“Well?” said Hilary, anxiously, as the man hesitated. “Did they harm him?”
“It was old Parson Pralph walking back from Hereford to his Vicarage at Tarrington.”
“I remember him, an old man of more than four-score years,” said Hilary. “He had white hair and a long white beard.”
“That’s the man,” said Zachary, gloomily. “He’d been Vicar of Tarrington over forty year. Well, one of Massey’s soldiers stopped him, saying, ‘Who art thou for?’ On whieh he honestly answered, ‘For God and the King,’ and the soldier without more ado raised his pistol and shot him dead.”
Hilary turned pale, the same sick horror that she had felt at Canon Frome on hearing of Colonel Woodhouse’s barbarous conduct at Hopton Castle overpowered her again, and as she walked on slowly to the Hill Farm her eyes were dim with tears.
The summer brought them the news of the King’s defeat at Marston Moor, but the more distant hostilities really affected them less than the smaller troubles in their own near neighbourhood.
In the autumn of 1644 there was once more grievous trouble at Canon Frome, for, notwithstanding the protection of the King’s letter, the Manor was attacked by a party of Royalists, who insisted on converting the house into a garrison.
Sir Richard Hopton resisted this intolerable invasion of his rights, but superior force triumphed, and the poor old knight was seized and cast into prison, while the Manor was at once garrisoned by a force whieh proved the scourge of the neighbourhood.
As the luckless farmers remarked, “God had sent them good harvests of hay and corn, but what was the use when they had but the labour of mowing and reaping?”
The crops had been safely gathered in, but the Canon Frome garrison plundered the farms, and if any man was bold enough to demand compensation, or to resist the seizure of his goods—well, he found that silent acquiescence would have been more prudent.