Chapter XXVIII

REMOVED from all the noise and bustle of the High Street, in a quiet nook away from the modern life of the town, stands Colchester Castle, on the site of the Temple of Claudius. The Keep, built by Eudo, "Dapifer," or High Steward of Normandy, under William the Conqueror and his two successors, alone remains, and has lost its upper storey, destroyed by a speculator who bought the building in 1683, and half ruined himself in his attempts to demolish it. It is perhaps not generally known that this is by far the largest keep in England, measuring 155 ft. by 113 ft. The Tower of London, built at the same period, and the next largest, measures only 116 ft. by 96 ft. There have been those who, looking at its massive walls, 12 ft. thick, with courses of Roman tiles conspicuous in them, have believed this to be the original Roman temple, and antiquaries who should have known better have written long treatises to support their views. Those, however, were the days before comparative archæology had come into being to prove that the peculiarities in the planning, noticeable here, are partaken of by the undoubted Norman keeps of the Tower of London and of Rochester Castle, known to have been designed by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester. Freeman was very severe in his time on those who labelled the interior of Colchester keep with such names as "podium" and "adytum," in their belief of its Roman character.

If its lack of height prevents Colchester Castle from being impressive without, certainly its gloomy dungeons and mighty walls compel the respect and wonder of all who enter. They look not so much as though they had been built up, as though cells and passages had been carved and burrowed out of a solid mass; so small are those passages and staircases, so thick the walls. In the chapel and the corridors that still remain roofed, the collections of the Essex Archæological Society have a home, and from other and roofless walls that are broad enough to afford the safest of pathways one may gaze down upon the surrounding grassy enclosures and see that spot where those two Royalist commanders, Lucas and Lisle, who held Colchester for seventy-six days against the besieging army of the Parliament in 1648, were barbarously shot by order of Fairfax, after having surrendered.

That siege of Colchester is the most romantic incident that has survived in the history of the town. It is the story of a last desperate attempt of the Royalists to contend with the Parliamentary forces that had everywhere overwhelmed the King's supporters after a bitter warfare of over six years. It was a gallant attempt, and the more so because Essex was not a county favourable to the King's cause. Sir Charles Lucas, at the head of this enterprise, was a younger member of the Lucas family, seated at Colchester. In the beginning of June 1648, a Royalist rising under Colonel Goring had been checked at Blackheath by the Parliamentary general, Fairfax. A portion of Goring's force crossed the Thames into Essex, and lay at Brentwood. This was an opportunity which Essex sympathisers could not let slip. Lucas and his friends, gathering a body of adherents, galloped down the road to Chelmsford, where the Committee of Parliament was in session, and seized them, afterwards continuing their progress to Brentwood, where they effected a junction with Goring's band. Their forces thus united, a counter-march was made upon Chelmsford again, and continued to Colchester; Lord Capel, Sir George Lisle, and many others joining on the way. On June 12, Goring, in command of this body of four thousand Royalists, approached Colchester, and found the Head Gate closed against him by the unsympathetic citizens, but a slight skirmish soon enabled him to force an entrance. He had not intended to remain at Colchester, but the swift pursuit that Fairfax organised from London gave the Royalists no time to continue their projected march into the Midlands. The day after Goring had entered Colchester, Fairfax had assembled his forces on Lexden Heath, and immediately sent a trumpeter to demand surrender. The inevitable refusal was the signal for a battle outside the town, on the London Road; a contest which resulted in the retirement of the Royalists within the walls. The Head Gate still existed, its bolts and bars in perfect order, but as the Royalists fell back through it into the town, two hundred or more of the Parliamentary troops dashed through in pursuit. Their ardour cost them their lives, for Lord Capel at the head of a determined band pushed back the gate upon the bulk of the enemy, thrusting his walking-stick through the staples as the door closed. The eager advance-guard, thus cooped up within the walls, were all slain.

