قراءة كتاب Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts
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charm, and a portrait of the Princess given by the King to the city hangs in the Guildhall. It is a full-length portrait, and she is represented standing, one hand lightly gathering together the folds of her white satin dress.
During the autumn and winter of 1645-46 Exeter was gradually hemmed in by bodies of Parliamentary troops stationed at posts in the neighbourhood, and with the new year the siege became a closer one. It would seem, however, that there was no very acute distress from lack of food; but Fuller, who was in the city at the time, mentions with satisfaction the appearance of 'an incredible number of Larks ... for multitude like Quails in the Wildernesse, and as fat as plentifull ... which provided a feast for many poor people, who otherwise had been pinched for provision.' As the spring advanced, the King's cause lapsed into a condition too hopeless to be bettered by further resistance, and on April 9 Sir John Berkeley, for over two years the faithful guardian of the city, signed the articles of its surrender, on honourable terms, to Sir Thomas Fairfax.
There is no space to speak of later dramatic incidents in Exeter—the trial and execution of Mr Penruddocke and Mr Grove, leaders of a Royalist rising of Wiltshire gentlemen, whose speeches on the scaffold are given at length by Izacke; nor of the joy that greeted the Restoration, when 'Tar-barrels and Bonefires capered aloft'; nor of Charles II's visit, nor the entrance of the Duke of Monmouth in 1680 with five thousand horsemen, and nine hundred young men in white uniforms marching before him. One may not even pause before the gorgeous spectacle of William III's arrival, heralded by a procession in which appeared two hundred negroes in white-plumed, embroidered turbans, and a squadron of Swedish horsemen 'in bearskins taken from the beasts they had slain, with black armour and broad flaming swords.'
It has been only possible to name the most outstanding points in the history of a city—once more to quote Professor Freeman—'by the side of which most of the capitals of Europe are things of yesterday.... The city alike of Briton, Roman, and Englishman, the one great prize of the Christian Saxon, the city where Jupiter gave way to Christ, but where Christ never gave way to Woden—British Caerwisc, Roman Isca, West Saxon Exeter, may well stand first on our roll-call of English cities. Others can boast of a fuller share of modern greatness; none other can trace up a life so unbroken to so remote a past.'