John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 1 of 2)
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Title: John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 1 of 2)
Creator: J. H. Shorthouse
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN INGLESANT: A ROMANCE (VOLUME 1 OF 2) ***
Produced by Al Haines.
JOHN INGLESANT
A Romance
by
John Henry Shorthouse
[Greek: Agapetoi, nun tekna Theou esmen, kai
oupo ephanerothe ti esometha.]
VOL. I.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1881
_Printed by_ R & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
_TO_
_RAWDON LEVETT, ESQ._
_MY DEAR LEVETT,_
_I dedicate these volumes to you, that I may have an
opportunity of calling myself your friend._
_J. HENRY SHORTHOUSE._
_LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON,_
_May 1, 1881._
Memoirs of the Life
OF
MR. JOHN INGLESANT
SOMETIME SERVANT TO KING CHARLES I.
WITH
AN ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING BY
THE JESUITS
AND
A PARTICULAR RELATION OF THE SECRET SERVICES
IN WHICH HE WAS ENGAGED
ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE LATE
IRISH REBELLION
WITH
SEVERAL OTHER REMARKABLE PASSAGES AND OCCURRENCES.
ALSO
A HISTORY OF HIS RELIGIOUS DOUBTS AND EXPERIENCES
AND OF THE MOLINISTS OR QUIETISTS IN ITALY
IN WHICH COUNTRY HE RESIDED FOR MANY YEARS
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF
THE ELECTION OF THE LATE POPE
AND
MANY OTHER EVENTS AND AFFAIRS.
*JOHN INGLESANT.*
*INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.*
During my second year at Oxford I became acquainted with a Roman
Catholic gentleman, the eldest son of a family long resident on the
borders of Shropshire towards Wales. My friend, whose name was Fisher,
invited me to his home, and early in my last long vacation I accepted
his invitation. The picturesque country was seen to great advantage in
the lovely summer weather. That part of Shropshire partakes somewhat of
the mountain characteristics of Wales, combined with the more cultivated
beauties of English rural scenery. The ranges of hills, some of which
are lofty and precipitous, which intersect the country, form wide and
fertile valleys which are watered by pleasant streams. The wide
pastures are bordered by extensive plantations covering the more gradual
ascents, and forming long lines along the level summits. We had some
miles to drive even from the small station on the diminutive branch line
of railway which had slowly conveyed us the last dozen miles or so of
our journey. At last, just at the foot of one of the long straight
hills, called Edges in that country, we came upon my friend's house,
seen over a flat champaign of pasture land, surrounded by rows of lofty
trees, and backed by fir and other wood, reaching to the summit of the
hill behind it. It was an old and very picturesque house, jumbled
together with the additions of many centuries, from the round tower-like
staircase with an extinguisher turret, to a handsome addition of two or
three years ago. Close by was the mutilated tower of a ruined priory,
the chancel of which is used as the parish church. A handsome stone
wing of one story, built in the early Gothic style, and not long
completed, formed the entrance hall and dining-room, with a wide
staircase at the back. The hall was profusely hung with old landscapes
and family portraits. After a short introduction to my friend's family,
we were soon assembled in the newly finished dining-room, with its stone
walls and magnificent overhanging Gothic fireplace. The dinner party
consisted of my friend's father and mother, his two sisters, and a Roman
Catholic clergyman, the family chaplain and priest of a neighbouring
chapel which Mr. Fisher had erected and endowed. The room was hung
entirely with portraits, several of them being ecclesiastics in
different religious costumes, contrasting, to my eyes, strangely with
the gay cavaliers and the beautiful ladies of the Stuarts' Court, and
the not less elaborately dressed portraits of the last century, and with
those of my host and hostess in the costume of the Regency. I was
struck with the portrait which happened to be opposite me, of a young
man with a tonsured head, in what appeared to me to be a very simple
monk's dress, and I asked the Priest, a beautiful and mild-looking old
man, whom it was intended to represent.
"A singular story is attached to that portrait," he said, "which, it may
surprise you to learn, is not that of a--a member of our communion. It
is the portrait of a young Englishman named Inglesant, a servant of King
Charles the First, who was very closely connected with the Roman
Catholics of that day, especially abroad, and was employed in some
secret negotiations between the King and the Catholic gentry; but the
chief interest connected with his story consists in some very remarkable
incidents which took place abroad, connected with the murderer of his
only brother--incidents which exhibit this young man's character in a
noble and attractive light. He is connected with Mr. Fisher's family
solely through the relations of his brother's wife, but, singularly, he
is buried not far from here, across the meadows. In the latter years of
his life he purchased an estate in this neighbourhood, though it was not
his native country, and founded an almshouse or rather hospital, for
lunatics, in the chapel in which his tomb is still standing. That
portrait, in which he appears in the dress of a novice," he continued,
turning to the one before me, "was taken in Rome, when he was residing
at the English college, where he certainly was received, as he appears
to have been generally when abroad, into full communion with us. As a
contrast to it, I will show you another in the drawing-room, by Vandyke,
which, though it really was intended for his brother, yet may equally
well represent himself, as, at that period, the two brothers are said to
have been so exactly alike that they could not be known apart. On his
tomb at Monk's Lydiard, as you may see if you incline to take the
trouble to walk so far--and it is a pleasing walk--he is represented in
his gown of bachelor of civil law, a degree which he received at Oxford
during the civil war, and he is there also represented with tonsured
head. I have often thought," continued the Priest, musingly, "of
arranging a considerable collection of papers referring to this
gentleman's story, which is at present in the library; or at least of
writing out a plain statement of the facts; but it would be better done,
perhaps, by a layman. I have the authority of these young ladies," he
continued, with a smile, turning to the Miss Fishers, "that the story is
a more entertaining and even exciting one than the sensational novels of
the day, of which, I need not say, I am not a judge."
The young ladies confirmed this as far as their knowledge went; but they
had heard only fragments of the story, and were urgent with the
clergyman to set about the task. He, however, replied to their
entreaties only by a shake of the head; and the ladies soon after left
the room.
When we went into the drawing-room, I was eager to see the Vandyke, and
was shown a magnificent picture at one end of the room, representing a
singularly handsome young man, in a gorgeous satin court dress of the
reign of Charles the First, whose long hair and profusion of lace and
ornament would probably, in the work of another artist, have produced an
unpleasing impression, but, softened by the peculiar genius of Vandyke,
the picture possessed that combination of splendour and pathos which we
are in the habit of associating only with his paintings. His satin
shoes and silk stockings contrasted curiously with the grass on which
the cavalier stood, and the sylvan scene around him; and still more so
with his dogs and two horses, which were held at some little distance by
a page. His face was high and noble, but on closely comparing it--as I
did several times--with that of the Monk in the dining-room, I arrived
at the conclusion that either the likeness between the brothers was
exaggerated, or the expression of the survivor must have altered greatly
in after years; for no difference in dress, great as was the contrast
between the coarse serge of the novice and the satin of the cavalier,
and between the close-cropped tonsured head and the flowing love locks,
would account for the greater strength and resolve of the portrait in
the dining-room, combined, strangely, as this expression was, with a
slightly wild and abstracted look, indicating either religious
enthusiasm, or perhaps unsettlement of the reason within; this latter
expression being totally wanting in the face of the cavalier.
The next day was Sunday, and I opened my window on a lovely prospect of
lawn and water, with the fir woods sweeping up the hill-sides beyond.
Walking out in the avenue when I was dressed, I met the family returning
from low mass at the chapel. I attended high mass with them at eleven
o'clock. The Chapel was picturesquely built higher up in the wood than
the house. It had a light and graceful interior, and the coverings of
the altar were delicate and white. The exquisite plaintive music, the
pale glimmer of the tapers in the morning sunlight, the soothing perfume
of the incense, the sense of pathetic pleading and of mysterious awe, as
if of the possibility of a Divine Presence, produced its effect on me,
as it does, I imagine, on most educated Churchmen; but this effect
failed in convincing me (then, as at other times) that there was more
under that gorgeous ceremonial than may be found under the simpler
Anglican ritual of the Blessed Sacrament. After church, my friend, who
had some engagement with the Priest, accepted my assurance that I was
fond of solitary walks; and I set off alone on my quest of the tomb of
John Inglesant.
I followed a footpath which led direct from the ruined Church near the
house, across the small park-like enclosure, into the flat meadows
beyond. The shadows of the great trees lay on the grass, the wild roses
and honeysuckle covered the hedges, a thousand butterflies fluttered
over the fields. That Sunday stillness which is, possibly, but the echo
of our own hearts, but which we fancy marks the day, especially in the
country, soothed the sense. The service in the morning had not supplied
the sacrament to me, but it had been far from being without the sense of
worship; and the quiet country in the lovely summer weather, in
connection with it, seemed to me then, as often, the nearest foretaste
we can gain of what the blissful life will be. As I went on the distant
murmur of Church bells came across the meadows, and following a footpath
for a couple of miles, I came to the Hospital or Almshouse, standing
amid rows of elms, and having a small village attached to it, built
probably since its erection. The bells which I had heard, and which
ceased a little before I reached the place, were in a curious turret or
cupola attached to the Chapel, which formed one side of the court. The
buildings were of red brick, faced with stone, in the latest style of
the Stuart architecture. The door of the Chapel was wide open, and I
entered and dropped into a seat just as the Psalms began. The room was
fitted in a style exactly corresponding to the outside; a circular
recess at the upper end took the place of chancel, lighted with three
windows, which were filled with innumerable small panes of glass. The
altar was richly draped; and on it, besides vases of flowers, were two
massive candlesticks of an antique pattern, and an old painting,
apparently of the Virgin and Child. The lower walls of the chancel and
of the whole Chapel were panelled, and the whole had a flat ceiling of
panelled oak, painted in the centre with a sun with rays. Partly in the
chancel, and partly in the Chapel, the surpliced choir was accommodated
in stalls or pews, and the organ and pulpit, in elaborate carved
mahogany, completed the interior. There was a good congregation; and
from this, and from many tablets on the walls, I gathered that the
Chapel was used by the neighbourhood as probably being nearer than the
Parish Churches. The soft afternoon light filled the place, gilding the
old brass-work, and lighting up the dark carving and the sombre narrow
pews. The music was of a very high class, deliciously sung, and I found
afterwards that there was an endowment especially for the choir, and
that the chaplains were required to be musical. The service bore
comparison favourably with the morning's mass, and a short sermon
followed. When all was over, and the people were gone out into the
sunshine, I began to look for the tomb I had come to see, and the
chaplain, having come out of the vestry, and seeming to expect it, I
went up and spoke to him. I told him I had walked from Lydiard--my
friend's house--to see the tomb of the founder, to which I had been
directed by the Roman Catholic gentleman who resided there. He was well
acquainted with Father Arnold, he told me, and took me at once to the
tomb, which was in a recess by the altar, screened from view by the
choir seats. There he lay, sure enough, just as the Priest had told me,
carved from head to foot in alabaster, in his gown of bachelor of civil
law, and his tonsured head. The sculptor had understood his work; the
face was life-like, and the likeness to the portrait was quite
perceptible. The inscription was curious--"sub marmore isto Johannes
Inglesant, Peccator, usque ad judicium latet, expectans revelationem
filiorum Dei."
I told the chaplain what Father Arnold had told me of this man's story,
and of the materials that existed for writing it. He had heard of them
too, and even examined them.
"The Priest will never write it," he said.
"Why do not you?" I asked.
He laughed. "I am a musician," he said, "not an author. You seem more
interested in it than most people; you had better do it."
As I came back across the fields I pondered over this advice; and after
dinner I asked the Priest the story. He told me the outline, and the
next morning took me into the library, and showed me the papers.
The library at Lydiard is a very curious room below the level of the
ground, and in the oldest part of the house. It adjoins the tower with
the extinguisher turret, by which there is communication with the bed
chambers, and with the leads and garrets at the top of the house. The
room was large, and had several closets besides a smaller room beyond,
which had no visible communication except into the library; but the
Priest showed me a secret doorway and staircase, which, he said,
descended into the cellars. Both these rooms and the closets were
crammed with books, the accumulation of four hundred years--most of them
first editions, and clean as when they came from the binder, but browned
and mellowed with age. Early works of the German press, a Caxton, the
scarce literature of the sixteenth century--all the books which had once
been fashionable--Cornelius Agrippa, and Cardan, two or three editions
of the Euphues, folios of Shakespeare and the dramatists, and choice
editions of the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
down to our own day. Besides this general literature, there was a large
collection of Roman Catholic works and pamphlets, many privately printed
at home or published abroad; biographies of Seminary Priests who had
suffered death in England, reports of trials, private instructions, and
even volumes of private letters, for Lydiard had always been a secure
hiding-place for the hunted priests, and more than one had died there,
leaving all his papers in the library. No fitter place could exist in
which to attempt the task I had already determined to undertake, and I
obtained leave of the Priest, promising to make nothing public without
his approval. I had the whole vacation before me; too idle and
desultory to read for honours, I had always been fond of literature and
the classics, and was safe for my degree, and I gave myself up
unreservedly to my task. I have endeavoured, as Father Arnold said, to
tell a plain story. I have no pretensions to dramatic talent, and I
deprecate the reader's criticism. If I have caught anything of the
religious and social tone of the seventeenth century, I am more than
content.
GEOFFREY MONK, M.A.
*CHAPTER I.*
When Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was in the zenith of his power, and was
engaged in completing the suppression of the smaller monasteries before
commencing on the greater,--he had in his service a young gentleman
named Richard Inglesant, the son of a knight, and descended from a
knightly family, originally of Flanders, who had come into England with
the Princess of Hainault. This young man was of an attractive person, a
scholar, active and useful in many ways, and therefore a favourite with
his master. One evening in the end of June 1537, he was sent for by
Cromwell into the great gallery of his magnificent house in Throgmorton
Street, where he found his master walking up and down in thought.
"You must be ready to depart at once, Richard," he said, "into
Wiltshire. I have in this commission appointed you Visitor of the
Priory of Westacre, six miles south of Malmsbury, on the way into
Somerset, which they call the Priory in the Wood. The King's Grace is
resolved on the suppression of this house, as a priory; but note very
carefully what I tell you;--it will be for your guidance. Great
interest has been made to his Grace's Highness on behalf of this house,
both by many of the gentry dwelling thereabout, and also by the common
people by the mouth of the Mayor of Malmsbury. They say the house is
without any slander or evil fame; that it stands in a waste ground, very
solitary, keeping such hospitality, that except with singular good
management it could not be maintained though it had half as much land
again as it has, such a number of the poor inhabitants nigh thereunto
are daily relieved. The Prior is a right honest man, and well beloved
of all the inhabitants therewith adjoining, having with him, in the
house, eight religious persons, being priests of right good
conversation, and living religiously. They spend their time in writing
books with a very fair hand, in making garments for the poor people, in
printing or graving. Now the prayer of these people is that the King's
Highness shall translate this priory into a college, and so continue as
many of the priests as the lands will maintain for the benefit of the
neighbours; and the King is much inclined to do this. Now, on the other
hand, this house has a proper lodging, where the Prior lay, with a fair
garden and an orchard, very mete to be bestowed on some friend of mine,
and some faithful servant of the King's Grace. There is no small number
of acres ready sown with wheat, the tilthes ordered for barley; the
house and grounds are well furnished with plate, stuff, corn, cattle;
the woods well saved, and the hedgerows full of timber, as though the
Prior had looked for no alteration of his house. I had set mine hand on
this house for a friend of mine, but the King's Grace is determined upon
this:--if the Prior will surrender the house in a discreet and frank
manner, and will moreover, on Sunday next, which is the Feast of the
most Precious Blood, after mass, to which all the neighbouring people
shall have been called, in his sermon, make mention of the King's title
of Supreme Head, and submit himself wholly, in all matters spiritual, to
the King's Grace, under Christ, the house shall be continued as a
college, and no man therein disturbed, and not so much as an ounce of
plate taken, that they may pray God Almighty to preserve the King's
Grace with his blessed pleasure. Now I send you on this mission
because, if things go as I think they may, I mean this house for you;
and there is so much clamour about this business that I will have no
more hands in it than I can help. Take two or three of the men with you
whom you can trust; but see you fail not in one jot in the course you
take with the Prior, for should it come to the King's ears that you had
deceived the Prior--and it surely would so come to his Grace--your head
would not be your own for an hour, and I should doubt, even, of my own
favour with the King."
Richard Inglesant was on horseback before daylight the next morning; and
riding by easy stages, arrived at Malmsbury at last, and slept a night
there, making inquiries about the way to Westacre. At Malmsbury, and at
all the villages where he stopped, he heard nothing but what agreed with
what Cromwell had told him; and what he heard seemed to make him loiter
still more, for he slept at Malmsbury a second night, and then did not
go forward to Westacre till noonday. In the middle of the summer
afternoon he crossed the brow of the hilly common, and saw the roofs of
the Priory beneath him surrounded by its woods. The country all about
lay peaceful in the soft, mellow sunlight; wide slopes of wood,
intermixed with shining water, and the quiet russet downs stretching
beyond. Richard had sent on a man the day before to warn the Prior, who
had been expecting his coming all day. The house stood with a little
walled court in front of it, and a gate-house; and consisted of three
buildings--a chapel, a large hall, and another building containing the
Prior's parlour and other rooms on the ground floor, and a long gallery
or dormitory above, out of which opened other chambers; the kitchens and
stables were near the latter building, on the right side of the court.
The Prior received Inglesant with deference, and took him over the house
and gardens, pointing out the well-stocked fish-ponds and other
conveniences, with no apparent wish of concealing anything. Richard was
astonished at the number of books, not only in the book-room, but also
in the Prior's own chamber; these latter the Prior seemed anxious he
should not examine. As far as Richard could see, they were, many of
them, chemical and magical books. He supped with the Prior in Hall,
with the rest of the household, and retired with him to the parlour
afterwards, where cakes and spiced wine were served to them, and they
remained long together. Inglesant delivered his commission fairly to
his host, dwelling, again and again, on every particular, while the
Prior sat silent or made but short and inconclusive replies. At last
Inglesant betook himself to rest in the guest-chamber, a room hung with
arras, opening from the gallery where the monks slept, towards the west;
one of his servants slept also in the dormitory near his door. The
Prior's care had ordered a fire of wood on the great hearth that lighted
up the carved bed and the hunting scene upon the walls. He lay long and
could not sleep. All night long, at intervals, came the sound of
chanting along the great hall and up the stairs into the dormitory, as
the monks sung the service of matins, lauds, and prime. His mind was
ill at ease. A scholar, and brought up from boyhood at the Court, he
had little sympathy with the new doctrines, and held the simple and
illiterate people who mostly followed them in small esteem. He was
strongly influenced by that mysterious awe which the Romish system
inspires in the most careless, even when it is not strong enough to
influence their lives. The mission he had undertaken, and the probable
destruction of this religious house, and the expulsion of its inmates
for his benefit, frightened him, and threatened him with unknown
penalties and terrors hereafter which he dared not face. He lay
listlessly on his bed listening to the summer wind, and when at last he
fell asleep, it was but a light fitful slumber, out of which he woke
ever and anon to hear the distant chanting of the monks, and see by the
flickering fire-light the great hounds coursing each other over the
walls of his room.
