JAMES K.MOFFITT 
 
 PAULINE FORE MOFFITT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY 
 
H 1 S T O R I C AL SKETCHES 
 
HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 OF NOTABLE PERSONS AND 
 EVENTS IN THE REIGNS OF 
 
 JAMES I. AND CHARLES I. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 ALEXANDER CARLYLE 
 B.A. 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd. 
 
 NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1898 
 
 [A a rights reserveii] 
 
Edinburgli : T. and A. Constablk, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
 GIFT 
 

 PREFACE 
 
 To write a Book on the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth of 
 England, was one of Carlyle's earliest literary aspirations. His 
 ' First Note-book,' beginning on the 22nd of March 1822, opens 
 with comments and observations on Clarendon's History of the 
 Rebellion, which he had then just begun to read. There follow 
 many pages of criticisms on that Work and quotations from it, 
 showing how deeply Carlyle was interested in the subject. 
 Before a month had gone by he had read the most of Clarendon, 
 the whole of Ludlow's Memoirs, a great part of Milton's Prose 
 Writings, and other Works which throw light upon that period. 
 Under date 15th April of the same year, there is this entry in the 
 Note-book : ' Must it,' his contemplated Book, ' be sketches of 
 ' English character generally, during the Commonwealth ; con- 
 ' taining portraits of Milton, Cromwell, Fox, Hyde, etc., in the 
 ' manner of De Stael's Allemagne} The spirit is willing — but ah ! 
 ' the flesh — ! ' In a few days more he had come nearer to a 
 decision : 'W^ithin the last month,' he writes on the 27th of 
 April, to his brother Alexander, ^I have well-nigh fixed upon a 
 ' topic. My purpose ... is to come out with a kind of Essay on 
 ' the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth of England — not to write 
 ' a History of them — but to exhibit, if I can, some features of 
 ' the national character as it was then displayed, supporting my 
 ' remarks by mental portraits drawn with my best ability, of 
 ' Cromwell, Laud, George Fox, Milton, Hyde, etc., the most 
 ' distinguished of the actors in that great scene.' 
 
 The scheme thus described had to be relinquished for a time : 
 other engagements of a more promising or practical nature, inter- 
 vened, which need not be recounted here. It is enough to say 
 
 V 
 
 386 
 
vi HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 that it was not till about 1842 or '43, that he found himself free 
 and in a position to attempt the realisation of his long-projected 
 scheme. During these twenty years he had read extensively, 
 as his Note-books snow, on the subject of the Civil Wars and the 
 Commonwealth; and one result of his studies was that he had 
 been gradually led to form a very high opinion of the character 
 of Oliver Cromwell, and to discern clearly that, whatever form 
 his contemplated Book on the Civil Wars should take, Cromwell 
 must be the hero of it. 
 
 In October 1843, after certain earlier attempts had proved 
 abortive, a practical commencement was made. He chose the 
 period of James i. as the starting-point, judging that the seeds 
 of the Civil Wars were sown in this king's reign. He proceeded 
 with the work for some months, evidently following the plan he 
 had sketched in 1822. But as the writing went on, his esteem 
 for Cromwell rose ever higher and higher, till by the time he had 
 reached the Long Parliament, Oliver had become the one object 
 of highest interest to him, the most noteworthy and noblest of 
 all the actors in the great drama. Carlyle had, however, almost 
 from the commencement of the writing, entertained doubts as to 
 whether he had taken the best plan for representing Cromwell 
 in his true character, or at least, for convincing the public that 
 his high estimate of Cromwell was undoubtedly the correct one. 
 He foresaw, for one thing, that his view of Oliver, so startlingly 
 at variance with that hitherto almost universally entertained, 
 would require, for its general acceptance, to be accompanied and 
 supported by unquestionable evidence. The evidence wanted lay 
 chiefly in Cromwell's own Letters and Speeches. Carlyle, there- 
 fore, changed his plan, early in 1844, laid aside what he had 
 already written, and began to collect and edit with the necessary 
 * elucidations ' these Letters and Speeches. 
 
 It is from the Manuscript, written and laid aside under the 
 circumstances explained, that the materials have been selected 
 for this little Book, which, for want of a better name, I have 
 called Ilisturical Sketches. 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 Carlyle in his Will (1873) refers to these Papers as 'a set of 
 ' fragments about James i., which were loyally fished out for me 
 ' from much other Cromwellian rubbish, and doubtless carefully 
 ' copied more than twenty years ago, by the late John Chorley 
 
 * who was always so good to me.' Mr. Chorley, on retui-ning the 
 Manuscript and his transcript of a large part of it, wrote, March 
 1851: 'I believe that I have sifted out all that is sufficiently 
 
 * written-out to take its place at once in a series of chapters. . . . 
 ' As it is, the collection is fit, I venture to say, with very little 
 ' care from your hand {viz., rounding off, introducing, and here 
 ' and there crossing out what is given elsewhere) to make a most 
 ' inviting little volume. . . . That you will not allow so much of 
 ' what is good, the fruit of so much labour^ to moulder in a box, 
 ' I most earnestly beg. In copying my part, I have found only 
 ' new reasons to desire this, for the profit of all who would fain 
 ' come nearer to the Life of English History, — as well as for my 
 ' own comfort and pleasure.' 
 
 Carlyle, however, never had the time or inclination to give the 
 Work his finishing touches. Fourteen years after the copy had 
 been made and the Papers returned to him, he wrapped the 
 whole thing up into a packet and put it finally away from him, 
 under the following docketing : ' About James i. and Charles i. 
 ' The Chorley Transcript, with the Original, probably about 1849 ; 
 ' — have not looked at it since ; nor will. T. C, 18 Feby. 1865.' 
 
 The original Manuscript is, for most part, a rough first-draft, 
 without any division into chapters, or indication of the order in 
 which the various matters were intended to appear when printed. 
 
 Mr. Chorley, in the part transcribed by him, — almost all of the 
 section on James and different parts of that on Charles, — has 
 given headings (many of which I have retained) to the various 
 subjects ; but he has not arranged the material into chapters, or 
 in chronological or other order. He has occasionally given 
 material for a footnote, or indicated the source from which one 
 might be drawn. 
 
viii HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 I have taken the copy used by my printers direct from the 
 Original wherever that was accessible, and have followed it as 
 closely as possible under the circumstances. Blanks, left for 
 dates and names forgotten at the moment of writing, have been 
 filled up wherever I could do so with certainty ; obvious slips of 
 the pen, misdatings, and statements historically incorrect and 
 marked doubtful by Carlyle himself, I have corrected by referring 
 to acknowledged authorities, ancient and modern. In two or 
 three instances, I have collected from different parts of the 
 Manuscript all that was written on a particular subject, and placed 
 it under one heading. This occasionally causes a little repetition 
 or redundancy, — a fault which I could have avoided only by 
 omitting matter of interest and importance. 
 
 Nearly the whole of the Manuscript which treats of James's 
 Reign has been printed here ; in the portion dealing with that 
 of Charles, however, much has been omitted, especially matter 
 referring specifically to Cromwell, and matter that has been 
 superseded by fuller treatment in Carlyle's elucidations of the 
 Letters and Speeches. 
 
 The chapters follow each other in chronological order as 
 nearly as practicable. The references to authorities, Stow's 
 Chronicle, Rushworth's Historical Collections, for example, are in 
 the Manuscript often merely indicated in a general way by 
 naming the Book or Author. These I have in every case 
 verified, and where necessary, completed by giving volume and 
 page ; and in not a few instances I have added other references 
 to well-known Historical Works, new and old. To the few foot- 
 notes by Carlyle, I have appended his initials. And for the 
 convenience of readers who may not be familiar with the history 
 of the Reigns of James and Charles, I have ventured to supply 
 brief notes of my own, where explanation, corroboration or slight 
 qualification of statements in the text seemed desirable. 
 
 A. CARLYLE. 
 
 2G<A October 1098. 
 
C O N T E N T S 
 
 Prefack ..... . . 
 
 iNTnODUCTORY — Of THE StUARTS GENERALLY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V 
 
 PART I 
 
 IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. James at Hinchinbrook ..... 9 
 
 II. ELizAnETn's Funeral — Shakspeare . . . I9 
 
 III. Hampton Court Conference — Puritanism and 
 
 Anti-Puritanism ...... 23 
 
 IV. James i. ........ 43 
 
 V. Bog of Lindsey . . ..... 58 
 
 VI. Guy Faux and the Gunpowder Plot . . . 66 
 
 VII. Knighting of Prince Henry .... 72 
 VIII. Material Progress in England — In London 
 
 ESPECIALLY . . . . . . . 78 
 
 IX. Spiritual Progress ...... 85 
 
 X. Paul's Aisle : Paul's Cross ..... 92 
 
 XI. Death of Prince Henry: Marriage of Princess 
 
 Elizabeth to the Palsgrave .... 94 
 
 XII. Duel — Sackville and Bruce . ■ . . . 99 
 
HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XIII. Shakspeare's Death — Cervantes— Kepler . . 103 
 
 XIV. Effects of Court Doings on the Minds of 
 
 Impartial Englishmen . . . . .108 
 
 XV. The Overbury Murder . . . . 112 
 
 XVI. King James's Discourse in the Star-Chamber . 125 
 
 XVII. Burning of the New Play-house in Drury Lane 
 
 — A Puritan Riot . . . . . .127 
 
 XVIII. Bacon 130 
 
 XIX. The King's Journey to Scotland . . .134 
 
 XX. The Book of Sports . . . . . .138 
 
 XXI. Execution of Raleigh . . . . .140 
 
 XXII. Court Precincts — Tournaments, etc. . . .141 
 
 XXIII. John Gibb 145 
 
 XXIV. The Spanish Match 147 
 
 XXV. James's Parliaments . . . . . .153 
 
 XXVI. Glimpses of Notable Figures in James's Parlia- 
 ment of I62O-I — Acts of the same — Bacon — 
 Monopolists . . . . . . .166 
 
 PART II 
 
 IX the hkicn of CHAKLKS I 
 I. Charles and his Queen .... 
 
 II. Charles and his Parliaments 
 III. CiiuHcii Provocations — Montague — Manwaring 
 
 181 
 185 
 15)1 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 IV. Buckingham and the Isle of RhiS and other 
 Discomfitures ....... 
 
 V. Charles's Third Parliament — First Session 
 
 VI, Popular Discontent on the Prorogation of 
 Third Parliament — Buckingham — Felton — 
 Rochelle, etc. ...... 
 
 VII. Charles's Third Parliament — Second Session 
 
 VIII, Religious Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Cen 
 TURY ....... 
 
 IX, Nicholas Ferrar — The Nunnery of Little 
 GiDDING . . .... 
 
 X. Dr, Leighton ..... 
 XI. Attorney General Noy 
 XII. A Scotch Coronation 
 
 XIII. English Men and Women in the Time of Puri 
 
 tanism ...... 
 
 XIV. Bastwick, Burton, and Prynne . 
 XV. Laud's Life by Hevlin 
 
 XVI, Laud's Reformation .... 
 XVII, The Colchester Prophets . 
 XVIII, Loom of Time . , . . . 
 XIX. Patience and Hope . , . . 
 XX. 'Jenny Geddes ' , . , . . 
 XXI. Discovery of the Thurloe Papers — Tradition 
 XXII. Hampden and Laud — Realities and Phantasms 
 XXIII, Wentworth (Strafford) , . . , 
 
 XI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 213 
 221 
 
 232 
 
 234. 
 242 
 248 
 252 
 
 268 
 271 
 274 
 281 
 288 
 296 
 298 
 299 
 310 
 317 
 321 
 
xii HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XXIV. The Scots at Dunse Law — Pacification of Ber- 
 wick, OR THE First 'Bishops' War' . . . 324 
 XXV. Public Burning of the Scotch Declaration 327 
 XXVI. Meeting of Oliver St. John and Edward Hyde 329 
 XXVII. A Scotch Army enters England — The Second 
 
 ' Bishops' War ' . . . . . . . S3^ 
 
 XXVIII. The Long Parliament 336 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 OF THE STUARTS GENERALLY 
 
 Whence came this Stuart, this unfortunate Dynasty of 
 Stuarts ; by what caprice of Destiny were they sent hither on 
 an errand which they could not do ; appointed to be Chief 
 Heroes of England, and able only to be Chief Chimeras of 
 England, and do solecisms ? They came — it were long to 
 tell where they came from ! They came, like the rest of us, 
 from the old ^Eons and Eternities ; they were produced by the 
 ' hereditary principle.' Time and chance, choice and neces- 
 sity, foresight and blindness, — all the Past Ages, with their 
 small radiances of earnest wisdom, struggling to illuminate 
 their huge masses of indolent stupidity, had given to that 
 present living Age James Stuart to be, under penalties. Chief 
 Hero over it. This was what the Past Ages, hitherto, on 
 that side of their affairs, had been able to do. 
 
 After all, there is something in the hereditary principle ; 
 in old times there used to be much in it, and in the newest 
 times there will always be something. Of these very Stuarts 
 it may be said generally, that they were a distinguished race ; 
 not common men. Indeed, all the old King genealogies, if 
 we will look into them, had sprung from intrinsically superior 
 or supreme persons, and were heroic more or less. The 
 Nassaus of Orange, the Capets of France, the Hohenstauf- 
 fens, Hohenzollerns, Vasas, Plantagenets, — people could not, 
 in those old unfurnished times, clutch up the first comer, claj) 
 the King's cloak on him, and say : ' There ! ' By no manner 
 of means. Nations needed to be governed ; to have a Hero- 
 captain go before them, and articulate for them what the dim 
 
 A 
 
2 HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 purpose of their existence was. Their dim purpose, — very 
 dim often, yet struggHng always to become clearer, and utter 
 itself in act and word, — was, and ever is, no other than this : 
 To conform themselves to the Eternal Laws, — Laws of Neces- 
 sity, revealed Laws of God, or whatever good or worse, or 
 better or best name they give it : this ever is, and must be, 
 the purpose of the sons of men. For which, very pressingly 
 indeed, they do need a king to go before them ; and must 
 find one, if they have none ! 
 
 I say, moreover, there is much in blood, in descent ; and 
 the hereditary principle is by no means nothing. Strong 
 races will last you many centuries ; will carry some linea- 
 ments of their Founder across the confusions of a long tract 
 of Time. Do we not see, in these very days, a kind of 
 Nassauism visible in this or the other Prince of Orange ; a 
 Bourbon physiognomy and eupeptic toughness of fibre in 
 this or the other king of the French ? Great King Races, 
 before they die out, give many signs of greatness ; and 
 especially while they are dying out, give tragic signs. The 
 last Vasa of Sweden, — it was melancholy to see how he had 
 the long solemn visage of a Charles Twelfth, or of a Gustavus 
 Adolphus, Lion of the North ; something of the stateliness, 
 the veracity, the lofty obstinacy, proud sense of honour, 
 which had marked his hero-fathers : only the faculty, the 
 insight and energy had been forgotten. Tragical enough. 
 The outer physiognomy, the case of a true king and Vasa 
 still there ; but no king or Vasa within it : — wherefore the 
 poor case had to be sent on its travels, as we know ! 
 
 In Breadalbane Castle there is, or was, and in many 
 Granger Print-books there still is, the Portraiture of a Stuart 
 worth lookino- at. It is the Fourth James ; he who rushed 
 upon his death at Flodden. A brave enough, kingly face, 
 beautiful and stern ; his long black hair fiowing down in 
 rough floods ; carelessly dashed on his head, the Highland caj) 
 with its feather : a really royal-looking man. You will note 
 
THE STUARTS 3 
 
 too, in his aspect, that singular dash of tragic, of Gypsy 
 black, still visible in his distant Grandson, Charles Second, 
 and lower. In the English Solomon,^ in the Royal Martyr, 
 in the Royal Pretender, you find the same bodeful and dark 
 physiognomic element, now more, now less developed. They 
 were all of one blood and bone ; the same tragic element in 
 their character and destiny, as well as in their faces. They 
 descended all from Elizabeth Muir of Rowallan, and were a 
 royal kind of men, — but, at their best, not royal enough. 
 
 The Poet King, the First of the Scotch Jameses ; in him, 
 still visibly to all of us, the world had assurance of a man. 
 Of his melodious written Poems I say nothing ; for a certain 
 eternal rhythm and melody looked through the whole being 
 of the man ; struggling to unfold itself as an Acted Poem, 
 much properer for a king. I find him a right brave man, 
 the born enemy of all unveracities and dissonances ; to whom 
 oppressors, thieves, quacks, and every sort of scoundrels, were 
 an abomination. He made enemies ; infallibly enough, 
 extensively enough. A hungry sanguinary pack of Earls, 
 and such like, broke in upon him in Perth Monastery, and 
 fiercely tore him down ; ^ — as vicious dogs do, when their 
 collars and leashes are not strong enough ; when, alas, perhaps 
 they have long been in the habit of ' eating leather,"" which, 
 says the proverb, dogs should never be taught to ' eat.' 
 
 There is another James,^ he that did Chi-'isfs Kirk and the 
 Gaherlunzie Song, in whom, had he never done more, some 
 pulse of a royal heart were traceable to me. This man too, 
 had rhythmic virtue in him ; an eye to see ' through the 
 
 ^ James I. of England and vi. of Scotland. 
 
 " The King was, perhaps too harshly, trying to curb the turbulent Nobles, 
 when a conspiracy to murder him was formed by his kinsmen, the Earl of 
 Athole, Sir Robert Stewart and Sir Robert Graham. On the 20th February 
 1437 the conspirators, led by Sir R. Graham, broke into the Dominican Mon- 
 astery at Perth, where the Court was then residing, and after a desperate resist- 
 ance the King was slain. The murderers were all taken and tortured to death. 
 The authorship of the Kingis Quair, Peblis to the Play, and a Ballad of Good 
 Counsel IS generally ascribed to this James i. 
 
 ^ James v., the ' Commons' King.' 
 
4 HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 * clothes of things ' ; a genial heart, broad, manful, sympa- 
 thetic ; a laugh like an earth({uake ! And beautiful Mary,^ 
 surely she, too, was a high kind of woman ; with haughty 
 energies, most flashing, fitful discernments, generosities ; too 
 fitful all, though most gracefully elaborated : the born 
 daughter of heroes, — but sore involved in Papistries, French 
 coquetries, poor woman : and had the dash of Gypsy tragic 
 in her, I doubt not ; and was seductive enough to several, 
 instead of being divinely beautiful to all. Considering her 
 grand rude task in this world, and her beautiful, totally 
 inadequate faculty for doing it, and stern destiny for not 
 doing it, — even Dryasdust^ has felt that there was seldom 
 anything more tragical ; and has expressed and still expresses 
 the same in his peculiar way. 
 
 So many inadequate heroes ; not heroic enough ! It is no 
 child's play, governing Nations. Nations are sometimes rather 
 tragical to govern. When your Nation is at a new epoch of 
 development, and struggling to unfold itself from Papistry 
 to Protestantism, from Image- worship to God- worship, from 
 torpid, slumberous Hearsay to wakeful terrorstruck and terrible 
 Sincerity ; and your Royal Race, perhaps, is on the downward 
 hand, nearly bankrupt of heroism, verging towards extinction, 
 and knows nothing of wakeful Nations and their meaning, — 
 yes, then there will arise very tragic complexities ; and Dry- 
 asdust will again have work cut out for him. 
 
 These poor Royal Stuarts who came of Elizabeth INIuir, 
 and, by the hereditary principle, without forethought of 
 theirs^ were sent to be Chief Governors here : may we not 
 
 ^ See also what Carlyle has said of Mary 'Queen of Scots,' in his ' Portraits 
 of John Knox,' p. 144 (Peoples' Ed., 1875). 
 
 - An expressive compound word used to denote any dreary, longwindod 
 writer who fills his pages with trifling details ' telling us nothing in many 
 words.' It occurs in Sir W. Scott's Novels, and is not of Carlyle's coinage. It 
 may be added that ' my erudite friend,' sometimes referred to in the following 
 pages, is simply a variety of the genus Dryasdust, differing from the common 
 type only in being more profoundly 'learned.' 
 
THE STUARTS 5 
 
 call them ' fateful "■ ? The Fates said to them : Be Kings, of 
 talent, but not of talent enough. Kings of a deep, inarticu- 
 late People, in whose heart is kindled fire of Heaven, which 
 shall be unintelligible and incredible to you. Take these 
 heroic qualities, this dash of Gypsy black. Let there run 
 in your quick blood a pruriency of appetite, a proud im- 
 patience, — alas, an unveracity, a heat and a darkness ; and 
 therewith try to govern England in the Age of Puritanism. 
 That, we have computed, will be tragedy enough, for England 
 and you. 
 
PART I 
 
 IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 JAMES AT HINCHINBROOK 
 
 [1603] 
 
 At Hinchinbrook Manor-house in Huntingdonshire, on 
 the 27th and 28th of April 1603, as the eye through dim 
 old Chronicles can still discern, there were really great doings ; 
 the ancient Borough of Huntingdon, ancient village of God- 
 manchester, and the whole Fen Country far and wide, all 
 thrown into almost preternatural emotion. A new Scotch 
 Majesty, James the Sixth as he was at Edinburgh, is pro- 
 gressing by slow stages towards London ; to become James 
 the First, and King of both countries ; — Elizabeth the Queen 
 being dead. He has got thus far on his journey : here, at 
 Hinchinbrook, ' on the Wednesday afternoon,' he emerges 
 from the northern twilight ; he in person, with a mighty 
 retinue, indistinctly glittering to us, in silk, silver and plumes ; 
 here a Knight, Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, son of 
 Sir Henry Cromwell, the ' Golden Knight," is doing the impos- 
 sible to entertain his Majesty. Here for unexpected reasons. 
 History will glance fixedly on him for an instant or two. 
 
 His Majesty, we understand, has already been above three 
 weeks on the road ; ambling along in large cavalcade, at full 
 leisure, in the bright Spring weather ; a phenomenon notable 
 to human nature ; — chasing game, making Knights, eating 
 dinners, chiefly hunting all the way ; feasted everywhere, by 
 sumptuous noblemen, by loyal civic corporations, regardless 
 of expense ; multitudes of human creatures crowding from all 
 sides of the horizon to a sight of him : for it is not every 
 
10 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 day one sees a Majesty ; and indeed, Kings, as the old 
 Chronicle ^ says, are now grown doubly wonderful, so long 
 have we, fifty years or more, been under Queens. Pheno- 
 menon once notable to human nature ; now forgettable. 
 Truly, of his Majesty's progress onward to Hinchinbrook, 
 it is only Parish History and the Peerage Books that can say 
 much at present. How he ' fired off a cannon on the walls 
 ' of Berwick, showing skill in great artillery "* ; how he lodged 
 ' at the Sign of the Bear and Sunne in Doncaster,'' no noble 
 mansion being near, and what the landlord's joy and teiTor 
 were ; how not far from Worksop Manor, His Majesty ate his 
 luncheon on a gi-een bank, pleasantly under the opening buds 
 and birches, and anon in Worksop Park was accosted by 
 kneeling huntsmen in Lincoln coats, who offered to show him 
 some game thereabouts, a very welcome offer : all this, and 
 more of the like, shall concern us extremely little. At York, 
 and again afterwards, I read His Majesty's Proclamation, 
 That such crowds shall not gather round our Royal Person : 
 Heavens, we are but a man, though clothed and quilted 
 in this extraordinary manner ! At Newark, with still more 
 interest, I witnessed the seizure of ' a cutpurse,' and instant 
 warrant with Sign-manual to the Recorder of the town to 
 have him hanged ; which was straightway done, without 
 judge or jury : a ' well-dressed cutpurse,' who had attended 
 us with profit for a tract of days;'" — probably a London 
 artist ; the oldest member of the swell mob taken notice of 
 by History. He swings in Newark there, on the sudden, 
 being seized flagrante delicto ; a warning to men. 
 
 These things we note, though with little interest. His 
 Majesty's progress, once glorious and divinely interesting as 
 the very zodiac, has now ceased to interest any mortal ; and 
 claims principally to be, by all mortals who recognise the 
 
 ^ Stow's Chronicle 0/ Ejt^land {London, 1631) ; begun by Slow and continued 
 by Howe. 
 
 ^ He confessed ' that hee hadde from Berwicke to that place played the cut- 
 purse in the Courte.' Stow, p. 821. 
 
CHAP. I.] JAMES AT HINCHINBROOK 11 
 
 phenomena of this world, forgotten, — left to Dryasdust and 
 the Peerage Books. — But here, at Hinchinbrook, we say, 
 human nature has still, for a reason little dreamt of by his 
 Majesty, vocation to take notice of him. The reader shall 
 know it by and by ; his Majesty will never know it.^ At 
 Hinchinbrook and elsewhere there is always more going on 
 than any of us dreams of. Among the huge flaring sun- 
 flowers, illustrious hollyhocks, not to say grass rag -weeds, 
 poisonous hemlocks, that cover the surface of feracious Time, 
 who knows what everlasting Oak Tree may have germinated 
 from its acorn, and be peering through the soil, — all irrecog- 
 nisable among the hollyhock and hemlock crops ! 
 
 But be that as it may, the fact, worthy of great notice or 
 of little, is indisputable: Hinchinbrook, on Thursday the 28th 
 of April 1603, loas all in gala. Through the gulph of dead 
 centuries we can still behold it, after a sort ; look on it as 
 with eyes. Hinchinbrook, while it was a Nunnery, never saw 
 such doing's. Hinchinbrook has been a Manor-house for half 
 a century and more ; it may become a Nunnery, an Iron- 
 foundry, before it see the like again. The gates of Hinchin- 
 brook are thrown open ; the dignified courts of Hinchinbrook 
 are filled with multitudes of nobility, gentry, respectable 
 commonalty ; and far and wide hovers and simmers, through 
 Huntingdon streets and all heights and open spaces of ground, 
 an extensive fluctuating crowd of human creatures, come from 
 far and near to see this reed shaken by the wind. These are 
 facts of the past tense : indubitable as the newest of the 
 
 ^ ' It is for the sake of little Oliver, roving about in the hand of his Nurse- 
 maid, unnoticed in these crowds ; for his sake, and for his alone, that the human 
 soul, may it please your Majesty, has come to pay its respects to your Majesty 
 this day ! No other errand had any soul ; hardly Dryasdust, who has no soul. 
 O Dryasdust, hadst thou noted down for me that little boy Oliver Cromwell, 
 what he did, said, any foolishest word he uttered, what kind of look he had, cap 
 or jacket he wore, how gladly had I given all the rest for that ! The rest without 
 that is dead as African guano, as the sweepings of Monmouth Street. Foolish 
 Dryasdust, he has not so much as named this little Oliver ; it is only by 
 chronology and moral certainty that we see him there at all ! ' — T. C. (/« 
 another unpublished paper of this series). 
 
12 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part I. 
 
 present. Thitherward we also, for reasons of our own, will 
 hasten to have a look. 
 
 Coming westward from the London side, if you pause on 
 the heights of Godmanchester, where Drunken Barnabee's 
 big Oak stood,^ a pleasant prospect opens. Lazy, fat, or 
 dropsical country, the very bogs of which looked green 
 enough, has spread around you for many a mile ; with 
 fat, lazy-looking willow-trees, alder-trees ; interspersed with 
 church-belfries, with red brick dwellings of men. And now 
 you are at the hill-top over Godmanchester, where Barnabee's 
 big tree then was and now is not ; and see the flat country 
 broken thenceforth into undulations ; — see the River Ouse, 
 with large curvature, come sweeping by ; on this side of it 
 the low, long street of Godmanchester, an undistinguished 
 stream or lake of simple houses with one high steeple ; on 
 the other side, leant up as in comfortable rest, the long 
 Shire-town of Huntingdon, with Church-towers, spires, and 
 the living smoke of hearths. ' The smoke-cloud sent up by 
 ' busy housewives cooking their husbands'* victuals,' as my 
 German friend says : " it hangs there these many centuries 
 under the serene of heaven. Mr. Robert CromwelFs chimneys 
 from the west end of the place contribute their quota. David 
 the Scotch King had a Castle here ; but there rose quarrels 
 respecting it, and Henry Plantagenet, Henry ii., in his 
 spleen, tore it down.^ Portholme, a green meadow, spreads 
 itself behind Godmanchester, on this side the River, plea- 
 santly, for bleaching of webs, for running of horse-races, for 
 cheerful promenading of men and women. An ancient Bridge, 
 we can observe, connects the village and the town ; — the 
 Ouse takes such a sweep as indicates that he is in no haste 
 about his journey : in fact this poor River has a sad fate to 
 look for ; fifty miles of Fen between him and the German 
 
 ' See Oliver Cromwell's Letters avd Speeches, i. 25 (Liby. Edition). 
 ''■ Teufelsdrockh, in Sartor Resartiis, book 11. cap. ix. 
 * Camden's Britannia, i. 502. 
 
CHAP.l] JAMES AT HINCHINBROOK 13 
 
 Ocean, and such a bewildered race to run as few rivers have. 
 Now branched into various arms ; now stagnating in marshes, 
 meres, black reedy plashes ; now high in air, held up by niain 
 force in Bedford Levels and embankments ; if you left him 
 alone, he would drown whole districts, and leave nothing but 
 the ' isles," Isle of Ely and others : this is the fate of the river 
 Ouse ; Avhich here flows by unconscious, and of a common 
 drab colour. 
 
 Huntingdon itself, we see, leans up against the edge of the 
 Hill, secure from swamp and mud ; and other knolls and 
 faint ridges, ever bluer, ever dimmer, die away towards 
 Kimbolton, St. Neofs and the Infinitude, in a pleasant 
 manner. Kimbolton old Town and Castle, where the sad 
 Queen Catherine, now divorced by questionable sentence, 
 sat down to die ; St. Neot's old Town and Church, where 
 worthy Neot, the brother of our great Alfred, mingled with 
 his mother Earth, and with the devout memories of men : 
 these lie in the blue-grey haze of the horizon : in the horizon 
 and beyond it lie so many things. 
 
 But leftwards to the south of Huntingdon, not half a mile 
 of distance, where the green heights spread gently along- 
 shaded with sprinklings of wood, — thither, it is, to Hinchin- 
 brook, O reader, that thou and I are bound on this occasion : 
 let us quit the Oak of Barnabee, and hasten down. Hinch- 
 inbrook is not now a Nunnery ; no, it only was one. Not 
 a nun there these fifty years and odd. Henry the Eighth, 
 big burly man, having divorced Catherine, dissolved all 
 Nunneries ; made this a Manor, gave it to Richard Crom- 
 well, a man useful in these operations ; ' affectionate nephew,' 
 as he writes himself, of the famed Thomas Cromwell, Earl of 
 Essex, who destroyed all Monasteries, and lost his own head 
 in the business. But Richard did not lose his head ; Richard 
 became opulent, and the big King said to him, ' Thou shalt 
 ' not be my Dick, thou shalt be my Darling.'' Hereby is 
 Richard's grandson now a man of opulence ; son of a Golden 
 Knight, and himself deserving to be called Golden. And 
 
14 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 here at Hinchinbrook, there is not worship of Saint Neot or 
 of any Saint or Hero going on ; but worship of a far different 
 sort, — which, in Heaven's name, let us hasten down to look 
 at for one moment if no more. 
 
 These thousands of abolished mortals, bone of our bone, 
 flesh of our flesh, who do indubitably circulate here, with 
 eager-gazing eyes, with multitudinous hum of English speech ; 
 so palpable that day, so vanished this ; are they without 
 interest to thee ? To me they are as good as preternatural : 
 there icere they ; where are they ? — But who shall describe 
 the inner solemnities ; the gifts of jewelled goblets, the stately 
 passages and ceremonials ; the ambrosial sumptuosities of 
 feasts, — seneschals and sewers with their white wands, and 
 dishes of silver and gold, great they as generals on the day of 
 battle ; and far down in the interior, fat cooks puffing and 
 perspiring, greasy scullions, sooty turnspits all in a broil ; 
 death-doing energy on every brow, the feeling that now 
 they must cook or die ! None can describe such things ; nor 
 need. The outer fountains of Hinchinbrook run mere wine ; 
 from the outer courts of Hinchinbrook no meanest rascal 
 shall, this day, go away unfed. What your soul longs for, 
 of victual or of liquor, is here to be had freely. One of the 
 heavenly bodies is passing here : Hinchinbrook has become 
 one of the houses of the Zodiac. 
 
 The Mayor of Huntingdon presented, as was pro[)er, the 
 keys and sword to his Majesty : the Mayor and Common- 
 council men have done and are doing, this day, their duty. 
 And the Cambridge Heads of Houses have come along, with 
 high-flown Latin compliment, in scarlet or other cloaks ; and 
 got such audience, such comfits and temporal and spiritual 
 entertainments as were needful ; and gone their ways again. 
 These come and go : our Progress is like that of the iVIoon, 
 escorted everywhere by the ocean-tides and land-clouds, full 
 sea where our presence is. It was but the other day there 
 came the ' Millenary Petition ' — Petition })ur})orting to be 
 signed by a thousand, or near a thousand, clergymen of 
 
CHAP.i.] JAMES AT HINCHINBROOK 15 
 
 Parishes, faintly, most humbly intimating that a point or two 
 in our glorious Reformed Church was, or might by the 
 human mind be conceived to be, short of perfection.^ 
 Which audacious though faint intimation Oxford University, 
 all in cloaks of some sort, shortly after did earnestly de- 
 nounce ; apprising his Majesty that they had a right to do 
 it, being such a body of men for Learning and real acumen 
 of insight as his Majesty might vainly seek the like of in this 
 world. Whereat old Archbishop Whitgift felt some comfort ; 
 having shuddered at such an audacious Millenary Petition ; 
 having lived this long while, as he said, ' in terror of a 
 ' Scotch misf coming down on him with this new Majesty 
 from the land of Knox, or Nox, Chaos and Company. 
 
 All these things concern us little. Of the Cambridge 
 Heads of Houses, of the Oxford Doctors unparalleled for 
 real acumen of insight ; of ancient Whitgift trembling for 
 his Scotch mist ; who, of gods or men, does take account of 
 it at this hour ? Even the ' Earl of Southampton, bearing 
 ' the Sword of State before his Majesty," has become almost 
 indifferent to us. Of these thirty thousand or so, all 
 bustling, jostling here, with eager eyes, in and about the 
 Manor House of Hinchinbrook and Borough of Huntingdon, 
 there are not ten persons known to me by face ; not three 
 whom I could wish any of my friends to know. Each of 
 them truly has a face ; face, for that matter, traced with 
 cares, hopes, character, complete series of life-adventures : 
 but they are strangers to me and History ; they belong 
 to brown Oblivion and others than me ! Solely, or almost 
 solely, among that fluctuating multitude which floods all 
 Hinchinbrook in such deray and gala, we will note one 
 little Boy of four years old gone Tuesday last ; ^ led by his 
 Nursemaid, as is like ; and bustling to and fro, with due con- 
 venience, to all suitablest points of view, for seeing this 
 solemnity : it is a Nephew of Sir Oliver the Landlord ; his 
 
 1 Neal's History of the Puritans, ii. 5 (edition of 1794). 
 
 2 Oliver Cromwell was born on 2Sth April, 1599. 
 
16 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 own name is little Oliver, or Noll, — poor little fellow ! Mr, 
 Robert Cromwell from his mansion in the west end of 
 Huntingdon ; Mr. Robert Cromwell, next Brother to the 
 Knight of Hinchinbrook, and Father to this Boy ; he and 
 Dame Cromwell, who is a Steward from the Stuntney Stewards, 
 and so of kin to this Scotch Majesty, are in the feast itself, 
 I fancy ; and Sir Thomas Steward the Knight of Stuntney, 
 and much other kindred, though unseen to me, are there : 
 but this our little Oliver strolls about, I think, in a state of 
 glad excitation, in the hand of his Nui'se-maid the while. 
 Look at him, reader ; him thou shalt look at. A broad- 
 headed, bony-faced little fellow, with clear grey eyes ; stout- 
 made for his years ; extremely full of wonder at present ; 
 — in what headdress of leather or cloth cap, in what body- 
 dress and breeches, doubtless his best cap and breeches, is 
 entirely unknown to this Editor. O Nollykin, my little man, 
 how this unexpected sunbui'st of the new Scotch Majesty has 
 transported thy poor little incipient spiritual faculty, and 
 thou art all one wide-eyed wonderment : was the like ever 
 seen or dreamt of ? Huntingdon Fair, with its bellowing 
 cattle, with its mystic showbooths, luxurious gingerbread 
 bazaars, leathercoated drovers and bedizened men and women, 
 was but a type of it. On the tabula rasa of thy poor young 
 brain, the Destinies are pleased to write with such pigments. 
 Destiny paints and writes daily, for every one of us, such 
 ' Dissolving Views,' electric, miraculous enough ; miracle 
 after miracle ; and the poor tablet retains what it may of 
 them, and comes out a very miraculous tablet ! — 
 
 Doubtless this ' Dissolving View ' speedily enough dissolved 
 out of the head of Nollykin, or retreated into the obscure 
 depths of him, as all such do, one swiftly extruded by the 
 other. Who can calculate what influences are thrown 
 incessantly into the young soul of a broad-headed, grey-eyed, 
 intelligent boy in this world ? Of such electric pictures and 
 dissolving views as we see here, there is great tpiantity day 
 after day ; and then — but there is no end of it ; Heavens, 
 
CHAP. I.] JAMES AT HINCHINBROOK 17 
 
 only think what this means : They are teachin*^ him the 
 English Language ! The English — not the French, German, 
 or Mandingo ; this they are daily speaking to the Boy 
 Oliver ; speaking, nay singing it with the Huntingdon tune or 
 accent, as they term it : let a reader try to compute the 
 probable effect of this alone. And then Pope Gregory, St. 
 Austin, John Calvin, Martin Luther ; onwards to Moses the 
 Midianitish shepherd, and earlier ! Shadows from all lands 
 and ages ; Shadows and lightgleams from the remotest con- 
 tinents of Space, from the uttermost shores of Time, fall and 
 flicker confusedly over this young mind in the Town of 
 Huntingdon here ; are making his mind''s tablet mysterious 
 enough. For instance, these young eyes did not see the Gilt 
 Temple at Upsala, with gold festoon-chains and seventy 
 horses' heads in a state of forwardness ; no, they saw Ely 
 Cathedral dominating the Fen Country, with surplices, 
 rubrics, and the long line of Archbishops not yet grown 
 ghastly. A man is citizen of his age ; yes — and a strange 
 age he will always find it, if he look. 
 
 And so, at all events, whenever henceforth the Boy Oliver 
 Cromwell hears mention of a king, this shambling, thick-speak- 
 ing, big-headed, goggle-eyed, extraordinary Scottish individual 
 in gilt velvet with fringing, will be the thing meant for him. 
 Progressing in a very chaos of pomp, gilding and splendour ; 
 not unlike the heavenly Moon on her zodiac ; drawing up 
 mankind round him, and their choicest liquors, gold goblets, 
 Barbary horses, and household effects and heartworship ; a 
 most gorgeous individual. ' O nursemaid mine, I think his 
 ' Majesty's tongue is a thought too big for him ? See how 
 ' he drinks, eating his liquor from the cup, and at the corners 
 'of his mouth leaks somewhat!'^ — 'Hush, thou naughty 
 ' Nollykin ; hush ! ' 
 
 Now, however, on Friday morning, breakfast being fairly 
 over, it is time his Majesty were under way. Sir Oliver, now 
 
 ^ Weldon, in Secret Hist, of the Court of King James, Edinburgh, 1811 ii. 2. 
 
 B 
 
18 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 Sir and a knight, must escort his Majesty to the gate : and 
 the little Oliver, from some street window or other place of 
 vantage, may look his last at this Pageant. The new Majesty 
 is gone, — may a blessing go with him ! 
 
 In Godmanchester the peojile stood all drawn out in 
 holiday clothes, with their yoked ploughs on the street ; 
 ' seventy fair new ploughs '' with their sleek teams, all 
 fluttering in ribbons and bedizenment,^ — their style of plough- 
 ing, crop rotation, and general mode of Fen -agriculture, 
 remaining somewhat obscure to us ! His Majesty inquires, 
 Why they have all these ploughs drawn out ? The Bailiff", or 
 other public spokesman, makes answer : May it please your 
 Majesty, the ploughs are yours. We are your ]VIajesty''s 
 poor socmen, and hold our land by that tenure, of offering 
 you our ploughs and work-gear, every time you pass this way, 
 — Say you so ? Well, I am glad to find I have so many 
 good husbandmen in one town. Keep your ploughs, my 
 men ; and rend the tough glebe to good purpose with them. — 
 God save your Majesty ! Universal shouts attend the king ; 
 and now, under Barnabee's Oak-tree, we will leave him on his 
 way to Royston. 
 
 To Royston, to Brockesbourne or elsewhither, and gradually 
 to Theobald's and to London ; — which latter enormous city, 
 half a million in population, and equal to Tyre or Sidon in 
 trade, he enters on the 7th of May ; ' riding thro'' the 
 ' meadows,'' says old Stow,^ ' to avoid the extremity of dust ' ; 
 so many myriads of human creatures, mounted or on foot, 
 thicker now than ever, thronging out to see him ; the Peer- 
 ages and Baronages, the officialities, mayoralties, the very 
 Inns of Court, all waiting, 'ranked on Stamford HilT or 
 elsewhere. Thus has his Majesty traversed the length of 
 England ; mankind, with their choicest household effects and 
 hearts'-reverences, escorting him, in a magnificent manner ; 
 as the Ocean-tides and land-clouds escort their celestial 
 Moon. Here, at the top of the highest Spring-tide, let the 
 ^ Stow, 822. - Chronicle, 823. 
 
CHAP. II.] ELIZABETH^S FUNERAL 19 
 
 last glimmer of the Hinchinbrook solemnity die out; girdled 
 by oblivion or imagination, by twilight sufficiently luminous. 
 
 We add only, that Sir Oliver who was not himself called 
 the Golden Knight (so says Dryasdust), but was the Son of 
 the Golden Knight, — of Sir Henry, namely, who built the 
 new Hinchinbrook, and otherwise unfolded himself in a golden 
 way, — did full certainly by this business become what we may 
 call a Silver Knight ; dwindling to a Silver-gilt, and at last 
 almost to a copper one ! In plain words, his light wasting 
 itself ever more burnt dimmer and dimmer from this day ; 
 in some twenty-three years more, he had to retire to Romsey 
 Mere, deeper into the Fens ; and sell Hinchinbrook to the 
 Montagues, in whose hands it still remains.^ 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ELIZABETH'S FUNERAL — SHAKSPEAllE 
 
 [1603] 
 
 Ix these same hours, so festive at Hinchinbrook, the 
 Funeral of Queen Elizabeth is going on at London, as Stow's 
 Chronicle apprises me ; and this too is worth a glance from 
 all of us. She died at Richmond, near five weeks ago, our 
 noble Queen ; but her body was privately carried to ^Vhite- 
 hall ; and this day, Thursday, the 28th of April, her 
 Obsequies shall be. ' The city of Westminster is surcharged 
 ' this day,' says Stow,'- ' with multitudes of all sorts of people 
 ' on the streets, in their houses, on the leads, and gutters, 
 ' who have come to see the obsequy,' — no wonder. And now, 
 in a chariot or hearse, drawn by eight black horses, and 
 ' trapped ' sufficiently in black velvet and the like, with Peers, 
 State-officers, Dignitaries, 'to the number of 1500 persons 
 ' that bore mourning,' she is borne to her long home. See, 
 
 ^ The date of the Deed of Sale of Hinchinbrook to the Montagues is 20th 
 June 1637. 2 Chronicle, 815. 
 
20 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 slowly emerging from AVhitehall Gate, and slowly wending by 
 King Street and Old Palace Yard, to the Abbey Church of 
 Westminster, the sable hearse with its eight black horses, and 
 stream of 1500 mourners comes to view: on the coffin-lid 
 lies her effigies ' counterfeited to the life,' gold crown on its 
 head, in its hand the sceptre and ball ; and quire-men of her 
 chapel, in clear mournful tenor, are ' singing,"' as they go, sad 
 requiem into all hearts. It is the last we shall see, on this 
 Earth, of our brave Queen Bess, On the coffin-lid lies her 
 effigies counterfeited to the life ; and hi the coffin — ! 
 And now the quire, in clear mournful tenor, sing requiem as 
 they go. 
 
 At sight and sound whereof, the ' universal nuiltitude,' 
 this is the thing my readers are surprised at, ' burst forth 
 ' into sheer wail and weeping"; lifted up their universal voice 
 and wept. Yes, there is her effigy painted to the life, the 
 ball and sceptre in its waxen hand : her effigy ; but her brave 
 self, where is that ? Gone, and never through the circling 
 ages returns to us more. F'mi.'i ; it is the end. She had 
 ' gained the people's love,"* says Stow, ' and continued growing 
 ' in it to the last.' And now this day ' there is such a weep- 
 ' ing as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory 
 ' of man ; neither doth any history mention any people made 
 ' such lamentation for the death of their sovereign ' ;— her 
 requiem singing itself, in most authentic mournful melody, 
 through all hearts. So fares the noble Queen Elizabeth to 
 her still home, in these hours ; bemoaned with true tears. 
 She was the last sovereign, if we will think of it, whom 
 English hearts did truly love : the unfortunate English 
 hearts ever since have been reduced, in great })art and e\on 
 in whole, to love the sovereign's effigy counterfeiteil to the 
 life, no sovereign's self being properly there ; — and to manage 
 that sorrowful problem in such sort as they could ! 
 
 'She was tall of stature; strong in every limb and joint; 
 'her fingers small and lonor ; her voice loud and shrill: she 
 * was of ail admirable ready wit and nieniorv ; very skilful in 
 
CHAP. II.] ELIZABETH'S FUNERAL 21 
 
 ' all kinds of neecllevvork,"' says poor old Stow ; — in fact, exceed- 
 ingly skilful every way. She had a brave heart, a veracious 
 clear intelligence ; on the whole, a great and genuinely royal 
 soul. She cast herself u})on her people's affection, — not 
 like a truckler either, but like a ruler, severe and stern withal. 
 With a noble divination, beautiful in a woman, but in a 
 brave and great-souled woman very natural, she apprehended 
 what the heart of her English People meant ; and she 
 bent herself to lead in the doing of that, — to he their king, 
 to go before them veritably as a heaven-sent Captain and guid- 
 ing Pillar of Fire. It is the task of a king. If he can do it, 
 joy to him and to us. Right loyally, devoutly will the 
 People recognise him as the Sent of Heaven, their miraculous 
 Pillar-of-Fire ; at sight of whom all hearts burn, and Spanish 
 Armadas, and Nightmare Chimeras in Rome or elsewhere, are 
 swept swiftly to the Father of them : the king wills it, — the 
 king of England, seconded by the King of the Universe. 
 If your hapless king cannot do this task, if in his own heart 
 there is not nobleness to divine it, to attempt it, and know it 
 as the one thing needful, — alas, what can he do ? Retire 
 from the trade, I should say ; that would be better for him ! 
 Here where he is he can do nothing but fatuities and inco- 
 herences ; which sooner or later are very certain to he rejected, 
 and not accepted ; inexorably and even indignantly rejected 
 of Earth and of Heaven. I have known men lose their heads 
 in such a business ! — 
 
 William Shakspeare, the beautifullest soul in all England, 
 that day, when the Cambridge Dignitaries came to his Majesty 
 and Hinchinbrook, and the innumerable Fen populations were 
 gathered, and the plumed silk-and-silver retinue were fugling 
 and gesticulating, and the conduits running wine, and the 
 little Boy Oliver looking at it without notice : William 
 Shakspeare, I rejoice also to see, by chronology and moral 
 certainty, was breathing in this world ; — a hale man of nine- 
 
22 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 and-thirty ; thinking of many things. Busy in South wark, 
 in the interior of the Globe Theatre on the Bankside, in a 
 private way ? Or gone out, he also with his human sym- 
 pathies, with heart capable of real reverence, to take his last 
 look at Elizabeth, borne in dirge-music to her long home, the 
 last of our English kings ? Thou beautiful Shakspeare, 
 thou wert alive that day; and makest the dark Past and the 
 io-norant Present and the uncertain Future brighter for us. 
 At thy writing-desk in South wark ; thrifty among the stage- 
 properties of the Globe Theatre, or out seeing Queen Eliza- 
 beth buried, thou shalt be very beautiful to us. How many 
 sublime Majesties, sublime Pontiff's, Arch-overseers so-called, 
 have faded away into the ghastly state, and claim from us 
 passionately one thing. Christian burial and oblivion ; and in 
 thy bright eyes we still lovingly shadow ourselves, thou right 
 royal, archiepiscopal one ! Shakspeare, beyond the smallest 
 doubt, was alive that day ; a hale man of nine-and-thirty, 
 with genius and Heaven's own light looking through the 
 eyes of him : it is a fact forever notable.^ And again, this 
 Earl of Southampton who bears the sword before his INIajesty : 
 he has been in the Tower for Essex"'s sake ; but has now got 
 
 ^ Elsewhere in this MS. Carlyle writes : ' In Dryasdust's huge stacks of print 
 and manuscript, the lumber-room of Nature, you cannot get one leaf with intel- 
 ligible jotting about William Shakspeare on it. A quarter of a leaf, half- 
 intelligible, will hold it all. William Shakspeare, the beautifuUest English 
 soul this England confesses to have ever made, the pink and flower of re- 
 membered Englishmen ; the greatest thing, it appears, that we have yet done, 
 and managed to produce in this world : of him English History says — nothing ! 
 What z's English History? The record of things memorable? I have known 
 better recording by mere old ballads, by stone heaps and Peruvian quipo-thrums ! 
 But the average of human History is only a shade better than English. " I am 
 always thankful," says Smelfungus, " that they did not forget to jot down the Four 
 Gospels themselves, and dismiss the whole business as an insignificant case of 
 Police!" . . . Yes, it is all ordered by the Heavens : Dryasdust, like Sin, 
 if not caused, is permitted; and we must have patience.' — Stevens, one of the 
 most acute of Shakspearian commentators, wrote : ' All that is known with 
 any degree of certainty concerning Shakspeare, is — that he was born at Slrat- 
 ford-on-Avon ; — married and had children there ; went to London, where he 
 commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays ; returned to Stratford, made 
 his will, died and was buried.' 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 23 
 
 out, under the new Majesty, and bears sword of state and 
 such like ; a most far-shining, noticeable man and Earl : does 
 no reader know him ? We all know him for the kindness he 
 did to an astonishing Play-actor of genius, — the above-said 
 Play-actor of the Globe Theatre, then alive in this world 
 beside him ! This world is all a Theatre ; and so many poor 
 Players act their parts ; some in bright dresses, some in dim ; 
 some to great purpose, some to almost none. All a theatre ; 
 — but a very emblematic one : the coulisses of it, on this 
 hand and on that, being Eternities ; the purport and upshot 
 of it being, as is rightly said, Life everlasting. Death ever- 
 lasting ! — 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE PURITANISM AND 
 
 ANTI-PURITANISM 
 
 [1603-4] 
 
 The Age of King James, after infinite reading, remains, 
 as it were, inane to us ; little better than no Age at all. 
 Dim, dreary, without form or meaning ; a sea of leaden- 
 coloured vapour, with certain unmelodious ghosts confusedly 
 shrieking and swimming in it ! No soul of genius has yet 
 resuscitated King James's Age for us, — or is in the least 
 likely to do so. The Heavens have not created, nor I think 
 intend to create, any soul that loves it : how can any soul 
 teach us to love it, to body it forth again, and look on it ? 
 Fatal Dryasdust, who is still publishing new volumes on the 
 matter, does not love it ; he only loves his own dreary jot- 
 tings and lucubrations on it ; — and so it grows ever drearier, 
 ever emptier : a sea of leaden vapour ; sinking towards Chaos 
 and the Bog of Lindsey,^ I imagine ! 
 
 One of the few things we could wish to save from such 
 vapour-sea, and look fixedly upon, were that Conference at 
 1 Sec/>os^, p. 58. 
 
24 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 Hampton Court in the middle of January 1604.^ It is the 
 first authentic appearance of Puritanism on the stage of 
 official life. Puritanism, as Martin Marprelate in surrep- 
 titious Pamphlets, and otherwise, has long had a gaseous 
 kind of existence ; painful " ministers, suffering under surplices 
 and scruples, have had High-Commission Courts, Oaths Ex- 
 Officio contrived for them, and been ejected and imprisoned 
 and sharply dealt with, in great detail : but here Puritanism 
 comes forward as a unity, solidified, tangible. Millenary 
 Petition, and various petitions and discussions which arose 
 out of that, having somewhat unsettled the Public mind, his 
 Majesty by Proclamation declares that he will settle it again ; 
 — summons four leading Puritans to meet his Bishops and 
 him, and try whether they cannot settle it. Who but would 
 wish, at this distance of time, to glance into such a meet- 
 ing, if he could be spiritually present there ? 
 
 Alas, it is not possible ; we cannot spiritually sec this 
 thing by looking on it ; this thing too is grown very spectral. 
 Reynolds, Sparks, Chadderton and Knewstubs ; Whitgift and 
 Bancroft, Bilson and Rudd : ^ who can know them ? They 
 speak in the English language ; but the meaning of them is 
 all foreign to us ; glances off from us with an irritating 
 futility, oft repeated, with a kind of unearthly pricking of 
 the skin. What is it that they want ? They did want 
 much ; they do want, as it were, nothing. Defunct ! The 
 ghosts of the defunct are pale, dim ; the living soul refuses 
 
 ^ ' 1603, by the style then in use there ; the English year beginning on the 25th 
 of March ; the Scotch and all other years beginning, as ours now do, with the 
 1st of January. Innumerable mistakes in modern Books have sprung from this 
 circumstance.' T. C.'s Note. — The 25th of March continued to be called New- 
 Year's Day, in official documents, until 1752. 
 
 - Painstaking. 
 
 * John Reynolds, Thomas Sparks, from Oxford ; John Knewstubs, Lawrence 
 Chadderton, from Cambridge, world-famous Doctors, were the spokesmen on 
 the Puritan side. John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury ; Richard Bancroft, 
 Bishop of London ; Thomas Bilson, Bishop of \Vinchesler ; Anthony Rudd, 
 Bishop of St. David's, were the chosen champions of Conformity in the 
 Church. 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 25 
 
 to admit them ; mind and memory contemplate them with a 
 natural shudder, and are in haste to be gone. Our sketches 
 of Puritanism, still more of Anti-Puritanism, ought to be 
 above all things brief! — 
 
 ' Every revolution,' says Smelfungus, ' has its articulate 
 ' respectable " Moderate Party," and then also its inarticulate 
 ' or less articulate " Extreme Party," each with a several sort 
 ' of merit. Nay, some without almost any merit. Your 
 
 * noblest Luther is soon followed by his ignoblest frightful 
 ' Knipperdolling and John of Leyden ! ^ Such Parties of 
 ' Moderate and Extreme, of Girondin and Mountain, as the 
 
 * French named them, could nowise fail in that grandest Re- 
 ' volution the modern world had seen ; properly the parent of 
 ' all the Revolutions it has since seen and is yet to see : the 
 ' Protestant Reformation. Not in the modern ages had such a 
 ' Protest, or one at all like such, taken place before. The 
 ' drugged, stupefied, prostrated Human Soul, starting up at 
 ' length awake ; swearing solemnly, in the name of the Highest, 
 ' that it would not believe an incredibility any more. The 
 ' beginning, you would say, of all benefit whatsoever to the 
 ' poor Human Soul. Believing incredibilities ; clinging spas- 
 
 * modically to falsities half-known to be false; saving to yourself, 
 ' " Cling there, thou poor soul, thou wilt be drowned and 
 ' swallowed of the devils otherwise ! " — can there be conceived 
 ' a more desperate condition ? The human soul becomes a 
 ' Quack soul, or Ape soul, in these desperate predicaments ; 
 ' gradually dies into extinction as a soul proper, — and instead 
 ' of Men, you have Apes by the Dead Sea ! 
 
 ' But not to insist on that, consider how inevitable it w^as 
 ' that after the Dissolution of Monasteries by Henry the 
 ' Eighth and the Publication of Canons and Prayerbooks by 
 ' Edward the Sixth, the great Protestant Reformation should 
 ' not stop but proceed. The question always obtruded itself, 
 ' When will you stop ? For by this lightning bolt of Luther's, 
 ' the divine-element vouchsafed us once more out of Heaven, 
 ^ John Beuckelszoon, head of the Anabaptists at Miinster. 
 
26 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 there had been conflagrations kindled ; — nay, we may figura- 
 tively say, subterranean coalfields kindled ; deep answering to 
 deep, and old dead things catching fiery life again from the 
 re-awakened Heaven-element, as their way is in such cases ! 
 And formidable explosions had taken place ; to be followed 
 by far more formidable, up to the very formidablest, to 
 Jacobinism itself ; — and in brief, there had, above ground and 
 below, a series of electric and ignitory operations connnenced, 
 which could not by human or superhuman industry be made 
 to terminate, till we had reached the eternal foundations 
 again. A work for centuries ; and one of the terriblest, 
 though of all it is the indispensablest. O Prelate, Marprelate, 
 you little know what you are tugging at ! — - 
 
 ' Vesuvius in the sixteenth century, as I read, the old com- 
 motions having sunk to rest for a thousand years or more, 
 had grown green a-top. By the benign skyey influences 
 continued for centuries, you saw a solid circular valley, 
 verdant, umbrageous, a savoury pasture for flocks : but it 
 had grown rough also with brambles, idle tangled thickets ; 
 populous now, for most part, with serpents, foxes, wolves. 
 Such was the Roman Church ; such in several respects, if you 
 consider it. Firmamented into fair green compactness, on 
 the bosom of Old-Judean and Old-European abysses, and 
 explosions, once volcanic enough ; till it had become green 
 nutritive grass-sward, shelter for sheep and oxen ; — till it had 
 become rough with briars and jungle, populous with wolves 
 and foxes. The seasons and the ages circled on. The old 
 subterranean coal-strata and electric reservoirs of the great 
 Deep, had they renounced connexion with the Heavenly 
 electricities, then ; or only, to our poor eyes, suspended it .'* 
 The fulness of time came ; the day of " renewed activity " 
 came : and where now is your circular grass valley on 
 Vesuvius top ? The lightning fell from Heaven, the electric 
 fire-reservoirs of the great Deep, with smoke, with fire and 
 thunder, loud, ever louder, awoke : sward and soil and jungle ; 
 oxen, wolves and serpents, and the rough valley altogether. 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 27 
 
 ' are blasted aloft into the immeasurable realms of air ; — 
 ' and in their stead, observe what kind of pumice-crater 
 ' we have ! ' 
 
 Surely, my dark friend, this similitude does not go on all- 
 fours, but halts dreadfully in one of its legs ? He persists 
 thus : ' It is the law of such explosions, when the lightning 
 ' falls from Heaven across long sleepy centuries, and awakens 
 ' the subterrene fire-elements ; blasting your circular valley 
 ' itself into air. The Soul of Mankind, — which has deej) 
 ' enough " strata," accumulated now for hundreds of thousands 
 ' of years since we arrived on this Planet, — is it not essentially 
 ' of that volcanic nature ? ' Similitudes that have to flounder 
 along on three legs, flourishing the fourth by way of accom- 
 paniment, these also are not a pleasant spectacle ! But to 
 return to Hampton Court. 
 
 Certain select Prelates and other high personages, four 
 select Puritans of chief quality, have met, convened by royal 
 proclamation, to consider what they can do for perfecting the 
 Divine Symbol or Church, here in England at present, — if it 
 is not already perfect, concerning which point discrepancies 
 exist. Does Symbol correspond with thing signified, as the 
 visible face of man does to the invisible soul within him r 
 Or are these pasteboard adhesions false noses which one 
 would wish to pluck oft"? It is a question worth considering. 
 Majesty himself will preside over these debates : for he is 
 of lively accomplished understanding ; and piques himself on 
 his knowledge of Theology ; which certainly, as the vital 
 secret of this Universe, God the Maker's method of making 
 and ruling this Universe, nmst be the thing of all others 
 worth knowing by an accomplished man. Majesty, if it 
 please Heaven, will regulate this high matter. 
 
 The Conference is in ' the drawing-room of the Privy 
 ' Apartments ' at Hampton Court : the room, or space, still 
 there ; but the actors and their actings, — ask not of them ! 
 They and the things they strove for, and the things they 
 strove against, are alike unrememberable, though never so 
 
28 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 often repeated ; of almost no interest to the living sons 
 of men. Ancient choleric Whitgifts, younger choleric 
 Bancrofts, grey spectral Bishops in considerable number, 
 with their deans and satellites likewise spectral ; spectral 
 Puritans to the number only of four : it is all grown very 
 spectral to us, — though we have still a kind of business 
 there. 
 
 Whitgift, the venerable hoary Primate, still somewhat in 
 dread of his ' Scotch mist,** may remain dimly visible to us ; 
 dimly the choleric Bancroft ; Dean Overal, one day to be 
 Bishop Overal, ' that prodigious learned man," may likewise 
 continue dim. Of Reynolds the chief Puritan, I have heard 
 that he refused a bishoprick, preferring to be Head of Christ- 
 Church College in Oxford, and apply himself to quiet piety 
 and meditation. Another thing is perhaps still notabler : he 
 was born, and grew up, a Papist ; he had a brother who went 
 into Protestantism : the two undertook to reason together, and 
 did it with such effect that they converted each the other : 
 logic, like ambition, vaulting too high, overleapt itself, or over- 
 leapt its selle, to this extent ! John Reynolds is now not 
 a Protestant only but a Puritan ; considered to be one of the 
 most learned men ever seen in this world ; ' the very treasury 
 * of erudition,'' ' his memory and reading near to a miracle."' ^ 
 But indeed the ' learning "■ of these reverend persons generally 
 is what we call prodigious : most praiseworthy ; if not insight, 
 then at least the sight of what others thought they saw into ; 
 which is an honest attempt towards insight ! Man can do 
 no more on that side than these good men, Puritan and 
 Anti-Puritan, had generally done. Their learning is pro- 
 digious ; the deep gravity of their existence is inconceivable 
 to mankind in these shallow sneering days. Of Sparks, 
 Knewstubs and the rest, so spectral is it, we shall say no 
 word. ' There are three days of Conference, the 1 4th, 1 (jth, 
 ' 18th of January 1603-4,"' so urges my erudite friend: the 
 first a consulting day of Bishops and King only, with Puritans 
 ^ Wood, Athentc, ii. I2. 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 29 
 
 waiting in the anteroom ; the other a pair of" battle-days, 
 with Puritans summoned in to speak and fence for themselves ; 
 but in our dim indolent imaginations it may be all massed 
 into one, — a spiritual passage at arms, worth noticing in 
 English History. 
 
 And so the King sits jewelled and dizened, with diamond 
 hatband, in his chair of State ; rich, we can suppose, as 
 Ormuz or Ind : on this hand, all in rochet, tippet, and 
 episcopalibus. Nine right reverend individuals, our Whitgifts, 
 Bancrofts, with seven bottleholders of the dean species ; victory 
 threatening from their eyes : on that hand, in simple ' furred 
 ' gowns like Turkey merchants or foreign Professors,' our poor 
 Four Puritans, Reynolds and Sparks, chief divines from 
 Oxford, Knewstubs and Chadderton, of the like quality from 
 Cambridge, not to speak of Scotch ' Mr. Galloway the 
 ' Minister of Perth,'' of whom not much is to be expected on 
 this occasion. Majesty is radiant, with diamond-buckled 
 hat, with wide-open glittering eyes and intellect : scattered 
 at due distances, in orderly groups, is a cloud of Peers, Privy- 
 councillors, and Official Persons, totally indeterminate to the 
 human mind, — among whom the ancient shadow of Chancel- 
 lor Egerton, venerable man, with his shaving-dish hat and 
 white beard, and even with touches of ready wit still audible, 
 is faintly to be discriminated. It is a fact this Conference, 
 though now grown so chimerical ; it lasted three days under 
 the sun : three days it occupied the drawing-room at 
 Hampton Court in the winter weather of 1603-4, while 
 England and the Earth were busy round it, and the Sun in 
 his old steady way was travelling through Capricorn above it; 
 — and it all looked solid enough at that time ! The reader 
 can read about it in Dean or Bishop Barlow's coloured 
 Narrative, or in Scotch Mr. Galloway's anti-coloured one, 
 nay, in his Majesty's own 'Letter to Mr. Blacke'; and it will 
 remain in the highest degree spectral to him after all. The 
 generations and their arguments and battlements — O Heaven, 
 
30 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 if the Bog of Lindsey did not receive them, condense them 
 into something, where were we ! 
 
 It must be owned, the claims of painful Dr. Reynolds and 
 his Puritans are modest in the extreme. To be delivered 
 from ' baptism by midwives,' — the very Bishops have conceded 
 that ; to be partially delivered from ' lay impropriation,' if it 
 would please impropriation to render back ' the seventh part ' 
 of its church property for spiritual food to souls perishing ; 
 and then to be delivered from the pressure of the ' surplice "" 
 where it ties up frail human consciences useful otherwise ; and 
 to have a correct Translation of the Bible : the modesty of 
 Marprelate, tending in any way towards the Eternal and the 
 Veritable, through this huge element of rubrics, symboHcs 
 and similitudes piled high as the zenith over him, could 
 hardly be more modest. It must be owned too that Bishop 
 Bancroft, while the modest complaint was still going on, 
 suddenly fell down on his knees before the King, begging 
 that ' Schismatics be not heai'd against their Bishops,' and 
 interrupted the painful Dr. Reynolds in mid career ; and did 
 again, falling on his knees, interrupt him ; showing a suffi- 
 ciently choleric temper of mind. Right reverend Whitgift too 
 was choleric, apprehensive of the Scotch mist coming in on him. 
 
 His Majesty, however, gave small countenance to jiainful 
 Reynolds and company ; glad he, for his part, that he had 
 now left the Scotch mist quite behind him, and got into the 
 promised land, where no ' beardless boy in a })uipit ' durst 
 beard him ; and on the contrary dignified Bishops and such 
 like were here to honour him and call him the second 
 Solomon. ' No Bishop no King,"" said his Majesty more than 
 once. And painful Reynolds going on to suggest, ^^^hethcr 
 it might not be well if the clergy were allowed to meet 
 together, say once in three weeks, and have ' prophesyings '' as 
 in good Archbishop GrindaPs time ; meeting by deaneries, 
 by archdeaconries, then by bishopricks, to strengthen one 
 another's hands, and prophesy in various profitable ways ? — 
 his Majesty broke forth into sheer flame ; declaring that ' this 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 31 
 
 was Scotch Presbytery under a new colour, and agreed with 
 Majesty as God did with the Devil," — meaning as the Devil 
 did with God. No more of that, good Doctor ! ' There 
 
 * you shall have Jack and Tom, Will and Dick assemble them- 
 
 * selves, and at their wise pleasure censure both me and my 
 ' council. Away, away, Doctor, wait seven years before ye 
 
 * speak of that. If ye find me growing lazy, and my mind 
 ' getting short with fat, after seven years or so, then ye can 
 ' try such a thing, for that will be the way to keep me in 
 ' exercise! No Bishop no King!' — whereat the whole celestial 
 Court shivers with glad rustle as of admiring mirth, and ' No 
 ' Bishop no King '' re-echoes applausive ; and Reynolds and 
 company are cowed into blank silence ; and a Courtier says, 
 ' It is now clear to him that a Puritan is a Protestant 
 ' frightened out of his wits,' and another that Puritans, in their 
 furred gowns of Turkey merchants, ' are more like Turks than 
 ' Christians ^ : and it is a titter and a snigger all over these 
 Courtly spaces; Majesty, like a far-darting Apollo, scatter- 
 ing his light-shafts in this exhilarative manner, to dispel the 
 things of Night. 
 
 Reynolds and company are cowed into blank silence, almost 
 into pallor and tremor ; and right reverend Bancroft falling 
 on his knees utters these words : ' I protest my heart melteth 
 
 * for joy that Almighty God, of His singular mercy, hath 
 ' given us such a King as since Christ's time hath not been.' 
 Right reverend, my heart, on the whole, doth not melt. — 
 Likewise, in regard to that afflictive chimera which they call 
 the Ex-ojjicio Oath, venerable Whitgift, charmed beyond the 
 limits to hear an approval of it, exclaims, ' Undoubted Iv your 
 ' Majesty speaks by the special assistance of God's spirit.' 
 Think you so, right reverend "^ The Ex-qfficio Oath is a thing 
 they try us with in their High Commission Court : Swear 
 that you are innocent, or else be held guilty ; — guilty surely, 
 unless your conscience be elastic ! Even Chancellor Egerton 
 is heard admitting, ' He had never seen King and Priest so 
 ' united as here.' 
 
32 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 And, in fine, Dr. Reynolds being questioned, ' Have you 
 ' anything more to say, Doctor ? ' answers, ' Nothing, may it 
 ' please your Majesty.' And Majesty, thereupon rising, de- 
 clares audibly, not without wrath, That these Puritans shall 
 either conform, or one country shall not hold them and him ! 
 Dread Sovereign — ? — And so, dispelled by the lightning- 
 shafts of Majesty, these Puritans fly back into their caves ; 
 and the glittering bodyguards, shadows of high-plumed lords, 
 long-skirted archbishops, professors in furred gowns, chan- 
 cellors in shaving-dish hat, Hampton Conference in general, 
 and ]\Iajesty Avith diamond hatband, become grey again, of 
 an indistinct leaden colour, and vanish in the dusk of things. 
 
 Dull Mr. Neal informs me. The Puritans, at next Convoca- 
 tion, were loaded with abundant penalties, excommunications, 
 ex-officios and what not ; whereby some three hundred clergy- 
 men, pious zealous preachers of the Gospel, with consciences 
 not sufficiently elastic, were plucked out as thorns from the 
 flesh of the Church, such seeming evidently now to be the 
 nature of them. The Puritans shall either conform, or 
 withdraw to Chaos or Hades, by route of Holland, North 
 America or what route they can. Bishop Bancroft, soon to 
 be Archbishop, sings after his fashion, Tc Deum, and is a 
 busy man. For old Whitgift lay sick to death ; and his 
 Majesty coming to see him, he lifted up his old hand and 
 eyes, saying ' Pro Ecdcsia Domini, For the Lord's Church ! ** 
 and spake no words more in this world ; and choleric Ban- 
 croft was Primate in his room, Ecdcsia Domini : venerable 
 })ale old spectral Archbishop, Overseer of human Souls, under 
 what inconceivable embodiments, ' congealed element piled 
 ' high as the zenith over us,' does the Spirit of jNIan live 
 bewildered in this world ; and discerns its empyrean home 
 either not at all, or in distortions and distractions beyond 
 belief; now in white or black cloth-tippets, now in gilt log- 
 palaces at Upsala, now in this now in that ! Is not Chaos 
 dee]) ? is not the Grave greedy H And there is an ' azure of 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 33 
 
 ' Infinitude ' overspanning Chaos and the Grave, for all true 
 
 souls of men. Why does the poor Human Species quarrel 
 
 with itself; why, in devout moments, sits it not rather, in 
 sacred sorrowful communion one and all, with its harps hung 
 on the willow trees, and weeps by the streams of Babel ! — 
 
 But on the other hand, what if Puritanism would not quit 
 the country, and go to Hades, either by way of Holland, or 
 by any way whatever ! Puritanism has a thing or two on 
 the anvil before it go to Hades. Puritanism, as simple 
 as it looks, is of a species his Majesty, for all his wide-open 
 eyes and intellect, does not thoroughly discern. A species 
 such as I have never yet known to go to Hades without 
 doing a bit of work in this world ; work not wholly mortal, 
 nay, leaving a soul behind it that was not mortal at all ! 
 Simple Puritanism, capable of being cowed down by choleric 
 Serene Highnesses, will break silence again, I think. There 
 is that in it that speaks to the Highest in Heaven above ; 
 and will not, if necessity arrive, altogether tremble to speak 
 to the High set on stilts at Hampton Court here ! — 
 
 In fact, if his Majesty could see that epoch of his as we 
 now see it, and what issue it has all had, it would astonish 
 him. The times are loud, your Majesty, and then again 
 they fall so dumb ! ^ What has become of all that high- 
 sounding element of things, with its embassyings, intriguings, 
 loud arguings, deep mysteries of state, which his Majesty 
 presided over ? It has proved a ceremonial mainly, an empti- 
 ness ; the voice of it has gone silent, its bright tints de- 
 servedly have grown leaden. O, second Solomon, inspired to 
 appearance by the spirit of God, what outcome has it all 
 had ; that same majestic English world of yours so dizened 
 by the tailor and upholsterer, by the worker in cloth-tissues 
 and the worker in word-tissues ; which could reckon even a 
 Bacon among its decorative tailors, very ambitious to handle 
 a needle in that service, — what has the net amount of it 
 turned out to be ? Alas, your Majesty, almost nothing ! 
 
 ^ As Goethe says. 
 C 
 
34 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 There remains of it little that a modern man could lay 
 his hand upon at once : — good Heavens, the main item of 
 it is not Hampton Court with its extremely solid-looking 
 phantasmagories, but perhaps — perhaps — the Bankside 
 Theatre with its })hantasmagories, professedly of paste- 
 board, got up for amusement of the gross million at a 
 groat each ! Heard human Majesty ever the like ? From that 
 chaos of loud-babbling figures gone all dumb, we have saved 
 
 for ourselves Shakspeare''s Plays. Verily that is the 
 
 tangiblest item at this hour. Your embassies flying silver- 
 winged, incessant, to all the four winds ; your solemn jousts 
 and tournaments, your favouritisms, caballings, sermons in the 
 Star-chamber and vexations of spirit ; your drinking bouts, 
 dancing bouts. Count- Mansfeld fighting bouts, theologies, 
 demonologies : they tumbled and simmered, wide as the 
 world, hisrh as the star-firmament : and the result that 
 survives for us has been, are we to say, — these eight small 
 volumes edited by Isaac Reed ^ and others ? The oldest 
 experienced King never heard the like ! 
 
 Nay, your Majesty, there is another thing that yet sur- 
 vives for us, palpable in the life of us all ; better even than 
 Shakspeare ; for by Heaven's blessing, it will be the parent 
 of many Shakspeares and other Veracities and Blessednesses 
 yet : I mean — alas, your Majesty, I mean this thing you 
 have just flashed into quasi-annihilation with your royal sun- 
 glances, and ordered to march straightway to Chaos, being- 
 inspired by the spirit of God. This thing called Puritanism, 
 in its dim furred gown ; this ! 
 
 For it goes away abashed from your presence, being of 
 melancholic modest nature ; but not to Chaos or Hades ; 
 having appointment and business elsewhere. It goes to its 
 chamber of prayer and meditation ; to its writing-desk, to its 
 pulpit, to its Parliament, — to the hearts of all just-thinking 
 Englishmen. And singular to see, it returns ever back, with 
 
 1 Critic and miscellaneous writer ; born in London, 1742 ; died 1S07. Edited 
 the Works of Shakspeare, 1785. 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 35 
 
 its old Gospel-books, and old Lawbooks, and Subsidy-books ; 
 knocks ever again at the King's gate, saying, Shall our life 
 become true and a God's-fact, then ; or continue half-true 
 and a cloth-formula ? And ever its demands wax wider ; — 
 and your jMajesty, in the Third Parliament, has to fly into 
 mere wrath at Newmarket, and cry in an elevated shrill 
 manner, ' Twelve chairs for the twelve Kings of the House of 
 ' Conmions, — -they are Kings, I think, come to visit me ! ' ^ 
 
 Truly a Sovereign of England, second Solomon or other, 
 who had read in his own noble heart what of noblest this 
 England meant and dimly strove towards, would not have 
 scouted Puritanism from him in that svniimary way. He 
 would have said to himself : How now ? Old traditional 
 Decorum is good ; but Sincerity newborn is infinitely good ; 
 Decorum divided from Sincerity will fare ill. This poor 
 Puritanism, ragged contradictory as it looks, is a confused 
 struggle towards God's eternal Verity, — wherein and not else- 
 where lies the fountain of all blessedness for England and me 
 and all nations and men. I will not cut it down, this poor 
 Puritanism ; I will guide it, foster it ; try to make it my 
 friend not my enemy. These poor scrupulous individuals 
 shall go home to their places ; shall preach abroad, among 
 my English people, a Calvinistic Stoicism, which is deeper 
 than Zeno's, which is deep as the Eternal, and will spring up 
 in thousandfold harmonies, I hope ! — A King who has in 
 him the instinct to recognise such nascent heroisms in their 
 incipient confused condition, and help them into birth and 
 being, shall reign truly ' forever ' : a King that has not will 
 reign falsely and but for a short time. Queen Elizabeth 
 now dead, she too loved cloth and formulas ; and could have 
 held by the Old ; but she felt in the heart of her country, 
 feeling it first of all in her own noble heart, that the true 
 vital pulse was Protestantism ; and, with lifelong wise en- 
 deavour and valour, she said, ' Let us be Protestant then.' 
 She, in a sense, reigns forever. She had a hero-heart of her 
 ^ See infra, p. 157 «• 
 
36 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 own which could recognise heroisms. Heavens, had that 
 Boy at Huntingdon but been her Son ! — But a King who has 
 no hero-heart, what to him are nascent heroisms springing 
 never so authentically from the Eternal ? They are ragged 
 confusions, very criminal, rebellious ; perverse world-tendencies 
 which he will withstand. He stems himself in the breach 
 against such ; stands minatory there, with his pikes and 
 cannons, his gibbets and white-rod ushers, a terrible spec- 
 tacle ; — and is washed away to the abyss, he and they ! 
 
 Alas, your Majesty, never more, in any day of settlement, 
 will Puritanism present itself with so extremely exiguous a 
 bill of bookdebts as it has now done through the hand of 
 Knewstubs and Reynolds ! It will come, next time, not in 
 doctoral furred gown alone ; it will come in formidable 
 Speaker's- wig withal, with Magna Charta and the Six Statutes 
 and Tallagio non concedcndo in its hand ; with sword on its 
 thigh ; with drawn sword for sheer battle, — O Heavens, with 
 headsman's axe, for regicide and one knows not what, never 
 seen before under this sun ! And Glorious Revolution Settle- 
 ments, American Independences ; nay, what say Ave, French 
 Revolutions, very Jacobinisms, — there is no end of this Puri- 
 tanism ! For it holds, as I observed, of the Eternal ; and 
 will not go to Hades without its work done ; nav, properly 
 will not go to Hades at all, but live here on Earth forever, 
 the soul of it blending with whatsoever of Eternal we have 
 here on Earth, part of the indestructible perennial sum of 
 human things. 
 
 Well, your Majesty, is not this world a catholic kind of 
 place ? The Puritan Gospel and Shakspeare's Plays : such 
 a pair of facts I have rarely seen saved out of one chimerical 
 generation. You say, ' We are an old and experienced 
 ' King ' ; which is very fortunate. And again, ' Lc Roy 
 ' s'avisera, the King will take thought of it': really he should! 
 This world is very wide, is deep beyond all plummets ; has 
 more in it, in Heaven and in Earth, than was yet dreamt of 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMl^^ON COURT CONFERENCE 37 
 
 in your or my philosophy. A world ever young, as old as it 
 looks ; a world most feracious, most edacious ; wherein the 
 oldest experienced kings have been found at fault before now ! 
 
 The following, by Smelfungus, seems more to resemble 
 some sort of modern Puritan Sermon than a piece of History. 
 In it there is no ' delineation of events ' ; but for under- 
 standing the spirit of what is delineated some readers may 
 find it not without significance. Such as are already familiar 
 with considerations of that kind may pass on, glancing all 
 the more slightly. Our dark friend writes : — 
 
 ' Descending into those old ages, we are struck most of all 
 ' ^\^th this strange fact, that they were Christian ages. 
 ' Actually men in those times were possessed with a belief that, 
 ' in addition to their evident greedy appetites, they had 
 ' immortal souls not a whit less evident ; souls which, after 
 ' death, would have to appear before the ]\Iost High Judge, 
 ' and give an account of their procedure in the conduct of said 
 ' appetites, with an issue that was endless. This, of which we 
 ' have yet a hollow tradition, worse in some respects than none, 
 ' was then a fact indisputable to all persons. Human persons 
 ' all knew it well ; only gross unhuman persons, and beasts 
 ' destined to perish, knew it not. God's eternal Judgment- 
 ' seat, awaiting all men above, was a fact as certain as the 
 ' King's Court sitting here below in Westminster Hall. It is 
 ' the vital fact of those old ages ; which renders them, at this 
 ' time, an enigma to the world. For the tradition of it has 
 ' grown so hollow, it is worse in some respects than none. 
 ' Sheer silence and ignorance, nay, atheistical denial once for 
 ' all, how much better is it than canting sham belief and 
 ' avowal from the teeth outward ! In reality, what man 
 * among us, if he is not one of a million, can form to himself 
 ' so much as an adequate shadow of that old fact ? 
 
 ' Worse in some respects than no tradition ; and yet in 
 ' other respects how much better, how invaluable in others ! 
 ' O cultivated reader, is it not worth while to hear of such a 
 
38 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 ' thing, even from the old dead ages, and as a rumour of what 
 ' once was ? That man's Httle earthly life is verily great, 
 ' infinite ; the shadow of eternities to him ; whereby he will 
 ' determine to himself the w-elfare or Avoe of eternities ? A 
 ' brief little drama on Earth, rigorously emblematic of eternal 
 
 * destinies in Heaven or else in Hell ? The rumour still 
 ' abides with us ; let it still abide, were it only in a hollow 
 ' doleful manner. Pure noble souls, with hearing ear and 
 ' understanding heart, are sent occasionally into this world ; 
 ' these also here and there will hear it, and, with astonishment, 
 ' will know it, will discern it ; by these gradually the god-like 
 ' meaning of it will be restored to us, never to be lost more. 
 ' It is the work they have done in the Past Time ; it is the 
 ' work they have to do in all times. There will then be a 
 ' hei'oic world, once again ; much cant and much brutality, 
 ' and miseries of many kinds, will then go their ways. 
 
 ' Yes, out of all ages named heroic there has come to us 
 ' some doctrine, feeling, or instinct equivalent to this ; out of 
 ' all ages that are not brutal, appointed to be forgotten, 
 ' without worth or meaning; for us. Ancient Heroisms had 
 ' some intimation of it, had an instinct equivalent to it ; the 
 ' much nobler modern Heroisms had it made credible and 
 ' indubitable to them. To History the purport of what 
 ' highest Gospels we have had may be defined as even this, 
 ' That Judgjnent and Eternity are not a hearsay, that they 
 
 * are a fact ; — fit enough to kindle the inmost deeps of us ! 
 ' I say, without either an exjn-ess doctrine, or a felt instinct 
 ' expressed in rules of action to this effect, man is not himself ; 
 ' — he is, little as he may dream of it, a kind of enchanted 
 ' monster. One has heard of a man very wretched because the 
 ' Devils had stolen away his shadow : but here they have 
 ' stolen his robes of light from him ; he walks abroad, little 
 ' knowing it, arrayed in the everlasting nuu'k, a son of Nox 
 ' and Chaos. He considers that his life was given him only to 
 ' enjoy it, to eat and digest in it, to be happv in it. He is a 
 ' ray of darkness become flesh. Noble deetl or thought there 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTOxN COURT CONFERENCE 39 
 
 is thenceforth none for him under these stars. His luckiest 
 lot, were it not even this, to return, at his soonest, to Chaos, 
 and report what a failure it was ? 
 
 ' For properly that outer fact of a Divine Jud<^ment is 
 the emblematic expression of this other internal fact, that 
 man has in him a man-like sense of Right and Wrong. 
 Right and Wrong ; manfulness {virtus), or unmanfulness ! 
 A manlike sense, we say, and not beastlike : for the very 
 beasts and horses know something of " morality,'" if this be 
 " moral "" : To know that on this side lie hay and oats, and on 
 that side lie scourgings and spur-rowels. But to a man, let 
 him understand it or not, his being right or his being wrong 
 is simply the one question. The most flaming Hell he will 
 front composedly, right being with him ; wrong being with 
 him, the Paradise of Houris were a Hell. 
 
 ' Yes, reader, it will require to be forever repeated till the 
 obtuse generations learn it again, and lay it to heart and 
 bring it forth in their practice again : man, very finite as we 
 see him, is withal a kind of infinite creature. His little 
 Time-life is a mysterious pavilion spread on the bosom of 
 Eternities ; there he acts his little life-drama, looked at, with 
 approval, with rejection, by the Eternities and Infinitudes. 
 Very certainly, let him know it or not, he does project him- 
 self beyond all firmaments and abysses ; has real property, 
 more real than was ever pleaded of in law-courts, beyond the 
 outmost stars. Either as an enchanted monster, forgetful of 
 all this ; or else as a man, encircled in celestial robes of 
 light, and mindful of all this, does he, in every epoch, in 
 every form of creed and circumstances, walk abroad ; the 
 enchanted thrall of this world, or else its heaven-sent king. 
 A splendour of Heaven looks through all Nature for him, 
 if he have eyes ; if he have none, it is of course a dark- 
 ness of Erebus. For Nature, say the Philosophers, is 
 properly his own Self shadowed back on him ; Nature is 
 the product of his own thought : he, that poor little 
 creature in round felt hat, is in a sense the " author ^ of 
 
40 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 Nature ; — an Unuameable gave him that faculty of com- 
 posing a Universe and Nature for himself, with those five 
 senses of his, with that thinking soul of his. 
 
