Title: The Governor of England
Author: Bowen, Marjorie
Language: English
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THE GOVERNOR OF ENGLAND



  THE GOVERNOR OF
  ENGLAND

  BY

  MARJORIE BOWEN

  NEW YORK
  E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
  1914



CONTENTS


PART I

THE CAUSE

  CHAP.                                                   PAGE

  I. THE SUMMONS                                            3

  II. THREE YEARS LATER                                    13

  III. MR. PYM AND AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE                     23

  IV. THE QUEEN'S POLICY                                   31

  V. THE FALL OF THE GREAT MINISTER                        42

  VI. THE KING FAILS                                       51

  VII. AUTUMN, 1641                                        61

  VIII. THE NEWS FROM IRELAND                              70

  IX. MR. PYM AND THE KING                                 79

  X. LORD FALKLAND'S ADVICE                                90

  XI. THE FIVE MEMBERS                                     99

  XII. NOTTINGHAM                                         107


PART II

THE MAN

  I. A LEADER OF MEN                                      117

  II. THE QUEEN'S FAREWELL                                128

  III. THE GREAT FIGHT                                    138

  IV. THE DEAD CAVALIER                                   147

  V. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL AND HIS GOD              157

  VI. THE KING DREAMS                                     164

  VII. LOYALTY HOUSE                                      174

  VIII. THE KING'S FOLLY                                  186

  IX. THE END OF THE WAR                                  194


PART III

THE CRISIS

  I. THE ISSUE WITH THE KING                              203

  II. THE KING'S PLOTS                                    213

  III. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL, ROYALIST              221

  IV. THE KING AT BAY                                     230

  V. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL, REPUBLICAN              238

  VI. PRESTON ROUT                                        246

  VII. THE CONSTANCY OF THE KING                          254

  VIII. IN THE BALANCE                                    261

  IX. BY WHAT AUTHORITY?                                  271

  X. EXIT THE KING                                        285


PART IV

THE ACHIEVEMENT

  I. "THE CROWNING MERCY"                                 297

  II. THE TALK IN ST. JAMES'S PARK                        306

  III. EXIT THE PARLIAMENT                                316

  IV. "THE NEW ORDER"                                     324

  V. HIS HIGHNESS                                         333

  VI. MAJOR-GENERAL HARRISON                              342

  VII. LADY NEWCASTLE                                     352

  VIII. THE LADY ELISABETH                                361

  IX. EXIT HIS HIGHNESS                                   370



PART I

THE CAUSE

"Of the two greatest concernments that God hath in the world, the one
is that of religion and of the preservation of the professors of it; to
give them all due and just liberty; and to assert the word of God.

"The other thing cared for is the civic liberty and interest of the
nation.

"Which, though it is, and I think it ought to be, subordinate to the
more peculiar interest of God, yet it is the next best God hath given
men in this world; and if well cared for, it is better than any rock to
fence men in their other interests."--OLIVER CROMWELL



CHAPTER I

THE SUMMONS


On a certain day in November, a misty day with sharpness under the
mist, a gentleman was walking out of the little town of St. Ives, which
stood black and bleak above the bleak, black waters of the Ouse and the
mournful clusters of bare, drooping willows.

It was late in the afternoon, and there chanced to be no one abroad in
the grazing lands outside the town save this one gentleman who walked
eastward towards the damp, vaporous fen country.

The horizon was brought within a few yards of him by the confining
mist, and, as he walked farther from St. Ives, the town began to be
also rapidly lost and absorbed in the general dull greyness, so that
when he turned at last (sharply and as if with some set purpose or some
lively inner prompting), the dwelling-houses, the river, bounded by the
barns and palings, had all disappeared, and there remained only visible
the erect tall steeple of the church, pointing into the grey sky from
the dark obscured willows and dark obscured town and unseen river.

And though he walked rapidly, yet this tower and steeple of the old,
humble, enduring church continued long in sight, for it was uplifted
into the higher, clearer air, and was in itself substantial and massive.

For the high-wrought mood of this gentleman who, as he advanced farther
into utter solitude, so continually looked back, this steeple of God's
mansion had a deep spiritual meaning; it rose out of darkness and
vapour and obscurity as the mandate of God rose, the one clear thing,
out of the confusions and strifes and clamours of the world.

The mandate of God, ay--surely the one thing that mattered, the one
thing to be followed and obeyed--and when the summons and command
were clear there was great joy in obedience; but what when, as now,
the order was not given, when God remained mute and the soul of His
creature was enclosed in darkness even as town and fields were now
enclosed in the cloudy exhumations of the earth?

When the steeple was at last hidden from his keenest glance, the
gentleman stopped and, leaning against a paling, gazed over the short
expanse of foggy ground visible to him, alone and terribly lonely in
his soul.

A deep melancholy lay upon him, a melancholy almost inseparable from
his unbending, austere, and sombre creed, a melancholy of the spirit,
black and awful, neither to be ignored nor reasoned with--a spiritual
disease to which he had been prone since his earliest youth, and which
became at times almost intolerable and scarcely to be endured by any
mortal, however stout-hearted.

Had any one come up through the November mist and noticed and observed
this gentleman leaning on the rough willow paling, he would have
seen nothing to suggest a gloomy mystic nor one struggling with the
anguished tribulations of the soul.

He was, to the outward eye, a man in the prime of life, of the type
commonly accepted as English, and, indeed, possible to no other nation
in the world, of medium height and the appearance of medium strength,
his obvious gentility gracing his plain, sober, frieze clothes, and the
little sword at his side giving the one courtly touch to his habit,
which otherwise, with plain band and ribbonless hat, might have seemed
too much that of a mere farmer, for his high boots, now mud-caked, had
seen good service. He wore no gloves on his browned hands, and his
hair, of the dusk English brown, was cut in a country fashion, and
worn no longer than his shoulders.

His face was unusual, yet might have been that of an ordinary man, the
features powerful, the nose bluntly aquiline, the mouth set steadily,
the Saxon grey-blue eyes rather overbrowed, giving the countenance a
glooming air, the chin and jaw massive, the complexion tanned to the
glowing natural colour of a healthy fair man past any bloom of youth,
and unused to the softness of town life.

Not a handsome face, but not uncomely, and remarkable chiefly (now, at
least) for a certain quiet look, not a slumbering look, but rather the
look of one whose soul is locked and sealed.

Such was his appearance, and his history was as simple and unpretending
as his visage and his attire; nothing had ever happened to him that
he should stand there now sunk in torments of melancholy. His life
had been smooth, uneventful, successful; he had been born and bred in
Huntingdon, and never gone beyond the borders of that county save when
he had sat, a silent borough Member, in His Majesty's last Parliament
at Westminster, nine years ago, and he was in that happy position of
being well known and respected, in his own little world, as one of
the largest landowners in St. Ives, and utterly unknown to the great
world where fame is distraction and confusion. He was tranquil in
an honourable obscurity, happy in his wife, his children, of an old
well-placed family, well connected, and of considerable local influence
and fair repute. He could himself remember that His late Majesty,
twice coming through Huntingdon, had each time been entertained by
his grandfather at his manor house, on the first occasion with much
splendour, when the King came from Scotland to take up his new crown.

In his own business he had prospered; the lands he had bought at St.
Ives and which he farmed himself, reclaiming them with patience from
the fen, had well repaid his labour, and he might count himself well
off, and even, for this quiet spot, wealthy.

Therefore it might have been supposed that this man, midway now through
life, would have considered his honourable labour, his honourable
profits, his serene existence, his fair placement and good report among
his neighbours, his prospect of quietness and respect and comfort to
the end of his days, and have been content, for he was without ambition.

But he was not satisfied with his own material happiness, for great new
forces and powers were abroad in the world struggling together, and
this struggle echoed again and again in the heart of the man who stood
against the willow paling, gazing into the November mist that shrouded
Erith Bulwark and the fen country.

The country had been long at peace, lulled and tranquil after that
great triumph of the Reformation of the Church, and that demonstration
of material power which had silenced the pretensions of Spain and
warned the world what England was.

But Elizabeth was now a generation dead, and the grandson of the
Papist Mary sat on the Tudor's throne with a Frenchwoman, a Mary and
a Papist too, beside him, and the Church was becoming again corrupt,
the power of the bishops daily higher, troubles in Church and State
increasing, liberty, civil and religious, threatened--for the King and
his ministers had governed nine years without a Parliament, contrary to
the laws and ordinances of the realm of England.

This Huntingdonshire gentleman knew that the devil was in these things,
that God was surely with the oppressed, with those who sought and
found a purer worship, with those, daily increasing, who accepted that
teaching of John Calvin which had inspired the Hollanders to throw
off the bloody yoke of Alva and the Inquisition, with those who had
ventured to plead humbly for liberty of conscience at the conference
of Hampton and had been denied by King and bishops with threats and
scorn, and had gone about since, ridiculed and persecuted, nicknamed
"Puritans."

This man knew this as he knew the King and the bishops, the ministers,
and the followers of these, were dealing with things idolatrous and
horrible, stepping into the fore-courts of hell.

Ay, and taking the nation with them. How was that to be
prevented--which way did God appoint?

That was the question which troubled the personal melancholy of the man
in whose heart it flashed--for the King was King by Divine appointment,
and if he had lent his weight and authority to these ways of misrule
and oppression, idolatry and Papistry, who was to argue with him or
withstand him?

Who was to appeal from the King to God?

The man in the frieze habit was conscious of a burning flame or
light in himself which urged him to step forward for this distracted
England's succour. But he received no summons. The face of the Lord was
veiled and he was but a poor soul, possibly damned, with no knowledge
of what destiny the Highest had prepared for him. He felt himself in
blackest chaos; his soul, which had ever striven to obtain God's grace,
now seemed tossed far from mercy on the black waters of despair.

To him, and especially in this mood, the present world was nothing; he
was not given to metaphor, but in his thoughts he compared the world
to a little plank he had once seen stretched across a deep and angry
stream, and arched above with fairest blossoming trees. The plank in
itself was insignificant, and useful only to support those who might
for a moment stand thereon--the important thing was to save oneself
from the black, dangerous abysses beneath, and gain, somehow, the
flower-crowned heights that the trees veiled and decked.

Whether the plank be rough or smooth, narrow or wide, mattered not
at all, if only one were enabled to tread thereon straightly. So it
mattered not a jot to this gentleman what his station, chances, or
fortunes might be in this world. Am I damned or saved? was the question
that held the heart of his torment and mingled with it was another: Is
there not that in me, unworthy as I am, which God might make use of to
save these poor people in poor England now? Yea, though I am not bred
to be a lawyer or a soldier, am I not conscious of _something_ within
me which might fit me for this work if God should call me to it?

But the heavens were black and mute to his intense prayers and his
humble endeavours to commune with God, and he went his obscure way in
wretchedness of heart, never faltering from the stern composure of his
belief that the Lord had preordained all things, and that no act of any
man's could alter a jot what was to befall.

The King and the bishops, poor puppets, believed in Freewill and such
heresies of Arminianism and Popery, but this Calvinist, standing in the
November vapour, _knew_ that he was but a helpless weapon to be used as
God might direct; _knew_ he was saved or damned before his birth, and
that no deed of his could alter the Divine fiat; _knew_ he was but a
machine into which the Holy Spirit might blow some sparks, but which at
present was cold and empty.

In this moment he felt hell very close beneath his feet, the earth
seemed a mere crust over that awful region, a crust that might easily
break and spew forth devils, while the over-arching heavens seemed
lost, lost beyond mortal attainment.

A long shudder shook his strong body, he covered the steadfast grey
eyes with his rough hand, and leant heavily against the paling.

A cousin of his, a man not unknown in Parliament, had recently defied
the King; had refused, being armed and at the head of his tenantry, to
pay the ship-money, that being a tax (one of many) levied by the King
without the consent of the people of England, Parliament being in
abeyance; and this country gentleman had appealed to the laws, asking,
"By what authority?" and when they said, "the King,"--had answered,
"that was not sufficient, for the laws and the nation were above the
King, and alone he could enforce nothing."

Which statement made men stare, for it was near treason, and the
speaker of these words was now on his trial, and his cousin, fighting
through his own tribulations, thought of him and of the issue that hung
upon the verdict pronounced upon his case.

If the judges found the ship-money tax illegal, then had civil liberty
won indeed a victory! If they found that the King was above the laws
and could by his sole authority do what he pleased in Church and State,
why, where was England and those poor few within her borders who truly
sought the Lord? Yet not so much even this tremendous issue touched the
soul of the melancholy Calvinist as the thought--What he did, could not
I do, ay, and more?

If one, a gentleman of good repute, may thus challenge even the sacred
authority of the King, may not another, of the same good blood and
stalwart faith, the Lord bidding him, accomplish something?

The thought was like a tiny ray of light penetrating his deep
melancholy; he moved from his cramped position, shook his frieze cloak
on which the drops of moisture hung thick, and looked about him.

Something to do--something to labour for--something to save and guard
for the Lord in this old realm where all had gone so crooked of late....

The fire that never lay very deep beneath the stagnation of his
melancholies mounted clear and bright in his soul.

He turned about to where he knew the church stood, and, stately
Englishman as he was, he flung out his hands wide with the unconscious
gesture of strong passion, and, looking upwards through the drizzling
mist with that inner eye which perfectly beheld the choired rows of
Paradise and the multitude about the Throne, he cried out aloud--

"Lord, wilt thou not choose _me_ also for this service?"

The little light in his soul increased into a gleam of hope; he turned
his back on the fens and Erith Bulwark, and retraced his steps towards
St. Ives, crossing the lands of Slepe Hall, which he rented, and coming
soon again in view of the quiet, sombre little town, and of the garden
wall enclosing his own riverside house.

The mist now began to waver and lift, and to be over-coloured with a
play of light, and when he reached the church the day was almost normal
fair.

In his soul, too, was the struggle stilled; a curious apathy, a pause
in spiritual experience, enveloped him. He stood motionless for a
moment, for he felt physically weak and his legs trembled under him.

As he halted so, not a yard from the entrance to the church, a solitary
horseman disturbed the dulness of the street--a young yeoman farmer
returning from market at Huntingdon town. On seeing the gentleman he
reined in the stout grey he rode, and very respectfully raised his hat.

"Why, sir," he said, "there is great news in Huntingdon. Why, Mr.
Cromwell, the news of the verdict is abroad!"

The other had no need to ask what verdict. In all England men spoke of
"the trial"--the trial of John Hampton for refusing to pay the King's
tax.

"Well?" he asked, and his serious face was pale.

"Mr. Cromwell," answered the young man dismally, "he is to pay the
twenty shillings."

For a moment Mr. Cromwell was silent, then he spoke slowly--

"So we have no hope in those who administer the laws?"

"They have put the laws beneath His Majesty," said the farmer eagerly.
"All is to be as he wills, with no talk of a Parliament at all--so
the lawyers in London say, sir--and Mr. Hampton is to pay the twenty
shillings which goeth with many another honest man's money into the
coffers of the bishops and the Papist Queen."

"Ay, so the lawyers say," returned Mr. Cromwell, "but this is a matter
which England"--he slightly stressed the word--"must decide."

The young farmer, flushed and important with his great news, saluted
again, and rode on to report all over the countryside how the protest
of Mr. John Hampton to the laws of England against the tyranny of the
King had failed.

Mr. Cromwell remained standing by the church a moment, then he wandered
off into one of his own fields near by and entered a great barn which
stood there, and remained silent in the dimness of the interior, which
was fragrant from the scent of last summer's hay stored in the lofts.

So the Law had decided in favour of the King, who might now levy
ship-money and whatever tax else he chose--and there would be the Tower
and the pillory, the branding and the fine, for those who dared resist,
as there had been for Prynne and Bastwick who had dared to criticise
the ritual of Archbishop Laud.

Mr. Cromwell felt a strange sparkle in his blood; he paced to and fro
on the rough floor, strewn with the dried husks of the last harvest,
and clasped his hands on his rough coat-breast and then dropped the
left to his sword. As he clasped the plain hilt, a sudden exaltation
shot into his heart, his spirit leapt suddenly to a greater height than
any it had touched before. And then it happened.

A dazzle of unbelievable light opened before his inner vision, he fell
on his knees and, from a sword of fire, received the accolade of God....

"Lord, I am saved!" he cried. "I am in Grace! And I am chosen to be Thy
servant in this work which is to be done in England...."

When the glamour faded he rose, staggering, and wept a little for joy.

It was a tremendous moment of his life.

Then he went home across the wet fields, outwardly an ordinary
gentleman, inwardly a soul newly awake to salvation, bearing a burning
light no more to be quenched until it returned to Heaven.



CHAPTER II

THREE YEARS LATER


"Sir," said the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who had been called hotly
from that country to counsel the imperative needs of the King. "I am
come to give you advice, and I tell you first, and plainly, never man
came to so lost a business."

As he spoke they stood looking at each other, master and servant, King
and minister, in a little cabinet of Whitehall, that glittered with
richness and flash of deep colour, like a casket of jewels.

Beyond the deep square window lay the gardens, the houses, the straight
reach of river, and London, beneath a quivering August haze; no discord
of sight nor sound disturbed the peaceful harmony of this scene, and in
the palace gardens the trees rustled and the flowers gave forth their
strength in sweet odours unvexed by human noise or hustle; yet my lord,
gazing out on this sunshine, knew well enough that the city, whose
towers rose beyond the sleepy river, was nursing forces that might
soon gather sufficient deadly power to sweep him, and all he stood
for, into nothingness. He bore himself erect, and the courage that was
his strongest quality showed in his haughty pose, in the expression of
his dark, disdainful face, in the quiet smile with which he spoke his
gloomy pronouncement.

He received no immediate answer, and in the pause of silence he glanced
attentively at the master whom he had served so whole-heartedly and
believed in so intensely--for such as he must always believe intensely
in the principle for which they fight.

Charles was leaning against the mullions; melancholy and levity were
strangely mingled in his mien. In stature and make he was slight, in
dress extravagant, his dove-grey silk was embroidered with seed pearls
and gold, and a deep collar of exquisite lace was fastened by two gold
tassels at the lacing of his doublet.

Every Englishman, first seeing him, noted how foreign he was in
appearance. Though brought up as one of the nation whom he was to rule,
blood was here stronger than breeding, the powerful French-Scotch
strain of his famous name, the influence of his gay, foreign mother,
showed in his elegance, his refinement, his somewhat sad dignity, which
gave him an air as if he were too great to be proud outwardly, but was
beyond measure proud inwardly.

His hair, of the renowned Stewart auburn colour, fell full and soft
round a face that was slightly worn and troubled, but handsome and
composed still--a face that was too charming to be the index of a mind,
or more than a mere seductive disguise for whatever manner of man lay
beneath.

My lord had served him long and known him as intimately as any man
save my late murdered Duke of Buckingham, but even my lord, now it was
coming to the issue of their joint policies, could not be quite sure
what the King would do,--where he would be adamant and where give way,
where he would fail, and where he would stand firm.

"A lost business," Charles repeated at last. He had a blood-red cameo
on the little finger of his fair left hand, and turned it about as he
spoke; it was the only jewel he wore save a long pearl in his right ear.

"Sir, I call it no better than lost. The army unexercised and
unprovided, great disloyalty abroad, the Scots in a rebellion which is
daily more successful, the people mightily disaffected, and all in a
clamour for a Parliament--and I would to God, sire, that you had not
dismissed the last one, for it was better than any you are like to
have called together at this turn."

"I will," said Charles, "call none at all." He knew secretly that his
minister was right, and he already regretted the moment of spleen
in which, after a three weeks' sitting, he had dismissed the first
Parliament he had called for eleven years--had called in desperation
for aid against the Scots--for he saw that what Strafford said was
true, and that in the present temper of the nation he was unlikely to
get men so loyal in their temper as even the Members of the so-called
Little Parliament had been.

"Yea, call none at all," returned the Earl, "and where are we for
money? Is there any king or country to whom we can turn? Have we not
asked in vain even at Rome--even from the merchants of Genoa?"

"The money must be raised in England," said the King. He would not put
it into words, but to himself he was forced to admit that no foreign
power nor personage would lend money without security--and security
Charles was quite unable to give; for in the eyes of Europe a King of
England, acting without his Parliament, was a person by no means to be
seriously regarded.

"Then," returned Strafford, in the tone of a man who courageously
accepts defeat, "Your Majesty must call another Parliament."

Charles moved from the window and seated himself before a small bureau
of dark wood, inlaid with mother-o'-pearl; he rested his delicate face
in his delicate hand and gazed mournfully, almost reproachfully, at his
minister.

"You accuse me of failure," said the Earl, answering the look in his
master's eyes. "Well, I have failed."

Certainly he had; his famous policy, which he had proudly called
"Thorough," had fallen to pieces before the first demonstration of the
popular anger, and his attempt to establish the English monarchy as the
monarchies of Spain and France were established, had come to nothing.
He was not the man to shirk blame or responsibility, and he did not
reflect, as he might have reflected, that had Charles whole-heartedly
trusted Strafford as Strafford had whole-heartedly served Charles, the
endeavour to force the policies of Richelieu on the English people
might have approached nearer accomplishment, or at least have avoided a
failure so disastrous.

The King did not speak; he was not in a mood to be generous with his
servant, for his own humiliation was very bitter and would be bitterer
still if he were forced to call another Parliament. The rebellious
Scots, resisting his attempt to thrust Episcopalian bishops upon them,
had advanced as far as Durham, and the English, far from flying to
arms to resist the invader, were showing obviously enough that they
considered the Scottish cause as theirs, and would indeed soon follow
their northern neighbour's example and call a Parliament of their own
did Charles not call one for them.

So much the daily petitions, and the demeanour of John Pym, the
ringleader of the malcontents, and those country gentlemen who had
rallied round him in the Little Parliament, by refusing supplies for
the Scottish war unless the country's grievances were first redressed,
attested.

Strafford took his eyes from his master and looked across the garden
to the shimmering river. He was a more resolute, a more brilliant,
a bolder man than the King. He saw more clearly and gauged more
accurately than His Majesty the strength of the opposition now growing
in England against the royal prerogative and the pretensions of the
Anglican clergy, and he saw also that in the ensuing struggle he stood
in the forefront of the battle and was marked out by Pym and his
followers as the first and principal victim. Once he had been of Pym's
party, and when he had seceded to the King, Pym had told him, "You
may leave us, but we shall not leave you while your head is on your
shoulders."

He had only been Thomas Wentworth then, and now he was Earl of
Strafford, and, under the King, the greatest man in the three realms,
but the threat recurred to him now as his eyes rested on the dazzle of
the river flowing swiftly towards the Tower.

He knew he had come to England to play a desperate game with John Pym,
and that the stakes were, "_Thy head or my head_."

The King startled him from his sombre thoughts by a light blow with
clenched hand on the bureau, and by rising abruptly.

"Is there no one to defend me against these rebellious Commons?" he
cried, as if his reflections had become desperate and were no longer to
be borne in silence.

"I have," said Strafford, "done my utmost. I am the best-hated man in
England, sire, for what I have done to enforce your authority. But if
none of my expedients avail your Majesty, if the people will not take a
debased coinage, if the train-bands refuse to arm--if all the support
of my Archbishop but end in his fleeing his palace, pursued by the
people----"

"The people!" broke in Charles, "always the people!"

"Ay," said Strafford, "always--the people."

"And what, my lord," asked the King, "is your advice now?"

"Advice?" echoed the Earl; the sun now fell full over his fine face and
showed it to be near as colourless as the rich lace collar he wore.
"There is no advice to be given but this--Your Majesty must call a
Parliament."

The King's mobile mouth curved scornfully.

"And what will be the first action of this new assembly?" he demanded.
"To present a petition against my Lord Strafford as once a petition was
presented against my Lord Buckingham. Do you not know how the nation
deals with my friends?"

"Sire," replied the minister, with a great sweetness of manner that
came with endearing charm from one of his stern and bold demeanour, "if
Your Majesty calls me friend, it is enough. What shall I fear when the
King stands by me?"

"Yes, yes," replied Charles, in sudden agitation; "they should not
have had Buckingham, and they shall not have you--rest assured, my
lord. Guard only from another Felton, and I will protect you from these
baying hounds that hate us so."

He held out his hand and Strafford clasped and kissed it with sincere
reverence. Not only was the King his beloved master, but the symbol of
that sacred and Divine authority which he believed to be the finest
form of government, and which his strong genius had so devotedly and
strenuously served.

The King, who seemed shaken with some sudden emotion, turned away,
pressing his handkerchief to his lips, and at that moment the door
opened, the leathern hanging that concealed it was lifted, and a lady
entered the cabinet--a lady frail and flowerlike to the eye, attired
in a gown of white silk with knots of pink; a lady with a radiant face
of the most delicate hues and shadings, whose fine black ringlets
were adorned with a braid of pearls worked in the likeness of the
fleur-de-lis on a pink ribbon.

Her countenance wore a look of fatigue and anxiety under the animation
of her expression, but, though she had lost the dewy loveliness of her
girlhood, she still appeared fragrant and youthful, an exquisite, royal
creature whose Bourbon blood showed in the quick, impetuous pride of
her carriage, while she had the great black eyes of her Medici mother,
and something, too, of the Italian in her gay liveliness.

At her entrance the King turned towards her with instant eagerness. He
had at this time three counsellors--Strafford, Laud, and the Queen--and
any one who looked upon him now as he took his wife's hand and led her
to the deep-cushioned window-seat, would not have doubted which had the
most influence of the three. Henriette Marie was now, as she had ever
been, the most powerful influence in her husband's life.

She looked now from the King to the Earl and said quickly, with a
pronounced French accent--

"What advice does my lord give in this perverse issue?"

"He saith there is nothing for it, Mary, but to call another
Parliament."

The Queen stamped her white-shod foot.

"_Mon Dieu!_" she exclaimed, with her eyes afire and a heat as of fire
in her voice also. "Are we to stretch our necks out for the _canaille_
to put their feet thereon?"

She spoke with the boundless pride of the daughter of Henri Quatre, of
one whose father, brother, and husband were kings; she spoke also with
the intolerance of a Papist for heretics, and with a woman's ignorance
of the worth and value of the great movements and upheavals of the
world.

All this Strafford saw; he saw also that she was a bad counsellor for
the King, but, though he was not the kind of man to relish sharing
confidences with a woman, he had long since recognized the fact that
Henriette Marie ruled England fully as much as the King.

Therefore he answered quietly--

"It is the only expedient, Madame, to raise money."

"I would rather," returned the Queen impetuously, "sell every jewel I
possess!"

The Earl smiled sadly.

"All your jewels twice over, Madame, would not serve our need now."

The Queen turned and caught her husband's sleeve.

"Is there no alternative--none?" she demanded. "Where are the soldiers?
Believe me, I would sooner see the heads of these men on London Bridge
than conferring together in Westminster Hall."

"Nay," replied Charles tenderly, "hold up thy heart, dearest. I cannot
think I shall again be confronted by such unruly miscreants as last
time, and truly there are divers things of much inconvenience that I do
fear cannot be settled save by this same calling of a Parliament."

The Queen returned his look of deep affection with a flashing glance.

"Truly, I am ashamed and scandalized that Your Majesty is come to this
pass! Where are your lords and your soldiers?"

"We have barely enough to hold the Scots off London," replied Charles,
"and those are unpaid and disaffected--as thou knowest."

The Queen's great eyes sparkled with the ready tears of provoked
passion.

"My Lord Archbishop was not safe at Lambeth," said Strafford slowly.
"The mobile followed him even to the gates of Whitehall."

"And is there no one to fire on them--to cut them down with the sword?"
asked the Queen. "Oh, Strafford, my Lord Strafford, I fear you have
very greatly failed of your high promises!"

"The depth of my failure is measured by the depth of my humiliation,"
returned the Earl. "I have not spared myself, Madame, in the endeavour
to make this kingdom great in the councils of Europe, and His Majesty
first among the crowned heads thereof, but the breath of the populace
is a wind that will blow any barque on to the rocks."

The King put his hand on Strafford's great shoulder.

"My friend," he said warmly, "no king ever had a truer. Do not blame my
lord, Mary, for this pass we are in, for he, if any man can, will serve
us and help us to a better issue."

"In France we have other ways to deal with treason and rebellion,"
said the Queen with sudden weariness; "but do what thou wilt! Call thy
Parliament, and God grant it avail thee to ease thy needs!"

She moved, with a whisper of silk, from the two men, and, taking up
a vellum-bound book from the little bureau where the King had sat,
fluttered over the painted leaves.

Strafford picked up his great plumed hat; he was bound that evening
for the headquarters of the English army at York, where he was to take
up the chief command.

The King walked with him to the door, holding his arm.

"Fear thou nought," he said earnestly. "I will protect thee."

The Queen put down the book and came forward.

"Take no heed of my passions," she said sweetly. "You have served us
well and we love you; good fortune, my lord. Farewell, and a fair
journey to York."

The Earl went on one knee to kiss her perfumed, pale hand, and she
looked at him with a certain tenderness, a certain regret, a certain
scorn curious to behold.

"I am too much your servant to avow myself afresh your creature," said
Strafford, lifting his ardent eyes, not to the lady, but to his master.
"You have all of me. I pray God deliver Your Majesty from these present
pressures, and grant me power to work you some service."

The sun was pouring broad beams full through the window and illumining
all the rich treasures that filled the cabinet, the gold-threaded
tapestry, the Italian pictures, the finely-wrought furniture, the
carpets of Persia, and the two graceful figures so delicately apt to
this gorgeous setting. The sunlight fell also on my lord, a figure more
soldierlike and not so attuned to a scene of luxury.

So he took his leave and came glooming into the courtyard, and mounted
amid his escort, and rode down Whitehall.

The streets were empty, by reason of the heat; only the vendors
of oranges and a few idlers were abroad, but when my lord reached
Westminster Hall, he saw by the corner-posts of the road two men
standing, and his bright, quick glance knew them at once for two
enemies of his--one his chief enemy, Mr. Pym, and the other one of his
followers who had sat for Cambridge in the Little Parliament, and been
marked unfavourably by my lord--a certain Oliver Cromwell.

My lord was too great a man to be discourteous, he touched his beaver
to the gentlemen and rode on with his guard, serene and aloof.

John Pym looked after the little cavalcade flashing in the dust and
sunlight.

"There goeth the chief enemy of these realms," he said. "Marked you his
haughty eye when he did salute us?"

"He cometh from Whitehall," returned Mr. Cromwell. "Hath he advised the
King to call a Parliament, think you, Mr. Pym?"

John Pym pointed to Westminster Hall behind them.

"There you and I will sit before the summer be burnt out," he answered,
"whether the King issue the writs or no."

They both stood silent, looking after my lord, who presently turned in
his saddle and gazed back at the Parliament House.

"_My head or thy head_," he thought, as he rode through the sunlight.

Strafford did not want to die.



CHAPTER III

MR. PYM AND AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE


When Mr. Cromwell had seen Lord Strafford ride away into the late
summer dust of gold, he returned to his lodging and, packing up his
effects, went back to Huntingdon. He was lately removed from St. Ives
to Ely, and was become of late a more quiet, sombre man than even
formerly, for he had received a blow his soul had staggered under,
namely, the death of his eldest son, a gallant youth still at college.
Yet he was soon withdrawn again from his grazing grounds and his
cattle, his harvesting, and buying, and selling, for the King called a
Parliament, and the people sent up from the boroughs and shires all the
flower of English gentlehood, the Cursons, Ashtons, Leighs, Derings,
Ingrams, Fairfaxes, Cecils, Polles, Grenvils, Trevors, Carews, and
Edgcombes, all fine old names deep rooted in English soil--most of them
the very men who had formed the late Parliament which the King had so
summarily dismissed--and with them came Mr. Cromwell, borough Member
for Cambridge, a silent man still, waiting for the Divine guidance
which had been promised him when he entered into Covenant with the Lord.

Soon after the session opened, a motion was moved for inquiry into
Irish affairs, and Mr. Cromwell, seeing Mr. Pym as they left the House
together, called out to him and said--

"It is my Lord Strafford you strike at, is it not?"

And Mr. Pym answered "Yes."

The two gentlemen walked together down Whitehall. There were a great
many of the meaner sort abroad, hustling and clamouring and passing
rumour from mouth to mouth about the progress of the Scots and the
humour of the King, all of them big with hopes of the things the
Parliament men would do, now they were gotten together; of how the
bishops would be put down for ever, the new taxes taken off, and His
Majesty's design for bringing over an army of Irish or French Papists
finally defeated.

As they neared Whitehall--that portentous and haughty palace behind
whose closed gates Majesty endured humiliation as best might be--Mr.
Pym, looking round him in his stately way at the robust and eager
crowd, touched his companion's arm.

"Mr. Cromwell," he said, "there is good material here if the right man
could be found to handle it."

"'Tis a great nation," answered Mr. Cromwell, "but 'tis to the ancient
blood we must look--not to these."

"That was my meaning," returned John Pym; "there are among us many able
men--but who will be called?"

"Thou thyself, Mr. Pym," said his friend warmly, "art surely a man
after God's own heart, one whom he hath raised up to be a captain, even
as he raised up David."

"I do what I can," returned Mr. Pym quietly, "but I am not the man for
whom England waiteth."

By now they had reached the post office at Charing Cross and halted at
a cutler's shop near by, for Mr. Cromwell had left his sword there in
the morning to be repaired, and now came to call for it. As there was
press enough of people buying and testing arms about the door, they
were delayed a little, and as they waited, a young gentleman, thrusting
a brace of new pistols into his belt, pushed his way through the crowd,
mounted a horse a groom held for him, and rode away with great speed.

Mr. Pym looked after him.

"That is a friend of my Lord Strafford," he whispered, "posting to York
to warn him to keep from London."

"Has it come to that?" asked Mr. Cromwell in a moved voice. "Is my lord
afraid?"

John Pym looked at him sharply.

"Hast thou not seen that temper in the House whereof any man might be
afraid?" he answered.

"But my Lord Strafford!" exclaimed the other gentleman in a tone as if
he named the King himself.

"Thinkest thou I have not the courage to impeach my Lord Strafford?"
demanded Mr. Pym grimly. "He is the chief author of these troubles, and
must answer for them to the Commons of England."

"I well believe thou hast the courage," answered Mr. Cromwell quietly,
taking up the sword which was waiting for him, "as I believe my lord
hath the courage to answer you."

"He hath courage," returned John Pym. "You speak as if you favoured
him," he added with a smile.

Mr. Cromwell smiled also and they left the shop, turning towards St.
Martin's Lane where Mr. Cromwell had his lodgings beyond the fields,
and there, when they had reached his chamber, they sat quiet awhile,
oppressed by the sense of great events which, gathering force and
momentum with every day, were marching forward with the majestic
strength of fate--events in which they, these two modest gentlemen
sitting silent in this modest chamber, felt that they might be
involved, might indeed be piece and part of the new pattern into which
the destinies of England were being rapidly woven.

Presently Mr. Cromwell rose and opened the window on to the light of
the setting sun which fell aslant the narrow street.

"There is a great battle before us," he said.

"Now the Parliament is called, half that battle is won," replied Mr.
Pym.

"Dost thou see things so easily?" returned the other. "This Earl now
will make a fight."

"This Earl will bend," flashed John Pym, "as the King will bend."

"The King?" repeated Mr. Cromwell thoughtfully. "Wilt thou threaten
even the rock of Divine authority on which the throne standeth?"

John Pym laid his hand on his friend's arm with a great eagerness
and intensity of gesture. He stood now in the full light of the open
window, and it was noticeable that, despite his strong and passionate
air, his person was emaciated and there was a look of disease and
fatigue very marked in his mobile face, as if he felt the full weight
of his years.

"Hark ye, Mr. Cromwell," he said, "thou art now much hearkened to in
the House and do often obtain the mastery thereof; thou wilt come to
great things yet, for, methinks, thou hast power over men; help us now
to rid England of this Strafford. I ask thee, for hitherto thou hast
kept silence on this matter. And I do not know thy mind on it."

Mr. Cromwell regarded him gravely, almost mournfully.

"Dost thou mean to have the Earl's head?" he asked.

"That is my inner and final meaning--even as it is his to have thine
and mine, and that of every man in England who dare speak his mind.'

"Then there is failure before thee," answered Oliver Cromwell, "for
this man is the King's friend, and the King will protect him."

"The King will have neither the power nor the will to protect a man
whom the Commons demand."

"The Duke of Buckingham----"

Mr. Pym broke the sentence.

"Ay--the Duke of Buckingham--would the King have saved him? Felton's
knife spared the answer."

"This makes His Majesty without honour," said Mr. Cromwell. "I cannot
imagine that he ever could or would abandon one whom he hath twined so
closely in his affections."

"The Earl must go and all he standeth for," returned John Pym.

"Ay, all he standeth for--the Star Chamber, the ship money, the Court
of High Commission, the power of the bishops--but the man thou canst
not touch, and thou mayst well leave his life when thou hast destroyed
his life work."

"Surely thou art always too compassionate," replied Mr. Pym.

"I have no natural hatred against the Earl of Strafford," smiled Mr.
Cromwell, "and it seemeth to me a hopeless task you do attempt, for the
King can never surrender him."

"I may fail," said John Pym. "I know that I play a desperate game, but
I feel the Lord is with me and that for His ends and His people I work.
Only a little while we have, the bravest and best of us, and how much
there is to do! How much!"

Mr. Cromwell leant further out of the window; there was a pot of
geranium slips on the sill, and their perfume was strengthening with
the fall of evening, and filling the quiet air with richness.

Oliver Cromwell looked over the deep, bright, green leaves towards
Whitehall which lay bathed in the gold and amber light of the sinking
sun.

"Hark!" he said, "hark!"

"Thou hast sharp ears," said Mr. Pym. "I hear nothing."

"I hear," returned the other, "the citizens of London rising----"

John Pym listened intently. A distant murmurous sound was soon audible
enough, a hoarse sound of human shouting, a blend of human voices with
clash of weapons and the tramp of feet.

"'Tis the train-bands fighting the apprentices, and those of the baser
sort, belike," said Mr. Pym. "Yesterday they were like to have burnt
down Lambeth Palace when they discovered His Grace had again fled."

Mr. Cromwell continued to gaze towards the end of the street, across
which several people were beginning to run, attracted by the now common
event of a street riot.

"The Lord is leading the nation through bitter ways," he observed.
"And I do see ahead of us a time of much trouble, for if His Majesty is
stubborn, these," he pointed down the street to the hurrying crowds,
"will fight."

"Parliament," replied Mr. Pym, "will settle all grievances without
bringing the mobile into it. Mr. Cromwell, to-morrow I will go to the
Bar of the House of Lords and impeach the King's favourite of high
treason, and there will be a many following me. Wilt thou be one of
them?"

Oliver Cromwell turned swiftly round to face his friend.

"Count on me," he said quietly, "to not leave thy party until thou hast
brought the King to reason, but I believe that this will be a longer
and bloodier business than any of us reckon on as yet."

"I trust we shall leave blood out of it," answered Mr. Pym gravely.
"But God directs as He will, and we are not of a temper to shrink from
fighting for His word and our liberty."

By now the crowd had gathered in considerable proportions, and the two
spectators at the window observed that the centre of this agitated
throng was a coach and four which, protected by several constables,
footmen, and two gentlemen on horseback, was endeavouring to make
headway down Whitehall, probably to the palace.

"Who is this," wondered Mr. Pym, "whose appearance causeth such a riot?"

They were, however, too far off to discern the occupant of the coach,
and therefore presently descended into the street to discover who it
might be whose progress was thus impeded, and to offer, if need be,
some assistance against the clamour of the mobile, for violence and
outrage were not wished for by these two, even though the cries of the
populace might be but an echo of their own sentiments.

As they began to push their way, into the fringe of the crowd, they
perceived that the coach had been brought to a standstill and was
densely surrounded by shop boys and the meaner kind of citizen.

The coachman, buffeted by various missiles, leant from his box and
cried--

"My lady, I cannot go on!"

At this the leathern curtains of the coach were drawn back and a
woman's face appeared at the window. She regarded the press before her
fixedly, and with a curious blankness of expression, her high-bred and
sensitive countenance had a cold look of either pride or terror, or
preoccupation, which made it mask-like as a carving.

Mr. Pym touched his companion's arm.

"It is Lady Strafford," he said.

Mr. Cromwell had never before seen the wife of the great minister who
was now no better than a doomed man, and he gazed with vast interest
and pity at the face staring from the coach window.

"We should save her from this," he answered, and, lifting his sword
hilt, with a few rude blows he forced his way through the crowd to the
coach.

"Stop this fooling!" he shouted, and his voice, when raised, was of an
extraordinary depth and harshness. The rioters turned, startled, and,
with a quick movement of his powerful arm, he swept two youths from the
wheels to which they were clinging to impede the movement of the coach.

Mr. Pym was now beside him, rather breathless with pushing his way
through.

The Countess never moved or altered her bitter calm; the two gentlemen
both saluted her, and when Mr. Pym's hat was off and she had a clear
view of his countenance, she gave a great start and the hot blood
rushed to her face and burnt up her pallor.

"Mr. Pym!" she cried. "Oh, John Pym!"

At the sound of this name, which was now famous throughout England as
the champion of the people, the crowd quieted and began shamefacedly to
give way, being at heart good humoured and not disposed to more than
rough horse-play, after the nature of English crowds.

"Ride on, madam," said Mr. Pym sombrely. "Your way is clear."

"I want not your succour," she returned, with great heat and force;
"false friend and subtle enemy, I know what you contrive against us!"

"Against _you_ nothing," he replied, "since once I enjoyed your grace
and entertainment--and, madam, it was your lord left us, not we him."

"Oh, what a land is this become!" answered the Countess, "when every
designing, rebellious knave may endeavour to strike even at the very
architects of the realm!"

"Architects of tyranny, madam," said Mr. Pym; "and every plain fellow
who can handle a sword may rightly endeavour to strike at them."

"Your presence flouts me," cried Lady Strafford. "Drive on!"

The coach swung forward on the leathers and jolted off down Whitehall,
still pursued by a few boys shouting and hooting.

"In the old days when I knew her," said John Pym, "she was a most
modest, excellent lady, but now I doubt but that she is proud and
blinded even as her lord."

"She seemed to me," replied Mr. Cromwell, "to be not so much as one
proud, but as one in a mortal fear."

"She has heard somewhat of this inquiry into Irish affairs, and is off
to the King to pray protection for her lord. Poor, silly woman, as if
she could prevail against the Commons of England!"

The autumn dusk was now rapidly approaching, and the two friends turned
into the Strand to find a tavern to get themselves some dinner before
they returned to the House.

Meanwhile the Countess of Strafford drove furiously into the courtyard
of the palace and, hastening through the public halls and galleries,
demanded an audience of the Queen.



CHAPTER IV

THE QUEEN'S POLICY


Lady Strafford was admitted, without any delay, into the private
apartment of the Queen, where Henriette Marie sat with two ladies in
a sumptuous simplicity and elegant seclusion, which was noticeable in
the extreme richness and good taste of the apartment, in the attire of
the Queen herself, which, free from all fopperies of fashion, was of an
exceeding fineness and grace, and in her occupation, which was that of
sewing figures in beads on a casket of white silk.

The chamber was so delicately scented with attar of roses and perfume
of jasmine and cascarilla, so finely warmed with a fire of cedar-wood,
that every breath drawn there was a delight; the window was shrouded
by peach-coloured velvet curtains, and the light came from a suspended
silver lamp the flame of it softened by a screen of rosy silk; on the
wall hung mellowed and ancient French tapestries, heavily shot with
gold and silver, and the inlaid floor was covered with silk carpets.
The Queen wore a pale saffron-coloured gown, and about her elbows and
shoulders hung quantities of exquisite lace fastened by loops of pearl.

At the entrance of the Countess, she very sweetly dismissed the ladies
and smiled at her visitor, then continued her task, thoughtfully
selecting the beads from an ivory tray and sewing them skilfully on to
the thick white silk.

The Countess remained standing before the Queen. She was now shown
to be a woman of a carriage of pride and fire, fair-haired and
swift-moving, with a great expression of energy which did not alter her
wholly feminine attraction.

"Your Majesty will forgive this uncourtly coming of mine," she said,
"but I have it on good authority that this inquiry into Irish Affairs
is but a covert attack on my Lord Strafford."

"Yea, most certainly," returned the Queen, raising her soft eyes to the
breathless lady.

"I saw John Pym to-day," cried the Countess, "and methought he had an
air of triumph; besides, would the very boys in the street dare shout
at me unless my lord's fall were assured?"

She twisted her hands together and sank on to a brocade stool near
the window. The Queen slightly lifted her shoulders and smiled. She
bitterly detested the English, who in their turn loathed her, both for
her nationality and her religion, and even for the name "Mary," which
the King gave her, and which was for ever connected in the popular mind
with Papistry and with two queens who had been enemies of England.
Therefore she was well-used to unpopularity and that hatred of the
crowd of which Lady Strafford to-day had had a first taste.

"Why discourage yourself about that, madam?" she asked. "These
creatures are not to be regarded."

"The House of Commons is to be regarded," returned Lady Strafford.

She spoke, despite herself, in a tone of respect for the power that
threatened her husband, and the Frenchwoman's smile deepened.

"How afraid you all are of this Parliament," she said.

"Has it not lately shown that it is something to be afraid of?" cried
the Countess.

The Queen continued to carefully select the tiny glass beads and to
carefully thread them on the long white silk thread. To the Countess,
who had never loved her, this absorption, at such an hour, in an
occupation so trivial, was exasperating.

"I have come to Your Majesty on matter of serious moment," she said,
and she spoke as one who had a claim; her husband had rendered great
services to the Crown, and held his lofty position more by his own
genius than by the King's favour. "Yesterday I sent an express to York,
beseeching my lord to stay there with the army, and to-day Mr. Holles,
one of my kinsmen, hath gone on the same errand. I beseech Your Majesty
to add your weight to these entreaties of mine, and to ask His Majesty
to bid my lord stay where he is safe."

At this the Queen's lovely right hand stopped work, and lay slack on
the white cover of the casket, and with the other she put back the fine
ringlets of black hair from her brow and looked full and delicately at
the Countess.

"Both the King and I," she returned gently, "wrote to my lord before
that--ay, the day before, and were you more often at court, madame, you
would have heard of it."

An eloquent flush bespoke the relief and gratitude of the Countess.

"Then he is safe!" she exclaimed. "At York, amid the army, who can
touch him!"

The Queen laughed lightly.

"Dear lady," she said, "thy lord is no longer at York, but on his way
to London. At least, if he be as loyal as I think he be."

"London?" repeated Lady Strafford, as if it were a word of terror.
"London? my lord cometh?"

"On the bidding of His Majesty and myself," answered Henriette Marie.

The Countess rose, she pushed back the dull crimson hood from her fair
curls, and looked the Queen straightly in the face.

"Wherefore have you bidden him to London, madame?" she asked.

"That he may answer the charges that will be brought against him," said
the Queen.

"And you have persuaded him to this!" cried the Countess. "I did think
that I might have counted you and His Majesty among my lord's friends!"

Henriette Marie picked up a knot of white silk and began to disentangle
the twisted strands.

"The Earl hath His Majesty's assurances and mine, of friendship and
protection," she said with dignity touched with coldness.

Lady Strafford stood silent, utterly dismayed and bewildered. It seemed
to her incredible that the King should have asked his hated minister to
come to the capital at the moment when the popular fury against him had
reached full height and the Commons were on the eve of impeaching him.
She did not, could not, doubt that the King would wish to protect his
favourite, but she felt an awful doubt as to his power. Had he not been
forced to call the Parliament at the demand of the people?--was it not
to please them that he had sent for the Earl?--so what else might he
not consent to when driven into a corner!

The Countess shuddered; she thought of the angry crowd who had chased
Laud from Lambeth Palace, who daily hooted at and insulted her when
she went abroad, of the useless train-bands, of the general bottomless
confusion and tumult, and she saw before her with a horrid vividness,
the calm, weary face of John Pym, the man who led the Commons.

The Queen surveyed her narrowly, and observed the doubt and terror in
her face.

"Are you afraid?" she asked. "Is it possible you think the King cannot
protect his friends?"

Lady Strafford looked at the beautiful frail woman in her lace and silk
who was so delicate, so charming, so gay, and who had more power over
the King than his own conscience, and her heart gave a sick swerve. She
never had, never could, wholly trust the French Papist Queen, for she
was herself too wholly open and English in her nature.

Henriette Marie rose, and the jasmine perfume was stirred by the
shaking of her garments.

"Is it not better," she said, with a lovely, tender smile, "that Lord
Strafford should come here and face his enemies, than that he should
lurk in York among his soldiers as if he feared what creatures like
this Pym could do?"

"Madame," returned Lady Strafford, through white lips, "no one would
ever think the Earl feared his enemies. But to come to London now is
not courage but folly."

"It is obedience to the King's wishes," said the Queen, and a haughty
fire sparkled in her dark liquid eyes.

"The King," returned the Countess, "asketh too much from his servant,
by Heaven, madame! Those who love my lord would see him stay at York--"

"And those who love the King would obey him," flashed Henriette Marie.

The Countess controlled herself and swept a curtsey.

"I take my leave," she said. "May Your Majesty hold as ever sacred the
promises with which you have brought my lord in among those who madden
to destroy him! As for me, my heart is fallen low. Madame, a good
night."

"I do forgive thy boldness for the sake of thy anxiety," said the Queen
with sweetness. "We women have many desperate moments in these bitter
times. A good night, my lady."

The Countess bent her proud blonde head and departed, and the Queen
took up her beads and her silks and began again to work the bouquet
of roses, lilies, and violets she was embroidering on the lid of the
casket.

A thoughtful and haughty expression clouded the delicate lines of her
face, and this proud pensive look did not alter when the hangings that
had scarcely fallen into place behind Lady Strafford were again lifted,
and the King, unattended, and with an air of haste, came into her
presence.

"Has Strafford come?" she asked.

"Not yet!" replied Charles, in an unsteady voice, "and I have begun to
wish I had not sent for him."

The Queen flung down her work and rose; the angry red of a deep passion
stained her pallor.

"Canst thou never be resolute?" she cried. "Wilt thou for ever hesitate
and change and regret every action? My lord, I would sooner be dead
than see this temper in thee."

The King came and kissed her hand with a charming air of gallantry.

"Sweet," he said, in self-justification, "it is a horrid thing to
command a man into the hands of his enemies."

"Thou knowest," returned Henriette Marie firmly, "that the Parliament
and London both clamour for my lord and will not, by any means, be
quiet until he appear. Thou knowest that we, that I, am in actual
danger."

"Hush, dear heart--speak not of our danger," interrupted Charles
hastily, "lest it seemeth we sacrifice our servant, our friend, to bare
fear."

"Acquit thyself to thy conscience, Charles," she answered with
limitless pride. "Art thou not the King? Must I remind thee of that as
even now I had to remind my Lady Strafford?"

"My lady here?" murmured the King.

"Did you not meet her in your coming?"

As she spoke Henriette Marie moved towards a mirror that hung in one
corner, and looked at her reflection with unseeing eyes, then turned
the same abstracted glance on to the King.

The mirror was set in a deep border of embroidery which was framed
in tortoise-shell, and the mellow colours of these, silks and shell,
were softened into rosy dimness by the shaded light. This same glow
was over the lovely figure of the Queen, her gown of ivory and amber
tints, brightened into a knot of orange at her breast, and the pearls
round her throat, and her soft, dark hair held no more lustre than the
exquisite carnation of her fragile beauty. She seemed utterly removed
from all that was commonplace, tumultuous, noisy, coarse, and Charles,
gazing at her with his soul in his eyes, was spurred and stung, as
always when he regarded his wife, with bitter anger that he was not
allowed to follow the bright guidance of this lady, and live with her
in rich happiness and peace adorned with every fine and costly art,
with all the intellectual delicacies and luxurious refinements which so
pleased them both.

He loathed the English people who dragged him and even his adored
wife into the clamorous atmosphere of intrigue and dissension, of
controversy and riot.

To Charles there was one God, one Church, one King, one right--the
right of God as manifested in the King's right; all else was to him
mere vexation, disloyalty, and blasphemy. The popular side of the
questions now rending the nations he did not even consider; he stood
absolutely, without compromise or doubt, by his own simple, unyielding,
ardent belief that he was King by God's will, and above and beyond all
laws.

And his late impotency to enforce this view on his subjects had stirred
his naturally gracious serene nature to deepest astonishment and anger.
He was baffled, outraged, and inwardly humiliated, and he had already
in his heart decided to be avenged on these gentlemen of the Commons
whose clamours had so rudely broken his regal security, and on the
stubborn English who had taken advantage of the rebellion of the Scots
and his lack of money with which to defend himself, to force on him
this hateful Parliament.

And now, when he knew that Pym, the inspiration and leader of
these unruly gentlemen, was daring to strike at his own especial
friend--minister and favourite, the man who was at once his guide and
mouthpiece--he was bewildered by his intense inner fury, and pride
as well as justice made him regret that he had summoned the Earl to
London.

He gazed at the Queen where she stood in golden shadow, and these
thoughts tormented him bitterly.

He knew her mind; her temper was even more despotic than his, and armed
force was the first and only weapon she would have ever used in dealing
with the people; her counsels were ever for the high hand, the haughty
command, the merciless sword, and always the King hearkened to her. But
his nature was more subtle, involved, and secretive than hers, and he
knew better than she did the growing strength of the forces opposed to
him; therefore he had often endeavoured to cope with his difficulties
after a fashion she called irresolute and unstable.

The Queen broke the heavy silence.

"Strafford will come and we will protect him," she said; "that is
enough."

"Nay, not enough," replied Charles, "for I must be avenged on these men
who seek to touch my lord."

"Hadst thou hearkened to me," she murmured in a melancholy voice, "thou
hadst been avenged on all these long since."

"Ay, Mary," cried the King earnestly, "we are not in a realm as loyal
and steadfast as France, but rule a country that hath become a very
hive of sedition, discontent, and treason, and it is well to tread
cautiously."

"Caution is not a kingly virtue," said Henriette Marie, with that same
sad sweetness of demeanour that was so exquisite a cloak for reproof.

"Trust me to act as is best for thee and for our sons," replied Charles
firmly. "Trust me to so acquit myself to God as to be worthy of thy
love."

The Queen regarded him with a wise little smile, then pulled a toy
watch of diamonds from the lace at her bosom and glanced at it with
eyes that flashed a little.

"With quick riding and sharp relays, my lord might almost be here," she
remarked.

Charles sank into the great chair with arms by the window, and bent his
gaze on the floor. His whole figure had a drooping and fatigued look;
he mechanically fingered the deep points of lace edging his cambric
cuffs.

Henriette Marie dropped the watch back behind the knot of orange velvet
on her breast, and her glance, that was so quick and keen behind the
misty softness that veiled it, travelled rapidly over her husband's
person.

She noted the grey hairs in his love-locks, the lines of anxiety
across his brow and round his mouth, his unnatural pallor, the nervous
twitching of his lips. He was the dearest thing on earth to her, but
she had been married to him nearly twenty years and she knew his
weakness, his faults, too well to any longer regard him as that Prince
of romance which he had at first appeared to her. His figure, as she
looked at him now, seemed to her strangely tragical; she could have
wept for this man who leant on her when she should have leant on him,
this man whom she would have despised if she had not loved.

"Holy Virgin," she said passionately to herself, "give him strength and
me courage."

She went to her table and began to put away her work. The King raised
his narrowed wistful eyes and said abruptly--

"Supposing the Earl doth not come? We are as likely to be hounded from
Whitehall as His Grace from Lambeth if my lord disappoints the people."

"He will come," said Henriette Marie, delicately putting away her beads
and silks in a tortoise-shell box lined with blue satin and redolent of
English lavender.

Even as she spoke and before she had turned the silver key in the
casket, her page had entered with the momentous news for which they
both, in their different fashion, waited.

My Lord Strafford was in the audience chamber, all in a reek from hard
riding.

They went down together, the King and Queen, and found the dark Earl,
in boots and cloak still muddied, waiting for them.

"My faithful one!" cried Charles, "so thou art come!" and when
Strafford would have knelt, he prevented him, and instead kissed him on
the cheek.

"Sire," answered my lord, "I met your messengers on the road. I had
already left York and was hastening to London to meet this accusation
mine enemies do prepare to spring on me."

Charles seized his hand and grasped it warmly.

"I do approve thine action, and here confirm all expressions of favour
I have ever given thee."

"Thy lady," added the Queen, smiling, "was, poor soul, fearful for
thee, but thou art not, I think, seeing thou hast our protection and
friendship."

"Madame," answered the Earl, fixing on her the powerful glance of his
tired dark eyes, "I am fearful of nothing, I do thank my God, save only
of some smirch on my honour, and that is surely safe while my gracious
master holdeth me by the hand."

There was energy and purpose in his look, his carriage, his speech, his
bearing had the unshakable composure of the fine man finely prepared
for any fate.

"Sire," he said, speaking with great sincerity and emotion, "my own
aim hath been to make thee and England great, and if His Majesty is
satisfied, I hold myself acquitted of any wrong to any man, nor do I
take any such on my conscience."

The King, much moved, clasped my lord's firm right hand closer in his
own, and stood close beside him in intimate affection.

"What weapon hast thou prepared to fight these rascals with?" asked
Henriette Marie.

"Madame," replied the Earl grimly, "I shall go down to the House
to-morrow and impeach John Pym of high treason on the ground of his
sympathy with, and negotiating with, the rebel Scots." He smiled
fiercely as if to himself, and added, "_My head or thine_, and no time
to lose!"

A sudden tremor shook the Queen, a silence fell on her vivacity.

"Come to us to-morrow," said Charles, "before going to Westminster--and
now to thy waiting wife and a good night, dear lord."

"Truly this evening I am a weary man," smiled Strafford, and with that
kissed the hands of his lieges and left them.

They stood silent after his going, not looking at each other.

They could hear the distant angry clamour of London at their gates.



CHAPTER V

THE FALL OF THE GREAT MINISTER


The moon's circle was half-filled with light, a mist rose and hung
above the river, a sullen rain was falling through the windless air,
as the gentlemen left the House and dispersed among the excited crowd
to their dwellings. Along the river the people were dense, they surged
and gathered along the banks from Westminster to St. Katherine's wharf,
shouting, singing, flinging up their hats, and wringing each other's
hands for joy.

They had just been regaled with a sight many of them had never dared to
hope to see. The mist and the rain had not obscured from their hungry
eyes the barge in which my Lord Strafford, that morning the greatest
subject in two kingdoms, had gone by, a prisoner, to the Tower.

He stood for an absolute monarchy, a dominant priesthood, taxation
without law, the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, even as
the Queen stood for Papistry and the possible employment of foreign
force, and the two between them represented all that was most hateful
to the English.

Therefore it was neither the usual levity of crowds nor the usual
vulgar rejoicing in fallen greatness that animated these dense throngs
of Londoners, but a deep, almost awful sense that a definite and
tremendous struggle had begun between King and people, and had begun
with a great victory on the popular side.

It had been a day of smouldering excitement that frequently burst into
riotings between Westminster and Whitehall. In the morning my lord,
with a guard of halberdiers, had gone down as usual to the House; after
a little while he had returned to the palace, accompanied each time by
the furious shouting and groans of the people. The truth was that his
charges against Pym were not yet ready, and he wished to consult his
master.

The crowd, however, waited, fed by rumours that came from time to time
by means of those who had the entry into the House; by the afternoon it
was definitely known that Mr. Pym had cleared the Lobby and locked the
door of the House, while a discussion of grave importance took place.

So the people waited, patient but insistent, trusting Mr. Pym and those
gentlemen shut up with him, yet watchful lest they should cheat them.

Nor were they disappointed; at five o'clock out came Mr. Pym at
the head of some three hundred Members, and, passing through the
frantically applauding crowd, went to the House of Lords.

Here, at the Bar, he told the Peers, that by the command of the Commons
in Parliament and in the name of all the Commons of England, he accused
the Earl of Strafford of high treason, and demanded that he be put in
custody while they produced the grounds of their accusation.

Then came my lord again, hastening back from Whitehall (where the news
had reached him), with an assured and proud demeanour, and so into
the House, with a gloomy and unseeing countenance for the hostile
throng; then more suspense, while excitement increased to a point where
it could not be any longer contained, and vented itself in fierce
rattlings on the very doorsteps of Westminster Hall and rebellious
tumults at the very gates of Whitehall, where the guards were doubled
and stood with drawn swords, for there had been some ugly shouting of
the Queen's name, and some hoarse demand that John Pym should accuse
her also of high treason against the realm of England, and haul her
forth with her black Papist brood of priests to answer the charges
against her, even as my lord was answering, or must answer them.
Before the misty evening was far advanced, and while the moon hung yet
sickly pale in a scarcely dark sky, the prologue to this tragedy was
accomplished, and my lord left the House where he had so long ruled
supreme, and was conveyed down the sullen tide to the Tower.

And when he had at last gone, and his guarded barge was absorbed into
the shadows of the Traitor's Gate, a kind of awe and silence fell
over London. The great minister, the King's favourite, the man who
was both his master's brain and conscience, had fallen so swiftly, so
irrecoverably, as London knew in her heart, that there was almost a
terror mingled with the triumph; for all knew that Strafford was not
one like Somerset or Buckingham, but a man of the utmost capacity for
courage, intelligence, and all the arts of government.

The Commons of Parliament, who had done this thing, scattered, weary
and quiet, to their various homes and lodgings, and Mr. Cromwell and
Mr. Hampden walked through the falling rain, communing with their
hearts.

As they neared the palace which stood brilliant with flambeaux lights
flashing on the drawn swords at the gates, Mr. Hampden turned his
gentle face towards his companion and said, "What will the King do?"

"The King?" repeated Mr. Cromwell, lifting earnest eyes to the silent
palace. "I would I could come face to face with the King--surely he is
a man who might be persuaded of the truth of things if he were not so
surrounded by frivolous, wrong, and wanton counsellors."

"I believe," answered John Hampden, "that His Majesty rooteth his
pretences so firmly in Divine Right--(being besides upheld in this by
all the clergy), that he would consider it blasphemy to abate one jot
of his claims. See this pass we are come to, Mr. Cromwell; we deal with
a man with whom no compromise is possible--ask Mr. Pym, who tried
to serve him--he will excuse himself, he will shift and turn, but he
will never give way, and when he is most quiet he will always break
his tranquillity with some monstrous imprudence, as this late forcing
of the Archbishop's prayer book on the Scots, thereby provoking a
peaceable nation into rebellion."

Mr. Cromwell turned up the collar of his cloak, for the cold dampness
of the night was increasing, and he was liable to rheumatism. He made
no answer, and Mr. Hampden, glancing expectantly at his thoughtful
face, repeated his query--

"What will the King do now?"

"What can he do?" replied the Member for Cambridge. "Strafford falleth
through serving him, and likely enough came to London on promise of the
King's protection. The King will stand by Strafford."

"Then it will remain to be seen which is the stronger--Parliament or
His Majesty," said John Hampden, and he sighed as if he foresaw ahead
a long and bitter struggle. "I tell thee this," he added, with an
earnestness almost sad, "that if the people are disappointed of justice
on my lord, the King is not safe in his own capital, nor yet the Queen.
Thou hast observed, Mr. Cromwell, how well hated the Queen is?"

"A Papist and a Frenchwoman," replied the other, "how could she
hope for English loyalty? And she is meddling--of all things the
English hate a meddling woman. Her ways might do well in France, but
here we like them not. I am sorry for my Lady Strafford," he added
irrelevantly, and with a strange note of tenderness in his rough voice.
"What are all these issues to her? Yet she must suffer for them. I saw
her yesterday, and she was as still for terror as a chased deer fallen
spent of breath, and yet had the courage to move and speak with pride,
poor gentlewoman!"

"We shall see many piteous things before England be tranquil," returned
Mr. Hampden sadly. "Chief among them this discomfiture of patient
women. The Lord support them."

They were now at Mr. Cromwell's door.

"Wilt thou come up, my cousin?" he asked, laying a detaining hand on
the other's damp coat sleeve.

"This evening hold me excused," answered Mr. Hampden. "I have some
country gentlemen at my entertainment, and I would not disappoint them."

So they parted as quietly as if this momentous day had held nothing
of note, and Mr. Cromwell went up to his modest chamber and lit the
candles and placed them on a writing-table which held a Bible among
the quills and papers. He stood for a while thoughtfully; he had flung
off his mantle and his hat, and his well-made, strong figure showed
erect in a plain, rather ill-cut, suit of dark green cloth, his band
and cuffs were of linen, and there was no single ornament nor an inch
of lace about his whole attire; indeed, his lack of the ordinary
elegancies of a gentleman's costume would have seemed to some an
affectation, and to all a sure indication that he had now definitely
joined the increasingly powerful Puritan party which had set itself
to destroy every vestige of ornament in England--from Bishops to lace
handkerchiefs, as their opponents sneeringly remarked. These enemies
were not, perhaps, in a humour for sneering to-night when the chief of
them lay straightened between prison walls. So thought Mr. Cromwell as
he stood thoughtfully before the little table that bore the Bible, and
looked down on the closed covers.

Above the table hung a mirror; the glass was old and cracked, and
into the frame were stuck various papers which showed how the present
possessor of the room disregarded the original use of the mirror.
Sufficient of the glass, however, remained unobscured to reflect the
head and shoulders of Oliver Cromwell, and this reflection, with the
dark background and the blurred surface of the glass, was like a fine
portrait, and by reason of the absolute consciousness of the man, like
a portrait of his soul as well as of his features.

His expression was at once fierce and tender and deeply thoughtful;
the brow, so carelessly shaded by the disordered brown hair, was free
from any lines, the grey eyes seemed as if they looked curiously into
the future, the lips were lightly set together, and seemed as if they
might at any minute quiver into speech, the line of his jaw and cheek
had a look of serene fierceness, like the noble idea of strength given
by the jaw of a lion.

So he looked, reflected in the old mirror and lit by the two common
candles, and if one had suddenly glanced over his shoulder into the
glass and seen that face, they would have thought they looked at a
painting of abstract qualities, not at a compound human being, at
this moment so utterly was his rugged look of strength and fortitude
spiritualized by the radiance of the soul within.

Outside the rain fell and there was no sound but the drip of the drops
on the sill; the great city was silent after the tumult of the day,
most people were eating, sleeping, going their ways as if there was
no King humiliated utterly, raging in his chamber; no Queen weeping
among her priests; no great man in prison writing to his wife: "Hold up
your heart, look to the children and your house, and at last, by God's
good pleasure, we shall have our deliverance"; no quiet gentleman from
Huntingdon standing in a quiet room and meditating things that would
change this city and this land as it had not been changed since it bore
the yoke of kingship.

