25 HEROISM OF LADY ARUNDEL In council I'm prefent, nor abfent, at tea, And nymphs courted by all, come and pay court to me. Who the fair's private favourite dares to difcover: If I move not on four, as I commonly do, You may find me on one leg, but never on two. HEROISM of LADY ARUNDEL of Wardour Cafle. TH HE account of the noble defence made by Lady Arundel, against her favage and unprincipled befiegers, is told in the "Mercurius Rufticus," a kind of newspaper of thofe times in which it was written; and which, in the narrative of the behaviour of the parliamentary generals, ferocious and infolent as it is, will recal, for the honour of the country where it happened, but imperfectly perhaps to the mind of the reader, the fcenes of ravage, defolation, and murder, which have taken place in a neighbouring nation; which, not fatisfied with the deftruction af it's old corrupt government, has raised upon the ruins of it a fyftem of tyranny and of rapine without example in the annals of the world. "On Tuesday the fecond of May 1643, Sir Edward Hungerford a Chief commander of the rebels in Wiltshire, came with bis forces before Wardour Caftle in the fame county, being the manfion-houfe of the Lord Arundel of Wardour. But finding the caftle frong, and those that were in it refolute not to yield it up unlefs by force, called Col. Strode to his help. Both thefe joined in one made a body of 1300, or thereabout. Being come before it, by a trumpet they fummon the caftle to furrender: the reafon pretended was, because the caftle being a receptacle of cavaliers and malignants, both houfes of parliament had ordered it to be fearched for men and arms and withal by the fame trumpeter declared, that, if they found either money or plate, they would feize on it for the ufe of the parliament. The Lady Arundel (her bufband being then at Oxford, and fince that dead there) refufed to deliver up the castle; and bravely replied, that the had a command from her lord to keep it, and the would obey his command. 66 Being denied entrance, the next day, being Wednesday the third of May, they bring up the cannon within mufquet-fhot, and begin the battery, and continue from the Wednesday to the Monday following, never giving any intermiffion to the beficged, who were but twenty-five fighting men, to make good the place against 7 ANECDOTES OF LADY ARUNDEL 81 against an army of 1300 men. In this time they spring two tnines; the first in a vault, through which beer and wood and other neceffaries were brought into the caftle; this did not much hurt, it being without the foundation of the caftle. The fecond was conveyed in the fmall vaults; which by reason of the intercourse between the feveral paffages to every office, and almost every room in the caftle, did much shake and endanger the whole fabric. "The rebels had often tendered fome unreafonable conditions to the befieged to furrender; as, to give the ladies, both the mother and the daughter-in-law, and the women and children, quarter, but not the men. The ladies, both infinitely fcorning to facrifice the lives of their friends and fervants, to redeem their own from the cruelty of the rebels, who had no other crime of which they could count them guilty, but their fidelity and earnest endeavours to preferve them from violence and robbery, chofe bravely (according to the noblenefs of their honourable families from which they were both extracted) rather to die together, than live on fo difhonourable terms. But now, the caftle brought to this distress, the defendants few, oppreffed with number, tired out with continual watchings and labour from Tuesday to Monday, fo distracted between hunger and want of reft, that, when the hand endeavoured to adminifter food, furprized with fleep it forgot it's employment, the morfels falling from their hands while they were about to eat, deluding their appetite; now, when it might have been a doubt which they would firft have laded their mufquets withal, either powder before bullet, or bullet before powder, had not the maid-fervants (valiant beyond their fex) affifted then, and done that fervice for them. Laftly, now, when the rebels had brought petarrs, and applied them to the garden doors (which, if forced, open a free paffage to the castle), and balls of wild-fire to throw in at their broken windows, and all hopes of keeping the caftle were taken away; now, and not till now, did the befieged found a parley. And though in their Diurnals at London they have told the world that they offered threefcore thousand pounds to redeem themselves and the castle, and that it was refufed; yet few men take themselves to be bound any thing the more to believe it because they report it. I would Mafter Cafe would leave preaching treafon, and inftruct his difciples to put away lying, and fpeak every man truth of his neighbour. Certainly the world would not be fo abused with untruths as now they are; amongst which number this report was one: for, if they in the caftle offered fo liberally, how came the rebels to agree upon articles of furrender fo far beneath that overture ? for the articles of furrender were thefe: "First, 82 HEROISM OF LADY ARUNDEL, "First, that the ladies, and all others in the caftle, fhould have quarter. "Secondly, that the ladies and fervants fhould carry away all ́ their wearing apparel; and that fix of the ferving-men, whom the ladies fhould nominate, fhould attend upon their perfons wherefoever the rebels thould dispose of them. "Thirdly, that all the furniture and goods in the house should be fafe from plunder; and to this purpofe one of the fix nominated to attend the ladies was to ftay in the cattle, and take an inventory of all in the houfe; of which the commanders were to have one copy, and the ladies another. "But, being on these terms mafters of the castle and all within it, it is true they obferved the first article, and fpared the lives of all the belieged, though they had flain in the defence at leaft fixty of the rebels. But for the other two they obferved them not in any part. As soon as they entered the caftle, they first seized upon the several trunks and packs which they of the caftle were making up, and left neither the ladies nor fervants any other wearing clothes but what was on their backs. "There was in the castle, amongst many rich ones, one extraordinary chimney-piece, valued at two thousand pounds; this they utterly defaced, and beat down all the carved works thereof with their pole axes. There were likewife rare pictures, the work of the moft curious pencils that were known to thefe latter times of the world, and fuch that Apelles himfelf (had he been alive) need not blush to own for his. Thefe in a wild fury they break and tear to pieces,-a lofs that neither cost nor art can repair. 