"there is no fear of John Inglesant, I believe you. There is no fear
that any man will betray his friends, and be false to his Order and his
plighted word, except the King!--except the King!"
Apparently the Jesuit did not think it worth while to answer this
outbreak, for he said, after a pause,--
"Your Majesty has written to Glamorgan?"
"Yes, I have told him to keep quiet," said the King, sitting down again;
"he is in no danger--I am clear of him. But do you mean to say, Father,
that Inglesant must be left to the gallows without a word?"
"No, I do not say that, your Majesty," said the other; "the rebels will
do nothing in a hurry, you may depend. They will do all they can to get
something from him which may be useful against your Majesty, and it will
be months before they have done with him. I have good friends among
them, and shall know all that happens. When they are tired of him, and
the thing is blown over a little, I shall do what I can."
"And you are sure of him," said the King; "any evidence signed by him
would be fatal indeed."
"Your Majesty may be quite easy," said the other, "I am sure of him."
"They will threaten him with the gallows," said the King, "life is sweet
to most men."
"I suppose it is," said the Jesuit, as if it were an assertion he had
heard several times lately, and began to think he must believe; "I have
no experience in such matters. But, however sweet it may be, its
sweetness will not induce John Inglesant to utter a syllable against the
cause in which he is engaged."
"You are very confident of your pupil," said the King. "I hope you will
not be deceived."
The Jesuit smiled, but did not seem to think it necessary to make any
further protestations, and soon after left the closet.
* * * * *
Inglesant remained some time in confinement at St. James's before he was
summoned before the Parliamentary Committee; but at the beginning of
March another of those extraordinary events occurred which seemed
arranged by some providential hand to fight against the King. A packet
boat put into Padstow, in Cornwall, supposing it to be a royal garrison;
on discovering their mistake, and some slight resistance having been
overpowered, the captain threw a packet of letters and some loose papers
overboard. The papers were lost, but the packet was fished out of the
sea, and proved to contain the most important of the correspondence from
Lord Digby, describing the discovery of the plot, the articles of
agreement with the Papists, the copy of the warrant from the King to the
Earl of Glamorgan, and several letters from the Earl himself, all
asserting his innocence of any actions but those directed and approved
by the King. These letters were published _in extenso_ by the
Parliament in a pamphlet which appeared on the 17th of March. The
information contained in these papers was of the greatest use to the
Parliament, for, though there was nothing in them absolutely to
inculpate the King (indeed the letters of Lord Digby, as far as they
went, were strong proofs to the contrary), yet it placed it in their
power to make assertions and inquiries based upon fact, and it brought
forward Lord Glamorgan as an evidence on their side. If they could now
have produced a confession signed by Inglesant to the same effect, the
case would have been almost complete--at any rate few would have
hesitated to call the moral proof certain. A Committee of the Commons
was appointed to examine Inglesant, and he was summoned to appear before
them.
On the day appointed he was brought from St. James's across the park in
a sedan, guarded by soldiers, and not being recognised escaped without
any notice from the passers-by.
The Committee sat in one of the rooms of the Parliament House, and began
by asking Inglesant his name.
"I understand," said one of the members savagely, "that your name is
Inglesant, of a family of courtiers and sycophants, who for generations
have earned their wretched food by doing any kind of dirty work the
Court set them; and that they never failed to do it so as to earn a
reputation even among the mean reptiles of the Court precincts. This is
true, is it not? And you have held some of those posts which an honest
man would scorn."
Inglesant had recovered his health during his imprisonment, thanks to
rest and sufficient food, and his manner was quiet and confident. To
the attack of the Parliamentarian he answered simply,--
"My name is Inglesant; I have been Esquire of the Body to the King."
The Chairman checked the warmth of the Puritan, and began to question
Inglesant concerning the plot, endeavouring to throw him off his guard
by mentioning facts which had come to their knowledge through the recent
discoveries. But Inglesant was prepared with his story. Though he was
surprised at the amount of knowledge the Committee possessed, yet he
stood to his assertion that he knew nothing of any instructions except
those which he had himself received, and that the whole plot originated
with the Jesuits, as far as he knew, and had every reason to believe.
