Читать книгу It Might Have Been - Emily Sarah Holt - Страница 9

“O Conspiracy!

Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,

When evils are most free? Oh, then, by day,

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough

To mask thy monstrous visage?”

Shakespeare.

The new home was the midmost of three contiguous houses, standing on the western side of King Street, and nearly opposite to what is now the entrance to New Palace Yard. They were a little larger and more pretentious than most of the houses in this street, and a goodsized garden ran backwards from each towards Saint James’s Park. As every house had then its name and a signboard to exhibit it—numbers being not yet applied to houses—these were no exception to the rule. That one of the trio nearest to the Abbey displayed a golden fish upon its signboard; the middle one hung out a white bear; while from the northernmost swung a panel representing an extremely stiff and angular creature apparently intended to suggest an angel. The young people made merry over their sign, Aubrey insisting that Hans was the White Bear, and Lettice retorting that it was Aubrey himself.

Hans and Aubrey sprang from their horses at the door; and while the latter rang the bell, the former busied himself in helping the ladies to alight. Whether any one would be inside the house was a problem requiring solution; and they thought it worth while to ascertain this before going further. In a moment, quick steps were heard approaching, and the door was opened by a woman who hardly showed herself behind it.

Lady Louvaine came in first, leaning on Hans.

“Good evening,” she said to the portress. “It was good of my Lord Oxford to provide—nay! Charity!”

“Ay, Madam, it’s me,” said the familiar voice of the old servant, whom her mistress believed she had left behind in Cumberland.

“Why, old friend! when earnest thou hither?”

“You’d best sit you down afore you hear folks their catechisms,” said Charity, coolly, leading the way to a pleasant parlour hung and upholstered in green, where a fire was burning on the hearth, and a large cushioned chair stood beside it. “When did I come? Well, let’s see?—it was o’ Tuesday last.”

“But how?” queried her mistress, in a tone which was a mixture of astonishment and perplexity.

“Same how as I get to most places, Madam—on my feet.”

“You walked to London, Charity?”

“Ay, I did. I’m good for fifteen miles at a stretch.”

“And whence gat you the money for your lodging?”

Charity laughed. “I never paid a halfpenny for lodging nobut (Note 1) once, and that was th’ last night afore I got here. Some nights I lay in a barn upo’ th’ hay: but most on ’em I got took in at a farm-house, and did an hour or two’s work for ’em i’ th’ morn to pay for my lodging and breakfast. But some on ’em gave it me right out for nought—just for company like. I bought my victuals, of course: but I should ha’ wanted them wherever I’d been.”

“And what led you to wish for life in London, Charity?”

“Eh! bless you, I want none to live i’ London. It’s a great, smoky, dirty place.”

“Then what did you want?”

“I wanted yo’,” said Charity, with a nod at her mistress. “Lady Lettice, yo’ll not turn me away? If things is so bad you cannot afford to keep me, you shalln’t: I can earn enough by my spinning half th’ day, and serve you i’ t’ other half. But yo’ll want two: I’m sure Rachel can ne’er do all th’ work, and you’d best have me, for nob’ry else ’ll put so much heart into ’t as I shall. Do let me stop, for I cannot abear to leave you.”

It was a moment before Lady Louvaine could speak. Then she held out her hand to Charity.

“My faithful Charity, I will not turn thee away! So long as I have two loaves of bread, thou mayest be sure of one.”

“Thank God, that’s all right!” said Charity with a sigh of evident relief. “We’s (we shall) get on famous, Rachel and me, and nother on us ’ll feel as if we’d been cast away of a desert island, as I’ve been feeling afore yo’ come. Eh, but it is a town, is this!”

“Charity, I wonder how you won in the house,” said Edith. “My Lord Oxford—”

“I’ve got a bit more gumption, Mrs. Edith, than you credit me with. I brought a letter to my Lord, or I should ne’er ha’ looked to get in else.”

“A letter!—from whom?”

“Fro’ Mrs. Joyce Morrell, to tell him who I were, and a bit more, I reckon.”

“I asked my Lord Oxford of his goodness to speak to some upholder (upholsterer) to send in a little necessary furnishing,” said Lady Louvaine, looking round, “such as were strictly needful, and should last us till we could turn us about: but methinks he hath done somewhat more than that.”

“You’ll turn you round middling easy, Madam,” answered Charity. “Th’ upholder were bidden to put th’ house to rights all through, and send the bill to Mistress Joyce. She gave me lodging fro’ Setterday to Monday, and bade me see to ’t that yo’ had all things comfortable. ‘Don’t split sixpences,’ she saith; ‘the bigger the charges the better, so long as they be for true comfort and not for gimcracks.’ So, Madam, I hope we’ve hit your Ladyship’s liking, for me and Mrs. Joyce, we tried hard—me at choosing, and she at paying. So that’s how it were.”

And dropping a quick courtesy, Charity departed with too much alacrity for thanks.

Lady Louvaine’s eyes followed her.

“The lines are fallen unto us in pleasant places,” quoted Edith, softly.

“Ay,” answered her mother. “And the pillar of the cloud hath gone before.”

Charity found Rachel in the kitchen, carrying a carpet-bag and a great bundle, and gazing round her with a bewildered air.

“Well, lass, what’s ta’en thee?” was her greeting.