In the morning he heard mass in the chapel, after which the Prior sent a
message to explain his absence, informing him that he was gone to
Malmsbury to consult with his friends there how he might best serve the
King's Grace. All that morning Richard Inglesant sat in the hall
receiving the evidence of all who came before him (of whom there was no
lack)--of the neighbours, gentry, and country people. He evidently
examined them with great care and acuteness, noting down every answer,
in a fair clerkly hand, exactly as he received it, neither extenuating
anything nor adding the least word. He also in the same report kept an
exact account of how he passed his time while at Westacre. There
appears--as Cromwell had said--not to have been the least breath of
scandal against the Prior or any of the priests in the house. The only
report at all injurious to the character of the Prior seems to have been
an opinion--oftentimes hinted at by the witnesses--that he was addicted
to the study of chemistry and magic; that, besides his occult books, he
had in his closet in his chamber a complete chemical apparatus with
which he practised alchemy, and was even said to be in possession of the
Elixir of Life. These reports Inglesant does not appear to have paid
much attention to, probably regarding them as not necessarily coming
within the limits of his commission; and, indeed, there is evidence of
his having acted with the most exact fairness throughout the
investigation, more than once putting questions to the witness,
evidently for the purpose of correcting misapprehensions which told
against the Prior. After dinner he rode out to the downs to a gentleman
who had courteously sent him word that he was coursing with greyhounds:
he, however, was not absent from the Priory long, declining the
gentleman's invitation to supper. After he had supped he spent the rest
of the evening in his own chamber, reading what he calls "Ovidii Nasonis
metamorphoseos libri moralizati," an edition of which, printed at
Leipsic in 1510, he had found in the Prior's room.
The next forenoon he spent in the same manner as the last, the people
flocking in voluntarily to give their evidence in favour of the house.
A little after noon the Prior came back, travelling on foot and alone.
As he came along he was thinking of the words of the gospel which
promise great things to him who gives up houses and land for the Lord's
sake.
When he reached the brow of the hill from which he could see the three
red-tiled roofs of the Priory peeping out from among the trees, with the
gardens and the green meadows, and the cattle seen here and there, he
stood long to gaze. The air was soft and yet fresh, and the woods
stretching up the rising-grounds about the Priory were wavering and
shimmering all over with their myriad rustling leaves, instinct with
life and beauty both to the ear and eye; a perpetual change from light
to shadow, from the flight of the fleecy clouds, would have made the
landscape dazzling but for the green on which the eye dwelt with a sense
of rest to the wearied and excited brain. A gentle sound and murmur, as
of happy and contented beings, made itself softly felt rather than
heard, through the noontide air. "Omnes qui relinquunt patrem, domes,
uxorem," said the Prior; but his eyes were so dim that he stumbled as he
went on down the hill.
Richard Inglesant and he were some time alone together that evening.
Whether the Prior prepared him at all for the course he had determined
to pursue, does not appear, but certainly he did not, to any great
extent.
The next day was Sunday, being the "Feast of the most Precious Blood"--a
Sunday long remembered in that country side. The people, for a score of
miles round, thronged to hear the Prior's sermon. The Mayor of
Malmsbury was there; but the clergy of the Abbey, it was noticed, were
not present. The little Chapel would not hold a tithe of the
people--indeed, few more than the gentry and their ladies, who came in
great numbers, were allowed admission. Richard Inglesant and the
Sheriff had Fald-stools in front of the altar, where they remained
kneeling the whole of mass. The doors and windows of the Chapel were
opened, that the people outside might assist at the celebration. They
stood as thick as they could be packed in the little courtyard, and up
the sloping fields around the Priory, listening in silence to the music
of the mass; and at the sound of the bell the whole multitude fell on
their knees as one man, remaining so for several minutes. Mass being
over, the Prior came in procession from the Chapel to where a small
wooden pulpit had been set up just outside the gate-house, in front of
which seats were placed for the Sheriff and Inglesant, and the chief
gentry. The silence was greater than ever, when the Prior, who had
changed the gorgeous vestments in which he had celebrated mass, and
appeared only as a simple monk, ascended the pulpit and began to preach.
The Prior was a great preacher; a small and quiet man enough to look at,
when he entered the pulpit he was transfigured. His form grew
dignified, his face lighted up with enthusiasm, and his voice, even in
the open air, was full and clear, and possessed that magical property of
reaching the hearts of all who heard him, now melted into tenderness,
and now raised to firm resolve. He began with the text that had haunted
his memory the day before, and the first part of his sermon was simply
an earnest and eloquent exhortation to follow Christ in preference to
anything beside on earth. Then, warming in his subject, he answered the
question (speaking that magnificent English tongue that even now rings
in the pages of Foxe), Where was Christ? and urging the people to follow
Him as He manifested Himself in the Church, and especially in the
sacrament of the altar. Then suddenly throwing aside all reserve, and
with a rapidity of utterance and a torrent of eloquence that carried his
hearers with him, he rushed into the question of the day, brought face
to face the opposing powers of the State and Christ, hurled defiance at
the former, and while not absolutely naming the King or his council,
denounced his policy in the plainest words. Then, amid the swaying of
the excited crowd, and a half stifled cry and murmur, he suddenly
dropped his voice, pronounced the formal benediction, and shrank back,
to all appearance, into the quiet, timid monk.
It is needless to describe the excitement and astonishment of the crowd.
The Prior and his procession with difficulty returned to the chapel
through the press. The Sheriff and Richard Inglesant, who with the
other leading gentry had affected perfect unconsciousness that anything
unusual was taking place, entered the hall of the Priory, and the Prior
had a message sent into the sacristy that the King's commissioner
desired to see him immediately in the parlour.
When the Prior entered, Inglesant was standing upon the hearth; he was
pale, and his manner was excited and even fierce.
"You are a bold man, master Prior," he said almost before the other was
in the room; "do you know that you have this day banished yourself and
all your fellowship into the world without shelter and without help?
Nay, I know not but the King's Grace may have you up to answer for this
day with your life! Do you know this?"
The Prior looked him steadily in the face, but he was deadly pale, and
his manner was humble and cowed.
"Yes, I know it," he said.
"Well," continued the other still more excitedly, "I call you to
witness, master Prior, as I shall before the throne of God Almighty,
that I have neither hand nor part in this day's work; that you have
brought this evil upon yourself by your own deed and choice, by no want
of warning and no suddenness on my part, but by your own madness alone."
"It is very true," said the Prior.
"I must to horse," said Inglesant, scarcely heeding him, "and ride post
to my lord. It is as much as my head is worth should any rumour of this
day's business reach the King's Grace by any other tongue than mine.
You will stay here under the Sheriff's guard; but I fear you will too
soon hear what a tragedy this day's play has been for you! God have you
in his keeping, Prior! for you have put yourself out of all hope of
mercy from the King's Grace."
He might have said more, but an alarming noise made him hasten into the
hall. The most lawless and poorest of the people--of whom numbers had
mingled in the crowd in the hope of spoil, taking for granted that the
house was dissolved--had made an attack upon the Chapel and the Prior's
lodging, and it was some time before the Sheriff, assisted by Inglesant
and the other gentlemen and their servants, all of whom were armed,
could restore order. When this was done, and the peaceable people and
women reassured, Inglesant's horses were brought out, and he mounted and
rode off through the dispersing but still excited and lawless crowds,
leaving the Priory to a strong guard of the Sheriff's men. As he rode
up the hill--the people shrinking back to let him pass--he muttered,
bitterly:
"A fine piece of work we have set our hands to, with all the rascal
people of the country to aid. And why should not the Poverty get some
of the droppings, when the Gentry cuts the purse?"
Travelling at a very different pace from that at which he had ridden
from London, he reached the city the next night, and went at once to the
Lord Cromwell, who, the next morning, took him to the King, to whom he
gave a full account of what had occurred. Henry--who appears to have
been induced to form his previous intention by the influence of a
gentleman at Court who probably had his private expectations with regard
to the future possession of the Priory--seems to have really cared
little about the matter. He was, however, highly incensed at the
Prior's sermon, and made no difficulty of immediately granting the
Priory to Richard Inglesant. A pursuivant was sent down to bring the
Prior up to London to be examined before the Council, but it does not
appear that he ever was examined. Probably Inglesant exerted his
influence with Cromwell in his behalf, for Cromwell examined him
himself, and appears to have informed the King that he was harmless and
mad. At any rate, he was set at liberty; and his troubles appear to
have actually affected his reason, for he is said to have returned to
the neighbourhood of Malmsbury, and to have wandered about the Priory at
nights. The other inmates of the Priory had been dispersed, and the
house taken possession of by Inglesant's servants; but he himself seems
to have taken but little pleasure in his new possession, for it was more
than a year before he visited it; and when he did so, events occurred
which increased his dislike to the place.
It was late in October when his visit took place, and the weather was
wild and stormy. He slept in the Prior's guest-chamber, which was in
the same state as when he had occupied it before. The wind moaned in
the trees, and swept over the roofs and among the chimneys of the old
house. In the early part of the night he had a terrible dream, or what
was rather partly a dream and partly a feverish sense of the objects
around him. He thought he was lying in the bed in the room where he
really was, and could not sleep; a fierce contention of the elements and
of some powers more fearful than the elements seemed going on outside.
The room became hateful to him, with its dark, hearse-like bed, and the
strange figures on the tapestry, which seemed to his bewildered fancy to
course each other over the walls with a rapidity and a fantastic motion
which made his senses reel. He thought that, unable to remain where he
was, he rose and went out into the old dormitory, now silent and
deserted, from one end of which he could look into the courtyard, while
from the other he could see a dark mass of woodland, and a lurid distant
sky. On this side all was quiet; but the courtyard seemed astir. The
moon shone with the brightness of day on the mouldering, ivy-grown
walls, and on the round pebble stones between which the long grass was
growing all over the court. The wind swept fiercely across it, and
splashes of rain, every now and then, made streaks in the moonlight like
fire; strange voices cried to him in an unknown language, and
undistinguished forms seemed passing to and fro. The Chapel was all
alight, and low and mournful music proceeded from it, as for the dead.
Fascinated with terror, he left the gallery and descended into the
court. An irresistible impulse led him to the Chapel, which was open,
and he went in. As he did so, voices and strange forms seemed to rush
forward to enter with him, and an overwhelming horror took possession of
him. Inside, the Chapel was hung with black; cowled forms filled the
stalls, and chanted, with hollow, shadowy voices, a dirge for the
departed. A hooded and black form stood before the altar, celebrating
the mass. The altar was alight with tapers, and torches were borne by
sable attendants on either side of the choir. The ghostly forms that
entered with him now thronged about him in the form and habit of living
men. Voices called from without, and were answered from within the
Chapel; rushing sounds filled the air as though the trees were being
torn up, and the Chapel and house rocked. There was no coffin nor pall,
nor any sign of mourning; and it seemed to Inglesant that he was present
at the celebration of some obyte, or anniversary of the death of one
long departed, over whom a wild and ghostly lamentation was made by
beings no longer of the earth. An inexpressible dread and sorrow lay
upon him--an overwhelming dread, as if the final Reckoning were near at
hand, and all hope taken away--sorrow, as though all whom he had ever
loved and known lay before him in death, with the solemn dirge and
placebo said over them by the ghostly choir. The strain was too intense
and painful to be borne, and with a cry, he awoke.
Utterly incapable of remaining where he was, he dressed, and went out
into the gallery, and down into the courtyard. The court was lighted by
the moonlight as brightly as in his dream for one moment, and then was
totally dark from the passing clouds flitting over the moon. All was
calm and still. A small door in the corner of the court near the Chapel
was open, and, surprised at this, Inglesant crossed over and passed
through it. It led into the graveyard of the Priory outside the Chapel,
where the monks and some of the country people had been used to bury
their dead. It was walled round, but the wall at the farther side was
old and ruinous, and had partly fallen down. As Inglesant reached the
postern door, the moon shone out brightly, and he saw, between himself
and the ruined wall, a wasted and cowled figure slowly traversing the
rows of graves. For a moment he felt a terror equal to that of his
dream, but the next the thought of the Prior flashed upon his mind, and
he crossed the graveyard and followed silently in the track of the
figure. The ghostly form reached the opposite wall, and commenced, with
some substance that shone like fire, to draw magic figures upon the
stones of one of its most perfect parts. Placing himself in a position
evidently indicated by these geometrical figures, he carefully observed
the precise spot where his shadow was projected on the wall before him
by the moonlight, and going to this spot, he carefully loosened and
removed a stone. By this time Inglesant was close upon him, and saw him
take from within the wall an antique glass or vial of a singular and
occult shape. As he raised it, some slight motion the other made caused
him to turn round, and at the sight of Inglesant he dropped the magic
glass upon the stone he had removed, and shattered it to pieces. When
he saw what had happened, the strange and weird creature threw his arms
above his head, and with a piercing cry that rang again and again
through the chill night air, fell backwards senseless, and lay in the
pale moonlight white and still among the graves. Inglesant removed him
into the house, and he was restored to sense, but scarcely to reason.
He lived for more than five years, never leaving the Priory, where
Inglesant directed that all his wants should be attended to, wandering
about the gardens, and sometimes poring over his old books, which still
remained upon his shelves. Inglesant never saw him again; but when he
died the old man sent him his blessing, and was buried before the altar
in the Chapel, where all the Priors of the house had lain before him; he
on whom the evil days, which they perhaps had merited but had escaped,
had fallen, and had crushed.
*CHAPTER II.*
Richard Inglesant never, till the last few years of his life, lived at
Westacre, and visited it very seldom. He was a successful courtier; and
at Cromwell's fall became a servant of the King. He married, and lived
entirely at the Court. He was all his life a Catholic at heart, but
conformed outwardly to the religion of the hour. He had one son, named
after him, who was educated at Oxford, and intended for the bar, but his
father left him so considerable a fortune that he was independent of any
profession. That Richard Inglesant left no more than he did, shows that
he adhered through life to the line of conduct we have seen him pursue
at Westacre--conduct which probably satisfied his conscience as being
rigidly exact and honest. On Henry's death he still retained one of his
places about the Court; but on King Edward's death, being a partisan of
Queen Mary's and a hearty conformer, he became a great favourite, and
held a lucrative post. He visited Westacre more frequently, and built a
stately range of buildings on one side of the court, where formerly the
old stables and kitchen were, no doubt for his son's sake, enlarging the
garden on that side to form a terrace in front of the new rooms. At
Queen Mary's accession service was recommenced in the Prior's Chapel,
which was repaired and fitted up afresh, and a regular priest appointed
to serve it. Inglesant's name does not appear in the trials of the
Protestants, a circumstance which makes it appear probable that he was
true to the temporising policy of his youth, and kept his zeal under
good control. When Elizabeth came to the throne, the service in the
Chapel underwent some modification, King Edward's Service Book being
used. The service then had been found so useful to the neighbours that
the parish petitioned for its continuance, and it was legally settled as
a chapelry. The priest conformed to the new order of things, and
Richard Inglesant--who at that time resided constantly at
Westacre--attended the service regularly. He remained a Catholic, but
during the first seven years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, which were all
he lived to see, the Catholics generally came to their parish churches
until forbidden by the Pope's Bull. It remained, therefore, for his
son, who was eighteen years of age at his father's death, to declare
himself; and he conformed to the usage of the English Church. He
resided entirely at Westacre, with an occasional visit to Court, keeping
open-handed hospitality, and slightly embarrassing the estate, though,
like his father, he had only one child. He was a favourer of the
Papists, and once or twice was in trouble on that account; but being
perfectly loyal, and a very popular man, he was rather a favourite with
the Queen, who always noticed him when he came to Court, and was wont to
say that "the dry crust Dick Inglesant gave a Papist should never choke
him while she lived." He lived beyond the term of years usual in his
family, and died in 1629, at the age of eighty-two, having been for the
last twenty years of his life, since the death of the Queen, entirely
under the guidance of his son, very much to his own advantage, as during
those black years for the Papists, he would most probably have committed
imprudences which might have been his ruin. His son, whose name was
Eustace, was a shrewd lawyer and courtier. He was--much more than his
father--a Papist at heart, but he conformed strictly to the English
Church, and possessed considerable indirect influence at Court. He was
thought much of by the Catholics, who regarded him as one of their most
powerful friends. He married young, in 1593, but he had no children by
his first wife, who died in 1610; and in 1620 he married again, a
Catholic lady who was his ward. With this lady he came to reside at
Westacre; but two years after, his wife died in giving birth to two
boys; and, disgusted with the country, he left the two infants to their
grandfather's care and returned to London, visiting Westacre, however,
regularly at intervals; where, with a small number of servants, the old
gentleman, totally forgetful of his old hospitality, and of his friends
the Papists, spent his last days with the greatest delight, in anxiously
watching over his little grandchildren. They were beautiful boys, so
exactly alike that it was impossible to tell them apart, and from their
earliest infancy so united in love to each other that they became a
proverb in the neighbourhood. The eldest was named Eustace, after his
father; but the youngest, at the entreaty of his young mother--uttered
in her faint and dying voice, as the children lay before her during the
few moments that were given her in mercy to look at them before her eyes
were closed on these dearly purchased treasures and all other earthly
things--was named John, after her brother, a Seminary priest of Douay,
executed in England for saying mass, and refusing the oath of supremacy.
Little need be told of the infancy of these boys: traditions remain, as
in other cases, of their likeness to each other, needing different
coloured ribbons to distinguish them; and of the old man's anxious
doting care over them. Many a pretty group, doubtless, they made, on
warm summer afternoons, on the shady terrace; but the old grandfather
died when they were seven years old, and slept with his father beneath
the Chapel floor. After the funeral, Eustace Inglesant had intended
taking both the children back with him to London, but he had
discovered--or fancied he had discovered--that the youngest was sickly,
and would be better for the country air; and therefore kept him at
Westacre, when he returned to the city with his brother. The truth
appears to be that he was a worldly, selfish man, and while fully
conscious of the advantage of an heir, he was by no means desirous of
giving himself more trouble than was necessary about either of his
children. The old Priory, however, was, at this time, not a bad place
to bring up a child in, though it had been neglected during the last ten
or eleven years; though the woods were overgrown, and the oaks came up,
in places, close to the house; though the Prior's fish-ponds had
transformed themselves into a large pool or lake; though the garden was
a tangled wilderness, and centaury, woodsorrel, and sour herbs covered
the ground; though the old courtyard and the Chapel itself were
mouldering and ruinous, yet the air of the rich vales in the north of
Wiltshire is more healthy than that of the higher downs, which are often
covered with fogs when the vales are clear, and the sky is bright and
serene. It was remarked that people lived longer in the valleys than at
places that would be supposed peculiarly healthy on the hills; that they
sang better in the churches; and that books and rooms were not so damp
and mouldy in the low situations as they were in those which stood very
high, with no river or marsh near them. The fogs at times, indeed, came
down into the valleys; and in the courtyard of the Priory dim forms had
been seen flitting through the mist, in reality the shadows of the
spectators thrown upon the mist itself, from the light of a lanthorn.
Such sights as these in such a place, so haunted by the memories of the
past, gave rise to many strange stories--to which young Inglesant
listened with wonder, as he did, also, to others of the _ignis fatuus_,
which, called by the people "Kit of the Candlestick," used, about
Michaelmas, to be very common on the downs, and to wander down to the
valleys across the low boggy grounds--stories of its leading travellers
astray, and fascinating them. The boy grew up among such strange
stories, and lived, indeed, in the old world that was gone for ever.
His grandfather's dimly remembered anecdotes were again and again
recalled by others, all of the same kind, which he heard every day.
Stories of the rood in the Chapel, of the mass wafer with its mysterious
awfulness and power, of the processions and midnight singing at the
Priory. The country was full of the scattered spoil of the monasteries;
old and precious manuscripts were used everywhere by the schoolboys for
covering their books, and for the covers of music; and the glovers of
Malmsbury wrapped their goods in them. In the churchyards the yew-trees
stood thick and undecayed, scarcely grown again from the last lopping to
supply bows for the archers of the King's army. The story was common of
the Becket's path, along which he had been used to pass when cure priest
at Winterbourn, and which could be seen through the deepest snow, or if
ploughed up and sown with corn. Indeed the path itself could be seen
within a pleasant ride across the downs from Westacre.
