of the market-place; while small detachments brought away the horses from the several inns, liberated the prisoners in the gaol, and surprised the sheriff and the two judges in their beds.  At first Wagstaff gave orders that these three should be immediately hanged; for they were traitors acting under the authority of the usurper; then, pretending to relent, he discharged the judges on their parole, but detained the sheriff a prisoners because he had refused to proclaim Charles Stuart.  At two in the afternoon he left Salisbury, but not before he had learned to doubt of the result.  Scarcely a man had joined him of the crowd of gentlemen and yeomen whom the assizes had collected in the town; and the Hampshire royalists, about two hundred and fifty horse, had not arrived according to their promise.  From Salisbury the insurgents marched through Dorsetshire into the county of Devon.  Their hopes grew fainter every hour; the further they proceeded, their number diminished; and, on the evening of the third day,[c] they reached Southmolton in a state of exhaustion and despondency.  At that moment, Captain Crook, who had followed them for several hours, charged into the town with a troop of cavalry.  Hardly a show of resistance was made; Penruddock, Grove, and Jones, three of the leaders, with some fifty others, were made

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1655.  March 7.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1655.  March 11.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1655.  March 14.]

prisoners; the rest, of whom Wagstaff had the good fortune to be one, aided by the darkness of the night, effected their escape.[1]

The Hampshire royalists had commenced their march for Salisbury, when, learning that Wagstaff had left that city, they immediately dispersed.  Other risings at the same time took place in the counties of Montgomery, Shropshire, Nottingham, York, and Northumberland, but everywhere with similar results.  The republicans, ardently as they desired to see the protector humbled in the dust, were unwilling that his ruin should be effected by a party whose ascendancy appeared to them a still more grievous evil.  The insurgents were ashamed and alarmed at the paucity of their numbers; prudence taught them to disband before they proceeded to acts of hostility; and they slunk away in secrecy to their homes, that they might escape the proof, if not the suspicion, of guilt.  Even Rochester himself, sanguine as he was by disposition, renounced the attempt; and, with his usual good fortune, was able to thread back his way, through a thousand dangers, from the centre of Yorkshire to the court of the exiled sovereign at Cologne.[2]

Whether it was through a feeling of shame, or apprehension of the consequences, Cromwell, even under the provocations which he had received, ventured not to bring to trial any of the men who had formerly fought by his side, and now combined against him because he trampled on the liberties of the nation.  With the royalists it was otherwise.  He knew that their sufferings would excite little commiseration in those whose