“Eh, Charity Ashworth, is that thee? Where art thou fro’?”

“Where are we both come to? That’s more to th’ purpose.”

“I’m banished my country, that’s all I know,” said Rachel, blankly. “I’m glad to see thee, schuzheaw.” (Note 2.)

“Dost thou mean to carry yon for th’ rest o’ thy life?” demanded Charity, laying hands on the carpet-bag. “Come, wake up, lass, and look sharp, for there’ll be some supper wanted.”

A very expressive shake of Rachel’s head was the response. But she set down the bundle, and began to unfasten her sleeves for work. Sleeves were not then stitched to the gown, but merely hooked or buttoned in, and were therefore easily laid aside when needful.

“What’s the price o’ eggs this road on?” asked she.

“Nought. We ’n getten th’ hens to lay ’em. Down i’ th’ market they’re four a penny.”

“Eggs—four a penny!” ejaculated the horrified cook.

“Ay—they’re a bonnie price, aren’t they? Ten to a dozen the penny at Keswick. Chickens be twopence and threepence apiece.”

Rachel turned and faced her colleague with a solemn air. “Charity Ashworth, wilt thou tell me what we’ve come here for?”

“ ‘To do our duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call us,’ ” said Charity, sturdily. “There’s twenty hens i’ yon yard at th’ end o’ th’ garden, and two cows i’ th’ shippen, and three black pigs i’ th’ sty—Mistress Joyce ordered ’em—and two pairs o’ hands, and two brains, and two hearts, and the grace o’ God: and if thou wants aught more, thou’lt have to ask Him for it. So now let’s be sharp and see to th’ supper.”

As they sat at breakfast the next morning, which was Lady Day and Sunday, Lady Louvaine said—

“I would fain know what manner of neighbours we shall have here, whether pleasant or displeasant; for some of our comfort shall hang thereon.”

“Oh, there’s a capital fellow at the Golden Fish,” cried Aubrey. “His name is Tom Rookwood, and his sister Dorothy is the prettiest girl I have seen this month. I know nought of the Angel.”

“Ah!” said Hans, and shook his head, “I have seen the Angel.”

“And is he angelic?” responded Aubrey.

“There be angels good and ill,” Hans made answer. “Madam, I were best forewarn you—there’s a tongue dwelleth there.”

“What manner of tongue, Hans?” said Lady Louvaine, smiling.

“One that goes like a beggar’s clap-dish,” said he; “leastwise, it did all the while I was in the garden this morning. She greeted me o’er the wall, and would know who we were, and every one of our names, and what kin we were one to the other, and whence we came, and wherefore, and how long we looked to tarry—she should have asked me what we had to our breakfast, if I had not come in.”

“And how much toldest her?” inquired Temperance.

“Not a word that I could help,” answered Hans. “Indeed, that is the only comfort of her—that she asks questions so fast you can scarce slide in an answer. She was free enough with her information as well—told me her name, and how many children she had, and that she paid three-and-fourpence the yard for her perpetuance gown.”

“And what is her name?” asked Faith.

“Silence Abbott,” said he.

“She scarce answers to it, seemingly,” replied Temperance.

“Where made you acquaintance with your Tom Rookwood, Aubrey?” said his grandmother.

“At the door,” said he. “His father is a gentleman of Suffolk, a younger son of Rookwood of Coldham Hall. He has three sisters—I saw not the other two; but I say, that Dorothy’s a beauty!”

“Well!” replied Temperance. “Folks say, ‘As mute as a fish’; but it seems to me the Golden Fish is well-nigh as talkative as the Angel. Mind thy ways, Aubrey, and get not thyself into no tanglements with no Dorothys. It shall be time enough for thee to wed ten years hence.”

“And have a care that Mr. Rookwood be himself an upright and God-fearing man,” added his Aunt Edith.

“Oh, he’s all right!” answered Aubrey, letting Dorothy go by. “He saith he can hit a swallow flying at eighty paces.”

“More shame for him!” cried Edith. “What for should he hit a swallow?”

“He has promised to show me all sorts of things,” added Aubrey.

“Have a care,” said Lady Louvaine, “that he lead thee not into the briars, my boy, and there leave thee.”

The Monday morning brought a visitor—Mrs. Abbott, from the Angel, after whose stay Edith declared that a day’s hard work would have fatigued her less of the two inflictions. This lady’s freedom in asking questions, without the remotest sense of delicacy, was only to be paralleled by her readiness to impart information. The party at the White Bear knew before she went home, that she had recently had her parlour newly hung with arras, representing the twelve labours of Hercules: that she intended to have roast veal to supper: that her worsted under-stockings had cost her four-and-sixpence the pair: that her husband was a very trying man, and her eldest son the cleverest youth in Westminster.

“Worsted stockings four-and-sixpence!” cried Temperance. “What a sinful price to pay! And I declare if they ask not three shillings and fourpence for a quarter of veal! Why, I mind the time when in Keswick it was but sixteen pence. Truly, if things wax higher in price than now they are, it shall be an hard matter to live. This very morrow was I asked a shilling for a calf’s head of the butcher, and eightpence for a lemon of the costard-monger, whereat I promise you I fumed a bit; but when it came to threepence apiece for chickens—Lancaster and Derby! It shall cost us here ever so much more to live.”

