talk, and putting on his hat, he took the floor of the House. I watched
him as he did so. He breathed inward, like one who has a business of
life and death in hand. I could see on his face that he was going to do
the deed that had been the secret of his breast for many days; and his
walk was that quick stride with which he ever went to meet an enemy. He
stood in the middle of the House, and began to accuse the members
personally. His words were swords. He flung them at the men as if they
were javelins; shot them in their faces as if from a pistol; and while
rivers run to the sea, I can never think of Oliver Cromwell as I saw him
this day but as one of the Immortals. He did not look as you and I
look. He filled the House, though a less man in bulk and stature than
either of us. He told the members to empty themselves of Self, and then
they would find room for Christ, and for England. He told them the Lord
had done with them. He said they were no Parliament, and that he had
been sent to put an end to their sitting and their prating.
"And at these words, Cluny Neville spoke to the Serjeant, and he opened
the doors, and some musketeers entered the House. Then Sir Harry Vane
cried out, 'This is not honest;' and Cromwell reminded him of his own
broken promise. And so, to one and all, he brought Judgment Day; for
their private lives were well known to him, and he could glance at Tom
Challoner and say, 'Some of you are drunkards;' and at Henry Marten, and
give the text about lewd livers; and at the bribe-takers he had only to
point his finger, and say in a voice of thunder '_Depart_,' and they
began to go out, at first slowly, and then in a hurry, treading on the
heels of each other."
"What of Lenthall? He has a stubborn will."
"He sat still in the Speaker's chair, until Cromwell ordered him to come
down. For a moment he hesitated, but General Harrison said, 'I will
lend you my hand, sir;' and so he also went out."
"But was there no attempt to stay such dismissals? I am amazed,
dumbfounded!" said Doctor Verity.
"Alderman Allen, the Treasurer of the Army, as he went out said
something to Cromwell which angered him very much; and he then and there
charged Allen with a shortage of one hundred thousand pounds, and
committed him to the care of a musketeer for examination. And as Sir
Harry Vane passed him, he told him reproachfully that his own
treacherous conduct had brought affairs to their present necessity; for,
he added, 'if Sir Harry Vane had been at the Cockpit according to his
words, Oliver Cromwell had not been in the Parliament House.' But I
tell you, there was no gainsaying the Cromwell of this hour. He was
more than mortal man; and Vane and the others knew, if they had not
known before, why he was never defeated in battle."
"After the Speaker had left, what then?"
"His eye fell upon the Mace, and he said scornfully to some of the
Ironsides, 'Take that bauble away!' Then he ordered the musketeers to
clear the House, he himself walking up to its Clerk and taking from
under his arm the bill which had caused the trouble, and which was ready
to pass. He ordered the man to go home, and he slipped away without a
question. Cromwell was the last soul to leave the Chamber, and as he
went out of it he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. He
then walked quietly back to his rooms in the Cockpit, and I dare say he
was more troubled to meet Mistress Cromwell than he was to meet Sir
Harry Vane and his company."
"Oh, no!" said Jane. "Mistress Cromwell is in all her husband's
counsels. He would go to her for comfort, for whatever he may have said
and done. I know he is this hour sorrowful and disturbed, and that he
will neither eat nor drink till he has justified himself in the sight of
God."
"He will need God on his right hand and on his left," said Doctor
Verity. "More than we can tell will come of this--implacable hostility,
rancorous jealousy, everlasting envy and spite. The members----"
"The members," interrupted General Swaffham, "have tied themselves,
hands and feet, with cords of their own spinning, and Oliver Cromwell
holds the ends of them. They will not dare to open their mouths. Sir
Harry Vane said something about the business being 'unconstitutional,'
and Cromwell answered him roughly enough, after this fashion:
'Unconstitutional? A very accommodating word, Sir Harry Vane. Give me
leave to say you have played fast and loose with it long enough. I will
not have it any longer! England will not have it! You are no friend of
England. I do say, sir, you are no friend of England!' And his passion
gathered and blazed till he spurned the floor with his feet, just as I
have seen my big red bull at Swaffham paw the ground on which he stood."
"This is all very fine indeed," said Mrs. Swaffham, almost weeping in
her anger; "but you need not praise this man to me. He has slain the
King of England, and turned out the English Parliament, and pray what
next? He will make himself King, and Elizabeth Cromwell Queen. Shall we
indeed bow down to them? Not I, for one."