 ' Encircle him visibly with that same celestial splendour 
 which is native to him ; in some way, let him understand 
 indubitably at all moments that he is a man, that he 
 does belong to the Heavens and Infinitudes, what a crea- 
 ture is he ! Difficulties, perils melt from his path, as 
 vapours from before the face of the sun : difficulties, perils 
 are not there for him ; he can hurl mountains aside, and 
 build paths across the impassable, march with spread 
 banners through the Deathkingdoms, trample Death and 
 Tartarus under his feet ! I have known such, under 
 various figures, at intervals in this noble world all along ; 
 and do, with continual gratitude, deeply thank the Heavens 
 for them : Old Romans, Moslems, still more Old Christians, 
 nay Puritans or modern Christians, " Believers," each after 
 his kind. I have known Luthers, Mahomets, men " resigned 
 to God,"" and not resigned to the Enemies of God ; — in 
 various forms I have known men come into this world as 
 evident Sons of Light, born enemies of Chaos : men blazing 
 with intolerable radiance ; before whom all pedants, poltroons 
 and the like beggarly persons had hastily to withdraw them- 
 selves, hastily to shut their eyes, and procure if possible 
 " improved smoked spectacles." For the radiance was in- 
 tolerable as Heaven's own ; it was the light of genius become 
 fire of virtue and valour : intolerable enough ; and sent 
 oftenest, to this corrupt Earth, not with peace but with a 
 sword, — nay, I believe, always with a sword among other 
 things. For human figures of this kind shall we not per- 
 ])etually thank the Heavens, as for their one favour ; from 
 and with which are all other favours ; without which no 
 other favour is possible, or indeed worth accepting if it were .'' 
 
 ' But on the other hand, once hide this his celestial destiny 
 from poor man ; persuade him, by enchantment of whatever 
 sort, that he has nothing to do with Heaven or the Infini- 
 
CHAP. III.] HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE 41 
 
 tudes, except to cant about them on ceremonial occasions, 
 and for making assurance doubly sure, pray by machinery to 
 them, — alas ! Has the thinking soul any sadder spectacle 
 in this world .'' Man has fallen into eclipse ; the dragons 
 and demons have, as it were, obliterated him. Yes, the 
 Subterranean ones, tugging and twitching at his Light- 
 mantle, have tugged it down with them ; and he remains 
 a mass of darkness, tenebrific, raying out mere darkness, 
 gi'eediness, baseness ; with the figure still of a man, but 
 mihappier than most animals and apes, — than all apes 
 except those that sit on Sabbath by the shores of the 
 Dead Sea ! 
 
 ' There are many such ; whole generations of such are, and 
 have been, in this world : but they are a solecism, a futile 
 monstrosity ; worth no notice, as we said. Their glitter, so 
 bright to themselves, is without brightness to any other. 
 What is the brightness of rotting wood, so soon as morning 
 has risen ? Their doom is to be forgotten forever. How 
 shall the soul of man take pains to remember what is intrin- 
 sically trivial, undelightful, dead and killing to all souls ? 
 This is w?a-elated to the Eternal Melodies ; this is discordant, 
 related to the Eternal Discords ! No soul of man will re- 
 member it ; will find any pleasure or possession in it. 
 Melancholy Pedantry does its part, for a certain length of 
 years, to the sorrow and confusion of the human mind : but 
 Pedantry also has to terminate ; its torpid volumes, no man 
 reading or reprinting them, are gradually eaten by worms ; 
 the last dull vocable is eaten by some charitable worm, and 
 the very echo of them vanishes forever. Such generations do 
 and must fall abolished out of History ; immense strata of 
 them are at last found pressed together into a film. God is 
 great. 
 
 ' But the truth is," continues our severe friend, ' this King 
 * James having, with his royal radiance, scattered English 
 
42 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Puritanism forth from his presence, and bidden it be gone to 
 Chaos, — he has, so to speak, quitted hold of the real heart 
 of England ; is becoming more and more an alien, he and 
 his, to what England means, and has in best to do. This 
 new Nobleness of England he has misknown, has taken for 
 a thing ignoble. England nevertheless must do it ; from the 
 eternal kingdoms, from the foundations of the Universe, 
 comes a monition to do it. The Law of Nature goes one way 
 with us ; our poor Sovereign Lord has set out to lead us and 
 compel us on another. What can come of it ? This poor 
 Sovereign Lord, this poor Stuart Dynasty of Sovereign Lords, 
 growing more and more aliens to the meaning of England, 
 will occupy the throne of England, — but find one day that 
 it is the Wooden-and-velvet " throne " merely, supported by 
 certain constables and tax-eaters merely. All aliens come to 
 be recognised for alien ; and must depart, if not peaceably, 
 then worse. 
 
 ' Puritanism, heartfelt conformity not to human rubrics 
 but to the Maker's own Laws, — what nobler thing was there, 
 or is there .'* All noble things, past, })resent, future, are even 
 this same thing under various conditions and environments. 
 It is a kindling of the human soul once more into recog- 
 nition of " God dwelling in /7," — recognition of its own awful 
 godhead. AH noble activities and enlightenments flow from 
 this as from a light-fountain and life-fountain. Just social 
 constitution, liberty combined with loyalty, privilege of })ar- 
 liament and privilege of king, all practical veracities and 
 equities, — these are but a small inevitable corollary from it, 
 as all colours are a corollary from the sun. England will 
 have to do this thing ; this thing is in very deed the Voice 
 of the Eternal to England, speaking such dialect as there is ; 
 and it nmst be done. AVho will helj) England to do it.'* 
 Who, heaven-sent, as a Pillar of Cloud by day, as a Pillar of 
 Eire by night, will go before the destinies of England, to 
 guide them, during his stage of it, through the undiscovered 
 Time ? Strong must he be ; fit to march through very Chaos. 
 
CHAP. IV.] JAMES I 43 
 
 ' He will have to defy the rage of Chaos ; to advance with 
 ' closed lips, with clear eyesight, through all yellings of nion- 
 ' sters, athwart all phantasms and abysses. Strong as a 
 ' Hercules, as a god. He, whether the gold crown be on his 
 ' head or not, will be the real King of England. If the gold 
 ' crown be not on his head, if the gold crown be on his enemy's 
 ' head, — it will be the worse for the gold crown.'' 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 JAMES I 
 
 This King James, with his large hysterical heart, with his 
 large goggle-eyes glaring timorously inquisitive on all persons 
 and objects, as if he would either look through them or else 
 be fascinated by them, and, so to speak, start forth into them, 
 and spend his very soul and eyesight in the frustrate attempt 
 to look through them, — remains to me always a noticeable, 
 not unloveable man. The liveliest recognition of innumerable 
 things, such a pair of goggle-eyes glaring on them, could not 
 fail. 
 
 He is a man of swift discernment, ready sympathy, ready 
 faculty in every kind ; vision clear as a lynx's, if it were deep 
 enough ! Courtiers repeat his Majesty's repartees and 
 speeches : was there ever seen such a head of wit ? He, 
 with his lynx eyes, detected in Monteagle's letter some 
 prophecy of ' suddenness,'' prophecy of — probable Gunpowder 
 barrels ; and found Guy Faux and his cellar, and dark 
 lantern, his Majesty, I think, it chiefly was. He detected 
 the ' Sleeping Preacher,"" a sneaking College-graduate, of semi- 
 Puritan tendencies, who pretended to preach in his sleep.^ 
 He was gi-eat in Law-suits, of logical acumen rarely paralleled; 
 your most tangled skein of lawpleading or other embroiled 
 logic, once hang it on the Royal judgment, he will wind it 
 oft" for you to the inmost thrum. He delights in doing 
 
 1 Stow. 
 
44 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 lawsuits, presiding over conferences ; testifying to himself and 
 others what a divine lynx faculty he has. He speaks like a 
 second Solomon ; translucent with logic, radiant with wit, 
 with ready ingenuity, and prismatic play of colours. Gun- 
 powder Plots, Sleeping Preachers, what or whom will he not 
 detect ? No impostor or imposture, you would say, can well 
 live before this King. None ; — except, alas, that one Semi- 
 impostor already lived i7i him, with a fair stock of unconscious 
 impostures laid up : these from within did yearn responsive 
 to their kindred who lived without ! In this sense, impostors 
 and impostures had a good time of it with King James : 
 many bright speciosities were welcome ; and certain rude noble- 
 nesses were indignantly radiated forth, and bidden go to Chaos. 
 
 But truly, if excellent discourse made an able man, I have 
 seldom heard of any abler. For every why he has his where- 
 fore ready ; prompt as touchwood blazes up, with prismatic 
 radiances, that astonishing lynx-faculty ; which has read and 
 remembered, which has surveyed men and things, after its 
 fashion, with extensive view. The noble sciences he could, 
 for most part, profess in College class-rooms ; he is potent 
 in theology as a very doctor ; in all points of nicety a Daniel 
 come to judgment. A man really most quick in speech ; full 
 of brilliant repartees and coruscations ; of jolly banter, ready 
 wit,^ conclusive speculation : such a faculty that the Arch- 
 bishops stand stupent, and Chancellor Bacon, not without 
 a certain sincerity, pronounces him wonderfully gifted. 
 
 It is another feature of this poor king that he was of hot 
 temper. A man prom])tly sympathetic, locpiacious, most 
 vehement, most excitable : can be transported into mere rage 
 and frenzy on small occasions ; will swear like an Ernulphus," 
 call the gods and the devils to witness what a life he has of 
 
 ^ ' He was very witty, and had as many ready witty jests as any man living, 
 at which he would not smile himself, but deliver them in a grave and serious 
 manner.' — Weldon {Secret History of the Court of A'/'iig James, Edinburgh, 
 1811) ii. 7. 
 
 - Whose Curse, a very comprehensive piece of 'swearing', indeed, is given 
 in full in Tristram Shandy, Bk. iii. cap. ii. 
 
CHAP. IV.] J A M E S I 45 
 
 it ; will fling himself down and ' bite the gi-ass,' say courtiers, 
 ' merely because his game has escaped him in the wood.' 
 Consider it : My game is gone, may all the devils follow it ; 
 and you, ye blockheads, — maledktum sit! And then, when 
 the fit is past, how his Majesty repents of it, in the saddest 
 silence, with pious ejaculations to Heaven for forgiveness ! 
 Poor king, his tongue is too big for him, his eyes are vigilant, 
 goggle-eyes : physically and spiritually the joints and life- 
 apparatus are ill-compacted in him. 
 
 Nor can we say, he has no heart ; rather he has too much 
 heart ; a heart great, but flaccid, loose of structure, without 
 strength : the punsters might say he suffered from ' enlarge- 
 ' ment of the heart."' His life expended itself in spasmodic 
 attachments, favouritisms, divine adorations of this or the 
 other poor undivine fellow-creature ; — passionate clutchings 
 at the unattainable ; efforts not strong but hysterical. How 
 he struggled for a Spanish Match ; ^ how the passionate 
 spasmodic nature of him cramped itself, with desperate desire, 
 on this as on the one thing needful, and he Avas heard to say 
 once with exultation, ' The very Devil cannot balk me now ! " 
 The one thing needful because the one thing unattainable. 
 Alas, O reader, what is it to thee and me, at this date, 
 whether the Spanish Match take effect or take no effect ? 
 Which of us, transporting himself with ever such industrious 
 loyalty, into the then state of matters, would lift his little 
 finger to attain that high topgallant of the Spanish Match 
 and make a sovereign happy ? The spasmodic endeavourings 
 of that big royal heart which now amount to zero ; the efful- 
 gences of that sublime intellect, comparable to Solomon's, 
 which are gone all to rust and darkness, fill me with a tragic 
 feeling. The Bog of Lindsey " is deep. The intelligence of 
 man, when he has any, should not expend itself in eloquent 
 talking, but in eloquent silence and wise work, rather. 
 
 His Majesty, with that peculiar ' divine faculty ' of his, 
 could not be expected to govern England, or to govern 
 ^ See/oi-/, p. 147. " SeQpost, p. 58. 
 
46 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [paPxT i. 
 
 anything, in a successful manner. Clever speech is good ; 
 but the Destinies withal are born deaf. How happy had his 
 Majesty been, could he have got the world to go by coaxing, 
 by brilliant persuasion, and have been himself left at liberty 
 to hunt ! We call his government bad, on all sides unsuc- 
 cessful, at variance with the fact ; the semi-impostor within 
 him attracting all manner of impostors and impostures from 
 without, and swearing eloquent brotherhood with them ! 
 Realities, of any depth, were an unintelligibility to him ; 
 only speciosities are beautiful. What trouble he had with 
 his Parliaments ! To the last it was an unintelligible riddle 
 to him, what these factious Commons, with their mournful 
 Puritanic Constitutional Petitions and Remonstrances could 
 rationally mean. Do they mean anything but faction, insane 
 rebellion, sacrilegious prying into our royal mysteries of State .^ 
 Apparently not. 
 
 That this poor King, especially in his later years, took to 
 favouritisms, is, as it were, the general summary of him, good 
 and bad, and need not surprise us. With such eyes he could 
 not but discriminate in the liveliest manner what had a show 
 of nobleness from A\hat had none. His eyes were clear and 
 shallow ; his heart was not great, but morbidly enlarged. 
 Nay, we are to say moreover, that his favourites, naturally 
 enough hated by all the world, were by no means hateful 
 persons. Robert Car, son of the Laird of Ferniehirst, who 
 quitted otter-hunting and short commons in the pleasant land 
 of Teviotdale, to come hither, and be Earl of Somerset and 
 a world's wonder had various qualities, I find, besides his 
 ' beauty.' ^ Audacity, dexterity, graceful courteous ways ; 
 shrewd discernment, swift activity, in the sphere allotted him, 
 had reconnnended Robert Car. Poor Car : had he staid in 
 his poor homeland, hunting otters, or what else there might 
 be ; roving weather-tanned by Jedwood, Teviotdale, and the 
 breezy hills and clear-rushing rivers ; and fished for himself 
 
 ' Robert Car (Carr or Ker) was created Viscount Rochester in 1611, ami 
 Earl of Somerset in 1613. 
 
CHAP. IV.] JAMES I 47 
 
 there, though on short commons, being a younger brother, — 
 how much luckier had he been, and perhaps we ! Or he 
 might have gone abroad, and fought the Papists, under my 
 Lord Vere. In Roxburghshire, as an eldest son, as a real 
 Laird with rents to eat, he would have been the delight of 
 men. 
 
 As for George Villiers,^ it is universally agreed he was the 
 prettiest man in England in several specious respects. A 
 proud man, too, rather than a vain ; with dignity enough, 
 with courage, generosity ; all manner of sense and manfulness 
 in the developed or half-developed state ; a far-glancing man. 
 Such a one this King might delight to honour. Poor old 
 King, his own old dislocated soul loved to repose itself on 
 these bright young beautiful souls ; in their warmth and 
 auroral radiance he felt that it was well with him. Crabbed 
 Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, had ended ; advancing age and 
 increase of sorrow were coming on his Majesty, when he 
 betook himself to Car. These accursed Favourites, they were 
 called, and passionately said to be, several things ; they were 
 properly Prime Ministers of England, chosen by the royal 
 ' divine faculty,'' such as it was. Bad Prime Ministers, very 
 ill-chosen ; — but not the worst ; I have known far worse. 
 We ourselves, who live under mere Prime Ministers chosen 
 by a Collective Wisdom and bursts of Parliamentary elo- 
 quence, have not we had worse, — Heavens, are we sure Ave 
 ever had much better ! Prime Ministers are difficult to 
 choose. By kings unheroic, and by peoples unheroic, they 
 are impossible to choose. 
 
 How happy had it been for this King, could he have done 
 his duty without trouble, by eloquence of speech alone ! O, 
 if the world would but go right by coaxing of it, by ingenious 
 pleading with it ! Here is wit, here is jolly banter ; sharp 
 logic-arrows, which give many a difficulty its quietus, — for 
 
 ^ Third son of Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, Leicestershire. He became 
 Viscount Villiers in i6l6, and Earl of Buckingham, 1617. 
 
48 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 the moment. Courtiers turn up their admiring eyes : a second 
 Solomon, we vow ! But ever the difficulty awakens again, feller 
 than before; it cannot be slain by logic-arrows. '■Beati Pacijici^ 
 ' Blessed are the Peacemakers,'' said his Majesty always. Yes, 
 Your Majesty ; but they will require other ammunition than 
 clever speech, I am afraid. Fain would his Majesty have 
 saved the Palatinate, how fain, could it have been done with- 
 out stroke struck ! All vice had been far from him, had 
 it not been so pleasant ; all virtue near, except that it was 
 troublesome. He would have promoted true religion, en- 
 couraged commerce, made a noble England of us, could it 
 have been done by speech alone. O England, why wilt thou 
 not go by coaxing ? Thou art like the deaf adder ; listenest 
 not to the voice of the charmer. Fact, it would seem, goes 
 one way ; I, and my Solomonisms, and courtiers with upturned 
 eyes, go another. Since eloquent speech will not do it, what 
 can we attempt ? Try it with ever new eloquence ; — and in 
 the intervals, as much as may be, fly from it. 
 
 His Majesty, idle from the first, grew ever idler. He 
 roved about in continual Progresses ; he hunted greatly, as 
 it were incessantly ; his active history was one great hunt. 
 Business, it is true, was neglected : but the semi-impostor 
 within, responded to by plenty of impostors from without, 
 declared it to be essential for ' the health of our royal 
 ' person.' Consider, ye English Peojile, if our royal liver got 
 into mis-secretion ? — Certainly, your Majesty's health before 
 all things ; ' your Majesty is the breath of our nostrils ! ' 
 His Majesty hunted much ; and also, what was a natural 
 resource for him, drank. His Majesty's drinking Mas con- 
 siderable ; moreover, it kept slowly but perceptibly increasing. 
 Christian, King of Denmark, his royal brother-in-law,' came 
 more than once to see him, with immense explosion of ' fire- 
 ' works on the River ' and elsewhere ; and the two Majesties 
 had carouses together worthy of the old Sea-kings. Acrid 
 
 ^ James married, in 1589, the Princess Anne, sister of Christian iv., King of 
 Denmark and Norway. 
 
CHAP. IV.] JAMES I 49 
 
 old Court-newsmen will apprise you how, before the Court 
 masque got ended, the Majesties of England and Denmark 
 were scandalously overcome with strong li(j[uor ; how even 
 ladies of honour, and Allegorical Virtues, Faith, Hope and 
 Charity, dressed for the nonce, staggered as they made their 
 entrance, unable to speak their finishing parts, their tongue 
 cleaving to the roof of their mouth ; and in one dim 
 hiccuping chaos, the worthships and worships of this lower 
 world reeled eclipsed, as in disastrous universal twilight of 
 the gods. What are we to think of these things, in Hunting- 
 don,^ for instance, and other such serious quarters ! Alas, 
 his Majesty's own royal conscience admits that it is scan- 
 dalous ; repents sorrowfully on the morrow, eager for soda- 
 water and consolation. 
 
 It is also admitted that this King ' sold honours.'' He 
 was the first that started that branch of industi'y ; sale of 
 honours was a regular item in our royal budget during those 
 years. He had a settled tariff of honours : so much for a 
 Knight, so much for a Baronet, which latter was one of his 
 own inventions ; so much for Baronhood, for all kinds of 
 Lordhood, up to Earlhood, which, it would appear, cost 
 10,000/. Whatsoever man, not entirely scandalous to 
 mankind, will pay down 10,000/. can be made an Earl. 
 Men disapproved of it, but men made purchases. Old Peers 
 gloomed unutterable things, but had to submit in silence. 
 The truth is, his Majesty was all along terribly in want 
 of cash. He had withal a perpetual desire to oblige every- 
 body, where it could be done with a mere garter, or slap 
 of the sword. His temptation to sell honours was consider- 
 able. And yet, — -alas, your Majesty, who are a wise old 
 King, is not this same as mad an act as any king can do ? 
 The necessitous Indian, in like fashion, procures a brief 
 warmth by burning his bed. Pay honour to whom honour 
 is vot due ; it is an anarchic transaction every fibre of it : 
 every such payment, on the part of any man, is a piece of 
 
 ^ Where Oliver Cromwell was living. 
 D 
 
50 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 anarchy ; a contribution to the great Bank of Social False- 
 hood, which if it go on accumulating will break us all. 
 Nobility direct for cash, nobility in any way hy cash, does it 
 not mean now and forever a thing false ? Does it not too 
 fatally admonish us that Mammon is a great god ; that he 
 sits there as our great god, with diamond eyes, gold eyebrows, 
 and belly full of jewels, awe-inspiring ; — that certain greater 
 gods, or were it even greater devils, strange Puritanisms, 
 most strange Jacobinisms, Sansculottisms, will be needed by 
 and by, to smite the crockery belly of him in pieces, and 
 scatter him and his diamonds in a surprising manner ! — 
 
 But in fact cash, all along, was the thing this King 
 wanted ; he could not help it. His revenues were great 
 compared with Queen Elizabeth's : but Queen Elizabeth was 
 thrifty, — she had it probably by nature. We of our royal 
 bounty, again, are generous ; a cheerful giver while we have 
 it, to the worthy, to the unworthy ! — King James's Parlia- 
 ments, for various reasons, grew shy of furnishing him at 
 such a ratio ; his Majesty's necessities were habitually great. 
 He had to subsist as a projector ; from hand to mouth ; his 
 inspiring genii Hunger and Hope. By Benevolences, by 
 forced loans, sale of honours, farming of Papist penalties, 
 monopolies of gold and silver thread ; — the very penalties 
 on swearing were farmed ; monopolies were thick as black- 
 berries,^ all farmed out for a consideration. His ways of 
 raising money and of wasting it are a wonder to behold. On 
 one Scotch individual called James Hay, called various things, 
 called ultimately Earl of Carlisle, and married to Lucy Percy, 
 daughter of Northumberland, he is comj)uted to have s])ent 
 first and last, 400,000/. ; say a million and a half of our 
 money. That was the money-price of Sardanapalus Hay and 
 his services ; probably the highest ever given for such a ])iece 
 of goods. Hay was not without talent, expertness as courtier 
 and clothes-horse : he went on several embassies, ' sliook 
 ' silver from his horse's hoofs ' on the streets of Paris, riding 
 * Seven hundred of them, according to d'Ewes. 
 
CHAP. IV.] JAMES I 51 
 
 in state there/ that the populace and all persons might 
 discern how regardless of expense he was. This King spent 
 immensely on Embassies, — eloquent persuasion ; which indeed 
 was his one recipe for foreign affairs. By embassies, by 
 progresses, by cheerful giving while we have it, our royal 
 exchequer is perennially running on the lees. 
 
 Of this or the other person we hear it said. What an 
 excellent man would he be, if he had but abundance of 
 money ! Yes, truly : — but the postulate is a very wide one. 
 To have always money means in the long-run, mad as money 
 and social arrangements are, that you do in some measure 
 conform yourself to facts ; that you do not entirely desert the 
 laws of industry, veracity, self-denial and common arithmetic, 
 on which, as on its central sanity, this mad world revolves, 
 still keeping out of chaos ! You do not forget these laws, 
 you in a degree adhere to them ; by that means some vestige 
 of cash still remains with you. Forget them altogether, 
 these central sanities, laws of self-denial, common arithmetic 
 and such like, — there is no exchequer in the world but you 
 will exhaust ; Fortunatus's Purse alone would suffice you. It 
 is even so. Fortunatus's Purse, that little leather pocket, in 
 which, every time you chose to open it there lay ten gold 
 coins, would subvert the laws of Moral Nature. Probably no 
 such miraculous machine could be put into the hands of a 
 son of Adam. Adieu then to all reformation, public and 
 private ! Adieu, ye central sanities ; we can revolve forever 
 in the superficial confusions. Injustice, madness, unveracity, 
 shameless practical denial of the multi})lication-table itself, 
 does not now clutch me by the stomach, by the throat, and 
 say, Thou shalt die or quit all that. No ; I only hear of it 
 from Moralists in Sunday pulpits, from demagogue orators or 
 such like ; and can contentedly go my way. So long as there 
 are necessitous scoundrels in this Earth, cannot I hire flat- 
 terers, hire armies, keep down all demagogues ; make Sunday 
 pulpits, by much milder methods, temper themselves ? I 
 ^ Wilson, in Kennel's History of England, ii. 704, 
 
52 HISTOllICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 have but to dive into my Fortunatus's leather-pocket, and 
 bring out always the ten gold coins. May the gods deliver 
 us from any such miraculous implement, fit to overset the 
 world ! 
 
 When we say therefore that his Majesty is in per})etual 
 want of cash, it is saying otherwise that his iMajesty finds 
 himself, after all, a kind of chaotic individual ; not owned by 
 the Veracities, as a Solomon should be, but disowned by 
 them. Facts everywhere disowned him, much to his astonish- 
 ment. Yet he struggled always, let us own, as his infirmities 
 would permit. With eloquent speech, with every superficial 
 assiduity, he tried to coax the Veracities ; snarled in angry 
 surprise, when they would not coax ;— and anew tried them. 
 Those vigilant glittering eyes, full of goodhumour, kindliness, 
 jolly banter ; that radiant wisdom secure that it is all-wise ; 
 that snarl, as of mastiffs swiftly passing, — poor Majesty ! 
 He was a man that hated trouble ; idle, nay ' eloquently 
 ' idle ' : in spite of black calumnies, what other vice had he ? 
 The summary of all his vices lay there, in that compre- 
 hensive one ; — as the summary of all his misfortunes lay in 
 want of cash. He had a most unquiet world to preside over ; 
 society all rent, or beginning to rend itself, in deep and ever 
 deeper travail -throes : in this little Island of ours, multitudes 
 of things confusedly germinating, which have since over- 
 shadowed the earth. A most pregnant, confused time ; 
 enough to astonish most Majesties. King of Puritanism ? 
 As the average of matters goes, we cannot cx})cct such a 
 thing. Puritanism, probably with struggle enough, will have 
 to find its own King. 
 
 For the rest, let no man suppose that this King was a 
 mere talking hypocrite ; that he flung up the reins of govern- 
 ment, like a modern Louis Fifteenth, in his Sybarite des))air, 
 and said. Go your own way, then ! Far from it. King 
 James, and this is the interesting })eculiarity, never once in 
 Ills remotest thoughts suspected that he was a Solecism. 
 With his whole soul he feels always that lie is Heaven- 
 
CHAP. IV.] JAMES I 53 
 
 appointed Governor of England ; rolls his vigilant large 
 eyes, wags his elo(|uent large tongue, with real intent to 
 govern and guide it. There is a touching conscientiousness 
 in him. For indeed the fulness of time had not yet come ! 
 Into no mind of man had it yet entered that this Universe 
 is an Imposture, an Uncertainty ; that any man or king 
 can, otherwise than at his eternal peril, be a Solecism, and 
 empty anarchic Clothes-horse there. Comparatively, with all 
 its confusions, a lucky epoch that of James ! 
 
 King James went in state to the Starchamber ; pronounced 
 divine Discourses in the Starchamber ; explaining to all 
 people, lords, commons, divines, lawyers and miscellaneous 
 persons, what their real duties were. He blew ' Counter- 
 ' blasts against Tobacco ' ; he denounced Dutch Vorstius, 
 argued with Papist Bellarmine. How has he mastered the 
 mysteries of Kingcraft ; written Basilicon-Dorons, that his 
 son after him might understand governing ? He is near 
 going to war with the Dutch, he who all his days detested 
 war, because they hesitate to dismiss Vorstius, the mad Arian 
 who attempts to profess Divinity. He sent Bishop ]\Iem- 
 bers to the Synod of Dort ; longed for their despatches on 
 Vorstius, Arminians and the ' five points,' as for the water 
 of life ; and when his Bishop-INIembers came home, he saw 
 them out of window, in a sad time, and said, ' Here come 
 ' my good mourners."' ^ A King every inch, and even a kind 
 of Pontiff ; a real Defender of the Faith ; ' by which title 
 ' he doth more value himself,^ says his ambassador, ' than by 
 ' the style of King of Britain.' ^ 
 
 With what unction does he discourse to Parliament also ; 
 expounding, in affectionate allegories, that they are the wife, 
 and he the husband ; that they must do no unkindnesses or 
 infidelities to one another. He feels himself as an immense 
 brood-fowl set over this England, and would so fain gather 
 it all under his wings. Cluck, cluck, ye unfortunate English ^^ 
 
 ^ Fuller, Church History of Britain (London, 1837), iii. 282. 
 - Ibid. 251. 
 
54 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 here are barleycorns, here are safe walks, if ye will but 
 follow ! Explosive, subterranean Papists, subtle Romish 
 fowlers not a few, Puritan owlets, glede -hawks, vulture 
 Vorstiuses are busy ; but so too am I, — with my quick eye- 
 sight, with my prodigious head of wit. Why should a noble- 
 man come idly hither to Court, and leave his own country 
 unguided, uncheered ; his chimney tops, the wind-pipes of 
 good hospitality, smokeless among their woods ? Why should 
 a person of elegant appearance puff nauseous tobacco-smoke 
 from him, — and even fill the cavities of his inner man with 
 soot ? If you dissect him, there have been known to issue, 
 as I am informed, considerable quantities of soot.^ Consider 
 witchcraft too ; beware of excess in witchcraft. O my 
 people, do your duty wisely ; — how fain would I too do my 
 duty, were it not so troublesome ! Hunting : — yes, but we 
 are constrained to hunting for the health of our royal person. 
 And drink : — we do take a little wine for our stomach's sake. 
 Choose wise men : — and do I not, ye rebellious ? I had 
 crooked sorrowful Robert Cecil once ; to me a great sorrow ; 
 and under him also you did nothing but croak. These 
 brilliant young figures, they fly out as my angels, as my swift 
 nimble scouts, seeking me the fit wise men ; to me they make 
 life easier ; to you they are — agreeable, I would hope .'' 
 
 The trouble his Majesty had with his Parliaments is but 
 analogous to what he had with all manner of Facts, 
 everywhere. Not one Fact of them would go by coaxing ; 
 Parliaments are again a naked fact we liave come upon, 
 the summary of many facts. Through his English Par- 
 liaments there speaks again the reality of England to this 
 King, — in a dialect extremely astonishing to him. Did 
 not Heaven's Self and the Laws of Nature appoint me to 
 
 ^ ' Surely smoke becomes a kitchen farre better than a dining chamber, and 
 yet it makes a kitchen also sometimes in tlie inward parts of men, soyling and 
 infecting them, with an vnctious and oily kind of soote, as hath been found in 
 some great 7b/^atYo takers, that after their death were opened.' Coiiutcrblastc 
 to Tobacco (King James's Works, London, l6i6, p. 221). 
 
CHAP. IV.] JAMES I 55 
 
 be Sovereign, and general Parent Fowl over you, ye 
 English ? Have not I clucked as a most kind parent, 
 struggling to cover you with my wings ? And ye will 
 prove mere rebellious cockatrices ? Know that our royal 
 breast contains anger withal ; dreadful volumes of wrath, 
 adequate to the dissolution of Nature in a manner ! 
 ' We think ourself very free and able to punish any 
 ' man's misdemeanours in Parliament ! ' ^ From these Par- 
 liaments, in language of respect almost devotional, there 
 comes truly a tone, lugubrious, low-voiced, unalterable ; 
 such as no second Solomon can understand. A croakinsr. 
 tremulous, most mournful petition, ever repeated : That 
 God's Gospel be attended to ; that right be done according 
 to the old laws ; that eternal verity do assert itself veritably 
 in all manner of temporal and other affairs. Dread Sovereign, 
 enlightened Majesty, O that it would please your Majesty 
 to put down Papistries, Spiritual Clothes-horses, blasphemous 
 unveracities : it is the law of the Most High Maker ; 
 what will become of your Majesty's poor Commons, of 
 your Majesty's Self and of us all otherwise ! So pray the 
 Parliaments ever more Puritanically. 
 
 What boots it ? Knewstubs and Chadderton " were flashed 
 back to Nox and Chaos, three hundred Puritan Niffht-owls 
 scattered from their nests in the Parish Churches : and yet 
 this strange Puritanism is spreading through all thinking 
 souls in England ! To the Country gentlemen it is grown 
 natural ; not a squire of them but has got the Bible- 
 doctrine in his heart, or feels that he ought to have it, 
 as the one thing needful. He has his Puritan Religion 
 about him ; as, in these days, our squire has his shotbelt 
 and double- barrel. Low, tremulous, but bodeful as the 
 voice of doom, rises the cry of the Bible Parliaments, 
 waxing ever wider, ever deeper, through that Reign of 
 James ; — enough to drive a second Solomon mad, if he were 
 to think of it ! God's Gospel : Have we not got it, ye 
 ^ Kennet, ii. 741. ^ ^^g t Hampton Court Conference,' aiife, p. 24. 
 
56 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 infatuated ? Privilege, right according to law : Did any 
 former king ever grant you the tithe of such Privilege ? 
 Will you yourselves be as kings, as gods knowing good 
 and evil ! Deep matters of State are far beyond your 
 simple comprehension. We are an old and experienced 
 King : are you advised of that ? We think ourselves very 
 free and able to punish any man's misdemeanours in Par- 
 liament. Shall we — dissolve Nature about your ears ? 
 We will to our hunting, and forget you ! Let us forget 
 you, ye infatuated ; and live by monopolies, benevolences, 
 sale of honours, and the general Grace of God ! 
 
 Of a truth, King James had his own difficulties with the 
 world ; and also, it is to be admitted, the world had its 
 own difficulties with King James. The Age of James, 
 which we found lying dim, and of a leaden colour, in the 
 Books of Dryasdust, is really in itself of dim nature ; 
 trivial, little worth remembering. An Age of tobacco and 
 other kinds of sinol:e. An Age of theory without practice ; 
 old theory ceasing to be practicable, new not yet becoming 
 so. Everywhere imminent, unconscious Decay struggles with 
 unconscious Newbirth. Struggle and wrestle as yet all dark ; 
 inarticulate contention, smoky ineffectuality, — smoke without 
 visible fire ! Fire there is ; but it lies deep under the fallen 
 and falling leaves of a Past Time, which are not yet con- 
 sumed, not yet understood to be consumable. What a most 
 poor spirit has taken possession of your Bacons and llaleighs ! 
 Within high-stalking Formulas there walks a Heality fast 
 verging towards the sordid. Hungry Valet-ambition, drunken 
 brutal Sensuality abound, on this hand ; and on that, empty 
 Hypocrisy not conscious that it is such. Not conscious : if 
 your Ethiopian never saw light, how can he surmise that he 
 is black '^ He scorns the foul insinuation ; has a vindictive 
 feeling, as of injured innocence. Not the least fatal and 
 hateful Hypocrisy is that same which never dreams that it is 
 hypocritical. 
 
CHAP. IV.] JAMES I 57 
 
 Men wear bushel-breeches, filled out with bran, in that 
 age ; and so, you may figuratively say, do things. Such 
 breeches arc a world too wide for the shrunk shank, which is 
 fast shrinking thinner and thinner, which really ought to be 
 quitting the streets now, as no longer roadworthy ! Much 
 that fencies itself to be a dress is becoming a questionable 
 masquerade. For there is a Reality in England other than 
 the somewhat sordid one with high-stalking Formulas at 
 Whitehall. A fire does exist; though dee})hiddcn under 
 brown leaves and exuviae, and as yet testifying itself only 
 by smoke ! Musical Spensers have sung their frosty Allegory 
 of Theoretic Heroisms, Faery Queens ; and lo, here is an un- 
 musical Knewstubs and Company persuading every one that 
 there ought to be a Practical Heroism. Rugged enough this 
 latter, but noble bevond all nobleness. Not in frosty Alle- 
 gories, in fantastic Dreamlands ; but here in this Earth, say 
 they, in this England, — at your feet, Peter, and at yours. Jack, 
 — is a steep Path of Hercules, which does actually lead to the 
 Eternal Heavens. That is news, old and yet extremely new ; 
 important if credible. Knewstubs knows it of a truth ; reads 
 it in his God's-Book, in his God-inspired heai't ; — and has one 
 thing needful, that he may himself accomplish it. That he 
 may himself accomplish it, this is the thing needful for 
 Knewstubs; not, except as subsidiary thereto, that he may 
 persuade all men or any man of it. The surer is he to 
 persuade all men. 
 
 This was the unaccountable element in English affairs 
 which a second Solomon had to face, and was altogether 
 unable to understand, — which had not yet become thoroughly 
 conscious of itself, — a conjuncture full of trouble to both 
 King and People. 
 
 One merit can never be denied this sorry generation of 
 James : That it is generating its Successor. When once 
 our said smoke, which we see waxing ever thicker, catches fire 
 and becomes flame, there will be a generation luminous 
 enough. 
 
58 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 BOG OF LINDSEY 
 
 [1G05] 
 
 It is not naturally a romantic region, that Fen Country ; 
 for the lover of the picturesque there is little comfort in it. 
 A stagnant land, grown dropsical ; where the lazy streams 
 roll with a certain higgling deliberation, as if in doubt 
 whether they would not cease to roll at all, which, indeed, 
 they occasionally do. The land-strata have not been suf- 
 ficiently heaved up from the Ocean, say the Geologists, with 
 much reason. The upheaval of strata from the ocean-bed 
 may be in excess and give us Alpine snow-mountains, fright- 
 ful Cotopaxis, Himalayas, with their cataracts and chasms ; or 
 in defect, as here, and give us quaking peat-bogs, expanses of 
 fat mud and quagmire. 
 
 Not a land of the picturesque, we say ; yet a land of some 
 interest to the human soul, as all land is or may become. A 
 gross, unpicturesque land, of reed -grass, Aveedy- verdure, of 
 mud and marsh ; where the scattered hills, each crowned with 
 its Church and hamlet, rise like islands over the continent of 
 peat-bog ; and indeed do mostly still bear the name of Ey, 
 which in the ancient dialect of all Deutschmen, Angles, 
 Norse, or whatever they are, means Island. Coveney, Swav- 
 esey, Sheepey, Horsey, not to speak of Ramsey, Eel-ey or 
 Ely, and so many other cyn and cas^ — they are beautiful to 
 me, with their little Parish Churches in the continent of 
 marsh there ; better than picturesque. The leaders of your 
 conquering Danes, East Angles or whoever they were, the 
 captain of fifty, the captain of ten, had settled each on his 
 dry knoll here, each with his merry men round him ; and set 
 to tillage, fishing, fowling, graziery and the peaceable cutting 
 of peat. Prosperous operations, which in the course of fertile 
 
CHAP, v.] BOGOFLINDSEY 59 
 
 centuries, have come to what we now see. The huts of his 
 merry men are this hamlet, this town with its towers and 
 markets ; his private chapel, what is notablest of all, has 
 grown to be this Parish Church ! The merry men, I find, 
 are still here, grubbing and stubbing in a very laborious 
 manner ; but the Captain himself has gone elsewhither, and 
 is somewhat to seek nowadays ! Meanwhile, we have it in 
 indisputable rhyme that ' the monks in Ely were singing 
 ' beautifully (merri/) as Cnut the King came rowing through 
 ' that quarter,' who straightway ordered a landing that he 
 might hear them at their vespers, — the noble pious Cnut 
 with an ear for music of every kind, and a soul ! 
 
 Merie sungen the Muneches binneii Ely 
 Tha Cnut Ching rew therby. 
 Roweth cnites noer the lant. 
 And here we thes Muneches saeng. ' 
 
 How the same King Cnut, storm -stayed at Soham, sat indig- 
 nant in the imperfect frost, unable either to row or ride ; 
 with his Christmas coming on at Ely, in sight of him, yet 
 unattainable : how he stormed and fumed ; and did at last 
 get through by help of a pikestaff and his own feet, guided 
 by a happy peasant dextrous in bog-topography, to whom 
 lands and quagmires were given for his service ; and so kept 
 
 ^ This is the first and only surviving stanza of an impromptu song made by 
 King Canute on the occasion of his visiting Ely, probably for the first time. 
 As the King, accompanied by his Queen Emma, approached the church of Ely, 
 he began to hear a kind of harmonious sound ; drawing nearer and listening 
 attentively, 'he perceived it to be the Monks in the Church singing their 
 Canonical hours. The King in the joy of his heart broke out into a Song which he 
 made extempore on the occasion, calling on the nobles that were about him to 
 join in the chorus. This Song in the English or Saxon language . . . was 
 long preserved by the Ely Monks, for the sake of the royal Author.' — Bentham's 
 History of the Church of Ely, p. 95. The following is a Latin version of the 
 stanza : 
 
 Dulce cantaverunt Monachi in Ely, 
 
 Dum Canutus Rex navigaret prope ibi. 
 
 Nunc, Milites, navigate propius ad terram, 
 
 Et simul audiamus Monachorum harmonium. 
 
60 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 his Christmas at Ely after all : this and other the like facts 
 are indisputable to Dryasdust. 
 
 Who knows what strange personages and populations have 
 dwelt in this Fen country, since it first rose into the sunlight 
 ' by volcanic agency,' or otherwise : Iceni, shaggy Fenmen, 
 Norsemen ; horrid Crocodile Ichthyosauri, Avading in the 
 mixed element ! There have been Roman conquerors, East- 
 Anglian conquerors, Danish conquerors in extreme abundance. 
 Nay, holy Guthlac, when he fled away from men in his solitary 
 boat and built a turf hut at Crowland, thinking he might 
 have leave to pray there in the desolate swamp country, was 
 beset with a populace of Devils, real Imps, the produce of 
 Guthlac and this Fen region, — scandalous gorbellied, bow- 
 legged, lobster-nosed little scoundrels, all dancing round him 
 with foul gestures and cacklings ; till he got them subdued 
 by obstinate devotion and spade husbandry ; and gradually a 
 Crowland Chapel, and even Crowland Abbey sacred to 
 Guthlac, was built there. Not to speak of devout Saxon 
 virgins, kings'' daughters some of them, ' and maids after 
 ' twelve years of marriage,"' flying through these watery wastes 
 to escape the snares of the world ; founding convents of Ely, 
 — but for whom Cnut had never heard that music. Then 
 also there were kings or kings"' sons, lying sick to death ; who, 
 in the crisis of their agony, saw Shining Ones, clear presence 
 of this or the other Saint, promising in audible sphere-music, 
 celestial enough, that they should not die but live ; who, 
 thereupon, very naturally, decided on founding Abbeys, at 
 Ramsey, or where they had the means. Strange enough pro- 
 ductions of this Fen country ; — foreign enough, to be bone 
 of our bone ! And here again, I apprehend, is a very strange 
 production of the Fen country ; this little Roy Oliver, whom 
 we saw in a late Cha})ter, looking at the Hinchinbrook Phan- 
 tasmagory, he himself a very real ol)ject ! He too, under 
 new guises, is of kindred to the devout kings'* sons and ])er- 
 secuted virgins ; perhaps also to Guthlac and his escort of 
 Devils. 
 
CHAP, v.] BOG OF LINDSEY 61 
 
 Be this as it may, one thing is certain : The progress of 
 improvement being considerable in those days, there has 
 arisen in Huntingdonshire and elsewhere some determination to 
 have the Fen regions drained. An important speculation ; 
 how often canvassed at the fireside of Mr. Robert Cromwell 
 and the Golden or Gilt Knight, among others ! Speculative 
 friends of agriculture see it to be possible ; there has long 
 been talk of it ; ought it not now to be done ? 
 
 Something from of old was done ; something by her late 
 Majesty ; nay, by old Romans, by Norse, East Anglians, 
 oldest Welsh Iceni and St. Guthlac ; — no genuine son of 
 Adam could live here without trying to drain a little, and 
 make the footing under him firmer ! Something was done ; 
 but alas, how little. Old works should be repaired ; new 
 greater ones attempted. Clough's-Cross bulwark with its 
 wooden tide-gates and flood-gates, engineers are of opinion 
 you could decidedly improve it. Morton's Leam, the old 
 Bishop Morton's, could you not ' scour ' ^ that, and make it 
 run ; to carry off the soaking Nen waters as it once did .'* 
 Salter's Lode too, and so many other lodes and leams — but 
 the Abbeys are all suppressed, given to the cormorants ; and 
 the Nen-deluges and several other things, ooze at their leisure, 
 none bound to take heed of them." The good old Bishop 
 Morton, he had ' a brick tower' built for himself in those 
 drowned regions : there on his specula commanding many a 
 mile of wet waste, he surveyed with extensive view the 
 domains of mud ; and watched how, in the distance or near, 
 his spademen in due gangs were getting some victory over it. 
 Venerable good old man ; a pleasure to me to see him on his 
 brick toAver there, though four centuries off! He, for one, 
 I think, is a sane son of Adam ; bent to conquer Chaos a 
 little, on more sides than one. For I love to believe he was 
 a good spiritual Overseer too, and did feats as Priest, as 
 Pontiff and Lord Chancellor : a sworn enemy of Chaos, 
 I do hope, whether it appeared as Lawyer's cobwebs, as 
 ^ Drerlge - Camden. 
 
62 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 mud-swanips, or human stupidity, as DeviPs disorder of what- 
 ever kind ! — 
 
 And now his long good Learn, we say, Hes stagnant, in- 
 effectual ; lapped in sedges and foul green slumber : that, at 
 least, you could scour and set flowing. That and much else. 
 These enormous Fens ought in short to be conquered. From 
 the big Bog of Lindsey by Humber mouth, westward by 
 Ramsey Mere, to Huntingdon, to Market Deeping in the 
 head of Norfolk, what a tract of land to be gained from 
 the mud - gods, — worth Sterling money if you had it ! 
 Positively our River Ouse should not be left to run in 
 this way, submerging whole districts : bank him, bulwark 
 him, hold him up by sheer force ; and instead of mud 
 and ducks, with summer hay, let there be cattle-pastures 
 and corn. 
 
 Such is the talk of speculative friends of agriculture ; such 
 is the deliberate Public Report which the leading men in 
 those Fen Countries, Sir Oliver and Mr. Robert Cromwell 
 among others, after endless volumes of speech and inquiring, 
 are now prepared to sign, — and will sign, ' at Huntingdon 
 ' this tenth of May 1605," legibly to Dugdale and others.^ 
 What speech and argumentative speculation they have had ; 
 what personal inspection, ridings singly or in bodies, to and 
 fro, enough probably to go round the globe, shall be left to 
 the reader. Quantities of talk and vain riding are necessary ; 
 an obscure groping round the business, till once you get upon 
 the business. So many vested interests to be conciliated ; 
 town navigations along those sleepy Rivers ; sununer rights of 
 pasturage and turf, winter rights of duck-fowling, with net, 
 decoy-duck and cross-bow ! But the draining is decided to 
 be possible. Pump up your learns and lodes, by windmill or 
 otherwise, into this uplifted Ouse, — if we once had him lifted. 
 It can be done ' without injury to any navigation,' say Sir 
 Oliver, Mr. Robert, and foiu'teen others. They say and 
 affirm that it can be done ; but from the j)()tential to the 
 ^ Noble's Cromwell, i. S3. 
 
CHAP, v.] BOGOFLINDSEY 63 
 
 indicative mood there is always such a distance.' Before this 
 possible thing can be done, what quantities of new vain speech 
 must condense themselves, and ridings that would go round 
 the world shrink into a point, ' tlic point' as men call it ! 
 
 ' All speech,' exclaims Smelfungus in his dark way, ' is of 
 ' vaporous character, and has to condense itself; speech and 
 ' much else has to condense itself, in such confused manner as 
 ' it can : these swampy Fen Countries are an emblem to thee 
 ' of human History in general ! The very meanings of speech, 
 ' like the sound of it, do they not swiftly pass away .'' The hot- 
 ' test controversial jangling which drives all hearts to madness, 
 ' this too is a transient vibration in the lower regions of the 
 ' atmosphere ; this, too, if thou wait a little, will condense 
 ' itself and not be. Vain even to print it and reprint it ; its 
 ' meaning for the heart of man is lost. That old brown stack 
 ' of Pamphlets of the Seventeenth Century, full of hot fury 
 ' then, is grown all torpid to us now, dead to us as ditch water 
 ' and peat. Our loud words, our passionate thoughts, the 
 ' whole world's angry jargon, how it hangs like a general cir- 
 ' cumambient very transitory air ; like a vapour mounting up 
 ' a little way from the ferment of Existence, — then anon 
 ' condensing itself, sinking quietly into the general Bog of 
 ' Lindsey, to lie soaking there. 
 
 ' How opulent, flourishing were those past generations ; 
 ' how silent, contracted no\v, compressed into black caput 
 * mortiium, — even as in Lindsey here ! The generations were 
 
 ^ Nothing came of this speculation : it was not until 1629 that the first prac- 
 tical attempt to deal with the Great Level was made by Cornelius Vermuyden, 
 a Dutch engineer. The opposition offered to the scheme by the neighbouring 
 landowners, the fishermen and willow-cutters was violent ; and the engineer's 
 plans were impracticable. It has been said that ' One of the principal labours 
 of modern engineers has been to rectify Vermuyden's errors.' For a long time 
 the business lingered. In 1649 an Act was passed for resuming the work under 
 better auspices ; a New Company of Adventurers was formed (of which Oliver 
 Cromwell was a member), and proceeded vigorously with a New Bedford Level, 
 — the one still existing. And in three or four years more the work was com- 
 pleted, after a sort. The Fen-office was burnt in the Great Fire (1666), and 
 a complete account of the Draining of the Fens cannot now be written. 
 
64 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 like annual flowerages, the centuries like years. For them 
 too, Life blossomed up, covered with verdure, with boughs, 
 and foliage and fruit ; and the sun and the stars shed on it 
 motherly influences for a season, nourishing it sumptuously ; 
 and — and — the season once spent, all venlure died into 
 brownness, fell away as dead leaves, as dead boughs and 
 trunks ; mouldering in huge ferment of decay ; till it sank 
 all as inarticulate rottenness, as black-brown dust, compressed 
 by natural gravitation, and continued influence of weather, 
 into the black stratum of morass we admire in these Fen 
 Countries. — Yes, brother, the leafy, blossoming, high-tower- 
 ing past century becomes but a stratum of peat in this 
 manner ; the brightest century the world ever saw will sink 
 in this fashion ; and thou and I, and the longest- skirted 
 potentates of the Earth, — our memories and sovereignties, 
 and all our garnitures and businesses, will one day be dug 
 up quite indistinguishable, and dried peaceably as a scantling 
 of cheap fuel. Generation under generation, even as here in 
 the Bog of Lindsey, such is History ; and all higher genera- 
 tions press upon the lower, squeezing them ever thinner : 
 how thin, for example, has Hengst and Horsa''s generation 
 become ! About Hengst and his voyage hither, the greatest 
 act of emigration ever heard of, you cannot distil a good 
 written page from all the Nenniuses and Newburys : and our 
 present inconsiderable paper Emigration Act, before we get 
 it passed, — this, with the discussions on it, I su})pose, might 
 clothe St. James's Park in pica ! Is not the Hengst-and- 
 Horsa speech -vapour condensed into bog- moisture, to a 
 wonderful degree ? 
 
 ' Melancholy, great : like the realms of the Death-goddess ; 
 — like the study of llushworth and C()m])nny ! How all the 
 growths of this feracious ]<^arth, what richest timber- forests, 
 corn-crops, cattle-pastures. Periodic Literatures and Systems 
 of Opinion, we have weaved upon it, do crumble fast or slow 
 into a jungly abbatis, the living and still verdant struggling 
 with the dead and brown ; and at a certain dc})th below the 
 
CHAP, v.] BOGOFLINDSEY 65 
 
 ' present, all is become black bog-substance, all ! ' Or nearly 
 
 all, thou dark Smelfungus ! subjoin we. 
 
 ' Vain to attempt reviving what is dead,' continues he ; 
 caput 7/iortuum will not live again. Have an eye for 
 knowing what is extinct ; it will stead thee well. How 
 many interesting Neo- Catholic, Puseyite, and other })lu- 
 perfect persons, like zealous officers of a spiritual Humane 
 Society, one beholds struggling, Avith breathless, half-frantic 
 assiduity, with surgical bellows, hot-cloth friction, and gal- 
 vanic apparatus, to restore you some vital spark which has 
 irrevocably fled ! Alas, friends, the dead horse will never 
 kick again, except galvanically ; never drag your waggon for 
 you again. Try ye, meanwhile, what utmost virtue is in 
 galvanism, unweariedly ; till absolute putrefaction supervene, 
 and galvanism itself produce no motion ; and all men depart 
 sorrowful, saying, " It is ended, it is dead ! " Humane- 
 Society galvanisers of this sort fill me with sorrow, but also 
 with a kind of love. Idolaters, — yes probably : they are not 
 innocent ; but they are well-intentioned, and are they not 
 unhappy ? As for the other, vulture or vampire class, who 
 have their own base uses in the matter ; and scandalously, 
 against Nature, keep the venerable Dead unburied that they 
 may feed upon them : of these, not to speak things too 
 savage, we will say nothing."' — 
 
 Our dark friend's concluding sentences are also notable : 
 In the Bog of Lindsey," says he, ' there lie wondrous animal 
 remains. Huge black oaktrees : the white wood all gone ; 
 the incorruptible heart of oak, a venerable thing, alone re- 
 maining. What fossil elks, enormous mammoths, of extinct 
 species some of them, are raised from bogs. Such also in 
 Historical Museums, belectured by fatal Dryasdust, I have 
 seen, — figuratively speaking. A mammoth all gone to the 
 osseous framework ; its eyes become huge eyeholes, filled with 
 the circumfluent clay. For it is all sunk in clay ; down 
 deep, in the dead deeps. Poor mammoth, — in its stomach, 
 they say, — in the place that had been its stomach, — lay 
 
66 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 ' a bundle of recognisable half-eaten reeds. Reedgrass cropped 
 ' in the antediluvian ages, with a tongue that had muscles and 
 ' taste before the Deluge, but has none now. This mammoth, 
 ' too, had its life. I tell thee, the world lay all green and 
 ' alive round it then, and was not inert blind bog as thou 
 ' seest it now. Not in an juwise,' thou fatal Dryasdust ! — 
 
 ' If History be the sister of Prophecy, if Past be Divine as 
 ' Future, and Time on his mysterious bosom bear the two, as 
 ' Night does her twins,^ then History also is miraculous. Not 
 ' lightly shalt thou persuade me to write a History of Oliver ! 
 ' Is it I that can bid full muscles, skin and life, clothe these 
 ' dry fossil bones ; the half-eaten reedgrass furnish itself with 
 ' new gastric juices ; and create an appetite under the ribs 
 ' of death ! ' 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 GUY FAUX AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 
 
 [1605] 
 
 What is singular, the Dovetail Papers contain no account, 
 or almost none, of the celebrated Gunpowder Treason. A 
 curious proof, wonderful and joyful, how all dies away in this 
 world, — battles as well as covenanted love, and how the 
 bitterest antagonisms sink into eternal silence, and peaceably 
 blend the dust of their bodies for new corn soil to the 
 succeeding generations. Punic Hannibal and Roman Scipio 
 are a very quiet pair of neighbours now. Guy Faux, who 
 had nearly sent the British Solomon and all his Parliament 
 aloft into the infinite realms by chemical explosion, has 
 become, like Solomon himself, little other than a ridiculous 
 chimera. ' I was gratified,*' says Dovetail, ' on the 5th of 
 ' November last, to meet an enormous Guy in the New Cut ;^ 
 
 ' As represented by Thorwaldscn's celebrated ri/icvo, Night soaring heaven- 
 ward with twins in her arms. 
 
 - A Street in London, joining the Waterloo and Blackfriar's Roads. 
 
CHAP. VI.] GUY FAUX: GUNPOWDER PLOT 67 
 
 got up with an accuracy of costume, in which this generation 
 may surely pride itself. He seemed in stature about twelve 
 feet or upwards ; he was seated in a cart drawn by idle 
 apprentices and young miscellaneous men, who shouted deep 
 but not fiercely as they dreAv. The face, of due length, was 
 axe-shaped as it were, all tending towards one enormous 
 nose ; the wooden eye looking truculently enough in its fixed 
 obduracy from its broad sleek field of featureless cheek. 
 Flood of black horsehair shaded this appropriate countenance, 
 streamed copious over back and shoulders, and gave a tragic 
 impressiveness to the figure. The white band was not for- 
 gotten ; nor square, close coat, with its girdle of black 
 leather. The hat, about the size and shape of a chimney-pot, 
 set in a pewter trencher, I considered to be of blackened 
 pasteboard. To such length has useful knowledge extended 
 among us ; down even to the apprentices and burners of 
 Faux. Thus travelled Faux in appropriate costume through 
 the New Cut, few pausing to glance at him, still fewer 
 offering any coin for the support of him. If here and there 
 some passenger regarded him with a brief grim smile, it was 
 much. ... I passed along, musing upon many things. To 
 such chimerical conditions do the sublimest Forms in History 
 come at last ; no bloodiest Truculence can continue terrible 
 forever ; how in this all-forgetting world do Angels of Doom, 
 at which every heart quailed, dwindle into pasteboard Buga- 
 boos ; and does Thor, the Thundergod, whose stroke smote 
 out Valleys of Chamouni, the angry breath of whose nostrils 
 snuffling through his red beard, was once the whistling 
 of the storm-blast over heaven, become Jack the Giant 
 Killer. My Lord Montague of Boughton left 40/.^ to keep 
 alive the memory of this great mercy, while Time endured ; 
 and in a space of 240 years it has come to what we see ! 
 — There is no contest eternal but that of Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman ; the rest are all, except as elements of that, in- 
 significant.' 
 
 ^ Collins. 
 
68 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Well, and are there in History many sterner figures than 
 Guido, standing there with his dark-lantern beside the six- 
 and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in AVhinniard's cellar under 
 the Parliament ? ^ To such length has he, for his part, 
 carried his insight into the true interests of this world. 
 Guido is a very serious figure ; has used reasonable effort to 
 bring himself to the stickingplace and Hercules'" choice of 
 Roads. No Pusey Dilettante, poor spouting New Catholic 
 or Young England in white waistcoat ; a very serious man 
 come there to do a thing, and die for it if there be need. 
 Papal Antichrist, the Holy Father, whom Fate has sent irre- 
 vocably towards Chaos and the Night-empire, this Guido will 
 recall again to light, — if not by Heaven's aid then by Hell's. 
 He is here with his six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in 
 Whinniard's cellar ; to blow up King and Parliament. — It is 
 remarkable how in almost all world-quarrels, when they came 
 to extremity there have been Infernal Machines, Sicilian 
 Vespers, Guido Powder-barrels and such like called into 
 action ; and worth noting how hitherto not one of them in 
 this world has prospered.' No, my desperate friends, that is 
 not the way to prosper. Can the Chariot of Time be stopt 
 or hastened by clutching at its wheel-spokes in that mad 
 manner ? You may draw at the Chariot itself or draw 
 against it ; but do not meddle with its wheel-spokes. 
 Besides, in all cases, I consider the Devil an unsafe sleeping- 
 partner, to be rejected, not to be admitted at any premium ; 
 by whose aid no cause yet was ever known to prosper. 
 
 A changed time truly, since Guido Faux was a figure of 
 flesh and blood steering his wild way between Heaven and 
 Hell ; instead of a pasteboard one travelling the New Cut to 
 collect Anticatholic pence for fireworks ! A most truculent 
 fact that of Guido, if we will meditate it. Gentlemen of 
 
 ^ The cellars under the House were let to coal -dealers, etc. 
 2 So also with the modern dynamitards. 
 
CHAP. VI.] GUY FAUX : GUNPOWDER PLOT 69 
 
 honour, of what education, reflexion, breeding and human 
 culture there was going, have decided after much study to 
 solve the riddle of Existence for themselves in this manner. 
 ' Heard are the Voices,' speaking out of the Eternity to man 
 that he shall be a man ; and it is in this way that Guido 
 Faux and Company interpret them. They have communed 
 together by word of mouth and glance of eye ; have clubbed 
 money, sworn on the Evangels ; and Jesuit Garnet,^ — many 
 looking askance on the business, has said, ' Well-done.' And 
 so King and Parliament are to fly aloft, and papal Antichrist 
 is to be recalled again to light. — Reader, it was not a Drury 
 Lane scenic exhibition to be done by burnt cork, bad 
 Iambics, and yellow funnel-boots, this of Guido's ; but a 
 terribly pressing piece of work not to be got done except 
 by practical exertion of oneself ! I have a view of the 
 rentino- of Whinniard's cellar : the landing of those six- 
 and-thirty casks of gunpowder there. Living Guido stands 
 there, a tough heart beating in him, dark-lantern and 
 three matches in hand ;" and there will be a fireblast and 
 peal of Doom, not often witnessed in this world ; and one 
 Parliament at least shall end in an original manner ! And 
 Papal Antichrist, the Holy Father, shall resume his old 
 place, and England unite herself with the old Dragons, 
 instead of the new-revealed Eternal God. Had not his 
 Majesty, seemingly again by special inspiration, detected in 
 this dark mystery the faintest light-chink ever seen, — an 
 ambiguous phrase in a letter,^ fit for such a pair of vigilant 
 quick-glancing goggle-eyes ; and, pressing forward, torn out 
 the whole fiery secret of it — to the wonder, the terror, the 
 horror and devout gratitude of all men. Flagging imagina- 
 tion, in this new element of ours, can do no justice to it, need 
 not try to conceive it ; imagination even of Shakspeare cannot. 
 Faux lies in stern durance ; austere, lynx-eyed judges round 
 him, with their racks and interrogatories, their feline lynx- 
 
 ^ Henry Garnet, Provincial of the Jesuits in England. 
 
 2 State Trials, ii. 201. ^ See ante, p. 43. 
 
70 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 eyes, as it were all pupil together, dilated into glow of rage 
 and terror ; able to see in the dark. Three-score ^ Apostolic 
 young gentlemen ride with the speed of Epsom through 
 slumbering England, into AVarwickshire, designing as they 
 profess to hunt there. The Warwickshire ' hunt ' ascertain- 
 ing how the matter is, swiftly dissipates itself again ; with 
 terror lest they themselves prove cozened foxes, and experi- 
 ence not what the hunter but what the chased fox in these 
 circumstances feels. The three score Apostolic young 
 gentlemen have to gallop again for life, for life ; the War- 
 wickshire Posse Comitatus galloping at their heels. And ' on 
 ' the edge of Warwickshire at Stephen Littleton"'s house,"' O 
 Heavens, while the poor fellows dried their gunpowder, it 
 caught fire, scorched two of them almost to death, or into 
 delirium. And the others ' stood upon their guard,' as 
 hunted human truculences chased into their last lair might ; 
 and Sheriff' and Posse had a deadlift effort to make ; and 
 their faces are grimed with powder-smoke, bathed in sweat ; 
 and faces lay grim, minatory in the last death-paleness in 
 Stephen Littleton's house there ; — and they were all killed or 
 else taken wounded, and then hanged and headed. And 
 horror, wonder, and awe-struck voice of thanksgiving rose 
 consentaneous from broad England, and the Lord Montague 
 founded ' an endowment of 40/. (annually) that the memory 
 ' of the deliverance might be celebrated, in all time to come, 
 ' in the town of Northampton.'' And in English History 
 there was never done a thing: of o-raver tragic interest than this 
 which Dovetail now sees reduced to pasteboard in the New 
 Cut. What dust of extinct lions sleeps peaceably under our 
 feet everywhere ! The soil of this world is made of the dust 
 of Life, the geologists say ; limestone and other rocks are 
 made of bone dust variously compounded. 
 
 But was not this a notable counterpart to the Ham})ton 
 Court phenomenon ; that in its dreary grey, not yet got to 
 the length of being luminous ; this in its expiring splendour, 
 1 State Trials, ii. 211. 
 
CHAP. VI.] GUY FAUX : GUNPOWDER PLOT 71 
 
 going off in a flash of hell-fire ? One would have thought 
 his Majesty had got enough of Papism ; — England, in general, 
 thought very heartily so. His Majesty had no hatred of the 
 Pope, except as a rival to King's Supremacy ; had at one 
 time wanted a Scotch Cardinal. His Majesty did find good, 
 when a certain old negotiation with the Po})e came to light, 
 to lay the blame of it on Secretary Elphinstone, the Lord 
 Balmerino ; ^ to have Balmerino condemned to die, and then 
 pardon him again. A Scotch Cardinal would have been a 
 sort of conveniency, he thought. Kings are peculiarly circum- 
 stanced ; especially kings that know not the heart of their 
 Nation, Ormuzd from Ahriman. 
 
 ^ Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet says that Elphinstone (Lord Balmerino) ' was 
 in such favour with King James, that he craved the reversion of secretary Cecil's 
 place, at the king's coming to the Crown of England, which was the beginning 
 of his overthrow ; for the said secretary Cecil wrought so that, having procured 
 a letter which had come from King James, wherein he promised all kindness 
 to the Roman See and Pope, if his holiness would assist him to attain to the 
 Crown of England ; — this letter the said secretary Cecil showed in the king's 
 presence in the Council of England ; whereupon King James, fearing to displease 
 the English nation, behoved to disclaim the penning of this letter, and lay the 
 blame thereof on his secretary, whom a little before that he had made Lord Bal- 
 merino : to whom he wrote to come to court ; where being come, for exoneration 
 of the king, he behoved to take on him the guilt of writing that letter.' The 
 Staggering State of the Scots Statesmen (Edin., 1754), 59-60. 
 
 The King took immense pains to prove that he had had no hand in writing 
 this letter ; that the signature to it had been got surreptitiously ; and there is 
 evidence, independently of Balmerino's confession which might have been a 
 forced or bribed one, to prove pretty certainly that James was, technically at least, 
 innocent of this particular charge. The king, however, had written com- 
 promising letters to the Cardinals and Italian Princes ; and in his ' Premonition 
 to all the most mighty Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christen- 
 dom,' which appeared some time afterwards, he does not even mention 
 Balmerino's Confession. Professor Gardiner {History of Englatid, ii. 34) says : 
 ' It is possible that, by the time that book appeared, James had remembered 
 that the signature of the letter to the Pope was but a small part of the charge 
 against him, and had become unwilling to call attention to the fact that, at all 
 events, he had ordered letters to be written to the Cardinals.' 
 
72 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 KNIGHTING OF PRINCE HENRY 
 
 [1610] 
 BEN JONSON's masques 
 
 On Wednesday the 30th of May, 1610, or Thursday the 
 31st, Prince Henry, hope of these Lands, was created Knight 
 of the Bath ; he, and certain other highly select persons : 
 with an explosion of rich silk dresses, cavalcadings, naval 
 combats, peals of ordnance, and ' most stately Masques,'' 
 enough to darken the very face of the Sun. 
 
 For Norroy and Clarentiaux and the proper Upholsterers 
 were busy ; and dignitaries, and Lord Mayors and Lord 
 Mayors' barges, and ' fifty-four of the Companies of London,' 
 all puffed out in scarlet and the usual trimmings. And 
 there was riding in state to Richmond on high horses, and 
 sailing in state from Richmond in gilt barges ; and more 
 than once ' the River was in a manner paved with boats.' 
 And ' at Chelsea there was a Dolphin upon whom sat 
 ' Neptune, and upon a Whale,' presumably of leather, ' there 
 ' sat a Watergoddess ; both of whom made certain Speeches 
 ' unto the Prince,' — Mr. Inigo Jones and rare Ben Jonson, 
 incited by the authorities, having done their best. And then 
 the young Knights, with his young Highness, ' walked round ' 
 this chamber, and afterwards round that ; and sat ' in white 
 ' linen coifs,' and again ' in grey cloaks,' poor young gentle- 
 men ; and then rose, and went to prayers ; and had spurs ; 
 and redeemed their spurs ' with a noble each to the King's 
 ' Cook, who stood at the Chapel door with his cleaver in his 
 ' hand ' ; — went to prayers, we say, and to dinner, and finally 
 to sleep, in a most surprising manner ; ^ London and the con- 
 temporary populations looking on with breathless veneration. 
 
 This innuense event, and explosion of events, enough to 
 ^ Stow, 899. 
 
CHAP. VII.] KNIGHTING OF PRINCE HENRY 73 
 
 deafen England, — who is there that would reawaken .? It 
 shall sleep well amid the brown leaves and exuviae ; wet 
 condensed portion of the Bog of Lindsey, with one tear of 
 ours added to it, — forever and a day. Alas, standing there 
 in a bewildered manner ' at the Chapel door in Whitehall,' 
 beside his Majesty's Cook with the gilt cleaver; bewildered, 
 jostled by so many shadows, we have to ask : In these bound- 
 less multitudes crowding all avenues, is there no soul then 
 whatever whom we in the least know .'' None or almost 
 none ; they are leaden shadows to us. Sardanapalus Hay, 
 yes he steps out a new-made Bath Knight, pays his gold 
 noble among the others ; he is there, — whom one does not 
 want to know. ' Master Edward Bruce ' too, a handsome 
 Scotch youth, Master of Kinloss, like to be Lord of Kinloss 
 in the Shire of Fife ; he is there,^ a shadow less leaden than 
 the others. His new spurs, his proud-glancing eyes do 
 lighten on us somewhat, — Avith a tragic expression : he shall 
 die in duel this one ;" it is sung by the Fates. And ' Master 
 ' William Cavendish,' heir-presumptive of the Shrewsburys 
 at Worksop, heir of "^^^elbeck, Bolsover and much else ; an 
 elegant youth, brimful of accomplishments and teachable 
 sciences ; he also takes a kind of colour ; him we shall meet 
 
 again. The rest Heavens, how they have vanished, 
 
 with their fresh-coloured cheeks, bright clothes, breathless 
 veneration ; and are silent ; all but a doomed few who roam, 
 yet for a season as shrieking ghosts, in the Peerage-Books 
 
 and torpid rubbish-mountains of my erudite Friend ! 
 
 But truly the explosion itself was audible and visible, nay, as 
 it were, tangible to all England, that Summer of 1610 : for 
 you had to pay your dues on the King's son being knighted ; 
 — wherein, however, his Majesty instructed the bailiffs to deal 
 gently for peace's sake, and be lax rather than rigorous. It 
 appears likewise that ' Sir John Holies ^ of Haughton was 
 ' made Comptroller of the Prince's Household ' ; an appoint- 
 ment none of us can object to. 
 1 See list in Stow, p. goi. - S&epost, p. 99. ^ See post, p. 202;/. 
 
74 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 But the thing I had to remark above all others was, that 
 Ben Jonson composed the Masque.^ O Ben, my rare Friend, 
 is this in very deed thou ? There in the body, with thy 
 rugged sagacities and genialities ; with thy rugged Annandale 
 face and unquenchable laughing eyes ; — like a rock hiding in 
 it perennial limpid wells ! My rare friend, there is in thee 
 something of the lion, I observe : — thou art the rugged 
 Stonemason, the harsh, learned Hodman ; yet hast strains 
 too of a noble softness, melodious as the voice of wood-doves, 
 fitfully thrilling as the note of nightingales, now and then ! 
 Rarer union of rough clumsy strength with touches of an 
 Ariel beauty I have not met with. A sterling man, a true 
 Singer-heart, — born of my native Valley too : to whom and 
 to which be all honour ! "^ 
 
 Ben made many Masques ; worked in that craft for thirty 
 years and more, the world applauding him : he had his 
 pension from the Court, his pension from the City ; — if you 
 have leather Dolphins afloat, you must try to get a little 
 music introduced into them withal. Certainly it is a circum- 
 stance worth noticing that surly Ben, a real Poet, could 
 employ himself in such business, with the applause of all the 
 world ; it indicates an Age very different from ours. An 
 Age full of Pageantry, of grotesque Symbolising, — yet not 
 without something in it to symbolise. That is the notable 
 point. Innumerable Masques and masqueradings ; a general 
 Social Masquerade, it almost seems to us, with huge bulging- 
 costumes and upholstery, stuffed out with bran and tailors' 
 trinnnings : yet within it there still is a Reality, though a 
 shrunken one, an ever farther shrinking one. Ben Jonson, 
 Francis Bacon, and other such can still work as tiremen for 
 it. How could it stand on its feet otherwise .'' A Social 
 Masquerade fallen aUoffcthcr empty collapses on the pave- 
 ment, amid the shrieks of the bystanders, — as in these last 
 times of ours we see it sorrowfully do ! To the heart of 
 
 ' Called ' Prince Henry's Barriers.' 
 
 ^ Ben himself was born in Westminster ; his Grandfather, in Annandale. 
 
CHAP. VII.] KNIGHTING OF PRINCE HENRY 75 
 
 Ben, of Francis, and of all persons, here was still a real King 
 and a real Prince ; whose knighthoods, cavalcadings, and 
 small and great transactions, the Melodies and Credibilities 
 had not yet disowned. 
 
 I myself, under certain conditions, have often assisted at 
 Ben's Masques ; looked at the quaint Court, in their fardin- 
 gales and stuffed breeches, treading solemn dances, ' flying out 
 ' in winoed chariots ' or otherwise : — and endeavoured to make 
 acquaintance with a fair friend or two on such occasions. 
 Lucy Percy I have seen, though she saw not me : the paragon 
 of women ; sprightliest, gentlest, proudest ; radiating con- 
 tinual soft arrows from her eyes and wit ; which pierce in- 
 numerable men, — pierce Sardanapalus Hay for one. Anne 
 Clifford too, a somewhat stern young maiden, full of sense, full 
 of heart and worth ; whom I think a certain young Sackville 
 of the House of Buckhurst — ' O Mistress Anne ! ' — is some- 
 times glancing at. These I have seen at Masques of Ben's ; 
 much admiring. The Masques themselves were not unde- 
 lightful to me. — 
 
 But certainly of all Ben's Masques, the one I should have 
 liked to see had been that one given at Holmby Castle in 
 Northamptonshire seven years ago,^ when Queen Anne first 
 came southward out of Scotland, and the little Prince [Henry] 
 with her, then a small boy. For there issued Satyrs singing 
 from the real bosquets of Holmby Park, and Queen Mabs 
 discoursing, not irrationally, as her Majesty and little Son 
 advanced ; and ' two bucks,' roused at the right moment, were 
 ' happily shot,' real bucks which you could dine from : and 
 then on the morrow, there appears a personage called Nobody ; 
 he is to speak some prologue to a general voluntary morrice- 
 dance of the Northamptonshire Nobility assembled there ; and 
 his complete Court-suit is, — let any and all readers guess it, — 
 
 1 This was the Masque called ' The Satyr.' Carlyle has noted in his copy of 
 Jonson's Works (Barry Cornwall's Edition, London, 1842): 'This' [T/te 
 Satyr] ' must have been presented at Holmby to Queen Anne as she came from 
 Scotland with the Prince.' 
 
76 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 ' a very large pair of breeches buttoning round his neck, and 
 ' his hands coming out at the pockets." My rare friend I — 
 Prince Henry Avas there, a boy of eleven years. ^ Prince 
 Charles was not there : he, too, will get to know Holmby and 
 its Bosquets, by and by, perhaps ? — 
 
 Consider also how the ' wit-combats at the jMermaid ' were 
 even now going on ! For the divine world-famous ' Eider 
 Dramatists'" were as yet new Dramatists, obscurely gliding 
 about, as mere mortals ; in very rusty outfit, some of them ; 
 lodging in Alsatia, by the ' Green Curtain at Shoreditch,' 
 Blackfriar's Playhouse, or God knows where. London with 
 its half-million population found some hutch, garret or rusty 
 cranny somewhere, for the lodging of these among others. 
 And at the Mermaid, of an evening, we assemble, if we have 
 any cash. And there are Ben and William Shakspeare in 
 wit-combat, sure enough ; Ben bearing down like a mighty 
 Spanish War-ship, fraught with all learning and artillery ; 
 Shakspeare whisking away from him, — whisking right 
 through him, athwart the big hulk and timbers of him ; 
 like a miraculous Celestial Light-ship, woven all of sheet- 
 lightning and sunbeams ! Through the thick rhinoceros skin 
 of my rare Ben there penetrated strange electric iuHuences ; 
 and he began to wonder where that pricking of his fell 
 came from ! He ' honoured William Shakspeare, on this side 
 ' idolatry, as much as any man.' These are the wit-combats 
 at the Mermaid ; — and in two years now they are to cease ; 
 and that divine Elder-Dramatist Business, having culminated 
 here, is to decline gradually, and at last die out and sink 
 under the hori/on, giving place to other Businesses, probably 
 of graver nature. In 1612,^ the man Shakspeare retires to 
 Stratford-on-Avon, into a silence which no Dryasdust or 
 obscene creature will ever penetrate ; — as it were, a kind of 
 divine silence, and mute dialogue with Nature herself, before 
 departing ; sacred, like the silence of the gods ! — These are 
 
 * Born, 1592. 
 
 '" Collier's Li'/i; of Shakspeare (London, 1S44), p. 232. 
 
CHAP. VII.] KNIGHTING OF PRINCE HENRY 77 
 
 the wit-combats at the Mermaid of an evening, if you chance 
 to be an Elder Dramatist, and have any cash left. 
 
 Thus, at any rate, have we got Prince Henry Knighted ; 
 one piece of loud labour is not to do again. It was con- 
 summated on the evening of Thursday, 31st May, 1610. 
 
 Prince Henry, besides being Prince of Wales and Knight, 
 is at pi'esent the hope of the world. Some seventeen years of 
 age ; really a promising young person,^ in a world prone to 
 hope. Courageous, frank, serious ; not so disinclined to 
 Puritanism, they say. He has a Sister, Princess Elizabeth, 
 now budding into most graceful maidhood ; indisputably the 
 flower of this Court. A most graceful, slim, still damsel ; 
 with her long black hair and timid deep look, — not without 
 the dash of Gypsy-tragic either. She has something of Mary 
 Queen of Scots, I think, this charming Princess, though not 
 the Papistries, the French coquetries ; and may grow yet to 
 
 ^ ' See description of him in Harris,' Carlyle has noted here. Perhaps the 
 reference is to the following, by Sir Charles Cornwallis, quoted by Harris {Life 
 of Jatnes /., London, 1814, i. p. 295):— 'He was of a comely, tall middle- 
 stature, about 5 ft. 8 in. high, of a strong, straight, well-made body, with some- 
 what broad shoulders, and a small waist ; of an amiable majestic countenance, 
 his hair of an auburn colour, long face and broad forehead, a piercing grave eye, 
 and most gracious smile, with a terrible frown ; courteous bearing, and affable ; 
 his favour like the sun, indifferently seeming to shine upon all : — naturally shame- 
 faced, and modest, — most patient, which he showed both in life and death. Dis- 
 simulation he esteemed most base, chiefly in a prince ; not willing, nor by nature 
 being able to flatter, favour, or use those kindly who deserved not his love. 
 Quick he was to conceive anything ; not rash but mature in deliberation, yet 
 most constant, having resolved. True of his promise ; most secret, even from 
 his youth ; so that he might have been trusted in anything that did not force a 
 discovery ; being of a close disposition not easy to be known or pried into : of a 
 fearless, noble, heroic and undaunted courage, thinking nothing impossible that 
 ever was done by any. He was ardent in his love to religion ; which love, and 
 all the good causes thereof, his heart was bent by some means or other (if he had 
 lived) to have shewed, and some way to have compounded the unkind jars 
 thereof. 
 
 ' He made conscience of an oath, and was never heard to take God's name in 
 vain. He hated Popery, though he was not unkind to the persons of Papists. 
 He loved and did mightily strive to do somewhat of everything and to excel in 
 the most excellent,' etc. 
 
78 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 be Queen of Hearts, if not otherwise a Queen. We have to 
 regret, yet not with an impious unthankfuhiess, that the 
 Royal Family amounts only to three : Prince Charles and 
 these two. Their Royal Mother, blond and buxom, much 
 given to Masquing, flaunts about ' she and her maids all like 
 ' Nereids, Hamadryads and mythological Nymphs'^; a Princess 
 of considerable amplitude of figure, massiveness of feature ; 
 philosophic indifferency, good humour and readiness of wit. 
 
 Little Prince Charles, it appears, has thoughts of being 
 Archbishop of Canterbury : there is in him a lachrymose 
 solemnity which perhaps might be suitable there. For the 
 rest, he stands badly on his legs, poor youth ; shambling 
 somewhat. Likewise, if it ever come to preaching, he will 
 stammer. The Destinies know ! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND, IN 
 
 LONDON ESPECIALLY 
 
 [1610-1620] 
 
 Bur England w-ithal is producing something else than 
 Duels " and Court-Masques ; England, if we knew^ it, is a 
 very fertile entity in those ages ; all budding, germinating, 
 under this Court-litter, — like a garden, in the Spring months, 
 hidden under protective straw ! Let us recognise also how true, 
 
 1 Wilson, in Kennet, ii. 685. 
 
 - In a portion of the MS. preceding this chapter there is given a series of 
 DuelHng Anecdotes : (i) Sir John Holies of Haughton and Jervase Markham ; 
 (2) The Croydon Races, where James Ramsay, of the Dalhousie Ramsays, 
 switched the crown and face of Lord Montgomery, Earl of rembroke's brother, 
 and the peace was with the utmost difiiculty kept ; (3) Sir Thomas Button and 
 Sir Hatton Cheek. — These anecdotes were printed in Leigh Hunt's Jotinial, 
 Nos. I, 2, and 6 (1850); and were afterwards (1857) included in Carlyle's Col- 
 lected Works under the title, 'Two Hundred and Fifty Years ago — a fragment 
 about Duels.' See Miscellanies, vi. pp. 211-27 (Liby. Edition). 
 
CHAP. VIII.] MATERIAL PROGRESS 79 
 
 within its limits, is this motto of his Majesty, ' Blessed are 
 ' the Peacemakers.*' Gardens and countries cannot grow if you 
 are continually tearing them up by the ploughshare of War. 
 Let them have peace ; peace even at a great price. If it be 
 possible, so far as lies in you, study to live at peace with all 
 men. — In fact the progress of improvement, everywhere in 
 England, especially in London City ; ' the unimaginable ex- 
 ' tension of buildings," ^ and clearing away of rubbish encum- 
 brances, ' greater during these last twelve years than for 
 ' fifty years before,' fills my ancient friends and me with 
 astonishment. 
 
 Moorfields, for example, did you know Moorfields before 
 the year 1606.^ From innumerable ages, the ground lay 
 there a wilderness of wreck and quagmire ; stagnant with 
 fetid ditches, heaped with horrent mounds, hollow with un- 
 imaginable sloughs, the ' general laystall ' of London, and 
 cloaca of Nature ; — so that men, with any nerves left, ' made 
 ' a circuit to avoid it "* ; the very air carrying pestilence. Thus 
 had it lain, from the times of William Redbeard, of Sweyn '' 
 Double-beard, or far earlier ; and the skilfuUest persons pro- 
 nounced all drainage of it impossible ; — nevertheless see now 
 how possible it is, ' Sir Leonard Holiday,'' our estimable 
 Lord Mayor, and * Master Nicholas Leate,' wealthy Mer- 
 chant : in the general peace and prosperity, these estimable 
 citizens decided on draining Moorfields, even contrary to 
 possibility ; and, with the windiest Force of Public Opinion 
 blowing direct in their faces, calling it ' holiday work ' and 
 other witty names, they proceeded to get spademen, crafts- 
 men, proper engineers, and from their own pockets ' made 
 ' large disbursements ' ; — and now you see the work is done ! 
 Instead of Nature's cloaca you have comfortable green 
 expanse, smooth-nibbled, trodden firm under foot ; waving 
 with hopeful tree-avenues, ' those most fair and royal walks ' ; 
 
 ^ Stow, I02I-2, 
 
 ^ ' Sven Tvae-Skieg (Twa-Shag, or Fork-beard) Canute's Father; Danish 
 King; — who lies buried at Gainsborough, — says my erudite friend.' — T. C, 
 
80 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 the Force of Public Opinion blowing on it now as a soft 
 zephyr, thankfully, wooingly. Thanks to brave Holiday, to 
 brave Leate ; who made ' the disbursements ' of money and 
 of courage ! Here truly is now a beautiful promenade and 
 artillery-ground ; where citizens can take their evening walk 
 of meditation ; where on fleld-da3^s, trained-bands and grand 
 military musters can parade and exercise themselves. 
 
