CHAPTER VII.

When I think of the months which passed between the king's attempted arrest of the five members and the first battle of the Civil War, I sometimes wonder how any one can ever undertake to write history.

In the little bit of the world known to us, parties were so strangely intertwined, so strangely divided, and so heterogeneously composed. The motives that drew men to one side or the other were so various and so mixed, that I think scarce one of those we knew fought on the same side for the same reason; while the differences which separated many men in the same party were certainly wider in many respects than those which separated them from others against whom they fought.

How world-wide the difference between Harry Davenant and Sir Launcelot Trevor! How nicely balanced the scales that made my Father and John Hampden "rebels," and Harry Davenant or Lord Falkland "malignants!"

Yet the distinctions were real, at least so it seems to me. Nor do I see how, if all were to be again starting from the same point, either could avoid coming to the same issue.

Harry Davenant believed revolution to be ruin, and chose the most arbitrary rule instead.

My Father, equally dreading revolution, believed the king to be the great revolutionist; by his arbitrary will changing times and laws; by his hopeless untruth subverting the foundations of society. Slowly he stepped down into the cold bitter waters of civil war, having for his watch-word, "Loyalty to England and her laws!" His chief hope lay in Mr. Hampden.

Roger again, and others like him, hoping more from liberty than he feared from revolution, and believing the contest would be fiery, but brief and decisive, plunged gallantly into the flood, with Liberty blazoned on their banners; liberty to do right and to speak the truth. His chosen captain was Mr. Cromwell, in whose troop he served from the first. God only knew the bitter pang it cost him (I knew it not till years afterwards) to take his post on the field which must, he knew, make so great a gulf between him and the Davenants. It was seldom Roger spoke of what he felt; scarce ever of what he suffered.

Dr. Antony wrote, meanwhile, from London:--

"Chirurgeons, like women, have indeed their place on the battle-field, and not out of reach of the danger. But their work is with the wounded, and their weapons are turned against the enemy of all; the 'last enemy,' scarce to be destroyed in this war! I hope to succour on the battle-field those I sought to comfort in the prisons. God grant I find the air of the field as wholesome to the spirits of my patients as that of the dungeon."

Job Forster never hesitated for a moment as to which was the right side. To him England was in one sense Canaan to be conquered, in another the Chosen Land to be kept sacred. The king was Saul; or, in other aspects, Sihon king of the Amorites, or Og king of Bashan. The Parliament, at first, and then the Lord Protector and the army, were the chosen people, Moses, Joshua, David. His only hesitation was whether he himself ought to fight on the field, or to work at the forge and protect Rachel and the village at home. "The Almighty," he said, "has not given me this big body of mine for nought. God forbid it should be said of Job Forster, Why abodest thou amidst the sheep-folds to hear the bleatings of the flocks?--that is, the ring of the hammer and anvil, which is as the bleating of my flocks to me. Yet there is Rachel! And the old law was merciful; and if it forbid a man to leave his new-married wife, how should I answer for leaving her who has more need of me, and has none but me? and she so ailing, and I, to whom the Lord has said as plain as words can speak, 'Be thou better to her than ten sons."

It was perhaps the first perplexity he had never confided to her, and sorely was Job exercised, until one morning in August he came to my Father with a lightened countenance, and said,--

"Mr. Drayton, she has given the word, as plain as ever Deborah spoke to Barak. I've got my commission, and I'm ready to go this night."

Afterwards, in an intimate talk by a camp-fire, he once told Roger how that morning, between the lights, he woke up and saw her kneeling down with her arms crossed upon the Book, and her eyes raised up to heaven, and running fast with tears. "I lifted myself," he said, "on my elbow, and I looked at her. But I didn't like to speak; I saw there was something going on between her soul and the Lord. And last she rose and came to me with a face as pale as the sheet, but without a tear in her eyes or a tremble in her voice, and she said, 'Job, thou shalt have thy way; the Lord has made me ready to give thee up.' And I said, sheepish-like, 'How canst thee know what I willed? I never said aught to thee!' Then she smiled and said, 'Thee never thinks thee says aught except thee speaks plain enough for the town-crier. Have not I heard thy sighs, and seen thy hankering looks whenever any of the lads listed these weeks past? But I could not speak before; now I can. For I've gotten the word from the Lord for thee and for me, and woe is me if I hold my peace.' The word for me was: 'Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son, from me.' 'And that,' said she, 'means thee, Job; for thou are more to me than that,' said she, 'more than that, only and all. I have no promise to hold thee by, like Abraham had for Isaac, yet if the Lord calls, what can I do?' And there her voice gave way, but she hurried on--'And I've gotten a word for thee, "_Have not I commanded thee?_ Be strong and of a good courage, for the Lord thy God is with thee wheresoever thou goest."' "So," concluded Job, "I got my word of command; and there was no more to be said. We knelt down together and gave ourselves up; and as soon as it was fairly day I came to give in my name."

That was Job Forster's motive. He believed he had the word of command direct from the King of kings. And this was the motive, I believe, of hundreds and thousand more or less like him; men who, as the Lord Protector said when the strife was over, were "never beaten." Gloriously distinct the two armies and the two causes seemed to him, perplexed by no subtle perceptions of right on the wrong side, or of wrong on the right.