To the many, even to Mr. Pym and Mr. Hampden, the fall of Strafford
might seem a tremendous thing, a shrewd blow against tyranny and a
daring act, but to this younger man, with his deeper, more mystical,
religious fervour, his practical and immeasurable courage, the sweeping
aside of the King's favourite was but the first of many acts that would
utterly alter the face of England.

Strafford might have gone, but there were other things to go--Papistry,
the Star Chamber, ship money, and other civil wrongs, bishops, prayer
books, church ornaments and choirs, and other pollutions of the
pure faith of Christ, and there was a burning, blazing ideal to be
followed--the ideal of what might be made of England in moral worth, in
civic liberty, in that domestic dignity and foreign power that had made
the reign of Elizabeth Tudor splendid throughout the world.

This might be done; but how was a poor country gentleman, untrained in
diplomacy or war, to accomplish it?

How dare he presume that he was meant to accomplish it?

He moved from the table abruptly and, going to the window, rested his
head against the frame and stared through the soiled panes into the
dark street where the lights glimmered sparsely at long intervals in
the heavy winter air.

He recalled and clung to the memory of the vision that he had had in
the old barn outside St. Ives; the certainty that he was in covenant
with the Lord to do the Lord's work in England had pierced his soul
with the same sharpness as a dagger might pierce the flesh. At times
the remembered glamour faded, weariness, misgivings, would cloud
the glorious conviction--yet deep-rooted in his noble spirit it
remained. God had spoken to him and he was to do God's works,--but the
practical humanity in him, the strong English sense and sound judgment
demanded--how?

He was of full middle age and unaccomplished in anything save farming
and such knowledge of the law as less than a year's training could give
him. His education had been the usual education of a gentleman, but he
had less learning than most, for his college days had been short, owing
to the death of his father and the sudden call to responsibilities, and
he had absolutely no love for any of the arts and sciences. How then
was he equipped to combat the immense powers arrayed against him--the
King, the Church, immemorial tradition, custom, usage, the weight of
aristocracy, the example of Europe--for his design, though yet vague,
was to create in England a constitution for Church and State for which
he could see no pattern anywhere within the world.

He felt no greatness in himself, he was even doubtful of his own
capacity. Though he was already much hearkened to, principally, he
thought, by reason of his connexion with Hampden and the vast number of
relations he had in the House, still, on the few occasions when he had
spoken in public, as when he had taken up the cause of the Fen people
in the late question of the drainage scheme, his ardour and impetuosity
had gone far to spoil his cause, and he was well behind, in political
weight and party influence, such men as Pym and Hampden and even
Falkland and Hyde, Holles and Haselrig, Culpeper and Strode.

Yet with trumpet rhythm there beat on his brain--"Something to do and
I to do it! Work to be done and I to accomplish it! Something to be
gained and I to gain it! The Lord's battles to be fought and I to fight
them!"

He moved from the window; the room was cold and the candles burnt with
a tranquil frosty light. Mr. Cromwell went to the great book lying
between the two plain brass sticks, the only book he ever read, the
book in which, to him, was comprised the whole of life and all we know
of the earth, of hell, of heaven.

He opened the Bible at random; the thick leaves fell back at the
psalms, and his passionate grey eyes fell on a sentence that he read
aloud with a deep note of triumph in his heavy masculine voice--

"_O help us against the enemy; for vain is the help of man. Through
God we shall do great acts: and it is he that shall tread down our
enemies._"

"Through ... _God_" repeated Mr. Cromwell, "we ... shall do ... _great_
acts."

He put his hand to the plain little sword at his side, that had
hitherto been of no use save to give evidence of his gentility on
market days at Huntingdon and Ely.... "_Great_ acts," he repeated again.

As he stood so, his right hand crossed to his sword, his left resting
on the open Bible, his chin sunk on to his breast and his whole face
softened and veiled with thought, he was not conscious of the humble
room, the patter of the rain, the two coarse candles poorly dispelling
the darkness. He was only aware of a sudden access of power, a revival
of the burning sensation that had come to him in the old barn perfumed
with hay at St. Ives.

His doubts and confusions, misgivings and fears, vanished, this inner
conviction and power seemed sufficient to combat all the foes concealed
in the quiet city--all, even to the King himself....

He went to his knees as swiftly as if smitten into that attitude.

"Through God," he whispered, "we shall do _great_ acts."

He hid his strong face in his strong hands and prayed.



CHAPTER VI

THE KING FAILS


November had turned to May and my Lord Strafford's public agony was
over; he lay in the Tower a condemned man.

For seventeen days had he, in this most momentous trial of his,
defended himself, unaided, against thirteen accusers who relieved
each other, and with such skill that his impeachment was like to have
miscarried; but the Commons were not so to be baulked.

They dare not let Strafford escape them; they feared an Irish army, a
French army, they feared the desperate King would dissolve them, they
feared another gunpowder plot, and twice, on a cracking of the floor,
fled their Chamber. All fears, all anxieties, all animosities were at
their sharpest edge; the crowds in the streets demanded the blood of
Strafford, and did not pause to add that if they were disappointed they
would not hesitate to satisfy themselves with more exalted victims.

A Bill of attainder against my lord was brought forward and hurried
through Parliament. Pym and Hampden opposed it, but popular fear
and popular rage were stronger than they, and there was no hope for
Strafford save in the master whom he was condemned for serving.
He wrote to the King, urging him to pass the Bill for the sake of
England's peace.

London became more and more exasperated; rumours flew thick: The King's
son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, was coming with an army; money was
being sent from the French King; the Irish, that ancient nightmare,
were to be let loose; the Queen had raised a troop to attack the Keys
of the Kingdom and set my lord free by force from the Tower.

The Bill was passed, and on a May morning sent up for the King's assent.

He had, a week before, sent a message to the Lords, beseeching them not
to press upon his conscience on which he could not condemn his minister.

But the appeal had failed; Lords, Commons, and people all waited
eagerly, angrily, threateningly, for the King's assent.

He asked a day to consider; he sent for three bishops and, in great
agony of mind, asked their ghostly counsel. Usher and Juxon told him
Strafford was innocent and that he should not sign. Williams bid him
bow to the opinion of the judges, and bade him listen to the thunderous
tumult at his gates. London was roused, he said, and would not be
pacified until my lord's head fell on Tower Hill.

So the hideous day wore on to evening, and the King had not signed.

As the delay continued, the suspense and agitation in the city become
almost unbearable, and it took all the efforts of the royal guards to
hold the gates of the Palace.

The King was locked into his private cabinet, and even the Queen had
not seen him since noon.

Henriette Marie had passed the earlier part of the day with her younger
children. She had made several vain attempts to see the King and she
had denied herself to all, even to Lady Strafford and her frantic
supplications.

She had many agents continually employed, and during the day they came
to her and reported upon the feeling in the Houses, in the city, and in
the streets.

She saw, from these advices, that the King's situation was little
better than desperate. She saw another thing--_there was not, at that
moment, sufficient force available in the capital to control the
multitude_. They were, in fact, at the mercy of the populace.

When the haze of spring twilight began to fall over the stocks and
lilies, violets and pinks in the gardens sloping to the river, still
flashing in the sinking sun, and the first breaths of evening were
wafted through the open windows of the Palace, delicious with the
perfume of these beds of sweets, the Queen went herself and alone to
the cabinet where the King kept his anguished vigil.

For a while he would not open, even to the sound of her voice, but
after she had waited there a little, like a supplicant, she heard his
step, the key was turned, and he admitted her. She entered swiftly
and flung herself at his feet, as she had done at their first meeting
nearly twenty years ago, when he had lifted her young loveliness to his
heart, there to for ever remain.

Now she was a worn woman, her beauty prematurely obscured by
distresses, and he was far different from the radiant cavalier who had
welcomed her to England, but the fire of love lit then in the heart of
each had not abated; even now, in the midst of his misery of mind, he
raised her up as tenderly, as reverently, as when she had first come to
him.

"Mary," he said brokenly, "Mary."

He kissed her cold cheek as he drew her to his shoulder, and she felt
his tears.

But her mood was not one of weeping; her frail figure, her delicate
features, were alert and quivering with energy; her large vivid eyes
glanced eagerly round the room. On the King's private black and gold
Chinese bureau lay the warrant for my Lord Strafford's execution. So
hasty and resolved was the Parliament, also, perhaps, so confident of
their power to force the King's assent, that the warrant had been sent
before the royal consent had been given to the Bill.

The Queen drew herself away from Charles and rested her glance on him.
She wore a white gown enriched with silver damask flowers, her face,
too, was colourless save for a feverish flush under her eyes, and the
long-admired black locks hung neglected and disarranged over her deep
lace collar. She was a sorrowful and reproachful figure as she stood
regarding him so intently.

The King's white sick face, too, wore a look of utter suffering, in his
narrowed eyes was a bitterness beyond sorrow.

"Sire," said the Queen in a formal tone, "you shut yourself up here
when it would more befit you to come forth and face what must be
faced." She set her teeth, "The people are at the very gates."

Charles took a step back against the heavy brocaded hangings of the
wall.

"I will not sign--no--I will not assent," he muttered.

"Will not? Will not?" cried the Queen. "Charles, thou hast no choice."

"Dost thou advise me to do this infamous thing?" answered the King in
a terrible voice. "He is my friend, his peril is through serving me;
and he trusts me, relies on me--that is enough. Even as you came I
had resolved that, not even to save my sacred Crown, would I abandon
Strafford."

"And what of me and my children?" asked the Queen, in a still voice;
"do we come after thy servant? Is thy love for me grown so halting that
I come last?"

The King winced.

"Who would touch thee?" he murmured.

"Even those who, now outside this very palace, cry insults against the
Papist and the Frenchwoman. Charles, I tell thee this is playing on the
edge of a revolution--are we all to go to ruin for Strafford's sake?"

"He went to ruin for mine," replied the King.

"He failed," said the Queen, "and he pays. When we fail, we too will
pay. But this is not our time. The people demand Strafford, and we will
not risk our Crowns and lives by refusing this demand."

"He trusts me," repeated Charles, "and I do love him. He served me
well, he was loyal ... our God help me!... my friend----"

He turned away to hide the uncontrollable tears, and, opening a drawer
in the little Chinese cabinet, fumbled blindly among some papers and
pulled out a letter.

"This is what he wrote me," he faltered. "I have never had one like him
in my service.... Mary ... I cannot let him die."

He sank into a chair and, resting his elbow on the arm of it, dropped
his face into his hand; the other held the letter of my lord written
from the Tower.

The Queen had read this epistle; at the time it had moved her, but now
that sensation of generous pity was dried up in the fierce desire to
save her husband and herself from all the ruin a revolution threatened.
She went up to the King and took the letter from his inert fingers,
and, glancing over it, read aloud a passage--

"'Sir, my consent shall more acquit you herein to God, than all the
world can do besides. To a willing man there is no injury done; and as
by God's grace I forgive all the world with calmness and meekness of
infinite contentment to my dislodging soul, so, sir, to you I can give
the life of this world with all the cheerfulness imaginable, in the
just acknowledgment of your exceeding favours.'--

"Hear!" added the Queen breathlessly, "the man himself does not ask nor
expect this sacrifice of you----"

Charles interrupted.

"Because he is magnanimous, shall I be a slavish coward?"

"He is willing to die," urged the Queen; "he is pleased to give his
life for you----"

"Willing to die? Where is there a man willing to die? There is none
to be found, however old, wretched, or mean. Deceive not thyself,
Strafford is young, strong, full of joy and life--he hath a wife and
children and others dear to him--is it like that he is _willing_ to
die?"

The Queen's eyes did not sink before the miserable reproach in her
husband's gaze.

"Willing or no, he _must_ die," she said firmly. "He must go. Stand not
in the way of his fate."

"He shall not die through me," said Charles, with a bitter doggedness.
"Am I never to sleep sound again for thinking of how I abandoned this
man? He came to London, Mary, on our promise of protection."

"We have done what we could," returned Henriette Marie, unmoved, "and
now we can do no more."

"I will not," said the King, as if repeating the words gave him
strength. "I will not. Do they want everything I love--first
Buckingham--now Strafford----"

"Then me," flashed the Queen. "Think of that, if you think of your wife
at all."

This reproach was so undeserved as to be grotesque. In all the King's
concerns, from the most important to the most foolish, she had always
come foremost, and this was the first occasion on which he had not
absolutely thrown himself on her judgment and bowed to her desires.

Some such reflection must have crossed his tortured mind.

"You always disliked Strafford," was all he said.

"No," said the Queen vehemently, as if she disclaimed some shameful
thing. "No, never, and I would have saved him. Do not take me to be so
mean and creeping a creature as to counsel you pass this Bill because I
hate my lord."

She was justified in her defence; she had been jealous of the powerful
minister, and she had never personally liked him, but it was not for
vengeance or malice that she urged the King to abandon Strafford, but
because she was afraid of that power which asked for his death, and
because her tyrannical royal pride detested the thought that she and
hers should be in an instant's danger for the sake of a subject. And
when she saw her husband, for the first time since their marriage, so
absorbed in anguished thought as to be scarcely aware of her presence,
as to be forgetful of her and her children, she felt jealous of this
other influence that seemed to defy hers, and a fierceness that was
akin to cruelty touched her desperation.

"Who is this man that I should be endangered for his sake?" she cried,
after she had in vain waited for the King to break his dismal silence.

"He is my friend," muttered Charles.

"Save him then, or share his fate," returned his wife bitterly. "As for
me, I will go to my own country, and there find the protection that you
cannot give me."

Charles sprang up and faced her.

"Mary, what is this? What do you speak of?" he cried in a distracted
voice, and holding out to her his irresolute hands.

The Queen took advantage of this sudden weakening of his silent
defences; her whole manner changed. She went up to him softly, took his
hands in hers, and, raising to him a face pale and pleading, broke out
into eager and humble entreaties.

"My Charles, let him go--let us be happy again--do not, for this
scruple, risk everything! My dear, give way--it must be--we are in
danger--oh, listen to me!"

He stared at her with eyes clouded with suffering.

"Couldst thou but put this eloquence on the other side I might be a
happier man," he said. "Strengthen my conscience, do not weaken it."

His tone was as pleading as hers had been, but she perceived that he
was still obdurate on the main part of her entreaty, and she slipped
from his clasp and knelt at his feet in a genuine passion of tears.

"You have had the last of me!" she sobbed. "I will not stay where
neither my dignity nor my life is safe. Keep Strafford and let me go!"

The King turned away with feeble and unsteady steps, and going to the
window pulled aside the olive velvet curtains.

The twilight had fallen and the sky was pale to colourlessness; low on
the horizon, beyond the river, sombre banks of clouds were rising, and
at the edge of them, floating free in the purity of the sky, was the
evening star, sparkling with the frosty light of Northern climes.

The King fixed his eyes on this star, but without hope of comfort; cold
and disdainful seemed star and heavens, and God pitiless and very far
away behind the storm-clouds.

There was no command, no excuse, no reproof for him from on High; in
his own heart the decision must be and now--at once--within the next
hour. At that moment life seemed unutterably hateful to the King;
everything in the world, even the figure of his wife, he viewed with a
touch of sick disgust; the taint of what he was about to do was already
over him, his life was already stained with baseness, his happiness
corrupted.

He knew, as he stared at the icy star that was already being veiled
by the on-rushing vapours of the rain-cloud, that he would abandon
Strafford.

Though he knew that it would be better to be that man in the Tower,
against whose ardent life the decree had gone forth, than himself in
his palace, secure by the sacrifice of that faithful servant; though he
knew that in the bloody grave of his betrayed friend would be entombed
for ever his own tranquillity and peace of mind, yet he also knew
that it was not in him to stand firm against those inexorable ones
who demanded Strafford, against the tears and reproaches of his wife,
against his own inner fears and weaknesses which whispered to him dread
and terror of these hateful Parliament men and of this mutinous city of
London.

In his heart he had always known that he would fail Strafford if it
ever came to a sharp issue, yea, he had known it when he urged his
minister to come from York, and that made this moment the more awful,
that his secret weakness, which he had never admitted to himself, was
forced into life.

He would forsake Strafford to buy the safety of his Crown, his family,
his person, and Strafford would forgive him (he could picture the look
of incredulous pity on the condemned man's dark face when the sentence
was read to him), and the Parliament would scorn him.

Through the entanglement of his bitter and humiliating reflections, he
became aware of the sound of the persistent, low sobbing of the Queen
in the darkening room behind him, and he turned, letting the curtains
fall together over the fading heavens, the brightening star, the
oncoming storm.

The scanty light that now filled the chamber was only enough to let him
discern the white blur of his wife's figure as she knelt before one of
the brocade chairs with her dark head lost in the shadows and her hands
upraised in a startling position of prayer.

Her sobs, even and continuous as the breaths of a peaceful sleeper,
filled the rich chamber, the splendours of which were now gloomed over
with shadow, with sorrow.

Presently, as he watched her, and as he listened, the grim sharpness of
his anguish was melted into a weak grief at her distress; his impotency
to protect her from tears became his main torment.

"Mary," he said, "Mary--it is over--think no more of it--go to bed and
sleep in peace. London shall be content to-night."

He stumbled towards her, and she rose up swiftly and straightly,
holding her rag of wet white handkerchief to her wet white face.

"Ah, Charles!" she exclaimed, her voice thick from her weeping.

She held out her arms, he took her to his heart and bowed his shamed
head on her shoulder; but after a very little while he put her away.

"Leave me now!"

"This thing must be done at once--to-night--I cannot tell how long they
can hold the gates----"

"I must go out," said Charles, with utmost weariness; "get me a light,
my dear, my beloved."

She found the flint and tinder and, with deftness and expedition, lit
the lamp of crystal and silver gilt which stood on the King's private
bureau.

As the soft, gracious flame illumined the room, the King, who was
leaning against the tapestry like a sick man, looked at once towards
the fatal paper and beside it the pen and ink dish ready.

The Queen stood waiting; her face was all blotted and swollen with
weeping; she looked a frail and piteous figure; her youth seemed
suddenly in one day dead, and her beauty already a thing of yesterday.

"It is well I love thee," said Charles, "otherwise what I do would make
hell for me. Oh, if I had _not_ loved thee, never, never would I have
done this thing!"

"We shall forget it," answered the Queen, "and we shall live," she
added, straining her hoarse voice to a note of passion, "to avenge
ourselves."

She spoke to a man of a nature absolutely unforgiving, and at this
moment her mention of vengeance came like comfort to his anguish and
palliation of his baseness.

"I will never forget, I will never pardon," he swore, lifting up his
hand towards heaven. "Never, never shall there be peace between me and
Parliament until this shame is covered over with blood."

He snatched up the warrant with trembling hand.

"Send some lords to me," he cried. "I cannot sign this myself--get it
done--bring this most hateful day to an end!"

He sank into the chair on which her tears had fallen, and stared at the
paper clutched in his fingers as if it was a sight of horror.

Henriette Marie hastened away to tell the waiting deputies of the
Houses that the King would pass the Bill, and as she went she heard
a cry intense enough to have carried to the Tower where my lord sat
waiting the news of his fate.

"Oh, Strafford! Strafford! my friend!"



CHAPTER VII

AUTUMN, 1641


"Things go too far and too fast for me, and though men speak of the
progress we make, to me it seemeth more like a progress into calamities
unspeakable."

The young man who spoke leant against the dark-blue and gold diapered
wall of the antechamber to the House of Commons, in Westminster Hall;
members and their friends were passing to and fro; in a few days
the memorable and triumphant session would adjourn. The King was
in Scotland, employed, as the Parliament well knew, in one of his
innumerable intrigues, this time an endeavour to bring a Northern army
into London. The Scots, since the imperfect peace he had patched with
them, remained his chief hope. Mr. Hampden was in Edinburgh watching
him, but Mr. Pym remained in London, the mainspring of the popular
party.

It was late August of the year my Lord Strafford ("putting off my
doublet as cheerfully now as I ever did when I went to my bed," he had
said), had walked to his death on Tower Hill. Archbishop Laud was a
prisoner, and the King had given his consent to a series of Acts which
swept away those grievances which the people had complained of, and,
most momentous of all, he had passed a law by which it was impossible
for him to dissolve Parliament without its own consent.

Therefore it might seem that affairs had never been so bright and
hopeful for the leaders of the reforming party, and yet this young
gentleman, leaning against the wall and staring at the pool of
sunlight the Gothic window cast at his feet, spoke in a tone of
melancholy and foreboding.

He had always been a close follower and friend of Pym and Hampden,
and always ardent for the public good--one of the keen, swift spirits
whose direct courage had helped the House to triumph, but now he stood
dejected and rather in the attitude of one who has suffered defeat.

His companion, who was but a few years older, regarded him with a
thoughtful air, then glanced dubiously at the crowds which filled the
chamber and from which they, in the corner by the window, stood a
little apart.

"I take your meaning," he replied, after a considerable pause. "I see
a bigger cleavage between King and people than I, for one, ever meant
there to be, and prospects of a division in this nation which will be a
long while healing."

He bent his gaze on the other side of the chamber where Mr. Pym and Mr.
Cromwell were talking loudly and at great length together.

If any casual observer had looked in at this assembly, assuredly it
would have been this man by the window at whom they would have glanced
longest and oftenest.

His appearance would have been noticeable in any gathering, for it was
one of the most unusual beauty and charm.

He was no more than thirty years of age, and the delicate smoothness
of his countenance was such as belongs to even earlier years, and gave
him, indeed, an air of almost feminine refinement and gentleness; his
long love-locks were pale brown, his heavy-lidded eyes of a soft and
changeable grey, and the expression of his lips, set firmly under the
slight shade of the fashionable moustaches, was one of great sweetness.

The whole expression of his face was a tenderness and purity seldom
seen in masculine traits; yet in no way did he appear weak, and his
bearing showed energy and resolution.

His dress, of an olive green, was carefully enriched with rough gold
embroidery, and his linen, laces, and other appointments were of a
finer quality than those worn by the other gentlemen there.

Such was Lucius Carey, my Lord Viscount Falkland, one of the noblest,
in degree and soul, of those who had combined to curb and confine the
tyranny of the King.

His companion was Mr. Edward Hyde, an ordinary looking blonde
gentleman, inclined to stoutness, and a prominent member of the more
moderate section of the dominant Commons.

He followed the direction of the Viscount's gaze and remarked, in a low
tone--

"Those two are getting matters very much into their own hands, and Mr.
Cromwell, at least, is too extreme."

"What more do they want?" asked my Lord Falkland. "The King hath
redressed the grievances we laboured under. They strained the very
utmost of the law (nay, more than the law) on the Earl of Strafford,
and to push matters further smacks of disloyalty to His Majesty."

"My Lord," answered Mr. Hyde firmly, "reformers are ever apt to run a
headlong course, and some excesses must be excused those who have so
laboured at the general good----"

"Excesses?" answered my lord, flushing a little. "I am still an
Anglican, by the grace of God, and when I see altars dragged from
their places, rood screens smashed, all pictures, images, and carvings
destroyed in our churches until God's houses look as if they were the
poor remnants of a besieged city,--when I know that this is by order of
Parliament, then methinks it seemeth as if violence had taken the place
of zeal."

"Neither do these things please me," answered Mr. Hyde, "but the dams
are broken and there are swift tides running in all directions. And who
is to stem them?"

"Or who," asked my lord sadly, "to guide them into proper channels? Not
your 'root and branch men,' who would sweep every bishop and every
prayer book out of the land. Not by such intolerance or bigotry, Mr.
Hyde, are we to gain peace and liberty."

"Moderate counsels," returned the other, "own but a weak voice in these
bitter savoured times. It is such as this Oliver Cromwell, with their
loud rude speech, who are hearkened to."

"I only half like this noisy Mr. Cromwell," said my lord. "He hath
sprung very suddenly into notice, and seemeth to have, on an instant,
gained much authority with Mr. Pym and Mr. Hampden."

At this moment the object of their speech turned his head and looked at
them as if he had heard his own name. Lord Falkland smiled at him and
made a little gesture of beckoning.

Mr. Cromwell instantly left his friends and came over to the window,
where he stood in the gold flush of sunshine and looked keenly at the
two young aristocrats.

"More plots, eh," he asked pleasantly.

"More talk only, sir," smiled the Viscount.

Mr. Cromwell laid his heavy muscular hand on my lord's arm.

"Thou art worthy," he remarked; "but what shall I say of thee?" his
narrowed grey eyes rested on Mr. Hyde's florid face. "Thou art he who
bloweth neither hot nor cold."

"I am like to blow hot enough, I think," returned Mr. Hyde, "unless
thou blow more cold."

"Wherein have I vexed thee?" asked Oliver Cromwell, with a pleasantness
that might have covered contempt.

"Your party is too extreme, sir," said the Viscount earnestly. "You
press too hard upon the weakness of His Majesty. What we set out
to gain hath been gained and safeguarded by law. You should now go
moderately, and, from what I know of your councils, you do not propose
moderation."

Mr. Cromwell's face hardened into heavy, almost lowering, lines.

"So you, too, slacken!" he exclaimed. "You would join those who rise up
against us! Fie, my lord, I had better hopes."

"Mr. Cromwell," returned the Viscount, "we have been long together on
the same road; but if your mind is what I do think it to be, then here
we come to a parting, and many Christian gentlemen will follow my way."

Oliver Cromwell regarded him with intense keenness.

"What do you think my mind to be?" he demanded.

"I think you rush forward to utterly destroy the Anglican Church and to
so limit the King's authority that he is no more than a show piece in
the realm."

"Maybe that and maybe more than that," returned Mr. Cromwell. "Even as
the Lord directeth: 'He shall send down from on high to fetch me and
shall take me out of many waters.' I stand here, a poor instrument,
waiting His will."

This answer bore the fervent and ambiguous character that Lord Falkland
had noticed in this gentleman's speeches, and which might be due either
to enthusiasm or guile, and which was, at least, difficult to answer.

"You run too much against the King," said Mr. Hyde, "and against the
Church of England. Our aim was to clear her of abuses, not to destroy
her."

"Our aim, Mr. Hyde?" interrupted the Member for Cambridge keenly. "Were
our aims ever the same, from the very first? I saw one thing, you
another; but trouble me not now with this vain discourse," he added,
with a note of great strength in his hoarse voice, "when I know you are
in communication with His Majesty and but seek an opportunity to leave
us."

Edward Hyde flushed, but answered at once and with pride.

"I make no secret of it that, if the Parliament forget all duty to the
King, I shall not."

"Are you afraid?" asked Mr. Cromwell, with more sadness than contempt.
"Or do you look for promotion and honours from His Majesty? There is
no satisfaction in such glory, 'but hope thou in the Lord and He shall
promote thee, that thou shall possess the land; when the ungodly shall
perish, thou shalt see it.'"

"You do us wrong!" exclaimed Lord Falkland. "We hold to loyalty; we
think of that and not of base rewards."

"Loyalty!" exclaimed Mr. Cromwell vehemently. "We own loyalty to One
higher than the King, yet what saith St. Paul: 'See then that ye walk
circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, because the days are evil.
Wherefore be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord
is.' Therefore we go not definitely against His Majesty, but rather
wait, hoping still for peaceable issues and fair days, yet abating
nothing of our just demands nor of our high hopes."

"Go your ways as you see them set clear before you," returned the
Viscount; "but as for me, all is confusion and I have begun to ponder
many things."

"'A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,'" said the Puritan
firmly, "and such can be of no use to us. Go serve the King and take
ten thousand with you, and still we stand the stronger."

Mr. Hyde's personal dislike of the speaker, as well as his loyalty and
conservative principles, spurred him into a hot answer.

"Do you then admit you do not serve the King?" he asked. "Are we to
hear open rebellion?"

"God knoweth what we shall hear and what we shall see," said Mr.
Cromwell grimly. "There will be more wonders abroad than thy wits will
be able to cope with, methinks, Mr. Hyde."

"My wits stand firm," smiled that gentleman, "and my faith is uncorrupt
and my sword is practised."

"The sword!" repeated Oliver Cromwell, putting his hand slowly on the
plain little weapon by his side. "Speak not of the sword! Englishmen
have not, sir, come to that, and will not, unless they be forced."

"Yet," said Lord Falkland quietly, "do you not perceive that by your
actions you provoke the possibilities of bloodshed? Already the Lords
have fallen away from you--the King hath many friends even among
the Commons, and they are not less resolute, less courageous, less
convinced of the justice of their desires than you yourself--how then
are these divided parties to be brought together unless a temperate
action and a mild counsel be employed? The King hath held his
hand--_sir, hold yours_."

With these words, which he uttered in a stately fashion and almost in
the tone of a warning, the young lord, taking Mr. Hyde by the arm, was
turning away, but Oliver Cromwell, with an earnest gesture, caught his
hand.

"Lucius Carey, stay thou with us," he said.

Lord Falkland let his slight hand remain in the Puritan's powerful
grasp, and turned his serene, mournful eyes on to the older man's
stern, eloquent face.

"Mr. Cromwell," he replied, "believe me honest as yourself. You left
plenty and comfort for this toilsome business of Parliament, and I also
put some ease by that I might do a little service here. My cause is
your cause, the cause of liberty. I despise the courtier and hate the
tyrant, but I believe in the old creeds, too, Mr. Cromwell, and that
the King is as like to save us as any other gentleman. Therefore, if
henceforth you see little of me, believe that I obey my conscience as
you do follow yours."

Mr. Cromwell released his hand and said no other word.

"A good night," smiled Lord Falkland, and, raising his beaver, left
Westminster Hall with Edward Hyde.

Lord Essex came up to the window, and to him Oliver Cromwell turned
sharply.

"There go two who will join the King's party," he said bluntly,
pointing after the two Cavaliers.

"They have long been of that mind," replied Lord Essex dryly. "Mr. Hyde
goeth to seek advancement and my lord because he is tender towards the
clergy."

"I would have kept my lord," remarked Mr. Cromwell, with a touch of
wistfulness in his tone. "He is a goodly youth and a brave, and hath
too fair a soul to join with idolators and Papists."

Meanwhile Lord Falkland, having parted from Mr. Hyde, was walking
along the river-bank, where an uneven row of houses edged the gardens
of Northumberland House, Whitehall, and the estates of the Buckingham
family.

The intense disquiet that agitated the country did not show itself
here: barges and sailing vessels went peacefully past on the brown
tide, urchins played in the mud, boatmen clustered round the steps and
clamoured for fares, at some house near by a concert of music was being
performed, and outside on the cobbles the barefoot children danced.

One or two gallants escorting ladies masked from the weather strolled
by, and over all was the peaceful glow of the summer sunset hour.

The scene was thrice familiar to Lord Falkland, but his sensitive soul
and quick eye were alive to every detail of the street, the people, and
the river.

He loved England, he loved London and the crooked river, built
over with crooked houses, from which rose the churches with the
Gothic towers or lead cupolas; but to-night this love made him feel
melancholy. He had a premonition that terror and discord would descend
on the beloved city, on the beloved land, and that he would be able to
avail nothing against those relentless forces of which Mr. Cromwell was
typical, and which seemed to be sweeping him on to tumult and strife.

He had left all the delights of his wealthy retirement--his dear
family, his dear friends, and his dear literature--that he might help
his country in the pass to which she had come.

And now he had himself arrived at a pass and must decide whether he
would remain with the party by which he had so far stood, or remain
loyal to the ancient Church and the ancient constitution which his
fathers had served and defended.

He paused in his walk when he reached Whitehall stairs, and turned to
look at the splendid new palace as it rose above the gardens and the
houses.

It was a very gorgeous sunset: gold and tawny, scarlet and crimson were
flung out across the purple west like great banners unfolded; in each
window-glass a blot of gold glittered amazingly; gold lay in every
little wrinkle in the surface of the river and on the patched canvas of
the ships; from the sea a wind was blowing, and in the breath of it the
heat of the summer day died.

My Lord Falkland lifted his eyes from the palace to the magnificence
of the heavens and his sadness increased upon him; when presently
he looked to earth again he was aware of a small child crying on a
doorstep over some tremendous woe.

He took some dried plums and a sixpence from his pocket (he usually had
sweetmeats about him, having many children of his acquaintance) and
gave them to the boy. Then he took a small brown volume of Virgil from
his pocket, but perceiving it to be too dark to read, he called a pair
of oars and was rowed to Chelsea Reaches to gain the sweeter air of the
country and to have leisure on the bosom of the river and under the
flaming sky to deal with the perplexing thoughts that vexed his noble
mind.



CHAPTER VIII

THE NEWS FROM IRELAND


Mr. Cromwell was in his chamber writing letters; it was a few weeks
before the expected return of the King and the opening of Parliament,
and the Member for Cambridge had come up to London early to confer
with Mr. Pym and other leaders of the popular party on the so-called
Remonstrance, otherwise the exposition of the case against Charles, and
of the hopes and fears and perils of the Parliament, already divided
within its own walls by the standing back or falling aside of men like
Falkland and Hyde.

It was a challenge to the King and to those who supported him, and if
passed would prove a shrewder blow to royalty than even the death of
Strafford.

For the rest, events were, for such a time of unrest, going with
surprising smoothness and quietness for the Parliament; it was now
generally known that the King had failed in his endeavours to bring
down a northern army to overawe Westminster, and though his plots, the
intrigues of the Queen and her Romanist advisers were incessant and
served to keep the Commons in a continual state of watchfulness and
alarm, they had hitherto been fruitless, and Mr. Pym and Mr. Cromwell,
though they might be accounted the strongest opponents of the King, yet
now hoped to bring or force Charles to reason and put the kingdom in
good order without recourse to more rioting or ferment.

Oliver Cromwell, thinking of these things with satisfaction, and having
sealed his letter, rose to light the lamp, for the gloomy October day,
foggy and brown at the brightest, was drawing to a close.

When he had trimmed and lit the lamp, he heard a familiar footstep on
the stairs, and, going swiftly to the door, opened it on John Pym.

"I did not expect thee," said Mr. Cromwell, smiling.

His visitor passed him and, throwing himself into the great chair
fitted with worn leather cushions near the yet unshuttered window,
stared at his friend with such a visible disturbance in his usually
composed and bold features that Mr. Cromwell was surprised into an
exclamation--

"What news is there?"

A grim smile stirred John Pym's pale lips.

"Where hast thou been all this day that thou hast not heard?"

"Here, since midday, and never a breath of news could reach me if some
friend did not bring it."

John Pym put his hand to his forehead; he looked old and ill and more
utterly overmastered by emotion than his colleague had ever before seen
him.

"Evil news, Mr. Pym?" and the energetic Puritan's mind flew to that
centre of mischief, the King and Queen in Scotland.

"Evil news," repeated the older man sombrely, "news that hath set
London in a frenzy. They are running mad in the streets now--news that
will make some swift conclusion here inevitable."

A light that was perhaps as much of pleasurable anticipation and
satisfaction as of regret or anger brightened Mr. Cromwell's eyes as he
answered--

"Tell me--as quick as may be--tell me this grievous thing."

"The full news has not come to hand yet--only a couple of desperate
messengers and this afternoon three more expresses confirming it."

He paused, for his voice was fast breaking under the strain of what he
had to utter.

"The lamp is smoking," he said, to steady himself.

Mr. Cromwell slowly turned down the wick, then Mr. Pym resumed in a
controlled and normal voice.

"There has been a most bloody rising in Ireland. The popish Irish have
risen against the English in Ulster--one of them, O'Neil, hath declared
he holdeth a commission from the King. Mr. Cromwell, the fearful
stories are beyond belief--thousands have been massacred, and the whole
Island is in a welter of barbarous confusion."

A groan of passionate horror and fury broke from Oliver Cromwell; all
the hatred of the Englishman for the Irish, of the Puritan for the
Papist, of the champion of freedom for the King and tyrant stirred in
his heart.

"This is the Queen's doing!" he exclaimed as half London had exclaimed
in the same rage and anguish.

"That is the popular cry," said Mr. Pym; "but we must be above the
popular cries and reason out this thing ourselves. Maybe this Phelim
O'Neil lieth, maybe the Queen hath no hand in this slaying of the
Protestants."

"Canst thou deny," cried Mr. Cromwell, "that she and her priests of
Baal have ever given pernicious advice to the King? Oh, wretched
country that ever had this cursed Frenchwoman set over it!"

"Let the Queen go," said John Pym. "We are not concerned with her, we
cannot strike at her; our business is with the King. Compose thyself--I
am come to confer with thee."

"I cannot so easily be calm," answered Mr. Cromwell, "when I consider
how God's English have been treated--are, at this moment, being
tormented and slain!"

"This is the sowing," returned Mr. Pym grimly. "By and by will come the
harvest."

"May I be there to help gather it!" cried the Member for Cambridge.
"May God preserve me to a little aid in avenging His people."

"The time will come," said John Pym, "'for the eyes of the Lord are
over the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the
face of the Lord is against them that do evil.'"

Oliver Cromwell dropped his chin on his breast, as his fashion was when
deeply moved; but John Pym raised his authoritative face and spoke
again.

"At this moment we must consider how this event is like to bear on the
issues at Westminster. We must be ready. I do not dare to hold the King
responsible for this most horrible work in Ireland, though I fear he
will find it hard to clear his name before the popular eye; but this
much is proven--he had a plot with the Irish gentry to gain Dublin for
himself, and there to raise an army to send against us."

"Aye, the sword," muttered Cromwell, "the power of the sword!"

"Even of that have I come to speak," pursued John Pym. "Thou, sagacious
as thou art, canst see the next move the King will take when he
returneth without the help he hoped for from Scotland?"

The other lifted his fine head quickly.

"He will demand an army for the reconquest of Ireland," he said
briefly. "And as I hope for mercy," he added solemnly, "he shall not
have it!"

"The only army the Parliament will raise will be one under its own
control and officered by its own men," replied John Pym; "but the
struggle will be sharp. We have now such men as Hyde and Falkland
against us, and the King's Episcopalian party gathereth strength in the
House and in the country."

He was silent a while, then he gave a great sigh of mental distress and
physical weariness.

"Is it too late to hope for peace?" he murmured, as if speaking to
himself. "Is it too late?"

"It is too late," blazed out Cromwell, "to trust the King. Too late,
indeed! Unless we wish to wait another Saint Bartholomew--another
Valtelline. It is not so long since this Queen's house had those
damnable murders done on poor Protestants--she who designed that
devilry was a Medici. Was not this woman's mother of that family? And
was not the King's grandmother from that same idolatrous court, and was
she not a wanton Papist? Trust none of them, Mr. Pym, nor Stewart, nor
Bourbon, but listen to the Lord's bidding, even as He commandeth, and
care nothing for any other."

"Thou didst not use to be so hot against the King," said John Pym.

"I did not know his subtle tricks, his shifts, his deceptions, his
lies, his faithlessness, his great unreason. Hath he not given us his
challenge? What did he not write this very month from Scotland? Mindst
thou his words? 'I am constant to the discipline and doctrine of the
Church of England established by Queen Elizabeth and my father, and I
resolve, by the grace of God, to die in the maintenance of it.' And
then he proceedeth to fill up the vacant bishoprics, and with those
very divines against whom we were bringing a charge of treason. Then
what thou hast said, even this moment, of Ireland--tell me not that it
was not his sceptre which was the staff that stirred up this flame! No
more dealings with Charles, Mr. Pym; the time for that is past."

The extraordinary strength and grandeur that emanated from the
speaker's personality, clothing it with that magnificence that is
usually only bestowed by the knowledge of high power or a mighty
station, was impressed on Mr. Pym as never, perhaps, before; and it
flashed into the mind of the bold parliamentary leader that here might
be indeed that champion of great fearlessness, indomitable purpose,
spiritual enthusiasm, and broad views who would soon be necessary to
second him and even to take his place, for he, John Pym, was not young,
and was worn with years of infinite labour. Times, too, had immensely
changed since first he had stepped forward to defend the English
law and English liberties, and in the new, strange, perhaps terrific
epoch coming it might well be that a man would be needed of qualities
different from his own.

Hitherto John Pym had not looked upon Oliver Cromwell as other than
an able and enthusiastic lieutenant; he had ranked him below men of
the intellectual calibre and fine culture of Hampden and Falkland, and
though he had never doubted his willingness in the cause of freedom,
he had not given much thought to his capacity. But lately--when
Cromwell had fired at the King's appointment of the obnoxious priests,
when he had spoken by his side for the exclusion of the bishops from
Parliament, when he had seconded the attack on the Prayer Book--Pym had
noticed in him the gleam of rare and splendid qualities.

And as he looked at him now, a man of homely simplicity in appearance,
yet conveying, by some magic of the spirit, a splendour and a force
such as is found once among tens of thousands, his heart leapt with a
deep inward joy.

"Thou art very fit to challenge the King," he said quietly.

The Calvinist was in no way moved by this.

"I may be an instrument," he said, "but the way is confused and
troubled; we draw near the whirlpool, and unless God make Himself
manifest, how are we to avoid being sucked into destruction?"

He began to pace the room with uneven and agitated steps.

"I would not be the first to draw the sword!" he cried; "but if the
Lord make it law and putteth it into my hands, shall I not strike? Oh,
Mr. Pym, war is an awful thought, and we hang on the edge of dreadful
conclusions; but is this the moment to turn back or pause? 'Teach me,
O Lord, the way of Thy statute, and I will keep it to the end! Give
me understanding and I will keep Thy law; yea, I will keep it with my
whole heart!'"

He paused by the farther wall, resting one hand against the wood
panelling, and with the other wiping his brow and lips with a plain
cambric handkerchief.

John Pym sat motionless in the great arm-chair, leaning forward a
little and looking intently and with a kind of quiet eagerness at the
younger man.

"When I heard this afternoon of the confirmation of this dismal and
lamentable news from Ireland, when I foresaw that the King had now an
excuse to demand an army--then I too thought--God hath spoken, and it
must be the sword."

Oliver Cromwell's whole stout frame trembled, as if responding to some
intense and suppressed emotion.

"England! England!" he muttered, "are we come to have to heal thy hurts
with the bloody steel and the devouring flame? I had hoped differently."

"If the King armeth so must we," said John Pym. "But there is yet some
hope. Hyde and Falkland are now something in the councils of the King,
and he may listen to them."

"My Lord Falkland will do a true man's uttermost," replied Cromwell,
with that sudden tenderness that was as natural to him as his sudden
fierceness. "But will he avail? I have but a mean opinion of Mr. Hyde."

"Neither he nor my Lord Viscount have a grasp bold enough nor an
outlook sure enough for these difficult times. But their advice will
better that of the Queen and the priests, and in them resteth our last
hopes of a peaceable settlement."

As Pym spoke he rose and, going over to Cromwell, grasped him by the
shoulders and looked earnestly into his face. In age there was nearly
twenty years difference between the two men, and the appearance of the
lawyer who had led a studious life in cities was very different from
that of the robust country gentleman; but their look of ardour, of
resolution, of steadfastness was the same, and John Pym's face, marked
with years and faded by ill-health, held the same brightness of a high
purpose as the blunt, fresh features of the younger man, still in the
height and prime of his vigorous strength.

"Thou wilt be a man much needed in the times to come," said Mr. Pym,
"for I think thou hast the gift of fortitude."

Oliver Cromwell did not answer; in his mind's eye he saw that misty day
outside St. Ives, the black river, the black houses, the gnarled and
bent willows, the church spire pointing to an obscure heaven, the flat
bog leading to Erith's Bulwark, beyond--the rude paling--all the common
details of that familiar scene where he had first entered into covenant
with God.

The glory of the vision had faded, and melancholies had taken the place
of that unspeakable joy and wonder; but a faith that never weakened
was always there and sometimes flashed up, as now, into a dazzling
remembrance of that other November day and the promise of the Lord.

"Englishmen such as thee are greatly wanted now," added Mr. Pym after a
little.

Mr. Cromwell suddenly flashed into a smile which had a certain steady
happiness in it, as if he had gained contentment from his momentary
absorption or reverie.

"There are many better than I!" he answered. "Poor reeds, Mr. Pym, but
by binding us together thou mayst make a stout birch for thy purpose!"

He turned and took his hat and mantle from a peg on the wall.

"I will come out with thee," he said, "and see how things go in London."

As the two gentlemen went together down the narrow stairs, Pym, in
a few words, gave his companion the outlines of the next momentous
measure he intended to bring forward at this juncture, when the public
frenzy at the Irish rebellion and the atrocious circumstances of it
would be occupying Parliament as well as people.

"I shall ask that military appointments may be under parliamentary
control, Mr. Cromwell, and that His Majesty take only such advisers as
the nation can approve; also that my Lord of Essex be given the command
of the train bands--under the authority of Parliament, not the King."

"Well dost thou seize the moment!" returned the other, in a tone of
admiration. "Turning even these events of horror into profit for
liberty, methinks thou hast the King so stript of all pretences that he
will scarce be able to find any rag of Popery to cover his bareness."

"Take care," said John Pym, gently laying his hand on his friend's
cuff, "that thou dost not underestimate those forces opposed to thee."

"And thou," replied Cromwell, "that thou dost not underestimate thine
own strength and power."

They came out into the ill-lit street, down which the sleet was
sweeping in icy spears; the close, stale odours of the city encompassed
them, and the bitter damp struck through their mantles and made their
flesh shiver.

"Methinks," said Cromwell, "this dark air is full of portents and heavy
with forebodings. Thou knowest, Mr. Pym, that we stand in a little mean
street, in the cold and darkness, in the midst of a distressed and
oppressed city, yet I tell thee the Lord hath us by the hand and will
lead us yet into the freedom and light of great spaces, there to work
His will."



CHAPTER IX

JOHN PYM AND THE KING


"This is Lord Falkland's advice," said the Queen, "and I do wonder you
should so listen to one who was but lately in the forefront of your
enemies and even now is close with them."

"It is the advice of the moderate men," returned Charles, with a sneer
on the adjective, "and I must listen to them. Patience, my dear, my
beloved. If I could win John Pym it were worth some sacrifice of pride."

"Things run more smoothly in your favour now," retorted Henriette
Marie, "and you have no need for these concessions. Was not our welcome
to London fair enough? And do not your friends in the Lords grow daily?"

"But the party of John Pym groweth daily also," said the King grimly,
"and therefore have I sent for him."

"I do wonder," cried his wife, "that you should stoop to parley with
one whom we both hold in hatred!"

"Do not imagine," replied Charles, with intense bitterness, "that
I shall ever forgive John Pym, whom I have long resolved to punish
fittingly. But if I can make an instrument of him, for his own
humiliation and my gain, surely I will."

They were walking in the gardens of Whitehall. It was still winter, but
of an extraordinary mildness; a pale and soft blue sky showed between
the bare branches, and through the thick carpet of damp brown leaves
the fresh little plants and weeds pushed up shoots of green.

Charles and his wife walked slowly along the damp paths; she was
wrapped carelessly in a black hood and cloak, and her face was
disfigured by a look of annoyance, anxiety, and fatigue.

Her beauty and sweetness seemed to have been lately burnt away by the
angry pride and passions the recent troubles had roused in her; she
was not one to retain either meekness or gaiety in adversity, and she
fretted deeply under what she termed the King's inaction.

Had she been in his place she would have put her fate to the test
before now by some act of violence, and instead of making concession
after concession, as Charles had done, she would have given the call to
arms at the first refusal of the Parliament to do her will or at the
first murmur they made against her fiat.

And now, in her eyes, a humiliation deeper than any yet endured was to
hand, in the shape of the King's proposed interview with John Pym--a
proposal which, as she had guessed, came from Lord Falkland, who was
beginning to attach himself to the Court, and who was, as always,
working sincerely in the interests of concord, a peaceful settlement,
and public security.

As usual, perversity and impatience, frivolity and pride made it
impossible for the Queen to grasp the difficulties of her husband's
position and how those difficulties had been augmented by the hideous
uprisings in Ireland, which continued with all the violence of furious
passions loosened after long restraint.

She said no more, however, for she was not the woman to waste words on
a matter where she was not likely to prevail.

The King too was silent; his feelings against John Pym were no less
bitter than his Queen's hatred of that resolute commoner, and they were
tinged with a dreadful shame and an awful remorse which she did not
feel, for the thought of Pym brought with it the thought of Strafford.

When they came to a little turn in one of the paths they beheld ahead
of them a very pleasant vista of bare but fresh trees, flecked with
sun and covered with splashes and tufts of moss, and on a bench beneath
a slender beech a group of youths who were engaged in shooting arrows
at a target.

Three of the little company were at the first opening of manhood, two
were children. All were unusual in their handsomeness and princely
poise as in the richness of their appointments, and four of them were
distinguished by a darkness of colouring and vividness of expression
commonly associated with the French or Italian, and not likely to be
the passport to popularity in England; the fifth and youngest was a
beautiful, grave child of eight, or so, with bright complexion and
golden auburn hair, who, leaning against the tree, handed to the others
the arrows out of a quiver of gilded leather.

His dress heightened his look of fairness, for it was light blue, and
the sun fell full over him while the others were in shade and darkly
though magnificently attired.

The other child was a lad a year or two older, of no particular beauty,
but of a nimble and sprightly appearance, whose irregular features were
lit by a pair of very handsome, eloquent, black eyes; seated at the
end of the bench, he was at the moment practising his skill at archery
and was tugging at a great bow that was almost too stubborn for his
strength.

The three young men who were gathered round him, directing and
instructing, were obviously brothers; all three of a splendid
presence and all characterized by an air of recklessness, arrogance,
and a certain rude pride, and one was a youth who would have been
distinguished in any company for his extreme handsomeness and his
animated, flamboyant personality.

It was he who, with the quickness that accompanied all his motions,
turned at the first footfall he heard and discerned the King. At the
sight of His Majesty the sport ended, and the young men rose, laughing;
but the fair child, with a certain prim absorption, busied himself in
putting the arrows away, and never looked up from his task.

"The bow is too strong for Charles," said the handsome youth with a
strong foreign accent.

"Get thee a smaller one," answered the King, smiling at his eldest son,
who had cast the bow down with a good-natured grimace.

"Nay, sire," replied the Prince of Wales, "it is a play that groweth
old-fashioned. I will practise the sword."

At this the fair boy glanced up from the quiver he was filling.

"If you will not learn," he said, in a voice serious for his years,
"why waste this time in the essay?"

His brother burst out laughing.

"To pass the hours, thou wise man!"

"I love not to pass the time in fooling," replied the little Duke of
York crossly. "If I had thought you would not learn, I would not have
held the arrows for you."

The young man laughed again, and so did the Queen, but the King said
quietly--

"If James hath a mind to be serious--why, it is no ill thing; you, my
nephews, might without harm be graver."

The three princes took this reproof in smiling silence; they made a
charming picture in the winter sunlight, in their youth and gaiety and
self-confidence and all the graceful airs of pride and rank which well
became their thoughtless age and high position.

Two of them, the Elector Palatine and Prince Maurice, moved on
through the gardens with their two English cousins and the Queen, but
Rupert, the handsome, impatient youth, remained where the King stood
thoughtfully by the bench, beside the fallen bow and the quiver of
arrows little James had flung down in disgust.

"Will Your Majesty see this traitor Pym to-day?" asked Rupert eagerly.

"Yes, here, and soon," replied Charles.

"He should be treading the scaffold planks, not the King's garden!"
cried the Prince.

Charles looked at his nephew with mingled affection and doubt. His own
nature was so totally different from that of the headstrong, violent,
reckless, and rudely arrogant Prince, that he could not altogether love
and trust his nephew; at the same time the young man's eager loyalty,
his warm if imprudent championship of the King's every action, could
not but endear him to Charles, as did his history of misfortune and the
fact that he was the son of the King's only sister, Elizabeth, who had
met with troubles undeserved and bravely borne.

He answered with the bitterness that often now flavoured his speech.

"You will taste trouble in your time, Rupert, if you do not learn that
such words must not be used of those who lead the people."

"I shall never be a king or a ruler," answered Rupert, "and so can keep
a freer tongue. A third son hath no hopes, but few fears, so tantivy to
these crop-eared churls, and may I one day have the hunting of them!"

He cast up his beaver as he spoke and caught it again with a laugh of
sheer light-heartedness.

"A free lance at your service, sire," he cried, and stooping near the
root of the beech he pulled up a root of violet which bore several pale
and small flowers of an exceeding sweetness of perfume.

With quick brown fingers he fastened it into the button-hole of his
dark scarlet doublet.

"Here comes the bold rebel," he said, his loud, deep voice but slightly
lowered.

Charles hastily turned his head.

Lord Falkland and John Pym were approaching. The King seated himself
and pulled his hat over his eyes as if to conceal the confusion in his
countenance when he found himself face to face with the man whom he
regarded as his minister's murderer, and Rupert, leaning against the
tree, folded his arms on his broad chest in an attitude of contempt and
defiance.

The four men made a strange opposition when they came together: the
refined sweetness and gentle bearing of the English noble contrasting
with the coarse beauty and bold demeanour of the foreign prince, and
the severe deportment and graceful figure of the King opposed to the
bent form, simple attire, and quiet carriage of the parliamentary
leader.

Both men had approached this interview with reluctance and a sense of
hopelessness; Pym, because he thought that it would be impossible to
force the King to sincerity, and the King, because he thought it would
be impossible to bend or break Pym.

Charles gave no immediate answer to Lord Falkland's presentation, and
made not the least effort to appear gracious. He and Pym were not
strangers to each other; there had been a time, years ago, when it
had seemed as if the famous lawyer might be one of those advising and
guiding the King.

"Sir," said Charles at length, "I know not why I have chosen to see you
here, save that the day is fair and we can talk here under the sky as
well as under a ceiling."

"Sir," replied John Pym simply, "I have been mewed up so much of late
that I am very glad to be in a pleasant place of green."

"Give us leave, my lord," said Charles, "and you, Rupert, we have to
confer with this our faithful subject."

The King's cold sarcasm was not lost on John Pym, whose lips curved
into a faint quiet smile, nor on the two young men, one of whom heard
with vexation, the other with considerable amusement.

Rupert would, indeed, have liked to have stayed and helped bait
and annoy a man whom he regarded as only fit for the branding, the
mutilation, the pillory, and the fine which had been the fate of
William Prynne a few years earlier, but he bowed to the King's
decision and moved away with the Viscount.

Charles looked after the two figures, alike in youth and comeliness,
dissimilar in everything else, then turned his stern and weary eyes on
John Pym, who stood with his plain hat in his hand, waiting for the
King to speak.

"Mr. Pym," he said abruptly, "there is much disaffection in the House."

"Yes, sire."

"And parties are very sharply divided," added Charles, alluding to the
continued strength of his partisans in the Commons.

John Pym understood him perfectly.

"We have," he answered, "much to contend against, but God hath given us
success."

The King's pale face assumed a look even more hard and bitter than
before; he knew Pym referred to the passing of the Great Remonstrance
which he had carried through the Commons by a narrow majority.

"We?" he exclaimed. "For whom do you speak when you say 'we,' Mr. Pym?"

"For those whom Your Majesty wished to deal with when you sent for me,"
answered the commoner calmly.

"Ah!" cried the King sharply. "You think you can boast to my face of
your power in the Commons!"

"I can boast to any man's face of the power of the English people,"
replied Pym, "and I believe it is that power that Your Majesty wisheth
to reckon with."

Charles was silent, not being able to master his humiliation and pride
sufficiently to speak.

"It is that power Your Majesty _must_ reckon with," added John Pym,
without bravado or insult, but with intense firmness.

The blood stained the King's pallor as if it had been called there by a
blow.

"You have changed your language since last we spoke together, Mr. Pym!"
he cried.

"Much hath changed, sire. There is a broad river with many currents and
many whirlpools flowing now through England, and it hath swept away
many old landmarks. I do not mean discourtesy, but Your Majesty must
have seen for himself the swift changes of the times."

"Yes," replied the King. "I have marked a crop of sedition such as few
sovereigns have been called upon to cope with."

"And the advisers of Your Majesty have ordered and permitted an upset
of the laws such as few peoples have had to endure, and as it is not in
the temper of the English to bear."

A haughty and bitter reply was on Charles' lips, but he remembered that
it was his object to in some way gain Pym and Pym's enormous influence,
and he summoned his slender stock of tact and patience.

"Mr. Pym," he said, with dignity, "we are not here to discuss old
grievances, but rather to prepare balm for present sores and to
consider how to avoid opening of future wounds."

John Pym smiled sadly.

"It is all," he said, "in Your Majesty's hands."

"I think," answered the King, "that very little is left in my hands.
Civil and religious authority is both assailed, and now you would
arrest from me the power of the sword."

"The Parliament should have authority to choose Your Majesty's advisers
and to control the army and the militia," said Pym.

"You try to force me into a corner," replied Charles, in a still voice.
"But you say it is in my hands," he added, with an effort. "Tell me if
there is any means you--and I--may pursue together."

John Pym knew as clearly as if Charles had put it into words that he
was appealing for his help; he stood silent, waiting for the King to
further reveal himself.

"You have had a long and laborious life, Mr. Pym," continued Charles,
fingering the deep lace on his cuffs. "I could give you that ease and
honour that bring repose."

"I am sorry Your Majesty said that," returned the commoner. "You must
know that I am not a second Strafford to leave my party for royal
bribes."

"You dare use that name to me!" blazed Charles, all his wrath and
hatred, shame and pain, suddenly laid bare.

"Why not?" returned Pym steadily. "The death of Thomas Wentworth lieth
not at my door. I opposed his impeachment. I wished his punishment, not
his blood."

"Thou and thou only brought him to the block!" cried Charles.

"Nor I, nor any could have done it if his master had chosen to save
him," said John Pym.

"This is too much!" cried Charles, his lips quivering, his eyes
reddened and flashing. "By my soul, it is too much! Against my will was
this meeting!"

"I also thought it was too late," replied Pym; "but I stand here, ready
to serve Your Majesty if Your Majesty will deal sincerely with your
people."

Charles' natural duplicity came to his aid and supplied the place of
patience; he mastered the wrath and horror caused in him ever by the
mention of Strafford, and answered with sudden and unnatural quietness--

"Mr. Pym," he said, looking not at him but at his own square-toed
shoes and the white silk roses on them, "I do desire concord and plain
dealing, nor do I wish to provoke further strife."

"Your Majesty," replied Pym, "then, should stop this great gathering of
ruffling Cavaliers who rally to the palace, and this armed guard who
insult the passing crowd."

"What of the Roundhead rabble?" said Charles fiercely, "who tear my
bishops' robes from their backs when they endeavour to make their way
across Palace Yard--who insult my Queen because she is Romanist?"

"Your Majesty provoked it," answered Pym calmly. "And had the bishops
shown more of the meekness proper to their calling they would not now
be in the Tower for their foolish proclamation."

He still held himself erect, though he was in feeble health and weary
from standing. The King marked his fatigue, natural in one of his age,
but his innate courtesy was stifled by his hatred of this man, and
neither policy nor kindness moved him to bid John Pym be seated.

"We must discuss these things," he said. "I am willing to be
reasonable, and you have the reputation of a moderate. But you have
some fanatic fellows of your party, Mr. Pym--Holles, Haselrig, Hampden,
and a certain Oliver Cromwell."

"These gentlemen you name," replied John Pym, "are no more nor less
fanatic than a hundred others, sire."

"They have stood forth of late as notable in voicing certain daring
opinions," said the King, who, though he had himself carefully in hand,
was not able to be more than barely civil. "You must not think, Mr.
Pym, that I have overlooked them."

"What is the meaning of Your Majesty's reference to these gentlemen?"

"Only this," replied Charles steadily, "that you and I could work
together only if you refused your company and counsels to these I have
mentioned--and some others, as my Lord Kimbolton, Mr. Strode, and the
Earl of Essex."

"They are all," said Mr. Pym, "as well able to advise Your Majesty as
myself. And, sire, if you sincerely wish to please your people, you
will entertain no prejudice against these men, for they are highly
esteemed and trusted by all."

"Enough, enough!" cried the King, in great agitation, hastily rising.
"I might consider terms with you, Mr. Pym, but not with every heretic
whose voice is loud enough to catch the ear of the vulgar--but do
not misunderstand me--you will hear from me again. To-day--to-day
the sun sets and it groweth chilly." He looked round the garden, now
filled with sunset light, with an abstracted air. "Think of me kindly,
Mr. Pym, and tell the Commons their honour and safety is my chiefest
care--as I hope theirs will be the welfare of the nation."

"Our talk, then, hath no conclusion?" asked Mr. Pym, who argued little
good from this abrupt dismissal.

"Not here," said the King with a smile; "at some further time, sir, you
shall know the impression your speech to-day hath made on me. Now I
must think a little on what you have said. A good night, Mr. Pym."

The commoner bowed, and the King, blowing a little silver whistle which
he carried, brought up an attendant whom he told to conduct Mr. Pym to
the gates of the palace.

And so the interview from which Lord Falkland and the moderate
royalists had hoped so much ended.

Charles, trembling with emotion, spurned with the light cane he carried
the spot of earth on which John Pym had stood.

"Thou damnable Puritan!" he muttered, "must I not only swallow thee but
all thy brood of heretics! Too much, by Christ, too much!"



CHAPTER X

LORD FALKLAND'S ADVICE


Half an hour later the Queen and Rupert found the King standing by
the sundial; the sun had faded from the heavens, leaving them faintly
purple, the trees were intertwining shapes, grey avenues of darkness,
the scent of the violets by the dial was rich and strong, the air blew
chilly, and in the palace windows the yellow lights were springing up,
one by one.

The Queen in her dark careless garments and Rupert in his brilliant
bravery alike gloomed up out of the twilight as indistinct shapes.

The King peered at them a little before he knew them.

"John Pym and I will never speak together more," he said abruptly
and in a hoarse tone. "When I returned to London it was not with the
purpose of winning these men but of punishing them, and to that purpose
I adhere."

"Lord Falkland," answered Rupert, "said Your Majesty had promised him
to take no violent measures, and to consult him and your new advisers
in all your actions."

"Of late I have had to make many promises that are impossible for me
to keep," returned Charles gloomily. "If men press on a king they must
expect he will use all weapons against them. I shall act without my
Lord Falkland's advice. How can he," added the King with a grand air,
"or any man, know what I feel towards these men who threaten my sacred
crown and God His Holy Church? Who imprison my bishops and take from
me--my friends?" his voice broke into sadness. "Truly, as I stood by
this dial, I thought it was like an emblem of my life, all the sunny
hours numbered and the finger now moving into darkness."

"But to-morrow will see the sun again," cried Rupert, "and so Your
Majesty, coming from an eclipse, shall behold a brighter day."

"Alas," answered Charles, "the moon is misty and clouds and rain
threaten for to-morrow. But though I am encompassed with many dangers I
will not hesitate to bring these traitors to judgment."

"This is what I from the first advised," said the Queen. "When we came
from Scotland, and the people were shouting and the city feasting
us--then was the moment to strike."

"It is not too late," replied Charles.

"Take care it be not," urged Henriette Marie. "Last autumn half a day's
delay ruined my Lord Strafford, so quick was this accursed Pym."

"He shall be avenged," cried the King in great agitation. "This time I
will strike first--keep it from my council. The King acts for the King,
now. Come in, my dear love, our short winter day is over--I feel it
cold."

"A keen wind blows up the river," said the Queen, with a little
shudder. "I saw the gulls to-day at Whitehall; that means a stormy
winter."

"But so far it hath been sweet as spring," said Rupert, "and there are
so many flowerets out, that you might think it Eastertide."

They returned to the palace, and the King had sent for Lord Falkland
and was proceeding to his cabinet, when he was met by Lord Winchester,
one of the most influential and ardent of his courtiers, a magnificent
and wealthy Cavalier, a Romanist, and one greatly beloved by King and
Queen.

"Sire," said this gentleman in a low, hurried voice. "I have just come
from Westminster where there are some most horrid rumours abroad. I
must acquaint you with----"

Charles looked at him in a startled and bewildered fashion.

"More ill news?" he murmured.

"Nay," said the Marquess, "it is but one of many rumours such as now
for ever beat the air--but I have sounded several on the likely truth
of this report, and do believe it to be more than an idle alarm."

The King took his friend's arm and drew him into his cabinet where
the wax-lights had already been lit and the fire sparkled between the
gleaming brass andirons.

"Dear lord, be concise and brief," he said affectionately. "I have
summoned Lord Falkland, and he," added Charles with his usual
imprudence, "is not in my confidence. I have taken him because I must.
Now, thy news."

The Marquess, who was as magnificent in appearance as he was in
temperament, being in all things the great noble, the patron of the
arts, the refined proud gentleman, the type of all that Charles most
admired, began to pace the room as if in some perturbation of mind.

"I do not know how to frame the thing in words," he began; "'tis about
John Pym."

"Ah, John Pym!" exclaimed Charles. He went to the fire and broke one of
the flaming logs with the toe of his boot.

"It is soberly said and credibly received," continued the Marquess,
"that this knavish fellow who hath such a marvellous hold on the minds
of his party is preparing an impeachment of----"

My lord paused, and the King turned sharply from the fire.

"What friend of mine doth he strike at now?" he asked, in a tone of
bitter anger and shame.

"It is said----"

"Thyself?"

"Nay, sire--should I for that have troubled you? It is said he
meditates impeaching Her Most Sacred Majesty."

"Oh, just God!" cried Charles, "shall I endure this another hour,
another minute?" He struck his breast with his open hand, and the rush
of blood to his face showed even through the glow of the fire. "Am I
the King and cannot I protect my wife?"

"Among Pym's party the thing is denied," said the Marquess, with an
instinctive desire to be fair even to people so hateful to him as were
the Puritans, "but remembering how suddenly he struck before, and
seeing how persistent the rumour was and how many held it credible, I
thought it well to bring it before Your Majesty----"

"It needed but that!" exclaimed the King. "Yet it needed not a further
outrage. I had already decided on my course."

He crossed suddenly to the Marquess and grasped him by the embroidered
sleeves.

"Ever since Strafford died," he said, struggling with violent emotion,
"I have vowed in my heart, by my crown and before God, that Pym and
the Parliament should pay! And they shall--to the last drop of blood
in their bodies! Let no one ask me for mercy for John Pym, for I would
sooner lose my all than lose my vengeance on these rebellious heretics!"

"It were better to strike at once," replied the Marquess, who well knew
the King's habit of hesitation, and whose sympathies were with the more
reckless counsels of the Queen. "Nor wait until they have gathered
strength and courage, or till fear giveth them daring. For I believe
they have their suspicions that Your Majesty meaneth to punish them."

"My lord," replied Charles, "you speak with wisdom. You shall not
have long to wait. Let me but beguile my Lord Falkland, who is for a
compromise with these fellows."

He returned to the fireplace and stood there, shivering, and warming
his hands, though not that he was cold; his features had a red, swollen
look as if he had lately wept, and his eyes were heavy-lidded and
bloodshot.

"My lord," he said, "come to me when Lord Falkland hath gone, and I
shall have my project ready."

Before the Marquess could answer, the King's page ushered in Lord
Falkland.

The King stood silent, biting his forefinger as the young noble saluted
him.

