LETTICE'S DIARY.
Netherby, _May_, 1647.--They have given us the best upper chambers in
the house, one for a withdrawing-chamber, the other for my Mother's
and my sleeping-chamber. This last has a broad embayed window
commanding the orchard, at the bottom of which is the pond where the
water-lilies grow that Roger gathered for me on that night when Dr.
Taylor and Mr. Milton discoursed together on the terrace, in speech
like rich music, about liberty of thinking and speaking.
"England has been echoing another kind of music all these years
since, on the same theme; but it seems as if we had drawn but little
nearer a conclusion. The Presbyterians seem as convinced of the sin
of allowing any one else to think or speak freely as the poor
martyred Archbishop was. The Presbyterians, it seems, are for the
Covenant (meaning Presbytery), King, and Parliament; the Covenant
first. We for King without Covenant and with Bishops. But the
Presbyterians are against conventicles and all sectaries (except
themselves). Herein, so far, we and they agree, and herein, some
think, may be a hope for the good cause. If we could make a
compromise, order might, it is thought, be speedily restored. This,
however, seems very hard. They would have to sacrifice the Covenant,
which seems nigh as dear to them as the Bible. We, the Church by law
established; the sacred links, my Mother says, which bind us to the
Catholic Church of all the past, which the king will die, she thinks,
rather than do. The only chance, therefore, of agreement seems to
be, if the Presbyterians ever reach the point of hating or fearing
the Independents more than they love the Covenant. Then, some think
the King and the Presbyterians, Scottish and English, might unite and
overpower the Independents; and--what then?
"I cannot at all imagine. Because, when the common enemy is gone,
Episcopacy and the Covenant still remain, and in the face of each
other. Sir Launcelot said the king thinks he has a very plain 'game'
to play. 'He must persuade one of his enemies to extirpate the
other, and then come in easily and put the weakened victor under his
feet.' This he has in letters declared to be his intention. I trust
the royal letters have been misread. For such a 'game' seems to me
very far from paternal or kingly; and, except on far better
testimony, I will not credit it. But for me there is an especial
grief in all these matters. Olive, who takes her politics mostly
from Roger, seems to lean to the Independents, who constitute the
strength of the army, and to General Cromwell, who is their idol; so
that whatever cause triumphs, nothing is likely to bring peace
between the Davenants and the Draytons.
"At present, however, our peace in this house is much increased. My
Mother and Mistress Dorothy have concluded a treaty on the ground of
their common loyalty to His Majesty, and their common abhorrence of
'sectaries.'
"Moreover, Mistress Dorothy is marvellous gentle and kind to us.
Having delivered her conscience, she treats my Mother with a tender
consideration and deference that go to my heart, although sometimes I
think it is only from the pity a benevolent jailer would feel for
sentenced criminals. They have been condemned. Justice will be
satisfied. And meantime, mercy may safely satisfy herself by keeping
them fed and warmed.
"She says little; but she watches my Mother's tastes, and supplies
her with unexpected delicacies in a way which binds my whole heart to
her.
"I scarce know why; but I always liked her. She is so downright and
true; manly, as a man may be womanly. She is most like Roger in some
ways of any of them, only he, being really a man and a soldier, is
gentler. And when she loves you, it seems to be in spite of herself,
which makes it all the sweeter. For she does love me. I am sure of
it, by the way she watches and exhorts, and contradicts me.
Especially, since I read her those sermons that afternoon when we
were waiting. I asked Olive, and she told me Mistress Dorothy said,
that afternoon, she thought I had gracious dispositions. That meant,
I opine, that she liked me. She wanted to excuse herself for liking
so worldly and Babylonish a young damosel as she believed me to be.
And, therefore, she has invested me with 'gracious dispositions,' and
believes herself commissioned to bring me out of Babylon, and to be a
'means of grace' to me, which, I am sure, I am willing she should be.
For my heart is too light and careless, I know well. Except on one
or two points. And, meantime, I flatter myself I may be an
'ordinance and means of grace' in some little measure to her, little
as she might acknowledge it. It does good people so much good to
love (really love I mean, not take in hand merely like patients)
people who are not so good as themselves. It sets them planning,
praying for others, and takes them away from looking within for
signs, and forward for rewards; by filling the heart with love, which
is the most gracious sign, and the most glorious reward in itself.
"Sweet Mother, mine! we all have been great means of grace to her in
that way.
"Think what she may, she would not have been a greater saint at
Little Gidding, although she had chanted the Psalter through three
hundred and sixty-five times in the year.
"I think she and Mistress Dorothy help each other. They make me
think of the two groups of graces in the Bible. St. Paul's,--'Love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance.' I picture these as sweet maidenly or matronly forms
white-robed, radiant, with low sweet voices. They represent my
Mother and the holy people of Mr. Herbert's school. Then there are
St. Peter's,--'Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience,
godliness, brotherly-kindness, charity.' These rise before me like a
company of knights in armour, valiant, true, and pure. In the kind
of plain, manly armour of the Ironsides, as Roger looked in it that
morning at Oxford, when he turned back and waved farewell to me in
the court of the College. And these represent Mistress Dorothy and
the nobler Puritans. They are the same, no doubt, essentially; love
and charity, the mother of one group, the king and crown of the
other. Yet they seem to represent to me two diverse orders of piety,
the manly and the womanly. Together, side by side, in mutual aid and
service, not front to front in battle, what a church and what a world
they might make.
"But the great event in the house now is the bethrothal of Olive and
Dr. Antony, which took place on the very morning after Mistress
Dorothy's grand Remonstrance.
"Dr. Antony left a day or two afterwards. And over since we have
been as busy as possible preparing for the wedding, which is to be in
July. Not a long betrothal-time. But they needed not further time
to try each other.
"It is very pleasant to be all of us occupied for her, who is so
little wont to be occupied with herself. She seems in a little
tumult of happiness, as far as any Puritan soul can be in a tumult.
"Many of these Puritan ways seem to me wondrous innocent and sweet.
"They have their solemnities, I see, and their ritual, and
ceremonial; and their symbolism and sacred art, moreover, say what
Mistress Dorothy may to the contrary.
"Tender sacred family rites and solemnities. They have, indeed, no
chapel or chaplain. But the family seems a little church; the father
is the priest. Not without sacred beauty this order, nor without
sanction either from the fathers of the Church (fathers older than
Archbishop Laud's), the fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
"For instance, when Olive and Dr. Antony were betrothed, Mr. Drayton
led them into his room, and laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
And that was the seal of their betrothal. Every Sunday morning,
Olive tells me, when she and Roger were children, after family
prayers, they used to kneel thus for their father's blessing. Sacred
touches, holy as coronation sacring oil, I think, to bear about the
memory of through life. But then there is this to be remembered.
When the consecrating touch is from hands which work with us in daily
life, they need to be very pure. No pomp of place, and no mist of
distance glorifies the ministrant. He had need, indeed, to be all
glorious within.
"Family solemnities must be very true to be at all fair. I can fancy
Puritan hypocrisy, or a mere formal Puritanism, the driest and most
hideous thing in the world.
"Then as to symbols and sacred art. What else are these Scripture
texts, carved over door-ways, graven on chimney-stones, emblazoned on
walls? 'They are not graven images,' saith Mistress Dorothy. But
what are words but images within the soul, or images, rightly used,
but children's words? Not that even as to 'holy pictures' and
'images' they are quite destitute. What else are the paintings from
Scripture on the Dutch tiles in Mr. Drayton's room, where Olive and
Roger learned from Mistress Gretel's lips their earliest Bible lore?