When he was asked how he, a Protestant and a Churchman, could lend
himself to such a plot, he replied that he was very much inclined to the
Romish Church, and that he thought the King's affairs so desperate that
the plan of obtaining help from the Irish rebels appeared to him and to
Father St. Clare as almost the only resource left to them. The
Committee, finding gentle means fail, adopted a sterner tone, telling
him he was guilty of high treason, without benefit, and that he might
certainly, on his own confession, be condemned to the gallows without
further trial. They then offered him a statement to sign, which, they
said, they had sure information contained nothing but the truth.
Inglesant looked at it, and saw that in truth it did contain a very fair
statement of what had really taken place.
He replied that it was impossible for him to sign anything so opposite
to what he had himself confessed; and that even if he did, no one would
believe so monstrous a statement, and one so contrary to the known
opinions and professions of the King. The Committee then asked him why,
if the King's commission was forged, it was kept back, and where it was?
Inglesant said that "the Lord Biron had it, having forcibly taken it
from him, and refused to return it, telling him plainly that he should
keep it as evidence against him."
He observed that this impressed the Committee, and he was soon after
dismissed. He returned to St. James's the same way that he came, but
found a strong guard summoned to attend him; for, the news of his
examination having got wind, the crowd assembled at the Parliament
House, and accompanied him, with hootings and insults of every kind,
across the Park.
As one result of his examination, Inglesant was removed from St.
James's, and sent by water to the Tower, where a close confinement in a
small cell, and insufficient diet, again affected his health. He formed
the idea that the Parliament intended to weaken him with long
imprisonment, and so cause him to confess what they wished; he feared
that the state of his health, and especially the extent to which his
brain was affected, would assist this purpose; and this fear preyed upon
him, and made him nervous and miserable--dreading above everything that,
his mind being clouded, he might say something inadvertently which might
discover the truth. His health rapidly declined, and he became again
thin and worn. The Parliament Committee now spread a report that the
royal party, who pretended to indicate the offenders in this plot, did
not really do so; and that in particular they kept back the originals of
the King's warrants and commissions, which they asserted to be
forgeries, and refused to bring them forward and submit them to proof,
which would be the surest way of making the fact of the King's ignorance
of them certain. They did this because they knew Lord Biron's character
as a man of unstained and unsuspicious honour, and they calculated that
such a taunt as this would be certain to bring him forward with the
commission, which he had in his keeping, and which they trusted to be
able to prove was a genuine document. Their policy had the desired
effect. Lord Biron, who was at Newstead, without consulting any one,
sent up a special messenger to the Speaker to say that, a safe-conduct
being granted him, he would come up to London, and appear before the
Committee of Parliament, bringing the commission, which he asserted was
a palpable forgery, with him. The safe-conduct was immediately sent
him, and he came up. The Committee were rejoiced at the success of
their policy, and fixed a day for him to appear before them, and at the
same time ordered Inglesant to be fetched up from the Tower to be
confronted with his lordship. The affair caused the greatest interest,
and the Committee Room was thronged with all who could command
sufficient influence to obtain entrance, and crowds filled the corridors
and the precincts of the House. Lord Biron was introduced, and gave his
evidence with great clearness, describing the arrest of Inglesant, his
suspicious conduct, and his attempt to induce Lord Biron to destroy the
warrant; and finally produced the paper, and handed it to the clerk of
the Committee. The Chairman then ordered Inglesant to be brought in
through a side door; and he came up to the bar.
His appearance was so altered, and his manner so cowed and embarrassed,
that a murmur ran through the room, and Lord Biron could not restrain an
exclamation of pity. Inglesant started when he saw him, for he had been
kept in complete ignorance of what had occurred, and his mind
immediately recurred to the commission. He was evidently making the
greatest efforts to collect himself, and keep himself calm. Nothing
could have told more against himself, or in favour of the part he was
playing, than his whole demeanour.
He was examined minutely on the circumstances of his arrest, and related
everything exactly as it occurred, which, indeed, he had done
before--both his relations tallying exactly with Lord Biron's.
