Captain Unton Crook. There was a brief street-fight,
ending in the defeat of the Royalists, and the capture of Penruddock
and about fifty more. Wagstaff escaped. Of the contemporary
insurgents in the north there had meanwhile escaped Malevrier and
also Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who had come from abroad to head the
Royalist insurrection generally, had gone to the north, but had not
awaited the actual upshot. He lay concealed in London for a time,
and got to Cologne at last. In the trials which ensued those who
suffered capitally were Penruddock, beheaded at Exeter, a Captain
Hugh Grove and several others at other places in the West, and two or
three at York. Many of the inferior culprits, capitally convicted,
had their lives spared, but were sent in servitude to Barbadoes.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 824-827; Whitlocke, IV. 188; Godwin, IV.
167-169; Carlyle, III. 99-100.]

Revenue had been one of the first cares of the Protector and Council
in resuming power after the Dissolution. By a former ordinance of
theirs of June 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 562), the assessment for the Army
and Navy had been renewed for three months at the rate of L120,000
per month, and for the next three months at the lowered rate of
L90,000 per month. This ordinance had expired at Christmas 1654; and,
though the Parliament had then passed a Bill for extending the
assessment for three months more at L60,000 per month, the Bill had
never been presented to Cromwell for his assent. On the 8th of
February, 1654-5, therefore, a new Ordinance by his Highness and
Council fixed the assessment for a certain term at L60,000 per month.
This acceptance of the reduction proposed by the Parliament gave
general satisfaction; and there is evidence that at this time
Cromwell and the Council let themselves be driven to various shifts
of economy rather than overstrain their power of ordinance-making in
the unpopular particular of supplies. But, indeed, it was on the
question of the validity of this power generally, all-essential as it
was, that they encountered their greatest difficulties. A merchant
named Cony did more to wreck the Protectorate by a suit at law than
did the Cavaliers by their armed insurrection. Having refused to pay
custom duty because it was levied only by an ordinance of the Lord
Protector and Council of March, 1654, and not by authority of
Parliament, he had been fined L500 by the Commissioners of Customs,
and had been committed to prison for non-pa