“_England, it has been said, has been saved by its adventurers--that is
to say, by the men who, careless whether their ways were like the ways
of others,... have set their hearts on realising first in themselves
and then in others, their ideal of that which is best and holiest. Such
adventurers the noblest of the Puritans were. Many things existed not
dreamed of in their theology, many things which they misconceived, or
did not conceive at all; but they were brave and resolute, feeding their
minds upon the Bread of Heaven, and determined within themselves to be
servants of no man and of no human system._”--S. R. Gardiner.
Gabriel quitted Hereford the next day, carrying with him the lock
of dark hair and the ribbon with the motto as the outward and visible
symbols of his betrothal, and deep in his heart the spiritual presence
of the mingled love of two souls. These, together with the vigorous and
sincere Christianity which had been the result chiefly of his father’s,
example and training, were the best equipments he could have had for his
London life.
Yet, perhaps, had the Bishop of Hereford known how strangely trying
the next two years were to be, he would not have imposed on his
granddaughter’s lover a test so excessively severe. Never had the
country passed through such a grave crisis.
It was towards the end of September that Gabriel arrived with his
companions at Sir Robert Harley’s lodgings in Little Britain. Only a
short time before, London had been given over to demonstrations of joy
on hearing that the King’s army had been utterly routed by the Scots,
for the English, who had always detested the Bishops’ War, felt that the
cause of the invaders was the cause of the invaded, and were rejoiced to
hear that Newcastle and the two northern provinces were in the hands
of the Covenanters. Scotch and English alike were sternly resolved no
longer to endure the intolerable misgovernment of Charles, and the
people crowded to sign the petition to the King which complained of the
grievances of the military charges, of ship-money, of the rapine caused
by lawless troops, of the Archbishop’s innovations, the unbearable
growth of monopolies, and, above all, of the unlawful government without
a Parliament.
The city seethed with exasperated discontent, and the very day after the
travellers arrived they found themselves in the heart of the struggle.
It was Sunday, and they had gone to morning service at one of the City
churches, where all had seemed tranquil enough. But at the time of
giving out notices the Bishop’s Chancellor roused the congregation
to fury by calling upon the churchwardens to take the oath to present
offenders against the ecclesiastical law.
All the wrath which had been gathering through the long years of
tyranny, all the hatred of Laud’s unwise revival of obsolete lawrs and
punishments seemed to concentrate itself in the shouts of “No oath! no
oath!” which burst from the congregation. Gabriel was startled, but the
next moment all his sympathies were with the people, for an apparitor
stood up angrily haranguing the objectors and most foolishly dubbing
them “A company of Puritan dogs.” This was too much to be tamely
endured; the people rose in wrath and hustled the apparitor, while the
Sheriff, who had been called to restore order, had the good sense to do
so by taking the obnoxious apparitor to gaol, the Chancellor making his
escape in such haste that he left his hat behind him.
Gabriel, remembering how galling the prosecution of his own father
had been, remembering, too, how Peter Waghorn’s old father lay dead
at Bosbury, a victim of the same overbearing _régime_, could not but
rejoice in the people’s triumph. The only marvel was that they had so
long endured the intolerable tyranny--a tyranny which, during the last
eleven years, had driven twenty thousand English Puritans to seek a new
home in America.
Meanwhile the King had found himself between the devil and the deep sea;
Strafford’s infamous scheme of debasing the coinage had been checkmated
by the firmness of the London merchants in the summer. It was impossible
to raise money anymore after the illegal fashion of the past eleven
years, and, hemmed in by his angry Scotch subjects in the north and
his indignant English subjects in the south, Charles at length, in his
speech to the great Council assembled in the hall of the Deanery at
York, announced the issue of writs for a Parliament to meet on November
the third.
Sir Robert Harley lost no time in establishing his son and Gabriel
Harford in chambers at Lincoln’s Inn, then returned once more to
Brampton to be again elected one of the Members for Herefordshire.
