Catholic gentlemen whom he knew; for the number of Papists in the royal
army was very great. Father Hall was dissatisfied at seeing Inglesant,
and tried hard to persuade him to keep out of the battle, saying he had
different and more useful work for him to do; but Inglesant would not
consent, though he agreed not to expose himself unnecessarily. The
Jesuit told him that his brother was with the Prince's regiment, but
counselled him not to join him, but stay in the King's bodyguard, which
his place at Court might well account for his doing. He enlarged so
much upon the coming danger, that Inglesant, who had never seen a
battle, became quite timid, and was glad when the Jesuit was sent for to
the King. Inglesant slept in a farm house, not far from Sir William's,
with several other gentlemen,--for those were fortunate who had half a
bed,--and on the morning rode with the King's pensioners to the top of
Edgehill. The Church bells were ringing for morning service as they
rode along. The King was that day in a black velvet coat lined with
ermine, and a steel cap, covered with velvet. He rode to every brigade
of horse and to all the tertias of foot, and spoke to them with great
courage and cheerfulness, to which the army responded with loud huzzahs.
An intense feeling of excitement prevailed as this battle--the first
fought in England for more than a century--was joined. Numbers of
country people crowded the heights, and the army was full of volunteers
who had only just joined, and had no idea of war. The King was
persuaded with difficulty to remain on a rising-ground at some little
distance, with his guard of pensioners on horseback; but Inglesant did
not remain with him, but joined his brother in the Prince's regiment
under the Palsgrave, and rode in the charge against the enemy's horse,
whom the Prince completely routed and chased off the field. Inglesant,
however, did not share in the glory of this victory, for his horse was
killed under him at the first shock of the encounter, and he went down
with him, and received more than one kick from the horses' hoofs as they
passed over him, rendering him for some time senseless. On recovering
himself he managed to get on his feet, and crossed the field to the
royal foot, but unfortunately joined the foot guards at the moment they
were attacked and routed by the Parliamentary horse and foot. The Earl
of Lindsay and his son were taken prisoners, and the royal Standard was
taken. At this moment the King was in great danger, being with fewer
than a hundred horse within half a musket shot of the enemy. The two
regiments of his reserve, however, came up, and Charles was desirous of
charging the enemy himself. Inglesant remained with the broken regiment
of the guard who retreated up the road over the hill, along which the
enemy's horse advanced, but, the early October evening setting in, the
enemy desisted and fell back upon their reserves. It was a hard frost
that night, and very cold. The King's army marched up the hills which
they had come down so gallantly in the morning. Inglesant remained with
the broken foot guards and the rest of the foot, which were confusedly
mixed together, all night. The men made fires all along the hill top to
warm themselves, and gathered round them in strange and motley groups.
Many of the foot were very badly armed, the Welshmen, especially, having
only pitchforks and many only clubs; but Prince Rupert the next day made
a descent upon Keinton, and carried off several waggon loads of arms,
which were very useful. The officers and men were mixed up together
round the fires without distinction. As Inglesant was standing by one
of them stiff and stunned with the blows he had received, and weak from
a sabre cut he had received on the arm, he heard some one who had come
up to the fire inquiring for him by name. It was the Jesuit, who had
given him up for dead, as he had met his brother who had returned with
Prince Rupert when he rejoined the King, and had learnt from him that
Inglesant had fallen in the first charge. He told him that Eustace had
gone down into the plain to endeavour to find him, which surprised and
touched Inglesant very much, as he suspected his brother of caring very
little for him. Father St. Clare stayed with Inglesant at the fire all
night, for the latter was too stiff to move, and made himself quite at
home with the soldiers, as he could with people of every sort, telling
them stories and encouraging them with hopes of high pay and rewards
when the King had once marched to London and turned out the Parliament.
Inglesant dozed off to sleep and woke up again several times during this
strange night, with a confused consciousness of the flaring fire
lighting up the wild figures, and the Jesuit still talking and still
unwearied all through the night.
