During the whole year of Lady Arundel's imprisonment, neither her
husband, nor her sister, nor her most close friends, such as my poor
unworthy self, had tidings from her, in the shape of any letter or
even message, so sharply was she watched and hindered from
communicating with any one. Only Sir Thomas Shirley wrote to the earl
her husband to inform him of his lady's safe delivery, and the birth
of a daughter, which, much against her will, was baptized according to
the Protestant manner. My Lord Arundel, mindful of her words in the
last interview he had with her before her arrest, began to haunt Mr.
Wells's house in a private way, and there I did often meet with him,
who being resolved, I ween, to follow his lady's example in all
things, began to honor me with so much of his confidence that I had
occasion to discern how true had been Sir Henry Jerningham's
forecasting, that this young nobleman, when once turned to the ways of
virtue and piety, should prove himself by so much the more eminent in
goodness as he had heretofore been distinguished for his reckless
conduct. One day that he came to Holborn, none others being present
but Mr. and Mrs. Wells and myself, he told us that he and his brother
Lord William, having determined to become Catholics, and apprehending
great danger in declaring themselves as such within the kingdom, had
resolved secretly to leave the land, to pass into Flanders, and there
to remain till more quiet times.
"What steps," Mr. Wells asked, "hath your lordship disposed for to
effect this departure?"
"In all my present doings," quoth the earl, "the mind of my dear wife
doth seem to guide me. The last time I was with her she informed me
that my secretary, John Mumford, is a Catholic, and I have since
greatly benefited by this knowledge. He is gone to Hull, in Yorkshire,
for to take order for our passage to Flanders, and I do wait
tidings from him before I leave London."
Then, turning to me, he inquired in a very earnest manner if my
thinking agreed with his, that his sweet lady should be contented he
should forsake the realm, for the sake of the religious interests
which moved him thereunto, joined with the hope that when he should be
abroad and his lands confiscated, which he doubted not would follow,
she would be presently set at liberty, and with her little wench join
him in Flanders. I assented thereunto, and made a promise to him that
as soon as her ladyship should be released I would hasten to her, and
feast her ears with the many assurances of tender affection he had
uttered in her regard, and aid her departure; which did also Mr.
Wells. Then, drawing me aside, he spoke for some time, with tears in
his eyes, of his own good wife, as he called her.
"Mistress Sherwood," he said, "I do trust in God that she shall find
me henceforward as good a husband, to my poor ability, by his grace,
as she has found me bad heretofore. No sin grieves me anything so much
as my offences against her. What is past is a nail in my conscience.
My will is to make satisfaction; but though I should live never so
long, I can never do so further than by a good desire to do it, which,
while I have any spark of breath, shall never be wanting."
And many words like these, which he uttered in so heartfelt a manner
that I could scarce refrain from weeping at the hearing of them. And
so we parted that day; he with a confident hope soon to leave the
realm; I with some misgivings thereon, which were soon justified by
the event. For a few days afterward Mr. Lacy brought us tidings he had
met Mr. Mumford in the street, who had told him--when he expressed
surprise at his return--that before he could reach Hull he had been
apprehended and carried before the Earl of Huntingdon, president of
York, and examined by him, without any evil result at that time,
having no papers or auspicious things about him; but being now
watched, he ventured not to proceed to the coast, but straightway came
to London, greatly fearing Lord Arundel should have left it.
"He hath not done so?" I anxiously inquired.
"Nay," answered Mr. Lacy, "so far from it, that I pray you to guess
how the noble earl--much against his will, I ween--is presently
employed."
"He is not in prison?" I cried.
"God defend it!" he replied. "No; he is preparing for to receive the
queen at Arundel House; upon notice given him that her majesty doth
intend on Thursday next to come hither for her recreation."
"Alack!" I cried, "her visits to such as be of his way of thinking
bode no good to them. She visited him and his wife at the Charterhouse
at the time when his father was doomed to death, and now when she is a
prisoner her highness doth come to Arundel House. When she set her
foot in Euston, the whole fabric of my happiness fell to the ground.
Heaven shield the like doth not happen in this instance; but I do
greatly apprehend the issue of this sudden honor conferred on him."
