losing six ships. Van Tromp then sailed
through the Channel proudly, with a broom at
his masthead to show that he had swept the
English from the seas. Blake, however, was
no man to bear this; three months after he
swooped at a Dutch convoy of merchantmen
of eighty vessels, and captured eleven men-of-war
and thirty merchantmen—a glorious prize.
Blake was as honest as he was brave, and after
all the galleons and plate vessels he had taken
did not leave five hundred pounds behind him.
The Royalists cast Blake's bones out of Westminster
Abbey, but they could not erase his
name from our history.

Straight as a black-plumed arrow the crow
bears on from Bridgewater to the Isle of
Athelney, once a swampy forest, where King
Alfred sheltered himself for a year in a
neatherd's cottage from the Danes. From
these river-side marshes he made those forays
on the Danes that culminated in his great
Wiltshire victory. While at Athelney, tradition
has it that he lost a favourite jewel of gold
and enamel, which had been fastened to a
necklace. Dropped in the underwood, trodden into
the river sand, fallen among the rushes or the
ferns, the ornament remained for centuries in
the Athelney earth, unclaimed, unseen, till,
extraordinary to relate, it was turned up by chance
in the seventeenth century. It is now in the
Ashmolean Museum, and is one of our most
precious relics. Oval in shape, and of Byzantine
workmanship, it bears the inscription, "Alfred
had me made."

The crow pauses over Halswell House to
recal an old tradition about the Tyntes—
an old crusading tradition it is, for the family
has been planted here on the Milverton road
longer than the oaks of their domain. The
first Tynte, a young knight of the Arundel
family, fought bravely at Ascalon, riding down
the Saracens till the white housings of his horse
were bordered crimson deep with Infidel blood.
Richard Coeur de Lion, who had observed him
hewing among the Moslem sabres, declared that
the maiden knight had borne himself like a lion,
and had done work enough for six crusaders,
whereupon he conferred on him for arms, a lion
argent on a field gules, between six crosslets of
the first, and for motto,  "Tynctus cruore
Saraceno."

The crow flies faster as it approaches Taunton,
till its broad wings flap rejoicingly over
the pleasant town above the river Tone. The
landscape is purely English; the vale, studded
with orchards, is green with pastures, cottages,
manor-houses, and village spires are scattered
over it "in gay abundance" to the very foot of
the blue Quantock and Blackdown hills, that
rise like huge waves in the far horizon. Taunton
used to be famous for its cloth manufacture,
and the vale was so fertile with "the zun and
zoil" alone, that there was a quaint Somersetshire
saying mentioned by Fuller: Ch' was
born at Taunton Dean; where should I be
born else?

The crow has only to alight on St. Mary's
rich-carved tower to gather up as many
legends as there are grains of wheat in a
corn-field. Early in the civil wars the town
was besieged by Sir Richard Granville and
eight thousand licentious and rapacious
Cavaliers, while Cromwell was busy at Windsor
preparing for the blow shortly to be struck
at Naseby. Taunton, tormented with ceaseless
fire, though half taken and half burned,
still held out under Blake. Many an anxious
reconnoitre must Blake have made in those
days from St. Mary's or St. James's towers to
see where the enemy swarmed thicker round the
earthworks, where the cannon blazed most, or
where the hot sally of the townsmen was being
most strenuously pushed forward towards the
Royalist tents. Colonel Weldon was at last
sent by Fairfax with four thousand men, and
Granville, dreading the approach of the main
Puritan body, raised the siege. From St. Mary's
towers Blake must have seen, with calm delight,
the enemy's masses of foot slowly loosen and
scatter over the valley. But the fever had
only slackened for an interval. Granville,
reinforced by three thousand horse, under the
dashing Goring, soon again advanced to Taunton,
and shut up Weldon and his men in the half
ruined town. After the heavy blow at Naseby,
Fairfax, however, drove Goring's Cavaliers
from Taunton, beat them at Lamport, and took
Bridgewater, with a king's garrison of two
thousand six hundred men.

In this second siege, when the Cavaliers were
again raging round the town, Blake behaved like
a Roman of the old rock. The streets round
the Priory and King Ina's Castle were soon mere
hulks of shattered walls and half destroyed
roofs. Ten thousand Cavaliers raged outside
the ramparts, shouting for the blood of these
resolute and dangerous Puritans. Shot and
powder grew rapidly scarce, and the fire from
the town perceptibly slackened, except at
those volcanic moments when Goring tried
to storm. Food, too, grew scarce. No droves
of oxen now from the valley, no fat sheep
from Mendip Downs. The soldiers became
pale and hollow-eyed, the women silent and
hopeless, the children querulous and fretful.
Blake had already announced his intention
of putting the garrison on rations of horseflesh.
There was only one hog left in the
town, and this animal was too useful to be
eaten. Poor wretch! led round the walls daily,
it was whipped at intervals, to induce the
Cavaliers to think that fresh supplies had been
secretly thrown in.

The people's spirit never failed. As for Blake,
he swore he would eat his boots before he surrendered,
though the enemy had shown their fierce
faces already at a practicable breach, and had
even planted cannon in part of the suburbs. At
last the storm begun to clear; one May day the
enemy's fire relaxed. There were shouts and
counter shouts; the king's banners receded;
the tents were lifted. Fairfax came dashing in.
The town was relieved; the siege was over.
That eleventh of May remained a festival for
a century after that. After the Restoration,
when every turncoat was drinking the king's