IF you look at a Map of
the World, you will see, in the left-hand upper corner of the Eastern
Hemisphere, two Islands lying in the sea. They are England and Scotland, and
Ireland. England and Scotland form the greater part of these Islands. Ireland
is the next in size. The little neighbouring islands, which are so small upon
the Map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland,--broken off, I
dare say, in the course of a great length of time, by the power of the restless
water.
In the old days, a
long, long while ago, before Our Saviour was born on earth and lay asleep in a
manger, these Islands were in the same place, and the stormy sea roared round
them, just as it roars now. But the sea was not alive, then, with great ships
and brave sailors, sailing to and from all parts of the world. It was very
lonely. The Islands lay solitary, in the great expanse of water. The foaming
waves dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their forests;
but the winds and waves brought no adventurers to land upon the Islands, and
the savage Islanders knew nothing of the rest of the world, and the rest of the
world knew nothing of them.
It is supposed that the
Phoenicians, who were an ancient people, famous for carrying on trade, came in
ships to these Islands, and found that they produced tin and lead; both very
useful things, as you know, and both produced to this very hour upon the
sea-coast. The most celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are, still, close to the
sea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close to it that it is hollowed out
underneath the ocean; and the miners say, that in stormy weather, when they are
at work down in that deep place, they can hear the noise of the waves
thundering above their heads. So, the Phoenicians, coasting about the Islands,
would come, without much difficulty, to where the tin and lead were.
The Phoenicians traded
with the Islanders for these metals, and gave the Islanders some other useful
things in exchange. The Islanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost
naked, or only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining their bodies,
as other savages do, with coloured earths and the juices of plants. But the
Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of France and Belgium, and
saying to the people there, ’We have been to those white cliffs across the
water, which you can see in fine weather, and from that country, which is
called BRITAIN, we bring this tin and lead,’ tempted some of the French and
Belgians to come over also. These people settled themselves on the south coast
of England, which is now called Kent; and, although they were a rough people
too, they taught the savage Britons some useful arts, and improved that part of
the Islands. It is probable that other people came over from Spain to Ireland,
and settled there.
Thus, by little and
little, strangers became mixed with the Islanders, and the savage Britons grew
into a wild, bold people; almost savage, still, especially in the interior of
the country away from the sea where the foreign settlers seldom went; but
hardy, brave, and strong.
The whole country was
covered with forests, and swamps. The greater part of it was very misty and
cold. There were no roads, no bridges, no streets, no houses that you would
think deserving of the name. A town was nothing but a collection of
straw-covered huts, hidden in a thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a low
wall, made of mud, or the trunks of trees placed one upon another. The people
planted little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle.
They made no coins, but used metal rings for money. They were clever in
basket-work, as savage people often are; and they could make a coarse kind of
cloth, and some very bad earthenware. But in building fortresses they were much
more clever.
They made boats of
basket-work, covered with the skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, ventured
far from the shore. They made swords, of copper mixed with tin; but, these
swords were of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow would bend one.
They made light shields, short pointed daggers, and spears--which they jerked
back after they had thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather
fastened to the stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten an enemy’s horse.
The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or forty tribes, each
commanded by its own little king, were constantly fighting with one another, as
savage people usually do; and they always fought with these weapons.
They were very fond of
horses. The standard of Kent was the picture of a white horse. They could break
them in and manage them wonderfully well. Indeed, the horses (of which they had
an abundance, though they were rather small) were so well taught in those days,
that they can scarcely be said to have improved since; though the men are so
much wiser. They understood, and obeyed, every word of command; and would stand
still by themselves, in all the din and noise of battle, while their masters
went to fight on foot. The Britons could not have succeeded in their most
remarkable art, without the aid of these sensible and trusty animals. The art I
mean, is the construction and management of war-chariots or cars, for which
they have ever been celebrated in history. Each of the best sort of these
chariots, not quite breast high in front, and open at the back, contained one
man to drive, and two or three others to fight--all standing up. The horses who
drew them were so well trained, that they would tear, at full gallop, over the
most stony ways, and even through the woods; dashing down their masters’
enemies beneath their hoofs, and cutting them to pieces with the blades of
swords, or scythes, which were fastened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond
the car on each side, for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at full speed,
the horses would stop, at the driver’s command. The men within would leap out,
deal blows about them with their swords like hail, leap on the horses, on the
pole, spring back into the chariots anyhow; and, as soon as they were safe, the
horses tore away again.
The Britons had a
strange and terrible religion, called the Religion of the Druids. It seems to
have been brought over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country
of France, anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the
Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of the Heathen Gods
and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, the
Druids, who pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians’ wands, and
wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told the ignorant people was a
Serpent’s egg in a golden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies
included the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some suspected
criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burning alive, in immense
wicker cages, of a number of men and animals together. The Druid Priests had
some kind of veneration for the Oak, and for the mistletoe--the same plant that
we hang up in houses at Christmas Time now--when its white berries grew upon
the Oak. They met together in dark woods, which they called Sacred Groves; and
there they instructed, in their mysterious arts, young men who came to them as
pupils, and who sometimes stayed with them as long as twenty years.
These Druids built
great Temples and altars, open to the sky, fragments of some of which are yet
remaining. Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the most
extraordinary of these. Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, on
Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form another. We know, from examination
of the great blocks of which such buildings are made, that they could not have
been raised without the aid of some ingenious machines, which are common now,
but which the ancient Britons certainly did not use in making their own
uncomfortable houses. I should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who
stayed with them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept
the people out of sight while they made these buildings, and then pretended
that they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the fortresses too;
at all events, as they were very powerful, and very much believed in, and as
they made and executed the laws, and paid no taxes, I don’t wonder that they
liked their trade. And, as they persuaded the people the more Druids there
were, the better off the people would be, I don’t wonder that there were a good
many of them. But it is pleasant to think that there are no Druids, NOW, who go
on in that way, and pretend to carry Enchanters’ Wands and Serpents’ Eggs--and
of course there is nothing of the kind, anywhere.
Such was the improved
condition of the ancient Britons, fifty-five years before the birth of Our
Saviour, when the Romans, under their great General, Julius Caesar, were
masters of all the rest of the known world. Julius Caesar had then just
conquered Gaul; and hearing, in Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island
with the white cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited
it--some of whom had been fetched over to help the Gauls in the war against
him--he resolved, as he was so near, to come and conquer Britain next.
So, Julius Caesar came
sailing over to this Island of ours, with eighty vessels and twelve thousand
men. And he came from the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, ’because
thence was the shortest passage into Britain;’ just for the same reason as our
steam-boats now take the same track, every day. He expected to conquer Britain
easily: but it was not such easy work as he supposed--for the bold Britons
fought most bravely; and, what with not having his horse-soldiers with him (for
they had been driven back by a storm), and what with having some of his vessels
dashed to pieces by a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he ran great risk
of being totally defeated. However, for once that the bold Britons beat him, he
beat them twice; though not so soundly but that he was very glad to accept
their proposals of peace, and go away.
But, in the spring of
the next year, he came back; this time, with eight hundred vessels and thirty
thousand men. The British tribes chose, as their general-in-chief, a Briton,
whom the Romans in their Latin language called CASSIVELLAUNUS, but whose
British name is supposed to have been CASWALLON. A brave general he was, and
well he and his soldiers fought the Roman army! So well, that whenever in that
war the Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle of the
rapid British chariots, they trembled in their hearts. Besides a number of
smaller battles, there was a battle fought near Canterbury, in Kent; there was
a battle fought near Chertsey, in Surrey; there was a battle fought near a
marshy little town in a wood, the capital of that part of Britain which
belonged to CASSIVELLAUNUS, and which was probably near what is now Saint
Albans, in Hertfordshire. However, brave CASSIVELLAUNUS had the worst of it, on
the whole; though he and his men always fought like lions. As the other British
chiefs were jealous of him, and were always quarrelling with him, and with one
another, he gave up, and proposed peace. Julius Caesar was very glad to grant
peace easily, and to go away again with all his remaining ships and men. He had
expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may have found a few for anything I
know; but, at all events, he found delicious oysters, and I am sure he found
tough Britons--of whom, I dare say, he made the same complaint as Napoleon
Bonaparte the great French General did, eighteen hundred years afterwards, when
he said they were such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were
beaten. They never DID know, I believe, and never will.
Nearly a hundred years
passed on, and all that time, there was peace in Britain. The Britons improved
their towns and mode of life: became more civilised, travelled, and learnt a
great deal from the Gauls and Romans. At last, the Roman Emperor, Claudius,
sent AULUS PLAUTIUS, a skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue the
Island, and shortly afterwards arrived himself. They did little; and OSTORIUS
SCAPULA, another general, came. Some of the British Chiefs of Tribes submitted.
Others resolved to fight to the death. Of these brave men, the bravest was
CARACTACUS, or CARADOC, who gave battle to the Romans, with his army, among the
mountains of North Wales. ’This day,’ said he to his soldiers, ’decides the
fate of Britain! Your liberty, or your eternal slavery, dates from this hour.
Remember your brave ancestors, who drove the great Caesar himself across the
sea!’ On hearing these words, his men, with a great shout, rushed upon the
Romans. But the strong Roman swords and armour were too much for the weaker
British weapons in close conflict. The Britons lost the day. The wife and
daughter of the brave CARACTACUS were taken prisoners; his brothers delivered
themselves up; he himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by his
false and base stepmother: and they carried him, and all his family, in triumph
to Rome.
But a great man will be
great in misfortune, great in prison, great in chains. His noble air, and
dignified endurance of distress, so touched the Roman people who thronged the
streets to see him, that he and his family were restored to freedom. No one
knows whether his great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever
returned to his own dear country. English oaks have grown up from acorns, and
withered away, when they were hundreds of years old--and other oaks have sprung
up in their places, and died too, very aged--since the rest of the history of
the brave CARACTACUS was forgotten.
Still, the Britons
WOULD NOT yield. They rose again and again, and died by thousands, sword in
hand. They rose, on every possible occasion. SUETONIUS, another Roman general,
came, and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called MONA), which was supposed
to be sacred, and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by their own
fires. But, even while he was in Britain, with his victorious troops, the
BRITONS rose. Because BOADICEA, a British queen, the widow of the King of the
Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her property by the
Romans who were settled in England, she was scourged, by order of CATUS a Roman
officer; and her two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and
her husband’s relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury, the Britons
rose, with all their might and rage. They drove CATUS into Gaul; they laid the
Roman possessions waste; they forced the Romans out of London, then a poor
little town, but a trading place; they hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by
the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. SUETONIUS strengthened his
army, and advanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army, and
desperately attacked his, on the field where it was strongly posted. Before the
first charge of the Britons was made, BOADICEA, in a war-chariot, with her fair
hair streaming in the wind, and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove
among the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the
licentious Romans. The Britons fought to the last; but they were vanquished
with great slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison.
Still, the spirit of
the Britons was not broken. When SUETONIUS left the country, they fell upon his
troops, and retook the Island of Anglesey. AGRICOLA came, fifteen or twenty
years afterwards, and retook it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing
the country, especially that part of it which is now called SCOTLAND; but, its
people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. They fought the
bloodiest battles with him; they killed their very wives and children, to
prevent his making prisoners of them; they fell, fighting, in such great
numbers that certain hills in Scotland are yet supposed to be vast heaps of
stones piled up above their graves. HADRIAN came, thirty years afterwards, and
still they resisted him. SEVERUS came, nearly a hundred years afterwards, and
they worried his great army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by
thousands, in the bogs and swamps. CARACALLA, the son and successor of SEVERUS,
did the most to conquer them, for a time; but not by force of arms. He knew how
little that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and
gave the Britons the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace,
after this, for seventy years.
Then new enemies arose.
They were the Saxons, a fierce, sea-faring people from the countries to the
North of the Rhine, the great river of Germany on the banks of which the best
grapes grow to make the German wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to
the sea-coast of Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsed by
CARAUSIUS, a native either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the
Romans to the command, and under whom the Britons first began to fight upon the
sea. But, after this time, they renewed their ravages. A few years more, and
the Scots (which was then the name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, a
northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions into the South of
Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at intervals, during two hundred
years, and through a long succession of Roman Emperors and chiefs; during all
which length of time, the Britons rose against the Romans, over and over again.
At last, in the days of the Roman HONORIUS, when the Roman power all over the
world was fast declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the
Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at
last, as at first, the Britons rose against them, in their old brave manner;
for, a very little while before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates,
and declared themselves an independent people.
Five hundred years had
passed, since Julius Caesar’s first invasion of the Island, when the Romans
departed from it for ever. In the course of that time, although they had been
the cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done much to improve the
condition of the Britons. They had made great military roads; they had built
forts; they had taught them how to dress, and arm themselves, much better than
they had ever known how to do before; they had refined the whole British way of
living. AGRICOLA had built a great wall of earth, more than seventy miles long,
extending from Newcastle to beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the
Picts and Scots; HADRIAN had strengthened it; SEVERUS, finding it much in want
of repair, had built it afresh of stone.
Above all, it was in
the Roman time, and by means of Roman ships, that the Christian Religion was first
brought into Britain, and its people first taught the great lesson that, to be
good in the sight of GOD, they must love their neighbours as themselves, and do
unto others as they would be done by. The Druids declared that it was very
wicked to believe in any such thing, and cursed all the people who did believe
it, very heartily. But, when the people found that they were none the better
for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the curses of the
Druids, but, that the sun shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids
at all, they just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and that it
signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. After which, the pupils
of the Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids took to other trades.
Thus I have come to the
end of the Roman time in England. It is but little that is known of those five
hundred years; but some remains of them are still found. Often, when labourers
are digging up the ground, to make foundations for houses or churches, they
light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from
which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on which they
trod, are discovered among the earth that is broken by the plough, or the dust
that is crumbled by the gardener’s spade. Wells that the Romans sunk, still
yield water; roads that the Romans made, form part of our highways. In some old
battle-fields, British spear-heads and Roman armour have been found, mingled
together in decay, as they fell in the thick pressure of the fight. Traces of
Roman camps overgrown with grass, and of mounds that are the burial-places of
heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the
bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of SEVERUS, overrun with moss and
weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin; and the shepherds and their dogs lie
sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge yet
stands: a monument of the earlier time when the Roman name was unknown in
Britain, and when the Druids, with their best magic wands, could not have
written it in the sands of the wild sea-shore.
THE Romans had scarcely
gone away from Britain, when the Britons began to wish they had never left it.
For, the Romans being gone, and the Britons being much reduced in numbers by
their long wars, the Picts and Scots came pouring in, over the broken and
unguarded wall of SEVERUS, in swarms. They plundered the richest towns, and
killed the people; and came back so often for more booty and more slaughter,
that the unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As if the Picts and Scots
were not bad enough on land, the Saxons attacked the islanders by sea; and, as
if something more were still wanting to make them miserable, they quarrelled
bitterly among themselves as to what prayers they ought to say, and how they
ought to say them. The priests, being very angry with one another on these
questions, cursed one another in the heartiest manner; and (uncommonly like the
old Druids) cursed all the people whom they could not persuade. So, altogether,
the Britons were very badly off, you may believe.
They were in such
distress, in short, that they sent a letter to Rome entreating help--which they
called the Groans of the Britons; and in which they said, ’The barbarians chase
us into the sea, the sea throws us back upon the barbarians, and we have only the
hard choice left us of perishing by the sword, or perishing by the waves.’ But,
the Romans could not help them, even if they were so inclined; for they had
enough to do to defend themselves against their own enemies, who were then very
fierce and strong. At last, the Britons, unable to bear their hard condition
any longer, resolved to make peace with the Saxons, and to invite the Saxons to
come into their country, and help them to keep out the Picts and Scots.
It was a British Prince
named VORTIGERN who took this resolution, and who made a treaty of friendship
with HENGIST and HORSA, two Saxon chiefs. Both of these names, in the old Saxon
language, signify Horse; for the Saxons, like many other nations in a rough
state, were fond of giving men the names of animals, as Horse, Wolf, Bear,
Hound. The Indians of North America,--a very inferior people to the Saxons,
though--do the same to this day.
HENGIST and HORSA drove
out the Picts and Scots; and VORTIGERN, being grateful to them for that
service, made no opposition to their settling themselves in that part of
England which is called the Isle of Thanet, or to their inviting over more of
their countrymen to join them. But HENGIST had a beautiful daughter named
ROWENA; and when, at a feast, she filled a golden goblet to the brim with wine,
and gave it to VORTIGERN, saying in a sweet voice, ’Dear King, thy health!’ the
King fell in love with her. My opinion is, that the cunning HENGIST meant him
to do so, in order that the Saxons might have greater influence with him; and
that the fair ROWENA came to that feast, golden goblet and all, on purpose.
At any rate, they were
married; and, long afterwards, whenever the King was angry with the Saxons, or
jealous of their encroachments, ROWENA would put her beautiful arms round his
neck, and softly say, ’Dear King, they are my people! Be favourable to them, as
you loved that Saxon girl who gave you the golden goblet of wine at the feast!’
And, really, I don’t see how the King could help himself.
Ah! We must all die! In
the course of years, VORTIGERN died--he was dethroned, and put in prison,
first, I am afraid; and ROWENA died; and generations of Saxons and Britons
died; and events that happened during a long, long time, would have been quite
forgotten but for the tales and songs of the old Bards, who used to go about
from feast to feast, with their white beards, recounting the deeds of their
forefathers. Among the histories of which they sang and talked, there was a
famous one, concerning the bravery and virtues of KING ARTHUR, supposed to have
been a British Prince in those old times. But, whether such a person really
lived, or whether there were several persons whose histories came to be
confused together under that one name, or whether all about him was invention,
no one knows.
I will tell you,
shortly, what is most interesting in the early Saxon times, as they are
described in these songs and stories of the Bards.
In, and long after, the
days of VORTIGERN, fresh bodies of Saxons, under various chiefs, came pouring
into Britain. One body, conquering the Britons in the East, and settling there,
called their kingdom Essex; another body settled in the West, and called their
kingdom Wessex; the Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established themselves in one
place; the Southfolk, or Suffolk people, established themselves in another; and
gradually seven kingdoms or states arose in England, which were called the
Saxon Heptarchy. The poor Britons, falling back before these crowds of fighting
men whom they had innocently invited over as friends, retired into Wales and
the adjacent country; into Devonshire, and into Cornwall. Those parts of
England long remained unconquered. And in Cornwall now--where the sea-coast is
very gloomy, steep, and rugged--where, in the dark winter-time, ships have
often been wrecked close to the land, and every soul on board has
perished--where the winds and waves howl drearily and split the solid rocks
into arches and caverns--there are very ancient ruins, which the people call
the ruins of KING ARTHUR’S Castle.
Kent is the most famous
of the seven Saxon kingdoms, because the Christian religion was preached to the
Saxons there (who domineered over the Britons too much, to care for what THEY
said about their religion, or anything else) by AUGUSTINE, a monk from Rome.
KING ETHELBERT, of Kent, was soon converted; and the moment he said he was a
Christian, his courtiers all said THEY were Christians; after which, ten
thousand of his subjects said they were Christians too. AUGUSTINE built a
little church, close to this King’s palace, on the ground now occupied by the
beautiful cathedral of Canterbury. SEBERT, the King’s nephew, built on a muddy
marshy place near London, where there had been a temple to Apollo, a church
dedicated to Saint Peter, which is now Westminster Abbey. And, in London
itself, on the foundation of a temple to Diana, he built another little church
which has risen up, since that old time, to be Saint Paul’s.
After the death of
ETHELBERT, EDWIN, King of Northumbria, who was such a good king that it was
said a woman or child might openly carry a purse of gold, in his reign, without
fear, allowed his child to be baptised, and held a great council to consider
whether he and his people should all be Christians or not. It was decided that they
should be. COIFI, the chief priest of the old religion, made a great speech on
the occasion. In this discourse, he told the people that he had found out the
old gods to be impostors. ’I am quite satisfied of it,’ he said. ’Look at me! I
have been serving them all my life, and they have done nothing for me; whereas,
if they had been really powerful, they could not have decently done less, in
return for all I have done for them, than make my fortune. As they have never
made my fortune, I am quite convinced they are impostors!’ When this singular
priest had finished speaking, he hastily armed himself with sword and lance,
mounted a war-horse, rode at a furious gallop in sight of all the people to the
temple, and flung his lance against it as an insult. From that time, the
Christian religion spread itself among the Saxons, and became their faith.
The next very famous
prince was EGBERT. He lived about a hundred and fifty years afterwards, and
claimed to have a better right to the throne of Wessex than BEORTRIC, another
Saxon prince who was at the head of that kingdom, and who married EDBURGA, the
daughter of OFFA, king of another of the seven kingdoms. This QUEEN EDBURGA was
a handsome murderess, who poisoned people when they offended her. One day, she
mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble belonging to the court; but her
husband drank of it too, by mistake, and died. Upon this, the people revolted,
in great crowds; and running to the palace, and thundering at the gates, cried,
’Down with the wicked queen, who poisons men!’ They drove her out of the
country, and abolished the title she had disgraced. When years had passed away,
some travellers came home from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia they
had seen a ragged beggar-woman, who had once been handsome, but was then
shrivelled, bent, and yellow, wandering about the streets, crying for bread;
and that this beggar-woman was the poisoning English queen. It was, indeed,
EDBURGA; and so she died, without a shelter for her wretched head.
EGBERT, not considering
himself safe in England, in consequence of his having claimed the crown of
Wessex (for he thought his rival might take him prisoner and put him to death),
sought refuge at the court of CHARLEMAGNE, King of France. On the death of
BEORTRIC, so unhappily poisoned by mistake, EGBERT came back to Britain;
succeeded to the throne of Wessex; conquered some of the other monarchs of the
seven kingdoms; added their territories to his own; and, for the first time,
called the country over which he ruled, ENGLAND.
And now, new enemies
arose, who, for a long time, troubled England sorely. These were the Northmen,
the people of Denmark and Norway, whom the English called the Danes. They were
a warlike people, quite at home upon the sea; not Christians; very daring and
cruel. They came over in ships, and plundered and burned wheresoever they
landed. Once, they beat EGBERT in battle. Once, EGBERT beat them. But, they
cared no more for being beaten than the English themselves. In the four
following short reigns, of ETHELWULF, and his sons, ETHELBALD, ETHELBERT, and
ETHELRED, they came back, over and over again, burning and plundering, and
laying England waste. In the last-mentioned reign, they seized EDMUND, King of
East England, and bound him to a tree. Then, they proposed to him that he
should change his religion; but he, being a good Christian, steadily refused.
Upon that, they beat him, made cowardly jests upon him, all defenceless as he
was, shot arrows at him, and, finally, struck off his head. It is impossible to
say whose head they might have struck off next, but for the death of KING
ETHELRED from a wound he had received in fighting against them, and the
succession to his throne of the best and wisest king that ever lived in
England.
ALFRED THE GREAT was a
young man, three-and-twenty years of age, when he became king. Twice in his
childhood, he had been taken to Rome, where the Saxon nobles were in the habit
of going on journeys which they supposed to be religious; and, once, he had
stayed for some time in Paris. Learning, however, was so little cared for,
then, that at twelve years old he had not been taught to read; although, of the
sons of KING ETHELWULF, he, the youngest, was the favourite. But he had--as most
men who grow up to be great and good are generally found to have had--an
excellent mother; and, one day, this lady, whose name was OSBURGA, happened, as
she was sitting among her sons, to read a book of Saxon poetry. The art of
printing was not known until long and long after that period, and the book,
which was written, was what is called ’illuminated,’ with beautiful bright
letters, richly painted. The brothers admiring it very much, their mother said,
’I will give it to that one of you four princes who first learns to read.’
ALFRED sought out a tutor that very day, applied himself to learn with great
diligence, and soon won the book. He was proud of it, all his life.
This great king, in the
first year of his reign, fought nine battles with the Danes. He made some
treaties with them too, by which the false Danes swore they would quit the
country. They pretended to consider that they had taken a very solemn oath, in
swearing this upon the holy bracelets that they wore, and which were always
buried with them when they died; but they cared little for it, for they thought
nothing of breaking oaths and treaties too, as soon as it suited their purpose,
and coming back again to fight, plunder, and burn, as usual. One fatal winter,
in the fourth year of KING ALFRED’S reign, they spread themselves in great
numbers over the whole of England; and so dispersed and routed the King’s
soldiers that the King was left alone, and was obliged to disguise himself as a
common peasant, and to take refuge in the cottage of one of his cowherds who
did not know his face.
Here, KING ALFRED,
while the Danes sought him far and near, was left alone one day, by the cowherd’s
wife, to watch some cakes which she put to bake upon the hearth. But, being at
work upon his bow and arrows, with which he hoped to punish the false Danes
when a brighter time should come, and thinking deeply of his poor unhappy
subjects whom the Danes chased through the land, his noble mind forgot the
cakes, and they were burnt. ’What!’ said the cowherd’s wife, who scolded him
well when she came back, and little thought she was scolding the King, ’you
will be ready enough to eat them by-and-by, and yet you cannot watch them, idle
dog?’
At length, the
Devonshire men made head against a new host of Danes who landed on their coast;
killed their chief, and captured their flag; on which was represented the
likeness of a Raven--a very fit bird for a thievish army like that, I think.
The loss of their standard troubled the Danes greatly, for they believed it to
be enchanted--woven by the three daughters of one father in a single
afternoon--and they had a story among themselves that when they were victorious
in battle, the Raven stretched his wings and seemed to fly; and that when they
were defeated, he would droop. He had good reason to droop, now, if he could
have done anything half so sensible; for, KING ALFRED joined the Devonshire
men; made a camp with them on a piece of firm ground in the midst of a bog in
Somersetshire; and prepared for a great attempt for vengeance on the Danes, and
the deliverance of his oppressed people.
But, first, as it was
important to know how numerous those pestilent Danes were, and how they were
fortified, KING ALFRED, being a good musician, disguised himself as a glee-man
or minstrel, and went, with his harp, to the Danish camp. He played and sang in
the very tent of GUTHRUM the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they
caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of
their tents, their arms, their discipline, everything that he desired to know.
And right soon did this great king entertain them to a different tune; for,
summoning all his true followers to meet him at an appointed place, where they
received him with joyful shouts and tears, as the monarch whom many of them had
given up for lost or dead, he put himself at their head, marched on the Danish
camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them for fourteen
days to prevent their escape. But, being as merciful as he was good and brave,
he then, instead of killing them, proposed peace: on condition that they should
altogether depart from that Western part of England, and settle in the East;
and that GUTHRUM should become a Christian, in remembrance of the Divine
religion which now taught his conqueror, the noble ALFRED, to forgive the enemy
who had so often injured him. This, GUTHRUM did. At his baptism, KING ALFRED
was his godfather. And GUTHRUM was an honourable chief who well deserved that
clemency; for, ever afterwards he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes
under him were faithful too. They plundered and burned no more, but worked like
honest men. They ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good honest English
lives. And I hope the children of those Danes played, many a time, with Saxon
children in the sunny fields; and that Danish young men fell in love with Saxon
girls, and married them; and that English travellers, benighted at the doors of
Danish cottages, often went in for shelter until morning; and that Danes and
Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of KING ALFRED THE GREAT.
All the Danes were not
like these under GUTHRUM; for, after some years, more of them came over, in the
old plundering and burning way--among them a fierce pirate of the name of HASTINGS,
who had the boldness to sail up the Thames to Gravesend, with eighty ships. For
three years, there was a war with these Danes; and there was a famine in the
country, too, and a plague, both upon human creatures and beasts. But KING
ALFRED, whose mighty heart never failed him, built large ships nevertheless,
with which to pursue the pirates on the sea; and he encouraged his soldiers, by
his brave example, to fight valiantly against them on the shore. At last, he
drove them all away; and then there was repose in England.
As great and good in
peace, as he was great and good in war, KING ALFRED never rested from his
labours to improve his people. He loved to talk with clever men, and with
travellers from foreign countries, and to write down what they told him, for
his people to read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English, and
now another of his labours was, to translate Latin books into the English-Saxon
tongue, that his people might be interested, and improved by their contents. He
made just laws, that they might live more happily and freely; he turned away
all partial judges, that no wrong might be done them; he was so careful of
their property, and punished robbers so severely, that it was a common thing to
say that under the great KING ALFRED, garlands of golden chains and jewels
might have hung across the streets, and no man would have touched one. He
founded schools; he patiently heard causes himself in his Court of Justice; the
great desires of his heart were, to do right to all his subjects, and to leave
England better, wiser, happier in all ways, than he found it. His industry in
these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day he divided into certain
portions, and in each portion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he
might divide his time exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were
all of the same size, were notched across at regular distances, and were always
kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches,
almost as accurately as we now divide it into hours upon the clock. But when
the candles were first invented, it was found that the wind and draughts of
air, blowing into the palace through the doors and windows, and through the
chinks in the walls, caused them to gutter and burn unequally. To prevent this,
the King had them put into cases formed of wood and white horn. And these were
the first lanthorns ever made in England.
All this time, he was
afflicted with a terrible unknown disease, which caused him violent and
frequent pain that nothing could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all the
troubles of his life, like a brave good man, until he was fifty-three years
old; and then, having reigned thirty years, he died. He died in the year nine
hundred and one; but, long ago as that is, his fame, and the love and gratitude
with which his subjects regarded him, are freshly remembered to the present
hour.
In the next reign,
which was the reign of EDWARD, surnamed THE ELDER, who was chosen in council to
succeed, a nephew of KING ALFRED troubled the country by trying to obtain the
throne. The Danes in the East of England took part with this usurper (perhaps
because they had honoured his uncle so much, and honoured him for his uncle’s
sake), and there was hard fighting; but, the King, with the assistance of his
sister, gained the day, and reigned in peace for four and twenty years. He
gradually extended his power over the whole of England, and so the Seven
Kingdoms were united into one.
When England thus
became one kingdom, ruled over by one Saxon king, the Saxons had been settled
in the country more than four hundred and fifty years. Great changes had taken
place in its customs during that time. The Saxons were still greedy eaters and
great drinkers, and their feasts were often of a noisy and drunken kind; but
many new comforts and even elegances had become known, and were fast
increasing. Hangings for the walls of rooms, where, in these modern days, we
paste up paper, are known to have been sometimes made of silk, ornamented with
birds and flowers in needlework. Tables and chairs were curiously carved in
different woods; were sometimes decorated with gold or silver; sometimes even
made of those precious metals. Knives and spoons were used at table; golden
ornaments were worn--with silk and cloth, and golden tissues and embroideries;
dishes were made of gold and silver, brass and bone. There were varieties of
drinking-horns, bedsteads, musical instruments. A harp was passed round, at a
feast, like the drinking-bowl, from guest to guest; and each one usually sang
or played when his turn came. The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made, and
among them was a terrible iron hammer that gave deadly blows, and was long
remembered. The Saxons themselves were a handsome people. The men were proud of
their long fair hair, parted on the forehead; their ample beards, their fresh
complexions, and clear eyes. The beauty of the Saxon women filled all England
with a new delight and grace.
I have more to tell of
the Saxons yet, but I stop to say this now, because under the GREAT ALFRED, all
the best points of the English-Saxon character were first encouraged, and in
him first shown. It has been the greatest character among the nations of the
earth. Wherever the descendants of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed, or
otherwise made their way, even to the remotest regions of the world, they have
been patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit, never to be turned
aside from enterprises on which they have resolved. In Europe, Asia, Africa,
America, the whole world over; in the desert, in the forest, on the sea;
scorched by a burning sun, or frozen by ice that never melts; the Saxon blood
remains unchanged. Wheresoever that race goes, there, law, and industry, and
safety for life and property, and all the great results of steady perseverance,
are certain to arise.
I pause to think with
admiration, of the noble king who, in his single person, possessed all the
Saxon virtues. Whom misfortune could not subdue, whom prosperity could not
spoil, whose perseverance nothing could shake. Who was hopeful in defeat, and
generous in success. Who loved justice, freedom, truth, and knowledge. Who, in
his care to instruct his people, probably did more to preserve the beautiful
old Saxon language, than I can imagine. Without whom, the English tongue in
which I tell this story might have wanted half its meaning. As it is said that
his spirit still inspires some of our best English laws, so, let you and I pray
that it may animate our English hearts, at least to this--to resolve, when we
see any of our fellow-creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our best,
while life is in us, to have them taught; and to tell those rulers whose duty
it is to teach them, and who neglect their duty, that they have profited very
little by all the years that have rolled away since the year nine hundred and
one, and that they are far behind the bright example of KING ALFRED THE GREAT.
ATHELSTAN, the son of
Edward the Elder, succeeded that king. He reigned only fifteen years; but he
remembered the glory of his grandfather, the great Alfred, and governed England
well. He reduced the turbulent people of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a
tribute in money, and in cattle, and to send him their best hawks and hounds.
He was victorious over the Cornish men, who were not yet quite under the Saxon
government. He restored such of the old laws as were good, and had fallen into
disuse; made some wise new laws, and took care of the poor and weak. A strong
alliance, made against him by ANLAF a Danish prince, CONSTANTINE King of the
Scots, and the people of North Wales, he broke and defeated in one great
battle, long famous for the vast numbers slain in it. After that, he had a
quiet reign; the lords and ladies about him had leisure to become polite and
agreeable; and foreign princes were glad (as they have sometimes been since) to
come to England on visits to the English court.
When Athelstan died, at
forty-seven years old, his brother EDMUND, who was only eighteen, became king.
He was the first of six boy-kings, as you will presently know.
They called him the
Magnificent, because he showed a taste for improvement and refinement. But he
was beset by the Danes, and had a short and troubled reign, which came to a
troubled end. One night, when he was feasting in his hall, and had eaten much
and drunk deep, he saw, among the company, a noted robber named LEOF, who had
been banished from England. Made very angry by the boldness of this man, the
King turned to his cup-bearer, and said, ’There is a robber sitting at the
table yonder, who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land--a hunted wolf,
whose life any man may take, at any time. Command that robber to depart!’ ’I
will not depart!’ said Leof. ’No?’ cried the King. ’No, by the Lord!’ said
Leof. Upon that the King rose from his seat, and, making passionately at the
robber, and seizing him by his long hair, tried to throw him down. But the
robber had a dagger underneath his cloak, and, in the scuffle, stabbed the King
to death. That done, he set his back against the wall, and fought so
desperately, that although he was soon cut to pieces by the King’s armed men,
and the wall and pavement were splashed with his blood, yet it was not before
he had killed and wounded many of them. You may imagine what rough lives the
kings of those times led, when one of them could struggle, half drunk, with a
public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed in presence of the company
who ate and drank with him.
Then succeeded the
boy-king EDRED, who was weak and sickly in body, but of a strong mind. And his
armies fought the Northmen, the Danes, and Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as
they were called, and beat them for the time. And, in nine years, Edred died,
and passed away.
Then came the boy-king
EDWY, fifteen years of age; but the real king, who had the real power, was a
monk named DUNSTAN--a clever priest, a little mad, and not a little proud and
cruel.
Dunstan was then Abbot
of Glastonbury Abbey, whither the body of King Edmund the Magnificent was
carried, to be buried. While yet a boy, he had got out of his bed one night
(being then in a fever), and walked about Glastonbury Church when it was under
repair; and, because he did not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and
break his neck, it was reported that he had been shown over the building by an
angel. He had also made a harp that was said to play of itself--which it very
likely did, as AEolian Harps, which are played by the wind, and are understood
now, always do. For these wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies,
who were jealous of his favour with the late King Athelstan, as a magician; and
he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into a marsh. But he got
out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of trouble yet.
The priests of those
days were, generally, the only scholars. They were learned in many things.
Having to make their own convents and monasteries on uncultivated grounds that
were granted to them by the Crown, it was necessary that they should be good
farmers and good gardeners, or their lands would have been too poor to support
them. For the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort
of the refectories where they ate and drank, it was necessary that there should
be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters, among them. For their greater
safety in sickness and accident, living alone by themselves in solitary places,
it was necessary that they should study the virtues of plants and herbs, and
should know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to set
broken limbs. Accordingly, they taught themselves, and one another, a great
variety of useful arts; and became skilful in agriculture, medicine, surgery,
and handicraft. And when they wanted the aid of any little piece of machinery,
which would be simple enough now, but was marvellous then, to impose a trick
upon the poor peasants, they knew very well how to make it; and DID make it
many a time and often, I have no doubt.
Dunstan, Abbot of
Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most sagacious of these monks. He was an
ingenious smith, and worked at a forge in a little cell. This cell was made too
short to admit of his lying at full length when he went to sleep--as if THAT
did any good to anybody!--and he used to tell the most extraordinary lies about
demons and spirits, who, he said, came there to persecute him. For instance, he
related that one day when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little
window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure; whereupon,
having his pincers in the fire, red hot, he seized the devil by the nose, and
put him to such pain, that his bellowings were heard for miles and miles. Some
people are inclined to think this nonsense a part of Dunstan’s madness (for his
head never quite recovered the fever), but I think not. I observe that it
induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy man, and that it made him
very powerful. Which was exactly what he always wanted.
On the day of the
coronation of the handsome boy-king Edwy, it was remarked by ODO, Archbishop of
Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth), that the King quietly left the coronation
feast, while all the company were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend
Dunstan to seek him. Dunstan finding him in the company of his beautiful young
wife ELGIVA, and her mother ETHELGIVA, a good and virtuous lady, not only
grossly abused them, but dragged the young King back into the feasting-hall by
force. Some, again, think Dunstan did this because the young King’s fair wife
was his own cousin, and the monks objected to people marrying their own
cousins; but I believe he did it, because he was an imperious, audacious,
ill-conditioned priest, who, having loved a young lady himself before he became
a sour monk, hated all love now, and everything belonging to it.
The young King was
quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstan had been Treasurer in the last
reign, and he soon charged Dunstan with having taken some of the last king’s
money. The Glastonbury Abbot fled to Belgium (very narrowly escaping some
pursuers who were sent to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had, when you
read what follows), and his abbey was given to priests who were married; whom
he always, both before and afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with
his friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the King’s young brother, EDGAR, as his
rival for the throne; and, not content with this revenge, he caused the
beautiful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only seventeen or eighteen, to
be stolen from one of the Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-hot
iron, and sold into slavery in Ireland. But the Irish people pitied and
befriended her; and they said, ’Let us restore the girl-queen to the boy-king,
and make the young lovers happy!’ and they cured her of her cruel wound, and
sent her home as beautiful as before. But the villain Dunstan, and that other
villain, Odo, caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joyfully
hurrying to join her husband, and to be hacked and hewn with swords, and to be
barbarously maimed and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy the Fair (his people
called him so, because he was so young and handsome) heard of her dreadful
fate, he died of a broken heart; and so the pitiful story of the poor young
wife and husband ends! Ah! Better to be two cottagers in these better times,
than king and queen of England in those bad days, though never so fair!
Then came the boy-king,
EDGAR, called the Peaceful, fifteen years old. Dunstan, being still the real
king, drove all married priests out of the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced
them by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid order called the
Benedictines. He made himself Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory;
and exercised such power over the neighbouring British princes, and so
collected them about the King, that once, when the King held his court at
Chester, and went on the river Dee to visit the monastery of St. John, the
eight oars of his boat were pulled (as the people used to delight in relating
in stories and songs) by eight crowned kings, and steered by the King of
England. As Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and the monks, they took great
pains to represent him as the best of kings. But he was really profligate,
debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young lady from the
convent at Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending to be very much shocked, condemned
him not to wear his crown upon his head for seven years--no great punishment, I
dare say, as it can hardly have been a more comfortable ornament to wear, than
a stewpan without a handle. His marriage with his second wife, ELFRIDA, is one
of the worst events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he
despatched his favourite courtier, ATHELWOLD, to her father’s castle in
Devonshire, to see if she were really as charming as fame reported. Now, she
was so exceedingly beautiful that Athelwold fell in love with her himself, and
married her; but he told the King that she was only rich--not handsome. The
King, suspecting the truth when they came home, resolved to pay the
newly-married couple a visit; and, suddenly, told Athelwold to prepare for his
immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified, confessed to his young wife what he had
said and done, and implored her to disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or
silly manner, that he might be safe from the King’s anger. She promised that
she would; but she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen
than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and adorned
herself with her richest jewels; and when the King came, presently, he
discovered the cheat. So, he caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be murdered
in a wood, and married his widow, this bad Elfrida. Six or seven years
afterwards, he died; and was buried, as if he had been all that the monks said
he was, in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he--or Dunstan for him--had much
enriched.
England, in one part of
this reign, was so troubled by wolves, which, driven out of the open country,
hid themselves in the mountains of Wales when they were not attacking
travellers and animals, that the tribute payable by the Welsh people was
forgiven them, on condition of their producing, every year, three hundred
wolves’ heads. And the Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, to save their
money, that in four years there was not a wolf left.
Then came the boy-king,
EDWARD, called the Martyr, from the manner of his death. Elfrida had a son,
named ETHELRED, for whom she claimed the throne; but Dunstan did not choose to
favour him, and he made Edward king. The boy was hunting, one day, down in
Dorsetshire, when he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred
lived. Wishing to see them kindly, he rode away from his attendants and
galloped to the castle gate, where he arrived at twilight, and blew his
hunting-horn. ’You are welcome, dear King,’ said Elfrida, coming out, with her
brightest smiles. ’Pray you dismount and enter.’ ’Not so, dear madam,’ said the
King. ’My company will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm. Please
you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in the saddle, to you and
to my little brother, and so ride away with the good speed I have made in
riding here.’ Elfrida, going in to bring the wine, whispered an armed servant,
one of her attendants, who stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round
behind the King’s horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips, saying, ’Health!’
to the wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to his innocent brother whose
hand she held in hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed man made a
spring and stabbed him in the back. He dropped the cup and spurred his horse
away; but, soon fainting with loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, and, in his
fall, entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on;
trailing his rider’s curls upon the ground; dragging his smooth young face
through ruts, and stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, and mud; until the
hunters, tracking the animal’s course by the King’s blood, caught his bridle,
and released the disfigured body.
Then came the sixth and
last of the boy-kings, ETHELRED, whom Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight
of his murdered brother riding away from the castle gate, unmercifully beat
with a torch which she snatched from one of the attendants. The people so
disliked this boy, on account of his cruel mother and the murder she had done
to promote him, that Dunstan would not have had him for king, but would have
made EDGITHA, the daughter of the dead King Edgar, and of the lady whom he
stole out of the convent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she would have
consented. But she knew the stories of the youthful kings too well, and would
not be persuaded from the convent where she lived in peace; so, Dunstan put
Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put there, and gave him the
nickname of THE UNREADY--knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness.
At first, Elfrida
possessed great influence over the young King, but, as he grew older and came
of age, her influence declined. The infamous woman, not having it in her power
to do any more evil, then retired from court, and, according, to the fashion of
the time, built churches and monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a church,
with a steeple reaching to the very stars, would have been any sign of true
repentance for the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered form was trailed at
his horse’s heels! As if she could have buried her wickedness beneath the
senseless stones of the whole world, piled up one upon another, for the monks
to live in!
About the ninth or
tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died. He was growing old then, but was as
stern and artful as ever. Two circumstances that happened in connexion with
him, in this reign of Ethelred, made a great noise. Once, he was present at a
meeting of the Church, when the question was discussed whether priests should
have permission to marry; and, as he sat with his head hung down, apparently
thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the room, and
warn the meeting to be of his opinion. This was some juggling of Dunstan’s, and
was probably his own voice disguised. But he played off a worse juggle than
that, soon afterwards; for, another meeting being held on the same subject, and
he and his supporters being seated on one side of a great room, and their
opponents on the other, he rose and said, ’To Christ himself, as judge, do I
commit this cause!’ Immediately on these words being spoken, the floor where
the opposite party sat gave way, and some were killed and many wounded. You may
be pretty sure that it had been weakened under Dunstan’s direction, and that it
fell at Dunstan’s signal. HIS part of the floor did not go down. No, no. He was
too good a workman for that.
When he died, the monks
settled that he was a Saint, and called him Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They
might just as well have settled that he was a coach-horse, and could just as
easily have called him one.
Ethelred the Unready
was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of this holy saint; but, left to
himself, he was a poor weak king, and his reign was a reign of defeat and
shame. The restless Danes, led by SWEYN, a son of the King of Denmark who had
quarrelled with his father and had been banished from home, again came into
England, and, year after year, attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax
these sea-kings away, the weak Ethelred paid them money; but, the more money he
paid, the more money the Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten thousand pounds;
on their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds; on their next invasion, four
and twenty thousand pounds: to pay which large sums, the unfortunate English
people were heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came back and wanted more,
he thought it would be a good plan to marry into some powerful foreign family
that would help him with soldiers. So, in the year one thousand and two, he
courted and married Emma, the sister of Richard Duke of Normandy; a lady who
was called the Flower of Normandy.
And now, a terrible
deed was done in England, the like of which was never done on English ground
before or since. On the thirteenth of November, in pursuance of secret
instructions sent by the King over the whole country, the inhabitants of every
town and city armed, and murdered all the Danes who were their neighbours.
Young and old, babies
and soldiers, men and women, every Dane was killed. No doubt there were among
them many ferocious men who had done the English great wrong, and whose pride
and insolence, in swaggering in the houses of the English and insulting their
wives and daughters, had become unbearable; but no doubt there were also among
them many peaceful Christian Danes who had married English women, and become
like English men. They were all slain, even to GUNHILDA, the sister of the King
of Denmark, married to an English lord; who was first obliged to see the murder
of her husband and her child, and then was killed herself.
When the King of the
sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, he swore that he would have a great
revenge. He raised an army, and a mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had
sailed to England; and in all his army there was not a slave or an old man, but
every soldier was a free man, and the son of a free man, and in the prime of life,
and sworn to be revenged upon the English nation, for the massacre of that
dread thirteenth of November, when his countrymen and countrywomen, and the
little children whom they loved, were killed with fire and sword. And so, the
sea-kings came to England in many great ships, each bearing the flag of its own
commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened
England from the prows of those ships, as they came onward through the water;
and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon their sides. The ship
that bore the standard of the King of the sea-kings was carved and painted like
a mighty serpent; and the King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he
trusted might all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs into
England’s heart.
And indeed it did. For,
the great army landing from the great fleet, near Exeter, went forward, laying
England waste, and striking their lances in the earth as they advanced, or
throwing them into rivers, in token of their making all the island theirs. In
remembrance of the black November night when the Danes were murdered,
wheresoever the invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them
great feasts; and when they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to
England with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their Saxon
entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried on this war:
burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries; killing the labourers
in the fields; preventing the seed from being sown in the ground; causing
famine and starvation; leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they
had found rich towns. To crown this misery, English officers and men deserted,
and even the favourites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many
of the English ships, turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a
storm occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English navy.
There was but one man
of note, at this miserable pass, who was true to his country and the feeble
King. He was a priest, and a brave one. For twenty days, the Archbishop of
Canterbury defended that city against its Danish besiegers; and when a traitor
in the town threw the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains, ’I will
not buy my life with money that must be extorted from the suffering people. Do
with me what you please!’ Again and again, he steadily refused to purchase his
release with gold wrung from the poor.
At last, the Danes
being tired of this, and being assembled at a drunken merry-making, had him
brought into the feasting-hall.
’Now, bishop,’ they
said, ’we want gold!’
He looked round on the
crowd of angry faces; from the shaggy beards close to him, to the shaggy beards
against the walls, where men were mounted on tables and forms to see him over
the heads of others: and he knew that his time was come.
’I have no gold,’ he
said.
’Get it, bishop!’ they
all thundered.
’That, I have often
told you I will not,’ said he.
They gathered closer
round him, threatening, but he stood unmoved. Then, one man struck him; then,
another; then a cursing soldier picked up from a heap in a corner of the hall,
where fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it
at his face, from which the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran to the
same heap, and knocked him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him;
until one soldier whom he had baptised (willing, as I hope for the sake of that
soldier’s soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck him dead with
his battle-axe.
If Ethelred had had the
heart to emulate the courage of this noble archbishop, he might have done
something yet. But he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and
gained so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon afterwards came over to
subdue all England. So broken was the attachment of the English people, by this
time, to their incapable King and their forlorn country which could not protect
them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a deliverer. London faithfully
stood out, as long as the King was within its walls; but, when he sneaked away,
it also welcomed the Dane. Then, all was over; and the King took refuge abroad
with the Duke of Normandy, who had already given shelter to the King’s wife,
once the Flower of that country, and to her children.
Still, the English
people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could not quite forget the great King
Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died suddenly, in little more than a
month after he had been proclaimed King of England, they generously sent to
Ethelred, to say that they would have him for their King again, ’if he would
only govern them better than he had governed them before.’ The Unready, instead
of coming himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for him. At
last, he followed, and the English declared him King. The Danes declared
CANUTE, the son of Sweyn, King. Thus, direful war began again, and lasted for
three years, when the Unready died. And I know of nothing better that he did,
in all his reign of eight and thirty years.
Was Canute to be King
now? Not over the Saxons, they said; they must have EDMUND, one of the sons of
the Unready, who was surnamed IRONSIDE, because of his strength and stature.
Edmund and Canute thereupon fell to, and fought five battles--O unhappy
England, what a fighting-ground it was!--and then Ironside, who was a big man,
proposed to Canute, who was a little man, that they two should fight it out in
single combat. If Canute had been the big man, he would probably have said yes,
but, being the little man, he decidedly said no. However, he declared that he
was willing to divide the kingdom--to take all that lay north of Watling
Street, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester was called, and to
give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men being weary of so much
bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became sole King of England; for
Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some think that he was killed, and
killed by Canute’s orders. No one knows.
CANUTE reigned eighteen
years. He was a merciless King at first. After he had clasped the hands of the
Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he swore to be just and good
to them in return for their acknowledging him, he denounced and slew many of
them, as well as many relations of the late King. ’He who brings me the head of
one of my enemies,’ he used to say, ’shall be dearer to me than a brother.’ And
he was so severe in hunting down his enemies, that he must have got together a
pretty large family of these dear brothers. He was strongly inclined to kill
EDMUND and EDWARD, two children, sons of poor Ironside; but, being afraid to do
so in England, he sent them over to the King of Sweden, with a request that the
King would be so good as ’dispose of them.’ If the King of Sweden had been like
many, many other men of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut;
but he was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly.
Normandy ran much in
Canute’s mind. In Normandy were the two children of the late king--EDWARD and
ALFRED by name; and their uncle the Duke might one day claim the crown for
them. But the Duke showed so little inclination to do so now, that he proposed
to Canute to marry his sister, the widow of The Unready; who, being but a showy
flower, and caring for nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her
children and was wedded to him.
Successful and
triumphant, assisted by the valour of the English in his foreign wars, and with
little strife to trouble him at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, and made
many improvements. He was a poet and a musician. He grew sorry, as he grew
older, for the blood he had shed at first; and went to Rome in a Pilgrim’s
dress, by way of washing it out. He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on
his journey; but he took it from the English before he started. On the whole,
however, he certainly became a far better man when he had no opposition to contend
with, and was as great a King as England had known for some time.
The old writers of
history relate how that Canute was one day disgusted with his courtiers for
their flattery, and how he caused his chair to be set on the sea-shore, and
feigned to command the tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his robe, for
the land was his; how the tide came up, of course, without regarding him; and
how he then turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, saying, what was the
might of any earthly king, to the might of the Creator, who could say unto the
sea, ’Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!’ We may learn from this, I think,
that a little sense will go a long way in a king; and that courtiers are not
easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for it. If the courtiers of
Canute had not known, long before, that the King was fond of flattery, they
would have known better than to offer it in such large doses. And if they had
not known that he was vain of this speech (anything but a wonderful speech it seems
to me, if a good child had made it), they would not have been at such great
pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together; the King’s
chair sinking in the sand; the King in a mighty good humour with his own
wisdom; and the courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it!
It is not the sea alone
that is bidden to go ’thus far, and no farther.’ The great command goes forth
to all the kings upon the earth, and went to Canute in the year one thousand
and thirty-five, and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it, stood his
Norman wife. Perhaps, as the King looked his last upon her, he, who had so
often thought distrustfully of Normandy, long ago, thought once more of the two
exiled Princes in their uncle’s court, and of the little favour they could feel
for either Danes or Saxons, and of a rising cloud in Normandy that slowly moved
towards England.
CANUTE left three sons,
by name SWEYN, HAROLD, and HARDICANUTE; but his Queen, Emma, once the Flower of
Normandy, was the mother of only Hardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions
to be divided between the three, and had wished Harold to have England; but the
Saxon people in the South of England, headed by a nobleman with great
possessions, called the powerful EARL GODWIN (who is said to have been
originally a poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to have, instead, either
Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes who were over in Normandy. It
seemed so certain that there would be more bloodshed to settle this dispute,
that many people left their homes, and took refuge in the woods and swamps.
Happily, however, it was agreed to refer the whole question to a great meeting
at Oxford, which decided that Harold should have all the country north of the
Thames, with London for his capital city, and that Hardicanute should have all
the south. The quarrel was so arranged; and, as Hardicanute was in Denmark
troubling himself very little about anything but eating and getting drunk, his
mother and Earl Godwin governed the south for him.
They had hardly begun
to do so, and the trembling people who had hidden themselves were scarcely at
home again, when Edward, the elder of the two exiled Princes, came over from
Normandy with a few followers, to claim the English Crown. His mother Emma,
however, who only cared for her last son Hardicanute, instead of assisting him,
as he expected, opposed him so strongly with all her influence that he was very
soon glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred was not so fortunate.
Believing in an affectionate letter, written some time afterwards to him and
his brother, in his mother’s name (but whether really with or without his
mother’s knowledge is now uncertain), he allowed himself to be tempted over to
England, with a good force of soldiers, and landing on the Kentish coast, and
being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as far as the
town of Guildford. Here, he and his men halted in the evening to rest, having still
the Earl in their company; who had ordered lodgings and good cheer for them.
But, in the dead of the night, when they were off their guard, being divided
into small parties sleeping soundly after a long march and a plentiful supper
in different houses, they were set upon by the King’s troops, and taken
prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in a line, to the number of six
hundred men, and were barbarously tortured and killed; with the exception of
every tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to the wretched Prince Alfred,
he was stripped naked, tied to a horse and sent away into the Isle of Ely,
where his eyes were torn out of his head, and where in a few days he miserably
died. I am not sure that the Earl had wilfully entrapped him, but I suspect it
strongly.
Harold was now King all
over England, though it is doubtful whether the Archbishop of Canterbury (the
greater part of the priests were Saxons, and not friendly to the Danes) ever
consented to crown him. Crowned or uncrowned, with the Archbishop’s leave or
without it, he was King for four years: after which short reign he died, and
was buried; having never done much in life but go a hunting. He was such a fast
runner at this, his favourite sport, that the people called him Harold
Harefoot.
Hardicanute was then at
Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, with his mother (who had gone over there after
the cruel murder of Prince Alfred), for the invasion of England. The Danes and
Saxons, finding themselves without a King, and dreading new disputes, made common
cause, and joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne. He consented, and soon
troubled them enough; for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed the
people so insupportably to enrich those greedy favourites that there were many
insurrections, especially one at Worcester, where the citizens rose and killed
his tax-collectors; in revenge for which he burned their city. He was a brutal
King, whose first public act was to order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot
to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end was worthy of such a
beginning. He fell down drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a
wedding-feast at Lambeth, given in honour of the marriage of his
standard-bearer, a Dane named TOWED THE PROUD. And he never spoke again.
EDWARD, afterwards
called by the monks THE CONFESSOR, succeeded; and his first act was to oblige
his mother Emma, who had favoured him so little, to retire into the country;
where she died some ten years afterwards. He was the exiled prince whose
brother Alfred had been so foully killed. He had been invited over from
Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his short reign of two years, and had
been handsomely treated at court. His cause was now favoured by the powerful
Earl Godwin, and he was soon made King. This Earl had been suspected by the
people, ever since Prince Alfred’s cruel death; he had even been tried in the
last reign for the Prince’s murder, but had been pronounced not guilty;
chiefly, as it was supposed, because of a present he had made to the swinish
King, of a gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and a crew of eighty
splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the new King with his power,
if the new King would help him against the popular distrust and hatred. So they
made a bargain. Edward the Confessor got the Throne. The Earl got more power
and more land, and his daughter Editha was made queen; for it was a part of
their compact that the King should take her for his wife.
But, although she was a
gentle lady, in all things worthy to be beloved--good, beautiful, sensible, and
kind--the King from the first neglected her. Her father and her six proud
brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by exerting
all their power to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he
preferred the Normans to the English. He made a Norman Archbishop, and Norman
Bishops; his great officers and favourites were all Normans; he introduced the
Norman fashions and the Norman language; in imitation of the state custom of
Normandy, he attached a great seal to his state documents, instead of merely
marking them, as the Saxon Kings had done, with the sign of the cross--just as
poor people who have never been taught to write, now make the same mark for
their names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and his six proud sons
represented to the people as disfavour shown towards the English; and thus they
daily increased their own power, and daily diminished the power of the King.
They were greatly
helped by an event that occurred when he had reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl
of Bologne, who had married the King’s sister, came to England on a visit.
After staying at the court some time, he set forth, with his numerous train of
attendants, to return home. They were to embark at Dover. Entering that
peaceful town in armour, they took possession of the best houses, and noisily
demanded to be lodged and entertained without payment. One of the bold men of
Dover, who would not endure to have these domineering strangers jingling their
heavy swords and iron corselets up and down his house, eating his meat and
drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway and refused admission to the
first armed man who came there. The armed man drew, and wounded him. The man of
Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelligence of what he had done, spreading
through the streets to where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by
their horses, bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to the house,
surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors and windows being closed when
they came up), and killed the man of Dover at his own fireside. They then
clattered through the streets, cutting down and riding over men, women, and
children. This did not last long, you may believe. The men of Dover set upon
them with great fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners, wounded many more,
and, blockading the road to the port so that they should not embark, beat them
out of the town by the way they had come. Hereupon, Count Eustace rides as hard
as man can ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks and
Norman lords. ’Justice!’ cries the Count, ’upon the men of Dover, who have set
upon and slain my people!’ The King sends immediately for the powerful Earl
Godwin, who happens to be near; reminds him that Dover is under his government;
and orders him to repair to Dover and do military execution on the inhabitants.
’It does not become you,’ says the proud Earl in reply, ’to condemn without a
hearing those whom you have sworn to protect. I will not do it.’
The King, therefore,
summoned the Earl, on pain of banishment and loss of his titles and property,
to appear before the court to answer this disobedience. The Earl refused to
appear. He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as
many fighting men as their utmost power could collect, and demanded to have
Count Eustace and his followers surrendered to the justice of the country. The
King, in his turn, refused to give them up, and raised a strong force. After
some treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons began to fall
off. The Earl, with a part of his family and abundance of treasure, sailed to
Flanders; Harold escaped to Ireland; and the power of the great family was for
that time gone in England. But, the people did not forget them.
Then, Edward the
Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean spirit, visited his dislike of the
once powerful father and sons upon the helpless daughter and sister, his
unoffending wife, whom all who saw her (her husband and his monks excepted)
loved. He seized rapaciously upon her fortune and her jewels, and allowing her
only one attendant, confined her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of
his--no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own heart--was abbess or jailer.
Having got Earl Godwin
and his six sons well out of his way, the King favoured the Normans more than
ever. He invited over WILLIAM, DUKE OF NORMANDY, the son of that Duke who had
received him and his murdered brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner’s
daughter, with whom that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her
washing clothes in a brook. William, who was a great warrior, with a passion
for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation; and the Normans in
England, finding themselves more numerous than ever when he arrived with his
retinue, and held in still greater honour at court than before, became more and
more haughty towards the people, and were more and more disliked by them.
The old Earl Godwin,
though he was abroad, knew well how the people felt; for, with part of the
treasure he had carried away with him, he kept spies and agents in his pay all
over England.
Accordingly, he thought
the time was come for fitting out a great expedition against the Norman-loving
King. With it, he sailed to the Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son
Harold, the most gallant and brave of all his family. And so the father and son
came sailing up the Thames to Southwark; great numbers of the people declaring
for them, and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold, against the
Norman favourites!
The King was at first
as blind and stubborn as kings usually have been whensoever they have been in
the hands of monks. But the people rallied so thickly round the old Earl and
his son, and the old Earl was so steady in demanding without bloodshed the
restoration of himself and his family to their rights, that at last the court
took the alarm. The Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop of
London, surrounded by their retainers, fought their way out of London, and
escaped from Essex to France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman favourites
dispersed in all directions. The old Earl and his sons (except Sweyn, who had
committed crimes against the law) were restored to their possessions and
dignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely Queen of the insensible King, was
triumphantly released from her prison, the convent, and once more sat in her
chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had no champion to
support her rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprived her.
The old Earl Godwin did
not long enjoy his restored fortune. He fell down in a fit at the King’s table,
and died upon the third day afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a
far higher place in the attachment of the people than his father had ever held.
By his valour he subdued the King’s enemies in many bloody fights. He was
vigorous against rebels in Scotland--this was the time when Macbeth slew
Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of years afterwards,
wrote his great tragedy; and he killed the restless Welsh King GRIFFITH, and
brought his head to England.
What Harold was doing
at sea, when he was driven on the French coast by a tempest, is not at all
certain; nor does it at all matter. That his ship was forced by a storm on that
shore, and that he was taken prisoner, there is no doubt. In those barbarous days,
all shipwrecked strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. So,
a certain Count Guy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold’s disaster
happened, seized him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian
lord as he ought to have done, and expected to make a very good thing of it.
But Harold sent off
immediately to Duke William of Normandy, complaining of this treatment; and the
Duke no sooner heard of it than he ordered Harold to be escorted to the ancient
town of Rouen, where he then was, and where he received him as an honoured
guest. Now, some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who was by this
time old and had no children, had made a will, appointing Duke William of
Normandy his successor, and had informed the Duke of his having done so. There
is no doubt that he was anxious about his successor; because he had even
invited over, from abroad, EDWARD THE OUTLAW, a son of Ironside, who had come
to England with his wife and three children, but whom the King had strangely
refused to see when he did come, and who had died in London suddenly (princes
were terribly liable to sudden death in those days), and had been buried in St.
Paul’s Cathedral. The King might possibly have made such a will; or, having
always been fond of the Normans, he might have encouraged Norman William to
aspire to the English crown, by something that he said to him when he was
staying at the English court. But, certainly William did now aspire to it; and
knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, he called together a great
assembly of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter ADELE in marriage, informed
him that he meant on King Edward’s death to claim the English crown as his own
inheritance, and required Harold then and there to swear to aid him. Harold,
being in the Duke’s power, took this oath upon the Missal, or Prayer-book. It
is a good example of the superstitions of the monks, that this Missal, instead
of being placed upon a table, was placed upon a tub; which, when Harold had
sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full of dead men’s bones--bones, as the
monks pretended, of saints. This was supposed to make Harold’s oath a great
deal more impressive and binding. As if the great name of the Creator of Heaven
and earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double-tooth, or a
finger-nail, of Dunstan!
Within a week or two
after Harold’s return to England, the dreary old Confessor was found to be
dying. After wandering in his mind like a very weak old man, he died. As he had
put himself entirely in the hands of the monks when he was alive, they praised
him lustily when he was dead. They had gone so far, already, as to persuade him
that he could work miracles; and had brought people afflicted with a bad
disorder of the skin, to him, to be touched and cured. This was called ’touching
for the King’s Evil,’ which afterwards became a royal custom. You know,
however, Who really touched the sick, and healed them; and you know His sacred
name is not among the dusty line of human kings.
HAROLD was crowned King
of England on the very day of the maudlin Confessor’s funeral. He had good need
to be quick about it. When the news reached Norman William, hunting in his park
at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to
council, and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his
oath and resign the Crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of France
leagued together round Duke William for the invasion of England. Duke William
promised freely to distribute English wealth and English lands among them. The
Pope sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring containing a hair which
he warranted to have grown on the head of Saint Peter. He blessed the
enterprise; and cursed Harold; and requested that the Normans would pay ’Peter’s
Pence’--or a tax to himself of a penny a year on every house--a little more
regularly in future, if they could make it convenient.
King Harold had a rebel
brother in Flanders, who was a vassal of HAROLD HARDRADA, King of Norway. This
brother, and this Norwegian King, joining their forces against England, with
Duke William’s help, won a fight in which the English were commanded by two
nobles; and then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the
coast at Hastings, with his army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the river
Derwent to give them instant battle.
He found them drawn up
in a hollow circle, marked out by their shining spears. Riding round this
circle at a distance, to survey it, he saw a brave figure on horseback, in a
blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse suddenly stumbled and threw him.
’Who is that man who
has fallen?’ Harold asked of one of his captains.
’The King of Norway,’
he replied.
’He is a tall and
stately king,’ said Harold, ’but his end is near.’
He added, in a little
while, ’Go yonder to my brother, and tell him, if he withdraw his troops, he
shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich and powerful in England.’
The captain rode away
and gave the message.
’What will he give to
my friend the King of Norway?’ asked the brother.
’Seven feet of earth
for a grave,’ replied the captain.
’No more?’ returned the
brother, with a smile.
’The King of Norway being
a tall man, perhaps a little more,’ replied the captain.
’Ride back!’ said the
brother, ’and tell King Harold to make ready for the fight!’
He did so, very soon.
And such a fight King Harold led against that force, that his brother, and the
Norwegian King, and every chief of note in all their host, except the Norwegian
King’s son, Olave, to whom he gave honourable dismissal, were left dead upon
the field. The victorious army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at the
feast, in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at the doors; and
messengers all covered with mire from riding far and fast through broken ground
came hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed in England.
The intelligence was
true. They had been tossed about by contrary winds, and some of their ships had
been wrecked. A part of their own shore, to which they had been driven back,
was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had once more made sail, led by the
Duke’s own galley, a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of
a golden boy stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner of the three
Lions of Normandy, the diverse coloured sails, the gilded vans, the many
decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and sunny water; by
night, a light had sparkled like a star at her mast-head. And now, encamped
near Hastings, with their leader lying in the old Roman castle of Pevensey, the
English retiring in all directions, the land for miles around scorched and
smoking, fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman power, hopeful and strong on
English ground.
Harold broke up the
feast and hurried to London. Within a week, his army was ready. He sent out
spies to ascertain the Norman strength. William took them, caused them to be
led through his whole camp, and then dismissed. ’The Normans,’ said these spies
to Harold, ’are not bearded on the upper lip as we English are, but are shorn.
They are priests.’ ’My men,’ replied Harold, with a laugh, ’will find those
priests good soldiers!’
’The Saxons,’ reported
Duke William’s outposts of Norman soldiers, who were instructed to retire as
King Harold’s army advanced, ’rush on us through their pillaged country with
the fury of madmen.’
’Let them come, and
come soon!’ said Duke William.
Some proposals for a
reconciliation were made, but were soon abandoned. In the middle of the month
of October, in the year one thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and the English
came front to front. All night the armies lay encamped before each other, in a
part of the country then called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of them)
Battle. With the first dawn of day, they arose. There, in the faint light, were
the English on a hill; a wood behind them; in their midst, the Royal banner,
representing a fighting warrior, woven in gold thread, adorned with precious
stones; beneath the banner, as it rustled in the wind, stood King Harold on
foot, with two of his remaining brothers by his side; around them, still and
silent as the dead, clustered the whole English army--every soldier covered by
his shield, and bearing in his hand his dreaded English battle-axe.
On an opposite hill, in
three lines, archers, foot-soldiers, horsemen, was the Norman force. Of a
sudden, a great battle-cry, ’God help us!’ burst from the Norman lines. The
English answered with their own battle-cry, ’God’s Rood! Holy Rood!’ The
Normans then came sweeping down the hill to attack the English.
There was one tall
Norman Knight who rode before the Norman army on a prancing horse, throwing up
his heavy sword and catching it, and singing of the bravery of his countrymen.
An English Knight, who rode out from the English force to meet him, fell by
this Knight’s hand. Another English Knight rode out, and he fell too. But then
a third rode out, and killed the Norman. This was in the first beginning of the
fight. It soon raged everywhere.
The English, keeping
side by side in a great mass, cared no more for the showers of Norman arrows
than if they had been showers of Norman rain. When the Norman horsemen rode against
them, with their battle-axes they cut men and horses down. The Normans gave
way. The English pressed forward. A cry went forth among the Norman troops that
Duke William was killed. Duke William took off his helmet, in order that his
face might be distinctly seen, and rode along the line before his men. This
gave them courage. As they turned again to face the English, some of their
Norman horse divided the pursuing body of the English from the rest, and thus
all that foremost portion of the English army fell, fighting bravely. The main
body still remaining firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and with their
battle-axes cutting down the crowds of horsemen when they rode up, like forests
of young trees, Duke William pretended to retreat. The eager English followed.
The Norman army closed again, and fell upon them with great slaughter.
’Still,’ said Duke
William, ’there are thousands of the English, firms as rocks around their King.
Shoot upward, Norman archers, that your arrows may fall down upon their faces!’
The sun rose high, and
sank, and the battle still raged. Through all the wild October day, the clash
and din resounded in the air. In the red sunset, and in the white moonlight,
heaps upon heaps of dead men lay strewn, a dreadful spectacle, all over the ground.
King Harold, wounded
with an arrow in the eye, was nearly blind. His brothers were already killed.
Twenty Norman Knights, whose battered armour had flashed fiery and golden in
the sunshine all day long, and now looked silvery in the moonlight, dashed
forward to seize the Royal banner from the English Knights and soldiers, still
faithfully collected round their blinded King. The King received a mortal
wound, and dropped. The English broke and fled. The Normans rallied, and the
day was lost.
O what a sight beneath
the moon and stars, when lights were shining in the tent of the victorious Duke
William, which was pitched near the spot where Harold fell--and he and his
knights were carousing, within--and soldiers with torches, going slowly to and
fro, without, sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of dead--and the
Warrior, worked in golden thread and precious stones, lay low, all torn and
soiled with blood--and the three Norman Lions kept watch over the field!
UPON the ground where
the brave Harold fell, William the Norman afterwards founded an abbey, which,
under the name of Battle Abbey, was a rich and splendid place through many a
troubled year, though now it is a grey ruin overgrown with ivy. But the first
work he had to do, was to conquer the English thoroughly; and that, as you know
by this time, was hard work for any man.
He ravaged several
counties; he burned and plundered many towns; he laid waste scores upon scores
of miles of pleasant country; he destroyed innumerable lives. At length
STIGAND, Archbishop of Canterbury, with other representatives of the clergy and
the people, went to his camp, and submitted to him. EDGAR, the insignificant
son of Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed King by others, but nothing came of it.
He fled to Scotland afterwards, where his sister, who was young and beautiful,
married the Scottish King. Edgar himself was not important enough for anybody
to care much about him.
On Christmas Day,
William was crowned in Westminster Abbey, under the title of WILLIAM THE FIRST;
but he is best known as WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. It was a strange coronation. One
of the bishops who performed the ceremony asked the Normans, in French, if they
would have Duke William for their king? They answered Yes. Another of the
bishops put the same question to the Saxons, in English. They too answered Yes,
with a loud shout. The noise being heard by a guard of Norman horse-soldiers
outside, was mistaken for resistance on the part of the English. The guard
instantly set fire to the neighbouring houses, and a tumult ensued; in the
midst of which the King, being left alone in the Abbey, with a few priests (and
they all being in a terrible fright together), was hurriedly crowned. When the
crown was placed upon his head, he swore to govern the English as well as the
best of their own monarchs. I dare say you think, as I do, that if we except
the Great Alfred, he might pretty easily have done that.
Numbers of the English
nobles had been killed in the last disastrous battle. Their estates, and the
estates of all the nobles who had fought against him there, King William seized
upon, and gave to his own Norman knights and nobles. Many great English
families of the present time acquired their English lands in this way, and are
very proud of it.
But what is got by
force must be maintained by force. These nobles were obliged to build castles
all over England, to defend their new property; and, do what he would, the King
could neither soothe nor quell the nation as he wished. He gradually introduced
the Norman language and the Norman customs; yet, for a long time the great body
of the English remained sullen and revengeful. On his going over to Normandy,
to visit his subjects there, the oppressions of his half-brother ODO, whom he
left in charge of his English kingdom, drove the people mad. The men of Kent
even invited over, to take possession of Dover, their old enemy Count Eustace
of Boulogne, who had led the fray when the Dover man was slain at his own
fireside. The men of Hereford, aided by the Welsh, and commanded by a chief
named EDRIC THE WILD, drove the Normans out of their country. Some of those who
had been dispossessed of their lands, banded together in the North of England;
some, in Scotland; some, in the thick woods and marshes; and whensoever they
could fall upon the Normans, or upon the English who had submitted to the
Normans, they fought, despoiled, and murdered, like the desperate outlaws that
they were. Conspiracies were set on foot for a general massacre of the Normans,
like the old massacre of the Danes. In short, the English were in a murderous
mood all through the kingdom.
King William, fearing
he might lose his conquest, came back, and tried to pacify the London people by
soft words. He then set forth to repress the country people by stern deeds.
Among the towns which he besieged, and where he killed and maimed the
inhabitants without any distinction, sparing none, young or old, armed or
unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York. In
all these places, and in many others, fire and sword worked their utmost
horrors, and made the land dreadful to behold. The streams and rivers were
discoloured with blood; the sky was blackened with smoke; the fields were
wastes of ashes; the waysides were heaped up with dead. Such are the fatal
results of conquest and ambition! Although William was a harsh and angry man, I
do not suppose that he deliberately meant to work this shocking ruin, when he
invaded England. But what he had got by the strong hand, he could only keep by
the strong hand, and in so doing he made England a great grave.
Two sons of Harold, by
name EDMUND and GODWIN, came over from Ireland, with some ships, against the
Normans, but were defeated. This was scarcely done, when the outlaws in the
woods so harassed York, that the Governor sent to the King for help. The King
despatched a general and a large force to occupy the town of Durham. The Bishop
of that place met the general outside the town, and warned him not to enter, as
he would be in danger there. The general cared nothing for the warning, and
went in with all his men. That night, on every hill within sight of Durham,
signal fires were seen to blaze. When the morning dawned, the English, who had
assembled in great strength, forced the gates, rushed into the town, and slew
the Normans every one. The English afterwards besought the Danes to come and
help them. The Danes came, with two hundred and forty ships. The outlawed
nobles joined them; they captured York, and drove the Normans out of that city.
Then, William bribed the Danes to go away; and took such vengeance on the
English, that all the former fire and sword, smoke and ashes, death and ruin,
were nothing compared with it. In melancholy songs, and doleful stories, it was
still sung and told by cottage fires on winter evenings, a hundred years
afterwards, how, in those dreadful days of the Normans, there was not, from the
River Humber to the River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one cultivated
field--how there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where the human creatures and
the beasts lay dead together.
The outlaws had, at
this time, what they called a Camp of Refuge, in the midst of the fens of
Cambridgeshire. Protected by those marshy grounds which were difficult of
approach, they lay among the reeds and rushes, and were hidden by the mists
that rose up from the watery earth. Now, there also was, at that time, over the
sea in Flanders, an Englishman named HEREWARD, whose father had died in his
absence, and whose property had been given to a Norman. When he heard of this
wrong that had been done him (from such of the exiled English as chanced to
wander into that country), he longed for revenge; and joining the outlaws in
their camp of refuge, became their commander. He was so good a soldier, that
the Normans supposed him to be aided by enchantment. William, even after he had
made a road three miles in length across the Cambridgeshire marshes, on purpose
to attack this supposed enchanter, thought it necessary to engage an old lady,
who pretended to be a sorceress, to come and do a little enchantment in the
royal cause. For this purpose she was pushed on before the troops in a wooden
tower; but Hereward very soon disposed of this unfortunate sorceress, by
burning her, tower and all. The monks of the convent of Ely near at hand,
however, who were fond of good living, and who found it very uncomfortable to
have the country blockaded and their supplies of meat and drink cut off, showed
the King a secret way of surprising the camp. So Hereward was soon defeated.
Whether he afterwards died quietly, or whether he was killed after killing
sixteen of the men who attacked him (as some old rhymes relate that he did), I
cannot say. His defeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge; and, very soon
afterwards, the King, victorious both in Scotland and in England, quelled the
last rebellious English noble. He then surrounded himself with Norman lords,
enriched by the property of English nobles; had a great survey made of all the
land in England, which was entered as the property of its new owners, on a roll
called Doomsday Book; obliged the people to put out their fires and candles at
a certain hour every night, on the ringing of a bell which was called The Curfew;
introduced the Norman dresses and manners; made the Normans masters everywhere,
and the English, servants; turned out the English bishops, and put Normans in
their places; and showed himself to be the Conqueror indeed.
But, even with his own
Normans, he had a restless life. They were always hungering and thirsting for
the riches of the English; and the more he gave, the more they wanted. His
priests were as greedy as his soldiers. We know of only one Norman who plainly
told his master, the King, that he had come with him to England to do his duty
as a faithful servant, and that property taken by force from other men had no
charms for him. His name was GUILBERT. We should not forget his name, for it is
good to remember and to honour honest men.
Besides all these
troubles, William the Conqueror was troubled by quarrels among his sons. He had
three living. ROBERT, called CURTHOSE, because of his short legs; WILLIAM,
called RUFUS or the Red, from the colour of his hair; and HENRY, fond of
learning, and called, in the Norman language, BEAUCLERC, or Fine-Scholar. When
Robert grew up, he asked of his father the government of Normandy, which he had
nominally possessed, as a child, under his mother, MATILDA. The King refusing
to grant it, Robert became jealous and discontented; and happening one day,
while in this temper, to be ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water on him
from a balcony as he was walking before the door, he drew his sword, rushed
up-stairs, and was only prevented by the King himself from putting them to
death. That same night, he hotly departed with some followers from his father’s
court, and endeavoured to take the Castle of Rouen by surprise. Failing in
this, he shut himself up in another Castle in Normandy, which the King
besieged, and where Robert one day unhorsed and nearly killed him without
knowing who he was. His submission when he discovered his father, and the
intercession of the queen and others, reconciled them; but not soundly; for
Robert soon strayed abroad, and went from court to court with his complaints.
He was a gay, careless, thoughtless fellow, spending all he got on musicians
and dancers; but his mother loved him, and often, against the King’s command,
supplied him with money through a messenger named SAMSON. At length the
incensed King swore he would tear out Samson’s eyes; and Samson, thinking that
his only hope of safety was in becoming a monk, became one, went on such
errands no more, and kept his eyes in his head.
All this time, from the
turbulent day of his strange coronation, the Conqueror had been struggling, you
see, at any cost of cruelty and bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All
his reign, he struggled still, with the same object ever before him. He was a
stern, bold man, and he succeeded in it.
He loved money, and was
particular in his eating, but he had only leisure to indulge one other passion,
and that was his love of hunting. He carried it to such a height that he
ordered whole villages and towns to be swept away to make forests for the deer.
Not satisfied with sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an immense
district, to form another in Hampshire, called the New Forest. The many
thousands of miserable peasants who saw their little houses pulled down, and
themselves and children turned into the open country without a shelter,
detested him for his merciless addition to their many sufferings; and when, in
the twenty-first year of his reign (which proved to be the last), he went over
to Rouen, England was as full of hatred against him, as if every leaf on every
tree in all his Royal Forests had been a curse upon his head. In the New
Forest, his son Richard (for he had four sons) had been gored to death by a
Stag; and the people said that this so cruelly-made Forest would yet be fatal
to others of the Conqueror’s race.
He was engaged in a
dispute with the King of France about some territory. While he stayed at Rouen,
negotiating with that King, he kept his bed and took medicines: being advised
by his physicians to do so, on account of having grown to an unwieldy size.
Word being brought to him that the King of France made light of this, and joked
about it, he swore in a great rage that he should rue his jests. He assembled
his army, marched into the disputed territory, burnt--his old way!--the vines,
the crops, and fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire. But, in an evil hour;
for, as he rode over the hot ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs upon some
burning embers, started, threw him forward against the pommel of the saddle,
and gave him a mortal hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in a monastery near
Rouen, and then made his will, giving England to William, Normandy to Robert,
and five thousand pounds to Henry. And now, his violent deeds lay heavy on his
mind. He ordered money to be given to many English churches and monasteries,
and--which was much better repentance--released his prisoners of state, some of
whom had been confined in his dungeons twenty years.
It was a September
morning, and the sun was rising, when the King was awakened from slumber by the
sound of a church bell. ’What bell is that?’ he faintly asked. They told him it
was the bell of the chapel of Saint Mary. ’I commend my soul,’ said he, ’to
Mary!’ and died.
Think of his name, The
Conqueror, and then consider how he lay in death! The moment he was dead, his
physicians, priests, and nobles, not knowing what contest for the throne might
now take place, or what might happen in it, hastened away, each man for himself
and his own property; the mercenary servants of the court began to rob and
plunder; the body of the King, in the indecent strife, was rolled from the bed,
and lay alone, for hours, upon the ground. O Conqueror, of whom so many great
names are proud now, of whom so many great names thought nothing then, it were
better to have conquered one true heart, than England!
By-and-by, the priests
came creeping in with prayers and candles; and a good knight, named HERLUIN,
undertook (which no one else would do) to convey the body to Caen, in Normandy,
in order that it might be buried in St. Stephen’s church there, which the
Conqueror had founded. But fire, of which he had made such bad use in his life,
seemed to follow him of itself in death. A great conflagration broke out in the
town when the body was placed in the church; and those present running out to
extinguish the flames, it was once again left alone.
It was not even buried
in peace. It was about to be let down, in its Royal robes, into a tomb near the
high altar, in presence of a great concourse of people, when a loud voice in
the crowd cried out, ’This ground is mine! Upon it, stood my father’s house.
This King despoiled me of both ground and house to build this church. In the
great name of GOD, I here forbid his body to be covered with the earth that is
my right!’ The priests and bishops present, knowing the speaker’s right, and
knowing that the King had often denied him justice, paid him down sixty
shillings for the grave. Even then, the corpse was not at rest. The tomb was
too small, and they tried to force it in. It broke, a dreadful smell arose, the
people hurried out into the air, and, for the third time, it was left alone.
Where were the
Conqueror’s three sons, that they were not at their father’s burial? Robert was
lounging among minstrels, dancers, and gamesters, in France or Germany. Henry
was carrying his five thousand pounds safely away in a convenient chest he had
got made. William the Red was hurrying to England, to lay hands upon the Royal
treasure and the crown.
WILLIAM THE RED, in
breathless haste, secured the three great forts of Dover, Pevensey, and
Hastings, and made with hot speed for Winchester, where the Royal treasure was
kept. The treasurer delivering him the keys, he found that it amounted to sixty
thousand pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels. Possessed of this wealth,
he soon persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown him, and became William
the Second, King of England.
Rufus was no sooner on
the throne, than he ordered into prison again the unhappy state captives whom
his father had set free, and directed a goldsmith to ornament his father’s tomb
profusely with gold and silver. It would have been more dutiful in him to have
attended the sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England itself, like this
Red King, who once governed it, has sometimes made expensive tombs for dead men
whom it treated shabbily when they were alive.
The King’s brother,
Robert of Normandy, seeming quite content to be only Duke of that country; and
the King’s other brother, Fine-Scholar, being quiet enough with his five
thousand pounds in a chest; the King flattered himself, we may suppose, with
the hope of an easy reign. But easy reigns were difficult to have in those
days. The turbulent Bishop ODO (who had blessed the Norman army at the Battle
of Hastings, and who, I dare say, took all the credit of the victory to
himself) soon began, in concert with some powerful Norman nobles, to trouble
the Red King.
The truth seems to be
that this bishop and his friends, who had lands in England and lands in
Normandy, wished to hold both under one Sovereign; and greatly preferred a
thoughtless good-natured person, such as Robert was, to Rufus; who, though far
from being an amiable man in any respect, was keen, and not to be imposed upon.
They declared in Robert’s favour, and retired to their castles (those castles
were very troublesome to kings) in a sullen humour. The Red King, seeing the
Normans thus falling from him, revenged himself upon them by appealing to the
English; to whom he made a variety of promises, which he never meant to
perform--in particular, promises to soften the cruelty of the Forest Laws; and
who, in return, so aided him with their valour, that ODO was besieged in the
Castle of Rochester, and forced to abandon it, and to depart from England for
ever: whereupon the other rebellious Norman nobles were soon reduced and
scattered.
Then, the Red King went
over to Normandy, where the people suffered greatly under the loose rule of
Duke Robert. The King’s object was to seize upon the Duke’s dominions. This,
the Duke, of course, prepared to resist; and miserable war between the two
brothers seemed inevitable, when the powerful nobles on both sides, who had
seen so much of war, interfered to prevent it. A treaty was made. Each of the
two brothers agreed to give up something of his claims, and that the
longer-liver of the two should inherit all the dominions of the other. When
they had come to this loving understanding, they embraced and joined their forces
against Fine-Scholar; who had bought some territory of Robert with a part of
his five thousand pounds, and was considered a dangerous individual in
consequence.
St. Michael’s Mount, in
Normandy (there is another St. Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall, wonderfully like
it), was then, as it is now, a strong place perched upon the top of a high
rock, around which, when the tide is in, the sea flows, leaving no road to the
mainland. In this place, Fine-Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, and
here he was closely besieged by his two brothers. At one time, when he was
reduced to great distress for want of water, the generous Robert not only
permitted his men to get water, but sent Fine-Scholar wine from his own table;
and, on being remonstrated with by the Red King, said ’What! shall we let our
own brother die of thirst? Where shall we get another, when he is gone?’ At
another time, the Red King riding alone on the shore of the bay, looking up at
the Castle, was taken by two of Fine-Scholar’s men, one of whom was about to
kill him, when he cried out, ’Hold, knave! I am the King of England!’ The story
says that the soldier raised him from the ground respectfully and humbly, and
that the King took him into his service. The story may or may not be true; but
at any rate it is true that Fine-Scholar could not hold out against his united
brothers, and that he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and wandered about--as poor
and forlorn as other scholars have been sometimes known to be.
