And so, my dear children, I come to the end of the history of a failure — a brave failure and a noble one, but a failure none the less. In three more years England was to come to herself, to tear the fetters¹ from her free limbs, and to send James and his poisonous brood flying from her shores even as I was flying then. We had made the error of being before our time. Yet there came days when folk thought kindly² of the lads who had fought so stoutly³ in the West, and when their limbs, gathered from many a hangman’s pit and waste place, were borne amid the silent sorrow of a nation to the pretty country burial-grounds where they would have chosen to lie. There, within the sound of the bell which from infancy⁴ had called them to prayer, beneath the turf over which they had wandered, under the shadow of those Mendip and Quantock Hills which they loved so well, these brave hearts lie still and peaceful, like tired children in the bosom⁵ of their mother. Requiescant-requiescant in pace!

Not another word about myself, dear children. This narrative⁶ doth already bristle⁷ with I’s, as though it were an Argus which is a flash of wit, though I doubt if ye will understand it. I set myself to tell ye the tale of the war in the West, and that tale ye have heard, nor will I be coaxed⁸ or cajoled into one word further. Ah! ye know well how garrulous⁹ the old man is, and that if you could but get to Flushing with him he would take ye to the wars of the Empire, to William’s Court, and to the second invasion of the West, which had a better outcome than the first. But not an inch further will I budge

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