1642, 14th December.—It is agreed that the inhabitants that have muskets shall watch at night in turn; that a watch house shall be erected at each bridge; that eight of the Commoners shall watch at night and eight by day, two at each of the three bridges, one in Stake Lane, and one in Weak’s Lane.
On June 10th, 1643, Lieutenant Lee garrisoned the place for the Parliament; on March 16th following, Captain Pyne, with a party from Lyme, captured the town and took 140 horse. Waller was here six months later (September 24th) raising the posse with 2,000 horse and 1,500 dragoons. Suffice it to say that Bridport preferred to keep as clear as possible from civil turmoil.
As for the romantic story of the escape of Charles II. after the battle of Worcester, and how he was nearly captured here, the reader is referred to Chapter I. for the full account.
The Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion brings us to the end of our interest in Old Bridport. It was on Sunday morning, June 13th, 1685, that the whole place was thrown into a ferment by a surprise attack on the town delivered by three hundred of Monmouth’s rebels from Lyme Regis. Lord Grey commanded them, and after a night march and on arrival at dawn having at the first volley routed the Dorset militia of 1,200 foot with 100 horse, they started making prisoners of the officers who were lodging at the “Bull” hotel. In this latter work, two Dorset men of good family fell victims—Edward Coker and Wadham Strangwayes—being slain by the rebels, who, after the first flush of victory, disregarded ordinary precautions, and when the King’s troops rallied they had to beat an ignominious retreat to Lyme. Judge Jeffreys finished the work by ordering twelve of the condemned rebels to be executed at Bridport. To any student of that period of history the unique collection of autographs, broadsides, songs, and portraits, including the pre-Sedgemoor letter from Lord Dumblane to his father, the Duke of Leeds—all which are contained in the library of Mr. Broadley, of Bridport—are absolutely indispensable.
SHAFTESBURY
By the Rev. Thomas Perkins, M.A.
Shaston, the ancient British Palladour, was, and is, in itself the city of a dream. Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its magnificent apsidal abbey, the chief glory of South Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled free-stone mansions—all now ruthlessly swept away—throw the visitor, even against his will, into a pensive melancholy, which the stimulating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. The spot was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots and abbesses, saints and bishops, knights and squires. The bones of King Edward “the Martyr,” carefully removed thither for holy preservation, brought Shaston a renown which made it the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and enabled it to maintain a reputation extending far beyond English shores. To this fair creation of the great Middle-Ages the Dissolution was, as historians tell us, the death-knell. With the destruction of the enormous abbey the whole place collapsed in a general ruin; the martyr’s bones met with the fate of the sacred pile that held them, and not a stone is now left to tell where they lie.
O does Thomas Hardy describe the ancient town of Shaftesbury.[55] Truly, it is a town that appears to have seen its best days. Its market-place is almost deserted, save on market-days, and when some travelling wild beast show visits the town. On fair days the round-abouts with galloping horses do a lively business, and their steam-driven organs emit energetic music that may be heard far and wide; and when a good circus pitches its tent on Castle Hill, vehicles of every description stream in by hundreds from all the surrounding villages, for there is nothing that the country folk love better than a circus. But at other times Shaftesbury would be considered by a stranger passing through it, fresh from city life, as a quiet if not sleepy town. It has little to boast of save its splendid site, its pure health-giving breezes, and the magnificent views of the surrounding hills and downs and valleys that may be obtained from several points of vantage. Of its four remaining churches one only is of mediæval date; the three others are all quite modern, entirely destitute of architectural interest, and with little beauty to recommend them. All the others which once stood here have disappeared, leaving nothing to remind us of their former existence save, in some few cases, the name of a street or lane. Of the glorious Abbey, probably the wealthiest nunnery that ever existed in the kingdom, nothing but the walls that once enclosed the precincts on the south-east, and the foundations of the church, long entirely hidden from sight by surface soil, now happily opened out by recent excavations, remain.
