176 THE EXETER ROAD 



eventually agreed to meet in that God's Acre, on 

 12tli January 1556, there to settle all accounts and 

 differences. They met, and, at a previously arranged 

 signal, Lord Stourton's servants rushed upon the 

 Hartsfills and stabbed and battered them to death 

 in a revoltingly cruel manner, while their master 

 looked on with approval. The details of this cold- 

 blooded atrocity are fully set forth in the trials of 

 that period, for the satisfaction of any one greedy 

 of horrors. 



This was in the reign of Queen Mary, when Pro- 

 testants were burned at the stake with the approval of 

 Roman Catholics ; but not even in those brutal times 

 could this affair Ije hushed up. Lord Stourton was 

 arrested, brought to trial in London, and, together 

 with four of his servants, found guilty of murder, 

 and sentenced to death. Justice was commendably 

 swift. The two Hartsills had been done to death 

 on the 12th of Jauuai;y, and on the second day of 

 March in the same year my lord set out under 

 escort from the Tower of London for Salisbury, the 

 place of execution. The melancholy cavalcade came 

 down the Exeter Road, the chief figure in it set 

 astride a horse, with legs and arms pinioned. The 

 first night they lay at Hounslow, the second at 

 Staines, the third at Basingstoke, and thence to 

 Salisbury, where, in the Market Place, on the morn- 

 ing of the 6th of March, they hanged him with a 

 silken cord. His servants were turned off at the 

 end of quite common hempen ropes, which doubtless 

 did their business quite as neatly. The body of this 

 prime malefactor, the organiser of the crime, was 