It was the turn of the tide, and during October, before the Parliament
met, the impatience of the people was no longer to be restrained. The
High Commission Court, where so many cruel sentences had been passed,
was invaded on the 22nd by an angry mob; sentence was about to be
pronounced on a separatist, but the proceedings were not allowed to be
carried on, the angry populace seized the books, broke down the benches
and flung the furniture out of doors. It was all in vain that Laud
called on the Court of Star Chamber to punish these disturbers; his
influence over the Court had been utterly swept away by the passion of
an outraged people.
It was not until November that Gabriel rode down to the house at
Notting-hill, where old Madam Harford lived, for on his arrival in
London she had been taking the waters at Tunbridge. In some trepidation
he drew rein before the doorway of a square red-brick mansion standing
on the crest of the hill, and was ushered into a very pleasant room
where the lady of the house sat, not at her spinning-wheel or her
embroidery-frame, but at a well-contrived reading-desk, poring over a
great folio.
There was no doubt that report had spoken rightly in terming old Madam
Harford “a very formidable personage.” Her greeting was kind, but
curiously silent, and there followed a pause while she scrutinised her
visitor very closely, as though to take his measure before committing
herself.
“You have your father’s features,” she said at length, making room for
her grandson on a carved oak settle beside her. “What news do you bring
from Hereford?”
Gabriel was glad enough to talk on this subject, and they naturally
spoke, too, of Bosbury, and of his ride there in September. Then the
case of Peter Waghorn’s father was mentioned.
“I remember the name in old times,” said Madam Harford, her face
lighting up. “There was a skilled carver in wood who lived nigh to the
church, and he had a very clever son who went to college and took holy
orders.”
“That must be the very man,” said Gabriel. “One of Dr. Laud’s victims.”
“The Archbishop will soon be called to his account,” said Madam Harford,
her shrewd, wrinkled face expressing no vindictiveness, but a quiet,
strong conviction. “My Lord Strafford’s high-handed and tyrannical
doings have brought him very justly to a prison and, if I mistake not,
Dr. Laud also will be impeached.”
“Sir Robert Harley says that Mr. Pym has damning evidence against Lord
Strafford which will startle all men at the trial,” said Gabriel.
“Truly it must have been a strange scene in the House of Lords, when
one so haughty and powerful as the Earl was called on to kneel while the
order was read which sequestered him from his place in the House, and
gave him into custody,” said the old lady, musingly. “They tell me that
the Lords hated his system of government even more than the Commons.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of a visitor, the servant
announcing Sir John Coke. Gabriel looked with great interest at the old
white-haired man who entered, for was he not great uncle to Hilary?
“I bring you a startling piece of news, ma’am,” said Sir John, sinking
down into the elbow chair which Gabriel had placed for him. “We have
fresh evidence of the great Popish plot, for to-day, when Mr. Heywood, a
justice of the peace, was crossing Westminster Hall, a man rushed at him
and tried, with a knife, to stab him to the heart. He was known to have
a list of Papists marked out for removal from the neighbourhood of the
Court and of the Houses.”
Now, in the existence of this great Popish plot the whole country firmly
believed, and the attempted assassination of Mr. Heywood was quite
enough to rouse the people to anger and to something very like panic.
Pym and Hampden, who two years later were fighting against the King, and
Falkland and Capel, who afterwards fought for him, were at one on this
point. The truth probably was that the great bulk of the English Papists
were only anxious to live in peace, but for some time a small number
of them had made the Queen’s rooms at Whitehall a nest of intrigue.
Sir John Coke had known this well enough when he had been Secretary of
State, and Gabriel listened now with interest to what he was telling his
old friend. It was, indeed, what he told all the world, and possibly his
annoyance at having been dismissed from office on the score of his
age, made him a little more ready to reveal what he knew to the Queen’s
discredit.
“Count Rossetti, the new Papal agent at Court,” explained Sir John, “was
full of fears last winter that the Short Parliament would demand his
dismissal. The Queen therefore obtained a promise from the King that if
objections were made he would say that her marriage-treaty secured her
the right to hold correspondence with Rome. Now this, ma’am, was a lie;
the marriage-treaty, as the King and Queen knew well enough, contained
nothing of the sort. Never was there a sadder day for England than that
which brought to her shores a French princess of the Popish religion to
be the wife of a Protestant prince. All our worst troubles have come out
of this luckless marriage. ’Tis very well known that the Queen hath
begged the Pope to send men and to advance money to aid the King in
governing the people against their wishes.”
