The very afternoon of Roger's and my return from Davenant Hall Dr.
Antony came on one of his ever-welcome visits. He had, by dint of
much trouble and perseverance, obtained access to Mr. Prynne, in his
solitary cell at Caernarvon, and to Mr. Bastwick and Mr. Burton, in
theirs, in Launceston and Lancaster Castles; and afterwards to the
prisons to which they were removed, in Guernsey, Jersey, and the
Scilly Islands, and also to old Mr. Alexander Leighton, in his
prison, after his most cruel mutilations.
Often in the summer Dr. Antony left his patients for a season, to
visit such throughout the land as were in bonds for conscience' sake,
bearing them the tidings, so precious to the solitary captive, that
in the rush of life outside they were not forgotten; taking them food
or physic, and such poor bodily comforts as were permitted by the
hard rules of their imprisonment, and bringing back messages to their
friends and kinsfolk. This last year Dr. Antony himself (as we heard
from others) had been somewhat impoverished by a fine of £250
sterling, to which he had been sentenced by the Star-Chamber on
account of these visits of compassion; although there was no law
against them.
This time he brought us grievous tidings from many quarters; and very
grave was the discourse between him and my Father.
Everywhere disgrace and disaster to our country; the French Huguenots
cursing our Court for encouraging them to insurrection, and then
sending ships against them to Rochelle (though, thank Heaven!
scarcely one of our brave sailors would bear arms against their
Protestant brethren--officers and men deserting in a body when they
discovered against whom they had been treacherously sold to fight);
our own fisheries on the east coast sold to the Hollanders, and the
capture of one of our Indiamen by Dutch ships; the Barbary corsairs
landing on the coast near Plymouth, and kidnapping our countrymen and
countrywomen from their village homes, to sell them as slaves to the
Moors in Africa; the King of Spain, the very pillar of Popery and
persecution, the sworn foe of our religion and our race from the days
of the Armada, permitted to recruit for his armies in Ireland; the
Government, with Wentworth (traitor to liberty) and Archbishop Laud
at the head of it, weak as scorched tow to chastise our enemies
abroad, yet armed with scorpions against every defender of our
ancient rights at home. The decision but lately given by the judges
against the brave and good Mr. Hampden as to ship money, placing our
fortunes at the mercy of the Court, who chiefly valued them as meant
wherewith to destroy our liberties; Justice Berkeley declaring from
the judgment-seat that Lex was not Rex, but that Rex was Lex;
thirty-one monopolies sold, thus making nearly every article of
consumption at once dear and bad. The sweeping, steady pressure of
Lord Strafford's (Mr. Wentworth) "Thorough" wrought into a vexation
for every housewife in the kingdom, by the king's petty monopolies.
The heavy links of Wentworth's imperious despotism, filed and twisted
by Archbishop Laud's petty tyrannies into needles wherewith to
torture tender consciences, and wiry ligatures wherewith to tie and
bind every limb. "Regulations as to the colours and cutting of
vestments, worthy (Aunt Dorothy said) of a court tailor, enforced by
cruelties minute and persevering enough for a malignant witch." Dark
stories, too, of private wrong, wrought by Wentworth in Ireland,
worthy of the basest days of the Roman emperors; tales of royal
forests arbitrarily extended from six miles to sixty, to the ruin of
hundreds of gentlemen and peasants; disgraceful news of faith broken
with Dutch and French refugees welcome to the heart of England since
the days of Elizabeth, made secure with rights confirmed to them by
James and by King Charles himself, now forbidden by Archbishop Laud
to worship God in the way for which their fathers had suffered
banishment and loss of all things,--driven to seek another home in
Holland, and in their second exile ruining the flourishing town of
Ipswich, where they had lived, and carrying over the cloth-trade
which was the support of our eastern counties to our rivals the Dutch.
"You have a copy of Fox's Book of Martyrs?" Dr. Antony asked of my
Father, after he had been speaking of these lamentable things.
"What good Protestant English household is without one?" exclaimed
Aunt Dorothy; "least of all such as this, whose forefathers are
enrolled in its lists."
"Take good care of it, then," Dr. Antony replied, "for the Primate
hath forbidden another copy to be printed, under the penalties the
Star-Chamber will not fail to enforce."
"The times are dark," he continued, "dark and silent. I stood this
spring by the grave of Sir John Eliot, in the Church of the Tower; as
brave, and loyal, and devout a gentleman as this nation ever knew,
killed by inches in prison for calmly pleading the ancient rights of
England in his place in Parliament, and then his body refused to his
family for honourable burial among his kindred in his parish church
in Cornwall, and cast like a felon's into a dishonoured grave in the
precincts of the prison where he died. And I thought how it might
have thrown a deeper shadow over his deathbed if he could have
foreseen how, during these six years, the tyranny would be tightened,
and the voice of the nation never once be heard in her lawful
Parliaments."
"The voice of the nation is audible enough to those who have ears to
hear," said my Father.
"Yea, verily," said Dr. Antony, "if you had journeyed through the
country as I have, you would say so. When will kings learn that
moans and subdued groans between set teeth are more dangerous from
human lips than any torrents of passionate speech?"
"And," added my Father, "that there is a silence even more
significant and perilous than these!"
"But there are two points of hope," said Dr. Antony. "One is the
Puritan colony in New England, where our brethren have exchanged the
vain struggle with human blindness and tyranny for the triumphant
struggle with nature in her primeval forests and untrodden wilds.
Four thousand good English men and women, and seventy-seven
clergymen, have taken refuge there during these last twenty years.
Not poor men only, for they have taken many thousand pounds of
English money, or money's worth, with them, forsaking country and
comfortable homes for the dear liberty to obey God rather than man.
And these plantations, after the severest struggles and privations,
are beginning to grow.
"What they hope and mean to be is shown by this, that two years
since, while food was still hard to win from the wilderness, and
roads and bridges had yet to be made, the plantation of Massachusetts
voted £400 for the founding of a college. Such an act might seem
more like the foresight of the fathers of a nation than the care of a
little exiled band struggling for existence with the Indians, the
wilderness, and a hostile Court at home.
