222 WEYMOUTH AND THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 



rout of the Royalists in Melcombe (viz., on April 6th, 1646)* 

 and Sherborne and Corfe Castle having been captured, the 

 reduction of the County to the Parliamentary forces was 

 completed. 



THE HANGING OF THE ROYALIST CONSPIRATORS, 

 ' MARCH SRD, 1645. 



Colonel Sydenham, the Governor of Weymouth, lost no 

 time in dealing summarily with the chief Royalist conspirators 

 in the plot for surprising the forts. Captain Batten had them, 

 with many other prisoners, on board his ship, " in a posture 

 speedily to be hanged," and wrote to the Speaker of the 

 House of Commons as to the prisoners : " To-morrow, 

 we shall shorten the number by hanging some of the towns- 

 men who are prisoners on board us and were the betrayers 

 of the town." Accordingly a council of war was held on Satur- 

 day, March 1st, 1645, and on several succeeding days, before 

 the Governor, all the field officers and captains of the 

 Weymouth Garrison, Captain Batten, Admiral of the Fleet 

 then riding in Weymouth Bay, and divers other sea Captains. 

 Captain Cade, the coadjutor of Fabian Hodder, made a con- 

 fession and was hanged ; Samways, a Melcombe tailor, was 

 brought to the gallows to be hanged ; but, expressing much 

 sorrow for his treachery, he, and Walter Bond, the Hope 

 fisherman, were reprieved and carried back to prison, " to 

 make a further discovery of their partners."! One of the 



* Captain Batten, in reporting the surrender of Portland to Lenthall, 

 Speaker of the House of Commons, wrote April 7th, 1646, "When they march'd 

 away. . . they had not a colour in the island. As to the sequestration 

 of their estates. . . there is not a hundred pounds a year amongst them 

 all, the Governour excepted. . . . The island was very stronge and would 

 have cost much blood to have reduced it by force. . . . There is more to 

 be done on the island with a faire carriage than by violence." 



t Mercurius Britanicus No. 75. 