“It shall not,” said Hans. “There be five acres of garden, and save for foreign fruits and spices, you shall ask little of the costard-monger shortly.”

“But who is to dig and dress it?” moaned Faith. “Aubrey cannot, all the day with his Lord, even if he were not away o’ nights: and Charity shall have too much to do.”

“I have two hands, Madam,” answered Hans, “and will very quickly have a spade in them: and ere I do aught else will I set the garden a-going, that Rachel and Charity can keep it in good order, with a little overlooking from you.”

“Me!” cried Faith, with a gasp of horror.

“Right good for you!” said her sister. “I’ll not help at that work; I shall leave it for you. As to foreign fruits and spices, we’ll have none of them, save now and then a lemon for the Lady Lettice—she loves the flavour, and we’ll not have her go short of comforts—but for all else, I make no ’count of your foreign spice. Rosemary, thyme, mint, savoury, fennel, and carraway be spice enough for any man, and a deal better than all your far-fetched maces, and nutmegs, and peppers, that be fetched over here but to fetch the money out of folks’ pockets: and wormwood and currant wine are every bit as good, and a deal wholesomer, than all your sherris-sack and Portingale rubbish. Hans, lad, let’s have a currant-bush or two in that garden; I can make currant wine with any, though I say it, and gooseberry too. I make no count of your foreign frumps and fiddlements. What’s all your Champagne but just gooseberry with a French name to it? and how can that make it any sweeter? I’ll be bounden half of it is made of gooseberries, if folks might but know. And as to your Rhenish and claret, and such stuff, I would not give a penny for the lot—I’d as soon have a quart of alegar. Nay, nay! we are honest English men and women, and let us live like it.”

“But, Temperance, my dear,” suggested Lady Louvaine, with a smile, “if no foreign fruits had ever been brought to England, nor planted here, our table should be somewhat scanty. In truth, we should have but little, I believe, save acorns and beech-nuts.”

“Nay, come!” responded Temperance; “wouldn’t you let us have a bit of parsley, or a barberry or twain?”

“Parsley!” said Lady Louvaine, smiling again. “Why, Temperance, that came first into England from Italy the year Anstace was born—the second of King Edward.” (Note 3.)

“Dear heart, did it so?” quoth she. “And must not we have so much as a cabbage or a sprig of sweet marjoram?”

“Sweet marjoram came in when thou wert a babe, Temperance; and I have heard my mother say that cabbages were brought hither from Flanders the year my sister Edith was born. She was five years elder than I, and died in the cradle.”

“Well!” concluded Temperance, “then I’ll hold my peace and munch my acorns. But I reckon I may have a little salt to them.”

“Ay, that mayest thou, and honey too.”

The next day, the Golden Fish swam in at the door; and it came in the form of Mistress Rookwood and her daughter Gertrude, who seemed pleasanter people than Mrs. Abbott. A few days afterwards came the Rector, Mr. Marshall, with his wife and daughter; and though—or perhaps because—Agnes Marshall was very quiet, they liked her best of any woman they had yet seen. Before they had stayed long, the Rector asked if Lady Louvaine had made acquaintance with any of her neighbours. She answered, only with two houses, the one on either side.

Mr. Marshall smiled. “Well, Mistress Abbott means no ill, methinks, though her tongue goeth too fast to say she doth none. Yet is her talk the worst thing about her. Tell her no secrets, I pray you. But I would warn you somewhat to have a care of the Rookwoods.”

“Pray you, Sir, after what fashion?” asked Lady Louvaine. “If I know from what quarter the arrow is like to come, it shall be easier to hold up the shield against it.”

“Well,” said he, “they come to church, and communicate, and pay all their dues; they may be honest folks: but this can I tell you, Mr. Rookwood is brother to a Papist, and is hand in glove with divers Popish perverts. Wherefore, my Lady Louvaine, I would not have you suffer your young folks to be too intimate with theire; for though these Rookwoods may be safe and true—I trust they are—yet have they near kinsmen which assuredly are not, who should very like be met at their house. So let me advise you to have a care.”

“That will I, most surely,” said she: “and I thank you, Sir, for putting me on my guard.”

In May the King arrived from Scotland, and in June the Queen, with the Prince, Prince Charles, and the Lady Elizabeth. “Princess” at this time indicated the Princess of Wales alone, and the first of our King’s daughters to whom the term was applied, except as heiress of England, were the daughters of Charles the First. Henry Prince of Wales was a boy of nine years old, his sister a child of seven, and the little Charles only three. The youthful Princess was placed in the charge of Lord Harrington, at Combe Abbey, near Coventry—a fact to which there will be occasion to refer again. The Princes remained with their parents, to the great satisfaction of the Queen, who had struggled as ceaselessly as vainly against the rigid Scottish custom of educating the heir-apparent away from Court Queen Anne of Denmark was a graceful, elegant woman, with extremely fair complexion and abundant fair hair. The King was plain even to ungainliness—a strange thing for the son of one of the most beautiful women that ever lived. The wisdom of James the First has been by different writers highly extolled and contemptuously derided. It seems to me to have partaken, like everything else, of the uncertainty of its author. He did give utterance to some apothegms of unquestionable wisdom, and also to some speeches of egregious folly. His subjects did not err far when they nicknamed their Scottish master and their “dear dead Queen,” his predecessor, “King Elizabeth and Queen James.” Yet justice requires the admission that the chief root of James’s many failings was his intense, unreasoning, constitutional timidity, which would have been ludicrous if it had been less pitiful. He could not see a drawn sword without shuddering, even if drawn for his own defence; and when knighting a man, it was necessary for the Lord Chamberlain to come to his Majesty’s help, and guide the blade, lest the recipient of the honour should be wounded by the unsteadiness of the King’s hand under the strong shuddering which seized him. So afraid was he of possible assassins that he always wore a thickly-padded cotton garment under his clothes, to turn aside bullet or dagger.