"The other point of hope is the Greyfriars' Church in Edinburgh,
where, on the 1st of last March, after long prayers and preachings,
the great congregation rose, gathered from all corners of the
kingdom,--nobles, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, lifted their hands
solemnly to heaven, and swore to the Covenant." Then Dr. Antony took
a manuscript paper from the breast of his coat, and read: "'We
abjure,' they swore, 'the Roman Antichrist,--all his tyrannous law
made upon indifferent things against our Christian liberty; his
erroneous doctrine against the written Word, the perfection of the
law, the office of Christ, and His blessed Evangel; his cruel
judgments against infants departing this life without the sacraments;
his blasphemous priesthood; his canonization of men; his dedicating
of kirks, altars, days, vows to creatures; his purgatory, prayers for
the dead, praying or speaking in a strange language; his desperate
and uncertain repentance; his general and doubtsome faith; his holy
water, baptizing of bells, conjuring of spirits, crossing, saving,
anointing, conjuring, hallowing of God's good creatures.' 'We,
noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, and commons,
considering the danger of the true Reformed religion, of the king's
honour, and of the public peace of the kingdom by the manifold
innovations and evils generally contained and particularly mentioned
in our late supplications, complaints, and protestations, do hereby
profess, and before God, his angels, and the world, solemnly declare
that with our whole hearts we agree and resolve all the days of our
life constantly to adhere unto and defend the foresaid true religion,
and forbearing the practice of all novations already introduced in
the matter of the worship of God, or approbations of the corruptions
of the public government of the Kirk, till they be tried or allowed
in free Assemblies and in Parliaments, to labour by all means lawful
to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel.' 'Neither do we
fear the aspersions of rebellion, combination, or what else our
adversaries, from their craft and malice, could put upon us, seeing
what we do is well warranted, and ariseth from an unfeigned desire to
maintain the true worship of God, the majesty of our king, and the
peace of the kingdom, for the common happiness of ourselves and
posterity. And because we cannot look for a blessing of God on our
proceedings except with our subscription we gave such a life and
conversation as becometh Christians who have renewed their covenant
with God, we therefore promise to endeavour to be good examples to
others of all godliness, soberness, and righteousness, and of every
duty we owe to God and man. And we call the living God, the Searcher
of hearts, to witness, as we shall answer to Jesus in that great day,
under pain of God's ever-lasting wrath and of infamy; most humbly
beseeching the Lord to strengthen us with his Holy Spirit for this
end.' And this," added Dr. Antony, "has been sworn to not in the
Greyfriars' Church alone; but by crowds, signed with their blood on
parchment spread on the stones of the churchyards in Edinburgh and
Glasgow; yea, in church after church, in city, village, and on
hill-side, from John o'Groats' House to the Borders, from Mull to
Fife, with tears, and shouts, and fervent prayers."
"And this means?" said my Father.
"It means that the Scottish nation will rather die than submit to
Archbishop Laud's ceremonies and canons; but that they mean neither
to die nor to submit; that every covenanted congregation will be a
recruiting ground, if necessary, fora covenanted army; that the oath
sworn in the Kirk they are prepared to fulfil on the battle-field."
"And a goodly army they might soon discipline," said my Father, "with
the military officers they have trained under the great Gustavus."
"It means," added Dr. Antony, lowering his voice, "that they are
ready to kindle a fire for religion and liberty in Scotland which
will not stop at the Borders, and will find fuel enough in every
county in England."
"The Court had better, for its own peace, have heeded Jenny Geddes'
folding-stool," said my Father.
"For his own peace," rejoined Aunt Dorothy, "but scarcely for ours."
From that time (1638), through more than a quarter of a century,
public and private life were so intertwined that no faithful history
can divide them. In quieter times, while the great historical
paintings are being wrought in parliament-houses and palaces,
countless small family-pictures are being woven entirely independent
of these in countless homes. But in times of revolution, national
history and private story are interwoven into one great tapestry,
from which the humblest figure cannot be detached without unravelling
the whole web.
Such times are hard, but they are ennobling. Or at least they are
enlarging. Faults, and ordinary virtues become crimes, or heroical
virtues, by mere force of temperature and space. Principles are
tested; pretences are dissolved by the fact of being pretences. Such
times are ennobling, but they are also necessarily tragical. All
noble lives--all lives worth living--are expanded from the small
circles of everyday domestic circumstances into portions of the grand
orbits of the worlds. Yet, doubtless, thereby in themselves such
lives must often become fragments instead of wholes, must seem in
themselves unfinished, must be in themselves inexplicable.
But, indeed, are not the histories of nations, and revolutions
themselves, even the grandest, but fragments of those greater orbits
of which we scarcely, even in centuries, can trace the movement? Is
it any wonder then that national histories as well as personal should
often seem tragical? As now, alas, to us! poor tempest-tossed
fragments of the ship's company which we deemed should have brought
home the argosies for ages to come, driven to these untrodden far off
shores; whilst to England, instead of the golden fleece of peace and
liberty, our enterprise may seem but to have brought a tyranny more
cruel and a court more corrupt. Yet may there be something in the
future which, to those who look back, will explain all!
For England; and perhaps even for these wild shores which we fondly
call New England!
Can it be possible that we have won the Golden Fleece, and have
brought it hither?
There is something, moreover, in having lived in times of storm. The
temperature is raised at such times; all life is keener, colour more
vivid, and growth more rapid.
A nation in revolution is, in more ways than one, like a ship in a
storm. The dividing barriers of selfishness are dissolved for a time
into a common passion of patriotic hope, purpose, and endeavour. We
feel our common humanity in our common throbs of hope and fear, in
our common efforts for deliverance. And we are (or ought to be)
nobler, and more large of heart for ever afterwards. And I think the
greater part are. Perhaps, in some measure, all; unless, indeed, it
be the ship's cats, who, no doubt, privately pursue the ship's mice
with undeviating purpose through the raging of winds and waves, and
look on the strife of the elements as a providential arrangement to
enable them to fulfil their mousing destinies with less interruption.
And what such times of revolution do for a nation, ought not
Christianity, the great perpetual revolution, to do for us always?
The great hindrance seems to me to be, that it is so much easier to
be partizans than patriots, whether in the Church or State.
If men would do for the country what they do for the party, what a
country we should have!
If Christians would do for the Church what they do for their sect,
what a world we should have!
For a quarter of a century, from the signing of the Covenant in the
High Kirk of Edinburgh, the long struggle went on. Nor has it ceased
yet, though the combatants have changed, and the battle-field.