The old man’s words lingered long in Gabriel’s mind; he began to
understand something of the gravity of the situation, and scarcely a
week passed without bringing fresh evidence that the country was in the
gravest peril.
It was inevitable that with all the ardour of youth he should side with
the Parliament which was reforming bit by bit the evils of the past.
To stand in a crowded London street and to hear the shouts of joy as
Burton was brought back from prison, to look on the haggard face so
cruelly mutilated, and to know that this awful punishment had been
incurred because the man had spoken and written against turning
communion-tables into altars, against bowing to them, against
crucifixes, and against putting down afternoon services on Sunday--this
was indeed an object-lesson which would last a lifetime. While the wrath
kindled by the piteous condition of Dr. Leighton, another of Laud’s
victims, who had been so barbarously treated in prison that when brought
forth he could neither walk, see, nor hear, filled his heart with that
intolerable resentment of cruelty and oppression which made many in
those days feel no sacrifice to be too great if it did but stop such
doings.
There has always been in Englishmen a vigorous and healthy hatred.
of clerical domination, and it was this which united men of widely
differing views in their attack on Laud’s system and on the new canons
which Convocation had issued when it had continued sitting after the
dissolution of the Short Parliament. These were now declared to be
illegal, and on December 18 Archbishop Laud was impeached of high
treason, and committed to custody by the House of Lords. Not a voice was
raised on his behalf; so cordially was he detested that, in spite of his
many virtues and his sincere love of the Church, men rightly felt that
he was “the root and ground of all their miseries,” and that his
rigid, unsympathetic rule, his preferment of such men as Strafford and
Windebank, and of many tyrannical Bishops--the hated Bishop Wren among
them; above all, his merciless determination to crush Puritanism and to
make Parliamentary government impossible, constituted grave dangers to
the country. Was the entire teaching power of England to be left in such
hands? Was Laud to have the training of all those to whom each Sunday
the people were compelled to listen? The idea was not to be borne.
At Sir Robert Harley’s rooms in Little Britain Gabriel naturally heard
much of what was passing during those two eventful years. In May London
was stirred into the wildest excitement by the discovery of the Army
plot, and although the full details were not generally published, it
was known to all that the scheme concocted by the Queen and her evil
counsellors, and certainly in the knowledge of the King, had been to
bring in French troops from the south, to which end the Queen was about
to go to Portsmouth. Meanwhile the English army was to join with the
Papists against London and Parliament, and the Irish army was to
attack the Scots. Gabriel learnt from Sir Robert that the plot had been
revealed by Goring, Governor of Portsmouth, and also by a merchant who
had received news of the intended attack on the city and the Tower of
London from an acquaintance at Paris.
The discovery of the King’s intrigues and the absolute hatred of the
Queen which now prevailed, robbed Strafford of his last hope of escape:
Charles knew that to refuse to sign the Earl’s death-warrant would be to
expose his wife to the gravest peril; the choice was a most cruel strain
upon him, and at length, worn out with agony of mind, he stifled his
conscience, and to screen his wife, sacrificed his friend.
The next triumph of the Parliament was the abolition in July of the
hated Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission. But, on the
question of religion, signs of disunion in the Parliamentary ranks began
to be evident. Bishops were then the nominees of the King, and those
who wished to retain them were tending to become supporters of the
independent authority of the monarch, while the opposite party, who
feared to retain the bishops in the Church lest they should prove
hostile to Parliamentary government, were gradually becoming, not
without good reason, more and more distrustful of Charles.
All through this eventful time Gabriel had heard but little of Hilary.
In each letter which he received from home she was allowed to send him
some message; but it was an understood thing that the lovers should
not correspond, and, somehow, ere long, the messages grew formal and
unsatisfactory. More cheering than these occasional words from afar was
the great kindness of the Bishop of Hereford, who often invited Gabriel
to visit him at his London residence.
