How well do I remember seeing the first consignment of these ghastly trophies passing along the road, and the inn-keepers and such like being forced to nail them up before their doors as a warning and terror to the village. Sometimes the air was rendered foul and pestilential for miles by the hanging corpses and horrid trophies. Women kept within their doors for weeks together, being so filled with horror at the sight; and the whole country was filled with stories of marvellous hairbreadth escapes, or of captures of innocent persons, who were treated with the same cruelty as those who had been in arms—the soldiers scarce taking the trouble to listen to their protests, and brutally telling them that since so many deserving death had escaped, they must needs die in their stead.
What fearful days to fall upon England, who had called herself a free country, and whose people had always believed that the innocent were protected from violence by the strong arm of the law! Alas! we were soon to find that the most fearful things of all were enacted by those who came in the name of Justice and Law.
I forget exactly what day it was that news reached us that the Duke had been captured, and was now on his way to London, where, as all men said, nothing could save him from the wrath of the King. Some said that had he not proclaimed himself King he might have had a chance for his life, but that having done this he had nothing to hope, and would end his life upon the scaffold.
Yet there were numbers of people who declared that he had got off safe to Holland in disguise, and that he who was on his way to London was not the Duke himself, but some follower whose outward aspect was very like, and who had changed clothes with the Duke and allowed himself to be taken, that his lord might safely escape and live in retirement for a while, and then appear again in his kingdom and fight more successfully for his crown. This belief was held by hundreds and thousands of people in our western counties for years and years, and I remember how long it was before the expectation of again seeing the Duke died out. Some maintained to the end of their lives that he still lived, and that he would have come again to save England had not the tyrant monarch been forced to fly, whilst the just William of Orange ruled (with and in right of his wife) in his stead.
But we in Taunton had other things more near and personal to think of than whether or not it was the Duke who was taken. The bloody victors were at our very gates, and none in the town knew who would escape when once inquisition for blood was about to be made. Was it not in Taunton that the Duke had been proclaimed King? Was it not in Taunton that he had received such royal honours, and such help in money and men? Were not many of his leading officers Taunton men? And if such signal vengeance had been taken already on the innocent rabble, who had acted ignorantly, how should the citizens of Taunton hope to escape?
Well do I remember that Thursday morning when we heard the people in the streets shouting out,—
"Colonel Kirke is coming! Colonel Kirke is coming! God have mercy upon us! Kirke and his Lambs are on their way!"
I rushed out into the streets to hear the news, and even as I did so I met a horseman riding into the yard of the inn, as though he came from the army. But I stayed not to ask news of him, for the people were crying out that twenty men were to be hanged in the city that day, and that Master John Mason was of that number.
All the town was in a terror and tumult, for Master John Mason was a man of most excellent repute, and though he had taken arms in the Duke's cause, he had only fought at Sedgemoor; and that he of all men should be a victim was a thing not to be borne.