The Scottish covenanted congregations grew quickly indeed into a
covenanted army, and advanced to the border. The King, by Archbishop
Laud's counsel, disbelieving in the Covenant, proclaimed that if
within six weeks the Scotch did not renounce it, he would come and
chastise them (in a fatherly way) with an army. The King and
Archbishop Laud regarded the Covenant as a freak of rebellious
misguided children. The Scotch regarded it as the portion of the
eternal law of God which they then had to keep; and would keep, or
die.
A difference not to be settled by royal proclamation.
The Scotch had the advantage of _being_ their own army, ready to
fight for their Divine law; while the king had to pay his army with
the coin of the realm, and never could inspire them to the end with
the conviction that they were fighting for anything but coin of the
realm.
The coin of the realm, moreover, lay in the keeping of those dragons
called Parliaments, which his majesty had termed "vipers" at their
last meeting, and in a letter to Strafford, had compared to "cats,"
tameable when young, "cursed" if allowed to grow old, and which he
had therefore banished underground for eleven years into shadow and
silence.
When, therefore, the king and the Covenanted army met on the borders,
it was found that the Scotch, commanded, as my Father said, by old
Gustavus Adolphus's officers; every regiment as in that old Swedish
army, also a congregation, meeting morning and evening round its
banner of "Christ's crown and covenant," for prayer was a rock
against which the English army might vainly break; but from which, as
the event proved, it preferred to ebb silently away, the pay for
which only it professed to fight, being, moreover, exhausted.
The king took refuge in a treaty, promising to leave Kirk affairs in
the hands of the Kirk, and to call a free assembly. Poor gentleman,
his promises were still believed to have some small amount of truth
in them, and a pacification was effected.
Then came the moment of hope for those who had been watching those
movements with the intensest interest in England.
Of the two evils, a remonstrating Parliament in London and a fighting
Kirk in Scotland, the former now appeared to the king the least. In
the keeping of the Parliament, dragon-monster as it seemed to him,
lay the gold. And once more, after a silence of eleven years, on the
15th of April, 1640, the Parliament was summoned; a weapon welded by
the wrongs and the patience of eleven years into a temper the king
had done well to heed.
Pym and Hampden were the chief spokesmen, and Mr. Cromwell sat for
Huntingdon.
At the last Parliament they, and brave men like them, had wept bitter
tears at the king's arbitrary measures, and at his false dealing.
At this Parliament there were no tears shed. There were no
disrespectful or hasty words spoken.
It was as if in spirit they met around the grave of the martyred Sir
John Eliot, and would do or say nothing to dishonour the grave to
which since last they met he had been brought for liberty.
But no portion of the hoarded treasure could the king force or cajole
from their grasp. The court insisted on supplies. The Parliament
insisted on grievances.
And on May the 5th, the king dissolved the Parliament.
My Father's voice trembled with emotion when he heard it. "They
would have saved him!" he said. "They would have saved the country
and the king!"
Said Aunt Dorothy grimly, "The king prefers armies to parliaments;
and no doubt he will have his choice."
A second royal army was raised by enforcing ship-money, seizing the
pepper of the Indian merchants, and compelling loans, filling the
towns and cities with angry men who dared not resist, and the prisons
with brave men who dared. And to rouse the country further, the
queen appealed publicly for aid to the Roman Catholics, whilst
Archbishop Laud demanded contributions of the clergy. Earl
Strafford, recalled from Ireland, was appointed commander-in-chief.
The court endeavoured also to enkindle the fury of the old Border
war-memories; but the Borderers were brethren in the faith, and,
refusing to hate each other, combined in hating the bishops.
The second army melted like the first, after some little heartless
fighting in a cause they hated; having distinguished itself mainly by
shouting its sympathy with the Puritan preachers in the various towns
through which it passed; by insisting on testing whether its
commanders were Papists before it would follow them to the field; and
by draining the king's treasury, so that he could proceed no further
without once more looking to the dreaded guardians of the gold.
"They meet in a different temper from the last," my Father said, as
we walked home from the village, where we had eagerly hastened to
meet the flying Post, who galloped from one patriot's house to
another with printed sheets and letters containing the account of the
king's opening speech on the 3d of November; "as different as the
sweet May days of promise during which the Little Parliament debated,
from the gray fogs which creep along the Fens before our eyes to-day.
Summer, and hope, and restitution brightened before that April
Parliament. Over this lower winter, storms, and retribution; slow
clearing of the stubble-fields of centuries, stern ploughing of the
soil for better harvests, not to be reaped, perchance, by the hands
that sow."
For the six months between had been ill-filled by the court party.
I remember now how one day during those months my Father's hands
trembled and his voice grew low as a whisper as he read to us a
letter telling how a poor reckless young drummer lad, who, when, on
leave from the army in the north, had joined a wild mob of London
apprentices in an attack on Lambeth Palace, had been racked and
tortured in the Tower to make him confess his accomplices; and
torture failing to make him base, poor boy, how he had been hanged
and quartered the day after.
"They dared not torture Felton a few years since for the murder of
Buckingham," my Father said, "and now they twist this boy's offence
into treason, because, forsooth, a drum chanced to be sounded by the
mob, that the poor misguided lad may suffer the traitor's doom, and
the honour of his Holiness, their Pontifex Maximus, their Archangel,
as they call him, be avenged."
(These were the things that silenced the pleadings of pity in good
and merciful men when, in after years, the Archbishop was brought to
the scaffold.
Now that the crime and its avenging all are past, and victim, slayer,
avenger, all have met before the great Bar, it is hard to recall the
passion of indignation these deeds awakened in the gentlest hearts
when they were being done with little chance of ever being avenged.
But is not the most inflexible judgment the offspring of outraged
mercy?)
All through that summer the king, the archbishop, and Strafford went
on accumulating wrongs on the nation, too surely to recoil on
themselves.
There may have been many tyrannies more terrible. Never could there
have been one more irritating, more ingenious in sowing discontents
in every corner of the land.
The archbishop in convocation made a new canon, requiring every
clergyman and every graduate of the universities to take an oath that
all things necessary to salvation were contained in the doctrine and
discipline of the Church of England, as distinguished from
Presbyterianism and Papistry.
