CHAP. V.
Pray now buy some: I love a ballad in print, a' life; for then we are sure they are true. _Winter's Tale._
Although the good parson of Cheddar was as yet unmolested, andcontinued his ministrations in peace, he was far too sagacious not toperceive the growing strength of Parliament, and never partook ofthose extravagant hopes, which, upon the arrival of the Marquis ofHertford, at the city of Wells, animated so many of the gentlemen andthe clergy in Somersetshire. But he gave such attendance at themeetings of a public nature as was necessary to show plainly the partwhich he had taken,--and he set a faithful example of loyalty in hisparish. The son and the son-in-law of old Blount the franklin, andmost of the yeomen of Cheddar, offered their services to the Marquis,and repaired to his quarters well mounted and armed.--It was a deeplymortifying reflection to Noble and his wife that their son Cuthberthad joined the forces of the Parliament, and was already in armsagainst his king. Their spirits were far more depressed by thisconsideration than by any other. Compared to this heavy trial allothers, which could possibly arrive, seemed light and undeserving ofcareful or anxious deprecation; but for this one chastisement, theyhumbled themselves before God daily with tears and supplications.Nevertheless they sorrowed not as without hope, and they did notmurmur. They knew that their prayers were poured out before a Fatherof mercies, who heareth always, and gives or withholds the blessingimplored, with a wisdom that cannot err, and with a mysterious love.
Therefore they were enabled to preserve a calm and resigned aspectbefore the village, and before their household, though plain Peter andthe good maidens were not to be deceived as to their silentsufferings; for master did not notice the flowers and birds in thegarden so much now, and walked up and down thinking, instead oftalking pleasant; and mistress had not looked after herfruit-preserves and her home-made wines this year with the heart sheused to do; and, worst sign of all, the dinner was often carried awayhardly touched by either. The apprehensions of Noble as to theprogress of disaffection to the royal cause proved but too wellfounded. The private agents and emissaries of the Parliament partywrought underhand to persuade the people, that, by the commission ofarray, a great part of the estates of all substantial yeomen andfreeholders would be taken from them, alleging, that some lords hadsaid that "twenty pounds by the year was enough for every peasant tolive on;" and they further said, that all the meaner and poorer sortof people were appointed by the same commission to pay a tax of oneday's labour in every week to the King. These reports, however littledeserving of credit, were received by the more ignorant with implicitbelief, and circulated by the interested and designing with mostpersevering activity. The people were thus taught that, if they didnot adhere to the Parliament, and submit to the ordinance for themilitia, they would soon be no better than slaves to the lords, andthe victims of a most cruel oppression.
The ignorance and credulity of the vulgar were by these arts widelyand successfully imposed upon; but the population of Cheddar waspreserved from these corrupting falsehoods by the prudence of Noble.He early obtained a copy of the commission of array, which was writtenin Latin, and having translated it with fidelity, distributed copiesfrom house to house. The word of the good parson was ever held inreverence by his flock, therefore, with few exceptions, and thoseconfined to the worst characters in the village, his account of thematter was received as true; while in many other places the craftysupporters of the levelling party, taking advantage of the commissionsbeing in Latin, translated it into what English they pleased, andabused simple folk in the manner related.
While the Marquis of Hertford maintained himself at Wells all thingscontinued quiet at Cheddar; but as Noble had foreseen, there was soona very powerful party brought against him, and he was compelled toretire, before the increasing forces and the active officers of theParliament, to Sherborne, in Dorsetshire.
Master Daws, the artful and the covetous enemy of Noble, who had beenalready baffled in his endeavour to drag him before a committee, andwhose eyes were steadily fixed upon the living of Cheddar, had notbeen inactive while the Royalists lay at Wells.