It is true, they are chiefly from the Old Testament. But Adam and
Eve delving, the serpent darting out his forked tongue from the tree,
Noah and the animals walking out of the ark, are as much pictures as
St. Peter fishing, or the blessed Virgin and the Babe, on church
windows? What difference, then, except that the Puritan pictures are
on tiles at home instead of on glass at church? 'They are for
instruction, and not for idolatry,' saith Mistress Dorothy. But did
not the monks in old times paint their pictures also for instruction,
and not for idolatry? 'Centuries of abuse make the most innocent
things perilous,' saith Mistress Dorothy. 'When the brazen serpent
had become an idol, Jehoshaphat called it a piece of brass, and broke
it in pieces.' I can see something in that. The sacrilege, then, is
the idolatry, not in the destruction of the idol. But alas, if we
set ourselves to destroy all things that have been, or can be made
into idols, where are we to stop? Some people made idols of the very
stones of their houses, without any scriptures thereon, or of their
firesides, without the sacred pictures. There are two things,
however, which fill me with especial reverence in these Puritan ways.
First, this sweet and sacred family piety. Second, or rather first,
for it is at the root of all, the intense conviction that every man,
woman, and child, in every word and work, has to do directly with
God, and that he, by virtue of being divine, is nearer us than all
the creatures; that to Him each one is immediately responsible, and
that, therefore, on his word only can it be safe for each one to
believe or do anything. Such conviction gives a power which ceases
to be wonderful only when you think of its source. But alas, alas!
what if this Divine word be misunderstood.
"_July_.--Roger Drayton has come, on a few days' leave, to be present
at his sister's wedding.
"He hath brought the strange news that the king is in the keeping of
the army. We scarcely know whether to mourn or rejoice. It came
about on this wise, as Roger told my Mother and me:--
"It was reported in the army that the Presbyterian party in the
Parliament designed to remove the king from Holmby, where he was, to
Oatlands, near London, there to make a separate treaty, in which the
soldiers were not to be consulted or considered.
"On the fourth of June, therefore, Cornet Joyce, without commission,
it seems, from any one, but simply as knowing that it would be
agreeable to the army; and to prevent this design of a separate
Presbyterian treaty, went, with some seven or eight hundred men, to
Holmby House, where His Majesty had remained since we saw him in
April.
"The Commissioners of the Parliament, who were His Majesty's jailers,
were very indignant at this interference of Cornet Joyce, and
commanded the gates to be closed, and preparations to be made to
resist an assault. Their own soldiers, on the contrary, were of the
same mind with the army and the Cornet, and threw open the gates at
once to their comrades. Nor was the king himself, it seems,
unwilling. When Cornet Joyce made his way to the royal presence, the
king spoke to him with much graciousness. He asked the Cornet if he
would promise to do him no hurt, and to force him to nothing against
his conscience. Cornet Joyce declared he had no ill intention in any
way; the soldiers only wanted to prevent His Majesty being placed at
the head of another army, and that he would be most unwilling to
force any man against his conscience, much less His Majesty. The
king, therefore, agreed to accompany him the next day, this happening
at night.
"The next morning, at six o'clock, His Majesty condescended to meet
the soldiers.
"He again demanded to know the Cornet's authority, and if he had no
writing from the general, Sir Thomas Fairfax.
"'I pray you, Mr. Joyce,' he said, 'deal ingenuously with me, and
tell me what commission you have.'
Said Joyce,--
"'Here is my commission.'
"'Where?' asked the king.
"'Behind me,' said the Cornet, pointing to his troopers; 'and I hope
that will satisfy your Majesty.'
The King smiled.
"'It is as fair a commission,' he said, 'and as well written as I
have ever seen in my life; a company of as handsome and proper
gentlemen as I have seen a great while. But what if I should yet
refuse to go with you? I hope you would not force me! I am your
king. You ought not to lay violent hands on your king. I
acknowledge none to be above me but God.'
"Cornet Joyce assured His Majesty he meant him no harm; and at length
the king went with the soldiers as they desired, they suffering him
to choose between two or three places the one he liked best.
"So, by easy stages, they conducted him to Childerley, near
Newmarket. And it is said the king was the merriest of the company.
Heaven send it to be a good augury.
"Roger said, moreover, that His Majesty continues to be of good
cheer, and the army to be friendly disposed towards him. They have
hope yet that Sir Thomas Fairfax, General Cromwell, and Ireton may
make some arrangement to which His Majesty may honourably accede.
"And, meantime, they allow him not only the attendance of his
faithful servants, but his own chaplains to perform the services of
the Church, which the Presbyterians refused him at Holmby.
Englishmen, especially the common people, and most of all, I think,
English soldiers, have honest hearts after all; safer to trust to
than those of men armed _cap-a-pie_ in covenants, and catechisms, and
confessions. Surely the king will yet win the hearts of the army,
and all will yet go right. Roger, meanwhile, is as stately in his
courtesy to me as a Spanish hidalgo, listening and assenting to all I
say in a way I detest. For it means that he feels our differences
too deep to venture on."
"_July_ 2_nd_.--Roger has begun to contradict and controvert me again
delightfully. This morning we had our first serious battle.
"Yester eve I said something about abhoring all middle states of
things. It was in reference to the poor peasants flocking around the
king. I said there was no poetry in mid-way things, or times, or
states, in mid-day, mid-summer, middle-life, or the middle-station in
the state.
"He took this up earnestly after his manner, and went into a serious
argument to prove me wrong. It was but a weakling and half-fledged
poesy, quoth he, which must needs go to dew-drops, and rosy clouds,
and primroses, and violets, for its smiles and decorations, and could
see no glory and beauty in summer or in noon. Summer with its golden
ripening harvests, and all its depths of bountiful life in woods and
fields; noon-tide with its patient toil or its rapturous hush of
rest; manhood and womanhood with their dower of noble work and
strength to do it. He could not abide (he said), to hear the
spring-tide spoken pulingly of as if it faded instead of ripened into
summer, or youth as if it set instead of dawned into manhood. And as
to the middle station in a nation, its yeomanry and traders, nations
must have their heads to think and their hands to work; but the
middle order was the nation's heart. If that was sound, the nation
was sound, if that was corrupt and base, the nation's heart was
rotten at the core. Which (ended he) he thought these last years,
with all their miseries, had proved the heart of England was not.
"Roger Drayton has a strange way of his own in discourse, of putting
aside all your light skirmishing forces, and closing with the very
kernel and core of the people he has to do with. The way of the
Ironsides, I suppose. I have been used to little but skirmishing in
discourse among the younger Cavaliers; light jesting talk whether the
heart or the subject be grave or gay. Even serious feelings being
hidden for the most part under a mask of levity. But Roger seldom,
perhaps never, exactly jests. His mirth, like a child's laughter, is
from the heart, as much as his gravity. He will know and have you
know what you really honour, or love, or want, or dread.
"So it happened that to-day on the terrace we came on the very
subject I had intended always to avoid; General Cromwell.
"I chanced to allude in passing to some of the reports I had heard
against the General, some careless words about his praying and
preaching with his men.
"I had no notion until then how Roger reveres this man, like a son
his father, or a loyal subject his sovereign.
"He said, quietly, but with that repressed passion which often makes
his words so strong, that no man who had ever knelt at General
Cromwell's prayers would jest at his praying, any more than any man
who had ever encountered him in battle would jest at his fighting.
That his word could inspire his men to charge like a word from
heaven, and could rally them like a re-inforcement. That after the
battle his strong utterance of Christian hope and faith could hearten
men to die, as it had heartened them to fight; that after such a
battle as Marston Moor, while directing the siege-works outside York,
he could find time to go down into the depths of his own past sorrows
to draw thence living waters of comfort for a friend (Mr. Walton)
whose son had been slain, writing him a letter of consolation (which
Roger had seen) containing words deep enough 'to drink up the
father's sorrow.'
