When I think of the months which passed between the king's attempted
arrest of the five members and the first battle of the Civil War, I
sometimes wonder how any one can ever undertake to write history.
In the little bit of the world known to us, parties were so strangely
intertwined, so strangely divided, and so heterogeneously composed.
The motives that drew men to one side or the other were so various
and so mixed, that I think scarce one of those we knew fought on the
same side for the same reason; while the differences which separated
many men in the same party were certainly wider in many respects than
those which separated them from others against whom they fought.
How world-wide the difference between Harry Davenant and Sir
Launcelot Trevor! How nicely balanced the scales that made my Father
and John Hampden "rebels," and Harry Davenant or Lord Falkland
"malignants!"
Yet the distinctions were real, at least so it seems to me. Nor do I
see how, if all were to be again starting from the same point, either
could avoid coming to the same issue.
Harry Davenant believed revolution to be ruin, and chose the most
arbitrary rule instead.
My Father, equally dreading revolution, believed the king to be the
great revolutionist; by his arbitrary will changing times and laws;
by his hopeless untruth subverting the foundations of society.
Slowly he stepped down into the cold bitter waters of civil war,
having for his watch-word, "Loyalty to England and her laws!" His
chief hope lay in Mr. Hampden.
Roger again, and others like him, hoping more from liberty than he
feared from revolution, and believing the contest would be fiery, but
brief and decisive, plunged gallantly into the flood, with Liberty
blazoned on their banners; liberty to do right and to speak the
truth. His chosen captain was Mr. Cromwell, in whose troop he served
from the first. God only knew the bitter pang it cost him (I knew it
not till years afterwards) to take his post on the field which must,
he knew, make so great a gulf between him and the Davenants. It was
seldom Roger spoke of what he felt; scarce ever of what he suffered.
Dr. Antony wrote, meanwhile, from London:--
"Chirurgeons, like women, have indeed their place on the
battle-field, and not out of reach of the danger. But their work is
with the wounded, and their weapons are turned against the enemy of
all; the 'last enemy,' scarce to be destroyed in this war! I hope to
succour on the battle-field those I sought to comfort in the prisons.
God grant I find the air of the field as wholesome to the spirits of
my patients as that of the dungeon."
Job Forster never hesitated for a moment as to which was the right
side. To him England was in one sense Canaan to be conquered, in
another the Chosen Land to be kept sacred. The king was Saul; or, in
other aspects, Sihon king of the Amorites, or Og king of Bashan. The
Parliament, at first, and then the Lord Protector and the army, were
the chosen people, Moses, Joshua, David. His only hesitation was
whether he himself ought to fight on the field, or to work at the
forge and protect Rachel and the village at home. "The Almighty," he
said, "has not given me this big body of mine for nought. God forbid
it should be said of Job Forster, Why abodest thou amidst the
sheep-folds to hear the bleatings of the flocks?--that is, the ring
of the hammer and anvil, which is as the bleating of my flocks to me.
Yet there is Rachel! And the old law was merciful; and if it forbid
a man to leave his new-married wife, how should I answer for leaving
her who has more need of me, and has none but me? and she so ailing,
and I, to whom the Lord has said as plain as words can speak, 'Be
thou better to her than ten sons."
It was perhaps the first perplexity he had never confided to her, and
sorely was Job exercised, until one morning in August he came to my
Father with a lightened countenance, and said,--
"Mr. Drayton, she has given the word, as plain as ever Deborah spoke
to Barak. I've got my commission, and I'm ready to go this night."
Afterwards, in an intimate talk by a camp-fire, he once told Roger
how that morning, between the lights, he woke up and saw her kneeling
down with her arms crossed upon the Book, and her eyes raised up to
heaven, and running fast with tears. "I lifted myself," he said, "on
my elbow, and I looked at her. But I didn't like to speak; I saw
there was something going on between her soul and the Lord. And last
she rose and came to me with a face as pale as the sheet, but without
a tear in her eyes or a tremble in her voice, and she said, 'Job,
thou shalt have thy way; the Lord has made me ready to give thee up.'
And I said, sheepish-like, 'How canst thee know what I willed? I
never said aught to thee!' Then she smiled and said, 'Thee never
thinks thee says aught except thee speaks plain enough for the
town-crier. Have not I heard thy sighs, and seen thy hankering looks
whenever any of the lads listed these weeks past? But I could not
speak before; now I can. For I've gotten the word from the Lord for
thee and for me, and woe is me if I hold my peace.' The word for me
was: 'Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld
thy son, thy only son, from me.' 'And that,' said she, 'means thee,
Job; for thou are more to me than that,' said she, 'more than that,
only and all. I have no promise to hold thee by, like Abraham had
for Isaac, yet if the Lord calls, what can I do?' And there her
voice gave way, but she hurried on--'And I've gotten a word for thee,
"_Have not I commanded thee?_ Be strong and of a good courage, for
the Lord thy God is with thee wheresoever thou goest."' "So,"
concluded Job, "I got my word of command; and there was no more to be
said. We knelt down together and gave ourselves up; and as soon as
it was fairly day I came to give in my name."
That was Job Forster's motive. He believed he had the word of
command direct from the King of kings. And this was the motive, I
believe, of hundreds and thousand more or less like him; men who, as
the Lord Protector said when the strife was over, were "never
beaten." Gloriously distinct the two armies and the two causes
seemed to him, perplexed by no subtle perceptions of right on the
wrong side, or of wrong on the right.
To Aunt Dorothy also matters were equally clear, although her point
of view was not precisely the same, and in the subsequent
subdivisions she and Job became seriously opposed. Aunt Dorothy
believed that she saw in the New Testament a model of church ritual
and government, minutely defined to the last stave or pin or loop of
the tabernacle; and rather that abandon the minutest of these sacred
details she would willingly have suffered any temporal loss. The
whole Presbyterian order of church government she saw clearly
unfolded in the Acts and the Epistles; and that godly men like Mr.
Cromwell on the other hand, or learned men like Dr. Jeremy Taylor on
the other, should fail to see it also, was a miracle only to be
accounted for by the blinding power of Satan, especially predicted in
these last days. With regard to the Government of the State also,
her belief was equally definite, derived, as she considered, from the
same Divine source. The king was "the anointed of the Lord." In
this, she said, Lady Lucy had undoubted insight into the truth. His
wicked councillors might be put to death, as traitors at once against
him and the realm; armies might by his Parliament be raised against
him; but it must be in his name, with the purpose of setting him free
from those evil councillors by whom he was virtually kept a prisoner;
his judgment being by them enthralled, so that he was irresponsible
for his acts, and might quite lawfully by his faithful covenanted
subjects be placed, respectfully, under bodily restraint, if thereby
his mind might be disenthralled from the hard bondage of the wicked.
