“We received yesterday the good news of the victory,” said the King. “I trust you bring no worse report of Sir Ralph Hopton, my lord?”
“He remains at Devizes, sire,” said Falkland, “and is steadily recovering from his injuries.”
The King put several questions as to the doings at Roundway Down, and Falkland having replied to them, was debating how he could suggest that the victory made this a fitting time for the opening of negotiations with Parliament, when the King asked what was being done with the prisoners.
“Some were left at Devizes, sire,” replied Falkland, “but a great number are being marched hither, and I am anxious that your Majesty should be in possession of the truth respecting one of Prince Maurice’s officers--Colonel Norton--who hath been guilty of very gross cruelty to two of the prisoners, Major Locke, who died last night for lack of a surgeon, and Lieutenant Harford.”
“Let me have the particulars,” said the King, coldly. “People are over-fond of bringing accusations against my nephew’s officers. Scarce a day passes but I have some idle tale of Prince Rupert’s men, and he hath but this morning assured me that the men are the best soldiers in our army, and hath told me of his clemency towards the lady of Caldecot Manor.”
Falkland’s face was a study. Prince Rupert was not without a certain generosity, but in the main he knew only too well that the troops commanded by the two German princes had done much by their burnings and plunderings and wanton devastation of the crops to exasperate the English. The people were not likely soon to forget the cruel burning of the eighty-seven houses in Birmingham which Prince Rupert had ordered in the spring.
“I will tell you, sire, precisely what I saw last night in St. Peter’s Church at Marlborough,” he said. And, graphically, but without any comment, he described to the King what had taken place.
“Bound to one of the church pillars, you say!” said the King, with a shudder, “and the guard had actually brought him water in the chalice! Horrible profanation! I cannot endure the misuse of the churches in this war, yet they assure me they must at times use them for troops and for prisoners.”
Falkland, with something like despair in his heart, marvelled at the extraordinary way in which the King missed the point he had wished to urge, and, in thinking of the church fabric and the communion-plate, failed to realise what cruelty to man really means.