from the first, remember
that I, who was concerned in it, say confidently that it really trembled
in the balance, and that this handful of resolute peasants with their
pikes and their scythes were within an ace of altering the whole
course of English history. The ferocity of the Privy Council, after the
rebellion was quelled, arose from their knowledge of how very close it
had been to success.

I do not wish to say too much of the cruelty and barbarity of the
victors, for it is not good for your childish ears to hear of such
doings. The sluggard Feversham and the brutal Kirke have earned
themselves a name in the West, which is second only to that of the arch
villain who came after them. As for their victims, when they had hanged
and quartered and done their wicked worst upon them, at least they left
their names in their own little villages, to be treasured up and handed
from generation to generation, as brave men and true who had died for a
noble cause. Go now to Milverton, or to Wiveliscombe, or to Minehead, or
to Colyford, or to any village through the whole breadth and length of
Somersetshire, and you will find that they have not forgotten what
they proudly call their martyrs. But where now is Kirke and where is
Feversham? Their names are preserved, it is true, but preserved in a
county's hatred. Who can fail to see now that these men in punishing
others brought a far heavier punishment upon themselves? Their sin hath
indeed found them out.

They did all that wicked and callous-hearted men could do, knowing well
that such deeds were acceptable to the cold-blooded, bigoted hypocrite
who sat upon the throne. They worked to win his favour, and they won it.
Men were hanged and cut down and hanged again. Every cross-road in the
country was ghastly with gibbets. There was not an insult or a contumely
which might make the pangs of death more unendurable, which was not
heaped upon these long-suffering men; yet it is proudly recounted in
their native shire that of all the host of victims there was not one who
did not meet his end with a firm lip, protesting that if the thing were
to do again he was ready to do it.

At the end of a week or two news came of the fugitives. Monmouth, it
seems, had been captured by Portman's yellow coats when trying to make
his way to the New Forest, whence he hoped to escape to the Continent.
He was dragged, gaunt, unshaven, and trembling, out of a bean-field in
which he had taken refuge, and