Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen ElizabethKingsley, Charles
History
Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth
Kingsley, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603 -- Fiction
Whereon old Cary and Sir Richard sent Will on a second trip with the
parish constable of Hartland (in which huge parish, for its sins, is
situate the Isle of Lundy, ten miles out at sea); who returned with the
body of the hapless John Braund, farmer, fisherman, smuggler, etc.;
which worthy, after much fruitless examination (wherein examinate was
afflicted with extreme deafness and loss of memory), departed to Exeter
gaol, on a charge of “harboring priests, Jesuits, gipsies, and other
suspect and traitorous persons.”
Poor John Braund, whose motive for entertaining the said ugly customers
had probably been not treason, but a wife, seven children, and arrears
of rent, did not thrive under the change from the pure air of Lundy to
the pestiferous one of Exeter gaol, made infamous, but two years after
(if I recollect right), by a “black assizes,” nearly as fatal as that
more notorious one at Oxford; for in it, “whether by the stench of the
prisoners, or by a stream of foul air,” judge, jury, counsel, and
bystanders, numbering among them many members of the best families in
Devon, sickened in court, and died miserably within a few days.
John Braund, then, took the gaol-fever in a week, and died raving in
that noisome den: his secret, if he had one, perished with him, and
nothing but vague suspicion was left as to Rose Salterne's fate. That
she had gone off with the Spaniard, few doubted; but whither, and in
what character? On that last subject, be sure, no mercy was shown to
her by many a Bideford dame, who had hated the poor girl simply for her
beauty; and by many a country lady, who had “always expected that the
girl would be brought to ruin by the absurd notice, beyond what her
station had a right to, which was taken of her,” while every young
maiden aspired to fill the throne which Rose had abdicated. So that, on
the whole, Bideford considered itself as going on as well without poor
Rose as it had done with her, or even better. And though she lingered
in some hearts still as a fair dream, the business and the bustle of
each day soon swept that dream away, and her place knew her no more.
And Will Cary?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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