 Smithfield, still earlier, has ceased to be Ruffian's Rig ; 
 Smithfield in these years is getting drained and paved : ^ firm 
 clear whinstone under your feet ; and in the centre a reserved 
 promenade ' strongly railed,' — which, the authorities consider, 
 may be useful as a market by and by. For, indeed, what 
 with carts, what with stalls and new produce, and the tumult 
 of an ever-increasing population, the market streets on market 
 days are becoming as it were impassable. Cheapside, Grace- 
 church Street, Leadenhall, — look at them on a market day ; 
 a hurlyburly without parallel ! There are the country carriers, 
 packing, unpacking ; swift diligence, thousandfold messagery 
 looking through their eyes ; there are the market-stalls, the 
 garden-stuffs, the butteries, eggeries, crockeries ; the pig- 
 droves, oxen-droves, the balladsingers, hawkers : ' What d'ye 
 ' lack, AVhat d'ye lack ? ' It is a hurlyburly verging on dis- 
 traction ; and will actually require new marketplaces, in 
 Smithfield or elsewhere. 
 
 But truly, if we should speak of the ' unimaginable ex- 
 ' tension' and improvement of this London generally, could Pos- 
 terity believe us, O my ancient friends ? Yet it is a fact. 
 By ' St. Catherine's and Radcliff,' what masses of new build- 
 ings ; like a town of themselves. Sec, the Strand, with its row 
 of Town Manorhouses, opens out fieldwards ; the miry ragged 
 Lane of Drury has become a firm street, fit for persons of 
 distinction. Northampton House, or Northumberland House, 
 at the end of Whitehall, rivals palaces. By St. INIartin's 
 Church, meanwhile, Ilolborn seems stretching out a limb to 
 Charing ; St. Martin's puddle-lane is now an elegant })aved 
 1 Finished in 1615. Slow, 1023. 
 
CHAr. VIII.] MATERIAL PROGRESS 81 
 
 street ; as if London and \Vestminster were absolutely coales- 
 cing ! AVhat will the limit of these things be ? Cheapside 
 paves its house-fronts with broad flagstones ; — O Posterity, 
 it is within men's memory when there was an open black- 
 smith's forge on the North side of Cheap ; men openly shoeing 
 horses there. And now it has broad flag-pavements, safe from 
 wheel and horse, even for the maids and children ; — and there 
 runs about on it one little Boy very interesting to me : ' John 
 ' Milton,' he says he is ; a flaxenheaded, blue-eyed beautiful 
 little object ; Mr. Scrivener Milton of Bread Street's Boy : 
 good Heavens ! 
 
 In brief, flag-pavements are becoming general ; and, at 
 least, the ' high causeways ' everywhere are getting themselves 
 carted away. ' From Holborn, from the Strand, the Barbican,' 
 from all manner of places go causeways carted off"; and the 
 doorsills of mortals see the light. Nay, in these years is not 
 indomitable Sheriff" Myddleton digging his New River ; — 
 leading that poor river, contrary to the order of Nature, not 
 into the Sea but bodily into human throats ! He has got 
 past Theobalds with it, the indomitable man, visible from the 
 King's windows; on 'the 29th day of September, 1613,' he 
 opens his sluices at Islington itself with infinite human gratu- 
 lation, explosion of tinimpet-and-drum music, marchings with 
 spades shouldered, and even, I think, some kind of thanks- 
 giving Psalm, ' as they saw the waters come gushing in.' 
 Truly this London threatens to reach half a million, to be 
 one knows not what ! His Majesty issues Proclamations 
 about it. Proclamation on Proclamation that no new houses 
 be built, for it is growing to be a wen. 
 
 These things his pacific Majesty sees with pleasure ; gives 
 them eloquent permission : he is right willing to give or to 
 do, for all good things, whatsoever will not trouble him too 
 much ! He has ' settled Ireland,' they say ; by exertion, or 
 by happy luck and forbearance of exertion, he has got, for 
 the first time in recorded History, the bloody gashes of 
 Ireland closed. Rabid carnage, needful and needless, has 
 
 F 
 
82 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 ceased there ; the kind Mother-earth gratefully covering it 
 in ; grateful that her Green Island is no longer dyed with 
 horrid red. Ireland, once in the course of ages, has peace. 
 The waste fertilities of Ulster are getting planted with useful 
 Saxon Londoners, useful Danish Scots. AVhere royal Shane 
 O^Neil, son of the Mudgods, ' ancient ' enough, I doubt not, 
 ancient as very Chaos ; — where Shane O'Neill roamed, not 
 long since, with bloody axe and firebrand, with usquebaugh, 
 and murderous bluster and delirium, or ' lay rolled up to 
 the neck in mire to cool his drink-fever,"* ^ like a literal 
 wild Boar with the addition of whisky and human cunning, 
 — peaceable men now drain bogs, sow wheatfields, spin yarn ; 
 * Coleraine and little Derry, now become London-Derry, are 
 ' their capitals. "* May it long continue ! These things his 
 pacific Majesty has done, or with approval and convenient 
 furtherance, seen his people do. He is right willing to give 
 every good thing a pat on the back ; what inexpensive 
 Charter, Patent or such like it may wish for, he will cheer- 
 fully grant. 
 
 How willing was he to have seen Silkworms introduced 
 into this country, could a Patent have done it ! He encour- 
 aged the planting of mulberry trees as the food of silkworms ; 
 to ' the ingenious Mr. Stalledge ' and another he granted ' a 
 ' Patent for seven years,' encouraging them as he could, to 
 import mulberry-seeds, to raise trees out of them, and plant 
 the same. In all Shires of England the mulberries are 
 planted ; " at Stratford-on-Avon, says fond tradition, Shak- 
 speare planted a mulberry. Old mulberries still stand here 
 and there in England : planted indisputably by sons of 
 Adam ; not indisputably by Shakspearc, by Bacon, still less 
 by Queen Elizabeth, by Sir Thomas More ! They yield their 
 
 ^ Kennel (ii. 409) says of Shane O'Neill : 'A wan he was who had stained his 
 hands with blood, and dealt in all the pollutions of unchaste embraces ; and so 
 scandalous a glutton and drunkard zvas he besides, that he would often lie up to 
 the chin in dirt to cool the fe~<erish heats of his intemperate lust.' (The italics are 
 Kennet's. ) 
 
 - Slow, S94. 
 
CHAP. VIII.] MATERIAL PROGRESS 83 
 
 sorry berries ever since to this day ; but the Silkworms did 
 not follow : owing to climate or other causes, there came no 
 silkworm culture into England. 
 
 On the other hand, Alum, says my ancient friend, will 
 succeed. In Yorkshire and elsewhere men are busy digging 
 Alum ; in Yorkshire ' Sir John Bourchier, Sir John Fowlis,'' 
 have Alum-pits ; are roasting, steeping the rude clays of 
 Bridlington, in hopes of getting Alum. Alum is verily 
 there ; but the skill to extract it is rather behindhand : let 
 us send for Germans, for High or Low Dutchmen, born to 
 the business ; they will teach us a new process ! The harsh 
 styptic Alum, invaluable mordant for dyers, is dug by the 
 newest processes from Bridlington earth to this day. For a 
 people that weave, there ought to be Dyers, to be alum. By 
 Heaven"'s blessing we can now dye our own cloths ; need no 
 Flemings in Pembrokeshire or elsewhere, to teach us that 
 secret. 
 
 Certainly the Cloth-manufacture does thrive. In Stroud- 
 water and the Western valleys, white woollen webs, finer than 
 togas of Roman Senators, stretch openly on tenterhooks ; a 
 goodly spectacle, as you issue from the Cotswold Hills. Leeds, 
 Yorkshire, Lancashire itself are beginning to excel in woollen 
 webs. In most English Towns are weavers, are clothiers ; the 
 wives of farmers set their maids to spin on winter nights. Col- 
 chester serges are a fabric known to mankind and womankind. 
 Reading Town clatters multifariously with looms ; the stew 
 of fullers is in it, the hum of old women and spinning-wheels. 
 There was old Mr. William Laud,^ dead a few years ago, 
 what a quantity of ' looms he kept going in his own house "■ ; 
 the jangle of them wont to awaken young Master William, of 
 a morning, and set him to his parsing-books ! Young 
 Master William is now Dr. William ; a small lean man of 
 forty ; President of St. John's College, Oxford, Rector of this. 
 Vicar of that ; King's Chaplain, with hopes to rise at Court 
 and become great. The jangle of those paternal looms in 
 ^ Heylin, Life and Death of W. Laud (London, 1668), 46. 
 
84 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Reading, buried now under what other jangles, and deafened 
 for the time, Hves yet in an obscure way in the memories of 
 Dr. WilHam ! 
 
 Old Mr. Laud the Clothier at Reading : — nay, was there 
 not, long since, a Jack of Newbury, known in Storybooks, in 
 authentic History ? A Weaver Jack comparable to Robber 
 Johnny of Gilnorkie : he, by mere weaving, did keep five 
 score of men in his hall ; for the king''s service too, on occa- 
 sion ! The very Scots are equal to manufacturing. Look at 
 Fife, how it spins linen ; Flemish Dutchmen invited over by 
 these Stuart Kings, having taught the trade there. Dun- 
 fermline Town, though the king sits no longer in it drinking 
 the blood-red wine, can weave linen shirts ; — will teach the 
 very Ulstermen and Irish to make linen. 
 
 In many or most English Towns are clothiers, we say : but 
 Gloucestershire, with its Cotswold fleeces, bears the bell ; the 
 Manchester wool-cottons, I think, are not in such demand as 
 formerly.^ Nevertheless, Lancashire, Yorkshire, though their 
 wool is half hair, are strangely distinguishing themselves in 
 the coarser fabrics. They weave ; they dig alum ; — the 
 ' Sheffield AVhittles,*" with their keen edge, meet me in many 
 markets. Hold on, ye Yorkshire men, ye Lancashire wizards 
 and witches : who knows how far it may carry you ! Lither- 
 pool, corruptly called Lirpool, Lerpool and Liverpool, has 
 built new fishing-boats, increased its traffic with Ireland : a 
 thriving little village ; — may come to rival Chester yet, in the 
 Irish trade and other things ! There stands, in a decayed, 
 honeycombed state, a kind of royal castle at Litherpool ; 
 ' under keeping of the Lords of Sefton,' this long while : a 
 range of huts, and even houses and warehouses, runs along the 
 Mersey beach there. Sandy heights, sandy flats ; scraggy 
 bent-grass fsir and wide, interspersed with bogs and moory 
 pools ; beaten with wild rains ; — not a favourable locality, 
 but it may come to something. From ' Chatmosse ' and 
 other places a respectable ' unctuous turf is dug." — O my 
 ' Camden (Lancashire). -' Camden. 
 
CHAP. IX.] SPIRITUAL PROGRESS 85 
 
 erudite Friend, what things are growing, under the Whitehall 
 phantasmagory and dead Court-litter thou so pokest in ! 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SPIRITUAL PROGRESS 
 
 [1G09-14] 
 
 THE AUTHORIZED TllANSLATIOX OF THE BIBLE (1611) 
 INTERCOURSE WITH AMERICA AND IXDIA 
 
 Precious temporal things are growing [in these years of 
 peace] ; priceless spiritual things. We know the Shakspeare 
 Dramaturgy ; the Rare-Ben and Elder-Dramatist affair ; 
 which has now reached its culmination. Yes ; and precisely 
 when the Wit-combats at the Mermaid are waning somewhat, 
 and our Shakspeare is about packing up for Stratford, — there 
 comes out another very priceless thing : a correct Translation 
 of the Bible ; that which we still use. Priceless enough this 
 latter ; of importance unspeakable ! Reynolds and Chadder- 
 ton petitioned for it, at the Hampton-Court Conference, long 
 since; and now, in 1611, by labour of Reynolds, Chadderton, 
 Dr. Abbot, and other prodigiously learned and earnest per- 
 sons, ' forty-seven in number,'' it comes out beautifully 
 printed ; dedicated to the Dread Sovereign ; really in part a 
 benefit of his to us.^ And so we have it here to read, that 
 Book of Books : ' barbarous enough to rouse, tender enough 
 ' to assuage, and possessing how many other properties,** says 
 Goethe ; — possessing this property, inclusive of all, add we. 
 That it is written under the eye of the Eternal ; that it is of 
 a Sincerity like very Death ; the truest Utterance that ever 
 came by Alphabetic Letters from the Soul of Man. Through 
 which, as through a window divinely opened, all men could 
 look, and can still look, beyond the visual Air-firmaments 
 and mysterious Time-oceans, into the Light-sea of Infinitude, 
 ^ Fuller's Churck History (London, 1S37), iii. 227-45. 
 
86 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 into the stillness of Eternity ; and discern in glimpses, with 
 such emotions and practical suggestions as there may be, their 
 far-distant longforgotten Home. Emotions and practical 
 suggestions, naturally of most transcendent kind ! — And so, 
 the mimic Shakspeare Dramaturgy having gone out, there is 
 another coming, I perceive, whose thunders and splendours 
 are not mimic ! In this also the English shall essay them- 
 selves. There are Realities which dwarf all Dreams, in this 
 Life of ours ; Acted Poesies which reduce all Spoken or 
 Speakable to silence. 
 
 Again, may we not call this a germ ; this notable little 
 twig of English History, shooting forth in the year 1609 ; — 
 springing up among the ephemeral dockweeds and luxuriances, 
 perhaps as a mighty Cedar, as an everlasting English Oak to 
 overshadow half the world ! By a lucky chance we catch 
 sight of it through the old Logbook of the Ship Sea-venture ; 
 Silas Jourdan, the Mate, having been kind enough to jot 
 it down. Discernibly enough, in the summer days of 1609, 
 a Fleet of eight ships from the Port of London is traversing 
 the Atlantic, on a remarkable errand. Eight of them ; the 
 chief ship that same Sea-venture, wherein sails Captain New- 
 port, sail Connnodore Somers, General Gates, connnanders of 
 the whole ; a right seaworthy shij) of three hundred tons : the 
 Fleet, O reader, is an Emigrant Fleet, bound — to Virginia ! 
 Beautiful, is it not, in the waste solitudes of the Atlantic, in 
 the depths of the old centuries, there ? Let us step on board 
 with Silas Jourdan, and see how they get on. 
 
 For a week or two, says Silas, we had pleasant weather ; 
 all right till we reached the Latitude 50°, on the ^5th July, 
 when ' a most sharpe and cruel 1 storm' began upon us, 
 threatening nothing; short of destruction. The tumbling-, 
 the rag-ino- and the roarino; ; mere Chaos broken loose, and 
 your poor small wooden ship, small human crew at wrestle 
 with it, — I'eaders can conceive. Through night and tempest, 
 the winds and fiends of Chaos pij^ing on us ! Our ship wears 
 
CHAP.ix.] INTERCOURSE WITH AMERICA 87 
 
 heavily, pitches like a thing driven by devils ; springs a big 
 leak : To the pumps, all hands to the pumps ! On the 
 morrow morning, where are our seven conn-ade ships with 
 their Emigrants ? All gone ; to the sea-bottom or elsewhere : 
 far and wide, in the lurid tempest-light round the horizon, 
 all is empty, mere tumbling water- mountains, wild- piping 
 winds. And the leak does not abate on us ; the leak gains 
 on us : All hands to the pump, yarely my men ! For three 
 days we pump, and bale with all our ' kettles, baricos and 
 ' buckets ■■ ; feeling that we must beat this leak or die. And 
 still the leak gains, and still the Avind rages ; we, pumping 
 desperate, run blindly before the wind. 
 
 What boots it ? The leak gains on us, the grim horizon 
 is empty but of tumbling sea-monsters ; the ship is filling, 
 sinking : we, at any rate, are dying of sixty hours' fatigue. 
 God in His mercy receive our souls ; for our bodies here there 
 is not now any hope. Silent are the pumps, all hands have 
 quitted the pumps ; have — gone to bed ; dropt down any- 
 where into very stern sleep. The sinking ship drifts before 
 the wind ; Admiral Somers sits wakeful on the poop, where 
 ' he has sat these three days,' Captain Newport too ; awake 
 they, saying little, as is like. We are drifting towards death, 
 then. At this hour, in the Middle Aisle of PauPs, they are 
 talking, promenading ! Merry England, rugged Mother 
 Earth, farewell forevermore. 
 
 See, there under the lee, is there not land ; at least rocks, 
 and spray deluges ? O heaven, on the chart in these lati- 
 tudes, is no land but Bermudas ; it is Bermudas, the ever- 
 vext Bermoothes ! Islands inhabited by mere Demons ; where 
 it thunders and lightens, pours down rain and storm forever ; 
 and on the black tempest, which the thunderbolt illumines 
 blue, seamen have seen hags riding. Nay, the very Islands 
 shift their place, dancing hither and thither : sailors sent to 
 visit them have sought, for weeks, in vain ; could find no 
 Island, only tempests, blue lightning magazines, and images 
 of forked Demons. Such is the ever-vext Bermudas, towards 
 
88 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 which we are now driving ; fatal Isle of Devils ! — Nonsense ! 
 cries Somers, cries Newport : Or if it were ? cry they ; a man 
 must have a heart in him to defy the Devils ! Cheerily, all 
 hands, O again all hands ; and I take the tiller in the name 
 of God ! — 
 
 O reader, this poor foundering Sea-venture was driven into 
 the ' only inlet ' of these rockbound Isles, such being the 
 Divine Will. She bounded in at the top of high water ; 
 soused down between two crags, as in a natural dock, and lay 
 there; every soul getting out safe. Their shipstores, ' meaP 
 and so forth, were drenched with brine ; but they had saved 
 their lives, man, woman and child. They found a land with 
 no Devils in it, except of their own bringing : a land over- 
 grown with bushy vegetation, ' mulberries, pears, palmettoes, 
 ' stately cedar-trees ' ; a frondent wilderness rich in fruit ; 
 tropical Autumn wedded to Spring. Fruit enough : and 
 what was far better, — plenty of wild pigs ran squeaking in 
 the thickets waiting to be shot and cooked. Better roast- 
 pork, eaten with acidulent tropical fruits, was not often 
 dished to man. These pigs dwelt there, and had been 
 fattening themselves : — < undoubtedly the product of former 
 ' shipwrecks ' ; in some former shipwreck the ancestors of these 
 had swum ashore, meaning to be ready there. We found 
 ' hawks'" also, of an ornamental nature ; and ' abundance of 
 ' tobacco.' AVhat could man require more ? A new English 
 subject was born to us in this Island, and we called him 
 ' Bermudas.' 
 
 Stout Sir George Somers, our noble Admiral, decided on 
 building us a new Ship ; and did in the space of fifteen 
 months, with unwearied toil and patience, very destitute of 
 iron and other necessaries, build a Ship of thirty tons ; and 
 therewith carried the main body of us to \'irginia, after all ; 
 where we found the seven conu-ade ships had arrived, — and 
 need enough of them and of us. Courage, stout Sir George ; 
 thou too art doing a bit of English History ; — these very 
 pigs of the Bermudas, swimming ashore from shipwreck, were 
 
CHAP. IX.] INTERCOURSE WITH AMERICA 89 
 
 doing somewhat ! The reader will be struck to learn that 
 Sir George returning to Bermudas, on a future year when all 
 this was over, to supply Virginia with pork, did gather pork 
 and salt it ; but also, alas, did eat roast-pig in over-abundance, 
 and died of a surfeit of roast-pig. Brave man ; of large 
 appetite and large heart : let the earth of these Bermuda 
 Islands, no longer ' Islands of Devils,' but human ' Soviers 
 ' Islands,' lie light on him : and his memory be not unvener- 
 able to us ! ^ — 
 
 As for Virginia, this fine settlement, since it was first 
 planted, in 1587, 'with above a hundred persons, men, 
 ' women, and children,'' has been much neglected. Not till 
 1606, hardly till this fleet of 1609, was there any effectual 
 remembrance of it by its Mother ; and what these hundred 
 persons have done with themselves in the interim would be 
 painful to consider. But here with Somers and his Fleet 
 came help ; new settlers, artificers, commanders, all things 
 necessary ; sent by the Virginia Company and his Majesty in 
 Council ; — and Virginia Shares, we may hope, have now 
 reached par ! For renowned Captain Smith, too, has been 
 'up at the Falls'; has founded Jamestown; has conquered 
 King Powhattan, the pipe-clayed, shell-girdled Majesty, and 
 taken his Daughter Captive, — whom one ' Mr. Rolf, a young 
 ' English gentleman,' is found audacious enough to marry. 
 ' Marry a Princess ? ' His Majesty [King James], I under- 
 stand, had thoughts of punishment : but reflecting that she 
 was only a pipe-clayed Princess, flatfaced, with probably some 
 ring or doorknocker through her nostrils, and no trousseau 
 or wardrobe but a scanty petticoat of wampum, he perceived 
 that the case was peculiar, that there was room for extending 
 the royal clemency. Audacious Rolf retains his Princess ; 
 generates half-caste specimens, with manifest advantage to all 
 
 ^ A Discovery of the Bertnitdas, othemuise called the He of Divels, by Silas 
 Jourdan. London, i6lO (Reprinted in Hacklnyt, v. 555: London, 1812). 
 — Stow, 1019-20. 
 
90 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 parties : and, on the whole, Virginia, I think, will come to 
 something, and the shares rise to par or higher ! — 
 
 Nay, looking into other old Logbooks, I discern, in the 
 Far East too, a notable germination. By Portuguese Gama, 
 by Dutch and other traffickers and sea-and-land rovers, the 
 kingdoms of the Sun are opened to our dim Fog-land withal ; 
 are comino; into a kind of contact with it. Enoland herself 
 has a traffic there, a continually increasine; traffic. In these 
 years,^ his Majesty has granted the English East India 
 Company a ' new Charter to continue forever ' ; the old 
 temporary Charter having expired. Ships, ' the innnense 
 ' Ship, Trade's-Increase, and her Pinnace, the Peppercorn "" ; 
 she and others have been there ; in Guzerat, in Java, in the 
 Isles of Ternate and Tidore, bringing spicy drugs. At Surat 
 and elsewhere, certain poor English Factories are rising, — 
 in spite of 'the Portugals of Goa.' Nay, in 1611, there 
 came Sir Robert Shirley, a wandering, battling, diplomatising 
 Sussex man, ' Ambassador from Shah Abbas the Great ' ; 
 and had a Persian AVife, and produced an English-Persian 
 boy, — to whom Prince Henry stood godfather. — Shah xVbbas, 
 Jehangire, Great Mogul, and fabulous-real Potentates of the 
 uttermost parts of the Earth, are dimly disclosed to us ; 
 Nioht's ancient curtain beino- now drawn aside. Not fabu- 
 lous, but real ; seated there, with awful eye, on their thrones 
 of barbaric pearl and gold : — is it not as if some rustle of 
 the coming epochs were agitating, in a gentle way, those 
 dusky remote Majesties ! The agitation of ' the Portugals 
 ' at Goa,' on the other hand, is not gentle but violent. 
 
 For lo, we say, through the I^ogbook of the old India Ship 
 Dragon, in the three last days of October, 1()1J2, there is 
 visible and audible a thing worth noticing at this distance. 
 A very fiery cannonading, ' nigh Surat in the Road of Swally."" 
 It is the Viceroy of Goa, and Captain Thomas Best. The 
 Viceroy of Goa has sent ' five thousand fresh men, in four great 
 ' Galleons with six-and-twenty lusty frigates,"" to demolish 
 ^ 1610, Camden (in Kennet, ii. 643). ' May, 1609,' says Stow, 994. 
 
CHAP. IX.] INTERCOURSE WITH INDIA 91 
 
 Captain Thomas Best and this Ship Dragon of his, — in fact to 
 drive these English generally, and their puny Factories, home 
 again, out of his Excellency's way. Even so :— but Captain 
 Thomas Best will need to be consulted on the matter, too ! 
 Captain Thomas Best, being consulted, pours forth mere 
 torrents of fire and iron, for three days running ; enough to 
 convince any Portugal. A surly dog ; cares not a doit for 
 our Galleons, for our lusty frigates ; sends them in splinters 
 about our ears ; kills eighty-two of us, besides the wounded 
 and fx'ightened ! Truculent sea-bear, son of the Norse Sea- 
 kings ; he has it by kind ! The Portuguese return to Goa 
 in a very dismantled manner. What shall we do, O Excel- 
 lency of Goa ? Best and his Dragon will not go, when 
 consulted ! O Excellency, it is we ourselves that will have 
 to go ! — This is the cannonade of Captain Best, ' General 
 ' Best ' as the old Logbooks name him ; small among sea- 
 victories, but in the World's History perhaps great, ^ 
 
 Captain Best, victorious over many things, sends home 
 despatches, giving 'a scheme of good order' for all our 
 Factories and business in the East ; sails hither, sails thither, 
 settling much ; — freights himself with ' cloves, pepper ' and 
 other pungent substances, and returns happily in 1614. 
 The Great Mogul had a ' Lieger ' or Agent of ours, for some 
 time past; and now, in this same year, 1614, Sir Thomas 
 Roe goes out as Resident Ambassador. The English India 
 Company seems inclined to make good its Charter ! His 
 Majesty, in all easy ways, right willingly encourages it. 
 
 American Colonies, Indian Empire, — and that far grander 
 Heavenly Empire, kingdom of the Soul eternal in the 
 Heavens : is not this People conquering somewhat for itself ? 
 Under the empty halm, and cast-clothes of phantasmagories, 
 under the tippets, rubrics, king's-cloaks and exuviae, I think 
 there is a thing or two germinating, — my erudite Friend ! 
 
 1 Orme's Historj/ of I/i/idostan (hondon, 1S05), "^Tp (t seqq. Stow, 994. 
 
92 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Paul's aisle : Paul's cross 
 
 [1610—1615] 
 
 Daily ' about eleven o'clock,'' it is the custom of all culti- 
 vated persons, ' principal gentry, lords, courtiers and profes- 
 ' sional men not merely mechanic,"' to meet in Paul's Cathedral, 
 and — walk in the Middle Aisle till dinner time, about twelve. 
 After dinner they return thither ' about three, and walk again 
 ' in the Middle Aisle till towards six.' There they roll hither 
 and thither, daily ; exchanging salutations ; ' discoursing 
 ' of news, business,' and miscellaneous matters ; — the many- 
 voiced hum of them yet audible in the mind's ear. In these 
 very days, are they not talking of Ravaillac, Rue de la Fer- 
 ronnerie, and the murder of Henri le Grand ? What will 
 that Scarlet Woman, sitting so on her seven hills and sending 
 out her Jesuit militia, come to ! Our Paris Letters say he did 
 it with a knife, and stabbed twice, standing on the hind-wheel 
 of the carriage. The king exclaimed, ' I am hurt ' ; and at 
 the second stroke, died ^ : Lingiieiida tellus et domus ! — ' I, 
 ' Francis Osborne, an observant youth, spending three-fourths 
 ' of my year in London, discourse of the worthiest persons, and 
 ' news from the fountain-head ' : ' I had come up on some pro- 
 ' mise of court-preferment,' which alas, proved rotten mainly ! — 
 
 And at Paul's Cross hard by, from your raised pulj)it 
 ' roofed with lead,' raised on steps like some big Spiritual 
 Sentry-box, you have sermon frequently, on weekdays or 
 other : you sit on benches, in most rapt silence, imder the 
 open canopy there ; detect Puritanical tendencies now and 
 then, Papistical now and then. Over in Ciieapside, mean- 
 while, the shop-apprentices are crying, ' What d' ye lack ? 
 
 ^ Friday, 14th May (24lh by the then English style) 1610. Osborne, 
 Historical Memoirs, p. 209. Henault, Abrt'g^' ihronologiqtie, p. 585. 
 
CHAP. X.] PAUKS AISLE: PAULAS CROSS 93 
 
 ' AVliat d" ye lack ? ' Old London, with its old shop-cries, 
 its old ' shrill milk-cries,'' and foolish and wise discoursings 
 of the human wind])ipe, is very vocal : Labour's thousand 
 hammers also fall in it, with multitudinous tumult, un- 
 noticed by Dryasdust ! — Silent in the Tower sits Raleigh, 
 sit my lord Northumberland and others : it was the Lady- 
 Arabella^ Plot, the Gunpowder Plot, what Plot one knows 
 not. Tough Raleigh is writing his History of the World ; 
 hemmed in by strait stone-walls. And at Court Attorney- 
 General Bacon is clearly on the rising hand ; a useful Court- 
 lawyer, ' with an eye like a viper.' And in many Church- 
 pulpits an alarming Puritanic tendency is traceable ; in 
 others a Papistic. And at Lambeth, choleric Bancroft is 
 waxing heavy, verging to his long sleep ; like to be 
 succeeded by solid Dr. Abbot. And, on the whole, is not 
 motley very generally the wear, for men and for things .'* They 
 have their exits and their entrances ; they dress themselves in 
 what fig-leaves and ornamental garnitures they can ; and strut 
 and fret their hour. If the somewhat paltry Stage of Life 
 were not an emblematic one, who, on such salary as there is, 
 would consent to act on it .'' Not I, for my share. But it is 
 and remains emblematic enough ; very wonderfully and also 
 fearfully emblematic ! Paltry loud-babbling Time, mirrored 
 on the still Eternity, is no longer paltry ; and poor mimes, 
 seemingly mere clothes-screens dressed out of Monmouth- 
 Street,^ are, if they knew it, either gods or else devils ! — 
 
 ^ Arabella Stuart, Daughter of Lennox (Darnley's younger brother), and 
 Cousin to King James. In May 1610 she married William Seymour, who was 
 of Tudor blood and might in certain contingencies have claimed a right to the 
 Crown of England. The young couple were both cruelly and unjustly treated 
 by the King : after imprisonment, escape and recapture, and incarceration in 
 the Tower for four years, Arabella died insane, 161 5. See Letters and Life of 
 A. Stuart, by Elizabeth Cooper. 
 
 * Now called Dudley Street, long noted for its second-hand-clothes shops. 
 
94 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 DEATH OF PllINCE HENRY : MARRIAGE OF PRINCESS 
 
 ELIZABETH TO THE PALSGRAVE 
 
 [1612-13] 
 
 Meanwhile the news are bad. On Thursday, 29th October 
 1612, Lord Mayor's Day, there is a grand to-do in Guildhall; 
 German Prince, Elector Palsgraf, and other high dignitaries, 
 secular and clerical, dining with the new Lord Mayor there. 
 An explosion of princely and civic gratulation and good cheer; 
 radiant enough, if we had time to reawaken it. The Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, good George Abbot, the last of the 
 Souls' Overseers is there ;^ Palsgraf and he talk Latin to each 
 other all the afternoon, much to the admiration of the citizens. 
 Bishop of London too is there, — one King, of whom little is 
 known ; a ' pious man,' employed in Weston's affair.^ Prince 
 Henry, alas, is absent, — he would have come, but has fallen 
 suddenly ill : this princely corporation dinner is chequered by 
 that one shade of sorrow ; but we struggle to suj^press it. 
 
 As to this handsome young Count Palatine, Palsgrave as 
 they call him, he is a handsome man ; lodges in Essex House ; 
 expenses all defrayed by his Majesty ; we understand he is 
 come about marrying the Princess Elizabeth. He comes 
 from Heidelberg, from Munich far beyond seas ; is of the 
 progeny of ' Otto von \\'^ittelsbach,' of one knows not whom ; 
 is Count Palati)ie of the Upper and Lower Palatinate : a 
 serene Highness whom singular destinies await. His progeny, 
 by Protestant Settlements, glorious Revolutions and such like, 
 do now govern these Islands ; are the })resent agreeable Family 
 of Hanover whom we all know. He speaks in Dutch Heidel- 
 
 ^ Stow, 1004, but the paging is wrong thereabouts. — T. C. 
 " He exerted himself to induce Weston to plead at his trial for complicity in 
 Overbury's murder. See infra, p. 112. 
 
CHAP. XL] DEATH OF PRINCE HENRY 95 
 
 berg Latin to Archbishop Abbot this day at the Lord 
 Mayor's Feast ; says his Highness (Prince Henry) had a game 
 of tennis, whereat his Higlmess got heated ; ^ George Abbot, 
 in Cambridge dialect, ' hopes in God it will pass quickly, and 
 ' come to nothing ! ' 
 
 Alas, it passed quickly, but took the young Prince along 
 with it. On ' the 6th November between seven and eight,'' at 
 his Palace in St. James's, he died. The sorrow of the popu- 
 lation is inconceivable by any population now. This, then, is 
 what it has come to. Our leather dolphins at Chelsea, and all 
 our stately Masquings, the glory of this Earth ; and all our 
 high hopes for a reign of Gospel Truth and real nobleness in 
 England, vanish so between seven and eight in the dim Nov- 
 ember evening ; choked in damp death forever. He was made 
 a Knight, we saw ; but it availed not. A wise, brave youth 
 for his years ; he scorned many honourable clothes-screens, 
 male and female, of his Father's Court ; yet in a discreet, 
 reticent manner ; from boyhood he had admired the Great 
 Henry '-^ of France, — whispers go that he was cognisant of the 
 Henry's Grand Scheme, and had determined to be king of 
 Protestantism. He was of a comely, tall middle-stature, five 
 feet eight, or so ; beautiful, shaped like an Adonis, of an 
 amiable majestic countenance ; the hair auburn, the eyes deep 
 and grave, with the sweetest smile in them, with the terriblest 
 frown. So say the Court newsmen, with the handkerchief at 
 their eyes,^ And he lies there dead, — vanished forever. He 
 has had two appearances in this History ; an entrance and an 
 exit : happily if also unhappily no intermediate performance 
 was required of him : applauses therefore are unmixed ; he 
 lies there a beautiful ideal youth, consecrated by the tears 
 and sorrowful heart worship of all the world. The Lord 
 Mayor's feast is sorrowfully clouded ; — all feasts are sorrow- 
 
 ^ Pictorial History of England i^oxid,or\, 1840), iii. 51. 
 
 2 Henri quatre, who had prepared a splendid army of 30,000 men, and was 
 thought to be on the point of setting out at the head of it to make war against 
 the Pope and his dominions. 
 
 ^ Sir C. Cornwallis, in Harris, p. 295. See ante, p. 77 «. 
 
96 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 fully clouded : broad Anne of Denmark weeps once more from 
 the bottom of her Mother s heart as she hoped never to have 
 done ; paternal Majesty does not weep, but his thoughts, I 
 believe, s;o wandering; over Time and over Eternity, over Past 
 and Present, in a restless, arid, vague, still more tragic manner, 
 and discern at glimpses what a sorry Rag-fair of a business 
 this of Life and its Eloc^uences is : — what a frivolous play- 
 actor existence we have at Whitehall here, with the Furies 
 looking through the arras on us ; what a sorry business this 
 of unheroic Human Life with its Court Masques is ! Let us 
 forget it, your Majesty. Music, then ; new Masques, and 
 ceremonials ; let the business of the State go on ; marriage of 
 the Palsgrave as one of the first of its businesses. 
 
 The sorrow of the population (as we said) is inconceivable 
 to any population now. As yet the whole nation is like 
 the family of one good landlord, with his loyal tenants and 
 servants round him ; and here is the beautiful young Lord- 
 ship and Heir Apparent struck suddenly down ! AVho would 
 not weep .'* We, had our time been then^ should have wept 
 too, I hope : but it is too late now. So fair a flower of 
 existence is cropt down ; the hope of Protestantism snatched 
 sternly away : we reflect that Prince Charles will be King, not 
 Archbishop now, but King ; which may produce results. 
 
 There goes a report of poison ; report that the Spaniards 
 and Jesuits have done it, — nay, still blacker reports that 
 Somerset Car whom he hated, — that a paternal Majesty, 
 struck with jealousy : — reports which are not now worth 
 naming.^ But indubitably enough the Funeral on ^londay, 
 7th December," as it winded on with its high hearse and waxen 
 effigies, with the sable principalities, with divers Bishops and 
 Marquises, Earls and Barons, all in crape, and the gentlemen 
 
 ^ The prince it would seem, died of typhoid fever. See Dr. Norman Moore's 
 Pamphlet, ' The Illness and Death of Prince Henry, Prince of Wales — a 
 historical case of typhoid fever,' — St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, vol. xvii. 
 Stow says : ' He died of a popular mallignant fever, which raigned that yere in 
 most parts of this land.' 
 
 - Stow, 1004. 
 
CH. XI.] MARRIAGE OF PRINCESS ELIZABETH 97 
 
 officials of the King's chapel ' singing very solemnly as they 
 ' marched,' was one of the saddest sights. The hearts of all 
 men are darkened. Guy and his fellow Fiends were for 
 blowing up his Majesty and High Court of Parliament ; do 
 they mean to try it now another way ? A Spanish warship, 
 I hear, ' has arrived,' in what port is uncertain, wholly 
 freighted with pocket pistols. Such is the rumour in these 
 days. Short pistols, to be distributed each to its due trucu- 
 lent Papist assassin, all over England ; truculent Papists 
 shall wear them in their pockets ; shoot with them each his 
 distinguished Protestant man. ' A black Christmas,' they 
 say, ' will make a bloody Lent.' ^ How little know we what 
 our fathers suffered ! We walk lightly over the graves and 
 martyr-struggles of our fathers ; but, indeed all the conquests 
 of this world are the fruit of martyrdom ; in all the noble 
 possessions of this world lies unrecognised the heart's-blood 
 of a heroic man. Courage ! His Majesty prohibits by a 
 Proclamation ^ the wearing of any pistol that will go into a 
 pocket at all, — any pistol the barrel of which is not fifteen 
 inches long or thereabouts : will this pacify you ? 
 
 As to the Marriage of Palatine Serene Highness and 
 Princess Elizabeth, — it happens on Shrove-Sunday the 14th 
 February, 1612-3, 'St. Valentine's Day,' says old Stow. 
 Considering what destinies came from it, let us look at the 
 phenomenon one moment. The Bride was all in white ; her 
 train borne by twelve bridesmaids, the beautifullest and noblest, 
 all in white ; on her head was a golden crown : her black hair 
 streamed gracefully down to her girdle, which was of pearls 
 and diamonds. In fact she was all of pearls, and herself one 
 beautifullest pearl,— a Mary Queen of Scots, without the 
 Popery, come again, — and made a radiance round her, says 
 old Wilson, like the Milky Way. She was led to the Altar, 
 in Whitehall Chapel it was, by two bachelors : young ortho- 
 dox, austere Prince Charles, and old nefarious Howard, Earl 
 1 Wilson, 62. 2 j^jj^^ 63^ 
 
 G 
 
98 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 of Northampton ; a crypto-papist too ; and from the Altar 
 by two married persons, whose names I forget.^ At the Altar, 
 while Archbishop Abbot did his functions,^ she blushed like 
 Aurora, but smiled withal ; nay, there went flashings of the 
 morning-light of joy from her fair voung face, which seemed 
 ominous to Arthur Wilson. Majesty himself is there, looking 
 vigilant-impatient, with open eyes and sardonic under-jaw ; 
 Queen Anne too, is there, — little charmed with the match. 
 Goody Palsgrave, she calls her, Goody who might have been 
 a Queen, with due management. She will be a Queen of 
 Hearts, at any rate, — and give rise to the present agreeable 
 family of Hanover. 
 
 The Old Chronicler feels all the tailor stir in him at 
 thought of the ' Masquings ' and ' Processionings '' with their 
 velvet, Mechlin lace and cloth of gold ; — transitory all as the 
 brightest flash of morning succeeded by laborious rainy day.^ 
 The Procession and Masque of the young Lawyers which came 
 along the Strand by torchlight, and up the River in illumin- 
 ated royal barges, throws the old heart almost into ecstasy. 
 For they did ride as Moriscos,* Indian kings, Moguls or 
 other truly exotic characters ; escorted by savages with gilt 
 rods, by hairy anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow 
 beneath their shoulders : all with torches ; all caparisoned, 
 high-prancing through the Strand by night, to the astonish- 
 ment of all mortals.^ Such then were young gentlemen of 
 the Inns of Court ; a class much given to Masquing. Was 
 William Noy there, for instance ? Good Heavens, they will 
 grow to be old gentlemen these ; and get into quite other 
 Masques, — into long wigs and red cloaks some of them, — - 
 and sit as judges, Shipmoney judges, and Attorney-Generals ; 
 dried specimens of Humanity, tough as leather tanned for 
 thirty years ! Noy has a Christmas pie sent up yearly by his 
 
 ^ Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Nottingham. 
 
 2 Stow, 1005. ^ Ibid., 1006. •• Moors. 
 
 * The young Lawyers' Masque, called ' The Masque of the Inner-Temple 
 and Gray's Inn,' was written by Francis Beaumont ; and was presented on 
 Saturday 20th Feb. 1612-3 in the Banqueting-House at Whitehall. 
 
CHAP. XII.] DUEL— SACK VILLE AND BRUCE 99 
 
 good Mother : for Noy too had a Mother ; and there were 
 once smiles to him and human tears ; and he was not always 
 of leather, — not of leather tanned for thirty years. — 
 
 In brief the Elector Palatine and beautiful Electress, after 
 festivities like those of Ahasuerus, were dismissed in the 
 beginning of April; — shipped at Rochester; and with a 
 train of festivities and triumphal arches, continuing still over 
 the West of Europe, making their path a kind of temporary 
 Valhalla or Vauxhall, did get at length to Mannheim ; there 
 happily and unhappily to hold Court levees, produce sons and 
 daughters, and mingle as they might in the great growth of 
 sublunary things. Fair days to them, to the young Queen of 
 Hearts especially. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 DUEL — SACKVILLE AND BRUCE ^ 
 
 [1613] 
 
 On an Autumn afternoon in August 1613, two young 
 gentlemen each attended by an official -looking person, are 
 riding at a slow, steady pace through the Eastern Gate of 
 Antwerp, proceeding first by broad highways and then by 
 remote byways towards Bergen-op-Zoom. They ride at some 
 distance apart these two pairs of persons, yet scrupulously 
 observing one another ; turn after turn through the green 
 meadows, the hindmost pair follows accurately the leading of 
 the first. What do they want in Bergen these two young 
 gentlemen with their attendants ? In Bergen nothing, but in 
 the road towards Bergen much. The March-line of the 
 States territories and the Arch-Duke's lies here in these green 
 sequestered meadows ; as near that as may be they would find 
 some quiet spot : there if a deed of blood chance to be done 
 
 ^ Edward Sackville, afterwards 4th Earl of Dorset, born 1591, died 17th July, 
 1652. Edward Bruce, 2nd Lord Kinloss. 
 
100 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 in the one country, the survivor has but to step across into 
 the other and he is safe. Peaceable cattle graze in these 
 meadows, peaceable Tenier's boors are getting their ale or 
 after-dinner nap in these painted cottages ; — not of peace is 
 the errand of these two young gentlemen. Their attendants 
 are two silent Surgeons or Barber- Surgeons, for a Surgeon in 
 those days is but a Subaltern, and shaves. Their errand I 
 think is of a duel. The foremost of these two young gentle- 
 men is the Honourable Edward Sackville of Buckhurst 
 Knowle, etc., is younger brother of the Earl of Dorset, 
 grandson to Buckhurst with his Ferrex and Porrex,^ great in 
 Queen Elizabeth's days, as fair a piece of young manhood as 
 you shall readily fall in with. The hindmost of them who 
 keeps such strict eye on him, is of Kinloss in Fife ; the Lord 
 Bruce of Kinloss ; also one of the prettiest young men. 
 What rage and fire swells in these beautiful young faces, all 
 silent, shaded with their long brown hair. Apollo piercing 
 the Python Serpent looked somewhat so, one fancies : — two 
 Apollos in modern Spanish hats and set on horseback there. 
 My young friends, I doubt you have mischief in your eye. 
 
 To this day I could never discover exactly what the cause 
 of quarrel was. The likeliest seems that it was a sister of 
 the Lord Bruce^s, — alas, this Sackville is seductive enough, — 
 a sister of Lord Bruce's, and then some former tiff' of contro- 
 versy, soldered up by intervention of Friends, wherein the 
 Lord Bruce, feeling that it was questionable, had said, ' He 
 ' gave his hand then, but his heart he reserved and did not 
 ' yet give.' Accordingly, from Paris in June last, he wrote 
 to Sackville the most courteous, the most fierce of letters 
 soliciting a meeting as the chief of all earthly blessings and 
 charities to him, to which Sackville as courteous and as 
 fierce, gave swift and brief assent, and so they arrive in the 
 Netherlands rendezvous at Antwer|), and the Seconds match 
 their swords, and the Lord Bruce indicates that the Seconds 
 
 ^ The Tragedie of Ferrex and Porrex, by Tlmnias Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, 
 1st Earl of Dorset (Lond. 1571, l6mo.). 
 
CHAP. XII.] DUEL— SACKVILLE AND BRUCE 101 
 
 shall not attend them, but only two Surgeons, for he is bound 
 to do or suffer what no Second could witness w'ithout inter- 
 fering, — bloody intentions, bloody and butcherly as Sackville's 
 Second said ; but intentions, which being reported to Sack- 
 ville, awaken such a humour in him that he starts up from 
 the very dinner-table saying, ' Be it now then ! '' And so 
 they are riding in byways among the green meadows between 
 Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom, the two angriest young figures 
 in the Low Countries that afternoon. Some two miles they 
 have ridden, and found nothing quite satisfactory : but 
 human nature cannot long endure such riding : Sackville 
 draws bridle, jDointing to a wet meadow, private, though wet, 
 says, ' This will do,' and the Lord Bruce answers, ' Why not 
 ' this ? "* The two Sui'geons therefore retire to a distance ; 
 ' interpose not between us as you love your lives, but leave us 
 ' to do our will on one another,' — and so now : ' At your 
 ' service. Sir.' ' At your service, my Lord.' We doff our 
 doublets, Spanish hats ; the meadow is water to the ankles ; 
 but the drawn swords glitter in the sun ; we are to strive 
 here for the greatest prize. — Sackville whose description no 
 Homer could excel shall report the rest : — 
 
 ' And there iu a meadow, ankle deep in the water, at least, bidding 
 farewell to our doublets, in our shirts we began to charge each other, 
 having afore commanded our surgeons to withdraw themselves a pretty 
 distance from us, conjuring them besides, as they respected our favour 
 or their own safeties not to stir, but suffer us to execute our pleasure, we 
 being fully resolved (God forgive us !) to despatch each other by what 
 means we could. 
 
 ' I made a thrust at my enemy, but was short, and in drawing back 
 my arm I received a great wound thereon, which I interpreted a reward 
 for my short shooting ; but in revenge I pressed into him, though I tlien 
 missed him also, and then received a wound in my right pap, which 
 passed level through my body almost to my back. And there we 
 wrestled for the two greatest and dearest prizes we could ever expect 
 trial for, — honour and life ; in which struggling, my hand having but 
 an ordinary glove upon it, lost one of her servants, though the meanest, 
 which hung by a skin, and to sight remaineth as before, and I am 
 put in hope one day to recover the use of it again. But at last breath- 
 
102 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 less, yet keeping our holds, there passed on both sides propositions of 
 quitting each other's swords, but when amity was dead, confidence 
 could not live, and who should quit first was the question ! which on 
 neither part either would perform ; and restriving again afresh, with a 
 kick and wrench together 1 freed my long captive weapon. AMiich incon- 
 tinently levying at his throat, being master still of his, I demanded if he 
 would yield his life or his sword ? Both which, though in that imminent 
 danger, he bravely denied to do. Myself being wounded and feeling 
 loss of blood, having three conduits running on me, began to make me 
 faint, and he courageously persisting not to accord to either of my pro- 
 positions, remembrance of his former bloody desire and feeling of my 
 present estate, I struck at his heart, but with his avoiding missed my 
 aim, yet passed through his body, and drawing back my sword repassed 
 it through again through another place, when he cried : " Oh, I am 
 slain ! " seconding his speech with all the foi'ce he had to cast me, but 
 being too weak, after I had defended his assault, I easily became master 
 of him, laying him upon his back, when, being upon him, I redemanded 
 of him if he would request his life ? But it seems he prized it not at so 
 dear a rate as to be beholden for it, bravely replying he scorned it ! 
 which answer of his was so noble and worthy, as I protest, I could not 
 find in my heart to offer him any more violence, only keeping him down 
 till at length his surgeon, afar off, cried he would immediately die if his 
 wounds were not stopped : whereupon I asked if he desired his surgeon 
 should come? which he accepted of; and so, being drawn away, I never 
 offered to take his sword, accounting it inhumane to rob a dead man — 
 for so I held him to be. 
 
 ' This thus ended, I retired to my surgeon, in whose arms after I had 
 remained a while, for want of blood, I lost my sight, and withal as I 
 thought my life also ; but strong water and his diligence quickly re- 
 covered me ; when I escaped a great danger : for my Lord's surgeon, 
 when nobody dreamt of it, came full at me with my Lord's sword ; and 
 had not mine, with my sword interposed himself, 1 had been slain by 
 those base hands, although my Lord Bruce, weltering in his blood, 
 and past all expectation of life, conformable to all his former carriage, 
 which was undoubtedly noble, cried out, " Rascal, hold thy hand ! " So 
 may I prosper as 1 have dealt sincerely with you in this relation.' ^ 
 
 ' So may I prosper as I have dealt sincerely with you in 
 ' this relation."* — ^Vhereat the Universal Benevolence Society, 
 the Abolition of Capital Punishment Society, the All-for- 
 
 ^ Collins, Peerage of England^ ii. pp. 153-7 (London, 1812). A long narra- 
 tive of this Duel was first printed in the Guardian, Nos. 129 and 133. 
 
CHAP. XIII.] SHAK SPEAKERS DEATH 103 
 
 Sugar and Syrup Society wring their hands ; and the Select 
 Anti-Twaddle Society calls attention to it as a thing not 
 without meaning. ' Rascal, hold thy hand ' ; reflect well on 
 that, you will find withal an epitome of many great things 
 there. For rage does dwell perennially as a submarine fire 
 element in the most flowery benevolent soul of man, and all 
 his reason and all his civilisation shine out consecrated when 
 he can, instead of being madly wielded thereby, manfully wield 
 it ; and like a god launch and check the very thunderbolts. 
 For thunder exists, nmst exist, and lightning in a summer 
 sky is very different from hell-fire in the murk of Chaos ; — 
 and, in short, the Select Anti-Twaddle Society advises the 
 All-for-Sugar Society to take care in these times that their 
 Sugar be not Sugar-of-lead. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SHAKSPEARE'S death CERVANTES — KEPLER 
 
 [1616] 
 
 But what is this that is passing in these very hours west- 
 ward in the centre of England, at the Town of Stratford- 
 on-Avon ? — Stratford is peaceful this day, hammering, sawing, 
 weaving, following its daily business for most part. But there 
 lies in it, taking his departure for an unknown Land, a mighty 
 man. William Shakspeare in these hours is dying. Twenty- 
 third of April, 1616, if there be faith in monumental brasses, 
 which for once we will thank. While Oliver Cromwell enters 
 himself in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, William Shak- 
 speare takes his leave of this world. Dim are now those 
 once bright eyes, heavy with the long sleep ; the radiant 
 far-darting soul, now weary and fordone, painfully with tired 
 wing is weltering through dark rivers of Death towards un- 
 known Shores. Earthly Dramaturgies are done ; in huge 
 torch-dance all the Figures of this world, snakehaired Furies, 
 
104 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 azure angels roll away. Coulisses, backscenes, footlights, 
 dropscenes of this terrestrial theatre spin and tumble to 
 annihilation ; and the Divinities and Silences and Eternal 
 Realities supervene. There have been many Shakspeares of 
 my kindred,^ silent ones and other ; — but thou art known to 
 me ; take thou my spoken blessing. My Shakspeare, 
 briffhtest creature known to me in all this world. Adieu ! 
 Anne Hathaway 's tears drop fast, her face is all bewept, and 
 the tears of young Judith fall fast : and Shakspeare is away ! 
 Exit Shakspeare, enter Oliver. Wit combats at the Mermaid 
 are all over, and quite another set of combats are to begin. 
 These things happen in England in one day. 
 
 Nay, far away, — for I love to follow the celestial Light- 
 bringers of this world, wherever Ass Dryasdust and his multi- 
 tude of oiled paper lanterns, and illuminated hollow turnips 
 will allow me, — far away in the heart of Spain, there too 
 they have been lodging an Angel unawares, in rather a sorry 
 manner. Miguel Cervantes; he too is just dead, after a 
 brave and weary life, — precisely ten days ago. Twenty-third 
 of April 1616, so in words say the Spanish Registers; and 
 Chevalier Florian will persuade me that it was the same day 
 as Shakspeare's and Oliver's ; forgetting the difference of 
 Old Style and New. A fortnight since, while Dorothy 
 Cromwell at the West end of Huntingdon was getting 
 Oliver's linen ready, my })oor brave Miguel, sick of dropsy, 
 worn out with toil, had borrowed himself a horse and ridden 
 out to see the green young leaves and bright Spring sky once 
 more, before he died. A kindlier, meeker, or braver heart 
 has seldom looked upon the sky in this world. O my brave 
 Miguel, when I think of thee fighting Turks at Lc})anto, 
 struggling like an unsubduable one, seven years against cap- 
 tivity among the Moors ; struggling all thy years against 
 poverty and misrecognition and hard luck ; and writing at 
 last Don Quixote, ' our sunniest and all but our deepest 
 
 ^ 'Yes, this Shakspeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by 
 him; we are of one blood and kind with him.' — Lectures on Heroes, p. 133. 
 
CHAP. XIII.] CERVANTES 105 
 
 ' modern Book ^ ; sitting maimed, forsaken, old, and in jail, — 
 I could blush for my own beggarly complaining, — I have to 
 say to myself remorsefully, self-contenmingly, ' Silence ! '' 
 From Miguel come no complaints ; from Miguel came often 
 thanks, gushing forth full of gratitude for the day of small 
 things. A born indefeasible gentleman ; whom you recog- 
 nise as such under every conceivable defacement, says one. 
 Yes ! a born indefeasible Beam of Light, say I ; which could 
 not be defaced ; which struggled upward victorious through 
 all elements of fortune, purifying all, not pollutable by any. 
 How Heaven's light will upwards ! Noble Chivalry is out 
 now, cannot live now except as in self mockery ; let it live in 
 that way, since in no other ; and we have a ' Knight of the 
 ' Sorrowful Countenance,' and a Squire of the fat Paunch, and, 
 amid Yanguesian Carriers and IMaritornes Hostelries and all 
 the uglinesses of the Earth, with Delirium and broken bones 
 at the bottom of them, such glimpses of Elysian scenes and 
 bright Boccaccio Gardens, and figures with their hair flowing 
 down like sunbeams, — as were seldom given before in this 
 world. Honour to Cervantes ; apotheosis to him, if there 
 were any sense now of what was godlike, what was manlike ! 
 
 He has ridden out, I say, to take one other look at the 
 
 azure firmaments and green mosaic pavements, and strange 
 carpentry and arras work of this noble Palace of a world, 
 which is his more than another's ; one look more, which proved 
 his last. ' On his way back to ^Madrid, in company with 
 ' two of his friends, they were overtaken by a young student 
 ' on horseback, who came pricking on hastily, complaining 
 ' that they went at such a pace as gave him little chance of 
 ' keeping up with them. One of the party made answer, that 
 ' the blame lay with the horse of Don Ml. de Cervantes, whose 
 ' trot was of the speediest. He had hardly pronounced the 
 ' name, when the student dismounted, and touching the hem of 
 ' Cervantes' left sleeve, said, " Yes, yes ! it is indeed the maimed 
 ' " perfection, the all-famous, the delightful writer, the joy and 
 ' " darling: of the Muses ! " — You are that brave ]Mio;uel ! ' 
 
106 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 ' In a few days more he had forever paid farewell to jest- 
 ' ing, farewell to merry humours, — to gay friends, and had 
 ' entered that other life, where he realised his last desire to 
 
 ' see his beloved one happy there/ Such things befall 
 
 contemporaneously in this world. 
 
 Human Blockheadism strives to bore us with innumerable 
 Spanish interests, of long-faced Philips in their velvet mantles, 
 thick-lipped Infantas, Treaties, Marriage-treaties, and I know 
 not what : but this, very strangely we discern, is becoming 
 as it were the one Spanish Interest : this is the Voice of the 
 entity called Spanish Nation in our Universe ; a day, as I 
 discern, is coming when it will be all dumb but this ; — as the 
 land of Greece now is, a waste of bewildered ruins, nothing 
 surviving of it but the voice. Happy the Nation that has 
 once spoken ! 
 
 Good Heavens, my erudite Friend, how dark, dead and 
 void is all that Europe, which lay then sunny, leafy, busy 
 every corner of it in those Summer months while Oliver is 
 grappling towards study of the Tongues under Dr. Howlet ! 
 It is gone to brown ashes and mere Rymer's Foedera^ me- 
 seems ; it is vanished all away. The Leipzig Fair was holden 
 twice annually, with chaffering and weighing, bargaining, and 
 paying of moneys ; but the merchants and pedlars with their 
 booths and bales have gone their ways again. Solemn 
 Majesties all along from Spain to Sweden, a fair sprinkling 
 of them all, on thrones as rich as Ormuz, with their treaties, 
 war-treaties and marriage-treaties, festivities and finance- 
 schemes ; not to speak of innumerable little German Dukes, 
 with their sixteen quarterings, their stiff Kanu)ierherrs and 
 thickquilted ceremonials, — Good Heavens, they are gone like 
 ghosts, with an unmusical screech ; and we hasten onwards 
 through the Death-kingdom, refusing to be instructed of 
 them. Life is short, my erudite Friend ; and Art is long ; 
 it is not with vanished clothes-screens and poor extinct oil- 
 lanterns, but, if ])ossible, with Heroes only, and what of 
 * Fadera, elc, in 20 voll. folio, by Thomas Rymer, London, 1704-35. 
 
CHAP. XIII.] KEPLER 107 
 
 heroic they have left, that I will concern myself. They and 
 their works : — why, it is properly all that this world has. 
 The rest — Chaos has it : thou blockhead, why wilt thou 
 bewilder us with Chaos a second time ? ^Vas not 07ice 
 enough ? Miouel Cervantes is worth all the Philips and 
 one to boot. 
 
 What the Ericson Vasa people are doing at Stockholm, 
 I will not inquire ; a brave race, sons of heroic Vasa who 
 rose and freed his Country ; and true Protestants, who will 
 be ready when wanted. Far off in the East, however, I 
 remark one Figure, in threadbare gabardine, with haggard 
 face, ploughed seemingly with many toils and tribulations, 
 but with eyes in which, amid sorrow and despair, beams 
 deathless hope, beams victory over all things : resident about 
 Vienna : but often hovering hither and thither as necessity 
 drives : the name of him is Johannes Kepler, Almanack 
 maker to the Kaiser's Highness. Yes, reader, of whatever 
 class, trade or character thou be, thou canst take a look at 
 that one ; — why, man, it was he in a manner that brought 
 thee thy breakfast out of China this morning, that taught 
 thee rightly what o'clock it was ; the very nautical almanacks 
 to this day are made by him. He is the Imperial Highnesses 
 Almanack Maker ; has strange astronomical and other 
 apparatus : old Sir Henry Wotton, going to ' lie abroad ' ^ 
 for his Majesty, saw his Camera Obscura and him, face to 
 face ; thought this Kepler a very ingenious person. He has 
 to shew Camera Obscuras, write Almanacks, be servant of all 
 work, lest bread itself fail him and he be reduced to water. 
 His salary is 18/ Sterling a year; and they pay it him dread- 
 fully ill. He has to go to Regensburg, to solicit the 
 Imperial Diet. ' Noble Lordships, serene Highnesses, Princi- 
 ' palities and Powers of sixteen quarterings, pay me, of your 
 'innate nobleness, my 18Z!' Of late years they have paid 
 
 ^ * Sent to lie abroad,' — as an ambassador ; a witticism of Sir Henry Wotton's. 
 See Lz/e of him by Isaac Walton ; ReliquiiB Wotloniatia, p. 300 ; and Carlyle's 
 Frederick the Great, i. 329-30. 
 
108 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 hiui terribly ill, — and his great heart, — for the man has a 
 great proud heart withal, — is almost getting weary of it. A 
 small salary when so irregularly paid : — but Johann has done 
 a bit of work ; that is his comfort. Reader, he has followed 
 the motions of the star Mars (' De Motibm StelJcc Martls ') 
 and discovered them ! For long lonesome years, in spite of 
 loneliness, discouragement, scolding wives, and very hunger ; 
 with a tenacity like death, he has followed this Star ]\Iars, 
 gone through his calculations seventy times, looking up with 
 a cheery smile into the face of Hunger itself : saying, ' O 
 ' Hunger, do not kill me till I find this Star Mars ! ' By 
 Heaven, I say he has found it ; and I cry victory with him 
 to this hour. Here are the eternal Laws of the Planetary 
 motions : [in ellipses, with the sun for focus, describing ecjual 
 areas in equal times, with the square of the j^eriodic time 
 proportional to the cube of the mean distance from the sun] ; 
 it was so the Maker from the first appointed these shining 
 things to move. I have found it, exclaims Johann ; and you 
 do not understand it : you are not like to understand it for 
 a long while. Never mind. If God Almighty waited for 
 six thousand years for one to see what He had made, cannot 
 I wait a century or two for one to understand what I have 
 done ? Yes, my brave one ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 EFFECTS OF COURT DOINGS ON THE MINDS OF 
 IMPARTIAL ENGLISHMEN 
 
 Into all prudent households, into all wise hearts reading- 
 Controversial Divinity in England, and intent to govern their 
 life on some God's truth there, what sorrowful rumours and 
 reflexions are those that the coin-se of royal affairs, of politics 
 foreign and domestic, sheds abroad every where in those days ! 
 Pious Mr. Robert Cromwell, pious Dr. Beard the schoolmaster 
 
CHAP. XIV.] EFFECTS OF COURT DOINGS 109 
 
 are shocked in Huntingdon. Sir Oliver himself, though of 
 hopeful secular nature, and bound to Majesty by knightship 
 and otherwise, sometimes knows not what to say. From 
 Court there seem to come almost no news that are not more 
 or less distressing. 
 
 Guy Faux and Company on the point of exploding Pro- 
 testantism out of England by one infernal shot of gunpowder ; 
 this, since the project failed, was not the worst news. That 
 an English King should still favour Papistry, find in the Pope 
 nothing unpardonable but his claim of a supremacy over 
 kings,^ and still struggle to connect himself with Spanish 
 Infantas and the other rubbish of heathen Babylon ; blind to 
 the Gospel of Heaven, to the ' Life of Immortality ' anew 
 ' brought to light,' as we may say, in all serious English 
 hearts : what are men to think of this ? The King of 
 England sits on his august throne, raised aloft, conspicuous 
 to all men as the illustrated symbol, the beautiful and almost 
 beatified epitome of our general English Existence and En- 
 deavour : and these are the news he sends us ? Favouritisms, 
 frivolities, foolish profusions and forced loans ; monopolies, 
 unjust taxations, open sale of honours, open neglect of 
 business ; drinking-bouts, court gallantries, Overbury Murders ; 
 Spanish Matches, lost Palatinates : abroad or at home, disgrace, 
 disaster, fatal ineffectuality in whatsoever we do or attempt ! 
 
 To us of the 19th century, seeking for some History of 
 England, these things, as the pabulum of loud rumour and 
 of sorrowful reflexion to contempoi-ary English hearts, have 
 still a kind of meaning ; in such sense they are still faintly 
 memorable to us, — hardly in any other sense. Indirectly and 
 by reflex they have in this way some relation to the History 
 of England ; but directly and as intrinsic facts, they have 
 almost none. What History of England lies, or can lie, in 
 all that ? The truth now is visible to every one, which then 
 no one could see or surmise, that this King James, and his 
 ^ James's Speech to his First Parliament. Wilson (in Kennet) ii. 671. 
 
110 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 works and mis-works, are not the History of England at all, 
 but something other than the Histoi-y of it ; — that ' this King 
 ' James, who sat on the throne of England, and did consume 
 ' the taxes, and command the constables and armed men of 
 ' England, was at bottom not King of England, as he seems to 
 ' be, but well -accredited Sham-King only ; that, alas, this royal 
 ' man was no Chief Hero of England, but was Chief Chimera 
 ' of it rather ! ' as our dark friend ^ says. The more is our 
 sorrow, in all respects. No wonder his history has grown 
 chimerical ; would this were the worst result of such chimera- 
 ship ! As a chronological milestone, and also as a fountain 
 of loud rumour and sorrowful reflexion to contemporaneous 
 believing men. King James must still have some purpose in 
 English History : in these capacities the surliest modern must 
 accept him, since it has so pleased the Fates. 
 
 To ourselves, except in these two relations, as time-mile- 
 stone and as fountain of rumours, King James, Solomon of 
 these Islands, shall be in great part indifferent ; our History 
 could otherwise affbrd to leave him in the dim vaporous 
 state, a hazy, chimerical and indeed incredible and impossible 
 person, as other Sovereigns, Solomons, and royal sublimities, 
 in the pages of our English Dryasdust, are. Why summon 
 spectres from the vasty deep of Dryasdust, unless one have 
 business with them .? Innumerable bright-tinted personages 
 and occasions, solemn ceremonials, deep strokes of King-craft ; 
 rises and falls of Somerset Car, of Buckingham Villiers, Over- 
 bury Murders, trials of Lady Lake : let this all or almost all 
 remain of an indistinct leaden colour for us ; in the infinite 
 leaden haze which goes down to Chaos, Nox and the })rimeval 
 Dark, let it dimly hang and hover for us. Spectres, spectres ; 
 all living significance of which is gone and returns not ! Let 
 them roam there in great part invisible on the torpid liubbish- 
 mountains ; shriek, at as rare intervals as })ossiblc, dolefully, 
 unintelligibly, on the viewless winds. 
 
 The tragedy of Overbury ; beautiful Robert Car of Fernie- 
 ' Smelfungus. 
 
CHAP. XIV.] EFFECTS OF COURT DOINGS 111 
 
 hirst, beautiful Frances Howard of the House of Suffolk, 
 fallen into the snares of the Devil, into Westminster Hall and 
 the malediction of gods and men : it was all loud in that 
 time, it has become low in this. 
 
 Viscountess Purbeck, for cause of gallantries, is to stand in 
 a white sheet, with lighted taper, and do penance, at St. 
 Martin's ; let her duck into some Savoy Ambassador's, frail 
 female, and escape from the big beadles, by a hole in the 
 garden wall,^ — with small notice from the readers of these 
 pages. She was daughter of Coke upon Lyttleton ; married 
 to some unfortunate madman, brother of George Villiers ; and 
 fell, sinful and sinned against, as flesh in these circumstances 
 may. Beautiful George Villiers, beautiful Robert Car, nay 
 crooked Robert Cecil himself, cunning Earl of Salisbury : they 
 were Prime Ministers once ; but, except perhaps as subsidiary 
 ' chronological milestones and fountains of rumour,' they are 
 as good as Nonentities now. Lord Chief Justice Coke, Coke 
 upon Lyttleton, is out ; and Chancellor Bacon, Baron Verulam, 
 Viscount of St. Albans, Augmenter of the Knowledges, is 
 in ' : to us, at this distance, how can it be vitally important "^ 
 These are not cardinal events, not properly events at all ; 
 these are but as chief appearances, phenomena more or less 
 empty ; and concern the reality little. All these, in deference 
 to Dryasdust, let us know, but be careful not to mention. 
 We know them, Dryasdust, in the travail and torpor of our 
 souls we have got to know them ; and they are worth nothing 
 to us. Carefully dressed cucumbers, thin sliced, the vinegar, 
 the pepper, and all else complete upon them ; and now this 
 last duty remains for us, That we faithfully throw them out 
 of window ! — Two facts, nevertheless, selected from the Papers 
 of my dark friend, I wish to retain here : — 
 
 ' Raleigh, Cobham and others,' says he, ' are condemned at 
 ' Winchester^; for over strenuous opposition politics, "plotting 
 ' " to bring in the Lady Arabella," * and one knows not what : 
 
 ^ Weldon, Secret History, i. 446. ^ See infra, p. 130, ;;. 
 
 ^ See post, p. 140, ;/, ** See ante, p. 93, w. 
 
112 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 ' they are all out to be beheaded, an immense multitude is 
 ' assembled to look on ; but John Gibb, his Majesty's Scotch 
 ' valet, having ridden all night, gallops in at the very nick of 
 ' time, strange haste looking through his eyes, and produces a 
 ' sign-manual, — a kind of pardon, to be received with shout- 
 ' ings. Kind of pardon, which was but a respite and perpetual 
 ' imprisonment ; whereby Raleigh got to the Tower, and writes 
 ' us a History of the World, before dying : poor Raleigh ! ' 
 ' — And again, this also I discern : ' Robert Devereux, an 
 ' Eton boy, is playing at shuttlecock with Prince Henry ; 
 ' Prince Henry, the hope of England, says in his anger at 
 ' something that went wrong in the game, " It is like the son 
 ' of a traitor," — the father of this Robert having as is well 
 ' known lost his head. " Son of a traitor " ; whereupon 
 ' Robert did, with his battledore, smite the royal bare crown 
 ' of Prince Henry, and draw royal red blood from it ; — rash 
 ' youth, prefiguring for himself an agitated, probably disloyal 
 ' future. The King, however, got him wedded to the fair and 
 ' false Lady Frances Howard, of the House of Suffolk : wedded, 
 ' but, alas, in form only ; it is an unrecordable history ; and 
 ' gave rise to the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury.' These 
 facts, though small, we will retain. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE OVERBURY MURDER 
 
 [1612-lGlO] 
 
 England meanwhile is ringing from side to side, not in 
 the most edifying manner, with the rumour of the Overbury 
 Murder. It is three years since this foul villany was done ; ^ 
 for two years it had lain concealed, sounding only in vague 
 popular rumour ; and now last Winter the cloak was torn 
 
 ^ Overbury died, 15th September, 161 3. — Somerset's Trial was 25th May 
 i6i6. 
 
CHAP. XV.] THE OVERBURY MURDER 113 
 
 away from it, and the subaltern actors in it were all before 
 Christmas got hanged. Stupendous, unutterable ; which 
 Dryasdust in the wearisomest foul old details and objurgations 
 strives to utter. ' As if this," says Tmepenny, ' were the 
 ' History of England in those days ! ' — 
 
 Overbury, a Gloucestershire gentleman and scholar, with good 
 talent, figure and manner, but with arrogance and contentious 
 vanity more than proportionable, had made acquaintance long 
 since with Robert Car now Earl of Somerset. The son of 
 Ferniehirst was not to spend his days peaceably hunting 
 otters in the streams of Teviotdale, nor was Thomas Overbury 
 to write dull Tragedies alone. They had made an intimacy, 
 I think, in the Court of France, Avhile they were both as 
 pages learning manners there in the year 1604.^ Car rose to 
 be royal Favourite, Overbury naturally joined him : at bottom 
 one finds that Car was Chief-Secretary of State ; and Over- 
 bury, a man prompt with his pen, was in an unofficial way 
 managing Secretary under him. They in their fashion, with 
 the aid of Royal Solomon, old crooked Salisbury and a Privy 
 Council, managed the affairs of this Country, better or worse. 
 In occasions of real strait, old Salisbury and real Experience 
 intervenes ; on other occasions, as of the Digby Embassies, 
 the Hay Embassies, Spanish Matches and such like, above 
 all in the 'granting of suits,' it was little matter how the 
 business was managed. For certain years these two did it, 
 better or worse ; Car Somerset walked before his Majesty 
 with white rod, as Bacon pathetically says ; radiant he as 
 the chief of all the celestial Planets, and Overbury is his 
 Moon. 
 
 Precisely in the time while Overbury formed his first 
 intimacy with Scotch Car in the Court of France at Paris, 
 the beautiful little Fanny Howard, Treasurer Suffolk's second 
 Daughter, of the best blood, of the beautifullest face and 
 figure you could find in all these Islands, was betrothed to 
 young Robert Devereux, son of the last great Essex, himself 
 
 ^ state Trials : ' Nine years since. ' 
 H 
 
114 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 Earl of Essex, restored in blood and fortune ; ^ the same \vhom 
 we saw smiting Prince Henry on the royal crown with his 
 racket for calling him ' son of a Traitor."* ^ These two are be- 
 trothed, nay, I think married, though as yet under years, Essex 
 hardly above thirteen, the lady some months younger. Old 
 Salisbury, they say, advised it, his Majesty approved, thinking 
 doubtless it would be a benefit for both, such a combination. 
 Alas, it proved far otherwise ! The young Earl Mas sent 
 upon his travels, till the years of boyhood should be over : he 
 returned a handsome, likely youth of eighteen, found a right 
 blooming bride, who however, did not smile much upon him : 
 by the malison of gods and men, by conjurers at Lambeth, 
 cunning w^omen at Suffolk House — who knows ? By perverse, 
 capricious imagination, — surely by perverse accursed Art and 
 human manufacture, when beneficent Nature had done her 
 part, — there could still no marriage be ; and protesting 
 against old crooked Salisbury, mere unblessed mysteries and 
 tragedies supervened ! Dryasdust imperatively demands that I 
 should fold him u}) here ; bury these records of his, as our old 
 German Fathers would have done, in the deepest discoverable 
 Peatbog, and drive down a stake of oak through them. To 
 me it is very clear, the young Frances Howard, Lady Essex 
 so-called, proud, capricious, passionate and foolish, had turned 
 her ambitious thoughts aloft, had decided on marrying a 
 heavenly Planet, and fixed on Scotch Car as the palpable chief 
 of these. ' Am not I the fairest damsel in England ? This 
 ' Robert Devereux with his big fat cheeks and heavy jaws, with 
 ' his wheezing voice and proud sulky temper — Resides he is 
 ' forced upon me ; it was not I that chose him ! The foremost 
 ' man in all the world — ah, it is not sulky, thick-voiced 
 ' Devereux, the Lord of Essex ; it is radiant Scotch Car of 
 * Rochester ! all-powerful he on Earth, the cynosure of England, 
 
 ^ Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, became commander of the Parlia- 
 mentary Army at the beginning of the Civil War. He was a man of great 
 courage and inflexible honour, but was far from being a successful general. See 
 Cro>fnve//'s Letters and Speeches, i. 201-2. 
 
 * See ante, p. 112. 
 
CHAr. XV.] THE OVERBURY MURDER 115 
 
 ' whom very dukes wait upon as a divinity, — by the very gait 
 ' of him a god." Saw the eyes of young fooHsh woman any 
 nobler figure of a man ? ' Tall is he, strong and swift, graceful 
 ' of look ; how fierce and gentle, like the swift greyhounds of 
 ' Scotch Teviotdale, which doubtless is a Parish of Fairyland ! 
 ' The cynosure of English eyes ; whom the proudest Howards 
 ' worship even as flunkies or valets : him, ah, could I have 
 ' him ! ' — So spake the eyes and thoughts of the poor foolish 
 young woman in the old Soirees of that time, in a somewhat 
 radiant manner ; and the eyes of Scotch Car, nothing loth, 
 could not but somewhat radiantly respond. 
 
 The eyes of Car respond ; but find Overbury thinks far 
 otherwise. A man of insolent ways, who hates the House of 
 Suffolk in all its branches ; of braggart thrasonic disposition, 
 to whom, in his boundless selfconceit, it seems as if Car indeed 
 were the chief man of England, but he the real Car, he the 
 real working Undersecretary, reading all his Embassy de- 
 spatches, suggesting all the replies. Of him there is too little 
 notice taken ; not on him fall those radiant glances from the 
 Daughter of the House of Suffolk ; falling on another they 
 are not beautiful to him. Rude counsels, remonstrances 
 couched in the guise of friendship, largely tinctured with 
 insolence and acrid selfconceit ; these now are frequent from 
 Under Secretary Overbury to Supreme Secretary Car. ' I 
 ' made you,' they almost seem to say ; ' that foolish wanton of 
 ' the House of Suffolk shall not unmake you ; I will not allow 
 ' it : ' Car smiles as he can ; keeping down many things ; finds 
 it nearly unsupportable. For the man is insolent ; treats my 
 
 Lady of Essex as if she were a . Good heavens ! 
 
 One night very late, in private in the Gallery at Whitehall, 
 Car coming home past midnight, finds Overbury with bedroom 
 candle in hand : ' AVhere have you been so late ? '' ' Pooh ; 
 ' out on my occasions.' ' I see it, that base woman will undo 
 ' you.' ' Who knows ? ' 'In that course I will not follow 
 ' you.' ' Quit her ? ' ' Yes, if you do not quit that unmen- 
 ' tionable, look you stand fast.' ' Stand 
 
116 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Rochester : ' what is to hinder ine ? I think my own legs 
 ' are straight enough to stand on. Suppose you went to bed, 
 * noble knight ? ' — And they part thus in a flash of fire. Of all 
 which the unsatisfied, distressed, almost distracted, foolish 
 young Lady of Essex is informed. For Car and she have secret 
 intercourse, swift correspondence, secret as the gods ; meet 
 in farmhouses between this and Hampton Court ^ on signal 
 given, — meet where they can, poor creatures, being grown 
 desperately beautiful to one another. This sulky, thick-voiced 
 Lord of Essex, shall he lie forever like a gardener*'s mastiff", in 
 front of Hesperides apples, himself not eating fruit ? The 
 malison of Heaven lies on it, sure enough. And it is so this 
 Overbury speaks ; and the earth is full of eyes and ears. ' Get 
 ' Overbury put away,"' cries Frances Lady of Essex, in a shrill 
 inspired manner ; him away, my Sungod ; thou canst subdue 
 him, thou ; — to the Tower with him, to Russia with him, 
 to the Nether Fiend with him, till the gardeners mastiff" 
 be driven out, and then ! - — — Overbury does land in 
 the Tower. I think a Russian Embassy was proposed to 
 him first ; but he declined it, or on second thoughts they 
 advised him to decline it, thinking the Tower would be 
 better. And so he sits in the Tower (22nd April, 1613); 
 and the gardener's mastiff shall be poked out from that lair 
 of his, and our perilous adventure launch itself. 
 
 And so now straightway the poking out of this Gardener"'s 
 Mastiff, suing of Divorce for Nullity, proceeds apace ; an un- 
 speakable operation, recorded voluminouslv in Dryasdust, — 
 which demands from all men to be buried in the deepest 
 attainable Peatbog, with a stake driven through it. Enough, 
 the Lady Frances is divorced, forever free of sulky Essex "'; the 
 Gardener's Dog poked out, departs, not altogether unwillingly, 
 
 ^ State Trials, ii. 920. 
 
 - ' Perceiving iiow little he was heholden to Venus,' Essex after the divorce 
 went abroad to 'address himself to the court of Mars,' in other words to learn 
 the art of war in the Low Countries. lie returned, and married again in 1630-1. 
 But his second wife, pleading on the same grounds as his first had done, also 
 obtained a divorce from him. 
 
CHAP. XV.] THE OVERBURY MURDER 117 
 
 I think, though in a disconsolate manner, with his hair up 
 and his tail between his legs. Keep your Hesperides Apples 
 in the Devil's name ; they were never of my choosing ; — only 
 I was set to watch them, and I have done it. This is ended 
 on the 25th September ^ ; and there is nothing comfortable in 
 it except that brave George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 considerably the bravest Archbishop I have known since that 
 time, refused to have any trade with it. Though named in 
 the head of his Majesty's Commission, he said resolutely. No. 
 Other Bishops and learned Doctors sit, — and solicit now to be 
 buried in Peatbogs, — but one Chief of Bishops does not sit : 
 honourable mention to him. He is of Puritan tendencies, say 
 some : his House at Lambeth is all alight in the dead hours 
 of darkness ; and I am told that he has Puritan Divines 
 in conference with him there ! distressful to Court : silenced 
 Preachers some of them, secretly indifferent to surplices some 
 of them : with these does an Archbishop consort ! AVhat can 
 you expect ? Scotch Privy Councillor, Sir George Hume, 
 Earl of Dunbar, first recommended him, I hear ; found him a 
 wise religious man, — did not ask sufficiently what he thought 
 of surplices. And so Lambeth Palace, you perceive, glows in 
 the nightwatches with men consulting about mere piety, care- 
 less of surplices. And at Oxford the Brother of this Abbot, 
 Head of a House there, and like to be a Bishop, snarls on 
 William Laud for semi-papistry, reproves him in open con- 
 vocation for the space of half an hour. And George Abbot, 
 Head of Christ's Church in England, he, for one, will have no 
 hand in the Lady Frances Howard's business, not even though 
 the King command him ; — he thinks it will be safer not. 
 
 All this while Overbury lies in the last impatience in the 
 Tower ; persecuting Rochester with letters ; thrasonically 
 exalting his past services, throwing out dark hints that he will 
 do a mischief yet, if he be not attended to. A mischief : for 
 he has secrets of Rochester's : secrets or a secret, which 
 Dryasdust to small pur))ose at this distance beats his poor 
 
 ^ Pictor. Hist., iii. 54. 
 
118 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 brains to discover. AVas it the poisoning of Prince Henry ? 
 Dark suspicions of that kind are afloat ; to which his Majesty, 
 had he been a loving parent, might have attended more. 
 Nay, was it some unutterable business, conceivable in foul 
 imaginations, but to be kept forever unspoken, especially by 
 Majesty and Rochester.? Dryasdust, thy imagination is most 
 vile, thy intellect is most dark ; thou unfortunate son of Nox. 
 It is likely this Under-secretary Overbury in a seven years 
 intimacy with such an Upper-secretary, might know many 
 secrets, not quite convenient to be discovered ! What they 
 were, we none of us shall ever know in the least, — and some 
 of us do not care in the least, would not give a doit to know 
 completely. I prithee, close the lid of that foul fancy of 
 thine ; it is malodorous ; the nostril is afflicted by it ; the 
 lungs taste poison from it. I would not give thee half a 
 doit for all the interpretation thou wilt ever throw on these 
 matters ; it should be other knowledge that we seek in the 
 midst of poisons and malodours ! Silence, thou son of the 
 Cesspools ! Very clearly Overbury in the Tower continues 
 importunate, insolent, of a most intemperate tongue ; and a 
 proud, hothearted, foolish young woman knows of it ; — and is 
 consulting conjurers in Lambeth, and has Procuress Turner, 
 and Apothecary Franklin, many bad men and cunning bad 
 women at her bidding ; and is now within sight, almost 
 within grasp, of Rochester Car, the Teviotdale Sungod, — 
 wading towards him with open arms and heart half or 
 wholly mad, through rivers of tribulation, crime and despair. 
 Overbury had better not thwart such a humour, if he knew 
 it. Nay, she has an Uncle, old Volpone Northampton, he 
 too knows of it ; he too, for his own objects, wishes that she 
 may attain her Sungod, and make all the Howards great. 
 Overbury calls her base woman, openly declares his hatred of 
 all Howards. Such sport will he spoil ; and thrasonically 
 declares it : ' When will you bring me out ? you dare not 
 'keep me here.?' For the man's voice is still intemperate. 
 Retter cut him off by poison ? Slow poison, suggests Mrs. 
 
CHAP.xv.] THE OVERBURY MURDER 119 
 
 Turner, Earl Northampton, or the Devil through some other 
 agent ; and in the third week of his imprisonment the slow 
 process is begun. Overbury's tongue continues as intemperate 
 as ever ; but there is a new keeper appointed for him, a new 
 Lieutenant of the Tower appointed ; ^ Northampton beckon- 
 ing mvsteriously, they mysteriously responding ; Overbury's 
 friends are all excluded, his father and mother persuaded 
 home again ; and Procuress Turner, with apothecaries, with 
 rosalojar and corrosive sublimate and white arsenic in small 
 quantities, are sapping and mining. 
 
 It was about the end of Summer when the unspeakable 
 Divorce case ended, and foolish hot-hearted poor young Lady 
 Frances got free of Essex ; saw herself advancing through 
 the River of Horrors towards the land of Everlasting Sun- 
 shine ; towards the Teviotdale Sungod, namely. By Heaven I 
 could pity the poor young wretch ; struggling so towards a 
 heaven ; which proved such a heaven ! I cannot slay her 
 without tears. It is a case for George Sand and the French 
 Romances, — if not rather for the old Teutonic Peatbogs. 
 Of such stuff are we all ; — and when such stuff gets upper- 
 most in any of us. Eternal Justice bids inexorably that it be 
 put down again ; — if not by wigged judges, hangman, and 
 gibbet, then by unwigged Lynch and his rifle : down, one way 
 or other, it must and shall be put. Nature and Destiny and 
 all the gods have inexorably said it, and if the wigged judge, 
 as I say, will not do it. Lynch will have to do it ; and also to 
 send the wigged judge by and by into limbo, or some reposi- 
 tory of old wigs : such judge, I should say, is not long for 
 this w^orld ! — Overbury takes a deal of poisoning ; the process 
 being slow.- He has had as much as would poison twenty 
 men, say apothecary Franklin and Keeper Weston. At 
 length on the 15th September 1613, he dies — all covered 
 
 ^ Sir Jervis Elwes was installed as successor to Sir William Wade in the 
 Lieutenancy of the Tower. 
 
 - Some affirmed that the poison sent for Overbury was withheld from him for 
 a time. 
 