One of the first men he saw in the morning was Edward Wood, whom he had
helped on his way from Oxford. This young man had been much more
fortunate than Inglesant, for he had come on foot without arms, and he
had succeeded in getting a good horse and accoutrements.
"You are much more lucky than I am," said Inglesant; "I have lost my
horses and servants and all my arms, and am beaten and wounded, as you
see, till I can scarcely stand, while you seem to have made your
fortune."
"I shall certainly get a commission," said the young man, who was only
eighteen, and certainly was very much pleased with himself; "but never
mind, Mr. Inglesant," he continued patronizingly, "it is your first
battle, as it is mine, and you have no doubt learnt much from it that
will be useful to you."
It had been one of the principal parts of Inglesant's training to avoid
assumption himself, and to be amused with it in others, so he took his
patronage meekly, and wished him success on his return, to Oxford, where
he really was made an officer in the King's service soon after.
Soon after he was gone Inglesant found his brother, and with him his own
servants, with an additional horse they had managed to secure, with
which he replaced the one he had lost; and the next morning he rode with
the Palsgrave into Keinton, where they surprised the rear of the
Parliamentary army, and took much spoil of the arms and ammunition, and
many wounded officers and other prisoners; but his wound being very
painful, and being sick and weary of the sight of fighting, and
especially of plundering, he left the Prince in Keinton and returned to
Oxford, where he was very glad to get back to his pleasant rooms in
Wadham. After the King had wasted his time in taking Banbury and
Broughton Castle, he marched to Oxford with his army, where he was
received with demonstrations of joy, and stayed some days.
After the King had rested a short time at Oxford, he proceeded to march
to London; but Inglesant did not accompany him. The blows he had
received about the head, together with his wound and the excitement he
had gone through, brought on a fever which kept him in his rooms for
some time. The Jesuit stayed with him as long as he could, but many
other of Inglesant's friends at Oxford showed him great kindness. When
he recovered he found himself, to his great surprise, something of a
hero. Though, as we have seen, few men could have done less at Edgehill
than Inglesant did, or have had less influence on the event of the day,
yet, as he had been in the charge of the Prince's horse, and also in the
rout of the foot guards, and had been wounded in both, and above all
was, especially with the ladies, something of a favourite, of whom no
one objected to say a good word, he gained a decided reputation as a
soldier. It was indeed reported and believed at Little Gidding that he
had performed prodigies of valour, had saved the King's life several
times, and retrieved the fortunes of the day when they were desperate.
In some respects this reputation was decidedly inconvenient to him; he
was looked upon as a likely man to be in all foraging parties and in
expeditions of observation sent out to trace the marchings and
countermarchings of the enemy. Now, as he was pledged to the Jesuit not
to expose himself to unnecessary danger, these expeditions were very
troublesome to him, besides taking him away from the studies to which he
was anxious to apply himself, and from the company of the leaders of
both the Churchmen and Papists, to obtain the acquaintance and
confidence of whom he still applied himself, both from inclination and
in accordance with the Jesuit's wish. It is true, however, that in
these expeditions about the country he formed several friendships of
this kind, which might afterwards be useful.
*CHAPTER IX.*
The King returned to Oxford in December, and the Court was established
at Christ Church College. There has perhaps never existed so curious a
spectacle as Oxford presented during the residence of the King at the
time of the civil war. A city unique in itself became the resort of a
Court under unique circumstances, and of an innumerable throng of people
of every rank, disposition, and taste, under circumstances the most
extraordinary and romantic. The ancient colleges and halls were
thronged with ladies and courtiers; noblemen lodged in small attics over
baker's shops in the streets; soldiers were quartered in the college
gates and in the kitchens; yet, with all this confusion, there was
maintained both something of a courtly pomp, and something of a learned
and religious society. The King dined and supped in public, and walked
in state in Christ Church meadow and Merton Gardens and the Grove of
Trinity, which the wits called Daphne. A Parliament sat from day to
day; service was sung daily in all the Chapels; books both of learning
and poetry were printed in the city; and the distinctions which the
colleges had to offer were conferred with pomp on the royal followers,
as almost the only rewards the King had to bestow. Men of every opinion
flocked to Oxford, and many foreigners came to visit the King. There
existed in the country a large and highly intelligent body of moderate
men, who hovered between the two parties, and numbers of these were
constantly in Oxford,--Harrington, the philosopher, the King's friend,
Hobbes, Lord Falkland, Lord Paget, the Lord Keeper, and many others.