The Scotch became
unquiet in the Red King’s time, and were twice defeated--the second time, with
the loss of their King, Malcolm, and his son. The Welsh became unquiet too.
Against them, Rufus was less successful; for they fought among their native
mountains, and did great execution on the King’s troops. Robert of Normandy
became unquiet too; and, complaining that his brother the King did not
faithfully perform his part of their agreement, took up arms, and obtained
assistance from the King of France, whom Rufus, in the end, bought off with vast
sums of money. England became unquiet too. Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl of
Northumberland, headed a great conspiracy to depose the King, and to place upon
the throne, STEPHEN, the Conqueror’s near relative. The plot was discovered;
all the chief conspirators were seized; some were fined, some were put in
prison, some were put to death. The Earl of Northumberland himself was shut up
in a dungeon beneath Windsor Castle, where he died, an old man, thirty long
years afterwards. The Priests in England were more unquiet than any other class
or power; for the Red King treated them with such small ceremony that he
refused to appoint new bishops or archbishops when the old ones died, but kept
all the wealth belonging to those offices in his own hands. In return for this,
the Priests wrote his life when he was dead, and abused him well. I am inclined
to think, myself, that there was little to choose between the Priests and the
Red King; that both sides were greedy and designing; and that they were fairly
matched.
The Red King was false
of heart, selfish, covetous, and mean. He had a worthy minister in his
favourite, Ralph, nicknamed--for almost every famous person had a nickname in
those rough days--Flambard, or the Firebrand. Once, the King being ill, became
penitent, and made ANSELM, a foreign priest and a good man, Archbishop of
Canterbury. But he no sooner got well again than he repented of his repentance,
and persisted in wrongfully keeping to himself some of the wealth belonging to
the archbishopric. This led to violent disputes, which were aggravated by there
being in Rome at that time two rival Popes; each of whom declared he was the
only real original infallible Pope, who couldn’t make a mistake. At last,
Anselm, knowing the Red King’s character, and not feeling himself safe in
England, asked leave to return abroad. The Red King gladly gave it; for he knew
that as soon as Anselm was gone, he could begin to store up all the Canterbury
money again, for his own use.
By such means, and by
taxing and oppressing the English people in every possible way, the Red King
became very rich. When he wanted money for any purpose, he raised it by some
means or other, and cared nothing for the injustice he did, or the misery he
caused. Having the opportunity of buying from Robert the whole duchy of
Normandy for five years, he taxed the English people more than ever, and made
the very convents sell their plate and valuables to supply him with the means
to make the purchase. But he was as quick and eager in putting down revolt as
he was in raising money; for, a part of the Norman people objecting--very
naturally, I think--to being sold in this way, he headed an army against them
with all the speed and energy of his father. He was so impatient, that he
embarked for Normandy in a great gale of wind. And when the sailors told him it
was dangerous to go to sea in such angry weather, he replied, ’Hoist sail and
away! Did you ever hear of a king who was drowned?’
You will wonder how it
was that even the careless Robert came to sell his dominions. It happened thus.
It had long been the custom for many English people to make journeys to
Jerusalem, which were called pilgrimages, in order that they might pray beside
the tomb of Our Saviour there. Jerusalem belonging to the Turks, and the Turks
hating Christianity, these Christian travellers were often insulted and ill
used. The Pilgrims bore it patiently for some time, but at length a remarkable
man, of great earnestness and eloquence, called PETER THE HERMIT, began to
preach in various places against the Turks, and to declare that it was the duty
of good Christians to drive away those unbelievers from the tomb of Our
Saviour, and to take possession of it, and protect it. An excitement such as
the world had never known before was created. Thousands and thousands of men of
all ranks and conditions departed for Jerusalem to make war against the Turks.
The war is called in history the first Crusade, and every Crusader wore a cross
marked on his right shoulder.
All the Crusaders were
not zealous Christians. Among them were vast numbers of the restless, idle,
profligate, and adventurous spirit of the time. Some became Crusaders for the
love of change; some, in the hope of plunder; some, because they had nothing to
do at home; some, because they did what the priests told them; some, because
they liked to see foreign countries; some, because they were fond of knocking
men about, and would as soon knock a Turk about as a Christian. Robert of
Normandy may have been influenced by all these motives; and by a kind desire,
besides, to save the Christian Pilgrims from bad treatment in future. He wanted
to raise a number of armed men, and to go to the Crusade. He could not do so
without money. He had no money; and he sold his dominions to his brother, the
Red King, for five years. With the large sum he thus obtained, he fitted out
his Crusaders gallantly, and went away to Jerusalem in martial state. The Red
King, who made money out of everything, stayed at home, busily squeezing more
money out of Normans and English.
After three years of
great hardship and suffering--from shipwreck at sea; from travel in strange
lands; from hunger, thirst, and fever, upon the burning sands of the desert;
and from the fury of the Turks--the valiant Crusaders got possession of Our
Saviour’s tomb. The Turks were still resisting and fighting bravely, but this
success increased the general desire in Europe to join the Crusade. Another
great French Duke was proposing to sell his dominions for a term to the rich
Red King, when the Red King’s reign came to a sudden and violent end.
You have not forgotten
the New Forest which the Conqueror made, and which the miserable people whose
homes he had laid waste, so hated. The cruelty of the Forest Laws, and the
torture and death they brought upon the peasantry, increased this hatred. The
poor persecuted country people believed that the New Forest was enchanted. They
said that in thunder-storms, and on dark nights, demons appeared, moving
beneath the branches of the gloomy trees. They said that a terrible spectre had
foretold to Norman hunters that the Red King should be punished there. And now,
in the pleasant season of May, when the Red King had reigned almost thirteen
years; and a second Prince of the Conqueror’s blood--another Richard, the son
of Duke Robert--was killed by an arrow in this dreaded Forest; the people said
that the second time was not the last, and that there was another death to
come.
It was a lonely forest,
accursed in the people’s hearts for the wicked deeds that had been done to make
it; and no man save the King and his Courtiers and Huntsmen, liked to stray
there. But, in reality, it was like any other forest. In the spring, the green
leaves broke out of the buds; in the summer, flourished heartily, and made deep
shades; in the winter, shrivelled and blew down, and lay in brown heaps on the
moss. Some trees were stately, and grew high and strong; some had fallen of
themselves; some were felled by the forester’s axe; some were hollow, and the
rabbits burrowed at their roots; some few were struck by lightning, and stood
white and bare. There were hill-sides covered with rich fern, on which the
morning dew so beautifully sparkled; there were brooks, where the deer went
down to drink, or over which the whole herd bounded, flying from the arrows of
the huntsmen; there were sunny glades, and solemn places where but little light
came through the rustling leaves. The songs of the birds in the New Forest were
pleasanter to hear than the shouts of fighting men outside; and even when the
Red King and his Court came hunting through its solitudes, cursing loud and
riding hard, with a jingling of stirrups and bridles and knives and daggers,
they did much less harm there than among the English or Normans, and the stags
died (as they lived) far easier than the people.
Upon a day in August,
the Red King, now reconciled to his brother, Fine-Scholar, came with a great
train to hunt in the New Forest. Fine-Scholar was of the party. They were a
merry party, and had lain all night at Malwood-Keep, a hunting-lodge in the
forest, where they had made good cheer, both at supper and breakfast, and had
drunk a deal of wine. The party dispersed in various directions, as the custom
of hunters then was. The King took with him only SIR WALTER TYRREL, who was a
famous sportsman, and to whom he had given, before they mounted horse that
morning, two fine arrows.
The last time the King
was ever seen alive, he was riding with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were
hunting together.
It was almost night, when
a poor charcoal-burner, passing through the forest with his cart, came upon the
solitary body of a dead man, shot with an arrow in the breast, and still
bleeding. He got it into his cart. It was the body of the King. Shaken and
tumbled, with its red beard all whitened with lime and clotted with blood, it
was driven in the cart by the charcoal-burner next day to Winchester Cathedral,
where it was received and buried.
Sir Walter Tyrrel, who
escaped to Normandy, and claimed the protection of the King of France, swore in
France that the Red King was suddenly shot dead by an arrow from an unseen
hand, while they were hunting together; that he was fearful of being suspected
as the King’s murderer; and that he instantly set spurs to his horse, and fled
to the sea-shore. Others declared that the King and Sir Walter Tyrrel were
hunting in company, a little before sunset, standing in bushes opposite one
another, when a stag came between them. That the King drew his bow and took
aim, but the string broke. That the King then cried, ’Shoot, Walter, in the
Devil’s name!’ That Sir Walter shot. That the arrow glanced against a tree, was
turned aside from the stag, and struck the King from his horse, dead.
By whose hand the Red
King really fell, and whether that hand despatched the arrow to his breast by
accident or by design, is only known to GOD. Some think his brother may have
caused him to be killed; but the Red King had made so many enemies, both among
priests and people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon a less unnatural
murderer. Men know no more than that he was found dead in the New Forest, which
the suffering people had regarded as a doomed ground for his race.
FINE-SCHOLAR, on
hearing of the Red King’s death, hurried to Winchester with as much speed as
Rufus himself had made, to seize the Royal treasure. But the keeper of the
treasure who had been one of the hunting-party in the Forest, made haste to
Winchester too, and, arriving there at about the same time, refused to yield it
up. Upon this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and threatened to kill the
treasurer; who might have paid for his fidelity with his life, but that he knew
longer resistance to be useless when he found the Prince supported by a company
of powerful barons, who declared they were determined to make him King. The
treasurer, therefore, gave up the money and jewels of the Crown: and on the
third day after the death of the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar stood
before the high altar in Westminster Abbey, and made a solemn declaration that
he would resign the Church property which his brother had seized; that he would
do no wrong to the nobles; and that he would restore to the people the laws of
Edward the Confessor, with all the improvements of William the Conqueror. So
began the reign of KING HENRY THE FIRST.
The people were
attached to their new King, both because he had known distresses, and because
he was an Englishman by birth and not a Norman. To strengthen this last hold
upon them, the King wished to marry an English lady; and could think of no
other wife than MAUD THE GOOD, the daughter of the King of Scotland. Although
this good Princess did not love the King, she was so affected by the
representations the nobles made to her of the great charity it would be in her
to unite the Norman and Saxon races, and prevent hatred and bloodshed between
them for the future, that she consented to become his wife. After some
disputing among the priests, who said that as she had been in a convent in her
youth, and had worn the veil of a nun, she could not lawfully be
married--against which the Princess stated that her aunt, with whom she had
lived in her youth, had indeed sometimes thrown a piece of black stuff over
her, but for no other reason than because the nun’s veil was the only dress the
conquering Normans respected in girl or woman, and not because she had taken
the vows of a nun, which she never had--she was declared free to marry, and was
made King Henry’s Queen. A good Queen she was; beautiful, kind-hearted, and
worthy of a better husband than the King.
For he was a cunning
and unscrupulous man, though firm and clever. He cared very little for his
word, and took any means to gain his ends. All this is shown in his treatment
of his brother Robert--Robert, who had suffered him to be refreshed with water,
and who had sent him the wine from his own table, when he was shut up, with the
crows flying below him, parched with thirst, in the castle on the top of St.
Michael’s Mount, where his Red brother would have let him die.
Before the King began
to deal with Robert, he removed and disgraced all the favourites of the late
King; who were for the most part base characters, much detested by the people.
Flambard, or Firebrand, whom the late King had made Bishop of Durham, of all
things in the world, Henry imprisoned in the Tower; but Firebrand was a great
joker and a jolly companion, and made himself so popular with his guards that
they pretended to know nothing about a long rope that was sent into his prison
at the bottom of a deep flagon of wine. The guards took the wine, and Firebrand
took the rope; with which, when they were fast asleep, he let himself down from
a window in the night, and so got cleverly aboard ship and away to Normandy.
Now Robert, when his
brother Fine-Scholar came to the throne, was still absent in the Holy Land.
Henry pretended that Robert had been made Sovereign of that country; and he had
been away so long, that the ignorant people believed it. But, behold, when
Henry had been some time King of England, Robert came home to Normandy; having
leisurely returned from Jerusalem through Italy, in which beautiful country he
had enjoyed himself very much, and had married a lady as beautiful as itself!
In Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge him to assert his claim to the
English crown, and declare war against King Henry. This, after great loss of
time in feasting and dancing with his beautiful Italian wife among his Norman
friends, he at last did.
The English in general
were on King Henry’s side, though many of the Normans were on Robert’s. But the
English sailors deserted the King, and took a great part of the English fleet
over to Normandy; so that Robert came to invade this country in no foreign
vessels, but in English ships. The virtuous Anselm, however, whom Henry had
invited back from abroad, and made Archbishop of Canterbury, was steadfast in
the King’s cause; and it was so well supported that the two armies, instead of
fighting, made a peace. Poor Robert, who trusted anybody and everybody, readily
trusted his brother, the King; and agreed to go home and receive a pension from
England, on condition that all his followers were fully pardoned. This the King
very faithfully promised, but Robert was no sooner gone than he began to punish
them.
Among them was the Earl
of Shrewsbury, who, on being summoned by the King to answer to five-and-forty
accusations, rode away to one of his strong castles, shut himself up therein,
called around him his tenants and vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was
defeated and banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true to his word,
that when he first heard of this nobleman having risen against his brother, he
laid waste the Earl of Shrewsbury’s estates in Normandy, to show the King that
he would favour no breach of their treaty. Finding, on better information,
afterwards, that the Earl’s only crime was having been his friend, he came over
to England, in his old thoughtless, warm-hearted way, to intercede with the King,
and remind him of the solemn promise to pardon all his followers.
This confidence might
have put the false King to the blush, but it did not. Pretending to be very
friendly, he so surrounded his brother with spies and traps, that Robert, who
was quite in his power, had nothing for it but to renounce his pension and
escape while he could. Getting home to Normandy, and understanding the King
better now, he naturally allied himself with his old friend the Earl of
Shrewsbury, who had still thirty castles in that country. This was exactly what
Henry wanted. He immediately declared that Robert had broken the treaty, and
next year invaded Normandy.
He pretended that he
came to deliver the Normans, at their own request, from his brother’s misrule.
There is reason to fear that his misrule was bad enough; for his beautiful wife
had died, leaving him with an infant son, and his court was again so careless,
dissipated, and ill-regulated, that it was said he sometimes lay in bed of a
day for want of clothes to put on--his attendants having stolen all his
dresses. But he headed his army like a brave prince and a gallant soldier,
though he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with four
hundred of his Knights. Among them was poor harmless Edgar Atheling, who loved
Robert well. Edgar was not important enough to be severe with. The King
afterwards gave him a small pension, which he lived upon and died upon, in
peace, among the quiet woods and fields of England.
And Robert--poor, kind,
generous, wasteful, heedless Robert, with so many faults, and yet with virtues
that might have made a better and a happier man--what was the end of him? If
the King had had the magnanimity to say with a kind air, ’Brother, tell me, before
these noblemen, that from this time you will be my faithful follower and
friend, and never raise your hand against me or my forces more!’ he might have
trusted Robert to the death. But the King was not a magnanimous man. He
sentenced his brother to be confined for life in one of the Royal Castles. In
the beginning of his imprisonment, he was allowed to ride out, guarded; but he
one day broke away from his guard and galloped of. He had the evil fortune to
ride into a swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he was taken. When the King
heard of it he ordered him to be blinded, which was done by putting a red-hot
metal basin on his eyes.
And so, in darkness and
in prison, many years, he thought of all his past life, of the time he had
wasted, of the treasure he had squandered, of the opportunities he had lost, of
the youth he had thrown away, of the talents he had neglected. Sometimes, on
fine autumn mornings, he would sit and think of the old hunting parties in the
free Forest, where he had been the foremost and the gayest. Sometimes, in the
still nights, he would wake, and mourn for the many nights that had stolen past
him at the gaming-table; sometimes, would seem to hear, upon the melancholy
wind, the old songs of the minstrels; sometimes, would dream, in his blindness,
of the light and glitter of the Norman Court. Many and many a time, he groped
back, in his fancy, to Jerusalem, where he had fought so well; or, at the head
of his brave companions, bowed his feathered helmet to the shouts of welcome greeting
him in Italy, and seemed again to walk among the sunny vineyards, or on the
shore of the blue sea, with his lovely wife. And then, thinking of her grave,
and of his fatherless boy, he would stretch out his solitary arms and weep.
At length, one day,
there lay in prison, dead, with cruel and disfiguring scars upon his eyelids,
bandaged from his gaoler’s sight, but on which the eternal Heavens looked down,
a worn old man of eighty. He had once been Robert of Normandy. Pity him!
At the time when Robert
of Normandy was taken prisoner by his brother, Robert’s little son was only
five years old. This child was taken, too, and carried before the King, sobbing
and crying; for, young as he was, he knew he had good reason to be afraid of
his Royal uncle. The King was not much accustomed to pity those who were in his
power, but his cold heart seemed for the moment to soften towards the boy. He
was observed to make a great effort, as if to prevent himself from being cruel,
and ordered the child to be taken away; whereupon a certain Baron, who had
married a daughter of Duke Robert’s (by name, Helie of Saint Saen), took charge
of him, tenderly. The King’s gentleness did not last long. Before two years
were over, he sent messengers to this lord’s Castle to seize the child and
bring him away. The Baron was not there at the time, but his servants were
faithful, and carried the boy off in his sleep and hid him. When the Baron came
home, and was told what the King had done, he took the child abroad, and,
leading him by the hand, went from King to King and from Court to Court,
relating how the child had a claim to the throne of England, and how his uncle
the King, knowing that he had that claim, would have murdered him, perhaps, but
for his escape.
The youth and innocence
of the pretty little WILLIAM FITZ-ROBERT (for that was his name) made him many
friends at that time. When he became a young man, the King of France, uniting
with the French Counts of Anjou and Flanders, supported his cause against the
King of England, and took many of the King’s towns and castles in Normandy.
But, King Henry, artful and cunning always, bribed some of William’s friends
with money, some with promises, some with power. He bought off the Count of
Anjou, by promising to marry his eldest son, also named WILLIAM, to the Count’s
daughter; and indeed the whole trust of this King’s life was in such bargains,
and he believed (as many another King has done since, and as one King did in
France a very little time ago) that every man’s truth and honour can be bought
at some price. For all this, he was so afraid of William Fitz-Robert and his
friends, that, for a long time, he believed his life to be in danger; and never
lay down to sleep, even in his palace surrounded by his guards, without having
a sword and buckler at his bedside.
To strengthen his
power, the King with great ceremony betrothed his eldest daughter MATILDA, then
a child only eight years old, to be the wife of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of
Germany. To raise her marriage-portion, he taxed the English people in a most
oppressive manner; then treated them to a great procession, to restore their
good humour; and sent Matilda away, in fine state, with the German ambassadors,
to be educated in the country of her future husband.
And now his Queen, Maud
the Good, unhappily died. It was a sad thought for that gentle lady, that the
only hope with which she had married a man whom she had never loved--the hope
of reconciling the Norman and English races--had failed. At the very time of
her death, Normandy and all France was in arms against England; for, so soon as
his last danger was over, King Henry had been false to all the French powers he
had promised, bribed, and bought, and they had naturally united against him.
After some fighting, however, in which few suffered but the unhappy common
people (who always suffered, whatsoever was the matter), he began to promise,
bribe, and buy again; and by those means, and by the help of the Pope, who
exerted himself to save more bloodshed, and by solemnly declaring, over and
over again, that he really was in earnest this time, and would keep his word,
the King made peace.
One of the first
consequences of this peace was, that the King went over to Normandy with his
son Prince William and a great retinue, to have the Prince acknowledged as his
successor by the Norman Nobles, and to contract the promised marriage (this was
one of the many promises the King had broken) between him and the daughter of
the Count of Anjou. Both these things were triumphantly done, with great show
and rejoicing; and on the twenty-fifth of November, in the year one thousand
one hundred and twenty, the whole retinue prepared to embark at the Port of
Barfleur, for the voyage home.
On that day, and at
that place, there came to the King, Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said:
’My liege, my father
served your father all his life, upon the sea. He steered the ship with the
golden boy upon the prow, in which your father sailed to conquer England. I
beseech you to grant me the same office. I have a fair vessel in the harbour
here, called The White Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you,
Sire, to let your servant have the honour of steering you in The White Ship to
England!’
’I am sorry, friend,’
replied the King, ’that my vessel is already chosen, and that I cannot
(therefore) sail with the son of the man who served my father. But the Prince
and all his company shall go along with you, in the fair White Ship, manned by
the fifty sailors of renown.’
An hour or two
afterwards, the King set sail in the vessel he had chosen, accompanied by other
vessels, and, sailing all night with a fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the
coast of England in the morning. While it was yet night, the people in some of
those ships heard a faint wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was.
Now, the Prince was a
dissolute, debauched young man of eighteen, who bore no love to the English,
and had declared that when he came to the throne he would yoke them to the
plough like oxen. He went aboard The White Ship, with one hundred and forty
youthful Nobles like himself, among whom were eighteen noble ladies of the
highest rank. All this gay company, with their servants and the fifty sailors,
made three hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship.
’Give three casks of
wine, Fitz-Stephen,’ said the Prince, ’to the fifty sailors of renown! My
father the King has sailed out of the harbour. What time is there to make merry
here, and yet reach England with the rest?’
’Prince!’ said
Fitz-Stephen, ’before morning, my fifty and The White Ship shall overtake the
swiftest vessel in attendance on your father the King, if we sail at midnight!’
Then the Prince
commanded to make merry; and the sailors drank out the three casks of wine; and
the Prince and all the noble company danced in the moonlight on the deck of The
White Ship.
When, at last, she shot
out of the harbour of Barfleur, there was not a sober seaman on board. But the
sails were all set, and the oars all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm.
The gay young nobles and the beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of various
bright colours to protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. The
Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet, for the honour of The
White Ship.
Crash! A terrific cry
broke from three hundred hearts. It was the cry the people in the distant
vessels of the King heard faintly on the water. The White Ship had struck upon
a rock--was filling--going down!
Fitz-Stephen hurried
the Prince into a boat, with some few Nobles. ’Push off,’ he whispered; ’and
row to land. It is not far, and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must die.’
But, as they rowed
away, fast, from the sinking ship, the Prince heard the voice of his sister
MARIE, the Countess of Perche, calling for help. He never in his life had been
so good as he was then. He cried in an agony, ’Row back at any risk! I cannot
bear to leave her!’
They rowed back. As the
Prince held out his arms to catch his sister, such numbers leaped in, that the
boat was overset. And in the same instant The White Ship went down.
Only two men floated.
They both clung to the main yard of the ship, which had broken from the mast,
and now supported them. One asked the other who he was? He said, ’I am a
nobleman, GODFREY by name, the son of GILBERT DE L’AIGLE. And you?’ said he. ’I
am BEROLD, a poor butcher of Rouen,’ was the answer. Then, they said together, ’Lord
be merciful to us both!’ and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in
the cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night.
By-and-by, another man
came swimming towards them, whom they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet
hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. ’Where is the Prince?’ said he. ’Gone! Gone!’ the two
cried together. ’Neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King’s
niece, nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three hundred, noble or
commoner, except we three, has risen above the water!’ Fitz-Stephen, with a
ghastly face, cried, ’Woe! woe, to me!’ and sunk to the bottom.
The other two clung to
the yard for some hours. At length the young noble said faintly, ’I am
exhausted, and chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, good
friend! God preserve you!’ So, he dropped and sunk; and of all the brilliant
crowd, the poor Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some
fishermen saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into their
boat--the sole relater of the dismal tale.
For three days, no one
dared to carry the intelligence to the King. At length, they sent into his
presence a little boy, who, weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told
him that The White Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground
like a dead man, and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile.
But he plotted again, and
promised again, and bribed and bought again, in his old deceitful way. Having
no son to succeed him, after all his pains (’The Prince will never yoke us to
the plough, now!’ said the English people), he took a second wife--ADELAIS or
ALICE, a duke’s daughter, and the Pope’s niece. Having no more children,
however, he proposed to the Barons to swear that they would recognise as his
successor his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the
eldest son of the Count of Anjou, GEOFFREY, surnamed PLANTAGENET, from a custom
he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broom (called Genêt in French) in his
cap for a feather. As one false man usually makes many, and as a false King, in
particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court, the Barons took the oath
about the succession of Matilda (and her children after her), twice over,
without in the least intending to keep it. The King was now relieved from any
remaining fears of William Fitz-Robert, by his death in the Monastery of St.
Omer, in France, at twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And as
Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the succession to the throne
secure.
He spent most of the
latter part of his life, which was troubled by family quarrels, in Normandy, to
be near Matilda. When he had reigned upward of thirty-five years, and was
sixty-seven years old, he died of an indigestion and fever, brought on by
eating, when he was far from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he
had often been cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought over to
Reading Abbey to be buried.
You may perhaps hear
the cunning and promise-breaking of King Henry the First, called ’policy’ by
some people, and ’diplomacy’ by others. Neither of these fine words will in the
least mean that it was true; and nothing that is not true can possibly be good.
His greatest merit,
that I know of, was his love of learning--I should have given him greater
credit even for that, if it had been strong enough to induce him to spare the
eyes of a certain poet he once took prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he
ordered the poet’s eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him
in his verses; and the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out his own
brains against his prison wall. King Henry the First was avaricious,
revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never lived whose word was less
to be relied upon.
THE King was no sooner
dead than all the plans and schemes he had laboured at so long, and lied so
much for, crumbled away like a hollow heap of sand. STEPHEN, whom he had never
mistrusted or suspected, started up to claim the throne.
Stephen was the son of
ADELA, the Conqueror’s daughter, married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and
to his brother HENRY, the late King had been liberal; making Henry Bishop of
Winchester, and finding a good marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him.
This did not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, a servant
of the late King, to swear that the King had named him for his heir upon his
death-bed. On this evidence the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned him. The new
King, so suddenly made, lost not a moment in seizing the Royal treasure, and
hiring foreign soldiers with some of it to protect his throne.
If the dead King had
even done as the false witness said, he would have had small right to will away
the English people, like so many sheep or oxen, without their consent. But he
had, in fact, bequeathed all his territory to Matilda; who, supported by
ROBERT, Earl of Gloucester, soon began to dispute the crown. Some of the
powerful barons and priests took her side; some took Stephen’s; all fortified
their castles; and again the miserable English people were involved in war,
from which they could never derive advantage whosoever was victorious, and in
which all parties plundered, tortured, starved, and ruined them.
Five years had passed
since the death of Henry the First--and during those five years there had been
two terrible invasions by the people of Scotland under their King, David, who
was at last defeated with all his army--when Matilda, attended by her brother
Robert and a large force, appeared in England to maintain her claim. A battle
was fought between her troops and King Stephen’s at Lincoln; in which the King
himself was taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until his battle-axe and
sword were broken, and was carried into strict confinement at Gloucester.
Matilda then submitted herself to the Priests, and the Priests crowned her
Queen of England.
She did not long enjoy
this dignity. The people of London had a great affection for Stephen; many of
the Barons considered it degrading to be ruled by a woman; and the Queen’s
temper was so haughty that she made innumerable enemies. The people of London
revolted; and, in alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged her at
Winchester, where they took her brother Robert prisoner, whom, as her best
soldier and chief general, she was glad to exchange for Stephen himself, who
thus regained his liberty. Then, the long war went on afresh. Once, she was
pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in the winter weather when the snow
lay thick upon the ground, that her only chance of escape was to dress herself
all in white, and, accompanied by no more than three faithful Knights, dressed
in like manner that their figures might not be seen from Stephen’s camp as they
passed over the snow, to steal away on foot, cross the frozen Thames, walk a
long distance, and at last gallop away on horseback. All this she did, but to
no great purpose then; for her brother dying while the struggle was yet going
on, she at last withdrew to Normandy.
In two or three years
after her withdrawal her cause appeared in England, afresh, in the person of
her son Henry, young Plantagenet, who, at only eighteen years of age, was very
powerful: not only on account of his mother having resigned all Normandy to
him, but also from his having married ELEANOR, the divorced wife of the French
King, a bad woman, who had great possessions in France. Louis, the French King,
not relishing this arrangement, helped EUSTACE, King Stephen’s son, to invade
Normandy: but Henry drove their united forces out of that country, and then
returned here, to assist his partisans, whom the King was then besieging at
Wallingford upon the Thames. Here, for two days, divided only by the river, the
two armies lay encamped opposite to one another--on the eve, as it seemed to all
men, of another desperate fight, when the EARL OF ARUNDEL took heart and said ’that
it was not reasonable to prolong the unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms to
minister to the ambition of two princes.’
Many other noblemen
repeating and supporting this when it was once uttered, Stephen and young
Plantagenet went down, each to his own bank of the river, and held a
conversation across it, in which they arranged a truce; very much to the
dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swaggered away with some followers, and laid
violent hands on the Abbey of St. Edmund’s-Bury, where he presently died mad.
The truce led to a solemn council at Winchester, in which it was agreed that
Stephen should retain the crown, on condition of his declaring Henry his
successor; that WILLIAM, another son of the King’s, should inherit his father’s
rightful possessions; and that all the Crown lands which Stephen had given away
should be recalled, and all the Castles he had permitted to be built
demolished. Thus terminated the bitter war, which had now lasted fifteen years,
and had again laid England waste. In the next year STEPHEN died, after a
troubled reign of nineteen years.
Although King Stephen
was, for the time in which he lived, a humane and moderate man, with many
excellent qualities; and although nothing worse is known of him than his
usurpation of the Crown, which he probably excused to himself by the
consideration that King Henry the First was a usurper too--which was no excuse
at all; the people of England suffered more in these dread nineteen years, than
at any former period even of their suffering history. In the division of the
nobility between the two rival claimants of the Crown, and in the growth of
what is called the Feudal System (which made the peasants the born vassals and
mere slaves of the Barons), every Noble had his strong Castle, where he reigned
the cruel king of all the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated
whatever cruelties he chose. And never were worse cruelties committed upon
earth than in wretched England in those nineteen years.
The writers who were
living then describe them fearfully. They say that the castles were filled with
devils rather than with men; that the peasants, men and women, were put into
dungeons for their gold and silver, were tortured with fire and smoke, were
hung up by the thumbs, were hung up by the heels with great weights to their
heads, were torn with jagged irons, killed with hunger, broken to death in
narrow chests filled with sharp-pointed stones, murdered in countless fiendish
ways. In England there was no corn, no meat, no cheese, no butter, there were
no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of burnt towns, and dreary wastes, were all
that the traveller, fearful of the robbers who prowled abroad at all hours,
would see in a long day’s journey; and from sunrise until night, he would not
come upon a home.
The clergy sometimes
suffered, and heavily too, from pillage, but many of them had castles of their
own, and fought in helmet and armour like the barons, and drew lots with other
fighting men for their share of booty. The Pope (or Bishop of Rome), on King
Stephen’s resisting his ambition, laid England under an Interdict at one period
of this reign; which means that he allowed no service to be performed in the
churches, no couples to be married, no bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be
buried. Any man having the power to refuse these things, no matter whether he
were called a Pope or a Poulterer, would, of course, have the power of
afflicting numbers of innocent people. That nothing might be wanting to the
miseries of King Stephen’s time, the Pope threw in this contribution to the
public store--not very like the widow’s contribution, as I think, when Our
Saviour sat in Jerusalem over-against the Treasury, ’and she threw in two
mites, which make a farthing.’
HENRY PLANTAGENET, when
he was but twenty-one years old, quietly succeeded to the throne of England,
according to his agreement made with the late King at Winchester. Six weeks
after Stephen’s death, he and his Queen, Eleanor, were crowned in that city;
into which they rode on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst much
shouting and rejoicing, and clashing of music, and strewing of flowers.
The reign of King Henry
the Second began well. The King had great possessions, and (what with his own
rights, and what with those of his wife) was lord of one-third part of France.
He was a young man of vigour, ability, and resolution, and immediately applied
himself to remove some of the evils which had arisen in the last unhappy reign.
He revoked all the grants of land that had been hastily made, on either side,
during the late struggles; he obliged numbers of disorderly soldiers to depart
from England; he reclaimed all the castles belonging to the Crown; and he
forced the wicked nobles to pull down their own castles, to the number of
eleven hundred, in which such dismal cruelties had been inflicted on the
people. The King’s brother, GEOFFREY, rose against him in France, while he was
so well employed, and rendered it necessary for him to repair to that country;
where, after he had subdued and made a friendly arrangement with his brother
(who did not live long), his ambition to increase his possessions involved him
in a war with the French King, Louis, with whom he had been on such friendly
terms just before, that to the French King’s infant daughter, then a baby in
the cradle, he had promised one of his little sons in marriage, who was a child
of five years old. However, the war came to nothing at last, and the Pope made
the two Kings friends again.
Now, the clergy, in the
troubles of the last reign, had gone on very ill indeed. There were all kinds
of criminals among them--murderers, thieves, and vagabonds; and the worst of
the matter was, that the good priests would not give up the bad priests to
justice, when they committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering and defending
them. The King, well knowing that there could be no peace or rest in England
while such things lasted, resolved to reduce the power of the clergy; and, when
he had reigned seven years, found (as he considered) a good opportunity for
doing so, in the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury. ’I will have for the
new Archbishop,’ thought the King, ’a friend in whom I can trust, who will help
me to humble these rebellious priests, and to have them dealt with, when they
do wrong, as other men who do wrong are dealt with.’ So, he resolved to make
his favourite, the new Archbishop; and this favourite was so extraordinary a
man, and his story is so curious, that I must tell you all about him.
Once upon a time, a
worthy merchant of London, named GILBERT A BECKET, made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him
kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the
merchant; and who told him that she wanted to become a Christian, and was
willing to marry him if they could fly to a Christian country. The merchant
returned her love, until he found an opportunity to escape, when he did not
trouble himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped with his servant Richard,
who had been taken prisoner along with him, and arrived in England and forgot
her. The Saracen lady, who was more loving than the merchant, left her father’s
house in disguise to follow him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the
sea-shore. The merchant had taught her only two English words (for I suppose he
must have learnt the Saracen tongue himself, and made love in that language),
of which LONDON was one, and his own name, GILBERT, the other. She went among
the ships, saying, ’London! London!’ over and over again, until the sailors
understood that she wanted to find an English vessel that would carry her
there; so they showed her such a ship, and she paid for her passage with some
of her jewels, and sailed away. Well! The merchant was sitting in his
counting-house in London one day, when he heard a great noise in the street;
and presently Richard came running in from the warehouse, with his eyes wide
open and his breath almost gone, saying, ’Master, master, here is the Saracen
lady!’ The merchant thought Richard was mad; but Richard said, ’No, master! As
I live, the Saracen lady is going up and down the city, calling Gilbert!
Gilbert!’ Then, he took the merchant by the sleeve, and pointed out of window;
and there they saw her among the gables and water-spouts of the dark, dirty
street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, surrounded by a wondering crowd, and
passing slowly along, calling Gilbert, Gilbert! When the merchant saw her, and
thought of the tenderness she had shown him in his captivity, and of her
constancy, his heart was moved, and he ran down into the street; and she saw
him coming, and with a great cry fainted in his arms. They were married without
loss of time, and Richard (who was an excellent man) danced with joy the whole
day of the wedding; and they all lived happy ever afterwards.
This merchant and this
Saracen lady had one son, THOMAS A BECKET. He it was who became the Favourite
of King Henry the Second.
He had become
Chancellor, when the King thought of making him Archbishop. He was clever, gay,
well educated, brave; had fought in several battles in France; had defeated a
French knight in single combat, and brought his horse away as a token of the
victory. He lived in a noble palace, he was the tutor of the young Prince
Henry, he was served by one hundred and forty knights, his riches were immense.
The King once sent him as his ambassador to France; and the French people,
beholding in what state he travelled, cried out in the streets, ’How splendid
must the King of England be, when this is only the Chancellor!’ They had good
reason to wonder at the magnificence of Thomas a Becket, for, when he entered a
French town, his procession was headed by two hundred and fifty singing boys;
then, came his hounds in couples; then, eight waggons, each drawn by five
horses driven by five drivers: two of the waggons filled with strong ale to be
given away to the people; four, with his gold and silver plate and stately
clothes; two, with the dresses of his numerous servants. Then, came twelve
horses, each with a monkey on his back; then, a train of people bearing shields
and leading fine war-horses splendidly equipped; then, falconers with hawks
upon their wrists; then, a host of knights, and gentlemen and priests; then,
the Chancellor with his brilliant garments flashing in the sun, and all the
people capering and shouting with delight.
The King was well
pleased with all this, thinking that it only made himself the more magnificent
to have so magnificent a favourite; but he sometimes jested with the Chancellor
upon his splendour too. Once, when they were riding together through the
streets of London in hard winter weather, they saw a shivering old man in rags.
’Look at the poor object!’ said the King. ’Would it not be a charitable act to
give that aged man a comfortable warm cloak?’ ’Undoubtedly it would,’ said
Thomas a Becket, ’and you do well, Sir, to think of such Christian duties.’ ’Come!’
cried the King, ’then give him your cloak!’ It was made of rich crimson trimmed
with ermine. The King tried to pull it off, the Chancellor tried to keep it on,
both were near rolling from their saddles in the mud, when the Chancellor
submitted, and the King gave the cloak to the old beggar: much to the beggar’s
astonishment, and much to the merriment of all the courtiers in attendance.
For, courtiers are not only eager to laugh when the King laughs, but they
really do enjoy a laugh against a Favourite.
’I will make,’ thought
King Henry the second, ’this Chancellor of mine, Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of
Canterbury. He will then be the head of the Church, and, being devoted to me,
will help me to correct the Church. He has always upheld my power against the
power of the clergy, and once publicly told some bishops (I remember), that men
of the Church were equally bound to me, with men of the sword. Thomas a Becket
is the man, of all other men in England, to help me in my great design.’ So the
King, regardless of all objection, either that he was a fighting man, or a
lavish man, or a courtly man, or a man of pleasure, or anything but a likely
man for the office, made him Archbishop accordingly.
Now, Thomas a Becket
was proud and loved to be famous. He was already famous for the pomp of his
life, for his riches, his gold and silver plate, his waggons, horses, and
attendants. He could do no more in that way than he had done; and being tired
of that kind of fame (which is a very poor one), he longed to have his name
celebrated for something else. Nothing, he knew, would render him so famous in
the world, as the setting of his utmost power and ability against the utmost
power and ability of the King. He resolved with the whole strength of his mind
to do it.
He may have had some
secret grudge against the King besides. The King may have offended his proud
humour at some time or other, for anything I know. I think it likely, because
it is a common thing for Kings, Princes, and other great people, to try the
tempers of their favourites rather severely. Even the little affair of the
crimson cloak must have been anything but a pleasant one to a haughty man.
Thomas a Becket knew better than any one in England what the King expected of
him. In all his sumptuous life, he had never yet been in a position to
disappoint the King. He could take up that proud stand now, as head of the
Church; and he determined that it should be written in history, either that he
subdued the King, or that the King subdued him.
So, of a sudden, he
completely altered the whole manner of his life. He turned off all his
brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank bitter water, wore next his skin
sackcloth covered with dirt and vermin (for it was then thought very religious
to be very dirty), flogged his back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a
little cell, washed the feet of thirteen poor people every day, and looked as
miserable as he possibly could. If he had put twelve hundred monkeys on
horseback instead of twelve, and had gone in procession with eight thousand
waggons instead of eight, he could not have half astonished the people so much
as by this great change. It soon caused him to be more talked about as an
Archbishop than he had been as a Chancellor.
The King was very
angry; and was made still more so, when the new Archbishop, claiming various
estates from the nobles as being rightfully Church property, required the King
himself, for the same reason, to give up Rochester Castle, and Rochester City
too. Not satisfied with this, he declared that no power but himself should
appoint a priest to any Church in the part of England over which he was
Archbishop; and when a certain gentleman of Kent made such an appointment, as
he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas a Becket excommunicated him.
Excommunication was,
next to the Interdict I told you of at the close of the last chapter, the great
weapon of the clergy. It consisted in declaring the person who was
excommunicated, an outcast from the Church and from all religious offices; and
in cursing him all over, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot,
whether he was standing up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running,
hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he was doing.
This unchristian nonsense would of course have made no sort of difference to
the person cursed--who could say his prayers at home if he were shut out of
church, and whom none but GOD could judge--but for the fears and superstitions
of the people, who avoided excommunicated persons, and made their lives
unhappy. So, the King said to the New Archbishop, ’Take off this
Excommunication from this gentleman of Kent.’ To which the Archbishop replied, ’I
shall do no such thing.’
The quarrel went on. A
priest in Worcestershire committed a most dreadful murder, that aroused the
horror of the whole nation. The King demanded to have this wretch delivered up,
to be tried in the same court and in the same way as any other murderer. The
Archbishop refused, and kept him in the Bishop’s prison. The King, holding a
solemn assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded that in future all priests found
guilty before their Bishops of crimes against the law of the land should be
considered priests no longer, and should be delivered over to the law of the
land for punishment. The Archbishop again refused. The King required to know
whether the clergy would obey the ancient customs of the country? Every priest
there, but one, said, after Thomas a Becket, ’Saving my order.’ This really meant
that they would only obey those customs when they did not interfere with their
own claims; and the King went out of the Hall in great wrath.
Some of the clergy
began to be afraid, now, that they were going too far. Though Thomas a Becket
was otherwise as unmoved as Westminster Hall, they prevailed upon him, for the
sake of their fears, to go to the King at Woodstock, and promise to observe the
ancient customs of the country, without saying anything about his order. The
King received this submission favourably, and summoned a great council of the
clergy to meet at the Castle of Clarendon, by Salisbury. But when the council
met, the Archbishop again insisted on the words ’saying my order;’ and he still
insisted, though lords entreated him, and priests wept before him and knelt to
him, and an adjoining room was thrown open, filled with armed soldiers of the
King, to threaten him. At length he gave way, for that time, and the ancient
customs (which included what the King had demanded in vain) were stated in
writing, and were signed and sealed by the chief of the clergy, and were called
the Constitutions of Clarendon.
The quarrel went on,
for all that. The Archbishop tried to see the King. The King would not see him.
The Archbishop tried to escape from England. The sailors on the coast would
launch no boat to take him away. Then, he again resolved to do his worst in
opposition to the King, and began openly to set the ancient customs at
defiance.
The King summoned him
before a great council at Northampton, where he accused him of high treason,
and made a claim against him, which was not a just one, for an enormous sum of
money. Thomas a Becket was alone against the whole assembly, and the very
Bishops advised him to resign his office and abandon his contest with the King.
His great anxiety and agitation stretched him on a sick-bed for two days, but
he was still undaunted. He went to the adjourned council, carrying a great
cross in his right hand, and sat down holding it erect before him. The King
angrily retired into an inner room. The whole assembly angrily retired and left
him there. But there he sat. The Bishops came out again in a body, and
renounced him as a traitor. He only said, ’I hear!’ and sat there still. They
retired again into the inner room, and his trial proceeded without him.
By-and-by, the Earl of Leicester, heading the barons, came out to read his
sentence. He refused to hear it, denied the power of the court, and said he
would refer his cause to the Pope. As he walked out of the hall, with the cross
in his hand, some of those present picked up rushes--rushes were strewn upon
the floors in those days by way of carpet--and threw them at him. He proudly
turned his head, and said that were he not Archbishop, he would chastise those
cowards with the sword he had known how to use in bygone days. He then mounted
his horse, and rode away, cheered and surrounded by the common people, to whom
he threw open his house that night and gave a supper, supping with them
himself. That same night he secretly departed from the town; and so, travelling
by night and hiding by day, and calling himself ’Brother Dearman,’ got away,
not without difficulty, to Flanders.
The struggle still went
on. The angry King took possession of the revenues of the archbishopric, and banished
all the relations and servants of Thomas a Becket, to the number of four
hundred. The Pope and the French King both protected him, and an abbey was
assigned for his residence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas a Becket, on a
great festival day, formally proceeded to a great church crowded with people,
and going up into the pulpit publicly cursed and excommunicated all who had
supported the Constitutions of Clarendon: mentioning many English noblemen by
name, and not distantly hinting at the King of England himself.
When intelligence of
this new affront was carried to the King in his chamber, his passion was so
furious that he tore his clothes, and rolled like a madman on his bed of straw
and rushes. But he was soon up and doing. He ordered all the ports and coasts
of England to be narrowly watched, that no letters of Interdict might be
brought into the kingdom; and sent messengers and bribes to the Pope’s palace
at Rome. Meanwhile, Thomas a Becket, for his part, was not idle at Rome, but
constantly employed his utmost arts in his own behalf. Thus the contest stood,
until there was peace between France and England (which had been for some time
at war), and until the two children of the two Kings were married in
celebration of it. Then, the French King brought about a meeting between Henry
and his old favourite, so long his enemy.
Even then, though
Thomas a Becket knelt before the King, he was obstinate and immovable as to
those words about his order. King Louis of France was weak enough in his veneration
for Thomas a Becket and such men, but this was a little too much for him. He
said that a Becket ’wanted to be greater than the saints and better than St.
Peter,’ and rode away from him with the King of England. His poor French
Majesty asked a Becket’s pardon for so doing, however, soon afterwards, and cut
a very pitiful figure.
At last, and after a
world of trouble, it came to this. There was another meeting on French ground
between King Henry and Thomas a Becket, and it was agreed that Thomas a Becket
should be Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the customs of former
Archbishops, and that the King should put him in possession of the revenues of
that post. And now, indeed, you might suppose the struggle at an end, and
Thomas a Becket at rest. NO, not even yet. For Thomas a Becket hearing, by some
means, that King Henry, when he was in dread of his kingdom being placed under
an interdict, had had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not only
persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York who had performed that
ceremony, and to excommunicate the Bishops who had assisted at it, but sent a
messenger of his own into England, in spite of all the King’s precautions along
the coast, who delivered the letters of excommunication into the Bishops’ own
hands. Thomas a Becket then came over to England himself, after an absence of
seven years. He was privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an
ireful knight, named RANULF DE BROC, had threatened that he should not live to
eat a loaf of bread in England; but he came.
The common people
received him well, and marched about with him in a soldierly way, armed with
such rustic weapons as they could get. He tried to see the young prince who had
once been his pupil, but was prevented. He hoped for some little support among
the nobles and priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants who
attended him, and feasted them, and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill,
and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on Christmas Day preached
in the Cathedral there, and told the people in his sermon that he had come to
die among them, and that it was likely he would be murdered. He had no fear,
however--or, if he had any, he had much more obstinacy--for he, then and there,
excommunicated three of his enemies, of whom Ranulf de Broc, the ireful knight,
was one.
As men in general had
no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting and walking, and gaping and
sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was very natural in the persons so freely
excommunicated to complain to the King. It was equally natural in the King, who
had hoped that this troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a
mighty rage when he heard of these new affronts; and, on the Archbishop of York
telling him that he never could hope for rest while Thomas a Becket lived, to
cry out hastily before his court, ’Have I no one here who will deliver me from
this man?’ There were four knights present, who, hearing the King’s words,
looked at one another, and went out.
The names of these
knights were REGINALD FITZURSE, WILLIAM TRACY, HUGH DE MORVILLE, and RICHARD
BRITO; three of whom had been in the train of Thomas a Becket in the old days
of his splendour. They rode away on horseback, in a very secret manner, and on
the third day after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from
Canterbury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. They quietly
collected some followers here, in case they should need any; and proceeding to
Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four knights and twelve men) before the
Archbishop, in his own house, at two o’clock in the afternoon. They neither
bowed nor spoke, but sat down on the floor in silence, staring at the
Archbishop.
Thomas a Becket said,
at length, ’What do you want?’
’We want,’ said
Reginald Fitzurse, ’the excommunication taken from the Bishops, and you to
answer for your offences to the King.’ Thomas a Becket defiantly replied, that
the power of the clergy was above the power of the King. That it was not for
such men as they were, to threaten him. That if he were threatened by all the
swords in England, he would never yield.
’Then we will do more
than threaten!’ said the knights. And they went out with the twelve men, and
put on their armour, and drew their shining swords, and came back.
His servants, in the
meantime, had shut up and barred the great gate of the palace. At first, the
knights tried to shatter it with their battle-axes; but, being shown a window
by which they could enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way.
While they were battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket had
implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral; in which, as a sanctuary or
sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to do no violent deed. He
told them, again and again, that he would not stir. Hearing the distant voices
of the monks singing the evening service, however, he said it was now his duty
to attend, and therefore, and for no other reason, he would go.
There was a near way
between his Palace and the Cathedral, by some beautiful old cloisters which you
may yet see. He went into the Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the
Cross carried before him as usual. When he was safely there, his servants would
have fastened the door, but he said NO! it was the house of God and not a
fortress.
As he spoke, the shadow
of Reginald Fitzurse appeared in the Cathedral doorway, darkening the little
light there was outside, on the dark winter evening. This knight said, in a
strong voice, ’Follow me, loyal servants of the King!’ The rattle of the armour
of the other knights echoed through the Cathedral, as they came clashing in.
It was so dark, in the
lofty aisles and among the stately pillars of the church, and there were so
many hiding-places in the crypt below and in the narrow passages above, that
Thomas a Becket might even at that pass have saved himself if he would. But he
would not. He told the monks resolutely that he would not. And though they all
dispersed and left him there with no other follower than EDWARD GRYME, his
faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as ever he had been in his life.
The knights came on,
through the darkness, making a terrible noise with their armed tread upon the
stone pavement of the church. ’Where is the traitor?’ they cried out. He made
no answer. But when they cried, ’Where is the Archbishop?’ he said proudly, ’I
am here!’ and came out of the shade and stood before them.
The knights had no
desire to kill him, if they could rid the King and themselves of him by any other
means. They told him he must either fly or go with them. He said he would do
neither; and he threw William Tracy off with such force when he took hold of
his sleeve, that Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadiness, he
so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce humour, that Reginald Fitzurse,
whom he called by an ill name, said, ’Then die!’ and struck at his head. But
the faithful Edward Gryme put out his arm, and there received the main force of
the blow, so that it only made his master bleed. Another voice from among the
knights again called to Thomas a Becket to fly; but, with his blood running
down his face, and his hands clasped, and his head bent, he commanded himself
to God, and stood firm. Then they cruelly killed him close to the altar of St.
Bennet; and his body fell upon the pavement, which was dirtied with his blood
and brains.
It is an awful thing to
think of the murdered mortal, who had so showered his curses about, lying, all
disfigured, in the church, where a few lamps here and there were but red specks
on a pall of darkness; and to think of the guilty knights riding away on
horseback, looking over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and remembering
what they had left inside.
WHEN the King heard how
Thomas a Becket had lost his life in Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity
of the four Knights, he was filled with dismay. Some have supposed that when
the King spoke those hasty words, ’Have I no one here who will deliver me from
this man?’ he wished, and meant a Becket to be slain. But few things are more
unlikely; for, besides that the King was not naturally cruel (though very
passionate), he was wise, and must have known full well what any stupid man in
his dominions must have known, namely, that such a murder would rouse the Pope
and the whole Church against him.
He sent respectful
messengers to the Pope, to represent his innocence (except in having uttered
the hasty words); and he swore solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and
contrived in time to make his peace. As to the four guilty Knights, who fled
into Yorkshire, and never again dared to show themselves at Court, the Pope
excommunicated them; and they lived miserably for some time, shunned by all
their countrymen. At last, they went humbly to Jerusalem as a penance, and
there died and were buried.
It happened,
fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that an opportunity arose very soon
after the murder of a Becket, for the King to declare his power in
Ireland--which was an acceptable undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, who had
been converted to Christianity by one Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long
ago, before any Pope existed, considered that the Pope had nothing at all to do
with them, or they with the Pope, and accordingly refused to pay him Peter’s
Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which I have elsewhere mentioned. The
King’s opportunity arose in this way.
The Irish were, at that
time, as barbarous a people as you can well imagine. They were continually
quarrelling and fighting, cutting one another’s throats, slicing one another’s
noses, burning one another’s houses, carrying away one another’s wives, and
committing all sorts of violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms--DESMOND,
THOMOND, CONNAUGHT, ULSTER, and LEINSTER--each governed by a separate King, of
whom one claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, one of these Kings, named
DERMOND MAC MURROUGH (a wild kind of name, spelt in more than one wild kind of
way), had carried off the wife of a friend of his, and concealed her on an
island in a bog. The friend resenting this (though it was quite the custom of
the country), complained to the chief King, and, with the chief King’s help,
drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of his dominions. Dermond came over to England
for revenge; and offered to hold his realm as a vassal of King Henry, if King
Henry would help him to regain it. The King consented to these terms; but only
assisted him, then, with what were called Letters Patent, authorising any
English subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his service, and aid his
cause.
There was, at Bristol,
a certain EARL RICHARD DE CLARE, called STRONGBOW; of no very good character;
needy and desperate, and ready for anything that offered him a chance of
improving his fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two other broken knights of
the same good-for-nothing sort, called ROBERT FITZ-STEPHEN, and MAURICE
FITZ-GERALD. These three, each with a small band of followers, took up Dermond’s
cause; and it was agreed that if it proved successful, Strongbow should marry
Dermond’s daughter EVA, and be declared his heir.
The trained English
followers of these knights were so superior in all the discipline of battle to
the Irish, that they beat them against immense superiority of numbers. In one
fight, early in the war, they cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before
Mac Murrough; who turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and,
coming to one which was the head of a man whom he had much disliked, grasped it
by the hair and ears, and tore off the nose and lips with his teeth. You may
judge from this, what kind of a gentleman an Irish King in those times was. The
captives, all through this war, were horribly treated; the victorious party
making nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting them into the sea from the
tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the miseries and cruelties attendant
on the taking of Waterford, where the dead lay piled in the streets, and the
filthy gutters ran with blood, that Strongbow married Eva. An odious
marriage-company those mounds of corpses must have made, I think, and one quite
worthy of the young lady’s father.
He died, after
Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various successes achieved; and
Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now came King Henry’s opportunity. To
restrain the growing power of Strongbow, he himself repaired to Dublin, as
Strongbow’s Royal Master, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in
the enjoyment of great possessions. The King, then, holding state in Dublin,
received the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, and so came home
again with a great addition to his reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a
new claim on the favour of the Pope. And now, their reconciliation was
completed--more easily and mildly by the Pope, than the King might have
expected, I think.
At this period of his
reign, when his troubles seemed so few and his prospects so bright, those
domestic miseries began which gradually made the King the most unhappy of men,
reduced his great spirit, wore away his health, and broke his heart.
He had four sons.
HENRY, now aged eighteen--his secret crowning of whom had given such offence to
Thomas a Becket. RICHARD, aged sixteen; GEOFFREY, fifteen; and JOHN, his
favourite, a young boy whom the courtiers named LACKLAND, because he had no
inheritance, but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All
these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him, and unnatural
brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the French King, and by his
bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful history,
First, he demanded that
his young wife, MARGARET, the French King’s daughter, should be crowned as well
as he. His father, the King, consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done,
than he demanded to have a part of his father’s dominions, during his father’s
life. This being refused, he made off from his father in the night, with his
bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the French King’s Court.
Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother
tried to join them--escaping in man’s clothes--but she was seized by King Henry’s
men, and immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years. Every
day, however, some grasping English noblemen, to whom the King’s protection of
his people from their avarice and oppression had given offence, deserted him
and joined the Princes. Every day he heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes
levying armies against him; of Prince Henry’s wearing a crown before his own
ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England;
of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him, their father, without
the consent and approval of the Barons of France. But, with his fortitude and
energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock of these disasters with a resolved
and cheerful face. He called upon all Royal fathers who had sons, to help him,
for his cause was theirs; he hired, out of his riches, twenty thousand men to
fight the false French King, who stirred his own blood against him; and he
carried on the war with such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference to
treat for peace.
The conference was held
beneath an old wide-spreading green elm-tree, upon a plain in France. It led to
nothing. The war recommenced. Prince Richard began his fighting career, by
leading an army against his father; but his father beat him and his army back;
and thousands of his men would have rued the day in which they fought in such a
wicked cause, had not the King received news of an invasion of England by the
Scots, and promptly come home through a great storm to repress it. And whether
he really began to fear that he suffered these troubles because a Becket had
been murdered; or whether he wished to rise in the favour of the Pope, who had
now declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of his own people, of
whom many believed that even a Becket’s senseless tomb could work miracles, I
don’t know: but the King no sooner landed in England than he went straight to
Canterbury; and when he came within sight of the distant Cathedral, he
dismounted from his horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and
bleeding feet to a Becket’s grave. There, he lay down on the ground, lamenting,
in the presence of many people; and by-and-by he went into the Chapter House,
and, removing his clothes from his back and shoulders, submitted himself to be
beaten with knotted cords (not beaten very hard, I dare say though) by eighty
Priests, one after another. It chanced that on the very day when the King made
this curious exhibition of himself, a complete victory was obtained over the
Scots; which very much delighted the Priests, who said that it was won because of
his great example of repentance. For the Priests in general had found out,
since a Becket’s death, that they admired him of all things--though they had
hated him very cordially when he was alive.
The Earl of Flanders,
who was at the head of the base conspiracy of the King’s undutiful sons and
their foreign friends, took the opportunity of the King being thus employed at
home, to lay siege to Rouen, the capital of Normandy. But the King, who was
extraordinarily quick and active in all his movements, was at Rouen, too,
before it was supposed possible that he could have left England; and there he
so defeated the said Earl of Flanders, that the conspirators proposed peace,
and his bad sons Henry and Geoffrey submitted. Richard resisted for six weeks;
but, being beaten out of castle after castle, he at last submitted too, and his
father forgave him.
To forgive these
unworthy princes was only to afford them breathing-time for new faithlessness.
They were so false, disloyal, and dishonourable, that they were no more to be
trusted than common thieves. In the very next year, Prince Henry rebelled
again, and was again forgiven. In eight years more, Prince Richard rebelled
against his elder brother; and Prince Geoffrey infamously said that the
brothers could never agree well together, unless they were united against their
father. In the very next year after their reconciliation by the King, Prince
Henry again rebelled against his father; and again submitted, swearing to be
true; and was again forgiven; and again rebelled with Geoffrey.
But the end of this
perfidious Prince was come. He fell sick at a French town; and his conscience
terribly reproaching him with his baseness, he sent messengers to the King his
father, imploring him to come and see him, and to forgive him for the last time
on his bed of death. The generous King, who had a royal and forgiving mind
towards his children always, would have gone; but this Prince had been so
unnatural, that the noblemen about the King suspected treachery, and
represented to him that he could not safely trust his life with such a traitor,
though his own eldest son. Therefore the King sent him a ring from off his
finger as a token of forgiveness; and when the Prince had kissed it, with much
grief and many tears, and had confessed to those around him how bad, and
wicked, and undutiful a son he had been; he said to the attendant Priests: ’O,
tie a rope about my body, and draw me out of bed, and lay me down upon a bed of
ashes, that I may die with prayers to God in a repentant manner!’ And so he
died, at twenty-seven years old.
Three years afterwards,
Prince Geoffrey, being unhorsed at a tournament, had his brains trampled out by
a crowd of horses passing over him. So, there only remained Prince Richard, and
Prince John--who had grown to be a young man now, and had solemnly sworn to be
faithful to his father. Richard soon rebelled again, encouraged by his friend
the French King, PHILIP THE SECOND (son of Louis, who was dead); and soon
submitted and was again forgiven, swearing on the New Testament never to rebel
again; and in another year or so, rebelled again; and, in the presence of his
father, knelt down on his knee before the King of France; and did the French
King homage: and declared that with his aid he would possess himself, by force,
of all his father’s French dominions.
And yet this Richard
called himself a soldier of Our Saviour! And yet this Richard wore the Cross,
which the Kings of France and England had both taken, in the previous year, at
a brotherly meeting underneath the old wide-spreading elm-tree on the plain,
when they had sworn (like him) to devote themselves to a new Crusade, for the
love and honour of the Truth!
Sick at heart, wearied
out by the falsehood of his sons, and almost ready to lie down and die, the
unhappy King who had so long stood firm, began to fail. But the Pope, to his
honour, supported him; and obliged the French King and Richard, though
successful in fight, to treat for peace. Richard wanted to be Crowned King of
England, and pretended that he wanted to be married (which he really did not)
to the French King’s sister, his promised wife, whom King Henry detained in
England. King Henry wanted, on the other hand, that the French King’s sister
should be married to his favourite son, John: the only one of his sons (he
said) who had never rebelled against him. At last King Henry, deserted by his
nobles one by one, distressed, exhausted, broken-hearted, consented to
establish peace.
One final heavy sorrow
was reserved for him, even yet. When they brought him the proposed treaty of
peace, in writing, as he lay very ill in bed, they brought him also the list of
the deserters from their allegiance, whom he was required to pardon. The first
name upon this list was John, his favourite son, in whom he had trusted to the
last.
’O John! child of my
heart!’ exclaimed the King, in a great agony of mind. ’O John, whom I have
loved the best! O John, for whom I have contended through these many troubles!
Have you betrayed me too!’ And then he lay down with a heavy groan, and said, ’Now
let the world go as it will. I care for nothing more!’
After a time, he told
his attendants to take him to the French town of Chinon--a town he had been
fond of, during many years. But he was fond of no place now; it was too true
that he could care for nothing more upon this earth. He wildly cursed the hour
when he was born, and cursed the children whom he left behind him; and expired.
As, one hundred years
before, the servile followers of the Court had abandoned the Conqueror in the
hour of his death, so they now abandoned his descendant. The very body was
stripped, in the plunder of the Royal chamber; and it was not easy to find the
means of carrying it for burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud.
Richard was said in
after years, by way of flattery, to have the heart of a Lion. It would have
been far better, I think, to have had the heart of a Man. His heart, whatever
it was, had cause to beat remorsefully within his breast, when he came--as he
did--into the solemn abbey, and looked on his dead father’s uncovered face. His
heart, whatever it was, had been a black and perjured heart, in all its
dealings with the deceased King, and more deficient in a single touch of
tenderness than any wild beast’s in the forest.
There is a pretty story
told of this Reign, called the story of FAIR ROSAMOND. It relates how the King
doted on Fair Rosamond, who was the loveliest girl in all the world; and how he
had a beautiful Bower built for her in a Park at Woodstock; and how it was
erected in a labyrinth, and could only be found by a clue of silk. How the bad
Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond, found out the secret of the
clue, and one day, appeared before her, with a dagger and a cup of poison, and
left her to the choice between those deaths. How Fair Rosamond, after shedding
many piteous tears and offering many useless prayers to the cruel Queen, took
the poison, and fell dead in the midst of the beautiful bower, while the
unconscious birds sang gaily all around her.
Now, there WAS a fair
Rosamond, and she was (I dare say) the loveliest girl in all the world, and the
King was certainly very fond of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly
made jealous. But I am afraid--I say afraid, because I like the story so
much--that there was no bower, no labyrinth, no silken clue, no dagger, no
poison. I am afraid fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, and died
there, peaceably; her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and
often dressing it with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty that had
enchanted the King when he too was young, and when his life lay fair before
him.
It was dark and ended
now; faded and gone. Henry Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church of
Fontevraud, in the fifty-seventh year of his age--never to be completed--after
governing England well, for nearly thirty-five years.
IN the year of our Lord
one thousand one hundred and eighty-nine, Richard of the Lion Heart succeeded
to the throne of King Henry the Second, whose paternal heart he had done so
much to break. He had been, as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood; but, the
moment he became a king against whom others might rebel, he found out that
rebellion was a great wickedness. In the heat of this pious discovery, he
punished all the leading people who had befriended him against his father. He
could scarcely have done anything that would have been a better instance of his
real nature, or a better warning to fawners and parasites not to trust in
lion-hearted princes.
He likewise put his
late father’s treasurer in chains, and locked him up in a dungeon from which he
was not set free until he had relinquished, not only all the Crown treasure,
but all his own money too. So, Richard certainly got the Lion’s share of the
wealth of this wretched treasurer, whether he had a Lion’s heart or not.
He was crowned King of
England, with great pomp, at Westminster: walking to the Cathedral under a
silken canopy stretched on the tops of four lances, each carried by a great
lord. On the day of his coronation, a dreadful murdering of the Jews took
place, which seems to have given great delight to numbers of savage persons
calling themselves Christians. The King had issued a proclamation forbidding
the Jews (who were generally hated, though they were the most useful merchants
in England) to appear at the ceremony; but as they had assembled in London from
all parts, bringing presents to show their respect for the new Sovereign, some
of them ventured down to Westminster Hall with their gifts; which were very
readily accepted. It is supposed, now, that some noisy fellow in the crowd,
pretending to be a very delicate Christian, set up a howl at this, and struck a
Jew who was trying to get in at the Hall door with his present. A riot arose.
The Jews who had got into the Hall, were driven forth; and some of the rabble
cried out that the new King had commanded the unbelieving race to be put to
death. Thereupon the crowd rushed through the narrow streets of the city,
slaughtering all the Jews they met; and when they could find no more out of
doors (on account of their having fled to their houses, and fastened themselves
in), they ran madly about, breaking open all the houses where the Jews lived,
rushing in and stabbing or spearing them, sometimes even flinging old people
and children out of window into blazing fires they had lighted up below. This
great cruelty lasted four-and-twenty hours, and only three men were punished
for it. Even they forfeited their lives not for murdering and robbing the Jews,
but for burning the houses of some Christians.
King Richard, who was a
strong, restless, burly man, with one idea always in his head, and that the
very troublesome idea of breaking the heads of other men, was mightily
impatient to go on a Crusade to the Holy Land, with a great army. As great
armies could not be raised to go, even to the Holy Land, without a great deal
of money, he sold the Crown domains, and even the high offices of State;
recklessly appointing noblemen to rule over his English subjects, not because
they were fit to govern, but because they could pay high for the privilege. In
this way, and by selling pardons at a dear rate and by varieties of avarice and
oppression, he scraped together a large treasure. He then appointed two Bishops
to take care of his kingdom in his absence, and gave great powers and
possessions to his brother John, to secure his friendship. John would rather
have been made Regent of England; but he was a sly man, and friendly to the
expedition; saying to himself, no doubt, ’The more fighting, the more chance of
my brother being killed; and when he IS killed, then I become King John!’
Before the newly levied
army departed from England, the recruits and the general populace distinguished
themselves by astonishing cruelties on the unfortunate Jews: whom, in many
large towns, they murdered by hundreds in the most horrible manner.
At York, a large body
of Jews took refuge in the Castle, in the absence of its Governor, after the
wives and children of many of them had been slain before their eyes. Presently
came the Governor, and demanded admission. ’How can we give it thee, O
Governor!’ said the Jews upon the walls, ’when, if we open the gate by so much
as the width of a foot, the roaring crowd behind thee will press in and kill
us?’
Upon this, the unjust
Governor became angry, and told the people that he approved of their killing
those Jews; and a mischievous maniac of a friar, dressed all in white, put
himself at the head of the assault, and they assaulted the Castle for three
days.
Then said JOCEN, the
head-Jew (who was a Rabbi or Priest), to the rest, ’Brethren, there is no hope
for us with the Christians who are hammering at the gates and walls, and who
must soon break in. As we and our wives and children must die, either by
Christian hands, or by our own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy by fire
what jewels and other treasure we have here, then fire the castle, and then
perish!’
A few could not resolve
to do this, but the greater part complied. They made a blazing heap of all
their valuables, and, when those were consumed, set the castle in flames. While
the flames roared and crackled around them, and shooting up into the sky,
turned it blood-red, Jocen cut the throat of his beloved wife, and stabbed
himself. All the others who had wives or children, did the like dreadful deed.
When the populace broke in, they found (except the trembling few, cowering in
corners, whom they soon killed) only heaps of greasy cinders, with here and
there something like part of the blackened trunk of a burnt tree, but which had
lately been a human creature, formed by the beneficent hand of the Creator as
they were.
After this bad
beginning, Richard and his troops went on, in no very good manner, with the
Holy Crusade. It was undertaken jointly by the King of England and his old
friend Philip of France. They commenced the business by reviewing their forces,
to the number of one hundred thousand men. Afterwards, they severally embarked
their troops for Messina, in Sicily, which was appointed as the next place of
meeting.
King Richard’s sister
had married the King of this place, but he was dead: and his uncle TANCRED had
usurped the crown, cast the Royal Widow into prison, and possessed himself of
her estates. Richard fiercely demanded his sister’s release, the restoration of
her lands, and (according to the Royal custom of the Island) that she should have
a golden chair, a golden table, four-and-twenty silver cups, and
four-and-twenty silver dishes. As he was too powerful to be successfully
resisted, Tancred yielded to his demands; and then the French King grew
jealous, and complained that the English King wanted to be absolute in the
Island of Messina and everywhere else. Richard, however, cared little or
nothing for this complaint; and in consideration of a present of twenty
thousand pieces of gold, promised his pretty little nephew ARTHUR, then a child
of two years old, in marriage to Tancred’s daughter. We shall hear again of
pretty little Arthur by-and-by.
This Sicilian affair
arranged without anybody’s brains being knocked out (which must have rather
disappointed him), King Richard took his sister away, and also a fair lady
named BERENGARIA, with whom he had fallen in love in France, and whom his
mother, Queen Eleanor (so long in prison, you remember, but released by Richard
on his coming to the Throne), had brought out there to be his wife; and sailed
with them for Cyprus.
He soon had the
pleasure of fighting the King of the Island of Cyprus, for allowing his
subjects to pillage some of the English troops who were shipwrecked on the
shore; and easily conquering this poor monarch, he seized his only daughter, to
be a companion to the lady Berengaria, and put the King himself into silver
fetters. He then sailed away again with his mother, sister, wife, and the
captive princess; and soon arrived before the town of Acre, which the French
King with his fleet was besieging from the sea. But the French King was in no
triumphant condition, for his army had been thinned by the swords of the
Saracens, and wasted by the plague; and SALADIN, the brave Sultan of the Turks,
at the head of a numerous army, was at that time gallantly defending the place
from the hills that rise above it.
Wherever the united
army of Crusaders went, they agreed in few points except in gaming, drinking,
and quarrelling, in a most unholy manner; in debauching the people among whom
they tarried, whether they were friends or foes; and in carrying disturbance
and ruin into quiet places. The French King was jealous of the English King,
and the English King was jealous of the French King, and the disorderly and
violent soldiers of the two nations were jealous of one another; consequently,
the two Kings could not at first agree, even upon a joint assault on Acre; but
when they did make up their quarrel for that purpose, the Saracens promised to
yield the town, to give up to the Christians the wood of the Holy Cross, to set
at liberty all their Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces
of gold. All this was to be done within forty days; but, not being done, King
Richard ordered some three thousand Saracen prisoners to be brought out in the
front of his camp, and there, in full view of their own countrymen, to be
butchered.
The French King had no
part in this crime; for he was by that time travelling homeward with the
greater part of his men; being offended by the overbearing conduct of the
English King; being anxious to look after his own dominions; and being ill,
besides, from the unwholesome air of that hot and sandy country. King Richard
carried on the war without him; and remained in the East, meeting with a
variety of adventures, nearly a year and a half. Every night when his army was
on the march, and came to a halt, the heralds cried out three times, to remind
all the soldiers of the cause in which they were engaged, ’Save the Holy
Sepulchre!’ and then all the soldiers knelt and said ’Amen!’ Marching or
encamping, the army had continually to strive with the hot air of the glaring
desert, or with the Saracen soldiers animated and directed by the brave
Saladin, or with both together. Sickness and death, battle and wounds, were
always among them; but through every difficulty King Richard fought like a
giant, and worked like a common labourer. Long and long after he was quiet in
his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel
in its mighty head, was a legend among the Saracens; and when all the Saracen
and Christian hosts had been dust for many a year, if a Saracen horse started
at any object by the wayside, his rider would exclaim, ’What dost thou fear,
Fool? Dost thou think King Richard is behind it?’
No one admired this
King’s renown for bravery more than Saladin himself, who was a generous and
gallant enemy. When Richard lay ill of a fever, Saladin sent him fresh fruits
from Damascus, and snow from the mountain-tops. Courtly messages and compliments
were frequently exchanged between them--and then King Richard would mount his
horse and kill as many Saracens as he could; and Saladin would mount his, and
kill as many Christians as he could. In this way King Richard fought to his
heart’s content at Arsoof and at Jaffa; and finding himself with nothing
exciting to do at Ascalon, except to rebuild, for his own defence, some
fortifications there which the Saracens had destroyed, he kicked his ally the
Duke of Austria, for being too proud to work at them.
The army at last came
within sight of the Holy City of Jerusalem; but, being then a mere nest of
jealousy, and quarrelling and fighting, soon retired, and agreed with the
Saracens upon a truce for three years, three months, three days, and three hours.
Then, the English Christians, protected by the noble Saladin from Saracen
revenge, visited Our Saviour’s tomb; and then King Richard embarked with a
small force at Acre to return home.
But he was shipwrecked
in the Adriatic Sea, and was fain to pass through Germany, under an assumed
name. Now, there were many people in Germany who had served in the Holy Land
under that proud Duke of Austria who had been kicked; and some of them, easily
recognising a man so remarkable as King Richard, carried their intelligence to
the kicked Duke, who straightway took him prisoner at a little inn near Vienna.
The Duke’s master the
Emperor of Germany, and the King of France, were equally delighted to have so
troublesome a monarch in safe keeping. Friendships which are founded on a
partnership in doing wrong, are never true; and the King of France was now
quite as heartily King Richard’s foe, as he had ever been his friend in his
unnatural conduct to his father. He monstrously pretended that King Richard had
designed to poison him in the East; he charged him with having murdered, there,
a man whom he had in truth befriended; he bribed the Emperor of Germany to keep
him close prisoner; and, finally, through the plotting of these two princes,
Richard was brought before the German legislature, charged with the foregoing
crimes, and many others. But he defended himself so well, that many of the
assembly were moved to tears by his eloquence and earnestness. It was decided
that he should be treated, during the rest of his captivity, in a manner more
becoming his dignity than he had been, and that he should be set free on the
payment of a heavy ransom. This ransom the English people willingly raised.
When Queen Eleanor took it over to Germany, it was at first evaded and refused.
But she appealed to the honour of all the princes of the German Empire in
behalf of her son, and appealed so well that it was accepted, and the King
released. Thereupon, the King of France wrote to Prince John--’Take care of
thyself. The devil is unchained!’
Prince John had reason
to fear his brother, for he had been a traitor to him in his captivity. He had
secretly joined the French King; had vowed to the English nobles and people
that his brother was dead; and had vainly tried to seize the crown. He was now
in France, at a place called Evreux. Being the meanest and basest of men, he
contrived a mean and base expedient for making himself acceptable to his
brother. He invited the French officers of the garrison in that town to dinner,
murdered them all, and then took the fortress. With this recommendation to the
good will of a lion-hearted monarch, he hastened to King Richard, fell on his
knees before him, and obtained the intercession of Queen Eleanor. ’I forgive
him,’ said the King, ’and I hope I may forget the injury he has done me, as
easily as I know he will forget my pardon.’
While King Richard was
in Sicily, there had been trouble in his dominions at home: one of the bishops
whom he had left in charge thereof, arresting the other; and making, in his
pride and ambition, as great a show as if he were King himself. But the King
hearing of it at Messina, and appointing a new Regency, this LONGCHAMP (for
that was his name) had fled to France in a woman’s dress, and had there been
encouraged and supported by the French King. With all these causes of offence
against Philip in his mind, King Richard had no sooner been welcomed home by
his enthusiastic subjects with great display and splendour, and had no sooner
been crowned afresh at Winchester, than he resolved to show the French King
that the Devil was unchained indeed, and made war against him with great fury.
There was fresh trouble
at home about this time, arising out of the discontents of the poor people, who
complained that they were far more heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a
spirited champion in WILLIAM FITZ-OSBERT, called LONGBEARD. He became the
leader of a secret society, comprising fifty thousand men; he was seized by
surprise; he stabbed the citizen who first laid hands upon him; and retreated,
bravely fighting, to a church, which he maintained four days, until he was
dislodged by fire, and run through the body as he came out. He was not killed,
though; for he was dragged, half dead, at the tail of a horse to Smithfield,
and there hanged. Death was long a favourite remedy for silencing the people’s
advocates; but as we go on with this history, I fancy we shall find them
difficult to make an end of, for all that.
The French war, delayed
occasionally by a truce, was still in progress when a certain Lord named
VIDOMAR, Viscount of Limoges, chanced to find in his ground a treasure of
ancient coins. As the King’s vassal, he sent the King half of it; but the King
claimed the whole. The lord refused to yield the whole. The King besieged the lord
in his castle, swore that he would take the castle by storm, and hang every man
of its defenders on the battlements.
There was a strange old
song in that part of the country, to the effect that in Limoges an arrow would
be made by which King Richard would die. It may be that BERTRAND DE GOURDON, a
young man who was one of the defenders of the castle, had often sung it or
heard it sung of a winter night, and remembered it when he saw, from his post
upon the ramparts, the King attended only by his chief officer riding below the
walls surveying the place. He drew an arrow to the head, took steady aim, said
between his teeth, ’Now I pray God speed thee well, arrow!’ discharged it, and
struck the King in the left shoulder.
Although the wound was
not at first considered dangerous, it was severe enough to cause the King to
retire to his tent, and direct the assault to be made without him. The castle
was taken; and every man of its defenders was hanged, as the King had sworn all
should be, except Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved until the royal
pleasure respecting him should be known.
By that time unskilful
treatment had made the wound mortal and the King knew that he was dying. He
directed Bertrand to be brought into his tent. The young man was brought there,
heavily chained, King Richard looked at him steadily. He looked, as steadily,
at the King.
’Knave!’ said King
Richard. ’What have I done to thee that thou shouldest take my life?’
’What hast thou done to
me?’ replied the young man. ’With thine own hands thou hast killed my father
and my two brothers. Myself thou wouldest have hanged. Let me die now, by any
torture that thou wilt. My comfort is, that no torture can save Thee. Thou too
must die; and, through me, the world is quit of thee!’
Again the King looked
at the young man steadily. Again the young man looked steadily at him. Perhaps
some remembrance of his generous enemy Saladin, who was not a Christian, came
into the mind of the dying King.
’Youth!’ he said, ’I
forgive thee. Go unhurt!’ Then, turning to the chief officer who had been
riding in his company when he received the wound, King Richard said:
’Take off his chains,
give him a hundred shillings, and let him depart.’
He sunk down on his
couch, and a dark mist seemed in his weakened eyes to fill the tent wherein he
had so often rested, and he died. His age was forty-two; he had reigned ten
years. His last command was not obeyed; for the chief officer flayed Bertrand
de Gourdon alive, and hanged him.
There is an old tune
yet known--a sorrowful air will sometimes outlive many generations of strong
men, and even last longer than battle-axes with twenty pounds of steel in the
head--by which this King is said to have been discovered in his captivity.
BLONDEL, a favourite Minstrel of King Richard, as the story relates, faithfully
seeking his Royal master, went singing it outside the gloomy walls of many
foreign fortresses and prisons; until at last he heard it echoed from within a
dungeon, and knew the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, ’O Richard, O my King!’
You may believe it, if you like; it would be easy to believe worse things.
Richard was himself a Minstrel and a Poet. If he had not been a Prince too, he
might have been a better man perhaps, and might have gone out of the world with
less bloodshed and waste of life to answer for.
AT two-and-thirty years
of age, JOHN became King of England. His pretty little nephew ARTHUR had the
best claim to the throne; but John seized the treasure, and made fine promises
to the nobility, and got himself crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after
his brother Richard’s death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been
put upon the head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if England
had been searched from end to end to find him out.
The French King,
Philip, refused to acknowledge the right of John to his new dignity, and
declared in favour of Arthur. You must not suppose that he had any generosity
of feeling for the fatherless boy; it merely suited his ambitious schemes to
oppose the King of England. So John and the French King went to war about
Arthur.
He was a handsome boy,
at that time only twelve years old. He was not born when his father, Geoffrey,
had his brains trampled out at the tournament; and, besides the misfortune of
never having known a father’s guidance and protection, he had the additional
misfortune to have a foolish mother (CONSTANCE by name), lately married to her
third husband. She took Arthur, upon John’s accession, to the French King, who
pretended to be very much his friend, and who made him a Knight, and promised
him his daughter in marriage; but, who cared so little about him in reality,
that finding it his interest to make peace with King John for a time, he did so
without the least consideration for the poor little Prince, and heartlessly
sacrificed all his interests.
Young Arthur, for two
years afterwards, lived quietly; and in the course of that time his mother
died. But, the French King then finding it his interest to quarrel with King
John again, again made Arthur his pretence, and invited the orphan boy to
court. ’You know your rights, Prince,’ said the French King, ’and you would
like to be a King. Is it not so?’ ’Truly,’ said Prince Arthur, ’I should
greatly like to be a King!’ ’Then,’ said Philip, ’you shall have two hundred
gentlemen who are Knights of mine, and with them you shall go to win back the
provinces belonging to you, of which your uncle, the usurping King of England,
has taken possession. I myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in
Normandy.’ Poor Arthur was so flattered and so grateful that he signed a treaty
with the crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his superior Lord, and
that the French King should keep for himself whatever he could take from King
John.
Now, King John was so
bad in all ways, and King Philip was so perfidious, that Arthur, between the
two, might as well have been a lamb between a fox and a wolf. But, being so
young, he was ardent and flushed with hope; and, when the people of Brittany
(which was his inheritance) sent him five hundred more knights and five
thousand foot soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. The people of
Brittany had been fond of him from his birth, and had requested that he might
be called Arthur, in remembrance of that dimly-famous English Arthur, of whom I
told you early in this book, whom they believed to have been the brave friend
and companion of an old King of their own. They had tales among them about a
prophet called MERLIN (of the same old time), who had foretold that their own
King should be restored to them after hundreds of years; and they believed that
the prophecy would be fulfilled in Arthur; that the time would come when he
would rule them with a crown of Brittany upon his head; and when neither King
of France nor King of England would have any power over them. When Arthur found
himself riding in a glittering suit of armour on a richly caparisoned horse, at
the head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began to believe this too,
and to consider old Merlin a very superior prophet.
He did not know--how
could he, being so innocent and inexperienced?--that his little army was a mere
nothing against the power of the King of England. The French King knew it; but
the poor boy’s fate was little to him, so that the King of England was worried
and distressed. Therefore, King Philip went his way into Normandy and Prince
Arthur went his way towards Mirebeau, a French town near Poictiers, both very
well pleased.
Prince Arthur went to
attack the town of Mirebeau, because his grandmother Eleanor, who has so often
made her appearance in this history (and who had always been his mother’s
enemy), was living there, and because his Knights said, ’Prince, if you can
take her prisoner, you will be able to bring the King your uncle to terms!’ But
she was not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this time--eighty--but
she was as full of stratagem as she was full of years and wickedness. Receiving
intelligence of young Arthur’s approach, she shut herself up in a high tower,
and encouraged her soldiers to defend it like men. Prince Arthur with his
little army besieged the high tower. King John, hearing how matters stood, came
up to the rescue, with HIS army. So here was a strange family-party! The
boy-Prince besieging his grandmother, and his uncle besieging him!
This position of
affairs did not last long. One summer night King John, by treachery, got his
men into the town, surprised Prince Arthur’s force, took two hundred of his
knights, and seized the Prince himself in his bed. The Knights were put in
heavy irons, and driven away in open carts drawn by bullocks, to various
dungeons where they were most inhumanly treated, and where some of them were
starved to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the castle of Falaise.
One day, while he was
in prison at that castle, mournfully thinking it strange that one so young
should be in so much trouble, and looking out of the small window in the deep
dark wall, at the summer sky and the birds, the door was softly opened, and he
saw his uncle the King standing in the shadow of the archway, looking very
grim.
’Arthur,’ said the
King, with his wicked eyes more on the stone floor than on his nephew, ’will
you not trust to the gentleness, the friendship, and the truthfulness of your
loving uncle?’
’I will tell my loving
uncle that,’ replied the boy, ’when he does me right. Let him restore to me my
kingdom of England, and then come to me and ask the question.’
The King looked at him
and went out. ’Keep that boy close prisoner,’ said he to the warden of the
castle.
Then, the King took
secret counsel with the worst of his nobles how the Prince was to be got rid
of. Some said, ’Put out his eyes and keep him in prison, as Robort of Normandy
was kept.’ Others said, ’Have him stabbed.’ Others, ’Have him hanged.’ Others, ’Have
him poisoned.’
King John, feeling that
in any case, whatever was done afterwards, it would be a satisfaction to his
mind to have those handsome eyes burnt out that had looked at him so proudly
while his own royal eyes were blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians
to Falaise to blind the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically
entreated them, and shed such piteous tears, and so appealed to HUBERT DE BOURG
(or BURGH), the warden of the castle, who had a love for him, and was an
honourable, tender man, that Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honour he
prevented the torture from being performed, and, at his own risk, sent the
savages away.
The chafed and
disappointed King bethought himself of the stabbing suggestion next, and, with
his shuffling manner and his cruel face, proposed it to one William de Bray. ’I
am a gentleman and not an executioner,’ said William de Bray, and left the
presence with disdain.
But it was not
difficult for a King to hire a murderer in those days. King John found one for
his money, and sent him down to the castle of Falaise. ’On what errand dost
thou come?’ said Hubert to this fellow. ’To despatch young Arthur,’ he
returned. ’Go back to him who sent thee,’ answered Hubert, ’and say that I will
do it!’
King John very well
knowing that Hubert would never do it, but that he courageously sent this reply
to save the Prince or gain time, despatched messengers to convey the young
prisoner to the castle of Rouen.
Arthur was soon forced
from the good Hubert--of whom he had never stood in greater need than
then--carried away by night, and lodged in his new prison: where, through his
grated window, he could hear the deep waters of the river Seine, rippling
against the stone wall below.
One dark night, as he
lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps of rescue by those unfortunate gentlemen who
were obscurely suffering and dying in his cause, he was roused, and bidden by
his jailer to come down the staircase to the foot of the tower. He hurriedly
dressed himself and obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the winding stairs,
and the night air from the river blew upon their faces, the jailer trod upon
his torch and put it out. Then, Arthur, in the darkness, was hurriedly drawn
into a solitary boat. And in that boat, he found his uncle and one other man.