To Aunt Dorothy also matters were equally clear, although her point of view was not precisely the same, and in the subsequent subdivisions she and Job became seriously opposed. Aunt Dorothy believed that she saw in the New Testament a model of church ritual and government, minutely defined to the last stave or pin or loop of the tabernacle; and rather that abandon the minutest of these sacred details she would willingly have suffered any temporal loss. The whole Presbyterian order of church government she saw clearly unfolded in the Acts and the Epistles; and that godly men like Mr. Cromwell on the other hand, or learned men like Dr. Jeremy Taylor on the other, should fail to see it also, was a miracle only to be accounted for by the blinding power of Satan, especially predicted in these last days. With regard to the Government of the State also, her belief was equally definite, derived, as she considered, from the same Divine source. The king was "the anointed of the Lord." In this, she said, Lady Lucy had undoubted insight into the truth. His wicked councillors might be put to death, as traitors at once against him and the realm; armies might by his Parliament be raised against him; but it must be in his name, with the purpose of setting him free from those evil councillors by whom he was virtually kept a prisoner; his judgment being by them enthralled, so that he was irresponsible for his acts, and might quite lawfully by his faithful covenanted subjects be placed, respectfully, under bodily restraint, if thereby his mind might be disenthralled from the hard bondage of the wicked. But beyond this no subject might go. The king's person was sacred; no profane hand could be lifted with impunity against him. Any difficulty, disorder, or evil, must be endured, rather than touch a hair of the consecrated head. This also was a conviction for which Aunt Dorothy was fully prepared to encounter any amount of contradiction or disaster. The narrow ridge on which she walked erect, without wavering or misgiving, was, she was persuaded, marked out as manifestly as the path of the Israelites through the Red Sea by the wall of impassable waters on either hand, by the pillar of cloud and fire behind. To this narrow way she would have allured, led, or if needful compelled every human soul, for their good, and the glory of God. No vicissitudes of fortune affected her convictions; the sorrows of all who deviated from this narrow path being, in her belief, from the Sword of the Avenger, while the sorrows of those who kept to it were from the Rod of the Comforter. My Father's adherence to very much the same course of conduct, from a belief of its expediency, and Aunt Gretel's from the tenderness of sympathy which inevitably drew her to the side on which there was the most suffering, seemed to Aunt Dorothy happy accidents, or special and uncovenanted mercies, singularly vouchsafed to persons of their uncertain and indefinite opinions. Not that Aunt Dorothy's nature was in any way vulgar, small, and narrow. Her heart was deep and high, if not always wide. To her convictions she would have sacrificed first herself, then the universe. Her convenience she would have sacrificed to the comfort of the meanest human being in the universe. She would not have swerved from her ridge of orthodoxy for the dearest love on earth. She would have stooped from it to save or help the most degraded wanderer, or her greatest enemy.

But the most dangerous conviction she held was unfortunately one of the deepest. It was that of her own practical infallibility. It was strange that, with the profoundest and most practical convictions of her own sinfulness, she never could learn the impossibility that all error should be removed whilst any sin remains; that there should be no darkness in the mind while there is so much in the heart. Strange, but not uncommon. Her sin she acknowledged as her own. Her creed she identified entirely with the Holy Scriptures. It was not her own, she said, it was God's truth to the minutest point, and, as such, she would have suffered or fought for every clause.

Nevertheless, with advancing years Roger and I grew into a deeper reverence for her character. If in our childhood she represented to us Justice with the sword and scales (often in our belief very effectually blindfolded), whilst Aunt Gretel enacted counteracting Mercy; in after years we grew rather to look on them as Truth and Tenderness, acting not counter to each other, but in combination. And in this imperfect world, where truth and love are never blended in perfect proportions in any one character, it is difficult to say on which we leant the most. It was strange to see how often their opposite attributes led them to the same actions. "Speaking the truth in love," was Aunt Dorothy's maxim; and if the love were sometimes lost in the emphasis on truth, neither truth nor love were ever sacrificed to selfish interest. "First pure then peaceable" was her wisdom; and I cannot say she always got as far as the "gentle, and easy to be entreated." But it is something to be able to look back on a life like hers, unprofaned by one stain of untruthfulness, or by one low or petty aim. It is only in looking back that we learn what a rock of strength she was to us all, or how the tenderest memories of home often cling like mosses around such rocks; the more closely, sometimes, for their very ruggedness. Thus our home at Netherby contained various elements ecclesiastical and political as well as moral, all of which, however, at the commencement of the civil wars were gathered together under the watchword, "Loyalty above all to the King of kings. Liberty to obey God."

It was this indeed, that, with all our internal differences as to church government and secular government, united us into one party. Whatever varieties of opinion as to church government our party contained: Presbyterian, Independent, Moderate Episcopal, or Quaker; classical, republican, aristocratic, English constitutional, or, finally, the adherents of the Deliverer, chosen (they deemed) as divinely and to be obeyed as implicitly as any Hebrew judge--all believed in the theocracy.

The liberty our party contended for was no mere unloosing of bonds. It was liberty to obey the highest law. It was no mere levelling to clear an empty space for new experiments. It was sweeping away ruins to clear a platform for the kingdom of God.

And this was another point in which the recollections of my life make me feel how vast and complicated an undertaking it must be to write history.

In our early days we used to be given histories of the Church and histories of the world. Profane histories and sacred histories as neatly and definitely separated as if the Church and the world had been two distinct planets.

But in our own times, at least, it seems to me absolutely impossible thus to separate them. The Battle of Dunbar was to Oliver Cromwell and his army as religious an act as their prayer-meeting at Windsor. The righting the poor folks who lost their rights on the Soke of Somersham was, I believe, as religious an act to Mr. Cromwell as the appointment of the gospel-lectures. And as with the actions so with the persons. Who can say which persons of our time belong to ecclesiastical and which to secular history?

Does the history of the Convocation, of the Star-Chamber, or of the Westminster Assembly, belong to sacred history; and the history of the Long Parliament, where decisions were made for time and eternity, or of the battle-fields whence thousands went to their last account, to profane? Is the making of confessions of faith a religious act, and the living by them or dying for them secular? Are Archbishop Laud, Bishop Williams, Mr. Baxter, Dr. Owen, Mr. Howe, ecclesiastical persons; and Lord Falkland, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, or Oliver Cromwell, secular?

In our times, as in my own life, it seems to me absolutely impossible to say where sacred history begins and where the profane ends.

My consolation is that it seems to me much the same in the Holy Scriptures. We call Genesis sacred history; and what is it, chiefly, but a story of family life? What is Exodus but a record of national deliverances? What are the Chronicles and Kings but histories of wars and sieges, interspersed with pathetic family stories? What, indeed, are the gospels themselves but the record, not of creeds or ecclesiastical conflicts, but of a life, the Life, coming in contact with every form of sickness, and sin, and sorrow in this our common everyday human life? What would the gospels be with nothing but the Sabbaths and the synagogues, and the Sanhedrim, and the Scribes and Pharisees left in them? With the widow's only son left out of them, and the ruler's little daughter, and the woman who was a sinner, and the five thousand fed on the grassy slopes of Galilee, and the one young man who departed sorrowful 'for he had great possessions?' Would it have been more truly Church history for being the less human history?

