Historic%20Yorkshire

THE STORY OF A TAX. 121
ungrateful adversaries,however numerousorblood-thirsty.
Seeing that Percy's resolution was fixed, his friends,
concerned for their own safety, fled from the already
beleagured mansion. The Earl,left alone,proceeded to
secure the door and windows of his room, but of little
avail were barricades; for the peasants poured into the
house, and were, even as he began his tardy measures,
engagedin a hand-to-hand struggle with his yeomen and
servants. These, outnumbered and speedily overcome,
giving way, the insurgents were in sole possessionof the
mansion, and at once made their way to the apartment
which was the last refuge of the Earl. The door was
quickly battered down, and the armed and infuriated
horde stood in the presence of their victim, who stood
calmly at bay,his good sword in hand, prepared to sell
his life at what should be a dear price to at least some of
his assailants. He stoodfirmly, the peasants kept at a
distance by the play of his weapon, which had made
several bite the dust, never to rise again, when the
unequal encounter was terminated by the approach of a
fellow armed with a scythe blade fixed pikewise at the
end of a pole. With this formidable and, under the
circumstances, resistless weapon, the villain slew the
Earl, cleaving his skull at one blow. To consummate
the savageryand render their sanguinaryvengeance complete,
they stripped the inanimate corpse and dragged it
for miles through the disaffected country to the great
applause of the malcontents, and until every feature of
that which had been Earl Percy of Northumberlandwas
obliteratedand his form distortedalmostpast recognition.
Many of his servants who had proved so much more
faithful than his friends werealso murdered at the same
time.
Popular fury, if it has no other basis than personal
resentment, speedilyexhausts itself,and the very susceptibility
whichrendered the murderers so ready to receive
the suggestions of a fiery leader, nowled them tobemoan
the extreme to which their rage had led them. Even