GOD’S PLAYTHINGS
BY
MARJORIE BOWEN
AUTHOR OF “THE VIPER OF MILAN,” “THE GLEN O’ WEEPING,”
“I WILL MAINTAIN,” ETC.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1913
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BECCLES
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE KING’S SON 1
II. A BIOGRAPHY 23
III. A POOR SPANISH LODGING 35
IV. DEFEAT 59
V. TWILIGHT 80
VI. THE CAMP OUTSIDE NAMUR 93
VII. THE POLANDER 113
VIII. THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF GRACE ENDICOTT 135
IX. THE CUP OF CHICORY WATER 153
X. THE BURNING OF THE VANITIES 180
XI. A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE 202
XII. THE ARISTOCRAT 225
XIII. THE BETROTHED OF PEDRO EL JUSTICAR 249
XIV. THE MACEDONIAN GROOM 260
XV. THE PRISONER 273
XVI. THE YELLOW INTAGLIO 301
GOD’S PLAYTHINGS
THE KING’S SON
“This letter has given rise to various
conjectures.”–_Dalrymple’s Memoirs._
_From Ringwood, the 9th of July, 1685._
MY LORD,
Having had some proof of your kindness when I was last
at Whitehall, makes me hope now that you will not refuse
interceding for me with the King, being I know, though too
late, how I have been misled; were I not clearly convinced of
that, I would rather die a thousand deaths than say what I do.
I writ yesterday to the King, and the chief business of my
letter was to desire to speak to him, _for I have that to say
to him that I am sure will set him at quiet for ever_. I am
sure the whole study of my life shall hereafter be how to serve
him; and _I am sure that which I can do is worth more than
taking my life away_; and I am confident, if I may be so happy
to speak to him, he will himself be convinced of it, _being I
can give him such infallible proof of my truth to him that,
though I would alter, it would not be in my power to do it_.
This which I have now said, I hope will be enough to encourage
your lordship to show me your favour, which I do earnestly
desire of you and hope that you have so much generosity as not
to refuse it. I hope, my lord, and I make no doubt of it, that
you will not have cause to repent having saved my life, which
I am sure you can do a great deal in if you please; being it
obliges me to be entirely yours, which I shall ever be, as long
as I have life.
MONMOUTH.
_For the Earl of Rochester, Lord High Treasurer of England._
Knowing that I had been involved in the miserable final adventure of
that unhappy Prince, James Scot, Duke of Monmouth, and even been with
him in that last Council in Bridgewater, my lord Rochester showed me
this letter with a kind of languid malice, and even had the indecency
to smile at it and address to me a remark slighting to the unfortunate
writer of that desperate appeal.
“For,” said he, “had Monmouth a secret to reveal, though ever so base
a one, he had disclosed it to save his life–and since he disclosed
nothing ’tis proof plain this was but a fool’s trick to catch mercy.”
He said no more, but I was minded to tell what I knew that I might do
justice to the memory of one wronged and wretched; yet the impulse
was but passing, for I knew that the secret his dead Grace had never
discovered was one which for pity’s sake I must be silent on; and well
I was aware also that what I could say would awaken no understanding in
the cold heart of Lawrence Hyde. My Lord’s Grace of Monmouth has been
dead ten years, and in the potent and huge events that have changed
Europe since, he has been forgotten by all but some of those poor souls
in the West who called him King. But I, who joined fortunes with him in
his reckless enterprise, hold often in my thoughts him whose fate is
now reckoned but a trifle in the history of nations. Both in the exile
that followed Sedgemoor and the years in England under His present
Protestant Majesty have I considered silently the tragic mystery of
this young man whose life was useless pleasure and whose death was
bitter anguish.
It hath a curious sound that I, once penman to his Grace, should now be
secretary to the Earl of Rochester; I gave my master this reflection,
and he laughed in his indolent fashion and answered that ten years
had accomplished the work of a hundred, and that the rebellion in
the West was ancient history. Yet when he had left me to my work I
copied this same letter (written in a quick hand with the agony of the
author showing in that forceful entreaty to one who had never been his
friend), and I brought the copy home with me and now must write under
it the explanation like the key to a cipher. Not to show any, but
rather to bury or destroy; not to betray the secret of the dead, but to
ease mine own heart of one scene which has haunted me these long ten
years.
It hath a turn of folly to write what will never be read, but the
impulse driving me is stronger than reason, and so I make confession of
what I know while holding my faith inviolate.
At the time of the capture of my lord in ’85, the indecent cruelty of
the then King in seeing one whom he had resolved to be bitterly avenged
on, and in commanding to be published an account of those agonies he
should have been most sedulous to veil, was much commented upon, and
first gave his people the impression of that ill-judging severity of
character and stern harshness of temper they soon found unendurably
galling.
It was well known too at that time, that my lord had obtained that
interview with the King by reason of the desperate letter he wrote, of
the same trend as the epistle he sent to my lord Rochester, declaring
he had somewhat of such importance to reveal that it should put the
King’s mind at rest for ever concerning him. Various were the rumours
abroad concerning this secret and what it might be, and as it was
known from the King’s lips that his Grace had revealed nothing, many
supposed, as my lord Rochester, that it was but a feint to obtain an
audience of his Majesty; yet how any could read those letters and not
see they were inspired by the bitter truth, I know not. Some believed
that it was that his Grace had been urged to his fatal undertaking by
His present Majesty, then Stadtholder of the United Provinces, and
that he had about him letters from that Prince’s favourite, Monsieur
Bentinck.