He had, it is true, seldom ventured from home for fear his preciouscarcass might receive some weighty mark of the wrath or merriment of aroyal trooper, though he might have gone to and fro in his clericalgarb as safe as an innocent child: but conscience made a coward ofhim; for he had employed the period of his confinement to his house inpreparing certain lying and inflammatory papers, which, through theagency of a near relation, who was a scrivener's clerk at Bristol, heprocured to be secretly printed in that city. These papers were of themost indecent and outrageous nature, directed chiefly againstprelacy, and all supporters of the church of England and the episcopalform of government. Now, this scrivener's clerk, though he knew anddespised the hypocrisy of Master Daws, and laughed at all religion,whether real or pretended, lent himself as a most ready agent in thischaritable work. "There are diversities of gifts, my dear Matty," saidhis crafty uncle Daws in the letter which accompanied his manuscriptlibels,--"diversities of gifts, but the same spirit:--thou hast alively wit, and a playful hand with thy pencil; prithee put a littledevice of some facetious kind at the head of each of thesepapers,--such an one as may be easily struck off in a wood-cut of thekind, which the profane Italians call caricature: but what need I saymore? Thou knowest what I would have:--see thou do it. I wish to havethem done before Cheddar fair, which is held, thou knowest, at thelatter end of September. They are a bigoted, base, priest-ridden herdof swine in that parish, and as blind as the moles and the bats:--wemust let in a little light on them:--see thou do it broadly."
The sharp-visaged, pale-faced nephew grinned as he read his worthyuncle's epistle, and secretly resolved at once to gratify the meandesire expressed in it, and to amuse himself, at his uncle's expense,when it was too late for him to make any alteration should he detectit. Of the ungainly figure, and the hideous features of his uncle, hehad caricatures without number; and as they were so strongly marked,that the rudest engraver of a wooden block could not fail to copy themfaithfully, he determined that the long visage of Daws himself shouldfind a place in his performance.
The fair-day of Cheddar was that one day in the year which was alwaysmost trying to Noble. All the other holydays were home festivals, andwere kept by the villagers among themselves, being seldom intruded onby strangers; but the annual fair always brought with it a herd ofidle vagabonds from Bristol, and other towns within a convenientdistance, and seldom terminated without many profligate, disgustingscenes, or an open brawl. The state of public affairs, and thepresence of a Puritan force in Somersetshire, had such an effect onthe fairs throughout the county this autumn, that they were in generalbut thinly attended, and little or no business was done among thefarmers and dealers, by whom they were commonly frequented.
Nevertheless, fairs were too important in the social economy to theconvenience of the people to be wholly suspended. Therefore, on theappointed morning, early in September, a pleasant peal of five bells(not as yet silenced by force or law) gave due notice from the towerof Cheddar church that the day of fairings and gilt gingerbread hadarrived; but although a certain quantity of booths had been erected,only one, and that but scantily supplied, was set apart for theprofane display of those glittering temptations. Among the farmservants standing for hire, there were no stout young carters withtheir whips, no hale shepherds with their crooks and green sprigs intheir hats; and though there was no lack of maids, yet, as theycrowded together, they looked lonesome and sad, and their bonny brownhair was not tied up with ribands. The few children present were heldfast by the hand, and led by their parents to see the common purchasesmade for the household; but even in these matters the traffic wasdull. There were, indeed, a few cattle; a few pens of sheep; somepiles of Cheddar and other Somersetshire cheese; a store of saltedmeats; one stall with fair garnishes of pewter for the cupboard;another with wooden bowls, and trenchers, and vessels for the dairy;and one great one, a
t which groceries, cloths, linens, and articles ofhardware, were promiscuously set forth, and where the neighbouringhousewives were wont to lay in their store of useful necessaries forthe coming year. But now it was so uncertain what a day might bringforth, that not many cared to make their annual outlay.
It might be supposed, that, in such unsettled times, mountebanks,tumblers, and conjurers could hardly reckon on a sufficient harvest ofpence to find them in beer and shoe leather; but some of them stillventured their exhibitions, and with a ready wit practised boldly,wherever they came, upon the popular prejudices of the hour, and lentthemselves to the crafty suggestions of the designing, who well knewthat the vulgar mind may be artfully seduced to join in the ridiculeof those very persons and things, which, in its better moments, it hasrespected.