He knelt to them, and
prayed them not to murder him. Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed him and
sunk his body in the river with heavy stones. When the spring-morning broke,
the tower-door was closed, the boat was gone, the river sparkled on its way,
and never more was any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes.
The news of this
atrocious murder being spread in England, awakened a hatred of the King
(already odious for his many vices, and for his having stolen away and married
a noble lady while his own wife was living) that never slept again through his
whole reign. In Brittany, the indignation was intense. Arthur’s own sister
ELEANOR was in the power of John and shut up in a convent at Bristol, but his
half-sister ALICE was in Brittany. The people chose her, and the murdered
prince’s father-in-law, the last husband of Constance, to represent them; and
carried their fiery complaints to King Philip. King Philip summoned King John
(as the holder of territory in France) to come before him and defend himself.
King John refusing to appear, King Philip declared him false, perjured, and
guilty; and again made war. In a little time, by conquering the greater part of
his French territory, King Philip deprived him of one-third of his dominions.
And, through all the fighting that took place, King John was always found,
either to be eating and drinking, like a gluttonous fool, when the danger was
at a distance, or to be running away, like a beaten cur, when it was near.
You might suppose that
when he was losing his dominions at this rate, and when his own nobles cared so
little for him or his cause that they plainly refused to follow his banner out
of England, he had enemies enough. But he made another enemy of the Pope, which
he did in this way.
The Archbishop of
Canterbury dying, and the junior monks of that place wishing to get the start
of the senior monks in the appointment of his successor, met together at
midnight, secretly elected a certain REGINALD, and sent him off to Rome to get
the Pope’s approval. The senior monks and the King soon finding this out, and
being very angry about it, the junior monks gave way, and all the monks
together elected the Bishop of Norwich, who was the King’s favourite. The Pope,
hearing the whole story, declared that neither election would do for him, and
that HE elected STEPHEN LANGTON. The monks submitting to the Pope, the King
turned them all out bodily, and banished them as traitors. The Pope sent three
bishops to the King, to threaten him with an Interdict. The King told the
bishops that if any Interdict were laid upon his kingdom, he would tear out the
eyes and cut off the noses of all the monks he could lay hold of, and send them
over to Rome in that undecorated state as a present for their master. The bishops,
nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled.
After it had lasted a
year, the Pope proceeded to his next step; which was Excommunication. King John
was declared excommunicated, with all the usual ceremonies. The King was so
incensed at this, and was made so desperate by the disaffection of his Barons
and the hatred of his people, that it is said he even privately sent
ambassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to renounce his religion and hold
his kingdom of them if they would help him. It is related that the ambassadors
were admitted to the presence of the Turkish Emir through long lines of Moorish
guards, and that they found the Emir with his eyes seriously fixed on the pages
of a large book, from which he never once looked up. That they gave him a
letter from the King containing his proposals, and were gravely dismissed. That
presently the Emir sent for one of them, and conjured him, by his faith in his
religion, to say what kind of man the King of England truly was? That the
ambassador, thus pressed, replied that the King of England was a false tyrant,
against whom his own subjects would soon rise. And that this was quite enough
for the Emir.
Money being, in his
position, the next best thing to men, King John spared no means of getting it.
He set on foot another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was
quite in his way), and invented a new punishment for one wealthy Jew of
Bristol. Until such time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of
money, the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, and, every day, to have one
tooth violently wrenched out of his head--beginning with the double teeth. For
seven days, the oppressed man bore the daily pain and lost the daily tooth;
but, on the eighth, he paid the money. With the treasure raised in such ways,
the King made an expedition into Ireland, where some English nobles had
revolted. It was one of the very few places from which he did not run away;
because no resistance was shown. He made another expedition into Wales--whence
he DID run away in the end: but not before he had got from the Welsh people, as
hostages, twenty-seven young men of the best families; every one of whom he
caused to be slain in the following year.
To Interdict and
Excommunication, the Pope now added his last sentence; Deposition. He
proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all his subjects from their
allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others to the King of France to tell
him that, if he would invade England, he should be forgiven all his sins--at
least, should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do.
As there was nothing
that King Philip desired more than to invade England, he collected a great army
at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen hundred ships to bring them over. But the
English people, however bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to
suffer invasion quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English standard was,
in such great numbers to enrol themselves as defenders of their native land,
that there were not provisions for them, and the King could only select and
retain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his own reasons
for objecting to either King John or King Philip being too powerful,
interfered. He entrusted a legate, whose name was PANDOLF, with the easy task
of frightening King John. He sent him to the English Camp, from France, to
terrify him with exaggerations of King Philip’s power, and his own weakness in
the discontent of the English Barons and people. Pandolf discharged his
commission so well, that King John, in a wretched panic, consented to
acknowledge Stephen Langton; to resign his kingdom ’to God, Saint Peter, and
Saint Paul’--which meant the Pope; and to hold it, ever afterwards, by the Pope’s
leave, on payment of an annual sum of money. To this shameful contract he
publicly bound himself in the church of the Knights Templars at Dover: where he
laid at the legate’s feet a part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily
trampled upon. But they DO say, that this was merely a genteel flourish, and
that he was afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket it.
There was an
unfortunate prophet, the name of Peter, who had greatly increased King John’s
terrors by predicting that he would be unknighted (which the King supposed to
signify that he would die) before the Feast of the Ascension should be past.
That was the day after this humiliation. When the next morning came, and the
King, who had been trembling all night, found himself alive and safe, he ordered
the prophet--and his son too--to be dragged through the streets at the tails of
horses, and then hanged, for having frightened him.
As King John had now
submitted, the Pope, to King Philip’s great astonishment, took him under his
protection, and informed King Philip that he found he could not give him leave
to invade England. The angry Philip resolved to do it without his leave but he
gained nothing and lost much; for, the English, commanded by the Earl of
Salisbury, went over, in five hundred ships, to the French coast, before the
French fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly defeated the whole.
The Pope then took off
his three sentences, one after another, and empowered Stephen Langton publicly
to receive King John into the favour of the Church again, and to ask him to
dinner. The King, who hated Langton with all his might and main--and with
reason too, for he was a great and a good man, with whom such a King could have
no sympathy--pretended to cry and to be VERY grateful. There was a little
difficulty about settling how much the King should pay as a recompense to the
clergy for the losses he had caused them; but, the end of it was, that the
superior clergy got a good deal, and the inferior clergy got little or
nothing--which has also happened since King John’s time, I believe.
When all these matters
were arranged, the King in his triumph became more fierce, and false, and
insolent to all around him than he had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns
against King Philip, gave him an opportunity of landing an army in France; with
which he even took a town! But, on the French King’s gaining a great victory,
he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five years.
And now the time
approached when he was to be still further humbled, and made to feel, if he
could feel anything, what a wretched creature he was. Of all men in the world,
Stephen Langton seemed raised up by Heaven to oppose and subdue him. When he
ruthlessly burnt and destroyed the property of his own subjects, because their
Lords, the Barons, would not serve him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly
reproved and threatened him. When he swore to restore the laws of King Edward,
or the laws of King Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and
pursued him through all his evasions. When the Barons met at the abbey of Saint
Edmund’s-Bury, to consider their wrongs and the King’s oppressions, Stephen
Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn charter of rights
and liberties from their perjured master, and to swear, one by one, on the High
Altar, that they would have it, or would wage war against him to the death.
When the King hid himself in London from the Barons, and was at last obliged to
receive them, they told him roundly they would not believe him unless Stephen Langton
became a surety that he would keep his word. When he took the Cross to invest
himself with some interest, and belong to something that was received with
favour, Stephen Langton was still immovable. When he appealed to the Pope, and
the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new favourite, Stephen
Langton was deaf, even to the Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but the
welfare of England and the crimes of the English King.
At Easter-time, the
Barons assembled at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, in proud array, and, marching
near to Oxford where the King was, delivered into the hands of Stephen Langton
and two others, a list of grievances. ’And these,’ they said, ’he must redress,
or we will do it for ourselves!’ When Stephen Langton told the King as much,
and read the list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did him no more
good than his afterwards trying to pacify the Barons with lies. They called
themselves and their followers, ’The army of God and the Holy Church.’ Marching
through the country, with the people thronging to them everywhere (except at
Northampton, where they failed in an attack upon the castle), they at last
triumphantly set up their banner in London itself, whither the whole land,
tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to join them. Seven knights alone, of all
the knights in England, remained with the King; who, reduced to this strait, at
last sent the Earl of Pembroke to the Barons to say that he approved of
everything, and would meet them to sign their charter when they would. ’Then,’
said the Barons, ’let the day be the fifteenth of June, and the place,
Runny-Mead.’
On Monday, the
fifteenth of June, one thousand two hundred and fourteen, the King came from
Windsor Castle, and the Barons came from the town of Staines, and they met on
Runny-Mead, which is still a pleasant meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow
in the clear water of the winding river, and its banks are green with grass and
trees. On the side of the Barons, came the General of their army, ROBERT FITZ-WALTER,
and a great concourse of the nobility of England. With the King, came, in all,
some four-and-twenty persons of any note, most of whom despised him, and were
merely his advisers in form. On that great day, and in that great company, the
King signed MAGNA CHARTA--the great charter of England--by which he pledged
himself to maintain the Church in its rights; to relieve the Barons of
oppressive obligations as vassals of the Crown--of which the Barons, in their
turn, pledged themselves to relieve THEIR vassals, the people; to respect the
liberties of London and all other cities and boroughs; to protect foreign
merchants who came to England; to imprison no man without a fair trial; and to
sell, delay, or deny justice to none. As the Barons knew his falsehood well,
they further required, as their securities, that he should send out of his
kingdom all his foreign troops; that for two months they should hold possession
of the city of London, and Stephen Langton of the Tower; and that
five-and-twenty of their body, chosen by themselves, should be a lawful
committee to watch the keeping of the charter, and to make war upon him if he
broke it.
All this he was obliged
to yield. He signed the charter with a smile, and, if he could have looked
agreeable, would have done so, as he departed from the splendid assembly. When
he got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a madman in his helpless fury. And
he broke the charter immediately afterwards.
He sent abroad for
foreign soldiers, and sent to the Pope for help, and plotted to take London by
surprise, while the Barons should be holding a great tournament at Stamford,
which they had agreed to hold there as a celebration of the charter. The
Barons, however, found him out and put it off. Then, when the Barons desired to
see him and tax him with his treachery, he made numbers of appointments with
them, and kept none, and shifted from place to place, and was constantly
sneaking and skulking about. At last he appeared at Dover, to join his foreign
soldiers, of whom numbers came into his pay; and with them he besieged and took
Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights and soldiers of the Barons. He
would have hanged them every one; but the leader of the foreign soldiers,
fearful of what the English people might afterwards do to him, interfered to
save the knights; therefore the King was fain to satisfy his vengeance with the
death of all the common men. Then, he sent the Earl of Salisbury, with one
portion of his army, to ravage the eastern part of his own dominions, while he
carried fire and slaughter into the northern part; torturing, plundering,
killing, and inflicting every possible cruelty upon the people; and, every
morning, setting a worthy example to his men by setting fire, with his own
monster-hands, to the house where he had slept last night. Nor was this all;
for the Pope, coming to the aid of his precious friend, laid the kingdom under
an Interdict again, because the people took part with the Barons. It did not
much matter, for the people had grown so used to it now, that they had begun to
think nothing about it. It occurred to them--perhaps to Stephen Langton
too--that they could keep their churches open, and ring their bells, without
the Pope’s permission as well as with it. So, they tried the experiment--and
found that it succeeded perfectly.
It being now impossible
to bear the country, as a wilderness of cruelty, or longer to hold any terms
with such a forsworn outlaw of a King, the Barons sent to Louis, son of the
French monarch, to offer him the English crown. Caring as little for the Pope’s
excommunication of him if he accepted the offer, as it is possible his father
may have cared for the Pope’s forgiveness of his sins, he landed at Sandwich
(King John immediately running away from Dover, where he happened to be), and
went on to London. The Scottish King, with whom many of the Northern English
Lords had taken refuge; numbers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the Barons,
and numbers of the people went over to him every day;--King John, the while,
continually running away in all directions.
The career of Louis was
checked however, by the suspicions of the Barons, founded on the dying
declaration of a French Lord, that when the kingdom was conquered he was sworn
to banish them as traitors, and to give their estates to some of his own
Nobles. Rather than suffer this, some of the Barons hesitated: others even went
over to King John.
It seemed to be the
turning-point of King John’s fortunes, for, in his savage and murderous course,
he had now taken some towns and met with some successes. But, happily for
England and humanity, his death was near. Crossing a dangerous quicksand,
called the Wash, not very far from Wisbeach, the tide came up and nearly
drowned his army. He and his soldiers escaped; but, looking back from the shore
when he was safe, he saw the roaring water sweep down in a torrent, overturn
the waggons, horses, and men, that carried his treasure, and engulf them in a
raging whirlpool from which nothing could be delivered.
Cursing, and swearing,
and gnawing his fingers, he went on to Swinestead Abbey, where the monks set
before him quantities of pears, and peaches, and new cider--some say poison
too, but there is very little reason to suppose so--of which he ate and drank
in an immoderate and beastly way. All night he lay ill of a burning fever, and
haunted with horrible fears. Next day, they put him in a horse-litter, and
carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed another night of pain and
horror. Next day, they carried him, with greater difficulty than on the day
before, to the castle of Newark upon Trent; and there, on the eighteenth of
October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the seventeenth of his vile
reign, was an end of this miserable brute.
IF any of the English
Barons remembered the murdered Arthur’s sister, Eleanor the fair maid of
Brittany, shut up in her convent at Bristol, none among them spoke of her now,
or maintained her right to the Crown. The dead Usurper’s eldest boy, HENRY by
name, was taken by the Earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the city of
Gloucester, and there crowned in great haste when he was only ten years old. As
the Crown itself had been lost with the King’s treasure in the raging water,
and as there was no time to make another, they put a circle of plain gold upon
his head instead. ’We have been the enemies of this child’s father,’ said Lord
Pembroke, a good and true gentleman, to the few Lords who were present, ’and he
merited our ill-will; but the child himself is innocent, and his youth demands
our friendship and protection.’ Those Lords felt tenderly towards the little
boy, remembering their own young children; and they bowed their heads, and
said, ’Long live King Henry the Third!’
Next, a great council
met at Bristol, revised Magna Charta, and made Lord Pembroke Regent or
Protector of England, as the King was too young to reign alone. The next thing
to be done, was to get rid of Prince Louis of France, and to win over those
English Barons who were still ranged under his banner. He was strong in many
parts of England, and in London itself; and he held, among other places, a
certain Castle called the Castle of Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To this
fortress, after some skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid siege.
Louis despatched an army of six hundred knights and twenty thousand soldiers to
relieve it. Lord Pembroke, who was not strong enough for such a force, retired
with all his men. The army of the French Prince, which had marched there with
fire and plunder, marched away with fire and plunder, and came, in a boastful
swaggering manner, to Lincoln. The town submitted; but the Castle in the town,
held by a brave widow lady, named NICHOLA DE CAMVILLE (whose property it was),
made such a sturdy resistance, that the French Count in command of the army of
the French Prince found it necessary to besiege this Castle. While he was thus
engaged, word was brought to him that Lord Pembroke, with four hundred knights,
two hundred and fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force both of horse and
foot, was marching towards him. ’What care I?’ said the French Count. ’The
Englishman is not so mad as to attack me and my great army in a walled town!’
But the Englishman did it for all that, and did it--not so madly but so wisely,
that he decoyed the great army into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and byways of
Lincoln, where its horse-soldiers could not ride in any strong body; and there
he made such havoc with them, that the whole force surrendered themselves
prisoners, except the Count; who said that he would never yield to any English
traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this victory, which the
English called, for a joke, the Fair of Lincoln, was the usual one in those times--the
common men were slain without any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen paid
ransom and went home.
The wife of Louis, the
fair BLANCHE OF CASTILE, dutifully equipped a fleet of eighty good ships, and
sent it over from France to her husband’s aid. An English fleet of forty ships,
some good and some bad, gallantly met them near the mouth of the Thames, and
took or sunk sixty-five in one fight. This great loss put an end to the French
Prince’s hopes. A treaty was made at Lambeth, in virtue of which the English
Barons who had remained attached to his cause returned to their allegiance, and
it was engaged on both sides that the Prince and all his troops should retire
peacefully to France. It was time to go; for war had made him so poor that he
was obliged to borrow money from the citizens of London to pay his expenses
home.
Lord Pembroke
afterwards applied himself to governing the country justly, and to healing the
quarrels and disturbances that had arisen among men in the days of the bad King
John. He caused Magna Charta to be still more improved, and so amended the
Forest Laws that a Peasant was no longer put to death for killing a stag in a
Royal Forest, but was only imprisoned. It would have been well for England if
it could have had so good a Protector many years longer, but that was not to
be. Within three years after the young King’s Coronation, Lord Pembroke died;
and you may see his tomb, at this day, in the old Temple Church in London.
The Protectorship was
now divided. PETER DE ROCHES, whom King John had made Bishop of Winchester, was
entrusted with the care of the person of the young sovereign; and the exercise
of the Royal authority was confided to EARL HUBERT DE BURGH. These two
personages had from the first no liking for each other, and soon became
enemies. When the young King was declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that
Hubert increased in power and favour, retired discontentedly, and went abroad.
For nearly ten years afterwards Hubert had full sway alone.
But ten years is a long
time to hold the favour of a King. This King, too, as he grew up, showed a
strong resemblance to his father, in feebleness, inconsistency, and
irresolution. The best that can be said of him is that he was not cruel. De
Roches coming home again, after ten years, and being a novelty, the King began
to favour him and to look coldly on Hubert. Wanting money besides, and having
made Hubert rich, he began to dislike Hubert. At last he was made to believe,
or pretended to believe, that Hubert had misappropriated some of the Royal
treasure; and ordered him to furnish an account of all he had done in his
administration. Besides which, the foolish charge was brought against Hubert
that he had made himself the King’s favourite by magic. Hubert very well
knowing that he could never defend himself against such nonsense, and that his
old enemy must be determined on his ruin, instead of answering the charges fled
to Merton Abbey. Then the King, in a violent passion, sent for the Mayor of
London, and said to the Mayor, ’Take twenty thousand citizens, and drag me
Hubert de Burgh out of that abbey, and bring him here.’ The Mayor posted off to
do it, but the Archbishop of Dublin (who was a friend of Hubert’s) warning the
King that an abbey was a sacred place, and that if he committed any violence
there, he must answer for it to the Church, the King changed his mind and
called the Mayor back, and declared that Hubert should have four months to
prepare his defence, and should be safe and free during that time.
Hubert, who relied upon
the King’s word, though I think he was old enough to have known better, came
out of Merton Abbey upon these conditions, and journeyed away to see his wife:
a Scottish Princess who was then at St. Edmund’s-Bury.
Almost as soon as he
had departed from the Sanctuary, his enemies persuaded the weak King to send
out one SIR GODFREY DE CRANCUMB, who commanded three hundred vagabonds called
the Black Band, with orders to seize him. They came up with him at a little
town in Essex, called Brentwood, when he was in bed. He leaped out of bed, got
out of the house, fled to the church, ran up to the altar, and laid his hand
upon the cross. Sir Godfrey and the Black Band, caring neither for church,
altar, nor cross, dragged him forth to the church door, with their drawn swords
flashing round his head, and sent for a Smith to rivet a set of chains upon
him. When the Smith (I wish I knew his name!) was brought, all dark and swarthy
with the smoke of his forge, and panting with the speed he had made; and the
Black Band, falling aside to show him the Prisoner, cried with a loud uproar, ’Make
the fetters heavy! make them strong!’ the Smith dropped upon his knee--but not
to the Black Band--and said, ’This is the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh, who
fought at Dover Castle, and destroyed the French fleet, and has done his
country much good service. You may kill me, if you like, but I will never make
a chain for Earl Hubert de Burgh!’
The Black Band never
blushed, or they might have blushed at this. They knocked the Smith about from
one to another, and swore at him, and tied the Earl on horseback, undressed as
he was, and carried him off to the Tower of London. The Bishops, however, were
so indignant at the violation of the Sanctuary of the Church, that the
frightened King soon ordered the Black Band to take him back again; at the same
time commanding the Sheriff of Essex to prevent his escaping out of Brentwood
Church. Well! the Sheriff dug a deep trench all round the church, and erected a
high fence, and watched the church night and day; the Black Band and their
Captain watched it too, like three hundred and one black wolves. For
thirty-nine days, Hubert de Burgh remained within. At length, upon the fortieth
day, cold and hunger were too much for him, and he gave himself up to the Black
Band, who carried him off, for the second time, to the Tower. When his trial
came on, he refused to plead; but at last it was arranged that he should give
up all the royal lands which had been bestowed upon him, and should be kept at
the Castle of Devizes, in what was called ’free prison,’ in charge of four
knights appointed by four lords. There, he remained almost a year, until,
learning that a follower of his old enemy the Bishop was made Keeper of the
Castle, and fearing that he might be killed by treachery, he climbed the
ramparts one dark night, dropped from the top of the high Castle wall into the
moat, and coming safely to the ground, took refuge in another church. From this
place he was delivered by a party of horse despatched to his help by some
nobles, who were by this time in revolt against the King, and assembled in
Wales. He was finally pardoned and restored to his estates, but he lived
privately, and never more aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a high
place in the King’s favour. And thus end--more happily than the stories of many
favourites of Kings--the adventures of Earl Hubert de Burgh.
The nobles, who had
risen in revolt, were stirred up to rebellion by the overbearing conduct of the
Bishop of Winchester, who, finding that the King secretly hated the Great
Charter which had been forced from his father, did his utmost to confirm him in
that dislike, and in the preference he showed to foreigners over the English.
Of this, and of his even publicly declaring that the Barons of England were
inferior to those of France, the English Lords complained with such bitterness,
that the King, finding them well supported by the clergy, became frightened for
his throne, and sent away the Bishop and all his foreign associates. On his
marriage, however, with ELEANOR, a French lady, the daughter of the Count of
Provence, he openly favoured the foreigners again; and so many of his wife’s
relations came over, and made such an immense family-party at court, and got so
many good things, and pocketed so much money, and were so high with the English
whose money they pocketed, that the bolder English Barons murmured openly about
a clause there was in the Great Charter, which provided for the banishment of
unreasonable favourites. But, the foreigners only laughed disdainfully, and
said, ’What are your English laws to us?’
King Philip of France
had died, and had been succeeded by Prince Louis, who had also died after a
short reign of three years, and had been succeeded by his son of the same
name--so moderate and just a man that he was not the least in the world like a
King, as Kings went. ISABELLA, King Henry’s mother, wished very much (for a
certain spite she had) that England should make war against this King; and, as
King Henry was a mere puppet in anybody’s hands who knew how to manage his
feebleness, she easily carried her point with him. But, the Parliament were
determined to give him no money for such a war. So, to defy the Parliament, he
packed up thirty large casks of silver--I don’t know how he got so much; I dare
say he screwed it out of the miserable Jews--and put them aboard ship, and went
away himself to carry war into France: accompanied by his mother and his
brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was rich and clever. But he only got
well beaten, and came home.
The good-humour of the
Parliament was not restored by this. They reproached the King with wasting the
public money to make greedy foreigners rich, and were so stern with him, and so
determined not to let him have more of it to waste if they could help it, that
he was at his wit’s end for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all he could
from his subjects, by excuses or by force, that the people used to say the King
was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took the Cross, thinking to get some
money by that means; but, as it was very well known that he never meant to go
on a crusade, he got none. In all this contention, the Londoners were
particularly keen against the King, and the King hated them warmly in return.
Hating or loving, however, made no difference; he continued in the same
condition for nine or ten years, when at last the Barons said that if he would
solemnly confirm their liberties afresh, the Parliament would vote him a large
sum.
As he readily
consented, there was a great meeting held in Westminster Hall, one pleasant day
in May, when all the clergy, dressed in their robes and holding every one of
them a burning candle in his hand, stood up (the Barons being also there) while
the Archbishop of Canterbury read the sentence of excommunication against any
man, and all men, who should henceforth, in any way, infringe the Great Charter
of the Kingdom. When he had done, they all put out their burning candles with a
curse upon the soul of any one, and every one, who should merit that sentence.
The King concluded with an oath to keep the Charter, ’As I am a man, as I am a
Christian, as I am a Knight, as I am a King!’
It was easy to make
oaths, and easy to break them; and the King did both, as his father had done
before him. He took to his old courses again when he was supplied with money,
and soon cured of their weakness the few who had ever really trusted him. When
his money was gone, and he was once more borrowing and begging everywhere with
a meanness worthy of his nature, he got into a difficulty with the Pope respecting
the Crown of Sicily, which the Pope said he had a right to give away, and which
he offered to King Henry for his second son, PRINCE EDMUND. But, if you or I
give away what we have not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it is likely
that the person to whom we give it, will have some trouble in taking it. It was
exactly so in this case. It was necessary to conquer the Sicilian Crown before
it could be put upon young Edmund’s head. It could not be conquered without
money. The Pope ordered the clergy to raise money. The clergy, however, were
not so obedient to him as usual; they had been disputing with him for some time
about his unjust preference of Italian Priests in England; and they had begun
to doubt whether the King’s chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for preaching
in seven hundred churches, could possibly be, even by the Pope’s favour, in
seven hundred places at once. ’The Pope and the King together,’ said the Bishop
of London, ’may take the mitre off my head; but, if they do, they will find that
I shall put on a soldier’s helmet. I pay nothing.’ The Bishop of Worcester was
as bold as the Bishop of London, and would pay nothing either. Such sums as the
more timid or more helpless of the clergy did raise were squandered away,
without doing any good to the King, or bringing the Sicilian Crown an inch
nearer to Prince Edmund’s head. The end of the business was, that the Pope gave
the Crown to the brother of the King of France (who conquered it for himself),
and sent the King of England in, a bill of one hundred thousand pounds for the
expenses of not having won it.
The King was now so
much distressed that we might almost pity him, if it were possible to pity a
King so shabby and ridiculous. His clever brother, Richard, had bought the
title of King of the Romans from the German people, and was no longer near him,
to help him with advice. The clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in alliance
with the Barons. The Barons were headed by SIMON DE MONTFORT, Earl of
Leicester, married to King Henry’s sister, and, though a foreigner himself, the
most popular man in England against the foreign favourites. When the King next
met his Parliament, the Barons, led by this Earl, came before him, armed from
head to foot, and cased in armour. When the Parliament again assembled, in a
month’s time, at Oxford, this Earl was at their head, and the King was obliged
to consent, on oath, to what was called a Committee of Government: consisting
of twenty-four members: twelve chosen by the Barons, and twelve chosen by
himself.
But, at a good time for
him, his brother Richard came back. Richard’s first act (the Barons would not
admit him into England on other terms) was to swear to be faithful to the
Committee of Government--which he immediately began to oppose with all his might.
Then, the Barons began to quarrel among themselves; especially the proud Earl
of Gloucester with the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in disgust. Then, the
people began to be dissatisfied with the Barons, because they did not do enough
for them. The King’s chances seemed so good again at length, that he took heart
enough--or caught it from his brother--to tell the Committee of Government that
he abolished them--as to his oath, never mind that, the Pope said!--and to
seize all the money in the Mint, and to shut himself up in the Tower of London.
Here he was joined by his eldest son, Prince Edward; and, from the Tower, he
made public a letter of the Pope’s to the world in general, informing all men
that he had been an excellent and just King for five-and-forty years.
As everybody knew he
had been nothing of the sort, nobody cared much for this document. It so
chanced that the proud Earl of Gloucester dying, was succeeded by his son; and
that his son, instead of being the enemy of the Earl of Leicester, was (for the
time) his friend. It fell out, therefore, that these two Earls joined their
forces, took several of the Royal Castles in the country, and advanced as hard
as they could on London. The London people, always opposed to the King,
declared for them with great joy. The King himself remained shut up, not at all
gloriously, in the Tower. Prince Edward made the best of his way to Windsor
Castle. His mother, the Queen, attempted to follow him by water; but, the
people seeing her barge rowing up the river, and hating her with all their
hearts, ran to London Bridge, got together a quantity of stones and mud, and
pelted the barge as it came through, crying furiously, ’Drown the Witch! Drown
her!’ They were so near doing it, that the Mayor took the old lady under his
protection, and shut her up in St. Paul’s until the danger was past.
It would require a
great deal of writing on my part, and a great deal of reading on yours, to
follow the King through his disputes with the Barons, and to follow the Barons through
their disputes with one another--so I will make short work of it for both of
us, and only relate the chief events that arose out of these quarrels. The good
King of France was asked to decide between them. He gave it as his opinion that
the King must maintain the Great Charter, and that the Barons must give up the
Committee of Government, and all the rest that had been done by the Parliament
at Oxford: which the Royalists, or King’s party, scornfully called the Mad
Parliament. The Barons declared that these were not fair terms, and they would
not accept them. Then they caused the great bell of St. Paul’s to be tolled,
for the purpose of rousing up the London people, who armed themselves at the
dismal sound and formed quite an army in the streets. I am sorry to say,
however, that instead of falling upon the King’s party with whom their quarrel
was, they fell upon the miserable Jews, and killed at least five hundred of
them. They pretended that some of these Jews were on the King’s side, and that
they kept hidden in their houses, for the destruction of the people, a certain
terrible composition called Greek Fire, which could not be put out with water,
but only burnt the fiercer for it. What they really did keep in their houses
was money; and this their cruel enemies wanted, and this their cruel enemies
took, like robbers and murderers.
The Earl of Leicester
put himself at the head of these Londoners and other forces, and followed the
King to Lewes in Sussex, where he lay encamped with his army. Before giving the
King’s forces battle here, the Earl addressed his soldiers, and said that King
Henry the Third had broken so many oaths, that he had become the enemy of God,
and therefore they would wear white crosses on their breasts, as if they were
arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian, but against a Turk. White-crossed
accordingly, they rushed into the fight. They would have lost the day--the King
having on his side all the foreigners in England: and, from Scotland, JOHN
COMYN, JOHN BALIOL, and ROBERT BRUCE, with all their men--but for the
impatience of PRINCE EDWARD, who, in his hot desire to have vengeance on the
people of London, threw the whole of his father’s army into confusion. He was
taken Prisoner; so was the King; so was the King’s brother the King of the
Romans; and five thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the bloody grass.
For this success, the
Pope excommunicated the Earl of Leicester: which neither the Earl nor the
people cared at all about. The people loved him and supported him, and he became
the real King; having all the power of the government in his own hands, though
he was outwardly respectful to King Henry the Third, whom he took with him
wherever he went, like a poor old limp court-card. He summoned a Parliament (in
the year one thousand two hundred and sixty-five) which was the first
Parliament in England that the people had any real share in electing; and he
grew more and more in favour with the people every day, and they stood by him
in whatever he did.
Many of the other
Barons, and particularly the Earl of Gloucester, who had become by this time as
proud as his father, grew jealous of this powerful and popular Earl, who was
proud too, and began to conspire against him. Since the battle of Lewes, Prince
Edward had been kept as a hostage, and, though he was otherwise treated like a
Prince, had never been allowed to go out without attendants appointed by the
Earl of Leicester, who watched him. The conspiring Lords found means to propose
to him, in secret, that they should assist him to escape, and should make him
their leader; to which he very heartily consented.
So, on a day that was
agreed upon, he said to his attendants after dinner (being then at Hereford), ’I
should like to ride on horseback, this fine afternoon, a little way into the
country.’ As they, too, thought it would be very pleasant to have a canter in
the sunshine, they all rode out of the town together in a gay little troop.
When they came to a fine level piece of turf, the Prince fell to comparing
their horses one with another, and offering bets that one was faster than
another; and the attendants, suspecting no harm, rode galloping matches until
their horses were quite tired. The Prince rode no matches himself, but looked
on from his saddle, and staked his money. Thus they passed the whole merry
afternoon. Now, the sun was setting, and they were all going slowly up a hill,
the Prince’s horse very fresh and all the other horses very weary, when a
strange rider mounted on a grey steed appeared at the top of the hill, and
waved his hat. ’What does the fellow mean?’ said the attendants one to another.
The Prince answered on the instant by setting spurs to his horse, dashing away
at his utmost speed, joining the man, riding into the midst of a little crowd
of horsemen who were then seen waiting under some trees, and who closed around
him; and so he departed in a cloud of dust, leaving the road empty of all but
the baffled attendants, who sat looking at one another, while their horses
drooped their ears and panted.
The Prince joined the
Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. The Earl of Leicester, with a part of the army
and the stupid old King, was at Hereford. One of the Earl of Leicester’s sons,
Simon de Montfort, with another part of the army, was in Sussex. To prevent
these two parts from uniting was the Prince’s first object. He attacked Simon
de Montfort by night, defeated him, seized his banners and treasure, and forced
him into Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, which belonged to his family.
His father, the Earl of
Leicester, in the meanwhile, not knowing what had happened, marched out of
Hereford, with his part of the army and the King, to meet him. He came, on a
bright morning in August, to Evesham, which is watered by the pleasant river
Avon. Looking rather anxiously across the prospect towards Kenilworth, he saw
his own banners advancing; and his face brightened with joy. But, it clouded
darkly when he presently perceived that the banners were captured, and in the
enemy’s hands; and he said, ’It is over. The Lord have mercy on our souls, for
our bodies are Prince Edward’s!’
He fought like a true
Knight, nevertheless. When his horse was killed under him, he fought on foot.
It was a fierce battle, and the dead lay in heaps everywhere. The old King,
stuck up in a suit of armour on a big war-horse, which didn’t mind him at all,
and which carried him into all sorts of places where he didn’t want to go, got
into everybody’s way, and very nearly got knocked on the head by one of his son’s
men. But he managed to pipe out, ’I am Harry of Winchester!’ and the Prince,
who heard him, seized his bridle, and took him out of peril. The Earl of
Leicester still fought bravely, until his best son Henry was killed, and the
bodies of his best friends choked his path; and then he fell, still fighting,
sword in hand. They mangled his body, and sent it as a present to a noble
lady--but a very unpleasant lady, I should think--who was the wife of his worst
enemy. They could not mangle his memory in the minds of the faithful people,
though. Many years afterwards, they loved him more than ever, and regarded him
as a Saint, and always spoke of him as ’Sir Simon the Righteous.’
And even though he was
dead, the cause for which he had fought still lived, and was strong, and forced
itself upon the King in the very hour of victory. Henry found himself obliged
to respect the Great Charter, however much he hated it, and to make laws
similar to the laws of the Great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate and
forgiving towards the people at last--even towards the people of London, who
had so long opposed him. There were more risings before all this was done, but
they were set at rest by these means, and Prince Edward did his best in all
things to restore peace. One Sir Adam de Gourdon was the last dissatisfied knight
in arms; but, the Prince vanquished him in single combat, in a wood, and nobly
gave him his life, and became his friend, instead of slaying him. Sir Adam was
not ungrateful. He ever afterwards remained devoted to his generous conqueror.
When the troubles of
the Kingdom were thus calmed, Prince Edward and his cousin Henry took the
Cross, and went away to the Holy Land, with many English Lords and Knights.
Four years afterwards the King of the Romans died, and, next year (one thousand
two hundred and seventy-two), his brother the weak King of England died. He was
sixty-eight years old then, and had reigned fifty-six years. He was as much of
a King in death, as he had ever been in life. He was the mere pale shadow of a
King at all times.
IT was now the year of
our Lord one thousand two hundred and seventy-two; and Prince Edward, the heir
to the throne, being away in the Holy Land, knew nothing of his father’s death.
The Barons, however, proclaimed him King, immediately after the Royal funeral;
and the people very willingly consented, since most men knew too well by this
time what the horrors of a contest for the crown were. So King Edward the
First, called, in a not very complimentary manner, LONGSHANKS, because of the
slenderness of his legs, was peacefully accepted by the English Nation.
His legs had need to be
strong, however long and thin they were; for they had to support him through
many difficulties on the fiery sands of Asia, where his small force of soldiers
fainted, died, deserted, and seemed to melt away. But his prowess made light of
it, and he said, ’I will go on, if I go on with no other follower than my
groom!’
A Prince of this spirit
gave the Turks a deal of trouble. He stormed Nazareth, at which place, of all
places on earth, I am sorry to relate, he made a frightful slaughter of
innocent people; and then he went to Acre, where he got a truce of ten years
from the Sultan. He had very nearly lost his life in Acre, through the
treachery of a Saracen Noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who, making the
pretence that he had some idea of turning Christian and wanted to know all
about that religion, sent a trusty messenger to Edward very often--with a
dagger in his sleeve. At last, one Friday in Whitsun week, when it was very
hot, and all the sandy prospect lay beneath the blazing sun, burnt up like a
great overdone biscuit, and Edward was lying on a couch, dressed for coolness
in only a loose robe, the messenger, with his chocolate-coloured face and his
bright dark eyes and white teeth, came creeping in with a letter, and kneeled
down like a tame tiger. But, the moment Edward stretched out his hand to take
the letter, the tiger made a spring at his heart. He was quick, but Edward was
quick too. He seized the traitor by his chocolate throat, threw him to the
ground, and slew him with the very dagger he had drawn. The weapon had struck
Edward in the arm, and although the wound itself was slight, it threatened to
be mortal, for the blade of the dagger had been smeared with poison. Thanks,
however, to a better surgeon than was often to be found in those times, and to
some wholesome herbs, and above all, to his faithful wife, ELEANOR, who
devotedly nursed him, and is said by some to have sucked the poison from the
wound with her own red lips (which I am very willing to believe), Edward soon
recovered and was sound again.
As the King his father
had sent entreaties to him to return home, he now began the journey. He had got
as far as Italy, when he met messengers who brought him intelligence of the
King’s death. Hearing that all was quiet at home, he made no haste to return to
his own dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in state through
various Italian Towns, where he was welcomed with acclamations as a mighty
champion of the Cross from the Holy Land, and where he received presents of
purple mantles and prancing horses, and went along in great triumph. The
shouting people little knew that he was the last English monarch who would ever
embark in a crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest which the
Christians had made in the Holy Land at the cost of so much blood, would be won
back by the Turks. But all this came to pass.
There was, and there
is, an old town standing in a plain in France, called Châlons. When the King
was coming towards this place on his way to England, a wily French Lord, called
the Count of Châlons, sent him a polite challenge to come with his knights and
hold a fair tournament with the Count and HIS knights, and make a day of it
with sword and lance. It was represented to the King that the Count of Châlons
was not to be trusted, and that, instead of a holiday fight for mere show and
in good humour, he secretly meant a real battle, in which the English should be
defeated by superior force.
The King, however,
nothing afraid, went to the appointed place on the appointed day with a
thousand followers. When the Count came with two thousand and attacked the
English in earnest, the English rushed at them with such valour that the Count’s
men and the Count’s horses soon began to be tumbled down all over the field.
The Count himself seized the King round the neck, but the King tumbled HIM out
of his saddle in return for the compliment, and, jumping from his own horse,
and standing over him, beat away at his iron armour like a blacksmith hammering
on his anvil. Even when the Count owned himself defeated and offered his sword,
the King would not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to a
common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight, that it was
afterwards called the little Battle of Châlons.
The English were very
well disposed to be proud of their King after these adventures; so, when he
landed at Dover in the year one thousand two hundred and seventy-four (being
then thirty-six years old), and went on to Westminster where he and his good
Queen were crowned with great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took place. For
the coronation-feast there were provided, among other eatables, four hundred
oxen, four hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs, eighteen wild boars,
three hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty thousand fowls. The fountains and
conduits in the street flowed with red and white wine instead of water; the
rich citizens hung silks and cloths of the brightest colours out of their
windows to increase the beauty of the show, and threw out gold and silver by
whole handfuls to make scrambles for the crowd. In short, there was such eating
and drinking, such music and capering, such a ringing of bells and tossing of
caps, such a shouting, and singing, and revelling, as the narrow overhanging
streets of old London City had not witnessed for many a long day. All the
people were merry except the poor Jews, who, trembling within their houses, and
scarcely daring to peep out, began to foresee that they would have to find the
money for this joviality sooner or later.
To dismiss this sad
subject of the Jews for the present, I am sorry to add that in this reign they
were most unmercifully pillaged. They were hanged in great numbers, on
accusations of having clipped the King’s coin--which all kinds of people had
done. They were heavily taxed; they were disgracefully badged; they were, on
one day, thirteen years after the coronation, taken up with their wives and
children and thrown into beastly prisons, until they purchased their release by
paying to the King twelve thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of property
belonging to them was seized by the King, except so little as would defray the
charge of their taking themselves away into foreign countries. Many years
elapsed before the hope of gain induced any of their race to return to England,
where they had been treated so heartlessly and had suffered so much.
If King Edward the
First had been as bad a king to Christians as he was to Jews, he would have
been bad indeed. But he was, in general, a wise and great monarch, under whom
the country much improved. He had no love for the Great Charter--few Kings had,
through many, many years--but he had high qualities. The first bold object
which he conceived when he came home, was, to unite under one Sovereign
England, Scotland, and Wales; the two last of which countries had each a little
king of its own, about whom the people were always quarrelling and fighting,
and making a prodigious disturbance--a great deal more than he was worth. In
the course of King Edward’s reign he was engaged, besides, in a war with
France. To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate their histories and
take them thus. Wales, first. France, second. Scotland, third.
LLEWELLYN was the
Prince of Wales. He had been on the side of the Barons in the reign of the
stupid old King, but had afterwards sworn allegiance to him. When King Edward
came to the throne, Llewellyn was required to swear allegiance to him also;
which he refused to do. The King, being crowned and in his own dominions, three
times more required Llewellyn to come and do homage; and three times more
Llewellyn said he would rather not. He was going to be married to ELEANOR DE
MONTFORT, a young lady of the family mentioned in the last reign; and it
chanced that this young lady, coming from France with her youngest brother,
EMERIC, was taken by an English ship, and was ordered by the English King to be
detained. Upon this, the quarrel came to a head. The King went, with his fleet,
to the coast of Wales, where, so encompassing Llewellyn, that he could only
take refuge in the bleak mountain region of Snowdon in which no provisions
could reach him, he was soon starved into an apology, and into a treaty of
peace, and into paying the expenses of the war. The King, however, forgave him
some of the hardest conditions of the treaty, and consented to his marriage.
And he now thought he had reduced Wales to obedience.
But the Welsh, although
they were naturally a gentle, quiet, pleasant people, who liked to receive
strangers in their cottages among the mountains, and to set before them with
free hospitality whatever they had to eat and drink, and to play to them on their
harps, and sing their native ballads to them, were a people of great spirit
when their blood was up. Englishmen, after this affair, began to be insolent in
Wales, and to assume the air of masters; and the Welsh pride could not bear it.
Moreover, they believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of whose unlucky old
prophecies somebody always seemed doomed to remember when there was a chance of
its doing harm; and just at this time some blind old gentleman with a harp and
a long white beard, who was an excellent person, but had become of an unknown
age and tedious, burst out with a declaration that Merlin had predicted that
when English money had become round, a Prince of Wales would be crowned in
London. Now, King Edward had recently forbidden the English penny to be cut
into halves and quarters for halfpence and farthings, and had actually
introduced a round coin; therefore, the Welsh people said this was the time
Merlin meant, and rose accordingly.
King Edward had bought
over PRINCE DAVID, Llewellyn’s brother, by heaping favours upon him; but he was
the first to revolt, being perhaps troubled in his conscience. One stormy
night, he surprised the Castle of Hawarden, in possession of which an English
nobleman had been left; killed the whole garrison, and carried off the nobleman
a prisoner to Snowdon. Upon this, the Welsh people rose like one man. King
Edward, with his army, marching from Worcester to the Menai Strait, crossed
it--near to where the wonderful tubular iron bridge now, in days so different,
makes a passage for railway trains--by a bridge of boats that enabled forty men
to march abreast. He subdued the Island of Anglesea, and sent his men forward
to observe the enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh created a panic among
them, and they fell back to the bridge. The tide had in the meantime risen and
separated the boats; the Welsh pursuing them, they were driven into the sea,
and there they sunk, in their heavy iron armour, by thousands. After this
victory Llewellyn, helped by the severe winter-weather of Wales, gained another
battle; but the King ordering a portion of his English army to advance through
South Wales, and catch him between two foes, and Llewellyn bravely turning to
meet this new enemy, he was surprised and killed--very meanly, for he was
unarmed and defenceless. His head was struck off and sent to London, where it
was fixed upon the Tower, encircled with a wreath, some say of ivy, some say of
willow, some say of silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin in ridicule of
the prediction.
David, however, still
held out for six months, though eagerly sought after by the King, and hunted by
his own countrymen. One of them finally betrayed him with his wife and
children. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and from that time
this became the established punishment of Traitors in England--a punishment
wholly without excuse, as being revolting, vile, and cruel, after its object is
dead; and which has no sense in it, as its only real degradation (and that
nothing can blot out) is to the country that permits on any consideration such
abominable barbarity.
Wales was now subdued.
The Queen giving birth to a young prince in the Castle of Carnarvon, the King
showed him to the Welsh people as their countryman, and called him Prince of
Wales; a title that has ever since been borne by the heir-apparent to the
English throne--which that little Prince soon became, by the death of his elder
brother. The King did better things for the Welsh than that, by improving their
laws and encouraging their trade. Disturbances still took place, chiefly
occasioned by the avarice and pride of the English Lords, on whom Welsh lands
and castles had been bestowed; but they were subdued, and the country never
rose again. There is a legend that to prevent the people from being incited to
rebellion by the songs of their bards and harpers, Edward had them all put to
death. Some of them may have fallen among other men who held out against the
King; but this general slaughter is, I think, a fancy of the harpers themselves,
who, I dare say, made a song about it many years afterwards, and sang it by the
Welsh firesides until it came to be believed.
The foreign war of the
reign of Edward the First arose in this way. The crews of two vessels, one a
Norman ship, and the other an English ship, happened to go to the same place in
their boats to fill their casks with fresh water. Being rough angry fellows,
they began to quarrel, and then to fight--the English with their fists; the
Normans with their knives--and, in the fight, a Norman was killed. The Norman
crew, instead of revenging themselves upon those English sailors with whom they
had quarrelled (who were too strong for them, I suspect), took to their ship
again in a great rage, attacked the first English ship they met, laid hold of
an unoffending merchant who happened to be on board, and brutally hanged him in
the rigging of their own vessel with a dog at his feet. This so enraged the
English sailors that there was no restraining them; and whenever, and wherever,
English sailors met Norman sailors, they fell upon each other tooth and nail.
The Irish and Dutch sailors took part with the English; the French and Genoese
sailors helped the Normans; and thus the greater part of the mariners sailing
over the sea became, in their way, as violent and raging as the sea itself when
it is disturbed.
King Edward’s fame had
been so high abroad that he had been chosen to decide a difference between
France and another foreign power, and had lived upon the Continent three years.
At first, neither he nor the French King PHILIP (the good Louis had been dead
some time) interfered in these quarrels; but when a fleet of eighty English
ships engaged and utterly defeated a Norman fleet of two hundred, in a pitched
battle fought round a ship at anchor, in which no quarter was given, the matter
became too serious to be passed over. King Edward, as Duke of Guienne, was
summoned to present himself before the King of France, at Paris, and answer for
the damage done by his sailor subjects. At first, he sent the Bishop of London
as his representative, and then his brother EDMUND, who was married to the
French Queen’s mother. I am afraid Edmund was an easy man, and allowed himself
to be talked over by his charming relations, the French court ladies; at all
events, he was induced to give up his brother’s dukedom for forty days--as a
mere form, the French King said, to satisfy his honour--and he was so very much
astonished, when the time was out, to find that the French King had no idea of
giving it up again, that I should not wonder if it hastened his death: which
soon took place.
King Edward was a King
to win his foreign dukedom back again, if it could be won by energy and valour.
He raised a large army, renounced his allegiance as Duke of Guienne, and
crossed the sea to carry war into France. Before any important battle was
fought, however, a truce was agreed upon for two years; and in the course of
that time, the Pope effected a reconciliation. King Edward, who was now a
widower, having lost his affectionate and good wife, Eleanor, married the
French King’s sister, MARGARET; and the Prince of Wales was contracted to the
French King’s daughter ISABELLA.
Out of bad things, good
things sometimes arise. Out of this hanging of the innocent merchant, and the
bloodshed and strife it caused, there came to be established one of the
greatest powers that the English people now possess. The preparations for the
war being very expensive, and King Edward greatly wanting money, and being very
arbitrary in his ways of raising it, some of the Barons began firmly to oppose
him. Two of them, in particular, HUMPHREY BOHUN, Earl of Hereford, and ROGER
BIGOD, Earl of Norfolk, were so stout against him, that they maintained he had
no right to command them to head his forces in Guienne, and flatly refused to
go there. ’By Heaven, Sir Earl,’ said the King to the Earl of Hereford, in a
great passion, ’you shall either go or be hanged!’ ’By Heaven, Sir King,’
replied the Earl, ’I will neither go nor yet will I be hanged!’ and both he and
the other Earl sturdily left the court, attended by many Lords. The King tried
every means of raising money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of all the Pope
said to the contrary; and when they refused to pay, reduced them to submission,
by saying Very well, then they had no claim upon the government for protection,
and any man might plunder them who would--which a good many men were very ready
to do, and very readily did, and which the clergy found too losing a game to be
played at long. He seized all the wool and leather in the hands of the
merchants, promising to pay for it some fine day; and he set a tax upon the
exportation of wool, which was so unpopular among the traders that it was
called ’The evil toll.’ But all would not do. The Barons, led by those two
great Earls, declared any taxes imposed without the consent of Parliament,
unlawful; and the Parliament refused to impose taxes, until the King should
confirm afresh the two Great Charters, and should solemnly declare in writing,
that there was no power in the country to raise money from the people,
evermore, but the power of Parliament representing all ranks of the people. The
King was very unwilling to diminish his own power by allowing this great
privilege in the Parliament; but there was no help for it, and he at last
complied. We shall come to another King by-and-by, who might have saved his
head from rolling off, if he had profited by this example.
The people gained other
benefits in Parliament from the good sense and wisdom of this King. Many of the
laws were much improved; provision was made for the greater safety of
travellers, and the apprehension of thieves and murderers; the priests were
prevented from holding too much land, and so becoming too powerful; and
Justices of the Peace were first appointed (though not at first under that
name) in various parts of the country.
And now we come to
Scotland, which was the great and lasting trouble of the reign of King Edward
the First.
About thirteen years
after King Edward’s coronation, Alexander the Third, the King of Scotland, died
of a fall from his horse. He had been married to Margaret, King Edward’s
sister. All their children being dead, the Scottish crown became the right of a
young Princess only eight years old, the daughter of ERIC, King of Norway, who
had married a daughter of the deceased sovereign. King Edward proposed, that
the Maiden of Norway, as this Princess was called, should be engaged to be
married to his eldest son; but, unfortunately, as she was coming over to England
she fell sick, and landing on one of the Orkney Islands, died there. A great
commotion immediately began in Scotland, where as many as thirteen noisy
claimants to the vacant throne started up and made a general confusion.
King Edward being much
renowned for his sagacity and justice, it seems to have been agreed to refer
the dispute to him. He accepted the trust, and went, with an army, to the
Border-land where England and Scotland joined. There, he called upon the
Scottish gentlemen to meet him at the Castle of Norham, on the English side of
the river Tweed; and to that Castle they came. But, before he would take any
step in the business, he required those Scottish gentlemen, one and all, to do
homage to him as their superior Lord; and when they hesitated, he said, ’By
holy Edward, whose crown I wear, I will have my rights, or I will die in
maintaining them!’ The Scottish gentlemen, who had not expected this, were
disconcerted, and asked for three weeks to think about it.
At the end of the three
weeks, another meeting took place, on a green plain on the Scottish side of the
river. Of all the competitors for the Scottish throne, there were only two who
had any real claim, in right of their near kindred to the Royal Family. These
were JOHN BALIOL and ROBERT BRUCE: and the right was, I have no doubt, on the
side of John Baliol. At this particular meeting John Baliol was not present,
but Robert Bruce was; and on Robert Bruce being formally asked whether he
acknowledged the King of England for his superior lord, he answered, plainly
and distinctly, Yes, he did. Next day, John Baliol appeared, and said the same.
This point settled, some arrangements were made for inquiring into their
titles.
The inquiry occupied a
pretty long time--more than a year. While it was going on, King Edward took the
opportunity of making a journey through Scotland, and calling upon the Scottish
people of all degrees to acknowledge themselves his vassals, or be imprisoned
until they did. In the meanwhile, Commissioners were appointed to conduct the
inquiry, a Parliament was held at Berwick about it, the two claimants were
heard at full length, and there was a vast amount of talking. At last, in the
great hall of the Castle of Berwick, the King gave judgment in favour of John
Baliol: who, consenting to receive his crown by the King of England’s favour
and permission, was crowned at Scone, in an old stone chair which had been used
for ages in the abbey there, at the coronations of Scottish Kings. Then, King
Edward caused the great seal of Scotland, used since the late King’s death, to
be broken in four pieces, and placed in the English Treasury; and considered
that he now had Scotland (according to the common saying) under his thumb.
Scotland had a strong
will of its own yet, however. King Edward, determined that the Scottish King
should not forget he was his vassal, summoned him repeatedly to come and defend
himself and his judges before the English Parliament when appeals from the
decisions of Scottish courts of justice were being heard. At length, John
Baliol, who had no great heart of his own, had so much heart put into him by
the brave spirit of the Scottish people, who took this as a national insult,
that he refused to come any more. Thereupon, the King further required him to
help him in his war abroad (which was then in progress), and to give up, as
security for his good behaviour in future, the three strong Scottish Castles of
Jedburgh, Roxburgh, and Berwick. Nothing of this being done; on the contrary,
the Scottish people concealing their King among their mountains in the
Highlands and showing a determination to resist; Edward marched to Berwick with
an army of thirty thousand foot, and four thousand horse; took the Castle, and
slew its whole garrison, and the inhabitants of the town as well--men, women,
and children. LORD WARRENNE, Earl of Surrey, then went on to the Castle of
Dunbar, before which a battle was fought, and the whole Scottish army defeated
with great slaughter. The victory being complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as
guardian of Scotland; the principal offices in that kingdom were given to
Englishmen; the more powerful Scottish Nobles were obliged to come and live in
England; the Scottish crown and sceptre were brought away; and even the old
stone chair was carried off and placed in Westminster Abbey, where you may see
it now. Baliol had the Tower of London lent him for a residence, with
permission to range about within a circle of twenty miles. Three years
afterwards he was allowed to go to Normandy, where he had estates, and where he
passed the remaining six years of his life: far more happily, I dare say, than
he had lived for a long while in angry Scotland.
Now, there was, in the
West of Scotland, a gentleman of small fortune, named WILLIAM WALLACE, the
second son of a Scottish knight. He was a man of great size and great strength;
he was very brave and daring; when he spoke to a body of his countrymen, he
could rouse them in a wonderful manner by the power of his burning words; he
loved Scotland dearly, and he hated England with his utmost might. The
domineering conduct of the English who now held the places of trust in Scotland
made them as intolerable to the proud Scottish people as they had been, under
similar circumstances, to the Welsh; and no man in all Scotland regarded them
with so much smothered rage as William Wallace. One day, an Englishman in
office, little knowing what he was, affronted HIM. Wallace instantly struck him
dead, and taking refuge among the rocks and hills, and there joining with his
countryman, SIR WILLIAM DOUGLAS, who was also in arms against King Edward,
became the most resolute and undaunted champion of a people struggling for
their independence that ever lived upon the earth.
The English Guardian of
the Kingdom fled before him, and, thus encouraged, the Scottish people revolted
everywhere, and fell upon the English without mercy. The Earl of Surrey, by the
King’s commands, raised all the power of the Border-counties, and two English
armies poured into Scotland. Only one Chief, in the face of those armies, stood
by Wallace, who, with a force of forty thousand men, awaited the invaders at a
place on the river Forth, within two miles of Stirling. Across the river there
was only one poor wooden bridge, called the bridge of Kildean--so narrow, that
but two men could cross it abreast. With his eyes upon this bridge, Wallace
posted the greater part of his men among some rising grounds, and waited
calmly. When the English army came up on the opposite bank of the river,
messengers were sent forward to offer terms. Wallace sent them back with a
defiance, in the name of the freedom of Scotland. Some of the officers of the
Earl of Surrey in command of the English, with THEIR eyes also on the bridge,
advised him to be discreet and not hasty. He, however, urged to immediate
battle by some other officers, and particularly by CRESSINGHAM, King Edward’s
treasurer, and a rash man, gave the word of command to advance. One thousand
English crossed the bridge, two abreast; the Scottish troops were as motionless
as stone images. Two thousand English crossed; three thousand, four thousand,
five. Not a feather, all this time, had been seen to stir among the Scottish
bonnets. Now, they all fluttered. ’Forward, one party, to the foot of the
Bridge!’ cried Wallace, ’and let no more English cross! The rest, down with me
on the five thousand who have come over, and cut them all to pieces!’ It was
done, in the sight of the whole remainder of the English army, who could give
no help. Cressingham himself was killed, and the Scotch made whips for their
horses of his skin.
King Edward was abroad
at this time, and during the successes on the Scottish side which followed, and
which enabled bold Wallace to win the whole country back again, and even to
ravage the English borders. But, after a few winter months, the King returned,
and took the field with more than his usual energy. One night, when a kick from
his horse as they both lay on the ground together broke two of his ribs, and a
cry arose that he was killed, he leaped into his saddle, regardless of the pain
he suffered, and rode through the camp. Day then appearing, he gave the word
(still, of course, in that bruised and aching state) Forward! and led his army
on to near Falkirk, where the Scottish forces were seen drawn up on some stony
ground, behind a morass. Here, he defeated Wallace, and killed fifteen thousand
of his men. With the shattered remainder, Wallace drew back to Stirling; but,
being pursued, set fire to the town that it might give no help to the English,
and escaped. The inhabitants of Perth afterwards set fire to their houses for
the same reason, and the King, unable to find provisions, was forced to
withdraw his army.
Another ROBERT BRUCE,
the grandson of him who had disputed the Scottish crown with Baliol, was now in
arms against the King (that elder Bruce being dead), and also JOHN COMYN,
Baliol’s nephew. These two young men might agree in opposing Edward, but could
agree in nothing else, as they were rivals for the throne of Scotland. Probably
it was because they knew this, and knew what troubles must arise even if they
could hope to get the better of the great English King, that the principal
Scottish people applied to the Pope for his interference. The Pope, on the
principle of losing nothing for want of trying to get it, very coolly claimed
that Scotland belonged to him; but this was a little too much, and the
Parliament in a friendly manner told him so.
In the spring time of
the year one thousand three hundred and three, the King sent SIR JOHN SEGRAVE,
whom he made Governor of Scotland, with twenty thousand men, to reduce the
rebels. Sir John was not as careful as he should have been, but encamped at
Rosslyn, near Edinburgh, with his army divided into three parts. The Scottish
forces saw their advantage; fell on each part separately; defeated each; and
killed all the prisoners. Then, came the King himself once more, as soon as a
great army could be raised; he passed through the whole north of Scotland,
laying waste whatsoever came in his way; and he took up his winter quarters at
Dunfermline. The Scottish cause now looked so hopeless, that Comyn and the
other nobles made submission and received their pardons. Wallace alone stood
out. He was invited to surrender, though on no distinct pledge that his life
should be spared; but he still defied the ireful King, and lived among the
steep crags of the Highland glens, where the eagles made their nests, and where
the mountain torrents roared, and the white snow was deep, and the bitter winds
blew round his unsheltered head, as he lay through many a pitch-dark night
wrapped up in his plaid. Nothing could break his spirit; nothing could lower
his courage; nothing could induce him to forget or to forgive his country’s
wrongs. Even when the Castle of Stirling, which had long held out, was besieged
by the King with every kind of military engine then in use; even when the lead
upon cathedral roofs was taken down to help to make them; even when the King,
though an old man, commanded in the siege as if he were a youth, being so
resolved to conquer; even when the brave garrison (then found with amazement to
be not two hundred people, including several ladies) were starved and beaten
out and were made to submit on their knees, and with every form of disgrace
that could aggravate their sufferings; even then, when there was not a ray of
hope in Scotland, William Wallace was as proud and firm as if he had beheld the
powerful and relentless Edward lying dead at his feet.
Who betrayed William
Wallace in the end, is not quite certain. That he was betrayed--probably by an
attendant--is too true. He was taken to the Castle of Dumbarton, under SIR JOHN
MENTEITH, and thence to London, where the great fame of his bravery and
resolution attracted immense concourses of people to behold him. He was tried
in Westminster Hall, with a crown of laurel on his head--it is supposed because
he was reported to have said that he ought to wear, or that he would wear, a
crown there and was found guilty as a robber, a murderer, and a traitor. What they
called a robber (he said to those who tried him) he was, because he had taken
spoil from the King’s men. What they called a murderer, he was, because he had
slain an insolent Englishman. What they called a traitor, he was not, for he
had never sworn allegiance to the King, and had ever scorned to do it. He was
dragged at the tails of horses to West Smithfield, and there hanged on a high
gallows, torn open before he was dead, beheaded, and quartered. His head was
set upon a pole on London Bridge, his right arm was sent to Newcastle, his left
arm to Berwick, his legs to Perth and Aberdeen. But, if King Edward had had his
body cut into inches, and had sent every separate inch into a separate town, he
could not have dispersed it half so far and wide as his fame. Wallace will be
remembered in songs and stories, while there are songs and stories in the
English tongue, and Scotland will hold him dear while her lakes and mountains
last.
Released from this
dreaded enemy, the King made a fairer plan of Government for Scotland, divided
the offices of honour among Scottish gentlemen and English gentlemen, forgave
past offences, and thought, in his old age, that his work was done.
But he deceived
himself. Comyn and Bruce conspired, and made an appointment to meet at
Dumfries, in the church of the Minorites. There is a story that Comyn was false
to Bruce, and had informed against him to the King; that Bruce was warned of
his danger and the necessity of flight, by receiving, one night as he sat at
supper, from his friend the Earl of Gloucester, twelve pennies and a pair of
spurs; that as he was riding angrily to keep his appointment (through a
snow-storm, with his horse’s shoes reversed that he might not be tracked), he
met an evil-looking serving man, a messenger of Comyn, whom he killed, and
concealed in whose dress he found letters that proved Comyn’s treachery.
However this may be, they were likely enough to quarrel in any case, being
hot-headed rivals; and, whatever they quarrelled about, they certainly did
quarrel in the church where they met, and Bruce drew his dagger and stabbed
Comyn, who fell upon the pavement. When Bruce came out, pale and disturbed, the
friends who were waiting for him asked what was the matter? ’I think I have
killed Comyn,’ said he. ’You only think so?’ returned one of them; ’I will make
sure!’ and going into the church, and finding him alive, stabbed him again and
again. Knowing that the King would never forgive this new deed of violence, the
party then declared Bruce King of Scotland: got him crowned at Scone--without
the chair; and set up the rebellious standard once again.
When the King heard of
it he kindled with fiercer anger than he had ever shown yet. He caused the
Prince of Wales and two hundred and seventy of the young nobility to be
knighted--the trees in the Temple Gardens were cut down to make room for their
tents, and they watched their armour all night, according to the old usage:
some in the Temple Church: some in Westminster Abbey--and at the public Feast
which then took place, he swore, by Heaven, and by two swans covered with gold
network which his minstrels placed upon the table, that he would avenge the
death of Comyn, and would punish the false Bruce. And before all the company,
he charged the Prince his son, in case that he should die before accomplishing
his vow, not to bury him until it was fulfilled. Next morning the Prince and
the rest of the young Knights rode away to the Border-country to join the
English army; and the King, now weak and sick, followed in a horse-litter.
Bruce, after losing a
battle and undergoing many dangers and much misery, fled to Ireland, where he
lay concealed through the winter. That winter, Edward passed in hunting down
and executing Bruce’s relations and adherents, sparing neither youth nor age,
and showing no touch of pity or sign of mercy. In the following spring, Bruce
reappeared and gained some victories. In these frays, both sides were
grievously cruel. For instance--Bruce’s two brothers, being taken captives
desperately wounded, were ordered by the King to instant execution. Bruce’s
friend Sir John Douglas, taking his own Castle of Douglas out of the hands of
an English Lord, roasted the dead bodies of the slaughtered garrison in a great
fire made of every movable within it; which dreadful cookery his men called the
Douglas Larder. Bruce, still successful, however, drove the Earl of Pembroke
and the Earl of Gloucester into the Castle of Ayr and laid siege to it.
The King, who had been
laid up all the winter, but had directed the army from his sick-bed, now
advanced to Carlisle, and there, causing the litter in which he had travelled
to be placed in the Cathedral as an offering to Heaven, mounted his horse once
more, and for the last time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and had reigned
thirty-five years. He was so ill, that in four days he could go no more than
six miles; still, even at that pace, he went on and resolutely kept his face
towards the Border. At length, he lay down at the village of Burgh-upon-Sands;
and there, telling those around him to impress upon the Prince that he was to
remember his father’s vow, and was never to rest until he had thoroughly
subdued Scotland, he yielded up his last breath.
KING Edward the Second,
the first Prince of Wales, was twenty-three years old when his father died.
There was a certain favourite of his, a young man from Gascony, named PIERS
GAVESTON, of whom his father had so much disapproved that he had ordered him out
of England, and had made his son swear by the side of his sick-bed, never to
bring him back. But, the Prince no sooner found himself King, than he broke his
oath, as so many other Princes and Kings did (they were far too ready to take
oaths), and sent for his dear friend immediately.
Now, this same Gaveston
was handsome enough, but was a reckless, insolent, audacious fellow. He was
detested by the proud English Lords: not only because he had such power over
the King, and made the Court such a dissipated place, but, also, because he
could ride better than they at tournaments, and was used, in his impudence, to
cut very bad jokes on them; calling one, the old hog; another, the
stage-player; another, the Jew; another, the black dog of Ardenne. This was as poor
wit as need be, but it made those Lords very wroth; and the surly Earl of
Warwick, who was the black dog, swore that the time should come when Piers
Gaveston should feel the black dog’s teeth.
It was not come yet,
however, nor did it seem to be coming. The King made him Earl of Cornwall, and
gave him vast riches; and, when the King went over to France to marry the
French Princess, ISABELLA, daughter of PHILIP LE BEL: who was said to be the
most beautiful woman in the world: he made Gaveston, Regent of the Kingdom. His
splendid marriage-ceremony in the Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, where there
were four Kings and three Queens present (quite a pack of Court Cards, for I
dare say the Knaves were not wanting), being over, he seemed to care little or
nothing for his beautiful wife; but was wild with impatience to meet Gaveston
again.
When he landed at home,
he paid no attention to anybody else, but ran into the favourite’s arms before
a great concourse of people, and hugged him, and kissed him, and called him his
brother. At the coronation which soon followed, Gaveston was the richest and
brightest of all the glittering company there, and had the honour of carrying
the crown. This made the proud Lords fiercer than ever; the people, too,
despised the favourite, and would never call him Earl of Cornwall, however much
he complained to the King and asked him to punish them for not doing so, but
persisted in styling him plain Piers Gaveston.
The Barons were so
unceremonious with the King in giving him to understand that they would not
bear this favourite, that the King was obliged to send him out of the country.
The favourite himself was made to take an oath (more oaths!) that he would
never come back, and the Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until
they heard that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough
for the besotted King, who brought him home again in a year’s time, and not
only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting folly, but offended his
beautiful wife too, who never liked him afterwards.
He had now the old
Royal want--of money--and the Barons had the new power of positively refusing
to let him raise any. He summoned a Parliament at York; the Barons refused to
make one, while the favourite was near him. He summoned another Parliament at
Westminster, and sent Gaveston away. Then, the Barons came, completely armed,
and appointed a committee of themselves to correct abuses in the state and in
the King’s household. He got some money on these conditions, and directly set
off with Gaveston to the Border-country, where they spent it in idling away the
time, and feasting, while Bruce made ready to drive the English out of
Scotland. For, though the old King had even made this poor weak son of his
swear (as some say) that he would not bury his bones, but would have them
boiled clean in a caldron, and carried before the English army until Scotland
was entirely subdued, the second Edward was so unlike the first that Bruce
gained strength and power every day.
The committee of
Nobles, after some months of deliberation, ordained that the King should
henceforth call a Parliament together, once every year, and even twice if
necessary, instead of summoning it only when he chose. Further, that Gaveston
should once more be banished, and, this time, on pain of death if he ever came
back. The King’s tears were of no avail; he was obliged to send his favourite
to Flanders. As soon as he had done so, however, he dissolved the Parliament,
with the low cunning of a mere fool, and set off to the North of England,
thinking to get an army about him to oppose the Nobles. And once again he
brought Gaveston home, and heaped upon him all the riches and titles of which
the Barons had deprived him.
The Lords saw, now,
that there was nothing for it but to put the favourite to death. They could
have done so, legally, according to the terms of his banishment; but they did
so, I am sorry to say, in a shabby manner. Led by the Earl of Lancaster, the
King’s cousin, they first of all attacked the King and Gaveston at Newcastle.
They had time to escape by sea, and the mean King, having his precious Gaveston
with him, was quite content to leave his lovely wife behind. When they were
comparatively safe, they separated; the King went to York to collect a force of
soldiers; and the favourite shut himself up, in the meantime, in Scarborough
Castle overlooking the sea. This was what the Barons wanted. They knew that the
Castle could not hold out; they attacked it, and made Gaveston surrender. He
delivered himself up to the Earl of Pembroke--that Lord whom he had called the
Jew--on the Earl’s pledging his faith and knightly word, that no harm should
happen to him and no violence be done him.
Now, it was agreed with
Gaveston that he should be taken to the Castle of Wallingford, and there kept
in honourable custody. They travelled as far as Dedington, near Banbury, where,
in the Castle of that place, they stopped for a night to rest. Whether the Earl
of Pembroke left his prisoner there, knowing what would happen, or really left
him thinking no harm, and only going (as he pretended) to visit his wife, the
Countess, who was in the neighbourhood, is no great matter now; in any case, he
was bound as an honourable gentleman to protect his prisoner, and he did not do
it. In the morning, while the favourite was yet in bed, he was required to
dress himself and come down into the court-yard. He did so without any
mistrust, but started and turned pale when he found it full of strange armed
men. ’I think you know me?’ said their leader, also armed from head to foot. ’I
am the black dog of Ardenne!’ The time was come when Piers Gaveston was to feel
the black dog’s teeth indeed. They set him on a mule, and carried him, in mock
state and with military music, to the black dog’s kennel--Warwick Castle--where
a hasty council, composed of some great noblemen, considered what should be
done with him. Some were for sparing him, but one loud voice--it was the black
dog’s bark, I dare say--sounded through the Castle Hall, uttering these words: ’You
have the fox in your power. Let him go now, and you must hunt him again.’
They sentenced him to
death. He threw himself at the feet of the Earl of Lancaster--the old hog--but
the old hog was as savage as the dog. He was taken out upon the pleasant road,
leading from Warwick to Coventry, where the beautiful river Avon, by which,
long afterwards, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born and now lies buried, sparkled in
the bright landscape of the beautiful May-day; and there they struck off his
wretched head, and stained the dust with his blood.
When the King heard of
this black deed, in his grief and rage he denounced relentless war against his
Barons, and both sides were in arms for half a year. But, it then became
necessary for them to join their forces against Bruce, who had used the time
well while they were divided, and had now a great power in Scotland.
Intelligence was
brought that Bruce was then besieging Stirling Castle, and that the Governor
had been obliged to pledge himself to surrender it, unless he should be
relieved before a certain day. Hereupon, the King ordered the nobles and their
fighting-men to meet him at Berwick; but, the nobles cared so little for the
King, and so neglected the summons, and lost time, that only on the day before
that appointed for the surrender, did the King find himself at Stirling, and
even then with a smaller force than he had expected. However, he had,
altogether, a hundred thousand men, and Bruce had not more than forty thousand;
but, Bruce’s army was strongly posted in three square columns, on the ground
lying between the Burn or Brook of Bannock and the walls of Stirling Castle.
On the very evening,
when the King came up, Bruce did a brave act that encouraged his men. He was
seen by a certain HENRY DE BOHUN, an English Knight, riding about before his
army on a little horse, with a light battle-axe in his hand, and a crown of
gold on his head. This English Knight, who was mounted on a strong war-horse,
cased in steel, strongly armed, and able (as he thought) to overthrow Bruce by
crushing him with his mere weight, set spurs to his great charger, rode on him,
and made a thrust at him with his heavy spear. Bruce parried the thrust, and
with one blow of his battle-axe split his skull.
The Scottish men did
not forget this, next day when the battle raged. RANDOLPH, Bruce’s valiant
Nephew, rode, with the small body of men he commanded, into such a host of the
English, all shining in polished armour in the sunlight, that they seemed to be
swallowed up and lost, as if they had plunged into the sea. But, they fought so
well, and did such dreadful execution, that the English staggered. Then came
Bruce himself upon them, with all the rest of his army. While they were thus
hard pressed and amazed, there appeared upon the hills what they supposed to be
a new Scottish army, but what were really only the camp followers, in number
fifteen thousand: whom Bruce had taught to show themselves at that place and
time. The Earl of Gloucester, commanding the English horse, made a last rush to
change the fortune of the day; but Bruce (like Jack the Giant-killer in the
story) had had pits dug in the ground, and covered over with turfs and stakes.
Into these, as they gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders and
horses rolled by hundreds. The English were completely routed; all their
treasure, stores, and engines, were taken by the Scottish men; so many waggons
and other wheeled vehicles were seized, that it is related that they would have
reached, if they had been drawn out in a line, one hundred and eighty miles.
The fortunes of Scotland were, for the time, completely changed; and never was
a battle won, more famous upon Scottish ground, than this great battle of
BANNOCKBURN.
Plague and famine
succeeded in England; and still the powerless King and his disdainful Lords
were always in contention. Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made
proposals to Bruce, to accept the rule of that country. He sent his brother
Edward to them, who was crowned King of Ireland. He afterwards went himself to
help his brother in his Irish wars, but his brother was defeated in the end and
killed. Robert Bruce, returning to Scotland, still increased his strength
there.
As the King’s ruin had
begun in a favourite, so it seemed likely to end in one. He was too poor a
creature to rely at all upon himself; and his new favourite was one HUGH LE
DESPENSER, the son of a gentleman of ancient family. Hugh was handsome and
brave, but he was the favourite of a weak King, whom no man cared a rush for,
and that was a dangerous place to hold. The Nobles leagued against him, because
the King liked him; and they lay in wait, both for his ruin and his father’s.
Now, the King had married him to the daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester,
and had given both him and his father great possessions in Wales. In their
endeavours to extend these, they gave violent offence to an angry Welsh
gentleman, named JOHN DE MOWBRAY, and to divers other angry Welsh gentlemen,
who resorted to arms, took their castles, and seized their estates. The Earl of
Lancaster had first placed the favourite (who was a poor relation of his own)
at Court, and he considered his own dignity offended by the preference he
received and the honours he acquired; so he, and the Barons who were his
friends, joined the Welshmen, marched on London, and sent a message to the King
demanding to have the favourite and his father banished. At first, the King
unaccountably took it into his head to be spirited, and to send them a bold
reply; but when they quartered themselves around Holborn and Clerkenwell, and
went down, armed, to the Parliament at Westminster, he gave way, and complied
with their demands.
His turn of triumph
came sooner than he expected. It arose out of an accidental circumstance. The
beautiful Queen happening to be travelling, came one night to one of the royal
castles, and demanded to be lodged and entertained there until morning. The
governor of this castle, who was one of the enraged lords, was away, and in his
absence, his wife refused admission to the Queen; a scuffle took place among
the common men on either side, and some of the royal attendants were killed.
The people, who cared nothing for the King, were very angry that their
beautiful Queen should be thus rudely treated in her own dominions; and the
King, taking advantage of this feeling, besieged the castle, took it, and then
called the two Despensers home. Upon this, the confederate lords and the
Welshmen went over to Bruce. The King encountered them at Boroughbridge, gained
the victory, and took a number of distinguished prisoners; among them, the Earl
of Lancaster, now an old man, upon whose destruction he was resolved. This Earl
was taken to his own castle of Pontefract, and there tried and found guilty by
an unfair court appointed for the purpose; he was not even allowed to speak in
his own defence. He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a starved pony without
saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. Eight-and-twenty knights were
hanged, drawn, and quartered. When the King had despatched this bloody work,
and had made a fresh and a long truce with Bruce, he took the Despensers into
greater favour than ever, and made the father Earl of Winchester.
One prisoner, and an
important one, who was taken at Boroughbridge, made his escape, however, and
turned the tide against the King. This was ROGER MORTIMER, always resolutely
opposed to him, who was sentenced to death, and placed for safe custody in the
Tower of London. He treated his guards to a quantity of wine into which he had
put a sleeping potion; and, when they were insensible, broke out of his
dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the chimney, let himself down from the
roof of the building with a rope-ladder, passed the sentries, got down to the
river, and made away in a boat to where servants and horses were waiting for
him. He finally escaped to France, where CHARLES LE BEL, the brother of the
beautiful Queen, was King. Charles sought to quarrel with the King of England,
on pretence of his not having come to do him homage at his coronation. It was
proposed that the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange the dispute; she
went, and wrote home to the King, that as he was sick and could not come to
France himself, perhaps it would be better to send over the young Prince, their
son, who was only twelve years old, who could do homage to her brother in his
stead, and in whose company she would immediately return. The King sent him:
but, both he and the Queen remained at the French Court, and Roger Mortimer
became the Queen’s lover.
When the King wrote,
again and again, to the Queen to come home, she did not reply that she despised
him too much to live with him any more (which was the truth), but said she was
afraid of the two Despensers. In short, her design was to overthrow the
favourites’ power, and the King’s power, such as it was, and invade England.
Having obtained a French force of two thousand men, and being joined by all the
English exiles then in France, she landed, within a year, at Orewell, in
Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, the
King’s two brothers; by other powerful noblemen; and lastly, by the first
English general who was despatched to check her: who went over to her with all
his men. The people of London, receiving these tidings, would do nothing for
the King, but broke open the Tower, let out all his prisoners, and threw up
their caps and hurrahed for the beautiful Queen.
The King, with his two
favourites, fled to Bristol, where he left old Despenser in charge of the town
and castle, while he went on with the son to Wales. The Bristol men being
opposed to the King, and it being impossible to hold the town with enemies
everywhere within the walls, Despenser yielded it up on the third day, and was
instantly brought to trial for having traitorously influenced what was called ’the
King’s mind’--though I doubt if the King ever had any. He was a venerable old
man, upwards of ninety years of age, but his age gained no respect or mercy. He
was hanged, torn open while he was yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown to
the dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at Hereford before the same judge on a
long series of foolish charges, found guilty, and hanged upon a gallows fifty
feet high, with a chaplet of nettles round his head. His poor old father and he
were innocent enough of any worse crimes than the crime of having been friends
of a King, on whom, as a mere man, they would never have deigned to cast a
favourable look. It is a bad crime, I know, and leads to worse; but, many lords
and gentlemen--I even think some ladies, too, if I recollect right--have
committed it in England, who have neither been given to the dogs, nor hanged up
fifty feet high.
The wretched King was
running here and there, all this time, and never getting anywhere in
particular, until he gave himself up, and was taken off to Kenilworth Castle.
When he was safely lodged there, the Queen went to London and met the
Parliament. And the Bishop of Hereford, who was the most skilful of her
friends, said, What was to be done now? Here was an imbecile, indolent,
miserable King upon the throne; wouldn’t it be better to take him off, and put
his son there instead? I don’t know whether the Queen really pitied him at this
pass, but she began to cry; so, the Bishop said, Well, my Lords and Gentlemen,
what do you think, upon the whole, of sending down to Kenilworth, and seeing if
His Majesty (God bless him, and forbid we should depose him!) won’t resign?
My Lords and Gentlemen
thought it a good notion, so a deputation of them went down to Kenilworth; and
there the King came into the great hall of the Castle, commonly dressed in a
poor black gown; and when he saw a certain bishop among them, fell down, poor
feeble-headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of himself. Somebody lifted
him up, and then SIR WILLIAM TRUSSEL, the Speaker of the House of Commons,
almost frightened him to death by making him a tremendous speech to the effect
that he was no longer a King, and that everybody renounced allegiance to him.
After which, SIR THOMAS BLOUNT, the Steward of the Household, nearly finished
him, by coming forward and breaking his white wand--which was a ceremony only
performed at a King’s death. Being asked in this pressing manner what he
thought of resigning, the King said he thought it was the best thing he could
do. So, he did it, and they proclaimed his son next day.
I wish I could close
his history by saying that he lived a harmless life in the Castle and the
Castle gardens at Kenilworth, many years--that he had a favourite, and plenty
to eat and drink--and, having that, wanted nothing. But he was shamefully
humiliated. He was outraged, and slighted, and had dirty water from ditches
given him to shave with, and wept and said he would have clean warm water, and
was altogether very miserable. He was moved from this castle to that castle,
and from that castle to the other castle, because this lord or that lord, or
the other lord, was too kind to him: until at last he came to Berkeley Castle,
near the River Severn, where (the Lord Berkeley being then ill and absent) he
fell into the hands of two black ruffians, called THOMAS GOURNAY and WILLIAM
OGLE.
One night--it was the
night of September the twenty-first, one thousand three hundred and
twenty-seven--dreadful screams were heard, by the startled people in the
neighbouring town, ringing through the thick walls of the Castle, and the dark,
deep night; and they said, as they were thus horribly awakened from their
sleep, ’May Heaven be merciful to the King; for those cries forbode that no
good is being done to him in his dismal prison!’ Next morning he was dead--not
bruised, or stabbed, or marked upon the body, but much distorted in the face;
and it was whispered afterwards, that those two villains, Gournay and Ogle, had
burnt up his inside with a red-hot iron.
If you ever come near
Gloucester, and see the centre tower of its beautiful Cathedral, with its four
rich pinnacles, rising lightly in the air; you may remember that the wretched
Edward the Second was buried in the old abbey of that ancient city, at
forty-three years old, after being for nineteen years and a half a perfectly
incapable King.
ROGER MORTIMER, the
Queen’s lover (who escaped to France in the last chapter), was far from
profiting by the examples he had had of the fate of favourites. Having, through
the Queen’s influence, come into possession of the estates of the two
Despensers, he became extremely proud and ambitious, and sought to be the real
ruler of England. The young King, who was crowned at fourteen years of age with
all the usual solemnities, resolved not to bear this, and soon pursued Mortimer
to his ruin.
The people themselves
were not fond of Mortimer--first, because he was a Royal favourite; secondly,
because he was supposed to have helped to make a peace with Scotland which now
took place, and in virtue of which the young King’s sister Joan, only seven years
old, was promised in marriage to David, the son and heir of Robert Bruce, who
was only five years old. The nobles hated Mortimer because of his pride,
riches, and power. They went so far as to take up arms against him; but were
obliged to submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those who did so, but who
afterwards went over to Mortimer and the Queen, was made an example of in the
following cruel manner:
He seems to have been
anything but a wise old earl; and he was persuaded by the agents of the
favourite and the Queen, that poor King Edward the Second was not really dead;
and thus was betrayed into writing letters favouring his rightful claim to the
throne. This was made out to be high treason, and he was tried, found guilty,
and sentenced to be executed. They took the poor old lord outside the town of
Winchester, and there kept him waiting some three or four hours until they
could find somebody to cut off his head. At last, a convict said he would do
it, if the government would pardon him in return; and they gave him the pardon;
and at one blow he put the Earl of Kent out of his last suspense.
While the Queen was in
France, she had found a lovely and good young lady, named Philippa, who she
thought would make an excellent wife for her son. The young King married this
lady, soon after he came to the throne; and her first child, Edward, Prince of
Wales, afterwards became celebrated, as we shall presently see, under the
famous title of EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE.
The young King,
thinking the time ripe for the downfall of Mortimer, took counsel with Lord
Montacute how he should proceed. A Parliament was going to be held at
Nottingham, and that lord recommended that the favourite should be seized by
night in Nottingham Castle, where he was sure to be. Now, this, like many other
things, was more easily said than done; because, to guard against treachery,
the great gates of the Castle were locked every night, and the great keys were
carried up-stairs to the Queen, who laid them under her own pillow. But the
Castle had a governor, and the governor being Lord Montacute’s friend, confided
to him how he knew of a secret passage underground, hidden from observation by
the weeds and brambles with which it was overgrown; and how, through that
passage, the conspirators might enter in the dead of the night, and go straight
to Mortimer’s room. Accordingly, upon a certain dark night, at midnight, they
made their way through this dismal place: startling the rats, and frightening
the owls and bats: and came safely to the bottom of the main tower of the
Castle, where the King met them, and took them up a profoundly-dark staircase
in a deep silence. They soon heard the voice of Mortimer in council with some
friends; and bursting into the room with a sudden noise, took him prisoner. The
Queen cried out from her bed-chamber, ’Oh, my sweet son, my dear son, spare my
gentle Mortimer!’ They carried him off, however; and, before the next
Parliament, accused him of having made differences between the young King and
his mother, and of having brought about the death of the Earl of Kent, and even
of the late King; for, as you know by this time, when they wanted to get rid of
a man in those old days, they were not very particular of what they accused
him. Mortimer was found guilty of all this, and was sentenced to be hanged at
Tyburn. The King shut his mother up in genteel confinement, where she passed
the rest of her life; and now he became King in earnest.