The Bible history seems to me to be a history of all human life in relation to God. The sins of the Bible are terribly manifest, secular sins; injustice, impurity, covetousness, cruelty. Its virtues are simple homely, positive virtues; truth, uprightness, kindness, mercy, gratitude, courage, gentleness; such sins and virtues as make the weal or woe of nations and of homes. Ordinary ecclesiastical history seems to me too often a record of secular struggles for consecrated things, and names, and places, and of selfish strivings for which shall be greatest. The sins it blames, too often mere transgressions of rules, mistakes as to religious terms, neglect of the tithe of mint, anise, and cummin. The virtues it commends, alas! too often negative renunciations of certain indulgences, scruples as to certain observances, fasting twice in the week; things which, done or undone, leave the heart the same.

But underneath all this a Church history like that of the Bible is being silently lived on earth, is being silently written in heaven. Little glimpses of it we see here from time to time. What will it be when we see it all?

All through that summer the country was astir with the enlistings for the king and the Parliament.

These began about April.

On the 23d of February, Queen Henrietta Maria had embarked at Dover for the Low Countries, with the Princess Mary and the crown jewels.

From the time that she was in safety the king's tone to the Parliament began (it was thought) to change. Always chivalrously regardful of her, and in different to danger for himself (for none of his father's timidity could ever be charged to him), he began to give more open answers to the popular demands. He hoped also, it was said, much from the queen's eloquence and exertions in his cause on the Continent. It was his misfortune, my Father said, that any favourable turn in his affairs made him unyielding; and thus it happened that he only came to terms when his cause was at the worst, so that his treaties had the double disadvantage of being made under the most adverse circumstances, and with men who knew from repeated experience that not one of his most sacred promises would be kept if he could help it. Such virtues as he possessed seemed always to come into action at the wrong moment; his courage when it could only kindle irritation; his graciousness when it could only inspire contempt.

The queen being safely out of the country, and the king safely out of the capital, from his refuge at York came the renewal of the old irritating demand for tonnage and poundage, rooting the opposition firmer than ever in the irrevocable distrust of the royal word.

The demand of the king for the old usurpations was met by the assertion of the Parliament of old rights, with the demand for new powers to secure these; by the assertion of the power of the purse, and the demand for power over the militia.

But to us women at Netherby all these negotiations and fencings between the king and the Parliament sounded so much like what had gone on for so long, everything was couched in such orderly and constitutional language, that it was difficult to think anything more than Protestations, Remonstrances, Breach of Privilege, and Protests for Privilege, would ever come of it.

The first thing that roused me to the sense that it might end not in words but in battles, was the news that reached us one April evening that the king had gone in person with three hundred horsemen to the gates of Hull, and had summoned Sir John Hotham to surrender the city; that Sir John had refused to surrender or to admit the king's troops (offering all loyal courtesy at the same time to the king himself); that the king and his three hundred had thereon gone off baffled to Beverly, and there proclaimed Sir John Hotham a traitor.

That night I said to Aunt Gretel,--

"This seems to me altogether to introduce a new set of terms and things. Instead of Protestations and Remonstrances, we hear of Summonses and Surrenders. The king and his cavaliers repulsed from the closed gates of one of his own cities! Aunt Gretel, these are new words to us; does not this look like war?"

And she replied, in a tremulous voice,--

"Alas, sweet heart, these are no new words to me. Your people seem to arrange many things others fight about, by talking about them. And it is difficult for me to say what words mean with you. But these words are indeed terribly familiar to me. And in my country they would certainly mean war."

And that night I well remember the perplexity that crossed my prayers, whether in praying as usual for the king I might not be praying against the Parliament, and against my Father and Roger, and the nation; until after debating the matter in my own mind for some time, I came to the conclusion that on whatever dark mountains scattered, and by whatever deep waters divided, to Him there is still "One flock, one Shepherd," and that however ill I knew how to ask, He knew well what to give.

LETTICE DAVENANT'S DIARY.

(_From another source._)

"_York_, _April_, 1642.--It has actually begun at last. The rebellion has begun. Sir John Hotham (Sir I hesitate to call him, for what knight is worthy the name who turns his disloyal sword against the very Fountain of knighthood and of all honor?) has closed the gates of Hull against the summons--against the very voice and person of His Sacred Majesty. At once the king withdrew to Beverley, and under the shadow of the grand old Minster proclaimed the false knight a traitor.

"The rebellion has begun, but every one says it cannot last long. Next Christmas at latest must see us all at peace again; the nation once more at the feet of the king. My Mother says like a prodigal child; Sir Launcelot says like a beaten hound. Mobs, says he, like dogs, can only learn to obey by being suffered to rebel a little, and then being whipped for it. (I like not well this talk of Sir Launcelot. If the nation is like a hound, at what point in the nation does the dog-nature begin, and the human end?) Speaking so, I told him, we might include ourselves. But he laughed, and said, such discerning of spirits required no miraculous gift. Moreover, he said, the king himself had once compared the Parliaments to 'cats, to be tamed when young but cursed when old;' and had called his sailors in the Thames who offered to guard the Parliament 'water-rats.' If the king said so, I confess I think His Majesty might have chosen more courtly similes. But I do not believe he did. I will never believe any evil of His Majesty, whoever says it, scarcely if I were to see it myself, for my eye? might be deceived.

"Only I should be sorely vexed if they heard these things at Netherby; because they never said rough things of any one. Especially now I am not there to explain things. For I am not allowed to write to them, nor to see them again, until things are right again in the country; which makes me write this.

"However, it cannot last long. Every one here agrees in that. Every one except Harry, whom we call 'Il Penseroso.' He sees such a long way, and on so many sides, or at least he tries to do so; and he talks of the Wars of the Roses, and the Wars in Germany; as if there were any resemblance! In Germany there were kings and states opposed. In the Wars of the Roses royal persons, with some kind of claim to reign. But this is nothing but flat rebellion. The family against the father; sworn liegemen against their sovereign lord; the body against the head. And how can any one think for a moment there can be any end to it but one, and that soon? Yes; at Christmas, I trust, we Davenants shall be at the Hall again, and the Draytons at Netherby, looking back to the end of this frantic and unnatural outbreak.