Lord Oxford came to Town in May, and Aubrey at once began his duties as a squire in his household. During June and July, he ran into the White Bear some half-dozen times in an evening, he said, to assure them that he was still alive. In August and September he was more remiss: and after October had set in, they scarcely saw him once a month. It was noticeable, when he did come, that the young gentleman was becoming more fashionable and courtly than of old. Lettice asked him once if he had bidden the tailor to make his garments of snips, since the brown suit which had been his Sunday best was breaking out all over into slashes whence puffs of pink were visible. Aubrey drew himself up with a laugh, and told his cousin that she knew nothing of the fashions. Lettice fancied she caught the gleam of a gold chain beneath his doublet, but it was carefully buttoned inside so as not to show.

Meanwhile, Hans—whose brown suit did not break out like Aubrey’s—was very busy in the garden, which he diligently dug and stocked. When this was done, he applied to a neighbouring notary, and brought home bundles of copying, at which he worked industriously in an evening. In the afternoon he was generally from home; what he did with himself on these occasions he did not say, and he was so commonly and thoroughly trusted that no one thought it necessary to ask him.

Edith and Temperance, coming in together one evening, were informed that Mrs. Rookwood had called during their absence, bringing with her Dorothy, Aubrey’s beauty.

“And didst thou think her beauteous, Lettice?” asked her Aunt Edith, with an amused smile.

“Truly, Aunt Edith, I marvel what Aubrey would be at. His fancies must be very diverse from mine. I would liever a deal have our Rachel.”

Temperance laughed, for Rachel had few claims of this nature.

“What like is she, Lettice?”

“She hath jet-black hair, Aunt, and thick black brows, with great shining eyes—black likewise; and a big nose-end, and pouting big red lips.”

“Humph! I reckon folks see beauty with differing eyes,” said Temperance.

The coronation did not take place before July. It was followed by severe pestilence, supposed to arise from the numbers who crowded into Town to witness the ceremony. Temperance kept fires of sweet herbs burning in the garden, and insisted on every body swallowing liberal doses of brick and wormwood, fasting, in the morning—her sovereign remedy against infection. Mrs. Abbott said that her doctor ordered her powder of bezoar stone for the same purpose, while the Rookwoods held firmly by a mixture of unicorn’s horn and salt of gold. In consequence or in spite of these invaluable applications, no one suffered in the three houses in King Street. His Majesty was terribly afraid of the pestilence; all officials not on duty were ordered home, and all suitors—namely, petitioners—were commanded to avoid the Court till winter. A solemn fast for this visitation was held in August; the statutes against vagabonds and “masterless men” were confirmed, whereat Temperance greatly rejoiced; and “dangerous rogues” were to be banished.

This last item was variously understood, some supposing it aimed at the Jesuits, and some at the Puritans. It was popularly reported that the King “loved no Puritans,” as it was now usual to term those Churchmen who declined to walk in the Ritualistic ways of the High Church party. To restrict the term Puritan to Nonconformists is a modern mistake. When, therefore, James began his reign by large remittances of fines to his Romish subjects, issued a declaration against toleration, revived the Star Chamber, and appointed Lord Henry Howard, a Roman Catholic, to the Privy Council, the Papists were encouraged, and the Puritans took alarm. The latter prepared to emigrate on a large scale to the American plantations, where no man could control them in religious matters; the former raised their heads and ventured on greater liberties than they had dared to take during the reign of the dead Queen. The French Ambassador, however, curled his lip contemptuously, and informed his master that James was a hypocrite.

The position of the English Roman Catholics at this time was peculiar and not agreeable. But in order to understand it, we must go back for thirty-five years—to the close of that halcyon period, the earliest ten years of Elizabeth, when the few Romanists then left in England generally came to church like other good citizens, and if they chose to practise the rites of their own faith in private, no notice was taken of it. It was not the Protestant Government, but the Papal See, which was responsible for the violent ending of this satisfactory state of things, when it was perceived at Rome that the Reformation was so thoroughly settled, and the nation so completely severed from Latin control, that (in the words of one of those who attempted the Queen’s life) “unless Mistress Elizabeth were suddenly taken away, all the devils in Hell should not be able to shake it.” In 1568, therefore, Pope Pius the Fifth put forth a Bull which excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, deposed her, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed them if they continued to obey her. To her Protestant subjects, of course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper—the private spleen of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England. But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation. The first visible effect of the Bull was that they all “did forthwith refrain the church,” and joined no more with their fellow-subjects in public prayer. The Queen contented herself in answer with forbidding the bringing in of Bulls—which was no more than Edward the First had done before her. Had the Pope and the Jesuits been then content to let matters rest, no difficulty might have arisen: but they would not. First Mayne, then Campion, the first Jesuit who entered England, were sent to “move sedition,” and to “make a party in execution of the former Bull.” To this followed an influx of treasonable books. It had now become evident that the Papal Bull was to be no mere brutum fulmen which might be safely left alone to die out, but a deliberate attempt to stir up rebellion against the Queen. For the Government to have kept silence would have been practically to throw their influence into the scale against the reign and the life of their Sovereign Lady.

