"The voices of preachers rose up like the drone of insects"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Six

Beaufort publicly imprisons and condemns Micah as a traitor but then privately and secretly releases him.

During Micah's public condemnation by Beaufort -- before his covert release by the same noble -- debate over whether he should be tortured to reveal details of Monmouth's forces. Again recalling Scott's "Old Mortality" mention is made of placing "a lighted match between the fingers."

When Micah reports on his experiences and Beaufort's divided loyalty, Monmouth muses: "He would fain stand upon both sides of the hedge at once . . . Such a man is very like to find himself on neither side, but in the very heart of the briars."

In the meantime, Monmouth's camp has become religiously divided: "the voices of preachers rose up like the drone of insects" with "every wagon or barrel or chance provision case converted into a pulpit, each with its own orator and little knot of eager hearkeners."

As the courtiers and professional military men worry about the lack or ordinance, the zealots rail that the Lord will provide as he did at the walls of Jerico.

Decimus pleased at this outbreak of dissention and fervor: "the leaven is working. Something will come of all this ferment."

Monmouth's sympathy with these rough-clad zealots a dubious one. When military events begin to turn against him, he is described as "moodily tapping his jeweled riding-whip against his high boots."

Then, the "leaven" truly begins to boil over as one of the extreme sectarian preachers urges his followers to (Taliban like) demolish Wells cathedral in order to regain God's favor. Cathedrals "altars of Baal . . . built for man-worship rather than God-worship . . . the old dish of Popery served under a new cover."

The sectaries literally commence to tear-down religion. Shouts the Cathedral verger: "they have pulled down Saint Peter and will have Paul down too unless help comes. There will not be an Apostle left."

Soon the zealots are joined by looters and drunken rioters taking advantage of the disarray and destruction. Micah, Sexton et al. try to calm the affray and soon "a Civil War within a Civil War breaks out."

Micah, speaking now as an old man, concludes that he never saw a more brutal battle than the religious fight within the cathedral.


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