The detachment of Roundheads
summoned the place. The royalist, to show his respect for their
authority, made his kitchen wench squeak a defiance from an upper
window, from which she bolted with great rapidity as soon as she had
thus represented the valor of the establishment, and when next seen it
was in the cellar, wedged in between two barrels of beer. The men went
at it hammer and tongs, and in twenty-four hours a good many
cannon-balls traversed the building, a great many stuck in the walls
like plums in a Christmas pudding, the doors were blown in with petards,
and the principal defenders, with a few wounded Roundheads, were carried
off to Cromwell himself; whilst the house itself was fired, and blazed
away merrily.
Cromwell threatened the royalist gentleman with death for defending an
untenable place.
"I didn't know it was untenable," said the gentleman. "How could I till
I had tried?"
"You had the fate of fortified places to instruct you," said Cromwell,
and he promised faithfully to hang him on his own ruins.
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