leges,
that they resented this summary justice upon their companion. A
court-martial sat upon my father, and it is likely that he would have
been offered up as a sacrifice to appease the angry soldiery, had not
the Lord Protector interfered, and limited the punishment to dismissal
from the army. Cornet Clarke was accordingly stripped of his buff
coat and steel cap, and wandered down to Havant, where he settled into
business as a leather merchant and tanner, thereby depriving Parliament
of as trusty a soldier as ever drew blade in its service. Finding
that he prospered in trade, he took as wife Mary Shepstone, a young
Churchwoman, and I, Micah Clarke, was the first pledge of their union.

My father, as I remember him first, was tall and straight, with a great
spread of shoulder and a mighty chest. His face was craggy and stern,
with large harsh features, shaggy over-hanging brows, high-bridged
fleshy nose, and a full-lipped mouth which tightened and set when he
was angry. His grey eyes were piercing and soldier-like, yet I have seen
them lighten up into a kindly and merry twinkle. His voice was the most
tremendous and awe-inspiring that I have ever listened to. I can well
believe what I have heard, that when he chanted the Hundredth Psalm as
he rode down among the blue bonnets at Dunbar, the sound of him rose
above the blare of trumpets and the crash of guns, like the deep roll of
a breaking wave. Yet though he possessed every quality which was
needed to raise him to distinction as an officer, he had thrown off his
military habits when he returned to civil life. As he prospered and grew
rich he might well have worn a sword, but instead he would ever bear a
small copy of the Scriptures bound to his girdle, where other men hung
their weapons. He was sober and measured in his speech, and it was
seldom, even in the bosom of his own family, that he would speak of the
scenes which he had taken part in, or of the great men, Fleetwood and
Harrison, Blake and Ireton, Desborough and Lambert, some of whom had
been simple troopers like himself when the troubles broke out. He was
frugal in his eating, backward in drinking, and allowed himself no
pleasures save three pipes a day of Oronooko tobacco, which he kept ever
in a brown jar by the great wooden chair on the left-hand side of the
mantelshelf.

Yet for all his self-restraint the old leaven would at times begin to
work in him, and bring on fits of what his enemies would call fan