2o8 THE RED DEER OF EXMOOR. 



quarrel with him, and challenge him to fight, which 

 Roger prudently declined. Roger escaped home, 

 though he alleges that the conspirators agreed to 

 waylay and murder him in the Strand. We next 

 hear that Edward Horner, " being a bad man " — 

 and, indeed, he cannot have been a pleasant neigh- 

 bour — collected twenty - eight armed men at 

 Taunton on fair day, and professing to act as 

 bailiff paraded the fair and extorted money and 

 goods. 



In the following year the same set of men went at 

 night to the house of George Webb in Taunton, 

 " which did there keep a beare or beares," and 

 demanded that he should bring out the bear, which 

 he refused. They then broke open his house "and 

 forcibly did take from him his beare and carried him 

 through the streets of Taunton . . . hooping 

 and hollowing and making most strange outcrys and 

 unwonted noyses . . . and some of the doors 

 they did break open and suffered the said beare to 

 rome about loose thereby disturbing the whole town, 

 whereby many of the inhabitants were likely to have 

 been driven out of their wittes and fallen madd 

 and so in that sort they carried the said 

 beare into the open market place at Taunton, then 

 being between the hours of 12 and i in the night, 

 and by the space of three hours with dogs and other 

 devices, with whippes and wheelbarrows bayte the 

 said beare and did not tye the said beare but in this 

 manner bayted him lose, and did then and there fall 