On the day fixed for the great and sumptuous banquet which was
prepared for the queen at Arundel House, I went thither, having been
invited by Mrs. Fawcett to spend the day with her on this occasion,
which minded me of the time when I went with my cousins and mine own
good Mistress Ward for to see her majesty's entertainment at the
Charterhouse, wherein had been sowed the seeds of a bitter harvest,
since reaped by his sweet lady and himself. Then pageants had charms
in mine eyes; now, none--but rather the contrary. Howsoever, I was
glad to be near at hand on that day, so as to hear such reports as
reached us from time to time of her majesty's behavior to the earl.
From all I could find, she seemed very well contented; and Mr.
Mumford, with whom I was acquainted, came to Mrs. Fawcett's chamber,
hearing I was there, and reported that her highness had given his
lordship many thanks for her entertainment, and showed herself
exceeding merry all the time she was at table, asking him many
questions, and relating anecdotes which she had learnt from Sir Fulke
Greville, whom the maids-of-honor were wont to say brought her all the
tales she heard; at which Mrs. Fawcett said that gentleman had once
declared that he was like Robin Goodfellow; for that when the
dairy-maids upset the milk-pans, or made a romping and racket, they
laid it all on Robin, and so, whatever gossip-tales the queen's ladies
told her, they laid it all upon him, if he was ever so innocent of it.
"Sir," I said to Mr. Mumford, "think you her majesty hath said aught
to my lord touching his lady or his lately-born little daughter?"
"Once," he answered, "when she told of the noble trick she hath played
Sir John Spencer touching his grandson, whom he would not see because
his daughter did decamp from his house in a baker's basket for to
marry Sir Henry Compton, and her majesty invited him to be her gossip
at the christening of a fair boy to whom she did intend to stand
godmother, for that he was the first-born child of a young couple who
had married for love and lived happily; and so the old knight said, as
he had no heir, he should adopt this boy, for he had disinherited his
daughter. So then, at the font, the queen names him Spencer, and when
she leaves the church, straightway reveals to Sir John that his godson
is his grandson, and deals so cunningly with him that a reconciliation
doth ensue. Well, when she related this event, my lord said in a low
voice, 'Oh madame, would it might please your majesty for to place
another child, now at its mother's breast, a first-born one also, in
its father's arms! and as by your gracious dealing your highness
wrought a reconciliation between a father and a daughter, so likewise
now to reunite a parted husband from a wife which hath too long
languished under your royal displeasure.'"
"What answered her grace?" I asked.
"A few words, the sense of which I could not catch," Mr. Mumford
answered; "being placed so as to hear my lord's speaking more
conveniently than her replies. He said again, 'The displeasure of a
prince is a heavy burden to bear.' And then, methinks, some other talk
was ministered of a lighter sort. But be of good heart. Mistress
Sherwood; I cannot but think our dear lady shall soon be set at
liberty."
Mr. Mumford's words were justified in a few days; for, to my
unspeakable joy, I heard Lady Arundel had been released by order of
the queen, and had returned to Arundel Castle. It was her lord himself
who brought me the good tidings, and said he should travel thither in
three days, when his absence from court should be less noted, as then
her majesty would be at Richmond. He showed me a letter he had
received from his lady, the first she had been able to write to him
for a whole year. She did therein express her contentment, greater,
she said, than her pen could describe, at the sight of the gray ivied
walls, the noble keep, her own chamber and its familiar furniture, and
mostly at the thought of his soon coming; and that little Bess had so
much sense already, that when she heard his name, nothing would serve
her but to be carried to the window, "whence, methinks," the sweet
lady said, "she doth see me always looking toward the entrance-gate,
through which all my joy will speedily come to me. When, for to cheat
myself and her, I cry, 'Hark to my lord's horse crossing the bridge,'
she coos, so much as to say she is glad also, and stretcheth her arms
out, the pretty fool, as if to welcome her unseen father, who,
methinks, when he doth come, will be no stranger to her, so
often doth she kiss the picture which hangeth about her mother's
neck."
But, alas! before the queen went to Richmond, she sent a command that
my Lord Arundel should not go anywhither out of his house (so Mr.