But beyond this no subject might go. The king's person was sacred;
no profane hand could be lifted with impunity against him. Any
difficulty, disorder, or evil, must be endured, rather than touch a
hair of the consecrated head. This also was a conviction for which
Aunt Dorothy was fully prepared to encounter any amount of
contradiction or disaster. The narrow ridge on which she walked
erect, without wavering or misgiving, was, she was persuaded, marked
out as manifestly as the path of the Israelites through the Red Sea
by the wall of impassable waters on either hand, by the pillar of
cloud and fire behind. To this narrow way she would have allured,
led, or if needful compelled every human soul, for their good, and
the glory of God. No vicissitudes of fortune affected her
convictions; the sorrows of all who deviated from this narrow path
being, in her belief, from the Sword of the Avenger, while the
sorrows of those who kept to it were from the Rod of the Comforter.
My Father's adherence to very much the same course of conduct, from a
belief of its expediency, and Aunt Gretel's from the tenderness of
sympathy which inevitably drew her to the side on which there was the
most suffering, seemed to Aunt Dorothy happy accidents, or special
and uncovenanted mercies, singularly vouchsafed to persons of their
uncertain and indefinite opinions. Not that Aunt Dorothy's nature
was in any way vulgar, small, and narrow. Her heart was deep and
high, if not always wide. To her convictions she would have
sacrificed first herself, then the universe. Her convenience she
would have sacrificed to the comfort of the meanest human being in
the universe. She would not have swerved from her ridge of orthodoxy
for the dearest love on earth. She would have stooped from it to
save or help the most degraded wanderer, or her greatest enemy.
But the most dangerous conviction she held was unfortunately one of
the deepest. It was that of her own practical infallibility. It was
strange that, with the profoundest and most practical convictions of
her own sinfulness, she never could learn the impossibility that all
error should be removed whilst any sin remains; that there should be
no darkness in the mind while there is so much in the heart.
Strange, but not uncommon. Her sin she acknowledged as her own. Her
creed she identified entirely with the Holy Scriptures. It was not
her own, she said, it was God's truth to the minutest point, and, as
such, she would have suffered or fought for every clause.
Nevertheless, with advancing years Roger and I grew into a deeper
reverence for her character. If in our childhood she represented to
us Justice with the sword and scales (often in our belief very
effectually blindfolded), whilst Aunt Gretel enacted counteracting
Mercy; in after years we grew rather to look on them as Truth and
Tenderness, acting not counter to each other, but in combination.
And in this imperfect world, where truth and love are never blended
in perfect proportions in any one character, it is difficult to say
on which we leant the most. It was strange to see how often their
opposite attributes led them to the same actions. "Speaking the
truth in love," was Aunt Dorothy's maxim; and if the love were
sometimes lost in the emphasis on truth, neither truth nor love were
ever sacrificed to selfish interest. "First pure then peaceable" was
her wisdom; and I cannot say she always got as far as the "gentle,
and easy to be entreated." But it is something to be able to look
back on a life like hers, unprofaned by one stain of untruthfulness,
or by one low or petty aim. It is only in looking back that we learn
what a rock of strength she was to us all, or how the tenderest
memories of home often cling like mosses around such rocks; the more
closely, sometimes, for their very ruggedness. Thus our home at
Netherby contained various elements ecclesiastical and political as
well as moral, all of which, however, at the commencement of the
civil wars were gathered together under the watchword, "Loyalty above
all to the King of kings. Liberty to obey God."
It was this indeed, that, with all our internal differences as to
church government and secular government, united us into one party.
Whatever varieties of opinion as to church government our party
contained: Presbyterian, Independent, Moderate Episcopal, or Quaker;
classical, republican, aristocratic, English constitutional, or,
finally, the adherents of the Deliverer, chosen (they deemed) as
divinely and to be obeyed as implicitly as any Hebrew judge--all
believed in the theocracy.
The liberty our party contended for was no mere unloosing of bonds.
It was liberty to obey the highest law. It was no mere levelling to
clear an empty space for new experiments. It was sweeping away ruins
to clear a platform for the kingdom of God.
And this was another point in which the recollections of my life make
me feel how vast and complicated an undertaking it must be to write
history.
In our early days we used to be given histories of the Church and
histories of the world. Profane histories and sacred histories as
neatly and definitely separated as if the Church and the world had
been two distinct planets.
But in our own times, at least, it seems to me absolutely impossible
thus to separate them. The Battle of Dunbar was to Oliver Cromwell
and his army as religious an act as their prayer-meeting at Windsor.
The righting the poor folks who lost their rights on the Soke of
Somersham was, I believe, as religious an act to Mr. Cromwell as the
appointment of the gospel-lectures. And as with the actions so with
the persons. Who can say which persons of our time belong to
ecclesiastical and which to secular history?
Does the history of the Convocation, of the Star-Chamber, or of the
Westminster Assembly, belong to sacred history; and the history of
the Long Parliament, where decisions were made for time and eternity,
or of the battle-fields whence thousands went to their last account,
to profane? Is the making of confessions of faith a religious act,
and the living by them or dying for them secular? Are Archbishop
Laud, Bishop Williams, Mr. Baxter, Dr. Owen, Mr. Howe, ecclesiastical
persons; and Lord Falkland, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, or Oliver Cromwell,
secular?
In our times, as in my own life, it seems to me absolutely impossible
to say where sacred history begins and where the profane ends.
My consolation is that it seems to me much the same in the Holy
Scriptures. We call Genesis sacred history; and what is it, chiefly,
but a story of family life? What is Exodus but a record of national
deliverances? What are the Chronicles and Kings but histories of
wars and sieges, interspersed with pathetic family stories? What,
indeed, are the gospels themselves but the record, not of creeds or
ecclesiastical conflicts, but of a life, the Life, coming in contact
with every form of sickness, and sin, and sorrow in this our common
everyday human life? What would the gospels be with nothing but the
Sabbaths and the synagogues, and the Sanhedrim, and the Scribes and
Pharisees left in them? With the widow's only son left out of them,
and the ruler's little daughter, and the woman who was a sinner, and
the five thousand fed on the grassy slopes of Galilee, and the one
young man who departed sorrowful 'for he had great possessions?'
Would it have been more truly Church history for being the less human
history?