Truth to tell, politics were not in the Bishop’s line; his thoughts were
far more with his work on the Epistle to the Colossians than with his
work in the House of Lords; and when one day late in December he invited
Gabriel to dine with him, their talk never once turned on the topics
which absorbed the rest of the nation.
Gabriel had now spent his second Christmas in London, and was eagerly
looking forward to his return home in the following September. It was a
keen delight to him to listen to Bishop Coke’s description of his recent
visit to Hereford, and the kindly old prelate spoke at some length about
his granddaughter.
“She cheered us all with her sweet voice on Christmas night,” he
remarked as he rose from the table and led his guest into the library;
“and better than all her other songs was a carol which she told me you
had taught her as a child.”
“That must have been the Bosbury carol which I learnt from my father,”
said Gabriel. And back into his mind there flashed a vision of the
past--a snow-effigy of Sir John Eliot lying in the old garden, and a
perception that had come to him that the words, “All for to make us
free,” were perhaps the best words that could be said of any man.
The Bishop at that moment caught sight of his manuscript, and, to
Gabriel’s disappointment, said no more about Hilary. “My commentary on
the Colossians is complete,” he remarked, turning over the leaves with a
loving touch. “This afternoon I place it in the printer’s hands.”
Gabriel was saved a reply, for the door was opened, and the servant
announced Lord Digby. Withdrawing a little into the oriel window,
he watched the entrance of a fine-looking man, with eager eyes and
impetuous manner. In his hand he carried a parchment roll, and Gabriel,
knowing that he was generally considered to be the King’s evil genius
and most rash counsellor, wondered on what errand he could have come.
A greater contrast than this young, hot-headed nobleman and the gentle,
dreamy-eyed Bishop could not be conceived--they might have stood for
ideal representatives of the worldly and the heavenly mind.
“I will not detain you a minute, my lord,” said Digby, declining a
chair. “I am in the greatest haste and only came to beg you to set your
signature to this Protestation. They tell me you are but to-day returned
from Hereford, and doubtless you have not heard what has passed. The
mob at Westminster saw fit to shout ‘No Bishops!’ and the Archbishop
of York, clutching at a ’prentice to silence him, was set upon by the
crowd and hustled on his way to the House. Luckily Colonel Lunsford and
some of his men drove back the dogs when they passed into Westminster
Hall, and a free fight followed, when many of the rogues were wounded.
’Tis no longer safe for the Bishops to venture to the House--this
parchment is a protest against such conduct, and I am sure you will
gladly aid us by lending your name.”
Gabriel wondered what intrigue lay beneath this apparently simple
request. That the matter was of considerable importance in Digby’s eyes
he felt convinced, for his expression as he looked at the saintly old
Bishop was at once anxious and wily.
“Do not trouble, my lord, to read the document through,” urged Digby;
“’tis a mere recital of the wrong under which the Bishops are
suffering through this ill-conduct of the mob. I am sure you will agree
that such an insult is not to be tamely endured.”
“I see that Bishop Hall has signed,” said the old prelate; “I have a
deep respect for Bishop Hall.”
And after a little more talk on Digby’s part the Protestation was signed
and the noble lord bowed himself out.
He had only just gone when the servant came to say that the Bishop’s
coach was waiting, and Gabriel hastened to make his farewell.
“Nay,” said the Bishop, “I have yet much to tell you as to Hereford
matters. If you will come with me we can speak of them as I drive down
to the City.”
The precious manuscript was to be conveyed to the printers, and Gabriel
was much afraid that the Bishop would be too much occupied with it to
talk of his granddaughter. However, in the course of the drive he heard
many little details which the home letters had failed to give him, and
as he parted with the kindly old man he felt more than ever drawn to
him. His dismay was, therefore, all the greater when, happening to be
with Ned Harley in Sir Robert’s room late the next day, he heard that
the Protestation which Bishop Coke had signed inadvertently was very far
from being the simple matter that Digby had represented it to be.
“It seems,” explained Sir Robert, “that Archbishop Williams took it to
the King at Whitehall last night, that his Majesty without reading it
handed it to Nicholas, who gave it to the Lord Keeper to place before
the House of Lords. Doubtless his Majesty knew beforehand what it
contained.”
