QforngU Intwraitg Stbrarg 3tl;ata, Kent ^ark BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library DA 300.H66 1920 Cream of curiosit 3 1924 027 926 629 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027926629 o p < TH6 Crb^m of Curiosity Being an account of certain historical and literary manuscripts of the xvii'^, xviii*^ y xix*^ centuries collected by 'J(EGINALD L._HINE ILLUSTRATED London : George Routledce ^ Sons, Ltd. New York : E. P. Dutton & Co. MCMXX 1393- ' 1 3"^^ t^'^t fiy ^oke he nought refused for lack of Curiosite.' (Gozver, Conf. Hi. 383.) 1632. ' A noble and solid curiosity of knowing , things in their heginnings.' {Hayzaard's tr. of Biondi's Eromena.) 1653. 'He was a man very curious and much inclined to hear of novelties and rare things.^ (fl. Cogan, tr. of Pinto's Travels, xliv., 172.) 1542. ' Clowtyd crayme and rawe crayme put togyther.' {Boorde, Dyetary, xii. (1870), 267.) 1636. ' Tou may sound these wits. They are cream-bowl or hut fuddle deep.' {B. Jonson, Discoveries, Works {Routledge), 747.) 1704. ' Such a man, truly wise, creams off nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.' {Swift, Tale of a Tub, ix.) lU ' All men, Socrates, who have any degree of right feeling, at the beginning of every em rprise, whether small or great, always call upon God. ' And we, too, must invoke and pray the gods and goddesses that we may say all things in a manner pleasing to them above all and likewise consistent with ourselves.' — The Timceus of Plato. MiUiam 0n0lovo ZimcB Qui dono lepidum novum libellum ? Timaei tibi : namque tu solebas Meas esse aliquid putare nugas. Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli Qualecumque ; quad, o patrona virgo, Plus una maneat perenne saclo. Catullus, i, i. CONTENTS PAGE ■ xi Introduction - - - - The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, Knight, sometyme lord high chancellor of england. Written in the Tyme of Queen Marie - - i The Commonplace Book of John Moore - - "39 A Sidelight on the Civil War (Sir Robert Heath) - 52 A Seventeenth-Century Pacificist (Sir Justinian Pacitt) 181 A Prince's Pocket-Book (The Duke of Monmouth) - 213 Rabies Theologorum (Being a Study of Two Seventeenth- Century Divines) ...--- 237 The English Tourist in 1731 .. - - - 258 A He-Precise Hypocrite ----- 281 The Journals of Isaaco ----- 291 The Professor in War-Time - - - - 3^7 In God's Acre ------ 3^0 The Genius of One Gobbo, a Poet _ . . 366 The Rise and Fall of the Umbrella - - - 374 A Child's Diary at Gibraltar - - - - 389 Fly-Leaves and Marginal Notes - . .. 402 Til ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To Professor C. H. Firth, of whom it has been well said that his learning is always at the service of his friends, and who stands in no need of the old injunction, ' not to be reserved and caitiff in this part of goodness '. For revising A Sidelight on the Civil War and A Princes Pocket-Book. To my old master and present mentor, E. E. Kellett, M.A. (Oxon.), for having my abecedarian atrocities for a time under his probation, thereby bringing about a hundred amendments in the matter and manner of this book. To Mr. Martin Secker and Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall & Co., who — the one for good consideration, the other out of good nature — gave me leave to reproduce the portraits prefixed to A Child's Diary at Gibraltar, A Seventeenth-Century Pacificist, and Rabies Theologorum. To the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine for leave to reprint A Prince's Pocket-Book, and A Seventeenth-Century Pacificist. To the shade of Bertram Dobell, Most Benevolent of B ook- sellers, who was wont to sell me precious manuscripts below price and add thereto much hard-won wisdom of his own. INTRODUCTION TIMES have changed overmuch since those studious, monastic days when Richard de Bury ransacked the libraries of Europe, and wrote the Philobiblon as the apologia of his pillage. ' In truth,' he says, ' we wanted manu- scripts, not moneyscripts ; we loved folios more than florins, and preferred slender pamphlets to pam- pered palfreys '. Though men and manuscripts have multiplied ten- thousand-fold since then, I doubt if there is anywhere the same unwearied devotion to letters that he and the ' sons of learning ' shewed. And naturally enough. In the course of its secular evolution, the world-community has outgrown its novitiate and cloister-days, taken new vows, and donned a different habit. There are new heavens to win : the politician's preferment ; the novelist's applause ; the merchant's crown. By such as these, men have been distracted from that singleness of heart which a bibliophile must have. All the same, there does exist a silent company of xii Introduction men whose fingers thrill to the touch of old vellum, whose eyes light to the appeal of faded ink. Like Li-Po, Prince of Poets, they have learned to count the world ' as so much duckweed on a river ', that they may sit in their pavilions and garner the harvest of a quiet eye. I, too — ^let me confess it — was once numbered of their tribe. In my ' canicular and flaming days ' I lived biblio-riotously : danced the night through with duo-decimos ; got mad drunk with old-vintage manuscripts ; and wantoned with the slim, lascivious Elzevirs. Then followed the lean years, the years of war. I came to myself. I developed a conscience, of all things the most hurtful to a connoisseur. Casting my eyes along my shelves of prodigal collecting, I grew alarmed. jThough a man, thought I, should gain the whole world of books might he not, by imperceptible degrees, lose his soul in so doing ? Already I had seen so many sink into that mental and moral sloth which the accumu- lation of this world's goods induces. jWas I not myself beset with the same mortal danger ? jDid not we chamber-students become gradually dim to the things more excellent ; insensible, if not actually callous, to those hopes and fears of struggling humanity, for which men were forsaking all and losing their very lives ? jHow these thoughts stung into the mind ! Most of all in the seclusion of my study, for there every book seemed to raise a separate accusation. jThen for the first time I remembered I was mortal. In the quiet turning of Introduction >iii the leaves I began to hear the disquieting call of Death to leave ' musinge on this world in the middest of my books ', and consider my latter end. ' Naked earnest thou into the world and naked shalt thou return '. Like the young lawyer, whose profession I also followed, I foresaw tha 1 1 too should go away sorrowful, having great possessions. II They say a book-worm can crawl through the most obstructive conscience. And I have proved it to be true. Though your convert is almost always an iconoclast, I for one made no bonfire of the vanities, did not in truth burn a single book. And I soon found that it was too late to thwart the settled order and disposition of my life. In the end I compromised with my conscience, as any wise attorney would. I must remain a bibliophile — that much was certain ; but I would be one degree better than the worst. If I sought after rarities still, I would collect, not to hoard them as before, but to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, and give their quintessence to those whom it might concern. The only thing that really troubled me was the possession of some forty literary and historical manuscripts, ranging over the last three hundred xiv Introduction years, abounding in wisdom and gaiety and quaint- ness, uniqi;e and unpublished stUl. It seemed rather selfish to be keeping them for my own pleasure, and I began to feel an obligation to share them with my fellow-men. How melancholy, after all, to become like Sir Thomas PhiUipps, that close-fisted antiquary, who amassed over 60,000 manuscripts (some of which I now possess) and printed hardly one. Had he spent half his time and money in editing some of his treasures, he would have deserved better of posterity. As it was, he simply rolled the stone of Sisyphus, collecting a pile of rarities, which on his death were once again dispersed. Not so, I determined, should it be with me, I would save my soul while there was time. To the young lawyer Christ had said : ' Sell what- soever thou hast and give to the poor '. A hard saying indeed ; one to be construed a little at a time. The sale may wait for a more convenient season, I reflected, but at least I will make my distribution to the poor — a distribution not in money but in kind. There shall be the bread of gaiety, the cream of curiosity, the wholesome nuts of knowledge — all gathered and served as daintily as I may out of my manuscript-store. And so has it come to pass. Here in this little morsel of a book is the first dole I fling. To be frank, I do not quite visualize the hungry multitude clamouring at my gates, but that is my publisher's affair. My conscience is satisfied. Introduction xv III Reader ! a word in your ear, before you glide off to the inevitable novel. You are a little shy — is it not so ? — of the unfamiliarity of my name and my wrinkled parchments, revenants of the ' yellow yesterdays of time'. But be of good heart. As for my name, it signifies a ' servant '. I am a son — nay, a servant of learning, and your servant too. I ask no louder fame than that. For the rest, I am as impatient as you are at the w^orship given to a thing just because it is old and smelleth mustily. If it can help to recreate the memory of what is best in the olden time, well and good — that is something gained. And that is just what the following pages seek to do. They form, as it were, a slender bridge across the ages, a faint clue to the complexity of the past. TThey tell of many times, of many goodly states, of some humble, unhistoried people. And the tale is a light-hearted one too. Nothing is here for tears or tediousness. Believe me, I have banged all the dust away. In the clemency of time, moreover, even the cruelty and heartbreak of mankind take on a mellower tone ; the dull things sink into the bottomless pit ; whilst those that are gay, and eager, and of good report, shine more and more unto the perfect day. But enough. I can hear some critic say : ' Me- thinks this servant apes the gentleman ; he doth xvi Introduction protest too much. Why has he not conned Lord Bacon's sound advice : " Prefaces are great waste of time, for though they seem to proceed of modesty yet they are bravery " ? ' Very well, I vidll cease. Pass on, reader, and prosper ! I give you good-day, and a pleasant journey. I wish it the more hopefully, because with my goose-grey quill I travelled the selfsame way — the via Manuscripta. Holbein] [Engraved by H. T. Ryall SIR THOMAS MORE, ob. 1535 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SIR THOMAS MORE, KNIGHT, SOMETYME LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND, WRITTEN IN THE TYME OF QUEEN MARIE FORTUNATE above all men of his time in the quality of his friends, Sir Thomas More in his biographers has been less singula,rly blessed. Something, of course, is due to the fashion of the day which regarded great men as part, merely, of the machine of State, having little or no separate existence of their own. If they fitted successfully into the general scheme of things, or made a comely figure in the pageant of history, then — well and good : some honey-mouthed chronicler would give them their naeed of praise. Otherwise, no amount of piety nor private excellence would avail to attract the historian's attention. The familiar study of character which Boswell perfected would then have seemed out of place. But even so there is good reason to complain. Here was a man, as Gabriel Harvey said : ' a pleasurable man, full of conceyted jests and merrimentes. He was born with a jest in his mouth ', and died with one on the scaffold. Yet those who write his life must needs Sir Thomas More affect the solemnity of an obituary notice or the summing-up of a judge. They suppress More's levity— his most characteristic trait » — as unbefitting the long face of a martyr. Here, again, was a man with a genius for friendship. 'Whenever', asks Erasmus, 'did nature mould a character more gentle, endearing, and happy than Thomas More's ? ' Yet this lovable trait is almost lost among the learned polemics of his Lives. Their general tenor is too studious and theological ; they smell not only of the candle but of the priest. One feels all the time that there is an axe to grind (an axe, mark you, for the shallow roots of the Reformation) — that it is part and parcel of Roman policy to magnify the martyr and discreetly ignore the man. Nor is the feeling diminished when the dates of publication are considered. For see : in the reign of Queen Mary and nearly in the same year, 1556, Roper wrote the classic life of More ; the manuscript to be dealt with in the following pages was composed ; Ellis Heywood wrote his // Moro, dedicated to Cardinal Pole, and Rastell's great folio of the works of More was published. Men looked to have a Catholic king again and the favour of the Pope. In 1588, when the conversion of England was expected, the De trihus 'Thomis of Stapleton appeared. In 1599, ^ The chronicler Hall declared that More never made the most ordinary communication without importing ' some mocke ' into it. ' This man ', sighed Marchmont in the grim-faced era of the Puritan rule, ' this man had the right knack of living in the world and was true to his motto oijoco-smo — betwixt jest and earnest '. Sir Thomas More when there was a prospect of disputed succession, the anonymous life was written which Dr Words- worth published », and soon after Charles the First had taken a Catholic for his queen the lives of Roper and Cresacre More issued from the press K One should not force these inferences too far, because all authors who are wise in their generation choose the propitious moment to catch the Public Ear ; but the fact tends to increase the reader's suspicion that More's ' Works and Days ' were subordinated in his biographies to the needs of Catholic propaganda. II One exception or qualification must be made ; for I should be the last to undervalue the affection of Roper or the simplicity and freshness of his style. In all the time before him and for a long while after there is nothing to set beside it. It marks a new era in the biographer's art. But, that apart, I cannot forgive a man who, after years of intimate companionship, commits to posterity such an insubstantial portrait. The outline is there toler- ably well drawn, but the figure does not live or ' In his Ecclesiastical Biography {liio). * See Dr Hunter's Introduction to the life by Cresacre More. Sir Thomas More laugh, or have its being. What a thousand pities the masterhand of Erasmus was not by to etch in the detail for us. We can tell from those tender sketches of his in the Letters to Budaeus and Hutten something of the measure of our loss. Poor Roper was too anxious about his own soul to appreciate the hilarity of the saints. He is continually dis- mayed with More's wantonness of mind i. He does not see that this man of all men — cut pectus erat omni nive candiditis—wzs naturally expressing his soul's health by casting snowballs at the ridiculous solemnity of life. And so slow-sighted is the poor dear man that he misses nearly all the fun. There is something quite pathetic in watching this laborious mind following painfully after the sallies of a wit that was, as some say, the most brilliant in all Europe, ^ In the life by Cresacre More, the grandson, the sins of omission were not so much congenital as perverse. Many a curious tale, apparently, he could have told an h^ would. One cannot help being angry with him, for at the outset he raises a furious expectation, declaring that More's ' vwtty sayings would of themselves fill out a volume ' ; and then, if you please, sprinkles a poor handful into a bulky volume of which most of the pages are thieved h.n A ■ u ^^""^ '^'"!^g>"e. °n that occasion, when, Margaret's hand having been asked in marriage, Sir Thomas UteraUy carried But tSt ^7 K-""^ ^"'"-^ "1^^^ '^^ ^^"i --*-d in hif ^ ;^ Sir Thomas More literatim from his uncle. Personally, I would give half the State Papers of Henry VIII's reign to possess the table-talk of Thomas More, and would bargain the other half to know what passed between him and his master as they paced, parlando trattando, up and down the Chelsea garden, the King with his arm affectionately curled about his Chancellor's neck. Why had not his biographers the wisdom to gather up the crumbs ? They leave unwritten the things we longed to hear, and give us in rich measure what we would willingly forego. We ask for the blessed bread of gaiety, never so well leavened as in the cerebellum of Tom More. They give us in- stead a stone ; nay, not one stone only but all those rocks of offence More himself hurled at the heretical heads of Tyndal and Barnes and Frith. It is not of such stones they should have built the temple of his fame. Those of us who worship his memory deplore the years he gave to theological con- tentions ; for unfortunately his controversial tone was just as coarse as that of other scholars and theologians of his time. It troubles us that he should have gloried in it, boasted of ' treading heretics under our feet like ants ', and carved those words hereticiis molestus » on his tomb. And besides, for all his powers of dialectic as a lawyer, he shows up little better than the sinners he reviled. They had' sharpened their tongues just as skilfully 1 They were erased in the year 1833. Sir Thomas More as he. As was said later on by the poet John Donne, who married into the family of More : ' Arguing is heretic's game, and exercise As wrestlers perfects them. Not liberties Of speech, but silence ; hands not tongues end heresies '. Ill So it is almost in spite of his biographers that one comes at last to know anything of the familiar history of this great and lovable man. From a score of sources, most of them foreign, picking here and there a jewel from the dust-heap of theological debate, we have to discover almost for ourselves the' true lustre of his fame, the rare beauty and harmony of his domestic life ^ Who that ever set eyes on Holbein's family group or scanned Erasmus' letters can ever forget the home at Chelsea, where in patriarchal style no less than twenty-two persons of four generations were gathered together, besides servants, under the rule of this best of men ? As has been well pointed out ", More continued the ^ A great service has been done the general reader by Dr W. H. Hutton, whose Sir Thomas More, now in its second edition, gathers into the compass of one volume nearly everything it is necessary to know. * In an excellent front-page article. Times Literary Supplement, July 26th, 1917. Sir, Thomas More fourteenth-century tradition of St Eleazar, Count of Sabran, who adopted as the spirit of his household the combined watchwords of prayer and work without making his castle into a cloister. With Eleazar, too, More would have all his household ' merry without offending God '. No dice, no cards, no tennis ; but all the wealth of innocent gaiety with which God himself has dowered this gladsome world. One watches More as he goes from morning chapel to Westminster Hall — on his way calling at the King's Bench, over which his father, the old John More, still presided, 'and reverently kneeling down in the sight of them all duly asked his father's blessing'. Thence to the Chancery, where as Lord Chancellor he himself rendered swift justice to his suitors, justice tempered always with equity and humour, without the accustomed bribes and without fear of what coun- sellors or King shall say— hasting always through the intricacies and sophistications of the law to the very heart of the matter, that he might the sooner return to his longed-for home. Mark the welcome from his darling Meg as his barge draws to the bank ; the whimsical report he gives to Roper, the serious pleader, of the causes of the day. Listen with both ears alert to the word-fencing with Pattison, the jester— the shout of the children as their father's thrusts go home. See them all romping oflE to the lower garden where the animal pets— father's no less than children's, a veritable menagerie— were ^ Sir Thomas More housed *. There is Erasmus suddenly dragged out from his studies to behold the monkey thwarting the weasel in his attack upon the rabbits — and required on the moment to describe it all in verse % whilst my Lord Chancellor, to them merely ' Daddy ', sits on the grass and makes an epigram all about the spider and the fly. Off again he marches to attend to what is needful in the department of home affairs. ' After my daily business is done ', he writes to Peter Gilles, his Antwerp friend, ' I must commune with my wife, chat with my children, and talk with my servants. All which things I account among business, unless a man will be a stranger in his own house '. At the same time he takes care lest his wife, by nature rather cumbered with too much serving, shall be housekeeper and nothing more. He persuades her to take lessons with him on the lute. Or they will sit together in the arbour and get Erasmus to read them delightful chapters ' More entertained more foreigners than any gentleman in the land ; and those of them who knew his passion for animals often requited his hospitaUty by the gift of strange beasts brought specially from their native country. This seems to have been the first of those Uterary Zoos which have abounded in Chelsea One remembers the 'birds and fowls of all Hnds, and beasts of' nearly aU hnds too-dogs, cats, wombats, kangaroos, armadilloes, all manner of creatures ', which used to tenant Rossetti's demesne : and those demon fowls, macaws and cochin-chinas ' which drove philosopher Carlyle to distraction. Europe! ^' ''""'^"^ ^''^''^^ '^'"'"'"' ' ^"'^^ ^'°"°"' ^^^"""^"^ "" Sir Thomas More out of the Praise of Folly k Or, again, they wiU teach the youngsters their Greek and Latin alphabets by chalHng up the letters on the barn, and shooting at them with their bows and arrows. What a shame it is when the royal barge is spied coming swiftly up the Thames, and the bluif King Harry breaks into their heaven. Sometimes he, too, will play with them in his hearty way and his giant laugh will go ringing through the gardens. But too often his royal forehead is wrinkled and the fire gleams in what More called ' those penetrable eyes ' ; they know well what that means. Away they are sent to the library and their lessons, so that Hal and their Daddy, suddenly transformed into King and Chan- cellor, may pace up and down the lawns together, for hours on end, deeply engrossed in difficult matters of State. A little while and the Chelsea community is desolate. The life and soul of it is somewhere in France or Flanders on the King's affairs for months and months together. Those at home only exist for his letters ; those hasty scribbles from the Council Board, which for all their simplicity were to them worth volumes of the vaunted Cicero. The home-sickness peeps out here and there — who could help it ? but nothing can overcome the old insouciance of style, the homely chaff and banter, the sweet counsel so irresistibly delivered. Not even ' Entitled, by a pretty play of words, the Encomium Moriae and dedicated to his dearest friend. lo Sir Thomas More when writing to the King and to Wolsey will he forbear his wit. He makes good fun of the pittance which he as Ambassador is allowed. Thirteen-and- fourpence a day ! Hardly enough for a bachelor's bill of wine. How in the world shall a married man keep twenty-two souls on that ? He really cannot persuade his family, he humorously regrets, to fast in his absence. Nor the animals either '. So it is with the last letters of all ; those written with a lump of charcoal in the Tower, that our eyes grow almost too dim to read. The same winsome, playful spirit, hovering above an unconquerable will, is about them too, making a ' mock of death ' that the farewells may hurt his children less. God ! that a king's blind lust should have brought such a man and such a home to ruin ! IV In a street by the British Museum there is an evil-looHng restaurant kept by an Italian, where you may taste as choice coffee as Florian's in Venice, Erasmus, who always deplored Mere's entanglement in State affairs, was especially troubled by the long embassies abroad. He knew what his friend lost by separation from his famHy. ' Thu! beW ^r"^'' /H" ^A°S= ^'^^^J' ^«^ f"^'^'^^ ; this it is to be th t whl'n'^n^' \ ?" "^^ "°^^ °^ ^^P-- it i« -°^th noting that, when Dr Dale (who, as Howell said, was a 'witty kind of Sir Thomas More n and consort if you please with Italian ladies, ' springes to catch woodcocks ', as old Polonius said, and as light as they are fair. Ten years ago those premises were used more honourably for the sale of woodcuts and English and Italian books. It was even then a disorderly house, for the books which might have stood upright on the shelves were mostly littered on the floor. A tabby cat was wont to perch on a pair of steps and smile foolishly at the bookworms grovelling about the pile. By the doorway a rusted suit of armour, said to have protected the skull of the poet Waller in the Civil War and as tarnished as his fame, mocked at the futile literary man. In the back room sat the Master Bookman, scribatiously bent over his work ; so intent on his interminable translation of Carducci that he cared nothing who purchased or pilfered from his store. You could just glimpse the back of his greasy collar andhear him droning out his lines till they drowsed into final form. This was the place where one Saturday afternoon I dug up my manuscript life of More, and with the payment of a few shillings and much valuable advice on the rendering of Carducci made it my very own. The manuscript, as I found out later in the seclusion drole') went to Flanders forty years after, Queen Elizabeth promised him 20/- per diem for his charges. ' Then Madam ', said he, ' I will spend 19/- a day '. ' What will you do with the odd shilling ? ' the Queen repUed. ' I will reserve that for my Kate, and for Jane and Dick ', meaning his wife and children. Where- upon the Queen smiled and enlarged his allowance. 12 Sir Thomas More of my study, was of more historical than biblio- graphical value, being merely a transcript made in 1883 by Mr C. A. Macirone, an ecclesiasticaUy- minded official at the War Office, from the original and hitherto unpublished life written by Nicholas Harpsfield, the last Catholic Archdeacon of Canter- bury, in the first year (1555) of Queen Mary's reign ». Attached to the transcript was a friendly letter from Archbishop Benson and his license to Macirone for the publication of the work. There was also a copy imprimatur for the same purpose dated as far back as 1685, but on neither occasion did the license lead to anything. Now the original from which Macirone's copy was taken reposes in the Archbishop's Library at * The date is fixed thus exactly because the writer states that it was written in the time of Queen Mary, and goes on to say that Rastell's great folio of the collected English works (which was pubUshed in 1556) was then nearing completion. The attribution of the work to Harpsfield (for the Life is unsigned) is justified on several grounds. He is mentioned as one of the biographers of Sir Thomas More in the Preface to the anonymous life which Dr Wordsworth published. Again, the writer of the manuscript now being considered near the end of it promises a special work on the Divorce between Henry VIH and Catharine of Aragon which we know Harpsfield to have written and which was published under his name forty years ago. Thirdly, the British Museum copy is subscribed N. H. L. D., of which the second half no doubt refers to his doctorate of Laws. We know that he was accustomed in that dangerous age to cloak his authorship in that fashion, because the Six Dialogues which he wrote in prison and sent to his friend Alan Gope to print secretly at Antwerp in 1566 were subscribed A. H. L. N. H. E. V. E. A. C. (Auctor hujus libri, Nicolaus Harps- field emu vera edidit Alanus Copus). Sir Thomas More 13 Lambeth (no. 827) but that again, though over 350 years old, is a copy in its turn. The original, partly in Harpsfield's hand and for the most part in that of William Carter his amanuensis, was publicly burned in 1583. By that time Harpsfield himself was beyond the jurisdiction of the Court, ' having perished in prison in 1575 ; but Carter was un- happily alive, and when Topcliffe, ' the famous pursuant and priest catcher ', broke into his cham- bers he found not only the manuscript of the life of Sir Thomas More but Harpsfield's treatise on Henry VHI's divorce. In those days, when Catholic plots and invasions were rumoured, the possession of such documents was held to be a crime ; and poor Carter was barbarously hanged, drawn, and quar- tered, and a bonfire made of his books \ But if Topcliffe boasted of bringing Harpsfield's heresies to dust and ashes he was woefully deceived. Carter had left nothing to chance. No less than three copies made by him or by his order exist ^t the present day. One at Lambeth already mentioned, ' He was an old hand at the game, having two or three times before been imprisoned for printing treasonable Uterature at a private press, one pamphlet comparing the Queen with Holofernes and suggesting to the ladies-in-waiting that they might copy Judith and rid the kingdom of a menace to the Faith. After Carter's arrest his wife informed against Lord Lumley and others his associates and hinted that her husband ' was acquainted with aU the secret dealings of the Papists ' and might turn informer. In the State Papers (Domestic Series) for 1587 there is a pathetic petition of the widow praying for Carter's son to be released from the Tower and his goods and papers restored. 14 Sir Thomas More written hastily in three different hands \ another among the Harleian MSS. (no. 6253), singular in having an Epistle Dedicatorie to M. William Roper and a series of portraits interleaved ; the third preserved in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. This last has an especial interest, apart from its wonderful caligraphy, for it seems to have been plucked, so to speak, as a brand from the burning. ' This booke ', says a note on the cover, ' was f ounde by Rich. Topcliff in Mr Thomas Moare's studdye emongs other bookes at Greenstrett Mr Wayfarer's house when Mr Moare was ap- prehended the XVI of April 1582 ' «. At the end of the text on folio 57 some loyal Protestant, as if reflecting on Mr Moare's dismemberment, has scribbled ' Longe preserve the Realme. Amen '. When one remembers that this was the first completed, if not indeed the first written, biography ^ On the first page some seventeenth-century student has scribbled ' very illegibly writt ', and at the end some moralizing reader has added ' Fame is a lier '. * In spite of the similarity in name, he was I think no relation of Sir Thomas More. ' A poor man ', reports Bishop Whitgyft to Walsyngham the Secretary of State, ' but very dangerous ; was Bonner's porter in Queen Mary's time '. The Privy Council had examined his papers the year before and found 'much badde stuflEe' amongst them. It is worth noting that Harpsfield's brother was also in Bonner's service. Sir Thomas More 15 of More, and that it has survived so many perils, it is surprising it should have remained in obscurity these many years. Moreover, it is in its content and composition no mean achievement, as the student may judge from the selections that will follow. The stylist of to-day may think the Archdeacon laborious and some may cavil at the use he made of Roper. But Harpsfield was quick to admit the latter charge. In homely words he confesses his pen-child to be a ' pigg of your owne sowe ', a pig nevertheless that squeaked in its own fashion and fed on more than its mother's milk. As for the style, say what you like, it reflects the man. It is long-winded, perhaps, but then Harpsfield was a lawyer. It is spangled with outlandish words and phrases ' fetched beyond the Garamentes ', but then Harpsfield was professor of Greek and had disputed in seven languages with the pundits of Louvain. It becomes shrill where heresy and schism are con- cerned, but Bloody Mary was then secure upon the throne and Harpsfield's temper had not sweetened in his exile. The tale of his life would be an attractive one to follow and is perhaps necessary to a due appreciation of his works ; but here only the briefest summary can find room. He was born at London in the year 1519 ; schooled at Winchester; and subsequently proceeded to New College, Oxford, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1535. Applying himself to the study of Civil and Canon Law, he became eminent in the 1 6 Sir Thomas More University, and in 1544 was admitted Principal of White Hall on the site of which Jesus College now stands. At the same time he was wise enough in his generation not to be too wise. Much of his . leisure was spent at Court vying with other scholars for the favours of the King. When Anne of Cleves came over to England in 1540 he was amongst those selected for the royal escort. And he gained more lucrative rewards, for he was one of those whom the King delighted to honour. In 1544 he was ap- pointed first Regius Professor of Greek at his own University. But scarcely was he settled in his chair when his royal patron died. For a time he endured the new regime, but in 1550, sooner than subscribe to the new-fangled religion of the Protector, he went into voluntary exile oversea. And there for four years he continued, reduced from the comfort- able life of a don to a scrambling hand-to-mouth existence, now starving for a season on Greek roots, now picking up crumbs at the Flemish and German Universities whither his perambulations led, and once in real luxury at Louvain as the guest of his friend and master William Roper. Then the boy- King died, and Harpsfield hurried back to England, resolved with the other champions of the old faith to stamp out the English Reformation. His sun rose swiftly to its height. In 1554, his annvs mirabilis, he was appointed Dean of the Court of Arches, Prebend of St Paul's with three fat livings attached, and Archdeacon of Canterbury in the room Sir Thomas More 17 of Edmund Cranmer. While it lasted he made whole stacks of hay. And what with his amazing energy and his knowledge of Ecclesiastical Law, which he delighted to employ to the confusion of simple men, the heretics trembled at his name. Fox goes so far as to say that, when Mary was known to be dying, Harpsfield rode in haste to London to ensure the fate of those who were under arrest. Yet Elizabeth, the Protestant Queen, when she succeeded, thought by no means cruelly of the man. She hoped, indeed, through his very moderation to reconcile her Roman and Reforming subjects, and it was at her wish that Harpsfield was chosen one of the seven orators for the Catholic cause in the famous though fruitless Disputation of Religion held in the Abbey Church at Westminster in the first year of her reign. VI The following year the Queen's Commissioners visited Harpsfield at St Paul's and summoned, him to acknowledge her as supreme head of the Church, just the one chief thing his conscience forbade him to do. Thereupon they lodged him in the Fleet, thinking by cool and solitary reflection he might be led to change his views. If so, they but little understood 1 8 Sir Thomas More their man. He could be as incurably obstinate as the Blessed More himself, and not for the bribe of a bishopric would he forswear allegiance to the Canon Law. At intervals they sent learned divines to preach him into a better frame of mind, and as late as 1567 Dr Goodman, the honey-mouthed Dean of Westminster, was angling for his soul. Then they left him in peace and to the sole companionship of his pen. For eight long years he wrote and wrote and slowly rotted tiU his death in 1575 ', leaving behind a little pile of manuscripts (no less learnedly than painfully performed) of which the greater number stiU await the printer's hand to set them free ". On his life and letters men have passed judgments in various terms, each according to the fashion of his faith, but no one has doubted his integrity or devotion. In summing up there is no reason why we should refuse the praiseworthy report of Piteus, who knew him well : ' He was a grave and a prudent man, severe and candid in his behaviour, ' ffis brother, Bonner's chaplain, and himself a great zealot for the Catholic Religion, who had also been imprisoned in the Fleet, died three years later. ' The Ufe of More had been written beforehand, as previously stated, in 1556. In prison he compiled Six Dialogues directed against the Pope's detractors, a History of the Anglican Church, a Life of Wy cliff, a Life of Cranmer, a Life of Christ, and the treatise on the Divorce already mentioned. The last-named has been edited by the Camden Society, the History of the Anglican Church was printed by the Society of Jesus in 1662 ; and the Six Dialogues were secretly issued from a press at Antwerp in 1566, but the other works remain in custody at Lambeth. Sir Thomas More 19 of great integrity of life, an admirable orator ^ ; a critical historian, a mighty master of languages, most eminent in the civil and canon law, and withal an able divine, being solidly grounded in these latter studies. In a word he was an inexhaustible fountain of all good literature, and is acknowledged even by his contemporaries to have deserved well of posterity '. In the selections of Harpsfield's Life of More which immediately follow I have preferred those which give particulars unnoted by the other bio- graphers or which vary from those already known. Until the whole work is published by some Learned Society these fragments may serve. The Epistle Dedicatorie to Mr William Rooper ^ To enterprise anything, or to gratifie any man with my doeings, ye are the onlie man livinge in all the Earth that by your longe and great benefits and charges imployed and heaped uppon me, towarde the supportinge of my livinge and learninge, have most deeplie bound mee to be at your commaundement 1 A faculty that was in the family. His brother, one of the appointed preachers at Paul's Cross, was caUed ' Dr SweetUps ' from his smooth words and fair discourse. " As already stated, this dedication does not appear in the Lambeth MS. I have, however, thought it worth while to transcribe it from the Harleian MS. Also throughout the selected passages I have taken some liberties with the punctuation, but only where necessary to save the reader from stumbling. 20 Sir Thomas More during my life. Againe if there be any matter in the world meet and convenient to be presented and dedicated unto you of any levened man, it is this present treatise. I am not ignorant that ye came of a worthy petigree both by the Father and Mother's syde ; by the father side of Auncient gentlemen of longe continuance; And by the Mother side of the Appuldrefeles, one of the Chiefest and auncient families in Kent ; and one of the 3 cheif e gentlemen that compelled William the Conqueror to agree and confirme the auncient customes of Kent ; daughter to the greate wise and right worshipfull Sr. John Fineux Chief e Justice of the Kings Bench, who amongst his worthie and notable sayings, was wont to saie; that if ye take away from a justice the order of his discretion, ye take from him more than halfe his office ; whose steppes in vertue wisdome and learning, as also your Worshipfidl fathers, whoe was Attornie to Kinge Henry ye Vlllth ; and whome ye in the office of the Prothonotary in the Kings Bench have immediatlie succeeded and shall therein by Gods Grace longe continue. Ye have (God be thanked) well followed the road after a man whose life is admired illustred and beutified (that worthie man Sir Thomas Moore) whose daughter you have married ; the excellent, learned and vertuous Matron Mrs. Margaret Moore. He was your fgther in lawe ; what saie I, your father in lawe, nay rather your verie father indeed; and Sir Thomas More 21 though a temporall man yet your very spirituall father ; one that by his good Councell and advice, or rather by his instant and devout prayers to God recovered your lost Soule, overwhelmed and full deepe drowned in the deadlie, dreadful! depth of horrible heresies. Ye may therefore especiallie at my hands vindicate and challenge unto you this my treatise ; and that not onlie for causes aforesaide, but for other also ; for as much as ye shall receive (I will not sale) a pigg of your owne Sowe — it were too homelie and swinish a terme — ^but rather a comelie and goodlie garland, a pleasante sweete Nosegay of most sweete and odoriferous flowers picked and gathered even out of your owne garden. Ye shall receive a garland decked and adorned with precious pearles and stones, the most orient, whereof you have by your owne travell procured and got together, I meane of the good instructions diliigentlie and trulie by your Industrie gathered ; and whereof many you knowe well by your owne experience ; which ye have imparted unto me and furnished me withall. Wherefore as all waters and Rivers, according to the saying of ye Scriptures, from whence they come thither doe reflowe againe it is convenient ye should reape the fruite of your owne labour and Industrie, and that it should redound thither from whence it originallie pro- ceeded.. And that wee and our posteritie should knowe to whome to Impute and ascribe the 2 2 Sir Thomas More Wellspring of this greate benefitt, and whome we may accordinglie thank for many things nowe come to light of this worthie man (which perchance other- wise would have been buried with perpetuaU ob- livion. And yet wee have also paid some parte of the Shott ; and have not been altogether negligent. Wee have gleaned (I trust) some good grapes, and have with poore Ruth leased some good corne ; as by the perusing you shall understand. And thus wee committ your Worship to the blessed tuition of the Almightie, whoe send you this and manie other good and happie new yeares Your Worshipps Bounden N. H. L. D. Of His Legal Studies and His Lectures on St Augustine's City of God But his father mynded that he should treade after his steppes and settle his whole mynde and studdye oppon the Lawes of the realm ; and soe being plucked from the univarsityes of studdyes and learneinges he was sett to the studdyes of the lawes only of this realme ; which studdye he cominced first at Newe Inn, one of the Inns of Channcerye, and when he had well favouredly profitted therein he was admitted to Lincolnes Inn, & there with grate allowance soe farre forth pursued his studdy, that he was made (as he was well worthy) an Utter Bariester. Nowe is the Lawe of the Realme & the Sir Thomas More 23 studdye thereof such as would require a whole man wholy & entyrely thereto addicted to a whole & intyre mans life to growe to any excellencye therein ; nether were utter Bariesters comonly made therein but after many yeares studye. But this mans speedye & yet substantiall profitinge was such that he enioyed some perogative of tyme, yet in this notwthstanding did he cutte of from the studie of the Lawe much time which he imploid to his former studies that he vsed in Oxford, and especially to the reading of St Augustine de Civitate dei, which though it be a booke very hard for a well learned man to understand, and cannot be exactly under- standed, and especially cannot be with commenda- tion openly read of any man that is not well and substantially furnished as well with divinitie as prophane knowledge, yet did Mr. Moore being so young, being so distracted allso and occupied in the studie of the comon lawes, openly read in the church of St. Lawrence in London the bookes of the said St Augustine de civitate dei to his no small com- endation, and to the great admiration of all his audience. His lesson was frequented and honored with the presence and resorte as well of that learned & great cuning man, Mr. Grocine (wth whome and wth Mr. Thomas Lupsete he learned the greeke toonge) as allso wth the chief e and best learned men of the cittie of London. About the said time the said Grocine read in the foresaid Cittie, the booke of Dyonisius Areopagita but he had not so frequent 24 Sir Thomas More and so great an auditorye as had Mr. Moore. This intermission and interchanging of studies was to Mr. Moore no lesse comfort & recreation than it was to his Auditors good and profitable. So that from this, as it were a spirituall exercise, he returned the lustyer & fresher againe to his owne studie of the temporall lawe. Of His Marriage and Continence In conclusion therefore, he fell to marriage, in, and under which he did not only live free from dis- honoring the same with any unlawful & filthy companie, leaving his owne wife (as many, especially such as be of great wealthe and authoritie, the more the pittie, often doe) but lived him selfe, his wife, his children, & family, after such a godlie and virtuous sorte as his house might rather be a mirrour and spectacle not only to the residue of the laitie, but even to many of the Clergie. Also his Wife was one Mr. Cokes' daughter, a Gentleman of Essex that had often invited him thither having 3 daugh- ters, whose honest conversacion and virtuous educa- tion provoked him there especially to set his affec- tion. And albeit his mind most served him to the second daughter, for that, he thought her the fairest, and best favoured, yet when he considered that it would be both great grief e, and some shame allso, the eldest to see her youngest sister in marriage preferred before her, he then of a certaine pittie Sir Thomas More 25 framed his fancy toward her, and soone after married her. Of His Visage and Bodily Appearance and Appetites ' Then as he was no tall man all the partes of his bodie were in as good proportion, and congruence as a man woulde wishe. His skinne was somewhat white, and the colour of his face drew rather to whytenes than to paleness, farre from rednes, saveinge that some little thinne red sparkles every where appeared. His haire was blackish yelowe, or rather yellowe blackish, his bearde thinne, his eyes graye and speackled ; which kinde of eyes do com- monly betoken and signifie a verye goode, and sharpe witte ; and they say that kinde of eyes are least encumbered with diseases and faultes. His coun- tennannce was conformable to his nature and disposition, pleasante and amiable, somewhat re- semblinge and tendinge to the fashion of one that would laughe. His voyce was neyther too boyster- ous and bigge, neyther too small .and shrill ; he spake his wordes very distinctly and treatably without any manner of hastines or stutteringe ; and albeit he delighted in all kinde of melodye, yet he seemed not of nature to be apt to singe himselfe. He enjoyed the health of his body full well, and » This was the passage which Dr Wordsworth prized so highly in this manuscript. 26 Sir Thomas More though he were not stronge of bodie, yet was he able to go throughe without any labour and payne, meet and convenient for him to despatch his business and affayres. He was very litle encum- bered and infested with sickness, saveinge a little before he gave over the office of the L. Channcelor, and especially afterwarde when he was shutt up in the tower. And now somewhat of his diet. Being a young man, he used and delighted much in drink- ing of water ; he used very small ale, and as for wine he did but sippe of it only for companyes sake and pledginge of his friends ; he more delighted to feede upon beefe, sake meates, and coarse breade, and that very well-leaned then upon fine meates and breade. He loved well milke and fruite, and especially egges. Of His Embassies Abroad He of his owne seUe, and . of nature, neyther desired nor well liked to be intricated with Princes Affaires ; and of all other offices, he had little mind and fancie to be any Ambassadoure. And least to this Ambassage, for he liked not to leave his abode and, as it were, to be shut up in a towne neere to the sea, where neyther the grounde nor the Aire was good and wholesome. Againe whereas in England of very nature he did abhorre from grievous and contentious altercations and strifes, though he Sir Thomas More 27 felte thereby a gaine, such contentions in a strange countrie were much more grievous and odious to him. And by so much the more as he felt thereby some damage ; for thoughe he were worshipfully provided and furnished for the defraying of his charge, yet grew there thereby some charges unto him, and he was merely woont to saye, that there was betweene a layman and a priest to be sent Embassadors a very great difference, for the Priests need not to be troubled or disquieted for the absence of theyr wives and children, as having none or such as they may find everywhere, as the laieman is, and may carrie theyr whole family wth them, as the laieman cannot. He would allso further pleasantlie sale that albeit he were no ill husband, no iU father, no ill maister, yet could he not intreate, his wife, children, or family to f aste for his pleasure until his returne. Of the Flatterers at Wolsey's Banquet ^ So it happened one day that the Cardinall had in great audience made an oration in a certaine matter, wherein he liked himself e so well, that at his dinner he sate on thornes till he might heare how they that » This amusing account of what Harpsfield calls Wolsey's ' vaineglorious, scabbed, itching folly to heare his owne praise ' is an abridgment by him of a previous description by More himself, who was present at the time. 2 8 Sir Thomas More sate with him at his boorde would comend it. And when he had sit musing a while devising, as I thought after, upon some proper prittie waye to bring it in withall, at the last for lack of a better, least he should have the matter go too long, he brought it even bluntly foorthe and asked all that sate at the boordes end (for at his owne messe in the midst there sate but himselfe alone) how well they liked his oration that he made that daie. When the Probleme was once proponed, till it was full answered no man, I weene, eate one morsell of meate. More, every man was fallen into so deepe a studie for the finding of some exquisite praise ; for he that should have brought out but a vulgare and common comendation would have thought himselfe shamed for ever. Then said we our sentences by rowe, as we sate from the lowest to the highest in good order, as it had been a great matter of the comonweale in an high solemne councell. When it came to my parte — I will not saie for any boaste — me thought by our Ladie for my part I acquitt myselfe meetely weU ; and I liked myself the better bycause I thought my woords went with some Grace in the English tongue, wherein letting my Latine alone me listed to shew my cuning, and I hoped to be liked the better bycause I sawe that he that sate next me and should saie his sentence after me was an unlearned Priest, for he covdd speake no latine at all. But when he came forthe with his parte of my Lord's commendation the wily Sir Thomas More 29 fox had beene so well accustomed at Court wth the crafte of flattery that he went beyond me too too farre, and then might I see by him what excellency a right meane wit may come to in one crafte, that in all his whole life studyeth and buisieth his wit about no more but that one ; but I made after a solemne vowe unto my selfe that if ever he and I were matched together at that boord againe, when we should fall to flattery, I would flatter in Latine that he should not contend with me any more ; for though I could be content to be outrunne of a horse yet would I no more abide it to be outrunne of an asse. But here now beganne the game ; he that sate highest and was to speake was a great beneficed man and not a doctor onely but somewhat learned in the Lawes of the Church. A world it was to see, how he marked every mans woord that spake before him, and it seemed that every woord, the more proper it was, the worse he liked it for the cumbrance he had to studie out a better to passe it. The roan even so sweat. wth labour that he was f aine now and then to wipe his face ; howbeit in conclusion, when he came to his course, wee that had spoken before him had so taken up all among us before that we had not left him one wise woord to speake after, and yet found he out such a shifte, that in his flattering he passed all the many of us. For when he saw he could find no words of Praise that had not beene spoken already before, the wily fox would speake never a worde, but as if ravished 30 Sir Thomas More with the wonder of the wisdome, and eloquence that my Lord's grace had uttered in his oration, he let a long sighe with an (Oh) from the bottome of his breast and held up both his hands and lift up his head and cast up Jiis eyes into the welkin and wepte. If Chancellor Wolsey had been as Chancellor More Thrise happie had he beene if he had trode the virtuous steps, that this worthie man who followed him in the office of the L. Channceler treaded. If he had I say followed his modest, soft, sober and nothing-revenging, and nothing-ambitious nature ; if he had shewed him selfe a true, faithfull, virtuous councellor to his Prince, then had he preserved himselfe from the foule, shamefull fall and ruine that he headlong by his outragious ambition, and revengeable nature cast himselfe in. Then had he preserved the Prince from the foule, enormous faultes and cruelties he after fell to ; then had he preserved this worthie man of whose story we be in hand and that noble prelate, the good byshop of Rochester ; and allso the blessed and as I may say the living saintes, the moonks of the Charterhouse, with many other from foule butchery and slaughter ; then finally had he preserved the whole Realme, from the heynous and hideous scismes and heresies, wherewth sithence it hath beene lamentably over- whelmed. Sir Thomas More 31 Of More's Piety and Spiritual Exercises And this among others was one of his good virtues and godlie proprieties, conditions, and customes, that when he entered into any matter or office of importance, as when he was chosen one of the King's privie councell, when he was sent ambassador, appointed speaker of the Parliament, made L. Chancelor, or when he took any other weighty matter or affaire upon him, he would goe to the Churche to be confessed, he would heare masse, and be houselled. He used — yea being L. Channcelor — to sitt Snd sing in the Quir wth a surplisse on his back, and when the Duke of Norf olke, coming on a time to Chelsey to dine with him, fortuned to find . him in his attire going homeward after , service, said after this fashion, ' God body, God body, my Lord Channcelor — a parish clarke ! You dishonor the King and his office.' ' Nay,' quoth Sr. Thomas More, smiling upon the Duke, ' your grace may not thinke that the King your Master and mine will with me for serving god his master be offended, or thereby account his office dishonored'. Wherein Sr. Thomas More did verie godlie and devoutlie and speake verie truly and wisely. What would the Duke have said if he had scene the mighty and noble Emperor Charles the Great playing the very same part, or King David long before, hopping and dauncing naked before the Arke. He was sometime for godlie purpose desirous to be solitarie, and to 32 Sir Thomas More sequester himself e from worldly company ; and therefore the better to satisfie and accomplish this, his godly desire, he builded a good distance from his mansion house at Chelsey, a place called the New BuUding, wherein there was a chappie, a librarie, and a gallerie. In which, as his use was on other dayes to occupie himselfe in prayer and studie togither, so on the Friday there usually continued he from morning to evening spending his time only in devout prayers and spirituall exercises. Of His Hair Shirt Albeit by reason he would not be noted of singularitie, he conformed himselfe outwardly to other men in his apparell according to his state and vocation, yet how little he inwardly esteemed such vanities it well appeared by the shirt of heare that he wore secretly next his body, whereof no person was privie, but his daughter only, Mrs. Margaret Roper, whome for her secrecy he above all other trusted, causing her as neede required to wash the same shirt of haire. It channced once that as he sate at supper in the sumer singly in his doublet and hose, wearing upon the said shirt of haire a playne linnen shirt without ruffle or collar, that a young gentlewoman Mrs. Moore, sister to the said Margaret, channcing to espie the same, began to laughe at it. His daughter Margaret, being not ignorant of his manner, perceaving the same, privily told him of it ; Sir Thomas More 33 and he being sorry that she saw it, presently amended it. Of More's Latin and English Works [For the sake of brevity I am obliged to omit the several pages of the section wherein Harpsfield ' speakes somewhat of his bookes whereby he hath consecrate his worthy name to Immortality in this transitory woorld to the woorldes end. And I doubt not ',he assures the reader, ' that for his great paines and travel] therein, especially for god's sake to whom he had his principall respect, he hath receaved his condigne reward in the celestiall woorld, that shall have no end '. Those who study the MS should dwell par- ticularly on the passage referring to 'More's epi- grams : ' These as they be learned and pleasant, so are they nothing biting or contumelious, howbeit merry and conceyted '. And on that which tells of his contest 'in a time of hostillity and warre ' with the Frenchman Brixius, who had boasted in verse of a naval victory over the English that was no victory at all. The one other outstanding pas- sage is that in which Harpsfield describes the Utopia, ' an exquisite platforme patterne and ex- ample of a singular good commonweale ', and tells how More's ' joUie invention ' bore such a * coun- tenance of truth that many learned men as Budaeus and Paludanus upon a fervent zeale wished that 34 Sir Thomas More some excellent divines might be sent thither to preach Christ his gospell — and it was the more credited for that about that time many strange and unknowen nations were discovered, such as our forefathers did never knowe or believe',] Of the Mischievous Practices of Tindall Let us now see how substantially Tindall and his f ellowes have handled their matters, and let us begin with that that pinched Tindall to heare of, his false and corrupt translation of the new testament, whereon it is to be considered that as these good brethren partly deny the very text itself e and whole bookes of the sacred scripture as the bookes of the Machabeesand certaine others and Luther St. James Epistle allso ; and as they adulterate and emasculate and corrupt the whole corps of the same with their viTong and false expositions,, far disagreeing from the coment of the holy, ancient fathers and doctors and from the faith of the whole catholik church, so for the advancing and furthering of the said heresies they have of a sett purpose perverted and mis- translated the said holy scripture, and after such shamefullsorte as Tindall who in his trans- lations turneth me this woord Church into congrega- tion, priest into senior or elder, which woord Congre- gation absolutely of it selfe as Tindall doth use it doth no more signify the congregation of christian men than a faire flock of unchristian geese, neither Sir Thomas More 35 this word presbiteros for elder signifieth any whit more a priest than an elder stick. Of More's ' Diverse Pet Beastes ' It was grate pleasure to him to see and beholde the forme and fashion, the manner and disposition of diverse beastes ; there was not lightly any kinde of byrdes that he kept not in his house, as he kept also the ape, the foxe, the wessel, the ferret, and other beastes that were rare and not common. Besides if there had beene anye thinge brought out of straunge countryes, or worthy to be looked upon, that was he very desirous to buy, and to adorne and furnishe his house with all the contention and pleasure of such as came to him ; who tooke grate pleasure in the beholdinge of such things and Hmself also with them. From a Letter to the King Wherefore my gratious soveraigne I never will, nor can it become mee, with your highnes to reason or argue the matter ; but in my most humble manner prostrate at your graces f eete I only beseech your grace with your owne high prudence and your accustomed goodnes consider and waye the matter. And if in so doing your owne vertuous mynde shall give (i.e. persuade) you, that notwithstandinge the 36 Sir Thomas More manifold and excellent goodness your gratious highnes hath so many manner of wayes used unto mee I were a wretch of such monstrous ingratitude as coulde with any of them all or any other person livinge digressefrom my bounden dutye of allegi- aunce towards your good grace ; then desire I no farther favour at your hands than the losse of all I can loose, goods, landes, libertie and finally my life with-aU, whereof ye keepinge any parte to my seUe coulde never doe me pennyworth of pleasure, but only shoulde my comforte be that after my shorte life and your long (which with continual prosr peritie to Gods pleasure our Lorde of his mercy sende you) I should once meete your grace in heaven and there be merry with you where amongst many other pleasures this shoulde bee one that you should see there that howsoever you take mee I am your true beadsman now and ever have beene, and will be till I dye howsoever your pleasure be to do with me. Of More's Reflections on Dr Fisher's going to Execution The 22nd of the sayde month the good learned Bishop. of Rochester, doctor John Fisher, was be- headed for the same cause at the tower hill to- geather with the foresayde Mr Rainolds and the 3 persons of the charterhouse. Sir Tho. More looking out of a window chaunced to see them goinge to Sir Thomas More 37 theyre execution and, longinge in that journey to have accompanied them, sayde to his daughter Margaret then standeinge there beside him : ' Loe doste thou not see Megg that these blessed fathers bee now as cheerfully goinge to theyre death as bridegroom es be to theyre marriage ? wherefore hereby mayst thou see, myne owne good daughter, what a greate difference there is between such as have in effect spente all theyre dais in a straite, harde, penetentiall and paynefuU life religiously, and such as have in the worlde like worldly wretches, as thy poore father hath done, consumed all theyre tyme in pleasure and ease licentiously. For god consideringe theyre long continual unpleasant life in most sore and grievous pennance will no longer suffer them to remayne in this vale of miserie and iniquitie, but speedily hence taketh them to the fruition of his everlastinge deitie ; whereas thy silly father \Megge, like a most wicked caitiff, hath passed forth the whole course of his most miserable life most sinfully, god thinkeing him not worthie so soone to come to that eternall f elicitie leaveth him yet here still in the worlde further to be plunged and moyled with miserie '. Of M ore's Last Verses As soon as Mr. Secretariewas gone he wrote with a coale, for inke then had he none, these verses f ollowinge : Maaaaa» -.y,^-,.. 38 Sir Thomas More ' Fie flatteringe fortune, looke thou never so fayre Nor never so pleasauntlye beginne to smile As thoughe thou wouldst my ruine all repayre, Duringe my life thou shalt not me beguile : Trust shall I god to enter in a while His heaven of heaven sure and uniforme ; Ever after this calme looke I for a storme '. Yea three years before this he shewed in certayne Latin verses that he elegantly made but not yet printed, in which he properly and wittilie alludeth to his name that he had litle hope of his continuance in this transitorie life and how hee prepared himself to the other eternall and everlastinge life : Moraris si sit spes hie tibi longa morari Hoc te vel morus more monere potest Desine morari, et coelo meditare morari Hoc te vel morus more monere potest. JOHN MOORE, HIS BOOKE THE COMMONPLACE BOOK OF JOHN MOORE (To Clifford Bax) AMONG the Manuscripts which I have gathered into my library from time to time there is one which I am often reading over again, one which I cherish more than the rest. And I purpose to set down here some record of the good things it contains, because I would like to share them with those into whose hands so long as I live this manuscript can never come. It has no title, and deals with nothing definite whatsoever by way of subject. It obeys no order and has no limitation either of rhyme or reason. It is in several hands and the writing goes without any seeming will or purpose of its own, wandering anywhere and anyhow, upwards, downwards, and sideways, and once at least in a circle. It is the oddest of odd books, and, if one shoxild seek to give a title to it, one could find none better I think than that line with which Dryden described dreams as a ' medley of disjointed things '. So far as I can tell from a close study (helped out with magnifying glasses and with a recipe for the 40 John Moore His Booke recovery of faded ink suggested on one of the pages), it is the day-book or commonplace book of a physician-farmer, John Moore by name, who Hved at Eldroth, a hamlet some few miles north-west of Settle. It was begun in the year 1640, and after the death of its possessor was continued and con- siderably enlarged by his son, who had very much the same qualities and turn of mind as his father before him. And, last of all, it seems to have fallen into the hands of the grandson, ^a child of tender years and very untender feeling, who made merry over the wisdom of his fathers by blotting out their brightest pages and substituting such learning as he was then capable of, to wit, some two or three thousand pot- hooks and letter-capitals. Within the covers of this little book is gathered almost everything under the light of the sun, or the moon, too, for the matter of that. Here may be found fragments of sermons and wise Latin saws, a treatise on Euclid and astronomy 1, a select herbal, a manual of veterinary science, abandoned problems in simple mathematics, forms of letters for use in times of love and hate and in the world's affairs, an * With a pretty, rhymed device to know the planets by : ' Would you count the planets soon Remember Sim, Sum and the Moone' S = Saturn. S = Sun. I = Jupiter. U = Venus. Moon. M = Mars. M = Mercury. John Moore His Booke 41 account of the corn-seeds sown on Eldroth farm and flower-seeds in the garden, bills of physick at half- a-crown a bottle, a classification of English towns in population and importance, snatches of rhyme in various stages of imperfection, a catalogue of the library and books loaned out to friends, a note on the preparation of paints in every colour, varnishes, inks and sealing wax, recipes and remedies for all matters of the culinary art and consequent disease, drafts of farm and hire agreements, numeration tables, acrostics, the signs by which to predetermine the sex of children in the womb, the science of grafting trees and budding roses ; and lastly an account of a vacation spent with one John Newton wandering through many counties in search of rare and medicinal herbs. II Any attempt to reduce this chaos into order would probably make confusion worse confounded, and I must therefore be forgiven if I seem as perverse and muddled in my selection as is this delightful medley of a manuscript itself. Indeed, I think it is this quality of inconsequence which gives to it the greatest part of its charm. For example, on one page there is a sober and righteous quotation from 42 John Moore His Booke , I , ,, „ — — ■ the sixteenth Psalm, and on the same page, written crosswise and hidden in the corner, as if for shame, is the confession that ' he John Moore did drinke three quarts of ale that day '. On another page he begins to copy the Gospel of St John : ' In the beginning was the worde . . .' And then he suddenly breaks off as if that reminded him of his parson neighbour ; and he adds straightway : 'Memorandum that this day parson Yonden bought his new sythe. I lent him sixpence and I also lent Ellen Yonden sixpence ye same day. . . .' And once again at the bottom of a fair-written page, containing verses from the Vulgate and sayings from the Fathers, he jots down this quaint conceit ' If that thy nose and mouthe were set Wide up against ye sonne. One might by the shadow of thy beake Know how ye day doth runne.' ' His books include Mantuan, Lillie's Grammar, the Judex Rhetor icus, the Book of Proverbs, ^sop's Fables, Dugard's Rhetoric, Construction of Prosody, The Flower of Fidellity, The ChyreurgorC s Companion, Virgil's Aeneid, and certain note-boob of his own; they witness with one consent to his classical and literary turn of mind. I was not at all surprised, therefore, to find him miserably deficient in the science of mathematics. His attempts to solve the simplest problems are pitifully weak ; in one case ' A similar conceit can be found in Cyrano de Bergerac's _7o«r««y to the Moon. John Moore His Booke 43 he gives up the struggle altogether and is led to reflect on the vanity of the human mind and the folly of earthly wisdom. Underneath the unfinished problem he writes down : ' The f eare of ye Lorde that is wisdome and to depart from iniquity is a good understanding '. Ill Nevertheless his brain was quite ingenious. Whenever the dull craft of figures could be applied to his own domain of thought, he was wide enough awake. Half-a-dozen pages, for example, are given up to the invention of acrostics and anagrams by no means to be despised. On another with unwearying patience he anticipates Archbishop Ussher by an elaborate computation of the ages of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. For his private correspondence he devised a cipher of numerals which especially aroused the curiosity of his infant son ; for on every hand, though at a respectful distance, the pothoob stand in wondering array. There are just a few letters written in plain hand — the timid first fruits of an amorous correspond- ence. Even these betray a knowledge of the laws of arithmetical progression. The first — as stiff a production as maiden modesty could want — must 44 John Moore His Booke I think have been copied from one of the many vade-mecums then in vogue : ' When my thoughts tell me yt success does not allways suit with a rational expectation and future events often falsifye ye promesses of a present appearance I am forct to feel such uncertanties as usually flow from the doubtfuU combatt betwixt hope and despair wherein love discharges both the active and passive part. From this thou mayst judge how glad I would be that you might make peace between them, which as thou values my quiet keep not longer from my knowledge. And be confident yt neither an un- willing heart nor a slow hand shall disprove my words though I call myself Thy true friend and faithfuU servant.' The next letter marks a methodical advance, being subscribed, ' Thy really affectionate friend ' ; by the end of the third he gets as far as ' Thine in unfaigned affection'. The fourth and last of the series (which closes the moment it becomes in- teresting) sets forth in this style : ' Truly my Deare it is not my delight to multiply words. . . .' After that the deluge — or at least so one is led to imagine, but as one turns over the page in breathless expecta- tion this is what meets the eye : ' An obtuse angle is greater than a right angle and is like ye left and right corner of a Roman X', It looks 'like a deliberate trap to catch the indecent inquisitiveness of those who should pry into this book. By far the most cunning things, however, in John John Moore His Booke 45 Moore's book are two palindromes, or sentences which read the same backwards as forwards. Had Moore really contrived these he would have been something of a marvel ; for there is no more head- splitting work under the sun. His two are in Latin : Signa te, signa ; temere me tangis et angis Cross, cross thyself ! Thou annoyest and vexeth me needlessly. Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor ^. By my exertions, Rome, thy desire will soon be near. In Moore's time I believe there were only two palindromes constructed in our English tongue. The first by Taylor, the Water Poet, a contemporary of Moore, ran thus : ' Lewd did I live and evil I did dwel ' ; while the second represented our first parent politely introducing himself to Eve upon this wise : ' Madam, I'm Adam '. But since Moore's day there have been many palindromes devised, e.g. : ' Snug and raw was I ere I saw war * Since writing the text of this study I have discovered these two palindromes in Tabouret's Bizarrures et Touches Du Seigneur des Accordes (Rouen, 1616, p. 84). Apparently the author was the Devil himself. Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours, so the legend runs, had to consult the Pope, and having no carriage, went on foot. Satan met him on the highroad and represented to him how indecorous it was that he should journey as a common pilgrim. Saint Martin thereupon thanked Satan for the suggestion, trans- formed him into a mule, and jumped on to his back. Having neither whip nor spur, he goaded him by making the sign of the cross on his back whenever he slackened pace, much to the annoyance of the Devil, who in remonstrance cried, ' Signa te, signa ; temere me tangis et angis — Cross, cross thyself ! Thou annoyeth and vexeth me needlessly '. There are hundreds of Latin palindromes, e.g., the Roman lawyer's motto : ' Si nummi 46 John Moore His Booke and guns ' ; ' Stop Rose, I prefer pies or pots ' ; ' Rise to vote, sir ' ; ' Name no one man ' ; ' Red root put up to , order ' ; ' Red rum did emit revel ere Lever time did murder '. IV In the select herbal there is a wealth of curious old-fashioned lore : ' The flower of asphodel being bruised and a dye made thereof will colour ye hair a golden yellow colour. The roots of ye elme tree boyled in water for a long time and the fat rising on the top thereof being then scummed oflE and the head being anointed therewith that is grown bald will quickly cause ye hair to grow again. Dead nettle being bruised and layd to the nap of the neck stays bleeding at ye mouthe or nose ; and rue, beet immunis — If you pay you will go free ', and the famous word square, ' Sator arepo tenet opera rotas ', where not only does the sentence read the same each way, but the initial letters of the successive words unite to form the first word, the second letters to form the second word, and so on. The same, of course, is true on reversal. In 1623 Andre Mestral, an advocate with little else to do, and wishing to please certain ladies and legal luminaries, addressed to them at Avignon twenty pages of poetry in Greek and Latin and French palindromes. One hopes he obtained his reward. Again in 1802 another stupendous tour deforce appeared — a Greek poem of 416 lines entitled Trotij/ia KapviKov composed by one Georg Bendotes of Vienna under the pseudonym, ' Ambrose Hiero- monachus Pamperes '. John Moore His Booke 47 and maiden hair will bring about the same cure. Foxglove leaves being bruised and bound to a cut or wound are said to heal it. They are likewise said to cure the King's evil after the same manner. Ye gum of ye cherry tree dissolved in wine is good for a cold, cough and hoarseness of throat, mendeth the colour of the face, sharpens the eyesight, pro- vokes ye appetite and helpeth to break and dispel the stone. Celandine being worn in the shoes of them that have the yellow jaundice, so that it touch the bare foot, helpeth them. Ye leaves of cowslips and hogs-grass is an excellent oyntment made to take away sunburn freckles and wrinkles '. Much faith is placed in the virtues of the herb betony or bishopswort, and among them is the following : ' Take 12 spoonfuls of betony water before thou goe to drinke and it will preserve thee from drunken- ness '. It avails also for the eyes and for the tooth- ache and for the ague ; as I read it first, it called to my mind that passage in the Herbarium of Apuleius which places a further tribute to this wonderful drug as a charm against nightmare, or as that old book phrased it ' against monstruous, nocturnal visitors and frightful sights and dreams '. And here is the recipe of a hot drink of unfailing power in the case of a cough or shortness of breath: 'Take a quart of running water. Boyle therein a handful of hyssop till it come to a pint. Strain it and put thereto a quarter of an ounce of liquorice, half a handful of raisins of the sun, 2 figs, 2 dates, sweet 48 John Moore His Booke fennell seeds and aniseed half an ounce. Boyle these till almost half be consumed. Then let it run through a strayner and sweeten ye liquor with white sugar candy to your liking. Soe drinke of it four spoonfuls at a time blood warm in ye morning a quarter of an hour before you rise and at night, when you are in bed, lie on your back and let it go leisurely down '. The verse of John Moore, if indeed it be his own handiwork, is of a very extraordinary character, and there is one poem of which for grotesqueness I have never met the like : ' I saw a peacock with a fiery tayle I saw a blazing comet drop down haile I saw ye clouds with joy curled round I saw a sturdy oak swoop on ye ground I saw a pismire swallow up a whale I saw ye brinish seas brim full of ale I saw a venus-glas sixteen yards deep I saw a well full of ye teares men weep I saw men's eyes all of a flaming fire I saw an house as high as moon and higher I saw ye sonne look red about midnight I was ye man that saw tliis fearful sight '. No critic I fancy without being himself ' brim full of ale ' would undertake to give a lucid interpreta- tion of this poem. I shall leave it to my readers to John Moore His Booke 49 solve as best they may. Before I stumbled across the clue I had an idea there was something amiss with John Moore's eyes when he wrote it, or that the ' fearful sight ' was inspired by the nightmare. I felt sorry he had not made better use of the betony he had praised so well ^. Another poem sets forth bravely with something of Marlowe's music : ' If I had wings like Icarus Or wisdom as Apollo I would outsoar King Solomon And fly where none could follow.' Unhappily the Icarian wings melt in the second stanza, and after some feeble fluttering the poem is abandoned. This farming poetaster's muse seems to have got swamped in the end with too much sanctimoniousness, for John Moore, if not born so, became a Brownist of the deepest dye and was always riding oflE to meeting at Rulstone, Starhouse, or Settle. His later verses are tuned to quite a different key and decline to the harshness of the Sternhold and Hopkins school— worthy indeed but dull: ' It is not loud but low, Sound heart not sounding-string, True zeale not outward show That in God's eare doth ring.' 1 There are two or three variants of this childish study in punctuation orally preserved, but I have never met one in print. E 5° John Moore His Booke And you may find many a couplet as plain a platitude as this : ' A time appoynted was from ye beginning For everything beneath ye sonne but sinning '. As one might expect, the best of Moore's verse wakens to the call of love. It is a thousand pities that in this section of the manuscript many pages have been torn away. Moore was of sensitive soul and not by any means willing that others should know how he fared at the hands of that goddess who is at once the fairest of the deities and the most cruel. But from the fragments that survive it is clear enough that love was for him ' a thwart sea wind full of rain and foam ', and that because of it he sufiefed shipwreck of his life : ' For when I doe behold Thy cheeks more glorious than fine gold, Then I admire and say, Now and allway, Why should Nature ever place So hard a heart under so sweet a face.' A little later he writes down : ' But faces are deceitful for, the while They seem most butyful, they most beguile.' And last of all in the bitterness of a heart-break which none of his herbs could heal, in the sorrow of love unsatisfied and the disillusion of coming death, John Moore His Booke 5^ he makes an end of his life's manuscript and takes leave of an unkind world : ' The silent swan who living had noe note, At death's approach unlocks her silent throat ; Leaning her breast against the reedy shore, She sings her first and last and sings noe more. Ffond world adieu, come death and dose mine eyes, More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.' A SIDELIGHT ON THE CIVIL WAR (To Professor Firth) WISHING for my own better understand- ing, once upon a time, to get a clear view of the Civil War (1642-1651) and the Commonwealth that followed, I did, perhaps, all that a student might fairly be expected to do. With cotton-wool in my ears, I battled with the ' drum and trumpet ' school of historians, to vnt, Cary and Hutchinson and Somers. My brain reeled with plots and counterplots and Major Generals' proclamatioils. Again, with a bottle of port at either elbow, I essayed^ the school of Dryasdust. The tomes of Rushworth and Whitelocke and Noble groaned upon my shelves ; delving into their lumber my spirit likewise groaned within me. And such intelligence as was left to me, I reverently devoted to the classic- masters of this period, to Clarendon and Carlyle and Firth and Everett-Green. But it was not till I bought a bundle of old letters, disclosing the fortunes of a Royalist family of that time, that I gained any vivid or human conception of what civil war and change in the State meant to the people of England. As with the Great War now ending (I write as they go forward with white flags to Marshal Foch), W. Hollins] [Etched, by R. Sawyer, 1820 SIR ROBERT HEATH : 1575—1619 Sometime lyORD Chief Justice of England On the Civil War 53 the imagination recoils from any wide consideration of such appalling terrors. By a merciful limitation we simply cannot comprehend the scene, or send forth our accumulating pities to a world of woes. To do so, were it possible, would in time unseat the firmest reason. Only by the refraction of history, through the prism of private experience — as in Tolstoy's War and Peace or the Mr 'Britling of our day — do we come at last to reality, feel the very pang of individual loss, follow through burning tears the alternate hopes and despairs of each lonely microcosm of a man. So, at any rate, it came to me, as I fingered one by one the half-legible and altogether-pitiful letters of the children of Sir Robert Heath (1575-1649), sometime Lord Chief Justice of England, who died of a broken heart the same year that his unhappy master, Charles the First, was martyred. I 1625-1636 Untying the first bundle of these papers, which ranges from 1625 to 1636, one plunges headlong into the multifarious activities of Sir Robert, then at the height of his powers as Attorney General and economic adviser to the Crown. One has indeed to walk warily and pick one's way. Apart from the 54 A Sidelight crabbed handwriting and abbreviations of this jurist, the matters concerned are — many of them — beyond the limits of a layman's comprehension. Ten folios, for example, of Heath's tangled exposition of the subtleties of judicial procedure in the reign of Henry VI will bring an average man to the exasperated conviction of Warwick, the King- Maker, as he paced up and down the Inner Temple gardens after a similar encounter : ' Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch ; Between two dogs, which has the deeper mouth ; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye, I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment ; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law. Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.' But there is no need to be pestered by what Sir Robert's younger daughter termed his ' quirckes and fitches '. You may leave these to the legal brethren ; for there are brighter things to meet with in this bundle. Here, dated in the year 1627, is a very readable petition to Sir Robert by the ' Master of the Mystery and Commonalty of Barber-Surgeons 'who employs a quill every whit as cutting as his lancet against the ' imposters, alients and unskilful! persons who daily lurk about the City of London '. Following that, though six years earlier in date, are Heath's notes on a proposed ' Charter for tobacco-pipe makers ', and a commis- sion to him as Justice for Middlesex ' to suppress On the Civil War 55 and punish the insolences of cooks, victuallers and others who keep dogs and hunt down the King's deer to sell it '. Next comes an ' advice ' upon the taxation of ' pilchards, blewstarch and pot-ash ' and a remonstrance against the grant of monopolies of salt and soap ^ They had, he reminds his Majesty, just fined one Chambers for asserting ' that Merchants have more encouragement and are less scrued up in Turkey than in England '. Yet was there not a scintilla of truth in the accusation ? For the safety of the kingdom the Attorney General spends a morning of 1633 in the Artillery Gardens to report on William Neade's ' warlike invention of the bow with the pike ', and the peaceful invention of the German, Bartholomew Cloyse, ' to blow water on height for quenching of a fire ' ; in the afternoon he has the unpleasant duty of examining on the rack a Brownist who had thrown his bible at the Archbishop and one Noah Rogers who had stood up at Charing Cross and preached that ' King Charles should be trodden under foot '. With these minor offenders he could be lenient enough, but woe betide aspiring Commoners like Bedford, Selden, and Eliot, who in 1628 and 1630 dared to confront this stiff upholder of the King's Pre- rogative. The House of Commons they were told was ' only fit for a pitiful Puritan or a pretending * The Statute of Monopolies passed in 1623 was very far from ending this abuse. 56 A Sidelight Patriot '. Writing to the Queen of Bohemia Sir Francis Nethersole observes that ' the King's Attorney argued for the King's Power on Saturday last all day and it is famed abroad . . . wUl wash away all our precedents, answer our reasons and expound the Statutes otherwise than we have done'. In his report to the Council, Heath himself confesses that he ' was upon the point of three hours in continual speech till I was almost tired which I hope I shall never be while in the King's service '. Lodged in the Tower per sfeciale Mandatum Regis, and a writ of Habeas Corpus denied them, the leaders of the Commons were given leisure to reflect on Heath's Animadversions on the liberty of the subject and that little tract on the Doctrine of Necessity which Hobbes was to merge into his Leviathan. ' My advise ', he reports to the King, ' is that they should be left in their prison as men neglected until their stomachs come down and that we should not prefer any information against them '. Verily, as White- locke says with a sneer, the King's Attorney was a ' fit instrument ' for those times. Yet for all his Tudor cast and discipline of mind, he has nothing of the vindictiveness of Laud, nor that high-browed disregard of the individual which Thomas May was chastising : ' The law is blind and speaks in general terms, She cannot pity where occasion serves.' ' • True enough, though one wouldn't take May's word for it. Though admitted to Gray's Inn (1615), he was prevented by On the Civil War 57 Again and again, as Attorney General and later as judge, he intervenes to mitigate the Archbishop's severities ; saves his college friend, Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, from utter ruin in the Star Chamber (1628) ; and rescues frofti the Lambeth prison ' a poore French watchmaker refuged here for the exercise of his conscience and religion ' (1626), With the other judges he is frequently at variance in his desire for clemency. Over one of his recommended pardons, a stronger hand has written Fiat Justitia, currat Lex et vivat Rex. Another Learned Brother refuses his consent when Sir Robert would acquit a soldier from man- slaughter, ' he having been provoked with such insufferable language as even young men who have seen the wars can very hardly digest '. They will let him release a boy whose father declares between his tears : ' he is the stay of my life and comfort of my age ' ; but will not interfere with the course of justice when a war-widow, whose husband was falsely certified as killed in the Isle of Rhe expedition, promptly remarried, ' whereupon her first husband returns from the wars and is dismayed '. defective utterance from practising in the Courts and consequently disparaged the profession ever after. Embittered by his failure as a plajrwright and in his election for the laureateship (1637), his spleen became proverbial. ' Inter focula ', says Aubrey : ' he would speak slightingly of the Trinity '.'.^Yet one forgives it all for his translation of Lucan and his history of the Long Parliament, to which he became Secretary in 1646. 58 A Sidelight II 1625-1636 ' At my leisure — if there be such a thing as leisure ', he is constantly promising to administer these tender -mercies of the law, or in his own words, ' to supple the rigor of statutes '. But the King gives him no leisure. The Exchequer is empty and Charles is personally over ^300,000 in debt (1626). Every other month Mr Attorney is desired to furnish new devices ' to augment our revenue '. Sir Robert must needs sit down after his day's work and rake up old precedents of Edward III or Henry IV to support the legality of Benevolences (which Coke was censured for denying), Tunnage and Poundage, and Sales of Honour. Possibly he strained his conscience in these matters, as he must have done in his stubborn defence of Steenie (Duke of Buckingham), whom the Commons impeached in 1628. But he was no mere sycophant of State. If he could find no precedent — and no man under Heaven or out of Hell was more ingenious than he ' — ^he would not invent one. He spares no words in denouncing ' the unlawfulness and miseries ' of " < For ever bending over the bead-roll of his precedents '—so Lord Campbell describes him. On the Civil War 59 ' Coat and Conduct money ' and the forced billeting of soldiers, especially the ' German Horse ' then quartered in England. Nor could Serjeant Noy persuade him that Ship Money, first levied at the invasion of the Danes in 1007, was applicable to the emergencies of Stuart times. He proved (in 1636) to be one of those obstinate ' gentlemen of the long robe ', who, ' in spite of the.guilding of this illegall Pill could not cause it to be swallowed down '. It was right perhaps to take money of ' certain foreigners being dyers of cloth and stuff ' and give them leave to do their merchandise in England, ' for here we prosper not in that Mystery '. His Majesty might fairly expect some benefit for granting the privilege of incorporation to Roger North, Robert Harcourt, and others, ' who have discovered means to take journies into the river of the Amazons in America ' (1626), and for the exclusive right of ' transporting hunting-dogs, beagles and hounds over-sea ', which was being asked for by ' Sir Thomas Badger, Master of the old Harriers, Sir Timothy Tyrrell, Master of the Buckhounds, and Thomas Potts, Master of the Privy Harriers (1630) '. But generally speaking he was against all taxations and monopolies of trade ; and above all against the fictitious inflation of credit. Every year in his ' Proposition of Policy for making His Majesty honoured and feared and dispelling the apparitions and fears and jealousies in the People ', he bids him take care that ' no bullion 6o A Sidelight depart out of this realm of England '• As for his Majesty's debts, the best way to meet them was by the ' disafforesting ' of Crown Lands, and reclama- tion of encroachments. In all this welter of departmental work, one almost forgets that Sir Robert Heath possessed a private or separate existence. Yet this poor man had a wife and family and, worse still, debts of his own, and hardly a moment to cope with them. He was also not a little fond of playing on the ' Peccadillo bowling-green '. What little money he earned went to the plausible Vermuyden, who undertook to make huge fortunes for his financiers by draining the Bedford Level, and by digging for lead near Derby. Unhappily Sir Robert had no time to watch over these enterprises ; like the wretched suitors in Chancery, he waited with ignorant expectation for the fortune that never came. In the end it was Heath himself who was drained ; financially speaking, he fell into the pit that he had digged at Dovegang, near Derby, and Vermuyden — the ' thievish projector ', as he called him — ^got away with the spoil. Apart from his Brasted estates, the King's Attorney held only a dilapidated wharf at Newcastle and that upon a doubtful title. To ingratiate himself with the burgesses of that town, he restores to them an ancient charter they had never heard of, and by painful research buUds up for them J History of the Company of Merchant-Adventurers of Newcastle On the Civil War 6i from the reign of King John. They thanked him perfunctorily for his labours, and took the first opportunity to oust him from the wharf. As he said twenty years later in exile, looking back upon these things : ' I bought my learninge at too deare a raite '. But, come now ; let us tie up this bundle, for it deals too much with this kingdom in general, where- as we are chiefly concerned in this study with the private adventures of Sir Robert and his sons ^. III 1626-1634 The family letters begin in the year 1626 when Edward and John, the two eldest sons ^, left the old ' In dealing with some hundreds of documents one is bound, if an end is to be reached, to abandon some good things by the way. But in case any serious student is so far interested, I may say, here and now, that he or she will some day have the opportunity to see all my originals. Unless I am driven to sell my manuscripts to pay my debts and funeral and testamentary expenses, I shall bequeath the Heath papers to the British Museum, which already possesses a number from the same source. A few of the latter (Egerton MSS., 2982 and 2983) I have used in the following pages. * There were three other boys : George, a quiet soul, who became Rector of West Grinstead ; Robert, a soldier of fortune and something of a wit ; and Francis, subsequently Doctor of Law. The girls numbered two : Mary, who married Sir William Morley of Halnaker ; and Annie, who married Sir Bernard Hide of Boore- Place. 62 A Sidelight home at Bras ted Place in Kent to take up residence in Clare Hall, Cambridge : the same college which their famous ancestor, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York and Chancellor to Queen Mary, had honoured. Here they were soon followed by a Polonius-epistle from their father : ' Serve God ', he writes, ' and use the means of his service, private and publicke. Follow your stuyde close, for now is your seed-time. Your harvest will followe. Carry yourselves soberly and lovingly to all. Give respect to your tutor and the Master of the house. Avoyd vayne and idle companye and the place of it. Love like brethren. Myne and your mother's blessing and prayers ever attend you in your indevours. . . . Your very lovinge father '. Unhappily, as it ap- pears, their seed-time was cut short ; for two years later their good father, making up his accounts, found that his blessing was all that he had to leave them — that and a burdensome legacy of debt. So they were recalled to the family-home to consider the melancholy statement of account, which is the second paper in this bundle '. Sixteen thousand ' Their private account book of college expenses still survives and is far more pleasing and prosperous. They seem to have 'laid out at our first coming for our chamber : ^20 '. ^^9 more went for ' trimming up ye same ' ; and to attract the goodwill of the master they expended ^24, ' for books to be given by our father to ye college '. These books, consisting of Councils of the Church, are still preserved in the College Ubrary, and have a label affixed seemingly of Heath's composition, Hujus Collegi quondam alumni— Minusculum. On the Civil War 63 four hundred and eleven pounds owing to the Jews, and to his Majesty, King Charles the First, two earls, three countesses, and some very importunate Commoners. On the other side naught but the Brasted settled estates, and a curious but worthless manuscript over which Sir Robert had wasted much time, setting forth the four and twenty qualifica- tions of a judge (he was then Lord Chief Justice o£ the Common Pleas) to correspond with the number of links in his collar of S S, and each from studious- ness of sanctity denoted by a term beginning with the letter S *. In the family-conclave some advised selling the estates with consent of the children ; others felt that a mortgage might suffice. The daughter, , Mary, who had married early, writes to Edward : ' Sweete Brother, the sad newes I hear doth soe trouble me as you can hardly think, and I heartily wish it were in me to doe more than deplore it. My heart is soe full that my pen staggers. Certainely as a sale is propounded, soe the most convenient speed that can be made thereof will be best ; for that worme (here she refers to the exorbitant interest of the Jews) will be dayly eateing and yet at length gape for the principall morsell. If it be possible, dear Brother, make a stepp downe to me, that I may speake with you to inlarge my greife ; but what help may hence arise, I am not, ^ ' A Collar oj Si consisting of 24 Links for the Honour and Ornament of a Judge who would be carefull and conscionable in the great callinge of Judicature '. 64 A Sidelight God knows, able to say. Your ever truly loving sister to her utmost Mary Morley '. In the end, Sir Robert and Edward, as his heir, sorrowfully signed away the fields about Brasted (fields very dear to them and full of memories), leaving only the mansion and its curtilage intact. The same year Edward and John were, by the grace of the benchers of the Inner Temple, admitted to two chambers adjoining their father's in that Inn ; and there set to work to help him repair the family fortunes. But this was only the beginning of their troubles. In 1634, 3^^^ when Laud was most bitterly engaged with the Puritans, Sir Robert openly expressed his sympathy with themi in the Court of Common Pleas, a thing intolerable to the Archbishop. Rush- ing to Whitehall in his fury, he persuaded the King to take away the judge's office ^. There is amongst the papers ' the humble petition (dated September 15th, 1634) of Sir Robert Heath, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas ', which touches the heart of the sympathetic reader but did not reach the heart of the King, ' To his unspeakable greif he hath lately understood that your Majesty hath removed him from his service. He therefore doth in all humility prostrate himself at your Majesty's feet, begging your gratious pardon for that which ' The King was the more easily persuaded because Sir Robert had advised against the legality of Ship Money. There were also charges of bribery, which on his monument in Brasted Church were indignantly denied. On the Civil War 65 he hath neather _ wickedly nor wilfully committed. ... I beseech your Majesty look back with an eye of pitty upon the deplorable estate of him, his wife and five sons who are all ruined, if your Majesty shall totally withdrawe your favour. But being supported by your gratious hand ... he shall be able speedily to doe your Majesty acceptable service and he, his poor wife and children shall ever bless God for your goodness and devoutly pray for your Majesty's long and prosperous raigne '. Unprofitable tears ! The King's heart was hardened ; and his ears monopolised by the enmity of the Archbishop. Sir Robert must needs start again, at the bottom of the ladder, as a common and impecunious pleader. IV I 634- I 642 After this further folly, Edward simply disowned his father, and with a gesture of despair threw himself at the first heiress he could find, to wit Lucy, the daughter of Paulus Ambrosius Croke, Bencher of the Inner Temple (Edward's own Inn), and a man of great substance and consequence at Hackney i. In her mansion at Cottesmore, in the ^ In the January and February issues of iVo<« (2«i g«m«, 1918, the Rev J. Harvey Bloom, M.A., published some very interesting F 66 A Sidelight County of Rutland, Edward indulged a pleasant and pastoral existence ; managed the home farm ; kept one eye on the tenants of the estate, and the other, not very intently, on his legal studies. Oc- casionally he drove to London to devil for his father-in-law, and after he was dead to help Sir George Croke in his Reports ; more often he trotted over to Exton to visit James Harrington, afterwards the famous author of Oceana, but just then fresh from the service of the Elector Palatine, and full of adventurous stories. Their acquaintance was the more natural because the Harringtons had lived at Cottesmore the generation before. James used often to speak of his visit to Rome, where he got into trouble by refusing to kiss the Pope's toe — an incivility which he afterwards justified rather prettily to Charles the First : ' after kissing your hand, Sire, I would not kiss the toe of any prince '. The friendship then started was to prove very fortunate to Edward in after days. There is one letter of Harrington's dated 1636, praising ' the sweetness of your disposition and the vertuousness of your consort and a courtesie in both which obliges extracts from the Household Account Book of this gentlemaij : e.g., for a paire of double black silke French garters, 6d. To the Steward his man who brought me a minced pie and two little pots of jeUy from his master, 6d. For a pair of spectacles, havinge lost my old, which I found againe 3/-. For 1 6 gallons of Muscadine for Sir Edw: Coke, Lord Chief Justice of England, ^£3. 7. For conserve of roses for my wife's daughter (the Lucy above named) having taken colde 2d. On the Civil War 67 mee for the future to waite an opportunity of requitall '. Ten years later, in a very changed world, he was as good as his word : he repaid their courtesies tenfold. In his society, and that of Lord Willoughby of Parham, another neighbouring squire, who blended the charm of the cavalier with the earnest purpose of the Puritan, the eldest son of Sir Robert Heath passed those halcyon days before the storm, when iften, as Clarendon said, ' could still possess their souls in peace, and behold the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies '. At Brasted, meanwhile. Sir Robert was busy, feeling his way back into the favour of the King ; in 1639 ^^ gave a considerable sum ' for his Majesty's expedition into the Northern Parts ', and two years later was appointed Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Brother John was busy in his way, winning the favour of Margaret Mennes, a lineal descendant of King James V of Scotland, whom afterwards he married. Lucy tried in vain to dissuade her brother-in-law. She knew the lady. ' Though love may be in, it is not the cheefe cause of her match. She is a woman soe wedded to her covetous desires that noe man must expect better from her that brings not with his love a fortune answerable to her vast mind. 1 pray God direct you in all your ways and prosper you in all your vertuous affairs.' To brother John, however, Margaret was exceedingly beautiful ; there was no more to be said — though Lucy ventured to remark 68 A Sidelight it would not last for ever. It did not. Soon after the marriage there was an accident which destroyed one of her chief graces and moved the pity even of Robert's muse. See his poem On the young and fair Mrs M. H. her hair being unfortunately burnt by chance in the candle as she was combing her head at night. Robert himself at this time was pretending to read law while secretly writing verse. - V I 642- I 643 Not with such tragic suddenness as ours, but after two years of threatening clouds, did the thunder of war begin. On August 22nd, 1642, ' the evening of a very stormy and tempestuous day ', King Charles unfurled the Royal Standard at Notting- ham ; and summoned his cavaliers. The time had come for every man to make the great decision, to declare without further pondering or subterfuge whether he were on the side of the King or on the side of the people. A hard choice with such rare loyalties and ideals in either camp. Hardest of all to minds of a finer stamp like Falkland, the perfect patriot and scholar. No wonder such men faltered and hesitated before the horrible arbitrament of war. Is there anything more piteous in the history of that time than Clarendon's famous picture of the household On the Civil War 69 at Great Tew where Falkland himself, ' sittinge amongst his friends often after a deepe silence and frequent sighes would with a shrill and sadd accent ingeminate the word Peace, Peace, and would passionately professe that the very Agony of the Warr, and the view of the calamityes and desolation that the Kingdom did and must endure, tooke his sleepe from him and would shortly breake his hearte ' ? With the impulsive Justice of the King's Bench, as one might imagine, there was no hesitation, no taking time to consider. A hasty good-bye to his wife, whom he was never to see again, and away he rode to join the King at York, where he was solemnly installed as Lord Chief Justice of England, notwithstanding that all law and order had been overthrown in the anarchy of Civil War. It is pleasant now and again to trace his steadfast figure in the general confusion, still keeping what calm and dignity it may. To this master of precedents and ceremonies the mere accident of war is no excuse for disobeying the common decencies of judicial life ; as George Lilburne finds, who is removed from his Magistracy ' for not comming in to prayers '. Nor wUl this merciful judge let Rupert's plunderers go on their violent course unchecked. 'Tis by no means singular, that order of Sir Robert's on October 17, 1642, 'To the Officers of the King's Army to allow no damage to be done to widow Vaughton and her son Humphrey, they having treated the officers with great civility and respect '. As the tragedy yo A Sidelight deepens, so his detachment grows. At a time when the city is encircled with enemies he is found sitting unperturbed in iMerton Hall, drowsing peacefully over the testimonials of college dons, and with no sense of incongruity appointing ' John Greaves, M.A. to be SavUian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford ' ^. As for the poet Robert, he cut short the sonnets to Clarastella (of which more anon), and enlisted in Rupert's cavalry. Nay, better than that, for he brought with him a troop of his own raising, as his hastily-scribbled accounts still testify. Borrowing money of his sister Mary, he purchased a whole armoury of ' carabins, pistoUs, swordes, and saddels ' ; and not to be outshone by any long-haired Cavalier, spent an equal sum on ' a Scarlett cloake, cost me lo guineas ', gold and silver fringes for his scarf, ' a Beaver Hatt ', and a quantity of powder, not for his ' carabins ' but his complexion, with ' lookeing-glasses and combes '. George remained to pray in safe terms that God would defend the right, with one eye watching the fat benefice of West Grinstead, of which he held the reversion. Francis, now a learned doctor, consulted his reputation and chose to abide amongst the sheepfolds of the law. Entrusted by the King with a secret-service mission, John had departed to Paris. Meantime, it seems that Edward, with whom ' Five years later this gentleman was ejected by the Parliamen- tary Visitors on the charge of ' misappropriating college property and having feasted with the Queen's confessors '. On the Civil War 71 these letters are more especially concerned, was trying to make his world safe for autocracy by sitting at one and the same time on both sides of the fence. But this uneasy poise of neutrality could hardly last ; certainly not in Rutland and Lincoln- shire, where the fighting began. His nearest friends, Harrington and Willoughby, quickly declared for the Parliament ; and the latter as Lord Lieutenant was immediately commissioned to round up the Royalists within his borders. Apparently Edward hesitated and was lost — ^for, from the moment of his father's flight to York, he was marked down as a ' malignant '. And not without further cause of his own creating, for on October 8th, 1642, he attempted to stop one Simon Wilcox of the local militia from marching off to the assistance of the Parliament with the village ' armes and musketts and guns '. In the words that followed, Edward was heard to say : ' You are a saucy fellow and I will lay you by the heels ', a threat which was quickly reported to those in authority on the other side. As soon as his temper had cooled, the prudent lawyer consulted his safety and peaceful reputation by getting rid of his own weapons of offence. He sold all his ' carabins and musketts ' to brother Robert for an old song and was careful not to enquire what he wanted them for. His only hope after that was to come out into the open and disavow the King. In February, 1643, as he still sat deliberating. Colonel Waite — an old family acquaintance, but now 72 A Sidelight grown unfamiliar — rode over from Boston with an order for his arrest. The same night he was lodged in Boston gaol, whilst six of the Colonel's troopers made themselves comfortable in his mansion — on the pretence of guarding Lucy, his wife. The reader may be left to imagine his feelings and hers. Mrs Hutchinson, who knew these Boston troopers well enough, and was on their side, has described them as 'illiterate, morose, melancholy, dis- contented, crazed sort of men, not fit for human conversation '. In prison Edward seems to have strained every nerve, and indeed every pen, within his power. There are drafts of letters to all the Roundheads thereabout : letters in every vein : wise as serpents, soft as doves, raging as Boanerges, explaining, pleading, and imprecating. To his war-sundered friend, James Harrington, he makes his final appeal. ' I submit myself to your mercy ', he writes ; ' when my actions shall be truely scand I am confident I shall not appeare that malignant I am now esteemed to bee. If my father bee under the displeasure of the parliament I am sorry for it, but I hope that shall not aggravate my fault — or the proverb shall be too justly followed that the fathers have eaten soure grapes and the children's teeth are sett on edge. ... Of a surete I have not blowne the coale to these sad divisions of the kingdome but have from my heart grieved at them. I have not added feuel to the fire by contributing anything against the Parliament but would bee joyfuU to sacrifice On the Civil War 73 myselfe in these flames so that thereby they might be quencht '. Curiously enough, in the con- temporary life of Justice Croke, Edward's uncle by marriage, the very same figure is used : ' He was a blessed peacemaker, and in those times of con- flagration was more for the Bucket than Bellows, often pouring out the waters of his tears to quench those beginning flames which others did ventilate.' VI I 643- I 645 The days come and go and bring no reply and no relief ; only occasionally a letter of sympathy like this of Roger Smith, ' a wel-wishinge kinsman ', who reminds Edward that he is not singular in his misfortunes. ' I perceive, Sir, you are involved into the comon calamities of the tymes ; there are manie millions that do condole with you. The whole kingdome is in a trembling condicion and we are all like to come betwixt two millstones readie to be grounde in peeces. It is beyond the councell of man to advise ; our resort must be to the Great Coun- celler above who can both direct and protect. God alone can bring light out of darkness. Our hope is that when this mortal is distroied wee male raigne with him for evermore.' At last, on February i6th, came Harrington's warrant of release and with it a 74 A Sidelight letter in characters as large and open as the writer's heart : ' Believe me I shall not be wantinge in any service I can doe you and yours. If any of the parlement furies should come upon you again assure yourselfe they will use noe incivility to you or any of youres. I rest your respective friend.' So the doors of Boston gaol were opened and Edward set free to return to the bojom of his family. At Cottesmore, however, he was virtually a prisoner still. The troopers, it is true, had departed, leaving the pantry and farm as bare as if a swarm of locusts had battened there. They had also commandeered the best of the furniture and carried it away. To clip the prisoner's wings stiU closer, Colonel Waite seized his carriage horses and sent them to Lord Willoughby to hunt down the other Royalists in hiding ^. If that had been all, Edward would not have repined, for he desired only to be left alone. He had yet to learn that no man liveth to himself, and that one is bound, soon or late, to be caught up into the meshes of a complex social system. Two years after, his father com- mitted the enormity of sentencing one Turpin, a prisoner of war, to death. The House of Commons was furious ; arraigned him for High Treason and declared him to be dead. Lest he should fall into 1 They were known locally as the ' Camdeners ', being the followers of Noel, Viscount Camden, and much hated for their plundering and cattle-driving. It took Willoughby and Cromwell most of 1643 to clear the county of these. On the Civil War 75 their hands and become literally as well as legally dead, the old man fled the realm and passed the little residue of his days at Calais. Not only did they forfeit all his estates, but proposed to forfeit Edward's too. He was summoned to appear forth- with at the Angel Inn at Lincoln, before five Commissioners, one of whom bore the fearsome name of ' Originall Beast ' i, whilst another vaunted himself under the style of Vigorous Robb. It was no use arguing with such men. Edward meekly confessed the extent and rental of his lands, or rather those of his wife, and was ordered to pay thereout the sum of ;^i5o per annum to the Parliamentary Committee. But how was he to collect the rents in such evil times ? That was the question, which the Originall Beast would not stay to hear. In desperation Edward wrote to John Dunkin, his agent, to wring the uttermost farthing out of his tenants and send the money along. The reply was not heartening : ' As soon as Cromwell's army is removed from us, I will wait upon you and bryng you what monys I can get upp, but one thing there is to be done, worthy Sir, that you should be pleased to send out a strict order to all the tenants that are in arrears or that have paid noe rent that presently they paie it in to mee under penalty of the forfeiture of their Estates ; otherwise they will be * It seems almost too good to be true. But tjiere it is on the summons in an unmistakable hand. 7 6 A Sidelight slack in payment.' One or two instalments fol- lowed, but as Dunkin observed, ' such dribbling summes doe no goode.' Moreover the tenants were melting away either by fraud or by force. ' This moneth ', he tells Edward, ' wee have had horse here who have snap't up people on each side of us, and Stonder this week has disappeared.' Once again he went on his rounds, declaiming that ' neither miller nor cottager is exempted from paying their rents ' because the country was upside down; but he gathered more kicks than halfpence. ' A black- mouthed Rayling fellow named Ramsey ', he re- ports, ' fiercely assaulted me this week '. And this was no singular case. It was clear the tenants were determined to sit on their ' leasehold hereditaments ' as though they were freehold, until they saw which way the battle went. And they were made the more tenacious in this by the class antagonistic fulmina- tions of such as Everard, the fanatic, who preached and printed manifestos saying that ' all landlords were thieves and murderers, that it was time to break in pieces the bands of particular property, to put down the oppression of buying and selling land and to make the earth a common treasury '. In 1649 he put his preaching into practice. Being directed by God in a vision to dig and plough the soil for the common good he started to work with fifty True Levellers upon St George's Hill, Oatlands. There they were found under the clear April skies dibbing beans and hastily seeking to bring in a new On the Civil War 77 era in that way. But Cromwell's horsemen, dis- obedient to the heavenly vision, and mindful only of their master, ' dibbed ' the fanatics instead. When that failed there remained the Bill before Parliament ' For the relief of tenants from Malignant Land- lords '. It was the turn of the small men now, and as Aubrey observes, they were not forgetting how ' damnable prowd and insolent the nobility and gentry had been in the soft time of peace '. VII 1630-1635 Let us leave this unhappy lawyer to pore over the accounts of his sequestered estate — and consider the far more pitiful lot of Lucy Heath, his wife. For here, in a few letters, full of childishness and passion and mis-spelling, is her authentic portrait. Her husband is wont to hide himself behind a mist of words — you cannot see the man for the lawyer. But she uses words unwillingly. They are wrung out of her by suffering ; the soul cries out in every phrase. Out of the little heap of her yellowing papers drop first of all the accounts of her wedding clothes in 1630 — a picturesque document that would bring a gleam into any lady's eye. There are ' willow- colored pettycoates and vestes covered with gold jS A Sidelight and silver lace', other petticoats of ' pincke- couUered damaske and skye-coullered grogram — a scarlet coote wrought of faune-couUered grogram '^. There is also the ' furniture of the red and white Tufltafity bed: a carpet of needleworke of divers coulers ; and a tale for a sweete bag, being the story of Solomon and the two Harlotts '. Though the times had not yet grown evil, a husband might prove unkind ; at any rate, to make sure, the trousseau included 'a knyfe with a bludd stone haft ' ^ and those far more deadly weapons in feminine armoury, to wit — ' a maske and a fanne ' From a view of the following papers, it appears that neither her new life nor her new husband fitted Lucy as well as her wedding clothes. Unhappily her good father died soon after the marriage and like a true lawyer left his affairs in confusion. Most of the property which he had promised to settle on his daughter lost its way into Chancery and is there, it is thought, to this day. Poor Lucy was harassed and bewildered every term with pleas, and replica- tions, rejoinders and rebutters, surrejoinders and surrebutters — the hope of any issue receding further at every step, till she learned to the uttermost that ' In the November issue, 191 8, of Notes and Queries, the Rev J. Harvey Bloom has printed the complete account, for which the student of the costume of that period owes him a considerable debt. " Not a bit of it, says the competent critic ; this is simply the domesticated, dinner-table knife that everybody carried. Never mind. I can still justify my fancy of it as a weapon, for in that case she was ' armed to the teeth '. On the Civil War 79 bitter definition of Chancery practice, as ' the art of killing your victim by inches and slow heart-break over forty years '. She writes again and again to her ' Good Unkle ', Justice Croke, who as executor of her father's will was in charge of the case. ' I am now an orphan ', she reminds him, ' sente into the world destitute of friends except you will be pleased to stand by me and to helpe as my sted father.' She entreats him to compromise, to climb down, anything to hasten the suit and get some ready money. ' Since it hath pleased God to crosse Mr Heath's fortunes and my expectations ', she argues, ' let us now be content with what we can get, rather than strive for what we are never likely to win.' Sensible advice, but perfectly unavailing. Those who have ploughed their way through Croke's mighty tomes of jurisprudence, will appreciate that not for the whole world, nor though his niece should starve, would he abate one jot or tittle from the slow majesty of English law. He will not even listen to his own sister who writes from her death- bed on Lucy's behalf : ' Ye crazie weaknesse I daily feele in myselfe persuading mee I have not longe to live make me the more desirous for my neice's good. ... I pray my circumstance will soe farre prevaile with you as not to baulke my soule in ye next Eternitie.' 8o A Sidelight VIII 1635-1642 Seeing no hope of legal issue, Lucy set her heart upon lineal issue instead — not without reasonable grounds. The old nursery at Cottesmore, where the young brood of Harringtons had been reared, was once more put in readiness. Solemn letters came from spinster aunts, praying that ' the Almightie may propagate and increase you in all blessings '. Others in reply to Lucy bemoan the scarcity of ' good countrie nurces ' — and drive her to send for the nannie who had brought her into the world. From friends and neighbours come timely gifts of sugar-candy, orange-chipps and so forth. ' Hearing you were with child ', another writes, ' I send a glasse of Adrian Gilbert's cordiall '. So by the providence of God and these provisions of the neighbours, the little girl Margaret was ushered into the world and became a great joy and consolation to her mother. Consolation not only for troubles in Chancery, continually present, but for a trying husband, continually absent. For one can trace without difficulty in the letters of this time the gradual estrangement between Edward and his wife. Too often does he order the family coach and drive away to London on ' pressing business ' ; business, to all outward seeming, of law within the courts, but to us who watch through Lucy's sorrow- ful eyes, 'tis the less-honorable business of courting On the Civil War 8i the Lady Roper. This lawyer indeed pleads in the suits of love ; he would win hearts, not causes, and he would break them too. Something of this heart- break there is in the wistful, almost childish, letters which Lucy addresses to him at the Inner Temple. ' Sweet-hearte ', one of them runs, ' if any intreaty of mine be of sufficience power to prevaile, let me beg your company this weeke. I pray you will make haste for you have tarried allready longer than you promised me. I shall be glad to see you when soe ever you come, though my hart is with you where soe ever you are. And prithy excuse my scribbling. My pen is soe extream bad and I am soe very sleepie that I can write noe more — onely to tell you that however you esteeme of me, I will ever remaine your lovinge wife till death.' Another happier letter rejoices at the prospect of his returning — outruns itself to meet him, and chides him for his slowness : ' You object you must have a dineing time, but I knowe you to be soe quick at your meate as that cannot mutch hinder ; therefore I pray let not a straw make you to stumble.' Again she apologises to this clever husband of hers, so skilled in composi- tion, for the ' scribblement ' of hers. ' My pen is bad, and my backe akes and it is soe very late that I am not able to mende it.' ^ In the last letter of all, written in a trembling hand, it is the heart not the • Certainly the pen-work is dreadful. To use Aubrey's abuse of Waller, she ' writes a lamentably bad hand, as bad as the scratching of a hen ', G 82 A Sidelight back that aches. ' Sweet-harte, I received your letter by which I understood of your frameing an excuse of your not comeinge to me. I would not have you to be troubled at it for, for my parte, I am not. I know you are now in the place and with the companie you like. With me you would injoy neyther. I intreate you not to come till you canne bringe your hart with you ; for excepte both harte and body may be joyned together I care not whether I see you, either ever or never ; for I thank God I am now in the place where I have love (meaning Margaret) though not from you. Now I will cease and trouble you noe longer, but rest desireing you to take these lines as from one whoe is not your beloved wife.' It is hardly for a stranger to intrude further upon this sorrow, but I cannot overlook the significance of some verses written by Robert in the following year. On Mrs E. H. having red haire on her head and on her left side a pure white lock growing — ' white as the soule she weares within ' : ' May age ne'er hoar that lovely hair Or leave that golden mountain bare Or let a holy Relic be Preserved to after ages free, That the succeeding times may tell This from the Queen of Beauty fell.' On the Civil War 83 IX I 642- I 645 Such was the state of Cottesmore in the days of peace. But there was worse to come. When Colonel Waite arrested Edward in 1642, we find no complaint from Lucy, for her husband was, as it were, a stranger in the house ; his heart was in London. But the Colonel had the unspeakable cruelty to tear the child Margaret from her mother's arms, and send her whither he only knew. Here in the bundle of letters is the copy of an appeal written to the Colonel on Lucy's behalf, which reflects something of her speechless grief. ' She lives a dying life ', it runs, ' without her daughter and it will hazard both their lives to keep them longer asunder. If your heart be not harder than adamant, now at length be intreated and persuaded to send her speedelie to her mother.' What came of this, there is no record to shew. Two years later we find Lucy herself appealing to Colonel Waite ' for old neighbourhood's sake and those often repeated professions of friendship by you. To speak of all the losses that my husband hath sustained ', she continues, ' would be but needlesse at this present, though I must take the boldnesse to say that whatever my husband's malignity may be, I cannot but think it very hard usage to mee and my poor children » that nothing should be allowed out of it * There had been another child — a son and heir — born in 1639, and given the name of Edward after his father. 84 A Sidelight (i.e." the Cottesmore Estate) to maintain us, especially since it is my own inheritance and theirs, whose father's faults I hope ought not to be imputed as crimes in them. But the loss that more par- ticularly concerns myself is some few goods of linen mantles and blanckets, with all my child-bed linen, which were taken at good Lady Normanton's house and are now I understand at Burley ' in your possession ; it having pleased God to add this affliction to the rest of those under which I now lie, to give me a great belly, though otherwise that in itself cannot but be accounted a blessing. I am very neare the use of these and hope you will have so much charity and humanity to mee and the poore babe in my belly, which will ere long be ready to come into the world.' This piteous appeal was backed by another letter from Lady Mary Mackworth a ' friend and naybour ' whose husband was then fighting for the Parliament as Governor of Shrewsbury, and another letter went to Lord Grey of Groby, who, as a reward for his valour at the battle of Newbury (1643) had been given the command of the Midland Counties Association. But charity and humanity were hardly to be looked for in these men. The Colonel was * The Colonel was at that time Governor of Burley House, which was taken by Cromwell the same year after desperate fighting. At this time he was petitioning Parliament that he might take the Cottesmore rents in satisfaction of his arrears of pay. This was allowed in 1647. On the Civil War 85 said to be the son of an ale-house keeper and to behave like one. The Commander was a fanatical Fifth Monarchy man ; and, though a son of the Earl of Stamford, had forsworn all gentleness of birth and demeanour for the ' grim and incommuni- cating company of the Puritans '. They had shaken hands with desperate resolutions. Five years later both were amongst those fifty-nine who signed the death warrant of the King. It was with such leaders in his mind that Lord Willoughby was writing this self-same year of the future of English nobility, himself on the point of breaking with the parliament to share the fate of his friends : ' We are all hasting to an early ruin ', he laments, ' the nobility and gentry are going down apace '. Of a certainty the Cottesmore family were going down apace. Early in 1644 died Edward — the son and heir — too frail a thing for a world so furiously inclined. Since the day of his birth in 1639, there had been nothing but war in Scotland or in England. He had with childish, wondering eyes beheld a divided kingdom — a divided family. And there seemed nothing but bitterness to inherit. Truly it was better to be gone. Hardly was he buried when the ' poore babe ' arrived. No acclamation of neighbours this time, nor Gilbert's Cordiall, nor sugar-candy. Not even his rightful cradle and baby linen. A comfortless time it was for children to be born. This one endured it for a day or two, received the unhappy name of his grandfather, 86 A Sidelight looked once or twice upon mankind, liked not the noise of them (for they were just then killing each other by thousands at Marston Moor not many leagues away) and so returned into the womb of Time. For a year his mother survived him, and then, as the only means to get out of Chancery and be quit of an uncivil world, she too died and followed her infant sons. There is a poem of Robert's Upon the Lingering death of the virtuous Mrs L. H., of which one stanza may be quoted here to shew something of the reverence in which her gentle, long-suffering spirit was held even by worldly and war-hardened men : ' Death ! I'll not blame thy subteltie In cutting off this Happy Shee : Ne'r did'st thou yet in thy black list enroul So fair a soul. Thy Envie snatcht her hence, lest wee, By her example taught, should be Immortalized by virtue and live still Against thy will '. And from Edward himself, when time had brought home the remorse of his neglect and the full measure of his loss, came this belated tribute to be cut upon the marble of her tomb : ' A chaste wife, a happy parent, a modest matron, a Sarah to her husband, a Martha to the world, a Mary to God, a woman in whose heart was gathered the best things of her race, not only to be seen in the greater and conspicuous virtues but likewise in the smaller pieties of Life.' On the Civil War 87 X I 645- I 648 Alone at Cottesmore, with Margaret, his little daughter, Edward Heath awaited what else fate had in store. The same year (1645) there came news that brother Robert, the sometime-poet and present- captain in Rupert's cavalry, had been captured near Winchester. Happily that blow was soon healed, for the prisoner, taking a poet's licence, broke his parole and got back to his regiment just in time (June 14th, 1645) to join in that desperate, far- too- successful charge, at Naseby — where all save honour was lost. Once again he served his King in the defence of Oxford the following year — as is men- tioned more in detail later. On its surrender he refused to take advantage of the terms and fled as a refugee into France, where reassuming the Muse's livery, he softened his exile by prolonging still further Clarastella's interminable sonnet-sequence. In December of 1647 another message was brought to Edward to say that his aged mother lay dying in the family home at Brasted and wished to give him her blessing. Again the old coach rumbled down the wintry lanes — this once upon an innocent errand — and apparently halted in London while Edward procured safe-conducts for his brothers to 88 A Sidelight come over from France. Only their father was refused. He was still at Calais, almost in sight of home, but ' considered in law to be dead '. ' All the children', writes the old man afterwards, 'were present at her death, and did celebrate her funerall rights not in a costly, yet in a comely manner as became soe grave a matrone '. Of Sir Robert himself we gain one or two last glimpses at this time. To all intents and purposes he was very far from dead. By the ' nefarious wickedness of bloody men ', to adopt his panegyrist's phrase, his name and fame had dwindled to a mere scintilla juris. But the Lord Chief Justice still boasted of his office, still main- tained that ' the common lawe of England would again looke up ', and still had hope, ' aye warm hope, if soe it please God, to see Englande again and sit in Westminster Hall '. This much and more is plain from a letter he writes at St Germain to Sir Edward Nicholas ^, a brother exile then eating the bread of charity at Caen. ' God will be gratious in his good ' Chief Secretary of State to Charles I. He had retired to Caen after negotiating the surrender of Oxford in 1646. The dislike of Henrietta Maria subsequently hindered him from the service of Charles II, and as the Parliament had confiscated all his lands and even held an auction of his goods and chattels he lived literally from hand to mouth. A few years after the date of this letter (vyhich is dated May 1st, 1648) Charles II found him at the Hague, ' wasted almost to nothing ', and in sheer pity offered him a baronetcy, with the suggestion that he should turn an honest penny by selling it at once. But there were no offers. At the Restoration what was left of him crawled back to Court and was rewarded with j^lo,ooo ; but it proved of little use. He was then too old and feeble to enjoy anything. On the Civil War 89 time ', he adds, ' to those poor distressed people who have suffered deeply for their fidelity and duty to God and their Sovereign '. Pending that divine interposition he bids Nicholas be of good heart. Not only was the Lord with them, but still above the storm of war there was upraised the standard of the Lord's Anointed. ' You say you are glad to find mee so cheerfuU as in truth I praise God I am. ... I pick my arguments of hope from Wales and the West of England and from Ireland. And I despaire not of Scotland.' The letter closes on a quieter note. Thinking of the time when they and the King shall come to their own again, he counsels Nicholas to set his son Matthew to the law, ' If he is inclinable that way, God will honour our profession thereby.' Now of all times in their exile is the time to study. Again the old man glows with the enthusiasm of his youth ; can see himself in his Chambers at the Inner Temple, poring by midnight taper over the sheep- skin reports — deep in the labyrinthine mysteries of the law. With such devotion should the son of Nicholas set out. For his guidance Sir Robert maps out a syllabus of study likely to employ the diligence of a dozen years — which indeed it needed to do. Let him read- Bracton and Littleton through and through. Perkins also and Stamford's Pleas of the Crown, and Plowden's Commentary and the famous Dialogue (' he shall find some pleasure in the reading of that ') of the Doctor and the Student, etc., etc. ' This will be enough for a good while and I hope by 90 A Sidelight that time, if soe it please God, wee may see England againe and then I will assist him further to settle his judgment and sett him in the way.' One smiles to see the partiality of this judge. Of the eight authors he commends six were of his own Inn, the Inner Temple, and three of the six preceded him as Justice of the Common Pleas. Nine years before (1640) it had been said in Judge Finch's court that the authors of the Common Law ' might all be carried in a wheelbarrow '. If so the wheelbarrow belonged to the Inner Temple Gardens. As an afterthought, Sir Robert copies out for Matthew thirty-five ' queres or doubts which may trouble a young student, with resolutions a long agone underwritten, every one such as if they be not lawe, yet will look very much like lawe.' Hopes he will ' relish ' them. One lingers rather affectionately over such a letter. No doubt Carlyle, with his spleen against lawyers in general, would have scoffed enormously at it, likening the writer to ' duU Bulstrode with his lumbering law pedantries, and his stagnant, official self-satisfactions ', and would have indulged his usual sport at ' learned wigs and lucrative long windednesses '. But this man was no pedant. His whole life argued the other way. Not sixty years of special pleading had tamed the native wildness of his mind. All the way through he had lost his chances by following the heart and not the head. Easy enough for Bulstrode, ' that canny, lynx-eyed lawyer ', to trim his sails to the prevailing On the Civil War 9^ wind, and bring home to the harbour of old age the full freight of fees and emoluments. But Justice Heath was no trimmer. Unskilled in shifting and tacking he refused to practise in that style. And so in spite of a long trafficking in the world, he brought nothing home to shore. Is there not something fine in the latter end of this old man ; though broken in health and fortune and bereaved of the comfort of his children, stiU keeping the lonely rapture of the student ; still kindling for its own sake to the joy pf jurisprudence ; in this dark night of his cause * still maintaining faith in God and the certitude of the divine right of kings ? XI I 648- I 649 But it was almost time to carry his ' doubtes and queres unresolved ' to the Courts above. In the memoir of his life ^ which he began on December 2nd that year, being the anniversary of his wife's death, ' As he wrote, the King was in the custody of Colonel Hammond in the Isle of Wight, and James Harrington, referred to above as the friend and protector of Edward Heath, was attending him there as groom of the bedchamber, and reading through with him lasso, Ariosto and the Faerie Queene. » This has been printed by the Philobiblon Society, vol. i, 1854. See R. Ac. 9120. 92 A Sidelight one hears for the first time the accent of despair. The September risings had failed. That very day- King Charles was being taken — ^his penultimate journey to Hurst Castle — by an army clamouring for his death. Sir Robert's pen goes on almost mechanically jotting down the dates and memoranda of his life ; but his thoughts are over the sea. Now and then the pen seems to hesitate and interrogate iiself. What use after all to revive the memory of old quarrels or stoop to answer the slanders which Time itself had silenced ? There was that villain, Vermuyden, who had swallowed up his early savings in the Derbyshire lead-mines — every penny of it gone, and the swindler — flourishing like a bay tree *. What words could mend all that ? Who would care ever again to read his once famous information (it was in 1630 — seemed like another world away) against Selden, Cotton, Bedford, and the rest — for their ' false seditious and malitious discourse and writings to the great insuflFerable scandall and disfame of your majestie ', and the thirty folios of advice he gave to him then, whereby ^ to bridle the impertinency of parliaments ' ? Who would ^ Sir Robert had written to him in 1648 for an account of the profits of the partnership. ' A small parcel of money in hand ', he urged, 'is better than a greate deale of lead under ground, es- pecially since wee know not when it will be gotten.' Vermuyden replied that the Dovegang Plot (Worksworth, Co. Derby) had not been worked since 1645 and that he had nothing to send. After Sir Robert's death Edward commenced an action against Ver- muyden which lasted for fifteen years. On the Civil War 93 examine those dim account-books of 1635 to see if really he had taken bribes ? What did it matter that he had flouted the other Judges and advised Charles against levying Ship Money ? His advice had been rejected. Now^ the whole world was falling about their ears. In the face of eternity how paltry it all seemed. What did anything matter but his soul's witness before the iudgment seat of God? Then suddenly his halting pen was dashed as it were from his hand by the news from home. For a moment throughout England — aye, and Europe too — men's hearts stood still with horror at the killing of Charles the First. To Sir Robert Heath it was no momentary horror ; it was the end of all. He hurries to his conclusion. ' Now have I little ■cause ', he writes, ' to desire the protraction of my life. Rather do I pray for death and say " Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly " '. Was it not well what his master had said to Bishop Juxon on the scaffold : ' I go from a corruptible to an incorrup- tible crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world ' ? It was good at last to be lying down to sleep. Seven months to the day after his master's death, his prayer was answered. At the latter end of harvest in that year (1649) when so much was cut down and withered, he was brought home from Calais to Dover and thence along the Kentish lanes to Brasted, where his children were Once again assembled. There in spite of the 94 A Sidelight ' parliament furies ' ^ and their forfeited estates they gave him funeral honours befitting a Lord Chief Justice of England. The cost of it in Edward's writing totals to ^240 — which had to be raised afterwards by the sale of jewels and a ' coile of pearles '. Moreover, in the rhetorical style of that day, they hired a professional poet to wreathe a garland of verse and to strew it upon the open grave ". Most of its flowers of rhetoric are sadly faded now, yet some bring back a faint scent of those ' old, far off, unhappy things and battles long ago '• ' On the death of Sir Robert Heath ', so the solemn music of the title goes, ' sometime Lord Chief Justice of England, and a man of High Faith and Constancy to his Serene Majesty, King Charles, whose body after long exile in France was carried into England, and after his labours and misfortunes at length peacefully laid to rest in the burial place of his forefathers.' And the conclusion of the whole matter is this : ' Here lies an interpreter of laws ; an Englishman of fame, yet more distinguished still by the nobility of exile. In a wicked age of pestifer- ous notions, he stood forth as the guardian of the State which all at once in their madness, with ' They were still rampant. On the day Sir Robert died (August 30th, 1649) ^ warrant issued from the Council of State to ' search the house of one Shepheard, a tailor in Whitefriars, for a cabinet belonging to Jno Heath or some other of the sons of Sir Robert Heath and bring it to the Council.' ' See Sloane MSS 608. The original is wrapped in the obscurity of barbarous Latin. On the Civil War 95 bloody feet and sacrilegious hands, the vulgar herd o'erthrew. Laden with years and honours may he sleep unmolested to the Judgment Day. And on his tomb — ^lest the children of after- time be ignorant of his name — let there be inscribed, " Here lies an Englishman — a Confessor — nay a martyr of the Law.' ' The tomb itself was erected after the Restoration by Sir John Heath, and is a famous piece of sculpture. The Latin inscription, not the above, speaks of Sir Robert as ' strong in persuasion, golden in temper and iron in patience. ... In the midst of litigation he loved peace — amongst the shadows of this world he sought for truth '. His arms stand in the window above the tomb : Arg., a cross engrailed, between twelve billets gu. Enclosed in a collar of SS. XII I 642- I 646 For a moment let us leave these country houses of Cottesmore and Brasted to their mourning. One may breathe too long in air so stifling and heavy with the sense of doom. Let us look wider afield and ease the mind of its grief, if only by shewing how far the roots of calamity run in the common lot : ' For misery still 'delights to trace Its semblancein another's^case .' 