"He wants no such homage, Martha," said the Doctor, "and if I judge
Madame Cromwell rightly, she is quite as far from any such desire."
"You know nothing of the Cromwell women, Doctor--I know. Yes, I know
them!"
"Dear mother----"
"Jane, there is no use 'dear mothering' me. I know the Cromwells. Many
a receipt for puddings and comfits I have given Elizabeth Cromwell, and
shown her how to dye silk and stuffs; yes, and loaned her my silver
sconces when Elizabeth married Mr. Claypole; and now to think of her in
the King's palace, and people bowing down to her, and hand-kissing, and
what not! And as for Oliver Cromwell's passions, we know all about them
down in Cambridgeshire," she continued. "He stamped in that way when
some one preached in St. Mary's what he thought rank popery; and about
the draining of the Fens, he kicked enough, God knows! Oh, yes, I can
see him in steel and buff, sword in hand, and musketeers behind him,
getting his way--for his way he will have--if he turn England
hurly-burly for it."
"Martha, he wore neither steel nor buff, and his sword was far from him.
He went down to the House in a black cloth suit and gray worsted
stockings, which, no doubt, were of his wife's knitting; and his shoes
were those made by Benjamin Cudlip, country fashion, low-cut, with steel
latchets. He had not even a falling collar on, just a band of stitched
linen round his neck."
"I wonder, oh, I hope!" said Jane, "that it was one of the bands I
stitched when I was last staying at Whitehall."
"Find it out, Jane; settle your mind that it was one of them," answered
Doctor Verity; "and then, Jane, you may tell it to your children, and
grandchildren, God willing."
"At any rate," continued General Swaffham, "Cromwell at this hour owed
nothing to his dress. I have seen him in the fields by St. Ives, and in
Ely Market, in the same kind of clothing. What would you? And what did
it matter? His spirit clothed his flesh, and the power of the spirit
was on him, so that the men in velvet and fine lace wilted away in his
presence."
"No one minds the Lord General's having power, no one minds giving him
honour for what he has done for England, but the Cromwell women! What
have they done more than others?" asked Mrs. Swaffham.
"Be at peace, Martha," said General Swaffham; "here are things to
consider of far greater import than the Cromwell women. How the nation
will take this affair, remains to be seen. 'Tis true the Lord General
was cheered all through the city, but he knows--and no man better--what
a fickle heart the populace have. As like as not, it will be, as he
said to me, 'Overturn, overturn, and great tasks on all sides.'"
"I look for measureless wrath and vain babble, and threats heard far and
wide," said Doctor Verity. "The people have been given what they
wanted, and twenty to one they will now nay-say all they have roared
for. That would be like the rest of their ways."
For once Doctor Verity was wrong. This master-stroke of Cromwell's went
straight to the heart of London. "Not a dog barked against it," said
Cromwell to his friends, and he was to all intents and purposes right.
Those who called it "usurpation" confessed that it was an usurpation of
capability, in place of one of incapability. Even the lampoons of the
day were not adverse to Cromwell, while some of them gave him a grim
kind of pleasure.
Thus, one morning, Cluny Neville passing the Parliament House noticed
placards on its walls, and going close enough to read them, found they
advertised "_This house to let; unfurnished_." And when he told this to
Cromwell, that faculty in the man which sometimes made for a rude kind
of mirth, was aroused, and he burst into an uproarious enjoyment of the
joke. "I wish," he cried, "I wish I knew the wag who did it. I would
give him a crown or two, I would indeed, and gladly."
There had been a little uncertainty about the navy, for Sir Harry Vane
had shown it great favour. But Admiral Robert Blake was as great and as
unselfish a man in his office as was Oliver Cromwell. He accepted the
change without dissent, telling his fleet simply--
"It is not the business of seamen to mind state affairs. Our business is
to keep foreigners from fooling us, and to find the Dutch ships, fight
them, and sink them."
And yet the feeling which led to Mrs. Swaffham's little burst of temper
was not particular to herself. Many women felt precisely as Martha
Swaffham did, and Cromwell did not take this element into his
consideration. Yet it was one that worked steadily towards its
reckoning, for men do not finally withstand the ceaseless dropping fire
of their own hearthstones. Mrs. Fleetwood's and Mrs. Lambert's
ill-feeling about precedence was indefinitely multiplied, and Mrs.
