Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Je-hnRe2EckC
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
SHREWSBURY
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF
A Tale of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE.
A Tale of the Days of Henry of Navarre.
THE RED COCKADE.
A Tale of the French Revolution.
[Illustration: WITH A GESTURE BETWEEN CONTEMPT AND IMPATIENCE THE DUKE
REMOVED HIS HAT]
SHREWSBURY
A Romance
BY
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE,"
"THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF," ETC.
WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
CLAUDE A. SHEPPERSON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1898
Copyright, 1897
By STANLEY J. WEYMAN
* * *
_All rights reserved_
TO MY BROTHER HENRY
IN MEMORY OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE YEAR 1877
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
With a gesture between contempt and impatience the duke removed his
hat. _Frontispiece_.
She looked directly at me.
In an instant I was on the other side of the fence.
Stole down the stairs and into the garden.
My companion seized my wrist.
The constable led me out of the crowd.
"When my back is turned go through that window."
He wore a dingy morning-gown and had laid aside his wig.
"Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried.
He pressed the ring of cold steel.
In the great chair sat an elderly lady leaning on an ebony stick.
I heard a light foot following me.
With a gesture between contempt and impatience the duke removed his
hat.
I flung my arms round him from behind, and with my right hand jerked
up the pistol.
A slight gentleman ambled and paced in front of a child.
"Now we will have that letter, if you please."
I saw a man had come to a stand before the door.
The place was nothing more than a concealed cupboard.
And turning from me, he began to pace the room, his hands clasped
behind him.
She came a step nearer to me, and peered at me.
Sir John ... stared at me a moment.
She listened in silence, standing over me with something of the
severity of a judge.
He shut himself in with his trouble.
I stood there at last ... the faces at the table all turned towards
me.
She was making marks on the turf with a stick.
SHREWSBURY
CHAPTER I
That the untimely death at the age of fifty-eight of that great
prince, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my most noble and generous
patron, has afflicted me with a sorrow which I may truly call _acerbus
et ingens_, is nothing to the world; which from one in my situation
could expect no other, and, on the briefest relation of the benefits I
had at his hands, might look for more. Were this all, therefore, or my
task confined to such a relation, I should supererogate indeed in
making this appearance. But I am informed that my lord Duke's death
has revived in certain quarters those rumours to his prejudice which
were so industriously put about at the time of his first retirement;
and which, refuted as they were at the moment by the express
declaration of his Sovereign, and at leisure by his own behaviour, as
well as by the support which at two great crises he gave to the
Protestant succession, formed always a proof of the malice, as now of
the persistence, of his enemies.
Still, such as they are, and though, not these circumstances only, but
a thousand others have time after time exposed them, I am instructed
that they are again afloat; and find favour in circles where to think
ill of public men is held the first test of experience. And this being
the case, and my affection for my lord such as is natural, I perceive
a clear duty. I do not indeed suppose that anyone can at this time of
day effect that which the sense of all good men failed to effect while
he lived--I mean the final killing of those rumours; nor is a plain
tale likely to persuade those, with whom idle reports, constantly
furbished up, of letters seen in France, weigh more than a consistent
life. But my lord's case is now, as I take it, removed to the Appeal
Court of Posterity; which nevertheless, a lie constantly iterated may
mislead. To provide somewhat to correct this, and wherefrom future
historians may draw, I who knew him well, and was in his confidence
and in a manner in his employment at the time of Sir John Fenwick's
case--of which these calumnies were always compact--propose to set
down my evidence here; shrinking from no fulness, at times even
venturing on prolixity, and always remembering a saying of Lord
Somers', that often the most material part of testimony is that on
which the witness values himself least. To adventure on this fulness,
which in the case of many, and perhaps the bulk of writers, might
issue in the surfeit of their readers, I feel myself emboldened by the
possession of a brief and concise manner of writing; which, acquired
in the first place in the circumstances presently to appear, was later
improved by constant practice in the composition of my lord's papers.