96 A Sidelight Here is another bundle separately tied ; one whose letters range about the counties of England, picking up the private and public gossip of the day. Only gossip, alas ! Yet even so by no means to be despised ; for, though it comes to us as Carlyle said ' in a small flute-like voice, across the loud Dis- turbances, which are all fallen silent now ', it is perhaps more eloquent than they. Originally there were letters concerning the loud disturbances as well ; but such m those times were difiicult and dangerous to keep. In the year 1646 the brass-box where Edward hid them was ' abstracted ' — and he was in consequence marked down as stiU more of a ' malignant ' than before. Another treasonable bundle was discovered when Lord WiUoughby's papers were seized at Christmas, 1647 ^ What Derby House and its spies did not know of Royalist intrigue is hardly worth the knowing ; and in this case, it is clear, not many documents escaped. Of the harmless remnant — the gossip of the day — the first is one written to Edward by Thomas Allanson just three weeks before Edgehill. ' It is certainly * Lord Willoughby openly broke with Manchester in 1644 and finally joined the Royalists in 1648, but the Heath letters prove what was not known before, that even at the very beginning of the war, when in Parliamentary command of Lincolnshire, he was secretly in touch with the King — through Edward Heath and one Thomas Allanson, ' sending once or twice a week '. One smiles now at their including a portrait and panegyric of Willoughby in the Parliamentary Pantheon of 1647, A Survey of England's Cham- pions and TrutV s faithful patriots, etc., compiled by Josiah Ricraft. On the Civil War 97 reported ', he says, ' that the kinge is at Bewdeley in Worcestershire and that he hath a great number of Welshmen to come to him thither where he intends to stay till his armies be compleat and then to advance towards London if my lord of Essex doe not stop his passage, whoe they saye with all his forces lyes within less than a day's martch of the kinge .' In the battle that ensued was slain that comely and chivalrous knight. Sir Edmund Verney, the standard bearer of the king, a friend not only of Edward Heath ^, but of many other men and a multitude of women. ' A ruddy and compleat man ', he was styled, ' for the pleasure of ladies '. He had sworn at Nottingham two months before that ' they that would wrest that staridard from his hand must first wrest his soul from his body '. And he kept his oath nobly, selling his life at the rate of sixteen gentlemen — ' to say nothing of the rabble ' — which fell that day by his sword. The hand faithful to death was found still gripping the standard, but the body was never recovered. From that year forward, owing to the abstraction of the brass box, there is nothing of any note till the siege of Oxford in 1 646. There one finds Robert again, after a dozen defeats stiU undisturbed in courage and certainty of suc- cess ; still the same drink-hard and die-hard as before. He fires much doggerel of abuse at the ^ Through his father, Sir Robert Heath, who had got Verney a pension of ,^200 a year as Knight Marshal in 1626. H s 9B A Sidelight crop-eared conscripts who rot in trenches outside the walls. Makes fun, too, at the tattered and torn veterans within. Only a great-hearted captain could have written those lines of his. On the cripple souldiers marching in Oxford in the Lord Cotrington's companie ^. And for all its bibulous refrain it was no swash-buckling bard who fixed this song on the doors of the Staff-Officers' Council as it debated the terms of surrender : ' FiU, fill the goblet full of sack ! What though our plate be coined and spent, Our faces next we'll send to the mint ; And 'fore we'll basely yield the town Sack it ourselves and drink it down .' XIII I 646- I 648 To that last rallying ground came Edward also from Cottesmore and John from his hiding-place in Paris. But not to fight. In their petitions to the Commissioners afterwards, Edward takes pains to shew that though numbered in the garrison he * was never in arms ' and John excuses himself of all complicity ' being then very crazy and infirme by ^ Should be Lord Cottington, himself something of a lagger, who had joined the King in 1643 and subsequently signed the capitulation in July, 1646. On the Civil War 99 reason of a late desperate leaver wherefore Sir Thomas Fairfax when the garrison was delivered gave me his pass to remove into some purer ayre '. Yet both these lawyers were shrewd enough to profit by the terms which Sir Edward Nicholas at the King's request was negotiating for the van- quished. In spite of their infirmities they were amongst the earliest of those who hastened to Goldsmiths' Hall ^ to save their skins at the expense of their estates, John compounded for 5^152 and hobbled back to Paris. Edward having more at stake quibbled interminably over the figures, and had to obtain a special ' lycense to contynue within the Cittyes of London and Westminster or within twenty miles of the lynes of communicacions soe as he prosecute his composicion without delay.' In applying for the license he explained that he had been hindered in the negotiations ' by the em- bezzlement of many of my writings.' His fine was ultimately fixed at ;^7oo, ' the one moiety in hand, the other in three months' time.' From brother Francis — safe in the sheepfold of the law — comes at this time a letter of consolation. ' I am sorrie to heare you have so little encouragement and counten- ance where you are. . . . Yet the King is still Lord ' A contemporary ballad, entitled Prattle your pleasure under the Rose has this verse : ' Under the rose be it spoken, there's a damn'd Committee, Sits in hell, Goldsmiths' Hall, in the midst of the City, Only to sequester the poor Cavaliers, — The Devil take their souls, and the hangmen their ears .' loo A Sidelight of the Sea though he hath lost the land. We must reverence the power above that makes use of these ill instruments to scourge us, and therefore if there be no comfort from abroad, Rex est perpetua nobis una dormienda ' '. In the postscript, this man of parchments condescends for the first and last time to a touch of pleasantry. ' In answer to that part of your letter in which you seeme to reprehend me for being somewhat too severe against women I must crave leave to interpret myselfe, that I meant it not of all, but of the generality, which we know is naught. Some three or four there are, I confesse, whose virtues I am so far detracting, or denying them their due commendations, that I feare rather I shall be accused of superstition and suspected to be of the Catholic party for worshipping of angels.' His next letter, to brother John across the sea (in July, 1647), is full of sneers at the Assembly of Divines, or ' Dry- Vines ', as John Lilburn called them ; ' a crowd ', says Francis, ' of obscure ministers who consult concerning the regulating of Presbytery ', and the union if possible in one faith of the 170 other enthusiastic bodies then extant. Perhaps, as Carlyle observed, ' these reverend, learned persons debating at four shillings and six pence a day did not get to the bottom of the Bottomless after aU ? Perhaps this Universe was not entirely built according to the ^ See Catullus, v. 5. By substituting Rex for Nox Francis indulges a very bad joke. On the Civil War loi Westminster Shorter Catechism, but by other ground-plans not yet entirely brought to paper anywhere in Westminster or out of it.' It reminds one of Wentworth's comment in 1634 when the Irish Clergy met for the settlement of their Canon Law, ' It is an unheard of thing for a few petty clerks to presume to make Articles of Faith.' ' Sir William Waller ', Francis continues, ' hath already consulted with his secte and given them a faire example to go abroad and aire themselves. . . . There is no hope of any moderated episcopacy.' These same godly men were still regulating the universe and earning their daily fees eighteen months later, when the Kingston rising began — to which the next letter refers. In the Jerusalem Chamber the Divines droned on, but the city was in a ferment. With Fairfax and Cromwell away, who was to save them if the insurrection spread ? Already there was Lord Holland and young Villiers ^ and five hundred more in array — ^and worse still they were led by Dutch Dalbier, to whom all causes were alike and who had in his time drilled soldiers for the elder Buckingham and for Cromwell too. Great was the relief when they were headed oflE from London, driven northwards to St Neots and despatched by Colonel Scrope. ' So furious were » For an account of these two, as indeed of many others named, and for reasons of space unbenoted in this study, the reader may be referred to the Dictionary of National Biography and the Calendar of State Papers {Domestic Series). I02 A Sidelight the soldiers at Dalbier's treachery that they hacked his body in pieces '. XIV 1 649- 1 65 1 So the years of strife wore on and this indestruc- tible nation of England, whirled this way and that by the chances of war or the dark providences of God — with the sword of its own children tearing at its vitals — reeled forward into the doubtful future. A little while and they said with bated breath, ' The King is dead '. Again, a little while and they were saying, ' Long live the Lord Protector '. Poor Edward with a wry face must needs repeat the same. In November, 1651, after ' this fa tall business of Worstor ', he solemnly engaged himself to be true and faithful ' to the Commonwealth of England as it is now established without a King or House of Lords '. Not very pleasant for him, but after some practice he was getting used to these ' engage- ments ' ; nor had he forgotten the sage advice of Selden in the Inner Temple, ' Oaths are so frequent they should be taken like pills swallowed whole ; if you chew them you will find them bitter ; if you think what you swear 'twill hardly go down '. That done, the Honourable Committee of Parliament invited him to help on the new era of liberty with a On the Civil War 103 twentieth part of his estate — to wit ^500. To this apparently he demurred, with the result that they scheduled his lands and collected the rents from the tenants. Moreover, they took Margaret again as a hostage and lodged her in Parliament quarters. Any student who wishes may follow the details of Edward's sequestration in the Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding with Delinquents. In the ' Catalogue of the Lords, Knights and Gentlemen that have compounded for their estates ' published in 1654 the compiler, evidently a sufferer himself, makes special reference to this unhappy period, ' when as it is well-known the horse-leeches then in power were continually crying Give! Give J and their under-Engines were at work to torment the Delinquents (as they called them) out of such sums as their masters' cruel avarice should exact from them.' By a curious coincidence one of these under-engines was named Robert Heath, who though a complete stranger, served several processes on Edward. Throughout the war he had assumed the high-sounding Christian name of Constantine. He is still remembered as the hard rider who brought the news of Worcester and Dunbar to the House of Commons. For brother John it seems there was no benefit from the Act of Oblivion. Thurloe was approached about it, but he knew too much. ' I have attempted all ways imaginable ', reports cousin Thomas, ' but there has been intercepted a letter unto him in I04 A Sidelight cypher which has insinuated sonae jealousy upon him.' Scornfully refusing to have any dealings with the Regicides, Robert the cavalier-poet stays on in a quiet nook of the Rhineland, asks his friend Brewer to send him Milles' De Nobilitate, and hopes on for happier days. Apollo is his Protector and his honour cannot be sequestered. ' I had rather be a dogg ', he writes, ' than show in- gratitude to soe good a Maister. As for my banish- ing, time and patience and my integrity at longe running will worke it out.' Now and again, however, even his patience falters. ' A new pur- chase may bee made every day in every place ', he writes in one letter, ' but the distance from my olde intire familiars to a remote forlorne angle of the world is a note that sounds too harsh : Howsoever it is God's mercye '. His Clarastella is now finished, is in fact in England, and is being published without his knowledge by Mosely in St Paul's Church Yard, the printer of Milton's poems. This much we learn from the address of the ' Stationer to the reader' who confesses the greatness of his pre- sumption in having ventured to the press without the author's knowledge: 'but', says he, 'the gallantness and ingenuity of the gentleman is so eminent in everything that I could not imagine but that the meanest of his recreations (for such was this) might carry much in it worthy of public view : besides the approbation of some friends hath heightened my desire of publishing it ; who upon On the Civil War 105 their revising it do assure me it is a sweet piece of excellent f ancie and worthy to be called the author's own issue.' Looking backwards one wonders what audience his rhymes could have found at a time when the naked sword was still out of its sheath. Clarastella herself — ^for it was she who chiefly mattered — may have read them, may indeed have been turned by them from her resolve to enter a nunnery ; ' Thyself a holy temple art Where love shall teach us both to pray, I'll make an altar of my heart, And incense on thy Ups will lay. Thy mouth shall be my oracle ; and then For beads we'l tell our kisses o'er agen.' A few of the poet's enemies may have scanned the ' Satyrs ' that concerned them ; for they are too biting to miss their mark. But for the rest one may guess that this poetaster endured the common lot and was the sole reader of his lines. He would not mind. A gallant gentleman like himself would not be daunted by bad verse. Besides, he used it as his recreation. And there was still good wine in the Low Countries to help out the doggerel — still a few boon companions, though penniless and banished, to sit with in taverns and roar out an English ballad. One can glimpse them, ' nectar sated to the height ', in his Sudden Phansie at Midnight : io6 A Sidelight ' Moult then thy speedy wings, old Time ! and be As slow-paced as becomes thy age ! that we May chirp awhile, and when we take our ease, Then flie and post as nimbly as you please ! Play the good fellow with us, and sit down Awhile, that we may drink the t'other round ! Yes, yes ; and let our Ganymede nimbly flie And fil us of the same poetick sherrie Ben Jonson us'd to quaffe to make him merrie. Such as would make the grey-beard bottles talk Had they but tongues, or had they legs, to walk : Such as would make Appolo smile or wu'd Draw all the sisters to our brotherhood. And though the bald fool stales not, let him know Wee'l sit and drink as fast as he shall go.' I65I-I652 Two other men these letters speak of whom neither Compoundings nor Oblivions availed. The one, Brown Bushel, sea-captain, fanatic and des- perado, whose light and audacity were not to be dimmed save by the axe of death. Four times had he changed sides in the war. Two jolly years had he painted the seas red in parliament ships as a pirate. Once had he sat in hypocrisy at the feet of George Fox the Quaker and heard that startling command, ' Repent, thou swine and beast '. And now the hour of reckoning had come ; the red flag had to be furled. Three years before, he had cast lots with two others for death and won. This time there was On the Civil War 107 no such luck. In sending a sum of interest to Edward on Lady Day, 1651, Cousin Heath says, ' Brown Bushel is to lose his head this day.' One might use for his epitaph poet Robert's scornful lines on a similar adventurer : ' Reader behold ! He who erst played The Jack o' both sides, here is laid. What side his soule hath taken now God or Divil, we hardly know ; But this is certain, since he dyed Hee hath been mist of neither side.' The same letter goes on to tell of Thomas Coke of Gray's Inn, then in hiding with ^^500 on his head after a miraculous escape from the Lord President's Council of State. ' He was betrayed ', says Thomas Heath, ' by his concubine in this manner. She was heretofore kept by ye Lord Keeper Littleton and lodged in Brasenose College untill his death, after which this Mr Cook tooke her and for many years allowed her a plentiful! revenue and by whom she had three children. But it seems, intending to marry with a lady of a good position, he thought to have shakt her off, withdrew his pension, and offered a composition of ^1000 which she refused and in revenge impeached him before the Councell of State of haveing receaved a commission from the King of Scotts (Charles the second's parliamentary title) '^. * Coke was recaptured soon after his escape. In vol. i of the Report on the Duke oj Portland's MSS at Welbeck Abbey, pp. S76-591, there are eleven confessions made by him in the Tower between March 31st and April 24th, 1651. io8 A Sidelight Of this scandalous history Thomas is not slow to point the moral — as his wont was with Edward, whose loose connections he deplored. So, years after, in 1656, he returns to the charge and sermonizes over those 400 women of ill-fame who were raided and sent to the Tower. In his seriousness he can discover no humour in the Dutch Ambas- sador's statement that they were to be taken to Jamaica ' to nurse the sick '. This indeed was no time for humour or the indulgence of human frailty. The Puritans were in grim earnest. Whether they liked it or not, men had morality thrust upon them by statute and standing Com- mittees. That same year in the particularly moral kingdom of Scotland over 1,000 people were haled before the judges for adulteries, some of them of twenty and thirty years before ; while in England it was enacted that adultery should be punishable with death. But in 1650 and the two following years Edward was following other lures than those of women. With Viscount Campden, Capt. Sherrard, and Fabian Philips, who two days before Charles' beheading had posted all about London A Protestation against the intended murther of the King', he was busy setting up a press, as they advertised it, for the advancement of learning (anticipating in their title the Committee for the Advancement of Learning appointed by Parliament in 1653), and secretly no doubt for the advancement of the King. There is some On the Civil War 109 ambiguous correspondence over this with a Monsieur Spinamonte and a Dutch knight unnamed, which was checked in the middle by the miscarriage of a letter * in whose hands wee know not '. ' We must be cautious ', says Edward to Capt Sherrard, ' to send nothing further in scriftis. . . . But I pray doe what you can in promoteing the issue of the booke for it sticks vilely on the thumbs for want of supply.' Two days after writing this letter (March 29th, 1650) Edward was arrested and examined before the Council, but as they could prove nothing definite against him he was warned and allowed to go. Besides this dangerous form of Royalist pro- paganda Edward aided the King materially with money. Tvnce in 1652 and once in the following year he sold some family jewels and sent the proceeds oversea. XVI 1652-1653 In his leisure time he seems to have attended "the sittings of that Committee for Law Reform, which at first included not a single lawyer and which by its promises and performances has become the laughing- stock of Commonwealth History. How those shop- keepers and shoemakers boasted in the beginning ! The world should see how they dealt root and branch with the scandal of those 23,000 cases waiting no A Sidelight unheard in the Court of Chancery (one of them the suit of Lucy Heath long since dead). No longer should that phrase of Piers the Ploughman be muttered through the land, ' The law is so lordlich and loth to maken ende '. ' For the future ', they announced, ' the ordinary suits shall be promptly despatched at a cost of from 20 to 40 shillings '. The formless mass of precedents should be con- tracted into a code, ' by which means the great volumes of law would come to be reduced into the bigness of a pocket-book ... a thing of so great worth and benefit as England is not yet worthy of '• ' Nor ', as another comments, ' likely in a short time to be so blessed as to enjoy '. No, indeed. Wrestle as they might with the power of darkness, these pious souls could not bring their millennium to light. To their misery they found it was impossible to sell justice over a counter as they sold their pounds of cheese. Nor could they discover even what it was made of. For three months they sat painfully sifting out the meaning of the term encumbrance, and would have been hair-splitting upon it for three years had not Cromwell dissolved them in his indignation *. Besides, the times were ^ The next Committee, aided by direct action in the Parliament House, got more things done — and this in spite of the steady opposition and threatened resignation of the judges. One of the chief reforms was the annulment of Judges' fees so long a matter of abuse, and the substitution of fixed salaries. For a full account the student should consult The Interregnum, by F. A. Inderwicke, Q.C. (1891). On the Civil War m too violent for these domestic reforms. Who knew how the war with the Dutch would end ? In 1653 Van Tromp was in the mouth of the Thames maintaining a close blockade. Provisions were scarce and prices rose famine high. Cousin Tom writes from Mark Lane : ' I have scarce a penny to bye me bread '. Another, ' poore kinsman ', John Webb of ' Ould Baily ', entreats Edward to find his son a place ' that he may eat his owne bread and not ours '. ' My Sonne John ', he says, ' is still with us at home like the poore man at the poole of Bethesda wanting a man to put him in the troubled waters of employment '. That month Edward inquired for his tailor, only to find he was prisoned for debt in the Marshalsea and wearing the clothes and the hat he was finishing for him. With the pride that even prisoners have he beseeches Edward if he must have his belongings to call for them at night and bring some old ones in exchange. ' Otherwise if I parte with them this day I shall be rendered ridiculous '. Nothing seems to have resulted from the many petitions then being signed to do away with arrest for debt. All the prisons were full. In the Marshalsea alone there were 399 debtors owing altogether close on a million pounds. ' Lord how fatally and prodigeously doe things fall out ', the tailor laments. ' I pray God direct us and bring us all out of this labyrinth of misery '. And those outside were in little better case. When the news came that the Dutch had sunk the two chief cargoes 112 A Sidelight from the Levant there was a panic on the Exchange. * It is such a breaking world ', writes a merchant to Edward, ' that I for my part shall bee very wary with whom I deale — men so faile on the suddayne. God amend all '. He is also wary about paper. It was getting short. ' I cannot afford double paper any longer ', he explains at the end of his single sheet. On the other side of the water things were if anything worse. In the busy mart of Amsterdam, 3,000 houses were to let and the grass was growing in many of the streets. A manufacturer of silk-bone lace, who in better times had found employment for three to four hundred girls, had been compelled to dismiss all but three. No wonder that when Crom- well died ' Amsterdam was lighted up as for a great deliverance and children ran along the streets, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead '. Blockade, food-shortage, and sickness on every hand. The letters are full of it : 'I cannot possibly doe your business ', complains Sister Mary Morley on May 24th, ' for we are not very well. Nedd the little knave lyeth very full come out of Measells. I too have beene very ill and feverish. Of the servants we have divers downe at present and more dropping. I praye God to keepe you and your daughter in health. Tis now a hott time and very sickly everywhere I heare.' All things considered it was an evil lot to be in London then. So Edward, the timid lawyer, reflected and after receiving some postfuls of these pestilential letters craves permission On the Civil War 113 to go home. In late August his permit passes the Committee ; the family coach rumbles down and the owner of Cottesmore returns just in time to help daughter Margaret get in the harvest and gather the apples and pears. XVII 1653-1657 There certainly was need to have a master about the house again. Only the month previous, Edward's agent had reported on its shameful disrepair. ' There be more drips ', he says, ' through the roof than before and the seelings and side-walls being broken downe all lies in a very slovenly condition. I have several times called on Jon Atterfold, but he says there are no carpenters to be hired '. One hopes the mansion was ' beautified ' before the fastidious John Evelyn made his visit in the autumn of that year. In his diary he calls it a ' pretty seat ' and passes on to write more largely of others. But no doubt he had much to tell Edward of his travels abroad, and news to give of poet Robert and those ' others of our banished friends ' whom he had dined with at Calais in 1652 — probably including brother John, whom elsewhere in his diary he calls ' my worthy friend and schoolfellow '. With such duties and diversions Edward Heath — the accomplished 114 A Sidelight man about town — seems to have dragged through two years of country life in tolerable content. One may follow him about pretty closely by means of his meticulous accounts. One day in studious mood he sends to Norwich for Erasmus's Adages at 3s. 4d., and Quarks' Emblems at 5s. 2d., and a Plutarch — the book that all exUes and disappointed men must have. Another day he begins making the cyder, and in the middle leaves Margaret to see it through, whilst he unpacks the basket just arrived from London. 'Tis not such a bad world after all. Behold, underneath the straw, a goodly sturgeon — his favourite fish — and on the invoice note some scribbled gossip by Turner the Barber in Temple Church Yard Lane, who kept Edward supplied with the news and everything else he wanted : That 3,000 Tories ^ were being shipped for transportation out of Ireland : That the Protector's Army in the Highlands had marched for fourteen days without seeing man, woman or child : ' and those they saw afterwards hardly to be called human beings by reason of their mishapes '. That the highways — long left to decay — were at last to be taken in hand : That there came a Quaker to the door of the Parlia- ment House and drawing his sword fell slashing those on every side, etc., etc' ^ This word, says Defoe, is the Irish toraigh used in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to signify a band of Cathohc outlaws, who haunted the bogs of Ireland. It is formed from the verb torning- him (to make sudden raids). On the Civil War 115 Another day James Harrington sends a special request for ' one of your spaniel dogs ' — an order that sets one thinking, for this may well be the same mischievous animal that Harrington himself refers to iu the first edition of Oceana published two years later, where, to excuse the monstrous list of errata, he explains that a spaniel had been ' questing among his papers '. By the same courier come letters from the three matrimonial agents whom Edward hires to go about and report on approachable heiresses with fortunes of not less than ;^8oo a year. 'I have beene as carefull and diligent in this business ', says the first, ' as though it had been my owne. Neere six hundred miles have I Ridd altogether and almost killed myself and the horse. As for the Retford lady, she is aged, and keeps a courtly distance. Yet she hath a fair estate in Cheshire, and an admirer. For being in ye parlour there came a knight throughe to ye garden — a very zealous suitor, as I was told, but to little purpose. His name is Sir Charles Adderly, a Warwickshire gentleman, and a servant to ye late King.' The second agent, who is endowed with all the flamboyant style of his profession, begins his letter ' Raptissime ' and goes into an ecstasy over the mansion of Seaton, and the exceeding riches of money, plate and jewels therein. ' Soe civilly and nobly treated have I been that I am half debauched into an admiration of her and from an ambassador become her Sollicitor '. The lady, to be sure, is no vast attraction in herself, and ii6 A Sidelight somewhat entangled with sequestration and Chan- cery suits of her first husband's estate. Yet it is a rich prize, and waits only for the asking. The rival, Sir Andrew King, need not for a moment rufile Edward's equanimity. ' Notwithstanding he dothe visit every day and speakeath much in com- mendation of the lady, she hath never any kindness for the knight ', Yet Edward must move warily for ' she hath somehow learned of your keeping a concubine. I say you must swell and be more considerable of your selfe and more value yourselfe than you have done. Hay day. Hay day, we will have brave cross-capering and tricking and tracking till all be done and then dwell at ease ; this Matri- mony is Money '. The third letter is from Cousin Tom — anxious as ever to get Edward decently re- married. The lady he puts forward is a paragon of virtue, vouched for beyond doubt by the testimonial he encloses of Dr Gilbert Sheldon, Warden of All- Souls College. ' And if you wiU have my opinion I thinke you are ye man she lookes after '. But unhappily the rival here is a man of spirit and address. ' He comes on with great resolution to carry her consent '. As it is December 29th, Cousin Tom suggests that a gift of venison at the New Year might improve Edward's chances, ' if the Committee will allow '. On the Civil War 117 XVIIl 1656-1657 As if his own love affairs were not burdensome enough, Edward at this time was in trouble with those of Margaret, Instead of looking after the bake-meats and plum-porridge, she must needs pore by daylight and night-light over the books of chivalry and sigh for her prince-charming to appear. By the perversity of fortune, an amorous knight, bearing the romantic name of Castendo, comes just then to Exton on a visit to Lady Chaworth, who was Margaret's bosom-friend. As if it had been or- dained before the beginning of the world, the two met by the usual impossible chance, and fell immediately and irrevocably in love. Amantes, amentes — Lovers, lunatics ! So gloriously insane was Castendo that he rode back with Margaret on the spur of the moment to ask her father's consent. As one may guess, there was a most unseemly row. Vowing success or self-destruction, Castendo was driven headlong from the house. The moment that was done, Margaret was forced to write to Lady Chaworth at the dictation of her father, forswearing all wish to see Castendo again. Then she was locked in her room. That same night she bribed one of the maids to carry a private letter to her friend, ' because the other was of my father's instruction to let you know how fearfully I am vexed at these cruell accidents '. Begs her to ii8 A Sidelight comfort Castendo and to use her ' rhetorick ' for the persuasion of her father. The following day, with a spirit that her mother would have praised, she escaped to Exton and threw herself on the protection of Lady Chaworth. One picks up the letters impatiently, wondering if she will elope with Castendo, and, if not, why not ? But it seems that more prudent counsels prevailed, and Castendo discreetly withdrew. Nor should one have expected otherwise, for the hot blood in her veins was cooled by an ancestry of countless lawyers on both sides. At any rate she decided to hold her father at bay with a series of ' pleadings ' and make a peaceful attempt to overcome his will. ' I shall pray to God to open your eyes ', he writes to her, ' that you may hear reason and be more sensible. Otherwise I can doe no other than give you over to your owne unbridled will '. In reply she is equally firm. Though signing as ' your most dutyfuU and obedient daughter ' and acknowledging his ' equity and kindnesse ', there is no trembling in ' the declaration of my resolution '. ' I have now chosen the time ', she announces, ' to doe this before you come here that you may have time to resume that indulgence you have ever professed ; and by that meanes make your presence not a disquiet ether to your self or mee but a great satisfaction to both. You have writt to mee of Reason once and again and again. I would answer there may be a Tyrannie in Reason itself when it is prest too home and without absolute On the Civil War 119 neede '. By this time, becoming quite unreasonable, Edward makes dreadful threats about depriving her of any share in her mother's property, insinuates that Castendo ' is hankering after another woman at Derby ', and would have driven Margaret into her lover's arms had not her strength of a sudden given way. The country doctor they call in is sensible enough to see that the case is not one for physic. ' If you love her or yourself ', he reports to Edward, 'let her goe to bed betimes and rise betimes, especially this Spring. All art vnthout this is not worth a blow-point '. It is done accordingly, for Margaret is too feeble to protest. But after six months of it she recovers some of her spirit. ' The country is too dull and melancholy ', she complains to her physician, ' there is no one to see '. He wisely approves her longing for a change, and persuades Edward to send her in ' the old black coach ' to a farmhouse of brother John near Ton- bridge. The invitation had come only the week before from Margaret's namesake who was the soul of kindness. She had been wishing to help all along. ' For ought that I can see ', she had written to her father, ' poore Peggy is to be left to god Allmighty's provedence. I am shure it troubles me to the heart to hear of her unsettled condicion. May we not call her to our home and indevire to make her life . more easy ? ' So it was arranged. Certainly the Cottesmore heiress was herself again for no one still in the pangs of love could have fancied the ' hogs-hash I20 A Sidelight and puddings ' she packed for meals inside the coach. In 'The Wilderness', as brother John's house is called, she soon blossoms as the rose. The letters are full of cheer. Evidently her heart is not broken after all. To play the ' distressed maiden ' in the gay town of Tonbridge is hardly possible for long ; the knights are too gallant and too kind. ' We were all yesterday to Tonbridge ', she writes to Edward, * where we sawe a boundance of Companie and it being so fine a day, ye Buckases and Princates (sic) ware upon ye Walkes '. It is clear we may leave her coquetting with ' Lord Goreinge and Coz : Middleton ' and return to Edward Heath. By a whimsical chance of correspondence, he was then being approached by a second cousin, Thomas Coo, to bring about a reconciliation between the latter and his father, whom he had angered ' by marrying without his consent '. ' I have heard my father oftentimes say ', he continues, ' that there was or should have bin neare upon an hundred pounds per annem settled upon me, and that if he should goe about to deprive mee of it, he should never come to heaven '. One would dearly like to know what Edward wrote in reply. Coo seems to have timed his requests to Edward unfortunately, for the month before, when the latter was proposing to remarry. Coo begged him to expostulate with his father who had done the same : ' I should be eternally glad if you could leade my father to serve his posteritie as much as his third bed fellow '. There appears to be no answer to that letter either. On the Civil War 121 XIX 1658-1659 It was professedly in search of a wife that Edward returned to London in the autumn of 1658. But the real and urgent reason for his going was an ultimatum from a lady, in forwarding which cousin Tom curtly and discreetly notes : ' Men's mistresses are not to be mentioned in letters.' Her discretion, however, is not so apparent. ' If you doe not come nor send me ^20, I must pawne the little trinkitts I have and, if need be, pawne myself. I beseech you believe nothinge but nesesitey could make me thus troublesome to you. I wish your other affayres would have given way to your amours '. In the end, both wife and mistress seem to have been forgotten, for in the last stage of the journey to London there broke that portentous storm which set the mighty spirit of Oliver Cromwell free. As if by a sudden stroke of lightning, the carefully and prayerfully prepared constitution of the Lord Protector was shattered. Once again the ship of state was cast adrift, leaving each to save what he could from the impending wreck. For all his trumpets of proclamation, no one believed that Richard could wield the sceptre of his father. And few, if any, trusted in Fleetwood or Lambert or Monk— those pilots of ever-shifting courses-^to 122 A Sidelight guide them to any haven of peace. How well Marvell the poet and Secretary of State expresses the pitiful paralysis of the nation after Cromwell's death : ' For we, since thou art gone, with heavy doom. Wander like ghosts about thy loved tomb. And lost in tears, have neither sight nor mind To guide us upward through this region blind ; Since thou art gone, who best that way couldst teach Only our sighs, perhaps, may thither reach.' Such was the uncertainty and excitement that every man burned to be in London then. There was the heart of England throbbing in every street. You could hear them singing of it in the*Strand : ' Oh ! London ! Centre of All Mirth, The Epitome of English Earth ; All provinces are in the streets And Warwick-shire with Essex meets.' • There was the brain of England — trembling before the unknown terrors of an interregnum, and seething with countless schemes to find a via media of sound government between the tyranny of army-captains and the tyranny of kings. Well has Milton de- scribed the ferment of the city ' not busier as a shop of war with hammers and anvils fashioning out instruments of armed justice, than it was with pens and heads sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching and revolving new ideas '. Rump Songs. 1662. Part i. Of banishing the Ladies out of Town. On the Civil War 123 With brother John who (after hiding in London for ten months as a spy) had finally compounded for ^900 and returned to England, Edward had taken lodgings in Shere Lane-End. The letter of hiring gives a useful idea of the furnished apartments of that day. For 25s. a week they got ' a fayre dining roome with a bedd and closett at one end behind a traverse of tapestry ', four other bedrooms, ' which have all the ayre of the fields ', kitchen, cellar and garret. No linen provided. John ' beate it downe to 25/ ' on condition that the bargain should be clinched. Otherwise ' shee will not keep it for us a day '. A number of letters addressed to Edward, however, at Miles' CoflFee House in Palace Yard shew that he had joined the famous Rota Club, established there by Harrington to further the political and philosophical systems outlined in Oceana. Had Cromwell lived, he would have been surprised at the influence of this book, the manu- script of which he had seized in 1655 and restored to the author only through the intercession of his daughter, Mrs. Claypole, Harrington having threatened to steal her child unless her father gave back his. Meantime Cromwell had read the work, which he allowed to circulate on the ground that it was too unpractical to be dangerous. One can hardly see the Cottesmore squire taking any forward part in the discussions of the Rota. Their discourses, it is true, wotild have attracted any intelligent man : ' they were ', says Aubrey, ' the most ingeniose and smart 124 A Sidelight that ever I heard or expect to heare : the arguments in the Parliament howse were but flatt to it '. But Edward was too much a king's man to enter into a dispassionate enquiry of the basis of republican government, and he must have disliked Harrington's ideas about the landowning class. In that upstairs room ' every evening full as it could be crammed ', you would not have found Edward beside ' the large ovall-table with a passage in the middle for Miles to deliver his coffee' (Aubrey makes a sketch of it) where the chief ' discoursers and inculcators ' sat ; but rather on the back benches with those 'auditors and antagonists' who behaved in an unseemly manner. Especially the ' gang of officers ', who many times disgruntled the ' virtuosi ', ' tore up their minutes ' and flung out of the coffee-room to drink the King's health in the ' Rhenish Wine House' hard by. While Petty and Wildman debated the Seven Models of a Commonwealth which Harrington was soon to publish, their Royalist friend was no doubt composing his next letter in cypher to Charles' agent at Breda. For some time he had been smuggling letters abroad through a ' poore silkewoman ', asking what he might expect to receive in return for all his services if the King came to his own again. But Charles was giving nothing away. ' You may be secure ', writes one anonymously for him in numeral cyphers, ' of the king's kindness, — for I have moved him in your behalf. Yet hath he resolved to create nothing in On the Civil War 125 this critical conjuncture '. And again, ' I do not find he is inclined absolutely to dispose of the place till he comes home '. XX I 659- I 660 Something of this correspondence must have been suspected by his friends, for one writes to him : ' You must have a great care not to betray yourself ; for once locked up you'll dwindle and pine away to death '. . . . Unhappily the warning came too late. A ' bundle of the poore silkewoman ' was inter- cepted going to Breda by way of Zealand, and as soon as the contents were deciphered Edward was arrested and sent to the Tower — apparently at the instance of General Lambert. The accounts shew that Edward was buying gunpowder in large quantities, which also may have come to the general's ears. On August 24th, 1659, ^^ was examined ' for assisting in the present rebellion of Sir George Booth ' and as he failed or refused to give security for peaceful conduct in the sum of £S^ooo he was taken back to the Tower. His next few letters are full of dismay. ' I beseech you ', he writes to Lady Vane, whose husband was on the Committee of Safety, ' I beseech you to move your friends of the councell of state that for my health's sake I may bee 126 A Sidelight enlarged from the present confinement that is upon me. I am very much indisposed through the want of some phisic and a little open ayre '. But Sir Harry Vane was delivering no one just then. ' The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! ' It was not only Cromwell who had occasion to cry those memorable words. Besides ' phisic and open ayre ', Edward was in need of money, to bribe jailers and get in some decent food. He applies to Richard Adam, his steward — but he proved at that time a most unprofitable servant. ' I have listed myself under Captaine Sherrard ', he explains, ' which is a hindrance that I cannot follow your businesse'. His business and Captain Sherrard's was much more urgent, namely to join up with Col : Ingoldsby, suppress Lambert's rising and seize Windsor Castle for the parliament. ' Soe ', he closes in his in- dependent fashion, ' soe I leave you to the protection of almightie god and rest your faithfull servant, Richard Adam '. For Edward therefore there was nothing to do but swallow the physic of philosophy, ruminate over Boethius' Consolations (purchased the month before) and hope on for better times. Three days by special license he spent in Sussex, journeying down there strictly guarded with the dead body of Sister Mary's child ^ for burial at Halnaker. That was all the fresh air he got till General Monk proclaimed the Restoration and set the captives free. • William Morley, whose admission to the Inner Temple he had obtained the year previous. On the Civil War 127 XXI I 63 8- I 642 Before passing on to the happier times of the Restoration, let us untie another bundle of earlier date made up of Domestic Accounts and glance at its contents. Perhaps the diversion may be worth our while, for apart from satisfying the cupboard curiosity we have in the household economy of others, especially in ages far removed, it will help us to bring die misfortunes of the Heath family into a better perspective. With all the travail and des- truction of war, it is wholesome to see how many stubborn, bread-and-cheese things go on their way in noiseless neutrality. By their daily insistence — as the vital concern of the race — they seem to mock at the transient epic of war. Are we not too prone — in these stirring episodes of human struggle — to overlook those ' who abide with the stuff ' ? Yet they, too, fight the good fight against moth and rust and decay. And their warfare is never ac- complished. Though the State go to ruin someone must scour the pots and pans, take the pig to market, and hang out the washing to dry. Though men differ about the divine right of kings, all are agreed upon the high necessity of beef and plum pudding and beer. The fighters must be fed. 128 A Sidelight Though the Fifth Monarchists preach the im- mediate coming of Christ the housewife must still be sewing-on of buttons. In these sartorial and culinary accounts one looks out upon the human tragedy, as it were, from the kitchen and scuUery windows, and beholds only the reflection of their bright interiors : one cannot see the world for the runner-beans in front. One cannot hear the shrieking of the guns for the singing of the kettle. With the incessant administration of its kitchen, still-room and sewing-chamber, is not a country house a petty kingdom of itself, obeying its own laws, industriously at peace ? In the cruel times of war, who knows how much heartbreak has been saved by the common-round of duties in the home ! The wound of absence, the agonizing foretaste of death, the endlessness of sorrow : in some measure have not all these been tempered by the blessed drudgery of daily, housewifery cares ? It cheers one most of all to trace this preoccupa- tion in the case of Lucy Heath at Cottesmore. Though unable to maintain the aflEection of her husband, she was the unrivalled mistress of the house. It was her family home and perhaps it is natural that the love which her husband spurned should have found an outlet in watching over its well-being, and that of her serving-maids and the good people in the village. Every Michaelmas in the pre-war days of plenty there was a tremendous collation for the tenants and a holiday picnic for On the Civil War 129 their children. To satisfy the gluttony of little boys is proverbially impossible ; set before them the most stupendous meal, even so, to use their own simile, ' 'tis like giving an acid drop to a rhinoceros '. But the Cottesmore kitchens at any rate tickled the palate of the beast. Again, on each New Year's Day a basket of food was prepared and sent to every cottage — ^forty-seven in all : To one a pig ; to another two capons ; to a third a bushel of apples ; to a fourth a goose, and so on. Nor is the erring husband overlooked. A well-stuffed hamper is consigned to him by coach that he may the better entertain his mistress ; and this shy and sweetly malicious note is hidden in the midst : ' Although I be not ignorant that London aboundeth with all variety of the choycest daintyes soe that our country cates can be but of little value, yet of my humble service and as an Omen or Pledge of my earnest desire of an Happy New Yeare unto you, I presume to present you with a taste of those things which your Husbandman's yarde doth afford, hopeing they may be the meanes to set out the excellency of your city provision and to manifest the difference between that and the country. My wishes and prayers for your happiness are still the same '. 130 ' A Sidelight XXII I 642- I 645 The spectre of civil war frightened all these charities of rural life away. There is no list of New Year's gifts after 1642. It is as much as Lucy can manage to feed the mouths of her own family. The Lady Bountiful suffers a war change into a careful housewife, reducing her stores and discovering substitutes. With her gentle and practical mind she foresees that ' the dainty es of the rich are like to be the teares of the poore ', and will suffer no luxuries. The daily bUls of iheat, fish and poultry in 1643 are less by one-half than those of the year before. When the price of sugar goes flying up, she will have none of it ; she orders the cook-maid to use ' common treacle ' instead. At the same time she is woman enough to abhor this compulsory economy and now and again breaks out into mild extravagance. To make the house more cheerful she hires a Frenchman from Oakham at half a crown a day to give Margaret lessons upon the lute. When the great news comes that Bristol — the gateway of the West — ^has sur- rendered to Prince Rupert, she sends post-haste to Stamford for a ' barrell of oysters '. To the Parliament on the other hand the news sounds ' like the sentence of death ' ; they resolve upon a day of fasting and humiliation. After another victory sht writes to Mr. Brewer, her agent in London, to buy a quantity of coloured ribbons to put in her hat and On the Civil War 131 some of the new porcelain dishes which were being imported from Paris ^. But ribbons were against the law. As li,e song had it : ' They'll not allow us curls or rings Nor favours in hats, nor no such things. They'll convert all ribands to Bible strings. Which nobody can deny '. ' You should not send twice for anythinge that lyeth in my power ', Brewer remarks in reference to the dishes, ' but I cannot in all the shoppes of London find any save such as are full of flase (i.e., flaws) and knottes and I knowe if I should send them I shall receive discontent for so doing '. Assuredly Lucy was somewhat particular. Though it will take much more ' Tuff Taffity ' to cover them, says the upholsterer, she insists upon having for her parlour ' not stooles but backstooles otherwise called chaises. It is the new fashone '. And they must have yellow-fringes ' like those on her new ' wallnut-tree bedstead'. Again she scolds her husband because through his meanness in bidding she is likely to lose a very choice bureau. 'lam sorry to see myself e so duU ', he replies, ' but the prize of it disliked mee. I have now, after drinking some cider with myself, raised my purse a note or two higher' Perhaps Lucy Heath was fortunate in * Probably some of Claude Reverend's handiwork, who was given a monopoly for Porcelain in 1664. There was no English manufacture till about 174S, when John Dwight founded^ his porcelain works at Chelsea. 132 A Sidelight dying before the prices became impossible. For housekeepers, as daughter Margaret was to find, the pinch came not in the years of war but in the middle period of the Commonwealth, after the exhausting struggle with the Dutch. Such, for example, was the rigour of De Witt's blockade in 1652 that coal was almost unprocurable. The cost, which earlier in the same year had been fixed at izd. per bushel, rose from £2 to £6 a chaldron and could hardly be got at that price. One witty fellow collected a crowd in the London streets by crying, ' Coals at three pence a bushel ', and when asked where they were to be sold so cheaply, replied, ' At Rotterdamm stairs '. It is left doubtful whether the wag was lynched or burned expensively over a coal fire. The scarcity set many brains working at economies and substitutes. Whitelocke reports that ' Sir John Winter had a project of charking of Sea-Coal whereby it became as sweet fuell as wood or char- coal ; and he sent some of it with a new fashioned Grate to several great men for a Tryall ; but it came to nothing '. All the winter of 1652 Margaret held on without any coal and heated her oven with faggots and billets as best she could. She even sent a waggon load of logs aU the way from Cottesmore to cheer he^ father in his fireless lodgings. Her household accounts which begin in 1648 make lively reading, for in spite of scarcity and sumptuary legislation she was determined to indulge her youth. On the Civil War 133 XXIII 1645-1648 Since 1644 the Parliament had forbidden all romping under the mistletoe, all eating of boar's head, all drinking of ale flavoured with joasted apples. Likewise mince-pies and plum-porridge had been denounced as Popery and roast turkey as unchristian. But Margaret meant to enjoy her Yuletide whatever the cost might be, and did so every year in the good old-fashioned way. In 1652 certain holy men moved Parliament with a grand remonstrance against the heathen festival of Christmas Day, grounding their arguments upon pieces of Holy Scripture and forcing the House to sit on the day concerned. Margaret merely romped and rioted the more. So again with playgoing. Two months after the ordinance of February nth, 1647-8, for the dismantling of theatres, fining of spectators, and whipping of actors at the cart's tail, Margaret insists upon coaching to London for what promised to be her last performance. ' Ffor a chare to goe to the play l/- : For goeing to the playe 4/6. : For taking my lute master to the play 4/6 ' : ' For entrance money to ye servantes 10/- '. Having so little choice they were driven to patronise the stage-players at the Red Bull in St John Street, 134 A Sidelight Clerkenwell, who the following year were raided by the troopers, stripped of their finery and flung into prison. With all these restrictions upon private and public pleasure, it might seem to a Royalist family as though the lot of the exiles in Paris were to be preferred. That same week Uncle John was squan- dering thirty shillings over there on plays ; diverting himself with Jacobus Brower, His Majesty's ' Vater and Dancer on the Ropes ' ; and losing fifty shillings at cards and six pounds fifteen to Monsieur Saumeurs, the great French tennis player in the Rue Verdelet. Certainly he was not to be pitied. Over here, however, men were still playing the sterner game of war and staking their lives at it. Fickle as ever, the ball of fortune tossed to and fro and neither players nor spectators could be confident on which side it would rest. Till ' there may be a peaceable and quiet end of these miserable distractions which we are fallen into', Edward decided to keep Margaret by him, and accordingly hired rooms in the house of one ' Master Pagitt a Lutemaker near St. Dunstan's Church in ffleet street ' close to the Inner Temple. By the light of their joint accounts one can watch them at meals or bargaining in the shops. Aunt Croke admonishes Edward ' to des- patch Peggy to schoole againe after her long loytering, where I hope shee will redeeme her lost time '. In pledge of her affection and possibly as a hint, she encloses ' a payre of siszures for misse '. Bu^t Peggy is not to be croaked out of her new-found On the Civil War 135 content in London. Lest her father should alter his mind, she hurries him oflF to Rosogan's in War- wick Lane and chooses two costumes that no school- girl could wear, at a cost — much be-margined and contested by Edward' — of ^i8 2s. 3d. And that was by no means the total. One finds other shop accounts : ' For a pistoll and firelock 14/-: For a stomager 3/- : For sending into Southwark for a baise petycoate for Misse 8/3 '. There are even items for ' patches and paint ', though these accord- ing to Evelyn did not become fashionable among respectable women before the spring of 1654 '• Then her father must be smartened too. She orders him ' some English gloves white and colored, a pair of halfe-silke stockings, a pair of Scarlett worsted ditto, and a large paire of gray to turn down to weare over shoes '2. A mercer is commanded to call in the evening with ' fine cloath of a good color for a suite and cloake ', and to bring a ' hatt for our ffoot boy '. Such a display of new raiment cries out to be seen, and Peggy is not unmindful. The following Sunday ' On June 7th, 1650, a Bill was introduced and read a first time to deal with the ' vice of painting, wearing black patches and immodest dresses of women ', but no one could be got to move the second reading. ' By the short-sightedness of King James, the process of stocking- making by machinery, invented by William Lee of St John's College, Cambridge, was discouraged and driven over to France. There it flourished until the Protestant persecution, when Lee died of grief and disappointment at Paris. Some of his workmen returned to England about 1647 and set up their frames in London. These stockings of Edward may well have been their manufacture. 136 A Sidelight they go in state— attended hy the foot-boy — to hear a fashionable preacher of the day. ' I am pretty well ', Margaret writes afterwards to her aunt at Halnaker, ' and went to church last Sunday to hear Mr Etheredg. I shall not doo it often for, God wott, it is ye most piteous silly soule to guide soe many people '. Before the next Sunday they take their coach out of the livery stables, where it is costing ' twelvepence per diem ', and make their long-promised visit to Brasted, to apportion the goods and chattels and trinkets of Edward's mother who had died the previous December. A fortnight later they return piled up with ' a powdering-tub, a pewter alembick, a feather bed, a brasse-pan to boyle fish in, a red foot-stoole, a little spitt with a wheel to it, a long striped curtaine out of the parlour ' and a heap of other household stuff. XXIV I 648- I 659 Arriving on December 6th, 1648, they find the streets agitated with people discussing the news of Col. Pride's purge of Parliament that morning, and wondering what next the army would dare to do. They were not left wondering long. Helpless as in the toils of an evil dream, the Royalists saw their King brought from Hurst Castle to Windsor and On the Civil War 137 from Windsor to St James's, arraigned before his accusers and sentenced to death as ' the occasioner, author and contriver of all the Treasons, Murders, Rapines, Burnings, Spoyls, Desolations, Damage and Mischief to this Nation acted or committed in the late Unnaturall, cruel and bloody wars '. In the bitter weather of January the 29th, Margaret goes out to buy ' a muJffe and a scarf e lined with fflanell ' to keep some warmth in her body, whilst waiting amongst the crowd at Whitehall on the following day. The King himself wore three waistcoats that morning against the cold lest men should mistake the cause of his shivering. ' He nothing common did nor mean, upon that memorable scene '. But what of his followers ? Can the same be said of them, that day or afterwards ? What can you think of Margaret who came back to her chambers to eat the ' calfes heade ' she had ordered for dinner ? And what can you say of Edward, who can write to his sister Mary the next day and close upon this cheerful note, ' Well, these things shall never breake my sleepe ' ! Nevertheless these things did break up the establishment at Mr Pagitt's. Now that the worst was over it might be safe to let Margaret return to Cottesmore, and in any case they could not afford to remain in London. As it was they had been reduced to sell some family jewels to ' Augra, the Goldsmith in Setter lane ', including a locket of Lucy Heath's golden and silver hair ! And the tradespeople press for money. ' I would not 138 A Sidelight trouble you with the mention of soe poore a som ', writes one of them, ' butt that the tymes being so ill doth force me to it ', Another begs if he is to be paid, ' that it may with all convenient speed be done because in these days no man knows how long he may live '. Cousin Windam thinks it high time he had the legacy named by Lucy on her death-bed, and suggests that a dying request might have been more promptly observed. ' Her memory ', replies Ed- ward, ' shall never dy in mee so long as life continues. I will shortly perf orme her wish and do now acknow- ledge to pay the sume of fifty pounds to you within some convenient time after it shall please God to settle the peace of this Hngdome so as I shall live to retourne to my estate again '. To satisfy everybody is impossible, for Colonel Waite still receives the Cottesmore rents, and what he does not keep is ' all discounted in Bribes and fees '. The smaller creditors, who always make the most trouble, are called in and appeased, giving receipts written out by Edward in the old style, ' in full for this bill and of all other accounts from the beginning of the world to the present day '. Then Edward and Margaret separate — she to maintain herself on short commons at Cottesmore, he to hide in an obscure lodging from his creditors and his father's creditors in London. The week after Sir Robert died his estate was ordered to pay ^^60 towards the maintenance of Westminster School — an obligation which fell afterwards on Edward as his heir, together with some On the Civil War 139 ;£i 2,000 worth of older debts bearing legal interest of ten per cent. Something has been written already of Edward's straitened life during the Commonwealth, and one does not wish to exaggerate ' the pity of it ' by pointing out all the economies of Margaret's household accounts. They shew well enough that she also possessed and practised that frugalitas splendida for which her grandmother is famed on her tomb in the Church at Brasted. And she practised her patientia too. After ten years of it she is still scheming for her father's good and the well-being of his house. Through the winter of 1659, when he was confined in the Tower and out of health, she writes and sends every week. ' I pray you to remember your pills and your possit '. When these fail of their effect she plies him with chocolate, a wonderful new medicine just introduced into Europe 1, and as a solace if not a cure, she keeps him provided with Spanish tobacco at 8s. a lb., and thoughtfully encloses an ounce or two to soften the * She had in 1650 bought some of the chocolate which Goodson obtained as spoil when he sacked Rio de la Hacha — perhaps the first that came into England. Twenty years later it was still considered a rarity. When Oliva, General of the Jesuits, wished to gain the favour of Korybuth, King of Poland, he sent him some of the finest Mexican chocolate. ' I am impelled by a reverent solicitude to minister as well as I can to the weakness of your stomach which has already been fortified by drugs of this kind.' That king's stomach might well be weak, for he was afflicted with a fabulous voracity. It is related that on one occasion the burghers of Dantzig presented him with a thousand Chinese apples and before night he had devoured them all ! 14° A Sidelight heart of the jailor. ' It is a great reconciler ', she observes, ' and I wish that all your unhappy dif- ferences might so vanish away — in smoke '. XXV 1660-1661 ' The King shall come to his own again '. There shall be cakes and ale, and ginger shall be hot in the mouth. Away with all prim, starched fanatics, oppressors of public pleasure. The King's men and the King's women shall be gorgeously apparelled ; shall go in soft raiment and eat delicately once more. And shall not the common people rejoice ? Bring out the may-poles from their hiding •. Let there be cock-fighting on every hill and morris-dancing in every valley. Spite of all statutes that say Nay, bear-baiting and playhouses and horse-racing shall revive. Turn out the snivelling ministers with their Presbyterian Directories and Pulpit-Blasphemies, and let the Book of Common Prayer be heard in Church as of old. Make haste, you laggard * In his notes on Monk's life, Aubrey says : ' Maypoles which in the hypocriticall times 'twas forbidden to sett-up, now were sett up in every cross-way, and at the Strand, neer Drury Lane the most prodigious one for height that perhaps was ever seen ; they were faine (I remember) to have the assistance of the sea-men's art to elevate it.' On the Civil War 141 politicians, with the disbanding of the army ; disperse that cloud of 50,000 locusts which for eighteen years has darkened and devastated the land. No more free-quarter, no more drumhead court-martials, no more fighting without pay. Let men go home at last to their half -ruined villages to see if their houses yet stand. Let them till the corn- fields again, and have some reasonaable hope of reap-- ing what they sow. And shall not our enemies be scattered ? And shall not our long-suffering loyalty have its late reward ? How simple and promising it seemed on that twenty-ninth of May, when to the welcome of a thousand bells, and the booming of Monk's heavy guns, Charles triumphed through the streets of London. All anxious thoughts were banished as folk watched the long procession pass ; threading its way beneath the overhanging balconies crowned with light-hearted girls waving their tapestries and flags. Behold the solid Livery Companies go by, with aldermanic pace and slow : their leaders hung about with costly furs and chains of gold, emblems of England's greatness. Mark you those grim, scarred Ironsides — ' our poor army, these poor contemptible men ', as Cromwell had styled them ^ — wondering furiously behind their impassive faces what God and Cromwell would say. And last of all you may cheer ' In his speech to the Second Parliament, April 21st, 1657. It seems a pity that these originals of our Old Contemftibles should be forgotten. 