The first effort he
made was to conquer Scotland. The English lords who had lands in Scotland,
finding that their rights were not respected under the late peace, made war on
their own account: choosing for their general, Edward, the son of John Baliol,
who made such a vigorous fight, that in less than two months he won the whole
Scottish Kingdom. He was joined, when thus triumphant, by the King and
Parliament; and he and the King in person besieged the Scottish forces in
Berwick. The whole Scottish army coming to the assistance of their countrymen,
such a furious battle ensued, that thirty thousand men are said to have been
killed in it. Baliol was then crowned King of Scotland, doing homage to the
King of England; but little came of his successes after all, for the Scottish
men rose against him, within no very long time, and David Bruce came back
within ten years and took his kingdom.
France was a far richer
country than Scotland, and the King had a much greater mind to conquer it. So,
he let Scotland alone, and pretended that he had a claim to the French throne
in right of his mother. He had, in reality, no claim at all; but that mattered
little in those times. He brought over to his cause many little princes and
sovereigns, and even courted the alliance of the people of Flanders--a busy,
working community, who had very small respect for kings, and whose head man was
a brewer. With such forces as he raised by these means, Edward invaded France;
but he did little by that, except run into debt in carrying on the war to the
extent of three hundred thousand pounds. The next year he did better; gaining a
great sea-fight in the harbour of Sluys. This success, however, was very
shortlived, for the Flemings took fright at the siege of Saint Omer and ran
away, leaving their weapons and baggage behind them. Philip, the French King,
coming up with his army, and Edward being very anxious to decide the war,
proposed to settle the difference by single combat with him, or by a fight of
one hundred knights on each side. The French King said, he thanked him; but
being very well as he was, he would rather not. So, after some skirmishing and
talking, a short peace was made.
It was soon broken by
King Edward’s favouring the cause of John, Earl of Montford; a French nobleman,
who asserted a claim of his own against the French King, and offered to do
homage to England for the Crown of France, if he could obtain it through
England’s help. This French lord, himself, was soon defeated by the French King’s
son, and shut up in a tower in Paris; but his wife, a courageous and beautiful
woman, who is said to have had the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion,
assembled the people of Brittany, where she then was; and, showing them her
infant son, made many pathetic entreaties to them not to desert her and their
young Lord. They took fire at this appeal, and rallied round her in the strong
castle of Hennebon. Here she was not only besieged without by the French under
Charles de Blois, but was endangered within by a dreary old bishop, who was
always representing to the people what horrors they must undergo if they were
faithful--first from famine, and afterwards from fire and sword. But this noble
lady, whose heart never failed her, encouraged her soldiers by her own example;
went from post to post like a great general; even mounted on horseback fully
armed, and, issuing from the castle by a by-path, fell upon the French camp,
set fire to the tents, and threw the whole force into disorder. This done, she
got safely back to Hennebon again, and was received with loud shouts of joy by
the defenders of the castle, who had given her up for lost. As they were now
very short of provisions, however, and as they could not dine off enthusiasm,
and as the old bishop was always saying, ’I told you what it would come to!’
they began to lose heart, and to talk of yielding the castle up. The brave
Countess retiring to an upper room and looking with great grief out to sea,
where she expected relief from England, saw, at this very time, the English
ships in the distance, and was relieved and rescued! Sir Walter Manning, the
English commander, so admired her courage, that, being come into the castle
with the English knights, and having made a feast there, he assaulted the
French by way of dessert, and beat them off triumphantly. Then he and the
knights came back to the castle with great joy; and the Countess who had
watched them from a high tower, thanked them with all her heart, and kissed
them every one.
This noble lady
distinguished herself afterwards in a sea-fight with the French off Guernsey,
when she was on her way to England to ask for more troops. Her great spirit
roused another lady, the wife of another French lord (whom the French King very
barbarously murdered), to distinguish herself scarcely less. The time was fast
coming, however, when Edward, Prince of Wales, was to be the great star of this
French and English war.
It was in the month of
July, in the year one thousand three hundred and forty-six, when the King
embarked at Southampton for France, with an army of about thirty thousand men
in all, attended by the Prince of Wales and by several of the chief nobles. He
landed at La Hogue in Normandy; and, burning and destroying as he went,
according to custom, advanced up the left bank of the River Seine, and fired
the small towns even close to Paris; but, being watched from the right bank of
the river by the French King and all his army, it came to this at last, that
Edward found himself, on Saturday the twenty-sixth of August, one thousand
three hundred and forty-six, on a rising ground behind the little French
village of Crecy, face to face with the French King’s force. And, although the
French King had an enormous army--in number more than eight times his--he there
resolved to beat him or be beaten.
The young Prince,
assisted by the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of Warwick, led the first division
of the English army; two other great Earls led the second; and the King, the
third. When the morning dawned, the King received the sacrament, and heard
prayers, and then, mounted on horseback with a white wand in his hand, rode
from company to company, and rank to rank, cheering and encouraging both
officers and men. Then the whole army breakfasted, each man sitting on the
ground where he had stood; and then they remained quietly on the ground with
their weapons ready.
Up came the French King
with all his great force. It was dark and angry weather; there was an eclipse
of the sun; there was a thunder-storm, accompanied with tremendous rain; the
frightened birds flew screaming above the soldiers’ heads. A certain captain in
the French army advised the French King, who was by no means cheerful, not to
begin the battle until the morrow. The King, taking this advice, gave the word
to halt. But, those behind not understanding it, or desiring to be foremost
with the rest, came pressing on. The roads for a great distance were covered
with this immense army, and with the common people from the villages, who were
flourishing their rude weapons, and making a great noise. Owing to these
circumstances, the French army advanced in the greatest confusion; every French
lord doing what he liked with his own men, and putting out the men of every
other French lord.
Now, their King relied
strongly upon a great body of cross-bowmen from Genoa; and these he ordered to
the front to begin the battle, on finding that he could not stop it. They
shouted once, they shouted twice, they shouted three times, to alarm the
English archers; but, the English would have heard them shout three thousand
times and would have never moved. At last the cross-bowmen went forward a little,
and began to discharge their bolts; upon which, the English let fly such a hail
of arrows, that the Genoese speedily made off--for their cross-bows, besides
being heavy to carry, required to be wound up with a handle, and consequently
took time to re-load; the English, on the other hand, could discharge their
arrows almost as fast as the arrows could fly.
When the French King
saw the Genoese turning, he cried out to his men to kill those scoundrels, who
were doing harm instead of service. This increased the confusion. Meanwhile the
English archers, continuing to shoot as fast as ever, shot down great numbers
of the French soldiers and knights; whom certain sly Cornish-men and Welshmen,
from the English army, creeping along the ground, despatched with great knives.
The Prince and his
division were at this time so hard-pressed, that the Earl of Warwick sent a
message to the King, who was overlooking the battle from a windmill, beseeching
him to send more aid.
’Is my son killed?’
said the King.
’No, sire, please God,’
returned the messenger.
’Is he wounded?’ said
the King.
’No, sire.’
’Is he thrown to the
ground?’ said the King.
’No, sire, not so; but,
he is very hard-pressed.’
’Then,’ said the King, ’go
back to those who sent you, and tell them I shall send no aid; because I set my
heart upon my son proving himself this day a brave knight, and because I am
resolved, please God, that the honour of a great victory shall be his!’
These bold words, being
reported to the Prince and his division, so raised their spirits, that they
fought better than ever. The King of France charged gallantly with his men many
times; but it was of no use. Night closing in, his horse was killed under him
by an English arrow, and the knights and nobles who had clustered thick about
him early in the day, were now completely scattered. At last, some of his few
remaining followers led him off the field by force since he would not retire of
himself, and they journeyed away to Amiens. The victorious English, lighting
their watch-fires, made merry on the field, and the King, riding to meet his
gallant son, took him in his arms, kissed him, and told him that he had acted
nobly, and proved himself worthy of the day and of the crown. While it was yet
night, King Edward was hardly aware of the great victory he had gained; but,
next day, it was discovered that eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and
thirty thousand common men lay dead upon the French side. Among these was the
King of Bohemia, an old blind man; who, having been told that his son was
wounded in the battle, and that no force could stand against the Black Prince,
called to him two knights, put himself on horse-back between them, fastened the
three bridles together, and dashed in among the English, where he was presently
slain. He bore as his crest three white ostrich feathers, with the motto ICH
DIEN, signifying in English ’I serve.’ This crest and motto were taken by the
Prince of Wales in remembrance of that famous day, and have been borne by the
Prince of Wales ever since.
Five days after this
great battle, the King laid siege to Calais. This siege--ever afterwards
memorable--lasted nearly a year. In order to starve the inhabitants out, King
Edward built so many wooden houses for the lodgings of his troops, that it is
said their quarters looked like a second Calais suddenly sprung around the
first. Early in the siege, the governor of the town drove out what he called
the useless mouths, to the number of seventeen hundred persons, men and women,
young and old. King Edward allowed them to pass through his lines, and even fed
them, and dismissed them with money; but, later in the siege, he was not so
merciful--five hundred more, who were afterwards driven out, dying of
starvation and misery. The garrison were so hard-pressed at last, that they
sent a letter to King Philip, telling him that they had eaten all the horses,
all the dogs, and all the rats and mice that could be found in the place; and,
that if he did not relieve them, they must either surrender to the English, or
eat one another. Philip made one effort to give them relief; but they were so
hemmed in by the English power, that he could not succeed, and was fain to
leave the place. Upon this they hoisted the English flag, and surrendered to
King Edward. ’Tell your general,’ said he to the humble messengers who came out
of the town, ’that I require to have sent here, six of the most distinguished
citizens, bare-legged, and in their shirts, with ropes about their necks; and
let those six men bring with them the keys of the castle and the town.’
When the Governor of
Calais related this to the people in the Market-place, there was great weeping
and distress; in the midst of which, one worthy citizen, named Eustace de Saint
Pierre, rose up and said, that if the six men required were not sacrificed, the
whole population would be; therefore, he offered himself as the first.
Encouraged by this bright example, five other worthy citizens rose up one after
another, and offered themselves to save the rest. The Governor, who was too
badly wounded to be able to walk, mounted a poor old horse that had not been
eaten, and conducted these good men to the gate, while all the people cried and
mourned.
Edward received them
wrathfully, and ordered the heads of the whole six to be struck off. However,
the good Queen fell upon her knees, and besought the King to give them up to
her. The King replied, ’I wish you had been somewhere else; but I cannot refuse
you.’ So she had them properly dressed, made a feast for them, and sent them back
with a handsome present, to the great rejoicing of the whole camp. I hope the
people of Calais loved the daughter to whom she gave birth soon afterwards, for
her gentle mother’s sake.
Now came that terrible
disease, the Plague, into Europe, hurrying from the heart of China; and killed
the wretched people--especially the poor--in such enormous numbers, that
one-half of the inhabitants of England are related to have died of it. It
killed the cattle, in great numbers, too; and so few working men remained
alive, that there were not enough left to till the ground.
After eight years of
differing and quarrelling, the Prince of Wales again invaded France with an
army of sixty thousand men. He went through the south of the country, burning
and plundering wheresoever he went; while his father, who had still the
Scottish war upon his hands, did the like in Scotland, but was harassed and
worried in his retreat from that country by the Scottish men, who repaid his
cruelties with interest.
The French King, Philip,
was now dead, and was succeeded by his son John. The Black Prince, called by
that name from the colour of the armour he wore to set off his fair complexion,
continuing to burn and destroy in France, roused John into determined
opposition; and so cruel had the Black Prince been in his campaign, and so
severely had the French peasants suffered, that he could not find one who, for
love, or money, or the fear of death, would tell him what the French King was
doing, or where he was. Thus it happened that he came upon the French King’s
forces, all of a sudden, near the town of Poitiers, and found that the whole
neighbouring country was occupied by a vast French army. ’God help us!’ said
the Black Prince, ’we must make the best of it.’
So, on a Sunday
morning, the eighteenth of September, the Prince whose army was now reduced to
ten thousand men in all--prepared to give battle to the French King, who had
sixty thousand horse alone. While he was so engaged, there came riding from the
French camp, a Cardinal, who had persuaded John to let him offer terms, and try
to save the shedding of Christian blood. ’Save my honour,’ said the Prince to
this good priest, ’and save the honour of my army, and I will make any
reasonable terms.’ He offered to give up all the towns, castles, and prisoners,
he had taken, and to swear to make no war in France for seven years; but, as
John would hear of nothing but his surrender, with a hundred of his chief
knights, the treaty was broken off, and the Prince said quietly--’God defend
the right; we shall fight to-morrow.’
Therefore, on the
Monday morning, at break of day, the two armies prepared for battle. The
English were posted in a strong place, which could only be approached by one
narrow lane, skirted by hedges on both sides. The French attacked them by this
lane; but were so galled and slain by English arrows from behind the hedges,
that they were forced to retreat. Then went six hundred English bowmen round
about, and, coming upon the rear of the French army, rained arrows on them
thick and fast. The French knights, thrown into confusion, quitted their
banners and dispersed in all directions. Said Sir John Chandos to the Prince, ’Ride
forward, noble Prince, and the day is yours. The King of France is so valiant a
gentleman, that I know he will never fly, and may be taken prisoner.’ Said the
Prince to this, ’Advance, English banners, in the name of God and St. George!’
and on they pressed until they came up with the French King, fighting fiercely
with his battle-axe, and, when all his nobles had forsaken him, attended faithfully
to the last by his youngest son Philip, only sixteen years of age. Father and
son fought well, and the King had already two wounds in his face, and had been
beaten down, when he at last delivered himself to a banished French knight, and
gave him his right-hand glove in token that he had done so.
The Black Prince was
generous as well as brave, and he invited his royal prisoner to supper in his
tent, and waited upon him at table, and, when they afterwards rode into London
in a gorgeous procession, mounted the French King on a fine cream-coloured
horse, and rode at his side on a little pony. This was all very kind, but I
think it was, perhaps, a little theatrical too, and has been made more
meritorious than it deserved to be; especially as I am inclined to think that
the greatest kindness to the King of France would have been not to have shown
him to the people at all. However, it must be said, for these acts of
politeness, that, in course of time, they did much to soften the horrors of war
and the passions of conquerors. It was a long, long time before the common
soldiers began to have the benefit of such courtly deeds; but they did at last;
and thus it is possible that a poor soldier who asked for quarter at the battle
of Waterloo, or any other such great fight, may have owed his life indirectly
to Edward the Black Prince.
At this time there
stood in the Strand, in London, a palace called the Savoy, which was given up
to the captive King of France and his son for their residence. As the King of
Scotland had now been King Edward’s captive for eleven years too, his success
was, at this time, tolerably complete. The Scottish business was settled by the
prisoner being released under the title of Sir David, King of Scotland, and by
his engaging to pay a large ransom. The state of France encouraged England to
propose harder terms to that country, where the people rose against the
unspeakable cruelty and barbarity of its nobles; where the nobles rose in turn
against the people; where the most frightful outrages were committed on all
sides; and where the insurrection of the peasants, called the insurrection of
the Jacquerie, from Jacques, a common Christian name among the country people
of France, awakened terrors and hatreds that have scarcely yet passed away. A
treaty called the Great Peace, was at last signed, under which King Edward
agreed to give up the greater part of his conquests, and King John to pay,
within six years, a ransom of three million crowns of gold. He was so beset by
his own nobles and courtiers for having yielded to these conditions--though
they could help him to no better--that he came back of his own will to his old
palace-prison of the Savoy, and there died.
There was a Sovereign
of Castile at that time, called PEDRO THE CRUEL, who deserved the name
remarkably well: having committed, among other cruelties, a variety of murders.
This amiable monarch being driven from his throne for his crimes, went to the
province of Bordeaux, where the Black Prince--now married to his cousin JOAN, a
pretty widow--was residing, and besought his help. The Prince, who took to him
much more kindly than a prince of such fame ought to have taken to such a
ruffian, readily listened to his fair promises, and agreeing to help him, sent
secret orders to some troublesome disbanded soldiers of his and his father’s,
who called themselves the Free Companions, and who had been a pest to the
French people, for some time, to aid this Pedro. The Prince, himself, going
into Spain to head the army of relief, soon set Pedro on his throne
again--where he no sooner found himself, than, of course, he behaved like the
villain he was, broke his word without the least shame, and abandoned all the
promises he had made to the Black Prince.
Now, it had cost the
Prince a good deal of money to pay soldiers to support this murderous King; and
finding himself, when he came back disgusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad
health, but deeply in debt, he began to tax his French subjects to pay his
creditors. They appealed to the French King, CHARLES; war again broke out; and
the French town of Limoges, which the Prince had greatly benefited, went over
to the French King. Upon this he ravaged the province of which it was the
capital; burnt, and plundered, and killed in the old sickening way; and refused
mercy to the prisoners, men, women, and children taken in the offending town,
though he was so ill and so much in need of pity himself from Heaven, that he
was carried in a litter. He lived to come home and make himself popular with
the people and Parliament, and he died on Trinity Sunday, the eighth of June,
one thousand three hundred and seventy-six, at forty-six years old.
The whole nation
mourned for him as one of the most renowned and beloved princes it had ever
had; and he was buried with great lamentations in Canterbury Cathedral. Near to
the tomb of Edward the Confessor, his monument, with his figure, carved in
stone, and represented in the old black armour, lying on its back, may be seen
at this day, with an ancient coat of mail, a helmet, and a pair of gauntlets
hanging from a beam above it, which most people like to believe were once worn
by the Black Prince.
King Edward did not
outlive his renowned son, long. He was old, and one Alice Perrers, a beautiful
lady, had contrived to make him so fond of her in his old age, that he could
refuse her nothing, and made himself ridiculous. She little deserved his love,
or--what I dare say she valued a great deal more--the jewels of the late Queen,
which he gave her among other rich presents. She took the very ring from his
finger on the morning of the day when he died, and left him to be pillaged by
his faithless servants. Only one good priest was true to him, and attended him
to the last.
Besides being famous
for the great victories I have related, the reign of King Edward the Third was
rendered memorable in better ways, by the growth of architecture and the
erection of Windsor Castle. In better ways still, by the rising up of
WICKLIFFE, originally a poor parish priest: who devoted himself to exposing,
with wonderful power and success, the ambition and corruption of the Pope, and
of the whole church of which he was the head.
Some of those Flemings
were induced to come to England in this reign too, and to settle in Norfolk,
where they made better woollen cloths than the English had ever had before. The
Order of the Garter (a very fine thing in its way, but hardly so important as
good clothes for the nation) also dates from this period. The King is said to
have picked ’up a lady’s garter at a ball, and to have said, HONI SOIT QUI MAL
Y PENSE--in English, ’Evil be to him who evil thinks of it.’ The courtiers were
usually glad to imitate what the King said or did, and hence from a slight
incident the Order of the Garter was instituted, and became a great dignity. So
the story goes.
RICHARD, son of the
Black Prince, a boy eleven years of age, succeeded to the Crown under the title
of King Richard the Second. The whole English nation were ready to admire him
for the sake of his brave father. As to the lords and ladies about the Court,
they declared him to be the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best--even of
princes--whom the lords and ladies about the Court, generally declare to be the
most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of mankind. To flatter a poor boy in
this base manner was not a very likely way to develop whatever good was in him;
and it brought him to anything but a good or happy end.
The Duke of Lancaster,
the young King’s uncle--commonly called John of Gaunt, from having been born at
Ghent, which the common people so pronounced--was supposed to have some
thoughts of the throne himself; but, as he was not popular, and the memory of
the Black Prince was, he submitted to his nephew.
The war with France
being still unsettled, the Government of England wanted money to provide for
the expenses that might arise out of it; accordingly a certain tax, called the
Poll-tax, which had originated in the last reign, was ordered to be levied on
the people. This was a tax on every person in the kingdom, male and female,
above the age of fourteen, of three groats (or three four-penny pieces) a year;
clergymen were charged more, and only beggars were exempt.
I have no need to
repeat that the common people of England had long been suffering under great
oppression. They were still the mere slaves of the lords of the land on which
they lived, and were on most occasions harshly and unjustly treated. But, they
had begun by this time to think very seriously of not bearing quite so much;
and, probably, were emboldened by that French insurrection I mentioned in the
last chapter.
The people of Essex
rose against the Poll-tax, and being severely handled by the government
officers, killed some of them. At this very time one of the tax-collectors,
going his rounds from house to house, at Dartford in Kent came to the cottage
of one WAT, a tiler by trade, and claimed the tax upon his daughter. Her
mother, who was at home, declared that she was under the age of fourteen; upon
that, the collector (as other collectors had already done in different parts of
England) behaved in a savage way, and brutally insulted Wat Tyler’s daughter.
The daughter screamed, the mother screamed. Wat the Tiler, who was at work not
far off, ran to the spot, and did what any honest father under such provocation
might have done--struck the collector dead at a blow.
Instantly the people of
that town uprose as one man. They made Wat Tyler their leader; they joined with
the people of Essex, who were in arms under a priest called JACK STRAW; they
took out of prison another priest named JOHN BALL; and gathering in numbers as
they went along, advanced, in a great confused army of poor men, to Blackheath.
It is said that they wanted to abolish all property, and to declare all men
equal. I do not think this very likely; because they stopped the travellers on
the roads and made them swear to be true to King Richard and the people. Nor
were they at all disposed to injure those who had done them no harm, merely because
they were of high station; for, the King’s mother, who had to pass through
their camp at Blackheath, on her way to her young son, lying for safety in the
Tower of London, had merely to kiss a few dirty-faced rough-bearded men who
were noisily fond of royalty, and so got away in perfect safety. Next day the
whole mass marched on to London Bridge.
There was a drawbridge
in the middle, which WILLIAM WALWORTH the Mayor caused to be raised to prevent
their coming into the city; but they soon terrified the citizens into lowering
it again, and spread themselves, with great uproar, over the streets. They
broke open the prisons; they burned the papers in Lambeth Palace; they
destroyed the DUKE OF LANCASTER’S Palace, the Savoy, in the Strand, said to be
the most beautiful and splendid in England; they set fire to the books and
documents in the Temple; and made a great riot. Many of these outrages were
committed in drunkenness; since those citizens, who had well-filled cellars,
were only too glad to throw them open to save the rest of their property; but
even the drunken rioters were very careful to steal nothing. They were so angry
with one man, who was seen to take a silver cup at the Savoy Palace, and put it
in his breast, that they drowned him in the river, cup and all.
The young King had been
taken out to treat with them before they committed these excesses; but, he and
the people about him were so frightened by the riotous shouts, that they got
back to the Tower in the best way they could. This made the insurgents bolder;
so they went on rioting away, striking off the heads of those who did not, at a
moment’s notice, declare for King Richard and the people; and killing as many
of the unpopular persons whom they supposed to be their enemies as they could
by any means lay hold of. In this manner they passed one very violent day, and
then proclamation was made that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and grant
their requests.
The rioters went to
Mile-end to the number of sixty thousand, and the King met them there, and to
the King the rioters peaceably proposed four conditions. First, that neither
they, nor their children, nor any coming after them, should be made slaves any
more. Secondly, that the rent of land should be fixed at a certain price in
money, instead of being paid in service. Thirdly, that they should have liberty
to buy and sell in all markets and public places, like other free men.
Fourthly, that they should be pardoned for past offences. Heaven knows, there
was nothing very unreasonable in these proposals! The young King deceitfully
pretended to think so, and kept thirty clerks up, all night, writing out a
charter accordingly.
Now, Wat Tyler himself
wanted more than this. He wanted the entire abolition of the forest laws. He
was not at Mile-end with the rest, but, while that meeting was being held,
broke into the Tower of London and slew the archbishop and the treasurer, for
whose heads the people had cried out loudly the day before. He and his men even
thrust their swords into the bed of the Princess of Wales while the Princess
was in it, to make certain that none of their enemies were concealed there.
So, Wat and his men
still continued armed, and rode about the city. Next morning, the King with a
small train of some sixty gentlemen--among whom was WALWORTH the Mayor--rode
into Smithfield, and saw Wat and his people at a little distance. Says Wat to
his men, ’There is the King. I will go speak with him, and tell him what we
want.’
Straightway Wat rode up
to him, and began to talk. ’King,’ says Wat, ’dost thou see all my men there?’
’Ah,’ says the King. ’Why?’
’Because,’ says Wat, ’they
are all at my command, and have sworn to do whatever I bid them.’
Some declared
afterwards that as Wat said this, he laid his hand on the King’s bridle. Others
declared that he was seen to play with his own dagger. I think, myself, that he
just spoke to the King like a rough, angry man as he was, and did nothing more.
At any rate he was expecting no attack, and preparing for no resistance, when
Walworth the Mayor did the not very valiant deed of drawing a short sword and
stabbing him in the throat. He dropped from his horse, and one of the King’s
people speedily finished him. So fell Wat Tyler. Fawners and flatterers made a
mighty triumph of it, and set up a cry which will occasionally find an echo to
this day. But Wat was a hard-working man, who had suffered much, and had been
foully outraged; and it is probable that he was a man of a much higher nature
and a much braver spirit than any of the parasites who exulted then, or have
exulted since, over his defeat.
Seeing Wat down, his
men immediately bent their bows to avenge his fall. If the young King had not
had presence of mind at that dangerous moment, both he and the Mayor to boot,
might have followed Tyler pretty fast. But the King riding up to the crowd,
cried out that Tyler was a traitor, and that he would be their leader. They
were so taken by surprise, that they set up a great shouting, and followed the
boy until he was met at Islington by a large body of soldiers.
The end of this rising
was the then usual end. As soon as the King found himself safe, he unsaid all
he had said, and undid all he had done; some fifteen hundred of the rioters
were tried (mostly in Essex) with great rigour, and executed with great
cruelty. Many of them were hanged on gibbets, and left there as a terror to the
country people; and, because their miserable friends took some of the bodies
down to bury, the King ordered the rest to be chained up--which was the
beginning of the barbarous custom of hanging in chains. The King’s falsehood in
this business makes such a pitiful figure, that I think Wat Tyler appears in
history as beyond comparison the truer and more respectable man of the two.
Richard was now sixteen
years of age, and married Anne of Bohemia, an excellent princess, who was
called ’the good Queen Anne.’ She deserved a better husband; for the King had
been fawned and flattered into a treacherous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young
man.
There were two Popes at
this time (as if one were not enough!), and their quarrels involved Europe in a
great deal of trouble. Scotland was still troublesome too; and at home there
was much jealousy and distrust, and plotting and counter-plotting, because the
King feared the ambition of his relations, and particularly of his uncle, the
Duke of Lancaster, and the duke had his party against the King, and the King
had his party against the duke. Nor were these home troubles lessened when the
duke went to Castile to urge his claim to the crown of that kingdom; for then
the Duke of Gloucester, another of Richard’s uncles, opposed him, and
influenced the Parliament to demand the dismissal of the King’s favourite
ministers. The King said in reply, that he would not for such men dismiss the
meanest servant in his kitchen. But, it had begun to signify little what a King
said when a Parliament was determined; so Richard was at last obliged to give
way, and to agree to another Government of the kingdom, under a commission of
fourteen nobles, for a year. His uncle of Gloucester was at the head of this
commission, and, in fact, appointed everybody composing it.
Having done all this,
the King declared as soon as he saw an opportunity that he had never meant to
do it, and that it was all illegal; and he got the judges secretly to sign a
declaration to that effect. The secret oozed out directly, and was carried to
the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand
men, met the King on his entering into London to enforce his authority; the
King was helpless against him; his favourites and ministers were impeached and
were mercilessly executed. Among them were two men whom the people regarded
with very different feelings; one, Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was
hated for having made what was called ’the bloody circuit’ to try the rioters;
the other, Sir Simon Burley, an honourable knight, who had been the dear friend
of the Black Prince, and the governor and guardian of the King. For this gentleman’s
life the good Queen even begged of Gloucester on her knees; but Gloucester
(with or without reason) feared and hated him, and replied, that if she valued
her husband’s crown, she had better beg no more. All this was done under what
was called by some the wonderful--and by others, with better reason, the
merciless--Parliament.
But Gloucester’s power
was not to last for ever. He held it for only a year longer; in which year the
famous battle of Otterbourne, sung in the old ballad of Chevy Chase, was
fought. When the year was out, the King, turning suddenly to Gloucester, in the
midst of a great council said, ’Uncle, how old am I?’ ’Your highness,’ returned
the Duke, ’is in your twenty-second year.’ ’Am I so much?’ said the King; ’then
I will manage my own affairs! I am much obliged to you, my good lords, for your
past services, but I need them no more.’ He followed this up, by appointing a
new Chancellor and a new Treasurer, and announced to the people that he had
resumed the Government. He held it for eight years without opposition. Through
all that time, he kept his determination to revenge himself some day upon his
uncle Gloucester, in his own breast.
At last the good Queen
died, and then the King, desiring to take a second wife, proposed to his council
that he should marry Isabella, of France, the daughter of Charles the Sixth:
who, the French courtiers said (as the English courtiers had said of Richard),
was a marvel of beauty and wit, and quite a phenomenon--of seven years old. The
council were divided about this marriage, but it took place. It secured peace
between England and France for a quarter of a century; but it was strongly
opposed to the prejudices of the English people. The Duke of Gloucester, who
was anxious to take the occasion of making himself popular, declaimed against
it loudly, and this at length decided the King to execute the vengeance he had
been nursing so long.
He went with a gay
company to the Duke of Gloucester’s house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex, where the
Duke, suspecting nothing, came out into the court-yard to receive his royal
visitor. While the King conversed in a friendly manner with the Duchess, the
Duke was quietly seized, hurried away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the
castle there. His friends, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were taken in the
same treacherous manner, and confined to their castles. A few days after, at
Nottingham, they were impeached of high treason. The Earl of Arundel was
condemned and beheaded, and the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ was
sent by a messenger to the Governor of Calais, requiring him to send the Duke
of Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he returned an answer that he
could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester had died in prison. The Duke
was declared a traitor, his property was confiscated to the King, a real or
pretended confession he had made in prison to one of the Justices of the Common
Pleas was produced against him, and there was an end of the matter. How the
unfortunate duke died, very few cared to know. Whether he really died
naturally; whether he killed himself; whether, by the King’s order, he was
strangled, or smothered between two beds (as a serving-man of the Governor’s
named Hall, did afterwards declare), cannot be discovered. There is not much
doubt that he was killed, somehow or other, by his nephew’s orders. Among the
most active nobles in these proceedings were the King’s cousin, Henry
Bolingbroke, whom the King had made Duke of Hereford to smooth down the old
family quarrels, and some others: who had in the family-plotting times done
just such acts themselves as they now condemned in the duke. They seem to have
been a corrupt set of men; but such men were easily found about the court in
such days.
The people murmured at
all this, and were still very sore about the French marriage. The nobles saw
how little the King cared for law, and how crafty he was, and began to be
somewhat afraid for themselves. The King’s life was a life of continued
feasting and excess; his retinue, down to the meanest servants, were dressed in
the most costly manner, and caroused at his tables, it is related, to the
number of ten thousand persons every day. He himself, surrounded by a body of
ten thousand archers, and enriched by a duty on wool which the Commons had
granted him for life, saw no danger of ever being otherwise than powerful and
absolute, and was as fierce and haughty as a King could be.
He had two of his old
enemies left, in the persons of the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing
these no more than the others, he tampered with the Duke of Hereford until he
got him to declare before the Council that the Duke of Norfolk had lately held
some treasonable talk with him, as he was riding near Brentford; and that he
had told him, among other things, that he could not believe the King’s
oath--which nobody could, I should think. For this treachery he obtained a
pardon, and the Duke of Norfolk was summoned to appear and defend himself. As
he denied the charge and said his accuser was a liar and a traitor, both
noblemen, according to the manner of those times, were held in custody, and the
truth was ordered to be decided by wager of battle at Coventry. This wager of
battle meant that whosoever won the combat was to be considered in the right;
which nonsense meant in effect, that no strong man could ever be wrong. A great
holiday was made; a great crowd assembled, with much parade and show; and the
two combatants were about to rush at each other with their lances, when the
King, sitting in a pavilion to see fair, threw down the truncheon he carried in
his hand, and forbade the battle. The Duke of Hereford was to be banished for
ten years, and the Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for life. So said the
King. The Duke of Hereford went to France, and went no farther. The Duke of
Norfolk made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and afterwards died at Venice of a
broken heart.
Faster and fiercer,
after this, the King went on in his career. The Duke of Lancaster, who was the
father of the Duke of Hereford, died soon after the departure of his son; and,
the King, although he had solemnly granted to that son leave to inherit his
father’s property, if it should come to him during his banishment, immediately
seized it all, like a robber. The judges were so afraid of him, that they
disgraced themselves by declaring this theft to be just and lawful. His avarice
knew no bounds. He outlawed seventeen counties at once, on a frivolous
pretence, merely to raise money by way of fines for misconduct. In short, he
did as many dishonest things as he could; and cared so little for the
discontent of his subjects--though even the spaniel favourites began to whisper
to him that there was such a thing as discontent afloat--that he took that
time, of all others, for leaving England and making an expedition against the
Irish.
He was scarcely gone,
leaving the DUKE OF YORK Regent in his absence, when his cousin, Henry of
Hereford, came over from France to claim the rights of which he had been so
monstrously deprived. He was immediately joined by the two great Earls of
Northumberland and Westmoreland; and his uncle, the Regent, finding the King’s
cause unpopular, and the disinclination of the army to act against Henry, very
strong, withdrew with the Royal forces towards Bristol. Henry, at the head of
an army, came from Yorkshire (where he had landed) to London and followed him.
They joined their forces--how they brought that about, is not distinctly
understood--and proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen had taken
the young Queen. The castle surrendering, they presently put those three
noblemen to death. The Regent then remained there, and Henry went on to
Chester.
All this time, the
boisterous weather had prevented the King from receiving intelligence of what
had occurred. At length it was conveyed to him in Ireland, and he sent over the
EARL OF SALISBURY, who, landing at Conway, rallied the Welshmen, and waited for
the King a whole fortnight; at the end of that time the Welshmen, who were
perhaps not very warm for him in the beginning, quite cooled down and went
home. When the King did land on the coast at last, he came with a pretty good
power, but his men cared nothing for him, and quickly deserted. Supposing the
Welshmen to be still at Conway, he disguised himself as a priest, and made for
that place in company with his two brothers and some few of their adherents.
But, there were no Welshmen left--only Salisbury and a hundred soldiers. In
this distress, the King’s two brothers, Exeter and Surrey, offered to go to
Henry to learn what his intentions were. Surrey, who was true to Richard, was
put into prison. Exeter, who was false, took the royal badge, which was a hart,
off his shield, and assumed the rose, the badge of Henry. After this, it was
pretty plain to the King what Henry’s intentions were, without sending any more
messengers to ask.
The fallen King, thus
deserted--hemmed in on all sides, and pressed with hunger--rode here and rode
there, and went to this castle, and went to that castle, endeavouring to obtain
some provisions, but could find none. He rode wretchedly back to Conway, and
there surrendered himself to the Earl of Northumberland, who came from Henry,
in reality to take him prisoner, but in appearance to offer terms; and whose
men were hidden not far off. By this earl he was conducted to the castle of
Flint, where his cousin Henry met him, and dropped on his knee as if he were
still respectful to his sovereign.
’Fair cousin of
Lancaster,’ said the King, ’you are very welcome’ (very welcome, no doubt; but
he would have been more so, in chains or without a head).
’My lord,’ replied
Henry, ’I am come a little before my time; but, with your good pleasure, I will
show you the reason. Your people complain with some bitterness, that you have
ruled them rigorously for two-and-twenty years. Now, if it please God, I will
help you to govern them better in future.’
’Fair cousin,’ replied
the abject King, ’since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth me mightily.’
After this, the
trumpets sounded, and the King was stuck on a wretched horse, and carried
prisoner to Chester, where he was made to issue a proclamation, calling a
Parliament. From Chester he was taken on towards London. At Lichfield he tried
to escape by getting out of a window and letting himself down into a garden; it
was all in vain, however, and he was carried on and shut up in the Tower, where
no one pitied him, and where the whole people, whose patience he had quite
tired out, reproached him without mercy. Before he got there, it is related,
that his very dog left him and departed from his side to lick the hand of
Henry.
The day before the
Parliament met, a deputation went to this wrecked King, and told him that he
had promised the Earl of Northumberland at Conway Castle to resign the crown.
He said he was quite ready to do it, and signed a paper in which he renounced
his authority and absolved his people from their allegiance to him. He had so
little spirit left that he gave his royal ring to his triumphant cousin Henry
with his own hand, and said, that if he could have had leave to appoint a
successor, that same Henry was the man of all others whom he would have named.
Next day, the Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the
side of the throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth of gold. The paper
just signed by the King was read to the multitude amid shouts of joy, which
were echoed through all the streets; when some of the noise had died away, the
King was formally deposed. Then Henry arose, and, making the sign of the cross
on his forehead and breast, challenged the realm of England as his right; the
archbishops of Canterbury and York seated him on the throne.
The multitude shouted
again, and the shouts re-echoed throughout all the streets. No one remembered,
now, that Richard the Second had ever been the most beautiful, the wisest, and
the best of princes; and he now made living (to my thinking) a far more sorry
spectacle in the Tower of London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying dead, among
the hoofs of the royal horses in Smithfield.
The Poll-tax died with
Wat. The Smiths to the King and Royal Family, could make no chains in which the
King could hang the people’s recollection of him; so the Poll-tax was never
collected.
DURING the last reign,
the preaching of Wickliffe against the pride and cunning of the Pope and all
his men, had made a great noise in England. Whether the new King wished to be
in favour with the priests, or whether he hoped, by pretending to be very religious,
to cheat Heaven itself into the belief that he was not a usurper, I don’t know.
Both suppositions are likely enough. It is certain that he began his reign by
making a strong show against the followers of Wickliffe, who were called
Lollards, or heretics--although his father, John of Gaunt, had been of that way
of thinking, as he himself had been more than suspected of being. It is no less
certain that he first established in England the detestable and atrocious
custom, brought from abroad, of burning those people as a punishment for their
opinions. It was the importation into England of one of the practices of what
was called the Holy Inquisition: which was the most UNholy and the most
infamous tribunal that ever disgraced mankind, and made men more like demons
than followers of Our Saviour.
No real right to the
crown, as you know, was in this King. Edward Mortimer, the young Earl of
March--who was only eight or nine years old, and who was descended from the
Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of Henry’s father--was, by succession, the
real heir to the throne. However, the King got his son declared Prince of
Wales; and, obtaining possession of the young Earl of March and his little
brother, kept them in confinement (but not severely) in Windsor Castle. He then
required the Parliament to decide what was to be done with the deposed King,
who was quiet enough, and who only said that he hoped his cousin Henry would be
’a good lord’ to him. The Parliament replied that they would recommend his
being kept in some secret place where the people could not resort, and where
his friends could not be admitted to see him. Henry accordingly passed this
sentence upon him, and it now began to be pretty clear to the nation that
Richard the Second would not live very long.
It was a noisy
Parliament, as it was an unprincipled one, and the Lords quarrelled so
violently among themselves as to which of them had been loyal and which
disloyal, and which consistent and which inconsistent, that forty gauntlets are
said to have been thrown upon the floor at one time as challenges to as many
battles: the truth being that they were all false and base together, and had
been, at one time with the old King, and at another time with the new one, and
seldom true for any length of time to any one. They soon began to plot again. A
conspiracy was formed to invite the King to a tournament at Oxford, and then to
take him by surprise and kill him. This murderous enterprise, which was agreed
upon at secret meetings in the house of the Abbot of Westminster, was betrayed
by the Earl of Rutland--one of the conspirators. The King, instead of going to
the tournament or staying at Windsor (where the conspirators suddenly went, on
finding themselves discovered, with the hope of seizing him), retired to London,
proclaimed them all traitors, and advanced upon them with a great force. They
retired into the west of England, proclaiming Richard King; but, the people
rose against them, and they were all slain. Their treason hastened the death of
the deposed monarch. Whether he was killed by hired assassins, or whether he
was starved to death, or whether he refused food on hearing of his brothers
being killed (who were in that plot), is very doubtful. He met his death
somehow; and his body was publicly shown at St. Paul’s Cathedral with only the
lower part of the face uncovered. I can scarcely doubt that he was killed by
the King’s orders.
The French wife of the
miserable Richard was now only ten years old; and, when her father, Charles of
France, heard of her misfortunes and of her lonely condition in England, he
went mad: as he had several times done before, during the last five or six
years. The French Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon took up the poor girl’s cause,
without caring much about it, but on the chance of getting something out of
England. The people of Bordeaux, who had a sort of superstitious attachment to
the memory of Richard, because he was born there, swore by the Lord that he had
been the best man in all his kingdom--which was going rather far--and promised
to do great things against the English. Nevertheless, when they came to
consider that they, and the whole people of France, were ruined by their own
nobles, and that the English rule was much the better of the two, they cooled
down again; and the two dukes, although they were very great men, could do
nothing without them. Then, began negotiations between France and England for
the sending home to Paris of the poor little Queen with all her jewels and her
fortune of two hundred thousand francs in gold. The King was quite willing to
restore the young lady, and even the jewels; but he said he really could not
part with the money. So, at last she was safely deposited at Paris without her
fortune, and then the Duke of Burgundy (who was cousin to the French King)
began to quarrel with the Duke of Orleans (who was brother to the French King)
about the whole matter; and those two dukes made France even more wretched than
ever.
As the idea of
conquering Scotland was still popular at home, the King marched to the river
Tyne and demanded homage of the King of that country. This being refused, he
advanced to Edinburgh, but did little there; for, his army being in want of
provisions, and the Scotch being very careful to hold him in check without
giving battle, he was obliged to retire. It is to his immortal honour that in
this sally he burnt no villages and slaughtered no people, but was particularly
careful that his army should be merciful and harmless. It was a great example
in those ruthless times.
A war among the border
people of England and Scotland went on for twelve months, and then the Earl of
Northumberland, the nobleman who had helped Henry to the crown, began to rebel
against him--probably because nothing that Henry could do for him would satisfy
his extravagant expectations. There was a certain Welsh gentleman, named OWEN
GLENDOWER, who had been a student in one of the Inns of Court, and had
afterwards been in the service of the late King, whose Welsh property was taken
from him by a powerful lord related to the present King, who was his neighbour.
Appealing for redress, and getting none, he took up arms, was made an outlaw,
and declared himself sovereign of Wales. He pretended to be a magician; and not
only were the Welsh people stupid enough to believe him, but, even Henry
believed him too; for, making three expeditions into Wales, and being three
times driven back by the wildness of the country, the bad weather, and the
skill of Glendower, he thought he was defeated by the Welshman’s magic arts.
However, he took Lord Grey and Sir Edmund Mortimer, prisoners, and allowed the
relatives of Lord Grey to ransom him, but would not extend such favour to Sir
Edmund Mortimer. Now, Henry Percy, called HOTSPUR, son of the Earl of
Northumberland, who was married to Mortimer’s sister, is supposed to have taken
offence at this; and, therefore, in conjunction with his father and some
others, to have joined Owen Glendower, and risen against Henry. It is by no
means clear that this was the real cause of the conspiracy; but perhaps it was
made the pretext. It was formed, and was very powerful; including SCROOP,
Archbishop of York, and the EARL OF DOUGLAS, a powerful and brave Scottish
nobleman. The King was prompt and active, and the two armies met at Shrewsbury.
There were about
fourteen thousand men in each. The old Earl of Northumberland being sick, the
rebel forces were led by his son. The King wore plain armour to deceive the
enemy; and four noblemen, with the same object, wore the royal arms. The rebel
charge was so furious, that every one of those gentlemen was killed, the royal
standard was beaten down, and the young Prince of Wales was severely wounded in
the face. But he was one of the bravest and best soldiers that ever lived, and
he fought so well, and the King’s troops were so encouraged by his bold
example, that they rallied immediately, and cut the enemy’s forces all to
pieces. Hotspur was killed by an arrow in the brain, and the rout was so
complete that the whole rebellion was struck down by this one blow. The Earl of
Northumberland surrendered himself soon after hearing of the death of his son,
and received a pardon for all his offences.
There were some
lingerings of rebellion yet: Owen Glendower being retired to Wales, and a
preposterous story being spread among the ignorant people that King Richard was
still alive. How they could have believed such nonsense it is difficult to
imagine; but they certainly did suppose that the Court fool of the late King,
who was something like him, was he, himself; so that it seemed as if, after
giving so much trouble to the country in his life, he was still to trouble it
after his death. This was not the worst. The young Earl of March and his
brother were stolen out of Windsor Castle. Being retaken, and being found to
have been spirited away by one Lady Spencer, she accused her own brother, that
Earl of Rutland who was in the former conspiracy and was now Duke of York, of
being in the plot. For this he was ruined in fortune, though not put to death;
and then another plot arose among the old Earl of Northumberland, some other
lords, and that same Scroop, Archbishop of York, who was with the rebels
before. These conspirators caused a writing to be posted on the church doors,
accusing the King of a variety of crimes; but, the King being eager and
vigilant to oppose them, they were all taken, and the Archbishop was executed.
This was the first time that a great churchman had been slain by the law in
England; but the King was resolved that it should be done, and done it was.
The next most
remarkable event of this time was the seizure, by Henry, of the heir to the
Scottish throne--James, a boy of nine years old. He had been put aboard-ship by
his father, the Scottish King Robert, to save him from the designs of his
uncle, when, on his way to France, he was accidentally taken by some English
cruisers. He remained a prisoner in England for nineteen years, and became in his
prison a student and a famous poet.
With the exception of
occasional troubles with the Welsh and with the French, the rest of King Henry’s
reign was quiet enough. But, the King was far from happy, and probably was
troubled in his conscience by knowing that he had usurped the crown, and had
occasioned the death of his miserable cousin. The Prince of Wales, though brave
and generous, is said to have been wild and dissipated, and even to have drawn
his sword on GASCOIGNE, the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, because he was
firm in dealing impartially with one of his dissolute companions. Upon this the
Chief Justice is said to have ordered him immediately to prison; the Prince of
Wales is said to have submitted with a good grace; and the King is said to have
exclaimed, ’Happy is the monarch who has so just a judge, and a son so willing
to obey the laws.’ This is all very doubtful, and so is another story (of which
Shakespeare has made beautiful use), that the Prince once took the crown out of
his father’s chamber as he was sleeping, and tried it on his own head.
The King’s health sank
more and more, and he became subject to violent eruptions on the face and to
bad epileptic fits, and his spirits sank every day. At last, as he was praying
before the shrine of St. Edward at Westminster Abbey, he was seized with a
terrible fit, and was carried into the Abbot’s chamber, where he presently
died. It had been foretold that he would die at Jerusalem, which certainly is
not, and never was, Westminster. But, as the Abbot’s room had long been called
the Jerusalem chamber, people said it was all the same thing, and were quite
satisfied with the prediction.
The King died on the
20th of March, 1413, in the forty-seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth
of his reign. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. He had been twice married,
and had, by his first wife, a family of four sons and two daughters.
Considering his duplicity before he came to the throne, his unjust seizure of
it, and above all, his making that monstrous law for the burning of what the
priests called heretics, he was a reasonably good king, as kings went.
THE Prince of Wales
began his reign like a generous and honest man. He set the young Earl of March
free; he restored their estates and their honours to the Percy family, who had
lost them by their rebellion against his father; he ordered the imbecile and
unfortunate Richard to be honourably buried among the Kings of England; and he
dismissed all his wild companions, with assurances that they should not want,
if they would resolve to be steady, faithful, and true.
It is much easier to
burn men than to burn their opinions; and those of the Lollards were spreading
every day. The Lollards were represented by the priests--probably falsely for
the most part--to entertain treasonable designs against the new King; and
Henry, suffering himself to be worked upon by these representations, sacrificed
his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord Cobham, to them, after trying in vain
to convert him by arguments. He was declared guilty, as the head of the sect,
and sentenced to the flames; but he escaped from the Tower before the day of
execution (postponed for fifty days by the King himself), and summoned the Lollards
to meet him near London on a certain day. So the priests told the King, at
least. I doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyond such as was got up by
their agents. On the day appointed, instead of five-and-twenty thousand men,
under the command of Sir John Oldcastle, in the meadows of St. Giles, the King
found only eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There was, in another place, an
addle-headed brewer, who had gold trappings to his horses, and a pair of gilt
spurs in his breast--expecting to be made a knight next day by Sir John, and so
to gain the right to wear them--but there was no Sir John, nor did anybody give
information respecting him, though the King offered great rewards for such
intelligence. Thirty of these unfortunate Lollards were hanged and drawn
immediately, and were then burnt, gallows and all; and the various prisons in
and around London were crammed full of others. Some of these unfortunate men
made various confessions of treasonable designs; but, such confessions were
easily got, under torture and the fear of fire, and are very little to be
trusted. To finish the sad story of Sir John Oldcastle at once, I may mention
that he escaped into Wales, and remained there safely, for four years. When
discovered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would have been taken
alive--so great was the old soldier’s bravery--if a miserable old woman had not
come behind him and broken his legs with a stool. He was carried to London in a
horse-litter, was fastened by an iron chain to a gibbet, and so roasted to
death.
To make the state of
France as plain as I can in a few words, I should tell you that the Duke of
Orleans, and the Duke of Burgundy, commonly called ’John without fear,’ had had
a grand reconciliation of their quarrel in the last reign, and had appeared to
be quite in a heavenly state of mind. Immediately after which, on a Sunday, in
the public streets of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was murdered by a party of
twenty men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy--according to his own deliberate
confession. The widow of King Richard had been married in France to the eldest
son of the Duke of Orleans. The poor mad King was quite powerless to help her,
and the Duke of Burgundy became the real master of France. Isabella dying, her
husband (Duke of Orleans since the death of his father) married the daughter of
the Count of Armagnac, who, being a much abler man than his young son-in-law,
headed his party; thence called after him Armagnacs. Thus, France was now in
this terrible condition, that it had in it the party of the King’s son, the
Dauphin Louis; the party of the Duke of Burgundy, who was the father of the
Dauphin’s ill-used wife; and the party of the Armagnacs; all hating each other;
all fighting together; all composed of the most depraved nobles that the earth
has ever known; and all tearing unhappy France to pieces.
The late King had
watched these dissensions from England, sensible (like the French people) that
no enemy of France could injure her more than her own nobility. The present
King now advanced a claim to the French throne. His demand being, of course,
refused, he reduced his proposal to a certain large amount of French territory,
and to demanding the French princess, Catherine, in marriage, with a fortune of
two millions of golden crowns. He was offered less territory and fewer crowns,
and no princess; but he called his ambassadors home and prepared for war. Then,
he proposed to take the princess with one million of crowns. The French Court
replied that he should have the princess with two hundred thousand crowns less;
he said this would not do (he had never seen the princess in his life), and
assembled his army at Southampton. There was a short plot at home just at that
time, for deposing him, and making the Earl of March king; but the conspirators
were all speedily condemned and executed, and the King embarked for France.
It is dreadful to
observe how long a bad example will be followed; but, it is encouraging to know
that a good example is never thrown away. The King’s first act on disembarking
at the mouth of the river Seine, three miles from Harfleur, was to imitate his
father, and to proclaim his solemn orders that the lives and property of the
peaceable inhabitants should be respected on pain of death. It is agreed by
French writers, to his lasting renown, that even while his soldiers were
suffering the greatest distress from want of food, these commands were rigidly
obeyed.
With an army in all of
thirty thousand men, he besieged the town of Harfleur both by sea and land for
five weeks; at the end of which time the town surrendered, and the inhabitants
were allowed to depart with only fivepence each, and a part of their clothes.
All the rest of their possessions was divided amongst the English army. But,
that army suffered so much, in spite of its successes, from disease and
privation, that it was already reduced one half. Still, the King was determined
not to retire until he had struck a greater blow. Therefore, against the advice
of all his counsellors, he moved on with his little force towards Calais. When
he came up to the river Somme he was unable to cross, in consequence of the
fort being fortified; and, as the English moved up the left bank of the river
looking for a crossing, the French, who had broken all the bridges, moved up the
right bank, watching them, and waiting to attack them when they should try to
pass it. At last the English found a crossing and got safely over. The French
held a council of war at Rouen, resolved to give the English battle, and sent
heralds to King Henry to know by which road he was going. ’By the road that
will take me straight to Calais!’ said the King, and sent them away with a
present of a hundred crowns.
The English moved on,
until they beheld the French, and then the King gave orders to form in line of
battle. The French not coming on, the army broke up after remaining in battle
array till night, and got good rest and refreshment at a neighbouring village.
The French were now all lying in another village, through which they knew the
English must pass. They were resolved that the English should begin the battle.
The English had no means of retreat, if their King had any such intention; and
so the two armies passed the night, close together.
To understand these
armies well, you must bear in mind that the immense French army had, among its
notable persons, almost the whole of that wicked nobility, whose debauchery had
made France a desert; and so besotted were they by pride, and by contempt for
the common people, that they had scarcely any bowmen (if indeed they had any at
all) in their whole enormous number: which, compared with the English army, was
at least as six to one. For these proud fools had said that the bow was not a
fit weapon for knightly hands, and that France must be defended by gentlemen
only. We shall see, presently, what hand the gentlemen made of it.
Now, on the English
side, among the little force, there was a good proportion of men who were not
gentlemen by any means, but who were good stout archers for all that. Among
them, in the morning--having slept little at night, while the French were
carousing and making sure of victory--the King rode, on a grey horse; wearing
on his head a helmet of shining steel, surmounted by a crown of gold, sparkling
with precious stones; and bearing over his armour, embroidered together, the
arms of England and the arms of France. The archers looked at the shining
helmet and the crown of gold and the sparkling jewels, and admired them all;
but, what they admired most was the King’s cheerful face, and his bright blue
eye, as he told them that, for himself, he had made up his mind to conquer
there or to die there, and that England should never have a ransom to pay for
HIM. There was one brave knight who chanced to say that he wished some of the
many gallant gentlemen and good soldiers, who were then idle at home in
England, were there to increase their numbers. But the King told him that, for
his part, he did not wish for one more man. ’The fewer we have,’ said he, ’the
greater will be the honour we shall win!’ His men, being now all in good heart,
were refreshed with bread and wine, and heard prayers, and waited quietly for
the French. The King waited for the French, because they were drawn up thirty
deep (the little English force was only three deep), on very difficult and
heavy ground; and he knew that when they moved, there must be confusion among
them.
As they did not move,
he sent off two parties:- one to lie concealed in a wood on the left of the
French: the other, to set fire to some houses behind the French after the
battle should be begun. This was scarcely done, when three of the proud French
gentlemen, who were to defend their country without any help from the base
peasants, came riding out, calling upon the English to surrender. The King
warned those gentlemen himself to retire with all speed if they cared for their
lives, and ordered the English banners to advance. Upon that, Sir Thomas
Erpingham, a great English general, who commanded the archers, threw his
truncheon into the air, joyfully, and all the English men, kneeling down upon
the ground and biting it as if they took possession of the country, rose up
with a great shout and fell upon the French.
Every archer was
furnished with a great stake tipped with iron; and his orders were, to thrust
this stake into the ground, to discharge his arrow, and then to fall back, when
the French horsemen came on. As the haughty French gentlemen, who were to break
the English archers and utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, came
riding up, they were received with such a blinding storm of arrows, that they
broke and turned. Horses and men rolled over one another, and the confusion was
terrific. Those who rallied and charged the archers got among the stakes on
slippery and boggy ground, and were so bewildered that the English archers--who
wore no armour, and even took off their leathern coats to be more active--cut
them to pieces, root and branch. Only three French horsemen got within the
stakes, and those were instantly despatched. All this time the dense French
army, being in armour, were sinking knee-deep into the mire; while the light
English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active as if they were fighting
on a marble floor.
But now, the second
division of the French coming to the relief of the first, closed up in a firm
mass; the English, headed by the King, attacked them; and the deadliest part of
the battle began. The King’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, was struck down,
and numbers of the French surrounded him; but King Henry, standing over the
body, fought like a lion until they were beaten off.
Presently, came up a
band of eighteen French knights, bearing the banner of a certain French lord,
who had sworn to kill or take the English King. One of them struck him such a
blow with a battle-axe that he reeled and fell upon his knees; but, his
faithful men, immediately closing round him, killed every one of those eighteen
knights, and so that French lord never kept his oath.
The French Duke of Alençon,
seeing this, made a desperate charge, and cut his way close up to the Royal
Standard of England. He beat down the Duke of York, who was standing near it;
and, when the King came to his rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore.
But, he never struck another blow in this world; for, even as he was in the act
of saying who he was, and that he surrendered to the King; and even as the King
stretched out his hand to give him a safe and honourable acceptance of the
offer; he fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds.
The death of this nobleman
decided the battle. The third division of the French army, which had never
struck a blow yet, and which was, in itself, more than double the whole English
power, broke and fled. At this time of the fight, the English, who as yet had
made no prisoners, began to take them in immense numbers, and were still
occupied in doing so, or in killing those who would not surrender, when a great
noise arose in the rear of the French--their flying banners were seen to
stop--and King Henry, supposing a great reinforcement to have arrived, gave
orders that all the prisoners should be put to death. As soon, however, as it
was found that the noise was only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants,
the terrible massacre was stopped.
Then King Henry called
to him the French herald, and asked him to whom the victory belonged.
The herald replied, ’To
the King of England.’
’WE have not made this
havoc and slaughter,’ said the King. ’It is the wrath of Heaven on the sins of
France. What is the name of that castle yonder?’
The herald answered
him, ’My lord, it is the castle of Azincourt.’ Said the King, ’From henceforth
this battle shall be known to posterity, by the name of the battle of
Azincourt.’
Our English historians
have made it Agincourt; but, under that name, it will ever be famous in English
annals.
The loss upon the
French side was enormous. Three Dukes were killed, two more were taken
prisoners, seven Counts were killed, three more were taken prisoners, and ten
thousand knights and gentlemen were slain upon the field. The English loss
amounted to sixteen hundred men, among whom were the Duke of York and the Earl
of Suffolk.
War is a dreadful
thing; and it is appalling to know how the English were obliged, next morning,
to kill those prisoners mortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony upon the
ground; how the dead upon the French side were stripped by their own countrymen
and countrywomen, and afterwards buried in great pits; how the dead upon the
English side were piled up in a great barn, and how their bodies and the barn
were all burned together. It is in such things, and in many more much too
horrible to relate, that the real desolation and wickedness of war consist.
Nothing can make war otherwise than horrible. But the dark side of it was
little thought of and soon forgotten; and it cast no shade of trouble on the
English people, except on those who had lost friends or relations in the fight.
They welcomed their King home with shouts of rejoicing, and plunged into the
water to bear him ashore on their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to
welcome him in every town through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and
tapestries out of the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and made
the fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt had run with
blood.
THAT proud and wicked
French nobility who dragged their country to destruction, and who were every
day and every year regarded with deeper hatred and detestation in the hearts of
the French people, learnt nothing, even from the defeat of Agincourt. So far
from uniting against the common enemy, they became, among themselves, more
violent, more bloody, and more false--if that were possible--than they had been
before. The Count of Armagnac persuaded the French king to plunder of her
treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and to make her a prisoner. She, who had
hitherto been the bitter enemy of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him,
in revenge. He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed herself Regent
of France, and made him her lieutenant. The Armagnac party were at that time
possessed of Paris; but, one of the gates of the city being secretly opened on
a certain night to a party of the duke’s men, they got into Paris, threw into
the prisons all the Armagnacs upon whom they could lay their hands, and, a few
nights afterwards, with the aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand people,
broke the prisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin was now dead,
and the King’s third son bore the title. Him, in the height of this murderous
scene, a French knight hurried out of bed, wrapped in a sheet, and bore away to
Poitiers. So, when the revengeful Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered
Paris in triumph after the slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin was
proclaimed at Poitiers as the real Regent.
King Henry had not been
idle since his victory of Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave attempt of the
French to recover Harfleur; had gradually conquered a great part of Normandy;
and, at this crisis of affairs, took the important town of Rouen, after a siege
of half a year. This great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke of
Burgundy proposed that a meeting to treat of peace should be held between the French
and the English kings in a plain by the river Seine. On the appointed day, King
Henry appeared there, with his two brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, and a
thousand men. The unfortunate French King, being more mad than usual that day,
could not come; but the Queen came, and with her the Princess Catherine: who
was a very lovely creature, and who made a real impression on King Henry, now
that he saw her for the first time. This was the most important circumstance
that arose out of the meeting.
As if it were
impossible for a French nobleman of that time to be true to his word of honour
in anything, Henry discovered that the Duke of Burgundy was, at that very
moment, in secret treaty with the Dauphin; and he therefore abandoned the
negotiation.
The Duke of Burgundy
and the Dauphin, each of whom with the best reason distrusted the other as a
noble ruffian surrounded by a party of noble ruffians, were rather at a loss
how to proceed after this; but, at length they agreed to meet, on a bridge over
the river Yonne, where it was arranged that there should be two strong gates
put up, with an empty space between them; and that the Duke of Burgundy should
come into that space by one gate, with ten men only; and that the Dauphin
should come into that space by the other gate, also with ten men, and no more.
So far the Dauphin kept
his word, but no farther. When the Duke of Burgundy was on his knee before him
in the act of speaking, one of the Dauphin’s noble ruffians cut the said duke
down with a small axe, and others speedily finished him.
It was in vain for the
Dauphin to pretend that this base murder was not done with his consent; it was
too bad, even for France, and caused a general horror. The duke’s heir hastened
to make a treaty with King Henry, and the French Queen engaged that her husband
should consent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on condition of
receiving the Princess Catherine in marriage, and being made Regent of France
during the rest of the King’s lifetime, and succeeding to the French crown at
his death. He was soon married to the beautiful Princess, and took her proudly
home to England, where she was crowned with great honour and glory.
This peace was called
the Perpetual Peace; we shall soon see how long it lasted. It gave great satisfaction
to the French people, although they were so poor and miserable, that, at the
time of the celebration of the Royal marriage, numbers of them were dying with
starvation, on the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There was some resistance
on the part of the Dauphin in some few parts of France, but King Henry beat it
all down.
And now, with his great
possessions in France secured, and his beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son
born to give him greater happiness, all appeared bright before him. But, in the
fulness of his triumph and the height of his power, Death came upon him, and
his day was done. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that he could not
recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke serenely to those who wept
around his bed. His wife and child, he said, he left to the loving care of his
brother the Duke of Bedford, and his other faithful nobles. He gave them his
advice that England should establish a friendship with the new Duke of
Burgundy, and offer him the regency of France; that it should not set free the
royal princes who had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel might
arise with France, England should never make peace without holding Normandy.
Then, he laid down his head, and asked the attendant priests to chant the
penitential psalms. Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty-first of August,
one thousand four hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his
age and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the Fifth passed away.
Slowly and mournfully
they carried his embalmed body in a procession of great state to Paris, and
thence to Rouen where his Queen was: from whom the sad intelligence of his
death was concealed until he had been dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of
crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a golden ball and
sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a
great retinue as seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted as
chief mourner, all the Royal Household followed, the knights wore black armour
and black plumes of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as
light as day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais there
was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And so, by way of London
Bridge, where the service for the dead was chanted as it passed along, they
brought the body to Westminster Abbey, and there buried it with great respect.
IT had been the wish of
the late King, that while his infant son KING HENRY THE SIXTH, at this time
only nine months old, was under age, the Duke of Gloucester should be appointed
Regent. The English Parliament, however, preferred to appoint a Council of Regency,
with the Duke of Bedford at its head: to be represented, in his absence only,
by the Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament would seem to have been wise in this,
for Gloucester soon showed himself to be ambitious and troublesome, and, in the
gratification of his own personal schemes, gave dangerous offence to the Duke
of Burgundy, which was with difficulty adjusted.
As that duke declined
the Regency of France, it was bestowed by the poor French King upon the Duke of
Bedford. But, the French King dying within two months, the Dauphin instantly
asserted his claim to the French throne, and was actually crowned under the
title of CHARLES THE SEVENTH. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match for him,
entered into a friendly league with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, and
gave them his two sisters in marriage. War with France was immediately renewed,
and the Perpetual Peace came to an untimely end.
In the first campaign,
the English, aided by this alliance, were speedily successful. As Scotland,
however, had sent the French five thousand men, and might send more, or attack
the North of England while England was busy with France, it was considered that
it would be a good thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had been so
long imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand pounds for his board
and lodging during nineteen years, and engaging to forbid his subjects from
serving under the flag of France. It is pleasant to know, not only that the
amiable captive at last regained his freedom upon these terms, but, that he
married a noble English lady, with whom he had been long in love, and became an
excellent King. I am afraid we have met with some Kings in this history, and
shall meet with some more, who would have been very much the better, and would
have left the world much happier, if they had been imprisoned nineteen years
too.
In the second campaign,
the English gained a considerable victory at Verneuil, in a battle which was
chiefly remarkable, otherwise, for their resorting to the odd expedient of
tying their baggage-horses together by the heads and tails, and jumbling them
up with the baggage, so as to convert them into a sort of live
fortification--which was found useful to the troops, but which I should think
was not agreeable to the horses. For three years afterwards very little was
done, owing to both sides being too poor for war, which is a very expensive
entertainment; but, a council was then held in Paris, in which it was decided
to lay siege to the town of Orleans, which was a place of great importance to
the Dauphin’s cause. An English army of ten thousand men was despatched on this
service, under the command of the Earl of Salisbury, a general of fame. He
being unfortunately killed early in the siege, the Earl of Suffolk took his
place; under whom (reinforced by SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, who brought up four hundred
waggons laden with salt herrings and other provisions for the troops, and,
beating off the French who tried to intercept him, came victorious out of a hot
skirmish, which was afterwards called in jest the Battle of the Herrings) the
town of Orleans was so completely hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to
yield it up to their countryman the Duke of Burgundy. The English general,
however, replied that his English men had won it, so far, by their blood and
valour, and that his English men must have it. There seemed to be no hope for
the town, or for the Dauphin, who was so dismayed that he even thought of
flying to Scotland or to Spain--when a peasant girl rose up and changed the
whole state of affairs.
The story of this
peasant girl I have now to tell.
IN a remote village
among some wild hills in the province of Lorraine, there lived a countryman
whose name was JACQUES D’ARC. He had a daughter, JOAN OF ARC, who was at this
time in her twentieth year. She had been a solitary girl from her childhood;
she had often tended sheep and cattle for whole days where no human figure was
seen or human voice heard; and she had often knelt, for hours together, in the
gloomy, empty, little village chapel, looking up at the altar and at the dim
lamp burning before it, until she fancied that she saw shadowy figures standing
there, and even that she heard them speak to her. The people in that part of
France were very ignorant and superstitious, and they had many ghostly tales to
tell about what they had dreamed, and what they saw among the lonely hills when
the clouds and the mists were resting on them. So, they easily believed that
Joan saw strange sights, and they whispered among themselves that angels and
spirits talked to her.
At last, Joan told her
father that she had one day been surprised by a great unearthly light, and had
afterwards heard a solemn voice, which said it was Saint Michael’s voice,
telling her that she was to go and help the Dauphin. Soon after this (she
said), Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had appeared to her with sparkling
crowns upon their heads, and had encouraged her to be virtuous and resolute.
These visions had returned sometimes; but the Voices very often; and the voices
always said, ’Joan, thou art appointed by Heaven to go and help the Dauphin!’
She almost always heard them while the chapel bells were ringing.
There is no doubt, now,
that Joan believed she saw and heard these things. It is very well known that
such delusions are a disease which is not by any means uncommon. It is probable
enough that there were figures of Saint Michael, and Saint Catherine, and Saint
Margaret, in the little chapel (where they would be very likely to have shining
crowns upon their heads), and that they first gave Joan the idea of those three
personages. She had long been a moping, fanciful girl, and, though she was a
very good girl, I dare say she was a little vain, and wishful for notoriety.
Her father, something
wiser than his neighbours, said, ’I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou
hadst better have a kind husband to take care of thee, girl, and work to employ
thy mind!’ But Joan told him in reply, that she had taken a vow never to have a
husband, and that she must go as Heaven directed her, to help the Dauphin.
It happened,
unfortunately for her father’s persuasions, and most unfortunately for the poor
girl, too, that a party of the Dauphin’s enemies found their way into the
village while Joan’s disorder was at this point, and burnt the chapel, and
drove out the inhabitants. The cruelties she saw committed, touched Joan’s
heart and made her worse. She said that the voices and the figures were now
continually with her; that they told her she was the girl who, according to an
old prophecy, was to deliver France; and she must go and help the Dauphin, and
must remain with him until he should be crowned at Rheims: and that she must
travel a long way to a certain lord named BAUDRICOURT, who could and would,
bring her into the Dauphin’s presence.
As her father still
said, ’I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy,’ she set off to find out this lord,
accompanied by an uncle, a poor village wheelwright and cart-maker, who
believed in the reality of her visions. They travelled a long way and went on
and on, over a rough country, full of the Duke of Burgundy’s men, and of all
kinds of robbers and marauders, until they came to where this lord was.
When his servants told
him that there was a poor peasant girl named Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody
but an old village wheelwright and cart-maker, who wished to see him because
she was commanded to help the Dauphin and save France, Baudricourt burst out
a-laughing, and bade them send the girl away. But, he soon heard so much about
her lingering in the town, and praying in the churches, and seeing visions, and
doing harm to no one, that he sent for her, and questioned her. As she said the
same things after she had been well sprinkled with holy water as she had said
before the sprinkling, Baudricourt began to think there might be something in
it. At all events, he thought it worth while to send her on to the town of
Chinon, where the Dauphin was. So, he bought her a horse, and a sword, and gave
her two squires to conduct her. As the Voices had told Joan that she was to
wear a man’s dress, now, she put one on, and girded her sword to her side, and
bound spurs to her heels, and mounted her horse and rode away with her two
squires. As to her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at his niece in
wonder until she was out of sight--as well he might--and then went home again.
The best place, too.
Joan and her two
squires rode on and on, until they came to Chinon, where she was, after some
doubt, admitted into the Dauphin’s presence. Picking him out immediately from
all his court, she told him that she came commanded by Heaven to subdue his
enemies and conduct him to his coronation at Rheims. She also told him (or he
pretended so afterwards, to make the greater impression upon his soldiers) a
number of his secrets known only to himself, and, furthermore, she said there
was an old, old sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine at Fierbois, marked
with five old crosses on the blade, which Saint Catherine had ordered her to
wear.
Now, nobody knew
anything about this old, old sword, but when the cathedral came to be
examined--which was immediately done--there, sure enough, the sword was found!
The Dauphin then required a number of grave priests and bishops to give him
their opinion whether the girl derived her power from good spirits or from evil
spirits, which they held prodigiously long debates about, in the course of
which several learned men fell fast asleep and snored loudly. At last, when one
gruff old gentleman had said to Joan, ’What language do your Voices speak?’ and
when Joan had replied to the gruff old gentleman, ’A pleasanter language than
yours,’ they agreed that it was all correct, and that Joan of Arc was inspired
from Heaven. This wonderful circumstance put new heart into the Dauphin’s
soldiers when they heard of it, and dispirited the English army, who took Joan
for a witch.
So Joan mounted horse
again, and again rode on and on, until she came to Orleans. But she rode now,
as never peasant girl had ridden yet. She rode upon a white war-horse, in a
suit of glittering armour; with the old, old sword from the cathedral, newly
burnished, in her belt; with a white flag carried before her, upon which were a
picture of God, and the words JESUS MARIA. In this splendid state, at the head
of a great body of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for the starving
inhabitants of Orleans, she appeared before that beleaguered city.
When the people on the
walls beheld her, they cried out ’The Maid is come! The Maid of the Prophecy is
come to deliver us!’ And this, and the sight of the Maid fighting at the head
of their men, made the French so bold, and made the English so fearful, that
the English line of forts was soon broken, the troops and provisions were got
into the town, and Orleans was saved.
Joan, henceforth called
THE MAID OF ORLEANS, remained within the walls for a few days, and caused
letters to be thrown over, ordering Lord Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart
from before the town according to the will of Heaven. As the English general
very positively declined to believe that Joan knew anything about the will of
Heaven (which did not mend the matter with his soldiers, for they stupidly said
if she were not inspired she was a witch, and it was of no use to fight against
a witch), she mounted her white war-horse again, and ordered her white banner
to advance.
The besiegers held the
bridge, and some strong towers upon the bridge; and here the Maid of Orleans
attacked them. The fight was fourteen hours long. She planted a scaling ladder
with her own hands, and mounted a tower wall, but was struck by an English
arrow in the neck, and fell into the trench. She was carried away and the arrow
was taken out, during which operation she screamed and cried with the pain, as
any other girl might have done; but presently she said that the Voices were
speaking to her and soothing her to rest. After a while, she got up, and was
again foremost in the fight. When the English who had seen her fall and supposed
her dead, saw this, they were troubled with the strangest fears, and some of
them cried out that they beheld Saint Michael on a white horse (probably Joan
herself) fighting for the French. They lost the bridge, and lost the towers,
and next day set their chain of forts on fire, and left the place.
But as Lord Suffolk
himself retired no farther than the town of Jargeau, which was only a few miles
off, the Maid of Orleans besieged him there, and he was taken prisoner. As the
white banner scaled the wall, she was struck upon the head with a stone, and
was again tumbled down into the ditch; but, she only cried all the more, as she
lay there, ’On, on, my countrymen! And fear nothing, for the Lord hath
delivered them into our hands!’ After this new success of the Maid’s, several
other fortresses and places which had previously held out against the Dauphin
were delivered up without a battle; and at Patay she defeated the remainder of
the English army, and set up her victorious white banner on a field where
twelve hundred Englishmen lay dead.
She now urged the
Dauphin (who always kept out of the way when there was any fighting) to proceed
to Rheims, as the first part of her mission was accomplished; and to complete
the whole by being crowned there. The Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do
this, as Rheims was a long way off, and the English and the Duke of Burgundy
were still strong in the country through which the road lay. However, they set
forth, with ten thousand men, and again the Maid of Orleans rode on and on,
upon her white war-horse, and in her shining armour. Whenever they came to a
town which yielded readily, the soldiers believed in her; but, whenever they
came to a town which gave them any trouble, they began to murmur that she was
an impostor. The latter was particularly the case at Troyes, which finally
yielded, however, through the persuasion of one Richard, a friar of the place.
Friar Richard was in the old doubt about the Maid of Orleans, until he had
sprinkled her well with holy water, and had also well sprinkled the threshold
of the gate by which she came into the city. Finding that it made no change in
her or the gate, he said, as the other grave old gentlemen had said, that it
was all right, and became her great ally.
So, at last, by dint of
riding on and on, the Maid of Orleans, and the Dauphin, and the ten thousand
sometimes believing and sometimes unbelieving men, came to Rheims. And in the
great cathedral of Rheims, the Dauphin actually was crowned Charles the Seventh
in a great assembly of the people. Then, the Maid, who with her white banner
stood beside the King in that hour of his triumph, kneeled down upon the
pavement at his feet, and said, with tears, that what she had been inspired to
do, was done, and that the only recompense she asked for, was, that she should
now have leave to go back to her distant home, and her sturdily incredulous
father, and her first simple escort the village wheelwright and cart-maker. But
the King said ’No!’ and made her and her family as noble as a King could, and
settled upon her the income of a Count.
Ah! happy had it been
for the Maid of Orleans, if she had resumed her rustic dress that day, and had
gone home to the little chapel and the wild hills, and had forgotten all these
things, and had been a good man’s wife, and had heard no stranger voices than
the voices of little children!
It was not to be, and
she continued helping the King (she did a world for him, in alliance with Friar
Richard), and trying to improve the lives of the coarse soldiers, and leading a
religious, an unselfish, and a modest life, herself, beyond any doubt. Still,
many times she prayed the King to let her go home; and once she even took off
her bright armour and hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear it more.
But, the King always won her back again--while she was of any use to him--and
so she went on and on and on, to her doom.
When the Duke of
Bedford, who was a very able man, began to be active for England, and, by
bringing the war back into France and by holding the Duke of Burgundy to his
faith, to distress and disturb Charles very much, Charles sometimes asked the
Maid of Orleans what the Voices said about it? But, the Voices had become (very
like ordinary voices in perplexed times) contradictory and confused, so that
now they said one thing, and now said another, and the Maid lost credit every
day. Charles marched on Paris, which was opposed to him, and attacked the
suburb of Saint Honore. In this fight, being again struck down into the ditch,
she was abandoned by the whole army. She lay unaided among a heap of dead, and
crawled out how she could. Then, some of her believers went over to an
opposition Maid, Catherine of La Rochelle, who said she was inspired to tell
where there were treasures of buried money--though she never did--and then Joan
accidentally broke the old, old sword, and others said that her power was
broken with it. Finally, at the siege of Compiègne, held by the Duke of
Burgundy, where she did valiant service, she was basely left alone in a
retreat, though facing about and fighting to the last; and an archer pulled her
off her horse.
O the uproar that was
made, and the thanksgivings that were sung, about the capture of this one poor
country-girl! O the way in which she was demanded to be tried for sorcery and
heresy, and anything else you like, by the Inquisitor-General of France, and by
this great man, and by that great man, until it is wearisome to think of! She
was bought at last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and was
shut up in her narrow prison: plain Joan of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no
more.
I should never have
done if I were to tell you how they had Joan out to examine her, and
cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and worry her into saying anything and
everything; and how all sorts of scholars and doctors bestowed their utmost
tediousness upon her. Sixteen times she was brought out and shut up again, and
worried, and entrapped, and argued with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary
business. On the last occasion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place
at Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and faggots, and the
executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It
is very affecting to know that even at that pass the poor girl honoured the
mean vermin of a King, who had so used her for his purposes and so abandoned
her; and, that while she had been regardless of reproaches heaped upon herself,
she spoke out courageously for him.
It was natural in one
so young to hold to life. To save her life, she signed a declaration prepared
for her--signed it with a cross, for she couldn’t write--that all her visions
and Voices had come from the Devil. Upon her recanting the past, and protesting
that she would never wear a man’s dress in future, she was condemned to
imprisonment for life, ’on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction.’
But, on the bread of
sorrow and the water of affliction, the visions and the Voices soon returned.
It was quite natural that they should do so, for that kind of disease is much
aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of mind. It was not only got out
of Joan that she considered herself inspired again, but, she was taken in a man’s
dress, which had been left--to entrap her--in her prison, and which she put on,
in her solitude; perhaps, in remembrance of her past glories, perhaps, because
the imaginary Voices told her. For this relapse into the sorcery and heresy and
anything else you like, she was sentenced to be burnt to death. And, in the
market-place of Rouen, in the hideous dress which the monks had invented for
such spectacles; with priests and bishops sitting in a gallery looking on,
though some had the Christian grace to go away, unable to endure the infamous
scene; this shrieking girl--last seen amidst the smoke and fire, holding a
crucifix between her hands; last heard, calling upon Christ--was burnt to
ashes. They threw her ashes into the river Seine; but they will rise against
her murderers on the last day.
From the moment of her
capture, neither the French King nor one single man in all his court raised a
finger to save her. It is no defence of them that they may have never really
believed in her, or that they may have won her victories by their skill and
bravery. The more they pretended to believe in her, the more they had caused
her to believe in herself; and she had ever been true to them, ever brave, ever
nobly devoted. But, it is no wonder, that they, who were in all things false to
themselves, false to one another, false to their country, false to Heaven,
false to Earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and treachery to a helpless
peasant girl.
In the picturesque old
town of Rouen, where weeds and grass grow high on the cathedral towers, and the
venerable Norman streets are still warm in the blessed sunlight though the
monkish fires that once gleamed horribly upon them have long grown cold, there
is a statue of Joan of Arc, in the scene of her last agony, the square to which
she has given its present name. I know some statues of modern times--even in
the World’s metropolis, I think--which commemorate less constancy, less
earnestness, smaller claims upon the world’s attention, and much greater
impostors.
BAD deeds seldom
prosper, happily for mankind; and the English cause gained no advantage from
the cruel death of Joan of Arc. For a long time, the war went heavily on. The
Duke of Bedford died; the alliance with the Duke of Burgundy was broken; and
Lord Talbot became a great general on the English side in France. But, two of
the consequences of wars are, Famine--because the people cannot peacefully
cultivate the ground--and Pestilence, which comes of want, misery, and
suffering. Both these horrors broke out in both countries, and lasted for two
wretched years. Then, the war went on again, and came by slow degrees to be so
badly conducted by the English government, that, within twenty years from the
execution of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French conquests, the town
of Calais alone remained in English hands.
While these victories
and defeats were taking place in the course of time, many strange things
happened at home. The young King, as he grew up, proved to be very unlike his
great father, and showed himself a miserable puny creature. There was no harm
in him--he had a great aversion to shedding blood: which was something--but, he
was a weak, silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great
lordly battledores about the Court.
Of these battledores,
Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the King, and the Duke of Gloucester, were at
first the most powerful. The Duke of Gloucester had a wife, who was
nonsensically accused of practising witchcraft to cause the King’s death and
lead to her husband’s coming to the throne, he being the next heir. She was
charged with having, by the help of a ridiculous old woman named Margery (who
was called a witch), made a little waxen doll in the King’s likeness, and put
it before a slow fire that it might gradually melt away. It was supposed, in
such cases, that the death of the person whom the doll was made to represent,
was sure to happen. Whether the duchess was as ignorant as the rest of them,
and really did make such a doll with such an intention, I don’t know; but, you
and I know very well that she might have made a thousand dolls, if she had been
stupid enough, and might have melted them all, without hurting the King or
anybody else. However, she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, and so was
one of the duke’s chaplains, who was charged with having assisted them. Both he
and Margery were put to death, and the duchess, after being taken on foot and
bearing a lighted candle, three times round the City, as a penance, was
imprisoned for life. The duke, himself, took all this pretty quietly, and made
as little stir about the matter as if he were rather glad to be rid of the
duchess.
But, he was not
destined to keep himself out of trouble long. The royal shuttlecock being
three-and-twenty, the battledores were very anxious to get him married. The
Duke of Gloucester wanted him to marry a daughter of the Count of Armagnac;
but, the Cardinal and the Earl of Suffolk were all for MARGARET, the daughter
of the King of Sicily, who they knew was a resolute, ambitious woman and would
govern the King as she chose. To make friends with this lady, the Earl of
Suffolk, who went over to arrange the match, consented to accept her for the
King’s wife without any fortune, and even to give up the two most valuable possessions
England then had in France. So, the marriage was arranged, on terms very
advantageous to the lady; and Lord Suffolk brought her to England, and she was
married at Westminster. On what pretence this queen and her party charged the
Duke of Gloucester with high treason within a couple of years, it is impossible
to make out, the matter is so confused; but, they pretended that the King’s
life was in danger, and they took the duke prisoner. A fortnight afterwards, he
was found dead in bed (they said), and his body was shown to the people, and
Lord Suffolk came in for the best part of his estates. You know by this time
how strangely liable state prisoners were to sudden death.
If Cardinal Beaufort
had any hand in this matter, it did him no good, for he died within six weeks;
thinking it very hard and curious--at eighty years old!--that he could not live
to be Pope.
This was the time when
England had completed her loss of all her great French conquests. The people
charged the loss principally upon the Earl of Suffolk, now a duke, who had made
those easy terms about the Royal Marriage, and who, they believed, had even
been bought by France. So he was impeached as a traitor, on a great number of
charges, but chiefly on accusations of having aided the French King, and of
designing to make his own son King of England. The Commons and the people being
violent against him, the King was made (by his friends) to interpose to save
him, by banishing him for five years, and proroguing the Parliament. The duke
had much ado to escape from a London mob, two thousand strong, who lay in wait
for him in St. Giles’s fields; but, he got down to his own estates in Suffolk,
and sailed away from Ipswich. Sailing across the Channel, he sent into Calais
to know if he might land there; but, they kept his boat and men in the harbour,
until an English ship, carrying a hundred and fifty men and called the Nicholas
of the Tower, came alongside his little vessel, and ordered him on board. ’Welcome,
traitor, as men say,’ was the captain’s grim and not very respectful
salutation. He was kept on board, a prisoner, for eight-and-forty hours, and
then a small boat appeared rowing toward the ship. As this boat came nearer, it
was seen to have in it a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner in a black
mask. The duke was handed down into it, and there his head was cut off with six
strokes of the rusty sword. Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover beach,
where the body was cast out, and left until the duchess claimed it. By whom,
high in authority, this murder was committed, has never appeared. No one was
ever punished for it.
There now arose in Kent
an Irishman, who gave himself the name of Mortimer, but whose real name was
JACK CADE. Jack, in imitation of Wat Tyler, though he was a very different and
inferior sort of man, addressed the Kentish men upon their wrongs, occasioned
by the bad government of England, among so many battledores and such a poor
shuttlecock; and the Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty thousand.
Their place of assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by Jack, they put forth
two papers, which they called ’The Complaint of the Commons of Kent,’ and ’The
Requests of the Captain of the Great Assembly in Kent.’ They then retired to
Sevenoaks. The royal army coming up with them here, they beat it and killed
their general. Then, Jack dressed himself in the dead general’s armour, and led
his men to London.
Jack passed into the
City from Southwark, over the bridge, and entered it in triumph, giving the
strictest orders to his men not to plunder. Having made a show of his forces
there, while the citizens looked on quietly, he went back into Southwark in
good order, and passed the night. Next day, he came back again, having got hold
in the meantime of Lord Say, an unpopular nobleman. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor
and judges: ’Will you be so good as to make a tribunal in Guildhall, and try me
this nobleman?’ The court being hastily made, he was found guilty, and Jack and
his men cut his head off on Cornhill. They also cut off the head of his
son-in-law, and then went back in good order to Southwark again.
But, although the
citizens could bear the beheading of an unpopular lord, they could not bear to
have their houses pillaged. And it did so happen that Jack, after
dinner--perhaps he had drunk a little too much--began to plunder the house
where he lodged; upon which, of course, his men began to imitate him.
Wherefore, the Londoners took counsel with Lord Scales, who had a thousand
soldiers in the Tower; and defended London Bridge, and kept Jack and his people
out. This advantage gained, it was resolved by divers great men to divide Jack’s
army in the old way, by making a great many promises on behalf of the state,
that were never intended to be performed. This DID divide them; some of Jack’s
men saying that they ought to take the conditions which were offered, and
others saying that they ought not, for they were only a snare; some going home
at once; others staying where they were; and all doubting and quarrelling among
themselves.