"Then Roger spoke of the unflinching justice, which was only the
other side of this same sympathy and care; how General Cromwell had
two of his men hanged for plundering prisoners at Winchester, and
sent others accused of the same offence to be judged by the royal
garrison at Oxford, whence the governor sent them back with a
generous acknowledgment.
"'It is _loyalty_ you feel towards General Cromwell,' I said, 'such a
disinterested, ennobling, self-sacrificing passion as our Harry felt
for the king.'
"He paused a moment,--
"'If God sends us a judge and a deliverer what else can we feel for
him?' he said, at length; 'I believe General Cromwell is the defender
of the law, and will be the deliverer of the nation, and if he will
suffer it,' he added, in a lower voice, 'of the king.'
"'Is it true,' I asked, 'that, as you once told us, General Cromwell
and the army are courteous to His Majesty, and anxious to make good
terms with him? Can it be possible that there may yet be an
honourable peace?' 'I believe,' he replied, 'that all things else
are possible, if only it is possible for the king to be true. But if
a word, king's or peasant's, is worth nothing, what other bond
remains between man and man? Forgive my rough speech. I know your
loyalty is a sacred thing to you. If the king will deal truly, I
believe General Cromwell will make him such a king as he never was
before. But who can twist ropes of sand? For one who is untrue
seems to me not to be a real substance at all, not even a shadow of a
substance, but simply a dream or phantasm, simply _nothing_.'
"I felt myself flush. We have sacrificed too much for His Majesty,
not to believe in him. Yet I fear he has other thoughts as to the
double-dealing to be permitted in diplomacy than Harry had, or many
gentlemen who serve him.
"I could only answer Roger by saying,--
"Adversity makes a king sacred if nothing else can. If the king's
cause were once more to prosper, we might debate such things as
these. But not now, Roger. I dare not now.'
"He looked as if words were on his lips, he could scarcely, with all
his reserve and courtesy, hold back. But he turned away, and calling
Lion from the pond where he was chasing some wild-fowl, we went into
the house.
"_July_ 4_th_.--Dr. Antony has come for the wedding. He brought us a
moving account of the two days spent by the Royal children. James
the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Princess Elizabeth,
with His Majesty, at Caversham, near Reading. The Independent
officers of the army permitted it. And they say General Cromwell
himself, having sons and daughters of his own, shed tears to see the
affection of the king and the innocent playfulness of the children,
knowing so little of the dangers around them.
"_July_ 5_th_.--Olive looked wondrous fair as a bride, in her plain
spotless dress, without an ornament, partly from Puritanical
plainness, and partly because the family jewels went long since with
the thimbles and bodkins of the London dames into the treasury at the
Guildhall. So grave and serene, pure and young, with her fair pale
face, and her smooth white brow and soft true eyes.
"She was married in the church, with some fragments of the
marriage-service, the whole being forbidden.
"It was sweet afterwards to see her kneel while my Mother kissed her
forehead, and placed a string of large pearls round her neck, with a
jewel.
"They had always a singular love for each other, Olive and my Mother.
The bride and bridegroom rode away together after noon-tide towards
their London home.
"_July_ 6_th_.--This morning I rose early and went down to the pond
in the orchard, and being led back by the sight of it to the thought
of Olive and old times, strayed on towards the Lady Well where first
we met.
"By the way I passed old Gammer Grindle's cottage, and finding the
door open, early as it was, went in to tell her about the bride.
"And there I saw Cicely and the child again; and heard her terrible
story of wrong and sorrow.
"It made me very sad, and as I went on towards the Well, it set me
thinking of many things.
"Why did Olive never tell me? But then I thought how I had more than
once wilfully refused to believe evil of Sir Launcelot, choosing to
believe what I liked. And a cold shudder came over me as I sat by
the Lady Well, to think how near danger I had been, and how terrible
it would have been if I had cared for him (not indeed that I ever
could). I meditated also whether it was not yet possible to get
right done to Cicely. And I resolved as far as I could for the
future never to believe anything because I wished, but because it was
true; that is, to try not to wish about things being true, but to
search out honestly if they are. And I was standing looking into the
Well, sunk deep in these thoughts, wondering if any one ever really
did quite do this, when I heard a footstep and glancing upwards, I
met Roger Drayton's eyes.
"And then he told me of his love. I cannot say I had never thought
of it before. I had sometimes even thought it might one day come to
something like this, and had even imagined a little, what I should
say, or perhaps, not so much what, as how I would say many wise
things to him and manage it so ingeniously that in some marvellous
way all the difficulties about the Civil wars would vanish, he would
see he had made some mistakes, and I would acknowledge candidly that
our side had not been blameless, and then I might admit, that,
perhaps, one day he might speak to me again on the other subject. At
least I know these dreams of mine always ended in my being left in
perfect certainty that Roger would one day join in the good cause,
and Roger perhaps in a very little uncertainty as to the rest.
"But everything went quite the other way. Roger was so much in
earnest about what he had to say, that what I had to say about
politics unfortunately went entirely out of my head. Roger has left
me with anything but a certainty or probability of his ever being a
Cavalier, as things are at present. And I have left him in no
uncertainty at all about the rest.
"I am afraid it was a golden opportunity lost. But how could I help
it? When he showed all his heart to me, how could I help his seeing
mine? And since I am sure there is no one in the world to be
compared with Roger, how could I help his seeing that I feel and
think so? Besides, after all, there is something base in such
conditions. It might have been trifling with his conscience. And
that would have been almost a crime.
"Wherefore, I am sure I could not have done otherwise, and I think I
have done right.
"Yet we made no promises. We know we love each other. That is all.
And I know he has loved me ever since he can remember. And I know,
with such a heart as his, once is for ever?
"And I know that now, if it were possible, that the whole world could
come between us; a world of oceans and continents, a world of war and
politics and calumnies, it would always be outside, it would never
come between our hearts.
"My Mother thinks so too. I feel now, for the first time, in some
ways what it is to have a Mother's heart to rest on. Although
through all her tender silence, I feel she sees more difficulties in
the way than I do.
"_July_ 10_th_.--A world of oceans and continents no separation! How
boldly I wrote! Roger is gone back to the army; gone not half an
hour, barely a mile away, scarcely out of sight. If I listen I fancy
I can almost hear his horse hoofs in the distance. And it seems as
if that mile were a world of oceans and continents, as if these
moments since he left were the beginning of an eternity, altogether
beyond the poor counted minutes and hours and days of time. But a
minute since, his hand in mine, and what may happen before I see him
again? How do I know if I shall ever see him again? In love such as
ours, ever and never so terribly intertwine!
"Unbelieving that I am. Now I shall have to learn if I understand
really anything of what it is to trust God and to pray.
"Prayer and trust must be as deep as _this love_, or they are nothing.
"They must be _deeper_, or they are no support."
OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.
We began our home in London in troublous times.
As we came near our house which was not far from the river and from
Whitehall, we saw something which moved me not a little, a coach
being drawn to St. James's Palace, guarded by Parliament soldiers. A
few people turned and gazed as it passed; and two children were
looking out of the window. These were the Royal children being taken
back to St. James's Palace after their two days with the king at
Caversham. There was something very mournful in beholding these
young creatures, born to be children of the nation as well as of the
king, taken to their royal home as to a prison, dwelling in their own
land as exiles, their Mother a fugitive in France, their Father a
captive among his own people.
There is a terrible strength in the pathetic majesty which enshrines
a fallen king; a well-nigh irresistible power in the crown which has
become a crown of thorns. A captive monarch is a more perilous foe
than a victorious army to the subjects who hold him captive. How
often during those sad years, 1647 and 1648, I had to go over all the
causes of the civil war again and again; Eliot slowly murdered in his
unlawful and unwholesome prison; the silenced Parliaments; the
tortured Puritans; the imprisoned patriots. How often I had to
recall all its course--Prince Rupert's plundering; the king's
repeated duplicity, slowly wearing out the nation's lingering trust
in him, and baffling all attempts at negotiation. I had to repeat
these things to myself, by an effort of will again and again, in
order to keep true to our principles at all.
