suffering. That I was beaten every day was to be expected in an Age when
blows and stripes were the only means thought of for instilling
knowledge into the minds of youth. But I was alone, I was friendless, I
was poor. My master received, I have reason to believe, but a slender
Stipend with me, and he balanced accounts by using me with greater
barbarity than he employed towards his better paying scholars. I had no
Surname, I was only "Boy Jack;" and my schoolfellows put me down, I
fancy, as some base-born child, and accordingly despised me. I had no
pocket-money. I was not allowed to share in the school-games. I was
bidden to stand aside when a cake was to be cut up. God help me! I was
the most forlorn of little children. Mrs. Gnawbit was as kind to me as
she dared be, but she never showed me the slightest favour without its
bringing me (if her husband came to hear of it) an additionally cruel
Punishment.
There was a Pond behind the orchard called Tibb's hole, because, as our
schoolboy legend ran, a boy called Tibb had once cast himself thereinto,
and was drowned, through dread of being tortured by this Monster. I grew
to be very fond of standing alone by the bank of this Pond, and of
looking at my pale face in its cool blue-black depth. It seemed to me
that the Pond was my friend, and that within its bosom I should find
rest.
I was musing in this manner by the bank one day when I felt myself
touched on the shoulder. It was the crutch of the Old Gentleman, who
had been wheeled hither, as was his custom, by one of the boys.
"You go into the orchard and steal a juicy pear," said the Old Gentleman
to his attendant. "Gnawbit's out, and I won't tell him. Leave me with
Boy Jack for five minutes, and then come back.--Boy Jack," he continued,
when we were alone, "how do you like it?"
"Like what, sir?" I asked humbly.
"All of it, to be sure:--the birch, the cane, the thong, the ferula, the
rope's-end,--all Gnawbit's little toys?"
I told him, weeping, that I was very, very unhappy, and that I would
like to drown myself.
"That's wrong, that's wicked," observed the Old Gentleman with a
chuckle; "you mustn't drown yourself, because then you'd lose your
chance of being hanged. Gregory has as much right to live as other
folks."[H]
I did not in the least understand what he meant, but went on sobbing.
"I tell you what it is," pursued the Old Gentleman; "you mustn't stop
here, because Gnawbit will skin you alive if you do. He's bound to do
it; he's sworn to do it. He half-skinned Tibb; and was going to take off
the other half, when Tibb drowned himself like a fool in this hole here.
He was a fool, and should have followed my advice and run away. 'Tibb,'
I said, 'you'll be skinned. Bear it, but run away. Here's a guinea.
Run!' He was afraid that Gnawbit would catch him; and where is he now?
Skinned, and drowned into the bargain. Don't you be a Fool. You Run
while there's some skin left. Gnawbit's sworn to have it all, if you
don't. Here's a guinea, and run away as fast as ever your legs can carry
you."
He gave me a bright piece of gold and waved me off, as though I were to
run away that very moment. I submissively said that I would run away
after school was over, but asked him where I should run to.
"I'm sure I don't know," the Old Gentleman said somewhat peevishly.
"That's not my business. A boy that has got legs with skin on 'em, and
doesn't know where to run to, is a jackass.--Stop!" he continued, as if
a bright idea had just struck him; "did you ever hear of the Blacks?"
"No sir," I answered.
"Stupid oaf! Do you know where Charlwood Chase is?"
"Yes, sir; my schoolfellows have been nutting there, and I have heard
them speak of it."
"Then you make the best of your way to Charlwood Chase, and go a-nutting
there till you find the Blacks; you can't miss them; they're everywhere.
Run, you little Imp. See! the time's up, and here comes the boy who
stole the juicy pear." And the boy coming up, munching the remains of
one of Gnawbit's juiciest pears, my patron was wheeled away, and I have
never seen him from that day to this.
That very night I ran away from Gnawbit's, and made my way towards
Charlwood Chase to join the "Blacks," although who those "Blacks" were,
and whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they
were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester
John or the Man in the Moon might be.