142 A Sidelight that flying column of happy maidens who had petitioned Parliament that they might for this once go loosely clad in white. But life, alas, is not all bonfires and roast beef ; the gutters do not normally run with wine. Processions pass and promises fade away. Certainly Edward Heath encouraged no illusions. He had too bitterly experienced the fickleness of fortune and the forgetfulness of kings. Nothing turns him aside from his main purpose. One writes to him from Halnaker, ' I am heartily glad to heare that ye King (whom God preserve) got safe to Towne from ye bloody plotts and Machiavellian designes of those that goe under ye name of phanaticks. If you then that sitt at ye helme keepe but ye citty quiett your inferior servants here wiU looke to ye Cuntry for indeede our deaputy Lieutenants here are very vigilant '. Well might they be, for in spite of the general cheering there were plenty who sought to embroil the land in civil war again. This same month brother John informed the Council that ' Captain Southwold had threatened " if the King came in by fair means or foul, he would have his head off, and cut him as small herbs in a pot " '. Another of Edward's people sends an expostulation from Cottesmore about the unnecessary zeal of the deputy lieutenant there. ' It seems ', he complains, * we must all be disarmed againe though we consyder ourselves soberly and not guiltie of anie suspition. My one arme is noe better than a birding gunn and I On the Civil War 143 entreate to have it in keepinge both for securing my house and Hlling of vermyne. And I have never offended with shooteing at any game of warrant, neither have I shott a shoote this half yeare '. XXVI I 661 -I 663 De minimis non curat lex. It was indeed no time to be answering such little letters. There was bigger game to shoot at. As the lawyer Edward well knew, everything depended on getting early to the doors of Whitehall palace. Already — so the news went — numbers of ' obstinate country gentlemen ' were pressing into the king's closet, clamouring for new titles and their old estates. On their heels, if not before them, came the squire of Cottesmore, with the pockets of his new suit bulging with petitions. There were seven altogether, though how many were delivered it is difficult to say. It was no good to rest all one's hopes on a single petition. Edward's kinsman Thomas Coo wrote to him : ' The six petitions before presented by mee have all been embezzled '. What sweat of brow and brain went to the making of Edward's can he seen easily enough by a glance at the rough drafts scored all over with second and third corrections. Evi- dently he disliked the lachrymose style then thought H4 A Sidelight essential in such cases — but it had to be done : ' Your petitioner ', he laments in one, ' hath under- gone the long and heavy paines of sequestration, decimation and imprisonments ; hath been neces- sitated to sell part of his estates to pay his father's debts to the value of ^^i 2,000 and upwards, and now prayeth for support and repaire of his ruined fortunes '. In another — phrased with more dignity and vigour — he reminds the king that ' he hath supply ed your majesty upon severall occasions to a good value as might be seen if needfull and hath never yett obtained any suit of you '. As none of these petitions met with any reward, Edward applied himself to Hyde who virtually ruled the kingdom while Charles revelled in the palace. ' I have not yet had the happiness ', he writes, ' of receiving any mark of favour from His Majesty since his returne ... it seems if not layd aside yet am I but coldly countenanced '. To save the time of the King's almoner he enumerates a few places he would content himself with on account, including ' the ancient Office of the Ballast '. He also oflEered to find and seize for the King the estate of one Mar- cellus Vanduren, an alien, on condition that he should be allowed to keep two-thirds of the spoil. But Hyde was busy blocking the Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion ; as the secretary observes to Edward, ' he is ever in a perpetuall hurry '. And it soon appeared to the petitioners that this very Bill which the Convention was forcing clause by clause would On the Civil War 145 be the crowning act of their disillusion. * 'Tis a Bill of Indemnity for the King's enemies ', they cried in their wrath, ' and Oblivion for his friends '. Not quite oblivion in this particular, for Edward, though forced to reconcile himself to poverty, was given a knighthood of the Bath. Perhaps ' given ' is hardly the word ; for in his lean condition, the list of fees to court flunkeys must have taken some of the gilt off the decoration. It is amazing to find how many departments could then be concerned in the granting of such a simple honour ; no fewer than sixty-nine pounds had to be doled out to ' Pur- suivants, Gentlemen-Ushers, Pages of the Bed- chamber, Gentlemen of the Sellar and Buttry, Porters of the Gate, Serjeant-Trumpeters, Drum- Majors, Surveyors of the Wayes and Harbingers '. Even the King's Jester, whom one thought to be obsolete, put in for a flagon of wine. The same year Marvell was complaining bitterly in the House about similar exactions from his brother-poet Milton. Edward, however, was suffering for the sins of his father. It was Sir Robert Heath who originally suggested to Charles I the device of replenishing the Exchequer by restoring the ancient practice of calling upon all tenants in capite to receive knight- hood. Fees were payable by those who accepted the dignity ; fines by those who refused it. Having done what he could for himself, Edward had the good grace to lend a pen to his brothers. The long-winded boastings of brother John are cut 14^ A Sidelight short, and a neat compliment to Hyde set dexter- ously in the forefront. Five folios more go to support the prayer in forma pauperis of the Lady Margaret, John's wife, ' who by the fraud, circum- vention, and oppressions of her first husband, Sir John Pretyman, is incapabil of leaving one penny to her husband and children.' She seems to have obtained no relief by this petition, but when her uncle Sir Jdin Mennes died in 1671, he left her * my great Portugal! jewel containing 180 diamonds set in gold ', which he had been given when he visited Portugal to negotiate for the King's marriage. Brodiers Francis and Robert, though honestly denying any knowledge of figures, are pushed headlong into the vacant office of auditors to the Court of Requests. James Heath, an obscure cousin, one who, to use Ludlow's phrase, ' having procured his present possessions by his wits is resolved to enlarge them by selling his conscience ', is helped to print a panegyric, and a history of the Civil War, ' mostly compiled ', says Anthony a Wood, ' from lying pamphlets and all sorts of news-bo°°o from King James as a portion for his wife, lost all but ;£5oo of it in one day's play at tennis. Of George Heath little has been said, and there is little to add. He was too mild and self-effacing a creature to leave a mark — on earth at any rate. One gets a side-view of him throu^ a letter of advice which Edward writes to him on succeeding to the living of West Grinstead in 1639. ' I am glad ', he says, ' to heare of your good fortune. And I hope you will not be unmindfull to give God thankes for providing so well for you, which you can noe way better doe than by imploring his assistance and bending all your owne endeavours for the making of yourself fitt for so weighty a calling. You must now transforme your shape and put yourselfe into that civil and grave garb as will befitt such an office and undergoe it with a hearty resolution, that all men may see you take it upon you not for itself, nor for advancement of your profit thereby — ^but that God may have the glory and your owne soul the comfort therein '. Civil and grave that was the text and tenor of his life. The ruffling fashion of the world and the rudeness of civil war never profaned his quiet manor house, set away in the On the Civil War 159 fields beside the church '. For a time it is true there waged a sort of civil war between his body and his soul over the maintenance of the celibate life. ' He is distracted ', writes Edward to John in 1640, ' betweene two Maryes, both of them virgins. If the one, he hath chosen ye better, if the other, then ihee hath chosen ye better part '. In the end, though ' the flesh lusted long against the spirit ', it was to the Blessed Virgin Mary that he paid his vows. For the rest, whenever it was required of him, he submitted to Caesar — be it Oliver Cromwell or Richard or Charles — but served Christ and Him only. Though ejected in 1642 he refused to aban- don his flock and was left alone by the new Minister to do what he deemed to be the will of God. Having no wife or children to care for, he gave all his days to the village people as parson, philanthropist and friend, bestowing, according to their several needs, homilies or homoeopathy or a helping-hand. Any- thing to bring a gleam of Heaven's ovm light across the sadness and corruption of the lower world. Anything to bind up the wounds of war and to heal the divisions of a time when fathers were often set against their sons and mothers at enmity with their daughters. Yes, in his own quiet way, he fulfilled something of what Cromwell(in i658)was prophesying ' ' It is ', says Lucas, in his Highways and Byeways of Sussex, ' still one of the most attractive and substantial of the smaller manor houses of Sussex, square and venerable and well roofed with Horsham stone '. 1 6o A Sidelight as the crowning mercy of his last Parliament : ' You shall be " the repairers of breaches, and the restorers of paths to dwell in ", and if there be any higher work which mortals can attain unto in this world, beyond this, I acknowledge my ignorance of it '. In his scant leisure one sees brother George pottering about the garden and reading Parkinson and Gerard in the shade — books that his mother, so deeply skilled in herbs, had given him on her death- bed. Sometimes he bends over a saintlier treatise like that early MS of Gul. de Pagula entitled Oculus Sacerdotis, which he had given himself at the Restoration and which now preserves his name in the Bodleian. Now and again, on St Michael's day, he invites hi§ neighbours to a feast, and for those lean times ' does ' them royally well. Amongst his scattered notes is a copy that he made for one of these occasions from an old receipt book of his mother's, To bake a peacocke : ' Parboyle him and season hym with pepper and sake both within and without ; then make a handsome tiffyne (i.e., dressing) for hyme and sticke the breast of hyme fuU of cloves. Then breake a few maces (nutmegs) and laye upon hyme and so set hyme into the oven '. In addition to these mild festivities the letters record one wild dissipation of the year 1670 when he abstained from his people in Lent and stayed in London ' to heare the severall persons appointed to preach before His Majesty '. A very clerical and trivial transgression, you may think, but it was On the Civil War i6i dearly punished. After sitting through twelve ' painfull sermons ' he collapsed, was taken back to his quiet parsonage and died. His body sleeps in Brasted Church beside that of his father and mother, in sure and certain hope to wake with them at the Restoration of Christ's Kingdom. XXXI I 640- I 68 3 A tear may be dropped also on the unnoticed tomb of brother IJ'rancis, who was buried there ten years later. He perhaps more than any of them was unblest in the time of his birth. All that his father had taught in his Catena of legal virtues he had outwardly practised and inwardly digested. ' The long and painfull studye, never acting upon a sudden pounce : sedation of spirit : suadUoquence of language : sagacitie to find out the secret by- paths of offenders ' : all these weapons of legal warfare were being perfected in the Inner Temple whilst the lawless world raged like Behemoth outside the gates. But what use to gain his doctorate of law — to burn the midnight oil and shorten the taper of his life when ' the English had no law but the Devil ' ? * To become a finished conveyancer, * So Daniel de la FalvoUiere alleged ; and cousin Tom was subpoenaed to prove in evidence against him. M 1 62 A Sidelight when there was nothing to convey ? To put on the whole armour of the law when the Levellers went about to abolish it root and branch ? Verily the * undoubted fruite of sapience ', so extolled by his father, had been blasted by the untimely frost of war. Nor was his plight amended when the fighting ceased. As the son of a thrice-detested and de- linquent judge he had no chance to be one of ' those lerned f ooles in publicke employment ' whom the Catena had despised. And there was nothing else to be. For a few months between 1646-7, he took shelter as a resident fellow in Corpus Christi College, but the ' Parliament furies ' hunted him out and seized the few sticks of furniture in his rooms. In May, 1650, he was in serious trouble on his own account through the discovery of correspondence with Sir Ralph Hopton, the Royalist Commander in the West, in which he had disguised himself under the name of Charles Escott. It needed all his ' sapience ' to put that straight. One catches sight of him next in that dark year of general destitution, 1653, when, to keep the wolf from the door, he borrowed ^30 on a bond to pay the same ' att the day of my marriage or death which shall first or next happen '. This, as he was always too poor to marry, was presented to his astonished executors thirty years after. With this ^30 and the sacrifice one by one of his precious books (but not his glorious folio of Shakespeare, which he kept to his dying day) he seems to have eked out a miserable existence till On the Civil War 163 the Restoration. Friends offered to help him now and again but he had all the prickly disposition of professional paupers. Least of all could he stomach brother John's condescending manner. ' What Frank intends to doe with my Lord Chief Justice ', the latter writes to Edward, ' I know not or by whom, for it must bee his owne worke and third persons must not interpose. Hee is now totally upon his owne counsells, haveinge lately so in- toUerably affronted mee and my wife in my owne house that I was forced to warne him out of it. And he is gone no further than the White Hart No house but a comen Inn within our neighbour- hood will willingly receive him '. From the White Hart brother Francis continued to issue petitions to be Prothonotary in the Court of Pardons, Chief Clerk in the Duchy of Lancaster and Registrar of the Judge of Faculties, but nothing came of them, though in one he alleges, what nowhere else appears, that he ' served the late King as Colonel of foot at Colchester '. Even after the Restoration he would have starved but for Edward's sleight-of-hand in palming him off as an expert auditor to the Court of Wards. That was a crowning mercy ; it came like the serenity of a second summer to cheer his broken spirit. Truly it brought him no nearer to fame or advancement in the law ; but by that time he was willing to compound with fortune for ' a little honey ' at the latter end of life. After those years of famine it is heartening to see him able to 164 A Sidelight buy a ' roan nagg ' to ride to Brasted of week-ends ; pleasing even for posterity's palate to go course by course over those monthly ' Suppers for the Auditors of Mr Treasurer's Accounts '. How this poor man of parchments must have relished those ' oysters and scrimps, cramm'd chickens, snipes, larkes, teales, tame pigeons, brests of veale, neckes of mutton, dishes of tartes, sampeirs and capers, oranges and sack ' ! Neither he nor brother Robert, his fellow auditor, is able to add up the supper bills correctly, though they fortified their mathematical with some quarts of Spanish vdne. But what did it matter ? — the treasurer would pay, whatever it came to — the figure be upon his head ! The last supper account is not even attempted, for the sorrowful reason that Francis died before it was digested. The connection is clear enough from a post-mortem examination of the menu. Brother George — ^it will be remembered — died in the odour of sanctity — from a surfeit of long sermons. It was the less honourable lot of Brother Francis to die in the odour of roast mutton — ^from a surfeit of ' straw- berries and shugar and creame '. XXXII I 660- I 664 There must be no such levity in writing -of Brother John, for not even "with his kith and kin On the Civil War 165 would he abate one jot or tittle of his self- importance. Unquestionably he was a man of con- sequence after the Restoration. By frequent re- minders that his wife ' had the great honour to bee at an humble distance related to Your Majesty' and that he had served him gratis when abroad as counsellor at law % he gained a knighthood, a gratuity of ^i,ooo, and ;£200 a year as Attorney for the Duchy of Lancaster. It is pleasant to find him sparing ^lo out of these for Anne Cartwright, ' who hath oftimes been faithful and serviceable to me when concealed in London on the King's AflFaires '. Again in 1661 the King intervened personally to save him ' from the imminent and intoUerable burthen of a Reading ' which according to ancient custom his Inn required of him. ' I have no materials fitting ', expostulates Sir John, ' by reason of my long banishment from bookes. Lawyers and practise ; nor can provide myself seeing that the charge thereof is impossible for my low exhausted estate to undergoe — just after Mr SoUicitor who has spent more in his reading than my fortune will sell for by the candle ' ^ In aid of his ' most faythfuU, * In the Public Record Office and the Bodleian Library there are many opinions and memorials delivered to Secretaries Nicholas and Hyde by ' Mr Heath Jurisconsult '. ^ To sell by the candle : a species of sale by auction. A pin is thrust through a candle about an inch from the top and bidding goes on until the candle is burnt down to the pin, when the pin drops into the candlestick, and the last bidder is declared the purchaser. It is used in remote places in England to this day. I last heard of its survival in Warwickshire. 1 66 A Sidelight obsequious and humbly-devoted servant ', King Charles addresses a very tactful letter to the Bench of the Inner Temple, wherein after praising the 'laudable custome of Readeings in your Society', he begs them to make an exception ' in this particular and extraordinary case of our truly and well-beloved John Heath in that he hath spent much time and wasted his fortune by constantly attending the services of our deare father and ourselfe in England and beyond the seas in the late Rebellion and is not therefore in such capacity as others of you to be preferred with the burden of this service '. In the result brother John was appointed Treasurer in- stead, an office that he filled with considerable dignity and diligence, on one occasion especially, ' tracking down divers disorderly and unknown persons who by assaults insolently and vsrith great violence set upon the watchmen in Fleet Street in open contempt and defiance of the good and laud- able government of the city and with great rudeness and incivility to the very person of the right honour- able ye Lord Mayor thereof '. At this time and for twenty years following. Sir John, be it for Self-importance or devotion to the State, was wearing all he could carry or display of the ' Livery of the Publick '. His letters, carefully drafted, disclose a multiplicity of affairs. One day as member of Parliament he is scolding the Dissenters of Gravesend (' pitifuU crusty and subtil people ', he calls them in a private note) for refusing to sign a On the Civil War 167 loyal address, ' an address reasonable in itself and convenient for your corporation to make as a meanes to the King's grace and favour which you stand in need of '. As they continued in their obstinacy he refused to represent them any longer and in the succeeding parliament sat for Clitheroe instead. Another day he is girding at the Papists, for though no Puritan he cannot abide ' the old gentleman on the other side of the Alpes ' any more than they, and the Jesuits least of all. ' They begin ', he tells brother Edward, ' to hold up their heads very much and in these parts are more than ordinary bold in deavouring to gaine proselites by telling them they will be damned if they turne not to the Church of Rome and give papers in writing by way of qualms to ignorant people the more to magnify their own church. It is well Parliament should put a term to their plottish behaviours '. Another day (November 13, 1662) as financial adviser to the Navy, a place made for him by his wife's uncle. Admiral Sir John Mennes ^ he goes with Pepys to inspect the ' An adventurous man who before the war had sailed and fought the world over. In 1644 he was made Governor of Wales for the King. In 1648 he joined Prince Rupert's piratical squadron till that was suppressed by Blake in 1650. The next ten years he whiled away the time composing vers de societe in conjunction with Dr James Smith for their anthologies : Musarum Deliciae, 1655 ,• Wit Restored, 1658. After the Restoration he was advanced in the Navy far beyond his deserts, for ' though a harmless, honest gentleman he is not fit for business '. ' The King ', says Sir Wm. Coventry, had better have given £100,000 than ever have had him there '. Yet he had some saving qualities. ' He is ', records Pepys, ' most 1 68 A Sidelight Chest and, in the diarist's words, they ' find it precious empty '. So it was at a more critical time, two and a half years later, when he scribbles this staccato note to Edward from the Navy Office. 'The King is fixt at Whitehall, the Queene at Oxford — some say with child but not yet owned. France has proclaimed warr against us. It will be a busy yeare. I hope a happy one for our nation '. XXXIII I 664- I 69 I As it turned out, the year was not happy and the war most inglorious. The Dutch, whom the French had joined, sailed up the Thames and burnt the ships of war which lay at Chatham. The corruption and incapacity of the ministers and the profiteering of the contractors ruined aU but themselves ; and frequently while the fire and the pestilence raged the infuriated populace assembled in the streets, crying out that England was being excellent companye and the best mimic that ever I saw ; doats mightily on Chaucer, seems to know something of chemistry and hath some judgment in pictures '. He was still Comptroller of the Navy when he died in 1 67 1. With the Heath letters are one or two written by him from ' on board the Goulden Phenix ' in the year of the Restoration. In Brasted church are some fragments of glass depicting a mermaid and a captain which Lady Heath designed for his memorial. On the Civil War 169 bought and sold. Brother John seems to have done pretty well out of the war and to have escaped the disgrace of Clarendon and those other of the mighty who were put down from their seats. Not unwisely he seems to have advertised his own integrity by prosecuting a petty clerk in his department for forgery and getting him put in the Gravesend pillory on two market days and fined twenty nobles. There is one roundabout accusation of bribery against him, however, which may be taken with reserve. ' In Mr Humphrey Hide's tobacco roome ', declares one of the papers, ' Dr Francis Heath did affirme that Major Robert Heath of Otford did afiirme to him that Sir John Heath's late servant a Barber had told him that he. Sir John, had received severall sums vf or his own use, which the Barber said in his opinion was a base unworthy thing to do '. Certainly there had been some mysterious journeys to Plymouth to meet one who oddly enough also bore the name of John Heath — a slave-runner of Barbadoes whom the Admiralty wanted for piracy. It was noticed by several beside Francis that this desperado was allowed to slip away and not molested in his human traffic ; and they drew the usual inference. With the consummate beatitude of being rich Sir John could aflEord to smile at these envious mutterings of his penniless, barrister brother ; but as soon as it could be done with decency he retired with his fortune to Brasted. Thenceforward it is an insignificant tale lyo A Sidelight of trafficking in land and quarrelling with tenants, wherein he shewed not a little of the parsimony of old age. ' It is a hard chapter ', he grumbles to brother Edward, ' to be alwayes abateing of rents. I find that, if one hard yeere come, tenants never consider how many good yeres have come before. Here I am vext with such as clamour without ceasing of rotten corn yeeres and bad woU marketts '. Yet some of the tenants' letters are piteous and genuine. One begs him ' to consider and com- miserate the lowe condition of your distressed (nay allmost distracted) tenant ', and points out ' that my house is lardge and a great part very old and ruinous and much adoo I have to uphoold it and maintain out of starving my six children all at home. If God aide not I am the saddest alive. Pardon I pray my praesumptious boldnesse. I submit to god's good will and your will and pleasure '. Another, while sending his rent, en- treats that ^lo of it may be returned ' to defray the charges of my buryall. I pray deny mee not for it is the last Request I make save to Him Jesus Christ my blessed Saviour and Redeemer who is the best phisicion both of soul and body '. Altogether the later correspondence of brother John reflects a discontented and deserted old age. After his chambers in London had been twice destroyed by fire he dwelt altogether in the country. Already he had lost his wife and only son ; and was soon to lose Margaret, his only daughter, who married George On the Civil War 171 Verney, later Lord Willoughby de Broke, and left her father alone in the quiet house at Brasted. There as a gray time-worn man he prolonged his years far beyond the natural span, outliving all his brothers save Robert, and seeing, what they were spared, namely the House of Stuart setting out a second time upon its travels. Not till the year 1 691 can one employ that telling phrase of Horace Walpole and observe that Sir John Heath ' who has been extinct so long is at last deceased '. XXXIV 1653-1685 Last of all and reluctantly let us part from that tough and indomitable creature Robert, whom we left in 1653 drinking and doggerelising in the Low Country. One would give much to glean from some racy account of his own the fruits and follies of this * sanguineous, vehement, volatile being ', during those years of exUe. All that survives to us is a book of prose, scribbled on the ale-benches of many a tavern over there and published in 1659, under the solemn style of Paradoxicall Assertions and Philo- sophical Problems. No one need be scared at such a title, for it is pure deceiving. Read but a page or two and you will find, as he claims in the beginning, 172 A Sidelight that the book is ' full of delight for all ladies and youthful fancies '. You may not agree with his assertions, but you will not fail to be amused by the pleasant audacity of their presentment. With the same reckless speed he had learned in Rupert's cavalry he rushes at his themes and essays by the very brandish of his pen to persuade us : That next to a Man the horse is the noblest creature : That the deepest scholars are the shallowest asses: That it is better to be head of a private house than the Tail of a Noble Family : That there is sound reason in the resting of eggs : That kings ought to have no monu- ments. A more difficult task was his after the Restoration to commend himself as the Tail of a Noble Family who had done faithful service, to the remembrance of the King. ' I have been ', he writes, ' in great continuall suffering from the beginning of the warr to this time for adhering to the royal interest ' ; whereupon His Gracious Majesty as an exceeding rich reward advanced him to the rank of Major. That might have been some trifling good if an increase of pay had followed ; but Cromwell's government had never known what Queen Elizabeth termed ' the felicity of full coflEers ', and the Dutch wars had emptied the military chest. ' I must trust to my own life ', he says in a letter to brother John, ' til God provide money, for none I fear can be had out of the Ex- chequer '. Nor can any places be cajoled out of the Chancellor, though he reminds him that he ' is On the Civil War 173 allied to your Lordship by affinity and inter- marriage ' (through sister Anne, who had married Sir Bernard Hyde) and resolves ' to depend wholly on your favour '. Evidently he also would have starved but for Edward's amazing coup in getting him the place of Auditor to the Court of Wards. Even there it was not all an affair of supper parties and strawberries and cream. At frequent intervals there were envious and supperless people who maligned him in high places as unskilled to execute his office. His replies are military, to say the least, and ' horribly stuffed with epithets of war '. ' Mr Robert Pol ', he tells Clarendon, ' is a lying Rascall as, I have told him to his face '. As for Mr Tatte- more, ' he is as great a Rebell as ever lived in Eng- land '. ' I will not have my actions thus descanted uppon by every capricious pate or malitious scelerat ; it does discourage any honest man from medling with the King's businesses. Ye nation has suffered too much already by such knaves and knavery '. Against a third he levels an accusation of corruption and adds generally : ' If His Majesty would shoot ye purloiners of his public Treasurie as the French King hath done he might grow richer, ye grumbling seamen be better paid, and ye whole Kingdom better satisfiedi;'. 1 74 A Sidelight XXXV 1665-1685 There was one charge, however, of ' neglect of duty ' which Robert found hard to rebut. To be shut up in a room and wrestle with figures was something his soul abhorred. One had to be born specially for such loathsome work. How he envied the industry of brother Edward and the meticulous arrangement and accuracy of his family accounts ! ' I do wish ', he laments to John, ' I had his nimble way of expelling my lazy disease '. The dislike of office routine drove him often to the playhouse and the tavern. And not infrequently he was absent, too, on amorous adventures- — particularly with a Mistress Bine, whom he loved with an ardour somewhat different from the distant adoration he had shewn to Clarastella, the early incitement of his Muse. No mirror of smooth verse can reflect the blazing passion this woman lights in him ; he must needs stammer out his sincerity and helplessness in prose : ' When may I have again the enjoyment of your company which I esteem before anything in the world and on which my life and happiness solidly depend. All places seem to me as so many prisons in comparison of the place that you make happy. My passion is swelled to that height that if you persist in your former resolutions of being cruell, you will make me the most miserable of mankind. Your passionate admirer whilst I am Robert Heath '. On the Civil War 175 If not to her, it is to his regiment that this fiery- hearted creature rides ; for he is still a soldier to the core — ' a well-drUled, exterminatory man ', albeit an auditor. He takes a proper pride in his com- pany ; sees to it that in accoutrement and discipline it is the pick of the Sussex Militia. Threatens to resign because Parliament wUl not restore the Courts-martial and the ' right of the immediate officer of the place to punish and imprison '. He tells brother John to make it known at Quarter Sessions that ' many officers in Sussex do resolve to lay downe and act no more but propose a new way to distract all, namely that they wiU serve the King in person '. The voluntary system, he urges, has broken down : that every other private soldier should be preacher or petitioner or mutineer as in Cromwell's regime is a military abomination. There must be conscription if the army is to hold together. ' None is compellable to serve in person, and none will volunteer for i/- a day. What then must be your conclusion ? But I leave these and other ye like failures to be supplementally regulated and explained by ye wisdom of Parlement. Lux supra nos nihil ad nos '. But the light of wisdom never descended from above, though the officers waited patiently enough. There came instead a fussy order of the War Office (1684) to provide a red coat lined with Philomel serge against May 29th (the anniversary of the Restoration). This out of their starving^pay to please a King who had toyed with 176 A Sidelight his women while the Dutch sailed up the Thames and fired the English Navy! In a fury Robert resigned his commission and thenceforward, to use Clarendon's phrase, ' lived narrowly and sordidly in the country'. Yet not 'sordidly' if money be excepted, for the little home at Otford, seven miles from the family home at Brasted, was soon filled with books and made happy with the continuance of those studies which the wars had interrupted. With the ingenuity that poor students can command, he sends a round robin to his friends, reciting the total loss of his library, which had been seized in 1646 and which he, ' in my constant condicion of minus nihilo ', had never been able to replace. Begs of each ' just one volume of your owne gift that soe I may be provided and you shall be listed amongst my Benefactors '. Now and again some daring enter- prise will lure him from his reading, as in the June of 1685 when Monmouth, whose horsemanship and gallantry had gained many a soldier's heart, set up his standard in the West. By then Robert was too old to put on battle harness, but he leaves no one in doubt of his sympathies. ' He did even goe to the village inn ', reports an informer, * and there did openly drinke ye Duke of Monmouth his health ', with the result that a troop of horse was promptly quartered on the parish and Robert required to give security for good behaviour. On the Civil War i77 XXXVI I685-I697 There was hardly need. Weary of ' arms and men ', he asked only a brief space before he died to dream in the Brasted meadows where he had frolicked as a boy ; and through the long summer evenings to forget all the hardness of his after life. ' I will resolve now ', he writes to a fellow captain, ' to lay aside all my needless and unresulting foames. God keepe us in his mercy to have more witt in our passions '. As he sat in the heather on Toys Hill and watched the breeze ruffling the valleys of corn below, he must have wondered whether all the rest — the ' thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers ' — ^had been worth the fighting. 'Twas the same question that had perplexed Marvell amongst the flowers of General Fairfax at Nunappleton House. Why do we moil and toU, hate one another and consume our days, when we might so easily enter upon our inheritance ? When wUl men cease to follow the mirage, and turn again and cultivate their garden ? ' Unhappy ! shall we never more That sweet militia restore. When gardens only had their towers And all the garrisons were flowers ; When roses only arms might bear And men did rosy garlands wear ? TuUps in several colours barred. Were then the Switzers of our Guard '. N 178 A Sidelight The same wistful thought plays in a pleasant ' conceited ' manner over Robert's last letter, written from the old home (where he goes occasion- ally to borrow a horse and to comfort brother John in his solitude) to a friend in London : ' Sir, Give leave to salute you from the Countrie of Primroses and Violets, where at this season each blooming tree projects an arbour and every greene field a fragrant enclosure of pleasure. We are not here confined, as in the city, to a garden a span long made of a deale box or a crackt pitcher filled up with dirt and soote, which in its prime can hardly afford a magott a breakfast or a nosegay to a grasshopper, but enjoy roome enough to tire a long-winged hawke and such variety of walkes as for spaciousness outire the famous Gallerie at the Louver. Instead of marble-pave- ments or carpets of state I tread on flowers or tender grasse that emulates the Emerauldes, and when if weary I would rest myselfe a while the banks of camomile attend my leisure, whose humility is such they smell the sweeter the more they are opprest. If I can persuade you to forsake your steeples and towers and the sound of Bow-bell, I'll promise you instead of the dinn of Coaches and Carts the gentle whispers of a calme and serious aire, whilst the chirping birds and murmuring streames joine theyre notes to make up a complete consort. For who would desire the yelping noise of a horse- Radish woman that might eate a sallad of his owne picking in quietnesse ; and is it not madnesse to be On the Civil War 179 troubled with the broome-man and the corn-cutter every morning when one may sleepe here tUl noone in silence ? ' There were to be many sunny days in the Brasted garden before poet Robert brought his alexandrine to an end and slept the ' morningless and un- awakening sleep '. Unshaken by James' flight and the Jacobite rebellions, his glass ran out without any jogging to the year 1697'. After a lifetime of ' passions and perturbations ', it was pleasant to sit under the garden wall and smile upon the hollyhocks and roses. For his part he did not languish ' to be dissolved and go hence and be no more '. Despite his years, he was in no hurry to leave this delicious earth and the glorious company of all living things. Other folk, like his poor exiled father, might yearn for the quiet of the grave, ' where no disturbance can be — no disturbance in the world '. But why give in to the last enemy on that account ? Were there not plenty of shy, sequestered nooks for stricken mortals within the vale of Kent ? Here at Brasted, for example, where ' capricious pates and malitious scelerats ' ceased from troubling, where the weary man might take his ease in an arbour with a book of verses and a flask of wine — was that not paradise enow ? If only Lucy, or Clarastella or Mary Bine were here, and his brothers and sisters were not dead ! But see — while we dream and regret — the sun goes down. For a moment it shines upon the tower i8o ^ Sidelight on the Civil War of St Martin's church, where the others are at rest; then sinks below the slopes of Westerham. The long cool shadows sweep down the garden. It strikes chill of a sudden. It is time to rise up and go. A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PACIFICIST (Sir Justinian Pagitt) I IMAGINE to yourself a thick quarto volume — plump if not clumsy and filling the palm of the hand, bound as if for the use of posterity in the toughest of leather, and the pages covered with Visiting in a trim Chancery hand. There you have in a glance the book of Justinian Pagitt's works and days wherein he wrote many odd things ' for the ease of his memory ' and, without knowing it, for the entertainment of our own. He was born in or about the year 1610 at the village of Tottenham, being the eldest son of James Pagitt, ' whome ', to use the words graven on his tomb, ' his owne worth and Prince's favour lighted to the dignity of a Baron of His Majesty's Ex- chequer, in whome birth, merit, place made up the body of unblemished honour. He was the prudent husband of three wives, by the first the provident father of four sons, a secure master of himself and a sincere servant of God. His life was a well-acted story of himselfe. His death a willing passage to Glorie. He died in the years of nature fifty-seven ; of Grace 1638.' 1 82 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist This good man belonged to the branch of the Pagitt family which for some two centuries had been settled at Cranford and Barton Seagrave in the County of Northampton ; a quiet race of men whose ambitions in life were satisfied,. as it seems, with the begetting of male children and with the sending of the eldest with unfailing monotony to the law via Christ Church and the Middle Temple, and the youngest through Magdalen to the Church. Justinian, therefore, by the very choice of his name, by the custom of his house, and by the fact that his father was a judge and his mother a daughter of the Dean of the Arches, had but little choice in the destination of his life ; born in gremio legis, he was devoted from the very outset to the dusty purlieus of the law. II Of his infancy and earlier youth the manuscript gives no account : we enjoy life too well at that age to burden it with a commentary. The beginning is at Christ Church, and even here the material is thin. There are some pages of scholastic notes and memoranda of lectures heard, which testify to his application — and one may guess from his after-life that he was sober and painstaking to an unpopular degree. He never figures in a college fray. For his sole recreation he seems to have walked over to Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 183 Magdalen Hall to hear Dr Henshaw preach, and then, returning to his rooms, to have bolted the door and written the sermon down. Perhaps he was a little unfortunate in following two kinsmen of very brilliant parts. StUl fresh in the college memory was the fame of^ Ephraim Pagitt, who while a student was able to speak in fifteen different tongues, and by his eleventh year had already translated and published Lavater's Sermons upon Ruth. And there were some hoary-headed dons who could recall the angelic wisdom and grace of Eusebius Pagitt, his uncle — whose discourses in high philosophy earned him the name of the ' golden sophister '. It was a little trying for Justinian to be reminded of these two : a plodder can scarcely hope to vie with supermen. If college-life proved uncongenial he found some comfort, I think, and some outlet for his natural piety in the acquaintance of Dr Richard Corbett, successively student and Dean of Christ Church and at that time Bishop of Oxford. One almost wonders at their knowing each other, for the Bishop, according to contemporary accounts, was ' the delight of all ingenious men, and the most celebrated wit in the university '• In his youth he had been the _ convivial friend of Ben Jonson, and boasted of having revelled and versified in all the taverns of London. It is doubtful if he ever emerged from his youth, for, after becoming a doctor of divinity, he donned a leather jerkin and 184 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist sang ballads at Abingdon Cross. Nor did the cares of a diocese depress him. Aubrey says that after service in the Cathedral ' he would sometimes take the key of his wine cellar and he and his chaplain, Washington, would lock themselves in and be merry. Then first he lays down his episcopal hat. There lyes the doctor. Then he puts oflE the gowne — there lyes the bishop. Then 'twas "Here's to thee Corbett and Here's to thee Washington " '. I wonder if the puritanical Pagitt knew of all this as he sat in the Bishop's house adjoining the Folly Bridge. Probably not ; for they had quieter things in common. The Bishop was a poet — the best, as someone has said, rather foolishly, of all the Bishops of England — and Justinian too was pos- sessed of a juvenile muse. On one page of this book he has copied out some exquisitely tender lines composed by Corbett for the third birthday of Vincent, his only son : ' What I shall leave thee none can tell. Yet all shall say I wish thee well : I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth Boath bodily and goastly health ; Not too much meanes nor witt come to thee, Too much of either may undo thee. I wish thee learninge not for showe. But truly to instruct and know : Not such as Gentlemen require To prate at table or at fier ; I wish thee all thy mother's graces. Thy father's fortune and his places. I wish thee friends and one at Court, Not to build on, but to support ; Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 185 Notjto helpe thee in doing many Oppressions but^from suffering any. I^wish thee]fpeace in all thy wayes, Not lazy, not contentious dayes ; And when thy soul and body parte, As innocent as now thou arte '. Even the magic of these verses could not avail ; for only one of these good wishes did Vincent bring to pass — ' A very handsome youth ', says Aubrey, ' but he is run out of all and goes begging up and down to gentlemen in the streets '. The rest is silence. Ill In the year 1628 Pagitt went down from Oxford without taking his degree. With all their learning the ' golden sophister ' and the polyglottist had done the same. It was another custom of their family. He seems to have returned to his father's house at Tottenham High Cross and to have read there for the bar. He becomes more earnest than ever. It was naturally the time for making great resolutions, for framing syllabuses of mental development and rules of social demeanour. The note-book grows more intimate, serving almost the use of a con- fessional. Into tiny one-inch squares he crams the doings and misdoings of each day, using for the 1 86 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist purpose a curious abbreviated jargon of English and Latin, or whichever will squeeze best into the space, as for example ' Meditatio de Lawyer's Life et Officer's deut: Preces et lectio biblica : Walke in feildes : In confabulation cum amicis : Too much bookishness. Somnolentia Peccavi '. Sometimes one has just a glimpse of the outer world. There are three pages of interesting notes upon the Duke of Buckingham's assassination (1628) ^, a sentence or two doubting the king's wisdom In making Laud Primate of all England (1633), and an account of two vacations (1630 and 1632) spent in the cathedral of Winchester and along the lanes of Warwickshire. But In the main he is hopelessly- introspective and quite oblivious of the shadows creeping over the face of England. Some more elaborate entries of the time, carefully tabulated, under the heading Examen Salutis Meae, make the quaintest reading : ' I. I do often eate too much at suppers which makes me ill and drowsle the next morning. '2. I do not carry myself with so much circum- specion as I should do but am too familiar with Sophie which may diminish my self respect. ' 3. I must forbear to contradict my father with my tongue. I must not meddel with his janglings with the servants. • After Felton had assassinated the Duke, his name was anagram- matized thus : ' John Felton— No ; flie not \ Pagitt takes a careful note of this. Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 187 ' 4. I have spoken irreverently concerning the Ministers of God and indifferently censured them and their sermons. I have been weary and drowsy at sermons many times minding and earnestly desiring humain witt in them than endeavouring to reape a spirituall benefit from the heavenly doctrines. ' 5. I have much doubted concerning heaven and hell 1633 2^ Novembris. ' 6. I have been inclined to pompous and stately musick in churches and have derided them that spoaken against it. ' 7. I lay a bed musing till 9 o'clock which caused a dulness in my head with losse of so much time. ' Resolve that wakening at 5 o'clock I will knock with my bedstaff to waken Elias who shall presently rise and make a fire whilst I rubb my body and then I wUl presently skip out of bed '. A note in the margin adds, ' I must have ye tinderbox with me.' ' 8. Query is not playing on the viol immedi- ately after meales hurtfuU by reason that it stirres ye fancy and bringeth a grate (i.e., flush) into my face. ' 9. Resolve to skip-rope each morning at six o'clock. '10. De arte sdtandi. I must study not to daunce loftily so much as to carry ye body sweetly and smoothly away with a graceful comportment. 1 88 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist In some places hanging steps are very graceful and give much ease and time to breathe ^. ' II. I am too grave at cards to play with women. Ergo I must winke at escapes, &c. &c '. That is just what he could not do. I doubt if Justinian winked, or was even whimsically inclined, in all his life. These heart-searchings and struggles for self-perfection throw indirectly a shrewd light upon the oddity of his nature. Was ever man so ineradicably grave ? With women especially he was as unbending as an Anabaptist — and that to them, as he learned, is the unpardonable sin. Finding no logical reason for their existence or their peculiarities, he was confirmed in his natural instinct as a lawyer to mistrust them one and all. And soon an event came to pass which increased his suspicions tenfold and distracted him sadly from following the Golden Rule. In brief, the old man his father. Baron Pagitt, took it into his head to marry again — for the third time. At his age such a step seemed rather uncalled for, and was hardly redeemed by the symmetrical propriety of his choice — the lady Mazaretta having previously had two husbands as he had had two wives. The match really was not so equal as it looked, for age was in her ' In the reign of James I barristers were put out of Commons for the offence of neglecting to dance before the judges ; nor will this appear so very extraordinary when it|is recollected that the judges themselves were accustomed to dance at the antique masques and revels of their respective inns. Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 189 favour and her tongue had slain two husbands and could slay a hundred more. Moreover, she was the daughter of a lawyer and had three hedgehogs on her coat-of-arms. With ' such a brimstone of a wife ' there was little hope of the Baron being the survivor of the fittest, or even finding ' quiet enjoyment ' in the rest of his lease of life. Now Justinian as the eldest son by the first wife was naturally furious. He was persuaded that this creature had set her cap at his father — that she coveted not his affection but his fortune. To his jaundiced eyes every change she made in the house- hold was but further evidence of this. At the same time he had not the courage to accuse her before his father. The position was a delicate one, and he was always timid. So he went on accumulating the evidence in his book of remembrance and relieved his feelings in that way. IV Here are some of the entries under the headings ' Audita et Animadversiones de Matte mea Oeconommical Affaires : The chief complaints against my mother '. ' I. We often have rotten lamb, bad beefe of i6d. a stone and tuff mutton at 4/- a quarter. 19^ Seventeenth-Century Pacificist ' 2. The joynts being small she causes them to be but halfe roasted which cannot be so wholsome for my father. ' 3. She repines whenas any of my fiathers ffriends come to meales e.g. my sister coming once at i o'clock she sayd : " I hoape she is not come to dinner ". ' 4. She causes my father's shirts to be washt in the buck [i.e., the laundry-tub] but her own smocks are washt by ye hand. ' 5. She allowes my father nothing to his break- faste but loathsome mingled butter. ' 6. She causes ye maide to fetch butter by penniworths at ye chandlers which our neighbours jeere at to my father's disgrace. ' 7. She is basely sparing of pepper and mustard scarcely allowing any. ' 8. She so imployes the maydes in making her petticoats that they cannot mende my linen. ' 9. She buyeth stale breade, saying we eate it up apace when new. This Joyce told me. ' 10. This day at dinner my mother told my father that ye dinner cost three shillings. But ye cookmaid after dinner told my brother that though she did lay out 3s this day at market halfe ye fishe, halfe ye eggs, a quart of vinegar, a quarter of ye butter and some other thinges were not sent in to dinner. 'II. When Parson Holt read to us that Solomon had men-singers and women-singers she bid my Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 191 father mark that and bid him remember women- singers. Whereby I conceive she meant that she would have Miss Woodson vs^aite on her and send my father for an organist '. Nothing, you see, comes amiss. And, though a lawyer, he will employ hearsay evidence at third hand against his mother. Look at this : ' 12. My father told Joyce who told Elias who told me that his ruffle was now startched very charily and his linen but rarely mended by reason of the maydes' ever spinning and knitting. The cook- mayd told me likewise she could not have time from knitting to even wash the trenchers '. As if in desperation at the sight of this page of complaints, he prepares for action : ' The longer she is suffered to go on in this course ', he argues to himself, ' the greater leade she will get and perhaps tye my father's heade so straight under her apron- strings that it will be hereafter difficult to get him away'. A moment later he begins to shrink from the task in hand. He makes another prim list of ' Inconveniences which might arise if I should informe my father concerning my mother's mis- doings and meannesses '. ' I. She would use what means she could by lying and spreading tales against me. ' 2. I shall not have my linen washt or mended well.' Note in the margin, ' This may be remedied by having my cloathes washed abroade '. 192 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist '3. She hath alreadye tied my father's hedd so straight under her strings that he would not credit my information V This sort of domestic fray could have but one conclusion, for the stepmother controlled the supplies. Justinian is discreetly silent on the ultimate encounter, but the fact of his discomfiture is clear. He does not even capitulate : he runs away. On May 21st, 1634, ^'^^ his brother Thomas for companion, he takes lodgings in Batter- sea till Term commences and then applies for chambers in the Middle Temple, where the name of Pagitt had been honoured many a hundred years. On June iSth, upon paying £^/p to the new buildings, then in course of erection, the brothers were granted admission to ' the chambers, studies and woodhouses in Elm Court, on the second floor eastward '. In the note-book Justinian has a separate heading : ' How to contrive our chambers in Elm Court ', and among other details there is a precise plan showing where their respective be- longings and books are to go, e.g., ' Places to hang gownes and dublets, a faire place to hang my robes in ; A catalogue of things to be bought to furnish our new chamber ', with a list of Necessaria which Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 193 includes ' Candlesticks e.g. Mr. Coles Iron Candle- stick, Bellows, fier showell, tongs, pair of globes, cushions ', etc., and a list of Ne cess aria Non which includes ' a devise of greene glasse to preserve my eyes by candle light '. I fancy these glasses were purchased after all : they would have suited him so well. For it is quite clear that, in spite of his stepmother's rocks of offence, the main current of his life ran on un- changed. If anything, he became more pragmatical than before, declining to swerve a hand's-breadth from his habitual way without legal or ancestral precedent. He allows himself to be fined just once for ' missing Mr Hatton's reading ', but then his father and grandfather had done the same. Other- wise he was perfect. In the pages entitled ' Examen diurnum vitae meae ' in his book you may observe him daily immersed in Bracton, Lyttelton, and the Common Law, and in sermons more deeply still. Twice a week he goes to hear the preachments of Dr Michlethwaite, the Master of the Temple, and afterwards he digests them into his book. It is to be hoped he took some profit from them, for the learned Doctor complained of getting none. In the Temple records for the year 1635 you will find him demanding 'recompense for his afternoon sermons and pains in the forenoons beyond his prede- cessors. But the bench decide that nothing is due or can be claimed in respect of supernumerary sermons '. o 194 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist About this time Pagitt seems to have made the acquaintance of another Justinian Pagitt, Minister of the English congregation at Amsterdam. This gentleman, being much exercised about Church discipline, sends twenty propositions for the con- sideration of Thomas Hooker of Esher, who was then said to be * the oracle and expediall library of the younger clergy '. Sonie of the propositions are referred to in our manuscript, e.g. ' Whether it is lawfuU for any to resort unto the public meetings of the Brownists and to communicate with them ? ' The answer is pat : ' Negative. Sinful and utterly unlawful '. VI Reading Pagitt's journal, you would hardly believe that the Middle Temple was one of the wildest communities then existing. Wiat a pity he was too decorous to take a part or even to tell us what he must have seen and heard ! As it is, we are left to the statutes of the Inn, where in sententious terms the students' offences are recited and penalties exacted. In Pagitt's first year it becomes necessary to provide ' that no gentlemen shall come into the hall or place of public prayer with hats, cloaks, boots, spurs, swords or daggers or shall wear long hair '. A catalogue is made of those 'chief stirrers of Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 195 mutiny ' who had resolved to continue these practices ; but, as you may guess, Justinian's name is not to be looked for there. The following year it is decreed that no dicing shall be used in time of divine service ; that no one shall presume to take violently from the steward, butler, cook, or any other servant any wine, tobacco, or provisions, or to hinder and interrupt the service of the house. Moreover, the gate in Essex Court leading towards the tavern shall be barred up till further order. Of individual misdemeanours there is no end. It is recorded to the prejudice of one Richard Devey that a young woman came to his door and delivered a bastard child, whereupon Richard ran away and was not heard of again, and the aged Masters, to save the reputation of the inn, were left to suckle the chUd. Not long after this, Pagitt's neighbour Freeman was expelled ' for calling one Wm. Peele, a student of brushes [presumably an artist] into his chambers, forcing him on pain of instant death to utter profane speeches and execrations against his will and con- science ', and threatening when it was over that he should be pumped and cut in pieces if he dared to complain. These disorders, or ' unsuflerable enormities ' as they were termed, came to a head about Christmas- tide in Pagitt's fourth year, and led to the following manifesto from the Bench : ' Whereas the licentious expensiveness of some gentlemen excells all reasonabl - 196 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist limits and begets clamour against the Society, and other disorders and abuses in later years have more and more crept in and have grown to such a height that the misgovernment of these times is become a public scandal whereof the judges and state take notice and press hard for reformation, Now the Masters of the Bench for vindicating the ancient honour of the Society and for removing reproach from their government have ordered that no Christmas shall be held this year within the House but that the company shall dissolve. Meanwhile every gentleman may dispose of himself at his own discretion and liberty '. A vain display of authority, as the sequel shows : ' For notwithstanding the order aforesaid, divers gentlemen with their swords drawn in a con- temptuous and riotous manner assembled on St Thomas's Eve, broke open by violence the doors of the hall, buttery and kitchen ', and proceeded to revel and drink and dice. An officer of the bench who came in with a seasonable desire for peace and good will among men was carried out and placed in the common stocks. Where do you think was Pagitt on that night of nights ? Mending his hose, perhaps, or cogitating upon contingent reminders, or more likely wondering what he should do if the rioters came his way. He writes down here in the book his resolve if he be challenged to a duel : ' I will reply in the words which a wise man used to the braggart Antonius— " If Antonius have a desier to Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 'f-c^'j loose his life he may finde many other meanes beside this", and another answer I could make were this, " I will not venture an old angell to a crackt groath." ' With this resolution in his heart and with cotton-wool stuffed in his ears, this seventeenth- century pacificist continues his studies, and offers, when the uproar has subsided, to serve on the standing committee appointed by the Bench ' ne quid respublica societatis detrimenti caperet '. VII This is the place, perhaps, to review Pagitt's correspondence or such of it as figures in his book. As one might expect, the letters are most elaborate affairs, composed with infinite pains from two and twenty ' rules of the epistolary art ', with preliminary drafts and corrections without end. But for all that they contain much interesting matter. The first is written to his cousin James Harrington on January 28th, 1633, when he was attached to the Middle Temple but not in residence as yet. After conveying his warmest affection to ' Mrs Anne ', regulator of his cousin's hoiijehold, who had a pleasant custom of keeping him in pastries and plum-cake, he adds : ' Mr Prynne of Lincoln Inne hathe lately sett forth a booke intitled Histrio- Mastix or the Player's Scourge the sale of which is 98 Seventeenth -Century Pacificist prohibited and he to appeare at the High Com- mission on Thursday next. I will if you desier it send you a more particular relacion. His booke is extraordinarily stufft with quotations of old authors which they say are his only argument ^ It is observable that his booke was published the next day after the queen's Pastorall at Somerset House. P.S. Will you please lend me Sir Kenelm Digby's Mathematical discourses.' On Candlemas Day the same year the four Inns of Court presented a masque before the King and Queen in order to counteract the effect of Prynne's book and confute his opinion against stage-plays. One almost feels they did but strengthen his case — at least in so far as his charges of prodigality and waste were concerned ; for they determined to make such a masque as had never been seen before and of which the like would never be seen again. They succeeded. They pleased the King. They made the Puritans rage. They staggered posterity. And this in the four hours of one night at a trifling cost of twenty-one thousand pounds. Those who take pleasure in pageants of this kind should turn to the Memorials of Bulstrode White- locke of the Middle Temple, who served with Edward Hyde, later Lord Chancellor of England, ' Prynne boasts in his preface that he has cited no less than 55 Synods and Councils, 70 Fathers and Christian writers before 1200. 150 foreign and domestic, Protestant and Popish authors since, and 40 Heathen Philosophers. Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 199 Mr Attorney Noy, and the learned John Selden on the Committee of Management. In his pages, decked out with a sumptuous array of courtly words and gilded phrase, there is a noble account ' of this the most glorious and splendid shew that ever was beheld in England'. He tells of the wonderful company of lute-players, and performers on bag- pipes and horns, that he collected and of the incidental music written by Lawes and the Queen's musicians from France. He describes the pro- cession of ' proper and beautiful young gentlemen ' of whom some walked and some rode, ' borrowing the King's best horses and richest saddles ', from Chancery Lane to the Palace of Whitehall. Nor does he hide the inevitable jealousies of the Inns of Court which drove them at last to throw dice for precedence and to frame the seats of the Grand- Masquers in the form of an oval, so that none might seem to be preferred. As one might imagine, the Masque ' gave great contentment especially to those of the younger sort and of the female sex ' ; the Queen and her ladies were enthralled. They danced with the Masquers till the dawn, praised their fine dresses, and made the King order the same revels for the following night. ' And so ', says Whitelocke, with something like a sigh, ' so are the earthly pomp and glory, if not vanity, soon past and over as if it had never been '. Unfortunately Pagitt neglects to inform us as to 200 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist the part he took in the show. His appropriate place was certainly in the ' Anti Masque of Birds wherein was represented a solemn Owl sitting in an ivy bush '. But his pen is taken up with grumbling at his share of the expense, and debating anxiously the question of clothes, how and at what cost to strike the balance between magnificence and meanness. After some enquiry he draws up a statement of ' What others have in hand to weare ', and decides that, while the black satin favoured by Grays Inn is rather heavy, the cloth of gold doublet devised by Mr Trevor with scarlet breeches and cloak is beyond all the bounds of modesty. ' In buying things against ye maske ', he adds, ' I was taxed for in- constancy and unsettledness in my resolution what to buy. I bespoake roses and garters laced with gold and silver lace and afterwards had no use for them '. In a letter to another cousin, Tremyll, we find some details of the show itself. ' I send you ', he says, ' a booke of our masque [Shirley's Triumph of Peace] which was presented on Monday last with much applause and commendation from ye King and Queene and all spectators. We all kist ye Queene's hand and then were conducted by my Lord Chamberlain and other Lords to a rich banquet whereto ye King and Queene came and took a taste and then graciously smiKng upon us left us to the sole enjoying of that well furnished table. Being much taken with ye masque the King sent invitation to us to ride againe on Tuesday next to Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 20 e the Merchant Taylor's Hall, in ye same manner as we rode to Whitehall, to meet his Majesty to supper. Sir Harry Vane ^ and other great Travel- lers say they never saw such a sight in any part of the world '. vni The other letters deal chiefly with cases in the courts, but are so full of scandal, and so free from legal phrasing that a layman may enjoy them. I find from the records of the Inn that Pagitt was called to the Utter Bar in 1635 and was attached later to the northern circuit. Writing from the sessions at Harrogate to his Uncle Sir Thomas Twysden, Doctor of Laws and Chancellor of Lich- field, he says : ' I heard likewise one yt went by the name of Dr Bright indicted and convicted for being married to three wives at one time. He had his clergy ^ and was burnt in the hand. There was another convict for a conspiracy who went to one Mr Tine a merchant at the Exchange and threatened to sue him at the spirituall court for having carnel knowledge of a wench whom he had instructed 1 He was at that time Comptroller of the King's Household. ^ This is rather a late example of the benefit of clergy, though ^he privilege was not in fact abolished till the year 1827. 202 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist beforehand. Mr Tine having a handsome wife and being unwilling any such things should come to her eares, to avoyd jealousy gave him money to be ridd of him but he came twice afterward for more money. Then Mr Tine being better advised indites this fellow and he was fined ;^ioo, bound to his good behaviour, pillory and imprisonment during ye King's pleasure. Mr Recorder sayd this was now a common trick and that Mr Hooker who writt the Ecclesiastical Polity was served in the same way '. Another letter (December, 1633) refers to the case of Lord Dominic Sarsfield, Justice of the Common Pleas of Ireland, who was tried in the Star Chamber and censured, fined, and removed for his mis- demeanours to juries, witnesses, and prisoners in open court. Pagitt declares that ' on one occasion when two of the Petit jury would not agree the judge sent an ofiicer in to them to say that at another place in his circuit when one of the jury would not agree the rest pulled him by the nose and pinched him till he gave in '. The last case noted by Pagitt is one of Use majeste, brought in the King's Bench against a certain Chyrurgeon, of whom ' It was testified by sundry gentlemen of quality in Drury Lane in London he bitt his thumb saying " I care not this much for your King ". And evidence was admitted to shew that the prisoner was a man of Spain in which country the biting of one's thumb is a token of scorn in the highest degree and will bear an Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 203 action of disgrace, just as spitting in one's face will in England. He was afterward hanged, drawn and quartered for his heinous offence '. IX Of Pagitt's own career as a barrister it is difficult to write with confidence at this far stretch of time. He was, as we have seen, a man of infinite pains and not likely to overlook the smallest detail in any case. But we may doubt whether — apart from the famQy — many briefs came to his hand. He would seem to have felt unsuited for pleading in open court and to have transferred himself in consequence to the Chancery side. In the seclusion of his own cham- bers, no doubt, he drafted feoffments without end. There is an elaborate opinion in the manuscript touching the disputed title of his father's lands — and some notes of proceedings taken out by him against his stepmother in the administration of his father's estate. But briefs and famUy benefactions are frail things to depend on for a living, as every barrister knows, and besides ' in those crazie and tickle times ' (to borrow the language of his Inn) no man might carve out the fashion of his life. It was something to find security, let alone success. So the careful Justinian took heed in time and- set 204 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist himself to find a place. He tabulates in his book a dozen ' meanes to procure an office and how to be presently placed in one ', and makes a list of those gentlemen in the Middle Temple whose influence may be useful, to wit Selden, Spelman, Harrington, Ireton, and Whitelocke, some of the best men of that day. His importunities were rewarded at last with the post of Custos Brevium and Recorder of the King's Bench. He becomes suddenly an important person. He is beset with a swarm of suitors begging clerk- ships in his office ; he appraises their merits and demerits as though he were devilling for the Record- ing Angel in the preparation of his brief for Dooms- day — and his judgments are duly entered in the book. Once only does he stretch a point and give a clerkship out of affection — namely, to Elias Ashmolej his cousin, who according to contemporary judg- ment was ' the greatest virtuoso and curioso that ever was known or read of in England before his time '. Elias had shared chambers with Justinian in Elm Court for two years while Tom Pagitt went to be Serjeant to the Sumpter ; and one finds in his diary a glowing eulogy upon his patron for the appointment. But for all that he resigns it within the month ; ' the terms are too hard for me ', he says. Then the Civil War began. The country was forced to take sides. There were affrays even in the Middle Temple. Justinian's uncle, Sir Roger Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 205 Twysden, was imprisoned, and Royden Hall sequestered by the Roundheads. His kinsman, Sir Justinian Isham, was fined two thousand pounds. His venerable cousin Ephraim Pagitt was forced to quit St Edmund's in Lombard Street where he had been rector forty years — ' merely for quietness sake '5 as the official account declared '. But as we might suspect, these storms of war passed without breaking over Justinian's head. There was little need to suppress him for quietness' sake. In 1643 the King reminded him that he was his sworn servant and summoned him to Oxford whither the royal Courts of Justice had removed. But Pagitt was risking nothing. ' To the great contempt of his Majesty's proclamations and the irremediable failure of Justice ', he remained within the walls of London and sat tight upon his rolls. And there in his quiet way he vowed some day to be even with Francis and Edward Heath (already known to this volume), those two Inner Temple men to whom ^ He had, to be sure, something of a tongue and his pen was even noisier than his tongue. In his ' Heresiografhie ' (1645) he writes : ' Since the suspension of our Church government, everyone that listeth turneth Preacher, as shoemakers, cobblers, buttonmakers, others and such like, take upon them to expound the holy Scrip- tures, intrude into our pulpits and vent strange doctrine, tending to faction, sedition and blasphemy '. It is worth mentioning in this connection that Ephraim's father Eusebius Pagitt had been ejected from his living of Kirkhampton in 1584 for preaching that ministers who did not preach were dumb dogs, that those who had two benefices were knaves, and that the late Queen Mary was a detestable woman and a wicked Jezebel. 2o6 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist his confiscated office was assigned ^. Apart from this, all that we hear of Pagitt, through these noisy years, is a humble petition to the Treasury for a larger room in which to keep the records, and a letter in Latin to his brother Tom bewailing the condition of his weakened and emaciated body. 