Yet all evidence was against this, and the Duke himself appealed to the
Stadtholder to bear witness that he had no designs against England when
he left The Hague, but intended for Hungary (for which purpose, indeed,
the Prince equipped him) and had since been misled by the restless
spirit of the Earl of Argyll and other malcontents whom he met, to his
undoing, in Brussels.
More believed that the disclosure related to that subtle designing
minister, the Earl of Sunderland, who was deep in the councils of
the King’s enemies, yet held his Majesty in such a fascination that
no breath against him was credited, even at the last, when he ruined
the King easily with a graceful dexterity that deceived even Monsieur
Barillon, who is esteemed for his astuteness.
Yet what reason had my lord Sunderland, intent on far larger schemes,
to lure my lord Monmouth into a disastrous expedition, and what object
had his Grace in keeping a final silence about such treachery?
Nor would the revelation of the falsehood of his Majesty’s minister or
the discovery of the dissimulation of his Majesty’s nephew be such a
secret as his Grace indicated in his letter–“for I have that to say to
him which I am sure will set him at quiet for ever”–whereas either of
these communications would rather have set King and Kingdom at great
trouble and dis-ease.
No one came near the truth in their guesses, and after a while no
one troubled, and truly it is an empty matter now; still, one that
containeth a centre of such tragic interest that for me the wonder and
pity of it never dieth.
To bring myself back to the events of that fatal year (the recollection
groweth as I write), it shall here be noted that I was witness of the
great and bitter reluctance of my lord to lead this rebellion.
He was brave in his spirit, but of an exceeding modesty and softness
in his temper, of a sweet disposition, averse to offend, fearful
of hardship, a passionate lover of life, generously weak to the
importunities of others.
Yet for a great while he withstood them, avoided Argyll, shut his doors
to Lord Grey and Ferguson and was all for retirement with the lady whom
he truly loved, Harriet Wentworth.
But from Love for whom he would put by these temptations came the
goad to urge him into the arms of Ambition, and she, who in her pride
would see him set on a throne, joined her entreaties to the arguments
of the men who needed a King’s son for their leader, and pawned the
very jewels in her ears to buy him arms. And he was prevailed upon to
undertake this sad and bitter voyage with but a few adventurers whose
much enthusiasm must take the place of money and wits, for of these
last they had neither. At first his Grace’s heart utterly misgave him
and he was more despondent than any man had ever known him, being
indeed in a black and bitter mood, reluctant to speak on anything but
Brussels and my lady waiting there.
This brought him into some discredit with his followers, but Ferguson
had spirit enough to inspire the ignorant, and Lord Grey, who, though a
man dishonoured in private and public life, was of a quick moving wit
and an affable carriage, animated the little company of us, not above a
hundred, who had joined together on this doleful enterprise.
But when we had landed on the rocky shores of Lyme Regis, it was his
Grace whose mood became cheerful, for his ready sensibility was moved
by the extraordinary and deep welcome these people of the West gave us,
for, whereas we who were at first, as I have said, but a hundred, in
a few days were six thousand, all hot on an encounter and confident;
truly it was marvellous to see how these people loved his Grace and how
he was at the very height of joyous exaltation in this fair successful
opening.
Taunton saw a day of triumph when his Grace was proclaimed King in the
market-place by a mad speech of Ferguson in which wild and horrible
crimes were laid to the charge of James Stewart, and I think Monmouth
saw himself King indeed, at Whitehall, so gracious and gay was his
bearing.
But my lord Grey looked cynically, for not a single person of any
consideration had joined us, and, while the gentry held back, ill-aimed
and untrained peasants were of no use to us. Yet had his Grace done
better to trust their fanatical valour and march on for Bristol and so
take that wealthy town, instead of spending his time endeavouring to
train his men–God knows he was no general, though a brave soldier in
his services in the Low Countries!
While he dallied, my lord Beaufort was raising the trained bands, and
my lord Feversham came down from London with some of the King’s troops.
Then came that attempt of my lord Grey on Bridport when he forsook his
men and fled; though this was proved cowardice, his Grace was too soft
to even reprimand him.
In miserable searching for food, in vain straggling marches, in
hesitations, in fatal delays the time passed; his Grace might have had
Bristol, a place abounding in his own friends; yet, hearing that the
Duke of Beaufort had threatened to fire it rather than open the gates,
he turned towards Bath, saying he could not endure to bring disaster on
so fair a city.
This faint-hearted gentleness was not fitted for the position he
had assumed; at Bath they killed his herald and returned a fierce
defiance. So we fell back on Frome in disorder; and my lord saw his
visions melting, his dream of Kingship vanish, for in the same day
he received three pieces of news: that the three Dutch regiments had
landed at Gravesend, that my lord Argyll was a prisoner, and that my
lord Feversham was marching upon him with three thousand men and thirty
pieces of cannon.