And the conflict with this rebound of instinctive loyalty, which went
on in my heart secretly, was going on in the city openly at the time
when we took up our abode there.
So strong and general, indeed, was this rebound of loyalty, that in
that August, 1647, which was our honeymoon, it seemed that the whole
city of London--at the beginning of the war the Parliament's very
strength and stay--was panting to return to its allegiance, led by
the Presbyterian majority in the House of Commons. The conflict
seemed altogether to have shifted its ground. The enemy now dreaded
by the city was not the king, but the army which its own liberal
contributions and persevering courage had done so much to create.
Like the German magician, Dr. Faustus, of whom Aunt Gretel used to
tell us, the city crouched trembling before the untameable spirit it
had evoked, as from moment to moment it grew into more terrible
stature and strength.
Sunday the 1st August, 1647, my first Sunday in London, was a
memorable day to me.
Through all the hush of the Puritan Sabbath there was a deep hum of
unrest throughout the city, a ceaseless stir of men walking in silent
haste hither and thither, or gathering for eager debate at the
corners of streets, in the squares, or in any public place. It was a
notable contrast to the cheerful stir of animal life and the deep
under-stillness at Netherby.
On the Friday before, the House of Commons had been invaded, not as
once in the beginning of the strife by the king trampling on
"Privilege" in quest of five "traitors," but by a crowd of 'prentices
with hats on, clamouring for the king against the army.
Then the two Speakers of the Lords and Commons had fled to the army,
with the mace, and all the Independent members.
The eleven banished Presbyterian members had returned; among them
Denzil Hollis (one of the king's fated "five traitors" who had
afterwards withstood the royal forces so gallantly at Brentford) and
Sir John Clotworthy, whose zeal had pursued Archbishop Laud with
theological questions even on the scaffold.
Recruitings, gatherings of men and arms, and drillings and
gun-practice had been going on in all quarters of the city on the
Saturday.
On Monday these were renewed with the earliest light of the summer
morning. Drums beating, trumpets calling, 'prentices hurrahing on
all sides, "No peace with Sectaries." The London militia, "one and
all," against the factious army, then believed to be couching
tranquilly near Bedford.
But on Tuesday the army rose from its lair, and advanced to Hounslow.
Then all Southwark came pouring in terrified throngs across London
Bridge, demanding peace with the army, and declaring they would not
fight. The Presbyterian General Poyntz was indignant, and there was
tumult and bloodshed in the streets.
Closer and closer that defied but dreaded monster of an army came,
every step forward and every halt watched with fluctuations of hope
and fear in the city. The army, meanwhile, strong in the presence of
the king, the speakers, the mace, and Oliver Cromwell, looked on
itself as not only representing but _being_ all the three powers of
the state combined, inspired by an invisible power stronger than all
states; and so it advanced majestically free from hurry or disorder.
Not a provision-cart or pack-horse was stopped on its way into the
city. And on Friday, August the 9th, the army appeared in the city,
marching three deep through Hyde Park with boughs of laurel in their
hats, through Westminster, along the Strand, through the City, to the
Tower. In a day or two they were quietly established in the villages
around, the headquarters being at Putney. The king was lodged the
while at Hampton Court.
Not an act of vengeance nor of disorder, as far as I know, disgraced
their triumph. Not that this was any matter of wonder to us. Our
wonder was that sober and godly citizens should wonder at the
soberness and godliness of the army, every regiment of which was a
worshipping congregation, and the soul of it Oliver Cromwell.
Job Forster was sorely vexed at the evil reports spread concerning
the soldiers. We saw him often during that autumn.
"Have they forgotten," he said, "that we have won Marston Moor and
Naseby for them? that we have been marching through the land all
these years, and not left a godly homestead nor a family the worse
for us throughout the length and breadth of the country? A man might
think it was we who sacked Leicester and plundered and burnt villages
and farms far and wide. They should have heard the prayers our poor
men poured forth by the camp-fires on the battle-fields where we shed
our blood for them. Such prayers as might well-nigh lift the roofs
from their great vaults of churches, and belike the great stone also
from their hearts. Men creeping easily among streets, praying safely
as long as they like behind walls, and sleeping every night on
feather-beds, might be the better for a good stretch now and then in
one of our Cromwell's marches, and a hard bed on the moors, and a
good look right up into the sky, beyond the roofs, and the clouds,
and the stars, and the Covenants and Confessions."
Roger also chafed much at the citizens, but most of all at their
misunderstanding of General Cromwell. All that autumn, said Roger,
the General, with Ireton, Vane, and Harry Marten, and other faithful
men, were labouring hard to establish peace on a lasting foundation,
as the proposals of the army proved. They would have provided that
His Majesty's person, the queen, and the royal issue should be
restored to honour and all personal rights; that the royal authority
over the militia should be subject to the advice of Parliament for
ten years; that all civil penalties for ecclesiastical offences (for
instance, whether for using or disusing the Common Prayer), should be
removed; that some old decayed boroughs should be disfranchised, and
the representation be made more equal; that parliaments should last
two years, not to be dissolved except by their own consent, unless
they had sat one hundred and twenty days; that grand jurymen should
be chosen in some impartial way, and not at the discretion of the
sheriff. But no man would have it so. The Levellers in the army
clamoured for justice on the "Chief Delinquent," and declared that
General Cromwell had betrayed them to the king. There was a mutiny
which Cromwell himself barely succeeded in quelling. The
Presbyterians would not give up the right to enforce the Covenant.
The king carried on negotiations at the same time with General
Cromwell, with the Presbyterians, and with the Irish Papists;
intending, as was showed, alas! too surely, from intercepted letters,
to be true to none, except, perchance, the last.
On November the 12th, early in the morning, the news flashed through
the city, cried from street to street, that the king had fled from
Hampton Court; and Roger, who was with us, that morning, said,--
"Once more General Cromwell would have saved the king and the
country. But the king will not be saved. Now he must turn wholly to
the country."
"But what," replied my husband, "if the country also refuses to be
saved by General Cromwell?"
"Then for a New England across the seas," said Roger. "But we are
not come to that yet."
For even after the king's flight Roger clung to the hope of
reconciliation, his hopes nourished by secret fountains flowing from
the very icebergs of his fears. For with the bond which bound People
and King, might be snapped for him the bond, not indeed of love, but
of hope between him and Lettice.
Still throughout that dreary winter negotiations went on between the
Parliament and His Majesty at the Castle of Carisbrook. More and
more hopeless as more and more men became mournfully convinced of the
king's untruth. Until, in April, 1648, when, from the upper windows
of our house, I could see on one side the trees bursting into leaf in
St. James' Park, and on the other the river shining with a thousand
tints of green and gold with the reflection of the wooded gardens of
the palaces and mansions from Westminster to the Temple; when the
fleets of swans began to pass by on their way to build their nests in
the reedy islets by Richmond or Kew, the news came from all quarters
that, amidst all this sweet stir of natural life, the country was
stirring with fatal insurrections from Kent to the Scottish borders.
The first outburst was in London itself.
A few 'prentices were playing at bowls on Sunday, April 9th, in
Moorfields, during church time. The train-bands tried to disperse
them. They fought, were routed by the train-bands, but rallied
quickly to the old cry of "Clubs." All through that night we heard
the tumult surging up and down through the city. The watermen, a
powerful body of men, joined them. The cry was, "For God and King
Charles." And not till the Ironsides charged on them from
Westminster was the riot quelled.
Then came tidings that Chepstow and Pembroke were taken by the
royalists, and that a Scottish army of forty thousand was coming
across the borders to undo all that had been done and to restore the
king.
