NO REST. THE QUEEN’S JOURNEY TO HOLLAND. A FRIEND IN NEED. “MASTER, GO
ON, AND I WILL FOLLOW THEE.” THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER ASTIR. THROUGH
GOOD REPORT AND ILL. AN INDIGNANT REFUSAL. BACK AT LATHOM. A
BOISTEROUS FRIEND
More than once in the early days of the civil war which had now fairly
broken out in the country, the King seemed to miss that tide in his
affairs which, if taken at the flood, promised to lead on to an issue
very different from that one which he did ultimately reach. After the
battle of Edgehill, though the Royalists suffered many reverses, their
star was undoubtedly in the ascendant. There were several reasons for
this, chief among them possibly, that the country at heart had not the
desire to fight, father against son, brother against brother.
Differences of political and religious creed might be sharply defined,
but for such trials by ordeal of bloodshed a large majority of men on
either side was not willing. General sympathy consequently belonged to
the Royalists, who were regarded as on the defensive. In a sense the
Royalists were the popular party. They had rallied round their King in
his hour of need, and sentiment was with them, as it is still, and as it
is likely to remain till the end of time—or at least until that day when
the name of king is wiped out from speech. Reason and prudence and much
more that is desirable might weigh heavily in the Parliamentary balance,
but chivalry and brightness of spirit and loyal daring had their
fascinations. The sombre Puritan belief was setting in more and more
darkly over the land, and the youthful English nobility and yeomanry had
no mind for it. By education and rearing, they revolted against its
limitations. They were not, on this account, all such reckless,
daredevil, licentious fighters, any more than the men of the opposite
party were all prick-eared, pragmatical pretenders to holiness; but that
the strength of the Royalists lay in an element which the
Parliamentarians did not possess, Cromwell, now rapidly coming to the
front, was not slow to recognise. Discussing this question one day with
Hampden, the astute lieutenant who was to eclipse the lustre of all the
members of his party, replied to Hampden’s speculative remarks upon the
weakness of their own cavalry men, and the strength of the King’s—“What
can your expect? Our cavaliers are old menials or pot-house lads; theirs
are sons of gentlemen, younger members of families of high rank. We
ought to have men animated by a spirit which is able to make them go as
far as gentlemen may go; otherwise I am certain that you will always be
beaten.”
“That is true,” said Hampden. “But what can be done?”
“I can do something,” replied Cromwell. “I will bring up men who have
the fear of God before their eyes, and who will put some conscience into
what they do. I will answer for it that they will not be beaten.” Then
he went to work and beat up recruits from among the tenantry of the
Eastern counties—men who engaged in the contest for conscience sake,
fiery fanatics, who spent in prayer the time they did not give to
fighting. Thus came into the world Cromwell’s Ironsides.
Another very material encouragement was experienced by the Royalists in
the return of the Queen with a convoy of troops and ammunition.
Burlington, where she landed, was bombarded, and the bullets fell into
the room she occupied. She was forced to take flight into the open
country, where she remained hidden under a bank. Lord Newcastle came to
her rescue, and conducted her to York, where the Roman Catholics of the
North rallied in great strength about her. She now sought to negotiate
terms with several of the Parliamentarian leaders, who were already
tiring of their cause; but the King’s final conditions, upon which he
consented to an arrangement, gave such offence to Parliament, that the
deputies were recalled by a message so peremptory that they had not time
to wait for their coaches, and started back to London on horseback. In
the meantime, the Earl of Derby had been successfully fighting for the
Royal cause in the North. He took Lancaster and Preston from the
Parliamentarians. There is little doubt that he would have followed up
these triumphs by the subjection of Manchester, though it held out with
great determination; but again he was thwarted by demands for his men to
be drafted elsewhere.
Despite the rudeness and insults of this course, the Earl strove to
endure them in an unmurmuring spirit. He was forced to see, without
contesting, an attack on the little town of Wigan, which he had
garrisoned under the Scotch General Blair. The town was taken and
pillaged. The sacramental vessels were even stolen from the church, and,
in accordance with the fanatical spirit of the time, which was beginning
to know no bounds, one of the Puritan bigots hung them round his neck as
idolatrous trophies. When his people and soldiers vented their
indignation at the treatment to which their beloved and honoured chief
was subjected by the Court, and at the hands of the master whom he was
striving with all his might, and at such sacrifices, to serve, he quoted
the noble passage from Tacitus: “_Pravis dictio factisque ex posteritate
et fama metus._”[11]
Footnote 11:
“It belongs to fame and posterity to strike bad actions and bad words
with fear.”
Nothing now remained for the Earl to do under such an enforced
inactivity but to return to Lathom House, in order to superintend the
work begun there of fortifying and victualling it, to ensure the safety
of his wife and children, who resided in it during his long absences.
The loyal, single-minded Earl was not likely to be a favourite with the
ruck of the Court party. For the butterfly courtiers he was too austere,
and for the place-seekers too honest, for them to be desirous of his
presence near the King, who was at Oxford, or the Queen, who was at
York. The uttermost confines of the kingdom were not too far to banish
him, in the opinion of many; and accordingly, under sufficiently
specious pretexts, thither he was sent, although the Parliamentarians
were rapidly gaining ground in the North; but, as the Earl writes in his
memoirs—“The old saying is verified, ‘Misfortunes never come
single-handed.’”
“I received,” he goes on to say, writing to his son, Lord Strange,
“letters from the Isle of Man, indicating threatenings of a great
revolt.” Many there, following the example of England, began to murmur
against the Government—thanks to a few malicious and seditious spirits.
They had learned the same lesson as the Londoners, coming tumultuously
to Court to demand new laws, and modification of old ones; saying that
they would have no bishops, and would not pay tithes to the clergy. They
despised authority, and set free several persons whom the Government had
arrested for their insolence. “I had also learned,” he continues, “that
an armed ship which I kept there for the defence of the island had been
seized by the Parliament ships—which turned out to be true. His Majesty,
therefore, had those about him, such as Lord Goring, Lord Digby, Lord
Jermyn, Sir Edward Dering and several others, who advised me to repair
immediately to the island, in order to prevent mischief in time to be of
service to his Majesty, and for the preservation of my heritage.”
But in this again the Earl might have coupled with his quoted axiom of
the arrival of evils in battalions, the fable of the old man and the
ass; for while he pleased the King and his lords, his enemies set his
departure to the Isle of Man to a desire to be out of the general
struggle. The Earl treats these calumnies with the contempt they
merited. It suffices that his son knows and understands him. “As to the
others,” he writes, “it matters little to me whether they understand or
not.”
Lord Derby delayed only long enough to return to Lathom, where he
mustered all the men, and got together all the money and ammunition
possible “to defend and protect my wife and children against the
insolence of the enemy.” Then he embarked for the Isle of Man.
“I left my house and my children,” the Earl concluded, “and all my
affairs in England in charge of my wife, a person of virtue and of
honour, worthy of her high birth and rank, who thus found herself alone,
a stranger in the land, and (so it was thought) destitute of friends,
provisions, or arms for defence. It was imagined that Lathom House would
be an easy conquest, and a commission from Parliament was procured to
subdue it by treaty or by force.”
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