And now the full utter madness of what he had undertaken was apparent;
we had neither cannon nor arms, scarcely powder; and he who had seen
the fine armies of Holland and France could not but see the hopeless
position he held with a force of these poor peasants, the cavalry
mounted on cart and plough horses, the foot but armed with scythes and
pruning-knives. Despair and dismay gained an audience of his mind;
he fell suddenly into agonies of fear and remorse for what he must
bring on these followers of his; from every one who came near him he
asked advice, and the anguish of his spirit was visible in his altered
countenance. He called councils in which nothing was resolved but the
desperate state they were in, and nothing talked of but the folly that
had put them there; his Grace passionately blaming Ferguson and Argyll
for their evil urgings. Then it was resolved to retreat on Bridgewater
to be nearer the sea; on this march some few left his Grace, but most
stayed in a dogged love, and this faith touched his tender heart as
much as his own danger, and wrought such a passion of weak agony in him
it was piteous to see the expression of it in his face.
At Bridgewater he viewed the enemy through his glasses from the top of
the church tower; there and then, I think, he knew that he gazed on a
country he must soon for ever leave.
Alas! alas! In my nostrils is still the scent of that July afternoon,
the perfume from the slumbrous grasses, the scent of the peaceful
flowers.…
That day we had a very splendid sunset; all the west was gold and
violet and the whole sky clear of clouds, yet over the morass below
the castle the marsh fog lay cold and thick, for lately it had rained
heavily and the Parret had overflowed its banks, so the whole earth was
wet–very clearly I recall all details of that day.
Here I come to that picture that is for ever with me–the last Council
of my lord. Had I the skill of some of those Hollanders whom I have
seen abroad, who can limn a scene just to the life, I could give this
scene on canvas with every colour exact.
It was a room in the Castle, not large, looking on to the garden;
through the open window showed that emblazoned sunset, and a rose and
vine leaf entwined against the mullions.
The panelling of the chamber was darkened and polished, above the
mantelpiece was a painting of a stone vase of striped and gaudy tulips,
very like, and there were logs ready on the hearth, for the evenings
were chilly. On the floor was a little carpet of Persia, and in the
centre a table with stools set about it, all of a heavy, rather ancient
design. A little brass clock with a mighty pendulum stood against the
wall on a bracket; on the table were two branched candlesticks, clumsy
and shining.
There were gathered the rebel officers, talking themselves into a
boastful confidence; the only man of quality among them, my lord Grey,
stood a little apart beside the open window–and smiled; he was a
curious man, not well-favoured, but one whom it was pleasant to look
upon, tall and dark, with that little fault in the eyes that casteth
them crooked. My office was an idle one, for there was nothing to
write, so I watched the others and felt chilled at the heart for the
hopelessness of it all.
When the dusk gathered, my lord Grey drew the curtains across the
rising mists and lit the candles slowly.
When the last flame rose up, Monmouth entered quietly: he ever had a
light step.
Marred as he then was by his inward misery, he was still the loveliest
gentleman in England and of a winning beauty impossible to be realised
by those who have not seen him; he wore a riding coat of brown cloth
and a black hat with a penache of white plumes, being more plainly
dressed than ever he had been before, I think, in all his easy life.
They all rose when he entered, but he motioned them to their seats
again, and I saw that he had not the firmness to command his voice
to speak. He took the place they had left for him, and Lord Grey,
shading the candle flame from his eyes, stared at him with that crossed
glance of his and that immovable expression of amusement on his lips.
For a while they spoke together, to cover, as I took it, this dismal
discomposure on the part of their leader.
But presently he took off his hat impatiently, showing his long soft
hair of that English-coloured brown and his eyes, of the tint of a
chestnut, that usually shone with so bright a light, and leaning a
little forward in his chair he broke into astonishing speech.
“I cannot go on,” he said. “I will not go on–there is nothing ahead but
ruin.”
At these words that so stript the poor pretence of hope from their
councils, these officers sat revealed as fearful and stricken men. They
looked at Monmouth as one who would be the mouthpiece of their own
terrors; my lord Grey withdrew himself a little from them and went to
stand by the mantelshelf, from there observing all.
The red came into the Duke’s face and he eyed them wildly.
“What are we going on?” he said. “We are not such fools as to think we
can prevail now.… I saw Dumbarton’s Scots yonder on Sedgemoor.… I know
how they can fight … they were under me at Bothwell Brig.…” He pressed
his handkerchief to his lips and he was trembling like a sick maid.
They saw in his eyes that he considered them, as the play saith,
on “the edge of doom,” and as he had given them leave for ignoble
thoughts, so each took advantage of it and bethought him of his own sad
condition.
“We have but a rabble,” said one. “And there is yet a chance to get
over seas—”
“I cannot fall into the hands of James Stewart,” muttered Monmouth;
“for I have done that which cannot be forgiven.” And there was such
pusillanimous fear in his wretched look of shivered dread that it
passed like a panic through all that they too had done what could
not be forgiven; nor was James Stewart a merciful man. One voiced the
general terror:
“We could get to the coast before any guessed we had left
Bridgewater–in flight lies our only chance.”
Then my lord Grey made this speech.
“There are six thousand people have left their homes to follow
you–would you, my lord, abandon them to that fate ye cannot face
yourself?”
Monmouth looked at him; maybe he thought it strange that the man that
had been a proved coward under fire should speak so intrepidly in the
council, yet he was too unnerved for a retort or an answer.