"And I mean to be most generous to them all about it. I do not mean even to say, 'I always told you how it would end.' They will see, and that will be enough. The king will forgive every one, I am sure, he is so gracious and gentle--(he spoke to me like a father the other day, and yet with such knightly deference!)--except, perhaps, a very few, who will have to be made examples of, unless they make examples of themselves by running out of the country, which I hope they may. For having once re-asserted his rightful authority, the king will be able to be forgiving without being suspected of weakness. There need not be any more poor mistaken people set in the pillory, which really seems to do no one any good, as far as I can see, and to make every one so exceedingly angry. The Puritans (that is, those among them who have any sense) will see that it really can make no difference whether the clergyman says the prayers in a white dress or a black. Perhaps even the bishops and archbishops might own the same. Because, although it cannot be good management to give a naughty child its way for crying, if it stops crying and is good, it is quite another thing.

"And then everything would go on delightfully. The very troublesome and obstinate people (on both sides, I think) might, perhaps, all go to America, some to the north and some to the south. For the American plantations are very wide, they say, and by the time they met--say in one or two hundred years--their great-great grandchildren might have given up caring so much about the colours of the vestments and the titles of the clergymen who do the services in the church. So that by that time everything would go on delightfully in America as well as in England. And by next Christmas, from what the gentlemen and ladies about here say, I should think this might all have begun. Only just now this little unpleasant contest has to be gone through first. And I am very much afraid as to what Mr. Drayton and Roger may do, or even Olive. They are so terribly conscientious. They will pick up the smallest questions with their consciences instead of with their common sense; which seems to me like watering a daisy with a fire-engine, or weeding a flower-bed with a plough. Mistress Dorothy is the worst of them (dear, kind, old soul, I must now and then look at her sermons, in order to make it quite clear to myself I was not a hypocrite in listening to them all that time). But I do not think any of them are quite safe in this way. And yet I know, in my inmost heart, they are better than any one in the world, except my Mother, and perhaps Harry. (Of His Majesty it is not for me to speak.) And I love them better than any one in the world, which, I am afraid, they will not believe, now I am not allowed to write to them. I love them for their noble perverseness, and their heroic conscientiousness, and their terrible truthfulness, and everything that separates us. And these last months at home have been the happiest of my life. I felt growing quite good. And one thing I have resolved. I will not say one word I should mind their hearing, so that when we meet again I may have nothing to explain or to unsay. For it is only misunderstanding that will ever make any of them take the wrong side; nothing but misunderstanding. And facts will set that all right when they see how things really are. As they will, I trust, before Christmas.

"It is not so easy to be good here as at Netherby. People say so many pretty things to me. My Mother says I must not heed them; they are only Court ways of speaking, which mean nothing; and that rightly used, I might even make them means of mortification, saying every time I hear such pretty phrases, as good Dr. Taylor recommended, 'My beauty is in colour inferior to many flowers; and even a dog hath parts as well proportioned to the designs of his nature as I have; and three fits of an ague can change it into yellowness and leanness, and to hollowness and wrinkles of deformity.' But this I find not so easy. If I were a rose, I should be pleased at being a rose, and at being thought sweet and fair. And even a well-favoured dog, meseems, has some harmless delight in his good looks. And as to the ague, I see no likelihood of it. And as to becoming yellow and lean, the more I think of it, the gladder I am to think I am not. And yet there is some little flutter in my pleasure at these fair speeches which hardly seems to me quite altogether good. And I do not think my Mother quite knows what nonsense these young Cavaliers talk. Perhaps no one did ever talk nonsense to her. Or, if they did, I am sure she never liked it. And I am afraid I do sometimes a little. Else, why should it all come back into my mind at wrong times?--in the Minster or at prayers. Heigh, ho! I wish I was at Netherby. No one ever called me fair enchantress there, or my cheeks Aurora's rose-garden, or my teeth strings of pearls, or my hands lilies, or my hair imprisoned sunbeams, or my voice the music of the spheres. Sir Launcelot talked enough of that kind of poetry to me, between Netherby and Windsor, to make a book of ballads. (For my Mother was in the sedan-chair, whilst I rode most of the way with Sir Launcelot.) And yet, I think, there is more honour in Roger Drayton's telling me in his straight-forward way he thought me wrong, as he so often did, than in all Sir Launcelot's most honeyed compliments.

"Not that I think Olive just to poor Sir Launcelot. If she could have seen his debonair and courteous ways to every clown and poor wench we met, and how he flung his crowns and angels to any beggar, she must have felt there is much kindliness in him, with all his wild ways.

"And when he saw I liked not so many fair speeches, he gave them up in a measure. I must say that for him; and he has been as deferential to me ever since at the Court, as if I were one of the princesses. Only I wish he would not always see when I drop my glove or my posy: at least, I think I do. Yet it is rather pleasant, too, at times to feel there is some one who cares about one among so many strange people, and some one who is always ready to talk about poor old Netherby, and who honours the Draytons, moreover, so generously. I wish Olive knew this.

"And I wish I were like my Mother, and had 'a chapel built in my heart.' Or else that I could live at Netherby.

"Sir Launcelot admires the 'beauty of holiness' in my Mother. He says, in all times, happily, there have been these sweet exalted Saints, especially among women, bright particular stars, celestial beauties, and princesses, that all men must revere. Quite another kind of thing, he says, from the Puritan notion of calling all men to be 'saints,' or else consigning them to reprobation as among the wicked.

"_Note_.--I am at a loss what to call this writing of mine. It is scarcely a Diary or Journal, for I certainly shall not do anything as regular as write in it every day. It shall not be 'Annals;' for I hope to have done with it before Christmas, when I shall have met Olive and all of them again at home. 'Chronicles' are more solemn still. 'Thoughts?' where shall I find them? 'Facts?' how is one to know them, when people give such different accounts of things? 'Meditations?' worse again. 'Religious Journals,' 'Confessions,' etc., always puzzled me. I could never make out for whom they were written. Especially the prayers I have seen written out at length in them. They cannot be meant for other people to read. That would be turning the 'closet' into 'the corners of the street.' They cannot be meant for the people themselves to read. For what good could that do? It would not be praying to see how I prayed some years since. They cannot surely be meant for God to read. He is always near, and can hear, or read our hearts, which is quite another thing from reading our Diaries.

