ill.u.s.tration, where the Earl of Worcester, Ragland's lord, held undisputed sway to the remotest corners of the county.

Still, Wales was not all for the King; and where such influence failed to be exerted, as in Pembroke and Glamorgan in the south, and some s.h.i.+res and districts of the north, the natural instincts of the Welsh prompted them to declare for liberty, as they have lately done at the polls. From any stigma that may have attached to them in the seventeenth century they have n.o.bly redeemed themselves in the nineteenth.

Of the bordering counties, Salop, as might be expected, stood strong for the King. The subserviency of its people--for centuries bowing head and bending knee to the despotic Lords of the Marches, who held court at Ludlow--had become part of their nature; hence an easy transfer of their obeisance to Royalty direct.

The s.h.i.+re of Worcester, closely connected with Salop in trade and other relations.h.i.+ps, largely shared its political inclinings; the city of Worcester itself being noted as a nest of "foul malignants," till purged of them by the "crowning mercy."

As for Hereford county, with its semi-pastoral, semi-agricultural population, it espoused the side natural to such; which, I need hardly say, was not that of liberty. Throughout all ages, and in all countries, the bucolic mind has been the most easily misled, and given strongest support to tyranny and obstruction. But for it the slimy Imperialism of France would never have existed, and but for the same the slimier imitation of it in England would not have been attempted.

Luckily, on this side of the English Channel there is not so much of the base material as on the other. When the Jew of Hughenden travestied country squire, patronising and bestowing prize smock-frocks on poor old d.i.c.k Robinson, he mistook the voting influence of d.i.c.k's farmer-master.

It no longer controls the destinies of this land, and will never more do so if the Parliament now in power but acts up to the spirit which has so placed it. _Nous verrons_!

Returning to the times of England's greatest glory, and the s.h.i.+re of Hereford, this, though strongly Royalist, was not wholly so. Many of the common people, especially on the Gloucester s.h.i.+re side, were otherwise disposed, and among the gentry were several n.o.ble exceptions, as the Kyrles, Powells, and Hoptons; and n.o.blest of all. Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Bryan--relentless iconoclast. If the name of Sir Richard Walwyn be not found in the ill.u.s.trious list, it is because the writer of romance has thought fit to bestow upon this valiant knight a fict.i.tious _nom de guerre_.

But the western s.h.i.+re ent.i.tled to highest honours for its action in this grand throe of the nation's troubles was undoubtedly Gloucester-- glorious Gloucester. When the lamp of liberty was burning dim and low elsewhere over the land, it still shone bright upon the Severn's banks; a very blaze in its two chief cities, Gloucester and Bristol. In both it was a beacon, holding out hope to the friends of freedom, near and afar, struggling against its foes, in danger of being whelmed, as mariners by the maddened ocean.

To the latter city, as a seaport, the simile may be more appropriate, though the former is equally ent.i.tled to a share in its credit. But Bristol most claims our attention now, as it was in 1642, under the mayoralty of Aldworth. A main _entrepot_ and emporium of commerce with the outside world, it was naturally emanc.i.p.ated from the narrow-minded views and prejudices of our insular nationality; not a few of its citizens having so far become enlightened as to believe the world had not been created solely for the delectation of royal sybarites, and the suffering of their subjects and slaves. Indeed, something more than the majority of the citizens of Bristol held this belief; and, as a consequence, showed their preference for the Parliament at the earliest hour that preferences came to be declared. So, when Colonel Ess.e.x, son of the Earl of like name--Lord General of the Parliamentary army--was sent thither commissioned as its military governor, no one offered to dispute his authority; instead, he was received with open arms.

But ere long the free-thinking Bristolians made a discovery, which not only surprised but alarmed them. Neither more nor less than that the man deputed by the Parliament to protect and guard their interests showed rather the disposition to betray them. If living in these days, Colonel Ess.e.x would have been a Whig, with a leaning towards Toryism.

As Governor of Bristol in 1642 he inclined so far to Cavalierism as to make boast of not being a Crophead, while further favouring those who wore their locks long and prated scornfully of Puritans and Quakers. At the time there was a host of these long-haired gentry in Bristol, prisoners whom Stamford had taken at Hereford, under _parole_, and the indulgent colonel not only kept their company, but joined them over their cups in sneers at the plebeian Roundheads, who lacked the gentility of blackguardism.

Luckily for the good cause, the tongue of this semi-renegade outran his prudence; his talk proving too loud to escape being heard by the Parliament, whose ears it soon reached, with the result that one fine evening, while in carousal with some of his Cavalier friends, he was summoned to the door, to see standing there a man of stern mien, who said,--

"Colonel Ess.e.x! 'Tis my disagreeable duty to place you under arrest."

"Place me under arrest!" echoed the military governor of Bristol, his eyes in amazement swelling up in their sockets. "What madman are you, sirrah?"

"Not so much madman as you may be supposing. Of my name, as also reason for intruding upon you so inopportunely, I take it this will be sufficient explanation."

At which the stern man handed him a piece of folded parchment, stamped with a grand seal--not the King's, but one bearing the insignia of the Parliament.

With shaking fingers Ess.e.x broke it open and read:--