Not without misgiving did Lord Falkland see the Marquess in this
closeness with the King. He knew him to be a man of honour and
loyalty, but he knew him also to be one of those whose perverse and
reckless advice the King most leant on--advice fatal to the peace of
the kingdom, my lord thought, despairing of bringing Charles into an
alliance with the Puritans when the great Romanist noble thus held his
ear. The Marquess on his side regarded Lord Falkland as little better
than a mild fanatic, and in his heart likened him, half bitterly, half
humorously, to one who, at a bear baiting, should strive to separate
the furious animals by Christian reasoning when the stoutest stick made
would be scarce sufficient.

So to the Marquess, who, though no statesman and no idealist, yet was
shrewd enough in a worldly way, did Lord Falkland's attempt to make
peace among the factions appear.

He took a half-laughing leave of the Viscount, and, kissing the King's
hand, retired.

Charles picked up a small black leather portfolio from his bureau
and began turning over the sketches it contained; they were Italian
drawings recently brought by the Earl of Arundel from Rome, and the
King glanced at them with real pleasure and relief. They were to his
distracted mind what wine and gaiety would be to other men.

Lucius Carey, my Lord Falkland, with a look of anxiety on his beautiful
face, waited for him to speak.

"Mr. Pym," said Charles at length, gazing at a little drawing in bistre
of a rocky landscape with trees, "did make some discourse with me on
the government of England."

"Was his speech such as to please Your Majesty?" asked the Viscount
eagerly.

"Please me?" repeated the King, keeping his voice steady, but the paper
in his hand fluttering from the nervous shaking of his wrist. "He
wished to discuss matters with me as if we were two stewards set over
an estate--not as if we were King and subject. Yet I do not doubt that
he is a man of influence and one full of expedients and devices."

"He is honest," said my lord, "and of great power, and it is most
necessary that Your Majesty should consider him and his party."

"Have I not," asked the King with subdued violence, "considered them?"

He put the drawing back in the portfolio and turned his sad, angry gaze
on Lord Falkland.

"It is most necessary," returned the Viscount, "that Your Majesty
should put aside all prejudice, and entertain the advices of these men
with sincerity and openness. It is said at Westminster----"

"Yea, it is said at Westminster!" interrupted Charles, thinking of
what the Marquess of Winchester had told him. "What is not said at
Westminster?"

Lord Falkland was entirely ignorant of what the King referred to, and
knew nothing of the designs imputed to Mr. Pym.

"I referred to those floating whispers and alarming rumours which
declare Your Majesty intendeth, and hath intended, ever since your
coming from Scotland, some sudden and violent measures against the
popular leaders."

The King turned to his portfolio again and drew out a delicate pencil
sketch of the Madonna and Child; the few strokes of lead glowed with
all the sweetness and grace of the Umbrian School.

"There is a lovely Raffaello, my lord," he said. "Who would not rather
spend his time with these than with dusty politics?"

"A King hath no choice, sire," answered the Viscount, who had himself
left a wealthy cultured retirement at the call of patriotism.

"No," said Charles, "there are many matters in which I have no
choice. As to these reports you have heard, did I not lately promise
the Commons that their safety was as much my care as that of my
own children? And have I not promised you, my lord, and my other
councillors, to take no step without your advice? What more can you ask
of your King?"

"Nothing more," replied Lord Falkland. "If Your Majesty remain of that
mind I believe there will be but little difficulty to bring all things
to a happy conclusion. Only I know that there are certain rash perverse
courtiers who would tempt Your Majesty to step outside the law."

"You have caught a republican tone from this Puritan party," said
Charles haughtily. "How shall I keep within the law who am alone the
law?"

Lord Falkland reddened at the rebuke, but answered the King manfully
and earnestly.

"Sire, if I am not honest with you, I lack in loyalty. The constitution
of England is a mighty thing, and even the King must respect it--even
as you have promised. And if you go against it, and against the party
and principles of Mr. Pym, there will be great store of unhappiness
ahead of us all."

Charles closed the portfolio and flung it down.

"I will do all things in reason," he said, facing the Viscount, "but I
stand as fast by my faith as they by their heresies. I will not forsake
the Church of England."

Lord Falkland was silent.

"And they ask for the militia," added Charles. "They desire that the
army for Ireland be in their hands, officered by their creatures."

"Your Majesty," suggested Falkland, "might allow them the militia for a
time."

"No, by Christ!" cried Charles, "not for an hour! You ask what was
never asked of King before. Neither Church nor sword will I surrender."

"Then the conference of Your Majesty with Mr. Pym hath been
unavailing?" asked my lord mournfully.

"I do not say so much," replied Charles. "I have said I will not be
unreasonable, nor regardless in any way, of the good of the people. I
will see Mr. Pym again."

"Forgive me, sire," said the Viscount, "but a temperate carriage is
advisable now in all things, to keep our friends, to gain others, and
to render impossible the horrid chance of bloodshed."

The King's eyes narrowed.

"They would fight, would they?" he answered. "Well, so would I--I am
not fearful of that. I should know how to meet rebellion."

"Rebellion?" repeated Lord Falkland. "I do not dare to use or think
that word!"

"There are some who do," said Charles dryly, "but with God's grace we
will avoid that danger. Are you satisfied, my lord?"

The Viscount bowed.

"I have Your Majesty's word for those measures we believe most
necessary now. I am content to leave the rest in the hands of Your
Majesty."

In his heart, the Viscount, who had met much disillusion and
disappointment since he had joined the Court party, was far from
satisfied. He found the King, as ever, vague, shifting, and reserved,
and he was bound to conclude that the interview with John Pym had
proved absolutely fruitless. Yet he drew some comfort from the fact
that Charles had promised to commit no violence on any of the Members
of the Commons nor to take any steps without the advice of his new
counsellors--those moderate, loyal men of whom Falkland and Hyde were
the chief, and whose mild and patriotic measures were entirely devoted
to the task of making a settlement in the kingdom and mediating between
Charles and the Parliament.

Charles seemed to notice the shade of sadness, perhaps of mistrust,
on my lord's fair face, and he touched him lightly and kindly on the
shoulder.

"Believe I shall act as becometh a King," he said, smiling.

Lord Falkland kissed his sovereign's hand and withdrew, reassuring
himself as best he might, and comforting himself with those fair
visions of truth and concord that never failed to fill his idealistic
mind.

Charles returned to the portfolio and continued to handle the drawings
with a loving, delicate touch, and to gaze at them with the sensitive
eyes of appreciation and knowledge.

He was so employed when my Lord Winchester returned. When the splendid
Marquess entered, he put the sketches by.

"There is little satisfaction to be had from my Lord Falkland," he
remarked. "He is little better than an ambassador of the Puritans."

"What will Your Majesty do?" asked the Marquess eagerly.

"To-morrow," replied Charles, "there will be a few of these enemies
of mine lodged in the Tower. To-morrow I impeach Pym and four of his
creatures of high treason, at the Bar of the House of Lords."



CHAPTER XI

THE FIVE MEMBERS


The commotion at Westminster was intense; never, even at the arrest of
Sir John Eliot or at the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford, or at
the passing of the Great Remonstrance, had excitement run so high.

For the King, without acquainting his new advisers, in direct violation
of his recent promises, to the astonishment and dismay of his friends,
the rage and horror of his enemies, had made a move which put his legal
position in the wrong and showed at once and for ever that alliance
between him and the popular party was impossible. He had sent the
Attorney-General to the Bar of the House of Lords to impeach Lord
Kimbolton and five members of the Lower Chamber--Pym, Strode, Holles,
Haselrig, and Hampden.

Immediately afterwards a guard was sent from Whitehall to arrest the
five members. The Commons refused to deliver them, and sent a message
to the King to say that the gentlemen charged were ready to answer any
legal accusation. They also ordered the arrest of the officers who had
been sent to search the rooms of the five members and seize and seal up
their papers.

This was the answer of the House to the challenge cast down by the
King, and all England thrilled to it; all England waited too, in a kind
of passionate suspense, the answer that would come from Whitehall. Was
the King, who had so suddenly declared himself an enemy of the nation,
baffled, checked or only further enraged? What would he do next?

Few slept that night of the 3rd of January; and from thousands of
Puritan households prayers and lamentations ascended.

It was now clear that not by gentle means could the people of England
hope to regain their cherished liberty, and that neither consideration
nor fair dealing was to be hoped from a King who had so contemptuously
disregarded faith and the law.

Falkland, Culpeper, Hyde, and their following were utterly confounded
and dismayed, ashamed and humiliated, but in the stern hearts of
Pym, Hampden, Holles, Haselrig, Strode, and Cromwell was a certain
exultation.

Their enemy (for so by now these men had come to regard the King)
had put himself in the wrong, and alienated that vast mass of the
nation which in all great crises long remains neutral, and which had,
hitherto, declared for neither King nor Parliament.

But the recent action of the King, after his open promise before
Parliament, caused the least reflective and humble of men to entertain
a jealousy of their liberties, and a strong murmur of indignation arose
over the whole country, which was a good help and encouragement to
these men at Westminster.

Added to this satisfaction, the popular leaders, who had already dared
so much and ventured so far, felt a deep, if stern, gratification,
which was not, perhaps, shared by their followers, that affairs were
coming at length to a conclusion. Charles had now raised the issue, and
it was their task to answer his challenge as decisively as he had given
it. Three at least of the Commoners--Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell--did
not shrink from the immense responsibilities which this involved on
them, nor from the high stakes on which they had to play.

Pym and Hampden already stood as near to death as had Pym the year
before, when Strafford had come glooming to Westminster to impeach
him, for there could be little doubt of the King's intention to appease
that proud blood of his forsaken minister by the blood of those who had
sent him to his death.

Cromwell, one of a younger generation and of no such importance in the
eyes of either King, his own party, or the nation, ran no such risk as
his leaders and incurred no such responsibility. He was, however, their
able and indefatigable lieutenant, and Pym at least thought highly
of him as a driving force of courage and fortitude, enthusiasm and
resolution.

On the morning of the 4th of January, the House met in an incredible
state of tension and excitement, but during the morning hours nothing
untoward occurred, and the Commons adjourned at midday without there
having been any sign or message from Whitehall.

It was a dun day, the river ran slate-coloured between grey houses,
the sky was murk and low, an east wind blew gusts of icy rain along
the streets, and at midday the light was obscure and dismal; the mild,
hopeful winter had changed after Christmas, and now had the full
Northern bitterness.

Mr. Cromwell returned to the House early, as did most, and when Mr. Pym
was in his place the benches were again crowded. Denzil Holles, Strode,
Hampden, and Haselrig were near the entrance, talking earnestly with
Lord Kimbolton, the Member of the House of Lords who had been impeached
with them.

Mr. Cromwell looked at them with some admiration and even envy; they
had a splendid chance to exercise all those qualities which he felt
strongly burning in himself.

He rose up and made his way to Mr. Pym, who was sitting silent, and
looked ill and fatigued. But his calm, resolute expression, the light
of energy, command, and courage in his glance showed him to be, as
always, the intrepid, prompt leader of men--the leader of wit and
resource and vigour.

"Any news yet to hand?" asked Mr. Cromwell eagerly. "You have gathered
nothing either in the lobbies or the streets?"

Mr Pym smiled.

"What is to be gathered but wild, bottomless rumours such as are to be
looked for in these divided times? I have some of our own people posted
near Whitehall that we may know as soon as possible the action of His
Majesty."

"Maybe," said Mr. Cromwell, "he will do no more, finding his threats
have failed."

"You do not know the King as well as I," returned John Pym. "He is the
very haughtiest and most revengeful of men, and is not like to suffer
in silence such an affront (for so he will call it) as hath been put on
him."

"What, then, will he do?" asked the Member for Cambridge. "What can he
do?"

"I have tried for many years," replied John Pym, "to work with His
Majesty to form a ministry of loyal men proven by the Parliament--but
it could never be, as you know--and all my dealings with the King,
down to this last interview when I saw him face to face, have taught
me his variableness, his unstability, his pride, and his insincerity.
Therefore I cannot judge nor guess what he will do."

The four members talking at the entrance had now returned to their
places, and Oliver Cromwell hastened to meet his friend, Lord
Kimbolton, who was about to leave for the Upper House. The Member for
Cambridge accompanied him into the antechamber, and while they were
there, talking on the one absorbing topic of the moment, a fellow with
his face pinched by the wind and a little breathless, came up asking
for Mr. Pym, and, showing his credentials, was admitted into the
Chamber.

Mr. Cromwell, taking a hasty leave of Lord Kimbolton, hurried back to
his place in the House.

He found the Members already in a state of deep emotion and
excitement, for the most momentous of news was flashing from mouth to
mouth.

Mr. Pym's messenger had brought word that the King himself, accompanied
by some hundreds of armed men, was riding down to Westminster. There
was no time to lose; the royal party had been issuing from Whitehall
gates when the man had seen them, and, though some little delay might
be caused by the dense crowd thronging the street, it could not be long.

Deep cries of "The city! safety in the city! To the river!" echoed
through Westminster Hall, and the five members were pushed from their
places by friendly hands and hurried from the Hall to the lobbies, from
the lobbies to the Thames, and there into the first boat available with
directions to hasten to the sanctuary of the city.

The thing was done with desperate swiftness, but if it had lacked this
haste it would have been too late, for the House was scarcely returned
to wonted order when the King with his cavalcade of ruffling Cavaliers
arrived at Westminster.

A deep hush fell on the Chamber, as if every man held his breath. Mr.
Cromwell leant forward in his seat, every line in his powerful face
tense, like a great mastiff on the watch, entirely absorbed by the
movements of his foe.

The King's men now filled Westminster Hall, and on the threshold of the
inviolable Chamber itself the King appeared.

When he first saw these rows of hostile faces, darkened, silent
countenances of men who had defied him and whom he hated and scorned,
he paused for a moment full in the doorway and calmly and deliberately
gazed round him.

There was something awful in the moment; the two opponents, King and
Parliament, so suddenly and violently brought together, seemed like
actors pausing before they enter on a tragedy.

The King, in rose-coloured cloth and a crimson cloak, great boots with
gilt spurs, his hat in his left hand, and his right pressed to his
heart, the bleak light of the wintry day falling over his fair head and
melancholy face, looked a frail figure to be opposed to these gathered
ranks of gentlemen who had the whole strength and feelings of a great
nation behind them, while he was only armed with the intangible weapons
of traditional authority and such virtue as he might find in the royal
blood of his unfortunate race.

Beside him was his nephew, the young Elector Palatine, whose dark,
haughty features expressed mingled curiosity and doubt. He had known
exile and wandering, misfortunes and defeat, and it might be that he
thought his uncle was daring those disasters which had broken his
father's heart. His own presence there was an additional outrage on the
Commons, but neither he nor Charles thought of this, so completely had
they in common the family recklessness.

The two Princes, Charles slightly before his nephew, advanced down the
floor of the House. Mr. Cromwell, turning in his seat, watched him;
there was a deep silence.

The King mounted the step of the chair and faced the Speaker; his
voice, very pleasant and slow as always, rose clearly through the
crowded, still Chamber.

"Sir," he said, "we demand certain of your Members--Mr. Pym, Mr.
Strode, Mr. Haselrig, Mr. John Hampden, and Mr. Denzel Holles."

There was a second's pause, then the King added in a voice slightly
varied and strained with anger--

"Where are these men?"

"Your Majesty," replied the Speaker, "I have neither ears nor eyes in
this place save as the House may be pleased to direct."

A low, deep murmur followed these words, and the blood ran up from the
King's fair beard to his fair curls, and remained there, a fixed red in
his haughty face.

"It is no matter," he replied. "I think my eyes are as good as
another's."

He turned and glanced round the House and scrutinized the packed
benches in which were those five notable empty places; through the
open doors his own followers peered in with a show of pike and pistol.
Oliver Cromwell looked at them and smiled. When the King's swift glance
for one instant rested on him, that grim smile was still on his lips;
he turned and looked down full into the flushed face of the King.

Charles smiled also with a bitterness beyond words.

"I perceive that my birds are flown," he said; "but I shall take my own
course to find them."

The Speaker neither moved nor spoke; a few deep cries of "Privilege!"
rose from the benches, and the King seemed to suddenly lose that proud
composure he had hitherto maintained. His painful colour deepened and
his countenance was confused and troubled, as if he realized how many
and powerful his enemies were and how completely he was now encompassed
by them.

"Hold us excused that we thus disturb you," he stammered, and he took
his hand from his heart, where he had hitherto kept it, and caught his
nephew by the arm as if to assure himself of the presence of one friend
in the midst of this hostile assembly.

"God save you, sire!" muttered the Elector Palatine. "Do not give these
rogues the power of disconcerting you."

Charles replied something that was lost in the ever deepening and
growing murmur from the benches, and, turning on his heel, passed
with his usual dignity of carriage through the ranks of the angry and
triumphant Commons, and joined his own followers in the lobby.

As the rose-coloured habit flashed out of sight, a great murmur arose,
and the Members turned passionately one to the other. There was neither
noise nor disorder; they were the very flower of English gentlemen,
nearly all of famous names and ancient lineage, and they had not acted
lightly nor for a trivial cause, but with full gravity and weight and
for the sake of civic liberty.

"His Majesty," said Mr. Cromwell to his neighbour, "is as great a
blunderer as any I have ever seen."

Further down the benches a member remarked--

"The die is cast. Now there is no turning back."

The next day the Parliament moved into the city for safety, and there
went into committee on the state of affairs in the kingdom. Mr.
Cromwell moved the consideration of means to put the kingdom in a state
of armed defence.

The King left Whitehall and sent his Queen from Dover to gain help from
France, and to pledge the Crown jewels in Holland.

So was the die cast indeed, as all men began to see as the stormy
spring merged into the stormy summer.



CHAPTER XII

NOTTINGHAM


"This is a day that will be remembered in the history of these times,"
said the lady at the window.

Her brother made no answer, but continued to lace up his long riding
gloves.

They were in an upper chamber of a house of the better sort in the town
of Nottingham; the dark panelled walls, the dark floor and ceiling,
the heavy furniture, with the fringes to the chairs and the worked
covers to the table, showed vividly to the least detail in the strong
afternoon rays of the August sun, which was, however, now and then
obscured by heavy clouds which veiled the whole town in dun shadow and
filled with gloom the apartment.

Both the lady and her brother were very young; but on her countenance
was a melancholy, and on his a resolution, ill-suited to their years.
The Cavalier was fair-haired, slight, grave, and arrayed in the garb of
war, being armed on back and breast, and carrying pistolets and a great
sword.

The lady was dressed in a style of fantastical richness which well
became her delicate and unusual appearance; she wore a riding habit and
it was of pale violet cloth, enriched with silver, and opening on a
petticoat of deep-hued amber satin braided with a border of purple and
scarlet; at her wrists and over her collar hung deep bands of lace; her
hair was dressed in a multitude of little blonde curls which was like a
net of gold silk wire about her face, and she wore a black hat crowned
with many short ostrich feathers.

Her features were sensitive, well-shaped, and showed both wit and
melancholy, her eyes were pale brown and languid-lidded, and her
lips were compressed in a decided line which indicated courage and
determination; yet the prevailing impression she made was of great
modesty and feminine tenderness.

At her breast, fastened with a knot of blue silk, was a long trail of
yellow jasmine and a white rose.

"If I had been the Queen," she said, "I would not have gone to France."

"She went to gain succour, Margaret," returned Sir Charles Lucas.

"Another could have gone," insisted the lady, resting her dreamy eyes
on her very lovely white hands which bore several curious pearl rings.
"If I had a lord and he was in the situation of His Blessed Majesty, I
would not have left him, no, not for two worlds packed with joys."

"The Queen went in April," replied the Cavalier, "and then matters did
not look to be past mending."

"Yet, methinks," said Margaret Lucas, "that any one might have
perceived such a temper in the Roundheads that they would not easily
see reason. And, dear Charles, the King had been defied at Hull--what
was that but a portent of this?

"However," she added at once, "it is not for me to speak so of my
sovereign lady. Oh, Charles, what a heaviness and melancholy doth
encumber my spirits! See how the sky is also stormy and doth presage
a tempest in the heavens, even as men's actions hasten a tempest on
earth."

"Thine is not the only heart filled with foreboding to-day. Many eyes
are already bitter with tears which shall be shed till their founts
are dry before these troubles end," replied the young man. "But it is
not for us to lament the tearing asunder of England, but to remember
for which purpose we came hither from Colchester to pay our duty to
the King, and renew our oaths of fealty before his banner which shall
to-day be raised."

Margaret Lucas came from the window; the brilliant light that streamed
through the cracks in the storm-clouds made a dazzling gold of her
hair, and slipped in lines of light down the rich silks and satins of
her garments.

Glorified by this strong light, she went up to her brother and laid her
hands lightly on his shoulders, turning him, with a gentle pressure, to
face her and look down on her lesser height.

"Dear," she said, "dear and best--what shall come is hid by God, and no
human eye may take a peep at it, yet we may make a guess that the times
will be rough and disheartening, and thou wilt be thick in the midst of
commotion. Yet whatever happen, remember thy loyal need, thy fair name;
heed no chatter, but serve the King, under God, and keep a thought for
all of us--and for Margaret, who hath no knight as thou hast yet no
lady, have a sweet remembrance. God bless thee according to His will,
Charles, and bring thee safely through these sad distresses."

The young Cavalier, much moved, drew her two hands from his shoulders
and kissed them, and she, gazing on him with much affection and
something of a mother's look, kissed his bent head where the light hair
waved apart.

Then, in a humour too solemn for speech, the two young loyalists (their
faith was simple and admitted of no argument--to them the King could do
no wrong) left the chamber and house, and mounting two well-kept horses
and followed by a neat groom, rode through the streets of Nottingham
towards the castle on the hill.

There were many people abroad, and several companies of shotmen,
musketeers, and of armed citizens marching in the direction of the
castle; but all were silent, and most, it seemed, sad, for an air of
general gloom overhung the town, and there was no one to break it with
rejoicing or shouting or any enthusiasm, and though those gathered
within the town might be tenacious in their loyalty, they were either
not confident enough or not exalted enough in their spirits to express
it by any demonstration.

There was, besides, a rapid storm blowing up; the sun glowed with
a fiery light, and black clouds tipped with burning gold rolled
threateningly across the heavens. Men's minds, keenly watching for
portents and omens, saw one in the wild weather promised in the sky,
and beheld, prefigured above them, the black waste and the red blood
that from this day on should be spread and spilled over the peaceful
richness of England.

Margaret Lucas and her brother rode into the courtyard of the castle,
where several companies of soldiers were gathered; some brass guns and
demi-culverins reflected the sun in blazes of light, and a band of
drummers and trumpeters stood ready.

Sir Charles Lucas perceived that Prince Rupert was already there at
the head of a company of finely-equipped gentlemen on horseback, and
rode up to pay his respects, having already met the Prince. Margaret
remained a little behind among the crowd of courtiers, ladies, and
citizens.

Rupert's spirits were ablaze with excitement and satisfaction, he
did not even seem to be aware of the general air of depression and
apprehension. The King had promised him the command of the cavalry, the
most important branch of the army, and to a Prince of his years and
temperament, the glory of this was sufficient to obscure everything
else.

"Good evening, Sir Charles!" he cried; then his quick eye roved past
the youth. "Is not that lady your sister? The likeness is great between
you."

"That is indeed Margaret Lucas," replied her brother, "who was visiting
near this town, and nothing would satisfy her but joining me to-day in
this ceremony."

"I must speak to this loyal lady," smiled the Prince.

He rode up to her and took off his hat, which was heavy with black
plumes.

"Would you not know me, Mrs. Lucas," he asked, "that you would stay
behind your brother?"

"I would not be uncivil to any, least to a Prince," replied the lady,
"but neither would I put my conversation on any man nor be so bold as
to look at one unbidden."

"This is a fair sweet loyalist," said Rupert. "Hast thou a cavalier
beside the King?"

She looked at him out of untroubled eyes; his bold, hawk-like face,
the black eyes, the white teeth flashing in a smile, the waving black
hair, the dark complexion above the white collar, and all his attire of
scarlet and buff and gold and trappings of war, his great horse, and
the background of cannon, halberdiers, and stormy heavens, made a noble
and splendid picture.

"I have no cavalier," said Margaret Lucas calmly, "nor have I yet seen
the man to whom I could give my troth."

"How many years hast thou?" asked Rupert.

"Highness--nineteen."

He was little older himself, but he smiled at her as he would have
smiled at a child.

"Give me your white rose," he said; "as thou art yet free, the gift
harms none."

Margaret turned to her brother.

"Charles, shall I?" and a faint smile touched her grave lips.

"With all heartiness," replied Sir Charles.

She took the rose and jasmine from above her true heart, and her small
hand laid them on the Prince's outstretched brown palm.

He raised that hand and kissed her glove, and her eyebrows lifted
half-humorously under her golden fringe of curls.

"You are in good spirits, my lord," she said. As Rupert, with clumsy
carefulness, was fastening the two frail flowers in his doublet, the
King rode into the courtyard, followed by the royal standard.

Charles rode a white horse and was wrapped in a dark blue mantle, an
unnatural pallor disfigured his cheek, and an unnatural fire sparkled
in his restless eyes; he seemed both melancholy and excited. He did not
fail of his usual dignity, however, and though shut within himself in
an inner gloom, he acknowledged readily the salutes that greeted him.
There was but a scanty crowd, both of citizens and soldiers, nor was
there much fervour save among the courtiers and personal friends of the
King.

Charles glanced up at the wide, darkening sky across which the mighty
clouds were marching, trailing fire in the west, then he turned to
Prince Maurice, who rode at his side. "When I was crowned," he said, in
a low voice, "they did preach a sermon on this text--'Be thou faithful
unto death and I will give thee a crown of life'--and unto death I
will be faithful to God, the Church of England, and my rightful royal
heritage."

He then rode forward, and amid the music of the drums and trumpets and
the shouts of the spectators, the royal standard of England was raised
and unfurled as sign and symbol that the King called on all loyal
subjects for their service and duty.

Many of the citizens threw up their caps and called out, "Long live
King Charles and hang up the Roundheads!" but their cries soon ceased,
and all gazed in a mournful silence at the great flag straining now at
poles and ropes and flaunting the sunset with bravery of leopards and
lilies and the rampant lion--crimson, gold, and blue.

It was the symbol of war--of civil war; when it broke on the evening,
then was all hope of peace for ever gone. All argument, appeals to law,
to reason, all legal dispute, all compromise, was over now; henceforth
the sword would decide.

The sensitive soul of Margaret Lucas was touched by a dreadful grief;
she bent on her saddle and wept. There was to her an almost unbearable
sadness in the silent appeal of the lonely flag.

The King glanced half-wildly round the little knot of faithful friends
gathered about him; a silence had fallen which none seemed ready to
break.

Suddenly Charles put out his hand; a drop of rain splashed on the bare
palm.

"The storm beginneth," he said, and turned his horse's head towards the
castle.

So they all went their several ways homeward in a wildness of wind and
rain.

The Royal Standard faced the gusty tempests for six days, then the pole
snapped and the storm hurled it in the dust.



PART II

THE MAN

"A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay."--_A
Contemporary on Oliver Cromwell._



CHAPTER I

A LEADER OF MEN


John Pym was dead.

In June John Hampden had fallen in the fight at Chalgrove field, Lord
Falkland had hurled himself on death in the front of the royalist
ranks at Newbury, and now Pym, the bold and able leader, the dauntless
spirit, the uncorrupted heart, had resigned the weight of his troublous
years and rested in peace at London, where his body lay in state for
good patriots to gaze on and mourn over before it was carried to the
Abbey Church which held the nation's great dead.

To no man in the three rent kingdoms did the news of John Pym's death
come with such force and menace as to Oliver Cromwell, now Colonel, and
Governor of Ely.

When the Parliament had taken up arms in reply to the King's challenge
at Nottingham, patriotic and energetic members had been given commands
in the parliamentary army. Mr. Cromwell had raised a troop of his
own in Cambridgeshire, had contributed out of his private means to
the public service, had seized the magazine in Cambridge Castle, and
forcibly prevented the University from sending its gold and silver
plate to the King, and so, by boldness and expedition in all his
actions, had justified the opinion held of him by his colleagues. He
had been under fire at Winceby and Edgehill and in some other of the
random skirmishes which marked the beginning of the war, and he had
shown himself quiet and tenacious in battle. He was now the soul of the
Eastern Association, one of the foremost of the county leagues against
the royal tyranny, Colonel of his own troop (now nearing close on a
thousand men), and Governor of Ely, the town of his residence, where
his family had remained during his service in London.

So the first turmoil and confusion of this most unhappy calling to
arms had cast up Oliver Cromwell to a higher position than he could
ever have thought of occupying in times of peace, and he had already
had tumultuous experience of the bitternesses, difficulties, and
bewilderments of one in authority during such momentous times.

To this man, in this situation, came the news of the death of John Pym,
and he went privately to his chamber about the time they were lighting
the candles and considered within himself.

The two leaders of the older generation, Hampden and Pym, were now
gone, and who was there with sufficient courage and capacity, foresight
and strength to take their place?

The moment was a critical one for the Parliament. The first rush of
enthusiasm, the first outburst of fury against the King was over; a
general lukewarmness overspread the adherents of the popular party,
and the people, seeing that Parliament had now gotten the sword, were
waiting for a speedy deliverance out of trouble and, finding themselves
instead in the midst of a bloody civil war, were inclined to clamour
for a peace, however hasty and patched up, especially as the tide of
martial success had run in favour of the King, thanks largely to the
generalship of his nephew Rupert, and many faint-hearted men were
beginning to remember that they were incurring the risk of impeachment
for high treason if the King should prove the final victor.

Those in the forefront of the parliamentary party were moderate men
such as Essex, Warwick, Holles, Strode, Vane, and Manchester; the keen
and fervent eye of Oliver Cromwell could see no successor to Hampden or
Pym.

Again there came to him remembrances of the day at St. Ives when he
had received together absolute assurance that he was in Grace, and
that the Lord had some uses for him. Did it not seem as if the path, at
first so dim and obscured, was being opened out before him with greater
and increasing clearness?

He could see the dangers that threatened the liberties of England,
still struggling with, and not yet released from, their bonds, and he
marvelled if God had put the means of quenching these dangers into his
hands: _no other were there_ now Pym was gone, perhaps it might be that
he would be called.

There was Sir Harry Vane, with his knowledge of foreign countries and
tongues, his pure heart and high courage, who had much of the mystic
piety which pleased Oliver Cromwell. Yet he doubted if this man had
the force and boldness to accomplish what must be accomplished now in
England.

He paced up and down the room a little, then went to the window and
looked out on the winter afternoon; the bare trees bent and shivered
beneath the steady sweeps of the wind in St. Mary's churchyard near
by, and the towers of the cathedral had a bleached and bonelike look
against a low, dark grey sky.

As he stood so, deep in his thoughts, he perceived, at first quite
dully, but soon with interest, the solitary figure of a gentleman
facing the wind in the chill street and coming towards his house.

Oliver Cromwell opened the leaded diamond pane and looked out; the
pedestrian raised his hand to hold his hat against the wind, the
beaver flapped back nevertheless, and the keen observer at the window
recognized the Earl of Manchester, formerly that Lord Kimbolton who had
been one of six members hurried from Westminster to the city, and now
President of the Eastern Association and one of the most popular and
influential men on the parliamentary side. Cromwell, however, had not
that affection for him which he had formerly held; he suspected not my
lord's loyalty, but his judgment, not his good intentions, but his
strength of mind and purpose, and he saw in him a typical exponent of
those evils and dangers his party had most to guard against.

With a sombre expression on his clouded features he descended the
modest stairway of his simple home: the two-storied house had come to
him, together with the office of tithe farmer, from his wife's uncle.

When he reached the hall he saw the slight figure of a girl lighting
the lamp above the door; she turned to him with the wax taper in the
silver holder still in her hand and the pure flame of it lighting a
face at once resolute and gentle.

The extreme plainness of her dark gown and white collar robbed her
of the usual pleasant festive carelessness of youth, but her air of
dignity and health and goodness was attractive enough, and she was not
without distinction and a certain handsomeness of form and feature.

At the sight of his eldest daughter Colonel Cromwell's face softened
wonderfully, and when he spoke his voice had a note of great tenderness
which entirely dispelled the usual harshness.

"I did perceive Lord Manchester coming, Bridget," he said. "I pray thee
set the candles in the little parlour. Is thy mother out?"

"She hath taken Frances and Elisabeth for an airing, sir," answered the
girl. "Mary remaineth with me. She will assay to help me with a tansy
pudding."

"The odour thereof is abroad already," said Colonel Cromwell. "Have we
not tansy pudding overoften, Bridget?"

A look of distress flushed the serene face of the young housekeeper.

"It is so difficult since the war began to vary the dishes," she
answered. "All commodities are so high in price and so scarce."

"I spoke lightly, dear," interrupted her father hastily. "Trouble not
thy mind with this matter."

A knock sounded. Bridget Cromwell opened the door and admitted Lord
Manchester, curtsied with great simplicity, then turned into the
parlour, bearing with her the frail light of the taper.

The two gentlemen followed her.

"You have heard that John Pym is dead?" asked my lord abruptly.

"But to-day, though it is a week ago. But the roads have been
impossible."

"It is," said Lord Manchester, "very rough marching in the fen country."

"We have a great loss in Mr. Pym," remarked Colonel Cromwell.

"Sir Harry Vane will take his place."

"Umph! Sir Harry Vane!" muttered the other. "A dreaming man."

"A moderate man," amended my lord.

"I begin," cried Oliver Cromwell, "to detest that word!"

Bridget had lit four plain candles which stood in copper sticks on
the mantelpiece, and, kneeling down, put her taper to the twigs under
the great logs on the hearth. The small room, which contained neither
picture nor ornament, but which was solidly and comfortably furnished,
was now fully revealed, as was the figure of the Earl in his buff
gallooned with gold, armed with sword and pistol, with his soldier's
cloak falling from his shoulders and his beaver in his hand.

Bridget blew out the taper, drew the red curtains over the window,
then went to a great sideboard which ran half the length of the room,
and was taking out a bell-mouthed glass and a silver tray when my lord
interrupted her.

"Not for me, my child," he said, with a smile. "I am lodging in Ely
for the night, and am merely here to have a few words with Colonel
Cromwell."

At this Bridget curtsied again and withdrew. As the door closed
behind her Oliver Cromwell turned suddenly on his guest with such an
expressive movement that my lord startled. But Cromwell said nothing.

"Sir," remarked my lord, "since last we met much hath changed. Things
show well for the King."

Colonel Cromwell did not speak.

"And I," continued the Earl, "am now very desirous to stop the war."

The other took this statement quietly.

"You were ever for a compromise," he said. "Well, well," he smiled. "So
you would stop the war? Not yet, my lord, not yet. When we lay down the
sword the King must be so defeated that he is glad to take our terms,
otherwise why did we ever unsheath the sword?"

"Success lies so far with His Majesty," was the reply. "Fairfax and
Essex can hardly hold their own, Rupert hath proved a very genius, the
Queen cometh from over seas with men and money--bethink you a little,
Colonel Cromwell, if the King should defeat us? Death for us all, aye,
to our poorest followers, as traitors, and his own terms imposed on a
bleeding nation!"

"He must not defeat us."

"The chances are against us," said my lord uneasily.

"God," returned Colonel Cromwell, with indescribable force, reverence,
and enthusiasm, "is with us. Do you think He will give the victory unto
the children of Belial?"

"Even if we gain the victory," persisted the Earl, "the King is always
the King."

"My lord, if that is your temper, why did you ever take up arms?"

"For that cause in which I would lay them down--the cause of liberty."

Oliver Cromwell went to the fire and stared down at the cracking logs,
through which the thin flames spurted.

"These arguments whistle like the wind in an empty drum," he said. "We
must not think of peace until we have gained that for which we made
war. Is the moment when the King is victorious the moment to ask his
terms?"

"What instrument have we to defeat the King?" demanded my lord.

"One can be forged," replied Oliver Cromwell. "I do believe, as I told
that very noble person, Mr. Hampden, that the King hath so far gained
the advantage because the blood and breeding is in his ranks--as I
said to my cousin, decayed serving men and tapsters will not fight
like gentlemen--therefore if we have not as yet gentle blood, let us
get the spirit of the Lord: faith will inspire as well as birth, my
lord. I have now myself a lovely troop, honest men, clean livers, eager
devourers of the Word, and had I ten times as many I would put them
with great confidence against Rupert's godless gentlemen."

"Your troop is mostly fanatic, Anabaptist, Independent--full of sermons
and groans," said my lord. "Extreme men, by your leave, Colonel
Cromwell, and full of religious disputations."

"Admit they be--they are all enthusiasts, they fight for God, not
pay--as Charles' gentlemen fight for loyalty, not pay--and, sir, I
prefer them who know what they fight for, and love that they know, to
any lukewarm hireling who will mutiny when his pence are in arrear."

"You yourself are an Independent," remarked the Earl dryly. "I had
forgot."

"Sir, I belong to no sect; within the limits of the true faith I would
let each man think as he would."

"So tolerant!" cried my lord. "Then wherefore have you pulled the
preacher from his pulpit in Ely Church?"

"Because the Anglican rites are a mockery of the Lord," returned
Cromwell, with fire. "And I would as soon have a Papist as a
Prelatist--toleration with the true faith, I said, my lord."

"Who is to define the true faith?" asked the Earl wearily. "I keep the
Presbyterian doctrine which seemeth best to me, but you, methinks,
would follow Roger Williams. Remember, sir, that you, as all of us," he
added, with some malice, "must take this Covenant the Scots have put
upon us as the price of their aid."

"That was John Pym's work," answered Colonel Cromwell, in a slightly
troubled manner. "His last work--'twas a galling condition, and at the
time I blamed him; but, sir, we had to have the Scottish army, and as
they would not give the army without we took the Covenant--well, Mr.
Pym was a wise man, and he judged it best--and we have the Scots (for
what they may be worth) marching to us instead of to the King."

"When you take up your appointment as my Lieutenant-General," insisted
the Earl, "you, too, must take the Covenant."

"Any man may take it now Sir Harry Vane, that lovely soul, hath added
his clause--_that religion be reformed in England according to the Word
of God_; that covereth everything, I think, sir, the _Word of God_, not
the dictates of the Scots!"

Lord Manchester looked at him in silence for an attentive moment, then
spoke briskly.

"You follow Sir Harry Vane in religion, do you follow him in politics?
Are you, too, a Republican?"

Oliver Cromwell looked at him quietly and frankly.

"I think a kingly government a good one," he said, "if the king be a
just, wise man. Nay, I never was a Republican."

"Remember we stand for _King_ and Parliament," remarked the Earl.
"I would not go too far--I would not overthrow the authority of His
Majesty."

"What care I what man holdeth authority in England as long as he is
powerless to do her wrong," replied Cromwell quietly. "Sir, all I say
is that the time hath not come for peace save it be offered by His
Majesty. Now is still the misty morning when all is doubtful to our
eyes; but presently the sun shall rise above the vapours, and we shall
behold very clearly the things we have to do. The Lord will strengthen
our hands and show us the way, and His enemies shall go down like a
tottering wall and a broken hedge."

The Earl moved about restlessly.

"You have great faith, Colonel Cromwell," he said, half sad, half vexed.

The fire had now sprung up strongly and threw a vivid light over the
figure of the Puritan soldier standing thoughtfully on his homely
hearth.

"Have I not need of faith?" he asked, in an exalted voice. "Aye, the
shield of faith and the breastplate of righteousness and the sword of
the spirit which is the Word of God! 'For we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in
high places!'"

The Earl made no reply; he was moved by the sincerity and force with
which Colonel Cromwell spoke, but at the same time he was appalled by
the prospect which a continuance of the war seemed to open up. He, like
many others, was confused, bewildered, alarmed by the tremendous thing
the Parliament had dared to do, and he wished to stop a crisis which
was becoming immense and overwhelming; he wished to keep the King and
the Church in their ancient places, and he felt more or less vaguely
that men such as Oliver Cromwell were aiming at a new order of things
altogether.

Colonel Cromwell, on the other hand, was not confused by the thought of
any future issues; he saw one thing, and that plainly: in the present
struggle between the King and the Parliament, the Parliament must be
victorious; then the future government of England might be decided, not
before.

He felt that there was no longer much use for men like my Lord
Manchester, able and popular as he was: the stern fanatics among his
own arquebusiers who spent their time in minute disputes and arguments
on matters of religious discipline were more to the liking of Oliver
Cromwell.

The Earl rose to take his leave.

"I am at my ancient lodging," he said. "May I expect you to-morrow
morning? There are some military points I would discuss with you."

"Command me to your own convenience," replied Colonel Cromwell.

"To-morrow, then."

The two went into the hall, which was filled by the smell of the tansy
pudding.

My lord asked after the eldest son of his host.

"He is very well, I thank you. He is at Newport Pagnell with my Lord
St. John's troop of horse. Richard is still at Felsted, as is Henry;
but I mean soon to take them from their schooling and put them in the
army. Fairfax would take one in his lifeguards; Harrison, I think,
another."

"So soon!" exclaimed my lord. "Their years are very tender."

Colonel Cromwell smiled.

"But the times are very rough, and we must suit ourselves to the times."

He opened the door; Ely showed bare and dreary beneath the darkening
sky, from which a few flakes of snow were beginning to slowly fall. The
two gentlemen touched hands and parted. As Colonel Cromwell still stood
at the door of his house, gazing thoughtfully at the winter evening as
if he saw there some sign or character plain for his reading, his wife
descended the stairs and, seeing him there, came to his side. She had a
bunch of keys in her hand, and the light from the lamp above the door
gleamed on them. Her docile eyes lifted to his; her face had a look of
stillness: she seemed a creature made for quietness.

"What had my lord to say?" she asked.

"Peace! peace!" muttered her husband. "He wanted peace!"

"And you?" she ventured timidly.

"I!" he answered. "I live in Meshech and Kedar. I am in blackness and
in the waste places; but the Lord hath had exceeding mercy upon me--I
have seen light in His Light--therefore am I confident in the hope I
may serve Him. His will be done!"

Elisabeth Cromwell looked out at the dim white towers of the cathedral,
where her first husband and her first-born lay buried, and she thought
of that other child, Robert, who had died at school only three years
before. Life seemed to her suddenly unreal. She closed the door and
turned away.

Her husband followed her into the room on the right of the passage,
where a fair group of children, Mary, Frances, and Elisabeth, were
roasting chestnuts by the fire.

A maid was putting a white cloth on the table; the pleasant clink of
glasses and china mingled with the laughter and talk of Elisabeth, a
beautiful child of some thirteen years, whose grace and gaiety was a
sudden brightness in the Puritan household.

At her father's entrance she came to him at once and showed him a round
ball she had made of holly berries and hung by a red ribbon as an
ornament to her wrist.

"Vanity!" said Colonel Cromwell; but as he kissed her his whole face
was radiant with love.



CHAPTER II

THE QUEEN'S FAREWELL


It was in the July following the winter when he had first come to
discussion with my Lord Manchester that Oliver Cromwell, now the Earl's
Lieutenant-General, flamed suddenly into great brilliance over England.

By his valour and skill he had turned the tide at Marston, after
Manchester, Fairfax, and Leven had fled from the battle as lost; he
had beaten Rupert's victorious horse with his own light cavalry, and
he had led the Scotch infantry in an overwhelming charge against the
enemy. The north of England was now lost to the King, the prestige of
the parliamentary army had never stood higher, and Oliver Cromwell was
become the foremost soldier in their ranks, both for fame and success.

Such were the results of the battle at Marston Moor; but Manchester
appeared to be more frightened than encouraged at the victory. He
almost refused to fight; his indecision lost the battle of Newbury;
he allowed the King to relieve Donnington Castle; he would not go to
the help of Essex, who was losing ground in the south; he and his
Lieutenant-General had high altercations; the Scottish Presbyterian
party proposed terms to the King, which Charles haughtily refused.
After this failure they were somewhat quieter, though two of their
leaders, Essex and Holles, endeavoured to bring an action against
Cromwell as an incendiary; but Cromwell himself showed tact and
moderation sufficient to bring about a peace between the various
factions that constituted the parliamentary forces, and in the
autumn of that year was instrumental in the creation of the New Model
Army--the instrument which he had long been burning to handle; the
instrument by which the King, still haughty and defiant at Oxford, in
which loyal city he had his own Parliament, was to be finally brought
to accept and keep the people's terms.

Cromwell was excepted from the self-denying ordinance which ruled that
no Members of Parliament were to bear commands in the army, and was
created Lieutenant-General and Commander of the Horse, Fairfax being
General and Skippon Major-General.

Manchester and Essex retired with good sense and dignity.

Charles, moving from Oxford, stormed Leicester; Fairfax raised the
siege of Oxford to dash after him, and on 14th June 1645 found himself
face to face with the King's forces at Naseby, on the borders of
Northamptonshire. A battle was now inevitable, and by both sides it
was felt that it would be decisive: neither side could endure a great
defeat, and either side would become almost completely master of
England by a great victory at this juncture. Rupert was smarting to
revenge himself for Marston; the King despised the New Model Army, and
was eager to dash to pieces this new instrument of his enemies; Fairfax
was ardent to justify the trust reposed in him. Both armies were
impatient to bring matters to an issue, so on each side were motives
sufficient for fierce inspiration.

The night after the armies had faced each other the King lay at
Market Harborough, eight miles from the village of Naseby, where the
parliamentary forces were encamped. He had his Queen with him and the
infant Princess, recently born at Exeter, and was lodged in the modest
country house of a certain loyal gentleman, a cadet of the noble house
of Pawlet. Rupert rode up in the twilight from his quarters to see his
uncle, and came into a peaceful, old walled garden, where Charles paced
the daisied grass.

On a bench beneath a great cedar tree sat the pale Queen, the sun and
shade flecked all over her white dress, her baby on her knee, and by
her side her new lady, Margaret Lucas.

The garden was all abloom with white roses, the rich summer air full
of the hum of bees and the thousand scents of June; the light was
taking on a richer gold colour as it faded, and where the garden sloped
westward to the orchards the dazzle of the setting sun danced in the
leaves.

The scene seemed very far from war, from turmoil, from confusion, and
blood-stained strife; among the mossy gables of the house some white
pigeons strutted, and there was no other noise nor any indication of
the army quartered near.

Prince Rupert came slowly over the lawn; his fringed leather breeches
and Spanish boots were dusty, and his red cloak open on soiled buff and
a torn scarf. He had a gloomy, reckless look, and his brow was frowning
beneath the disordered black love-locks.

Charles stopped when he saw his nephew coming and asked abruptly--

"They will fight to-morrow?"

"I think they will," replied the Prince. He went up to the Queen and
kissed her hand.

There was the dimness of many tears in that proud woman's eyes, and
the delicacy of her beauty had turned to a haggard air of sickness;
she had, however, the swift, hawk-like look of one whose courage is
unbroken, and her pride was even more obviously shown now than in
the days of her greatest splendour, when it had been cloaked with
sweetness. Her worn, dark features, her careless dress and impatient
glances, words, and movements were in great contrast to the careful
splendour, the composed gravity, and the smooth youth of the blonde
Margaret Lucas.

"Have you come to take His Majesty away from me?" cried the Queen to
Rupert as his lips touched her thin, cold hand.

"He did promise to inspect the army to-night, Madame," returned
Rupert, with a certain touch of indifferency in his manner: Charles
was no soldier, and the Prince had little deference for his opinion on
military matters.

"And to-morrow there will be a battle," said the Queen. She rose
suddenly, clasping the sleeping child to her heart; her ruined eyes
regained, by the sparkle of tears, for one moment their lost brilliancy.

"Oh, Madame," cried Margaret Lucas passionately, "surely God will not
permit His Majesty to be defeated!"

Rupert's dark countenance flashed into a smile as he glanced at her
pale fervency.

"That cursed Cromwell is on his way to join Fairfax," he remarked.
"Pray, Mrs. Lucas, that he doth not arrive in time."

"Is he so terrible a man?" asked the Queen scornfully: she could not
endure to give even the compliment of fear to these rebels.

"A half-crazed fanatic or a very cunning hypocrite," returned the
Prince; "but an able fighter, on my soul, Madame!"

"His army consisteth of poor ignorant men," cried Henriette Marie.
"Surely, surely gentlemen can prevail against them."

"We will make the trial to-morrow, Madame," said Rupert, with a flush
in his swarthy face for the memory of Naseby. "At least, we do not lack
in loyalty--in endeavour--Your Majesty believeth that?"

"Yes, yes," said the Queen hurriedly. "Loyalty is common enough; but
where shall we get good counsels? Are we wise to fight the rebels
to-morrow? By all accounts they are double our number--and if this
Cromwell cometh up with reinforcements----"

The King, who had hitherto stood silent, fingering the dark foliage on
one of the lower sweeping branches of the cedar tree, now spoke with
authority.

"We fight to-morrow, Mary. I mean to surprise their outposts."

A pause of silence fell. The sunlight was slipping lower through the
trees, and lay like flat gold on the lawn; the last brilliance of the
day lay in the fair locks of Margaret Lucas, in the embroideries of her
gown, in the swords of King and Prince, and over the frail figure of
the undaunted Queen.

"I shall see Your Majesty at the camp after supper?" asked Rupert.

"Yes--sooner," replied Charles.

The Queen looked keenly at the young man on whom so much depended in
the issue of to-morrow, and seemed as if she was about to make some
appeal or exhortation; but she turned away with a mere quiet farewell.
The King followed her with a smile to his nephew.

Margaret Lucas remained under the great cedar tree and Rupert lingered.

"The white roses are again in bloom," he said.

"When they next flourish may the King be safe in London again!" cried
the lady.

"Amen," said Rupert. "Do you know the noble Marquess of Newcastle, Mrs.
Lucas?" he added, with a smile.

A bright colour mounted to her alert face.

"I met him in Oxford," she returned.

"I had your flowers in my Prayer Book in memory of that day we raised
the Standard," said the young Prince, "and when my lord saw them, we
being in chapel together, he did ask of them, and when he heard their
history begged them from me. Does this anger you?"

"It is not becoming that Your Highness should tell me of it," faltered
Margaret Lucas.

"You are too modest," smiled the Prince. "He is a gallant lord and
a valiant, loyal soldier. He asked me, if I saw you, to give you his
homages."

The lady stood silent, her eyes downcast, the quick blood coming and
going in her noble face. Rupert waited.

"Have you no answer to the princely Marquess?" he asked.

Margaret Lucas lifted her head.

"Tell him to--keep--the flowers," she stammered.

With that she turned away as if she was frightened of having said too
much; the young General laughed a little and went back towards the
house, whistling the air of a German song.

Margaret stood staring over her shoulder after him; all the misfortunes
of the State, of her own family, all the hideous sights and sad stories
which had weighed her heart with black bitterness, the danger of her
beloved brother, her own precarious situation--all these things were
forgotten in one great flash of happiness.

She clasped her hands tightly.

"How I do love thee, thou excellent gentleman," she murmured, "even
with an affection that is so beyond modesty and reason that if thou
wert here I could avow it to thy face! God protect thee, dear, loyal
lord!"

The sun had now sunk behind the trees and hedges of the orchard; the
last bee had flown; the roses gave forth their strength in a more
intense perfume; the sky changed to a sparkling violet, glimmering with
rosy gold in the west.

The Queen called Margaret Lucas, and, putting the little Princess in
her arms, bid her go and take the child to her women.

Margaret made her grave and humble obeisances and withdrew, holding the
King's youngest born over a joyful heart.

"Mary," said Charles, taking his wife's hand, "if I fail to-morrow you
will go to France. Promise me."

"You must not fail," she answered passionately. "But I give you this
promise if it makes you fight with a lighter conscience."

"A light conscience!" echoed the King. "Methinks I shall never own a
light conscience again."

"You are too discouraged," murmured the Queen, but with a kind of
lassitude.

They went together into the house, and he told her of the arrangements
he had made for her safe conduct to the coast in case of his defeat.
She listened and made no reply.

They entered the sitting-room that opened on the garden, and the King
closed the door, for he could hear some of his gentlemen without.

Henriette Marie seated herself on a worn leather couch and looked at
her husband.

His face was pallid, his eyes heavy and shadowed, his hair damp about
the brow; he continually put his hand above his eyes or above his heart.

"Last night I dreamt of Strafford," he said suddenly.

"It was a dream!" answered the Queen. "Is this a time to dwell on
things unfortunate?"

He made no reply; he moved about the darkening room, aimlessly touching
the furniture and the walls.

At last he stopped before the inert figure of his wife.

"Farewell, sweet," he said. "I have to join the Prince."

"Farewell," she murmured.

He moved towards the door and she sprang up.

"Oh," she exclaimed, in a tone of horror, "this may be our last
meeting!"

Charles turned, startled.

"Dear God forbid!" he cried.

"If--the worst cometh--if I go to France--ah, when shall I again behold
you?"

"Hast thou also evil premonitions?" asked the King, with a shudder.

She controlled herself.

"No," she replied through stiff lips. "No--no--but many thoughts press
on my heart, and I am weak of late."

Indeed, she felt all her limbs tremble, so that they would no longer
support her, and she sat down on the couch again, cold from head to
foot.

Charles stood beside her, gazing with the soul's deepest passion of
love and anguish at her bowed dark head.

"Kiss me and go," she said. "What can I say? You know my whole heart.
All hath been said between you and me. We have been surprised by
misfortune, and I am something unprepared. But never doubt that I love
thee wholly."

The King again made that gesture of his hand, pressed first to his
heart and then to his forehead, as if heart and head were equally
wounded, then he went to a corner of the room where an old clavichord
stood and lifted up the cover.

"Sing to me before I go, Mary," he whispered.

The Queen rose heavily. Her bold spirit was bent with gloom; ill-health
and the continual failure of the King's intrigues and the King's arms
had given her a kind of disgust of life. As she had been more despotic
than the King in prosperity, so she was more bitter and stern in
adversity. As she crossed the window, open on the soft dimness of the
garden, she thought, through her miserable languor, "If, indeed, I
never see him again, the scent of these roses will be with me all my
life."

"I will light the candles," said Charles.

"No--no," she answered. She seated herself and her hands touched the
keys.

Her voice, once the pride of two courts and her greatest
accomplishment, rose in a little French song; but tears and suffering
had taken the clearness from her notes that once had rung so true.

At the end of the first verse she broke down and, putting her hands
before her face, wept.

"I do love thee," said the King, bending over her in a passion of
tenderness. "More than words can rehearse I do love thee, dear Mary,
and have loved thee all my days. Be not confounded--it cannot be God's
will to desert us utterly. Hold up your heart. Oh I do love thee, or
I had rather not have lived to see my present miseries--but thou hast
made life worth while to me. My dear wife--my dear, dear wife."

The Queen did not move, and her dry, difficult sobs did not cease.

"Oh, love that is so weak," cried the King, "that it cannot do more
than this ... to see thee thus ... what greater misery could I have
than to see thee thus."

Still she did not speak. She had done much for him--crossed the seas
and become a supplicant at her brother's court, sold her jewels,
persuaded, inspired, and led many to join his standard, raised an army
for his cause, been untiring and dauntless in her counsels, her energy,
her confidence; but now a fatigue that was like despair was over her.
She felt about him a fatality as if success was impossible for him, and
all her ruined pride and splendour, her lost hopes, her lost endeavours
crowded upon her till she could do nothing but weep.

Charles stooped and, with infinite gentleness, drew her hands from her
face.

"This is a bad augury for me to-morrow," he said.

She lifted her head then, the sobs still catching her throat. It was
too dark for him to see her face, distorted by tears; only the dim
white oval of it showed in the dusk.

"No bad auguries," she said. "No--to-morrow must see a turn in our
miserable fortunes."

He kissed her with a trembling reverence of devotion, and her tears
dried on his cold cheek.

"Have confidence," she murmured, her face pressed against his lace
collar. She was always heartening him, firing his hesitation, directing
his indecision, and the instinct of guiding and inspiring him came to
her now even in her moment of weakness. "Have no sad thoughts, no ill
thoughts--God will fight for his anointed King. If I seem confounded,
consider that I have been troubled with many things."

He drew her gently towards the window, and they stood together looking
out on to the garden. The white hawthorn and roses, the last lilac
still showed pallid through the gloaming; the stars were beginning to
sparkle in a sky from which the gold had faded, leaving it the colour
of dead violets; the pure air was rich and sweet as honey.

"Whatever betide," said the King, "remember this--I will never forsake
my children's heritage nor my faith."

He had always scrupulously kept his promise never to discuss religion
with his Papist Queen, and he did not emphasize his resolve to remain
for ever faithful to the Church of England. She knew this constancy of
his and admired it, but now she said nothing of these matters.

"Whatever befall," she replied, "you are always the King."

"I shall not forget it," he said, with a kind of passion.

Another moment of silence passed, during which their thoughts burnt
like fire in their hearts and brains, then he moved to go, stammering
farewells.

Thrice he turned back to embrace her again, thrice her hands clung to
him with a desperation almost beyond her control, while her lips tried
to form in words what no words could say.

Then at length he was gone, and she heard the door shut.

"I will not watch him ride away," she said to herself. "I will wait and
watch his return."

Suddenly she thought of Lady Strafford and of the last time she had
spoken with the Countess.

"O, God," she cried, "if I should never see Charles again!"

She turned to go after him, but controlled herself from this folly and
stood huddled in the window watching the night moths flutter, shadows
among shadows, and the chilly moon brighten from a wraith to gleaming
silver among the whispering orchard trees.

She stood so until she heard the bugles that announced the King's
departure, then she went to her prayers to supplicate the Madonna and
the saints with bitter tears and bitter forebodings.



CHAPTER III

THE GREAT FIGHT


That evening, while the King was reviewing his troops at Harborough and
giving them the word for to-morrow--"Mary"--while General Sir Thomas
Fairfax was holding a council at Naseby, Lieutenant-General Cromwell
was hastening over the borders of Northamptonshire with six hundred men
towards the headquarters of the parliamentary army, which he reached
about five in the morning under the light of a cloudless dawn.

At the entrance to the village he halted for an instant and surveyed
with a keen eye the undulating open space of ground which rolled
towards Guilsborough and Daventry: unfenced ground, full of rabbit
holes and covered with short, sweet grass and flowers, above which the
larks were singing.

The pure summer morning was full of gentle airs blowing from orchards
and gardens and the scents of all fresh green things opening with the
opening day.

Silent lay the hamlet of Naseby, the white thatched cottages, the two
straggling streets, the old church with a copper ball glittering on the
spire, all clearly outlined in the first fair unstained light of the
sun.

Beyond lay the parliamentary army: a sober force with their pennons,
flags, and colours already displayed among them, and the gold fire
gleaming along their brass cannon.

Cromwell and his six hundred, dusty from the night's ride, swept, a
flash of steel on leather, a tramp of hoofs, a cloud of dust, through
Naseby, where the villagers crowded at windows and doors, not knowing
whether to curse them or bless them, and so to the headquarters of
General Sir Thomas Fairfax.

As the new-comers passed through the army and were recognized for
Lieutenant-General Cromwell and his men, whom Rupert had, after Marston
Moor, nicknamed "Ironsides," the soldiers turned and shouted as with
one voice, for it had lately been very commonly observed that where
Cromwell went there was the blessing of God.

Sir Thomas Fairfax was already on horseback, and the two Generals met
and saluted without dismounting.

Oliver Cromwell looked pale, and when he lifted his beaver the grey
strands showed in his thick hair: the war had told on him. He had
lost his second son and a nephew. His natural melancholy had been
increased by this and by the bloody waste he had daily to witness, by
the continual bitterness and horror of the struggle; but the exaltation
of his stern faith still showed in his expression, and he sat erect in
his saddle, a massive figure solid as carved oak, in his buff and steel
corselet.

General Fairfax was a different type of man, patriotic and honourable
as his Lieutenant-General, but cultured, fond of letters, lukewarm in
religion, and not given to extremes. Cromwell, however, found him more
acceptable than Manchester or Essex.

"Sir," cried the General, "you are as welcome to me as water in a
drought. Sir, I give to you the command of all the horse, and may you
do the good service you did at Long Marston Moor."

"We are but a company of poor ignorant men, General Fairfax," replied
Oliver Cromwell, "and the malignants, I hear, make great scorn of us as
a rabble that are to be taught a lesson. Yet I do smile out to God in
praises, in assurance of victory, for He will, by things that are not,
bring to naught things that are!"

"We have to-day a great task," said Sir Thomas Fairfax, "for if the
King gaineth the victory he will press on to London--and once there he
may regain his old standing; whereas if he faileth, he will never more,
I think, be able to bring an army into the field."

"Make no pause and have no misgiving, sir," replied Cromwell. "God hath
put the sword into the hands of the Parliament for the punishment of
evil-doers and the confusion of His enemies, and He will not forsake
us. Sir, I will about the marshalling of the horse, for I do perceive
that we are as yet not all gotten in order."

The army indeed, though armed and mounted, was not yet arranged in any
order of battle, and at this moment there came a message from one of
the outposts that the King's forces, in good order, were marching from
Harborough.

Fairfax with his staff galloped to a little eminence beyond some apple
orchards that fenced in the broad graveyard of the church. By the aid
of perspective glasses they could very clearly see the army of the
King--the flower of the loyal gentlemen of England, the final effort
and hope of Majesty (for this force was Charles' utmost, and all men
knew it)--marching in good array and with a gallant show, foot and
horse, from Harborough. The Royal Standard was borne before, and, they
being not much over a mile away, Cromwell, through the glasses, could
discern a figure in a red montero, such as Fairfax wore, riding at the
head of the cavalry.

"'Tis Rupert, that son of Baal," he muttered sternly. "The false
Arminian fighteth well--yet what availeth his prowess, when his end
shall be that outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of
teeth?"

Near by, higher than the old copper ball of the church, a tiny lark
sang; the bees hovered in the thyme at their feet; the stainless blue
of the heavens deepened with the strengthening day. A sudden sense of
the peace and loveliness of the scene touched the sensitive heart of
Sir Thomas Fairfax.

"English against English, on English land!" he cried. "The pity of it!
God grant that we do right!"

Cromwell turned in his saddle, his heavy brows drawn together.

"Dost thou doubt it?" he demanded. "Art thou like the Laodicean,
neither hot nor cold?"

"I think of England," replied the General, "and of what we destroy
herein--fairness and tranquillity vanisheth from the land like breath
from off a glass!"

Cromwell pointed his rough gauntleted hand towards the approaching
royal forces.

"Dost thou believe," he asked, "that by leaving those in power we
secure tranquillity and repose? I tell thee, every drop of blood
shed to-day will be more potent to buy us peace than years of gentle
argument."

"Thou," said Sir Thomas Fairfax, "art a man of a determined nature--but
I am something slow-footed. To our work now, sir, and may this bloody
business come to a speedy issue!"

Cromwell rode with his own troop down the little hillside to take
up his position at the head of the cavalry on the right, the left
wing being under Ireton, the infantry in the centre being under the
command of Skippon, the Scotsman, the whole under the supervision of
Fairfax. This deposition of the army was hastily come to, for there
was not an instant to lose; indeed, the Parliamentarians had scarcely
gained the top of the low ridge which ran between the hedges, dividing
Naseby from Sulby and Clipston, when the King's army came into view
across Broadmoor, Rupert opposite Ireton, Langdale and his horse
facing Cromwell and the Ironsides, Lord Astley in the centre, with the
infantry and the King himself in armour riding in front.

Fairfax posted Okey's dragoons behind the bridges running to Sulby,
and flung forward his foot to meet the advancing line of the royalist
attack. The infantry discharged their pieces, and the first horrid
sound of firing and thick stench of gunpowder disturbed the serene
morning.

Then began the bloody and awful fight. Up and down the undulating
ground English struggled with English, the colours rocked and dipped
above the swaying lines of men, the demi-culverins and demi-sakers
roared and smoked, the horse charged and wheeled and wheeled and
charged again. The mounting sun shone on a confusion of steel and
scarlet, sword and musket, spurt of fire and splash of blood, on many
a grim face distorted with battle fury, on many a fair, youthful face
sinking on to the trampled earth to rise no more, on many fair locks
of loyal gentlemen, combed and dressed last night and now fallen in
the bloody mire never to be tended or caressed again, on many a stern
peasant or yeoman going fiercely out into eternity with his word of
"God with us!" on his stiffening lips.

Lord Astley swept back Skippon's first line on to the reserve. Rupert,
hurling his horse through the sharp fire of Okey's dragoons, broke up
Ireton's cavalry, and for all their stubborn fighting bore them back
towards Naseby village. Uplifted swords, maddened horses, slipping,
falling, staggering up again, the shouting, flushed Cavaliers, the
bitter, silent Roundheads struggled together towards the hamlet and
church. In the midst was always Rupert, hatless now, and notable for
his black hair flying and his red cloak and his sword red up to the
hilt.

Fairfax looked and saw his left wing shattered, his infantry
overpressed and in confusion, the ignorant recruits giving ground, the
officers in vain endeavouring to rally them, and his heart gave a sick
swerve; he dashed to the right, where Cromwell was fighting Langdale,
whose northern horsemen were scattered right and left before the
terrible onslaught of the Ironsides.

As Cromwell, completely victorious, thundered back from this charge, he
met his General. He did not need, however, Sir Thomas Fairfax to tell
him how matters went; his keen eye saw through the battle smoke the
colours of the infantry being beaten back into the reserve, and he rose
up in his stirrups and waved on his men.

"God with us!" broke from the lips of the Puritans as their commander
re-formed them.

"God with us!" shouted Cromwell.

One regiment he sent to pursue Langdale's flying host; the rest he
wheeled round to the support of the foot.

Rupert had left the field in pursuit of Ireton; there was no one to
withstand the charge of the Ironsides as they hurled themselves, sword
in hand, into the centre of the battle.

A great cheer and shout arose from the almost overborne ranks of
Fairfax and Skippon when they saw the cavalry dashing to their rescue,
and a groan broke from Charles when he beheld his foot being cut down
before the charge of the Parliamentarians.

He rode up and down like a man demented, crying through the storm and
smoke--

"Where is Rupert? Is he not here to protect my loyal foot?"

But the Prince was plundering Fairfax's baggage at Naseby, and the
infantry were left alone to face the Ironsides.

They faced about for their death with incredible courage, being now
outnumbered one to two, forming again and again under the enemy's fire,
closing up their ranks with silent resolution, one falling, another
taking his place, mown down beneath the horses till their dead became
more than the living, yet never faltering in their stubborn resolution.

