It so chanced, that the first thing on which the eyes of Sir Roger rested, when he entered the parsonage, was a glass case, or cabinet, in which, among other ancient relics, was a small crucifix, exquisitely wrought in ivory. The sight of this inflamed his zeal to the boiling pitch; and declaring that so great an abomination could only be punished by the utter destruction of the dwelling in which it was found, he called in two or three assistants, whom he judged qualified to overlook the books on the shelves, to the end that any godly ones might be saved from the general ruin;—declaring, at the same time, that all the silver, and the gold, and the raiment, and the furniture, and the pictures, and the vessels, of what sort soever, whether in hall or kitchen, were polluted, and must be consumed, and denouncing the wrath of God on any of his followers who should presume, like Achan, to appropriate a single article of the unhallowed heap. Accordingly, on the lawn before the windows, a huge fire was made of all these goods, which were cast forth from the windows; the shell only of the house being spared for the use of such godly minister as the Parliament might appoint.
The attention of Sir Roger and the few zealots with him was confined to the contents of the library: not a few valuables, however, from other parts of the mansion, were stolen and secreted by the sly rogues of the squadron. But it so chanced that, as the house was spared, in a concealed recess, behind a false wainscot, his family plate and a few heirlooms were preserved. Of five hundred volumes, however, only three copies of the Bible, also one work in folio, two small thin quartos, and a heap of loose pamphlets of a controversial nature, written by Puritans, escaped the sentence of fire. Upon the same pile, and doomed to blaze in the same flame, were thrown fine copies of the ancient fathers; the works of sound Protestant divines, and ponderous lives and legends of Romish saints; the tomes of Bacon, and old worthless folios on astrology and divination; the plays and poems produced by the genius of a Shakspeare and a Spenser, and the interminable and prosaic romances which, in the preceding age, our ancestors had found leisure and patience to peruse.
During the night, Juxon was confined as a prisoner in one of the out-houses in his own yard, and, in the morning, he was mounted on a lean, bony cart-horse, without saddle or bridle, and led by a small escort to Warwick, where, before he was committed to the gaol of the Castle, he was subjected to the odious and vile insults of an examination before a Committee of Religion. Three witnesses appeared against him: two of these were base knaves from his own parish, and the third was from Coventry.
Thomas Slugg, the first of these, a lazy hypocrite, who found it easier to affect the office of an itinerant singer of psalms than to dig, deposed that Parson Juxon was an enemy to all godly persons, and a teacher of falsehoods, caring nothing for the souls of his people; and, as a proof, stated that, when, on one occasion, he, the witness, had asked him, “whether there were many or few that should be saved?” he had turned his back upon him, and entered the church saying,—
“What is that to thee? follow thou me.”
Another, who was a turned-off journeyman of the blacksmith’s, deposed that he saw Parson Juxon one day in a field behind his own garden casting the bar and hammer; and that he, the parson, threw a bar, and a heavy stone, and a sledge hammer, and that the smith, and two farmers, and one Strong, a warrener, threw against him.
The third was no other than the witch-finder from Coventry, who swore that the parson consorted with dealers in magic and the black art; that books on those arts were found in his house, and burned (this was confirmed eagerly by some of the escort), and that he even kept in his pay and service a notorious witch named Yellow Margery.
Juxon listened to these charges with a grave smile, and made no reply. Hereupon one of the commissioners observed, in great wrath,—
“That he was a most godless and obstinate Malignant, as was plain to see by his laughing, and the redness of his face; and that if not drunk, he was merry; but that a gaol and bread and water would soon take away the colour from his cheeks, and bring down the naughtiness of his spirit.”