'It seems as though, just now, everyone is ex- perimenting on me. The learned gentleman to whom I first had recourse treated me with superb indifference but the eminent Dr Hinton (Physician in Ordinary to the King) has prescribed a julep to be taken in the mornings and in the afternoons, a draught of milk mingled with mountain-green that has just been steeped in rose water. Another advises lozenges for the chest and Egyptian ointment well rubbed in with a warm hand, while my father- in-law would have me wear a wrap of scarlet flannel and swallow some powders made of snails. Tell me pray what you think of all these treatments. Yours carissime frater in sickness and in health, in life and death. J. P.' * After brooding over this injury for seventeen years he took action against them in the year 1660. It proved an interminable cause. Oddly enough the original pleadings have come into my hands since this study was commenced. One thing is clear, that the profits of the office, even over such a period, were more than exhausted by the costs. Seventeenth-Century Pacificist "207 X This is the place to speak of a more serious change in Justinian's life, which befell some little time before the Civil War. If anything, it was forced upon him by his father. About the year 1634 the latter reminded Justinian that he was the eldest son and should consider his duty to perpetuate the family name. By way of reply Justinian composes an essay entitled The character of the wife 1 would choose and closes it with Solomon's bitter sentence : ' One man have I found amongst a thousand but a woman I have not '. The years of misery with Mazaretta had plainly soured him against the sex, and he delights to point out to his thrice-married father what contentious and illogical creatures these women are. ' Only the other day ', he writes, ' when I was in the street I heard one say to another : ' Thou art a whore, a dishonest wretch ', and presently after she did say : ' I am as honest and as good a woman as thyselfe every inch of thee '. After a stubborn resistance of two years the forces of nature and family precedent prove stronger than his wUl ; he accepts the suggested hand of Dorcas Willcox, daughter of Richard WiUcox, Citizen and Haberdasher of London, and is married to her on July 7th, 1636. They go to live in the village of Monken Hadley at ' a very faire house surnamed Ludgraves scytuate in a valley near Enfeylde Chase '. The house jS^tands to this day, no longer indeed the 2o8 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist home of a Pagitt but perverted to the use of a preparatory school, or rather one should say ' re- verted ' for even before Pagitt's day the house had been granted to one Francis Atkinson, ' who out of a design truly generous and public, endeavouring to prevent the inconvenience of irregulated youth, set up a school or academy here for the education of a select number of Gentlemen's sons of good quality '. Thenceforward honours and infants come thick and fast. A little son is born on the first anniversary of the wedding day just in time to receive the Hss and the name of his grandfather before the latter dies. Then follow two daughters, a miniature Justinian, and finally boy-twins. So the family line was secured. And now, having been sufficiently obedient to his father, Justinian settles down to his own devices. He takes on the fashion of a country squire and extends his domain by buying a portion of the Enfield Chase. He chaffs the neighbouring farmer for consulting an almanac-maker before scything his crop of hay, and is delighted because it pours on the day advised. But he does not himself despise the advice of Cousin Ashmole the astrologer when his own grass comes to be ripe. XI As it turned out, the sun shone well upon Jus- tinian at this time ; for apart from his hay he is Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 209 appointed to the Commission of the Peace for the County of Middlesex, Comimissioner for the Taxes in the same area, and apparently knighted, though his name is not to be found in the official list of knights. He is even selected by the Council of State as a man of capacity to deal with problems of public safety. One finds a letter addressed to him in July, 1659, from his old friend Sir James Har- rington, at that time President of the Council : * Hearing that a rude multitude from Enfield Town have broken down the hedges of an enclosure and threaten to cut down the houses as well ^, we desire you to examine the business and proceed according to law to suppress the tumult and in case you require further help have ordered two troops of horses to be in the neighbourhood to act under your orders for the public good '. A more peaceful honour came to him the following year in the friendship of Samuel Pepys. They met at Westminster Hall for the first time on August 20th, 1660, and dined together at Heaven's coffee- house ". It was the love of music that drew them together — ^for Pagitt was a great player on the organ * This disorder was due to the sale and enclosure of Enfield Chase from 1652 onwards, by which the local farmers were deprived of common land which, as they claimed, had been enjoyed for three hundred years. Justinian disposed of the matter by ap- pointing a Commission to enquire. * A place of entertainment in Old Palace Yard on the site of which the Committee Rooms of the House of Commons now stand. It is called in Hudihras ' False Heaven at the end of the Hall.' P 2IO Seventeenth-Century Pacificist and the viol, and Pepys was wont to be ' transported, ravished' and soul-enwrapped with all kinds of wind- musique 'and could himself play on the flageolet. Two years later the diarist notes down ' Sep- tember 1st, 1662, at Lord Sandwich's. Pagitt being there. Will Howe and I and he played over some things of Locke's which pleased us well. It being the first music I have heard for a great while '. Again in December of that year after hearing service in the King's Chapel they foregather in the same nobleman's house. ' Met Howe and Pagitt the Counsellor, an old lover of musique. We sang some Psalms of Mr Lawes and played some symphonies till night. Had great store of good musique '. The last record- of their meeting is in 1664, when Pepys strolls round to Pagitt's room in town and finds him at chamber music ' with Dr Walgrave, an Englishman bred at Rome who plays the best on the lute that I ever heard man '. Of the rest of Pagitt's acts and emoluments there is no record remaining ; no annotated sermons of the Hadley Rector, no further comminations against his stepmother, no more Examen Salutis Meae. Nothing iiideed but a blank silence extending over seven years which breaks for a moment on a Latin epitaph and passes into the unbroken silence of the tomb. On January 2nd, 1669, the dust of Sir Justinian Pagitt, Custos Brevium et Recordorum de Banco Regis, was laid to rest in the Church of St Giles in the Fields, close to those chambers in Elm Seventeenth-Century Pacificist 211 Court where as a youth he had meditated on the mysteries of life and death. Beneath the pride of his coat-of-arms and the humble confidence of his motto, Deo Restituit, he sleeps securely, where stepmothers cease from troubling and recorders are at rest. Ten months later his^ widow slept beside him. Her own memorial is in plain English and commends her virtues simply by giving the number of her children. As for her sons, Justinian alone survived and perpetuated the memory of his father by presenting a cottage to the parson and the clerk and six tenements for the use of decayed householders within the parish of Hadley. The latter, though rebuilt, are still known as the ' Pagitt Rooms '. One other memorial there is — ^if one could but discover it — namely, a panegyrick poem entitled Ad ornatissimum Justinianum Pagitt. Arm. Custodem Brevium, the composition of Payne Fisher, some- time Poet Laureate to the Protector or, as he styled himself after the Restoration, ' the chief scribbler and Pamphleteer to His Infernal Majesty '. The poem is referred to by Antony Wood as existing in his day, but it never came to be printed, and hitherto my searches have been in vain. It is possible that this portrait-study may attract it to the light. As for the Lady Mazaretta, the villain of this piece, it must be told that she survived all her 212 Seventeenth-Century Pacificist enemies and lived victorious to the verge of ninety years. Her career adds one more melancholy example of the good estate of the wricked and the inequitable lot of mortals here below. For while the soft pliable natures have but a few days on the earth and those mostly in the shade, the wicked seem tO'bask like bay-trees in the sun of uncounted years. According to her physician Mazaretta's appetite was enormous to the end. But where is she now ? o o w H !:> O a o- A PRINCE'S POCKET-BOOK I FEEBLE of intellect, and eflfeminate, irresolute and vain, the licentious offspring of illicit love, the sport of every wind that blew and every amorous woman — such are the easy phrases the historians have used to summarize and dismiss the life and character of James, Duke of Monmouth, the second son of Charles the Second ^, It is surprising that they have not given more patient, if not more charitable, consideration to the fate of one who for all his faults was more loved in his day than any man in the land, and who came within an ace, too, of sitting on the throne. For let it not be forgotten, had Charles the Second been called four years earlier to his account, that is to say * So still generally styled. But see Historical Essays and Studies, by Lord Acton, 1907, pp. 85-122, where the faint traces are followed of James Stuart, the first son, born at Jersey in 1646 of an unknown lady of noble blood, or as Charles himself described her, d'une jeune dame des plus qualifies de nos royaumes, plus tot par fragility de nostre premiire jeunesse que par malice. When twenty- two years of age James entered himself in the house of the Novices of the Jesuits at Rome as Jacobus de la Cloche. The same year, carefully disguised, he paid a brief visit to his father in London and thence departed on a secret mission. He was never seen, never heard of again — save in the questionable shape of a pretender who made a stir at Naples and produced documents which he must have stolen from the true holder of the name. 214 A Princes Pocket-Book in 1681, before the reaction against Shaftesbury's violence had set in, ' King Monmouth ' might have been a tremendous fact instead of a passing fancy in the West. As it chanced otherwise, the historians almost with one consent have written out a very brief chronicle of what, from its unsuccess, they term a barren and rebellious career, and from their own rather censorious point of view there is none to withstand them. Happily, the province of literature is less austere, and the essayist in particular is willing to feed on the crumbs that fall unobserved from the historian's table ; or, in other words, to consider for their curiosity, charm, or what not, the little nameless, unremembered acts that form after all the best portion of any man's life ; his private unofficial ways, his pride and prejudice, the fashion of his dress, the form of his devotion, and all the other thousand and one things that weigh so lightly in judicial scales. In the case of Monmouth a familiar study of this kind is still possible. Much of this ill-starred life has sunk into oblivion, but one document of especial interest survives in the pocket- book or, as he would have called it, the table-book, of the Prince. A Prince's Pocket-Book 215 II You will not find this cited in the histories, for it is only recently, after two hundred years of hiding, that the little volume has come to light. To discover its Odyssey through that period would be a romantic achievement, and one likely to employ the devotion of a lifetime. But some, at least, of its vagaries may be suggested here. When the King's men ran Monmouth to earth at Ringwood, after Sedgmoor had been lost, they searched through his shepherd's disguise and found a number of charms and talismans of safety hung about his neck (' foolish conceits ', he called them, ' given me in Scotland ') — in one pocket a handful of raw pease, and in the other a watch, a purse of gold, a treatise on fortifica- tion, and this treasured book. It was given by them to Colonel Legge, who had been commanded to convey the prisoner by coach to London. In a note to Burnet's History of his own Time, Lord Dartmouth teUs us that the Colonel beguiled the journey with its perusal, but, being a mere military man, found the poems and the astrological signs very little to his liking. In the contemporary account given by Sir John Reresby it is stated that after the Duke's execution ' the papers and books that were found on him are since delivered to His Majesty [Kirig James the Second]. One of the books was a MS of spells, charms, and conjurations, songs, receipts, and 2i6 A Princes Pocket-Book prayers, all written in the late Duke's hand '. Its subsequent history is conjectural. It would seem that the volume was placed in the King's Library of State MSS, and was probably among those given by him to Terriesi, the Tuscan ambassador, on Decem- ber nth, 1688, to be carried for safety into France ^ It no doubt shared the King's exile at the Palace of St Germains, and must have stood on the shelves there exactly a hundred years ; for at the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 it was thought wiser to remove King James's papers to a place of security. The President of the English College in Paris oflEered to receive them temporarily, and promised to ship them to England when occasion served. To avoid suspicion they were delivered first of aU to the house of a French citizen near the college. He unhappily was imprisoned before the transfer could be made ; whereupon his wife, in terror at the thought of books, with royal arms upon them, being found in her possession, tore off the * Between 1685 and 1688 it must somehow have been examined by Welwood, subsequently physician to William III, for in his Memoirs, published in 1699, he describes the pocket-book and gives extracts from Monmouth's diary which it no longer contains. He says, moreover, that, though there be certain ' dark passages and some clear enough that shall be eternally buried for me, perhaps it had been better for King James' honour to have committed them to the flames as Julius Cassar is said to have done on a like occasion '. It has been suggested that King James took the hint and removed the diary from the body of the book ; but this seems impossible from the condition of the volume. More probably Wdwood's memory was at fault, and the diary formed a separate book. A Princess Pocket-Book 217 covers or defaced them as best she could. Then she burnt some, and buried the rest in the earth. The Monmouth MS escaped with less damage than might have been expected, but the mutilated silver clasps and the gaping wounds in the sides where the Royal Arms had been speak eloquently of the peril it survived. What further adventures befell it seems impossible to discover. Apparently it made its way home again to the library of Prince Charles Edward ; for we are told that the Duchess of Albany, his daughter, lit upon it there and that it passed on her death to her sole executor, the Abbe Walters, whom rumour declared to be a descendant of Monmouth's mother. In the course of the next few years the Stuart papers were gradually dispersed. Some, as we learn frdm the Abbe's own account, were destroyed and others sold to our Sovereign George the Fourth ^ On the inner cover of the Monmouth MS the autograph of the Abbe can still be deciphered through a glass, but neither glass nor guess has yet discovered to wh6m he sold the manuscript itself. We only know that by the year ' The romantic story of the discovery and of the negotiations (1805- 1813) for the purchase of the two portions of the Stuart Papers at Rome, with the plans of Nelson and Collingwood to carry them ofi from Civita Vecchia, the papal annulments of the sale, the arrest of the English agent, the hiding of the papers and their eventual transhipment via Leghorn, Tunis, and Malta, is fully told in the Introduction to the Calendar of the Stuart Papers (Hist. MSS Commission, 1902). It is clear that the Monmouth MS was one of the large number abstracted from the general mass of papers before or during the sale. 2i8 A Prince's Pocket-Book 1827 this princely volulne, once housed in the palace of St James, had sunk in its fortunes nearly to the gutter, just as Moiimouth's mother had fallen froin King's woman to common prostitute. It was rescued from a bookstall in the streets of Paris by one John Barette, a student of divinity in the Irish College there, and sent by him as a gift to a priest in County Kerry. On the priest's death it passed to Robert Rae, of Killorghlin, in the same county, a man of taste, who was quick to discern and advertize its value. By his leave or direction the volume was shown to the Royal Irish Academy in November, 1849, one of their members, Dr Anster, giving a slight summary of its contents. Two years later the long-suflEering and far-travelled volume took its last journey across the Irish Sea, and reposes now in the British Museum, where any man who is of good character and is so certified by a citizen of London can examine it at ease ^ III A bookseller would describe the volume as a duodecimo bound In black leather and richly tooled in gold with chased silver clasps half broken away. ' The manuscript I possess is a transcript of the original made just before its purchase by the British Museum. A Prince's Pocket-Book 219 Though somewhat stained with long use and rough weather, it is a book still comely to see and very- pleasant to hold. On the inner cover are blazoned the Royal Arms, which Monmouth had licence to use under proclamation of 1663, ^J^d below stands the motto ' Ingenuas susficit artes ', which for sheer incongruity with the temper of the Duke's mind would be very hard to match. On the fly- leaf, in the firm hand of King James, appears the following note : ' This book was found in the Duke of Monmouth's pocket when he was taken and is most of his own handwriting '. The writing that fills these 157 pages is plain and soldierly and nothing more, but the spelling, the grammar, the composi- tion, these are ' princely '. I use the word ad- visedly. There are some high-born and favoured classes who are fairly exempted from all obligation to be intelligent. A prince of the blood has other things to attend to. As for reading and writing, his servants will do what is necessary for him, and Secretaries of State can be hired anywhere at a trivial cost. It was a famous declaration of Pope Gregory the Great that no words of his should fail of their purpose because they chanced to disagree with the grammar of Donatus. This dictum has become the charter of liberty to the Popes and Princes of Christendom since his day. Monmouth perhaps strained it as far as any. A split infinitive or a sentence lost in the middle disturbed him not in the least. His concern in life — indeed his only 2 20 A Prince's Pocket-Book philosophy — was to do that which seemed to him most pleasant, to be (as Ascham styled it) ' the very primerose of nobilitie '. He was a prince, as Dryden said, after the order of Absalom — a man clothed in soft raiment, gorgeously apparelled, and living delicately in the King's Courts ^. In this pocket-book of his, for example, he will spell you ' boutes ' for boots, and ' choos ' for shoes, and think no more about it % but you may be sure he would have taken infinite pains to get them of Cordova leather and in the latest fashion of Ver- sailles. Again the metre of the love poems in these pages is past finding out, and the sentiment too highly sugared, but Monmouth was well enough versed in the ' mystical grammar of amorous glances ', and cultivated as an art the splendidly passionate manner of life. It was said that he was a finished profligate at seventeen ! Let us confess * Pepys said his clothes were ' mighty fine ' ; no faint praise from such an authority. The student may find some curious details of general expenditure in the Monmouth's Household Account Book (Egerton MS 117), e.g., ^^42 for feathers, £1^ los. od. for a gold fringe, £8 for periwigs, £16 for Mr Godfrey ye dancing master (a constant charge), ;^i6 for a bet with Rob. Newman at the Tennis Court, and ;£i,200 for His Grace at Paris. ' Holograph letters of Monmouth's are of the greatest rarity. But there was one I remember seeing in the Morrison collection, addressed to Lord Cochrane, which gave an excellent idea of Mon- mouth's abecedarian uncertainty. After begging his Lordship's forgiveness for not having written before, he continues, ' for my going a brad I sopos if there be pease I shall go for I have axced the King leave to go and I am in great hopes that the King will give mee leave for thats the thing that I desier most '. A Prince's Pocket-Book 221 it at once : the greater part of this book is given over to vanity. That is the secret of its appeal. Where princes are concerned, one does not clamour for vs^isdom. For one man who will read the Proverbs of Solomon a thousand will revel in the Song of Songs. So the eye soon learns to slip over the moral sayings of Monmouth scattered in this book, in order to linger on the story of his life, his escapes, and escapades. IV t After all, one should give Monmouth his due. His main hope in this life lay in his amazing beauty and power to please. While Shaftesbury plotted, it was for him to steal the hearts of the people, a part that he had studied and could play to perfec- tion ^. Throughout his quasi-royal progresses in the west he moved in a mist of praise and admiration, and even we who see him now only on the canvas of Kneller and Peter Lely ^ can imagine something of • Coming to Chester one time for the Wallasey races, he heard that the Mayor's little daughter was about to be baptized. On the impulse of the moment he offered to stand as godfather to the chUd. And not only did he grace her with the name of his lady, Henrietta, but later, winning the plate at the races, he bestowed this also as a christening gift. * There are other portraits by Cooper, Wyck, Riley, Wissing, Tyssen, Huysmans, and Mary Beale. .en 222 A Princess Pocket-Book the magic of his face. How the lines of Dryd spring into recollection ! ' On each side bowing popularly low, His looks, his gestures, and his words he frames. And with familiar ease repeats their names. Whate'er he did was done with so much ease. In him alone 'twas natural to please ; His motions all accompanied with grace. And paradise was opened in his face ' '. Now here, in this pocket-book, we get, as it were, behind the scenes, and observe the player in his private room, for ever employed over the arts and crafts of self-preservation. His one dread was lest this beauty of his should wither, and with the accustomed credulity of fear he believed every quack who came. A ' favourite remedy of Dr Stephens ' is noted down, consisting chiefly of good Gascon wine, with ginger, nutmegs, cloves, and carroway seed thrown in for additional warmth — ' Whosoever useth this water morning and evening and so often it preserveth him and will 'make him seem young very long '. Other recipes abound ' to make the face more fair ', to cause the hair to grow, to make grey hairs ' This last line is a quotation from Chaucer. A single example of its application may be noted. As the' Duke rode with his suite through the Friary Gate into Ilchester he observed Whiteing, the Quaker, standing, with many others of the same persuasion, in sober habits and irremovable hats. So he pulled up and without more ado took off his hat to them ; which princely mark of recognition: won their hearts, if not their hats. There were many Quakers serving in his last campaign. A Prince's Pocket-Book 223 grow black. This last trick is done not by the use of any dye such as the moderns aflEect, but by the power of a .magical incantation sung in the waning of the moon. ' For heat in the face, redness and shining of the nose ', Monmouth has a^ very simple and charming remedy. ' Take a fair linen cloth and in the morning lay it over the grass and draw It along till it be wet with dew. Then wring it out into a fair dish and wet the face therewith as often as you please '. Not so inexpensive is the recipe for a smooth complexion that comes after : ' You must take the shells of 52 eggs, beat them small and still them with a good fire, and with the water anoint yourself where the rughness is '. It is not all a question of beauty. One curious recipe there is ' to procure male or female issue as may be most desired ' — and another prescribes a cure for the stone, which if not certain is quite comforting to take. ' Let holly berys full ripe be gadiered and dried till they be reduced to powder ; then, finely sifted, take thereof as much as will ly on a sixpence in a good drought of Rennish wine '. Enough of these. In the end they availed Moiimouth but little, and one almost feels that his 2 24- A Prince's Pocket-Book beauty'' more than his ambition was the bane of his career. As one sighs over the untiknely fate of this prince ' in favour beautiful above the sons of men ' one may well despair, and hold with Brother Giles of Perugia that ' it is a great grace of God in one to have no graces at all '. But you cannot alter the inevitable. Where beauty is, there wiU ambition be. They have hunted together since the world began, and there is good reason why they should. The first great philosopher of Greece said that the right of commanding doth of duty belong to such as are fair — and though to the common people the name of Aristotle is nothing but a name, they, too, are of the same opinion, and always will be, despite the latter day innovation of lineal succession. Left to himself it is doubtful if Monmouth would have pressed his claim. He was content to hunt with the Charlton hounds and race his horses at Newmarket. There was Moor Park to laze in, and Lady Wentworth a morning's-ride away. There were masques and dances at the Court, and Eleanor Needham to carry down the river. ' How happy had he been if destiny- Had higher placed his Ufe or not so high.' But the people urged him on. They wanted a Protestant duke. They wanted to back the hand- some nephew against the ill-favoured uncle in the running for the Crown. The playhouse audiences * vowed for him against the world ' whenever he A Prince's Pocket-Book 225 appeared. Often as he came for service to St Martin's the people rose and cried : ' God bless the Duke of Monmouth '. The firebrand Ferguson gave him no rest. The legend of the black box was whispered through the streets to break the baton sinister, and when that failed there followed the precious maxim : ' He that hath the worse title will make the better king '. Behind them all schemed Shaftesbury — the unscrupulous arch-plotter — plotting for his own peculiar ends-^a man who chose Monmouth for his tool, believing, as many have done, that the safety of the monarchy is in direct proportion to the stupidity of the sovereign, and knowing well that the government in such case would be upon his shoulders. It was by such men that the prince was persuaded to rendunce the fruits of pleasure for the graver foUies of fame and rebellion. VI Of the perils that ensued much may be guessed frbtti the jottings in this book. There is, for example, a precise direction how ' to write letters of secrets ' by the use of invisible ink. There are memoranda of the assumed names of his friends, and the houses where they will call. One finds, too, the Q 226 A Prince's Pocket-Book uncouth names of merchants in Amsterdam, includ- ing Daniel Le Blon who advanced ^3,000 ^. Under the name of Monsieur Jean Ray Coopman of Amsterdam he writes : ' Must make a scratch upon the inward letter '. Truly the way of conspirators is hard ! He knew not whom to trust, and had so little confidence in his own judgment that he resorted to the magic of numbers. On page 44 will be found in French, ' A sure means of knowing if a person wiU be faithful and if he will keep his word '. It is too long and incoherent to quote, but the gist of it is this : You take the last baptismal name of the party concerned, turn it into Latin, and count the number of letters. To this must be added the number of days then expired of the current month with a further number of five. The total of these three additions should then be divided by seven. If the remainder is even the party is incapable of faith. If it is odd his devotion is assured. The contingency of there being no re- mainder is left to silence. Really it is a sad com- mentary on Monmouth's wavering mind. ' This amount was raised on the security of the Great George and other personal belongings of the Duke. By subscription of friends in exile and the pawning of Lady Wentworth's jewels a further ^6,000 was obtained ; and was very soon spent in the munitions of war. Monmouth's expeditionary force landed at Lyme Regis with just £•/ i'3s. gd. in hand ! By a whimsical coincidence the man appointed by the Duke as paymaster for his army was surnamed Goodenough. He failed, however, to live up to his calling and absconded at the^first reverse. A Prince's Pocket-Book 227 Of his experience as a soldier there is less recorded than one might hope. Some rather tedious pages are taken up with extracts from a text book in French entitled Trait'e de la Guerre ou Politique Militaire. A more interesting note follows ' con- cerning the Battereyes that can be made at Flushing to keep the French ships from coming in ', with the number of guns required and the positions they should command. These were the very forts that Philip Sidney had manned just a hundred years before, and it is singular that, if the scandal of Lucy Walters' earlier life be true, Monmouth was himself the son of Robert Sidney, and Philip Sidney's great- great nephew. A less ambitious page discusses the remedy for the corns and footsoreness that are the bane of infantry life, and a recipe is provided ' For to make bouts and choos hold out water '. There must have been use for this in the midsummer floods of Monmouth's last campaign, and for three other recipes as well : ' to keep iron from rusting ', ' to boille down plate ', and ' to procure repose of body and of mind '. VII One soldierly habit Monmouth never failed to practise, namely to keep a note of the journeys he 228 A Prince's Pocket-Book made, the routes taken, the distances between the towns and so forth. For example : 'The way from London to East Tilbery ist Dec. 1679 '» ^ ^^^ which refers to his banishment for shewing too much mercy to the Scots after Bothwell Bridge. Again he gives particulars of ' The way I took when I came from England Dec. 20th 1684 ' after the secret visit to his father which filled him with so much hope ». There are notes of the road from Brussels to Dieren, the Prince of Orange's country-seat, where Mon- mouth taught the staid Dutch ladies to dance and was in turn taught by them how to skate. The rest refer to the more desperate days of his sojourn in Holland after the news of James' succession. Being dismissed by William from the Court, Mon- mouth went into hiding for a time. Lady Went- worth was escorted to Antwerp by Don Valera, a Spanish officer and friend. At a grand ball given there in her honour, just as the guests had assembled and the dance music had begun, a mysterious note -was slipped into Lady Wentworth's hand. Begging to be allowed a moment to answer it, she left the room, and to everyone's amazement was not seen again. It was a summons from her lover. An * An unpublished letter in the Morrison collection of Sir Leonine Jenkins, Secretary of State, to Sir Richard Bulstrode, Envoy at Brussels, dated January 7th, 1683-4, throws some ad- c|itional light on this return : ' It is confidently sayd that the Duke of Monmouth with a servt. landed at Camfire upon ye 21-31 of the last month — went from thence to Bergh of Zome, and pretended thence to go for Antwerp, being lace merchants as they gave out '. A Prince's Pocket-Book 22g entry in his pocket-book under March nth, 1685, shews the route they took from Antwerp to Dor- drecht, and the weather that they faced : ' Very frosty, great deal of snow, then rain '. They found refuge ultimately at Gouda, a little town some thirteen miles north-east of Rotterdam, which Monmouth insists upon spelling ' Tergou '. Here in strict seclusion he seems to have enjoyed the happiest season of his life. For a long time his fellow-conspirators at Amsterdam tempted him in vain. Writing from Gouda to Argyll's secretary, Spence, he says : ' To tell you my thoughts without disguise I am now so much in love with a retired life that I am never like to be fond of making a bustle in the world again '. After all, though he won much glory in his five campaigns, his heart was scarcely fashioned for a soldier. The road he knew best of all led to no scene of war. It ran from his mansion of Soho through the villages of ' Hamsted, Hendon, Edge- worth, Astra (Elstree), St Stephens, and Doun- stable ' to Toddington in the County of Bedford. He marks the stages carefully in this book ; for, though he might well lose the Crown, he was not likely to miss the way to Lady Wentworth. It was with her alone he found the peace that the world could not give, and a respite — alas, too brief ! — from those headaches Philip Sidney had written of : ' that a passionate life perforce will bring us to '. ^SMJIJiiJMJ*— *** 230 ^ Princess Pocket-Book VIII Perhaps the most personal and touching thing in this manuscript is a poem, or rather a piece of doggerel, written by Monmouth at Toddington Manor in one of these intervals of rest. The words are set to an air also by Monmouth's hand : ' With joy we leave thee, False world, and do forgive All thy false treachery, For now we'U happy live. We'll to our bowers And there spend our hours ; Happy there we'll be, We no strifes there can see, No quarrelling for crowns. Nor fear the great one's frowns. Nor slavery of State, Nor changes in our fate. From plots this place is free. There we'll ever be ; We'll sit and bless our stars That from the noise of wars Did this glorious place give ' That thus we happy live.' Those who care may condemn Monmouth for his connection with the Lady Henrietta. They must at least admit the constancy of his affection. That in itself is sufficiently amazing. Here was a prince ^ In the margin Monmouth gives the alternative line : ' Or did us Toddington give '. A Prince's Pocket-Book 231 born of a chance intrigue, given to Lady Castle- maine, of all creatures, to bring up, and made the spoilt child of a wicked Court. It was hardly the training for a chaste and sober life. And what, too, ^ of his marriage ? It has been asserted on very sound authority that a man's mother is his mis- fortune, while his wife is his own mistake. The axiom fails in Monmouth's case, for the misfortune was clearly double. He had both mother and wife thrust upon him by his father, and he found it impossible to love either the one or the other. If he is to be blamed for seeking happiness and love tiU at length they were found, then most folk on the face of this planet stand in similar jeopardy of their souls. For his own part, as a man facing death, he declared that he and his lady were blameless in the sight of God. This raises the difficult question of Monmouth's religion. Had he any, or had he none ? He was, of course, the official champion of the Protestant party, and to the exterior practices of religion a strict conformist. Once in Chichester Cathedral he was openly preached at for an hour as a rebel and a danger to the State. Yet he never stirred in his stall. Moreover, he went there again. Unlike most Englishmen, he was equally strict abroad. The fat burghers at The Hague looked upon him as a fanatic because he attended divine service twice in one day, and were only reassured when they found a similar regularity in the banquets 2 32 A Prince's Pocket-Book that he gave ^ Nevertheless, if the truth be told, his religion was quite primitive. He feared the darkness as a child does. He dreaded the im- penetrable blackness of the tomb. On one page he writes down, ' A Motow : fear Nothing but God.' ' For himself the injunction was little needed. He feared God with an exceeding fear. The thought that there might come an end to the pleasant habit of existence and the sweet fable of life filled him with constant foreboding. In truth, this terror of God and death and the devil becomes a disease with him. For sixteen pages he makes an abridgment of English history, but confines it almost entirely to a Hst of the ' casualties and prodigies ' that befall the successive reigns. Of William the First he has nothing to say except that ' a great lord sitting at table in this King's time was eaten up by mice ' ». King Stephen's chronicle is momentous ' for dragons and earthquakes and wells that spout up blood ' — ' But the devout citizens who formed the congregation . at Amsterdam prayed continually that his enterprise might find favour with the Almighty. The course of his life, as Burnet says so bluntly, would hardly warrant a divine interposition of Providence in his favour, but he expected something of the kind almost to the end. " It was the motto adopted later for the rebellion, and was blazoned in gold on Monmouth's green banners by the ladies of. Taunton. ' The passage is probably taken from Baker's Chronicle, where it reads as follows : ' Also in this king's time a great Lord sitting at a feast was set upon by mice ; and though he was removed from land to sea and from sea again to land yet the mice still followed him and at last devoured him '. A Prince's Pocket-Book 233 wicked priests who suifer the fate of Jonah in the Irish sea— fishes caught in the shape of men — dolphins landed in the Thames — and a maiden who lived seven years without the help of food. More- over, in the days of King Harry the Fourth, in the year 1402 to be precise, he tells how the devil, disguised in the garb of an Austin friar, appeared at Danebury, in Essex, whereat the Lord sent a tempest of wind that unhappily blew down the church steeple, but the devil took the hint as well, and was pleased to go away. IX The private prayers of Monmouth occupy a score of pages, and are the outpourings of a soul in much sorrow and doubtful of the way of salvation. ' A sinner I am I confess, a sinner of no ordinary strain, but let not this hinder Thee, O my God, for upon such sinners Thou gettest Thy greatest glory. For it were a great dishonor to Thee to imagine that Thou diedest only for sinners of a lower kind, and leftest such as I am without remedy. I ask not Thee any longer the things of this world, neither power, nor honour, nor riches, nor pleasures. No, my God, dispose of them to whom Thou pleasest, so that Thou givest me mercy. And let this day, O God, be noted in the Book'. And here is 2 24- A Prince's Pocket-Book another, written after a night of desperate adventure : ' Blessed be Thy name, O Lord, and blessed be Thy mercys, Who has preserved us this night from sin and sorrow, from sad chances and a violent death. The outgoings of the morning and evening shall praise Thee, O Lord, and Thy servant shall rejoice in giving Thee thanks for Thy particular preserva- tion of me this night. O Lord, pardon the wander- ings and coldness of these petitions, and deal with me, not according either to my prayers or deserts, but according to my needs ' ^. Side by side with these private ejaculations the old superstitions hold their ground. There is an extraordinary charm in this book ' To procure deliverance from pain ' by which one is told to repeat the Sixth Psalm seven times and to add at each repetition the first verse of the Seventh Psalm '^. This being done, it is necessary to hold up the image of the goddess Isis, ' and to say : ' O great God of Salvation, may it please you by the virtue of Thy Saint Isis and by the virtue of this psalm, to deliver me from this travail and torment * As Margaret Gatty discovered, Monmouth made liberal use of the petitions in the Guide to the Penitent printed at the end of Jeremy Taylor's Golden Grove ; but he plainly adapted them to his peculiar needs. The construction of the greater number of the prayers proves them to be his own handivyork. " Monmouth was convinced of the efficacy of the number 7. There are many other entries depending on its virtue and a table shewing its multiplications from i to 37. ' It is surprising how Christian the goddess Isis had become. See Britomart's vision in Isis' Church in Spenser's Faerie Queen. A Prince's Pocket-Book 235 as it pleased Thee to deliver him who made this psalm and prayer '. X One discovers also a number of astrological signs and planetary wheels, no doubt connected with Monmouth's horoscope, too faded now to follow, but they sadly influenced his spirits toward the end of his career. The Abbe Pregnani, an Italian astrologer, had told him to beware of July 15th. Could he pass safely by that day his horoscope would clear. It was the very day of his execution. One may understand, therefore, why in his last shameful interview with James he begged so abjectly for one more day of life ^. It was not to be. His star set in a mist of blood. Yet he died proudly as a Stuart will, though the hiss of his peers was against him, though the priest refused him the last consolation of the Church, though he had not even for viaticum the kiss of the one he loved. ' There was more behind this than Pregnani's oracle, for the Abbe was notoriously wrong. Monmouth had consulted him often in horse-racing and had lost on his advice every time. It has been pointed out that Monmouth's former discharge from the Tower, when a boy, was on Thursday, July i6th, 1657. With his superstitious faith in the virtue of numbers he no doubt expected a second deliverance on that day. It would have been a Thursday, too. 236 A Prince's Pocket-Book^ ' With an air of undisturbed courage ', still in the flush of youth, still lovely in men's eyes, stiU master of their hearts, he went down into that darkness he so long had feared. May we not alter his own song for an epitaph f There at peace lies he. Where no strife can be, No quarrelling for crowns, No fear of great one's frowns, Nor slavery of estate. Nor further change of fate. A DISPUTATIOUS DIVINE RABIES THEOLOGORUM Being a Study of Two Seventeenth-Century Divines SOMETIMES, I confess, after coming back to the twentieth century from reading an early English divine, I feel all a-shiver, as if bodily and mentally conscious that the world and its inhabitants are growing cold ; which of course they are, only one should hardly perceive it yet. And nowhere, as I think, is the change more marked than in the tone of theological debate. One looks in vain now for the rabies theologorum ,• the world has grown too respectable for that. The thunder- ings of the schoolmen, the sulphurous rhetoric of Salmasius (who changed his pen every half-hour because it grew too hot), the holy strife of disputa- tious men who sat in cathedra pestilentiee and lightly passed a verbis ad verhera — where shall one look nowadays for the like of these ? ' Saints in disguise, in execution men ; Peace in their looks and vengeance in their pen ; Spirits who prompted every damning page With pontiff pride and still increasing rage '. You will not find them these last hundred years. They have been drowned in that milk-and-water 238 Rabies Theologorum school of liberal theology, which makes, as Swin- burne said, 'for the ultimate amiability of all things ', or one might add for an indiscriminate charity and invertebrate belief. Three hundred years ago if any child of wrath presumed to interfere with the foundations of the Church he was caught by the statute ' de hceretico comburendo ' and burnt with all his books. In these faint times we ask the editor of a Church paper to print a disparaging review. I wonder if it is wrong to be sorry for the change. No doubt it tends to the general peace and quiet of Christendom, which is itself something to be grateful for. But one has the disquieting thought that it may not be so much the peace as the slumber of the Church, the gradual disinclination to contend about the fabric of the Faith. I am a little sus- picious of the detached, academic manner of modern theology. I am prone to think that those who wrote at white heat, like the Jacobean divines, did so because their very souls were on fire. I can find it in my heart to forgive their want of grammar and of grace ; for it is plain that the zeal of the Lord had eaten these things up : it was palpably urgent for the Church militant to get without delay at its adversaries' throats. And, whatever strait-laced people say, enthusiasm has been and ought stiU to be the most godlike thing on earth '. * There is an inscription on one of the bells in a church near my home which reads thus : ' Prosperity to the Church of England and no encouragement to Enthusiasm '. Rabies Theologorum 239 II On quite another ground we should prefer the earlier divines. For in the arena of the mind it is they alone who satisfy the standard of sporting men. I do not count myself more bellicose than other folk, yet I never tire of the gladiatorial shows of the Stuart tractarians. They fought like tigers till the world rocked under their feet and the inhabitants thereof stopped their ears lest deafness should come upon them. Never, I think, was the Emperor Julian more justified in his saying that ' angry theologians are the wildest of wild beasts '. Sir Thomas Browne in the thick of their controversies might weU exclaim : ' I had rather stand the shock of a basilisco than the fury of their merciless pens '. And it was some experience of this kind no doubt which provoked Anthony Henley to call Swift * a beast for ever after the order of Melchizideck '. So far as laymen are concerned, there has been no theological controversy worth reading as con- troversy since Louth and War bur ton's day *. You remember what Dr Johnson said of the protagonists » I am not forgetting Newman — tjie greatest tractarian of the English tongue. But he was probably more concerned with the perfection of his style than the persuasion of his readers. We lose our heads to him but not our hearts. 24° Rabies Theologorum m that fray : ' Warburton has most general, most scholastic learning ; Lowth is the more correct. I do not know which of them calls names best '. Certainly there was more skill and variety of abuse in the preceding era of Titus Oates, when Evelyn the diarist complains that 'The devil will not suflFer the church to be quiet and at rest. We have a mad, giddy company of precisians, schismaticks and some heretiques, even in our own bosom, and they stand at no extream '. But the pentecost of pamphleteering fell thirty years before, in the days of William Laud, and was not a little due to the provocation of his rule. It was the period when everybody scribbled books about theology as he listed. There was a prodigal effusion of Christian ink ; a paper war which ceased not till all the verbal ammunition was exhausted. In a space of eleven years no fewer than thirty thousand works » were printed to the greater glory of God — a laudable end that was attained, by most writers, through the burnt-offering of their enemies, who in consequence were His. '' It does really seem as though a double portion of the spirit of Shimei had descended to his successors. Like their master, they cursed, they threw stones, they cast dust ; and like him again they declared • Fifty thousand, ventures Carlyle, 'huge piles of ftioilldering wreck, wherein at the rate of perhaps one penny-Weight per ton lie things memorable '. Rabies Theologorum 24.1 that the Lord had bidden them so to do '. Old Ben Jonson declared, on the other hand, that they did it for their own delight, and I can warrant they were well-pleased with their dexterity and resource. ' Some controversers in divinity ', he says, ' are like swaggerers in a tavern that catch that which stands next them : be it the candlesticks or the pots ; turn everything into a weapon : of times they fight blindfold and both beat the air '. So to Archbishop Leighton the differences between Protestants appeared to be no more than ' a drunken scuffle in the dark '. Now let us catch two of these ' controversers ' as it were in the act, and see them exchange their blows. Believe me it is quite good sport and you need have no fear, gentle reader ; I have chosen for you a manuscript of milder date lest the censor should intervene. Ill The volume before me, which I bought at a sale of the Phillipps' collection, is dated 1687, a few months before the trial of the Seven Bishops, which * ' The itching of scribblers ', says Howell unpleasantly, ' was the scab of the time. Any triobolary Pasquiller, any sterquilinous rascal was licensed to throw dirt in the faces of sovreign princes and bishops of the Church in open printed language '. R 242 Rabies Theologorum lost King James the crown of England. A time, indeed, of great ferment in Church as well as State, for what with Lewis XIV's Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and James' obstinate determination to recover the nation for Rome, and the Noncon- formists' resolution to restore the Commonwealth, the fate of England and of religious toleration was trembling in the balance. From the Anglican stronghold Parker and Sherlock and South had been flinging incendiary bombs or inflammatory tracts, and were themselves beginning to be set upon by priests, presbyters, and infidels in most unholy alliance. The manuscript under consideration contains the originals of two of these opposing tracts, mercilessly cut down and compelled to teep the peace beneath a common binding. One of them got published under a false pretence to be disclosed a little later • the other, though it received the Archbishop's imprimatur, I have never seen in print. The first, written in a bold, uncompromising hand, is entitled : ' A letter from a Dissenter to the Divines of the Church of England in Order to a Union', It seems to have excited the rage of one quid- tempered reader, for the forefront has been slashed with a pen-knife in several places and to the depth of a dozen sheets. Some kind soul has fastened the fragments together with anything that came to his hand. Now this letter, because it is short and pithy and because it gives the text for the Rabies Theologorum 243 subsequent counterblast, shall speak in full for itself : ' This is to let you know, Reverend Sirs, how sensible I and our brethren are of the great Change we perceive in your Pulpits, yt whereas sometime since nothing was heard from thence but thunder against Dissenters, with the terrible noise of their Spirit of Obstinacy and disobedience, of Rebellion, the sin of witchcraft, of their being schismatics against the true Chufch, and that nothing was so proper to reduce them into a Christian, & within ye Pale, as the severe Execution of the Laws, as summoning to the Commons, seising and im- prisoning, &c : Now all this storm is cleared up into a perfect Calm, and instead of force and Rigour we know nothing now but of fair Invitations, and most oblidging Calls to a Peaceable Union, there being now no diflferance to be heard of betwixt us, but only of a few diflEerent Ceremonies, and that other- wise we are all joynt Members with you in the same Church. This Change I say we are all very sensible of. And as for a Union, and a good correspondence, you may be assured, we are all so in love with Union and peace that we could heartily wish to see all Christians at this day, as they were in the time of the Apostles, of One spirit, and of one mind. But you know what has hindered us hitherto from joyning with your Church, we have always Suspected you for Papists in Masquerade : ye many Ceremonies you have retained ; your Crosses & altars, & Tapers, 244 Rabies Theologorum & Surplices, & Bowings, your Confessions and Absolutions & Mass- Forms of Prayer ; &c, have oblidged us to these thoughts, and that tho' you pretend to have left Babylons, yet by the rags and Livery you brought along with you, we could not but still suspect you of her Retinue. ' Of late indeed you have given us some Reason to change our Opinion, whilst Popery making some approaches to you, and even standing at your Doors, you have given her such sour Entertainment, and treated her with so muth Severity^ as if in reality you had no kindness for her. T^is I ray, is some Motive to us, to change our former Opinion of you, and yet on the other hand, I see so many Decdis in Vilknous Man, that I cannot tell how, but to be jealous still I fear your Rdigion, may, like the weather, have its different seasons and Returns. And as some times the Dissenters from the Influence of your Church, lie under a Severe & nipping mnter & at odier times again enjoy a warm and inviting suia^ine ; so you may be as changeable in Respect of the Papists too, sometimes for 'em & sometimes against 'em, and yet be the same Old Church of England still, like the sun which making different seasons & changes in ye year, yet never changes it self. And this Consideration does not leave me without some Fears and Jealousies. I apprehaid you have a way of promoting Popery, and yet being against ye Papists, & that if we join with you, we may be instructed in real Popery, whilst we are Rabies Theologorum 245 taught to hate ye Papists, and if so, I do not see but it would be the same thing to joyn with the Papists, as with you. IV * This jealousie of mine has been strengthened of late by some of your writings, most especially by one which appeared lately, Entituled, An Answer to the Compiler of the Nubes TesMum, wherein the Author, whilst he severly lets fly against the Papists, does at ye same time maintain and propogate such Doc- trines, as I have ever looked upon, as ye very essence and ground work of Popery. You will give me leave to make a short list of such as I have observed in ye perusing of yt book : And then if you will give me youir Opinion, & let me know whether really they are Conformable to the Doctrines of your Church 'twill serve as a light to direct us what to do, whilst you invite us to joyn Communion with you.' I think I can spare the reader the si;steen specific charges of Ppp^ry that follow, because the chief ones are mentioned in the author's recapitu^tipp, now to be set forth. ' These are some of ye Points, which I observed in reading that book, and here for a better under- standing I desire to know of you whether these are truely and really your doctrine. The book I see has the standard mark, 'tis licensed by ye Archbishop of 246 Rabies Theologorum Canterburys Chaplain, & so must be supposed to contain nothing but what is agreeable to your Church, And if so, how can we choose but be jealous of your Calls to Union, and fair Invitations, whilst we see you holding out Reformation in one hand, and so much Popery in ye other ? What means your so good Opinion of the Pope, of Tradi- tion, of Honouring the Saints, of their intercession for us, of Honouring their Memories or Monuments, of owing a Respect and Veneration due to their Relicks, of allowing Prayers for ye souls departed as advantageous to them, and for ye Parden of their sins, of believing Christs Body to be really present in the Sacrament, and that it is his Flesh and Blood, what means I say, all this ? Is this the Doctrine of your Church to which you invite us to joyn ? If it be, I tell you plainly : ye are ye men I always took ye to be ; if not papists altogether at ye best, like those imperfect Animals of Egypt, which beginning to move out of Mother dirt are left unfirnished, & in Colour & Scent, ye greatest part are nothing but mother dirt still, & unto it do naturally return. For my part, If I could come so near Popery as this, I should make no difficulty of taking 'tother step. For 'tis thither all this does naturally tend. 'We desire satisfaction in these particulars, &when this is done, we shall know better how to follow your Calls. You'll Pardon this Importunity & in a friendly Answer consider our circumstances, make things as favourable as you can, & above all things Rabies Theologorum 247 remember that to hear little of trusting and less of Punishing will be most acceptable to Reverend Sirs yours, &c. London, Printed, & are to be sold by Randal Taylor, near Stationers Hall. 1687. The Counterblast is not long delayed. It comes flying headlong on the wings of indignation. The anonymous author ^ pauses neither to consider nor to spell. He simply leaps upon his adversary and stifles him with abuse. On December 4th in that same year, 1687, he writes ' Finis ' to his fulmination and gives it a full-sounding title : ' J Vindication of the Principles of the author of the Answer to ye Compiler of ye Nuhes Testium from the charge of Popery, In Answer to a late Pretended Letter from a Dissenter to ye Divines of ye Church of England '. Notwithstanding the hint of that word 'Pre- tended ', I hope and believe, ingenuous reader, that you will be just as staggered as I was. I can hardly credit it yet, but it is quite certain that that Dis- senter whose plausible epistle we have read was a » Anonymous but by no means unhiown. By name Edward Gee, and by fame a most fearless champion of the Church Militant. His path in life was strewn with the bodies of those who dared to withstand him. 248 Rabies Theologorum mere decoy, a wolf in sheep's clothing, in short the Jesuit Sabran in disguise. The author of the Vindication hunts him up and down the thickets of theology and the unholy jungle of metaphysics like a panther after its prey, and the more mercilessly because he had been on the trail before. There is something in the style that catches at his memory, a trick of phrase here and there strangely familiar and somehow sinister. Moreover, the printer's name is suppressed. That in itself is suspicious ; and, to make matters worse, the printing to his eyes looks like the printing of Henry Hills, whose press the Romans used ^. At last the truth flashes upon his * And King James II also for his orders in Council. I have one of these issued by Hills' press just a year before the MS now under consideration. It is directed against those ' factious and unquiet spirits who in stead of preaching the pure word of God presume to meddle with matters of state, to model new Governments to the Dishonour of God, the Scandal of Religion, and Disturbance of the Peace . .. .' etc., etc. A part of the preamble is worth quoting for the light it throws upon the contentious character of the clergy at that time : ' And whereas also sundry young Divines and Preachers, either out of a Spirit of Contention and Contradiction, or in a vain ostentation of their Learning, take upon them in their popular sermons, to handle the deep Points of God's Eternal Coun- cels and Decrees, or to wrangle about Forms and Gestures and other fruitless Disputes and Controversies, serving rather to amuse than profit the Hearers ; which is done for the most part and with the greatest Confidence by such persons as least understand them, etc., etc. ... We out of our Princely Care and Zeal do (inter alia) admonish Preachers not to spend their Time and Study in the Search of Abstruse and Speculative Notions, especially in and about the deep Points of Election and Reprobation, together with the Incomprehensible manner of the Concurrence of God's free Grace and Mans free Will . . . and since preaching was not anciently the Work of every Priest but was Restrained to the choicest Persons Rabies Theologorum 249 indignant soul. An enemy hath done this. It is the handiwork of the Jesuit Sabran. He remembers on the sudden that ' this ridiculous and mischievious Representer ' had played the same crafty game before in a veiled attack upon Dr Sherlock. On that occasion the worthy Doctor had answered him in like manner with a Vindication, ' wherein he hath thoroughly baffled the pretences of the Roman adversary and broke the neck of his silly design '^ . To make doubly sure, he goes to see Randall Taylor the publisher, and learns that a ' strict charge had been laid upon him not to tell whence he had it, that so (is his comment) the suppositious Brat may pass undiscovered, and all that was said in this pretended letter may be swallowed by the un- thinking mulyitude as if it came from some real Dissenter '. Now if Randall Taylor imagined he had foiled this Anglican he was mightily mistaken ; for the latter breathing a prayer to be delivered from ' aU evil and mischief, from sin, from privy con- spiracy and all the crafts and assaults of the devil ' follows his clue to the printing house of Henry for Gravity, Prudence and Learning we do order the Archbishops and Bishops of this Kingdom to license those only who can assert the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England without Bitterness, Railing, Jearing or other unnecessary or unseemly provocation '. The order itself of which this gives a short abstract is a reissue of one promulgated by Charles the Second in 1662. ^ To shew how in those days everyone thought himself at liberty to butt in to these theological contentions, Sherlock himself was answered by one William Giles, who calls himself a Protestant Footman living with Madam H. in Mark Lane. 250 Rabies Theologorum Hills. Mark how carefully this counter-plot is laid. The Vindicator, remembering that his face and figure are well known to the world at large, stands without at a convenient angle so that he may see and hear, while his servant goes within. The latter asks for some Roman theology then current, and is served civiUy enough ; but when with an innocent air he breathes out an order for three copies of A Letter from a Dissenter to the Divines of the Church of England, the printer's countenance grows purple. As the Vindicator observes, 'he damned my servant, and damned the letter and refused to sell him any of it though my man saw and pointed to a Heap of them before his very face. . . . But all this foolish care (he continues) is to no purpose, since Henry Hills' print is well known to all booksellers and ye Representer's style to all scholars that have given themselves the trouble of reading his frothy pamphlets. That is enough to blast the whole design, since there are no people of Tollerable sense but would as soon as they saw whence it came reflect with themselves that the Book must needs be a ridiculous sham '. VI After this preliminary bombardment the blows fall fast and thick. One could hardly expect Rabies Theologorum 251 otherwise. No time is lost here in peaceful per- suasion. The vindication is drowned in vilification. The author, who as the reader will have seen was no mean strategist, defends himself by delivering a strenuous attack. He brings up his heaviest howitzers — the never out-of-date argumentum ad hominem. 'This juggling adversary ', he exclaims, ' is a man devoid of all honesty, sense, and con- science. ... I am so far from thinking that any Christian should be guilty of such a deliberate and injurious imposture that I believe both Turkes and Heathens would abhor and detest being a party to such a malicious pergery. . . . But when a man's head is in at such a sort of writing, when he is resolved to blacken his adversary but wants matter and ground for such Calumines, he must e'en do as my adversary does, invent himself what he would fain have found and charge him with saying in his work that which he expressly denies '. After throwing some two score of these projec- tiles, the author looks about for fresh material ; and in fact beats the air rather vainly, until a happy chance brings to his mind the angry complaint of Job, ' Oh, that my enemy had written a book '. Now this was a priceless reminder ; for most Tinhappily for himself the wretched Sabran had perpetrated a book, one, moreover, still green in the memory of men. The Vindicator simply pounces on the opportunity. ' It will please the Generallity of readers ', he says, ' as much as it will gall my 252 Rabies Theologorum adversary to learn that he hath stole the whole of this book, except a single passage or two, out of Na talis Alexandre, a Present writer of the Church of Rome, without once mentioning whence he had it. Another thing is that every one of Alexandre's volumes made use of by this Plagiary hath been condemned to the flames two years before by the present pope and all people forbid under pain of excommunication to keep, read or transcribe any of the same. Therrfore he stands excommunicate for his pains and cannot be absolved by any person but the pope himself. This shews how deceitful a Son of the Church he is, notwithstanding the fine things said by him on behalf of ye Bishop of Rome '. After this knock-out blow, the Vindicator con- descends to answer seriatim the sixteen charges of Popery — not by any means for the satisfaction of the breathless Sabran but for the general well-being and intelligence of the world at large. This attitude or obsession of mind persists indeed throughout the Vindication. Over and over again the author announces : ' I will shew the world : I will declare unto them ', &c. . . . and gibes at the Jesuit for writing ' to amuse the multitude ', as if the whole of Christendom hung upon their lips, whereas it is conceivable that each was the sole student of the other's work. These gladiators of the spirit raised in their conflict such a bewildering dust that they were not conscious the spectators had departed. Thrilled by their own dexterity. Rabies Theologorum 253 they imagined the applause of thousands. If fighting for its own sake were not dear to the human heart we should do well to pity these blind com- batants. But they had their reward. As it is, we are, I think, too ready to cry ' dust to dust, ashes to ashes ' and throw the light earth of our laughter into their quiet graves. VII There is hardly need to prolong the reader's attention over the sixteen lines of defence, for as an apologist die Anglican is dull. Perhaps two of his answers are worth detailing. On the charge of glorifying the saints and wor- shipping their relics he observes : ' It is very well known l3xat not only the Church of England but reformed churches abroad do keep days in Honour or Memory of the Saints Departed, who do at the same time Detest and Abhor the putting up of prayers unto them, or praying to them for to be made partakers of their Merits. There be some who piously believe that the Glorified Saints do intercede for the Church Militant but he that will take pains to look into the Liturgy of the Church of England may quickly see that we do no more than bless God for his manyfold Gifts and Graces unto them whereby they were enabled to be Glorious 2 54 Rabies Th eologorum Examples to the world & strong thewed in any Troubles and fiery Tryals and to pray unto him that we may have grace to Direct our lives after their good Examples '. On the question of relics he admits himself ready to accept the teaching and practice of the Roman Church as it stood in the fourth and fifth centuries, but dissociates himself from the extravagances of a later age, e.g., the doctrine of self-multiplication to which they were driven to explain why the same bones of the same saint were exhibited in twenty different churches. The charge of making prayers for the dead he finds more difficult to rebut : ' As for the Doctrine and practices of the Church of England herself, which I do heartily subscribe to, so far is she from either encouraging or practising prayers for the Dead, that whereas in the dawning of the Reformation in King Edward's first Common prayer book there was a direct praying for the Dead in that prayer for the whole estate of Christ's Church ; in the next version of the Liturgy the petitions for the dead were Quite left out of that prayer and out of the whole service. In the common prayer book printed at London in march 1549 the prayer for the Dead is to be mett with and so it is in another edition in June following in the same year at London ; and in a third Edition of 1551 at DubHn but upon the Revision which was made about that time we find it omitted and Quite left out of the Common Rabies Theologorum 255 Prayer Books printed in 1552 and afterwards down to our times not any useage or revival of that practice among us '. On a following page he adds : ' I cannot but look upon St Ambrose's praying for the soul of the Emperour Theodosius, and his resolution not to leave him tiU by his Tears and Prayers he had brought him unto the mountain of the Lord, where he might enjoy Life for ever- more, as a thing that might very well have been spared since we know by the very same oration that St Ambrose did believe that the Soul of that Emperour was in Bliss, was placed in Heaven, did enjoy at that time perpetual Light and a never Ceasing tranquility, and was admitted into the Society of the Saints in Glory. I have no other defence to make for this extraordinary Action of this Father, than to say that all this was done in a Rhetorical Harangue, wherein the Custom of all times have allowed the Oratours to speak things that were not strict truths and things which they neither properly speaking believed themselves or were desirous that another should '. In final settlement of his opinion he adds : ' I think those that d-ye. in the Lord have no need of our prayers and that those that dye in his Disfavour can receive no benefit by them.' 256 Rabies Theologorum VIII Let us pass on to the author's peroration, for it is time to make an end ; and besides this is written very pontifically and gives an excellent summary of his style and method of abuse. The last flying kicks at the pseudo-dissentar are worthy of regard : * Thus I have gone through and fuUy answered this Large charge of Popery against me, and since he was not satisfied in the Letter to set them only once down, but does for the greater Security of Effecting his design against me repeat them in short before he Ends his Letter I will do the same here by my answers unto them : The first Charge therefore in these Articles about the Pope, and the fourth about Tradition, I have shewn to be as Notorious and Scandalous a Falsification of a mans words and meaning as the greatest cheat in the World can be guilty of ; that the six next can be called popery because all Christians in the world believe it as well as the Church of Rome which is a thing so horridly foolish as no one but he that hath more malice than ■wit or Logick in his head could be supposed Guilty of, and for the Last Six they are most falsely nick- named Popery and most rediculously laid to my perticular Charge, except this malicious Adversary can shew that to make a thing Popery it is necessary that it be Believed and practiced in all Churches that are against as well as for the Church of Rome and that I am the Generality of Christians or at Least the whole Church of England. Rabies Theologorum 257 If ever Rage and Folly Malice and Weakness were equally discovered to the World it certainly was in this wretched Letter, wherein all the care seems to be either to pervert my words, and falsifie my meaning or to put down that as said by me which was not so ; as meant by me, that was not so ; & as said by me in Particular which was common unto all Christians.' Though it works but little change in our conduct, we are taught often to repeat the philosophic maxim : ' What will this look like in a hundred years ? ' How few of the works of men can bear this time-searching test ; and among those that fail what more foolish and utterly vain than the trophies of theological strife ! For my own part, though I have read many an hundred pamphletary conten- tions, I have never failed to remind myself at the end of Baxter's noble rejoinder : ' Whilst we wrangle here in the dark we are dying and passing to the world that will decide all controversies ; and the safest passage there is peaceable holiness '. Some recent owner of this manuscript has altered Crabbe's well-known lines and written at the end : AFTER TWO HUNDRED YEARS Here all the rage of controversy ends And rival zealots rest like bosom friends. An Anglo-Catholic here in deep repose. Sleeps with the fiercest of his Roman foes. THE ENGLISH TOURIST IN 173 1 I HAVE often praised the testator of a certain will I read in Somerset House, who charged his real estate with an annuity of fifteen pounds in favour of his nephew and directed the latter to spend that sum in books of foreign travel. A most rare and enlightened provision, for, as old Des- champs used to say : ^ line scet Hen qui ne va hors '. Neither, for the converse is just as true, does a man travel whose mind is uninstructed. Such do not travel : they merely go from one place to another. They set out simple fools and come back learned fools, with new tricks and preciousness of speech, outlandish habits and depreciation of aU things done in the English way. Those who would ' peregrinate to know the life of states ' must study beforehand, and not only the customs and the manners of the countries whither they are bound, but the foot- prints and the records of those who travelled there before. In idle moments I have amused myself by acting imaginatively as this youth's literary adviser, for fear lest a gift so truly laudable should fail of its effect. One cannot perhaps go far wrong in works of travel, for they all possess something of that variety of scene, that spirit of adventure, that little spectacle of the world which no well-regulated mind can do without. At the same time I should be s •t?'