Preparations were now made on both sides for a siege. Fairfax had already lost many men, and dared not attempt to carry the town by storm. His plan was to surround Colchester and imprison the Royalists there until such time as his heavy ordnance or starvation should compel them to surrender. With his command of reinforcements from London, and his ability thus to enclose the town with a cordon of troops, the position of the Royalists was hopeless, and it is to their honour and credit that, in order to contain Fairfax's large army and so give opportunities to the organisers of Royalist movements in the Midlands, they continued the defence in the face of starvation and despite the easy terms of capitulation at first offered them. Their domestic position (so to call it) in the town was unenviable, for the inhabitants were wholly opposed to their cause. They had with them, it is true, the members of the Parliamentary Committee whom they had kidnapped from Chelmsford, but those gentlemen were a nuisance and had to be civilly treated and fed while the Royalists themselves went hungry. The unfortunate inhabitants, too, were starving, and many of their houses and churches destroyed by the besiegers' cannon shot; while suburbs were burnt down outside the walls.

The end of this long agony came on August 27, when the town was surrendered; the officers "surrendering to mercy," the lesser officers and rank and file with an assurance that their lives and personal belongings should be spared. Seventy-five superior officers accordingly gave up their arms at the "King's Head" inn. Four of them were to be tried by court-martial. One escaped, one was pardoned, and two--Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle--condemned to be shot without delay, on a disproved charge of having once broken their parole when formerly prisoners of war. In vain asking for time to make some final disposition of their affairs, these two officers were executed the same evening, on a grassy spot a few paces clear of the north wall of the old castle. Sir Charles Lucas was the first to be shot, and met his end as a brave, gallant gentleman should. "I have often faced death on the field of battle," he said, "and you shall now see how I dare to die." Then he knelt in prayer, and, rising, threw open his vest, exclaiming, "See, I am ready for you. Now, rebels, do your worst!" The firing-party then fired and shot him in four places, so that he fell dead on the instant.

Sir George Lisle was then brought to the same place, and viewing the dead body of his friend as it lay on the ground, knelt down and kissed him, praising his unspotted honour. After bidding farewell to some friends, he turned to the spectators, saying, "Oh! how many of your lives here have I saved in hot blood, and must now myself be most barbarously murdered in cold blood? But what dare not they do that would willingly cut the throat of my dear King, whom they have already imprisoned, and for whose deliverance, and peace to this unfortunate country, I dedicate my last prayer to Heaven?" Then, looking in the faces of those who were to execute him, and thinking they stood at too great a distance, he desired them to come nearer, to which one of them said, "I'll warrant, sir, we hit you." "Friend," he answered, "I have been nearer you when you have missed me!" And so, after a short prayer upon his knees, he rose up and said, "Now, traitors, do your worst!" Whereupon they shot him dead.

The stone covering the graves of these unhappy soldiers may yet be seen in St Giles's Church, with an inscription stating that they were "by the command of Thomas Fairfax, the general of the Parliament Army, in cold blood barbarously murdered." A legend may still be occasionally met with in old books, which has it that the Duke of Buckingham, who had married Fairfax's daughter, approached Charles the Second with the object of having the passage erased that reflected so severely on his father-in-law's memory. The King conferred on the subject with Lord Lucas, who said that he would with pleasure obey the Royal command, if only His Majesty would allow him to place in its stead the statement that "Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were barbarously murdered for their loyalty to King Charles the First, and that his son, King Charles the Second, had ordered this memorial of their loyalty to be erased." The King then, we are told, commanded the already existing epitaph to be cut still deeper, and it will be readily observed by those who go to gaze upon it that the lettering is bolder and deeper than commonly is the case.

The undertaking of Fairfax with respect to the surrendered soldiery was not respected. They were ruthlessly pillaged, and some sent to the plantations over seas. Lord Capel was eventually executed in London. For many years afterwards the spot where Lucas and Lisle fell was shown by the awe-struck people of Colchester, who told the legend that grass would not grow where that loyal blood had been spilled. In later times the story became an article of faith with one political party and a derision to the other. No grass grows there now; but for the commonplace reason that a well-kept gravel path occupies the site, which is duly marked by a small obelisk.