FOOTNOTE:
[H] In my youth ancient persons as frequently spoke of the hangman as
"Gregory"--and he was so named at the trial of the Regicides in
1660-61--as by his later title of "Jack Ketch."--J. D.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF
THE KING'S CASTLES IN THE EAST COUNTRY.
AT the time when his Majesty Charles II. was so happily restored to the
throne of these kingdoms, there was, and had been, confined for upwards
of ten years, in one of his Majesty's Castles in the eastern part of
this kingdom, a certain Prisoner. His Name was known to none, not even
to the guards who kept watch over him, so to speak, night and day,--not
even to the gaoler, who had been told that he must answer with his Head
for his safe custody, who had him always in a spying, fretful
overlooking, and who slept every night with the keys of the Captive's
cell under his pillow. The Castle where he lay in hold has been long
since levelled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever had any earth to rest
upon, and was not rather stayed upon some jutting fragment of Rock
washed away at last by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, of its exact
situation I am not qualified to tell. I never saw the place, and my
knowledge of it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that
were done within its walls I can affirm the certitude with Truth. From
such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to
have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and
thick, and defying the lashings of the waves, almost as though it were
some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone
wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the
mainland by a drawbridge and barbican. But for many months of the year
there was no mainland within half a mile of it, and the King's Castle
could only be reached by boats. Men said that the Sun never shone there
but for ten minutes before and ten minutes after a storm, and there were
almost always storms lowering over or departing from that dismal place.
The Castle was at least two miles from any human habitation; for the few
fishermen's cabins, made of rotten boats, hogsheads nailed together, and
the like, which had pitifully nestled under the lee of the Castle in old
time, had been rigorously demolished to their last crazy timber when the
Prisoner was brought there. At a respectful distance only, far in, and
yet but a damp little islet in the midst of the fens, was permitted to
linger on, in despised obscurity, a poor swamp of some twenty houses
that might, half in derision and half in civility, be called a Village.
It had a church without a steeple, but with a poor Stump like the
blunted wreck of some tall ship's mainmast. The priest's wages were less
than those of a London coal-porter. The poor man could get no tithes,
for there were no tithes to give him. Three parts of his glebe were
always under water, and he was forced to keep a little school for his
maintenance, of which the scholars could pay him but scant fees, seeing
that it was always a chance whether their parents were dead of the Ague,
or Drowned. Yet there was a tavern in the village, where these poor,
shrinking, feverish creatures met and drank and smoked, and sang their
songs, contriving now and again to smuggle a few kegs of spirits from
Holland, and baffle the riding-officers in a scamper through the fens.
They were a simple folk, fond of telling Ghost-Stories, and with a firm
belief in charms to cure them from the Ague. And, with an awe whose
intensity was renewed each time the tale was told, they whispered among
themselves as to that Prisoner of Fate up at the Castle yonder. What
this man's Crime had been, none could tell. His misdeed was not, it was
whispered, stated in the King's Warrant. The Governor was simply told
to receive a certain Prisoner, who would be delivered to him by a
certain Officer, and that, at the peril of his life, he was to answer
for his safe custody. The Governor, whose name was Ferdinando Glover,
had been a Captain of Horse in the late Protector Oliver's time; but, to
the surprise of all men, he was not dismissed at his Majesty's
Restoration, but was continued in his command, and indeed, received
preferment, having the grade of a Colonel on the Irish establishment.
But they did not fail to tell him, and with fresh instances of severity,
that he would answer with his head for the safe keeping of his Prisoner.
Of this strange Person it behoves me now to speak. In the year 1660, he
appeared to be about seven-and-thirty years of age, tall, shapely,
well-knit in his limbs, which captivity had rather tended to make full
of flesh than to waste away; for there were no yards, nor spacious
outlying walls to this Castle; and but for a narrow ledge that ran
along the surrounding border, and where he was but rarely suffered to
walk, there was no means for him to take any exercise whatever. He wore
his own hair in full dark locks, which Time and Sorrow had alike agreed
to grizzle. Strong lines marked his face, but age had not brought them
there. His eye was dim, but more with watching and study than with the
natural failing of vital forces.