Mixed up with these grave and studious persons, gay courtiers and gayer
ladies jostled old and severe divines and college heads, and crusty
tutors used the sarcasms they had been wont to hurl at their pupils to
reprove ladies whose conduct appeared to them at least far from
decorous. Christmas interludes were enacted in Hall, and Shakespeare's
plays performed by the King's players, assisted by amateur performers;
and it would have been difficult to say whether the play was performed
before the curtain or behind it, or whether the actors left their parts
behind them when the performance was over, or then in fact resumed them.
The groves and walks of the colleges, and especially Christ Church
meadow and the Grove at Trinity, were the resort of this gay and
brilliant throng; the woods were vocal with song and music, and love and
gallantry sported themselves along the pleasant river banks. The poets
and wits vied with each other in classic conceits and parodies, wherein
the events of the day and every individual incident were pourtrayed and
satirized. Wit, learning, and religion joined hand in hand as in some
grotesque and brilliant masque. The most admired poets and players and
the most profound mathematicians became "Romancists" and monks, and
exhausted all their wit and poetry and learning in furthering their
divine mission, and finally, as the last scenes of this strange drama
came on, fell fighting on some hardly-contested grassy slope, and were
buried on the spot, or in the next village churchyard, in the dress in
which they played Philaster, or the Court garb in which they wooed their
mistress, or the doctor's gown in which they preached before the King,
or read Greek in the schools.
This gaiety was much increased the next year, when the Queen came to
Oxford, and the last happy days of the ill-fated monarch glided by. It
was really no inapt hyberbole of the classic wits which compared this
motley scene to the marriage of Jupiter and Juno of old, when all the
Gods were invited to the feast, and many noble personages besides, but
to which also came a motley company of mummers, maskers, fantastic
phantoms, whifflers, thieves, rufflers, gulls, wizards, and monsters,
and among the rest Crysalus, a Persian Prince, bravely attended, clad in
rich and gay attire, and of majestic presence, but otherwise an ass;
whom the Gods at first, seeing him enter in such pomp, rose and saluted,
taking him for one worthy of honour and high place; and whom Jupiter,
perceiving what he was, turned with his retinue into butterflies, who
continued in pied coats roving about among the Gods and the wiser sort
of men. Something of this kind here happened, when wisdom and folly,
vice and piety, learning and gaiety, terribly earnest even to death and
light frivolity, jostled each other in the stately precincts of
Parnassus and Olympus.
With every variety and shade of this strange life Inglesant had some
acquaintance; the philosophers knew him, the Papists confided in him;
Cave, the writer of news-letters for the Papists, sought him for
information; the Church party, who knew his connection with the
Archbishop, and the services he had rendered him, sought his company;
the ladies made use of his handsome person and talents for acting, as
they did also that of his brother. He had the entree to the King at all
times, and was supposed to be a favourite with Charles, though in
reality the King's feelings towards him were of a mixed nature. No man
certainly was better known at Oxford, and no man certainly knew more of
what was going on in England than Inglesant did.
Among the chief beauties of the Court the Lady Isabella Thynne was the
most conspicuous and the most enterprizing: the poet Waller sang her
praise, music was played before her as she walked, and she affected the
garb and manner of an angel. She was most beautiful, courteous, and
charitable; but she allowed her gaiety and love of intrigue to lead her
into very equivocal positions. She was intimately acquainted with
Eustace Inglesant, who was one of her devoted servants, and assisted her
in many of her gaieties and gallant festivals and sports; but she was
shy of Johnny, and told Eustace that his brother was too much of a monk
for her taste. She had a bevy of ladies, who were her intimate friends,
and were generally with her, some of whom she did not improve by her
friendship.