Colchester was long in recovering itself after the rough treatment received during the siege; and in fact, it is only in recent years that the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall, battered down on that occasion, has been rebuilt; while the Norman minster of St Botolph remains the roofless ruin that cannonading and incendiarism left it. Evelyn in 1656 found Colchester "a ragged and factious town, now swarming with sectaries," and if he had visited it nine years later would have witnessed a worse state, for the plague almost depopulated the place.

"Sectaries"--that is to say, those who preferred to think for themselves on religious matters, and to worship in their own way--were treated with an unconscionable severity. One Parnell, a Quaker, was imprisoned in a cell within Colchester Castle, and died there, his story affording a sad example of barbarity in the authorities of that period.

But the early nineteenth century was as savage in some ways as the late seventeenth, which so delighted in despitefully using Nonconformists. The antiquarian collections in the castle, for instance, include a particularly ferocious instrument devised for the protection of the squires' property and for the maiming of poachers. It is a man-trap; one of those devilish contrivances which, actuated by powerful springs and furnished with sharp steel teeth, would, when accidentally trodden on by the poacher, snap down upon his leg with force sufficient to injure the bone and probably mutilate him for life. It was thus the landed interests protected their rabbits, hares and pheasants. The existence of this man-trap, together with the spring guns also used at the same time, is a reproach to the England of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, just as its preservation here as a curiosity is a certificate of the progress achieved in humanity since then.

The present prosperity of Colchester is reflected in many ways, but in none more strikingly than the condition of the castle, now a municipal property, and encircled with lawns and flower-beds, oddly at variance with its time-worn grandeur. The neatness of these surroundings and of the ornamental railings that fence off the enclosure is admirable from the everyday point of view, but the picturesque neglect and rural squalor of other years pointed the moral of the place and annotated its story, while present prettinesses blur the historic page. It is so everywhere throughout the land. When, a hundred years ago, Turner, Sandby, Prout and Girtin, our early water-colourists, roamed the country, making their picturesque sketches, they did not find themselves baulked by flower-beds, cursed by cast-iron fences, or requested not to walk on the grass. They had to pick their hazardous way through miry lanes, or adventure through the bottomless sloughs of farmyards. All these things were offensive to the wayfarer, but they generally meant picturesque compositions and exquisitely sketchable foregrounds. Nowadays the conscientious illustrator, unwilling to picturesquely exaggerate, and yet accursed with cast-iron railings new from Birmingham last week, is in a quandary.

The once forlorn condition of Colchester Castle doubtless originated in 1726, when its then owner, Sir Isaac Rebow, left it by will to a detested grandson, on whom he thus conferred a useless encumbrance, a more exasperating bequest than even the proverbial cutting off with a shilling.

A relic of those old days of picturesque neglect is found in the book of an auctioneer, who wrote an account of his "Professional Travels in England in the first half of the Nineteenth Century," modestly veiling his identity, and simply calling himself on his title-page, "An Auctioneer." Part One of his work was issued in 1843, but Part Two is yet to come, and as his first instalment shows little merit, the world can well afford to forego the second.

Coming to the castle, he muses over its ruins, and weeps that cabbages and coriander employ the attention of the Colchester people, rather than the care of ancient fortresses. To him, thus contemplating "the sad remains of so many interesting scenes," enters from an adjoining farm one whom he is pleased to term "an Aborigine." By this he obviously names an Essex farm-labourer. It is an affectation, but he might have done worse. He _might_ have called him, seeing that Colchester is a place of oysters, a "native," in inverted commas, evidences of jocular intent, which would have been dreadful.

"Ah! sir," says the Aborigine, "it was cruel work when them great Barons, as they call 'em, lived here."

"True, my friend," replies the Auctioneer, "but it's a pity to see hogs and donkeys depasturing in their courts and gardens, and grubbing and kicking down their halls and chapels."

"Lord! your honour," rejoins the son of the soil, "what's the use on 'em in these days? I'd sooner see an acre of these 'ere swedes any day, than them there towers and dungeons. Them swedes afore you 'ool carry a score o' fine wethers any month in the year, and plaze ye to look at 'em, but as for them flint walls, you may look at 'em for ever and a day 'fore you find enough o' green for a garnish"; which was indeed a practical rural way of looking at things.