120 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 with blotches, a miserable, tragic object, fit for French 
 Romances ; and is huddled that same day into a deep grave 
 within the Tower ; and so we smooth the Earth-mound down, 
 close, close, and begin to look about us now for our rewards. 
 The river of Horrors is now waded ; heaven is now here — 
 such as it is. — Overbury''s death is 15th September, Rochester 
 Somerset's wedding is 26th December. 
 
 On 26th December, many things being now annihilated, 
 two Lovers are made happy : Majesty assisted and all the 
 Court Galaxy of Stars : a wedding of unimaginable pomp ; 
 coranto-dancing, masquing, and deray, — such pomp as never 
 even Chelsea saw when the leather Seagods spake in verse. 
 Poor fool Frances, poor fool Rochester have their heaven ; 
 and, I find, take up their lodgings at the Cockpit in St. 
 James's. Northampton and the Howards strike the stars. — 
 But let us hasten. Northampton soon dies ; all men do so 
 soon die ! The Howards are all since dead, and no star 
 shifted from its place. O curas hominnm ! Overbury is 
 buried deep ; but murder, they say, will out. Popular 
 rumour, sounding into all quarters and crevices, sounds at 
 length into some ear that can give response. It is evident ! 
 His Majesty not without a love of justice, not without 
 a terror of appearing unjust, summons all the Judges, 
 Coke upon Lyttleton at their head ; Majesty says passion- 
 ately : Foul murder ! search it out ; God reward it on me 
 and mine, if I screen any nuu'derers. And so last xVutumn 
 and Winter from October on to Christmas 1615, there 
 was an investigating, a dejjoning, pleading and empanel- 
 ling, and the whole foul matter is brought forth into 
 clear daylight before God and the country ; and the gallows 
 is not idle. First Weston, Overbury \s appointed keeper in 
 the Tower, is tried; on the 19th October 1615, he, — and 
 he will not plead or speak Guilty or Not-Guilty, being urged 
 to silence by high persons in the Cockpit, as is like. Coke 
 upon Lyttleton explains to him that the Law can make a 
 man plead : that the Law can squeeze him by hyper-Bramah 
 
CiiAr. XV.] THE OVER BURY MURDER 121 
 
 presses, feed him on ' water from the nearest puddle,"' — render 
 him very glad to })lead. Go to your cell again, my man 
 Weston ; and consider that. AVeston on his next appearance 
 j)leads ; Apothecary Franklin, driven by conscience, peaches ; 
 Weston peaches ; is found guilty, — sent swiftly to the gal- 
 lows. Concerning whom I observe onlv this : Two gentlemen 
 ride up to him on the ladder at Tyburn,^ — seem to speak 
 words with him ; one of which gentlemen, I seem to myself 
 to know. Heavens, he is Sir John Holies, whom I saw 
 fencing in Sherwood Forest, many years since, spoiling 
 Jervase Markham in one important particular.^ He is 
 father of the boy Denzil ; has Den/il at College somewhere ; 
 a prosperous gentleman this John ; Markham has never for- 
 given him. He from his saddle speaks earnestly to Weston 
 that he would revoke his confession, his accusation of great 
 persons : ' What ho, Weston, wilt thou die, doing thy kind 
 ' masters a disservice ? ' — ' May it please you, I am going to 
 ' be hanged, and seem now to be my own master. Think 
 ' you, worshipful Sir John, will the Grand Headmaster, Maker, 
 ' Creator and Eternal Judge of us all, like me better for going 
 ' to Him with a lie in my mouth ? Worshipful Sir John, if 
 ' you ever come to be hanged yourself — ! ' Weston dies 
 sticking to his confession ; worshipful Sir John Holies and 
 the other gentleman are tried at criminal Law,- get thrown 
 into the Tower, for this service ; but ere too long get out 
 again. Fain would worshipful Sir John Holies have done 
 my lord of Somerset a service, but he could not. Death and 
 the Devil were too strong. 
 
 Franklin too is hanged ; though he peached it could not 
 save him. The light of day breaks in and ever in upon this 
 dark business ; and now London rings with it, and England 
 rings with it ; foolish countenances are agape and foolish 
 
 ^ See Carlyle's Miscellanies, vi. 214-18. 
 
 - Sir John Holies, Sir John Wentworth and Mr. Lumsden were summoned 
 to the Starchamber for having by this proceeding ' traduced the Publick Justice.' 
 State Trials, 13 James I., 1615, No. no. 
 
122 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 tongues go wagging, happily all silent now. — How often 
 have I too seen a sooty smith with forge-hammer grounded 
 under broad black palm, with wide eyes and mouth stand 
 swallowing; a tailor's news ! The Bog of Lindsev has it now. 
 — Forward ! Mrs. Turner is tried and hanged ; a truly 
 wretched female who once saw better days, a Doctor"'s or 
 Chirurgeon's widow it would seem ; but destitute of monev, 
 which my Lady of Essex is well supplied with ; ' was my Lady 
 ' of Essex's servant, had no way of living but through my Lady 
 ' of Essex '; — and therewith burst into tears. Lynch himself 
 would have compassion ; but Lynch would have something 
 else withal ! One good effect of Widow Turner's hanging I 
 consider to have been the disuse of yellow starch. Idle 
 blockheads, forever changing modes, disfiguring their poor 
 unfeathered bodies, had fallen sometime since into discontent 
 with their circular rufi\, or linen neckgear, as not yet imposing 
 enough, and thought the effect could be aided, were it 
 starched yellow. Yellow starch accordingly, for it and for 
 all linen got up in mode. For Man in dressing his skin 
 adumbrates unconsciously his inner self, and comes out very 
 peculiar at times. At times I liken him with Butler 
 Hiidibras to dog distract or monkey sick. Widow Turner 
 being a person of respectability, though at Tyburn, could not 
 but appear in yellow ruffs duly got up ; whereupon all the 
 world indignantly scoured its ruff' white again. O ^Vidow 
 Turner, Widow Turner, the getting up of that yellow ruff", 
 the night before Tyburn ! And thy long ride through 
 London streets, and through this world generally ; and 
 respectability in yellow ruff* to be devoured by Hemp and 
 Death ! Justice inexorably hangs thee, but there are tears 
 in her eyes. And Sir J. Ehves, Knight ; he too is tried ; 
 defends himself, 'Thou canst not say I did it'; the jury find 
 that he looked through his fingers, that he aided and abetted ; 
 he too is hanged. His speech I have read in Dryasdust ; an 
 affecting speech on Tower-hill, from the Gibbet-ladder : he 
 confesses all ; too ambitious, I wanted to be up in the world, 
 
CHAP. XV.] THE OVERBURY MURDER 123 
 
 forgot the Law of God ; a great sinner, was a gambler too ; 
 vowed once, ' may I be hanged if I gamble more "" ; I gambled 
 more, and see God is just; the King and his Laws are just. 
 Guilty, I, before God and man. Ye friends — I see many 
 friends, there, there, there, — thanks to you ! Pray for me ! 
 Sir Maximilian Dallison, we have gambled much together ; 
 I charge you give it over. Sir M. Dallison answers from 
 horseback that he will. And now the cap being fitted, 
 Elwes says these words : ' O Christians, pray for me, who 
 ' shall never more behold your faces ! "* The Christians pray 
 for him ; who would not .'' His two servants stand bitterly 
 weeping at his feet. The hangman does his office : and it 
 is ended. 
 
 These are edifying things for England ; edifying to 
 comment upon by the Winter fires of the year of Redemption 
 1615 ! They whom the King delights to honour, pity they 
 had not been honourabler. The foremost of all Eng-land, 
 beautiful by nature, doubly beautiful by art, there are they 
 traced into hand - in-glove commerce with blackartists, 
 swindlers, procuresses, corrosive sublimate, treachery and 
 murder : the Devil, it would seem, has his Elect. What 
 Chadderton and Knewstubs, virtuous bible-reading Squirarchy 
 and the painful praying Ministry thought of these things ? 
 The shadow of these falls into every thoughtful heart in 
 England. 
 
 Oliver is hardly warm in Cambridge till there come tidings 
 that my lord of Somerset and my lady of Somerset are 
 themselves arraigned. In Westminster Hall ; 24th May 
 1616, she; 25th May, he. I will not dwell upon it; 
 would I could bury it in the bottomless Bog of Lindsey 
 where its home, in spite of mortals, yet is. The fated 
 - Frances Howard ; fair, false, an angel of Heaven, yet with 
 the glare of Hellfire in the face of her. A doomed one. I 
 think Helen of Troy was probably not fairer ; Clytemnestra 
 little guiltier ; Medea of Colchis little fatal er. Tragedies 
 could be written of her : but it skills not. The History of 
 
124 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 James's Reio-n o-enerallv has been written as if bv mutinous 
 valets ; I'ioting in flunky saturnalia, the Master being gone. 
 They worshipped this goggle-eyed Scotch Majesty as a visible 
 god while alive among them, the proudest saying, ' Here is 
 ' skin and soul to boot, much at your Majesty's service : this 
 ' poor skin of mine, would it please your Majesty to have it 
 ' flayed, tanned in any way, and made into boots for your 
 ' Majesty's wear ? ' And INIajesty once gone, they burst out 
 into undisguised insolence of Flunkyism ; no lie too black 
 for them, no jilatitude too gross. — ^Frances Howard a])pears 
 at the Bar in Westminster Hall : Lords all in ermine, scarlet, 
 Attorney Bacon in black silk, with eyes like a viper. Serjeant 
 Montague with black patch on his crown ; Chancellor Elles- 
 mere with shaving-dish hat ; Coke upon Lyttleton ; there are 
 they all ; and the fatal Medea-Clytemnestra Howard ' with 
 ' bare axe borne before her;' trembling very much. She is in 
 black of the finest, or superfinest, hoops, ruffs, with white 
 ' cobweb lace,' chimneypot chaperon or hat of I know not 
 what felt or chip : a beautiful pale trembling Daughter of 
 the Air, — of the Prince of the Power of the Air. They read 
 her indictment ; at the name of Weston she gave way to 
 tears, she lifted her fan, screened her face with it, and wept 
 till the indictment was done. Guilty : she pleads Guilty. 
 Guilty ? He with the viper eyes had a speech ready, which 
 will not be of use then ! ^ Frances Howard, what hast thou 
 to say, etc. ? A voice of the smallest, not audible in Court, 
 till he of the viper eyes repeats it, answers : ' My Lords, I can 
 ' much aggravate, but nothing extenuate my fault. I desire 
 ' mercy, and that the Lords will intercede for me to the King.' 
 Sentence is pronounced : ' That you be hanged by the neck 
 ' till you be dead ; and the Lord have mercy upon your soul.' 
 Next day appears my Lord of Somerset. Superfinest 
 satin doublet, velvet cloak, eyes sunk and face very pale. 
 ' Not guilty, my Lords,' says Somerset : and defends himself 
 against Bacon of the viper eyes, not without acuteness, not 
 ^ See Bacon's Works, Birch, iii. 493. 
 
ciiAr. XV.] KING JAMESES DISCOURSE 125 
 
 without dignity. His Majesty was in some tenor he ' might 
 ' fly out,' being very hot of temper, and blab Court secrets : 
 but he did not. Who can say I knew of Overbury's poison- 
 ing ? This thing was unknown to me, and that thing. 
 There were others to poison him, I suppose. They whom he 
 had injured beyond forgiveness might poison him, perhaps : 
 was I to be his shield ? It was a duel they had with him. 
 In his heart lurks that insinuation ; but openly on the tongue 
 only this, ' I knew it not.'' On him, too, the sentence is 
 passed, ' Be hanged till you be dead," etc. This, on the 25th 
 of May, 1616. 
 
 And so the Tragedy is ended then ? Justice done : a land 
 cleansed of blood .^ Alas, his Majesty was a Rhadamanthus, 
 but in theory only. Weston said, ' I see they will catch the 
 ' little flies, but the big ones shall escape.' Even so, his 
 Majesty pardoned fatal Frances, pardoned the husband of 
 fatal Frances ; emits them in succession with due pauses 
 of years and sums of years, from their imprisonment in 
 the Tower.^ 
 
 They quit the Tower ; but they are very miserable. Their 
 daughter and only child marries the Earl of Bedford's son 
 and heir : they fall sick, have fallen poor, obscure : — fall very 
 miserable : handsomer had Rhadamanthus done his part and 
 ended them at once ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 KING James's discourse in the star-chamber 
 
 [1616] 
 
 Those dreadful Overbury-Somerset affairs being well over, 
 and the parties either hanged or lodged in the Tower, his 
 
 ^ ' The Earl and his Lady were released from their confinement in the Tower 
 in January 162 1-2, the latter dying 23rd August 1632. . . . The Earl of 
 Somerset survived his Lady ; and dying in July 1645, was buried in the church 
 of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.' — State Trials, ii. 966. 
 
126 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Majesty thinks he will relieve his royal heart by a bit of 
 good public speaking. He proceeds, on the 20th of June, 
 1616, to the Star-Chamber, and to the assembled Peers and 
 Judges there pronounces with a most earnest face, and 
 energetic Northern accent of voice, his world-famous ' Dis- 
 course in the Star-Chamber"';^ — intimating to all ranks of 
 persons in this country how their respective duties are to 
 be done. As a universal Brood-hen and most provident 
 assiduous Clucker, does this great Monarch gather the three 
 Nations under his wings, and cluck-cluck to them : lulling, 
 admonishing, caressing, reproaching them. He thinks, after 
 these commotions, it will have a good effect in composing the 
 general mind a little. A kinder heart beats not in any man 
 or clucker ; think also what a flashing fury there is, should 
 danger, disobedience, or any devilry occur ! A most vigilant, 
 vehement, Royal Clucker, rolling large eyes on every side of 
 him ; coercing, compescing ; ready, if need be, to fly out 
 in flashes of fury, with his feathers up, and voice at a 
 mere screech ! Dread Sovereign ! For we are an old and 
 experienced King. And consider, Master Brook, whether 
 it be a light matter to lead some millions of people, and 
 be clucker over them ? 
 
 This world-famous Discourse can still be read in King 
 James''s Works ; but I do not much advise the general reader 
 to try it. Heaven knows, the British Nation did and does 
 ever need to be admonished, rebuked, guided forward by 
 some King ! Some greatest man, who, with gold crown on 
 his head, and bodyguard round him, or totally without any 
 such appendage and mark of recognition, is King of the 
 country ; is, I say, and remains King, the other King so- 
 called being merely one of shreds and })atches, with nnich 
 broken meat, expensive cast apparel, and waste rcvoiue flung 
 to him, but with no real authority in this world or in any 
 other, — a Morrice-dance King, most beautiful to the flunky ; 
 most tragic, almost frightful to every thinking heart. The 
 ^ * Made a very line Speech,' says Camden. 
 
CHAP. XVII.] BURNING OF THE PLAY-HOUSE 127 
 
 peculiarity of this King James is that he assumes the part 
 of a real King, not in the least suspecting that he has 
 become a sham-King. Hence our laughter at his cluck- 
 clucking, which were otherwise very venerable. Nowadays 
 your Sham-king knows his trade too well : it has been 
 followed for above two hundred years now, and he ought 
 to know it a little. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 BURNING OF THE NEW PEAY-HOUSE IN DRURY 
 LANE, A PURITAN RIOT 
 
 [4th March 161 6-7 J 
 
 Ox Shrove Tuesday the 4th of March, 1616-7, there 
 assembled in several quarters, many disorderly persons of sundry 
 kinds, among whom were very many boys and young lads :^ 
 these assembled themselves in Lincoln''s Inn Fields, Finsbury 
 Field, in Ratcliff* and Stepney Field ; wherever young persons 
 were met for mirth of Shrovetide ; singularly consentaneous 
 groups of illegal " young men ; and some infectious notion 
 getting abroad among them, they in their respective localities 
 took to pulling down the houses of ill-fame of this Metropolis, 
 determined that London should be rid of one abomination 
 at least. Houses of ill-fame they violently smashed to ruin ; 
 the doors, windows, all frangible materials of them ; tumbling 
 out the accursed furniture of them, scattering many a terrified 
 Doll Tearsheet and brassfaced Mistress Quickly amid shrieks 
 and howls. Mere victualling houses. Taverns for strong- 
 drink, they, fancying these too might secretly be houses of 
 ill-fame, took to smashing. Thou shalt not suffer a DeviPs 
 servant to live. What is this sale of strong waters ; whom 
 does it benefit, if not Tearsheet and Quickly, Sathanas and 
 Company .? A man selling liquid madness by the gill, ought 
 
 1 Stow, 1026. 
 
128 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 to look in God's \Vord ; see whether there, or elsewhere out 
 of Tophet, there be any warrant for him ! Begone ye 
 Missionaries of Insanity, ye recruiters for Bedlam, ye brass- 
 faced, detestable Quicklys, ye unfortunate females generally 
 and unfortunate males ! Audible shriek rises from amid the 
 general hum of London ; Doll Tearsheet weeping ; brandy- 
 faced Quickly herself grown pale. Sir F. Michell, the 
 Knight of Clerkenwell ; he drives a pretty trade, I am told, 
 he the «nworshipful protecting bordels in that dense quarter 
 of the City, negotiating with Council-boards to wink at them : 
 but to-day he is powerless to protect, — glad if he can 
 protect himself. 
 
 What a sound rises to us, reaches even to us, out of that 
 Shrovetide in old London ! The riotous young populace 
 goes about with some voice, not of the ' Five Points "* AVeekly 
 Intelligencer, but of the Christian Scriptures, in its head ; 
 says inarticulately, in a voice audible though mixed with mere 
 riotous mischievous ingredients, — voice semi-animal, as like 
 a billow as a voice, — ' Servants of Satan, depart ! It is you 
 ' that bring God's curse upon us, you that ought palpabliest 
 * to depart ! Away ! "■ — Puritanism has sjiread downwards to 
 the populace ; our Aj)prentice riots are getting Puritan ! 
 Wait a little, my pretty young ones ; grow to strength of 
 bone ; many a one of you will get a Gospel matchlock to 
 carry yet, with bandaliers, with bullets in your cheek ; ^ and 
 have a juster mark than poor Doll Tearsheet to aim at. 
 You will see the DeviFs Own drawn out rank and file, with 
 banners spread, lintstocks kindled, in full strength and 
 truculence : at them you shall make a dash, — if it lie 
 in you ! 
 
 These riotous young persons, scum of the population with 
 some dash of the Christian Scriptures in it, were of course 
 visited by Dogberry and Verges, nay, by the worshipful 
 Sheriifs of London and such constabulary force and united 
 
 ^ In default of pouches the soldiers in those days carried a supply of bullets 
 in their mouths. 
 
CHAP. XVII.] BURNING OF THE PLAY-HOUSE 129 
 
 Justices of Middlesex as they could muster : but them they 
 ' resisted and despitefully used,' not valuing them a rush. 
 Go home, ye worshipful Sheriffs ; we say certain avowed 
 Devifs servants shall presently depart. Towards night they 
 decide on a very extraordinary, new step, decide on checking 
 or stopping the progress of the Legitimate Drama ! Believe 
 it, Posterity : Shakspeare is not yet dead a year, and James 
 Shirley is a lad at school, and Ben and Beaumont and many 
 rare friends of mine are in their prime, when this riotous as- 
 semblage pours itself towards Drury Lane ; operates with crow- 
 bars on the fair new Playhouse lately builded there. With 
 crowbars, with sledgehammers, extempore battering-rams, — 
 torches too in the distance seem possible to me. What floods 
 of tin armour, paper crowns, pasteboard Tempest-Islands and 
 the vasty fields of France, pour themselves from the upper 
 windows ; with clangour frightful to consider ! 
 
 * Stop them, stop them, ye joltheads!"* His Majesty is 
 supping hard by in Somerset House, in solemn State that 
 evening with the jolly broadfaced Queen Anne, whom it is 
 rare for him to visit ; making a right merry Shrovetide ; when 
 this insane clangour of the destructive populace invades his 
 ear. They are pulling Drury Lane to pieces ; Dogberry and 
 Verges and the Constabulary Force are in flight, and the 
 Sheriff" they have resisted and despitefully used ! Out with 
 the Trainedbands ; let the Lords of the Council proclaim 
 instant Martial- law : so orders the angry Parent-fowl ; by 
 my soul we will stop them, if our feathers once rise. Martial- 
 law, I believe, means very rapid hanging ; I believe, almost 
 on the spur of the instant. A stringent riot-act. The 
 illegal populace hears word of it ; rapidly ebbs home ; leaving 
 the Legitimate Drama to its fate. Majesty held his solemn 
 supper with the broadfaced jolly one ; a high Lady of con- 
 siderable substance bodily and spiritual, not without decision, 
 goodhumour and motherwit, whom I rather like, though her 
 face is freckled, and her Danish hair too blond for me. His 
 Majesty, the populace having ebbed home again, was pleased, 
 
130 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 nay delighted. Somerset House, says he, in some pause of 
 the coranto-dancing and comfit-eating, this is called Somerset 
 House, but in honour of my beloved Queen and this night, I 
 will that it be henceforth called Denmark House. We will 
 drink prosperity to Denmark House, if you please !- — responded 
 to with loud acclaim ; drunk I suppose, with gusto by every 
 one from the Queen to the meanest of her subjects. And so 
 ends Shrovetide, 1616-7. This Puritan riot I thought good 
 to take a glance at. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BACON 
 
 At London on the 7th day of May, 1617, observe a thing- 
 worth one slight glance from us. Sir Francis Bacon, he 
 whom we saw with the liquorish brown eyes pleading as 
 Attorney General in my Lord and Lady of Somerset's case, — 
 he is now made Lord Keeper, High Chancellor, or whatever 
 name they give it ; and is this day astonishing the London 
 Public and the Middle Aisle of PauFs by his ' mighty pro- 
 ' cession,' as the admiring Dryasdust calls it, ' on the first dav 
 ' of Term.' ^ A procession and cavalcade such as new Lord 
 Keepers are used to give ; but this is far mightier, — very 
 grand indeed ; — starting I know not where, consisting of 
 I know not what ; caparisoned grand horses, caparisoned 
 grand men, long - gowned Law Lords and sublime Lord 
 Keeper with his purse and great seal ; learned Serjeants, 
 horse-cloths, trumpets, tabards and trumpery : one of the 
 sublimest Processions ; which the Middle Aisle generally 
 must admit to surpass most things. This new Lord Keeper, 
 I find, is fifty-four years of age ; and the high topgallant of his 
 
 ^ The Great Seal was delivered to Sir F. Bacon, the King's Attorney, aged 
 fifty-four, on 7th March, 1617 ; ' solemn Procession in mighty pomp ' took place 
 on the first day of Term, 7th May. Camden. — Bacon had been made Lord 
 Chancellor on the 7th January, 1616-7 ; and six months later he was raiscil to 
 the Peerage under the title of Lord Verulam. 
 
CHAP. XVIII.] BACON 131 
 
 fortunes, fruit of endless industries, and assiduity fit to attain 
 the amaranth crown and cap of immortality, is now attained. 
 There rides he sublime, with purse and big- seal ; shall have 
 the beatitude of sealing into authenticity the behests of 
 George Villiers and James Stuart, the Dread Sovereign. 
 Next year they make him Baron Verulam. There rides he 
 for the present, with his white ruff, with his fringed velvet 
 cloak and steeple hat, and ' liquorish viper eyes ' ; a very 
 prosperous man. O Francis Bacon, my Lord of Verulam, 
 if they had appointed one the Lord Keeper to the Chancery 
 of Heaven, as I have known it happen to some, so that one 
 could seal into authenticity the behests of God Almighty 
 instead of George Villiers'' behests, — it had been something ! 
 There is in this Lord Keeper an appetite, not to say a 
 ravenousness, for earthly promotion and the envy of surround- 
 ing flunkies, which seems to me excessive. Thou knowest 
 him, O reader : he is that stupendous Bacon who discovered 
 the new way of discovering truth, — as has been very 
 copiously explained for the last half century, — and so made 
 men of us all. Undoubtedly a most hot seething, fermenting 
 piece of Life with liquorish viper eyes ; made of the finest 
 elements, a beautiful kind of man, if you will ; but of the 
 earth, earthy ; a certain seething, ever-fermenting prurience 
 which prodigally burns up things : — very beautiful, but very 
 clayey and terrene every thing of them ; — not a great soul, 
 which he seemed so near being, ah no ! 
 
 The King discovered Bacon's large genius and also its 
 intrinsic hollowness ; the many coloured lambent light as if 
 from Heaven, and also how it was in good part a light not 
 from Heaven at all, but from the earthly market-place with 
 its fish-oil lamps and curiously cut and coloured glasses ; — 
 alas, a light not even of honest fish-oil : how beautiful to 
 some eyes is the light of fish itself in a certain state of 
 forwardness ! Putridity, O Dryasdust, is not without 
 luminosity, nay, radiance of a sort ; and one day thou wilt 
 discover that Prophets are other than inspired shop-keepers ; 
 
132 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 that Novmti Organum teaching us how to discover truth is 
 good, but that a poor John Kepler making out by natural 
 Vetiis Organum^ by the light of his own flaming soul, in 
 hunger and obstruction, after e^rperhnenhnn criicis seventy 
 times repeated in the heart's blood of the man, the greatest 
 discovery yet made by man, the laws namely of the Heavenly 
 stars, was worth, even for scientific purposes, a horse load of 
 Organums ! This Bacon, with his eye like a viper, is never- 
 theless a pretty man shining out of the dark place ; a man 
 in whose light I have sought for guidance but not hitherto 
 found any. The dark places of my destiny were not made 
 clear to me by these many-tinted flickering transparencies. 
 In such moods and stern necessities that lie in the path of 
 men, the transparencies, the augments of the sciences, O my 
 Lord Chancellor ! — Does your Lordship think the sciences 
 can be augmented effectually by an augmentation of shop- 
 drawers where one reposits them ; better methods of labelling, 
 of mixing, compounding and separating, — by any augment of 
 machinery whatever ! Such augments shall be welcome, but 
 not the welcomest at all ! The spirit of sincerity, of self- 
 sacrifice, of common honesty, my Lord ; these once shed 
 abroad, we shall have augment of the knowledges and other 
 good things ; not otherwise, I believe. Knowledges are 
 attained by the flaming soul of man writing its knowledge 
 formulas in its own heart's blood ; only Pedantries, drowsy 
 pretentious Ineptitudes, Dryasdustisms, are attainable other- 
 wise. It is of the former that Prophets have always pro- 
 phesied from their Pisgah-heights, not of the latter. Call 
 you that a Pisgah ? I call it a common Hampstead Hill, 
 where will lie a broken-down Chancellor gone to ashes in his 
 own phosphorescence ; ruined by ambition, secularity, insin- 
 cerity, and at last bribery and common want of cash : a sight 
 tragic to see. 
 
 How can a great soul like Bacon's worship a James ; spend 
 itself in struggling to gain the favour of a James ? Patience, 
 reader ; he is the last such. Our next great soul is a 
 
CHAP. XVIII.] BACON 133 
 
 Milton ; he will prove unbuyable by your Jameses ; unbuy- 
 able enough ! . . . 
 
 His Majesty being absent in Scotland when Bacon was 
 appointed Lord Keeper, he (as I find recorded in the 
 mutinous-flunky pages of Dryasdust), being left with some 
 chief authority, played the amazingest tricks : ^ slept in the 
 King's beds, held levees, tried so far as he could what real- 
 imaginary sovereignty was. For which they shoved him 
 almost into annihilation, the real Sovereigns did, at their 
 return : and he had to do obeisance to George Villiers, and 
 cry, with what of nobleness he could, ' Have pity on me, thou 
 ' mighty one ! ' Much whereof I do not care to believe. But 
 true enough the hatred borne to this man, by high and by 
 low, seems very great. Alas, in fact this great man is of 
 flunky nature. . . . Let us leave him, let us leave him, wish 
 him big revenues, big stacks of lawpapers, old hats, marine 
 stores,'^ cast-apparel and unrivalled shop-lists : out of such 
 came never any word of life, nor will, Seekest thou great 
 things, seek them not. There, whither thou strivest, it is even 
 as here, not a whit better. Stand to thy tools here, and be 
 busy for the Eternities ; and noble as a Protestant Hebrew, 
 not base as a Whitechapel one. — Enough of Bacon.^ 
 
 ^ Weldon, Secret History of the Court of James I., i. 438. 
 
 2 Worn-out tackle and other odds and ends for sale in second-hand shops at 
 Sea-ports. 
 
 ^ The above reflexions on the author of the ' Novum Organum ' will seem to 
 many excessively severe ; but they do not exceed in severity what Weldon, 
 Wilson, and others have put on record regarding Bacon. ' He was,' says Arthur 
 Wilson, ' the true emblem of human frailty, being more than a man in some 
 things, and less than a woman in others. His crime was Briberie and Extor- 
 tion, . . . and these he had often condemned others for as 2. Judge, which now 
 he comes to suffer for as a Delinquent : And they were proved and aggravated 
 against him with so many circumstances, that they fell very foully on him, both 
 in relation to his reception of them, and his expending of them : For that which 
 he raked in, and scrued for one way, he scattered and threw abroad another ; 
 . . . This poor gentleman, mounted above pity, fell below it : His Tongue, that 
 was the glory of his time for Eloquence (that tuned so many sweet Harrangues) 
 was like a forsaken Harp, hung upon the Willows, whilst the waters of affliction 
 
134 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE king's journey TO SCOTLAND 
 
 [1617] 
 
 Shrovetide riots and festivities, Francis Bacon's Lord- 
 keepership, and Oliver Cromweirs return from Cambridge, 
 kindling up the dark void of Dryasdust a little, one begins 
 to discern that, even now in these weeks,^ his Majesty made a 
 Royal Progress into Scotland ; his first thither, since we saw 
 him fire the shot on Berwick Walls, and also his last. 
 
 It is indisputable his Majesty visited Scotland ; but by 
 itself it has ceased to be very memorable. There are healthy 
 human memories withal ; let them be thankful that they have 
 a talent for forgetting. Magniloquent loyal Addresses more 
 than one, on this occasion, full of drowsy Bombast, like tales 
 told by an idiot, I have read, and will not remember. History, 
 human Intelligence, has to stand between the Living and the 
 Dead. The Addresses to Royalty in that age are perhaps 
 the drowsiest of all on record. They are very false, we may 
 say they are the first really false loyal Addresses delivered by 
 
 overflowed the banks. And now his high-flying Orations are humbled to suppli- 
 cations, and thus he throws himself, and Cause, at the feet of his Judges, before 
 he was condemned : ' [Here follows the Humble Submission and Supplication of 
 the Lord Chancellor to the Right Hon. Lords of the Parliament] . . . ' Though he 
 had a pension allowed him by the King, he wanted to his last, living obscurely 
 in his lodgings at Gray's Inn, where his loneness and desolate condition, wrought 
 upon his ingenious, and therefore then more melancholy temper, that he pined 
 away. And had this unhappiness after all his height of plenitude, to be denied 
 beer to quench his thirst : For having a sickly taste, he did not like the beer of 
 the house, but sent to Sir Fulk Grevill, Lord Brook, in neighbourhood (now and 
 then) for a bottle of his beer, and after some grumbling the Butler had order to 
 deny him.' Life and Reign of James I., 159-61. 
 
 Spedding's Letters and Life of Lord Bacon, which Carlyle read in later years 
 (iS6l-74)a little modified his opinion of the great but erring genius; though 
 he never became one of Carlyle's heroes or great men. See, also, post, p. 170. 
 
 ^ The King set forward on his Journey into Scotland about four o'clock in 
 the afternoon, March 14th, 1617. — Camden. 
 
CHAP. XIX.] KING^S JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND 135 
 
 English persons, but they do not yet feel that they are false, 
 nay, they as it were unconsciously lament that they are false ; 
 and accordingly inflate themselves into bombast, now grown 
 very sorrowful to us.^ Our Loyal Addresses, in the progress 
 of things, have long since recognised themselves as false, — 
 they know better now than to go into bombast. They say, 
 We too are tales told by an idiot ; God help us, man surely 
 was not meant to do aperies and tales told by an idiot ; — 
 but they shall at least be done without the sound and fury, — 
 in a very gentle style, a style conscious that it cannot be too 
 gentle. 
 
 His Majesty's businesses in Scotland, doubt it not, were 
 manifold."-^ Festivities, huntings, bombast Addresses, these 
 are pleasant pastime ; and for the earnest hours of a Solomon 
 there are thrums enough gone a-ravelling to knit up in such 
 
 ^ As a specimen of the style of these addresses take the following extract from 
 that delivered by the Deputy-town-clerk of Edinburgh to king James on the 
 occasion of the above visit : ' How joyful your majesty's return (gracious and 
 dread sovereign) is to this your majesty's native town, from the kingdom due to 
 your sacred person, by royal descent, the countenances and eyes of these your 
 majesty's loyal subjects speak for their hearts. This is that happy day of our 
 new birth, ever to be retained in fresh memory . . . acknowledged with 
 admiration, admired with love, and loved with joy, wherein our eyes behold the 
 greatest human felicity our hearts could wish, which is to feed upon the royal 
 countenance of our true Phoenix, the bright star of our northern firmament, the 
 ornament of our age, wherein we are refreshed, yea revived with the heat and 
 beams of our sun. . . . The very hills and groves accustomed before to be 
 refreshed with the dew of your majesty's presence, not putting on their wonted 
 apparel, but with pale looks, representing their misery for the departure of their 
 royal king.' — R. H. Stevenson, Chronicles of Edinbtu-gh, p. 137. 
 
 ■- ' His chief object in visiting Scotland was to effect the complete establish- 
 ment of the Episcopal form of church government, and to assimilate the religious 
 worship of the two countries. Without the least spark of religious zeal, James 
 was most determinedly bent on the subversion of the Presbyterian system, the 
 spirit and form of which he detested more than ever, as inimical to his notion of 
 the divine right of kings, and their absolute supremacy over the church as well 
 as state. From the time of the controversy with the English Puritans at Hamp- 
 ton Court, he had been devising how he should fully restore episcopacy to 
 Scotland. . . . Soon after, the bishops, who had never altogether ceased to exist 
 in name, were re-established in authority and in revenue, — that is, to the extent 
 of the power of James and his slavish court.' — Pictorial Hist., iii. p. 64. 
 
136 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 a country. Those old Church-lands ; seized really with an 
 unspeakable coolness by our hungry Vicekings or Aristocracy 
 here, when the Nation set about reforming its Religion : had 
 the hungry Vicekings before all men the clear right to them .'' 
 A cooler stroke of legislative trade I have not seen anywhere, 
 — nor had my friend Knox seen anywhere. Majesty thinks 
 the Headking might as well have these lands back again to 
 himself. This Church too, besides its poverty, is all out at 
 elbows every way. A ragged, ill-tempered kind of Church ; 
 much given to censuring persons in authority ; never duly 
 reverent of the Earthly Majesty, shadow of God in this 
 Earth. They ought to have real Bishops, they ought to 
 have Surplices, ceremonies ; it would bind them to good 
 behaviour. No Bishop, no King, His Majesty in secret, I 
 discern, is preparing the Five Articles of Perth ; ^ emblematic 
 of good ceremonial ; five Articles, unrememberable though 
 oft committed to memory ; in two years more, by packed 
 Assemblies, and other kingcraft methods of hook and of 
 crook, he will get those Five Articles, and see visions of Scotch 
 Bishops, though still only stuffed- skin Bishops, — Tulchan ^ 
 
 Bishops as the Scots called them. — Gently, your Majesty ! 
 
 Dr. Laud, a small chaplain, lean little tadpole of a man, with 
 red face betokening hot blood : him I note there authenti- 
 cally as Chaplain to the King. These preparations for the 
 Phantom Bishops, stuffed surplices, he in a subaltern way 
 discerns gladly. Surveying this savage country with attentive 
 view, he can discern as yet no ' religion ' in it, none. Such 
 is his verdict. You will seek between the Mull of Galloway 
 
 ^ The Five Articles of Perth are given in full in Spoltiswood's Church of 
 Scotland, p. 538 (Edition, 1655). Condensed they are as follows: (i) The 
 Communion to be received kneeling. (2) In case of illness and necessity the 
 Lord's Supper to be administered in private houses. (3) Baptism, ditto. (4) 
 Various Fast Days to be observed. (5) Children to be brought to the Bishop for 
 a blessing. 
 
 ^ A Tulchan is a calf's skin stuffed with straw, and set beside a cow to make 
 her give milk ; and a Tulchan Bishop, one who received the Episcopate on 
 condition of assigning the temporalities to a secular ^cr^ow. —Jaiiiieson. See 
 also Carlyle's Cromwell, i. 44. 
 
CHAP. XIX.] KING'S JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND 137 
 
 and John of Groat's, inquiring after such an article, in vain, 
 for what I could see. ' The churches are as like barns as 
 ' churches ' ; there is not a surplice in the country ; I question 
 if there be a tailor in the country that could cut you a 
 decent surplice. The tradition of religion seems lost. — No 
 religion in this country, think you, Doctor ? There are men 
 living here that have heard John Knox. They have a notion 
 here that man consists of a soul as well as of a body with 
 tippets. I am sorry to find they have ' no religion,' Doctor ! 
 The little redfaced screechy Doctor takes his first survey of 
 this country. 
 
 His Majesty, as I bethink me, returned from Edinburgh 
 (it was now grown Autumn) by the pleasant Western Road, 
 by Drumlanrig and Dumfries, at which latter Burgh, very 
 interesting to me otherwise, it was our lot to suffer by a 
 sleepy mass of bombast promulgated at the old Port on Lady 
 Devorgilla's old Nith-Bridge (blessings on her Lady-heart, she 
 built a bridge there, some five hundred years ago, and founded 
 Abbeys and Balliol College at Oxford, and her footprints in 
 this world are still lovely to men and gods) : a somniferous 
 Town-Council harangue, I say, got up by some extinct 
 Dominie Sampson of the neighbourhood, with steam almost 
 at the bursting point, whom I do not bless ; and pronounced 
 at the old Nith-Bridge Port by ancient Provost and civic 
 authorities, and a wondering ancient population, — very 
 wonderful to me. — Ye Eternities, ye Silences ! Nith River 
 rushes by brown from his mossy fountains, singing his very 
 ancient song, and the salmon mount in Spring ; — and a 
 Burns has been there ; — and the Exits and the Entrances are 
 in fact miraculous to me. Nith River rolls ;— and the River 
 of Existence rolls : to the Sea, to the great still Sea ! Mr. 
 Rigmarole, somnambulant charmer, have you any notion of 
 
 the really miraculous ? His Majesty does on this happy 
 
 occasion present the Dumfries Population with a miniature 
 bit of ordnance in real silver, saying, ' Shoot for it annually,' 
 
138 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part I. 
 
 and encourage the practice of weapons. Which ' Siller Gun "* 
 and annual practice of shooting did accordingly continue 
 itself almost to our own days. Scotch readers know The 
 Siller Gun, by a Dumfries Native named John Mayne, a 
 small brown Poem-Book, not without merit : as good as some 
 Ostade Picture of poor extinct burghers and their humours ; 
 to be hung in the corner, and looked at, not without emotion. 
 These burghers, too, are all vanished and become transfigured ; 
 their three-cornered hats, their old hair-queues, are already 
 acquiring some preternaturalism for us. Their noise, their 
 loud vociferation, and ha-ha-ing on that Siller-gun day, is it 
 not all gone dumb .'' Ye Silences, ye Eternities ! This was 
 the chief trace his Majesty left in Scotland for the Writer of 
 these pages ! 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE BOOK OF SPOUTS 
 [May, 1618] 
 
 His Majesty was always fond of Archery, of manly sports 
 and recreations. Coming ^ into Lancashire, his princely 
 bowels are touched with two things : the sorrowful temper 
 of the Protestant people, especially their sad way of spending 
 Sunday, and the considerable number of Papists who deny 
 the King's Supremacy. Two indisputable evils. These 
 Papists deny our Supremacy ; are dangerous fellows ; they 
 were near blowing us up with Gunpowder a little while ago. 
 And our Protestants, alas, they are all Puritan ; they sjjend 
 the Sunday in mere readings of the AVord, in mere medita- 
 tions on Death, Judgment and Eternity. jMuch revolving 
 in his royal heart these indubitable evils, his Majesty discerns 
 that both may be helped, and new stimulus given to Archery 
 withal and manly sports, by one wise stroke of legislation. 
 He promulgates in Lancashire his Royal Proclamation per- 
 ^ On his return from ScuUand. 
 
CHAP. XX.] BOOK OF SPORTS 139 
 
 mitting manly sports on Sunday after church service, com- 
 manding all ministers to say that they are permitted. Poor 
 Majesty, a well meant stroke of legislation, but the unsucccss- 
 fullest I ever heard of. Horror, abnegation, despair, 
 execration fervent but unspoken, seizes the heart of all Bible 
 Christians in England. Has not God above written, 
 Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy ; and here your 
 Majesty bids us make it unholy ? Archeries, Church-ales, 
 football, leapfrog, dancing and Church-farthing — are these 
 the ways of sanctifying a Sabbath of the Lord 't — ' Tush, 
 ' tush,"" snarls his Majesty, ' ye understand little of it ! "" These 
 Church-ales, leapfrog and such like, do not ye perceive I grant 
 them to nobody till he has attended Church-service .'' Is not 
 there an encouragement to Protestant Church-going ? You 
 have no legislative acumen, you ! The Papists used to have 
 a merry Sunday ; but see, now they dare not sport openly. 
 My Sport Book says expressly it is this sad Puritan Sabbatism 
 that deters Aveak vessels from conversion to Protestantism in 
 those parts. They dare not be converted to passing the 
 Sunday in that manner ! It is too gloomy for them. Let 
 me introduce a little football, encourage Protestantism, open 
 a smoother road Heavenwards, and become a noted ' Easy- 
 ' shaving shop.' — This is the far-famed Book of Sports, 
 published 24th May, 1618, received with horror, with speech- 
 less but felt execration, by all Bible Christians in England. 
 I know not if even the surplice Christians thought much 
 good of it.^ 
 
 ^ Neal {History of the Puritans, ii. p. 115) says the Book of Sports was drawn 
 up by Bishop Moreton. Archbishop Abbot disapproved of it, and refused to 
 allow it to be read in the Church at Croydon. 
 
140 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 EXECUTION OF KALEIGH 
 
 [1618] 
 
 Ox the morning of 29th October, 1618, in Palace Yard, 
 a cold morning, equivalent to our 8th of November, behold 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, a tall greyheaded man of sixty-five gone. 
 He has been in far countries ; seen the El Dorado, penetrated 
 into the fabulous dragon-realms of the West, hanged Spaniards 
 in Ireland, rifled Spaniards in the Orinoco ; — for forty years a 
 most busy man ; has appeared in many characters : this is his 
 last appearance on any stage. Probably as brave a soul as 
 lives in England ; — he has come here to die by the headsman''s 
 axe. What crime ? Alas, he has been unfortunate ; has 
 become an eyesorrow to the Spaniards, and did not discover 
 the El Dorado mine. Since Winchester,^ when John Gibb 
 came galloping [with a reprieve], he has lain thirteen years in 
 the Tower ; the travails of that strong heart have been many. 
 Poor Raleigh, toiling, travailing always ; in Court drawing- 
 rooms, in Tower prison-rooms, on the hot shore of Guiana ; 
 with gold and promotion in his fancy, with suicide, death and 
 despair in clear sight of him : toiling till his ' brain is 
 broken '' " and his heart is broken : here stands he at last ; 
 after many travails it has come to this with him. 
 
 Yesterday, after consultation of the Judges, he appeared in 
 the King's Bench in Whitehall to say why he ought not to 
 die, being doomed fifteen years ago, and only res})ited by John 
 Gibb, not pardoned .'' Hard to say : he said what he could. 
 Chief-Justice Montague, a very ugly function for him, had to 
 sit there and answer that it was all naught. To the Gatc- 
 
 ^ Where Raleigh's trial had taken place in November, 1603. He was charged 
 with ' treason,' convicted, sentenced to die. A reprieve came from the king, 
 by the hands of John Gibb, in the very nick of time, and Raleigh was committed 
 to the Tower, there to remain during his Majesty's pleasure. 
 
 - This expressive phrase is Raleigh's own in a letter to his wife. 
 
CHAP. XXI.] EXECUTION OF RALEIGH 141 
 
 house this night, to the scaffold on the morrow. — Here 
 accordingly what a crowd of human faces, all unknown to me ! 
 Oliver from some of the Law-offices in Chancery Lane, come 
 truanting hither ? It may be ; it is not certainly known to 
 me. Earls of Arundel, Northampton and Doncaster in a 
 window. Earl of Clare ; our old friend John Holies — Heavens, 
 what a morning ! Raleigh's Death-speech, Raleigh's Life 
 History, is inarticulate tragedy itself to us. (Why has none 
 yet loved this Raleigh ; made a musical Hero of him ? He 
 is a great man.) He raises his voice that the Earl of 
 Arundel and others looking from their window may hear 
 him ; they say, ' Nay, we will come down to you. Sir Walter "" ; 
 and they come down. He has smoked his last pipe of 
 tobacco by candle-light this morning ; drunk a cup of sack, 
 saying, ' Good liquor, if a man might tarry by it.' With a 
 stern sympathy John Holies, the tawny, deep-eyed Earl of 
 Arundel, and the assembled thousands listen to him. Bess, 
 his faithful Bess, with her orphan, sits weeping in secret, — one 
 orphan here amid a very stern world ; my brave first-born lies 
 buried in Guiana, slain on the other side of the world ; and 
 Walter, their father, is to die ! It is eight of the clock ; a 
 cold November morning ; — and the speech ended. ' Would 
 ' you wish to go down and warm yourself a little ? ' said the 
 sympathetic sheriff. ' Nay, good friend, let us be swift : in a 
 ' quarter of an hour my ague fit will be upon me, and they will 
 ' say I tremble for fear.' — Here is the greatest sacrifice the 
 Spaniards have yet had. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 COURT PRECINCTS — TOURNAMENTS, ETC. 
 
 [1621] 
 
 D'EwES had his eyes about him ; a brisk young gentleman 
 going about Town ; brings comfortable proof to us that the 
 grass was green in those days too. In galooned or plain 
 
142 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 breeches, with satin or coarser doublet, in cuerpo or with 
 Spanish cloak, busy or idle, men do walk on legs ; women, in 
 small steeple hats, in fardingales, in bands yellow starched or 
 otherwise, are somewhat interesting to them. Conceive it, 
 reader ! It was not dead, a vacant ghastly Hades, filled with 
 Dryasdustism, with Ilymer''s Feeder a and Doctrines of the 
 Constitution, — that old London ; — it was alive ; loud-voiced, 
 many-toned, of meaning unfathomable, beautiful, wonderful, 
 fearful. God had made it too, — it was and is not ; and we, 
 issuing from it, are, and shall soon not be. 
 
 D'Ewes, for one thing, we find goes much to Tournaments. 
 Sublime Tournaments, of frequent occurrence, are the cynosure 
 of intelligent curiosity : there, in all their caparisons and 
 glory, and horse trappings, are the gods of this world to be 
 found. Dryasdust is aware of that Tilt- Yard ; there, just 
 behind our present [Horseguards ?] ^ stands that sublime 
 establishment, of figure somewhat uncertain to me, stands the 
 Tiltyard of King Henry ; stands the Cockpit, too, not now a 
 place of cocks alone, but a residence of Car-Somersets, kings'" 
 favourites, and Cocks of Jove. These and much else stand 
 there ; and ' across the head of King Street "■ runs an arch and 
 covered })assage leading from St. James's Park into the Privy 
 Gallery of Whitehall ; and trucks and street passengers rolling 
 freely under the feet of the king, when he chooses to issue in 
 that way. And as yet there is no Parliament Street. Parlia- 
 ment Street is the esplanade of Whitehall and the thorough- 
 fare from King Street to Charing Cross ; and Privy Gallery is 
 at the end of it ; and Canonries of Westminster, and Cannon 
 Rows behind the Privy Gallery are — I know not what ; and 
 Palace Yards, and Passages to Lambeth Ferry. And West- 
 minster Bridge is not, and Whitehall Bridge is. And out- 
 ward in front of AVhitehall and the Banqueting House, 
 spreads some dignified esplanade, with gilt-railing, I doubt 
 not, and Courts of yard ; the trucks and cars and street- 
 
 ^ In turning the page Carlyle omits some word here, probably ' Horse- 
 guards.' 
 
CHAP. XXII.] COURT PRECINCTS 143 
 
 passengers rolling freely in front from King Street to Charing 
 Cross and the Strand. And Royal Whitehall is like a kind 
 of City in itself; the king'^s household and all maimer of 
 courtier persons having their apartments there. And it is all 
 of figure very uncertain to me. For it is all vanished, by fire 
 and otherwise ; and only the Banqueting House of Inigo 
 Jones yet stands, got into strange new environment. The 
 fashion of this world passeth away. 
 
 What Processions to St. PauFs ; what Tilts and high- 
 flown Tournaments, not in the least memorable to me. Take 
 this one seen through the eyes of D'Ewes, and multiply it 
 by as many hundreds spread duly over the dead centuries as 
 your imagination will conveniently hold : — 
 
 ' 3Ionday, 8th Janum-t/ 1621-2. — In the afternoon I went to the Tilt- 
 yard, over against VV^hitehall, whence four couples ran, to shew the 
 before-mentioned French Ambassador, Cadnet, and divers French Lords 
 that came with him, that martial pastime. Prince Charles himself ran 
 first, with Richard Lord Buckhurst, Earl of Dorset, and brake three 
 staves very successfully. The next couple that ran were the beloved 
 Marquis of Bucking-ham and Philip Lord Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, 
 younger brother of ^V'illiam Herbert, Earl of Pembroke ; but had very 
 bad success in all the courses they made. Marquis Hamilton, a Scotch- 
 man, and the King's near kinsman, with Sir Robert Rich, Earl of War- 
 wick, performed their course almost as gallantly as the Prince and Earl 
 of Dorset ; but the last couple did worst of all, almost not breaking a 
 staff. 
 
 ' After this, most of the tilters, except the Prince, went up to the 
 French Lords in a large upper room of the house standing at the lower 
 end of the Tiltyard ; and I crowding in after them, and seeing the 
 Marquis of Buckingham discoursing with two or three French Monsieurs, 
 I joined to them, and most earnestly viewed him, for about half an 
 hour's space at the least ; which 1 had opportunity the more easily to 
 accomplish because he stood, all that time he talked, bareheaded. I saw 
 everything in him full of delicacy and handsome features ; yea his hands 
 and face seemed to me, especially effeminate and curious. It is possible 
 he seemed the more accomplished, because the French Monsieurs that 
 had invested him, were very swarthy, hard-favoured men. That he was 
 afterwards an instrument of much mischief, both at home and abroad, is 
 so evident upon record as no man can deny ; yet this I do suppose pro- 
 ceeded rather from some Jesuited incendiaries about him, than from his 
 
144 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 own nature, which his very countenance promised to be affable and 
 gentle.'' 
 
 Thanks, worshipful Sir Simonds ; a man that has eyes and 
 a pen, it is pity he does not take a sketch or two as he passes 
 along through this variegated life-journey. I love measure- 
 ments by the foot-rule ; I love practicalities, Doctrines of the 
 Constitution, arguments by logic, computations by arith- 
 metic ; but, alas, these of themselves will do little ; these of 
 themselves become brown parchments, torpid Dryasdustisms, 
 dead marine stores, purchaseable bad-cheap at sixpence the 
 ton. 
 
 Would to Heaven this seeing Knight, travelling about in 
 that age, were now at my bidding ! Thou shouldst go for 
 me, worshipful Sir Simonds, to look on this man and on that. 
 What is Rare Ben saying to it ? Tell me what kind of lair 
 he lodges in, that lion-hearted one; mastiff-hearted ; irascible, 
 so jovial, faithful ; an honest English Spiritual Mastiff'. 
 Where is it ; what sort of room is it, how many chairs, — 
 what stockings has the Rare Ben on ? Is his wife mending; 
 shirts ? O D'Ewes — ! — But the place I would gladliest of 
 all send worshipful D'Ewes to is the Church of St. Giles's 
 Cripplegate, on the morning of 22d August 1620. There 
 is a wedding going on there ; I know it yet by the old Parish 
 Books. Oliver Cromwell to Elizabeth Bourchier, daughter of 
 Sir James Bourchier of Felsted Essex. Even so : it is my old 
 friend Oliver who, by time and industry, has brought it thus far. 
 Much has passed in this King's reign ; and here too is a thing 
 that has come about : Nollkin, the little bony-faced Boy that 
 went about, in child's cap and breeches, gazing on the Scotch 
 Majesty at Hinchinbrook," has grown to the height of five feet 
 eleven or so, a substantial man of his inches, and is here 
 acquiring in marriage a very great possession, a good wife ! 
 We saw him last in the Church-yard burying his Father. 
 The wide rolling river of Existence pauses not ; the genera- 
 
 ' Sir Simonds D'Ewes, extracted from Biog. Brit, 
 ^ See ante, p. 15. 
 
CHAP. XXIII.] JOHN GIBB 145 
 
 tions (lie and are born, let the King do as he will, AVhat 
 this Oliver was like ? — O, D'Ewes ! what countenance he 
 wore, what boots, band, doublet, sword and velvet coat he had 
 on ! An authentic shadow of the look of that Transaction 
 in St. Giles's Cripplegate, would have worth for me. Mr. 
 Cromwell in the bloom of youth cannot be considered beauti- 
 ful ; but no ingenuous man on the morning of his marriage 
 can well be without beauty. A rugged substantial figure ; 
 with modesty, ingenuousness and earnestness, strength of 
 pious simplicity, which is the strongest of all, which I take 
 to be the beautifullest of all. He has dark hair, of the olive 
 black common in England ; grey, earnest eyes, beaming very 
 strangely this morning ; a nose of fair proportions, inclining 
 decidedly to the left, — not too accurately bisecting the face .^ 
 in the way Painters so dislike. A mouth big enough, none 
 of your poor thin lips ; compact, yet extensive, ex})ansive ; 
 room in it for all manner of quivering and curling, for fer- 
 vour, for love and rage, for prayer and menace : a face to me 
 very beautiful, Mr. Palette. Of the Bride I will say so 
 much : her look is what the Scotch call sonsy ;^ caps, cambric 
 ribbons and equipments all betoken an ingenuous wholesome 
 character. , 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 JOHN GIBB 
 
 [1622 .?] 
 
 One day at Theobalds his Majesty discussing weighty 
 affairs of State, bethinks him of a certain bundle of Papers, 
 reports or such like of some Public functionary, which will 
 be of essential service to him. He calls for them ; to his 
 astonishment they are not to be found. With waxing im- 
 patience he summons this person and that to no purpose ; 
 summons John Gibb, his faithful Scotch valet, who has 
 
 ^ Sonsy = well-conditioned, good-humoured, sensible, engaging, 
 
 K 
 
146 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 attended him out of Scotland, faithful as the shadow to the 
 Sun, and never been found wanting : ' Where are those 
 ' Papers ? ' ' Your Majesty, I know not, I never had them." — 
 
 ' Nonsense, I gave them to you ; find them, or by ! ' 
 
 His Majesty begins to swear horribly, to rage like the cave 
 of ^Eolus, threatening to dissolve Nature or eat the cai-pets 
 from the floor. John Gibb falls on his knees, calls Heaven 
 to witness, as he is his Majesty's faithful slave to death, that 
 he never saw these Papers, never saw them, or heard of them, 
 is ignorant of them as the babe unborn. The cave of .Eolus 
 rages with horrible oaths, more dreadfully than ever, rages, 
 stamps, smites the kneeling Gibb on the breast or abdomen 
 with his royal foot ! There is life in the humblest oyster, 
 in all living things. John Gibb starts to his legs in 
 silence ; in silence issues from the royal presence, beckons his 
 horse from the stable, and mounts, determined to ride to the 
 end of the Earth rather than remain. No sooner is Gibb 
 gone in this manner than some Secretary or Subaltern Official 
 aroused in his closet bv the bruit that has everywhere arisen, 
 hurries to the royal presence with the papers in his hand, 
 saying, ' May it please your Majesty, here ! Your Majesty 
 ' gave them to me ! ' ' And where is John Gibb ? ' cries his 
 Majesty. John Gibb has ridden towards the end of the 
 world. Pungent remorse convulses the royal breast into 
 new tempest or counter-tempest. 'Ride, run,' cries his 
 Majesty, all in frenzy, ' bring me back John Gibb or I will 
 ' die. Ride, I say ; tell him I will not break bread till I see 
 ' his face again ; he will kill his King if he returns not. 
 ' Ride like the wind, and the whirlwind ! ' — Poor IVIajesty ; 
 the Equerries riding like the whirlwind, overtake John Gibb 
 in a very stern humour about Tottenham Cross, on his way 
 to London ; conjure him, not without difficulty, back again ; 
 his Majesty blubbers over him in an uncontrollable tempest 
 of tears, O Gibb, O Gibb, falls down on his knees to him, to 
 John Gibb, swears he will never rise again till Gibb forgive 
 him. Think of it ; it is very unmaje.stic, and yet I have 
 
CHAP. XXIV.] THE SPANISH MATCH 147 
 
 known pattern characters of the Solomon and other sorts, 
 who never in their lives were equal to such a thing ! I con- 
 sider his Majesty a good man wrong placed ; the function of 
 him was to be a Schoolmaster not a King ; he should have 
 been bred up rigorously to command that infirm temper ; 
 there in a calm manner how beautifully had he taught the 
 young idea how to shoot, and been respected in his parish ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE SPANISH MATCH ^ 
 
 [1623] 
 
 We can form no image of the just horror with which our 
 ancestors of that age regarded Spain. Spain, the eldest son 
 of the Man of Sin ; chosen champion of Antichrist, whose 
 function is to be the enemy of God. Very potent ; yes, the 
 sun never sets on his Empire ; among the kingdoms of this 
 world he is greatest ; sits there on his Ormuz and Golconda 
 throne, warring against the Most High. To the beast soul he 
 is as a God ; what can withstand him and his treasure-heaps 
 and millions of armed men ? asks the beast soul. But woe 
 to the man soul that considers him as such. Falsity seated on 
 twenty Golcondas, dost thou think it can prosper ? I think 
 it cannot. In God's Scriptures, in all printed and not yet 
 printed Scriptures, I read his doom. He wars against the 
 Most High, and cannot prosper. His doom is certain, if ever 
 any's was. God shall arise to Judgment, the hour continually 
 draws nigh. They shall perish by the brightness of His 
 coming, — stricken with intolerable splendour, they shall vanish 
 to the Night and to the den of Eternal Woe. 
 
 A terrible entity this same Spain. Its gloomy wing over- 
 shadowing; one half the globe : a dark Western world with 
 its El Dorados, Romish Inquisitions, monopolies, and horrid 
 
 ' The proposed marriage of the Prince of Wales to the Spanish Infanta. 
 
148 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 cruelties. A Western Hemisphere given to Antichrist, the 
 Enemy of God. There, in those dark countries, in those dark 
 gold mines worked by the blood of poor black men, are forged 
 the war-armaments, the infernal thunder, with which Anti- 
 christ persecutes the Saints of God. A dark world, from 
 which none yet has dared to tear away the veil. Our Drakes 
 and Frobishers lifted the veil ; valiantly ventured in, illumi- 
 nated with English cannon-fire those kingdoms of Night ; 
 brought home rich prizes, gleams of practical Romance. A 
 true Wonderland, that Western Region ; splendent with 
 jewels and gold, where mercy and justice never come, ^^'hose 
 veil is wonder and darkness ; whose God is the Devil. 
 
 So far as I can discern, the whole foreign policy of James 
 consists in soliciting alliance with this potent, world-rich, 
 wondrous, but infernal country. ' Conservatism,"' yes holding 
 by what is already established, what has money in its pocket, — 
 even though the Devil be partner in the concern. The whole 
 English Nation thinks not so. It says from the depth of its 
 heart, No partnership with the Devil. His Majesty who has 
 such a wondrous head of theological Avit, hopes partly, I 
 suspect, to convert this Spanish Devil. Dreams to that effect 
 soothe the royal conscience. If we were once united in league 
 of amity, who knows what light I might throw on Religion, 
 too, for that great king, nay, for the Pope himself ? The 
 Pope is not so bad, if he would give up meddling with the 
 Supremacy of Kings. I have certainly in theology an acumen 
 that seeks its fellow. The Pope and we might join halfway; 
 the unspeakable miseries of Euro})e healed. — — Perhajis 
 the soul of all James's policy was this Spanish Match. AVhat 
 a thing will it be for England to have the richest country of 
 this Planet at its back, and probably heal up the Reformation 
 split itself in Europe ! 
 
 Deej) stroke of kingcraft ! Can anything be more unpros- 
 perous ? As unlucky as the Book of S})orts for turning 
 [Catholics in] England to Protestantism ; as the settlement of 
 the Scotch Kirk by putting Tulchan Bishoj)s over it ! His 
 
CHAP. XXIV.] THE SPANISH MATCH 149 
 
 wise Majesty, most eloquent of living kings, is not wise to 
 discern the true Grand Tendency, I think. Eloquence, king- 
 craft, are good ; hut it is vain to try the Laws of Natiu-e with 
 such alteratives. The Laws of Nature, the Law of Right and 
 Truth, the Eternal Course of things, may it please your 
 Majesty, is steadily flowing otherwise ; which no Second 
 Solomon can counteract. If all this that you are so elocjuently 
 pleading, assiduously establishing, should ha})pen not to be 
 the truth, what a crop of dragon's teeth will you have been 
 sowing broadcast, all your days ! Swashing and sowing, with 
 that eloquent tongue and mind of yours, mere dragon's teeth, 
 which rise up as armed men ! Woe to the king who cannot 
 discern amid the topcurrents, backwaters and froth eddies what 
 the grand true tendency is. He is no king, but a stuffed 
 king's Cloak merely, a Tulchan king ; a king of shreds and 
 patches, that will be torn up yet and flung into the fire. 
 
 The Puritan Mob at Drury Lane had some significance ; 
 nuich more, and to the like effect, the Mobs at the Spanish 
 Ambassador's. As in a faint whisper, the cardinal movement 
 of the English mind does there speak to us. I find two 
 Spanish Mobs in these years ; riotous, violent, indicative. 
 
 First Spanish Mob is 12th July, 1618; second is 3rd 
 December, 1620. We are reduced to read the thought of 
 England in dumb hieroglyphics, in popular connnotions, how 
 we can. There are of us that remember the Armada yet ; 
 and the giant ships, with big bellying sails, like big vultures 
 sent of the Devil to pounce upon us. The Gunpowder Plot, 
 and lit match miraculously snatched from it, is yet young. 
 Both Houses and your Majesty in the middle of them, were 
 near springing skyward on that occasion. The Scarlet Woman 
 that sitteth on her Seven Hills, making the kingdoms drunk 
 with the wine of her abominations — we know her, we have to 
 all eternity rejected her. Not with Nox and the clammy 
 putrescence of the Dead and Unbelievable, will we of England 
 take our lot. Away with that ; it is disowned of God, it has 
 
150 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 become unbelievable to men. Our part is Forward, not 
 backward ! 
 
 Of this poor king's Parliaments we have yet said nothing, 
 A singular Entity these English Parliaments ; almost as 
 unknown to us as the Spanish Main, Horse-loads of writing 
 on them, too ; but writing which no man can read, which no 
 man can remember when read. From 400 to 600^ human 
 individuals assembled there under complex conditions to 
 consult concerning the arduous affairs of the kingdom, at a 
 distance of two hundred years and more, dull enough at first, 
 they are become ditchwater, Stygian Marshes and death-pools 
 for the intellect of man. Sleep w^ell, ye old Parliaments, till 
 the general Trump of Doom awaken you, and then in a very 
 summary manner ; for to gods and men you Jiave become 
 dead, clannny, noisome, — ' dead for a ducat ! ' 
 
 We find however, that the Spanish Match and the consti- 
 tution of Puritan Parliaments are intimately related to each 
 other. Had there been real Kings still in England, instead 
 of Sham-kings fancying themselves real, and Sham-kings 
 knowing that they are sham, how different had been the 
 development of English Parliaments ; how different the whole 
 History of the world ! Parliaments in old times had agreed 
 well with kings ; as realities do naturally with things real. 
 Had the Captain of the English people, he who with big 
 plumed hat and other insignia stood there to guide the 
 march of England through the undiscovered Deep, but known 
 in verity what the real road was, and been prompt to take it 
 always wisely, and say, ' Hither ; this way, ye brave ! "* what 
 need had he to quarrel with his Serjeants and Corporals ? 
 The Serjeants and Corporals and all the Host down to the 
 meanest drummer, all but some few mutineers, easily repressed, 
 
 ^ Rushworth states that the original members of the Long Parliament (1640) 
 were exactly 500 in number. Forster says there were between 3 and 400 
 members in the Parliament of 1628. In James's Parliaments the nimiber would 
 be still smaller; but in the above estimate Carlylo may have had both Lords 
 and Commons in mind. 
 
CIIAI-. xxiv.J THE SPANISH MATCH 151 
 
 had answered as from of old, ' Yea, Captain ; Forward, and 
 ' God save you ! we follow always ! ' But when your chief 
 Captain took the Spanish Match, Antichrist and the Devil 
 and all the dead putrid Past which had still money in its 
 pocket, to be the road ; — which was not the road ; which the 
 Eternal had declared in written Hebrew words, and in Divine 
 instincts, audible in all true English hearts, to be the road to 
 Ruin temporal and eternal, — what could your poor Corporals, 
 Serjeants, Drummers and the Host in general do ? They 
 had to pause in sorrowful amazement, to wring their hands, 
 cry to the gods ; — stretch their old Parliamentary Formulas ; 
 in some way or other contrive not to go Devil-ward ! — Alas, 
 good kings for the ever-widening Entity called English 
 Nation were difficult to get ; the Earth is importuning 
 Heaven at this hour everywhere with the question. How 
 shall we get them ? Brothers, by knowing them better. 
 They were there, if you had had eyes to recognise them, — 
 if you had been real God-worshippers and not Tailor-god 
 worshippers. If you had been real worshippers of God, 
 would you not have recognised the Godlike when you saw it 
 in this world ? What was the use of all your worship other 
 but even that same ? It was for that end alone ; for that 
 simply, and no other that I could ever discover. Alas, the 
 Moslem and others have said, God is Great. But this 
 English People is beginning to say. Tailors Shutz and 
 Company are great. Do you call that bit of black wood 
 God ? indignantly asks my friend Mahomet. You rub it 
 with oil, and the flies stick in it, you stupid idolatrous 
 individuals. Do you call that Plumedhat and Toomtabard 
 a Captain ? We know not what to call him, answer the 
 English sorrowfully. Human nomenclature has not yet 
 mastered the significance of him. His name is — Toomtabard, 
 the Deity of Flunkies. Woe is to us, and to our children. 
 Yes, it had been all otherwise had they found good kings, 
 kings approximately good. Kings approximately good had 
 never gone into Spanish Matches ; had known Puritanism for 
 
152 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 the noblest ; rude as it was ; and there would have been no 
 Spanish jMatches, no misbred Prince Charles, no Oliver Pro- 
 tector, but only Oliver Farmer, no rebellious Parliament, no 
 American Revolution. — The Supreme Powers willed it other- 
 wise. 
 
 The reader therefore understands why, in August, 1623, 
 bonfires blaze and steeplebells ring joyful all over England 
 for the Prince's return from Spain. An unspeakable mercy ; 
 the dark Maelstrom of Antichrist has not sucked into its 
 abysses this hopeful Prince. Thank Heaven, we have our 
 own again ; and no thick-lipjied Infanta, Austrian Daughter 
 of the Devil. Ding-dong, therefore ; ding-dong ; — and let us 
 dance about the bonfire ! Such a gleam rises all through 
 England in these harvest months, struggling up under the 
 harvest moon some short way towards the stars. Veritably 
 as a kind of twilight in the black waste night, I still discern 
 it ; let the reader consider it well. 
 
 Posterity, says Lord Keeper Finch discoursing to the 
 Parliament, will consider the thing incredible. Posterity, 
 which never wants exjjerience of distraction in the sons of 
 men, does still make shift to believe it, — has ceased now 
 altogether to care a straw for it. They went, they took 
 post through France, this sublime young Prince, sublime 
 young Duke ; under name of Jack Smith and Tom Smith ; 
 in big black wigs, scattering store of money ; and their 
 attendant and factotum was Richard Graham, a shiftv 
 Border lad, used belike to Border reiving ; once a lad in 
 Buckingham's stables, but advanced gradually, so shifty was 
 he, to be Equerry, Spanish Factotum, Sir Richard, and a 
 prosperous gentleman, — not extremely beautiful to me. 
 True there is merit in him, he subsists to this day ; some 
 toughness of vitality, a merit of being able to subsist, — such 
 as the Whitechapel Jews manifest : none of the highest 
 merits, though an authentic one. 
 
 The details of this sublime expedition in the conunon 
 Dryasdust are very unauthentic ; borrowed mostly from 
 
CHAP.xxv.] JAMESES PARLIAMENTS 153 
 
 Howeirs Letters.^ James Howell, a (juickwittecl, locjuacious, 
 scribacious, self-conceited Welshman of that time. He was 
 presumably extant in Spain during these months ; his Letters 
 were })ut together above twenty years afterwards. Letters 
 partly intended, I think, as a kind of Complete Letter- writer; 
 containing bits of History too, bits of wit and learning, 
 })hilosophy and elegant style; an elegant readers vade-mecum ; 
 intended, alas, above all, to procvn-e a modicum of indis- 
 pensable money for poor Howell. They have gone through 
 twelve editions or more : they are infinitely more readable 
 than most of the torpid rubbish, and fractions of them, if 
 you discriminate well, are still worth reading. These are the 
 foundations whereon our accounts of this sublime Expedition 
 rest. Very unauthentic ; but in fine we care nothing for the 
 business itself. Alas, the one interest in it is this most 
 authentic fact : That the bells all rang in England when it 
 ended in failure. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 James's parliaments 
 
 Parliaments keep generally sitting during this king's 
 reign ; Lords sit, and Commons too, as they have done since 
 Henry iil's time, granting supplies, attending to grievances ; 
 a o-reat Council of the Nation ; not a little mysterious, 
 ignorant even themselves of what meaning lies in them. 
 There let them sit, consulting de arduis regiii conccrnentihu.s, 
 etc., — deep down in the Death-kingdoms, never to be evoked 
 into living memory any more ; — not till an abler Editor than 
 this present make his appearance, or a public better disposed. 
 
 James's First Parliament, nearly blown up with gunpowder 
 once, sat, nevertheless, long ; — seven years, unscathed, from 
 
 ' ' Howell is very questionable,' says Carlyle in a marginal note on a page of 
 his copy of the Pictorial History of England. 
 
154 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part I. 
 
 the Spring of 1604 to the Spring of 1611 ; doing the 
 arduous matters of the kingdom the best it could. Not 
 wholly to his Majesty's satisfaction ; — as indeed, what 
 Parliament, representing a real England, could agree with 
 this king, who represented an imaginary England ? At 
 Hampton Court Conference and on other occasions, we have 
 seen his Majesty refuse to recognise the meaning of this real 
 England, the highest purpose it had, the dim instinct of it, 
 unuttered, unutterable, but living at all hours in every drop 
 of its blood. We have elsewhere shown the progress and 
 effect of this. In brief, his Majesty, little as he dreams of it, 
 has long since divorced himself from England ; goes one way, 
 while England goes another. 
 
 His Majesty had by this time taken up with beautiful 
 Robert Car ; already made him Rochester ; — had decided to 
 try another way for supplies. The Parliamentary way is 
 barred for the present : there is instead within reach the 
 way of benevolences, of selling monopolies, titles ; — his tonnage 
 and poundage,^ many perquisites, purveyances ; — one could try 
 benevolences ; in some way live without continual contra- 
 diction. For three years his Majesty tries it ; a difficult way 
 this too ; cumbrous, confused, unfruitful : shall not we try a 
 Parliament again ? Alert Car and others revolve it in their 
 minds ; say they will ' undertake ' to get a compliant Parlia- 
 ment ; by their interest in Shires and Boroughs, by their 
 unrivalled skill in managing Elections, the majority shall be 
 secure and devoted to his Majesty. Try it, then. They try 
 it, and fail. The Second Parliament of James, 5th April 
 1614, called the Undertakers' Parliament, got on as ill as 
 possible. King's favour for the Scots, Recusants, Monopolies, 
 etc., etc., being the burden of their song ; it was suddeidv 
 dissolved, says Camden, 7th June — not one Act passed : and 
 
 ^ As these terms are often misunderstood, it may not be amiss to say that 
 Tonnage meant a certain duly or impost on eacli (tin of wine ; and Poundage 
 ditto on each twenty shillings' worth of other goods. Weight was not a considera- 
 tion in the computation of the tax. 
 
CHAP. XXV.] JAMES'S PARLIAMENTS 155 
 
 all their proceedings declared null and void. This was the 
 Undertaker Parliament — not as if the Parliament had belonged 
 to the burying profession, and sat all in black, with Cambric 
 weepers — no, but because men ' undertook ^ for it that it 
 should be compliant. Wherein, as we see, they signally 
 failed. There was a terrible moroseness in this Parliament ; 
 their appetite for Popish Recusants was keen. ' They all 
 ' took the sacrament in St. Margarefs," as the wont was ; 
 ' none refused it ' ; no Papist could be detected by that test. 
 They were dissolved suddenly after two months, and not one 
 Act passed. 
 
 ^Monopolies again, therefore ; tonnage, poundage, purvey- 
 ances, benevolences ; monopolies have increased to the number 
 of seven hundred. So we weather it, through Overbury 
 Murders, Bacon Keeperships, till Somerset is sent away, till 
 the Palatinate is on fire, till a new world has come, Avith 
 difficulty ever increasing — and we decide at length to try a 
 new Parliament, 30th January, 1620-1. 
 
 On 30th January, 1620-1, after two adjournments, the 
 king goes in state to open this, his Third Parliament. 
 
 \'ery dim, we have said, are these Parliaments : dim and 
 musty all the records of them. Escaping out of that 
 impalpable dim-mouldering element, how glad are we to 
 catch this concrete coloured glimpse, through a pair of eyes 
 that still see for us ! Sir Simonds D'Ewes, a brisk Suffolk 
 gentleman, of dapper manners, of most pious most polite, 
 high-flown Grandisonian ways, amazingly learned in the law 
 and history of Parliaments for so young a man : — he, we 
 perceive, has come up to Town, got a convenient place, and 
 is there for all ages, or as many ages as will look. We 
 extract his own words, with many thanks to him : — here it 
 all is, as fresh as gathered : 
 
 '1620-1. There liad long- since writs of summons gone forth for the 
 calling of a Parliament, of which all men that had any religion hoped 
 much good, and daily prayed for a happy issue. For both France and 
 Germany needed support and help from England, or the true professors 
 
156 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 of the Gospel were likely to perish in each Nation, under the power and 
 tyranny of the Antichristian adversary. 
 
 ' I got a convenient place in the morning, not witliout some danger 
 escaped, to see his Majesty pass to Parliament in state. It is only worth 
 the inserting in this particular that Prince Charles rode with a rich 
 coronet upon his head, V)etween the Serjeants at Arms, carrying maces, 
 and the Pursuivants carrying their pole-axes, both on foot. Next before 
 his Majesty rode Henry V'ere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain 
 of England, with Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Earl Marshal of 
 England, on his left hand, both bare-headed. Tlien followed his Majesty, 
 with a rich crown upon his head, and most royally caparisoned. 
 
 ' I, amongst the nobility, chiefly viewed the Lord Seymour, Earl of 
 Hertford, now some eighty-three years old, and even decrepit with age. 
 He was born, as I was informed, tlie same day King F^dward the Sixth 
 was ripped out of the Lady Jane Seymour's womb, his aunt. 
 
 ' In the King's short progress from ^^'hitehall to AVestminster, these 
 passages following were accounted somewhat remarkable. First : that 
 he spake often and lovingly to the people, standing thick and threefold 
 on all sides to behold him : "God bless ye ! God bless ye ! " contrary to 
 his former hasty and passionate custom, which often in his sudden dis- 
 temper, would bid "a pox," or "plague" on such as flocked to see him. 
 Secondlji : though the windows were filled with many great ladies as he 
 rode along, yet that he spake to none of them but to the Marquis of 
 Buckingham's mother and wife, who was the sole daughter and heiress of 
 the Earl of Rutland. Thirdly : that he spake particularly, and bowed, to 
 the Count of Gondomar, tlie Spanish Ambassador. And Fourthly : that 
 looking up to one window, as he passed, full of gentlewomen or ladies, 
 all in yellow bands, he cried out aloud : " a pox take ye ! are ye there .^ " 
 — at wliich, being much ashamed, they all withdrew themselves suddenly 
 from the window. — Doctor Andrews preached in AA^estminster Church 
 before the King, Prince, and Lords Spiritual and Temporal. 
 
 ' Being afterwards assembled in the Upper House, and the King seated 
 on his tlu-one, he made a pitliy and eloquent speech, promising the 
 removal of Monopolies, of which there were at this time 700 in tlie 
 kingdom, granted by Letters Patent under the Great Seal, to the enrich- 
 ing some few projectors and the impoverishing all the kingdom besides. 
 Next, he promised, with his people's assistance, to consent to aid the 
 King of Bohemia, his son-in-law, and not to enforce the Spanish Match 
 without their consent ; and tlierefore in conclusion desired them cheer- 
 fully and speedily to agree upon a sufficient supply of his wants by 
 Subsidies ; promising them, for the time to come, to play tlie good 
 husband, and that in part he had done so already. I doubt not, how- 
 ever, these blessed promises took not a due and proportionable effect, 
 
CHAP. XXV.] J A M E S\S P A 11 L I A M E N T S 157 
 
 accordiiifj- as the loyal subject did hope ; yet did Kiii^ James (a Prince 
 whose piety, learning and gracious government after-ages may miss and 
 wish for) really at this time intend the performance of them.' ^ 
 
 Thus goes King James to open his Third Parliament. 
 The Sermon by Dr. Andrews, sublime as a Second Canto of 
 Childe Harold, shall remain unknown to us ; unknown what 
 passes in the sublime Parliament itself, or known only as 
 a hum of many voices, crying earnestly in such English dialect 
 as they have : ' Dread Sovereign of this English Nation, lead 
 
 * us not to Antichrist and the Devil. Dread Sovereign, our 
 
 * right road is not Devilward, but Godward : woe 's me ! we 
 ' cannot, nay, must not, go to the Devil ! "" In dim Parlia- 
 mentary language, engrossed on the old Records, incredibly 
 diffuse, and almost undecipherable for mortal tedium, this is 
 what I read, — this and nothing more. Majesty quitting 
 D'Ewes's field of vision has got into the hands of Dryasdust, 
 and merges into the eternal dusk, vanishing from the cognis- 
 ance of men. 
 
 I'llAGUE rilOJECTILES BEGINNING OF THE THIRTY- YEARS WAR 
 
 [1621] 
 
 Something I would have given to be at Newmarket, when 
 the Deputation from the Commons came to him in 1621. 
 His Majesty's old eyes flashed fire; and there burst from him, 
 with highly satirical snarl, not unbeautiful to me at this 
 distance : ' Twelve chairs ! Here are twelve kings come to 
 ' visit me ! ' ^ The quarrel I will trouble no man with ; all 
 
 ^ D'Ewes's Autobiography (Lond. 1S45), i. 169 ct seqcj. 
 
 - Carlyle here quotes Arthur Wilson (see his Life and Reign of James I. 
 London, 1653, p. 172): 'The King entertained their messengers very roughly ; 
 and some say he called for twelve Chaires for them, saying here are twelve Kings 
 come to me.' According to another report the King called 'Bring stools for 
 the ambassadors' (see State Papers Doni., cxxiv. , — Chamberlain to Carleton, 
 15 Dec. 1621) : ' It seems they had a favourable reception, and the king played 
 with them, calling for stools for the ambassadors to sit down.' The majority of 
 later historians have accepted Wilson's report without question. But whether 
 
158 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 men, as I have often done, would straightway forget it. The 
 record stands in Arthur Wilson ; read, whoso is of power to 
 take interest in it. The Commons, with awestruck thought, 
 sat trembling, yet obstinately quiescent. Our formula 
 stretched, so far, must not contract itself again ? No, not 
 unless his Majesty could take into the course of going God- 
 ward, — which I fear is not likely ! Devilward, said the 
 instincts of them all, we cannot go. His Majesty, now 
 growing old, fonder of peace than ever : what can he do but 
 yield ? 
 
 The truth is his Majesty is growing old, and tribulations 
 are thickening on him. The Spanish Match cannot make 
 right progress ; perverse men, perverse events, all England, 
 nay, all Europe is turning against it. What hum is this in 
 the Middle Aisle of PauPs ; dim image to be gathered there 
 of a world-contest going to take arms again ? Couriers in 
 those months of Summer, 1621, going and coming very thick 
 on the business of the Palatinate. Such a world hum I have 
 never yet heard in the Middle Aisle. Battle of Armageddon 
 coming on ! You that have hearts in your bodies ; you that 
 love bright honour ; you that worshij)ped the Lady Elizabeth 
 when she went in diamond brightness and long black hair a 
 daughter of the galaxy, a Protestant Mary Queen of Scots, a 
 young Elizabeth Queen of Hearts ! — Or shall we give the 
 story in connected manner, as an eye-witness looking his best 
 from two centuries oft* records it for us ? 
 
 Wilson's or Chamberlain's account is the more correct, or whether there is much 
 truth in either, is very uncertain, — and very unimportant. Wilson, however, 
 records another story which has some interest in this connexion : he says that 
 when the king (soon after his return from Scotland in 1617) was about to leave 
 London for Theobalds early on a Monday morning, his carriages passed through 
 the City on Sunday with a great deal of clatter and noise during Divine Service. 
 The Lord Mayor hearing of it commanded that the carriages should be stopped. 
 Complaint was made to James. ' It put the King into a great rage, swearing 
 he thought there had been no more /ciiigs in England Init himself ; yet after 
 he was a little cooled he sent a warrant to the Lord Mayor, commanding him 
 to let them pass, which he obeyed.' — Wilson, Life and Kcipi of James /., 106, 
 or Kennet, ii. 743. 
 
CHAP. XXV.] JAMESES PARLIAMENTS 159 
 
 THE THREE PRAGUE PROJECTILES 
 
 If England itself shall be dim for us under James, how 
 infinitely dimmer the rest of the world ! Henry of Bourbon 
 with his Henr'iadcs shall rustle on unheeded ; unheeded also 
 the German Kaisers and their debateable Rekhstage. A 
 mighty simmering darkness, — wide as the living Earth, 
 deep as the dead Earth. Deep, the very thought refuses 
 to sound it : where did man begin ? Night-Empire ; Hela's 
 Empire, — Dryasdust, vexer of minds, let these be respectable 
 to us. 
 
 And yet across the hazy European continent is not this a 
 phenomenon worth noting ; this projection of three human 
 respectable individuals from the Castle of Prague ? Visible to 
 us, lucent across the dusk of ages ? Three respectable in- 
 dividuals ; they descend violently from a window, as inert 
 projectiles do, accelerative law of Gravitation acting on them, 
 velocity increasing as the time, space as the square of the 
 time, in a truly frightful manner ! Whence ? Whither ? 
 These are the questions. 
 
