you go to the watch, discharge the guard,
bid them unarm, and go home to their lodgings."

A magistrate departed on the errand.

"Now fetch me the keys of the gate," said Pelham, "and that straightway,
or, before God, you shall die."

The keys were brought, and handed to the peremptory old Marshal. The old
board of magistrates were then clapped into prison, the new ones
installed, and Deventer was gained for the English and Protestant party.

There could be no doubt that a city so important and thus fortunately
secured was worthy to be well guarded. There could be no doubt either
that it would be well to conciliate the rich and influential Papists in
the place, who, although attached to the ancient religion, were not
necessarily disloyal to the republic; but there could be as little that,
under the circumstances of this sudden municipal revolution, it would be
important to place a garrison of Protestant soldiers there, under the
command of a Protestant officer of known fidelity.

To the astonishment of the whole commonwealth, the Earl appointed Sir
William Stanley to be governor of the town, and stationed in it a
garrison of twelve hundred wild Irishmen.

Sir William was a cadet of one of the noblest English houses. He was the
bravest of the brave. His gallantry at the famous Zutphen fight had
attracted admiration, where nearly all had performed wondrous exploits,
but he was known to be an ardent Papist and a soldier of fortune, who had
fought on various sides, and had even borne arms in the Netherlands under
the ferocious Alva. Was it strange that there should be murmurs at the
appointment of so dangerous a chief to guard a wavering city which had so
recently been secured?

The Irish kernes--and they are described by all contemporaries, English
and Flemish, in the same language--were accounted as the wildest and
fiercest of barbarians. There was something grotesque, yet appalling, in
the pictures painted of these rude, almost naked; brigands, who ate raw
flesh, spoke no intelligible language, and ranged about the country,
burning, slaying, plundering, a terror to the peasantry and a source of
constant embarrassment to the more orderly troops in the service of the
republic. "It seemed," said one who had seen them, "that they belonged
not to Christendom, but to Brazil." Moreover, they were all Papists, and,
however much one might be disposed to censure that great curse of the
age, religious intolerance--which was