Jack, who was in two
minds about fighting or accepting a pardon, and who indeed did both, saw at
last that there was nothing to expect from his men, and that it was very likely
some of them would deliver him up and get a reward of a thousand marks, which was
offered for his apprehension. So, after they had travelled and quarrelled all
the way from Southwark to Blackheath, and from Blackheath to Rochester, he
mounted a good horse and galloped away into Sussex. But, there galloped after
him, on a better horse, one Alexander Iden, who came up with him, had a hard
fight with him, and killed him. Jack’s head was set aloft on London Bridge,
with the face looking towards Blackheath, where he had raised his flag; and
Alexander Iden got the thousand marks.
It is supposed by some,
that the Duke of York, who had been removed from a high post abroad through the
Queen’s influence, and sent out of the way, to govern Ireland, was at the
bottom of this rising of Jack and his men, because he wanted to trouble the
government. He claimed (though not yet publicly) to have a better right to the
throne than Henry of Lancaster, as one of the family of the Earl of March, whom
Henry the Fourth had set aside. Touching this claim, which, being through
female relationship, was not according to the usual descent, it is enough to
say that Henry the Fourth was the free choice of the people and the Parliament,
and that his family had now reigned undisputed for sixty years. The memory of
Henry the Fifth was so famous, and the English people loved it so much, that
the Duke of York’s claim would, perhaps, never have been thought of (it would
have been so hopeless) but for the unfortunate circumstance of the present King’s
being by this time quite an idiot, and the country very ill governed. These two
circumstances gave the Duke of York a power he could not otherwise have had.
Whether the Duke knew
anything of Jack Cade, or not, he came over from Ireland while Jack’s head was
on London Bridge; being secretly advised that the Queen was setting up his
enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against him. He went to Westminster, at the head
of four thousand men, and on his knees before the King, represented to him the
bad state of the country, and petitioned him to summon a Parliament to consider
it. This the King promised. When the Parliament was summoned, the Duke of York
accused the Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Somerset accused the Duke of
York; and, both in and out of Parliament, the followers of each party were full
of violence and hatred towards the other. At length the Duke of York put
himself at the head of a large force of his tenants, and, in arms, demanded the
reformation of the Government. Being shut out of London, he encamped at
Dartford, and the royal army encamped at Blackheath. According as either side
triumphed, the Duke of York was arrested, or the Duke of Somerset was arrested.
The trouble ended, for the moment, in the Duke of York renewing his oath of
allegiance, and going in peace to one of his own castles.
Half a year afterwards
the Queen gave birth to a son, who was very ill received by the people, and not
believed to be the son of the King. It shows the Duke of York to have been a
moderate man, unwilling to involve England in new troubles, that he did not
take advantage of the general discontent at this time, but really acted for the
public good. He was made a member of the cabinet, and the King being now so
much worse that he could not be carried about and shown to the people with any
decency, the duke was made Lord Protector of the kingdom, until the King should
recover, or the Prince should come of age. At the same time the Duke of
Somerset was committed to the Tower. So, now the Duke of Somerset was down, and
the Duke of York was up. By the end of the year, however, the King recovered
his memory and some spark of sense; upon which the Queen used her power--which
recovered with him--to get the Protector disgraced, and her favourite released.
So now the Duke of York was down, and the Duke of Somerset was up.
These ducal ups and downs
gradually separated the whole nation into the two parties of York and
Lancaster, and led to those terrible civil wars long known as the Wars of the
Red and White Roses, because the red rose was the badge of the House of
Lancaster, and the white rose was the badge of the House of York.
The Duke of York,
joined by some other powerful noblemen of the White Rose party, and leading a
small army, met the King with another small army at St. Alban’s, and demanded
that the Duke of Somerset should be given up. The poor King, being made to say
in answer that he would sooner die, was instantly attacked. The Duke of
Somerset was killed, and the King himself was wounded in the neck, and took
refuge in the house of a poor tanner. Whereupon, the Duke of York went to him,
led him with great submission to the Abbey, and said he was very sorry for what
had happened. Having now the King in his possession, he got a Parliament
summoned and himself once more made Protector, but, only for a few months; for,
on the King getting a little better again, the Queen and her party got him into
their possession, and disgraced the Duke once more. So, now the Duke of York
was down again.
Some of the best men in
power, seeing the danger of these constant changes, tried even then to prevent
the Red and the White Rose Wars. They brought about a great council in London
between the two parties. The White Roses assembled in Blackfriars, the Red
Roses in Whitefriars; and some good priests communicated between them, and made
the proceedings known at evening to the King and the judges. They ended in a
peaceful agreement that there should be no more quarrelling; and there was a
great royal procession to St. Paul’s, in which the Queen walked arm-in-arm with
her old enemy, the Duke of York, to show the people how comfortable they all
were. This state of peace lasted half a year, when a dispute between the Earl
of Warwick (one of the Duke’s powerful friends) and some of the King’s servants
at Court, led to an attack upon that Earl--who was a White Rose--and to a
sudden breaking out of all old animosities. So, here were greater ups and downs
than ever.
There were even greater
ups and downs than these, soon after. After various battles, the Duke of York
fled to Ireland, and his son the Earl of March to Calais, with their friends
the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick; and a Parliament was held declaring them
all traitors. Little the worse for this, the Earl of Warwick presently came
back, landed in Kent, was joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other powerful
noblemen and gentlemen, engaged the King’s forces at Northampton, signally
defeated them, and took the King himself prisoner, who was found in his tent.
Warwick would have been glad, I dare say, to have taken the Queen and Prince
too, but they escaped into Wales and thence into Scotland.
The King was carried by
the victorious force straight to London, and made to call a new Parliament,
which immediately declared that the Duke of York and those other noblemen were
not traitors, but excellent subjects. Then, back comes the Duke from Ireland at
the head of five hundred horsemen, rides from London to Westminster, and enters
the House of Lords. There, he laid his hand upon the cloth of gold which
covered the empty throne, as if he had half a mind to sit down in it--but he
did not. On the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him if he would visit the
King, who was in his palace close by, he replied, ’I know no one in this
country, my lord, who ought not to visit ME.’ None of the lords present spoke a
single word; so, the duke went out as he had come in, established himself
royally in the King’s palace, and, six days afterwards, sent in to the Lords a
formal statement of his claim to the throne. The lords went to the King on this
momentous subject, and after a great deal of discussion, in which the judges
and the other law officers were afraid to give an opinion on either side, the
question was compromised. It was agreed that the present King should retain the
crown for his life, and that it should then pass to the Duke of York and his
heirs.
But, the resolute
Queen, determined on asserting her son’s right, would hear of no such thing.
She came from Scotland to the north of England, where several powerful lords
armed in her cause. The Duke of York, for his part, set off with some five
thousand men, a little time before Christmas Day, one thousand four hundred and
sixty, to give her battle. He lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and the
Red Roses defied him to come out on Wakefield Green, and fight them then and
there. His generals said, he had best wait until his gallant son, the Earl of
March, came up with his power; but, he was determined to accept the challenge.
He did so, in an evil hour. He was hotly pressed on all sides, two thousand of
his men lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he himself was taken prisoner. They
set him down in mock state on an ant-hill, and twisted grass about his head,
and pretended to pay court to him on their knees, saying, ’O King, without a
kingdom, and Prince without a people, we hope your gracious Majesty is very
well and happy!’ They did worse than this; they cut his head off, and handed it
on a pole to the Queen, who laughed with delight when she saw it (you recollect
their walking so religiously and comfortably to St. Paul’s!), and had it fixed,
with a paper crown upon its head, on the walls of York. The Earl of Salisbury
lost his head, too; and the Duke of York’s second son, a handsome boy who was
flying with his tutor over Wakefield Bridge, was stabbed in the heart by a
murderous, lord--Lord Clifford by name--whose father had been killed by the
White Roses in the fight at St. Alban’s. There was awful sacrifice of life in
this battle, for no quarter was given, and the Queen was wild for revenge. When
men unnaturally fight against their own countrymen, they are always observed to
be more unnaturally cruel and filled with rage than they are against any other
enemy.
But, Lord Clifford had
stabbed the second son of the Duke of York--not the first. The eldest son,
Edward Earl of March, was at Gloucester; and, vowing vengeance for the death of
his father, his brother, and their faithful friends, he began to march against
the Queen. He had to turn and fight a great body of Welsh and Irish first, who
worried his advance. These he defeated in a great fight at Mortimer’s Cross,
near Hereford, where he beheaded a number of the Red Roses taken in battle, in
retaliation for the beheading of the White Roses at Wakefield. The Queen had
the next turn of beheading. Having moved towards London, and falling in,
between St. Alban’s and Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of
Norfolk, White Roses both, who were there with an army to oppose her, and had
got the King with them; she defeated them with great loss, and struck off the
heads of two prisoners of note, who were in the King’s tent with him, and to
whom the King had promised his protection. Her triumph, however, was very
short. She had no treasure, and her army subsisted by plunder. This caused them
to be hated and dreaded by the people, and particularly by the London people,
who were wealthy. As soon as the Londoners heard that Edward, Earl of March,
united with the Earl of Warwick, was advancing towards the city, they refused
to send the Queen supplies, and made a great rejoicing.
The Queen and her men
retreated with all speed, and Edward and Warwick came on, greeted with loud
acclamations on every side. The courage, beauty, and virtues of young Edward
could not be sufficiently praised by the whole people. He rode into London like
a conqueror, and met with an enthusiastic welcome. A few days afterwards, Lord
Falconbridge and the Bishop of Exeter assembled the citizens in St. John’s
Field, Clerkenwell, and asked them if they would have Henry of Lancaster for
their King? To this they all roared, ’No, no, no!’ and ’King Edward! King
Edward!’ Then, said those noblemen, would they love and serve young Edward? To
this they all cried, ’Yes, yes!’ and threw up their caps and clapped their
hands, and cheered tremendously.
Therefore, it was declared
that by joining the Queen and not protecting those two prisoners of note, Henry
of Lancaster had forfeited the crown; and Edward of York was proclaimed King.
He made a great speech to the applauding people at Westminster, and sat down as
sovereign of England on that throne, on the golden covering of which his
father--worthy of a better fate than the bloody axe which cut the thread of so
many lives in England, through so many years--had laid his hand.
KING EDWARD THE FOURTH
was not quite twenty-one years of age when he took that unquiet seat upon the
throne of England. The Lancaster party, the Red Roses, were then assembling in
great numbers near York, and it was necessary to give them battle instantly. But,
the stout Earl of Warwick leading for the young King, and the young King
himself closely following him, and the English people crowding round the Royal
standard, the White and the Red Roses met, on a wild March day when the snow
was falling heavily, at Towton; and there such a furious battle raged between
them, that the total loss amounted to forty thousand men--all Englishmen,
fighting, upon English ground, against one another. The young King gained the
day, took down the heads of his father and brother from the walls of York, and
put up the heads of some of the most famous noblemen engaged in the battle on
the other side. Then, he went to London and was crowned with great splendour.
A new Parliament met.
No fewer than one hundred and fifty of the principal noblemen and gentlemen on
the Lancaster side were declared traitors, and the King--who had very little
humanity, though he was handsome in person and agreeable in manners--resolved
to do all he could, to pluck up the Red Rose root and branch.
Queen Margaret,
however, was still active for her young son. She obtained help from Scotland
and from Normandy, and took several important English castles. But, Warwick
soon retook them; the Queen lost all her treasure on board ship in a great
storm; and both she and her son suffered great misfortunes. Once, in the winter
weather, as they were riding through a forest, they were attacked and plundered
by a party of robbers; and, when they had escaped from these men and were
passing alone and on foot through a thick dark part of the wood, they came, all
at once, upon another robber. So the Queen, with a stout heart, took the little
Prince by the hand, and going straight up to that robber, said to him, ’My
friend, this is the young son of your lawful King! I confide him to your care.’
The robber was surprised, but took the boy in his arms, and faithfully restored
him and his mother to their friends. In the end, the Queen’s soldiers being
beaten and dispersed, she went abroad again, and kept quiet for the present.
Now, all this time, the
deposed King Henry was concealed by a Welsh knight, who kept him close in his
castle. But, next year, the Lancaster party recovering their spirits, raised a
large body of men, and called him out of his retirement, to put him at their
head. They were joined by some powerful noblemen who had sworn fidelity to the
new King, but who were ready, as usual, to break their oaths, whenever they
thought there was anything to be got by it. One of the worst things in the
history of the war of the Red and White Roses, is the ease with which these
noblemen, who should have set an example of honour to the people, left either
side as they took slight offence, or were disappointed in their greedy
expectations, and joined the other. Well! Warwick’s brother soon beat the
Lancastrians, and the false noblemen, being taken, were beheaded without a
moment’s loss of time. The deposed King had a narrow escape; three of his
servants were taken, and one of them bore his cap of estate, which was set with
pearls and embroidered with two golden crowns. However, the head to which the
cap belonged, got safely into Lancashire, and lay pretty quietly there (the
people in the secret being very true) for more than a year. At length, an old
monk gave such intelligence as led to Henry’s being taken while he was sitting
at dinner in a place called Waddington Hall. He was immediately sent to London,
and met at Islington by the Earl of Warwick, by whose directions he was put
upon a horse, with his legs tied under it, and paraded three times round the
pillory. Then, he was carried off to the Tower, where they treated him well
enough.
The White Rose being so
triumphant, the young King abandoned himself entirely to pleasure, and led a
jovial life. But, thorns were springing up under his bed of roses, as he soon
found out. For, having been privately married to ELIZABETH WOODVILLE, a young
widow lady, very beautiful and very captivating; and at last resolving to make
his secret known, and to declare her his Queen; he gave some offence to the
Earl of Warwick, who was usually called the King-Maker, because of his power
and influence, and because of his having lent such great help to placing Edward
on the throne. This offence was not lessened by the jealousy with which the
Nevil family (the Earl of Warwick’s) regarded the promotion of the Woodville
family. For, the young Queen was so bent on providing for her relations, that
she made her father an earl and a great officer of state; married her five
sisters to young noblemen of the highest rank; and provided for her younger
brother, a young man of twenty, by marrying him to an immensely rich old
duchess of eighty. The Earl of Warwick took all this pretty graciously for a
man of his proud temper, until the question arose to whom the King’s sister,
MARGARET, should be married. The Earl of Warwick said, ’To one of the French
King’s sons,’ and was allowed to go over to the French King to make friendly
proposals for that purpose, and to hold all manner of friendly interviews with
him. But, while he was so engaged, the Woodville party married the young lady
to the Duke of Burgundy! Upon this he came back in great rage and scorn, and
shut himself up discontented, in his Castle of Middleham.
A reconciliation,
though not a very sincere one, was patched up between the Earl of Warwick and
the King, and lasted until the Earl married his daughter, against the King’s
wishes, to the Duke of Clarence. While the marriage was being celebrated at
Calais, the people in the north of England, where the influence of the Nevil
family was strongest, broke out into rebellion; their complaint was, that
England was oppressed and plundered by the Woodville family, whom they demanded
to have removed from power. As they were joined by great numbers of people, and
as they openly declared that they were supported by the Earl of Warwick, the
King did not know what to do. At last, as he wrote to the earl beseeching his
aid, he and his new son-in-law came over to England, and began to arrange the
business by shutting the King up in Middleham Castle in the safe keeping of the
Archbishop of York; so England was not only in the strange position of having
two kings at once, but they were both prisoners at the same time.
Even as yet, however,
the King-Maker was so far true to the King, that he dispersed a new rising of
the Lancastrians, took their leader prisoner, and brought him to the King, who
ordered him to be immediately executed. He presently allowed the King to return
to London, and there innumerable pledges of forgiveness and friendship were
exchanged between them, and between the Nevils and the Woodvilles; the King’s
eldest daughter was promised in marriage to the heir of the Nevil family; and
more friendly oaths were sworn, and more friendly promises made, than this book
would hold.
They lasted about three
months. At the end of that time, the Archbishop of York made a feast for the
King, the Earl of Warwick, and the Duke of Clarence, at his house, the Moor, in
Hertfordshire. The King was washing his hands before supper, when some one
whispered him that a body of a hundred men were lying in ambush outside the
house. Whether this were true or untrue, the King took fright, mounted his
horse, and rode through the dark night to Windsor Castle. Another
reconciliation was patched up between him and the King-Maker, but it was a
short one, and it was the last. A new rising took place in Lincolnshire, and
the King marched to repress it. Having done so, he proclaimed that both the
Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence were traitors, who had secretly
assisted it, and who had been prepared publicly to join it on the following
day. In these dangerous circumstances they both took ship and sailed away to
the French court.
And here a meeting took
place between the Earl of Warwick and his old enemy, the Dowager Queen
Margaret, through whom his father had had his head struck off, and to whom he
had been a bitter foe. But, now, when he said that he had done with the
ungrateful and perfidious Edward of York, and that henceforth he devoted
himself to the restoration of the House of Lancaster, either in the person of
her husband or of her little son, she embraced him as if he had ever been her
dearest friend. She did more than that; she married her son to his second
daughter, the Lady Anne. However agreeable this marriage was to the new
friends, it was very disagreeable to the Duke of Clarence, who perceived that
his father-in-law, the King-Maker, would never make HIM King, now. So, being
but a weak-minded young traitor, possessed of very little worth or sense, he
readily listened to an artful court lady sent over for the purpose, and
promised to turn traitor once more, and go over to his brother, King Edward,
when a fitting opportunity should come.
The Earl of Warwick,
knowing nothing of this, soon redeemed his promise to the Dowager Queen
Margaret, by invading England and landing at Plymouth, where he instantly
proclaimed King Henry, and summoned all Englishmen between the ages of sixteen
and sixty, to join his banner. Then, with his army increasing as he marched
along, he went northward, and came so near King Edward, who was in that part of
the country, that Edward had to ride hard for it to the coast of Norfolk, and
thence to get away in such ships as he could find, to Holland. Thereupon, the
triumphant King-Maker and his false son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, went to
London, took the old King out of the Tower, and walked him in a great
procession to Saint Paul’s Cathedral with the crown upon his head. This did not
improve the temper of the Duke of Clarence, who saw himself farther off from
being King than ever; but he kept his secret, and said nothing. The Nevil
family were restored to all their honours and glories, and the Woodvilles and
the rest were disgraced. The King-Maker, less sanguinary than the King, shed no
blood except that of the Earl of Worcester, who had been so cruel to the people
as to have gained the title of the Butcher. Him they caught hidden in a tree,
and him they tried and executed. No other death stained the King-Maker’s
triumph.
To dispute this
triumph, back came King Edward again, next year, landing at Ravenspur, coming
on to York, causing all his men to cry ’Long live King Henry!’ and swearing on
the altar, without a blush, that he came to lay no claim to the crown. Now was
the time for the Duke of Clarence, who ordered his men to assume the White
Rose, and declare for his brother. The Marquis of Montague, though the Earl of
Warwick’s brother, also declining to fight against King Edward, he went on
successfully to London, where the Archbishop of York let him into the City, and
where the people made great demonstrations in his favour. For this they had
four reasons. Firstly, there were great numbers of the King’s adherents hiding
in the City and ready to break out; secondly, the King owed them a great deal
of money, which they could never hope to get if he were unsuccessful; thirdly,
there was a young prince to inherit the crown; and fourthly, the King was gay and
handsome, and more popular than a better man might have been with the City
ladies. After a stay of only two days with these worthy supporters, the King
marched out to Barnet Common, to give the Earl of Warwick battle. And now it
was to be seen, for the last time, whether the King or the King-Maker was to
carry the day.
While the battle was
yet pending, the fainthearted Duke of Clarence began to repent, and sent over
secret messages to his father-in-law, offering his services in mediation with
the King. But, the Earl of Warwick disdainfully rejected them, and replied that
Clarence was false and perjured, and that he would settle the quarrel by the
sword. The battle began at four o’clock in the morning and lasted until ten,
and during the greater part of the time it was fought in a thick mist--absurdly
supposed to be raised by a magician. The loss of life was very great, for the
hatred was strong on both sides. The King-Maker was defeated, and the King
triumphed. Both the Earl of Warwick and his brother were slain, and their
bodies lay in St. Paul’s, for some days, as a spectacle to the people.
Margaret’s spirit was
not broken even by this great blow. Within five days she was in arms again, and
raised her standard in Bath, whence she set off with her army, to try and join
Lord Pembroke, who had a force in Wales. But, the King, coming up with her
outside the town of Tewkesbury, and ordering his brother, the DUKE OF
GLOUCESTER, who was a brave soldier, to attack her men, she sustained an entire
defeat, and was taken prisoner, together with her son, now only eighteen years
of age. The conduct of the King to this poor youth was worthy of his cruel
character. He ordered him to be led into his tent. ’And what,’ said he, ’brought
YOU to England?’ ’I came to England,’ replied the prisoner, with a spirit which
a man of spirit might have admired in a captive, ’to recover my father’s
kingdom, which descended to him as his right, and from him descends to me, as
mine.’ The King, drawing off his iron gauntlet, struck him with it in the face;
and the Duke of Clarence and some other lords, who were there, drew their noble
swords, and killed him.
His mother survived
him, a prisoner, for five years; after her ransom by the King of France, she
survived for six years more. Within three weeks of this murder, Henry died one
of those convenient sudden deaths which were so common in the Tower; in plainer
words, he was murdered by the King’s order.
Having no particular
excitement on his hands after this great defeat of the Lancaster party, and
being perhaps desirous to get rid of some of his fat (for he was now getting
too corpulent to be handsome), the King thought of making war on France. As he
wanted more money for this purpose than the Parliament could give him, though
they were usually ready enough for war, he invented a new way of raising it, by
sending for the principal citizens of London, and telling them, with a grave
face, that he was very much in want of cash, and would take it very kind in
them if they would lend him some. It being impossible for them safely to
refuse, they complied, and the moneys thus forced from them were called--no
doubt to the great amusement of the King and the Court--as if they were free
gifts, ’Benevolences.’ What with grants from Parliament, and what with
Benevolences, the King raised an army and passed over to Calais. As nobody
wanted war, however, the French King made proposals of peace, which were
accepted, and a truce was concluded for seven long years. The proceedings
between the Kings of France and England on this occasion, were very friendly,
very splendid, and very distrustful. They finished with a meeting between the
two Kings, on a temporary bridge over the river Somme, where they embraced
through two holes in a strong wooden grating like a lion’s cage, and made
several bows and fine speeches to one another.
It was time, now, that
the Duke of Clarence should be punished for his treacheries; and Fate had his
punishment in store. He was, probably, not trusted by the King--for who could
trust him who knew him!--and he had certainly a powerful opponent in his
brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, being avaricious and ambitious,
wanted to marry that widowed daughter of the Earl of Warwick’s who had been
espoused to the deceased young Prince, at Calais. Clarence, who wanted all the
family wealth for himself, secreted this lady, whom Richard found disguised as
a servant in the City of London, and whom he married; arbitrators appointed by
the King, then divided the property between the brothers. This led to ill-will
and mistrust between them. Clarence’s wife dying, and he wishing to make
another marriage, which was obnoxious to the King, his ruin was hurried by that
means, too. At first, the Court struck at his retainers and dependents, and accused
some of them of magic and witchcraft, and similar nonsense. Successful against
this small game, it then mounted to the Duke himself, who was impeached by his
brother the King, in person, on a variety of such charges. He was found guilty,
and sentenced to be publicly executed. He never was publicly executed, but he
met his death somehow, in the Tower, and, no doubt, through some agency of the
King or his brother Gloucester, or both. It was supposed at the time that he
was told to choose the manner of his death, and that he chose to be drowned in
a butt of Malmsey wine. I hope the story may be true, for it would have been a
becoming death for such a miserable creature.
The King survived him
some five years. He died in the forty-second year of his life, and the
twenty-third of his reign. He had a very good capacity and some good points,
but he was selfish, careless, sensual, and cruel. He was a favourite with the
people for his showy manners; and the people were a good example to him in the
constancy of their attachment. He was penitent on his death-bed for his ’benevolences,’
and other extortions, and ordered restitution to be made to the people who had
suffered from them. He also called about his bed the enriched members of the
Woodville family, and the proud lords whose honours were of older date, and
endeavoured to reconcile them, for the sake of the peaceful succession of his
son and the tranquillity of England.
THE late King’s eldest
son, the Prince of Wales, called EDWARD after him, was only thirteen years of
age at his father’s death. He was at Ludlow Castle with his uncle, the Earl of
Rivers. The prince’s brother, the Duke of York, only eleven years of age, was
in London with his mother. The boldest, most crafty, and most dreaded nobleman
in England at that time was their uncle RICHARD, Duke of Gloucester, and
everybody wondered how the two poor boys would fare with such an uncle for a
friend or a foe.
The Queen, their
mother, being exceedingly uneasy about this, was anxious that instructions
should be sent to Lord Rivers to raise an army to escort the young King safely
to London. But, Lord Hastings, who was of the Court party opposed to the
Woodvilles, and who disliked the thought of giving them that power, argued
against the proposal, and obliged the Queen to be satisfied with an escort of
two thousand horse. The Duke of Gloucester did nothing, at first, to justify
suspicion. He came from Scotland (where he was commanding an army) to York, and
was there the first to swear allegiance to his nephew. He then wrote a
condoling letter to the Queen-Mother, and set off to be present at the
coronation in London.
Now, the young King,
journeying towards London too, with Lord Rivers and Lord Gray, came to Stony
Stratford, as his uncle came to Northampton, about ten miles distant; and when
those two lords heard that the Duke of Gloucester was so near, they proposed to
the young King that they should go back and greet him in his name. The boy
being very willing that they should do so, they rode off and were received with
great friendliness, and asked by the Duke of Gloucester to stay and dine with
him. In the evening, while they were merry together, up came the Duke of
Buckingham with three hundred horsemen; and next morning the two lords and the
two dukes, and the three hundred horsemen, rode away together to rejoin the
King. Just as they were entering Stony Stratford, the Duke of Gloucester,
checking his horse, turned suddenly on the two lords, charged them with alienating
from him the affections of his sweet nephew, and caused them to be arrested by
the three hundred horsemen and taken back. Then, he and the Duke of Buckingham
went straight to the King (whom they had now in their power), to whom they made
a show of kneeling down, and offering great love and submission; and then they
ordered his attendants to disperse, and took him, alone with them, to
Northampton.
A few days afterwards
they conducted him to London, and lodged him in the Bishop’s Palace. But, he did
not remain there long; for, the Duke of Buckingham with a tender face made a
speech expressing how anxious he was for the Royal boy’s safety, and how much
safer he would be in the Tower until his coronation, than he could be anywhere
else. So, to the Tower he was taken, very carefully, and the Duke of Gloucester
was named Protector of the State.
Although Gloucester had
proceeded thus far with a very smooth countenance--and although he was a clever
man, fair of speech, and not ill-looking, in spite of one of his shoulders
being something higher than the other--and although he had come into the City
riding bare-headed at the King’s side, and looking very fond of him--he had
made the King’s mother more uneasy yet; and when the Royal boy was taken to the
Tower, she became so alarmed that she took sanctuary in Westminster with her
five daughters.
Nor did she do this
without reason, for, the Duke of Gloucester, finding that the lords who were
opposed to the Woodville family were faithful to the young King nevertheless,
quickly resolved to strike a blow for himself. Accordingly, while those lords
met in council at the Tower, he and those who were in his interest met in
separate council at his own residence, Crosby Palace, in Bishopsgate Street.
Being at last quite prepared, he one day appeared unexpectedly at the council
in the Tower, and appeared to be very jocular and merry. He was particularly
gay with the Bishop of Ely: praising the strawberries that grew in his garden
on Holborn Hill, and asking him to have some gathered that he might eat them at
dinner. The Bishop, quite proud of the honour, sent one of his men to fetch
some; and the Duke, still very jocular and gay, went out; and the council all
said what a very agreeable duke he was! In a little time, however, he came back
quite altered--not at all jocular--frowning and fierce--and suddenly said,--
’What do those persons
deserve who have compassed my destruction; I being the King’s lawful, as well
as natural, protector?’
To this strange
question, Lord Hastings replied, that they deserved death, whosoever they were.
’Then,’ said the Duke, ’I
tell you that they are that sorceress my brother’s wife;’ meaning the Queen: ’and
that other sorceress, Jane Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have withered my body,
and caused my arm to shrink as I now show you.’
He then pulled up his
sleeve and showed them his arm, which was shrunken, it is true, but which had
been so, as they all very well knew, from the hour of his birth.
Jane Shore, being then
the lover of Lord Hastings, as she had formerly been of the late King, that
lord knew that he himself was attacked. So, he said, in some confusion, ’Certainly,
my Lord, if they have done this, they be worthy of punishment.’
’If?’ said the Duke of
Gloucester; ’do you talk to me of ifs? I tell you that they HAVE so done, and I
will make it good upon thy body, thou traitor!’
With that, he struck
the table a great blow with his fist. This was a signal to some of his people
outside to cry ’Treason!’ They immediately did so, and there was a rush into
the chamber of so many armed men that it was filled in a moment.
’First,’ said the Duke
of Gloucester to Lord Hastings, ’I arrest thee, traitor! And let him,’ he added
to the armed men who took him, ’have a priest at once, for by St. Paul I will
not dine until I have seen his head of!’
Lord Hastings was
hurried to the green by the Tower chapel, and there beheaded on a log of wood
that happened to be lying on the ground. Then, the Duke dined with a good
appetite, and after dinner summoning the principal citizens to attend him, told
them that Lord Hastings and the rest had designed to murder both himself and
the Duke if Buckingham, who stood by his side, if he had not providentially
discovered their design. He requested them to be so obliging as to inform their
fellow-citizens of the truth of what he said, and issued a proclamation
(prepared and neatly copied out beforehand) to the same effect.
On the same day that
the Duke did these things in the Tower, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, the boldest and
most undaunted of his men, went down to Pontefract; arrested Lord Rivers, Lord
Gray, and two other gentlemen; and publicly executed them on the scaffold, without
any trial, for having intended the Duke’s death. Three days afterwards the
Duke, not to lose time, went down the river to Westminster in his barge,
attended by divers bishops, lords, and soldiers, and demanded that the Queen
should deliver her second son, the Duke of York, into his safe keeping. The
Queen, being obliged to comply, resigned the child after she had wept over him;
and Richard of Gloucester placed him with his brother in the Tower. Then, he
seized Jane Shore, and, because she had been the lover of the late King,
confiscated her property, and got her sentenced to do public penance in the
streets by walking in a scanty dress, with xe258bare feet, and carrying a
lighted candle, to St. Paul’s Cathedral, through the most crowded part of the
City.
Having now all things
ready for his own advancement, he caused a friar to preach a sermon at the
cross which stood in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in which he dwelt upon the
profligate manners of the late King, and upon the late shame of Jane Shore, and
hinted that the princes were not his children. ’Whereas, good people,’ said the
friar, whose name was SHAW, ’my Lord the Protector, the noble Duke of
Gloucester, that sweet prince, the pattern of all the noblest virtues, is the
perfect image and express likeness of his father.’ There had been a little plot
between the Duke and the friar, that the Duke should appear in the crowd at
this moment, when it was expected that the people would cry ’Long live King
Richard!’ But, either through the friar saying the words too soon, or through
the Duke’s coming too late, the Duke and the words did not come together, and
the people only laughed, and the friar sneaked off ashamed.
The Duke of Buckingham
was a better hand at such business than the friar, so he went to the Guildhall
the next day, and addressed the citizens in the Lord Protector’s behalf. A few
dirty men, who had been hired and stationed there for the purpose, crying when
he had done, ’God save King Richard!’ he made them a great bow, and thanked
them with all his heart. Next day, to make an end of it, he went with the mayor
and some lords and citizens to Bayard Castle, by the river, where Richard then
was, and read an address, humbly entreating him to accept the Crown of England.
Richard, who looked down upon them out of a window and pretended to be in great
uneasiness and alarm, assured them there was nothing he desired less, and that
his deep affection for his nephews forbade him to think of it. To this the Duke
of Buckingham replied, with pretended warmth, that the free people of England
would never submit to his nephew’s rule, and that if Richard, who was the
lawful heir, refused the Crown, why then they must find some one else to wear
it. The Duke of Gloucester returned, that since he used that strong language,
it became his painful duty to think no more of himself, and to accept the
Crown.
Upon that, the people
cheered and dispersed; and the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham
passed a pleasant evening, talking over the play they had just acted with so
much success, and every word of which they had prepared together.
KING RICHARD THE THIRD
was up betimes in the morning, and went to Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a
marble seat, upon which he sat himself down between two great noblemen, and
told the people that he began the new reign in that place, because the first
duty of a sovereign was to administer the laws equally to all, and to maintain
justice. He then mounted his horse and rode back to the City, where he was
received by the clergy and the crowd as if he really had a right to the throne,
and really were a just man. The clergy and the crowd must have been rather
ashamed of themselves in secret, I think, for being such poor-spirited knaves.
The new King and his
Queen were soon crowned with a great deal of show and noise, which the people
liked very much; and then the King set forth on a royal progress through his
dominions. He was crowned a second time at York, in order that the people might
have show and noise enough; and wherever he went was received with shouts of
rejoicing--from a good many people of strong lungs, who were paid to strain
their throats in crying, ’God save King Richard!’ The plan was so successful
that I am told it has been imitated since, by other usurpers, in other
progresses through other dominions.
While he was on this
journey, King Richard stayed a week at Warwick. And from Warwick he sent
instructions home for one of the wickedest murders that ever was done--the
murder of the two young princes, his nephews, who were shut up in the Tower of
London.
Sir Robert Brackenbury
was at that time Governor of the Tower. To him, by the hands of a messenger
named JOHN GREEN, did King Richard send a letter, ordering him by some means to
put the two young princes to death. But Sir Robert--I hope because he had
children of his own, and loved them--sent John Green back again, riding and
spurring along the dusty roads, with the answer that he could not do so
horrible a piece of work. The King, having frowningly considered a little,
called to him SIR JAMES TYRREL, his master of the horse, and to him gave
authority to take command of the Tower, whenever he would, for twenty-four
hours, and to keep all the keys of the Tower during that space of time. Tyrrel,
well knowing what was wanted, looked about him for two hardened ruffians, and
chose JOHN DIGHTON, one of his own grooms, and MILES FOREST, who was a murderer
by trade. Having secured these two assistants, he went, upon a day in August,
to the Tower, showed his authority from the King, took the command for
four-and-twenty hours, and obtained possession of the keys. And when the black
night came he went creeping, creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, up the
dark, stone winding stairs, and along the dark stone passages, until he came to
the door of the room where the two young princes, having said their prayers,
lay fast asleep, clasped in each other’s arms. And while he watched and
listened at the door, he sent in those evil demons, John Dighton and Miles
Forest, who smothered the two princes with the bed and pillows, and carried
their bodies down the stairs, and buried them under a great heap of stones at
the staircase foot. And when the day came, he gave up the command of the Tower,
and restored the keys, and hurried away without once looking behind him; and
Sir Robert Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to the princes’ room, and
found the princes gone for ever.
You know, through all
this history, how true it is that traitors are never true, and you will not be
surprised to learn that the Duke of Buckingham soon turned against King
Richard, and joined a great conspiracy that was formed to dethrone him, and to
place the crown upon its rightful owner’s head. Richard had meant to keep the
murder secret; but when he heard through his spies that this conspiracy
existed, and that many lords and gentlemen drank in secret to the healths of
the two young princes in the Tower, he made it known that they were dead. The
conspirators, though thwarted for a moment, soon resolved to set up for the
crown against the murderous Richard, HENRY Earl of Richmond, grandson of
Catherine: that widow of Henry the Fifth who married Owen Tudor. And as Henry
was of the house of Lancaster, they proposed that he should marry the Princess
Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late King, now the heiress of the house
of York, and thus by uniting the rival families put an end to the fatal wars of
the Red and White Roses. All being settled, a time was appointed for Henry to
come over from Brittany, and for a great rising against Richard to take place
in several parts of England at the same hour. On a certain day, therefore, in
October, the revolt took place; but unsuccessfully. Richard was prepared, Henry
was driven back at sea by a storm, his followers in England were dispersed, and
the Duke of Buckingham was taken, and at once beheaded in the market-place at
Salisbury.
The time of his success
was a good time, Richard thought, for summoning a Parliament and getting some
money. So, a Parliament was called, and it flattered and fawned upon him as
much as he could possibly desire, and declared him to be the rightful King of
England, and his only son Edward, then eleven years of age, the next heir to
the throne.
Richard knew full well
that, let the Parliament say what it would, the Princess Elizabeth was
remembered by people as the heiress of the house of York; and having accurate
information besides, of its being designed by the conspirators to marry her to
Henry of Richmond, he felt that it would much strengthen him and weaken them,
to be beforehand with them, and marry her to his son. With this view he went to
the Sanctuary at Westminster, where the late King’s widow and her daughter
still were, and besought them to come to Court: where (he swore by anything and
everything) they should be safely and honourably entertained. They came,
accordingly, but had scarcely been at Court a month when his son died
suddenly--or was poisoned--and his plan was crushed to pieces.
In this extremity, King
Richard, always active, thought, ’I must make another plan.’ And he made the
plan of marrying the Princess Elizabeth himself, although she was his niece.
There was one difficulty in the way: his wife, the Queen Anne, was alive. But,
he knew (remembering his nephews) how to remove that obstacle, and he made love
to the Princess Elizabeth, telling her he felt perfectly confident that the
Queen would die in February. The Princess was not a very scrupulous young lady,
for, instead of rejecting the murderer of her brothers with scorn and hatred,
she openly declared she loved him dearly; and, when February came and the Queen
did not die, she expressed her impatient opinion that she was too long about
it. However, King Richard was not so far out in his prediction, but, that she
died in March--he took good care of that--and then this precious pair hoped to
be married. But they were disappointed, for the idea of such a marriage was so
unpopular in the country, that the King’s chief counsellors, RATCLIFFE and
CATESBY, would by no means undertake to propose it, and the King was even
obliged to declare in public that he had never thought of such a thing.
He was, by this time,
dreaded and hated by all classes of his subjects. His nobles deserted every day
to Henry’s side; he dared not call another Parliament, lest his crimes should
be denounced there; and for want of money, he was obliged to get Benevolences
from the citizens, which exasperated them all against him. It was said too,
that, being stricken by his conscience, he dreamed frightful dreams, and
started up in the night-time, wild with terror and remorse. Active to the last,
through all this, he issued vigorous proclamations against Henry of Richmond
and all his followers, when he heard that they were coming against him with a
Fleet from France; and took the field as fierce and savage as a wild boar--the
animal represented on his shield.
Henry of Richmond
landed with six thousand men at Milford Haven, and came on against King
Richard, then encamped at Leicester with an army twice as great, through North
Wales. On Bosworth Field the two armies met; and Richard, looking along Henry’s
ranks, and seeing them crowded with the English nobles who had abandoned him,
turned pale when he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom he had
tried hard to retain) among them. But, he was as brave as he was wicked, and
plunged into the thickest of the fight. He was riding hither and thither,
laying about him in all directions, when he observed the Earl of
Northumberland--one of his few great allies--to stand inactive, and the main
body of his troops to hesitate. At the same moment, his desperate glance caught
Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights. Riding hard at him, and
crying ’Treason!’ he killed his standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed another
gentleman, and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself, to cut him down. But,
Sir William Stanley parried it as it fell, and before Richard could raise his
arm again, he was borne down in a press of numbers, unhorsed, and killed. Lord
Stanley picked up the crown, all bruised and trampled, and stained with blood,
and put it upon Richmond’s head, amid loud and rejoicing cries of ’Long live
King Henry!’
That night, a horse was
led up to the church of the Grey Friars at Leicester; across whose back was
tied, like some worthless sack, a naked body brought there for burial. It was
the body of the last of the Plantagenet line, King Richard the Third, usurper
and murderer, slain at the battle of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year
of his age, after a reign of two years.
KING HENRY THE SEVENTH
did not turn out to be as fine a fellow as the nobility and people hoped, in
the first joy of their deliverance from Richard the Third. He was very cold,
crafty, and calculating, and would do almost anything for money. He possessed
considerable ability, but his chief merit appears to have been that he was not
cruel when there was nothing to be got by it.
The new King had
promised the nobles who had espoused his cause that he would marry the Princess
Elizabeth. The first thing he did, was, to direct her to be removed from the
castle of Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, where Richard had placed her, and
restored to the care of her mother in London. The young Earl of Warwick, Edward
Plantagenet, son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had been kept a
prisoner in the same old Yorkshire Castle with her. This boy, who was now
fifteen, the new King placed in the Tower for safety. Then he came to London in
great state, and gratified the people with a fine procession; on which kind of
show he often very much relied for keeping them in good humour. The sports and
feasts which took place were followed by a terrible fever, called the Sweating
Sickness; of which great numbers of people died. Lord Mayors and Aldermen are
thought to have suffered most from it; whether, because they were in the habit
of over-eating themselves, or because they were very jealous of preserving filth
and nuisances in the City (as they have been since), I don’t know.
The King’s coronation
was postponed on account of the general ill-health, and he afterwards deferred
his marriage, as if he were not very anxious that it should take place: and,
even after that, deferred the Queen’s coronation so long that he gave offence
to the York party. However, he set these things right in the end, by hanging
some men and seizing on the rich possessions of others; by granting more
popular pardons to the followers of the late King than could, at first, be got
from him; and, by employing about his Court, some very scrupulous persons who
had been employed in the previous reign.
As this reign was
principally remarkable for two very curious impostures which have become famous
in history, we will make those two stories its principal feature.
There was a priest at
Oxford of the name of Simons, who had for a pupil a handsome boy named Lambert
Simnel, the son of a baker. Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and
partly to carry out the designs of a secret party formed against the King, this
priest declared that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the young Earl of
Warwick; who (as everybody might have known) was safely locked up in the Tower
of London. The priest and the boy went over to Ireland; and, at Dublin,
enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people: who seem to have been generous
enough, but exceedingly irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of
Ireland, declared that he believed the boy to be what the priest represented;
and the boy, who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such things of
his childhood, and gave them so many descriptions of the Royal Family, that
they were perpetually shouting and hurrahing, and drinking his health, and
making all kinds of noisy and thirsty demonstrations, to express their belief
in him. Nor was this feeling confined to Ireland alone, for the Earl of
Lincoln--whom the late usurper had named as his successor--went over to the
young Pretender; and, after holding a secret correspondence with the Dowager
Duchess of Burgundy--the sister of Edward the Fourth, who detested the present
King and all his race--sailed to Dublin with two thousand German soldiers of
her providing. In this promising state of the boy’s fortunes, he was crowned
there, with a crown taken off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary; and was
then, according to the Irish custom of those days, carried home on the
shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal more strength than sense.
Father Simons, you may be sure, was mighty busy at the coronation.
Ten days afterwards,
the Germans, and the Irish, and the priest, and the boy, and the Earl of
Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to invade England. The King, who had good
intelligence of their movements, set up his standard at Nottingham, where vast
numbers resorted to him every day; while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but
very few. With his small force he tried to make for the town of Newark; but the
King’s army getting between him and that place, he had no choice but to risk a
battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the complete destruction of the Pretender’s
forces, one half of whom were killed; among them, the Earl himself. The priest
and the baker’s boy were taken prisoners. The priest, after confessing the
trick, was shut up in prison, where he afterwards died--suddenly perhaps. The
boy was taken into the King’s kitchen and made a turnspit. He was afterwards
raised to the station of one of the King’s falconers; and so ended this strange
imposition.
There seems reason to
suspect that the Dowager Queen--always a restless and busy woman--had had some
share in tutoring the baker’s son. The King was very angry with her, whether or
no. He seized upon her property, and shut her up in a convent at Bermondsey.
One might suppose that
the end of this story would have put the Irish people on their guard; but they
were quite ready to receive a second impostor, as they had received the first,
and that same troublesome Duchess of Burgundy soon gave them the opportunity.
All of a sudden there appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving from Portugal, a
young man of excellent abilities, of very handsome appearance and most winning
manners, who declared himself to be Richard, Duke of York, the second son of
King Edward the Fourth. ’O,’ said some, even of those ready Irish believers, ’but
surely that young Prince was murdered by his uncle in the Tower!’--’It IS
supposed so,’ said the engaging young man; ’and my brother WAS killed in that
gloomy prison; but I escaped--it don’t matter how, at present--and have been
wandering about the world for seven long years.’ This explanation being quite
satisfactory to numbers of the Irish people, they began again to shout and to
hurrah, and to drink his health, and to make the noisy and thirsty
demonstrations all over again. And the big chieftain in Dublin began to look
out for another coronation, and another young King to be carried home on his
back.
Now, King Henry being
then on bad terms with France, the French King, Charles the Eighth, saw that,
by pretending to believe in the handsome young man, he could trouble his enemy
sorely. So, he invited him over to the French Court, and appointed him a
body-guard, and treated him in all respects as if he really were the Duke of
York. Peace, however, being soon concluded between the two Kings, the pretended
Duke was turned adrift, and wandered for protection to the Duchess of Burgundy.
She, after feigning to inquire into the reality of his claims, declared him to
be the very picture of her dear departed brother; gave him a body-guard at her
Court, of thirty halberdiers; and called him by the sounding name of the White
Rose of England.
The leading members of
the White Rose party in England sent over an agent, named Sir Robert Clifford,
to ascertain whether the White Rose’s claims were good: the King also sent over
his agents to inquire into the Rose’s history. The White Roses declared the
young man to be really the Duke of York; the King declared him to be PERKIN
WARBECK, the son of a merchant of the city of Tournay, who had acquired his
knowledge of England, its language and manners, from the English merchants who
traded in Flanders; it was also stated by the Royal agents that he had been in
the service of Lady Brompton, the wife of an exiled English nobleman, and that
the Duchess of Burgundy had caused him to be trained and taught, expressly for
this deception. The King then required the Archduke Philip--who was the
sovereign of Burgundy--to banish this new Pretender, or to deliver him up; but,
as the Archduke replied that he could not control the Duchess in her own land,
the King, in revenge, took the market of English cloth away from Antwerp, and
prevented all commercial intercourse between the two countries.
He also, by arts and
bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert Clifford to betray his employers; and he
denouncing several famous English noblemen as being secretly the friends of
Perkin Warbeck, the King had three of the foremost executed at once. Whether he
pardoned the remainder because they were poor, I do not know; but it is only
too probable that he refused to pardon one famous nobleman against whom the
same Clifford soon afterwards informed separately, because he was rich. This
was no other than Sir William Stanley, who had saved the King’s life at the
battle of Bosworth Field. It is very doubtful whether his treason amounted to
much more than his having said, that if he were sure the young man was the Duke
of York, he would not take arms against him. Whatever he had done he admitted,
like an honourable spirit; and he lost his head for it, and the covetous King
gained all his wealth.
Perkin Warbeck kept
quiet for three years; but, as the Flemings began to complain heavily of the
loss of their trade by the stoppage of the Antwerp market on his account, and
as it was not unlikely that they might even go so far as to take his life, or
give him up, he found it necessary to do something. Accordingly he made a
desperate sally, and landed, with only a few hundred men, on the coast of Deal.
But he was soon glad to get back to the place from whence he came; for the
country people rose against his followers, killed a great many, and took a
hundred and fifty prisoners: who were all driven to London, tied together with
ropes, like a team of cattle. Every one of them was hanged on some part or
other of the sea-shore; in order, that if any more men should come over with
Perkin Warbeck, they might see the bodies as a warning before they landed.
Then the wary King, by
making a treaty of commerce with the Flemings, drove Perkin Warbeck out of that
country; and, by completely gaining over the Irish to his side, deprived him of
that asylum too. He wandered away to Scotland, and told his story at that
Court. King James the Fourth of Scotland, who was no friend to King Henry, and
had no reason to be (for King Henry had bribed his Scotch lords to betray him
more than once; but had never succeeded in his plots), gave him a great
reception, called him his cousin, and gave him in marriage the Lady Catherine
Gordon, a beautiful and charming creature related to the royal house of Stuart.
Alarmed by this
successful reappearance of the Pretender, the King still undermined, and
bought, and bribed, and kept his doings and Perkin Warbeck’s story in the dark,
when he might, one would imagine, have rendered the matter clear to all
England. But, for all this bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King’s
Court, he could not procure the Pretender to be delivered up to him. James,
though not very particular in many respects, would not betray him; and the
ever-busy Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms, and good soldiers, and
with money besides, that he had soon a little army of fifteen hundred men of
various nations. With these, and aided by the Scottish King in person, he
crossed the border into England, and made a proclamation to the people, in
which he called the King ’Henry Tudor;’ offered large rewards to any who should
take or distress him; and announced himself as King Richard the Fourth come to
receive the homage of his faithful subjects. His faithful subjects, however,
cared nothing for him, and hated his faithful troops: who, being of different
nations, quarrelled also among themselves. Worse than this, if worse were possible,
they began to plunder the country; upon which the White Rose said, that he
would rather lose his rights, than gain them through the miseries of the
English people. The Scottish King made a jest of his scruples; but they and
their whole force went back again without fighting a battle.
The worst consequence
of this attempt was, that a rising took place among the people of Cornwall, who
considered themselves too heavily taxed to meet the charges of the expected
war. Stimulated by Flammock, a lawyer, and Joseph, a blacksmith, and joined by
Lord Audley and some other country gentlemen, they marched on all the way to
Deptford Bridge, where they fought a battle with the King’s army. They were
defeated--though the Cornish men fought with great bravery--and the lord was
beheaded, and the lawyer and the blacksmith were hanged, drawn, and quartered.
The rest were pardoned. The King, who believed every man to be as avaricious as
himself, and thought that money could settle anything, allowed them to make
bargains for their liberty with the soldiers who had taken them.
Perkin Warbeck, doomed
to wander up and down, and never to find rest anywhere--a sad fate: almost a
sufficient punishment for an imposture, which he seems in time to have half
believed himself--lost his Scottish refuge through a truce being made between
the two Kings; and found himself, once more, without a country before him in
which he could lay his head. But James (always honourable and true to him,
alike when he melted down his plate, and even the great gold chain he had been
used to wear, to pay soldiers in his cause; and now, when that cause was lost
and hopeless) did not conclude the treaty, until he had safely departed out of
the Scottish dominions. He, and his beautiful wife, who was faithful to him
under all reverses, and left her state and home to follow his poor fortunes,
were put aboard ship with everything necessary for their comfort and
protection, and sailed for Ireland.
But, the Irish people
had had enough of counterfeit Earls of Warwick and Dukes of York, for one
while; and would give the White Rose no aid. So, the White Rose--encircled by
thorns indeed--resolved to go with his beautiful wife to Cornwall as a forlorn
resource, and see what might be made of the Cornish men, who had risen so
valiantly a little while before, and who had fought so bravely at Deptford
Bridge.
To Whitsand Bay, in
Cornwall, accordingly, came Perkin Warbeck and his wife; and the lovely lady he
shut up for safety in the Castle of St. Michael’s Mount, and then marched into
Devonshire at the head of three thousand Cornishmen. These were increased to
six thousand by the time of his arrival in Exeter; but, there the people made a
stout resistance, and he went on to Taunton, where he came in sight of the King’s
army. The stout Cornish men, although they were few in number, and badly armed,
were so bold, that they never thought of retreating; but bravely looked forward
to a battle on the morrow. Unhappily for them, the man who was possessed of so
many engaging qualities, and who attracted so many people to his side when he
had nothing else with which to tempt them, was not as brave as they. In the
night, when the two armies lay opposite to each other, he mounted a swift horse
and fled. When morning dawned, the poor confiding Cornish men, discovering that
they had no leader, surrendered to the King’s power. Some of them were hanged,
and the rest were pardoned and went miserably home.
Before the King pursued
Perkin Warbeck to the sanctuary of Beaulieu in the New Forest, where it was
soon known that he had taken refuge, he sent a body of horsemen to St. Michael’s
Mount, to seize his wife. She was soon taken and brought as a captive before
the King. But she was so beautiful, and so good, and so devoted to the man in
whom she believed, that the King regarded her with compassion, treated her with
great respect, and placed her at Court, near the Queen’s person. And many years
after Perkin Warbeck was no more, and when his strange story had become like a
nursery tale, SHE was called the White Rose, by the people, in remembrance of
her beauty.
The sanctuary at
Beaulieu was soon surrounded by the King’s men; and the King, pursuing his
usual dark, artful ways, sent pretended friends to Perkin Warbeck to persuade
him to come out and surrender himself. This he soon did; the King having taken
a good look at the man of whom he had heard so much--from behind a
screen--directed him to be well mounted, and to ride behind him at a little
distance, guarded, but not bound in any way. So they entered London with the
King’s favourite show--a procession; and some of the people hooted as the
Pretender rode slowly through the streets to the Tower; but the greater part
were quiet, and very curious to see him. From the Tower, he was taken to the
Palace at Westminster, and there lodged like a gentleman, though closely
watched. He was examined every now and then as to his imposture; but the King
was so secret in all he did, that even then he gave it a consequence, which it
cannot be supposed to have in itself deserved.
At last Perkin Warbeck
ran away, and took refuge in another sanctuary near Richmond in Surrey. From
this he was again persuaded to deliver himself up; and, being conveyed to
London, he stood in the stocks for a whole day, outside Westminster Hall, and
there read a paper purporting to be his full confession, and relating his
history as the King’s agents had originally described it. He was then shut up
in the Tower again, in the company of the Earl of Warwick, who had now been
there for fourteen years: ever since his removal out of Yorkshire, except when
the King had had him at Court, and had shown him to the people, to prove the
imposture of the Baker’s boy. It is but too probable, when we consider the
crafty character of Henry the Seventh, that these two were brought together for
a cruel purpose. A plot was soon discovered between them and the keepers, to
murder the Governor, get possession of the keys, and proclaim Perkin Warbeck as
King Richard the Fourth. That there was some such plot, is likely; that they
were tempted into it, is at least as likely; that the unfortunate Earl of
Warwick--last male of the Plantagenet line--was too unused to the world, and
too ignorant and simple to know much about it, whatever it was, is perfectly certain;
and that it was the King’s interest to get rid of him, is no less so. He was
beheaded on Tower Hill, and Perkin Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn.
Such was the end of the
pretended Duke of York, whose shadowy history was made more shadowy--and ever
will be--by the mystery and craft of the King. If he had turned his great
natural advantages to a more honest account, he might have lived a happy and
respected life, even in those days. But he died upon a gallows at Tyburn,
leaving the Scottish lady, who had loved him so well, kindly protected at the
Queen’s Court. After some time she forgot her old loves and troubles, as many
people do with Time’s merciful assistance, and married a Welsh gentleman. Her
second husband, SIR MATTHEW CRADOC, more honest and more happy than her first,
lies beside her in a tomb in the old church of Swansea.
The ill-blood between
France and England in this reign, arose out of the continued plotting of the
Duchess of Burgundy, and disputes respecting the affairs of Brittany. The King
feigned to be very patriotic, indignant, and warlike; but he always contrived
so as never to make war in reality, and always to make money. His taxation of
the people, on pretence of war with France, involved, at one time, a very
dangerous insurrection, headed by Sir John Egremont, and a common man called
John a Chambre. But it was subdued by the royal forces, under the command of
the Earl of Surrey. The knighted John escaped to the Duchess of Burgundy, who
was ever ready to receive any one who gave the King trouble; and the plain John
was hanged at York, in the midst of a number of his men, but on a much higher
gibbet, as being a greater traitor. Hung high or hung low, however, hanging is
much the same to the person hung.
Within a year after her
marriage, the Queen had given birth to a son, who was called Prince Arthur, in
remembrance of the old British prince of romance and story; and who, when all
these events had happened, being then in his fifteenth year, was married to
CATHERINE, the daughter of the Spanish monarch, with great rejoicings and
bright prospects; but in a very few months he sickened and died. As soon as the
King had recovered from his grief, he thought it a pity that the fortune of the
Spanish Princess, amounting to two hundred thousand crowns, should go out of
the family; and therefore arranged that the young widow should marry his second
son HENRY, then twelve years of age, when he too should be fifteen. There were
objections to this marriage on the part of the clergy; but, as the infallible
Pope was gained over, and, as he MUST be right, that settled the business for
the time. The King’s eldest daughter was provided for, and a long course of
disturbance was considered to be set at rest, by her being married to the
Scottish King.
And now the Queen died.
When the King had got over that grief too, his mind once more reverted to his
darling money for consolation, and he thought of marrying the Dowager Queen of
Naples, who was immensely rich: but, as it turned out not to be practicable to
gain the money however practicable it might have been to gain the lady, he gave
up the idea. He was not so fond of her but that he soon proposed to marry the
Dowager Duchess of Savoy; and, soon afterwards, the widow of the King of
Castile, who was raving mad. But he made a money-bargain instead, and married
neither.
The Duchess of
Burgundy, among the other discontented people to whom she had given refuge, had
sheltered EDMUND DE LA POLE (younger brother of that Earl of Lincoln who was
killed at Stoke), now Earl of Suffolk. The King had prevailed upon him to
return to the marriage of Prince Arthur; but, he soon afterwards went away
again; and then the King, suspecting a conspiracy, resorted to his favourite
plan of sending him some treacherous friends, and buying of those scoundrels
the secrets they disclosed or invented. Some arrests and executions took place
in consequence. In the end, the King, on a promise of not taking his life,
obtained possession of the person of Edmund de la Pole, and shut him up in the
Tower.
This was his last
enemy. If he had lived much longer he would have made many more among the
people, by the grinding exaction to which he constantly exposed them, and by
the tyrannical acts of his two prime favourites in all money-raising matters,
EDMUND DUDLEY and RICHARD EMPSON. But Death--the enemy who is not to be bought
off or deceived, and on whom no money, and no treachery has any
effect--presented himself at this juncture, and ended the King’s reign. He died
of the gout, on the twenty-second of April, one thousand five hundred and nine,
and in the fifty-third year of his age, after reigning twenty-four years; he
was buried in the beautiful Chapel of Westminster Abbey, which he had himself
founded, and which still bears his name.
It was in this reign
that the great CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, on behalf of Spain, discovered what was
then called The New World. Great wonder, interest, and hope of wealth being
awakened in England thereby, the King and the merchants of London and Bristol
fitted out an English expedition for further discoveries in the New World, and
entrusted it to SEBASTIAN CABOT, of Bristol, the son of a Venetian pilot there.
He was very successful in his voyage, and gained high reputation, both for
himself and England.
PART THE FIRST
WE now come to King
Henry the Eighth, whom it has been too much the fashion to call ’Bluff King
Hal,’ and ’Burly King Harry,’ and other fine names; but whom I shall take the
liberty to call, plainly, one of the most detestable villains that ever drew
breath. You will be able to judge, long before we come to the end of his life,
whether he deserves the character.
He was just eighteen
years of age when he came to the throne. People said he was handsome then; but
I don’t believe it. He was a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced,
double-chinned, swinish-looking fellow in later life (as we know from the
likenesses of him, painted by the famous HANS HOLBEIN), and it is not easy to
believe that so bad a character can ever have been veiled under a prepossessing
appearance.
He was anxious to make
himself popular; and the people, who had long disliked the late King, were very
willing to believe that he deserved to be so. He was extremely fond of show and
display, and so were they. Therefore there was great rejoicing when he married
the Princess Catherine, and when they were both crowned. And the King fought at
tournaments and always came off victorious--for the courtiers took care of
that--and there was a general outcry that he was a wonderful man. Empson,
Dudley, and their supporters were accused of a variety of crimes they had never
committed, instead of the offences of which they really had been guilty; and
they were pilloried, and set upon horses with their faces to the tails, and
knocked about and beheaded, to the satisfaction of the people, and the
enrichment of the King.
The Pope, so
indefatigable in getting the world into trouble, had mixed himself up in a war
on the continent of Europe, occasioned by the reigning Princes of little
quarrelling states in Italy having at various times married into other Royal
families, and so led to THEIR claiming a share in those petty Governments. The
King, who discovered that he was very fond of the Pope, sent a herald to the
King of France, to say that he must not make war upon that holy personage,
because he was the father of all Christians. As the French King did not mind
this relationship in the least, and also refused to admit a claim King Henry
made to certain lands in France, war was declared between the two countries.
Not to perplex this story with an account of the tricks and designs of all the
sovereigns who were engaged in it, it is enough to say that England made a
blundering alliance with Spain, and got stupidly taken in by that country;
which made its own terms with France when it could and left England in the
lurch. SIR EDWARD HOWARD, a bold admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey,
distinguished himself by his bravery against the French in this business; but,
unfortunately, he was more brave than wise, for, skimming into the French
harbour of Brest with only a few row-boats, he attempted (in revenge for the
defeat and death of SIR THOMAS KNYVETT, another bold English admiral) to take
some strong French ships, well defended with batteries of cannon. The upshot
was, that he was left on board of one of them (in consequence of its shooting
away from his own boat), with not more than about a dozen men, and was thrown
into the sea and drowned: though not until he had taken from his breast his
gold chain and gold whistle, which were the signs of his office, and had cast
them into the sea to prevent their being made a boast of by the enemy. After
this defeat--which was a great one, for Sir Edward Howard was a man of valour
and fame--the King took it into his head to invade France in person; first
executing that dangerous Earl of Suffolk whom his father had left in the Tower,
and appointing Queen Catherine to the charge of his kingdom in his absence. He
sailed to Calais, where he was joined by MAXIMILIAN, Emperor of Germany, who
pretended to be his soldier, and who took pay in his service: with a good deal
of nonsense of that sort, flattering enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer.
The King might be successful enough in sham fights; but his idea of real
battles chiefly consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colours that were
ignominiously blown down by the wind, and in making a vast display of gaudy
flags and golden curtains. Fortune, however, favoured him better than he
deserved; for, after much waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying, gold
curtaining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French battle at a place
called Guinegate: where they took such an unaccountable panic, and fled with
such swiftness, that it was ever afterwards called by the English the Battle of
Spurs. Instead of following up his advantage, the King, finding that he had had
enough of real fighting, came home again.
The Scottish King,
though nearly related to Henry by marriage, had taken part against him in this
war. The Earl of Surrey, as the English general, advanced to meet him when he
came out of his own dominions and crossed the river Tweed. The two armies came
up with one another when the Scottish King had also crossed the river Till, and
was encamped upon the last of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill of Flodden.
Along the plain below it, the English, when the hour of battle came, advanced.
The Scottish army, which had been drawn up in five great bodies, then came
steadily down in perfect silence. So they, in their turn, advanced to meet the
English army, which came on in one long line; and they attacked it with a body
of spearmen, under LORD HOME. At first they had the best of it; but the English
recovered themselves so bravely, and fought with such valour, that, when the
Scottish King had almost made his way up to the Royal Standard, he was slain,
and the whole Scottish power routed. Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that
day on Flodden Field; and among them, numbers of the nobility and gentry. For a
long time afterwards, the Scottish peasantry used to believe that their King
had not been really killed in this battle, because no Englishman had found an
iron belt he wore about his body as a penance for having been an unnatural and
undutiful son. But, whatever became of his belt, the English had his sword and
dagger, and the ring from his finger, and his body too, covered with wounds.
There is no doubt of it; for it was seen and recognised by English gentlemen
who had known the Scottish King well.
When King Henry was
making ready to renew the war in France, the French King was contemplating
peace. His queen, dying at this time, he proposed, though he was upwards of
fifty years old, to marry King Henry’s sister, the Princess Mary, who, besides
being only sixteen, was betrothed to the Duke of Suffolk. As the inclinations
of young Princesses were not much considered in such matters, the marriage was
concluded, and the poor girl was escorted to France, where she was immediately
left as the French King’s bride, with only one of all her English attendants.
That one was a pretty young girl named ANNE BOLEYN, niece of the Earl of
Surrey, who had been made Duke of Norfolk, after the victory of Flodden Field.
Anne Boleyn’s is a name to be remembered, as you will presently find.
And now the French
King, who was very proud of his young wife, was preparing for many years of
happiness, and she was looking forward, I dare say, to many years of misery,
when he died within three months, and left her a young widow. The new French
monarch, FRANCIS THE FIRST, seeing how important it was to his interests that
she should take for her second husband no one but an Englishman, advised her
first lover, the Duke of Suffolk, when King Henry sent him over to France to
fetch her home, to marry her. The Princess being herself so fond of that Duke,
as to tell him that he must either do so then, or for ever lose her, they were
wedded; and Henry afterwards forgave them. In making interest with the King,
the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his most powerful favourite and adviser,
THOMAS WOLSEY--a name very famous in history for its rise and downfall.
Wolsey was the son of a
respectable butcher at Ipswich, in Suffolk and received so excellent an
education that he became a tutor to the family of the Marquis of Dorset, who
afterwards got him appointed one of the late King’s chaplains. On the accession
of Henry the Eighth, he was promoted and taken into great favour. He was now
Archbishop of York; the Pope had made him a Cardinal besides; and whoever
wanted influence in England or favour with the King--whether he were a foreign
monarch or an English nobleman--was obliged to make a friend of the great
Cardinal Wolsey.
He was a gay man, who
could dance and jest, and sing and drink; and those were the roads to so much,
or rather so little, of a heart as King Henry had. He was wonderfully fond of
pomp and glitter, and so was the King. He knew a good deal of the Church
learning of that time; much of which consisted in finding artful excuses and
pretences for almost any wrong thing, and in arguing that black was white, or
any other colour. This kind of learning pleased the King too. For many such
reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation with the King; and, being a man of
far greater ability, knew as well how to manage him, as a clever keeper may
know how to manage a wolf or a tiger, or any other cruel and uncertain beast,
that may turn upon him and tear him any day. Never had there been seen in
England such state as my Lord Cardinal kept. His wealth was enormous; equal, it
was reckoned, to the riches of the Crown. His palaces were as splendid as the
King’s, and his retinue was eight hundred strong. He held his Court, dressed
out from top to toe in flaming scarlet; and his very shoes were golden, set
with precious stones. His followers rode on blood horses; while he, with a
wonderful affectation of humility in the midst of his great splendour, ambled
on a mule with a red velvet saddle and bridle and golden stirrups.
Through the influence
of this stately priest, a grand meeting was arranged to take place between the
French and English Kings in France; but on ground belonging to England. A
prodigious show of friendship and rejoicing was to be made on the occasion; and
heralds were sent to proclaim with brazen trumpets through all the principal
cities of Europe, that, on a certain day, the Kings of France and England, as
companions and brothers in arms, each attended by eighteen followers, would
hold a tournament against all knights who might choose to come.
CHARLES, the new
Emperor of Germany (the old one being dead), wanted to prevent too cordial an
alliance between these sovereigns, and came over to England before the King
could repair to the place of meeting; and, besides making an agreeable
impression upon him, secured Wolsey’s interest by promising that his influence
should make him Pope when the next vacancy occurred. On the day when the
Emperor left England, the King and all the Court went over to Calais, and
thence to the place of meeting, between Ardres and Guisnes, commonly called the
Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of expense and prodigality was
lavished on the decorations of the show; many of the knights and gentlemen
being so superbly dressed that it was said they carried their whole estates
upon their shoulders.
There were sham
castles, temporary chapels, fountains running wine, great cellars full of wine
free as water to all comers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and
such things without end; and, in the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-shone
and out-glittered all the noblemen and gentlemen assembled. After a treaty made
between the two Kings with as much solemnity as if they had intended to keep
it, the lists--nine hundred feet long, and three hundred and twenty broad--were
opened for the tournament; the Queens of France and England looking on with
great array of lords and ladies. Then, for ten days, the two sovereigns fought
five combats every day, and always beat their polite adversaries; though they
DO write that the King of England, being thrown in a wrestle one day by the King
of France, lost his kingly temper with his brother-in-arms, and wanted to make
a quarrel of it. Then, there is a great story belonging to this Field of the
Cloth of Gold, showing how the English were distrustful of the French, and the
French of the English, until Francis rode alone one morning to Henry’s tent;
and, going in before he was out of bed, told him in joke that he was his
prisoner; and how Henry jumped out of bed and embraced Francis; and how Francis
helped Henry to dress, and warmed his linen for him; and how Henry gave Francis
a splendid jewelled collar, and how Francis gave Henry, in return, a costly
bracelet. All this and a great deal more was so written about, and sung about,
and talked about at that time (and, indeed, since that time too), that the
world has had good cause to be sick of it, for ever.
Of course, nothing came
of all these fine doings but a speedy renewal of the war between England and
France, in which the two Royal companions and brothers in arms longed very
earnestly to damage one another. But, before it broke out again, the Duke of
Buckingham was shamefully executed on Tower Hill, on the evidence of a
discharged servant--really for nothing, except the folly of having believed in
a friar of the name of HOPKINS, who had pretended to be a prophet, and who had
mumbled and jumbled out some nonsense about the Duke’s son being destined to be
very great in the land. It was believed that the unfortunate Duke had given
offence to the great Cardinal by expressing his mind freely about the expense
and absurdity of the whole business of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At any
rate, he was beheaded, as I have said, for nothing. And the people who saw it
done were very angry, and cried out that it was the work of ’the butcher’s son!’
The new war was a short
one, though the Earl of Surrey invaded France again, and did some injury to
that country. It ended in another treaty of peace between the two kingdoms, and
in the discovery that the Emperor of Germany was not such a good friend to
England in reality, as he pretended to be. Neither did he keep his promise to
Wolsey to make him Pope, though the King urged him. Two Popes died in pretty
quick succession; but the foreign priests were too much for the Cardinal, and
kept him out of the post. So the Cardinal and King together found out that the
Emperor of Germany was not a man to keep faith with; broke off a projected
marriage between the King’s daughter MARY, Princess of Wales, and that
sovereign; and began to consider whether it might not be well to marry the
young lady, either to Francis himself, or to his eldest son.
There now arose at
Wittemberg, in Germany, the great leader of the mighty change in England which
is called The Reformation, and which set the people free from their slavery to
the priests. This was a learned Doctor, named MARTIN LUTHER, who knew all about
them, for he had been a priest, and even a monk, himself. The preaching and
writing of Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking on this subject; and
Luther, finding one day to his great surprise, that there really was a book
called the New Testament which the priests did not allow to be read, and which
contained truths that they suppressed, began to be very vigorous against the
whole body, from the Pope downward. It happened, while he was yet only
beginning his vast work of awakening the nation, that an impudent fellow named
TETZEL, a friar of very bad character, came into his neighbourhood selling what
were called Indulgences, by wholesale, to raise money for beautifying the great
Cathedral of St. Peter’s, at Rome. Whoever bought an Indulgence of the Pope was
supposed to buy himself off from the punishment of Heaven for his offences.
Luther told the people that these Indulgences were worthless bits of paper,
before God, and that Tetzel and his masters were a crew of impostors in selling
them.
The King and the
Cardinal were mightily indignant at this presumption; and the King (with the
help of SIR THOMAS MORE, a wise man, whom he afterwards repaid by striking off
his head) even wrote a book about it, with which the Pope was so well pleased
that he gave the King the title of Defender of the Faith. The King and the
Cardinal also issued flaming warnings to the people not to read Luther’s books,
on pain of excommunication. But they did read them for all that; and the rumour
of what was in them spread far and wide.
When this great change
was thus going on, the King began to show himself in his truest and worst
colours. Anne Boleyn, the pretty little girl who had gone abroad to France with
his sister, was by this time grown up to be very beautiful, and was one of the
ladies in attendance on Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was no longer
young or handsome, and it is likely that she was not particularly
good-tempered; having been always rather melancholy, and having been made more
so by the deaths of four of her children when they were very young. So, the
King fell in love with the fair Anne Boleyn, and said to himself, ’How can I be
best rid of my own troublesome wife whom I am tired of, and marry Anne?’
You recollect that
Queen Catherine had been the wife of Henry’s brother. What does the King do,
after thinking it over, but calls his favourite priests about him, and says, O!
his mind is in such a dreadful state, and he is so frightfully uneasy, because
he is afraid it was not lawful for him to marry the Queen! Not one of those
priests had the courage to hint that it was rather curious he had never thought
of that before, and that his mind seemed to have been in a tolerably jolly condition
during a great many years, in which he certainly had not fretted himself thin;
but, they all said, Ah! that was very true, and it was a serious business; and
perhaps the best way to make it right, would be for his Majesty to be divorced!
The King replied, Yes, he thought that would be the best way, certainly; so
they all went to work.
If I were to relate to
you the intrigues and plots that took place in the endeavour to get this
divorce, you would think the History of England the most tiresome book in the
world. So I shall say no more, than that after a vast deal of negotiation and
evasion, the Pope issued a commission to Cardinal Wolsey and CARDINAL CAMPEGGIO
(whom he sent over from Italy for the purpose), to try the whole case in
England. It is supposed--and I think with reason--that Wolsey was the Queen’s
enemy, because she had reproved him for his proud and gorgeous manner of life.
But, he did not at first know that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn; and
when he did know it, he even went down on his knees, in the endeavour to
dissuade him.
The Cardinals opened
their court in the Convent of the Black Friars, near to where the bridge of
that name in London now stands; and the King and Queen, that they might be near
it, took up their lodgings at the adjoining palace of Bridewell, of which
nothing now remains but a bad prison. On the opening of the court, when the
King and Queen were called on to appear, that poor ill-used lady, with a
dignity and firmness and yet with a womanly affection worthy to be always
admired, went and kneeled at the King’s feet, and said that she had come, a
stranger, to his dominions; that she had been a good and true wife to him for
twenty years; and that she could acknowledge no power in those Cardinals to try
whether she should be considered his wife after all that time, or should be put
away. With that, she got up and left the court, and would never afterwards come
back to it.
The King pretended to
be very much overcome, and said, O! my lords and gentlemen, what a good woman
she was to be sure, and how delighted he would be to live with her unto death,
but for that terrible uneasiness in his mind which was quite wearing him away!
So, the case went on, and there was nothing but talk for two months. Then
Cardinal Campeggio, who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted nothing so much as
delay, adjourned it for two more months; and before that time was elapsed, the
Pope himself adjourned it indefinitely, by requiring the King and Queen to come
to Rome and have it tried there. But by good luck for the King, word was
brought to him by some of his people, that they had happened to meet at supper,
THOMAS CRANMER, a learned Doctor of Cambridge, who had proposed to urge the
Pope on, by referring the case to all the learned doctors and bishops, here and
there and everywhere, and getting their opinions that the King’s marriage was
unlawful. The King, who was now in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn, thought this
such a good idea, that he sent for Cranmer, post haste, and said to LORD
ROCHFORT, Anne Boleyn’s father, ’Take this learned Doctor down to your
country-house, and there let him have a good room for a study, and no end of
books out of which to prove that I may marry your daughter.’ Lord Rochfort, not
at all reluctant, made the learned Doctor as comfortable as he could; and the
learned Doctor went to work to prove his case. All this time, the King and Anne
Boleyn were writing letters to one another almost daily, full of impatience to
have the case settled; and Anne Boleyn was showing herself (as I think) very
worthy of the fate which afterwards befel her.
It was bad for Cardinal
Wolsey that he had left Cranmer to render this help. It was worse for him that
he had tried to dissuade the King from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a servant as
he, to such a master as Henry, would probably have fallen in any case; but,
between the hatred of the party of the Queen that was, and the hatred of the
party of the Queen that was to be, he fell suddenly and heavily. Going down one
day to the Court of Chancery, where he now presided, he was waited upon by the
Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who told him that they brought an order to him to
resign that office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he had at Esher, in
Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off to the King; and next day came
back with a letter from him, on reading which, the Cardinal submitted. An
inventory was made out of all the riches in his palace at York Place (now
Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully up the river, in his barge, to Putney. An
abject man he was, in spite of his pride; for being overtaken, riding out of
that place towards Esher, by one of the King’s chamberlains who brought him a
kind message and a ring, he alighted from his mule, took off his cap, and
kneeled down in the dirt. His poor Fool, whom in his prosperous days he had
always kept in his palace to entertain him, cut a far better figure than he;
for, when the Cardinal said to the chamberlain that he had nothing to send to
his lord the King as a present, but that jester who was a most excellent one,
it took six strong yeomen to remove the faithful fool from his master.
The once proud Cardinal
was soon further disgraced, and wrote the most abject letters to his vile
sovereign; who humbled him one day and encouraged him the next, according to
his humour, until he was at last ordered to go and reside in his diocese of
York. He said he was too poor; but I don’t know how he made that out, for he
took a hundred and sixty servants with him, and seventy-two cart-loads of
furniture, food, and wine. He remained in that part of the country for the best
part of a year, and showed himself so improved by his misfortunes, and was so
mild and so conciliating, that he won all hearts. And indeed, even in his proud
days, he had done some magnificent things for learning and education. At last,
he was arrested for high treason; and, coming slowly on his journey towards
London, got as far as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester Abbey after dark, and
very ill, he said--when the monks came out at the gate with lighted torches to
receive him--that he had come to lay his bones among them. He had indeed; for
he was taken to a bed, from which he never rose again. His last words were, ’Had
I but served God as diligently as I have served the King, He would not have given
me over, in my grey hairs. Howbeit, this is my just reward for my pains and
diligence, not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to my prince.’ The
news of his death was quickly carried to the King, who was amusing himself with
archery in the garden of the magnificent Palace at Hampton Court, which that
very Wolsey had presented to him. The greatest emotion his royal mind displayed
at the loss of a servant so faithful and so ruined, was a particular desire to
lay hold of fifteen hundred pounds which the Cardinal was reported to have
hidden somewhere.
The opinions concerning
the divorce, of the learned doctors and bishops and others, being at last
collected, and being generally in the King’s favour, were forwarded to the
Pope, with an entreaty that he would now grant it. The unfortunate Pope, who
was a timid man, was half distracted between his fear of his authority being
set aside in England if he did not do as he was asked, and his dread of
offending the Emperor of Germany, who was Queen Catherine’s nephew. In this
state of mind he still evaded and did nothing. Then, THOMAS CROMWELL, who had
been one of Wolsey’s faithful attendants, and had remained so even in his
decline, advised the King to take the matter into his own hands, and make
himself the head of the whole Church. This, the King by various artful means,
began to do; but he recompensed the clergy by allowing them to burn as many
people as they pleased, for holding Luther’s opinions. You must understand that
Sir Thomas More, the wise man who had helped the King with his book, had been
made Chancellor in Wolsey’s place. But, as he was truly attached to the Church
as it was even in its abuses, he, in this state of things, resigned.
Being now quite
resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine, and to marry Anne Boleyn without more
ado, the King made Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, and directed Queen
Catherine to leave the Court. She obeyed; but replied that wherever she went,
she was Queen of England still, and would remain so, to the last. The King then
married Anne Boleyn privately; and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, within
half a year, declared his marriage with Queen Catherine void, and crowned Anne
Boleyn Queen.
She might have known
that no good could ever come from such wrong, and that the corpulent brute who
had been so faithless and so cruel to his first wife, could be more faithless
and more cruel to his second. She might have known that, even when he was in
love with her, he had been a mean and selfish coward, running away, like a frightened
cur, from her society and her house, when a dangerous sickness broke out in it,
and when she might easily have taken it and died, as several of the household
did. But, Anne Boleyn arrived at all this knowledge too late, and bought it at
a dear price. Her bad marriage with a worse man came to its natural end. Its
natural end was not, as we shall too soon see, a natural death for her.
PART THE SECOND
THE Pope was thrown
into a very angry state of mind when he heard of the King’s marriage, and fumed
exceedingly. Many of the English monks and friars, seeing that their order was
in danger, did the same; some even declaimed against the King in church before
his face, and were not to be stopped until he himself roared out ’Silence!’ The
King, not much the worse for this, took it pretty quietly; and was very glad
when his Queen gave birth to a daughter, who was christened ELIZABETH, and
declared Princess of Wales as her sister Mary had already been.
One of the most
atrocious features of this reign was that Henry the Eighth was always trimming
between the reformed religion and the unreformed one; so that the more he
quarrelled with the Pope, the more of his own subjects he roasted alive for not
holding the Pope’s opinions. Thus, an unfortunate student named John Frith, and
a poor simple tailor named Andrew Hewet who loved him very much, and said that
whatever John Frith believed HE believed, were burnt in Smithfield--to show
what a capital Christian the King was.
But, these were
speedily followed by two much greater victims, Sir Thomas More, and John
Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester. The latter, who was a good and amiable old
man, had committed no greater offence than believing in Elizabeth Barton,
called the Maid of Kent--another of those ridiculous women who pretended to be
inspired, and to make all sorts of heavenly revelations, though they indeed
uttered nothing but evil nonsense. For this offence--as it was pretended, but
really for denying the King to be the supreme Head of the Church--he got into
trouble, and was put in prison; but, even then, he might have been suffered to
die naturally (short work having been made of executing the Kentish Maid and
her principal followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King, resolved to
make him a cardinal. Upon that the King made a ferocious joke to the effect
that the Pope might send Fisher a red hat--which is the way they make a
cardinal--but he should have no head on which to wear it; and he was tried with
all unfairness and injustice, and sentenced to death. He died like a noble and
virtuous old man, and left a worthy name behind him. The King supposed, I dare
say, that Sir Thomas More would be frightened by this example; but, as he was
not to be easily terrified, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope, had made up
his mind that the King was not the rightful Head of the Church, he positively
refused to say that he was. For this crime he too was tried and sentenced,
after having been in prison a whole year. When he was doomed to death, and came
away from his trial with the edge of the executioner’s axe turned towards
him--as was always done in those times when a state prisoner came to that
hopeless pass--he bore it quite serenely, and gave his blessing to his son, who
pressed through the crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled down to receive it.
But, when he got to the Tower Wharf on his way back to his prison, and his
favourite daughter, MARGARET ROPER, a very good woman, rushed through the
guards again and again, to kiss him and to weep upon his neck, he was overcome
at last. He soon recovered, and never more showed any feeling but cheerfulness
and courage. When he was going up the steps of the scaffold to his death, he
said jokingly to the Lieutenant of the Tower, observing that they were weak and
shook beneath his tread, ’I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up; and,
for my coming down, I can shift for myself.’ Also he said to the executioner,
after he had laid his head upon the block, ’Let me put my beard out of the way;
for that, at least, has never committed any treason.’ Then his head was struck
off at a blow. These two executions were worthy of King Henry the Eighth. Sir
Thomas More was one of the most virtuous men in his dominions, and the Bishop
was one of his oldest and truest friends. But to be a friend of that fellow was
almost as dangerous as to be his wife.
When the news of these
two murders got to Rome, the Pope raged against the murderer more than ever
Pope raged since the world began, and prepared a Bull, ordering his subjects to
take arms against him and dethrone him. The King took all possible precautions
to keep that document out of his dominions, and set to work in return to
suppress a great number of the English monasteries and abbeys.
This destruction was
begun by a body of commissioners, of whom Cromwell (whom the King had taken
into great favour) was the head; and was carried on through some few years to
its entire completion. There is no doubt that many of these religious
establishments were religious in nothing but in name, and were crammed with
lazy, indolent, and sensual monks. There is no doubt that they imposed upon the
people in every possible way; that they had images moved by wires, which they
pretended were miraculously moved by Heaven; that they had among them a whole
tun measure full of teeth, all purporting to have come out of the head of one
saint, who must indeed have been a very extraordinary person with that enormous
allowance of grinders; that they had bits of coal which they said had fried
Saint Lawrence, and bits of toe-nails which they said belonged to other famous
saints; penknives, and boots, and girdles, which they said belonged to others;
and that all these bits of rubbish were called Relics, and adored by the ignorant
people. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt either, that the King’s
officers and men punished the good monks with the bad; did great injustice;
demolished many beautiful things and many valuable libraries; destroyed numbers
of paintings, stained glass windows, fine pavements, and carvings; and that the
whole court were ravenously greedy and rapacious for the division of this great
spoil among them. The King seems to have grown almost mad in the ardour of this
pursuit; for he declared Thomas a Becket a traitor, though he had been dead so
many years, and had his body dug up out of his grave. He must have been as
miraculous as the monks pretended, if they had told the truth, for he was found
with one head on his shoulders, and they had shown another as his undoubted and
genuine head ever since his death; it had brought them vast sums of money, too.
The gold and jewels on his shrine filled two great chests, and eight men
tottered as they carried them away. How rich the monasteries were you may infer
from the fact that, when they were all suppressed, one hundred and thirty
thousand pounds a year--in those days an immense sum--came to the Crown.
These things were not
done without causing great discontent among the people. The monks had been good
landlords and hospitable entertainers of all travellers, and had been
accustomed to give away a great deal of corn, and fruit, and meat, and other
things. In those days it was difficult to change goods into money, in
consequence of the roads being very few and very bad, and the carts, and
waggons of the worst description; and they must either have given away some of
the good things they possessed in enormous quantities, or have suffered them to
spoil and moulder. So, many of the people missed what it was more agreeable to
get idly than to work for; and the monks who were driven out of their homes and
wandered about encouraged their discontent; and there were, consequently, great
risings in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. These were put down by terrific
executions, from which the monks themselves did not escape, and the King went
on grunting and growling in his own fat way, like a Royal pig.
I have told all this
story of the religious houses at one time, to make it plainer, and to get back
to the King’s domestic affairs.
The unfortunate Queen
Catherine was by this time dead; and the King was by this time as tired of his
second Queen as he had been of his first. As he had fallen in love with Anne
when she was in the service of Catherine, so he now fell in love with another
lady in the service of Anne. See how wicked deeds are punished, and how
bitterly and self-reproachfully the Queen must now have thought of her own rise
to the throne! The new fancy was a LADY JANE SEYMOUR; and the King no sooner
set his mind on her, than he resolved to have Anne Boleyn’s head. So, he
brought a number of charges against Anne, accusing her of dreadful crimes which
she had never committed, and implicating in them her own brother and certain
gentlemen in her service: among whom one Norris, and Mark Smeaton a musician,
are best remembered. As the lords and councillors were as afraid of the King
and as subservient to him as the meanest peasant in England was, they brought
in Anne Boleyn guilty, and the other unfortunate persons accused with her,
guilty too. Those gentlemen died like men, with the exception of Smeaton, who
had been tempted by the King into telling lies, which he called confessions,
and who had expected to be pardoned; but who, I am very glad to say, was not.
