trial which ensued. It is impossible to read them without the
conviction that some one higher in rank than the Somersets was
interested, if not actually concerned, in the death of Overbury. The
smaller personages were hanged, and Mrs. Turner put yellow ruffs out of
fashion by wearing them at the gallows.
Lady Somerset pleaded _guilty_, evidently under the influence of a
promise of pardon, if she did so, and of fear lest Bacon’s already
prepared speech, had she pleaded _not guilty_, might send her to an
ignominious death. She was confined in the Tower, and she implored with
frantic energy, that she might not be shut up in the room which had
been occupied by Overbury.
Somerset appeared before his judges in a solemn suit, and wearing
the insignia of the Garter. He pleaded _not guilty_, but despite
insufficiency of legal evidence he was convicted, and formally
condemned to be hanged, like any common malefactor. But the ex-page
won his life by his taciturnity. Had he, in his defence, or afterward,
revealed anything that could have displeased or disturbed the King, his
life would have paid the forfeit. As it was, the King at once ordered
that the Earl’s heraldic arms as knight of the Garter should not be
taken down. For the short period of the imprisonment of the guilty
pair, both guilty of many crimes, although in the matter of Overbury
there is some doubt as to the extent of the Earl’s complicity, they
separately enjoyed the “Liberty of the Tower.” The fallen favorite was
wont to pace the melancholy ramparts with the George and collar round
his neck and the Garter of knighthood below his knee. He was often
seen in grave converse with the Earl of Northumberland. Sometimes, the
guilty wife of Somerset, impelled by curiosity or affection, would
venture to gaze at him for a minute or two from her lattice, and then,
if the Earl saw her, he would turn, gravely salute her, and straightway
pass on in silence.
When liberated from the Tower, the knight of the Garter, convicted of
murder, and his wife, confessedly guilty, went forth together under
protection of a royal pardon. Down to the time of the death of Lady
Somerset, in 1632, the wretched pair are said never to have opened
their lips but to express, each hatred and execration of the other.
The earl lived on till 1645--long enough to see the first husband of
his wife carry his banner triumphantly against the son of James, at
Edgehill. The two husbands of one wife died within a few months of each
other.
Such was the career of one who began life as a page. Let us contrast
therewith the early career of one whose name is still more familiar to
the general reader.
Toward the middle of the sixteenth century there was established at
York a respectable and influential Protestant family of the name of
Fawkes. Some of the members were in the legal profession, others were
merchants. One was registrar and advocate of the Consistory Court of
the cathedral church of York. Another was notary and proctor. A third
is spoken of as a merchant-stapler. All were well to-do; but not one
of them dreamed that the name of Fawkes was to be in the least degree
famous.
The Christian name of the ecclesiastical lawyer was Edward. He was
the third son of William and Ellen Fawkes, and was the favorite child
of his mother. She bequeathed trinkets, small sums, and odd bits of
furniture to her other children, but to Edward she left her wedding
suit, and the residue of her estate. Edward Fawkes was married when his
mother made her will. While the document was preparing, his wife Edith
held in her arms an infant boy. To this boy she left her “best whistle,
and one old angel of gold.”
The will itself is a curious document. It is devotional, according
to the good custom of the days in which it was made. The worthy old
testator made some singular bequests; to her son Thomas, amid a
miscellaneous lot, she specifies, “my second petticoat, my worsted
gowne, gardit with velvet, and a damask kirtle.” The “best kirtle and
best petticoat” are bequeathed to her daughter-in-law Edith Fawkes.
Among the legatees is a certain John (who surely must have been a
_Joan_) Sheerecrofte, to whom, says Mistress Fawkes, “I leave my
petticoat fringed about, my woorse grogram kirtle, one of my lynn
smockes, and a damask upper bodie.” The sex, however, of the legatee is
not to be doubted, for another gentleman in Mrs. Fawkes’s will comes in
for one of her bonnets!
The amount of linen bequeathed, speaks well for the lady’s housewifery;
while the hats, kirtles, and rings, lead us to fear that the wife
of Master Edward Fawkes must have occasionally startled her husband
with the amount of little accounts presented to him by importunate
dressmakers, milliners, and jewellers. Such, however, was the will of
a lady of York three centuries ago, and the child in arms who was to
have the silver whistle and a gold angel was none other than our old
acquaintance, known to us as Guy Faux.
