Salisbury was the scene of Penruddocke’s rising for the King in 1655. He was a county gentleman, of Compton Chamberlayne, and with some others and a band of a hundred and fifty horsemen, rode into the city at four o’clock in the morning of 14th March. They seized the Judges of Assize in their beds, opened the doors of the prison, and imprisoned the judges in the place of the released convicts. Then, finding the citizens too timid to join them in their revolt against Cromwell, they sped across country, into Devon, where they were captured. Charles the Second was welcomed by Salisbury’s citizens, just as they welcomed every one else; practising with much success St. Paul’s admirable precept, to be ‘all things to all men.’ When James the Second came here, on his way to meet, and fight, the Prince of Orange, he was escorted, with every show of deference and respect, to his lodgings at the Bishop’s Palace by the Mayor, and when he had slunk away, and the Prince came, less than four weeks later, and was lodged in the same house, the same Mayor did precisely the same thing. From the beginning of the seventeenth century onward the citizens began to dearly love kings and great personages, or, if they did not love them, effectually pretended to do so. When plague ravaged the city of London, no one coming from that direction was allowed to enter Salisbury, and even Salisbury’s own citizens returning home from that infected centre were obliged to remain outside for three months, while goods were not permitted to be brought nearer than Three Mile Hill. But Charles the Second and his Court, flying from London from the disease, were welcomed all the same! XXVII [Sidenote: _BRUTAL SCENES_]