I remember that canon especially, because it brought Roger home from
Oxford, where he had been studying during the past two years, and was
about to take his degree, and led to results, sad indeed for us,
though not exactly among the miseries to be set down to the
archbishop. Roger would not swear, he said, against the religion of
half the kingdom, at least without understanding it better.
From Northamptonshire, Kent, Devonshire,--old conservative Kent and
the loyal West,--came up indignant petitions against this canon.
London was exasperated by the committal of four aldermen who refused
to set before the king the names of those persons within their wards
who were able to lend his majesty money; every borough in the kingdom
was aroused by the presence of its members ignominiously dismissed
from the dissolved Parliament; nine boroughs were still more deeply
moved by the absence of their members, imprisoned the day after the
dissolution in the Tower. Every day brought reports of some fresh
victim fined in the Star-Chamber on account of the odious ship-money.
Especial complaints came from the North, which Strafford was grinding
with the steady pressure of his presence in the council at York.
And meantime the friendly Scots were practically inculcating
Presbyterianism and the advantages of armed resistance in the four
counties beyond the Tees, where they had been left in possession
until they received the price wherewith the king had paid them for
rebellion.
There was much stir and movement in the land all through those
months. Netherby lay close to the high road, and we had many
visitors. Mr. Cromwell once, on his way to Cambridge (for which
place he then sate in Parliament), brief in speech and to the point,
hearty in look, and word, and gesture, and also at times in laughter.
Mr. Hampden, dignified and courtly as any nobleman of the king's
court. Mr. Pym, with firm, close-set lips and grave eyes. He came
more than once on horseback, and put up for the night, on one of the
many rides he took at that time around the country to stir up the
patriots to act together. My father also was often absent attending
meetings of the country party at Broughton Hall, the Lord Brooks'
mansion, near Oxford, where Roger, being at the university, sometimes
met him.
So the summer passed on, its perishable things fading, and its
enduring things ripening into autumn. Crop after crop of royal
promises budded and bloomed and bore no fruit, until the people grew
sorrowfully to understand that royal words, like flowers cultivated
into barrenness in royal gardens, were never purposed to bear fruit,
but only to attract with empty show of blossom. The nobles
petitioned for a Parliament; ten thousand citizens of London, in
spite of threats, petitioned for parliament; and at last once more
the king summoned it.
A month afterwards, early in December, my Father called the household
around the great hall fire to hear a letter from Dr. Antony:
"_To my very loving friend,_
"_Roger Drayton, Esq.,_
"_November_ 28_th._
"_Present these._
"HONOURED SIR,--Let us rejoice and praise God together. My
occupation is gone. The prisons bid fair to be cleared of all save
their rightful tenants. Parish after parish will welcome back
faithful ministers, undone and imprisoned by Star-Chamber and High
Commission. Heaven send that prison and persecution have made their
voices strong and gentle, and not bitter and shrill; for I have found
the devil not locked out by prison-bolts. And too surely also he
will find his way into triumphal processions such as we have had in
London to-day, on behalf of Mistress Olive's old friends, Mr. Prynne,
Mr. Bastwick, and Mr. Burton. But let me set my narrative in order.
"A fortnight before the Parliament was opened two thousand rioters
had torn down the benches in St. Paul's, where the cruel High
Commission were sitting, shouting that they would have no bishop, no
High Commission. Now these disorders cease. Once more the gag is
off the lips of every borough and county in Old England; and the
bitter helpless moans and wild inarticulate cries which have vainly
filled the land these eleven years give place to calm and temperate
speech. Petitions and remonstrances pour in from north, south, east
and west; some brought by troops of horsemen. The calmest voices are
heard more clearly.
"'He is a great stranger in Israel,' said Lord Falkland, 'who knoweth
not that this kingdom hath long laboured under great oppression both
in religion and liberty. Under pretence of uniformity they have
brought in superstition and scandal; under the titles of reverence
and decency they have defiled our Church by adorning our churches.
They have made the conforming to ceremonies more important than the
conforming to Christianity.'
"Said Sir Edward Deering, in attacking the High Commission Court,--
"'A Pope at Rome will do me less hurt than a patriarch at Lambeth.'
"Said Sir Benjamin Rudyard,--
"'We have seen ministers, their wives, and families, undone against
law, against conscience, about not dancing on Sundays. They have
brought it so to pass, that under the name of Puritans all our
religion is branded. Whosoever squares his actions by any rule
divine or human, he is a Puritan; whosoever would be governed by the
king's laws, he is a Puritan; he that will not do whatsoever other
men will have him do, he is a Puritan.'
"The Commons had not sate four days when, on the 7th of November, by
warrant of the house, they sent for Mr. Prynne, Mr. Bastwick, and Mr.
Burton, from their prisons beyond the seas, to certify by whose
authority they had been mutilated, branded, and imprisoned.
"And now after three weeks these three gentlemen, freed from their
sea-washed dungeons in Jersey, Guernsey, and the Scilly Islands, have
this day arrived in the city. All the way from the coast they have
been eagerly welcomed, escorted by troops of friends with songs and
garlands, from town to town.
"Five thousand citizens of condition rode forth on horseback to meet
them, among them many a citizen's wife, and all with bay and rosemary
in their hats and caps, to do honour to those their enemies had
vainly sought to shame. I trow brave Mrs. Bastwick, who stood
tearless by her husband at the pillory, and who hath not been
suffered to see him in his prison since, thought it no shame to unman
him by shedding tears of joy to-day. Old gray-haired Mr. Leighton,
moreover, bent with imprisonment and torture, and young John Lilburn,
for whom Mr. Cromwell so fervently pleaded, were there to share the
triumph, all marked with honourable scars from the Star-Chamber.
This outside the city. And within, at Westminster, another
victory--not a triumph but a victory--not festive, but solemn and
tragical, as victories on battle-fields are wont to be.
"This day at the bar of the House of Peers, about three of the clock
in the afternoon, Mr. Pym, in the name of all the Commons of England,
impeached Thomas, Earl of Strafford, of high treason. And this night
Lord Strafford lodges in the Tower.
"He is too stately a cedar that there should not be something great
in his fall.