One after another these English gentlemen, pikemen, and shotmen went
down, slain by English hands, watering English earth with their blood,
gasping out their lives on the rabbit holes and torn grass, swords,
pikes, and muskets sinking from their hands, hideously wounded, defiled
with blood and dirt, distorted with agony, dying without complaint for
the truth as they saw truth and loyalty as they conceived loyalty.
One little phalanx resisted even the charge of the Ironsides, though
attacked front and flank; they did not break. As long as they had a
shot they fired; when their ammunition was finished they waited the
charge of Fairfax with clubbed muskets. Their leader was a youth in his
early summer with fair, uncovered head and a rich dress. He fell three
times; when he rose no more his troop continued their resistance until
the last man was slain. Then the Ironsides swept across their bodies
and charged the last remnant of the King's infantry.

Charles Stewart, watching with agony and dismay the loss of his foot
and guns, rode from point to point of the bitter battle, vainly
endeavouring to rally his broken forces.

Such as was left of Langdale's horse gathered round him, and at this
point up came Rupert, flushed and breathless, his men exhausted from
the pursuit and loaded with plunder.

"Thou art too late," said the King sternly, pointing to the awful
smoke-hung field. "Hadst thou come sooner some loyal blood might have
been saved."

It was the sole reproach he made: he was past anger as he was past hope.

"God damn and the devil roast them!" cried Rupert, in a fury. "But we
will withstand them yet!"

With swiftness and skill he seconded the King's courageous efforts to
rally the remnant of the horse, and these drew up for a final stand in
front of the baggage wagons and carriages, where the camp followers
shrieked and cowered.

For the third time Oliver Cromwell formed his cavalry, being now joined
by Ireton, who, though wounded, had rallied the survivors of Rupert's
pursuit, and now, in good order and accompanied by the shotmen and
dragoons, advanced towards the remnants of the royal horse.

The King seemed like one heedless of his fate: his face was colourless
and distorted, the drying tears stained his cheek. He looked over the
hillocks scattered with the dead and dying who had fallen for him, and
he muttered twice, through twitching lips--

"Broken, broken! Lost, lost!"

The parliamentary dragoons commencing fire, Rupert headed his line for
his usual reckless charge, and Charles, galloping to the front, was
about to press straight on the enemy's fire, when a group of Cavaliers
rode up to him, and one of them, Lord Carnwath, swore fiercely and
cried out--

"Will you go upon your death in an instant?"

The King turned his head and gave him a dazed look, whereon in a trice
the Scots lord seized the King's foam-flecked bridle, and turned about
his horse.

"This was a fight for all in all, and it is lost!" cried Charles.

Seeing the King turn from the battlefield, his cavalry turned about
too as one man, and galloped after him on the spur, without waiting
for the third charge of Cromwell's Ironsides, who chased them through
Harborough, from whence the Queen, on news of how the day was going,
had an hour before fled, and along the Leicester road.

The regiments that remained took possession of the King's baggage, his
guns and wagons, his standards and colours, his carriages, including
the royal coach, and made prisoner every man left alive on the field.

In the carriages were many ladies of quality, sickened and maddened,
shrieking and desperate, who were seized and hurried away in their
fine embroidered clothes and fallen hair--calling on the God who had
deserted them--carried across the field strewn with their slain kinsmen
to what rude place of safety might be devised.

Nor was any roughness exercised against them, for they were English and
defenceless.

The Irish camp followers were neither English nor defenceless, even the
most wretched tattered woman of them had a skean knife at her belt, and
used it with yelling violence.

What mercy for such as these, accursed of God and man--the same breed
as those who rose and murdered the English in Ulster?

"What of these vermin?" asked an officer of Cromwell, when he galloped
past in pursuit of the royalists.

"Is there not an ordinance against Papists?" was the answer, hurled
harsh and rough through the turmoil. "To the sword with the enemies of
God!"

It was done.

Midday had not yet been reached; the whole awful fight had hardly
occupied three hours, and now the King had fled with his broken troops,
and from among the baggage wagons, the stuffs, the clothes, the food,
the hasty tents, the Puritans drove into the open the wretched Irish
women, wild creatures, full of a shrieking defiance and foul cursing,
pitiful too in their rags and dirty finery, their impotence, their
despair.

Some were young enough and fair enough, but smooth cheeks and bright
eyes and white arms worked no enchantment here; sword and bullet made
short shrift of them and their knives and curses.

"In the name of Christ!" cried one, clinging half-naked to an Ironside
captain.

"In the name of Christ!" he repeated fiercely, and dispatched her with
his own hand.

Then that too was over; the last woman's voice shrieking to saint and
Madonna was quieted; the last huddled form had quivered into stillness
on the profaned earth, the carbines were shouldered, the swords
sheathed, and the Puritans turned back with their captured colours and
standards, such plunder as could be met with, and the King's secret
cabinet, recklessly left in his carriage, and full, as the first glance
showed, of secret and fatal papers.

The dial on the church front at Naseby hamlet did not yet point to
twelve; across the graves lay Ireton's men and Rupert's Cavaliers,
their blood mingling in the daisied grass; the copper ball which had
overlooked a day of another such sights beyond the sea, still gleamed
against a cloudless sky, and above it, in the purer, upper air, the
lark still poured forth his immutable song which the living were as
deaf to as the dead.



CHAPTER IV

THE DEAD CAVALIER


Lieutenant-general Cromwell pursued the King to within sight of
Leicester, nine miles beyond Harborough, to which hamlet he returned
with his troop towards the close of day.

The royalists, who had filled Harborough twenty-four hours before, were
now scattered like dust before the wind; the house where the King and
Queen had stayed the previous night was deserted, and this Cromwell and
some of his officers took possession of, as the most commodious in the
place.

The church, after being despoiled of painting, carving, coloured glass,
and altar, was used partly as a stable and partly as a prison for the
few captives the Parliamentarians had with them.

Cromwell watched this work completed, then rode across the fragments of
broken tombs and shattered glass, flung out of the church, to the house
where Charles Stewart had taken farewell of his wife the day before.

The furniture the Queen had used was still in its place; in the parlour
where Cromwell entered with Ireton stood the clavichord open, as
Henriette Marie had left it when she broke down over her French song;
a glove and a scarf belonging to Margaret Lucas lay on the couch, the
windows were wide on the beautiful garden which again sent up sweet
scents to the evening air.

Cromwell noticed none of these things; he was not a man of exquisite
senses; perfume and flowers, green trees and sunshine were as little to
him as they could be to any healthy man, and as for delights of man's
making, he abhorred them all as vanities, from pictures and music, fine
dwellings and costly gardens, to ruffles and fringed breeches.

Ireton was, if anything, a man even stiffer and more rigid in his
ideas. They both sat down to their supper in the delicate little room
which had been some one's home, without the least regard to their
surroundings, either the luxurious furniture or the fair garden giving
forth sweets to the evening air.

Neither had changed their dusty, blood-stained leather and steel;
Cromwell cast his beaver and gloves on to the satin couch, and Ireton
flung his on to the polished floor.

A soldier brought in bread, meat, cheese, and beer from the inn;
nothing more was to be had. Cromwell, who had not eaten since the night
before, did not complain, but finished his food with a good appetite.

Though he had been twenty-four hours in the saddle, he was too strong a
man to feel more than an ordinary weariness, and the exaltation of his
spirits made him forget the slight fatigue of his body.

The two soldiers said little while they were eating, save to now
and then make some remark on the number of the malignants slain or
captured, or some ejaculations as to the might and power of the Lord
who had now so signally demonstrated that His countenance was turned
towards them.

Henry Ireton was a man after Cromwell's own heart, one of the choicest
of that little band who had taken the place of the older patriots,
such as Pym and Hampden. Blake and Sidney were two others; Sir Harry
Vane, who was of my late Lord Falkland's temper, Cromwell considered
less well suited to the times; Fairfax he had some doubts of; and
Manchester, Essex, and their kind he regarded as little better than
Laodiceans.

When he had finished his meal he pushed back his chair and regarded
his companion fixedly. Ireton had taken off his corselet, bandoleer,
and sword, and his left arm was bandaged; his extreme pallor and the
drooping way he sat showed the severity of his wound, but it had not
had power to dismay his spirit or to soften his stern bearing.

He was a man of five-and-thirty, well born and well favoured, his
features showing resolution, enthusiasm, capacity, and courage.

"Hast thou no mind to take a wife?" asked Cromwell abruptly.

"It is not for me to be thinking of marriage when the land is in
mourning," replied Ireton. "Even a wilderness with the water-springs
dried up and a fruitful land become barren."

"Peace cometh soon," said Cromwell grimly.

"Yet the King hath escaped into Oxford by now, and many places hold out
against us," returned Ireton.

"Be not as the children of Ephraim, but remember what the Lord hath
done for us," said Cromwell. "I tell thee He shall this year make an
end of His enemies, Papist, Prelatist, and Arminian, and all such as
defy Him. Is not His hand truly visible amongst us? Surely it would be
a very atheist to doubt it. And for what I was about to say, Harry,
coming to a plainer matter, my daughter Bridget is marriageable
and full of piety and fear of the Lord--a thrifty maiden and one
well-exercised in household ways, and if thou hast a mind to this
alliance we may celebrate a marriage with the peace."

Ireton flushed with pleasure at this undoubted honour; for Oliver
Cromwell had become already a considerable man, and after the splendour
of to-day's achievements was like to become more considerable still;
beside, Ireton held him in sincere respect and affection.

"Sir," he replied, "I am very sensible of this kindness, and if I on my
part may satisfy what you shall demand of me, I will take a wife from
thy hearth with as much joy as Jacob took Rachel."

Oliver Cromwell's face softened into sudden tenderness.

"Thou _dost_ satisfy me, Henry!" he answered. "I have great and good
hopes of thee. I know not why this came into my mind at this season,
save that, seeing thee hurt and weary, methought a woman's care would
not come ill."

He rose abruptly, to cut short Ireton's further thanks, and, going to
the door, called for candles.

Colonel Whalley and some other officers now entered, and after some
further talk they left, Ireton with them, to see to the deposition of
the new troops who, bringing prisoners and plunder, were continuing to
pour into Harborough. Cromwell, left alone, called for ink and paper,
and, seating himself anew at the table where the candles now stood
among the tankards, plates, and knives, commenced his letter to the
Speaker of the House of Commons.

Little of the tumult filling the village reached this quiet room;
outside the roses, lilacs, and lilies folded their parcels of sweets
beneath the rising moon, and far off a nightingale was singing where
the orchards dipped to a coppice, and the coppice dipped to the west.

Oliver Cromwell wrote--"Harborough, 14th June 1645," paused a minute,
biting his quill and frowning at the candlelight, then briefly wrote
the news of the great victory:--

 "SIR,--Being commanded by you to this service, I think myself bound to
 acquaint you with the good hand of God towards you and us.

 "We marched yesterday after the King, who went before us from Daventry
 to Harborough; and quartered about six miles from him. This day we
 marched towards him.

 "He drew out to meet us; both armies engaged. We, after three hours'
 fight very doubtful, at last routed his army; killed and took about
 5000, very many officers, but of what quality we yet know not.

 "We also took about 200 carriages--all he had; and all his guns, being
 12 in number, whereof 2 were demi-cannon, 2 demi-culverins, and (I
 think) the rest sakers.

 "We pursued the enemy from three miles short of Harborough to nine
 miles beyond, even to the sight of Leicester, whither the King fled."

Having said all he could think of with regard to the actual battle that
was of importance, Cromwell paused again and thoughtfully sharpened his
quill.

Both the mystical and practical side of him wished to improve the
opportunity. He had lately heard how the Presbyterian party at
Westminster was very hot against the Independents, especially such
as would not take the Covenant, calling them Anabaptists, Sectaries,
and Schismatics; and Cromwell, who was for liberty of conscience and
toleration within Puritan bounds, and who was, if he was anything, an
Independent himself and no lover of the Scots or their Covenant, wished
to impress the Parliament with the worth of these despised sects, at
the same time to magnify God for what He had done for them. He wished
also to give praise to Fairfax, who, under the Lord, he considered the
author of this victory.

After labouring a little further in thought, he added this to his
letter--

 "Sir, this is none other but the hand of God; and to Him alone belongs
 the glory wherein none are to share with Him.

 "The General served you with all faithfulness and honour; and the best
 commendation I can give him is, that I dare say he attributes it all
 to God and would rather perish than assume to himself.

 "Which is an honest and a thriving way, and yet as much for bravery
 may be given to him in this action as to a man."

Having thus done justice to his General, the Puritan endeavoured
to do justice to his soldiers, and to give a timely warning to the
Presbyterians. He dipped his quill into the ink-dish and added, with a
firm hand and a bent brow, frowning--

 "Honest men served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are
 trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage them.

 "I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that
 are concerned in it.

 "He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he
 trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty
 he fights for.

 "In this he rests, who is your most humble servant,

  "OLIVER CROMWELL"

As he dried and sealed up his letter, the soldier, whose ears, though
deaf to the nightingale and the lift of the wind in the trees without,
were keen enough for all practical sounds, heard a certain tumult or
commotion which seemed to be in the house and almost at his very door.

With the instinct that the last few years had bred in him, he put his
hand to his tuck sword and shifted it farther round his thigh, then,
taking up the standing candlestick, he hastily crossed to the door and
opened it. A little group of soldiers were gathered round the front
entrance to the house, which stood wide open, and Cromwell joined them,
casting the rays of his two candles over a scene that had hitherto been
illumined only by the pale trembling light of the rising moon.

A small, white, tired horse stood at the steps of the house, his head
hanging down to his feet; at his bridle was a woman, a dark scarf about
her shoulders, the slack reins in her hand, and on his back hung a man
who had fallen forward on his neck, almost, if not quite, unconscious.

The woman, with the moonlight on her face, was speaking to the soldiers
in a tone at once imperious and desperate, and from all parts of the
garden a mingled crowd was approaching to ascertain the cause of this
supplication at the gate of the General's house.

Cromwell stepped with authority to the front; the first flutter of the
candlelight over the scene revealed to him that the man was desperately
wounded and that the woman was wild with fear and anger, yet, by some
fierce effort, keeping her composure. The look on her face reminded him
of that he had seen on Lady Strafford's face when her coach was stopped
by the mob in Whitehall.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Sir," replied one of the troopers, "this is none other than one of
those calves of Bethel who did so levant and flourish to-day."

The lady now let go the reins and stepped forward, interrupting
the soldier, and addressing herself directly to Cromwell, whom she
perceived by his scarf and equipments to be an officer of some rank.

"Sir," she said, with a dignity greater than her sorrow, and a pride
stronger than her grief, "this is my husband's brother's house."

"Thy brother hath doubtless fled with the King," returned Cromwell,
"and his house is now the property of the Parliament."

"This is my husband," said the lady; "he was in the battalia
to-day--and I went down to the field and found him, and one helped me
set him on a horse and so we came here--to my brother's house."

Cromwell listened tenderly.

"Alas!" he said, "thou art over young for such scenes."

He gave the candlestick to one of the soldiers, and stepped into the
garden.

The Cavalier, who was, by a desperate effort, holding on to his senses,
now dragged himself upright and spoke--

"Since the rebels have the house, ask them not--for charity," he
muttered, and then, with the attempt at speech, fainted, and dropped
sideways out of the saddle into the arms of one of the Roundheads.

At this sight the lady lost all pride, and, glancing wildly round the
ring of steel-clad figures, she clasped her hands in a gesture of
appeal.

"May he not be taken into the house?" she stammered. "Oh, good sirs,
for pity!"

"A malignant," said the corporal who had caught the Cavalier, pointing
to his long locks and rich dress, "and one doubtless drunk with the
blood of the saints! Shall I take him to the church, that plague spot
of hierarchy, where the other children of Belial lie bound?"

"Nay," replied Cromwell, "take up the young man and bring him into the
house."

He looked to the lady and added--

"Madam, what is your name and quality?"

"Sir," she replied, "my lord is Sir William Pawlet, of the House of the
Marquis of Winchester, and I am Jane, his wife."

The look of pity died from the Puritan's expressive face.

"He who holdeth Basing House against us? That Winchester?" he cried
grimly. "Art thou, as he, Papists?"

"Your tongue doth call us that," she replied faintly.

"Ha!" cried Cromwell, "must I then succour the children of filth
and abomination, the brood of the Scarlet Women, whose bones I have
declared shall whiten the valley of Hinnom and whose dust I promised to
cast into the brook of Kedar?"

The lady pressed to her husband's side.

"God's will be done," she said in despair; "even in this pass I cannot
deny my God nor my King."

The two soldiers who had lifted the Cavalier paused with their burden,
expecting that the General would order both Papists to a common prison.

And such, indeed, was for a moment his intention, for no man was more
hated by him than Lord Winchester, who had, since the beginning of the
war, defied the Parliamentarians from Basing House.

But as he was about to speak he glanced down at the face of the
unconscious man, and a shudder shook him.

On the young Cavalier's fair face was a dreadful look of his own son
Oliver, who had died at Newport Pagnell, and of that nephew who had
died in his arms after Marston Moor; and with these two memories
came that of his first-born, Robert, dead in early youth, and the
intolerable pain of that loss smote him afresh.

"Bring the youth into the house," he said sombrely.

Lady Pawlet made no answer and gave no sign of gratitude; she followed
the soldiers who were carrying her husband, and helped them to support
his head.

"Surely the young man is dying," said Oliver Cromwell gloomily. "Bring
him into the parlour and fetch a surgeon if one may be found. And
look you, Gaveston," he added to the sergeant, "see this letter is
dispatched to Mr. Lenthall, in London."

The candles had now been replaced on the table, and the General took up
his letter to the Speaker, but while he was addressing the soldier and
handing him the dispatch, his frowning eyes were fixed on the Cavalier,
who was now extended on the couch with his cloak for a pillow.

Lady Pawlet, as if despairing of better accommodation, perhaps too
sunk in grief to notice anything, went on her knees by the side of her
husband, and knelt there as still as he, holding his hand to her breast.

The black scarf had fallen back over her tumbled grey dress and soiled
ruffles, and the red-gold of her disordered hair glittered round a face
disfigured with fatigue and sorrow--a face that had once been fair
enough and gay enough. They were both very young and scarcely past
their bridal days.

Oliver Cromwell stood with his back to the table, the light behind him,
watching them; she seemed forgetful of his presence.

Sir William was bleeding in the head and the arm; these at least were
his visible hurts, probably he had other wounds beneath his battle
bravery of silk and bullion fringe, Spanish leather, and brocaded scarf.

His wife, bending over him still and helpless, as if she, too, was
secretly wounded and dying of it, suddenly moved.

"A priest," she whispered, "is there not a priest? I think he
is--dying."

"Pray that the light may come to him in the little time left," said
the Puritan sternly. "And seek not to seal his eternal damnation by
idolatry and devilry."

The lady looked up as if she had not heard what he said and did not
know who he was.

"Oh, sir," she said, "will you come and look at my lord?"

Cromwell stepped up to the couch and gazed down at the Cavalier; his
features were pinched, the wound at the side of the head, from which
the blood had ceased to flow, was of a purplish colour.

The General touched him on the brow, moving back the clotted curls, and
gazed into his agonized features.

"His heart--I cannot feel his heart," cried Lady Pawlet.

"He is not here," said Cromwell. "Even as we speak, he standeth before
the Judgment Seat."



CHAPTER V

LIEUT.-GENERAL CROMWELL AND HIS GOD


"Well, well!" stammered Lady Pawlet. "There are some shall answer to
God for this. Well, well!"

"Get to thy friends if thou hast any," said the Puritan, "and let them
put thee beyond seas. There is an ordinance against Papists."

She stared at him; the body of the dead Cavalier was between them; the
red candlelight and the white moonlight mingled grotesquely over the
dead and the living.

"Ah yes," she said; her eyes wandered to her husband's face. "The King
will be sorry," she added.

"The King," replied Cromwell, "hath troubles of his own to mourn for.
Up, mistress, and be going. This is no place for mourner and Papists.
Tell me some friend's house and I will have thee conveyed thither."

Lady Pawlet made no reply, and remained kneeling by the couch which
held her husband.

Cromwell moved away abruptly; though professional insensibility and his
hatred of the Papist checked the pity that was natural to him at any
sight of distress, still his mystic, melancholy nature had been moved
by the sight of the young man brought in dead. He thought he beheld in
him a type of all the fair lives that had been ruined or lost since
this war began--wasted men! And how many of them, one, two, or three
thousand to-day, now being shovelled into the trenches at Broadmoor ...
all English like this one ... all with some woman somewhere to weep for
them....

He turned again to the immobile woman.

"Come, madam, come, come," he began, but his speech was broken by the
entry of a soldier with some dispatches from Fairfax, who remained at
Naseby, and with the statement that there was no surgeon conveniently
to be brought.

"As for that," returned Cromwell, "the malignant is now in the hands of
the Living God. But let that little white horse I saw be looked to."
He turned to Lady Pawlet. "He is mine by right of war, but I will give
thee a fair price for him if he be thine, since we are ever in need of
horses."

She made no reply; Cromwell glanced at her frowningly.

"Gaveston," he said, "is there nought but this burnt ale in the house?
Search for a glass of alicant for the malignant's wife, she hath
neither strength to speak or move."

"Methinks the King did take the fleshpots with him when he fled from
this Egypt," returned Gaveston. "There is scarce enough in the village
to refresh the outer men of the saints themselves--but I will see if I
can find a bottle of sack or alicant, General Cromwell."

Lady Pawlet, hitherto so immovable as to appear insensible, now
suddenly rose to her feet, and, turning so that she stood with her back
to her husband's body, stared at the General who remained at the table,
not two paces away from her.

"Art thou Oliver Cromwell?" she cried, with a force and energy that was
so in contrast to her former despairing apathy that the two men were
startled, and Cromwell turned as if to face an accuser.

"I am he," he answered.

"Rebel and heretic!" cried the unfortunate lady. "May the curse of
England rest on thee! May all the blood that has been spilt, and all
the tears shed for those thou hast slain, cry out to the throne of God
for a bolt to strike thee down!"

"Fond creature," replied Cromwell, "I am in covenant with the Lord, and
I do the Lord's work, and your blasphemies do but waste the air."

"No! I am heard!" answered Lady Pawlet, to whom horror and wrath had
given an exalted dignity and a desperate strength. "Man of blood and
disloyalty, a scourge upon this land, a bitterness and a terror to
these unhappy people!"

"Shall I take her away?" asked Gaveston, advancing.

"Nay," replied Cromwell, "let her speak. Words no more than swords
touch those who wear the armour of the Lord. As for thee, vain, unhappy
one, go and wrestle with the evil errors that hold thee, and pray that
light be given to thy eternal darkness."

Lady Pawlet moved aside and pointed to her husband.

"He is dead," she said. "Only I know how good he was, how excellent and
loyal--but he is dead in his early summer. And I, too, have lived my
life."

"'Man is a thing of nought, he passeth away like a shadow,'" returned
the Lieutenant-General sombrely. "We are but a little dust that the
wind bloweth as it will."

"A brazen face and an iron hand!" cried Lady Pawlet wildly. "A wicked
heart and a lying mouth! What has this unhappy England done that she
cannot be delivered of thee?"

To the surprise of Sergeant Gaveston, Cromwell neither left the
room nor ordered the removal of the frantic lady, but answered her
earnestly, even passionately--

"Was it the Parliament first set up the standard of war? Nay, it
was the King. Was it the Parliament that ever refused to come to an
accommodation? Again the King. Was it the Parliament that roused the
Highlands of Scotland to war? Nay, Montrose, the King's man. Was it the
Parliament did command these horrid outrages in Ireland? Nay, Phelim
O'Neil, the King's man. Therefore accuse us not of bloodshed, for we do
but make a defence against violence and tyranny. We fight for God's
people that they may have repose and blessing, and for this land that
it may have liberty."

"Thou to talk of God's people, heretic of heretic, who hast rejected
even thine own deluded Church!"

"Ay, and the blue and brown of the Presbyter as well as the lawn
sleeves of the Bishop," cried Cromwell, pacing up and down in that
agitation that often came on him when he was excited by any attack on
his religious sincerity. "If the prayer-book is but a mess of pottage,
what is the preaching of the Covenanters but dry chips offered to the
soul starving for spiritual manna? Men of all sects fight side by
side in my ranks--would they could do so at Westminster." He suddenly
checked himself as he perceived that he was saying more than his
place and dignity required, controlled the agitation that had hurried
him into speech, and turned to Lady Pawlet, not without pity and
tenderness--

"Gaveston, conduct this lady to Naseby where are the other gentlewomen
taken to-day, and give her name and quality to Sir Thomas Fairfax. Take
out the malignant and place him with his fellows in the trenches."

At this the unhappy wife gave a shriek and hurled herself across the
dead Cavalier, desperately clinging to his limp arms and pressing her
bright head against his bloodied coat.

"My dear, they want to put you in the ground! I went to find you--you
were alive; what has happened now? I found you; what has happened? They
shall not take you away. Leave me," as Gaveston tried to move her from
the body; "he is not dead." She looked up and the tears were falling
down her cheeks. "I have nothing of him--no child. Would you take him
away?"

"Leave them here," said Cromwell. Since he had beheld his wife mourning
her two eldest sons he could not bear to see a woman weep, and the
young Cavalier had still that dreadful look of young Oliver. "Send
some woman from the village to her, and in the morning, when she is
removed, you might bury him. Take my things upstairs--wait"----He broke
open the packages and, holding them near the candlelight, looked over
the contents.

"Nothing I need answer to-night," he said, and glanced again at the
slim figure of the young woman as she clung to her dead in her agony,
the bright unbounded hair all that was left of beauty that had been so
fresh and lovely.

"So is it with the ungodly," he muttered sombrely. "How suddenly do
they perish, consume, and come to a fearful end! Even like a dream when
one awaketh!"

So saying, he turned abruptly into the garden and walked away from the
house.

All the June flowers showed silver pale against the dark lines of
the hedges and the box trees clipped into the forms of dragons and
peacocks--monstrous, clumsy shapes now against a sky filled with the
pale purity of the moonlight. Somewhere a fountain tinkled a thin jet
of water into a shallow basin; a seat, a sundial, a statue showed here
and there as the pleasance led to the fishpond, where the wet leaves
of water-lilies gleamed, and, past that, a bowling-green, shaded with
noble limes, then to the orchards of apple trees bending above the
tall grass scattered with daisies, where the grounds ended in a wooden
paling which fenced a little copse full of hidden birds and flowers.

The Puritan soldier passed through the garden without noticing the
sleeping loveliness or reflecting on the desolation it soon would be:
his mind was solely on his work, on what he had done, on what he must
do--occupied with all the doubts and terrors of the struggle between
the uplifted spirit and the still passionate human nature.

Outwardly he never faltered or hesitated, but inwardly all was
often black and awful: a thousand perplexities assailed his strong
understanding, a thousand different emotions warred in his warm and
ardent heart.

Usually his spiritual enthusiasm went hand in hand with his physical
courage and capacity, with his earthly feelings and hopes; but
sometimes these jarred with each other, and then the old melancholy
rolled over his soul.

When he had walked unheeding as far as the paling and was stopped
there, by lack of a gate, he folded his arms on the fence and gazed
ahead of him into the sweet night.

He was fatigued, yet far from the thought of sleep; the excitement
of the battle and the pursuit, the thrill of victory were still with
him....

And yet ... and yet ... the dead face of Sir William Pawlet and the
no less terrible countenance of his wife came before the soldier's
vision.... And how many thousands of these were there not now in
England, how many homes deserted like this one, how many fugitives
flying beyond seas, how many comely corpses being tumbled into the
trenches dug among the rabbit burrows on Broad Moor? So many that the
rolling hillocks would be all great graves, and for long years no
man would be able to turn the earth there with a plough but he would
disturb the mouldering dead.

What if he had to answer for this blood? Was not he the man who had
always urged war--been the soul and inspiration of the conflict, so
that the malignants turned and cursed him, even as Lady Pawlet had this
very evening, believing him to be the foremost of their enemies?

"Lord God," he cried out, grasping the fence with his strong hands, "I
do not fight for gain or power, for pride or hot blood, but for Thy
service, as Thou knowest! What am I but a worm in Thy sight, yet Thou
hast given me success through Thy lovely mercy and made me a fear unto
them who defy Thee! Hast Thou not declared that Thine enemies shall be
scattered like the dust, and they who dwell in the wilderness kneel
before Thee? Bring us that time, O Lord, bring Thy promised peace and
scatter those who delight in war! For Thou hast said, 'I will bring My
people again as I did from Basan, Mine own will I bring again, as I did
sometime from the deep of the sea!'"

These words, which he spoke out loudly and in a strong voice, were
wafted strangely over the sleeping copse, where even the nightingale
was silent now; the sound of them seemed to be blown back again and to
echo in his soul strongly even after his lips were silent.

He suddenly remembered when last he had rested against a fence; it was
that November day outside St. Ives, when God had come to him as he
walked his humble fields in obscurity and given him promise of grace.

His whole being shook with joy at the recollection; he put his hand to
the cross of his sword, and as he touched the cold metal he again felt
God stoop towards him, and saw the future and the labour of the future
clear and blessed.



CHAPTER VI

THE KING DREAMS


The Parliamentarians followed up the victory at Naseby with victories
at Langport, Bridgewater, Sherborne, and Bath. The King was desolate at
Newark, relying on Rupert, who held Bristol, that famous city, and had
promised to stand siege for four months and more, and on the Marquess
of Montrose, who had roused the gallant Highlanders to fight for
their ancient line of kings, who had already been triumphant in many
engagements, and was now marching to meet General Leslie, Cromwell's
comrade-in-arms at Marston Moor, who had crossed the Tweed to crush the
Scotch royalists.

It might seem that the reckless bravery of Rupert and the reckless
loyalty of Montrose were poor props with which to support a crown;
but the King, unpractical in everything, dreamt that these two might
save him yet, though his cause, since first he set his standard up at
Nottingham, had never looked so desperate.

His private cabinet of papers which had been taken at Naseby had done
him more harm than the defeat, for there were many documents, letters,
and memoranda which proved to the victors the insincerity of his
dealing with the Parliament, the sophistries of his arguments, the
hollowness of his professions, and the unreliability of his word.

They proved also, if the Parliamentarians had cared to make the
deduction, that Charles, however frivolous he might be, however
unstable and changing, however much he had temporized and given way,
was on some points adamant, and these points were his devotion to the
Church of England, to his Crown and all its prerogatives, his unshaken
belief in his own divine right, and the sacred justice of his cause.

Charles, indeed, had never meant to come to an honest understanding
with Parliament, which he regarded as rebellious and traitorous. He
might have played with it, cajoled it, lured it, deceived it; but he
had never intended to do more. Promises had been forced from him,
but he had always found some sophistry with which he consoled his
conscience for breaking them; concessions might have been forced from
him, but he always meant, at the first opportunity, to withdraw.
He would, if he had had the power, have replaced the Star Chamber
to-morrow and treated the Puritans as they had been treated after the
Hampton Conference in his father's time.

And he scarcely made a secret of the way he intended to treat the
rebels if they were ever at his mercy. They embodied all that was
hateful to him, and he had Strafford, Laud, and deep personal
humiliations to avenge. He might sometimes talk of toleration, but
there was none in his heart: his graceful exterior concealed a
fanaticism as stern, as convinced, as unyielding as any that burnt
beneath the rough leather of Cromwell's Independents.

In the autumn of the year of Naseby, so disastrous to his cause, he was
in the besieged city of Newark, one of the few holding out for him; he
had, indeed, now only a few cities, such as Oxford, Bristol, Exeter,
and Winchester, besides that in which he lay.

The Marquess of Newcastle, that faithful soldier and loyal subject, and
many faithful Cavaliers and a small loyalist garrison were with him;
they were not under any immediate fear of an attack, because Fairfax
and Cromwell were harrying Goring and Hopton in the south, and the
Parliamentary force in the north was occupied with Montrose.

The Prince of Wales had followed his mother to the Hague and then to
Paris; the other sons, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, remained in
St. James's Palace, together with the younger children. This safety of
his wife and his heir gave the King a certain comfort and ease in his
mind, and the long, idle autumn days did not pass unpleasantly in the
beleaguered city for one whose delight was in dreams and repose and a
retired leisure.

His soul was indeed sunk in melancholy, but it was a gentle sadness;
and the quiet of the moment, the sunny days in the old castle and
garden did not fail to touch with peace a soul so sensitive to
surroundings.

He told Lord Digby, my Lord of Bristol's son (that nobleman having fled
to Paris), that if he could not live like a king he could always die
like a gentleman; no one, not the most insulting, crop-eared ruffian
of them all, could take that privilege from him. So, too, he wrote to
the Queen in reply to her letters, which always advised uncompromising
courses and exhorted him not to give way on any single point in
reality, though she said it might be well to yield in appearance.

Charles needed no such advice; he was calmly and patiently resolved
to go to ruin on the question of episcopacy and his divine right
rather than yield a tittle, and this was not any the less true that
few believed it of him. Almost the entire country, including the
Parliamentary leaders, thought that now the King was cornered he would
make terms: their only concern was to find guarantees to make him keep
these terms when made.

To some, in whom he put perfect trust, the King revealed his mind. Thus
he had written to Rupert at Bristol: "Speaking as a mere soldier or
statesman, I must say that there is no probability but of my ruin.

"But, speaking as a Christian, I must tell you that God will not suffer
rebels and traitors to prosper or this cause to be overthrown. And
whatever personal punishment it shall please Him to inflict on me must
not make me repine, much less give over this quarrel.

"Indeed, I cannot flatter myself with expectations of good success more
than this, to end my days with honour and a good conscience, which
obliges me to continue my endeavours, as not despairing that God may in
due time avenge His own cause.

"Though I must avow to all my friends--that he who will stay with me
at this time must expect and resolve either to die for a good cause or
(which is worse) to live as miserable in maintaining it as the violence
of insulting rebels can make it."

As for the King's future plans, they were vague, uncertain, and waited
on events. Every General in arms for him--Rupert, Goring, Hapton,
Montrose--fought on their own, with no other guidance than what their
talents and circumstances might give them, and Charles might either
join the one of them who was most successful or return to Oxford,
which had been for nearly three years his headquarters. He was not
without hopes that the energies of the Queen might land another army in
England, either Frenchmen supplied by her brother or Dutchmen sent by
his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange.

He had some encouragement, too, to believe that the Scots, who disliked
Independency almost as much as Prelacy, might yet be detached from
their alliance with the Parliament. It was known that they did not
love Cromwell nor he them, and the more that he gained in importance
the more their ardour for the cause he represented cooled. It was said
that they had even viewed the defeat of the malignants at Naseby with
a cold and dubious eye, as they considered the discomfiture of the
royalists quite balanced by the triumph of the Sectarists, Schismists,
and Anabaptists who composed Cromwell's Ironsides.

Charles, therefore, nourished some fantastic hope that by deluding
the Scots into thinking he would take the Covenant that was their
shibboleth, he might altogether detach them from his enemies. It was a
subtle and difficult piece of policy, and could only be accomplished
by those intrigues which had so often damaged the King before; but
Charles dallied with the idea, while he waited for the news of a
victory from Montrose which would put Scotland in a more submissive
attitude.

The middle of September came, and there was no message from the
Marquess. Charles soothed himself with memories of the Graeme's
victories at Aberdeen, Perth, Inverlochy, and Kilsyth, and whiled away
the time with reading, meditation, and the elegant companionship of the
cultured and poetical Newcastle and the fantastical and brilliant Digby.

These two were with the King in the garden of the house, or castle,
where he lodged in the afternoon of one lovely day when the sun sent a
bloom of gold over the majestic scenery and glittered in the stately
windings of the Trent.

The talk fell on the Marquess of Winchester, who had so long held
Basing against the Parliament that the Cavaliers had come to call it
Loyalty House and the Puritans to curse it as a cesspool of Satan or
outpost of hell.

"I would that my noble lord was here," said Charles, with feeling.

"He doth better service to Your Majesty," returned Lord George Digby,
"in defying the rebels from Basing House."

"But how long can he defy them?" asked the King. "Can a mere mansion
withstand the onslaughts of an army? Nay," he added, in a melancholy
tone, stooping to pat the white boarhound which walked beside him, "my
Lord Winchester will be ruined like all my friends, and Loyalty House
will be but burnt walls blackened beneath the skies, even as so many
others which have been besieged and beleaguered by the rebels."

"Speak words of good omen, sir," said Newcastle, who had himself staked
(and lost, it seemed) the whole of a princely fortune on the royal
cause. "Methought that to-day you did have a more cheerful spirit and a
more uplifted heart."

"Alas!" replied Charles. "I hope on this, on that, I trust in God, I
believe that my own fate is in my own hands, and that I can make it
dignified or mean as I will; but when I consider those who are ruined
for me, then, I do confess, I have no strength but to weep and no
desire but to mourn."

"Sir," said the Marquess, much moved, "Your Majesty's misfortunes but
endear you the more to us; and as for any inconveniences or losses we
may have suffered, what are they compared to the joy of being of even a
little service to your sacred cause? Sir, the rebels may wax strong and
successful, but believe me there are still thousands of gentlemen in
England who would gladly lay down their lives for you."

"I do believe it, Newcastle," answered the King affectionately, "and
therefore I am sad that I must see those suffer whom I would protect
and reward."

They had now, in their leisurely walking, reached a portion of the
garden laid out on some of the old disused fortifications of the
castle, and looking towards the town.

The ancient earthworks and moat had been planted with grass and trees,
and sloped to a shady park full of deer which stretched to the walls of
the city.

The castle being upon gently rising ground, Charles and his companions,
on leaving that part of the garden which was walled in, came upon a
scene that was perfect in English fairness.

It had been a wet summer, and grass and trees were not yet dried or
faded; an exquisite sweep of verdure filled the moat, and beyond the
emerald lawns of the deer park rested, half in the shadow of majestic
elms and oaks and half in the soft light of the sun striking open
glades. Beyond was the strongly fortified town; towers, gables, roofs,
and spires, interspersed with trees, shimmered in the ineffable glow of
autumn, and between them rolled the golden length of the Trent.

The castle, which stood as an outpost to the town, was grimly fortified
at the base, and the walls of Newark held cannon and soldiery; but none
of this was visible to the three on the old ramparts. The scene was one
of perfect peace, of that peculiar rich and tender beauty which seems
only possible to England, and which not even civil war had here been
able to destroy.

The King seated himself on a bench which stood against one of the
buttresses of the castle, the white dog gravely placed himself at his
feet, while the two Cavaliers remained standing. The three figures,
aristocratic, finely dressed, at once graceful and careless, well
fitted the scene.

The King, though worn and haggard, was still a person eminently
pleasing to the eye; the Marquess, a little past the meridian of life,
was yet notable for his splendid presence; and Lord Digby, at once a
philosopher and a courtier, set out a handsome appearance with rich
clothes, both gorgeous and tasteful.

Charles, after being sunk for some minutes in contemplation of the
prospect below him, turned to Newcastle with a smile both tender and
whimsical.

"The Queen writes me, my lord," he said, "that there is a certain
gentlewoman with her in Paris who often discourseth of your
excellencies. Have you any knowledge of whom this lady can be?"

The Marquess flushed at this unexpected allusion, and his right hand
played nervously at his embroidered sword band.

"I only know one lady in Her Majesty's service," he smiled, "and she is
scarce like to flatter me or any man, being most cold, most shy. Sir,
it is Margaret Lucas, and I met her when she was attending the Queen at
Oxford."

"It is Margaret Lucas that I speak of," replied Charles. "Dear
Marquess, I think her a very noble lady. Will you not write to her in
Paris and console her exile?"

The Marquess answered with a firm sadness--

"If Mrs. Lucas would accept of me I would take her for my wife. But
these are not the times to think of such toys as courtships."

"Ah, my lord," said Charles earnestly, "a true and loyal love shall
console thee in any times. What adversity is there a faithful woman
cannot soften? Whatever be before thee, take, whilst thou may, this
gentlewoman's love--thy sacrifices would not so vex my soul if I could
see thee with a gentle wife."

He sighed as he finished, his thoughts perhaps turning to the one deep
passion of his own life--the Queen--now so far away and so divided from
him by dangers and difficulties. When would he again behold her in her
rich chamber singing at her spinet, with roses at her bosom and her
dark eyes flashing with love and joy? When again would he behold her
among her court at Whitehall, honoured and obeyed? When again take her
hand and look into her dear, dear face?... Were these days indeed over
for ever, to be numbered now with dead things?...

He rose with a sharp exclamation under his breath: these reflections
were indeed intolerable.

"Ah," he said impatiently, "this dearth of news is bitter to the
spirit. I sometimes think it would be well to gather my faithful
remnant round me and make a sortie into Scotland to join my Lord
Montrose."

This was quite to the taste of the two noblemen, who were also tired
of Newark, and Lord Digby, for whom no scheme was too fantastic, began
to discourse on the advantages of the King's sudden appearance in the
Highlands.

But the mood of Charles quickly changed; his resignation and melancholy
returned.

"Nay," he said, "I must better the Scots by wits, not force. What
would it avail to fall into the hands of the cunning Argyll and his
Covenanters, and give the squinting Campbell the pleasure of making us
prisoner?"

The Cavaliers were silent, and the three began to slowly continue their
walk round the old ramparts.

"Methinks this might be the garden of the Hesperides," said Newcastle
presently. "See how bright the gilded light falleth, how gently move
the dappled deer, and how softly all the little leaves quiver. And all
the young clouds that come abroad are soft as a lady's veil."

"It were good to die in such a place, at such an hour, if God gave us
any choice," said Charles. "For one could think, in such a moment, that
it was well to leave all sordid things and let the soul leap into the
sunset sky as gladly as the body leapeth in cool water on a dusty day.
But we must live and endure bloody times--and may the angels give us
constancy!"

As he spoke he idly turned and saw, coming towards him, one of the
gentlemen of his bedchamber.

He stood still.

"This is some news," he said. "Go forward, my lord,"--touching Lord
Digby on the arm--"and ask."

He had become notably pale, and he looked down at the roses on his
shoes and put his hand to his side as the two gentlemen came up to him.

Momentous news had arrived at last: one of Rupert's troopers had
brought a dispatch from that Prince, and within a few minutes of him
had come a Captain of some Irish who had been with Montrose.

He brought no dispatch; he had made his way with danger, difficulty,
and great delay from Scotland. His news was put in a few words, but
they were words which Lord Digby could scarcely stammer to the pale
King.

"There is news come, sir--that David Leslie----"

"A battle," asked Charles, swiftly looking up. "There hath been a
battle?"

"Alas! Your Majesty must speak with this Captain of Irish yourself,"
said the gentleman, in dismay. "He saith Leslie fell on the noble
Marquess near Selkirk, and did utterly defeat and overwhelm him; it was
at Philiphaugh, sir--and all the Scottish clans were broken and the
Marquess is fled."

Newcastle gave an exclamation of bitter grief and rage. Charles stood
silent a full minute, then said in a low voice--

"The Marquess is not taken?"

"Not that this Captain knoweth----"

"Then we have some mercy," said the King, with a proud tenderness
infinitely winning. "My dear lord, what bitterness is thine to-day!
Alas! Alas!"

Digby, with tears in his eyes, took the dispatch and gave it to
the King, hoping that it might contain news that would soften the
bitterness of Montrose's overthrow.

But for a while the King, struggling with his stinging disappointment
and mortification, could not read, and when he did break the seals it
was with a distracted air.

The very heading of the paper brought the hot blood to his pallid
cheeks: it was not "Bristol," but "Oxford."

The Prince wrote laconically to say he had surrendered Bristol to
Fairfax and Cromwell, and had gone under parliamentary convoy to Oxford.

When the King had read the letter he stared round upon his gentlemen.

"Is this my sister's son," he cried, with quivering lips, "or a
hireling Captain? Was this my own blood did this thing? Rupert whom I
trusted?"

None of them dare speak. Charles was so white that they feared that he
would fall in a fit or swoon.

"My city, my loyal city!" he muttered; then he cast the Prince's letter
on to the grass, as if it soiled his fingers, and turned slowly away.
He had the look of a broken man.



CHAPTER VII

LOYALTY HOUSE


Soon after Bristol surrendered, Winchester, that other loyal city,
fell. Leicester, so lately taken from the Parliament, was by them
recaptured soon after Naseby. Nearly twenty fortified houses had been
taken this year. Goring's troopers were dispersed. Rupert and his
brother had, in spite of all denials, followed the King to Newark:
Rupert in high disgrace, deprived of his commissions, and ordered
abroad, yet staying and endeavouring to justify himself to his outraged
kinsman, succeeding somewhat, yet still in the unhappy King's deep
displeasure, and hardly any longer to be considered as His Majesty's
Commander of Horse, whether or no he held a commission, since His
Majesty had no longer an army for any one to general.

In Scotland Montrose had fled to the Orkneys. Argyll and the
Conventiclers were triumphant and biding their chance to make a
bargain either with King or Independents, according as circumstances
might shape themselves, or as either party might be ready to take the
Covenant.

What, indeed, could the King hope for now but for some division
among his enemies, or that the shadowy army of Dutch, Lorrainers, or
Frenchmen should at last materialize and descend upon the coasts of
Britain.

Ireland, in a welter of bloody confusion, was a broken reed to lean on.
Ormonde, working loyally there, had too many odds against him, and was
no more to be relied on than Montrose, who had paid a bitter price for
his loyalty and his gallant daring.

It was in the October of this year which had meant such bitter ruin
to the King's party that the Lieutenant-General of the parliamentary
army, returning from the capture of Winchester, set his face towards
Hampshire, where, at Basingstoke, stood Basing House, the mansion
of the King's friend, the Marquess of Winchester, which had stood
siege for four years, and was a standing defiance and menace to the
Parliamentarians and a great hindrance to the trade of London with the
West, for the Cavaliers would make sorties on all who came or went and
capture all provisions which were taken past.

Cromwell had at first intended to storm Dennington Castle at Newbury,
another fortified residence which had long annoyed the Puritans; but
Fairfax decided otherwise, believing that nothing could so hearten and
encourage the Parliament as the capture of that redoubtable stronghold,
Basing House.

Accordingly, Cromwell, gathering together all the available artillery,
turned in good earnest towards Basing, from whence so many had fallen
back discomfited.

"But now the Lord is with us," said General Cromwell. "We have smitten
the Amalekite at Bristol and Winchester, and shall he continue to
defy us at Basing? Rather shall they and theirs be offered up as a
sweet-smelling sacrifice to the Lord."

It was in the middle of the night of 13th October that the
Parliamentarians surrounded Basing House.

Then, while the batteries were being placed and Dalbier, the Dutchman
from whom Cromwell had first learnt the rudiments of the art of war,
Colonel Pickering, Sir Hardress Waller, and Colonel Montague were
taking up their positions, the Lieutenant-General, who had already been
in prayer for much of the night, gave out to his brigade that he rested
on the 115th Psalm, considering that those they were about to fight
were of the Old Serpent brood, to be fallen upon and slain even as
Cosbi and Timri were slain by Phineas--to be put to the sword even as
Samuel put Agag to the sword.

Colonel Pickering chose for his text, "I will arise against the house
of Jeroboam with the sword," and on that propounded a discourse to his
troopers as they were getting the sakers and culverins into position;
but Cromwell put his faith in the aforesaid psalm.

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for
Thy mercy and Thy truth's sake.

"Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? Our God is
in the heavens; He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased.

"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.... _They
that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in
them._"

With these words in his mind, Lieutenant-General Cromwell gave the
order, near towards six of the autumn morning, for the attack.

All night the great lordly House, which had so long stood unscathed,
had been silent among its courts, lights showing at the windows and
above the Stewart standard floating lazily in the night breeze. There
were two buildings--the Old House, which had stood, the seat of the
Romanist Pawlets, for three hundred years, a fine and splendid mansion,
turreted and towered after the manner of the Middle Ages, and before
that the New House, built by later descendants of this magnificent
family in the modern style of princely show and comfort, both
surrounded by fortifications and works, a mile in circumference, and
well armed with pieces of cannon.

As the sun strengthened above the autumn landscape, the steel of morion
and breastplate could be discerned on the ramparts and the colour of an
officer's cloak as he went from post to post giving orders: these were
the only signs that the besieged were aware of the great number and
near approach of the Parliamentarians.

Soon after six, the dawnlight now being steady, and the attacking
parties being set in order--Dalbier near the Grange, next him Sir
Hardress Waller and Montague; and on his left Colonel Pickering--the
agreed-upon signal, the firing of four of the cannon, being given, the
Lieutenant-General and his regiments stormed Basing House.

A quick fire was instantly returned, and the steel morions and coloured
cloaks might be seen hastening hither and thither upon the walls and
works, and a certain shout of defiance arose from them (it was known
that they made a boast of having so often foiled the rebels as they
termed them, and that they believed this bit of ground would defy them
even when great cities fell), which the Puritans replied to not at all,
but directed a full and incessant fire, as much as two hundred shots
at a time at a given point in the wall, which, unable to withstand so
fierce an attack, fell in, and allowed Sir Hardress Waller to lead
his men through the breach and right on the great culverins of the
Cavaliers, which were set about their court guard. They, however,
with extraordinary courage and resolution, beat back the invader and
recovered their cannon; but, Colonel Montague coming up, they were
overpowered again by sheer numbers, and the Puritans flowed across the
works to the New House, bringing with them their scaling ladders. There
was another bitter and desperate struggle, the Cavaliers sallying out
and only yielding the blood-stained ground inch by inch as they were
driven back by the point of the pike on the nozzle of the musket.

Dalbier and Cromwell in person had now stormed at another point; the
air was horrid with fire-balls, the whiz of bullets, the rank smoke
of the cannon, the shrieks and cries that began to issue from the New
House at the very walls of which the fight was now expending its force,
like waves of the sea dashed against a great rock.

Not once, nor twice, but again and again did the stout-hearted
defenders, in all their pomp of velvet and silk, plume and steel,
repulse their foes; again and again the colours of my Lord Marquess,
bearing his own motto, "_Aymer loyaulte_," and a Latin one taken from
King Charles' coronation money, "_Donec pax redeat terris_," surged
forth into the thickest of the combat, were borne back, and then
struggled forward, tattered and stained with smoke.

But the hour of Loyalty House had come; the proud and dauntless
Cavalier, whose loyalty had endured foul as well as fair weather, had
now come to the end of his resistance to his master's enemies.

Nothing human could long withstand the rush forward of the Ironsides.

Colonel Pickering passed through the New House and got to the very gate
of the Old House.

Seeing his defences so utterly broken down and his first rampart and
mansion gone, the desperate Marquess was wishful to summon a parley,
and sent an officer to wave a white cravat from one of the turrets with
that purpose.

But the Puritans would listen to no parley.

"No dealings with this nest of Popery!" cried Colonel Pickering, whose
zeal was further inflamed by the sight of a popish priest who was
admonishing and encouraging the besieged.

After this the Cavaliers fell to it again with the sword, keeping up an
incredible resistance, and all the works and the courtyards, the fair
gardens, walks, orchards, and enclosed lands, the pleasances and alleys
laid out by my lord with great taste after the French model were one
bloody waste of destruction; sword smiting sword, gun replying to gun,
men pressing forward, being borne back, calling on their God, sinking
to their death, trampled under foot; the air all murky with smoke, the
lovely garden torn up and in part burning from fire-balls, the wall
of the noble House pierced by cannon-shot, the shrieks of women and
the curses of men uprising, the colours of my lord ever bravely aloft
until he who held them sank down in the press with a sigh, while his
life ran out from many wounds, and the banner of loyalty was snatched
by a trooper of Pickering's and flaunted in triumph above the advancing
Parliamentarians.

At this sight a deep moan burst from the House and dolorous cries
issued from every window, as if the great mansion was alive and
lamented its fate pressing so near.

Lieutenant-General Cromwell was now at the very gates of the inner
house, and these were, without much ado, burst open. The Cavaliers,
pressed upon by multitudes and broken at the sword's point, fell
back, mostly dying men, in the great hall; and on the great staircase
were some, notably my Lord Marquess himself, who still made a hot
resistance, as men who had nothing but death before them and meant to
spend the little while left them in action.

From the upper floors might be heard the running to and fro of women
and servants, the calling of directions, and the gasping of prayers,
while from without the cannon still rattled and smoke and fire belched
through the broken walls.

At last, my lord being driven up into his own chambers, and those about
him slain, Major Harrison sprang to the first landing and called upon
all to surrender; upon which eight or nine gentlewomen, wives of the
officers, came running forth together and were made prisoners.

Major Harrison pushed into the nearest chamber, which was most
magnificently hung with tapestries and furnished in oak and Spanish
leather--a great spacious room with candlesticks of gold and lamps of
crystal, brocaded cushions, and Eastern carpets--and there stood three
people, one Major Cuffe, a notable Papist, one Robinson, a player of my
lord's, and a gentlewoman, the daughter of Doctor Griffiths, who was in
attendance on the garrison.

These three stood together warily, watching the door, and when the
godly Harrison and his troopers burst in they drew a little together,
the soldier before the others. Harrison called on him curtly to
surrender, and named him popish dog, at which the Cavalier came at him
with a tuck sword that was broken in the blade, and with this poor
weapon defended those who were weaponless.

But Harrison gave him sundry sore cuts that disarmed him, and, his
blood running out on the waxed floor, he slipped in it and so fell, and
was slain by Harrison's own sword through the point of his cuirass at
the armpit.

Thereupon they called on the play-actor and the lady to surrender. She
made no reply at all, but stared at the haggled corpse of Major Cuffe,
twisting her hands in her flowered laycock apron.

And the player put a chair in front of him and turned a mocking eye
upon the Puritans.

"I have had my jest of you many a time," he said, "and if I had lived I
had jested still--but I choose rather to die with those who maintained
me----"

Here Harrison interrupted.

"This is no gentleman, but a lewd fellow of Drury Lane."

He was dragged from behind the chair.

"I have been in many a comedy," he cried, "but now I play my own
tragedy!"

Him they dispatched with a double-edged sword, and cast him down; he
fell without a groan, yet strangely murmured, "Amen."

Major Harrison, with his bloody weapon in his hand, swept across the
chamber through the farther entrance into the next, and his soldiers
after him.

Mrs. Griffiths now woke from her stupor of dismay and rushed from one
body to another as they lay yet warm at her feet.

And when she found that they who had lately been speaking to her were
hideously dead, and her hands all blooded with the touching of them,
she turned and cursed the soldiery in her agony.

"Silence! thou railing woman!" one of them cried.

She seized one of the empty pistols from the window-seat and struck at
the man.

"God's Mother avenge us!" she shrieked.

The fellow, still in the heat of slaughter, hurled her down.

"Spawn of the scarlet woman!" he exclaimed.

She got up to her knees, her head-dress fallen and her face deformed.

"Thrice damned heretic!" she said. "Thou shalt be thrust into the
deepest pit----"

"Stop her mouth!" cried another, coming up; he gave her an ugly name,
and hit her with his arquebus.

She fell down again, but continued her reproaches and railing, till
they made an end, one firing a pistol at her at close range, the ball
thereof mercifully killing her, so that she lay prone with her two
companions.

After this the soldiers joined Major Harrison, whom they found
with Lieutenant-General Cromwell at the end of this noble suite of
apartments, having there at last brought to bay the indomitable lord
of this famous and wealthy mansion, the puissant prince, John Pawlet,
Marquess of Winchester.

The place where this gentleman faced his enemies was the chapel of his
faith, pompous and glorious with every circumstance of art and wealth.

Windows of jewel-like glass transmitted the October sunshine in floods
of softly coloured light; the walls were of Italian marble, curiously
inlaid; on the altar blazed, in full pride, an image of the Virgin, the
height of a man and crowned with gems; a silk carpet covered the altar
steps, and cushions of velvet were scattered over the mosaic floor.

In front of the altar lay a dead priest; the violet glow from the
east window stained his old shrunken features, and beside him on the
topmost step stood the Marquess; above the altar and the Virgin hung a
beautiful picture brought from Italy at great expense by my lord, and
showing a saint singing between some others--all most richly done; and
this and the statue was the background for my lord.

He had his sword in his hand--a French rapier--water-waved in gold--and
he wore a buff coat embroidered in silk and silver, and Spanish
breeches with a fringe, and soft boots, but no manner of armour. He was
bareheaded; his hair, carefully trained into curls after the manner of
the Court, framed a face white as a wall; one lock fell, in the fashion
so abhorred by the Puritans, longer than the rest over his breast, and
was tied with a small gold ribbon.

"Truly," said Major Harrison exultingly, "the Lord of Israel hath given
strength and power to His people! 'As for the transgressors, they shall
perish together; and the end of the ungodly is, they shall be rooted
out at the last!'"

Then Lieutenant Cromwell demanded my lord's sword.

"The King did give me this blade, and to him alone will I return it,"
replied the Marquess.

"Proud man!" cried Cromwell. "Dost thou still vaunt thyself when God
hath delivered thee, by His great mercy, into our hands?"

He turned to the soldiers.

"Take this malignant prisoner and cast down these idolatrous shows and
images--for what told I ye this morning? '_They that make them are like
unto them_, so is every one who _trusteth in them_'--the which saying
is now accomplished."

When the Marquess saw the soldiers advancing upon him, he broke his
light, small sword across his knee and cast it down beside the dead
priest.

"Though my faith and my sword lie low," he said, "yet in a better day
they will arise."

"Cherish not vain hopes, Papist," cried Harrison, "but recant thine
errors that have led thee to this disaster."

At this, Mr. Hugh Peters, the teacher, who had newly entered the
chapel, spoke.

"Dost thou still so flourish? When the Lord hath been pleased in a few
hours to show thee what mortal seed earthly glory groweth upon?--and
how He, taking sinners in their own snares, lifteth up the heads of His
despised people?"

The Marquess turned his back on Mr. Peters, and when the soldiers
took hold of him and led him before the Lieutenant-General, he came
unresisting, but in a silence more bitter than speech.

Cromwell spoke to him with a courtesy which seemed gentleness compared
to the harshness of the others.

"My lord," he said, "for your obstinate adherence to a mistaken cause I
must send you to London, a prisoner to the Parliament. God soften your
heart and teach you the great peril your soul doth stand in."

Lord Winchester smiled at him in utter disdain, and turned his head
away, still silent.

Now Colonel Pickering came in and told Cromwell that above three
hundred prisoners had been taken, and that Basing was wholly theirs,
including the Grange or farm where they had found sufficient provisions
to last for a year or more and great store of ammunition and guns.

"The Lord grant," said the Lieutenant-General, "that these mercies be
acknowledged with exceeding thankfulness."

And thereupon he gave orders for the chapel to be destroyed.

"And I will see it utterly slighted and cast down," he said, "even as
Moses saw the golden calf cast down and broken."

The soldiers needed little encouragement, being already inflamed with
zeal and the sight of the exceeding rich plunder, for never, since the
war began, had they made booty of a place as splendid as Basing.

Major Harrison with his musket hurled over the image of the Virgin on
the altar, and his followers made spoil of the golden vessels, the
embroidered copes, stoles, and cloths, the cushions and carpets.

The altar-painting was ripped from end to end by a halbert, slashed
across, and torn till it hung in a few ribbons of canvas; the gorgeous
glass in the windows was smashed, the leading, as the only thing of
value, dragged away, the marble carvings were chipped and broken, the
mosaic walls defaced by blows from muskets and pikes.

After five minutes of this fury the chapel was a hideous havoc, and the
Marquess could not restrain a passionate exclamation.

Cromwell turned to him.

"We destroy wood and stone and the articles of a licentious worship,"
he said, "but you have destroyed flesh and blood. To-day you shall see
many popish books burnt--but at Smithfield it was human bodies."

The Marquess made no reply, nor would he look at the speaker, and they
led him away through his desolated house.

Wild scenes of plunder were now taking place; clothes, hangings, plate,
jewels were seized upon, the iron was being wrenched from the windows,
the lead from the roof; what the soldiers could not remove they
destroyed; one wing of the house was alight with fierce fire, and into
these flames was flung all that savoured of Popery; from the Grange,
wheat, bacon, cheese, beef, pork, and oatmeal were being carried away
in huge quantities; amid all the din and confusion came the cries for
quarter of some of the baser sort who had taken refuge in the cellars,
and divers groans from those of the wounded who lay unnoticed under
fallen rubbish and in obscure corners.

Cromwell gave orders to stop the fire as much as might be, for, he
said, these chairs, stools, and this household stuff will sell for a
good price.

The pay of his soldiers was greatly in arrears, and he was glad to have
this pillage to give them.

"It will be," he remarked, "a good encouragement--for the labourer is
worthy of his hire, and who goeth to warfare at his own cost?"

He and his officers, together with the Marquess and several other
prisoners, now came (in the course of their leaving of the House) on
the bedchamber of my lord, which caused the Puritans to gape with
amaze, so rich beyond imaginings was this room, especially the bed,
with great coverings of embroidered silk and velvet and a mighty
canopy bearing my lord's arms, all sparkling with bullion as was the
tapestry on the walls.

Some soldiers were busy here, plundering my lord's clothes, and others
were fighting over bags of silver, and the crown-pieces were scattered
all over the silk rugs.

Then Mr. Peters, who had been arguing with my lord on his sinful
idolatrous ways, pressed home his advantage and pointed to the disaster
about him and asked the Marquess if he did not plainly see the hand of
God was against him?

Lord Winchester, who had hitherto been silent, now broke out.

"If the King had had no more ground in England than Basing House, I
would have adventured as I did and maintained it to the uttermost!"

"Art so stubborn," cried Mr. Peters, "when all is taken from thee?"

"Ay," said the Marquess, "Loyalty House this was called, and in that I
take comfort, hoping His Majesty may have his day again. As for me, I
have done what I could; and though this hour be as death, yet I would
sooner be as I am than as thou art!"

And he said this with such sharp scorn and with an air so princely (as
became his noble breeding) that Hugh Peters was for awhile silenced.

But Oliver Cromwell said, "Thou must say thy say at Westminster."

And so fell Basing in full pride.



CHAPTER VIII

THE KING'S FOLLY


Lieutenant-General Cromwell lay encamped outside Oxford; Chester had
lately fallen, and Gloucester, and when the Parliamentarians took
Oxford, as they must certainly soon take it, the King would have not a
foot of ground left in England.

The King was in Oxford; he had gone from Newark to Wales, he had
wandered awhile with such scattered forces as were left him with Rupert
and Maurice, and then he had returned once more to the faithful, loyal
city that might continue to be both faithful and loyal, but could not
much longer resist the enemy that was ever pressing closer round her
grey walls.

It was April. "We must end the war this year," Cromwell said. The
people expected a peace and a settlement from the Parliament; the only
question now in the minds of the leaders was, what peace and settlement
would the King make, and keep, now he was fairly beaten?

This question was foremost night and day in the mind of General
Cromwell.

This day, towards the end of April, he sat in his tent outside the
beleaguered city, smoking a pipeful of Virginian tobacco and gazing out
at the spring landscape and the near encampment of the Parliamentarian
army, which was illumined by the dubious light of a misty moon.

Two companions were with him--Henry Ireton, who was to wed Bridget
Cromwell at the conclusion of the war, and Major Harrison, a soldier
not so entirely to the Lieutenant-General's liking as his prospective
son-in-law, still, a deeply religious man and dauntless soldier, if too
strongly tinged with that fanaticism which was now the mainspring of
the new model army.

A discussion which involved some difference of opinion was taking place
between the three Puritans; Cromwell, who was one against two, was much
more silent than his wont, for it was usual for him to speak at great
length, with many illustrations of his meaning (which served, however,
as much for confusing his purpose as for enlightening it, and had
already got him the name of dissembler among his opponents) and great
fervour and enthusiasm; he could never be called taciturn, but to-night
he was silent with a kind of dumbness as if one of his melancholies
were on him, whereas Harrison and Ireton expounded their case with much
rigour and eloquence.

And their case was that the King was utterly and entirely not to be
trusted, and that any pact or bargain made with him would be a useless
thing, not worth the sheepskin it was written upon.

"As witness," said Major Harrison, "his solemn protestation to the
Commons that he loved them as his own children, and a few days after
his coming down to the House and claiming the five--as witness his
promises and false oaths to Parliament which his papers taken at Naseby
did show he never meant to keep, but was the while trying to bring
over Lorrainers to cut our throats--and what of this last business in
Ireland when he sent Lord Glamorgan over to stir up the Irish Papists,
and then, when the scheme was discovered, forsook my lord and utterly
denied him and the Papists too?"

"As he forsook Strafford," added Ireton. "That deed alone would have
spoilt the credit of a private man, and to my thinking spoils the
credit of a king too."

"He tried to save him," said Cromwell briefly.

"Nay, his lady, being Sir Denzil Holles' sister, was the one who made
the effort for the reprieve, as I know from Sir Denzil," replied
Ireton; "the King shook him off like an old cloak, as he would shake
off any friend he thought was likely to be hurtful to him."

Harrison took up the theme with the greater vehemence of his low origin
and coarse training, for though his noble appearance and military
appointments gave him some of the appearance of that equality with his
fellow-officers which he claimed by reason of his military rank, still,
when he spoke, it was obvious that neither the levelling of war nor
religion could do away with the distinctions of birth and education;
Cromwell and Ireton were as clearly gentlemen as Harrison, the son of a
butcher, was clearly not.

"What is dealing with the King but trafficking with Egypt," he
concluded his peroration, "and setting up a covenant with the powers
of darkness? Can good come from tinkling with such as Charles Stewart?
Nay, rather a curse upon the land."

Oliver Cromwell took the pipe out of his mouth; he sat near the
entrance to the tent, and the feeble moonlight was full over his rugged
profile.

The one oil-lamp had burnt out, and the three soldiers either had not
noticed, or were indifferent to the fact, that they were sitting in the
half-dark.

"Shallow and frivolous he may be, nay, hath been proved to be," said
Cromwell slowly. "_But he is the King._ Major Harrison, those words are
as a tower of strength, as a wand of enchantment--there is the weight
of seven hundred years or more to support them--and Charles, without
one soldier, means more to England than you or I could ever mean were
we backed by millions."

"During those seven hundred years you speak of," replied Harrison
grimly, "there have been kings so detestable that means have been found
to put them off their thrones. The thing is not without precedence."

"Nay, surely," said the Lieutenant-General gently; "but in the wars
and quarrels of which you speak some rival prince was always there
to take his kinsman's place. This is not a dispute among kings and
nobles, but an uprising of the people for their liberty to force the
King to grant them their just demands--therefore, the case is without
precedent."

"And what, sir, do you deduct from that?" asked Henry Ireton.

"Why, that if we put the King down there is no one to set in his place.
The Prince of Wales hath gone abroad to the French Court and a papist
mother; the King's nephew, the Elector Charles Louis, who was flattered
with some hopes of the succession, is a silly choice; the King's other
sons are children, Rupert and Maurice are free lances--and which of
these, were he ever so desirable, would be accepted by the nation while
the King lives?"

There was a little pause, and then Harrison said boldly--

"Why need we a king at all?"

