year, his wrath burst out with more dangerous effect. I was playing
about him as he worked in the tanning-yard one spring afternoon, when in
through the open doorway strutted two stately gentlemen, with gold
facings to their coats and smart cockades at the side of their
three-cornered hats. They were, as I afterwards understood, officers of
the fleet who were passing through Havant, and seeing us at work in the
yard, designed to ask us some question as to their route. The younger
of the pair accosted my father and began his speech by a great clatter
of words which were all High Dutch to me, though I now see that they
were a string of such oaths as are common in the mouth of a sailor;
though why the very men who are in most danger of appearing before the
Almighty should go out of their way to insult Him, hath ever been a
mystery to me. My father in a rough stern voice bade him speak with
more reverence of sacred things, on which the pair of them gave tongue
together, swearing tenfold worse than before, and calling my father a
canting rogue and a smug-faced Presbytery Jack. What more they might
have said I know not, for my father picked up the great roller wherewith
he smoothed the leather, and dashing at them he brought it down on the
side of one of their heads with such a swashing blow, that had it not
been for his stiff hat the man would never have uttered oath again.
As it was, he dropped like a log upon the stones of the yard, while his
companion whipped out his rapier and made a vicious thrust; but my
father, who was as active as he was strong, sprung aside, and bringing
his cudgel down upon the outstretched arm of the officer, cracked it
like the stem of a tobacco-pipe. This affair made no little stir, for
it occurred at the time when those arch-liars, Oates, Bedloe, and
Carstairs, were disturbing the public mind by their rumours of plots,
and a rising of some sort was expected throughout the country.
Within a few days all Hampshire was ringing with an account of the
malcontent tanner of Havant, who had broken the head and the arm of two