Mumford informed me), but remain there a prisoner; and my Lord
Hunsdon, who had been in former times his father's page, and now was
his great enemy, was given commission to examine him about his
religion, and also touching Dr. Allen and the Queen of Scots. Now was
all the joy of Lady Arundel's release at an end. Now the sweet cooings
of her babe moved her to bitter tears. "In vain," she wrote to me
then, "do we now look for him to come! in vain listen for the sound of
his horse's tread, or watch the gateway which shall not open to admit
him! I sigh for to be once more a prisoner, and he, my sweet life, at
liberty. Alas! what kind of a destiny does this prove, if one is free
only when the other is shut up, and the word 'parting' is written on
each page of our lives?"
About a month afterward, Mr. Mumford was sent for by Sir Christopher
Hatton, who asked him divers dangerous questions concerning the earl,
the countess, and Lord William Howard, and also himself--such as, if
he was a priest or no; which indeed I did not wonder at, so staid and
reverend was his appearance. But he answered he never knew or ever
heard any harm of these honorable persons, and that he himself was not
a priest, nor worthy of so great a dignity. He hath since told me that
on the third day of his examination the queen, the Earl of Leicester,
and divers others of the council came into the house for to understand
what he had confessed. Sir Christopher told them what answers he had
made; but they, not resting satisfied therewith, caused him, after
many threats of racking and other tortures, to be sent prisoner to the
Gate-house, where he was kept for some months so close that none might
speak or come to him. But by the steadfastness of his answers he at
last so cleared himself, and declared the innocency of the earl, and
his wife and brother, that they were set at liberty.
Soon after her lord's release, I received this brief letter from Lady
Arundel:
"MINE OWN GOOD CONSTANCE,--I have seen my lord, who came here the day
after he was set free. He very earnestly desires to put into execution
his reconciliation to the Church now that his troubles are a little
overpast. I have bethought myself that, since Father Campion hath left
London, diligence might be used for to procure him a meeting with
Father Edmonds, whom I have heard commended for a very virtuous and
religious priest, much esteemed both in this and other countries.
Prithee, ask Mr. Wells if in his thinking this should be possible, and
let my lord know of the means and opportunities thereunto. I shall
never be so much indebted, nor he either, to any one in this world, my
dear Constance, as to thee and thy good friends, if this interview
shall be brought to pass, and the desired effect ensue.
"My Bess doth begin to walk alone, and hath learned to make the sign
of the cross; but I warrant thee I am sometimes frightened that I did
teach her to bless herself, until such time as she can understand not
to display her piety so openly as she now doeth. For when many lords
and gentlemen were here last week for to consider the course her
majesty's progress should take through Kent and Sussex, and she,
sitting on my knee, was noticed by some of them for her pretty ways,
the clock did strike twelve; upon which, what doth she do but
straightway makes the sign of the cross before I could catch her
little hand? Lord Cobham frowned, and my Lord Burleigh shook his head;
but the Bishop of Chichester stroked her head, and said, with a
smile, _'Honi soit qui mal y pense;'_ for which I pray God to bless
him. Oh, but what fears we do daily live in! I would sometimes we were
beyond seas. But if my lord is once reconciled, methinks I can endure
all that may befal us. Thy true and loving friend,
"ANN, ARUNDEL AND SURREY."
I straightway repaired to Mr. Wells, and found him to be privy to
Father Edmonds's abode. At my request, he acquainted Lord Arundel with
this secret, who speedily availed himself thereof, and after a few
visits to this good man's garret, wherein he was concealed, was by him
reconciled, as I soon learnt by a letter from his lady. She wrote in
such perfect contentment and joy thereunto, that nothing could exceed
it. She said her dear lord had received so much comfort in his soul as
he had never felt before in all his life, and such directions from
Father Edmonds for the amending and ordering of it as did greatly help
and further him therein. Ever after that time, from mine own hearing
and observation, his lady's letters, and the report of such as haunted
him, I learnt that he lived in such a manner that he seemed to be
changed into another man, having great care and vigilance over all his
actions, and addicting himself much to piety and devotion. He procured
to have a priest ever with him in his own house, by whom he might
frequently receive the holy sacrament, and daily have the comfort to
be present at the holy sacrifice, whereto, with great humility and
reverence, he himself in person many times would serve. His visits to
his wife were, during the next years, as frequent as he could make
them and as his duties at the court and the queen's emergencies would
allow of; who, albeit she looked not on him with favor as heretofore,
did nevertheless exact an unremitting attendance on his part on all
public occasions, and jealously noted every absence he made from
London. Each interview between this now loving husband and wife was a
brief space of perfect contentment to both, and a respite from the
many cares and troubles which did continually increase upon him; for
the great change in his manner of life had bred suspicion in the minds
of some courtiers and potent men, who therefore began to think him
what he was indeed, but of which no proof could be alleged.