And here some will expect me to proceed at once to the events of the
year 1696, in which Sir John suffered, or at least 1695. But softly,
and a little if you please _ab ovo_; still the particulars which
enabled my lord's enemies to place a sinister interpretation on his
conduct in those years had somewhat, and, alas, too much, to do with
me. Therefore, before I can clear the matter up from every point of
view, I am first to say who I am, and how I came to fall in the way of
that great man and gain his approbation; with other preliminary
matters, relating to myself, whereof some do not please at this
distance, and yet must be set down, if with a wry face.
Of which, I am glad to say, that the worst--with one exception---comes
first, or at least early. And with that, to proceed; premising always
that, as in all that follows I am no one, and the tale is my lord's, I
shall deal very succinctly with my own concerns and chancings, and
where I must state them for clearness of narration, will do so
_currente calamo_ (as the ancients were wont to say) and so forthwith
to those more important matters with which my readers desire to be
made acquainted.
Suffice it, then, that I was born near Bishop's Stortford on the
borders of Hertfordshire, in that year so truly called the Annus
Mirabilis, 1666; my father, a small yeoman, my mother of no better
stock, she being the daughter of a poor parson in that neighbourhood.
In such a station she was not likely to boast much learning, yet she
could read, and having served two years in a great man's still-room,
had acquired notions of gentility that went as ill with her station as
they were little calculated to increase her contentment. Our house lay
not far from the high road between Ware and Bishop's Stortford, which
furnished us with frequent opportunities of viewing the King and
Court, who were in the habit of passing that way two or three times in
the year to Newmarket to see the horse-races. On these occasions we
crowded with our neighbours to the side of the road, and gaped on the
pageant, which lacked no show of ladies, both masked and unmasked, and
gentlemen in all kinds of fripperies, and mettlesome horses that hit
the taste of some among us better than either. On these excursions my
mother was ever the foremost and the most ready; yet it was not long
before I learned to beware of her hand for days after, and expect none
but gloomy looks and fretful answers; while my father dared no more
spell duty for as much as a week, than refuse the King's taxes.
Nevertheless, and whatever she was as a wife--and it is true she could
ding my father's ears, and, for as handsome as she was, there were
times when he would have been happier with a plainer woman--I am far
from saying that she was a bad mother. Indeed, she was a kind, if
fickle, and passionate one, wiser at large and in intention than in
practice and in small matters. Yet if for one thing only, and putting
aside natural affection--in which I trust I am not deficient--she
deserved to be named by me with undying gratitude. For having learned
to read, but never to write, beyond, that is, the trifle of her maiden
name, she valued scholarship both by that she had, and that she had
not; and in the year after I was breeched, prevailed on my father who,
for his part, good man, never advanced beyond the Neck Verse, to bind
me to the ancient Grammar School at Bishop's Stortford, then kept by a
Mr. G----.
I believe that there were some who thought this as much beyond our
pretensions, as our small farm fell below the homestead of a man of
substance; and for certain, the first lesson I learned at that school
was to behave myself lowly and reverently to all my betters, being
trounced on arrival by three squires' sons, and afterwards, in due
order and gradation, by all who had or affected gentility. To balance
this I found that I had the advantage of my master's favour, and that
for no greater a thing than the tinge of my father's opinions. For
whereas the commonalty in that country, as in all the eastern
counties, had been for the Parliament in the late troubles, and still
loved a patriot, my father was a King's man; which placed him high in
Mr. G----'s estimation, who had been displaced by the Rump and hated
all of that side, and not for the loss of his place only, but, and in
a far greater degree, for a thing which befell him later, after he had
withdrawn to Oxford. For being of St. John's College, and seeing all
that rich and loyal foundation at stake, he entered himself in a body
of horse which was raised among the younger collegians and servants;
and probably if he had been so lucky as to lose an eye or an arm in
the field of honour, he would have forgiven Oliver all, and not the
King's sufferings only, but his own. But in place of that it was his
ill-chance to be one of a troop that, marching at night by the river
near Wallingford, took fright at nothing and galloped to Abingdon
without drawing rein; for which reason, and because an example was
needed, they were disbanded. True, I never heard that the fault on
that occasion lay with our master, nor that he was a man of less
courage than his neighbours; but he took the matter peculiarly to
heart, and never forgave the Roundheads the slur they had unwittingly
cast on his honour; on the contrary, and in the event, he regularly
celebrated the thirtieth of January by flogging the six boys who stood
lowest in each form, and afterwards reading the service of the day
over their smarting tails. By some, indeed, it was alleged that the
veriest dunces, if of loyal stock, might look to escape on these
occasions; but I treat this as a calumny.