There was then only the Queen to dispose of. She had been surrounded in the
Tower with women spies; had been monstrously persecuted and foully slandered;
and had received no justice. But her spirit rose with her afflictions; and,
after having in vain tried to soften the King by writing an affecting letter to
him which still exists, ’from her doleful prison in the Tower,’ she resigned
herself to death. She said to those about her, very cheerfully, that she had
heard say the executioner was a good one, and that she had a little neck (she
laughed and clasped it with her hands as she said that), and would soon be out
of her pain. And she WAS soon out of her pain, poor creature, on the Green
inside the Tower, and her body was flung into an old box and put away in the
ground under the chapel.
There is a story that
the King sat in his palace listening very anxiously for the sound of the cannon
which was to announce this new murder; and that, when he heard it come booming
on the air, he rose up in great spirits and ordered out his dogs to go
a-hunting. He was bad enough to do it; but whether he did it or not, it is
certain that he married Jane Seymour the very next day.
I have not much
pleasure in recording that she lived just long enough to give birth to a son
who was christened EDWARD, and then to die of a fever: for, I cannot but think
that any woman who married such a ruffian, and knew what innocent blood was on
his hands, deserved the axe that would assuredly have fallen on the neck of
Jane Seymour, if she had lived much longer.
Cranmer had done what
he could to save some of the Church property for purposes of religion and
education; but, the great families had been so hungry to get hold of it, that
very little could be rescued for such objects. Even MILES COVERDALE, who did
the people the inestimable service of translating the Bible into English (which
the unreformed religion never permitted to be done), was left in poverty while
the great families clutched the Church lands and money. The people had been
told that when the Crown came into possession of these funds, it would not be
necessary to tax them; but they were taxed afresh directly afterwards. It was
fortunate for them, indeed, that so many nobles were so greedy for this wealth;
since, if it had remained with the Crown, there might have been no end to
tyranny for hundreds of years. One of the most active writers on the Church’s
side against the King was a member of his own family--a sort of distant cousin,
REGINALD POLE by name--who attacked him in the most violent manner (though he
received a pension from him all the time), and fought for the Church with his
pen, day and night. As he was beyond the King’s reach--being in Italy--the King
politely invited him over to discuss the subject; but he, knowing better than
to come, and wisely staying where he was, the King’s rage fell upon his brother
Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, and some other gentlemen: who were tried
for high treason in corresponding with him and aiding him--which they probably
did--and were all executed. The Pope made Reginald Pole a cardinal; but, so
much against his will, that it is thought he even aspired in his own mind to
the vacant throne of England, and had hopes of marrying the Princess Mary. His
being made a high priest, however, put an end to all that. His mother, the
venerable Countess of Salisbury--who was, unfortunately for herself, within the
tyrant’s reach--was the last of his relatives on whom his wrath fell. When she
was told to lay her grey head upon the block, she answered the executioner, ’No!
My head never committed treason, and if you want it, you shall seize it.’ So,
she ran round and round the scaffold with the executioner striking at her, and
her grey hair bedabbled with blood; and even when they held her down upon the
block she moved her head about to the last, resolved to be no party to her own
barbarous murder. All this the people bore, as they had borne everything else.
Indeed they bore much
more; for the slow fires of Smithfield were continually burning, and people
were constantly being roasted to death--still to show what a good Christian the
King was. He defied the Pope and his Bull, which was now issued, and had come into
England; but he burned innumerable people whose only offence was that they
differed from the Pope’s religious opinions. There was a wretched man named
LAMBERT, among others, who was tried for this before the King, and with whom
six bishops argued one after another. When he was quite exhausted (as well he
might be, after six bishops), he threw himself on the King’s mercy; but the
King blustered out that he had no mercy for heretics. So, HE too fed the fire.
All this the people
bore, and more than all this yet. The national spirit seems to have been
banished from the kingdom at this time. The very people who were executed for
treason, the very wives and friends of the ’bluff’ King, spoke of him on the
scaffold as a good prince, and a gentle prince--just as serfs in similar
circumstances have been known to do, under the Sultan and Bashaws of the East,
or under the fierce old tyrants of Russia, who poured boiling and freezing
water on them alternately, until they died. The Parliament were as bad as the rest,
and gave the King whatever he wanted; among other vile accommodations, they
gave him new powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure, any one whom he
might choose to call a traitor. But the worst measure they passed was an Act of
Six Articles, commonly called at the time ’the whip with six strings;’ which
punished offences against the Pope’s opinions, without mercy, and enforced the
very worst parts of the monkish religion. Cranmer would have modified it, if he
could; but, being overborne by the Romish party, had not the power. As one of
the articles declared that priests should not marry, and as he was married
himself, he sent his wife and children into Germany, and began to tremble at
his danger; none the less because he was, and had long been, the King’s friend.
This whip of six strings was made under the King’s own eye. It should never be
forgotten of him how cruelly he supported the worst of the Popish doctrines
when there was nothing to be got by opposing them.
This amiable monarch
now thought of taking another wife. He proposed to the French King to have some
of the ladies of the French Court exhibited before him, that he might make his
Royal choice; but the French King answered that he would rather not have his
ladies trotted out to be shown like horses at a fair. He proposed to the
Dowager Duchess of Milan, who replied that she might have thought of such a
match if she had had two heads; but, that only owning one, she must beg to keep
it safe. At last Cromwell represented that there was a Protestant Princess in
Germany--those who held the reformed religion were called Protestants, because
their leaders had Protested against the abuses and impositions of the
unreformed Church--named ANNE OF CLEVES, who was beautiful, and would answer
the purpose admirably. The King said was she a large woman, because he must
have a fat wife? ’O yes,’ said Cromwell; ’she was very large, just the thing.’
On hearing this the King sent over his famous painter, Hans Holbein, to take
her portrait. Hans made her out to be so good-looking that the King was
satisfied, and the marriage was arranged. But, whether anybody had paid Hans to
touch up the picture; or whether Hans, like one or two other painters,
flattered a princess in the ordinary way of business, I cannot say: all I know
is, that when Anne came over and the King went to Rochester to meet her, and
first saw her without her seeing him, he swore she was ’a great Flanders mare,’
and said he would never marry her. Being obliged to do it now matters had gone
so far, he would not give her the presents he had prepared, and would never
notice her. He never forgave Cromwell his part in the affair. His downfall
dates from that time.
It was quickened by his
enemies, in the interests of the unreformed religion, putting in the King’s
way, at a state dinner, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, CATHERINE HOWARD, a
young lady of fascinating manners, though small in stature and not particularly
beautiful. Falling in love with her on the spot, the King soon divorced Anne of
Cleves after making her the subject of much brutal talk, on pretence that she
had been previously betrothed to some one else--which would never do for one of
his dignity--and married Catherine. It is probable that on his wedding day, of
all days in the year, he sent his faithful Cromwell to the scaffold, and had
his head struck off. He further celebrated the occasion by burning at one time,
and causing to be drawn to the fire on the same hurdles, some Protestant
prisoners for denying the Pope’s doctrines, and some Roman Catholic prisoners
for denying his own supremacy. Still the people bore it, and not a gentleman in
England raised his hand.
But, by a just
retribution, it soon came out that Catherine Howard, before her marriage, had
been really guilty of such crimes as the King had falsely attributed to his
second wife Anne Boleyn; so, again the dreadful axe made the King a widower,
and this Queen passed away as so many in that reign had passed away before her.
As an appropriate pursuit under the circumstances, Henry then applied himself
to superintending the composition of a religious book called ’A necessary
doctrine for any Christian Man.’ He must have been a little confused in his
mind, I think, at about this period; for he was so false to himself as to be
true to some one: that some one being Cranmer, whom the Duke of Norfolk and
others of his enemies tried to ruin; but to whom the King was steadfast, and to
whom he one night gave his ring, charging him when he should find himself, next
day, accused of treason, to show it to the council board. This Cranmer did to
the confusion of his enemies. I suppose the King thought he might want him a
little longer.
He married yet once
more. Yes, strange to say, he found in England another woman who would become
his wife, and she was CATHERINE PARR, widow of Lord Latimer. She leaned towards
the reformed religion; and it is some comfort to know, that she tormented the
King considerably by arguing a variety of doctrinal points with him on all
possible occasions. She had very nearly done this to her own destruction. After
one of these conversations the King in a very black mood actually instructed
GARDINER, one of his Bishops who favoured the Popish opinions, to draw a bill
of accusation against her, which would have inevitably brought her to the
scaffold where her predecessors had died, but that one of her friends picked up
the paper of instructions which had been dropped in the palace, and gave her
timely notice. She fell ill with terror; but managed the King so well when he
came to entrap her into further statements--by saying that she had only spoken
on such points to divert his mind and to get some information from his
extraordinary wisdom--that he gave her a kiss and called her his sweetheart.
And, when the Chancellor came next day actually to take her to the Tower, the
King sent him about his business, and honoured him with the epithets of a
beast, a knave, and a fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, and so
narrow was her escape!
There was war with
Scotland in this reign, and a short clumsy war with France for favouring
Scotland; but, the events at home were so dreadful, and leave such an enduring
stain on the country, that I need say no more of what happened abroad.
A few more horrors, and
this reign is over. There was a lady, ANNE ASKEW, in Lincolnshire, who inclined
to the Protestant opinions, and whose husband being a fierce Catholic, turned
her out of his house. She came to London, and was considered as offending
against the six articles, and was taken to the Tower, and put upon the
rack--probably because it was hoped that she might, in her agony, criminate
some obnoxious persons; if falsely, so much the better. She was tortured
without uttering a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would suffer his men
to torture her no more; and then two priests who were present actually pulled
off their robes, and turned the wheels of the rack with their own hands, so
rending and twisting and breaking her that she was afterwards carried to the
fire in a chair. She was burned with three others, a gentleman, a clergyman,
and a tailor; and so the world went on.
Either the King became
afraid of the power of the Duke of Norfolk, and his son the Earl of Surrey, or
they gave him some offence, but he resolved to pull THEM down, to follow all
the rest who were gone. The son was tried first--of course for nothing--and
defended himself bravely; but of course he was found guilty, and of course he
was executed. Then his father was laid hold of, and left for death too.
But the King himself
was left for death by a Greater King, and the earth was to be rid of him at
last. He was now a swollen, hideous spectacle, with a great hole in his leg,
and so odious to every sense that it was dreadful to approach him. When he was
found to be dying, Cranmer was sent for from his palace at Croydon, and came
with all speed, but found him speechless. Happily, in that hour he perished. He
was in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign.
Henry the Eighth has
been favoured by some Protestant writers, because the Reformation was achieved
in his time. But the mighty merit of it lies with other men and not with him;
and it can be rendered none the worse by this monster’s crimes, and none the
better by any defence of them. The plain truth is, that he was a most
intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease
upon the History of England.
HENRY THE EIGHTH had
made a will, appointing a council of sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son
while he was under age (he was now only ten years old), and another council of
twelve to help them. The most powerful of the first council was the EARL OF
HERTFORD, the young King’s uncle, who lost no time in bringing his nephew with
great state up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower. It was considered at the
time a striking proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry for his
father’s death; but, as common subjects have that virtue too, sometimes, we
will say no more about it.
There was a curious
part of the late King’s will, requiring his executors to fulfil whatever
promises he had made. Some of the court wondering what these might be, the Earl
of Hertford and the other noblemen interested, said that they were promises to
advance and enrich THEM. So, the Earl of Hertford made himself DUKE OF
SOMERSET, and made his brother EDWARD SEYMOUR a baron; and there were various
similar promotions, all very agreeable to the parties concerned, and very
dutiful, no doubt, to the late King’s memory. To be more dutiful still, they
made themselves rich out of the Church lands, and were very comfortable. The
new Duke of Somerset caused himself to be declared PROTECTOR of the kingdom,
and was, indeed, the King.
As young Edward the
Sixth had been brought up in the principles of the Protestant religion,
everybody knew that they would be maintained. But Cranmer, to whom they were
chiefly entrusted, advanced them steadily and temperately. Many superstitious
and ridiculous practices were stopped; but practices which were harmless were
not interfered with.
The Duke of Somerset,
the Protector, was anxious to have the young King engaged in marriage to the
young Queen of Scotland, in order to prevent that princess from making an
alliance with any foreign power; but, as a large party in Scotland were
unfavourable to this plan, he invaded that country. His excuse for doing so
was, that the Border men--that is, the Scotch who lived in that part of the
country where England and Scotland joined--troubled the English very much. But
there were two sides to this question; for the English Border men troubled the
Scotch too; and, through many long years, there were perpetual border quarrels
which gave rise to numbers of old tales and songs. However, the Protector
invaded Scotland; and ARRAN, the Scottish Regent, with an army twice as large
as his, advanced to meet him. They encountered on the banks of the river Esk,
within a few miles of Edinburgh; and there, after a little skirmish, the
Protector made such moderate proposals, in offering to retire if the Scotch
would only engage not to marry their princess to any foreign prince, that the
Regent thought the English were afraid. But in this he made a horrible mistake;
for the English soldiers on land, and the English sailors on the water, so set
upon the Scotch, that they broke and fled, and more than ten thousand of them
were killed. It was a dreadful battle, for the fugitives were slain without
mercy. The ground for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was strewn with
dead men, and with arms, and legs, and heads. Some hid themselves in streams
and were drowned; some threw away their armour and were killed running, almost
naked; but in this battle of Pinkey the English lost only two or three hundred
men. They were much better clothed than the Scotch; at the poverty of whose
appearance and country they were exceedingly astonished.
A Parliament was called
when Somerset came back, and it repealed the whip with six strings, and did one
or two other good things; though it unhappily retained the punishment of
burning for those people who did not make believe to believe, in all religious
matters, what the Government had declared that they must and should believe. It
also made a foolish law (meant to put down beggars), that any man who lived
idly and loitered about for three days together, should be burned with a hot
iron, made a slave, and wear an iron fetter. But this savage absurdity soon
came to an end, and went the way of a great many other foolish laws.
The Protector was now
so proud that he sat in Parliament before all the nobles, on the right hand of
the throne. Many other noblemen, who only wanted to be as proud if they could
get a chance, became his enemies of course; and it is supposed that he came
back suddenly from Scotland because he had received news that his brother, LORD
SEYMOUR, was becoming dangerous to him. This lord was now High Admiral of
England; a very handsome man, and a great favourite with the Court ladies--even
with the young Princess Elizabeth, who romped with him a little more than young
princesses in these times do with any one. He had married Catherine Parr, the
late King’s widow, who was now dead; and, to strengthen his power, he secretly
supplied the young King with money. He may even have engaged with some of his
brother’s enemies in a plot to carry the boy off. On these and other
accusations, at any rate, he was confined in the Tower, impeached, and found
guilty; his own brother’s name being--unnatural and sad to tell--the first
signed to the warrant of his execution. He was executed on Tower Hill, and died
denying his treason. One of his last proceedings in this world was to write two
letters, one to the Princess Elizabeth, and one to the Princess Mary, which a
servant of his took charge of, and concealed in his shoe. These letters are
supposed to have urged them against his brother, and to revenge his death. What
they truly contained is not known; but there is no doubt that he had, at one
time, obtained great influence over the Princess Elizabeth.
All this while, the
Protestant religion was making progress. The images which the people had
gradually come to worship, were removed from the churches; the people were
informed that they need not confess themselves to priests unless they chose; a
common prayer-book was drawn up in the English language, which all could
understand, and many other improvements were made; still moderately. For
Cranmer was a very moderate man, and even restrained the Protestant clergy from
violently abusing the unreformed religion--as they very often did, and which
was not a good example. But the people were at this time in great distress. The
rapacious nobility who had come into possession of the Church lands, were very
bad landlords. They enclosed great quantities of ground for the feeding of
sheep, which was then more profitable than the growing of crops; and this
increased the general distress. So the people, who still understood little of
what was going on about them, and still readily believed what the homeless
monks told them--many of whom had been their good friends in their better
days--took it into their heads that all this was owing to the reformed
religion, and therefore rose, in many parts of the country.
The most powerful
risings were in Devonshire and Norfolk. In Devonshire, the rebellion was so
strong that ten thousand men united within a few days, and even laid siege to
Exeter. But LORD RUSSELL, coming to the assistance of the citizens who defended
that town, defeated the rebels; and, not only hanged the Mayor of one place,
but hanged the vicar of another from his own church steeple. What with hanging
and killing by the sword, four thousand of the rebels are supposed to have
fallen in that one county. In Norfolk (where the rising was more against the
enclosure of open lands than against the reformed religion), the popular leader
was a man named ROBERT KET, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, in the first
instance, excited against the tanner by one JOHN FLOWERDEW, a gentleman who
owed him a grudge: but the tanner was more than a match for the gentleman,
since he soon got the people on his side, and established himself near Norwich
with quite an army. There was a large oak-tree in that place, on a spot called
Moushold Hill, which Ket named the Tree of Reformation; and under its green
boughs, he and his men sat, in the midsummer weather, holding courts of
justice, and debating affairs of state. They were even impartial enough to
allow some rather tiresome public speakers to get up into this Tree of Reformation,
and point out their errors to them, in long discourses, while they lay
listening (not always without some grumbling and growling) in the shade below.
At last, one sunny July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed
Ket and all his men traitors, unless from that moment they dispersed and went
home: in which case they were to receive a pardon. But, Ket and his men made
light of the herald and became stronger than ever, until the Earl of Warwick
went after them with a sufficient force, and cut them all to pieces. A few were
hanged, drawn, and quartered, as traitors, and their limbs were sent into
various country places to be a terror to the people. Nine of them were hanged
upon nine green branches of the Oak of Reformation; and so, for the time, that
tree may be said to have withered away.
The Protector, though a
haughty man, had compassion for the real distresses of the common people, and a
sincere desire to help them. But he was too proud and too high in degree to
hold even their favour steadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated
him, because they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time
building a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up
church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops’ houses: thus making
himself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the Earl of
Warwick--Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made himself so
odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh--joined with seven other
members of the Council against him, formed a separate Council; and, becoming
stronger in a few days, sent him to the Tower under twenty-nine articles of
accusation. After being sentenced by the Council to the forfeiture of all his
offices and lands, he was liberated and pardoned, on making a very humble
submission. He was even taken back into the Council again, after having
suffered this fall, and married his daughter, LADY ANNE SEYMOUR, to Warwick’s
eldest son. But such a reconciliation was little likely to last, and did not
outlive a year. Warwick, having got himself made Duke of Northumberland, and
having advanced the more important of his friends, then finished the history by
causing the Duke of Somerset and his friend LORD GREY, and others, to be arrested
for treason, in having conspired to seize and dethrone the King. They were also
accused of having intended to seize the new Duke of Northumberland, with his
friends LORD NORTHAMPTON and LORD PEMBROKE; to murder them if they found need;
and to raise the City to revolt. All this the fallen Protector positively
denied; except that he confessed to having spoken of the murder of those three
noblemen, but having never designed it. He was acquitted of the charge of
treason, and found guilty of the other charges; so when the people--who
remembered his having been their friend, now that he was disgraced and in
danger, saw him come out from his trial with the axe turned from him--they
thought he was altogether acquitted, and sent up a loud shout of joy.
But the Duke of
Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on Tower Hill, at eight o’clock in the
morning, and proclamations were issued bidding the citizens keep at home until
after ten. They filled the streets, however, and crowded the place of execution
as soon as it was light; and, with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once
powerful Protector ascend the scaffold to lay his head upon the dreadful block.
While he was yet saying his last words to them with manly courage, and telling
them, in particular, how it comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted in
reforming the national religion, a member of the Council was seen riding up on
horseback. They again thought that the Duke was saved by his bringing a
reprieve, and again shouted for joy. But the Duke himself told them they were
mistaken, and laid down his head and had it struck off at a blow.
Many of the bystanders
rushed forward and steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their
affection. He had, indeed, been capable of many good acts, and one of them was
discovered after he was no more. The Bishop of Durham, a very good man, had
been informed against to the Council, when the Duke was in power, as having
answered a treacherous letter proposing a rebellion against the reformed
religion. As the answer could not be found, he could not be declared guilty;
but it was now discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among some private
papers, in his regard for that good man. The Bishop lost his office, and was
deprived of his possessions.
It is not very pleasant
to know that while his uncle lay in prison under sentence of death, the young
King was being vastly entertained by plays, and dances, and sham fights: but
there is no doubt of it, for he kept a journal himself. It is pleasanter to
know that not a single Roman Catholic was burnt in this reign for holding that
religion; though two wretched victims suffered for heresy. One, a woman named
JOAN BOCHER, for professing some opinions that even she could only explain in
unintelligible jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named VON PARIS, who practised as
a surgeon in London. Edward was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign
the warrant for the woman’s execution: shedding tears before he did so, and
telling Cranmer, who urged him to do it (though Cranmer really would have
spared the woman at first, but for her own determined obstinacy), that the
guilt was not his, but that of the man who so strongly urged the dreadful act.
We shall see, too soon, whether the time ever came when Cranmer is likely to
have remembered this with sorrow and remorse.
Cranmer and RIDLEY (at
first Bishop of Rochester, and afterwards Bishop of London) were the most
powerful of the clergy of this reign. Others were imprisoned and deprived of
their property for still adhering to the unreformed religion; the most
important among whom were GARDINER Bishop of Winchester, HEATH Bishop of
Worcester, DAY Bishop of Chichester, and BONNER that Bishop of London who was
superseded by Ridley. The Princess Mary, who inherited her mother’s gloomy temper,
and hated the reformed religion as connected with her mother’s wrongs and
sorrows--she knew nothing else about it, always refusing to read a single book
in which it was truly described--held by the unreformed religion too, and was
the only person in the kingdom for whom the old Mass was allowed to be
performed; nor would the young King have made that exception even in her
favour, but for the strong persuasions of Cranmer and Ridley. He always viewed
it with horror; and when he fell into a sickly condition, after having been
very ill, first of the measles and then of the small-pox, he was greatly
troubled in mind to think that if he died, and she, the next heir to the
throne, succeeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be set up again.
This uneasiness, the
Duke of Northumberland was not slow to encourage: for, if the Princess Mary
came to the throne, he, who had taken part with the Protestants, was sure to be
disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk was descended from King Henry the
Seventh; and, if she resigned what little or no right she had, in favour of her
daughter LADY JANE GREY, that would be the succession to promote the Duke’s
greatness; because LORD GUILFORD DUDLEY, one of his sons, was, at this very
time, newly married to her. So, he worked upon the King’s fears, and persuaded
him to set aside both the Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert
his right to appoint his successor. Accordingly the young King handed to the
Crown lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times over by himself, appointing
Lady Jane Grey to succeed to the Crown, and requiring them to have his will
made out according to law. They were much against it at first, and told the
King so; but the Duke of Northumberland--being so violent about it that the
lawyers even expected him to beat them, and hotly declaring that, stripped to
his shirt, he would fight any man in such a quarrel--they yielded. Cranmer,
also, at first hesitated; pleading that he had sworn to maintain the succession
of the Crown to the Princess Mary; but, he was a weak man in his resolutions,
and afterwards signed the document with the rest of the council.
It was completed none
too soon; for Edward was now sinking in a rapid decline; and, by way of making
him better, they handed him over to a woman-doctor who pretended to be able to
cure it. He speedily got worse. On the sixth of July, in the year one thousand
five hundred and fifty-three, he died, very peaceably and piously, praying God,
with his last breath, to protect the reformed religion.
This King died in the
sixteenth year of his age, and in the seventh of his reign. It is difficult to
judge what the character of one so young might afterwards have become among so
many bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles. But, he was an amiable boy, of very
good abilities, and had nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his
disposition--which in the son of such a father is rather surprising.
THE Duke of
Northumberland was very anxious to keep the young King’s death a secret, in
order that he might get the two Princesses into his power. But, the Princess
Mary, being informed of that event as she was on her way to London to see her
sick brother, turned her horse’s head, and rode away into Norfolk. The Earl of
Arundel was her friend, and it was he who sent her warning of what had
happened.
As the secret could not
be kept, the Duke of Northumberland and the council sent for the Lord Mayor of
London and some of the aldermen, and made a merit of telling it to them. Then,
they made it known to the people, and set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she
was to be Queen.
She was a pretty girl
of only sixteen, and was amiable, learned, and clever. When the lords who came
to her, fell on their knees before her, and told her what tidings they brought,
she was so astonished that she fainted. On recovering, she expressed her sorrow
for the young King’s death, and said that she knew she was unfit to govern the
kingdom; but that if she must be Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was
then at Sion House, near Brentford; and the lords took her down the river in
state to the Tower, that she might remain there (as the custom was) until she
was crowned. But the people were not at all favourable to Lady Jane,
considering that the right to be Queen was Mary’s, and greatly disliking the
Duke of Northumberland. They were not put into a better humour by the Duke’s
causing a vintner’s servant, one Gabriel Pot, to be taken up for expressing his
dissatisfaction among the crowd, and to have his ears nailed to the pillory,
and cut off. Some powerful men among the nobility declared on Mary’s side. They
raised troops to support her cause, had her proclaimed Queen at Norwich, and
gathered around her at the castle of Framlingham, which belonged to the Duke of
Norfolk. For, she was not considered so safe as yet, but that it was best to
keep her in a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she might be sent abroad, if
necessary.
The Council would have
despatched Lady Jane’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, as the general of the army
against this force; but, as Lady Jane implored that her father might remain
with her, and as he was known to be but a weak man, they told the Duke of
Northumberland that he must take the command himself. He was not very ready to
do so, as he mistrusted the Council much; but there was no help for it, and he
set forth with a heavy heart, observing to a lord who rode beside him through
Shoreditch at the head of the troops, that, although the people pressed in
great numbers to look at them, they were terribly silent.
And his fears for
himself turned out to be well founded. While he was waiting at Cambridge for
further help from the Council, the Council took it into their heads to turn
their backs on Lady Jane’s cause, and to take up the Princess Mary’s. This was
chiefly owing to the before-mentioned Earl of Arundel, who represented to the
Lord Mayor and aldermen, in a second interview with those sagacious persons,
that, as for himself, he did not perceive the Reformed religion to be in much
danger--which Lord Pembroke backed by flourishing his sword as another kind of
persuasion. The Lord Mayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, said there could be
no doubt that the Princess Mary ought to be Queen. So, she was proclaimed at
the Cross by St. Paul’s, and barrels of wine were given to the people, and they
got very drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires--little thinking, poor
wretches, what other bonfires would soon be blazing in Queen Mary’s name.
After a ten days’ dream
of royalty, Lady Jane Grey resigned the Crown with great willingness, saying
that she had only accepted it in obedience to her father and mother; and went
gladly back to her pleasant house by the river, and her books. Mary then came
on towards London; and at Wanstead in Essex, was joined by her half-sister, the
Princess Elizabeth. They passed through the streets of London to the Tower, and
there the new Queen met some eminent prisoners then confined in it, kissed
them, and gave them their liberty. Among these was that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester,
who had been imprisoned in the last reign for holding to the unreformed
religion. Him she soon made chancellor.
The Duke of
Northumberland had been taken prisoner, and, together with his son and five
others, was quickly brought before the Council. He, not unnaturally, asked that
Council, in his defence, whether it was treason to obey orders that had been
issued under the great seal; and, if it were, whether they, who had obeyed them
too, ought to be his judges? But they made light of these points; and, being
resolved to have him out of the way, soon sentenced him to death. He had risen
into power upon the death of another man, and made but a poor show (as might be
expected) when he himself lay low. He entreated Gardiner to let him live, if it
were only in a mouse’s hole; and, when he ascended the scaffold to be beheaded
on Tower Hill, addressed the people in a miserable way, saying that he had been
incited by others, and exhorting them to return to the unreformed religion,
which he told them was his faith. There seems reason to suppose that he
expected a pardon even then, in return for this confession; but it matters
little whether he did or not. His head was struck off.
Mary was now crowned
Queen. She was thirty-seven years of age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face,
and very unhealthy. But she had a great liking for show and for bright colours,
and all the ladies of her Court were magnificently dressed. She had a great
liking too for old customs, without much sense in them; and she was oiled in the
oldest way, and blessed in the oldest way, and done all manner of things to in
the oldest way, at her coronation. I hope they did her good.
She soon began to show
her desire to put down the Reformed religion, and put up the unreformed one:
though it was dangerous work as yet, the people being something wiser than they
used to be. They even cast a shower of stones--and among them a dagger--at one
of the royal chaplains who attacked the Reformed religion in a public sermon.
But the Queen and her priests went steadily on. Ridley, the powerful bishop of
the last reign, was seized and sent to the Tower. LATIMER, also celebrated
among the Clergy of the last reign, was likewise sent to the Tower, and Cranmer
speedily followed. Latimer was an aged man; and, as his guards took him through
Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, ’This is a place that hath long
groaned for me.’ For he knew well, what kind of bonfires would soon be burning.
Nor was the knowledge confined to him. The prisons were fast filled with the
chief Protestants, who were there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and
separation from their friends; many, who had time left them for escape, fled
from the kingdom; and the dullest of the people began, now, to see what was
coming.
It came on fast. A
Parliament was got together; not without strong suspicion of unfairness; and
they annulled the divorce, formerly pronounced by Cranmer between the Queen’s
mother and King Henry the Eighth, and unmade all the laws on the subject of
religion that had been made in the last King Edward’s reign. They began their
proceedings, in violation of the law, by having the old mass said before them
in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who would not kneel down. They also
declared guilty of treason, Lady Jane Grey for aspiring to the Crown; her
husband, for being her husband; and Cranmer, for not believing in the mass
aforesaid. They then prayed the Queen graciously to choose a husband for
herself, as soon as might be.
Now, the question who
should be the Queen’s husband had given rise to a great deal of discussion, and
to several contending parties. Some said Cardinal Pole was the man--but the
Queen was of opinion that he was NOT the man, he being too old and too much of
a student. Others said that the gallant young COURTENAY, whom the Queen had
made Earl of Devonshire, was the man--and the Queen thought so too, for a
while; but she changed her mind. At last it appeared that PHILIP, PRINCE OF
SPAIN, was certainly the man--though certainly not the people’s man; for they
detested the idea of such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and
murmured that the Spaniard would establish in England, by the aid of foreign
soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even the terrible
Inquisition itself.
These discontents gave
rise to a conspiracy for marrying young Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth,
and setting them up, with popular tumults all over the kingdom, against the
Queen. This was discovered in time by Gardiner; but in Kent, the old bold
county, the people rose in their old bold way. SIR THOMAS WYAT, a man of great
daring, was their leader. He raised his standard at Maidstone, marched on to
Rochester, established himself in the old castle there, and prepared to hold
out against the Duke of Norfolk, who came against him with a party of the Queen’s
guards, and a body of five hundred London men. The London men, however, were
all for Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They declared, under the castle
walls, for Wyat; the Duke retreated; and Wyat came on to Deptford, at the head
of fifteen thousand men.
But these, in their
turn, fell away. When he came to Southwark, there were only two thousand left.
Not dismayed by finding the London citizens in arms, and the guns at the Tower
ready to oppose his crossing the river there, Wyat led them off to
Kingston-upon-Thames, intending to cross the bridge that he knew to be in that
place, and so to work his way round to Ludgate, one of the old gates of the
City. He found the bridge broken down, but mended it, came across, and bravely
fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. Finding the gate closed against
him, he fought his way back again, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being
overpowered, he surrendered himself, and three or four hundred of his men were
taken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a moment of weakness (and perhaps of
torture) was afterwards made to accuse the Princess Elizabeth as his accomplice
to some very small extent. But his manhood soon returned to him, and he refused
to save his life by making any more false confessions. He was quartered and
distributed in the usual brutal way, and from fifty to a hundred of his
followers were hanged. The rest were led out, with halters round their necks,
to be pardoned, and to make a parade of crying out, ’God save Queen Mary!’
In the danger of this
rebellion, the Queen showed herself to be a woman of courage and spirit. She
disdained to retreat to any place of safety, and went down to the Guildhall,
sceptre in hand, and made a gallant speech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But
on the day after Wyat’s defeat, she did the most cruel act, even of her cruel
reign, in signing the warrant for the execution of Lady Jane Grey.
They tried to persuade
Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion; but she steadily refused. On the
morning when she was to die, she saw from her window the bleeding and headless
body of her husband brought back in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill
where he had laid down his life. But, as she had declined to see him before his
execution, lest she should be overpowered and not make a good end, so, she even
now showed a constancy and calmness that will never be forgotten. She came up
to the scaffold with a firm step and a quiet face, and addressed the bystanders
in a steady voice. They were not numerous; for she was too young, too innocent
and fair, to be murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as her husband had
just been; so, the place of her execution was within the Tower itself. She said
that she had done an unlawful act in taking what was Queen Mary’s right; but
that she had done so with no bad intent, and that she died a humble Christian.
She begged the executioner to despatch her quickly, and she asked him, ’Will
you take my head off before I lay me down?’ He answered, ’No, Madam,’ and then
she was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. Being blinded, and unable to
see the block on which she was to lay her young head, she was seen to feel
about for it with her hands, and was heard to say, confused, ’O what shall I
do! Where is it?’ Then they guided her to the right place, and the executioner
struck off her head. You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds the
executioner did in England, through many, many years, and how his axe descended
on the hateful block through the necks of some of the bravest, wisest, and best
in the land. But it never struck so cruel and so vile a blow as this.
The father of Lady Jane
soon followed, but was little pitied. Queen Mary’s next object was to lay hold
of Elizabeth, and this was pursued with great eagerness. Five hundred men were
sent to her retired house at Ashridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring
her up, alive or dead. They got there at ten at night, when she was sick in
bed. But, their leaders followed her lady into her bedchamber, whence she was
brought out betimes next morning, and put into a litter to be conveyed to
London. She was so weak and ill, that she was five days on the road; still, she
was so resolved to be seen by the people that she had the curtains of the
litter opened; and so, very pale and sickly, passed through the streets. She
wrote to her sister, saying she was innocent of any crime, and asking why she
was made a prisoner; but she got no answer, and was ordered to the Tower. They
took her in by the Traitor’s Gate, to which she objected, but in vain. One of
the lords who conveyed her offered to cover her with his cloak, as it was
raining, but she put it away from her, proudly and scornfully, and passed into
the Tower, and sat down in a court-yard on a stone. They besought her to come
in out of the wet; but she answered that it was better sitting there, than in a
worse place. At length she went to her apartment, where she was kept a
prisoner, though not so close a prisoner as at Woodstock, whither she was
afterwards removed, and where she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid
whom she heard singing in the sunshine as she went through the green fields.
Gardiner, than whom there were not many worse men among the fierce and sullen
priests, cared little to keep secret his stern desire for her death: being used
to say that it was of little service to shake off the leaves, and lop the
branches of the tree of heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were left.
He failed, however, in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, at length,
released; and Hatfield House was assigned to her as a residence, under the care
of one SIR THOMAS POPE.
It would seem that
Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main cause of this change in Elizabeth’s
fortunes. He was not an amiable man, being, on the contrary, proud,
overbearing, and gloomy; but he and the Spanish lords who came over with him,
assuredly did discountenance the idea of doing any violence to the Princess. It
may have been mere prudence, but we will hope it was manhood and honour. The Queen
had been expecting her husband with great impatience, and at length he came, to
her great joy, though he never cared much for her. They were married by
Gardiner, at Winchester, and there was more holiday-making among the people;
but they had their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in which even the
Parliament shared. Though the members of that Parliament were far from honest,
and were strongly suspected to have been bought with Spanish money, they would
pass no bill to enable the Queen to set aside the Princess Elizabeth and
appoint her own successor.
Although Gardiner
failed in this object, as well as in the darker one of bringing the Princess to
the scaffold, he went on at a great pace in the revival of the unreformed
religion. A new Parliament was packed, in which there were no Protestants.
Preparations were made to receive Cardinal Pole in England as the Pope’s
messenger, bringing his holy declaration that all the nobility who had acquired
Church property, should keep it--which was done to enlist their selfish
interest on the Pope’s side. Then a great scene was enacted, which was the
triumph of the Queen’s plans. Cardinal Pole arrived in great splendour and
dignity, and was received with great pomp. The Parliament joined in a petition
expressive of their sorrow at the change in the national religion, and praying
him to receive the country again into the Popish Church. With the Queen sitting
on her throne, and the King on one side of her, and the Cardinal on the other,
and the Parliament present, Gardiner read the petition aloud. The Cardinal then
made a great speech, and was so obliging as to say that all was forgotten and
forgiven, and that the kingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.
Everything was now
ready for the lighting of the terrible bonfires. The Queen having declared to
the Council, in writing, that she would wish none of her subjects to be burnt
without some of the Council being present, and that she would particularly wish
there to be good sermons at all burnings, the Council knew pretty well what was
to be done next. So, after the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as a
preface to the burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner opened a High Court at Saint
Mary Overy, on the Southwark side of London Bridge, for the trial of heretics. Here,
two of the late Protestant clergymen, HOOPER, Bishop of Gloucester, and ROGERS,
a Prebendary of St. Paul’s, were brought to be tried. Hooper was tried first
for being married, though a priest, and for not believing in the mass. He
admitted both of these accusations, and said that the mass was a wicked
imposition. Then they tried Rogers, who said the same. Next morning the two
were brought up to be sentenced; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, being
a German woman and a stranger in the land, he hoped might be allowed to come to
speak to him before he died. To this the inhuman Gardiner replied, that she was
not his wife. ’Yea, but she is, my lord,’ said Rogers, ’and she hath been my
wife these eighteen years.’ His request was still refused, and they were both
sent to Newgate; all those who stood in the streets to sell things, being
ordered to put out their lights that the people might not see them. But, the
people stood at their doors with candles in their hands, and prayed for them as
they went by. Soon afterwards, Rogers was taken out of jail to be burnt in
Smithfield; and, in the crowd as he went along, he saw his poor wife and his
ten children, of whom the youngest was a little baby. And so he was burnt to
death.
The next day, Hooper,
who was to be burnt at Gloucester, was brought out to take his last journey,
and was made to wear a hood over his face that he might not be known by the
people. But, they did know him for all that, down in his own part of the country;
and, when he came near Gloucester, they lined the road, making prayers and
lamentations. His guards took him to a lodging, where he slept soundly all
night. At nine o’clock next morning, he was brought forth leaning on a staff;
for he had taken cold in prison, and was infirm. The iron stake, and the iron
chain which was to bind him to it, were fixed up near a great elm-tree in a
pleasant open place before the cathedral, where, on peaceful Sundays, he had
been accustomed to preach and to pray, when he was bishop of Gloucester. This
tree, which had no leaves then, it being February, was filled with people; and
the priests of Gloucester College were looking complacently on from a window,
and there was a great concourse of spectators in every spot from which a glimpse
of the dreadful sight could be beheld. When the old man kneeled down on the
small platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed aloud, the nearest people
were observed to be so attentive to his prayers that they were ordered to stand
farther back; for it did not suit the Romish Church to have those Protestant
words heard. His prayers concluded, he went up to the stake and was stripped to
his shirt, and chained ready for the fire. One of his guards had such
compassion on him that, to shorten his agonies, he tied some packets of
gunpowder about him. Then they heaped up wood and straw and reeds, and set them
all alight. But, unhappily, the wood was green and damp, and there was a wind
blowing that blew what flame there was, away. Thus, through three-quarters of
an hour, the good old man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as the fire rose
and sank; and all that time they saw him, as he burned, moving his lips in
prayer, and beating his breast with one hand, even after the other was burnt
away and had fallen off.
Cranmer, Ridley, and
Latimer, were taken to Oxford to dispute with a commission of priests and
doctors about the mass. They were shamefully treated; and it is recorded that
the Oxford scholars hissed and howled and groaned, and misconducted themselves
in an anything but a scholarly way. The prisoners were taken back to jail, and
afterwards tried in St. Mary’s Church. They were all found guilty. On the
sixteenth of the month of October, Ridley and Latimer were brought out, to make
another of the dreadful bonfires.
The scene of the
suffering of these two good Protestant men was in the City ditch, near Baliol
College. On coming to the dreadful spot, they kissed the stakes, and then
embraced each other. And then a learned doctor got up into a pulpit which was
placed there, and preached a sermon from the text, ’Though I give my body to be
burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ When you think of the
charity of burning men alive, you may imagine that this learned doctor had a
rather brazen face. Ridley would have answered his sermon when it came to an
end, but was not allowed. When Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had
dressed himself under his other clothes, in a new shroud; and, as he stood in
it before all the people, it was noted of him, and long remembered, that,
whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a few minutes before, he now stood
upright and handsome, in the knowledge that he was dying for a just and a great
cause. Ridley’s brother-in-law was there with bags of gunpowder; and when they
were both chained up, he tied them round their bodies. Then, a light was thrown
upon the pile to fire it. ’Be of good comfort, Master Ridley,’ said Latimer, at
that awful moment, ’and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by
God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’ And then he was
seen to make motions with his hands as if he were washing them in the flames,
and to stroke his aged face with them, and was heard to cry, ’Father of Heaven,
receive my soul!’ He died quickly, but the fire, after having burned the legs
of Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to the iron post, and crying, ’O! I
cannot burn! O! for Christ’s sake let the fire come unto me!’ And still, when
his brother-in-law had heaped on more wood, he was heard through the blinding
smoke, still dismally crying, ’O! I cannot burn, I cannot burn!’ At last, the
gunpowder caught fire, and ended his miseries.
Five days after this
fearful scene, Gardiner went to his tremendous account before God, for the
cruelties he had so much assisted in committing.
Cranmer remained still
alive and in prison. He was brought out again in February, for more examining
and trying, by Bonner, Bishop of London: another man of blood, who had
succeeded to Gardiner’s work, even in his lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of
it. Cranmer was now degraded as a priest, and left for death; but, if the Queen
hated any one on earth, she hated him, and it was resolved that he should be
ruined and disgraced to the utmost. There is no doubt that the Queen and her
husband personally urged on these deeds, because they wrote to the Council,
urging them to be active in the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was
known not to be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him with artful
people, and inducing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and friars
visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him various attentions, talked
persuasively with him, gave him money for his prison comforts, and induced him
to sign, I fear, as many as six recantations. But when, after all, he was taken
out to be burnt, he was nobly true to his better self, and made a glorious end.
After prayers and a
sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the day (who had been one of the artful
priests about Cranmer in prison), required him to make a public confession of
his faith before the people. This, Cole did, expecting that he would declare
himself a Roman Catholic. ’I will make a profession of my faith,’ said Cranmer,
’and with a good will too.’
Then, he arose before
them all, and took from the sleeve of his robe a written prayer and read it
aloud. That done, he kneeled and said the Lord’s Prayer, all the people
joining; and then he arose again and told them that he believed in the Bible,
and that in what he had lately written, he had written what was not the truth,
and that, because his right hand had signed those papers, he would burn his
right hand first when he came to the fire. As for the Pope, he did refuse him
and denounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon the pious Dr. Cole cried out
to the guards to stop that heretic’s mouth and take him away.
So they took him away,
and chained him to the stake, where he hastily took off his own clothes to make
ready for the flames. And he stood before the people with a bald head and a
white and flowing beard. He was so firm now when the worst was come, that he
again declared against his recantation, and was so impressive and so
undismayed, that a certain lord, who was one of the directors of the execution,
called out to the men to make haste! When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true
to his latest word, stretched out his right hand, and crying out, ’This hand
hath offended!’ held it among the flames, until it blazed and burned away. His
heart was found entire among his ashes, and he left at last a memorable name in
English history. Cardinal Pole celebrated the day by saying his first mass, and
next day he was made Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer’s place.
The Queen’s husband,
who was now mostly abroad in his own dominions, and generally made a coarse
jest of her to his more familiar courtiers, was at war with France, and came
over to seek the assistance of England. England was very unwilling to engage in
a French war for his sake; but it happened that the King of France, at this
very time, aided a descent upon the English coast. Hence, war was declared,
greatly to Philip’s satisfaction; and the Queen raised a sum of money with
which to carry it on, by every unjustifiable means in her power. It met with no
profitable return, for the French Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and the
English sustained a complete defeat. The losses they met with in France greatly
mortified the national pride, and the Queen never recovered the blow.
There was a bad fever
raging in England at this time, and I am glad to write that the Queen took it,
and the hour of her death came. ’When I am dead and my body is opened,’ she
said to those around those around her, ’ye shall find CALAIS written on my
heart.’ I should have thought, if anything were written on it, they would have
found the words--JANE GREY, HOOPER, ROGERS, RIDLEY, LATIMER, CRANMER, AND THREE
HUNDRED PEOPLE BURNT ALIVE WITHIN FOUR YEARS OF MY WICKED REIGN, INCLUDING
SIXTY WOMEN AND FORTY LITTLE CHILDREN. But it is enough that their deaths were
written in Heaven.
The Queen died on the
seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred and fifty-eight, after reigning not
quite five years and a half, and in the forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal
Pole died of the same fever next day.
As BLOODY QUEEN MARY,
this woman has become famous, and as BLOODY QUEEN MARY, she will ever be justly
remembered with horror and detestation in Great Britain. Her memory has been
held in such abhorrence that some writers have arisen in later years to take
her part, and to show that she was, upon the whole, quite an amiable and
cheerful sovereign! ’By their fruits ye shall know them,’ said OUR SAVIOUR. The
stake and the fire were the fruits of this reign, and you will judge this Queen
by nothing else.
THERE was great
rejoicing all over the land when the Lords of the Council went down to
Hatfield, to hail the Princess Elizabeth as the new Queen of England. Weary of
the barbarities of Mary’s reign, the people looked with hope and gladness to
the new Sovereign. The nation seemed to wake from a horrible dream; and Heaven,
so long hidden by the smoke of the fires that roasted men and women to death,
appeared to brighten once more.
Queen Elizabeth was
five-and-twenty years of age when she rode through the streets of London, from
the Tower to Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. Her countenance was strongly
marked, but on the whole, commanding and dignified; her hair was red, and her
nose something too long and sharp for a woman’s. She was not the beautiful
creature her courtiers made out; but she was well enough, and no doubt looked
all the better for coming after the dark and gloomy Mary. She was well
educated, but a roundabout writer, and rather a hard swearer and coarse talker.
She was clever, but cunning and deceitful, and inherited much of her father’s
violent temper. I mention this now, because she has been so over-praised by one
party, and so over-abused by another, that it is hardly possible to understand
the greater part of her reign without first understanding what kind of woman
she really was.
She began her reign
with the great advantage of having a very wise and careful Minister, SIR
WILLIAM CECIL, whom she afterwards made LORD BURLEIGH. Altogether, the people
had greater reason for rejoicing than they usually had, when there were
processions in the streets; and they were happy with some reason. All kinds of
shows and images were set up; GOG and MAGOG were hoisted to the top of Temple
Bar, and (which was more to the purpose) the Corporation dutifully presented
the young Queen with the sum of a thousand marks in gold--so heavy a present,
that she was obliged to take it into her carriage with both hands. The
coronation was a great success; and, on the next day, one of the courtiers
presented a petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was the custom to
release some prisoners on such occasions, she would have the goodness to
release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and also the
Apostle Saint Paul, who had been for some time shut up in a strange language so
that the people could not get at them.
To this, the Queen
replied that it would be better first to inquire of themselves whether they
desired to be released or not; and, as a means of finding out, a great public
discussion--a sort of religious tournament--was appointed to take place between
certain champions of the two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may suppose
that it was soon made pretty clear to common sense, that for people to benefit
by what they repeat or read, it is rather necessary they should understand
something about it. Accordingly, a Church Service in plain English was settled,
and other laws and regulations were made, completely establishing the great
work of the Reformation. The Romish bishops and champions were not harshly
dealt with, all things considered; and the Queen’s Ministers were both prudent
and merciful.
The one great trouble
of this reign, and the unfortunate cause of the greater part of such turmoil
and bloodshed as occurred in it, was MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS. We will try
to understand, in as few words as possible, who Mary was, what she was, and how
she came to be a thorn in the royal pillow of Elizabeth.
She was the daughter of
the Queen Regent of Scotland, MARY OF GUISE. She had been married, when a mere
child, to the Dauphin, the son and heir of the King of France. The Pope, who
pretended that no one could rightfully wear the crown of England without his
gracious permission, was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, who had not asked for
the said gracious permission. And as Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited
the English crown in right of her birth, supposing the English Parliament not
to have altered the succession, the Pope himself, and most of the discontented
who were followers of his, maintained that Mary was the rightful Queen of
England, and Elizabeth the wrongful Queen. Mary being so closely connected with
France, and France being jealous of England, there was far greater danger in
this than there would have been if she had had no alliance with that great
power. And when her young husband, on the death of his father, became FRANCIS
THE SECOND, King of France, the matter grew very serious. For, the young couple
styled themselves King and Queen of England, and the Pope was disposed to help
them by doing all the mischief he could.
Now, the reformed
religion, under the guidance of a stern and powerful preacher, named JOHN KNOX,
and other such men, had been making fierce progress in Scotland. It was still a
half savage country, where there was a great deal of murdering and rioting
continually going on; and the Reformers, instead of reforming those evils as
they should have done, went to work in the ferocious old Scottish spirit,
laying churches and chapels waste, pulling down pictures and altars, and
knocking about the Grey Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White Friars, and
the friars of all sorts of colours, in all directions. This obdurate and harsh
spirit of the Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always been rather a sullen
and frowning people in religious matters) put up the blood of the Romish French
court, and caused France to send troops over to Scotland, with the hope of
setting the friars of all sorts of colours on their legs again; of conquering
that country first, and England afterwards; and so crushing the Reformation all
to pieces. The Scottish Reformers, who had formed a great league which they
called The Congregation of the Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth that, if
the reformed religion got the worst of it with them, it would be likely to get
the worst of it in England too; and thus, Elizabeth, though she had a high
notion of the rights of Kings and Queens to do anything they liked, sent an
army to Scotland to support the Reformers, who were in arms against their
sovereign. All these proceedings led to a treaty of peace at Edinburgh, under
which the French consented to depart from the kingdom. By a separate treaty,
Mary and her young husband engaged to renounce their assumed title of King and
Queen of England. But this treaty they never fulfilled.
It happened, soon after
matters had got to this state, that the young French King died, leaving Mary a
young widow. She was then invited by her Scottish subjects to return home and
reign over them; and as she was not now happy where she was, she, after a
little time, complied.
Elizabeth had been
Queen three years, when Mary Queen of Scots embarked at Calais for her own
rough, quarrelling country. As she came out of the harbour, a vessel was lost
before her eyes, and she said, ’O! good God! what an omen this is for such a
voyage!’ She was very fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it
and weeping, until it was quite dark. When she went to bed, she directed to be
called at daybreak, if the French coast were still visible, that she might
behold it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear morning, this was done,
and she again wept for the country she was leaving, and said many times, ’
Farewell, France! Farewell, France! I shall never see thee again!’ All this was
long remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a fair young
princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it gradually came, together with her
other distresses, to surround her with greater sympathy than she deserved.
When she came to
Scotland, and took up her abode at the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she
found herself among uncouth strangers and wild uncomfortable customs very
different from her experiences in the court of France. The very people who were
disposed to love her, made her head ache when she was tired out by her voyage,
with a serenade of discordant music--a fearful concert of bagpipes, I
suppose--and brought her and her train home to her palace on miserable little
Scotch horses that appeared to be half starved. Among the people who were not
disposed to love her, she found the powerful leaders of the Reformed Church,
who were bitter upon her amusements, however innocent, and denounced music and
dancing as works of the devil. John Knox himself often lectured her, violently
and angrily, and did much to make her life unhappy. All these reasons confirmed
her old attachment to the Romish religion, and caused her, there is no doubt,
most imprudently and dangerously both for herself and for England too, to give
a solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to
the English crown, she would set up that religion again. In reading her unhappy
history, you must always remember this; and also that during her whole life she
was constantly put forward against the Queen, in some form or other, by the
Romish party.
That Elizabeth, on the
other hand, was not inclined to like her, is pretty certain. Elizabeth was very
vain and jealous, and had an extraordinary dislike to people being married. She
treated Lady Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such
shameful severity, for no other reason than her being secretly married, that
she died and her husband was ruined; so, when a second marriage for Mary began
to be talked about, probably Elizabeth disliked her more. Not that Elizabeth
wanted suitors of her own, for they started up from Spain, Austria, Sweden, and
England. Her English lover at this time, and one whom she much favoured too,
was LORD ROBERT DUDLEY, Earl of Leicester--himself secretly married to AMY
ROBSART, the daughter of an English gentleman, whom he was strongly suspected
of causing to be murdered, down at his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire,
that he might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great writer,
SIR WALTER SCOTT, has founded one of his best romances. But if Elizabeth knew
how to lead her handsome favourite on, for her own vanity and pleasure, she
knew how to stop him for her own pride; and his love, and all the other proposals,
came to nothing. The Queen always declared in good set speeches, that she would
never be married at all, but would live and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very
pleasant and meritorious declaration, I suppose; but it has been puffed and
trumpeted so much, that I am rather tired of it myself.
Divers princes proposed
to marry Mary, but the English court had reasons for being jealous of them all,
and even proposed as a matter of policy that she should marry that very Earl of
Leicester who had aspired to be the husband of Elizabeth. At last, LORD DARNLEY,
son of the Earl of Lennox, and himself descended from the Royal Family of
Scotland, went over with Elizabeth’s consent to try his fortune at Holyrood. He
was a tall simpleton; and could dance and play the guitar; but I know of
nothing else he could do, unless it were to get very drunk, and eat
gluttonously, and make a contemptible spectacle of himself in many mean and
vain ways. However, he gained Mary’s heart, not disdaining in the pursuit of
his object to ally himself with one of her secretaries, DAVID RIZZIO, who had
great influence with her. He soon married the Queen. This marriage does not say
much for her, but what followed will presently say less.
Mary’s brother, the
EARL OF MURRAY, and head of the Protestant party in Scotland, had opposed this
marriage, partly on religious grounds, and partly perhaps from personal dislike
of the very contemptible bridegroom. When it had taken place, through Mary’s
gaining over to it the more powerful of the lords about her, she banished
Murray for his pains; and, when he and some other nobles rose in arms to
support the reformed religion, she herself, within a month of her wedding day,
rode against them in armour with loaded pistols in her saddle. Driven out of
Scotland, they presented themselves before Elizabeth--who called them traitors
in public, and assisted them in private, according to her crafty nature.
Mary had been married
but a little while, when she began to hate her husband, who, in his turn, began
to hate that David Rizzio, with whom he had leagued to gain her favour, and
whom he now believed to be her lover. He hated Rizzio to that extent, that he
made a compact with LORD RUTHVEN and three other lords to get rid of him by
murder. This wicked agreement they made in solemn secrecy upon the first of
March, fifteen hundred and sixty-six, and on the night of Saturday the ninth,
the conspirators were brought by Darnley up a private staircase, dark and
steep, into a range of rooms where they knew that Mary was sitting at supper
with her sister, Lady Argyle, and this doomed man. When they went into the
room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist, and Lord Ruthven, who had risen
from a bed of sickness to do this murder, came in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning
on two men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen for shelter and protection. ’Let him
come out of the room,’ said Ruthven. ’He shall not leave the room,’ replied the
Queen; ’I read his danger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here.’
They then set upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table, dragged him
out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When the Queen heard that he was
dead, she said, ’No more tears. I will think now of revenge!’
Within a day or two,
she gained her husband over, and prevailed on the tall idiot to abandon the
conspirators and fly with her to Dunbar. There, he issued a proclamation,
audaciously and falsely denying that he had any knowledge of the late bloody
business; and there they were joined by the EARL BOTHWELL and some other
nobles. With their help, they raised eight thousand men; returned to Edinburgh,
and drove the assassins into England. Mary soon afterwards gave birth to a
son--still thinking of revenge.
That she should have
had a greater scorn for her husband after his late cowardice and treachery than
she had had before, was natural enough. There is little doubt that she now
began to love Bothwell instead, and to plan with him means of getting rid of
Darnley. Bothwell had such power over her that he induced her even to pardon
the assassins of Rizzio. The arrangements for the Christening of the young
Prince were entrusted to him, and he was one of the most important people at
the ceremony, where the child was named JAMES: Elizabeth being his godmother,
though not present on the occasion. A week afterwards, Darnley, who had left
Mary and gone to his father’s house at Glasgow, being taken ill with the
small-pox, she sent her own physician to attend him. But there is reason to
apprehend that this was merely a show and a pretence, and that she knew what
was doing, when Bothwell within another month proposed to one of the late
conspirators against Rizzio, to murder Darnley, ’for that it was the Queen’s
mind that he should be taken away.’ It is certain that on that very day she
wrote to her ambassador in France, complaining of him, and yet went immediately
to Glasgow, feigning to be very anxious about him, and to love him very much.
If she wanted to get him in her power, she succeeded to her heart’s content;
for she induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh, and to occupy, instead of
the palace, a lone house outside the city called the Kirk of Field. Here, he
lived for about a week. One Sunday night, she remained with him until ten o’clock,
and then left him, to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given in
celebration of the marriage of one of her favourite servants. At two o’clock in
the morning the city was shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk of Field was
blown to atoms.
Darnley’s body was
found next day lying under a tree at some distance. How it came there,
undisfigured and unscorched by gunpowder, and how this crime came to be so
clumsily and strangely committed, it is impossible to discover. The deceitful
character of Mary, and the deceitful character of Elizabeth, have rendered
almost every part of their joint history uncertain and obscure. But, I fear
that Mary was unquestionably a party to her husband’s murder, and that this was
the revenge she had threatened. The Scotch people universally believed it.
Voices cried out in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night, for
justice on the murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in the public
places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as his accomplice;
and, when he afterwards married her (though himself already married),
previously making a show of taking her prisoner by force, the indignation of
the people knew no bounds. The women particularly are described as having been
quite frantic against the Queen, and to have hooted and cried after her in the
streets with terrific vehemence.
Such guilty unions
seldom prosper. This husband and wife had lived together but a month, when they
were separated for ever by the successes of a band of Scotch nobles who
associated against them for the protection of the young Prince: whom Bothwell
had vainly endeavoured to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have
murdered, if the EARL OF MAR, in whose hands the boy was, had not been firmly
and honourably faithful to his trust. Before this angry power, Bothwell fled
abroad, where he died, a prisoner and mad, nine miserable years afterwards.
Mary being found by the associated lords to deceive them at every turn, was
sent a prisoner to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood in the midst of a lake,
could only be approached by boat. Here, one LORD LINDSAY, who was so much of a
brute that the nobles would have done better if they had chosen a mere
gentleman for their messenger, made her sign her abdication, and appoint
Murray, Regent of Scotland. Here, too, Murray saw her in a sorrowing and humbled
state.
She had better have
remained in the castle of Lochleven, dull prison as it was, with the rippling
of the lake against it, and the moving shadows of the water on the room walls;
but she could not rest there, and more than once tried to escape. The first
time she had nearly succeeded, dressed in the clothes of her own washer-woman,
but, putting up her hand to prevent one of the boatmen from lifting her veil,
the men suspected her, seeing how white it was, and rowed her back again. A
short time afterwards, her fascinating manners enlisted in her cause a boy in
the Castle, called the little DOUGLAS, who, while the family were at supper,
stole the keys of the great gate, went softly out with the Queen, locked the
gate on the outside, and rowed her away across the lake, sinking the keys as
they went along. On the opposite shore she was met by another Douglas, and some
few lords; and, so accompanied, rode away on horseback to Hamilton, where they
raised three thousand men. Here, she issued a proclamation declaring that the
abdication she had signed in her prison was illegal, and requiring the Regent
to yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier, and in no way discomposed
although he was without an army, Murray pretended to treat with her, until he
had collected a force about half equal to her own, and then he gave her battle.
In one quarter of an hour he cut down all her hopes. She had another weary ride
on horse-back of sixty long Scotch miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey,
whence she fled for safety to Elizabeth’s dominions.
Mary Queen of Scots
came to England--to her own ruin, the trouble of the kingdom, and the misery
and death of many--in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight. How
she left it and the world, nineteen years afterwards, we have now to see.
WHEN Mary Queen of
Scots arrived in England, without money and even without any other clothes than
those she wore, she wrote to Elizabeth, representing herself as an innocent and
injured piece of Royalty, and entreating her assistance to oblige her Scottish
subjects to take her back again and obey her. But, as her character was already
known in England to be a very different one from what she made it out to be,
she was told in answer that she must first clear herself. Made uneasy by this
condition, Mary, rather than stay in England, would have gone to Spain, or to
France, or would even have gone back to Scotland. But, as her doing either
would have been likely to trouble England afresh, it was decided that she
should be detained here. She first came to Carlisle, and, after that, was moved
about from castle to castle, as was considered necessary; but England she never
left again.
After trying very hard
to get rid of the necessity of clearing herself, Mary, advised by LORD HERRIES,
her best friend in England, agreed to answer the charges against her, if the
Scottish noblemen who made them would attend to maintain them before such
English noblemen as Elizabeth might appoint for that purpose. Accordingly, such
an assembly, under the name of a conference, met, first at York, and afterwards
at Hampton Court. In its presence Lord Lennox, Darnley’s father, openly charged
Mary with the murder of his son; and whatever Mary’s friends may now say or
write in her behalf, there is no doubt that, when her brother Murray produced
against her a casket containing certain guilty letters and verses which he
stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, she withdrew from the inquiry.
Consequently, it is to be supposed that she was then considered guilty by those
who had the best opportunities of judging of the truth, and that the feeling
which afterwards arose in her behalf was a very generous but not a very
reasonable one.
However, the DUKE OF
NORFOLK, an honourable but rather weak nobleman, partly because Mary was
captivating, partly because he was ambitious, partly because he was
over-persuaded by artful plotters against Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea
that he would like to marry the Queen of Scots--though he was a little frightened,
too, by the letters in the casket. This idea being secretly encouraged by some
of the noblemen of Elizabeth’s court, and even by the favourite Earl of
Leicester (because it was objected to by other favourites who were his rivals),
Mary expressed her approval of it, and the King of France and the King of Spain
are supposed to have done the same. It was not so quietly planned, though, but
that it came to Elizabeth’s ears, who warned the Duke ’to be careful what sort
of pillow he was going to lay his head upon.’ He made a humble reply at the
time; but turned sulky soon afterwards, and, being considered dangerous, was
sent to the Tower.
Thus, from the moment
of Mary’s coming to England she began to be the centre of plots and miseries.
A rise of the Catholics
in the north was the next of these, and it was only checked by many executions
and much bloodshed. It was followed by a great conspiracy of the Pope and some
of the Catholic sovereigns of Europe to depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the
throne, and restore the unreformed religion. It is almost impossible to doubt
that Mary knew and approved of this; and the Pope himself was so hot in the
matter that he issued a bull, in which he openly called Elizabeth the ’pretended
Queen’ of England, excommunicated her, and excommunicated all her subjects who
should continue to obey her. A copy of this miserable paper got into London,
and was found one morning publicly posted on the Bishop of London’s gate. A
great hue and cry being raised, another copy was found in the chamber of a
student of Lincoln’s Inn, who confessed, being put upon the rack, that he had
received it from one JOHN FELTON, a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames,
near Southwark. This John Felton, being put upon the rack too, confessed that he
had posted the placard on the Bishop’s gate. For this offence he was, within
four days, taken to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered. As
to the Pope’s bull, the people by the reformation having thrown off the Pope,
did not care much, you may suppose, for the Pope’s throwing off them. It was a
mere dirty piece of paper, and not half so powerful as a street ballad.
On the very day when
Felton was brought to his trial, the poor Duke of Norfolk was released. It
would have been well for him if he had kept away from the Tower evermore, and
from the snares that had taken him there. But, even while he was in that dismal
place he corresponded with Mary, and as soon as he was out of it, he began to
plot again. Being discovered in correspondence with the Pope, with a view to a
rising in England which should force Elizabeth to consent to his marriage with
Mary and to repeal the laws against the Catholics, he was re-committed to the
Tower and brought to trial. He was found guilty by the unanimous verdict of the
Lords who tried him, and was sentenced to the block.
It is very difficult to
make out, at this distance of time, and between opposite accounts, whether
Elizabeth really was a humane woman, or desired to appear so, or was fearful of
shedding the blood of people of great name who were popular in the country.
Twice she commanded and countermanded the execution of this Duke, and it did
not take place until five months after his trial. The scaffold was erected on
Tower Hill, and there he died like a brave man. He refused to have his eyes
bandaged, saying that he was not at all afraid of death; and he admitted the
justice of his sentence, and was much regretted by the people.
Although Mary had
shrunk at the most important time from disproving her guilt, she was very
careful never to do anything that would admit it. All such proposals as were
made to her by Elizabeth for her release, required that admission in some form
or other, and therefore came to nothing. Moreover, both women being artful and treacherous,
and neither ever trusting the other, it was not likely that they could ever
make an agreement. So, the Parliament, aggravated by what the Pope had done,
made new and strong laws against the spreading of the Catholic religion in
England, and declared it treason in any one to say that the Queen and her
successors were not the lawful sovereigns of England. It would have done more
than this, but for Elizabeth’s moderation.
Since the Reformation,
there had come to be three great sects of religious people--or people who
called themselves so--in England; that is to say, those who belonged to the
Reformed Church, those who belonged to the Unreformed Church, and those who
were called the Puritans, because they said that they wanted to have everything
very pure and plain in all the Church service. These last were for the most
part an uncomfortable people, who thought it highly meritorious to dress in a
hideous manner, talk through their noses, and oppose all harmless enjoyments.
But they were powerful too, and very much in earnest, and they were one and all
the determined enemies of the Queen of Scots. The Protestant feeling in England
was further strengthened by the tremendous cruelties to which Protestants were
exposed in France and in the Netherlands. Scores of thousands of them were put
to death in those countries with every cruelty that can be imagined, and at
last, in the autumn of the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, one
of the greatest barbarities ever committed in the world took place at Paris.
It is called in
history, THE MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW, because it took place on Saint
Bartholomew’s Eve. The day fell on Saturday the twenty-third of August. On that
day all the great leaders of the Protestants (who were there called HUGUENOTS)
were assembled together, for the purpose, as was represented to them, of doing
honour to the marriage of their chief, the young King of Navarre, with the
sister of CHARLES THE NINTH: a miserable young King who then occupied the
French throne. This dull creature was made to believe by his mother and other
fierce Catholics about him that the Huguenots meant to take his life; and he
was persuaded to give secret orders that, on the tolling of a great bell, they
should be fallen upon by an overpowering force of armed men, and slaughtered
wherever they could be found. When the appointed hour was close at hand, the
stupid wretch, trembling from head to foot, was taken into a balcony by his
mother to see the atrocious work begun. The moment the bell tolled, the
murderers broke forth. During all that night and the two next days, they broke
into the houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants, men,
women, and children, and flung their bodies into the streets. They were shot at
in the streets as they passed along, and their blood ran down the gutters.
Upwards of ten thousand Protestants were killed in Paris alone; in all France
four or five times that number. To return thanks to Heaven for these diabolical
murders, the Pope and his train actually went in public procession at Rome, and
as if this were not shame enough for them, they had a medal struck to
commemorate the event. But, however comfortable the wholesale murders were to
these high authorities, they had not that soothing effect upon the doll-King. I
am happy to state that he never knew a moment’s peace afterwards; that he was
continually crying out that he saw the Huguenots covered with blood and wounds
falling dead before him; and that he died within a year, shrieking and yelling
and raving to that degree, that if all the Popes who had ever lived had been
rolled into one, they would not have afforded His guilty Majesty the slightest
consolation.
When the terrible news
of the massacre arrived in England, it made a powerful impression indeed upon
the people. If they began to run a little wild against the Catholics at about
this time, this fearful reason for it, coming so soon after the days of bloody
Queen Mary, must be remembered in their excuse. The Court was not quite so
honest as the people--but perhaps it sometimes is not. It received the French
ambassador, with all the lords and ladies dressed in deep mourning, and keeping
a profound silence. Nevertheless, a proposal of marriage which he had made to
Elizabeth only two days before the eve of Saint Bartholomew, on behalf of the
Duke of Alençon, the French King’s brother, a boy of seventeen, still went on;
while on the other hand, in her usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied
the Huguenots with money and weapons.
I must say that for a
Queen who made all those fine speeches, of which I have confessed myself to be
rather tired, about living and dying a Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was ’going’ to
be married pretty often. Besides always having some English favourite or other
whom she by turns encouraged and swore at and knocked about--for the maiden
Queen was very free with her fists--she held this French Duke off and on
through several years. When he at last came over to England, the marriage
articles were actually drawn up, and it was settled that the wedding should
take place in six weeks. The Queen was then so bent upon it, that she
prosecuted a poor Puritan named STUBBS, and a poor bookseller named PAGE, for
writing and publishing a pamphlet against it. Their right hands were chopped
off for this crime; and poor Stubbs--more loyal than I should have been myself
under the circumstances--immediately pulled off his hat with his left hand, and
cried, ’God save the Queen!’ Stubbs was cruelly treated; for the marriage never
took place after all, though the Queen pledged herself to the Duke with a ring
from her own finger. He went away, no better than he came, when the courtship
had lasted some ten years altogether; and he died a couple of years afterwards,
mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to have been really fond of him. It is not
much to her credit, for he was a bad enough member of a bad family.
To return to the
Catholics. There arose two orders of priests, who were very busy in England,
and who were much dreaded. These were the JESUITS (who were everywhere in all
sorts of disguises), and the SEMINARY PRIESTS. The people had a great horror of
the first, because they were known to have taught that murder was lawful if it
were done with an object of which they approved; and they had a great horror of
the second, because they came to teach the old religion, and to be the
successors of ’Queen Mary’s priests,’ as those yet lingering in England were
called, when they should die out. The severest laws were made against them, and
were most unmercifully executed. Those who sheltered them in their houses often
suffered heavily for what was an act of humanity; and the rack, that cruel
torture which tore men’s limbs asunder, was constantly kept going. What these
unhappy men confessed, or what was ever confessed by any one under that agony,
must always be received with great doubt, as it is certain that people have
frequently owned to the most absurd and impossible crimes to escape such
dreadful suffering. But I cannot doubt it to have been proved by papers, that
there were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and with France, and with
Scotland, and with Spain, for the destruction of Queen Elizabeth, for the
placing of Mary on the throne, and for the revival of the old religion.
If the English people
were too ready to believe in plots, there were, as I have said, good reasons
for it. When the massacre of Saint Bartholomew was yet fresh in their
recollection, a great Protestant Dutch hero, the PRINCE OF ORANGE, was shot by
an assassin, who confessed that he had been kept and trained for the purpose in
a college of Jesuits. The Dutch, in this surprise and distress, offered to make
Elizabeth their sovereign, but she declined the honour, and sent them a small
army instead, under the command of the Earl of Leicester, who, although a
capital Court favourite, was not much of a general. He did so little in
Holland, that his campaign there would probably have been forgotten, but for
its occasioning the death of one of the best writers, the best knights, and the
best gentlemen, of that or any age. This was SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, who was wounded
by a musket ball in the thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, after having had his
own killed under him. He had to ride back wounded, a long distance, and was
very faint with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for which he had
eagerly asked, was handed to him. But he was so good and gentle even then, that
seeing a poor badly wounded common soldier lying on the ground, looking at the
water with longing eyes, he said, ’Thy necessity is greater than mine,’ and
gave it up to him. This touching action of a noble heart is perhaps as well
known as any incident in history--is as famous far and wide as the
blood-stained Tower of London, with its axe, and block, and murders out of
number. So delightful is an act of true humanity, and so glad are mankind to
remember it.
At home, intelligence
of plots began to thicken every day. I suppose the people never did live under
such continual terrors as those by which they were possessed now, of Catholic
risings, and burnings, and poisonings, and I don’t know what. Still, we must
always remember that they lived near and close to awful realities of that kind,
and that with their experience it was not difficult to believe in any enormity.
The government had the same fear, and did not take the best means of
discovering the truth--for, besides torturing the suspected, it employed paid
spies, who will always lie for their own profit. It even made some of the
conspiracies it brought to light, by sending false letters to disaffected
people, inviting them to join in pretended plots, which they too readily did.
But, one great real
plot was at length discovered, and it ended the career of Mary, Queen of Scots.
A seminary priest named BALLARD, and a Spanish soldier named SAVAGE, set on and
encouraged by certain French priests, imparted a design to one ANTONY
BABINGTON--a gentleman of fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for some time a
secret agent of Mary’s--for murdering the Queen. Babington then confided the
scheme to some other Catholic gentlemen who were his friends, and they joined
in it heartily. They were vain, weak-headed young men, ridiculously confident,
and preposterously proud of their plan; for they got a gimcrack painting made,
of the six choice spirits who were to murder Elizabeth, with Babington in an
attitude for the centre figure. Two of their number, however, one of whom was a
priest, kept Elizabeth’s wisest minister, SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM, acquainted
with the whole project from the first. The conspirators were completely
deceived to the final point, when Babington gave Savage, because he was shabby,
a ring from his finger, and some money from his purse, wherewith to buy himself
new clothes in which to kill the Queen. Walsingham, having then full evidence
against the whole band, and two letters of Mary’s besides, resolved to seize
them. Suspecting something wrong, they stole out of the city, one by one, and
hid themselves in St. John’s Wood, and other places which really were hiding
places then; but they were all taken, and all executed. When they were seized,
a gentleman was sent from Court to inform Mary of the fact, and of her being
involved in the discovery. Her friends have complained that she was kept in
very hard and severe custody. It does not appear very likely, for she was going
out a hunting that very morning.
Queen Elizabeth had
been warned long ago, by one in France who had good information of what was
secretly doing, that in holding Mary alive, she held ’the wolf who would devour
her.’ The Bishop of London had, more lately, given the Queen’s favourite
minister the advice in writing, ’forthwith to cut off the Scottish Queen’s
head.’ The question now was, what to do with her? The Earl of Leicester wrote a
little note home from Holland, recommending that she should be quietly
poisoned; that noble favourite having accustomed his mind, it is possible, to
remedies of that nature. His black advice, however, was disregarded, and she
was brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire, before a
tribunal of forty, composed of both religions. There, and in the Star Chamber
at Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended herself with great
ability, but could only deny the confessions that had been made by Babington
and others; could only call her own letters, produced against her by her own
secretaries, forgeries; and, in short, could only deny everything. She was
found guilty, and declared to have incurred the penalty of death. The
Parliament met, approved the sentence, and prayed the Queen to have it
executed. The Queen replied that she requested them to consider whether no
means could be found of saving Mary’s life without endangering her own. The
Parliament rejoined, No; and the citizens illuminated their houses and lighted
bonfires, in token of their joy that all these plots and troubles were to be
ended by the death of the Queen of Scots.
She, feeling sure that
her time was now come, wrote a letter to the Queen of England, making three
entreaties; first, that she might be buried in France; secondly, that she might
not be executed in secret, but before her servants and some others; thirdly, that
after her death, her servants should not be molested, but should be suffered to
go home with the legacies she left them. It was an affecting letter, and
Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent no answer. Then came a special
ambassador from France, and another from Scotland, to intercede for Mary’s
life; and then the nation began to clamour, more and more, for her death.
What the real feelings
or intentions of Elizabeth were, can never be known now; but I strongly suspect
her of only wishing one thing more than Mary’s death, and that was to keep free
of the blame of it. On the first of February, one thousand five hundred and
eighty-seven, Lord Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the execution, the
Queen sent to the secretary DAVISON to bring it to her, that she might sign it:
which she did. Next day, when Davison told her it was sealed, she angrily asked
him why such haste was necessary? Next day but one, she joked about it, and
swore a little. Again, next day but one, she seemed to complain that it was not
yet done, but still she would not be plain with those about her. So, on the
seventh, the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of
Northamptonshire, came with the warrant to Fotheringay, to tell the Queen of
Scots to prepare for death.
When those messengers
of ill omen were gone, Mary made a frugal supper, drank to her servants, read
over her will, went to bed, slept for some hours, and then arose and passed the
remainder of the night saying prayers. In the morning she dressed herself in
her best clothes; and, at eight o’clock when the sheriff came for her to her
chapel, took leave of her servants who were there assembled praying with her,
and went down-stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other.
Two of her women and four of her men were allowed to be present in the hall;
where a low scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was erected and covered
with black; and where the executioner from the Tower, and his assistant, stood,
dressed in black velvet. The hall was full of people. While the sentence was
being read she sat upon a stool; and, when it was finished, she again denied
her guilt, as she had done before. The Earl of Kent and the Dean of
Peterborough, in their Protestant zeal, made some very unnecessary speeches to
her; to which she replied that she died in the Catholic religion, and they need
not trouble themselves about that matter. When her head and neck were uncovered
by the executioners, she said that she had not been used to be undressed by
such hands, or before so much company. Finally, one of her women fastened a
cloth over her face, and she laid her neck upon the block, and repeated more
than once in Latin, ’Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!’ Some say her
head was struck off in two blows, some say in three. However that be, when it
was held up, streaming with blood, the real hair beneath the false hair she had
long worn was seen to be as grey as that of a woman of seventy, though she was
at that time only in her forty-sixth year. All her beauty was gone.
But she was beautiful
enough to her little dog, who cowered under her dress, frightened, when she
went upon the scaffold, and who lay down beside her headless body when all her
earthly sorrows were over.
ON its being formally
made known to Elizabeth that the sentence had been executed on the Queen of
Scots, she showed the utmost grief and rage, drove her favourites from her with
violent indignation, and sent Davison to the Tower; from which place he was
only released in the end by paying an immense fine which completely ruined him.
Elizabeth not only over-acted her part in making these pretences, but most
basely reduced to poverty one of her faithful servants for no other fault than
obeying her commands.
James, King of
Scotland, Mary’s son, made a show likewise of being very angry on the occasion;
but he was a pensioner of England to the amount of five thousand pounds a year,
and he had known very little of his mother, and he possibly regarded her as the
murderer of his father, and he soon took it quietly.
Philip, King of Spain,
however, threatened to do greater things than ever had been done yet, to set up
the Catholic religion and punish Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing that he
and the Prince of Parma were making great preparations for this purpose, in
order to be beforehand with them sent out ADMIRAL DRAKE (a famous navigator,
who had sailed about the world, and had already brought great plunder from
Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where he burnt a hundred vessels full of stores.
This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off the invasion for a year; but
it was none the less formidable for that, amounting to one hundred and thirty
ships, nineteen thousand soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two thousand slaves,
and between two and three thousand great guns. England was not idle in making
ready to resist this great force. All the men between sixteen years old and
sixty, were trained and drilled; the national fleet of ships (in number only
thirty-four at first) was enlarged by public contributions and by private
ships, fitted out by noblemen; the city of London, of its own accord, furnished
double the number of ships and men that it was required to provide; and, if
ever the national spirit was up in England, it was up all through the country
to resist the Spaniards. Some of the Queen’s advisers were for seizing the
principal English Catholics, and putting them to death; but the Queen--who, to
her honour, used to say, that she would never believe any ill of her subjects,
which a parent would not believe of her own children--rejected the advice, and
only confined a few of those who were the most suspected, in the fens in
Lincolnshire. The great body of Catholics deserved this confidence; for they
behaved most loyally, nobly, and bravely.
So, with all England
firing up like one strong, angry man, and with both sides of the Thames
fortified, and with the soldiers under arms, and with the sailors in their
ships, the country waited for the coming of the proud Spanish fleet, which was
called THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA. The Queen herself, riding in armour on a white
horse, and the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Leicester holding her bridal rein,
made a brave speech to the troops at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravesend, which was
received with such enthusiasm as is seldom known. Then came the Spanish Armada
into the English Channel, sailing along in the form of a half moon, of such
great size that it was seven miles broad. But the English were quickly upon it,
and woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped a little out of the half
moon, for the English took them instantly! And it soon appeared that the great
Armada was anything but invincible, for on a summer night, bold Drake sent
eight blazing fire-ships right into the midst of it. In terrible consternation
the Spaniards tried to get out to sea, and so became dispersed; the English
pursued them at a great advantage; a storm came on, and drove the Spaniards
among rocks and shoals; and the swift end of the Invincible fleet was, that it
lost thirty great ships and ten thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced,
sailed home again. Being afraid to go by the English Channel, it sailed all
round Scotland and Ireland; some of the ships getting cast away on the latter
coast in bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages, plundered those
vessels and killed their crews. So ended this great attempt to invade and
conquer England. And I think it will be a long time before any other invincible
fleet coming to England with the same object, will fare much better than the
Spanish Armada.
Though the Spanish king
had had this bitter taste of English bravery, he was so little the wiser for
it, as still to entertain his old designs, and even to conceive the absurd idea
of placing his daughter on the English throne. But the Earl of Essex, SIR
WALTER RALEIGH, SIR THOMAS HOWARD, and some other distinguished leaders, put to
sea from Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz once more, obtained a complete
victory over the shipping assembled there, and got possession of the town. In
obedience to the Queen’s express instructions, they behaved with great
humanity; and the principal loss of the Spaniards was a vast sum of money which
they had to pay for ransom. This was one of many gallant achievements on the
sea, effected in this reign. Sir Walter Raleigh himself, after marrying a maid
of honour and giving offence to the Maiden Queen thereby, had already sailed to
South America in search of gold.
The Earl of Leicester
was now dead, and so was Sir Thomas Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to
follow. The principal favourite was the EARL OF ESSEX, a spirited and handsome
man, a favourite with the people too as well as with the Queen, and possessed
of many admirable qualities. It was much debated at Court whether there should
be peace with Spain or no, and he was very urgent for war. He also tried hard
to have his own way in the appointment of a deputy to govern in Ireland. One
day, while this question was in dispute, he hastily took offence, and turned
his back upon the Queen; as a gentle reminder of which impropriety, the Queen
gave him a tremendous box on the ear, and told him to go to the devil. He went
home instead, and did not reappear at Court for half a year or so, when he and
the Queen were reconciled, though never (as some suppose) thoroughly.
From this time the fate
of the Earl of Essex and that of the Queen seemed to be blended together. The
Irish were still perpetually quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and he
went over to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, to the great joy of his enemies (Sir
Walter Raleigh among the rest), who were glad to have so dangerous a rival far
off. Not being by any means successful there, and knowing that his enemies
would take advantage of that circumstance to injure him with the Queen, he came
home again, though against her orders. The Queen being taken by surprise when
he appeared before her, gave him her hand to kiss, and he was overjoyed--though
it was not a very lovely hand by this time--but in the course of the same day
she ordered him to confine himself to his room, and two or three days
afterwards had him taken into custody. With the same sort of caprice--and as
capricious an old woman she now was, as ever wore a crown or a head either--she
sent him broth from her own table on his falling ill from anxiety, and cried
about him.
He was a man who could
find comfort and occupation in his books, and he did so for a time; not the
least happy time, I dare say, of his life. But it happened unfortunately for
him, that he held a monopoly in sweet wines: which means that nobody could sell
them without purchasing his permission. This right, which was only for a term,
expiring, he applied to have it renewed. The Queen refused, with the rather
strong observation--but she DID make strong observations--that an unruly beast
must be stinted in his food. Upon this, the angry Earl, who had been already
deprived of many offices, thought himself in danger of complete ruin, and
turned against the Queen, whom he called a vain old woman who had grown as
crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. These uncomplimentary expressions
the ladies of the Court immediately snapped up and carried to the Queen, whom
they did not put in a better tempter, you may believe. The same Court ladies,
when they had beautiful dark hair of their own, used to wear false red hair, to
be like the Queen. So they were not very high-spirited ladies, however high in
rank.
The worst object of the
Earl of Essex, and some friends of his who used to meet at LORD SOUTHAMPTON’S
house, was to obtain possession of the Queen, and oblige her by force to
dismiss her ministers and change her favourites. On Saturday the seventh of
February, one thousand six hundred and one, the council suspecting this,
summoned the Earl to come before them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it
was then settled among his friends, that as the next day would be Sunday, when
many of the citizens usually assembled at the Cross by St. Paul’s Cathedral, he
should make one bold effort to induce them to rise and follow him to the
Palace.
So, on the Sunday
morning, he and a small body of adherents started out of his house--Essex House
by the Strand, with steps to the river--having first shut up in it, as
prisoners, some members of the council who came to examine him--and hurried
into the City with the Earl at their head crying out ’For the Queen! For the
Queen! A plot is laid for my life!’ No one heeded them, however, and when they
came to St. Paul’s there were no citizens there. In the meantime the prisoners
at Essex House had been released by one of the Earl’s own friends; he had been
promptly proclaimed a traitor in the City itself; and the streets were
barricaded with carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back to his house
by water, with difficulty, and after an attempt to defend his house against the
troops and cannon by which it was soon surrounded, gave himself up that night.
He was brought to trial on the nineteenth, and found guilty; on the
twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill, where he died, at thirty-four
years old, both courageously and penitently. His step-father suffered with him.
His enemy, Sir Walter Raleigh, stood near the scaffold all the time--but not so
near it as we shall see him stand, before we finish his history.
In this case, as in the
cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots, the Queen had commanded,
and countermanded, and again commanded, the execution. It is probable that the
death of her young and gallant favourite in the prime of his good qualities,
was never off her mind afterwards, but she held out, the same vain, obstinate
and capricious woman, for another year. Then she danced before her Court on a
state occasion--and cut, I should think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so
in an immense ruff, stomacher and wig, at seventy years old. For another year
still, she held out, but, without any more dancing, and as a moody, sorrowful,
broken creature. At last, on the tenth of March, one thousand six hundred and
three, having been ill of a very bad cold, and made worse by the death of the
Countess of Nottingham who was her intimate friend, she fell into a stupor and
was supposed to be dead. She recovered her consciousness, however, and then
nothing would induce her to go to bed; for she said that she knew that if she
did, she should never get up again. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on
the floor, without any food, until the Lord Admiral got her into bed at last,
partly by persuasions and partly by main force. When they asked her who should
succeed her, she replied that her seat had been the seat of Kings, and that she
would have for her successor, ’No rascal’s son, but a King’s.’ Upon this, the
lords present stared at one another, and took the liberty of asking whom she
meant; to which she replied, ’Whom should I mean, but our cousin of Scotland!’