“Oh, you,” added Lord Grey, with a flick of a scorn in his tone, “who
took the title of a King, and are a King’s son, cannot you make a more
seemly show of it than this?”
“It is my life,” said the Duke in a piteous agitation. “Five thousand
pounds on my head … to die as Russell did.…”
“You are a King’s son,” repeated Lord Grey.
In a desperate passion his Grace answered him.
“Why did you induce me to this folly? It was you, that villain Ferguson
and Argyll—”
“He has paid,” said the other quickly.
“As I must pay.… My God, was I not happy in Brabant? You but wanted my
name to gild your desperation—”
“We would have made you King,” said Lord Grey, and he smiled a little.
There fell a silence, and it seemed that the Duke would speak, but he
said no words.
“Come, gentlemen,” spoke out my lord Grey. “The Council is over–you
will have your orders before morning–all expedients are ineffectual;
now each, in his own way, must go forward to the end.” He took up the
candle to light them from the room, and they, being men of a little
station, were overawed by his quality and went; two of them deserted
that night, and one betrayed us by firing a pistol to warn Lord
Feversham of our approach and so got the King’s pardon. God be merciful
to the others; I think they died unknown and brave.
I, being trusted because there was a price on my head and I had borne
the torture in Scotland, was asked by Lord Grey to stay and help
hearten his Grace.
We endeavoured to reason him into going into Castle Field, where
Ferguson preached to the miners and ploughmen; he would not, but in a
weak agony abused Wildman and Argyll as the engines of his torture, and
he had the look on him we call “fey”; I believed he was near his death.…
So the night fell very misty and warm, and my lord would not lie down,
but sat in that little room struggling with anguish.
He had his George of diamonds on and often looked at it and spoke
incoherently of how King Charles had given it him … surely my pity was
more provoked than my scorn, for he was soft and gentle in his ways
and so had gained much love.
That morning one had complained to him Lord Grey should be dishonoured
for his behaviour without Bridport–and he had answered: “I will not
affront my lord by any mention of his misfortune–” yet here was he sunk
in utter misery while Lord Grey strove to rouse in him a manly and
decent courage with which to be worthy of these poor brave souls who
loved and followed him; presently he came round to his old and first
appeal.
“Remember you are a King’s son.”
It was near one in the morning by the little brass clock, and I sat
wearily by the door that led to the bedchamber; the Duke was at the
table, and as my lord Grey spoke he looked up and began laughing. He
laughed so long and recklessly that we were both dumb in a kind of
horror, and when at last he came to a pause in his laughter there was
silence.
Now the Duke discovered some fortitude: he rose and helped himself to
wine, which brought the fugitive blood back into his cheeks and he held
himself with more dignity, though there was that wild look of unsettled
wits in his wide-opened eyes.
“My lord,” he said, “and you, sir–bring the candles nearer and I will
show you something—” He put back the admired locks that screened his
brow and took from the pocket of his inner coat a leather book that he
laid on the table before us.
“What is this?” asked my lord Grey.
The Duke untied the covers in quiet and let fall on the polished wood
all manner of odd and foolish papers, letters, complexion wash recipes,
charms and notes of his journeyings in Holland.
These he put aside and drew from a secret lining a silver case such as
is used for a painting in little.
It was my thought that it contained the picture of Lady Harriet, which
we were to return to her if either lived to do it, and I was sorry for
this lady who had been so faithful in her love.
From one to the other of us the Duke looked strangely; his face was
flushed now and beautiful as in former days when he was the loved one
of that great brilliance at Whitehall, yet still he had the seal of
death on him, and, worse than that, the horrible fear of it writ in
every line of his comely countenance.
“Please you, look here,” he said; he opened the locket and held it out
in his palm.
“What is this?” he asked in a husk and torn voice.
It was the likeness of a man, very fairly done, who wore a uniform and
cravat of the time of the death of King Charles I.
Lord Grey looked at it quickly.
“It is your Grace,” he said; then, seeing the dress–“No,” he added, and
glanced swiftly at Monmouth–“who is it?”
“It is Colonel Sidney taken in his youth,” I said, for I had known the
man well in Rotterdam when he was attached to the court of the late
King Charles, then in exile there. And I gazed at the painting … it was
a marvellous fair face.
While I looked my lord Duke had three letters out from the same
secret corner of his book, and I saw that two were in the writing of
Colonel Sidney and the third in a hand I did not know, the hand of an
ill-educated woman.
“Who is this?” asked Lord Grey with an amazed look. “Surely Colonel
Sidney was never any concern of your Grace?”
He stood with the picture in his hand and Monmouth looked up at him
from the old worn and folded letters he was smoothing out.
“It is Colonel Sidney,” he said.
“Well?” asked Lord Grey intently.
“He was my father,” said Monmouth; then he began laughing again, and it
had the most doleful sound of anything I have ever heard. I could not
grasp what had been said, but my lord Grey with his quick comprehension
seemed in a moment to understand and value this truth.
“Your father!” he said softly, and added: “To think we never saw
it!” which was an extraordinary thing to say; yet, on looking at the
likeness in little and on the fair agonised face staring across the
candlelight one might notice that they were in almost every detail the
same, and methought I was a very fool never to have observed before
how these two men were alike, even to little manners and fashions of
speech.