The Bible history seems to me to be a history of all human life in
relation to God. The sins of the Bible are terribly manifest,
secular sins; injustice, impurity, covetousness, cruelty. Its
virtues are simple homely, positive virtues; truth, uprightness,
kindness, mercy, gratitude, courage, gentleness; such sins and
virtues as make the weal or woe of nations and of homes. Ordinary
ecclesiastical history seems to me too often a record of secular
struggles for consecrated things, and names, and places, and of
selfish strivings for which shall be greatest. The sins it blames,
too often mere transgressions of rules, mistakes as to religious
terms, neglect of the tithe of mint, anise, and cummin. The virtues
it commends, alas! too often negative renunciations of certain
indulgences, scruples as to certain observances, fasting twice in the
week; things which, done or undone, leave the heart the same.
But underneath all this a Church history like that of the Bible is
being silently lived on earth, is being silently written in heaven.
Little glimpses of it we see here from time to time. What will it be
when we see it all?
All through that summer the country was astir with the enlistings for
the king and the Parliament.
These began about April.
On the 23d of February, Queen Henrietta Maria had embarked at Dover
for the Low Countries, with the Princess Mary and the crown jewels.
From the time that she was in safety the king's tone to the
Parliament began (it was thought) to change. Always chivalrously
regardful of her, and in different to danger for himself (for none of
his father's timidity could ever be charged to him), he began to give
more open answers to the popular demands. He hoped also, it was
said, much from the queen's eloquence and exertions in his cause on
the Continent. It was his misfortune, my Father said, that any
favourable turn in his affairs made him unyielding; and thus it
happened that he only came to terms when his cause was at the worst,
so that his treaties had the double disadvantage of being made under
the most adverse circumstances, and with men who knew from repeated
experience that not one of his most sacred promises would be kept if
he could help it. Such virtues as he possessed seemed always to come
into action at the wrong moment; his courage when it could only
kindle irritation; his graciousness when it could only inspire
contempt.
The queen being safely out of the country, and the king safely out of
the capital, from his refuge at York came the renewal of the old
irritating demand for tonnage and poundage, rooting the opposition
firmer than ever in the irrevocable distrust of the royal word.
The demand of the king for the old usurpations was met by the
assertion of the Parliament of old rights, with the demand for new
powers to secure these; by the assertion of the power of the purse,
and the demand for power over the militia.
But to us women at Netherby all these negotiations and fencings
between the king and the Parliament sounded so much like what had
gone on for so long, everything was couched in such orderly and
constitutional language, that it was difficult to think anything more
than Protestations, Remonstrances, Breach of Privilege, and Protests
for Privilege, would ever come of it.
The first thing that roused me to the sense that it might end not in
words but in battles, was the news that reached us one April evening
that the king had gone in person with three hundred horsemen to the
gates of Hull, and had summoned Sir John Hotham to surrender the
city; that Sir John had refused to surrender or to admit the king's
troops (offering all loyal courtesy at the same time to the king
himself); that the king and his three hundred had thereon gone off
baffled to Beverly, and there proclaimed Sir John Hotham a traitor.
That night I said to Aunt Gretel,--
"This seems to me altogether to introduce a new set of terms and
things. Instead of Protestations and Remonstrances, we hear of
Summonses and Surrenders. The king and his cavaliers repulsed from
the closed gates of one of his own cities! Aunt Gretel, these are
new words to us; does not this look like war?"
And she replied, in a tremulous voice,--
"Alas, sweet heart, these are no new words to me. Your people seem
to arrange many things others fight about, by talking about them.
And it is difficult for me to say what words mean with you. But
these words are indeed terribly familiar to me. And in my country
they would certainly mean war."
And that night I well remember the perplexity that crossed my
prayers, whether in praying as usual for the king I might not be
praying against the Parliament, and against my Father and Roger, and
the nation; until after debating the matter in my own mind for some
time, I came to the conclusion that on whatever dark mountains
scattered, and by whatever deep waters divided, to Him there is still
"One flock, one Shepherd," and that however ill I knew how to ask, He
knew well what to give.
LETTICE DAVENANT'S DIARY.
(_From another source._)
"_York_, _April_, 1642.--It has actually begun at last. The
rebellion has begun. Sir John Hotham (Sir I hesitate to call him,
for what knight is worthy the name who turns his disloyal sword
against the very Fountain of knighthood and of all honor?) has closed
the gates of Hull against the summons--against the very voice and
person of His Sacred Majesty. At once the king withdrew to Beverley,
and under the shadow of the grand old Minster proclaimed the false
knight a traitor.
"The rebellion has begun, but every one says it cannot last long.
Next Christmas at latest must see us all at peace again; the nation
once more at the feet of the king. My Mother says like a prodigal
child; Sir Launcelot says like a beaten hound. Mobs, says he, like
dogs, can only learn to obey by being suffered to rebel a little, and
then being whipped for it. (I like not well this talk of Sir
Launcelot. If the nation is like a hound, at what point in the
nation does the dog-nature begin, and the human end?) Speaking so, I
told him, we might include ourselves. But he laughed, and said, such
discerning of spirits required no miraculous gift. Moreover, he
said, the king himself had once compared the Parliaments to 'cats, to
be tamed when young but cursed when old;' and had called his sailors
in the Thames who offered to guard the Parliament 'water-rats.' If
the king said so, I confess I think His Majesty might have chosen
more courtly similes. But I do not believe he did. I will never
believe any evil of His Majesty, whoever says it, scarcely if I were
to see it myself, for my eye? might be deceived.
"Only I should be sorely vexed if they heard these things at
Netherby; because they never said rough things of any one.
Especially now I am not there to explain things. For I am not
allowed to write to them, nor to see them again, until things are
right again in the country; which makes me write this.
"However, it cannot last long. Every one here agrees in that. Every
one except Harry, whom we call 'Il Penseroso.' He sees such a long
way, and on so many sides, or at least he tries to do so; and he
talks of the Wars of the Roses, and the Wars in Germany; as if there
were any resemblance! In Germany there were kings and states
opposed. In the Wars of the Roses royal persons, with some kind of
claim to reign. But this is nothing but flat rebellion. The family
against the father; sworn liegemen against their sovereign lord; the
body against the head. And how can any one think for a moment there
can be any end to it but one, and that soon? Yes; at Christmas, I
trust, we Davenants shall be at the Hall again, and the Draytons at
Netherby, looking back to the end of this frantic and unnatural
outbreak.
"And I mean to be most generous to them all about it. I do not mean
even to say, 'I always told you how it would end.' They will see,
and that will be enough. The king will forgive every one, I am sure,
he is so gracious and gentle--(he spoke to me like a father the other
day, and yet with such knightly deference!)--except, perhaps, a very
few, who will have to be made examples of, unless they make examples
of themselves by running out of the country, which I hope they may.