It is now fashionable with a certain section to stigmatise Elizabeth as a persecutor, and to represent the penal laws against the Papists enacted in her reign as cruel oppressions of innocent and harmless persons, enforced simply because they believed certain religious doctrines. Those who will carefully follow the facts can hardly avoid seeing that the disloyalty preceded the coercion, and that if the Romanists were maddened into plotting against the Government by oppressive laws, those laws were not due to groundless fear or malice, but were simply the just reward of their own deeds. During the five years of Queen Mary, three hundred men, women, and children, were put to death for their religious opinions only. During the forty-four years of Queen Elizabeth, less than thirty priests, and five harbourers of priests, were executed, not for their opinions nor their religion, but for distinctly treasonable practices. (Note 4.)

When matters had come to this pass, in 1580, the first penal laws were issued, against recusancy and seditious publications. The penalty for recusancy—by which was meant a legal conviction for absence from public worship on religious grounds—“was not loss of life or limb, or whole estate, but only a pecuniary mulct and penalty; and that also only until they would submit and conform themselves and again come to church, as they had done for ten years before the Pope’s Bull.” Twenty pounds per lunar month was the fine imposed; but this referred only to adult males, “not being let by sickness.” Compared with the laws of Queen Mary, and even of her predecessors, this penalty was gentleness itself; and those modern writers who see in it cruelty and rigour must have little knowledge of comparative history. Yet so far was this from stopping the flow of treason, that a Jesuit mission entered England with the special purpose of teaching the people that under the Bull of Pope Pius the Queen stood excommunicated, and that it was a positive sin to obey her. Their success was only too manifest. Men of all sorts and conditions, from peers to peasants, were “reconciled” in numbers by their teaching. If this were to go on, not only would Elizabeth’s life be the forfeit, but the Reformation settlement would be uprooted and undone, and the blood of the Marian martyrs would have been shed for nought.

The laws were now made more stringent. By the Act of 1580 it had been provided that every priest saying mass should be liable to a fine of two hundred marks (133 pounds), with half that sum for every hearer, and both to imprisonment for a year, or in the priest’s case until the fine was paid. Now, all Jesuits and priests ordained since the Queen’s accession were banished the kingdom, being allowed forty days after the close of the session; and none were to enter it, on penalty of death. All persons receiving or assisting such priests were held guilty of felony. Recusants were to be imprisoned until they should conform, and if they remained obstinate for three months, they must be banished.

These penal laws, however, were rarely enforced. They were kept as a sword of Damocles, suspended over the heads of the unhappy Romanists, and capable of being brought down on them at any moment. In the hands of an unscrupulous Minister of the Crown they might be made an agency of considerable vexation: yet no reasonable remonstrance could be offered to the reminder that these penalties were inflicted by law, and it was only of the Queen’s clemency that they had not been earlier exacted. It must also be admitted that the penal laws bore in reality much harder on the Romanists than they seem to do in Protestant eyes. To deprive a Protestant of the services of a clergyman is at most to incommode him; to deprive a Papist of his priest is equivalent in his eyes to depriving him of his salvation. To them, therefore, it was a matter of life and death. And yet, it must not be forgotten, they had brought it on themselves.

With the death of Elizabeth came a serious change. Revile her as they might, under her the Romanists had been on the whole gently and justly used. But it was in reality, though they could not see it, after her the deluge.

Who was to be Elizabeth’s successor had been for years at once a serious and an unsettled question. There were three persons living when she died, each of whom could have put forward a claim to the Crown on various grounds.

Humanly speaking, the decision was made by two groups of persons—the Careys and Cecils, and the Romanists of England—both of whom were determined that James of Scotland should succeed. The latter had been working for some time past, and had secured promises from James that he would extend special toleration to them. He was expected to look kindly on the party which had adhered to his mother—it would be difficult to say why, since in Scotland his adherents had always been at war with hers—and it was remembered that he had been born and baptised in the Church of Rome. The Roman party, therefore, wrought earnestly in his favour. Sir Thomas Tresham proclaimed him at Northampton, at considerable personal risk; his sons and Lord Monteagle assisted the Earl of Southampton to hold the Tower for James. The Pope, Clement the Eighth, was entirely on James’s side, of whose conversion he entertained the warmest hopes. To the French Ambassador, Monsieur de Beaumont, James asserted that “he was no heretic, that is, refusing to recognise the truth; neither was he a Puritan, nor separated from the Church: he held episcopacy as necessary, and the Pope as the chief bishop, namely, the president and moderator of councils, but not the head nor superior.”

We in this nineteenth century, accustomed to ideas of complete and perpetual toleration, and alas! also to Gallio-like apathy and indifference, can scarcely form a conception of what was at that time the popular estimate of a Papist. A fair view of it is given by the following sarcastic description, written on the fly-leaf of a volume of manuscript sermons of this date.

“The Blazon of a Papist (‘priest’ is erased) contrived prettily by som Herault of Armes in ye compasse of Armoury.