About that time Roger came into the chamber where I was busied with
confections, and unlacing and laying aside his helmet, he sat down in
silence.
His face was fixed and very pale.
"No ill-tidings?" I said.
"I ought not to think so," he replied.
And then he told me of a solemn prayer-meeting, held throughout the
day before at Windsor Castle, by the army leaders. How some of them,
being "sore perplexed that what they had judged to do for the good of
these poor nations had not been accepted by them, were minded to lay
down arms, disband, and return each to his home, there to suffer
after the example of Him who, having done what He could to save His
people, sealed His life by suffering." But others were differently
minded, and striving to trace back the causes of their present
divisions and weakness, they came at last to what they believed the
root, those cursed carnal conferences which their own conceited
wisdom had prompted them to the year before with the king's party.
Then Major Goffe solemnly rehearsed from the Scripture the words,
"Turn you at my reproof, and I will pour out my Spirit unto you;" and
thereupon their sin and their duty was set unanimously with weight on
each heart, so that none was able to speak a word to each other for
bitter weeping, at the sense and shame of their sins and their base
fear of men." "Cromwell, Ireton, and his Ironsides weeping bitterly!
It was a thing not to forget," said Roger, pausing.
"Then, Roger," said I, trembling, "if this was the sin they wept for,
what is the _duty_ they see before them?"
Roger bowed his forehead on his hands as they rested on the table
before him, and his reply came muffled and slow.
"'To call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that
blood he hath shed and mischief he hath done to his utmost against
the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations.' This is what
they deem their duty," he said.
"Call the king to an account, Roger!" I said, "the king!"
I could scarce speak the word for horror.
"Kings have to be called to account," he said.
"Yes, in heaven," I said. "But on earth, Roger, on earth never."
"Herod was called to account on earth, Olive," said he.
"True, but it was by God, Roger," I said. "Not by man! never by man!"
"By the law, Olive," he said; "by God's law, which is above all men."
"But what men can ever have right to execute the law on a king?" I
said; "on their own king?"
"Woe to the men who have to do it," said Roger; "but bitterer woe to
the man who does not the work God sets him to do, whatever woe it
brings on the doing. Olive, who gave," he added, mournfully,
"sanction to Laud and Strafford's oppressions, and to Prince Rupert's
plunderings?"
I could only weep.
"Oh, Roger," I said, "let the thunderbolt, or the pestilence, or any
of God's terrible angels do this work in His time. They are strong
and swift enough. It is not for men."
He made no reply.
"What lies between this terrible resolve and its execution?" I asked
at length.
"Chepstow and Pembroke to be besieged and taken; Wales to be
reconquered; the Scottish army of forty thousand to be driven back
over the borders," he replied.
"Then there is a hope of escape for the king yet."
"There is an interval, Olive," he replied. "These things must take
time. But they must be done. In a few days, General Cromwell is to
lead us forth to do them. The order is given for the army to march
to Wales."
I did not venture to mention Lettice's name to him. We both knew too
well what a gulf this terrible resolve, if ever it came to action,
must create between us. But before he left he said,--
"Olive, I don't think it is cowardice not to say anything of this to
Lettice yet. Her mother, she writes to-day, is failing so sadly.
And there are so many chances in battle. If I fall, I need not leave
on her memory of me what would so embitter sorrow to her.
"And the king might escape," thought I. "His Majesty had all but
succeeded in getting through the bars of his chamber-window not a
month since. But I did not say this to Roger."
On the next day, the 3rd of May, the army marched forth, and with it
Roger and Job Forster. And my husband went with them on his work of
mercy.
So that this summer of 1648 was a very anxious and solitary one for
me. I longed much to see my Father, but he was occupied in quelling
insurrection in the North. And the city was so unquiet, I thought it
selfish to send for either of my aunts.
Not that I was without friends. Now and then it fortified me greatly
to have a glimpse of Mr. John Milton in his small house at Holborn;
to hear his strong words of determination and hope for the English
people; and, perchance, to catch some strains from his organ.
But my chief solaces were, first the morning exercises, between six
and eight of the clock, at St. Margaret's Church near the Abby, where
there was daily prayer, and praise, and reading of God's word, with
comments to press it home to the heart, from divers excellent and
godly ministers.
And next, a friendship I had made with good Mr. John Henry a Welsh
gentleman who kept the royal garden and orchard at Whitehall, and
lived in a pleasant house close on Whitehall Stairs. His wife had
died scarce three years before, of a consumption, and it was edifying
to hear him and his daughters speak of her virtue and piety; how she
had looked well to the ways of her household, had prayed daily with
them, catechized her children, and devoted her only son Philip to the
work of the ministry in his infancy, and how a little before she died
she had said, "My head is in heaven, my heart is in heaven; it is but
one step more and I shall be there too."
This friendship solaced me for many causes; primarily for three: in
that Mr. Henry was a godly gentleman; in that he lived in a garden by
fair water, which reminded me of Netherby; and in that he was a
Royalist. For it did my heart good to near some good words spoken
for the captive king, poor gentleman; and I have been wont ever to
gain benefit from good men who differ from us on party points. With
such we leave the party differences, and fly to the common harmonies,
which are deeper.
Many a delightsome hour have I spent in Mr. Henry's house in the
orchard, by the river, watching the boats, and gay barges, and the
fishers, and the white fleets of swans, and the flow of the broad
river sweeping by, always like a poem of human life, set to a stately
organ music, plying my needle meanwhile beside the young daughters of
the house, with cheerful converse. But most of all I loved to
hearken to the father's discourse concerning the king and the court
in the days gone by. How the young princes used to play with his
Philip, and gave him gifts, and had wondrous courtesy for him; and
how Archbishop Laud took a particular kindness for him when he was a
child, because he would be very officious to attend to the water-gate
(which was part of his father's charge), to let the archbishop
through when he came late from council, to cross the water to
Lambeth; and how afterwards the lad Philip had been taken to see the
fallen archbishop in the Tower, and he had given him some "new money."
It was strange to think how the great River of Time had borne all
that stately company away, king, court, archbishop, council, like
some fleeting pomp of gay barges beneath the windows, or like the
masques and pageants they had delighted in, of which Mr. Henry told
me. It was good, too, to have such touches of simple kindness, as
remembering a child's taste for bright new money, thrown into the
dark picture we Puritans had among us of the persecutor of our
brethren. It is good for the persecuted to feel by some human touch
that their persecutors are human; good while the persecuted suffer,
good beyond price if ever they come to rule and judge.
Sometimes, moreover, Mr. Philip the son came home from Christchurch,
Oxford, where he was a student, and his discourse was wondrous sacred
and pleasant for so young a gentleman. One thing I remember he said
which was a special solace to me. He would blame those who laid so
much stress on every one knowing the exact time of their conversion.
"Who can so soon be aware of the daybreak," quoth he, "or of the
springing up of the seed sown? The blind man in the Gospel is our
example. This and that concerning the recovering of his sight he
knew not: 'But this one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I
see.'" Which words have often returned to my comfort. In that,
instead of sending me back into my past life, and down into my heart
to look for tokens of grace, they set me looking up to my Lord, to
see his gracious countenance; and in looking I am enlightened, be it
for the first time, or the thousand and first.
Meantime the great tide of Time was flowing on, bearing on its breast
to the sea royal fleets, and little row-boats such as mine.
In July the sailors of the fleet suddenly declared for the king,
landed the Parliament admiral, and crossing the Channel, took on
board the Prince of Wales, acknowledging him as their commander.