And being that I saw the tragic pitifulness of it all, I could do no
more than laugh dismally also.
“See you these letters if you want proof,” said Monmouth.
“There is no need,” answered my lord Grey. “The likeness is enough.”
Then he repeated: “And we never saw it!”
“No,” said his Grace half-fiercely; “you never saw it–I was always the
King’s son to you–instead of that I am scarce a gentleman.… Now you
know why I cannot go on.… I am no Stewart, I have no royal blood.…”
Grey looked at him, turning over in his mind, I think, the aspects
of this bewildering turn; he gazed at Colonel Sidney’s son with a
curiosity almost cruel.
I was thinking of the obscurity from which he had sprung, the mystery
round his early years in Rotterdam, his sudden appearance in a blaze of
glory at Whitehall when the King had made him Duke.…
“Who did this?” I asked. “And who kept silence?”
“King Charles loved me as his son,” he answered vaguely, “and I loved
him.… I could not have told him–and I was ambitious. What would you
have done?” he cried. “I did not know until I was fourteen.” He pressed
his hand to his breast.
“But I will not die for it,” he muttered. “Why should I die for it?”
“Your death must become your life, not your birth,” said Lord Grey.
“My death!” shivered Monmouth.
Lord Grey turned to face him; thin and harsh-featured as he was, he
made the other’s beauty a thing of nothing.
“Why?” he said commandingly. “You know that you must die–you know what
will happen to-morrow and what you have to expect from James Stewart,
and those honours that you have won in life will you not keep to grace
your death?”
“I cannot die,” answered Monmouth; he rose and began walking about in a
quick passion of protesting anguish: “I will not die.”
“That you cannot decide; the manner only is in your power,” said Lord
Grey calmly, and I marvelled to think that he had been a coward in open
field.
“I am not the King’s son—” his Grace cried out at him, and fell across
a chair sick with unavailing love of life.
Lord Grey took up a candle and turned to the door, looking at him the
while.
“Will you give James Stewart this triumph?” he asked.
This seemed the one thing to brace Monmouth, for those two had always
hated each other strongly; James in the old days had feared my lord’s
power, been jealous that he was the elder son of the elder son, and
Monmouth seemed to remember that; yet a mean thought hurried on the
heels of the manly reflection.
“He would give me my life for this,” he said weakly. “My life for this
secret—”
“Good night,” said Lord Grey–a strange man–and left us.
The Duke seemed not to know that he had gone or that I remained; after
a little he went into the bedchamber, but not to sleep, and all night I
heard him weeping … such sick and bitter womanish sobs all through that
long watch I kept.…
Colonel Sidney’s son!
Who were they who did this–and they who kept silence?
A curious commingling of motives, sordid and lovable, ambition, some
little love, some touch of self-sacrifice.… I felt compassion for King
Charles, who had had no deeper feeling in all his spoilt life than this
affection for what was not his.…
I put the wasting candles out and sat in the dark; I lifted the curtain
and saw the sun rise over Sedgemoor.
Six thousand men to fight against hopeless odds to-morrow for him they
deemed a King, the blood of Bourbon and Stewart, the heir of Tudor and
Plantagenet.…
And in my ears was the thick sobbing of a mere Englishman of a stock
that scarce boasted gentility, who could not face the end of his
masquerade nor fit the robe of greatness he had assumed.
* * * * *
So here is the secret revealed at length to the dumb and innocent
paper; God knoweth it is, as Lawrence Hyde saith, a great while ago;
for the rest, the world knows how the Duke rode out to Sedgemoor with
such a look in his face the very children knew he was marked for doom,
and how he fled, leaving his men to gain great honour after he had
forsaken them. Also how he was found in peasant’s dress, so changed
they did not know him till the George of diamonds flashed out on his
tattered garments as he fainted in his captor’s clutch. Lord Grey was
taken with him; they stayed at Ringwood two days and from there his
Grace wrote frantically to the King and to Lord Rochester.
It is very clear he meant to buy his life with his wretched secret,
though I think my lord Grey must have been ever urging him to die with
a decent carriage.
So they brought him to London and he was taken before his Majesty,
swordless and with his hands tied behind him.
What passed no man knoweth but James Stewart; he has spoken often
of it, and I know those to whom he has told of Monmouth’s ignoble
desperate pleadings for life at any cost, of his casting himself down
and imploring mercy.
Yet he must have been spurred by something in the demeanour of his
ancient enemy, for he never told his secret, and he left the presence
with anger and dignity, resolving, it must be, to cheat the King of
that last satisfaction. Yet afterwards he fell again into unmanly
misery that was the wonder of all, and then into a strange mood that
was neither the apathy of despair, or, as some said, an exalted
enthusiasm. I wondered then and now where his proofs were: not
found on him with the other poor trifles I had seen at Bridgewater
Castle–destroyed, perhaps. And so he died, hurried reluctant from life,
without either religion or repentance, sorry for the blood shed in the
West, firm in his love for Lady Harriet, indifferent to the clergyman
who cried out on the scaffold:
“God accept your imperfect repentance!”
He would not join in the prayer for the King; when they goaded him he
said “Amen” with a careless air.