"Scorning the Commons' message, with a proud-glooming countenance the
earl made towards his place at the head of the board. But at once
many bade him void the house. Sullenly he had to move to the door
till he was called. There he, at whose door so many vainly waited,
had to wait till he was summoned. Loftily he stood to hear the
sentence of the House. He was commanded to kneel, and on his knees
he was committed prisoner to the Keeper of the Black Rod. He would
have spoken, but he who had silenced England for eleven years was
sternly silenced now, and had to go without a word. In the outer
room they demanded his sword. The carl cried to his serving-man with
a loud voice to take my Lord-Lieutenant's sword. A crowd thronged
the doors of the House as he stepped out to his coach. No fellow
capped to him before whom yesterday not a noble in England would have
stood uncovered with impunity. One cried to another, 'What is the
matter?' 'A small matter, I warrant you,' quoth the earl. Coming to
where he had left his coach he found it not, and had to walk back
again through the gazing, gaping crowd. He was not suffered to enter
his own coach, but was carried away a prisoner in that of the Keeper
of the Black Rod.
"And this night he lodges--scarce, I trow, rests or sleeps--in the
Tower. Will the memory of his old companion in the days before he
turned traitor to England and liberty, our noble murdered patriot
Eliot, haunt his memory there? From his ghost the earl is safe
enough. Such ghosts are in other keeping and other company. And for
the earl's memory, darker recollections than that of Eliot with all
his wrongs may well haunt it, if report speaks truth; recollections
which the Old Tower itself, with all its chambers of death, can
scarce outgloom.
"But Lord Strafford is not a man to dream while there is work to be
done, or to look back when life may hang on his wisdom in looking
forward.
"The first stroke is struck, but the cedar is not felled yet. Nor
can any surmise what it may bring down with it if it falls.
"Your faithful servant and loving friend.
"LEONARD ANTONY.
"Roger will like to hear that his friend Mr. Cromwell presented the
petition for poor John Lilburn, (some time writer for Mr. Prynne)
that was scourged from Westminster to the Fleet prison. And also
that he hath warmly espoused the cause of certain poor countrymen
whom he knows near St. Ives, robbed of their ancient pasture-rights
on a common tyrannously enclosed by one of the queen's servants.
"Mr. Cromwell seemed to take these poor men's wrongs sorely to heart,
and spoke with a flushed face and much vehement eloquence concerning
them, in a voice which certain courtiers thought loud and untunable,
clad in a coat and band they thought unhandsome and made by an 'ill
country-tailor,' and in a hat without a hatband. But the Parliament
hearkened to him with much regard, and gave great heed to what he
counselled."
Roger's eye kindled.
"Mr. Cromwell will never forget the old friends for the new," said my
Father, "nor pass by little duties in hurrying to great ends."
Then our household broke into twos and threes debating the news.
Aunt Dorothy shook her head. "I do mourn over it," said she. "Mr.
Cromwell might do great things. And here are the Church and State
all on fire, and the Almighty sending His lightnings on the cedars of
Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan, while Mr. Cromwell keeps harping on
these petty worldly things; on the wrongs of an insignificant servant
of Mr. Prynne's, which no doubt would get set right of themselves
when once the great battle is fought; and on whether some poor
clodpoles near St. Ives get a few acres more or less to feed their
sheep on. And, meanwhile, the sheep of the Lord's pasture wandering
on the mountains without pasture or shepherd! I do think it a pity,
too, that Mr. Cromwell does not change his tailor; we ought to
provide things honest in the sight of all men. Not but that I will
say," she concluded, "Mrs. Cromwell and the maidens might take some
of these matters on herself."
I remember that night asking Aunt Gretel if she thought it would be
wrong to put Earl Strafford's name into my prayers. He was not
exactly an enemy of mine, or there would be a command to do so; and
he certainly was not a friend, nor, now, any longer "one in
authority." But it went to my heart to think how in a moment all his
glory seemed turned to dishonor, the crowd gaping on him, and no man
capping to him.
"What wouldst thou pray for, Olive?" said Aunt Gretel. "Certainly
not that he may have power again, and set up the Star-Chamber, and
send the three gentlemen to the pillory once more."
"Would he do that if he got out of the Tower?" said I.
"The wise and good men think so, or they would not have him sent
there," said she.
"But might he not be better always afterwards?" I asked.
"The people cannot trust that he would," she said. "Even if he
promised ever so much and intended it, they could not at once trust
him."
"Is it too late then for him to be forgiven?" I said.
"Too late, it seems, for men to forgive him," said she, very gravely.
"But never too late for God?" I said.
"No, never too late for God," said she, slowly. "Because God knows
when we really intend to give up sinning, even when we can do nothing
to show it to men. So it is never too late for Him to take His
prodigals home to his bosom."
"Then I can ask for that," said I. And I did. But that night there
sank down on my heart for the first time (the first time of so many
in the solemn years that, followed) the terrible words, "Too late;"
the terrible sense that an hour may come when, if repentance towards
God is still possible, reparation to man and mercy from man are
possible no longer.
This fervour of patriotic life which animated us all at Netherby made
us rather hard, I am afraid, on Cousin Placidia.
Throughout the year, after our sojourn at Davenant Hall, she had
tried Roger and me (and I believe also secretly Aunt Dorothy) very
seriously by becoming in her way exceedingly religious. One winter
morning when Roger and I were busy with my father about our Italian
lessons at one end of the hall, the following discussion took place
between Placidia and Aunt Dorothy over their spinning near the
hearth. Placidia had seen, she informed Aunt Dorothy, the vanity of
all things under the sun, the folly of pride, and the wickedness of
all worldly pomp, and she washed decidedly to take her place "on the
Lord's side," to work out betimes her own salvation, and to secure
for herself an abundant entrance into the kingdom. Aunt Dorothy
spoke of the heart being deceitful, and hoped Placidia would make
sure of her foundation. Placidia rejoined with some slight
resentment as to any doubts of her orthodoxy, that she humbly trusted
she knew as well as any one, that every one's heart was indeed
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, that is, every
ungodly person's; indeed one only needed to look around in any
direction to see it. Aunt Dorothy replied that, for her part, she
found her own heart still very ingenious in deceiving her, and in
need of a great deal of daily watching.
