perhaps less of refined gallantry than prevailed among the “Cavaliers”
_par excellence_. Thus it was a feat of which old chivalry would have
been ashamed--that of Admiral Batten, when he cannonaded the house in
which Queen Henrietta Maria was sleeping, at Bridlington, and drove her
into the fields. But, what do I say touching the gallant refinement
on the respective sides?--after all, the rudeness of Batten was
civility itself compared with the doings of Goring and his dragoons.
On the other hand, there was not a man in arms, in either host, who
in knightly qualifications excelled Hampden--“a supreme governor over
all his passions and affections, and having thereby a great power over
those of other men.” With regard to Cromwell himself, Madame de Sévigné
has remarked, that there were some things in which the great Turenne
resembled him. This seems to me rather a compliment to Turenne than to
the Protector. The latter, like Hampden could conceal, at least, if he
could not govern his passions. He had the delicacy of knighthood; and
he was not such a man as Miles Burket, who, in his prayer on the Sunday
after the execution of the king, asked the Almighty if he had not smelt
a sweet savor of blood?
The fighting chivalry of Goring, let me add, was nevertheless perfect.
The courtesies of chivalry were not his; but in ability and bravery
he was never surpassed. His dexterity is said to have been especially
remarkable in sudden emergencies; and it was this dexterity that used
to be most praised in the knight of olden times. Many other cavaliers
were poor soldiers, but admirable company.
The fierce but indomitable spirit of chivalry, on the other hand, that
spirit which will endure all anguish without relinquishing an iota of
principle, or yielding an inch of ground in the face of overwhelming
numbers, was conspicuous in other men besides the martial followers
of Cromwell. I will only instance the case of Prynne, who, under the
merciless scourge, calmly preached against tyranny; and with his
neck in the pillory, boldly wagged his tongue against cruelty and
persecution. “Freeborn John” was gagged for his audacity, but when
he was thus rendered speechless, he stamped incessantly with his
unshackled feet, to express that he was invincible and unconvinced
still. If this was not as great courage as ever was shown by knight, I
know not what to call it.
Against the courage of Cromwell, Dugdale and Roger Manby say more than
can ever be alleged against Prynne--namely, that his heart failed him
once in his life. It is said, that when he was captain of a troop of
horse in Essex’s regiment, at Edgehill, “he absented himself from
the battle, and observing, from the top of a neighboring steeple the
disorder that the right wing sustained from Prince Rupert, he was so
terrified, that slipping down in haste by a bell-rope, he took horse,
and ran away with his troop, for which cowardice he had been cashiered,
had it not been for the powerful mediation of his friends.” This
passage shows that the legendary style of the chivalrous romance still
was followed as an example by historians. Indeed romance itself claimed
Oliver for a hero, as it had done with many a knight before him. It was
gravely told of him that, before the battle of Worcester, he went into
a wood, like any Sir Tristram, where he met a solemn old man with a
roll of parchment in his hand. Oliver read the roll--a compact between
him and the Prince of Darkness, and was heard to say, “This is only for
seven years; I was to have had one for one-and-twenty.” “Then,” says
the Chronicler, “he stood out for fourteen; but the other replied, that
if he would not take it on those terms, there were others who would. So
he took the parchment and died that day seven years.” This is history
after the model of the Seven Champions.
The observance of knightly colors was kept up in the contest between
commonwealth men and the crown. Those of Essex were deep yellow; and
so acute were the jealousies of war, that they who wore any other were
accounted as disaffected to the good cause.
I have remarked before, that Siri puts blame upon the Scottish
men-at-arms, whose alleged mercenary conduct was said to have been the
seed of a heavy crop of evil. The Scots seem to have been unpopular
on all sides. Before the catastrophe, which ended king and kingdom,
the French embassador, then in the north, was escorted to some point
by a troop of Scots horse. On leaving them, he drew out half-a-crown
piece, and asked them how many pence it contained. “Thirty,” was the
ready-reckoned answer of an arithmetical carabinier. “Exactly so!”
replied the envoy, flinging the piece among them with as much contempt
as the Prince of Orange felt respect, when he threw his cross among the
Dutch troops at Waterloo. “Exactly so! take it. It was the price for
which Judas betrayed his master.”