The boy's first instructor was the old curate of the Chapel, who taught
him his Church Catechism and his latin grammar. This man appears to have
been one of those ministers so despised by the Puritans as "mere grammar
scholars," who knew better how to read a homily than to make a sermon;
yet John Inglesant learnt of him more good lessons than he did, as he
himself owned, afterwards from many popular sermons; and in his old age
he acknowledged that he believed the only thing that had kept him back
in after years, and under great temptations, from formally joining the
communion of the Church of Rome, was some faint prejudice, some
lingering dislike, grounded on the old man's teaching. Other teachers,
of a different kind, the child had in plenty. The old servants who
still remained in the house; the woodsmen and charcoal burners; the
village girls whom the housekeeper hired from year to year at Malmsbury
fair; the old housekeeper who had been his mother's maid, and whom the
boy looked on as his mother, and who could coax him to her lap when he
was quite a tall boy, by telling him stories of his mother; one or two
falconers or huntsmen who lingered about the place, or watched the woods
for game for the gentry around. When he was ten years old, in 1632, the
curate of the Chapel died; and Mr. Inglesant did not at once replace
him, for reasons which will appear presently. John led a broken
scholastic life for a year, going to school when it was fine enough to
make a pleasant walk attractive to ----, where the Vicar taught some
boys their grammar and latin Terence in the Church itself; and where
there was a tradition that the great antiquary, Master Camden,
Clarencieux King of Arms, coming on his survey to examine the Church,
found him, and spoke to him and his scholars. At the end of a year,
however, his father coming into the country, arranged for him to go to
school at Ashley, where he was to stay in the house with the Vicar, a
famous schoolmaster in the west country. This gentleman, who was a
delicate and little person, and had an easy and attractive way of
teaching, was a Greek scholar and a Platonist, a Rosicrucian and a
believer in alchemy and astrology. He found in little Inglesant an apt
pupil, an apprehensive and inquisitive boy, mild of spirit, and very
susceptible of fascination, strongly given to superstition and romance:
of an inventive imagination though not a retentive memory; given to day
dreaming, and,--what is more often found in children than some may
think, though perhaps they could not name it,--metaphysical speculation.
The Vicar taught his boys in the hall of his Vicarage--a large room with
a porch, and armorial bearings in the stained glass in the windows. Out
of this opened a closet or parlour where he kept his books, and in this
he would sit after school was over, writing his learned treatises, most
of which he would read to John Inglesant, some of them in latin. This,
with his readings in Plato, assisted by his eager interest, gave John,
as he grew older, a considerable acquaintance with both languages, so
that he could read most books in either of them, and turn over the
remnants of the old world learning that still remained in the Prior's
Library, with that lazy facility which always gives a meaning, though
often an incorrect one--not always a matter of regret to an imaginative
reader, as adding a charm, and, where his own thought is happy, a
beauty. Here he imbibed that mysterious Platonic philosophy, which--seen
through the reflected rays of Christianity--becomes, as his master
taught him, in some sort a foreshadowing of it, as the innocent and
heroic life of Socrates, commended and admired by Christians as well as
heathens, together with his august death, may be thought, in some
measure, to have borne the image of Christ; and, indeed, not without
some mystery of purpose, and preparation of men for Christianity, has
been so magnified among men. Here, too, he eagerly drank in his
master's Rosicrucian theories of spiritual existences; of the vital
congruity and three several vehicles of the soul; the terrestrial, in
which the soul should be so trained that she may stay as short a time as
possible in the second or aerial, but proceed at once to the third, the
etherial, or celestial; "that heavenly chariot, carrying us, in triumph,
to the great happiness of the soul of man." Of the aerial genii, and
souls separate, and of their converse with one another, and with
mankind. Of their dress, beauty, and outward form; of their pleasures
and entertainments, from the Divinest harmony of the higher orders, who,
with voices perfectly imitating the passionate utterance of their devout
minds, melt their souls into Divine Love, and lose themselves in joy in
God; while all nature is transformed by them to a quintessence of
crystalline beauty by the chemical power of the spirit of nature, acting
on pure essences. Of the feastings and wild dances of the lower and
deeply lapsed, in whom some sad and fantastic imitation of the higher
orders is to be traced; and of those aerial wanderers to whom poetical
philosophers or philosophical poets have given the rivers and
springs--the mountains and groves; with the Dii Tutelares of cities and
countries; and the Lares familiares, who love the warmth of families and
the homely converse of men. These studies are but a part of the course
of which occult chemistry and the lore of the stars form a part; and
that mysterious Platonism which teaches that Pindar's story of the Argo
is only a secret recipe for the philosopher's stone; and which pretends
that at this distance of time the life of Priam can be read more surely
in the stars than in history.
More than three years passed in these pursuits, when Inglesant,--now a
tall, handsome, dreamy-looking boy of fourteen, was suddenly recalled to
Westacre by his father, who had unexpectedly arrived from London. His
master, who was very fond of him, gave him many words of learned advice;
for he expected, as proved to be the case, that his school-days--at
least as far as he was concerned,--were ended. He concluded with these
words:--
"I have done my best to show you those hidden truths which the heathen
divines knew as well as we; how much more, then, ought we to follow
them, who have the light of Christ! Do not talk of these things, but
keep them in your heart; hear what all men say, but follow no man: there
is nothing in the world of any value but the Divine Light,--follow it.
What it is no man can tell you; but I have told you many times, and you
know very well it is not here nor there, as men shall tell you, for all
men say they have it who are ignorant of its very nature. It will
reveal itself when the time shall come. If you go to the Court, as I
think you will, attach yourself wholly to the King and the Church party,
the foundations of whose power are in the Divine will. I foresee dark
clouds overhanging the Church, but let not these affright you; behind,
the Divine Light shineth--the Light that shineth from the hill of God.
I have taught you to clear your soul from the mists of carnal error, but
I have never told you to act freely in this world: you are not placed
here to reason (as the sectaries and precisians do), but to obey.
Remember it is the very seal of a gentleman--to obey: remember the
Divine words of Plato, in the Crito, when Socrates was about to suffer;
how he refused, when urged, to break those laws under which he was
falsely condemned. Let those words ring in your ears as they did in
his; so that, like the worshippers of Cybele, who heard only the flutes,
you shall hear nothing but the voice of God, speaking to you in that
rank in which He has placed you, through those captains whom He has
ordained to the command. Whenever--and in whatever place--the Divine
Light shall appear to you, be assured it will never teach you anything
contrary to this."
There was no horse sent for John, but he was obliged to ride in an
uncomfortable manner before the serving man who was sent to fetch him;
children, and especially younger sons, being treated as little better
than servants, and they were indeed often tyrannised over by the latter.
When he reached Westacre, he was told his father was in one of the rooms
in the new wing of the house, and on entering, he found him in company
with three other persons. One of these was the newly appointed curate
of the Church, whom Johnny had never yet seen; the other was a fine,
handsomely dressed man, with a lofty, high-bred look, and in the window
was a beautiful boy of about John's own age, in the costly dress of a
page. Inglesant knew that this must be his brother Eustace; and after
humbly receiving his father's rather cold greeting, he hastened to
embrace him, and he returned the greeting with warmth. But his father
immediately presented him to the gentleman who stood by him; telling him
that this gentleman would probably spend some time at Westacre, and that
it was chiefly that he should attend him, that he had sent for him home;
charging him, at the same time, to serve and obey him implicitly, as he
would his father or the King.
"He is a mere country lad," he said, "very different from his brother,
but he is young, and may be useful in after days."
The gentleman looked at Johnny kindly, with a peculiar expression which
the boy had never before seen, penetrating and alluring at the same
time.
"He is, as you say, Esquire, a country lad, and wants the fine clothes
of my friend the page, nevertheless he is a gallant and gentle boy, and
were he attired as finely, would not shame you, Mr. Inglesant, more than
he does. And I warrant," he continued, "this one is good at his books."
And sitting down, he drew Johnny on his knee, and taking from his pocket
a small book, he said: "Here, my friend, let us see how you can read in
this."
It was the Phaedo of Plato, which Johnny knew nearly by heart, and he
immediately began, with almost breathless rapidity, to construe with,
here and there, considerable freedom, till the gentleman stopped him
with a laugh. "Gently, gently, my friend. I saw you were a scholar, but
not that you were a complete Platonist! I fear your master is one who
looks more to the Divine sense than to the grammar! But never mind, you
and I shall be much together, and as you are so fond of Plato, you shall
read him with me. You shall go to your brother, who, if he cannot read
'In Phaedone,' can tell you many wonderful things of the Court and the
city that no doubt you will hear very gladly;" and letting Johnny go, he
turned to his father, saying, in an undertone, which, however, the boy
heard; "The lad is apt, indeed! more so than any of us could have
dreamt; no fitter soil, I could wager, we could have found in England!"
Johnny went to his brother, and they left the room together. The two
boys,--as the two children had been,--were remarkably alike; the more so
as this likeness of form and feature, which to a casual observer
appeared exact, was consistent with a very remarkable difference of
expression and manner--the difference being, as it were, contained in
the likeness without destroying it. Their affection for each other,
which continued through life, was something of the same nature, arising
apparently from instinct and nature, apart from inclination. Their
tastes and habits being altogether different, they pursued their several
courses quite contentedly, without an effort to be more united, but once
united, or once recalled to each other's presence or recollection even
in the most accidental manner, they manifested a violent and
overpowering attachment to each other. On the present occasion they
wandered through the gardens and neighbourhood of the Priory; and as the
strange gentleman had foretold, Johnny took the greatest interest in the
conversation of his brother, whom, indeed, he both now and afterwards
most unfeignedly admired, and to whose patronage he invariably submitted
with perfect satisfaction. Eustace, who had lately been admitted one of
the junior supernumerary pages to the King, talked incessantly of the
King's state and presence chamber, of the yeomen of the guard, of the
pageants and masques, and of banquets, triumphs, interviews, nuptials,
tilts, and tournaments; the innumerable delights of the city; of the
stage players, tumblers, fiddlers, inn-keepers, fencers, jugglers,
dancers, mountebanks, bear-wardens; of sweet odours and perfumes,
generous wines, the most gallant young men, the fairest ladies, the
rarest beauties the world could afford, the costly and curious attire,
exquisite music, all delights and pleasures which, to please the senses,
could possibly be devised; galleries and terraces, rowing on the Thames,
with music, on a pleasant evening, with the goodly palaces, and the
birds singing on the banks.
All this Johnny listened to with admiration, and made little reply to
his brother's disparaging remarks on the miserable life he had led in
the country, or to his sage advice to endeavour, by some means, to come
to London to the Court.
Johnny remembered his master's counsel, and was silent on his own
pleasures and pursuits. His pleasant walks by the brook side, pleasant
shade by the sweet silver streams, good air, and sweet smell of fine,
fresh meadow flowers, his walks among orchards, gardens, green thickets,
and such-like pleasant places, in some solitary groves between wood and
water, meditating on some delightful and pleasant subject--he thought
his brother would only ridicule these things. It is true the next day
when they went to the Avon to see an otter hunted, Johnny occupied the
foremost place for a time; he was known to the keepers, and to two or
three gentlemen who were at the sport, and was familiar with the terms
in tracing the mark of the otter, and following through all the craft of
the hunting, tracing the marks in the soft and moist places to see which
way the head of the chase was turned. He carried his otter spear as
well as any of the company, while the hounds came trailing and chanting
along by the river-side, venting every tree root, every osier bed and
tuft of bulrushes, and sometimes taking to the water, and beating it
like spaniels. But as soon as the otter, escaping from the spears, was
killed by the dogs, or, having by its wonderful sagacity and craft
avoided the dogs, was killed by the spears, Eustace assumed his superior
place, coming forward to talk to the gentlemen, who were delighted with
him, while Johnny fell back into the quiet, dreamy boy again.
The two brothers were left together for several days, their father, with
the strange gentleman--whose name Eustace told Johnny was Hall--having
departed on horseback, on a visit to a gentleman in Gloucestershire.
Eustace observed great caution in speaking of Mr. Hall, telling Johnny
he would know all about him soon from himself. The boys passed the time
happily enough. Johnny's affection for his brother increased every day,
and withstood not only Eustace's patronage, but--what must have been
much more hard to bear--the different way in which the servants treated
the two boys. Eustace, who, though only a few minutes older than his
brother, was the heir, was treated with great deference and respect;
which might possibly also be owing to his being a stranger and to his
Court breeding. Johnny, on the contrary, though he was quite as tall as
his brother, they treated like a child: the housekeeper took him up to
bed when it pleased her; the old butler would have caned him without
hesitation had he thought he deserved it; and the maids alternately
petted and scolded him, the first of which was more disagreeable to him
than the last. The hard condition of children, and especially of
younger brothers, is a common theme of the writers of the period, and
Johnny's experience was not different from that of others. His
disposition, however, was not injured by it, though it may have made him
still fonder of retirement and of day-dreaming than he would have been.
This hard discipline made him resolve to be silent on those wonderful
secrets and the learning that his master had taught him, and to meditate
increasingly upon them in his heart. He delighted more and more in
wandering by the river-side, building castles in the air, and acting an
infinite variety of parts. When his brother left him, this became still
more delightful to him, and but for other influences he might have gone
on in this fascinating habit till he realised Burton's terrible
description, and from finding these contemplations and fantastical
conceits so delightful at first, might have become the slave of vain and
unreal fancies, which may be as terrible and dismal as pleasing and
delightful.
After about a fortnight's absence, Mr. Inglesant and Mr. Hall returned
from their visit, or visits, for they appeared to have stayed at several
places; and the next day Eustace and his father departed for London.
His father displayed more affection than usual on leaving Johnny behind
him, assuring him of his love, and that if he heard a good account of
him from Mr. Hall, he should come up to London and see the Court.
Eustace's grief at losing his brother again was much lessened by his joy
at returning to his congenial life in London; but Johnny watched him
from the old gatehouse in front of the Priory with a sad heart.
While he is standing looking after his father and brother, as they ride
up the hill by the same path which the Prior came down that fine summer
morning long years before, we will take a moment's time to explain
certain events of which he was perfectly ignorant, but which were about
to close about him and involve him in a labyrinth from which he may have
been said never to have issued during his life. We call ourselves free
agents;--was this slight, delicate boy a free agent, with a mind and
spirit so susceptible, that the least breath affected them: around whom
the throng of national contention was about to close; on whom the
intrigue of a great religious party was about to seize, involving him in
a whirlpool and rapid current of party strife and religious rancour?
Must not the utmost that can be hoped,--that can be even rationally
wished for--be, that by the blessing of the Divine guidance, he may be
able to direct his path a little towards the Light?
The laws oppressing the Roman Catholics, which had been stringently
enforced during the greater part of James's reign, had been considerably
relaxed when he was negotiating with the Spaniards for the marriage of
his son, and again on King Charles's marriage with Henrietta Maria of
France. From that time greater and greater leniency was shown them, not
only by the exertion of Catholic influence at Court, but also through
Puritan jealousy; the juries refusing to punish Popish recusants,
because Puritan separatists were included in the lists. Spasmodic
exertions of severity were made from time to time by the King and the
Church party; but, on the whole, the Papists enjoyed more and more
liberty, especially between 1630 and 1640. Advantage was taken by the
party of this freedom to the fullest extent; money was amassed abroad,
an army of missionary priests poured into England, agents were sent from
the Pope, and every effort made in every part of England to gain
converts, and confirm uncertain members. Many Papists who had conformed
to the authority of the English Church beginning to entertain hopes of
the ultimate success of the old religion, fell away and became
recusants--that is, ceased to attend their Parish Church. Mr.
Inglesant, who--through all his life--had watched the progress of
affairs with a careful and far-reaching penetration, had, from the
first, been in communication with chiefs of the popish party; but he was
far too important a friend where he was to allow of any change in his
behaviour, and he still rigidly conformed to the Established Church.
The Roman Catholics were divided into two parties, holding two opinions,
which, under different aspects, actuate all religious parties at the
present day. The one viewed the English Church and its leader
Archbishop Laud with hatred, regarding him, and doubtless with great
truth, as their most formidable opponent, as occupying a place in the
country and in the allegiance of the majority of Englishmen which
otherwise could only have been filled by the older Church: the other
looking more at the resemblances between the two Churches, held the
opinion that little was needed to bring the Established Church into
communion and submission to the Papal See, and by that means, at once,
and without trouble, restore the papal authority in England. The
efforts of this party were of a more political nature than those of the
other; they endeavoured to win over Archbishop Laud to a conference, and
a Cardinal's hat was offered to him more than once. To this party Mr.
Inglesant belonged. Occupying a neutral position himself, and possessed
of the confidence of members of both Churches, he was peculiarly fitted
for such negotiations, and was in constant communication with those
Churchmen, very numerous at Court, and among the clergy and the country
gentry, who were favourably disposed to the Papists, though at the same
time sincere members of their own Church. The value of emissaries
possessing in this way the confidence of Church people and Papists alike
was so obvious, that Mr. Inglesant and his friends did all they could to
add to their number, especially as they were not very easy to procure,
great jealousy existing, among nearly all Church people, of any foreign
or armed interference in England on the part of the Romanists, who were
always suspected of such intentions. Mr. Inglesant, therefore, whom
nothing escaped, had marked out his younger son's temperament as one
peculiarly fitted to be trained for such a purpose, and had communicated
this idea to his intimate associate among the Papists, Father Sancta
Clara, as he was called, of an English family named St Clare, a Jesuit
missionary priest who travelled in England under the name of Mr. Hall.
The latter was a man of great influence, unbounded devotion to his
order, and unflinching courage; a profound scholar, and, according to
the knowledge of that day, a man of science, trained, indeed, in every
variety of human learning, and taking advantage of every scrap of
knowledge and information for the advancement of his purpose. Of
elegant and fascinating manners, and accustomed to courtly life abroad,
he was, perhaps, the most influential agent among the thousand mission
priests at that time scattered through England. His time, of course,
was fully taken up with his difficult embassy, but he was interested in
the account Inglesant gave of his son; and the idea of training him to
such usefulness in three or four years' time, when their plans might be
expected to be ripe, commended itself exceedingly to his peculiar genius
and habit of mind. He was at this time Superior over part of the
south-west of England, and was much engaged among the gentry in those
parts--a position of peculiar difficulty, as the people of the greater
part of that district were strongly Puritan, and the gentry hostile to
Rome. So secluded and convenient a position as Westacre Priory was
exactly adapted to aid him in his mission, and he resolved to take up
his quarters there, from whence he could, with great hopes of escaping
observation, continue his work in the adjoining country. Mr. Inglesant,
with an eye to such a contingency, had purposely omitted to appoint a
chaplain at the Priory for some time, and now nominated a Mr. ----, a
graduate of Oxford, a man who was "ex animo" a Papist, and who only
waited a suitable time to declare himself one. The number of such men
was very great, and they were kept in the English Church only by the
High Church doctrines and ceremonies introduced by Archbishop Laud;
affording one out of numberless parallels between that age and the
present. It is perhaps not necessary to say more in this place to
explain the presence of Mr. Hall (otherwise Father Sancta Clara) at
Westacre, nor the future that lay before Johnny Inglesant as he stood by
the gatehouse of the old Priory looking after his father and Eustace as
they rode up the hill.
