Article the Third, engaged the General’s safe conduct and protection to all the gentlemen and others who had sought refuge within the walls of Raglan Castle to their respective homes.
Article the Fourth, was an enlargement of the preceding article, by which three months’ protection was guaranteed to certain other gentlemen, until they should either have made their peace with Parliament, or departed the realm.
Article the Fifth, guaranteed the protection and care of the sick and wounded left in the Castle.
Article the Sixth, was an indemnity for all words and acts of the garrison during the siege of the Castle.
On Wednesday the nineteenth of August, in pursuance of these arrangements, the Castle and Garrison of Raglan were duly surrendered to Sir Thomas Fairfax, for the use of both Houses of Parliament. The garrison, which at first had mustered eight hundred men, was now reduced to less than half that number; and as certain of the warlike muniments were becoming so diminished as to expose them at last to the chances of seeing the Castle entered by storm, a prolonged resistance must have been attended with disastrous consequences.
“The garrison had no sooner marched out,” says an eye-witness, “than Fairfax entered the Castle, took a view of it, had some conversation with the Marquess, and then, quitting the scene of his last operation in the way of siege, proceeded to Chepstow, where he was received in triumph by the committee; and, after a brief halt in the Castle, returned to his head-quarters at Bath,”
“A conqueror; and blushing on his sword
The stains of blood, by loyal Raglan pour’d.”
Yet Fairfax, as far as lay in his power, was very exact in observing every condition to which he was a party. It is recorded to his honour, that, “far from allowing violence, he would not even permit insults, or expressions of triumph over the unfortunate Royalists.” Something of this generous bearing towards his opponents may be observed in his correspondence with the Marquess of Worcester. He is painted by historians as equally eminent for personal courage and for humanity; and though strongly infected with prejudices, or principles derived from religious and party zeal, he never seems, in the course of his public conduct, to have been diverted, by private interest or ambition, from adhering strictly to these principles. Sincere in his professions, disinterested in his views, open in his conduct, “he had formed,” says Hume,[273] “one of the most shining characters of his age, had not the extreme narrowness of his genius in everything but in war, and his embarrassed and confused elocution on every occasion but when he gave orders, diminished the lustre of his merit, and rendered the part which he acted, even when vested with the supreme command, but secondary and subordinate.”
With this just tribute to his merits as a man and a soldier, we take leave of the Conqueror of Raglan, annexing the following
Anecdotes.—When Fairfax, as we learn from the same authority, laid siege to Raglan Castle, and fair terms were offered to all the garrison, the Marquess only excepted, the generous old Nestor entreated his friends to accept the proposal, and allow him to be the ‘Jonas.’ But this proposition, it may be readily believed, had the opposite effect, of strengthening their determination to stand by him to the last man. In thanking his officers for their devotedness, he added, in his own peculiar way, “I do not much like that way of embalming neither—to be served up to my audit as a thing newly taken out of the cost of many friends’ blood.”