Knowing as I do what bitter terror he felt, what ghastly anticipations
he had, what agony he had endured at the thought of the sheer moment of
death, with what shivering sickness he felt the axe, with what horror
he eyed the headsman, I cannot bear to write or think how they mangled
him.…
And so he died; he brought much misery on the innocent and he was maybe
a worthless man, yet I could weep for him even now. I am glad he did
not speak; Lord Grey has been ever silent and no one else knows.
* * * * *
Among all those who watched that fair-haired head held up it is strange
there is not one to think it showed little likeness to the dark-browed
Stewart Kings.…
Here the paper is endorsed in another hand:
“If this be truth then this was a thing ironical. The writer of this
rambling manuscript and the Earl of Tankerville, once Lord Grey, are
dead, and there be none that know save God who knows and judges.”
A BIOGRAPHY
THE EARL OF STRAFFORD
“Certainly never any man acted such a part, in such a theatre,
with more wisdom, constancy and eloquence, with greater
reason, judgment and temper, and with a better grace in all
his words and gestures, than this great and excellent person
did.”–_Whitelock on the trial of Strafford._
This was a man who in his own time was great and fell to dishonoured
death, leaving a brilliant memory, but one neither respected nor
praised; a King raised him, used him and forsook him, a people judged
him, condemned him, and put him to death. Great events followed; the
nation shook and changed. The King himself was swept away by that same
power to which he had in vain sacrificed his minister, a greater than
the King ruled England and men forgot the Earl of Strafford save to
execrate his policies.
But they who come home crowned with laurel from the wars the popular
heroes of an hour are not always the only saviours of their country,
and they who flatter the people do not always serve them best. History
is a hard, often an unreflective, judge; her verdict, dictated by the
passion of a moment, lasts too often for centuries.
Judging a man by his inner spirit, his desires, the use he makes of
great abilities, pitying a man for his misfortunes, his bitter death,
those English born may well give a little gratitude to this Englishman
who had ever England in his heart.
Thomas Wentworth was of an ancient and noble family of Yorkshire,
powerful by intellect, Puritan by tradition, strong by courage and
self-belief, above all things deeply desirous of rendering that service
to his country which is the way that most readily appeals to a man of
an active complexion of satisfying that almost unconscious yearning for
glory that is the sign of a great spirit. Mere personal ambition is a
proof of either meanness or madness, and the self-seeking of either
insanity or vanity has never attained any but a brittle fame and a
hollow achievement; if a man is to even contemplate the performance of
mighty deeds, he must have some mightiness within him.
Strong enthusiasm, unless it be of the headlong useless kind, is ever
joined to that tincture of melancholy which comes from viewing the
contrasting apathy of the rest of mankind, and for the first years of
his opening understanding Thomas Wentworth was silent, reserved in
matters political, given to reflect and observe more than to speak or
act.
He had the usual education of a gentleman, studied at Cambridge,
travelled in Europe, became Sir Thomas and member for Yorkshire before
he was twenty-one.
It was the beginning of the power of parliaments, the beginning of that
temper in the people which was to later furnish the extraordinary
spectacle of a nation ruling its own kings and retaining a monarchy
as a mere ornament to that independence which displayed undisguised
is likely to be too stern an object to please a people full of levity
and love of show. This party was represented by the Opposition that
had galled and restricted the first Charles since his accession; he,
however, rather disliked than feared them, and did not doubt that his
authority would quell their republican principles.
With these men, among whom was John Pym and afterwards a nobler
patriot, John Hampden, Sir Thomas took his seat; he went not into
extremes against the court, but conducted himself moderately; he
became _Custos Rotulorum_ for the West Riding; presently the king was
advised to make him Sheriff of York that he might be disqualified as a
Parliamentary candidate; next he was imprisoned for refusing to pay a
forced loan imposed by Charles; it seemed that he was committed beyond
withdrawal to the Opposition, daily more daring; and that he was to be
one of that band of men, firm willed and single minded, who discovered
in an absolute monarchy a menace to the general good; but Wentworth
did not see with them; tradition was strong in him, his imagination
glorified loyalty; he saw in the king an instrument for procuring
the greatness of the people; he saw a crisis approaching, a struggle
drawing nearer, he chose his side, knowing perhaps that it was bound
to lose, but seeing at least a chance for his own dormant abilities
to strengthen and exalt a weakening institution. In 1628 the Duke of
Buckingham was stabbed to the heart by one of those Puritans who were
resolved that all pertaining to Kingship was fatal to their country’s
peace, and in that year Thomas Wentworth took the place of the murdered
favourite and became, with Laud of Canterbury, chief adviser to the
King.
It was supposed by his former friends that he had covered himself with
immortal infamy by his desertion of the popular party for that of the
court, and their censure has been often echoed, it being assumed that
because the cause he espoused was unsuccessful he wasted his genius in
serving it; but in 1628 Sir Thomas may have hoped to make England as
great as did Cromwell afterwards, and there was no prophet to tell him
his judgment was deceived.
A personal friendship rose between him and the stately, formal King
with whose traits he had much in common. Charles, grateful to the
genius that took the place of Buckingham’s careless talents, created
him in one year baron, viscount, and Lord President of the Council of
the North.
The Puritan party viewed his rise with peculiar hatred; so hard is it
for even just men to stifle the claims of party and see any good in
that cause which is not their own.
