The conversation which Albert had in vain endeavoured to interrupt,
flowed on in the same course after he had left the room. It entertained
Louis Kerneguy; for personal vanity, or an over-sensitiveness to
deserved reproof, were not among the faults of his character, and were
indeed incompatible with an understanding, which, combined with more
strength of principle, steadiness of exertion, and self-denial, might
have placed Charles high on the list of English monarchs. On the other
hand, Sir Henry listened with natural delight to the noble sentiments
uttered by a being so beloved as his daughter. His own parts were
rather steady than brilliant; and he had that species of imagination
which is not easily excited without the action of another, as the
electrical globe only scintillates when rubbed against its cushion. He
was well pleased, therefore, when Kerneguy pursued the conversation, by
observing that Mistress Alice Lee had not explained how the same good
fairy that conferred moral qualities, could not also remove corporeal
blemishes.
“You mistake, sir,” said Alice. “I confer nothing. I do but attempt to
paint our King such as I _hope_ he is—such as I am sure he _may_ be,
should he himself desire to be so. The same general report which speaks
of his countenance as unprepossessing, describes his talents as being
of the first order. He has, therefore, the means of arriving at
excellence, should he cultivate them sedulously and employ them
usefully—should he rule his passions and be guided by his
understanding. Every good man cannot be wise; but it is in the power of
every wise man, if he pleases, to be as eminent for virtue as for
talent.”
Young Kerneguy rose briskly, and took a turn through the room; and ere
the knight could make any observation on the singular vivacity in which
he had indulged, he threw himself again into his chair, and said, in
rather an altered tone of voice—“It seems, then, Mistress Alice Lee,
that the good friends who have described this poor King to you, have
been as unfavourable in their account of his morals as of his person?”
“The truth must be better known to you, sir,” said Alice, “than it can
be to me. Some rumours there have been which accuse him of a license,
which, whatever allowance flatterers make for it, does not, to say the
least, become the son of the Martyr—I shall be happy to have these
contradicted on good authority.”
“I am surprised at your folly,” said Sir Henry Lee, “in hinting at such
things, Alice; a pack of scandal, invented by the rascals who have
usurped the government—a thing devised by the enemy.”
“Nay, sir,” said Kerneguy, laughing, “we must not let our zeal charge
the enemy with more scandal than they actually deserve. Mistress Alice
has put the question to me. I can only answer, that no one can be more
devotedly attached to the King than I myself,—that I am very partial to
his merits and blind to his defects;—and that, in short, I would be the
last man in the world to give up his cause where it was tenable.
Nevertheless, I must confess, that if all his grandfather of Navarre’s
morals have not descended to him, this poor King has somehow inherited
a share of the specks that were thought to dim the lustre of that great
Prince—that Charles is a little soft-hearted, or so, where beauty is
concerned.—Do not blame him too severely, pretty Mistress Alice; when a
man’s hard fate has driven him among thorns, it were surely hard to
prevent him from trifling with the few roses he may find among them?”
Alice, who probably thought the conversation had gone far enough, rose
while Master Kerneguy was speaking, and was leaving the room before he
had finished, without apparently hearing the interrogation with which
he concluded. Her father approved of her departure, not thinking the
turn which Kerneguy had given to the discourse altogether fit for her
presence; and, desirous civilly to break off the conversation, “I see,”
he said, “this is about the time, when, as Will says, the household
affairs will call my daughter hence; I will therefore challenge you,
young gentleman, to stretch your limbs in a little exercise with me,
either at single rapier, or rapier and poniard, back-sword, spadroon,
or your national weapons of broad-sword and target; for all or any of
which I think we shall find implements in the hall.”
It would be too high a distinction, Master Kerneguy said, for a poor
page to be permitted to try a passage of arms with a knight so renowned
as Sir Henry Lee, and he hoped to enjoy so great an honour before he
left Woodstock; but at the present moment his lameness continued to
give him so much pain, that he should shame himself in the attempt.
Sir Henry then offered to read him a play of Shakspeare, and for this
purpose turned up King Richard II. But hardly had he commenced with
“Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster,”
when the young gentleman was seized with such an incontrollable fit of
the cramp as could only be relieved by immediate exercise. He therefore
begged permission to be allowed to saunter abroad for a little while,
if Sir Henry Lee considered he might venture without danger.
