In the meantime the besiegers went on with their approaches toward the Castle--their main works being not above some sixty yards distant--and had planted four mortar pieces in one place, and two mortar pieces at another, each mortar piece carrying a grenade shell twelve inches diameter.
Towards the end of the siege, whilst the cannon of Fairfax was playing upon the Castle from the neighbouring height, and when casualties within the walls were of hourly occurrence, an incident occurred, which shows that in these perilous times even ladies deemed it necessary to apologise for being afraid of leaden bullets. “One evening, during the hottest period of the cannonade,” says Dr. Bayly, “there came a musket bullet in at the window of the withdrawing room, where my lord used to entertain his friends with his pleasant discourses after dinners and suppers, which, glancing upon a little marble pillar of the window, and from thence hit the Marquess upon the side of his head, and fell down flattened upon the table, which breaking the pillar in pieces, it made such a noise in the room, that his daughter-in-law, the Countess of Glamorgan, who stood in the same window, ran away as if the house had been falling down upon her head, crying out--‘O Lord! O Lord!’ But at length finding herself more afraid than hurt, she returned back again, no less excusing her--as she was pleased to call it--rudeness to her father, than acknowledging her fears to all the company. To whom the Marquess said: ‘Daughter, you had reason to run away when your father was knocked on the head.’ Then pausing some little while, and turning the flattened bullet round with his finger, he further said: ‘Gentlemen, those who had a mind to flatter me, were wont to tell me that I had a _good head_ in my younger days; but if I don’t flatter myself, I think I have a good head-piece in my old age, or else it would not have been _musket proof_.’”
Of the exemplary good order observed by the household, before the establishment of a garrison within the Castle, an eye-witness has transmitted the following testimony:--
“I have lived in Raglan Castle,” said he, “three years, and in all that time I never saw man drunk, nor heard an oath, amongst any of all his (the Marquess’s) servants; neither did I ever see a better ordered family; and that which was most wonderful unto me was, that the servants of his house, being half Papists and half Protestants, were never at variance in point of religion--which was brought about by prohibiting disputations.[267] Neither was any man the less accepted for his religion, if his _service_ were acceptable. But when the Castle was filled with officers and soldiers, he used to be more grieved to hear and witness the drunkenness that was then and there too much practised: insomuch, that when some of his chief officers had told him, how that they had fortified such and such a place so and so; and that the enemy could not come; and that there it was impossible. ‘Ay, ay,’ said my Lord; ‘but you have left the main place open and unprotected. You have no fortifications against Heaven. For there is so much swearing and drunkenness amongst you, that from thence I fear me will come our greatest enemy, and you have made no provision against _him_.’ And, indeed, he said justly; for, in truth, the royalists were grievously addicted to many vices, to which, on the contrary, the companions and followers of Cromwell were comparatively strangers.”