Now the nephew of Daws had been a most willing and active agent inforwarding the objects of his uncle; for he had not only procured hislibellous papers to be printed, but he had provided them each with acaricature engraving on wood; and he had, in like manner, causedcertain ribald songs to be headed for distribution at Cheddar fair; sothat they who could not read the slanders and calumnies contained inthe printed matter might see them pictured to their senses. Nor did hestop here; but he procured a base fellow, the son of a drunkensaddler, who was a noted posture master in Bristol, to carry thesepapers and prints to Cheddar on the fair day, and to commend them tothe people. This knave, taking with him a merriman and a fire-eater toassist him in attracting a crowd, repaired thither, and about noonbegan his operations on a scaffold near the market cross. They hadbeen followed by a rabble of disorderly persons, among whom the reportof some fun at Cheddar fair had been already spread by the roguesengaged on the occasion.
Master Daws, who had been advised by his nephew of the preparationsthat were made for bringing the church and its ministers into contemptbefore the population of Cheddar, walked to the village at an earlyhour in company with his nephew, under the pretence of buying ahundred weight of cheese and a salted mutton; and, though the day wasfine, he took care to appear in the blue Geneva cloak, which wascommonly worn by the Puritan divines. Having engaged an upper room ina public house facing the market place, he had no sooner stalkedthrough the vacant crowd, and made his purchases, than he retired tofeast his malignant envy from the window of this chamber.
The sound of the pipe and tabor, and the nasal tones of MasterMerriman, soon gathered all the idle folk in the fair round themountebank's scaffold. The fool began with their favourite egg-dance;and they stood with gaping mouths to see him hop about on one leg, andthen, being blindfolded, dance backwards and forwards between the eggswithout touching one of them: their mouths gaped yet wider, as thisperformer was succeeded by the fire-eater, who, after commencing bythe trick of drawing forth from his mouth yard after yard of ribands,as if his stomach had been a riband loom, put a bundle of lightedmatches into his mouth, and blew the smoke of the sulphur through hisnostrils. Last came the posture-master, whose art consisted in makingall sorts of uncouth faces, and exhibiting in a natural but shockingmanner every species of deformity and dislocation. Now he showed ahuge rising of his left shoulder; now shifted the deformity into theother; now represented a humpback; accompanying these changes of hisfigure with sundry comical contortions of countenance, to which thecrowd responded in roars of laughter. Having thus got them into goodhumour for his purpose, he went on to imitate the cries and voices ofsundry animals and birds; the crow of the cock, the gabble of thegeese, the gobble of the turkey, the quaak of the duck, the squeak ofthe sucking pig, the bleat of the lamb, the grunt of the old sow, andthe braying of the ass. The crowd was on the broad grin while he wentthrough these imitations. He now therefore disappeared for a minute,leaving the merriman to amuse them, by way of interlude, with ajocular dance, and returned in robes made of coarse materials toimitate those of a bishop. His figure was stuffed out to Falstaff-likeproportions; his hands were crossed with due gravity; he had plumpersin his cheeks; and he forthwith began to intone an anthem withburlesque solemnity. The words were in mockery of the coronationanthem; and the petition for the growth of the King's beard, and theshaving thereof, was delivered in all those varieties of note which hehad before given when mimicking the animals of the farm-yard. He thusexcited the mirth of the rabble vastly. He closed this mischievousperformance by a comic song about tithes; and, after imitating thesqueak of a sucking pig, and the clack of a hen, he produced upon thestage, by sleight of hand, as if from his paunch, a basket filled withcurious samples of the small tithe, in which the tenth egg was notforgotten. His place was now taken by the mountebank, who professed tobe appointed grand physician to the state, and purifier of the church.The fool stood by his side making all the uncouth faces which he couldthink of, taken, it must be confessed, most chiefly from the sour_kill-joys_ of the time; and holding a large bundle of printed papers,each headed by a wood-cut, he distributed them down among the peoplefor due consideration of pence and farthings dropped into his cap.These papers, though ridiculous devices were prefixed to them,contained a venom of no laughable matter, and were eagerly bought up.