During the year which followed these haps mine aunt died, and Mr.
Congleton sold his house in Ely Place, and took a small one in Gray's
Inn Lane, near to Mr. Wells's and Mr. Lacy's. It had no garden, nor
the many conveniences the other did afford; but neither Muriel nor
myself did lament the change, for the vicinity of these good friends
did supply the place of other advantages; and it also liked me more,
whilst Basil lived in poverty abroad, to inhabit a less sumptuous
abode than heretofore, and dispense with accustomed luxuries. Of
Hubert I could hear but scanty tidings at that time--only that he had
either lost or resigned his place at court? Mr. Hodgson was told by
one who had been his servant that he had been reconciled; others said
he did lead a very disordered life, and haunted bad persons. The truth
or falsity of these statements I could not then discern; but methinks,
from what I have since learnt, both might be partly true; for he
became subject to fits of gloom, and so discomfortable a remorse as
almost unsettled his reason; and then, at other times, plunged into
worldly excesses for to drown thoughts of the past. He was frightened,
I ween, or leastways distrustful of the society of good men, but
consorted with Catholics of somewhat desperate character and fortunes,
and such as dealt in plots and treasonable schemes.
Father Campion's arrest for a very different cause--albeit his enemies
did seek to attach to him the name traitor--occurred this year at
Mrs. Yates's house in Worcestershire, and consternated the
hearts of all recusants; but when he came to London, and speech was
had of him by many amongst them which gained access to him in prison,
and reported to others his great courage and joyfulness in the midst
of suffering, then, methinks, a contagious spirit spread amongst
Catholics, and conversions followed which changed despondency into
rejoicing. But I will not here set down the manner of his trial, nor
the wonderful marks of patience and constancy which he showed under
torments and rackings, nor his interview with her majesty at my lord
Leicester's house, nor the heroic patience of his death; for others
with better knowledge thereof, and pens more able for to do it, have
written this martyr's life and glorious end. But I will rather relate
such events as took place, as it were, under mine own eye, and which
are not, I ween, so extensively known. And first, I will speak of a
conversation I held at that time with a person then a stranger, and
therefore of no great significancy when it occurred, but which later
did assume a sudden importance, when it became linked with succeeding
events.
One day that I was visiting at Lady Ingoldsby's, where Polly and her
husband had come for to spend a few weeks, and much company was going
in and out, the faces and names of which were new to me, some
gentlemen came there whose dress attracted notice from the French
fashion thereof. One of them was a young man of very comely appearance
and pleasant manners, albeit critical persons might have judged
somewhat of' the bravado belonged to his attitudes and speeches, but
withal tempered with so much gentleness and courtesy, that no sooner
had the eye and mind taken note of the defect than the judgment was
repented of. What in one of less attractive face and behavior should
have displeased, in this youth did not offend. It was my hap to sit
beside him at supper, which lasted a long time; and as his behavior
was very polite, I freely conversed with him, and found him to be
English, though from long residence abroad his tongue had acquired a
foreign trick. When I told him I had thought he was a Frenchman, he
laughed, and said if the French did ever try to land in England, they
should find him to be a very Englishman for to fight against them; but
in the matter of dinners and beds, and the liking of a dear sunny sky
over above a dim cloudy one, he did confess himself to be so much of a
traitor as to prefer France to England, and he could not abide the
smoke of coal fires which are used in this country.
"And what say you, sir," I answered, "to the new form of smoke which
Sir Walter Raleigh hath introduced since his return from the late
discovered land of Virginia?"
He said he had learnt the use of it in France, and must needs confess
he found it to be very pleasant. Monsieur Nicot had brought some seeds
of tobacco into France, and so much liking did her majesty Queen
Catharine conceive for this practice of smoking, that the new plant
went by the name of the queen's herb. "It is not gentlemen alone who
do use a pipe in France," he said, "but ladies also. What doth the
fair sex in England think on it?"
