Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly fed,
cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and
murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all
impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day:
in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence when
he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them,
with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. It no
longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at
parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a proud
pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of
officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, "Way for the King!"
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming
to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece. He liked to
receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the
affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called
him brother. O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all
that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws: yet upon
occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and
give him a look that would make him tremble. Once, when his royal
'sister,' the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him
against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would
otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their
august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty
thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had
delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the
executioner, {9} the boy was filled with generous indignation, and
commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the stone
that was in her breast, and give her a human heart.
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince
who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge
him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first royal
days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about
the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and happy
restoration to his native rights and splendours. But as time wore on,
and the prince did not come, Tom's mind became more and more occupied
with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the
vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he
did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome spectre,
for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.
Tom's poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind.
At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but
later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and
betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty
place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums,
made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost
wholly. And he was content, even glad: for, whenever their mournful and
accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more
despicable than the worms that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in
his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded
by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow was the day appointed
for his solemn crowning as King of England. At that same hour, Edward,
the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel,
and clothed in rags and shreds--his share of the results of the riot--was
wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest
certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster
Abbey, busy as ants: they were making the last preparation for the royal
coronation.