This was on the twenty-third of March. They asked her once again that day,
after she was speechless, whether she was still in the same mind? She struggled
up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in the form of a crown, as the
only reply she could make. At three o’clock next morning, she very quietly
died, in the forty-fifth year of her reign.
That reign had been a
glorious one, and is made for ever memorable by the distinguished men who
flourished in it. Apart from the great voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, whom
it produced, the names of BACON, SPENSER, and SHAKESPEARE, will always be
remembered with pride and veneration by the civilised world, and will always
impart (though with no great reason, perhaps) some portion of their lustre to
the name of Elizabeth herself. It was a great reign for discovery, for
commerce, and for English enterprise and spirit in general. It was a great
reign for the Protestant religion and for the Reformation which made England
free. The Queen was very popular, and in her progresses, or journeys about her
dominions, was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I think the truth
is, that she was not half so good as she has been made out, and not half so bad
as she has been made out. She had her fine qualities, but she was coarse,
capricious, and treacherous, and had all the faults of an excessively vain
young woman long after she was an old one. On the whole, she had a great deal
too much of her father in her, to please me.
Many improvements and
luxuries were introduced in the course of these five-and-forty years in the
general manner of living; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting,
were still the national amusements; and a coach was so rarely seen, and was
such an ugly and cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen
herself, on many high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion behind the Lord
Chancellor.
’OUR cousin of Scotland’
was ugly, awkward, and shuffling both in mind and person. His tongue was much
too large for his mouth, his legs were much too weak for his body, and his dull
goggle-eyes stared and rolled like an idiot’s. He was cunning, covetous,
wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearer, and the most
conceited man on earth. His figure--what is commonly called rickety from his
birth--presented a most ridiculous appearance, dressed in thick padded clothes,
as a safeguard against being stabbed (of which he lived in continual fear), of
a grass-green colour from head to foot, with a hunting-horn dangling at his
side instead of a sword, and his hat and feather sticking over one eye, or
hanging on the back of his head, as he happened to toss it on. He used to loll
on the necks of his favourite courtiers, and slobber their faces, and kiss and
pinch their cheeks; and the greatest favourite he ever had, used to sign
himself in his letters to his royal master, His Majesty’s ’dog and slave,’ and
used to address his majesty as ’his Sowship.’ His majesty was the worst rider
ever seen, and thought himself the best. He was one of the most impertinent
talkers (in the broadest Scotch) ever heard, and boasted of being unanswerable
in all manner of argument. He wrote some of the most wearisome treatises ever read--among
others, a book upon witchcraft, in which he was a devout believer--and thought
himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, and wrote, and said, that a king
had a right to make and unmake what laws he pleased, and ought to be
accountable to nobody on earth. This is the plain, true character of the
personage whom the greatest men about the court praised and flattered to that
degree, that I doubt if there be anything much more shameful in the annals of
human nature.
He came to the English
throne with great ease. The miseries of a disputed succession had been felt so
long, and so dreadfully, that he was proclaimed within a few hours of Elizabeth’s
death, and was accepted by the nation, even without being asked to give any
pledge that he would govern well, or that he would redress crying grievances.
He took a month to come from Edinburgh to London; and, by way of exercising his
new power, hanged a pickpocket on the journey without any trial, and knighted
everybody he could lay hold of. He made two hundred knights before he got to
his palace in London, and seven hundred before he had been in it three months.
He also shovelled sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords--and there was a
pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them, you may believe.
His Sowship’s prime
Minister, CECIL (for I cannot do better than call his majesty what his
favourite called him), was the enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir
Walter’s political friend, LORD COBHAM; and his Sowship’s first trouble was a
plot originated by these two, and entered into by some others, with the old
object of seizing the King and keeping him in imprisonment until he should
change his ministers. There were Catholic priests in the plot, and there were
Puritan noblemen too; for, although the Catholics and Puritans were strongly
opposed to each other, they united at this time against his Sowship, because
they knew that he had a design against both, after pretending to be friendly to
each; this design being to have only one high and convenient form of the
Protestant religion, which everybody should be bound to belong to, whether they
liked it or not. This plot was mixed up with another, which may or may not have
had some reference to placing on the throne, at some time, the LADY ARABELLA
STUART; whose misfortune it was, to be the daughter of the younger brother of
his Sowship’s father, but who was quite innocent of any part in the scheme. Sir
Walter Raleigh was accused on the confession of Lord Cobham--a miserable
creature, who said one thing at one time, and another thing at another time,
and could be relied upon in nothing. The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh lasted
from eight in the morning until nearly midnight; he defended himself with such
eloquence, genius, and spirit against all accusations, and against the insults
of COKE, the Attorney-General--who, according to the custom of the time, foully
abused him--that those who went there detesting the prisoner, came away
admiring him, and declaring that anything so wonderful and so captivating was never
heard. He was found guilty, nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Execution was
deferred, and he was taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, less
fortunate, were executed with the usual atrocity; and Lord Cobham and two
others were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought it wonderfully
knowing in him to surprise the people by pardoning these three at the very
block; but, blundering, and bungling, as usual, he had very nearly overreached
himself. For, the messenger on horseback who brought the pardon, came so late,
that he was pushed to the outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout and
roar out what he came for. The miserable Cobham did not gain much by being
spared that day. He lived, both as a prisoner and a beggar, utterly despised, and
miserably poor, for thirteen years, and then died in an old outhouse belonging
to one of his former servants.
This plot got rid of,
and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up in the Tower, his Sowship held a great
dispute with the Puritans on their presenting a petition to him, and had it all
his own way--not so very wonderful, as he would talk continually, and would not
hear anybody else--and filled the Bishops with admiration. It was comfortably
settled that there was to be only one form of religion, and that all men were
to think exactly alike. But, although this was arranged two centuries and a
half ago, and although the arrangement was supported by much fining and
imprisonment, I do not find that it is quite successful, even yet.
His Sowship, having
that uncommonly high opinion of himself as a king, had a very low opinion of
Parliament as a power that audaciously wanted to control him. When he called
his first Parliament after he had been king a year, he accordingly thought he
would take pretty high ground with them, and told them that he commanded them ’as
an absolute king.’ The Parliament thought those strong words, and saw the
necessity of upholding their authority. His Sowship had three children: Prince
Henry, Prince Charles, and the Princess Elizabeth. It would have been well for
one of these, and we shall too soon see which, if he had learnt a little wisdom
concerning Parliaments from his father’s obstinacy.
Now, the people still
labouring under their old dread of the Catholic religion, this Parliament
revived and strengthened the severe laws against it. And this so angered ROBERT
CATESBY, a restless Catholic gentleman of an old family, that he formed one of
the most desperate and terrible designs ever conceived in the mind of man; no
less a scheme than the Gunpowder Plot.
His object was, when
the King, lords, and commons, should be assembled at the next opening of
Parliament, to blow them up, one and all, with a great mine of gunpowder. The
first person to whom he confided this horrible idea was THOMAS WINTER, a
Worcestershire gentleman who had served in the army abroad, and had been
secretly employed in Catholic projects. While Winter was yet undecided, and
when he had gone over to the Netherlands, to learn from the Spanish Ambassador
there whether there was any hope of Catholics being relieved through the
intercession of the King of Spain with his Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall,
dark, daring man, whom he had known when they were both soldiers abroad, and
whose name was GUIDO--or GUY--FAWKES. Resolved to join the plot, he proposed it
to this man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate deed, and they two
came back to England together. Here, they admitted two other conspirators;
THOMAS PERCY, related to the Earl of Northumberland, and JOHN WRIGHT, his
brother-in-law. All these met together in a solitary house in the open fields
which were then near Clement’s Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of London;
and when they had all taken a great oath of secrecy, Catesby told the rest what
his plan was. They then went up-stairs into a garret, and received the
Sacrament from FATHER GERARD, a Jesuit, who is said not to have known actually
of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I think, must have had his suspicions that
there was something desperate afoot.
Percy was a Gentleman
Pensioner, and as he had occasional duties to perform about the Court, then
kept at Whitehall, there would be nothing suspicious in his living at
Westminster. So, having looked well about him, and having found a house to let,
the back of which joined the Parliament House, he hired it of a person named
FERRIS, for the purpose of undermining the wall. Having got possession of this
house, the conspirators hired another on the Lambeth side of the Thames, which
they used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder, and other combustible matters.
These were to be removed at night (and afterwards were removed), bit by bit, to
the house at Westminster; and, that there might be some trusty person to keep
watch over the Lambeth stores, they admitted another conspirator, by name
ROBERT KAY, a very poor Catholic gentleman.
All these arrangements
had been made some months, and it was a dark, wintry, December night, when the
conspirators, who had been in the meantime dispersed to avoid observation, met
in the house at Westminster, and began to dig. They had laid in a good stock of
eatables, to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug with great ardour.
But, the wall being tremendously thick, and the work very severe, they took
into their plot CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, a younger brother of John Wright, that they
might have a new pair of hands to help. And Christopher Wright fell to like a
fresh man, and they dug and dug by night and by day, and Fawkes stood sentinel
all the time. And if any man’s heart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes said, ’Gentlemen,
we have abundance of powder and shot here, and there is no fear of our being
taken alive, even if discovered.’ The same Fawkes, who, in the capacity of
sentinel, was always prowling about, soon picked up the intelligence that the
King had prorogued the Parliament again, from the seventh of February, the day
first fixed upon, until the third of October. When the conspirators knew this,
they agreed to separate until after the Christmas holidays, and to take no
notice of each other in the meanwhile, and never to write letters to one
another on any account. So, the house in Westminster was shut up again, and I
suppose the neighbours thought that those strange-looking men who lived there
so gloomily, and went out so seldom, were gone away to have a merry Christmas
somewhere.
It was the beginning of
February, sixteen hundred and five, when Catesby met his fellow-conspirators
again at this Westminster house. He had now admitted three more; JOHN GRANT, a
Warwickshire gentleman of a melancholy temper, who lived in a doleful house
near Stratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning wall all round it, and a deep moat;
ROBERT WINTER, eldest brother of Thomas; and Catesby’s own servant, THOMAS
BATES, who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicion of what his master was
about. These three had all suffered more or less for their religion in
Elizabeth’s time. And now, they all began to dig again, and they dug and dug by
night and by day.
They found it dismal
work alone there, underground, with such a fearful secret on their minds, and
so many murders before them. They were filled with wild fancies. Sometimes,
they thought they heard a great bell tolling, deep down in the earth under the
Parliament House; sometimes, they thought they heard low voices muttering about
the Gunpowder Plot; once in the morning, they really did hear a great rumbling
noise over their heads, as they dug and sweated in their mine. Every man
stopped and looked aghast at his neighbour, wondering what had happened, when
that bold prowler, Fawkes, who had been out to look, came in and told them that
it was only a dealer in coals who had occupied a cellar under the Parliament
House, removing his stock in trade to some other place. Upon this, the
conspirators, who with all their digging and digging had not yet dug through
the tremendously thick wall, changed their plan; hired that cellar, which was
directly under the House of Lords; put six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in
it, and covered them over with fagots and coals. Then they all dispersed again
till September, when the following new conspirators were admitted; SIR EDWARD
BAYNHAM, of Gloucestershire; SIR EVERARD DIGBY, of Rutlandshire; AMBROSE
ROOKWOOD, of Suffolk; FRANCIS TRESHAM, of Northamptonshire. Most of these were
rich, and were to assist the plot, some with money and some with horses on
which the conspirators were to ride through the country and rouse the Catholics
after the Parliament should be blown into air.
Parliament being again
prorogued from the third of October to the fifth of November, and the
conspirators being uneasy lest their design should have been found out, Thomas
Winter said he would go up into the House of Lords on the day of the
prorogation, and see how matters looked. Nothing could be better. The
unconscious Commissioners were walking about and talking to one another, just
over the six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder. He came back and told the rest
so, and they went on with their preparations. They hired a ship, and kept it ready
in the Thames, in which Fawkes was to sail for Flanders after firing with a
slow match the train that was to explode the powder. A number of Catholic
gentlemen not in the secret, were invited, on pretence of a hunting party, to
meet Sir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the fatal day, that they might be ready
to act together. And now all was ready.
But, now, the great
wickedness and danger which had been all along at the bottom of this wicked
plot, began to show itself. As the fifth of November drew near, most of the
conspirators, remembering that they had friends and relations who would be in
the House of Lords that day, felt some natural relenting, and a wish to warn
them to keep away. They were not much comforted by Catesby’s declaring that in
such a cause he would blow up his own son. LORD MOUNTEAGLE, Tresham’s
brother-in-law, was certain to be in the house; and when Tresham found that he
could not prevail upon the rest to devise any means of sparing their friends,
he wrote a mysterious letter to this lord and left it at his lodging in the
dusk, urging him to keep away from the opening of Parliament, ’since God and
man had concurred to punish the wickedness of the times.’ It contained the
words ’that the Parliament should receive a terrible blow, and yet should not
see who hurt them.’ And it added, ’the danger is past, as soon as you have
burnt the letter.’
The ministers and
courtiers made out that his Sowship, by a direct miracle from Heaven, found out
what this letter meant. The truth is, that they were not long (as few men would
be) in finding out for themselves; and it was decided to let the conspirators
alone, until the very day before the opening of Parliament. That the
conspirators had their fears, is certain; for, Tresham himself said before them
all, that they were every one dead men; and, although even he did not take
flight, there is reason to suppose that he had warned other persons besides
Lord Mounteagle. However, they were all firm; and Fawkes, who was a man of
iron, went down every day and night to keep watch in the cellar as usual. He
was there about two in the afternoon of the fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain
and Lord Mounteagle threw open the door and looked in. ’Who are you, friend?’
said they. ’Why,’ said Fawkes, ’I am Mr. Percy’s servant, and am looking after
his store of fuel here.’ ’Your master has laid in a pretty good store,’ they
returned, and shut the door, and went away. Fawkes, upon this, posted off to
the other conspirators to tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut himself
up in the dark, black cellar again, where he heard the bell go twelve o’clock
and usher in the fifth of November. About two hours afterwards, he slowly
opened the door, and came out to look about him, in his old prowling way. He
was instantly seized and bound, by a party of soldiers under SIR THOMAS
KNEVETT. He had a watch upon him, some touchwood, some tinder, some slow
matches; and there was a dark lantern with a candle in it, lighted, behind the
door. He had his boots and spurs on--to ride to the ship, I suppose--and it was
well for the soldiers that they took him so suddenly. If they had left him but
a moment’s time to light a match, he certainly would have tossed it in among
the powder, and blown up himself and them.
They took him to the
King’s bed-chamber first of all, and there the King (causing him to be held
very tight, and keeping a good way off), asked him how he could have the heart
to intend to destroy so many innocent people? ’Because,’ said Guy Fawkes, ’desperate
diseases need desperate remedies.’ To a little Scotch favourite, with a face
like a terrier, who asked him (with no particular wisdom) why he had collected
so much gunpowder, he replied, because he had meant to blow Scotchmen back to
Scotland, and it would take a deal of powder to do that. Next day he was
carried to the Tower, but would make no confession. Even after being horribly
tortured, he confessed nothing that the Government did not already know; though
he must have been in a fearful state--as his signature, still preserved, in
contrast with his natural hand-writing before he was put upon the dreadful
rack, most frightfully shows. Bates, a very different man, soon said the
Jesuits had had to do with the plot, and probably, under the torture, would as
readily have said anything. Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, made
confessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that was heavy upon him.
Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his own horses all the way to Dunchurch,
did not mount to escape until the middle of the day, when the news of the plot
was all over London. On the road, he came up with the two Wrights, Catesby, and
Percy; and they all galloped together into Northamptonshire. Thence to
Dunchurch, where they found the proposed party assembled. Finding, however,
that there had been a plot, and that it had been discovered, the party
disappeared in the course of the night, and left them alone with Sir Everard
Digby. Away they all rode again, through Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to a
house called Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire. They tried to raise the
Catholics on their way, but were indignantly driven off by them. All this time
they were hotly pursued by the sheriff of Worcester, and a fast increasing
concourse of riders. At last, resolving to defend themselves at Holbeach, they
shut themselves up in the house, and put some wet powder before the fire to
dry. But it blew up, and Catesby was singed and blackened, and almost killed,
and some of the others were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die, they
resolved to die there, and with only their swords in their hands appeared at
the windows to be shot at by the sheriff and his assistants. Catesby said to
Thomas Winter, after Thomas had been hit in the right arm which dropped
powerless by his side, ’Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together!’--which
they did, being shot through the body by two bullets from one gun. John Wright,
and Christopher Wright, and Percy, were also shot. Rookwood and Digby were
taken: the former with a broken arm and a wound in his body too.
It was the fifteenth of
January, before the trial of Guy Fawkes, and such of the other conspirators as
were left alive, came on. They were all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and
quartered: some, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, on the top of Ludgate-hill; some,
before the Parliament House. A Jesuit priest, named HENRY GARNET, to whom the
dreadful design was said to have been communicated, was taken and tried; and
two of his servants, as well as a poor priest who was taken with him, were tortured
without mercy. He himself was not tortured, but was surrounded in the Tower by
tamperers and traitors, and so was made unfairly to convict himself out of his
own mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he had done all he could to prevent
the deed, and that he could not make public what had been told him in
confession--though I am afraid he knew of the plot in other ways. He was found
guilty and executed, after a manful defence, and the Catholic Church made a
saint of him; some rich and powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with
the project, were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber; the
Catholics, in general, who had recoiled with horror from the idea of the
infernal contrivance, were unjustly put under more severe laws than before; and
this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot.
His Sowship would
pretty willingly, I think, have blown the House of Commons into the air
himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it knew no bounds all through his
reign. When he was hard pressed for money he was obliged to order it to meet,
as he could get no money without it; and when it asked him first to abolish
some of the monopolies in necessaries of life which were a great grievance to
the people, and to redress other public wrongs, he flew into a rage and got rid
of it again. At one time he wanted it to consent to the Union of England with
Scotland, and quarrelled about that. At another time it wanted him to put down
a most infamous Church abuse, called the High Commission Court, and he
quarrelled with it about that. At another time it entreated him not to be quite
so fond of his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his praise too
awful to be related, but to have some little consideration for the poor Puritan
clergy who were persecuted for preaching in their own way, and not according to
the archbishops and bishops; and they quarrelled about that. In short, what
with hating the House of Commons, and pretending not to hate it; and what with
now sending some of its members who opposed him, to Newgate or to the Tower,
and now telling the rest that they must not presume to make speeches about the
public affairs which could not possibly concern them; and what with cajoling,
and bullying, and fighting, and being frightened; the House of Commons was the
plague of his Sowship’s existence. It was pretty firm, however, in maintaining
its rights, and insisting that the Parliament should make the laws, and not the
King by his own single proclamations (which he tried hard to do); and his
Sowship was so often distressed for money, in consequence, that he sold every
sort of title and public office as if they were merchandise, and even invented
a new dignity called a Baronetcy, which anybody could buy for a thousand
pounds.
These disputes with his
Parliaments, and his hunting, and his drinking, and his lying in bed--for he
was a great sluggard--occupied his Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time he
chiefly passed in hugging and slobbering his favourites. The first of these was
SIR PHILIP HERBERT, who had no knowledge whatever, except of dogs, and horses,
and hunting, but whom he soon made EARL OF MONTGOMERY. The next, and a much
more famous one, was ROBERT CARR, or KER (for it is not certain which was his
right name), who came from the Border country, and whom he soon made VISCOUNT
ROCHESTER, and afterwards, EARL OF SOMERSET. The way in which his Sowship doted
on this handsome young man, is even more odious to think of, than the way in
which the really great men of England condescended to bow down before him. The
favourite’s great friend was a certain SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, who wrote his
love-letters for him, and assisted him in the duties of his many high places,
which his own ignorance prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir
Thomas having just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wicked
marriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a divorce from
her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in her rage, got Sir Thomas put
into the Tower, and there poisoned him. Then the favourite and this bad woman
were publicly married by the King’s pet bishop, with as much to-do and
rejoicing, as if he had been the best man, and she the best woman, upon the
face of the earth.
But, after a longer
sunshine than might have been expected--of seven years or so, that is to
say--another handsome young man started up and eclipsed the EARL OF SOMERSET.
This was GEORGE VILLIERS, the youngest son of a Leicestershire gentleman: who
came to Court with all the Paris fashions on him, and could dance as well as
the best mountebank that ever was seen. He soon danced himself into the good
graces of his Sowship, and danced the other favourite out of favour. Then, it
was all at once discovered that the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not
deserved all those great promotions and mighty rejoicings, and they were
separately tried for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes.
But, the King was so afraid of his late favourite’s publicly telling some
disgraceful things he knew of him--which he darkly threatened to do--that he
was even examined with two men standing, one on either side of him, each with a
cloak in his hand, ready to throw it over his head and stop his mouth if he
should break out with what he had it in his power to tell. So, a very lame
affair was purposely made of the trial, and his punishment was an allowance of
four thousand pounds a year in retirement, while the Countess was pardoned, and
allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated one another by this time, and
lived to revile and torment each other some years.
While these events were
in progress, and while his Sowship was making such an exhibition of himself,
from day to day and from year to year, as is not often seen in any sty, three
remarkable deaths took place in England. The first was that of the Minister,
Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been strong,
being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he had no wish to live; and
no Minister need have had, with his experience of the meanness and wickedness
of those disgraceful times. The second was that of the Lady Arabella Stuart,
who alarmed his Sowship mightily, by privately marrying WILLIAM SEYMOUR, son of
LORD BEAUCHAMP, who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, and who, his Sowship
thought, might consequently increase and strengthen any claim she might one day
set up to the throne. She was separated from her husband (who was put in the
Tower) and thrust into a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in a man’s
dress to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to France, but unhappily
missed her husband, who had escaped too, and was soon taken. She went raving
mad in the miserable Tower, and died there after four years. The last, and the
most important of these three deaths, was that of Prince Henry, the heir to the
throne, in the nineteenth year of his age. He was a promising young prince, and
greatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth, of whom two very good things are
known: first, that his father was jealous of him; secondly, that he was the
friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing through all those years in the Tower,
and often said that no man but his father would keep such a bird in such a
cage. On the occasion of the preparations for the marriage of his sister the
Princess Elizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage it turned
out), he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill, to greet his new
brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There he played a great game at
tennis, in his shirt, though it was very cold weather, and was seized with an
alarming illness, and died within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this young
prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the Tower, the beginning of a
History of the World: a wonderful instance how little his Sowship could do to
confine a great man’s mind, however long he might imprison his body.
And this mention of Sir
Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but who never showed so many merits as in
trouble and adversity, may bring me at once to the end of his sad story. After
an imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to resume those
old sea voyages of his, and to go to South America in search of gold. His
Sowship, divided between his wish to be on good terms with the Spaniards through
whose territory Sir Walter must pass (he had long had an idea of marrying
Prince Henry to a Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to get hold
of the gold, did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set Sir Walter free,
taking securities for his return; and Sir Walter fitted out an expedition at
his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth of March, one thousand six hundred and
seventeen, sailed away in command of one of its ships, which he ominously
called the Destiny. The expedition failed; the common men, not finding the gold
they had expected, mutinied; a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and the
Spaniards, who hated him for old successes of his against them; and he took and
burnt a little town called SAINT THOMAS. For this he was denounced to his
Sowship by the Spanish Ambassador as a pirate; and returning almost
broken-hearted, with his hopes and fortunes shattered, his company of friends
dispersed, and his brave son (who had been one of them) killed, he was
taken--through the treachery of SIR LEWIS STUKELY, his near relation, a
scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral--and was once again immured in his prison-home of
so many years.
His Sowship being
mightily disappointed in not getting any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as
unfairly, and with as many lies and evasions as the judges and law officers and
every other authority in Church and State habitually practised under such a
King. After a great deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it was
declared that he must die under his former sentence, now fifteen years old. So,
on the twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six hundred and eighteen, he was
shut up in the Gate House at Westminster to pass his late night on earth, and
there he took leave of his good and faithful lady who was worthy to have lived
in better days. At eight o’clock next morning, after a cheerful breakfast, and
a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster,
where the scaffold was set up, and where so many people of high degree were
assembled to see him die, that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him
through the crowd. He behaved most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his
mind, it was that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off; and he
solemnly said that he had had no hand in bringing him to the block, and that he
had shed tears for him when he died. As the morning was very cold, the Sheriff
said, would he come down to a fire for a little space, and warm himself? But
Sir Walter thanked him, and said no, he would rather it were done at once, for
he was ill of fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour his shaking fit
would come upon him if he were still alive, and his enemies might then suppose
that he trembled for fear. With that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful and
Christian prayer. Before he laid his head upon the block he felt the edge of
the axe, and said, with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine,
but would cure the worst disease. When he was bent down ready for death, he
said to the executioner, finding that he hesitated, ’What dost thou fear?
Strike, man!’ So, the axe came down and struck his head off, in the sixty-sixth
year of his age.
The new favourite got
on fast. He was made a viscount, he was made Duke of Buckingham, he was made a
marquis, he was made Master of the Horse, he was made Lord High Admiral--and
the Chief Commander of the gallant English forces that had dispersed the
Spanish Armada, was displaced to make room for him. He had the whole kingdom at
his disposal, and his mother sold all the profits and honours of the State, as
if she had kept a shop. He blazed all over with diamonds and other precious
stones, from his hatband and his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant
presumptuous, swaggering compound of knave and fool, with nothing but his
beauty and his dancing to recommend him. This is the gentleman who called
himself his Majesty’s dog and slave, and called his Majesty Your Sowship. His
Sowship called him STEENIE; it is supposed, because that was a nickname for
Stephen, and because St. Stephen was generally represented in pictures as a
handsome saint.
His Sowship was driven
sometimes to his wits’-end by his trimming between the general dislike of the
Catholic religion at home, and his desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as
his only means of getting a rich princess for his son’s wife: a part of whose
fortune he might cram into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles--or as his
Sowship called him, Baby Charles--being now PRINCE OF WALES, the old project of
a marriage with the Spanish King’s daughter had been revived for him; and as
she could not marry a Protestant without leave from the Pope, his Sowship
himself secretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. The
negotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in great books,
than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is, that when it had been held
off by the Spanish Court for a long time, Baby Charles and Steenie set off in
disguise as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see the Spanish Princess;
that Baby Charles pretended to be desperately in love with her, and jumped off
walls to look at her, and made a considerable fool of himself in a good many
ways; that she was called Princess of Wales and that the whole Spanish Court
believed Baby Charles to be all but dying for her sake, as he expressly told
them he was; that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to England, and were
received with as much rapture as if they had been a blessing to it; that Baby
Charles had actually fallen in love with HENRIETTA MARIA, the French King’s
sister, whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully fine and
princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, all through; and that he openly
said, with a chuckle, as soon as he was safe and sound at home again, that the
Spaniards were great fools to have believed him.
Like most dishonest
men, the Prince and the favourite complained that the people whom they had
deluded were dishonest. They made such misrepresentations of the treachery of
the Spaniards in this business of the Spanish match, that the English nation
became eager for a war with them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the
idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament granted money for the
beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spain were publicly declared to
be at an end. The Spanish ambassador in London--probably with the help of the
fallen favourite, the Earl of Somerset--being unable to obtain speech with his
Sowship, slipped a paper into his hand, declaring that he was a prisoner in his
own house, and was entirely governed by Buckingham and his creatures. The first
effect of this letter was that his Sowship began to cry and whine, and took
Baby Charles away from Steenie, and went down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of
nonsense. The end of it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said
he was quite satisfied.
He had given the Prince
and the favourite almost unlimited power to settle anything with the Pope as to
the Spanish marriage; and he now, with a view to the French one, signed a
treaty that all Roman Catholics in England should exercise their religion
freely, and should never be required to take any oath contrary thereto. In
return for this, and for other concessions much less to be defended, Henrietta
Maria was to become the Prince’s wife, and was to bring him a fortune of eight
hundred thousand crowns.
His Sowship’s eyes were
getting red with eagerly looking for the money, when the end of a gluttonous
life came upon him; and, after a fortnight’s illness, on Sunday the
twenty-seventh of March, one thousand six hundred and twenty-five, he died. He
had reigned twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing
more abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished on this King, and
the vice and corruption that such a barefaced habit of lying produced in his
court. It is much to be doubted whether one man of honour, and not utterly
self-disgraced, kept his place near James the First. Lord Bacon, that able and
wise philosopher, as the First Judge in the Kingdom in this reign, became a
public spectacle of dishonesty and corruption; and in his base flattery of his
Sowship, and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave, disgraced himself
even more. But, a creature like his Sowship set upon a throne is like the
Plague, and everybody receives infection from him.
BABY CHARLES became
KING CHARLES THE FIRST, in the twenty-fifth year of his age. Unlike his father,
he was usually amiable in his private character, and grave and dignified in his
bearing; but, like his father, he had monstrously exaggerated notions of the
rights of a king, and was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could
have been relied upon, his history might have had a different end.
His first care was to
send over that insolent upstart, Buckingham, to bring Henrietta Maria from
Paris to be his Queen; upon which occasion Buckingham--with his usual
audacity--made love to the young Queen of Austria, and was very indignant
indeed with CARDINAL RICHELIEU, the French Minister, for thwarting his
intentions. The English people were very well disposed to like their new Queen,
and to receive her with great favour when she came among them as a stranger. But,
she held the Protestant religion in great dislike, and brought over a crowd of
unpleasant priests, who made her do some very ridiculous things, and forced
themselves upon the public notice in many disagreeable ways. Hence, the people
soon came to dislike her, and she soon came to dislike them; and she did so
much all through this reign in setting the King (who was dotingly fond of her)
against his subjects, that it would have been better for him if she had never
been born.
Now, you are to
understand that King Charles the First--of his own determination to be a high
and mighty King not to be called to account by anybody, and urged on by his
Queen besides--deliberately set himself to put his Parliament down and to put
himself up. You are also to understand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea
(enough in itself to have ruined any king) he never took a straight course, but
always took a crooked one.
He was bent upon war
with Spain, though neither the House of Commons nor the people were quite clear
as to the justice of that war, now that they began to think a little more about
the story of the Spanish match. But the King rushed into it hotly, raised money
by illegal means to meet its expenses, and encountered a miserable failure at
Cadiz, in the very first year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz had been
made in the hope of plunder, but as it was not successful, it was necessary to
get a grant of money from the Parliament; and when they met, in no very
complying humour, the, King told them, ’to make haste to let him have it, or it
would be the worse for themselves.’ Not put in a more complying humour by this,
they impeached the King’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, as the cause
(which he undoubtedly was) of many great public grievances and wrongs. The
King, to save him, dissolved the Parliament without getting the money he
wanted; and when the Lords implored him to consider and grant a little delay,
he replied, ’No, not one minute.’ He then began to raise money for himself by
the following means among others.
He levied certain
duties called tonnage and poundage which had not been granted by the
Parliament, and could lawfully be levied by no other power; he called upon the
seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all the cost for three months of, a fleet
of armed ships; and he required the people to unite in lending him large sums
of money, the repayment of which was very doubtful. If the poor people refused,
they were pressed as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry refused, they were sent
to prison. Five gentlemen, named SIR THOMAS DARNEL, JOHN CORBET, WALTER EARL,
JOHN HEVENINGHAM, and EVERARD HAMPDEN, for refusing were taken up by a warrant
of the King’s privy council, and were sent to prison without any cause but the
King’s pleasure being stated for their imprisonment. Then the question came to
be solemnly tried, whether this was not a violation of Magna Charta, and an
encroachment by the King on the highest rights of the English people. His
lawyers contended No, because to encroach upon the rights of the English people
would be to do wrong, and the King could do no wrong. The accommodating judges
decided in favour of this wicked nonsense; and here was a fatal division
between the King and the people.
For all this, it became
necessary to call another Parliament. The people, sensible of the danger in
which their liberties were, chose for it those who were best known for their
determined opposition to the King; but still the King, quite blinded by his
determination to carry everything before him, addressed them when they met, in
a contemptuous manner, and just told them in so many words that he had only
called them together because he wanted money. The Parliament, strong enough and
resolute enough to know that they would lower his tone, cared little for what
he said, and laid before him one of the great documents of history, which is
called the PETITION OF RIGHT, requiring that the free men of England should no
longer be called upon to lend the King money, and should no longer be pressed
or imprisoned for refusing to do so; further, that the free men of England
should no longer be seized by the King’s special mandate or warrant, it being
contrary to their rights and liberties and the laws of their country. At first
the King returned an answer to this petition, in which he tried to shirk it
altogether; but, the House of Commons then showing their determination to go on
with the impeachment of Buckingham, the King in alarm returned an answer,
giving his consent to all that was required of him. He not only afterwards
departed from his word and honour on these points, over and over again, but, at
this very time, he did the mean and dissembling act of publishing his first
answer and not his second--merely that the people might suppose that the
Parliament had not got the better of him.
That pestilent
Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded vanity, had by this time involved the
country in war with France, as well as with Spain. For such miserable causes
and such miserable creatures are wars sometimes made! But he was destined to do
little more mischief in this world. One morning, as he was going out of his
house to his carriage, he turned to speak to a certain Colonel FRYER who was
with him; and he was violently stabbed with a knife, which the murderer left
sticking in his heart. This happened in his hall. He had had angry words
up-stairs, just before, with some French gentlemen, who were immediately
suspected by his servants, and had a close escape from being set upon and
killed. In the midst of the noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the
kitchen and might easily have got away, drew his sword and cried out, ’I am the
man!’ His name was JOHN FELTON, a Protestant and a retired officer in the army.
He said he had had no personal ill-will to the Duke, but had killed him as a
curse to the country. He had aimed his blow well, for Buckingham had only had
time to cry out, ’Villain!’ and then he drew out the knife, fell against a
table, and died.
The council made a
mighty business of examining John Felton about this murder, though it was a
plain case enough, one would think. He had come seventy miles to do it, he told
them, and he did it for the reason he had declared; if they put him upon the
rack, as that noble MARQUIS OF DORSET whom he saw before him, had the goodness to
threaten, he gave that marquis warning, that he would accuse HIM as his
accomplice! The King was unpleasantly anxious to have him racked, nevertheless;
but as the judges now found out that torture was contrary to the law of
England--it is a pity they did not make the discovery a little sooner--John
Felton was simply executed for the murder he had done. A murder it undoubtedly
was, and not in the least to be defended: though he had freed England from one
of the most profligate, contemptible, and base court favourites to whom it has
ever yielded.
A very different man
now arose. This was SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH, a Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in
Parliament for a long time, and who had favoured arbitrary and haughty
principles, but who had gone over to the people’s side on receiving offence
from Buckingham. The King, much wanting such a man--for, besides being
naturally favourable to the King’s cause, he had great abilities--made him
first a Baron, and then a Viscount, and gave him high employment, and won him
most completely.
A Parliament, however,
was still in existence, and was NOT to be won. On the twentieth of January, one
thousand six hundred and twenty-nine, SIR JOHN ELIOT, a great man who had been
active in the Petition of Right, brought forward other strong resolutions
against the King’s chief instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them
to the vote. To this the Speaker answered, ’he was commanded otherwise by the
King,’ and got up to leave the chair--which, according to the rules of the House
of Commons would have obliged it to adjourn without doing anything more--when
two members, named Mr. HOLLIS and Mr. VALENTINE, held him down. A scene of
great confusion arose among the members; and while many swords were drawn and
flashing about, the King, who was kept informed of all that was going on, told
the captain of his guard to go down to the House and force the doors. The
resolutions were by that time, however, voted, and the House adjourned. Sir
John Eliot and those two members who had held the Speaker down, were quickly
summoned before the council. As they claimed it to be their privilege not to
answer out of Parliament for anything they had said in it, they were committed
to the Tower. The King then went down and dissolved the Parliament, in a speech
wherein he made mention of these gentlemen as ’Vipers’--which did not do him
much good that ever I have heard of.
As they refused to gain
their liberty by saying they were sorry for what they had done, the King,
always remarkably unforgiving, never overlooked their offence. When they
demanded to be brought up before the court of King’s Bench, he even resorted to
the meanness of having them moved about from prison to prison, so that the
writs issued for that purpose should not legally find them. At last they came
before the court and were sentenced to heavy fines, and to be imprisoned during
the King’s pleasure. When Sir John Eliot’s health had quite given way, and he
so longed for change of air and scene as to petition for his release, the King
sent back the answer (worthy of his Sowship himself) that the petition was not
humble enough. When he sent another petition by his young son, in which he
pathetically offered to go back to prison when his health was restored, if he
might be released for its recovery, the King still disregarded it. When he died
in the Tower, and his children petitioned to be allowed to take his body down
to Cornwall, there to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the King
returned for answer, ’Let Sir John Eliot’s body be buried in the church of that
parish where he died.’ All this was like a very little King indeed, I think.
And now, for twelve
long years, steadily pursuing his design of setting himself up and putting the
people down, the King called no Parliament; but ruled without one. If twelve
thousand volumes were written in his praise (as a good many have been) it would
still remain a fact, impossible to be denied, that for twelve years King
Charles the First reigned in England unlawfully and despotically, seized upon
his subjects’ goods and money at his pleasure, and punished according to his
unbridled will all who ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion with some people
to think that this King’s career was cut short; but I must say myself that I
think he ran a pretty long one.
WILLIAM LAUD,
Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King’s right-hand man in the religious part
of the putting down of the people’s liberties. Laud, who was a sincere man, of
large learning but small sense--for the two things sometimes go together in
very different quantities--though a Protestant, held opinions so near those of
the Catholics, that the Pope wanted to make a Cardinal of him, if he would have
accepted that favour. He looked upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, and
so forth, as amazingly important in religious ceremonies; and he brought in an
immensity of bowing and candle-snuffing. He also regarded archbishops and
bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, and was inveterate in the last degree
against any who thought otherwise. Accordingly, he offered up thanks to Heaven,
and was in a state of much pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman, named
LEIGHTON, was pilloried, whipped, branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears
cut off and one of his nostrils slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the
inventions of men. He originated on a Sunday morning the prosecution of WILLIAM
PRYNNE, a barrister who was of similar opinions, and who was fined a thousand
pounds; who was pilloried; who had his ears cut off on two occasions--one ear at
a time--and who was imprisoned for life. He highly approved of the punishment
of DOCTOR BASTWICK, a physician; who was also fined a thousand pounds; and who
afterwards had HIS ears cut off, and was imprisoned for life. These were gentle
methods of persuasion, some will tell you: I think, they were rather calculated
to be alarming to the people.
In the money part of
the putting down of the people’s liberties, the King was equally gentle, as
some will tell you: as I think, equally alarming. He levied those duties of
tonnage and poundage, and increased them as he thought fit. He granted
monopolies to companies of merchants on their paying him for them,
notwithstanding the great complaints that had, for years and years, been made
on the subject of monopolies. He fined the people for disobeying proclamations
issued by his Sowship in direct violation of law. He revived the detested
Forest laws, and took private property to himself as his forest right. Above
all, he determined to have what was called Ship Money; that is to say, money
for the support of the fleet--not only from the seaports, but from all the
counties of England: having found out that, in some ancient time or other, all
the counties paid it. The grievance of this ship money being somewhat too strong,
JOHN CHAMBERS, a citizen of London, refused to pay his part of it. For this the
Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to prison, and for that John Chambers brought
a suit against the Lord Mayor. LORD SAY, also, behaved like a real nobleman,
and declared he would not pay. But, the sturdiest and best opponent of the ship
money was JOHN HAMPDEN, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the ’vipers’
in the House of Commons when there was such a thing, and who had been the bosom
friend of Sir John Eliot. This case was tried before the twelve judges in the
Court of Exchequer, and again the King’s lawyers said it was impossible that
ship money could be wrong, because the King could do no wrong, however hard he
tried--and he really did try very hard during these twelve years. Seven of the
judges said that was quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to pay: five of the
judges said that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden was not bound to pay. So, the
King triumphed (as he thought), by making Hampden the most popular man in
England; where matters were getting to that height now, that many honest
Englishmen could not endure their country, and sailed away across the seas to
found a colony in Massachusetts Bay in America. It is said that Hampden himself
and his relation OLIVER CROMWELL were going with a company of such voyagers,
and were actually on board ship, when they were stopped by a proclamation,
prohibiting sea captains to carry out such passengers without the royal
license. But O! it would have been well for the King if he had let them go!
This was the state of England. If Laud had been a madman just broke loose, he
could not have done more mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavours
(in which he was seconded by the King, then in person in that part of his dominions)
to force his own ideas of bishops, and his own religious forms and ceremonies
upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a perfect frenzy. They formed a
solemn league, which they called The Covenant, for the preservation of their
own religious forms; they rose in arms throughout the whole country; they
summoned all their men to prayers and sermons twice a day by beat of drum; they
sang psalms, in which they compared their enemies to all the evil spirits that
ever were heard of; and they solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. At
first the King tried force, then treaty, then a Scottish Parliament which did
not answer at all. Then he tried the EARL OF STRAFFORD, formerly Sir Thomas
Wentworth; who, as LORD WENTWORTH, had been governing Ireland. He, too, had
carried it with a very high hand there, though to the benefit and prosperity of
that country.
Strafford and Laud were
for conquering the Scottish people by force of arms. Other lords who were taken
into council, recommended that a Parliament should at last be called; to which
the King unwillingly consented. So, on the thirteenth of April, one thousand
six hundred and forty, that then strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at
Westminster. It is called the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very little
while. While the members were all looking at one another, doubtful who would
dare to speak, MR. PYM arose and set forth all that the King had done
unlawfully during the past twelve years, and what was the position to which
England was reduced. This great example set, other members took courage and
spoke the truth freely, though with great patience and moderation. The King, a
little frightened, sent to say that if they would grant him a certain sum on
certain terms, no more ship money should be raised. They debated the matter for
two days; and then, as they would not give him all he asked without promise or
inquiry, he dissolved them.
But they knew very well
that he must have a Parliament now; and he began to make that discovery too,
though rather late in the day. Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of September,
being then at York with an army collected against the Scottish people, but his
own men sullen and discontented like the rest of the nation, the King told the
great council of the Lords, whom he had called to meet him there, that he would
summon another Parliament to assemble on the third of November. The soldiers of
the Covenant had now forced their way into England and had taken possession of
the northern counties, where the coals are got. As it would never do to be
without coals, and as the King’s troops could make no head against the
Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a truce was made, and a treaty with
Scotland was taken into consideration. Meanwhile the northern counties paid the
Covenanters to leave the coals alone, and keep quiet.
We have now disposed of
the Short Parliament. We have next to see what memorable things were done by
the Long one.
THE Long Parliament
assembled on the third of November, one thousand six hundred and forty-one.
That day week the Earl of Strafford arrived from York, very sensible that the
spirited and determined men who formed that Parliament were no friends towards
him, who had not only deserted the cause of the people, but who had on all
occasions opposed himself to their liberties. The King told him, for his
comfort, that the Parliament ’should not hurt one hair of his head.’ But, on
the very next day Mr. Pym, in the House of Commons, and with great solemnity,
impeached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. He was immediately taken into
custody and fell from his proud height.
It was the
twenty-second of March before he was brought to trial in Westminster Hall;
where, although he was very ill and suffered great pain, he defended himself
with such ability and majesty, that it was doubtful whether he would not get
the best of it. But on the thirteenth day of the trial, Pym produced in the
House of Commons a copy of some notes of a council, found by young SIR HARRY
VANE in a red velvet cabinet belonging to his father (Secretary Vane, who sat
at the council-table with the Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly told the
King that he was free from all rules and obligations of government, and might
do with his people whatever he liked; and in which he had added--’You have an
army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience.’ It
was not clear whether by the words ’this kingdom,’ he had really meant England
or Scotland; but the Parliament contended that he meant England, and this was
treason. At the same sitting of the House of Commons it was resolved to bring
in a bill of attainder declaring the treason to have been committed: in
preference to proceeding with the trial by impeachment, which would have
required the treason to be proved.
So, a bill was brought
in at once, was carried through the House of Commons by a large majority, and
was sent up to the House of Lords. While it was still uncertain whether the
House of Lords would pass it and the King consent to it, Pym disclosed to the House
of Commons that the King and Queen had both been plotting with the officers of
the army to bring up the soldiers and control the Parliament, and also to
introduce two hundred soldiers into the Tower of London to effect the Earl’s
escape. The plotting with the army was revealed by one GEORGE GORING, the son
of a lord of that name: a bad fellow who was one of the original plotters, and
turned traitor. The King had actually given his warrant for the admission of
the two hundred men into the Tower, and they would have got in too, but for the
refusal of the governor--a sturdy Scotchman of the name of BALFOUR--to admit
them. These matters being made public, great numbers of people began to riot
outside the Houses of Parliament, and to cry out for the execution of the Earl
of Strafford, as one of the King’s chief instruments against them. The bill
passed the House of Lords while the people were in this state of agitation, and
was laid before the King for his assent, together with another bill declaring
that the Parliament then assembled should not be dissolved or adjourned without
their own consent. The King--not unwilling to save a faithful servant, though
he had no great attachment for him--was in some doubt what to do; but he gave
his consent to both bills, although he in his heart believed that the bill
against the Earl of Strafford was unlawful and unjust. The Earl had written to
him, telling him that he was willing to die for his sake. But he had not
expected that his royal master would take him at his word quite so readily;
for, when he heard his doom, he laid his hand upon his heart, and said, ’Put
not your trust in Princes!’
The King, who never
could be straightforward and plain, through one single day or through one
single sheet of paper, wrote a letter to the Lords, and sent it by the young
Prince of Wales, entreating them to prevail with the Commons that ’that
unfortunate man should fulfil the natural course of his life in a close
imprisonment.’ In a postscript to the very same letter, he added, ’If he must
die, it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday.’ If there had been any
doubt of his fate, this weakness and meanness would have settled it. The very
next day, which was the twelfth of May, he was brought out to be beheaded on
Tower Hill.
Archbishop Laud, who
had been so fond of having people’s ears cropped off and their noses slit, was
now confined in the Tower too; and when the Earl went by his window to his
death, he was there, at his request, to give him his blessing. They had been
great friends in the King’s cause, and the Earl had written to him in the days
of their power that he thought it would be an admirable thing to have Mr.
Hampden publicly whipped for refusing to pay the ship money. However, those
high and mighty doings were over now, and the Earl went his way to death with
dignity and heroism. The governor wished him to get into a coach at the Tower
gate, for fear the people should tear him to pieces; but he said it was all one
to him whether he died by the axe or by the people’s hands. So, he walked, with
a firm tread and a stately look, and sometimes pulled off his hat to them as he
passed along. They were profoundly quiet. He made a speech on the scaffold from
some notes he had prepared (the paper was found lying there after his head was
struck off), and one blow of the axe killed him, in the forty-ninth year of his
age.
This bold and daring
act, the Parliament accompanied by other famous measures, all originating (as
even this did) in the King’s having so grossly and so long abused his power.
The name of DELINQUENTS was applied to all sheriffs and other officers who had
been concerned in raising the ship money, or any other money, from the people,
in an unlawful manner; the Hampden judgment was reversed; the judges who had
decided against Hampden were called upon to give large securities that they
would take such consequences as Parliament might impose upon them; and one was
arrested as he sat in High Court, and carried off to prison. Laud was
impeached; the unfortunate victims whose ears had been cropped and whose noses
had been slit, were brought out of prison in triumph; and a bill was passed
declaring that a Parliament should be called every third year, and that if the
King and the King’s officers did not call it, the people should assemble of
themselves and summon it, as of their own right and power. Great illuminations
and rejoicings took place over all these things, and the country was wildly
excited. That the Parliament took advantage of this excitement and stirred them
up by every means, there is no doubt; but you are always to remember those
twelve long years, during which the King had tried so hard whether he really
could do any wrong or not.
All this time there was
a great religious outcry against the right of the Bishops to sit in Parliament;
to which the Scottish people particularly objected. The English were divided on
this subject, and, partly on this account and partly because they had had
foolish expectations that the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all
the taxes, numbers of them sometimes wavered and inclined towards the King.
I believe myself, that
if, at this or almost any other period of his life, the King could have been
trusted by any man not out of his senses, he might have saved himself and kept
his throne. But, on the English army being disbanded, he plotted with the
officers again, as he had done before, and established the fact beyond all
doubt by putting his signature of approval to a petition against the
Parliamentary leaders, which was drawn up by certain officers. When the
Scottish army was disbanded, he went to Edinburgh in four days--which was going
very fast at that time--to plot again, and so darkly too, that it is difficult
to decide what his whole object was. Some suppose that he wanted to gain over
the Scottish Parliament, as he did in fact gain over, by presents and favours,
many Scottish lords and men of power. Some think that he went to get proofs against
the Parliamentary leaders in England of their having treasonably invited the
Scottish people to come and help them. With whatever object he went to
Scotland, he did little good by going. At the instigation of the EARL OF
MONTROSE, a desperate man who was then in prison for plotting, he tried to
kidnap three Scottish lords who escaped. A committee of the Parliament at home,
who had followed to watch him, writing an account of this INCIDENT, as it was
called, to the Parliament, the Parliament made a fresh stir about it; were, or
feigned to be, much alarmed for themselves; and wrote to the EARL OF ESSEX, the
commander-in-chief, for a guard to protect them.
It is not absolutely
proved that the King plotted in Ireland besides, but it is very probable that
he did, and that the Queen did, and that he had some wild hope of gaining the
Irish people over to his side by favouring a rise among them. Whether or no,
they did rise in a most brutal and savage rebellion; in which, encouraged by
their priests, they committed such atrocities upon numbers of the English, of
both sexes and of all ages, as nobody could believe, but for their being
related on oath by eye-witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or two hundred
thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak, is uncertain; but, that it
was as ruthless and barbarous an outbreak as ever was known among any savage
people, is certain.
The King came home from
Scotland, determined to make a great struggle for his lost power. He believed
that, through his presents and favours, Scotland would take no part against
him; and the Lord Mayor of London received him with such a magnificent dinner
that he thought he must have become popular again in England. It would take a
good many Lord Mayors, however, to make a people, and the King soon found
himself mistaken.
Not so soon, though,
but that there was a great opposition in the Parliament to a celebrated paper
put forth by Pym and Hampden and the rest, called ’THE REMONSTRANCE,’ which set
forth all the illegal acts that the King had ever done, but politely laid the
blame of them on his bad advisers. Even when it was passed and presented to
him, the King still thought himself strong enough to discharge Balfour from his
command in the Tower, and to put in his place a man of bad character; to whom
the Commons instantly objected, and whom he was obliged to abandon. At this
time, the old outcry about the Bishops became louder than ever, and the old
Archbishop of York was so near being murdered as he went down to the House of
Lords--being laid hold of by the mob and violently knocked about, in return for
very foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was yelping out ’No Bishops!’--that he
sent for all the Bishops who were in town, and proposed to them to sign a
declaration that, as they could no longer without danger to their lives attend
their duty in Parliament, they protested against the lawfulness of everything
done in their absence. This they asked the King to send to the House of Lords,
which he did. Then the House of Commons impeached the whole party of Bishops
and sent them off to the Tower:
Taking no warning from
this; but encouraged by there being a moderate party in the Parliament who
objected to these strong measures, the King, on the third of January, one
thousand six hundred and forty-two, took the rashest step that ever was taken
by mortal man.
Of his own accord and
without advice, he sent the Attorney-General to the House of Lords, to accuse
of treason certain members of Parliament who as popular leaders were the most
obnoxious to him; LORD KIMBOLTON, SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG, DENZIL HOLLIS, JOHN PYM
(they used to call him King Pym, he possessed such power and looked so big),
JOHN HAMPDEN, and WILLIAM STRODE. The houses of those members he caused to be
entered, and their papers to be sealed up. At the same time, he sent a
messenger to the House of Commons demanding to have the five gentlemen who were
members of that House immediately produced. To this the House replied that they
should appear as soon as there was any legal charge against them, and
immediately adjourned.
Next day, the House of
Commons send into the City to let the Lord Mayor know that their privileges are
invaded by the King, and that there is no safety for anybody or anything. Then,
when the five members are gone out of the way, down comes the King himself,
with all his guard and from two to three hundred gentlemen and soldiers, of
whom the greater part were armed. These he leaves in the hall; and then, with
his nephew at his side, goes into the House, takes off his hat, and walks up to
the Speaker’s chair. The Speaker leaves it, the King stands in front of it,
looks about him steadily for a little while, and says he has come for those
five members. No one speaks, and then he calls John Pym by name. No one speaks,
and then he calls Denzil Hollis by name. No one speaks, and then he asks the
Speaker of the House where those five members are? The Speaker, answering on
his knee, nobly replies that he is the servant of that House, and that he has
neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, anything but what the House commands
him. Upon this, the King, beaten from that time evermore, replies that he will
seek them himself, for they have committed treason; and goes out, with his hat
in his hand, amid some audible murmurs from the members.
No words can describe
the hurry that arose out of doors when all this was known. The five members had
gone for safety to a house in Coleman-street, in the City, where they were
guarded all night; and indeed the whole city watched in arms like an army. At
ten o’clock in the morning, the King, already frightened at what he had done,
came to the Guildhall, with only half a dozen lords, and made a speech to the
people, hoping they would not shelter those whom he accused of treason. Next
day, he issued a proclamation for the apprehension of the five members; but the
Parliament minded it so little that they made great arrangements for having
them brought down to Westminster in great state, five days afterwards. The King
was so alarmed now at his own imprudence, if not for his own safety, that he
left his palace at Whitehall, and went away with his Queen and children to
Hampton Court.
It was the eleventh of
May, when the five members were carried in state and triumph to Westminster.
They were taken by water. The river could not be seen for the boats on it; and
the five members were hemmed in by barges full of men and great guns, ready to
protect them, at any cost. Along the Strand a large body of the train-bands of
London, under their commander, SKIPPON, marched to be ready to assist the
little fleet. Beyond them, came a crowd who choked the streets, roaring
incessantly about the Bishops and the Papists, and crying out contemptuously as
they passed Whitehall, ’What has become of the King?’ With this great noise
outside the House of Commons, and with great silence within, Mr. Pym rose and
informed the House of the great kindness with which they had been received in
the City. Upon that, the House called the sheriffs in and thanked them, and
requested the train-bands, under their commander Skippon, to guard the House of
Commons every day. Then, came four thousand men on horseback out of
Buckinghamshire, offering their services as a guard too, and bearing a petition
to the King, complaining of the injury that had been done to Mr. Hampden, who
was their county man and much beloved and honoured.
When the King set off
for Hampton Court, the gentlemen and soldiers who had been with him followed
him out of town as far as Kingston-upon-Thames; next day, Lord Digby came to
them from the King at Hampton Court, in his coach and six, to inform them that
the King accepted their protection. This, the Parliament said, was making war
against the kingdom, and Lord Digby fled abroad. The Parliament then
immediately applied themselves to getting hold of the military power of the
country, well knowing that the King was already trying hard to use it against
them, and that he had secretly sent the Earl of Newcastle to Hull, to secure a
valuable magazine of arms and gunpowder that was there. In those times, every
county had its own magazines of arms and powder, for its own train-bands or
militia; so, the Parliament brought in a bill claiming the right (which up to
this time had belonged to the King) of appointing the Lord Lieutenants of
counties, who commanded these train-bands; also, of having all the forts,
castles, and garrisons in the kingdom, put into the hands of such governors as
they, the Parliament, could confide in. It also passed a law depriving the
Bishops of their votes. The King gave his assent to that bill, but would not
abandon the right of appointing the Lord Lieutenants, though he said he was
willing to appoint such as might be suggested to him by the Parliament. When
the Earl of Pembroke asked him whether he would not give way on that question
for a time, he said, ’By God! not for one hour!’ and upon this he and the
Parliament went to war.
His young daughter was
betrothed to the Prince of Orange. On pretence of taking her to the country of
her future husband, the Queen was already got safely away to Holland, there to
pawn the Crown jewels for money to raise an army on the King’s side. The Lord
Admiral being sick, the House of Commons now named the Earl of Warwick to hold
his place for a year. The King named another gentleman; the House of Commons
took its own way, and the Earl of Warwick became Lord Admiral without the King’s
consent. The Parliament sent orders down to Hull to have that magazine removed
to London; the King went down to Hull to take it himself. The citizens would
not admit him into the town, and the governor would not admit him into the
castle. The Parliament resolved that whatever the two Houses passed, and the
King would not consent to, should be called an ORDINANCE, and should be as much
a law as if he did consent to it. The King protested against this, and gave
notice that these ordinances were not to be obeyed. The King, attended by the
majority of the House of Peers, and by many members of the House of Commons,
established himself at York. The Chancellor went to him with the Great Seal,
and the Parliament made a new Great Seal. The Queen sent over a ship full of
arms and ammunition, and the King issued letters to borrow money at high
interest. The Parliament raised twenty regiments of foot and seventy-five
troops of horse; and the people willingly aided them with their money, plate,
jewellery, and trinkets--the married women even with their wedding-rings. Every
member of Parliament who could raise a troop or a regiment in his own part of
the country, dressed it according to his taste and in his own colours, and
commanded it. Foremost among them all, OLIVER CROMWELL raised a troop of
horse--thoroughly in earnest and thoroughly well armed--who were, perhaps, the
best soldiers that ever were seen.
In some of their
proceedings, this famous Parliament passed the bounds of previous law and
custom, yielded to and favoured riotous assemblages of the people, and acted
tyrannically in imprisoning some who differed from the popular leaders. But
again, you are always to remember that the twelve years during which the King
had had his own wilful way, had gone before; and that nothing could make the
times what they might, could, would, or should have been, if those twelve years
had never rolled away.
I SHALL not try to
relate the particulars of the great civil war between King Charles the First
and the Long Parliament, which lasted nearly four years, and a full account of
which would fill many large books. It was a sad thing that Englishmen should
once more be fighting against Englishmen on English ground; but, it is some
consolation to know that on both sides there was great humanity, forbearance,
and honour. The soldiers of the Parliament were far more remarkable for these
good qualities than the soldiers of the King (many of whom fought for mere pay
without much caring for the cause); but those of the nobility and gentry who
were on the King’s side were so brave, and so faithful to him, that their
conduct cannot but command our highest admiration. Among them were great
numbers of Catholics, who took the royal side because the Queen was so strongly
of their persuasion.
The King might have
distinguished some of these gallant spirits, if he had been as generous a
spirit himself, by giving them the command of his army. Instead of that,
however, true to his old high notions of royalty, he entrusted it to his two
nephews, PRINCE RUPERT and PRINCE MAURICE, who were of royal blood and came
over from abroad to help him. It might have been better for him if they had
stayed away; since Prince Rupert was an impetuous, hot-headed fellow, whose
only idea was to dash into battle at all times and seasons, and lay about him.
The general-in-chief of
the Parliamentary army was the Earl of Essex, a gentleman of honour and an
excellent soldier. A little while before the war broke out, there had been some
rioting at Westminster between certain officious law students and noisy
soldiers, and the shopkeepers and their apprentices, and the general people in
the streets. At that time the King’s friends called the crowd, Roundheads,
because the apprentices wore short hair; the crowd, in return, called their
opponents Cavaliers, meaning that they were a blustering set, who pretended to
be very military. These two words now began to be used to distinguish the two
sides in the civil war. The Royalists also called the Parliamentary men Rebels
and Rogues, while the Parliamentary men called THEM Malignants, and spoke of
themselves as the Godly, the Honest, and so forth.
The war broke out at
Portsmouth, where that double traitor Goring had again gone over to the King
and was besieged by the Parliamentary troops. Upon this, the King proclaimed
the Earl of Essex and the officers serving under him, traitors, and called upon
his loyal subjects to meet him in arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of
August. But his loyal subjects came about him in scanty numbers, and it was a
windy, gloomy day, and the Royal Standard got blown down, and the whole affair
was very melancholy. The chief engagements after this, took place in the vale
of the Red Horse near Banbury, at Brentford, at Devizes, at Chalgrave Field
(where Mr. Hampden was so sorely wounded while fighting at the head of his men,
that he died within a week), at Newbury (in which battle LORD FALKLAND, one of
the best noblemen on the King’s side, was killed), at Leicester, at Naseby, at
Winchester, at Marston Moor near York, at Newcastle, and in many other parts of
England and Scotland. These battles were attended with various successes. At
one time, the King was victorious; at another time, the Parliament. But almost
all the great and busy towns were against the King; and when it was considered
necessary to fortify London, all ranks of people, from labouring men and women,
up to lords and ladies, worked hard together with heartiness and good will. The
most distinguished leaders on the Parliamentary side were HAMPDEN, SIR THOMAS
FAIRFAX, and, above all, OLIVER CROMWELL, and his son-in-law IRETON.
During the whole of
this war, the people, to whom it was very expensive and irksome, and to whom it
was made the more distressing by almost every family being divided--some of its
members attaching themselves to one side and some to the other--were over and
over again most anxious for peace. So were some of the best men in each cause.
Accordingly, treaties of peace were discussed between commissioners from the
Parliament and the King; at York, at Oxford (where the King held a little
Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. But they came to nothing. In all these
negotiations, and in all his difficulties, the King showed himself at his best.
He was courageous, cool, self-possessed, and clever; but, the old taint of his
character was always in him, and he was never for one single moment to be trusted.
Lord Clarendon, the historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes that he
had unhappily promised the Queen never to make peace without her consent, and
that this must often be taken as his excuse. He never kept his word from night
to morning. He signed a cessation of hostilities with the blood-stained Irish
rebels for a sum of money, and invited the Irish regiments over, to help him
against the Parliament. In the battle of Naseby, his cabinet was seized and was
found to contain a correspondence with the Queen, in which he expressly told
her that he had deceived the Parliament--a mongrel Parliament, he called it
now, as an improvement on his old term of vipers--in pretending to recognise it
and to treat with it; and from which it further appeared that he had long been
in secret treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of ten thousand
men. Disappointed in this, he sent a most devoted friend of his, the EARL OF
GLAMORGAN, to Ireland, to conclude a secret treaty with the Catholic powers, to
send him an Irish army of ten thousand men; in return for which he was to
bestow great favours on the Catholic religion. And, when this treaty was
discovered in the carriage of a fighting Irish Archbishop who was killed in one
of the many skirmishes of those days, he basely denied and deserted his
attached friend, the Earl, on his being charged with high treason; and--even
worse than this--had left blanks in the secret instructions he gave him with
his own kingly hand, expressly that he might thus save himself.
At last, on the
twenty-seventh day of April, one thousand six hundred and forty-six, the King
found himself in the city of Oxford, so surrounded by the Parliamentary army
who were closing in upon him on all sides that he felt that if he would escape
he must delay no longer. So, that night, having altered the cut of his hair and
beard, he was dressed up as a servant and put upon a horse with a cloak
strapped behind him, and rode out of the town behind one of his own faithful
followers, with a clergyman of that country who knew the road well, for a
guide. He rode towards London as far as Harrow, and then altered his plans and
resolved, it would seem, to go to the Scottish camp. The Scottish men had been
invited over to help the Parliamentary army, and had a large force then in
England. The King was so desperately intriguing in everything he did, that it
is doubtful what he exactly meant by this step. He took it, anyhow, and
delivered himself up to the EARL OF LEVEN, the Scottish general-in-chief, who
treated him as an honourable prisoner. Negotiations between the Parliament on
the one hand and the Scottish authorities on the other, as to what should be
done with him, lasted until the following February. Then, when the King had
refused to the Parliament the concession of that old militia point for twenty
years, and had refused to Scotland the recognition of its Solemn League and
Covenant, Scotland got a handsome sum for its army and its help, and the King
into the bargain. He was taken, by certain Parliamentary commissioners
appointed to receive him, to one of his own houses, called Holmby House, near
Althorpe, in Northamptonshire.
While the Civil War was
still in progress, John Pym died, and was buried with great honour in
Westminster Abbey--not with greater honour than he deserved, for the liberties
of Englishmen owe a mighty debt to Pym and Hampden. The war was but newly over
when the Earl of Essex died, of an illness brought on by his having overheated
himself in a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. He, too, was buried in Westminster
Abbey, with great state. I wish it were not necessary to add that Archbishop
Laud died upon the scaffold when the war was not yet done. His trial lasted in
all nearly a year, and, it being doubtful even then whether the charges brought
against him amounted to treason, the odious old contrivance of the worst kings
was resorted to, and a bill of attainder was brought in against him. He was a
violently prejudiced and mischievous person; had had strong ear-cropping and
nose-splitting propensities, as you know; and had done a world of harm. But he
died peaceably, and like a brave old man.
WHEN the Parliament had
got the King into their hands, they became very anxious to get rid of their
army, in which Oliver Cromwell had begun to acquire great power; not only
because of his courage and high abilities, but because he professed to be very
sincere in the Scottish sort of Puritan religion that was then exceedingly
popular among the soldiers. They were as much opposed to the Bishops as to the
Pope himself; and the very privates, drummers, and trumpeters, had such an
inconvenient habit of starting up and preaching long-winded discourses, that I
would not have belonged to that army on any account.
So, the Parliament,
being far from sure but that the army might begin to preach and fight against
them now it had nothing else to do, proposed to disband the greater part of it,
to send another part to serve in Ireland against the rebels, and to keep only a
small force in England. But, the army would not consent to be broken up, except
upon its own conditions; and, when the Parliament showed an intention of
compelling it, it acted for itself in an unexpected manner. A certain cornet,
of the name of JOICE, arrived at Holmby House one night, attended by four
hundred horsemen, went into the King’s room with his hat in one hand and a
pistol in the other, and told the King that he had come to take him away. The
King was willing enough to go, and only stipulated that he should be publicly
required to do so next morning. Next morning, accordingly, he appeared on the
top of the steps of the house, and asked Comet Joice before his men and the
guard set there by the Parliament, what authority he had for taking him away?
To this Cornet Joice replied, ’The authority of the army.’ ’Have you a written
commission?’ said the King. Joice, pointing to his four hundred men on
horseback, replied, ’That is my commission.’ ’Well,’ said the King, smiling, as
if he were pleased, ’I never before read such a commission; but it is written
in fair and legible characters. This is a company of as handsome proper
gentlemen as I have seen a long while.’ He was asked where he would like to
live, and he said at Newmarket. So, to Newmarket he and Cornet Joice and the
four hundred horsemen rode; the King remarking, in the same smiling way, that
he could ride as far at a spell as Cornet Joice, or any man there.
The King quite
believed, I think, that the army were his friends. He said as much to Fairfax
when that general, Oliver Cromwell, and Ireton, went to persuade him to return
to the custody of the Parliament. He preferred to remain as he was, and
resolved to remain as he was. And when the army moved nearer and nearer London
to frighten the Parliament into yielding to their demands, they took the King
with them. It was a deplorable thing that England should be at the mercy of a
great body of soldiers with arms in their hands; but the King certainly
favoured them at this important time of his life, as compared with the more
lawful power that tried to control him. It must be added, however, that they
treated him, as yet, more respectfully and kindly than the Parliament had done.
They allowed him to be attended by his own servants, to be splendidly
entertained at various houses, and to see his children--at Cavesham House, near
Reading--for two days. Whereas, the Parliament had been rather hard with him,
and had only allowed him to ride out and play at bowls.
It is much to be
believed that if the King could have been trusted, even at this time, he might
have been saved. Even Oliver Cromwell expressly said that he did believe that
no man could enjoy his possessions in peace, unless the King had his rights. He
was not unfriendly towards the King; he had been present when he received his children,
and had been much affected by the pitiable nature of the scene; he saw the King
often; he frequently walked and talked with him in the long galleries and
pleasant gardens of the Palace at Hampton Court, whither he was now removed;
and in all this risked something of his influence with the army. But, the King
was in secret hopes of help from the Scottish people; and the moment he was
encouraged to join them he began to be cool to his new friends, the army, and
to tell the officers that they could not possibly do without him. At the very
time, too, when he was promising to make Cromwell and Ireton noblemen, if they
would help him up to his old height, he was writing to the Queen that he meant
to hang them. They both afterwards declared that they had been privately
informed that such a letter would be found, on a certain evening, sewed up in a
saddle which would be taken to the Blue Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover;
and that they went there, disguised as common soldiers, and sat drinking in the
inn-yard until a man came with the saddle, which they ripped up with their
knives, and therein found the letter. I see little reason to doubt the story.
It is certain that Oliver Cromwell told one of the King’s most faithful
followers that the King could not be trusted, and that he would not be
answerable if anything amiss were to happen to him. Still, even after that, he
kept a promise he had made to the King, by letting him know that there was a
plot with a certain portion of the army to seize him. I believe that, in fact,
he sincerely wanted the King to escape abroad, and so to be got rid of without
more trouble or danger. That Oliver himself had work enough with the army is
pretty plain; for some of the troops were so mutinous against him, and against
those who acted with him at this time, that he found it necessary to have one
man shot at the head of his regiment to overawe the rest.
The King, when he
received Oliver’s warning, made his escape from Hampton Court; after some
indecision and uncertainty, he went to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight.
At first, he was pretty free there; but, even there, he carried on a pretended
treaty with the Parliament, while he was really treating with commissioners
from Scotland to send an army into England to take his part. When he broke off
this treaty with the Parliament (having settled with Scotland) and was treated
as a prisoner, his treatment was not changed too soon, for he had plotted to
escape that very night to a ship sent by the Queen, which was lying off the
island.
He was doomed to be
disappointed in his hopes from Scotland. The agreement he had made with the
Scottish Commissioners was not favourable enough to the religion of that
country to please the Scottish clergy; and they preached against it. The
consequence was, that the army raised in Scotland and sent over, was too small
to do much; and that, although it was helped by a rising of the Royalists in
England and by good soldiers from Ireland, it could make no head against the
Parliamentary army under such men as Cromwell and Fairfax. The King’s eldest
son, the Prince of Wales, came over from Holland with nineteen ships (a part of
the English fleet having gone over to him) to help his father; but nothing came
of his voyage, and he was fain to return. The most remarkable event of this
second civil war was the cruel execution by the Parliamentary General, of SIR
CHARLES LUCAS and SIR GEORGE LISLE, two grand Royalist generals, who had
bravely defended Colchester under every disadvantage of famine and distress for
nearly three months. When Sir Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed
his body, and said to the soldiers who were to shoot him, ’Come nearer, and
make sure of me.’ ’I warrant you, Sir George,’ said one of the soldiers, ’we
shall hit you.’ ’AY?’ he returned with a smile, ’but I have been nearer to you,
my friends, many a time, and you have missed me.’
The Parliament, after
being fearfully bullied by the army--who demanded to have seven members whom
they disliked given up to them--had voted that they would have nothing more to
do with the King. On the conclusion, however, of this second civil war (which
did not last more than six months), they appointed commissioners to treat with
him. The King, then so far released again as to be allowed to live in a private
house at Newport in the Isle of Wight, managed his own part of the negotiation
with a sense that was admired by all who saw him, and gave up, in the end, all
that was asked of him--even yielding (which he had steadily refused, so far) to
the temporary abolition of the bishops, and the transfer of their church land
to the Crown. Still, with his old fatal vice upon him, when his best friends
joined the commissioners in beseeching him to yield all those points as the
only means of saving himself from the army, he was plotting to escape from the
island; he was holding correspondence with his friends and the Catholics in
Ireland, though declaring that he was not; and he was writing, with his own
hand, that in what he yielded he meant nothing but to get time to escape.
Matters were at this
pass when the army, resolved to defy the Parliament, marched up to London. The
Parliament, not afraid of them now, and boldly led by Hollis, voted that the
King’s concessions were sufficient ground for settling the peace of the
kingdom. Upon that, COLONEL RICH and COLONEL PRIDE went down to the House of
Commons with a regiment of horse soldiers and a regiment of foot; and Colonel
Pride, standing in the lobby with a list of the members who were obnoxious to
the army in his hand, had them pointed out to him as they came through, and
took them all into custody. This proceeding was afterwards called by the
people, for a joke, PRIDE’S PURGE. Cromwell was in the North, at the head of
his men, at the time, but when he came home, approved of what had been done.
What with imprisoning
some members and causing others to stay away, the army had now reduced the
House of Commons to some fifty or so. These soon voted that it was treason in a
king to make war against his parliament and his people, and sent an ordinance
up to the House of Lords for the King’s being tried as a traitor. The House of
Lords, then sixteen in number, to a man rejected it. Thereupon, the Commons
made an ordinance of their own, that they were the supreme government of the
country, and would bring the King to trial.
The King had been taken
for security to a place called Hurst Castle: a lonely house on a rock in the sea,
connected with the coast of Hampshire by a rough road two miles long at low
water. Thence, he was ordered to be removed to Windsor; thence, after being but
rudely used there, and having none but soldiers to wait upon him at table, he
was brought up to St. James’s Palace in London, and told that his trial was
appointed for next day.
On Saturday, the
twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and forty-nine, this memorable
trial began. The House of Commons had settled that one hundred and thirty-five
persons should form the Court, and these were taken from the House itself, from
among the officers of the army, and from among the lawyers and citizens. JOHN
BRADSHAW, serjeant-at-law, was appointed president. The place was Westminster
Hall. At the upper end, in a red velvet chair, sat the president, with his hat
(lined with plates of iron for his protection) on his head. The rest of the
Court sat on side benches, also wearing their hats. The King’s seat was covered
with velvet, like that of the president, and was opposite to it. He was brought
from St. James’s to Whitehall, and from Whitehall he came by water to his
trial.
When he came in, he
looked round very steadily on the Court, and on the great number of spectators,
and then sat down: presently he got up and looked round again. On the
indictment ’against Charles Stuart, for high treason,’ being read, he smiled
several times, and he denied the authority of the Court, saying that there
could be no parliament without a House of Lords, and that he saw no House of
Lords there. Also, that the King ought to be there, and that he saw no King in
the King’s right place. Bradshaw replied, that the Court was satisfied with its
authority, and that its authority was God’s authority and the kingdom’s. He
then adjourned the Court to the following Monday. On that day, the trial was
resumed, and went on all the week. When the Saturday came, as the King passed
forward to his place in the Hall, some soldiers and others cried for ’justice!’
and execution on him. That day, too, Bradshaw, like an angry Sultan, wore a red
robe, instead of the black robe he had worn before. The King was sentenced to
death that day. As he went out, one solitary soldier said, ’God bless you, Sir!’
For this, his officer struck him. The King said he thought the punishment
exceeded the offence. The silver head of his walking-stick had fallen off while
he leaned upon it, at one time of the trial. The accident seemed to disturb
him, as if he thought it ominous of the falling of his own head; and he admitted
as much, now it was all over.
Being taken back to
Whitehall, he sent to the House of Commons, saying that as the time of his
execution might be nigh, he wished he might be allowed to see his darling
children. It was granted. On the Monday he was taken back to St. James’s; and
his two children then in England, the PRINCESS ELIZABETH thirteen years old,
and the DUKE OF GLOUCESTER nine years old, were brought to take leave of him,
from Sion House, near Brentford. It was a sad and touching scene, when he
kissed and fondled those poor children, and made a little present of two
diamond seals to the Princess, and gave them tender messages to their mother
(who little deserved them, for she had a lover of her own whom she married soon
afterwards), and told them that he died ’for the laws and liberties of the
land.’ I am bound to say that I don’t think he did, but I dare say he believed
so.
There were ambassadors
from Holland that day, to intercede for the unhappy King, whom you and I both
wish the Parliament had spared; but they got no answer. The Scottish
Commissioners interceded too; so did the Prince of Wales, by a letter in which
he offered as the next heir to the throne, to accept any conditions from the
Parliament; so did the Queen, by letter likewise.
Notwithstanding all,
the warrant for the execution was this day signed. There is a story that as
Oliver Cromwell went to the table with the pen in his hand to put his signature
to it, he drew his pen across the face of one of the commissioners, who was
standing near, and marked it with ink. That commissioner had not signed his own
name yet, and the story adds that when he came to do it he marked Cromwell’s
face with ink in the same way.
The King slept well,
untroubled by the knowledge that it was his last night on earth, and rose on
the thirtieth of January, two hours before day, and dressed himself carefully.
He put on two shirts lest he should tremble with the cold, and had his hair
very carefully combed. The warrant had been directed to three officers of the
army, COLONEL HACKER, COLONEL HUNKS, and COLONEL PHAYER. At ten o’clock, the
first of these came to the door and said it was time to go to Whitehall. The
King, who had always been a quick walker, walked at his usual speed through the
Park, and called out to the guard, with his accustomed voice of command, ’March
on apace!’ When he came to Whitehall, he was taken to his own bedroom, where a
breakfast was set forth. As he had taken the Sacrament, he would eat nothing
more; but, at about the time when the church bells struck twelve at noon (for
he had to wait, through the scaffold not being ready), he took the advice of
the good BISHOP JUXON who was with him, and ate a little bread and drank a
glass of claret. Soon after he had taken this refreshment, Colonel Hacker came
to the chamber with the warrant in his hand, and called for Charles Stuart.
And then, through the
long gallery of Whitehall Palace, which he had often seen light and gay and
merry and crowded, in very different times, the fallen King passed along, until
he came to the centre window of the Banqueting House, through which he emerged
upon the scaffold, which was hung with black. He looked at the two
executioners, who were dressed in black and masked; he looked at the troops of
soldiers on horseback and on foot, and all looked up at him in silence; he
looked at the vast array of spectators, filling up the view beyond, and turning
all their faces upon him; he looked at his old Palace of St. James’s; and he
looked at the block. He seemed a little troubled to find that it was so low,
and asked, ’if there were no place higher?’ Then, to those upon the scaffold,
he said, ’that it was the Parliament who had begun the war, and not he; but he
hoped they might be guiltless too, as ill instruments had gone between them. In
one respect,’ he said, ’he suffered justly; and that was because he had
permitted an unjust sentence to be executed on another.’ In this he referred to
the Earl of Strafford.
He was not at all
afraid to die; but he was anxious to die easily. When some one touched the axe
while he was speaking, he broke off and called out, ’Take heed of the axe! take
heed of the axe!’ He also said to Colonel Hacker, ’Take care that they do not
put me to pain.’ He told the executioner, ’I shall say but very short prayers,
and then thrust out my hands’--as the sign to strike.
He put his hair up,
under a white satin cap which the bishop had carried, and said, ’I have a good
cause and a gracious God on my side.’ The bishop told him that he had but one stage
more to travel in this weary world, and that, though it was a turbulent and
troublesome stage, it was a short one, and would carry him a great way--all the
way from earth to Heaven. The King’s last word, as he gave his cloak and the
George--the decoration from his breast--to the bishop, was, ’Remember!’ He then
kneeled down, laid his head on the block, spread out his hands, and was
instantly killed. One universal groan broke from the crowd; and the soldiers,
who had sat on their horses and stood in their ranks immovable as statues, were
of a sudden all in motion, clearing the streets.
Thus, in the
forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the same time of his career as
Strafford had fallen in his, perished Charles the First. With all my sorrow for
him, I cannot agree with him that he died ’the martyr of the people;’ for the
people had been martyrs to him, and to his ideas of a King’s rights, long
before. Indeed, I am afraid that he was but a bad judge of martyrs; for he had
called that infamous Duke of Buckingham ’the Martyr of his Sovereign.’
BEFORE sunset on the
memorable day on which King Charles the First was executed, the House of
Commons passed an act declaring it treason in any one to proclaim the Prince of
Wales--or anybody else--King of England. Soon afterwards, it declared that the
House of Lords was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished; and
directed that the late King’s statue should be taken down from the Royal
Exchange in the City and other public places. Having laid hold of some famous
Royalists who had escaped from prison, and having beheaded the DUKE OF
HAMILTON, LORD HOLLAND, and LORD CAPEL, in Palace Yard (all of whom died very
courageously), they then appointed a Council of State to govern the country. It
consisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers. Bradshaw was made
president. The House of Commons also re-admitted members who had opposed the
King’s death, and made up its numbers to about a hundred and fifty.
But, it still had an
army of more than forty thousand men to deal with, and a very hard task it was
to manage them. Before the King’s execution, the army had appointed some of its
officers to remonstrate between them and the Parliament; and now the common
soldiers began to take that office upon themselves. The regiments under orders
for Ireland mutinied; one troop of horse in the city of London seized their own
flag, and refused to obey orders. For this, the ringleader was shot: which did
not mend the matter, for, both his comrades and the people made a public
funeral for him, and accompanied the body to the grave with sound of trumpets
and with a gloomy procession of persons carrying bundles of rosemary steeped in
blood. Oliver was the only man to deal with such difficulties as these, and he
soon cut them short by bursting at midnight into the town of Burford, near
Salisbury, where the mutineers were sheltered, taking four hundred of them
prisoners, and shooting a number of them by sentence of court-martial. The
soldiers soon found, as all men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled
with. And there was an end of the mutiny.
The Scottish Parliament
did not know Oliver yet; so, on hearing of the King’s execution, it proclaimed
the Prince of Wales King Charles the Second, on condition of his respecting the
Solemn League and Covenant. Charles was abroad at that time, and so was
Montrose, from whose help he had hopes enough to keep him holding on and off
with commissioners from Scotland, just as his father might have done. These
hopes were soon at an end; for, Montrose, having raised a few hundred exiles in
Germany, and landed with them in Scotland, found that the people there, instead
of joining him, deserted the country at his approach. He was soon taken prisoner
and carried to Edinburgh. There he was received with every possible insult, and
carried to prison in a cart, his officers going two and two before him. He was
sentenced by the Parliament to be hanged on a gallows thirty feet high, to have
his head set on a spike in Edinburgh, and his limbs distributed in other
places, according to the old barbarous manner. He said he had always acted
under the Royal orders, and only wished he had limbs enough to be distributed
through Christendom, that it might be the more widely known how loyal he had
been. He went to the scaffold in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold
end at thirty-eight years of age. The breath was scarcely out of his body when
Charles abandoned his memory, and denied that he had ever given him orders to
rise in his behalf. O the family failing was strong in that Charles then!
Oliver had been
appointed by the Parliament to command the army in Ireland, where he took a
terrible vengeance for the sanguinary rebellion, and made tremendous havoc,
particularly in the siege of Drogheda, where no quarter was given, and where he
found at least a thousand of the inhabitants shut up together in the great
church: every one of whom was killed by his soldiers, usually known as OLIVER’S
IRONSIDES. There were numbers of friars and priests among them, and Oliver
gruffly wrote home in his despatch that these were ’knocked on the head’ like
the rest.
But, Charles having got
over to Scotland where the men of the Solemn League and Covenant led him a
prodigiously dull life and made him very weary with long sermons and grim
Sundays, the Parliament called the redoubtable Oliver home to knock the
Scottish men on the head for setting up that Prince. Oliver left his
son-in-law, Ireton, as general in Ireland in his stead (he died there
afterwards), and he imitated the example of his father-in-law with such good
will that he brought the country to subjection, and laid it at the feet of the
Parliament. In the end, they passed an act for the settlement of Ireland,
generally pardoning all the common people, but exempting from this grace such
of the wealthier sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, or in any killing
of Protestants, or who refused to lay down their arms. Great numbers of Irish
were got out of the country to serve under Catholic powers abroad, and a
quantity of land was declared to have been forfeited by past offences, and was
given to people who had lent money to the Parliament early in the war. These
were sweeping measures; but, if Oliver Cromwell had had his own way fully, and
had stayed in Ireland, he would have done more yet.
However, as I have
said, the Parliament wanted Oliver for Scotland; so, home Oliver came, and was
made Commander of all the Forces of the Commonwealth of England, and in three
days away he went with sixteen thousand soldiers to fight the Scottish men.
Now, the Scottish men, being then--as you will generally find them now--mighty
cautious, reflected that the troops they had were not used to war like the
Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open fight. Therefore they said, ’If we
live quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here, and if all the farmers come into
the town and desert the country, the Ironsides will be driven out by iron
hunger and be forced to go away.’ This was, no doubt, the wisest plan; but as
the Scottish clergy WOULD interfere with what they knew nothing about, and
would perpetually preach long sermons exhorting the soldiers to come out and
fight, the soldiers got it in their heads that they absolutely must come out and
fight. Accordingly, in an evil hour for themselves, they came out of their safe
position. Oliver fell upon them instantly, and killed three thousand, and took
ten thousand prisoners.
To gratify the Scottish
Parliament, and preserve their favour, Charles had signed a declaration they
laid before him, reproaching the memory of his father and mother, and
representing himself as a most religious Prince, to whom the Solemn League and
Covenant was as dear as life. He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon afterwards
galloped away on horseback to join some tiresome Highland friends, who were
always flourishing dirks and broadswords. He was overtaken and induced to
return; but this attempt, which was called ’The Start,’ did him just so much
service, that they did not preach quite such long sermons at him afterwards as
they had done before.
On the first of
January, one thousand six hundred and fifty-one, the Scottish people crowned
him at Scone. He immediately took the chief command of an army of twenty
thousand men, and marched to Stirling. His hopes were heightened, I dare say,
by the redoubtable Oliver being ill of an ague; but Oliver scrambled out of bed
in no time, and went to work with such energy that he got behind the Royalist
army and cut it off from all communication with Scotland. There was nothing for
it then, but to go on to England; so it went on as far as Worcester, where the
mayor and some of the gentry proclaimed King Charles the Second straightway.
His proclamation, however, was of little use to him, for very few Royalists
appeared; and, on the very same day, two people were publicly beheaded on Tower
Hill for espousing his cause. Up came Oliver to Worcester too, at double quick
speed, and he and his Ironsides so laid about them in the great battle which
was fought there, that they completely beat the Scottish men, and destroyed the
Royalist army; though the Scottish men fought so gallantly that it took five
hours to do.
