Micah Clarke | Page 3

a great
spread of shoulder and a mighty chest. His face was craggy and stern,
with large harsh features, shaggy over-hanging brows, high-bridged
fleshy nose, and a full-lipped mouth which tightened and set when he
was angry. His grey eyes were piercing and soldier-like, yet I have seen
them lighten up into a kindly and merry twinkle. His voice was the
most tremendous and awe-inspiring that I have ever listened to. I can
well believe what I have heard, that when he chanted the Hundredth
Psalm as he rode down among the blue bonnets at Dunbar, the sound of
him rose above the blare of trumpets and the crash of guns, like the
deep roll of a breaking wave. Yet though he possessed every quality
which was needed to raise him to distinction as an officer, he had
thrown off his military habits when he returned to civil life. As he
prospered and grew rich he might well have worn a sword, but instead
he would ever bear a small copy of the Scriptures bound to his girdle,
where other men hung their weapons. He was sober and measured in
his speech, and it was seldom, even in the bosom of his own family,
that he would speak of the scenes which he had taken part in, or of the
great men, Fleetwood and Harrison, Blake and Ireton, Desborough and
Lambert, some of whom had been simple troopers like himself when
the troubles broke out. He was frugal in his eating, backward in
drinking, and allowed himself no pleasures save three pipes a day of
Oronooko tobacco, which he kept ever in a brown jar by the great
wooden chair on the left-hand side of the mantelshelf.
Yet for all his self-restraint the old leaven would at times begin to work
in him, and bring on fits of what his enemies would call fanaticism and
his friends piety, though it must be confessed that this piety was prone
to take a fierce and fiery shape. As I look back, one or two instances of
that stand out so hard and clear in my recollection that they might be
scenes which I had seen of late in the playhouse, instead of memories
of my childhood more than threescore years ago, when the second
Charles was on the throne.
The first of these occurred when I was so young that I can remember

neither what went before nor what immediately after it. It stuck in my
infant mind when other things slipped through it. We were all in the
house one sultry summer evening, when there came a rattle of
kettledrums and a clatter of hoofs, which brought my mother and my
father to the door, she with me in her arms that I might have the better
view. It was a regiment of horse on their way from Chichester to
Portsmouth, with colours flying and band playing, making the bravest
show that ever my youthful eyes had rested upon. With what wonder
and admiration did I gaze at the sleek prancing steeds, the steel morions,
the plumed hats of the officers, the scarfs and bandoliers. Never, I
thought, had such a gallant company assembled, and I clapped my
hands and cried out in my delight. My father smiled gravely, and took
me from my mother's arms. 'Nay, lad,' he said, 'thou art a soldier's son,
and should have more judgment than to commend such a rabble as this.
Canst thou not, child as thou art, see that their arms are ill-found, their
stirrup-irons rusted, and their ranks without order or cohesion? Neither
have they thrown out a troop in advance, as should even in times of
peace be done, and their rear is straggling from here to Bedhampton.
Yea,' he continued, suddenly shaking his long arm at the troopers, and
calling out to them, 'ye are corn ripe for the sickle and waiting only for
the reapers!' Several of them reined up at this sudden out-flame. 'Hit the
crop-eared rascal over the pate, Jack!' cried one to another, wheeling
his horse round; but there was that in my father's face which caused
him to fall back into the ranks again with his purpose unfulfilled. The
regiment jingled on down the road, and my mother laid her thin hands
upon my father's arm, and lulled with her pretty coaxing ways the
sleeping devil which had stirred within him.
On another occasion which I can remember, about my seventh or
eighth year, his wrath burst out with more dangerous effect. I was
playing about him as he worked in the tanning-yard one spring
afternoon, when in through the open doorway strutted two stately
gentlemen, with gold facings to their coats and smart cockades at the
side of their three-cornered hats. They were, as I