had ordered the mass to be said there on the
9th of September were undoubtedly the civil or military authorities in the
town. Theirs was the guilt, if guilt it were, and theirs should have been
the punishment. Yet his argument supposes that the unarmed individuals
whose blood was shed there on the 12th, were the very persons who had set
up the mass on the 9th.

3. We know not how far this second massacre was originated or encouraged by
Cromwell. It is well known that in the sack of towns it is not always in
the power of the commander to restrain the fury of the assailants, who
abuse the license of victory to gratify the most brutal of their passions.
But here we have no reason to suppose that Cromwell made any effort to save
the lives of the unarmed and the innocent. Both the commander and his
men had a common religious duty to perform. They were come, in his
own language, "to ask an account of the innocent blood which had been
shed,"--to "do execution on the enemies of God's cause." Hence, in the case
of a resisting city, they included the old man, the female, and the child
in the same category with the armed combatant, and consigned all to the
same fate.

4. Of the proceedings of the victors during that night we are ignorant; but
it does not suggest a very favourable notion of their forbearance, that
in the following morning the great church of St. Peter's was filled with
crowds of townspeople of both sexes, and of every age and condition. The
majority of the women and children sought protection within the body of the
church; a select party of females, belonging to the first families in the
town, procured access to the crypts under the choir, which seemed to offer
more favourable chances of concealment and safety. But the sacred edifice
afforded no asylum to either. The carnage began within the church at an
early hour; and, when it was completed, the bloodhounds tracked their prey
into the vaults beneath the pavement. Among the men who thus descended into
these subterranean recesses, was Thomas Wood, at that time a subaltern,
afterwards a captain in Ingoldsby's regiment. He found there, according
to his own narrative, "the flower and choicest of the women and ladies
belonging to the town, amongst whom a most handsome virgin, arrayed in
costly and gorgeous apparel, kneeled down to him with tears and prayers to
save her life; and being strucken with a profound pitie, he took her under
his arme, and went with her out of