“I can answer for the two or three of our people that are still left
about the place,” said Sir Henry; “and I know my son has disposed them
so as to be constantly on the watch. If you hear the bell toll at the
Lodge, I advise you to come straight home by the way of the King’s Oak,
which you see in yonder glade towering above the rest of the trees. We
will have some one stationed there to introduce you secretly into the
house.”
The page listened to these cautions with the impatience of a schoolboy,
who, desirous of enjoying his holiday, hears without marking the advice
of tutor or parent, about taking care not to catch cold, and so forth.
The absence of Alice Lee had removed all which had rendered the
interior of the Lodge agreeable, and the mercurial young page fled with
precipitation from the exercise and amusement which Sir Henry had
proposed. He girded on his rapier, and threw his cloak, or rather that
which belonged to his borrowed suit, about him, bringing up the lower
part so as to muffle the face and show only the eyes over it, which was
a common way of wearing them in those days, both in streets, in the
country, and in public places, when men had a mind to be private, and
to avoid interruption from salutations and greetings in the
market-place. He hurried across the open space which divided the front
of the Lodge from the wood, with the haste of a bird, escaped from the
cage, which, though joyful at its liberation, is at the same time
sensible of its need of protection and shelter. The wood seemed to
afford these to the human fugitive, as it might have done to the bird
in question.
When under the shadow of the branches, and within the verge of the
forest, covered from observation, yet with the power of surveying the
front of the Lodge, and all the open ground before it, the supposed
Louis Kerneguy meditated on his escape.
“What an infliction—to fence with a gouty old man, who knows not, I
dare say, a trick of the sword which was not familiar in the days of
old Vincent Saviolo! or, as a change of misery, to hear him read one of
those wildernesses of scenes which the English call a play, from
prologue to epilogue—from Enter the first to the final _Exeunt
omnes_—an unparalleled horror—a penance which would have made a dungeon
darker, and added dullness even to Woodstock!”
Here he stopped and looked around, then continued his meditations—“So,
then, it was here that the gay old Norman secluded his pretty
mistress—I warrant, without having seen her, that Rosamond Clifford was
never half so handsome as that lovely Alice Lee. And what a soul there
is in the girl’s eye!—with what abandonment of all respects, save that
expressing the interest of the moment, she poured forth her tide of
enthusiasm! Were I to be long here, in spite of prudence, and
half-a-dozen very venerable obstacles beside, I should be tempted to
try to reconcile her to the indifferent visage of this same
hard-favoured Prince.—Hard favoured?—it is a kind of treason for one
who pretends to so much loyalty, to say so of the King’s features, and
in my mind deserves punishment.—Ah, pretty Mistress Alice! many a
Mistress Alice before you has made dreadful exclamations on the
irregularities of mankind, and the wickedness of the age, and ended by
being glad to look out for apologies for their own share in them. But
then her father—the stout old cavalier—my father’s old friend—should
such a thing befall, it would break his heart.—Break a pudding’s-end—he
has more sense. If I give his grandson a title to quarter the arms of
England, what matter if a bar sinister is drawn across them?—Pshaw! far
from an abatement, it is a point of addition—the heralds in their next
visitation will place him higher in the roll for it. Then, if he did
wince a little at first, does not the old traitor deserve it;—first,
for his disloyal intention of punching mine anointed body black and
blue with his vile foils—and secondly, his atrocious complot with Will
Shakspeare, a fellow as much out of date as himself, to read me to
death with five acts of a historical play, or chronicle, ‘being the
piteous Life and Death of Richard the Second?’ Odds-fish, my own life
is piteous enough, as I think; and my death may match it, for aught I
see coming yet. Ah, but then the brother—my friend—my guide—my guard—So
far as this little proposed intrigue concerns him, such practising
would be thought not quite fair. But your bouncing, swaggering,
revengeful brothers exist only on the theatre. Your dire revenge, with
which a brother persecuted a poor fellow who had seduced his sister, or
been seduced by her, as the case might be, as relentlessly as if he had
trodden on his toes without making an apology, is entirely out of
fashion, since Dorset killed the Lord Bruce many a long year since.
Pshaw! when a King is the offender, the bravest man sacrifices nothing
by pocketing a little wrong which he cannot personally resent. And in
France, there is not a noble house, where each individual would not
cock his hat an inch higher, if they could boast of such a left-handed
alliance with the Grand Monarque.”