"It is a good form of government," replied Cromwell, "and I believe
the only one the English will take. If you have no king you may have a
worse thing--every shallow pate faction casts to the top seizing the
direction of affairs. It was never the design of any of us," he added,
"to depose the King when we took up arms."

"Nay," admitted Ireton, "the design was to bring him to reason, but
how may that be done when we deal with one who knows not the name of
reason?"

"Now," said the Lieutenant-General, "he has no power to be false. Nor
will the Parliament ever again be as defenceless as it was when he was
last at Whitehall."

"Then," put in Ireton shrewdly, "if you offer terms to the King which
leave the power of the sword with the Parliament, you offer what he,
even in his utmost extremity, will not accept."

"We have had no experience of what he will do in extremity," replied
Cromwell, "since he has never come to it till now."

"But has he not," cried Harrison, "always refused to give up what he
terms his rights? Did he not contemptuously reject the Uxbridge Treaty?"

"As any man might have guessed he would," replied Cromwell dryly; he
had been no party to the folly of the Presbyterians in asking the King
to accept these impossible conditions. "He will always be a Prelatist,
yet he might--nay, he must--rule according to the laws of England, and
allow all men freedom in their thoughts."

"He never will!" exclaimed Harrison.

"He must," repeated Cromwell.

His pipe had now gone out; he knocked out the ashes against the tent
pole and rose.

"The settlement of this war," remarked Henry Ireton, "is like to be
more trouble than the fighting of it."

"What," asked Cromwell, with that half-moody, half-tender melancholy
that so often marked his speech, "avail these doubts and surmises? It
is but lost labour that ye haste to rise up so early and so late take
rest, and eat the bread of carefulness--'it is in the Lord's hands--the
Lord's will be done.'"

Major Harrison rose also; he wore part of his armour; vambrace and
cuirass clattered as he moved.

"Ay," he said, "worthy Mr. Hugh Peters did wrestle in prayer with the
Lord for three hours on that point, and afterwards held forth in lovely
words--yet were we still in darkness as to God's will with us----"

"Doubt not," answered Cromwell fervently, "that He will make it
manifest as He hath done aforetime."

He paused in his pacing and turned to face the huge soldier, who now
stood with one hand on the tent flap, holding it back.

The moon was sinking, a white wafer behind the gates and towers of
Oxford, but the first flush of the dawn replaced her misty light.

"I look for the Lord!" cried Cromwell. "My soul doth wait for Him,
in His word is my trust--'My soul fleeth unto the Lord, before the
morning watch, I say before the morning watch!'"

"Ay," added Harrison, with a coarser enthusiasm and a blunter speech;
"and when the Lord cometh what shall He say--but slay Dagon and his
adherents, put to the sword the Amalekite and Edomite and all the
brood of the Red Dragon. And who is the foremost of these but Charles
Stewart?"

"The Lord," replied Cromwell, "hath not yet put it into my soul to put
the King down, nor to utterly slight his authority. Yet on all these
matters I would rather be silent--this is scarce the time for speech on
this subject."

Major Harrison picked up his morion, which bore in front the single
feather that denoted his rank, and with a few words of farewell left
the tent.

Ireton prepared to follow him.

"A good repose, Harry," said Cromwell affectionately. "We have talked
over long, and I fear to little purpose. We must come to these
arguments again at Westminster. Get now some sleep--farewell."

When Henry Ireton had gone, Cromwell continued to walk up and down the
worn turf that formed the floor of the tent.

"Ah, soul, my soul," he muttered, "art thou wandering again in
blackness, not knowing which way to turn? Do the waters come in and
overwhelm thee? Yet did not the Lord receive thee into His grace,
and make with thee a Covenant and a promise? The sword of the Lord
and Gideon!--has it not been given thee to wield that weapon, and to
triumph with it? Was not the Lord's hand plainly shown in that they
have felled the malignants as the bricks of Basing that fell down one
from the other? And hast thou not permitted them to be utterly consumed
from the land, even from Havilah unto Shur?"

While he thus exhorted and chided some inner weakness or sadness that
was liable to come over him, most often at night, and when he was
inactive, speaking aloud, as was his wont when thus excited, he was
startled by the sudden entry of one of his officers.

The man was preceded by the soldier in attendance on Cromwell, who had
kept guard outside his tent, and now carried a lantern, the strong
beams of which, disturbing the dubious light of the tent, showed the
figure of Cromwell standing by the camp-bed on which his armour was
piled.

"Sir," began the officer, "we have made, outside the city, a prisoner,
whom it is expedient Your Excellency should see."

"For what purpose, Colonel Parsons?" asked Cromwell wearily, and
hanging his head on his breast, as he did when tired or thoughtful.

"Because the malignant, defying us, with much fury, did declare a
strange thing. He said that the King had escaped from Oxford two days
or so ago."

Cromwell looked up sharply; his face seemed full of shadows.

"Bring the prisoner before me," he said briefly, and seated himself on
the leathern camp-chair at the foot of his rough couch.

The officer retired, and soon returned accompanied by two halberdiers
escorting a young Cavalier, completely disarmed and dusty and
disordered in his dress, as if he had made a fair struggle before
surrendering his liberty.

"Thy name?" asked Cromwell.

"Charles Lucas," replied the young man.

"And what hast thou to say of this escape of the King from Oxford?"

The young man laughed.

"I may now freely tell thee, thou cunning rebel, that His Sacred
Majesty is by now safe in the hands of his faithful Scots."

Cromwell scarcely repressed a violent start.

"He went from Oxford in the guise of a groom," continued Sir Charles,
in a tone of amusement and triumph; "and I, for one, helped him."

"Even so?" said Cromwell, and gazed upon him absently.

"Shall I not," asked Colonel Parsons, "have the young malignant shot
before the sun is up?"

The Lieutenant-General roused himself from deep thought with an effort.

"Nay, let him go," he said; "we want no more corpses nor prisoners."

Parsons, with the freedom the Independent officers took, remonstrated.

"He is a Socinian, a Prelatist, an Erastian--even as a soldier of Pekah
or Jeroboam!"

"Let him go," repeated Cromwell, with his usual mildness, "it is now a
matter of days. Spare all the blood you can, Colonel Parsons."

The dark red flushed the royalist's cheek.

"I want no mercy nor quarter from rebels," he said haughtily.

"Silly boy," smiled Cromwell, "take thy vaunts elsewhere," and Sir
Charles, whether he would or no, was hustled out of the tent.

Cromwell sat motionless awhile, holding his hand before his eyes.

"The Scots," he was swiftly thinking, "what a turn is here ... he
will not take the Covenant.... Then he is ours for the asking ...
helpless any way ... the Scots!... Thou art an ill statesman, Charles
Stewart.... Methinks the war is ended."



CHAPTER IX

THE END OF THE WAR


In June of that year two women sat together in an upper room of a
humble, though decent, house in London, near the Abbey of Westminster
and the Hall where the Parliament was now sitting.

This was a back street, crooked and obscure; never as yet had it been
touched nor disturbed by the clamours and tumults which of late had
risen and fallen through the broad ways of London like the tempestuous
rising and falling of the winter sea.

In the little garden stood a lime tree, now in full leaf, and the sun,
striking through the branches, filled the room with a soft greenish
light, and in and out the boughs and sometimes in and out of the open
window a white butterfly fluttered.

The two women sat near the window and talked together in low voices.

One was in her prime but spoilt by sorrow and sickness, her blonde hair
mixed with grey as if dust had been sprinkled upon it, her face peaked
and thin, her lids heavy, her eyes dimmed; the other little beyond
girlhood, but she too disfigured by suffering, and nothing remaining to
her of the pleasant beauty of youth save the flowing richness of her
red-gold curls.

Both were simply, even humbly, clad, in heavy mourning.

The younger, after a pause of silence during which both gazed out at
the sun among the green with eyes that no longer kindled to such a
sight, remarked--

"Bridget Cromwell is married to-day."

"Yes," replied the other; "they say it is a sure sign of a general
peace."

The young gentlewoman made no reply to this remark, but glanced down at
the wedding-ring on her fair thin hand.

"I wonder," she cried fiercely, "if she is as happy as I was when I was
a bride. I wonder if she will ever come to be as unhappy as I am now!"

Lady Strafford did not reply, and her companion, with the tears
smarting up into eyes already worn with weeping, continued--

"I could find it in my heart to wish that the rebel's daughter might
find herself, at my years, a childless widow!"

"Hush, Jane," said the Countess; "this is not charity!"

"The times," replied Lady William Pawlet, "do not teach charity. Thou
art nobly patient, but I have not yet learnt to hush my railing. All,
all gone and an empty life! Madonna! how can one support the burden!
Oh, to be a man and go forward in the front ranks to die as Lord
Falkland did! But to be a woman--a woman who must wait till she die of
remembering!"

"There is no answer to be made--none," said the Countess; "the heart
knoweth its own bitterness."

"And we sit here in poverty, bereaved and desolate, and Oliver Cromwell
hath my Lord Worchester's estates and the thanks of Parliament,"
continued Lady William, following out thoughts too bitter to be kept
silent. "Loyalty now must go barefoot and impudent knavery swell
in high places! I will go abroad to the Queen in Paris--she too is
desolate and maybe can employ me about her person, for I will no longer
be a charge on you, madam. Will you not," she added, in a more timid
tone, "come too?"

"I will not, willingly," replied the elder lady firmly, "ever see Her
Majesty again. Nor yet the King. Thank God I can keep my loyalty and
wish His Majesty a safe deliverance from all his present perils, but
this I know, that were he to taste the bitterest death and she the
bitterest widowhood, both, in the extreme hour of their misery, could
endure no greater torment than to remember Lord Strafford and how he
died."

She spoke quietly without raised voice or flushed cheek, yet so
intensely, that Jane Pawlet, who had never heard her mention this
subject before, was horrified and awed.

"The world is upside down, I think," she murmured. "It all seems to me
so unreal--I doubt it can be more strange in hell."

"You are young," replied the Countess, "and may live to think of all
this as a clouded dream. But my life is over."

"You have been the wife of a great man," cried Lady William Pawlet,
"and you have children."

"Whom I must see grow up as landless exiles, bearing an attainted
name," said Lady Strafford, with a stern smile.

"But you have fulfilled yourself," returned the other, "while I have
been, and am, useless. Ah me, how differently I dreamed it!"

Then the poor widow, overwhelmed by recollections of a happiness which
now seemed the doubly dazzling because it had been so brief, rose to
conceal her emotion, and moved restlessly round the room.

Lady Strafford glanced at her and, with an effort to distract her mind,
touched on another subject.

"I had a letter from Margaret Lucas in Paris--so ill spelt I can hardly
read it; but it seems the Marquess of Newcastle hath come to St.
Germains and that they are reading each other's poetry--so belike there
will be a match there."

"Ah yes?" said Lady William heavily.

"They have both lost their estates," continued the Countess, "so it
will be a fair trial of their love and constancy."

As she spoke there was a light, almost uncertain knock on the door.

Lady Strafford, who, in her narrow circumstances, kept no servant,
looked from the window cautiously.

"It is my brother," she said, and the younger lady at once left the
room, soon returning accompanied by Sir Denzil Holles.

This gentleman had always been of a contrary party to the Earl of
Strafford, and in the first part of his life had seen but little of his
magnificent sister. He had, however, done his utmost to save the Earl's
life, and was now almost the principle support of the Countess and her
children.

He was not in arms for Parliament (though he had been one of the famous
five members), and, being estranged from the army by the fact of his
Presbyterian religion, and animated by a great dislike of Oliver
Cromwell, he stood as much aloof as he was able from the clashes of the
times, though he led a considerable party in the Commons.

"Any news?" asked his sister, after greeting him affectionately.

"The usual," replied Sir Denzil gloomily. "Oxford surrendered--the
princes and Sir Ralph Hopton are gone beyond seas--Sir Jacob Astley
with the last force of royalists hath been taken--and Bridget Cromwell
is now Bridget Ireton."

"The King's cause, then," said the Countess, "is utterly lost and
ruined?"

"As far as it can be maintained by arms, it is," replied her brother,
who, though he had been imprisoned by King Charles, showed no great
elation at his downfall. "And as it is certain he will not take the
Covenant--why, you may take it it is altogether ruined."

"He will not?" asked Lady William Pawlet.

"Nay, though they have entreated him on their knees, with tears--as
have we, the Presbyterians--and if he will not take it, there is not a
single Scot will shoulder a musket for him."

"It seems," remarked the Countess quietly, "that the King can be
faithful to some things."

"Ay," said Sir Denzil, "to the Church of England and his Crown. I
believe he would resign life itself sooner than either."

"Therefore if the Scots will not fight there is an end of the war?"
said his sister. "Well, Denzil, what shall we do?"

"Get beyond seas, unless I can put down the army," he replied. "This
is no longer a country for such as I. The King is overcome--but in his
place is like to be a worse tyrant."

"You mean Oliver Cromwell?"

"Yes," said Denzil Holles bitterly. "That man is now the front of all
things--he hath the army at his back and groweth bigger every day."

"The talk is," said his sister, "that he would make accommodation with
the King, whereas many of his party are for measures the most extreme,
even for setting up a Republic--so it is said--but I know not. What
does one hear but echoes of echoes in a retirement such as this?"

"It matters not," replied Sir Denzil, "things are all ajar in
England. I have a mind to Holland to a little quiet, some books, a
few friends--Ralph Hopton is at the Hague. I can be no use in this
whirligig, and I will save what little credit, what little fortune, I
have left."

He had often spoken so before, but had always been drawn back to the
whirlpool at Westminster, and his sister believed that he would be so
again.

Lady William Pawlet had listened wearily to this conversation between
brother and sister. Her personal anguish had dimmed all politics for
her; the rebels were now to her simply her husband's murderers, the
royalists the party for whom he died. More important to her than the
ultimate fate of King and Parliament was the memory of the morning of
Naseby when she had knotted Sir William's scarf over his cuirass and
hung a little silver saint round his neck as a charm against evil. She
watched the white butterfly which fluttered in the upper branches of
the lime, and thought of the legend of the Ancients which chose this
insect, for its light purity and because of the hideous creature from
which it came, as an emblem of the soul; and she wondered if her lord's
soul was hovering somewhere beneath heaven, watching her, or if he was
already in the Fields of Paradise. Her chief consolation remained that
he had been confessed and absolved before he went to the battle....

"Well, well," said Lady Strafford, "London is no place for me--every
paving-stone hath a memory.... And you, child, will you go to Paris?"

"Yes, madam, to the Queen, who was always a good friend to me. We have
the same faith, as you know."

"The noble family of Pawlet," remarked Sir Denzil gracefully, "have a
great claim on the house of Stewart. The defence of Basing was one of
the noblest actions of this unhappy war."

"The Marquess lost everything," said Lady William Pawlet. "Even the
bricks were pulled down and sold--even my lord's shirts--and his
bedchamber invaded by the vulgar, who burnt all the tapestry there for
the sake of the gold threads in it, and they were the most beautiful
hangings in England. What is loyalty's reward? Bitter, I fear, bitter."

She glanced out of the window at the unchanging sunshine as if it hurt
her eyes, then moved away again restlessly round the room.

The Countess made an effort to stir a silence that was so full of
memories, of regrets, of disappointments.

"Well," she said, "the war is over and we shall go abroad; but what
will happen in England?"

"That," replied Sir Denzil sternly, "is very much in the hands of
Oliver Cromwell."



PART III

THE CRISIS

"Robin, be honest still. God keep thee in the midst of snares. Thou
hast naturally a valiant spirit. Listen to God, and He shall increase
it upon thee, and make thee valiant for the truth. I am a poor creature
that write to thee, the poorest in the world, but I have hope in God,
and desire from my heart to love His people."--_Lieutenant-General
Cromwell to Colonel Hammond, Nov. 1648._



CHAPTER I

THE ISSUE WITH THE KING


On a summer afternoon in the year 1647, an officer, with a small escort
of arquebusiers, rode from Putney to Hampton village, and turning
briskly towards the palace, passed unchallenged, and saluted by the
sentries, through the great iron gates, over the moat, and stopped at
the principal entrance.

The captain of the guard-house came out.

"'Tis Lieutenant-General Cromwell!" he exclaimed.

"Ah, Colonel Parsons," returned the other pleasantly. "I do recall that
thou went here----"

"Things have changed since we besieged Oxford, sir," said Parsons.

"Ay, and gotten themselves into a fine confusion," replied Cromwell;
"but I will see the King. Tell His Majesty who waits."

"Nay, sir, step in," said Parsons; "the days are gone by when men had
to wait for an audience of His Majesty."

"Yet I trust to it that he is entertained with civility?" said the
Lieutenant-General. "Were it otherwise it would look very ill."

Without waiting for a reply to this, which was intended more as a
rebuke to Parsons' tone of speech than as question, for Cromwell knew
very well how the King was treated and lodged, the Lieutenant-General
passed up the stairs and along the galleries towards the royal
apartments, preceded by one of the palace attendants.

Parsons looked after him with mingled admiration and envy.

"There goes the darling of the army and the terror of the Parliament,"
he said to another officer who had joined him. "They no more know
what to do with Noll Cromwell than they know what to do with Charles
Stewart."

He voiced the common view of the situation of the Parliament men; the
which had indeed found themselves in greater difficulties during the
peace than they had done during the war, though they had succeeded in
getting the Scots out of the kingdom and the King into their own hands.

After wearisome and confused negotiations between the King, the Scots,
and the Presbyterians had come to nothing through Charles' haughty
refusal to forsake the Church of England and take the solemn Covenant,
the Parliament had paid the Scots £20,000, as an instalment of the pay
due to them, and on this the Northerners had marched away across the
Borders to the endless disputes among themselves, headed by Argyll, the
Covenanter, and Hamilton, the royalist, who were now one up, now one
down, like boys on a see-saw.

The King had been delivered to the Parliamentary Commissioners and
lodged with great respect at Holmby.

And then the Parliament was confronted with other problems: On one
hand the clamours of the people for a good understanding with His
Majesty, and on the other side the claims of the army, which refused
to be disbanded without the arrears of pay owing, which arrears were
not forthcoming except in so small a proportion as to be indignantly
refused by the soldiers.

Some of the right was on the side of the army and all the might.
Neither Parliament nor nation could do anything with them, especially
as all the force and fervour of the new Puritan religion which had
defeated the King was to be found in the ranks of the soldiers, for
nearly all the Parliament men were Presbyterians, and nearly all the
army belonged to one or other of the enthusiastic sects commonly named
'Independents'; and oft either side of this cleavage of religious
belief was nearly as much bitterness as had animated Puritan and Papist
against each other.

Denzil Holles had resolved to stay in England, and was busy leading a
party in Parliament against the chiefs of the army, principally against
the Lieutenant-General, who was looked upon as the great man of his
side, nay, by some, as the great man of the nation.

He, on his part, maintained a singular quiet, nor put himself forward
in any way. He had moved his family from Ely to London, and there
resided quietly or moved about from place to place as his duties
called, contradicting no man and interfering with none; yet somehow his
figure was always in the background of men's thoughts, and all either
feared him, or looked to him hopefully as their case might be, as if
from him must come, sooner or later, the healing of the schisms, the
twisting together of the intricate strands of faction, the smoothing
out of the tangled confusions that now maddened and bewildered men.

There were able, honest leaders in every sect and faction, there
were clever, high-minded politicians like Sir Harry Vane, there were
energetic and successful soldiers like Sir Thomas Fairfax, and there
were men like Ireton who combined the qualities of both--all of whom
were respected and followed by their several parties. But none stood
out so vividly in the eyes of both friend and foe as did the figure of
Oliver Cromwell, whose cavalry charges had turned the tide of battle at
Marston Moor and Naseby, who was the idol of that army which seemed now
to hold the balance of power, and whose utterances in Parliament had
shown him to be as decisive, as wary, as brilliant in attack, as quick
in resource, as commanding a personality in politics as he was on the
battlefield.

Yet there was perhaps no one, among all the men whom the times had
made prominent, who kept so in the background of events during the
last turmoils, confusions, and intricacies of the negotiations and
consultations between the King, the Scots, the Parliament, the Army,
the Presbyterians, and the Independents.

Since the conclusion of the Civil War, the King had been, and continued
to be, the great element of discord and difficulty. No one could resign
themselves to do without him, and no one knew what to do with him; the
Scots had given him up in despair, and the parliamentary Commissioners
found him equally impossible to deal with. A general deadlock had
been solved, Gordian knot fashion, by the army; Cornet Joyce and
six hundred men, acting under what orders no one knew, but acting
certainly according to the general wish, had carried off the King
(very much to his will and liking), from Holmby, to the great dismay
of the parliamentary Presbyterians, and lodged him at Hinchinbrook,
from whence he moved about with the army, treated in kingly style. He
was finally taken to Hampton Court, the army headquarters being now at
Putney, in such ominous nearness to London that the great city itself
was believed to tremble, and at Westminster there was open turmoil.

Lieutenant-General Cromwell, who, with the other officers, had been
ordered to his regiments when news came of Cornet Joyce's amazing
action, but who had already gone (not without some haste, his enemies
said, for fear of an arrest from the incensed Parliament, for it was
credited that his was the authority under which Joyce had acted), had
remained at Putney for some weeks before this visit of his to Hampton
Court.

He was, with little delay, admitted to the King's antechamber, where
Lord Digby received him, and soon into the King's presence. The
apartment was one of the beautiful chambers built and decorated by
Henry VIII; old oak, carved in a deep linen pattern and worn to a
colour that was almost dark silver, formed the walls, and round the
deep blue painted ceiling ran a design of "A. H." and the Tudor roses,
quartered thus to please the first English Queen who died a public and
shameful death.

An oriel window, brilliant with painted blazonry, was set open on to
the gardens which sloped to the willow trees and the river, and in the
red-cushioned window-seat the King's white dog slept.

The furniture was very handsome stately oak and stamped Spanish
leather; above the low mantelshelf hung a picture by Antonio Mor,
a portrait of the sad-faced Mary Tudor, in white cambric and black
velvet, gold chain, and breviary.

Charles was seated at a coral-red lacquer cabinet or desk powdered with
gold figures--a princely piece of furniture, rich and costly. Cromwell,
seeing him, paused in the doorway and took off his broad-leaved hat.

The two exchanged a quick and steady look. Cromwell had last seen the
King at Childerly House, only a few weeks before, when he and General
Fairfax had ridden down to Huntingdon to meet His Majesty; but the
interview had been brief, by torchlight, and the Lieutenant-General had
taken little part in it. The King, too, had been largely obscured by a
horseman's hat and cloak, so that the last clear remembrance Cromwell
had of the King remained that of the famous day when Charles had come
to Westminster to seize the five members.

That scene and the central figure of it remained very vividly in
Cromwell's mind, even across all the stormy years which lay between
then and now. He recalled the unutterable haughtiness, the poise, the
splendour, the rich attire of the King then; he would not have known
the man before him for the same.

Charles wore a brown cloth suit passemented with silver, grey hose, and
shoes with dark red roses on them; his whole attire was careless, even
neglected, and he had no jewellery, order, or any kind of adornment,
save a deep falling collar of Flemish thread lace.

But the change in his attire was not so remarkable as the change in
his appearance; his hair, which still fell in love-locks on to his
shoulders, was utterly grey, and his face had a grey look too, so
entirely devoid was it of any brightness of colour, his features were
swollen and suffused, and his eyes were heavy-lidded and unutterably
weary.

It gave Oliver Cromwell a sudden start to see the King, whose mere name
was such a tower of strength, who had vaunted himself so proudly, and
been so tenacious of his royal rights, reduced to this semblance of
beaten humanity who bore on his face the marks of how he had suffered
in body and soul. Cromwell himself had changed too; he was a year older
than Charles, but, in his untouched vigour and ardent air of strength
and enthusiasm, looked many years younger; his buff and soldierly
appointments were richer than formerly, and he carried himself with an
air of greater authority and decision.

Charles set down the quill with which he was writing, and pointed to a
chair with arms near the window.

"What can Lieutenant-General Cromwell," he said, with a most delicate,
most scornful, emphasis on the title, "want with me?"

Cromwell gazed at him with unabashed grey eyes. It might be acutely in
the King's mind that it was strange for a country gentleman to be thus
facing a King of England, but no such thought disturbed the Puritan.

"Sir," he returned, "the nation is in a crisis that must end soon--the
army and the Parliament are in disagreements. We are the victims of
unsearchable judgments."

"Yes," agreed Charles, who was not sorry to hear it, and who hoped, in
the troubled waters of these divisions, to fish for his own benefit; he
was already like a wedge between Parliament and army, splitting them
further apart.

"I am here," continued Cromwell, "as representing the army."

"Sent by a deputation?" asked the King keenly. His greatest hope was in
the army.

"Sent by no deputation," returned the other firmly. "Inspired only by
the Lord, yet what I offer I could engage the fulfilment of."

There was a quiet assumption of power in these words that was wormwood
to the King, but he controlled himself.

"You have come to propose terms," he said. "I have been listening to
terms for long weary months. What are yours?"

"Nay, I make no terms with Your Majesty," said Cromwell. "I only wish
you to be sincere with your people."

It was what John Pym had said at the very beginning--before the war,
Charles remembered; he remembered, too, that he had offered Pym a price
and Pym had refused. "You did not bid high enough," the Queen said
afterwards. Charles, ever untaught by experience, proceeded to repeat
with Cromwell the tactics he had used with Pym. What, after all, could
this man have come for, save to drive a bargain? And he was worth
bargaining with, as Pym had been--powerful rebels both!

The King's eyes shot hate at the quiet figure before him, but he
answered smoothly--

"Sincere! You and I speak a different language, sir, but I will try to
understand you. You mean that the army will do something for me? That
you might influence them on my behalf?"

Cromwell rose and moved to the oriel window; an expression of agitation
swept into his face.

"Sir," he said, with deep earnestness, "Your Majesty is the only remedy
for these present divisions--until a good peace be established, and you
be again at Whitehall, the nation is but like a parcel of twigs which,
unbound, cannot stand. Sir, I know there are extreme men who think
otherwise, but they are of the sort who are always there, and must be
never heeded."

A wave of exultation made the blood bound in the King's veins: he was
then indispensable to the nation. His swift, secret thought was that
he might regain his throne on his own terms, without yielding a jot of
his prerogatives, since his arch-enemy admitted what he had admitted.

"The army desires to see Your Majesty in your rightful place,"
continued Cromwell, "and would and could bring you to London despite
the Parliament."

"Well?" asked Charles.

"We must have," said Cromwell, with a certain heaviness, "the things
for which we have fought, for which we have poured out our blood."

A bitterly sarcastic smile curved the King's thin lips. Cromwell was
coming to his price, he thought; he wondered what he would ask, and
what might be promised with safety.

"We must have toleration for God's people," said the Puritan.

The King interrupted.

"I will not take the Covenant. I have already refused an army because
of that condition."

"You are now, sir," returned Cromwell bluntly, "dealing with
Englishmen, not Scots. We set no such store by the Covenant. I said,
sir, toleration."

"A word," remarked Charles, "beloved of fanatics."

"A word," said Cromwell, unmoved, "dear to honest men. We would have
all deal with God according to their conscience."

The King did not think it worth while to probe into the reservation
this tolerance made in disfavour of Prelacy and Papacy, the two faiths
he believed in. The whole gamut of theological questions had been run
through and argued upon during the conferences at Newcastle, and had
left Charles as firm an adherent as before of the Anglican Church. The
whole subject of the Puritan faith, associated as it was with vexation,
disloyalty, and rebellion, was too distasteful a one for him to enter
on; he reserved his wit and strength for the more practical issues.

"Will you tell me briefly, sir, the main purpose of this visit?"

"I wished," said Cromwell, "to sound Your Majesty. The army would not
waste its labours--and Your Majesty hath been slippery," he added
calmly.

The outraged blood stormed the King's cheeks; but the several instances
of his duplicity were too well known and too well attested to be for an
instant denied.

"I am a prisoner," he said haughtily, "and therefore forbidden
resentment."

With trembling fingers he drew nearer to him a bowl of yellow roses
that stood on his desk and nervously pulled at the leaves.

Cromwell did not look at him, but at the peaceful and lovely view of
garden and river beyond the oriel window.

"The army," he pursued quietly, giving weight to every word, "would
have no trafficking with foreign powers, no bringing of foreign forces,
no stirrings and meddlings in Ireland or Scotland, no vengeance taken
on any of their number, a free Parliament, and free churches. To a
king who could agree to these things--sware to them--_on the word of a
king_, and on that pledge keep them--there would be small difficulty in
his coming again to his ancient place and power. Remember these things,
Your Majesty; consider and ponder them. I shall come again to consult
with you. 'Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good: dwell in
the land, and verily thou shalt be fed--delight thou in the Lord, and
He shall give thee thy heart's desire.' Cast thyself on these words,
sir, that God hath moved me to say to thee."

He spoke with such earnestness, dignity, such extraordinary conviction
that the King's sneer died on his lips, and though his sensation of
respect was instantly gone, still it had been there.

"Above all," added Cromwell, "I pray Your Majesty be sincere. If you
mislike what I have said, what I have asked of you--bid me not to come
again."

The King took this to mean, "Will you deal with me or no?" and he
answered without hesitation, for he was well aware of Cromwell's power
and prestige.

"Come again and let us talk of these things at leisure. I commonly walk
in the galleries in the afternoon. Let me some day have your company."

He rose; a smile softened his haggard face into something of its
ancient grace.

"Do not disappoint me of your second coming," he said.

He held out his hand. Cromwell, without hesitation or confusion, kissed
it and left.

While his steps were yet sounding without, Charles rang a bell on his
desk that instantly summoned Lord Digby from the adjoining apartment.

"Open the window wider!" cried the King, with a shudder. "The air is
tainted...."



CHAPTER II

THE KING'S PLOTS


"That man," added Charles, in a tone of great agitation, "will make
terms. He came abruptly and left abruptly, he spoke obscurely--but his
meaning was to offer himself for my service."

"It is no wonder," replied Lord Digby, "there is a great and widening
rift between the army and the Parliament, and Cromwell hath been
heard to very plainly urge on the Presbyterians the advisability of
submitting to Your Majesty."

"What," muttered the King, walking about the room, "does he want?"

"Did he not tell Your Majesty? Methought that had been the object of
his visit."

"He told me," replied Charles, "the usual demands--what the army would
have, what it would not have. I take no notice of that. What doth he
want for himself?"

"His price would be a high one," returned Lord Digby thoughtfully. "He
is much esteemed by his party; he hath good hopes of rising."

"Faugh!" cried the King angrily. "He hath _risen_--what more can he
hope? He comes to me because he finds his usurped honours perilous,
because he can hardly hold his own. There is no loyalty in the fellow.
I take him to be a very artful, false rebel."

"Yet," said my lord earnestly, "he is worth gaining. I know of none
whom the rebels think so highly of, and his interest in the army is
supreme."

"I also have some interest in the army," said Charles haughtily. "Dost
not thou know it? Even as this Cromwell knoweth it--else why doth he
come to me? Nay, he is well aware that I still count for something in
this my kingdom."

"Still, I would say that it were well to gain Oliver Cromwell--if he be
willing to bring the army over to Your Majesty. I say, he is greater in
the public eye than we can think. His party taketh him for a man."

"And so he is, and therefore can be gained," replied Charles, with
a bitter smile. "I tell thee it goes to my heart to deal with this
fellow, whom I would very willingly see hanged; indeed, it does. But as
I do believe he hath influence, I will do it. What would he have--some
patent of nobility? It were fitting to offer him the rebel Essex's
title. Hath he not some distant relation to that Thomas Cromwell who
was the Earl of Essex?"

"I have heard it," assented Lord Digby, "and I believe that Your
Majesty hath hit on a good bait. Cromwell hath much railed against the
nobility, which is a good sign in a man that he would have a title
himself."

"And Fairfax--I must throw a sop to Fairfax," continued Charles. "There
is more loyalty and more manners in him than in his Lieutenant."

"He is not," added Lord Digby, "so useful."

Charles paused before the window.

"You know," he said, "that my best hopes are still in Scotland, and not
with these rebels. If I can make a secret treaty with the Scots, I am
independent of army and Parliament both."

Lord Digby was not practical nor level-headed. His loyalty was too
sincere to allow him broad-mindedness in his view of the struggle now
taking place in England, and his ideas were rather fantastical and
partook of that lightness and even frivolity which characterized so
many of the King's followers; but even he could not help seeing that
Charles was playing a game which every day became more dangerous, and
that this complicated and subtle intrigue was not suited to present
circumstances. A straight dealing with the army leaders, the Cavalier
thought, would have been better than these underhand negotiations with
the Scots, who had already proved themselves so unreliable, especially
as Charles never would, under any pressure, take the Covenant, and
therefore his alliance with Scotland could only be based on delusion
and fraud; while, at the same time, if these negotiations were
revealed, the English Parliament and the English army would be further
set against the King, and with England and the divisions in England lay
Charles' best chance--not in his northern kingdom.

It was these constant intrigues and subterfuges on the part of the
King, his blindness to his real interests, his unconquerable disdain
of his enemies, his firm refusal to believe that any pact or agreement
was possible between him, the King, and them, his subjects, his proud
resignation, which would take any ill, but would never give way on
any detail, however small, that had driven those fierce and downright
Princes, Rupert and Maurice, out of England. Rupert had thought the
Royal cause lost before he delivered Bristol, yet the King had had many
chances since then, all lost, or missed, or flung away.

He was too extraordinarily incredulous of his enemies' successes; it
seemed as if he could not believe nor remember that he was no longer
what he had been, one of the foremost kings in Europe, but a monarch
without an army, without a town, without revenues or allies, separated
from his family, surrounded by adversaries, practically a prisoner,
and dependent on the dole of the Parliament for the very bread he ate.
Charles could not realize these things--his birth, his instincts, his
character were too strong for his intelligence, though that was not
mean--and he still blinded himself with the idea that he was _the
King_, and that he needed no other claim and no other force than what
lay in those words to eventually triumph over, and be signally revenged
on, his rebellious subjects.

Not that Charles had shown this temper too openly or exhibited any
outward folly in his long dealings with Scots and Parliament. These
complicated negotiations had shown him at his best; he had been clever,
learned, courteous, full of resource and firmness. The principle of
his unalterable divine authority (the rock on which all the various
hopes of a compromise were eventually shattered) he kept securely
out of sight, being too proud to vaunt or rave. None the less it
was there, and he was disdainfully storing up future vengeance for
all of them--Scots, Presbyterians, Parliament men, army men, and
Puritans--when the time should come for him to have done playing with
them.

Such advisers as he had (the Queen was still the foremost) supported
him in his views and in the means he took to advance his aims; but
now affairs were become so desperate that he held the bare semblance
of kingship only by the consent and tolerance of the Parliament and
the army. And it occurred to many, as it occurred now to Lord Digby,
that an open peace with the rebels on the best terms to be got was the
safest, indeed the only, policy to be pursued.

Lord Digby ventured now to say as much, in guarded and respectful
terms, but with as much weight as his own volatile nature (only too
much like Charles' own) would allow.

The King, resting one elbow on the window-sill, his chin in his hand
and his eyes fixed on the passing glitter of the river, listened with
impatience hardly disguised.

Soon he interrupted.

"Next thou wilt advise me to take the Covenant," he said, "or to accept
the articles offered me at Uxbridge or Norwich!"

"Nay," answered Lord Digby, with a flush on his fair face; "but I do
say there is no reliance to be placed on the Scots."

"Wait," returned Charles obstinately. "I am of good hopes I can get an
army from them without taking the Covenant, but on the mere promise
to do so, and on some suspension of the bishops for three years or
so--some compromise, worked secretly."

"Is this plan laid?" asked Digby, who had not before heard of it.

"Yea, with my Lord Hamilton, and then I shall be able to hang up all
these knavish rascals who come to me to bargain--to offer terms to
_me_!"

"Meanwhile flatter them," said my lord uneasily.

"I will flatter them," returned Charles, with a flash in his worn eyes.
"I will talk of an Earldom to Cromwell--but I hope the Scots will be
across the border again before the patent is signed!"

Lord Digby was still not convinced; it seemed to him that this overture
from a man of the weight and influence of Oliver Cromwell was not an
advance to be lightly treated at this delicate stage of affairs.

"This man is fanatic," he said. "Your Majesty must remember that. I
believe he standeth more for principle than party, more for his ideas
than for his gain. A title may allure him, but it is a matter where one
would need to be careful, sire. The bait must be skilfully played, or
this fish will not rise."

But Charles, though supremely constant on some points himself, found
it impossible to believe in the constancy of those whose opinions were
opposed to him: such as Cromwell were to him 'rebels,' and he gave them
no other distinction.

"We shall see as to that," he replied impatiently. "What did this man
come here for if not to get his price?"

"Methinks he came on behalf of his policy," said Lord Digby doubtfully.
"Maybe he would have the credit of reconciling Your Majesty with the
Parliament, and after the peace some great place in the army or at your
Council board."

"These high ambitions may be useful to us," replied Charles, with a
bitter accent, "and therefore we will encourage them. Meanwhile, our
hopes lie across the border or across the sea--not in the rebel camp."

He was then silent a little while and seemed, as had become usual with
him, to have suddenly sunk into a meditation or reverie: he would so do
now in the midst of a conversation, the midst of a sentence even, as
if his mind wandered suddenly from the present to the past, from the
objects near to objects far away.

His face looked as if a veil had been dropped over it, so completely
absent was his gaze, so utterly did an expression of melancholy hide
and disguise all other.

Lord Digby stood watching him with bitter regret, with indignant
sorrow, and as he gazed at this face which humiliation and anguish had
distorted and altered as a terrible disease will distort and alter,
as he noticed the grey locks, the thin, marred profile, the careless
dress, a horrible conviction pressed on his heart with the certainty of
a revelation: the King was ruined, broken, cast down; never would he be
set up again, and these schemes and plots were mere baseless delusions.
This conviction was as fleeting as it was strong, yet for one moment
the faithful gentleman had seen his master as a thing utterly lost, and
he turned his head away swiftly, for he loved the man as well as the
King.

Charles turned from the window, his thin fingers still pressed to his
face.

"Go and see if any letters have come," he said.

Lord Digby did not say that immediately a courier came he was brought
to the King, and therefore there could be no letters without his
instant knowledge, but turned sadly to go on his errand; he knew
the King was waiting always for letters from Henriette Marie in
France--imperious, passionate letters when they came, which he kissed
every line of and sprinkled with the scalding tears of pride and love
and regret.

As soon as Lord Digby had gone Charles drew from his doublet a gold
chain, from which hung two diamond seals and a miniature in a case
ornamented with whole pearls.

He touched the spring, the lid flew up, and he gazed at the little
enamel which showed him the features of the Queen.

The painting had been done in her bridal days, and the artist's
delicate skill had preserved for ever the seductive loveliness of her
early youth; she wore white, and her complexion was the tint of blonde
pearl, her dark hair hung in fine tendrils on her brow, her large eyes
were glancing at the spectator with a laughing look, round her neck was
a string of large pearls, and on her bosom a bow of pink ribbon.

So he remembered her as he had first seen her, when, at the first
glance, she had subdued him into her willing bondsman: before he met
her he had been cold to women, and after meeting her there had been no
other in the world for him.

He never reflected if this complete absorption in her, this submission
to her will had been for his good; he never recalled the many fatal
mistakes she had advised, nor the damage done him by his unpopular
Romanist Queen; he never even admitted to himself that the one action
of his life for which he felt bitter remorse, the abandonment of
Strafford, was mainly committed to please her; nor did it ever occur
to him that many women would have stayed with him to the last, at all
costs. The brightness of his devotion outshone all these things; he saw
her image good and brave and infinitely dear, and of all his losses
the loss of her was paramount. As he thought of her, his longing half
formed the resolution to quit all these turmoils and escape to France,
abandoning for her sake his last chances of keeping his crown.

He might have come to this resolution before and carried it through had
he not too well known her pride and her ambition.

"If you make an agreement with Parliament," she had written, "you are
no king for me. I will never set foot in England again."

And he had promised her that he would make no pact with the rebels
unless she had first approved.

A light cloud passed over the sun, the sparkle died from the river,
the glow from the sky, the warm tremble of light from the trees; and
as Charles looked other clouds came up, in stately battalions, and
darkened the whole west.

Lord Digby returned.

"No messenger, sire," he said, "no letters."

"I did know it," replied Charles, with a smile that cast scorn on
himself; "but I am my own fool, and beguile the time with mine own
follies."



CHAPTER III

LIEUT.-GENERAL CROMWELL, ROYALIST


"Thou goest too often to Hampton Court," said Major Harrison. "I say it
to thy face."

"Thou mayst say it before any man," returned Cromwell mildly, "and do
no harm."

"If you will have any influence with the army you will go no more,"
continued Harrison.

"Ay!" said Cromwell, with the same patience; "but I think neither of my
influence with the army nor of any other thing, friends, but of what
the Lord hath put it in my heart to do for His service and the peace of
these times."

So saying, he laid down a little manual of gun drill, the pages of
which he had been turning over, and relit his pipe.

The scene was the guard-room of the army's headquarters at Putney.
Cromwell had been to London that morning to see his family, who were
now established in a mansion in Drury Lane, and his buff coat and his
falling boots were still dusty with the dust of the return ride.

Fairfax was in the room and the preacher, Hugh Peters. The bolder
Harrison voiced their opinions when he told Cromwell that he was
becoming too intimate with the King and too firm a supporter of the
royal pretensions; but Fairfax, from a natural reserve, and Peters,
because he hoped the Lieutenant-General would make an adequate defence,
were silent.

"Little did I ever think," cried Harrison, pacing heavily about the
room, "that thou wouldst become the consort of tyrants, the frequenter
of the strange children, whose mouth talketh of vanity, and whose right
hand is a hand of iniquity!"

Cromwell raised his calm eyes from his long clay pipe.

"No man will enjoy his possessions in peace until the King hath his
rights again," he said, "and I make no disguise from you nor from any
that I am doing my utmost to bring about a good peace with His Majesty.
For what other reason did any of us take up arms?"

"Ay," assented Sir Thomas Fairfax hastily, "and the Parliament and the
city of London are pressing for a settlement."

"My visits to Hampton Palace," continued Cromwell, "and my communings
with the King have had this one object--a good peace."

"If thou canst bring Charles Stewart to a good peace--_and make him
keep it_--thou hast more than mortal skill," said Harrison.

"What wouldst thou in this realm?" asked Cromwell, glancing up at him
with a gleam of humour. "A republic?"

The other three were silent at this; even among the extremists the idea
of totally abolishing the kingship was scarcely murmured.

"Well, then," said Cromwell, with a little smile, glancing round the
three silent faces, "a treaty with the King is the only means to get
us out of our present imbroglio, is it not? Now we have conquered His
Majesty, we must make terms with him."

"You never will," cried Hugh Peters vehemently. "He is false and false,
unstable and creeping in his ways--even while you confer with him he is
arranging to bring in the Scots again or murdering Papists from Ireland
or the French!"

"How do you know?" asked the Lieutenant-General, turning sharply in his
chair.

Mr. Peters glanced at Major Harrison, who replied--

"It is true that I have my finger in some plots the King hath in
hand. His agents meet at the Blue Boar in Holborn, and he hath a whole
service of secret couriers travelling between England, the Scots, and
France. As yet I have no letters, no absolute proofs in my possession,
but I do not think to lack them long."

"Have you long known of this, Sir Thomas?" asked Cromwell, rising.

"A week or so," replied the General; "but I have not given it overmuch
attention. If one listened to all the rumours of plots one's brain
would be confounded."

"I have men in disguise at the Blue Boar," said Harrison stubbornly,
"and soon I hope to prove my suspicions correct."

"Why, if they are," said Cromwell calmly, "then I shall change my
policy."

"Thou art all of a fatalist," remarked Harrison grimly; "there is no
ruffling thee."

The Lieutenant-General picked up his gloves and hat and riding-stock.

"Can I alter God's decrees that I should fret because of them?" he
answered earnestly. "I am but the flail in the hand of the thresher.
The Lord's will be done on me and on His Majesty, who are both the
instruments of His unsearchable judgments on these lands."

He saluted the General respectfully, but left without further speech.
He might call himself the instrument of the Lord: it was clear that he
did not consider himself the instrument of Sir Thomas Fairfax.

He seemed, indeed, quietly but fully conscious that he and he alone
could move the army (which at present still held the balance of power),
and that he, therefore, and no other was become the arbiter of these
realms.

When he left the guard-room he sent his servant for his son-in-law,
Henry Ireton, who soon joined him; the two mounted and, through the
October sun, rode to Hampton Court.

They exchanged little conversation on the way, partly because each
thoroughly understood the other, and partly because their minds were
full of busy thoughts.

The King, who was still treated with formality and respect, with his
own servants and his own friends about him, made no delay in seeing
them. He had lately had several interviews with Cromwell, with Fairfax,
with Ireton, and walking about Wolsey's groves and alleys had discussed
with them, through more than one summer and autumn afternoon, the
prospects before England.

It was in the garden, in one of the beautiful walks of yellowing oak
and beech that sloped to the river, that he received them now.

As usual his manner was gentle and gracious, as usual he kept his seat
(he was resting on a wooden bench) and did not uncover, though the two
Generals doffed their hats: power still paid this respect to tradition.

"Sir," said Cromwell at once, "I should have waited on you sooner, but
I have been sick of an imposthume in the head. But now I am here I have
weighty matters to say, and I would have Your Majesty give a keen ear
to my words."

"Am I not ever," said Charles, with a faint smile, "attentive to your
words?"

"I know not," replied Cromwell, with his plain outspokenness. "I cannot
read the heart of Your Majesty," and he looked at him straightly.

With the tip of his cane Charles disturbed the first little dead gold
leaves which lay at his feet.

"Ah," he replied slowly, "so you have weighty things to say?"

He had long known that his conferences with the leaders of the
army must come to a crisis and a plain issue soon; it had not been
his purpose to force this moment until his plans were all smoothly
arranged, but now he was ready enough. As usual he had his points
clear, his feelings under command, as usual his manner was gentle,
contained, courteous, his mind alert and watchful; yet there was a
weariness in his face and voice that all his art could not disguise,
as he came again to the old wretched business of speaking his enemies
fair, as he once more engaged in the endless game of negotiation,
proposal and counter-proposal, which he never intended should come to
anything.

The keen eyes of Commissary-General Ireton detected the shudder of
reluctance, almost repulsion, which Charles so instantly repressed.

"We will be short, Your Majesty," he said, "and it is not our intention
to ask you for more audiences. The army doth not like our meeting. All
must be settled in this coming together."

Charles glanced up at the two men standing before him as John Pym had
stood before him once in another of his royal gardens--Pym was dead,
but his principles were alive indeed; Charles thought that if the old
Puritan was in any hell which allowed him a glimpse of the earth he
must be grinning derisively at this scene now.

"We have had," said Cromwell, not waiting for Charles to speak,
"conferences, rendezvous, councils of war, much running to and fro
between the army and the Parliament, many talks between ourselves and
Your Majesty. Surely this thing must come to an end. The country is
without a government, and many extreme and fanatic men do seize the
time to unsettle the mind of the vulgar with fierce, empty words."

He paused a moment, then added, looking at the King intently and
openly, and speaking with almost mournful seriousness--

"Your Majesty knows what the country must have--are you prepared to
grant us these desires?"

Charles looked at him with a steadiness equal to his own.

"And if I say I am?" he replied. "What then?"

Both men were speaking with a directness usually foreign to them.

"Then," said Cromwell, "you may be in Whitehall within the week, sir.
The army will escort you there."

Charles could hardly disguise the leap of exultation that shook his
heart at this splendid chance, which, after being dangled before him so
long, was at length definitely offered him.

"Sir," added the Lieutenant-General, "I make no disguise from you that
there are many in the army not of my mind--it is rumoured that Your
Majesty hath secret dealings with the Scots, the French, the Dutch----"

"If the English are loyal to me," replied Charles, "wherefore should
I need foreign aid? These tales fly like thistledown before the first
autumn wind--when we are in London, sir, I will listen to, and satisfy,
all demands."

"Is that a pledge?" demanded Cromwell. "Is Your Majesty sincere with
me?"

Charles rose.

"What have I to gain by insincerity?" he said; and again his cane
stirred the drifting shrivelled leaves.

"And I must speak my side," he added. "It is my wish to show you that
loyalty may bring more profit and honour than rebellion."

"What manner of profit?" asked Cromwell. "If you mean personal profit,
why, I am well enough." ('Ay, with my Lord Worchester's lands,' thought
Charles bitterly): "two of my wenches are wed, my eldest son is
settled, the younger making good progress, for my other little maids
and their mother I can provide--what more should I want? For Henry
Ireton I can say the same."

"Yet I can gild this honourable prosperity," replied the King. "When my
Lord Essex died, his title--his title died with him--you, methinks, are
of the first Earl's house----"

"Ah!" cried Cromwell sharply, and flushed all over his face and neck.

"Oliver Cromwell may take the rank of Thomas Cromwell, who was also the
terror and the help of a king," continued Charles, with smiling lips
and narrowed eyes.

The blood was still staining the Lieutenant-General's face; his
forehead was crimson up to the thick brown hair; he looked on the
ground in a fashion that was embarrassed, almost stricken.

'I have not offered enough,' thought Charles; aloud he said--

"When I am in Whitehall I will sign the patent, and then the Earl of
Essex may command me to further service."

Still Cromwell did not speak.

'Thou clod, dost thou not understand!' cried the King in his heart.

He spoke again.

"And thy son-in-law, Henry Ireton here--he also I would raise----"

Cromwell interrupted, but in a confused and stammering fashion.

"Sir--you have mistaken--I am no cadet of the first Earl of Essex's
family--nay--or so remote; it matters not--I never thought of it--this
was not what I came to speak of--yet what I would have said is gone
from me." His head fell on his breast despondently; he made a hopeless
little gesture with his gloved right hand. "Let it pass," he finished.

"For me," said Henry Ireton. "I would that Your Majesty had not spoken
of this."

Charles could not keep all scorn from his smile as he replied--

"We will discuss these things at Westminster."

Cromwell raised his head and gazed into the King's pale, composed face.

"I do ask Your Majesty," he said, and in his deep voice was a note of
intense appeal, "to be sincere with me."

"I am sincere with you, General Cromwell," replied Charles.

A light gust of wind shook the oak branches and more leaves drifted
downwards.

"To-morrow I will return with General Fairfax and some other
officers," said Cromwell, "with whom Your Majesty may finally speak."
He seemed about to take his leave, hesitated, then, as if a sudden
impulse had shaken him, he turned again and addressed Charles.

"Not for my sake," he said, "nor for any light reason--but for thy
soul's sake that when thou comest before the living God thou mayst have
no treachery or falsehood in the scale against thee, deal fairly with
me now. There thou shalt wear no crown to give thee courage, and no
courtier shall flatter thee--therefore, sir, bethink thee, and tell me
plainly if I may trust thee."

"I have said it," replied Charles.

For a second Cromwell was silent; then he and Ireton took a formal
leave and left the Palace grounds.

When they were mounted and clear of the iron gates and the stone lions,
Ireton spoke.

"Wilt thou put that man up in Whitehall again? See how his mind runs on
little things--he did offer us bribes as if we were soldiers deserting
for higher pay."

"That went to my soul," replied Cromwell simply. "I thought he took me
for an honest man--but it pleased the Lord to mortify me, and I must
not murmur. As for the King--yea, I will put him on his heights again,
for that is the only way to peace."

They rode silently until they came within sight of Putney, and there
they were met by Major Harrison, who, riding, came out of the village
and joined them at the village green.

"News," he said abruptly, with a grim smile and triumphant eyes--"news
from 'The Blue Boar.'"

"Ay?" replied Cromwell quietly.

Harrison turned his horse about and rode beside the others; the three
slowed to a walking pace.

"You had not left the guard-room ten minutes," said Harrison, "before
my man arrived from London, all in a reek. He had found and arrested
the King's secret messenger, and out of his saddle ripped these"--he
held up a packet of papers--"secret letters to the Queen," he added
triumphantly, "and as fatal as those papers captured after Naseby!"

Ireton gave a passionate exclamation, but Cromwell said--

"What is in them?"

"Much treason," replied Harrison succinctly. "He tells his wife he
will never make a peace with either army or Parliament, that he is
deluding both while he raises a force in Scotland and Ireland, in which
countries Hamilton and Ormonde intrigue for him. He begs her to get a
loan from the Pope to raise a foreign army--and he promises," added
Harrison dryly, "that, when he hath his day again, those two rebels,
Cromwell and Ireton, shall both be hanged."

"Doth he? doth he?" said Cromwell; he held out his hand and took the
papers.

One glance at their contents confirmed Harrison's summary--the whole
was in the King's known hand.

Oliver Cromwell turned his horse and rode back to Hampton Court.



CHAPTER IV

THE KING AT BAY


When Cromwell returned to the Palace the King had already gone to his
supper.

"I will wait," said the Lieutenant-General; and in the little room with
the linen-pattern carving in the grey-coloured walls, the portrait of
Mary Tudor, the red lacquer desk, and the oriel window, where he had
first spoken with Charles, he waited.

Between his buff coat and his shirt lay the packet of papers ripped
from the saddle of the secret messenger in the stables of "The Blue
Boar"--papers which Charles believed to be across the Channel by now.

Oliver Cromwell waited while nearly half an hour ticked away on the
dial of the gilt bracket clock, and then came Lord Digby to say that
His Majesty would not be disturbed again to-night; Charles had still
the unconquerable pride of royalty; he would not be summoned to meet
his enemies at any hour they chose to name; the state with which he was
still surrounded perhaps deluded him into thinking he could behave as
he had behaved at Whitehall.

If so, the veil of his dignity was now rent in such a way that it could
never be patched again; Cromwell, with a manner there was no mistaking,
the manner of the master, repeated his demand for an instant audience
of His Majesty.

Lord Digby withdrew, and five minutes later the Puritan soldier was
ushered into the old, now disused, state chamber of Henry VIII, hung
with fine Flemish tapestries representing the 'Seven deadly Sins' and
lit by mullioned windows looking on the Park.

Charles was already there, walking up and down; he had changed his
dress since Cromwell had left him, and now wore black velvet with
cherry-coloured points and gold tags; his fingers played nervously with
the long gold chain which thrice circled his chest.

In the light, already slightly dim, of the large room, the grey look
of his face and hair was more apparent; it was almost as if some faded
carving had been joined to a living body, so extraordinarily lifeless
and without light was that immobile face framed in the long, waving,
colourless locks.

But in the eyes, swollen and lined, an intense vitality gleamed; the
dark pupils sparkled with force and emotion under the tired, drooping
lids as Charles stopped in his pacing and turned about to face Cromwell.

"I had not expected this," he said, with a haughtiness which seemed
to disguise some straining passion. "What more have we to say, sir?
Methought you were to come to-morrow."

"To-morrow might have been too late," said Cromwell. He spoke in his
usual quiet, almost melancholy, fashion; his heavy voice held the usual
deep note, enthusiastic, mournful.

He stood bareheaded, in his dusty leathers and silk scarf, his falling
boots, soiled spurs, and plain tuck sword, his head a little drooping,
his tanned face reddish from the ride through the autumn air.

Behind him the Gothic figures on the tapestry twisted and glowed
through branches and sprays of flowers and a luxurious profusion of
rare birds and uncouth beasts.

"Too late for what?" asked Charles, still endeavouring to conciliate
his powerful foe, and now, he hoped, ally, still barely able to conceal
his angry pride at the lack of ceremony with which he was treated,
the manner in which this man came before him, his great disgust and
repulsion at having to deal with such fellows at all.

"Get you gone to-night from Hampton, sir," said Cromwell, "to whatever
place seems good--here you shall no longer be safe."

"Ah," cried Charles, "is this the end of all your wily advances? I am
not safe!"

"Because I cannot protect you when what Major Harrison knows is spread
abroad among the army."

The King's right hand left his chain; he pressed his fingers over his
heart; on the black velvet they looked thin and white beyond nature.

"The hand of God is against you," said Cromwell sombrely. "He does not
mean that you shall again rule in this land. I would have made treaty
with you as the Gibeonites made with David--and I would not ask from
you the lives of seven, as they asked for the sons of Saul, but only
your own word pledged openly. But you could not keep it, but dealt with
the children of Belial and all the array of the ungodly."

Charles took one delicate step backwards.

"These are mighty words," he said.

"They are mighty doings," replied Cromwell. "Not of mean things or
small things or the things concerning one man or another am I speaking,
but of great things, the displeasure of God on this wretched land, the
means we must take to revoke His judgment.... Much blood hath been
shed," he added, with a sudden flash in his voice, "but not that which
must be before we find peace."

"I know not of what you speak," muttered the King.

"You very well know," replied Cromwell, and through the obscure web of
his words a meaning of passion, of force and fire did gleam, like gold
or flame. "You know what you have done. How you have deceived and gone
crookedly. But God is not mocked. Hath He not said, 'Though they dig
into Hell thence shall mine hand take them, though they climb up into
Heaven thence shall I pull them down'? And out of darkness and secrecy
hath He revealed your designs that you may not bring more evil upon
England."

"Of what dost thou accuse the King?" asked Charles.

"Of high treason," replied Cromwell--"of treason towards God and
England."

A step farther back moved Charles, so that his shoulders touched and
ruffled the tapestry.

"By what authority do you use this boldness?" he asked.

"My authority is from within," answered the Puritan. "I can satisfy
men of my authority. I am not afraid. I see that in treating with you
I have committed folly, but that is over. God will find another way.
Get from Hampton, under what excuse you may. I would not, sir, have the
army do you a mischief."

"I will," replied Charles, "get as far as may be from the violence of
insulting rebels--I will withdraw myself from my subjects until they
remember their duty to their King."

"In what way," demanded Cromwell, "hast thou fulfilled thy duty to God
or to His people?"

"I have endured much!" cried Charles, in a sharp voice. "But till now I
have been spared open insolence!"

Unmoved and unblenching the Lieutenant-General regarded him.

"Sir," he replied, "you may yet hear worse words than any I have
said, and may have to bear a rougher speech. I did not come to rail,
but to tell you that I am now persuaded there can be no treaty or
understanding between you and us. Sir, others advised me of this
awhile ago, but I would not listen. But now the hand of God is plainly
discoverable--your plots and subterfuges are revealed, sir, your secret
letters to the Queen are known."

Charles, whose quick mind had been reviewing all the possible disasters
that could have befallen, who had been wondering which of his intrigues
had been unveiled, was not prepared for a catastrophe so complete
as the discovery of his secret correspondence with his wife, which
revealed, not one, but all of his complicated plots.

As Cromwell told him at last the cause of his sudden estrangement, he
felt at once a shock and a premonition chill his heart; he remembered
quite clearly what had been in his last letter to the Queen, and the
statement that he had made in his irritation and humiliation regarding
Cromwell and Ireton, and he saw that another golden chance had gone,
and that he had lost for ever the help of the army which he had
sacrificed so much pride to gain.

But he faced this misfortune as he had faced so many others, with
unfailing courage and dignity.

"You pretend to deal with me as your king," he said, "but you treat me
as your prisoner. I am spied upon, and my very letters opened.... There
is no more to be said."

Cromwell did not deny the charge, as he might well have done, since
Major Harrison, and not he, had tracked and arrested the King's
messenger.

"My hopes of you are dead," he merely said. "I would have you leave
Hampton, for I know not what the army may do, and if they take you to
Whitehall now, sir, it will not be as a king, but as a prisoner."

"I am well used to that treatment," replied Charles, with hot
bitterness, "nor have I looked for any other at the hands of rebellious
fanatics. Didst thou think," he added, with the full force of that fury
and scorn he had so long concealed breaking the bounds of his fitful
prudence and his steady courtesy, "that _I_ ever regarded _thee_ as my
friend?"

"I would have been so, sincerely," replied Cromwell, with his
unruffled, melancholy calm. "I and Ireton risked our prestige with the
army to make conferences and debates with you, but it hath been as if
one should pour water into a sieve. I would have overlooked much--even
the insult you put on me to-day when you tried to buy me with a feather
for my cap, when I was offering myself to you with no thought but the
good of this realm. So cheaply did you hold Pym, so cheaply will you
always hold honest men, it seems--and I, sir, tell you plainly that I
have done with you. I will find other ways. Not through you can peace
come to England. I do now perceive it. 'Unstable as water, thou shalt
not excel.' You must go on to your fate, sir, as I shall to mine; but
look for no ally in me or in the army, for henceforth there can be no
treaty between Your Majesty and us. My cousin, Colonel Whalley, shall
remain here to look after your security; as for me, you shall not see
me again, or in a manner very different. As for what may become of you
or your estate, of that I wash my hands of--the Lord deal with you."

"Amen," said Charles sternly, "and may He judge between you and me.
Between me who have kept His ancient statutes and upheld His Church,
and you who have defied and blasphemed both."

"God is neither in statutes nor in churches," replied Cromwell, "but
in the innermost recesses of the spirits and the secret depths of
the heart, and these sanctuaries have you polluted and defiled, with
tyranny and falseness and sly and untruthful dealing."

He took a step towards the door; a sudden weariness seemed to have
overtaken him, or a wave of the weakness from his recent illness; he
looked, in his dusty clothes, like a rider beaten with fatigue, a
traveller exhausted after a long journey, his chin sank on his linen
collar; his broad shoulders were bowed, and his step was at once heavy
and uncertain.

Charles remained white, rigid in pose and expression as when Cromwell
entered the chamber; the shadows were swiftly closing round them and
all sharp lines and fine colours were blurred; through the one open
window a breeze came, which lightly stirred the dusty tapestry and
shook it in faint ripples from top to bottom.

The disused, unfurnished chamber, built for pomp and magnificence, was
unutterably mournful and dreary, a fitting setting for the unfortunate
King whose black figure was lost in, and one with, the ancient arras.

When he had reached the door, Cromwell turned and spoke again.

"Thou hast, sir, lost as good a chance as we are ever like to get of
a fair settlement, and lost it through falseness and folly." He spoke
with passion, but it was a passion of regret, not of vexation or wrath.
"A good night."

The King, without turning his head or moving, stood as if he dismissed
an unwelcome suitor from an audience, he showed an indifference that
was stronger than contempt and an insulting coolness and absence of
passion.

So, with no other word on either side, they parted, and Oliver rode
back to Putney, weary with disappointment and chagrin, though his
inmost prescience knew, and had known, that this disappointment and
chagrin had been from the first foredoomed, that in ever dealing with
the King at all he had been preparing the failure that had disclosed
itself to-night; as he reflected on the whole business, his stern
common sense laughed at the idealism which had led him astray; how
could he have ever hoped to have clipped a king to _his_ pattern out of
Charles?

The delusion was over; he asked himself, as he rode through the fresh
autumn twilight, what was to take its place?

If the King could not be trusted--what then? Some of the bold words
of Thomas Harrison flashed into his mind. Must they, could they, do
without a king at all?

Oliver Cromwell did not think so; he was never a Republican: order
and system were lovely to him, and both were involved, in his English
heart, with the idea of a steadfast though constrained monarchy.

In anything else (where, indeed, was the model for anything else to be
found in Europe, save perhaps in the peculiar constitution, founded
under peculiar circumstances, of the United Provinces?) he foresaw the
elements of constant anarchy, constant revolution....

Yet he had done with the King--finished with him with that complete
definiteness of which his resolutions were supremely capable.

So Cromwell strove with his thoughts during the short ride to Putney
where all the chiefs of the army were already in conclave.

Alone in the uncared-for splendour of another monarch the unhappy King
stood, motionless, as his enemy had left him, and tried to measure the
extent of his misfortune and to readjust his shattered plans.

He was still, as ever, incredulous of his ultimate defeat, but never
before had he been so utterly at a loss for present action. The army
was lost to him, that was clear; neither the Scots nor the Parliament
were ready to receive him, the Queen had not been able to raise the
foreign army, his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, had been prevented
by the States-General from sending troops to his assistance, Ormonde
could do nothing in Ireland--that country was indeed lost to the
royal cause, since the miserable affair of the Earl of Glamorgan--and
Hamilton seemed powerless to fight the Campbell faction at Edinburgh.

"What shall I do?" muttered Charles. "What shall I do?"

His thoughts turned with even deeper longing than usual to the Queen
in her exile; he believed that he might forsake everything and go to
her; two things restrained him, sheer pride and the thought of his two
children, the Princess Elisabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, who were
in the hands of the Parliament and whom he would have to leave behind.

The Duke of York had already escaped to France, but the figures of
these little children rose up and restrained his flight.

Besides, he must stand by his crown ... but he would not stay at
Hampton--his own enemy had warned him.

But where to go--in all my three realms where to go?

Several days he waited in his usual indecision, then, miserable,
harassed, uncertain, torn by a thousand perplexities, he and his few
companions crept one night down the back stairs, came out on to the
riverside, and went forth aimlessly, with no plan nor purpose, with
nothing but schemes as wild as will-o'-the-wisps to light the dimness
and confusions of their future.



CHAPTER V

LIEUT.-GENERAL CROMWELL, REPUBLICAN


In a room of the house where Oliver Cromwell had moved his family from
Ely, a mansion in Drury Lane, one of the least pretentious in that
fashionable street, but stately and comfortable, two women were sitting
over the ruddy fire which lit and cheered the close of the short winter
day.

The contrast between them was as marked as any contrast could be,
yet something in their personalities knit together and blended as if
beneath their great differences there was an underlying likeness--the
likeness of the same breed and birth.

The elder lady was towards the close of life--eighty, perhaps, or more;
her face and person were delicate, her lap full of delicate embroidery,
out of which her fine fingers drew a fine needle and thread.

She wore a grey tabinet gown; a white cap and white strings enclosed
her fragile face, white linen enfolded her shoulders and bosom, and
long white cuffs reached from her wrist to her elbow.

A housewife's case and a small Bible hung by cords to her waist; she
had nothing of gold or silver but her worn wedding ring, yet she gave
the impression of something high and fine and aristocratic.

She sat in a deep, cushioned chair with a hooded top; the failing light
had baffled the eyes that were still so keen, and the needlework was
dropped on her lap.

At her feet, on a small footstool, sat her grandchild, she who had
brightened the house at Ely with her balls of holly berries, her red
ribbons, her laughter, and her songs, and who now brightened the finer
town house when she visited there; she was no longer an inmate of her
father's home, for, though only seventeen, Elisabeth was a year married
and now Mrs. Claypole.

Neither in dress nor manner was she a Puritan; her lavender-blue silk
gown, flowing open on a lemon-coloured petticoat, her deep falling
collar and cuffs of Flemish lace, the bow of rose colour at her breast
and in her hair, her white sarcenet shoes with the silver buckles, the
long ringlets which escaped the pearl comb and fell on her shoulders,
even her piquant bright face, with eyes slightly languishing and mouth
slightly wilful, seemed more to belong to the now exiled court of
Henriette Marie than to the household of the leader of the Roundhead
army.