For having once re-asserted his rightful authority, the king will be
able to be forgiving without being suspected of weakness. There need
not be any more poor mistaken people set in the pillory, which really
seems to do no one any good, as far as I can see, and to make every
one so exceedingly angry. The Puritans (that is, those among them
who have any sense) will see that it really can make no difference
whether the clergyman says the prayers in a white dress or a black.
Perhaps even the bishops and archbishops might own the same.
Because, although it cannot be good management to give a naughty
child its way for crying, if it stops crying and is good, it is quite
another thing.
"And then everything would go on delightfully. The very troublesome
and obstinate people (on both sides, I think) might, perhaps, all go
to America, some to the north and some to the south. For the
American plantations are very wide, they say, and by the time they
met--say in one or two hundred years--their great-great grandchildren
might have given up caring so much about the colours of the vestments
and the titles of the clergymen who do the services in the church.
So that by that time everything would go on delightfully in America
as well as in England. And by next Christmas, from what the
gentlemen and ladies about here say, I should think this might all
have begun. Only just now this little unpleasant contest has to be
gone through first. And I am very much afraid as to what Mr. Drayton
and Roger may do, or even Olive. They are so terribly conscientious.
They will pick up the smallest questions with their consciences
instead of with their common sense; which seems to me like watering a
daisy with a fire-engine, or weeding a flower-bed with a plough.
Mistress Dorothy is the worst of them (dear, kind, old soul, I must
now and then look at her sermons, in order to make it quite clear to
myself I was not a hypocrite in listening to them all that time).
But I do not think any of them are quite safe in this way. And yet I
know, in my inmost heart, they are better than any one in the world,
except my Mother, and perhaps Harry. (Of His Majesty it is not for
me to speak.) And I love them better than any one in the world,
which, I am afraid, they will not believe, now I am not allowed to
write to them. I love them for their noble perverseness, and their
heroic conscientiousness, and their terrible truthfulness, and
everything that separates us. And these last months at home have
been the happiest of my life. I felt growing quite good. And one
thing I have resolved. I will not say one word I should mind their
hearing, so that when we meet again I may have nothing to explain or
to unsay. For it is only misunderstanding that will ever make any of
them take the wrong side; nothing but misunderstanding. And facts
will set that all right when they see how things really are. As they
will, I trust, before Christmas.
"It is not so easy to be good here as at Netherby. People say so
many pretty things to me. My Mother says I must not heed them; they
are only Court ways of speaking, which mean nothing; and that rightly
used, I might even make them means of mortification, saying every
time I hear such pretty phrases, as good Dr. Taylor recommended, 'My
beauty is in colour inferior to many flowers; and even a dog hath
parts as well proportioned to the designs of his nature as I have;
and three fits of an ague can change it into yellowness and leanness,
and to hollowness and wrinkles of deformity.' But this I find not so
easy. If I were a rose, I should be pleased at being a rose, and at
being thought sweet and fair. And even a well-favoured dog, meseems,
has some harmless delight in his good looks. And as to the ague, I
see no likelihood of it. And as to becoming yellow and lean, the
more I think of it, the gladder I am to think I am not. And yet
there is some little flutter in my pleasure at these fair speeches
which hardly seems to me quite altogether good. And I do not think
my Mother quite knows what nonsense these young Cavaliers talk.
Perhaps no one did ever talk nonsense to her. Or, if they did, I am
sure she never liked it. And I am afraid I do sometimes a little.
Else, why should it all come back into my mind at wrong times?--in
the Minster or at prayers. Heigh, ho! I wish I was at Netherby. No
one ever called me fair enchantress there, or my cheeks Aurora's
rose-garden, or my teeth strings of pearls, or my hands lilies, or my
hair imprisoned sunbeams, or my voice the music of the spheres. Sir
Launcelot talked enough of that kind of poetry to me, between
Netherby and Windsor, to make a book of ballads. (For my Mother was
in the sedan-chair, whilst I rode most of the way with Sir
Launcelot.) And yet, I think, there is more honour in Roger
Drayton's telling me in his straight-forward way he thought me wrong,
as he so often did, than in all Sir Launcelot's most honeyed
compliments.
"Not that I think Olive just to poor Sir Launcelot. If she could
have seen his debonair and courteous ways to every clown and poor
wench we met, and how he flung his crowns and angels to any beggar,
she must have felt there is much kindliness in him, with all his wild
ways.
"And when he saw I liked not so many fair speeches, he gave them up
in a measure. I must say that for him; and he has been as
deferential to me ever since at the Court, as if I were one of the
princesses. Only I wish he would not always see when I drop my glove
or my posy: at least, I think I do. Yet it is rather pleasant, too,
at times to feel there is some one who cares about one among so many
strange people, and some one who is always ready to talk about poor
old Netherby, and who honours the Draytons, moreover, so generously.
I wish Olive knew this.
"And I wish I were like my Mother, and had 'a chapel built in my
heart.' Or else that I could live at Netherby.
"Sir Launcelot admires the 'beauty of holiness' in my Mother. He
says, in all times, happily, there have been these sweet exalted
Saints, especially among women, bright particular stars, celestial
beauties, and princesses, that all men must revere. Quite another
kind of thing, he says, from the Puritan notion of calling all men to
be 'saints,' or else consigning them to reprobation as among the
wicked.
"_Note_.--I am at a loss what to call this writing of mine. It is
scarcely a Diary or Journal, for I certainly shall not do anything as
regular as write in it every day. It shall not be 'Annals;' for I
hope to have done with it before Christmas, when I shall have met
Olive and all of them again at home. 'Chronicles' are more solemn
still. 'Thoughts?' where shall I find them? 'Facts?' how is one to
know them, when people give such different accounts of things?
'Meditations?' worse again. 'Religious Journals,' 'Confessions,'
etc., always puzzled me. I could never make out for whom they were
written. Especially the prayers I have seen written out at length in
them. They cannot be meant for other people to read. That would be
turning the 'closet' into 'the corners of the street.' They cannot
be meant for the people themselves to read. For what good could that
do? It would not be praying to see how I prayed some years since.
They cannot surely be meant for God to read. He is always near, and
can hear, or read our hearts, which is quite another thing from
reading our Diaries.