If the saints were unsainted in the time of the commonwealth, they
found some compensation at the hands of Mr. Penry, the author of Martin
Mar-Prelate, who chose to knight the most distinguished--and this not
only did he do to the male, but to the female saints. The facetious
Penry, accordingly, spoke of Sir Paul, Sir Peter, and Sir Martin, and
also of Sir Margaret and Sir Mary.
Passing on to later times, those of James II., I may observe that Poor
Nat Lee, when mad, said of a celebrated knight of this time, Sir Roger
Lestrange, that the difference between the two was that one was Strange
Lee, the other Lestrange. “You poor in purse,” said Lee, “as I am poor
in brains.” Sir Roger was certainly less richly endowed mentally than
the poet, but he had _one_ quality which a knight of old was bound
to have, above most men who were his contemporaries--namely, intense
admiration for the ladies. This gallantry he carried so far that when
he was licenser of books, it is said that he would readily wink at
unlicensed volumes, if the printer’s wife would only smile at him.
Though not exactly germane to the immediate subject of Sir Roger, I
will notice here that it was the custom for children, as late as the
reign of James II., on first meeting their parents in the morning, to
kneel at their feet and ask a blessing. This was an observance seldom
omitted in the early days of chivalry by knights who encountered a
priest. We often hear praises of this filial reverence paid by errant
knights to the spiritual fathers whom they encountered in their
wanderings.
Another social custom connected with chivalry was still observed during
this, and even during the reign of William III. It is noticed by
Dryden, in the dedication to his “Love Triumphant,” in the following
words:--“It is the usual practice of our decayed gentry to look about
them for some illustrious family, and then fix their young darling
where he may be both well-educated and supported.” The knightly courage
and the education were not _always_ of the highest quality, if we
might put implicit faith in the passage in Congreve’s _Old Bachelor_,
wherein it is said, “the habit of a soldier now-a-days as often cloaks
cowardice, as a black coat does atheism.” But the stage is not to be
taken as fairly holding the mirror up to nature; and for my part, I
do not credit the assertion of that stage-knight, Sir Harry Wildair,
that in England, “honesty went out with the slashed doublets, and
love with the close-bodied gown.” Nor do I altogether credit what is
said of Queen Anne’s time, in the _Fair Quaker of Deal_, that “our
sea-chaplains, generally speaking, are as drunk as our sea-captains.”
William III. knighted many a man who did not merit the honor, but he
was guilty of no such mistake when he laid the sword of chivalry on
the shoulders of honest Thomas Abney, citizen of London. Abney was one
of those happy architects who build up their own fortunes, and upon
a basis of rectitude and commonsense. In course of time, he achieved
that greatness which is now of so stupendous an aspect in the eyes of
the Parisians; in other words, he became Lord Mayor of London. The
religious spirit of chivalry beat within the breast that was covered
with broadcloth, and Sir Thomas Abney humbled himself on the day on
which he was exalted. He had been “brought up” a dissenter, but he
certainly was not one when he became sovereign of the city in the year
1700. He was none the less a Christian, and it is an exemplary and an
agreeable trait that we have of him, as illustrated in his conduct on
the day of his inauguration. The evening banquet was still in progress,
when he silently withdrew from the glittering scene, hurried home, read
evening prayers to such of his household as were there assembled on the
festive day, and then calmly returned and resumed his place among the
joyous company.
This knight’s hospitality was of the same sterling quality. Who forgets
that to him Dr. Watts (that amiable intolerant!) was indebted during
thirty years for a home? The Abney family had a respect for the author
of “the Sluggard,” which never slept. It almost reached idolatry. I
have said thirty years, but in truth, Dr. Watts was at home, at the
hearth of Sir Thomas, during no briefer a period than six-and-thirty
years. The valetudinarian poet, the severity of whose early studies had
compelled him to bid an eternal _vale_ to the goddess of health, was
welcomed by the knight, with an honest warmth born of respect for the
worth and genius of a kind-hearted man who “scattered damnation” in
gentle rhymes, and yet who would not have hurt a worm. In the little
paradise where he was as much at ease as his precarious health would
allow, it is astonishing with what vigor of spirit and weakness of
phrase the good-intentioned versifier thrust millions from the gates of
a greater paradise. Such at least was my own early impression of the
rhymes of the knight’s guest. They inspired much fear and little love:
and if I can see now that such was not the author’s design, and that
he only used menace to secure obedience, that thereby affection might
follow, I still am unable to come to any other conclusion, than that
the method adopted is open to censure.