Yet there was nothing frivolous in the appearance of Elisabeth
Claypole; her prettiness had a pensive cast, her glance often a
seriousness unusual for her age, and if she sometimes showed a pride,
a vanity, or an impatience, impossible to her sweetly austere sister,
Bridget Ireton, she was not less noble and pious, brave and good, and
perhaps her deeper tenderness, her greater gaiety, her warmer love of
life were not such sins in the eyes of the God whom she had always been
taught to fear; yet sins her father called them, though he knew they
made her lovable, though he found her sweeter than Bridget, who was
gentle perfection.

Sitting here now, in the closing day, with the firelight flushing her
delicate clothes and her sensitive face, and the shadows encroaching
on her hair, here, with the cheerful noises of London without and the
cheerful atmosphere of home within, she talked to her grandmother of
the one subject every one must talk of this wondrous winter--the King's
bewildered flight from Hampton, his aimless two days' riding, his final
turning to the Isle of Wight and giving himself up to the Governor
there, Colonel Hammond, whom he had reason to believe was loyalist at
heart.

Yet here again the King had been, as ever, unfortunate; Robert Hammond,
tempted at first to take the King where he wished, yet remained true
to his trust, and the unhappy Stewart was again a prisoner, now at
Carisbrooke, kept more strictly than before--and a portentous silence
hung over the nation; English, Scots, Presbyterians, Independents,
Parliamentarians, the army, the Royalists--all seemed waiting--"Waiting
for what?" asked Elisabeth Claypole, voicing the question England was
asking.

"For the Lord to show His will towards this poor kingdom," said Mrs.
Cromwell simply. "Surely He will dispose it all to mercy."

"Mercy?" repeated the young girl thoughtfully. "I see little mercy
abroad. Much blood and bitterness--but no mercy."

"At least," said the old gentlewoman composedly, "His Majesty is mewed
up, and that should be a step towards the settlement of these tangled
affairs."

"Alas, poor King!" murmured the youngest Elisabeth (it was her mother
and her grandmother's name). "Alas! alas!"

"Why dost thou say alas?" asked Mrs. Cromwell calmly. "Dost thou not
recall what thy father said in the House the other day when he moved
that no more addresses should be sent to the King, nor any dealings
made with him, under pain of high treason? He put his hand on his
sword, thy father did, and he said, quoting Holy Writ--'Thou shalt not
suffer a hypocrite to reign----'"

"He said not so much a month ago," replied Elisabeth; "then he was
all for a good peace with His Majesty, saying--how could any man come
quietly to his own save by that?"

"Thou knowest," returned the old lady, who had much of the strength and
melancholy of her son in her calm demeanour, "that all that is changed."

"Will there be another war?" murmured Elisabeth Claypole, looking
dreamily into the fire.

"That is a matter for men.... Be not so grave, dear heart, the Lord
hath us all in His keeping."

"My father," replied the girl, "hath been grave of late--during all my
visit. He thinketh affairs are dark, I believe."

"Not only affairs of the kingdom weigh on him, Elisabeth--something his
own do oppress him. The Parliament settlements are yet indefinite, and
then there is your brother Richard's marriage. It does not please your
father that he should be so deep in love as to leave the Life Guards.
And then this Dorothea Mayor's father requireth settlements, hard for
your father to give as things now stand--all this weighs with him and
puts him in anxieties and silences."

At the end of this speech, Mrs. Cromwell, either exhausted from so
many words or from the thoughts her own explanation had conjured up,
sighed and leant back in her chair, dropping her chin on the immaculate
whiteness of her cambric bosom, as her son would sink his on his breast
when he was thoughtful or oppressed.

"Richard," said Elisabeth Claypole in that soft, eager voice which was
always ready to plead for and to praise every one, "is not suited for
the army--he never cared for it."

"Cannot you see," replied Elisabeth Cromwell almost sharply, "what a
disappointment that is for your father?"

"He loveth Oliver," whispered Oliver's sister, and her eyes swam in
tears. "Oliver would have been a good soldier."

"He loved Robert more," returned the grandmother. "Robert was the
first born. His eldest son. Richard could never be as either Robert or
Oliver to him; yet he will be loving and just to Richard." That sense
of the presence of the dead that the hushed mention of them seems to so
often evoke, as if they were never far, and at the sound of love and
regret hovered near, filled the darkening room. Both the grandmother
and sister seemed to see the bright ardent figure of the young cornet,
whose life had burst forth so fiercely into action amid the whirling
events of war, and had been stilled so suddenly by a hideous disease
in an insignificant garrison, and was now forgotten save by these one
or two who had loved him.

Elisabeth Claypole remembered; she remembered his excitement, their
mother's instructions, the cordials and balms he had taken with him,
the fine shirts she had helped stitch and pack, his new sword that had
looked so big to her childish eyes--the farewells--the letters....

Elisabeth Cromwell remembered; she remembered his farewell visit, how
she had blessed him and he had knelt before her with her hand on his
smooth fair head ... and his tallness and straightness and slenderness,
and all his bright new bravery of war array....

"Ah well," she said softly. "Ah well," and her mind wandered off to her
own youth, and it seemed to her as if she had indeed been living a long
time ... almost too long.

"Light the candles, my love, my dear," she said. "It is sad to sit in
the dark."

As her granddaughter rose, the door opened and Oliver Cromwell entered.

His coming was a surprise; he was not now often in London, save when he
had to speak at Westminster. He had lately been at Hereford, and they
had not expected his return so soon.

The sincere warmth of his welcome might have pleased any man, however
weary, and his gravity lifted under it for a while, but when he had
kissed them both and come to the fire and warmed his hands, silence
came over him, as if the melancholy had closed over and clouded him
again. His mother, from her hooded chair, gazed at his powerful, yet
drooping figure, and the presence of the younger Oliver seemed more
insistent.

Elisabeth Claypole had gone to fetch the candles.

"We were speaking of Oliver," said Mrs. Cromwell.

Her son turned to look down at her.

"He is with the Lord," he answered gravely. "He was a man--and took a
man's fate doing man's work."

A little fall of silence, then Cromwell spoke again--

"Do you think of Robert sometimes, mother?"

"I knew, I knew," murmured the old gentlewoman. "He was your love."

"He was a child," replied Cromwell, with infinite tenderness, with
infinite regret. "A little, useless child. Dying so, he remains a
child--never higher than my shoulder. My eldest born. Oliver laughed
when he did go, for joy to die in God's service, but Robert wept. Ay,
they at Felsted told me he wept because I was not there to take his
hand in the sharpness of his passing. Oh, that went to my heart, my
innermost heart ... but God saved me."

The young Elisabeth returned, followed by the servant with the two
branched candlesticks of brass which stood on the black polished table,
where they reflected their full shining length.

With a shudder the Lieutenant-General roused himself and turned to face
the room.

"What hast thou been doing?" asked Elisabeth Claypole when the maid had
gone.

"It would not please thee to know," he answered sombrely.

Now the room was lit she noticed his pallor, his heavy air.

"Thou art tired, father," she cried.

"Ay--tired--tired--bring me a glass of wine, dearest." He turned round
again to the fire and said abruptly, "There hath been a mutiny in
the army. A rebellious meeting at Corkbush field--these levellers it
was--but I did stamp it out; we must have no disaffection in the army."

"A meeting?" exclaimed his daughter, taking a bell-mouthed glass from
the sideboard; "but it is ended--how?"

"They drew lots," replied Cromwell, "and one was shot. One Arnald--a
brave man."

"Oh, father!" cried Mrs. Claypole. "More blood--more misery!"

"It had to be," said Cromwell. "Dost thou think I love it?" He made an
effort to shake off his preoccupation and his gloom, "Come, come, this
is no news for thee."

He turned again to gaze very tenderly at her as she came with wine on a
silver salver.

"Oh, vanity and carnal mind!" he cried, pulling at the ribbons on her
sleeve; "thy sister Ireton doth think that thou art too much given to
worldliness! Yet seek ye the Lord and ye shall find Him," he added,
with a sudden grave smile.

"Sir, I would," she replied earnestly. "Let not my ways deceive you, I
am very humble at heart."

"I do believe it," he said.

He drank his wine slowly. He asked where his wife was (he had learnt
below that she was abroad), and was told that she was with Lady Wharton.

"She did not expect me," he said half-wistfully. "I wish that I had
chanced to find her. Since I am so much away I would have all round me
when I am at home."

"She will be in soon," said his mother, gathering up her fine sewing
with an air of regret, for the candlelight was not strong enough for
her to see the minute stitches.

Elisabeth crept up to her father, and taking his sword hand, caressed
it.

"What of the King?" she asked.

"The King is at Carisbrooke," he replied.

She gave a deep sigh.

"How will it end, my father?"

"How should we have that knowledge yet?"

"The poor King!" she exclaimed. "I am sorry for the poor King!"

Cromwell was silent.

"Tell me," said Elisabeth, creeping closer to him, "will there be
another war?"

"God forfend," he answered gravely.

"Then what will the King do?" she insisted.

"Thou art very tender towards the King."

"I am sorry for him, surely. And I have heard thee say--he must have
his rights again."

"He hath forfeited his rights," said Cromwell, glooming. "He is a
hypocrite."

"Once you were his friend," said Elisabeth Claypole; "is that over?
Why, Major Harrison even called you royalist."

"Yes, it is over," returned her father, "and now you may sooner call
me republican--a name I did use to hate. The King is not one to be
trusted, neither is he fortunate. God is against him, and will not have
him raised up again; even as the Lord's judgment went forth against
Tyrus, so hath it gone forth against Charles Stewart. What hath God
said--'I shall bring thee down with them that descend to the pit--and
thou shalt be no more--thou shalt be sought for, but never shalt thou
be found!'"

"But what wilt thou do with the tyrant?" asked Mrs. Cromwell.

"He is not my prisoner, nor am I his judge," replied Cromwell, with
sudden vehemence. "Ask _me_ not what his fate will be! Ask me not to
pity the King--'he that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity, and the rod
of his anger shall fail.'"

He crossed to the sideboard and set his glass there.

Elisabeth Claypole stood sad and thoughtful by her grandmother's chair;
Cromwell came and kissed her delicate forehead.

"Thy brother's marriage treaty sticks," he said pleasantly. "I must
go and write to Mr. Mayor, and cast up what higher settlements I can
offer."

"He demands too much," declared Mrs. Cromwell.

"Nay, he is prudent; but I have two wenches still to provide
for--farewell for a moment." He had gone again.

"The affairs of men!" muttered the old gentlewoman. "Well, well."

Elisabeth Claypole, too, felt sad; she, too, felt helpless in a busy
world that did not need her. She returned to her stool and began to
fold up her grandmother's work; both of them, being women, were used to
loneliness.



CHAPTER VI

PRESTON ROUT


Charles was a prisoner at Carisbrooke, more strictly guarded than ever
before, but not any less dangerous to Parliament or the disrupting
forces which stood for Parliament. In spite of everything they still
tried to come to an agreement with him, for the confusion of the
kingdom was beyond words, beyond any one man's brain to grasp and cope
with, and all turned to the King and the tradition behind the King as
the one stable thing in a whirl of chaos.

Charles thought that they, traitors and rebels as they were, were
speeding to their own doom. Outwardly he played with them as he had
done before; he referred himself, he said, wholly to them. Meanwhile he
was sowing the seeds of another Civil War.

He had come to an agreement with the Scots whereby they were to unite
with the English royalists against the Parliament, and he on his side
was to suppress Sectaries and Independents and to establish presbytery
for three years, himself retaining the Anglican form of worship. This
agreement was signed secretly, wrapped in lead, and buried in the
garden of Carisbrooke Castle.

Royalist risings broke out all over the country, particularly in Wales;
mutinies were frequent in the still undisbanded, unpaid army; the
struggle between Presbyterian and Independent was as sharp as it had
ever been. Hamilton triumphed over the Argyll faction in the Scottish
Parliament, raised an army 40,000 strong, and prepared to march across
the Border "to deliver the King from Sectaries." Part of the fleet
had revolted, gone to Holland, fetched the young Prince of Wales and
Rupert, and was buccaneering round Yarmouth Roads. In Ireland the
Marquess of Ormonde and the papal Nuncio were coming to some pact to
unite against the Parliament, and the feeling of the sheer people of
England was veering against the austere rule of the Puritan and coming
again to the old known and tried idea of Kingship. "Why not," they
asked, "a good peace with His Majesty?"

Cromwell and a few others knew why not; because the King was utterly
impossible to deal with; because he did not admit that he, the King,
_could_ be dealt with, made party to a bargain or an agreement, like an
ordinary man.

But in the minds of the common people, Charles did not get the blame
nor they the credit of this attitude of his. Cromwell in particular had
lost much of his prestige; the zealots blamed him for his conferences
with the King, the moderates because they had not succeeded. He brought
about meetings between the leaders of the two factions, Presbyterians
and Independents, but quite uselessly--neither would yield a jot. Then
the extreme men of the Parliament and the extreme men of the army were
gotten together by his care to discuss the desperate state of affairs.

This conference resolved itself into a bitter and academic dispute on
the various forms of government, each man backing himself by manifold
quotations from Scripture.

"Wherefore," cried Cromwell, starting up impatiently, "do you argue
which is best--monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy--when you are come
here to find a remedy for the present evils?"

Thereat they began to reply together, tediously and idly, and Cromwell
picked up the cushion from the chair on which he sat and hurled it at
Ludlow's head, and before it could be flung back to him he ran down the
stairs, thus ending the conference.

Soon after, the army came together at Windsor and, with prayers and
tears and exhortations, besought God to tell them for what mistreading
or fault all these turmoils and distresses had come upon them.

And the conclusion of these three days of mystic exaltation was that
God was punishing them for their dealings with Charles Stewart, who was
henceforth to be no more considered or dealt with, but treated as a
delinquent and man of blood who would be, in good time, made to answer
for his sins to men before he went to answer for them to God.

The situation was a paradox. The Scots were invading the kingdom to
restore Charles and to force the Covenant on England; these two matters
were no less the object of the parliamentary majority, yet they were
bound to withstand Hamilton, for his victory would mean their own utter
overthrow.

To further complicate the situation, Langdale and the English
Cavaliers, joined with Hamilton, abhorred the Covenant, and were
fighting not merely for the re-establishment of the monarchy but the
re-establishment of the Church of England.

It was obvious, even to the most hopeful, that only the sword could cut
these tangles; it was obvious, even to the most hesitating, that the
Scots must be driven back over their own Border.

Cromwell, who had been on the edge of impeachment, who had many eager
foes now in Parliament and army, was called forth again at the supreme
moment.

He was sent to South Wales, crushed the rebellion there, took Pembroke
Castle, heard Hamilton had crossed the Border, turned northwards and,
by July, was in Leicestershire. By the middle of August he had joined
General Lambert between Leeds and York.

There his scouts brought him news that Hamilton and Langdale had
effected a juncture and were marching for London.

"If," said Cromwell, "they reach London, then goodnight to us, for the
King will be master for all in all, and all the blood and bitterness
will have been for naught."

There was nothing but him and his force to stay them. He had, perhaps,
eight thousand men; they, twenty-one thousand, or near it. The weather
was tumultuous, stormy; torrents of rain fell, the upland fells were
almost impassable from mud and bog. Cromwell had brought his army by
long and arduous marches from Wales; many of them were barefoot, many
in rags. None of them had yet received the months of arrears of pay
which had been so long in dispute. Plunder was forbidden them; they
were there, like the hosts of Joshua, to fight for the Lord, and for
nothing else.

My Lord Duke, with his great straggling army, came over the open heaths
as far as Preston and Wigan, no colours displayed because of the wind,
no tents nor fires at night because of the wind and the rain; so they
marched, a weary troop, neither well-disciplined nor well-generaled,
and soon to face those troops which Oliver Cromwell had made the best
in the world. But there was with them neither hesitation nor dismay,
for half of them were Scots, and Langdale's men were of the same breed
as Cromwell's, and would fight as well and endure as stubbornly.

Cromwell came to Clitheroe and lay in the house of a Mr. Sherburn, a
Papist, at Stonyhurst. The next day was Wednesday, and still raining;
the weather, the soldiers said, "was as fearful a marvel as the hideous
sight of English fighting English on English earth"; the sky was one
colour with earth, heavy, dun; the beaten heath, the broken bushes
dripped with moisture, the water ran in rivulets through the soaked
earth. As the rain ceased for a while the wind would rise, sweeping
strongly across the open spaces.

Ashton marched to Whalley, other troops of dragoons to Clitheroe,
Cromwell advanced towards Preston. On the other side my Lord Duke
advanced, also, hardly knowing where, in the rain and wind, on the
undulating ground of hillocks and hollows, his army lay, or how and
where it was available.

Sir Marmaduke Langdale was near Langdridge Chapel, on Preston Moor, the
other side of the Ribble. Four miles away my lord the Duke, who was at
Darwen, the south side of the river too, where there should have been
a ford, but was not, so swollen was the tide with the mighty rains. My
Lord Duke passed the bridge with most of his brigades and sent Lord
Middleton with a large portion of the cavalry to Wigan.

Meanwhile, through the rain and the confusion, stumbling over the
incredibly rough ground, a forlorn of horse and foot, commanded by
Major Hodgson and Major Rounal, came upon Sir Marmaduke and his three
thousand English.

The Scots, themselves confused, thinking it only an attack of Lancaster
Presbyterians, did not support Langdale, who complained that he had
not even enough powder; but he fought, he and his men, like heroes,
against forces more than double their number--against the Ironsides,
for four hours, always in the wind and wet, on the rough ground. Then
such as was left of them gave way and fell back on Preston; some of the
infantry surrendered, some of the horse escaped north to join Munro.

Meanwhile, Cromwell had swept Hamilton and Baillie back across the
Darwen, back across the Ribble, had captured both bridges and driven
my lord towards Preston town. Three times in his retreat my lord
turned round to face his enemies, crying out for "King Charles!" Three
times he repulsed the troops pursuing him, and the third time he drove
them far back and, escaping from them, swam the river and joined
Lieutenant-General Baillie where he had enclosed himself on the top of
a hill.

Night fell and the battle was stayed; all were wet, weary, hungry,
haggled; the Parliamentarians, the victors, not the less exhausted, but
with fire in their hearts and hymns of praise on their lips. Cromwell
wrote to "the Committee of Lancashire sitting at Manchester" his
account of the day's fight, dispatched it, prayed, and got into the
saddle again.

It was still foul weather, wind, rain, miles of muddy heath, hillocks,
hollows now stained with blood and scattered with bodies, men, and
horses, dead and dying.

The Duke of Hamilton's forces fought all that day and the next, routed
again and again, rallied again and again; always the rain, the wind,
the muddy heath, the low clouds, always the soldiers growing fainter
and wearier. Beaten from the bridge of Ribble, falling back, a drumless
march on Wigan Moor, leaving the ammunition to the enemy, falling
farther back on to Wigan town, where they thought to make some stand,
but decided not to, with skirmishes of detachments at Redbank where
the Scots nearly worsted Colonel Pride at Ribble Bridge, and where
Middleton (the weather, always foul, bringing confusion and fatigue)
missed his chief, coming too late. And so it went for three days on
the wet Yorkshire heaths, till finally it was over; the fate of King,
Church, Constitution, and Covenant was decided. Hamilton and the
vanguard of horse rode wearily and aimlessly towards Uttoxeter; Munro
and the rearguard straggled back to their own country; a thousand of
them were left dead under the rain, trodden into the bloody heath;
three thousand of them were made prisoners. And the second Civil War
which had flamed up so suddenly and so fiercely was ended.

The Puritans--the patriots--had passed through their darkest hour
triumphantly; their ragged, hungry, unpaid soldiers, fighting truly for
God and not for pay, had again saved England from the return of the
tyrant and his manifold oppressions and confusions.

After the three days' fight was over, Cromwell sat down at Warrington
to write to the Speaker of the House of Commons a long account of the
rout.

"The Duke," he wrote, "is marching with his remaining horse towards
Namptwich.... If I had a thousand horse that could but trot thirty
miles, I should not doubt but to give a very good account of them; but
truly we are so harassed and haggled out in this business, that we are
not able to do more than walk at an easy pace after them."

But whether or no the Puritans were too wearied to pursue their enemies
mattered little; the day was decided.

The Duke of Hamilton, wandering vaguely, with fewer and fewer men after
him, was finally taken at Uttoxeter, where he surrendered, a sick and
broken man.

Cromwell cleared the Border of the remnants of the Scots, retook
Berwick and Carlisle, engaged the Argyll faction, now the head of the
Government of Scotland, to exclude all royalists from power, and turned
back towards England, the foremost man of the moment again, and in the
eyes of at least half England, the saviour of the country from the
invader.

But if the country was grateful, the Parliament was not. Denzil Holles,
fiercest of Presbyterians, rose up at Westminster to lead a party
against his enemy Cromwell. The Lords, who had all become royalists,
considered whether they should impeach the victorious general; it was
noticeable how much bolder they all were when the Independents and
their indomitable leader were absent, and how, as the return of the
army, strengthened in renown and prestige, drew nearer, they began to
cast round for some means of escape from the fact facing them, that
when Cromwell reappeared at Westminster he would be absolute master of
the political situation, for he had behind him the entire army and they
had nothing but the mere unsupported weight of the law.

So sharp was the division and so fierce had party hatred become, that
the Presbyterians at Westminster hated the Independents with the army
as no Roundhead or Cavalier had ever hated in the first broad division
of the war.

Toleration was the watchword of Cromwell and his followers, and no
word was more detestable to the Parliament. To mark their loathing of
it they passed an ordinance punishing Atheism. Arianism, Socinianism,
Quakerism, Arminianism, and Baptists with death.

Meanwhile, Cromwell, looming ever larger in the imaginations of men,
was returning triumphant to London. If his fame had been at the lowest
when he left for Wales, it was at the highest now. Denzil Holles
conceived the idea of meeting material force by moral force; as they
had nothing else to oppose to Cromwell they must oppose the King.
Charles still remained, in many ways, the hub of the political wheel.

The Parliament must now yield either to him or to the army; they
thought they saw their chance with Charles. If terms could be come
to with him, and he be installed in London before the army returned,
Cromwell would be faced with a situation with which he would probably
not be able to cope. _He_ had denounced the King solemnly at the
Windsor meeting, therefore Charles, once again in power, could not
treat him otherwise than as an enemy.

The vote against further addresses to the King, which Cromwell's
eloquence had hurried through the House, was repealed, and
parliamentary commissions were sent to the Isle of Wight to open a new
treaty with the King.

But they were not prepared to make concessions; the propositions of
Uxbridge, of Newcastle, of Oxford, of Hampton Court were offered again
and again, fought inch by inch. Charles, too, was still as intractable
as ever; the coalition between royalist and Presbyterian seemed doomed
to failure; the negotiations were continually ruptured on the subject
of Church government. Charles would not forgo his bishops, and the
Parliament would not endure them; though each side was desperate, on
this point they were firm.

Meanwhile, Cromwell and his Ironsides were coming nearer.



CHAPTER VII

THE CONSTANCY OF THE KING


The fifteen commissioners had left the King; Sir Harry Vane, perhaps
the sincerest republican of all, had stayed behind a moment to entreat
Charles--as Pym--as Cromwell--had entreated him--"to be sincere."

The King, grave, composed, courtly, had answered him as he had answered
Pym and Cromwell--"In all these dealings I have been sincere."

And so they left him, and the wearisome yet desperate negotiations,
which had been protracted from the middle of the September after
Preston Rout to nearly the end of November, were over.

Charles had given way; he had consented to the temporary abolition of
the bishops, for three years at least; the coalition of Royalist and
Presbyterian was formed against Cromwell and the army; the treaty which
made a third Civil War imminent was signed.

After the commissioners had departed, Lord Digby came to Charles,
who still sat at the head of the table at which he had so often held
his own in caustic argument and learned dispute on the subject of
Episcopacy.

"Bring me," said the King, "a little wine."

Lord Digby, without calling a servant, served the King himself.

The winter twilight was falling; the sea fog drifting over the island
thickened the sad atmosphere that filled the room in which the King
sat. A private house at Newport had been for some weeks now his
residence, and carried with it less state, but more semblance of
freedom, than Carisbrooke Castle.

The King wore grey. Since his own servants had been taken from him he
had grown more and more neglectful of his attire; there was nothing
either fine or splendid in his garments, and he wore no jewels. His
face showed a more cheerful expression than had been of late usual to
him, and when he had drunk the alicant, a faint colour came into his
cheeks and a sparkle to his eyes.

"Digby," he said, "I think I shall yet be able to undo these rogues,
these traitors, these villains--but come, I must write to my Lord
Ormonde, for I have had to publicly give orders that he is to do
nothing in Ireland, and he may be misled."

To most these words, the first he had spoken since he had assured Sir
Harry Vane of his sincerity, would have appeared indeed startling
and ironical, but Lord Digby knew the whole of his master's tortuous
intrigues. He was aware that from the moment the negotiations with the
Parliament began, Charles had been planning to escape from the Isle
of Wight, and join that portion of the navy which was now under the
command of Rupert and the Prince of Wales, and thus make a descent on
Ireland, where the incredible exertions of the Marquess of Ormonde kept
alive a royalist party, and from there attempt another such invasion of
England as had just ended so fatally at Preston Rout.

Such was the wild, vague, and desperate scheme which the King nursed
in preference to returning triumphantly to London as the ally of the
Parliament, and from there dealing with the army, now his open enemies.

But this, though it might seem the surest proof of his levity and
falsity, was in reality the uttermost testimony he could give of his
constancy to principles which he accounted Divine.

The price the Parliament asked was the sacrifice of Episcopacy, and
that was what Charles would never consent to. Far preferable was the
wild hazard, the desperate risk, the almost certain danger of trusting
to Rupert and his lawless little fleet, or Ormonde and his inadequate
forces, or Ireland and her uncertain loyalty, than keeping the pact
with the Presbyterian, who refused the Divine form of Church government.

Now, almost before the commissioners had entered their coaches, he was
hurriedly writing to Ormonde and to the Queen.

"Do not be astonished at any concession I may make," he wrote to the
Marquess, "for it will come to nothing, and heed no public commands I
may give, until you hear that I am free; but keep alive with all vigour
the spirit of loyalty in Ireland."

To his wife he wrote--"The great concessions I have made to-day were
merely in order to my escape."

When these hasty letters, in the writing of which the King seemed to
relieve some of the feelings that he had had to contain in his bosom
during the long hours of his conference with the representatives of
Parliament, were finished and locked into the secret drawers of the
King's desk, Lord Digby lit the candles and closed the shutters over
the mournful, wet, misty night.

"I would, sir," he said, with a little shudder, "that we were well out
of this cursed island."

Charles rose from the little desk; his eyes were brilliant, his mouth
hardly set under the delicate moustaches.

"If I were once in Ireland," he said, "fortune would look differently
on me."

He had always been so--always, under the most cruel mortification
hopeful, trustful in some expedient. Ever since his overthrow he had
trusted first in Rupert and Montrose, then in the foreign armies the
Queen would raise, then in Hamilton, then in the divisions of his
enemies, and now in Rupert and his elusive ships.

Lord Digby could not fail to see this incurable hopefulness of his
master, nor to argue ill from it; but he was himself light-spirited
and fantastical, and his remonstrances were few and faint.

Yet he hazarded one now.

"As the army is deadly disloyal and much raised up of late, and as the
Parliament is your one sure refuge from it, sir, would it not be wiser
to observe this treaty, at least for a while?"

"Never!" cried Charles fiercely. "Never will I yield! I have sworn that
I will defend the Church of England and my rights--even unto death.
I will not deal with these rebels save by the sword. The sword? Nay,
the halter. I hope, Digby, that God will give me the day when I can
see these rogues marched to Tyburn. Thou canst scarcely conceive," he
added, with great intensity, "what a hatred I have for them--how my
mortifications, my humiliations, my losses, all the loyal blood shed
for me cry out for repayment! How I loathe them and their heretical
opinions and their canting speech--how I detest them for mine own
helplessness!"

He flung himself into the arm-chair beside the hearth, where a feeble
fire burnt neglected.

"Hamilton's a prisoner," he said gloomily. "What will they do with my
faithful lord? How many noble lives have I not to avenge?"

As he spoke he thought (as he thought often now, too often for his own
peace) of Strafford, his first great, awful, and useless sacrifice.

"If it cost my heart's blood I will not submit," he muttered, biting
his lip.

But Lord Digby would not so easily relinquish his point--that the
Parliament was a surer refuge from the army than Rupert or Ormonde, or
any possible ships or possible men either of these Cavaliers might be
able to command.

"Fairfax," he reminded the King, "sent Ireton to the House with a
remonstrance from the army, protesting against the Parliament dealing
with Your Majesty, and even daring to say that you should be brought
to trial."

"But the House," replied the King, with a grim smile, "refused to
consider these demands of 'armed sectaries.'"

"But the army," persisted Lord Digby, "hath the power."

"I will be free of all of them," cried Charles passionately. "Of the
army, of the Parliament, of all their cursed sects and heresies."

He lapsed into a melancholy silence again. My lord put another log on
the fire and stirred the faint flames to a blaze.

"In the Queen's letter of this morning," said Charles suddenly, "she
mentioned that loyal gentlewoman, Margaret Lucas--she hath fallen ill.
When she had the news of the end of her brother, Sir Charles, she was
as one who had received a death-sentence."

Tears moistened his own eyes. He was not usually very sensible of the
sorrows of those who were ruined in his service, and gratitude was no
part of his character or tradition; yet there was something in the
story of the gallant young Lucas, who, after an heroic defence of
Colchester, had surrendered on terms which bargained for quarter for
the inferiors, but left the superiors at the mercy of the enemy, yet
who had been taken out with his fellow-officer, Sir George Lisle, and
shot like a dog before those walls he had so valiantly defended through
three months of famine and misery, which moved the King, even to tears.

"Ireton's doing," he cried. "Jesus God! grant that I may send Ireton to
Tyburn one day."

"From an officer who came here recently I heard an account of it," said
Lord Digby, in a low voice. "They neither of them thought to have died,
seeing they had surrendered to mercy, but they made no grief of it. Sir
Charles was shot first, and Sir George bent and kissed him while he was
yet warm (and conscious, I hope) and spoke to the wretched rebels,
'Come nearer and make sure of me.' And upon one of the dogs replying,
'I warrant you we shall hit you, Sir George,' he smiled and said, 'Ay!
but I have been nearer to you, many a time, my friends, and you have
missed me,--I would I had been there to give them company.'"

"And they are gone!" sighed Charles. "How many of the young and brave
have I not lost! Ah, Digby, mine hath been a dismal fate, to ruin all
those I would most advance, to bring down those whom I would most
exalt."

He was not thinking now of Sir Charles Lucas, but of the Queen; his
thoughts were never long from her. The image of her in her exile, in
her poverty and humiliation, in her beaten pride and broken splendour
was the most lively of all his mortifications, the most exquisite of
all his secret tortures; he felt that he had abjectly failed towards
her, towards her children, and, keenest sting of all, that she must
despise him for his failure and his misfortune.

His head sank lower and lower on his breast, and two tears forced
themselves from his tired eyes and hung burning on his faded cheeks.

"Digby, my faithful lord," he said, "I do sometimes think that it would
have been better for me to have died at Naseby. By now the Lord would
have judged me, and I should have been at peace--peace, peace! How the
word dangles before us while the thing is never to be found, this side
of heaven."

Digby dropped on one knee beside him.

"May Your Majesty soon find it," he said, in a broken voice, "and live
long to enjoy it."

"If it were possible!" murmured Charles. "But we must get to
Ireland--it is very needful that we should get to Ireland."

Lord Digby lowered his voice, as if somewhere in this lonely,
desolate-looking room a spy of Parliament or army might lurk.

"The preparations are all complete," he said. "It only needs to wait
until the commissioners have left the Island."

A little shudder shook the King.

"What will it feel, Digby," he murmured, "to be free again--free!"

Then, as if rousing himself from thoughts that threatened to be
overwhelming, he put out his hand and took up a small brown volume
tooled in gold, and, turning over the thin pages rough with print,
let slip his mind from the leases of care and suffered himself to be
distracted by Lucan's _Pharsalia_.

The mist changed to rain, which slashed at the window; a winter wind
disturbed the tapestry and flickered the flames on the deep hearth,
which hissed beneath the drops falling down the wide chimney.

Charles, sunk in the deep, worn leather chair, with one thin hand
supporting his thin face, the long curls flowing over his breast,
gathered consolation from those ancient deeds of melancholy heroism and
fated endeavour.

Lord Digby left the room to concert with the few personal attendants
left the King about the final arrangements for the King's flight from
Newport as soon as the Parliamentarians should have returned to London.

But again Charles Stewart proved unfortunate.

The day before his projected escape Colonel Hammond, the Governor
of the Island, sent an escort to remove His Majesty from Newport to
Hurst Castle, a dreary residence near the coast, on the sea shingle,
where Charles was closely guarded beyond all hope of escape, even if
his word of honour not to escape had not been extracted from him: and
this was a point where he would admit of no sophistries. So the dream
of Rupert and his ships and Ormonde and his loyal Catholics vanished,
as all Charles' dreams had vanished, into the bitter obscurity of
disappointment.



CHAPTER VIII

IN THE BALANCE


It was the army who had ordered the King's removal to a place of
greater security, the army who had now resolved to make an end of these
long negotiations between King and Parliament.

On the day after Charles was closed into Hurst Castle the army marched
into London, Cromwell not yet with them; but other men, embued with his
spirit, were his representatives. He had proposed that the Parliament
should be forcibly dissolved and a new one elected, and a Declaration
to this effect had been issued by the army now openly at variance with
the assembly, which had flung aside their great Remonstrance. Leading
officers spoke darkly, yet unmistakably, of what they would do to the
King, ay, and to the Parliament.

The Commons, undaunted, voted that the King's concessions were
sufficient ground for treating of a general peace; the reply of the
army was to send Colonel Pride down to the House to arrest every member
who had voted to continuing negotiations with the King.

"It was the only way," said Henry Ireton, "to save the kingdom from a
new war into which King and Parliament conjointly would plunge us--that
is our warrant and our law for what we do."

Cromwell, coming the evening of that day to London, approved. "Since
it is done, I am glad of it," he said, "and will endeavour to maintain
it."

Meanwhile, Harrison had gone down to Hurst Castle and removed the King
from that melancholy solitude to Windsor.

The now purged House of Commons, which consisted of a mere handful
of Independent members, was nothing but the mouthpiece of the army,
who were now the masters of the hour. In council they decided against
bringing the King to trial if he could be brought by any means to
reason, and Lord Denbigh was sent to Windsor again--once more and for
the last time--to offer Charles terms.

The same terms--the abandonment of Episcopacy and of his own absolute
sovereignty.

All illusion was at last stripped from the proceedings; no meaningless
courtesies or formalities obscured the issue. The army were treating
Charles as they would treat a vanquished enemy, and he at last saw
it--saw there was no hope, no evasion possible, no succour at hand, no
shift, no expedient to which he could turn; saw, too, for the first
time, the sharp and bitter nature of the alternative of his refusal of
these terms.

The army talked freely of his trial and death; there was barely a
disguise given to the fact that Lord Denbigh gave him his choice
between the Church of England, his Crown--and his life.

This struck not at the King's ambition or lust of power or love of
authority, but at his conscience, for he believed as firmly that
he was there to uphold the Divine ordinance in Church and State as
Cromwell believed that God was mocked by Lawd's surplices, candles, and
genuflexions.

On the gloomy day in the end of December when the return of Lord
Denbigh with the King's answer was expected, Henry Ireton was with his
father-in-law in his house in Drury Lane. Both men showed signs of the
tremendous physical and spiritual stress they had lately undergone.
Cromwell especially was haggard; the burden which he had assumed was
no light one, nor was the responsibility he was about to undertake one
which could be worn easily.

Up to the very last he had hoped that the King would give way. Lord
Denbigh's journey had been on his recommendation, and he still clung to
the possibility that Charles, now absolutely with his back against the
wall, might make those concessions which would enable the army to spare
him.

But the other and more likely alternative had to be faced.

"Can we," said Henry Ireton, in a tone almost of awe, "bring to trial
the crowned and anointed King?"

The thing was indeed unheard of, appalling in its audacity even to the
men who had been already years in arms against their King--a thing
without precedent, full of a nameless horror. But Oliver Cromwell
was not troubled by this consideration. He was uplifted by his stern
enthusiasm from all fears of laws and tradition; he knew himself
capable of moulding the movement to suit the need; and he was of an
incalculable courage.

Yet in this affair he had shown himself more moderate, almost more
hesitating, than many of his colleagues; he did not see clearly; he
was not sure what God had meant him to do, and his personal feeling,
despite his absolute refusal to deal further with Charles after his
treachery had been made manifest, was still towards some arrangement by
which the King could be returned to the throne and forced to keep his
people's laws.

His trust in the King had been utterly scattered; his sentiments had
become almost republican; yet in his heart he struggled to find some
means of saving the King as he had struggled since the end of the first
civil war.

He still hesitated before committing himself to the fierce measures
advocated by the great body of the army; yet Charles had done some
things which Cromwell could never forgive.

Notably the calling in of the Scots.

To the Englishman, English of the English in every fibre, this "attempt
to vassalage us to a foreign nation," as he had called it, was the
intolerable, unforgivable wrong--a thing which burnt the blood to think
of--a wrong which the Scots, beaten back across the border and Hamilton
waiting death in London, did not soften or make amends for. Cromwell
had broken the Scots, but he could not forgive them.

"Had he not done that," he cried aloud, "it had been easier to forget
his manifold deceits."

"God hath witnessed against him," replied Ireton.

But he, too, was for moderation; he had suggested a trial of the King
and then a decorous imprisonment.

Such a compromise did not please the Lieutenant-General, who was
waiting for the indication for swift, prompt action. He wanted an
impetus to an irrecoverable decision, not an expedient for avoiding it;
nothing in the nature of a shift was ever tolerable to him.

"Until Lord Denbigh return," he broke out, "we can decide on nothing. I
know not what the Providence of God may put upon us; but this I know,
the King hath one more chance, and if he take it not--there will be no
excuse but folly and cowardice to delay our dealings with him."

"And when we have dealt with him--what then?" asked Ireton, and he
looked gloomy and apprehensive, like a man oppressed with many heavy
thoughts.

Oliver Cromwell rose from the table at which both had been sitting;
through his air of weariness the indomitable fire of his inner
conviction, his inner faith glowed. Ireton, looking at him, thought
that he always, even in his moments of deepest dejection or melancholy,
gave that impression of one carrying a flame.

"I have much rested on these words of late," he said: "'They that shine
with thee shall perish. They that war against thee shall be as nothing;
and as a thing of nought. For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right
hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.'"

As he spoke he moved to the window and stood with his back against the
dark curtains which hung before it. His clothes were dark too, his
white band and his tanned but pale face, his brown hair and clasped
hands were all picked out and shone upon by the candlelight; for the
rest, his figure was in shadow. Ireton, gazing at him, was impressed
by something about him which, hearty and homely as were his manners,
seemed to always put him beyond his brother officers: the quality of
greatness, Henry Ireton thought it was; but he wondered wherein lay
greatness.

Cromwell did not speak again, and Ireton took his leave.

"I am going to Sir Thomas Fairfax," he said, "and if any messenger
comes from Windsor to-night, I will send one over to you with the news."

After he had been alone a little while Cromwell went upstairs, still
with a thoughtful face, with eyes downcast and a frowning brow.

The room he entered was rendered cheerful by the bright firelight and
the glow of the candles in the wall sconces of polished brass, and it
formed the setting to a fair and tender picture.

Cromwell's wife was seated at the spinet which occupied one corner of
the room, and either side of her stood one of her younger daughters,
singing. The lady and the children were all dressed in a brown colour,
and the purity of their fair-complexioned faces and the delicacy of
their soft and waving gold-brown hair was heightened by their collars
and caps of white cambric enriched with exquisite needlework.

At the Lieutenant-General's entrance they paused, and Elisabeth
Cromwell was about to rise, but he bade them continue and crossed to
the fireplace, where he stood quietly, with his head hanging on his
breast.

With a blush for the presence of their father at their simple
performance, the two little girls began again; the fresh voices,
sharply pure and sweetly tremulous, rose clearly and echoed clearly in
the high-ceiled chamber, accompanied by the faint, half-muffled notes
of the spinet.

  "Ye Holy Angels bright,
  Who wait at God's right hand,
  Or through the realms of light
  Fly at your Lord's command.
      Assist our song,
      Or else the theme
      Too high doth seem
      For mortal tongue."

The little singers had forgotten the embarrassment of an audience;
their eyes sparkled, their little round mouths strained open in a
rapture.

Elisabeth Cromwell, as her fingers touched the keys to the simple
melody, looked across the spinet to her husband.

  "Ye blessed souls at rest,
  Who ran this earthly race,
  And now from sin released,
  Behold the Saviour's face.
      His praises sound
      As in His light
      With sweet delight
      Ye do abound."

The mother's head bent a little; she dropped her eyes. She was thinking
of Robert and Oliver, and wondering if they were leaning from heaven to
listen to this song--"blessed souls at rest." Ah, well!

  "Ye saints, who toil below,
  Adore your Heavenly King,
  And onward as ye go
  Some joyful anthem sing.
      Take what He gives
      And praise Him still
      Through good and ill,
      Who ever lives!"

The young voices gathered greater fervency on the next lines--

  "My soul, bear thou thy part,
  Triumph in God above,
  And with a well-tuned heart
  Sing thou the songs of love!
      Let all thy days
      Till life shall end,
      Whate'er He send,
      Be filled with praise!"

Frances and Mary Cromwell, having ended their hymn, came round from
behind the spinet and curtsied to their father.

"A sweet song," he said, "and sweetly sung. Who wrote the words, Mary?"

"Mr. Richard Baxter, sir," she replied; "he taught them to the troop
he was chaplain of at Kidderminster--and Henry copied them and brought
them home to us."

"Learn Mr. Baxter's hymns," he smiled, "but not his tenets. He is
lukewarm and unstable."

Mrs. Cromwell rose.

"And now they must to bed--I fear it is already over-late."

The Lieutenant-General stooped and kissed each of them on the fair,
untroubled brow.

"A good night, my dears, my sweets. A good night, my little wenches."

He lingered over the farewell caress half wistfully, and as they left
the room his tired eyes followed them.

Elisabeth Cromwell came to her husband's side and glanced up at him,
then down at the fire.

"You are troubled to-night," she said, in a low voice.

"No," he answered, "no."

"About Richard's marriage settlements," she returned. "It is over a
year since that affair was first opened."

"I know," he replied, "I know. But what can I do? I cannot settle on
Dorothy Mayor moneys which I have not got for my own. There is Henry
to think of, and the two little ones--and thou knowest, Bess, I am not
rich."

She knew well enough from many economies of her own. He had strained
his estates at the commencement of the first war, when he had raised
and equipped, at his own expense, his troop in Cambridgeshire; his pay
was in arrears and had lately been reduced; he had waited many ancient
debts due to him from the Government; and he had returned the larger
portion of the income arising from the grant of Lord Worchester's lands
to the Parliament to be used in settling that unhappy country, Ireland.
Therefore he was now more hampered and with less money to dispose
of than when in private life, and all his frugal living and all his
wife's good management would not permit him to afford Mr. Mayor what he
demanded for his daughter; therefore Richard's match had hung a year,
and seemed likely to hang longer.

"I would rather," said Richard's father abruptly, "that the lad was
more like his brother Henry, and less eager to take a wife and live
easily."

"All cannot be as thee," answered Elisabeth Cromwell half sadly,
"wrapped in great affairs."

He turned.

"Why, Bess," he said, taking her hand, "that did sound as a reproach."

"Nay, my lord, my dear," she replied, in a subdued passion; "but thou
art so much away."

"But thou art not alone," he said, eagerly bending over her.

"A woman is always alone, Oliver, when she is away from him she
loves. I think a man doth not understand that--he hath so much
else--thou--thou hast so much--and I am gone right into the background
of thy life!"

He took both her hands now and laid them on his heart.

"Thou art dearer to me than any creature in the world," he said. "Let
that content thee."

She sighed and smiled together. By her great love for him she could
measure her great pain because of him--the separations, the anxieties,
the apprehension, the knowledge that she was only a part of his life,
that he had now many, many other things to think of more important
than her, while she had nothing but him--always him. But he could not
understand.

"Well, well," she said.

"Why art thou sad, Bess?" he asked tenderly. "Is it about Dick's
marriage?"

She shook her head; her gentle face flushed with the thought that came
to her.

"Oh, Oliver, I have been sorry about the King," she said simply.

"The King!" He dropped her hands.

Elisabeth Cromwell lifted her large, clear grey eyes.

"What is to be the fate of the King?" she asked, trembling.

"That hangs in the balance," he replied briefly. "Bring not these
questions on to my own hearth, Bess."

Thus rebuked, she moved away, trembling more.

Her husband looked at her kindly.

"It is not for me or thee," he said gently, "to discuss the fate of the
King, but for God in His good time to disclose it. Maybe He will harden
His heart as He hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and maybe He will turn
it to peace."

"These are terrible times," replied Elisabeth Cromwell rapidly.
"I cannot but think of how terrible--being a woman I cannot but
tremble--fearful things are said now about the King--about--bringing
him to trial."

"Why not?" asked her husband sternly. "Hath he not been the author of
two civil wars, and would he not have brought about a third save that
God struck his forces at Preston Battle?"

"But he--he is the Governor of England," she answered timidly.

"Nay, no longer," returned Oliver Cromwell; "that high office hath
he defiled. God hath overturned him--'He shall put down the mighty
from their seats and exalt the humble and meek.' The King hath sinned
against God, against his people, against the laws of England."

"Alack--it is beyond my understanding," sighed his wife; "but it seems
to me _he is the King_!"

"Be not deceived by high-sounding words," replied the
Lieutenant-General. "Charles Stewart is a man and must pay as men
pay--for their sins and their follies."

As he spoke the servant entered with a note, which had just been
brought, he said, by General Fairfax's man.

Cromwell gazed at the seal--Henry Ireton's arms pressed into wax
scarcely cold--a full minute before he opened it, and the blood rushed
to his face.

When he opened the letter his fingers shook.

It contained a few words from his son-in-law, the sand yet sticking to
the ink.

The King had utterly refused to see Lord Denbigh, and utterly refused
to have any dealings either with Parliament or army.

He defied them. Now, driven to the last extremity, he had flung aside
all subterfuge and all evasion; he stood by his conscience, and no
matter what the consequences, he refused terms which he regarded as a
betrayal of God's laws in Church or State.

Oliver Cromwell crumpled up the letter with a gesture of, for him,
unusual agitation.

"So it is over!" he muttered. He gazed at his wife with eyes that did
not see her; drops of sweat stood out on his forehead and his lips
quivered.

"What is over?" asked Elisabeth Cromwell, in terrified tones.

He drew himself together with an effort.

"The reign of Charles Stewart," he replied simply.



CHAPTER IX

BY WHAT AUTHORITY?


The Lords having rejected the ordinance for bringing the King to
trial, the Commons, always under the influence of the army, declared
themselves capable of enforcing their own act by their own law, "the
People being, under God, the original of all just power."

Charles was hurried from Windsor to St. James's, and the day after his
arrival in London put on his trial for having endeavoured to subvert
his people's rights, for having levied war on them with the help of
foreign troops, and with having, after once being spared, endeavoured
by all wicked arts to again involve the kingdom in bloody confusion.

This was the end after so many years of strife, evasion, pacts made
and broken, bloodshed and lives ruined. Charles was a prisoner on
trial for his life, and in one of his splendid beds at Whitehall (now
the headquarters of the army) Oliver Cromwell slept or lay awake and
struggled with tumultuous thoughts.

Many who had been with him all along were against him now. Vane and
Sidney protested hotly. Many members refused to sit among the judges
who were to try Charles.

"The King," said Sidney, "can be tried by no court, and by such a court
as this no man can be tried."

"I tell you," said Cromwell sombrely, "we will cut off his head with
the crown upon it."

So passionate and vigorous and unalterable was his resolution now it
was taken.

The fiercer spirits of the army were with him. "'Blood defileth the
land,'" quoted Ludlow, "'and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood
shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.'"

Cromwell, too, now believed that by God's express law the King was
doomed.

It mattered not a whit to him that the tribunal which was to try
Charles had neither legal nor moral right, since there was no law by
which the King could be brought to trial, and the judges represented
neither the Commons nor the people, but a section of the army;
indeed, while others endeavoured to find excuses with which to cover
up the obvious illegality of the proceeding, Cromwell disdained any
such shifts. As he had been the man who had striven longest and most
arduously to make some compromise with the King, he was now the man who
was advancing most boldly and directly to the climax of the King's last
phase.

He had decided there could be no peace while Charles lived, and he
spared no effort to secure his death.

The time for temporizing was past, he believed, and he acted, as he
never failed to act at a crisis, with swiftness, with firmness, with
unhesitating decision.

Whitelocke, St. John, Wilde, and Rolle declined to be President of the
Court which tried the King, but John Bradshaw accepted.

For a week the trial in the great Hall of Westminster (which the King
had last entered when he came to demand the five members) continued,
a long haughty protest on the part of Charles, a stern overruling
of him on the part of the Court--the whole thing almost incredible
in swiftness, fierceness, and enthusiastic passion overlaid with
the stately forms of ancient ceremonial. On the fourth time of the
sitting, the 29th January, being Saturday, the Court was held--as many
believed--for the last time.

Lord Digby, who had been separated from his master when Charles was
removed to Hurst Castle, and had been wandering about, more or less in
disguise ever since, had managed to gain London, and on this morning
of the 29th, a cold, wet, and grey day, he made his way to Westminster
Hall, to witness the awful, unbelievable spectacle of the trial of his
King.

The great gates of the Hall were opened to admit the general public,
which soon swarmed in, and Digby found himself in the midst of a vast
concourse of people, mostly of the baser sort, who pushed and gossiped
and passed food and drink from one to another, so that the atmosphere
was like the pit of a theatre for the smell of beer and oranges, as it
had been at the trial of Lord Strafford.

Lord Digby caught scraps of conversation which pierced him to the
heart--how, on the second day, the head had fallen off the King's cane
and he had had to stoop for it himself--how he had paled at this, as if
he took it for an ill-omen ... how curt Bradshaw had been with him, and
how certain all were that there could only be one end--the axe....

Soon the Court entered, and a great "Ah-h," like an indrawn breath,
rose from the crowd when they saw that Serjeant Bradshaw, the Lord
President, was attired in a scarlet robe, instead of the black one
which he had worn on the previous occasions. "His cap," whispered the
man next Lord Digby, "is lined with steel, for fear one might make an
attempt on him."

John Bradshaw, with a very unmoved dignity and stern calmness, took
his seat in the midst of the Court, in a crimson velvet chair, having
a desk with a crimson velvet cushion before him; either side of him,
on the scarlet-hung benches, the fourscore members of the Court seated
themselves, all with their hats on; sixteen gentlemen with partisans
stood either side the Court; before a table, set at the feet of the
President and covered with a rich Turkey carpet on which lay the sword,
stood the Serjeant-at-Arms with the mace; the Clerk of the Court sat at
this table also.

A company of guards was placed about the Hall to keep order, and
everywhere, in the body of the Court and in the galleries, was a great
expectant press of people.

After the Court had been sitting about ten minutes, the prisoner
arrived in the charge of Colonel Tomlinson and a company of gentlemen
with partisans.

As he entered some of the soldiers cried out, "Execution! Execution!
Justice against the traitor at the Bar!"

The Serjeant-at-Arms met the King and conducted him to the Bar, where a
crimson velvet chair was placed for him.

Charles looked sternly at the Court, up at the galleries and the
multitude gathered in the body of the Hall; then he seated himself,
without moving his hat.

He was dressed more richly than Lord Digby remembered him to have been
for some time; his suit was black velvet and pale blue silk, with
Flemish lace and silver knots; he carried a long cane in his hand and
a pair of doeskin gloves. He was scarcely seated before he rose up
again and moved about and looked down at the spectators with a smile of
unutterable haughtiness. Lord Digby was near enough to remark that he
looked in good health, vigorous, and composed.

Suddenly he glanced up at the Lord President, and though he must have
remarked the scarlet robe, he did not change colour.

"I shall desire a word--to be heard a little," he said, "and hope I
shall give no occasion of interruption."

"You may answer in your time," replied Bradshaw coldly. "Hear the Court
first."

"If it please you, sir, I desire to be heard," said the King. "And
I shall not give any occasion of interruption--and it is only in a
word--a sudden judgment----"

"Sir," interrupted the Lord President, "you shall be heard in due time,
but you are to hear the Court first----"

"Sir, I desire--it will be in answer to what I believe the Court will
say--sir, a hasty judgment is not so soon recalled----"

"Sir," replied the Lord President sternly, "you shall be heard before
the judgment be given, and in the meantime you may forbear."

Charles took his seat again, saying, "Well, sir, shall I be heard
before judgment be given?"

The Lord President now proceeded to address the Court.

"Gentlemen, it is well known to most of you that the prisoner at the
Bar hath been several times convened before the Court to make answer to
a charge of treason----"

Here the King looked up and laughed in the face of the Court.

"--and other high crimes exhibited against him in the name of the
People of England----"

A shrill woman's voice interrupted from one of the galleries--"Not half
the People!" The King smiled, and there was some disturbance while the
lady was silenced or removed.

Bradshaw continued: "To which charge being required to answer, he
began to take on him to offer reasoning and debate unto the authority
of the Court to try and judge him; but being overruled in that, and
still required to make his answer, he was still pleased to continue
contumacious, and to refuse to submit or answer.

"Thereupon the Court have considered of the charge; they have
considered of the contumacy and of the notoriety of the fact charged
upon the prisoner, and have agreed upon the sentence to be pronounced
against this prisoner."

The Lord President paused a moment, and a low hum went through the
Court. The King threw back his head with that expression of incredulous
haughtiness still on his face.

"The prisoner doth desire to be heard," continued Bradshaw, "before the
sentence be pronounced, and the Court hath resolved that they will hear
him."

Charles rose; his scornful eyes flickered along the faces of his judges
and rested for a second on the white countenance of Oliver Cromwell,
who was looking at him intently.

The Lord President addressed the King--

"Yet, sir, this much I must tell you beforehand, which you have been
minded of before, that if that you have to say be to offer any debate
concerning jurisdiction, you are not to be heard in it--you have
offered it formerly and you have indeed struck at the root, that is,
the power and supreme authority of the Commons of England--but, sir, if
you have anything to say in defence of yourself concerning the matter
charged, the Court hath given me in command to let you know that they
will hear you."

The King caught hold of the bar in front of him. He began to speak;
at first his voice, though steady, was so low that only those near
could hear him; he addressed himself to Bradshaw, but he faced all his
judges, and his glance travelled from one to another.

At last Lord Digby, straining forward through the press, caught some
words.

"... This many a day all things have been taken away from me, but
that which I call more dear to me than my life, my honour, and my
conscience--and if I had respect to my life more than the peace of the
kingdom, the liberty of the subject, certainly I should have made a
particular defence for myself, for by that at leastwise I might have
deferred an ugly sentence, which I believe will pass on me."

He then asked to be heard in the Painted Chamber before the Lords and
Commons before any sentence was given.

As he concluded he raised his voice and spoke with great nobleness and
force.

"And if I cannot get this liberty I do here protest that so fair shows
of liberty and peace are pure shows and not otherwise since you will
not hear your King."

A hush followed his speech; Cromwell whispered to a neighbour; a faint
sunlight penetrated the narrow Gothic window and touched to brilliancy
John Bradshaw in his scarlet robes among his crimson cushions.

"Sir, you have spoken," he said.

"Yes, sir," replied the King, looking at him austerely.

The sunlight strengthened; the judge blazed in his unrelieved red; the
prisoner was still in shadow; he stood with his hands on the bar; Lord
Digby could see that he was biting his under-lip.

"What you have said," announced Bradshaw, "is a further declining of
the jurisdiction of this Court, which was the thing wherein you were
limited before----"

The King's voice cut his speech.

"Pray excuse me, sir, for my interruption, because you mistake me--it
is not a declining of it; you do judge me before you hear me speak.
I say I will not, I do not decline, though I cannot acknowledge the
jurisdiction of this Court----"

A deep humming from the Court drowned the rest of his speech.

Bradshaw, stern, slightly flushed, and in a voice of terrible import,
made reply--

"Sir, this is not altogether new that you have moved unto us--not
altogether new to us, though it is the first time in person that you
have offered it to the Court. Sir, you say you do not decline the
jurisdiction of the Court."

"Not in this that I have said," answered Charles swiftly.

"I understand you well, sir," said the Lord President; "but,
nevertheless, that which you have offered seems to be contrary to that
saying of yours--for the Court are ready to give a sentence."

The very slightest quiver disturbed the King's face; he sought for his
handkerchief, found it, and wiped his lips, looking down the while.

"It is not as you say," continued Bradshaw sternly, "that we will not
hear our King--we have been ready to hear you, we have patiently waited
your pleasure for three Courts together, to hear what you would say to
the People's charges against you, to which you have not vouchsafed to
give any answer at all."

As Lord Digby, pressed in the pushing crowd, listened to these words
and gazed at the awful scene a sickness came over him; he saw that
terrible red of judge and cushion, chair and bench float in a mist
before his eyes, and through that scarlet blur the King's figure,
stripped now of the inviolate sacredness of Majesty--merely a man, a
desperate man in a sea of enemies, making a last stand for his life.

Bradshaw concluded his speech by saying that the Court would withdraw
to the Court of Awards to consider of the King's request to be heard in
the Painted Chamber, and so they moved out, leaving the red chair and
the red benches bare.

Charles was also removed; as he passed the sword lying on the table
covered with the Turkey carpet he said, "I do not fear that," and
Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Harrison, hearing the words, looked at him
over their shoulders as they went out.

Lord Digby struggled nearer the front and cried out, "God save your
Majesty!" hoping the King would recognize his voice, but it was lost in
cries of "Justice!" and "Execution!" which rose from the soldiers.

After half an hour the Court returned and the Serjeant-at-Arms brought
back the prisoner. Charles now held in his hand a small bunch of herbs,
and truly the atmosphere was stifling; he was still composed, but his
face was now as white as the wall behind him; he seated himself and
folded his arms.

Bradshaw addressed him; he was not to be allowed to go before the Lords
and Commons in the Painted Chamber. "The judges are resolved to proceed
to punishment and to judgment, and that is their unanimous resolution."

Some of the spectators groaned; the sense of impending doom, calamity,
and horror spread from one to another. Charles rose; he was not a whit
abashed or lowered in his pride, but there was a passion in his tones,
a ringing challenge in his words, which were the indications of an
inner despair.

"I know it is vain for me to dispute," he said. "I am no sceptic for
to deny the power you have--I know that you have power enough! I
confess, sir, I think it would have been for the kingdom's peace if you
had shown the lawfulness of your power!" His haughty contempt showed
for a moment unmasked, his look, his bearing, his voice, defied them
utterly. "For this delay that I have desired, I confess it is a delay,
but a delay very important to the peace of the kingdom, for it is not
my person that I look on alone, it is the kingdom's welfare and the
kingdom's peace--it is an old sentence that we should think long before
we resolve of great matters--therefore, sir, I do say again, that I do
put at your doors all the inconveniency of a hasty sentence. I confess
I have been here this week, this day eight days ago was the day I
came here first, but a little delay of a day or two further may give
peace--whereas a hasty judgment may bring on that trouble and perpetual
inconveniency to the kingdom that the child which is unborn may repent
it." He paused a second, then raised his voice slightly. "Therefore
again, out of the duty I owe to God, and to my country, I do desire
that I may be heard by the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber, or
any other chamber that you will appoint me."

The sixty-eight judges made no movement; Bradshaw, whose dignity and
unfaltering composure were as remarkable as the dignity and composure
of the prisoner, considering the extraordinary position in which he, a
mere Cheshire gentleman, was now placed towards his sovereign, and what
a responsibility he was taking on himself, what undying vengeance, what
possibly horrible fate he was facing if the tide should one day turn,
briefly replied that the Court had made their resolution and again
asked Charles if he had anything to say for himself before sentence was
delivered.

The King, facing him, replied--

"I say this, sir, that if you will hear me, if you will but give this
delay, I doubt not but I shall give some satisfaction to you all here,
and to my People, after that. And, therefore, I do require you, as you
shall answer it at the dreadful Day of Judgment, that you will consider
it once again."

It was what he had said since he had first been put on trial, a
steady refusal to recognize this Court (as on all legal grounds he
was justified in doing), a refusal to plead or argue the cause, a
repetition of the haughty demand--"By what authority?" Before the
Lords and Commons he might defend himself, not before this tribunal of
his rebellious subjects. But as deeply rooted, as unyielding, as his
refusal to recognize the Court was the Court's intention to judge and
condemn him; they were there to make inquisition for blood, and not one
of them faltered in their stern task.

In answer to the King's last speech Bradshaw said merely, "Sir, I have
received direction from the Court."

The King sat down.

"Well, sir," he said, and looked about him with utter haughtiness.

"The Court will proceed to sentence," continued the Lord President, "if
you have nothing more to say."

Lord Digby and many others held their breath: would the King, even now,
disdain to answer to his charge?

He looked at Bradshaw and very faintly smiled.

"Sir," he said, "I have nothing more to say, but I shall desire that
this may be entered--what I have said."

He knew as he spoke that his last hope had gone; he put the herbs to
his nostrils and his thoughts flew to Paris and the woman waiting
there.... The winter sun had faded; the crimson and scarlet glowed
through a sombre shadow of river mist and afternoon fog, which began to
encroach upon the Court and blot the eager faces and blur the coloured
garments and dim the glitter of the great bare sword at which the King,
turning in his chair, looked curiously.

"The Court, sir, hath something more to say to you," said Bradshaw,
"which, although I know it will be very unacceptable, yet they are
resolved to discharge their duty. Sir, you speak very well of a
precious thing, which you call Peace, and it is much to be wished that
God had put it into your heart that you had as effectually and really
endeavoured and studied the peace of the kingdom, as now in words you
do pretend--but, as you were told the other day, actions must expound
intentions--yet your actions have been clean contrary."

In this strain the speech continued, delivered with clearness, with
force and point, yet with a rapidity that strained the speed of the
licensed penmen who were taking down the report of the trial.

Bradshaw spoke with learning, with eloquence, with weight and fire; yet
what he said was but a repetition of the old grounds the Parliament had
taken since the beginning of the war; the law was above the King. The
King had defied the law and was therefore answerable.

He cited many precedents, quoted many authorities, but he could not
disguise the illegality of the tribunal over which he presided, or
cloak the fact that the King was being judged by means as outside the
law as his had been when he had cast Sir John Eliot into the Tower or
forced John Hampton to pay ship money.

The King had lost in the long struggle and was now paying the penalty
as they on the scarlet benches would have paid if he had been the
victor.

This fact Bradshaw might adorn with all dignity and eloquence--but it
remained obvious and undeniable.

The Lord President spoke too long; the crowd became restless; and awful
as the moment was, unprecedented as was the occasion, human weakness
and human levity prevailed. Some yawned, some fought their way out for
fresh supplies of food and drink, some went away to spread the news the
King was doomed.

Some followed the speech eagerly enough and hummed their approbation,
some shouted protests and were thrown out by the soldiers.

Charles, listening to an indictment such as no king had ever listened
to before, in a situation in which no king had ever been before, sat
perfectly still, holding the herbs to his nostrils.

To him this talk was mere waste of air; he was, as he had said, as
good a lawyer as any in the kingdom, and he knew that the Court which
Bradshaw so burningly justified had no shadow of legal right; he knew
that he was the victim of force, and he knew that he was suffering, not
so much for the offences which the Lord President laid to his charge,
as because he had remained faithful to the Church of England and the
Divine right of kings; he knew that if he had forsaken these two tenets
even a few days ago when Lord Denbigh came to Windsor he might have
been saved.

And he did not regret his firmness--even at this moment.

Once, when Bradshaw, appealing to history, said, "You are the hundred
and ninth King of Scotland," he moved, and his look brightened as if he
had been recalled from wandering thoughts to the present moment; and
when the Lord President spoke of the violent end of his grandmother,
Mary Stewart, he started a little and frowned.

For the rest he was motionless and silent, save only when Bradshaw
arraigned him as, "Tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the
Commonwealth of England"; then he blushed and cried out, "Ha!"

The Lord President, spurred afresh by this cry of defiance, proceeded
to prove these charges against the King, reinforcing them with texts of
Scripture, and so upbraiding and fiercely condemning the King that at
last Charles, amid a general murmur and buzz of the Court, sprang to
his feet.

"I would only desire one word before you give sentence," he said, "and
that is that you hear me concerning those great imputations that you
have laid to my charge!"

"Sir," replied Bradshaw undauntedly, "you must give me leave to go
on--for I am not far from your sentence and your time is now past----"

Again Charles interrupted.

"But I desire that you will hear me a few words only--for truly
whatever sentence you will put upon me in respect of those heavy
imputations that I see by your speech you have put upon me--sir, it is
very true that----"

"Sir," said Bradshaw, with great sternness, "I would not willingly,
especially at this time, interrupt you in anything you have to say,
but, sir, you have not owned us as a Court--you look upon us as a sort
of people met together--and we know what language we receive from your
party."

"I know nothing of that!" exclaimed Charles contemptuously.

Bradshaw continued with the old bitter grievance: "You disavow us as
a Court"--and on that theme spoke a little longer, the King the while
facing him, leaning forward eagerly, with clenched hands and white
face, frowning.

"We cannot be unmindful of what the Scripture tells us, for to acquit
the guilty is of equal abomination as to condemn the innocent. We may
not acquit the guilty. What sentence the law affirms to a traitor,
tyrant, a murderer, and a public enemy to the country, that sentence
you are now to hear read unto you, and that is the sentence of the
Court."

There was a great movement in the Hall as of a wave advancing, then
flung back. Oliver Cromwell put his hands before his face; the King did
not move.

"Read the sentence," said Bradshaw. "Make an oyer and command silence
while the sentence is read."

Which was done by the Clerk of the Court, and silence indeed fell--a
silence which seemed to shudder.

The Clerk read over the charge from the parchment he held, and then
proceeded--

"This charge being read unto him, he, the said Charles Stewart, was
required to give his answer, but he refused to do so, and so expressed
the several passages of his trial in refusing to answer. For all which
Treasons and Crimes this Court doth adjudge that the said Charles
Stewart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy, shall be put
to death by the severing of his head from his body."

Terrible sighs broke from the spectators; they swayed to and fro. The
King, now the moment had come, looked incredulous.

"The sentence now read and published," said Bradshaw, "is the Act,
Sentence, Judgment, and Resolution of the whole Court."