 The Bohemians are a hot-tempered, vehement, Sclavonic 
 people, given to Protestantism almost since the time of 
 WicklifFe, and involved in continual troubles on that 
 account. Of martyred Huss and the wars that rose 
 from the ashes of Huss ; of Zisca and his fighting while 
 alive and his skin bequeathed to be a drum that he might 
 still help to fight when dead ; of these, a century before the 
 time of Luther, all men have heard. And now, a century 
 after Luther, it is still a trouble and contention, in that hot 
 Sclavonic country, concerning Protestantism. The German 
 Kaisers keep their word ill with these Bohemians ; the 
 German Kaisers are false feeble men, in straits from without 
 and from within ; the throne of the Scarlet Woman built upon 
 confusions is not easy to hold up. How Kaiser Rodolph 
 quarrelled with Matthias, and Matthias with Rodolph, and 
 
160 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 signed treaties and broke them, and again signed and con- 
 firmed them, and harrowed the poor Bohemian Protestants 
 now this way, now tliat, were long and sad to say. The 
 Bohemians got a kind of jNIagna Charta, Majcftats-brief, in 
 1609, — three years after this they got jMatthias for their 
 king. Do we not know that Rodolph sat surrounded with 
 astrologers, fire-eaters, and jugglers, while Kepler the Astro- 
 nomer, going over his calculations seventy times, having a 
 pension of 18/. which was never paid, had to die broken- 
 hearted and as it were unjustly starved ? It is the same 
 llodolph, and Matthias is his brother. Wonder not at the 
 state of Bohmenland. Rodolph at signing of the last treaty 
 did not write ujion the paper, so much as splash upon it, so 
 angry was he ; and dashed his bonnet on the ground at his 
 brother's feet, poor man, stamping in much rage, — and 
 happily died very soon. And now Matthias Kaiser has made 
 a Catholic Ferdinand his king of the Romans, king of the 
 ]3ohemians, and Bohemian Magna Charta is again openly- 
 violated in the teeth of your Imperial word and signature, and 
 Protestant churches pulled down by subaltern Jesuit Officials, 
 servants of the Devil ; and the Bohemian humour is harrowed 
 up once more, and fretted to the flaming point, and the 
 Estates have assembled, and Prague streets are swarming with 
 an angry armed population, — who have agreed on one thing. 
 That the Honourable the Herr Wilhelm von Slavata and 
 Javeslav von Martinitz, the two chief incendiary officials who 
 betray Bohemia, shall be sent out of the country. These two 
 Privy Councillors, Slavata and Martinitz, shall brook the 
 Bohemian Privy Council no more, but seek an establishment 
 elsewhere. It is the 23rd day of May, 1618, when matters 
 have come to this })itch in Prague. The Deputation of 
 Estates, Count Thurn and other dignitary patriots at their 
 head, have gone to Palace State House of Prague, armed 
 population crowding at their licels to hear the Imperial 
 rescript, to answer it by announcement. That Martinitz and 
 Slavata shall ])ack and depart. The Sunnner sun shines 
 
CHAP. XXV.] JAMES'S PARLIAMENTS 161 
 
 without ; debates in the interior Council Room most probably 
 run high ; the agitated multitude on Prague streets watch 
 and gaze expectant ; Posterity two centuries off and more 
 gazes expectant : See at last ! an upper window of the 
 high State House, sixty feet or so, suddenly opens its folding 
 leaves ; suddenly a four-limbed projectile body bolts forth, 
 committed to the law of Gravitation, to a desperate fall of 
 sixty feet : it is the Honourable Herr Javeslav von Martinitz, 
 lights happily on a dung heap, plunges to the neck therein, 
 unhurt, but dreadfully astonished. And see again a second 
 precisely similar phenomenon : it is the Honourable Herr 
 Slavata ; he falls not so soft ; is unkilled but lame I doubt 
 for life. And, see, finally a third : Fabricius Platier, the 
 Secretary of these two, he also takes the frightful lover's-leap ; 
 — lights happily on the dungheap, he ; gathers himself to- 
 gether, and having steeped and washed himself makes off to 
 Vienna to report news. The Bohemian land and Diplomacy 
 is thus cleared of these three sooner than was expected. This 
 is the ' Whence ? "* of that extraordinary descent of human 
 projectiles still visible through the dusk of centuries. As 
 to the ' "V^^lither ? ' of it, that is a much longer story. 
 
 These three human beings, flung out into the murky sea 
 of European things, raise commotion of billows, eddies, tides 
 and swelling inundations, which extend into all regions, for 
 the sea itself is no common sea, but a miraculous living one. 
 Not Bethlen Gabor in Transylvania, not Richelieu in France, 
 no king of Denmark, Sweden, Poland ; least of all a king of 
 England, nor any living man, can escape the influence of it. 
 There come new Bohemian Elections of a king to go before 
 them ; they unhappily elect Friedrich ; ^ and he unhappily 
 accepts. There come Battles of Prague, frightful Defeats of 
 Prague : Friedrich the king sat at dinner with his Queen and 
 
 ^ Called derisively by the Germans the ' Winter- Konig' (Winter King), 
 meaning to imply thereby that he was a mere snow-king, very inert, very soluble, 
 and not likely to last long. He was crowned at Prague, 4th Nov. 1619. See 
 Carlyle's Friedrich, i. 329. 
 
 L 
 
162 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Court, during this Prague Battle ; but the musket volleys 
 came too near, breathless messengers rushed in, king and 
 queen had to spring to horse without packing their goods, 
 and gallop,^ — her Majesty rode behind the Earl of Dorset 
 (Sir Edward Sackville) — they all galloped towards Holland ; 
 the royal pair towards mere disaster, obstruction, and want 
 of all things. Six months of royalty brought loss of the 
 Palatinate itself, and a life all bound in shallows and mis- 
 fortunes. It involved our poor Solomon in Spanish treaties, 
 in endless embassies, in life-long effort to recover this 
 Palatinate by kingcraft without Battle. Impossible : for 
 Germany, Catholic against Protestant, is all gone to battle ; 
 it is a universal European war of Protestant against Catholic 
 once more : unhappy Europe ! And Gustavus comes in, and 
 on the other hand Wallenstein with his Croats, with his 
 Pappenheims and Tillys : it is what they call the Thirty- 
 Years'' War, the war of Protestantism, hardly exampled for 
 misery and desolating violence in these new ages. New 
 truth when it comes into the world has a stormy welcome, 
 for most part. The old foolish world, it will not learn that 
 Divine Truth comes out of Heaven, and must and will by 
 eternal law rule here on Earth : admit the new Truth, it is 
 as sunlight, blessed, fruitful for all ; resist the new Truth, 
 it has to become as lightning, and reduce all to ashes before 
 the blessedness can arrive. This war of Protestantism with 
 its flaming Magdeburgs, its gloomy Tillys, Pappenheims, its 
 murderous murdered Wallenstein, is wastefuller than even the 
 war of Jacobinism has hitherto been in these new ages. 
 And so there is at last the war of the Reformation to be 
 fought. Murk of Hell is to rise against Bright of Heaven, 
 and try which is stronger. In death-wrestle, grim, terrible, 
 world-wide, for a space of Thirty Years. Our Fathers ! — 
 neither was your life made of down and honey ! History 
 could summon remarkable English fragments from that 
 German scene of things ; but will not at present, being bound 
 ^ Sunday, 8th November, 1620. lOid., 331 n. 
 
CHAP. XXV.] JAMES'S PARLIAMENTS 163 
 
 elsewhither. This Protestant war of Germany is as the loud 
 prelude of a Protestant war in England. From a worldwide 
 orchestra, with l)attle trumpets, cannon thunders and the 
 crash of towns and kingdoms, rises the curtain of our smaller 
 but still more significant English Drama. In Germany it 
 asks but that, for the present, it may be allowed to live and 
 continue. God's Bible, is not that the real rule of this 
 world, with its depths and its heights, its times and its 
 eternities ? Universal Protestantism has already answered 
 Yes, and seems to think the matter finished : but here is an 
 English Puritanism rising which says : In the name of God, 
 let us walk by it, then, and front all the times and the 
 eternities on it ! Protestantism was to have its Apotheosis 
 in England, — to rise here into the eternal, and produce its 
 Heroes like other divine Isms. 
 
 Noble Englishmen of warlike temper, not a few, I see 
 fighting in this German scene ; Scottishmen a great multi- 
 tude : whither better can a noble-hearted young man go ? 
 To the souls of Protestant men it is the cause of causes. 
 Shall God's Truth, indubitable to all open hearts, survive in 
 this world, or be smothered again under the Pope's cloth 
 chimera, incredible to all but half- shut hearts, — frightful, 
 detestable to all but such ? Truly a great question. For 
 as yet there is no babble of toleration and so forth, alas, 
 there is yet no Exeter Hall Christianity, but quite another 
 sort ; doubt and indifference do not yet say to themselves, 
 How noble am I ; don't you observe how I tolerate ? But 
 the toleration there, and always, meant by good men, was 
 tolerance of the unessential, total eternal intolerance of the 
 other ; vow like that of Hannibal to war with it forever . . . 
 
 And so Bohemia is coming to the crisis (May, 1620); 
 couriers fly and have long been flying. Archbishop Abbot 
 has written like an English Protestant man and Chief 
 
164 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Priest ; ^ the Parliament like Englishmen have spoken and 
 voted. ' Desert not our own flesh and blood, dread Sove- 
 ' reign ; desert not the cause of God on this Earth ! ' Embark 
 on the cause of God, — good bottom that, your INIajesty ! 
 Lo, we are all here to follow you through Life and Death, 
 and to defy the very Fiends on that. ' Take the van of it,"" 
 cries Abbot ; cry the heart of England, the Parliament and 
 all authentic voices of England. Take the van of it, fear 
 nothing ; with faith, with sober energy defy all things ; 
 unfurl the flag of England in this time of doubt and dread, 
 to the expectant Nations ; let it float on the heaven's winds, 
 proclaiming to all kingdoms, sublunary and subterranean, 
 ' Lo ! Hither, ye oppressed ; we are for God's cause, we ; 
 ' God's cause is great, the Devil's cause only looks great ! ' 
 
 The poor pacific king is in sad straits ; and will be forced 
 to consent in a small degree. They will force him to go 
 voluntarily ! — And so, on the 11th day of June, audible, I 
 daresay, to Simonds d'Ewes, audible to learned Camden, my 
 truly estimable friend, ' the drums beat in the city.' Yes, to 
 a certain extent I still hear them. ' Rat-tan-tan, rat-tan, 
 ' rodody-dow : any young man that has a heart above slavery, 
 ' that has a heart to fight for Christ's Gospel and the Lady 
 ' Princess far away amid the German Popish Devils ! Princess 
 ' Elizabeth, Queen of Hearts, Queen of Bohemia too ! ' — Enlist 
 ye expectant stout young men, city apprentices, street porters, 
 
 ^ ' This Prelate (Abbot) being asked his opinion as a Privy Counsellor, while 
 he was confined to his bed with the gout, wrote the following letter to the 
 Secretary of State, 12th September 1619 : "That it was his opinion that the 
 Elector should accept the crown ; that England should support him openly ; 
 and that as soon as news of his coronation should arrive, the bells should be 
 rung, guns fired, and bonfires made, to let all Europe see that the king was 
 determined to countenance him. ... It is a great honour to our king to have 
 such a son made a king ; methinks I foresee in this the work of God, that by 
 degrees the kings of the earth shall leave the whore to desolation. Our striking 
 in will comfort the Bohemians, and bring in the Dutch and the Dane, and 
 Hungary will run the same fortune. As for money and means, let us trust God, 
 and the Parliament, as the old and honourable way of raising money."' Cabala, 
 i. p. 12. (Quoted by Ncal, History of the Puritans, ii. p. 118.) 
 
CHAP. XXV.] JAMES'S PARLIAMENTS 165 
 
 draymen and others, who stand there in your leather or woollen 
 jerkins with hearts not disinclined to blaze in this matter. — 
 Or, rather, on the whole, perhaps, do not enlist. Your cause 
 is the best a human soul could wish : but your Supreme Cap- 
 tain, alas, he is a Plumed-hat and Captain*'s Cloak hung on a 
 long pole, at the service of all the thirty-two winds. He 
 cannot lead, or command to be led, towards victory in any 
 enterprise. Good Generals, if he do choose them he will 
 desert them ; bad generalship, bad lieutenantcy, bad ser- 
 jeantcy, an issue futile, not effectual. On the whole I will 
 not enlist, much as I long to do it. 
 
 A certain proportion of men do nevertheless enlist ; good 
 Generals are to lead them : Generals Vere, Earl of Oxford, my 
 young Lord of Essex. 
 
 They got into Bohemia ; — sailed from Gravesend 22nd 
 July, 1620 ; we sent them off with many blessings, warm 
 tears. They got into Bohemia, but it proves as I said : they 
 were not supported. With grim energy, dumb, making no 
 proclamation of themselves on the page of History, they 
 fought there, and stood at bay in Frankenthal, like invincible 
 English mastiffs, begirt with clouds of Spanish wolves, cut off" 
 from all help. Frankenthal stands in the pleasant Rhine 
 country, — dost thou know it, idle English tourist of these 
 days ? Know that the ' Siege of Frankendale ' was once 
 world-famous ; that the brave died there, unconquerable and 
 without renown. Indisputably enough, there stand they, the 
 truehearted, mastiff'-faced ones, with their steeple hats, match- 
 locks, and unimproved artillery service ; grimly at bay against 
 Europe in general ; and cannot conquer, will not be con- 
 quered, — and die : Trafalgar victory, Blenheim victory, and 
 and I know not what victories, not one of these had more 
 valour at the gaining of it. 
 
166 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 GLIMPSES OF NOTABLE FIGURES IX JAMES's PARLIA- 
 MENT OF 1620-1 ACTS OF THE SAME BACON 
 
 IMONOPOLISTS 
 
 Ix this shadow of a Parliament sitting as in Hades, I, with 
 a strange emotion, notice faces not entirely unknown to me. 
 The blooming broad face of John Pym, Member for Chippen- 
 ham or Tavistock,^ a young Somersetshire gentleman, much 
 distinguished at Oxford ; learned Latin Tutors, Fathers of 
 Nonsense Verse, have written him Delight of the jMuses, a 
 very Ingenuity of a Boy : ' Lejjos puelli, delicicv ][hisanim.'' He 
 has now been in the Inns of Court, become learned in Law, sits 
 in Parliament ; has got, or hopes to get, solid Official employ- 
 ment ; speaks well — what is far more, thinks and means well : 
 the stuff of a first-rate Senator, I should say, lies in Mr. John 
 Pym. Look in his face ; there are in it the lineaments of a 
 very rhinoceros, such a field of cheeks, such a cliff of brows ; 
 the hair carelessly dishevelled, the eyes as if weary and yet 
 unweariable. He believes, every fibre of him, in God"'s truth; 
 reads the same out of Hebrew Gospels, out of English Parlia- 
 ment Rolls ; — leaves, Avherever he is reading, the Untrue in a 
 good measure lying as if unread. Cobweb does not stick to 
 him : — what an advantage in readers ! A rational, pertinent 
 man : I observe they often put him on Connnittees, though 
 young : his word is modest, sagacious, elucidative of the matter 
 in hand. 
 
 Then there is the silver-toned Sir Benjamin Rudyard (from 
 Wilton), an elegant young gentleman about Town ; on whom 
 Ben Jonson has congratulatory Epigrams ; most strange to 
 hear Gospel-texts, and mellifluous Puritanic jn'eaching from a 
 young gentleman with that cut of beard, in ruffs of that 
 quality ! How serious is the face of young Sir Benjamin ; yet 
 
 ^ He preferred Tavistock next Parliament. — Commons' Journals, i. 6Si. 
 
CH. XXVI.] GLIMPSES OF NOTABLE FIGURES 167 
 
 with delicate smiles on occasion ! The grave, the awful, is well 
 divided in these men from the ludicrous, the insignificant. 
 Man is as the chameleon ; takes his tone from the circun)- 
 ambient element : now sniffing, sneering as a humbug in the 
 midst of humbugs, struggling the best he can to be king of 
 his humbug Universe ; now silently praying, mellifluously 
 preaching as a devout Puritan in James's Parliaments ; much 
 overshadowed with the awe of his condition ; with the elegant 
 starched ruffs, with chosen phraseology, vanity cut of beard, 
 struggling to be king of his, which is a very different one ! 
 What contrasts,! 
 
 Sir Thomas Wentworth,^ of Wentwoodhouse in Yorkshire ; 
 him, too, I notice there. A tall young gentleman, of lean 
 wiry nature, of large jaws, and flashing grey eyes : com- 
 memorative now and then of the Gunpowder Treason," of 
 matters dangerous to religion and liberty ; for the rest, in- 
 clined frequently to have the matter referred to a Connnittee. 
 A proud young man ; in whom slumbers much fire, — to be 
 developed one way or the other. 
 
 Sackville, Sir Edward, he whom we saw staggering, bleed- 
 ing, near dead by dead and gory Bruce, in the meadows of 
 Tergose, — whom the dying Bruce opened his eyes yet to save, 
 and with his tongue waxing motionless said : ' Rascal, hold 
 ' thy hand ! ' — This Sackville has come back from the Antwerp 
 meadows, from Frankenthal, and much miscellaneous roving 
 and hard service ; and sits here, a most pertinent composed 
 Member of Parliament, ripening towards official and other 
 destinies. Beautiful the women call him ; beautiful the men. 
 Eloquent, too, by no means destitute of eloquence, of fruitful 
 insight, of heart-veracity, which is the mother of eloquence. 
 I hear him say, this pink of chivalry and fashion, ' The passing- 
 bell ringeth for religion.'' ' Obscene Papal spectra in Three 
 Hats, Austrian Kaisers, dusky kings of Spain, and all the 
 
 1 Created Earl of Strafford, 1 2th January 1639-40. 
 - Commons' Journals^ i. 655-6. 
 
168 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 Heathen are raging : dusky infinitudes, stirred up by that fall 
 of the Three Prague Projectiles ; — and dim oceans, do make a 
 roaring : threaten Sackville that they will engulph the last 
 fragment of Protestant firm land. The passing-bell ringeth for 
 religion; — now, if ever, let our Dread Sovereign endeavour to 
 get out his war-tuck, and lead England on ! Alas ! the war- 
 tuck will not out ; hardly do we see a glimmer of the blade of 
 it (as at Frankenthal last winter), when it is rannned home 
 again ; and we try the way of negotiative ambassadors. 
 Sackville, meanwhile, is very loyal ; would not touch upon 
 the Sovereign's prerogative for untold gold. ' Had I as many 
 ' voices as Fame is fabled to have, this your Remonstrate 
 ' Petition which toucheth on the Royal Message, should not 
 ' get one of them, Mr. Speaker ! "* ^ 
 
 Of older venerable persons, who rather hold by the Past 
 than tend to the Future, I say little. Learned Serjeant 
 Crew, one day to be Speaker Crew, — how strange, almost 
 preternatural, to hear him talk of the woman of Tekoah : 
 of an issue of blood which we will heal by touching the hem 
 of King James's garment ! He says it with the earnestness 
 of an old Prophet, this learned Serjeant, — as, indeed, Ser- 
 jeants themselves were still in earnest ; even Noy has his 
 Bible in his pocket, and would shudder if he thought he was 
 not God's servant, but only Mammon's ; — nay, Coke upon 
 Lyttleton — let profane chimerical mortals in wig and black 
 gown, now grown so chimerical, take thought of it ! — Coke 
 upon Lyttleton, when our Session ends, and we all rise to be 
 prorogued for a month, uplifts the Litany." Sir Edward 
 Coke desired the House to say after him, and he recited the 
 Collect for the King and his children (from the Gunpowder 
 Treason version) : ' Almighty God, who hast in all ages 
 * shewed thy power and mercy in the miraculous and gracious 
 
 ^ ' Sir Edward Sackvyle said, " Had he as many Voices as Fame is said to 
 have, should not have one of them, this Clause of the Prince's Marriage. " ' 
 — Commons Journal, i. 655. 
 
 ^ Ibid., i. 629. 
 
CH. XXVI.] GLIMPSES OF NOTABLE FIGURES 169 
 
 ' deliverances of thy Church and in the protection of righteous 
 ' and rehgious Kings and States professing thy holy and eternal 
 ' truth, from the wicked conspiracies and malicious practices 
 ' of the enemies thereof,' etc. etc. — Is not this one Fact in- 
 clusive of innumerable multitudes of Facts ? 
 
 Thus they in their ancient Parliament, sitting there in 
 their steeple hats and Spanish cloaks ; in presence of God 
 and King James : — the venerable and unintelligible men. 
 The passing-bell ringeth for religion, the swelling seas of 
 Antichrist and foul damnable Error, will lick out the stars 
 of heaven ; and the Dread Sovereign will not be incited to 
 take note of it : — what, and what in the world shall we do ? 
 ' I hope,' observes an honourable Baronet, — the name of him 
 is Philips,^ but who has any chance to remember it .'' — ' I hope 
 ' every man of us hath prayed for direction before coming 
 ' hither this morning ! ' " Good Heavens ! I too could rever- 
 ence a Parliament of that kind, and think it might be good 
 for something. The same honourable Baronet listens with 
 unspeakable reverence to Coke upon Lyttleton and the pre- 
 cedents ; but says, withal, more than once, ' If there be no 
 ' precedent, it is time to make one ! ' This is his opinion, 
 Sir Robert Philips's, — an answer to his prayer, I could almost 
 say ; such a superhuman audacity is required for it ! — 
 
 The spectre of that steeple-hatted Parliament, in its dread 
 reverence, in its dire straits, balancing itself on old precedents 
 as on a Bridge of Azrael,^ with long pole loaded with Ser- 
 jeant's lead at each end, shuddering to advance ; and Philips 
 and necessity saying : Thou must ! — is venerable and pathetic 
 to me. Itself so pale, quaint, steeple-hatted, shadowy, its 
 dire writhings grown sport to us ; — the foremost vanguard of 
 innumerable extinct Parliaments that have not even a spectre 
 
 ^ Forster (Lt/e of Eliot), i. 94. The Coinnioiis Journals, i. 658, attribute a 
 similar remark to Sir G. Moore, also : ' Sir George Moore " hopeth every man 
 here hath prayed for direction.'" 
 
 2 Ibid., 658. 
 
 3 Azrael is the Angel of Death ; the Bridge is by some called Tchinavar. 
 See, for example, Voltaire's Zadig, chap. ii. 
 
170 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 left, — down into the deep night of Saxon Were-moot, of 
 Spear-councils on the coast of the Baltic, older than Hengst, 
 than Odin ; — O Heavens ! is not the Past a divine Book, 
 unfathomable, awful, inclusive of all divine Books whatso- 
 ever ? Inspired penmen have been dreadfully wanting. 
 
 This spectral Parliament, all pale to us, but some young 
 faces, the Pyms, Wentworths, etc., that have the hue of Life 
 still in them, — did several things, which are meniorable to 
 Dryasdust rather than to me. It is the Parliament that 
 overhauled poor Chancellor Bacon. Alas, what a change 
 since we last saw him, riding in purple cloak from Chancery 
 Lane.^ Ihey have in this earnest Parliament, — meaning 
 something far other than improved shop-lists, and augments 
 of the sciences, meaning fair-play namely, and God's Justice 
 on Earth, — got their claws upon the sublime Chancellor, and 
 will do him a mischief. They have indisputable traces of a 
 thing or two, — a purse delivered by the Lady Wharton, a 
 purse by Mr. Egerton ; "" in brief, they have detected this 
 poor Chajicellor to be a hungry Jew of Whitechapel, selling 
 Judgment for a bit of money : they twitch the purple cloak 
 off him, all the learned wigs, patch-coifs, and trappings off 
 him ; and say, with nostrils dilated in disgust : Go ! He goes, 
 one of the sorrowfullest of all mortals, to beg beer in Gray's 
 Inn,'^ to augment the sciences, if from the like of him the 
 sciences have any augment to expect ! 
 
 On the whole, this earnest Parliament is vehement upon 
 swindlers, monojiolists, corruptionists, foul-players in general ; 
 has got its claws upon the seven hundred monoj^olies, for one 
 thing. May it prosper ! Good luck to this Parliament ! 
 With what a shrill tone it denounces your Sir Giles 
 Mompesson, hauled down from his bench ; — for he was an 
 Honourable Member this Giles. He has had mono})olies of 
 gold-thread, which was mere pinchbeck thread ; of ale-houses, 
 of lobsters, — and what not ? He was deep in the seven 
 
 ^ See ante, p. 130. - Sec Spedding, Letters and Life, vii. 252 ei seqq. 
 
 ^ Sec ante, p. 134, «. 
 
CH. XXVI.] GLIMPSES OF NOTABLE FIGURES 171 
 
 hundred monopolies ; treated the field of trade as if it had 
 been a hunting-field, and all men that sewed gold, all men that 
 drank ale, or ate a lobster, as if they had been royal game, 
 for which he had a licence ; vexing them with his attorney 
 hunting-beagles. And he got himself elected by ' a rich 
 ' country gentleman.' Behold him now, hauled down from his 
 bench, laid on the flat of his back ; figuratively speaking, the 
 claws of the Parliament fixed in him ; its fierce beak denounc- 
 ing him with considerable shrillness, making ready to rend 
 him ! A Connnittee on him ; sharp searching questions on 
 him ; sharp eyes and beaks upon him. Sir Giles flies ; 
 escapes from the Conmions"' Serjeant with slippery dex- 
 terity ; escapes hastily beyond sea, wings his obscene flight, 
 with plucked feathers, into outer darkness. Mompesson, we 
 regret to say, is gone ; but Michell, his main Attorney, him 
 we have safe in the Tower ; he, I expect, will not go for a 
 few weeks yet ! Sir Francis Michell, unworshipful knight, 
 living by the Doll Tearsheets in Clerkenwell, by the bullies of 
 Alsatia, by lobsters, — a putrid eye-sorrow on this earth ; — 
 the reader saw him once at the sack of Drury Lane Play- 
 house : the reader perhaps will not grudge to see how a 
 Puritan House of Commons deals with a gilt scoundrel when 
 they catch him. I copy part of the sentence : old Stow or 
 Howe, old Arthur Wilson, Chronicle-Baker and the whole 
 world saw it done. First his spurs knocked off by the servants 
 of the Earl Marshal, and thrown away.^ ' Then the silver 
 ' sword ' (which ought to have been gilded, says Mr. William 
 Camden^) 'is taken from his side, broken over his head, 
 ' and thrown away. Last of all they pronounce him no longer 
 ' to be a knight, but a knave, as was formerly done to Andrew 
 ' de Herclay, when he was degraded by Anthony Lucy." — 
 This done ; — Sentence : 
 
 ' To be taken back to the Fleet Prison, and confined there 
 ' in the place called Bolton's Ward.' Yes, through Bolton's 
 Ward, too, we obtain a stern glimpse into old tragic doings. 
 
 ^ Stow, 1034. - Camden, Annals of James I. (i6thjune 1621). 
 
172 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 The state of the Fleet Prison itself is examined in this Parlia- 
 ment ; Bolton's Ward and other things come to light in a 
 very unsatisfactory manner. There they lie, the poor 
 prisoners, in this or the other Ward, prisoners for debt or 
 misdemeanour in this world ; eighteen on one mattress, 
 twenty-four on another ; harsh Warden charging twopence 
 a night. ... If you do not pay, you are turned into other 
 far worse Wards, left there to consider yourself. There used 
 to be a kind of slit, or open barn-window, through which 
 poor prisoners consulted with their friends or lawyers ; the 
 tyrannous Warden has walled it up beyond human height, 
 reduced it to a pigeon-hole far up ; there now only falls in on 
 us some melancholy ray through the pigeon-hole overhead, — 
 disclosing darkness visible. No wonder men get discontented, 
 irreverent of persons in authority, and require to be roused at 
 night and clapt into worse Wards. The worst of all the 
 Wards is Bolton's. Bolton, a man unknown to me, seemingly 
 of truculent humour, was clapt some years ago into a certain 
 bed- ward one night, he and another ; for bad conduct, as is 
 like. In the gloom of the night Bolton's truculent humours 
 surged up, not a whit appeased ; the damp black stones 
 round him, on these he could not vent his humours ; and 
 there was in this ward, besides himself, but one conn-ade. 
 Bolton, it is like, has been gruff to the human comrade, the 
 human comrade gruflp to him : on the morrow morning Bolton 
 was found there alone ; Bolton, with glaring blood-shot eyes, 
 quite private by himself; the human comrade lay dead and 
 murdered on the floor there. Bolton, doubt it not, was 
 hanged ; and the place ever since is called Bolton's Ward ; a 
 Ward as squalid as any, and now with two ghosts in it over 
 and above. It is here that Francis Michell, vender of mono- 
 polies, swindling attorney that decreed injustice by a law, once 
 prosperous scum of creation, sits with his spurs hacked off', 
 and all prosperity fled far from him, considering the vicissi- 
 tude of things. 
 
 And on the morrow morning we behold this phenomenon, 
 
CH. XXVI.] GLIMPSES OF NOTABLE FIGURES 173 
 
 very singular to us, through the little chink in the murk of 
 centuries. An unspurred knight of the rueful countenance, 
 ' with a paper on his breast and back that pointed at the 
 ' foulness of the cause,' mounted on what leanest spavined 
 garron was discoverable, with his face to the tail, with the tail 
 in his hand, led by the hangman, equitating as on hot iron, 
 in a shambling, high-pitching, excited spavined manner ; 
 escorted by great and small from Palace-yard to ' Finsbury 
 ' Prison,' amid the curses and the howls and laughter of man- 
 kind. Clear enough there ; clear as sunlight through this 
 identical chink effected by the Commons'' Journals for us in 
 the leaden murk of the old dead times. Halting Punishment 
 has found thee, right unworshipful ! thee for one : ride there, 
 in a halting, high-floundering excited and spavined manner, 
 whither thou art bound ! The modern reader looks on it, too, 
 with a grim smile ; and yet with a sigh. The modern reader 
 thinks : Why cannot I have one of my monopolists, my air- 
 monopolists, my food-monopolists, my prosperous scums of 
 creation, — decreers of injustice by a law, — shaken out from 
 his Longacre respectability, and shown as what he is, set even 
 on such a Rosinante to I'ide with his face to the tail ? By 
 Heaven, modern reader, thou wilt get such a thing when once 
 thou hast well deserved it. At present thou knowest not 
 Right from Wrong, as thy fathers did ; thou knowest it not 
 at all, except as a horse knows it, — thou unhappy ! 
 
 This Parliament made a public clearance of monopolists, 
 unjust Chancellors, attorney swindlers, in greater and lesser 
 wigs, not without success : but one laments soon to see it get 
 into fearful flat contradiction with the Dread Sovereign him- 
 self. Inevitable : the Dread Sovereign set to govern England, 
 and here is England not minded, not capable of being minded, 
 to be governed so. The Dread Sovereign wants a Spanish 
 Match for England ; England, by laws older than any Parlia- 
 ment Rolls, cannot wish any Spanish Match. England must 
 adhere to Christ's Gospel, and have the true God for Patron. 
 
174 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 The true God joined with the Spanish Mammon, his Majesty 
 will have. In brief, these Commons have concocted an 
 humble and humblest Petition ; and, lying flat on their faces, 
 touching the hem of his Majesty"'s garment, earnestly, as with 
 tears, entreat him to have regard to the same. The bleeding- 
 condition of the Palatinate, of the Protestant Gospel, has 
 struck them ; they glance even at the Spanish ]\latch, and 
 pray God and the King that there might be a Protestant 
 Match, instead. Popish Matches are bad, whisper they to 
 one another within their Parliament walls. We knew a 
 Papist woman at Acton, she had children whom her Protest- 
 ant Husband insisted to breed as Protestants : — the frantic 
 Papist mother killed them, rather.^ Good cannot come of 
 any Papist Match ; let us make our Petition, let us touch the 
 hem of his Majesty's garment. Impossible ! cry others, cries 
 Edward Sackville, for one. These are high matters of State : 
 — had I as many voices as Fame has, this clause should not 
 get one of them ! ^ 
 
 Whereupon, his Majesty hearing what was toward, writes 
 a severe admonitory Letter : ^ his hunting at Newmarket is 
 quite spoiled ; he refuses to receive our Deputation of Twelve, 
 to read their Petition at all : we have to send express and 
 recall them on the Eastern Counties'" Road. What is to be 
 done now ; in the name of wonder and terror, what ? ^^^hy, 
 at worst, nothing may be done ; perhaps that is the best of 
 all. This Parliament, so to speak, strikes work ; sits there 
 for certain days expostulating, arguing, convincing itself that 
 it cannot in these circumstances go on with any Bill."* Ad- 
 monitory high Letters follow : — ' An old experienced King,' 
 etc., ' very free and able,' etc. — Dread Sovereign, we read 
 these Letters, and again read them, and ever again : but to 
 
 * Commons' Journals. ^ See ante^ p. i6S. 
 
 ^ Of dale 3rd December 162 1. 
 
 ■* 'And the House finding it a great discouragement to them to proceed in any- 
 business when there was so great a distance [divergence] betwixt the King and 
 them, . . . thought they had as good do nothing, as have that they do undone 
 again.' — Wilson, 172. 
 
Cir. XXVI.] GLIMPSES OF NOTABLE FIGURES 175 
 
 go on with any Bill is impossible. We have struck work, 
 with or without foresight, we have stumbled on that plan, 
 and sit here doing nothing ; the world all buzzing round us. 
 A wonder, a wonder ! a Parliament that does not get on with 
 Bills ! It is the most ominous attitude I have yet seen in 
 England : touching to the mind from this great distance of 
 years. Not that trivial insolence or any light sputtering is 
 legible on those old steeple-hatted faces : ah, no ! clouds of 
 dark sorrow, of awe and dread, which they are driven by 
 necessity to front ; — outer clouds and some inner eternal 
 Light ; stern, red-cloudy beckonings of a Day that is yet 
 below the horizon, loaded perhaps with thunder ! I hope 
 no man of us but has prayed for direction before coming 
 hither. — What boots it ? A strike of work in any king's 
 Parliament, if the men have come hither with prayer, is 
 serious. His Majesty, after certain high Messages and certain 
 low but obstinate answers, consents to receive our Deputation 
 of Twelve. . . . The Deputation was received, but the breach 
 Avas not healed. The Commons made a protest ^ that it was 
 their ancient and undoubted birthright to enjoy ' the Liberties, 
 ' Franchises, Privileges and Jurisdictions of Parliament,"' and 
 ' that the arduous and urgent affairs concerning the Kine, 
 ' State, and the Defence of the Realm, and of the Church of 
 ' England and the making and maintenance of Laws, and 
 ' redress of mischiefs and grievances which daily happen within 
 ' this Realm, are proper subjects and matter of counsel and 
 ' debate in Parliament.' — Sackville and the State Servants 
 who sit before the Speaker gainsaying what they could within 
 doors, reporting to Majesty without. His Majesty, now 
 come as far as Theobalds, hears that the Protest is ens-rossed 
 on their Records. Majesty thereupon comes galloping up to 
 Town ; tears out their Protest with his own hand (30th 
 December, while the House is prorogued) ; and, on the 6th 
 of January 1621-2, dissolves this Protesting Parliament. 
 
 ^ Protestation of the Commons concerning Privileges. Parliamentary His. 
 tory, i. 1362. 
 
176 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [parti. 
 
 Such a Parliament I never befoi-e saw in England ; — a Par- 
 liament that struck work. Clouds of lurid sorrow on their 
 old faces, luridly illuminated by some light still below the 
 horizon, lurid symptoms of a Day not yet born, but like to 
 be very stormy. I hope none of us awaits it without prayer ; 
 — it will be better not ! 
 
 SIR EDWARD COKE IN JAMEs's PARLIAMENTS ENGLISH 
 
 LOVE OF PRECEDENTS 
 
 The quantity of intellect, struggling under elements grown 
 opaque to us, which reveals itself to us in Sir Edward Coke, 
 fills us with amazement. Never wanting with his sharp jest, 
 with his witty turn ; learned, how learned ! in records ; — 
 ' he knoweth all the Books."* His argument, grown now 
 entirely opaque to all mortals, flashes in the astonished eyes 
 of contemporaries like a light-beam, like a lightning-bolt. 
 ' It is not under Mr. Attorney's cap to answer that ! "■ 
 saith he. 
 
 The cause of Liberty, I have heard, is much indebted to 
 Coke. If that be synonymous with the cause of Parliament, 
 as for the moment it doubtless was, the debt is probable. In 
 the stretching of Precedents, which he has of all sorts and 
 ages, dug up from beyond Pluto and the deepest charnel- 
 houses and extinct lumber-rooms of Nature, which he pro- 
 duces and can apply and cause to fit by shrinking or expanding, 
 and on the whole to suit any foot,— he never had a rival. 
 Whatever the old Parliaments had done, when they were all 
 Lords and Barons, with armed England at their back, wliom 
 none that would live in England could venture to gainsay at 
 all, — this our learned friend asserts to be competent to ' Par- 
 ' liament ' still ; now when we are poor Connnons paid by our 
 boroughs : when we are mere learned Serjeants and incon- 
 siderable knights of the Shire. 
 
 One of the most surprising features of these English Par- 
 liaments and of this English People, is their veneration of 
 
CH. XXVI.] GLIMPSES OF NOTABLE FIGURES 177 
 
 precedents. Their worship of the past ; — which is indeed 
 one of the indispensablest features of a great soul, in a Nation 
 as in a man. He that cannot persevere, that is not bound 
 by the law of his nature to persevere, how can he ever arrive ? 
 Habit : — it is the law of habit that makes roads everywhere 
 through the pathless in this universe ; wheresoever thou 
 findest a made road, there was the law of habit active, — 
 honour it in its degree. Granted the road is not the best, 
 yet how much better is it than no road ! ' Had you seen it 
 ' before it was made ' ; ^ — and what toil General Wade had 
 with it ! — For indeed the History of the Past is the real 
 Bible. So did the God's will which made this universe 
 manifest itself to usward : even so, if thou wilt think of it. 
 That is the true series of Incarnations and Avatars. The 
 splendour of God shone through the huge incondite Chaos of 
 our being, so, and then so ; and by heroism after heroism, we 
 have come to what you see. The Bible of the Past ; rich 
 are they that have it written as some old Greeks, old Hebrews 
 and others, have had. But looking in Collinses Peerage and 
 the illegible torpid rubbish-mounds of Dryasdust, I am struck 
 dumb. English Literature, if literature mean speaking in fit 
 words what the gods were pleased to act, as I think it does 
 and must, — is a thing yet to be born. 
 
 ' God is great,' say the Moslems : Yes, but Dryasdust also 
 and human Stupidity are not small. It, too, is wide as 
 Immensity ; it, too, is deep as Hell ; has a strength of 
 slumberous torpor in it the subduing of which will mean that 
 the History of this Universe is complete. Dummheit : — there 
 is something venerable in it. In its dark belly it swallows 
 all light-beams and lightnings : they are all, as it were, 
 welcome to it. With some celestial coruscations, huge as 
 
 ^ ' Had you seen this road before it was made, 
 
 You would lift both your hands and bless General Wade ! ' 
 
 A doggerel couplet said to have been written at an inn in Glencroe in the 
 Scottish Highlands, though it smacks more of the Emerald Isle. — It is cited by 
 Carlyle in Dr. Francia {Miscellanies^ vi. 77), and often elsewhere. 
 
 M 
 
178 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part i. 
 
 Ophiuchus,^ you illumine for a moment its cavernous 
 immensities, wondrous, terrible ; you display its black 
 sooterkins, its brood of dragons ; — and straightway all 
 again is peaceable and dark. The gods will never conquer 
 it, says Schiller, and say I. 
 
 ^ Ophiuchus, the serpent-holder, a constellation in the northern heavens. 
 
 ' Like a comet burn'd, 
 That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge 
 In th' arctic sky.' — Milton, Par. Lost, ii. 708-10. 
 
PART II 
 IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 CHARLES AND HIS QUEEN 
 
 KiNd Charles, supreme Sovereign of these kingdoms by 
 ' right of sixty descents,'' he too, is not without his difficulties. 
 His sixty descents, and the right grounded on them, do 
 indeed remain unquestionable to all creatures ; this man, 
 somewhat knock-kneed, tongue-tied, of a hasty temper and 
 stuttering speech, derives his existence such as it is from 
 entirely antique Ferguses, Malcolm Canmores, indisputably 
 from Robert Steward and Elizabeth Muir of Rowallan, a 
 lady of contested virtue, which however no one yet contests.^ 
 Indisputable King of England. Here as he stands on his 
 more or less splay-footed basis, no wildest mortal dreams 
 of questioning that he, Charles Stuart, has the right, the 
 might and divine vocation from above, to furnish guidance for 
 this people of England. Yet is his position not without 
 complicacy ; not without its abstruse sides, — as indeed it 
 reaches into the vague on all sides, and had better not be 
 questioned, if it could be avoided. 
 
 This King is of fine delicate fibre, too fine for his place, 
 and would have suited better as a woman. With Queen 
 Bess for a husband how happy it had been ! There is a real 
 selectness, if little nobleness of nature in him ; his demeanour 
 everywhere is that of a man who at least has no doubt that 
 he is able to command. Small thanks to him perhaps ; — had 
 
 ^ ' The royal line, as used to be well known, had, or was passionately supposed 
 and passionately denied to have had, a kind of flaw in the very starting of it, 
 " Elizabeth Muir," the mother or grandmother of them all in that line, being 
 by some considered an improper or partially improper female, whose children 
 came before marriage ! We will hope otherwise. ' From unused MS. of CarlyWs 
 ' Cro>?nvelL' 
 
 181 
 
182 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 not all persons from his very birth been inculcating this 
 lesson on him ? He has, if not the real faculty to command, 
 at least the authentic pretension to do it, which latter of 
 itself will go far in this world. 
 
 Hammond L'Estrange, a learned gentleman in those days, 
 asks, 'Was there ever a fool that stammered ?' ^ If stammer- 
 ing be the infallible proof of wisdom, this king is wise. He 
 has a hauk, a stutter in his speech, a regurgitancy, as if his 
 thought went too fast for his tongue. Everywhere a hasty 
 man, brooks no delays, no formalities that stand between him 
 and his purpose, rushes on, often enough with more sail than 
 ballast. Not an eloquent man, though a vehement ; I have 
 read many hundreds of his Speeches and letters, till the tone 
 of them has grown familiar to me : " ' Sirs, Sirs, have a care 
 
 ' how you with withstand a King!' his fine hazel eyes 
 
 flashing almost with rage the while, for he is of a choleric 
 turn. A somewhat too headlong man. Did he not, for 
 example, dash off incognito to Spain, to look after his 
 (intended) Spanish bride himself; the negotiations proving 
 tedious ? he went with Buckingham, as Jack Smith and 
 Tom Smith, disguised in enormous wigs ; — a feat, which, 
 says Speaker Finch,^ posterity will rank among fables. He 
 came nevertheless ; came, saw and concjuered 7iot, — returned 
 
 ^ 'Since there was never, or very rarely, known a fool that stammered.' 
 Keign of King Charles I. (Lond., 1656), p. 2. 
 
 ''' Carlyle had also read the Eikon Basilike (attributed by some to Charles, by 
 others to Gauden) and thus records his impressions of it in a pencil note probably 
 written at the British Museum : — ' Eikon Basilike ; a beautiful piece of sincere 
 cant ; nearly the most beautiful I ever saw. Which by no likelihood, except in 
 an age all of cant, could have been believed to be genuine. Few paragraphs 
 of it but denounce its falsity, its absolute incredibility as the writing of King 
 Charles, — or indeed of any other man whatever, who was other than the viiim 
 of a man. Very practical-looking ! — King Charles throughout as this poor 
 Eikon represents him, has nothing to say except, " Am not I the most faultless 
 of men and martyrs? Was there at any time in any case blame found in me? 
 A good man surely ; — O Lord, didst thou ever chance before to make one as 
 good! Make me better if possi])le." It is the ne plus ultra of I'hariseeism. 
 Perhaps at bottom there are few untruer books. Enough of///' 
 
 ^ Rubhworth, i. 205. 
 
CHAP. I.] CHARLES AND HIS QUEEN 183 
 
 home without his Infanta, near wrecked in the Bay of Sant- 
 ander. The brown beautiful Infanta, beautiful though her 
 lij),s were somewhat large, blushed beautifully when she saw 
 him on the Prodo, again fled, beautifully scx'eaming, when he 
 leapt the garden wall to have a word with her ; but it came 
 all to nothing ; the blushings, the beautiful screamings wasted 
 themselves fruitless, swallowed in the inane ; alas ! The 
 Infanta got another husband ; this Prince another wife,^ — for 
 I saw him coming with her up the River Thames towards 
 Whitehall, in gilded barges ; and he had taken her out to 
 view that mighty London of two hundred and twenty 
 years ago, — a notable place of half a million souls, with 
 Shakspeare*'s Theatre at the Bankside yonder and much else ; 
 but a sudden shower splashing impetuous out of heaven drove 
 him and her below deck again, and the London of two 
 centuries ago dips under cloud from us. O Speaking Shak- 
 speare, O ye dumb half million. Is not T'mie the miracle of 
 miracles ? Fearful and wonderful ? 
 
 A beautiful little creature she, too, if the Ritter Van Dyke 
 lie not to us, beautiful and sprightly with her bright hazel eyes, 
 with her long white fingers, and dainty looks and ways, the 
 Daughter of the Great French Henry, but born to a fate not 
 happy. She, like him, was unfortunate in her religion. For 
 there landed with her at Whitehall stairs, there went to live 
 with her at Denmark House (Somerset House now named) a 
 retinue of Jesuits, of tonsured priests Avith pyxes and Popery 
 equipments according to contract, and began to play tricks 
 before England and high Heaven. They began, and ended 
 not ; it was the root of infinite sorrow^s to her. Why did not 
 the Solomon of Eng-land choose a Protestant wife for his son? 
 There was no Protestant woman visible to Solomon of 
 adequate divinity of lineage in those days, so failing the 
 Infanta of Spain, he chooses her Majesty of France, — the 
 
 ^ Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henri iv. and Marie de Medicis ; born 
 25th Nov., 1609; married to Charles (by proxy), ist May, 1625; arrived in 
 London, i6th June of the same year ; and died, 31st August, 1669. 
 
184 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 unfortunate Solomon, no headstrong Saul, no reckless 
 Rehoboam, could have chosen worse. For the priests, we say, 
 Jesuits, Legates, etc., whose name is legion, begin and could 
 never end, and walk as a real demon-host, a legion of obscure 
 spectres, enchanters and unruly goblins through the whole 
 history of that period, troubling as goblins do and must, the 
 solid minds of Englishmen. They were Priests of the 
 Infallible Church : they were Frenchmen, sons of that Belle 
 France que nous aimons tons. Goblin troops of Recusants 
 gather to their chapel in clear daylight. They set the poor 
 young Queen to do a penance, walk barefoot all along the 
 Strand from Somerset House to the Abbey of Westminster, 
 carrying a big wax candle, we suppose, and wrapt in sheet of 
 sackcloth, in the hope of propitiating Heaven by that means. 
 In the certainty of alienating Earth at least ! The headlong 
 young King took a sudden resolution, sent sailing barges to 
 wait at Somerset House, sent officers with cash : paid up 
 these French incomers, male and female, priest and lay, 
 suddenly one morning, their arrears to the utmost penny ; 
 ordered them to pack up, one and all, and sail home again, 
 without word spoken. — Inexorable! They went, with objurga- 
 tion, imprecation, with female hysterical noises and emotions, 
 — all swiftly conveyed beyond the Nore, no heart pitying 
 them.^ The poor young Queen, when his Majesty went to 
 tell her in Whitehall, flew into such a tempest as none of us 
 had seen hitherto, — -quite driven beyond the vaporific point, 
 the apartment not really able to contain her, poor Queen ; 
 for she ' smashed the window glass with her little fist,"' and 
 skipped about entirely in a maenadic state. Can rages of that 
 magnitude dwell in celestial minds ? Such tempest in a 
 Queen, most perilous, momentous then, though shrunk now to 
 small dimensions, and raging now with beautiful distinctness 
 as a mere temj^est in a tea|)ot, the old Amialists do through 
 their miraculous spy-glasses indisputably exhibit to us. 
 
 ' With the exception of a few of tlie Queen's personal attendants, they were 
 all expelled in August 1626. 
 
CHAP. II.] CHARLES AND HIS PARLIAMENTS 185 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHARLES AND HIS PARLIAMENTS 
 
 This King's power we said was indefinite, whereby he thinks 
 it infinite. He is astonished at his faithful Commons that 
 they will not, his irrefragible reasons once nay twice and three 
 times laid clearly before them, grant him supply for his 
 occasions ! Sunbeams are not clearer to his eye than those 
 reasons to the royal mind. And his power if not infinite is 
 indefinite which is so like infinite. . . . And on the other 
 hand, these Commons have an antiquity to go back upon ; 
 have an authority which is also indefinite. Old learned and 
 thrice learned Cokes, little short of the owl of Minerva in 
 learning, quote precedents of Henry vi. and Richard ii. (weak 
 kings both), crabbed Latin out of Bracton, Fleta and one 
 knows not where ; dive down into a bottomless antiquity, a 
 dust-vortex of learned tradition whither the eye dreads to 
 follow them, and return with wise saws and antique instances, 
 and speak with vehemence, one might say, with insolence. 
 Prerogative of Majesty, Privilege of Parliament, these are two 
 indefinites apt to mistake themselves for Infinitudes ; they 
 dwelt far enough apart in the old times, each in its venerable 
 Indefiniteness or Indefinitude, raying out an infinite respect 
 towards one another, and now by the progress of things they 
 have become closer, they have come in contact, and indefinite 
 so differing from infinite, it is like to be collisive, I fear. 
 How unhappy for venerable Indefinitudes when they have to 
 come closer and define themselves. A king was once a great 
 truth. A king was once the strongest man, raised aloft on 
 bucklers with clangour of sounding shields and sounding- 
 hearts from all the people. His Parliament in those times 
 was simple enough, a festivity of all his Vice-kings, Barons, 
 Jarls (strong men). Leaders (Dues) whom he had made Lords 
 of Land ; they came to keep their Christmas with him, and 
 
186 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 many is the royal flagon of good liquor, the loin of good 
 roast meat they have consumed at his table in this very West- 
 minster Hall. Assiduous Seneschals and Sewers, with white 
 aprons and eager assiduity, hurrying to and fro, torches 
 blazing on these learned walls, copious oil lamps, and log 
 fires blazinff. the frost of Christmas bolted out of doors, all 
 frost and darkness hanging over you like an infinite cloak, 
 not uncomfortable to think of. A most ruddy potent blaze 
 of life and Christmas cheer, and such talk in Norman Saxon ! 
 This was the original kind of Parliament as the human eye, 
 piercing the opaque eclipse of Dryasdust, discerns it ; a highly 
 eligible kind. For every measure was debated on, both sober 
 and then in a kind of mental elevation ; you saw both sides 
 of every object, and tried to hit the middle of it. 
 
 But since that time the Parliament has greatly altered. 
 The Parliament does not meet now in Westminster Hall for 
 Christmas festivities and consultation over wine ; far differ- 
 ent. This Parliament is now divided into two Houses, and 
 consults in a jejune manner. Strangest of all, the dumb 
 Commons have got to have a voice in it ; have come these 
 three centuries or more, and grow yearly more important, 
 more importunate. For the king's Peers that used to sit in 
 Westminster are now by no means the only Vice-kings in this 
 Britain. Fighting has given pLace to trading, ploughing, 
 weavino; and merchant adventurine;. It mioht be these Peers 
 of the king would decide on a thing, and now, as times are 
 turned, it could not be executed. Wherefore others also 
 must be asked for their assent. 
 
 Very greatly too has this acknowledged Strongest, King as 
 they call him, altered since those old days. Not now lifted 
 on the bucklers of men ; which was always a contentious 
 business : he is accepted through sixty descents, and the 
 virtue of Elizabeth Muir ; all men joyfully with assured 
 heart exclaiming, This is he, this infirm, splay-footed one ; 
 he is our acknowledged Strongest. This is he ! Men and 
 brethren, this ! ' Yes, he,' answer they with one voice, ' he is 
 
CHAP. IL] CHARLES AND HIS PARLIAMENTS 187 
 
 ' our acknowledged.' And it is wonderful, to us nearly un- 
 imaginable, what divinity does still encircle this infirm king 
 of the composite order, and the proudest heart veils itself 
 awestruck before the fflance of his eye ; and he is considered 
 the Lord's Anointed ; and to himself and others appears 
 terrible and inexorable. Man is a creature of much Phantasy 
 and little understanding, his approximatings, his amalgam- 
 ations of the true and false, call it rather the Eternal and 
 the Possible, are sometimes surprising. The remedy is, If 
 this Strongest prove altogether intolerably weak, it has been 
 our use from of old, driven to it by stern necessity, to cast 
 him away and get rid of him, were it even by the fieriest 
 methods. For the law of the Universe is inexorable : the 
 equation, not exactly soluble by any human Algebra, is mean- 
 while a most exact thing in Practice and Fact and does 
 assert itself continually in gradual circuitous ways, in swift 
 paroxysms, notable to all persons. 
 
 King James prospered ill with his Parliaments, but it is 
 nothino; to this of Charles. We saw King: James with 
 ' Twelve Chairs here ! ' ' Twelve kings come to visit me, I 
 ' think ' ! ^ and that magniloquent snarl and glance of the 
 royal eyes, not destitute of claims to human sympathy from 
 us. In fact, English Parliaments are England in epitome, 
 brouoht face to face with the king- : if the kingj be minister 
 of the dumb hearfs-purpose of England, Parliament will be 
 as oil upon his head ; if he be minister of some quite different 
 purpose, and have in his royal heart parted quite away from 
 the dumb heart of England, England must needs, in some 
 more or less dumb way, were it only by sobs and dumb 
 groans, in a very inarticulate manner, signify the same to 
 him. For it is inevitable. And if there were no Parliament, 
 or a Parliament that pretends to be satisfied with him, the fact 
 were no whit altered. — That he has got off the rail-tramroad, 
 and is travelling towards perdition ; this fact, if not attended 
 to, will have to announce itself in a still fataler manner. 
 
 ^ See a7ite, p. 157, w. 
 
188 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Charles's first parliament 
 [1625] 
 
 Charles's First Parliament met on 18th June, 1625, soon 
 after his accession ; — his Father had died on the 27th of 
 March preceding. His Majesty with impetuous haste sig- 
 nifies that he is in a war by Parliameiifs direction, of 
 Parliamenfs seeking; ; that Parliament has one thing to 
 do : grant him supplies straightway. Parliament does 
 grant two subsidies, the amount of which is unknown 
 to Dryasdust and me ; but inadequate for his IMajesty's 
 occasions.^ The Parliament cannot afford above two sub- 
 sidies for the present ; has recusants to complain of, crypto 
 recusants ; learns with a horror very natural to it, that the 
 king has lent his ships to the French to fight agahist Protest- 
 antism, against the Protestants of Rochelle ! '" As the 
 pestilence is raging, we adjourn the Parliament to Oxford, 
 rising after a session of four weeks. 
 
 That loan of ships to the French is a fact which all men 
 see with their eyes ; which his unfortunate impetuous 
 Majesty, tied up by treaties, misled by negotiations and so 
 forth, tries to explain, but cannot satisfactorily. Palpable 
 to all mortals is the fact : even English warships, equipped 
 by the toil and gold of England, manned by the oak 
 hearts of England, sailed away for the French coast, and 
 there learned that they were meant not ' for Genoa,' but 
 against Rochelle, poor Protestant Rochelle ; — and they went, 
 after struggling enough, the English ships went, though not 
 
 ^ The two subsidies amounted only to about ^140,000. 
 
 - Rochelle was the stronghold of the Huguenots under tlic duke de Rohan 
 and his brother the Prince de Soubise. Being comparatively powerless on the 
 sea, Richelieu, for the French Government, claimed the loan of eight ships from 
 England by a clause in the marriage-treaty of Charles and Henrietta Maria. 
 Charles and Buckingham succeeded for a while in deceiving the English people 
 and even Pennington, the captain of the ' Vanguard ' of the little fleet, by pre- 
 tending that it was destined against Genoa, the friend and ally of Spain. — See 
 Forster, Life 0/ Eliot, i. 322, et seqq. 
 
CHAP. II.] CHARLES AND HIS PARLIAMENTS 189 
 
 one English sailor would go with them, — or rather there 
 was one solitary gunner that went, — and he, we are ha])j)y to 
 learn, was shot by a bullet from Rochelle ; the rest resisted 
 all bullying, cajoling, — preferred stepping a.shore in a foreign 
 port [Dieppe], begging their way homewards — go they would 
 not. And then the English ships [manned by Frenchmen] 
 cannonade the poor Protestants ; the guns we founded with 
 our own brass go to that use. Who can grant subsidies ? 
 Who knows to what war they will go, whether to any war ? 
 ' It is the Duke of Buckingham's doing ; he misleads the good 
 ' young king.'' — He wants money, this Duke, and is very 
 uncertain about his war : he said once in Mr. Strode's hear- 
 ing, ' Grant four subsidies, and chose your own war ! ' — The 
 Parliament reassemble at Oxford, 1st August, with the 
 Rochelle ships and cannonadings, and the cry of all England 
 dinning in their ears ; and are not very immediate with their 
 supplies. Supply my occasions, says his Majesty ; says and 
 reiterates in message after message, supply my occasions, and 
 be swift about it. The Parliament is slow about it ; gets 
 into petitioning about Religion, first of all. Will you supply 
 my occasions ? asks his Majesty more impetuously than ever : 
 — the season is going, near gone ! Will you, yea or no ? 
 The Commons, with sad thoughts, know not what to answer ; 
 will perpend this religious matter first. Dissolve them ; send 
 them home again ; make Oxford and us clear of them : — after 
 a Session of eleven days. Alas, this young Majesty is too 
 quick ! Has Solomon left a Rehoboam ? How his Majesty 
 sent out for benevolences, forced men to give him free gifts, 
 to etc., etc., and imprisoned them when they demurred, my 
 readers, Dryasdust and the Avhole world know. 
 
 It was in this Parliament that Lord -keeper Williams 
 (Bishop of Lincoln, who succeeded Bacon) first, taking the 
 measure of England, of himself, of the Duke of Buckingham 
 and this Parliament and things in general, found that it were 
 well if he threw oft' the Duke's livery, and set up for himself. 
 It is well known, and was doubtless often repeated by the 
 
190 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 braggart Welshman himself, how the two took counsel 
 together, and came to high words on the matter. There are 
 grievances in England, which ought to be redressed, thinks 
 Williams. Reverend, what language is this ? Do you also 
 mean to join with the factious Puritan Party ? Think what 
 your footing is, my Lord-keeper, in this court of his Majesty ! 
 I will stand on my own feet, said Williams, and try to get 
 justice done. Buckingham's face flashes fire. Then, look 
 you stand fast, answers he : — the smoking controversy ending 
 in clear flame. 
 
 Williams has been very useful to Buckingham ; who knows 
 to what lengths he has used his quick wit in serving him ! The 
 Spanish Ambassador, for instance, had a cunning plot of the 
 most dextrous engineership, all primed and charged for Buck- 
 ingham ; ready to explode in James''s time ; — the Lord-keeper 
 Bishop, by dim scouts, prying in the very brothels for him, 
 found it out in time ; the consecrated Bishop, in a case of 
 necessity, communicated with unfortunate females ; distilled 
 the due intelligence from them. Thus did he save his Duke.^ 
 But now the little Bishop Laud, of Bath and Wells, is coming 
 in. He seems to be getting superseded ; whereat his Welsh 
 blood takes fire : — he resolves to throw off" the Duke, as 
 above said, and set up for himself. 
 
 Charles's second parliament 
 
 [1625-6] 
 
 CAPrrAL in this way '" coming in with difficulty . . . we 
 summon a new Parliament in February of next year, 1625-6. 
 
 ^ This refers to Lafuent's and Carondelet's plot to overthrow Buckingham in 
 1624. Carondelet's mistress was in the pay of Williams, and disco%'ered to him 
 that a secret interview had taken place between James and Lafuent, at which 
 the latter had done his utmost to ruin the favourite in the king's estimation. 
 Williams first made known his discovery to Prince Charles, saying, ' In my 
 studies of Divinity I have gleaned up this maxim, "It is lawful to make vise of 
 the sin of another. Though the devil make her a sinner, I may make good use of 
 her sin."' 
 
 ' By Privy Seals, Benevolences, Forced Loans, etc. 
 
CHAP. III.] CHURCH PROVOCATIONS 191 
 
 We ourselves, all in white satin, were inaugurated, crowned 
 at Westminster, successfully ; but the Parliament — why, it 
 took to censuring poor Richard Montague our Chaplain, Pyni 
 drawing up a long indictment of him ; ^ took to censuring 
 Buckingham, nay, impeachment of him, Bristol and he enter- 
 ing upon long arguments, and your Eliot, your Dudley 
 Digges and others came up to the Lords' House with an 
 impeachment of the Great Duke. Vain all our management, 
 our letters, messages, our speaking at Whitehall, Bucking- 
 ham's speaking ; our sending Eliot and Dudley Digges to the 
 Tower and emitting of them again : mere im})eachment is the 
 end of it ; and when we for the last time send peremptory 
 Avord, ' Supply us quickly or — — • ! ' they answer by a 
 ' Remonstrance ' about Papists and other confusions ; — and we 
 have to dissolve them as if with a flash of fire ; ^ and take to 
 loans again, to alienating of royal demesnes, to farming out of 
 Jesuit Recusants, shifts painful to the royal mind ! 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CHURCH PROVOCATIONS MONTAGUE MANWARING 
 
 [1627-8] 
 
 Did you hear of the Canon of Windsor's ' New Gag for an 
 old Goose ' ? Yes, and of the ^Appello Ccesarem ' : ^ but I will 
 say almost nothing of them. Goose and Gag, Caesar and the 
 Appeal to Caesar are alike dead, dead ; — let them sleep in peace 
 for evermore. Conceive that the Goose is quacking, hissing ; 
 that the gagging of it did agitate the inmost soul of England : 
 but that it is all now gone into the preterite, into the plu- 
 preterite tense, and ought not to disturb any innocent son 
 of Adam any more. Sons of Adam are born for other pur- 
 
 ' Rushworth, i. 209-12. ^ On 15th June 1626. 
 
 " Kennet, iii. 30. 
 
192 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 poses than to pore over shot rubbish, and get into jan*ing 
 with one another about marine stores.^ These few facts, three 
 old buttons, excerpted from the mouldering rubbish, let them 
 suffice, and more than suffice, for afflicted human nature in 
 our day : ' Gag for the New Gospel ' was a Papist Book that 
 came out aoainst Protestantism about 1624 — or three or 
 four years ago, — how lively, talented, hissing with vehement 
 satirical meaning every line of it ; now dead as the dust of 
 king Harry, who ' loved a man.' Richard jVIontague, a Cam- 
 bridge man, of what breed I know not, had got to be Canon 
 of Windsor, Fellow of Eton, Rector of I know not what, 
 and Chaplain to his Majesty ; a prosperous reverend man, 
 replenished with fat livings, with College-fame for acumen 
 and academic lore, blooming with a kind of flush vigour 
 verffins almost towards insolence of soul, as a man in those 
 prosperous circumstances may. Ten years ago, young Mr. 
 Selden published his Book on Tithes, thinking tithes to be 
 probably not of Divine origin ; and got into trouble enough 
 on that account. Richard Montague was one of the many 
 who smote into rubbish this pernicious tenet ; Selden was 
 covered, if not with contempt, yet with the king's censure ; 
 and Montague got in tolerably swift succession the fat livings 
 and church-decorations above enumerated. Well, some year 
 or two after Selden was reduced to rubbish, there came out 
 another book, called ' Gag for the New Gospel,' a Papist 
 Book, as we have said, against Protestantism. Richard 
 Montague took his pen again ; and I will believe, with a 
 beautiful vein of academic acumen, of flush vigour, and perhaps 
 a certain dash of prosperous flunkyism, wrote his ' New 
 ' Gag for an Old Goose,' not only confuting the Papist to 
 the requisite extent, but cutting withal into the sides of 
 Puritanism, when it happened to stand in the way of his 
 flourishings. He has a heavy polemic sword, and swings it 
 recklessly ; learned Pym knows with what vehemence ; not I, 
 having never opened one of his books, nor ever in the least 
 
 * See antCy p. 133, //. 
 
CHAP. III.] CHURCH PROVOCATIONS 193 
 
 meaning to do so, — horrible is the thought to me ! But they 
 grumbled at him in James's last Parliament ; gave him over 
 to Abbot, last of the Archbishops, who rebuked him with due 
 severity ; — whereupon the Windsor Canon went home to his 
 stall, much discontented, and never once came to visit his 
 Archbishop any more. On the contrary, he sets to work, 
 clutches his pen or polemic sword, unsubdued, writes another 
 Book 'Appello Caesarem,' in defence of himself as is evident ; 
 which Book, which two Books, and the general procedure of 
 this Richard Montague, Windsor Canon, proved ' highly dis- 
 ' tasteful ' to the Commons in Parliament ; filled the two first 
 Parliaments of Charles i. with considerable clamour, and in 
 England occasioned much distress : — the Goose, the Gag, 
 Caesar and the Caesar Appealed, being all yet in their pleni- 
 tude of life, not yet flung out as shot rubbish, but throbbing 
 with blood in every vein, with agony and rapture lying in 
 every fibre of them. Such was then the general constitution 
 of this country. What a change ! 
 
 Many clergy and other men of genius answered the Canon 
 Montague ; learned laity, too ; young Mr. Rouse of Truro, 
 among others. How Goose, and Gag-goose Montague, hissed 
 and sounded for a space of five or six years through this 
 realm of England ; was brought to the Commons Bar (7th 
 July 1625),^ sentenced to be fined, incapacitated, to be, if 
 not drummed out of the ranks of the Spiritual army, at least 
 ordered sternly to keep quiet, and fall into the rear rank 
 there ; all this the world shall learn from Dryasdust,^ not from 
 me. And how the king at one time designed letting the 
 Common law take its course ; — whereupon, the little Bishop 
 of St. Davids, one Dr. Laud, beginning now to be busy at 
 Court, 'sees a cloud rising,' jots down in his Journal, 'I see 
 ' a cloud rising.' ^ Be of courage, my little shrill Doctor ! 
 Clouds indeed, — one knows not what clouds. But cannot 
 
 ^ Co77imons' Jottrtiah, i. 806. " Rush worth, i. 605. 
 
 * 'He said: "I seem to see a cloud arising and threatening the Church of 
 England.'" — Rushworth, i. 199. 
 
 N 
 
194 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 you write to the Duke of Buckingham ; in straits he might 
 be a present aid ? ^ — Enough ; this Montague, censured in 
 two Parliaments, keeps all his places ; in these very days, I 
 hear they are about giving him the Bishopric of Chichester 
 (14th July, 1628). — Enough of Richard Montague, and more 
 than enough : — meantime let no man confound him with 
 [James] Montague Bishop of Winton, Editor of the immortal 
 Works of King James.^ — 
 
 It will be proper also to jot down with extreme brevity the 
 exact essential facts concerning Dr. Manwaring. Dr. Roger 
 Manwaring, of whom I know nothing, — minister of Guy 
 Mannering for anything I know, — is Chaplain in ordinary to 
 his Majesty, and enjoys the Vicarage of St. Giles's in the 
 Fields, where he occasionally preaches ; — the place is still in 
 the fields, not yet among the Seven Dials, as modern readers 
 will recollect : — and a sweet breath of new hay comes in upon 
 Dr. Roger, as he preaches. 
 
 Dr. Roger, while the Loan was going on, and many 
 persons refusing, and getting pressed as seamen, was called to 
 preach before his Majesty, on 4th July, 1627 ; and saw good 
 then to set forth and elucidate by learned arguments and 
 triumphant pulpit eloquence, that refusing of his Majesty's 
 Loan, to supply his Majesty's just occasions, was a thing com- 
 parable to the worst actions on record ; to Core, Dathan and 
 Abiram's action,^ for one, to Theudas's and Judas's, and I know 
 not whom and what, — a thing damnable, in short. This was 
 on 4th July, 1627, at Whitehall in the County of Middlesex. 
 Finding great applause, he when his turn next came round, on 
 the 29th of the month,^ repeated the same doctrine with 
 enforcements and embellishments, proving clearly to all 
 Courtier persons that by refusing his Majesty's Loan, you not 
 only subjected yourself to the Star Chamber, but to Dannia- 
 tion itself. These things he preached in his Majesty's Chapel 
 in Whitehall, in the glowing days of July, 1627: giving great 
 
 ^ Letter given in Rushworth. 
 
 - Their rebellion against Moses, see Num. xvi. 1-36. * Rushworth, i. 594. 
 
CHAP. IV.] BUCKINGHAM: ISLE OF RHl'i: 195 
 
 satisfaction to the iiiinds of Courtier men. One may hope 
 promotion will visit this Dr. Roger. Among the various 
 species of the genus Flunky, is not truculent flunky one of 
 the uo'liest ? Do but further dress him in Priest's y-arments, 
 make him solemnly take God and men to witness that he is, 
 for his ]:)art, and will daily through life be, a consecrated anti- 
 flunky, — to render him perhaps the ugliest spectacle this 
 beautiful, blue, patient heaven overspans in our poor world ! 
 Doctor Roger's sermon is accepted at Whitehall, and occasion- 
 ally heard during the sultry days, amid the breath of new hay. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BUCKINGHAM AND THE ISLE OF RHE ^ AND 
 OTHER DISCOMFITURES 
 
 [1627] 
 
 Alas, the king's loans did not answer ! The Duke of 
 Buckingham came home hardly saved from out of the salt- 
 pits of the Isle of Rhe ; one of the most draggled conquered 
 heroes ever seen in England. I know the salt-pits of Rhe, 
 and the world knows them. Beautiful Buckingham stood up 
 in his boat, with drawn sword, as his men disembarked on the 
 mud-beach of Rhe Island, and valiantly dislodged the French 
 therefrom : — he was a fearless young gentleman, too, but had 
 no military knowledge whatever ; in fact, he was like that 
 celebrated fiddler, — he did not know whether he could fiddle 
 or not, but Avould now try ! I noticed him at a later period 
 of the season, sitting in his tent in his nightgown, with sand 
 in his dishevelled hair, distraction clouding his beautiful brow : 
 Fort St. Martin cannot be taken, cannot be breached, scaladed, 
 mined, by a man that till now has never tried ; and as for 
 starving, they have smuggled provision ships over the bar ; 
 
 ^ Buckingham had sailed from Portsmouth on June 27th, 1627, and arrived on 
 loth July at St. Martin's, a fortified Town on the Isle of Rhe, which lies close to 
 Rochelle. 
 
196 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 the sentries stand ' with legs of mutton on their pike-points.'' 
 Fort St. Martin is unattainable ; the young General sits there 
 in his nightgown, clutching liis dishevelled hair, by the night 
 lamp, to no purpose. In a few days more, I see him breaking up 
 his camp ; max'ching by narrow causeways, French pikes prick- 
 ing him frightfully in his rear ; salt-pits on each hand of him, 
 indefensible bridges, fierce struggling, fierce, but fruitless, and 
 2000 brave men buried in the bogs, — and only the sea and 
 English ships with any hope ahead. He got on board, a much 
 altered man. Bright as a new gold coin, all heavy gold he 
 came ; tarnished as a piece of dis-gilded copper, now visibly 
 copper, he went ; and gallant Sir John Borroughes and two 
 thousand and odd brave Englishmen lie buried in the bogs. 
 And Rochelle and French Protestantism was left in despair. 
 All England was waiting to rewelcome him with curses not loud 
 but deep. So that, riding through a town ' on the south 
 ' coast,"* — which town my Dryasdust omits to name, — the 
 gallant young Earl of Denbigh, his nephew, proposes to change 
 cloaks with him, that he be not massacred ; which generous 
 proposal the Duke, a fearless man, declines. In this nameless 
 town he was not massacred — not there. 
 
 Our wars were most unfortunate, our treaties proved all 
 futile or worse, Ave meant to assist the Protestants, to recover 
 the Palatinate, and alas, our assistance was mere hindrance, 
 our embrace was as the clasp of one taken with the falling 
 sickness, dangerous. Eight of our ships sent against poor 
 Protestant Rochelle . . . And then our new armament, and 
 armaments, under Cecil, under Denbigh, under Buckingham, 
 to Cadiz, to relieve Rochelle, to the Isle of Rhe, or where- 
 ever it might be ; which of them has had the smallest success ? 
 A good many thousands of heroic English souls have vanished, 
 their bodies disastrously left in several lands and shores, in 
 mound heaps round the German hospitals, in Salt-bogs in the 
 Isle of Rhe ; — happiest they that could see the face of Tilly 
 
CHAP. IV.] CHARLESES THIRD PARLIAMENT 197 
 
 and his Pandours, for they at least died fighting, though in 
 vain. Mansfeld Jed a force to the Low Countries ; ^ none 
 would allow them to land : they died by ague and scurvy on 
 the swampy coasts of Holland. Morgan led a force to join 
 the King of Denmark, and Tilly cut the King and them to 
 pieces ; Morgan after a siege of Stade has to surrender, and 
 return with the skeleton of regiments ^ . . . Cecil sailed to 
 attack Cadiz, spent biscuit, courage, powder and many a 
 brave life, and returned home Avith disgrace and a minus 
 quantity on board. We have quarrelled with France, gone to 
 war, and agreed again : it mattered not ; our peace was 
 almost worse for a man than our war. Buckingham for 
 instance and the Isle of Rhe. 
 
 Alas, it will not do. Forced Loans come in with difficulty, 
 Avith endless contentions, obstructions, imprisonments of con- 
 tumacious town and country gentlemen ; and yield with all 
 our patents, and rents of Jesuit penalties, a most scanty 
 return. . . . What is to be done ? Sir R. Cotton is sent 
 for and consulted, all the oracles consulted, sing ' Summon a 
 ' new Parliament ; and at whatever cost agree with your 
 ' Parliament.^ A Third Parliament is summoned ; meets on 
 17th March, 1627-8, — Oliver Cromwell, burgess of Hunting- 
 don, one of the Members. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Charles's third parliament — first session 
 
 [1628] 
 
 Years of dim, leaden haze, wherein History yields us 
 nothing but Death and Torpor, and dust and ashes, we will 
 leave behind us. What boots it .'* Let it lie all dead, quiet 
 in the realms of Hela ; Memory is not possible, unless 
 Oblivion keep pace with it. Let us look, if possible, with 
 our own eyes into Charles's Tliird Parliament ; one summer 
 ■* January 1624-5. - Stade surrendered to Tilly, 27th April, 1628. 
 
198 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 morning of the year 1628. The reader will be willing ; how 
 willing, if with his own eyes he could there see anything ! 
 History, delineation, talk of any sort whereby nothing can be 
 seen, — let us not augment the mass of it, — which threatens 
 to equal the mountains. 
 
 Honourable gentlemen rise early in those years : shortly 
 after seven in the morning, prayers are over in the House, 
 the Speaker set, and business under way. \'ery edifying to 
 see the honourable gentlemen wending rapidlv along, with 
 the morning sun still level ; hastening, if they catch the 
 chimes of Margaret's ; — for if too late, you are fined twelve- 
 pence for the poor. They come from Drury Lane, from 
 Martin's Lane, King Street, Holborn, and other fashionable 
 quarters ; the Lords come from their Town-houses mostly 
 along the Strand ; — what they breakfasted upon, — -except 
 that they have generous wines, jolly English Ales, solid 
 English sirloins and unadulterated bread, — I do not know. 
 Breakfasted they have ; four millions of English souls have 
 breakfasted and got to work in various ways ; and here we 
 are, in the old Hall of Westminster, on the 5th of June 
 1628, while the chimes of Margaret's have not yet sung half- 
 past seven. 
 
 Ask me not to tell thee what the crowd consists of. Men 
 of business, men of idleness, men of curiosity ; Lawyers, 
 walking here till their cases in the Courts come on, — earnest 
 in conversation with their clients — about causes which are all 
 settled now. Eager (pikhmncs come to catch at the fountain- 
 head what is the news. It is a noisy quick-simmering })lace, 
 and a strange hum rises from it, of which, happily, we know 
 not one word. The June sun shines on Palace Yard, makes 
 even Palace Yard beautiful. Father Thames flows gushing 
 on, and much water has run by since then. I seem to catch 
 the sound of Burlamachi, of Dalbier, Trailbaston^ — ^Burla- 
 machi, a Lombard, as I guess, from Lombard Street, has 
 the Serjeant's summons, about shipping cannon against law, 
 
CHAP, v.] CHARLES'S THIRD PARLIAMENT 199 
 
 about buying great saddles, German lances, — must come here 
 to answer it. He is among this crowd even now. It does 
 appear his Majesty had decided on having 1000 German 
 horse, heavy horsemen with big swords and unknown speech ; 
 knowing men whisper, what they dare not say, that it was 
 for the purpose of coercing such English as would not lend 
 upon benevolence. Colonel Dalbier and Scotch Balfour, Sir 
 William, — they were to command, to enlist the men, to 
 choose the horses. Burlamachi by warrant and sign-manual 
 w-as to have the furnishing of them in the markets of North 
 Germany, "\^^lat Avere they meant for, those 1000 horse 
 under a foreign German, a foreign Scot, with this Lombard 
 for purseholder ? If not for an actual Trailbaston business, 
 then for what ? One's blood run's cold ! TraUhadon was 
 the old law^ of Norman Game-preservers, to coerce the Robin 
 Hoods and such like, by swift military execution, if nothing 
 else would do it ; but we, — wq thought we had got a Parlia- 
 ment law ! I hear the name of Manwaring mentioned also : 
 — Manwaring (of whom we have briefly noted the business 
 else\vhere^) had his quietus yesterday, or what will lead to his 
 quietus. Mr. Pym gave it him home to the heart yesterday, 
 I hear it whispered ; his accusation is all engrossed on vellum, 
 and the Lords, I think, will accede.^ 
 
 Petition of Right, Petition of Right ; this, too, I hear 
 much murmured of. I am told his Majesty's acceptance of 
 it on Tuesday last was hardly satisfactory. He accepted it ; 
 but with a certain vagueness. I hear the Commons are dis- 
 satisfied ; and have spoken to that effect, — if a man may dare 
 to murmur that he knows such a thing. Petition of Right, 
 I incline to consider, the greatest thing since Magna Charta. 
 "WTiat is it but Magna Charta itself, and the Six Statutes re- 
 confirmed ? Magna Charta has had to be confirmed thirty 
 times already ; and this is the thirty-first ? O Mr. Rigmarole ! 
 what a Parliament this might have been ! These Trailbastons, 
 these forced Loans, and tyrannous proceedings, not of his 
 ^ See ante, p. 194. 2 Rushworth. 
 
200 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Majesty, God forbid ! — but of certain ill-advised persons, who 
 misled his good heart, — are all done away by this Petition. 
 It was the doing of Sir Edward Coke ; thanks forever to Coke 
 upon Lyttleton ! Were you there on the 1st of ]\Iay, when 
 the ' great silence ' took place ? Our House was busy on the 
 Petition, considering what could be done in the alarming 
 invasions of our liberty ; the King sent a message : Take my 
 royal word, there shall be no more of all that. You will take 
 my royal word, or Avill you not ? — whereupon ensued ' a 
 ' great silence,' ^ — very natural. Many knew what to think, 
 but none what to say. At length, with the humblest 
 prostrations and expressions, these respectful Commons craved 
 leave to take his Majesty's royal word, to write it down, 
 namely, upon parchment, in due form of a Parliamentary 
 Bill, that it might remain clear to all the world, and to a 
 grateful Posterity when perhaps a less excellent King might 
 be reigning — in other words, to go on with our Petition of 
 Right. This is the Petition of Right : it grew up under the 
 cunning hands of venerable Coke upon Lyttleton ; he worked 
 it upon the potter's wheel of a debating House of Commons, 
 spun it aloft into this beautiful piece of porcelain law- 
 symmetry, which we hope may be the Palladium of our 
 liberties. No Englishman to be imprisoned without habeas 
 corpus ; no Tallage to be conceded ; no nothing : — a brief 
 document and a beautiful ; — which has cost us two months, 
 come through many perils from the potter's -wheel of the 
 Commons, from the furnace-kiln of the Lords ; — and the King's 
 acceptance of it was thought to be somewhat of the stingiest. 
 He did not say : Soit droit Jhit comnie il est desire : — he said : 
 it should be law but — but : — why did his Majesty introduce 
 any ' but ' ? An excellent Parliament, Mr. Rigmarole ; — but 
 it is said they are to be prorogued on Wednesday next. 
 
 But let us, in Heaven's name, try if we can get into the 
 interior of the Parliament itself; look about and see if there 
 is anything discoverable there. A strange, dim old place ; 
 
 ^ Rushworth. 
 
CHAP, v.] CHARLES'S THIRD PARLIAMENT 201 
 
 very invisible, yet very indisputable. There is no disputing 
 of it : here are the Rhadanianthine Commons Journals ])roving 
 to the latest posterity that it is a real corporeal entity, no 
 fiction of the brain, but a creation of the Almighty Maker. 
 Look on it, reader, with due earnestness ; it will dawn on thee 
 as a visible or half-visible ghost, one of those strange Parlia- 
 ments of the Past, which are not, and which were ; — the 
 perpetual miracle of this our Life on Earth. 
 
 Yes, here I see is learned Serjeant Finch, as Speaker ; ^ his 
 face nearly hidden from one by his wig. Hidden mostly by 
 their wigs, sit near, in front of him, his Majesty''s select 
 councillors, such of them as have got selected : a Secretary 
 Cook, a Sir Humphrey May, Chancellor of the Duchy, and 
 others : dim rudiments of a Majesty's Ministry such as we 
 now have : they as yet sit sparse and feeble ' in front of the 
 ' Speaker ' ; mostly hidden from all mortals, so to speak, by 
 their official wigs. To all mortals they are and have long been 
 mere human official wig-bearers, not worth discriminating or 
 distinguishing ; — as such let them to all Eternity continue ! 
 
 And over in the general amphitheatre of benches, — well, is 
 it not a sight ! — there they sit, all clothed and banded, the 
 honourable Puritan gentlemen, most grave thoughts under 
 those steeple-hats of theirs. Our old friends in the ' Twelve 
 ' kings ' Parliament,^ most of them I still see here : these, and 
 sundry whom I note as new. Old Sir Edward Coke, tough 
 veteran, one rejoices to see still in his place ; they have 
 pricked him as Sheriff, they have tried various tricks to keep 
 him out, but could not, so learned was he in precedents, a man 
 of the toughest fibre, of quickest wit, not to be easily balked 
 in the laws. Mr. Pym, still in the Puritan interest, manages 
 most of our complaints against the Manwaring and Priest- 
 flunky species : a man rising, growing ; as the healthy oak 
 does ; a man you may well call robust. Trumpet-tongued 
 Sir Benjamin [Rudyard ?], still on the side of Court. Decisive 
 Wentworth wishing to have Committees appointed ; staunch 
 ^ Collins, ii. 232. - See aiite, p. 157. 
 
202 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 for Protestantism and Privilege of Parliament ; but always with 
 method. It is inconceivable what he has had to suffer down 
 in Yorkshire, in county business, in Elections, from the Savile 
 genealogy there : how they have thwarted and spited him, and 
 striven to make him small among his neighbours ; — a thing he 
 cannot brook. Do they know what stuff" he is made of, this 
 young Wentworth ? He is full of energy, he is full of method ; 
 deny him not the first necessity of man, that of expanding 
 himself, of growing bigger, — he must do it, must and will, in 
 a noble or ignoble way. I notice Mr. Coryton, also, my 
 esteemed young friend from the west,^ Mr. Strode, esteemed 
 young friend Mr. Denzil Holies, old EarPs ^ favourite son, — 
 inherits plenty of the family irascibility. Here is a Sir 
 John Hotham, too, from Yorkshire, — rather a poor-looking 
 creature ? says the reader. Yes, on his countenance I read 
 pruriency enough, ill-tempered vanity enough, — a stamp of 
 Fate ? — much desire to distinguish himself, and small ability 
 to do it ; — that is stamp enough of Fate, I think. Fate, the 
 Devil, or whatever we call it, has ear-marked or brand-marked 
 that man, legibly to intelligent minds, ' The Devil his.' — 
 
 Mr. Hampden — ah, yes ! hail to you, Mr. Hampden ; right 
 glad to see you here again ! He sits there in the purest 
 linen, clear-combed, close-shaven, his mouth, somewhat thin in 
 the lips, is very carefully shut, his bright eyes are radiantly 
 o})en. Don't you think the li})s a trifle too thin ? My beautiful 
 Mr. Hampden ! His mother has never yet got him a Peerage ; 
 he himself begins to have other views : he, too, is growing 
 bigger, and has to do it, but I ho})e in a noble way. Fiery 
 Eliot is there, speaking like pistol-bullets ; his very silence 
 eloquent. Our young friend Sackville,^ Duel Sackvillc, is 
 become Duel Dorset, by his brother's death, and gone to the 
 House of Lords ; but I notice, home here from the German 
 
 ' Cornwall. 
 
 - John Holies, father of Denzil, became Lord Houghton in 1616 (having 
 bought a Peerage for ^^10,000), and Earl of Clare in 1624. He died in 1637. 
 * See ante, pp. 99, 167. 
 
