CHAPTER XVI

IN TIME OF TRIAL

FROM nursery rhymes and baby games to arranged marriages, from the horn-book to university studies, from dress, amusements, everyday occupations to the most serious concerns, we have taken a general, if only a bird's-eye view of the life led by the cultivated classes during the half century that preceded the great Civil War. The test of that life came in blood and fire. How had those pleasant country homes, with their old traditions, their religious customs, fitted their sons and daughters to play their parts when the unlooked-for, the impossible, happened?

The men went forth to their posts in council or in camp, but what of the women who remained at home, who knew their husbands and sons in danger, their homes threatened, who went in constant fear of attack, or, at the least, of the quartering of troops upon them, and the destruction of all the little personal possessions which mean home to most women? The note of the day amongst them is heroism; not only the heroism of deeds which find a record in history, but that of the cheerful, uncomplaining patience with which they took the spoiling of their goods, the personal hardships, the poverty, the daily miseries which the war involved.

It was not always a passive heroism that was shown; the home of Sir John Killigrew, near Falmouth, was not the only one whose owners were ready themselves to commit it to the flames sooner than that it should fall into the hands

of the enemy and be a base for further operations. Many a woman even, left to herself, with none but her servants and young children with her, whose training had been only the ordering of a large household, found herself competent to provision, man, and hold her husband's castle for the King, even in some cases commanding the troops herself. Among the valiant ladies who thus won for themselves renown in the pages of history the names of Dame Mary Bankes and of Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby, spring at once to remembrance.

Corfe Castle, which stands in a strong position on the chain of hills which cut off the Isle of Purbeck from the rest of Dorsetshire, must have been not only a fortress, but a luxurious home full of beautiful things, many of which were described in the former volume, and it was so well fortified as to defy menace for a long time.1 When in 1642 Sir John Bankes, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and one of the Privy Council, was summoned to attend the King at York, he sent Lady Bankes and her children to his Dorsetshire castle, no doubt believing that there they would be in perfect safety. During the winter, the first winter of the war, she remained there undisturbed, but the spring of 1643 saw matters growing more serious as the enemy drew nearer and nearer. By May the rebels, under the command of Sir Thomas Trenchard and Sir Walter Erle, were in possession of Dorchester, Lyme, Melcombe, Weymouth, Wareham, and Poole, Portland Castle having been delivered to them by treachery, and only Corfe Castle remained in obedience to the King. It was, of course, of the utmost importance to them that they should gain this, and so put themselves in possession of the whole of the sea-coast of Dorset, and, no doubt, thinking they had only a woman to deal with, Sir John being now on circuit, they promised themselves an easy victory.

Dame Mary, however, who was a Hawtrey of Rislip,

1 The Story of Corfe Castle, by the Right Hon. George Bankes.