3 Having thus given them a tafte what performance of articles they were to expect from them, they barbaroufly led the ladies, and the young lady's children, two fons and a daughter, prisoners to Shaftesbury, fome four or five miles from Wardour. "While they were prifoners, to mitigate their forrows, in triumph they bring five caft-loads of their richest hangings and other furniture through Shaftesbury towards Dorchester; and fince that, contrary to their promife and faith, given both by Sir Edward Hungerford and Strode, they plundered the whole castle; fo little ufe was there of the inventory we told you of, unless to let the world know what Lord Arundel loft, and what the rebels gained. This havock they made within the caftle. Without they burnt all the out-houfes; they pulled up the pales of two parks, the one of red deer, the other of fallow; what they did not kill they let loofe to the world for the next taker. In the parks they burn three tenements and two lodges; they cut down all the trees about the house and grounds. Oaks and elms, fuch as OF WARDOUR CASTLE. 83 as but few places could boast of the like, whofe goodly bushy advanced heads drew the eyes of travellers on the plains to gaze on them; these they fold for fourpence, fixpence, or twelve-pence a-piece, that were worth three, four, or five pounds a-piece." The fruit-trees they pluck up by the roots, extending their malice to commit fpoil on what God, by à fpecial law, protected from deftruction, even in the land of his curfe, the land of Canaan; for fo we read, "When thou shalt befiege a city, thou fhalt not deftroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them, for thou mayeft eat of them,. and thou shalt not cut them down and employ them in the fiege; only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat thou shalt deftroy," Deut. xx. 19, 20. Nay, that which efcaped deftruction in the Deluge cannot efcape the hands of these children of the Apollyon the destroyer. They dig up the heads of twelve great ponds, fome of five or fix acres a-piece, and destroy all the fill. They fell carp of two feet long for two-pence and three-pence a-piece; they fent out the fifh by cart-loads, fo that the country could not fpend them. Nay, as if the present generation were too narrow an object for their rage, they plunder pofterity, and deftroy the nurseries of the great ponds. They drive away and fell their horfes, kine, and other cattle, and, having left nothing either in air or water, they dig under the earth. The castle was ferved with water brought two miles by a conduit of lead; and, intending rather mifchief to the king's friends than profit to themselves, they cut up the pipe and fold it (as thefe men's wives in North Wiltshire do bone-lace) at fix-pence a yard; making that waste for a poor inconfiderable fum, which two thoufand pounds will not make good. They that have the unhappy occafion to fum up these loffes, value them at no less than one hundred thousand pounds. And though this lofs were very great, not to be paralleled by any except that of the Countess of Rivers, yet there was fomething in thefe fufferings which did aggravate them beyond all example of barbarity which unnatural war till now did produce, and that was Rachel's tears, "lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, a mother weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were taken from her." For the rebels, as you hear, having carried the two ladies prifoners to Shaftesbury, thinking them not safe enough, their intent is to remove them to Bath, a place then much infected both with the plague and the fmall-pox. The old lady was fick under a double confinement, that of the rebels and her own indifpofition. All were unwilling to be exposed to the danger of the infection, efpecially the young lady, having three children with her, they were too dear, too rich a treasure, to be fnatched away to fuch probable lofs without reluctancy; L 2 PRUDENCE. EA reluctancy; therefore they refolve not to yield themselves pri foners unless they will take the old lady out of her bed, and the. reft by violence, and fo carry them away. But the rebels fearing left fo great inhumanity might incenfe the people against them, and render them odious to the country, decline this, and, fince they dare not carry all to Bath, they refolve to carry fome to Dor chefter, a place no lefs dangerous for the infection of schism and rebellion, than Bath for the plague and the small-pox. To this. purpose they take the young lady's two fons, (the eldest but nine, the younger but feven years of age) and carried them captives to Dorchester. "In vain doth the mother with tears intreat that these pretty pledges of her lord's affections may not be fnatched from her. In vain do the children embrace and hang about the neck of their mother, and implore help from her, that neither knows how to keep them, nor yet how to part with them; but the rebels, having loft all bowels of compaffion, remain inexorable. The com plaints of the mother, the pitiful cry of the children, prevail not with them; like ravenous wolves they feize on the prey, and," though they do not crop, yet they tranfplant thofe olive-branches that food about their parents' table." Lady Arundel is buried with her lord, near the altar of the very elegant chapel at Wardour Castle, built by the prefent Lord Arundel. PRUDENCE. S fidlers and archers, who cunningly know The way to be prais'd for their merit, So likewife a prudent young damfel fhould do, Still make the beft ufe of her beauty; If her 'mark the would hit, or her leffon play through, Then arm'd against chance, and fecure of fupply, One fpark, for her fport, the may jilt and set by, REFLEC |