Such were the thoughts which rushed through the mind of Charles, at his
first quitting the Lodge of Woodstock, and plunging into the forest
that surrounded it. His profligate logic, however, was not the result
of his natural disposition, nor received without scruple by his sound
understanding. It was a train of reasoning which he had been led to
adopt from his too close intimacy with the witty and profligate youth
of quality by whom he had been surrounded. It arose from the evil
communication with Villiers, Wilmot, Sedley, and others, whose genius
was destined to corrupt that age, and the Monarch on whom its character
afterwards came so much to depend. Such men, bred amidst the license of
civil war, and without experiencing that curb which in ordinary times
the authority of parents and relations imposes upon the headlong
passions of youth, were practised in every species of vice, and could
recommend it as well by precept as by example, turning into pitiless
ridicule all those nobler feelings which withhold men from gratifying
lawless passion. The events of the King’s life had also favoured his
reception of this Epicurean doctrine. He saw himself, with the highest
claims to sympathy and assistance, coldly treated by the Courts which
he visited, rather as a permitted supplicant, than an exiled Monarch.
He beheld his own rights and claims treated with scorn and
indifference; and, in the same proportion, he was reconciled to the
hard-hearted and selfish course of dissipation, which promised him
immediate indulgence. If this was obtained at the expense of the
happiness of others, should he of all men be scrupulous upon the
subject, since he treated others only as the world treated him?
But although the foundations of this unhappy system had been laid, the
Prince was not at this early period so fully devoted to it as he was
found to have become, when a door was unexpectedly opened for his
restoration. On the contrary, though the train of gay reasoning which
we have above stated, as if it had found vent in uttered language, did
certainly arise in his mind, as that which would have been suggested by
his favourite counsellors on such occasions, he recollected that what
might be passed over as a peccadillo in France or the Netherlands, or
turned into a diverting novel or pasquinade by the wits of his own
wandering Court, was likely to have the aspect of horrid ingratitude
and infamous treachery among the English gentry, and would inflict a
deep, perhaps an incurable wound upon his interests, among the more
aged and respectable part of his adherents. Then it occurred to him—for
his own interest did not escape him, even in this mode of considering
the subject—that he was in the power of the Lees, father and son, who
were always understood to be at least sufficiently punctilious on the
score of honour; and if they should suspect such an affront as his
imagination had conceived, they could be at no loss to find means of
the most ample revenge, either by their own hands, or by those of the
ruling faction.
“The risk of re-opening the fatal window at Whitehall, and renewing the
tragedy of the Man in the Mask, were a worse penalty,” was his final
reflection, “than the old stool of the Scottish penance; and pretty
though Alice Lee is, I cannot afford to intrigue at such a hazard. So,
farewell, pretty maiden! unless, as sometimes has happened, thou hast a
humour to throw thyself at thy King’s feet, and then I am too
magnanimous to refuse thee my protection. Yet, when I think of the pale
clay-cold figure of the old man, as he lay last night extended before
me, and imagine the fury of Albert Lee raging with impatience, his hand
on a sword which only his loyalty prevents him from plunging into his
sovereign’s heart—nay, the picture is too horrible! Charles must for
ever change his name to Joseph, even if he were strongly tempted; which
may Fortune in mercy prohibit!”
To speak the truth of a prince, more unfortunate in his early
companions, and the callousness which he acquired by his juvenile
adventures and irregular mode of life, than in his natural disposition,
Charles came the more readily to this wise conclusion, because he was
by no means subject to those violent and engrossing passions, to
gratify which the world has been thought well lost. His amours, like
many of the present day, were rather matters of habit and fashion, than
of passion and affection: and, in comparing himself in this respect to
his grandfather, Henry IV., he did neither his ancestor nor himself
perfect justice. He was, to parody the words of a bard, himself
actuated by the stormy passions which an intriguer often only
simulates,—
None of those who loved so kindly,
None of those who loved so blindly.
An amour was with him a matter of amusement, a regular consequence, as
it seemed to him, of the ordinary course of things in society. He was
not at the trouble to practise seductive arts, because he had seldom
found occasion to make use of them; his high rank, and the profligacy
of part of the female society with which he had mingled, rendering them
unnecessary. Added to this, he had, for the same reason, seldom been
crossed by the obstinate interference of relations, or even of
husbands, who had generally seemed not unwilling to suffer such matters
to take their course.
So that, notwithstanding his total looseness of principle, and
systematic disbelief in the virtue of women, and the honour of men, as
connected with the character of their female relatives, Charles was not
a person to have studiously introduced disgrace into a family, where a
conquest might have been violently disputed, attained with difficulty,
and accompanied with general distress, not to mention the excitation of
all fiercer passions against the author of the scandal.