He sat beneath the knightly roof, without a want unsupplied, with every
desire anticipated; exempted from having to sustain an active share of
the warfare in the great battle of life, he was beset by few, perhaps
by no temptations; and free from every care, he had every hour of the
day wherein to walk with God. His defect consisted in forgetting that
other men, and the children of men, had not his advantage, and while,
rightly enough, he accounted their virtue as nothing, he had no bowels
of compassion for their human failings. It is well to erect a high
standard, but it is not less so to console rather than condemn those
who fall short of it. “Excelsior” is a good advice, on a glorious
banner, but they who are luxuriously carried on beneath its folds
should not be hasty to condemn those who faint by the way, fall back,
and await the mercy of God, whereby to attain the high prize which they
had for their chief object. I should like to know if Sir Thomas ever
disputed the conclusions adopted by his guest.
This mention of the metropolitan knight and the poet who sat at his
hearth, reminds me of a patron and guest of another quality, who were
once well known in the neighborhood of Metz;--“Metz _sans_ Lorraine,”
as the proud inhabitants speak of a free locality which was surrounded
by, but was never _in_ Lorraine.
The patron was an old chevalier de St. Louis, with a small cross and
large “aîles de pigeon.” The guest was the parish priest, who resided
under his roof, and was the “friend of the house.” The parish was a
poor one, but it had spirit enough to raise a subscription in order
to supply the altar with a new _ciborium_--the vessel which holds
the “body of the Lord.” With the modest sum in hand, the Knight of
St. Louis, accompanied by the priest, repaired to Metz, to make the
necessary purchase. The orthodox goldsmith placed two vessels before
them. One was somewhat small, but suitable to the funds at the knight’s
disposal; the other was large, splendidly chased, and highly coveted by
the priest.
“Here is a pretty article,” said the chevalier, pointing to the
simpler of the two vessels: “But here is a more worthy,” interrupted
the priest. “It corresponds with the sum at our disposal,” remarked
the former. “I am sure it does not correspond with your love for Him
for whom the sum was raised,” was the rejoinder. “I have no authority
to exceed the amount named,” whispered the cautious chevalier. “But
you have wherewith of your own to supply the deficiency,” murmured
the priest. The perplexed knight began to feel himself a dissenter
from the church, and after a moment’s thought, and looking at the
smaller as well as the simpler of the two vessels, he exclaimed--“it
is large enough for the purpose, and will do honor to the church.”
“The larger would be more to the purpose, and would do more honor
to the Head of the Church,” was the steady clerical comment which
followed. “Do you mean to say that it is _not_ large enough?” asked
the treasurer. “Certainly, since there is a larger, which we may have,
if you will only be generous.” “_Mais!_” remonstrated the knight, in
a burst of profane impatience, and pointing to the smaller ciborium,
“Cela contiendroit le diable!” “Ah, Monsieur le Chevalier,” said the
priest, by no means shocked at the idiomatic phrase. “Le Bon Dieu est
plus grand que le diable!” This stroke won the day, and the goldsmith
was the most delighted of the three, at this conclusion to a knotty
argument.
George I. was not of a sufficiently generous mind to allow of his
distributing honors very profusely. The individuals, however, who were
eminently useful to him were often rewarded by being appointed to enjoy
the emoluments, if not exercise the duties of several offices, each
in his own person. At a period when this was being done in England,
the exact reverse was being accomplished in Spain. Thus we read in
the _London Gazette_ of March 29 to April 1, 1718, under the head of
Madrid, March 21, the following details, which might be put to very
excellent profit in England in these more modern times:--
“The King having resolved that no person shall enjoy more than one
office in his service, notice has been given to the Duke d’Arco, who is
Master of the Horse, and Gentleman of the Bedchamber; the Marquis de
Montelegre, Lord Chamberlain and Captain of the Guard of Halberdiers;
the Marquis de St. Juan, Steward of the Household, and Master of the
Horse to the Queen; and one of the Council of the Harinda, the Marquis
de Bedmar, the Minister of War, and President of the Council; and
several others who are in the like case, to choose which of their
employments they will keep. To which they have all replied that they
will make no claim, but will be determined by what his Majesty shall
think fit to appoint. The like orders are given in the army, where they
who receive pay as General Officers, and have Colonels’ commissions
besides, are obliged to part with their regiments.”