Guy was christened on the sixteenth of April, 1570, in the still
existing church of St. Michael le Belfry; and when the gossips and
sponsors met round the hospitable table of the paternal lawyer to
celebrate the christening of his son, the health of Master Guy followed
hard upon that of her gracious highness the queen.
Master Guy had the misfortune to lose his father in his ninth year.
“He left me but small living,” said Guy, many years afterward, “and I
spent it.” After his sire’s decease, Guy was for some years a pupil at
the free foundation grammar-school in “the Horse Fayre,” adjacent to
York. There he accomplished his humanities under the Reverend Edward
Pulleyne. Among his schoolfellows were Bishop Morton, subsequently
Bishop of Durham, and a quiet little boy, named Cheke, who came to be a
knight and baronet, and who, very probably went, in after-days, to see
his old comrade in the hands of the hangman.
Some seventeen miles from York stands the pleasant town of
Knaresborough, and not far from Knaresborough is the village of
Scotten. When Guy was yet a boy, there lived in this village a very
gay, seductive wooer, named Dennis Baynbridge. This wooer was wont to
visit the widowed Edith, and the result of his visits was that the
widowed Edith rather hastily put away her weeds, assumed a bridal
attire, married the irresistible Dennis, and, with her two daughters,
Anne and Elizabeth, and her only son Guy, accompanied her new husband
to his residence at Scotten.
Baynbridge was a Roman Catholic, as also were the Pullens, Percies,
Winters, Wrights, and others who lived in Scotten or its neighborhood,
and whose names figure in the story of the Gunpowder Plot.
At Scotten, then, and probably soon after his mother’s marriage, in
1582, Guy, it may be safely said, left the faith in which he had been
baptized, for that of the Romish Church. Had he declined to adopt
the creed of his step-sire, he perhaps would have been allowed but
few opportunities of angling in the Nidd, rabbiting by Bilton Banks,
nutting in Goldsborough Wood, or of passing idle holydays on Grimbald
Craig.
On the wedding-day of Edith Fawkes and Dennis Baynbridge, the paternal
uncle of Guy made his will. He exhibited his sense of the step taken by
the lady, by omitting her name from the will, and by bequeathing the
bulk of his property to the two sisters of Guy. To Guy himself, Uncle
Thomas left only “a gold ring,” and a “bed and one pair of sheets, with
the appurtenances.”
When Guy became of age, he found himself in possession of his
patrimony--some land and a farm-house. The latter, with two or three
acres of land, he let to a tailor, named Lumley, for the term of
twenty-one years, at the annual rent of forty-two shillings. The
remainder he sold at once for a trifle less than thirty pounds. Shortly
after, he made over to a purchaser all that was left of his property.
He bethought himself for a while as to what course he should take, and
finally he chose the profession of arms, and went out to Spain, to
break crowns and to win spurs.
In Spain, he fell into evil company and evil manners. He saw enough of
hard fighting, and indulged, more than enough, in hard drinking. He was
wild, almost savage of temper, and he never rose to a command which
gave him any chance of gaining admission on the roll of chivalry. There
was a knight, however, named Catesby, who was a comrade of Guy, and the
latter clung to him as a means whereby to become as great as that to
which he clung.
Guy bore himself gallantly in Spain; and, subsequently, in Flanders,
he fought with such distinguished valor, that when Catesby and his
associates in England were considering where they might find the
particular champion whom they needed for their particular purpose in
the Gunpowder Plot, the thought of the reckless soldier flashed across
the mind of Catesby, and Guy was at once looked after as the “very
properest man” for a very improper service.
The messenger who was despatched to Flanders to sound Guy, found the
latter eager to undertake the perilous mission of destroying king and
parliament, and thereby helping Rome to lord it again in England. The
English soldier in Flanders came over to London, put up at an inn,
which occupied a site not very distant from that of the once well-known
“Angel” in St. Clement’s Danes, and made a gay figure in the open
Strand, till he was prepared to consummate a work which he thought
would help himself to greatness.
