The Gloucester men, made of this sturdy mettle, forthwith set to work and raised entrenchments; and the Gloucester women seem to have caught the spirit of their husbands and fathers, for matrons and maids wrought all the afternoon in the little mead, fetching in turf to repair the works, whilst the soldiers, on the other side, cut off the pipes which supplied the city conduits, and diverted the waters which drove the mills. On Sunday, which seems to have been with the Royalists a favourite day for such work, the engineers planted pieces of ordnance on a battery at Gawdy Green, and thence plied their shots; but breaches were no sooner made in the fortifications than they were mended, through the untiring energy and courage of the inhabitants, who employed wool-sacks in repairing the damage done. From day to day for three whole weeks, some incident occurred to alarm or encourage the people, till, on Sunday, September the 3rd, when they were at church, news came that the besiegers had planted a store of cannon-baskets at the east gate, and that it was supposed they intended there to spring a mine. The Puritan preacher hearing this, dismissed his audience without any sermon, when the men, equally prepared to pray or fight, immediately began to line the houses over the east gate, and to make a strong breastwork across the street. The renowned William Chillingworth, we may observe in passing, "was in Charles's camp, engaged in bringing his classical knowledge to bear upon the contrivance of engines ("after the manner of the Roman _testudines cum pluteis_.") They ran upon cart wheels, we are told, with a musket-proof covering to conceal the assailants, who shot through holes; and these machines--which were odd things for a clergyman to make--were also furnished with a protection to rest on the breastworks, and so to form a complete bridge over the ditch into the city. The employment of a divine in military matters was then by no means a peculiar circumstance; for it is a little curious that his antagonist, Francis Cheynell, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, accompanied the Earl of Essex into Cornwall, where he shewed a soldierly courage, and where it was said his commands were as readily obeyed as the general's own.[357] After much suffering by the citizens of Gloucester, the siege was raised by the Earl of Essex, on the 5th of September. [Sidenote: _Effect of War on the Assembly._]