Placidia admitted the necessity. Indeed, she said, that on a review
of her life she felt that, although she had been mercifully preserved
from many infirmities which beset other people, (her temper being
naturally even, and her tastes sober,) still no doubt she shared in
the universal depravity. But she had, like Jacob at Bethel, she
said, made a solemn covenant with God, promising to give Him
henceforth His due portion of her affections and substance; she had
signed and sealed it on her knees, and she believed she was accepted,
that she was on the Lord's side, and that, as with Jacob, He would
henceforth be on hers.
Aunt Dorothy's spinning-wheel flew with ominous rapidity, but some
moments passed before she replied. Then she said,--
"My dear, I trust that you know the difference between a _covenant_
and a _bargain_. The patriarch Jacob, on the whole, no doubt meant
well, but I never much liked his 'ifs' and 'thens' with the Almighty.
The best kind of covenants, I think, are those which begin on the
other side. As when the Lord said to Abraham, 'Fear not, Abraham, I
am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.' Or, 'I am the
Almighty God, walk before me and be thou perfect.' Then follow the
promises, lavish as His riches, which fill heaven and earth; free as
the air He gives us to breathe. When God gives there is no limit, no
reserve, no condition. But, on the other hand, neither is there
reserve, or condition, or limit when He demands. It is not so much
for so much, but _all_ surrendered in absolute trust. It is, 'Be
thou perfect;' it is, 'Leave thy country, and thy kindred, and thy
father's house;' it is, 'Give me thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom
thou lovest.' Is this what you mean by a covenant with God? Think
well, for He 'is not mocked.' His hand is larger than ours, as the
sea is larger than a drinking-cup; but He will not accept our hands
half full."
Said Placidia,--
"Aunt Dorothy, I have no intention whatever of being half for the
world and half for God. I have no opinion at all of the religion
which can dance round May-poles on the week-day, and attend the
worship of God on Sundays; or fast and pray on Fridays, wear mourning
in Lent, and be decked out in curls, and laces, and jewels, on
feast-days. I have made up my mind never to wear a feather, or a
trinket, or a bit of lace to my band, or a laced stomacher, nor to
use crisping-tongs, nor to indulge in any kind of 'dissoluteness in
hair,' nor ever to sport any gayer colour in mantle or wimple than
gray, or at the most 'liver colour.' I have not the least intention,
Aunt Dorothy, of trying to serve two masters. I know in that way we
gain nothing. But I do believe that those that honour Him He will
honour, and that godliness hath promise of the life that now is as
well as of that which is to come."
"The Lord's honours are not often like King Ahasuerus's," said Aunt
Dorothy, gravely; "the Crowns of those He delighted to honour have
sometimes been of fire, and their royal apparel of sack-cloth. There
is such a thing," she continued, her wheel whirling like a whirlwind,
"as serving only one master, yet that not the right one, though
taking His name. And we are near the brink of that precipice
whenever we seek any reward from the Master beyond His 'Well done.'
'_I_ am thy shield,'" she concluded, "'_I, the Lord Himself;_' not
what He promises or what He gives, though it were to be the half of
His kingdom."
By this time my Father's attention had been aroused to the
discussion, and rising from the table and approaching the spinners,
he said,--
"What you say, sister Dorothy, reminds me of some words I heard
lately in a letter of Mr. Cromwell's. 'Truly no creature hath more
cause,' he wrote, 'to put himself forth in the cause of his God than
I. I have had plentiful wages beforehand, and I am sure I shall
never earn the least mite.'"
"Yea, verily," said Aunt Dorothy, "Mr. Cromwell may waste too much
thought on draining and dyking; but he is a godly gentleman, and he
under stands the Covenant."
Cousin Placidia, however, pursued her course, and continued a living
rebuke to Roger and me if we indulged in too noisy merriment, and to
any of the maids who were tempted into a gayer kirtle or ribbon than
ordinary. On Sunday she was never known to smile, nor on any other
day to laugh, except in a mild moderate manner, as a polite
concession to any one who expected it in response to a facetious
remark.
Her conversation meantime became remarkably scriptural. She did not
allow herself an indulgence which she did not justify by a text; if
her dresses wore longer than usual, so as to spare her purse, she
looked on it as a proof that she had been marvellously helped with
wisdom in the choice. If she escaped the various accidents which not
unfrequently brought me into disgrace, and my clothes to premature
ruin, she regarded it as an interference of Providence, like to that
which watched over the Israelites in the wilderness.
Indeed, it seemed to Roger and me that Placidia's primary meaning of
being "on the Lord's side" was, that in a general way the Almighty
should do what she liked; and that in particular the weather should
be arranged with considerate reference as to whether she had on her
new taffetas or her old woolsey. Great therefore was our relief,
although great also our astonishment, when Aunt Dorothy announced to
us one day that Cousin Placidia was about to be married to Mr.
Nicholls, the vicar of Netherby.
"Are you not surprised?" I ventured to ask of my Father. "Cousin
Placidia is such a Precisian, as they call it, and Mr. Nicholls
thinks so much of Archbishop Laud."
"Not much surprised, Olive," he said. "I think Placidia's religion
and Mr. Nicholls' are a little alike. Both have a great deal to do
with the colour and shape of clothes, and with the places and times
at which things are done, and the way in which they are said. And
both are prudent persons, desirous of taking a respectable place in
the world in a religious way. I should think they would agree very
well."
Aunt Dorothy was at once indignant and consoled.
"I never quite trusted Placidia's professions," said she; "but this,
I confess, goes beyond my fears. A person who never passes what he
calls the altar without making obeisances such as the old heathens
made to the sun and the moon, and who, not six months ago, defiled
the house of God with Popish incense!"
But Cousin Placidia had explanations which were quite satisfactory to
herself.
"She had had so many providential intimations," she said (one of the
habits of Placidia that always most exasperated Roger was her way of
always doing what she wished, because, she said, some one else wished
it; and since she had become religious, she usually threw the
responsibility on the Highest Quarter)--"intimations so plain, that
she could not disregard them without disobedience. Mr. Nicholls'
coming to Netherby at all was the consequence of a series of most
remarkable circumstances, entirely beyond his own control. The way
in which the prejudice against each other, with which they began, had
by degrees changed into esteem, and then into something more, was
also very remarkable. And what was most remarkable of all was, that
on the very morning of the day when he proposed to her, she
had--quite by chance, as it might seem, but that there was no such
thing as chance--opened the Bible on the passage, 'Get thee out from
thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, into
a land that I will shew thee: and I will bless thee.'"