Into the matter of the plot I will not enter. It must be observed,
however, that knight never went more coolly to look death in the face
than Guy went to blow up the Protestant king and the parliament. At the
same time it must be added, that Guy had not the slightest intention
of hoisting himself with his own petard. He ran a very great risk, it
is true, and he did it fearlessly; but the fact that both a carriage
and a boat were in waiting to facilitate his escape, shows that
self-sacrifice was not the object of the son of the York proctor. His
great ambition was to rank among knights and nobles. He took but an
ill-method to arrive at such an object; but his reverence for nobility
was seen even when he was very near to his violent end. If he was ever
a hero, it was when certain death by process of law was before him.
But even then it was his boast and solace, that throughout the affair
there was not a man employed, even to handle a spade, in furtherance of
the end in view, who was not a gentleman. Guy died under the perfect
conviction that he had done nothing derogatory to his quality!
Considering how dramatic are the respective stories of the page and
squire, briefly noticed above, it is remarkable that so little use
has been made of them by dramatists. Savage is the only one who has
dramatized the story of the two knights, Somerset and Overbury. In
this tragedy bearing the latter knight’s name, and produced at the
Haymarket, in June, 1723, he himself played the hero, Sir Thomas.
His attempt to be an actor, and thus gain an honest livelihood by
his industry, was the only act of his life of which Savage was ever
ashamed. In this piece the only guilty persons are the countess and
her uncle, the Earl of Northampton. This is in accordance with the
once-prevailing idea that Northampton planned the murder of Sir Thomas,
in his residence, which occupied the site of the present Northumberland
house. The play was not successful, and the same may be said of it
when revived, with alterations, at Covent Garden, in 1777. Sheridan,
the actor, furnished the prologue. In this production he expressed his
belief that the public generally felt little interest in the fate of
knights and kings. The reason he assigns is hardly logical.
“Too great for pity, they inspire respect,
Their deeds astonish rather than affect.
Proving how rare the heart _that_ we can move,
Which reason tells us we can never prove.”
Guy Faux, who, when in Spain, was the ’squire of the higher-born
Catesby, has inspired but few dramatic writers. I only know of two. In
Mrs. Crouch’s memoirs, notice is made of an afterpiece, brought out on
the 5th of November, 1793, at the Haymarket. A far more creditable
attempt to dramatize the story of Guy Fawkes was made with great
success at the Coburg (Victoria) theatre, in September, 1822. This
piece still keeps possession of the minor stage, and deservedly; but
it has never been played with such effect as by its first “cast.” O.
Smith was the Guy, and since he had played the famous Obi, so well
as to cause Charles Kemble’s impersonation at the Haymarket to be
forgotten, he had never been fitted with a character which suited him
so admirably. It was one of the most truthful personations which the
stage had ever seen. Indeed the piece was played by such a troop of
actors as can not now be found in theatres of more pretensions than the
transpontine houses. The chivalric Huntley, very like the chivalric
Leigh Murray, in more respects than one, enacted _Tresham_ with a rare
ability, and judicious Chapman played _Catesby_ with a good taste,
which is not to be found now in the same locality. Dashing Stanley
was the _Monteagle_, and graceful Howell the _Percy_, Beverly and
Sloman gave rough portraits of the king and the facetious knight, _Sir
Tristam Collywobble_--coarse but effective. Smith, however, was the
soul of the piece, and Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley, might have witnessed the
representation, and have been proud of his descent from the dignified
hero that O. Smith made of his ancestor.
I have given samples of knights of various qualities, but I have yet
to mention the scholar and poet knights. There are many personages who
would serve to illustrate the knight so qualified, but I know of none
so suitable as Ulrich Von Hutten.
ULRICH VON HUTTEN.
“Jacta est alea.”--_Ulrich’s Device._
Ulrich von Hutten was born on the 21st of April, 1488, in the castle of
Stackelberg, near Fulda, in Franconia. He was of a noble family--all
the men of which were brave, and all the women virtuous. He had three
brothers and two sisters. His tender mother loved him the most, because
he was the weakest of her offspring. His father loved him the least for
the same reason. For a like cause, however, both parents agreed that a
spiritual education best accorded with the frame of Ulrich. The latter,
at eleven years old, was accordingly sent to learn his humanities in
the abbey school at Fulda.