At this news my heart beat as high with hope as the fiercest
royalist's. The Prince of Wales with a fleet in the Downs! the king
his father in prison close to the shore at Carisbrook! what could
hinder a rescue? But no rescue was attempted. Weeks passed on--the
opportunity was lost; the fleet was won back to the Parliament, and
the king remained at Carisbrook. I have never heard any attempt to
explain why the prince neglected this chance of saving the king. It
made my heart ache to think of the captive sovereign watching all
those weeks for rescue, (for he sent to entreat it might be
attempted) and listening for the sound of friendly guns, and the
appearance of a band of loyal seamen, all in vain.
For all this time his doom was coiling closer and closer round him.
Pembroke and Chepstow were retaken. General Cromwell wrote from
Nottingham for shoes for his "poor tried soldiers," wearied with a
hundred and fifty miles hasty marching across the wild country of
Wales towards the north. In August came the tidings of the total
defeat of the Scottish army at Preston.
I had just received the news of this in a letter from my husband, and
was sitting alone in my chamber, tossed hither and thither in mind,
as was my wont during those anxious months, scarce knowing at any
news whether to rejoice or to mourn, in that every victory of the
army seemed but to bring a step nearer the fulfillment of that
dreadful purpose of calling the king to account. By way of quieting
these uneasy thoughts, I rose to go to good Mr. Henry's, when a
little stir at the door aroused me, and in another minute I was
clasped to Aunt Gretel's heart, sobbing out my gladness at seeing her.
"Hush, sweetheart, hush," she said, "that is the worst of surprises.
I meant to save thee suspense, and to make as little disturbance as
possible."
"I wanted thee so sorely," said I. "It is not thy coming that has so
moved me; it was the trying to do without thee."
In half an hour she had unpacked her small bundle, and established
herself in the guest-chamber, with everything belonging to her as
quietly in its place, as if it had never known another. Her presence
brought an unspeakable quiet with it. The solitary house became home
again. And in another fortnight we were rejoicing together over my
first-born, our little Magdalene; the fountain of delight opened for
us in the desert of those dreary times.
And in September my husband returned to me.
Preston was the last battle of that campaign worthy the name. The
Scottish royalist army was broken up, and General Cromwell was
welcomed in Edinburgh, and by the Covenanters everywhere, as the
deliverer of the land.
Throughout September the king was holding conferences at Newport with
the Commissioners of the Parliament. All bore witness to the ability
and readiness with which he spoke. His hair had turned gray, his
face was furrowed with deep lines of care, but all the old majesty
was in his port, and even those who had known him before were
surprised at his learning and wit.
But, alas, it was mere speech. The king wrote to his friends
excusing himself for making concessions, by the assurance that he
merely did it in order to facilitate his escape.
And more than that, all the actors in that drama, sincere or not,
were rapidly fading into mere performers in a pageant. The decisive
conferences were held, the true work was done. The doom was fixed
elsewhere.
By the middle of November the army, victorious from Wales and
Scotland, and mindful of the prayer-meeting at Windsor, was again at
St. Albans, calling for justice on the Chief Delinquent.
On the 29th of November the king was removed from Carisbrook to Hurst
Castle, a lonely, bare and melancholy fort opposite to the Isle of
Wight, whose walls were washed by the sea.
On December the 2d the quiet of Mr. Henry's house and of the royal
orchard was broken, by the arrival of a portion of the Parliament
army at Whitehall, trampling down with heavy armed tread the grass
which had grown in the deserted palace-court.
On Sunday there was much preaching in many quarters, of a kind little
likely to calm the storm. In the churches the Presbyterian preachers
declaimed fervently against the atrocity and iniquity of seizing the
person of the king. In the parks Independent soldiers preached on
the equality of all before the law of God. "Tophet is ordained of
old," one of them took for his text. For the king it is prepared. A
notable example, my husband said, of that random reading of the
Sacred Scriptures which turns them into a lottery of texts to conjure
with, like a witch's charms.
In the Parliament my old hero Mr. Prinne, with his cropped ears and
his branded forehead, stood up and boldly pleaded for the king, never
braver, I thought, than then.
On the 5th of December came another invasion of the Parliament House,
Colonel Pride and his soldiers turning all the Presbyterian and
Royalist members back from the doors. "Pride's Purge."
It was a sorely perplexed time. Had the very act of despotism which
first roused the nation to the point of civil war now to be repeated
in the name of liberty for the ruin of the king?
"What are we fighting for? I used to ask myself. The battle-cries,
as well as the front of the armies, had so strangely changed. For
the king and Parliament? The king was in prison. The Parliament was
reduced to fifty members. For the nation? The nation was half in
insurrection. For liberty? No party seemed to allow it to any other.
Roger and the Ironsides alone seemed clear as to the answer. "We are
fighting--not under six hundred members of Parliament, nor under
fifty, but under one leader given us by God; under General Cromwell,"
he said. "And he is fighting for the country, to save it and make it
free and righteous, and glorious in spite of itself. When he has
done it, it will be acknowledged. Till then he must be content to be
misjudged, and we must content he should be, as the heroes have been
too often, and the saints nearly always, until their work, perhaps
until their life, is done."
I lay awake much during those nights of December. My little
Magdalene was often restless, and I used to listen to the flow of the
river through the silence of the sleeping city and think how the sea
was washing the walls of the king's desolate prison, praying for him,
and for General Cromwell, and all, and thanking God that my lot was
the lowly one of submitting instead of that of deciding, in these
terrible times.
But a sorer sorrow was advancing slowly on us all. On the 10th of
December came an imploring letter from Lettice, saying that her
mother had failed sadly during the last week, that she and her mother
longed for Dr. Antony, and her mother even more for me and the babe.
The next day we were on the road to Netherby, Aunt Gretel, my
husband, the babe, and I.
It was late in the evening of the second day when we reached the dear
old house.
We were met with a hush, which fell on me like a chill. The Lady
Lucy had fallen into one of those quiet sleeps which of late had
become so rare with her, and the whole household was quieted so as
not to disturb her.
The subdued tone into which everything falls, in a house in which
there has been long sickness, and where everything has been ordered
with reference to one sufferer, fell heavily on us, coming in from
the fresh autumn air with voices attuned to the bracing winds, and
hearts eager with expectations of welcome. It was like being ushered
into a church hushed for some mournful ceremony; and we stepped
noiselessly, and spoke under our breath, until an unsubdued wail from
the only creature of the company unable to understand the change, the
baby waking suddenly from sleep, broke the dreary spell of stillness.
The Lady Lucy heard the little one's cry, and sent to crave a glimpse
of us all that night.
In her chamber alone, throughout the house that anxious hush was
absent. She spoke in her natural voice, though now lower than even
its usual sweet low tones, from weakness. She had a bright welcoming
word for each, and while gratefully heeding my husband's counsel,
declared that baby would be her head physician. The very touch of
the soft little fingers and the sound of her little cooings and
crowings had healing in them, she said.
She looked less changed than I had expected. But my husband shook
his head and would give little promise. Lettice seemed to me more
altered than her mother. Her eyes had a steady, deep, watchful look
in them, very unlike her wonted changeful brilliancy. She said
nothing beyond a few words of welcome to me that night. But the next
morning the first moment we were alone together she took my hands,
and pressing them to her heart, she said,--
"Tell me Olive; I have been afraid to ask any one else, but I must
know. What do they mean by Petitions from the army for justice on
the King?"
I was so startled by her sudden appeal, I could not meet her eyes nor
think what to say. I could only murmur something about there having
been so many Petitions, Remonstrances, and Declarations, which had
ended in talking.
"True," said she, "but the army are like no other party in the state.
They do not end with talking. They know what they want, and mean
what they say, and do what they mean. What do they mean by Petitions
against the Chief Delinquent?"
"Many do think, Lettice," I said, "that the king himself, and not
only his counsellors, began all the evil."