But the danger of the King’s society consisted in his being much of an
unbeliever in the existence of such cases as were likely to be
embittered by remorse on the part of the principal victim, or rendered
perilous by the violent resentment of her connexions or relatives. He
had even already found such things treated on the continent as matters
of ordinary occurrence, subject, in all cases where a man of high
influence was concerned, to an easy arrangement; and he was really,
generally speaking, sceptical on the subject of severe virtue in either
sex, and apt to consider it as a veil assumed by prudery in women, and
hypocrisy in men, to extort a higher reward for their compliance.
While we are discussing the character of his disposition to gallantry,
the Wanderer was conducted, by the walk he had chosen, through several
whimsical turns, until at last it brought him under the windows of
Victor Lee’s apartment, where he descried Alice watering and arranging
some flowers placed on the oriel window, which was easily accessible by
daylight, although at night he had found it a dangerous attempt to
scale it. But not Alice only, her father also showed himself near the
window, and beckoned him up. The family party seemed now more promising
than before, and the fugitive Prince was weary of playing battledore
and shuttlecock with his conscience, and much disposed to let matters
go as chance should determine.
He climbed lightly up the broken ascent, and was readily welcomed by
the old knight, who held activity in high honour. Alice also seemed
glad to see the lively and interesting young man; and by her presence,
and the unaffected mirth with which she enjoyed his sallies, he was
animated to display those qualities of wit and humour, which nobody
possessed in a higher degree.
His satire delighted the old gentleman, who laughed till his eyes ran
over as he heard the youth, whose claims to his respect he little
dreamed of, amusing him with successive imitations of the Scottish
Presbyterian clergymen, of the proud and poor Hidalgo of the North, of
the fierce and over-weening pride and Celtic dialect of the mountain
chief, of the slow and more pedantic Lowlander, with all of which his
residence in Scotland had made him familiar. Alice also laughed, and
applauded, amused herself, and delighted to see that her father was so;
and the whole party were in the highest glee, when Albert Lee entered,
eager to find Louis Kerneguy, and to lead him away to a private
colloquy with Dr. Rochecliffe, whose zeal, assiduity, and wonderful
possession of information, had constituted him their master-pilot in
those difficult times.
It is unnecessary to introduce the reader to the minute particulars of
their conference. The information obtained was so far favourable, that
the enemy seemed to have had no intelligence of the King’s route
towards the south, and remained persuaded that he had made his escape
from Bristol, as had been reported, and as had indeed been proposed;
but the master of the vessel prepared for the King’s passage had taken
the alarm, and sailed without his royal freight. His departure,
however, and the suspicion of the service in which he was engaged,
served to make the belief general, that the King had gone off along
with him.
But though this was cheering, the Doctor had more unpleasant tidings
from the sea-coast, alleging great difficulties in securing a vessel,
to which it might be fit to commit a charge so precious; and, above
all, requesting his Majesty might on no account venture to approach the
shore, until he should receive advice that all the previous
arrangements had been completely settled.
No one was able to suggest a safer place of residence than that which
he at present occupied. Colonel Everard was deemed certainly not
personally unfriendly to the King; and Cromwell, as was supposed,
reposed in Everard an unbounded confidence. The interior presented
numberless hiding-places, and secret modes of exit, known to no one but
the ancient residents of the Lodge—nay, far better to Rochecliffe than
to any of them; as, when Rector at the neighbouring town, his prying
disposition as an antiquary had induced him to make very many
researches among the old ruins—the results of which he was believed, in
some instances, to have kept to himself.
To balance these conveniences, it was no doubt true, that the
Parliamentary Commissioners were still at no great distance, and would
be ready to resume their authority upon the first opportunity. But no
one supposed such an opportunity was likely to occur; and all believed,
as the influence of Cromwell and the army grew more and more
predominant, that the disappointed Commissioners would attempt nothing
in contradiction to his pleasure, but wait with patience an
indemnification in some other quarter for their vacated commissions.
Report, through the voice of Master Joseph Tomkins, stated, that they
had determined, in the first place, to retire to Oxford, and were
making preparations accordingly. This promised still farther to insure
the security of Woodstock. It was therefore settled, that the King,
under the character of Louis Kerneguy, should remain an inmate of the
Lodge, until a vessel should be procured for his escape, at the port
which might be esteemed the safest and most convenient.