There was in Oxford a gentleman, a Mr. Richard Fentham, who was
afterwards knighted, a member of the Prince's council, and a person of
great trust with the King. This gentleman had been at school with
Eustace Inglesant at that famous schoolmaster's, Mr. Farnabie, in
Cripplegate Parish in London,--a school at one time frequented by more
than three hundred young noblemen and gentlemen, for whose accommodation
he had handsome houses and large gardens. One day Fentham took Eustace
Inglesant to call on two young ladies, the daughters of Sir John Harris,
who had lately come to Oxford to join their father, who had suffered
heavy losses in the royal cause, and had been made a baronet. They
found these two young ladies, to the eldest of whom Fentham was engaged,
in a baker's house in an obscure street, ill-furnished and mean-looking.
They were both, especially the eldest, extremely beautiful, and had been
brought up in a way equal to any gentlemen's daughters in England, so
that the gentlemen could not help condoling with them on this lamentable
change of fortune, to which they were reduced by their father's devotion
to the royal cause. The eldest young lady, Ann, a spirited, lively
girl, confessed it was "a great change from a large well-furnished house
to a very bad bed in a garret, and from a plentiful table to one dish of
meat--and that not the best ordered,--with no money, for they were as
poor as Job, and had no clothes," she said, "but what a man or two had
brought in the cloak bags." Eustace Inglesant pursued the acquaintance
thus begun; and both he and his brother were at Wolvercot Church some
time afterwards, when Richard Fentham and Mistress Ann were married in
the presence of Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards the Lord Chancellor, and
Geoffry Palmer, the King's attorney. Lady Fentham was much admired and
sought after, and became one of Lady Isabella's intimate friends. She
was a lively, active girl, and fond of all kinds of stirring exercise
and excitement, and was peculiarly liable to be led into scrapes in such
society. Besides Lady Isabella, she was also exposed to other
temptations from political ladies, who endeavoured to persuade her that
a woman of her talent and energy should take some active part in public
affairs, and get her husband to trust to her the secrets of the Prince's
Council. They succeeded so far as to cause her to press her husband on
this matter, and to cause some unpleasant feeling on her part, which,
but for his kind and forgiving conduct, might have led to a serious
breach. This danger passed over, but those springing from the
acquaintance with Lady Isabella were much more serious. Sir Richard was
much away at Bristol with the Prince, and during his absence Lady
Isabella promoted an intimacy between Lord H----, afterwards the Duke of
P----, and her young friend. In this she was assisted by Eustace
Inglesant, who appeared to be actuated by some very strange personal
motive, which Johnny, who saw a great deal of what was going on, could
not penetrate.
Matters were in this state when one day Shakespeare's play of "The
Comedy of Errors," or an adaptation of it, was given by the gentlemen of
the Court, assisted by the King's players, in the Hall at Christ Church.
The parts of the brothers Antipholus were taken by the two Inglesants,
who were still said to be so exactly alike that mistakes were
continually being made between them. The play was over early, and the
brilliant company streamed out into the long walk at Christ Church,
which was already occupied by a motley throng. The players mingled with
the crowd, and solicited compliments on their several performances. The
long avenue presented a singular and lively scene--ladies, courtiers,
soldiers in buff coats, clergymen in their gowns and bands, doctors of
law and medicine in their hoods, heads of houses, beggars, mountebanks,
jugglers and musicians, popish priests, college servants, country
gentlemen, Parliament men, and townspeople, all confusedly intermixed;
with the afternoon sun shining across the broad meadow, under the
rustling leaves, and lighting up the windows of the Colleges and the
windings of the placid river beyond.