"_May_ 30, _York_.--The birds begin to sing in the trees around the Minster. Our lodging is opposite. And the courtiers begin to gather once more around the king. Many lords have come these last days from London, with some faithful members of the Commons' House, and old Lord Littleton has come, with somewhat limping loyalty, they say, after the Great Seal, now in the right hand. So that this grave old town begins to look gay. Cavaliers caracolling about the streets, doffing their hats to fair faces in the windows. Troops mustering but slowly; somewhat slowly. Nor can I make out if these townspeople altogether like us and our ways. There are so many Puritans among these traders. And Sir Launcelot says they have great sport in the Puritan household where he is quartered, in making the Puritan lads learn the 'Distracted Puritan,' and other roystering Cavalier songs, and drink confusion to the Covenant; and in making the host and hostess bring out their best conserves, linen and plate, for the use of the men. Sir Launcelot told them, he said, that they should only look on it as the payment of an old debt the children of Israel had owed to the Egyptians these three thousand years. I do not think such jokes good manners in any other person's house, and I told him so. But he said their ridiculous gravity makes the temptation too strong to be resisted. If they would jest good-humouredly in return, he said, they would soon understand each other. But would they? I am not quite sure how Sir Launcelot enjoys not having the best of a joke. And I could not bear his calling the Puritans all canting, or ridiculous. He knows better. And I told him so. I felt quite indignant, and the tears were in my eyes (for I thought of them all at Netherby). He seemed penitent. Indeed, I hope it did him good.

"_June_.--The Parliament are growing more insolent every day; they dared to say in one of their ridiculous Remonstrances that 'the king is for the kingdom, not the kingdom for the king, that even the crown jewels are not His Majesty's own, but given him in trust for the regal power.' However, they will soon learn their mistake about that, for the crown-jewels are safe in Holland, and have there purchased for the Crown good store of arms and ammunition. These were all embarked in a Dutch ship called the _Providence_. A great Providence, my Mother says, attended her. For although she was wrecked on the coast of Yorkshire, nevertheless, all her stores have this day been safely brought into York.

"Now we shall see what gentlemen can do against tapsters, and tailors' and haberdashers' 'prentices, such as make up the wretched army they have been mustering in London! The citizens' wives actually brought their thimbles and bodkins, it is said, to pay the men; to such mean and ludicrous straits are they reduced. The Cavaliers call it 'the Thimble and Bodkin Army.'

"_July_ 20.--Sir John Hotham is said to be wavering back to loyalty. A day or two since, a gallant little army of four thousand men rode forth hence through the Mickle Bar, to demand the surrender of that presumptuous city, Hull, and if refused, to storm it. Better they had listened to His Majesty's gentle summons with his three hundred. How gallant and brave they looked. Plumed helmets gleaming swords flashing, pennons flying, horses looking as proud of the cause as the riders. Not a cavalier among them who would not face battle as gayly as the hunting-field.

"_July_ 22.--Those treacherous townspeople! Not a troop of them is to be relied on. Our gallant Cavaliers came back in disorder. And all because of the faithless train-bands, and those turbulent citizens of Hull. Lord Lindsay, with three thousand men, was at Beverley, and on the lighting of a fire on Beverley Minster, the gates of Hull were to be opened by some loyal men inside. But five hundred rebels within the town, hearing too soon of the intention of these loyal men, made a sortie under the command of Sir John Hotham. The true Cavaliers would have stood firm, every one says, but the Yorkshire train-bands would not draw sword against their neighbours, but ran away to Beverley, and so the whole ended in disgrace and defeat. If we could only have an army entirely composed of gentlemen, and their sons, and retainers, the Parliament could not stand a day. But the worst news that has reached us lately, is the treachery of the Earl of Warwick and the navy. They have all gone over to the Parliament, in spite of the king's offering them better pay than they ever received before. Five ships stood firm at first, but the rest overpowered them. I hope no one ever told them about their being called 'water-rats,' but there are always some malicious people who delight to make mischief by telling tales. I should think royal persons ought to be very careful about their jests.

"_August_.--We are on the point of leaving York to spend a few days at Nottingham, where the king's standard is to be set up.

"I am not sorry to leave this old town. I miss the pleasant walks at home. For here one dare scarce venture much out of doors. If the Cavaliers are as dangerous to their enemies as they are sometimes to their friends, the Parliament has good cause to tremble. The streets echo dismally at night with the shouts of drunken revelry. But, I suppose, all armies are alike. Only it is rather unfortunate for us that gravity and the show of piety being the badge of the Puritans, levity and a reckless dashing carriage are taken up as their badge by many of the young Cavaliers.

"I would they took example by the king. His Majesty has been riding around the country lately himself, calling his lieges to follow him. And his majestic courtesy and grace, with his loving and winning speeches, such as he made at Newark and Lincoln, showing his good intentions and desires for their liberty and welfare, must, I am sure, be worth him a mint of such money as the London citizens can coin out of their thimbles and bodkins.

"The North country is well disposed, they say; and Lancashire, where the queen hath much hold on the Catholic gentlemen of ancient lineage there; and the West country, where brave Sir Bevil Granvill lives, is full of loyalty. Mr. Hampden has done mischief in Buckinghamshire, and Mr. Cromwell (a brewer, Sir Launcelot says, rather than a country-gentleman, though not of low parentage) calls himself captain, and is disaffecting the eastern counties, already disloyal enough, with their French Huguenot weavers, and their 'Anabaptists, Atheists, and Brownists,' as His Majesty calls them.

"The towns are the worst, however. I suppose there is something in buying and selling, and tinkering and tailoring, which makes people think more of mean money considerations, than of loyalty and honour. Then there are so many Puritans in the town. Perhaps the narrow dark high streets make them naturally inclined to be gloomy and strait-laced. I think, however, the less our Cavalier soldiers are quartered in the towns, the better, till they mend their manners. It may make the citizens less pleased than ever with the Book of Sports.

"_Nottingham, August_ 23.--This evening the king himself set up his standard on the top of the field behind the castle. There was much sounding of drums and trumpets. Several hundreds gathered around the royal party, and we watched a little way off. But, I know not how, the act did not seem as solemn as the occasion. The night was stormy; and the trumpets and drums, and then the voice of the herald reading the royal proclamation, sounded small and thin against the rush and howling of the winds. The troops have not yet answered the king's call as they should, and those present were mostly the train-bands. Then His Majesty, on the spot, made some alterations in the proclamation, which perplexed the herald, so that he blundered and stumbled in reading it. Altogether I wish I had not been there.