“First. There is papist Rampant, a furious beast: ’tis written that the Diuell goes about like a roaring Lion, but the Diuell himselfe is not more fierce and rigorous then is papist where (he) is of force and ability to shew his tyranny: wittnes ye murthers, ye massacres, ye slaughters, ye poysoning, ye stabbing, ye burning, ye broyling, ye torturing, ye tormenting, ye persecuting, with other their bloody executions, euery (sic) fresh in example, infinite to be told, and horrible to be rememberd.

“Second. A papist Passant: he’s an instrument of sedition, of insurrection, of treason, of Rebellion, a priest, a Jesuite, a seminary, and such other as find so many friends in England and Ireland both to receaue and harbour them, that it is to be feard we shall smart for it one day.

“Third. A papist Volant; of all the rest, these I take to do the least harme: yet they will say they fly for their consciences, when its apparently known they both practice and conspire.

“Fourth. A papist Regardant; he obserus times, occasions, places, and persons, and though he be one of the Popes intelligencers, yet he walks with such circumspection and heed, that he is not known but to his own faction.

“Fifth. A papist Dormant: he’s a sly companion, subtill as a fox: he sleeps with open eyes, yet somtymes seeming to winke, he looks and pries into opportunity, still feeding himselfe with those hopes that I am in hope shall never do him good.

“Sixth. A papist Couchant: this is a daungerous fellow, and much to be feard; he creeps into the bosom of ye state, and will not stick to look into ye Court, nay, if he can, into Court counsells: he will shew himselfe tractable to ye co(mm)on wealthe prescriptions, and with this shew of obedience to Law, he doth ye Pope more service then 20 others that are more resisting.

“Seventh. A papist Pendant: indeed a papist pendant is in his prime p’fection: a papist pendant is so fitting a piece of Armoury for ye time present, as all Herauds in England are not able better to display him: a papist is then in chiefe when he is a Pendant, and he neuer comes to so high p’ferment, but by ye Popes especiall blessing.” (Note 5.)

James’s first act, when his succession was peaceably ensured, was to remit the fines for recusancy. For the first and second years of his reign, they were not enforced at all. The sum paid into the Exchequer on this account, in the last year of Elizabeth, was 10,333 pounds; in the first and second years of James it was about 300 and 200 pounds respectively. But in his third year, the fines were suddenly revived, and the Romanists took alarm. The King was evidently playing them false. He had been heard to say that “the Pope was the true Antichrist,” that “he would lose his crown and his life before he would alter religion;” that “he never had any thought of granting toleration to the Catholics, and that if he thought that his son would condescend to any such course, he would wish the kingdom translated to his daughter;” and lastly, that “he had given them a year of probation, to conform themselves, which, seeing it had not wrought that effect, he had fortified all the laws against them, and commanded them to be put in execution to the uttermost.”

Early in 1604, all Jesuits and seminary priests were banished; the recusancy fines and arrears were soon after stringently exacted, and many Roman Catholic families almost reduced to beggary. Sudden domiciliary visits were made in search of concealed priests, usually in the dead of night: empty beds were examined, walls struck with mallets, rapiers thrust into the chinks of wainscots. The Jesuit missionaries were in especial danger; they went about disguised, hid themselves under secular callings and travelled from one house to another, using a different name at each, to avoid discovery. One priest, named Moatford, passed as the footman of Lord Sandys’ daughter, wore his livery, and said mass in secret when it seemed safe to do so. Serious difficulties were thrown in the way of educating children; if they were sent abroad, the parents were subject to a fine of 100 pounds; if taught at home by a recusant tutor, both he and his employer were mulcted in forty shillings per day.

It was in these circumstances that the Gunpowder Plot originated—not from some sudden ebullition of groundless malice: and it was due, not to the Romanists at large, but to that section of them only which constituted the Jesuit party.

It is not generally understood that the Roman Church, which boasts so loudly of her perfect unity, is really divided in two parties, one siding with, and the other against, that powerful and mysterious body calling itself the Society of Jesus. It is with this body, “the power behind the Pope,”—which Popes have ere this striven to put down, and have only fallen a sacrifice themselves—that political plots have most commonly originated, and the Gunpowder Plot was no exception to the general rule. It was entirely got up by the Jesuit faction, the ordinary Roman Catholics not merely having nothing to do with it, but placing themselves, when interrogated, in positive opposition to it.

There are certain peculiarities concerning the conspirators which distinguish this enterprise from others of its class. They were mostly young men; they were nearly all connected by ties of blood or marriage; two-thirds of them, if not more, were perverts from Protestantism; and so far from being the vulgar, brutal miscreants usually supposed, they were—with one exception—gentlemen of name and family, and some of good fortune; educated and accomplished men, who honestly believed themselves to be doing God service. It is instructive to read their profound conviction that they were saving their country’s honour, furthering their own salvation, and promoting the glory of God. The slaughter of the innocents which necessarily attended their project was lamentable indeed, but inevitable, and gave rise to as little real compunction as the eating of beef and mutton. These men were by no means heartless; they were only blind from ignorance of Scripture, and excess of zeal in a false cause.