This regulation seriously disturbed the revenue of many a Spanish
knight; but it was a wise and salutary regulation, nevertheless. At the
very period of its being established, Venice was selling her titles
of knighthood and nobility. In the same Gazette from which the above
details are extracted, I find it noticed, under the head of “Venice,
March 25,” that “Signor David, and Paul Spinelli, two Geneva gentlemen,
were, upon their petition, admitted this week by the Grand Council,
into the Order of the Nobility of this Republic, having purchased that
honor for a hundred thousand ducats.” It was a large price for so small
a privilege.
I have treated of knighthood under George II., sufficiently at length,
when speaking of that king himself; and I will add only one trait of
his successor.
It was not often that George III. was facetious, but tradition has
attributed to him a compound pun, when he was urged by his minister
to confer knighthood upon Judge Day, on the return of the latter from
India. “Pooh! pooh!” remonstrated the king, “how can I turn a Day into
night?” On the ministerial application being renewed, the king asked,
if Mr. Day was married, and an affirmative reply being given, George
III. immediately rejoined, “Then let him come to the next drawing-room,
and I will perform a couple of miracles; I will not only turn Day into
Knight, but I will make Lady-Day at Christmas.”
There was a saying of George III. which, put into practice, was as
beneficial as many of the victories gained by more chivalrous monarchs.
“The ground, like man, was never intended to be idle. If it does not
produce something useful it will be overrun with weeds.”
Among the men whom James I. knighted, was one who had passed through
the career of a page, and notice of whom I have reserved, that I might
contrast his career with that of a contemporary and well-known squire.
RICHARD CARR, PAGE; AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE.
Of all the adventurers of the seventeenth century, I do not know
any who so well illustrate the objects I have in view, as the two
above-named gentlemen. The first commenced life as a page; the second
was an esquire by condition, and a man-at-arms. Master Faux, for
attempting murder, suffered death; and Richard Carr, although he was
convicted of murder, was suffered to live on, and was not even degraded
from knighthood.
When the Sixth James of Scotland reigned, a poor king in a poor
country, there was among his retinue a graceful boy--a scion of the
ancient house of Fernyhurst, poor in purse, and proud in name. At the
court of the extravagant yet needy Scottish king, there was but scant
living even for a saucy page; and Richard Carr of Fernyhurst turned his
back on Mid Lothian, and in foreign travel forgot his northern home.
James, in his turn, directed his face toward the English border; and
subsequently, in the vanities of Whitehall, the hunting at Theobald’s,
the vicious pleasure of Greenwich, and the roysterings at Royston, he
forgot the graceful lad who had ministered to him at Holyrood, St.
Andrews, and Dunbar.
When this James I. of England had grown nearly tired of his old
favorite and minister, Salisbury, for want of better employment he
ordered a tilting match, and the order was obeyed with alacrity. In
this match Lord Hay resolved to introduce to the King’s notice a youth
who enjoyed his lordship’s especial patronage. Accordingly, when the
monarch was seated in his tribune, and the brazen throats of the
trumpets had bidden the rough sport to begin, the young squire of Lord
Hay, a handsome youth of twenty, straight of limb, fair of favor,
strong-shouldered, smooth-faced, and with a modesty that enhanced his
beauty, rode up on a fiery steed, to lay his master’s shield and lance
at the feet of the monarch. The action of the apprentice warrior was
so full of grace, his steed so full of fire, and both so eminently
beautiful, that James was lost in admiration. But suddenly, as the
youth bent forward to present his master’s device, his spur pricked the
flank of his charger, and the latter, with a bound and a plunge, threw
his rider out of the saddle, and flung young Carr of Fernyhurst, at the
feet of his ex-master, the King. The latter recognised his old page,
and made amends for the broken leg got in the fall, by nursing the
lad, and making him Viscount Rochester, as soon as he was well. James
created him knight of the Garter, and taught him grammar. Rochester
gave lessons to the King in foreign history. The ill-favored King
walked about the court with his arms round the neck of the well-favored
knight. He was for ever either gazing at him or kissing him; trussing
his points, settling his curls, or smoothing his hose. When Rochester
was out of the King’s sight James was mindful of him, and confiscated
the estates of honest men in order to enrich his own new favorite.