So he had been in this grim place going on for twelve years, without a
day's respite, without an hour's enlargement. True, he wore no fetters,
and was treated with a grave and stately Consideration; but his bonds
were not less galling, and the iron had not the less entered into his
soul. The Order was, that he was to be held as a Gentleman, and to be
subjected to no grovelling indignities or base usage. But the Order was
(for a long time, and until another Prisoner, hereafter to be named,
received a meed of Enlargement) likewise as strict that, save his
keepers, he should see no living soul. "And it is useless," wrote a
Great Lord to the Governor once, when it was humbly submitted to him
that the Prisoner might need spiritual consolation, and have solace to
his soul by conferring with poor Parson Webfoot yonder,--"it is
useless," said that nobleman, "for your charge to see any black gown,
under pretext that he would Repent; for, albeit though I know not his
crime more than the babe unborn, I have it from his Majesty's own
gracious word of mouth, that what he has done cannot be repented of;
therefore you are again commanded to keep him close, and to let him have
speech neither of parson nor of peasant." Which was duly done. But
Colonel Glover, not untouched by that curiosity inherent to mankind, as
well as womankind, took pains to cast about whether this was not one who
had a hand in compassing the death of King Charles I.; and this coming,
in some strange manner (through inquiries he had made in London), to the
ears of Authority, he was distinctly told that his prisoner was not one
of those bold bad men who, misled by Oliver Cromwell, had signed that
fatal Warrant:--the names and doom of the Regicides being now all well
known, as having suffered or fled from Justice, or being in hold, as Mr.
Martyn was. So Colonel Glover, being well assured that what was done was
for the King's honour, and for the well-being of his Estates, and that
any other further searching or prying might cost him his place, if they
did not draw him within the meshes of the law against Misprision of
Treason, forbore to vex himself or Authority further on matters that
concerned him not, and was so content to guard his Prisoner with greater
care than ever. The Castle was garrisoned by but twelve men, and of
these six were invalids and matrosses; but the other six were tall and
sturdy veterans, who had been indeed of Oliver's Life-guard, and were
now confirmed in their places, and with the pay, not of common soldiers,
but of private gentlemen, by the King's own order. Their life was
dreary enough, for they could hold but little comradeship with the
invalids, whom they dubbed "greybeards, drivellers, and kill-joys." But
they had a guard-room to themselves, where they diced and drank, and
told their ruffian stories, and sang their knavish catches, as is the
manner, I suppose, for all soldiers to do in all countries, whether in
camps or in cities. But their duty was withal of the severest. The
invalids went snugly to bed at nine of the clock, or thereabouts, but
the veritable men-of-war kept watch and ward all night, turn and turn
about, and even when they slept took their repose on a bench, which was
placed right across the Prisoner's door.
This much-enduring man--for surely no lot could be harder than his--to
be thus, and in the very prime and vigour of manhood, cooped up in a
worse than gaol, wherein for a long time he was even denied the company
of captives as wretched as he,--this slave to some Mightier Will and
Sterner Fate than, it would seem, mortal knowledge could wot of, bore
his great Distress with an unvarying meekness and calm dignity. With
him, indeed, they did as they listed, using him as one that was as Clay
in the hands of the Potter; but, not to the extent of one tetchy word or
froward movement, did he ever show that he thought his imprisonment
unjust, or the bearing of those who were set over him cruel. And this
was not an abject stupor or dull indifference, such as I have marked in
rogues confined for life in the Bagnios of the Levant, who knew that
they must needs pull so many strokes and get so many stripes every day,
and so gave up battling with the World, and grinned contumely at their
gaolers or the visitors who came sometimes to point at them and fling
them copper money. In the King's Prisoner there was a philosophic
reserve and quietness that almost approached content; and his
resignation under suffering was of that kind that a Just Man may feel
who knows that he is upon the ground, and that, howsoever his enemies
push at him, he cannot fall far. He never sought to evade the conditions
of his captivity or to plead for its being lightened. The courtesies
that were offered to him, in so far as the Governor was warranted in
offering such civilities, he took as his due; but he never craved a
greater indulgence or went one step in word or in deed to obtain a
surcease from his harsh and cruel lot.