"_May_ 30, _York_.--The birds begin to sing in the trees around the
Minster. Our lodging is opposite. And the courtiers begin to gather
once more around the king. Many lords have come these last days from
London, with some faithful members of the Commons' House, and old
Lord Littleton has come, with somewhat limping loyalty, they say,
after the Great Seal, now in the right hand. So that this grave old
town begins to look gay. Cavaliers caracolling about the streets,
doffing their hats to fair faces in the windows. Troops mustering
but slowly; somewhat slowly. Nor can I make out if these townspeople
altogether like us and our ways. There are so many Puritans among
these traders. And Sir Launcelot says they have great sport in the
Puritan household where he is quartered, in making the Puritan lads
learn the 'Distracted Puritan,' and other roystering Cavalier songs,
and drink confusion to the Covenant; and in making the host and
hostess bring out their best conserves, linen and plate, for the use
of the men. Sir Launcelot told them, he said, that they should only
look on it as the payment of an old debt the children of Israel had
owed to the Egyptians these three thousand years. I do not think
such jokes good manners in any other person's house, and I told him
so. But he said their ridiculous gravity makes the temptation too
strong to be resisted. If they would jest good-humouredly in return,
he said, they would soon understand each other. But would they? I
am not quite sure how Sir Launcelot enjoys not having the best of a
joke. And I could not bear his calling the Puritans all canting, or
ridiculous. He knows better. And I told him so. I felt quite
indignant, and the tears were in my eyes (for I thought of them all
at Netherby). He seemed penitent. Indeed, I hope it did him good.
"_June_.--The Parliament are growing more insolent every day; they
dared to say in one of their ridiculous Remonstrances that 'the king
is for the kingdom, not the kingdom for the king, that even the crown
jewels are not His Majesty's own, but given him in trust for the
regal power.' However, they will soon learn their mistake about
that, for the crown-jewels are safe in Holland, and have there
purchased for the Crown good store of arms and ammunition. These
were all embarked in a Dutch ship called the _Providence_. A great
Providence, my Mother says, attended her. For although she was
wrecked on the coast of Yorkshire, nevertheless, all her stores have
this day been safely brought into York.
"Now we shall see what gentlemen can do against tapsters, and
tailors' and haberdashers' 'prentices, such as make up the wretched
army they have been mustering in London! The citizens' wives
actually brought their thimbles and bodkins, it is said, to pay the
men; to such mean and ludicrous straits are they reduced. The
Cavaliers call it 'the Thimble and Bodkin Army.'
"_July_ 20.--Sir John Hotham is said to be wavering back to loyalty.
A day or two since, a gallant little army of four thousand men rode
forth hence through the Mickle Bar, to demand the surrender of that
presumptuous city, Hull, and if refused, to storm it. Better they
had listened to His Majesty's gentle summons with his three hundred.
How gallant and brave they looked. Plumed helmets gleaming swords
flashing, pennons flying, horses looking as proud of the cause as the
riders. Not a cavalier among them who would not face battle as gayly
as the hunting-field.
"_July_ 22.--Those treacherous townspeople! Not a troop of them is
to be relied on. Our gallant Cavaliers came back in disorder. And
all because of the faithless train-bands, and those turbulent
citizens of Hull. Lord Lindsay, with three thousand men, was at
Beverley, and on the lighting of a fire on Beverley Minster, the
gates of Hull were to be opened by some loyal men inside. But five
hundred rebels within the town, hearing too soon of the intention of
these loyal men, made a sortie under the command of Sir John Hotham.
The true Cavaliers would have stood firm, every one says, but the
Yorkshire train-bands would not draw sword against their neighbours,
but ran away to Beverley, and so the whole ended in disgrace and
defeat. If we could only have an army entirely composed of
gentlemen, and their sons, and retainers, the Parliament could not
stand a day. But the worst news that has reached us lately, is the
treachery of the Earl of Warwick and the navy. They have all gone
over to the Parliament, in spite of the king's offering them better
pay than they ever received before. Five ships stood firm at first,
but the rest overpowered them. I hope no one ever told them about
their being called 'water-rats,' but there are always some malicious
people who delight to make mischief by telling tales. I should think
royal persons ought to be very careful about their jests.
"_August_.--We are on the point of leaving York to spend a few days
at Nottingham, where the king's standard is to be set up.
"I am not sorry to leave this old town. I miss the pleasant walks at
home. For here one dare scarce venture much out of doors. If the
Cavaliers are as dangerous to their enemies as they are sometimes to
their friends, the Parliament has good cause to tremble. The streets
echo dismally at night with the shouts of drunken revelry. But, I
suppose, all armies are alike. Only it is rather unfortunate for us
that gravity and the show of piety being the badge of the Puritans,
levity and a reckless dashing carriage are taken up as their badge by
many of the young Cavaliers.
"I would they took example by the king. His Majesty has been riding
around the country lately himself, calling his lieges to follow him.
And his majestic courtesy and grace, with his loving and winning
speeches, such as he made at Newark and Lincoln, showing his good
intentions and desires for their liberty and welfare, must, I am
sure, be worth him a mint of such money as the London citizens can
coin out of their thimbles and bodkins.
"The North country is well disposed, they say; and Lancashire, where
the queen hath much hold on the Catholic gentlemen of ancient lineage
there; and the West country, where brave Sir Bevil Granvill lives, is
full of loyalty. Mr. Hampden has done mischief in Buckinghamshire,
and Mr. Cromwell (a brewer, Sir Launcelot says, rather than a
country-gentleman, though not of low parentage) calls himself
captain, and is disaffecting the eastern counties, already disloyal
enough, with their French Huguenot weavers, and their 'Anabaptists,
Atheists, and Brownists,' as His Majesty calls them.
"The towns are the worst, however. I suppose there is something in
buying and selling, and tinkering and tailoring, which makes people
think more of mean money considerations, than of loyalty and honour.
Then there are so many Puritans in the town. Perhaps the narrow dark
high streets make them naturally inclined to be gloomy and
strait-laced. I think, however, the less our Cavalier soldiers are
quartered in the towns, the better, till they mend their manners. It
may make the citizens less pleased than ever with the Book of Sports.
"_Nottingham, August_ 23.--This evening the king himself set up his
standard on the top of the field behind the castle. There was much
sounding of drums and trumpets. Several hundreds gathered around the
royal party, and we watched a little way off. But, I know not how,
the act did not seem as solemn as the occasion. The night was
stormy; and the trumpets and drums, and then the voice of the herald
reading the royal proclamation, sounded small and thin against the
rush and howling of the winds. The troops have not yet answered the
king's call as they should, and those present were mostly the
train-bands. Then His Majesty, on the spot, made some alterations in
the proclamation, which perplexed the herald, so that he blundered
and stumbled in reading it. Altogether I wish I had not been there.
"The king's standard ought to be something more than a pole no higher
than a May-pole with a few streamers, and a common flag at the top.