"I know," she replied. "But they have had justice enough on the
king, I should think, to satisfy any one. They have deprived him of
all power, separated him from the queen and the royal children, and
all who love him, and shut him up behind iron bars. And now, they
petition for justice on him. What would they do to him worse, Olive?
What can he suffer more? What has the king left but life?"
I could not answer her.
"To touch _that_, Olive," she continued, looking steadily into my
eyes, and compelling me by the very intensity of her gaze to meet
them, "to touch that would be crime, the worst of crimes. It would
be regicide, parricide."
"But how could it ever be, Olive?" She went on. "They have
assassinated kings I know before now. But a king brought to justice
(as they call it) like a common criminal! Since the world was, such
a thing was never known. It can never be, Olive, she added in a
trembling voice, "I have heard the king dreads assassination. Do
you? Could his enemies descend to that depth?"
"Never, Lettice," I replied, "never." And in saying thus I could
meet her eyes frankly and fearlessly.
Her face lighted up.
"Never! no, I believe not. Then there can surely be little fear.
There is no tribunal which can judge the king. No bar for him to
stand arraigned before but the judgment-seat of God. A king was
never condemned and put to death deliberately and solemnly in the
face of his own people, and of all the nations. Never since the
world was. And it never could be. From assassination you are sure
he is safe. Be honest with me, Olive. There are base men in all
parties. You are _sure_?"
"As sure as of my life," I said, "as sure as of my father's word, or
Roger's."
"Then there can be no reason to fear," she said. "I will cast away
this awful dread. Oh, Olive," she exclaimed, bursting into tears,
"you have brought me new life. Do you know that sometimes during
these last few days, since I heard of those Petitions, I have almost
prayed that if such a fearful crime and curse could be hanging over
England, my Mother might be taken to God first, and learn about it
first there, where we shall understand it all. But you have
comforted me, Olive. I need make no such prayers. What I have so
dreaded can never be."
I felt almost guilty of falsehood in letting her thus take comfort.
Yet if my husband's fears about Lady Lucy were well-founded, there
was little need for such a prayer. And to Time I might surely leave
it to unveil the horrors that after all might be averted.
But no intervention from above or from below came to avert the steady
unfolding of the great tragedy on which the nation's eyes were fixed.
The king went on to his doom, as the doomed in some terrible old
tragedy of destiny, tremblingly watchful for the storm to break from
the side whence there was no danger, but all the time advancing with
blind fearlessness to confront the lightnings which were to smite him.
In the solitary sea-washed walls of Hurst Castle he listened for the
stealthy tread of the assassin. And when at midnight, on the 17th of
December, the creak of the drawbridge was heard between the dash of
the waves, and then the tramp of armed horsemen echoing beneath the
castle-gate, the king rose and spent an hour alone in prayer.
Colonel Harrison, who commanded these men, had been named to him as
one likely to be employed to assassinate him. "I trust in God who is
my helper," said the king to his faithful servant, Herbert; "but I
would not be surprised. This is a fit place for such a purpose," and
he was moved to tears; no unmanly tears, and no groundless fears. He
was not the first of his unhappy race who had been the victim of
treacherous midnight murders. But when on the morrow he recognized
in Colonel Harrison's frank countenance and honest converse one
incapable of such baseness, his spirits rose, and he rode away almost
gayly with his escort of gallant and well-mounted men, courteous
enough in their demeanour to him. In the daylight, and in the royal
halls of Windsor, where they lodged him, he felt strong again in the
sacredness of the king's person, and alas he fancied himself strong
in those false schemes of policy which, and which only, had divested
his royal person of its sacredness in the hearts of his people. "He
had yet three games to play," he said, "the least of which gave him
hope of regaining all."
On the 5th of January he gave orders for sowing melon-seed at
Wimbledon; and dwelt on Lord Ormond's work for him in Ireland. He
made a jest of the threat of bringing him to a public trial. Kings
had been killed in battle, treacherously put to agonizing deaths in
dungeons whose walls tell no tales, and let no cries of anguish
through, secretly stabbed at midnight. But the rebels it seemed
plain were not foes of that stamp. Even the example three of his
Cavaliers had lately given them in treacherously assassinating
Rainsborough, one of Cromwell's bravest officers at Doncaster,
kindled in the most fanatical of the Roundheads no emulation, but
simply a burning indignation and contempt. Save the sword of battle,
or the dagger of the murderer, no weapon was known wherewith to kill
a king. The Roundheads did not number assassination among their
"instruments of justice." The war was over. What then was there for
His Majesty to fear?
Strafford, indeed, had been almost as confident up to the last. And
neither gray hairs or consecration had saved the Archbishop's head
from the scaffold. But between an anointed king and the loftiest of
his subjects, according to the royal and the royalist creed, the
distinction was not of degree but of nature.
All the courts of Europe surely would rise and interfere ere a king
should be tried before a tribunal of his lieges, of creatures who
held honour and life by his breath.
Nor only earthly courts. Would the One Tribunal before which a
sovereign alone could be summoned, suffer such an infringement of its
rights?
So the king went on jesting at the thought of his subjects bringing
him to trial, playing his "three games," and peacefully sowing seeds
for more harvests than one.
And meanwhile Cromwell came back slowly advancing from Scotland to
London; Petitions for Justice on the Chief Delinquent lay on the
table of the House of Commons not unheeded; on the 6th of January,
Colonel Pride, with his soldiers, guarded the door of the House of
Commons, and sent thence every member who disposed still to prolong
treaties with the king; in the afternoon of that same 6th of January,
General Cromwell was thanked by the "purged" house, or Rump, of fifty
members, for his services, and the High Court of Justice was
instituted for the trial of "Charles Stuart, for traitorously and
tyrannically seeking to overthrow the rights and liberties of the
people." And on the 19th of January, not three weeks after he had
been tranquilly planning at Westminster for his summer garden crops,
and sowing seed for other harvests in Ireland, the king was sitting
in Westminster Hall arraigned before this Court as a "tyrant,
traitor, and murderer."
And still only were the heavens unmoved, but not a word of
remonstrance or of generous pleading had come from one crowned head
in Europe.
But meantime over our little world at Netherby that awful Presence
was hovering to which all the outward terrors that may, or may not
surround it, the midnight dagger, the headsman's axe, the crowds of
eager gazers around the scaffold, are but as the trappings of the
warrior to his sword, or the glitter of the axe to its edge. Death
was silently wearing away the little remaining strength of Lady Lucy
Davenant.
There was one amongst us nearer the beginning of the new life than
any of us knew, so near that the roar of the political tempest around
us was hushed ere it reached her chamber, and she lay on the
threshold of the other world almost as unconscious of the storms of
this as our little infant Magdalene, whose cradle she used to delight
to have beside her.
I can remember, as if it were yesterday, the dim tender smile with
which she used to watch the babe asleep beside her.
Once she said to me,--
"There seems to me something strangely alike, Olive, in the darling's
place and mine, though to all outward seeming so different. I lie
and look at her and think of the angels in the Percy Shrine at the
Minster at Beverly, how they bear in their arms to Jesus a little
helpless new-born soul, and He stretches out His hands to take it to
His bosom--a soul new-born from death, to the deathless life with Him.
"Sometimes it seems like that, Olive, what is coming to me; so great
and perfect the change. Sometimes so easy and simple; more like
laying aside garments we have worn through the night bathing in the
water of life, and stepping refreshed, strong, and 'clothed in
raiment clean and white'--into the next chamber, to meet Him who
awaits us there. So little the change, for we have in us the
treasure we shall bear with us. The new eternal life is in our Lord,
and not in any state or time; and since we have him with us, both
here and there, it seems only like stepping a little further into the
Father's house--from the threshold to the inner chambers--and hearing
Him nearer and seeing Him more clearly. Tell Lettice I had these
comforting thoughts, Olive," she would say; "I cannot speak to her,
she is too much moved; and she wants me to say I long to stay on
earth, and I cannot, Olive. I cannot feel at home any more here
since Harry is gone. And I am so weak and sinful, I may do harm, as
well as good by staying longer, even to Lettice, poor tender child.
