Chippinge Borough

by Stanley John Weyman

“That’s all very fine,” the Honourable Bob answered churlishly, “but Brereton’s in command. And you don’t catch me interfering. I am not going to take the responsibility off his shoulders.”

“But think what may happen to-night!” Vaughan urged. Already he saw that the throng was growing denser and its movements less random. Somewhere in the heart of it a man was speaking. “Think what may happen after dark, if they are as bad as this in daylight?”

Flixton looked askance at him. “Ten to one, only what happened last night,” he answered. “You all croaked then; but Brereton was right.”

Vaughan saw that he argued to no purpose. For Flixton, forward and positive in small things and on the surface, was discovered by the emergency; all that now remained of his usual self-assertion was a sense of injury. Vaughan inquired, instead, where he would find Brereton, and as by this time the crowd had clearly outgrown the control of a single man, he contented himself with walking round the Square, and learning, by mingling with the fringe, what manner of spirit moved it.

That spirit, though he heard some ugly threats against Wetherell and the Bishops and the Lords, was rather a reckless and mischievous than a bloodthirsty one. To obtain drink, to destroy this or that gaol, and by and by to destroy all gaols seemed to the crowd the first principles of Reform.

Presently a cry of “To the Bridewell! Come on! To the Bridewell!” was raised, and led by a dozen hobbledehoys, armed with iron bars plucked from the railings, a body of some hundreds trooped off, helter-skelter, in the direction of the prison of that name.

Vaughan saw that someone must be induced to act; and to him the following hours of that wet, dismal Sunday were a waking nightmare. He hurried hither and thither, from Guildhall to Council House, from Brereton’s lodgings to the dragoons’ quarters, striving to effect something and always failing; seeking some cohesion, some decision, some action, and finding none. Always there had just been a meeting, or was going to be a meeting, or would be a meeting by and by. The civil power would not act without the military; and the military did not think itself strong enough to act, but would act if the civil power would do something which the civil power had made up its mind not to do. And meantime the supineness of the mass of the citizens was marvellous. He seemed to be moving endlessly between lines of men who lounged at their doors, and joked, or waited for the crowd to pass that way. Nothing, it seemed to him, would rouse these men to a sense of the position. It would be a lesson to Wetherell, they said. It would be a lesson to the Peers. It would be a lesson to the Tories. The Bridewell was sacked and fired, the great gaol across the New Cut was firing, the Gloucester gaol in the north of the city was threatened. And still it did not occur to these householders, as they looked down the wet, misty streets, that presently it would be a lesson to them.

But at half-past three, with the dusk on that rainy day scarce an hour off, there was a meeting at the Guildhall. Still no cohesion, no action. On the other hand, much recrimination, many opinions. One was for casting all firearms into the float. Another for arming all, fit or unfit. One was for fetching the Fourteenth back, another for sending the Third to join them at Keynsham. One was for appeasing the people by parading a dummy figure of their own Recorder through the city and burning it on College Green. Another for relying on the Political Union. In vain Vaughan warned them that the mob would presently attack private property; in vain he offered, in a few spirited words, to lead the Special Constables to the rescue of the gaol. The meeting, small to begin and always divided, dwindled fast. The handful who were ready to follow him made the support of the military a condition. Everybody said, “To-morrow!” To-morrow the posse comitatus might be called out; to-morrow the yeomanry, summoned by the man in the yellow jacket, would be here! To-morrow the soldiers might act. And in fine—To-morrow!

There was over the door of the Council House of those days a statue of Justice, lacking the sword and the bandage. Vaughan, passing out in disgust from the meeting, pointed to it. “There is Bristol, gentlemen,” he said bitterly. “Your authorities have dropped the sword, and until they regain it we are helpless. I have done my best.” And, shrugging his shoulders, he started for Brereton’s lodgings to try a last appeal.

He might well think it necessary. For a night which Bristol was long to remember was closing down upon the city. Though it was Sunday, the churches were empty; in few was a second service held. The streets, on the contrary, were full, in spite of the cold; full of noise and turmoil and disorder; of bands of men hastening up and down with reckless cries and flaring lights, at the bidding of leaders as unwitting. In Queen’s Square the rioters were drinking themselves drunk as at a fair, while amid the falling rain, through which the last stormy gleams of daylight strove to pass, amid the thickening dusk, those who all day long had jested at their doors began to turn doubtful looks on one another. From three points the smoke of fired prisons rose to the clouds and floated in a dense pall over the city; and men whispered that a hundred, two hundred, five hundred criminals had been set free. On Clifton Downs, on Brandon Hill, on College Green, on Redcliffe the thousand gazers of the morning were doubled and redoubled. But they no longer wore the cynical faces of the morning. On the contrary there were some who, following with their eyes the network of waterways laden with inflammable shipping, which pierced the city in every direction—who, tracing these and the cutthroat alleys and lanes about them, predicted that the morning would find Bristol a heap of ruins. And not a few, taking fright at the last moment, precipitately removed their families to Clifton, and locked up their houses.