He took Sherborne from the widow and children of Raleigh, with the
cold-blooded remark to the kneeling lady, “I maun have it for Carr!”
Rochester was a knight who ruled the King, but there was another knight
who ruled Rochester. This was the well-born, hot-headed, able and
vicious Sir Thomas Overbury. Overbury polished and polluted the mind
of Rochester; read all documents which passed through the hands of the
latter, preparatory to reaching those of the King, and not only penned
Rochester’s own despatches, but composed his love-letters for him. How
pointedly Sir Thomas could write may be seen in his “Characters;” and
as a poet, the knight was of no indifferent reputation in his day.
Rochester, Sir Thomas, and the King, were at the very height of their
too-warm friendship, when James gave Frances Howard, the daughter of
the Earl of Suffolk, in marriage to young Devereux, Earl of Essex. The
bride was just in her teens. The bridegroom was a day older. The Bishop
of Bath and Wells blessed them in the presence of the King, and Ben
Jonson and Inigo Jones constructed a masque in honor of the occasion.
When the curtain fell, bride and bridegroom went their separate ways;
the first to her mother; the second to school. Four years elapsed ere
they again met; and then Frances, who had been ill-trained by her
mother, seduced by Prince Henry, and wooed by Rochester, looked upon
Essex with infinite scorn. Essex turned from her with disgust.
Rochester then resolved to marry Frances, and Frances employed the
poisoner of Paternoster-row, Mrs. Turner, and a certain Dr. Forman,
to prepare philters that should make more ardent the flame of the
lover, and excite increased aversion in the breast of the husband.
Overbury, with intense energy, opposed the idea of the guilty pair,
that a divorce from Essex was likely to be procured. He even spoke
of the infamy of the lady, to her lover. Frances, thereupon, offered
a thousand pounds to a needy knight, Sir John Ward, to slay Overbury
in a duel. Sir John declined the offer. A more successful method was
adopted. Sir Thomas Overbury was appointed embassador to Russia, and
on his refusing to accept the sentence of banishment, he was clapped
into the tower as guilty of contempt toward the king. In that prison,
the literary knight was duly despatched by slow poison. The guilt was
brought home less to Rochester than to Frances, but the King himself
appears to have been very well content at the issue.
James united with Rochester and the lady to procure a divorce between
the latter and Essex. The King was bribed by a sum of £25,000. Essex
himself did not appear. Every ecclesiastical judge was recompensed who
pronounced for the divorce--carried by seven against five, and even
the son of one of them was knighted. This was the heir of Dr. Bilson,
Bishop of Winchester, and he was ever afterward known by the name of
Sir Nullity Bilson.
Sir Nullity danced at the wedding of the famous or infamous pair;
and never was wedding more splendid. King, peers, and illustrious
commoners graced it with their presence. The diocesan of Bath and
Wells pronounced the benediction. The Dean of St. Paul’s wrote for the
occasion an epithalamic eclogue. The Dean of Westminster supplied the
sermon. The great Bacon composed, in honor of the event, the “Masque of
Flowers;” and the City made itself bankrupt by the extravagant splendor
of its fêtes. One gentleman horsed the bride’s carriage, a bishop’s
lady made the bride’s cake, and one humorous sycophant offered the
married pair the equivocal gift of a gold warming-pan.
The King, not to be behindhand in distributing honors, conferred one
which cost him nothing. He created Rochester Earl of Somerset.
Two years after this joyous wedding, the gentleman who had made a
present to the bride, of four horses to draw her in a gilded chariot
to the nuptial altar, had become a knight and secretary of state. Sir
Richard (or, as some call him, Sir Robert) Winwood was a worshipper
of the now rising favorite, Villiers; and none knew better than this
newly-made knight that the King was utterly weary of his old favorite,
Somerset.
Winwood waited on the King and informed him that a garrulous young
apothecary at Flushing, who had studied the use of drugs under Dr.
Franklin of London, was making that melancholy town quite lively,
by his stories of the abuses of drugs, and the method in which they
had been employed by Lord and Lady Somerset, Mrs. Turner (a pretty
woman, who invented yellow starched ruffs) and their accomplices, in
bringing about the death of Overbury. The food conveyed to the latter
was poisoned by Frances and her lover, outside the tower, and was
administered to the imprisoned knight by officials within the walls,
who were bribed for the purpose.