Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714 -- Fiction
Never, in short, did one see such a tumult of joy; it is impossible
to speak otherwise: the people had lost their wits with excess of
joy. Nor did they show their welcome in shouting only, for all doors
were thrown wide open, and supplies and necessaries of all kinds
were sent to the soldiers in the camp outside the town, so that the
country lads declared they had never fared more sumptuously. There
now rode after the Duke several Nonconformist ministers, beside my
father. Thus there was the pious Mr. Larke, of Lyme: he was an aged
Baptist preacher, who thought it no shame to his profession to gird
on a sword and to command a troop of Horse; and others there were,
whose names I forget, who had come forth to join the deliverer.
Lord Grey rode on one side of him, and Colonel Speke on the other;
Dr. Hooke, the Chaplain, and my father rode behind. My heart swelled
with joy to hear how the people, when they had shouted themselves
hoarse, cried out for my father, because his presence showed that
they would have once more that liberty of worship for want of which
they had so long languished. The Duke's own Chaplain, Mr. Ferguson,
had got a naked sword in his hand, and was marching on foot, crying
out, in a most vainglorious manner, 'I am Ferguson, the famous
Ferguson, that Ferguson for whose head so many hundred pounds were
offered. I am that man! I am that man!' He wore a great gown and
a silken cassock, which consorted ill with the sword in his hand,
and in the evening he preached in the great church, while my father
preached in the old meeting-house to a much larger congregation,
and, I venture to think, with a much more edifying discourse.
The army marched through the town in much the same order as it had
marched out of Lyme, and it seemed not much bigger, but the men
marched more orderly, and there was less laughing and shouting. But
the streets were so thronged that the men could hardly make their
way.
In the market-place the Duke halted, while his Declaration was read
aloud. One thing I could not approve. They dragged forth three
of the Justices--High Churchmen and standing stoutly for King
James--and forced them to listen, bareheaded, to the Declaration:
a thing which came near afterwards to their destruction. Yet they
looked sour and unwilling, as anyone would have testified. The
Declaration was a long document, and the reading of it took half an
hour at least; but the people cheered all the time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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