Swaffham's more intimate rejection of the Cromwell women was a stone
thrown into water and circling near and far. The Lord General Cromwell,
men and women alike, could accept; he had fought his way to honour, and
they could give him what he had won. But the Cromwell women had done
nothing, and suffered nothing beyond the ordinary lot; it was a much
harder thing to render homage unto them. In these days, Mrs. Swaffham,
though ignoring the late King, was distinctly royal and loyal where
Queen Henrietta Maria was concerned.
But it was, after all, a grand time in old England. Adventures and
victories were the news of every day. Nothing was too strange to happen;
people expected romances and impossibilities; and because they expected
them, they came. The big city was always astir with news; it flew from
lip to lip, like wild fire, was rung out from every steeple, and flashed
in bonfires from one high place to another. This formidable man in
black and gray was at the helm of affairs, and England felt that she
might now trade and sow and marry and be happy to her heart's desire.
The shutting of the Parliament House affected nothing; the machinery of
Government went on without let or hindrance. A new Parliament was
quickly summoned, one hundred and forty Puritan notables "fearing God
and of approved fidelity and honesty," and it was to begin its sittings
on the ensuing fourth of July. Meantime, Robert Blake was wiping out of
existence the Dutch navy and the Dutch commerce. In the month of June,
he took eleven Dutch men-of-war and one thousand three hundred and fifty
prisoners; the church bells rang joyously from one end of England to the
other, and London gathered at St. Paul's to sing Te Deums for the
victory.
Thus to the echoes of trumpets and cannon the business of living and
loving went on. The great national events were only chorus to the
dramas and tragedies of the highest and the humblest homes. While
Cromwell was issuing writs for a new Parliament and holding the reins of
Government tightly in his strong hands, his wife and daughters were
happily busy about the marriage of young Harry Cromwell to Elizabeth
Russel; and Sir Peter Lely was painting their portraits, and Lady Mary
Cromwell had her first lover; and Mrs. Swaffham was making the cowslip
wine; and the Fermor and Heneage girls off to Bath for trifling and
bathing and idle diversions; and Jane sewing the sweetest and tenderest
thoughts into the fine linen and cambric which she was fashioning into
garments for her own marriage. In every family circle it was the same
thing: the little comedies of life went on, whether Parliament sat or
not, whether Blake brought in prizes, or lay watching in the Channel;
for, after all, what the people really wanted was peace and leisure to
attend to their own affairs.
One lovely morning in this jubilant English spring, Jane sat at the open
window writing to Matilda de Wick. All the sweet fresh things of the
earth and the air were around her, but she was the sweetest and freshest
of all. There was a pleasant smile on her lips as her fingers moved
across the white paper. She was telling her friend about Harry
Cromwell's marriage in the old church at Kensington; about the dresses
and the wedding feast, and the delightful way in which the Lord General
had taken his new daughter to his heart. "And what now will Mistress
Dorothy Osborne do?" she asked. "To be sure, she is said to be greatly
taken with Sir William Temple, who is of her own way of thinking--which
Harry Cromwell is not, though Mrs. Hutchinson has spoken of him
everywhere as a 'debauched, ungodly cavalier;' but Mrs. Hutchinson has a
Presbyterian hatred of the Cromwells. And I must also tell you that the
Lords Chandos and Arundel have been tried before the Upper Bench for the
killing of Mr. Compton in a duel. The crime was found manslaughter, and
they were sentenced to be burned in the hand which was done to them
both, but very favourably. And the Earl of Leicester said he was glad
of it, for it argued a good stiff government to punish men of such high
birth; but my father thinks Leicester to be the greatest of levelers, he
would abolish all rank and titles but his own. And I must also tell you
that General Monk has discovered his marriage to Ann Clarges a
market-woman of low birth, no beauty whatever, and a very ill tongue.
My mother is sure the General must have been bewitched; however,
Mistress Monk has gone to live in Greenwich palace, which has been given
to the General for a residence. And the rest of my news is in a
nutshell, Matilda. I heard from Tonbert that your brother had been seen
at de Wick, but this I discredit. Did he not go with you to France:
Cymlin is in Ireland, and sulking at his banishment to so barbarous a
country; and so I make an end of this long letter, saying in a word I am
your friend entirely and sincerely, Jane Swaffham."
When Matilda received this letter she was in Paris. Her first
resting-place had been at The Hague, where she had speedily been made
known to the Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the widowed ex-Queen of Bohemia,
and the mother of Prince Rupert. In her poverty-stricken Court Matilda
found kindred spirits, and she became intimate with the light-hearted
Queen and her clever daughters. For in spite of the constant want of
money, it was a Court abounding in wit and fun, in running about The
Hague in disguise; in private theatricals, singing and dancing, and
other "very hilarious amusements," deeply disgusting to the English
Puritans.
