THE GRAY CHAMPION
There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure
of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the
Revolution. James II, the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous,
had annulled the charters of all the colonies, and sent a harsh and
unprincipled soldier to take away our liberites and endanger our
religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a
single characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and Council, holding office
from the King, and wholly independent of the country; laws made and
taxes levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their
representatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and the titles
of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by
restrictions on the press; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the
first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For
two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial
love which had invariably secured their allegiance to the mother
country, whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Protector, or
Popish Monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had been
merely nominal, and the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying far
more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of
Great Britain.
At length a rumour reached our shores that the Prince of Orange had
ventured on an enterprise, the success of which would be the triumph of
civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England. It was but
a doubtful whisper; it might be false, or the attempt might fail; and,
in either case, the man that stirred against King Tames would lose his
head. Still the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people smiled
mysteriously in the streets, and threw bold glances at their oppressors;
while far and wide there was a subdued and silent agitation, as if the
slightest signal would rouse the whole land from its sluggish
despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to avert it by
an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm their despotism
by yet harsher measures. One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros
and his favourite councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the
red-coats of the Governor's Guard, and made their appearance in the
streets of Boston. The sun was near setting when the march commenced.
The roll of the drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the
streets, less as the martial music of the soldiers, than as a
muster-call to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude, by various
avenues, assembled in King Street, which was destined to be the scene,
nearly a century afterward, of another encounter between the troops of
Britain, and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than
sixty years had elapsed since the pilgrims came, this crowd of their
descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their
character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on
happier occasions. There were the sober garb, the general severity of
mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of
speech, and the confidence in Heaven's blessing on a righteous cause,
which would have marked a band of the original Puritans, when threatened
by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed, it was not yet time for the old
spirit to be extinct; since there were men in the street that day who
had worshipped there beneath the trees, before a house was reared to the
God for whom they had become exiles. Old soldiers of the Parliament were
here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms might
strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here, also, were the
veterans of King Philip's war, who had burned villages and slaughtered
young and old, with pious fierceness, while the godly souls throughout
the land were helping them with prayer. Several ministers were scattered
among the crowd, which, unlike all other mobs, regarded them with such
reverence, as if there were sanctity in their very garments. These holy
men exerted their influence to quiet the people, but not to disperse
them. Meantime, the purpose of the Governor, in disturbing the peace of
the town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the
country into a ferment, was almost the universal subject of inquiry, and
variously explained.
"Satan will strike his master-stroke presently," cried some, "because he
knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be dragged
to prison! We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King Street!"
Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their minister,
who looked calmly upward and assumed a more apostolic dignity, as well
befitted a candidate for the highest honour of his profession, the crown
of martyrdom. It was actually fancied, at that period, that New England
might have a John Rogers of her own to take the place of that worthy in
the Primer.
"The Pope of Rome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew!" cried
others. "We are to be massacred, man and male child!"
Neither was this rumour wholly discredited, although the wiser class
believed the Governor's object somewhat less atrocious. His predecessor
under the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion of the first
settlers, was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing,
that Sir Edmund Andros intended at once to strike terror by a parade of
military force, and to confound the opposite faction by possessing
himself of their chief.
"Stand firm for the old charter Governor!" shouted the crowd, seizing
upon the idea. "The good old Governor Bradstreet!"
While this cry was at the loudest, the people were surprised by the
well-known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly
ninety, who appeared on the elevated steps of a door, and, with
characteristic mildness, besought them to submit to the constituted
authorities.
"My children," concluded this venerable person, "do nothing rashly. Cry
not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England, and expect patiently
what the Lord will do in this matter!"
The event was soon to be decided. All this time, the roll of the drum
had been approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with
reverberations from house to house, and the regular tramp of martial
footsteps, it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made
their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with
shouldered matchlocks, and matches burning, so as to present a row of
fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a
machine, that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next,
moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a
party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros,
elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favourite
councillors, and the bitterest foes of New England. At his right hand
rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that "blasted wretch," as Cotton
Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient government,
and was followed with a sensible curse through life and to his grave. On
the other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery as he rode
along. Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as well he
might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him, their
only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native land. The
captain of a frigate in the harbour, and two or three civil officers
under the Crown, were also there. But the figure which most attracted
the public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal
clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in
his priestly vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and
persecution, the union of church and state, and all those abominations
which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of
soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear.