When asked what his business was in Chester, he said--to prepare the
Cavaliers to receive the Irish help; and added that he had been obliged
to communicate a great deal more to Lord Biron than he had wished or
intended, and that Lord Biron had always manifested the greatest
suspicion of him and of his mission.
He gave his evidence steadily, but without looking at Lord Biron, or
indeed at any one.
When asked why he wished to recover possession of the commission, or at
least to induce Lord Biron to burn it, he replied,--
"Lest it should serve as evidence against myself."
This seemed to most present a very natural answer; yet it caused Lord
Biron to start, and to fix a searching glance on Inglesant.
As a gentleman of high breeding and instinctive honour, it jarred upon
his instinct, and conveyed a sudden suspicion that Inglesant was acting.
That the latter might be so utterly perverted by his Jesuit teaching as
to be lost to all sense of right and truth, he was prepared to believe;
that he might have been led into treason knowingly or inadvertently, he
was willing to think; but the low and pitiful motive that he gave was so
opposed to his previous character, notorious for a fantastic elevation
and refinement of sentiment, that it supposed him a monster, or that
some miracle had been wrought upon him. A terrible doubt--a doubt which
Biron had once or twice already seen faintly in the distance--approached
nearer and looked him in the face.
The Committee had examined the commission one by one, comparing it with
some of the King's writing which they had before them; finally it passed
into the hands of a Mr. Greenway, a lawyer, and skilled in questions of
evidence and of writing, who examined it attentively.
It was curious to see the behaviour of the two men under examination
while this was going on; Lord Biron, as a noble gentleman, from whose
mind the doubt of a few minutes ago had passed, standing erect and
confident, looking haughtily and freely at the expert, secure in his own
honour and in that of his King; Inglesant, cowed and anxious, leaning
forward over the bar, his eyes fixed also on the lawyer--pale, his lips
twitching,--the very picture of the guilty prisoner in the dock.
The expert looked at both the men curiously, then threw down the paper
contemptuously.
"It is a palpable forgery," he said; "and not even a clever imitation of
the King's hand."
And indeed, from some accident or other, the letters were, some of them,
formed in a manner unusual to the King.
Inglesant, weakened with illness and anxiety, could not restrain a
movement of intense relief. He drew a long breath and stood erect, as
if relieved from an oppressive weight. He raised his eyes, and they
caught those of Lord Biron, which had been attracted towards him, and
were fixed full on his face.
Biron started again; there was not the least doubt that Inglesant
rejoiced in the proof of the forgery of the warrant. That terrible doubt
stood close now before his lordship and grasped him by the throat.
Suppose, after all, this man whom he had imprisoned and despised, whose
mission he had thwarted--this man whom all the royal party were calling
by every contemptuous name, who stood there pale, cowed, beaten
down;--suppose, after all, that this man, alone against these terrible
odds, was all the time fighting a desperate battle for the King's
honour, forsaken by God and men! But the consequences which would
follow, if this view of the matter were the true one, were, in Lord
Biron's estimation, too terrible to be thought of.
"I wish to say," said Inglesant, looking straight before him, "that the
Lord Biron obtained possession of that paper when he was in possession
of information of which I was ignorant. His lordship would probably
have behaved differently, but he thought he was speaking to a thief."
There was something in this covert reproach, so worded, which so exactly
accorded with what was passing in Lord Biron's mind that it cut him to
the quick.
"I assure you, Mr. Inglesant," he said eagerly, "you are mistaken.
Whatever I may think of the cause in which you are engaged, I have
always wished to behave to you as to a gentleman. If you consider that
you have cause of complaint against me, I shall be ready, when these
unhappy complications are well over, as I trust they may be, to give you
satisfaction and to beg your pardon afterwards."
He said these last words so pointedly that Inglesant started, and saw at
once that his fear had been well founded, and that, thrown off his guard
by the success of the examination of the warrant, he had made a mistake.
He looked up quickly at Biron--a strange terror in his face--and their
eyes met.
