Chapter XXXII: Epilogue

My story is done, in so far as I set myself the task of telling the tale of the ill-fated rising of the Duke of Monmouth. Yet methinks it will be more complete if I add but a few more words, and tell of how Will Wiseman revenged himself upon that wicked Judge whose cruelty and injustice wrought such misery and havoc in the prosperous and happy homes of the West.

Whilst the King was rousing hatred and anger throughout his realm, which ended in his being forced to fly the kingdom but four short years after the events I have related, I was living happily at Master Simpson's, having elected to join with him in his business (though later in life I became possessed of the Three Cups Inn, and left the shop to my eldest son, as being a place of less temptation for a youth than a house of entertainment), and being at the age of eighteen betrothed to pretty Lizzie, who loved me in spite of my crooked back, and has made me the best and most loving of wives.

Will Wiseman remained with us, rising from apprentice to shopman in due time; and when the kingdom was all in a turmoil of excitement at the reports flying about as to the flight of the wicked King, and the landing of his son-in-law, William of Orange, nothing would serve Will but that he must go up to London to see and hear the news. And since he had had no holiday for many years, we gladly encouraged him to do so; and thus it came about that he became, through God's Providence, an instrument for the punishment of that most wicked of wicked men, Lord Jeffreys.

Will stayed in the house of a poor scrivener at Wapping, and this man had the most terrible fear of the great Judge, having been once brought before him, and having never forgotten the gleam of those rolling eyes nor the frightful aspect of those bloated features.

All London was in a ferment. The King had fled, so it was said; and rumour said also that the wicked Chancellor, in awful terror of what might now befall him, had fled likewise, and that he was about to leave the kingdom in disguise, hidden away in some coaling-boat.

No one was perhaps more excited than Will by this intelligence; and when further information was brought by the mate of a coaling-vessel lying in the river to the effect that the Chancellor (if indeed he could be so termed seeing that the King had taken over the Great Seal into his own possession to destroy it) had come on board in disguise, and was actually lying hidden there till sailing-time next morning, Will was one of the excited and furious crowd who rushed off to the Justices of the Peace in that neighbourhood to obtain a warrant for his arrest.

But the Justices complained that since no specific charge was brought against Jeffreys, they could not grant this; and perhaps they were, in truth, still afraid of the man before whom so many of them had trembled in the days of his power. The people might have been baffled by this rebuff had it not been for the firmness of Will, who suggested that they should demand a warrant from the Lords of the Council; and from these dignitaries, who were still sitting, they obtained a warrant to arrest him on the charge of high treason, those ministers thinking it injurious to the welfare of the kingdom that he should be allowed to leave.

Armed with the warrant, they went on board the coaling-boat, and searched it through and through, but found no person bearing any likeness to the Chancellor. The Captain baffled all their inquiries; and it was only later that they discovered that Jeffreys had indeed been there, but finding the boat could not sail before morning, had gone upon another vessel for the night, and thereby nearly saved himself from his enemies and pursuers.

Nearly--but not quite. Chance, as some would call it; Providence and an outraged Maker, as we of Taunton maintain, decreed it otherwise.

Will, sorely grieved and disappointed, retired home at dark and went to bed as usual; but with the morning light restlessness came upon him, and he felt inaction impossible.

His host, the humble scrivener, was going about his daily duties, and Will walked with him. Their way led them through an unsavoury lane that was called Hope Alley, and lay hard by King Edward's Stair at Wapping. In passing down this alley they saw before them a sign hanging out, representing a Red Cow, which was the name of a pot-house much frequented by sailors. Will's glance travelling to this gaudy sign, suddenly encountered the gaze of a pair of rolling blood-shot eyes which seemed suddenly and strangely familiar. The next instant he had recognized, beneath the shade of a tarpaulin hat, the bloated visage of the terrible Judge last seen by him in the Assize Hall of Taunton.

Grasping the scrivener by the arm and whispering a few hurried words to him, Will hastened away for the guard; whilst the scrivener entered the house and the room, where the too reckless fugitive had adventured himself in order to indulge once more his intemperate love for strong drink, and found that worthy shrinking back into a corner, his hat pulled far over his eyes, his face hidden as much as he could hide it by a pint pot.

In a moment the house was surrounded by a hooting and yelling crowd. I have heard Will describe the scene a hundred times, and each time I seem to see it more plainly than the last--the cowering, craven coward now shivering and shrinking before men whom he had sworn at, raved at, cursed and brow-beaten, more cowed and terrified than the most miserable of his victims. And verily that crowd would have torn him limb from limb or ever the guards had come at him (for, contrary to the custom of an English mob, this one was bloodthirsty and furious to an extent which can better be imagined than described), had it not been for the action of the train-bands, who forced a way through the hooting mob and got the prisoner safe into a coach, though not before his clothes were torn half off his back, and he had been wounded by many a flying stone, and had shrieked aloud for mercy in his agony and terror.

That very day, after an interview with the Lord Mayor and by his own desire, he was carried to the Tower, but even so he barely escaped the fury of the populace; for when it was known that the coach contained this man so bitterly detested and feared, there were continual and determined attacks made upon it, and the bloated visage was seen from time to time appearing first at one window and then at another, whilst the miserable man clasped his hands and cried aloud for the mercy he never bestowed upon those who had implored it of him.

And thus he entered the Tower a miserable and despairing captive, only a little more than three years after that Bloody Assize with which his name will always be associated. Four months later he perished miserably, despised and hated by all men; and not even left in peace to die, but assailed by all sorts of malicious letters and even gifts which must have made his last days a hell upon earth to him. But enough of that bad man.

We of the West Country heard with stern satisfaction of his end, in the bright spring-tide and the happiness we were all feeling in the wise and just rule of our new Sovereigns. And the tale of how Will Wiseman was the instrument of his final capture, and thus was the means of avenging the miseries his hands had inflicted upon so many here, will always be a favourite one with young and old in Taunton Town.

Men remembered the prognostication of Mother Whale, and how she had prophesied an evil end for him, even as she had prophesied the exile of the tyrant monarch. It seemed, indeed, that in spite of all we had suffered, the Lord had been working on the side of virtue and freedom. The wicked King was disgraced and driven away; the yet more wicked Judge had died in the Tower.

THE END.

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