_\'!'^' S^l i ?■ The English Tourist in 1 731 ..259 sorry for any stripling who by accident or perverted instinct were to feed himself for example on Dr Syntax's Towr in Search of a Wife, or Drunken Barnaby's Journal, or that over-luscious classic The Golden Asse of Apuleius. In this case there has been no such misadventure. As the infant's next friend, I have persuaded him to eschew the evil and hold fast to that which is good. By my counsel he already possesses a very choice collection in which you may find Tom Coryat's Crudities, Mandeville's and Lithgow's Travels, Nash's Have with you to Saffron Walden, Purchas' Pilgrim.es, Hakluyt's Voyages, Taylor the Water- Poet's A Very Merry Wherry Ferry Voyage, Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, Howell's Instructions for Foreign Travel, Bolton's General Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God, and many a hundred more. There is, of course, no scarcity of such books through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but in after years, when the fashion of the Grand Tour was declining, the records grow thin and poor. There are, to be sure, the works of Rogers and Addison, and Sterne, but even with them some of the thrill has departed : the glow of actual ex- perience tends to be lost in a veil of literary form. No student can fail to have observed this serious lack of accredited travel-books, and consequently of our social knowledge of Europe through the greater part of the eighteenth century. The honest and 26o The English Tourist in 173 1 particular chronicles of Arthur Young only serve to show what we have missed. That is why I am minded after my decease to supplement my youth's imaginary collection by the bequest of a manuscript I have treasured for some years. It is a volume in quarto, neither stout nor thin, and dad in very weather-beaten veUum. The pages, which number i6o, are in the clerkly hand of Stephen Rust, a merchant in the City, and contain the journal kept by him from July to September, 1731, while travelling through the Netherlands and France. The account he gives of his Continental tour is, I think, the more valuable because it attempts neither flourish of style nor touch of senti- ment. The only direct humour is in the writing of the author's name, which by an admixture of red and black ink gives the appropriate suggestion of old rust. Otherwise you will find a ' plain unvarnished tale ' of what an average well-to-do tradesman of that time saw and spent on his summer holiday abroad. Happily for us, he is as precise in his .'.ccounts as a retail haberdasher. Not a penny is overlooked. The nine-hundred-and-seventy-seven miles which he and his three companions measured cost ^164 IIS. gd. ; and for petty expenses on pictures, night-caps, dog-collars, lignum-vitee spying- glasses, and a Parisian hat, he disbursed the further sum of ^9 3s. 7d. The money-value of everything, the menu at the inns, the modes of conveyance, the look of the crops and of the labourers in the fields — The English Tourist in 1731 261 all these are appraised and benoted to a nicety- through a merchant's critical eye. A professional writer would have missed more than half of what is written here. He would have served up a dish of antiquities in the approved style of itinerant authors ; he would, in a word, have given us a stone when we asked for nothing more than the daily bread of life. But this introduction is long enough. It is time for the reader to rate the merchant's performance at its own worth and from its own words. When he has gone through the following pages, which form about one-fifth of the whole, he shall say if my praise is beyond or beneath the mark. London. Monday 2nd August 1731. Set out at eleven in ye morning in a hired coach to ourselves (cost ^4. 10. o.)from Mr Fletcher Gyle's house in Holbourn with himself and son (a lad of fourteen years) Mr George Talbot a priest, and 'Mr Wandes- ford Gyll, an attorney of Furnival's Inn, for Dover. Shooter's Hill (8 miles). Drank a glass only of wine at ye Starr and then took leave of ye view of London, drove on and by op.e o'clock to Dartford (14) ; dined at ye Bull, was at Stroud (28) and Rochester about seaven, supped and lay at ye Crown. Here is a fine bridge over ye river Medway, an old Cathedral Church, a handsome Townhouse and a house to lodge poor travellers for one night and four pence in money given 'em. 262 The English Tourist in 1731 Tuesday 3rd August. Through Chatham to Sitenbourn (^6) where at eight a.m. we breakfasted at ye George and by twelve reached Canterbury (55). Set forward after dinner and by seaven reached Dover (70). Set up at ye King's Head kept by Widow Austin. Had civil usage. Drank Burgundy wine. Contracted with Captain Da Costa Master of the Marlborough for 3 guineas freight to Calais. The 4th August imbarked at 7 a.m. with an easterly wind which slackened our sail but very pleasant, none of us sick. Loosing ye tide we could not get into ye harbour, so a large boat came off and took us in — but could not land us by a stone's cast for which reason several fellows who wait such occasions waded up to us in their clothes, took us on their backs and brought us and our luggage on shoare by 3 o'clock the afternoone. Great struggle among 'em to get the money which cost us 2/6 a man. We walked up ye sand a considerable way when we were met by ye inkeepers of ye town asking our Company. Calais (91). The soldiers on guard demanding our names and examining our cloake-baggs we were conducted to ye Gbvernour at his house who enquired our bussinyss, where going &c (a matter of Form only). After telling him our designs with great civility, took leave and wee set up at ye sign of ye Citty of London in Prison Street, a French house but very civill usage so stay'd here two days. Drank white wine at 5d and red at 8d a quart, English The English T ourist in 1731 263 money, and eat snipes at 2f apiece but nothing dressed in our manner. Here strong fortifications, Cittadell and Ramparts ; ye Harbour defended by two wooden forts with great guns a great distance out in ye sea^i Visited ye mendicant Fryers at their convent who wear black habits and caps, flanel shirts and no linen of any sort not even the bedding in their cells — shave their heades, eat neither Flesh, Butter, Cheese nor eggs, only Fish and fruits and drink wine ; were extreamly civill. Gravelin (103). Reached here at noone. Set up at ye sign of ye Ihree Children. Dined on fish being Friday viz sowles and other flat fish, a soope meagre and 2 bottles of wine. Here we visited a convent of English Nunns of the order of Poor Clares, their habits coarse brown cloth. Mrs Bagnal their Lady- Abbess conversed with us with extream courtesie and fredome. Mr Burbeck their confessor, a facetious, fat, musical Gentleman intreated us to drink a glasse of wine with him but time not per- mitting we tooke to our Caravan again. Dunkirk (115) Neufort (133) Bruges (157). GhentXi^i). ToUerable good usage. Purchased a book Hesferides ^ for 3/6. ' Probably Herrick's poems under that title, though there had been no reprint since 1648. All through the Commonwealth, however, copies were being sent to France and the Low Countries ; it was a favourite book with the Royalist refugees and brightened many a weary hour. 264 The English Tourist in 173 ^ Antwerp (211). The road to this citty rather heathy on which observed several malefactors hung in chains but otherwise pleasant. After an uneasie tiresome journey in a small cart-like vehicle arrived at seven this evening August nth. Set up at ye sign of ye Citty of Brussells. St Mary's Church is ye Cheefe. A small organ, violins and other musick playing while ye Gentlemen of ye choir were singing Mass. The people giving strickt attendance at their devotions all day and paying adoration even in ye streets to ye Image of ye Virgin Mary on the Pumps. In a grotto beside the Dominican Church is a deep Grate representing what they call Purgatory with numbers of persons in flames with ye utmost agony and despare. Our expenses run high at the place so we stay but two days. Latour, Moredyke then by ferry over the river Maes to Rotterdam (271) in Holland. Set up at ye signe of Count TiirirCs Head. In ye morning being Sunday I tooke a servant of ye house to directe me to ye English Church instead of which by his mis- taking me shew'd me to a dissenting Meeting house. Parting with my guide before I discovered ye disap ointment, was obliged to stay there. Was let into a Pew with much civillity. The Preacher preach'd a toUerable good sermon. Dined at ye ordinary on a dish of Soup, Mutton and Colly- flowers, a Pigg, Chickens, Pidgeons, sausages and The English Tourist in 173 1 265 cabbage a dish of Hartichoaks and a desart of Melons, Peaches, Apricots, Pears, Currence and Filberts and Tarts at a Guelder or 2od English. This afternoone insted of staying to see the Town, as well as to be at their fair which began ye next morning, Mr Gyles moved to proceed to ye Hague on account of a sail of books in which con- trary to my inclination he prevailed. Delft (zj'j). In a church here lies Van Trump, a famous Dutch Admiral, for whome is a fine marble monument with his Effigia lying pendent under which is ships of warr sculptured in Basso Relevio .^ The Hague (zSo). Here met Mr Manby a Book- seller in St Paul's Churchyard an acquaintance of Mr Gyles. Paid 28 stivers a bottle for claret and 4d for a quart of small beer or rather a sort of oat-ale which they call Moll. Saw ye house of our late king William ye 3rd and in one room a set of Tea Equipage in silver which was Queen Mary's. Leyden (290). This being ye residence of the celebrated Dr Herman Boerhaave % Mr Gyll went to consult him for ye Gravill and I tooke ye ^ Pepys writing in 1660 says the tomb is in a church at The Hague. He gives the concluding phrases of the epitaph : Tandem Bella Anglico non victor, certe invictus, vivere et vincere desiit, and adds : ' There is a sea-iight cut in the marble, with the smoake the best expressed that ever I saw in my life'. ^ One of the most celebrated physicians in Europe. Born near Leyden (1668) and died there in 1738. An especial student of Hippocrates. Made Rector of Leyden (1714) and in that capacity gave lessons to Peter the Great. He was made a member of the Royal Society of London the year before this tour. 266 The English Tourist in 1731 opportunity for my asthma. He received us with much respect and asked me ye particular circum- stances of my case with much care and for my fee of a gold Ducat gave me his prescription with great encouragement that I should find reliefe therein. Harlem (302). The cheafe manufacture here is thread stockings. Vast numbers of windmills are seen from the canal and banquetting houses of rich merchants. Amsterdam. Arrived August 14th. Took quar- ters at ye signe of Ye Bible. This large citty has 20 gates and 700 bridges. In the three principal streets near the Amstel Bridge are computed to be one thousand houses rented one with another at ^200 per annum each, built of stone or brick five stories high and ornamented with statues, windows of ye best glass, kept clean and look like crystal for beauty, ye sides of ye houses set with gaily tiles. These houses appeared as clean as if painted yearly and are inhabited by eminent merchants. Ye streets have fine canals running thro' 'em planted of each side with rows of trees and are paved with clinkers. We walk'd on their Exchange and ob- serv'd a vast number of merchants and industry in its full hastie being a place of great traffick pursued with diligence and rewarded with plenty and proffit. No idle beggars seen in their streets. The Theater is under the Burgo-Master's direc- tion — the actors having lixt salaries so that ye nett profitts are imployed towards the maintenance of The English Tourist in ^731 267 their poor. In the evening I went there and see ye Tragedie of Methreiates tollerably performed in Roman habits. Ye screen's good, a large deep stage, on each side ye front a fine statue. No boxes on ye stage, only two sconces which are composed of white glass beeds. On the stage curtain a Beehive. The Musick but indifferent, very few hands, had dancing and singing after a Dutch maner and a farce. Ye Pitt seats stuflEt and back boards to 'em, the price a Guelder. Utricht (331). After much inquiry here our companion Mr Gyles fixt his son at a French Boarding School to learn that language,^ writing accounts, geography, fortifications &cc at 300 guelders per annum. Much grief at parting with his father. I gave him half a guinea. Saw the stone building where ye Grand Peace of Europe obtained by our Queen Ann was treated on and executed. Thence by barge by way of Woerden, Bodegrane and Tergow back to Rotterdam (363). Set up at ye signe of Gilders Key. Met extravagant dear usage there but drank good Pontiack wine at 36 stivers a bottle. At the head of a fine canal in the citty is a curious Brass statue of Erasmus in a doctor's habit turning over the leaves of a folio booke and near it in Kirk Street is the very house in which he was born, built with brick four stories high. It is now inhabited by a little trader in tobacco and brandy. Wee drank a dram of the latter at a stiver. 268 The English Tourist id 1731 I bought seven purple birds-eye handkerchiefs of our landlord at 21/9 english and a pair of grey- worsted hose at a shoppe at 4/1 1, very indifferent. Hired a Berlin coach for 50 guelders to go twenty leagues. Moerdyke (383) by ferry leaving Dort on our left and so by a yatch to Sevenhurgh (399). Dined here on cold chear. A wretched place. We lay on (for we did not venture to stripp ourselves) four Bedds ranged on one side of ye roome like those in Hospitals and so very high that we could not get on 'em but by help of chairs. Much disturbed with swarms of ratts so got up early. We got no breakfast. Antwerp (423) again, 25th August. Here we discharged our fine Berlin which was lined with Crimson Cosoy, side glasses and a whole one before very handsome. Thence by diligence to Machlin (435). The Cathedral has a vast high Tower — 575 steps up to ye Dial each figure being seven foot in length and the Dial one hundred forty four feet in circumference. Brussells (447). Soon after our arrival hapened an Execution in ye great square before their Statthouse of two Malefactors, Master and Man, for coining ; ye latter hanged on a Gibbet at ye end of a scaffold erected for that purpose and the Master after saying a short prayer, attending with two priests, making Obeysance to ye Magistrates, was fastened to a post full of holes on ye scaffold with The English Tourist in 1731 269 a rope round his neck, breast, belly and leggs, with a crucifix and a string of Beads in his hands till strangled ; then thrown head long in his gown and clothes into a chaldron of boil- ing oyle. The Executioner was a well dressed man. Friday 27th. Wee went to see ye Arch-Dutchess (elder-sister of the present Emperor Charles of Germany) who now resides in a Pallace belonging to ye Prince of Orange here) on her return from chapel to the state-roome where she this day dined in Publick. She was dressed after ye Spanish mode with a black silk damask stiff-bodiced gown and long train to it, a gold stuffe Pettycoate with a large hoope, her hair in short curled powdered tressells with a sort of silver gauz headress inset with clusters of Dianionds and Emeralds, a very large pair of emerald pendent Ear-Rings, had lace double ruffles from ye shoulder to ye Elbow and deep-pleated tucker of ye same round ye gown, a Bracelet of jewels on her right wrist. As to her person it is rather Lusty, her c'omplexion fair, a very long chin and on ye whole a plain Lady. About ten Maids of Honour dressed in ye same maner (jewels excepted) in waiting, all excessively painted, her Pages in Spanish short coats with leading strings behind and tufted ribbons round ye knees. Several Gentlemen at Court in rich Brocades, embroadered and lace cloaks. The State Room hung with rich silk Tapestry in which was a crimson silk Damask 27© The English Tourist in 173 ^ trimmed with gold lace Canopy; under this she sat down to dine. Being a fast day had no flesh or fowls but a great variety of fish in different forms, one of which was a cray-fish and green peas together, Eggs and a fine desert. She eat very heartily ; ye ladies in waiting bend ye knee when delivering the cup as observed to crowned heads. Was served in silver dishes and gilt plates. Was about two hours at dinner and is esteemed a very proud woman. When I returned to my company, after dinner an old musical Gentleman came in and entertained us with several songs and with his hands to his lips play'd in imitation of a Bass Viol surprisingly well for a small gratification. An Execution was expected this day of a German for ye murder of his two friends about three weeks past when asleep in their beds for which he is sentenc'd to be broken on the wheell. Thos. Earl of Ailesbury, Viscount Bruce of Ampthill in Bedfordshire, Robert Lord Petre and Catherine Dutchess Dowager of John Duke of Buckingham, and natural daughter to our King James ye 2nd by Catherine Sidley, live in the Sanblon a fine pleasant Square. Mons (477). A vast strong Fortified town with canals, draw bridges and walls in ye Emperor's hands. Was not permitted to view the fortifications. The English Tourist w 1731 271 In one Collegiate Church is a representation of the Resurrection in Basso Relievo on marble the most curious I ever saw. They informed us that, when finished, the Artist had his eyes put out to prevent his doing such another picture elsewhere. On our way thence we saw the place where the famous battle of Malplacket was fought by Prince Eugene and John Duke of Marlboro' against the French. Was strictly examined by Frepch soldiers this evening at our arrival in Valenciennes (498). Wretched lodgings. Nasty house. Prison fare. Cambray (519). Ye Golden Cord — a house of good entertainment after our own way. Manufactures here of fine Cambricks. P^rone (543). Was again examined by Custome house officer who took away from a walking traveller, that kept pace with ye coach, a little tobacco for which they putt him in prison, it being strickly prohibited. I bought here a wooden tobacco pipe — cost 3d. Roye (567). The countrey-people on our way here live miserable hard, women and children with- out hose or shoes, in their smocks and pettycoats but no gowns on, with meagre looks as if half starved and dwell in nasty hovels. Their children from five to fourteen years follow ye coaches begging and singing Jve Mary's and Pater Nostefs for alms. And yet a fine rich arable country ! Observed our coach was guarded by archers? 272 The English Tourist in 173^ having been robbed on ye road about a week before. Pont St Maiscence (600). September 2nd. Put up at ye Rain-deer a large old ordinary house and yet could scarce get Bedds. Supp'd but so-so. Louis 15 the present king lay in this house one night just before, after late hunting in ye neighbouring woods. Vast large woods in which are wild foxes, wolves, &c. Senlis (606). Breakfasted at ye Angel on Tea, Curds wine and Rumbooze each person as they liked, all very good. At seaven o'clock in the evening after seaven days stage of 60 leagues from Brussells arrived at the citty of Paris (630). Took rooms at ye Hotel de Tou^non in ye Rue de Grave at 100 livres or about five pounds for a fortnight. Was attended by several Persons offering their service but we agreed with one John Emery or Hemery, we were not sure which, for I5d a day. Bought a pair of black silk hose at 10/6 and 2 wove-cotton night caps at 2/9 and had our hatts edged with gold lace, cost each 9/7 very cheap but not good. Walked to the English monastery of Benedectine monks remarkable for that our unfortunate King James ye 2nd and his youngest daughter are deposited in a small chapel which is ct)nstantly hung in mourning. The bodies coffined stand under a black velvet canopy with ye arms of England and ermine on ye pall. Was informed 'twas thus preserved and not buried in The English Tourist in 172 1 273 expectation of bringing to Westminster one day or other 1. Near it lyes Sir Francis Anderton ». Proceeded to the Palais Royal belonging to the Duke of Orleans and saw the chamber where the Duke contrived and made the fatal scheme of Missisipi stock in which was a yellow silk damask bed and silk tapestry with the whole story of Don Quixiote represented and Moses in the Bi^lrushes exceeding grand. Now to the Palace of Versailles sure the most magnificent of any in Europe ... [a long descrip- tion follows]. While we were in the gallery, Her Majesty came in dressed in a yellow and silver fishy sack or gown and a black Gauz thin hood, had a black broad ribbon with bow of diamonds on her neck, bracelets of pearls and diamonds on her ^ The body of James II was provisionally transported to the English Benedictine Church of St Edmund in the Faubourg St Jaques. His heart was deposited in the Convent of the Visitation at Chaillot ; his brain was bequeathed to the Scots College at Paris ; while his bowels were divided between the English college at St Omer and the parish Church of St Germains. The corpse remained in its original resting-place awaiting transportation to Westminster Abbey till the first French Revolution, when the coffin was broken up for the sake of the lead and its contents carried away — it was said to be thrown into the/osse commune. * A copy of his epitaph is amongst Dr RawHnson's collection in the Bodleian. It is tiresomely superlative about his ' Christian Virtues, High Constancy and Beneficence as a traveller to Heaven ', and adds of his family that ' it is such none more ancient could desire to be born '. He died at Paris in 1678 and his marble was erected by his ' spouse — a Somerset ', and those ' ornaments of the kingdom ' — his children. T 27^ The English Tourist in lys^ wrists, a fine picture set with diamonds on her left hand, a large ring on each little finger, very large diamond pendant, in her ears — is of middle stature, has a fine white hand aiid arm, somewhat painted in ye face but looks of a very agreable sweet dis- position. A Gentleman of the Court offered to introduce us to the room where their Majesties were to sup that evening in Publick. We readily accepted and came at his appointed time and place. Ye cloth was laid in a large unfurnished roome over a common mean table, on which was set two gold equipages for pepper salt sugar, a knife and fork of gold and gilt plates all covered with rare fine Damask linnen. At ye table was set two crimson velvet chairs for the King and Queen and three stools at each end for the Ladies in Waiting. Soon after from their apart- ments within Their Majesties came. The King set himself on the right hand of his Queen, the Dutchess of Vautedour set at ye upper end, and four other ladies, shamefully painted, in kind of Spanish dresses, at the other end on said stooUs. Behind their Majesties stood Duke Charost Captain of ye Guards and 2 officers of the Household with gold headed staves. The King was dressed in a sad- couler'd silk, suit trim'd with silver lace and his hair put up in a black silk bagg, is a handsome black man of much vivasity in his countenance but not well shaped, he eat very heartily of eggs, fish &c. Ye queen eat but little. She frequently talked to her The English Tourist in 1731 275 Ladies and seemed to take much notice of Mrs Cummins of our party hy reason we thought of her English dress and pea green padisoy suite robed and trim'd with open silver lace headcloths and ruffles and she is a fair agreable woman. We went also to the Dutchess of Vautedour's appartments who is governess to ye Princes and Princesses where we saw the young Dauphin, The Duke of Anjou, and the Mesdames de France caried from thence in rich Chairs to ye Queen. They are fine children but inclined to too much fat and are heavy and not spritely. Took our coach and drove to the palace of St Germain. Viewed the private chapel where our unfortunate King James ye second pay'd his devo- tions while in exile — ^his dining room, his playing room and the chamber in which he dyed. In the adjoining room his youngest daughter dyed. We saw also the queen's apartments and ye room in which she dyed. All the furniture in these rooms now taken down, nothing but bare walls. From thence we took to our coach to see the several vineyards in ye neighbouring villages. We walked among the people as were cutting and putting ye grapes into small caskets. Their way of making wine is emptying ye caskets into a deep wide large tubb or vat then 3 or 4 men go in naked save wooden shoes with which they tread ye grapes till they sink therein breast high. They get the remainder of ye juice by putting it into a large ^1^ The English Tourist in 173' press. It is sold very cheap ifd or 2d a .quart to ye poorer sort of people. The owners of the vineyards are not allowed to have presses but are obliged to bring their grapes to their Seigniour or Lord of the Manor who keeps presses for that purpose for which he takes one twelfth of the produce, and by this means is let into ye knowledge of ye quantity, on which they pay a 57o tax to the king besides a Tyth of one tenth to the Clergie. Another day we walk'd thro' several wards of ye Hosfital de Dieu near Notre Dame Church and observed one, two, three and some four in a Bed, sadly crowded, at this time seven thousand patients. Their manner of lighting the streets here is by hanging up Lanthornes at a proper distance by ropes across from one side of ye road to ye other in ye middle about 20 foot high and are of glass kept very clean ; these and the paving of the streets (which are of square stone like those of the Cockpit London) and cleaning of 'em, as well as the Watch, is all done at the King's charge. Several trades open on Sundays. St Denis (670). Lewis ye 14th lyes in the Cathedral church here in a velvet coffin under a canopy of the same a Pall on ye coffin on which are the arms of France at his feet two lamps constantly burning and to be continued till ye death of the present king as it seems is ye Custome of France. Chantilly (691), Gournay, Cuvilly, Roye. Douay (■/%)• Visited here the Benedictine Monks The English Tourist in 1731 277 in black habits. Wee conversed with their Prior, Mr Warwick of Cumberland, Mr Steers of Cooke's Court London, Mr Will Metcalfe and Mr Knowles of Hampshire who wrote and published a book of vegetables containing 8000 Lattin verses ^. His second Edition on foreign plants 21000 verses not yet printed. They shew'd us a Salter in Manu- script on vellum very curiously wrote and painted, the coulers remain beautiful tho' done in 1307. In the Chapel of the English Seminary here is a curious blue glass in the center of which is preserved the hair shirt of our St Thos a Beckett as a Relict — and another containing Cardinal Charles Barrow's red cap whose body they said is preserved in a cristal transparent coffin at Milan. Lille (814). This esteemed one of the strongest fortified Towns in all Flanders. Wee passed over five great drawbridges to a grand high stone gate with Trophy figures and the statue of Mars on the right and Hercules on ye left. The sentinels on duty saluted us and the Mayor gave us leave to walk on ye Ramparts. The Bastions exceeding strong from whence had a good prospects of ye out workes with a large canal quite round. This vast strong place was designed by the famous Monseigneur ' Gilbertus Knowles' Mattria Medica Botanica, in qua symp- tomata variorum moTborum descriluntur, herbaeque iisdem depellendis aptissimae apponuntur . . . Octingentis, praeter propter, carminibus Latinis hexametris totum opus constat. Londini 1723. Happily, mankind was spared the larger work. 278 The English T ourist in 1 7 3 ^ Vauban, Engineer to ye late king, and esteemed ye best in Europe. On our return we drove by the Town Magazine five stories high and a great length — in case of a siege is filled with corn wine and all proper accomodations for the inhabitants. A funeral procession passed by to St Stephen's Church attended by ten Cannons, four vsdth black vestments and scarlet velvet copes and borders, on ye back a death's head, singing boys with twelve taU large wax candles, the coffin white, covered with a scarlet Pall with a white cross on it. Entering the church all began to sing the burial service and sprinkle ye cofiin with holy water. After the interment the grave was filled up and all retired away homeward. Bethune (838). This is a small fortified tovra on a hill. Stay'd here only the drinking of a bottle of wine. Aire (853). A strong fortified town which suffered much in ye late warr, the old church of St Peter's was almost battered down, only ye choir and one side left standing and but two out of seaven small fine stone altars of Mosaic work done about one thousand years before. Here is an English Nunnery of Poor Carmelites. Mr Talbot, one of our travellers, apply'd to see his own sister a Nunn here of long standing. There was great joy at meeting, but did not observe any liberty of conversation only at ye gate. She was in an ill state of health. Mr Confessor entertained us The English Tourist in ij^'^ 279 with a glass of Burgundy in his chamber where was a print of Father Paul Atkinson aged 73 who was a Prisoner above thirty years in Hurst Castle near the Isle of Wight ^ — also a picture of the Emasculate conception of our Lady as they Express it. In the market place we were told that four souldiers who had affronted their officer were to have their right hands first cut off and then hanged. St Omers (862). This is a strong town. Set up at ye signe of the Golden Door. In the chapel of ye English seminary of Jesuits is kept King James ye second's scarlet coat trim'd with gold lace and his queen Mary Beatrice Eleonora's Embroidered Robes with ermine. Father Polton nephew to him who was appointed by ye said King to dispute with the then Archbishop of Canterbury came to us here and very courteously shewed us everything worthy of notice. Calais (886). Here we paid off our valet John Hemery. Then sent for and agreed with Capt. Westfield, Master of the Isaac and Mary sloope seaventy tuns burthen a prime sailor, at half a guinea a man and a crown over for himself. Was obliged to make several tacks before could get off the French coast. A fresh gale — was very sick. ^ Paul Atkinson (1656-1729), Franciscan friar. After holding several important offices in his order was infamously betrayed to the officers of the law by his maidservant for a reward of ;£icio, under the penal statutes of ii and 12 Wm. III. Apprehended in 1698 and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. 2 8o The English Tourist in i73^ Dover (907), Canterbury, Sittenbourn, Rochester, had fine smelts for supper. Stroud Darfrod — then drove on to the Starr on Shooter's Hill ; stayed drinking a cool tankard and had the agreable pros- pect of London first from this place. Proceeded and by six o'clock on 22nd September arrived at the Cross Keys Inn in Grace Church Street London from vi'hence we took a Hackney Coach home to Castle Yard, I praise God, in good health which concludes the eighth days journey from Paris and nine hundred and seventy-seaven miles, our intire whole travels in seaven weeks and two dayes. A VERY WISE AND DISCREET MAN A HE PRECISE HYPOCRITE IF you were to extract from Earle's Micro- cosmographie his characters of The meere coniplimental man, The meere gull-citizen and The She Precise hypocrite, turn the last named into the masculine gender, and mix the whole together, you would compound a foolish, whimsical being very like the one whose diary, or a fragment of it, follows. How the Jacobean bishop would have loved this man for a model ! In his pithy phrasing he would have pictured him for all time. In fact, though the diary gives a speaking likeness of the living man I feel sometimes as if he were too good to be true ; an oddity from some old book ; a curiosity for collectors ; a piece so rare we shall not look upon his like again. For think, where nowadays, or even in the year of grace 1767, will you find another soul complaining of the city of St Albans that it is ' too gay ' and choosing rather to live at Amersham, in whose streets respectability stalks oii unchecked ? Where will you look for another who falls on his knees in the middle of lunch and begs for divine illumination to decide whether he may drink two, two and a half, or three glasses of wine without damnation to his soul ? It seems to me 282 A He Precise Hypocrite 1 1 ■ ' As if hypocrisy and nonsense Had got th' advowson of his conscience.' And what a conscience ! Poor wretched man, he was afflicted with it beyond all bearing. The poets say that conscience hath a thousand several tongues. He seemed to hear them all confusedly at one time. They drove him to distraction. For ever halting between a hundred opinions he lost whatever activity of mind he had ; and stood irresolutely wondering whether the voices came from God or were the whispered suggestions of the Adversary in disguise. It was conscience, too, that drove him to inflict good morals on his neighbours. And here he became ridiculous. He anticipated the derision of William Blake by carrying the Golden Rule so far that he attained to be the Golden Fool. He was for ever doling out divinity and pestering his brethren with bread-and-cheese advice. It was unfortunate in this respect that he was a pettifogging lawyer— and, worse than that, a lawyer without a practice. His conscience would not let him be idle, and his niggling, legal mind discovered endless occasions to intermeddle with other men's affairs. So you will see him self-appointed as a kind of Public Trustee ; an executor de son tort, as we say, both to the quick and the dead ; which impertinence in Scotch law is more rightly termed a ' vicious intromission '. These then, with an aversion from his wife and suspicion of all his servants, are the essential traits A He Precise Hypocrite 283 of this attorney's mind. The reader may be left to fill in detail from the diary itself. As for his name and how he came by his beginning and his end I have not bothered to find out. These are paltry questions that do not concern a portrait in minia- ture. I am content to leave this untouched, faded though it may be in the lapse of time; for the curves of character are still traceable and quaint enough to please. It is plain from the evidence of his handwriting alone that his body was large and deliberate in all its ways. When I think of it and remember his sanctimoniousness and secret in- dulgence in strong drink I am tempted to steal and apply to him the description of Oliver Cromwell made by a boy at Harrow : ' The Lord Protector had a round face and a very red nose, under which there lurked a strong religious conviction '. On the Eve of All Hallows, 191 2, I was walking along the road between Great Missenden and Amersham when I espied his ghost standing with folded arms and melancholy hat by the gateway of a field. I knew it was he by Jeremiah's prophecy in the Hebrew (his favourite wayside reading) which glowered at me from the pocket of his coffee-coloured suit. Moreover, the attitude was unmistakably his own as, slightly bent forward, he peered through his horn-rimmed spectacles at some farm-lads who were goading a bullock in the way that it should go. I called to him gently lest he should take alarm and assured him that I was a brother attorney and 284 A He Precise Hypocrite bound for the city of St Albans. That was enough. With the guilty gesture of a ghost surprised at large from its tenement of clay, and with one fearful glance at me as though I were accurst, he fled aS only a shadow can, down the road and away. 1786. 26 July. Came to London by the Lewisham stage. Went to Jackson's and bought this book to write my Journal in. Also Dr Jebb's Thoughts on the Constructidn of Prisons. Hired the first volume of Goldsmith's History of the Earth. zjth July. Mr Calamy's servant brought my case. Deliberated whether I should give him anything, for his trouble. Could not determine so he went away without it but appeared to expect something. As I went home thought I saw a chUd playing roughly with a puppy or kitten. Thought of buying it from the child but then thought that by offering too little from ignorance of its price I might be said to have robbed the child. Debated this matter on my return home with some anxiety and had frequent inclinations to return. In the evening walked with Ramsey from Warwick Court to Snowhill ; in the way met a black begging. Past without giving him anything. Asked Ramsey if he had any half-pence. Finding he had none and thinking this might be one of the Blacks intended for the free settlement on the coast of Africa I went back and gave him sixpence. I am apt to be too A He Precise Hypocrite 285 precipitate but hope by the divine help to correct this fault. Sat up till past eleven unnecessarily anxious about the fire. Will endeavour to correct all excess of every kind. zith July. Dined at Dolly's Chop House. Came home to supper. Drank one glass of wine after supper and eat a little bit of meat both contrary to my intention. ^oth July. Rose pretty well this morning being Sunday. I set out to go to the Swiss Church. Went to Soho and though I have frequently been at that church could not find my way to it but after puzzling about for some time was obliged to relinquish the attempt and in returning lost myself and wandered till I came to St Clements or to New Church, I didn't know which it was and so came home. After dinner had thoughts of going to Old Jewry to prayers but while I was debating the matter other matters intervened and prevented me till it was too late to go. Drank some cold water just as I was going to bed which chilled my stomach and forced me to drink a glass of wine contrary to my intention. 2nd August. Went in a coach and dined at Calamy's. Coachman asked me 2/6 as his fare. Thought it too much so took down his number when I gave him the money. Asked Dr Kippis at dinner to tell me the places within thirty miles of London where were Dissenting Congregations. Set them down in my book. 2 86 A He Precise Hypocrite /[th August. Wrote a letter to Williams' three daughters, to go with the books. Read the letter to Miss H lest there should be in it any mode of expression unsuitable. ^th August. Home once more. I must observe how often my horses are fed and how much at a time. Looked in my book of arithmetic to see how many quarts of oats make a peck. Supped early. Had debate in my mind whether it was temperate for me to eat meat. Was hungry. Eat some chicken and drank two glasses of wine. I must take care not to be slack in struggling for entire self- command. 6th August. Sunday. Read the first three chap- ters of Isiah in Hebrew. Struggled in my mind whether I should go to divine service or not as I could not be certain who would officiate. yth August. Carried some books upstairs and began to set my books a little in order which had been disarranged a little when they were dusted. Read Pliny the Younger's Letters. Read also the beginning of the first page of his Natural History. In all these there are things which I cannot make out but I will look at them again. Uh August. Went to visit Dr Jubb. Think I talked rather too fast. Mentioned what Newton says about his having Divine communications when he was engaged in the slave trade. Hope I have not misrepresented him. Think I have not. I greatly fear that a desire of pleasing the company I am in 'A He Precise Hypocrite - zSj too often mixes itself in my motives. I humbly implore the Divine assistance to remove this dangerous propensity. nth August. At supper attempted to read some of Pliny's Natural History. Could not as they were talking. Attempted to drink one glass of wine ; found it quite nauseous and threw greatest part of it away. Looked into Wesley's Magazine — a great mixture of sense and wild enthusiasm, yet I know not how whenever I read his magazines they make my head giddy and my spirits low. iph August. Sunday. On my return from church read prayers to my family. Felt myself much fatigued and exhausted. Eat cold meat for supper and drank three small glasses of wine. This did me good and no harm at al . li^th August. Spent a cheerful day. Drank two half-glasses of Pontiak and two glasse; of port. Had felt a great sinking and exhaustion beforehand. But I will with the blessing of God take care and watch over myself not to be tempted from any bodily situation to commit the lust of excess. iSth August. At night played a rubber or two of Cribbage for nothing as usual. lyth August. After breakfast Mr Disney read several extravagant ghost stories out of Calmet's Dissertation on the Apparition of Angels, Demons, Sac.,"^ a book which on the whole I think a very » A translation of Augustus Calmet's Dissertations sur les ap- paritions dss Anges des Demons et des Esprits. Paris. 1746. 288 A He Precise Hypocrite ■ sensible candid performance especially when I consider it as the production of a Monk. Mr Parkins affirmed more than once that he had seen an apparition of several Beings in the daytime in the air above his head and that some of them spoke to him and that the words seemed to thrill through his heart and that he felt them there rather than in his ears. I said I thought he was deceived. i2)th August. Mr Elliot mentioned a curious invention of a man in London which is a method of copying a picture colours and all in two hours with so strong a resemblance in the copy as to be scarcely discernable from the original. Dined at Chesham. Think I at first talked rather too fast and a little nonsensically but that I re- covered myself towards the latter end. 20th August. Walked to Chesham carrying in my pocket a small Cambridge edition of the New lestame'nt in Greek and the Geneva edition of the Hebrew Bible in four volumes. Read in the last as I walked, two or three chapters in Isiah and one or two in Jeremiah. Met some sheep, thought at first they were strayed but afterwards found there was a shepherd boy with them. After I passed them had several debates with myself whether I ought not to caution the boy against letting them go into the corn fields, the corn being standing in many places and lying cut and unbound in others. Actually turned back and walked near a quarter of a mile back with that intent but could not find the A He Precise Hypocrite 289 boy. Had a debate in my mind whether I ought not to follow him till I found him. Thought it might make me too late however. 26th August. After breakfast Mr Turner, the coal merchant, came. I paid him his bill and at the same time told him that as a near relation of mine had married a coal merchant, I intended to deal with him in future. Mr Turner was very civil on the occasion. 2yth August. Sunday. About twelve I had some broiled mutton intending to go to the two o'clock service but in conversing and one thing or other the tirfie elapsed and I dined at home but went in the evening. Many endeavours made to dissuade me and to deter me from it from a friendly motive but I thought on weighing all circumstances that it was right for me to go^ — and I went. 2nd September. My agent Mr Price would have me to live at home in St Albans but from the account I could learn of it I think St Albans is too gay. I shall think no more of it. 6th September. I think myself to have been cruelly and ungenerously treated by my wife and her friends yet there are parts of my conduct towards her which on cool reflection I greatly condemn. Now my intention is to make every reasonable concession where I have been really wrong as indeed I ought and at the same time to discover if there is any spark of generosity in the other party. 'jth September. Dressed to go to Chesham to dine 290 A He Precise Hypocrite at Mrs Porter's according to appointment. Went a little way and returned two or three times having forgot something one time and to change my waistcoat. All this is Contemptibly Childish. I will endeavour to break through it. At dinner I felt a little as I should not feel, a sort of half inclination to be splenetic. I beseech Almighty God to pardon me and to deliver me from every disposition contrary to true Christian Benevolence. ()th September. Mrs Disney, Miss Rumsay and I walked out late by moonlight just before the house. I believe all three of us have caught colds by it. Before going to bed I copied out my last letter to my wife. 2nd October. I sorted my letters to my wife and hers to me. I tied several of them together and put all I could find into a particular letter box which I intend to use for the purpose of containing her letters and mine and also all letters relating to our unhappy transactions. I pray continually for my dear child, my friends, my country and my enemies. I have found much benefit from constant prayers. THE JOURNAL OF ISAACO I THE time approaches when all the wildness of this little world will be overrun and tamed into the trimness of a civilized parterre ; when the last trail will have been trodden, the mystery of the last forest bared, and the last of the savage peoples penned into a League of Nations to die of unnatural peace. What will our children do then, I wonder, for their books of high romance ? How satisfy their thirst of daring with nothing further to dare ? Who will appease them, when ' The Rudyards cease from kipling And the Haggards ride no more ', when Robinson Crusoe and the classics are once read, and in a hen-coop world no saga-man arises in their stead ? They say that by then we shall have enlarged our borders and gone in our chariots of petrol to visit the wheeling stars. But I misdoubt these Icarian flights. It seems to me more likely that the harassed parents and publishers of those days will be driven earthward to rummage into the lumber of the past and bring out as new the obscure things that a former more heroic age had buried. In those stricken times, I hope someone may have the fortune to light upon my manuscript Journal of 292 ^The Journal of Isaaco Isaaco, a slinij alluring folio that now glitters in red- and-gold upon my study shelves. It would be a pity if Time, the All-Merciless, were allowed to throw the dust of oblivion over these pretty pages, for they possess in good measure that trait of ' pleasant atrocity ' which vnns the attention of youth. But who was Isaaco, and what was his Journal that it calls for the popularity of print ? Those who have followed the harrowing tale of Mungo Park's Travels along the River Niger, in the years 1795 to 1797, and again in the fatal expedition of 1805, will be well acquainted with Isaaco. They will have smiled at his childish tempers, applauded his snake- like cunning, and laughed outright at his heathen superstitions. But the others must be gravely informed that Isaaco was a West African of the Mandingo tribe who was wont for dignity's sake to describe himself as a Mohammedan priest. Cer- tainly he had the pentecostal gift of tongues, for there was hardly a dialect of Bambouk, Fool-adoo, Jallonkadoo, Timbuctoo, and all the other tribes of Senegal and beyond, but he could deceive the wiliest natives in it. Moreover, as a professional guide he found it pay to keep a wife in every petty state. At the worst she served to exercise the tongue ; at the best she was provisioner, geographer, and spy. Never tired, never sick, never at a loss, Isaaco was simply indispensable to the European merchants trading in Senegal. So, indeed, was he to Mungo Park, that doughtiest of Scotsmen, The Journal of Isaaco 293 who dared on through Bambarra and Haoussa where no white-face had ever been. Without Isaaco's genius and gigantic strength, it is unlikely that the second expedition (in 1805) would ever have reached the Niger. It was Isaaco who nursed the forty brave men who one by one sickened of dysentery ; supported them on their mules, even in delirium, when they cried like children for their homes ; and buried them at the last with saphies or charms from the Koran over their unmarked graves. It was he who watched, while the others slept the dead sleep of exhaustion ; piled up the camp fires to scare off the lions and wolves, and, worse than wolves, those thieves and murderers (the scum of Senegal) who ever dogged their steps. None like Isaaco could placate each chieftain with the gift that his soul desired (be it cowries, beads, looking-glasses, muskets, or multi-coloured waist- coats) ; nor when these failed could any but he win passports with the mere honey of his tongue. Nothing could swerve him from honesty or the performance of his task. He was tied to a tree and flogged in the presence of his local wife, set upon by the very white men he was serving, stung all over by a swarm of bees, and mauled in both thighs by a crocodile ; but each time he turned up smiling and ready to go on. Nothing could stop him, for did he not keep the solemn ritual of the guides, sacrificing a black ram at the threshold of every country they entered, drawing the magic triangles and hieroglyphs 294 The Journal o f Isaaco on the sand of every desert they had to cross, and keeping fast in his scrip that lock of a white man's hair, which added all the knowledge of a European to the African natives who possessed it ^ ? II The agreement of Isaaco was to guide the ex- pedition to the Niger, whence it was to proceed under the direction of Amady Fatouma, another guide. Accordingly, when Sansanding was reached, Isaaco's work was accomplished. Some days he lingered to load the great canoe (large enough to carry a hundred men). In the evenings he taught Mungo Park the names of the necessaries of life in the tongues of the countries ahead. Then he took a last farewell of his master and carried back to the coast that famous letter to Lord Camden, the concluding lines of which are engraved below the writer's statue in the city of Edinburgh : ' My dear friends Mr Anderson and likewise Mr Scott are both dead ; but, though all Europeans who were with me should die, and though I were myself half dead, I would still persevere ; and if I could not succeed in the object of my journey I would at least die on the Niger.' * To this day no news has reached England of Isaaco's death, and indeed after all he survived it seems impossible he should ever die. The Journal of Isaaco 295 One by one the months wore on and no news •came from the Niger. But in the next year (i8o^ there began to be rumours of a great disaster. Still nothing definite was heard, and Mjingo Park's wife and his many friends hoped on. They knew his marvellous hardihood, and resource, and that of the stalwart Scotsmen who were with him. In 1810, however, the Government, who were responsible for the second expedition, thought it time to inquire what had befallen it ; so they told the Governor of Senegal to find Isaaco and ofFer him ^^1,000 to explore after the explorer and put all doubts at rest. Now the manuscript which I possess, and of which a pr'ecis foUows, is Isaaco's account of his travels in search of Mungo Park, by which he earned his thousand pounds and did the last sad offices to his master's memory. In my judgment it contains as much of the spirit of adventure as Mungo Park's own journals, and, being written by a native, gets nearer to the life and mind of the African negro than any white man, writing from outside, could hope to do. For that reason I wonder often why the successive editors of Park's Travels have passed it over, printing only the last page or two, wherein Amady Fatouma relates the explorer's end. One thing I know has been against its adoption, to wit, an insufferably dull style. Seeing that it is difficult to be dull in the Arabic tongue, and that it was impossible for Isaaco to be so in any of the tongues he used, I suspect the EngHsh translator (no doubt a mere 296 The Journal of Isaaco clerk in Governor Maxwell's Office) of pruning away the flowers of speech, and making all as prim and exact as an affidavit. Or possibly Isaaco simulated dulness. He meant to have that thousand pounds, and could afford to take no risks. A tropical, luxuriant style would certainly have put his credibility in question. As it was, many of the Learned Societies doubted his word, and one of them roundly asserted that he had sat outside Senegal and fabricated at ease the history of his travels. It was only after Bowditch, Denham, Clapperton, and Lander had explored after the explorer, that Isaaco's credit was established and the Learned Societies put to shame. In the abridgment that follows I have tried to preserve not only the spirit, but wherever possible the very words, of Isaaco's manuscript Journal. Whatever has been discarded is of little con- sequence and of less grammar. Ill Isaaco left Senegal by ship on the 22nd day of the Moon Tabasky (January 7th) in the year 1810 ; but apparently the moon was not propitious, for he was nearly cast away in the lighter, trying to cross the bar, and in the ensuing confusion the larger part of The Journal of Isaaco 297 his baggage was stolen. When he discovered this two days later at Goree and attempted to return, the winds rose and tossed the vessel about for nine days and drove him back to Goree. After some negotiation with Governor Maxwell by courier, the baggage was rescued and sent to Isaaco by road The next few pages of his Journal are difficult and barren reading, bristling with nothing but the uncouth names of places where the good ship passed or anchored for the night, and with the hours duly entered as in a log book, according to the Mohammedan hours of prayer. Sailing by way of Yoummy, Jillifrey, Tancrowaly, and Jaunimmarou, they came on the eighth day to Mariancounda, where Isaaco landed. This was the home of Dr Robert Ainsley, who had so often befriended Mungo Park, fitted him out with the necessaries of life, and started each expedition on its way. Under the same hospitable roof Isaaco lodged for the inside of a week, and then, enriched with the gift of a horse and an ass and twenty bars of beads, went into the wilds to search for the fate of his master. To open the road through Giammalocoto and Tandacounda, Isaaco wisely paid court to the King of Cataba, and showered upon him an old musket and a string of amber of the quality No. 4. The next halt was at Sandougoumanna under a tamarisk tree (Isaaco always notes the trees under which he sleeps). From the shade of this in the early morning he sent presents to the kings who barred the way ; tobacco 298 The Journal of Isaaco to him of Sallatigua, scarlet cloth to him of Man- sangcoije. Three villages on, Isaaco's company was suddenly increased by members of his own family, fleeing before the army of Bambarra — all but his mother who had refused to leave her kraal. Three days later he was with her, in his native place of Montogou, and there stayed forty days, whether carousing, or fighting, or praying he does not say. Then, prudently burying his heavy luggage, he departed, still carrying his people with him — through Moundoundou, where the chief killed a sheep in his honour and was rewarded with a flask of powder — on through Couchiar, a sleepy sort of place by name and situation with a spreading bark tree, beneath which he drowsed the length of a day: — on to Saabic, a village solely inhabited by Maraboos or priests. To gain the goodwill of Allah, he dwelt there a few days, and discovered a relation of one of his wives (no rare occurrence, seeing how many he kept) whose heart he rejoiced with some gunpowder and a gay piece of cloth. At the very next village, Tallimangoly, he fell across another, who cost him three grains of amber. Indeed, it seemed as though his store of pre ents would never hold out, for, no sooner had he digested the sheep his cousin killed for him, than the Bambarra army came up, and with fear and trembling Isaaco must needs dole out a whole heap of stuff — 10 flasks of powder, 13 grains of amber (this time No. i), 2 grains of coral (No. i) | and a handsome tin box. These to The Journal of Isaaco 299 the King. And the King's chamberlain, goldsmith, and singing men had to be tipped as well ^. IV So they paid their way through Sangnonagagy and Saamcolo (where there was a 'grand palaver' to rescue Isaaco's dog, which had bitten a man and been condemned to die), on to Diggichoucoumee, a place as long as its name, which took them four days to get through. It took still longer to get clear of the next village of Dramana, for the family of one of his wives came up and bitterly opposed her going with him on a journey so hazardous. There was another ' grand palaver ' . In the end Isaaco lost his temper and divorced his wife ; and, as the law required her to return what she had received at marriage, he came rather well out of it — to be exact, with a bullock and four sheep. A little further on Isaaco met an Arab with an exceptionally fine mare, which he bought with his wife's dowry and so consoled himself. He found the mare more tract- able than a vsdfe with obstinate relations. After this episode the pace of the party mended. Numbers of villages with unpronounceable names were 1 Isaaco was better able to appreciate their music than Mungo Park. In one item of his accounts, the latter writes : 'To the native singers for singing their nonsense '. 300 The Journal of Isaaco hurried through. The river Senegal was crossed, and a country entered, that of Bambarra, where only women could be found. Every man, even the children and the aged, had gone away with the army. At the ill-sounding place Ourigiague, just beyond, they were royally entertained. A whole bullock was roasted for them. So, too, at Medina, where they were forced to waste twelve days and devour five sheep, because one of Isaaco's servants made off with the aforesaid mare and Isaaco's precious musket. A trustier servant was despatched on his trail. In due time he returned with the mare and the musket, and preferred not to say what had happened to the thief. The petty kingdom of Casso, which they came to next, proved very trying. There were six rivers to cross, full (says Isaaco) of alligators and hippopotami. There was the for- bidding rock of Tap-Pa in the desert of Maretou- mane to get by. And there was the mountain of Lambatara, on the top of which they were attacked by a cloud of bees. Maddened with stings, the negroes ran everywhere ; the mules broke loose and threw their packs down the hill. Poor Isaaco had to collect them all, physick the dying and distressed, and number the living and the lost. At nightfall he slept like a log ' under a monkey-bread tree'. The following day was darkened by an ominous message from the King of the Bambarra. There was evidently trouble brewing ahead. To gain some friendship in the capital, Isaaco decided to bribe. The Journal of Isaaco 301 To Sabila, the Chief of the King's slaves, he sent a pair of scissors, a snuff-box, and a looking-glass, and desired to be his friend. And to his old friend Allasana Bosiara, then ambassador at Bambarra from the King of Sego, he sent a piece of silver ' as a mark of being near him ', and begged him not to leave until he was in safety. As he drew nearer, other signs made Isaaco convinced that ' something unpleasant was planning '. He was refused lodg- ings and water by the chiefs. A friendly merchant who had travelled under his protection was secretly warned to take himself and his goods away before it was too late. Thereupon Isaaco retired to another monkey-bread tree, ringed his little company about with muskets, double-barrelled guns, and assegais and ' waited for what should happen '. The following morning the King tempted them away with the friendliest of welcomes and gave them lodging and water at Wassaba, near the Royal Palace. His suggestion, however, that Isaaco should sleep separately from his people, was courteously but firmly declined. Indeed, Isaaco left nothing to chance. He first fortified the lodgings assigned to him, and then set out to find Sabila. But the King's spies who dogged his steps gave him the wrong directions, and at last he abandoned the quest. It seemed clear that Sabila did not wish him well. The next day the King sent word he would like to see Isaaco. It had to be. Taking his life in his hands, as he had done a thousand times before. 302 The Journal of Isaaco the old guide mounted his horse and rode ofiE to the royal quarters. On the way, a friend whispered to him that he was betrayed ; and on no account must he tell the King that he was bound with presents to the King of Sego ; for there was not a being he hated and feared so much as that monarch, who usurped his rightful throne. ' But ', replied Isaaco, ' he knows already I am bound there. To Sego I was sent and to Sego I must go unless force or death prevents '. Arrived at the King's door, Isaaco was told that he was sleeping (yet another ruse) and that he must remain in the guard-room. It was then about sunset. For hours Isaaco waited, but the King slept on and not a soul of Isaaco's friends in the capital came to relieve his suspense. They knew he was marked down to die. ' The only person ', he writes, ' who came to comfort me was a Griot, that is a dancing woman- On leaving me she went, as I afterwards learnt, to the Ambassadors of Sego and said to them : " Oh ! me, oh ! me, my back is broke (which is an expression of sorrow among the Cassoukes). They are going to kill Isaaco " '. Meantime, as the guard were dancing, singing, and drinking, Isaaco stole out unperceived and made The Journal of Isaaco 303 good use of his time. To the keeper of the inn, with whom he had formerly stayed, and who had some influence with the King, he gave one of his wives' necklaces and seven grains of coral. From him he went to Madiguijou, a Counsellor of State, explained his mission to Sego, and hinted what Governor Maxwell would do if he were put to death. He even crept into Sabila's hut, and told him the same thing ; but the chief of the slaves smiled and promised nothing. Isaaco plied him with more amher No. i but he ' smiled and smUed and still remained a villain '. Then Isaaco thought it wiser to get back into the guard-room, before the drunken soldiers grew sober and looked for him In the morning he played his last card by getting into touch with the Ambassadors from Sego. These distinguished gentlemen were by no means eager to take on the burden of his protection, but Isaaco bade them know that the present which Mungo Park had promised King Mansong, he (Isaaco) was commissioned to bring to their King Dacha, his son. If they were determined to go without him, they might do so ; but whether he lived or died they should hear of it at Sego. That fetched them. They were by no means pleased with the picture Isaaco drew of their suflFerings, and proceeded to save themselves by saving him. As the King their master could simply eat up the King of Bambarra and his army at one swallow, they commanded the release of Isaaco and twenty men to conduct him 304 The Journal of Isaaco on his way. At this peremptory message. King Figuing Coroba found it politic to wake, and sum- moned Isaaco to his presence. The latter obeyed, went through the highest salutations, and proffered a tin box by way of asking : ' Is it peace ? ' But there was no sign of peace. The King suddenly lost his temper, raged at the King of Sego, and, swearing he would seize everything Isaaco possessed, hurled the tin box at his head. Isaaco discreetly withdrew, while Sabila promised to pour oil on the troubled waters. The next day Isaaco, nothing daunted, presented himself with the aforesaid tin box and in addition a quantity of amber, and gunpowder, and the horse Robert Ainsley had given him. Sabila was bribed once more, and the King's singer was won over with a snuff-box. At the sight of his share, the King's anger melted like wax, and he not only gave Isaaco leave to depart that same day, but promised an escort too. . . . Isaaco coolly answered that he was in no hurry and would wait a day or two — an exhibition of nerve that quite astonished the King. ' You see ', he said to Sabila, ' Isaaco appears to be a courageous man. If he had been of a weak-spirited mind, he would have run away and left his things in my hands '. To confirm his friendship, the King called up the heir to the throne, and made him swear protection to Isaaco, an oath which the Prince hinted should be cemented by the gift of a cousaha or shirt. But Isaaco delicately replied that he had none quite clean The Journal of Isaaco 305 enough to present. When he returned to his own country, he swore to bring him a new one. So Isaaco triumphed and returned to his own people, who were mourning him as dead. Nor did he come empty-handed, for he met a man on the way who wanted a priestly charm or amulet (grisgris). Isaaco scribbled an Arabic prayer on a leaf, and received a bullock in exchange. This he slaughtered forth- with, feasted his large family, and made a sacrifice of thanksgiving to his god. VI Three days after this distressing delay, Isaaco set out for Sego, and was brought in safety to the end of the Bambarra dominions. For further guidance he then hired four promising natives, but, having landed the party in the midst of a gloomy forest, they grew superstitious and ran away. ' I was much disappointed ', says the mild Isaaco, ' at their behaviour '. More likely he was speechless with rage *. But there was nothing to do but to press on, and that they did through forest and desert to the lakes of Chicare and Tirium. As they reached * It must be remembered that Isaaco was writing a government report and careful to suppress all sign of indecorum. What a heap of money one would give to possess his private, unexpurgated journal ! X 3o6 The Journal of Is aaco the mud-walled village of Giangounta, one of the fatting pigs, which were to be given to King Dacha, became too fat to carry. Isaaco begged the chief of the vilage to look after it until it could be fetched, but he objected, ' being afraid to take charge of an unknown animal '. However, Isaaco explained all about its ways, wrote a grisgris to ward off all evil, and dumped it on the still-astonished hamlet. Thence over more lakes by canoe, through Toucha, where they found the trees from which African gunpowder was made, and by a great pyramid with a large stone on its head, where the murderous Moors lie in wait. Going by night to avoid them, Isaaco did not till day discover that one of his servants had made off with his box of jewellery and his one and only cousaba. Then he swore as only a Moham- medan priest can, and rode after the thief. In three days he was back with the fdon, whose death penalty he postponed for a time on condition that he carried the remaining pig into Sego. At San- nanba, Isaaco found again the sister and the wife he had left there five years before. He seems to have quite forgotten them ; but they had faithfully waited his return, knowing that nothing would kill him. It was from them that he first learnt that Mungo Park was dead. They had seen Alhaji Beraim *, who had been shewn the canoe in the ' A priest of Yaour to whom Amady Fatouraa, the guide, had given a small present from Mungo Park. The Journal of Isaaco 307 country of Haousa, where Park met his end. How- ever, Isaaco was determined to go on and learn for himself on the spot. So he dismissed his sister with a piece of muslin, took on the wife, and released the prisoner, for (he says), ' I was certain, once in the King's power, he would be put to death '. At Counnow, a little further along the road, Isaaco came upon ' an enormous large tree inhabited by a great number of bats. Another such tree lies on the west of the village likewise full of bats ; but what is most extraordinary, the bats of the east constantly go at night to the west, and return to the east at the approach of day ; those of the west never go to the east. And the natives say their lawful King (Figuing Coroba who had been driven out to the petty kingdom of Bambarra) lies upon the west '. Impressing four men of every district to carry the pig to the next, Isaaco journeyed on through Dedougou, Issicord, and five other villages all deserted. At Yamina, one of the women slaves whom Isaaco had redeemed, and who had followed his expedition, found her long-lost husband. There was much rejoicing and dancing and exchange of presents all round. Then after crossing the Niger at JoUiba, they struck Sego Coro, the ancient palace of the kings, where to that day (and possibly to this) the King resorted when war was declared, to have his amulets prepared, and don his forefathers' armour. There, too, the royal prisoners were wont to be brought for confinement until the fasting 3o8 The Journal of Isaaco moon, and then cruelly murdered in the House of Death. For eight days after it was against the law for anyone to pass the house without putting off his hat and shoes. In the reign of the great warrior- king, Walloo, not a moon passed without the sacrifice of blood. VII The next day Isaaco was summoned to the presence of the King, who scented his presents from afar. Indeed the royal message was concerned onlj^ with the pigs : they were to be brought in the same ingenious manner by which Isaaco had tied them for transit. In this fashion then, with the swine, like peace-offerings, suspended in advance, Isaaco's motley company, begrimed with eight months' travel, came straggling into Sego. Encircled with his companies of guards, ' young, strong and beard- less ', the great King Dacha squatted on the ground. Behind and beside him, standing upright in the earth, glittered the four broadswords which Mungo Park had given. As a sign that he had loosed his hounds of war, the King was dressed in his military coat, shining with countless amulets of gold. In the wild flaming sky burned the remnants of the storm which had just driven him back from Doua- bougou. So squatted King Dacha, and with royal The Journal of Isaaco 309 impassive face, showing no mark of the boiling curiosity within, stared at those unknown animals, the swine. Hard on their heels shuffled Isaaco, himself also on all fours in a deep obeisance. Behind him the bearers of the inevitable bribes : a drumj two blunderbusses, a bed, a piece of scarlet cloth, and a solitary dog. (There should have been another, but it had bolted far back at Mariancounda), Then said Isaaco : ' Maxwell, Governor of Senegal, salutes you and sends his compliments to you. Here is the present your father asked of Mr Park and which he promised to send him '. ' Is the Governor well ? ' asked Dacha. ' Yes ', replied Isaaco, ' he is well and desired me to beg your assistance to discover what has become of Mr Park. We would know if he is dead or alive ', After these civilities they fell to business, and Isaaco bargained for a canoe to row as far as needful down the Niger. The King hesitated over the Governor's oflEer of two hundred bars, for was he not far enough away to break his word ? But when the two pigs got loose and waddled about, he became as happy as a child, and was no more trouble to Isaaco. To confirm his goodwill, he killed a bullock for him, and begged him to remain as his guest throughout the remainder of that moon. After a fortnight's festivities, Isaaco was preparing to depart when the King's mind was suddenly turned another way. A message was brought in that the Prince of Timbuctoo was at hand and desired an audience. King Dacha 3IO The Journal of Isaaco scowled. Then he leapt to his feet, summoned his 600 guards, and went out in full war-paint to meet him. The Prince rode up airily and said : * Being a friend of your father, I thought it my duty to let you know of my coming to take a wife, prom- ised to me in your tribe '. ' And why ', asked Dacha in his dreadful voice, ' why have you permitted the people of your country to plunder one of my caravans, and why did you yourself plunder another ? ' With no more said, the King ^returned to his kraal. It was from others the Prince learned that the merchants of the caravans had denounced him before the King, that his betrothed had been given to another, and that he was in danger of being plundered of his life. With almost indecent haste he despatched three horses to the King, gave pieces of coloured stuff to all the captains of the guards, and slunk back ashamed to Timbuctoo. But King Dacha was so furiously enraged, he could neither stay in his kraal nor allow Isaaco to take leave. Away he rode to Impelbara and Banangcoro, with Isaaco trailing behind, very much out of temper and somewhat out of breath. It seemed, as the chief slave tried to explain, that when the King was angry he pacified himself by visiting his children. Apparently he visited his wrath on them. Isaaco groaned and wondered how many there might be, and in -wrhat score of villages they dwelt apart. But he cheered up when they told him the legitimate The Journal of Isaaco 311 children were six. There had been more, but by an ancient law of Sego if a male child was born of one of the King's wives upon a Friday, its throat was cut immediately. This had accounted for three. After a decent interval, Isaaco made it known to the King that he also was very angry and demanded to have his canoe and go after Mungo Park. The King then sent for him, apologized for forgetting all about him, and pointed in justification to the pigs, which, like a good father, he had brought along to please the children. He himself could hardly keep his eyes off such fat and unusually happy creatures. The next day Isaaco pressed the bargain, and, though it was Friday, steered away in the King's canoe for Sansanding, where he had parted from Mungo Park. And then, with the prospect of hundreds of miles in hostile country before him, he had a stroke of good fortune, for in the next village of Medina, whom should he run against but Amady Fatouma ! As one might expect, Isaaco nailed him to the spot with a hundred questions. Poor Amady began to weep. ' They are all dead ', he sobbed. Isaaco demanded to know when and where and why. ' They are all dead ', the guide repeated. ' They are lost for ever. It is no use asking. It is no good looking for what is irrecover- ably lost '. Like a sensible man, Isaaco checked the ardour of his curiosity. It certainly was hopeless to ply Amady with questions ; his tears threatened to flood the Niger ; it was not safe to stay there. So 312 The Journal of Isaaco Isaaco gave him a day or two to subside, and arranged a meeting higher up the river. VIII Amady's tale has often been printed, and there is no need here to repeat anything but essentials ; his padding is even more woolly than Isaaco's. In the great canoe ^, which Isaaco had helped to load before departing, Mungo Park rowed away on November r7th, 1805, with the survivors of his company of forty, namely, four white men and five negroes, including Amady, for crew. From the very outset the voyage proved unpropitious. Almost every village they passed on the river bank came out against them in canoes, armed with bows and arrows, pikes and assegais. Each member of the crew kept fifteen muskets in action ; to kill and kill was the only chance of forcing a passage through. There was no Isaaco to try the magic of conciliation. Once indeed, when they had beaten off sixty canoes with appalling slaughter, Amady ventured to remonstrate. 