“What did it contain, sir?” asked Gabriel, curiously.
“It protested that all laws, orders, votes and so forth made in the
absence of the Bishops were null and void. Clearly it was got up by my
Lord Digby, who was in high ill-humour because a day or two since he
had been worsted in his effort to obtain the assent of the Lords to a
declaration that Parliament was no longer free. It would have suited
him very well that this vote should be treated as null and void. The
unfortunate Bishops will pay dearly for their protest.”
“Why, sir, what has been done to them?” asked Gabriel, with some anxiety
in his tone.
“The Lords at once acquainted the Lower House that the Protestation
entrenched on the fundamental privileges and being of Parliament, and
Mr. Pym told them that a scheme for seizing the Parliamentary leaders
was on foot; he then moved that the Bishops who had signed the
Protestation should be impeached of treason for having tried to subvert
the very being of Parliament. I believe that they are all by now in the
Tower.”
Gabriel, having mixed of late with men of every shade of opinion, had
learnt to hold his tongue. He said not a word as to having been present
when Digby visited Bishop Coke. But the next day he hurried off to the
Tower, where he found the Bishop of Hereford in sore distress.
“You well know that I had no treasonable intention in signing,” said the
old man. “I merely wished for order in Palace Yard, and that we might be
able to go to and from our duties in Parliament unmolested. Well,’tis
after all my own fault. I ought to have read the document through
instead of yielding to my Lord Digby’s haste. Truth to tell, my thoughts
were more with my manuscript--and now what will become of it?”
“My lord, if you will trust me as a messenger, I would bear your wishes
to the printers, who saw me of late with your lordship,” said Gabriel.
And thus it came to pass that the proofs of the Commentary on the
Colossians went to and from the Tower in the charge of Dr. Harford’s
son, and that the Bishop’s tedious weeks of imprisonment were cheered by
the work he loved.
It happened one day early in January that Gabriel, crossing Tower-green
with the second batch of proofs, caught sight of no less a person than
Archbishop Laud himself. He was standing in converse with a friend, and
laughing very heartily over a caricature which the other held. Gabriel
saw at a glance that it was a picture which represented Archbishop
Williams as a decoy duck leading his eleven brethren into prison. On his
return from Bishop Coke’s room he saw that Dr. Laud had parted with
his friend, and was pacing the green alone with bent head and an air of
great dejection. Remembering the pomp of his entry into Hereford years
ago, Gabriel could not help feeling great pity for the captive; what
a contrast did he now present! Feeble, bent and sad, he seemed another
being from the haughty overbearing prelate who had roused his wrath as a
child by that harsh rebuke to his father. Even the bitter enmity between
the two Archbishops which had scandalised people, was now a thing of
the past, though, perhaps, there had been a little malice in Dr. Laud’s
laughter over the caricature representing Dr. Williams’s mischance. The
Archbishop had turned and was pacing slowly back again, when his leg
suddenly gave way beneath him, and he fell to the ground. Gabriel ran
forward and helped the old man to rise.
“I thank you, sir,” said Laud, feebly, giving him a long look out of his
inscrutable eyes. “They have taken all my attendants from me save one,
and my strength is failing.”
A warder approached them, and, again thanking Gabriel, the Archbishop
bade the man take him back to his room in the Bloody Tower.
But, nevertheless, though it was impossible not to feel compassion for
the forlorn plight of one who a short time before had enforced his will
on the whole country, there rang in Gabriel’s ears the words that had
been spoken to him in Bos-bury churchyard, and he could not but think of
the far worse plight of Waghorn’s father in Bridewell, heavily ironed,
and chained for months to a post in a foul, damp dungeon.
His thoughts were grave enough as he was rowed up the river that cold
afternoon, and the recollection of the startling news he had heard
on the previous day as to the King’s impeachment of the Parliamentary
leaders, and his illegal demand for their arrest, filled him with
uneasiness; it seemed to him that they were all living on the brink of a
volcano.