His progress in all knowledge, religious and secular, made him the
delight of the stern abbot and of his parents. Every effort possible
was resorted to, to induce him to devote himself for ever to the
life of the cloister. In his zealous opposition to this he was ably
seconded by a strong-handed and high-minded knight, a friend of his
father’s named Eitelwolf von Stein. This opposition so far succeeded,
that in 1504, when Ulrich was sixteen years of age he fled from the
cloister-academy of Fulda, and betook himself to the noted high-school
at Erfurt.
Among his dearest fellow _Alumni_ here were Rubianus and Hoff, both of
whom subsequently achieved great renown. In the Augustine convent, near
the school, there was residing a poor young monk, who also subsequently
became somewhat famous. Nobody, however, took much account of him just
then, and few even cared to know his name--Martin Luther. The plague
breaking out at Erfurt, Rubianus was accompanied by Ulrich to Cologne,
there to pursue their studies. The heart and purse of Ulrich’s father
were closed against the son, because of his flight from Fulda; but his
kinsman Eitelwolf, provided for the necessities of the rather imprudent
young scholar.
The sages who trained the young idea at Cologne were of the old high
and dry quality--hating progress and laboriously learned in trifles.
At the head of them were Hogstraten and Ortuin. Ulrich learned enough
of their manner to be able to crush them afterward with ridicule, by
imitating their style, and reproducing their gigantic nonsense, in the
famous “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.” In the meantime he knit close
friendship with Sebastian Brandt, and Œcolampadius--both young men of
progress. The latter was expelled from Cologne for being so, but the
University of Frankfort on the Oder offered him an asylum. Thither
Ulrich repaired also, to be near his friend, and to sharpen his weapons
for the coming struggle between light and darkness--Germany against
Rome, and the German language against the Latin.
At Frankfort he won golden opinions from all sorts of people. The
Elector, Joachim of Brandenburg; his brother, the priestly Margrave
Albert; and Bishop Dietrich von Beilow were proud of the youth who did
honor to the university. He here first became a poet, and took the
brothers Von Osthen for his friends. He labored earnestly, and acquired
much glory; but he was a very free liver to boot, though he was by no
means particularly so, for the times in which he lived. His excesses,
however, brought on a dangerous disease, which, it is sometimes
supposed, had not hitherto been known in Europe. Be this as it may, he
was never wholly free from the malady as long as he lived, nor ever
thought that it much mattered whether he suffered or not.
He was still ill when he took up for a season the life of a wandering
scholar. He endured all its miserable vicissitudes, suffered famine and
shipwreck, and was glad at last to find a haven, as a poor student, in
the Pomeranian University of Griefswalde. The Professor Lötz and his
father the Burgomaster, were glad to patronize so renowned a youth,
but they did it with such insulting condescension that the spirit of
Ulrich revolted; and in 1509, the wayward scholar was again a wanderer,
with the world before him where to choose. The Lötzes, who had lent
him clothes, despatched men after him to strip him; and the poor,
half-frozen wretch, reached Rostock half starved, more than half
naked, with wounds gaping for vengeance, and with as little sense about
him as could be possessed by a man so ill-conditioned.
He lived by his wits at Rostock. He was unknown and perfectly
destitute; but he penned so spirited a metrical narrative of his life
and sufferings, addressed to the heads of the university there, that
these at once received him under their protection. In a short time he
was installed in comparative comfort, teaching the classics to young
pupils, and experiencing as much enjoyment as he could, considering
that the Lötzes of Griefswalde were continually assuring his patrons
that their protégé was a worthless impostor.
He took a poet’s revenge, and scourged them in rhymes, the very
ruggedness of which was tantamount to flaying.
Having gained his fill of honor at Rostock, his restless spirit urged
him once again into the world. After much wandering, he settled for a
season at Wittenburg, where he was the delight of the learned men. By
their eleemosynary aid, and that of various friends, save his father,
who rejoiced in his renown but would not help him to live, he existed
after the fashion of many pauper students of his day. At Wittenburg he
wrote his famous “Art of Poetry;” and he had no sooner raised universal
admiration by its production, than forth he rushed once more into the
world.
He wandered through Bohemia and Moravia, thankfully accepting bread
from peasants, and diamond rings from princes. He had not a maravedi
in his purse, nor clean linen on his back; but he made himself welcome
everywhere. One night he slept, thankfully, on the straw of a barn;
and the next sank, well-fed, into the eider-down of a bishop’s bed.