*CHAPTER III.*
Father Sancta Clara was obliged to remain quiet at Westacre for some
time, and devoted himself entirely to gaining an influence over Johnny.
Of course in this he was entirely successful. There was a good library,
for that day, at the Priory; the Prior's old books were still on the
shelves, and Richard Inglesant, who we have seen was a scholar, added
largely to them, bringing all his books into the country when he came to
live at Westacre. The difference between Johnny's former master and
this present one was that between a theorist and dreamer and a statesman
and man of the world and critical student of human nature. The Father
made Johnny read with him every day, and by his wealth of learning and
acquaintance with men and foreign countries, made the reading
interesting in the highest degree. In this way he read the classics,
making them not dead school books, but the most human utterances that
living men ever spoke; and while from these he drew illustrations of
human life when reading Plato--which he did every day--he led his pupil
to perceive, as he did more fully when he grew older, that wonderful
insight into the spiritual life and spiritual distinctions which even
Christianity has failed to surpass. He led him, step by step, through
that noble resolve by which Socrates--at frightful odds, and with all
ordinary experience against him--maintains the advantage to be derived
from truth; he pointed out to him the three different elements to be
found in Plato: the Socratic or negative argument, simply overthrowing
received opinion; the pseudo-scientific, to which Plato was liable from
the condition of knowledge in his day; and, finally, the exalted flight
of the transcendental reason, which, leaving alike the scepticism of the
negative argument and the dreams of false science, flies aloft into the
pure ether of the heavenly life. He read to him Aristophanes, pointing
out in him the opposing powers which were at work in the Hellenic life
as in the life of every civilised age. He did not conceal from him the
amount of right there is on the popular side of plain common sense, nor
the soundness of that fear which hesitates to overthrow the popular
forms of truth, time-honoured and revealed, which have become in the
eyes of the majority, however imperfect they may really be, the truth
itself. Nor did he fail to show him the unsuitability of the Socratic
argument to the masses of the people, who will stop at the negative
part, and fail of the ethereal flight beyond; and he showed him how it
might be possible, and even the best thing for mankind, that Socrates
should die, though Socrates at that moment was the noblest of mankind:
as, afterwards, though for a different reason, it was expedient that a
nobler than Socrates should die for the people,--nobler, that is, in
that he did what Socrates failed in doing, and carried the lowest of the
people with him to the ethereal gates. And in this entering into
sympathy with the struggle of humanity, he prepared his pupil to receive
in after years (for it is a lesson that cannot be fully learned until
middle life is approached) that kindly love of humanity; that sympathy
with its smallest interests; that toleration of its errors, and of its
conflicting opinions; that interest in local and familiar affairs, in
which the highest culture is at one with the unlearned rustic mind.
The boy drank in all this with the greatest aptitude, and would have
listened all day, but his tutor insisted on his taking his full amount
of exercise, and himself commanded his admiration as much by skill in
the sports of the field as by learning. He made no effort to draw his
mind away from the English Church, farther than by giving him a crucifix
and rosary, and teaching him the use of them, and pointing out the
beauties of the Roman use; he even took pains to prevent his becoming
attached to Popery, telling him that his father would not wish him to
leave the Church of England; and though that Church was at present in
schism, it would probably soon be reunited, and that meanwhile the
difference was unimportant and slight. He knew, indeed, that from the
excitable and enthusiastic nature of his pupil, if he once became
attached strongly to Roman theology, all his use as a mediator between
the two parties would at once be lost; and he therefore contented
himself with securing his own influence over Johnny; which he
accomplished to the most unlimited extent.
After certain preparations had been made, and some needful precautions
taken, a great change took place in the life at Westacre Priory.
Strangers were constantly arriving, stayed a few hours, and departed,
mostly coming in the night, and leaving, also, after sunset. Several,
however, remained a longer time, and took great pains to conceal
themselves. They all had long interviews with the Father. Services
were also performed in the Chapel, frequently in Latin. It was death to
say mass in England, except in the Queen's Chapels at St. James's, at
Somerset House, and at Woodstock, nevertheless mass was said in all
parts of England, and it was said at Westacre. One night, after Johnny
had been asleep for some hours, he was awakened by Father St. Clare, who
told him to dress himself and come with him, and, at the same time,
charged him never to tell any one what he might be about to see--an
injunction which the boy would have died rather than disobey. The long
streaks of the summer dawn stretched across the sky before them as they
crossed the courtyard towards the Chapel, and the roofs stood out sharp
and distinct in the dim, chill air. The Chapel was lighted, and on the
white cloth of the altar were tapers and flowers. Half awake in the
sweet fresh morning air, Johnny knelt on the cold flag stones of the
Chapel and saw the mass. Strangers who had come to the Priory on
purpose were present, and some gentlemen of the neighbourhood whom
Johnny knew. It is strange that the Jesuit should have placed so much
trust in the prudence and fidelity of a boy; but he probably knew his
pupil, and certainly had no cause to repent. This was not the only time
mass was said; for one winter night--or rather morning--an old peasant
known in the neighbourhood as Father Wade had been to Marlborough wake,
and being benighted, bethought himself of asking a lodging at the
Priory, and approached it by a pathway from the east, which, crossing
the meadows beyond the Chapel, came round to the gatehouse at the front.
He, however, never reached the gate, and being found at home the next
day, and questioned as to where he passed the night, he was at first
evasive in his replies, but on being pressed, told a mysterious story of
strange lights and shapes of men he had seen about the Priory; and
approaching--he said--fearfully along the path, there, sure enough! were
the old monks passing up in procession from the graveyard through the
wall into the Chapel, as through a door; and he heard the
long-remembered chanting of the mass, and saw the tapers shining through
the east window, as he had seen them when a little boy.
This manner of life went on for about a year, at the end of which time
Father St. Clare's absences became more frequent, and Johnny was left
much alone. The Father's mission in the west of England was not
prospering, for the very simple reason that he was too good for the
work. As far as the duties of a Superior went, everything was
satisfactory. The country was mapped out in districts, and emissaries
were appointed to each; but for the peculiar mission of Father St.
Clare--that of personal influence--there was no scope. It was the habit
of the Jesuits, by the charms of their conversation and learning, by
their philosophical theories, and in some cases by their original
systems of science, to gain the confidence and intimacy of the highest
both in station and intellect. And for this seed to spring up, there
must be first a suitable soil for it to be sown in, and this soil was
particularly scarce in Wiltshire. All the refinement and learning of
Father St. Clare was thrown away upon the country squires; any boon
companion would have influenced them quite as well. Becoming conscious
of this, the Jesuit rode frequently to London, where work which required
the highest skill and talent was going on; and in his absence Johnny was
left very much to his own devices. During one of these absences a
priest who had remained concealed several days at the Priory, and who
had taken a fancy to the boy, gave him at parting, a little book,
telling him to read it carefully, and it would be of use to him through
life. It was entitled, "The Flaming Heart, or the Life of St. Theresa,"
of which a later edition, printed in 1642, was dedicated to Henrietta
Maria. It opened a new world of thought to Johnny, who was now sixteen
years of age, and he read it many times from beginning to end. A great
deal of it was so strange to Inglesant, that he was repelled by it. The
exaggeration of the duty of self-denial, the grotesque humility, the
self-denunciation for the most trifling faults,--most of the details
indeed appeared to him either absurd or untrue; but, running through all
the book, the great doctrine of Divine Illumination fascinated him. The
sublime but mysterious way of devotion pointed out in it, while quite
different from anything he had previously heard of, was still
sufficiently in accordance with the romantic habit of his mind, and with
the mystic philosophy in which his old master had trained him, to cause
him to follow it with an eager sympathy. The natural and inspired
writings of the great mystics, indeed, breathe a celestial purity,
entirely distinct from those of their inferior disciples, who brought
down their spiritual system to earth and earthly purposes. The rest from
individual effort, the calm after long striving, the secret joy in God,
the acquiescing in His will, in which the true elevation of devotion
lies, and which is not the effect of lively imaginations or of fruitful
inventions--of these, all men are not capable, but all may reach the
silent and humble adoration of God which arises out of a pure and quiet
mind, just as when a man enters into an entire friendship with another;
then the single thought of his friend affects him more tenderly than all
that variety of reflections which may arise in his mind where this union
is not felt. This inward calm and quiet in which men may in silence
form acts of faith and feel those inward motions and directions which,
as this book taught, follow all those who rise up to this elevation, and
which lead them onward through the devious paths of this life,--what
must this be but the Divine Light of which his old master had so often
told him he was ignorant, but whose certain coming he had led him
constantly to expect? Enticed by such thoughts as these, he passed the
days, hardly knowing what he did; and wandered in this perplexed
labyrinth without a guide. Without a guide! but this book of his told
him of a guide--a spiritual guide!--nay, even recommended obedience and
entire submission to this director; and dissuaded from self-confidence.
Where, then, was this guide, to whom, in the midst of such spiritual
light and life, and after such ecstatic visions, he should turn? The
book said it was the priest--any priest would do--but still it was the
priest. This seemed to John Inglesant, whose perceptions the Jesuit had
sharpened, but whose unrestrained romance he had not crushed, to be very
different from that Divine Light of which his master spoke, from that
transcendental voice of the Platonic Reason speaking in the silence of
the soul; nay, it seemed to him to be a fall even from the teaching of
the book itself. Meditating on these things, Johnny thought he would
visit his old master, to see what he had to say about this new doctrine.
It was a fine summer morning when he made the visit; he had a horse of
his own now, and a servant if he chose, but he preferred to-day to go
alone. He found Mr. ---- had discontinued his school, and was entirely
buried in his books; only reading morning and evening prayers, and a
homily, or one of his old sermons in the Church on Sundays. He never
left his study on other days, except for a turn in his little garden.
His house was by the wayside, with a small paved court before the hall;
and by the side of this court, the garden, into which the window of the
study, in a gabled wing adjoining the hall, looked towards the road. He
was pleased to see Inglesant, though he very dimly remembered him, and
questioned him of his studies. Johnny read him some Plato with the
Jesuit's comments, of which the old gentleman took notes eagerly, and
afterwards incorporated them in his book. The book he was writing was
upon Talismanic figures, but he was not particular what he put into it;
anything of an occult and romantic character being welcome, and
introduced with not a little ingenuity. He had no sense nor
understanding of anything else in the world but such subjects and his
books; and being exceedingly infirm, he could scarcely lift some of the
larger folios which lay heaped about him within reach. He blessed God
that his eyesight was so good, and that he could still read Greek--the
contracted Greek type of that day. After some conversation, Inglesant
opened his mind to him, told him what he had been reading, and asked his
opinion. The old scholar pricked up his ears, and set to work with
great delight, taking notes all the time; and Johnny found, years
afterwards, when he happened to read his book in London, that all he
told him was introduced into it.
"I find nothing, my dear pupil," he said, "in the Christian Church, very
old, concerning this doctrine--for that author who goes by the name of
Dionysius the Areopagite is of far later date--but I will discover to
you some mysteries concerning it, which, so far as I know, have never
been brought to light by any man. I find the germ of this doctrine in
those fragments of metaphysics which go under Theophrastus, his name;
who was a disciple of Aristotle, and succeeded him in his school; and
was an excellent philosopher, certainly, by the works by him which
remain to this day. Here he says that the understanding joined to the
body, can do nothing without the senses, which help it as far as they
can to distinguish sensible things from their first causes, but that all
knowledge and contemplation of the first causes must be by very touching
and feeling of the mind and soul; which knowledge, thus gained, is not
liable to error. Synesius, a man well known amongst scholars, being
vexed that this new divinity began in his day to be in request amongst
Christians; and some illiterate monks and others taking advantage of it
to magnify ignorance, to bring themselves into repute--Synesius, I say,
wrote that exquisite treatise, which he inscribed 'Dio,' to prove the
necessity of human learning and philosophy to all who will contemplate
high things with sobriety and good success. 'God forbid,' he says,
'that we should think that if God dwell in us, He should dwell in any
other part of us than that which is rational, which is His own proper
temple.'
"Now whether the writings of some ancient and later Platonists, Greeks
and Arabs, Heathens and Mahometans be a sufficient ground and warrant
for them that profess to ascribe more to the Scriptures, by which
sobriety of sense is so much commended unto us, than to the opinions of
heathen philosophers, I leave you to consider."
Then Inglesant left him, for he seemed more desirous to put ideas into
his book than to impart them, and rode home across the downs. As he
went, he overtook a gentleman riding an easy-going palfrey, whom he
found to be one whom he knew; one, indeed, of those who had attended the
early morning mass in the Chapel. This gentleman, who was one of those
called Church Papists, that is, Papists who saved themselves from the
charge of recusancy by sometimes attending their Parish Church, knowing
Johnny, and placing faith in him, began at once to relate his troubles.
He dwelt sadly on the fines he had to pay, and his difficulties in
avoiding the communion at Easter; but his greatest troubles were caused
by his wife, who was much more zealous than he was, and refused to go to
Church once a month to keep off the Church-wardens. Her religion,
indeed, was so costly to him, that he had rather have had a city lady
with her extravagant dress. He was very particular in inquiring after
Father St. Clare, and whether Inglesant knew of anything he was engaged
in; but John could give him no information, not knowing anything of the
Jesuit's plans. They were hard times, he said, for a good quiet subject
who wished to live at peace with his King and with his clergyman; but
what with the fear of the apparitor on one hand, and of his wife and her
advisers among the Catholics on the other--he had a hard time of it. He
was a cheerful man naturally, however, and leaving this discourse, which
he thought would tire his companion, he entertained him for some time
with the news of the country, of which he gathered great abundance in
his rides. Among other things, he told him of a clergyman at a parish
not far off, who, he said, must be a Catholic in his heart, for his
piety was so great and his punctuality in reading common prayer, morning
and evening in the Church alone in his surplice so regular, that--so the
common report ran--he had brought down an angel from heaven, who
appeared to him in the Church one evening, in the glow of the setting
sun, and told him many wonderful and heavenly things. When the gentleman
had related this, they came to the point where their roads parted, and
he invited Johnny--for he was very courteous--to come on to his house,
and sup with him. To this Inglesant consented, visits being a rare
pleasure to him, and they rode together to the gentleman's house, which
stood on the edge of the downs, with a courtyard and gatehouse before
it, and at the back a fair hall and parlour, having a wide prospect over
the valley and the distant view. Johnny was courteously received by the
popish lady and her sister, who was devout and very pretty. The supper
would have been very plain--the day being a fast--but the gentleman
insisted on waiting while a rabbit was cooked for his friend; and when
it came, he partook of it himself, in spite of his wife's
remonstrances--out of courtesy to his guest, he said, and also to enable
him to get over his next fine, which, he said, it ought to do. The
ladies asked John Inglesant many questions about the Father, and what
took place at the Priory; also about his brother the Page. This made
him leave early, for though he knew nothing of any plots or treason, he
was constantly afraid of saying something he ought not to do; nothing
was said, however, about the morning mass, which was too serious a
matter to be lightly spoken of.
As he rode away through the soft evening light, he thought so much of
the story the gentleman had told him, that he made up his mind to ride
to the village and see the clergyman whose goodness was so manifest and
so rewarded. He, surely--if no one else could--would show him the true
path of Devotion.
Two or three days afterwards he took the ride, and arrived at the small
old Church at a very opportune moment, for the clergyman in his surplice
was just going into it to read the evening prayers. Inglesant attended
devoutly, being the only person present; for the sexton's wife, who rang
the bell, did not consider that her duty extended farther. Prayers
being over, the parson invited Johnny to supper--a much better one than
he had had at the Papist's--and Inglesant stated his difficulties to
him, and asked his advice. The Parson showed him several small books
which he had written; one on bowing and taking off the hat at the name
of Jesus; another on the cross in baptism, and kneeling at the
communion; a third on turning to the east, which last appeared to be
mostly quotations and enlargements from Dr. Donne; a fourth on the use
of the surplice. He repudiated being popishly inclined; having
disproved, he said, that any of these practices were popish, in all his
books, all of which, as far as Johnny could see, displayed considerable
ingenuity; and while he inserted many trivial and weak passages, he
seemed to have been well read in the Fathers and other old authors, and
to have been a loyal, honest, and zealous advocate, according to his
capacity, of the Church of England. He evidently looked on forms and
ceremonies with the greatest reverence, and was totally incapable of
telling his visitor anything of that mystical life he was so anxious to
realise. Johnny inquired about the angel, but his host, while not
appearing displeased at the reports being spread abroad, professed to
deny all knowledge of it, but in such a way as to make Inglesant think
he would like to have acknowledged it, had he dared. He rode away
disappointed, and began to think he must consult Father St. Clare;
which, for some reason or other he had felt a disinclination to do.
While he was in this perplexity, he bethought himself of his first
schoolmaster, the man who taught in the Church where Camden visited him.
He had forgotten all about this man, except that he was of a mild and
kind nature; but he was so anxious for direction that he went to him at
once. This man had been very poor, and brought up a large family, all
of whom, however, he had put forward in life, some at the University and
the Church, and some among the clothiers and glove-makers at Malmsbury
and the other towns of Wiltshire. Johnny found him living alone--for
his wife was dead--in a small cottage no better than a countryman's,
with a few books, which with his garden were all the wealth he
possessed. He was a great herbalist, and famous in the country for his
cures and for his sermons, though no two people could agree why they
admired the latter; all uniting in considering him a simple and rather
poor preacher. This Inglesant learnt from a countryman who walked at
his horse's side as he came near the village; but when he found the old
gentleman sitting on a bench before his study window, and he rose and
met his look, Inglesant saw at once--thanks to the cultivation of his
perception by the Jesuit's teaching--what it was that gained him the
people's love. He had large and melting eyes that looked straight into
the hearts of those who met him, as though eager to help them and do
them good. He received Johnny with great kindness, though he had quite
forgotten him, and did not even remember when he told him who he was.
But when Inglesant, who found it very easy to speak to him of what had
brought him there, told him of his difficulties, he listened with the
greatest interest and sympathy. When he had finished speaking, he
remained some minutes silent, looking across the garden where the hot
mid-day air was playing above the flowers.
"You have been speaking," he said at length, "of very high and wonderful
things, into which, it would seem, even the angels dare not look; for we
are, as would appear, taught in Scripture that it is in man's history
that they see the workings of Divine Glory. And indeed, worthy Mr.
Inglesant, when you have lived to the limit of my many years, you will
not stumble at this; nor think this life a low and poor place in which
to seek the Divine Master walking to and fro. These high matters of
which you speak, and this heavenly life, is not to be disbelieved, only
it seems to me--more and more--that the soul or spirit of every man in
passing through life among familiar things is among supernatural things
always, and many things seem to me miraculous, which men think nothing
of, such as memory, by which we live again in place and time--and of
which, if I remember rightly, for I am a very poor scholar, you
doubtless know, St. Augustine says many pertinent things--and the love
of one another, by which we are led out of ourselves, and made to act
against our own nature by that of another, or, rather, by a higher
nature than that of any of us; and a thousand fancies and feelings which
have no adequate cause among outward things. Here, in this book which I
was reading when you so kindly came to see me, are withered flowers,
which I have gathered in my rambles, and keep as friends and companions
of pleasant places, streams and meadows, and of some who have been with
me, and now are not. There is one, this single yellow flower--it is a
tormentilla, which is good against the plague--what is it, that, as I
hold it, makes me think of it as I do? Faded flowers have something, to
me, miraculous and supernatural about them; though, in fact, it is
nothing wonderful that the texture of a flower being dried survives. It
is not in the flower, but in our immortal spirit that the miracle is.