And the trumpets which are to rouse a nation, ought to have a certain
magnificence in them, altogether different from the trumpets they
blow at the carols at Netherby at Christmas. I am sure I cannot tell
how. But I always pictured it so. The words are grander than the
things.
"Perhaps all our pomps and solemnities look poor and mean under the
open sky. We had better keep them beneath roofs of our own making.
The pomps we are used to under the open sky are the purple and
crimson and gold of sunset and sunrise, great banners of storm-clouds
flung across the sky. And the solemnities are the thunders, and the
mighty winds, and the rushing of rivers, and the dashing of seas.
"The things are grander, infinitely, than any words wherewith we can
speak of them.
"But when I said so to my Mother, she said, 'And yet, my child, one
soul, and even one human voice, is grander, or more godlike than all
the thunders. It is their significance, Lettice, which gives the
grandeur to any solemnities of ours. If we heard those trumpets
summon our countrymen by thousands to the battle, or saw that flag
borne blood-stained from the field, we should not think the voice of
the trumpet wanted terrible magnificence, or call the flag a common
thing ever more.'
"Perhaps, after all, it was only a little inward depression that made
me feel this disappointment. For only three days before, Coventry
had shut her gates in the king's face, and the Earl of Essex is at
hand, they say, with a great army, and so few flocking loyally to the
king.
"But worst of all, I think, is this Prince Rupert. His mother's
name, Elizabeth of Bohemia, has been like a sacred name in the
country for years; a saint and a heroine in courage and patience.
But this prince is so noisy and reckless, and takes so much upon
himself, that he angers the older gentlemen and experienced soldiers
sorely. My Father says he is little better than a petulant boy. Yet
he has great weight with the king, his uncle, and takes the command
into his own hands; so that the gallant old Earl of Lindsay deems his
own command little better than nominal. And, meanwhile, the younger
Cavaliers take their colour from him, and use that new low cant word
of his, 'plunder,' quite as a jest, as if it meant some new sport or
sword-exercise, instead of meaning, as it does, scouring all over the
country, burning lonely farm-houses, robbing the inmates, and
sometimes hanging the servants at the doors for refusing to betray
their masters, sacking villages, and I know not what other
wickednesses. In the fortnight he has been here, he has flown
through Worcestershire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire,
Leicestershire, and Cheshire. And not a night but we have seen the
sky aglow with the fires of burning villages and homesteads. I
should fear to hear how the people along his line of march, coming
back to their ruined homes, speak of the king.
"Moreover, it is said, the rebel troops are strictly forbidden to
take anything without paying for it, a contrast worth them much.
"_August_ 24.--This morning, before I rose, my Mother's waiting
gentlewoman brought dismal news. The royal standard, said she, has
been blown down in the night, and lies a wreck along the hill.
"My Mother says it is heathenish to talk of omens and auguries. And
my Father says these foreigners are the worst omen, and all would be
well enough if they would leave Englishmen to fight out their own
quarrels, like neighbours, who exchange blows and are friends again,
instead of like wretched hired Lanzknechts or Free Companions.
"But Sir Launcelot laughs, and says it is a good thing to give the
whining Puritans something to cry for at last. And Harry sighs, and
says he supposes it is necessary to make the rebels see we are in
earnest.
"Altogether, we do not seem in very good humour with each other just
now. However, a few victories will no doubt set us all right again.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the king will bring these
rebels to their senses sooner or later; in a few months at latest.
"Only I had not understood at all how very melancholy war is. I
thought of it as concerning no one but the soldiers. And men must
incur danger one way or another. And there is the glory, and the
excitement, and the exercise of noble courage, making such men as
nothing but such trials can make.
"But the battles seem but a small part of the misery; the misery
without glory to any one.
"On our way hither from York, my Mother was faint and tired, and we
stopped at a little farm-house with an orchard. It was evening, and
the woman had just finished milking the cows by the door, and she
gave my Mother a cup of new milk while she rested on the settle in
the clean little kitchen. There were two little children playing
about, and the father was at work in the orchard, and one of the
children called him, and he brought my Father a cup of cider. And
there was a Bible on the table with wood-cuts; and I found the eldest
child knew the meaning of them. He said his father had told him.
They were very kind and pleasant to us.
"And a few days since Harry told me they had passed a little farm
with an orchard, and the man was surly and a Puritan, and refused to
tell the way some fugitives had fled; and Prince Rupert had him
hanged on his own threshold, and drove off the cows for plunder.
"And from what Harry says I feel sure it is the same.
"And I have scarcely slept since, thinking of that poor man, and the
silent voice that will never any more explain the wood-cuts in the
old Bible, and the poor hands that will never show their willing
hospitality again.
"But it is only one, Harry says, among hundreds; and such things must
be, and I must not think of it.
"But every one of the hundreds is just that terrible only one, which
leaves the world all lonely to some poor mourner!
"Those gentlemen in Parliament have dreadful things to answer for.
"Why did not Mr. Hampden pay a thousand times his miserable
ship-money rather than lead the country on to such horrors?
"For the king cannot have his commands disobeyed. If he did, how
could he be a king?
"I do wish he could be more a king with his own troops; I am sure he
hates this ravaging and marauding. But so many of the gentlemen
serve, and, indeed, keep their regiments at their own cost, which
makes them difficult to control.
"_October_.--Prince Rupert has been driven from Worcester. If it
were only a lesson in reverence and modesty for the prince, it would
not so much matter, some think, that he left twenty good and true men
dead there. The Earl of Essex occupies the city. He has been there
a fortnight doing nothing. Some remnants of loyalty, we think,
hinder him from coming to open collision. But what the use of
collecting an army can be unless it is to fight, it is hard to see.
The truth is, perhaps, that he begins to feel the peril of setting
his haberdashers and grocers' 'prentices, commanded by a forsworn
peer, against gentlemen's sons fighting under their king! Meantime,
our army is gathering at last, and only too eager, they say, to give
the rebels a lesson. Once for all, God grant it be a lesson once for
all. Although the battles do not seem to me half so dreadful as
these 'plunderings.' But perhaps that is because I never came near a
battle; nor, indeed, can the oldest man in England remember any one
that ever did on English soil."
OLIVE DRAYTON'S RECOLLECTIONS.
All through the summer the armies were gathering. In our seven
eastern counties--Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincoln,
Huntingdonshire, and Hertfordshire--called the associated counties,
because bound by Mr. Hampden and Mr. Cromwell into an association for
mutual defence, the King's Commission of Array and the Parliament's
Ordinance of Militia clashed less than elsewhere. In August Mr.