"But, my dear," remarked Aunt Gretel, to whom, Aunt Dorothy being
unapproachable, Placidia had made this explanation--"my dear, you are
not going to leave your country, are you? and you do know the land to
which you are going."
"Of course," said Placidia, "there are always differences. But the
application was certainly very remarkable. Mr. Nicholls quite agreed
with me, when I told him of it."
"No doubt, my dear, no doubt," said Aunt Gretel, retreating. "But
there does seem a little difference in your opinions."
"Uncle Drayton says we should look on the things in which we agree,
more than on those in which we differ," said Placidia. "Besides, if
Aunt Dorothy would only see it, I really trust I have been already
useful to Mr. Nicholls. He said, only yesterday, he thought there
was a good deal to be said in favour of some late ordinances of the
Parliament against too close approach to Papistical ceremonies. Mr.
Nicholls had never any propension towards the Pope; and he thinks now
that, it may be, his canonical obedience to Archbishop Laud led him
to some unwise compliances. But the powers that be, he says, must
always have their due honour. The great point is, to ascertain which
powers be, and which only seem to be. And now that the Parliament
has impeached Archbishop Laud, and sent him to the Tower, this is
really an exceedingly difficult question for a conscientious
clergyman, who is also a good subject, to determine."
Aunt Gretel did not pursue the subject, she being always in fear of
losing her way, and straying into wildernesses, when English politics
or rubrics came into question.
And in due time Placidia became Mistress Nicholls, and removed to the
parsonage, with a generous dowry from my Father, and everything that
by the most liberal interpretation could in any way be construed into
belonging to her, down to a pair of perfumed Cordova gloves which had
been given her by some gay kinswoman, and, having been thrown aside
in a closet as useless vanities, cost Aunt Dorothy a long and
indignant search. Everything might be of use, said Placidia, in
their humble housekeeping. And she had always remembered a saying
she had once heard Aunt Gretel quote from Dr. Luther,--"that what the
husband makes by earning, the wife multiplies by sparing."
"An invaluable maxim," she remarked, "for people in narrow
circumstances, who had married from pure godly affection, without
passion or ambition, despising all worldly considerations, like
herself and Mr. Nicholls."
It was a strange Christmas to many in England, that first in the
stormy life of the Long Parliament. Earl Stratford had been in the
Tower since the 28th of November. A week before Christmas day
Archbishop Laud had been impeached and committed to custody. There
was no thought of the Parliament dispersing. Mr. Pym and others of
the patriot members were occupied with preparing for Lord Strafford's
trial, which did not begin until the 22nd of the following March.
On the other hand, faithful voices, long silent in prisons, were
heard again in many pulpits throughout the land.
Judge Berkeley, who had given the unjust decision in favour of
ship-money, was seized on the bench in his ermine, and taken to
prison like a common felon.
The great thunder-cloud of Star-chamber and High Commission Court had
dispersed. The Puritans and Patriots breathed once more, and the
great voice of the nation, speaking at Westminster the words which
were deeds, while it quieted the cries and groans of the oppressed
country, set men's tongues free for earnest and determined speech by
every hall hearth, and every blacksmith's forge, and ale-house, and
village-green, and place of public or social talk throughout the
country.
The blacksmith's forge in Netherby village was indeed a place well
known to Roger and me. Job Forster, the smith, a brave,
simple-hearted giant from Cornwall (given to despising our inland
peasants, who had never seen the sea, and suspected of being the
mainstay of a little band of sectaries in the neighborhood), having
always been Roger's chief friend; while Rachel, his gentle, sickly,
saintly little wife (whom he cherished with a kind of timorous
tenderness, like something almost too small and delicate for him to
meddle with), had always given me the child's place in her motherly
heart, which no child had been given to their house to fill.
Whenever we were missed in childhood, it was commonly at Job
Forster's forge we were sought and found. And by this means we
learned a great deal of politics from Job's point of view, as well as
many marvellous stories of God's providence by sea and land, which
seemed to us to show that God was as near to those who trust Him now,
as to the Israelites of old, which, also, Job and Rachel most surely
believed.
But, meantime, while the clouds over England seemed scattering, a
heavy cloud gathered over us at Netherby.
The Davenant family had come to the Hall for the Christmas
festivities. We met often during the time they were there, more than
ever before. The ties of friendship and of neighbourhood seemed to
prevail over the party strife which had so long kept us apart.
Hope there was also that those party conflicts at last might cease
with the disgrace of the hated Lord-Lieutenant.
His sudden abandonment of the patriot side, his rapid rise, and his
lofty, imperious temper, had not failed to make enemies even among
those of his own party. Sir Walter Davenant said he had no liking
for turn-coats. They always over-acted their new part, and commonly
did more to injure the party they joined than the party they
betrayed. The haughty earl once out of the way, the king would
listen to truer men and better servants.
The Lady Lucy held in detestation the earl's private character. The
king, she said, was a high-minded gentleman, an affectionate husband
and father, his presence and life had done much to reform the court;
the earl was a man of commanding ability, but his hands were not pure
enough to defend so lofty a cause. Better men, she thought, if in
themselves weaker, would yet form stronger stays for the throne of
the anointed of God. If Lord Strafford were displaced, she thought,
the best men of all parties would unite; would understand each other,
would understand their king, and all might yet go well. My Father,
though less sanguine, was not without hope, although on rather
different grounds. While Lady Lucy believed that Lord Strafford's
violence and evil life were a weakness to the cause she deemed in
itself sacred, my Father thought that Lord Strafford's power of
character and mind were a fatal strength to the cause he deemed in
itself evil. The earl once gone, he believed the king would never
find such another prop for his arbitrary measures, the lesser tyrant
would fall like an arch with the key-stone out, and the king would
yield, perforce, to the just demands of the nation.
However, for the time, Lord Strafford's imprisonment formed a bond of
sympathy between the two families, to Roger's and my great content.
Much friendly rivalry there was in the Christmas adornment of the two
transepts with wreaths of ivy and holly, ending in a free confession
of defeat on our part, as our somewhat clumsy bunches of evergreen
stood out in contrast with the graceful wreaths and festoons with
which Lettice had made the memory of the Davenants green.