At this the sixty-eight judges stood up to show their assent.

"Will you hear me a word, sir?" cried Charles.

"Sir," returned Bradshaw, "you are not to be heard after the sentence."

"No, sir?"

"No, sir--by your favour, sir. Guard, withdraw your prisoner."

The partisans closed round Charles; incredulous, outraged, he continued
to protest.

"I may speak after the sentence--by your favour, sir, I may speak after
the sentence--ever----"

The guards caught hold of him none too civilly.

"I say, sir, I do," cried the unfortunate King--then sternly to the
soldier who had seized his arm, "Hold!"--"by your favour the sentence,
sir----"

They pushed and dragged him away. He raised his voice.

"I am not suffered for to speak! Expect what justice other people will
have!"

So, still incredulous, protesting, he was forced away, and the Court
rose and went into the Painted Chamber.

Lord Digby made his way out of the crowd; he found a dun mist over
London and rows of Cromwell's Ironsides keeping guard outside the Hall.

As the King passed out with his guards on his way to Sir Robert
Cotton's, one of these men called out, "God bless you, sir!" and his
officer struck him on the face.

"It is a severe punishment for a little offence," said Charles. He was
now quite calm.

The mist deepened, blotting out the surging crowd, some of whom wept
and some of whom were silent, but none of whom openly rejoiced.



CHAPTER X

EXIT THE KING


The Dutch Ambassador interceded for the King; the Queen and the Prince
of Wales wrote, offering to accept any conditions Parliament might
require if only the King might be spared; but the stern enthusiasts who
had resolved to sacrifice the blood of the tyrant were not to be turned
from their purpose now by any entreaty or threat whatever; the thing
they were about to do was awful, incredible to the whole world, but
they were not to be stopped now. The Scottish commissioners spoke for
the King, too, but in vain; neither they nor the others got any answer.

That day, Monday, the King was permitted to take leave of the only
two of his children left in England--the Duke of Gloucester and the
Princess Elisabeth; that day Oliver Cromwell and his colleagues signed
the death-warrant at Whitehall.

The next day was appointed for the execution; the King slept that night
at St. James's Palace, but Oliver Cromwell, in the rich chamber in
Whitehall, slept not at all, but prayed from candlelight to dawn, then
armed himself and went out to meet the other commissioners who were
in the banqueting hall, urging that the workmen be hastened with the
scaffold in front of the Palace, which was not yet ready, nor did look
to be ready before the King came.

Charles slept; neither dreams nor visions disturbed him, and when he
woke, two hours before the dawn, he remembered everything at once, very
clearly.

He remembered that he was to die to-day, that he had taken leave of his
children and given Elisabeth two diamond seals for her mother.... He
remembered that he would never see the Queen again, and that he left
her an exile dependent on her sister-in-law, the Regent of France.

And as he got out of bed he remembered Lord Strafford.

He dressed himself with great slowness and care in the clothes he had
worn during his trial; he put on two shirts and a blue silk vest, for
it was cold and he had no wish to shiver; he exactly adjusted the black
and silver, the Flemish lace, the knots of ribbon; he combed his hair
and arranged it in the long, smooth ringlets.... Once or twice while he
was dressing he paused.

"O God," he said, "am I--the King--going to die to-day?"

He was still incredulous; it seemed to himself that his feelings were
suspended. He moved mechanically; he had an almost childish anxiety not
to tremble; he kept holding out his right hand and looking at it; when
he saw that it was steady he smiled.

When he came to fasten his doublet he went to the mirror framed in
embroidery and tortoise-shell, which hung at the foot of his bed, and
then he noticed that his face was slightly distorted--at one side drawn
with a strange contraction.... Yet he told himself that he felt quite
calm; he tried to smooth that look away from his features with his
fingers, then moved away abruptly and opened the window.

He wondered what Strafford had looked like just before his death, and
it came to him that he was enduring what Strafford had endured--minute
by minute the same--he was also the same age as Strafford had been, to
the very year.

He sat down in the great arm-chair by the bed and tried to think;
what a failure his life had been, what a collapse of all hopes and
ambitions--how incomplete; he was very, very weary of the long
struggle which he had maintained so unyieldingly, and not sorry to have
it ended.

Yet it was an awful thing to die this way--and so suddenly.

Only a month ago he had been at Windsor, firmly believing that his
enemies would destroy each other, firmly believing that he would once
more come to Whitehall, a king, and hang all these rebels and traitors.

And now it was all over, all the hopes and fears, suspenses and
agitations, all the struggles and defeats and intrigues; there were
only a few hours of time left, and only one thing more to do--to die
decently.

He put on his shoes with the big crimson roses, his light sword, his
George with the collar of knots and roses, his black velvet cloak;
then as the dawn began to blur the candlelight, Bishop Juxon, whose
attendance had been permitted him, came to him. It was this Bishop
who had urged him not to assent to Strafford's death--how well both
men remembered that now--across all the tumultuous events which lay
between--how well!

Charles rose.

"I thank you for your loyalty, my lord," he said; and then he was
silent, for he thought that his voice sounded unnatural.

"May Your Majesty wake to-morrow so glorified that you will forget
to-day!" replied the Bishop.

"To-morrow!" repeated Charles absently. "Ay, to-morrow--you will get up
to-morrow and move and eat--ay, to-morrow----"

"To-morrow thou wilt be in Paradise, sire," replied Juxon firmly, and a
sincere hope and courage shone in his eyes, which were red and swollen
with weeping.

"I die for the Church of England," said the King quickly. "They may say
what they will, but if I had abandoned Episcopacy I might have lived."

"God knoweth it," answered the Bishop solemnly, "and men will know it
after a little while."

Charles took up his hat, his gloves, his cane, and without speaking
followed the Bishop into the little royal chapel where he had so often
worshipped in happier times.

He took the Sacrament; when the ceremony was over a calm, almost
a lethargy, fell on his spirits; he tried to think of great and
tremendous things, of what was behind him and what was before him,
but his brain slipped from them; even the Queen had become absolutely
remote. He found himself wondering how Strafford had felt at this same
moment in his life.

When he left the chapel he went to one of the antechambers and waited.

Trivial things attracted his attention: he noticed that the ceiling
needed repainting, and, looking down at his collar of the George, the
foolish thought occurred to him as he saw the enamelled blossoms that
he would never behold real roses again, for this was winter and there
would be no flowers in the park which he would have to pass through.

He wished that he could fix his mind on something high and splendid now
there was so little longer left in which to think of anything, and it
distressed him that he could not.

None of this appeared in his demeanour; he sat, looking very stately
and noble, with his cloak wrapped round him for the cold and his cane
in his hand.

"The omens were against me from the first," he said suddenly. "I was
crowned in white, like a shroud, and at my coronation sermon the text
was: 'Be thou faithful unto Death and I will give thee a crown of
Eternal Life'; then my flag was blown down at Nottingham--and the other
day, at what they call my trial, the head fell off my cane."

This speech showed that his mind still ran on worldly things; but Juxon
seized hold on a portion of his words with which to give him comfort.

"Thou hast been faithful unto death," he said, "and to-day will enter
on to Eternal Life."

"I said I would die rather than betray the Church of England,"
answered Charles, "and I have redeemed it to the letter."

As he spoke there entered unceremoniously Colonel Hacker, one of the
three officers appointed to convey him to Whitehall.

Charles rose with such majesty and undaunted dignity that the stout
Puritan was, for a moment, abashed, and held out his warrant in silence.

"I submit to your power, but I defy your authority," said the King
contemptuously, and with that clapped on his hat and followed the
officer, Juxon following him.

When they reached the fresh air Charles felt a new vigour, a certain
excitement; in all the depth of his fall and the bitterness of his
humiliation, in all the extreme of his failure and the mightiness of
his defeat, he had his own inner triumph. He might be broken but he was
not bent; he died a King, not yielding a jot of his rights, bequeathing
to his son a lost heritage, but one uncurtailed by any concession of
his. He was dying for his beliefs--because he would not forgo them they
were killing him; he found satisfaction in that thought.

When he came to where his escort of guards waited, he cried out in his
usual tone of authority, "March on apace!"

It was now about ten o'clock; the heavy air had hardly lifted over
London, but it was pleasant in the Park, and from the bare fields
and hedgerows beyond came a waft of winter freshness; all the view
was blocked by people and regiment upon regiment of soldiers, all
motionless and expressionless.

"It is an ordinary day," said Charles, "like a hundred other days, but
it shall long be marked with red in England's calendar."

The people, overawed by the soldiers and by the terror of the occasion,
were strangely silent as he passed; the prevailing emotion seemed a
desperate curiosity, as if they waited, breathless, to know if this
horrific thing could really come to pass.

The King thought of nothing but of how Strafford had walked so....

When he came to Whitehall he was conducted to his own bedchamber; there
was a fire burning and a breakfast laid for him. In these familiar
surroundings, where some of the happy moments of his splendid life
had been spent, a faint horror came over him, and he felt his knees
tremble; he found, too, that a physical sickness touched him at the
sight of the food.

"I have taken the Sacrament," he said briefly. Then he asked of the
soldiers still attending him--"How long?"--and they told him "Till the
scaffold was finished."

"It is terrible," said Charles to the bishop, "to wait."

The Commissioners were waiting too. Oliver Cromwell was in the
boarded gallery, and with him was one Nunelly, the doorkeeper to the
committee of the army, who had a warrant of £50,000 to deliver to the
Lieutenant-General, with them were Major Harrison and Mr. Hugh Peters.

"O Lord!" cried this last, "what mercy to see this great city fall down
before us! And what a stir there is to bring this great man to justice,
without whose blood he would turn us all to blood had he reigned again!"

Oliver Cromwell took the packet from Nunelly; he was quite white, and
his hand shook so that twice the package dropped.

"Nunelly," he said hoarsely, "will you see the beheading of the
King--surely you will see the beheading of the King?"

And without waiting for an answer he began to pace up and down, in
uncontrollable agitation and excitement.

And presently Hugh Peters and Richard Nunelly went out into the
banqueting hall, and out of the centre window on to the scaffold where
the joiners were yet at work driving staples in.

When they returned to the boarded gallery, Cromwell and Harrison were
still there.

"This will be a good day," said Peters.

"Are you not afraid that it will be a bloody day to all England?" asked
Nunelly fearfully.

"This is not a thing done in a corner," replied Harrison calmly, "but
before the world. I follow not my own poor judgment, but the revealed
word of God in His Holy Scriptures."

Cromwell turned to Peters who stood in his black cloak and hat like
death's own herald.

"Is it ready?" he asked. "Why this delay--this intolerable delay?"

His voice shook as he spoke.

"Are the vizards ready?" he asked again.

"Ay, it is Brandon the hangman and the fellow Hulet, and they are to
have thirty pounds apiece--and now, I think, Colonel Hacker may go to
fetch the King," replied Peters.

"Will you see him pass?" asked Harrison.

"I will not look on him again, alive or dead!" replied Cromwell
sombrely.

But Peters and Nunelly went to an upper window where they might have a
good view....

In his bedchamber the King still waited; the soldiers had withdrawn
and left him alone with Juxon, to whom the dying man gave his last
instructions, and one, above all, important.

"Let my son forgive his father's murderers--and let _him always
maintain the Church of England and his own royal rights in this
realm_--let him make no compromise on these points. And let my
younger sons never be cajoled into taking their brother's place--my
son Charles, who, in a few moments now, will be King of England and
Scotland."

"I promise," said Juxon.

Then the King rose and walked up and down.

"Jesus, God!" he cried, "spare me this waiting!"

"I implore Your Majesty to eat and drink a little," entreated the
bishop, and Charles, who felt himself indeed sick and faint, drank a
glass of claret and eat a piece of bread. When he had finished he took
a white satin cap from his pocket and gave it to Juxon, also his watch,
with some broken words of thanks. Then Colonel Hacker came, and the
King turned to go through the splendid galleries of his old home to his
death.

He had his hat on and said not a word; beneath his composure he was
struggling to overcome the physical weakness that beset him, rendering
him incapable of high thoughts; the sensitive flesh shrank from what it
had to face; already he felt a ring of pain round his neck.

The fine apartments, the paintings, the rich furniture still there,
swam dizzily before his eyes; but he walked firmly....

Colonel Hacker led the way; they stepped through the centre window of
the banqueting hall on to a scaffold hung with black, on which stood
the two vizards or headsmen; both of whom wore frieze breeches and
coats--one had a grey beard showing beneath the mask, the other was
disguised with a light wig. When Charles stepped out of the window he
recoiled with a repulsion no pride could control. In the foreground
the two black figures, and beyond a sea of white faces, all looking
at him; even the soldiers, horse and foot, their red coats and steel
brightening the grey morning, were looking at him--all in silence.

His glance fell to the block. "Is it so low?" he asked, in a horrified
way. Then he recovered himself and turned to the few about him.

"It was the Parliament began the war, not I," he said, "but I hope they
may be guiltless too, and all blame may go to the ill instruments which
came between us"--here one of the officers touched the axe, and the
King cried out--"Take care of the axe! take care of the axe!"--resuming
afterwards his speech. "The government rests with the King and not with
the people, in that belief and in the faith of the Church of England I
die."

He laid off his cloak and hat, then added with great wistfulness--

"In one respect I suffer justly, and that is because I have permitted
an unjust sentence to be executed on another."

He took off his George and the little miniature of the Queen (which he
kissed), and gave them to Juxon.

He gave a purse of guineas to the grey-bearded vizard with the axe, who
knelt to ask his pardon, and again that awful sickness closed over his
heart.

"Take care they do not put me to pain," he said to Colonel Hacker,
and his lips trembled. Then to the man, "I shall say but very short
prayers, and then thrust out my hands--at this sign do you strike."

"I will warrant, sir," said Colonel Hacker, "the fellow is skilful."

The King now took off his doublet, sword, and sword-string, doing it
carefully that he might gain time for perfect composure at the supreme
minute.

Juxon approached him.

"Your Majesty hath but one more stage to travel in this weary world,
and though that is a turbulent and troublesome stage, it is a short
one, and will carry Your Majesty all the way from earth to heaven."

Charles looked at St. James's Palace showing beyond the multitude of
faces.

"I have a good cause and a gracious God on my side," he said. He took
the white satin cap from the bishop, and put his hair up in it; a
slight figure he looked now in the straight blue vest and white cap.

The church bells struck half-past twelve, the sluggard sun sent faint
rays through the low winter clouds. The King knelt down. "Remember," he
said to Juxon.

A great excitement steadied him, driving away the sickness; this was
the end, the end--and after?

He placed his forehead in the niche of the block; the position was
uncomfortable, and he was staring down at the black covering of the
scaffold floor.

He closed his eyes, clutching his hands on his breast; he felt the
keen air on his bare neck, and confused visions leaped before him. He
tried to pray.

"Lord Jesus," he murmured swiftly. "Lord Jesus----" he could think of
nothing more; with an almost mechanical movement he threw out his hands.

He heard the headsman step nearer; he set his teeth.

The axe struck cleanly; the blood was over all of them, and the vizard
with the light wig held up by the long grey curls the head which had
bounded to his feet.

"God save the people of England!" said Colonel Hacker.

A deep and awful groan broke from the multitude, and the soldiers,
hitherto immovable, turned about in all directions, clearing the
streets.



PART IV

THE ACHIEVEMENT


"We are Englishmen; that is one good account. And if God give a nation
valour and courage, it is honour and a mercy."--OLIVER P., 1656,
_Speech to Parliament, Tuesday, 16th Sept., in the Painted Chamber_.


"I was by birth a gentleman living neither in any considerable height
nor yet in obscurity. I have been called to several employments in the
Nation.... I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an honest man in
those services."--OLIVER P., _ibid._, _12th Sept. 1654_.


"If my calling be from God and my testimony from the People--only God
and the People will take it from me, else I shall not part with it--I
should be false to the trust that God hath placed in me, and to the
interest of the people of these nations if I should."--OLIVER P.,
_ibid._



CHAPTER I

"THE CROWNING MERCY"


On a soft golden blue day in September 1651, when the trees were still
in full leafage in the Park, and the river reflected a sky veiled with
delicate white clouds, when the last sheaves of corn were standing in
the fields beyond St. James's Palace, and the orchards near glowed all
red with fruit, a crowd was gathered in the streets of London--a crowd
as vast and as excited as that which had waited to hear the verdict
on Lord Strafford, or had thronged to witness the awful scene outside
Whitehall when the King knelt before the headsman.

On both these occasions the people, if triumphant, in the first
instance, were still awestruck and silenced, in the second, by the
portents of great events and by the magnitude of the terrible daring
of their leaders. Now they were triumphant openly, rejoicing almost
light-heartedly; the King had died a traitor's death and the skies
had not fallen; other great men had followed him in his final fate,
and none had avenged them. The present Charles Stewart, called the
King of Scots since his coronation at Scone, was flying the country,
a proscribed fugitive; the Commonwealth, proclaimed after the death
of the late King, was a year and a half old and had shown no signs of
weakness nor unstability, and to-day the people were got together to
welcome home the Lord-General, Oliver Cromwell, who was returning after
having subdued Ireland and Scotland as those Islands had never yet been
subdued.

Fire and sword had swept Ireland from coast to coast; Cromwell had
not spared the enemies of the Lord, as Drogheda could witness, Papist
priests had been hanged or knocked on the head, Papist garrisons
massacred, Papist peasants transported, Papist gentry forbidden their
religion, and driven from their estates into the desolate regions of
Connaught.

Without pause or hesitation or check, with fierceness, vigour, and
irresistible onslaught, Cromwell had overcome Ireland, and had left the
unfortunate country, silenced now with her own blood, to cherish for
ever a terrible image of this Englishman, and a terrible hatred.

Next, he turned against Scotland, where the second Charles, having
denounced the faith of his father, and the religion of his mother,
having taken the Covenant (submitting in a moment to those things which
the late King had died rather than yield to), was setting up once more
the standard of the Stewarts.

Cromwell (now Lord-General, for Fairfax, too cold and meticulous for
these times, had retired) met the Scots at Dunbar and beat Lord Leven
and David Leslie as thoroughly as he had beaten Hamilton at Preston,
and with troops as tired, hungry, and outnumbered, as they had been
hungry and outnumbered then. Dunbar Drove they called this, as they had
called the other Preston Rout.

Both were mighty victories.

Then, a year later, on the 3rd of September, the anniversary of Dunbar,
Cromwell, supported by Lambert and Harrison, marched to meet another
invading army of Scots headed by the young Charles, and on the banks
and bridges of the Severn and in the streets of Worcester city, beat
them again, ruining completely the cause of the young Stewart, who
watched the day from the cathedral tower, then fled, hopeless, not to
Scotland, but beyond seas, this time to seek an asylum at his sister's
court.

That was the end of it. Cromwell had subdued kings and kingdoms; there
was no one left to lead any army across the Border or ships across St.
George's Channel, and neither of the sister islands would be likely
to attempt to measure swords with England again. There were no more
gallant Cavaliers to rise up for a lost cause. Montrose had been hanged
in Edinburgh, and the young King for whom he died had repudiated him
almost before the heroic soul had left the gallant body. Hamilton,
Capel, Holland, Derby, had suffered on the block, kissing the axe
that had slain their master; the rest were beyond seas, in exile and
poverty, or in their own country outnumbered, forlorn, impoverished,
and silenced.

And the man who had thus achieved the triumphs of his cause and his
beliefs, the soldier who had been victorious in every engagement he had
undertaken, whose enthusiasm, fire, and faith had heartened his party
when even the bravest had been daunted, was the man who was riding into
London to-day, welcomed by salvos of artillery and pealing of bells.

Five of the foremost Members of Parliament had ridden out to meet him
on his march. One of the royal palaces, that of Hampton, had been given
him as a residence; he enjoyed now a grant of nearly six thousand a
year, and in his train, as he entered London, were many of the noblest
in the country, and with him rode the Lord Mayor, the Speaker, the
Council of State, the Aldermen, and Sheriffs.

It was noticed that his carriage was simple and modest; the triumphant
conclusion of the nine years' struggle had no more power to shake him
from the calm inspired by his sombre creed and intense beliefs than
the rebuffs, confusions and temptations of the struggle itself. He was
still, in his own eyes, as much God's mere instrument as when he sowed
his grain and reaped his harvest in Huntingdon; and the future and his
rise or fall were as absolutely preordained by the Lord now as then.

With a modesty that was absolutely unaffected he declined all credit
for his overwhelming victories; and with a simplicity some mistook
for irony (but irony was not in his nature), he remarked of the huge
multitude which had gathered to see him pass: "There would be even more
to see me hanged," so exactly did he value the popular favour, and so
completely was he aware of the peril of the height on which he stood.

When the triumphal entry was over and evening was closing in, he turned
at last to his own home.

One sadness marred the return; Henry Ireton had died in Ireland, worn
out by the fatigues of the strenuous campaign which had more than
once laid the Lord-General himself on a bed of sickness, and Bridget
Ireton was shut into her house, mourning her lord, whose body was being
brought home for burial in the Abbey Church at Westminster.

The rest were all there to welcome him; his mother, his wife, his
son Richard, now at last wedded to Dorothy Mayor (Henry was still in
Ireland, doing good work there), Elisabeth Claypole and her husband,
and the two unmarried girls, Mary and Frances.

The women wept, in their enthusiasm and joyful relief. Elisabeth
Claypole hung on his breast in a passion of tears, so completely did
the sadness of the world overwhelm her sensitive heart in any moment of
emotion.

Almost her first words were to ask his kindness towards the poor Irish
who were being sent to Jamaica and Barbadoes as slaves. After all
Cromwell's victories his favourite daughter's delicate voice had risen
with the same appeal: "Be merciful, be pitiful--spare the prisoners!"

"Why do you weep, Betty?" he asked.

"Because she is a foolish wench," said her husband good-humouredly.

"Nay," said Elisabeth Cromwell, "what doth your old poet say--'pity
runneth soon in a gentle heart'; and we have had to bear some straining
anxieties."

"And we have heard awful reports," murmured Mrs. Claypole, smiling
through her tears with that simple archness which her father loved,
however he might contemn her carnal mind. "Blood--nothing but blood
was spoken of, until my dreams were coloured red."

"Ay," said old Mrs. Cromwell, with the vagueness of her great age.
"Hast thou not slain the children of the Scarlet Woman by tens of
thousands? I heard that at Drogheda thou didst close the blasphemous
idolaters into their own church, and there burn them, as an offering of
sweet savour in the nostrils of the Lord."

Cromwell glanced at his daughter Elisabeth, and answered nothing; the
cries of the burning Papists echoed sometimes in his own heart for
all his stern exaltation in slaying the enemies of God. For a moment
his brow clouded, but the subject was swept away and forgotten in the
congratulations, questions, and answers of Mr. Claypole and Richard
Cromwell. The times were still momentous, even perilous; now there was
peace what would they and all the other men of England do?

While the Lord-General talked with these two, the women took the old
gentlewoman to her room; she could hardly walk now and her senses were
failing, the Bible was constantly in her hands, and she spoke of little
else but her son.

When she had reached the chamber set apart for her, she got into her
chair by the window and looked at the sunset a little, half-dozing and
talking to herself, then she roused suddenly and asked Mrs. Claypole,
who tenderly remained with her, to "Fetch your father, child, fetch
your father. I have had little of him but the pain of his absences, and
I would see him now!"

Elisabeth Claypole, light-footed and delicate in her glimmering white
and blue silks, sped on her errand, taking with her some of the last
late roses with which she had adorned her grandmother's room.

When she gave her message she slipped the stems of two of them through
the button-hole of her father's dusty uniform. Their gay beauty looked
incongruous enough on his sober attire, but though his lips chid her,
his eyes smiled, and he let the blossoms remain.

Elisabeth Cromwell was wondering, in sentences half-awed, half-vexed,
how she should keep house in a great place like Hampton Court?--how
many servants must she have, and how could they use such a number of
rooms?

"We will come and stay with thee," said Dorothy, Richard's wife,
who was not averse to her share of her father-in-law's splendour.
Her pretty face was very bright and smiling to-day above the demure
fall of her lawn collar, and her gown was new silk, embroidered in a
fashion not uncourtly; her husband, too, was habited with a richness
beyond his father's. The Lord-General had not failed to mark his son's
wide, Spanish boots, fringed breeches, grey cloth passemented with
rose-colour, and Malines lace collar and fall. It did not please him,
for he took it as another indication of that weakness and levity which
he had before suspected, with a terrible pang, in his eldest surviving
son.

He made no reply to Dorothy Cromwell, but followed his daughter to her
grandmother's room.

That night there was a wonderful sunset, not only the west but the
whole horizon was gold, crimson, and scarlet; the earth seemed ringed
with fire, and the glow penetrated even into the narrow street, so that
there was the sense of a wonderful light and colour abroad--a light
brilliant and mystical, shed from heaven upon the earth.

Oliver Cromwell crossed the room, which was dark and plain, but full
of the odour of dry rose leaves and lavender and camphire, and stood
before his mother who sat by the window, a small shrivelled gentlewoman
in a hooded chair. She lifted her blurred eyes and held out her two
little hands to him; he kissed them, and then as Elisabeth Claypole
left them he broke forth, "Mother, I am tired, tired."

He rested his sick head against the mullions and gazed up at the little
strip of sky, glorious with floating clouds of light, visible above the
houses opposite.

"How is it with thee, my son Oliver?" she asked. "Thou art come in
triumph with much acclaim, but hast thou within the peace of God, which
passeth all understanding?"

He answered with a fervour and a quickness which was like the passion
of self-justification yet ennobled by his usual enthusiasm.

"I have followed the pillar of cloud by day," he answered, "the pillar
of fire by night. I have disregarded the wind and the whirlwind, and I
have listened for the still small voice. _I believe God hath been with
me because of the victories I have had._"

"Surely," replied Mrs. Cromwell, "He hath witnessed for thee as He
witnessed against the King. Is not this fight at Worcester spoken of on
all tongues as the crowning mercy?"

The Lord-General continued to look at the sky which was fast paling
from flame tints into a burning paleness, like gold in a furnace,
thrice refined.

"For nine years I have laboured," he said, "and not once hath the Lord
put me down. Yet sometimes the voice will fail, sometimes the Sign will
not come--sometimes I even seem to fall from grace--sometimes I wonder
why I ever left obscurity. Yet the Lord called me! I will maintain
it--He held up my hands and made me His instrument! I have been one
with the Spirit; I say it was God's work, for He did not put me down!
Now, it were better that I should lay aside my high office and return
to what I was."

"It were better," said the old gentlewoman; "but can England spare you
yet? For me, I would rather die where I have lived than amid these
splendours."

"I will go back to my own place," continued Oliver Cromwell. "I have
done what God set me to do--I have swept the enemy from the land, I
have seen the tyrant slain, and his children exiled. When shall the
young man, Charles Stewart, get another army? Nay, when he fled from
Worcester city, he fled from his throne for ever; his forces are
scattered and no captain out of Egypt shall ever get them together
again. I say the land is purged, and what work is there for me?"

He was silent a moment, then he added, "I am weary and still something
sick."

These recent sicknesses of his troubled him; he could not understand
the fault for which this weakness had been laid on him. Following out
his own thoughts he broke into speech again.

"As for Drogheda, _I say it was in the heat of action_, and were they
not Papists, blasphemous idolaters whose hands were red with the blood
of God's poor people? _It was in the heat of action!_ What was that
little moment compared to the torments of hell they have earned? When
they were shut up in the church and the flames were getting hold on
them, I heard one say--'God damn me, God confound me, I burn!' That
is God's judgment. God _hath_ damned him--to the flame that is never
quenched and the worm that never dieth! Poor clay am I, but a reed
He breatheth through--shall I be blamed for His vengeance against
Drogheda? Nay, no more than I shall be praised for His victories at
Dunbar and Worcester--when He was pleased to make use of a certain poor
thing of mine, nay, a little invention, the army."

The ancient gentlewoman leant forward and stroked his sleeve with her
pallid hand thickened with heavy veins. She had an instinct that he
required comforting in this the highest moment of his glory.

He still wore his buff riding coat, his dusty boots, his plain
sword-thread and sword; surely no victorious general had ever returned
to take his triumph in such attire. No order, no ornament distinguished
him from the meanest of his fellow-citizens; his features, always
heavy, were slightly swollen and slightly suffused, his eyes most
deeply lined and shadowed; there was as much grey as brown now in the
locks that fell to his shoulders, and a general sadness was in his
expression, his pose, the tone of his rough voice.

His little mother continued to anxiously stroke his cloth sleeve and to
gaze up at him with those failing eyes which saw neither marks of age
nor fatigue, saw neither plainness nor ill-health, but only _her_ son
in the glory of his matchless achievement.

He looked down at her at last.

"My mother," he said, "how long ago is it since I knelt to say my
prayers at your knee? I feel the years grow marvellously heavy and my
body full of the evils of old age. So little done, so much to do! For
all of us, such a little while."

"Many more years for thee, son Oliver," she replied. "Many more and
much to do in them! If there be something to be done in England, wilt
thou not do it?"

"Surely," he said, straightening himself, "for I am English--it is the
English who now testify most for the Lord, and He out of His mercy hath
given us great gifts."

The last sunlight had faded from the narrow street, and the precise
chamber was growing dark.

"God keep thee always," said Mrs. Cromwell quietly. "I would not hold
thee even from manifest danger if He bade thee go!"

"I believe I never shall go back to Ely," he answered evenly. "My hand
is on the plough----"

The door was gently opened and Elisabeth Claypole, holding a candle
which illumined her wistful, frail beauty, half entered and told them
the supper waited for them below.



CHAPTER II

THE TALK IN ST. JAMES'S PARK


The Council of State had done well; great names were among the members.
Sir Harry Vane had devoted his patriotism and his great gifts to the
administration of the navy, which was under the command of William
Blake, already as renowned at sea as Cromwell on the land; the naval
war with the United Provinces was already taxing the resources of the
infant Commonwealth, and so far all had acquitted themselves with
honour and distinction.

Rupert and his roving pirate ships had been swept from the seas, Deane
and Monk kept an iron hand on Scotland, Fleetwood and Ludlow completed
the bloody conquest of Ireland. Outwardly the new Republic might well
present a uniform and solid appearance; but within it seethed with
confusion.

The main cause of the two civil wars and the execution of the
King--ecclesiastical questions--was still in abeyance; nothing was
settled in Church or State. Nor were the finances of the country in a
hopeful condition; neither the Church lands nor the King's lands nor
all the revenues formerly given to royalty served to pay the expenses
of the Dutch War. Cromwell's dreams of retirement vanished; urged from
within by his own eager soul and from without by the appeals of those
who could not bear their burdens without his help, he remained in the
forefront of affairs, the leader of the army in name and fact, a figure
slightly enigmatical, needed by all and by some feared.

He was not without his enemies. Edmund Ludlow, on one of his visits to
London, told him frankly that the extreme Puritans could not forget his
attempt to come to terms with the late King, and the extreme moderates
could not forget his execution of the mutineers at Ware.

The last time Ludlow and Cromwell had crossed words Cromwell had ended
the argument by hurling a cushion at his opponent's head. Now he
answered mildly and declared that the Lord was bringing to pass through
him what He had promised in the 110th Psalm; he expounded this theory
for an hour, and Ludlow was silenced by rhetoric if not convinced by
reason.

Meanwhile Cromwell, whether he silenced his critics by oratory or
hurled cushions, went his way without heeding any of them; sometimes
mildly, sometimes in sudden gusts of temper, sometimes in strange
exalted excitements he pursued a policy which, however obscure and
vague it might seem to others, was clear as crystal and bright as flame
to him.

The feeling between the army and the remnant of Charles' last
Parliament still ruling at Westminster became again restless and
intense; all men began to see that the present Government was, and
could be nothing else, but provisional. A date, three years off, was
fixed for the dissolution of the present Parliament, and Cromwell
called a conference between the chief lawyers and the chief captains,
to whom he offered two vital questions: Should they have a republic or
a monarchy? if a monarchy, who was to be King?

The Parliament men were mostly for a monarchy, the army men for a
republic: Desborough and Whalley were especially strong for that.

Oliver Cromwell was not with them: he had never been at heart
republican; but he said little, and the conference broke up, as the
others had done, without solving a single difficulty.

Sometime after the Lord-General, coming from his luminous obscurity
where he gleamed, keeping all men in an uncertainty as to his wishes
and his intentions, asked the Lord Whitelocke, lawyer and Parliament
man, to attend him in his walking in the Park, and to there discuss
with him the unsettlement and turmoil of the State.

It was a day in November; the brambles in the hedges had sparse
fox-coloured leaves; the trees in the orchard and archery ground were
bare; the elms and oaks were hung with thin scattered gold leaves
against a pale blue and frosty sky; the ground was hard with a thin ice
in the ruts where yesterday had been mud; above the empty Palace, which
might be plainly glimpsed through the bare trees, a solitary white
cloud floated, like a forlorn banner. The Lord-General often looked at
this cloud while he spoke: he had a habit of gazing much at the sky.

He wore a black suit and grey worsted hose, broad leathern shoes with
wide steel buckles, sword, band, collar, and hat as plain as might be.
There was nothing about his person to indicate the profession which he
represented; he was in every way as plain as the plain lawyer to whom
he talked. He opened with what was in his mind, but gently, indirectly
and vaguely, after his usual manner.

"Where is the cause? Where is this for which we all fought? Lord
Whitelocke, did so many poor people die to this end? Was the glorious
climax of the war, the death of the tyrant to lead to no better
conclusion than this? Hath the Lord led us out of Egypt to abandon us
now? Truly, sir, I do not think it, yet I ask you where is the cause?
I say that the cause is overlaid with jars, with jealousies, with
confusion, and this must not be. The Lord will not have it--it is not
as it should be, sir, in a Commonwealth."

Bulstrode Whitelocke hesitated a moment and struck at the frozen ground
with his cane; he was a shrewd, prosaic man, a keen lawyer, and a
fearless patriot. After his little pause he resolved on boldness: his
quick, direct speech was a contrast to Cromwell's involved phrases.

"The peril we are in, sir, cometh from the arrogance of the army, from
their high pretensions and unruly ways and desire for dominance."

The Lord-General gave him a long glance.

"Say you so?" he returned mildly. "Yet methinks they are a lovely
company, worthy of all honour."

"They have had all honour and all profit too," returned Whitelocke
grimly, "and now they would have all power as well, under your favour,
sir."

"Nay," returned Cromwell, "this is not so. The army is the poor
instrument by which the Lord saved England; they did some little
service at Naseby--at Preston--at Dunbar and Winchester, and though
I dare say they would sooner die than take any of the glory of
these mercies, yet the Lord chose them as His instruments, and that
must be accounted to them as an honour. Sir, the army hath laboured
much, sweated in your service; sir, without the army"--he pointed to
Whitehall--"that Palace would now be the dwelling-place of the young
man, Charles Stewart. I pray you consider these things."

"Yet I repeat," insisted the Lord Whitelocke, who was voicing the
feeling of the entire Parliament and a great portion of the nation,
"that the army is the cause of these present jars--their imperious
carriage is hard to be borne, sir, and from it arises the confusions
and jealousies which oppress us. As to their merits, the Council of
State hath done somewhat too--the war with the Dutch----"

"Because of this war my spirit hath groaned!" interrupted Cromwell.
"Should there not rather be a union between two Protestant republics
than war? And what do not you spend on it? All that which you have
gained from King and bishops. I say it were more befitting us, as
Christians and Englishmen, to have peace with the Dutch."

Whitelocke refused to be drawn into this argument. He returned to his
point.

"The Council of State rule well and wisely--the people uphold them."

"Nay, do they?" interrupted the Lord-General, in a very decided tone.
"I tell you this, Mr. Whitelocke, I have been up and down the country
and heard the opinions of many men, and I say that most, and the best
of them, do loathe the Parliament."

"Where is this leading?" asked the lawyer sharply.

"Ay, where?" repeated Cromwell. "There are the people new come from
civil strife unheard of, and ye lay on them the great burden of a
foreign war; ye settle nothing and strive after nothing but to prolong
your own sitting. There are scandalous members among you--ay, I know it
well--self-seekers, drunkards, men of lewd life. I say it is not well
these should be uncontrolled in power, therefore I spoke for a king or
for one with a king's authority. They have none to check them, they
do as they will, they are slow, they are idle, they meddle in private
matters; it will not do. Let them look to their authority, which is on
high; let them seek God painfully."

He spoke with passion now, but also with a certain weariness, as if he
was oppressed with great thoughts and slowly struggled to the outward
expression of them.

"You are a soldier and therefore impatient," returned Whitelocke
quietly. "The Parliament is slow--but that is within human reason."

The Lord-General turned and looked at him grimly.

"There is another thing which is not within human reason, which is
that this Commonwealth should stand without a master set over the
Parliament."

"How may one do that?" demanded the lawyer sharply, "when the
Parliament is itself the authority from which we derive ours?"

"That is a formal difficulty," replied Cromwell impatiently. "Do you
think I should be stopped by nice points of law?"

Whitelocke marked the pronoun the soldier had used.

"Would you withstand the Parliament?" he asked keenly. "They are your
masters."

"They are no man's masters; they are means to an end," replied
Cromwell. "I am a poor thing, but the Lord hath made some use of me
these ten years past--yea, a little use. He hath been pleased to
appoint me to do a few things for Him, some little work, and I will
do it, despite Parliament as I did and despite a king. I say we will
have righteousness and justice; if need be these men can be put down as
the tyrant was put down, and the poor and simple be cared for and the
groans of the needy heard."

"These are stern words," said Whitelocke; "and how will you justify
them?"

"God will justify them," replied the Lord-General, "as He hath hitherto
upheld what I have said in His name. What was I? What did I know of
armies or of the battalion? Yet the Lord said, 'Be thou ruler, even
among Mine enemies,' and sent me forth to conquer kings and princes.
And we were but a handful and they gentlemen. Yet we did it. 'With
His own right hand and with His holy arm hath He gotten Himself the
victory!' And now I am bidden to labour still in His cause and to go
forward--and do you think that poor remnant sitting at Westminster
shall hinder me?"

The Lord Whitelocke was silent; he was rather startled at what
he took to be the kernel of Cromwell's speech--his enmity to
the Parliament--and he was not deceived by the gentleness and
self-effacement of the Lord-General, who, he knew, was indeed capable
of doing away with the Parliament as he and his had done away with the
King. And there was now, as always, the great fact to be remembered
and reckoned with that Cromwell had behind him the army of his own
creation, that fierce military whose enthusiasm was not much curbed
or checked by regard for mere formal institutions and laws of men's
framing.

"In very deed," he replied, "your power and the power behind you is too
high. How can we withstand it?"

"My power, such as it be," returned the soldier mildly, "cometh from
God and the People. Be assured that if I use it for other than the
glory of one and the good of the other it will pass from me. I say this
because meseemeth you have fear of the army, poor souls; but I did not
open this talk for any matter of argument with thee, but rather in a
friendly spirit to discuss the present jars."

"You have discussed them to good purpose, sir," returned Whitelocke
dryly. "I perceive that you look upon the Parliament and the Council of
State with ill-will and mistrust."

"I think," replied Cromwell, still gazing at the pale cloud floating
in the pale sky over Whitehall, "that we need a Governor over this
England."

"Where is he to be found?" demanded Whitelocke.

"The Lord will bring such an one forward in His good leisure," said
Cromwell.

Whitelocke liked this speech still less than those which had gone
before it; he thought it meant that the Lord-General intended in truth
to set himself against the Parliament.

"Who will be your Governor of England?" he asked.

"Who can resolve that question?" said Cromwell evasively.

"What is your proposal to solve the present difficulties?" was
Whitelocke's next question. He was determined that he would, if
possible, gain something definite from the present conversation.

The Lord-General made no answer, and they walked on slowly and in
silence. The very last leaves were scattered from the boughs overhead
on to the frosty ground at their feet, and a little low, sharp wind was
blowing across the city.

Bulstrode Whitelocke waited for the Lord-General's answer. Himself a
moderate man, to a point he was wholly with Cromwell's tolerance and
large-mindedness; but when Cromwell's moderation suddenly culminated in
daring action, then Whitelocke refused to follow him. He had been one
of the most active of those who had endeavoured to frame a treaty with
the late King, and had warmly supported Cromwell's attempts to bring
Charles to a compromise; but he had refused to sit in the High Court of
Justice that had tried and condemned the King. So now he felt that they
were again reaching a crisis when he could not support any longer the
man whom he so sincerely admired.

But the Lord-General would not any further disclose himself, and when
Whitelocke was about to press for a reply he caused a distraction by
pausing and pointing to a gentleman walking near the archery fields, to
which they had now nearly approached.

"I know his face, who is he?" asked Cromwell.

Bulstrode Whitelocke, somewhat vexed at this abrupt change of subject,
answered briefly--

"He is the Latin Secretary to the Council of State."

"Ah," said the Lord-General, "a very worthy citizen. I have heard of
him. From the first he hath given his testimony to the good cause. I
would there were many more such among you."

By this, the person of whom he spoke drew near, and seeing the two
gentlemen, and knowing Whitelocke and recognizing Cromwell, he stopped
and bowed.

Cromwell turned towards him, and Whitelocke had no choice but to do
likewise.

"You are the Latin Secretary," said the Lord-General. "You have written
much in defence of the cause. I have often sought an occasion to speak
to you."

The gentleman thus addressed bowed in some confusion like one
overwhelmed by a great honour.

"Do you know me?" asked Cromwell.

"I do, my Lord-General," was the reply, given in a sweet musical
voice. "What lover of truth and freedom doth not?--'My lord fighteth
the battles of the Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee all thy
days.'"

He spoke with a warm sincerity which raised his words above the
suspicion of flattery, and a flush overspread his naturally pallid
features.

There was something about his person and manner wholly attractive; in
his youth (he was now in middle age) he must have been of a beauty
almost feminine, and his traits still had a frail and delicate
comeliness; his large dark blue eyes were fatigued and heavy lidded
as if swollen with overuse, and his pale cheek and the brow shaded
by the long locks of brown hair bore traces of sickness and anxiety;
his figure was slender and noble, and his black clothes were fine
in quality; his whole appearance was of an elegance wholly lacking
to the Lord-General's person; indeed, for all the sobriety of his
attire, he appeared more like one of the unfortunate Cavaliers than
one of the most vigorous champions of the Independents, the author of
_Eikonoclastes_.

"I thank you, Mr. Milton," replied Cromwell. "I hope we may be better
acquainted. You have laboured much and your reward halts, but I believe
you have that greatness in you which is pleased to serve England
without fee."

"For the little that I do I am even overpaid," replied John Milton,
with a deepening of his boyish flush.

The glance of the two men met, and a look flashed between them as if
they were wholly one in spirit; then the Secretary bowed again, and
each went his way.

"The Council have bidden him write an answer to Salmasius' work," said
Whitelocke. "He calls it _A Defence of the People of England_--but it
doth not proceed as quickly as he would wish because his eyes fail him.
He told me that at times he could hardly see the letters on the paper."

Cromwell looked back at the slender, erect figure walking away under
the bare trees.

"Thou hast a brave heart if I mistake not," he murmured.

Then he went on again, Bulstrode Whitelocke still waiting for him to
deliver himself.

Not until they had almost reached the confines of the Park and the
houses of Charing Cross did the Lord-General speak.

Then, turning suddenly to his expectant companion, he said--

"What if a man should take it upon himself to be king?"

Whitelocke stared, startled beyond concealment.

"Well?" urged Cromwell gently.

The lawyer, recovering himself, took refuge in the pedantic, formal
objections offered by the law and the constitution.

Cromwell listened patiently. When Whitelocke, rather confused and
breathless, had brought his speech to an end he answered mildly--

"Neither the law nor the constitution gave authority for the execution
of a king. Yet we did it. Therefore we may do other things for which
there is no warrant in charter or Parliament roll, but for which the
warrant cometh from God. Yet for the moment I have no more to say."



CHAPTER III

EXIT THE PARLIAMENT


During these days the Lord-General and his colleagues, Harrison and
Lambert, waited much on the Lord, confessing their sinfulness and
asking for Divine help.

Behind them was always the army, demanding arrears of pay, work for the
poor, and the suppression of the general lawlessness of the kingdom;
there were many more conferences between the lawyers and the soldiers;
towards the close of 1652 Cromwell gently, and Lambert and Harrison
not at all gently, began to say that it was the Lord's will that
the Parliament should go. Parliament, they declared, should call a
convention and then abdicate.

The gentlemen at Westminster, seeing the military saints were in
earnest, set themselves to prepare a scheme of government which should
meet the approval of the army; the wise and valiant Sir Harry Vane, the
younger, drew up a bill to provide for a provisional government, the
nucleus of which was to be the members now sitting, they who had been
ever in the forefront of the fight since that fight had begun.

This scheme to give perpetuity to a body which they wished to
completely abolish only further exasperated the army; Cromwell and
Harrison pushed forward their own bill.

On the 19th of April, Vane and Cromwell and their several supporters
held another conference in the suite of apartments in Whitehall Palace,
now given to the Lord-General, at which both parties agreed to stay
their hands until the discussion should be resumed and brought to some
conclusion. The next day Cromwell was more cheerful than had been usual
with him of late; he loved polemics and to measure his rhetoric with
others; yesterday's long argument with Sir Harry Vane had enlivened
him; he looked forward to a resumption of the conference and to a final
triumph for the Cause; he had recently communed much with himself,
brooded and considered in his soul, and he was convinced that God had
further work for him; part of that work he believed to be to settle the
nation--and not by way of the Parliament.

That morning as he was at breakfast with Lambert and Harrison an abrupt
end was put to his tranquillity and satisfaction.

News was brought that the Parliament had assembled early and were
hurrying through Sir Harry Vane's bill.

The Lord-General sank at once into gloomy silence, while the other two
soldiers heavily condemned the perfidy of the Parliament men.

"I will not believe it," said Cromwell at last. "Nay, I will not
believe falsehood of Sir Harry Vane."

"But maybe," suggested Major-General Harrison, "his followers have got
beyond Sir Harry and done this thing despite him."

"Nay," returned the Lord-General. "I believe it not."

"You are too slow to move!" cried Harrison, with some heat. "If it had
not been for your hesitation there would have been no Parliament to
defy the poor toilers in God's cause."

The Lord-General pushed his tankard away from him.

"You are one," he answered, "who will not wait the Lord's leisure, but
would hurry into that which afterwards honest men must repent."

"You have waited the Lord's leisure too long," said Harrison. "Much
delay is not good."

"When the Lord speaks, I obey," answered Cromwell, with some grimness;
"and then my actions are as swift as any man's, yea, even as thine,
Major-General Harrison. I have given some poor testimony to that
effect."

"Meanwhile," put in Lambert, "the miserable remnant at Westminster
are making their bill law--and where are we? Even made a mock of and
slighted."

As he spoke another messenger arrived, and close on his heels a third,
to say that the Parliament were in very deed pushing through Sir Harry
Vane's bill.

Then Cromwell rose.

"'Up, Lord, and help me, O my God,'" he said, "'for Thou smitest all
mine enemies upon the cheek-bone--Thou hast broken the teeth of the
ungodly!' Now is the time--yea, even now." He turned to Harrison. "Come
with me to Westminster and let us testify to God."

He called for his hat; he wore his black coat and his grey worsted
stockings and a plain neck-band.

As he was leaving Whitehall he ordered a guard of soldiers to accompany
him, and marched down to Westminster with them behind him, as Charles
had marched with his armed followers from the same Palace to the same
Parliament eleven years before.

When they reached Westminster Hall he left the file of muskets in the
outer room, and he and his two generals passed to their usual places in
the Commons.

There were about sixty members present; at the silent entrance of the
three soldiers all looked round and about them, and some shifted in
their places and whispered to their neighbours. "I see Old Noll's red
nose," said one as Cromwell entered; "we are like to have a tempest."

But the Lord-General went quietly to his seat, as did his two
companions; and the members, whatever trepidation they might feel,
displayed none, but continued their debate, preparatory to passing Sir
Harry Vane's bill.

Cromwell listened, his arms folded, his head bent on his breast; the
sweet April sunshine filled the chamber with a pleasant haze in which
the motes danced; Sir Harry Vane looked often at the Lord-General as
if he would find an opportunity to excuse himself for his seeming
breach of faith; indeed, his supporters had taken the matter out of his
hands and forced the bill on, whether he would or no; but Cromwell sat
glooming, and would not meet his eye.

The discussion proceeded, moderate, orderly; presently the Lord-General
called to Major-General Harrison, who sat opposite to him on the other
side of the House, to come to him.

"Methinks," said Cromwell grimly, looking about him, "this Parliament
is rife for a dissolution--and that this is the time for doing it."

Harrison, impetuous as he was, was startled by this; he might urge
Cromwell to action, and blame his slowness, but when Cromwell was
roused Harrison, like any other, was alarmed.

"Sir," he replied, lowering his voice (for their conversation was being
observed with suspicion), "this work is very great and dangerous,
therefore, seriously consider of it, before you engage in it."

"You say well," replied Cromwell, and lapsed into moody silence again.
Harrison took the seat next him, Lambert being near.

The members, though still outwardly tranquil, hastened the debate, and
in a short while the question for passing the bill was about to be put.

Then Cromwell moved, and, leaning sideways to Harrison, touched him
on the arm and said, "This is the time; I must do it;" and then he
suddenly stood up, taking off his hat, and throwing out his right hand,
he addressed the members with great passion.

"What heart have ye for the public good," he cried--"ye who support
the corrupt interest of presbytery and that of the lawyers, who are
the props of tyranny and oppression? This is a time of rebuke and
chastening, but as the Lord liveth, we will have neither rebuke nor
chastening from such as you!"

The members, swept into silence by the suddenness and violence of his
speech, made no reply; all eyes were fixed on him as he stood on the
floor of the House, his face flushed and his eyes fiery under the
lowering brows.

"What do ye care for but power?" he flung at them, and his voice rang
into the farthest corners of the Hall. "What do you care for but to
perpetuate that power? As for that Act"--he pointed to where it lay
ready to be passed--"you have been forced to it, and I dare affirm
that you never designed to observe it! I say your time has come; the
Lord hath done with you--He has chosen more worthy instruments for
the carrying on of His work--I say He will have no more paltering and
fumbling with traps and toys of the ungodly!"

Here Sir Peter Wentworth got to his feet amid a hum of approbation.

"This is the first time," he declared, red in the face, "that ever I
heard such unbecoming language in Parliament--and it is the more horrid
as it comes from the servant of the Parliament, and a servant whom
Parliament hath so highly trusted--yea, and so highly obliged," he
added, with meaning.

But he could get out no more. Cromwell stepped into the midst of the
House and waved his hand contemptuously.

"Come, come!" he cried. "I will put an end to your prating!"

Then, stamping his feet and clapping on his hat as he saw several rise
in a tumult to answer him, he said in a loud, stern voice, "You are
no Parliament--I say you are no Parliament! I will put an end to your
sitting!"

Then, while several tried to speak together and there was a confusion,
the Lord-General bade the serjeant attending the House open the doors,
which he did.

"Call them in," said Cromwell; "call them in." And Lieutenant-Colonel
Wolseley, with two files of muskets, entered the House and marched up
the floor.

Then Sir Harry Vane, seeing the soldiers, stood up in his place and
protested loudly--

"This is not honest! Yea, it is against morality and common honesty!"

Cromwell turned round and sorted him with his glance from the press.

"Oh, Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane!" he cried. "The Lord deliver me
from Sir Harry Vane!"

Then pointing out another member, he cried, "There sits a drunkard,"
and so railed at several separately, ending, "Are these fit to govern
God's poor people?"

The House was now in absolute disorder and confusion, but the
Lord-General's voice rose above it all.

His angry eye lit on the mace.

"What shall we do with this bauble?" he asked, and added, "There, take
it away!"

Major-General Harrison went up to the Speaker.

"Sir," he said, "seeing things are reduced to this pass, it is no
longer convenient for you to remain here."

The Speaker answered, "Unless you force me, I will not come down."

"Sir," replied Harrison, "I will lend you my hand."

And, so saying, he took hold of him and brought him down.

Then Cromwell turned again to the Members who were all coming from
their places.

"It is you who have forced me to do this!" he cried, with passion, "for
I have sought the Lord day and night that He would rather slay me than
put me on the doing of this work!"

Turning to Lieutenant-General Wolseley, who commanded the muskets, he
ordered him to clear the House, which was done, the Members forlornly
departing under the command of the soldiers, Cromwell sternly watching
the while.

And when the benches were all empty he went to the clerk, who was
blankly and in a bewildered way holding Sir Harry Vane's Bill, and,
snatching it from his hands, put it under his cloak.

Then ordering the doors to be locked, he went back to Whitehall with
Lambert and Harrison. But the day's work was not yet complete; he had
barely reached his headquarters before Lieutenant-General Wolseley came
up to say that the late Parliament's creation, the Council of State,
were sitting as usual in the Painted Chamber.

"Say you so?" replied Cromwell, and he turned back to Whitehall as he
had turned back to Hampton when he heard of Charles' double dealing.

Lambert and Harrison accompanied him, and the three swept into the
Painted Chamber with little ceremony.

John Bradshaw, the late King's judge, was in the chair; he faced the
Lord-General as he had faced the unhappy King, with unshaken dignity
and calm.

Cromwell was now composed; but he eyed the Councillors fiercely as he
walked up the room.

"If you meet here as private persons," he said, "you shall not be
disturbed, but if you meet as a Council of State, this is no place for
you," his harsh voice became ominous. "Since you cannot but know what
has just been done in the House, take notice that the Parliament is
dissolved."

The Latin secretary raised his tired blue eyes with something of
admiration as well as keen interest in their glance, but Bradshaw
replied with unmoved sternness, eyeing Cromwell with a directness as
uncompromising as Cromwell eyed him.

"Sir," he said, "we have heard what you did in the House, and before
many hours all England will hear it. But, sir, you are mistaken to
think that the Parliament is dissolved--for no power under Heaven can
dissolve them but they themselves, therefore take _you_ notice of that."

"Ha, Mr. Bradshaw," returned the Lord-General, "you may talk and talk,
but I say that the Lord has done with you and with these others about
you. I know that you are a person of an upright carriage, who has
notably appeared for God and for the public good, but I say that your
time is over--other means are to be used now, yea, other means!"

"The means of force and violence," replied John Bradshaw calmly, "and
to them we must submit. I do not deny that, but your right we shall
always deny, therefore remember it----"

"You are no longer a Council of State," said Cromwell, "and none shall
any longer give heed to you. Go about your several businesses."

Bradshaw came down from his place.

"And with us goes the Commonwealth," he returned. "What will you put in
place of it?"

"The Lord shall show in His leisure," said Cromwell sternly, and went
from the Painted Chamber with Lambert and Harrison after him.

And so it was over; the Parliament had followed the King; the last
remnant and pretence of a constitution had been swept away, and a
sudden military revolution had placed the army at the head of the
nation, their leader thereby becoming the greatest man in England.

For, the King gone, the Parliament broken, who was there left for any
man to look to save he who had swept away both King and Parliament and
now stamped angrily out of Westminster Hall?

Even Harrison had been taken by surprise; he was enthusiastic, as he
foresaw an uninterrupted reign of God's chosen, those military saints
who were sacred and purified by their fights for the Lord, but he was
also a little bewildered as to the course future events must take.

Lambert merely said, "This is a difficult business and requires careful
handling."

But Cromwell himself was openly exalted and uplifted; his passion of
anger gave way to a passion of spiritual enthusiasm.

"This hath been a call from the Lord!" he cried, as the three walked
back to Whitehall. "Yea, a direct call! Own it, for it hath been
unprojected, and is marvellous! This morning did we know of this thing?
Nay, and now it is done! And this hath been the way the Lord hath dwelt
with us from the first. He hath kept things from our eyes all along so
that we have never seen His dispensations beforehand!"

"Truly," replied Harrison, "He hath marvellously witnessed for us, and
thou hast been as Joshua who scattered the enemies of the Lord at the
waters of Merom, and chased them even into the valley of Mizpeh, and
burnt Hazor with fire."

"The Edomites, the Ammonites, and the Moabites are scattered," said
Lambert, "but who is now to reign in Israel?"

"We whom God hath called," replied Cromwell.

And so they came to the headquarters of the army at Whitehall, the
palace of the late King; and the second revolution was complete.



CHAPTER IV

"THE NEW ORDER"


The rule of the Lord-General and his council of officers, governing
in a form parliamentary, called "the little Parliament" was a failure
complete and absolute.

Soldiers could not do the work of lawyers, nor the veterans of Naseby,
Preston, Dunbar, and Worcester rule England as well as they had
defended her. Such measures as they carried were totally against the
principles and policy of their leader, who passed from rapt enthusiasm
to sad disillusion, and finally to gloomy anger again; the military
saints, chosen of the Lord as they were, and the very cream of the
elect, could not govern England.

In December 1653, after many consultations with his councils, Cromwell,
who hesitated to break up another Parliament by force, persuaded the
officers to hand back their powers to him from whom they had received
them.

The soldiers, though fanatic, narrow, and intolerant, were neither
self-seeking nor unreasonable; they saw that they were unable to govern
the country, and that there was only one man who could undertake the
task that had been too much for them.

Whether he had the courage, the daring, the firmness to seize this
position, to step to the front and take the command so completely,
to take upon himself the burden of rule in the present state of the
country, after so many attempts at government had failed, was yet to be
seen.

He had hitherto shown no personal ambition and no desire to thrust
himself forward, his manner being rather to keep himself in the
background and wait for God to bid him act.

The moment was serious, perilous, even awful; the Members of the last
Parliament and the officers met constantly in prayer; conferences,
meetings between all the able men available, were frequent; the people,
sternly and austerely ruled for the last three years, with the Puritans
triumphant and the Cavaliers utterly silenced and suppressed, waited in
a quietude that concealed an intense excitement.

On Wednesday, the 15th of December, the Lord-General rode from one of
these meetings to his home, now at Hampton Court. He arrived there
bitten with the cold and covered with fine snow. He went straight
to the fire in the room which his family used to dine in, and flung
himself with the weariness of one spent in mind and body into the great
wicker chair with arms and red cushions that he commonly used.

The noble, pleasant room was empty save for Elisabeth, his daughter
(the Claypoles had a suite of apartments at Hampton Palace), and her
youngest child, who was asleep on her knee. He had not noticed her at
first, so quietly was she withdrawn into the shadows, and her low,
pleased exclamation, "My father!" gave him a little start.

"Betty!" he impetuously flung out his hand to her; she softly laid the
sleeping boy on the velvet couch from which she had risen, and, coming
to his side, knelt beside him, and slipped her hand inside his.

He gazed with affectionate pleasure at her charming face, bright and
delicate, sensitive and resolute, lifted to his, the brown, waving
hair, the expressive blue eyes, the mouth a little wistful, the chin a
little proud, the whole infinitely dear and loving.

"What has happened to-day?" she asked gently.

The look of heaviness her greeting had lightened returned to his
countenance; he lifted his head and stared into the mellow flames that
sprang from the great logs between the brass and irons.

"Betty, it hath come," he said; "it is to be laid on me, the burden,
yea, the whole burden. Mine was the responsibility," his rough voice
rose a little. "I put down the King, I broke the Parliament--I set up
the officers who failed (the more blame to me)--and now it is I who
must guide the State."

"Thou?" murmured Elisabeth.

"Who else?" he continued moodily, "who else? It is a call from God and
the people, and no man could ask for more. Yea, I know the Lord hath
called me as He called me ten years ago from St. Ives--this is thy
work--get thou up and do it!"

"Thou--wilt thou be King?" asked Elisabeth, dropping his hand with a
shiver of fear.

"Even so," he replied sombrely; "but not with the name of a thing so
hated shall I be called. Some time ago this came to me as the thing to
do--a flash out of a cloud--then darkness came again; but now it is
before me, very clearly, that I must be the Governor of England."

"It is a high calling and an awful place to hold," said his daughter.

"And I am sick in the body, often and often tired in the soul. Thou
dost know," he added, with a kind of passion, "how very, very willing I
was to retire after Worcester fight; often upon riding the rough ways
in Scotland, often when sick in Ireland, have I dreamt to come back to
a meek, sweet retirement, but it was not to be. God sought me out again
and bid me go forward. And now there is this come upon me. Betty, I
shall soon be fifty-five years old. I feel myself, in many ways, old.
But there is this work to do. And it is for England. Yet how shall
I prevail where these upright and wise ones failed? For they strove
earnestly, yet God would not have them. Will He forsake me also? 'Oh,
that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest!'
Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness. I would
hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest!"

And his head drooped on his breast as if he was discouraged.

Elizabeth took his inert hand again between her fresh, warm palms.

"Why should you fear a cold success in this great venture?" she asked.
"Truly it is a great and awful thing to take a king's place, but shall
not the Lord still support you as hitherto, and bless you with notable
victories?"

Cromwell, still staring into the fire, answered slowly.

"I have some sparks of the light of His countenance, which keeps me
alive--yet I see ahead difficulties greater than any I have yet met.
What are charges in the field compared to factions in the State? I say
the saints failed, and shall not I fail? Will not men say to me, as
the Hebrew said to Moses--'Who made thee a Prince and a judge over us.
Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?"

Elisabeth shuddered.

"Ay, I killed the Egyptian," continued Cromwell, glooming, "but there
are many more out of Egypt ready to take his place, ready to confound
us, yea, there are plenty of diabolic persons abroad, ready to set
snares for the godly, even the devil and all his angels are lying in
wait to thwart this England which the Lord hath elected for His own!"

"But thou canst meet and conquer them, if it be in the power of any man
to do so," returned Elisabeth simply. "Again I say it is a high and
fearful thing that thou must undertake, but I know that in all things
thou wilt walk according to the Gospel."

The Lord-General turned to look at her as she knelt beside him in her
rosy gown with the firelight glowing over her, her faced upturned, and
her hands clasped on the arm of his chair--a sweet comforter truly, in
her seriousness and loving encouragement, in her eager belief in him
and rapt piety.

"That is not how many will speak of me, Betty," he said, with a sad
tenderness. "Rather will they call me usurper and traitor, and say that
I have put down others for carnal ambition. Many hard and contemptuous
things will be said of me, Betty."

"I know," she answered bravely, "but need _we_ care?"

As she spoke, a third came down the shadowy room, and joined
them--Elisabeth Cromwell.

The Lord-General rose and went up to her.

"You are tired!" she cried, noting that before all, and she caught his
arms and peered up into his face tenderly through the dim light.

"Mother," said Mrs. Claypole, rising from beside the empty chair--"the
new orders are decided upon to-day----"

"Ah!" cried Cromwell's wife, "and thou?"

"My dear, my best," he said, "we must live at Whitehall now----"

"The king's palace?" she exclaimed, recoiling a little.

"Yea," he answered gently, "for I am called to be the new Governor of
this country."

"Why, that is a fearful thing!" she said, with a half-terrified laugh.
"Thou wilt never more be safe, nor I at peace!"

She let go her hold on his sleeves and moved to the fire.

"I was happier before it all began," she said abruptly; "this startles
me." She gave again that piteous laugh, which was more like a sob. "I
am too old to learn to be a Prince's lady," she said.

And she glanced in the mirror above the mantelpiece, looking at her
grey hair and meek face.

"I would sooner not put this up in Whitehall for all the world to gape
at!" she said.

"Ah, mother!" cried Betty Claypole, and embraced her and kissed her
hand.

"Did you not expect this?" asked the Lord-General mournfully. "I did
so--because," he added, with great simplicity, "I saw no other fitted
for the place."

"There is no other" said his daughter. "He is one and only--is it not
so, mother? And thou art one and only, too, dear, and wilt shine in
Whitehall far higher than the French Queen."

The Lord-General turned with a little smile to both of them.

"By now you should be used to living in a palace," he said.

"What will they say of us?" asked Elisabeth Cromwell, still troubled.
"They will say that we have put ourselves up in the King's place."

"There is no king," interrupted Cromwell firmly. "And as for the place
I undertake to fill, the whole people have called me to it, yea, the
whole people."

He repeated this statement as if to persuade and convince himself; he
well knew that his authority came from a very few of the people, mainly
from the army leaders, and that his election was not the result of a
general demand on the part of the nation; only the minority had hailed
him, the majority remained as always, passive, almost indifferent--or
fiercely hostile.

He might be going to rule for the people's sake, purely, but he was not
going to rule by their wish. He felt this a weakness in his case and
strove to cover it, even to deceive himself in it; a general election,
a genuine appeal to the country, might have resulted in bringing in
the second Charles Stewart, and for the sake of the cause he had not
dared risk it. Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, who in many ways represented
the average Englishman, had pressed Cromwell to call in Charles after
the crisis of a year ago, and no one knew better than the Lord-General
that the three islands seethed with royalist plots and the restless
intrigues of various fanatical sects. No one knew better than he,
either, what a target for hatred and rage he would be, what undying
fury he would arouse, how many and implacable his enemies would become.

His call might be from God, it certainly was not from the people of
England.

Elisabeth Claypole knew something of all this, and to her there
was something piteous in the strong man's attempt to belittle his
difficulties and disguise the narrow basis on which his authority
rested.

Elisabeth Cromwell broke the thoughtful silence.

"And thou wilt be Governor of England!" she said. "Scarcely can I
believe it."

She voiced the incredulity of many; yet the thing was done.

On the following Friday, His Excellency the Lord-General of the Forces
became His Highness the Lord-Protector of England, and was installed in
that office with all ancient ceremonial, formerly used by kings, and
kings alone.

There was an installation in the Chancery Court, Westminster Hall, His
Highness appearing in a richer dress than he had ever worn before, even
at his son's wedding--rich velvet, all black, with a band of gold round
his hat, a fine sword, and sword band.

So he went in procession from Whitehall and back again, attended by
the Lord Mayor, the judges, and other dignitaries, in robe of state,
outriders, running footmen, guards of soldiers, and the usual shouting
crowd, half-awed, half-jeering, and wholly curious, some wishing
confusion to red-nosed Noll and some thanking the Lord that He had sent
a gracious saint to reign over them.

The sergeants with their maces, the heralds in gold and scarlet,
proclaimed, at Old Exchange, at Palace Yard, and in other places,
Oliver Cromwell Lord-Protector, with the same dignity, and ceremony,
and shouting as Charles Stewart had been proclaimed King. So a change
so tremendous was accomplished with such little outward difference.

The new ruler had given his oath of fidelity to the new Constitution
(an instrument drawn up in four days by the officers, with Lambert at
their head) and had received the great seal and sword of State. By the
afternoon all was over, and the man who little more than ten years
ago had been a gentleman farmer, with no experience save that of the
routine of a country estate, with no more knowledge of God and man than
he could learn from his one Book, with no power, influence, or wealth
at all, was now sole ruler, dictator, and symbol of one of the greatest
nations in Europe and foremost champion of the Reformed Religion....