The nephew of old Daws had been at little pains to rack his inventionfor the subject of these curious cuts. On one, he had engraven thefigure of a fox, vested in canonicals, with a crosier in his hand anda mitre on his head, hanging upon a tree, with a flock of geese andother fowl beneath chattering at him; on another, he had represented afox in chains, with his right paw on a bag of money, and a monkey atprayers by his side, trying to steal it away. On the next was giventhe figure of a wolf in sheep's clothing, bearing a close resemblanceto his own uncle, puffing a large fire with a pair of bellows, onwhich was inscribed "Groans and sighs;" while above was depicted anowl, with a wolf and a lamb joining in prayers. By a self-deceptionnot uncommon, Master Daws had not the slightest suspicion that thesaid wolf bore any likeness to himself, and, to the secret diversionof his nephew, he gave a most ghastly smile of approval as he lookedover the rude caricatures, three of which we have described. The timewas now come for directing the wayward crowd to a stronger expressionof their contempt for the church than laughter. Accordingly, thenephew of Daws descended among them, and proposed that they shouldburn a bishop's effigy before the parson's house. While the effigy waspreparing, the people stood in groups reading the papers; and sundrycharitable suggestions were made by the baser among them. "Let's getinto his cellar," said one, "and drink a little of the sacramentwine."--"Let's lay hold of the church plate," said another:--"Or givethe parson a ride on old Bruin here," was the cruel proposal of athird, pointing to a huge bear in a string, led by a wanderingshowman. All things were soon ready; and, led by the posture master infront, and guided behind by the mischievous nephew of Master Daws, offthe rabble moved, noisy and half drunk, and ready for all evil. Theyhad no sooner reached the yew-tree in the churchyard, and wereadvancing towards the wicket, than out rushed an old beggar, stumpingon his wooden leg, followed by plain Peter and two more old labourers,and immediately behind them, as if in pursuit, a fine young bull. Theold beggar, who was no other than the worn-out veteran beforementioned, shouted, "_Mad bull!_" at the top of his voice, with anearnestness and passion that made him at once believed; and the crowdfled, tumbling over each other, as they ran, in inextricableconfusion: nor were they allowed time to detect the deceptionpractised on them; for the old soldier and plain Peter slipping behindthe frightened beast, and goading him forward, he performed hisfriendly office as well as the maddest of all bulls, and veryeffectually dispersed the mob, and defeated their base and cruelintentions for that day. Master Daws, who had from his post ofobservation at the window witnessed the scenes in the market-placewith the most malignant satisfaction, as soon as the crowd marched offtowards the vicarage with the effigy, and he saw the coast clear,could not repress his curiosity, and, stealing down, followed afar offto watch their operations. In the luckless moment of their panic andflight, he was so terrified and puzzled, that he could not regain thehouse, but ran with the crowd, and was thrown do
wn by a pig; nor wasthis the worst, for it so happened that a man, leading a monkey, fellat the same moment, and jocko flew upon Daws and bit his right ear,till he screamed for agony: beyond this, however, and the tearing ofhis clothes, he sustained no injury. A worse fate waited theposture-master, the bear being infuriated at the hubbub, and havingbroken away from his master, seized him fiercely, and embraced him ina hug so fatal, that it produced contortions of countenance and adislocation of bones very different from those he had so lately beenexhibiting, and left him a cripple for life. The warning of hismaster's danger had been communicated to plain Peter, that verymorning, by the grateful old soldier, who had come to that fair withno other intention than rendering this service, he having heard awhisper of the intended doings in a tap at Bristol. It so chanced thatold Noble was confined to the house by a sprain of the ankle, and hismistress was not well; so Peter kept from them all mention of thesefears. The stratagem he adopted for putting the mob to flight wassuggested by the old soldier, and cheerfully aided by a neighbouringfarmer and two of his servants. Thus was the worthy parson protectedin peace, and kept safe from the strife of tongues and the violence ofa base rabble, throughout a day that was very threatening:unconscious himself how Daws had been undermining him, he had passedit in a frame of mind more than usually composed.
Daws and his nephew continued their retreat without staying to paytheir reckoning at the public-house. The greater part of the crowd,finding themselves on the road to Axbridge, proceeded there, to makeup for their disappointment at Cheddar by a riot at that placeinstead. So few, indeed, returned, after they had got beyond the reachof danger, to find out the truth of it, and they squabbled so muchamong themselves, that Master Blount and the villagers were able toprevent further disturbance at that time. Before evening all thestrange rabble departed; and the sun set on Cheddar as tranquilly asin happier times.