'Martin ', he said, taking hold of his arm, ' let us cease firing : we have killed too many ' Mansong had sold it to Park for a quantity of firearms. It was half rotten and took eighteen days to make water-tight. Forty feet long by six broad and flat-bottomed. They christened it ' His Majesty's Schooner Joliba '. The Journal of Isaaco 313 already'. 'On which', he comments, 'Martin wanted to kill me and would have done so had not Mr Park intervened '. The troubles thickened. The news of their coming had evidently been spread in advance. Just beyond Gotoigega they encoun- tered a whole army, comprised of the Poule nation, such beasts themselves, that (says Amady) they possess no beasts of any other kind. They were suffered to go by in an ominous silence — only to fall foul of a squadron of hippopotami, who nearly washed them over. At an island just beyond, Amady was landed to forage for milk ; but there was no milk to be had, not even the milk of human kindness. The natives took him prisoner and decided he should be done to death. But Mungo Park was watching ; and by a fortunate chance two canoes full of natives, bringing fresh provisions for sale, had come alongside at that jnoment. Mungo Park made it abundantly clear that he would kill every man-jack of them if a hair of Amady's head were touched. So the prisoners were exchanged. It was a narrow escape for Amady ; and the uneasiness it caused was increased by the constant cries from the shore, ' Amady Fatouma, how can you pass through our country without giving us anything ? ' 'I seriously promised ', he observed, ' never to pass there again without making considerable charitable donations to the poor '. As they came to the frontiers of Haousa another large army of Moors watched them from a mountain. Fortunately they 314 The Journal of Isaaco had no fire-arms, and could do no harm. On reaching Yaour, the first place of any size in Haousa, Amady was landed, as his bargain was to bring the party only so far. In addition to his pay, he conveyed Mungo Park's presents to the King, but, instead of delivering these in person, gave them to the Chieftain of Yaour, who promised to forward them. A little slip, it seems, but fraught with deadly consequence. The Chieftain, finding out from Mungo Park that he did not intend to return that way, determined to keep the presents for himself. The next morning, as Amady was paying his court to the King and expecting the presents to come, two horsemen rode in from Yaour and said : ' We are sent by the Chief to let you know that the white men went away without giving you or him anything. They have a great many diings with them and have given nothing. This Amady Fatouma now before you is a bad man, and has made a fool of you '. Poor Amady was forthwith put in irons and all his goods consficated, with the exception of his Arabic charms, which they dared not touch. The next morning the King sent his army to Boussa and posted it on a rock which straddled the width of the river, leaving only a narrow opening for the current to race through. Mungo Park, seeing the danger, nevertheless resolved to force a passage. But the odds were terrific. It took half the men to keep the canoe moving against the current, while the rest fired at the enemy as they hurled stones and The Journal of Isaaco 3^5 assegais upon their heads. At last the two steersmen were slain, and the canoe went adrift. In a desperate attempt to lighten it, they cast all the baggage into the river, but still could make no headway. Overpowered by numbers and fatigue, and widi no chance of killing a whole army, they saw but one hope of escape — namely, to make for the shore and get away into the bush. Taking hold of one of the white men, Mungo Park leapt into the river, Martin, with another white man, following after ; but, fine swimmers as they were, the current proved too strong for them and all four were drowned. The one negro left in the canoe sur- rendered, and both he and the canoe were dragged to shore and carried to the King. After being kept three months in irons, Amady was released and in part consoled with a concubine. But he made it his first business before departing to visit the slave taken in the canoe, and learn from him the sad details of Mungo Park's destruction. The only thing that was found in the canoe after its capture was a sword belt which the King used as a saddle-girth for his horse. IX Such was Amady Fatouma's tale, that Isaaco had journeyed for nine months to hear. And as he was a 3^6 The Jou rnal of Isaaco ' good, honest, and upright man ' and had sworn truth upon the Koran, there was nothing to do but believe and carry back the mournful tidings. To make ' assurance double sure ', Isaaco sent a native to Yaour, who bribed a slave girl to steal the sword belt from the king's charger. Then, passing home- ward through Sego, he told the news to Dacha, who was so furious that he despatched his army to wipe the country of Haousa off the face of the earth. But Isaaco set his face for Senegal, to exchange his Arabic Journal for a thousand pounds. PORTRAIT OF THE PROTHONOTARY APOSTOI,IC JUI.IANO, BY I,OTTO THE PROFESSOR IN WAR-TIME THE lot of a man of letters in war-time might almost call for pity, if pity itself were not otherwise employed. For in a world , gone mad it is accounted pretentious to be sane. To preserve an academic air and that detachment which is the atmosphere of art, if it were possible, would still be held inhuman. Moreover, the impulse to create has gone ; when everything is being destroyed it no longer seems worth while. At the first stroke of war our pride of intellect crumbles to the dust, for is not war itself the annihilation of all thought ? There is no one to heed what we shall say. We are suddenly discovered to be of no account. Our talents have no application to a style of war which tends increasingly to become a simple problem in mechanics. The pen is as futile as the sword. In the old far-oflE and less unhappy days when wars were confined to a small professional class, the artist might retire within himself and follow his own bent. Then could he go on scribbling his pretty story in blue ink, while History wrote hers in red. But now the whole nation goes out to war. The insignificant residue has, if anything, the more hideous part, that of watching the world, its own world, the only world it is sure of, reeling to destruc- tion. Nor is that other world immune which the 3 1 8 The Professor in War- Time man of letters inhabits. One by one his gracious divinities depart. He is forsaken of the Sacred Nine. The holy wells of inspiration fail. The frontiers are overthrown by the Philistines. The voice of the Serjeant is heard in the land. And a cry goes up from every coast that the great god Pan is dead. The artist stands confused and impotent between two worlds laid waste. He has a heart that throbs with the accumulated agonies of human- kind, but no longer a head to contrive or a hand to execute. I have a manuscript in which this psychology of war-time is strikingly exemplified. It was not born in the travail of the present time, but in the terror of that last convulsion of the human race which followed the birth throes of the Revolution. For profit or distraction a professor of English literature seems to have undertaken a study of the unfruitful period from Chaucer's death to the birth of Mar- lowe's muse. A Miscellany of little men. One could hardly wish a theme more pedagogic and remote. Yet even here in these peaceful haunts the unpeace of Europe intrudes. The writer finds it impossible to concentrate his thought. He is cooscious all the time of the tempest over the sea, The Professor in War-Time 319 which threatens to break with its fury upon the shores of England. His pen, left to its own vagaries, commits such irresponsibilities as this : ' It was in or about the year 1430 that Lydgate attained his greatest ignorance '. Poor Lydgate ! it was very much what happened, but rather cruel to make it widely known. These lapses grow more frequent until the manuscript is thrown aside and the writer goes — who knows ? — perhaps to fire off a musket in the war with France. The last few pages, indeed, pass abruptly from the consideration of Queen Elizabeth's translation of the Hercules (Etcsus of Seneca (* whose only recommendation is its royalty ') to the ' accumulated distresses, the un- paralleled atrocities which make every reasonable being look with horror at Revolutions and feel the most active energies to support the system that protects them from external attack and internal enemies '. ' The system of Fraternization which France has held forth to the discontented or unprincipled subjects of every nation in Europe ', he notes down, ' has been attended with very dangerous effects in the surrounding countries, and occasioned no small alarm in our own, till the spirit of individualism by forming patriotic Associations, and the energetic wisdom of the Ministry in proposing laws to the legislature to overawe and terrify the malcontents into an unwilling tranquility has dissipated the general apprehension and restored the public 320 The Professor in War-Time confidence in our Constitution '. And finally he adds in words which might be used with still more force to-day ^ : ' Great Britain has long been the Arbiter of Europe and is now adding another and more distinguished title by becoming the Preserver of it.' II Quite apart from ' wars and rumours of wars ' this scholar would seem to have been easily dis- tracted. He possessed what may be termed the kangaroo-brain, for ever eager to leap off at a tangent and escape the dull routine — a trait without question unprofessorial but not without a certain charm. Here especially it pleases, for often when the theme leads to a desert place he wiU pluck you a flower from his commonplace book and set it in the midst. One smiles at the inconsequence and loves it all the more. Perhaps these innocent alleviations are the most memorable things in all the manuscript. For example, after some arid pages on Aristotle and Arabian philosophy, he harks back to English Literature by saying that the first striking-clock seen in this country came as a present from AbduUa, King of Persia, in the year 800 a.d., and, as if that were not sufficient to establish the transition, he reminds us that, when King Henry V embarked for ' This was being written in the year 1916, The Professor in War-Time 321 his second expedition into France in 1447, his ship was furnished with sails of purple silk richly em- broidered with gold. Again, he is moved, goodness knows why, in the very middle of his discourse on the poet Gower, to inforiji us that the physicians of Paris were not allowed to jnarry till the year 1452. A few pages later John Norton and George Ripley, two didactic poets on chemistry of all unlikely themes, come up for critical review, and the task proves so dry that the prpfessor is reminded of a medieval receipt for the brewing of cyder. This indulgence leads on to most woeful aberration. Throwing his syllabus to the wind, he commences a long discussion upon the chastity of nuns, and the test which the Bishop of Lincoln employed in his pastoral visitations. From this he springs to the question whether organs were used in the Saxon Churches, and from that again, by a kangaroo-leap over four centuries, to a description of the emperor's library at Constantinople in 380 a.d. and the ' famous roll, one hundred feet in length, made of a Dragon's gut or intestines on which the Iliad and Odyssey were written in characters of gold '. Ill There is something fresh and almost modern in the general tenor of this work ; for, even where he condescends to the treatment of his theme, the T 322 The Professor in War-Time professor employs the same personal note, and picturesque appreciation that characterize the divagations. Schools and tendencies his soul abhors. He will not allow the dust of deliberate criticism to lie upon his pages. There is, to be sure, a slight sprinkling of Boileau and our English Pope, but only to blind the eyes of the elect. For the rest and at the outset he makes his romantic preferences plain. ' There are ', he writes, ' extravagances which, however they may wound propriety, cannot but delight ; there are incredibiUties that are more acceptable than truth and there are fictions which are more valuable than reality '. I fancy he would have given but a qualified assent to our modern definition of criticism as ' the adventures of the soul among masterpieces '. If you are out for adven- tures, he would have urged, you must seek them not on the highways of literature, for these have been surveyed to dulness and too safely hedged-about, but the byeways, crooked and perverse, leading at their own whim perhaps to nowhere at all, are still ' rumourous of old romance '. For his own part the professor follows the gleam most gladly in the black-letter chronicles of his chosen age. He is, perhaps, too willing to put off the academic air and plunge headlong into these fabulous histories — and almost unconsciously he falls himself into that superabundant diction, which was not unbecoming in the Decorated period that they adorned. Hall and Baker, Holinshed and The Professor in War-Time 323 Harding, are always at his elbow, but perhaps Fabyan is the favourite : ' esteemed not only for the most facetious but the most learned of all the Mercers Sherriffs and Aldermen of his time. The best of his metres is the complaint of Edw. 2nd. As an historian he is equally attentive to the suc- cession of the Mayors of London as of the Monarchs of England, and seems to have thought the dinners at Guildhall and the pageantries of the city com- panies more interesting than our victories in France and our struggles for public liberty at home. In the not unimportant reign of Henry V he records as a leading event the fact that a new weathercock was placed on the cross of St Paul's steeple '. And again he brings the Nut-Brown Maid into his discourse, not by any means for the flavour of its poetry, but for the sake of describing the odd rummage of a chronicle in which it first appeared, to wit, Arnold's Chronicle or Customs of London, first printed about 1521^ — the most heterogeneous and multifarious miscellany that ever existed. The collector sets out with a catalogue of the customs and charters of the City of London. To these succeed recipes to pickle sturgeon, to make vinegar, ink, and gunpowder ; how to raise parsley in an hour ; the art of brewery and soap-making ; an extract of the livings in London ; an account of the last visitation of St Magnus Church ; the weight of Essex cheese, and a letter to Cardinal Wolsey. The Nut Brown Mayde is introduced between an 324 The Professor in War-Time estimate of some subsidies paid into the Exchequer and directions for buying goods in Flanders. IV At times, however, he can turn his mind to something very different. I have often stayed in my reading to admire his pithy criticism of the Confessio Aniantis : ' A dialogue between a lover and his sconfessor in which, with a true Catholic spirit, Ovid's Art of Love is blended with the Breviary '. Nor is his judgment of Wyatt out of the way : ' He has too much art as a lover and too little as a poet. His gallantries are laboured and his versification negligent '. That the professor can show charity as well as discrimination is plain from his words on Marlowe's prostitution of his Muse : ' His wit and spriteliness of conversation had often the unhappy knack of tempting him to sport with more sacred subjects ; more perhaps from the pre- posterous ambition of courting the casual applause of profligate and unprincipled companions than from any systematic disbelief of religion '. The professor, it should here be observed, employs some curious standards for the appraisement of the poets. He has a hearty dislike of the mere metrician or professional spinner of rhymes. A poet to his thinking should be a man of many parts and The Professor in War-Time 325 only by accident a poet. The ideal is the courtier, the statesman, the soldier, who toss off a ballad impromptu in a breathing space of battle, or waiting for an audience of the King. Thus he is led to commend William Hunnis as a poet, chiefly, I think, by reason of that ruffian's kaleidoscopic career. Just listen to his titles of honour and dishonour : Gentleman of the Chapel Royal to Edward VI, attempted assassinator of Queen Mary, robber of the public treasury, debaser of the coin, member of the Grocers' Company, Custodian of the gardens and orchards at Greenwich, and collector of dues of wheelage and passage over London Bridge. The professor seems to think that Hunnis' verses have in them a certain polychromatic iridescence, as if shot through with all the colours of his life's diversity. Beside the rainbow-world of such a poet, the single- minded devotion of Spenser pales into a tame white light. The professor is, perhaps, wise not to submit his theory to the test of long quotation, for in truth Hunnis' masterpiece, The Seven Sobs of a Sorrowful Soul for Sin, moves one almost to tears — not of repentance, be it said, nor of rapture, but of in- expressible boredom. I like better that last will and testament of his which he wrote in rhyme upon a fly-leaf of Sir Thomas More's Collected' Works : ' To God my soule I doe bequeathe, because it is his owne, My body to be layd in grave, where to my friends best known ; Executors I wyll none make, thereby great stryiie may growe Because the goodes that I shall leave wyll not pay all I owe.' 326 The Professor in War-Time The poet Skelton is approached from much the same direction. One would have liked some dis- cussion of the Skeltonian skipping-metre, which at times seems flexible enough and full of vigour, but now and again betrays the bard to most loquacious doggerel. A critic, too, should tell us whether to believe Puttenham that he was ' a rude rayling rimer ' or Erasmus who held him up to the world as ' a light and ornament of British literature '. But the professor inclines rather to tell whimsical stories of Skelton's enmities at court and his clerical indiscretions in the pulpit at Diss. There can be no question of his genius, argues the professor, because King Henry VII avowed it openly and bestowed on the poet a dress of white and green, embroidered in silk and gold with the word Calliope. But I fancy his best chance of surviving in the memory of men lies in a story the professor neglects to tell. It appears that Skelton, whose morals were almost as free as his metre, was called to account by his bishop for living in concubinage with a woman by whom he had many children. When his parish- ioners alleged in support of the charge that he was the father of a boy recently born in his house, he confessed the fact in the pulpit the next Sunday, and, exhibiting the naked child to the congregation, asked them naively enough what fault they had to find with the infant, who, he declared, was ' as fair as the best of all yours '. The Professor in War-Time 327 Just as the professor would have the poet be anything but all a poet, so he would have the priest be anything but all a priest. With manifest complacence of mind he traces the gradual secular- ization of the clergy from the time of Charlemagne onwards, due first of all to the crusading spirit and the employment of clerics in civil affairs, and later to the effect of the Neo-Classic revival. Turbulent spirits, like Bishop Odo of Bayeux or Grosseteste of Lincoln, are his great delight. He is pleased at their way of chastening canons, kings, and citizens alike — and of persuading men to seek the kingdom of heaven by giving them hell upon earth. He has an almost equal admiration for those catholic spirits who help out the Scriptures with the teaching of Plotinus, and for those again who merchandize ad majorem Dei gloriam the relics of the saints. All these conform to the golden rule of virtue in diversity. The perfect priest to this view would be a pluralist, not in livings but in lives. Not by mere charity of mind should he fulfil the Apostle's words but by experience of actual life be all things to all men. The professor's pen kindles readily to this theme. He depicts the establishment of the Knights Templars, ' a body of armed monks who had engaged to live both as anchorites and soldiers '. 3^8 The Profissor in War-Time He gives a lively portrait of medieval bishops ' performing their hunter's mass at the altar, booted and spurred for the chase and with hawks upon their fists '. And he praises the French people for the honour they do to St James by creating him a baron. The words of old Froissart are deeply underlined : ' Ou eurent-ils affection et devotion dialler en pelerinage au Baron Sainct Jaques '. The same people please him by their simplicity about the Scriptures. ' So little did they know of the Bible in the early centuries that, when some writer translated the Books of Kings and the Maccabees into their tongue, they received them as stories of chivalry and nothing more '. The popes seemed mainly employed in getting the best of both worlds in literature as well as life : ' While Leo was anathematizing Luther he published a Bull of excommunication against those who should censure the poems of Ariosto, and it was under his pontificate that a perpetual indulgence was granted for re- building the church of a monastery on the ground that it possessed a manuscript of Tacitus '. So the monks of Chaucer's day may have had but a scant acquaintance with the Bible, but as bibliophiles they could hardly be surpassed. What loving care they gave to their manuscripts, what sacrifices to possess them ! The brethren of Sithiu, so the professor relates, petitioned the Emperor to have the right of hunting through the adjoining de- mesnes, and pointed out for a sufficient reason that The Professor in War-Time 329 they would by that means obtain leather in plenty for the binding of their books. Good bindings were well warranted in those days, for the price of a book was more than th^ price of a man. One is astonished to see how scarce they had become. ' The paucity of "books ', notes our author, ' arising from the destruction of the libraries, particularly the in- valuable ones of Italy by the Goths, obstructed the Revival of Letters. Towards the close of the 7th century the papal library at Rome was almost destitute of books. At the beginning of the loth century one copy of the Bible and St Jerome's Epistles served several convents in Spain ^. The library at Oxford, before the year 1300, consisted of only a few tracts, chained or kept in chests in the choir of Saint' Mary's Church. In 1432 the library of the Grey Friars in London was filled with books at the expense of ^£556. In 1482 Leicester Abbey library contained eight large stalls of books. Who- ever lent a book in these early periods took a security for its safe return. It was also common to lend money on the deposit of a book. At the beginning of the fourteenth century there were only four 1 One remembers that Dr S. R. Maitland (The Dark Ages, p. 221) quarrels with the statement which he found in more or less similar terms in Fleury and Wharton. He explains that old Gennadius, Bishop of Astorga, thought fit after dividing many other books among four monasteries or oratories which he had founded in his diocese to give them his bible (in his gift referred to as ' hibliothecam totam ') as part of a circulating library. It is not fair, he urges, to assume from that a scarcity of bibles and other books. 33° The Professor in War -Time classics in the Royal Library at Paris — one copy each of Cicero, Ovid, Lucan, and Boethius ; the rest were chiefly books of devotion and treatises on astrology, cheiromancy, medicine, etc., translated from the Arabic. The whole consisted of 900 volumes Such was the price of books in the Middle Ages that in 1 1 74 Walter Abbot of Westminster purchased of the Monks of Worcester Bede's Homilies and St Austin's Psalter for twelve measures of barley, and a pall on which was embroidered in silver the History of St Birinus. About 1400, Meun's Roman de la Rose was sold before the Palace Gate at Paris for forty crowns, or ^33 6s. 6d. VI Apart from the mere preservation of books, the close association of literature and religion at this period proved a benefit to neither. Literature especially suffered, for she was the inferior associate — less an ally than an handmaiden or even bond- servant of religion. When not shackled with the fetters of Latinity (which it was old Asham's glory first to break), the strength and genius of the English language was requisitioned to make sport for the Philistines. She had Samson's revenge never- theless, and staggered the world by bringing down The Professor in War-Time 331 upon her taskmasters' heads the House of Fame which twelve centuries had hardly sufficed to build. With an unsparing pen the professor reveals the unwisdom of the Church. First of all the clergy must needs grow discontent with their venerable liturgy and, like the Athenians, sigh for some new thing. The homilies were given to them as a compromise, but they preferred to make discourses of their own and garnished them sumptuously with ignominia seculi such as the fables of iFsop and questionable tales from the Gesta Romanorum. A worse innovation succeeded in the Mystery plays, debased and feeble imitations of those heathen masterpieces which the Church in the time of its wealth had affected to patronize. No doubt these spectacles pleased the people hugely, just as the Church-ales and the boy-bishop revels had done before, but the loss of decency and reverence they caused has never been recovered. ' To those who are accustomed ', says the professor, ' to contemplate the great picture of human follies which the un- polished ages of Europe hold up to our view, it will not appear surprising that the people who were bidden to read the events of the sacred history in the Bible in which they were faithfully and beauti- fully related should at the same time be permitted to see them represented on the stage, disgraced with the grossest improprieties, corrupted with inven- tions and additions of the most ridiculous kind, sullied with impurities and expressed with the 332 The Professor in War-Time lowest gesticulations '. He then proceeds to damn them, as it were, out of their own mouths or rather by the simple statement of their titles, e.g., The Goodly Stage Play of the Passion of Christ, which was performed at the Grey Friars in London on Corpus Christi day before the Lord Mayor, the Privy Council, and many great Estates of the realm. Another esteemed mystery bore the following name : Anewe Merry and Wittie Comedie or Inter- lude newlie imprinted treating the History of Jacob and Esau, and contains that homely sentence which the Professor should have noted : ' The pottage was so good that God Almighty might have putt his finger in't '. While some of our poets were set to hack-work of this kind, others were employed to put a rhymester's polish on the Psalms or versify the Articles of Belief. ' At the beginning of the Reformation, edification and rhyme were closely connected, so that almost every part of the Scriptures was turned into verse by the zealous poets of that period, who from principles of unfeigned piety darkened the lustre and enervated the force of the divine pages by a species of poetry which impoverishes prose. Bale mentions a comedy called The Whore of Babylon, composed by Edward VI ; and his short reign abounds with religious pasquinades on both sides. They were often basphemous as well as violent. Even the doctrine of transubstantiation was lam- pooned and defended in ballads '. The Professor in War-Time 333 The account of Sternhold and Hopkins, which follows, deserves to be quoted in full. VII ' Calvin at this period was framing his new Church at Geneva in which the whole substance and form of divine worship was reduced to praying, preaching, and singing. For the latter purpose he adopted the Psalms of Marot, the favourite poet of France in the reign of Francis the First. They were adapted to plain and easy melodies which all might learn and in which all might join. As it was Calvin's system to strip religion of all that adorned it whether of external show or ceremonial solemnity and to banish everything which employed the senses, it might be asked how he could reconcile the use of singing, even when purged from the corruptions and abuses of popery, to so philosophical a plan of worship. But a new sect always draws the converts from the meanest of the people who can have no relish for the more elegant externals. Calvin also knew that it was necessary to keep his congregation in good humour by a kind of pleasurable gratification which might enliven the attendance on the mere rigid duties of praying and preaching. He therefore permitted an auxiliary exercise to devotion which might engage the affections without violating the 334 The Professor in War-Time simplicity of his worship, and availing himself of that natural propensity which prompts even vulgar minds to express their more animated feelings in rhyme and music, he conceived a mode of universal Psalmody not too refined for common capacities and fitted to please the populace. The rapid propogation of Calvin's religion and his numerous proselytes are a strong proof of his address in planning such a sort of service. France and Germany were instantly infatuated with a love of Psalm singing, which being admirably calculated to kindle and diffuse the flame of fanaticism was peculiarly serviceable to the purposes of faction and frequently served as the trumpet to rebellion. This infectious frenzy of sacred song reached England at the very critical point of time when it had just embraced the reformation and the new Psalmody was obtruded on the new English Liturgy by some few officious zealots who favoured the discipline of Geneva. Thomas Sternhold, whose metrical ver- sion of the Psalms was the first used in the Church of England, was a native of Hampshire and probably educated at Winchester College. Having passed some time at Oxford he became Groom of the Robes to Henry the Eighth, whose favourite he was. He had the same zeal, tho' not the same success, as his fellow-labourer, Clement Marot, and it is a singular circumstance that vernacular versions for general use of the Psalter were first published both in France and England by laymen, court-poets and servants of The Professor in War-Time 335 the King. Marot versified 50 Psalms, Sternhold 51, John Hopkins, a schoolmaster, 58, and Thomas Norton, a barrister, 27. . . . But every attempt to clothe the sacred writings in verse WiW tend to debase the dignity of the original. It was certainly not honour or ambition for literary fame that provoked such an enterprise, but motives of piety and a compliance with the cast of the times. The Psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins are poor, incorrect and disgusting, not to say ridiculous : Ps. Ixxiv, 12 : Why doost withdrawe thy hand aback And hide it in thy lap ? O pluck it out and be not slack To give thy foes a rappe. Ps. Ixviii, 7 : When thou diddest march before thy folk The Egyptians from among And brought them through the- wilderness Which was both wide and long . . . Ps. Ixx, 3 ; Confound them that applye And seke to work me shame And at my harme do laugh and crye So, so, there goth the game.' vni After this depressing dose of religious doggerel the • professor sets out to enjoy himself. The 33^ The Professor in War-Time Otia Imperalia of Gervase of Tilbury (1427) supply him with five jests and a dozen wonders. Still un- satisfied, he plunges headlong into Mandeville and the tales of chivalry, and only smiles at Posseyin the learned Jesuit's complaint that ' for the last 500 years all the Courts of Eujope have been infatuated by the reading of romances, and the Devil himself hath instigated Luther to procure a translation of Amadis from Spanish into French for the purpose of facilitating his grand scheme of overthrowing the Catholic religion '. When he has slain a hundred dragons and rescued a thousand damosels in distress, he takes up the poems of Thomas Rowley, a secular priest of Bristol (/?or^fli circa 1470), and in the midst of his declamation and delight never dreams them to be red-hot forgeries from Chatterton's mischievous brain. With Richard Edwards, the Elizabethan, however, he is on surer ground. For his contributions to The Paradise of Dainty Devices this poet deserves all the praise that he gets, even the Professor's lavish tribute : ' He was a writer of regular dramas, a contriver of masques and a composer of poetry for pageants. He united those arts and accomplish- ments which minister to popular pleasantry. He was the first fiddle, the most fashionable sonneteer, the readiest rhymer and the most facetious mimic of the Court. He seems to have possessed many of those talents of which no specimens could be transmitted to posterity '. The Professor in War-Time 337 So the manuscript runs on in a pleasant, rambling style, full of preference and prejudice and untroubled with ambition. It is only towards the close that the professor startles one by appearing through his cloud of witness, hurriedly arrayed in hood and gown, to pronounce, ex cathedra and with due academic deliberation, the following summing-up : ' The customs, institutions, traditions and religion of the Middle Ages were favourable to poetry. Their pageants, processions, spectacles and cere- monies were friendly to imagery, to personification and allegory. Ignorance and superstition, so op- posite to the real interests of human society, are the parents of imagination. The very devotion of the Gothic manners was romantic. The Catholic wor- ship, besides that its numerous exterior appendages were of a picturesque and even of a poetical nature, disposed the mind to a state of deception, and encouraged or rather authorised every species of credulity : its visions, legends and miracles pro- pogated a general propensity to the marvellous, and strengthened the belief of spectres, demons, witches and incantations. The illusions were heightened by churches of a wonderful mechanism, and con- structed on such principles of inexplicable architec- ture as had a tendency to impress the soul with every false sensation of religious fear. The savage pomp and the capricious heroism of the Baronial manners were replete with incident, adventure and enterprise ; and the intractable genius of the feudal 33 8 The Professor in War-Time policy held forth those irregularities of conduct, discordancies of interest and dissimilarities of situa- tion that framed rich materials for the minstrel muse. The tacit compact of fashion, which pro- motes civility by diffusing habits of uniformity and therefore destroys peculiarities of character and situation had not yet operated upon life, nor had domestic convenience banished unwieldy magnifi- cence. Literature and a better sense of things not only banished these barbarities but superseded the work of composition which was formed upon them. Romantic poetry gave way to the force of reason and enquiry ; as its own enchanted palaces and gardens instantaneously vanished when the Christian Cham- pion displayed the shield of truth and baffled the charm of the Necromancer. The study of the Classics with a colder magic and a tamer mythology introduced a method into composition ; and the universal ambition of rivalling those new patterns of excellence (the faultless models of Greece and Rome) produced that bane of invention. Imitation. . . . Where before there had been a certain dignity of inattention to niceties, Erudition held sway and demanded of genius that it should be accurate in its speech. Fancy was weakened by reflection and philosophy. The fashion of treating everything scientifically applied speculation and theory to the arts of writing. Judgment was advanced above imagination and rules of criticism were established. The brave eccentricities of original genius and the The Professor in War -Time 339 daring hardiness of native thought were intimidated by metaphysical sentiments of perfection and refinement. Setting aside the consideration of the more solid advantages which are obvious, the lover of true poetry wiU ask what we have gained by this revolution ? It may be answered : much good taste, good sense and good criticism. But in the meantime we have lost a set of manners and a system of machinery more suitable to the purposes of poetry than those which have been adopted in their place. We have parted [here is the pet epigram again] with extravagances that are above propriety, with incredibilities that are more accept- able than truth and with fictions that are more valuable than reality.' ' IN GOD'S ACRE I IF one may judge from the reports of many doctors, it is a more or less easy matter to die. The good man yields his spirit with something like eagerness as to a fruition long desired. Cupio dissolvi et esse cum Christo. Even to the un- righteous or earthly man comes the merciful oblivion that is all his hope ; the ' draught that is the death of care, the long forgetfulness '. Easy to die, nor any the less easy, once dead, to be forgotten. The trouble begins vvith the desire of man to thwart the course of nature and set up his rock of fame against the eternal flux. The desire in itself is natural enough. Every man clings by instinct to his ego while he may, and seeks to perpetuate his memory after he has gone down into the river Lethe. Though philosophers may jeer and poets mock the boast of Ozymandias, the ordinary human is not to be deterred from grasping the poor semblance of immortality that is within his power. No, the trouble is not in the desire. It is in the poverty of its expression. There is nothing less easy than the writing of an epitaph. To compose a perfect one is perhaps impossible. The dead might do this, as indeed they are feigned to in the Greek Anthology, In God's Acre 341 for they have due knowledge and detachment, and can see the whole. The living see ' as in a glass darkly'. They grope and hesitate among half- truths and are never sure whether to give more account to the Here or the Hereafter. With our Christian epitaphs this is especially the case. They lose artistically from a lack of unity in the central emotion. They attempt too much. This rmortal would put on immortality as well for the body as the soul. Though the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial another, he would at one and the same time shine with the double splendour. And so too often we see, added to the self-satisfaction of a life well-lived, the smug antici- pation of the life to come. The nouveatt-mort is made to seem as vulgar as the nouveau riche. In the extreme it produces something notoriously foolish, like this from Pewsley church : * ' Here lies the body of Lady O'Looney, Great niece of Burke commonly called the sublime. She was bland, passionate and deeply religious ; Also she painted in water-colours and Sent several pictures to the exhibition ; She was the first cousin to Lady Jones ; Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven '. This sublimely ridiculous effusion would have been impossible two centuries before. It is a pity indeed that the eighteenth century, so prodigal of 1 If Edgar Lee Masters used any model for the Spoon River Anthology it might very well have been this. 342 In God's Acre inscriptions, should have learned so little from the brevity and lowliness of the earHer epitaphs. What could be more tender and sufficient for example than this record of Dorothy Shurley, who is buried in Uckfield Church : ' Her pity was the clothing of the poore . . . and all her minutes were but steppes to Heaven ' ? What quieter confidence than that which Erasmus shewed when they told him of Warham's death : ' Quod enim in illo amabam non periit — ^That which I ever loved in him has not passed away'; or this of another : ' He sleeps calmly in the Great House ' ; or this, again, of the same period which I found cut on a nameless tomb in the Rhone valley : ' Post tenehras sfero lucem — after the shadows I look forward to the light ' ? n The decline of the epitaph is pretty nearly proportionate to the rise of the common people. In the olden time only ' the men of most worship ' were allowed this privilege, just as in Sparta it was limited to those who were killed in battle and to women who dedicated themselves to a religious life. They had, moreover, the good sense in those days to hire poets to put a thread of fancy round the bare ' chronicle of wasted time '. With the rise of the In God's Acre 343 merchant-classes a different order prevailed. Time- hallowed words were wrested to serve the quaintest ends, as in the case of the rich trader who lies entombed in Chipping Campden Church, and who claims upon his stone to be ' the flower of the wool- merchants of all England '. Even that is preferable to the flatness and commonplace of the age which followed, when no son of Adam would rest quiet in his grave without an epitaph. What pious perjuries ensued ! What bountiful words for poor and questionable spirits ! What culpable imposition on the credulity of strangers ! ^ The pages of Tis- sington's collection, if one could endure to read it through, would reveal little more than the miserable monotony and the unvarying perfection of the human race. They were born, they ate and drank, they begat children ; they did that which was righteous in the sight of men : and they died in the odour of sanctity. So runs the universal tale. Well might Charles Lamb enquire : ' But where are the naughty people buried ? ' ^ One complains not ' I am often reminded of Samuel Buder's note : ' There is a tomb at some place in France, I think at Carcassone, on which there is a sculpture representing the friends and relations of the deceased in paroxysms of grief, with their cheeks all cracked and crying like Gaudenzio's angels on the Sacro Monte at Varallo-sesia. Round the corner, however, just out of sight till one searches, there is a man holding both his sides and splitting with laughter.' * An answer is attempted in Icklesham churchyard : ' God takes the good — too good on earth to stay ; And leaves the bad — too bad to take away.' i/ 344 In God's Acre only of the dishonesty of these epitaphs but of their inordinate length. A few short and pithy ones can be discovered, like that on Dr Walker, who wrote a treatise on the English Particles. ' Here lie Walker's particles ' they cut good-humouredly upon his stone ^ But the most were composed on the principle that, though ' the memory of the just is as a pleasant savour ', it needs the professional touch to bring out its best perfume .^ To Raleigh's mind those two narrow words Hie Jacet sufficed to cover all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of men ; but the hack-writers of epitaphs were paid at so many shillings a line. It was their living to magnify the dead. By their lengthy achievements they won much filthy lucre and fully justified Pope's gibe : ' That where so much is said One half will never be believed The other never read.' It is a blessed relief to light, as one occasionally does, upon those epitaphs which reprove the vulgar ' I call to mind a family tomb in Sompting church (Sussex) on which the one word ' Fuerunt ' is inscribed. ^ Cf. The epitaph on Sir John Weld's tomb at Southgate : ' The wicked like a wasted candle shrinke Within the socket and there dye and stincke ; But righteous men dissolved yield a sent Like precious odours when their box is rent. And so did hee at his departure giving A lasting sweetness to refresh ye living.' In God's Acre 345 curiosity of the collector and remind us that the true eloquence of death is in its silence alone. I have some respect for the woman who wrote these following lines and carried her secret with her to the grave : ' Reader, pass on — nor waste your time On bad biography, or bitter rhyme ; For what I am, this cumbrous clay insures, And what I was is no affair of yours.' ' III Qu'aintness of diction, the extravagant compli- ments of heirs % the long enumeration of offices, pious ejaculations and platitudes — all these you may observe in English epitaphs ; but how little of that poignancy of grief which the Greeks shewed for ' So and even more snappish are the lines on an attorney's tomb at Reading : ' Quis sum, qualis eram, quid ero tu mine rogare Nil mea vita rejert : ducere disce tuam.' But the famous original of these sentiments is to be looked for in the Greek Anthology under the name of Paulus Silentarius : ' My name and country were ... no matter what ! Noble my race . . . who cares though it were not ? The fame I won in life ... is all forgot ! Now here I he . . . and no one cares a jot ! ' " Mr Justice Darling has wittily observed: 'The effusive compliments of an heir only satisfy me that he came into possession of the estate. They are proof of the ancestor's subjection to death but none of his other virtues.' 34^ In God's Acre those ' who are gone the final road of Acheron '. The difference is one not of phrasing or of art but of emotion in the presence of death. To our thinking, if one may disregard a substantial minority, death is but the approach from one life to another. So Henry Newbolt has sung of it in Mors Janua Vita : ' Pilgrim, no shrine is here, no prison, no inn : Thy fear and thy belief alike are fond : Death is a gate and holds no room within ; Pass — to the road beyond.' To the Greeks, on the other hand, death itself was the end. There was no road beyond. It was ' loveless and inexorable death who snatched them away from the sweet light, the warmth of the sun, the dear embrace of children '. Listen to Callimachus the poet : ' O Charidas, what of the underworld ? Great darkness. And what of the resurrection ? A lie. And Pluto ? A fable ; we perish utterly'. So from these tombs, where the bereaved poured the libation of their longing, arises an inconsolable sorrow, which neither the beauty nor the restraint of the classic muse can hide, such sorrow that even now we barbarians of the north, who lift up our flinty hearts to say there is in death no sting, can scarce withhold our tears. ' Looking on the monument of a dead boy, Cleotes son of Menesaechmus, pity him who was so beautiful and died '. And listen to this other on a child : ' Me a In God's Acre 347 baby that was just tasting life heaven snatched away, I know not whether for good or for evil ; unsatiable death, why hast thou snatched me cruelly in infancy ? Why hurriest thou ? Are we not all thine in the end ? ' And this on a shipwrecked sailor : ' Mariner, ask not whose tomb I am here but be thine own fortune a kinder sea ' •• Here in England we have had Grecians too. Is there not in the genius of Ben Jonson an echo — ^faint though it be — of the voice of Sophocles ? Surely the master himself would have rejoiced in the faultless epitaph on ' Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ' ? * Then, too, in Milton's elegy on Lycidas we catch the very music of Theocritus' lute ; in the demoniac laughter of Dean Swift we have intensified Lucian's mis- anthropic scorn '. To select the prototype of Walter Savage Landor would not be quite so easy, yet of all these men he seems the most akin to the spirit of the Greeks. To their vivacity, their childlike acceptance of the beauty and the wonder of life, and their ever-changing moods, he added moreover something of the stability, the proud endurance of the Roman people. The full measure ^ I have adopted J. W. Mackail's well-known versions in prose. * I know it has been doubted if Jonson wrote it. But he has a better claim than any other poet. ' Or the profound melancholy of that unknown poet who wrought Dionysius' epitaph : ' I Dionysius of Tarsus lie here at sixty, having never married ; and I would that my father had not.' 34^ In God's Acre of his mind shines through the noble lines of his epitaph : ' I strove with none ; for none was worth my strife ; Nature I loved, and next to Nature Art ; I warmed both hands before the fire of life. It sinks, and I am ready to depart.' Grecians just a few ; but for the most part they were very inferior spirits who wrote our English epitaphs. An art, in the beginning ennobled by poets and men of piety, declined through generations of literary jobbers, until in the close of the eighteenth century it fell into the hands of the village schoolmaster, or, with even worse effect, to the gasping dictation of the epitaphee himself in articulo mortis. IV The finger of Time has mercifully erased most of this graveyard doggerel, but several collections which misguided antiquarians then made with a care that had been better bestowed upon the poor still witness to the widespread vulgarity of taste. If anything in their pages will catch the modern reader's eye, it is the infrequent gleam of humour. A heavy-handed humour, to be sure, and macabre as Hogarth's pictures or Holbein's Dance of Death. But sometimes you light upon it, shining in perfect In God's Acre 349 innocence, as in one example of the manuscript that follows : ' In memory of Jane to whom this parish of Hatton, but more especially the curate, owes the greatest regard. Obiit 1744 '. Such gems unhappily were rare, but they revealed possibilities which modern bards are beginning to explore. Indeed, the experimental muse of to-day is turning more often to the epitaph as a form for its expression. By its disposition to irony, its anti- Tennysonian avoidance of emotion, its regard for a certain acidity of speech, it has acquired just the qualities that tell ; and it has learned, moreover, that there is quite sufficient sting in death to point an epigram. If only those in ecclesiastical authority * would give the poets their poetic license, the latter might recover the province they have lost and make the desert of God's acre a flowering place of art. Already one may trace the advance, even in the narrow field of humour. Not more 1 The fact of the freehold of the graveyard being in the in- cumbent gives hira a right of reasonable veto in respect of the epitaphs to be cat upon the stones ; though one may often appeal to the Bishop or apply for a faculty over his head. As a reaction from the license of the eighteenth century, the parsons have for the main part gone to the other extreme, shying at anything that does not proceed from Holy Writ. They have tolerated para- phrasers but not poets or poetasters. It required two months' acrimonious correspondence with a Vicar, an Archdeacon, and a Bishop before my mother's epitaph could be allowed — yet the lines chosen came from one of the most well known of the Fathers of the Church. It is time the parson's veto were more liberally exercised. 350 In God's Acre than ten years back these lines on a pompous police- man were composed : ' His name we need not repeat. For now in bliss he reigns ; Who had the maximum of feet, The minimum of brains.' Clever and well-appointed lines, yet the humour of them is still in the Teutonic or avoirdupois tradi- tion. Now set beside them this verse of yesterday : ' Angels grant a trifling boon To our brother who here lies ; Sound the trumpets after noon, Earlier doth he never rise.' Here you have something of the true lightness of touch, a winsome, delicate waywardness of humour, upon which the clods of criticism can never lie. You may estimate these lines in Troy weight : they are of pure gold. V In the village of Newnham where I dreamed and rollicked as a boy, the one joy that never wearied was to visit old Will Watts. A spice of adventure preserved this from the common fate, for the old man's cottage was out of bounds and he himself was as terrifying as anything we read of in Grimm's fairy In God's Acre 351 tales. To begin with, he was said to be ninety-nine years old — it stood at ninety-nine for the last five years of his life — and he looked every day of it. To us who were well within single figures his age seemed monstrous. We ranked him with Methuselah and those others of ' the youthful world's gray fathers '. Then, too, after his wife died, he mourned for her not for a month or a twelvemonth only but all the rest of his life. Whether it were for piety or inclination or inertia I never knew, but for more than a dozen years the blinds were down in the front window ; the cottage stayed as she had left it, only an inch or two dustier ; and the old man sat on where she had left him, only an inch or two dirtier. He neither washed nor brushed his hair. He wore one everlasting suit of clothes. I believe he never went to bed. In the afternoons we would stand at tip-toe rather timidly upon the cobbles and peer at him through the open door as he huddled over the fire. They said at night he merely slammed the door and slept in the self-same chair. For the most part, while we watched and marvelled, he would mutter to himself and take no heed of us ; but sometimes the grisly head would turn and growl like a bear till we took to our heels and fled. In the summer of his last year he seemed to regain his interest in life ; particularly in the evening when the last rays of the sun used to shine through his doorway and light up his dingy room. By that time I was somewhat older and often went by myself to have a 352 In God's Acre talk with him. And I learned much that I have good reason to remember, for, despite his taciturnity he was no thick-headed son of Hodge nor limited in speech to three acres and a cow. I could very well credit the village Report that he had written his wife's epitaph ; for, though cast in the death and cross-bones tradition, it certainly reflected to a nicety his own grim outlook on this life and the doom to come ^. VI But I must not dwell on these memories any longer ; except to say that Watts remembered a gentleman coming to Newnham, when he was quite a lad, to copy the epitaphs. It had lingered in his mind because he helped to clear the moss and lichen from the older stones where the inscriptions were obscured. The gentleman told Watts he had come Buntingford way, through Rushden, Wallington, Ash well, and Hinxworth, and that he had been copying epitaphs round London for more than twenty years. For the rest of my youth I thought ' I ought to have known better ; the author was Charles Wesley : ' Pass a few swiftly fleeting years. And all that now in bodies live Shall quit Uke me the vale of tears. Their righteous sentence to receive.' In God's Acre 353 no more of this, but later on, when I came to perambulate my home county as an antiquary, I found in many villages the same tradition preserved. No one could then speak at first-hand like Will Watts, but through four generations had persisted the memory of a stranger who, with note-book in hand, had between 1790 and 1810 gleaned the graveyards of these parts. You may guess, therefore, how I leapt with joy when I discovered what I take to be the original manuscript of this collection, stranded high up on the shelves of Bertram Dobell. Its last recorded death is 1804. It is confined in its range to the counties about London^ — though a few extraneous epitaphs are copied from The Gentleman's Magazine and other journals ^ Moreover, the crooked itin- erary which the collector mentioned to old Watts as his route from Buntingford to Newnham is followed exactly in this volume. Most unhappily the manu- script I discovered is a second volume only. It has no separate title page ; and the black label on the leather binding reads Epitaphs, MS, and nothing more. There is nothing to give the least hint of the compiler's name. On the two inner covers are ' And one cheery example from the Westminster Drollery of 1671 : ' Hie jacet John Shorthose Sine hose, sine shoes, sine breeches ; Quifuit dum vixit Si-ne goods, sine lands, /«W riches.' AA 35+ In God's Acre pasted the armorial bookplates of the Crisp family ; but the present holders of that name have no recollection of this volume or of its strayed com- panion. If any bibliophile can guide the missing volume to my hands he may be sure of my gratefulness, or if he prefers it, he shall be rewarded in baser kind. Meantime the selection that follows may serve to give an impression of the manuscript's content ; and, as I hope, some amusement by the way. I have kept the pages within reasonable limit, in regard for Dr Johnson's rule. ' An epitaph ', lie says, ' should be no larger than common beholders may be expected to have leisure and patience to behold '. If the rule can be enlarged to meet the case of a collection of epitaphs, then it applies with still greater force. YARDLEY When this you see remember me And thiiik now I am gone, You may walk out and seek about And not find such a one. COTTERED What to vain mortals can a pleasure be When no one part is from consumption free ; The head, the hand, the knee a palsy shakes, The blood runs chill and every member quakes. Death will the end of all my sorrows be, And then I launch into eternity. In God's Acre 355 AMWELL Mourn not foi me my wife and children dear I am not dead but slumber here It was by a fatal Jam at Ware Mill I fell Alas I never spoke nor did my secrets reveal. Amen. AMWELL Tho' boistrous winds and Neptune's waves Have toss'd me to and fro In spite of all by God's decree I harbour here below Where I now at an anchor ride With many of our fleet Yet once again I must set sail Our admiral Christ to meet. AMWELL That which a being was, what is it ! shew That being which it was, it is not now. To be what 'tis is not to be yon see, And what now is not shall a being be. WESTON James Titmuss. Ob. 1794 A industrious man I have been And in this world have done my best I hope in Heaven my soule may rest. STEVENAGE Charles Stewart. Ob. 1796 Adieu vain world I've seen Enough of Thee And am careless what thou Canst say of me What Faults you have seen in me Take care to shun And look at home enough There's to be done. 35^ In God's Acre STEVENAGE Mary Underwood. Ob. 1741 This world's a City full of crooked Streets Death is the Market Place where aU men meet If life were Merchandise as Men could buy The rich would always live the poor would only die. ' ASHWELL Elizabeth Christy. Ob. 1800 She made haste and delayed not to learn the law of God for she did greatly delight in his commandments whereby she became exceedingly wise and graceful, pious, chaste, sincere, loving, obedient, pleasant, patient and guarded in all her senses. She was mild and tender in her mood not grave with sternness nor vnth lightness free. Against bad examples resolutely good fervent in zeal and warm in charity She was a pleasant Child She was a very dear daughter. Is she not one of the Lord's redeemed f For she was not defiled she was a Virgin And in her mouth we found no guile It is said of such they shall sing a new song Unto the Lord which no man can learn but the hundred and forty and four thousand O Lord give us Thy heavenly grace that we with her May so follow her good Example that we may be made partakers of everlasting glory. HITCHIN Joseph Abbot, Ob. 1802 A plain upright man writhout Guile or Pride Goodness his aim and Honesty his Guide Could all the pomps of this vain world despise And only after death desir'd to rise. » An epitaph much in use at that time. I have met with it in ten graveyards in Hertfordshire alone. It comes out of an ancient ballad collected in Percy's Reliques. In God's Acre 357 BENGEO Ann Bowles, Ob. 1770 Here I lies sleeping in the dust Until the Resurrection of the Just Waiting the Voice of Christ to say Arise my Saint and come away. STANSTEAD Henry Graves, Ob. 1702 Here lies in one grave more than one Gravs ; Envious Death at last has gained his Prize ; No Pills or Potions here could make him tarry, Resolv'd he was to fetch away old Harry. You foolish Doctors could you all miscarry ! Great were his actions on the tempestuous waves, Resistiess seas could never conquer Graves. At Colchester he met this overthrow, Unhappily you lost him at a blow ; Each toarine hero shed for him a tear St Margret's now in him must have a share. CHESHUNT 1 William Williams. Ob. 1782 In silence here beneath a youth is laid By whom the sports of nature were survey 'd With ravished breast o'er meads he did pursue The started hare which o'er the landsUp flew By which pursuit his heart oprest with heat Plung'd in the stream which nature thought so sweet But now the stream a change to nature gave And plung'd this youth deep in the silent grave. • There are thirty-five more noted from this graveyard, but the collector seems to have missed the best : that in which a judicious husband, called upon to commemorate his second wife on the same stone and just below the panegyric of his first wife, adds that she was ' equally well-beloved '. He was risking nothing in the next world 1 35^ In God's Acre WHEATHAMSTEAD Thomas Nash. Ob. 1797 Here lyeth one that had several Brothers And he was kind unto some others Part of his wealth he gave away. And for his cloaths his Brothers this Rail do pay. THETFORD My Grandmother was buried here. My cousin Jane, and two uncles dear, My father perished with a mortification in his thighs. My Sister dropt down dead in the Minories, But the reason why I'm here interr'd according to my thinking, Is owing to my good living and hard drinking *. If therefore good Christian you vsdsh to live long, Beware of drinking Brandy, Gin, or anything strong. SNOWLAND Thomas Palmer Palmers all our Faders were I a Palmer lived here And travel'd still till worn wud age I ended this wolds pilgrimage On the blest Ascension day In the chearful month of May A thousand with four hundred seaven I took my journey hence to Heaven. ' One is reminded of a modern Wiltshire ditty beginning : ' I died o' cider and taters When I wer a-turned four-score. Us always wer hearty aters, My feyther he wer afore.' In God's Acre 359 HUNSDON Thomas King. Ob. 1735 Here lies Tom King old Dad of fame Who knew his Gun and eke his Game The fact whereof both Ball's and Luton Now can fully prove the truth on He loved his Bottle and his Friend Which he enjoy'd unto his End He Dy'd at last alas poor Tom ! Behold at last his Slab and Tomb. " HUNSDON John Lane. Ob. 1763 A prisoner in Hopes John Lane, a very old servant Let me Rest 1763 Faithful to Men But a great Sinner to my God. INSCRIPTION OVER AN ALEHOUSE WITH THE SIGN OF AN ANCHOR, AT WATFORD Above behold the painter's touch Does smiling Hope express I vainly hope to do as much 'Tis drawing I profess Tho' brush and pencil I use not Nor do I much Uke chalk Yet when my drawdngs go to pot My Heads themselves wilt talk. THEYDON GARNON , John Palmer. Ob. 1766 For the thing which I feared is come upon me And that which I was afraid of is come unto me : died of the Small Poi. 360 In God's Acre BRADBORN CHURCH, KENT Sir Thomas Scot Here lies Sir Thomas Scot by name ; Oh hapie Kemp that bore him ! Sir Reynold with four knights of fame, Lyv'd lyneally before him. His wiefs were Baker, Hayman, Beere, His love to them unfayned. He lyved nyne and fifty yeare ; And seventeen sowles he gayned. His first wief bore them everie one : The world might not have myst her ! She was a verie paragon. The ladie Buckherst's syster. His vridowe lyves in sober sort ; No matron more discreter. She still retdynes a good reporte, And is a great housekeeper. He (being call'd to special place), ' Did what did best behove him. The Queen of England gave him grace ; The King of Heav'n did love him. His men and tenants wail'd the daye His kinn and countrie cried ! Both younge and old in Kent may saye fr; Woe woorth the daye he died. He made his porter shut his gates To sycophants and briebors ; And ope them wide to great estates, And also to his neighbors. His hbuse was rightlye termed hall Whose bred and beef was redie It was a verie hospitall And refuge for the needie. In God's Acre 361 From whence he never stept aside, In winter nor in summer. In Christmas time he did provide Good cheer for everie comer. When any servis should be donn, He lyeked not to lyngar ; The rich vrould ride, the poor would runn If he held up his finger. He kept tall men, he rydd great hors ; He did indite most finelye. He used few words, but cold discours Both wisely and dyvinely. His lyveing meane, his chargie's greate, His daughters' well bestowed ; Altho' that he were lefte in debt In fine he nothing owed. But died in rich and happy state, Belov'd of man and woman. And (which is yeat much more than that) He was envy'd by noman. In justice he dyd much eicell. The law he never wrangled, He loov'd rellygion wondrous well, ' But he was not new fangled. Let Romney Marsh, and Dover saye. Ask Norborn camp at leysure. If he were woont to make delaye. To doe his countrie pleasure. But Ashford's proffer passeth all. It was both rare and gentle ; Theiy wold have paid his funerall, T' have tomb'd him in their temple. 