Elisabeth Claypole (Lady Elisabeth now) slept that next spring in
Whitehall; the first night she lay on a bed with blue satin curtains
brought by Henriette Marie from France, and not sold with the King's
other effects by reason of the fine workmanship of the needlework on
them.

A mirror once used by the Queen was in the room too, her fleurs-de-lis
were embroidered in the hangings, and the whole chamber was still
redolent of the perfumes she had kept in the caskets and cupboards.
Elisabeth, who had less than any of her family the stern belief in
fatalism, which was the central doctrine of their austere and heroic
creed, and less blind reliance on the justice of the Puritan cause,
felt a faint horror and a regretful remorse at lying among these
splendours when the woman to whom they had belonged (to whom they
still belonged, Elisabeth thought) dwelt in poverty and loneliness,
unfortunate as Queen and wife.

That first night she dreamt dismal things, and woke up in the dark,
oppressed with confused remembrances of the excitement of the day.

And with other remembrances, more awful; often had she heard an account
of the execution of the King and listened with horrified and reluctant
ears.

Now, as she sat up in the great bed, shivering in the winter night, she
pictured, all too clearly, the late King as he had been described to
her--the slender figure in the pale blue silk vest, with the George on
the breast, and the hair gathered up under a white satin cap.

She thought that she saw him glimmer across the dark, looking down at
his feet--he wore the wide shoes with silk roses, which had gone out of
fashion since his death--and then at her, smiling bitterly.

He came, without moving his limbs, gliding to the bed, passed it, rose
up a man's height from the floor, and disappeared in a shaft of shaking
light.

"We are intruders here!" said Elisabeth, cold to the heart. She got
out of bed (her husband was still asleep; she could hear his even
breathing) and stood shivering in the keen air.

A chill like a presage of death crept through her veins; the whole
place seemed to exhale an air of hate and misery.

So strong was this feeling that she fumbled for a gown in the dark, and
stole to the next chamber to look at her infant son.

The moonlight was in his room, and she saw him sleeping peacefully
beside his nurse. Elisabeth crept back, dreading lest she should
conjure up another awful image of the late King.

"I am not going to be happy here," she kept saying to herself. "I am
not going to be happy here."

The next day she did not leave her bed, and before long it was known
that the Protector's favourite daughter was stricken with a lingering,
nameless illness.



CHAPTER V

HIS HIGHNESS


"Was England ever in a better way?" demanded the Lord-Protector. "Even
under Elisabeth of famous memory (for so we may truly call her) was
this country more quiet at home, more respected abroad? Nay, there is
no malignant in the land can say it----"

"Surely Your Highness hath no need to make any defence to us," said
the Lord Lambert, one of his military council. Some number of them
and other dignitaries were gathered in his apartment at Whitehall,
listening to him.

His Highness, who had hitherto been pacing restlessly up and down the
room, here came to a pause before the table at which the officers and
councillors sat.

"I have need to defend myself before all men," he exclaimed vehemently,
"for on every hand am I decried and blamed! I speak not of plots
against my life and such little matters--the work of a few diabolic
persons in the pay of Charles Stewart--but of the great discontent
of the Prelatists, of the rage of the Papists, of the intolerance of
all--yea, even of the sharpness and bitterness of many of God's people
who go about saying that the ways of Zion are filled with money, that
their gold is dim, and that there is a sharp wind abroad, but not to
cleanse the land."

None of the officers offering to speak, Cromwell continued, still in an
impassioned manner--

"Whoever speaks so is wrong! God put me here. My authority is from
Him--I will come down for none of them."

He went to the window embrasure and stood there, with his back to the
light, his hat pulled over his brows, his arms folded on his breast,
gazing at his councillors and friends.

The Protectorship had lasted over a year, and Cromwell was now as
absolute as ever any Stewart had dared to be.

His first Parliament had gone the way of the last of King Charles'; the
members presuming to question the Instrument by which Cromwell had been
elected, His Highness had again resorted to the file of soldiers with
loaded snaphances, and, gathering the expelled members in the Painted
Chamber, had made them swear fealty to the Instrument and to himself
before he permitted them to return to their places.

The immovable Bradshaw, Sir Arthur Haselrig, one of the famous five
members, and some others refused the oath; the rest took it and went
back.

But so impossible was it to combine a military autocracy with the
ancient methods of civil government, so impossible for soldiers and
lawyers to work together, that the Parliament again displeased His
Highness by revising the Instrument into a constitution which His
Highness could not accept.

On the earliest opportunity he dismissed them, and had since ruled
entirely on his own authority with such help as he might get from the
Council of officers.

So when all the ancient landmarks had been carried away, the power
of the sword remained standing and the army and their general ruled
England; it was a strange ending to the long, earnest, and bloody
struggle, an ending neither Pym nor Hampden had ever foreseen, nor
Cromwell himself, when the Parliament he was afterwards to break had
sent him down to Cambridge to raise a troop for the defiance of the
King.

In ruling without a Parliament he was doing what Strafford and Charles
had perished for attempting, in keeping a huge standing army (it was
now twice the number named in the Instrument) he was doing what no king
of England had been permitted to do; he had, in fact, the power at
which Charles had aimed, and he had what Charles had never been able
to attain--the armed force to maintain him in that power.

When he dealt with the Parliament he had used the methods Strafford
would have used had he dared, and he was ruling now with the absolutism
which Strafford had always passionately hoped would one day belong to
his master.

But what had not been possible to a descendant of many kings, with all
tradition behind him, had been achieved easily enough by a soldier
produced by a revolution, who had nothing to rely on but the gifts
within himself.

Cromwell was too clear-sighted not to discern the illogical position
he was occupying, but it did not disturb him, nor did he find it very
wonderful; his fatalism (which his enemies termed opportunism) accepted
without question all that the Lord should be pleased to send; his
enthusiasm for the cause of liberty disguised, even from himself, the
arbitrary nature of his authority, and the victorious soldier, who had
fought God's battles from Naseby to Worcester, was not to be frightened
from the position he held by any malignant talk of his unlawful right.
Nor was the wise patriot and ardent statesman to be argued from the
point of vantage from whence he could do the best for England.

But the plots, agitations, upheavals, intolerances, and violences about
him, even among his own one-time friends (some of whom, including the
lofty-minded Vane, were in the Tower), did shake and trouble him.
These, more than anything, thwarted him in his honest and strenuous
attempt to set up an orderly government on the ruins left by the
violence of war and the wreckage of social upheaval.

"I will not have intolerance!" he broke out now, suddenly at his
Council. "I say I will not have it--let every man who is not a
Prelatist or a Papist--who doth not preach licentious doctrines in the
name of Christ--let him worship in peace!"

"In this way many damnable heresies will creep into the land," answered
one of the officers.

"I would rather," cried His Highness, "permit Mahometanism in the land
than have one of God's people persecuted!"

His Council remained silent; not one of these men agreed with him, and
it was a notable tribute to the respect and affection they had for him
that none of them raised a voice in dissent.

He felt, however, their opposition, as indeed he felt the opposition of
the entire nation to this dearest of his ideals--toleration.

It seemed as if men never would agree to leave their neighbour in peace
on the question of religious belief; and the extraordinary bitterness
of the feeling between the various sects was more and more vexing to
Cromwell, who had always held tolerance as a matter of principle, and
now, as he advanced more and more in greatness and power, recognised
it as being a necessary element of wise government at home and useful
alliances abroad.

"God," he continued, driving home his point with a certain labour, as
if he struggled to put into words what no words would convey, "hath
elected England--He hath made us the instruments of some work of His.
He wishes us to go forward--to fight heresies and Antichrist--but also
He wisheth us to remain united in brotherly love, not to be too nice
and strict about the religion of the man next us, so long as he be
working clearly in due fear of Him--were we not all kinds in the army?
Did any fight the worse for being an Anabaptist? Nay, I do not think
so. God hath need of all of us who love Him."

General Lambert answered--

"This is very well here, among sober men, but how shall Your Highness
get such a doctrine accepted among the general?"

"Yea," said the Lord-Protector gloomily. "Truly the fools trouble me
more than the knaves--most of all do the lukewarm vex me, for nought
will bring them to any reason--give me a Saul sooner than a Gallio!"

"Sir," replied one of the officers, "there are Sauls, and plenty too,
and maybe the Lord calleth us to combat these sooner than to smooth
over heresies and live peaceably with those who are little better than
the heathen and the infidel."

Cromwell groaned.

"There is much to do," he answered. "I say there is much to do--yea,
serious and mighty things; and shall we stop on the way to argue upon
trivial matters?"

"Trivial matters!" echoed several voices at once.

The Lord-Protector flashed upon them--

"Yea, so I say! Study how a man may serve the State, not how he may be
persuaded from his proper beliefs--this is enough for any man. 'With
my whole heart have I sought Thee--O let me not go wrong out of Thy
commandments!'--he who can say that from his heart, leave him in peace.
Even these poor people the Quakers--what harm is there in them that
they should be so roughly used? What hath God said?--'I have loved thee
with an everlasting love--with loving kindness have I drawn thee!'
Shall we, too, not strive for a little of this kindness? What have we
not had to contend with of late? A Parliament that was but a clog and
a hindrance, rebellions such as that at Salisbury, godly men such as
Major-General Harrison led astray, rising of Anabaptists--all manner of
trouble and confusion--and shall we add to it by persecuting those who
differ from us in small matters of doctrine?"

The Council remained silent; the Keepers of the Great Seal glanced
at one another. These men were not in dread of His Highness as his
Parliament had been; they were not his creation to be scattered at his
will--nay, he was rather their creation--yet they knew that when it
came to a struggle he always prevailed, gently or roughly, directly
or indirectly, and they were aware of his whirlwind resolutions and
believed that if occasion arose they, too, might be smitten and cast
aside, even though they were the very foundations on which his power
stood.

The Protector, eyeing them keenly, was silent too.

The Master of the Rolls, Lenthall (the Speaker whom Harrison had
helped from the chair when Cromwell had dismissed the remnant of
Charles' last Parliament), propping his grim face on his thin hand,
asked His Highness what he was discontented with.

"Surely," he said, with some austerity, "the work of Christ is being
accomplished in England? Abroad we have good respect--I think General
Blake hath made the name of English respected on the seas--all Europe
hath recognized this Commonwealth. Why is Your Highness so vexed and
troubled?"

He spoke with some sternness, for he believed, in common with many of
his colleagues, that the Protector aimed at an even greater personal
power, and to make himself king in name as he was in fact--an ambition
which was intensely displeasing to the army and to their leaders,
nearly all of whom were staunch Republicans.

"I am vexed and troubled because there is so much confusion and
littleness at home," replied Cromwell. "There is more lamenting over
the putting down of cock-fighting, play-acting, and horse-racing,
gambling, and such lewd sports than ever I heard over the loss of any
good thing. There are plots and confusions manifold, and the Lord hath
veiled the future from me, therefore I am vexed and troubled. Yet," he
added, with a change of voice and a bright flash in his eyes, "I am
not discouraged nor disheartened--ye must not so misread me--'in the
daytime also He led them with a cloud, and in the night with a pillar
of fire'--so it hath always been with me--do not think that that hath
ever failed me."

No man had any speech with which to answer him, and the little assembly
broke up with the usual courtesies. Only Lambert said as he was
leaving: "'He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in
all thy ways.'"

When they had all gone His Highness went to the table where they had
been sitting, and sat down in his great chair of honour and dropped his
head on his breast.

Many and great thoughts oppressed him; the melancholy that was such
a close companion to his enthusiasms overcame him. He saw himself
old, weary, faced with an impossible situation, with unsurmountable
difficulties.

For some while he sat so, his head sinking lower, his hands clasped on
his knees; then he was aroused by the gentle opening of the door, and
Elisabeth Claypole came softly into the Council Chamber.

"Forgive me," she said. "I did see that the others had gone, and,
knowing that you must be alone, I feared you had fallen into sad
thoughts." She approached him. "It is not well, my father--nay, it is
not well--that you should sit alone with melancholy thoughts."

She sank into the chair that the stern Lambert had just left; the dark
wood and leather now framed a very different picture from that the
austere soldier had made.

Long ill-health, which physicians could not cure, and intervals
of lingering illness, which physicians could not ease, had robbed
Elisabeth Claypole of much of her vivacity and much of her fresh
comeliness, but she still remained, despite her languor, her paleness,
a certain sadness caused by constant pain, a creature choice and rare,
and, despite all, cheerful and courageous. As the Lord-Protector lifted
his tired eyes to gaze at her dear face he saw in her youthful features
a sudden startling likeness to his mother, who had died, still valiant
and serene, a few months after she had moved into the King's palace.

This curious resemblance between one dead, so full of years, and one
young and living gave him a feeling of horrid presage; he rose abruptly.

"Betty, I wish you would get well," he said.

She smiled faintly.

"That is what Bridget says," she answered (Bridget Ireton was Bridget
Fleetwood now, the wife of one of her father's most honoured generals.
Mary and Frances were still to wed, and great matches were foretold
for them); "but you must not think so much of me--I shall soon be well
enough."

Her father gazed at her, yearning over that lost brightness which he
had condemned once as evidence of a carnal mind; her grey gown, her
modest laces, her smooth ringlets--all were plain enough now; though
her father had put on great state and lived almost with the ceremonial
of a king, the Lady Elisabeth had no longer any heart for pretty
vanities.

"Methinks," said Cromwell bluntly, "thou art not happy when thou art at
Whitehall."

"I love Hampton better," she replied evasively.

It was not difficult for him to divine what her thoughts were--what
they always had been.

"Thou dost think thy father liveth in another man's house by living in
the King's palace," he said, with whimsical tenderness.

"No, no," she answered, with an effort; "but it remindeth me of old,
unhappy times--of all the blood that was shed--of the King himself
(poor, wretched King)----"

Cromwell interrupted vehemently.

"He did not die for nothing, neither he nor the others--that judgment
on the tyrant was the fruit and crown of all our efforts and prepared
the way for such of Christ's work as we have been able to do since.
Betty"--he turned to his daughter with the same half-anxious,
half-proud air of defence with which he had turned to his Council a
little before--"is not this country better at home and abroad than it
was under the late King?"

"All bear witness to that," she replied quickly; "and that is the
reason why you should be more uprised in spirits, sir."

"I have much to overcome," he answered.

"What hath the Lord said?" rejoined the Lady Elisabeth--"'With him that
overcometh will I share My throne.'"

"Dear one, thy rebuke is well," answered His Highness gently, "and do
not doubt that I shall go forward to the end. But at present there are
some things hard to bear--mostly the estrangement from some Christians
of my acquaintance. I did never think to be parted from Major-General
Harrison and John Bradshaw, those godly men. Albeit I have tried my
best to remain with them, and I hope yet to win Major-General Harrison."

"He is hard, father--he is hard and fierce," replied Elisabeth
Claypole. "He was cruel to many poor men--I have heard notable talk of
it----"

"Thou art too pitiful," said Cromwell, "and judge as a woman. There
is no man among us--not thy brother Henry, not Lambert, nor Dishowe,
nor my son Fleetwood, a finer soldier or a truer Christian than Thomas
Harrison."

"I do not like him," insisted the Lady Elisabeth, with a sparkle of
her former spirit. "Methinks he smells of his father's trade, and
it is credibly believed that he hath plotted against you with the
Anabaptists--Richard told me as much."

"As to that I will demand an answer of these charges from him,"
returned Cromwell gloomily. "Believe me that I love him."

For answer and comfort she rose and went up to him; as she took him
lovingly by the upper arm she started. She felt something hard beneath
the rich black velvet which he wore.

"You have armour on!" she murmured.

"Since young Major Gerrard set the precedent there have been many ready
to follow his example," replied His Highness. "And in this way I would
not die--nay, I would not die shot like a beast."

"O Christ, preserve us all!" cried Lady Elisabeth, and fell weeping
over the heart that her father had to guard with a steel corselet from
the assassin's bullet or knife.

He put his arm round her as if she had been a child (so, indeed, she
still seemed to him); and the thoughts of both went back to the happy
home in St. Ives, before they had known sickness or death among them,
when she had not gone in silk nor he in secret armour, when they had
not known the perils of great positions nor the magnificence of kings'
palaces.



CHAPTER VI

MAJOR-GENERAL HARRISON


Major-General Harrison, in grim retirement, sternly rejected the
Lord-Protector's half-wistful attempts to win him, and even refused to
come to Whitehall as a friend and dine or sup with the Cromwell family.

His Highness, however piqued or hurt he might be in secret, refused to
allow any persecution of his old comrade-in-arms, though Harrison was
becoming daily more involved with the Anabaptists and that peculiar
section of enthusiasts who were styled Fifth-Monarchy Men, because they
believed that the four kingdoms foretold by St. John had come to pass,
and that the kingdom now approaching was the fifth, that of Christ.

His Highness was lenient with them as with other fanatics: it was in
his nature to be tolerant and to prefer any form of enthusiasm to
lukewarmness. He was gentle with the Quakers, and listened patiently
to George Fox's mystic denunciations of him. "I am sure that thou and
I should be good friends did we but know each other," had been his
parting words. He interceded, though vainly, for the poor, half-crazed
Naylor, who had allowed his followers to salute him as the Messiah and
had been sentenced by Parliament to brandings, whippings, and pillories
that meant a hideous death.

But though the Lord-Protector was merciful he was also strong, as had
been abundantly proved.

When fanaticism became insubordination and the cause of religious
liberty cloaked mutiny and revolt, when, in brief, things mystic and
intangible interfered with things very practical and tangible, His
Highness struck, once and for ever.

He raised no objection to men finding in the pages of the Revelations a
doctrine comfortable to themselves; but if they used such doctrines as
a pretext for rebellion, he knew how to hold them down with a firm hand.

Therefore, though he argued sweetly and meekly with Thomas Harrison, he
had that redoubtable saint closely under his observation, as he also
watched Harry Vane and Bradshaw and Haselrig and other of his one-time
friends.

His Highness was busy in these days, full of high business with France
and Spain and the Netherlands as well as with this business of keeping
order at home; for Oliver Cromwell, who had always been a great man,
was now a great Prince, and England had become of more importance in
Europe than she had been since the royal Elisabeth or the royal Harry V.

It was the Lord's doing, said His Highness, the Lord who had elected
the English as His chosen people. A league of the Protestant nations
in one alliance was foremost of the Lord-Protector's deeply cherished
schemes; at present it seemed far from consummation: more practical
matters occupied His Highness. With Blake on the seas and himself at
home, England was powerful and vigorous; outwardly she was serene
as she was glorious, but none knew better than Cromwell himself how
beneath this serenity raged faction, discontent, and confusion, and how
uncertain the tenure of this glory was--merely the tenure of his own
life.

Soon after a certain complicated and perilous plot against that life
had been discovered and crushed, Cromwell received, among other news
equally disturbing (for troubles did not lack in England this turbulent
spring), an account, well attested, of Major-General Harrison's
treasonous dealings with the Fifth-Monarchy Men and of a widespread
plot to seduce the army from its allegiance.

An Anabaptist preacher had held forth boldly. "Wilt thou have Christ or
Cromwell?" he had asked. In daring and in defiance these enthusiasts
were getting beyond all common prudence.

His Highness sent for Major-General Harrison, not in the terms of
friendship now, but as a Prince summoning a subject.

Major-General Harrison came, grimly but serenely, and was ushered
through all the state the Protector kept, for, though simple with his
family and friends, to the outer world he held as much show as any
monarch, into the presence of His Highness, who waited him in a very
rich chamber that still contained some of the late King's pictures and
hangings and carpets.

The Lord-Protector was standing facing the door. He looked less than
his years, and his expression and pose were both of extraordinary
vigour; he wore brown velvet gallooned with gold and a great falling
collar of lace; his hair was now as grey as Charles' when he was
brought prisoner to Hampton Court; but his mournful, resolute face
showed no sign of age or feebleness.

Thomas Harrison was unbooted, for he had come by water; his attire was
the very extreme of severe simplicity, and his dark countenance was
pale and stern.

He took off his high-crowned hat as he came into the Protector's
presence and flung it, with his cloak, across a chair; he made no
reverence and eyed His Highness with calm hostility.

This cold look from one who had been his ancient friend, who had shared
with him so many hopes, enthusiasms, toils, and victories, smote the
Protector to the heart. He had been prepared for this enmity; but now
that he was actually in the presence of his former companion-at-arms,
the sight of the figure he had so often seen foremost in the field of
battle, fighting for the Lord, and the face which he had seen so often
fired by an exaltation kindred to his own, overwhelmed him with a
tender sadness and the tears sprang into his eyes.

"Thomas Harrison," he cried, "I did not think that we should meet thus!"

"Nor I," replied the other sombrely. "Sir, have your say with me and
let me go--for I have nobler work to do than a vain waiting on men in
palaces."

His Highness slightly flushed.

"I see what rankles in thy mind," he replied. "Yet I did think that,
whatever the general might say, a man such as thou wouldst have
believed the best, not the worst. Nay," he added more warmly, "why
shouldst thou think so meanly of me? Looking into thy own heart, thou
knowest thy motives and principles pure--hast thou not the generosity
to credit that I might look into my heart and say the same?"

Major-General Harrison gazed at him unmoved.

"Wherefore this defence?" he asked. "I have accused you of nothing."

"Not in words," replied the Lord-Protector, "but by thy whole conduct
and manner."

"Neither need trouble thee," said the soldier calmly, speaking with
more mildness and adopting the form of speech both more respectful and
more affectionate, "since thou needst not see me save by thy own wish."

"It was needful that I should see thee," returned His Highness, "it was
very needful. Hard things are said of thee--yea, difficult and curious
things."

He walked about the room, looking at the floor, his arms folded behind
him, then stopped before Harrison, who remained a few paces from the
door standing by the chair on which were his hat and cloak.

"Thou hast meddled with Anabaptists and these mistaken people called
Fifth-Monarchy Men," he said abruptly.

A grim smile flashed over Harrison's face.

"Art thou become a persecutor and a watcher over men's consciences and
a spy on their actions?" he asked.

"Nay," replied His Highness, grimly too, "thou knowest well enough if
I am tolerant or no, Thomas Harrison; thou knowest me very well, even
to the roots of my heart. But now I am Governor of England, and over
England I shall watch."

"Thou art," said the undaunted Republican, "a tyrant."

"I am a ruler by charter of God and the People," said Cromwell. "It is
well known in this nation and in all the world"--he lifted his head
with great dignity--"whether I am a tyrant or no. But I will admit this
much, I have as much power and authority as many a bad king. Take that
along with thee."

"I take along with me," returned Harrison, "that thou art a tyrant;
and though it hath pleased God, in His mysterious decrees, to place
thee where thou art, I know that He hath done it to bring a further
rebuke and chastening upon us before the coming of His kingdom and for
thy destruction. There is a wind abroad over the land, but one which
neither purifies nor cools--the presence of God is not with thee nor
with those under thee."

"This is hardly said," answered the Lord-Protector sadly. "Ah, thou
hast gone so far with me--canst thou not go a little further? Together
we fought, together we judged that wicked man, Charles Stewart----"

Harrison interrupted.

"Then thou wast acting as God directed--but lately thou hast acted
as if a bad angel possessed thee. The true saints who fought with
thee then could not fight with thee now, Lord Cromwell. A poor few we
are--nay, a pitiful remnant, but we believe that before long it will be
made known from Heaven that we are right, although it hath seemed good
to Him to suffer this turn to come upon us--so that we are a forsaken
few."

"Nay, not forsaken!" cried His Highness, much agitated. "Is it not for
thee, and such as thee, that this Government exists?"

"I know not," replied Harrison coldly. "Methought that it existed for
itself, as all governments do."

"Truly" cried the Lord-Protector, with rising anger, "they who call
thee hard have reason--nay, thou art more, thou art unjust."

"Unjust!" repeated Harrison, with more emotion than he had so far
shown. "Is thy memory so feeble or thy heart so false as not to recall
the old days, the bright morning of our hopes and triumphs?"

He came a step nearer, holding out his hands and speaking vehemently.

"We rejoiced in slaying the enemies of the Lord; with many tears
and prayers and strivings we sought assurance of the Lord's will
and brought the tyrant to judgment. Thou and I put our names to his
death-warrant; thou and I will answer together for that deed before the
Heavenly Throne, and I can say before Him who searcheth all hearts, I
did this thing thinking His hand was in it, and that the land could
only be cleansed from blood by the blood of him who first shed blood.
But thou, what canst thou say?--I slew this man that I might climb into
his place, succeed to his power, sleep in his rich bed, have carnal
honours for my children, and a high name for myself! Oh, Oliver, thou
canst say nothing else!"

"Before Him who made me a Joshua over this Israel I need no defence,"
answered His Highness simply. "He knoweth my poor heart and what He put
therein--and how this miserable flesh, with many stumbles, tried to do
His will. I am not afraid of my God. Leave Him to judge me and return
to thy ancient faithfulness to me."

"Thou wert," said Harrison, "as the apple of mine eye, but now I loathe
thee. Thou hast turned aside, and thou shalt not tempt me to follow
thee, even if thou flatterest me, saying, 'Come and sit on my right
hand and share my power.'"

The Lord-Protector took a sharp turn about the room.

"Thou art deluded, I plainly see," he said; "but it cannot be allowed
that thou shouldst run into these excursions, though I have given thee
a great latitude--I say that it cannot be allowed. I have with a great
deal of patience suffered thee to sally out, but I perceive thou art
misled, yea, and rebellious--surely we will have no rebellion."

"Do what you will with me," said Harrison calmly. "I will give my
little poor testimony to the truth as I know it. Maybe I am a little
mistaken, but I act according to my understanding, desiring to make the
revealed Word of God in His Holy Scriptures my guide."

"Thou art mistaken," replied Cromwell gloomily. "Beware of a hard heart
and an obdurate spirit. And beware of these Fifth-Monarchy Men. They
plot against the Commonwealth--they plot against my life."

"You believe that of me?" asked Harrison sharply.

"Why not?" returned His Highness scornfully. "Thou hast put thy hand to
the removal of one tyrant and may willingly desire to remove another."

"What I did against Charles Stewart was not done in a corner," said the
Republican calmly, "nor should I act in a hidden way against you or
against anyone."

"Nay," said Cromwell impulsively, "I believe it. Forgive me. But thou
art in these Fifth-Monarchy plots."

"We do not plot," returned Harrison, "nor intrigue, whatever may be
noised of us."

"Thou mayst put what name thou wilt to it, Major-General Harrison,"
said His Highness; "but it is a known fact that thou seekest to disturb
the Government and seduce the army."

"I neither own the Government nor molest it. But wherefore these words?
I do not seek to fly or in any way to save myself. Sir, I am in your
power, both I and those poor hearts, those few redcoats who still hold
the pure doctrine."

"Thou knowest," replied the Lord-Protector hastily, and with evident
emotion, "that I wish to be at peace with all men--even with the
malignants."

"Yea!" cried Thomas Harrison, with a flame of anger in his dark eyes,
"you have been very ready to make peace with Bael--to this has your
tolerance led you!"

"I would that thou hadst a little more tolerance," was the mild reply.

"These are vain words," said the soldier impatiently. "You and I have
parted company long since. Our ways lie differently now. Tell me what
you will of me and let this end."

Oliver Cromwell looked at him fully and mournfully, then sighed.

"If thou wilt recognise the Government thou mayst live in peace for me."

Thomas Harrison replied in a tone serene and unmoved--

"I will not; come what may, I will not."

The Lord-Protector straightened his figure (which drooped a little in
the shoulders of late), and then the blood slowly overspread his face.

"I shall not take this lightly," he said; "for my own dignity I may not
take it lightly--I am the Governor of England. I have some authority."

"The brief carnal power of a thing of clay," replied Harrison, with an
exalted smile. "Wherefore should I seek to please thee, who in a few
years will be gone from this scene, leaving behind thy power and thy
splendour? I listen to the voice of Him before whom thou and all the
nations of the earth are less than a drop of water in the bucket; my
thoughts are fixed, not on this dusty sojourn here, but on those azure
eternities which God giveth to His servants. Therefore I will not obey
thee in this matter, for my conscience is against it."

The Lord-Protector was silent a moment, then he spoke in a tone from
which all friendliness and pleading had gone.

"Then if you will not recognize the Government, you must cease to serve
it. I shall ask for your commission."

Major-General Harrison gently unfastened his sword thread and laid the
plain weapon and the plain belt on a little table which stood near the
Protector.

"There is my sword," he said, "which hath done some poor little
service. Take it and let it rust."

Cromwell remembered Marston Moor, Naseby, Basing, Oxford, many warm
acts of friendship, many mutual prayers--all the old laborious,
hopeful, triumphant days which they had shared.

He said nothing; his hand went out as if yearningly and lovingly
towards the weapon which he had so often seen red with the newly
smitten blood of God's enemies.

He still did not speak, and his silence was stern.

Thomas Harrison took up his hat and cloak, and with a courteous but
cold salute turned to take his leave.

His Highness turned to watch him and suddenly spoke, even as the other
had his hand on the door.

"Thomas Harrison, it is very fitting that I make some defence to you.
You have known me very well, and you believe hard, diabolic things of
me. I would make some answer to this. I may bear the unkind thoughts of
mine enemies, but I would be relieved of the ill-opinion of those who
were once my friends."

Harrison paused, and then turned with his back to the door, still
unmoved and hostile, but attentive, as if compelled to that amount of
respect by the rough, impassioned voice and fervent tones of the man
for whom he would have given his life a few years ago. As he listened
to his one-time beloved General, something of the old affection touched
him, though faintly; he waited.

"You accuse me of base ambition," said His Highness, lifting his
head--his face had a look of a lion, mournful and infinitely
strong--"but that failing I never had. You accuse me of grasping at
the King's power, but that I never wanted. A man was needed--England,
I say, had need of a man--but none came. Any of you could have come
forward to take this place I hold--this place of no peace, little
sleep, and endless labour--any of you! But you were not called, or you
did not heed the call, you stepped aside--and England waited. I know
not if you lacked courage, or if your conscience called you different
ways--but none offered. And I, on in years and something broken by the
wars, besought the Lord not to put this upon me--yet He did. And I did
not shirk it. I obeyed Him as I did when I left London to form a troop
in Cambridge that time the King did raise his standard against the
people. Each time the Lord's breath was through me, as wind is through
a hollow reed, and by Him I could do a little. That is my only merit.
And England is something now--the home of His chosen. You were nice,
you hesitated, you made punctilios--but I heard the call and saw the
light, as oft in the battalion, and I obeyed. I have tried many ways of
government, each as it comes to my hand. What my position truly is I
know not--I am a parish constable set to keep the peace. Yet here I be,
by God's will, and here I do my work. You may judge me with charity,
Thomas Harrison, as one upon whom a very heavy burden hath been laid."

He paused, and his head drooped.

"There is no more to say," he added, and his rough voice had fallen
lower. "Farewell--'God watch between me and thee when we are absent
from one and another.'"

"Amen," said Thomas Harrison.

And so they parted.

The Lord-Protector stood lonely in the rich chamber, which had been
furnished by the dead King and the banished Queen.

He went to the window and looked on the spring fairness of the garden,
on the warm glitter of the river and the sails going down to the sea.

His greatness oppressed him in that moment, and he was home-sick for
the past and the uneventful days of his youth.



CHAPTER VII

LADY NEWCASTLE


Through the mingled splendour and distress, brightness and confusion
of these years of the Lord-Protector's ruling in England, while the
glory of England rose to a perilous height (her renown glittered as the
foam on a wave cast for a moment into the sun--soon to fall into the
darkness of the waters again and to be lost), while Oliver Cromwell
shone refulgent in all men's eyes, the Lady Elisabeth Claypole, moving
from her husband's house to her father's palaces, and in all places
greatly loved, faded visibly and pitifully.

She had always been an advocate of mercy, and many a Cavalier owed his
life or his estate to her pleadings, and there was no one, however he
might hate Cromwell, who had not a gentle thought for this daughter
of his. Among her keen, delicate sisters she showed yet more keen and
delicate, and though she had now lost the fresh English fairness which
bloomed in the Lady Mary and the Lady Frances, and which had become
womanly grace in Bridget Fleetwood, yet of all of them she was the most
lovable. If any wished a favour from the Lord-Protector it was to her
they went to ask her intercession, for as her illness and her weakness
grew and her end came nearer, nearer with every painful breath she
drew, His Highness' tender love increased into an agony of yearning,
until it seemed as if he could refuse her nothing.

One April, when His Highness was deep in great affairs--letters to
Cardinal Mazarin, letters to General Blake now sailing victorious in
foreign waters, questions of his taking the title of King, questions
of the Fifth Monarchy men having broken out rebelliously at last, and
Thomas Harrison being in the Tower for abetting them--a supplicant
came to Hampton with a very earnest entreaty to be allowed to see the
Lord-Protector. Whereat John Thurloe, His Highness' faithful secretary,
was indignant almost beyond the bounds of courtesy, and mighty angry
with the servants who had let the lady get as far as the antechamber.

"Lackeys," said she, on hearing his complaint, "are still used to pay
respect to princesses."

But he told her she could by no means see His Highness, and he spoke so
firmly that she sadly turned away.

"Alas!" she murmured, "that I should be sent like a beggar from the
door of a usurper!"

John Thurloe regarded her sharply.

"Had you been a man, madam, you would have had to answer for that
remark."

The lady turned and seemed about to reply, when Elisabeth Claypole
chanced to pass the open door, and, seeing a stranger there, she
entered.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"A lady who will not give her name," said the secretary dryly; "but no
one can see His Highness now."

"My name," said the stranger, with that air of fantastic dignity which
disguised her haggard sadness, "is something too great to be bandied
about here--but give me yours, madam."

"I am Elisabeth Claypole, madam," returned the Protector's daughter
mildly.

The lady swept a courtly curtsey.

"There is no need," she replied, "for me to disguise my quality from
one so generous and good. I am, madam, the wife of the unfortunate
Marquess of Newcastle."

This name, which a few years ago had been one of the greatest in the
land, and still echoed in the minds of men, had an effect on John
Thurloe and even on Elisabeth herself. The new order had not endured
long enough for people to have eradicated the instinct of respect for
noble blood and ancient names; for a moment the Marchioness, in her
poor attire, abashed the two commoners, so strong still were tradition
and the old teaching.

Then Elisabeth Claypole spoke.

"Will you come with me, madam, and take a little poor hospitality?"

Thurloe, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of the distinguished
petitioner, put in his word.

"I will give Your Grace's name to His Highness presently, but I do fear
it is useless."

"Come with me, madam," repeated the Lady Elisabeth, and she gently took
the Marchioness by the hand and led her to her apartment.

Lady Newcastle came meekly; for all her air of pride she was downcast
and bewildered with misfortune.

The Lady Elisabeth's room looked on the river, now shaded by willow
trees covered with drooping yellow and red leaves, the banks were grown
with tall grasses and rushes, and the first pale flowers of spring,
beyond the soft fields, faded into the soft sky.

Elisabeth Claypole loved to sit day after day at her deep window gazing
on that scene, watching the river that wandered through such pleasant
ways through the great city, past the palace, past the Traitor's Gate,
out to the wonder and turmoil of the open sea.

It was a beautiful chamber hung with embroidery of her own stitching,
and furnished with many curious pieces from the Netherlands and China,
carpets of Persia, and two mirrors framed in glass flowers and done by
the Venetians.

She put a chair for the Marchioness and herself sank into the window
seat, glancing swiftly at her guest. She saw a lady of a medium
loveliness, most piteously worn and marred by sorrow, and attired in
a tasteful if unusual style, which gave her the appearance of being
richly dressed; but Elisabeth's quick eyes saw that the grey silk dress
had been turned and scoured, that the ruffles of lace had been darned
again and again, and that she wore no jewels. The Protector's daughter
felt ashamed of her own velvet gown and the valuable pearls she had in
her ears.

"I wished to see your father, madam," said Lady Newcastle, in a voice
where fatigue and humiliation struggled with a natural pride.

"Alas!" murmured Elisabeth. "He is so pressed with business--will you
tell your errand to me, my Lady Newcastle?"

"I have come to England in company with my brother-in-law to endeavour
to obtain some remnant of my husband's estates," was the answer. "And
we were returning in despair, when I, unknown to him, thought to make
this personal appeal."

The Lady Elisabeth knew at once that the unfortunate gentlewoman had
made an utterly hopeless journey, for she was well aware that one of
the late King's generals, and a royalist so notable as the Marquess of
Newcastle, could never obtain grace from the Commonwealth.

Wishful, as ever, to avoid inflicting pain rudely, she made an evasive
answer.

"Will your lord swear fealty to the Government, madam?"

"Nay--do you take him for a disloyal wretch?" flashed the Marchioness.

"Then," replied Elisabeth, with something of her pride roused, "I
wonder that you should have undertaken the labour of this journey."

A pallor overshadowed the royalist lady's features, and she hung her
head, as if she heard in these words the full extent of her miseries
and the depths of her humiliations.

"Could you see how the exiles live in Paris, in Rotterdam--in Antwerp,"
she answered--"all of us--even the Queen--you would not wonder at my
endeavour, however foolish, to obtain some relief."

It was the Protector's daughter who paled now; the thought of the
English exiles wandering miserably through Europe had constantly
haunted her.

"You are then in distress?" she asked, in a low voice.

"In the greatest poverty," replied Lady Newcastle, her pride melting
before the touch of tenderness, and the tears suddenly reddening her
eyes. "The French King makes nothing of us; he is all for an alliance
with the usur--with your father. The Princess of Orange can do nothing
for us, for, since her husband died, the Netherlands have put down
her son and so--and so----" she paused to command herself, then
continued: "Do not think I complain for myself. My lord was ruined
when I married him in Paris. I took him for great and exceeding love,
as he did me, seeing I was dowerless, and I make it no hardship to
share his exiled wanderings with him--but there are so many others even
wanting bread--and Her Majesty and the Princess Henrietta are in such
distress----But not to you should I speak of these things. I would only
explain how it is that I have so far lowered my dignity as to come here
on this errand."

Elisabeth Claypole caught a glimpse of the sufferings, poverties,
and misery of the exiled English in this speech, given so humbly, so
haltingly, yet with the accent of a pride unquenched.

My lady dashed the tears from her eyes with a laced handkerchief.

"I am Margaret Lucas," she added, "and well used to misfortunes. I came
to England to try what I could do, but I found no friend anywhere, nor
any one who would bring me before your father. So I came to-day--wildly
and foolishly, it might be--to ask if he would give my lord his rights."

"I would not give you false hopes," replied the Lady Elisabeth. "My
Lord's estate is forfeit, and no entreaties of yours or mine could
avail to restore it."

"Entreaties?" cried Lady Newcastle. "I fear I could not entreat----"

She abruptly checked her sentence, but Elisabeth knew well enough that
some hard thing against the Protector had been on her tongue.

"Have patience, my lady, this life is very short and full of sadness.
All these great affairs and great pains will soon be past, and others
will be in our places while we shall be at rest--up there"--she pointed
to the sky--"above it all, God grant!"

"You speak as if you too were unfortunate!" said the Marchioness
wonderingly. "Surely, Mrs. Claypole, you do not need philosophy to
sweeten your lot."

"I am dying," answered Elisabeth Claypole. "And I am young and have
much on this earth that I love, also I suffer very greatly--so much
that I wish I could die quicker. Therefore," she added sweetly, "you
see that I have not found the world wholly pleasant, and why I long for
these mansions God hath prepared for us above."

My lady's warm heart was greatly moved by this touching confession.

"Forgive me, I did not know," she answered; "but I dare hope you are
mistaken----"

"Those who love me deceive themselves, but I know," smiled Elisabeth.
"I am not afraid to die--but sometimes, madam, I am a coward before the
pain, the great pain,"--then, hastily turning the subject from herself,
she added,--"I mix not at all in business, I know my father doeth
God's work--yet I am most grieved for you and such as you, for all the
blood shed, for all the misery. Ah me!--our day is now, we seem very
glorious, but what doth it all hang on? My father's life--no more. And
it may be that we too shall end and come to nothing and your turn come
again. I know not. Sometimes life seems very far away from me, as if I
surveyed it from a distance, and saw it all blurred and vague."

"How many sad women I have seen!" exclaimed Margaret. "The Queen--you
would not know her--an old woman, all burnt away with fiery tears;
Lady Strafford, all broken and silenced; Lady William Pawlet, who
hath crept into a convent and is as near a nun as a widow may be--and
myself--how I have wept--mine eyes are weakened for ever because of
tears. It was for Charles, my dear, dear brother ... you know they
shot him, poor gallant soldier, outside Colchester.... Your father was
guiltless of that, or nothing had brought me here to-day."

Elisabeth did not answer; Cromwell was certainly not responsible for
the military executions, so harsh and unnecessary, of Lucas and Lisle
after the siege of Colchester; but it had been the work of Bridget's
first husband, Henry Ireton (a man whom she had never liked), and so
she could not condemn the action though her heart cried out against it.
The Marchioness rose, and the gentle April sunlight flicked the scoured
silk, the darned lace, the face so peaked and worn for one so young.

"Well, well," she said, with quivering lips, "one goes on living--but
the world is never the same after these things have happened. How
differently I dreamed it would be!"

"I also," answered Elisabeth Claypole. "I never thought of death at
all. Far, far off I fancied him, and behold, he was knocking at the
door. But the world does not heed poor silly women, madam; we are but
the dust bruised by the tramplings of great events; nations march
past and leave us weeping. God send you a good deliverance from your
sorrows. I will do what little I can, and ask my father to receive your
petition, but well I know it hopeless."

"I thank you," said Margaret; "from my heart I thank you for your good,
your generous, graciousness. I cannot think of you as my enemy----"

"Why should you?" cried Elisabeth. "We are both English women. I hope
the day is near when all such shall be united."

She rose and unlatched the lattice, and a fresh air blew in from the
young leaves that quivered on the willows and the young grass that
waved in the fields.

"The river!" said Margaret, looking over her shoulder. "I often dream
of the river, it seems woven through everything--twisted in and out
of the past years and all their story. In Paris, among strangers, I
think of the river, and grow sad with home-sickness. The river is very
dear--and means so much."

"I think so too," said Elisabeth. "Consider how it will flow on the
same, hundreds of years hence, when all the present kingdoms of the
earth will be dust like yester year's roses."

"I hope I shall die in England," said my lady irrelevantly; "and now
farewell," she added bravely. "Forgive me my sad coming."

"Come again," interrupted the Lady Elisabeth, taking her hand. "I may
have news for you. Where do you lodge?"

"With Mrs. Brydon, a cousin of my father over against the Exchange.
I am called Mrs. Lucas there, for any pomp is foolish in such sorry
circumstances."

"Come again in a few weeks--my father is so occupied with the Spanish
War--but I will speak to him of my lord's estates. Yet I can promise
nothing," she added reluctantly.

"Yet I love you dearly for the kindness," replied Margaret, holding out
her hands.

Elisabeth took them in her own frail fingers; these two women were
strangely drawn to one another.

"I pray Heaven you will recover," added the Marchioness. "I think you
will recover. Madam, you will live to be very happy."

"God may make me happy," said Elisabeth, "but not on the earth now."

"Nay, you will live to encourage other unfortunates as you have
encouraged me."

Both of them had tears in their eyes; obeying a mutual impulse, they
bent and kissed each other on the cheek.

Elisabeth came with Margaret to the outer door of her apartments, and
there gave her in charge to one of the ushers to be conducted from the
palace with all courtesy.

Before she returned to her chamber she asked if His Highness was at
leisure.

She was told that he was deeply engaged with his secretary on the
questions to be put before the Council when he returned to Whitehall
to-morrow.

Lady Newcastle returned to an alien London, and sat down in her forlorn
and ancient splendour to write to her beloved lord in Antwerp, where he
lodged in the house of the late King's painter, Sir Peter Rubens.

As the shadows fell over the city, over the fresh countryside, over
the river, as the night moths came out and the early stocks and pinks
in the gardens at Hampton Palace filled the air with sweetness, His
Highness still toiled in his cabinet, and Elisabeth Claypole still sat
at the open window of her room with folded hands and thoughtful eyes
gazing across the twilight.



CHAPTER VIII

THE LADY ELISABETH


When the Marchioness of Newcastle, after waiting long and vainly,
returned at length to Hampton Court and asked for the Lady Elisabeth,
she was told that the Protector's daughter was too ill to see any one.

After lingering a little, and trying other sources of communication
with the court and finding none, she returned sadly with her husband's
brother to Antwerp to take up again her exiled life.

All through that summer and autumn Elisabeth Claypole had seemed
sinking down to death. She knew little of what passed: of how, after
long debates, His Highness had refused the title of King ('a feather
in his cap,' he called it; a feather he would fain have had, many
said, only the army had willed otherwise), but had been installed in
purple and ermine as Lord-Protector of the new-formed Constitution and
presented with Bible and sword; of how ambassadors had come and gone
in England and the war with Spain proceeded brilliantly; how plots
were formed and exposed and His Highness went in a continual fear of
his life that was beginning to undermine his calm nerves and resolute
courage, and of how he and his Generals toiled continually----

Of all this Elisabeth Claypole knew little; she was scarcely conscious
of more than the darkened room in which she lay and of the figures of
her mother and sisters coming and going softly, of her husband grieving
by her bed, and her father's presence in such moments as he could
spare to hold her hand and speak comforting words to her tired ears.

By the spring they thought that they had cured her; but in the summer
she drooped again, though she went to the marriage of her sister
Frances with young Mr. Rich, the Earl of Warwick's heir.

Frances was the last to wed, for Mary was now Lady Fauconberg. Many
finer matches had been suggested for this youngest of the Protector's
daughters; some had even tried to bring about a marriage between her
and Charles Stewart, and the women of His Highness' family had favoured
this scheme, but Cromwell waved it aside--'If he could forgive his
father's death, I could not forgive the loose manner of his life'--and
Frances had wedded, after much opposition, Mr. Rich, a delicate youth.

In the June of this year of 1658 came the great news of the fall of
Dunkirk, the defeat of the Spanish, and the flattering friendship of
the French. London glittered with a congratulatory embassy from Paris;
in the midst of the pageantry, His Highness, who had already interfered
once to save the poor people of the valleys of Piedmont, was once more
extending his mighty protection to them, and Mr. Milton, the Latin
Secretary to the Council of State, was turning His Highness' letters
into Latin: Mr. Milton dictated his translations now, for he was lately
become utterly blind.

The news of the battle of the Dunes raised England to a yet higher
point of fame than she had yet reached. France could refuse such an
ally nothing, and Mazarin interfered to protect the Piedmontese.

So went affairs abroad and in England well too, save that the finances
were strained, His Highness having dissolved the Parliament in
February, preferring, indeed, to govern without one.

"God be judge between you and me," were the concluding words of his
last speech.

Other sorrows beside the illness of his daughter visited His Highness
this summer: Mr. Rich died a few months after his marriage, leaving
poor Frances a widow at seventeen; the old Earl of Warwick died, an
ancient friend of the Protector; most painful and terrible loss of all,
the youngest son of the Lady Elisabeth died, and she fell again into
illness and was soon at a desperate extremity.

In between his entertainment of the French ambassadors at Whitehall,
his conferences with his Council, and all the routine of government,
His Highness would take his coach and drive to Hampton, and sit for
a while in his child's darkened chamber and pray with tears that her
agony might be lessened.

His own health began to suffer. Those about him noticed that the deep
gloom which had settled on his spirits was affecting his strength; he
still looked and seemed in every way younger, much younger than his
years; he had a great appearance of strength; he gave the impression
of being firmly built, and set, and able to endure for a great while
yet the powerful winds which buffeted his high and glorious pinnacle of
splendour.

Yet those most with him, especially Thurloe, his ardent and faithful
secretary, thought that underneath this calm and strong exterior he
was much shaken in mind and health. His domestic sorrows were known
to affect him sorely, his nerves were strained to breaking-point by
the constant apprehension of assassination, the future was believed
to weigh on him, for there was no settlement of the country for any
period longer than his life, and it became daily more apparent how the
whole fabric of Puritan government depended on that life, on his unique
position and influence with the army, on the dominating force of his
personality, on the glory of his prestige and the glamour of his genius.

He had always seemed so vigorous, and glowing with the light and the
fire of an immortal spirit that no one associated him with age or
death or thought about his successor; but it was possible that to
himself, as the atmosphere of death chilled his home, might come the
reflection that the England of his making was as baseless as the Greece
of Alexander, and might as easily fall to pieces at his death--only
his captains were not the men to divide the spoils. What, then, would
follow?

He may well have asked himself that question and pondered over it in
these dark days.

The Lord Richard, his eldest surviving son, was a mere country
gentleman, with neither strength nor talents--nay, rather of an
indolent turn and a certain softness; to set him to hold together the
various elements which controlled the nation would be to invite certain
failure.

The Lord Henry, his second son, was as able a man as any about him and
already of much distinction in his military and diplomatic career;
but he was not the man to step into another's place: ambition did not
spur his noble qualities. Then there were the Lord Fleetwood, his
son-in-law, the Lord Lambert, Disbrowe, many fine, fearless soldiers,
Blake, Monck. But where was _the_ man--the one pre-eminently marked out
to continue the work of His Highness?

No one could point to such an one. The Lord-Protector had the right
of naming his successor, but as yet had not done so; the new-founded
Constitution (the last attempt to frame a civil government on the
foundations of arbitrary military power) was scarcely complete, and
after these last glorious successes in the Spanish War there was
further persistent talk of a kingship for the Protector. Many said this
title was a certain thing; but it was a thing yet pending, and with it
the question of the succession.

There were many jars and confusions, too, in the inner state of England
that might well weigh on the spirit of the Protector. His body was
worn with gout and a slight but lingering aguish fever. He might
neglect none of his business, and maintain the appearance of mental and
physical strength, but John Thurloe, his constant companion, was not
deceived.

"His Highness," he said to Whitelocke, "is a sick man, and these vigils
by the Lady Elisabeth will wear him to a great disease."

That summer was notable for the fierceness of the heat: day by day
the sun beat down without either rain or cloud, night after night the
stars shone with unveiled brilliance; then towards the beginning of
August a light wind blew for several days and cooled the air. Elisabeth
Claypole seemed to rally a little as the great heat was relieved, and
His Highness, who had left business for several days lately to watch
by her, thought it safe to return to London, where the French notables
were still being entertained.

On Friday the 6th of August he came back to Hampton Court; he came in
a coach, for, having lately been flung from his carriage, he was too
shaken to ride on horseback. That day he had been more than usually
cheerful; he had even smiled at the reports from France: tales of how
his Ironsides (oh, irony!), now fighting there side by side with the
followers of the Scarlet Lady, had given their General trouble by their
behaviour in the churches of the idolaters, one lighting his pipe
from the candle on the high altar. Then he heard how Mr. Hugh Peters
had endeavoured to make long sermons before the magnificent Cardinal,
hoping to convert him from his deep errors.

At the name of Mr. Hugh Peters His Highness smiled no more; it recalled
to him strangely that winter morning in Whitehall when he had paced
the boarded gallery in sick agitation, and Hugh Peters, in his black
clothes, had gone out to the scaffold and helped knock a staple in and
hurried to and fro in enthusiastic excitement.... It seemed so long ago
... and now this same Hugh Peters was arguing with Cardinal Mazarin,
and the young King of France was sending him a rich sword with a
jewelled hilt ... a King who was the nephew of that other King who had
knelt down at the block that January morning.

His Highness did not set much store by this costly sword: his victories
had been won with plainer weapons.

While he was in his coach, hastening towards Hampton, he took from his
pocket a pamphlet which was then making much stir in England. The title
was _Killing no Murder_, and it set forth with much eloquence that any
murderer of Oliver Cromwell would be justified by God and man.

His Highness read the paper from beginning to end, then put it back in
his pocket.

"There is no notice to be taken of such things," said John Thurloe, who
sat opposite him.

"It is no matter one way or another," answered His Highness; and he
took from his bosom a small Bible and gave it to Thurloe and asked him
to read from it aloud, "For," he said, "I feel my eyes tired."

"What shall I read?" asked the secretary, leaning towards the light
of the window and unclasping the Book: the coach had just turned by
Turnham Green and the road was smooth.

"Read," said the Lord-Protector, "the fourth of St. Paul to the
Philippians, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth verses--read aloud
in a strong voice."

Which John Thurloe did.

"'Not that I speak in respect of want: but I have learned, in
whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be
abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere, and by all things, I am
instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to
suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth
me.'"

His Highness repeated the last sentence.

"'_I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me._' This
Scripture did once save my life," he added, "when my eldest son, poor
Robert, died, which went as a dagger to my heart--indeed, it did."

He paused and John Thurloe looked up, startled to hear him refer to a
sorrow so ancient. But Cromwell's thoughts seemed to be in the past.

"In my great extremity," he continued, "I did read these passages
of Paul's contention--of the submission to the will of God in all
conditions; and it was hard--indeed, it was hard. In my weakness I
said, 'It is true, Paul, _you_ have learned this, and attained to
this measure of grace; but what shall _I_ do? Ah, poor creature, it
is a hard lesson for me to take out. I find it so!' But reading on to
the thirteenth verse, where Paul saith, '_I can do all things through
Christ which strengtheneth me_,' then faith began to work and my heart
to find support, saying to myself, 'He that was Paul's Christ is my
Christ too!'--and so I drew waters out of the well of salvation."

"Why should Your Highness remind yourself of this?" asked Thurloe
anxiously.

"Oh, Thurloe!" cried the Lord-Protector, with a great sigh, "it is to
nerve myself in case another of my children should be taken from me.
If she should die--it would be almost more than I could bear. Yet God
might take her, though I have wrestled with Him for her life, even as
David wrestled for the life of his son. My brave, sweet one! She was
always good and loving, was she not, Thurloe? Wonderful and inscrutable
are His ways that He should lay such suffering and agonies on one so
delicate and valiant!"

The secretary had no more to say; neither did His Highness speak again,
but gazed out of the window at the sun-dried countryside, at the
orchards where the dry wind blew the shrivelled leaves of red and gold
from the fruit too early ripe, at the great elms and oaks rustling the
foliage to the ground, at the thatched and gabled cottages where the
children ran to the doors to watch the coach with the four horses and
outriders and the troop of Lifeguards go by.

Soon they came in sight of the river, with islands and barges and
reaches, where the boats were drawn above the tide and a few boys
fished, knee-deep in mud.

Then they lost the river and passed between private mansions standing
among trees, and so to the village of Hampton as the sun was sinking in
a glow of unstained fire.

As they neared the Palace His Highness became very pale, and he looked
once or twice with an air of dread from the window, as if he expected
to see some awful change over the place.

But no scene could have been more peaceful: the river flowed softly
between the fading willows and the banks where the tall grasses, white
whorls of hemlock, and clusters of parsley flowers grew; the last light
of the sun glowed on the red bricks of the Palace and cast long shadows
from the summer flowers in the garden; up among the high chimney-stacks
white pigeons fluttered home with light upon their wings.

Cromwell entered the Palace. The first to meet him was one of the
grooms of his chamber; the man gave him a frightened look and moved
away without speaking.

He went towards his daughter's apartments, and in the corridor Frances
Rich, a child in widow's mourning, came towards him with staggering
steps.

He paused.

"Oh, my father!" she said, and lifted a face swollen with weeping.

"What is it, my dear?" he asked, in a still voice. "Be calm, my child,
my dear."

He took her trembling little figure by the shoulder and smoothed back
the damp hair from her forehead.

"Is she dead?" he asked. "Is she gone--is Betty dead, dear?"

"Oh, my father!" sobbed poor Frances again, and seemed unable to find
other words.

Elisabeth Cromwell came down the passage, and with her the Lord
Claypole.

"Ah," said His Highness, "is it over? And I left her--yet only for a
little--and she is gone."

His wife came and put her arms round his neck and wept on his shoulder
a little, then she took his hand and led him to their daughter's
chamber, followed by those two other mourners, also sick with grief and
watching.

Elisabeth Claypole lay dead, she had fallen from one convulsion fit to
another, and breathed her last breath, in great pain and suffering, but
with a composed and cheerful mind and a serene and hopeful soul.

She was dead; very young she looked as she lay in the great bed in
the darkened chamber with the shadows over her; the rich coverlet was
straightened across her limbs, the sheet smoothed, the pillow shaken;
she was at peace after the long tossings to and fro, the hot nights of
agony, the dragging days of unconsciousness.

Very small she looked and delicate; her hair seemed like a handful of
fine silk on the pillow, her hands white flowers on the coverlet; her
head was drooping slightly sideways, and the gentle look she wore in
life had returned, effacing all trace of suffering.

There were many standing round her; all made way at the approach of His
Highness; he came up to the bed and looked down at her.

"'My life is waxen old with heaviness,'" he murmured, "'and my years
with mourning.... I am become like a broken vessel.'"

He bent over her stillness, his transient sorrow breaking vainly
against her eternal repose.

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," said Elisabeth Cromwell,
and touched her husband's hand.

He went to his knees on the bed-step and put his head on his folded
hands.

"May He who sitteth above the waterflood comfort me--for in myself I
can do nothing!" he muttered.

They left him there, for they thought that he prayed; but it was not
so: the valiant spirit had been robbed of its matchless fortitude at
last; His Highness was in a swoon of anguish.



CHAPTER IX

EXIT HIS HIGHNESS


From that day he sickened rapidly; his strength fell from him with a
suddenness that amazed those about him. He attended business as usual,
wearing the purple of royal mourning, but the heaviness of his spirit
was noticed by all.

Towards the end of August, George Fox, the Quaker, came to Hampton
Court to see His Highness about the persecution of the Friends; he
went by river, and soon after he stepped ashore at Hampton he saw His
Highness riding at the head of his Lifeguards, going towards the Palace
under the shade of the riverside trees.

George Fox waited until the cavalcade, which was coming slowly towards
him, into Hampton Court Park, had reached him, gazing steadily the
while at that figure of His Highness, drooping a little in the saddle
and looking ahead of him, with an extraordinary air of stillness.

"I felt and saw," wrote Fox afterwards, when he was back in his
cobbler's shop in London, "a waft of death go forth against him, and
when I came to him he looked like a dead man."

His Highness was very courteous; he checked his horse when he saw the
patient figure, russet-clad, with the broad-brimmed hat, waiting for
him, and welcomed Fox as warmly as he had done two years before when
the Quaker saw him at Hyde Park Corner among his Guards, and pressed to
his carriage window, and spoke to him gravely--as he spoke to him now,
warning him, and laying before him the sufferings of the Friends, even
as the spirit moved him to do.

His Highness listened; the stillness of his demeanour, remarkable in
one naturally so full of energy and eloquence, did not alter; he said
very little, only kindly bade Fox come and see him at his house next
day.

And so he rode on slowly towards the red palace, "and I," wrote Fox in
his _Journal_, "never saw him more."

For the following day, when he came from Kingston to Hampton again, the
doctors would let no one see His Highness, who was fallen worse--of a
tertian ague, they said--and would never ride at the head of his famous
Guard again, either through Hampton Court Park or anywhere else. George
Fox had been the last to see the Lord-Protector on horseback, girt with
a sword.

Soon after he was moved by coach to London, where the air was thought
to be better for his complaint; St. James's Palace, that he intended
to lodge at, not being immediately ready, he was taken to Whitehall,
and on the Wednesday following half the nation was praying for him, and
half waiting breathlessly, "for a great deliverance."

In Whitehall, a meeting of preachers and godly persons besought God
with prayers and tears to spare His Highness, and all over the city
were apprehension, expectation, hopes, fears, and supplication.

So it had come to this: the twenty years of great events, with all the
toil, achievement, triumph, tumult, and sorrow, had swept up to this
moment when the gentleman farmer from St. Ives, who had received a
command from God, lay dying at Whitehall, with that command executed
as far as it is in a man to accomplish a mission he conceives Divine,
dying, with England breathless, and the son of the late tyrant
breathless too, and watching and waiting from across the water.

It seemed to many valiant souls as if this England so violently shaped
anew into something of the form which was the ideal of Puritanism,
purged and glorified, was no more than the vivified dream of this one
man, and that when he passed from the earth it would be as when a
sleeper wakes--the dream would be dispelled and all things become as
they had been.

What he himself might think, now that he knew the summons had come,
none could tell, for he was mostly silent during the ebb and flow of
his illness, and only spoke to pray; once or twice the passionate
entreaties to God, which he heard rising around him, and the passionate
affection of his family and friends, seemed to rouse in him a desire
and hope of life. He could not but know that his work was not yet
finished, and that this was not the best of times for him to die.

"Lord, Thou knowest," he said, "that if I do desire to live, it is to
show forth Thy praise and declare Thy works!" and, "Is there none that
says, Who will deliver me from this peril?" then, "Man can do nothing;
God can do what He will."

And at times he fell into a kind of enthusiasm, speaking much of the
Covenants of Works and of Grace and expounding them; to his wife and
children, who felt their very life being torn from them, he spoke, too:
"Love not this world"--he repeated the words with great vehemence, as
was his wont--"I say, love not this world; it is not good that you
should love this world--children, live like Christians. I leave you the
Covenant to feed on!"

But for the most he had done with human affection; weeping did not seem
to touch that heart that had once been so tender to tears.

He did not even look at those about him, but upwards at the dark canopy
of his bed; and to that inner eye which had beheld the sword stretched
out of the cloud in the barn at St. Ives, it was no covering of
tapestry which hung above him, but the threshold of the eternal world.

The dry wind, which had begun before the Lady Elisabeth died, and blown
for weeks across the Island from sea to sea, deepened and strengthened
now from day to day, and at the end of this month of August, when His
Highness was rapidly coming to the end of all storms and calms alike, a
hurricane of wind arose--the most fearful, violent, and protracted any
man could remember.

The angry seas sucked in ships and sailors and beat furiously on the
coast, trees were uprooted, haystacks and barns overturned, tiles and
chimneys cast down; in the cities men could scarcely stand in the
streets for the wind which roared and piped round the corners.

The great man dying and the great storm raging became mysteriously
connected in the minds of those watching and waiting breathlessly;
there were not wanting those who said that it was the Devil come for
His Highness, nor those who thought it was the sound of the wings of
God's angels, nor those who thought that it was devils and angels both
wrestling together.

It was drawing near to that most glorious day for Oliver Cromwell
and his cause, the 3rd of September, the anniversary of Dunbar
and Worcester, and of the calling of the first Parliament of His
Highness--a day of general thanksgivings and triumph to all Puritans.

As the stormy winds rocked Whitehall Palace and rattled at the window
out of which Charles Stewart had stepped to die, and at the window of
the room where the Lord Protector lay, His Highness rallied from his
slumbers and sat upright in his great bed and listened to the tempest,
as a soldier might sit up in the dark and listen the night before a
battle.

"I think I am the poorest wretch alive," he said, "but I love God,
or, rather, am beloved by Him--I am a conqueror and more than a
conqueror--'_through Christ which strengtheneth me_'"--so he repeated
again the words which had saved him once, long ago. But as he sat up,
hearkening to the blowing winds without, his comfort seemed to go from
him.

"It is a fearful thing," he said, "to fall into the hands of the Living
God!"

He raised himself up and stretched out his hand towards the wind as if
he appealed to something in that tumult outside his palace.

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!" he
cried again.

So high and loud the wind howled that those about him shivered as if
they feared to be struck by some supernatural force; but Cromwell sat
erect, and again cried out, "I say it is a fearful thing to fall into
the hands of the Living God!"

One of the chaplains praying in the adjoining chamber heard His
Highness' raised and agonized voice and entered the sick-room.

To him Oliver Cromwell turned eagerly.

"_Tell me_," he asked, in a voice of intense wistfulness, "_is it
possible to fall from Grace?_"

"Nay," said the pastor, "it is not possible."

"_Then_," said the dying man, "_I am saved, for I know that I was once
in Grace_."

He clasped his hands, and the family and friends about him, whom he
seemed to have forgotten, heard, in the pauses of the wind, his prayer--

"Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in Covenant
with Thee through Grace! And I may--I will--come to Thee, for Thy
people! Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to
do them some good, and Thee service--many of them have set too high a
value on me, others wish and would be glad of my death--Lord, however
Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on and do good for them."

His voice rose now like the voice of a well man, almost as strong as
the voice that had greeted with a psalm the rising sun before Dunbar.

"Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love--and
go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation--and make the
Name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on
Thy Instruments to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to
trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too.

"And pardon the folly of this short prayer--even for Jesus Christ's
sake. And give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen!"

And after this he lay down among his pillows and slept, despite the
storm.

And there began to be whispers about the succession, which hitherto no
one had dared name.

It was vaguely believed that His Highness _had_ named him, some while
ago, and the sealed paper containing his wishes was at Hampton. Thurloe
and the Lord Fauconberg sent there for it, but the paper could not be
found; and His Highness' body was fast sinking into eternal slumber,
and his spirit escaping them, and they were all confused and amazed at
what might be before them.

The faithful Thurloe approached his bed and asked him who was to be his
successor.

At which His Highness turned his head and was silent.

"The Lord Richard?" whispered Thurloe, and the Lord Protector was
believed to answer, "Yes, yes," but no man could be sure of what he
said. Henry Cromwell was absent; the rest of his family were near
him, but he seemed to forget them. Only twice he asked intensely for
"_Robert, Robert_, my eldest son."

He fell now into great pains, but with them came great cheerfulness of
spirit.

"God is good," he was heard to say--"indeed, He is--God is good--my
work is done. Yet God be with His people."

On the eve of the thanksgiving day, which shall never be kept as a
thanksgiving day again, save by an oppressed people, secretly in their
hearts, the victor of the battles which made the 3rd of September
glorious was seen to be very near the end of his restlessness and his
pain.

He spoke to himself continually, judging and abasing himself, and
his eyes were continually turned upward to that rich canopy and rich
ceiling, which was certainly neither covering nor concealment to him
who saw the light beyond the palace roof.

His sad, forlorn wife (who saw but dark days ahead of her) besought him
to drink and sleep and held out a cup to him.

"It is not my design to drink or sleep," he answered, "but my design is
to make what haste I can to be gone."

All through the windy night he prayed brokenly; once he spoke of
Harrison, and seemed troubled; once he asked God to spare Betty further
pain, and again he said, "Is Robert dead?--and Oliver?"

When the sun was up over city and golden river, and the vast crowds
waiting anxiously, His Highness had fallen to silence.

Neither to the God who waited for him, nor to his forlorn family, nor
to the breathless nation did His Highness speak again in any earthly
tongue.

That afternoon the Lord ungirt the sword with which He had invested his
Captain twenty years before, and in Whitehall Palace Oliver Cromwell's
lifeless body lay--and the nation flew asunder into confusion.

"My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.

"But Thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever--and Thy remembrance
throughout all generations....

"They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall wax old as
doth a garment.

"And as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed:
_but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail_." Amen. Amen.


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