All these delightful thoughts that come into my mind when I look at this
flower--thoughts, and fancies, and memories--what are they but the
result of the alchemy of the immortal spirit, which takes all the
pleasant, fragile things of life, and transmutes them into immortality
in our own nature! And if the poor spirit and intellect of man can do
this, how much more may the supreme creative intellect mould and form
all things, and bring the presence of the supernatural face to face with
us in our daily walk! Earth becomes to us, if we thus think, nothing
but the garden of the Lord, and every fellow-being we meet and see in
it, a beautiful and invited guest; and, as I think I remember, many of
the heathen poets, after their manner, have said very fine things about
this; that we should rise cheerfully from this life, as a grateful guest
rises from an abundant feast; and though doubtless they were very dark
and mistaken, yet I confess they always seemed to me to have something
of a close and entire fellowship with the wants of men, which I think
the Saviour would have approved. If you, sir, can receive this mystery,
and go through the honourable path of life which lies before you,
looking upon yourself as an immortal spirit walking among supernatural
things--for the natural things of this life would be nothing were they
not moved and animated by the efficacy of that which is above nature--I
think you may find this doctrine a light which will guide your feet in
dark places; and it would seem, unless I am mistaken, that this habit of
mind is very likely to lead to the blessedness of the Beatific Vision of
God, on the quest of which you have happily entered so young: for surely
it should lead to that state to which this vision is promised--the state
of those who are Pure in Heart. For if it be true, that the reason we
see not God is the grossness of this tabernacle wherein the soul is
encased, then the more and the oftener we recognise the supernatural in
our ordinary life, and not only expect and find it in those rare and
short moments of devotion and prayer, the more, surely, the rays of the
Divine Light will shine through the dark glass of this outward form of
life, and the more our own spirit will be enlightened and purified by
it, until we come to that likeness to the Divine Nature, and that purity
of heart to which a share of the Beatific Vision is promised, and which,
as some teach, can be attained by being abstract from the body and the
bodily life. As we see every day that the supernatural in some men
gives a particular brightness of air to the countenance, and makes the
face to shine with an inimitable lustre, and if it be true that in the
life to come we shall have to see through a body and a glass however
transparent, we may well practise our eyes by making this life
spiritual, as we shall have also to strive to do in that to which we go.
My predecessor in this living, doubtless a very worthy man (for I knew
him not), has left it recorded on his tombstone--as I will show you if
you will come into the Church--that he was 'full of cares and full of
years, of neither weary, but full of hope and of heaven.' I should
desire that it may be faithfully recorded of me that I was the same!"
John went with him into the Church, and read the old vicar's epitaph,
and several more--for he was very much taken with the old gentleman's
talk, and indeed stayed with him the whole day: his host adding a dish
of eggs and a glass of small beer to his daily very frugal meal. Johnny
invited him to come to the Priory, and so left him, more pleased and
satisfied with this than with any of his other visits. As he rode back
through the darkening valley, and through the oak wood before the Priory
gate, he little thought that not only should he not see the old Parson
again, but that his quiet contemplative life was come to an end, and his
speculations would now be chased away by a life of action; and for the
future the decision, often to be made at once, as to what he ought to
do, would appear of more consequence than that other decision, which had
seemed to him, sometimes, the only important one, as to what it was
right to think.
When he reached the Priory, he found the Jesuit had returned, and when
at supper he inquired of Johnny if his ride had been a pleasant one, as
the servant had told him he had been out since the morning, Johnny began
at once, and told him all that had been passing in his mind since the
priest had given him the book, and of all the directors he had sought
for his guidance. Father St. Clare listened (though it may be doubted
whether the recital was altogether agreeable to him) with great
attention, and seemed pleased and amused at the boy's descriptions,
which showed his pupil's fine perception of character.
"You have taken a wise course," he said, "which has led you to see much
of the workings of the minds of men: this is the most useful study you
can follow, and the most harmless to yourself, if you keep your own
counsel, and gain knowledge without imparting it. I am glad you have
told me all this, because it shows me I have not been deceived in you,
but that the time is fully ripe for you to play the part your father and
I have destined for you, and to play it--to great extent--alone. The
day after to-morrow we shall go up to London; on the way, I will open to
you the position of parties, the crisis of affairs--a position and a
crisis such as never was before in this or any other country! You are
very young, but you are years older in mind than most of your age, and
your youth renders you all the more fit for the work I have for you to
do. I trust you without reserve; I shall commit to your keeping secrets
which would, if revealed, bring the highest heads in England, not to
speak of my own, to the block. I have no fear of you."
Inglesant listened breathlessly and with open eyes to this address. It
made his heart beat high with delight and excitement. Death--nay, the
bitterest torture--would be nothing to him, if only he could win this
man's approval, and be not only true but successful in his trust. His
entire devotion to the Jesuit cannot be looked upon as anything
wonderful, for the whole mental power of the latter, directed by the
nicest art--a power and an art at that time not surpassed in Europe--had
been directed to this end upon the boy's susceptible nature, and the
result could not be doubtful.
The Jesuit might well say that the crisis was imminent, and the position
of affairs peculiar. Plotters were at work in all directions, and for
different ends; but the schemes of all miscarried, and the expectations
of all proved to be miscalculations: those of the Roman Catholics--with
whom St. Clare was associated--more than all. Their expectations were
at the highest pitch. The Court influence was with them to a large
extent. The Church of England was at its highest summit of glory and
power, and its standing-point was almost their own. Laud was partly
gained. He had refused a cardinal's hat; but in such a way that the
offer was immediately renewed, and remained open. It seemed, indeed, as
though little more remained to do, when this goodly edifice began to
crumble, slowly, indeed, but surely, and with accelerating speed. A new
power appeared in the country; hostile, indeed, to Catholicism, but,
what was much worse, also slightly contemptuous of it, directing its
full force against the Church and the Crown. The Church collapsed with
wonderful suddenness; and the Crown was compelled to seek its own
preservation, extending what little aid it might be able to render to
the Church; neither had the least power or time to give to the
assistance of their former allies. All this had not happened when the
Jesuit and Johnny rode up to London, but it was foreshadowed clearly in
the immediate future.
*CHAPTER IV.*
Father St. Clare and Johnny set out the next day, accompanied by two
servants on horseback. The road was quite new to Inglesant after they
left Malmsbury; and he was greatly delighted and amused with all he saw.
The fair landscapes, the prospects of goodly cities with the towers and
spires of their Churches rising into the clear smokeless air; the
stately houses and gardens, the life of the country villages, the fairs
and markets, strolling players, the morris dancing, the drinking and
smoking parties, the conjurors and mountebanks, peasants quarrelling
"together by the ears," and buying and selling; wandering beggars, and
half-witted people called "Tom o' Bedlams" who were a recognised order
of mendicants--everything amused and delighted him, especially with his
companion's witty and penetrating comments upon all they met with.
At Windsor they walked on the terrace, from which Johnny saw the view,
which was then considered only second to that of Greenwich, of the river
and many pleasant hills and valleys, villages and fair houses, far and
near. As they rode along, at every suitable opportunity, and at night
after supper at the inns, the Jesuit explained to Johnny the position of
public affairs. He told him that though the power of the King and the
Archbishop was apparently at its greatest height, as the trial and
condemnation of Laud's traducers, Prynne, Baswick, and Burton had just
been decided, and the trial of Hampden for refusal to pay ship-money was
about to commence, yet nevertheless, the impossibility of governing
without a Parliament was becoming so evident, and the violent and
aggressive temper of the people was so marked, that he, and those like
him, who possessed the best information of what was passing throughout
all classes, and among all parties, however secret, considered that
changes of a very remarkable character were imminent. The temper of the
people, he said, was the more remarkable, because in the one case,
libellers like Prynne would have been put to death without mercy in
either of the preceding reigns, and no notice taken by the people; and
the tax, called ship's money, was so light and so fairly levied, as to
be scarcely felt. The Archbishop, he said, was determined to force the
service book upon the Scots; a most unwise and perilous proceeding at
the present moment, and he was informed by the emissary priests then in
the north of England and Scotland, that the resistance to it would be
determined, and that the Scottish malcontents were supported by the
Puritan party in the English Parliament. Under these circumstances, he
explained to Johnny, that a change had taken place in the policy of some
of the Roman Catholic party, who had formerly acted with Mr. Inglesant
and Father St. Clare, and they had arrived at the conclusion that the
Church of England was no longer worth the pains of humouring and
conciliating. The Queen had been advised to attempt the perversion of
the Parliamentary leaders, and several of the Catholic plotters had
undertaken a similar enterprise. Father St. Clare told Johnny candidly,
that he neither sympathised entirely with these views nor altogether
with those of the party to which he had hitherto belonged. On the one
hand, he had arrived at the conclusion that Laud was a true servant of
the Church of England, and would never consent to submission to Rome,
except on terms which could not be granted, but on the other, he had so
long regarded the Church as the natural ally of Rome, and the
uselessness of attempting to win over the Puritans was so apparent, that
he had not entered warmly into these new schemes. He, however, was
inclined to think that were a change to take place, and the Puritan
party to gain the supreme power in the State, the re-action among the
upper classes would be so great, that the Romish faith would gain
numberless converts. He finally pressed upon Johnny the necessity of
great prudence, telling him that he should be immediately placed about
the person of the Queen as one of her pages; and, as soon as possible,
transferred to the King's service in as high a post as the influence to
be exerted could command, in order that he should possess as much
influence as possible: that in the meantime his business would be simply
to become acquainted with as many of all parties as he possibly could,
and to gain their confidence, opportunities for doing which should be
given him both in the assemblies he would meet at his father's house,
and in other company into which he should be introduced. He warned him
against crediting anything he heard, unless assured of its truth by
himself--the most exaggerated reports upon every subject, he said,
prevailing in the Court and city. The conversions to Romanism, he told
him, though numerous, were nothing like so many as were reported, as
might be supposed when the reputed ones included such men as Mr.
Endymion Porter, the most faithful servant of the King and a firm Church
of England man, though, like many others, entertaining very friendly
opinions of the Papists.
Conversing in this way, they entered London one afternoon at the
beginning of August 1637. Johnny, as may be supposed, was all eyes as
they entered London, which they did by Kensington and St. James's Park.
The beautiful buildings at Kensington, and the throng of gentry and
carriages in the park astonished him beyond measure. As they passed
through the park many persons recognised Father St. Clare, but they
passed on without stopping, through the gateway by the side of the
beautiful banqueting-house into the narrow street that led by Charing
Cross and the Strand. The crowds were now of a different kind to those
they had passed in the park. They passed several groups assembled round
quack doctors and itinerant speakers, one of whom was relating how the
congregation of a Parish Church the Sunday before had been alarmed by an
insurrection of armed Papists--stories of this kind being then a common
invention to excite and stir up the people. At one of these groups they
were startled by hearing a man who was selling books, announce the name
as "Jesus' Worship Confuted;" as the thing was new to the Jesuit, he
stopped and ordered one of his men to dismount and bring him one, when
it was found to be a tract against ceremonies, and especially against
bowing at the name of Jesus. They resumed their passage down the
Strand, Father St. Clare remarking on the strange ideas a stranger would
attach to the state of religion in England if he listened only to the
opposing cries. All down the Strand the Jesuit pointed out the
beautiful houses of the nobility, and the glimpses of the river between
them. They stopped at last at Somerset House, then a large rambling
series of buildings extending round several courts with gardens and
walks on the river banks, and a handsome water-gate leading to the
river. They went to the lodgings of Father Cory, the Queen's confessor,
who was at home, and received them hospitably. Johnny was so taken up
with all the astonishing sights around him, especially with the
wonderful view up and down the river, with the innumerable boats and
barges, the palaces and gardens, and churches and steeples on the banks,
that it was a day or two before he could talk or think calmly of
anything. The next morning the Jesuit took him to his father's house on
the north side of the Strand, where he saw both his father and brother,
it not being the latter's turn in waiting at the Court. Mr. Inglesant
was not more affectionate to his son than usual; he appeared anxious and
worn, but he told him he was pleased at his arrival, that he must obey
Father St. Clare in all things, and that he would become a useful and
successful man. Father St. Clare had sent for a Court tailor, and
ordered a proper dress and accoutrements for Johnny, who was astonished
at his own appearance when attired in lace and satin, and his long hair
combed and dressed. The Jesuit regarded him with satisfaction, and told
him they were going at once to the Queen. Mr. Inglesant's coach was
sent for them, and was waiting in one of the courts; and entering, they
were driven through London to Whitehall.
It was the third of August, and the Archbishop was marrying the Duke of
Lennox to the Lady Mary Villiers, the daughter of the great Duke of
Buckingham, in his Chapel at Lambeth. The King was expected to go to
Lambeth to be present at the ceremony, but this was of no consequence to
the Jesuit, who wished to introduce his protege to the Queen alone. When
they reached Whitehall, however, they found that both their Majesties
had gone to the wedding, and the day being very rainy, news had been
sent from Lambeth immediately after the ceremony that the Queen was
returning, and she was then on the water. The Jesuit and Johnny left
their carriage and went down to the water-gate. The Jesuit was
evidently well known at the Court, and way was made for him everywhere.
At that time the greatest laxity was allowed to the Catholics, and other
priests besides the Queen's confessors were tolerated openly in London.
As they reached the water-gate, the rain had ceased for a time, and a
gleam of sunlight shone upon the river, and rested on the Queen's barge
as it approached. Johnny's heart beat with excitement, as it reached the
steps amid a flourish of trumpets, and the guard presented arms. The
Queen, splendidly dressed, came from under the awning and up the steps,
accompanied by her gentlemen and the ladies of her Court. Johnny never
forgot the sight to his dying day, and it was doubtless one to be long
remembered by those who saw it for the first time. When the Queen was
near the top of the stairs and saw St. Clare, she stopped, and extending
her hand she welcomed him to the Court. She seemed to remember
something, and spoke to him rapidly in French, to which he replied with
the utmost deference, in the same language. Then falling back, he
indicated Johnny to the Queen, saying--"This is young John Inglesant,
your Majesty, of whom I spoke to your Grace concerning the business you
wot of."
The Queen looked kindly at the boy, who indeed was handsome enough to
incline any woman in his favour.
"They are a handsome race," she said, still speaking French; "this one,
I think, still more so than his brother."
"This is a refined spirit, your Majesty," said the Jesuit, in a low
voice, "of whom I hope great things, if your Majesty will aid."
"You wish to be one of my servants, my pretty boy," said the Queen,
extending her hand to Johnny, who kissed it on one knee; "Father Hall
will tell you what to do."
And she passed on, followed by her train, who looked at St. Clare and
the boy with curiosity, several nodding and speaking to the Jesuit as
they proceeded.
Johnny was duly entered the next day as one of the supernumerary pages
without salary, and entered upon his duties at once, which consisted
simply of waiting in anterooms and following the Queen at a distance in
her walks. This life, however, was beyond measure interesting to
Johnny: the beautiful rooms and galleries in the palace, with their
wonderful contents were an inexhaustible source of delight to him;
especially the King's collection of paintings which was kept in a single
apartment, and was admired over Europe. Father Hall took him also to
many gentlemen's virtuoso collections of paintings and curiosities,
where his intelligence and delight attracted the interest and kindness
of all his hosts. Father St. Clare also gave him from time to time,
small editions of the classics and other books which he could keep in
his pocket, and read in the anterooms and galleries when he was in
waiting. He would have been astonished, if the Jesuit had not told him
it would be so, at the number of persons of all ranks and opinions in
the Court who spoke to him and endeavoured to make his acquaintance,
that they might remember him at a future time, evidently at the request
of the priest.
Shortly after he came to London he was present at the Chapel Royal, at
Whitehall, when the King took the sacrament and presented the gold
pieces coined especially for this purpose. The sight impressed Johnny
very much. The beautiful Chapel, the high altar on which candles were
burning, the Bishops and the Dean of the Chapel in their copes, the
brilliant crowd of courtiers, the King--devout and stately--alone before
the altar, the exquisite music, and the singing of the King's choir,
which was not surpassed in Rome itself. As the sunlight from the
stained windows fell on this wonderful scene, it is not surprising that
young Inglesant was affected by it, nor that this young spirit looking
out for the first time on the world and its surprising scenes, and
pageants, and symbols, realised the truth of what the old Parson had
told him, and converted all these sights into spiritual visions; this
one in particular, which led back his thoughts, as it was meant, to the
three kings of old, who knelt and offered gifts before the mysterious
Child.
Johnny saw his brother frequently, as the latter had grown out of his
page-hood, and held another post about the Court, which gave him much
leisure. The two young courtiers were at this time more alike than
ever, and were much admired at Court as a pair. At one of the Queen's
Masques, about this time, they acted parts somewhat similar to the
brothers in Comus, but requiring greater resemblance, as in
Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, and both their acting and appearance was
applauded by the King himself, who began to take notice of Johnny. Mr.
Inglesant, the elder, had never been a favourite with the King, who was
aware of his leaning to Popery, and indeed, at this time, both he and
his friend the Jesuit were very much discouraged at the aspect of
affairs. The position of the Papists had never been so good as at
present, but this very circumstance was the ruin of their party. All
restraints and reproaches of former times seemed forgotten; a public
agent from Rome resided openly at the Court, and was magnificently feted
and caressed; the priests, though to avow popish orders was by law
punishable with death, went about and preached openly without fear; and
it was related as a sign of the times, that a Jesuit at Paris who was
coming into England, coolly called on the English ambassador there, who
knew his profession, offering his services in London, as though there
were no penal law to condemn him the moment he landed! High Mass at
Somerset House was attended at noon-day by great numbers of the Papists,
who returned together from it through the streets as openly as the
congregation of the Savoy, and the neighbouring churches. Their priests
succeeded in converting several ladies of some of the greatest families,
thereby provoking the anger of their relations, and causing them to long
for their suppression. They held large political conferences openly,
and ostentatiously subscribed a large sum of money to assist the King
against the Scots. Clarendon, indeed, says that they acted as though
they had been suborned by these latter to root out their own religion.
It would seem, indeed, that the English mind is not habituated to
plotting, and that the majority of any party are not equal to a
sustained and concealed effort. The Jesuit, Mr. Inglesant, and the
other astute members of their party perceived with sorrow the course
things were taking without being able to remedy it. The former desisted
from all active efforts, contenting himself with assisting the Queen in
her attempts to win over members of the Parliament to her interest, and
in opposing and counteracting the intrigues of a small and fanatical
section of the Papists who were attempting a wild and insane plot
against the King and the Archbishop, which was said to extend to even
the attempting their death. As neither of these occupations was very
arduous, he had little need of Johnny's assistance, and left him very
much to himself. Inglesant, therefore, continued the cultivation of his
acquaintance with both parties pretty much in his own way. He had
several friends whose society he much valued among the Papists, and he
frequently attended mass when not obliged to by his attendance upon the
Queen; but he was rather more inclined to attach himself to the members
of the Laudian and High Church party, who presented many qualities which
interested and attracted him. He read with delight the books of this
party, Dr. Donne's and Herbert's Poems, and the writings of Andrews and
Bishop Cosin's Devotions, which last was much disliked by the Puritans,
and, indeed, the course he took could not have been more in accordance
with the Jesuit's plan of preparing him for future service, should the
time ever arrive when such usefulness should be required. In his mind
he was still devoted, though in a halting and imperfect manner, to that
pursuit of the spiritual life and purity which had attracted him when so
young, and he lost no opportunity of consulting any on these mysterious
subjects who he thought would sympathise with his ideas. In this he had
no assistance from his brother, who was devoted to the pursuit of
pleasure--of worldly pleasure, it is true, in its most refined
aspect--but still of such pleasures as are entirely apart from those of
the soul.