So, then, while Sir Thomas Jevery was busy about his ships and his
merchandise, Lady Jevery and Matilda spent much time with the ex-Queen,
her dogs and her monkeys, her sons and her daughters, and the crowd of
Cavalier gentlemen who made the house at The Hague a gathering place.
Rupert, however, had never been his mother's favourite, yet she was
proud of his valour and achievements, and not generally indisposed to
talk to Matilda about her "big hero." It pleased her most to describe
with melodramatic thrills his baptism in the great old palace of Prague,
his ivory cradle embossed with gold and gems, and his wardrobe--"the
richest he ever had in his life, poor infant;"--and then she continued,
"He was not a lucky child. Misfortune came with him. He was not a year
old when the Austrians overran Bohemia, and we were without a Kingdom--a
king and a queen without a crown. Well, I have my dogs and my monkeys."
"Which your Majesty greatly prefers to your sons and daughters," said
the witty young Princess Sophie.
"They give me fewer heartaches, Sophie," was the answer. "Look, for
instance, at your brother Rupert. What an incorrigible he is! What
anxieties have I not suffered for him. And Maurice, who must get
himself drowned all because of his adoration of Rupert! Oh, the poor
Prince Rupert! he is, as I say, most unlucky. I told my august brother
Charles the same thing, and he listened not, until everything was lost,
and it was too late. The great God only knows what calamities there are
in this world."
"But Prince Rupert has been the hope and support of his cousin's Court
in the Louvre for three years," said Matilda warmly; "it is not right to
make little of what he has done."
"He has done miracles, my dear Lady Matilda," answered Rupert's mother;
"but the miracles never pay. We are all of us wretchedly poor. He
sells his valour and his blood for nothing worth while."
"He is the greatest soldier and sailor in the world; so much even his
enemies admit."
"There are no results," said the ex-Queen, with a gay laugh and a shrug
of her shoulders. "And I am told he has learned magic among the
Africans, and brought home blackamoors and finer monkeys than my own. I
object to nothing, since he assures me of his undying love for myself
and the Protestant religion. I assure you, if he did not love the
Protestant religion I should find no difficulty in renouncing him."
"He was too well educated in his religion to forget it, madame," said
the Princess Louise.
"I am not to blame if it were otherwise. I assure you he knows his
Heidelberg Catechism as well as any Doctor of Divinity, and the History
of the Reformers is at his tongue's end. I am not in health to go
regularly to church, but my children go without omission, and they give
me the points of the sermon in writing. I do my duty to them; and of
Rupert I had once great hopes, for the first words he ever spoke were
'Praise the Lord,' in the Bohemian tongue. After that, one does not
readily think evil of a Prince."
Every day Matilda adroitly induced such conversations; and once when the
mother had talked herself into an enthusiasm, she said, "Come and I will
show you some pictures of this Rupert. His sister Louise makes
portraits quite equal to those of her master, Honthorst. I may tell you
frankly, we have sold her pictures for bread often; they are said to be
Honthorst's, but most often they are the work of the Princess Louise.
The poor child! she paints and she paints, and forgets that she is a
Palatine Princess without a thaler for her wardrobe. Look at this
portrait of Rupert! Is he not a big, sturdy boy? He was only four
then, but he looks eight. How full of brave wonder are those eyes, as
he looks out on the unknown world! And in this picture he is fourteen.
He does not appear happy. No, but rather sad and uncertain, as if he
had not found the world as pleasant as he expected. In this picture he
is seventeen, gallant and handsome and smiling. He has begun to hope
again,--perhaps to love. And look now on this face at twenty-nine; he
has carried too heavy a burden for his age, done too much, suffered too
much."
Matilda knew the latter portrait well, its facsimile lay upon her heart;
and though she did not say a word, it was impossible not to notice in
all the painted faces that strange, haunting Stuart melancholy, which
must have had its root in some sorrowful, unfathomable past.