The summit of those old walls has nowadays a very charming green garnish of grass, rendered parti-coloured by wind- and bird-sown wallflowers and vigorous wildings; but more lusty than these are the young sycamores, that have struck deep roots into the walls and bid fair to grow into large trees.

It is still possible to follow the greater part of Colchester's old walls along the queer alleys that run above or below them. Eld Lane, out of whose elevated course the steep descent of the old postern, now known as Scheregate Steps, goes, is situated along the summit of the south wall looking over towards St John's Green, where, facing a wilderness of scrubby grass, broken bottles, and the sordid house-sweepings of the modern town, the gatehouse stands, all that is left of the proud mitred Abbey of St John. By that green is the frowzy little church of St Giles, patched up in so atrocious a manner from the wreck it was after the siege of 1648 that to call its "architecture" merely "debased" is to deal kindly with it. A dilapidated boarded tower is a feature of the exterior; the interior provided with a flat plaster ceiling, like that of a dwelling-room, and filled with flimsy pine-wood pews, painted and grained. Dust and stuffiness reign within; dust and broken crockery without. And yet, although so unlovely, it is not altogether with satisfaction that an elaborate design is seen for rebuilding the church from its foundations, together with the notice, "It is earnestly hoped that contributions will be given toward the restoration fund." "Restoration" is not the word, for the design is alien and quite unlike anything that formerly stood on the ground. Rather let the place be repaired and cleansed and its unbeautiful details preserved as a characteristic and shocking example of how they looked upon ecclesiastical architecture in the dark days of churchwarden- and carpenter-Gothic. It is here, under the north aisle, that those two valiant captains, Lucas and Lisle, are laid.

For the church-towers built of Roman bricks, and for other evidences of that ancient Empire, let the explorer seek, and, presently finding, think himself, if he will, an original investigator: it is a harmless attitude, if at the same time unwarranted by fact. Let us to other matters, and then, leaving the town, hie away for Ipswich.

Colchester is, of course, famous for its oysters, and has been ever since the Roman occupation. In the estuary of the Colne, and the Crouch, and in the oozy creeks of the Essex shores, the Colchester "natives" still grow up from infancy to maturity and feed upon the semi-maritime slime, as they did close upon two thousand years ago, and doubtless long before that. If we may judge from the stupendous heaps of oyster-shells discovered on the sites of Roman towns and villas, near and far, to say merely that the Romans were fond of oysters would be far too mild a term. They must have almost lived on oysters, dreamt oysters, and thought oysters. No wonder Colchester, whence the finest and the largest supply came, was so prosperous a Roman colony.

Although the fishery brings wealth to the town, it is more than a mile away and makes no sign. Those who might think that, because of it, Colchester should obtrude oysters at every turn and oyster-shells should strew every street, would be vastly disillusioned. But beside its oyster fishery, other Colchester trades are of secondary importance. Agricultural machinery is made here, and brewing and corn-milling carried on, but the once famed textile manufactures are gone. Among those old trades was the industry of baize-making, which left Colchester considerably over a century ago for other centres, after having given additional prosperity to the town for a period of a hundred and fifty years. It was shortly after 1570 that numbers of Dutch Protestants, fleeing from the Spanish persecutions in Holland, introduced the making of "bays and says," and, despite local jealousies, flourished amazingly for generations here.

But Colchester will never be dull while it continues to be what it is now--a great military depôt. Those worthy representatives of the Roman legionaries at a distance in time of nineteen centuries or so, the Tommies and troopers of the British Army, are a prominent feature in every street, and bugles blow all round the clock, from _réveillé_ to the last post, when every good soldier goes home to his barracks down the Butt Road; while the King's bad bargains stay behind and fortify themselves against apprehensions of the morrow's "clink" with another glass, or, adventuring too rashly into the street, find themselves presently in charge of the military patrol that walks the town with measured step and slow.