One of his friends had presented Inglesant with a little book, "Divine
Considerations of those things most profitable in our Christian
profession," written in Spanish by John Valdesso, a Papist, and
translated by a gentleman of whom Johnny heard a great deal, and was
exceedingly interested in what he heard. In this book the author says
several very high and beautiful things concerning the Spiritual life,
and of the gradual illumination of the Divine Light shed upon the mind,
as the sun breaks by degrees upon the eyes of a traveller in the dark.
But though Johnny was attracted to the book itself, he was principally
interested in it by what he heard of the translator. This was Mr.
Nicholas Ferrar, who had founded a religious house at Little Gidding, in
Huntingdonshire, or, as it was called in the world, the "Protestant
Nunnery," in which he lived with his mother and several nephews and
nieces, in the practice of good works and the worship of God.
Extraordinary attention had been attracted to this establishment by the
accounts of the strange and holy life of its inmates; and still more by
the notice which the King had condescended to take of it, not only
visiting it on his journey to Scotland, in 1633, but also requesting and
accepting presents of devotional books, which it was part of the
occupation of the family to prepare.
The accounts of this religious house, and of the family within it, so
excited Johnny's imagination that he became exceedingly desirous to see
it, especially as it was said that Mr. Ferrar was very infirm, and was
not expected to survive very long.
It was late in the autumn when he made this visit, about two months
before Mr. Ferrar's death. The rich autumn foliage was lighted by the
low sun as he rode through the woods and meadows, and across the
sluggish streams of Bedford and Huntingdon. He slept at a village a few
miles south of Little Gidding, and reached that place early in the day.
It was a solitary, wooded place, with a large manor house, and a little
Church close by. It had been for some time depopulated, and there were
no cottages nor houses near. The manor house and Church had been
restored to perfect order by Mr. Ferrar, and Inglesant reached it
through a grove of trees planted in walks, with latticed paths and
gardens on both sides. A brook crossed the road at the foot of the
gentle ascent on which the house was built. He asked to see Mr. Ferrar,
and was shown by a man-servant into a fair spacious parlour, where Mr.
Ferrar presently came to him. Inglesant was disappointed at his
appearance, which was plain and not striking in any way, but his speech
was able and attractive. Johnny apologised for his bold visit, telling
him how much taken he had been by his book, and by what he had heard of
him and his family; and that what he had heard did not interest him
merely out of curiosity, as he feared it might have done many, but out
of sincere desire to learn something of the holy life which doubtless
that family led. To this Mr. Ferrar replied that he was thankful to see
any one who came in such a spirit, and that several, not only of his own
friends, as Mr. Crashaw the poet, but many young students from the
University at Cambridge came to see him in a like spirit, to the
benefit, he hoped, of both themselves and of him. He said with great
humility, that although on the one hand very much evil had been spoken
of him which was not true, he had no doubt that, on the other, many
things had been said about their holiness and the good that they did
which went far beyond the truth. For his own part, he said he had
adopted that manner of life through having long seen enough of the
manners and vanities of the world; and holding them in low esteem, was
resolved to spend the best of his life in mortifications and devotion,
in charity, and in constant preparation for death. That his mother, his
elder brother, his sisters, his nephews and nieces, being content to
lead this mortified life, they spent their time in acts of devotion and
by doing such good works as were within their power, such as keeping a
school for the children of the next parishes, for teaching of whom he
provided three masters who lived constantly in the house. That for ten
years they had lived this harmless life, under the care of his mother,
who had trained her daughters and grand-daughters to every good work;
but two years ago they had lost her by death, and as his health was very
feeble he did not expect long to be separated from her, but looked
forward to his departure with joy, being afraid of the evil times he saw
approaching.
When he had said this, he led Inglesant into a large handsome room
upstairs, where he introduced him to his sister, Mrs. Collet, and her
daughters, who were engaged in making those curious books of Scripture
Harmonies which had so pleased King Charles. These seven young ladies,
who formed the junior part of the Society of the house, and were called
by the names of the chief virtues, the Patient, the Cheerful, the
Affectionate, the Submiss, the Obedient, the Moderate, the Charitable,
were engaged at that moment in cutting out passages from two Testaments,
which they pasted together so neatly as to seem one book, and in such a
manner as to enable the reader to follow the narrative in all its
particulars from beginning to end without a break, and also to see which
of the sacred authors had contributed any particular part.
Inglesant told the ladies what fame reported of the nuns of Gidding, of
two watching and praying all night, of their canonical hours, of their
crosses on the outside and inside of their Chapel, of an altar there
richly decked with plate, tapestry, and tapers, of their adoration and
genuflexions at their entering. He told Mr. Ferrar that his object in
visiting him was chiefly to know his opinion of the Papists and their
religion, as, having been bred among them himself, and being very nearly
one of them, he was anxious to know the opinions of one who was said to
hold many of their doctrines without joining them or approving them.
Mr. Ferrar appeared at first shy of speaking, but being apparently
convinced of the young man's sincerity, and that he was not an enemy in
disguise, he conversed very freely with him for some time, speaking much
of the love of God, and of the vanity of worldly things; of his dear
friend Mr. George Herbert, and of his saintly life; of the confused and
troublesome life he had formerly led, and of the great peace and
satisfaction which he had found since he had left the world and betaken
himself to that retired and religious life. That, as regards the
Papists, his translating Valdessa's book was a proof that he knew that
among them, as among all people, there were many true worshippers of
Jesus, being drawn by the blessed Sacrament to follow Him in the
spiritual and divine life, and that there were many things in that book
similar to the mystical religion of which Inglesant spoke, which his
dear friend Mr. George Herbert had disapproved, as exalting the inward
spiritual life above the foundation of holy Scripture: that it was not
for him, who was only a deacon in the Church, to pronounce any opinion
on so difficult a point, and that he had printed all Mr. Herbert's notes
in his book, without comment of his own: that though he was thus
unwilling to give his own judgment, he certainly believed that this
inward spiritual life was open to all men, and recommended Inglesant to
continue his endeavours after it, seeking it chiefly in the holy
Sacrament accompanied with mortification and confession.
While they were thus talking, the hour of evening prayer arrived, and
Mr. Ferrar invited Johnny to accompany him to the Church; which he
gladly did, being very much attracted by the evident holiness which
pervaded Mr. Ferrar's talk and manner. The family proceeded to Church
in procession, Mr. Ferrar and Inglesant walking first. The Church was
kept in great order, the altar being placed upon a raised platform at
the east end, and covered with tapestry stretching over the floor all
round it, and adorned with plate and tapers. Mr. Ferrar bowed with great
reverence several times on approaching the altar, and directed Inglesant
to sit in a stalled seat opposite the reading pew, from which he said
the evening prayer. The men of the family knelt on the raised step
before the altar, the ladies and servants sitting in the body of the
Church. The Church was very sweet, being decked with flowers and herbs;
and the soft autumn light rested over it. From the seat where Inglesant
knelt, he could see the faces of the girls as they bent over their books
at prayers. They were all in black, except one, who wore a friar's grey
gown; this was the one who was called the Patient, as Inglesant had been
told in the house, and the singularity of her dress attracted his eye
towards her during the prayers. The whole scene, strange and romantic
as it appeared to him, the devout and serious manner of the
worshippers--very different from much that was common in churches at
that day--and the abstracted and devout look upon the faces of the
girls, struck his fancy, so liable to such influences, and so long
trained to welcome them; and he could not keep his eyes from this one
face from which the grey hood was partly thrown back. It was a passive
face, with well-cut delicate features, and large and quiet eyes.
Prayers being over, the ladies saluted Inglesant from a distance, and
left the Church with the rest, in the same order as they had come,
leaving Mr. Ferrar and Johnny alone. They remained some time discoursing
on worship and Church ceremonies, and then returned to the house. It
was now late, and Mr. Ferrar, who was evidently much pleased with his
guest, invited him to stay the night, and even extended his hospitality
by asking him to stay over the next, which was Saturday, and the Sunday,
upon which, as it was the first Sunday in the month, the holy Sacrament
would be administered, and several of Mr. Ferrar's friends from
Cambridge would come over and partake of it, and to pass the night and
day in prayer and acts of devotion. To this proposition Inglesant
gladly consented, the whole proceeding appearing to him full of interest
and attraction. Soon after they returned to the house supper was
served, all the family sitting down together at a long table in the
hall. During supper some portion of the book of the Martyrs was read
aloud. Afterwards two hours were permitted for diversion, during which
all were allowed to do as they pleased.
The young ladies having found out that Inglesant was a Queen's page,
were very curious to hear of the Court and royal family from him, which
innocent request Mr. Ferrar encouraged, and joined in himself. One
reason of the success with which his mother and he had ruled this
household appears to have been his skill in interesting and attracting
all its inmates by the variety and pleasant character of their
occupations. He was also much interested himself in what Johnny told
him, for in this secluded family, themselves accustomed to prudence,
Inglesant felt he might safely speak of many things upon which he was
generally silent; and after prayers, when the family were retired to
their several rooms, Mr. Ferrar remained with him some time, while
Johnny related to him the aspect of religious parties at the moment, and
particularly all that he could tell, without violating confidence, of
the Papists and of his friend the Jesuit.
The next morning they rose at four, though two of the family had been at
prayer all night, and did not go to rest till the others rose. They
went into the oratory in the house itself to prayers, for they kept six
times of prayer during the day. At six they said the psalms of the hour,
for every hour had its appropriate psalms, and at half-past six went to
Church for matins. When they returned at seven o'clock they said the
psalms of the hour, sang a short hymn, and went to breakfast. After
breakfast, when the younger members of the family were at their studies,
Mr. Ferrar took Inglesant to the school, where all the children in the
neighbourhood were permitted to come. At eleven they went to dinner, and
after dinner there was no settled occupation till one, every one being
allowed to amuse himself as he chose. The young ladies had been trained
not only to superintend the house, but to wait on any sick persons in
the neighbourhood who came to the house at certain times for assistance,
and to dress the wounds of those who were hurt, in order to give them
readiness and skill in this employment, and to habituate them to the
virtues of humility and tenderness of heart. A large room was set apart
for this purpose, where Mr. Ferrar had instructed them in the necessary
skill, having been himself Physic Fellow at Clare Hall, in Cambridge,
and under the celebrated Professors at Padua, in Italy. This room
Inglesant requested to see, thinking that he should in this way also see
something of and be able to speak to the young ladies whose acquaintance
he had hitherto not had much opportunity of cultivating. Mr. Ferrar
told his nephew to show it him--young Nicholas Ferrar, a young man of
extraordinary skill in languages, who was afterwards introduced to the
King and Prince Charles, some time before his early death. When they
entered the room Inglesant was delighted to find that the only member of
the family there was the young lady in the Grey Friar's habit, whose
face had attracted him so much in Church. She was listening to the long
tiresome tale of an old woman, following the example of George Herbert,
who thought on a similar occasion, that "it was some relief to a poor
body to be heard with patience."
Johnny, who in spite of his Jesuitical and Court training was naturally
modest, and whose sense of religion made him perfectly well-bred,
accosted the young lady very seriously, and expressed his gratitude at
having been permitted to stay and see so many excellent and improving
things as that family had to show. The liking which the head of the
house had evidently taken for Inglesant disposed the younger members in
his favour, and the young lady answered him simply and unaffectedly, but
with manifest pleasure.
Inglesant inquired concerning the assumed names of the sisters and how
they sustained their respective qualities, and what exercises suited to
these qualities they had to perform. She replied that they had
exercises, or discourses, which they performed at the great festivals of
the year, Christmas and Easter; and which were composed with reference
to their several qualities. All of these, except her own, were
enlivened by hymns and odes composed by Mr. Ferrar, and set to music by
the music master of the family, who accompanied the voices with the viol
or the lute. But her own, she said, had never any music or poetry
connected with it; it was always of a very serious turn, and much longer
than any other, and had not any historical anecdote or fable interwoven
with it, the contrivance being to exercise that virtue to which she was
devoted. Inglesant asked her with pity if this was not very hard
treatment, and she only replied, with a smile, that she had the
enjoyment of all the lively performances of the others. He asked her
whether they looked forward to passing all their lives in this manner,
or whether they allowed the possibility of any change, and if she had
entirely lost her own name in her assumed one, or whether he might
presume to ask it, that he might have wherewithal to remember her by, as
he surely should as long as he had life. She said her name was Mary
Collet; and that as to his former question, two of her sisters had had,
at one time, a great desire to become veiled virgins, to take upon them
a vow of perpetual chastity, with the solemnity of a Bishop's blessing
and ratification, but on going to Bishop Williams he had discouraged,
and at last, dissuaded them from it.
Inglesant and the young lady remained talking in this way for some time,
young Nicholas Ferrar having left them; but at last she excused herself
from staying any longer, and he was obliged to let her go. He ventured
to say that he hoped they would remember him, that he was utterly
ignorant of the future that lay before him, but that whatever fate
awaited him, he should never forget the "Nuns of Gidding" and their
religious life. She replied that they would certainly remember him, as
they did all their acquaintance, in their daily prayer, especially as
she had seldom seen her uncle so pleased with a stranger as he had been
with him. With these compliments they parted, and Inglesant returned to
the drawing-room, where more visitors had arrived.
In the afternoon there came from Cambridge Mr. Crashaw the poet, of
Peterhouse, who afterwards went over to the Papists and died Canon of
Loretto, and several gentlemen, undergraduates of Cambridge, to spend
the Sunday at Gidding, being the first Sunday of the month. Mr.
Crashaw, when Inglesant was introduced to him as one of the Queen's
pages, finding that he was acquainted with many Roman Catholics, was
very friendly and conversed with him apart. He said he conceived a
great admiration for the devout lives of the Catholic saints, and of the
government and discipline of the Catholic Church, and that he feared
that the English Church had not sufficient authority to resist the
spread of Presbyterianism, in which case he saw no safety except in
returning to the communion of Rome. Walking up and down the garden
paths, after evening prayers in Church, he spoke a great deal on this
subject, and on the beauty of a retired religious life, saying that here
at Little Gidding and at Little St. Marie's Church, near to Peterhouse,
he had passed the most blissful moments of his life, watching at
midnight in prayer and meditation.
That night Mr. Crashaw, Inglesant, and one or two others remained in the
Church from nine till twelve, during which time they said over the whole
Book of Psalms in the way of antiphony, one repeating one verse and the
rest the other. The time of their watch being ended they returned to the
house, went to Mr. Ferrar's door and bade him good-morrow, leaving a
lighted candle for him. They then went to bed, but Mr. Ferrar arose
according to the passage of Scripture "at midnight I will arise and give
thanks," and went into the Church, where he betook himself to religious
meditation.
Early on the Sunday morning the family were astir and said prayers in
the oratory. After breakfast many people from the country around and
more than a hundred children came in. These children were called the
Psalm children, and were regularly trained to repeat the Psalter, and
the best voices among them to assist in the service on Sundays. They
came in every Sunday, and according to the proficiency of each were
presented with a small piece of money, and the whole number entertained
with a dinner after Church. The Church was crowded at the morning
service before the Sacrament. The service was beautifully sung, the
whole family taking the greatest delight in Church music, and many of
the gentlemen from Cambridge being amateurs. The Sacrament was
administered with the greatest devotion and solemnity. Impressed as he
had been with the occupation of the preceding day and night, and his
mind excited with watching and want of sleep and with the exquisite
strains of the music, the effect upon Inglesant's imaginative nature was
excessive. Above the altar, which was profusely bedecked with flowers,
the antique glass of the East window, which had been carefully repaired,
contained a figure of the Saviour of an early and severe type. The form
was gracious and yet commanding, having a brilliant halo round the head,
and being clothed in a long and apparently seamless coat; the two
fore-fingers of the right hand were held up to bless. Kneeling upon the
half-pace, as he received the sacred bread and tasted the holy wine,
this gracious figure entered into Inglesant's soul, and stillness and
peace unspeakable, and life, and light, and sweetness, filled his mind.
He was lost in a sense of rapture, and earth and all that surrounded him
faded away. When he returned a little to himself, kneeling in his seat
in the Church, he thought that at no period of his life, however
extended, should he ever forget that morning or lose the sense and
feeling of that touching scene, of that gracious figure over the altar,
of the bowed and kneeling figures, of the misty autumn sunlight and the
sweeping autumn wind. Heaven itself seemed to have opened to him and
one fairer than the fairest of the angelic hosts to have come down to
earth.
After the service, the family and all the visitors returned to the
mansion house in the order in which they had come, and the Psalm
children were entertained with a dinner in the great hall; all the
family and visitors came in to see them served, and Mrs. Collet, as her
mother had always done, placed the first dish on the table herself to
give an example of humility. Grace having been said, the bell rang for
the dinner of the family, who, together with the visitors, repaired to
the great dining-room, and stood in order round the table. While the
dinner was being served they sang a hymn to the organ at the upper end
of the room. Then grace was said by the Priest who had celebrated the
communion, and they sat down. All the servants who had received the
Sacrament that day sat at table with the rest. During dinner one of the
young people whose turn it was, read a chapter from the Bible, and when
that was finished conversation was allowed; Mr. Ferrar and some of the
other gentlemen endeavouring to make it of a character suitable to the
day, and to the service they had just taken part in. After dinner they
went to Church again for evening prayer; between which service and
supper Inglesant had some talk with Mr. Ferrar concerning the Papists
and Mr. Crashaw's opinion of them.
"I ought to be a fit person to advise you," said Mr. Ferrar with a
melancholy smile, "for I am myself, as it were, crushed between the
upper and nether millstone of contrary reports, for I suffer equal
obloquy--and no martyrdom is worse than that of continual obloquy--both
for being a Papist and a Puritan. You will suppose there must be some
strong reason why I, who value so many things among the Papists so much,
have not joined them myself. I should probably have escaped much
violent invective if I had done so. You are very young, and are placed
where you can see and judge of both parties. You possess sufficient
insight to try the spirits whether they be of God. Be not hasty to
decide, and before you decide to join the Romish communion, make a tour
abroad, and if you can, go to Rome itself. When I was in Italy and
Spain, I made all the inquiries and researches I could. I bought many
scarce and valuable books in the languages of those countries, in
collecting which I had a principal eye to those which treated on the
subjects of spiritual life, devotion, and religious retirement, but the
result of all was that I am now, and I shall die, as I believe and hope
shortly, in the Communion of the English Church. This day, as I
believe, the blessed Sacrament has been in the Church before our eyes,
and what can you or I desire more?"
The next morning before Inglesant left, Mr. Ferrar showed him his
foreign collections, his great treasure of rarities and of prints of the
best masters of that time, mostly relative to historical passages of the
Old and New Testaments. Inglesant dined with the family, of whom he
took leave with a full heart, saluting the ladies with the pleasant
familiarity which the manners of the time permitted. Mr. Ferrar went
with him to the borders of the parish, and gave him his blessing. They
never saw each other again, for two months afterwards Nicholas Ferrar
was in his grave.
*CHAPTER V.*
The next year of Inglesant's life contained several incidents which had
very important results. The first of these was the illness and death of
his father, which occurred shortly after Johnny's return to London. His
end was doubtless hastened by the perplexity and disappointment of many
of his political projects, for his life in many respects was a failure.
Though a rich man he had spent large sums in his political intrigues,
and the property he left was not large. His lands and all his money he
left to his eldest son, but he left Johnny some houses in the city,
which Inglesant was advised to sell. He therefore disposed of them to a
Parliament man, and deposited the money with a goldsmith to be ready in
case of need. The possession of this money made him an important
person, and he was advised to purchase a place about the Court, which,
with his interest with the Queen's advisers, would secure his success in
life. He endeavoured to act on this advice, but it was some time before
he was successful.