"I have heard," I answered, "that her majesty herself did try for to
smoke, but presently gave it up, for that it made her sick. Her
highness is also reported to have lost a wager concerning that same
smoking of tobacco."
"What did her grace bet?" the gentleman asked.
"Why, she was one day," I replied, "inquiring very exactly of the
various virtues of this herb, and Sir Walter did assure her that no
one understood them better than himself, for he was so well acquainted
with all its qualities, that he could even tell her majesty the weight
of the smoke of every pipeful he consumed. Her highness upon this
said, 'Monsieur Traveller, you do go too far in putting on me
the license which is allowed to such as return from foreign parts;'
and she laid a wager of many pieces of gold he should not be able to
prove his words. So he weighed in her presence the tobacco before he
put it into his pipe, and the ashes after he had consumed it, and
convinced her majesty that the deficiency did proceed from the
evaporation thereof. So then she paid the bet, and merrily told him
'that she knew of many persons who had turned their gold into smoke,
but he was the first who had turned smoke into gold.'"
The young gentleman being amused at this story, I likewise told him of
Sir Walter's hap when he first returned to England, and was staying in
a friend's house: how a servant coming into his chamber with a tankard
of ale and nutmeg toast, and seeing him for the first time with a
lighted pipe in his mouth puffing forth clouds of smoke, flung the ale
in his face for to extinguish the internal conflagration, and then
running down the stairs alarmed the family with dismal cries that the
good knight was on fire, and would be burnt into ashes before they
could come to his aid.
My unknown companion laughed, and said he had once on his travels been
taken for a sorcerer, so readily doth ignorance imagine wonders. "Near
unto Metz, in France," quoth he, "I fell among thieves. My money I had
quilted within my doublet, which they took from me, howsoever leaving
me the rest of my apparel, wherein I do acknowledge their courtesy,
since thieves give all they take not; but twenty-five French crowns,
for the worst event, I had lapped in cloth, and whereupon did wind
divers-colored threads, wherein I sticked needles, as if I had been so
good a husband as to mend mine own clothes. Messieurs the thieves were
not so frugal to take my ball to mend their hose, but did tread it
under their feet. I picked it up with some spark of joy, and I and my
guide (he very sad, because he despaired of my ability to pay him his
hire) went forward to Chalons, where he brought me to a poor
ale-house, and when I expostulated, he replied that stately inns were
not for men who had never a penny in their purses; but I told him that
I looked for comfort in that case more from gentlemen than clowns;
whereupon he, sighing, obeyed me, and with a dejected and fearful
countenance brought me to the chief inn, where he ceased not to bewail
my misery as if it had been the burning of Troy; till the host,
despairing of my ability to pay him, began to look disdainfully on me.
The next morning, when, he being to return home, I paid him his hire,
which he neither asked nor expected, and likewise mine host for
lodgings and supper, he began to talk like one mad for joy, and
professed I could not have had one penny except I were an alchemist or
had a familiar spirit."
I thanked the young gentleman for this entertaining anecdote, and
asked him if France was not a very disquieted country, and nothing in
it but wars and fighting.
"Yea," he answered; "but men fight there so merrily, that it appears
more a pastime than aught else. Not always so, howsoever. When
Frenchman meets Frenchman in the fair fields of Provence, and those of
the League and those of the Religion--God confound the first and bless
the last!--engage in battle, such encounters ensue as have not their
match for fierceness in the world. By my troth, the sight of dead
bodies doth not ordinarily move me; but the valley of Allemagne on the
day of the great Huguenot victory was a sight the like of which I
would not choose to look on again, an I could help it."
"Were you, then, present at that combat, sir?" I asked.
"Yea," he replied; "I was at that time with Lesdiguières, the
Protestant general, whom I had known at La Rochelle, and beshrew me if
a more valiant soldier doth live, or a worthier soul in a
stalwart frame. I was standing by his side when Tourves the butcher
came for to urge him, with his three hundred men, to ride over the
field and slay the wounded papists. 'No, sir,' quoth the general, 'I
fight men, but hunt them not down.' The dead were heaped many feet
thick on the plain, and the horses of the Huguenots waded to their
haunches in blood. Those of the Religion were mad at the death of the
Baron of Allemagne, the general of their southern churches, brave
castellane, who, when the fight was done, took off his helmet for to
cool his burning forehead; and lo, a shot sent him straight into
eternity."
