"Higher and higher the fog was scorched upward by the fierce heat below, glowing through and through with red, reflected glare, till it arched itself into one vast dome of red-hot iron, fit roof for all the madness below; and beneath it, miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundry Church shining red—the symbol of the old Faith—looking down in stately wonder and sorrow upon the fearful birth-throes of a new age."
When morning dawned on Monday, help really seemed at hand, and five thousand men obeyed the call for the posse comitatûs, and, furnished with a short staff and a strip of white linen round their arm as a badge, did good service for the restoration of order. Shops were all closed, business suspended, and the soldiers, and the naval and military pensioners, under Captain Cook, cleared the streets, and peace seemed in a fair way of being restored.
Peace, and at what a price! Wreck and ruin everywhere; Queen's Square, a mass of burning rubbish, strewn, too, with the charred bodies of those who had fallen in the fray. At night, by order of the Mayor, the churches and houses were lighted up, and the soldiers guarded the streets.
Transcriber's note: The footnote below, without an anchor, was placed at this point in the book.
Vide "Charles Kingsley's Life," vol. i., p. 21.
But it was not till after the fifth of November, when an outburst of Protestant and Anti-Reform zeal was expected, that the law-abiding people of Bristol and its surrounding neighbourhood felt safe. During the whole of that week watch and ward was kept, and all demonstrations were repressed.
The Bristol Riots were over, but the day of reckoning came; and for many weeks there was nothing thought of but the restoration of lost property, the finding of dead bodies hid in the ruins of Queen's Square, and the apprehension of the ringleaders in the rebellion.
Colonel Brereton was charged by the Mayor with not acting up to his orders, and a military inquiry was appointed to try the truth of the Mayor's statement, and held at the Hall of the Merchant Venturers, and it ended in Colonel Brereton's being put under arrest, previous to his trial by court martial.
It was some time before Gilbert was fit for any exertion, and the doctor insisted on quiet and complete rest. His whole system had received a shock, and the effects of the blow were seen by constant headache, and an irritability and depression very unlike himself.