Micah Clarke | Page 2

speak from his own knowledge of these events,
or who has played a more forward part in them. All that I know I shall
endeavour soberly and in due order to put before you. I shall try to
make these dead men quicken into life for your behoof, and to call back
out of the mists of the past those scenes which were brisk enough in the
acting, though they read so dully and so heavily in the pages of the
worthy men who have set themselves to record them. Perchance my
words, too, might, in the ears of strangers, seem to be but an old man's
gossip. To you, however, who know that these eyes which are looking
at you looked also at the things which I describe, and that this hand has
struck in for a good cause, it will, I know, be different. Bear in mind as
you listen that it was your quarrel as well as our own in which we
fought, and that if now you grow up to be free men in a free land,
privileged to think or to pray as your consciences shall direct, you may
thank God that you are reaping the harvest which your fathers sowed in
blood and suffering when the Stuarts were on the throne.
I was born then in the year 1664, at Havant, which is a flourishing
village a few miles from Portsmouth off the main London road, and
there it was that I spent the greater part of my youth. It is now as it was
then, a pleasant, healthy spot, with a hundred or more brick cottages
scattered along in a single irregular street, each with its little garden in
front, and maybe a fruit tree or two at the back. In the middle of the
village stood the old church with the square tower, and the great
sun-dial like a wrinkle upon its grey weather-blotched face. On the
outskirts the Presbyterians had their chapel; but when the Act of
Uniformity was passed, their good minister, Master Breckinridge,

whose discourses had often crowded his rude benches while the
comfortable pews of the church were empty, was cast into gaol, and his
flock dispersed. As to the Independents, of whom my father was one,
they also were under the ban of the law, but they attended conventicle
at Emsworth, whither we would trudge, rain or shine, on every Sabbath
morning. These meetings were broken up more than once, but the
congregation was composed of such harmless folk, so well beloved and
respected by their neighbours, that the peace officers came after a time
to ignore them, and to let them worship in their own fashion. There
were Papists, too, amongst us, who were compelled to go as far as
Portsmouth for their Mass. Thus, you see, small as was our village, we
were a fair miniature of the whole country, for we had our sects and our
factions, which were all the more bitter for being confined in so narrow
a compass.
My father, Joseph Clarke, was better known over the countryside by the
name of Ironside Joe, for he had served in his youth in the Yaxley troop
of Oliver Cromwell's famous regiment of horse, and had preached so
lustily and fought so stoutly that old Noll himself called him out of the
ranks after the fight at Dunbar, and raised him to a cornetcy. It chanced,
however, that having some little time later fallen into an argument with
one of his troopers concerning the mystery of the Trinity, the man, who
was a half-crazy zealot, smote my father across the face, a favour
which he returned by a thrust from his broadsword, which sent his
adversary to test in person the truth of his beliefs. In most armies it
would have been conceded that my father was within his rights in
punishing promptly so rank an act of mutiny, but the soldiers of
Cromwell had so high a notion of their own importance and privileges,
that they resented this summary justice upon their companion. A
court-martial sat upon my father, and it is likely that he would have
been offered up as a sacrifice to appease the angry soldiery, had not the
Lord Protector interfered, and limited the punishment to dismissal from
the army. Cornet Clarke was accordingly stripped of his buff coat and
steel cap, and wandered down to Havant, where he settled into business
as a leather merchant and tanner, thereby depriving Parliament of as
trusty a soldier as ever drew blade in its service. Finding that he
prospered in trade, he took as wife Mary Shepstone, a young

Churchwoman, and I, Micah Clarke, was the first pledge of their union.
My father, as I remember him first, was tall and straight, with