No; they will not do anything of the kind. Instead, they advance into the Market Square, where their battery is wheeled, pointing up the High Street, much to the consternation of the citizens, firmly persuaded that this is the end of all things and now busily engaged in secreting their little hoards, their silver spoons and precious things, in unlikely places. The rioters, conscious of having easily overawed the place, now determine to put it under contribution, beginning with those who have ground the faces of the poor--the millers and their kind. Dennis, armed with a gun, and at the head of a threatening crowd, appears before the house of one Rickwood, miller. "They must have fifty pounds," he says, "or down come house and mill." Little doubt that they mean it: in earnest thereof, observe, windows are already smashed. Bring out those fifty sovereigns, miserable ones, before we pull the house about your ears!
They send off to the bank accordingly; Mrs. Rickwood going in haste. On the way she meets the Bank Manager, a person who combines that post with the civil overlordship of Ely. He is, in point of fact, the chief constable. Something grotesquely appropriate, if you think of it, in these two posts being in the hands of one man. "They shall not have a penny," he stoutly declares, assisting Mrs. Rickwood from the crowds that beset her; but certain blows upon head and body determine him to be more diplomatic, and after some parley he agrees to pay the fifty pounds in cash to those who constitute themselves leaders of three divisions of rioters. These three men alone, representing Ely, Littleport, and Downham, shall be admitted to the bank, and each shall--and does actually--receive one-third of that sum, signing for it. Resourceful manager! They are paid the coin, and sign: they might as well have signed their death-warrants, for those signatures are evidence of the very best against them when proceedings shall subsequently be taken.
Other houses are visited and people terrified, and then they are at a loss for what next. You cannot make a revolution out of your head as you go on: what is needed is a programme, some definite scheme, and of such a thing these poor wretches have no idea. So, gradually, as afternoon comes on, they disperse and fall back upon discontented Littleport, just before the arrival of a troop of the 18th Dragoons and a detachment of the Royston Volunteer Cavalry, sent for to Bury St. Edmunds and Royston by the magistrates who had in the early morning parleyed with the rioters. Ely is saved!