Bidding the boatman set him down at the Parliament stairs, he sprang
ashore, and was just paying his fare, when he chanced to notice two
gentlemen getting into the next boat. He recognised them at once as
Hazlerigg and Holies; as he mounted the steps he had to stand aside to
make room for two more gentlemen who seemed in haste to join them;
the first was Mr. Pym, with his usual air of strength tempered with
_bonhomie_, and close behind him came Mr. John Hampden, his fine genial
face no longer cheerful as it was wont to be, but sad and stern, with
the expression of one who is steadily confronting some grievous national
danger.
Gabriel took off his hat and bowed low; he had met the Member for
Buckinghamshire more than once at Sir Robert Harley’s.
“This is a dark day for England, Mr. Harford,” said Hampden, returning
the young man’s salute. “But God reigns--with His help we will take no
step backward.”
The boat was pushed off, and Gabriel saw that the four Members were
being rowed in the direction of the city.
Hurrying up the steps, he walked towards the Houses of Parliament, and
as he approached Westminster Hall, it was very clear that most unusual
work was on hand. Fighting his way through the crowd he gained the
doorway, gathering as he did so that the King was close by, coming, men
said, to arrest the Parliamentary leaders. The notion seemed too wild to
be believed; yet it was, alas! true.
Just as the clocks struck three the King’s coach, surrounded by some
three or four hundred armed men, drove up to Westminster Hall; the guard
filed into the great building, while the King, alighting, wrapped his
fur-lined cloak about him, for the bitter January wind blew gustily, as
though it would have protested against his entrance. Gabriel was swept
by the throng inside the Hall, but he could see well enough, and watched
intently as the King strode rapidly through the armed ranks, towards the
entrance which led to the House of Commons; here he turned and bade his
retinue wait outside, then once more moved forward to enter that door
which no English King had ever passed.
Apparently his command to the retinue to wait without only applied to a
certain number, for Gabriel observed that some eighty of them flung off
their cloaks and left them in the hall, then, with their sword arms free
and provided also with pistols, they passed on into the lobby. Gabriel
noticed that the first to pass in after the King was Captain David
Hide, the husband of one of the Coningsbys of Herefordshire, a notorious
scoundrel, with a savage and uncontrollable temper; he was one of the
officers who had drawn their swords on the people a few days before,
and was said to be the inventor of the opprobrious term of “Roundhead,”
which during the last week had come into vogue as applied to supporters
of the Parliament.
Then followed a long time of waiting, which chafed the King’s followers
sorely.
“I warrant you,” said one standing within earshot of Gabriel, and
cocking his pistol as he spoke, “I am a good marksman, I will hit sure.”
The lad’s blood grew hot. What would happen when the King found the
Members he sought absent? That he had contemplated using force if the
House refused to give them up was evident. What would happen now?
As he mused a thrill of expectation passed through the waiting people;
the King appeared in the doorway--his brow was dark, it was plain to
all that he had been baffled, and the disgust of his retinue would have
amused Gabriel had not his heart burnt within him at the thought of the
grievous wrong that had been intended. He learnt afterwards that Mr.
Strode, the fifth Member, had refused to quit the House, and had only
been forcibly dragged out by a friend a moment before the entrance of
the King.
For days after the whole of London rang with the angry cry, “Privileges
of Parliament!” It was in vain that the King ordered Gurney, the Lord
Mayor, to proclaim Lord Mandeville and the five Members of the House of
Commons as traitors. Gurney, loyal man as he was, sturdily replied that
the proclamation was against the law, and the King, thus hopelessly
beaten, could only save the Queen from the consequences of her rash
intrigues by hastily quitting Whitehall, and making preparations for her
departure from England.
It was not until May that the imprisoned prelates were released, but
when the King had consented to the Bishops’ Exclusion Bill, and there
was no longer anything to dread from their political interference,
they were allowed to quit the Tower. Bishop Coke had indeed received a
special permit to go to his wife during her illness, and early in June
he returned to Hereford, never again to visit London.
Hilary, who not unnaturally laid the blame of her grandfather’s
imprisonment on the Parliamentary leaders, and hated them accordingly,
was entranced to hear the Bishop’s warm words of appreciation as to
Gabriel Harford, nor did it once occur to her that her lover had learnt
to look on almost every disputed subject from a point of view exactly
opposite to her own.