CHAP, v.] CHARLES'S THIRD PARLIAMENT 203 
 
 wars, another manful young gentleman, Half Hopton, Sir Ralph 
 they call him, of whom in coming years we shall know more. 
 And seated on the intermediate degrees, lost in the general 
 crowd of steeple-hats, what face is yonder ? — The same we 
 saw last in Cripplegate Church, eight years ago, in wedding 
 raiment beside Elizabeth Bourchier, — Mr. Oliver Cromwell, 
 Burgess for Huntingdon ! Yes, sure enough, there sits he ; 
 confabulates at times with cousin Ham})den ; he has been 
 living, been doing and endeavouring all this while, though 
 Ave saw nothing of him ! Doing and thinking — who knows 
 how much ! ' AVhat am I ? What is this LTniverse ? Whence 
 ' came I into it ? Whither am I bound in it ? ' These dread 
 questions fell deep on the great silent soul ; stirred it u}) 
 well nigh to madness. Doctor Simcock has told friends of 
 mine that he suffered under terrible hypochondria, and had 
 fancies about the Town-cross. No wonder. These questions 
 are insoluble, or the solution of them is a miracle to us : 
 they are great as our soul is great, accurately of the same 
 size. To ' Apes by the Dead Sea' this Universe is an Apery, 
 a tragic humbug, which they put away from them by un- 
 musical screeches, by the natural cares for lodging, for dinner 
 and such like ; but to Men it is an awful verity, of which 
 some solution is indispensable ! — In brief, my brave Oliver, 
 after much wrestling to solve it, has laid hold of the Puritan 
 Gospel, wherein he finds the question answered ; after long 
 hearsav, it became a Divine fact for him, and he stands from 
 henceforth with the Eternal stars above him and the murky 
 waters safe under him, on this firm ground, with a Hitherto 
 shalt thou come, but no farther. — It is a victory like few. 
 Noble as the gods is he that hath gained it ! 
 
 The Order of the Day on this Tuesday of June, 1628, is 
 the Declaration to the King. The House was yesterday in 
 Grand Committee, gradually building up its Declaration to 
 the King. A work of delicacy and difficulty, but imperative 
 to be done. It behoves a faithful House of Commons, now 
 
204 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 when Mass-Priests swarm among us, and are setting up a 
 College in Clerkenwell, here at home ; when abroad the Three- 
 hatted Man of Sin is a-tiptoe on his Mountain of Idolatries 
 in the Romish Babylon, summoning all servants of the Devil 
 in cowl or crown, by insidious plot or open violence, to tread 
 out God's light on this Earth ; when the passing-bell ringeth 
 for religion, and also for liberty and right ; when men are 
 maltreated against law, and our trade and substance are decay- 
 ing visibly, and our counsels, foreign and domestic smitten 
 with futility, and even English fighting is become as mock- 
 fighting, except that we ourselves are slain and sunk in salt- 
 pits, and disastrous quagmires, and scandalous Turk-Pirates 
 are grown familiar with Laver [?] Point, and the Nore buoy, 
 and capture our ships in our own waters ; and from all the 
 people struggles wide-spread, inarticulate, a sound of sorrow 
 and complaint, — which some one ought to change into a voice : 
 — in such circumstances, it behoves a House of Commons 
 mindful of its mission registered, not in the Rolls Chapel 
 alone, but in the Chancery of Heaven, to venture on doing it. 
 We dare not say it ! We are very miserable ! 
 
 The House is to meet this morning at seven of the clock ; 
 the Order was, the Grand Committee and business of the 
 Declaration shall be proceeded in at eight. No business of 
 greater delicacy could be given to men reverent to his Majesty 
 as to the visible Vicegerent of God, — and not with lip- 
 reverence but heart-reverence ; and yet the invisible God 
 himself nmst have His Truth spoken ; — at thy peril hide it 
 not ! — The modern reader will do well to understand that 
 such, in very sober truth, was the temper of this Parliament ; 
 that mimicry of reverence either to man or to God had not 
 yet come in. The distractions of this heavy-laden Earth 
 were not yet completed ; quacks were not raised by general 
 acclamation anywhere to ride and guide the business of this 
 Earth, but there remained in man a clear sense for quacks 
 and for the Eternal doom of quacks ; — a great hope conse- 
 quently remained. This House of Connnons will go forward 
 
CHAP, v.] CHARLES'S THIRD PARLIAMENT 205 
 
 in its Declaration with all reverence, yet with all faithfulness ; 
 I hope none of them have come hither without prayer for 
 guidance.^ 
 
 Alas ! before ever we get into Grand Committee, hear 
 Speaker Finch with a message from his Majesty : Finch, of 
 whom I see little hut the wig, has been with his Majesty over 
 night ; as his wont is too often for a faithful Speaker ; — and 
 now this is the message : That we are to be prorogued in 
 eight days ; that we ought to get on with our Bill of Sub- 
 sidies, and not take up new matter : that, in fact, his Majesty 
 ' requires us ' to abstain from such new matter, and especially 
 from all new matter ' which may lay any scandal or aspersion 
 ' on the State-government or Ministers thereof.' ' Here is the 
 King's message. We shall not need to go into Grand Com- 
 mittee, then, to give voice to the dumb sorrow of the people, 
 and the word of the Lord that has come to us. Our tread- 
 ing of the Bridge of Dread will not be called for. We 
 are to lay no scandal on the State Government or Ministers 
 thereof. I command you, says the God's Vicegerent, with 
 brief emphasis, that on that subject you be silent. Such 
 a message, we may hope, never before came to any House 
 of Commons. 
 
 Will the modern reader believe it ? can he in his light, 
 innocent, mimetic mind, bring the matter in the least home 
 to himself? This House of Commons, men of English 
 humour and rugged practical temper, did, at hearing of this 
 message, burst, not into Parliamentary Eloquence, but pretty 
 generally into a passion of tears ! It is the incrediblest of 
 all entirely indisputable facts. Honourable Yorkshire Bur- 
 gesses, learned Serjeant Members, have written authentic 
 note of it, historic Rushworths put it in print, and the 
 Mss. themselves moulder, still decipherable, in the British 
 Museum. Charles's Third Parliament, on Thursday the 5th 
 of June, 1628, at hearing of the above message, sat with 
 1 See anie, p. 169. - Rushworth, i. 605. 
 
206 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 consternation on every face, and could not speak for 
 weeping. 
 
 Sir Robert Phili})s rises : — This, if ever any was, is a case 
 for making a precedent, if there be none ready made. 
 Philips in broken words attempts to utter his big thought. 
 Is it so, then ? There is to be no hope, then, after all our 
 humble and careful endeavours towards God and towards 
 man ; and no hope of rectifying these miseries, seeing our 
 sins are many and great. Yes, it is our sins, I consider. I 
 surely am myself now, if ever at any moment, wrought upon 
 and tempted to sin. To the sin of impatience, poor Sir 
 Robert means. ' What was our aim, but to have done his 
 ' Majesty service ? ' says he ; but the big tears burst forth, — 
 except in that way, his big thought can find no utterance ; 
 he sits abruptly down. Oliver, I think, is pale in the ftice, 
 and Mr. Hampden's lips are closed like a pair of pincers. 
 Pym speaks ; but Pym, too, breaks down with weeping. It 
 is such a scene as I never saw before. 
 
 Fiery Eliot rises, in his eyes, too, are tears, but lightning 
 also ; our sins, he says, are exceeding great ; if we do not 
 speedily return to God, God will remove himself farther from 
 us. Sir John thinks, surely there must have been some mis- 
 report of us to his Majesty : what did we aim at, but to 
 vindicate the honour of his Majesty and of our country ? 
 ' As to his Majesty's Ministers, I persuade myself, no Minister 
 ' how dear soever can ' — Here the Speaker, feeling that a 
 certain high Duke is aimed at, starts from his Chair, — tears 
 in his eyes also ; — says, ' There is a command laid upon me, 
 ' — I must forbid you to proceed ' ; — and Sir John, as if shot, 
 plumps down silent. 
 
 And old Sir Edward Coke rises. Coke upon Lyttleton, 
 touiih old man, here in one of the last of his forensic fields, 
 his old eyes beam with strange light, his voice is shrill, like a 
 
 prophet's : ' Mr. Speaker, I p ' ! By Heavens ! that 
 
 tough old visage, too, is getting all awry, dissolved into weep- 
 ing ! Sir Edward, ' overcome with passion, seeing the desola- 
 
CHAr. v.] CHARLESES THIRD PARLIAMENT 207 
 
 ' tion likely to ensue, was forced to .sit down when he began 
 ' to speak, through the abundance of tears.' ^ ^Ve were much 
 ' affected to be so restrained, since the House in former times 
 ' had proceeded by fining and conmiitting John of Gaunt, the 
 ' King's son, and others, and sentenced the Lord Chancellor 
 ' Bacon.' ^ — Old Coke weeping, the House all weeping ; it is 
 such a scene as I never saw in any House of Commons. So 
 deep the two reverences lie on the old honourable Gentleman, 
 — such a clash does the collision of the two reverences make 
 when they hit together ! The King, God's visible Vicegerent, 
 commands us to desist ; the invisible God himself, dumb 
 England, and the voices of our Fathers from the Death - 
 kingdoms of the Past, and the voices of our children from 
 the unborn Future, bid us forward. We are come to the 
 shock of conflict, then, — here is the actual clash of long- 
 threatened war ; and it is we that have to do it, the stern 
 lot was ours. Very terrible this hour, — the child of cen- 
 turies, the parent of centuries. ' Apes by the Dead Sea ' 
 would not weep at such an hour ; they, with umnusical 
 screech, would whisk out of it, and be safe : but Men have 
 to front the hour ; woe to them if they make not their post 
 good ! — therefore does this House of Commons weep, — 
 ' besides a great many whose grief made them dumb.' 
 
 Yet some, says Mr. Alured the younger, bore up in that 
 storm.^ Mr. Kirton says : ' He hopes we have hearts and 
 ' hands and swords, too ; he hopes Ave will not be trodden 
 ' down into the mud without a word or two with our enemies, 
 ' without a stroke or two with them ! '- Dangerous words, like 
 a glow of sheet -lightning across the weeping skies. Mr. 
 Kirton's words being comjilained of, the House of Commons, 
 on the morrow, upon question, with one accord did vindicate 
 the same. ' In the end they desired the Speaker to leave the 
 ' Chair,' ' that they might speak the freer and the frequenter, 
 ' and commanded that no man go out of the House, upon pain 
 
 ^ Rushworth, i. 609. 
 
 - Coni7)ions Journals, i. 909. 
 
208 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 ' of going to the Tower. Then the Speaker humbly and 
 ' earnestly besought the House to give him leave to absent 
 ' himself for half an hour, presuming they did not think he 
 ' did it for any ill intention ; which was instantly granted 
 ' him.'' Sir Edward again rises, his voice firmer this time, he 
 says : ' I now see God hath not accepted our late smooth 
 ' ways ; in our fear of offending, we have not dealt sincerely 
 ' with the King. We should have laid bare these miseries to 
 ' the roots, and spoken the truth. We have sinned against 
 ' God therein.' — Old Sir Edward, actual Coke upon Lyttleton, 
 thinks he has sinned against God. ' Therefore, I,"" says the 
 tough and true old man, ' not knowing whether I shall ever 
 ' speak here again, will speak freely ; I do here protest that 
 ' the author and cause of all these miseries is the Duke of 
 ' Buckingham ! ' ^ Yea, yea ! cries the voice of all the world, 
 breaking the dread silence with acclamation : ' which was 
 ' entertained and an&wered with a cheerful acclamation of the 
 ' House, as when one good hound recovei's the scent, the rest 
 ' come in with a full cry.' And we now vote, not only, that 
 our Declaration shall go on, but that the Duke of Buckingham 
 shall be expressly named in it ; we will solemnly point him 
 out ; him, as the bitter root of all these sori'ows ; let us 
 please God rather than man ! And so, now our eyes are dry, 
 just as the vote is passing, Speaker Finch comes back upon 
 us, after an absence, not of half an hour, but of three whole 
 hours, — for the chimes of Margaret's are now ringing eleven 
 — and informs us that we are to rise straightway, and no 
 business farther in House or in Committee, by us or any part 
 of us, to be done this day. ' What are we to expect on the 
 ' morrow,' says Mr. Francis Alured, ' God of Heaven knows.' 
 Dissolution, most probably, and confusion on the back of 
 confusion ! Sir, let us have your prayers, Avhereof both you 
 and I have need. 
 
 This is the Session 5th June, 1628 : which History thinks 
 
 ^ Rush\voilli, i. 609-10. 
 
CHAP, v.] CHARLESES THIRD TARLIAMExXT 209 
 
 good to take notice of, as of one of the reniarkablest Sessions 
 rescued from the torpid rubbish-mounds of Dryasdust, and 
 set it conspicuous, as on a hill. No modern reader ever saw 
 a House of Connnons weeping. What spoonies ! says the 
 modern honourable Gentleman : Why did they weep ? O 
 modern honourable Gentleman, I will advise thee to reflect 
 why ; — reflect well upon it, and see if thou canst find why. 
 It may chance to be of real profit to thee. Men in these 
 days do not usually weep ; the commonest case of weeping is 
 that of the schoolboys whom you have cut off" from their bun. 
 The loss of one's bun, whether baked bun or other, is still a 
 serious calamity : schoolboys, enamoured young gentlemen, 
 romantic young ladies, and such like, do yet weep for the loss 
 of their several sweet buns ; — but it is justly thought im- 
 proper in men. Men do not usually weep ; men usually 
 are not in earnest enough for weeping. ' It is a touching 
 ' thing,"* says Diderot (of his Father) ' to see men weep.' I 
 call it a scandalous condition of affairs, in which one cannot 
 weep except for the loss of one's bun : very scandalous, 
 withered and barren, indeed : — the sign that soul has now 
 become synonymous with stomach ; Avhich state of matters 
 may the gods speedily put an end to for evermore ! With 
 stern satisfaction one discerns that if the gods do it not, 
 the Devil will do it, before long ! — 
 
 The Parliament, as we know, was not dissolved on the 
 morrow : contrariwise, the King changed his hand, and 
 determined to conciliate these Commons ; weeping Commons, 
 that dry their eyes with a Nation ranked behind them, 
 reverent to man, but reverent before all to God, are a thing 
 to be conciliated, if one can. Buckingham himself, a man 
 not without discernment, advises it. His Majesty, with such 
 softest speeches as he had, anxious to soothe, and to get his 
 Subsidies, studies to mollify. For we meet on the morrow, 
 which is Friday, and go on with our Declaration, and justify 
 even the words of Kirton, about swords and our enemies' 
 throats. On Saturday, his Majesty assembles us ; with a 
 
 o 
 
210 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 kind short speech, much to the purpose, confirms our Petition 
 of Right, passes it in the usual way of Bills, with all formali- 
 ties of sanction, ' Let right be clone, and Soit droit fait comme 
 ' il est desire.'' To the joy of all men ; to the illumining of 
 London again, had not the night been Saturday. We may 
 pray our thanks on the Sabbath, but not illuminate. 
 
 If the Commons would now pass their Subsidy Bill, and go 
 about their business ! The Commons have their Declaration 
 to perfect first ; they have the Trailbaston, foreign Dalbier 
 and Burlamachi to see into. Conciliatory Majesty annuls the 
 whole Trailbaston business, discharges Dalbier, Burlamachi, 
 Balfour, and all German horse whatsoever : — orders the 
 proper authority to sell off the great saddles, disperse men, 
 horse and all by the rapidest mode it can, and let the Trail- 
 baston drop forever and a day, — the Trailbaston for one 
 thing. Our Commons go on with their Declaration, debating 
 daily with closed doors : the Subsidy-bills, for all our huny, 
 cannot be hastened beyond their own tortoise pace. And 
 London simmers, deep and huge, round them ; all dumb to 
 us, to itself all-eloquent ; hears, with a bright flash in every 
 eye, that the Duke is actually to be named. Let him look 
 to it. London has no Times'' reports, Hansard's Debates : but 
 what the Parliamentary sympathy of London was, rude dumb 
 actions do still speak. For example : — Who is this coming 
 out of the Tavern in Old Jewry on the evening of the 13th 
 day of June, Friday evening ? It is little more than a 
 week since the noble House of Commons sat all weeping ; 
 and now the Duke, yes the Duke, is to be named. Do you 
 see that scandalous old man .? — an old man and an old 
 sinner. Duke's Devil,^ — Dr. Lamb the name of him. A 
 warlock, they tell me, a dealer with unclean spirits, himself, 
 sure enough, a most unclean spirit, — tried for life before 
 now ; his crimes shameful and horrible, his defence cynical ; 
 that of a beast, not of a man. Pity they did not hang him 
 ^ II. L'Estrange, S7. 
 
CHAP, v.] CHARLESES THIRD PARLIAMENT 211 
 
 then ! A catspaw of the Duke ; that is worst of all. He, 
 denizen of dark scoundreldom, deals with unclean spirits, with 
 scandals and abominations, to help the Duke. Enemy of 
 God and of England, servant of Duke and the Devil. Why 
 has he emerged from the deep of scoundreldom into daylight 
 this blessed June afternoon ? He has been at the play in 
 Shoreditch this very afternoon — at the play. We copy the 
 rest from historic Rushworth : 
 
 'At tliis ven^ time, being- June 18,^ 1G28, Doctor Lamb so-called, 
 having been at a Play-house, came through the city of London ; and 
 being a person very notorious, the Boys gathered very thick about him ; 
 which increased by the access of ordinary People and the Rabble ; they 
 pi'esently reviled him with words, called him a Witch, a Devil, the 
 Duke's Conjurer, etc. ; he took Sanctuary in the Windmill Tavern at the 
 lower end of the Old Jewry, where he remained a little space ; but there 
 being two doors opening to several Streets out of the said House, the 
 Rout discovering the same, made sure both doors, lest he should escape, 
 and pressed so hard upon the Vintner to enter the House, that he, for 
 fear the House should be pulled down, and the Wines in his Cellar 
 spoiled and destroyed, thrust the imaginary Devil out of his House ; 
 whereupon the tumult carried him in a crowd among them, howling and 
 shouting, crying : a Witch, a Devil ; and when they saw a guard coming 
 by the order of the Lord Mayor for the rescue of him, they fell upon 
 the Doctor, beat him and bruised him, and left him for dead. AV^ith much 
 ado the officers that rescued him, got him alive to the Counter ; where 
 he remained some few hours, and died that night. The City of London 
 endeavoured to find out the most active persons in this Riot ; but could 
 not find any that either could, or, if they could, were willing to witness 
 against any person in that business.'^ 
 
 Here is an end to Doctor Lamb, — a man I never saw 
 before. A most ugly weather-symptom, for Duke and Duke's 
 Patron ; — a protest not spoken in Grammatical Parliamentary 
 Remonstrance, but written in violent mob hieroglyphics ; 
 which, nevertheless, it would beseem a wise King to in- 
 terpret well. The King interprets that it is violent spirits 
 in the Commons who stir up all this ; makes double haste to 
 
 ^ 1 8th in Rushworth is a mistake or misprint for 13th. 
 - Collections, i. 618. 
 
212 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 ({uicken the Subsidy-bill, and get the Commons sent adrift. — 
 Declaration has the best heat in the Parliamentary oven ; 
 Subsidy-bill is baking very slowly. Declaration is presented, 
 is accepted with sniffing politeness ; Subsidy-bill is still un- 
 ready. Patience, three days ! Finally, mere Speaker Finch 
 and Official men reporting that the Subsidy-bill, though not 
 handsomely ready, may now be eaten, hastily his ^Majesty 
 quenches his Parliamentary oven : in plain language, in a most 
 hasty, flurried manner, prorogues the Commons, namely ; ^ 
 not even thanking them for his Subsidy-bill. The Subsidy- 
 bill, we said, was ready, though not handsomely ready : the 
 Tonnage and Poundage Bill was not ready at all. This 
 latter, meanwhile, as an indispensable item of our finance, 
 we determine to use, nevertheless. The London Magistrates 
 are fined heavily for Doctor Lamb : the Commons"* Members 
 are all home in the counties : Mr. Cromwell, I think, at 
 Huntingdon, rejjorts the course of matters with due reticence 
 and pious reflection to Dr. Beard, and other judicious persons, 
 that have a claim to that privilege. His precise words are 
 lost to us ; but the meaning of them is very })lain to us and 
 every person for a thousand years or so ; — all England meant 
 what this Mr. Cromwell was now meaning ; and saw itself 
 reduced to express the same in a dreadfully audible manner 
 by and by ! Puritanism shrank out of sight very submissive 
 at the Hampton Court Conference, in furred gown, four-and- 
 twenty years ago : but out of being it could not shrink ; — 
 nourished as it was from the eternal fountains, and com- 
 manded by God himself to be. It was, in furred gown, very 
 submissive twenty-four years ago : but behold it now as a 
 Parliament all in tears, with tough Coke u])on Lyttleton, 
 himself unable to speak, — yet urged on by the thought of 
 offending God. A Parliament all drying its tears, in the 
 name of God venturing to name the Duke ; the very populace 
 in chorus, after its own rude way, j)ouncing u})on a Doctor 
 Lamb. A spirit wide as England, seemingly ; deep as the 
 ' On 26 ih June, 1628. 
 
CHAP. VI.] POPULAR DISCONTENT 213 
 
 world ! If I were his Majesty, I would try to reconcile 
 myself to this spirit ; — try to become Captain of it, as the 
 likeliest way. His Majesty, a man of clear insight, but none 
 of the deepest, determines on attempting to subdue it. The 
 Destinies of England ordered that this English King should 
 have no sympathy with the heart-tendency of England, 
 therefore no understanding of it ; that he should nickname 
 it Puritanism, mutiny, ' violent spirits,' — and try whether 
 he could subdue it. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 POPULAR DISCONTENT ON THE PROROGATION OF 
 
 THIRD PARLIAMENT BUCKINGHAM — FELTON 
 
 ROCHELLE, ETC. 
 
 [1628] 
 
 Thus is the Parliament sent home again ; and, as Mr. 
 Strode says, a slight put upon it in print. For his Majesty 
 causes his Prorogation Speech to be printed ; — issues, like- 
 wise, a Proclamation whereby the blame is shifted from his 
 shoulders, and laid upon ours. His Majesty also saw good, 
 in respect of the Reverend Roger Sycophant Manwaring, — 
 brought to his knees in the House of Commons and sentenced 
 to heavy penalties, — his Majesty sees good to forbear the 
 same ; sees good on the contrary to confer on Dr. Sycophant 
 the rich living of Stanford Rivers in Essex, with dispensation 
 to hold that of St. Giles's, the while : — there can Dr. Roffer 
 preach his Court doctrines, in town or country, much at his 
 ease. His Book,^ I think, is burnt according to sentence ; 
 and Proclamation is issued, to talk no more about it ; which 
 stops on the threshold a host of learned Anti-Roger Books 
 and Pamphlets just coming out ; and, as we in Whitehall 
 hope, finishes off this Reverend Dr. Sycophant affair in a 
 judicious manner. Court Chaplains, minor Canons, any able 
 
 ^ Consisting of the two Sermons of July 1627. See ante, p. 194. 
 
214 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Gospel Preachers who will preach that men, if they do not 
 lend us money on royal summons, will be damned — ought 
 not they to have encouragement ? Bishop Neile, Bishop 
 Laud, the Right Reverend Fathers, are of that opinion. On 
 which ground, too. Canon Montague, he who for five years 
 has lived in hot water on our account, has gagged old geese 
 and ganders in such masterly style, and been censured and 
 badgered, — Canon Montague, we decide, shall have a Souls'- 
 Overseership ; he, if any, is fit to oversee souls : — if souls 
 cannot get to heaven following Canon Montague, what chance 
 have they otherwise ? So it is decided. The See of 
 ChicliEster falling vacant in these weeks, we settle, by congt 
 (Telire and nolo episcopari and the other forms, that Canon 
 Montague shall have it. These things a realm of England 
 has to witness, while the yellow corn is rustling in the harvest 
 sun of this year 1628 : honourable gentlemen, following 
 their reapers, flying their hawks in their several counties, 
 have to hear of these things : — and answer them with an 
 expressive though inarticulate ' huh ! ' variously accented. 
 
 It is Buckingham that has done it, — Neile and Laud, his 
 spiritual bottle-holders ; servants of the Scarlet Woman, 
 thrice scandalous flunkies of the Man of Sin. Shall England 
 be trodden down, then, into temporal and eternal ruin ? Not 
 our ' trade "* only, but our salvation, the Gospel of the living 
 God given up for a DeviTs Gospel of Rubrics, of Mannnon, 
 of Flunkyism ; England and all its children forsaking the 
 Laws of God, and staggering down and ever down towards 
 their, in that case, very inevitable goal, the Devil ! Mr. 
 Kirton hopes we are Englishmen ; hopes we have hearts and 
 hands, and sharp steel withal, to have a word or two with 
 our enemies first, a stroke or two with them. Alas, how our 
 fathers felt in those things, is all unknown to this more 
 unfortunate enchanted generation ; (juack-ridden, hag-ridden, 
 hell-ridden, till it has forgotten God altogether, and re- 
 members only the cant of God ; and now lies choking in a 
 grey aby^ss of Inanities and vain Vocables, as in the exhausted 
 
CHAP. VI.] POPULAR DISCONTENT 215 
 
 bell of an air-pump, — and will either awaken soon, or perish 
 for evermore. We are still more unfortunate ! 
 
 Lieutenant Felton, walking in those old hot days on the 
 shady side of old London streets, is grown as grim as Rhada- 
 manthus ; thinking of this state of affairs, thinking what, in 
 these circumstances, a just man, fearing God and hating the 
 Devil, ought to do. A short, swart figure, of military 
 taciturnity, of Rhadamanthine energy and gravity ; on him 
 more than on most this universal nightmare crushing down 
 all English souls, sits heavy. O that the gods would tell this 
 heavy-laden soul what he, for his part, ought to do in it ! 
 The gods, or else the devils, perhaps will. Passing along 
 Tower Hill, one of these August days. Lieutenant Felton sees 
 a sheath-knife on a stall there, value thirteen pence,^ of short, 
 broad blade, sharp trowel-point, and very fair temper and 
 dimensions, — made of an old sword, I think, — the glitter of 
 it flashes into his eye, and into the eye of his soul, as a 
 Heaven^s response ; a gleam of monition in his great dark- 
 ness. He pays down the thirteen pence, sticks the sheath- 
 knife in his pocket, and walks away. 
 
 Meantime, we hear from Rochelle that matters there are 
 coming to extremity. King Louis, Cardinal Richelieu, with 
 big Bassompierre and huge-whiskered hosts, have beleaguered 
 it, begirdled it, are staking up with piles and booms the very 
 harbour ; they write to us for help, these poor Protestant 
 Rochellers, ' with their tears and their blood."' Yes, in us 
 there is help ! grimly mutters Felton, grimly mutters England. 
 Our eight warships sent to batter them, which every man 
 deserted except one gunner, who was shot, — in these there 
 was a very singular ' help ' ! And the great Duke's general- 
 ship in Rhe, — his expenditure, discomfiture, 2000 left in the 
 brine-bogs, — was not that a help for you ? — My Lord of 
 
 ^ The price is variously given : some say tenpence, others say sixteenpence, 
 others a shilling. 
 
216 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Denbigh ^ went again this summer ; his big sails they saw 
 from the walls, looking wistfully — but nothing more. He 
 could not get in ; — him, too, they found a broken reed. 
 Their tears and their blood — poor Rochellese ! O England, 
 England ! And the Duke is going again ; brave men once 
 more are to be led by liim. The Duke will try a second time 
 whether he can play on the war-fiddle : — good Heavens ! the 
 patience of gods and men had need to be great ! 
 
 Buckingham actually is going ; busy, he, at Portsmouth ; 
 and the king is with him in these August days, getting ready 
 a right gallant sea-armament, putting forth the whole 
 strength of England. If he can relieve Rochelle, it will be 
 an innnense relief to himself withal. He must do it, he 
 must try to do it. The weight of a Nation's scorn and silent 
 rage is not light upon a proud heart. Buckingham, in the 
 centre of a gathering sea-armament, with impatient French 
 Soubises, hasty Sovereign Majesties, difficulties, delays, and 
 every conceivable species of refractory official person, is one of 
 the busiest men in all the world. On the Saturday morning, 
 August 23rd, my Lady Denbigh at Newnham Paddox in 
 Warwickshire, the sister of the great Duke, has a letter from 
 her brother ... ' Whereunto all the while she was writing 
 ' her answer, she bedewed the paper with her tears ; and after 
 ' a most bitter passion [of weeping], whereof she could yield no 
 ' reason but that her dearest brother was to be gone, — she fell 
 ' down in a swoon. Her letter ended thus : " / xcUl pray for 
 ' " your happy return^ xvliich I look at zaith a great cloud over v\y 
 ' " head^ too heavy for my poor heart to hear xcHhout torment ,• 
 ' " but I hope the great God of Heaven icill bless you..'''' ' " 
 
 Precisely about which time, I discover a swart, thick-set 
 figure riding into Portsmouth ; taciturn, of Rhadamanthine 
 gravity. Lo ! it is Lieutenant Felton, he that bought the 
 sheath-knife on Tower Hill, for thirteen pence. Going to 
 Rochelle, perhaps ? He was near drowned last time in the 
 
 ^ Buckingham's brolher-iii-law. 
 
 ^ Keliqtiiic Wottotiiatnc (Lond. 1685), ji. 235. 
 
CHAP. VI.] POPULAR DISCONTENT 217 
 
 salt quagmire there. He rides into Portsmouth, and is lost 
 in the general whirl of men. 
 
 Whether Buckingham has had his breakfast, or is only 
 o'oino- to have it, whether he is enterin<:j into this dark 
 passage or coming out of that dark passage, and how, in 
 short, the matter was, my erudite friend is ignorant. Several 
 different witnesses report each individual circumstance in a 
 different way ; and I reconcile myself without difficulty to be 
 ignorant. The house is whirling with officials, menials, 
 military gentlemen, naval gentlemen, with every conceivable 
 business, including that of breakfasting and bartering. The 
 Rhadamanthine Felton is elbowing about among the others. 
 M. De Soubise has been arguing, talking loud with the Duke 
 this morning, some thought in anger, but it was only the 
 French excited manner : the Duke is now barbered, is break- 
 fasted or about to breakfast, at any rate is come down stairs, 
 and is stepping along, speaking into the ear of Sir Somebody,^ 
 a military gentleman unknown to me, who with low conge, 
 takes his leave ; the next moment there is a shriek from some 
 strong voice. The Duke it is : — the Duke ineffectually 
 grasping at his sword, staggers back, tw-o serving-men, hastily 
 rushing up, he staggers into their arms ; he tugs at a knife 
 sticking in his left breast, tugs it out, and a torrent of life- 
 blood with it ; and groaning only ' The villain hath killed 
 ' me ! *■ sinks down into swift death ; — from the pinnacle of 
 England swiftly down into the bottomless deep forever. His 
 poor Duchess running out in morning deshabille, looks over 
 the stair balustrade, — what a sight ! They lay him on a 
 table ; they leave him there : — he is dead, he is the pinnacle 
 of England no more. 
 
 Felton did not hide himself: Felton, hearing them say it 
 was the Frenchmen, said calmly : ' It was I : ' ^ a methodic 
 
 ^ Sir Thomas Fryer, one of Buckingham's favourite Colonels : a ' short man.' 
 - Felton withdrew to the kitchen after the dastardly deed ; and some say that 
 
 hearing the people cry out ' A Frenchman ! A Frenchman ! ' and mistaking this 
 
 cry for ' Felton ! Felton ! ' he then surrendered himself. 
 
218 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part li. 
 
 Rhadamanthine man ! In his hat they found a bit of writing, 
 in case they had killed him straightway, to explain that a 
 man could sacrifice his life in a good cause.^ 
 
 The king was at prayers at Southwick ; " the messenger, 
 arriving, found the whole Court in chapel on their knees ; he 
 stepped over kneeling figures, stepped up to his Majesty and 
 whispered ; his Majesty, without change of face, continued 
 praying. Some say he wept duly afterwards ; to us it shall 
 remain indifferent. On the morrow. Bishop Laud and Bishop 
 Neile, just engaged in consecrating Canon Montague at 
 Croydon, hear the news ; ^ certainly with due sorrow, they, — 
 for it is most momentous. An electric stroke, awakening all 
 England into horror, into reflexions profitable or unprofitable. 
 
 At bottom this, too, was as a voice of protest, saying, O 
 King, quit not the Law of God, lest the DeviFs Law come 
 upon us ! An illegal, unparliamentary protest ; as ineffectual 
 as the legal Parliamentary had been. Puritan England coukl 
 give Felton's action no approval ; the grim deed changed 
 nothing, took away nothing except in a shocking manner the 
 lives of two poor men. Alas, if you are going to kill and 
 abolish, it is the Sham-kino- of Eno-land that vou must abolish 
 from the face of poor England, to get the true king there ; 
 and assassin knives are not the road to that ! The road to 
 that, it also will have to be trodden ? and in the course of 
 years and the course of centuries we may arrive. Felton's 
 protest, one of many, went for little. Our fleet, too, all 
 ineffectual as if Buckingham's self had led it, sailed for 
 Rochelle in a few days ; could not relieve Rochelle, could not 
 get across the Richelieu boom ; could only come its ways home 
 
 ^ ' "That man is cowardly Ijnse and deserveth not llic nameof a gentleman or 
 Souldier that is not willinge to sacrifice his life for the honor of his God his Kinge 
 and his Countrie." Lett noe man commend me for doinge of it, but rather dis- 
 commend themselves as the cause of it, for if God had not taken away o"" hearts 
 for o^ sinnes he would not have gone so longe unpunished — Jo. Felton,' were 
 the words on a paper pinned into Felton's hat. 
 
 '^ Four miles from Portsmouth. 
 
 * Rushworth, i., 635. 
 
CHAP. VI.] POPULAR DISCONTENT 219 
 
 again. The townsmen saw it from the walls fade over the 
 horizon ; then opened their gates to the king's mercy, who did 
 prove merciful. A ghastly population worn to shadows, the 
 third soul only surviving, the rest dead of famine, desperate 
 labour and sorrow : — so ends Protestant Rochelle ; it is to 
 be called Borgo ]\Iaria, in honour of the Queen Mother, our 
 Queen's Mother, too. Ah, Guy Faux did not then peram- 
 bulate the New Cut, a mere guy, as now : he was a ravening 
 devil then, drunk with the blood of brave men ! I hate him 
 as the friend of Darkness, the cowardly slave of the Past, 
 struggling to believe incredibilities, to cramp, handcuff, and 
 mutilate his own God-given soul,- — a most beggarly trade ; — 
 but it is with no perfect hatred ; it is with a kind of sorrow 
 rather, mainly with a kind of ennui. Men's one request of 
 him is that he would cease to bore them ; good Heavens, let 
 him cease to bore us : on his own side of the pavement how 
 free shall he be ! he shall most freely live while there is a 
 gasp of breath in him^ — were it for three centuries yet, as jVI. 
 Jouffroy ^ counts. 
 
 Felton in his prison was visited by numerous friends ; 
 sternly reasoned with by friends and by foes. Solemn Puri- 
 tans convinced him that he had done wrong ; that his soul 
 was too dark and grim ; that the gleams of that sheath-knife, 
 illuminating his inner chaos, was a light of Satan. Bishop 
 Laud sternly demands his accomplices, his prompters. ' I had, 
 ' and needed to have, none. In my own heart I thought to do 
 ' God service. I now find it was a temptation of the Devil. 
 ' My life is forfeited to the Law justly, to Man's Law and 
 ' God's Law. As to accomplices, I have none — none ! ' 'If we 
 ' put you to the rack, you will name them,' said Bishop Laud. 
 ' Alas,' answered he, ' in the extremity of pain, I may name 
 * any one — I may name your lordship, for that matter ! ' Laud 
 is for venturing on the rack, nevertheless ; ' it must have been 
 
 ^ Theodore Simon Jouffroy (1796-1842), philosopher, and author of many 
 works, — Melanges Philosophiqties, Cours de Droit naturel, Cours ctEsthetique, 
 etc. Translator of Dugald Stewart and Thomas Reid. 
 
220 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part li. 
 
 ' the Parliament that set this man on."* The rack, answer the 
 Judges, is not permitted by the Laws of England.^ Felton 
 cannot be racked as Guy Faux was. 
 
 On the 27th November, Felton is brought from the Tower 
 to Westminster Gatehouse, takes his trial at the King's 
 Bench ; g^iilty by his own confession : Doom, Death at 
 Tyburn. He laid his right hand on the bar, saying : ' ISIy 
 ' Lords, I have one other request : Will your Lordships add to 
 ' my sentence that this hand, which did an act abhorrent to 
 ' God's Law, be smitten off from me before I ascend the 
 ' gibbet ? It will be a satisfaction to my mind ! ' The Law of 
 England, again consulted, says that there is now in it no such 
 doom.^ Felton dies at Tyburn on the 29th a grimly pious 
 death in the sight of all men. His dead body is carried 
 down to Portsmouth ; hangs high there. I hear it creak in 
 the wind through the old ages. An old almost forgotten 
 tragedy. Clytemnestra's was not grinuiier : and the Earth 
 now covers it, as she does so many. 
 
 King Charles, in this excited condition of the English 
 mind, sees good to put oft' the re-assembling of Parliament a 
 little. Not while the news of Rochelle is fresh, not till 
 Buckingham's death have become a familiar fact, and Felton 
 have swung for some weeks, and we have got on our course 
 again, let Parliament re-assemble. I have one glance more to 
 give into this Parliament. We saw it weeping ; we shall now 
 see it dry-eyed. 
 
 ■• The judges unanimously declared that the use of the torture had licen at all 
 times unwarrantable by the laws of England. — Pici. Hist, of England, iii. 13S. 
 
 - ' Mr. Justice Jones answered that the law and no more should be his, hanging 
 and no maiming.' Forster, Life of Eliot, ii. 373. 
 
CiiAi'. vii.J CHARLES'S THIRD TARLIAMENT 221 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHARLES'S THIRD PARLIAMENT SECOND SESSION 
 
 [Feb. -March, 1628-9] 
 STORJIY CLOSE, SPEAKER FINCH HELD DOWN IN THE CHAIR 
 
 Charles, it is very visible, had clone his best to conciliate 
 this Parliament ; was conscious of a great effort for that 
 purpose. Too ' conscious ' of it, indeed : it was his best that 
 he had done. There lay a rent between them, which he or 
 they had little notion of; rent daily widening into an impass- 
 able chasm. The fact is : They were England, wanting to 
 be governed and led ; he was King and Governor, not of 
 them but of a theoretic England, lying in cloudland, in the 
 brain of his Majesty and some particular men. 
 
 By many messages, the king, bridling his quick, imperious, 
 impatient humour, had tried to soothe this Parliament, and 
 get his Subsidies, his Tonnages and Poundages, handsomely 
 out of them : handsomely is better than unhandsomely. The 
 royal choler spurts up through the conciliatory messages, like 
 the -chafing of a curbed steed ; the paw of velvet, stroking 
 you so gently, had an impatient set of talons in it ! This 
 the Commons felt ; and, better than his Majesty, discerned 
 the meanings, tendencies and probable issues of it : — with sadly 
 presaging soul. AVe saw the whole House in tears towards 
 the end of last Session. Let us now see the whole House 
 dry-eyed, their eyes not weeping now, but blazing ; — which 
 indeed is the next consequence of such tears. 
 
 The Tonnage and Poundage, that sheet-anchor of royal 
 Finance, has taken a sad course. The King thought and 
 thinks it his without grant of Parliament : the Commons 
 have again and again demonstrated, voted, not in the least to 
 his Majesty's conviction, that it is not his ; that it is theirs. 
 
222 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part il. 
 
 and shall be his when they give it him. Tedious debates, 
 raking up of precedents, splitting of Constitutional hairs. Do 
 the Commons mean to say we can or shall do without our 
 revenue of Tonnage and Poundage ? His Majesty prorogued 
 Parliament last Session, the Tonnage and Poundage Bill not 
 passed, only advancing with an intolerable slowness towards 
 passing, — and decided to levy the Tonnage and Poundage, 
 without a Bill, as usual. 
 
 Constitutional men and merchants refuse to pay ; their 
 goods are seized, they are haled up to the Council ; have ore 
 tcmis to stand. Richard Chambers had a cargo of grograms 
 comino; in from Bristol. ' Tonnage and Poundajye for 
 ' them ? '' ' No,' answers Chambers, vehemently ' No." — And 
 before the Council says vehemently that England is growing 
 intolerable for a mercantile man, that in Turkey itself 
 merchants are not screwed as they are here.^ Rash words ; 
 for which the said Richard had to stand examinations, to 
 pay fines, to lie in prison ; — the first of a lifelong course of 
 tribulations, of Tonnage and Poundage martyrdom, to the 
 said Richard, Merchant RoUe's goods, too, have been 
 seized ; Rolle, is an Hon. Member ; ^ — and when he pleaded 
 to the Customhouse men, saying, ' Am not I an Hon. 
 ' Member ? '' they answered, ' If you were the Parliament itself, 
 ' we must do it.' Besides, the Petition of Right has been 
 wrong engrossed in the Record Office, has been wrong printed. 
 It is engrossed, it is printed, not as we ordered and antici- 
 pated, with his Majesty's second clear conclusion and com- 
 plete answer, but with his first hesitating, incomplete, and 
 altogether dubitable one. The Printer says he had 1500 
 copies printed with the proper second answer, but was ordered 
 to cancel these. Only three of them got into circulation ; it 
 is the Petition with its first answer that now circulates ; an 
 altogether lame and impotent Petition. Wherefore are these 
 things ? 
 
 ' Rushworlli, i. 639. Slate Trials, iii. 373, 
 " John Rolle, Member for Kcllinglon. 
 
CHAP. VII.] CHARLESES THIRD PARLIAMENT 223 
 
 The Parliament meets, as we can imagine, in no sunny 
 humour. His Majesty expects to have his Tonnage and 
 Poundase made into a Bill ; the Commons have first of all 
 to incjuire strictly how Tonnage and Poundage have come to 
 be levied, and Hon. Members to be coerced for it, without 
 any Bill. Likewise, what the history of Roger Manwaring, 
 Rector of St. Giles's has been, since we sentenced him last 
 Session ? The history of Sibthorp, Vicar of Brackley. The 
 history of Canon ^Montague, whom we by solemn judgment 
 covered under a bushel, and who now sees himself Bishop 
 Montague, and set on a hill. Religion does not seem to be 
 in too good a way. The Church presided over by Xeile and 
 Laud fails to sive universal satisfaction : are there not causes 
 of some dissatisfaction in the State of England.'* Space 
 enough for controversy between a King of those humours and 
 a Parliament of these ? The debatings, searchings for 
 precedents, stretchings of old forms in the new necessities, — 
 the summonings, the royal messages, the questionings and 
 canvassings, the speakings and silences ; the mood of mind 
 within doors and without ; — let the reader conceive them 
 even in a vague manner ! ' Pass me my Tonnage and 
 ' Poundage Bill,'' reiterates his Majesty, ' Pass it, and then, 
 ' there will be no brabbling about it ! Chambers and Rolle 
 ' will pay their Customs when the Bill is passed, and say 
 ' nothing — Pass it, I say ! ' The Commons consider that — 
 they have an admirable reticence in them, these Commons — 
 they consider that — that — it will be better to consider 
 the state of Religion first ; that the state of God's Church 
 among us is of more pressing moment than are his jNIajesty's 
 Tonnao;e and Poundage. We will take the two together ; 
 but have our Grand Committee of Religion sitting as the 
 first and main business. ' A Jove principium,'' quote they : 
 begin with Heaven, if you want to have anything blessed on 
 Earth. ' Grant me patience ! ' cries his Majesty, fuming and 
 chafing. ' Ye Commons, pass me my Tonnage and Poundage ! "* 
 Patience, your Majesty, O patience, curb them not too tight. 
 
224 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [i art ir. 
 
 these Commons of England ; they should be ridden with a 
 strong yet gentle bridle-hand. ' Methinks I see a cloud ' ; 
 so do I, your Grace ! 
 
 It was on the 11th of January, 1629, by our reckoning, 
 while this Grand Connnittee is sitting, that Mr. Oliver Crom- 
 well, Member for Huntingdon, driven by zeal for God's House, 
 made his first speech in Parliament, declaring on the authority 
 of Dr. Beard how ' flat Popery had been preached by Dr. 
 ' Alablaster at Paul's Cross.'- — A first appearance in regard 
 to the temper of that Parliament no less than to the person 
 of the speaker.^ 
 
 Flat Popery, Doctor Beard said. Manwaring, whom you 
 sentenced, is gone to Stanford Rivers. IMontague, whom 
 three Parliaments solennily decreed to cover under a bushel, 
 that he might not pervert men, is Bishop of Chichester by 
 Neile's procurement, he is set on a hill. ' If these be the 
 ' steps to Church preferment, what are we to expect '^. "" The 
 Honourable Member sits down with glowing face and eyes ; 
 
 ^ Letters and Speeches, i. 65. 
 
 ^ So ended Cromwell's firt.t Speech according to Parliantcntary History (on 
 the authority of Crewe) ; but in a report of the speech by Nicholas these words 
 do not occur, whence some historians conclude that Cromwell did not speak them 
 on this occasion. Omissions are common in reporting, interpolations or addi- 
 tions are comparatively rare ; and the reader may judge for himself whether it is 
 not quite as likely that Nicholas, who reported the first part of the Speech very 
 fully, failed to catch the conclusion as that Crewe added to the Speech words 
 that were not spoken ! What motive could he have had for making such an 
 addition ? ' If these be the steps,' etc., appears to have been a common enough 
 expression, made use of by more than one honourable member on more than 
 one occasion. Carlyle makes a further interesting reference to the subject in 
 another part of this MS., where he writes : ' " If these be the steps to promotion 
 \_sic'\ what are we to expect?" floats on the whirlwind of Tradition like that 
 other speech written down one knows not when first or where first by the 
 phantasm Nennius : '■^ Eu Saxones ni/iiith eiire saxes!" — Winged words have 
 verily a singular power of flying, support themselves through dense and rare, 
 through the dark bewilderments of savage centuries, and arrive clear, fresh 
 and still on wing here at our own door even now.' — For £ie Saxones, etc., see 
 Nennii Historia Britonum (Londini, 1838), p. 37 ; or Six Old English Chronicles 
 (London, 1848), p. 405. 
 
CHAP. VII.] CHARLESES THIRD PARLIAMENT 225 
 
 happy that, under never such obstructions, he has got a bit of 
 his mind spoken, a fraction of his message done in this House, 
 whither England has sent him to speak for her. Veteran Sir 
 Robert Philips does not compliment the young Member ' on 
 ' his speech,' bless the mark ! but he follows up the young 
 Members meaning; — does yea to it, which is better than 
 sayhi^ yea. Mr. Crewe has taken down the young Member's 
 words ; — in the Commons Journals of that day, 1 1th February 
 1628-9, is this entry: 'Ordered, That Dr. Beard of Hunt- 
 ' ingdon be written to by Mr. Speaker, to come up and testify 
 ' against the Bishop ; the order for Dr. Beard to be delivered 
 ' to Mr. Cromwell.'' 
 
 These words of the young Member for Huntingdon, ' Flat 
 ' Popery,' and ' what are we to expect ? "" shall stand as the 
 epitome to us of that Grand Committee ; its doings and 
 debatings in those weeks thereby rendered dimly conceivable 
 to us. Bishop Neile and Bishop Laud are named as the grand 
 fomenters of that anti-English, anti-Gospel tendency in the 
 Church of this country ; solemnly named and complained of 
 by the Commons of England ; let them think of that ! Not 
 lightly or factiously, but solemnly, as an act of real sacred- 
 ness. Select readers, patient of old verity buried in dead 
 torpid phraseology, who may read this Resolution ^ will find, 
 after repeated perusals, a strange tremor of a nobly pulsing 
 heart still traceable in it : profound reverence to God's 
 Anointed, but still profounder reverence to God ; and simple- 
 hearted, wise and genuine old fathers, standing solemn, 
 sorrowful, as with eyes wet and yet stern, between these two 
 contradictions. For the hour in this world's history has 
 arrived. You, will you serve Christ or Antichrist ? meaning 
 withal : You, will you serve Truth or Falsity in the cast- 
 clothes of Truth ? Do you know in your hearts, with joy 
 and awe, that the Present also is alive ; or do you know only 
 that the Past ivas alive and that you are dead clock-work set 
 in motion by the Past ? Heavens, what shadows and con- 
 
 ^ Against Jesuitism and Arminianism. 
 P 
 
226 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 fusions, from foreign parts, foreign centuries and places, do 
 eclipse and bewilder the poor soul of man ! Weh dir, doss Du 
 ein Enkel b'lst ! Woe to thee, that thou art the grandson of 
 so many grandfathers that were — not wise ! Dead rubbish 
 is piled over thee to the zenith. 
 
 A happy issue to this Parliament becomes as good as 
 impossible. The Right Revd. Father in Christ, Dr. Neile, 
 the Right Revd. Father, Dr. Laud, the king''s spiritual coun- 
 cillors and right-hand men, are named as prime disturbers of 
 this Church and Kingdom ; the Tonnage and Poundage Bill 
 is not passed ; only bottomless questions, about the king^s right 
 to sue and seize for it without a Bill, are stirred ; — filling the 
 nation with confusion. ' Pass me my Bill ! if I need a Bill, 
 ' pass it ! '' cries the king, with flaming eyes, studying to be 
 mild. ' Deign to understand, O anointed Majesty, that your 
 ' Majesty does verily need a Bill ! ' urge the Commons in a low- 
 tone, low but deep. Matters grow worse and worse. Dawes 
 and Carmarthen, leviers of the Customs, have been questioned ; 
 they have the king''s warrant, the king vindicates them. 
 Richard Chambers feels that he is worse screwed than in 
 Turkey. Rolle, the Hon. Member, has been served with a 
 subpoena. Doctor Beard is coming up from Huntingdon to 
 testify of flat Popery ; Burgess, the Bailift', has run, it is sup- 
 posed, for Ipswich, and the Serjeant is after him : he has 
 been heard to say, I have been among a company of Parlia- 
 mentary hell-hounds and Puritans ; thank God, I am out ! — 
 There has been terrible examining : of Popish Colleges in 
 Clerkenwell, of reprinting the Petition of Right, of seizing 
 Hon. Mr. RoUe's goods, of serving Mr. Rolle with a suhpivna : 
 from the Attorney General to Burgess the Bailift', no man 
 could think himself safe. 
 
 But, in fine, as we say, the Customs officers, cross-question 
 them as we may, reply only : That they seized these goods for 
 such duties as were due in the time of King James ; that his 
 Majesty sent for them on Sunday last, and bade them make 
 
CHAP. VII.] CHARLES'S THIRD PARLIAMENT 227 
 
 no other answer. Learned Selden, therefore, with a shrill 
 voice (it was on Thursday 19th February, next week after 
 Mr. CromwelFs ' flat Pojicry'') cried : ' If there be any near 
 ' the King that niispresent our actions, let the curse light on 
 ' them, not on us ! and believe it, it is high time to vindicate 
 ' ourselves in this case, else it is vain for us to sit here.' ^ The 
 learned Selden is getting shrill. The House, fiery Sir John 
 Eliot for its spokesman, [declares] that it ought to be so ; 
 that Mr. Rolle ought to have privilege in this case." Put 
 that question. Speaker Finch says, ' he dare not put that 
 
 * question, he is otherwise commanded by the king ! ' ^ Learned 
 Mr. Selden is thereupon heard yet shriller : ' Dare you not, 
 ' Mr. Speaker ; dare you not put this question when we com- 
 ' mand you ? What is a Speaker that dare not put our 
 ' questions ? We may sit still and look at one another ; busi- 
 ' ness is at an end. Other Speakers in other cases may say 
 
 * they have the king's command ! Sir, we sit here by command 
 ' of the king under the Great Seal of England ; and you, by 
 ' his Majesty, sitting in his royal chair before both Houses, are 
 ' appointed to be our Speaker. Do your office ! ' '^ The Speaker 
 dare not : other Hon. Members objurgatively bid, with higher 
 and higher vehemence; he weeps, he dare not, resolutely will not. 
 What is to be done ? The House adjourns 'in some heat' till 
 the day after tomorrow, that we may consider and see. Till 
 Wednesday, the day after tomorrow ; and on Wednesday the 
 king, finding the House and all things still in some heat, 
 thinks it will be better if they adjourn till IMonday next, and 
 try whether they can cool a little. Monday, 2nd of March is 
 the winding up of an epoch in the Parliamentary History of 
 England ; and a scene which the readers of these pages shall 
 
 ^ Rushworth, i. 65S. - Cortunous Journals, i. 932. 
 
 ^ Rushworth, i. 660. 
 
 ■* Forsler [Life of Eliot, ii. 438 ii) says, ' Even Rushworth, misled by the 
 passionate speeches spoken in this debate' of 19th February, ' has transferred to 
 it also a portion of the proceedings which belong to the 2nd of March. It was 
 not until the latter day that the speeches of Eliot and Selden, there misplaced, 
 were delivered.' 
 
228 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 contemplate for a nionient. With faithful industry, refusing 
 to be seized with locked-jaw, we fish out the details from 
 Rushworth and Law-indictments — slumberous lakes of Dry- 
 asdust — and present them dimly visible to men. 
 
 Monday^ 9>nd March 1628-9. — The public emotion has 
 not in the least calmed itself; the Parliament is hot as ever, 
 smoking towards flame. The whisper goes round : his 
 Majesty has decided to dissolve this Parliament straightway, 
 such is his Majesty's resolution. This Monday we are to be 
 adjourned again, then straightway dissolved. The Royal 
 Proclamation is already drawn.^ Our Speaker will never put 
 that question of Mr. Rolle's privilege, — put any question 
 more. Speakers of Parliament shall not ' dare' to put ques- 
 tions ! Tonnage and Poundage will be levied without Bill ; 
 Neile and Laud will go on with Arminian rubrics ; Treasurer 
 Weston screwing men and merchants worse than the Turks 
 do : are the Laws of God and Man about to be violated with 
 impunity in this England ? Ye men and Hon. Members 
 that stand in the gap, it rests now with you ! Of you now, 
 as they do of us all, in a more than usually emphatic way, 
 the past generations of England and the future alike ask : 
 ' Will you trembling steal from your post ? Will you not 
 ' trembling, stand by it ? ' ' We will stand by it,' answers 
 Eliot, answer hot Denzil Holies, hot William Strode from the 
 west, Walter Long and others. Monday morning comes : 
 let us enter this far-distant House of Commons, dim-visible, 
 authentic across the extinct centuries, and see. 
 
 Speaker Finch, though he is on the wrong side, is a man 
 one could pity this Monday morning ; alas ! whom could one 
 not pity ? They have arrived at the rending j)oint ; in this 
 living social frame of England, fibre is to be torn from fibre : 
 — not without pain. Speaker Finch's fjxce, I think, is dis- 
 tressed with many cares. Hot Den/il Holies is seated on his 
 ^ Rushwortli, i. 66 1. 
 
CHAP. VII.] CHARLESES THIRD PARLIAMENT 229 
 
 right hand, and Walter Long^ on his left, this morning : 
 there they have taken place, there, above his Majesty's official 
 servants, who sit on the lower stage in front. For what end ? 
 DenziPs face, too, is loaded with a certain gloom. What face 
 is not so loaded ? Mr. Hampden's lips are shut, his clear 
 eyes wide open. Mr. Oliver Cromwell looks mere anxiety and 
 gloom, as if some Last Day were arrived. 
 
 First business, Order of the Day, is that we put that 
 question concerning Mr. Rolle. ' That question, that ques- 
 ' tion, put that question ! ' Mr. Speaker answers on the 
 contrary that he has a message from his Majesty to adjourn 
 this house till the 10th instant. ' That question, put that 
 ' question ! ' cries the body of the House, in sorrow, in anger, 
 in a whirl of manifold emotions. Speaker cannot, Speaker 
 dare not ; — ' Put it, the question, put it ! ' Eliot is offering 
 to speak ; offering, and again offering : — Speaker, grieved to 
 say he must withdraw then, rises to his feet for that pur- 
 pose : ' What ho, Mr. Speaker ! ' Denzil Holies, Walter 
 Long, the resolute Hon. gentleman, are upon him, each by 
 a shoulder : ' By the Eternal God, you shall not go, Mr. 
 ' Speaker ! you shall sit there till the House give you leave ! ' 
 ' Shame ! "■ cries Hayman ; ' you are a tool for tyranny ! 
 ' Hold him down ! ' Such a scene was never seen in any 
 House of Commons. They hold the Speaker down : — the 
 House all piping like the whirlwind. Hear Eliot now. 
 
 Eliot says :^ ' We have prepared a short declaration of our 
 ' intentions which I hope will agree with the honour of the 
 'House and the justice of the King''; 'and with that he 
 ' threw down a paper into the floor of the said House'; saying, 
 ' Mr. Speaker, I desire it may be read ! ' Speaker starts up 
 again ; is fairly out of his chair : ' What ho ! ' Valentine and 
 Holies drag him in again. Hold him down ! ' I desire that 
 ' paper may be read.' ' No,' cry some ; ' Oh,' cry all ; ' read, 
 ' read,' very many. House much troubled. Mr. Cory ton 
 ' strikes ' Mr. Winterton ; good Heavens ! Official persons 
 1 Or Benjamin Valentine, say some. " Rushworth, i. 667. 
 
230 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part il. 
 
 and such like want to go out : Sir Miles Hobart, ' of his own 
 ' hand,' locks the door, puts the key in his pocket. Read ! 
 Read ! House much troubled. Strode says openly : ' Shall 
 ' we be scattered like sheep, and a scorn put upon us in 
 ' print ? ' ' Sir, I move that this paper be read : stand up, 
 ' you that would have it read ! ' — IVIany stand up : — does not 
 Mr. Hampden, does not jNIr. Oliver Cromwell ? — Still the 
 paper lies unread. Mr. Selden : ' Must the Clerk read that 
 ' paper."* Clerk does not read ; how can a clerk, his Speaker 
 being speechless ? ' Keep the door shut, hold him down ! ' 
 Since the paper cannot be read, Eliot will take the liberty 
 to speak the substance thereof. It is : That Neile and Laud 
 are disturbers of the church of England ; that many of his 
 Majesty's Privy Council are going on wrong courses ; that 
 Treasurer Weston walks in the Duke's footste])s ; let us 
 accuse Treasurer Weston ; let the Commons of England 
 declare as capital enemies to the King and Kingdom all that 
 will persuade the King to take Tonnage and Poundage 
 without grant of Parliament, and that, if any merchants shall 
 willingly pay these duties without consent of Parliament, 
 they shall be declared accessaries to the rest. — That will have 
 an effect, whatever become of it : ' no man was ever blasted 
 ' in this House, but a curse fell on him ! ' — Speaker shudders 
 in his chair ; he is chained there like Prometheus.^ — Yes ! if 
 he levy Tonnage and Poundage without a Bill, it may be the 
 worse for him. Walter Long says : ' If any man shall give 
 ' away my liberty and inheritance (I speak of the merchants) 
 ' I note him for a capital enemy of the Kingdom."' So the 
 House pipes like the whirlwind ; articulate, inarticulate ; and 
 Holies constraining the Speaker to sit, is redacting something, 
 putting it in pen-and-ink. 
 
 Hark ! a knocking at the door ! ' \Vho knocks ? "" ' His 
 
 ' Majesty desires the Serjeant to attend him.' 'Silence!' 'His 
 
 ' Majesty desires the Serjeant, Edward Grimston, the Serjeant! ' 
 
 ' Alas, the door is locked, and the key gone : I can't get out ! ' 
 
 ^ Rushworth, i. 669. 
 
CHAP. VII.] CHARLES'S THIRD PARLIAMENT 231 
 
 The messenger returns to Whitehall with that strange tidings. 
 ' Be quick, Holies ! ' Holies is quick ; Holies is ready : but 
 hark ! Here is another knock. Usher of the Lords' House 
 and Black Rod, James Maxwell, by his Majesty's connnand. 
 ' House locked, key lost, can't get in ' : — Holies, standing by 
 the Speaker, since the Speaker is speechless, will himself, in 
 this very exceptional case, crave leave to put the following 
 three Resolutions, of which the House will signify its sense, 
 say Ay, say No : — the Ayes have it : there is nothing else 
 but Ayes. Three Resolutions which the most fastidious 
 modern reader shall not get oft' without reading. No ! all 
 men, to the latest posterity, who hope to be governed by 
 realities, in place of accredited false formulas ; by true living 
 Gospels, instead of dead cobwebs and 'four surplices at All- 
 ' hallowtide,' shall read these three Resolutions, and with 
 thankfulness say Ay ! 
 
 1. 'Whosoever shall bring in innovation in religion, or by 
 ' favour seek to extend or introduce Popery or Arminianism, 
 ' or other opinion disagreeing from the true and orthodox 
 ' church, shall be reputed a capital enemy to this kingdom and 
 
 ' commonwealth.' Ay! four huiidred ayes. — Twenty-seven 
 
 million ayes ! 
 
 2. ' Whosoever shall counsel or advise the taking or levy- 
 ' ing of the Subsidies of Tonnage and Poundage, not being 
 ' granted by Parliament, or shall be an actor or instrument 
 ' therein, shall be likewise reputed an innovator in the Govern- 
 ' ment, and capital enemy to the kingdom and commonwealth.' 
 Ay, ayes, as above ! 
 
 3. ' If any merchant or other person Avhatsoever shall 
 ' voluntarily yield or pay the said Subsidies of Tonnage and 
 ' Poundage, not being granted by Parliament, he shall like- 
 ' wise be reputed a betrayer of the liberty of England, and 
 ' an enemy to the same.' 
 
 Ay ! Twenty-seven million ayes, or three hundred million, 
 from Europe, America, and the Colonies ! 
 
232 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 And now, having passed these Resolutions, vanish ! Miles 
 Hobart produces his key ; Speaker is released ; House of 
 Commons disperses. King's Guard coming down with sledge- 
 hammers, finds the door wide open ; House of Commons 
 gone, vanished into infinite night. — On March 2nd their 
 Journal has no entry but that they were adjourned to the 
 1 0th March ; the tenth has no entry at all, but stars. There 
 was no House of Commons, then, on the 10th. The King 
 speaks his Dissolution that day to the Lords, — no Commons 
 there, — and calls the Commons ' vipers.' It is the last 
 Parliament for eleven years. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 RELIGIOUS ARISTOCRACY IN THE SEVENTEENTH 
 CENTURY 
 
 How the Country Gentlemen had Puritan Chaplains, 
 Tutors, instructing their households in the way of heavenly 
 Truth ; how noble dames and high lords listened to the voice 
 of Gospel Doctrine, and had real ' Spiritual advisers ■ as a 
 lamp to their path ; and all England got impregnated with 
 the wisdom preached abroad in Judea long ago ; — these facts, 
 now fallen into oblivion with us, might give rise to reflexions. 
 Pitched fights in Theology, lasting sometimes for a couple of 
 days, were common in noble houses. James, Primate of 
 Ireland, Lecturer for the present, in Covent Garden, is a main 
 hand at such operations. He strikes your Jesuit on the 
 hollow of the body like a real artist ; knocks the wind out of 
 him one good time for all ; the »Iesuit, with a gasp, says : ' I 
 ' am well punished for my })resumption in arguing with such 
 ' a man.' Beautiful souls, oftenest of the female sex, look on 
 with more than curiosity, reward the victor with glances that 
 mean mitres. Ought not he to have a mitre, and crosier, or 
 shepherd's crook, who can save his flock from the wolves : 
 who can lead souls safe, and land them in heaven .'' Several 
 
CHAP. VIII.] RELIGIOUS ARISTOCRACY 233 
 
 hish females of the Buckingham kindred were troubled with 
 tendencies to Popery ; some of them were healed by pitched 
 fights, others would not be saved, but heeled evermore, and 
 fairly canted at last into the lap of the Man of Sin. And 
 many a gracious Lady Rich, and gracious Lady Poor de la Poor, 
 — beautiful Appearances that graced the current of this world's 
 history for a season, — gracious high dames not a few ; — who 
 would not try to save such souls, if it lay in him ! Father 
 Laud, for the Championship of England, had a three days' 
 wrestle with Fisher, the Jesuit ; and beat him into jelly, I 
 would hope. Nay, the controversy, once world-celebrated, is 
 in print ; but no man henceforth to the end of the world can 
 read it. Open it ; — the print is clear, but there lurks in it 
 mere torpidity. Guy Faux has ceased to be a Devil, has 
 become a guy ; rolls softly through the New Cut over the 
 powdered ashes of Dragon's teeth and old dust of extinct 
 Lions ; begs merely for a few halfpence to buy beer. — 
 
 Puritan Chaplains and souls'" Instructors have now changed 
 themselves into Newspaper Leading Articles, dilettante Art 
 and Artists, into George-Sand-Balzac Novels, and I know not 
 what : the soul, as I apprehend, in this modern England, has 
 learnt the way of dispensing with instruction, or taking that 
 as it pleases to come ; as Welsh Ponies do their corn, — when 
 they can get it. ' Intellect once divorced fi'om rank,' says 
 my dark friend, ' signifies that rank is preparing for annihila- 
 ' tion ; that much is verging towards chaos!' — The last 
 genuine relation between the two that has been seen in 
 England, was this now forgotten one, of an earnest religious 
 aristocracy to earnest Puritan Chaplains in the seventeenth 
 Century. In the next, stern Samuel, with a stroke like 
 Thor's, had to smite Patronage on the crown. Intellect 
 stalks solitary, like an Angel of Destruction, through the 
 world ; — Rank, a beautiful idiot, rolls placidly towards its 
 doom. 
 
234 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 NICHOLAS FERRAll — THE NUNNERY OF 
 LITTLE GIDDING ^ 
 
 One night, about the time when King James was progress- 
 ing southward to take possession of his crown, stirring all 
 England into incontrollable confluences, and giving a dis- 
 solving view to the young grey eyes at Hinchinbrook, a 
 certain other infantine character, in the upper room of a 
 merchant's house in the City of London, was busied praying 
 at great length, and with the intensest devotion. Nicholas 
 Ferrar was the name of this young person ; a creature 
 religious by nature and habit ; and carried away on this 
 occasion into altogether extraordinary heights. He prayed 
 the whole night, it would seem, with ever increasing fervour ; 
 felt himself lifted uj), as some of the Catholic Saints have 
 been known to do ; had a foretaste of heaven ; had a pre- 
 sentiment, such as a young heart in its preternatural expansion 
 Avas capable of, that he ought to devote himself, soul and 
 body and endeavour, to the special service of the Highest, in 
 this vale of temptations and tears. This night, in Nicholas 
 Ferrars history, has, amid the general dark oblivion all round 
 it, become clear to me. 
 
 Much afterwards is dark and dim ; the merchant and his 
 fortunes went the common course ; in the path of Nicholas, 
 too, there had occurred the inevitable chances and changes. 
 His father had died, his mother still lived ; he himself, grown 
 now to be a man, unable to execute his childlike presenti- 
 ment as yet ; had been at Cand)ridge ; had travelled, for 
 instruction withal ; had got as far as Rome, looked with 
 wonder on the face of Antichrist himself, the Holy Father 
 so-called ; — whether Antichrist or not, Nicholas could not 
 
 ^ There is a brief account of the Nunnery of Little Gidding in Carlyle's 
 Cromwell, i. 73-4. 
 
CHAP. IX.] NICHOLAS FERRAR 235 
 
 say ; but in any case the sight was certainly wonderful 
 enough. Convents and ancient Papal practices had passed 
 before the eyes of Nicholas ; awakening deep questions in his 
 heart. The way to get to an eternal Heaven ? Yes, that is 
 the question. By what road shalt thou travel, my soul ? 
 Surely the steepest road or the sternest, through Gethsemane 
 fields, eremite Thebaids, through flaming death-portals and 
 the abysses of creation, — any road in such case were easy ! 
 To Nicholas this world was all a dramatic shadow, infinitely 
 important as symbolising heavenly higher worlds, not im- 
 portant otherwise. The money lucre, traffic and poor profit- 
 and-loss of this world grew yearly more insignificant to 
 Nicholas ; and the question : AVhich way leads to the interior 
 Sea of Light through these phenomena ? growing ever more 
 intense, childlike presentiments re-awaken on you in the 
 pressure of serious manly affairs. 
 
 Nicholas returns to England, tries employment under the 
 Virginia Company, becomes Member of Parliament (1624), 
 soon retires from public life, sad, silent, unserene of aspect, 
 revolving in him many thoughts. His mother living, a pious 
 clear old lady ; he has a brother pious, a sister or sisters 
 pious ; the question with them all is : Which way, O ye 
 kind Heavens, which way ? 
 
 The traffic of the elder FeiTars, all winded up, yields 
 reasonable sufficiency of money ; traffic protracted to never 
 such lengths, can do no more. Not traffic henceforth ; hence- 
 forth our childlike presentiment how to be realised ? Alas, 
 how ? For the world, with its rolling wains and loud tumult, 
 here in London City, is importunate and soul-distracting. 
 In the Eastern mosses of Huntingdonshire, comes offering for 
 sale, the decent ]Manorhouse of Gidding Parva ; Little Gidding 
 Manor, with due fields and competent rentals : — Church, 
 Manorhouse, and solitary lands of Little Gidding all our own ; 
 — why not ? The Ferrars, clubbing stock, purchase this 
 Little Gidding establishment, remove thither, bag and 
 baggage, man and maid, and mother and mother's child of 
 
236 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 them, — some twenty souls in all, waving the world and its 
 traffic a long adieu.^ 
 
 And so there establishes itself, amid the prose realities of 
 that time, one of the strangest poetico-devotional facts, such 
 as only the earlier heroic times, under quite other circum- 
 stances, were used to ; figuring now upon us almost as a 
 dream. For Nicholas has been ordained Deacon ; he is not 
 head of the house only, but Pontiff of it ; and the house 
 is wholly as a Convent or Priory, there for devotion alone. 
 Night and day in the little parish Church or Manor Chapel, 
 the ritual goes on without sleep or slumber : at all hours 
 of the dark or daylight, you can say to yourself some portion 
 of the Prayer Book is getting itself executed ; the men and 
 women divided into relays (like ship-watches), relieve one 
 another by turns, and the praying and chanting slumbers not 
 nor sleeps. Is not that strange enough in a country where 
 all Abbeys are voted down, and Hinchinbrook Convent has 
 become the dwellingplace of the Golden Knight ? Cursory 
 readers have heard of it in Isaac Walton and others, not 
 without uncertainty, astonishment. But there is no doubt of 
 it. Cursory readers, if they please to take a country excursion 
 with a friend of ours, extant in those times, named ' ]Mr. 
 ' G.,** — shall see it with eyes ; — with G.'s eyes, almost as good 
 as their own. Painful Thomas Hearne has been so good as 
 print the narrative of Mr. G. ; — stick it into strange neigh- 
 bourhood, as is his wont ; from which it is still extricable and 
 extractable. 
 
 Who ' Mr, G.' was .'* ^ The gods and painful Thomas 
 Hearne are as good as silent. A Gray's Inn Lawyer, says 
 Thomas Hearne ; . . . a vanished name and man. A clear 
 man nevertheless, of solid legal knowledge, business habits, 
 
 ^ Ferrar's mother had bought Little Gidding some time before this ; and 
 Nicholas joined her there in 1625, as later accounts show. 
 
 - Hearne calls him Mr. Lenton. The Narrative is in the form of a Letter 
 from Lenton to Sir Thomas Iledly. See Thomas Caii Vindicia: Antiquitatis 
 Academia: Oxoniensis (1730), ii. 702-94. 
 
CHAP. IX.] NICHOLAS FERRAR 237 
 
 courteous manners, and (wonderful wonder !) of solid piety ; 
 vanished all but the soul of him, which still lives, shining 
 clear as a light-beam in this dark place : — whom in these 
 strange circumstances we accompany somewhat as we might a 
 spirit. He has been on Circuit business at Huntingdon or 
 elsewhere, this worthy Mr. G. : — hearing much, as he has long 
 and often done, of this Little Gidding institution, reflecting 
 nmch on it ; and so determined, the Circuit business being 
 over, to take horse and see it for himself. Vanished rider, 
 vanished horse ; wilt thou not accompany him into these 
 lone moors, across those vanished centuries sunk so long in 
 Hades ? Swift, then, spur apace, good G. ; meritorious 
 vanished man ! 
 
 A pleasant dewy morning, Mr. G. The sun, long since 
 rolled together out of Chaos, has been trying his beams here, 
 he and human industry busy for a while, have made improve- 
 ments. These waving expanses have got clothed with sward 
 and tilth tillage ; much has been built, has been drained, 
 fenced, ploughed ; quagmires themselves have grown firm and 
 green ; heath of the wold has given place to grass and grain. 
 Brick huts and houses, framed in oak, — many a smokepillar 
 redolent of life and social breakfast, rises over those once 
 solitary regions. Houses, nay. Churches, pointing towards 
 heaven itself. Kimbolton Castle lies grey on that hand ; 
 Peterborough with its Spires on this. The mud-demons have 
 been wonderfully subdued. Birds singing clear from many an 
 old trimmed copse and hedge-row ; heavy plough-men tramp- 
 ing steadily a-field, plough-men, nay, rosy milk-maids, merry 
 brats of children, clean coifed grandmothers, have been 
 realised ; and the dewy vaulted element of blue and Heaven's 
 blessed sun bends not unkindly over all. A tolerably pleasant 
 morning, I think, Mr. G., on the whole, a successful thing 
 this Earth ? — -Mr. G. responds no syllable, sunk in his own 
 reflections ; silent till he himself see good. Here, however, 
 is Little Gidding itself ! — A handsome, modest, Manorhouse, 
 amid tufted trees, trimmed gardens. Says Mr G. : 
 
238 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 ' I came thither after ten, and fouud a fair house, fairly seated, to 
 which I passed through a fine grove and sweet walks, latticed and 
 gardened on both sides. ... A man-servant brought me into a fair 
 spacious parlour ; whither, soon after, came the old gentleman's second 
 Sonne (Nicholas), a bachelor of a plain presence, but of able speech and 
 parts : who, after I had, as well as in such case I could, deprecated any 
 ill conceit of me, for so undutiful and bold a visit, entertained me very 
 civilly, and witli humility : yet said that I was the first that had ever 
 come to them in that kind. . . . After deprecations and some compli- 
 ments, he said I should see his Mother, if I pleased. I, shewing my 
 desire, he went up into a chamber, and presently returned with these ; 
 namely, his Mother, a tall straight, clear-complexioned grave matron of 
 eighty years of age ; his elder Brother married (but whether a widower 
 I asked not), a short black-complexioned man, his Apparell and Haire so 
 fashioned as made him shew Priestlike ; and his Sister married to one 
 Mr. Cooles, by whom she hath fourteen or fifteen children ; all which 
 are in the house, which I saw not yet ; and of these, and of two or three 
 Maidservants, the family consists. I saluted the Mother and Daughter, 
 not like Nuns, but as we used to salute other AV'omen. And after we 
 were all set circular-wise, and my deprecations renewed, to the otlier 
 three, I desired that, to their favour of entertaining of me they would 
 add the giving of me a free liberty to speak ingenuously, what I con- 
 ceived of anything I should see or have heard of, without any distaste to 
 them. Which being granted, I first told them what I had heard of 
 the Nuns of Gidding ; of the watching and praying all night, of their 
 Canonical Houres, of their Crosses on the outside and inside of their 
 Chapell ; of an Altar there richly decked with Plate, Tapestry and 
 Tapers; of their adorations and geniculatious at their entering therein, 
 which, I objected, might savour of superstition and Popery. Here the 
 younger Sonne, the mouth for them all, cut me off, and to this last 
 answered. First, with a protestation, that he did as verily believe the 
 Pope to be Antichrist as any article of his Faith. Wherewith I was 
 satisfied and silenced touching that point. For the Nunnery, he said : 
 That the name of Nuns was odious, but the truth from whence that 
 untrue report might arise was, that two of his Nieces had lived, one 
 thirty, the other thirty-two years virgins, and so resolved to continue (as 
 he hoped tliey would) the better to give themselves to fasting and prayer; 
 l)ut had made no Vowes. For their Canonical Houres, he said they 
 usually prayed six times a day, twice a day publicly in the Chapell, and 
 four times privately in their house. ... I said if they spent so much 
 time in praying, they would leave little for preaching or for their weekly 
 callings. For the one I vouched the Text, " He that turneth away his 
 ear from hearing the Law," etc. For the other, " Six days," etc. To 
 
CHAP. IX.] NICHOLAS FKRRAR 239 
 
 the one he answered : That a neiglibour Minister, of another Parish, 
 came on Suiulay mornings and preached in tlieir Cliapell, and sometimes 
 they went to liis Parish. To the otlier : Tliat tlieir calling was to serve 
 God ; which he took to be the best. I replied that for men in health, 
 and of active bodies and parts, it were a tempting of God to (juit our 
 callings, and wholly to betake ourselves to Fasting, Prayer and a 
 contemplative Life, which by some is thought to be no better than a 
 specious kind of idleness. . . . He rejoined : That they had found 
 diverse perplexities, distractions and almost utter ruine in their callings. 
 But if others knew what comfort and content God liad ministered unto 
 them since their sequestration, and with what incredible improvement of 
 their livelyhood, it might encourage others to the like course. I said 
 that such an imitation [or innovation] might be of dangerous conse- 
 quence, and that if any, in good case before, should fall into Poverty, 
 few afterwards w6uld follow the example. 
 
 ' For their Niglitwatchings, and their rising at four o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, — which I thought was too much for one of four score years, and for 
 children ; to the one he said : It was not much, since they always went to 
 bed at seven of the clock in the evening. For the other, he confessed 
 there were every night two, a/feniatim, continued all night in their 
 devotions, that went not to bed until the rest arose. For the Crosses, 
 he made me the usuall answer : — -That they were not ashamed of that 
 Badge of Christian profession, which the first Propugners of the faith 
 bore in their banners, and which we in our Churche Discipline retain to 
 this day. For their Chapell, that it was now near Chapell-time (for 
 eleven is the houre in the forenoon) and that I might, if I pleased, 
 accompany them thither, and so satisfy myself best of what I had heard 
 concerning that. ... In the meantime I told them I perceived all was 
 not true I had heard of the place ; for I could see no such Inscription on 
 the frontispiece of the House, containing a kind of Invitation of such as 
 were willing to learn of them or would teach them better. . . . He 
 barring me from further compliments said. The ground of that Report 
 hung over my head, we sitting by the chimney. On the chimney piece 
 was a MS. Tablature ; which, after I had read, I craved leave to beg a 
 copy thereof . . . which he forthwith took down, and commanded to be 
 presently transcribed and given me. . . . The words of the protestation 
 are as followeth : 
 
 He that by reproofe of our errors and He that by a cheerful participation 
 
 remembrance of that which is more a and approbation of that which is good, 
 
 perfect, seeks to make us better, is < confirms us in the same, is Wellcome 
 
 Wellcome as an Angel of God, as a Xian Friend. 
 
240 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 But 
 He that any ways goes about to divert He that faults us, in absence, for that 
 
 or disturb us, in that which is and which in presence he made shew to 
 
 ought to be amongst Xians, though it Q approve of, shall by a double guilt, of 
 be not usuall in the world, is a Burthen < Flattery and Slander, violate the bonds 
 while he stays, and shall beare his of Friendship and Christianity, 
 
 judgement, whosoever he be. 
 
 Mary Ferrar, Widowe, 
 
 Mother of this Family, 
 
 aged about Four score yeares, 
 
 that bids adieu to all Fears and Hopes of this world, 
 
 and only desires to serve God." 
 
 ' . . . But we passed from this tovirards the Chapell, being about 
 forty paces from the house. Yet staid a little (as with a parenthesis) by 
 a glass of sack, sugarcake and a fine napkin, brought by a mannerly 
 maid. ... At the entering [of the Chapell] he [N. Ferrar] made a 
 low abeysance, few paces further, a lower ; coming to the Half-pace, 
 which was at the East end, where the Table stood, he bowed to the 
 ground, if not prostrated himself ; then went up into a fair large reading- 
 place (a preaching place being, of the same proportion, right over against 
 it). ITie Mother with all her Traine (which were her Daughter aiul 
 Daughter's Daughters, had a faire Island Seat. He placed me above, 
 upon the Half-pace, with two faire longe window cushions of green velvet 
 before me. . . . The Daughter's four Sonnes knelt all the while at the 
 edge of the Half-pace : all in black gownes, and they went to church in 
 round Monmouth-caps (as my man said, for I looked not back), — the 
 rest all in black, save one of the Daughter's Daughters, who was in a 
 Fryer's grey gowne. We being thus placed, the Deacon (for so I must 
 now call him)i with a very loud and distinct voice began with the Litany, 
 read divers prayers and collects, in the book of Common prayer, and 
 Athanasius his creed, and concluded with the " Peace of God," etc. All 
 ended, the Mother and all her company attended my coming down ; but 
 her Sonne Deacon told her I would stay a while to view the Chapell. 
 So with all their civil salutations towards me (which I returned tliem 
 afar off, and durst come no nearer, lest I should have lit upon one of the 
 Virgins, not knowing whether they would liave taken a kiss in good part 
 or no), they departed home.' [Here follows an account of the Chapel, its 
 decorations, etc., with questions and answers thereon.] 
 
 ' . . . It being now twelve o'clock we eiuled our discourse, and 1 
 called for my horses, hoping that hereupon he would have invited me to 
 stay dinner, — not that I cared for meat . . . but that I might have 
 gained more time to have seen and observed more of their fashions, and 
 whether the virgins and younger sort would have mingled with us, with 
 
 ^ Nicholas had received Deacon's orders from Laud. 
 
CHAr. IX.] NICHOLAS FERR All 241 
 
 divers other things that a Dinner-time would have best ministered matter 
 for. But instead of making me stay, he helped me in calling for my 
 Horses, — accompanying me even to my stirrup. And so, I, not return- 
 ing to the House, as we friends met, so we parted. 
 
 ' . . . They are extraordinarily well reported of by their poor 
 neighbours : that they are very liberal to the poor, at great cost in 
 preparing physic and surgery for the sick and sore, whom they also visit 
 often ; and that some sixty or eighty poore people they task with 
 catechisticall questions, which when they come and make answer to, 
 they are rewarded with Money and their Dinner. ... I find them full 
 of humanity and liberality, and others speak as much of their charity, 
 which I also verily believe, and therefore am far from censuring them, 
 of whom I think much better than of myself. . . .' 
 
 Mr. G. thought, we see, they might perhaps invite him 
 to stay to dinner ; but they did not ; — ^he rides forth at the 
 gate again, bowed out by Nicholas Ferrar ; and becomes, in 
 soul as in body, to all persons henceforth, a vanished man. 
 
 Nicholas Ferrar spent much of his odd time in binding 
 Church Books, in illuminating mss., in writing Polyglot Bibles, 
 making Commentaries, etc. : — a somewhat melancholy way of 
 living, one would think. Alas, to penetrate into that 
 Heaven's-splendour, and live there by any method, is not 
 easy : and many have to stop by the way, involved in briars 
 and intricacies, and say to themselves : ' Is not this it ? I can 
 ' no further ; this shall be it.' The prayer-relays work steady, 
 and for nine or ten years henceforth, at any hour from 
 noon to midnight, and midnight round to noon again, you 
 can say to yourself : There rises a chaunt or prayer from 
 Gidding Parva now. That, after its kind, is a perpetual 
 platoon-firing of devotional musketry with the Tower stamp 
 or Lambeth stamp, — calculated, you would say, to effect a 
 breach at last, and take heaven by storm ? O Nicholas, my 
 somewhat sombre gentleman ! — I respect all earnest souls, and 
 mourn withal to see under what imaginations, hearsays, night- 
 mare bewilderments, pressures of the Time-element piled high 
 on us as the zenith, the soul of man has to live, and comfort 
 itself as it can. 
 
242 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 DR. LEIGHTON 
 
 [1630] 
 
 Amoxc; the men of that generation Dr. Leighton may in 
 one point pass for a superlative : so far as I know he is of 
 all the then extant British subjects the ugliest, — if there be 
 truth in brush or graver, if Granger and Print-collectors 
 have not entirely deceived us. A monstrous pyramidal head 
 evidently full of confused harsh logic, toil, sorrow and much 
 other confusion, wrinkly brows arched up partly in wonder 
 partly in private triumph over many things, most extensive 
 cheeks, fat, yet flaccid, puckered, coiTugated, flowing down 
 like a flood of corrugation, wherein the mouth is a mere cor- 
 rugated eddy, frowned over by an amorphous bulwark of 
 nose, — the whole, you would say, supjjorted by the neck-dress, 
 by the doublet collar, and frankly resting on it, surmounted 
 by deluges of tangled tattery hair : such is the alarming 
 physiognomy of Dr. Leighton, medical gentleman travelling 
 southward from the city of Aberdeen ^ (.'') with AVife and 
 Family in wagons, sea-craft, or such conveyance as the time 
 afforded, with intent to settle in his Profession here in 
 London. Doubt it not, this Doctor had thoughts in him, 
 purposes very serious, cares of eating and of other sorts. 
 Poor Doctor, how he toilsomely ])loddod about, seeking 
 lodgings here, squatting himself into some attainable cranny, 
 and assiduously hoping against hope, set himself to obtain 
 practice by patience, valour, strong all -forgotten energy. 
 Good Heavens, it is all a history unrecorded, a history ever 
 re-enacted to these days ; a painful valiant history such as 
 oblivion swallows yearly by the million, and nothing more 
 
 * Or more likely from Edinburgh, in the University of which town he had 
 received his education. He is said to have sprung from an ancient family 
 possessing a ' seat near Montrose.' — Dictiouary of National Bici^raphy. 
 