"The king's standard ought to be something more than a pole no higher than a May-pole with a few streamers, and a common flag at the top. And the trumpets which are to rouse a nation, ought to have a certain magnificence in them, altogether different from the trumpets they blow at the carols at Netherby at Christmas. I am sure I cannot tell how. But I always pictured it so. The words are grander than the things.

"Perhaps all our pomps and solemnities look poor and mean under the open sky. We had better keep them beneath roofs of our own making. The pomps we are used to under the open sky are the purple and crimson and gold of sunset and sunrise, great banners of storm-clouds flung across the sky. And the solemnities are the thunders, and the mighty winds, and the rushing of rivers, and the dashing of seas.

"The things are grander, infinitely, than any words wherewith we can speak of them.

"But when I said so to my Mother, she said, 'And yet, my child, one soul, and even one human voice, is grander, or more godlike than all the thunders. It is their significance, Lettice, which gives the grandeur to any solemnities of ours. If we heard those trumpets summon our countrymen by thousands to the battle, or saw that flag borne blood-stained from the field, we should not think the voice of the trumpet wanted terrible magnificence, or call the flag a common thing ever more.'

"Perhaps, after all, it was only a little inward depression that made me feel this disappointment. For only three days before, Coventry had shut her gates in the king's face, and the Earl of Essex is at hand, they say, with a great army, and so few flocking loyally to the king.

"But worst of all, I think, is this Prince Rupert. His mother's name, Elizabeth of Bohemia, has been like a sacred name in the country for years; a saint and a heroine in courage and patience. But this prince is so noisy and reckless, and takes so much upon himself, that he angers the older gentlemen and experienced soldiers sorely. My Father says he is little better than a petulant boy. Yet he has great weight with the king, his uncle, and takes the command into his own hands; so that the gallant old Earl of Lindsay deems his own command little better than nominal. And, meanwhile, the younger Cavaliers take their colour from him, and use that new low cant word of his, 'plunder,' quite as a jest, as if it meant some new sport or sword-exercise, instead of meaning, as it does, scouring all over the country, burning lonely farm-houses, robbing the inmates, and sometimes hanging the servants at the doors for refusing to betray their masters, sacking villages, and I know not what other wickednesses. In the fortnight he has been here, he has flown through Worcestershire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and Cheshire. And not a night but we have seen the sky aglow with the fires of burning villages and homesteads. I should fear to hear how the people along his line of march, coming back to their ruined homes, speak of the king.

"Moreover, it is said, the rebel troops are strictly forbidden to take anything without paying for it, a contrast worth them much.

"_August_ 24.--This morning, before I rose, my Mother's waiting gentlewoman brought dismal news. The royal standard, said she, has been blown down in the night, and lies a wreck along the hill.

"My Mother says it is heathenish to talk of omens and auguries. And my Father says these foreigners are the worst omen, and all would be well enough if they would leave Englishmen to fight out their own quarrels, like neighbours, who exchange blows and are friends again, instead of like wretched hired Lanzknechts or Free Companions.

"But Sir Launcelot laughs, and says it is a good thing to give the whining Puritans something to cry for at last. And Harry sighs, and says he supposes it is necessary to make the rebels see we are in earnest.

"Altogether, we do not seem in very good humour with each other just now. However, a few victories will no doubt set us all right again. There can be no reasonable doubt that the king will bring these rebels to their senses sooner or later; in a few months at latest.

"Only I had not understood at all how very melancholy war is. I thought of it as concerning no one but the soldiers. And men must incur danger one way or another. And there is the glory, and the excitement, and the exercise of noble courage, making such men as nothing but such trials can make.

"But the battles seem but a small part of the misery; the misery without glory to any one.

"On our way hither from York, my Mother was faint and tired, and we stopped at a little farm-house with an orchard. It was evening, and the woman had just finished milking the cows by the door, and she gave my Mother a cup of new milk while she rested on the settle in the clean little kitchen. There were two little children playing about, and the father was at work in the orchard, and one of the children called him, and he brought my Father a cup of cider. And there was a Bible on the table with wood-cuts; and I found the eldest child knew the meaning of them. He said his father had told him. They were very kind and pleasant to us.

"And a few days since Harry told me they had passed a little farm with an orchard, and the man was surly and a Puritan, and refused to tell the way some fugitives had fled; and Prince Rupert had him hanged on his own threshold, and drove off the cows for plunder.

"And from what Harry says I feel sure it is the same.

"And I have scarcely slept since, thinking of that poor man, and the silent voice that will never any more explain the wood-cuts in the old Bible, and the poor hands that will never show their willing hospitality again.

"But it is only one, Harry says, among hundreds; and such things must be, and I must not think of it.

"But every one of the hundreds is just that terrible only one, which leaves the world all lonely to some poor mourner!

"Those gentlemen in Parliament have dreadful things to answer for.

"Why did not Mr. Hampden pay a thousand times his miserable ship-money rather than lead the country on to such horrors?

"For the king cannot have his commands disobeyed. If he did, how could he be a king?

"I do wish he could be more a king with his own troops; I am sure he hates this ravaging and marauding. But so many of the gentlemen serve, and, indeed, keep their regiments at their own cost, which makes them difficult to control.

"_October_.--Prince Rupert has been driven from Worcester. If it were only a lesson in reverence and modesty for the prince, it would not so much matter, some think, that he left twenty good and true men dead there. The Earl of Essex occupies the city. He has been there a fortnight doing nothing. Some remnants of loyalty, we think, hinder him from coming to open collision. But what the use of collecting an army can be unless it is to fight, it is hard to see. The truth is, perhaps, that he begins to feel the peril of setting his haberdashers and grocers' 'prentices, commanded by a forsworn peer, against gentlemen's sons fighting under their king! Meantime, our army is gathering at last, and only too eager, they say, to give the rebels a lesson. Once for all, God grant it be a lesson once for all. Although the battles do not seem to me half so dreadful as these 'plunderings.' But perhaps that is because I never came near a battle; nor, indeed, can the oldest man in England remember any one that ever did on English soil."

OLIVE DRAYTON'S RECOLLECTIONS.

All through the summer the armies were gathering. In our seven eastern counties--Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincoln, Huntingdonshire, and Hertfordshire--called the associated counties, because bound by Mr. Hampden and Mr. Cromwell into an association for mutual defence, the King's Commission of Array and the Parliament's Ordinance of Militia clashed less than elsewhere. In August Mr. Cromwell seized a magazine of arms and ammunition at Cambridge. The stronghold of the Puritans was in these eastern regions; and except where a few Royalist gentlemen, like the Davenants, led off their retainers, the Parliament had, amongst us, mostly its own way. All the more reason, my Father said, for our men to risk their persons, since our homes were safer than elsewhere.