On another evening they were talking of England, and of recent events
there, chiefly of the high-handed dismissal of the Parliament, and the
gay-hearted Elizabeth laughed at the affair very complacently. "I am an
English Princess," she said, "but I hate Parliaments; so did his late
Majesty, my brother Charles. But for the Parliament, my fate might have
been different. I adored my husband, that is known, but it was the
Parliament who made our marriage. My father, the great and wise King
James, did not wish me to marry the Elector Palatine,--it was a poor
match for the Princess Royal of England,--but the Parliament thought the
Elector would make himself the leader of the Calvinistic princes of the
Empire. My dear Lady Matilda, he was sixteen years old, and I was
sixteen, and we two children, what could we do with those turbulent
Bohemian Protestants? You make a stir about your Oliver Cromwell
ordering the English Members of Parliament out of their own House,
listen then: the Protestant nobles of Bohemia threw the Emperor's
ministers and members out of their Council Chamber windows. It was only
their way of telling the Emperor they would not have the Catholic King
he supported. The English adore the Law, and will commit any crime in
it and for it; the Bohemians are a law unto themselves. They then asked
us to come to Prague, and we went and were crowned there, and in the
midst of this glory, the Prince Rupert was born. He was a wonder for
his great size, even then. And he had for his sponsors the King of
Hungary and the Duke of Wurtenburg and the States of Bohemia, Silesia,
and Upper and Lower Lusatia. Yet in less than a year we were all
fugitives, and the poor child was thrown aside by his frightened nurse,
and found lying alone on the floor by Baron d'Hona, who threw him into
the last coach leaving the palace; and he fell into the boot and nearly
perished. So you see how unfortunate he was from the beginning."
"But, madame, you have a large family; some of them will surely retrieve
your misfortunes."
"I do not trouble myself about the day I have never seen. There is a
great astrologer in Paris, and he has told me that my daughter Sophia
will bear a son, who will become King of England. Sophia gives herself
airs on this prediction."
Sophia, who was present, laughed heartily. "Indeed, madame," she said,
"and when I am Queen Mother I shall abolish courtesies. Imagine, Lady
de Wick, that I cannot eat my dinner without making nine separate
courtesies, and on Sundays and Wednesdays, when we have two divines to
eat with us, there are extra ones. I shall regulate my Court with the
least amount of etiquette that will be decent."
"You perceive, Lady de Wick, what a trial it is to have four clever
daughters--not to speak of sons. My daughter, the Princess Elizabeth,
is the most learned of women; I think she knows every language under the
sun. You have seen the paintings of the Princess Louise. Sophia is
witty and pretty, and is to be the mother of an English King; and my
fair Henrietta is a beauty, and what is remarkable, she is also amiable,
and makes adorable embroideries and confections. So the mother of four
such princesses must not complain."
"Especially when she has seventeen dogs and horses; not to speak of
monkeys and blackamoors," cried Sophia.
"Sophia is jealous!" said the merry ex-Queen. "So is Rupert. Now, I am
never jealous; I think jealousy is selfishness."
Such intimate conversations occurred daily while Matilda frequented the
House at The Hague; and when Sir Thomas Jevery was ready to proceed to
Paris, the ladies did not leave their pleasant entertainer without
tangible, financial proof of their interest in the Palatines. The
light-hearted, dependent Elizabeth took the offering with open
satisfaction. "It is very welcome," she said gratefully; "and the more
so, because it is so sensibly expressed. Some would have thought it
best to offer me a jewel, and so put my steward to the trouble of
selling it, and me to the loss. Oh!" she sighed, smiling cheerfully at
the same time, "it is a sad thing to be poor for want of money; poverty
is so transparent. If you have only money, it is a cloak for
everything."
*CHAPTER X*
*RUPERT AND CLUNY*
"Beauty formed
Her face; her heart Fidelity."
"For he was of that noble trade,
That demigods and heroes made;
Slaughter, and knocking on the head,
The trade to which they all were bred."
When the Jeverys arrived in Paris, they went immediately to the
beautiful Hotel de Fransac, which Sir Thomas had rented for their
residence while in the city. It was situated in La Place Royale, almost
within sight of the palaces of the King and the Cardinal. But Sir
Thomas considered it necessary to the success of his business with
Mazarin to wear the outside show of great wealth, and it was quite as
necessary to Matilda's hopes and desires. If she would keep in
enthralment a prince, she must, at least, be the princess of his
imagination. In reality, she was now much more so than ever before.
Years and sorrow and manifold experiences had imparted to the mere
loveliness of the flesh the captivating charm of the spirit. She was
now a woman, not only to be adored for her beauty, but still more so for
the qualities that would be in their perfection when beauty of face and
form had faded away.