CHAP. X.] DR. LEIGHTON 243 
 
 said. How many already swallowed, as Dr. Leighton, like 
 snow-flakes on the sea. O, Oblivion, thou art deep and 
 greedy ; but Life, thou too art ever young and unsubduable ! 
 No man can expect to be rewarded by rounds of applause for 
 every manful thing he does. Certainly not. And if he 
 cannot content himself with either the gods for spectators, 
 or no spectators, he will never play well I think. Empty 
 benches are perhaps the best, and an audience frankly cat- 
 calling, not the worst. Cat-calling, I say, for their rounds of 
 applause when such do come have often proved the ugliest 
 thing they had to give to a man. O Doctor, heal thou a 
 little sickness ; abolish a little misery in this God's Earth, 
 and call thyself blessed in that thou canst do aught Godlike, 
 — which alone is truly blessed and manlike ! Thou art not 
 come hither asking this poor blockhead of a world to do thee 
 favours, pay thee due wages ; thou art come, with or even 
 without wages, to do the poor blockhead of a world favours. 
 Thou wilt say to it, keep thy favours, hapless blockhead, give 
 them to this quack, and the other, these legions of quacks in 
 high places and in low. I have work in me, help in me for 
 a poor bewildered blockhead such as thou art now grown, — 
 and it is not with thee that I Avill chaffer about w^ages. Go 
 thi^ way, I have 7ni/ way to go ! Enough : this Doctor finds, 
 what is a real satisfaction, that he has never yet died of 
 hunger, that he has healed or tried to heal a little sickness, 
 burnt up a little sin and misery from man ; and so, laying 
 both ends of his lot together, that he ought to go on in a 
 moderately hopeful frame of mind. 
 
 Courage, Dr. Leighton, and arch thy brows in private 
 triumph over several things. A Greater than thou in far 
 lower abasement than thine said once. Fear not the world. 
 Be of good cheer ; I have overcome the world, — I, the 
 Nazareth Peasant, with a knit wool sack for my apparel, 
 owner only, under the wide sky, of my own soul and body and 
 this, I have overcome it. And do Ave not justly worship 
 such a one, with love ineffable draw near to him, and in 
 
244 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 such poor dialect as we can, say, Thou art Godlike, thou 
 art God ! All brave men have to overcome the world ; are 
 born kings of the world, and never rest till they overcome it. 
 Dr. Leighton's old brown Book ^ is still found on the 
 shelves of Museum libraries, but 'wdll never more be read by 
 any mortal. Living mortal glancing into it here and there, 
 falls chilled as with the damp of funeral aisles ; says mourn- 
 fully. It is dead — dead ; and till the last day, if even then, 
 will never live again. Most melancholy, dim, with mouldered 
 margins, worm-eaten, its pages, letter-press, all so dim soot- 
 brown. Alas, and the meaning of it not a whit more living, 
 all soiled soot-brown, illegible as the letter-press. And we 
 forget that it was ever otherwise ; it was once new, clean- 
 margined, bright white paper, bright black ink, — Book and 
 Book's purport wholly new, comfortable to behold. Leighton's 
 Book was eagerly purchased over counters, eagerly read in 
 parlours, the very odour of the paper still new, new the 
 odour of the doctrines and discoursing, wholly a new in- 
 vigorating thing, redolent of comfort, instruction, hope to the 
 mind of man ! For in two centuries paper waxes old, and 
 much that stands on paper. O ancient Pamphlets, soot- 
 brown, mournfully mouldering Golgotha of human thoughts 
 and efforts ! Yet the thoughts did once live, and work, like 
 the Thinkers of them. And only thoughts that go down 
 to the centre continue long working, of which sort there 
 are naturally few. Dr. Leighton's Babylonian Beast, etc., 
 struggling to point out the difference between Fact and 
 Semblance, in a superficial way, were not of this number, 
 
 1 ' An Appeal to the Parliament, or Zion's Plea against the Prelacie ' ; etc. 
 The book had been printed at Utrecht, in 162S, and copies sent to England 
 while Charles's Third Parliament was still sitting. Leighton had gone to 
 Holland to be pastor of a church, — the English College of Physicians having 
 objected to his practising medicine further in London, — his qualification being 
 only a Leyden M.D. Degree. He was ordained (March, 1629), and inducted 
 into the charge of an English Church in Utrecht ; returned to London in the 
 autumn of that year, having, it would seem, received a call to some church in 
 the city, and was seized in February following, cast into Newgate, tried in June 
 in the Star-chamber, and sentenced as stated, infra, p. 246. 
 
CHAP. X.] DR. LEIGHTON 245 
 
 Enough, if the men of that century or year read Leighton, 
 rejoiced in the redolence of new paper and what other novelty 
 there might be ; men of other centuries or years must look 
 out for themselves. 
 
 Swiftly however a new scene opens on me. Scene of the 
 Star-chamber Court, — one of the lion's-dens in that menagerie 
 of Westminster Hall, whither by the stern keepers of the place 
 so many men, Daniels and others, have been cast. They say 
 it arose in Elizabeth's time ; . . . small matter with whom 
 it originated, my wish is once to see it vanish and cease. 
 Neither have I learned in what room it sat, — one hopes the 
 room is long since burnt, and no ashes of it remaining recog- 
 nisable. What I do see is a suitable human apartment, a 
 room of good dimensions, of solid carpentry, with raised 
 bench, with indistinct ushers, macers, apparitors, indistinct to 
 the eye, and judges of grave aspect also very indistinct for 
 most part, — if it be not one little man in lawn sleeves, in 
 three-cornered hat, with wrinkly, short face, with a look of 
 what one might call arrogant sorrow of a sort, reflexion of a 
 sort, and assiduity and ingenuity which in this world has had 
 many crosses, but doubts not to triumph yet as it deserves to 
 do. It is he they call William Laud [soon to be] Archbishop 
 of Canterbury ; sometimes named in a vein of pleasant wit 
 his Little Grace,^ not on account of his little stature alone. 
 His Little Grace has arched brows, horseshoe mouth, but 
 
 ^ Laud's small bodily stature seems to have been the source of many a jest in 
 those days. To Archie Armstrong, the king's Fool, who like many others bore 
 no goodwill to Laud, is attributed this double ejitendre : ' All praise to God and 
 little laud to the Devil ! ' Archie's last joke at Court was made too at Laud's 
 expense and bore bitter fruit. When Laud's attempt to press the new Service- 
 book and Canons into use in the Kirk had resulted in an almost universal 
 signing of the Covenant, and the unwelcome news of this had just arrived at 
 Court (in 1638), Armstrong meeting Laud on his way to the Council called out 
 to him, ' Whae's fool noo? ' Laud was ' little ' enough to take the matter so 
 much to heart that he had the poor Fool brought before the Council and sen- 
 tenced to have his coat pulled over his ears and to be at once dismissed from 
 the king's service. 
 
246 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 brows arched for another than Leighton's reason. On 
 the whole, what a contrast, that small, short, wrinkly face 
 on the bench, and this huge pyramidal one on the floor. 
 The debate I do not give ; why should I if I could ? . . . 
 This only transpired that Leighton in his Book called the 
 Prelates by hard names, ' affirming that they did corrupt the 
 ' king," that he dared to call her sacred Majesty and royal 
 Consort, as being of the Popish religion, ' a daughter of 
 ' Heth,'' and to pray for her conversion ; that in fact he was a 
 Scottish man without the caution characteristic of that 
 country, a man resigned to God and not to the enemies of 
 God, intemperate of speech, and also very unfortunate. . . . 
 The judges were of one voice, each endeavouring to outbid 
 the other, regretting only that he was not tried for treason, 
 that they might have taught him what a gallows was. As it 
 is, he shall learn what pillory, prison and the branding-iron 
 are. Only first, as he is an ordained clergyman, and we would 
 not for worlds do a shadow of dishonour to the Church, let 
 him be taken across to Lambeth to the High Commission 
 Court, and there be degraded. The Bishop of London, or 
 the Commission acting with him, will not be loath to degrade 
 him ! Dr. Laud, with his eyes, if you look at him there on 
 the bench, answers emphatically, No. Once well degraded at 
 Lambeth, let him be locked up in the Fleet Prison, let him 
 on the 10th of next November be brought into Palace yard, 
 whipped, set in our pillory there, have one ear cut off, one 
 nostril slit, one cheek stamped with hot-iron letters, S.S., 
 ' Sower of sedition ' : that will do for one day. — Ye Judges 
 that sit in place of God, does this man deserve such slitting, 
 such branding and butchery ? Is this actually the ugliest 
 scoundrel you can find in England, in this month of November 
 1G30, that you mangle him in this manner? — On a day follow- 
 ing, says the Court, let him be carted to the pillory at Cheap- 
 side, and there after a second flogging, have his second ear 
 cut off", his second nostril slit, his second cheek burned S.S. : 
 that will do for a second day. Then, — why then, fine him 
 
CHAP. X.] DR. LEIGHTON 247 
 
 10,000/. and pack him up in the Fleet Prison for life. Most 
 potent, grave and reverend Signiors, who sit there by appoint- 
 ment in the place of God above, punishing the ugliest of His 
 enemies here below, — have you properly riddled [sifted] the 
 general scoundrelisni of England, and made out that this man 
 is actually the chief sample ? You do actually slit his flesh 
 here with cold iron and hot ; there is no uncertainty as to that. 
 Rhadamanthus ? But Rhadamanthus is always sure. Good 
 Heavens, if this man w^ere not the chief scoundrel ? And 
 what do you mean by answering to God ? This man means a 
 thing by it, and I mean a thing by it, a very fact : precisely 
 such a fact as you mean by answering to Charles Rex this 
 afternoon in Whitehall. Will the royal eyes look beneficently 
 on you, will they look daggers and dismissals ? One or the 
 other, I suppose. Good God, and what will the divine eyes 
 do with you ? 
 
 Poor Leighton, the day before the execution of his sentence, 
 sat meditative in the Fleet prison, revolving many things in 
 his troubled soul. Many friends call to comfort him ; texts 
 of Scripture are rife. In the dusk of the evening there called 
 two friends of an indistinct colour, Mr. Livingston and Mr. 
 Anderson, both unknown to me, both Scotch I should judge, 
 and of pious cautious mind. In the dusk of the evening 
 Livingston put off his cloak, hat and breeches, all of a grey 
 colour. Anderson put off his doublet ; all put off and mis- 
 cellaneously put on, and become of an indistinct, irrecognis- 
 able grey hue ; and all three as friends of Dr. Leighton, 
 walked out into the foggy element, leaving the prison cell 
 empty, and jailors to whistle for Dr. Leighton. Hereupon 
 there is issued a ' Hue and cry' : he hath a yellowish beard, a 
 high brow, and is between forty and fifty. ^ 
 
 Is there any reader now alive or likely ever to live, that 
 
 does not wish poor Dr. Alexander Leighton may get off ? 
 
 O Sandy Leighton, my poor Sandy, wert thou up among the 
 
 hills of Braemar again, within smell of the peat-reek, among 
 
 ^ Rushworth, ii. 57. 
 
248 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part II. 
 
 the free rocks and forests, the pouring floods and linns, — thou 
 mightst skulk and double there among thy own kith and kin, — 
 for here meseems there is small mercy going. Ah me, one has 
 friends there, perhaps a poor old Scotch mother still there 
 that will weep, — Doctor, I shall fall into tears if I go on. 
 The Doctor had only got into Bedfordshire, when he was 
 overtaken : had to suffer his bloody sentence, part first on 
 Friday, November 16th, and then part second, that day 
 week, — as Dr. Laud, the zealous little individual, has jotted 
 down in his Diary, with surgical minuteness, being indeed a 
 kind of spiritual surgeon. A St. John Long of the English 
 Nation, who Avill burn the sins of it out by actual cautery and 
 make it worthy of God's favour.^ 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ATTORNEY GENERAL NOY 
 
 [1631-4] 
 SHIPMONEY WRIT 
 
 In the year 1631 " Noy was made Attorney General. A 
 ' morose man ** says Clarendon, one of those surly Law-pedants, 
 acute spirits of human intelligence cased in the hide of rhino- 
 ceros ; kind of men extinct now. Used to get a pie from 
 his mother at Christmas, ate the contents of the pie, but kept 
 the crust and lid, the ' coffin of the pie,' as they then called 
 it : this coffin of the pie used to serve for long months after- 
 wards as a general waste-box for the papers of the learned 
 Mr. Noy, Letters, law-briefs, wash-bills, a waste miscellanv of 
 learned and unlearned scriptatory matter found refuge here, — 
 
 ^ After this barbarity Leighton was taken back to the Fleet prison and kept a 
 prisoner there till released by the Long Parliament in 1640. In 1642 he was 
 made keeper of Lambeth House, which was then converted into a State prison. 
 He survived until 1649. His second son, Robert, became the celebrated Arch- 
 bishop Leighton. It is now said that the entry in Laud's Diary, above referred 
 to, is a forgery. - Wood, Atheiuc, ii. 5S1. 
 
CHAP. XL] ATTORNEY GENERAL NOY 249 
 
 happy that there was any refuge. So say tlie old Pamphlets, 
 grinning in their broad manner. Think of this, what a Law 
 Chamber does this learned coffin of a pie presuppose ! When 
 the weather grew hot it is presumable the pastry, even to a 
 Noy''s olfactory nerves, became unsupportable. When the 
 weather grew hot the pie coffin would descend to the dogs, — 
 to be rejected even of the dogs ; and the learned gentleman^s 
 papers would fly refugeless, like Sibylline leaves. William 
 Noy : / moyl hi Lata} Human nature at this date has little 
 conception of such an existence. By what alchemy was a soul 
 of man ever fascinated to the study of English law ? It is 
 inconceivable. This man has long ago no need of money, no 
 benefit from money ; look at the coffin of his Christmas pie 
 used as Drawing-room chiffiannier. 
 
 In 1628 Noy was a patriot Member of Parliament, as 
 Wentworth, too, was. But Wentworth is gained to the 
 Court ; now they decide also on gaining Noy. The King 
 sent for him, says Weldon ; ^ said he meant him for Attorney. 
 ' Attorney .'' Humph ! ^ said Noy ; and went his way again 
 without so much as thanking the king. Nevertheless it was 
 as seed sown, this word of his Majesty's. That Rhinoceros 
 Noy could be fitted with Court housings, served with gilt oats, 
 be curried into Courtly glossiness of skin and have the honour 
 to draw his Majesty on public occasions, — the thought was 
 new ; the thought gradually became seductive, became charm- 
 ing. In 1631 Noy is Attorney General. All his stupendous 
 Law learning turns now to the king"'s side, he digs and pumps 
 up from the abysmal reservoirs of Law such precedents as were 
 never dreamed of before, pumps and pumps till his Law ditch- 
 water submerges this Nation as Noah's Flood did the world.^ 
 
 Of Attorney Noy's new taxes, benevolences, monopolies and 
 oppressions of the subject, it were long to speak ; he was the 
 hatefullest of all men to us ; not only unjust but decreeing 
 injustice by a law. We mention two only : the first his 
 
 1 An anagram on Noy's name. - Cited in Wood, ii. 582. 
 
 * Weldon, cited in Wood, ii. 583. 
 
250 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part II. 
 
 monopoly of Soap. The King by Attorney Noy's advice^ 
 decides to become the great Soap-boiler of his people, — leases 
 out the monopoly of making monopoly Soap to certain parties 
 for a consideration. Potashes and oleaoinous substances exist 
 for you in ^■ain ; you shall not make soap but in the king"'s 
 way and by the king's permission. The Attorney will try you 
 at Law; fine you in 500/., in 1000/., in 1500/. a piece.^ 
 Eloquent, to endless lengths, in their dim way, are the old 
 Pamphlets on this crying grievance of Soap : eloquent, doubt- 
 less, too, were the living housewives and inhabitants of Eng- 
 land. For Soap is not only dear, it is bad, not lavatory but 
 excoriating, and leaving the foulness, burns the skin. Who 
 can live without soap .'' And good soap, — you cannot get it 
 for money ; it is hardly to be had. Your Majesty, must the 
 human subject testify its loyalty by going in foul linen ! Are 
 grease-spots a sign of being well affected '^ I have heard of 
 no monopoly more grievous to the universal human mind ; the 
 old Pamphlets in their dim eloquence are almost heart-aft'ect- 
 ing. Pepper, too, is put under monopoly ; pepper, tobacco, 
 etc. ; what is there that is not jmt imder monopoly .^ We 
 speak only of Attorney Noy's second grand feat, his grandest 
 and most famous, that of Ship-money. 
 
 In secret the Attorney being consulted studies long, pumps 
 up from the Stygian well of old forgotten law, this right or 
 practice that the old kings had of connnanding ships from the 
 Maritime Towns ; draws out a writ to that effect : the greatest 
 feat of Attorney Noy and the last. Before the writ got pub- 
 lished, the Attorney was lying down deep under Roe and Doe 
 in his grave, safe with Empson and Dudley, with extinct 
 extortioners, no more to deci'ce injustice by a law. The 
 vintners drank carouses ; ^ and a published account of the Dis- 
 section of Attorney Noy testifies, that ' his heart was made of 
 
 ^ ' Was it by Noy's advice,' Carlylo has inserted in tlie ms. here. — I have not 
 found a (Hstinct answer to the question ; but as Noy was Attorney-general lie 
 must at least have approved of the scheme, if he did not actually originate it. 
 
 ^ Rushworth, ii. 253. •* Wood, ii. 564. 
 
CHAP. XI.] ATTORNEY GENERAL NOY 251 
 
 ' old parchment proclamations, his brain was gone entirely to 
 ' dust, and in his belly was found a barrel of bad soap."" 
 Frightful ! And the Attorney leaves all [or nearly all] to his 
 son Edward, ' rcUqua omnia, etc., and the rest of my lands, 
 ' goods, etc., I leave to my son Edward Noy, whom I make my 
 ' executor, to be consumed and scattered about, tu'c de eo melhi.f 
 ' speravi, as I have always expected of him."' Which indeed 
 proved true ; for within two years, the Attorney's son, busy 
 as his father had anticipated, in running tlirough his fortune, 
 was himself run through in a duel : and the Attorney's big 
 Babylon that he had builded, vanished all like a parchment 
 castle, and was not. The vintners drank and the connnonalty 
 caroused : but had they known what was coming ! The 
 Attorney's last posthumous feat excelled all that he had done 
 while living. Here are some memorial verses which a patient 
 reader may peruse with what admiration he can : 
 
 ' Noy's flood is goue. 
 The Banks appear ; 
 Heath is shorn down. 
 And Finch sings there. ' ^ 
 
 Is it not beautiful ? It means that Noy died on the 9th 
 of August, 1634 ; that Banks succeeded as Attorney General ; 
 that Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Heath, was removed with 
 disgrace from the Common Pleas,^ and in his room appeared 
 on 16th October Sir John Finch, the Sj^eaker whom the 
 Commons held down in his chair, and was Queen's Attorney, 
 but was not understood to know anything of Law ; ^ gowned 
 men inquired eagerly of one another. What can the mean- 
 ing of this latter thing be ? Not long. The riddle was 
 ])ropounded on the 16th, and in four days, on the 20th 
 October, 1634,^ it was solved — by pronmlgation of the Ship- 
 money Writ. The City of London petitioned against it ; 
 but the City had to submit. 
 
 1 Wood, ii. 5S4. - Rushworth, ii. 253 
 
 ^ Clarendon. ^ Rushworth, ii. 259. 
 
252 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A SCOTCH CORONATION 
 [1633] 
 
 So many things are hidden in that dead abyss of Past 
 Time ; only here and there a ghmpse of actuality recoverable 
 from the devouring night. And of these few the meaning 
 and meanings are so hard to seize ! For so it stands in this 
 dark Life of ours. The figure of the actuality you may see ; 
 but the spirit of it ? How it arose, as all does arise, from 
 the unfathomable Deeps, old as the morning of Days, and 
 tends onwards to this present day and still onwards to the 
 ultimatum, so unknown, yet so indubitable, sure as very death, 
 when the Last of the Days shall have become dark, and 
 Human History have ended, and there shall be no other 
 Day .'' This to the eye of Supreme Intelligence is clear ; to 
 God's eye, but to no man's and no angel's ? And yet, did 
 it not in very truth lie intelligible, had there been an Intelli- 
 gence sufficient in the work of every man ! Unconsciously 
 the poorest mortal, in all acts and trivialities by which he 
 consciously means so little, has a meaning deep as the 
 primeval Death-kingdoms ; and decipherable only by the 
 All-knowing God. For the poorest mortal was present in 
 embryo at the Creation, and will in essence be present at the 
 Consunnnation. Of the unconscious meaning we can spell 
 the pitifullest fraction : but in these past times even the 
 conscious meaning, what the actors thought, what of their 
 miraculous life the actors of personages had shaped into some 
 articulation tliat they called thought, and gave utterance 
 to in some futility of speech, — this, even this, has mostly 
 perished. How can history be known ? It is all a prophetic 
 Sibylline Book ; palimpsest, inextricable ; over which hangs 
 darkness and a kind of sacred horror.^ We must catch a 
 ^ ' Noi so.' T. C.'s note on the MS. here. 
 
CiiAr. XII.] A SCOTCH CORONATION 253 
 
 glimpse where we can ; we must read some fraction of the 
 meaning of it as we can. 
 
 On Saturday 15th June, 1633, by a singular chain of 
 accidents, I obtain some view of the ancient city of Edinburgh; 
 and discern a few things there in a quite visual manner, 
 several of which it would gratify me to understand com- 
 pletely. But sure enough the June sun shines on that old 
 Edinburgh, clear as it does on the new and newest ; and 
 men are alive and things verily extant there, — and even a 
 state of excitation is discoverable among them. Curious to 
 see. Westward on its sheer blue rock towers up the Castle of 
 Edinburgh, and slopes down eastward to the Palace of Holy- 
 rood ; old Edinburgh Town, a sloping high-street and many 
 steep side lanes, covers like some Avrought tissue of stone and 
 mortar, like some strong rhinoceros skin of stone and mortar, 
 with many a gnarled embossment, church steeple, chimney- 
 head, Tolbooth, and other ornament or indispensability, back 
 and ribs of that same eastward slope, — after all not so unlike 
 some crowned couchant animal, of which the Castle were 
 crown, and the life-breath those far-spread smoke-clouds and 
 vapour-clouds rising up there for the last thousand years or 
 so. At the distance of two hundred years or more this 
 thing I see. Rhinoceros Edinburgh lies in the nmd : south- 
 ward a marshy lake or South Loch, now about to be drained; 
 northward a marshy lake or North Loch, which will not be 
 drained for the next one hundred and thirty years. 
 
 Faring westward from Dalkeith comes a cavalcade somewhat 
 notable : a many-footed tramp of stately horses, a waving 
 grove of plumes, scarfs, cloaks, embroideries ; it is the 
 choicest cavalcade that could be got up in these Northern 
 parts ; and in it ride Church and State, Charles Rex namely 
 and William Laud, Archbishop, who in ordinary papers signs 
 himself ' Wil. Cant.' ^ Other figures I could particularise, but 
 
 1 Laud, now Bishop of London, became (on the death of Abbot) Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, 6th August 1633, immediately after his arrival home from this 
 visit to Scotland. Although he was not nominally Archbishop of Canterbury at 
 
254 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [paPxT ii. 
 
 of what avail were it ? James, Marquis of Hamilton, home 
 from the German AVars, is there, and the Earls of Northum- 
 berland, Arundel, Pembroke, Southampton, and Holland, and 
 many other persons of quality.^ 'ibey have lodged all night 
 in the House or Palace of Dalkeith, which, within the memory 
 of old men, James, Earl of Morton, built, — prior to losing 
 that strong cunning head of his for privity to Darnley's 
 murder, for accumulated enemies, accumulated hatreds and 
 other causes. His Majesty on Progress travels with a large 
 retinue, harbingers, heralds, etc., and in one word no fewer 
 than two-and-forty scourers and bottle-washers. Two-and- 
 forty human souls spend their days in scouring dishes for his 
 Majesty to eat from ; what must the other higher items be ! 
 Proclamations have been published to keep down the markets 
 on his passage, lest, like the locust swarm, he might create 
 famine of horses' meat and men\s meat. I could tell thee 
 where he lodged each night, how the Lord of Newcastle, at 
 Welbeck,laid out on one dinner for him the matter of lOOOZ., 
 equal to, perhaps, 3000/. or 4000Z. now. How he was 
 wetted at York, and the Archbishop ' Wil. Cant.,' Primate of 
 England, was witty." How already in Huntingdonshire, he 
 had called at Little Gidding, and collationed there with IVIrs. 
 Mary Ferrar and her noteworthy Protestant Monks and 
 Nuns.^ All this I could tell thee, and more ; but it would 
 be dull, dreary ; and indeed a crime in me to do it. Solely, 
 at utmost Berwick-upon-Tweed I noted the elegant Recorder, 
 Mr. Thomas Widdrington, in a style sublime and beautiful 
 haranguing him ; how the ancient decayed Town, lying like a 
 decayed warhound in time of peace, disconsolate between its 
 hills, grew young to see the face of Majesty ; and this year, 
 
 the time of this Scottish visit, he had long performed practically all the duties of 
 Primate. — 'Wil. Cant' is of course an abbreviation of VVilheli>ius Caiituariaisis, 
 
 ^ Kennet, iii. 69. 
 
 - ' May 24th. The King was to enter into York in State. The day was 
 extreme windy and rainy, that he could not all day long. I called it " \'ork 
 Friday." ' — Laud's Diary. 
 
 •• See ante, p. 234 ; and Carlyle's Cromwell, i. 73. 
 
CHAP. XII.] A SCOTCH CORONATION ; 255 
 
 1633, would be for all ages a miraculous Plato's year: — 
 whereupon Mr. Thomas kneels at Majesty's bidding, and after 
 due slap of sword is bid ' rise Sir Thomas Widdrington, 
 ' Knight."' A knight really worshipful enough, of learned 
 middle-aged face, in decent Vandyk beard, white collar and 
 black gown ; for he is of Gray's Inn, and Recorder here. 
 One of those famed Border Widdringtons, — posterity, like 
 enough, of the Chevy-Chase Widdrington who fought upon 
 his stumps. Understand next that close on Berwick, at the 
 place they call the Bound-road, or limit of the Kingdoms, the 
 Scotch chivalry waited in gala-dress, carrying their estates on 
 
 their back. And then understand further, But no, 
 
 thou unhappy reader, I will not strain thy patience till it 
 crack. Widdrington speeches, ceremonial upholstery and 
 blaring of trumpets, and indeed all large bulks in the 
 inside of which is small or no reality, have in these latter 
 days grown wearisome even to blockheads, and have to me 
 ceased to be wearisome, and become something more. Noise 
 with no meaning in it, bulk with no substance in it : is there, 
 in truth, if one will consider it, a more sinful, I might call 
 it insolent, blasphemous phenomenon easily discoverable at 
 present ? Truce, therefore, to the antecedencies of this same 
 Royal Progress, — sufficient that thou seest the Progi-ess itself ; 
 and sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. — Ambling along 
 by the South-western roots of Arthur's Seat ; through the 
 green June country towards Edinburgh, tower-crowned, blue- 
 cloaked, — whither, as extreme, compressed agitation is reign- 
 ing there, may not we as well run and announce that at last 
 the King is coming .'' 
 
 At the "West Port of Edinburgh there is no entrance 
 except one overleap the wall, — which indeed for the genius of 
 History, is easy. But the huge planked gate we find is shut 
 there ; and within it, — ay, within, do but look ! Solemn, on 
 each side of the way, three firm ranges of wooden seats, 
 whereon sit, in awful expectancy, clad in velvet, clad in satin 
 silkgowns, Mr. Archibald Clark (?), Lord Provost of the City, 
 
256 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 with his Baihe.s, with his Councilloi>>, in full complement ; 
 names entirely unwritten, if not in the universal Doom-book, 
 figures that were and are not, — waiting what will betide. O 
 Mr. Archibald, brother shadow of the seed of Adam, w^hom I 
 never saw before, and hope ne^er to see again, what an hour 
 is this ! The King is coming ; thou hast a speech to make, 
 multiplex ceremonies to do, and see well done, todav. Thou 
 sittest there, thy shadow Bailies, Councilloi-s, all round thee ; 
 that blue Castle rock and battlements frowning oAer thee ; and 
 shortly thou shalt make a speech and genuflexions, thou 
 hapless, happy civic functionary, here at the West Port ; all 
 Edinburgh looking on, and Scotland, and three kingdoms ; — 
 and thou waitest for the shadow of the King^s Majesty ! The 
 Heavens send thee well through it, say I ; for the moment is 
 great. Mr. Archibald sits Avith thick-drawn breath, and all 
 mortals draw their breath thick. I mark however, that the 
 middle street is sanded smooth, the sides railed-in with wooden 
 fences, with due Town-guards and Lochaber-axes, to debar the 
 profane vulgar. O, ye vulgar, whom I see as with eyes, yet 
 know no face of ! bone of my bone, you and your fathers, who 
 are my fathers, all unknown to me from the beginning of 
 days ! A fair good-morning, nevertheless ! Sturdy Scotch 
 figures in breeches, beautiful Scotch figures in petticoats ; — 
 honest men and bonny lasses, — there ye are. And those heads 
 are full of thought, and those hearts, of joy and sorrow, — and 
 it has all finished, where is it ? All gone silent, an inarticulate 
 hum as of the big Ocean moan of old Eternitv. A fair 
 good-morrow to you, — with thoughts for which there are no 
 words ! 
 
 Thirteen score of volunteer guards-royal, the handsomest 
 youths in Edinburgh, wait somewhere, I think, in the Grass- 
 market, all in white satin doublets, black velvet breeches, white 
 silk stockings, beautiful in pyet plumage : of these I reck not 
 specially. Alas, all plumage is soon shed, swept bare ; — all 
 plumage is stript, I say, — cloth-plumage, flesh-plumage, — the 
 very bones and dust are stript to nothing, — and all souls are 
 
CHAP. XII.] A SCOTCH CORONATION 257 
 
 bare, — Queen of England and Janet Geddes, maid-servant, all 
 one. O Janet, thou in thy long-eared mutch (which the Germans 
 still call Miltze and we mob-cap), in thy humble linsey-wolsey 
 woman's dress, what doest thou today ? Busy, belike, with 
 broth-pot and dinner-stuff, like a hardworking servant, hoping 
 only to catch some glimpse of Majesty hastily, from a front 
 window? At this day, among the 753 portraits that there 
 are of Charles Rex, I could wish there had been one of Jenny 
 Geddes ! Dimly I have seen her, poor woman, in deep closes 
 [lanes], in high garrets ; scouring, sweeping, as a poor servant- 
 wench ; reading her old Bible by a candle-end when all the 
 house lay quiet ; closing the day of drudgery with prayer to 
 the Highest God. Authentic prayer, my friend, which is not 
 so common a thing. Her grandfather, I doubt not, heard 
 Knox preach ; and to Jenny also a great Gospel has come. 
 Gospel, — what Gospel ever equalled it .'' That in poor and 
 poorest Jenny, too, under her coarse mutch, under her dusty 
 coarse gown, there dwells an Eternity ; strangely imprisoned 
 so, a gleam of God Himself ? Believe it, Jenny ; believe it as 
 thou canst ; for it is true, and was, and forever will be ; and 
 in comparison there is no truth worth believing at all ! Hard- 
 working Jenny has exchanged glances with various handsome 
 lads of the neighbourhood, but yet made no wedding. She 
 seems to me, quiet as she is, of quick, deep temper : perhaps 
 infirm of temper. Other scandals, reported by the crew of 
 dragons, I have read, and then found reason to consider lies. 
 Scrub away, poor Jenny ; this day thou mayest see the King 
 as he passes, — and shalt not fail another day, to do the King 
 an errand, send the King a message of its sort, unlikely as that 
 looks at present.^ 
 
 Strolling along these holiday streets of Edinburgh, a num- 
 ber of questions suggest themselves. Some answerable, too 
 many of them unanswerable. For, see, not only at the West 
 Port, where Mr. Archibald Clark with his Bailie retinue sits, 
 
 ^ See the chapter on 'Jenny Geddes,' infra, p. 299. 
 11 
 
258 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 thick-breathing ; but here, at tlie West Bow, an inner closed 
 gate, at the head of that tortuous street, stand orators, nay, I 
 think stand Allegories, judging by their personations ; — and 
 then again, as we emerge into the High-street, what are these 
 in sky-blue cloaks and plumes, various as the rainbow, as sky 
 messengers newly alighted to congratulate the king's Majesty ? 
 The old Tolbooth and all St. Giles's Cathedral never looked 
 so brave. In the bowels of the High Cross fountain there 
 circulates, impatiently demanding egress, a lake of Claret. 
 Judge if this decoration is a popular one ! And a little 
 farther on, at the public Weigh-house, — what the Scotch call 
 Tron, not yet a Church, but a public Weigh-house, — see, the 
 blunt edifice, by plaster, planks, draperies and upholstery, is 
 changed to an Olympus, on which hover — the Nine Muses of 
 Antiquity, and much else ! These too, are to congratulate the 
 King's Majesty ; in verses as melodious as possible, apprise 
 him that he is King by 108 descents, counting from the First 
 Fergus, and prophesy that 108 or more shall descend from 
 him in like manner. Of a new set of Allegories at the Nether 
 Bow or lowest gate, of all that is going forward in the interior 
 of Holyrood, and chapels with tapestry, bed-hangings, and 
 furnishings, etc., and the cooking and furbishing that goes 
 and has gone on there, my patience fails me to speak. For, 
 on the whole, what is it but a scenic phantasm, rather help- 
 lessly adumbrative of somewhat, not of much ? Adumbrative, 
 as indeed all ceremony is, of men's worship for heroes or even 
 for the cloaks of heroes ; but, alas, in how helpless a manner ! 
 For in truth, O reader, the cloak of a hero cannot by any 
 industry of man be worshipped at all ; and at intervals the 
 dreadfullest contradictions ensue from attempting and pretend- 
 ing to worship it. Good Heavens ! it is like a veritable bolt 
 of Heaven striking through a resinous torch and pasteboard 
 thunder-apparatus at Drury Lane : the lamcntablest accident ; 
 which, nevertheless always at intervals occurs. For when a 
 Noah's Deluge by Law of Nature is due, there is no remedy 
 in May-games, in careless dalliances, in marrying and giving in 
 
CHAP. XII.] A SCOTCH CORONATION 259 
 
 marriage : either thou wilt with faith and true labour build 
 an Ark, or the floods due by Law of Nature will wash thee 
 out of the way. For which reason, when thou seest cloth- 
 worship going on, quit it, I advise thee : it is not safe, it is 
 far from safe. 
 
 An historical secret that will interest, — this pageantry has 
 all been got up by Mr. William Drunnnond of Hawthornden, 
 a gentleman of much genius who lives ' vacant for the Muses," 
 as he calls it, out at Hawthornden. By him and by fit 
 upholsterers has all this pageantry been got up.^ 
 
 This then, is what Mr. Drummond could contrive to make 
 of it, this miscellany of skyblue Muses, on their Tron 
 Olympus, begirt with Scotch Lochaber axes, authentic Mr. 
 Clark and the astonishing etceteras that we see ? Drummond 
 
 ' Jamesone, a portrait painter, had come up from Aberdeen to superintend the 
 scenic part of this Coronation pageant. Drummond, in consultation with Jame- 
 sone, wrote the Speeches in ornate prose and the Poems in still more ornate 
 poetry. These may now be read in Drummond's Works, under the title of ' The 
 Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch Charles, King of Great Britain, 
 France and Ireland, into his ancient and royal City of Edinburgh. ' — These are : 
 In Prose, 
 
 ' A Speech intended to be spoken at the West Gate,' beginning, ' If nature 
 could suffer rocks to move and abandon their natural places, this town,' etc. — 
 offering 'hecatombs of happy desires,' etc. 
 
 And in Verse : — 'Speech of Caledonia, representing the kingdom : ' followed 
 by a ' Horoscopal Pageant by the Planets,' — opened by Endymion 'apparelled 
 like a shepherd, in long coat of crimson velvet . . . had a wreath of flowers on 
 his head, his haire was curled and long, and in his hand he bare a sheep-hook ; 
 on his legs were buskins of gilt leather.' After his address come Speeches from 
 Saturn, Jove, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon : which last, after 
 praising ' the fair Queen and her Golden Maids,' prophesies to the King : — 
 
 ' Beneath thee reign Discord (fell mischief's forge, 
 The bane of people, state and kingdom's scourge), 
 Pale Envy (with the cockatrice's eye, 
 Which seeing kills, but seen doth forthwith die) : 
 Malice, Deceit, Rebellion, Impudence, 
 Beyond the Garaments shall pack them hence, 
 With every monster that thy glory hates : 
 Thus Heavens decree, so have ordained the Fates.' 
 
 These delivered, Endymion perorates with a flourish : concluding thus : ' AH 
 shall observe and serve this blessed King.' 
 
260 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 meditatino- in his elejrant melodious mind the God\s-fact as 
 it stands between this Scottish Nation and its Charles Rex, 
 found nothing so adumbrative of it as even this, this puffy 
 monstrositv, rich in silk velvet and such like, but in all else 
 most poor. Not beautiful, not true, significant of little ; 
 comparable to the huge puff-breeches of the time, and within 
 them no limbs ; at which the human mind two centuries 
 removed stands stupent, — not condemnatory, no. And Mr. 
 Drummond was a genius ? I expect his singing will differ a 
 little from that of the old Iliad Homerides, — merging direct 
 with fiery veracity towards the fact, melting into music by 
 the very truth and fire of it. Alas, yes, from the Greek 
 Homerides, from the Norse Skalds, from the English or Scotch 
 ballad-singer, from all men that ever at any time sang truly. 
 The true singer hurries direct — towards the fact, intent on 
 that alone, melts into nmsic by the very fire of his veracity. 
 Drummond's genius one would say is that of an accomplished 
 Upholsterer rather.^ Different from Homer's — as a pair of 
 the costliest slashed puff- breeches, stuffed broader than a 
 bushel with nothing in them, may differ from a pair of 
 Grecian Hippolytus' limbs with nothing superfluous on them. 
 But good Mr. Drummond is a type of his age. His mon- 
 strous unveracious puff-breeches ovation is the emblem of so 
 much other unveracity. Mr. Drummond, had I been there, 
 I had bowed almost silently to this King^s ^Majesty, and 
 thought within myself, O King's Majesty, I know not, the 
 Scottish Nation knows not, what thou art, — half phantasm, 
 half reality ; God only knows. The Scottish Nation bends 
 its head respectfully in the meanwhile, will cheerfully find 
 thee victual and lodging of its best for the time being. What 
 a pity there were any pageant and ceremony not full of 
 meaning ! They are all false, antl they cannot all, like the 
 Lord Major's coach, be safely trusted to the children to see 
 
 ' In later years, especially after reading Professor Masson's ' Drummond of 
 Ilawthornden,' Carlyle formed a higher estimate of Drummond's genius than he 
 has expressed here. 
 
CHAP. XII.] A SCOTCH coil ON ATI ON 261 
 
 that they are false. Pity that there should be any grhnace : 
 a gesture that means nothing is an unveracity which man 
 should avoid. Thy very horse scorns it. The neigh of the 
 horse is sincere, and his kick is sincere. 
 
 Paseants are of small moment to us : nevertheless we must 
 look on this occasion how it stands with Mr. Archibald Clark 
 at the AVest Port. The heart of the man beating thick with 
 painful expectancy, his breathing fluttered into a series of 
 sighs. Edinburgh waits, with Mr. Clark at its head, in painful 
 expectance of the King's Majesty. Hark, see far overhead : 
 the old Castle has heard his Majesty's trumpet, and answers 
 from her metal throats, in thunder, in rolling smoke-clouds 
 barred with long spears of fire. Fifty shots of their great 
 ordnance : Tore Heaven a very handsome salute. And there, 
 aye there, Mr. Archibald ; loud knock at this thy West Port 
 door, Majesty knocking for entrance : thou must ■ rise, bestir 
 thee, for the hour is come ! — Pageants are a thing valueless 
 as dreams ; records of Pageants are like the dream o/'a dream. 
 Nevertheless, as this old Edinburgh Gate opens, flung back by 
 old Edinburgh beefeaters, the Lord Provost kneeling, presents 
 his oration, and the keys of the City in a silver bason, having 
 first shaken into it a purse of a thousand gold coins ; which 
 Marquis Hamilton as Master of the Horse and Grand 
 Chamberlain of Scotland, receives ; and the King's Majesty 
 listens, and Earth is attentive, and Heaven ; the June sun 
 looks down on it, and two centuries have fled since then ; 
 while all this goes on, I say, and the plumed cavalcade fares 
 slowly through the Grassmarket, West Bow and along its 
 upholstery orbit, looked on by a hundred thousand eyes, the 
 light of which is gone two centuries ago, — I could like to 
 institute a few general reflexions. A few passing glimpses 
 even, were not without interest to us. For this Pageant, spite 
 of all the velvet mantling, fustian oratory and other Drum- 
 mond furbishment, has a reality in it, though a small one. 
 There verilv are certain two-lea-ged animals without feathers 
 under it. Strip it bare as thou wilt, these do result. These ; 
 
262 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 and whatsoever in themselves and in their mutual relation 
 these may mean and be. Reader, it is withal a most abstruse, 
 and if well seen into, a most astonishing reality ; compared 
 with which this Hawthornden upholstery and Nine sky-blue 
 Muses, etc., are very paltry. Nay, did nine real old Muses, 
 with a real Apollo, light here on the Tron Weigh-house, 
 and DrUmmond fly home shrieking, even that were not more 
 wonderful. These unfeathered bipeds, could I rightly say 
 whence these came, whither they are bound, and whence 
 they got this gear they have within them and upon them, — 
 these laces, Genoa velvets, still more, these thoughts, beliefs, 
 imaginations, expectations, — I were a Thrice Greatest and 
 Mercurius to thee. 
 
 Observe, for example, him they call King''s Majesty, 
 Charles Rex, by one hundred and eight descents, who sits 
 stately on his brown barb, footcloth of black embroidered 
 velvet, bits golden, stirrups silvern, crupper and headstall 
 glittering with gems of Ind, — is not that a proper man ? 
 What thinkest thou of him ? Of the white taffeta cloak, of 
 flat-brimmed Spanish hat and white plume, I say nothing : 
 except that all is suitable to each ; that it is a king's 
 Majesty very handsomely done. The long deep -browed 
 visage, shaded with love-locks, terminating in delicate 
 moustaches and peaked beard, is not without elegance and an 
 air of pride or royal superciliousness, shaded you would say 
 with sorrow. There is in it a solemnity partly conscious 
 that it ought not to be solenni — that it is not solid or really 
 solemn, rests not on solidity or energy, depth, or inward 
 facultv of any kind ; but solely on the white tafl'eta cloak 
 with etceteras. Wholly the great man except the soul of 
 him, — like the Tragedy of Hamlet, the part of Hamlet left 
 out by })articular desire. To me it has a certain fatality of 
 aspect. This man has not achieved greatness ; he has been 
 born great, — in gesture, decoration, place and bearing. His 
 elegant thin hazel eyes seem very rapid and very deep, and 
 turn up occasionally as if Heaven would make all good 
 
CHAP. XIL] A SCOTCH CORONATION 263 
 
 nevertheless. Pretension and ability seem far out of pro- 
 portion. He is descended from some one he calls Fergus 
 the First by 108 generations, and at some later point of the 
 genealogy, from Elizabeth Muir of Rowallan, in Renfrew- 
 shire, whom some assert to have been an improper female. 
 Falsely, I hope, — but indeed, what matters it ? We have 
 all some 108 descents, or more, counting from Adam, or 
 even from Japheth, downwards, and at some step it is odds 
 but some improper females and not very many proper males 
 have intervened. From Elizabeth Muir, at all events, the 
 Steward of Scotland, begotten by poor Robert Bruce, second 
 of that name, did issue, and became king and took his Trade's 
 name for surname, and had descendants and adventures, and 
 so we have now royal Stewarts, who reign over both nations, 
 by divine right, by diabolic wrong, or probably by a mixture 
 of these two. Mixture somewhat difficult to disentangle. 
 
 Of Marquis Hamilton riding at the King''s right hand, who 
 has just received the bason, keys and gold coins, I ask thee, 
 Whether he too has not something of fatal in the face of 
 him ? A man favoured by his Majesty, the old playmate 
 and constant familiar of his Majesty, who has slept in his 
 Majesty "'s bedroom, and yet has had misventures, and is like 
 to have. Where, O Marquis, for example, are the 6000 men 
 thou leddest to the relief of Protestant Germany and Gus- 
 tavus. Lion of the North ? Six thousand went, a fiery 
 miscellany of British valour and adventure : wasted, yellow 
 with disease, not many units return ! Even death in Battle 
 was refused them. They had to die inactive, mostly of 
 famine and heartbreak, and Gustavus or Protestantism never 
 saw the mark of their swords. Hoping to purchase a little 
 glory, thou hast paid the money, thou hast not got the ware ! 
 Jacobus Cunctator,^ I consider thee a very questionable 
 
 1 James, third Marquis of Hamilton. He was created Duke of Hamilton in 
 1643. His last exploit was the leading of a Scottish army of 20,000 into 
 England; he was defeated by Cromwell at Preston, taken at Uttoxeter; and, 
 after escape and recapture, was condemned and executed in 1648. 
 
264 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 general. Better to stay in green Clydesdale by the Falls of 
 Corra, in that palace of thine. But the old Lady Mother is 
 fond of glory, is fond of Protestantism ; and on the whole a 
 young Marquis is still a young king, and neither kings nor 
 Marquises have yet reached the stage of Donothingism, Rois 
 Fainmns, which is the penultimate stage. This young 
 Marquis, if you saw him on foot or at Court, has the 
 strangest, slouching, crouching, luridly bashful attitude and 
 ways ; something really sinister, and jminful even, as Mr. 
 Hyde assures me : alas, a deepfelt disproportion between 
 place and power to fill it, between what you expect of your- 
 self, and what you will ever perform ; this is painful enough ! 
 this untempered by heroic humility, heroic self-suppression, 
 self-killing, far too hard a process for the most, this is 
 sinister enough ! I pity this poor Marquis, a man of keen 
 anxious feelings, keen attachments even, not unkindly, not 
 unconscientious, were they not so dashed by egoist terrors 
 which he cannot well help : there are thousands of w'orse 
 men. See what a viperous glow in those otherwise frightened 
 eyes of his, as of the viper and poor innocent frog. I do not 
 like such eyes. The Cunctator's brows are already waxing 
 heavy, in a few years more of such conspicuous misventures, 
 futile seekings of glory, by paying his cash and not getting 
 the ware, the corners of his mouth will palpably descend, 
 and one shall find him a man of horse-shoe mouth and fro<>- 
 viper eyes, a conspicuously sinister man. For the present in 
 much sunshiny weather, close to the King's Majesty, cheered 
 by the Scottish bason and gold, and genial sunshine, he rides 
 in moderate comfort, hoping better things. 
 
 One glance, too, at him on whom all eyes are glancing, 
 Thomas Howard, Lord Marshal, Earl of Arundel and Surrev, 
 first nobleman of England, who rides in state here richly 
 caparisoned, the cynosure of many eyes. A luminous, dis- 
 tinguished man, to us still recognisable though faintlv. 
 Processioning, at home and abroad, on embassies, solcnni 
 missions in foreign parts, the first nobleman in England ; — 
 
CHAP. XII.] A SCOTCH CORONATION 265 
 
 to us all this has grown most dim, small and as it were 
 extinct. Bv how feeble, neglected a ray, does Thomas Earl 
 of Arundel still glimmer visible to thee, O reader of the 
 Nineteenth Century and me ? Neglected in his garden in the 
 Strand lie certain mutilated blocks of foreign -hewn stone : 
 These, Thomas Earl of Arundel found lying for sale at Rome, 
 on his foreign missions or travels ; these, the price seeming 
 reasonable, he purchased and brought home ; some unknown 
 Greek man (1500 ? years ago) had got them hewn, sculptured 
 with dates of old-world deeds and epochs, in which state they 
 long stood read by curious dark Greek eyes, then lay tumbled, 
 devastated by the Turks, no black or grey eye heeding them, 
 — exce})t the salesman w-ho persuaded Thomas Earl of 
 Arundel to purchase them. Thomas purchased them, laid 
 them in his garden in the Strand. They lie there neglected 
 while Thomas rides the streets of Edinburgh with king 
 Charles. But now in this present year [1843], these 
 Parian hewn stones, — what of them escaped being set in 
 grates by masons, rescued by the illustrious Selden, — stand 
 in the door-way (?) of a College at Oxford, and are a Parian 
 Chronicle, and fly abroad printed in Books, and are the 
 Arundel jNIarbles, known to all mortals, — shedding some 
 faint veritable ray into the otherwise Cimmerian night of early 
 Time.^ Such virtue was in English Thomas Howard's guineas 
 well oriven — in the stroke of that Greek's Parian chisel 
 judiciously laid on. Thanks to Thomas Howard, whom we 
 name, that he purchased these marbles ; but thanks also to 
 that invisible but indubitable Greek who quarried and 
 sculptured them, whom we cannot name. By this faint ray 
 shed into the far night of Time, shall Thomas Howard be 
 long memorable ; when all else of him is forgotten. O 
 money - capitalists. Earls, Dukes, persons of capital and 
 
 ^ The marbles of which the ' Parian Chronicle ' is the most interesting item, 
 were presented to the University of Oxford in 1677, by Henry Howard, grand- 
 son of the above Thomas Howard. The marbles are now, nearly all, deposited 
 in the basement of the Ashmolean museum. 
 
266 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 honour, striving to purchase a little glory, my advice were 
 that you went to the right shop for it, that you did some 
 actual thing, or fraction of a thing. Glory is purchasable if 
 you want it ; but the tailor, upholsterer, coachbuilder, etc., 
 have it not to sell. Palaces, valets, and caparisons, the 
 whole honour and splendour of this Thomas are clean gone ; 
 the mountains of venison and beef, the oceans of Burgundy 
 and vi7io secco, sherries, sack, he poured thi'ough his thousand 
 throats, to the admiration of contemporary flunkies, where 
 is all that ? By the few guineas he gave for the Arundel 
 Marbles does Thomas Howard, like a farthing rushlight in 
 a galaxy all tenebrific, assert some feeble honourable visi- 
 bility. Glory ? my right honourable friends, it is not by 
 sumptuous expenditure and sumptuously consuming, that man, 
 had he the throat of BePs dragon,^ can rise to the immortal 
 gods. No ! nor even by dressing Parliamentary cases, rising 
 to the head of Ministries, and victoriously guiding the spigot 
 of taxation, what we call the helm of Government. My right 
 honourable friends, might the heavenly wisdoms illuminate 
 you ; for failing them, I think the Tartarean Fatalisms, are 
 not far, which never fail to prove didactic though a little 
 too late ! — 
 
 Meanwhile I ask thee, good reader, hast thou seen many 
 prettier youths than this young Earl of Montrose ?^ Mugdok, 
 beyond the Forth Meadows, is iniluckily a hungry house ; but 
 here it has sent forth a proper man. Cardinal de Retz, a 
 judge in such matters, finds a resemblance here to the heroes 
 of Plutarch. So do I too, as realities of the human kindred 
 all resemble one another. If King of Scotland mean strongest 
 or largest soul of Scotland, why were not this man King ? 
 Alas ! such thought be far from us ; from him how altogether 
 far is it ! For the Past exists too, some four or five year- 
 
 ' See the story of ' Bel and the Dragon ' in the Apocrypha. 
 
 " James Graham, the 'great Marquis,' born 1612. He deserted the Cove- 
 nanters at the close of the Second Bishops' War, espoused the royal cause, and, 
 after a glorious but ill-fated career, died on the gallows, May, 1650. 
 
CHAP.XII.J A SCOTCH CORONATION 267 
 
 thousands deep ; — not to be abolished, thank Heaven ! And 
 in all times and places, the Present cannot get existed except 
 by adopting all that is true of that, and honestly growing out 
 of that. Shambling Charles Stuart is king, and firm-footed, 
 fire-souled James Graham aspires but to be an accepted 
 implement of his. Accepted, how thrice happy were he. 
 Alas, the poor youth's estate, squandered in France, too, 
 and foreign travels, etc., lies mainly on his back, I doubt : 
 and he has w ild wishes within him, a wild deep soul, insatiable 
 as fire and noble too and fierce and bright as that. I like 
 that lion-lip of the young Earl, that massive aquiline face, 
 that broad brow, and the eyes, in which I discern smoke 
 enough. He rides sumptuously but unnoticed. King's Majesty 
 w'ould take no notice of him, wherein some say Marquis 
 Hamilton, speaking of broken fortune, ambitious, vehement 
 temper, did him no good. Pass on, my Lord Marquis ; 
 possibly we shall meet again. 
 
 Dr. William Laud, now Bishop of London, Privy Councillor 
 to his Majesty, Member of the High Commission Court and 
 Star Chamber, etc., rides too in that procession, gazes some- 
 what over the high edifices and street phenomena, trying to 
 remember them again, after an absence of sixteen years. Yes, 
 my Lord Bishop, those old stone houses are there, but in 
 your Lordship's self many things have changed : your hair 
 which was then black is now getting grizzled, and you are a 
 man of sixty ; the church, too, has changed, and the world. 
 English Solomon who never loved you, is gone to his gloiy, 
 old age and strong Greek wine having done their part. He 
 grew at last so stiff, that when they set him on horseback, he 
 would stick unaltered through a whole stag -hunt, merely 
 demanding liquor, from time to time ; and come in with the 
 hat sunk a little into the hollow of his neck, but otherwise 
 unaltered in position,^ swearing Scotch oaths, and not in the 
 
 ^ James was not always so fortunate as that in his riding. It is on record 
 that, as ' he was riding on horseback abroad ' (after dinner on the day in 
 which he had dissolved his Third Parliament. 6th January, 1621-2), 'his horse 
 
268 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 worst humour. A right rehgious Sovereign he, and ti'ue 
 father of the Church, whose loss would have been irreparable, 
 — ^had we not here, by Heaven's blessing, got a new and 
 better ! What king James but meditated king Charles 
 will do. 
 
 Alas, all changes, all grows, decavs, and dies. We were 
 then a poor subaltern of an underfoot chaplain, busy packing, 
 in a subterranean way, Scotch General Assemblies, under the 
 cold shade ; and we have been since then a pretty way. 
 Dean of Huntingdon, Bishop of St. Davids, Dean of Chapel 
 Royal, etc., and are now third Bishop of the realm, within 
 sight almost of being first, — for poor old Abbot cannot hold 
 out long. And the church — what a reformation ; which then 
 we durst hardly dream of ! Altars, in most places, built into 
 the East wall, surrounded with a decent rail ; the priest in 
 dispensing the elements going through his genuflexions in 
 many places with propriety. Chinese Mandarins, heathen 
 Bonzes, Talapoins,' shall they surpass us in fitness of gesture ? 
 And they but Idolaters ! By Heaven's blessing, we shall 
 surpass them. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN IN THE TIME OF 
 PURITANISM 
 
 Is it not worth our while to look back for a moment at 
 the last great expansion of England ? We will look at 
 Puritanism and the time of Oliver Cromwell. A time of 
 darkness, straits ; when the soul of England pent within old 
 
 stumbled and cast his Majestic into the New River, where the ice brake : he 
 fell in, so that nothing but his boots were scene. Sir Richard Yong was next, 
 who alighted, went into the water, and lifted him out. There came much 
 water out of his mouth and bodie. Mis Majestic rode back to Theobalds, 
 went into a warme Vjcd, and, as we heare, is well, which God continue I ' 
 Harleian MS., 389. 
 
 ' Bonzes and Talapoins arc Buddhist Priests and Monks. 
 
CHAP. XIII.] ENGLISH MEN AND WOMEN 269 
 
 limits, could no longer live, felt that it must be delivered or 
 die, — and with endless tribulation and confusion, did verily 
 deliver itself, and get new freer limits to live in ! What is 
 in the Future we know not ; but know well it will be of 
 blood-relation to the Past. Wouldst thou know the coming- 
 grandchild, look in the portrait of his grandfather. The 
 clothes will be different, how different : but the features, 
 never doubt it, will have a resemblance. 
 
 Landor has written ' Imaginary Conversations ' ; but the 
 real conversations were an entirely different matter. Much 
 more is required for men's understanding one another than 
 their speaking the same vocables of language. The Edinburgh 
 man brought suddenly into a London circle feels himself, in 
 spite of Newspapers, so much of an alien. The topics of his 
 new neighbours are not his topics, they think too, in quite 
 a different style about them : What the neighbours say to 
 him, Avhat he says to the neighbours, is alike in good measure 
 unintelligible, conversation frustrate, speech that cannot be 
 heard. 
 
 Fancy a figure from one of our extant soirees, suddenly 
 carried back 200 years into the dark past, and set down face 
 to face in a social evening party of CromwelFs time. Pause 
 a little over this. No doubt at all our ancestors had evening 
 parties ; there in apartments swept, heated, lighted, cheery 
 Avith the hum of human voices they do meet together ; certain 
 as if we saw it, there they are. Of stature, figure, structure 
 bodily and spiritual, altogether like our own ; nothing but the 
 outer tailor's work dissimilar. Their faces in all lineaments 
 are as ours : behold the English noses in their shapes and 
 unshapes, — the due proportion of them tipt with carbuncular 
 red : the surly square English faces, alas, sorrowfully truculent 
 perhaps, sorrowfully thoughtful, loving, valiant, sorrowfully 
 strivine; to be glad. For the basis of their life is earnestness ; 
 too apt, in such a world as this, to have itself made into 
 sorrow, silent, mournful indignation and provocation, noble 
 or ignoble spleen, — what you would call a radically sulky 
 
270 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 kind of people. In whom nevertheless lies laughter and 
 floods of honest joy ; the best and only good laughter, — as 
 rainbows and all bright pictures shine best on a ground of 
 black. Faces altogether such as ours ; and figures, the broad- 
 shouldered Herculean, the taper- limbed Apollo figure, and 
 other varieties, not to speak of bow-legged, squat, with pot- 
 bellies. Neither in spite of time can their curls, wimples 
 and fantastic dresses and head-dresses hide from me that here 
 are true daughters of Saxondom, bright as the May month, 
 beautiful as the summer dawn. Behold them. The face a 
 beautiful, improved, transfigured, female version of the male 
 face, a thing really worth beholding. Truculent sorrow, 
 where is it now ? Become a noble dignity, sunny grace made 
 lovelier by a shade. These are the daughters of England, 
 the mothers of England. Beautiful enough for that matter. 
 Complexion as of milk with a tinge of roses ; shapes as of 
 the wood-goddess with her nymphs ; — and in those blue eyes, 
 as quiet as they look, have I not seen festive radiances, 
 lambent kindlings ; brighter far than the glance of diamonds. 
 It was the flash of their minds that had life, that was soul, 
 and had come from Heaven. Properly the brightest of all 
 weather gleams in this lower life. Alas ! they go out so soon 
 in dead darkness, and all that vision is aAvay, away ! 
 
 Such figures in their silks, in their cloth habiliments, 
 bright -dyed enough, are veritably there, alive, and lights 
 burning round them, and the modern figure entering with 
 the truest wish to comnmne, what a stranger is he ! Talk 
 goes of my Lord Marshal and his Parian Chronicle that lies 
 mouldering in Arundel House, by the Strand of Thames, and 
 how the masons have broken part of it, and sacrilegiously set 
 fire-grates with Marmora ArundeHana. Of Lambeth and his 
 Grace, by some called his Little Grace, so overwhelmed with 
 Star chamber and High Connnission business, — Bastwick's 
 ears to be cropt in Palaceyard ; obscure sectaries getting 
 loud everywhere ; of King's right to Tonnage and Poundage 
 without Parliament or not without ; of Altars raileil and 
 
Cii. XIV.] BASTWICK, BURTON, AND PRYNNE 271 
 
 fronting the East, or Communion Tables w hicli are not Altars 
 nor railed, and stand either East or West as it chances. Ah 
 me, and of Grace, Predestination, Goodworks, Faith, and of 
 the Five Arminian Points condemned at Dort. A dim hum 
 of these things reaches our ears ; but they are become un- 
 momentous, undelightful, — unintelligible, like the jargoning 
 of choughs and rooks ! — We shall never get into that old 
 soiree ; neither let us lament that we cannot. And if in 
 these circles one spoke a word of Parliamentary Reform 
 Schedules, Sir Robert Peel and the prosperity of Trade ? 
 German Literature, Almack's Toleration, Railway miracle, 
 or the Cause of Civil and Religious Liberty all over the 
 world ? Time was, but the time that was is not any more ; 
 has no more the right to be. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 BASTWICK, BURTON, AND PRYNNE 
 
 [1637] 
 
 Ox the 30th of June, 1637, I see a crowd in old Palace 
 Yard : Old London streaming thitherward through King 
 Street, by boats at Lambeth ferry, through all streets and 
 ferries, with various expressions of face, with thoughts — who 
 can know their thoughts ? Dim through the long vista of 
 years, and all foreign, though domestic, nay, paternal, has 
 the whole grown to me : men and women many thousands, 
 in hoods, in long lappeted cap and gown, in steeple hat and 
 Dutch-looking breeches, — of indistinct costume, — close packed 
 together — stand gazing there ; but the features I see are 
 English, a sea of English faces, — a miscellaneous sea of 
 English souls with such most indistinct miscellany of thoughts 
 as the scene brings. My Fathers and my Mothers ! For 
 behold, the three prisoners come out, guarded by due tip- 
 staves, by long-skirted persons in authority ; mount aloft to 
 
272 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 their scaffold, into the general eye of day, of that day, — and 
 of many days, onwai'd even to this day and farther. Indis- 
 tinct murmur, thrill of manifold fellow-feeling runs through 
 that crowd. They were seditious men, these three, or they 
 were not seditious but speakers for the rights of Englishmen ? 
 They shall lose their ears this day, be heavily fined and take 
 farewell of liberty in jail till death : so much is certain. 
 They are of a sort not usually seen on Pillories ; Reverend 
 Henry Burton, of Friday Street Chapel ; William Prynne, 
 Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at Law, and John Bastwick, 
 M.D. Burton was a Graduate of Oxford, had at one time 
 been Tutor to the King, a man held in great estimation, and 
 chargeable with no fault but a certain anti-Laudism which 
 could not then, and cannot now, either in the matter or even 
 in the manner of it, be regarded by the public as a crime 
 very heinous, but as the reverse of one. W. Prynne whom 
 we are accustomed to picture to ourselves as a dingy un- 
 washed, contentious, writing- sansculotte, was far other in 
 reality : a gentleman by birth and breeding and behaviour, 
 a Graduate of Oxford ; laborious conscientious Student of 
 Law, a man of much learning which to his own generation 
 was very far from looking crabbed and obsolete as it does to 
 ours. John Bastwick, too, is a gentleman and scholar; has 
 studied at Cambridge, learned medicine at Padua, and prac- 
 tised it at Colchester. These thiee persons disreputable 
 to nobody, warmly esteemed and even venerated of many, 
 appeared on this 30th June, 1637, on what might be called 
 a new stage, and exhibited a very strange spectacle to Eng- 
 land. They were conducted from prison to their scaffolds in 
 Palace Yard ; fixed in their pillories for two hours, as if they 
 had been pickpockets : at the end of two hours the exe- 
 cutioners with attendant surgeons, with braziers, branding- 
 irons, and due apparatus, stept forth and shore their ears 
 off them, staunching their blood with the actual cautery of 
 red-hot iron hissing in their flesh, — the people looking on, 
 not with noise, with a silence which we find had grown 
 
CH. XIV.] BASTWICK, BURTON, AND PRYNNE 273 
 
 ' pale,"* All people might naturally ask themselves, Whither- 
 ward is all this ; what will it end in ? Bastwick's wife caught 
 his ears in her lap, and kissed him without tears. Brave 
 dame Bastwick, worthy to be a Mother of men ! '^ In 
 Burton''s case, who had preached all the time of the pillory- 
 penance, they cut an artery, and the blood came leaping ; his 
 face grew pale, as all faces did ; ' I am not hurt,' he cried. 
 Prynne's ears, which had been sliced before but sewed on 
 again, were now grubbed out beyond surgeon's help ; the 
 executioners rather sawed than cut him ; Prynne said with 
 emphasis : ' Cut me, tear me, burn me ; I fear the fire of 
 ' Hell, but none of you.' Burton when they carried him into 
 a house in King Street, the execution being done, and laid 
 him on a bed, was heard to say, the June temperature too 
 being very high, ' This is too hot to last.' Words which 
 circulated through the London multitude and through all 
 England, with something of a prophetic application. — O, my 
 brothers, my poor maltreated Bastwicks, Burtons, and Prynnes, 
 never so rude of speech, so obsolete of dialect and logic, it is 
 you withal whom I will honour. If no triple-hatted, shovel- 
 hatted or other chimera do now oppress us, if the attempt to 
 do it would raise England, Europe and America as one man 
 and explode such mad chimera into limbo, — whom have we 
 to thank ! 
 
 This was the last and greatest of the High Commission 
 and Star-Chamber performances in the way of slitting and 
 branding. We may give it as the culminating point and 
 apex of a large unrememberable mass of pilloryings, finings, 
 and ignominious severities inflicted on Englishmen for scrupling 
 
 ^ ' But thus too the poor Scotch woman, John Brown the carrier's wife, at that 
 cottage door in Clydesdale, bound up her shot husband's brains, and sitting down 
 in silence, laid it on her lap, bidding her orphans not weep, but wait this stern 
 blessed morning the farther will of God. And when the Claverhouse trooper 
 asked tauntingly, " What think ye of your husband now?" she answered, " I 
 thought always mickle of my husband, and I think more of him now than ever ! " 
 — May it please your Grace, this seems to me better than altars in the East.' 
 From another Paper in this MS., headed ' Prynne and Bastwick,^ 
 
 S 
 
274 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 to become inane China-men, and worship God in the Laud 
 manner by bowings and beckings towards the East, etc. ' Is 
 ' the living God a buzzard idol,"" asks Milton,^ as with eyes 
 flashing empyrean fire : Darest thou worship Him with 
 grimaces, and Drury Lane gesticulations ? I dare not, and 
 must not, and will not ! You shall ! said little Laud, with 
 his shrew voice elevated, and his red face still redder ;^ and so 
 the matter went on, and had grown ' too hot to last."" 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 laud's life by heylin^ 
 
 Laud's Life has been described by Peter Heylin, D.D. ; 
 the man known usually in Presbyterian Polemics by the name 
 of ' Lying Peter.' He is an alert, logical, metaphorical, 
 most swift, ingenious man ; alive every inch of him. Episcopal 
 to the very finger-ends. This present writer has read the 
 old dim folio, every word of it, with faithful industry, with 
 truest wish to understand. A hope did dawn on him that he 
 of all Adam's posterity would be the last that undertook 
 such a trouble : some one of Adam's sons was fated to be the 
 last ; why not he ? It had been too sad a task otherwise. 
 For if the truth must be told, this unfortunate last reader 
 found that properly he did not ' understand ' it in the least, 
 that though the thing lay plain, patent as the turnpike high- 
 way, no man would ever more understand it. For the 
 mournful truth is, that the human brain in this stage of its 
 progress, refuses any longer to concern itself with Peter 
 Heylin. The result was, no increase of knowledge at all. 
 Read him not, O reader of this nineteenth century, let no 
 pedant persuade you to read him. Spectres and air-phantoms 
 
 ^ ' . . . Who thought no better of the living God than of a buzzard idol.' 
 Eikoiioklastcs. 
 
 - Cypriaiiiis Angiicits ; or the. History ot the Life and Death of William 
 Laud, Arclibisliop of Canterbury, by Peter Heylin (London, i66S). 
 
CHAP. XV.] LAUD^S LIFE BY HEY LIN 275 
 
 of altars in the East, half-paces, communion-rails, shovel- 
 hatteries, and mummeries and genuflexions; I for one, () 
 Peter, have forever lost the talent of taking any interest in 
 them, this way or that. As good to say it free out. My 
 sight strains itself looking at them ; discerns them to be 
 verily phantoms, air-woven, brain-v/oven ; disowned by Nature, 
 noxious to health and life, — dreary as an aged cobweb full 
 of dust and dead flies. Peter, my friend, it is enough to sit 
 two centuries as an incubus upon the human soul ; thou 
 wouldst not continue it into the third century ? Thou art 
 requested in terms of civility to disappear. Incubuses have 
 one duty to do : withdraw. Were Peter's Book well burnt 
 and not a copy of it left, this therefore were the balance of 
 accounts : human knowledge where it was, and two weeks of 
 time and misery saved to many men. On these terms, this 
 last reader will not grudge having read. 
 
 In these present years, much to the wonder of the world, 
 considerable phantasmagories of theoretic logic as to Church 
 and State and their relation and subordination and coordina- 
 tion, figure, once again, like ghosts resuscitated from a past 
 century, through the heads of certain English living men. 
 Into such conflict of phantasmagories thou and I, O reader, 
 have not the faintest purpose to enter. By Heaven's blessing 
 we belong not to the seventeenth century ; we are alive here, 
 and have the honour of belonging to the nineteenth ! What 
 concerns us is to discern clearly across mitres, coifs, rochets, 
 tithes and liturgies what is a Church and what is no Church 
 at all. The Church is the messenger from the world of 
 Eternity to men who live in this w^orld of Time. What 
 credible message she delivers in this visible Time-world as to 
 our possessions, relations, prospects, in the unseen world which 
 lies beyond Time ; this for the while is the religion of men. 
 How the true Church will relate itself to the practical State, 
 this is ever the interesting question, the question of questions. 
 How the seeming Church will do it, is, if she be no true one, 
 a most unimportant question. Church and State are Theory 
 
276 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 and Practice. Church is our Theorem of the invisible 
 Eternity, wherein all that we name world in our earthly 
 dialects, all from royal mantles to tinkers' aprons, seems but 
 as an emblematic shadow. Emblematic, I say ; for thou 
 wilt discern that the real Church of men does always trans- 
 figure itself in their temporal business. Of many a man that 
 signs the Church credo zvitJiout either smile or sigh, what were 
 the real Thirty-nine Articles, could we, or even could he 
 himself, poor stupid insincere man, contrive to get them out 
 of him ? One huge Note of InteiTogation : Is there any 
 unseen world ? What is it ? Some say there is ? That 
 were his Thirty-nine Articles — the homily from which we 
 may likewise see dimly drawn, and, if not preached, daily 
 cited. Man's soul is his stomach ; thou son of man, have 
 an eye to victual ; in victual, from pudding up to praise, how 
 rich is this earth ! A Note of Interrogation : Others I have 
 known whose Thirty-nine Articles were one huge zero. — It 
 must be o\vned King Charles's Kingship, and Archbishop 
 Laud's Archbishopship were extremely on a par. 
 
 Church : look, 1800 years ago, in the stable at Bethlehem, an 
 infant laid in a manger! Look, and behold it; thou wilt thereby 
 learn innumerable things. The admiration of all nobleness, 
 divine worship of Godlike nobleness, how universal is it in the 
 history of men. — But mankind, that singular entity mankind, 
 is like the fertilest, fluidest, most wondrous element in which 
 the strangest things crystallise themselves, spread out in the 
 most astonishing growths. Bethlehem cradle was one thing 
 in the year One, but all years since that, — 1800 of them 
 now, have been contributing new growth to it ; — and see 
 there it stands : the Church ! Touching the earth with one 
 small point, rising out therefrom, ever higher, ever broader, 
 hio^h as the heaven itself, broad till it overshadows the whole 
 visible heaven and earth, and no star can be seen, except 
 through it. Whatever the root and seedgrain were, thou 
 does not call all that enormous orowth above ground nothing ? 
 
 o o o 
 
 Surely not ; it is a very wondrous thing, nay, a great in- 
 
CHAP. XV.] LAUD^S LIFE BY HEYLIN 277 
 
 structive and venerable thing. Were its root gone to 
 nothing, sure enough it were still there. Alas, if its root 
 do give way, and it lose hold of the firm earth, what, great 
 as it is, can by any possibility become of it, except even this, 
 that it sAvay itself slowly or fast, nod ever farther from the 
 perpendicular, and sweeping the eternal heavens clear of its 
 old brown foliage, come to the ground with nuich confused 
 crashing and lie there a chaos of fragments, a mass of 
 splinters, boughs and wreckage, out of which the })oor 
 inhabitants must make what they can ! Do not forget your 
 root, therefore, my brothers ! I have comparatively a most 
 small value for your biggest magic-tree when the root of it is 
 gone. 
 
 Certainly among the characters I have fallen in with in 
 history this William Laud has not been the least perplexing. 
 Pyrrhuses, Pizarros that fight, kill and truculently cut their 
 way to promotion in that manner, one can understand ; 
 mighty hunters who live to kill foxes, we have likewise seen ; 
 missioned Cooks, Columbuses who cannot rest till they have 
 discovered continents ; Spanish Soldier Poets writing Arau- 
 cana Epics on leather ; Tychos and Keplers searching out, in 
 weary night watches, in bitter isolation and hardship and 
 neglect of all men, the courses of the stars : but what this 
 man means by cutting oiF men's ears, branding their cheeks 
 S.S., and chaining them to posts under ground, and keeping 
 the whole world in hot water, for the sake of getting his 
 altars set in the East wall ? Good Heavens, suppose the 
 altar were set in the West wall, or in any or no wall, so that 
 the living; hearts of men would be turned towards the God of 
 the altar ! Their ears might then stick on their heads, one 
 would say, and all go well and peaceably. But no ; the 
 Puritans, it appears, are turned but too intently towards the 
 God of the altar ; and that is no excuse for them with 
 William Laud, — nay, as probably begetting an impatience 
 with East-wall altars, and other Episcopal Upholstery, it is 
 
278 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part il. 
 
 part of their offence. They are too religious ; and a 
 Christian souPs Arch-overseer has the strangest care laid upon 
 him, — that of making his people less religious ! The trouble 
 this soul's Overseer has taken in promulgating the Book of 
 Sports^ and such like, with penalties and admonitions, is con- 
 siderable in that direction. If the Divine Powers favour, the 
 Earthly ones have done their part ; and this people on the 
 Sabbath day shall not indulge themselves in praying, but come 
 out to sport and drink ale. And the man reads the same 
 Bible still printed in this country, and is Archiepiscopus, 
 Primate of all England. Stranger Primate of all England I 
 have never in my life fallen in with. And it is a clean- 
 brushed, cultivated man, well-read in the Fathers and Church 
 history ; a rational, at least much- reasoning, extremely logical 
 man. He will prove it for thee by never-ending logic, and 
 the most riveting arguments, if thou hast patience to listen. 
 What he means, what he can possibly mean ? 
 
 There have been many Prccsules of England, Arch-overseers 
 of Canterbury, and some of them through "Wharton's AngUa 
 Sacra, Lives of Saints, and such windows as I could disco\er 
 or attain to, I have looked at with attention, affliction, 
 admiration, generally with amazement : but this Prccsul of 
 England amazes me more than all, afflicts me more than all. 
 Eadmer's Life of Anselm in the rough Norman days, one can 
 still survey with interest ; his old Anselm one can still discern 
 to be a living man, a kind of hero, and reverently salute him 
 as a sublime though simple old Father, through the dim eight 
 centuries that intervene ; but this new Praosul, distant but two 
 centuries, did he ever breathe, and step about on black leather .'' 
 Already poor William Laud is too inconceivable. Not among 
 the heroes of this world ... is he to be ranked. Human 
 scepticism will not go the length of disbelieving that he 
 lived ; and yet alas, in what way ; how could a human figure, 
 
 ' King James's 'Book of Sports' (see ante, jx 13S) was reissued by Charles 
 and Laud in 1633. 
 
CHAP. XV.] LAUD^S LIFE BY HEY LIN 279 
 
 with warm red blood in him consent to live in that manner ? 
 It is, and continues, very difficult to say ! Future ages, if 
 they do not, as is likelier, totally forget ' AV. Cant.,' will range 
 him under the category of Incredibilities, Not again in the 
 dead strata which lie under men's feet, will such a fossil be 
 dug up. The wonderful wonder of wonders, were it not even 
 this, A zealous Chief Priest, at once persecutor and martyr,^ 
 who has no discoverable religion of his own ? 
 
 Or why not leave Laud very much on his own basis ? Let 
 the dead bury their dead. Laud is little to me. Yet as the 
 straggling bramble which you find suspended by many a 
 prickly hook to the noble oak tree, to the fruitful fig, so high 
 and protrusive is the bramble you are obliged to notice it. — 
 The present is like boundless steam or gas ; boundless, filling 
 the Earth and the Solar System : wait a little, it will from 
 gaseousness become liquid, become dried and solid, sink into 
 the quiet thickness of a film. Large epochs lie in one rock- 
 stratum of that deep mass that lies piled up from the centre 
 of Beginning. Under feet of the living lies as soil and as 
 rocky substratum, the ashes of the dead. Organic remains, it 
 is all organic residues, and was once alive and loud as you are. 
 It lies now so quiet, growing mere corn for you, supporting 
 your partridges, game-laws, and much else ! — 
 
 How then shall we name this singular Wil. Cant. ? Name 
 him Arch PrcEsnl of the so-called ' Nag's-head Church."' A 
 Church evidently of the temporary kind, which could exist 
 only in certain centuries, and in all other centuries will be 
 sought for in vain. — In the times of Anselm and the Vatican, 
 it was a life-and-death question, Shall Europe become wholly 
 a Church, its Kings mere administrative deacons therein, the 
 universal Sovereign of it sitting aloft at Rome, crowned in 
 his three hats, a kind of human God ? Or shall the Heathen 
 
 ^ Articles of impeachment against Laud for having attempted to subvert 
 religion and the fundamental laws of the realm, were unanimously voted by the 
 House of Commons in Feb., 1 640-1. He was soon afterwards sent to the 
 Tower, and beheaded on Tower Hill, loth January, 1644-5. 
 
280 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 secular element of it, withal, not be suppressed ; since it too 
 was made of God ? Psalms and Litanies being everywhere 
 chaunted to the utmost perfection, there will remain yet 
 innumerable things to do, — cotton to be spun in Lancashire, 
 for instance, grain to grow in the Lothians, and nmch else ! 
 Everywhere cities are to be built, swamps to be drained, and 
 wastes to be irrigated, savage tribes and places to be drilled 
 and tilled, whole continents to become green, fruitful with 
 life and traffic. The Heathen element, as you call it, ought 
 withal to assert itself, and will. Jesus of Nazareth and the 
 life he led and the death he died, through which as a 
 miraculous window the visions of martyrdom, heroism, di\ine 
 depths of sorrow, of noble labour, and the unspeakable silent 
 expanses of Eternity disclose themselves : lie, the divinost of 
 men, shall be the alone divine ? The vision of Eternity, such 
 vision hid from the outer eye, yet real and the only reality to 
 the eye of the soul, shall it assert itself in man's life, and 
 even alone assert itself ? The vision of Eternity shall be all ; 
 and the vision of Time, except in reference to that, shall be 
 nothing. My enlightened friends of this present supreme 
 age, what shall I say to you ? That essentially it is even so. 
 That he who has no vision of Eternity will never get a hold 
 of Time. Time is so constructed ; that is the fact of the 
 construction of this world ; and no class of mortals who have 
 not, through Nazareth or elsewhere, come to get heartily 
 acquainted with such fact, perpetually familiar with it in all 
 the outs and ins of their existence, ha\'e ever found this 
 universe habitable long. I say they had to quit it soon and 
 march, — as I conjecture, into chaos and that land of ^v■hich 
 Bedlam is the Mount Zion. The Morld turned out not to 
 be made of mere eatables and drinkables, of Newspaper puffs, 
 gilt carriages, flunkies ; no, but of something other than 
 these. . . . 
 
CHAP. XVI.] LAUD^S REFORMATION 281 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 laud's reformation 
 
 Early in the Seventeenth century, Dr. William Laud, this 
 small man of great activity, had formed the wish, which, as 
 dignities accumulated on him and occasion offered, became 
 the purpose, to introduce a Reformation into England (Re- 
 formation is what Peter Heylin names it) — into England and 
 her affairs. England has never since I first heard of it, been 
 without need of a reformation ; every man too is called to 
 introduce his bit of reformation into his corner of this earth 
 while he sojourns in it : that is properly the meaning of his 
 appearance here. Let him by all means introduce his re- 
 formation ; nay he Avill do it, and cannot help doing it ; ugly 
 clay will grow to square- moulded hard-burnt bricks, to per- 
 pendicular, rain-tight houses, in his hands ; untanned skins 
 of cattle to mud-proof elegant boots ; brutal putrescent 
 Poperies to rugged Lutheran Evangelisms ; — according to 
 the trade and opportunities of the man, let him by all means 
 give us what reformation is in him. It is his contribution 
 to the general funded capital of this God's Earth, and shall 
 be welcome to us. 
 
 This small William Laud \\'ith the great activity, is noA\' 
 ever since the year 1633 Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate 
 of all England, favourite chief counsellor of his INIajesty 
 Charles the First of the name, and feels himself in a situation 
 to midertake reforaas. In a position, and surely not without 
 a call ; for he is chief Spiritual Overseer of England, re- 
 sponsible more than another for the eternal welfare of the 
 souls of England. Let him ascertain well what reformation 
 he can make, and in Heaven's name proceed to make it. 
 The Reformation introduced by this small Archbishop 
 Laud brought along with it such a series of remarkable trans- 
 actions and catastrophes, conspicuous to England and to all 
 
282 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 lands, as could not at that time have been anticipated by 
 him. For in truth, if we consider it now with these modem 
 eyes of ours, it claims to rank among the most singular 
 reformations ever introduced into human affairs by any son 
 of Adam ; whereby singular results could not fail to follow 
 from it. 
 
 Laud as by office and duty bound, turns naturally his first 
 attention to the spiritual state of England, — the spiritual is 
 clearly enough the parent of the practical in every phasis of 
 it, the spiritual given, all is given. Well, wherein is the soul 
 of England sick ? What is wrong in the spiritual state of 
 England ? Much every way. Much, — the origin and con- 
 dition of which would lead us into boundless developments. — 
 The Spiritual is wrong, the Temporal is wrong ; much has 
 gone wrong ; but shall if it please Heaven be rectified. 
 
 The candid human intellect if it study intensely for five 
 years under constant danger of locked-jaw, will still in this 
 nineteenth century detect a busy inquisitive original faculty 
 in William Laud, but a faculty imprisoned deep as the 
 world"'s centre in such element of world-wide obsolete delu- 
 sions as renders it, when never so well detected, of no use to 
 us except for scientific purposes. A fly, once so busy, im- 
 bedded in amber, which by much manipulating becomes 
 translucent. The fly once so busy is now quite quiet, dead 
 totally ; the amber is — one knows not what. 
 
 A busy logical faculty, operating entirely on chimerical 
 element of obsolete delusions, a vehement shrill-voiced char- 
 acter, confident in its own rectitude as the narrowest character 
 may the soonest be. A man not without aft'ections, though 
 bred as a College Monk, with little room to develoji them ; 
 of shrill tremulous partly feminine nature, capable of spasms, 
 of most hysterical obstinacy, as female natures are. Prone to 
 attach itself, if not from love, at least from the need of help, 
 a most attaching creeper-})lant, something of the bramble 
 species in it. The bramble will prick you to the bone, while 
 the oak to your handling is sleek ; the bramble by its \ery 
 
CHAP. XVI.] LAUD^S REFORMATION 283 
 
 prickers and climbing will train itself aloft and be found at 
 the tops of the highest trees : you shall judge thereby if it 
 was not a strong shrub that bramble ! Dr. William Laud has 
 pricked a man or two that handled him, and he has cknig 
 withal to this and the other rising forest tree, to Bishop 
 Williams and King James, to the Duke of Buckingham, to 
 King Charles ; and his black berries such as they are now 
 cluster the forest, like the noblest fruit that is to be found 
 there. A conspicuous bramble, judged by some to be a shrub 
 of proud strength. O Charles Rex ! the royal Cedar that has 
 not the art and health to eject brambles from it, but carries 
 brambles up along with it, as if prickers were strength and 
 black berries a noble fruit — such royal Cedar is in no good 
 way. The first proof of a king or a man is the question, 
 What men does he esteem ; the man I choose will be the 
 counterpart and complement of my own self ; what I loved in 
 myself as a possession, and doubly loved as a wish and ideal 
 which I longed to possess, but could not : the embodiment of 
 this will be my loved one. Kings and Cedars that carry up 
 brambles along with them are themselves bramblish. 
 