My Father, from his old military experience, had much to do with training and drilling the men. Strange sounds of clanging arms and sharp words of command echoed from the old court of the Manor. Old arms, the very stories belonging to which were well-nigh forgotten, were taken down; arms which had hung on the walls of manor-house and farm-house since the Wars of the Roses. The newest weapon we had at Netherby which had seen service in England was a short jewel-hilted sword the Drayton of the day had worn at the Battle of Bosworth Field, fighting, by a rare piece of good luck for us, under Henry VII., on the winning side. Since then the Reformation had revolutionized the Church, and gunpowder had revolutionized the art of war; so that instead of the sturdy bow-men, each provided with his weapon and ready trained to the use of it, whom his ancestors brought to the field, my Father could only muster a few labourers and servants, without weapons and without training, with no further preparation for war than hands used to labour, wits ready to learn, and hearts ready to dare.

My Father did not mean to lead his own men. Having had experience of engineering in the German wars, he was employed here and there as his directions were needed. Roger and those who went from Netherby served from the first with Mr. Cromwell's Ironsides; my Father, as his contribution, providing the armour, which, like that of Haselrigge's Lobsters, was complete and costly. Other bands passed and repassed often, and shared the hospitalities of the Manor, to join Lord Brook's purple-coats, Lord Say and Lord Mandeville's bluecoats. Hollis' red-coats were London men, and Mr. Hampden's green-coats all from his own county, Buckinghamshire; while the badge of all was the orange scarf round the arm--the family colours of Lord Essex, the general. Each regiment had its own motto--Hampden's, "_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_;" Essex's (pointing many a cavalier jest, if seen in plunder or retreat), "_Cave adsum_." On the reverse of each banner was the common motto of all, "God with us"--the watch-word of so many a battle.

Money was not stinted; the city of London heading the contributions in January with £50,000, and the Merchants' Companies with nigh as large a sum (then intended to avenge the Irish massacre); whilst Mr. Hampden gave £1000, and his cousin, Mr. Cromwell, £500.

Women brought their rings and jewels; cherished old family plate was not held back. We in our sober Puritan household had few jewels to bring, but such as we had were disinterred from their caskets, and the few silver drinking-cups which distinguished our table from any farmers round were packed up by Aunt Dorothy's own hands, and despatched to the London Guildhall, not without sighs, but without hesitation, with all the money that could be spared.

Cousin Placidia also offered what she called her "mite," when she heard that the poor citizens' wives in London had even offered their thimbles and bodkins.

"I am but a poor parson's wife," said she, "but I am thankful they will receive even such poor offerings as I can bring."

And she brought those embroidered Cordova gloves, the search for which had so incensed Aunt Dorothy.

"It is remarkable," she observed, "that I always said one never knew what use anything might be in a poor parson's household; and now I have found the use."

"What use, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "do you think the Parliament soldiers will fight in embroidered gloves?"

"Spanish leather is dear," replied Placidia, "and things will always sell. It is only a poor mite I know, but so is a thimble. The Parliament soldiers cannot, of course, fight in thimbles any more than in gloves, and the widow's mite was accepted."

"A mite and the 'widow's mite,' are some way apart, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "your 'widow's mite,' I suppose, might be the parsonage and the glebe, and those cows in your uncle's park and meadow. Take care what you offer to the Lord. He sometimes takes us at our word. And there are plunderers abroad who take their own estimate of people's mites, widows' and others."

Said Placidia, never taken aback--

"Aunt Dorothy, Mr. Nicholls and I regard the glebe as a sacred trust, of which we feel we must on no account relinquish the smallest fraction. And as to the cows Uncle Drayton gave me, I wonder you can suspect me of such ingratitude as to give them up to any one."

"I did not, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy, quietly. "What shall I label your Cordova gloves? A parson's mite? You know I cannot exactly say 'widow's.'"

"An orphan's perhaps, Aunt Dorothy."

"Very well, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "I should think that would affect the Parliament very much. It may even get into history."

With which this little passage at arms closed.

Happily for the popular cause, the common interpretation of acceptable 'mites' differed from Placidia's, so that in a short time a considerable army was levied.

The navy ever remained true to the Parliament; irritated, some foolish persons said, by a report that the king had called them "water-rats." As well say the whole Parliament stood firm, because the king once compared them to cats. The navy had its own watchwords, better pointed than by the sting of a sorry jest. English seamen were not likely to trust too implicitly to the promises of the Sovereign who had tried to sell them to aid in the destruction of the brave little band of beleaguered Protestants at Rochelle.

All through the summer the armies were being levied, and the breach was silently widening.

In July an incident showed, my Father said, as much as anything could, how entirely the king's mind was unchanged, and how "thorough" would have been the tyranny established in his hands, though Laud, and Strafford, and the Queen, and every violent councillor, had been removed. My old friend, Dr. Bastwick, the physician, was seized by the royal forces at Worcester while engaged in levying men for the Parliament, under Earl Stamford, who retreated. It was with the greatest difficulty that one of the judges restrained the king from having him hanged on the spot although there could be no reason why he should have been sentenced with this exceptional severity except the fact that he had already been scourged, pilloried, and maimed by the cruelty of the Star-Chamber.

The deep distrust which such indications of the king's true mind produced, cost him more than many lost battles.

They tended to inspire such resistances as that made a few weeks afterwards by the brave commoners of Coventry, when, without garrison, without engineers, with no defence but their feeble ancient walls, they shut their gates in the Sovereign's face, defied the royal forces, and when the breach was made by artillery in the old tottering walls, barricaded the streets with barrows and carts, made a sally, carried the nearest lines, seized the guns, and turned them against the besiegers, compelling them at last to retire baffled.

But it was Prince Rupert, "the Prince Robber," who, perhaps, more than any, turned the hearts of the people against the Sovereign who could use such an instrument. Trained in the cruel school of the Palatinate wars, he had read its terrible lessons the wrong way; having learned from the sufferings of his father's subjects not pity, but a savage recklessness of suffering. He brought home to hundreds of burning villages and plundered lonely farms, which no Parliamentary remonstrances or declarations would have reached, the conviction that the king looked on his people, not as a flock, but as mere live-stock on an estate, to be kept up if profitable and manageable, and if not to be sacrificed to any system of management which gave less trouble and brought in more profit.