The original propounder of the plot was unquestionably Robert Catesby, of Ashby Saint Ledgers, a Northamptonshire gentleman of ancient ancestry and fair estate. He first whispered it in secret to John Wright, a Lincolnshire squire, and soon afterwards to Thomas Winter, a younger brother of the owner of Huddington Hall in Worcestershire, and a distant cousin of an old friend of some of my readers—Edward Underhill, the “Hot Gospeller.” Thomas Winter communicated it in Flanders to Guy Fawkes, a young officer of Yorkshire birth, and these four met with a fifth, Thomas Percy, cousin and steward of the Earl of Northumberland. The object of the meeting was to consider the condition of the Roman Catholics, with a view to taking action for its relief. There was also a priest in the company, but who he was did not transpire, though it is almost certain to have been one of the three Jesuits chiefly concerned in the plot—John Gerard, Oswald Greenway, or Henry Garnet. Percy, usually fertile in imagination and eager in action, was ready with a proposition at once. He said—

“The only way left for us is to kill the King; and that will I undertake to do. From him we looked for bread, and have received nought save stones. Let him be prayed to visit my Lord Mordaunt at Turvey, where a masque may be had for him; and he once there, in the house of one of us (though my Lord be not known so to be), he is at our mercy. How say you, gentlemen?”

“Nay, my son,” replied the priest. “There is a better course in hand—even to cut up the very roots, and remove all impediments whatsoever.”

“That were to run great risk and accomplish little,” added Catesby. “No, Tom: thou shalt not adventure thyself to so small purpose. If thou wilt be a traitor, I have in mine head a much further design than that—to greater advantage, and that can never be discovered.”

Every body wished to know his meaning.

“I have bethought me,” continued Catesby, “of a way at one instant to deliver us from all our bonds, and without any foreign help to replant again the Catholic religion. In a word, it is to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder, for in that place have they done us all the mischief, and perchance God hath designed that place for their punishment.”

“Truly, a strange proposal!” said Thomas Winter. “The scandal would be so great that the Catholic religion might sustain thereby.”

“The nature of the disease requires so sharp a remedy,” was Catesby’s reply.

“But were it lawful?” objected John Wright. “Ask your ghostly father,” said Catesby, who was pretty sure of the answer in that case.

“But remember,” said Winter, “there are many of our friends and Catholic brethren amongst the Lords: shall we destroy them with the rest?”

Catesby’s answer was in principle that of Caiaphas. “Ay: ’tis expedient the few die for the good of the many.”

The next step was to obtain a house convenient for their operations—namely, so close to the Houses of Parliament that they could carry a mine from its cellar right under the House. Percy was deputed to attend to this matter, as his circumstances offered an excuse for his seeking such a house. He was one of the band of gentlemen pensioners, whose duty it was to be in daily attendance on the King; a position into which he had been smuggled by his cousin Lord Northumberland, without having taken the oath requisite for it. This oath Percy could not conscientiously have taken, since by it he renounced the authority of the Pope. A little study of the topography induced him to fix on two contiguous houses, which stood close to the House of Lords. On investigation, it was found that these two houses belonged to the Parliament, and were held by Mr. Wyniard, Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe, “an ancient and honest servant of Queen Elizabeth.” Both, however, had been sub-let by him—the nearer to Mr. Henry Ferris; the further to Gideon Gibbons, a public porter, subsequently utilised by the plotters, to his danger and discomfort. Percy, therefore, in March, 1604, “began to labour earnestly” with Mr. Wyniard and his wife to obtain these houses. Mrs. Wyniard seems chiefly to have attended to this business; her husband was not improbably incapacitated by age or ill-health. Percy’s efforts proved successful. He was accepted as tenant by the Wyniards at a rent of 12 pounds per annum, Mr. Ferris being bought out with 30 pounds for his good-will and 5 pounds more “in consideration of the charges of the house.” The agreement was signed on the 24th of May.

The next united act of these five exemplary gentlemen was to meet at a house “in the fields behind Saint Clement’s Church, near the arch, near the well called Saint Clement’s Well.” This seems to have been the residence of the Jesuit priest Gerard; but it is uncertain whether it was identical with that of Percy, or with that of Mrs. Herbert, where Fawkes had apartments, both which are also described as “beyond Saint Clement’s.” Gerard, who was in the company, was with delicate consideration left in an upper room, where he was provided with all necessaries for the celebration of mass, while the conspirators proceeded to business alone in the lower apartment. Taking a primer in his hand, Catesby administered to his four accomplices this oath, which he also took himself:—

“You swear by the blessed Trinity, and by the Sacrament which you now propose to receive, never to disclose directly or indirectly, by word or circumstance, the matter that shall be proposed to you to keep secret, nor desist from the execution thereof till the rest shall give you leave.”

Then they passed into the upper room, where Gerard stood ready robed, and received the host from his hands—with what “intention” being unknown to him, if the assertion of the conspirators may be believed.