"The Catholics were then wholly routed?" I asked.
"Yea," he answered; "mowed down like grass in the hay-harvest. De
Vins, however, escaped. He thought to have had a cheap victory over
those of the Religion; but the saints in heaven, to whom he trusted,
never told him that Lesdiguières on the one side and d'Allemagne on
the other were hastening to the rescue, nor that his Italian horsemen
should fail him in his need. So, albeit the papists fought like
devils, as they are, his pride got a fall, which well-nigh killed him.
He was riding frantically back into the fray for to get himself slain,
when St. Cannat seized his bridle, and called him a coward, so I have
heard, to dare for to die when his scattered troops had need of him;
and so carried him off the field. D'Oraison, Janson, Pontmez, hotly
pursued them, but in vain; and all the Protestant leaders, except
Lesdiguières, returned that night to the castle of Allemagne for to
bury the baron."
A sort of shiver passed through the young gentleman's frame as he
uttered these last words.
"A sad burial you then witnessed?" I said.
"I pray God," he answered, "never to witness another such."
"What was the horror of it?" I asked.
"Would you hear it?" he inquired.
"Yea," I said, "most willingly; for methinks I see what you describe."
Then he: "If it be so, peradventure you may not thank me for this
describing; for I warrant you it was a fearful sight. I had lost mine
horse, and so was forced to spend the night at the castle. When it
grew dark I followed the officers, which, with a great store of the
men, also descended into the vault, which was garnished all round with
white and warlike sculptured forms on tombstones, most grim in their
aspect; and amidst those stone imager, grim and motionless, the
soldiers ranged themselves, still covered with blood and dust, and
leaning on their halberds. In the midst was the uncovered coffin of
the baron, his livid visage exposed to view--menacing even in death.
Torches threw a fitful, red-colored light over the scene. A minister
which accompanied the army stood and preached at the coffin's head,
and when he had ended his sermon, sang in a loud voice, in French
verse, the psalm which doth begin,
'Du fond de ma pensée,
Du fond de tous enuuis,
A tol s'est adressé
Ma clamear jour et nult.'
When this singing began two soldiers led up to the tomb a man with
bound hands and ghastly pale face, and, when the verse ended, shot him
through the head. The corpse fell upon the ground, and the singing
began anew. Twelve times this did happen, till my head waxed giddy and
I became faint. I was led out of that vault with the horrible singing
pursuing me, as if I should never cease to hear it."
"Oh, 'tis fearful," I exclaimed, "that men can do such deeds, and the
while have God's name on their lips."
"The massacre of St. Bartholomew," he answered, "hath driven those of
the Religion mad against the papists."
"But, sir," I asked, "is it not true that six thousand Catholics in
Languedoc had been murthered in cold blood, and a store of them
in other places, before that massacre?"
"May I be so," he answered in a careless tone. "The shedding of blood,
except in a battle or lawful duel, I abhor; but verily I do hate
papists with as great a hate as any Huguenot in France, and most of
all those in this country--a set of knavish traitors, which would
dethrone the queen and sell the realm to the Spaniards."
I could not but sigh at these words, for in this young man's
countenance a quality of goodness did appear which made me grieve that
he should utter these unkind words touching Catholics. But I dared not
for to utter my thinking or disprove his accusations, for, being
ignorant of his name, I had a reasonable fear of being ensnared into
some talk which should show me to be a papist, and he should prove to
be a spy. But patience failed me when, after speaking of the clear
light of the gospel which England enjoyed, and to lament that in
Ireland none are found of the natives to have cast off the Roman
religion, he said:
"I ween this doth not proceed from their constancy in religion, but
rather from the lenity of Protestants, which think that the conscience
must not be forced, and seek rather to touch and persuade than to
oblige by fire and sword, like those of the south, who persecute their
own subjects differing from them in religion."