That they understood each other is probable; at any rate Inglesant's
look was so full of warning that Biron understood that if nothing more,
and restrained himself at once. All this had passed almost unnoticed by
the Committee, who were consulting together.
Lord Biron left the room, and Inglesant was taken back to the Tower as
he had come. Mr. Secretary Milton, who had been present as a spectator,
left the Parliament House and proceeded at once to Clerkenwell Green to
the house of General Cromwell, and related to him and to General Ireton,
who was with him, what had occurred.
"They have gained nothing by getting this warrant," he said; "nay, you
have lost rather. You have brought up Lord Biron, who comes forward in
the light of day and with the utmost confidence, and challenges this
paper to be a forgery, and your own lawyers bear him out in it. I have
not the least doubt it is the King's; but some of the letters, either
purposely or more probably by accident, are not in his usual hand, and
the best judges cannot agree on these matters. Out of Inglesant you
will get nothing. He is a consummate actor, as I have known of old. He
is prepared at every point, and carefully trained by his masters the
Jesuits. I know these men, and have seen them both here and abroad.
Acting on select natures the training is perfect. They will go to death
more indifferently than to a Court ball. You may rack them to the
extremity of anguish, and in the delirium of pain they will say what
they have been trained to say, and not the truth. You may wear him out
with fasting and anxiety until he makes some mistake; he made two
to-day, besides one which was a necessity of the case,--for I do not see
what else he could have said,--that was so slight that no one saw it but
Biron. Weakened by anxiety, doubtless, he could not restrain a movement
of relief when the expert declared the warrant a forgery; Biron saw that
too, for I watched him. Last, which was the greatest mistake of all,
and would show that his training is not entirely perfect, were we not to
make allowance for his broken health, he forgot his part, and suffered
his passion to get the better of him, and to taunt Lord Biron in such a
way that Biron, who I think till then honestly believed the King's word,
very nearly let out the truth in his astonishment. But what do you gain
by all this? It rather adds to the apparent truth of the man's story,
and gives life to his evidence. Nothing but his written testimony will
be of any use, and this you will never get."
"He shall be tried for his life at any rate," said Cromwell.
"You have threatened him with that already."
"Threatening is one thing," replied the General; "to stand beneath the
gallows condemned to death another."
* * * * *
News of the taking of Chester and of the arrest of John Inglesant on
such a terrible charge--a charge at once of treason against the King,
his country, and his religion--as it travelled at once over England,
reached Gidding in due course. It caused the greatest dismay and
distress in that quiet household. About the middle of April a gentleman
of Huntingdon, a Parliament man, who had lately come from London, dined
with the family. He told them during dinner that he had been present in
the Committee room when Mr. Inglesant had been examined. When dinner
was over Mr. John Ferrar, who was now at the head of the family,
remained at table with this gentleman, being anxious to hear more, and
Mary Collet also stayed to hear what she could of her friend, watching
every word with eager eyes. In that family, where there was nothing but
love and kindliness and entire sympathy, it was thought only natural
that she should do so, and no ill-natured thought occurred to any member
of it. The Parliament man described more at full the examination before
the Committee, and Inglesant's worn and guilty appearance,--sad news,
indeed, to both his hearers. He described Lord Biron's examination and
the production of the forged warrant.
"And did John Inglesant admit that it was forged?" said Mr. Ferrar.
"Yes, he said from his own knowledge that it was prepared by Father St.
Clare the Jesuit."
"It is a strange world," said Mr. Ferrar dreamily, "and the Divine call
seems to lead some of us into slippery places--scarcely the heavenly
places in Christ of which the Apostle dreamt."
The gentleman did not understand him, nor did Mary Collet altogether
until afterwards.
Presently Mr. Ferrar said,--
"And what do you think of it all? Was the warrant forged or not?"