He would rise at six of the clock both in winter and summer, and apply
himself with great ardour to his private devotions and to good studies
until eight, when his breakfast, a tankard of furmety and a small
measure of wine, was brought him. And from nine until noon he would
again be at his studies, and then have dinner of such meats as were in
season. From one to three he was privileged to walk either on the narrow
strip of masonry that encompassed his prison-house, and with a soldier
with his firelock on hip following his every step, or else to wander up
and down in the various chambers of the Castle, still followed by a
guard. Now he would tarry awhile in the guard-room, and stand over
against the soldier's table, his head resting very sadly against the
chimney, and listen to their wild talk, which was, however, somewhat
hushed and shaped to decency so long as he abided there. And anon he
would come into the Governor's apartment, and hold Colonel Glover for
some moments in grave discourse on matters of history, and the lives of
Worthy Captains, and sometimes upon points and passages of Scripture,
but never upon anything that concerned the present day. For, beyond the
bounds of the place in which he was immured, what should he know of
things of instant moment, or of the way the world was wagging? By
permission, the Colonel had told him that Oliver was no more, and that
Richard, his son, was made Protector in his stead. Then, at the close of
that weak and vain shadow of a Reign, and after the politic act of my
Lord Duke of Albemarle (Gen. Monk), who made his own and the country's
fortune, and Nan Clarges'[I] to boot, at one stroke, the Prisoner was
given to know that schism was at an end, and that the King had come to
his own again. Colonel Glover must needs tell him; for he was bidden to
fire a salvo from the five pieces of artillery he had mounted, three on
his outer wall, and two at the top of his donjon-keep, to say nothing of
hoisting the Royal Standard, which now streamed from the pole where erst
had floated the rag that bore the arms of the Commonwealth of
England.[J]
"I am glad," the Prisoner said, when they told him. "I hope this young
man will make England happier than did his father before him." But this
was after he was in hopes of getting some company in his solitude, and
when he was cheerfuller.
It was about midway in his imprisonment when another Captive was brought
to the King's Castle; but it was not until close upon the Restoration of
King Charles II. that the two prisoners were permitted to come together.
The second guest in this most dolorous place was a Woman, and that Woman
was my Grandmother, Arabella Greenville.
There is no use in disguising the fact that, for many months after the
failure of her attack on the Protector, the poor Lady had been as
entirely distraught as was her fate after the death of the Lord Francis,
and that to write her Life during this period would be merely penning
the chronicle of a continued Frenzy. It were merciful to draw a veil
over so sad and mortifying a scene--so well brought up as she had been,
and respected by all the Quality,--but in pursuit of the determination
with which I set out, to tell the Truth, and all the Truth, I am forced
to confess that my Grandmother's Ravings were of the most violent, and
that of her thoroughly demented state there could be no doubt. So far,
indeed, did the unhappy creature's Abandonment extend, that those who
were about her could with difficulty persuade her to keep any Garments
upon her body, and were forced with Stripes and Revilings to force to a
decorous carriage the gentle Lady who had once been the very soul and
mirror of Modesty. But in process of time these dreadful furies and
rages left her, and she became calm. She was still beautiful, albeit her
comeliness was now of a chastened and saddened order, and, save her eye,
there was no light or sparkle in her face.