I have gone rather too far, chronologically speaking, in order to tell this part of the story straight through; and now we must go back a little. About four months before this oath was taken, in January, 1604, was held the famous conference of bishops at Hampton Court. The King, who, though baptised a Roman Catholic, had been educated as a Presbyterian, propounded various queries to the hierarchy concerning practices which puzzled him in the Church of England, of which he was now the supreme head upon earth. In the first place, he desired to know the meaning of the rite of confirmation: “if they held the sacrament of baptism invalidous without it, then was it in his judgment blasphemous; yet if it were only that children might themselves profess and be blessed, then very good.” The absolution of the Church he had heard compared to the Pope’s pardons. Private baptism, he would have administered only by a lawful minister; and concerning excommunications he had also something to say. On all these points the bishops fully satisfied his Majesty, “whose exquisite expositions did breed wonder and astonishment in that learned and noble audience.” Modern readers of the proceedings have been much less inclined to astonishment, except indeed that the bishops should have been so easily astonished. On the second day, a deputation was received from the Puritan ministers, who petitioned for four points—which had they gained, the nineteenth century would have found its burdens considerably lightened. They requested that the doctrine of the Church might be preserved pure, according to God’s Word; that good pastors might be planted in all churches, to preach in the same; that the Book of Common Prayer might be fitted to more increase of piety; and that Church government might be sincerely ministered according to God’s Word.

King James made the deputation explain themselves; and after a day’s debate, he angrily told them that they were aiming at a Scottish presbytery, which agreed with monarchy as well as God and the Devil. “No bishop, no king!” added his Majesty. Some few members of the Conference maintained that the Puritans had been crushed and insulted; but Chancellor Egerton said he had never seen king and priest so fully united in one person as in that of his sacred Majesty, and Bancroft (afterwards Archbishop) fell upon his knees, unctuously exclaiming that his heart melted for joy to think that England was blessed with such a ruler. The bishops and privy-councillors then conferred alone, altered a few expressions in the Liturgy, and summoned the Puritans to hear their decision. Dr. Raynolds, the Puritan spokesman, entreated that the use of the surplice and the sign of the cross in baptism might be laid aside, or at least not made compulsory, but the King sternly told him that they preferred the credit of a few private men to the peace of the Church; that he would have none of this arguing; “wherefore let them conform, and quickly too, or they shall hear of it.” By this short-sighted policy, the opportunity for really securing peace to the Church was lost for sixty years, and many of the troubles of the next reign were sown. The next step was to arrest ten of the Puritan leaders; and then to eject from their benefices three hundred clergy of that school. Among these was Mr. Marshall, the pastor of our friends. Lady Louvaine was sorely troubled. She said they were now as sheep without a shepherd, and were but too likely to have a shepherd set over them who would fleece and devour the sheep. Of these clergy some joined the Presbyterians, some the Brownists—whom people now began to call Independents: others remained in the Church, ceasing to minister, and following such callings as they deemed not unbecoming the position of a Christian minister—chiefly tutorship and literature. Mr. Marshall was in the last class. He said better times might come, and he could not see his way to desert the Church, though her ways to him at this present were somewhat step-motherly.

“But how, Mr. Marshall, if the Church cast you forth?” asked Temperance.

“Then must I needs go,” he answered with a smile. “But that, look you, were not my deed, nor should I be responsible for it before God. So long as I break not her laws, she hath no right to eject me; and so long as she abideth in the truth, I have no right to desert her.”

“But the bishops abide not in the truth, as I take it.”

“The bishops be not the Church,” replied he. “Let the Articles and Homilies be changed, with evil tendency, and then that is to change the Church. I go forth of her then at once; for she should be no longer the Church of my faith, to which I sware obedience, and she hath not that right over me to require me to change with her. But so long as these are left unaltered, what matter though bishops change? They are not immortal: and very sure am I they are not infallible.”

“What think you, Mother?” said Edith.

“Children,” replied Lady Louvaine, laying down her knitting in her lap, “I can get no further at this present than one line of Saint John: ‘He Himself knew what He would do.’ I do not know what He will do. It may be, as it then was, something that none of all His disciples can guess. One step at a time is all He allows us to see, and all He bids us take. ‘He calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out’; but also, ‘He goeth before them.’ At times He leads them, I think, outside the fold; and if He is outside, and we hear His voice, we must needs go to Him. Yet is this rare, and we should make very sure that it is from without we hear the familiar voice, and not rush forth in haste when He may be calling from within. Let us know that He is on the road before us, and then we need have no fear to run fast, no doubt whither the road will lead. There be some sheep in such haste to run that they must needs go past the Shepherd; and then have they no longer a leader, and are very like to miss the right way.”

“You have the right, Lady Louvaine,” said Mr. Marshall. “ ‘He that believeth shall not make haste.’ Yet there be sheep—to follow your imagery, or truly that of our Lord—that will lag behind, and never keep pace with the Shepherd.”

“Ay,” she answered: “and I know not if that be not the commoner fault of the twain. He calls, and calls, and they come not; and such sheep find many a sharp tap from the rod ere they will walk, never say run. Our Shepherd is human, therefore He can feel for us; He is Divine, therefore can He have patience with us. Let us thank God for both.”

Note 1. Except, only. This, now a Northern provincialism, is an archaism at least as old as the fourteenth century.

Note 2. Nevertheless. This strictly Lancastrian provincialism is supposed to be a corruption of “choose how.” Its exact pronunciation can hardly be put into English letters.

Note 3. This was a revival; for “persille” is found on the Rolls of Edward II.

Note 4. This is the computation of Sir Edward Coke in his opening speech at the trial of the Gunpowder conspirators.

Note 5. The little manuscript volume wherein this is inscribed, which is in my own possession, consists of sermons—not very legible, and mostly very dry by the Rev. Thomas Stone, their dates ranging from 1622 to 1666, with a few occasional memoranda interspersed.