"Sir," I exclaimed, "this is a strange thing indeed, that Protestants
do lay a claim to so great mildness in their dealings with recusants,
and yet such strenuous laws against such are framed that they do live
in fear of their lives, and are daily fined and tormented for their
profession."
"How so?" he said, quickly. "No papist hath been burnt in this
country."
"No, sir," I answered; "but a store of them have been hanged and cut
to pieces whilst yet alive."
"Nay, nay," he cried, "not for their religion, but for their many
treason."
"Sir," I answered, "their religion is made treason by unjust laws, and
then punished with the penalties of treason; and they die for no other
cause than their faith, by the same token that each of those which
have perished on the scaffold had his life offered to him if so he
would torn Protestant."
In the heat of this argument I had forgot prudence; and some unkindly
ears and eyes were attending to my speech, which this young stranger
perceiving, he changed the subject of discourse--I ween with a
charitable intent--and merrily exclaimed, "Now I have this day
transgressed a wise resolve."
"What resolve?" I said, glad also to retreat from dangerous subjects.
'"This," he answered: "that after my return I would sparingly, and not
without entreaty, relate my journeys and observations."
"Then, sir," I replied, "methinks you have contrariwise observed it,
for your observations have been short and pithy, and withal uttered at
mine entreaty."
"Nothing," he said, "I so much fear as to resemble men--and many such
I have myself known--who have scarce seen the lions of the Tower and
the bears of Parish Garden, but they must engross all a table in
talking of their adventures, as if they had passed the Pillars of
Hercules. Nothing could be asked which they could not resolve of their
own knowledge."
"Find you, sir," I said, "much variety in the manners of French people
and those you see in this country?"
He smiled, and answered, "We must not be too nice observers of men and
manners, and too easily praise foreign customs and despise our own
--not so much that we may not offend others, as that we may not be
ourselves offended by others. I will yield you an example. A
Frenchman, being a curious observer of ceremonious compliments, when
he hath saluted one, and began to entertain him with speech, if he
chance to espy another man, with whom he hath very great
business, yet will he not leave the first man without a solemn excuse.
But an Englishman discoursing with any man--I mean in a house or
chamber of presence, not merely in the street--if he spy another man
with whom he hath occasion to speak, will suddenly, without any
excuse, turn from the first man and go and converse with the other,
and with like negligence will leave and take new men for discourse;
which a Frenchman would take in ill part, as an argument of
disrespect. This fashion, and many other like niceties and curiosities
in use in one country, we must forget when we do pass into another.
For lack of this prudence I have seen men on their return home tied to
these foreign manners themselves, and finding that others observe not
the like toward them, take everything for an injury, as if they were
disrespected, and so are often enraged."
"What think you of the dress our ladies do wear?" I inquired of this
young traveller.
He smiled, and answered:
"I like our young gentlewomen's gowns, and their aprons of fine linen,
and their little hats of beaver; but why have they left wearing the
French sleeves, borne out with hoops of whalebone, and the French hood
of velvet, set with a border of gold buttons and pearls? Methinks
English ladies are too fond of jewels and diamond rings. They scorn
plain gold rings, I find, and chains of gold."
"Yea," I said, "ladies of rank wear only rich chains of pearl, and all
their jewels must needs be oriental and precious. If any one doth
choose to use a simple chain or a plain-set brooch, she is marked for
wearing old-fashioned gear."
"This remindeth me," he said, "of a pleasant fable, that Jupiter sent
a shower, wherein whosoever was wet became a fool, and that all the
people were wet in this shower, excepting one philosopher, who kept
his study; but in the evening coming forth into the market-place, and
finding that all the people marked him as a fool, who was only wise,
he was forced to pray for another shower, that he might become a fool,
and so live quietly among fools rather than bear the envy of his
wisdom."
With this pleasant story our conversation ended, for supper was over,
and the young gentleman soon went away. I asked of many persons who he
should be, but none could tell me. Polly, the next day, said he was a
youth lately returned from France (which was only what I knew before),
and that Sir Nicholas Throckmorton had written a letter to Lady
Ingoldsby concerning him, but his name she had forgot. O what strange
haps, more strange than any in books, do at times form the thread of a
true history! what presentiments in some cases, what ignorance in
others, beset us touching coming events!
The next pages will show the ground of these reflections.