For a moment she enjoyed her triumph, and then begging permission to
make a little change in our arrangements, with that quick perception
of hers, and those fairy fingers which never could touch anything
without weaving something of their own grace into it, in an hour or
two she had made the massive columns and heavy arches of our
ancestral chapel light and graceful as the most decorated monument of
the Davenants, with traceries of glossy leaves and berries.
Lettice's birthday was on Twelfth Night. She was fifteen, nearly two
years younger than I was, and three than Roger.
There was great merry-making at the Hall that day. In the morning
distributings of garments to all the maidens in the parish of
Lettice's age, by her own hands. She had some kindly or merry word
for every one, and throughout the day was the soul of all the
festivities. There was such a fullness of life and enjoyment in her;
such a power of going out of herself altogether into the pleasures or
wants of others. She seemed to me the centre of all, just as the sun
is, by sending her sunbeams everywhere. While every one else was
full of the thought of her, she was full only of shining into every
neglected corner and shy blossom, making every one feel glad and
cared for, down to Gammer Grindle's idiot boy.
It was a wonderful joy for me to be Lettice's friend. I had almost
as much delight in her as Sir Walter, who watched her with such
pride, or Lady Lucy, whose eyes so oft moistened as they rested on
her. She would have it that Roger and I must be at her right hand in
everything.
In the afternoon Harry Davenant came with Sir Launcelot Trevor.
Harry looked rather grave, I thought, but he was naturally that; and
Lettice's gaiety soon infected him so that he became foremost in the
games, which lasted until the sun went down, and the servants and
villagers dispersed to kindle up the twelve bonfires. But Sir
Launcelot looked sorely out of temper. His heavy brows quite lowered
over his keen, dark eyes, so that they flashed out beneath like the
stormy light under a thunder cloud. He scarcely bent to my Father or
to any of us; and although he was lavish as ever of compliments to
Lady Lucy and Lettice, his brow scarcely relaxed to correspond with
the lip-smiles with which he accompanied them.
When the sun was fairly set, the twelve fires were kindled, this time
on the field in front of the Hall, in honour of Lettice, instead of
as usual on the village green.
We waited to see them kindle up, and then we left. Roger stayed
behind us. There was to be songs and dances round the fires, and
then feasting in the Hall late into the night. But Roger only
intended to remain a little while to see the merriment begin.
I remember looking back for a last glimpse of the fires as they leapt
and sank, one moment lighting up every battlement of the turrets, and
all the carving of the windows with lurid light, and flashing back
from the glass like carbuncles; the next substituting for the reality
their own fantastic light and goblin shadows, so that not a corner or
gable of the old building looked like itself. And I remember
afterwards that close by one of the fires were standing Roger and
Lettice, and Sir Launcelot, near each other; Roger piling wood on the
fire at Lettice's direction, and Sir Launcelot standing a little
apart with folded arms watching them. His face looked red and angry.
I thought it was perhaps because of the angry glare of the flames.
Yet something made me long to turn back and bring Roger away with us.
It was impossible. But involuntarily I looked back once more: the
flames leapt up at the moment, and then I saw Sir Launcelot and Roger
as clearly as in daylight, apparently in eager debate.
I lingered to watch them, but just then the fitful flames fell, I
could see no more, and I had to hasten on to follow my Father and
Aunt Gretel home.
Before we reached home the clouds, which had been threatening all
day, began to fall in showers of hail. We had not been in an hour
when, as we were sitting over the hall fire, talking cheerily over
the doings of the day, Roger suddenly entered, his face ashen-white,
his eyes like burning coals, and, in a low voice, called my Father
out to speak to him outside. For a few minutes, which seemed to me
hours, we sat in suspense, Aunt Gretel's knitting falling on her lap,
in entire disregard of consequence to the stitches--Aunt Dorothy's
spinning-wheel whirling as if driven by the Furies. Then my Father
returned alone, as pale as Roger.
He seated himself again, with his arms on his knees and his hands
over his face--an attitude I had never seen him in before. It made
him look like an old man; and I remember noticing for the first that
his hair was growing gray.
No one asked any questions.
At length, in a calm, low voice, my Father said,--
"Roger and Sir Launcelot Trevor have quarrelled. Roger struck Sir
Launcelot, and he fell against one of the great logs of the bonfires.
He is wounded severely, and Roger is going to ride to Cambridge for a
physician."
"In such a night!" said Aunt Gretel; "not a star; and the hail has
been driving against the panes this half hour!"
"It is the best thing Roger can do," said my Father, quietly.
The next minute we heard the ring of a horse's hoofs on the pavement
of the court, and then the sound of a long gallop dying slowly away
on the road amidst the howling of the wind and the clattering of the
hail.
But no one spoke until the household were gathered for family prayer.
There was no variation in the chapter read or in the usual words of
prayer; only a tremulous depth in my Father's voice as he asked for
blessings on the son and daughter of the house.
And afterwards, as I wished him good-night, he leant his hand on my
head, and said--
"Watch and pray, Olive--watch and pray, my child, lest ye enter into
temptation."
Then I knelt down, and hid my face on his knee, and said--
"O Father, Roger must have been sorely provoked--I am sure he was. I
am sure it was not Roger's fault--I am sure; so sure! Sir Launcelot
is so wicked, and I will never forgive him."
"Roger said it was his fault, my poor little Olive," replied my
Father, very tenderly, "and that he will never forgive _himself_.
And whatever Sir Launcelot said or did, you must forgive him, and
pray that God may forgive him; for he is very seriously hurt, and may
die."
"Roger would be sure to say that," I said. "He is always ready to
blame himself and excuse every one else. But, O Father, God will not
let Sir Launcelot die! What can we do?"
"Pray! Olive," he said in a trembling voice--"pray!" and he went to
his own room.
But all night long, whenever I woke from fitful snatches of sleep,
and went to the window to look if the storm had passed, and if Roger
were coming, I saw the light burning in my Father's window.
The last time Aunt Gretel crept up softly behind me, and throwing her
large wimple over me, drew me gently away.
"I have kept such a poor watch for Roger!" I said; "and see! my
Father's lamp is burning still. He has been watching all night."
"There is Another watching, Olive," she said, softly, "night and day.
The Intercessor slumbers not, nor sleeps. It is never dark now in
the Holiest Place, for he is ever there; and never silent, for He is
ever interceding."