226 WEYMOUTH AND THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 



A GHASTLY MURDER. 



We now reach a period 17 months after the raising of the 

 siege ; the townsfolk have pretty well settled, amongst 

 themselves, their political animosities, are clearing the 

 narrow streets of the earth and rubbish d: posited during the 

 war, and are making good the damage done to their houses 

 and gardens, when they are startled by an extraordinary 

 story which forms the subject of gossip at every street corner. 

 Personal narratives connected with sieges in the Civil War 

 have not frequently come down to us in any detail. I will, 

 therefore, relate this one. There is a well-known public 

 passage which leads into New Street, on the South side of 

 the Pawnbroker's shop in St. Mary Street, Melcombe Regis. 

 This passage was called, until recently, Blockhouse Lane, 

 because it led to a square stone-built Elizabethan fort, 

 facing the bay, called " the Blockhouse." On the site of 

 the pawnbroker's shop stood, during the Civil War, what is 

 described in an old record, as " a house of entertainment," 

 meaning, of course, an Inn or Public House. It was kept 

 by a man named John Chiles. We learn that, at the time 

 of the siege, owing to the perturbed state of the town, the 

 house " was for the most part full of people day and night." 

 The excitement which prevails at the time I was speaking 

 of is in consequence of Chiles having just been arrested on 

 a charge preferred against him of having, a few days after 

 the siege, murdered a guest in his house. What stirs the 

 populace so much is, that this terrible charge has been made 

 by his own wife. Let us go to the ancient Town Hall in 

 St. Edmund Street probably an Elizabethan building and 

 hear the case which is about to be tried by the Borough 

 Justices. Chiles' wife gives her evidence. She says that a 

 Trader named William Courtney (who seems to have come 

 from Taunton Dean) lodged at the house on the Thursday 

 night after the siege ; that he was a middle-aged man, with 

 flaxen hair and yellow beard, and wore a short coat ; that he 

 was accommodated with a pallet of straw, by the bedside of 