The escape of Charles
after this battle of Worcester did him good service long afterwards, for it
induced many of the generous English people to take a romantic interest in him,
and to think much better of him than he ever deserved. He fled in the night,
with not more than sixty followers, to the house of a Catholic lady in
Staffordshire. There, for his greater safety, the whole sixty left him. He
cropped his hair, stained his face and hands brown as if they were sunburnt,
put on the clothes of a labouring countryman, and went out in the morning with
his axe in his hand, accompanied by four wood-cutters who were brothers, and
another man who was their brother-in-law. These good fellows made a bed for him
under a tree, as the weather was very bad; and the wife of one of them brought
him food to eat; and the old mother of the four brothers came and fell down on
her knees before him in the wood, and thanked God that her sons were engaged in
saving his life. At night, he came out of the forest and went on to another
house which was near the river Severn, with the intention of passing into
Wales; but the place swarmed with soldiers, and the bridges were guarded, and all
the boats were made fast. So, after lying in a hayloft covered over with hay,
for some time, he came out of his place, attended by COLONEL CARELESS, a
Catholic gentleman who had met him there, and with whom he lay hid, all next
day, up in the shady branches of a fine old oak. It was lucky for the King that
it was September-time, and that the leaves had not begun to fall, since he and
the Colonel, perched up in this tree, could catch glimpses of the soldiers
riding about below, and could hear the crash in the wood as they went about
beating the boughs.
After this, he walked
and walked until his feet were all blistered; and, having been concealed all
one day in a house which was searched by the troopers while he was there, went
with LORD WILMOT, another of his good friends, to a place called Bentley, where
one MISS LANE, a Protestant lady, had obtained a pass to be allowed to ride
through the guards to see a relation of hers near Bristol. Disguised as a
servant, he rode in the saddle before this young lady to the house of SIR JOHN
WINTER, while Lord Wilmot rode there boldly, like a plain country gentleman,
with dogs at his heels. It happened that Sir John Winter’s butler had been
servant in Richmond Palace, and knew Charles the moment he set eyes upon him; but,
the butler was faithful and kept the secret. As no ship could be found to carry
him abroad, it was planned that he should go--still travelling with Miss Lane
as her servant--to another house, at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire; and
then Miss Lane and her cousin, MR. LASCELLES, who had gone on horseback beside
her all the way, went home. I hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin,
for I am sure she must have been a brave, kind girl. If I had been that cousin,
I should certainly have loved Miss Lane.
When Charles, lonely
for the loss of Miss Lane, was safe at Trent, a ship was hired at Lyme, the
master of which engaged to take two gentlemen to France. In the evening of the
same day, the King--now riding as servant before another young lady--set off
for a public-house at a place called Charmouth, where the captain of the vessel
was to take him on board. But, the captain’s wife, being afraid of her husband
getting into trouble, locked him up and would not let him sail. Then they went
away to Bridport; and, coming to the inn there, found the stable-yard full of
soldiers who were on the look-out for Charles, and who talked about him while
they drank. He had such presence of mind, that he led the horses of his party
through the yard as any other servant might have done, and said, ’Come out of
the way, you soldiers; let us have room to pass here!’ As he went along, he met
a half-tipsy ostler, who rubbed his eyes and said to him, ’Why, I was formerly
servant to Mr. Potter at Exeter, and surely I have sometimes seen you there,
young man?’ He certainly had, for Charles had lodged there. His ready answer
was, ’Ah, I did live with him once; but I have no time to talk now. We’ll have
a pot of beer together when I come back.’
From this dangerous
place he returned to Trent, and lay there concealed several days. Then he
escaped to Heale, near Salisbury; where, in the house of a widow lady, he was
hidden five days, until the master of a collier lying off Shoreham in Sussex,
undertook to convey a ’gentleman’ to France. On the night of the fifteenth of
October, accompanied by two colonels and a merchant, the King rode to Brighton,
then a little fishing village, to give the captain of the ship a supper before
going on board; but, so many people knew him, that this captain knew him too,
and not only he, but the landlord and landlady also. Before he went away, the
landlord came behind his chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to live to
be a lord and to see his wife a lady; at which Charles laughed. They had had a good
supper by this time, and plenty of smoking and drinking, at which the King was
a first-rate hand; so, the captain assured him that he would stand by him, and
he did. It was agreed that the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that
Charles should address the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who was
running away from his creditors, and that he hoped they would join him in
persuading the captain to put him ashore in France. As the King acted his part
very well indeed, and gave the sailors twenty shillings to drink, they begged
the captain to do what such a worthy gentleman asked. He pretended to yield to
their entreaties, and the King got safe to Normandy.
Ireland being now
subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by plenty of forts and soldiers put there by
Oliver, the Parliament would have gone on quietly enough, as far as fighting
with any foreign enemy went, but for getting into trouble with the Dutch, who
in the spring of the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-one sent a fleet
into the Downs under their ADMIRAL VAN TROMP, to call upon the bold English
ADMIRAL BLAKE (who was there with half as many ships as the Dutch) to strike
his flag. Blake fired a raging broadside instead, and beat off Van Tromp; who,
in the autumn, came back again with seventy ships, and challenged the bold
Blake--who still was only half as strong--to fight him. Blake fought him all
day; but, finding that the Dutch were too many for him, got quietly off at
night. What does Van Tromp upon this, but goes cruising and boasting about the
Channel, between the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight, with a great Dutch
broom tied to his masthead, as a sign that he could and would sweep the English
of the sea! Within three months, Blake lowered his tone though, and his broom
too; for, he and two other bold commanders, DEAN and MONK, fought him three
whole days, took twenty-three of his ships, shivered his broom to pieces, and
settled his business.
Things were no sooner
quiet again, than the army began to complain to the Parliament that they were
not governing the nation properly, and to hint that they thought they could do
it better themselves. Oliver, who had now made up his mind to be the head of
the state, or nothing at all, supported them in this, and called a meeting of
officers and his own Parliamentary friends, at his lodgings in Whitehall, to
consider the best way of getting rid of the Parliament. It had now lasted just
as many years as the King’s unbridled power had lasted, before it came into
existence. The end of the deliberation was, that Oliver went down to the House
in his usual plain black dress, with his usual grey worsted stockings, but with
an unusual party of soldiers behind him. These last he left in the lobby, and
then went in and sat down. Presently he got up, made the Parliament a speech,
told them that the Lord had done with them, stamped his foot and said, ’You are
no Parliament. Bring them in! Bring them in!’ At this signal the door flew
open, and the soldiers appeared. ’This is not honest,’ said Sir Harry Vane, one
of the members. ’Sir Harry Vane!’ cried Cromwell; ’O, Sir Harry Vane! The Lord
deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!’ Then he pointed out members one by one, and
said this man was a drunkard, and that man a dissipated fellow, and that man a
liar, and so on. Then he caused the Speaker to be walked out of his chair, told
the guard to clear the House, called the mace upon the table--which is a sign
that the House is sitting--’a fool’s bauble,’ and said, ’here, carry it away!’
Being obeyed in all these orders, he quietly locked the door, put the key in
his pocket, walked back to Whitehall again, and told his friends, who were
still assembled there, what he had done.
They formed a new
Council of State after this extraordinary proceeding, and got a new Parliament
together in their own way: which Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon, and
which he said was the beginning of a perfect heaven upon earth. In this
Parliament there sat a well-known leather-seller, who had taken the singular
name of Praise God Barebones, and from whom it was called, for a joke,
Barebones’s Parliament, though its general name was the Little Parliament. As
it soon appeared that it was not going to put Oliver in the first place, it
turned out to be not at all like the beginning of heaven upon earth, and Oliver
said it really was not to be borne with. So he cleared off that Parliament in
much the same way as he had disposed of the other; and then the council of
officers decided that he must be made the supreme authority of the kingdom, under
the title of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.
So, on the sixteenth of
December, one thousand six hundred and fifty-three, a great procession was
formed at Oliver’s door, and he came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair
of boots, and got into his coach and went down to Westminster, attended by the
judges, and the lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all the other great and
wonderful personages of the country. There, in the Court of Chancery, he
publicly accepted the office of Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, and the City
sword was handed to him, and the seal was handed to him, and all the other
things were handed to him which are usually handed to Kings and Queens on state
occasions. When Oliver had handed them all back, he was quite made and
completely finished off as Lord Protector; and several of the Ironsides
preached about it at great length, all the evening.
OLIVER CROMWELL--whom
the people long called OLD NOLL--in accepting the office of Protector, had
bound himself by a certain paper which was handed to him, called ’the
Instrument,’ to summon a Parliament, consisting of between four and five
hundred members, in the election of which neither the Royalists nor the
Catholics were to have any share. He had also pledged himself that this
Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent until it had sat
five months.
When this Parliament
met, Oliver made a speech to them of three hours long, very wisely advising
them what to do for the credit and happiness of the country. To keep down the
more violent members, he required them to sign a recognition of what they were
forbidden by ’the Instrument’ to do; which was, chiefly, to take the power from
one single person at the head of the state or to command the army. Then he
dismissed them to go to work. With his usual vigour and resolution he went to
work himself with some frantic preachers--who were rather overdoing their
sermons in calling him a villain and a tyrant--by shutting up their chapels,
and sending a few of them off to prison.
There was not at that
time, in England or anywhere else, a man so able to govern the country as
Oliver Cromwell. Although he ruled with a strong hand, and levied a very heavy
tax on the Royalists (but not until they had plotted against his life), he
ruled wisely, and as the times required. He caused England to be so respected
abroad, that I wish some lords and gentlemen who have governed it under kings
and queens in later days would have taken a leaf out of Oliver Cromwell’s book.
He sent bold Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean Sea, to make the Duke of
Tuscany pay sixty thousand pounds for injuries he had done to British subjects,
and spoliation he had committed on English merchants. He further despatched him
and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, to have every English ship and
every English man delivered up to him that had been taken by pirates in those
parts. All this was gloriously done; and it began to be thoroughly well known,
all over the world, that England was governed by a man in earnest, who would
not allow the English name to be insulted or slighted anywhere.
These were not all his
foreign triumphs. He sent a fleet to sea against the Dutch; and the two powers,
each with one hundred ships upon its side, met in the English Channel off the
North Foreland, where the fight lasted all day long. Dean was killed in this
fight; but Monk, who commanded in the same ship with him, threw his cloak over
his body, that the sailors might not know of his death, and be disheartened.
Nor were they. The English broadsides so exceedingly astonished the Dutch that
they sheered off at last, though the redoubtable Van Tromp fired upon them with
his own guns for deserting their flag. Soon afterwards, the two fleets engaged
again, off the coast of Holland. There, the valiant Van Tromp was shot through
the heart, and the Dutch gave in, and peace was made.
Further than this,
Oliver resolved not to bear the domineering and bigoted conduct of Spain, which
country not only claimed a right to all the gold and silver that could be found
in South America, and treated the ships of all other countries who visited
those regions, as pirates, but put English subjects into the horrible Spanish
prisons of the Inquisition. So, Oliver told the Spanish ambassador that English
ships must be free to go wherever they would, and that English merchants must
not be thrown into those same dungeons, no, not for the pleasure of all the
priests in Spain. To this, the Spanish ambassador replied that the gold and
silver country, and the Holy Inquisition, were his King’s two eyes, neither of
which he could submit to have put out. Very well, said Oliver, then he was
afraid he (Oliver) must damage those two eyes directly.
So, another fleet was
despatched under two commanders, PENN and VENABLES, for Hispaniola; where,
however, the Spaniards got the better of the fight. Consequently, the fleet
came home again, after taking Jamaica on the way. Oliver, indignant with the
two commanders who had not done what bold Admiral Blake would have done,
clapped them both into prison, declared war against Spain, and made a treaty
with France, in virtue of which it was to shelter the King and his brother the
Duke of York no longer. Then, he sent a fleet abroad under bold Admiral Blake,
which brought the King of Portugal to his senses--just to keep its hand in--and
then engaged a Spanish fleet, sunk four great ships, and took two more, laden
with silver to the value of two millions of pounds: which dazzling prize was
brought from Portsmouth to London in waggons, with the populace of all the
towns and villages through which the waggons passed, shouting with all their
might. After this victory, bold Admiral Blake sailed away to the port of Santa
Cruz to cut off the Spanish treasure-ships coming from Mexico. There, he found
them, ten in number, with seven others to take care of them, and a big castle,
and seven batteries, all roaring and blazing away at him with great guns. Blake
cared no more for great guns than for pop-guns--no more for their hot iron balls
than for snow-balls. He dashed into the harbour, captured and burnt every one
of the ships, and came sailing out again triumphantly, with the victorious
English flag flying at his masthead. This was the last triumph of this great
commander, who had sailed and fought until he was quite worn out. He died, as
his successful ship was coming into Plymouth Harbour amidst the joyful
acclamations of the people, and was buried in state in Westminster Abbey. Not
to lie there, long.
Over and above all
this, Oliver found that the VAUDOIS, or Protestant people of the valleys of
Lucerne, were insolently treated by the Catholic powers, and were even put to
death for their religion, in an audacious and bloody manner. Instantly, he
informed those powers that this was a thing which Protestant England would not
allow; and he speedily carried his point, through the might of his great name,
and established their right to worship God in peace after their own harmless
manner.
Lastly, his English
army won such admiration in fighting with the French against the Spaniards,
that, after they had assaulted the town of Dunkirk together, the French King in
person gave it up to the English, that it might be a token to them of their
might and valour.
There were plots enough
against Oliver among the frantic religionists (who called themselves Fifth
Monarchy Men), and among the disappointed Republicans. He had a difficult game
to play, for the Royalists were always ready to side with either party against
him. The ’King over the water,’ too, as Charles was called, had no scruples
about plotting with any one against his life; although there is reason to
suppose that he would willingly have married one of his daughters, if Oliver
would have had such a son-in-law. There was a certain COLONEL SAXBY of the
army, once a great supporter of Oliver’s but now turned against him, who was a
grievous trouble to him through all this part of his career; and who came and
went between the discontented in England and Spain, and Charles who put himself
in alliance with Spain on being thrown off by France. This man died in prison
at last; but not until there had been very serious plots between the Royalists
and Republicans, and an actual rising of them in England, when they burst into
the city of Salisbury, on a Sunday night, seized the judges who were going to
hold the assizes there next day, and would have hanged them but for the
merciful objections of the more temperate of their number. Oliver was so
vigorous and shrewd that he soon put this revolt down, as he did most other
conspiracies; and it was well for one of its chief managers--that same Lord
Wilmot who had assisted in Charles’s flight, and was now EARL OF
ROCHESTER--that he made his escape. Oliver seemed to have eyes and ears
everywhere, and secured such sources of information as his enemies little
dreamed of. There was a chosen body of six persons, called the Sealed Knot, who
were in the closest and most secret confidence of Charles. One of the foremost
of these very men, a SIR RICHARD WILLIS, reported to Oliver everything that
passed among them, and had two hundred a year for it.
MILES SYNDARCOMB, also
of the old army, was another conspirator against the Protector. He and a man
named CECIL, bribed one of his Life Guards to let them have good notice when he
was going out--intending to shoot him from a window. But, owing either to his
caution or his good fortune, they could never get an aim at him. Disappointed
in this design, they got into the chapel in Whitehall, with a basketful of
combustibles, which were to explode by means of a slow match in six hours;
then, in the noise and confusion of the fire, they hoped to kill Oliver. But,
the Life Guardsman himself disclosed this plot; and they were seized, and Miles
died (or killed himself in prison) a little while before he was ordered for
execution. A few such plotters Oliver caused to be beheaded, a few more to be
hanged, and many more, including those who rose in arms against him, to be sent
as slaves to the West Indies. If he were rigid, he was impartial too, in
asserting the laws of England. When a Portuguese nobleman, the brother of the
Portuguese ambassador, killed a London citizen in mistake for another man with
whom he had had a quarrel, Oliver caused him to be tried before a jury of
Englishmen and foreigners, and had him executed in spite of the entreaties of
all the ambassadors in London.
One of Oliver’s own
friends, the DUKE OF OLDENBURGH, in sending him a present of six fine
coach-horses, was very near doing more to please the Royalists than all the
plotters put together. One day, Oliver went with his coach, drawn by these six
horses, into Hyde Park, to dine with his secretary and some of his other
gentlemen under the trees there. After dinner, being merry, he took it into his
head to put his friends inside and to drive them home: a postillion riding one
of the foremost horses, as the custom was. On account of Oliver’s being too
free with the whip, the six fine horses went off at a gallop, the postillion
got thrown, and Oliver fell upon the coach-pole and narrowly escaped being shot
by his own pistol, which got entangled with his clothes in the harness, and
went off. He was dragged some distance by the foot, until his foot came out of
the shoe, and then he came safely to the ground under the broad body of the
coach, and was very little the worse. The gentlemen inside were only bruised,
and the discontented people of all parties were much disappointed.
The rest of the history
of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell is a history of his Parliaments. His
first one not pleasing him at all, he waited until the five months were out,
and then dissolved it. The next was better suited to his views; and from that
he desired to get--if he could with safety to himself--the title of King. He
had had this in his mind some time: whether because he thought that the English
people, being more used to the title, were more likely to obey it; or whether
because he really wished to be a king himself, and to leave the succession to
that title in his family, is far from clear. He was already as high, in England
and in all the world, as he would ever be, and I doubt if he cared for the mere
name. However, a paper, called the ’Humble Petition and Advice,’ was presented
to him by the House of Commons, praying him to take a high title and to appoint
his successor. That he would have taken the title of King there is no doubt,
but for the strong opposition of the army. This induced him to forbear, and to
assent only to the other points of the petition. Upon which occasion there was
another grand show in Westminster Hall, when the Speaker of the House of
Commons formally invested him with a purple robe lined with ermine, and
presented him with a splendidly bound Bible, and put a golden sceptre in his
hand. The next time the Parliament met, he called a House of Lords of sixty
members, as the petition gave him power to do; but as that Parliament did not
please him either, and would not proceed to the business of the country, he
jumped into a coach one morning, took six Guards with him, and sent them to the
right-about. I wish this had been a warning to Parliaments to avoid long
speeches, and do more work.
It was the month of
August, one thousand six hundred and fifty-eight, when Oliver Cromwell’s
favourite daughter, ELIZABETH CLAYPOLE (who had lately lost her youngest son),
lay very ill, and his mind was greatly troubled, because he loved her dearly.
Another of his daughters was married to LORD FALCONBERG, another to the
grandson of the Earl of Warwick, and he had made his son RICHARD one of the
Members of the Upper House. He was very kind and loving to them all, being a
good father and a good husband; but he loved this daughter the best of the
family, and went down to Hampton Court to see her, and could hardly be induced
to stir from her sick room until she died. Although his religion had been of a
gloomy kind, his disposition had been always cheerful. He had been fond of
music in his home, and had kept open table once a week for all officers of the
army not below the rank of captain, and had always preserved in his house a
quiet, sensible dignity. He encouraged men of genius and learning, and loved to
have them about him. MILTON was one of his great friends. He was good humoured
too, with the nobility, whose dresses and manners were very different from his;
and to show them what good information he had, he would sometimes jokingly tell
them when they were his guests, where they had last drunk the health of the ’King
over the water,’ and would recommend them to be more private (if they could)
another time. But he had lived in busy times, had borne the weight of heavy
State affairs, and had often gone in fear of his life. He was ill of the gout
and ague; and when the death of his beloved child came upon him in addition, he
sank, never to raise his head again. He told his physicians on the
twenty-fourth of August that the Lord had assured him that he was not to die in
that illness, and that he would certainly get better. This was only his sick
fancy, for on the third of September, which was the anniversary of the great
battle of Worcester, and the day of the year which he called his fortunate day,
he died, in the sixtieth year of his age. He had been delirious, and had lain
insensible some hours, but he had been overheard to murmur a very good prayer
the day before. The whole country lamented his death. If you want to know the
real worth of Oliver Cromwell, and his real services to his country, you can
hardly do better than compare England under him, with England under CHARLES THE
SECOND.
He had appointed his
son Richard to succeed him, and after there had been, at Somerset House in the
Strand, a lying in state more splendid than sensible--as all such vanities
after death are, I think--Richard became Lord Protector. He was an amiable
country gentleman, but had none of his father’s great genius, and was quite
unfit for such a post in such a storm of parties. Richard’s Protectorate, which
only lasted a year and a half, is a history of quarrels between the officers of
the army and the Parliament, and between the officers among themselves; and of
a growing discontent among the people, who had far too many long sermons and
far too few amusements, and wanted a change. At last, General Monk got the army
well into his own hands, and then in pursuance of a secret plan he seems to
have entertained from the time of Oliver’s death, declared for the King’s
cause. He did not do this openly; but, in his place in the House of Commons, as
one of the members for Devonshire, strongly advocated the proposals of one SIR
JOHN GREENVILLE, who came to the House with a letter from Charles, dated from
Breda, and with whom he had previously been in secret communication. There had
been plots and counterplots, and a recall of the last members of the Long
Parliament, and an end of the Long Parliament, and risings of the Royalists
that were made too soon; and most men being tired out, and there being no one
to head the country now great Oliver was dead, it was readily agreed to welcome
Charles Stuart. Some of the wiser and better members said--what was most
true--that in the letter from Breda, he gave no real promise to govern well,
and that it would be best to make him pledge himself beforehand as to what he
should be bound to do for the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, however, it
would be all right when he came, and he could not come too soon.
So, everybody found out
all in a moment that the country MUST be prosperous and happy, having another
Stuart to condescend to reign over it; and there was a prodigious firing off of
guns, lighting of bonfires, ringing of bells, and throwing up of caps. The
people drank the King’s health by thousands in the open streets, and everybody
rejoiced. Down came the Arms of the Commonwealth, up went the Royal Arms
instead, and out came the public money. Fifty thousand pounds for the King, ten
thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of York, five thousand pounds for his
brother the Duke of Gloucester. Prayers for these gracious Stuarts were put up
in all the churches; commissioners were sent to Holland (which suddenly found
out that Charles was a great man, and that it loved him) to invite the King
home; Monk and the Kentish grandees went to Dover, to kneel down before him as
he landed. He kissed and embraced Monk, made him ride in the coach with himself
and his brothers, came on to London amid wonderful shoutings, and passed
through the army at Blackheath on the twenty-ninth of May (his birthday), in
the year one thousand six hundred and sixty. Greeted by splendid dinners under
tents, by flags and tapestry streaming from all the houses, by delighted crowds
in all the streets, by troops of noblemen and gentlemen in rich dresses, by
City companies, train-bands, drummers, trumpeters, the great Lord Mayor, and
the majestic Aldermen, the King went on to Whitehall. On entering it, he
commemorated his Restoration with the joke that it really would seem to have
been his own fault that he had not come long ago, since everybody told him that
he had always wished for him with all his heart.
THERE never were such
profligate times in England as under Charles the Second. Whenever you see his
portrait, with his swarthy, ill-looking face and great nose, you may fancy him
in his Court at Whitehall, surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in
the kingdom (though they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling, indulging
in vicious conversation, and committing every kind of profligate excess. It has
been a fashion to call Charles the Second ’The Merry Monarch.’ Let me try to
give you a general idea of some of the merry things that were done, in the
merry days when this merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne, in merry
England.
The first merry
proceeding was--of course--to declare that he was one of the greatest, the
wisest, and the noblest kings that ever shone, like the blessed sun itself, on
this benighted earth. The next merry and pleasant piece of business was, for
the Parliament, in the humblest manner, to give him one million two hundred
thousand pounds a year, and to settle upon him for life that old disputed
tonnage and poundage which had been so bravely fought for. Then, General Monk
being made EARL OF ALBEMARLE, and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the
law went to work to see what was to be done to those persons (they were called
Regicides) who had been concerned in making a martyr of the late King. Ten of
these were merrily executed; that is to say, six of the judges, one of the
council, Colonel Hacker and another officer who had commanded the Guards, and
HUGH PETERS, a preacher who had preached against the martyr with all his heart.
These executions were so extremely merry, that every horrible circumstance
which Cromwell had abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. The hearts of
the sufferers were torn out of their living bodies; their bowels were burned
before their faces; the executioner cut jokes to the next victim, as he rubbed
his filthy hands together, that were reeking with the blood of the last; and
the heads of the dead were drawn on sledges with the living to the place of
suffering. Still, even so merry a monarch could not force one of these dying men
to say that he was sorry for what he had done. Nay, the most memorable thing
said among them was, that if the thing were to do again they would do it.
Sir Harry Vane, who had
furnished the evidence against Strafford, and was one of the most staunch of the
Republicans, was also tried, found guilty, and ordered for execution. When he
came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill, after conducting his own defence with
great power, his notes of what he had meant to say to the people were torn away
from him, and the drums and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown
his voice; for, the people had been so much impressed by what the Regicides had
calmly said with their last breath, that it was the custom now, to have the
drums and trumpets always under the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no
more than this: ’It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a dying man:’
and bravely died.
These merry scenes were
succeeded by another, perhaps even merrier. On the anniversary of the late King’s
death, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were torn out of
their graves in Westminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows
all day long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a
pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom would have dared to
look the living Oliver in the face for half a moment! Think, after you have
read this reign, what England was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his
grave, and what it was under this merry monarch who sold it, like a merry
Judas, over and over again.
Of course, the remains
of Oliver’s wife and daughter were not to be spared either, though they had
been most excellent women. The base clergy of that time gave up their bodies,
which had been buried in the Abbey, and--to the eternal disgrace of
England--they were thrown into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym
and of the brave and bold old Admiral Blake.
The clergy acted this
disgraceful part because they hoped to get the nonconformists, or dissenters,
thoroughly put down in this reign, and to have but one prayer-book and one
service for all kinds of people, no matter what their private opinions were.
This was pretty well, I think, for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the
Romish Church because people had a right to their own opinions in religious
matters. However, they carried it with a high hand, and a prayer-book was
agreed upon, in which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not
forgotten. An Act was passed, too, preventing any dissenter from holding any
office under any corporation. So, the regular clergy in their triumph were soon
as merry as the King. The army being by this time disbanded, and the King
crowned, everything was to go on easily for evermore.
I must say a word here
about the King’s family. He had not been long upon the throne when his brother
the Duke of Gloucester, and his sister the PRINCESS OF ORANGE, died within a
few months of each other, of small-pox. His remaining sister, the PRINCESS
HENRIETTA, married the DUKE OF ORLEANS, the brother of LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH,
King of France. His brother JAMES, DUKE OF YORK, was made High Admiral, and
by-and-by became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious sort of man, with
a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women in the country. He married, under
very discreditable circumstances, ANNE HYDE, the daughter of LORD CLARENDON,
then the King’s principal Minister--not at all a delicate minister either, but
doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace. It became important now
that the King himself should be married; and divers foreign Monarchs, not very
particular about the character of their son-in-law, proposed their daughters to
him. The KING OF PORTUGAL offered his daughter, CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA, and
fifty thousand pounds: in addition to which, the French King, who was
favourable to that match, offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The King of
Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen of Princesses, and
other hopes of gain. But the ready money carried the day, and Catherine came
over in state to her merry marriage.
The whole Court was a
great flaunting crowd of debauched men and shameless women; and Catherine’s
merry husband insulted and outraged her in every possible way, until she
consented to receive those worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to
degrade herself by their companionship. A MRS. PALMER, whom the King made LADY
CASTLEMAINE, and afterwards DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND, was one of the most powerful
of the bad women about the Court, and had great influence with the King nearly
all through his reign. Another merry lady named MOLL DAVIES, a dancer at the
theatre, was afterwards her rival. So was NELL GWYN, first an orange girl and
then an actress, who really had good in her, and of whom one of the worst
things I know is, that actually she does seem to have been fond of the King.
The first DUKE OF ST. ALBANS was this orange girl’s child. In like manner the
son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King created DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH, became
the DUKE OF RICHMOND. Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to be a commoner.
The Merry Monarch was
so exceedingly merry among these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and
equally infamous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon got through his hundred
thousand pounds, and then, by way of raising a little pocket-money, made a
merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French King for five millions of livres.
When I think of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwell raised England in the eyes
of foreign powers, and when I think of the manner in which he gained for
England this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined to consider that if the Merry
Monarch had been made to follow his father for this action, he would have
received his just deserts.
Though he was like his
father in none of that father’s greater qualities, he was like him in being
worthy of no trust. When he sent that letter to the Parliament, from Breda, he
did expressly promise that all sincere religious opinions should be respected.
Yet he was no sooner firm in his power than he consented to one of the worst
Acts of Parliament ever passed. Under this law, every minister who should not
give his solemn assent to the Prayer-Book by a certain day, was declared to be
a minister no longer, and to be deprived of his church. The consequence of this
was that some two thousand honest men were taken from their congregations, and
reduced to dire poverty and distress. It was followed by another outrageous
law, called the Conventicle Act, by which any person above the age of sixteen
who was present at any religious service not according to the Prayer-Book, was
to be imprisoned three months for the first offence, six for the second, and to
be transported for the third. This Act alone filled the prisons, which were
then most dreadful dungeons, to overflowing.
The Covenanters in
Scotland had already fared no better. A base Parliament, usually known as the
Drunken Parliament, in consequence of its principal members being seldom sober,
had been got together to make laws against the Covenanters, and to force all
men to be of one mind in religious matters. The MARQUIS OF ARGYLE, relying on
the King’s honour, had given himself up to him; but, he was wealthy, and his
enemies wanted his wealth. He was tried for treason, on the evidence of some
private letters in which he had expressed opinions--as well he might--more
favourable to the government of the late Lord Protector than of the present
merry and religious King. He was executed, as were two men of mark among the
Covenanters; and SHARP, a traitor who had once been the friend of the
Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made Archbishop of St. Andrew’s, to teach
the Scotch how to like bishops.
Things being in this
merry state at home, the Merry Monarch undertook a war with the Dutch;
principally because they interfered with an African company, established with
the two objects of buying gold-dust and slaves, of which the Duke of York was a
leading member. After some preliminary hostilities, the said Duke sailed to the
coast of Holland with a fleet of ninety-eight vessels of war, and four
fire-ships. This engaged with the Dutch fleet, of no fewer than one hundred and
thirteen ships. In the great battle between the two forces, the Dutch lost
eighteen ships, four admirals, and seven thousand men. But, the English on
shore were in no mood of exultation when they heard the news.
For, this was the year
and the time of the Great Plague in London. During the winter of one thousand
six hundred and sixty-four it had been whispered about, that some few people
had died here and there of the disease called the Plague, in some of the
unwholesome suburbs around London. News was not published at that time as it is
now, and some people believed these rumours, and some disbelieved them, and
they were soon forgotten. But, in the month of May, one thousand six hundred
and sixty-five, it began to be said all over the town that the disease had
burst out with great violence in St. Giles’s, and that the people were dying in
great numbers. This soon turned out to be awfully true. The roads out of London
were choked up by people endeavouring to escape from the infected city, and
large sums were paid for any kind of conveyance. The disease soon spread so
fast, that it was necessary to shut up the houses in which sick people were,
and to cut them off from communication with the living. Every one of these
houses was marked on the outside of the door with a red cross, and the words,
Lord, have mercy upon us! The streets were all deserted, grass grew in the
public ways, and there was a dreadful silence in the air. When night came on,
dismal rumblings used to be heard, and these were the wheels of the
death-carts, attended by men with veiled faces and holding cloths to their
mouths, who rang doleful bells and cried in a loud and solemn voice, ’Bring out
your dead!’ The corpses put into these carts were buried by torchlight in great
pits; no service being performed over them; all men being afraid to stay for a
moment on the brink of the ghastly graves. In the general fear, children ran
away from their parents, and parents from their children. Some who were taken
ill, died alone, and without any help. Some were stabbed or strangled by hired
nurses who robbed them of all their money, and stole the very beds on which they
lay. Some went mad, dropped from the windows, ran through the streets, and in
their pain and frenzy flung themselves into the river.
These were not all the
horrors of the time. The wicked and dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the
taverns singing roaring songs, and were stricken as they drank, and went out
and died. The fearful and superstitious persuaded themselves that they saw
supernatural sights--burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms and darts. Others
pretended that at nights vast crowds of ghosts walked round and round the
dismal pits. One madman, naked, and carrying a brazier full of burning coals
upon his head, stalked through the streets, crying out that he was a Prophet,
commissioned to denounce the vengeance of the Lord on wicked London. Another
always went to and fro, exclaiming, ’Yet forty days, and London shall be
destroyed!’ A third awoke the echoes in the dismal streets, by night and by
day, and made the blood of the sick run cold, by calling out incessantly, in a
deep hoarse voice, ’O, the great and dreadful God!’
Through the months of
July and August and September, the Great Plague raged more and more. Great
fires were lighted in the streets, in the hope of stopping the infection; but
there was a plague of rain too, and it beat the fires out. At last, the winds
which usually arise at that time of the year which is called the equinox, when
day and night are of equal length all over the world, began to blow, and to
purify the wretched town. The deaths began to decrease, the red crosses slowly
to disappear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, pale frightened faces
to be seen in the streets. The Plague had been in every part of England, but in
close and unwholesome London it had killed one hundred thousand people.
All this time, the
Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, and as worthless as ever. All this time,
the debauched lords and gentlemen and the shameless ladies danced and gamed and
drank, and loved and hated one another, according to their merry ways.
So little humanity did
the government learn from the late affliction, that one of the first things the
Parliament did when it met at Oxford (being as yet afraid to come to London),
was to make a law, called the Five Mile Act, expressly directed against those
poor ministers who, in the time of the Plague, had manfully come back to
comfort the unhappy people. This infamous law, by forbidding them to teach in
any school, or to come within five miles of any city, town, or village, doomed
them to starvation and death.
The fleet had been at
sea, and healthy. The King of France was now in alliance with the Dutch, though
his navy was chiefly employed in looking on while the English and Dutch fought.
The Dutch gained one victory; and the English gained another and a greater; and
Prince Rupert, one of the English admirals, was out in the Channel one windy
night, looking for the French Admiral, with the intention of giving him
something more to do than he had had yet, when the gale increased to a storm,
and blew him into Saint Helen’s. That night was the third of September, one
thousand six hundred and sixty-six, and that wind fanned the Great Fire of
London.
It broke out at a baker’s
shop near London Bridge, on the spot on which the Monument now stands as a
remembrance of those raging flames. It spread and spread, and burned and
burned, for three days. The nights were lighter than the days; in the daytime
there was an immense cloud of smoke, and in the night-time there was a great
tower of fire mounting up into the sky, which lighted the whole country
landscape for ten miles round. Showers of hot ashes rose into the air and fell
on distant places; flying sparks carried the conflagration to great distances,
and kindled it in twenty new spots at a time; church steeples fell down with
tremendous crashes; houses crumbled into cinders by the hundred and the
thousand. The summer had been intensely hot and dry, the streets were very
narrow, and the houses mostly built of wood and plaster. Nothing could stop the
tremendous fire, but the want of more houses to burn; nor did it stop until the
whole way from the Tower to Temple Bar was a desert, composed of the ashes of
thirteen thousand houses and eighty-nine churches.
This was a terrible
visitation at the time, and occasioned great loss and suffering to the two
hundred thousand burnt-out people, who were obliged to lie in the fields under
the open night sky, or in hastily-made huts of mud and straw, while the lanes
and roads were rendered impassable by carts which had broken down as they tried
to save their goods. But the Fire was a great blessing to the City afterwards,
for it arose from its ruins very much improved--built more regularly, more
widely, more cleanly and carefully, and therefore much more healthily. It might
be far more healthy than it is, but there are some people in it still--even
now, at this time, nearly two hundred years later--so selfish, so pig-headed,
and so ignorant, that I doubt if even another Great Fire would warm them up to
do their duty.
The Catholics were
accused of having wilfully set London in flames; one poor Frenchman, who had
been mad for years, even accused himself of having with his own hand fired the
first house. There is no reasonable doubt, however, that the fire was
accidental. An inscription on the Monument long attributed it to the Catholics;
but it is removed now, and was always a malicious and stupid untruth.
THAT the Merry Monarch
might be very merry indeed, in the merry times when his people were suffering
under pestilence and fire, he drank and gambled and flung away among his
favourites the money which the Parliament had voted for the war. The
consequence of this was that the stout-hearted English sailors were merrily
starving of want, and dying in the streets; while the Dutch, under their
admirals DE WITT and DE RUYTER, came into the River Thames, and up the River
Medway as far as Upnor, burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak batteries,
and did what they would to the English coast for six whole weeks. Most of the
English ships that could have prevented them had neither powder nor shot on
board; in this merry reign, public officers made themselves as merry as the
King did with the public money; and when it was entrusted to them to spend in
national defences or preparations, they put it into their own pockets with the
merriest grace in the world.
Lord Clarendon had, by
this time, run as long a course as is usually allotted to the unscrupulous
ministers of bad kings. He was impeached by his political opponents, but
unsuccessfully. The King then commanded him to withdraw from England and retire
to France, which he did, after defending himself in writing. He was no great
loss at home, and died abroad some seven years afterwards.
There then came into
power a ministry called the Cabal Ministry, because it was composed of LORD
CLIFFORD, the EARL OF ARLINGTON, the DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM (a great rascal, and
the King’s most powerful favourite), LORD ASHLEY, and the DUKE OF LAUDERDALE,
C. A. B. A. L. As the French were making conquests in Flanders, the first Cabal
proceeding was to make a treaty with the Dutch, for uniting with Spain to
oppose the French. It was no sooner made than the Merry Monarch, who always
wanted to get money without being accountable to a Parliament for his
expenditure, apologised to the King of France for having had anything to do
with it, and concluded a secret treaty with him, making himself his infamous
pensioner to the amount of two millions of livres down, and three millions more
a year; and engaging to desert that very Spain, to make war against those very
Dutch, and to declare himself a Catholic when a convenient time should arrive.
This religious king had lately been crying to his Catholic brother on the
subject of his strong desire to be a Catholic; and now he merrily concluded
this treasonable conspiracy against the country he governed, by undertaking to
become one as soon as he safely could. For all of which, though he had had ten
merry heads instead of one, he richly deserved to lose them by the headsman’s
axe.
As his one merry head
might have been far from safe, if these things had been known, they were kept
very quiet, and war was declared by France and England against the Dutch. But,
a very uncommon man, afterwards most important to English history and to the
religion and liberty of this land, arose among them, and for many long years
defeated the whole projects of France. This was WILLIAM OF NASSAU, PRINCE OF
ORANGE, son of the last Prince of Orange of the same name, who married the
daughter of Charles the First of England. He was a young man at this time, only
just of age; but he was brave, cool, intrepid, and wise. His father had been so
detested that, upon his death, the Dutch had abolished the authority to which
this son would have otherwise succeeded (Stadtholder it was called), and placed
the chief power in the hands of JOHN DE WITT, who educated this young prince.
Now, the Prince became very popular, and John de Witt’s brother CORNELIUS was
sentenced to banishment on a false accusation of conspiring to kill him. John
went to the prison where he was, to take him away to exile, in his coach; and a
great mob who collected on the occasion, then and there cruelly murdered both
the brothers. This left the government in the hands of the Prince, who was
really the choice of the nation; and from this time he exercised it with the greatest
vigour, against the whole power of France, under its famous generals CONDE and
TURENNE, and in support of the Protestant religion. It was full seven years
before this war ended in a treaty of peace made at Nimeguen, and its details
would occupy a very considerable space. It is enough to say that William of
Orange established a famous character with the whole world; and that the Merry
Monarch, adding to and improving on his former baseness, bound himself to do
everything the King of France liked, and nothing the King of France did not
like, for a pension of one hundred thousand pounds a year, which was afterwards
doubled. Besides this, the King of France, by means of his corrupt
ambassador--who wrote accounts of his proceedings in England, which are not
always to be believed, I think--bought our English members of Parliament, as he
wanted them. So, in point of fact, during a considerable portion of this merry
reign, the King of France was the real King of this country.
But there was a better
time to come, and it was to come (though his royal uncle little thought so)
through that very William, Prince of Orange. He came over to England, saw Mary,
the elder daughter of the Duke of York, and married her. We shall see by-and-by
what came of that marriage, and why it is never to be forgotten.
This daughter was a
Protestant, but her mother died a Catholic. She and her sister ANNE, also a
Protestant, were the only survivors of eight children. Anne afterwards married
GEORGE, PRINCE OF DENMARK, brother to the King of that country.
Lest you should do the
Merry Monarch the injustice of supposing that he was even good humoured (except
when he had everything his own way), or that he was high spirited and
honourable, I will mention here what was done to a member of the House of
Commons, SIR JOHN COVENTRY. He made a remark in a debate about taxing the
theatres, which gave the King offence. The King agreed with his illegitimate
son, who had been born abroad, and whom he had made DUKE OF MONMOUTH, to take
the following merry vengeance. To waylay him at night, fifteen armed men to
one, and to slit his nose with a penknife. Like master, like man. The King’s
favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, was strongly suspected of setting on an
assassin to murder the DUKE OF ORMOND as he was returning home from a dinner;
and that Duke’s spirited son, LORD OSSORY, was so persuaded of his guilt, that
he said to him at Court, even as he stood beside the King, ’My lord, I know
very well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt upon my father. But I
give you warning, if he ever come to a violent end, his blood shall be upon
you, and wherever I meet you I will pistol you! I will do so, though I find you
standing behind the King’s chair; and I tell you this in his Majesty’s
presence, that you may be quite sure of my doing what I threaten.’ Those were
merry times indeed.
There was a fellow
named BLOOD, who was seized for making, with two companions, an audacious
attempt to steal the crown, the globe, and sceptre, from the place where the
jewels were kept in the Tower. This robber, who was a swaggering ruffian, being
taken, declared that he was the man who had endeavoured to kill the Duke of
Ormond, and that he had meant to kill the King too, but was overawed by the
majesty of his appearance, when he might otherwise have done it, as he was
bathing at Battersea. The King being but an ill-looking fellow, I don’t believe
a word of this. Whether he was flattered, or whether he knew that Buckingham
had really set Blood on to murder the Duke, is uncertain. But it is quite
certain that he pardoned this thief, gave him an estate of five hundred a year
in Ireland (which had had the honour of giving him birth), and presented him at
Court to the debauched lords and the shameless ladies, who made a great deal of
him--as I have no doubt they would have made of the Devil himself, if the King
had introduced him.
Infamously pensioned as
he was, the King still wanted money, and consequently was obliged to call
Parliaments. In these, the great object of the Protestants was to thwart the
Catholic Duke of York, who married a second time; his new wife being a young
lady only fifteen years old, the Catholic sister of the DUKE OF MODENA. In this
they were seconded by the Protestant Dissenters, though to their own
disadvantage: since, to exclude Catholics from power, they were even willing to
exclude themselves. The King’s object was to pretend to be a Protestant, while
he was really a Catholic; to swear to the bishops that he was devoutly attached
to the English Church, while he knew he had bargained it away to the King of
France; and by cheating and deceiving them, and all who were attached to
royalty, to become despotic and be powerful enough to confess what a rascal he
was. Meantime, the King of France, knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued
with the King’s opponents in Parliament, as well as with the King and his
friends.
The fears that the
country had of the Catholic religion being restored, if the Duke of York should
come to the throne, and the low cunning of the King in pretending to share
their alarms, led to some very terrible results. A certain DR. TONGE, a dull
clergyman in the City, fell into the hands of a certain TITUS OATES, a most
infamous character, who pretended to have acquired among the Jesuits abroad a
knowledge of a great plot for the murder of the King, and the re-establishment
if the Catholic religion. Titus Oates, being produced by this unlucky Dr. Tonge
and solemnly examined before the council, contradicted himself in a thousand
ways, told the most ridiculous and improbable stories, and implicated COLEMAN,
the Secretary of the Duchess of York. Now, although what he charged against
Coleman was not true, and although you and I know very well that the real
dangerous Catholic plot was that one with the King of France of which the Merry
Monarch was himself the head, there happened to be found among Coleman’s
papers, some letters, in which he did praise the days of Bloody Queen Mary, and
abuse the Protestant religion. This was great good fortune for Titus, as it
seemed to confirm him; but better still was in store. SIR EDMUNDBURY GODFREY,
the magistrate who had first examined him, being unexpectedly found dead near
Primrose Hill, was confidently believed to have been killed by the Catholics. I
think there is no doubt that he had been melancholy mad, and that he killed
himself; but he had a great Protestant funeral, and Titus was called the Saver
of the Nation, and received a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year.
As soon as Oates’s
wickedness had met with this success, up started another villain, named WILLIAM
BEDLOE, who, attracted by a reward of five hundred pounds offered for the
apprehension of the murderers of Godfrey, came forward and charged two Jesuits
and some other persons with having committed it at the Queen’s desire. Oates,
going into partnership with this new informer, had the audacity to accuse the
poor Queen herself of high treason. Then appeared a third informer, as bad as
either of the two, and accused a Catholic banker named STAYLEY of having said
that the King was the greatest rogue in the world (which would not have been
far from the truth), and that he would kill him with his own hand. This banker,
being at once tried and executed, Coleman and two others were tried and executed.
Then, a miserable wretch named PRANCE, a Catholic silversmith, being accused by
Bedloe, was tortured into confessing that he had taken part in Godfrey’s
murder, and into accusing three other men of having committed it. Then, five
Jesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, and Prance together, and were all found
guilty, and executed on the same kind of contradictory and absurd evidence. The
Queen’s physician and three monks were next put on their trial; but Oates and
Bedloe had for the time gone far enough and these four were acquitted. The
public mind, however, was so full of a Catholic plot, and so strong against the
Duke of York, that James consented to obey a written order from his brother,
and to go with his family to Brussels, provided that his rights should never be
sacrificed in his absence to the Duke of Monmouth. The House of Commons, not
satisfied with this as the King hoped, passed a bill to exclude the Duke from
ever succeeding to the throne. In return, the King dissolved the Parliament. He
had deserted his old favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, who was now in the
opposition.
To give any sufficient
idea of the miseries of Scotland in this merry reign, would occupy a hundred
pages. Because the people would not have bishops, and were resolved to stand by
their solemn League and Covenant, such cruelties were inflicted upon them as
make the blood run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through the country to
punish the peasants for deserting the churches; sons were hanged up at their
fathers’ doors for refusing to disclose where their fathers were concealed;
wives were tortured to death for not betraying their husbands; people were
taken out of their fields and gardens, and shot on the public roads without
trial; lighted matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, and a most
horrible torment called the Boot was invented, and constantly applied, which
ground and mashed the victims’ legs with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured
as well as prisoners. All the prisons were full; all the gibbets were heavy
with bodies; murder and plunder devastated the whole country. In spite of all,
the Covenanters were by no means to be dragged into the churches, and persisted
in worshipping God as they thought right. A body of ferocious Highlanders,
turned upon them from the mountains of their own country, had no greater effect
than the English dragoons under GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE, the most cruel and
rapacious of all their enemies, whose name will ever be cursed through the
length and breadth of Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abetted all
these outrages. But he fell at last; for, when the injuries of the Scottish
people were at their height, he was seen, in his coach-and-six coming across a
moor, by a body of men, headed by one JOHN BALFOUR, who were waiting for
another of their oppressors. Upon this they cried out that Heaven had delivered
him into their hands, and killed him with many wounds. If ever a man deserved
such a death, I think Archbishop Sharp did.
It made a great noise
directly, and the Merry Monarch--strongly suspected of having goaded the
Scottish people on, that he might have an excuse for a greater army than the
Parliament were willing to give him--sent down his son, the Duke of Monmouth,
as commander-in-chief, with instructions to attack the Scottish rebels, or
Whigs as they were called, whenever he came up with them. Marching with ten
thousand men from Edinburgh, he found them, in number four or five thousand,
drawn up at Bothwell Bridge, by the Clyde. They were soon dispersed; and Monmouth
showed a more humane character towards them, than he had shown towards that
Member of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit with a penknife. But
the Duke of Lauderdale was their bitter foe, and sent Claverhouse to finish
them.
As the Duke of York
became more and more unpopular, the Duke of Monmouth became more and more
popular. It would have been decent in the latter not to have voted in favour of
the renewed bill for the exclusion of James from the throne; but he did so,
much to the King’s amusement, who used to sit in the House of Lords by the
fire, hearing the debates, which he said were as good as a play. The House of
Commons passed the bill by a large majority, and it was carried up to the House
of Lords by LORD RUSSELL, one of the best of the leaders on the Protestant
side. It was rejected there, chiefly because the bishops helped the King to get
rid of it; and the fear of Catholic plots revived again. There had been another
got up, by a fellow out of Newgate, named DANGERFIELD, which is more famous
than it deserves to be, under the name of the MEAL-TUB PLOT. This jail-bird
having been got out of Newgate by a MRS. CELLIER, a Catholic nurse, had turned
Catholic himself, and pretended that he knew of a plot among the Presbyterians
against the King’s life. This was very pleasant to the Duke of York, who hated
the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. He gave Dangerfield twenty
guineas, and sent him to the King his brother. But Dangerfield, breaking down
altogether in his charge, and being sent back to Newgate, almost astonished the
Duke out of his five senses by suddenly swearing that the Catholic nurse had
put that false design into his head, and that what he really knew about, was, a
Catholic plot against the King; the evidence of which would be found in some
papers, concealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier’s house. There they were, of
course--for he had put them there himself--and so the tub gave the name to the
plot. But, the nurse was acquitted on her trial, and it came to nothing.
Lord Ashley, of the
Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and was strong against the succession of the
Duke of York. The House of Commons, aggravated to the utmost extent, as we may
well suppose, by suspicions of the King’s conspiracy with the King of France,
made a desperate point of the exclusion, still, and were bitter against the
Catholics generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve to say, that they
impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catholic nobleman seventy years old,
of a design to kill the King. The witnesses were that atrocious Oates and two
other birds of the same feather. He was found guilty, on evidence quite as
foolish as it was false, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. The people were
opposed to him when he first appeared upon the scaffold; but, when he had
addressed them and shown them how innocent he was and how wickedly he was sent
there, their better nature was aroused, and they said, ’We believe you, my
Lord. God bless you, my Lord!’
The House of Commons
refused to let the King have any money until he should consent to the Exclusion
Bill; but, as he could get it and did get it from his master the King of
France, he could afford to hold them very cheap. He called a Parliament at
Oxford, to which he went down with a great show of being armed and protected as
if he were in danger of his life, and to which the opposition members also went
armed and protected, alleging that they were in fear of the Papists, who were
numerous among the King’s guards. However, they went on with the Exclusion Bill,
and were so earnest upon it that they would have carried it again, if the King
had not popped his crown and state robes into a sedan-chair, bundled himself
into it along with them, hurried down to the chamber where the House of Lords
met, and dissolved the Parliament. After which he scampered home, and the
members of Parliament scampered home too, as fast as their legs could carry
them.
The Duke of York, then
residing in Scotland, had, under the law which excluded Catholics from public
trust, no right whatever to public employment. Nevertheless, he was openly
employed as the King’s representative in Scotland, and there gratified his
sullen and cruel nature to his heart’s content by directing the dreadful
cruelties against the Covenanters. There were two ministers named CARGILL and
CAMERON who had escaped from the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and who returned to
Scotland, and raised the miserable but still brave and unsubdued Covenanters
afresh, under the name of Cameronians. As Cameron publicly posted a declaration
that the King was a forsworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unhappy
followers after he was slain in battle. The Duke of York, who was particularly
fond of the Boot and derived great pleasure from having it applied, offered
their lives to some of these people, if they would cry on the scaffold ’God
save the King!’ But their relations, friends, and countrymen, had been so
barbarously tortured and murdered in this merry reign, that they preferred to
die, and did die. The Duke then obtained his merry brother’s permission to hold
a Parliament in Scotland, which first, with most shameless deceit, confirmed
the laws for securing the Protestant religion against Popery, and then declared
that nothing must or should prevent the succession of the Popish Duke. After
this double-faced beginning, it established an oath which no human being could
understand, but which everybody was to take, as a proof that his religion was
the lawful religion. The Earl of Argyle, taking it with the explanation that he
did not consider it to prevent him from favouring any alteration either in the
Church or State which was not inconsistent with the Protestant religion or with
his loyalty, was tried for high treason before a Scottish jury of which the
MARQUIS OF MONTROSE was foreman, and was found guilty. He escaped the scaffold,
for that time, by getting away, in the disguise of a page, in the train of his
daughter, LADY SOPHIA LINDSAY. It was absolutely proposed, by certain members
of the Scottish Council, that this lady should be whipped through the streets
of Edinburgh. But this was too much even for the Duke, who had the manliness
then (he had very little at most times) to remark that Englishmen were not
accustomed to treat ladies in that manner. In those merry times nothing could
equal the brutal servility of the Scottish fawners, but the conduct of similar
degraded beings in England.
After the settlement of
these little affairs, the Duke returned to England, and soon resumed his place
at the Council, and his office of High Admiral--all this by his brother’s
favour, and in open defiance of the law. It would have been no loss to the
country, if he had been drowned when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetch
his family, struck on a sand-bank, and was lost with two hundred souls on
board. But he escaped in a boat with some friends; and the sailors were so
brave and unselfish, that, when they saw him rowing away, they gave three
cheers, while they themselves were going down for ever.
The Merry Monarch,
having got rid of his Parliament, went to work to make himself despotic, with
all speed. Having had the villainy to order the execution of OLIVER PLUNKET,
BISHOP OF ARMAGH, falsely accused of a plot to establish Popery in that country
by means of a French army--the very thing this royal traitor was himself trying
to do at home--and having tried to ruin Lord Shaftesbury, and failed--he turned
his hand to controlling the corporations all over the country; because, if he
could only do that, he could get what juries he chose, to bring in perjured
verdicts, and could get what members he chose returned to Parliament. These
merry times produced, and made Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench, a
drunken ruffian of the name of JEFFREYS; a red-faced, swollen, bloated,
horrible creature, with a bullying, roaring voice, and a more savage nature
perhaps than was ever lodged in any human breast. This monster was the Merry
Monarch’s especial favourite, and he testified his admiration of him by giving
him a ring from his own finger, which the people used to call Judge Jeffreys’s
Bloodstone. Him the King employed to go about and bully the corporations,
beginning with London; or, as Jeffreys himself elegantly called it, ’to give
them a lick with the rough side of his tongue.’ And he did it so thoroughly,
that they soon became the basest and most sycophantic bodies in the
kingdom--except the University of Oxford, which, in that respect, was quite
pre-eminent and unapproachable.
Lord Shaftesbury (who
died soon after the King’s failure against him), LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL, the Duke
of Monmouth, LORD HOWARD, LORD JERSEY, ALGERNON SIDNEY, JOHN HAMPDEN (grandson
of the great Hampden), and some others, used to hold a council together after
the dissolution of the Parliament, arranging what it might be necessary to do,
if the King carried his Popish plot to the utmost height. Lord Shaftesbury
having been much the most violent of this party, brought two violent men into
their secrets--RUMSEY, who had been a soldier in the Republican army; and WEST,
a lawyer. These two knew an old officer of CROMWELL’S, called RUMBOLD, who had
married a maltster’s widow, and so had come into possession of a solitary
dwelling called the Rye House, near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said
to them what a capital place this house of his would be from which to shoot at
the King, who often passed there going to and fro from Newmarket. They liked
the idea, and entertained it. But, one of their body gave information; and
they, together with SHEPHERD a wine merchant, Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney,
LORD ESSEX, LORD HOWARD, and Hampden, were all arrested.
Lord Russell might have
easily escaped, but scorned to do so, being innocent of any wrong; Lord Essex
might have easily escaped, but scorned to do so, lest his flight should prejudice
Lord Russell. But it weighed upon his mind that he had brought into their
council, Lord Howard--who now turned a miserable traitor--against a great
dislike Lord Russell had always had of him. He could not bear the reflection,
and destroyed himself before Lord Russell was brought to trial at the Old
Bailey.
He knew very well that
he had nothing to hope, having always been manful in the Protestant cause
against the two false brothers, the one on the throne, and the other standing
next to it. He had a wife, one of the noblest and best of women, who acted as
his secretary on his trial, who comforted him in his prison, who supped with
him on the night before he died, and whose love and virtue and devotion have
made her name imperishable. Of course, he was found guilty, and was sentenced
to be beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn-fields, not many yards from his own house. When
he had parted from his children on the evening before his death, his wife still
stayed with him until ten o’clock at night; and when their final separation in
this world was over, and he had kissed her many times, he still sat for a long
while in his prison, talking of her goodness. Hearing the rain fall fast at
that time, he calmly said, ’Such a rain to-morrow will spoil a great show,
which is a dull thing on a rainy day.’ At midnight he went to bed, and slept
till four; even when his servant called him, he fell asleep again while his
clothes were being made ready. He rode to the scaffold in his own carriage,
attended by two famous clergymen, TILLOTSON and BURNET, and sang a psalm to
himself very softly, as he went along. He was as quiet and as steady as if he
had been going out for an ordinary ride. After saying that he was surprised to
see so great a crowd, he laid down his head upon the block, as if upon the
pillow of his bed, and had it struck off at the second blow. His noble wife was
busy for him even then; for that true-hearted lady printed and widely
circulated his last words, of which he had given her a copy. They made the
blood of all the honest men in England boil.
The University of
Oxford distinguished itself on the very same day by pretending to believe that
the accusation against Lord Russell was true, and by calling the King, in a
written paper, the Breath of their Nostrils and the Anointed of the Lord. This
paper the Parliament afterwards caused to be burned by the common hangman;
which I am sorry for, as I wish it had been framed and glazed and hung up in
some public place, as a monument of baseness for the scorn of mankind.
Next, came the trial of
Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreys presided, like a great crimson toad,
sweltering and swelling with rage. ’I pray God, Mr. Sidney,’ said this Chief
Justice of a merry reign, after passing sentence, ’to work in you a temper fit
to go to the other world, for I see you are not fit for this.’ ’My lord,’ said
the prisoner, composedly holding out his arm, ’feel my pulse, and see if I be
disordered. I thank Heaven I never was in better temper than I am now.’
Algernon Sidney was executed on Tower Hill, on the seventh of December, one
thousand six hundred and eighty-three. He died a hero, and died, in his own
words, ’For that good old cause in which he had been engaged from his youth,
and for which God had so often and so wonderfully declared himself.’
The Duke of Monmouth
had been making his uncle, the Duke of York, very jealous, by going about the
country in a royal sort of way, playing at the people’s games, becoming
godfather to their children, and even touching for the King’s evil, or stroking
the faces of the sick to cure them--though, for the matter of that, I should
say he did them about as much good as any crowned king could have done. His
father had got him to write a letter, confessing his having had a part in the
conspiracy, for which Lord Russell had been beheaded; but he was ever a weak
man, and as soon as he had written it, he was ashamed of it and got it back
again. For this, he was banished to the Netherlands; but he soon returned and
had an interview with his father, unknown to his uncle. It would seem that he
was coming into the Merry Monarch’s favour again, and that the Duke of York was
sliding out of it, when Death appeared to the merry galleries at Whitehall, and
astonished the debauched lords and gentlemen, and the shameless ladies, very
considerably.
On Monday, the second
of February, one thousand six hundred and eighty-five, the merry pensioner and
servant of the King of France fell down in a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday
his case was hopeless, and on the Thursday he was told so. As he made a
difficulty about taking the sacrament from the Protestant Bishop of Bath, the
Duke of York got all who were present away from the bed, and asked his brother,
in a whisper, if he should send for a Catholic priest? The King replied, ’For
God’s sake, brother, do!’ The Duke smuggled in, up the back stairs, disguised
in a wig and gown, a priest named HUDDLESTON, who had saved the King’s life
after the battle of Worcester: telling him that this worthy man in the wig had
once saved his body, and was now come to save his soul.
The Merry Monarch lived
through that night, and died before noon on the next day, which was Friday, the
sixth. Two of the last things he said were of a human sort, and your
remembrance will give him the full benefit of them. When the Queen sent to say
she was too unwell to attend him and to ask his pardon, he said, ’Alas! poor
woman, SHE beg MY pardon! I beg hers with all my heart. Take back that answer
to her.’ And he also said, in reference to Nell Gwyn, ’Do not let poor Nelly
starve.’
He died in the
fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his reign.
KING JAMES THE SECOND
was a man so very disagreeable, that even the best of historians has favoured
his brother Charles, as becoming, by comparison, quite a pleasant character.
The one object of his short reign was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England;
and this he doggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy, that his career very
soon came to a close.
The first thing he did,
was, to assure his council that he would make it his endeavour to preserve the
Government, both in Church and State, as it was by law established; and that he
would always take care to defend and support the Church. Great public
acclamations were raised over this fair speech, and a great deal was said, from
the pulpits and elsewhere, about the word of a King which was never broken, by
credulous people who little supposed that he had formed a secret council for
Catholic affairs, of which a mischievous Jesuit, called FATHER PETRE, was one
of the chief members. With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, as the
beginning of HIS pension from the King of France, five hundred thousand livres;
yet, with a mixture of meanness and arrogance that belonged to his contemptible
character, he was always jealous of making some show of being independent of
the King of France, while he pocketed his money. As--notwithstanding his
publishing two papers in favour of Popery (and not likely to do it much
service, I should think) written by the King, his brother, and found in his
strong-box; and his open display of himself attending mass--the Parliament was
very obsequious, and granted him a large sum of money, he began his reign with
a belief that he could do what he pleased, and with a determination to do it.
Before we proceed to
its principal events, let us dispose of Titus Oates. He was tried for perjury,
a fortnight after the coronation, and besides being very heavily fined, was
sentenced to stand twice in the pillory, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate
one day, and from Newgate to Tyburn two days afterwards, and to stand in the
pillory five times a year as long as he lived. This fearful sentence was
actually inflicted on the rascal. Being unable to stand after his first
flogging, he was dragged on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and flogged as he
was drawn along. He was so strong a villain that he did not die under the
torture, but lived to be afterwards pardoned and rewarded, though not to be
ever believed in any more. Dangerfield, the only other one of that crew left
alive, was not so fortunate. He was almost killed by a whipping from Newgate to
Tyburn, and, as if that were not punishment enough, a ferocious barrister of
Gray’s Inn gave him a poke in the eye with his cane, which caused his death;
for which the ferocious barrister was deservedly tried and executed.
As soon as James was on
the throne, Argyle and Monmouth went from Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended a
meeting of Scottish exiles held there, to concert measures for a rising in
England. It was agreed that Argyle should effect a landing in Scotland, and
Monmouth in England; and that two Englishmen should be sent with Argyle to be
in his confidence, and two Scotchmen with the Duke of Monmouth.
Argyle was the first to
act upon this contract. But, two of his men being taken prisoners at the Orkney
Islands, the Government became aware of his intention, and was able to act
against him with such vigour as to prevent his raising more than two or three
thousand Highlanders, although he sent a fiery cross, by trusty messengers,
from clan to clan and from glen to glen, as the custom then was when those wild
people were to be excited by their chiefs. As he was moving towards Glasgow
with his small force, he was betrayed by some of his followers, taken, and
carried, with his hands tied behind his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh
Castle. James ordered him to be executed, on his old shamefully unjust
sentence, within three days; and he appears to have been anxious that his legs
should have been pounded with his old favourite the boot. However, the boot was
not applied; he was simply beheaded, and his head was set upon the top of
Edinburgh Jail. One of those Englishmen who had been assigned to him was that
old soldier Rumbold, the master of the Rye House. He was sorely wounded, and
within a week after Argyle had suffered with great courage, was brought up for
trial, lest he should die and disappoint the King. He, too, was executed, after
defending himself with great spirit, and saying that he did not believe that
God had made the greater part of mankind to carry saddles on their backs and bridles
in their mouths, and to be ridden by a few, booted and spurred for the
purpose--in which I thoroughly agree with Rumbold.
The Duke of Monmouth,
partly through being detained and partly through idling his time away, was five
or six weeks behind his friend when he landed at Lyme, in Dorset: having at his
right hand an unlucky nobleman called LORD GREY OF WERK, who of himself would
have ruined a far more promising expedition. He immediately set up his standard
in the market-place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant, and a Popish usurper,
and I know not what else; charging him, not only with what he had done, which
was bad enough, but with what neither he nor anybody else had done, such as
setting fire to London, and poisoning the late King. Raising some four thousand
men by these means, he marched on to Taunton, where there were many Protestant
dissenters who were strongly opposed to the Catholics. Here, both the rich and
poor turned out to receive him, ladies waved a welcome to him from all the
windows as he passed along the streets, flowers were strewn in his way, and
every compliment and honour that could be devised was showered upon him. Among
the rest, twenty young ladies came forward, in their best clothes, and in their
brightest beauty, and gave him a Bible ornamented with their own fair hands,
together with other presents.
Encouraged by this
homage, he proclaimed himself King, and went on to Bridgewater. But, here the
Government troops, under the EARL OF FEVERSHAM, were close at hand; and he was
so dispirited at finding that he made but few powerful friends after all, that
it was a question whether he should disband his army and endeavour to escape.
It was resolved, at the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, to make a night
attack on the King’s army, as it lay encamped on the edge of a morass called
Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded by the same unlucky lord, who was not a
brave man. He gave up the battle almost at the first obstacle--which was a deep
drain; and although the poor countrymen, who had turned out for Monmouth,
fought bravely with scythes, poles, pitchforks, and such poor weapons as they
had, they were soon dispersed by the trained soldiers, and fled in all
directions. When the Duke of Monmouth himself fled, was not known in the confusion;
but the unlucky Lord Grey was taken early next day, and then another of the
party was taken, who confessed that he had parted from the Duke only four hours
before. Strict search being made, he was found disguised as a peasant, hidden
in a ditch under fern and nettles, with a few peas in his pocket which he had
gathered in the fields to eat. The only other articles he had upon him were a
few papers and little books: one of the latter being a strange jumble, in his
own writing, of charms, songs, recipes, and prayers. He was completely broken.
He wrote a miserable letter to the King, beseeching and entreating to be
allowed to see him. When he was taken to London, and conveyed bound into the
King’s presence, he crawled to him on his knees, and made a most degrading
exhibition. As James never forgave or relented towards anybody, he was not
likely to soften towards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation, so he told the
suppliant to prepare for death.
On the fifteenth of
July, one thousand six hundred and eighty-five, this unfortunate favourite of
the people was brought out to die on Tower Hill. The crowd was immense, and the
tops of all the houses were covered with gazers. He had seen his wife, the
daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, in the Tower, and had talked much of a lady
whom he loved far better--the LADY HARRIET WENTWORTH--who was one of the last
persons he remembered in this life. Before laying down his head upon the block
he felt the edge of the axe, and told the executioner that he feared it was not
sharp enough, and that the axe was not heavy enough. On the executioner
replying that it was of the proper kind, the Duke said, ’I pray you have a
care, and do not use me so awkwardly as you used my Lord Russell.’ The
executioner, made nervous by this, and trembling, struck once and merely gashed
him in the neck. Upon this, the Duke of Monmouth raised his head and looked the
man reproachfully in the face. Then he struck twice, and then thrice, and then
threw down the axe, and cried out in a voice of horror that he could not finish
that work. The sheriffs, however, threatening him with what should be done to
himself if he did not, he took it up again and struck a fourth time and a fifth
time. Then the wretched head at last fell off, and James, Duke of Monmouth, was
dead, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. He was a showy, graceful man, with
many popular qualities, and had found much favour in the open hearts of the
English.
The atrocities,
committed by the Government, which followed this Monmouth rebellion, form the
blackest and most lamentable page in English history. The poor peasants, having
been dispersed with great loss, and their leaders having been taken, one would
think that the implacable King might have been satisfied. But no; he let loose
upon them, among other intolerable monsters, a COLONEL KIRK, who had served
against the Moors, and whose soldiers--called by the people Kirk’s lambs,
because they bore a lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of Christianity--were
worthy of their leader. The atrocities committed by these demons in human shape
are far too horrible to be related here. It is enough to say, that besides most
ruthlessly murdering and robbing them, and ruining them by making them buy
their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it was one of Kirk’s
favourite amusements, as he and his officers sat drinking after dinner, and
toasting the King, to have batches of prisoners hanged outside the windows for
the company’s diversion; and that when their feet quivered in the convulsions
of death, he used to swear that they should have music to their dancing, and
would order the drums to beat and the trumpets to play. The detestable King
informed him, as an acknowledgment of these services, that he was ’very well
satisfied with his proceedings.’ But the King’s great delight was in the
proceedings of Jeffreys, now a peer, who went down into the west, with four
other judges, to try persons accused of having had any share in the rebellion.
The King pleasantly called this ’Jeffreys’s campaign.’ The people down in that
part of the country remember it to this day as The Bloody Assize.
It began at Winchester,
where a poor deaf old lady, MRS. ALICIA LISLE, the widow of one of the judges
of Charles the First (who had been murdered abroad by some Royalist assassins),
was charged with having given shelter in her house to two fugitives from
Sedgemoor. Three times the jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys
bullied and frightened them into that false verdict. When he had extorted it
from them, he said, ’Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she had been my
own mother, I would have found her guilty;’--as I dare say he would. He
sentenced her to be burned alive, that very afternoon. The clergy of the
cathedral and some others interfered in her favour, and she was beheaded within
a week. As a high mark of his approbation, the King made Jeffreys Lord
Chancellor; and he then went on to Dorchester, to Exeter, to Taunton, and to
Wells. It is astonishing, when we read of the enormous injustice and barbarity
of this beast, to know that no one struck him dead on the judgment-seat. It was
enough for any man or woman to be accused by an enemy, before Jeffreys, to be
found guilty of high treason. One man who pleaded not guilty, he ordered to be
taken out of court upon the instant, and hanged; and this so terrified the
prisoners in general that they mostly pleaded guilty at once. At Dorchester
alone, in the course of a few days, Jeffreys hanged eighty people; besides
whipping, transporting, imprisoning, and selling as slaves, great numbers. He
executed, in all, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred.
These executions took
place, among the neighbours and friends of the sentenced, in thirty-six towns
and villages. Their bodies were mangled, steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch
and tar, and hung up by the roadsides, in the streets, over the very churches.
The sight and smell of heads and limbs, the hissing and bubbling of the
infernal caldrons, and the tears and terrors of the people, were dreadful
beyond all description. One rustic, who was forced to steep the remains in the
black pot, was ever afterwards called ’Tom Boilman.’ The hangman has ever since
been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name went hanging and hanging,
all day long, in the train of Jeffreys. You will hear much of the horrors of
the great French Revolution. Many and terrible they were, there is no doubt;
but I know of nothing worse, done by the maddened people of France in that
awful time, than was done by the highest judge in England, with the express
approval of the King of England, in The Bloody Assize.
Nor was even this all.
Jeffreys was as fond of money for himself as of misery for others, and he sold
pardons wholesale to fill his pockets. The King ordered, at one time, a
thousand prisoners to be given to certain of his favourites, in order that they
might bargain with them for their pardons. The young ladies of Taunton who had
presented the Bible, were bestowed upon the maids of honour at court; and those
precious ladies made very hard bargains with them indeed. When The Bloody
Assize was at its most dismal height, the King was diverting himself with
horse-races in the very place where Mrs. Lisle had been executed. When Jeffreys
had done his worst, and came home again, he was particularly complimented in
the Royal Gazette; and when the King heard that through drunkenness and raging
he was very ill, his odious Majesty remarked that such another man could not
easily be found in England. Besides all this, a former sheriff of London, named
CORNISH, was hanged within sight of his own house, after an abominably
conducted trial, for having had a share in the Rye House Plot, on evidence
given by Rumsey, which that villain was obliged to confess was directly opposed
to the evidence he had given on the trial of Lord Russell. And on the very same
day, a worthy widow, named ELIZABETH GAUNT, was burned alive at Tyburn, for
having sheltered a wretch who himself gave evidence against her. She settled
the fuel about herself with her own hands, so that the flames should reach her
quickly: and nobly said, with her last breath, that she had obeyed the sacred
command of God, to give refuge to the outcast, and not to betray the wanderer.
After all this hanging,
beheading, burning, boiling, mutilating, exposing, robbing, transporting, and
selling into slavery, of his unhappy subjects, the King not unnaturally thought
that he could do whatever he would. So, he went to work to change the religion
of the country with all possible speed; and what he did was this.
He first of all tried
to get rid of what was called the Test Act--which prevented the Catholics from
holding public employments--by his own power of dispensing with the penalties.
He tried it in one case, and, eleven of the twelve judges deciding in his
favour, he exercised it in three others, being those of three dignitaries of
University College, Oxford, who had become Papists, and whom he kept in their
places and sanctioned. He revived the hated Ecclesiastical Commission, to get
rid of COMPTON, Bishop of London, who manfully opposed him. He solicited the
Pope to favour England with an ambassador, which the Pope (who was a sensible
man then) rather unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre before the eyes of
the people on all possible occasions. He favoured the establishment of convents
in several parts of London. He was delighted to have the streets, and even the
court itself, filled with Monks and Friars in the habits of their orders. He
constantly endeavoured to make Catholics of the Protestants about him. He held
private interviews, which he called ’closetings,’ with those Members of
Parliament who held offices, to persuade them to consent to the design he had
in view. When they did not consent, they were removed, or resigned of
themselves, and their places were given to Catholics. He displaced Protestant
officers from the army, by every means in his power, and got Catholics into
their places too. He tried the same thing with the corporations, and also
(though not so successfully) with the Lord Lieutenants of counties. To terrify
the people into the endurance of all these measures, he kept an army of fifteen
thousand men encamped on Hounslow Heath, where mass was openly performed in the
General’s tent, and where priests went among the soldiers endeavouring to persuade
them to become Catholics. For circulating a paper among those men advising them
to be true to their religion, a Protestant clergyman, named JOHNSON, the
chaplain of the late Lord Russell, was actually sentenced to stand three times
in the pillory, and was actually whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dismissed
his own brother-in-law from his Council because he was a Protestant, and made a
Privy Councillor of the before-mentioned Father Petre. He handed Ireland over
to RICHARD TALBOT, EARL OF TYRCONNELL, a worthless, dissolute knave, who played
the same game there for his master, and who played the deeper game for himself
of one day putting it under the protection of the French King. In going to
these extremities, every man of sense and judgment among the Catholics, from
the Pope to a porter, knew that the King was a mere bigoted fool, who would
undo himself and the cause he sought to advance; but he was deaf to all reason,
and, happily for England ever afterwards, went tumbling off his throne in his
own blind way.
A spirit began to arise
in the country, which the besotted blunderer little expected. He first found it
out in the University of Cambridge. Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford
without any opposition, he tried to make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge:
which attempt the University resisted, and defeated him. He then went back to
his favourite Oxford. On the death of the President of Magdalen College, he
commanded that there should be elected to succeed him, one MR. ANTHONY FARMER,
whose only recommendation was, that he was of the King’s religion. The
University plucked up courage at last, and refused. The King substituted
another man, and it still refused, resolving to stand by its own election of a
MR. HOUGH. The dull tyrant, upon this, punished Mr. Hough, and five-and-twenty
more, by causing them to be expelled and declared incapable of holding any
church preferment; then he proceeded to what he supposed to be his highest
step, but to what was, in fact, his last plunge head-foremost in his tumble off
his throne.
He had issued a
declaration that there should be no religious tests or penal laws, in order to
let in the Catholics more easily; but the Protestant dissenters, unmindful of
themselves, had gallantly joined the regular church in opposing it tooth and
nail. The King and Father Petre now resolved to have this read, on a certain
Sunday, in all the churches, and to order it to be circulated for that purpose
by the bishops. The latter took counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was
in disgrace; and they resolved that the declaration should not be read, and
that they would petition the King against it. The Archbishop himself wrote out
the petition, and six bishops went into the King’s bedchamber the same night to
present it, to his infinite astonishment. Next day was the Sunday fixed for the
reading, and it was only read by two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand. The
King resolved against all advice to prosecute the bishops in the Court of King’s
Bench, and within three weeks they were summoned before the Privy Council, and
committed to the Tower. As the six bishops were taken to that dismal place, by
water, the people who were assembled in immense numbers fell upon their knees,
and wept for them, and prayed for them. When they got to the Tower, the
officers and soldiers on guard besought them for their blessing. While they
were confined there, the soldiers every day drank to their release with loud
shouts. When they were brought up to the Court of King’s Bench for their trial,
which the Attorney-General said was for the high offence of censuring the
Government, and giving their opinion about affairs of state, they were attended
by similar multitudes, and surrounded by a throng of noblemen and gentlemen.
When the jury went out at seven o’clock at night to consider of their verdict,
everybody (except the King) knew that they would rather starve than yield to
the King’s brewer, who was one of them, and wanted a verdict for his customer.
When they came into court next morning, after resisting the brewer all night,
and gave a verdict of not guilty, such a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as
it had never heard before; and it was passed on among the people away to Temple
Bar, and away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to the east, but passed
to the west too, until it reached the camp at Hounslow, where the fifteen
thousand soldiers took it up and echoed it. And still, when the dull King, who
was then with Lord Feversham, heard the mighty roar, asked in alarm what it
was, and was told that it was ’nothing but the acquittal of the bishops,’ he
said, in his dogged way, ’Call you that nothing? It is so much the worse for
them.’
Between the petition
and the trial, the Queen had given birth to a son, which Father Petre rather
thought was owing to Saint Winifred. But I doubt if Saint Winifred had much to
do with it as the King’s friend, inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a
Catholic successor (for both the King’s daughters were Protestants) determined
the EARLS OF SHREWSBURY, DANBY, and DEVONSHIRE, LORD LUMLEY, the BISHOP OF
LONDON, ADMIRAL RUSSELL, and COLONEL SIDNEY, to invite the Prince of Orange
over to England. The Royal Mole, seeing his danger at last, made, in his
fright, many great concessions, besides raising an army of forty thousand men;
but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the Second to cope with. His
preparations were extraordinarily vigorous, and his mind was resolved.
For a fortnight after
the Prince was ready to sail for England, a great wind from the west prevented
the departure of his fleet. Even when the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was
dispersed by a storm, and was obliged to put back to refit. At last, on the
first of November, one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the Protestant
east wind, as it was long called, began to blow; and on the third, the people
of Dover and the people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing
gallantly by, between the two places. On Monday, the fifth, it anchored at
Torbay in Devonshire, and the Prince, with a splendid retinue of officers and
men, marched into Exeter. But the people in that western part of the country
had suffered so much in The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart. Few people
joined him; and he began to think of returning, and publishing the invitation
he had received from those lords, as his justification for having come at all.
At this crisis, some of the gentry joined him; the Royal army began to falter;
an engagement was signed, by which all who set their hand to it declared that
they would support one another in defence of the laws and liberties of the
three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and of the Prince of Orange. From
that time, the cause received no check; the greatest towns in England began,
one after another, to declare for the Prince; and he knew that it was all safe
with him when the University of Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if he
wanted any money.
By this time the King
was running about in a pitiable way, touching people for the King’s evil in one
place, reviewing his troops in another, and bleeding from the nose in a third.
The young Prince was sent to Portsmouth, Father Petre went off like a shot to
France, and there was a general and swift dispersal of all the priests and
friars. One after another, the King’s most important officers and friends
deserted him and went over to the Prince. In the night, his daughter Anne fled
from Whitehall Palace; and the Bishop of London, who had once been a soldier,
rode before her with a drawn sword in his hand, and pistols at his saddle. ’God
help me,’ cried the miserable King: ’my very children have forsaken me!’ In his
wildness, after debating with such lords as were in London, whether he should
or should not call a Parliament, and after naming three of them to negotiate with
the Prince, he resolved to fly to France. He had the little Prince of Wales
brought back from Portsmouth; and the child and the Queen crossed the river to
Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable wet night, and got safely away. This
was on the night of the ninth of December.
At one o’clock on the
morning of the eleventh, the King, who had, in the meantime, received a letter
from the Prince of Orange, stating his objects, got out of bed, told LORD
NORTHUMBERLAND who lay in his room not to open the door until the usual hour in
the morning, and went down the back stairs (the same, I suppose, by which the
priest in the wig and gown had come up to his brother) and crossed the river in
a small boat: sinking the great seal of England by the way. Horses having been
provided, he rode, accompanied by SIR EDWARD HALES, to Feversham, where he
embarked in a Custom House Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting more ballast,
ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fishermen and smugglers
crowded about the boat, and informed the King of their suspicions that he was a
’hatchet-faced Jesuit.’ As they took his money and would not let him go, he
told them who he was, and that the Prince of Orange wanted to take his life;
and he began to scream for a boat--and then to cry, because he had lost a piece
of wood on his ride which he called a fragment of Our Saviour’s cross. He put
himself into the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, and his detention
was made known to the Prince of Orange at Windsor--who, only wanting to get rid
of him, and not caring where he went, so that he went away, was very much
disconcerted that they did not let him go. However, there was nothing for it
but to have him brought back, with some state in the way of Life Guards, to
Whitehall. And as soon as he got there, in his infatuation, he heard mass, and
set a Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner.
The people had been
thrown into the strangest state of confusion by his flight, and had taken it
into their heads that the Irish part of the army were going to murder the
Protestants. Therefore, they set the bells a ringing, and lighted watch-fires,
and burned Catholic Chapels, and looked about in all directions for Father
Petre and the Jesuits, while the Pope’s ambassador was running away in the dress
of a footman. They found no Jesuits; but a man, who had once been a frightened
witness before Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen, drunken face looking through a
window down at Wapping, which he well remembered. The face was in a sailor’s
dress, but he knew it to be the face of that accursed judge, and he seized him.
The people, to their lasting honour, did not tear him to pieces. After knocking
him about a little, they took him, in the basest agonies of terror, to the Lord
Mayor, who sent him, at his own shrieking petition, to the Tower for safety.
There, he died.
Their bewilderment
continuing, the people now lighted bonfires and made rejoicings, as if they had
any reason to be glad to have the King back again. But, his stay was very
short, for the English guards were removed from Whitehall, Dutch guards were
marched up to it, and he was told by one of his late ministers that the Prince
would enter London, next day, and he had better go to Ham. He said, Ham was a
cold, damp place, and he would rather go to Rochester. He thought himself very
cunning in this, as he meant to escape from Rochester to France. The Prince of
Orange and his friends knew that, perfectly well, and desired nothing more. So,
he went to Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by certain lords, and
watched by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous people, who were far more
forgiving than he had ever been, when they saw him in his humiliation. On the
night of the twenty-third of December, not even then understanding that
everybody wanted to get rid of him, he went out, absurdly, through his
Rochester garden, down to the Medway, and got away to France, where he rejoined
the Queen.
There had been a
council in his absence, of the lords, and the authorities of London. When the
Prince came, on the day after the King’s departure, he summoned the Lords to
meet him, and soon afterwards, all those who had served in any of the
Parliaments of King Charles the Second. It was finally resolved by these
authorities that the throne was vacant by the conduct of King James the Second;
that it was inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant
kingdom, to be governed by a Popish prince; that the Prince and Princess of
Orange should be King and Queen during their lives and the life of the survivor
of them; and that their children should succeed them, if they had any. That if
they had none, the Princess Anne and her children should succeed; that if she
had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange should succeed.
On the thirteenth of
January, one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine, the Prince and Princess,
sitting on a throne in Whitehall, bound themselves to these conditions. The
Protestant religion was established in England, and England’s great and
glorious Revolution was complete.
I HAVE now arrived at
the close of my little history. The events which succeeded the famous
Revolution of one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, would neither be
easily related nor easily understood in such a book as this.
William and Mary
reigned together, five years. After the death of his good wife, William
occupied the throne, alone, for seven years longer. During his reign, on the
sixteenth of September, one thousand seven hundred and one, the poor weak
creature who had once been James the Second of England, died in France. In the
meantime he had done his utmost (which was not much) to cause William to be
assassinated, and to regain his lost dominions. James’s son was declared, by
the French King, the rightful King of England; and was called in France THE
CHEVALIER SAINT GEORGE, and in England THE PRETENDER. Some infatuated people in
England, and particularly in Scotland, took up the Pretender’s cause from time
to time--as if the country had not had Stuarts enough!--and many lives were
sacrificed, and much misery was occasioned. King William died on Sunday, the
seventh of March, one thousand seven hundred and two, of the consequences of an
accident occasioned by his horse stumbling with him. He was always a brave,
patriotic Prince, and a man of remarkable abilities. His manner was cold, and
he made but few friends; but he had truly loved his queen. When he was dead, a
lock of her hair, in a ring, was found tied with a black ribbon round his left
arm.
He was succeeded by the
PRINCESS ANNE, a popular Queen, who reigned twelve years. In her reign, in the
month of May, one thousand seven hundred and seven, the Union between England
and Scotland was effected, and the two countries were incorporated under the
name of GREAT BRITAIN. Then, from the year one thousand seven hundred and
fourteen to the year one thousand, eight hundred and thirty, reigned the four
GEORGES.
It was in the reign of
George the Second, one thousand seven hundred and forty-five, that the
Pretender did his last mischief, and made his last appearance. Being an old man
by that time, he and the Jacobites--as his friends were called--put forward his
son, CHARLES EDWARD, known as the young Chevalier. The Highlanders of Scotland,
an extremely troublesome and wrong-headed race on the subject of the Stuarts,
espoused his cause, and he joined them, and there was a Scottish rebellion to
make him king, in which many gallant and devoted gentlemen lost their lives. It
was a hard matter for Charles Edward to escape abroad again, with a high price
on his head; but the Scottish people were extraordinarily faithful to him, and,
after undergoing many romantic adventures, not unlike those of Charles the
Second, he escaped to France. A number of charming stories and delightful songs
arose out of the Jacobite feelings, and belong to the Jacobite times. Otherwise
I think the Stuarts were a public nuisance altogether.
It was in the reign of
George the Third that England lost North America, by persisting in taxing her
without her own consent. That immense country, made independent under
WASHINGTON, and left to itself, became the United States; one of the greatest
nations of the earth. In these times in which I write, it is honourably
remarkable for protecting its subjects, wherever they may travel, with a
dignity and a determination which is a model for England. Between you and me,
England has rather lost ground in this respect since the days of Oliver
Cromwell.
The Union of Great
Britain with Ireland--which had been getting on very ill by itself--took place
in the reign of George the Third, on the second of July, one thousand seven
hundred and ninety-eight.
WILLIAM THE FOURTH
succeeded George the Fourth, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty,
and reigned seven years. QUEEN VICTORIA, his niece, the only child of the Duke
of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third, came to the throne on the
twentieth of June, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven. She was married
to PRINCE ALBERT of Saxe Gotha on the tenth of February, one thousand eight
hundred and forty. She is very good, and much beloved. So I end, like the
crier, with
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!