Cromwell seized a magazine of arms and ammunition at Cambridge. The
stronghold of the Puritans was in these eastern regions; and except
where a few Royalist gentlemen, like the Davenants, led off their
retainers, the Parliament had, amongst us, mostly its own way. All
the more reason, my Father said, for our men to risk their persons,
since our homes were safer than elsewhere.
My Father, from his old military experience, had much to do with
training and drilling the men. Strange sounds of clanging arms and
sharp words of command echoed from the old court of the Manor. Old
arms, the very stories belonging to which were well-nigh forgotten,
were taken down; arms which had hung on the walls of manor-house and
farm-house since the Wars of the Roses. The newest weapon we had at
Netherby which had seen service in England was a short jewel-hilted
sword the Drayton of the day had worn at the Battle of Bosworth
Field, fighting, by a rare piece of good luck for us, under Henry
VII., on the winning side. Since then the Reformation had
revolutionized the Church, and gunpowder had revolutionized the art
of war; so that instead of the sturdy bow-men, each provided with his
weapon and ready trained to the use of it, whom his ancestors brought
to the field, my Father could only muster a few labourers and
servants, without weapons and without training, with no further
preparation for war than hands used to labour, wits ready to learn,
and hearts ready to dare.
My Father did not mean to lead his own men. Having had experience of
engineering in the German wars, he was employed here and there as his
directions were needed. Roger and those who went from Netherby
served from the first with Mr. Cromwell's Ironsides; my Father, as
his contribution, providing the armour, which, like that of
Haselrigge's Lobsters, was complete and costly. Other bands passed
and repassed often, and shared the hospitalities of the Manor, to
join Lord Brook's purple-coats, Lord Say and Lord Mandeville's
bluecoats. Hollis' red-coats were London men, and Mr. Hampden's
green-coats all from his own county, Buckinghamshire; while the badge
of all was the orange scarf round the arm--the family colours of Lord
Essex, the general. Each regiment had its own motto--Hampden's,
"_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_;" Essex's (pointing many a cavalier jest,
if seen in plunder or retreat), "_Cave adsum_." On the reverse of
each banner was the common motto of all, "God with us"--the
watch-word of so many a battle.
Money was not stinted; the city of London heading the contributions
in January with £50,000, and the Merchants' Companies with nigh as
large a sum (then intended to avenge the Irish massacre); whilst Mr.
Hampden gave £1000, and his cousin, Mr. Cromwell, £500.
Women brought their rings and jewels; cherished old family plate was
not held back. We in our sober Puritan household had few jewels to
bring, but such as we had were disinterred from their caskets, and
the few silver drinking-cups which distinguished our table from any
farmers round were packed up by Aunt Dorothy's own hands, and
despatched to the London Guildhall, not without sighs, but without
hesitation, with all the money that could be spared.
Cousin Placidia also offered what she called her "mite," when she
heard that the poor citizens' wives in London had even offered their
thimbles and bodkins.
"I am but a poor parson's wife," said she, "but I am thankful they
will receive even such poor offerings as I can bring."
And she brought those embroidered Cordova gloves, the search for
which had so incensed Aunt Dorothy.
"It is remarkable," she observed, "that I always said one never knew
what use anything might be in a poor parson's household; and now I
have found the use."
"What use, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "do you think the Parliament
soldiers will fight in embroidered gloves?"
"Spanish leather is dear," replied Placidia, "and things will always
sell. It is only a poor mite I know, but so is a thimble. The
Parliament soldiers cannot, of course, fight in thimbles any more
than in gloves, and the widow's mite was accepted."
"A mite and the 'widow's mite,' are some way apart, my dear," said
Aunt Dorothy; "your 'widow's mite,' I suppose, might be the parsonage
and the glebe, and those cows in your uncle's park and meadow. Take
care what you offer to the Lord. He sometimes takes us at our word.
And there are plunderers abroad who take their own estimate of
people's mites, widows' and others."
Said Placidia, never taken aback--
"Aunt Dorothy, Mr. Nicholls and I regard the glebe as a sacred trust,
of which we feel we must on no account relinquish the smallest
fraction. And as to the cows Uncle Drayton gave me, I wonder you can
suspect me of such ingratitude as to give them up to any one."
"I did not, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy, quietly. "What shall I
label your Cordova gloves? A parson's mite? You know I cannot
exactly say 'widow's.'"
"An orphan's perhaps, Aunt Dorothy."
"Very well, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "I should think that would
affect the Parliament very much. It may even get into history."
With which this little passage at arms closed.
Happily for the popular cause, the common interpretation of
acceptable 'mites' differed from Placidia's, so that in a short time
a considerable army was levied.
The navy ever remained true to the Parliament; irritated, some
foolish persons said, by a report that the king had called them
"water-rats." As well say the whole Parliament stood firm, because
the king once compared them to cats. The navy had its own
watchwords, better pointed than by the sting of a sorry jest.
English seamen were not likely to trust too implicitly to the
promises of the Sovereign who had tried to sell them to aid in the
destruction of the brave little band of beleaguered Protestants at
Rochelle.
All through the summer the armies were being levied, and the breach
was silently widening.
In July an incident showed, my Father said, as much as anything
could, how entirely the king's mind was unchanged, and how "thorough"
would have been the tyranny established in his hands, though Laud,
and Strafford, and the Queen, and every violent councillor, had been
removed. My old friend, Dr. Bastwick, the physician, was seized by
the royal forces at Worcester while engaged in levying men for the
Parliament, under Earl Stamford, who retreated. It was with the
greatest difficulty that one of the judges restrained the king from
having him hanged on the spot although there could be no reason why
he should have been sentenced with this exceptional severity except
the fact that he had already been scourged, pilloried, and maimed by
the cruelty of the Star-Chamber.
The deep distrust which such indications of the king's true mind
produced, cost him more than many lost battles.
They tended to inspire such resistances as that made a few weeks
afterwards by the brave commoners of Coventry, when, without
garrison, without engineers, with no defence but their feeble ancient
walls, they shut their gates in the Sovereign's face, defied the
royal forces, and when the breach was made by artillery in the old
tottering walls, barricaded the streets with barrows and carts, made
a sally, carried the nearest lines, seized the guns, and turned them
against the besiegers, compelling them at last to retire baffled.
But it was Prince Rupert, "the Prince Robber," who, perhaps, more
than any, turned the hearts of the people against the Sovereign who
could use such an instrument. Trained in the cruel school of the
Palatinate wars, he had read its terrible lessons the wrong way;
having learned from the sufferings of his father's subjects not pity,
but a savage recklessness of suffering. He brought home to hundreds
of burning villages and plundered lonely farms, which no
Parliamentary remonstrances or declarations would have reached, the
conviction that the king looked on his people, not as a flock, but as
mere live-stock on an estate, to be kept up if profitable and
manageable, and if not to be sacrificed to any system of management
which gave less trouble and brought in more profit.