The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its
moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the
nature of things and the character of the people. On one side the
religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the
other, the group of despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the
midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently
clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the
universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to
deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience
could be secured.
"O Lord of Hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, "provide a Champion
for thy people!"
This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry, to
introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had rolled back, and were
now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the
soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The
intervening space was empty--a paved solitude, between lofty edifices,
which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly, there was seen
the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the
people, and was walking by himself along the centre of the street, to
confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and
a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before,
with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the
tremulous gait of age.
When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly
round, displaying a face of antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable
by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at
once of encouragement and warning, then turned again, and resumed his
way.
"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.
"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves.
But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of
four-score years and upwards, were disturbed, deeming it strange that
they should forget one of such evident authority, whom they must have
known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop, and all the old
councillors, giving laws, and making prayers, and leading them against
the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with
locks as gray in their youth, as their own were now. And the young! How
could he have passed so utterly from their memories--that hoary sire,
the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely
been bestowed on their uncovered heads, in childhood?
"Whence did he come? What is his purpose? Who can this old man be?"
whispered the wondering crowd.
Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his
solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the
advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his
ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude
of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but
unbroken dignity. Now, he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping
time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side, and
the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other, till, when
scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped his staff by
the middle, and held it before him like a leader's truncheon.
"Stand!" cried he.
The eye, the face, and attitude of command; the solemn, yet warlike peal
of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be
raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man's word and
outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the
advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so
gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some
old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had
summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and
looked for the deliverance of New England.
The Governor, and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves
brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would
have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the
hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but glancing his
severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it
sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old
man was chief ruler there, and that the Governor and Council, with
soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of
the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
"What does this old fellow here?" cried Edward Randolph, fiercely. "On,
Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same
choice that you give all his countrymen--to stand aside or be trampled
on!"
"Nay, nay, let us show respect to the good grandsire," said Bullivant,
laughing. "See you not, he is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath
lain asleep these thirty years, and knows nothing of the change of
times? Doubtless, he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
Noll's name!"
"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh
tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor?"
"I have stayed the march of a King himself, ere now," replied the gray
figure, with stern composure, "I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry
of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place; and
beseeching this favour earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to
appear once again on earth, in the good old cause of his saints. And
what speak ye of James? There is no longer a Popish tyrant on the throne
of England, and by to-morrow noon, his name shall be a byword in this
very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that
wast a Governor, back! With this night thy power is ended--to-morrow,
the prison!--back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"
The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, and drinking in the words
of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one
unaccustomed to converse, except with the dead of many years ago. But
his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly
without arms, and ready to convert the very stones of the street into
deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he cast
his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with
that lurid wrath, so difficult to kindle or to quench; and again he
fixed his gaze on the aged form, which stood obscurely in an open space,
where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts,
he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the oppressor were
averawed by the Gray Champion's look, or perceived his peril in the
threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back, and
ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before
another sunset, the Governor, and all that rode so proudly with him,
were prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated, King
William was proclaimed throughout New England.
But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that, when the troops had
gone from King Street, and the people were thronging tumultuously in
their rear, Bradstreet, the aged Governor, was seen to embrace a form
more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed, that while they
marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded
from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till, where
he stood, there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape
was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in
sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his
funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was.
And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the
records of that stern Court of Justice, which passed a sentence, too
mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times, for its humbling
lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard,
that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of
their sires, the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he
walked once more in King Street. Five years later, in the twilight of an
April morning, he stood on the green, beside the meeting-house, at
Lexington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate
inlaid, commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution. And when our
fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill, all through
that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be, ere
he comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril.
But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step pollute
our soil, still may the Gray Champion come, for he is the type of New
England's hereditary spirit; and his shadowy march, on the eve of
danger, must ever be the pledge, that New England's sons will vindicate
their ancestry.