The world--at least the world here in England--is very dark to me.
And sometimes I think it will all soon end, not this war only, but
all wars, and the kingdom come for which the Church prayed so long,
and the glorious Epiphany."
One thing I remarked with Lady Lucy, as with others whom since I have
watched passing from this world of shadows into the world of real
things. The lesser beliefs which separate Christians seemed
forgotten, fallen far back into the distance and the shade, in the
light of the great truths which are our life--which are Christianity.
The spontaneous utterances of such Christian deathbeds as I have
watched, have had little of party-beliefs, and of party-politics
nothing. As Lady Lucy herself once said,--
"Oh, if all could only see Him as He is! We are divided because we
are fragments: the whole race is fallen and broken into fragments.
But in Him, in Christ, all the broken fragments are one again and
live. Truth is no fair ideal vision: it is Christ."
And again she would speak of her death with infinite comfort. "He
died really--really as I must," she said; "the flesh failed, the
heart failed, but he overcame. He offered Himself up without spot to
God, and me, sin-stained as I am, in Him--the Son, the Redeemer, the
Lord. And the Father was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself.
And we are in Him, reconciled, for ever and ever."
Now and then she would ask if we had heard news of the king. And we
gave her such general and vague accounts as we dared, deeming it
unmeet to distress her with perplexities which would so soon be
unperplexed to her. And this was easy, her attention being seldom
now fixed long on any subject.
On the 6th of January Roger came on his way to London from the
North--on the old Christmas day, which Lady Lucy had continued to
keep.
In the morning Lettice had read her the gospel for the day.
In the afternoon when she saw Roger, connecting him with the army and
the king, she asked at once for his Majesty.
"The king is at Windsor," Roger said.
"At home!" she said with a smile; "at home again for the Christmas.
That is well."
Roger made no reply, and, to the relief of all, her mind passed
contentedly from the subject. She took Lettice's hand and Roger's in
hers, and pressed them to her lips, and murmured, "My God, I thank
Thee." And then, as a faintness came over her, we all withdrew but
Lettice.
Roger and I were alone in the ante-room. He was waiting to bid
Lettice farewell. When she came out of her mother's chamber she sat
down on the window seat, her eyes cast down, her trembling mute lips
almost as white as her cheeks.
Roger went towards her, and stood before her; but she made no
movement and did not even lift her eyelids, heavy and swollen as they
were with much weeping.
"Lettice," he said, "let me say one word before I go. Let me say one
word to comfort you in this sorrow, for is not your sorrow mine?"
"Of what avail?" she said. "You are taking the king to London to
die. The greatest crime and curse is about to fall on the nation,
and you will go and share and sanction it, and make it your own. No
word of mine will move you--how can word of yours comfort me? You
will, if you are commanded by him you have chosen for your priest and
king, keep guard by the scaffold while the king is murdered. Did not
you tell me so two hours since? Did not I entreat and implore and
tell you you were digging a gulf, not only, between me and you, but
between you and heaven?"
He stood for a few moments silent and motionless, and then he said:
"And did I not tell you, that, as a soldier I could do no otherwise
unless I deserted my chief, nor as a patriot unless I betrayed my
country? It is the king who has betrayed us, Lettice; who has
refused to let us save him and trust him. The hand that could have
stopped all the oppression and injustice at the source--from the
beginning--and _did not_, must be the guiltiest hand of all. It is
_falsehood_ that is leading the king to this end, not the country,
nor the Parliament, nor General Cromwell."
At last she looked up,--"Do not try to persuade me, Roger," she said,
"God knows I am too willing to be persuaded. I cannot reason about
it any more than about loving my Mother or obeying my Father. I dare
not listen to you. I am untrue," she added, bursting at length into
passionate tears, "I have been a traitor, to let my Mother be
deceived--to let her thank God for what can never be!"
"Lettice," he said in a tone of anguish, "if you reproach yourself,
if you call yourself a traitor, what am I?"
"You are as true as the Gospel, Roger," she said, her sobs subsiding
into quiet weeping; "as true as heaven itself. You would never have
done what I did. You would break your own heart and every one's
rather than utter or act one falsehood, or neglect one thing you
believe to be duty. That is what makes it so terrible."
His voice trembled as he replied,--"You trust me, and yet you think
me capable of a terrible crime."
"I know that to lay sacrilegious hands on the king is an unspeakable
crime," said she; "but to trust you is no choice of mine. I cannot
tear the trust of my heart from you if I would, Roger, and God knows
I would not if I could."
A light of almost triumphant joy passed over his face, as, standing
erect before her, with folded arms, he looked on her down-cast face,--
"Then the time must come when a delusion that cannot separate us in
heart can no longer separate us in life," he said, in tones scarcely
audible. "Your Mother said the truth, Lettice, when she joined our
hands. Such words from her lips at such a time are surely prophecy."
Lettice shook her head.
"My Mother saw beyond this world," she said, mournfully; "where there
are no delusions, and no divisions, and no partings."
He bent before her for an instant, and pressed her hand to his lips.
And so they parted.
That night Lettice and I watched together by Lady Lucy's bedside.
And all things that could distract and divide seemed for the time to
be dissolved in the peace of her presence.
She revived once or twice and spoke, although it seemed more in rapt
soliloquy than to any mortal ear.
"Everything grows clear to me," she said once; "everything I cared
most to see. The divisions and perplexities which bewilder us here
are only the colours the light puts on when it steps on earth. On
earth it is scarlet and purple and bordered work; in heaven it is
fine linen, clean and white, clean and white."
Often she murmured in clear rapid tones, very awful in the silence of
the sick-chamber at night, the words,--
"The king, the king!"
Lettice and I feared to go to her to ask what she meant, dreading
some question we dared not answer. We thought belike her mind was
wandering, as she did not seem to be appealing to us or looking for
an answer.
But at length the words came more distinctly, though broken and low,
and then we knew what they meant,--
"The King! King of kings! Faithful and true. Mine eyes shall see
the King in His beauty. He shall deliver the needy when he crieth,
King of the poor, King of the nations, King of kings, Faithful and
true. I am passing beyond the shadows. I begin to see the lights
which cast them. Beyond the storms--I see the angels of the winds.
Beyond the thunders--they are music, from above. Beyond the
clouds--they are the golden streets, from above. Mine eyes shall see
the King--as He is; as thou art; no change in Thee, but a change in
me. In Thy beauty as Thou art."
All the following day the things of earth were growing dim to her,
but to the last her courtesy seemed to survive her strength. No
little service was unacknowledged; even when the voice was inaudible,
the parched lips moved in thanks or in prayer.
And on the early morning of the 21st of January she passed away from
us, her hand in Lettice's, her eyes deep with the awful joy of some
sight we could not see.
On the evening of that very day came the tidings that the king had
been brought, on the 19th of January, as a criminal, before the High
Court of Justice in Westminster Hall, to be tried for his life as the
"principal author of the calamities of the nation."
When Lettice heard it, the first burst of tears came breaking the
stupor of her sorrow, as she sobbed on my shoulder, "Thank God she is
safe, beyond the storms of this terrible distracted world. She is
gone where she will never more be perplexed what to believe or what
to do."
"She is gone," said my Father, tenderly taking one of her hands in
his, "where loyalty and love of country, and liberty and law are
never at variance; where the noblest feelings and the noblest hearts
are never ranged against each other. And we hope to follow her
thither."
"But oh," sobbed Lettice, "this terrible space between!"
"Look up and press forward, my child," he replied, "and the way will
become clear. Step by step, day by day; the space between is the way
thither."