That the good man did in truth love and favour loyalty, however, and
this without sparing the rod in season, I am myself a bright and
excellent example. For though I never attained to the outward flower
of scholarship by proceeding to the learned degree of arts at either
of the Universities, I gained the root and kernel of the matter at
Bishop's Stortford, being able at the age of fourteen to write a fine
hand, and read Eutropius, and Caesar, and teach the horn-book and
Christ-Cross to younger boys. These attainments, and the taste for
polite learning, which, as these pages will testify, I have never
ceased to cultivate, I owe rather to the predilection which he had for
me than to my own gifts; which, indeed, though doubtless I was always
a boy of parts, I do not remember to have been great at the first.
_Sub ferula_, however, and with encouragement, I so far advanced that
he presently began to consider the promoting me to the place of usher,
with a cane _in commendam_; and, doubtless, he would have done it but
for a fit that took him at the first news of the Rye House Plot, and
the danger his Sacred Majesty had run thereby--which a friend
imprudently brought to him when he was merry after dinner--and which
caused an illness that at one and the same time carried him off, and
deprived me of the best of pedagogues.
After that, and learning that his successor had a son whom he proposed
to promote to the place I desired, I returned to the school no more,
but began to live at home; at first with pleasure, but after no long
interval with growing chagrin and tedium. Our house possessed none of
the comforts that are necessary to idleness, and therefore when the
east wind drove me indoors from swinging on the gate, or sulking in
the stack-yard, I found it neither welcome nor occupation. My younger
brother had seized on the place of assistant to my father, and having
got thews and experience _ambulando_, found fresh ground every day for
making mock of my uselessness. Did I milk, the cows kicked over the
bucket, while I thought of other things; did I plough, my furrows ran
crooked; when I thrashed, the flail soon wearied my arms. In the
result, therefore, the respect with which my father had at first
regarded my learning, wore off, and he grew to hate the sight of me
whether I hung over the fire or loafed in the doorway, my sleeves too
short for my chapped arms, and my breeches barely to my knees. Though
my mother still believed in me, and occasionally, when she was in an
ill-humour with my father, made me read to her, her support scarcely
balanced the neighbours' sneers. Nor when I chanced to displease
her--which, to do her justice, was not often, for I was her
favourite--was she above joining in the general cry, and asking me,
while she cuffed me, whether I thought the cherries fell into the
mouth, and meant to spend all my life with my hands in my pockets.
To make a long story short, at the end of twelve months, whereof every
day of the last ten increased my hatred of our home surroundings, the
dull strip of common before the door, the duck-pond, the grey horizon,
and the twin ash-trees on which I had cut my name so often, I heard
through a neighbour that an usher was required in a school at Ware.
This was enough for me; while, of my family, who saw me leave with
greater relief on their own account than hope on mine, only my mother
felt or affected regret. With ten shillings in my pocket, her parting
gift, and my scanty library of three volumes packed among my clothes
on my back, I plodded the twelve miles to Ware, satisfied the learned
Mr. D---- that I had had the small-pox, would sleep three in a bed,
and knew more than he did; and the same day was duly engaged to teach
in his classical seminary, in return for my board, lodging, washing,
and nine guineas a year.