"_Whose own the sheep ore not_," was written in the ashes of every
home ruined by Prince Rupert in the king's service.
With these deeds the people contrasted the well-kept orders of the
Parliament to Lord Essex. "You shall carefully restrain all
impieties, profaneness, and disorders, violence, insolence, and
plundering in your soldiers, as well by strict and severe punishment
of such offences as by all others means which you in your wisdom
shall think fit."
And we grew to think that whoever the true shepherd and king of the
people might be, it was scarcely one who employed the wolf for a
sheepdog.
It was but slowly and reluctantly that this conviction grew on the
nation. Those who look back on the king's life, hallowed by the
shadow of his death, little know how slowly and reluctantly. We
would fain have trusted him if he would have let us. The nation
tried it again and again, and only too much was sacrificed before
they would believe it was in vain. Still there had been no battle.
The Earl of Essex, after following the Prince from Worcester,
lingered there three weeks, doing nothing. No battle worth the name
for nearly a hundred and seventy years, until Sunday the 23d of
October, 1642.
Then came the first great shock. All that Sunday afternoon our
countrymen, husbands, brothers, fathers, sons of the women left in
the quiet villages at home, were fighting in the desperate struggle
for life and death, until at night four thousand Englishmen lay dead
on the slopes of Edgehill, or dying in the villages around--the day
before as tranquil and peaceful as ours.
I remember there was a peculiar quiet about that Sunday at Netherby.
So many of the men of the village had gone to the war. Roger had
been away many weeks, and my Father had left some days before to join
Lord Essex at Worcester. In all our household there were no men left
except Bob the herdsman. The church was strangely deserted. The
Hall pew empty. Scarcely one deep manly voice in response or psalm.
On the benches in the village a few old men had an unwonted monopoly
of talk, and the lads on anything like the verge of manhood strode
heavily about with a new sense of importance. One asked another for
news. But there was none, save rumours of mysterious marchings and
counter-marchings of troops, without any aim that we knew, or the
echo of some far-off foray of Prince Rupert's. There was a dreamy
stillness all around. Tib's voice came up alone from the kitchen as
she moved about some Sabbath work of necessity, and sung rather
uncertainly snatches of the psalm we had sung at prayers in the
morning. From the slope where the house stood (which gave us that
wide range over the levels which I miss everywhere else), I saw the
cattle feeding far off in the marshy lands, too far for any sound of
their voices to reach me. The harvest was over on the nearer slopes,
so that there was no music of the wind rustling through the corn.
The land lay half slumbering in its autumn rest, like Roger's
faithful Lion in his Sunday afternoon sleep on the terrace below.
But, I knew not why, there seemed to me a kind of expectancy in this
calm. A waiting and listening seemed to palpitate through this
stillness of the land such as pervaded Lion's slumbers as he couched,
quivering at every sound, vainly waiting for Roger's voice to summon
him as usual at this hour for a walk in the fields.
The feeling grew on me, till all this quiet seemed not as the rest
after a calm, but the calm before a storm; and the silence excited in
me as if it were the breathless hush of thousands of beating hearts.
Then I thought of Rachel Forster in her lonely home. And it was a
relief to rise at once and go to her. Her door was open. She was
sitting before the old Bible. It was open, but she was not reading.
Her hands were clashed on her knees. There was a stillness on her
face as great as that over the country. But in this calm there was
something that calmed me.
It seemed to me conscious and victorious, not dreamlike, and liable
at any moment to a terrible waking.
I told her the restlessness I had been feeling.
"Can we wonder, Mistress Olive?" said she. "Do we not know what we
might be giving them up for?"
"This quietness of the world seems awful to me to-day, Rachel," said
I, "but in you there is something that quiets me. You find peace in
prayer Rachel," said I. "Is it not that?"
"I scarce know whether it is prayer, Mistress Olive. It is nothing
but going to the Rock that is higher than I, and taking all that is
precious to me there, and staying there. It is just creeping to the
foot of the Cross, and keeping there."
"You feel, then, as if something terrible were coming, Rachel," I
said.
"I know something terrible must come," she said, with a tremulousness
in her voice which was more from enthusiasm than from fear. "To-day,
or to-morrow, or some day. For the Day of Vengeance is come; and the
year of His redeemed is at hand."
"Oh, Rachel," I said, "I cannot silently rest as you do. I want
words, entreaties for Roger, for my Father, for Job, and also for the
good men who, if the battle comes, must die on the wrong side, and
for the king; the king who, if he would but be true, might set all
right again."
And she knelt down and prayed in words brief and burning, like the
prayers in the Bible.
"You do not feel it too lonely here, Rachel?" I said as I left, "Why
not come up to us? Your presence would be like a strong wall and
fortress to me."
"I am less lonesome here, Mistress Olive," said she. "Job made so
many little plans to spare me trouble before he went. I see his hand
everywhere. There is the pile of wood close to the fire, and the
little pipe carrying the water to the very door. It would seem like
making light of his work not to use it all. And besides," she added,
"there's a few poor tried folk who used to look to Job for a good
word and a good turn, and now some of them look to me. And I could
not fail them for the world."
As I wished her good-bye, and walked home and thought of her, a
glorious new sense came on me of the strength there is in waiting on
God, of the possibility of the feeblest who lean on him being not
only sustained, but becoming themselves strong to sustain others.
When I went to see Rachel, the whole solid world had seemed to me, in
my anxiety for the precious lives I could do nothing to preserve, but
as some treacherous and quaking ground among our marshes, ready to
sink down and overwhelm, us, beneath the weight of our passing
footsteps.
As I returned, the world, though in itself as transitory and
uncertain as ever, was once more a solid pathway to me, because
underneath it stood the foundation of an Almighty love, one word from
whom was stronger and more enduring than all the worlds.
So we sang our evening psalm, and slept quietly that night at
Netherby, knowing nothing of the four thousand pale and rigid corpses
that lay stretched on the blood-stained battle-slopes at Edgehill,
while Lord Essex encamped on the silent battle-field, and the king's
watch-fires were kindled on the hill above, where he began the day,
and no ground was gained on either side; only the lives of four
thousand men lost.
If we may say "lost" of any life yielded up to duty, and called back
to God!
In the tongues of men, we speak of lives lost on battle-fields:
perhaps in the tongue of angels they speak of lives lost in easy and
luxurious homes.