His host, the humble scrivener, was going about his daily duties, and Will walked with him. Their way led them through an unsavoury lane that was called Hope Alley, and lay hard by King Edward's Stair at Wapping. In passing down this alley they saw before them a sign hanging out, representing a Red Cow, which was the name of a pot-house much frequented by sailors. Will's glance travelling to this gaudy sign, suddenly encountered the gaze of a pair of rolling blood-shot eyes which seemed suddenly and strangely familiar. The next instant he had recognized, beneath the shade of a tarpaulin hat, the bloated visage of the terrible Judge last seen by him in the Assize Hall of Taunton.
Grasping the scrivener by the arm and whispering a few hurried words to him, Will hastened away for the guard; whilst the scrivener entered the house and the room, where the too reckless fugitive had adventured himself in order to indulge once more his intemperate love for strong drink, and found that worthy shrinking back into a corner, his hat pulled far over his eyes, his face hidden as much as he could hide it by a pint pot.
In a moment the house was surrounded by a hooting and yelling crowd. I have heard Will describe the scene a hundred times, and each time I seem to see it more plainly than the last—the cowering, craven coward now shivering and shrinking before men whom he had sworn at, raved at, cursed and brow-beaten, more cowed and terrified than the most miserable of his victims. And verily that crowd would have torn him limb from limb or ever the guards had come at him (for, contrary to the custom of an English mob, this one was bloodthirsty and furious to an extent which can better be imagined than described), had it not been for the action of the train-bands, who forced a way through the hooting mob and got the prisoner safe into a coach, though not before his clothes were torn half off his back, and he had been wounded by many a flying stone, and had shrieked aloud for mercy in his agony and terror.
That very day, after an interview with the Lord Mayor and by his own desire, he was carried to the Tower, but even so he barely escaped the fury of the populace; for when it was known that the coach contained this man so bitterly detested and feared, there were continual and determined attacks made upon it, and the bloated visage was seen from time to time appearing first at one window and then at another, whilst the miserable man clasped his hands and cried aloud for the mercy he never bestowed upon those who had implored it of him.
And thus he entered the Tower a miserable and despairing captive, only a little more than three years after that Bloody Assize with which his name will always be associated. Four months later he perished miserably, despised and hated by all men; and not even left in peace to die, but assailed by all sorts of malicious letters and even gifts which must have made his last days a hell upon earth to him. But enough of that bad man.
We of the West Country heard with stern satisfaction of his end, in the bright spring-tide and the happiness we were all feeling in the wise and just rule of our new Sovereigns. And the tale of how Will Wiseman was the instrument of his final capture, and thus was the means of avenging the miseries his hands had inflicted upon so many here, will always be a favourite one with young and old in Taunton Town.
Men remembered the prognostication of Mother Whale, and how she had prophesied an evil end for him, even as she had prophesied the exile of the tyrant monarch. It seemed, indeed, that in spite of all we had suffered, the Lord had been working on the side of virtue and freedom. The wicked King was disgraced and driven away; the yet more wicked Judge had died in the Tower.
THE END.
Library of Historical Tales.
Dorothy Arden. A Story of England and France Two Hundred Years Ago. By J.M. Callwell. Crown 8vo, cloth extra. Price 4s.
A story of the dragonnades in France in the time of Louis XIV. Also of the persecutions in England under James II., the Monmouth rebellion, the Bloody Assize, and the Revolution.