who
heard them. With firm steps and smiling faces the roll of martyrs went
forth to their fate during the whole of that long autumn day, until the
rough soldiers of the guard stood silent and awed in the presence of
a courage which they could not but recognise as higher and nobler than
their own. Folk may call it a trial that they received, and a trial it
really was, but not in the sense that we Englishmen use it. It was but
being haled before a Judge, and insulted before being dragged to the
gibbet. The court-house was the thorny path which led to the scaffold.
What use to put a witness up, when he was shouted down, cursed at,
and threatened by the Chief Justice, who bellowed and swore until the
frightened burghers in Fore Street could hear him? I have heard from
those who were there that day that he raved like a demoniac, and that
his black eyes shone with a vivid vindictive brightness which was scarce
human. The jury shrank from him as from a venomous thing when he
turned his baleful glance upon them. At times, as I have been told, his
sternness gave place to a still more terrible merriment, and he would
lean back in his seat of justice and laugh until the tears hopped down
upon his ermine. Nearly a hundred were either executed or condemned to
death upon that opening day.

I had expected to be amongst the first of those called, and no doubt I
should have been so but for the exertions of Major Ogilvy. As it was,
the second day passed, but I still found myself overlooked. On the
third and fourth days the slaughter was slackened, not on account of
any awakening grace on the part of the Judge, but because the great Tory
landowners, and the chief supporters of the Government, had still some
bowels of compassion, which revolted at this butchery of defenceless
men. Had it not been for the influence which these gentlemen brought
to bear upon the Judge, I have no doubt at all that Jeffreys would have
hung the whole eleven hundred prisoners then confined in Taunton. As
it was, two hundred and fifty fell victims to this accursed monster's
thirst for human blood.

On the eighth day of the assizes there were but fifty of us left in
the wool warehouse. For the last few days prisoners had been tried
in batches of ten and twenty, but now the whole of us were taken in
a drove, under escort, to the court-house, where as many as could be
squeezed in were ranged in the dock, while the rest were penned, like
calves in the market, in th