After his return to London Inglesant saw Mr. Crashaw two or three times,
when that gentleman was in London, and his conversation led him to think
more of the Roman Catholics than he had hitherto done, and inclined him
more and more to join them. Nothing would have recommended him so much
to the Queen as such a step, and his feelings and sympathies all led him
the same way. He was exceedingly disgusted with the conduct and
conversation of the Puritans, and the extreme lengths to which it was
evident they were endeavouring to drive the people. Most of his
friends, even those who were themselves sound Churchmen, looked
favourably on the Papists, and it was thought the height of ill breeding
to speak against them at Court. It is probable, therefore, that
Inglesant would have joined them openly but for two very opposite
causes. The one was his remembrance of the Sacrament at Little Gidding,
the other was the influence of his friend the Jesuit. The first of
these prevented that craving after the sacrifice of the Mass, which
doubtless is the strongest of all the motives which lead men to Rome;
the other was exerted several ways.
It was one of the political maxims of this man that he never, if
possible, allowed anything he had gained or any mode of influence he had
acquired to be lost or neglected, even though circumstances had rendered
it useless for the particular purpose for which he had at first intended
it. In the present case he had no intention of permitting all the care
and pains he had been at in Inglesant's education to be thrown away. It
is true the exact use to which he had intended to devote the talents he
had thus trained no longer existed, but this did not prevent his
appreciating the exquisite fitness of the instrument he had prepared for
such or similar use. Circumstances had occurred which in his far-seeing
policy made the Church of England scarcely worth gaining to the Catholic
side, but in proportion as the Church might cease to be one of the great
powers in the country, the Papists would step into its place: and in the
confused political struggles which he foresaw, the Jesuit anticipated
ample occupation for the peculiar properties of his pupil. In the event
of a struggle, the termination of which none could foresee, a qualified
agent would be required as much between the Papists and the popular
leaders as between the Catholics and the Royal and Church Party. Acting
on these principles, therefore, the Jesuit was far from losing sight of
Inglesant, or even neglecting him. So far indeed was he from doing so,
that he was acquainted with most that passed through his mind, and was
well aware of his increased attraction towards the Church to which he
himself belonged. Now for Inglesant to have become actively and
enthusiastically a Papist would at once have defeated all his plans for
him, and rendered him useless for the peculiar needs for which he had
been prepared. He would doubtless have gone abroad, and even if he had
not remained buried in some college on the Continent, he would have
returned merely as one of those mission priests (for doubtless he would
have taken orders) of whom the Jesuit had already more than he required.
It was even not desirable that he should associate exclusively with
Papists. He was already sufficiently known and his position understood
among them for the purposes of any future mission on which he might be
engaged; and it would be more to the purpose for him to extend his
acquaintance among Church of England people, and gain their confidence.
To this end the Jesuit thought proper to remove him from the immediate
attendance on the Queen, where he saw few except Papists, and to assist
in his endeavours to purchase a place about the King's person. In this
he was successful, and about the end of 1639 Inglesant purchased the
place of one of the Esquires of the Body who relinquished his place on
account of ill health. This post, which followed immediately after that
of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, was looked upon as a very
important and influential one, and cost Inglesant a large sum of money
before he obtained it. He was, as we have seen, rather a favourite with
the King, who had noticed him more than once, and he began to be
regarded as a rising courtier whose friendship it would be well to keep.
When the Jesuit had seen him settled in his new post, he put in motion
another and still more powerful engine which he had prepared for
preventing his pupil from joining the Romish Church. He had himself
inculcated as much as possible a broad and philosophical method of
thought upon his pupil, but he was necessarily confined and obstructed
in this direction by his own position and supposed orthodoxy, and he was
therefore anxious to infuse into Inglesant's mind a larger element of
rational inquiry than in his sacred character it was possible for him to
accomplish without shocking his pupil's moral sense. If I have not
failed altogether in representing that pupil's character, it will have
been noticed that it was one of those which combine activity of thought
with great faculty of reverence and of submission to those powers to
which its fancy and taste are subordinated. These natures are
enthusiastic, though generally not supposed to be so, and though little
sign of it appears in their outward conduct; for the objects of their
enthusiasm being generally different from those which attract most men,
they are conscious that they have little sympathy to expect in their
pursuit of them, and this gives their enthusiasm a reserved and cautious
demeanour. They are not, however, blindly enthusiastic, but are never
satisfied till they have found some theory by which they are able to
reconcile in their own minds the widest results to which their activity
of thought has led them, with the submission and service which it is
their delight and choice to pay to such outward systems and authorities
as have pleased and attracted their taste. This theory consists
generally in some, at times half-formed, conception of the imperfect
dispensation in which men live, which makes obedience to authority, with
which the most exalted reason cannot entirely sympathise, becoming and
even necessary. This feeling more than anything else, gives to persons
of this nature a demeanour quite different from that of the ordinary
religious or political enthusiast, a demeanour seemingly cold and
indifferent, though courteous and even to some extent sympathetic, and
which causes the true fanatic to esteem them as little better than the
mere man of the world, or the minion of courtly power. The enthusiastic
part of his character had been fully cultivated in Inglesant, the
reasoning and philosophic part had been wakened and trained to some
extent by his readings in Plato under the direction of the Jesuit; it
remained now to be still more developed, whether to the ultimate
improvement of his character it would be hard to say.
The Jesuit took him one day into the city to Devonshire House, where,
inquiring for Mr. Hobbes, they were shown into a large handsome room
full of books, where a gentleman was sitting whose appearance struck
Inglesant very much. He was tall and very erect, with a square
mallet-shaped head and ample forehead. He wore a small red moustache,
that curled upward, and a small tuft of hair upon his chin. His eyes
were hazel and full of life and spirit, and when he spoke they shone
with lively light; when he was witty and laughed the lids closed over
them so that they could scarcely be seen, but when he was serious and in
earnest they expanded to their full orb, and penetrated, as it seemed,
to the farthest limit of thought. He was dressed in a coat of black
velvet lined with fur, and wore long boots of Spanish leather laced with
ribbon. When the first compliments were over, the Jesuit introduced
Inglesant to him as a young gentleman of promise, who would derive great
benefit from his acquaintance, and whose friendship he hoped might not
prove unacceptable to Mr. Hobbes.
Inglesant came often to Mr. Hobbes, whose conversation delighted him.
It frequently referred to the occurrences of the day, in which Mr.
Hobbes sided with the Government, having a great regard for the King
personally, as had Harrington afterwards, and most of the
philosophers--all their sympathies and theories being on the side of law
and strong government; but their discourse frequently went beyond this,
and embraced those questions of human existence which interest thinking
men. He soon found out Inglesant's tendency towards Catholicism, and
strongly dissuaded him from it.
"Your idea of the Catholic system," he said, "is a dream, and has no
real existence among the Papists. Your ideal is an exalted Platonic
manifestation of the divine existence diffused among men: the reality is
a system of mean trivial details, wearisome and disgusting to such men
as you are. Instead of the perfect communion with the Divine Light, such
as you seek, you will have before you and above you nothing but the
narrow conceptions of some ignorant priest to whom you must submit your
intellect. What freedom of thought or existence will remain to you when
you have fully accepted the article of transubstantiation, and truly
believe that the priest is able of a piece of bread to make absolutely
and unconditionally our Saviour's body, and thereby at the hour of death
to save your soul? Will it not have an effect upon you to make you
think him a god, and to stand in awe of him as of God Himself if He were
visibly present?"
"I suppose it would," said Inglesant.
"One of our divines of the English Church, writing much above their
wont--for they are much stronger in their lives than in their
writings--puts this very plainly in the matter of the judgment of the
priest in confession. 'Yet this extorted confession on Pain of
Damnation is not the stripping a man to his naked body, but the
stripping him of his body, that they may see his naked heart, and so, by
the force of this superstition, break into those secrets which it is the
only due privilege of Almighty God to be acquainted with, who is the
only rightful Searcher of hearts.' These men may well pretend to be
followers of Aristotle, who reason only from the names of things,
according to the scale of the Categories; but of those of the better
sort, as you and I take ourselves to be, who follow Plato, and found our
doctrine on the conceptions and ideas of things, we must ever submit to
be called heretics by them as a reproach, though we, doubtless, and not
they, are the true sacramentalists, that is, the seekers for the hidden
and the divine truth. It is for this reason that I take the Sacrament
in the English Church, which I call in England the Holy Church, and
believe that its statutes are the true Christian Faith."
"There seems to me," he went on after a pause, "something frightfully
grotesque about the Romish Church as a reality. Showing us on the one
side a mass of fooleries and ridiculous conceits and practices, at
which, but for the use of them, all men must needs stand amazed; such
rabble of impossible relics,--the hay that was in the manger, and more
than one tail of the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem, besides
hundreds which for common decency no man in any other case would so much
as name. To look on these, I say, on one side, and on the other to see
those frightful and intolerable cruelties, so detestable that they
cannot be named, by which thousands have been tormented by this holy and
pure Church, has something about it so grotesque and fantastic that it
seems to me sometimes more like some masque or dance of satyrs or devils
than the followers of our Saviour Christ."
"All this," said Inglesant, "I partly believe, yet I imagine that
something may be said upon the other side of the argument, and I should
suppose that there is not one of these doctrines and practices but what
has some shadow of truth in it, and sprang at first from the wellspring
of truth."
"Doubtless," said the philosopher, "there is nothing but has had its
origin in some conception of the truth, but are we 'for this cause,' as
that same divine says, 'also to forsake the Truth itself, and
devotionally prostrate ourselves to every evanescent and far-cast show
of Him--shadows of shadows--in infinite myriads of degenerations from
Him?' Surely not."
"What is truth?" said Inglesant; "who shall show us any good?"
"Truth," said the philosopher, "is that which we have been taught, that
which the civil government under which we live instructs us in and
directs us to believe. Our Saviour Christ came as the Messiah to
establish His kingdom on earth, and after Him the Apostles and Christian
Princes and Commonwealths have handed down His truth to us. This is our
only safe method of belief."
"But should we believe nothing of Christianity," said Inglesant, "unless
the civil government had taught it us?"
"How can you believe anything," said Hobbes, "unless you have first been
taught it? and in a Christian Commonwealth the civil government is the
vicar of Christ. I know the Jesuits," said Hobbes, "and they me; when I
was in France, some of them came to trouble me about something I had
said. I quieted them by promising to write a book upon them if they did
not let me be: what they seek is influence over the minds of men; to
gain this they will allow every vice of which man is capable. I could
prove it from their books. It is not for me, whom you scarcely know, to
say anything against a friend whom you have known so long; but, as I
understand you, your friend does not advise you to become a Papist. I
do not suppose, though possibly you may do so, that he has no other
object in view than your welfare. He has doubtless far-reaching reasons
of which we know nothing; nevertheless, be not distrustful of him, but
in this especially follow his advice. Shakespeare, the play-writer, says
'there's a divinity that shapes our ends,' or, I should say, the ends
that others work out for us, to His higher purpose. Let us have faith
in this beneficent Artist, and let Him accomplish His will on us."
"But this," said Inglesant, "is very different from what my reading and
experience in mystical religion has taught me. Is there then no medium
between the Divine Life and ourselves than that of the civil government?
This would seem to me most repulsive and contrary to experience."
"If you pretend to a direct revelation," said Hobbes with a smile, "I
have nothing to allege against it, but, to the rest of us, Christian
sovereigns are the supreme pastors and the only persons we now hear
speak from God. But because God giveth faith by means of teachers,
therefore I call hearing the immediate cause of faith. In a school
where many are taught, some profit, others profit not; the cause of
learning in them that profit is the Master, yet it cannot be thence
inferred that learning is not the gift of God. All good things proceed
from God, yet cannot all that have them say that they are inspired, for
that implies a gift supernatural and the immediate hand of God, which he
that pretends to, pretends to be a prophet."
"I am loth to believe what you say," said Inglesant; "I am no prophet,
yet I would willingly believe that God is speaking to me with an
immediate voice, nay, more, that I may enter into the very life that God
is leading, and partake of His nature. Also, what you now say seems to
me to contradict what you said before, that we should endeavour to found
our doctrine on the conceptions and ideas of things, which I take to
mean a following after divine truth: nor do I see why you take the
sacrament, as you say you do, except you expect some immediate
communication from God in it."
The philosopher smiled. "One may see you have been taught in the
Jesuits' college," he said, "and are a forward pupil and a close
reasoner. But what I have said concerning faith coming by hearing need
not prevent that afterwards God may convey other gifts to men by other
means. Yet I confess I am not a proficient in this divine knowledge or
life of which you speak; nor do I follow your master Plato very far into
the same conclusions which many profess to find in him. One disputant
grounds his knowledge upon the infallibility of the Church, and the
other on the testimony of the private spirit. The first we need not
discuss, but how do you know that your private spirit, that this divine
life within you, is any other than a belief grounded on the authority
and arguments of your teachers?"
Inglesant made no reply, which the philosopher perceiving, began to talk
of something else, and the other soon after took his leave. Hobbes's
doctrine was new to him, as it was to every one in that day, indeed, the
particular form it took was peculiar to Hobbes, and perished with him;
but the underlying materialism which in some form or other has presented
itself to the thinkers of every age, and which now for the first time
came before Inglesant's mind, was not without its effect. "How do I know
indeed," he said, "that this divine life within me is anything but an
opinion formed by what I have heard and read? How do I know that there
is any such thing as a divine life at all?"
Such thoughts as these, if they produced no other effect, yet gradually
lessened that eagerness in his mind towards divine things which had been
so strong since his visit to Little Gidding, and quite satisfied him to
defer at any rate any thoughts of joining the Church of Rome. But his
thoughts were turned into other channels by the events which were
occurring in the political world, and which began now to assume a very
exciting character.
*CHAPTER VI.*
On the 20th of August 1640 the King set out for York on his way to
Scotland, in some haste, and Inglesant accompanied or rather preceded
him, his duty being to provide apartments for the King. The King
advanced no farther than North Allerton, Lord Strafford being at
Darlington, and a large part of the army at Newburn-upon-Tyne, from
whence they retreated before the Scots almost without fighting. It was
at this time that Inglesant began to see more of the real state of
affairs among the leaders of the royal party, and became aware of the
real weakness of their position. He appears to have formed the opinion
that Lord Strafford, in spite of his great qualities, had failed
altogether in establishing himself on a firm and lasting footing of
power, and was deficient in those qualities of a statesman that ensure
success, and incapable of realising the necessities of the times. His
army, on which he relied, was disorganised, and totally without devotion
or enthusiasm. It melted away before the Scots, or fraternised with
them, and the trained bands and gentry who came in to the King's
standard and to the Earl, prefaced all their offers of service with
petitions for the redress of grievances and the calling together a
Parliament. Inglesant had already formed the opinion that the
Archbishop, who was now left at the head of affairs in London with the
Privy Council, and was vainly endeavouring to prevent the citizens from
sending up monster petitions to the King, was even more at variance with
the inevitable course of events, and more powerless to withstand them
than the Earl; and he appears to have written to his friend the Jesuit,
for his guidance, careful explanations of his own views on these
subjects. Father Hall, however, was not a man hastily to change his
course. He had belonged from the beginning to that section of the
popish party whose policy had been to support the High Church party
rather than to oppose it, and this policy was strengthened now that the
royal power itself began to be attacked. Whatever others of the popish
party might think, those with whom the Jesuit acted, and the party at
Rome which directed their conduct, were undeviating supporters of the
King, and were convinced that all advantage which the Papists might in
future achieve was dependent upon him. It is not apparent what action
the Jesuit was taking at this moment, probably he was contented to watch
the course of events; but this much is certain, that his efforts to
induce Churchmen to work with him were increased rather than diminished.
While the King was at York, the Marquis of Montrose, who was in the
Covenanters' army, carried on a correspondence with him, and copies of
his letters were believed to be stolen from the King's pockets at night
by one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, and sent to the leader of
the Scots' army. Montrose retired into Scotland, and as the King was
desirous of continuing a correspondence which promised so much, he
decided upon sending a special messenger to the Marquis. Inglesant was
fixed upon for this mission, as being known by the Royalists as a
confidential agent of the Court, but at the same time almost entirely
unknown to the opposite party. He found Montrose at Edinburgh, at a
time when the Marquis was endeavouring to form a party among the
nobility of Scotland, in opposition to the Covenant. Inglesant was
probably little more in this negotiation than an accredited
letter-carrier; but a circumstance occurred in connection with his stay
in Scotland which is not without interest with reference to his future
character. Among the gentlemen with whom Montrose was in connection
were some of the Highland chiefs, and to one of these the Marquis sent
Inglesant as a safe agent, being perfectly unknown in Scotland. This
gentleman, understanding that the messenger of Montrose was coming to
meet him, travelled down from the Highlands with a great retinue of
servants, and sent on one of his gentlemen, with a few attendants, to
meet the young Englishman on the borders of Perthshire. Inglesant had
ridden from Stirling, and the night being stormy and dark, he had
stopped at a gentleman's house in a lonely situation at the foot of the
Badenoch Hills. Here, late in the evening, his entertainers met him,
and they passed the night in company. After supper, as they were
sitting in front of the fire with the master of the house and several
more, the conversation turned upon the faculty of second sight, and the
numberless instances of its certainty with which the Highland gentlemen
were acquainted. While they were thus discoursing, the attention of the
gentleman who had come to meet Inglesant was attracted by an old
Highlander who sat in the large chimney, and he inquired whether he saw
anything unusual in the Englishman, that made him regard him with such
attention. He said no, he saw nothing: in him fatal or remarkable more
than this, that he was much mistaken if that young man was not a seer
himself, or, at any rate, would be able before many months were over to
see apparitions and spirits. Inglesant thought little of this at the
time, but he remembered it afterwards when an event occurred on his
return to London which recalled it to his recollection.
The treaty having been settled with the Scots, and the writs issued for
a new Parliament, the King returned to London.
One day in September, Inglesant received a visit from one of the
servants of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who brought a message from
Laud expressing a wish to see Mr. Inglesant at his dinner at Lambeth
Palace on any day that would suit his convenience. He went the next day
by water at the proper hour, and was ushered into the great hall of the
palace, where dinner was laid, and many gentlemen and clergymen standing
about in the windows and round the tables, waiting the Archbishop.
Inglesant's entrance was remarked at once, his dress and appearance
rendering him conspicuous, and his person being well known, and
occasioned some surprise; for the Archbishop had not been latterly on
friendly terms with the Queen, whom he had opposed on some questions
relating to Papists, to whose party, even since his being in the King's
household, Inglesant was considered to belong. The servants had
evidently received orders concerning him, for he was placed very high at
table and waited upon with great attention. On the Archbishop's
entrance he noticed Inglesant particularly, and expressed his pleasure
at seeing him there. The conversation at dinner turned entirely on the
Scotch rebellion, and the failure of the Earl of Strafford to repress
it; and on the King's return to London, which had not long taken place.
Several gentlemen present had been with the army, and spoke of the
insubordination among the officers, especially such as had been
Parliament men. The elections for the new Parliament were expected
shortly to take place, and many of the officers were deserting from the
army, and coming up to London and other places to secure their return.
The utmost dissatisfaction and insubordination prevailed over the whole
country, for Laud and Strafford, after exciting the animosity of the
people, had proved themselves weak, and the people began to despise as
well as hate them--not perceiving that this probably proved that they
were not the finished tyrants they were supposed to be. Strafford's
army, raised by himself, having proved powerless against the Scots and
insubordinate against its master, the popular party was encouraged to
attack him, whom they hated as much as ever, though they began to fear
him less. The violent excitement of the popular party against the High
Churchmen and against ceremonies was also a subject of conversation.