He entered Olmutz ragged, shoeless, and exhausted. He left it, after
enjoying the rich hospitality he had laughingly extracted from Bishop
Turso, on horseback, with a heavy purse in his belt, a mantle on his
shoulder, and a golden ring, with a jewel set in it, upon his finger.
Such were a student’s vicissitudes, in the days of German wandering, a
long time ago.
The boy, for he was not yet twenty years of age, betook himself to
Vienna, where he kept a wide circle in continual rapture by the
excellence of his poetical productions. These productions were not
“all for love,” nor were they all didactic. He poured out war-ballads
to encourage the popular feeling in favor of the Emperor Maximilian,
against his enemies in Germany and Italy. Ulrich was, for the moment,
the Tyrtæus of his native country. Then, suddenly recollecting that his
angry sire had said that if his son would not take the monk’s cowl,
his father would be content to see him assume the lawyer’s coif, our
volatile hero hastened to Pavia, opened the law books on an ominous 1st
of April, 1512, and read them steadily, yet wearied of them heartily,
during just three months.
At this time Francis the first of France, who had seized on Pavia,
was besieged therein by the German and Swiss cavalry. Ulrich was
dangerously ill during the siege, but he occupied the weary time by
writing sharp epitaphs upon himself. The allies entered the city; and
Ulrich straightway departed from it, a charge having been laid against
him of too much partiality for the French. The indignant German hurried
to Bologna, where he once more addressed himself to the _Pandects_ and
the _Juris Codices Gentium_.
This light reading so worked on his constitution that fever laid him
low, and after illness came destitution. He wrote exquisite verses to
Cardinal Gurk, the imperial embassador in Bologna, where the pope for
the moment resided; but he failed in his object of being raised to some
office in the cardinal’s household. Poor Ulrich took the course often
followed by men of his impulses and condition; he entered the army as a
private soldier, and began the ladder which leads to knighthood at the
lowest round.
Unutterable miseries he endured in this character; but he went through
the siege of Pavia with honor, and he wrote such sparkling rhymes in
celebration of German triumphs and in ridicule of Germany’s foes, that,
when a weakness in the ankles compelled him to retire from the army, he
collected his songs and dedicated them to the Emperor.
The dedication, however, was so very independent of tone, that
Maximilian took no notice of the limping knight who had exchanged the
sword for the lyre. Indeed, at this juncture, the man who could wield
a sledge-hammer, was in more esteem with the constituted authorities
than he who skilfully used his pen. The young poet could scarcely win
a smile, even from Albert of Brandenburg, to whom he had dedicated a
poem. Sick at heart, his health gave way, and a heavy fever sent him to
recover it at the healing springs in the valley of Ems.
A short time previous to his entering the army, the young Duke Ulrich
of Wurtemburg had begun to achieve for himself a most unenviable
reputation. He had entered on his government; and he governed his
people ill, and himself worse. He allowed nothing to stand between
his own illustrious purpose and the object aimed at. He had for wife
the gentle Bavarian princess, Sabina, and for friend, young Johan von
Hutten, a cousin of our hero Ulrich.
Now, Johan von Hutten had recently married a fair-haired girl, with
the not very euphonious appellation of Von Thumb. She was, however,
of noble birth, and, we must add, of light principles. The duke fell
in love with her, and she with the duke, and when his friend Johan
remonstrated with him, the ducal sovereign gravely proposed to the
outraged husband an exchange of consorts!
Johan resolved to withdraw from the ducal court; and this resolution
alarmed both his wife and the duke, for Johan had no intention of
leaving his lightsome Von Thumb behind him. Therefore, the duke invited
Johan one fine May morning in the year 1515, to take a friendly ride
with him through a wood. The invitation was accepted, and as Johan was
riding along a narrow path, in front of the duke, the latter passed his
sword through the body of his friend, slaying him on the spot.
Having thus murdered his friend, the duke hung him up by the neck in
his own girdle to a neighboring tree, and he defended the deed, by
giving out that ducal justice had only been inflicted on a traitor who
had endeavored to seduce the Duchess of Wurtemburg! The lady, however,
immediately fled to her father, denouncing the faithlessness of her
unworthy husband, on whose bosom the young widow of the murdered Johan
now reclined for consolation.