He had trailed a pike in the wars, and was an ignorant, but neither a
cruel, nor, save in the pretence of knowledge, a dishonest man; it
might be supposed, therefore, that, after the taste of idleness and
dependence I had had, I should here find myself tolerably placed, and
in the fair way of promotion. But I presently found that I had merely
exchanged a desert for a prison, wherein I had not only the
shepherding of the boys to do, both by night and day, which in a short
time grew inconceivably irksome, so that I had to choose whether I
would be tyrant or slave; but also the main weight of teaching, and
there no choice at all but to be a drudge. And this without any
alleviation from week's end to week's end, either at meals or at any
other time! for my employer's wife had high notions, and must keep a
separate house, though next door, and with communications; sitting
down with us only on Sundays, and then at dinner, when woe betide the
boy who gobbled his food or choked over the pudding-balls. Having
satisfied herself on my first coming that my father was neither of the
Quorum nor of Justice's kin, and, in fact, a mere rustic nobody, she
had no more to say to me, but when she was not scolding her husband,
addressed herself solely to one of the boys, who by virtue of an uncle
who was a Canon, had his seat beside her. Insensibly, her husband, who
at first, with an eye to my knowledge and his own deficiencies, had
been more civil to me, took the same tone; and not only that, but,
finding that I was to be trusted, he came less and less into school,
until at last he would only appear for a few minutes in the day, and
to carve when we had meat, and to see the lights extinguished at
night. This without any added value for me; so that the better I
served him--and for a year I managed his school for him--the less he
favoured me, and at last thought a nod all the converse he owed me in
the day.
Consigned to this solitary life by those above me, it was not likely
that I should find compensation in the society of lads to whom I stood
in an odious light, and of whom the oldest was no more than fourteen.
For what was our life? Such hours as we did not spend in the drudgery
of school, or in our beds, we passed in a yard on the dank side of the
house, a grassless place, muddy in winter and dusty in summer,
overshadowed by one skeleton tree; and wherein, since all violent
games and sports were forbidden by the good lady's scruples (who
belonged to the fanatical party) as savouring of Popery, we had
perforce to occupy ourselves with bickerings and complaints and
childish plays. Abutting on the garden of her house, this yard
presented on its one open side a near prospect of water-butts, and
drying clothes, so that to this day I profess that I hold it in
greater horror than any other place or thing at that school.
It is true we walked out in the country at rare intervals; but as
three sides of the town were forbidden to us by a great man, whose
property lay in that quarter, and who feared for his game, our
excursions were always along one road, which afforded neither change
nor variety. Moreover, I had a particular reason for liking these
excursions as little as possible, which was that they exposed me to
frequent meetings with gay young sparks of my own age, whose scornful
looks as they rode by, with the contemptuous names they called after
me, asking who dressed the boys' hair and the like, I found it
difficult to support--even with the aid of those reflections on the
dignity of learning and the Latin tongue which I had imbibed from my
late master.
Be it remembered (in palliation of that which I shall presently tell)
that at this time I was only eighteen, an age at which the passions
and ambitions awake, and that this was my life. At a time when youth
demands change and excitement and the fringe of ornament, my days and
weeks went by in a plain round, as barren of wholesome interests as it
was unadorned by any kindly aid or companionship. To rise, to teach,
to use the cane, to move always in a dull atmosphere of routine; for
diversion to pace the yard I have described, always with shrill
quarrellings in my ears--these with the weekly walk made up my life at
Ware, and must form my excuse. How the one came to an abrupt end, how
I came to have sore need of the other, it is now my business to tell;
but of these in the next chapter; wherein also I propose to show,
without any moralities, another thing that shall prove them to the
purpose, namely, how these early experiences, which I have thus curtly
described, led me _per viam dolorosam_ to my late lord, and mingled my
fortunes with his, under circumstances not unworthy of examination by
those who take mankind for their study.