did marvellously prevent, both to me and many others, whereat the malignants are so enraged that they have since pulled down my Mill, and pretend that Prince Rupert so commanded, and threaten to pull down my house and divers others, which 1 think they dare not, lest they build it up againe, the Country having sent them admonition of their insolency." This mill is identified by the following passage from the tract entitled "Prince Rupert's burning Love, &c." "Sithence," that is after the town had been burned, "they have caused one Mr. Porter's Blademill in the town to be pulled down, wherein sword blades were made and imployed, onely for the service of the Parliament, and so they were informed (which cost erecting about 100l.) threatening if it were not pulled downe, the rest of the Towne should be burnt. For now they begin to be great Agents in Fire-Workes."
We may picture to ourselves what kind of man Mr. Porter was; an earnest, God-fearing Puritan, who even for money would not make swords for the Royalists, a fact which some living manufacturers would do well to ponder over. He was one of Cromwell's men who "had a conscience in their work." His nobly pious way of looking at things will be gathered from a short extract from his short letter. "Though," he says, "they intended to burne the Towne utterly, as may be known by their laying lighted match, with powder and other combustible matter at the other end, which fired in divers places, and divers was found out and prevented, so that we may truly say, that the flames, swords, pilledgers, but especially the prison, made a difference betwixt those that feared God, and those that feared him not. But this is remarkable in their vilenesse, that all these houses, saving two, were fired in cold blood, at their departure, wherein they endeavoured to fire all, and in the flames they would not suffer the people to carry out their goods, or to quench it, triumphingly with reproaches rejoiced that the wind stood right to consume the Town, at which present the Lord caused the winds to turn, which was a token of his notice of their insultation." We gladly and gratefully accept R. Porter as one of the almost forgotten worthies of old Birmingham.