The wildest rumours were prevalent as to the probable conduct of the new
Parliament, but all agreed that the Lord Lieutenant and the Archbishop,
and probably the Lord Keeper, would be impeached. After dinner the
Archbishop rose from table, and retired into one of the windows at the
upper end of the hall, overlooking the river, requesting Inglesant, to
whom he pointed out the beauties of the view, to follow him. Having
done this, he said a few words to him in a low voice, explaining his
regret at the difference which had arisen between himself and the Queen,
whose most faithful servant he protested he had ever been, and whom he
was most desirous to please. He then went on to say that he both could
and intended to inform Her Majesty of this through other channels than
Mr. Inglesant, though he bespoke his good offices therein; but he wished
principally to speak to him of another matter, which would require
privacy to explain fully to him; but thus far he would say, that
although he had always been a true servant of the Church of England, and
had never entertained any thoughts inconsistent with such fidelity, yet
he believed the Roman Catholics were aware that he had always behaved
with great toleration to them, and had always entertained a great
respect for their religion, refusing to allow it to be abused or
described as Antichrist in the English pulpits; that it was notorious
that he had excited the enmity of the popular party by this conduct; and
that whatever he might suffer under the new Parliament would be in
consequence of it. He was aware that Mr. Inglesant was in the
confidence of that party, and especially the particular friend of Father
Hall, the leader of the most powerful section of it; and he entreated
his services to bring the Jesuit and himself to some understanding and
concerted action, whereby, at least, they might ward off some of the
blows that would be aimed at them. The Archbishop said that many of the
wisest politicians considered that the two parties who would divide the
stage between them would be the popular party and the Papists; and if
this were really the case (though he himself thought that the loyal
Church party would prove stronger than was thought), it was evident that
Mr. Inglesant's friend would be well able to return any kindness that
the Archbishop had shown the Romanists.
Inglesant went to the Jesuit as soon as possible, and related his
interview with the Archbishop. Father Hall listened to it with great
interest.
"He has been like a true ecclesiastic," he said, "blind to facts while
he was in the course of his power, astonished and confounded when the
natural results arrive. Nevertheless, I fancy he will make a good
fight, or at least a good ending. The people know not what they want,
and might have been led easily, but it is too late. What was the real
amount of tyranny and persecution the people suffered? The Church
officers were blamed on the one hand for not putting the laws in force
against the Papists, and on the other, for putting them in force against
the Puritans. However, he has a right view of the power of the Church
party, in which I join him. We shall see the good fight they will make
for the King yet. The gentry and chivalry of England are rather rusty
for want of use, but we shall see the metal they are made of before
long. However, the Catholics will be ready first, are ready in fact now,
and I have great hopes of the use that we shall make of these
opportunities. I am much mistaken if such a chance as we shall have
before many months are over will not be greater than we have had for a
century. I shall count on you. We have been long delayed, and you must
have thought all our pains would come to nothing; but we must have long
patience if we enter on the road of politics.
"You are now," said the Jesuit, "embracing the cause full of enthusiasm
and zeal, and this is very well; how else could we run out the race,
unless we began with some little fire? But this will not last, and
unless you are warned, you may be offended and fall away. When you have
lived longer in this world and outlived the enthusiastic and pleasing
illusions of youth, you will find your love and pity for the race
increase tenfold, your admiration and attachment to any particular party
or opinion fall away altogether. You will not find the royal cause
perfect any more than any other, nor those embarked in it free from mean
and sordid motives, though you think now that all of them act from the
noblest. This is the most important lesson that a man can learn--that
all men are really alike; that all creeds and opinions are nothing but
the mere result of chance and temperament; that no party is on the whole
better than another; that no creed does more than shadow imperfectly
forth some one side of truth; and it is only when you begin to see this
that you can feel that pity for mankind, that sympathy with its
disappointments and follies, and its natural human hopes, which have
such a little time of growth, and such a sure season of decay.
"I have seen nothing more pathetic than touches in the life of some of
these Puritans--men who have, as they thought in obedience to the will
of the Deity, denied themselves pleasure--human pleasure--through their
lives, and now and then some old song, some pleasant natural tale of
love flashes across their path, and the true human instinct of the sons
of Adam lights up within them.
"Nothing but the Infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of
human life.
"As you know, we have many parties in our Church, nay, in our own order:
different members may be sent on opposing missions; but it is no matter,
they are all alike. Hereafter it will be of little importance which of
these new names, Cavalier or Roundhead, you are called by, whether you
turn Papist or Puritan, Jesuit or Jansenist, but it will matter very
much whether you acted as became a man, and did not flinch ignobly at
the moment of trial. Choose your part from the instinct of your order,
from your birth, or from habit or what not; but having chosen it, follow
it to the end. Stand by your party or your order, and especially in the
hour of trial or danger be sure you never falter; for, be certain of
this, that no misery can be equal to that which a man feels who is
conscious that he has proved unequal to his part, who has deserted the
post his captain set him, and who, when men said 'such and such a one is
there on guard, there is no need to take further heed,' has left his
watch or quailed before the foeman, to the loss, perhaps the total ruin,
of the cause he had made his choice. I pray God that such misery as
this may never be yours."
The elections being over, London became very full. The new members
hastened up. The nobility and country gentry came crowding in, and all
the new houses in the Strand and Charing Cross were occupied, and a
throng of young Cavaliers filled the courts and precincts of the palace.
As soon as the King arrived, Inglesant went into waiting in his new
post, in which great responsibility in the keeping of the royal
household, especially at night, devolved upon him. His post came
immediately after that of the gentlemen of the privy chamber, with whom
the immediate attendance on the person of the King stopped, but the
charge of the King's rooms brought him continually into the royal
presence.
As soon as the Parliament met, the impeachment of Strafford began; and
as it proceeded, the excitement grew more and more intense. It was not
safe for the courtiers to go into the city, except in numbers together,
and a court of guard was kept by the Cavaliers before Whitehall towards
Charing Cross.
One day Inglesant received a letter from the Jesuit, whom he seldom saw,
as follows:--
"Jack, tell your friend, the Archbishop, that Lambeth House will be
attacked two nights from this, by a rabble of the populace. The
Parliament leaders will not be seen in this, but they can be felt. Burn
this, but let the Archbishop know the hand from which it comes."
On receiving this warning the Archbishop fortified his house, and
crossed the water to his chamber in Whitehall, where he slept that night
and two others following. His house was attacked by a mob of five
hundred men; one of them was wounded and afterwards executed; not much
damage was done.
History can furnish few events so startling and remarkable as the trial
and death of Lord Strafford--events which, the more they are studied,
the more wonderful they appear. It is not easy to find words to express
the miserable weakness and want of statesmanship which led to, and made
possible, such an event; and one is almost equally surprised at the
comparatively few traces of the sensation and consternation that such an
event must have produced. I am not speaking of the justice or the
injustice of the sentence, nor of the crime or innocence of the
accused,--I speak only of a great minister and servant of the Crown, in
whose policy and support the whole of the royal power, the whole
strength of the national establishment, was involved and pledged. That
such a man, by the simple clamour of popular opinion, should have been
arrested, tried, and executed in a few days, with no effort but the most
degrading and puny one made on his behalf by his royal master and
friend, certainly must have produced a terror and excitement, one would
think, unequalled in history. That the King never recovered from it is
not surprising; one would have thought he would never have held up his
head again. That the royal party was amazed and confounded is not
wonderful; one would have thought it would have been impossible ever to
have formed a royal party afterwards. What considerations were powerful
enough in the King's mind to induce him to consent to an act of such
wretched folly and meanness we shall never know.
It was two nights after the execution. The guard was set at Whitehall
and the "all night" served up. The word for the night was given, and
the whole palace was considered as under the sole command of Inglesant,
as the esquire in waiting. He had been round to the several gates, and
seen that the courts and anterooms were quiet and clear of idlers, and
then came up into the anteroom outside the privy chamber, and sat down
alone before the fire. In the room beyond him were two gentlemen of the
privy chamber, who slept in small beds drawn across the door opening
into the royal bedchamber beyond. The King was in his room, in bed, but
not asleep; Lord Abergavenny, the gentleman of the bedchamber in
waiting, was reading Shakespeare to him before he slept. Inglesant took
out a little volume of the classics, of the series printed in Holland,
which it was the custom of the gentlemen of the Court, and those
attached to great nobles, to carry with them to read in antechambers
while in waiting. The night was perfectly still, and the whole palace
wrapped in a profound quiet that was almost oppressive to one who
happened to be awake. Inglesant could not read; the event that had just
occurred, the popular tumults, the shock of feeling which the royal
party had sustained, the fear and uncertainty of the future, filled his
thoughts. The responsibility of his post sat on him to-night like a
nightmare, and with very unusual force; a sense of approaching terror in
the midst of the intense silence fascinated him and became almost
insupportable. His fancy filled his mind with images of some possible
oversight and of some unseen danger which might be lurking even then in
the precincts of the vast rambling palace. Gradually, however, all
these images became confused and the sense of terror dulled, and he was
on the point of falling asleep when he was startled by the ringing sound
of arms and the challenge of the yeoman of the guard, on the landing
outside the door. The next instant a voice, calm and haughty, which
sent a tremor through every nerve, gave back the word "Christ."
Inglesant started up and grasped the back of his chair in terror.
Gracious Heaven! who was this that knew the word? In another moment the
hangings across the door were drawn sharply back, and with a quick step,
as one who went straight to where he was expected and had a right to be,
the intruder entered the antechamber. It wore the form and appearance
of Strafford--it was Strafford--in dress, and mien, and step. Taking no
heed of Inglesant, crouched back in terror against the carved
chimney-piece, the apparition crossed the room with a quick step, drew
the hangings that screened the door of the privy chamber, and
disappeared. Inglesant recovered in a moment, sprang across the room,
and followed the figure through the door. He saw nothing; but the two
gentlemen raised themselves from their couches, startled by his sudden
appearance and white, scared look, and said, "What is it, Mr. Esquire?"
Before Inglesant, who stood with eyes and mouth open, the picture of
terror, could recover himself, the curtain of the bed-chamber was drawn
hastily back, and the Lord Abergavenny suddenly appeared, saying in a
hurried, startled voice:--
"Send for Mayern; send for Dr. Mayern, the King is taken very ill!"
Inglesant, who by this time was recovered sufficiently to act, seized
the opportunity to escape, and, hurrying through the antechamber and
down the staircase to the guard-room, he found one of the pages, and
despatched him for the Court physician. He then returned to the guard
at the top of the staircase.
"Has any one passed?" he asked.
"No," the man said; "he had seen no one."
"Did you challenge no one a moment ago?"
The man looked scared, but finally acknowledged what he feared at first
to confess, lest it should be thought he had been sleeping at his post,
that he had become suddenly conscious of, as it seemed to him, some
presence in the room, and found himself the next moment, to his
confusion, challenging the empty space.
Failing to make anything of the man, Inglesant returned to the privy
chamber, where Lord Abergavenny was relating what had occurred.
"I was reading to the King," he repeated, "and His Majesty was very
still, and I began to think he was falling asleep, when he suddenly
started upright in bed, grasped the book on my knee with one hand, and
with the other pointed across the chamber to some object upon which his
gaze was fixed with a wild and horror-stricken look, while he faintly
tried to cry out. In a second the terror of the sight, whatever it was,
overcame him, and he fell back on the bed with a sharp cry."
"Mr. Inglesant saw something," said both the gentlemen at once; "he came
in here as you gave the alarm."
"I saw nothing," said Inglesant; "whatever frightened me I must tell the
King."
Dr. Mayern, who lodged in the palace, soon arrived; and as the King was
sensible when he came, he merely prescribed some soothing drink, and
soon left. The moment he was gone the King called Abergavenny into the
room alone to him, and questioned him as to what had occurred.
Abergavenny told him all he knew, adding that the esquire in waiting,
Mr. Inglesant, was believed to have seen something by the gentlemen of
the privy chamber, whom he had aroused. Inglesant was sent for, and
found the King and Abergavenny alone. He declined to speak before the
latter, until the King positively commanded him to do so. Deadly pale,
with his eyes on the ground, and speaking with the greatest difficulty,
he then told his story; of the deep silence, his restlessness, the
sentry's challenge, and the apparition that appeared. Here he stopped.
"And this figure," said Abergavenny in a startled whisper, "did you know
who it was?"
"Yes, I knew him," said the young man; "would to God I had not."
"Who was it?"
Paler, if possible, than before, and with a violent effort, Inglesant
forced himself to look at the King.
A contortion of pain, short but terrible to see, passed over the King's
face, but he rose from the chair in which he sat (for he had risen from
the bed and even dressed himself) and, with that commanding dignity
which none ever assumed better than he, he said,--
"Who was it? Mr. Esquire."
"My Lord Stafford."
Abergavenny stepped back several paces, and covered his face with his
hands. No one spoke. Inglesant dared not stir, but remained opposite
to the King, trembling in every limb, and his eyes upon the ground like
a culprit. The King continued to stand with his commanding air, but
stiff and rigid as a statue; it seemed as though he had strength to
command his outward demeanour, but no power besides.
The silence grew terrible. At last the King was able to make a slight
motion with his hand. Inglesant seized the opportunity, and, bowing to
the ground, retired backward to the door. As he closed the door the
King turned towards Abergavenny, but the room was empty. The King was
left alone.
*CHAPTER VII.*
In the beginning of 1642 the King left Whitehall finally, and retired
with the Queen to Hampton Court, from which he went to the south to see
Her Majesty embark, and without returning to London proceeded to the
north. Very few attendants accompanied him, and Inglesant was left at
liberty to go where he pleased. His brother was in France, and he was
at the moment ignorant where the Jesuit was. Several motives led him to
go to Gidding, where he felt sure of a welcome, though Mr. Ferrar was
dead, and he accordingly rode there in the end of March. Mr. Nicholas
Ferrar jun. had been dead nearly a year, having not long survived his
uncle, and the household was governed by Mr. John Ferrar, Mr. Nicholas
Ferrar's brother. Their usual quiet and holy life seemed quieter and
more holy; a placid melancholy and a sort of contented sorrow seemed to
fill the place, which was not disturbed even by those expectations of
approaching trouble and danger which all felt. They received Inglesant
with kindness and even affection, and begged him to remain as long as he
pleased. Mary Collet, who, secretly he acknowledged to himself, was the
principal reason of his coming down, met him frankly, and seemed more
attractive and beautiful than before. He felt awed and quieted in her
presence, yet nothing was so delightful to him as to be in the room or
garden with her, and hear her speak. He endeavoured to assist her in
her work of attending to the poor and sick, and in tending the garden,
and became like a brother to her, without saying or desiring to say one
word of gallantry or of love. The Puritans of the neighbouring towns,
who had always disliked the Ferrars, came more frequently into their
neighbourhood, and endeavoured to set the country people against them,
and even to stir them up to acts of violence; but the Ferrars remarked
that these annoyances were lessened by the efforts of a Puritan
gentleman, who was possessed of considerable property in Peterborough,
and who had latterly taken advantage of several excuses to come to
Little Gidding.
Inglesant saw this gentleman once or twice, and became rather attracted
towards him in a strange way. He appeared to him to be a man in whom a
perpetual struggle was going on between his real nature and the system
of religion which he had adopted, but in whom the original nature had
been subdued and nearly extinguished, until some event, apparently of
recent occurrence, had renewed this conflict, and excited the conquered
human nature once more to rebellion. This alone would have afforded
sufficient interest and attraction to a man of Inglesant's temperament;
but this interest was increased tenfold when he perceived, as he did
very soon, that this disturbing event and the reason which brought Mr.
Thorne to Gidding, were in fact one and the same, the same indeed which
brought himself there--attraction to Mary Collet. The peaceful
half-religious devotion with which he regarded his friend prevented him
from being incited to any feeling of jealousy by this discovery, and
indeed would have made the idea of such a sentiment and opposition
almost ridiculous. He treated Mr. Thorne, when they met at table or
elsewhere, with the most marked courtesy--a courtesy which the other
very imperfectly returned; at first ignoring Inglesant altogether, and
when this was no longer possible, taking every opportunity to reprove
and lecture him in the way the Puritans took upon them to do, all of
which Inglesant bore good-humouredly. Things had gone on this way for
several weeks, and Mr. Thorne's visits had grown less frequent, when one
summer afternoon he rode over, and after seeing Mr. John Ferrar, came to
seek Mary Collet. He found her and Inglesant alone in one of the small
reading parlours looking on the garden. Inglesant had been reading
aloud in Mr. Crashaw's poems; but on the other's entering the room, he
rose and stood behind Mary Collet's chair, his hand resting on the high
back. His attitude probably annoyed Mr. Thorne, whose manner was more
severe and stern than usual. He made the lady a formal greeting, and
took slight heed of Inglesant, who wished him Good-day.
"The days are far from good, sir," he said severely, "and the night of
the soul is dark; nevertheless, there is a path open to the saints of
God, which will lead to a brighter time."
He looked hard at Mary Collet as he spoke.
"I should hope, sir," said Inglesant, with a conciliatory smile, "that
you and I may one day stand together in a brighter dawn."
The other's face slightly softened, for indeed the indescribable charm
of Inglesant's manner few could resist, but he hardened himself
instantly, and replied,--
"It is a fond hope, sir. How can two walk together unless they are
agreed? What fellowship is there between the saints (however unworthy)
and the followers of the pleasures of this world? And how may you, on
whom the Prince of this world has bestowed every brilliant gift and
power, stand at the resurrection amongst the poor and despised saints of
God?"
Mary Collet moved slightly, and put her hand back upon the chair elbow,
so that it partly and slightly touched Inglesant's hand, at which
movement, a spasm, as of pain, passed over Mr. Thorne's features, and he
drew himself up more sternly than before.
"But I am idling my time vainly and sinfully here," he said, "in
chambering and wantonness, when I should be buckling on my armour.
Mistress Collet, I came here to wish you farewell. I am going to London
in the good cause, and I shall in all human probability never see you
more. I intreat you to listen to the bridegroom's voice, and from my
heart I wish you God-speed."
As she rose, he pressed her hand lightly, and raised his eyes to heaven,
as the Puritans were ridiculed for doing; then he bowed stiffly to
Inglesant, and was gone.
Inglesant followed him to the courtyard, where his horses were standing,
but he took no further notice of him, and rode off through the gate.
Johnny stood looking after him down the alley, between the latticed
walks of the garden. At last he stopped and looked back. When he saw
Inglesant still there, he seemed to hesitate, but finally dismounted and
led his horse back. Inglesant hastened to meet him, with his plumed hat
in his hand.
"Mr. Inglesant," said the Puritan, speaking slowly and with evident
hesitation, "I am going to say something which will probably make you
regard with increased contempt not only myself, which you may well do,
but the religion which I profess to serve, but which I betray, in which
last you will commit a fatal sin. But before I say it, I beg of you, if
a few moments ago I said anything that was unnecessarily severe and more
than my Master would warrant, that you will forgive it. Woe be to us if
we falter in the truth, and speak pleasant things when we should set our
face as a flint; nevertheless, there is no need for us to go beyond the
letter of the Spirit, and I almost feel that the Lord has disowned my
speech, seeing that so soon after I fear I myself am fallen from Grace."
He stopped, and Inglesant wondered what this long preamble might mean.
He assured him that he bore no ill-feeling, but very much the contrary;
but the Puritan scarcely allowed him to finish before he began again to
s
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