“You have left us,” said John Pym, “but we will not leave you while
your head is on your shoulders.”
In 1633 Wentworth was made Lord Deputy of Ireland, and endeavoured to
reduce order into that vexed and discontented country by measures which
were abused as despotic, but which were necessary to a man occupied
with great schemes. England could never be a great empire while Ireland
was an independent kingdom; his claim of Connaught only anticipated the
inevitable, and if the army he was so abused for raising could have
been kept together under his direction, the crown of England might have
been saved. As far as time permitted, he introduced social benefits
into the wretched land and encouraged the linen industry by planting
flax.
But he was too late, perhaps too impetuous, blinded by his own genius
for command into overlooking the steady rise of the democracy; he
himself described his policy as “thorough.” Had he been allowed the
time, he would have made a notable thing of this policy; but the tide
was against him, and bore him sharply out to ruin.
Private malice, not his own faults, brought about his downfall, and he
was thrown by a misuse of the law as wanton as any tyranny that could
be brought against him. In 1639 John Pym carried out his threat and
impeached him of high treason; Wentworth, newly created Lord Strafford,
was committed to the Tower, and the outward disgrace and real glory of
the man began.
It was one of the most memorable of all state trials, and lacked no
element of the tragic, the strange, the terrible, or the dramatic.
The prisoner was he who for over ten years had been the greatest man
in the three kingdoms; the principal accuser was one who had been the
closest friend of the man he accused; the judges were eighty peers of
the realm, the witnesses the two Houses. A King who loved and a Queen
who hated the accused were present. The prisoner conducted his own
defence, and outside beyond the doors of Westminster Hall the first
murmurs of the growing civil war were beginning to rise and swell.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck painted Lord Strafford as a dark, handsome man
of a robust type dictating to his secretary; the picture shows a
personality such as is in accordance with what we know of the man, and
when looking at the proud, half-frowning face it is easy to imagine how
he stood during his trial, pale, composed, erect, scornful of them,
seeing very surely the axe ahead, having no trust save in the sad-eyed
King at whose ear the Bourbon Queen whispered hatred of him, yet
using all his magnificence of eloquence to save himself as one who is
conscious that his life is worth defending.
Thirteen accusers, who relieved each other, plied him with questions
for seventeen days, and he answered them all with unshaken judgment,
calm and grace, unaided, unpitied. John Pym’s hatred spurred his
enemies on, and Lord Strafford must have tasted the bitterest of all
humiliation when he looked to where sat his friend Charles Stewart, not
daring to lift a hand to save him–and he had hoped to make his King
great indeed.
The man on trial for his life and honours and the King in his regal
seat exchanged many a deep look across the commoners who were the
masters of both–“he trusts me, and I am helpless” was like a dagger in
the heart of Charles.
By his side always sat the Queen, Mary of France, black-eyed, small, in
satin and pearls, ready with her hand on his wrist, her voice in his
ear: “Do not rouse the people–let Strafford go—”
She had always hated him; she hated any who endeavoured to share her
dominion over her husband; she began, too, to be afraid of the people,
and as she was of the blood royal of France, a breed that could not
understand concession, she and her priests urged the King into further
tyrannical measures; first, let Strafford go: he had devised the
unpopular laws; if his death would appease the people, let them glut in
his blood and keep their complaints from the ear of his Majesty.
So the Queen; but the King loved Strafford, who had served him to this
end of ruin, and when he looked across at the dauntless figure pleading
his cause to ears deaf with prejudice, he vowed in his heart that his
minister should not die, and cursed the barking commoners who forced
him there to witness the humiliation of this his faithful servant.
The genius of one man was triumphant over the malice of many. Strafford
argued away every charge raised against him. A bill of attainder was
then brought forward, hurried on, and passed on April 26th, a week
after he had closed his splendid defence.
The King, desperate and seeing his own throne shaking, yet had the
resolution to refuse his assent; he had promised his protection to
Strafford and would not give way.
The whole nation rose to demand the blood of Thomas Wentworth; Laud was
already in the Tower, the Puritan party dominant; the fallen minister
had no friend save the King.
His ambitious, lofty, and reserved spirit tasted great agony while he
waited through the long days of early spring, tramping his chamber in
the Tower–he who had hoped to make England great–and here was England
howling for his life and honours … here was John Pym and his fanatic
followers triumphant.
“What is left? Can the great spirit rise to the great crisis? Having
proudly lived, can I proudly die? Can I still serve England–now?”
The King was firm, and public feeling rose to a panic of excitement.
Revolution was on the point of shaking the very palace. The Queen, with
a baseness doubly vile in a woman, used her arts to wrest death from
Strafford for her husband, vowed with tears to flee to France. The
Bishop of Lincoln urged that the needs and desires of the nation were
more than a mere private promise.
But the King was firm; he would not sign the death warrant of Strafford.
Then the Queen, potent for mischief, wrought on the King, since he was
obstinate on that point, to save his servant by violent means. The
distracted Charles took her fatal advice and endeavoured to seize the
Tower of London by force by means of the troops lately raised by the
Queen.
This attempt on the keys of the kingdom threw the nation, already in a
ferment, into a tumult of wrath and fear, and Lord Strafford was lost.