"_Whose own the sheep ore not_," was written in the ashes of every home ruined by Prince Rupert in the king's service.

With these deeds the people contrasted the well-kept orders of the Parliament to Lord Essex. "You shall carefully restrain all impieties, profaneness, and disorders, violence, insolence, and plundering in your soldiers, as well by strict and severe punishment of such offences as by all others means which you in your wisdom shall think fit."

And we grew to think that whoever the true shepherd and king of the people might be, it was scarcely one who employed the wolf for a sheepdog.

It was but slowly and reluctantly that this conviction grew on the nation. Those who look back on the king's life, hallowed by the shadow of his death, little know how slowly and reluctantly. We would fain have trusted him if he would have let us. The nation tried it again and again, and only too much was sacrificed before they would believe it was in vain. Still there had been no battle. The Earl of Essex, after following the Prince from Worcester, lingered there three weeks, doing nothing. No battle worth the name for nearly a hundred and seventy years, until Sunday the 23d of October, 1642.

Then came the first great shock. All that Sunday afternoon our countrymen, husbands, brothers, fathers, sons of the women left in the quiet villages at home, were fighting in the desperate struggle for life and death, until at night four thousand Englishmen lay dead on the slopes of Edgehill, or dying in the villages around--the day before as tranquil and peaceful as ours.

I remember there was a peculiar quiet about that Sunday at Netherby. So many of the men of the village had gone to the war. Roger had been away many weeks, and my Father had left some days before to join Lord Essex at Worcester. In all our household there were no men left except Bob the herdsman. The church was strangely deserted. The Hall pew empty. Scarcely one deep manly voice in response or psalm. On the benches in the village a few old men had an unwonted monopoly of talk, and the lads on anything like the verge of manhood strode heavily about with a new sense of importance. One asked another for news. But there was none, save rumours of mysterious marchings and counter-marchings of troops, without any aim that we knew, or the echo of some far-off foray of Prince Rupert's. There was a dreamy stillness all around. Tib's voice came up alone from the kitchen as she moved about some Sabbath work of necessity, and sung rather uncertainly snatches of the psalm we had sung at prayers in the morning. From the slope where the house stood (which gave us that wide range over the levels which I miss everywhere else), I saw the cattle feeding far off in the marshy lands, too far for any sound of their voices to reach me. The harvest was over on the nearer slopes, so that there was no music of the wind rustling through the corn. The land lay half slumbering in its autumn rest, like Roger's faithful Lion in his Sunday afternoon sleep on the terrace below. But, I knew not why, there seemed to me a kind of expectancy in this calm. A waiting and listening seemed to palpitate through this stillness of the land such as pervaded Lion's slumbers as he couched, quivering at every sound, vainly waiting for Roger's voice to summon him as usual at this hour for a walk in the fields.

The feeling grew on me, till all this quiet seemed not as the rest after a calm, but the calm before a storm; and the silence excited in me as if it were the breathless hush of thousands of beating hearts.

Then I thought of Rachel Forster in her lonely home. And it was a relief to rise at once and go to her. Her door was open. She was sitting before the old Bible. It was open, but she was not reading. Her hands were clashed on her knees. There was a stillness on her face as great as that over the country. But in this calm there was something that calmed me.

It seemed to me conscious and victorious, not dreamlike, and liable at any moment to a terrible waking.

I told her the restlessness I had been feeling.

"Can we wonder, Mistress Olive?" said she. "Do we not know what we might be giving them up for?"

"This quietness of the world seems awful to me to-day, Rachel," said I, "but in you there is something that quiets me. You find peace in prayer Rachel," said I. "Is it not that?"

"I scarce know whether it is prayer, Mistress Olive. It is nothing but going to the Rock that is higher than I, and taking all that is precious to me there, and staying there. It is just creeping to the foot of the Cross, and keeping there."

"You feel, then, as if something terrible were coming, Rachel," I said.

"I know something terrible must come," she said, with a tremulousness in her voice which was more from enthusiasm than from fear. "To-day, or to-morrow, or some day. For the Day of Vengeance is come; and the year of His redeemed is at hand."

"Oh, Rachel," I said, "I cannot silently rest as you do. I want words, entreaties for Roger, for my Father, for Job, and also for the good men who, if the battle comes, must die on the wrong side, and for the king; the king who, if he would but be true, might set all right again."

And she knelt down and prayed in words brief and burning, like the prayers in the Bible.

"You do not feel it too lonely here, Rachel?" I said as I left, "Why not come up to us? Your presence would be like a strong wall and fortress to me."

"I am less lonesome here, Mistress Olive," said she. "Job made so many little plans to spare me trouble before he went. I see his hand everywhere. There is the pile of wood close to the fire, and the little pipe carrying the water to the very door. It would seem like making light of his work not to use it all. And besides," she added, "there's a few poor tried folk who used to look to Job for a good word and a good turn, and now some of them look to me. And I could not fail them for the world."

As I wished her good-bye, and walked home and thought of her, a glorious new sense came on me of the strength there is in waiting on God, of the possibility of the feeblest who lean on him being not only sustained, but becoming themselves strong to sustain others.

When I went to see Rachel, the whole solid world had seemed to me, in my anxiety for the precious lives I could do nothing to preserve, but as some treacherous and quaking ground among our marshes, ready to sink down and overwhelm, us, beneath the weight of our passing footsteps.

As I returned, the world, though in itself as transitory and uncertain as ever, was once more a solid pathway to me, because underneath it stood the foundation of an Almighty love, one word from whom was stronger and more enduring than all the worlds.

So we sang our evening psalm, and slept quietly that night at Netherby, knowing nothing of the four thousand pale and rigid corpses that lay stretched on the blood-stained battle-slopes at Edgehill, while Lord Essex encamped on the silent battle-field, and the king's watch-fires were kindled on the hill above, where he began the day, and no ground was gained on either side; only the lives of four thousand men lost.

If we may say "lost" of any life yielded up to duty, and called back to God!

In the tongues of men, we speak of lives lost on battle-fields: perhaps in the tongue of angels they speak of lives lost in easy and luxurious homes.