3o6 THE EXETER ROAD 



weio'h the chances of a force marchiiio; throuah the 

 hostile countryside in the depth of winter to outflank 

 Exeter. 



But all hope for James's cause was gone, and 

 although the spirits of the ambitious William sank 

 when, on entering the streets of Exeter, he was only 

 received with a chilly curiosity, he was not to know 

 — for how could that most stony of champions read 

 into the hearts of these people ? — that their generous 

 enthusiasm for faith and freedom was quite crushed 

 out of existence by the bloody work of three years 

 before, when the peasantry saw with horror the 

 progress of the fiendish Jeffreys marked by a line 

 of gibbets ; when they could not fare forth upon the 

 highways and byeways without presently arriving at 

 some Gols;otha rubricated with the dishonoured 

 remains of one or other of their fellow^s ; and when 

 many a cottage had its empty chair, the occupants 

 dead or sold into a slavery worse than death. 



The people received William with a well-simulated 

 lack of interest, because they knew what would be 

 their portion were he defeated and James again 

 triumphant. They could not have cherished any 

 personal affection for the Prince of Orange, but can 

 only, at the best of it, have had an impersonal regard 

 for him as a champion of their liberties ; and of 

 helping such champions they had already acquired 

 a bitter surfeit. Thus it was that the back of loyalty 

 was broken, and Exeter, for once in her story, belied 

 her motto, SemiDcr Fidclis, the gift of Queen Elizabeth. 



The gifts that loyalty has Ijrought Exeter may soon 

 be enumerated, for they comprise just a number of 