When her health and mind were healed, so far as earthly skill could heal
them,--it being given out, I am told, to her kindred that she had died
mad in the Spinning House at Cambridge: but she had never been further
than the house of one Dr Empson at Colchester, who had tended her
during her distraction,--my Grandmother was brought to the King's Castle
in the East, and for a long time lay incarcerate in a lower chamber of
the Keep, being not allowed even that scant exercise which was permitted
to the Prisoner above, and being waited upon and watched night and day
by the Governor's Daughter, Mistress Ruth Glover, who at nights slept in
a little closet adjoining my Grandmother's chamber. The girl had a
tongue, I suppose, like the rest of her sex,--and of our sex too,
brother,--and she would not have been eighteen, of a lively Disposition,
and continually in the society of a Lady of Birth and accomplishments,
not more than ten years her senior, without gossiping to her concerning
all that she knew of the sorry little world round about her. It was not,
however, much, or of any great moment, that Ruth had to tell my
Grandmother. She could but hold her in discourse of how the Invalid
Matrosses had the rheumatism and the ague; how the Life-guard men in
their room diced and drank and quarrelled, both over their dice and
their drink; how the rumour ran that the poverty-stricken habitants of
the adjoining village had, from long dwelling among the fens, become as
web-footed as the wild-fowl they hunted; and how her Father, who had
been for many years a widower, was harsh and stern with her, and would
not suffer her to read the romances and play-books, some half-dozen of
which the Sergeant of the Guard had with him. She may have had a little
also to say about the Prisoner in the upper story of the Keep--how his
chamber was all filled with folios and papers; how he studied and wrote
and prayed; and during his two hours' daily liberty wandered sadly and
in a silent manner about the Castle. For this was all Mistress Ruth had
to tell, and of the Prisoner's name, or of his Crime, she was, perforce,
mum.
These two Women nevertheless shaped all kinds of feverish Romances and
wild conjectures respecting this unknown man above stairs. Arabella had
told her own sad story to the girl who--though little better than a
waiting-woman--she had made, for want of a better bower-maiden, her
Confidante. I need not say that oceans of Sympathy, or the accepted
Tokens thereof, I mean Tears, ran out from the eyes of the Governor's
Daughter when she heard the History of the Lord Francis, of the words he
spoke just before the musketeers fired their pieces at him, and of
another noble speech he made two hours before he Suffered, when the
Officer in command, compassionating his youth and parts, told him that
if he had any suit, short of life, to prefer to the Lord General, he
would take upon himself to say that it should be granted without
question; whereon quoth my Lord Francis, "I will not die with any suit
in my mouth, save to the King of kings." On this, and on the story of
the Locket, and of his first becoming acquainted with Arabella, of his
sprightly disguise as a Teacher, with the young squire at Madam
Desaguilier's school at Hackney, of his Beauty and Virtues and fine
manners and extraordinary proficiency in Arts and Letters and the
Exercises of Chivalry,--of these and a thousand kindred things the two
women were never tired of talking. And, indeed, if one calls to mind
what vast Eloquence and wealth of words two loving hearts can distil
from a Bit of Ribbon or a Torn Letter, it is not to be wondered at that
Arabella and Ruth should find their Theme inexhaustible--so good and
brave as had been its Object, now dead and cold in the bloody trench at
Hampton yonder, and convert it into a perpetually welling spring of
Mournful Remembrances.
Arabella had taken to her old trick of Painting again, and in the first
and second year of her removal to the Castle executed some very
creditable performances. But she never attempted either the effigies of
her Lover or of the Protector, and confined herself to portraitures of
the late martyred King, and of the Princes now unjustly kept from their
inheritance.
It was during the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell (that mere
puppet-play of Power) that the watch kept on the prisoners in the King's
Castle grew for a time much less severe and even lax. Arabella was
suffered to go out of her chamber, even at the very hours that the
Prisoner above was wandering to and fro. The guards did not hinder their
meeting; and, says Colonel Ferdinando Glover, one day to his daughter,
"I should not wonder if, some of these days, Orders were to come down
for me to set both my birds free from their cage. That which Mrs.
Greenville has done, you and I know full well, and I am almost sorry
that she did not succeed."
"Oh, father!" cries Mistress Ruth, who was of a very soft and tender
nature, and abhorred the very idea of bloodshed; so that, loving
Arabella as she did with all her heart, she could not help regarding her
with a kind of Terror when she remembered the deed for which she was
confined.
"Tush, girl," the Colonel makes answer, "'tis no Treason now to name
such a thing. Oliver's dead, and will eat no more bread; and I misliked
him much at the end, for it is certain that he betrayed the Good Old
Cause, and hankered after an earthly crown. As for this young Popinjay,
he will have more need to protect himself than these Kingdoms. And I
think that if your father is to live on the King's wages, it had better
be on the real King's than the false one."
"And do you think, father, that King Charles will come to his own
again?" asks Ruth, in a flutter of delight; for Arabella had made her a
very Royalist at heart.