362 In God's Acre Ambition he did not regard, No boaster, nor no bragger, He spent, and lookt for no reward, He could not play the bagger. BENNINGTON Here continues to rot the Body of Walter Clibben who with two of his sons robbed many persons. He was shot the 28th Dec. 1783 by Geo. North whilst he and his two sons were cruelly treating Mr. Benjn Whittenbury His Master. One son was executed for this crime in March 1783. PHILIPS NORTON, SOMERSET Here lies I — Here lies she Hallelujah, Hallelujee *. STEPNEY, MIDDLESEX Here lies the body of Samuel Paul Spital Fields Weaver and that's all. OVER THE DOOR OF ELY CATHEDRAL Here I lies without the Door Within the Church are many more Here I Ues and hawe less to pay And I lies just as warm as they. • In the early years of the nineteenth century a Mr Dickson who was Provost of Dundee died and by his wrill left the sum of one guinea to a person to compose his epitaph, which sum he directed his executors to pay. The executors, thinking to defraud the poet, agreed to meet and share the guinea amongst them, each contributing a line to the epitaph, which ran as follows : First Executor : ' Here lies Dickson— Provost of Dundee.' Second Executor : ' Here lies Dickson— Here lies he.' The Third Executor was put to it for a long time but, unwilling to lose his share of the guinea, vociferously bawled out : ' Hallelujah, Hallelujee '. In God's Acre 3^3 ON SIR ROLAND VAUX Sir Rowland Vaux that sometime was the Lord of Triermane Is dead, his body clad in lead and ligs law under this stone. Evin as we, evin so was he on earth a levan man Evin as he, eidn so maun we for all the craft we can. BABRAHAM, CAMBRIDGESHIRE On Sir Horatio Palavicini, Collector of the Pope's Taxes IN Queen Mary's Reign Here lies Horatio Palavayene Who robb'd the Pope to lend the Queene. He was a thiefe — a thiefe ! thou lyest : For what ? He robb'd but Antichrist — Him Death wyth besome swept from Babraham Into the bosom of ould Abraham. NEWNHAM, GLOUCESTERSHIRE Thomas Yerbury. Ob. 1759 From every boist'rous storm of life And that worst storm domestic strife Which shipwrecks all our social joys And every worldly bhss destroys I luckily am arriv'd at last And safe in port my Anchor's cast Where shelter'd by the blissful shore Nought shall disturb or vex me more. ON MARGERY PEG Here lies the remains of Margery Peg Who never had issue save one in her leg She was a woman of wonderful cunning While one leg stood still the other kept running. IN A CHURCHYARD IN DEVONSHIRE Dree viner Babe you ne'er did zee Than God Emighty sent to we They were zurprised by Ego vits And here they lies as dead as nits. - 3^4 In God's Acre A FAMILY EPITAPH Here lies Father, Mother, Brother and I Who all died in the space of one year They all lies buried in Godstow yonder And I lies buried here. ST ALBAN'S ABBEY Lo in this Inn of Travellers doth lie One rich for nothing but a memory His name was Sir John Mandevile content Having seen much with a small continent Towards which he travell'd ever since his birth And at last pawn'd his Body for the earth Which by a statute must in mortgage be Till a Redeemer come to set it free. WILLIAM BRAND Here lies the body of William Brand Who work'd thro' life in lime and sand ; And 'cause he would not be forgotten ; He built this tomb for his bones to rot in : But where he's gone no one can tell, Some say to Heaven — but some to Hell For that's the place where Atheists dwell. FRAMPTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE Reader ! thou standest on the sacred dust of a virtuous handsome maid, Amy the daughter of Harry Symes and Ann his Wife, daughter of Sir John Seymour. She was, in her deportment to her parents, eximious, respectful, dutiful, obedient to a proverb. She never gave them cause to ask, ' Why do you this ? ' She was snatched from them by a violent sickness, which makes them daily wash their eyes with salt water. She lies here in still and quiet sleep, not to be awakened but by the loud trump, and then rise in white to sing Hallelujahs to the great God, and the Lamb forever Amen. She deceased Jan. 9th, 1678. In God's Acre 3^5 ALMONDSBURY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE Of all the creatures which God made under the sun there is none so miserable as man ! For all Dumb creatures have no misfortunes do befall them but what come by Nature : but man, through his own folly and against his own knowledge, brings himself into a thousand griefs, both of soul and body. As for example : our Father had two children, and againsf his better knowledge he committed the sin of idolatry upon us, for, had our Father done his duty towards God but one part in a thousand, as he did towards us, when he prayed to God to spare our lives, God might have heard his prayers ; but God is a jealous God, and punisheth the faults of parents upon their children. Though the sins of our Father have deprived us of the light of the sun, thanks be to God we enjoy more great, more sweet, more blessed light, which is the presence of God the maker of all lights, to whom be all honour and glory. Beneath this place lie the bodies of John and Elizabeth Maronne, in memory of whom their Father caused this monument to be put up. EUzabeth died in 1708, aged 6. John in 171 1, aged 5, Their father was a poor man born in the province of Dauphine in the kingdom of France. He believes that his sins were the cause that God took the lives of his children. Porchier n'avance pas in pas sans penser a la mort. THE GENIUS OF ONE GOBBO, A POET IN the same year in which Wordsworth gave a new impulse to the sacred stream of poetry by the publication of The Excursion, a thin manuscript volume of poems was sent to Mr Smith of London by one Gobbo, the author. The leather binding which holds the manuscript is thick enough to be immortal ; the poems within it are so faded that in another generation they will have vanished for ever. As in the case of Wordsworth, the muse of Gobbo was concerned with the return to Nature, but, being only a thick-headed servant of Apollo, his approach was not sincere and direct like that of his master, but pursued its fantastic way through the decorated glades of th^t pastoral poesy which consists mainly in calling one's pen a ' pipe ' and one's readers ' sheep '. At first sight his mellisonant tingle-tangle seems so worthless that one is haU- persuaded to let it fade and be forgotten. But after a time one is captivated by its very badness, and spellbound at the strange uses to which such men will put their wits. After all, it is better to be amused than exasperated, and there is a kindliness in the lapse of time which makes us laugh merrily at that past incompetence which would enrage us in <^.. yc^ii ■■C-z ■/i/^A.^i^c ' A' ,//y, /A ,A •/* •■^ to Wrf-' yt t tttli/ Z'^, t'<^» '/,/i, '"'■ ^■"- rv^ '■*'^^> '>y«/ ./^,r/^.-.. , (_ %" .^ A SPECIMEN PAGE OF GOBBO'S VERSE SinCWTNG .MR. SMITH'S ALTER ATIOXS The Genius of One Gohho 3^7 contemporary art. Even Gobbo's verse can be read, given fine and sunny weather, and in time of rain one may get some relief by jeering at this pedestrian rhymester as he pants up the lower slopes of Parnassus. To defend his work would be possible only on the score of utility. It woidd be necessary to point out that bad poetry is the only poetry intelligible to the general body of people and that alone which gives them pleasure. Your true poet takes the wings of the mind and dwells in the uttermost regions of abstraction ; he is scarcely ever within hail of the wayfaring, foolish men. It is the blundering bard, the weaver of time-worn words and refashioner of threadbare therfies who stands the best chance of being understood ; for the work of such deals with the general ruck of daily life ; it teems with its dust, its fond failures, its foolish vanities, its pride. II But to return to Gobbo's verse. The Mr Smith of London above referred to was no pubUsher but the poet's patron and literary adviser, and it is to him that the volume is dedicated in this wise : ' Our greatest exertions are most frequently intro- duced from the minutiae of trifles. To a similar incident may be supposed the cause of the fugitive 368 The Genius of pieces I now place under your protection — they are by no means novel to you. I planted them in the garden of your extensive mind for correction : wild flowers as they were, you kindly and judiciously separated from them the surrounding weeds of false reasoning and delusive sophistry ; they have sprung up under the careful management of your discern- ment, and I submit them now in the vigor of their blossom for the entertainment of my friends '. We may judge Mr Smith's feeling in the matter by the MS itself, for it is scored all over with his corrections and variations ; scarcely a stanza is left untouched until the whole is one inextricable mass of con- glomerated collaboration. The corrections are nearly as amusing as the text. Mr Smith, as we learn from the lines which Gobbo sends him upon his marriage, was a retail grocer in the city, and there is in his verses something of the dignity of his profession and a large and varied assortment of perishable and questionable thought. At the very end of the dedication Gobbo betrays the source of his inspiration. ' A female acquaintance ' *, he vnrites, ' having perused my first appeal to the Poetic Muse encouraged me by her politeness to submit a second attempt for her amusement ; this also met with success and so, being flattered with her solicitations, I continued my efforts to please.' ' She is styled in one of thejpoems : ' The dearest object of my youthful views And fair promoter of my infant muse.' One Gobbo, a Poet 369 Tliis is always the beginning of these poetic disorders. And, given a little feminine encourage- ment, the confidence of these lesser fry grows amazingly. With a thousandth part of the genius of Donne they will cry out valiantly in his style, * All women shall adore us and some men '. Til Gobbo was quite honest in declaring that his muse worked by the magnification of the ' minutiae of trifles '. Nothing indeed could be more ludicrous than some of the occasions which provoked it. They remind one irresistibly of Morier's satire upon the poet who wrote ' something so happy about a toothpick '. As for Gobbo, he wUl build the lofty rhyme on a groundwork less stable than gossamer. There is one poem, ' On a gnat endeavouring to sting a young lady ', which opens thus : ' Fly thou base insect from th' impending storm Nor dare to trespass on that lovely form ; If any value on thy life be placed, I give thee caution to retire in haste : For if I catch thee fluttering on the wing And hovering near to strike thy poisonous sting Thy forfeit life the vile attempt shall pay ; So insect, take the friendly hint — Away ! ' There is another, ' On seeing two ladies in a stoingy too indelicate to quote ; another, ' On seeing a nest^ BB 37° The Genius of of goldfinches reared by a cock canary ' ; and another, ' On parting from a beautiful young girl to see Mr Pitt lie in state? The earlier poems of the collection may be assigned to the London period of Gobbo's career. They were composed in Wigmore Street, in what is termed the Vauxhall style of poetry, and are full of the usual gallantries of a man about town. One sets off thus : ' When warmed with Bacchus' potent juice Of which they say he drank profuse, A modest youth of Oxford Street (In length six inches and five feet) Boldly attempted it is said One night to kiss Miss Betsy Bread.' Another takes the form of an ode descriptive of ' Mr Pinchen's annual, aquatic excursion ' ; ' Lo Bacchus mid' the festive crew regales, And jovial Pinchen tells some witty tales ; Gosling the helm directs and Poet Gob Collects ideas for his empty nob.' Half-way through the volume there is a long satirical poem addressed in all bitterness to the lady who had refused the poet's love and broken his somewhat brittle heart. In utter anguish of soul he forswears London and devotes himsdtf to the simple life and ' the celibate's saintly crown ' : ' In some far vale where streamlets gently wind And rural objects pacify the mind.' One Gobbo, a Poet ' 371 This is the period of his two famous elegies. There is one very much after Wordsworth and it laments a Lucy too. But the best verse is no better than this : ' The fawning lambkin's tinkle-bell With mild harmonious note No longer yields its magic speU T'enliven Lucy's cot.' The other elegy is upon the death of a curlew. One verse I think is enough : ' Amusing, inofEensive bird, No more I'll see thee strut ; No more thy simple note is heard — Stopt by the murderous cat.' IV There follows a selection of pastoral verse in the approved style, where the poet is a luckless swain, seeking some cool, sequestered spot : ' From noise and bustle far remote Except the harmless lambkin's bleat .' ' Or lagging 'side some cool refreshing stream. When ripening warmth teems from the solar beam.' He sings sometimes of early dawn : ' When shepherds seek their fleecy host. Close by the mountain's brow ; The faithful sheepdog takes his post — Forth comes the useful cow.' 372 The Genius of Sometimes, too, of noon ' When frisky lambkins sport and nimble fawns ', but he is best in the subdued and melancholy style of the day's decline, ' When Luna's friendly cheering light, Illumes the spangled plain ' : ' All sports have ceased — the ruddy shepherd sleeps, And Somnus o'er the languid milkmaid creeps.' He returns just once to the city of his youth to compose some Reflections in the Green Park : ' Again I mingle in the flirting crowd And tread the footsteps of the vain and proud.' But it is only that he may have this one last fling : ' Ye servile avaricious Pack, Ye hypocritic smiling friends ; Ye giddy crown in vice's track Whose every act to folly tends. Adieu ! Voluptuous Town, adieu ! Farewell the Op'ra, Play and Ball ! I pant to join the virtuous few To mix with sports which ne'er appall.' We have reserved until the last the greatest of Gobbo's poems : ' The tippling earth absorbs the dew, That variegates the spangled vale ; The sweet harmonic aerial crew With Nature's song salute the dale. With gentle pace the lazy cows Are ushered in the luscious mead ; The goats and lambkins 'gin to browse And Robin yokes the docile steed. One Gobbo, a Poet 373 Where fragrant haycocks deck the fields, In little hillocks widely spread, And friendly bushes act as shields, I'll tarry with my lovely maid.' The reader will be comforted to learn that this maid was no misty abstraction of the poet's muse,but a real live country-girl. They married in due course. Gobbo's wedding-gift was a never-ending poem of thirty pages invoking Heaven and earth and hell and ' Ye multitudes who ilock around Sweet wedlock's standard — sight profound.'' One may believe that the girl lived in tolerable happiness ever after, because this is the last poem in the book. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE UMBRELLA (To THE Memory of Humphry Gilliat) IF you were minded, most friendly reader, to follow me beyond the limits of this book, I should, I think, lead you to the village of Ickleford in the county of Hertford, and to an inn there which otherwise you would miss. For it stands foolishly back from the highway and hides behind a forge as if ashamed to ask for custom of wayfaring men. They call it The Old George and would want to show you the long refectory table at which the third of our Hanover kings gave a display of his power of gormandizing. But I should carry you off to the seventeenth-century parlour, where once upon a time the Cavaliers came in, dusty and thirsty from the turmoils of civil war, to drink confusion to the Roundheads, and (hammering out a tune on the oaken benches) to sing outrageous ballads of Old Noll. When your thirst was satisfied, I should fall to showing you the sights, to wit : the churlish clock which points and has pointed to closing time for more than a dozen years, the sumptuously bound volumes of Burns' poetry on an upper sheM, which on a near inspection becomes a biscuit box, a broad- sheet entitled Ihe Landlord's Welcome to his Guests, JONAS ITANWAV, frm: fmsT KstiiniiiMf.s wiro kver c.MtRiKD an UifBRFXL.\,) Rise and Fall of the Umbrella 375 in which one of the lines, ' My chairs are easy, fires are bright ', has been queried most unkindly, and above all the great chimney (' large enough ', as the landlord says, ' to turn a pony round ') where once Dick Turpin hid from a hue and cry. All these lively things would I show you and still more, but alas ! reader, the best is no longer there. I wish I could put the clock right back and introduce you to Humphry GiUiat, gentleman-adventurer and pedlar of umbrellas, whom I met there ten years ago. I remember it was a scorching hot day in July, 1909, when I came, impatient for my lunch, into this parlour and called out lustily to be ?erved. No answer. I called again and again but my voice seemed to echo through an empty house. After some time I heard a rustling movement, as I thought, in the parlour close behind me. I turned about and started to see what looked like a bundle of old clothes uncurling itself from the darkened ingle- nook and taking gradually the semblance of a human figure. Then a sleepy voice complained : ' Why make such an infernal noise ? ' ' I'm very sorry ', I replied ; ' I didn't know you were there. I'm wanting lunch and can't make anyone hear.' ' Then you should do as I did ', came the gruff reply. ' I tried for five minutes. Then I cursed them in their absence, crept in here, and went to sleep. It's much better than going on getting excited.' 37^ The Rise and Fall ' But I'm hungry ', I persisted, ' and so hungry that I will not wait.' With that I left him and made a tour of the premises, and so successfully that in ten minutes I was back again with cheese and bread and cake and ale and lettuce and jam. ' Now it's my fault ', I said, ' that you are awake and feeling hollow ; so I insist on your sharing what we have.' * Well, that's nice of you ', he observed. ' I agree, especially as you are the richer man of the two.' ' I'm not over sure of that ', I answered ; but as he came out of his hole and stood upright, I exam- ined his clothes and by a rapid calcvdation made out that mine were worth some seven shillings more. Moreover, I had two florins in my pocket and his estate I guessed was limited to copper. For ten minutes there was nothing between us but the altum silentium and clangor dentium which desperate hunger induces. Then my curiosity arose and I said : * Tell me who you are and where you intend to go. " ' Humphry Gilliat ',he said, ' that's my name; a decent name too for a lost dog like me. I've no address to speak of, and if you don't mind I'd sooner not tell you what I was in the beginning. As for my present occupation, see there ! ' He pointed to a bundle of dilapidated umbrellas on the other side of the ingle and added drily : ' Not very brisk in this delightful weather ! ' Of the Umbrella 377 ' Ah ! ' I said, ' but never mind. It's a respectable profession, though it may not pay. Why, you and I must be two of the few survivors of the primitive umbrelliferous race. There is mine standing by the door. Like you, I carry it all the days of the year, not as the heathen do for fear of a sudden shower, but for its mystic companionship, its occult power, its secret wisdom.' So it was we fell talking about the mythology and the literary history of the umbrella ; and all the time he was feeling about in his pockets and produc- ing little scraps of much discoloured paper, crammed with notes of previous research in a hand that once must have written Greek. At last he passed them across to me and said : ' Look here, you may like to take these away and read them at your leisure. Make what use of them you please and post them to me at the Anchor Inn at Tempsford. I shall be there in three days' time.' That was the last I saw of Humphry Gilliat. Whether he lives or not I cannot say. I have only the memory of our meeting and the following essay which I wrote in haste from the material he supplied. I have often thought the saying of King David, that we are ' conceived in sin and shapen in 37^ The Rise and Fall iniquity ' might be extended to the children of our brains, the books we so wantonly beget. If the truth were known, how few of these are written for the love of God, or any regard for man. Some authors make a show of homage to the Heavenly Muse. Others claim to write at the instigation of the Holy Spirit. And a third class of men there is which prof esses reverence for the Abstract Ultimate Truth, whatever that may be. For my own part, I am suspicious of all three. So far as I can dis- cover, the cacoethes scribendi springs from a three- fold cause and one that is altogether evil : pride of intellect, the pursuit of filthy lucre, and bad temper. I myself am in the last and worst degree, for my brains are too barren to boast of and my style does not reach the Harmsworth-Pearson standard. But a little matter will fetch me ; a trifling provocation, a thwarting, say, of my own pet theories, and out comes my broadest nib, and the chaste white paper is blackened with abuse. Now to-day, for example, I was beguiled to read an ingenious essay in praise of walking-sticks, wherein the writer sought to uphold them as the lineal descendants of the sword, and protested against the flimsy, effeminate canes in use at the present day. I browsed upon it with pleasure and conviction until the beginning of the end, where the author tried to further his theme by the odious method of comparison, and fixed on the umbrella for the purpose. This latter he covered with Of the Umbrella 379 disrespect : ' an effete, preposterous equipment, buckling ignominiously at the slightest pretext into a tangle of protruding spokes, provoking laughter everywhere and impossible to make presentable except at the hands of half-a-dozen men about town who have devoted their lives to it and of course dare not open it when once effectively rolled . . . &c., &c.' Now one smiles at the writer's spleen in this case because it was the natural reaction of a balanced mind after a paragraph of overpraise, but behind it all there lurks the shadow of that traditional discourtesy towards umbrellas and those who use them which we who are enlightened should withstand. At the outset let us be clear. We do not rest our defence on the low ground of utility, though this might well be done. Nor are we to be prejudiced because a so-called poet apostrophized his umbrella on this wise : ' This precious, supple instrument, confect Of the whale's bone and of the silkworm's grave, With outstretched wing my brow will oft protect From the wet onslaught of the pluvial wave.' All such outbursts are misguided. Why, even Martial in his world-famed epigram ^ never refers to the umbrella as a shield from rain. And still less I will , quote it for the advantage of the ignorant : Accipe qwe nimios vincant umbracula soles ; Sit licet et ventus, te tua vela tegent. 380 The Rise and Fall was such a use in the mind of the Chinese lady who invented the umbrella in the year 1919 b.c. Her idea was to make it a movable pavilion for private pleasure. ' Sire ', she said to the carpenter, her husband, ' you make with extreme cleverness houses for men, but it is impossible to make them move, whilst the object which I am framing for their delight can be carried to any distance, even beyond a thousand leagues.' II Now the whole story of the rise and fall of the umbrella will never be told, because the one treatise of the early world which dealt with its evolution perished in the fire of Alexandria ; but somehow and sometime in far antiquity there sprang up a number of legends suggesting that the gods were concerned in its origin and had infused into it a genius, an inspiration, and a sacred force which could be transmitted to those who used it. If I were a philologist I should dwell for thirty pages on the point, for it opens up a fascinating field for study. Sufficient here to say, for example of what might be, that the Latin form umbella derives from the root umhel — ' a canopied efflorescence'. There is plenty of evidence to shew that the now despised umbrella was often employed as a symbol of the Of the Umbrella 381 radiant solar wheel ; and thus one gets back to Apollo and the Sun worship so widespread in " primitive religion. It was natural, therefore, that the umbrella should have been used in the ritual of worship and, in the ages when rulers were chosen by the priests, as a sign and sanction of their kingly dignity *. In his De Umbellee Gestatione the learned Paciandi asserts that the umbrella became a leading feature in the reUgious ceremonial of ancient Greece, and we know from the bas-reliefs brought from Nineveh and the frescoes on the tomb of Thebes that no king was duly crowned in those days unless the sacred umbrella were unfurled and held above his head. Indeed, in India one of the Mahrattas who reigned in Punah had as his most esteemed title ' King of the White Elephant and Lord of the Four and Twenty Parasols ' ; and he it was who conceived the charm- ing idea of distinguishing the various grades of his nobility by the size and shades of their umbrellas: In Egypt the royal authority of the umbrella was still further extended, for in Thent-Amen's day (1120 B.C.) the Courts held that if even the shadow of Pharaoh's umbrella or those of his chief governors ^ The symbolism is well exemplified in S'akuntala, a Hindoo diamatic poem of about 600 b.c. : ' The cares of supporting the nation harass the sovereign, while he is cheered with a view of the people's welfare, as a huge umbrella, of which a man bears the staflc in his hand, fatigues while it shades him. The sovereign like a branching tree bears at his head a scorching sunbeam, while the broad shade allays the fever of those who seek shelter under him '. 382 The Rise and Fall fell upon a man he became thenceforward their bondsman all the days of his life ^. III No doubt it was this legendary report of genius and divine wisdom latent in the umbrella which led so many minor poets doubtful of inspiration to attempt it in this way. The Irish poet Mangan never confessed the source of his Muse, though his enemies suggested alcohol, but it is stated in his biography that he never appeared in sunshine or storm without a large malformed umbreUa, which when partly covered by his short cloak (tucked up tightly to his person) made him look for all the world like a Scotch bagpipe. One thinks of Jules Laf orgue, that strange minstrel wandering about the farm- steads of France, ' et de far les necessites un parapluie immuaUement place sous les bras' ^ Shall we not * Not even priests were immune. When Unu-Amen, the senior priest of the Hait chamber of the house of Amen, journeyed to Syria to buy cedar wood for a new boat for Amen-Ra, King of the Gods, he stepped accidentally into the shadow of the Governor's umbrella. An officer of the bodyguard arrested him at once, and he was only saved by the clemency of the prince. In those times the shadow of a man was supposed to carry with it some of the vital power and authority of the man himself. One constantly finds traces of this belief ?imong primitive peoples. * Laforgue's friend. Saint- Beuve, was the only poet I have read of who adopted the ' realist ' attitude to the umbrella, but then he was a very indifferent poet. In the one duel in which he chose Of the Umbrella 383 recall De Quincey, too, that frail pathetic figure, dragging about with him a great soul and a huge home-made umbrella ; driven by poverty to use it as a tent to sleep under by night, though scarce strong enough to pitch it for himself, and getting hopelessly entangled with it when the wind was high. Is it not the truest emblem of his enveloped, tortuous style ? It is a pity to press the illustration too far, but we must mention the fastidious Hayley, who could never compose save on horseback between eleven and twelve o'clock of a morning at Bognor and holding at all cost an umbrella to shade his teeming head, with the result that sometimes, when the wind reversed and his umbrella too, his nag would plunge and throw him headlong to the stony beach. And what, last of all, of Borrow, who sang so brave an epic to his umbrella as, like a sail expanded behind his shoulders and with a gale following from the East, it carried him to his desired haven at Bala ? Apart from the question of inherent genius, what symbolic and allegoric treasure the poets must find in their umbrellas ^. Are they not in direct suc- cession from the staffs which the pastoral poets used to defend his critical opinions it drizzled with rain — whereupon the famous poet-critic faced his adversary beneath an open umbrella, observing that though he might be killed by a bullet he was deter- mined not to catch his death of cold. * The word umbraliter in Latin means ' figuratively ' or ' meta- phorically '. And there are other words framed from the same root for literary use, e.g., unibratilis, ' meditative ', and umhraculum, ' a school or academy '. 384 The Rise and Fall and reminiscent of the wand of Apollo itself ? Is not their expansion a symbol of that throwing open of the gates of faery which lead to the realm of song ? What better means of detachment than this secret paviHon where one may hide from the strife of tongues ! Are they not convenient and telling similes to satirize one's enemies withal ? Was it not Aristophanes who said that the verse of Euripides was as windy and inflated with epithet as an umbrella with air, and who with doubtful taste described the ears of another rival as flapping up and down like an umbrella in a gale of wind f IV Enough then of the poets. For a moment let us descend to things more practical. Not, be it repeated, to urge any apologia on this plea, but to suggest some wider utility for the umbrella than is at present allowed. What a deal of daily experience is packed into Borrow's homely words : ' A good friend to a man is an umbrella in rain time and likewise at many other times. What need he fear if a vsdld buU or a ferocious dog attach him, provided he has a good umbrella ? He unfurls the umbrella in the face of the bull or dog and the brute turns round quite scared and runs away ^. Or if a footpad 1 At the time of the pro-war riots in Italy in 191 5 the cavalry were called out to suppress a rising near Empoli. Expecting but little opposition, they rode up to the mob but were utterly routed by the ruse of some resolute women who suddenly opened their coloured umbrellas and twirled them amazingly before the horses' eyes. Of the Umbrella 385 asks him for his money, what need he care provided he has an umbrella ? He threatens to dodge the ferrule into the ruffian's eye, and the fellow starts back and says, " Lord, Sir ! I meant no harm. I never saw you before in all my life. I merely meant a little fun." 'Moreover, who doubts that you are a respectable character, provided you have an umbrella ? You go into a public-house and call for a pot of beer, and the publican puts it down before you with one hand, vwthout holding out the other for the money, for he sees that you have an umbrella and consequently property. And what respectable man, when you overtake him on the way and speak to him, will refuse to hold conversation with you provided you have an umbrella ? Not one. The respectable man sees you have an umbrella, and concludes that you do not intend to rob him, and with justice, for robbers never carry umbrellas. O a tent, a shield, a lance, and a voucher for character is an umbrella ! ' Those are true words. As something of a pedestrian myself, I have proved them. I, too, have slept under my own umbrella, fought with it, walked with it, talked with it, made friends by it, and many a time seen the truculent soul of a publican melt into obsequiousness before it. And one other thing I must add. It is the one satisfying protest one can make when a milHonaire's motor-car comes swooping and shrieking down a peaceful lane, with a choking cloud of dust dragging at its heels. Then in good CO 386 The Rise and Fall time, and in full view, I go deliberately to the grass verge, unfurl my umbrella, and curl myself up beneath its wings. Only twice, I confess, have some gentle-people stopped their car and apologized for its dust ; but I am content to have provoked a thousand Philistines. Believe me, no intelligent person will care to encounter the vicissitudes of life vwthout the aid of an umbrella. There is hardly a single experience for which it does not serve. I knew, once upon a time, an antiquary who for his health's sake voyaged to Samoa, and was much scorned by his shipmates for including an umbrella in his kit. Now when they landed in Samoa it chanced there was a great gathering of the native tribes, at which the High King was to deliver an oration. This in accordance with almost universal custom had to be done leaning on a spear, but when the time came the King's spear was nowhere to be found. As the audience were unarmed, the King's counsellors were at their vsdts' end what to do, when the pale-faced antiquary walked into the ring and presented the stammering monarch with an English half-guinea umbrella. It was received with some suspicion, but, as soon as the King could be persuaded to lean upon it, his tongue was loosed and the words poured forth in a flood of eloquence. Nor is this the end of the story, for the King made the Englishman his friend, gave him a palace to dwell in, food from his own table, and three of his favourite wives for the duration of his visit. Of the Umbrella 387 Really one could write at large of the lay uses of the umbrella and of the many whimsical legends to which they have given rise. But this essay must come to an end. There is just one little group of tales we must refer to, centred about the introduc- tion of the umbrella into this country in 1725. For a decade and more they were so rare that the University of Cambridge possessed but one for all its colleges ; the undergraduates had to put down their names three months ahead to secure its use. An advertisement in the Female Tatler of the same period states that ' the young gentleman belonging to the Custom House who in fear of rain borrowed the umbrella from Wills' Coffee House shall next time be welcome to the maid's pattens/ And such was the reluctance of the English to naturalize this foreign luxury that, even in 1778, a certain Mr Macdonald had to give up using the fine coloured- silk umbrella he had imported from Spain because the people ran behind him in the streets calling out : ' Frenchman, why don't you get a coach ? ' How very English ! And how little we have changed ! Still ready to pounce upon any singu- larity, be it good or bad. Still content with black- habited umbrellas for a hundred and fifty years while our neighbours haVe rejoiced in all the colours 3^8 Rise and Fall of the Umbrella that are known. Go into the fields in Italy or Spain and see the labourers drinking or sleeping at noonday under their umbrellas of crimson and yellow, magenta and sky-blue. Go to the markets and see the carts come in with their gorgeous canopies. Go to liie flower and fruit stalls in the piazzas and see the women selling under the esgis of their own ancestral umbrellas. And then come back to England, to this un-umbrelliferous race. See how we suffer from our insularity and Protestant religion ; and pray that a second Macdonald may arise. Of a truth the praise of umbrellas is without end, and if one set one's mind to it one might even prove the hard saying of the destitute journalist, who pawned all that he possessed save one dear possession, and then wrote ' The umbrella is the man '. We have, so to speak, only approached the subject with our wits rolled up. Were we to unloose the bands of restraint and throw our fancies free to the very canopy of heaven, what a deluge might befall ? A BEI,I,E OF GIBRALTAR A CHILD'S DIARY AT GIBRALTAR (To Felicity) BOOKS are of so little reputation in the country where I live that we buy and sell them, not by Troy weight as one should of precious things, but like old metal by the ton. Some few we are willing to read if the weather is bad or we need distraction from toothache. I have evai noticed some of the more cultured house- holders rise to the classics of Barclay and Corelli ; and once in a season of Lent I found a young woman in Barrington looking for spiritual consolation in Voltaire's Pucelle d' Orleans, picked up for three- pence at a bookstall. But in the main we buy to keep the home-fires burning or to amuse our children by tearing out the pages, or to sell again for profit to the dealers in waste-paper. I remember some years ago walking into the bookseller's shop at Hitchin, and being shown there a pile of books spread out on the floor, fresh from the auction-room and brought thence in a float. Being invited to browse upon this stack of books, I began by standing on the top of them, and grazed upon the slopes ; but the position became so precarious with the continual shifting that I found it safer to sit down and pluck at those within my reach. So, with the eight volumes of old Scott's Commentaries 39° A Child's Diary at Gibraltar for a seat and Barrow's Sermons for a buttress on every side, I continued the inspection. It proved a poor, mildewed, insectiferous sort of crop that could barely yield eight books to the acre, and I was about to give it up altogether when I lit upon a tiny manuscript only three inches square, bound in what once upon a time had been white linen, and endorsed with the words ' Diary of E. F. 1 866 ' in a childish hand. Believe me, that refuse heap of books was soon forgot and, though I sat upon it still, I was as one enchanted and with a magic simple and sure as the sight of speedwell in a field of stubble or the sound of children's voices ringing from a window in a lonely street. Precious are all memories of ' dear things done in infancy ', but this little book is doubly so because it has the ingenuousness and spontaneity of that brief interspace between the babbling incoherence of babyhood and the copy- book decorum that a governess instils. In silhouette of black and white you have de- pictured here (if indeed you have eyes to see) the likeness of an early Victorian girl in all the freshness and zest of her unspoilt years. I have also the diaries she wrote in England thirty and forty years after ; but these I shall not transcribe. 1866. Jan. I. Wrote my story called Erman Clyde and painted a picture in Illustrated London Almanac. I painted it very well. In the afternoon went rushing about and climbed trees. Played A Child^s Diary at Gibraltar 391 hide-and-seek with C. H. After tea we played the geography game with sugar plums for counters. January 4. Went to McCarter's and bought this book for ninepence. After dinnet I learnt my lessons and read Ingoldsby Legends. At eight o'clock had tea ; at nine I go to bed. January 5. After lunch played with my dolls. Then I made a new dressing table for Mrs Rossitur ou,t of the lid of a box and four cubes from my German Puzzle. I then put some stuff off some tarlatan which Montegreffe gave me round it and it looked very nice. Mrs Branfield came in at tea time. She says that Rose who is in our class at Sunday School went to her to do anything she could, and that she (Mrs B) had taken some milk for the children and Mary the nurse said she saw Rose drink it all up. Mrs B asked Rose where the milk was and she said that some smuts had settled upon it. Mrs B then said : ' Why didn't you skim off the smuts ? ' She then got very red and said it had gone sour. January 7. Went out by myself, saw no one so came home. Mama made a cake this morning and I beat up the eggs and chopped up candid peel. Then I got a piece of paper and baked a piece of the cake in the oven. Went to market. The Man at 33 stall gave me two oranges and Mama a pound of currants. January 9. We had lessons very quick and after them Mama and I went up to the Palace and to 392 A Child's Diary at Gibraltar Mrs Montmorency's. She is very much spotted. I played with dear little Birdie. It is no use describing my evenings for they're always alike. January lo. Mrs Forrester gave a picnic. Mr and Mrs Harrington, Mrs Herbert and Mr and Mrs Lingard, Lord and Lady Hastings, Miss Clifford (my sister) and myself (your humble servant), went to it. Mr and Mrs Lingard left cards on us and so did Mrs Herbert. We had great fun. We played at a hotel after. January i'3. Went to the water-place. Heard that a dead dog or cat had been thrown in, some boys there said they wouldn't drink any. I went to get some water in the cottage. The sergeant said I might have some but not the boys. I went out and told the boys the water in the place was perfectly good and to prove it drank some. Teddy Hepper said I hadn't drank any that I had only put my lips to the mug. January 14. Went to Church as usual. January 1 8. Went to CoUingwood's party. The waiter wanted to show me into the drawing-robm with my hat and cloak. Mrs Collingwood took me up to her room to take off my things. A big boy in green took me in to tea. We had dancing, Quadrilles, Roger de Coverly and galop waltzes. Games after. Hunt the slipper, I sent a letter to my love, and the Cushion Game without being blind- folded. I was kissed in Cushion Game a great many A Child^s Diary at Gibraltar 393 times. The Peacock boy kissed me. Harry Cres- wdl and Charley and Jemmy CoUingwood kissed me. I don't know how many times. I kissed all the little boys. I began with Ricardo Creswell, next Clayton Freeling, next Percy Carver, next Arthur Carver and next Fennick Bennett. I had to throw the cushion so many times because I was kissed so many times. January 19. Was so tired that I slept till half past nine. Mrs B came with Willy to see us. The latter eat awiay at gingernuts and Lisbon Plums all the time. January 25. It is very windy. The Uniacks came when Mama and Papa were out. Mr U's hat blew across the road into the mud. January 26. After breakfast my male dove got away out of the hole where the seed-trough goes in. It didn't come back at all. Papa took me to Mr Million to look at my tooth. He is a Frenchman. I screamed and cried and Mr M took my tooth out. After, he wrapped it in paper and gave it to me as ' Un souvenir de douleur, un souvenir de peine, et un souveni'r de Moi ', as he said. January 32 (corrected later to Feb. ist). Went with Mrs. Blake and others to see St Michael's cave. Heaps of children there. We had soda-water and cake and went inside the cave. It was very muddy and slippery and Mrs Blake thought there were precipices. Poor Sanchez was nearly in hysterics. K. Creswell and I were the best. We were not a 394 A Child's Diary at Gibraltar scrap frightened. As we came home all the boys laughed at A. because he cried and stamped in the cave. Charlie Creswell is so ridiculous. He pre- tended to faint and fell against us nearly knocking us down. February 4. I went with Mrs Blake to little Arthur's Inundation [presumably baptism]. February 7. Jemmy CoUingwood and Peacock came to Alameda with Janie, Sissie and me. Went down beneath the bandstand. A little boy came to us with 3 packets of sweets saying ' J. CoUingwood told me to give one to each of you '. Janie and I returned them saying ' Thanks for your presents. Here they are. We return them to you '. February 8. Had a delicious ride. Cantered about without the leading rein, trotted and walked. Had great fun. The Colonel passed me on the way home and bowed. I said ' I have just been for a ride '. He said ' Hope you did not fall oflE '. February 10. Went to Queen of Spain's Chair. It was a very long way. When we got to the top it rained like cats and dogs and blew a gale of wind. We were half blown away. All the trimming was torn off my black silk frock, Sissie was wishing she hadn't come and was half-crying. I and Charlie whistled. February 4. I got a Valentine. I don't know who sent it. Went to tea with Blakes. Played Old Maid and Beggar my neighbour. A Child's Diary at Gibraltar 395 February 5. Went to Church of cowse. After that came back to Alameda through gardens. Saw heaps of tipsy sailors. March I. Last night Mama and Papa went to Cooper's. She was very tired so stayed in bed for breakfast. Papa has a bad headache. Mrs Carver lent me a book called Lette'rs left at the, pastry cook's. March 6. Went to Alameda gardens. A man and his little girl came to sit on my seat. The man said to me, ' And whose nice little girl are you ? ' March 15. Didn't go to Church this morning. Didn't wake early enough. March 17. As I was playing Morning Bell with Mama Mr D. came. He stayed for lunch. After it I went to my room and played. Mama and Mr D. sang songs, ' Ta main ', ' Si tu savais que je faime ', and heaps of French songs. Then I came in and played in the drawing room. March 20. Arthur and Sissie came. We played fortunes, I was to be a fisherman's wife and to have the best voice to sing to the fishes and be presented at Court and to go up the Alps in a boat drawn by whales. I was to marry three husbands one of whom was to be a shepherd and live in a barn. March 23. With the CoUingwood's. We played at being the Duchess of Norfolk and Devonshire in Park Lane, After dinner Mama and I went to Miss Cundy's to buy me a hat. She wanted me to have a horrid thing whose sides turned up horribly but I called it horrid. 39^ A Child's Diary at Gibraltar April 3. Mrs Meane came for me to go with her to Katie's wedding. Went to King's Chapel to organ gallery where Mrs Morgan, Captain R., and Mrs Bessario and baby were. Baby called out ' Ta Ta, Katie ' in Church. Katie looked very nice. After service Rossario went to carriage with baby. Katie took baby on her lap and kissed her over and over. April 6. Went to cathedral with A. Blair. Very early so walked round and round the Church. They' sang a horrid anthem. The men sang ' King of Kings and Lord of Lords ' and all the time the boys screeched AUeluUa, AlleluUa as hard as they could I read Women of Israel till bed time. April 7. After lunch went to Long walk. One of the boys threw a ball which hit me on the eye. As I passed they said one after another, ' I didn't do it, Edie '. April 13. Tried on a lot of summer frocks. Had lessons. Played / ^py and How many miles to Babylon. At night stuck a card with ' Miss E. Fox, knock and ring ' on my door, and hung a shell suspended by a piece of cord for a knocker. April 15. Mr Parker had dinner here. He sung for me 'There were three blue-bottles on a wall '. Then I went to bed. April 16. At five I went over to A. Blair's to spend afternoon. Saw Alice's dolls. We swung at the Giant's Stride and at six had tea in A's tea- things and bread and jam. A Child's Diary at Gibraltar 397 April 19. Went with Mama and Papa to the races. Major Fisher asked us to sit in his carriage. I did and saw the races. I won three-pbnce from Janie. After tea played Old Soldier and My Lady's Toilette without a trencher. April 20. This afternoon I made a model vilhge in sand with a church, cottages, farms, parsonage and I made a hill near it with a winding path all the way up. April 30. I wrote copy, read Roman history, Bible, and translated in OUendorf ; did what I could. Then I painted ' Ruth ' in Illustrated Almanac and amused myself till lunch. After lunch a parcel from England came with frocks for Sissie.and I and some likenesses of Willy and Henry — such good ones. May 13. Sunday. I went to Church and gave three-pence at collection. The Blake's pew is so nice. Mr CoUingwood was prayed for in church. Poor George was crying. He hid his face in the surplice. May 16. Went to the Bishop's college. There is a great procession and all that there. The Bishop showed us the Museum, the dormitories, and all the rooms in the place. We saw the pro- cession. The Bishop was first in his silk em- broidered robes and mitre. The priests came in next and had a train of little girls in white frocks and veils and sashes ; they carried large candles in their hands lighted ; the nuns came next. Then 39^ A Child's Diary at Gibraltar all the Roman Catholics in Gib : came all with immense candles, then the pensioners and boys. They carried in the procession a silver shrine of the Virgin Mary and our Blessed Lord — such a lovely thing. Everyone bowed before it. May 20. We had a letter to say Aunt Polly is dead. I am so sorry. Mama cried. She didn't go to Church. Papa and I went alone. The CoUing- woods were in Church. Their father died three days ago. After service I walked to the Cruikshanks and had great fun. June 5. The new cook came to-day ; she is so queer. Went to tea with Morgans. Had great jolly fun. Played Choose the lawyer and Proverbs. June 15. Ellen our new cook went away to-day. A new maid Kitty came. June 23. Mr D. had breakfast here. Had lessons. Mr D. had dinner here too. It rained in the afternoon. Mr D. had tea here. July 2. Really sometimes very often in the morning it is lovely. To-day it was so. It was so fresh the air was. The sky was so blue and all the birds were singing. The sun was shining, then the bay was so lovely. I wish someone could take a photograph of Algeceiras bay. July 17. The Blakes are going to England to-morrow at 5 in the morning. We said ' Good- bye ' now. Oh ! how detestable it is to say ' Good- bye'. We all kissed each other. Perhaps I shall never see them again. A Child's Diary at Gibraltar 399 - - - ■ - August 27. All went to bathe — so beautiful in the water. I had porridge for breakfast. Played with Daisy and Baby all morning. Baby was so funny. He had a very bad night. December 25. Christmas Day. I woke early and looked at my presents. So nice. Beeton'j Annual, Giant Killer or the Battle we all must fight and scissors. I gave Laurie a Christmas Tree with bags of sweets on it, a doll in white silk, and a pin cushion. She was so pleased. I gave Mama the marker and other things and Papa the slippers and the servants shawls and collars and cuffs. They were so pleased. January 7. Went to Mrs Carver's party. Played Mulberry Bush. Grown up people came. February 3. Sunday. At Church. Saw with the Mosleys three nice young ladies, fresh peoples straight from England, I should think. Such tiny bonnets and big Mignons. Had tea alone so snugly. April I. April Fool Day. Made Pa, Mrs U., Catalina and Lolly April Fools— such fun. April 3. So happy. A letter came from Uncle Henry saying he is coming here to stay ; next Tuesday he will be here. No Lessons ! No 'Church I April 9. Up at six. Uncle Henry came. I am so glad. He gave me such a lovely writing case so small and nice, two kinds of paper and 2 ditto of envelopes, pen wipers, place for stamps, wafers and ink bottle. So delicious. Talked all morning about 400 A Child's Diary at Gibraltar relations. How nice to have Uncle Henry here. I was so sleepy for we were up so horribly early. April ID. After breakfast practised. Uncle Henry read Deer Slayer. Then he wrote his diary. I read Roman History and Bogatzky's Golden Treasury. It is such a lovely night, cool and pleasant, the moon shining, the garden of the convent looking so like those one reads of in Arabian tales, quite an Oriental garden. Really Gib : is a charming place. It is so nice to have such a pretty peep as I have from the drawing room window opposite the piano. Only a little peep but such a nice one. The cloudless sky above as blue as can be ; the bay matching it in colour, and behind it the purple mountains of Algeciras. Just in front of the window is the garden with its orange trees and other beautiful trees. In the morning everything is so pleasant, and the air is so fresh. Everything is just delightful. How sorry we shall be to leave. April 19, Good Friday. Hot cross buns. May 3. Today is my birthday. Dr M. gave me two sticks of candy and a fig basket. Got three letters from Mama, Aunt Annie and Sissy. Dear Aunt, she is a duck. May 9. Lady Airey gave colours to the 83rd. Mr Meane took us. We got close too and heard all the speech. Lady A. was in mauve moire with lace shawl and white bonnet. It was so pretty to see the 83rd in a square, the pile of arms in the centre, the ensigns kneeling and Lady A. bending over them A Child's Diary at Gibraltar 401 with the beautiful crimson ahd gold colours in her hands. Mr Clarke in his surplice looked sweet. May 21. How nice my room is. My bed is so different from the one at Mrs Meane's. June 3. We drove Mrs Uniack to the beach. Mrs Fisher and her surprising baby were there. It is so queer, it laughs like a man (ha, ha, ha ! it laughs) and is always on its back kicking. On Tuesday the Prince paid a farewell visit to the Governor at 10.30. The guard of honour awaited him at the Convent gate. Up he drove in Sir Richmond's carriage in cocked hat and uniform with gold epaulettes. Such a nice looking boy. Came back with staff galloping. I went after to Mrs Carver where I buried myself in books. June 5. I went to see Mrs Meane. Her darling baby is very ill. Mrs M. cries and says ' My darling I love no one but you '. Laurie is going to stay here. She sleeps in my room while her baby brother is ill. June 7. Poor darling ! it is dead now. I was so shocked. Poor Mrs Meane was in such a state. I don't know what to think, what shall I do ? Poor dear little baby. When I saw him last he looked so imploringly in our faces with his great eyes as if he wished us to relieve his pain. Ellen has just been for four candlesticks— the candles are for the baby, she said. Poor Mrs Meane I do pity her and pray to God for her and Laurie and Dr Meane and all. Poor Laurie! this morning she was talking and saying so gaily ' Baby well— baby well now.' DD FLY-LEAVES AND MARGINAL NOTES (To loNE AND Dorothy) ONE of the pleasures and rewards of a bibliophile's dusty career is to find manuscript entries of former possessors in the fly-leaves or margins of old books. I say ' old books ' because, of recent years, readers have become delicate in their ways and will by no means intrude on the pure whiteness of the unprinted page. There was no squeamishness of this kind two hundred years ago. Note-books were dear to buy, and files and registers were things unknown. If our ancestors would preserve anything for future record, if they would make a rough calculation of wages or rent, if they would prepare a rough draft of letters or sonnets to the beloved, there really was only one way — to use the blank pages of their books. To them there was nothing desecrating or incongruous in this habit. It was as natural to them as it was later to Professor Heger to make a note of his shoemaker's bill on the passionate letters of Charlotte Bronte. I know a copy of the Breeches Bible in which the Epistle to the Hebrews is scored all over with the household accounts of a family from August to November, 1693, and a bookseller once •O iJ — ~ : rt w M H O a a o w H W i4 2 Fly -Leaves & Marginal Notes 403 told me that he had a second edition of Rabelais containing the draft correspondence of a horse- dealer in King George the First's day over an alleged breach of warranty, and from his report of the contents I could guess that the dealer was not a whit behind Master Rabelais himself in the power and variety of his abuse. Nothing comes amiss. Wisdom and worldliness go hand in hand and give you, if you read at large in the byeways of old books, a veritable speculum tnundi. In a manuscript of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiee, for which a rapacious bookseller asked me £"^2, there were some fifteenth-century recipes added by way of supple- ment against the colic, which if sound were con- solation indeed. In one of the Libri treasures of the eleventh century a dim-eyed scribe had written down a recipe for his own use, ' ad curandum dolorem oculorum, whilst another more sanguine fellow had expressed the desire of his heart in plain English another way : ' To sleep soundly Eat roundly And drink profoundly Is the redie Way to become Fatt.' Sic ait C. B. 1683. You will frequently find complaints and expostula- tions of scribes against the weariness and boredom of their tasks. One of them stops right in the middle of Ovid's Ars Amatoria and peevishly notes in the margin Melius scripsisfem si voluissem, and then turns 404 Fly-Leaves and to the end and relieves his mind with curious designs for cutting out men's coats. Another will be taken quite a different way and lift his stiffened hands in prayer : ' Jesus that made both sea and lande Send me grace to amend my hande.' II To a mere bookworm, I can think of no more pleasant recreation for a winter evening than to draw the curtains, fling an extra log on the study fire, set the tea tray in the middle of the room, and then wander up and down the length of those shelves where all one's dreams and memories are stored. Not to read, mark you ; but to browse at random and with an especial eye to discover hints and signs of those who loved these books before our day. It is by this half -careless pursuit that we light upon those records of the dead, sometimes- touch- ingly human in their way, which in the determined reading of the text we had not eyes to see. Let no one belittle these waifs and strays of literature because they have no fixed abode. Wisdom is justified of these children as much as any other. Who, for example, does not rejoice in the mellow learning, the criticism and the conceits of Gabriel Marginal Notes 4^5 Hervey's Marginalia, collected by Mr BuUen ? Who does not covet the library of Bishop Warburton, who read everything he could find, and having, as Bentley said, ' a monstrous appetite and a very bad digestion ', covered his books with comments and notes for his recollection ? Who will forget the ' empty, pragmatical fellow ' in Addison's essay, who, after reading ' The Whole Duty of Man ', wrote the names of some of his neighbours opposite every deadly sin named in that improving treatise ? And who would not give his two ears to possess the books that passed through Coleridge's magical hands ? Do you remember what Lamb said of him in that essay where he divides mankind into the race of borrowers and the race of lenders ? ' Reader, if haply thou art blest with a moderate collection of books, be shy of showing it, or, if thy heart over- floweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to such an one as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He will return them (generally anticipating the time ap- pointed) with usury ; enriched with annotations trebling their value. I have had experience. Many are those precious MSS of his (in matter often- times, and almost in quantity not infrequently, vying with the originals) in no very clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel, in old Burton, in Sir Thomas Browne.' ^ 1 Not so choicely illuminating was poet Wordsworth. One long-sufiering friend of his said : ' You might as well turn a bear into a tulip garden as let Wordsworth loose in your library.' 4o6 Fly-Leaves and I fancy Coleridge must have been a litde doubtful whether this habit of his did not annoy his friends, for he wrote in Lamb's copy of Donne, ' I shall die soon, my dear Charles Lamb, and then you will not be vexed that I have bescribbled your books ' '. Ill And now without any apology of the kind I offer to those dusty creatures, my brother book-worms, some of the treasure which I have grubbed up out of my own little heap of books. In my copy of the second edition of the Justice of the Peace, i6()6, there are written down several barbaric attempts at verse by one Edward George, who possessed the book, as he says, on ' April ye 12 old stile 1773 '. ' Pray reader do not take this book away For that it hath a greater mind to stay.' And the following quatrain appears in three dif- ferent forms : ' My noble Lord Noddy Ever let it be said, That where Nature doth no brains afford. No moon affects that head.' ^ The mention of Charles Lamb calls to mind many caustic marginal notes of Walter Savage Landor. In the Life of the essayist prefixed to the second volume of the Letters, Talfourd unfortunately remarks : ' The spirit of gentility seems to breathe around all his persons '. On which Landor scribbles in the margin, ' The deuce it does ! ' Marginal Notes 407 In my copy of Living English Poets, 1893, these satirical lines appear : ' How they made a goodly show One and twenty years ago Forty poets in a row ! Twenty now are voted dead ; Ten beside are hardly read ; Show some pity, years ahead.' Against many a passage in John Reynolds' Inquiries concerning the State and Oeconomy of the Angelical Worlds, which I bought in the fish-market at Whitby, a former reader has made the accusation of plagiarism, until at last, exasperated beyond measure, he sets down this fulmination of Erasmus on a like occasion : ' The thief who steals money goes to the gallows. The miscreant who purloins other men's writings is called a man of letters ; I would not hang him. I would suffocate him with burnt paper.' In my edition of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding this indignant protest is written in a youthful hand : " I believe this is the first book I ever bought. I bought it when quite a tiny child because a deceiving man told me it was a merry book and full of adven- tures. If anyone care to see how deeply that man lied let him read the book for himself. It is cut up to page 146. Nothing on earth will ever make me read any further. If anyone else wish to do so he must cut it for himself but it is sheer lunacy to do anything of the kind. It is a book about as bad as 4o8 Fly -Leaves and that one of which the prophet Jeremiah said to the prince Seraiah "And it shall be when thou hast made an end of reading this book thou shalt bind a stone to it and cast it into the midst of Euphrates " '. In my History of the Council of Trent, by Nathaniel Brent, 1629, a very ponderous work in folio, there is the bookplate of a certain parson named Kenworthy and this sentence written in pencil below : ' I read this as a Lenten penance in the year 1867 '. He is not quite accurate in saying this, for there are 878 pages in all and he failed to accomplish more than a third. The reading must have proved a very torment to this strict Protestant. The interjection marks in pencil begin on page 10 ; from page 50 onwards the margins are full of expostulations, and when on page 216 he finds Friar Ambrosius Catarinus saying that ' the Bishopriche instituted by Christ is one only which the Pope hath and the institution of the others is by the Pope ', he puts down in the margin, ' This is rank Popery ', and slams the book. In my History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, by David Hume, 1644, some patriotic fellow has inscribed these words with a threatening hand : ' Whoever asserts that England and its people are superior to Scotland, I say he lies in his throat ' ^. In my Selections from Wordsworth (1834) tnade by Joseph Hine, with whom I claim no connection, the ' A not uncommon maxim, I am told, in Scottish books. Sir Walter Scott found one similar in a book on heraldry. Marginal Notes 409 preface is much disfigured by the pencil-remarks of a reader ; especially the passage where Hine con- siders that ' Mr Wordsworth's poetry, if properly ];ead (that is as Hine himself would read it) when reflected from the mirror of simplicity, dignity, and power . . . renders it highly desirable for ladies' seminaries and female perusal '. He really deserves the pencilled abuse in the margin, ' You conceited puppy ! ' IV In my second edition of Boccaccio's Decameron there is a note to say that the book was given by Mr J. C. Nainby on his death-bed to Dr Forbes his physician. I suppose this is one of those books which a man gets rid of in a hurry when he makes a death-bed repentance ; and of course Boccaccio himself had done the same. In the first edition of A treatise of Satan's Temptations, by Richard Gilpin, 1677, there is this curious entry : * A. Hughes, given to him by himself as an aid to meet the cunning devices of the world the flesh and the Devil. In a time of sore trial. February 1822.' And that reminds me of a Latin Grammar I heard of since this essay was commenced, the property of a schoolboy by whom these same devices of the devil were rather cultivated than abhorred. Among 41 o Fly-Leaves and a thousand scribblings in this book his master found this very villainous advice : ' Be sure never to give the same name to more than one shop in the town.' In the first volume of my Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, which once belonged to a Cambridge rowing blue ^, there is scarcely a bare half -inch which is not crammed with pictures or pen-work of other kind. The drawings of girls' heads are especially good, but they are placed rather unfortunately between some Hebrew characters and the results of the Rugby matches of St John's XV ; on the last page is a detailed drawing of an undergraduate's mock funeral. I have only once seen ladies' heads drawn in more charming fashion, and that was in a work of Aristotle which Andrew Lang illustrated when he was at Oxford. And in that same volume there were these delightful verses as well : ' There is an old provost of Oriel Who's been there from time immemorial, As the age of Zanonis He fancies his own is This festive old provost of Oriel.' ' In Walter Raleigh's History of the World there is written the following effusion : ' John Evans his booke. Pray read with great caution, but very * The Honourable and Reverend L. W. Denman, for many years rector of Willian, near Hitchin. ' Lang's name reminds me of a paper of his in the second volume of Bibliographica, gathering together many choice manuscript entries in the books — especially the association books — he loved to collect. It is worth noting as one of the very few essays of the kind. Marginal Notes 411 little at a time. Please to Indeavour to keep in memory some little part of what is required that you must be joyfuU in solemnity : Fear God : Honour the .King : Glory to God in the Highest : Peace good will towards men. Allelujah. Amen.' This burst of spiritual fervour could not well last. John Evans soon found himself immersed in worldly things and used the rest of the fly-leaf as a memoran- dum of hirings. 'Mary Ann Evans came to Mr Phillippses on 26 May 1797 for the term of 3 years at 4 guineas for the first year, two of which as been received according to agreement. Thomas Evans came to Mr Phillippses the 15th Sep 1797— received one guinea towards his board.' In the first volume of my Florio's Montaigne the following little conspiracy is revealed : ' I being in poverty and having vowed a vow to buy no more books for myself for the space of six calendar months next ensuing do hereby in order to evade such vow and also out of sheer affection for my ladye give her my love and these three volumes of dear old Montaigne. Provided nevertheless [and this is the cunning of it] that it shall be lawful and permitted to me to read herein at all hours of day and night throughout the term of my natural life not exceeding however the period of fourteen hours in any one day.' 412 Fly -Leaves and One finds, of course, much dogger el-of-abuse addressed to readers who borrow and never return : London March ye yth 1741 If that this booke, Wherein you look. By carlissnesse be lost ; Restore it me, For I am he, That knows best what it cost. James Brewinny. Cost me 6/5. ' There is another which stands threateningly at the beginning of my Art of Ingeniously Tormenting with proper rules for the exercise of that pleasant art, 1753. ' He that doth this booke steal. May he never taste good ale ; And who ever takes this booke away, In a ditch may dye, I harty pray, I say.' They say there are no creatures quite so cruel as the men of letters ; and really the terrific punish- ments they would mete out for minor oflfences would seem to prove it true. They can be excused if at all only by reference to their originals in the ' References to the cost of books are of course amongst the most frequent of manuscript entries. The best I have met with was written by Sir Walter Scott in his copy of Monk's History of the Poets : ' Very rare, therefore worth a guinea ; very senseless, therefore not worth a shilling.' Marginal Notes 413 Dark Ages when a manuscript was often worth the price of many men. Here are some of the milder notices I have taken from the forefront of old books : 'Whoever removeth this volume from its place, may the anger of the Lord overtake him in both worlds to all eternity. Amen.' ' If any man thieve this book may he receive damnation with Judas the traitor, with Annas and Caiaphas and Pilate. Amen.' And this, if you please, from a Holy Bible : ' If any man shall purloin this book, may he die the death, may he be cooked on a gridiron, may the falling sickness and fevers attack him, and may he be broken on the wheel and hung. Amen.' And the following, from a manuscript of some of Augustine's and Ambrose's works in the Bodleian Hbrary : ' This book belongs to St Mary of Robert's Bridge ; whosoever shall steal it or sell it, or in any way alienate it from this house or mutilate it, let him be anathema-maranatha. Amen.' Un- derneath this imprecation is the frightened note of a subsequent owner : ' I John, Bishop of Exeter, know not where the aforesaid house is, nor did I steal this book, but acquired it in a lawful way.' There is just one more of the kind, a pretty blend of French and Latin verse that I can commend to any biblio- phile for the protection of his books. I found it in my copy of the Antedotum Melancholia Joco Cerium, 1667 — a book so wicked and whimsical and pleasant withal that I can forgive any possessor wishing a shameful death to him who took it away : 414 Fly -Leaves and Qui ce livre desrohe'hs, Pro suis criminibus Sa teU au gibet porter a Cum aliis latronibus ; Quelle honte ce sera Pro suis parentibus ! Si hunc librum redidisset Lector pendu non fuisset. I myself once ventured to make something of the same kind, for I have always thought that a man should, if possible, compose his own oaths and objurgations. To swear between quotation marks, to curse according to a book, to plagiarize the minor prophets — all this is very well, but it gives half the glory to another and but feebly satisfies the spleen. So in the copy of a book which I vnrote on the subject of dreams and presented to a local library I inserted the following lines. They should be read at top speed and with a certain ghostliness of voice to produce the proper terrification. CAVEAT LECTOR Let him that taketh this book away, And fails to return it upon the day, Be seized in the dark by a nightmare grim, Be tickled and tortured in every limb, Be freed to the fiends' and the furies' whim, And the mischievous elves severe though sUm, Be mocked by the Devil in pseudonym, Of the cheeky, inconsequent Cherubim, And preached to in possible interim. By near relations and spinsters prim. Marginal Notes 415 Till his hair stand up in a style horrific, His teeth grow loose in chatter terrific, His eyes revolve in his face rubific. And his vertebrae shiver with pains prolific, Till mandragora, that rare specific. Nor homoeopathy's mild pacific, Nor ever the soundest soporific. Shall soothe that sinner to sleep again. VI Come, Reader, let's make an end, or with these innumerous cocktails of casual fancies we shall get gout in the understanding. Never mind those twenty bescribbled tomes, tumbled about the floor ; we can look at them another day. See, there's the fire nearly out ! And here's our tea getting cold — an ancient brew of long standing ; what they caU in the tea-book-shop ' a very late infusion of the first edition '. And by Boanerges, Son of Thunder, if our Cream of Curiosity hasn't turned ! We've left it too long, my dear Sir, and I've got none of the Milk of Meditation to offer you. What ! You will not stay ? Ah ! I see. You want to go and scribble something malicious about me on the fly-leaf of my book. I have given you some models to improve on, eh ? Well, get along witli you. But, one moment : I think I can give you a better model still. Reach down that shabby quarto by your right shoulder^ — Burchard's Ordo 41 6 Fly -Leaves & Marginal Notes Missce, 1502. That's the one. Now turn to page 57 — I fancy it is — and read out what is penned at the bottom. 'Tis Signor Grassi's polite appreciation of the author : Fuit supra omnes bestias, bestial- issimus, inhumanissimus, invidiosissimus, stoUdissimus, inhonestissimus. . . . That's enough, please ; the rest is unprintable. Well, now, if you can abuse me more abundantly than that, I'll forgive you for the fun of it. Farewell ! Close both the doors, there's a good fellow. I want to be alone. THE END PKINTED BY THE ANCHOK PRESS, LTD., TIPTUBE, ESBtX, ENGLAND