The wildfire of party zeal inflamed men into believing anything
desperate of the King; thrice the members of the House of Commons fled
on a cracking of the floor, thinking they had trod again over gunpowder
as in the former reign. There was nothing too monstrous to be stated,
nor too extravagant to be believed.
But the King would not sign the death warrant of his friend and
servant; he was supported by the Bishop of London, who bade him listen
to his conscience rather than to the fierce demands of party. Amid all
the press of turning strife one man was calm–the prisoner in the Tower
who saw every day how he had failed in his scheme of government and how
he had been the means of embroiling the King with the people instead
of establishing a great man over a great nation and making a light in
Europe of Charles Stewart.
Of all bitter failures, what can be more bitter than that of a great
statesman who hugely stakes and hugely loses beyond redemption, beyond
hope? The proud dark-faced man who had stood so high and dreamt so
daringly had his vigils of anguish during those long May days and
nights in the old Tower already darkened with noble blood and the
memory of splendid sufferers. He had lost everything but his life, and
that hung on the promise of the King. My lord did not doubt that his
master would keep that promise; but what was mere life to a man who
only valued existence as it meant use, power, achievement?
He who had given the King and England his best now gave all left to
him. On one of those awakening days of spring, when even in the Tower
there were trees bursting into leaf, glimpses of cloud-flecked blue,
bars of sunshine across the cold walls and sounds from the wide river
of music and merry-making, Lord Strafford wrote to the King, asking,
for the sake of the peace of England, to be left to his fate.
In these words he concluded his noble letter: “My consent will more
acquit you to God than all the world can do besides. To you I can
resign the life of this world with all imaginable cheerfulness.” The
King gave way, but with no abatement of his anguish, since he justly
felt that such a request was but another reason for him to keep his
word.
He could not, when he had consented, sign the warrant himself, so this
was done by four lords, and he sent a message entreating mercy of the
peers, or at least a delay; but there was no pity in England for Lord
Strafford, nor for the King.
The worst half of the tragedy was his; he never forgot nor shook his
conscience free of what he had done. When he came to his own agony and
bent his sad head to the block he looked at Juxon, that same bishop
who had been advocate for Strafford, and said, “Remember,” and it was
believed that the terrible whisper referred to the forsaken friend who
had died the same death eight years before.
At the moment he fell into a kind of apathy in the midst of the
rejoicing faction who had their way at last.
Lord Strafford prepared for death; he was in the full vigour of life,
of a worldly temper, proud and ambitious; the warm days were full of
the keen joy of life. He tasted to the utmost the sharpness of the
struggle between flesh and spirit. When he heard from the written
paper the actual words of the King formally condemning him he was for
a moment broken with emotion and overcome at thought of the friendship
that had failed so miserably; he, beloved of the King, was to die an
attainted man, a death humiliating and shameful, branded as a traitor.
He struggled to control his haughty spirit, to subdue the flesh that
clung to lovely life, but always before his eyes were the ripening
green, the sweet early weather, the sounds from the river, and it was
not easy.
The execution was hurried on; on the 12th of May he went to his death
in black satins like the great gentleman he was; as he left the gate
Archbishop Laud, his one-time coadjutor, now his fellow-prisoner, met
him, and he went on his knee to receive the blessing of one who was
to so quickly follow him to the scaffold, then on between his guards
silent and scornful like the leader of them all, while on his face
were the low-breathed air and the early sunshine, and in his ears the
calls of the birds and the swish of the river rippling hurriedly under
the fortress walls.
Many men have died for England in many ways, none under circumstances
more difficult and bitter than this proud man who sank to rest upon the
block that May day while his sick, haunted King waited in the great
palace for the awful news of the irrecoverable.
A POOR SPANISH LODGING
PHILIP WHARTON, DUKE OF WHARTON
“The scorn and wonder of his age.”–_Alexander Pope._
A young man sat at a wooden table in a small, mean room.
His hands were in his pockets and his head sunk on his breast, his legs
outstretched before him.
A miserable bed, covered with a dirty blanket, occupied one corner of
the room, above it being a gaunt and poorly carved crucifix.
The floor, walls and ceiling were lath, plaster and worn wood, all
soiled, smoked and crumbling.
The one small window was covered with a thick pane of discoloured glass
that could not open; some portmanteaux stood beneath and a broken chair.
On the table was a coarse glass stained with lees of wine, a loaf of
bread, an hour-glass and a knife.
The flies turned in and out of the glass, clustered round the loaf and
hung in clouds about the window.
Outside the sun, at its full height and strength, blazed at white heat,
and a bar of vivid light streamed through the smeared glass and fell in
a pool of gold on the dirty floor near to the young man, who appeared
to be dozing, so still did he sit and so level was his breathing.
He was humbly dressed in a travelling coat that was much worn, though
of a good cloth and fashionable cut, a frayed blue silk waistcoat,
black breeches, boots to his knees, and a coat of grey tabinet, all
much used and soiled.
At his side was a light sword, and round his throat a neckcloth of fine
Venetian lace, carelessly folded.
His hair hung untidily down his back and forward over his face; it
was a charming chestnut-brown colour and very thick. Presently he
stretched himself and raised his head without removing his hands from
his breeches pockets.
He glanced round the room, and it would have been impossible to
discover from his expression whether the squalor of his surroundings
moved him to disgust or no.