Fellows who had been "insolent" to his Majesty's representative, had been shipped off to the plantations. The corporal had favoured Luke with the opinion that the King would get so much money by this collection as to put him above the need to ask Parliament for another shilling.
The pot-bellied man left the vicarage soon after I received this account, taking with him fifty pounds, and the vicar retired to his study, perhaps for prayer.
In the course of the morning Mr. Butharwick came over to see me, bringing a summons from the commissioner, requiring my father's attendance at the White Hart, so about one o'clock I joined the company assembled there. The commissioner, Tunstall by name, as we learned from the reading of his warrant under the Great Seal, which he allowed some of the gentlemen to inspect, sat at a table, with a scribe on his left hand, four or five of his musketeers standing behind him. There were seats for the men of rank and condition, but two-thirds of the floor were filled by a standing crowd. After the reading of the warrant, Tunstall made a long pompous speech, setting forth the necessities of the King, the duty of his subjects, and the trouble caused in the realm by factious and treasonable persons, who had abused their privileges and his Majesty's leniency by contriving to delay the voting of supplies, urgently required for the defence of the kingdom, and the dignity of the Crown. The short of it was the king wanted money badly, and we were to find it, or the consequences would be disagreeable. The commissioner looked at his papers, and then said that the first name on his list was that of George Stovin of Totlets, assessed at five hundred pounds. Squire Stovin rose, and spoke—
"It is not for me to judge of his Majesty's requirements, or to give an opinion as to the propriety of this unwonted way of meeting them, but only to say that the demand made on the gentry and farmers of Crowle—and on the gentry and farmers of Axholme generally—is to the last degree ill-timed. Hundreds of acres in various parts of the Isle, which last year bore heavy crops, are reduced to swamp by the action of foreign invaders, who are under his Majesty's protection. In this part of the Isle, many of us have been brought within a little of beggary. I myself have had the cottages in which my labourers lived swept away, and most of my barns and outbuildings. Scores of my sheep have been drowned—my crops are lost. It is monstrous to ask me to give money to the King. I want compensation from the King."
There followed a loud rumble of assent to Squire Stovin's speech. As soon as it ceased, the commissioner gave some order in a low voice to the corporal, and then said—
"That treasonable talk will cost thee more than five hundred pounds, thou impudent rebel. I allow thee one hour to send and get what may be wanted for a sojourn in Lincoln castle."
At the word, a musketeer seized the squire, and tied his hands behind him. A growl of angry voices was heard all over the room, and, a tumult might have happened, but, at some signal which I did not perceive, a score musketeers entered by the door behind the assemblage.
Squire Stovin called out: "Will some friend be kind enough to go to tell Mrs. Stovin I am going a journey, and want my portmanteau?"
"No man quits the room except by my permission," bawled the commissioner, as a number of gentlemen turned to do the squire's errand.
Daft Jack, the town idiot, shambled forward from the rear to the table.