"I am somewhat at a loss what to think," said the other, "I am not, as
you know, Mr. Ferrar, and without wishing to offend you, an admirer of
the King, but I do not believe him to be a fool and mad. There is no
doubt that he has tampered with the Papists throughout, yet I cannot
think, unless he is in greater extremities than we suppose, that he
would have practised so wild and mad a scheme as this one of the Irish
rebels and murderers. On the other hand, I can conceive nothing too bad
for the Jesuits to attempt; and it seems to me that I can discern
something of their hand in this--an introduction of an armed Papist
force into the country, to be joined, doubtless, by all the English
Papists; only I should have thought they could have procured this
without bringing in the King's name, but doubtless they had some reason
for this also. The general opinion among the Parliament men is that the
warrant is the King's, and that he has planned the whole thing. On the
other hand, it is plain the Cavaliers do not believe it, or Lord Biron
would never have come boldly up of his own accord, and brought up the
warrant so confidently."
"But does not the warrant itself prove something one way or the other?"
said Mr. Ferrar.
"These things are very difficult to judge upon," said the gentleman.
"The expert to whom the Committee gave it pronounced it a forgery upon
the spot, but he has been greatly blamed for precipitancy; and others to
whom it has been shown pronounce it genuine. Some of the letters
certainly are not like the King's, but the style of the hand is the
King's, they say, even in these unusual letters. By the way, if you had
seen Inglesant's guilty look when the expert took the paper in his hand,
you would say with me it was a forgery. You could not, to my mind, have
a stronger proof."
"But if the King had ordered this, would not he help Mr. Inglesant?"
Mary Collet ventured to say.
"Help? madam," said the gentleman warmly, "when did the King help any of
his friends?"
"Whichever way it is," said Mr. Ferrar mildly, "he cannot help. To help
would be to condemn himself in public opinion, which in these unhappy
distractions he dare not do. Did Lord Biron speak to Mr. Inglesant,
sir?"
"Very little. They taunted each other once, and seemed about to come to
blows. All the evidence went to show that Lord Biron suspected him from
the first."
The gentleman soon after left. Mr. Ferrar returned to the dining-room
after seeing him to his horse, and found Mary Collet sitting where they
had left her, lost in sad and humiliating thought.
He sat down near her and said kindly,--
"My dear Mrs. Mary, I hardly know which of the two alternatives is the
best for your friend--for my friend; but it is better at least for you
to know the truth, and I think I can now pretty much tell which is the
true one. If this plot were altogether the Jesuits', John Inglesant
would not say it. If the King had no hand in it, proof would be given a
thousand ways without having recourse to this. There are other facts
which to my mind are conclusive that this way of thinking is the right
one, but I need not tell them all to you. What I have said I should say
to none but you. You will see that it is of the utmost importance that
you say nothing of it to any. I believe you may comfort yourself in
thinking that, according to the light which is given him, John Inglesant
is following what he believes to be his duty, and none can say at any
rate that it is a smooth and easy path he has chosen to walk in."
Mary Collet thanked him, her beautiful eyes full of tears, and left the
room.
A few days afterwards the news ran like wildfire over England that the
King had left Oxford secretly, and that no one knew where he was; and a
night or two afterwards Mr. John Ferrar was called up by a gentleman who
said he was Dr. Hudson, the King's Chaplain, and that the King was
alone, a few paces from the door, and that he would immediately fetch
him in.
Mr. Ferrar received His Majesty with all possible respect. But fearing
that Gidding, from the known loyalty of the family, might be a suspected
place, for better concealment he conducted the King to a private house
at Coppingford, an obscure village at a small distance from Gidding, and
not far from Stilton. It was a very dark night, and but for the lantern
Mr. Ferrar carried, they could not have known the way. As it was, they
lost their way once, and wandered for some time in a ploughed field.
Mr. Ferrar always spoke with the utmost passionate distress of this
night, as of a night the incidents of which must have awakened the
compassion of every feeling heart, however biassed against the King. As
a proof of the most affecting distress, the King, he said, was serene
and even cheerful, and said he was protected by the King of kings. His
Majesty slept at Coppingford, but early in the May morning he was up,
and parted from Mr. Ferrar, going towards Stamford. Mr. Ferrar returned
to his house, and two days after it was known that the King had given
himself up to the Scottish army.
*CHAPTER XIV.*