John Inglesant, in the modern Court dress in which, according to the
fashion of the day, he had played Antipholus of Ephesus, was speaking to
Lord Falkland, who had not been at the play, but who, grave and
melancholy, with his dress neglected and in disorder, was speaking of
the death of Hampden, which had just occurred, when a page spoke to
Inglesant, telling him that Lady Isabella desired his presence
instantly. Rather surprised, Inglesant followed him to where the lady
was walking, a little apart from the crowd, in a path across the meadows
leading from the main walk. She smiled as Inglesant came up.
"I see, Mr. Esquire Inglesant," she said, "that the play is not over.
It was your brother I sent for, whom this stupid boy seemingly has
sought in Ephesus and not in England."
"I am happy for once to have supplanted my brother, madam," said Johnny,
adapting from his part. "I have run hither to your grace, whom only to
see now gives me ample satisfaction for these deep shames and great
indignities."
"I am afraid of you, Mr. Inglesant," said the lady; "you have so high a
reputation with grave and religious people, and yet you are a better
cavalier than your brother, when you condescend that way. That is how
you please the Nuns of Gidding so well."
"Spare the poor Nuns of Gidding your raillery, madam," said Inglesant;
"surely Venus Aphrodite is not jealous of the gentle dove."
"I will not talk with you, Mr. Inglesant," said the lady pettishly;
"find your brother, I beseech you; his wit is duller than yours, but it
is more to my taste."
Inglesant went to seek his brother, but before he found him his
attention was arrested from behind, and turning round he found his scarf
held by Lord H----, who said at once, "Is the day fixed, and the place?
have you seen the lady?"
"My lord," said Inglesant, "the play really is over, though no one will
believe it. 'I think you all have drunk of Circe's Cup.' I am afraid
as many mishaps wait me here as at Ephesus."
Lord H---- saw his mistake. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I took you
for your brother, who has some business of mine in hand. I wish you
good day."
"I must get to the bottom of the mischief that is brewing," said
Inglesant; "there is some mystery which I cannot fathom. The lady no
doubt is pretty Lady Fentham, but Eustace surely can never mean to
betray his friend in so foul a way as this."
That evening he sought his brother, and telling him all he had noticed,
and what he had overheard, he begged him to tell him the plain facts of
what was going on, lest he might add to the confusion in his ignorance.
Eustace hesitated a little, but at last he told him all.
"There is no real harm intended, except by Lord H----," he said; "Lady
Isabella simply wants to make mischief and confusion all around her.
She has persuaded Ann Fentham to encourage Lord H---- a little, to lead
him into a snare in which he is to be exposed to ridicule. There is a
lady in Oxford, whom you no doubt know, Lady Cardiff, whom, if you know
her, you know to be one of the most fantastic women now living, to bring
whom into connection with Lord H---- Mrs. Fentham has conceived would be
great sport; now, to tell you a secret, this lady, who entered into this
affair merely for excitement and sport, is gradually becoming attached
to me. I intend to marry her with Lady Isabella's help. She has an
immense fortune and large parks and houses, and has connections on both
sides in this war, so that her property is safe whatever befalls. This
is a profound secret between me and the Lady Isabella, who is under
obligations to me. Mrs. Fentham knows nothing of it, and is occupied
solely with bringing Lord H---- and Lady Cardiff together. The ladies
are going down to Newnham to-morrow. I meet them there, and Lord H----
is to be allowed to come. I intend to press my suit to Lady Cardiff,
and certainly by this I shall spoil Lady Fentham's plot; but this is all
the harm I intend. What will happen besides I really cannot say, but
nothing beyond a little honest gallantry, doubtless."
"But is not such sport very dangerous?" said John. "Suppose this
intimacy came to Richard Fentham's ears, what would he say to it? You
told me there had already been some mischief made by some of the women
between them."
"If he hears of it," said Eustace, carelessly, "it can be explained to
him easily enough; he is no fool, and is not the man to misunderstand an
innocent joke."
Inglesant was not satisfied, but he had nothing more to say, and changed
the subject by inquiring about Lady Cardiff, of whom he knew little.