430
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[ch. 26.
It was perhaps the report of this business which decided Blackhall on surrendering. But two or three days after, Grey finally arrived, bringing with him the Lanzknechts, three hundred Italian musketeers, and some tolerable artillery. Grey's whole force was not more than a thousand, but it was formed of professional soldiers who understood their business, and with them the advance must at all hazards be ventured. Herbert with the Welsh was reported to be at no great distance, but Exeter was in extremity, and to lose it might be to lose everything.
August 3.On Saturday the 3rd of August, therefore, the little army marched out of Honiton. To avoid a battle where they could not choose their ground, they left the road, crossed the open hills behind Ottery St Mary, and in the evening of the same day were on the heath—or what was a heath in those days—above St Mary's Clyst, two miles from Topsham. Among the peasantry the irritation was justly turned to madness when they knew that foreign mercenaries were brought in to crush them. Never before had English rulers used the arms of strangers against English subjects; and no sooner were their columns in sight, than the villagers of Clyst rushed up in rage to fall upon them. One could wish that the better cause had found the better defenders. The half-armed Devonshire peasants were poorly matched against trained and disciplined troops. Few who went up the hill came back again; they fell in the summer gloaming, like stout-hearted, valiant men, for their hearths and altars; and Miles