 In this way thinks Dr. William Laud (Wil. Cant., as he is 
 now better called ^) may England be reformed. All England 
 ranked up into drill order ; bowing towards the East, becking, 
 gesticulating, with W. Cant, for fugleman : in this way the 
 drill exercise were perfect, and we were a happy people. In- 
 fatuated W. Cant. Wilt thou make the English into a 
 nation of Chinese Mandarins, adequate merely to bow towards 
 the East, and pay First Fruits ? The respectable English 
 Nation, always alive hitherto, shall now wither itself into dead 
 dry lath and wire, a nation of lath clothes-screens, and go 
 jerking, sprawling and gesticulating as thou fuglest ! There 
 will then be the wonderfullest uniformity ; at the turning of 
 thy rotatory calabash, they shall all go like the keys and stops 
 in one vast barrel organ ; and a thine; that can be called music 
 rise to Heaven. Thou infatuated mortal, dost thou think 
 •^ See ante, p. 253 n. 
 
284 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 man's soul is a Dutch toy made of four sticks to be twitched 
 hither and thither ? Darest thou, unspeakable clothes-screen, 
 approach the Unnameable, Fountain of Splendour and of 
 Terror, with such fugle movements ? Dost thou think the 
 living God is a buzzard Idol, whom it is safe to mimic and 
 gesture with, and worship by beckings towards the East ? 
 Thou — a pale grey faded ghost in fact, fast vanishing from 
 us into eternal dusk and death, forever forgotten by men, and 
 shalt from me have no hard words. 
 
 Dr. Laud's Reformation, it must at the same time be 
 admitted, is one of the most surprising ever presented to the 
 mind of man. To Dr. Laud's mind it had presented itself, 
 that is a fact, of which, incredible as it seems. History bears 
 the unquestionablest testimony. How doubt it .'' Prynne's 
 ears are off, twice slit publicly away, the second time down to 
 the very stumps. Prynne can have no doubt of it. Dr. 
 
 Leighton's large unhappy nose is slit, Mr. ^ walks in 
 
 the Gatehouse with a collar round his neck. Some hundred 
 processes in Star-chamber, High Commission Court and else- 
 where, and most Parishes in England set to jangling, law- 
 suiting, and recriminating : these do bear witness that to Dr. 
 Laud's mind it was not sport but stern earnest. To this fact 
 we must anchor ourselves if we would fish for some shadow of 
 meaning in the existence of Dr. W. Laud : That he had a 
 Reformation in view and was willing to slit men's noses, slice 
 off men's ears, and front the jangle and contradiction of all 
 England for the sake of the same. 
 
 To Dr. Laud, much pondering the matter from his early 
 years, it has grown clearer and clearer that the Spiritual con- 
 dition of England is wrong, that hence nothing else can be 
 right. The Spiritual condition is wrong ; in other words, the 
 Church Devotion has fallen into a most imperfect condition, 
 and is falling ever lower. The minds of men not turned 
 towards God their Maker ? Why, at least their bodies are 
 not turned towards the East when they partake of the elements 
 
 1 Name omitted in the MS. 
 
CHAr. XVI.] LAUD'S REFORMATION 285 
 
 on Sunday. Certain persons called of the Church of England 
 preach in imperfect Surplices, linen cloaks, or in no Surplice 
 or linen cloak at all. P. P. Clerk of this Parish has in too 
 many instances altogether neglected to iron the Surplice and 
 lay it in lavender. Priests are not select in their tailoring as 
 they ought to be, nor obedient to the rubric. How are the 
 Connnunion elements desecrated : the bread cut with a knife 
 not solemnly set apart, knife which perhaps in the next instant 
 will have to cut mutton or spread butter. Good Heavens ! 
 It is horrible. And the Chancel of Churches is a place in 
 scandalous neglect : have I not seen dogs, stray dogs, in 
 sermon time rambling in the sacred precinct as if God 
 Almighty were not particularly There any more than He is 
 Here ! A^^lat are we to think ? 
 
 For the truth must be confessed, there is a generation of 
 men, affecting to strive after personal communion with God, 
 who undervalue all those things, nay, despise them. Puritans ; 
 a disobedient generation, of sour, gloomy aspect, irreverent of 
 the tailoring of priests, — to whom the highest lustre of it, 
 even the crown itself if on an addle-head, is little other than 
 a miserable piece of gilt tin ! O Dr. Laud, it is im- 
 possible for posterity anchored never so stedfastly to that 
 historical fact of thine, and fishing never so desperately for 
 some meaning in thee, to comprehend a Dr. William of the 
 seventeenth century even from afar. Thou art and remainest a 
 ghost to us, my thrice reverend friend, a personage chimerical, 
 inconceivable, and as it were impossible. No posterity never 
 so distant, will ever again comprehend thy souFs travail in 
 this world, — nor perhaps in any other. Thou wert a fact, 
 alas, a most fatal tragic fact, and now thou art become an 
 historical cobweb, and our lazy imaginations pronounce thee 
 impossible. — Charity will perhaps demand that one be brief 
 with thee. 
 
 By Heaven's blessing Dr. Laud will reform this. ' All 
 ' who want canonical cloaks, commonly called priest's cloaks, 
 ' shall provide themselves before Allhallowtide next, on pain 
 
286 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 ' of Ecclesiastical censure."' ^ All ye that labor and are heavy- 
 laden come unto me and I will — order you to buy Canonical 
 cloaks. 
 
 There will then be the wonderfullest uniformity ! From 
 the East to the West the united English people, ducking, 
 becking," going through their devotional drill exercise, under 
 their respective drill-serjeants, one great Genei-al at Lambeth 
 in the centre of them, a sight which cannot but be gratifying 
 to Heaven. 
 
 In fact Dr. Laud's ideas of religion are peculiar. AVhatso- 
 ever people ranks itself in line and goes through the specified 
 parade-movements, has a religion ; whatsoever people does 
 not, has none. 
 
 . . . The reader of our time will perhaps gain a glimpse 
 into W. Laud if he take this discernible fact along with him, 
 That Laud meant by worshipping, not the turning of one 
 man's heart towards God, or the turning of many or of all 
 men's hearts so, but first and foremost a turning of faces 
 towards the altar at the East, done simultaneously by many 
 men, with a certain decorous symmetry, of the military sort. 
 This, thought his Grace, will be the method, if method there 
 is, of getting all hearts turned towards God, that they turn 
 first in a symmetrical drill-serjeant way towards God's altar 
 built into the Eastern wall. Sharp serjeantry and drilling- 
 must civilise these awkward squadrons into symmetry, simul- 
 taneity. ' Worship is a social act.' ' When two or three 
 ' are gathered together.' In all which is there not sometliing 
 of truth : simultaneous worship is desirable, — if it can be 
 had. Lay the dim embers together, they will glow into white 
 fire. And yet, may it please your Grace, I have known 
 worship transacted well by solitary men too. Nay, the best 
 worship ever heard of: Elijah the Tishbite"s for example, 
 
 ^ 'A rescript iilh August 1634; addressed by Sir N. Brent, Laud's man, to 
 the diocese of Lincoln. Kennet, iii. 73.' T. C. 's Note. 
 
 ^ Becking (for bowing) is a word frequently used by the i'liritan writers of the 
 17th century. 
 
CHAr. XVI.] LAUD^S REFORMATION 287 
 
 when the ravens fed him ; antl His Avho was carried of" the 
 Spirit to be tempted forty days in the wilderness, — far from 
 all human episcopal help and drill, alone with God and His 
 own sore struggling nigh sinking soul. Consider it, your 
 Grace, to have the heart of a man, by what means soever, so 
 kindled from Heaven that its earthly dross be consumed, is 
 the meaning of all worship. The heart of one man so kindled 
 is more venerable to me than all the St. Peter's High Masses, 
 than all the most perfect devotional drill serjeantry of Lam- 
 beth or elsewhere. Your Grace forgets. If the heart have 
 not some kindling in it, the great want will be fire to kindle 
 it. The embers being not dim, but black, dead, what steads 
 it on what grate you gather them .'' They are dead, black ; 
 all grates, all bellows and bellows-blowers are vain, and the 
 proffer of them in such circumstances a sorrowful mockery to 
 me. In fine will your Grace please to inform me where 
 Jonah, when sunk in the whale's belly, found his prayer-book 'i 
 
 Dr. Laud was in Scotland in 1617, and again in 1633; 
 but in Scotland he could find no religion. Their religion, he 
 says, I could see none they had ! Their churches are little 
 better than barns or dove-cotes ; in their worship no fixed 
 order, all left to option. What religion had they .? If they 
 had a religion where or what was it '^ — Really, your Grace, it 
 might be hard to say. But could not you perhaps give them 
 one, the unfortunates "^ The Dr. has his own thoughts that 
 way ; time will try. 
 
 How much has grown indifferent to us in all that, valueless 
 as the dust of worn-out clothes. The laystall is the place for 
 it, let no man reprint it again, present it to be read again, 
 let it lie in the laystall to be mingled gradually as freshening 
 manure upon the general soil of human things. There are 
 dead shell-fish which have pearls in them ; yes — and there are 
 others which have no pearls, but mere hydro-carburetted gases 
 to fatten the soil as manure. Indifferent, — unspeakably in- 
 
288 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part il. 
 
 different to me, is the controversy with Fisher the Jesuit, 
 masterly as it was. What have I to do with Fisher the 
 Jesuit ? He is indifferent to me, as the temple of Upsala ; 
 his arguments as the seventy horses' heads stuck up there, 
 gone all to nothingness now. O Fisher the Jesuit, once for 
 all I do not believe thee ; not a jot of fact has turned out 
 for me in all that hypothesis of thine : it is not true, Fisher ; 
 begone, and let me have done with it and thee. Can I dwell 
 forever in the old spectral night with its vampires and foolish 
 hobgoblins, because there are shovel hats there ? With a 
 sacred joy I hail the eastern morning — anthem once again of 
 God's eternal daylight, and request and even command all 
 Fishers with their trumperies to get behind me. — Something- 
 eternal in Puritanism, nothing but temporary in Laud. One 
 grows yet in part ; the other has gone wholly to the laystall, 
 nothing but an inheritance in Fuseyism to pick up again, and 
 plant it again. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE COLCHESTER PROPHETS 
 [lG38-il] 
 
 What Hampden, Cromwell, and other educated men may be 
 thinking, I know not ; but what a cloud of bodeful meditation, 
 earnest as death, is spread over England in these dark days, 
 many symptoms teach us to know. The melancholic English 
 character, in such a turbid twilight of things, intensely gazing 
 on its Bible as the one sure transcript of God's purposes and 
 ways with man, comes to very strange conclusions. For it is a 
 melancholic character of endless seriousness, carrying gravity 
 even into its cockfighting, and by these Reformation contro- 
 versies has stirred up the lowest lees of it, made it very serious 
 indeed. 
 
 For example, in Colchester Town in Essex County, on its 
 green height, girt by the kind embrace of the river Colne ; 
 assiduous in a certain lane of that citv, I have for some time 
 
CHAP. XVII.] THE COLCHESTER PROPHETS 289 
 
 had my eye upon a weaver, nay, upon two weavers. Richard 
 Farnhain, that is the chief one ; let us in these days, while 
 the Scotch Assembly is sitting, cast a glance into Colchester ; 
 and look, for by miracle we can still do so, we with our 
 modern eyes, into the dingy shop and ancient earnest existence 
 of Richard Farnham. Methinks his establishment is some- 
 what dingy, redolent of suds, weaver's batter and Gallipoli oil, 
 — for Richard, I conceive, works Colchester serges, hanks and 
 sporls, which with their reels and reel-bobbins are scattered 
 confusedly around. And Richard with sallow, unshaven face, 
 unkempt hair or greasy nightcap, plies the shuttle with a 
 multitudinous, monotonous jangle adding thread to thread. 
 O Richard, Richard, and it is thou in very deed, no dream of 
 any Fabulisfs or Novelist"'s brain ; but a production of the 
 Universe's brain, a very fact, there jangling its daily yards of 
 serge cloth in a certain lane of Colchester in the year 1638 ? 
 
 Many persons I find are in the habit of visiting Richard, 
 to ask most serious questions of him, for his fame as a knower 
 of Scriptures has spread out of his lane into the main streets, 
 nay, into adjoining parishes. The wrestlings of Richard have 
 been deep as those of a Luther or an Augustine ; down to the 
 depths of being has this poor soul been forced to dive and 
 bring up tidings. This and the other worn soul, ready to 
 perish, has he comforted, given guidance to, — for he knows 
 the pathways, and the impassables ; he has been there, he. 
 To many has Richard Farnham been a comfort, but to 
 none so much as to a brother weaver, John Bull, whom he 
 often consorts with, whom in these days he has raised from 
 darkness into the most surprising light of wisdom or delirium, 
 — or of both in one ; or quasi-light, one part of Heaven, 
 nine parts of Bedlam. Richard Farnham and John Bull, 
 the two individuals weaving serge two centuries ago in the 
 Town of Colchester, will deserve a moment's notice from us. 
 
 Many persons visit Richard ; question him as men do an 
 oracle ; but he answers not alike to all. Is your questioning 
 a mere profane curiosity, Richard swiftly by a counter ques- 
 
290| HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 tion or two detects you ; takes up his shuttle again, and 
 dumb, with a shake of the head, recommences his weaving. 
 On the other hand, do your answers please, and seem to 
 indicate to Richard that you have an awakened soul capable 
 to apprehend divine truth, the shuttle pauses ; there come 
 hints, come utterances, frequent words exciting meditation 
 enough, compelling you to new visits and ever new. Of his 
 ideas about the Holy Ghost, perseverance and the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost, I say little. ' Have you not read Revela- 
 ' tions 11th and 12th? Few read with understanding. Woe 
 ' to the land that is sunk in idolatries, in falsities, in whore- 
 ' doms with the Scarlet woman. Darkness rests over it. 
 ' Destruction draws nigh to it. And yet, observe, are there 
 ' not Two Witnesses spoken of ? Have you not read Hosea ? 
 ' How the grim Hebrew soul darkened down almost to despair 
 ' and death by the wickedness of a world following falsities 
 ' and blasphemous fatuities of speech and act, certain of the 
 ' wrath of the Most High, blazes by fits into supernal glare of 
 ' brilliancy, sees shapes, prefigurements, admonitory messengers, 
 ' pillars of fire ? The darker your gloom of earnestness, the 
 ' more supernal your illumination, — through the portals of 
 ' Death shall issue Angels whose face is as the Sun. Few read 
 ' with understanding."* We oftenest cannot read at all in these 
 wretched dilettante days. Richard has read ; in Richard''s 
 soul there are sorrows like that of Hosea, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, 
 as deep as any man''s ; no terriblest glare in their rapt 
 phantasy but awakens due glare and shadow in the phantasy 
 of Richard, — a soul of man is like the souls of all other 
 men ; and everywhere in Nature deep calls unto deep. The 
 wickedness of England, the billet-moneys, the martial laws, 
 injustices in high places, the backslidings, unbeliefs, perver- 
 sities, the rejected Gospel, the vain nunnmery of Altars in 
 the East and four surplices at Allhallowtide, have sunk down 
 on Richard ; made him dark as a very Hebrew, kindling here 
 and there with supernal glare of brightness intolerable to the 
 Colchester eye. — O reader, thou with the utmost stretcii and 
 
CHAP. XVII.] THE COLCHESTER PROPHETS 291 
 
 dead-lift endeavour of all thy artistic faculties (bless the 
 mark !), and imaginative faculties, and all the half-dead 
 dilettante faculties thou hast, wilt never know what a splen- 
 dour of highest Heaven mixed with the gloom of lowest 
 Bedlam is in the soul of that poor weaver. But let us not 
 be profane, let the divine temple of a human soul, even a 
 poor Colchester weaver''s, be still a kind of temple. Richard 
 has no mind to Avrite Epics, which is apt to be a low trade 
 compared with acting them ; he has no artistic faculty but 
 that of making serges. He sits there, asking of men, 
 whether they do not know the Two Witnesses, the Two Olive 
 Branches, etc., whether these death-deeps of the Hebrew soul 
 call not with something of a divine voice to all English souls. 
 
 He that lives in this dead generation when Reform means 
 
 more victual to eat with less work to do, and all soul of man 
 is, as near perhaps as can be, sunk into a stomach of man ; 
 he that lives in this generation, and is not only with it but 
 of it, will never know, nor in the remotest manner conceive, 
 what passed in England in that living and heroic one. ^^^^at 
 brotherhood have we with inspired Hebrews .'' To catch the 
 attitude of them for artistic purposes in Drury Lane and 
 elsewhere. Like some brutish Roman populace holding u]) 
 their thumbs when the gladiator died, and saying, ' How well 
 ' he does it ! ' A miserable rabble ; doomed either to new 
 veracity of conduct or to swift destruction. Do we not sit 
 round the blaze of old Heroisms, as apes do round a fire in 
 the wood ; chattering, ' Aha, it is warm and good ! ' — and 
 have not the gift or possibility, any ape of them, to add a 
 new stick to the fire, but sit till it has all gone out, and 
 the very ashes are cold, and they chatter to themselves, 
 ' Hoohoo, how warm it xcas ! ' 
 
 But as for this poor Richard Farnham, I find that for long 
 years the mystery has been deepening in him ; which on 
 repeated visits, if you are found worthy, Richard cautiously 
 discloses, to the astonishment of all hearers. The Two 
 Witnesses, it would clearly appear, are these two Colchester 
 
292 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 weavers, Richard Farnham and John Bull ! Even they. 
 These are the two Anointed ones, — purified in great suffer- 
 ing ; they are also called Olive trees, and Candlesticks, in 
 figurative language. Bull and Richard Farnham, these are 
 the two. They prophesy on earth very wondrous things, out 
 of their mouth proceeds fire ; for a certain length of time 
 they can turn the waters into blood ; can smite the earth 
 with what plagues they will, and have power, for one thing, to 
 shut the heavens that it rain not for 1260 days. What will 
 become of the ao-riculture in Essex ? Savest thou, O Richard ! 
 The obscure public listens with upturned eyes. 
 
 Yes, continues Richard ; and it is withal a fearful pre- 
 eminency, not to be courted by the natural man. For when 
 they have finished their testimony in the world, this Bull and 
 Farnham, the Beast that ascends out of the Bottomless Pit 
 is to kill them outright, and they are to lie dead in Jeru- 
 salem for three days and a half: and the nations will not 
 suffer their dead bodies to be buried. If there is truth in 
 Scripture, says Richard, these things I think must be so. 
 But they are ' things of a high nature.' For after three days 
 and a half, the spirit of life is to return to Bull and Farnham, 
 and, to the amazement of all their enemies, they are to stand 
 on their feet there in Jerusalem again, and Farnham is to be 
 king on David's throne and Bull priest in Aaron's seat ; and 
 they are to reign forever. — In my experience of prophecy I 
 have heard nothing stranger. And persons of good gifts, 
 very knowing in the Scriptures, give credit to Richard, — for 
 there looks out of his sallow visage and glaring eyes a belief 
 which you cannot disbelieve. Neither is he mad ; he sits 
 there composedly weaving serge at sevenpence a day, waits 
 patiently, not in haste to encounter these glories and these 
 terrors till the time come. O Richard, Richard, — in what 
 ambient element of Boeotian fog and Egyptian murk and 
 stupidity unconquerable by the gods does poor human nature 
 walk abroad in this world ! 
 
 A questionable incident however here emerges in Richard's 
 
CHAP. XVII.] THE COLCHESTER PROPHETS 293 
 
 history ; an incident at which the profane world cannot fail 
 to cavil ; by which it is like the catastrophe will be precipit- 
 ated. Richai'd, a prophetic bachelor hitherto, is not made of 
 brass ; no, and all fires, it is said, are of kin to one another. 
 One of Richard's chief disciples, the knowingest in the Scrip- 
 tures of them all, is of the female sex, — her husband at sea ; 
 one Haddenton, gone far enough, ' to the Indies,' or I know 
 not where. Richard, driven by strange impulses prophetic 
 and other, is whirled in the strangest chaos, clutches with 
 avidity at this fact, that he ought to ' marry a wife of whore- 
 ' doms,' as the prophet Hosea did ? ^ Very probable. He 
 marries Mrs. Haddenton, her husband far off in the Indies ; 
 this is the wife wanted : she, a religious professor, knowing in 
 the Scriptures, of good life and gifts, is contented to be that 
 same peculiar kind of wife for Richard, whom I think she 
 probably loves and indeed worships. Greater scandal has 
 not happened in my time. But it lies in nature. Who 
 could refuse a celestial for a husband, even though he were a 
 weaver of serge ? As we are now approaching the Doctors 
 C'ommons and the Abyss of everlasting Night, and hear in 
 the distance Bedlam and the grinding of the Treadmill, we 
 may as well quit Richard for the present "^ One little 
 prophetic rushlight shedding a faint ray over many things. 
 An England reading its Bible as Richard Farnham did, how 
 can such an England be obedient to the fugle motions of a 
 W. Laud ? 
 
 Farnham and Bull have ceased to weave in Colchester, we 
 know not by what stages, whether voluntarily sallying forth 
 to prophesy, or compulsorily haled forth by Sheriffs officers 
 to go to judgment ; but their shuttles have ceased to vibrate, 
 the multitudinous jangle of their serge -looms is heard no 
 more. Compulsory Sheriff's officers, I believe, have haled 
 them both to prison. Haddenton has returned from sea, has 
 claimed his wife : there are charges of Bigamy, charges of 
 Blasphemy ; in brief, Farnham is in New Bridewell Prison, 
 ^ See Hosea i. 2. 
 
294 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Bull in Old Bridewell in the City of London. ' Colchester 
 Jack "* (Haddenton), claimed legally to have his wife again ; 
 legally had her restored to him after solemn trial. She is 
 not to be hanged for Bigamy, being to appearance a good, 
 deluded woman. She is reprieved, given back to Haddenton ; 
 — and there ensued passages between them in the New Bride- 
 well Prison which a refined history had rather not report. 
 For she was a wife of aberrations, appointed so to be. Nor, 
 in brief, can the law ultimately avail to restore to Jack of 
 Colchester his wife of aberrations ; these three, Richard 
 Famham, the Prophet Hosea, and her own female will, all 
 conspiring to the contrary. So Jack having set sail again 
 for the Indies, she is Richard's once more ; for it was written 
 in Hosea, she should ' abide for him many days,'^ — as in the 
 New Bridewell Prison, under the thraldom of Haddenton and 
 the SherifTs officers, she has now done. A scandal to religion, 
 much to be deplored ! But as I said the Prophets themselves 
 are in prison, their prophecies and bigamies having given 
 offence ; and safe under lock and key, let them get to 
 Jerusalem as they can. 
 
 And now in these sad Avinter days, they have fallen sick, as 
 many do of a grievous sickness which is killing many, and the 
 humane officials permit them to go out occasionally, and at 
 the house of Mr. Custin, Rosemary Lane, I have often seen 
 them interpreting the Scriptures to one another. With 
 Custin and Mrs. Custin and other believers, especially a 
 Mrs. Ticknall, a carpenter's wife in Wapping, a creditable 
 woman skilled in spiritual things. — O reader, thou canst not 
 laugh at this thing, thou art ready to weep at it, — under 
 such nightmare obstructions struggles the agonised soul of 
 man, climbing the slippery precipices, stumbling at every step, 
 if haply he may reach the sacred mountain-tops, and bathe in 
 the everlasting dawn. — Custin dies, the women weeping over 
 him, bidding him keep the faith. In this dim house in 
 Rosemary Lane January 8th, 1641-2, lies another ready to 
 die, lie two others, the Prophets themselves. Farnhanrs hour 
 
CHAP. XVII.] THE COLCHESTER PROPHETS 295 
 
 is first ; Bull, from an adjoining truckle-bed, calls on him to 
 hold fast, to trample the Devil and his terrors under foot, 
 and ford steadily the devouring death-stream with his eye on 
 the other shore. Faniham is dead, in ten days more Bull 
 also dies and is buried, steadfast to the last. And now there 
 remains but Mrs. Custin, Mrs. Ticknall from Wapping, and 
 the wife of aberrations, with a future as obscure as three good 
 women ever had. 
 
 For they consider that the Two Prophets do indeed, as the 
 Sciiptures must be fulfilled, seem to lie dead, having been 
 three days in the belly of the earth ; but that according to 
 other Scriptures they are not dead but living, and gone on a 
 far voyage, far beyond Haddenton of Colchester, — gone in 
 vessels of bulmshes to convert the Ten Tribes, wherever they 
 may be. Beyond the gates of ^Ethiopia and the chambers of 
 the morning ! They are to come back from the rising of the 
 sun, these Two Prophets, and then, mark it ye proud ones of 
 this world, they shall tread on Princes as mortar, as the 
 potter treads clay having perfect command of it. What then 
 will become of King Charles, Mr. Hyde,, and Sir John 
 Culpepper ? And Archbishop Pashur ? ^ Pashur girt-with- 
 trembling, and his surplice, will have a poor outlook ! If 
 there be truth in Scripture, say these three women, this is 
 true. Did an intelligent Christian ever hear the like ? I 
 grieve to add that these are understanding women, women of 
 fine parts for knowledge in the Scripture, of seemingly devout 
 ways, even the wife of aberrations has the air of a pious 
 person who has obeyed prophecies merely. But words and 
 arguments are vain ; vain even that you offer to dig into the 
 graves of these Prophets and show their very bodies still there, 
 not gone to the gates of ^Ethiopia in vessels of bulrushes ; 
 but there : ' Of course they will seem to be there,' the women 
 answer ; ' to your carnal unbelieving eyes they will be there ; 
 
 ^ Pashur, i.e. Laud. ' Then said Jeremiah unto him, the Lord hath not 
 called thy name Pashur, but Magor-missabib. ' Jeremiah xx. 3. Magor- 
 missabib = Girt-with-trembling ; literally ' Fear-round-about.' 
 
296 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 ' it is the penalty of your unbelief. This wicked and adulterous 
 ' generation seeketh a sign, — to them no sign will be given ; 
 ' to such as them how can or could any sign be given : leave 
 ' us alone here, ye profane ! ' Adieu, my ancient sistei's ; adieu 
 then, since it must be so : I part from you with thoughts for 
 which the English and other modem languages have at 
 present no word. May ye reach the sacred mountain -tops 
 whither we too and all that tend any whither are painfully 
 tending and climbing. — O Heavens, ye much endeavouring, 
 much enduring, ye shall reach them to bathe a sick soiled 
 existence, and wash it clean from all its darkness ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 LOOM OF TIME 
 
 (occupation of the ENGLISH GENTRY) 
 
 How do the English gentry employ themselves in this age ? 
 They ride abroad with hawks and hounds, speculate on the 
 flying of their hawks, on their hounds ; pay visits with high 
 ceremony ; at the very least they can fight cocks. They read 
 a good deal, especially in divinity, Sidney's Arcadia, and 
 high-stilting Romances, if not Shaks})eare''s glowing Histories, 
 yet Spenser's frosty Allegory, with Davila's Civil Wai^s [of 
 France],^ Holinshed and the great historical compositions, not 
 to speak of Acts of Parliament, Spelman, etc.. up to 
 Ployden and Fortescue De Laudibus [Leffum AngTiw]. Not 
 once to mention what is the staple article of all serious 
 men, immensities of Sermons, Bishops"' Charges, Chilling- 
 
 1 Henri-Catherin Davila, son of Antoine Davila, a member of an extensive 
 Spanish family. Antoine came into France in 1572, and was befriended by 
 Henri III. and Catherine de Medicis. In acknowledgment of their kindness he 
 called his second son Henri-Catherin Davila. Henri-Catherin was born near 
 Padua in 1576. His great work, T/ie Civil Wars of France, was first published 
 at Venice, 1630, in 15 volumes 4°. It was translated from Italian into French, 
 and published at Paris in 1642 ; and an English translation of a large part of it 
 appeared at London in 1647. Biographic Uitivcrsellc. 
 
CHAP. xviiL] LOOM OF TIME 297 
 
 worth's Relignm of Protestants, a safe Way to Salvation. 
 Especially Divinity : frightful Dutch Divinity of Vorstius, 
 Anti-Vorstius, the Synod of Dort, Five Points, and one 
 knows not what or whose ; for it was matter of eternal 
 moment in those days. King James was heard to thank 
 God that the Prince could manage a dispute in Theology 
 with the learnedest clerk of them, so thoroughly grounded 
 was he. Cockfighting, gambling, duelling, loving and hating ; 
 — the daily household epochs, three hungers and three satis - 
 fyings daily : that, at all times, is a resource for human 
 nature. Alas, at bottom, what would become of human 
 nature without that ? Our mean wants and the necessity 
 of satisfying them : they are as ballast for the soul of man, — 
 the soul of man without these would soar and sail away very 
 soon into the inane. Acorns fall, oak trees are felled ; men 
 bake fresh bricks, hew ashlar stone ; and huts and manor- 
 houses, bright in their first colours, dot the green face of the 
 world. The Tron Kirk of Edinburgh is getting built since 
 his Majesty Avas there, is shooting out its Avhite steeple 
 higher and higher into the sky this very year.^ 
 
 It is the enormous Tissue of Existence never yet broken, 
 whereof we, too, are threads ; which is working itself then as 
 now, with low-voiced, jarring tumult, wide as our dwelling- 
 place, the Universe, through that unimaginable and yet 
 indubitable, miraculous, enormous Loom of Time. The Loom 
 of Time, — it is no flourish of speech, strange to say, it is 
 a fact very imperfectly so spoken. Wide also as the LTniverse 
 is this Loom, higher than the Stars, deeper than the Abysses. 
 O, cultivated reader, hast thou ever contemplated in thy soul 
 the thing called Time, and yet say est thou the age of Miracles 
 has ceased ? " 
 
 1 The building of the Tron Kirk was begun about 1637, but, for want of 
 money, proceeded so slowly that the kirk was not ready for occupation till 1647, 
 and was not completed till 1663. — See R. H. Stevenson's Chronicles of 
 Edinburgh, p. 293. 
 
 - Cf. Sartor Resartus, Book iii. cap. viii. 
 
298 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 PATIENCE AND HOPE 
 
 [i(;37] 
 
 The Shipmoney has been solemnly argued, and Hanipden"'s 
 cause is lost.^ By monopolies, forced loans, fiscal extortions, 
 we are punished in our purse ; by scourgings, slit noses, 
 cutting off of ears, in our persons and consciences : what is 
 an Englishman coming to ? Would we fly to New England 
 for shelter in the wildernesses beyond the ocean, even this is 
 not permitted us : Saybrook is building itself in Connecticut ; 
 but the Lords Saye and Brook shall not be permitted to go 
 thither. Eight ships lie embargoed in the Thames ; the 
 Puritan Emigrants forbidden to depart ; ye shall remain 
 here, ye Puritan insubordinates ; we want your ears on our 
 pillories here. — And the dull people endures it all ; this 
 people sunk under jnumpsirrms and ,mmpsimus in dreary 
 enchantment seems incapable to help itself, seems ready to 
 endure all things. Do not God's Gospel ministers lie dark 
 
 in dungeons ; Mr.^ with a collar round his neck 't 
 
 God's Gospel silenced and blasphemously trodden down at 
 altars in the East, hateful chimeras in their copes and tippets 
 are becking and gesticulating as if the living God were a 
 mimetic nmnnnery and conventionality and man were an 
 Imitation and Hearsay and had no soul in him but an ape's. 
 And the people resist not ; since they held down the Speaker, 
 nothing em})hatic has been done by them. Fiery Eliot lies 
 dead and cold, Strode reads his Bible, rugged Pym his Bible 
 and briefs, etc., etc. We shall grow all, I think, into a 
 Nation of mimes and Chinese automatons ; living quietly with 
 a witness, — standing (piietly as the wooden Chinese tumblei>> 
 
 ^ See Le/fcrs and Speeches, i. 98. 
 
 - Name omitted in the ms. Sec ante, p. 284. 
 
CHAP. XIX.] PATIENCE AND HOPE 299 
 
 with lead in the bottom of them do, and all beck and bow- 
 when the little red-faced Grace of Lambeth pulls the check 
 string. No, Mr. Oliver ; speak not so. This people's 
 patience is among its noblest qualities, in respect for the 
 constable's baton it is easy to be deficient, not easy to exceed. 
 Patience, patience, till you can no more. Time with its 
 births and deaths is rolling on. Help in this universe comes 
 often one knows not whence ; this universe, to the just man, 
 is in all fibres of it, feracious of help. The just man's cause 
 is the uni^■erse"'s own cause ; what the universe always through 
 all its entanglements and supei-ficial perplexities means, has 
 meant, and will mean : ever amid all the thousandfold eddies 
 and back currents which bewilder eye and soul, this is the 
 grand interior tide-stream and world -deep tendency which 
 must and will succeed. — Look up to the highest as thou dost 
 and study to be of good cheer. ' I to the Hills will lift mine 
 * eyes, from whence doth come mine aid.' 
 
 To the Hills indeed ; — and look what is this that is befall- 
 ing in the remote North Country in these days ? History 
 M'ill hasten thither. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 ' JENNY GEDDES ' 
 
 [1637] 
 
 Puritanism throughout the English lands lies cinished 
 down, driven into silence, and it is thought into annihilation. 
 Parishes of respectability have their altars at the East, their 
 Four Surplices at Allhallowtide, and hope they have embraced 
 Dr. Laud's Reformation, and terminated Dr. Luther's. So 
 far as officiality can go, the disobedient spirit of Puritanism 
 is abolished. 
 
 Nevertheless there are things that cannot be annihilated, 
 let respectable officiality do its best and worst. Whatsoever 
 
300 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 holds of the Eternal in man, addressing itself to the eternal 
 sense of justice, conscience, implanted in us by the Maker, it 
 is born anew with every new man into this world, and can 
 never be suppi'essed. The more you press and compress 
 attempting to suppress it, the more fiercely will it recoil 
 against you one day, with heavy compound interest for all 
 it has suffered. Especially if it have suffered quietly ; — 
 dread these quiet sufferers, there is a strength in them beyond 
 what they themselves know ! Dr. Laud, with his rubrics, 
 formulas, and Four Surplices at Allhallowtide, is playing a 
 heavier game than he wots of. 
 
 For example it is now some half century that the Scottish 
 people have had to suffer the saddest obstructions : their 
 beloved National Church, founded we may well say in the 
 travail of their souls, and the true emblem to them of God's 
 presence in this Earth, has for half a century been obstructed, 
 and at times threatened with suffocation under the nightmare 
 of foreign Prelacy. The naked vigour of Knox and his 
 heroism, which prefers the humblest real coat to wearing one of 
 cobwebs, shall now be covered up and decorated with rubrics, 
 formalities, and Four Surplices at Allhallowtide, what the 
 spirit of Knox feels to be unveracities, and will once for all 
 have no trade with, betide what may. For long a baleful 
 death - shadow has hung over the Scotch Church ; true 
 Assemblies prohibited, exploded canonicals permitted, — 
 Episcopacy, in its rochets, tippets, and rotten rags of an 
 extinct Popery, abhorred by Heaven and Earth, actually 
 walking abroad in the country. O Dr. Laud, it is cruel, if 
 thou knew it ; but thou wilt never know ! These men, in 
 such poor rude way as they can, protest against deliriums 
 and delusions ; they say, Our life is true and not a lie, an 
 eternal fact, no shadow or tradition, but a God's fact : — dare 
 we pretend to believe manifest incredibility, to serve the 
 living God with things sacrificed to dumb wooden Idols .'' 
 ^Ve dare not, we dare not ; and, as God is our witness, we 
 will not ! Doctor, there is not a holier feeling in the soul of 
 
CHAP. XX.] 'JENNY GEDDES^ 301 
 
 man than this same, nor a moi'e benign one for the world : 
 properly it is the light of the world, found here and there in 
 a human heart ; it is the sacred element which keeps this 
 world from becoming all one horrid charnel-house. Doctor, 
 you had better let these feelings alone. Observe too, how 
 quiet the people is ; this half century it has generally held 
 its peace, leaving it for most part, as Hampden says, to the 
 Almighty. The Scottish Church is under a fatal cloud. 
 King James's Prelates, like winged rocheted harpies, hovering 
 to devour it ; they have not devoured it, God's Gospel is still 
 preached among us ; and the faithful man can save his soul 
 alive ; let us trust in God for this cause of His. To God 
 we may complain in prayer ; against supreme royalty and 
 sovereign powers that be, what man can rebel ? No quieter 
 people, more reverent towards the Highest King in heaven, 
 or towards its lower kings on earth, exists anywhere. 
 
 Dr. Laud has been in Scotland twice over ; he drove with 
 unheard-of peril to himself and coach to various districts of 
 the country, inaccessible except to zeal, looked with his own 
 eyes on the nakedness of the land and its religion. Religion ? 
 he says, I could find no religion. Their Churches were little 
 handsomer than barns ; their worship no worship, mere un- 
 methodic confusion, according to the notions of particular men. 
 Any particular man rose up, prayed, without book, whatever 
 lay in him. Drill exercise, done in a more slovenly way, I 
 will thank any man to show me in this world. When a 
 Right Reverend Father in God gives the word to a Nation, 
 ' Shoulder arms,' and the Nation does not do it, but one 
 person stands at ' attention,' another stands ' at ease,' another 
 ' draws ramrod,' and some even ' present,' threatening to fire, 
 — what kind of manoeuvring is that ! I put the question, Is 
 that people and its devotional Drill exercise in a good way ? 
 What fatal dim owls of Minerva do perch themselves with 
 authority in a Nation's Holiest of Holies, from time to time, 
 and scratch and hoot there, ' Too-whit Too-whoo, No worship 
 ' Hoo,' till — till people's patience with them is exhausted ! 
 
302 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Dr. Laud in 1617 as king James's Chaplain, and still 
 more when he went with Charles to his Coronation in 1633, 
 failed not of one thing, to regulate the Chapel-royal accord- 
 ing to the true model. Heathen Scots without any religion, 
 if they stept down to Holyrood might have the satisfaction 
 to see religion. Here you observe due Altars in the East, 
 the Four Surplices just lifted out of lavender foldings, an 
 honour to the laundress, men bowing at the name of Jesus, 
 bowing at many things, response, re-response, and Collect of 
 the day, men answering like clock-work to the fugle motion, 
 so that when you say, ' Ground arms,' they make one 
 simultaneous rattle of it, and the manoeuvre is perfect. Ye 
 unhappy Scots without religion, does it not charm vou at all ? 
 The unhappy Scots look on with vinegar aspect and closed 
 lips, on their grim countenances no sign of charming is yet 
 legible. 
 
 And yet good example is contagious and persuades the 
 hardest hearts. Dr. Laud thinks clearly this fifty years' 
 expectancy should become fruition, — and real Scotch Bishops, 
 which are as yet little better than Ghosts, should take shape 
 and substance. King Charles, sensible, by instinct and con- 
 viction, of this truth, ' No Bishop no King,' is easily persuad- 
 able. The real Liturgy shall be introduced into all churches, 
 the Prayer-book printed, and not without due, gradual, oft- 
 repeated admonition impressed into all parts of Scotland on a 
 given day. What good is it to trample down Puritanism in 
 England, if a whole Scotch Nation is allowed to practise it ? 
 
 Nay, it would appear King Charles is about endeavouring 
 to recover the Church lands ; at least taking steps that way. 
 In the disastrous times of Knox, a hungry nobility, with the 
 promptitude of cormorants, swallowed the Church property, 
 as it were in one day, and poor Knox when he demanded it 
 back to make Schools with it, build Churches with it, teach 
 and spiritually edify and enlighten the people with it, found 
 that it had become a devout imagination. To his sorrow, to 
 the sorrow of many men since that. It will r(>(|niro a new 
 
CHAP. XX.] 'JENNY GEDDES^ 303 
 
 pious thousand years to accumulate the like for spiritual uses, 
 and as yet in these two centuries the process has not begun. 
 
 It was a step of extreme delicacy this demandinp; back the 
 Church-lands, or seeming even afar off to demand them back. 
 Possession for two generations is something in this mutable 
 world ; all men when you touch them in the purse are likely 
 to be sensitive. These old National Church properties, had 
 they been demanded back for a Church which was never so 
 National, rooted in the hearts of the whole Nation, would not 
 have come softly back ; now that the better part of a century 
 had fixed them in their new places, with their new holders, 
 not without a violent series of wrenchings, backed by the 
 sacred determination of the whole people, could that spoil 
 have been regained. But to demand them back for a Church 
 which was not National at all, which was disliked and fast 
 growing detested by the nation, and in broad Scotland had 
 no hearty partisan, that one can see, but Dr. Laud and our 
 royal self .^ King Charles is thought to be looking this way ; 
 and surely this is not the way to facilitate the getting in of 
 his Service-book. 
 
 Galvanic Dryasdust, generally very offensive, becomes as it 
 were intolerable when he gets to treat of any matter that has 
 a soul. Being himself galvanic merely, he cannot believe 
 that there will be, is, or ever was, in man or his affairs any 
 soul, — any vital element whatever, except the galvanic 
 irritability, Greediness of Gain. This, according to Dryas- 
 dust, is sufficient in common cases ; in uncommon cases, 
 Protestant Reformations and such like, he superadds some 
 quantum svff.^ of delirium, calling it enthusiasm, the passions, 
 or such like ; and considers the phenomenon explained in 
 that way. Cost what it may, he will not, and cannot, admit 
 any soul. When a Luther rises Godlike to defy the powers 
 of Earth and the whole created Universe in behalf of God's 
 truth once more, the purblind Dryasdust sees in it some 
 shopkeeper grudge of a grey monk against a black one, 
 
 ^ Quantum sufficit, a sufficiency, enough for the purpose. 
 
304 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 When Protestant Reformations take place, it is chess-moves 
 of Diplomacy, it is hungry barons greedy of Church spoil : 
 look at Germany, look at Scotland, in the pages of Dryasdust. 
 Nations when they flame up with fire once more as if from 
 the centre of the world, are to Dryasdust nothing but heaps 
 of flagrant madness, meaning at bottom, so far as there is 
 any meaning left, to fill their pockets or stomachs. In all 
 which, O reader, if thou reflect on it, is there not something 
 infinitely fatal not to say nefarious, and if it were not 
 pitiable, detestable ? Blasphemy is the name it ought to 
 go by. You can't sue Dryasdust in any court of law ; yet 
 who is there that has injured you as he ? Ely mas, the base 
 sorcerer, who perverted men's hearts and minds from God's 
 Gospel, God's splendour struck him blind : was it not a 
 merited punishment ? Dryasdust was punishable in those 
 days. But indeed the Apes by the Dead Sea, they still 
 chatter without any soul, having disbelieved in souls, — that 
 is a punishment which in no time can be abrogated. Thank 
 God for it, and mark it, and shudder at it. My readers and 
 I will not believe that German Reformations, Scottish Refor- 
 mations, Scottish Presbyterianisms, French Revolutions, ever 
 did or can proceed from the hungry avidities or despicable 
 penny wisdoms of Jack and Will, Dick and Tom. Such 
 slaves are there present in all Heroisms, as ashes in all fires, 
 but the ashes are not the fire. 
 
 Poor old Edinburgh, it lies there on its hill-face between 
 its Castle and Holyrood, extremely dim to us at this two- 
 centuries' distance ; and yet the indisputable fact of it burns 
 for us with a strange illuminativeness ; small but unquench- 
 able as the light of stars. Indisputably enough, old Edin- 
 burgh is there ; poor old Scotland wholly, my old respected 
 Mother ! Smoke cloud hangs over old Edinburgh, — for, 
 ever since ^neas Sylvius's ^ time and earlier, the people have 
 had the art, very strange to vEneas, of burning a certain sort 
 
 ^ ^neas Sylvius was born in 1405; sent on a mission to Scotland, etc., in 
 1432 ; and became Pope Pius 11. in 1458. 
 
CHAP. XX.] 'JENNY GEDDES' 305 
 
 of black stones, and Edinburgh with its chimneys is called 
 ' Auld Reekie'' by the country people. Smoke-cloud very 
 visible to the imagination : who knows what they are doing 
 under it ! Dryasdust with his thousand Tomes is dumb as 
 the Bass Rock, nay, dumber, his Tomes are as the cackle of 
 the thousand flocks of geese that inhabit there, and with 
 deafening noise tell us nothing. The mirror of the Firth 
 with its Inchkeiths, Inchcolms and silent isles, gleams beauti- 
 ful on us ; old Edinburgh rises yonder climbing aloft to its 
 Castle precipice ; from the rocks of Pettycur where the 
 Third Alexander broke his neck, from all the Fife heights, 
 from far and wide on every hand, you can see the skv 
 windows of it glitter in the sun, a city set on a hill. But 
 what are they doing there ; what are they thinking, saying, 
 meaning there ? O Dryasdust ! — The gallows stands on the 
 Borough Muir ; visible, one sign of civilisation ; and men do 
 plough and reap, and weave cloth and felt bonnets, other- 
 wise they could not live. There are about a million of them, 
 as I guess, actually living in this land ; notable in several 
 respects to mankind. 
 
 They have a broad Norse speech these people ; full of 
 picturesqueness, humour, emphasis, sly, deep meaning. A 
 broad rugged Norse character, equal to other audacities than 
 pirating and sea-kingship; and for the last 1000 years, in 
 spite of Dryasdust's goose-babble, have not been idle. They 
 have tamed the wild bisons into peaceable herds of black- 
 cattle ; the wolves are all dead long since ; the shaggy forests 
 felled ; fields, now green, now red, lie beautiful in the sun- 
 shine ; huts and stone-and-mortar houses spot for ages this 
 once desert land. Gentle and simple are there, hunters with 
 Lincoln coats and hawk on fist, and flat-soled hodden-grey 
 ploughmen and herdsmen. They have made kings this 
 people, and clothed them long since in bright-dyed silk or 
 velvet with pearls and plumages, with gold and constitutional 
 privileges and adornments. Kings ? Nay, they have made 
 Priests of various kinds, and know how to reverence them, 
 
 u 
 
306 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 and actually worship with them. For they are of deep 
 heart ; equal to still deeper than Norse Mythologies, and the 
 gilt Temple of Upsala has for a thousand years lain quite 
 behind them and beneath them. The Nation that can 
 produce a Knox and listen to him is worth something ! 
 They have made actual Priests, and will even get High- 
 priests, — though after long circuits I think, and in quite 
 other guise than the Laud simulacra who are not worth 
 naming here. This is the people of Scotland, and Edinburgh 
 is the ca})ital of it ; whom this little red-faced man with the 
 querulous voice, small chin and horse-shoe mouth, Avith the 
 black triangle and white tippets on him, has come to favour 
 with a religion. He, in his black triangle and Four Surplices 
 at Allhallowtide, will do it, — if so please Heaven. 
 
 Who knows, or will ever know, what the Edinburgh jiopu- 
 lation were saying while the printing of Laud's Service Book 
 went on ? For long it threatened ; the Scotch simulacra (of 
 Bishops) were themselves very shy of it, but the little red- 
 faced man whose motto is ' thorough,' drove it on. And so, 
 after various postponements, now on Sunday the 23rd day of 
 July, 1637, the feat is to be done; Edinburgh after genera- 
 tions of abeyance shall again see a day of religion. 
 
 ' The times are noisy,' says Goethe, ' and again the times 
 ' sink dumb ! ' How dumb is all this Edinburgh, are the 
 million and odd articulate-speaking voices and hearts of 
 Scotland of that year 1637 ! Their speech and speculation 
 has all condensed itself, as is usual, has sunk undistinguished 
 into the great Bog of Lindscy. He were a Shakspeare and 
 more that could give us, in due miniature, any emblem of the 
 speech and thought of Scotland during that year. No 
 Shakspeare was there ; only Dryasdust was there ; and it is 
 now grown silent enough. The boding of fifty years is now 
 to realise itself, the thing, that we greatly feared has come 
 upon us. The heart of this Scotland pauses aghast. A land 
 purged of Idolatry shall again become Idolatrous ? — Really, 
 O modern reader, it is worth taking thought of. Idolatry, 
 
CHAP. XX.] 'JENNY GEDDES^ 307 
 
 which means use of symbols that are no longer symbolic, is it 
 not, in the Church and out of the Church, verily the heaviest 
 human calamity ? In the Church, and out of the Church, 
 for all human life is either a worship or it is a chimera, 
 Idolatry may be defined as the topstone of human miseries 
 and degradations ; it is the public apotheosis and solemn 
 sanctioning of human unveracity, whereby all misery and 
 degradation physical and spiritual, temporal and eternal, first 
 becomes rightly possible ; the deliverance from it rightly 
 impossible. Admit honestly that you are naked, there is 
 some chance that by industry and energy you may acquire a 
 coat ; clothe yourself in cobwebs, and say with your teeth 
 rattling. How comfortable am I, there is no chance of ever 
 being clothed, there is no wish for or belief in the possibility 
 of ever being better clothed. Men say with the drop at 
 their nose, and teeth playing castanets (as you may hear them 
 anywhere in these sad days). How comfortable are we ! 
 
 With Jenny Geddes it has fared as with Pompey and 
 others : there remains the shadow of her name. As Hercules 
 represents whole generations of Heraclides and their work ; 
 as Marat in our compressive imagination did all the Reign of 
 Terror ;^ so Jenny is the rascal multitude, by whom this 
 transaction in the High Church was done. Her name is not 
 mentioned for twenty-five or thirty years afterwards in any 
 book ; nevertheless it remains lively to this day in the mouth 
 of Scottish tradition, and a Poet Burns in such mocking 
 apotheosis as is permitted us in these poor days, calls his 
 mare Jenny Geddes, Good Jenny, I delight to fancy her as 
 a pious humble woman, to whom, as in that greatest Gospel 
 is the rule, the Highest had come down. In her kerchief or 
 simple snood, in her checkered plaid and poor stufF-gown she 
 is infinitely respectable to me ; reads that Bible which she 
 has in her hand, a poor bound Bible with brass clasps, and 
 ^ See Carlyle's French Revolution, iii. 256. 
 
308 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 sits upon a folding stool. It is the belief of Jenny that 
 God's grace is in store for her, or God's eternal judgment, 
 according as she behave well or behave ill : respectable 
 Jenny ! 
 
 Dim through the pages of Dryasdust we notice conclaves 
 of Scottish Puritans, dignitaries, nobles, honourable women, 
 taking earnest counsel on the matter ; meeting for confer- 
 ence in Edinburgh and elsewhere. The old Duchess of 
 Hamilton, says Dryasdust, rode about with a pair of pistols 
 in her saddle. Like enough ; with pistols in her saddle, 
 and a variety of thoughts in her mind. Dim, owlish 
 Dryasdust, as is his way in such cases, imputes the whole 
 phenomenon to those conclaves : it was all a wooden puppet- 
 play, constructed and contrived by these higher personages, 
 the wires all fitted on, the figures all whittled and dressed, 
 the program all schemed out ; — and then some Duchess of 
 Hamilton pulled the master- wire, and a dramatic representa- 
 tion was given. Disastrous Dryasdust, is human life dead, 
 then ? Art thou entirely an owl and tenebrific ray of dark- 
 ness, then? — Enough, the 23rd morning of July, 1637 has 
 risen over Edinburgh city ; a silent Sabbath morning, not to 
 be a silent day and evening ; the dissatisfaction of long years 
 will perhaps give itself voice today. But the Bailies and 
 Officialities are getting towards St. Giles's Church,^ and many 
 mortals with speculation in their eyes ; right reverend Sydserf " 
 is there, and Dean Hanna, etc., all in due rochets and 
 pontificals ; the miscellaneous audience sits waiting, nothing 
 heard but here and there the creaking of some belated foot, 
 slight coughing of some weak throat, and generally in all 
 pauses, an irregular chorus of sighs. Dismal enough. They 
 are going to worship here it would seem ? 
 
 See, the Dean enters, a man irrecognisable to us at the 
 distance of 200 years, recognisable only as an aggregate of 
 
 ^ Edinburgh had been lately made a separate diocese, and St. Giles's its 
 Cathedral Church, — Lindsay being now the Bishop, and Hanna the Dean. 
 ^ Sydserf, Bishop of Galloway, since 1635. 
 
CHAP. XX.] 'JENNY GEDDES' 309 
 
 tippets and rochet, with a Laud's Prayer Book in its hand. 
 At sight of Dean Hanna in this guise, imagination hears 
 a strange rustle in the St. Giles's audience ; sees Jenny 
 Geddes's lips compress themselves, her nose become more 
 aquiline ; and the general rustle as our Dean mounts the 
 reading-desk sink into silence as of death. One can fancy the 
 Dean's heart palpitating somewhat. Opening the Prayer Book 
 he breaks the silence. — Hm — hm — hum ! ever louder hums the 
 audience, each taking courage and example from the other, 
 the hum mounting in rapid geometric progression, till it breaks 
 out into interjections, castings-in, as we call them, of a most 
 emphatic sort. Some do make responses ; inserted probably 
 by Sydserf or Lindsay, as ' clackers ' are in the first night of a 
 play. Hired ' clackers ' if so be they may save the play from 
 being damned. Hired clackers, — or any not uncharitable soul 
 to reinforce a poor Clerk in these circumstances.'' Service 
 cannot be heard ; the Dean growing redder and redder in the 
 face, reads on ; inaudible for hums, for growls, for open 
 obstreperous anger of all men. Jenny Geddes (it appears from 
 Dryasdust) has risen to her feet, many persons have risen. A 
 hired clacker, close at Jenny's back endeavouring to make the 
 response, her righteous soul able to stand it no longer, she 
 flames into sheer wrath and articulation with tongue and palm ; 
 and exclaimed, says Dryasdust, smiting the young man heartily 
 on alternate temples, ' Thou foul thief, wilt thou sing a Mass 
 'at my lug?' What a shrill sharp arrow of the soul! We 
 have had long battles with the Mass ; black nightmares of the 
 Devil like to choke us into Death eternal ; and they are gone 
 and going, and we are awake to God's eternal sunlight, and 
 the Devil's nightmare is to return .'' All women, all men and 
 children feel with Jenny. The tumult rises tenfold. ' Out, 
 'away, off, off!' — So that Lindsay in regular pontificals is 
 obliged himself to mount into the Pulpit. Poseidon in the 
 tempest raises his serene head, to calm all billows. ' Let us 
 ' read the Collect of the day.' ' Collect ? Collect ? ' cry many. 
 ' Let us read ' — reiterates he. ' Deil colick the wame o' thee I ' 
 
310 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 cries Jenny, all clear flaming, regardless of the Devil and his 
 angels ; and hurls her stool at the Bishop's head. The Bishop 
 ducking adroitly avoids the missile. But now, as when a 
 light-spark falls on fire-damp, it is all one flame, this smoking 
 element of madness and sheer riot ; and stools, walking-sticks, 
 whatsoever missile and vociferation can be snatched, fly con- 
 verging towards one point, — which no Bishop, unless he be a 
 cast-metal one from Birmingham, can pretend to stand. 
 Official Bailies with their beefeaters rush down distracted, 
 conjure with outspread hands, menace, push, they and their 
 beefeaters, who I hope have Lochaber axes, or at least good 
 truncheons, — gradually with confused effort drive out the 
 rascal multitude, leaving only the hired clackers or charitable 
 men bent to reinforce a weak clerical. The rascal multitude 
 patter on the windows, vociferate, shriek and howl : the 
 Collect of the day cannot too soon terminate ; I wish even we 
 had the Bishop well home. 
 
 Imaginative readers can conceive the rest. How the riot 
 spread over Edinbiu-gh, over broad Scotland at large ; the 
 element, getting ready for years, being all so inflammable ; 
 no man, or hardly any man except Lindsay and his clackers, 
 having any real desire to suppress it. How pious lairds and 
 lords and clergy, many a pious Scottish man, flocked in from 
 all sides to Edinburgh, if only to hear the news, — and did hear 
 several things, and did see this one thing. What a multitude 
 they are, what a temper they are of! 
 
 Jenny is a Deborah in Israel. — 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 DISCOVERY OF THE THURLOE PAPERS TRADITION 
 
 The learned Mr. Thomlinson of No. 13 Lincoln's Inn 
 had gone to the country for the Long Vacation, and given u]) 
 his rooms to a certain Clergyman of uncertain pursuits, name 
 not known, pursuits not known, whose time it would seem 
 
CH. XXL] DISCOVERY OF THURLOE PAPERS 311 
 
 hung heavy on his hands. This Clergyman, then, having no 
 resource in looking out of the Avindow or the like, took to 
 poking about the carpentry and by-nooks of his apartment, 
 tapping on wainscots, garret ceilings and such like, reflecting 
 in an idle manner on the unknown series of wigs and gowns 
 and learned human creatures that had tenanted this temporary 
 domicile of his. Nothing can be figured more miserable ; yet 
 it proved not altogether so. Tapping miserably on wainscots, 
 garret ceilings, this melancholy young Clergyman came upon 
 a secret ceiling of his garret, came upon a hidden box or 
 package stuffed aside there, with an immensity of papers in it. 
 One thing was clear, they were letters of the seventeenth 
 century ; and at last another thing became clear, that Chan- 
 cellor Somers, the patriotic collector, would give a considera- 
 tion for them. With Chancellor Somers, very busy otherwise, 
 they turned to little account ; nor with others into whose 
 hands they fell. By and by Mr. Birch, however, subsequently 
 of the British Museum, putting on his historic spectacles, 
 easily discovered that here was a correspondence of the seven- 
 teenth century, abounding in the highest historic names, and 
 turning up his Dryasdust repositories, easily remembered that 
 a certain John Thurloe, Government Secretary, in his latter 
 days resided here ; — discovered therefore that this was 
 Thurloe's secret hoard of official correspondence ; which, un- 
 willing to lose it, yet in evil times afraid to keep it, the good 
 man had buried there in that box in the wall, and now after 
 about a hundred years, it had unexpectedly come to light, 
 Mr. Birch with enlivened hope, with alacrity, with persevering 
 industry, proceeded to copy, decipher, arrange and commit to 
 the press, that mass of dead letters ; and so in seven folio 
 volumes we have to this day a Thurloe Correspondence 
 which he that runs, and is not afraid of locked-jaw, may to all 
 lengths read. 
 
 Life being short and Art long, few or rather none, have ever 
 read this Book, but all of us pry into it on occasion. Historic 
 Art gratefully skims through it on a voyage of discovery, 
 
312 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 hangs witli outspread pinions for moments in the strange 
 twilight, in the strange silence, of that wide-spread City of 
 the Dead, descrying what it can, — little of moment for most 
 part. For in truth the region is most awful, of a leaden 
 quality, a leaden colour, guarded by basilisks, inhabitated by 
 ghosts ; and the living visitor is in haste to return. We, at 
 the very door of it, have snatched the following morsel : 
 
 [Here follow directions to copy Oliver Cromwell's Letter of 
 the 13th October, 1638, to his beloved Cousin, Mrs. St. John. 
 It stands in the Letters and Speeches, as Cromwell's Second 
 Letter (i. 100).] 
 
 Much remains obscure, lost beyond recovery. Alas, and 
 the very spirit of the writing, how it is lost too ; and the 
 abstract words become meaningless to us ; as are the proper 
 names. . . . The appellations and ideas, we say, are not less 
 obliterated than the proper names and persons. Who knows 
 what to make of dwelling in Meshec, which signifies Pi-olong- 
 ing\ or in Kedar, which signifies Blackness ? How could a man 
 supposed to be of vigorous sense write down such imbecilities, 
 or what did he mean by them ? Dryasdust is terribly at a 
 loss ; the living intellectual circles wait with blank eagerness, 
 some word of explanation from him, and he as good as feels 
 that he has none to give. — ' Cant, Hypocrisy ' ; the intellectual 
 circles have rejected these ; — well then, ' Enthusiasm, Fanatic- 
 ' ism, some form of the grand element of cloudiness ? ' ' Yes,"" 
 with a kind of nasal interjectional ' Hm — Inn,*' as if still all were 
 not right. But they are found to rest satisfied with this : The 
 square-jawed, rugged-looking individual, with massive nose, 
 with keen grey eyes, and wart above the right eyebrow, was 
 partly in a distracted condition. If it should ever by chance, as 
 there is passing need otherwise, be disclosed to the intellectual 
 circles that they have souls to be saved, then the last hypotiiesis 
 of Dryasdust will go like the rest, I think ; then woe in general 
 to Dryasdust: his hypotheses and foul Hecate eclipses will 
 fleet away with ignominious drunnning in the rear of them ; 
 the very street urchins approvingly looking on ; and a most 
 
CH. XXL] DISCOVERY OF THURLOE PAPERS 313 
 
 poisonous eclipse be lifted from the whole Past, the whole 
 Present and Future time ! O Dryasdust ! Expediency, Wind- 
 bag and Co. will march, the gates of native Chaos yawning for 
 them, and the public thoroughfares will be clearer for a while. 
 Consider, O intelligent reader, if by beneficent chance thou 
 knewest that there was in verity after Death a Judgment and 
 Eternity, that all the Earth and its business were but the 
 Flame Image of a great God, his throne dark with excess of 
 light, and Hell pain or Heavenly joy were forever in few years 
 sure for thee. Thou wouldst fly to the mountains to cover 
 thee, to Christ, to whosoever brought a hope of salvation 
 for thee. Thy life were then a perpetual sacred prophecy, or, 
 through the obstructions of the terrene element, a perpetual 
 effort to be such. Prayers, tears, never-ending efforts, the 
 sacrifice of very life, all this were a light thing for thee. Thou 
 too, and all thy life and business, like the Earth thy mother, 
 wert a kind of flame-image through which, now in bursts of 
 clear splendour, now in fuliginosity and splendour overclouded, 
 the presence of a God did verily look. Thou too wouldst 
 write passionately for Dr. Wells to Mr. Story at the Sign of 
 the Dog.^ But thinkest thou this depends on Dr. Wells or 
 Mr. Story, on any printed Book, Hebrew or other, or on any 
 man or body of men, Hebrew, or other ? That Dr. Wells or 
 Mr. Story can make it or unmake it ? My friend, when Dr. 
 Wells and Mr. Story and all that was in the brain or memory 
 of either of them shall have vanished like dreams never to be 
 in any human memory more, this thing in its essentiality will 
 remain true. 
 
 Here however, there are two courses that open themselves 
 for the human species, leading to the notablest divarication, 
 with the results of which History is full. The poor human 
 genius is wrapt in traditions inwards to the very soul of 
 it, and never comes out except wrapt in clothings, what it 
 well calls habits. Did not Adam of Bremen see a gilt 
 Temple at Upsala totally different from St. Catherine's 
 
 ^ See Letter i., Cromwell, i. 90. 
 
314 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Church ; with festooned gilt chains round it, and horses' 
 heads set high on perches, some seventy in various stages 
 of decomposition ? The modes of Divinity are properly 
 endless among men : but they reduce themselves mainly into 
 these two.^ 
 
 Under the green Earth, so flowery, cheery, shone on by the 
 sun, lie dismal deeps, dwelling-places of we know not what 
 mis-shapen gnomes, Rushworths, Dugdales, Rymers, dark 
 kingdoms of the vanished Dead. He that would investigate 
 the Past must be prepared for encountering things unpleasant, 
 things dreary, nay, ghastly. The Past is the dwelling of the 
 Dead ; the pale kingdoms of Dis and the Dii Manes. Ulysses 
 did not descend to the Dwellings of the Departed without 
 struffo^les and sacrifices ; nor when there did he find the region 
 cheerful. Achilles, Prince of Heroes, is right mournful as 
 a Shade : ' Do not extenuate Death to me, illustrious Ulysses : 
 ' I would wish, as a field-labourer to drudge for another man, 
 ' though a mean one, to whom there were small substance, 
 ' rather than be king of all the vanished Dead.' ^ How faith- 
 fully this old Greek notion of Achilles in Elysium represents 
 his condition in the human memory, — his relation to the 
 living Biographer ! He is vanished, or nearly so, a thin, melan- 
 choly shade. Speak of the meanest day-drudge who is yet 
 alive and visible to me ; speak not of the Dead, for I behold 
 them not. — It is like thou beholdest them not ! The Club 
 Anecdotes of a Jabesh AVindbag, how much more interesting 
 to us than all that the Philosopher and Poet can say or sing 
 of an Oliver Cromwell ! 
 
 TRADITION 
 
 Tradition, too, is to be connnended ; in Tradition, too, is 
 something of divine. Tradition is the beatified bodily form 
 of all that once was ; of what our Fathers from immemorial 
 time have tried and found worthy. It begins beyond record 
 
 ' i.e. Paganism and Clirislianity. - Odyssey, xi. 4S7-91. 
 
CHAP. XXL] TRADITION 315 
 
 or memory ; it too, so to speak, begins in Eternity. To the 
 first men, they that with fresh virgin eyes looked forth into 
 a Universe on which as yet no thought or sight had tried 
 itself, all was new and nameless, was wonderful, unnameable, 
 was o-odlike or God ; the first stratum of Tradition is the 
 life of these First Men ; Tradition begins with the beginning 
 of Time, it abuts on Eternity, is as a thing shed forth by the 
 Eternal, Thou shalt worship Tradition too ; thou dost well 
 to recognise a divineness in the Past. If Human History is 
 the grand universal Bible, whereof almost all other Bibles are 
 but synoptical tables, illustrative picture-books, then I reckon 
 that what has hung suspended in the general human memory 
 will be well worth gathering. Nay, worthy or not, it has to 
 be gathered. We are born into a shaped world, not into 
 a world which is yet to shape. What went before is a fact 
 not less inexorable than what will follow. How the world is 
 shaped and how farther it is shapable, — these are in a manner 
 the two sole questions for a man. 
 
 Tradition is as the life-element, the circumambient air. 
 We unconsciously live by it ; the rabidest radical is pene- 
 trated by Tradition to the innermost fibre of him, at all 
 moments of his existence, even when he is loudest in de- 
 nouncing and gainsaying it. His denunciation of Tradition 
 is itself in how many ways traditionary ! He demands Elec- 
 toral Suffrage, Free Parliaments, Ballot-box, etc. ; him too 
 the wisdom of his ancestors taught that. Tradition ? Does 
 he not speak English, a kind of English ? That of itself, 
 if he reflect on it, is as the azure element that towered up 
 boundless over Phosphoros, filling immensity for him, and 
 fixed him down as with the weight of mountains under per- 
 petual chains, perpetual beneficent leading-strings as we may 
 call them withal. Imprisoning weight as of mountains reach- 
 ing to the zenith, says one ; — beneficent roofing, household 
 accommodation and security, says another. 
 
 Poor Zacharias Werner, in a rhapsody not intrinsically of 
 much meaning, gives this account of the emblematic indi- 
 
316 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 vidual, Phosphoros, the Light-bringer, meaning evidently by 
 him the soul of man, or perhaps, as some now speak, the soul 
 of mankind : 
 
 ' And when the Lord saw Phosphoros his pride. 
 Being wroth thereat, he cast him forth, 
 
 And shut him in a prison called Life ; 
 
 And gave him for a garment earth and water. 
 And hound him straitly in four Azure Chains, 
 
 And pour'd for him the bitter cup of Fire.' ^ 
 
 This rhapsodic imagery has truly a resemblance to the fate 
 of Man under Tradition. 
 
 The air in small portions is transparent, of no colour or 
 noticeability ; but take it in totality as an atmosphere, it 
 is azure, beautiful, almost divine-looking, and encircles us 
 everywhere with a Dome which we well name Heaven. In- 
 finitude does so in all senses, in all cases. Tradition is 
 properly the Totality of the memorable acts and thoughts 
 of all mankind. We are alive because we have an atmosphere 
 round us ; we are socially alive (we are in so many senses 
 spiritually alive) because we have, and have long had, brothers 
 round us, and the memory of their relations to the Universe. 
 This, too, is an atmosphere ; builds an azure heavenly world 
 round our terrestrial one. 
 
 The laws of spiritual as of physical optics act here too ! 
 Masses of the Past get compressed by distance, compressed 
 and transfigured to sapphire colour ; and one highest peak 
 becomes the name of a wide district. From the Greek 
 Homeric Songs, to Longobard Paul Deacon, there rhymes 
 itself a kind of order out of past human things ; and arid 
 History becomes a rhythmic Mythus. Hercules prints his 
 name on long centuries of Herculean work and enterprise. 
 Past events are deified. Does not every people, looking at 
 its language, consider that the first Grammarian was God, 
 
 ^ For the remainder of this, the Legend of the Old Man of Carmel, see 
 Carlyle's Essay on Werner, Miscellaiiies, i. 12S et seqq. 
 
CHAr. XXII.] HAMPDEN AND LAUD 317 
 
 the Maker? The Lawgivers of most nations, including our 
 own, if we go out of Westminster Hall into Westminster 
 Abbey, are esteemed still very clearly to be gods. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 HAMPDEN AND I.AUD — REALITIES AND PHANTASMS 
 
 How many voiceless men ride busily with hawk and hounds, 
 sit studious, sit bibulous, refectory and requiescent within 
 doors, fare busily on highways and fieldworks, on their several 
 errands, smite upon the anvil and malleable hot iron in their 
 rustic smithies, ride fruitlessly abroad with idle hawk upon 
 their fist, and hounds and valets following them, at this same 
 hour. All voiceless now, at that hour all loud and celebrated. 
 Oblivion come to the aid of memory ! How can we remember 
 you all ? In this city where I write in my garden, are some 
 1,800,000 human souls, to every soul of whom do not the 
 heavens vault themselves into an arch with its crown riffht over 
 his head, as if he were the most important man, to produce 
 whom all things had hitherto been tending ? There is no 
 remembering of you all ! I will beg some 999,999,999 of you 
 to let your selves be forgotten peaceably that the unit may 
 find room for himself. Alas, in the human memory as on the 
 stage of Life, one set is ever crushing out another, and Godlike 
 silence and evanition into serene azure is sooner or later the 
 lot of all men and all gods. 
 
 Black walls of oblivion, like dark cloud coulisses must bound 
 our small illuminated theatre. AVherefore History, though 
 with reluctance, will be silent. 
 
 Amid the valleys where the Ouse languidly like an aristo- 
 cratic river, collects its brooks, folded up among the green 
 valleys, sheltered by the Buckingham beeches, is the Hampden 
 Manorhouse and Church, the mansion of John Hampden ; is 
 John Hampden himself, a man of grave but cheerful affable 
 
318 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 ways, as I judge by the look of him, not without Teutonic 
 fire in his heart, but deep hidden, whom it were delightful to 
 look in upon, did time permit ! Authentically, sure as I am 
 now here, he is then there, riding abroad to look up his 
 tenants, to visit some neighbour, or the green earth and azure 
 beeches at least ; sitting at home reading Davila on the Civil 
 Wars,^ reading Chillingworth and Dutch Divinity, — looking 
 earnestly into an ocean that his eyesight cannot bound, which 
 is indeed bottomless, deep, which the sharpest human eyesight 
 only seems to itself to reach the bottom of. In the bottom- 
 less ocean there does ever appear to be a bottom ; where the 
 light fails and the eye can reach no farther, there the eye rests 
 contented as on the primeval basis, there is the bottom so- 
 reckoned : it is the law of optics for men here below. Mr. 
 Hampden's eye reaches down farther than most, discerns as the 
 deepest primeval fact, that in the heart of this world a God 
 dwells verily, that man, poor imprisoned creature does of a 
 felt truth reach up to Heaven and down to Hell, that the 
 question how he demeans himself in this poor life, is actually 
 of infinite moment to him. There, intrinsically, is the bottom 
 for John Hampden, — as it is indeed for me, and for the clear- 
 sighted reader. Hast thou heard of any deeper depth yet 
 reached by telescope or otherwise ? I have heard of extremely 
 shallow depths trumpeted abroad, as the wonderful wonder and 
 real bottom found at last, in these enlightened days : how 
 there dwelt no God but a mere steam-engine and clock- 
 mechanism in the heart of this world, and man's real duty 
 was but to find due Jamaica treacle for himself, a finite duty, 
 not infinite, with other most mournful matter, which, for the 
 credit of the house, I will not enlarge upon. Such extremely 
 shallow depths have I been vociferously invited to contemplate 
 in these days, — but a deeper than this of Hampden's no man 
 ever saw, — nor will see, I imagine. Two things strike me 
 
 1 ' Hampden was,' says Sir Philip Warwick, ' very well read in History ; and 
 I remember the first time I ever saw that of Davila of the Civil Wars of France, 
 it was lent mc under the title of " Mr. Hampden's Viide J\Iecu/ii." ' 
 
CHAP. XXII.] HAMPDEN AND LAUD 319 
 
 dumb, even as they did Heir Kant of Konigsberg, as they did 
 John Hampden of that Ilk, as they liave done all men that 
 had an open eye and soul, since soul and eye did first open on 
 this world : Two things strike me dumb, the Starry Firma- 
 ment, and the Law of Duty in man. Infinities both. Do 
 they set thee talking ? 
 
 But now suppose an earnest Mr. Hampden searching with 
 his whole soul into those beautiful and divine depths had heard 
 it confidently affirmed by all credible persons, and never 
 dreamt of doubting it. That God the Eternal Lawgiver did 
 once break the silence of Eternities, and speak ; that here in 
 this Hebrew and Greek Book was his authentic voice, here and 
 not elsewhere at all .? That as you learned His law here and 
 did it, or neglected to learn and do it. Eternity of Blessedness, 
 or endless Night of Misery, awaits you for evermore. That all 
 this were a truth, true as sunrise and sunset, terrible as Death 
 and Judgment. Certainly it were a fact of some importance, 
 this, to Mr. Hampden. Certainly the impatience of Mr. 
 Hampden with Vatican Popes, and Lambeth Pontiffs, and 
 Phantasms with Four Surplices at Allhallowtide, were consider- 
 able. Ye audacious Phantasms in Four Surplices at Allhallow- 
 tide, what is all this ? How dare you parade yourselves in 
 such Guy Faux mummeries before the Eternal God ! and 
 address Him in set words that mean almost nothing for you ! 
 Are you sure of your way here ? Has God commanded say- 
 ing, This is pleasing to me ; or was it only Dr. Laud that 
 commanded ? — Mr. Hampden, we had better not articulate 
 ourselves farther on these subjects ; but study to possess our 
 souls in patience, or at any rate in silence. Mr. Hampden, 
 the noble speaker, has a talent of silence too. Like his people, 
 Mr. Hampden is of silent nature ; prepared in so imperfect a 
 world to put up with many things. Much is uncertain. 
 Much is wrong ; but all will be manifest ; all will be perfect, 
 and no grievance more forever, very soon. 
 
 And the Phantasms on their side have not the slightest mis- 
 giving about it. They answer : Good Mr. Hampden, we are 
 
320 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 not entirely Phantasms ; we are partly human too after a sort ! 
 It was in this way that the earliest Fathers from beyond 
 human memory taught us, and in the Book itself is said, Do 
 all things decently and in order ; this is the order, we fancy ; 
 this is what the earliest Fathers, etc. We rest on Tradition, 
 ring after ring round our horizon, the outer ring of which lies 
 seemingly in contact with God himself and Eternity, — seem- 
 ingly as the vapours over Paddington heights and the hills of 
 Norwood lie in contact with the stars and are part and parcel 
 of the firmament. Infinite star-firmament, law of human duty, 
 direct voice of God, opened human soul : we know nothing of 
 all that ; our own souls, it appears, must be shut to us, suspect 
 to us, — though we received a University education. We never 
 saw any opened human soul, heard within us or without us 
 any direct voice of God, — heard only the direct voices of the 
 spectral Archbishops, saw with such eyes as we had the eternal 
 firmament rest firmly on Paddington and the heights of 
 Norwood and Dulwich ! And so they provide their Four Sur- 
 plices at Allhallowtide with ruffled temper, chaunt ancient 
 metre, and go on nothing doubting. 
 
 Good Heavens, when I look at these two classes of men, the 
 Phantasms partly human after a sort, with their temper getting 
 ruffled, and the Realities with their patience getting exhausted, 
 — I could fancy collisions coming to pass between them. And 
 what a business will it be, getting at the considerable heart 
 of tmth which consciously and unconsciously does lie in both, 
 and having it presented in pure form. Due reverence for 
 venerable human forms, due reverence for awful divine reali- 
 ties which transcend all forms : it will be centuries before we 
 see these two made rightly one, and a wide glorious blessed 
 life for us, instead of a narrow contentious and cursed one. 
 
CHAP. XXIII.] WENTWORTH (STRAFFORD) 321 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 WENTWORTH ( STRAFFORD) 
 
 As a lake of discontent it^ spreads and stagnates these eleven 
 years over England, swamping all England more and more 
 into a sour marsh of universal discontent, without hope, with- 
 out aim. England is slow to revolt ; that is the reason why 
 England has been successful in revolting. This man ^ has no 
 notion to revolt, what hope is there for a man ? The King is 
 strong, the King is given over to his Lauds, his haughty fierce 
 Wentworths, his swoln Attorney Noys, their belly full of 
 parchment, where for press of Law no Justice can find audience. 
 One must be patient, one must be silent. God's true 
 messengers shall be cast into dungeons, set on pillories, with 
 branded cheeks and ignominious slashes, their true voice 
 smothered by the hangman. We must fly far, to America, 
 New England, crouch low and be silent ; waiting God's good 
 time. In the end, ah yes, full surely yes, in the end God's will 
 shall be done, not Dr. Laud's. — And now if out of so much 
 smoke there did arise fire, what a blaze, sudden as continents 
 of dry heath, fierce as anthracite furnaces, would it probably 
 be ! — It is the crowning moment of a man's life when he does 
 take up arms, in the name of God, against an evil destiny, 
 resolved to better it or die. Crowning moment of a man's 
 life and also of a Nation's. The nation that never yet did so 
 is still in the pupil state, and wants for present and coming 
 times the noblest consciousness of a nation. 
 
 Sir Thomas Wentworth of Wentworth Woodhouse, York- 
 shire, Baron Wentworth, my Lord of Strafford that is to be,^ 
 was busy in the north of England at Council of the North, is 
 busy still in Ireland, Tyranny's strong right-hand man. But 
 the uninitiated reader, though the Straffbrd Papers have been 
 
 1 The policy of Laud and Charles. ' Hampden. 
 
 ^ Stepost, p. 323 «. 
 
 X 
 
HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 printed these many years, will inquire vainly about that. 
 They are enchanted Papers, those Strafford ones, shed a torpid 
 influence, benumb into languor, into tetanus or sleep, all 
 motion in the souls of men. O Radcliff, Heylin, Hacket, 
 Rushworth, Nalson, Burton, Whitelock, Heath, and Vickers, 
 why does posterity execrate you ? Were ye not faithful in 
 your day; and drove jocundly your waggon-loads of contem- 
 porary printed babble, jocundly shot it there, not calculating 
 that it would be rubbish ? Posterity did nothing for antiquity: 
 posterity must take contentedly what antiquity was pleased to 
 bequeath it : casket of gold grains precious in all markets, 
 mountain heaps of gravel and indurated mud in size like the 
 ruins of Babylon ; no Pactolus ^ rolls metal alone, but metal 
 and gravel mixed. 
 
 Wentworth, Strafford that is to be, a man of biliary, 
 choleric temper, of fierce pride and energy, is busy in 
 Ireland and England, and has long been. I knew him 
 once as a Reformer; in those days when we were about to 
 hold our Speaker down, he was among us, resolute as the 
 rest ; but when we actually held our Speaker down, when 
 we had obtained our Petition of Right, he was not with 
 us any more. He had gone away from us, gone over to the 
 Four Surplices, to Whitehall and the gilt Formulas. Canst 
 thou not conceive an honourable soul seduced ? I have known 
 such, more than one. The elevated soul seeks advancement, 
 seeks to see itself an elevated soul ; ^ the smile of kings, like 
 radiance out of Heaven, says to them, ' Saul, Saul, why perse- 
 ' cutest thou me ? "" Sir John Savile,^ long a pestilent eye-sore 
 to thee, lo! my glance shall dissolve him from thy path; in no 
 County meeting shall any Savile, or man of them, outshine 
 
 1 A river of Lydia, famed for its golden sands. 
 
 ^ ' It is a chaste ambition if rightly placed, said Strafford at his Trial, to have 
 as much power as may be, that there may be power to do the more good in the 
 place where a man lives.' Rushworth, Tnal of Strafford, 146. 
 
 ^ The office of Gustos Rotuloruni, in Yorksliire, was through Buckingham's 
 influence taken from Wentworth and given to Sir John Savile in 1628 ; the writ 
 for Wentworth 's removal being handed to him as he sat in open Court presiding 
 as Sheriff. 
 
CHAP. XXIII.] WENTWORTH (STRAFFORD) f523 
 
 thee any more. It shall be so, it is so. Am not I good to 
 thee ; why persecutest thou me ? Gratitude, sunburst of 
 unexpected limitless hope and heavenly radiance, will have 
 effect on the heart of man. Sir Thomas sees a new shorter 
 course open to him ; much that looked ugly under the winter 
 twilight and shadow of intolerable old Savile, is grown beauti- 
 ful when illuminated by such light from the king's throne. O 
 my high struggling soul, see, by this way too, thou shalt get 
 on higli, be recognised by thyself and others for a high soul. 
 Privilege of Parliament, Petition of Right, much that was 
 ugly under the shadow of old Savile and cold obstruction, is 
 now grown far less ugly under the summer sunlight. Privilege 
 of Parliament, much may be rationally doubtful to the mind 
 of man ; but this that thou art President of the North,^ and 
 hast dissolved old Savile and all Yorkshire gainsayers from 
 thy path, this is not doubtful, this is certain, a most blessed 
 indisputable fact. Sir Thomas sees a new shorter course not 
 doubtful but indisputable opening to him ; sees gradually a 
 new heaven and earth ; all old things are passed away, behold 
 all things are become new, even a shrill hysterical chimera in 
 Four Surplices at AUhallowtide, even he, since his spasms pull 
 my way, and he cheers me on to the top of my bent, is not 
 unlovely to me. 
 
 Look not in the Strafford Papers, O reader, unless thy 
 nerves be strong, thy necessities great. They are grown en- 
 chanted as Papers, we said ; dim as Ghostland, and have a 
 torpid quality, agreeable only to the soul of Dryasdust. We 
 see Dr. Laud and Viscount Wentworth with much of the 
 King's Majesty's business, the interests of Supreme Justice 
 and Dr. Laud's and Viscount Wentworth's in this world ; in 
 a highly unsatisfactory manner ; — and shall observe only that 
 Wentworth, as well as Laud, is for ' Thorough.'' 
 
 Wentworth is a man of dark countenance, a stern down- 
 
 ^ Wentworth became President of the Council of the North, Dec. 162S ; 
 he was made Earl of Strafford and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in January, 1640. 
 His Trial and execution took place in the spring of 164 1. 
 
324 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 looking man, full of thoughts, energies, — of tender affections 
 gone mostly to the shape of pride and sorrow, of rage sleeping 
 in stern composure, kept strictly under lock and key : cross 
 him not abruptly, he is a choleric man, and from under his 
 dark brows flashes a look not pleasant to me. Poor Went- 
 worth, his very nerves are all shattered, he lives in perpetual 
 pain of body, such a force of soul has he to exert. He must 
 bear an Atlas burden of Irish and other unreasons : from a 
 whole chaos of angry babble he has to extract the word or 
 two of meaning, and compress the rest into silence. A 
 withered figure, scathed and parched as by internal and 
 external fire. Noble enough ; yes, and even beautiful and 
 tragical ; at all events, terrible enough. He reverences King 
 Charles, which is extremely miraculous, yet partially to be 
 comprehended ; King Charles, and I think, no other creature 
 under this sky. Nay, at bottom. King Charles is but his 
 Talismanic Figure, his conjuration Formula with w^hich he 
 will conjure the world ; he must not break or scratch that 
 Figure, or where were he ? At bottom does not even reverence 
 King Charles; he looks into the grim sea of fate stretching 
 dark into the Infinite and the Eternal, and himself alone 
 there ; and reverences in strange ways only that and what 
 holds of that. A proud, mournful, scathed and withered man, 
 with a prouder magazine of rage lying in him. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE SCOTS AT DUNSE EAW — PACIFICATION OF 
 BERWICK, OR THE FIRST ' BISHOPS' WAR ' 
 
 [1()39] 
 
 In the early summer days of 1639, there was seen at Dunse 
 Law near Tweedmouth on the left bank, a notable thing : 
 some 30,000 Scottish men all encamped on the conical Hill or 
 Law, with tents, trenches, with pikes, muskets, Bible and 
 
CHAP. XXIV.] THE SCOTS AT DUNSE LAW 325 
 
 Psalm-books, and munitions of temporal and spiritual war- 
 fare, — advanced hither to their own Border, to petition his 
 Majesty, in a most respectful but emphatic manner. Many lie 
 there encamped ; Nobility, Gentry, Clergy, Commonalty, each 
 Earl or Lord with his tenants and dependants round him, a 
 Colonel he, a hardy drilled regiment they ; on every tent flies 
 this bandrol, 'For Christ's Crown and Covenant,' and at even- 
 ing and morning tide, as the drum rolls, there rises the voice 
 of prayer and of psalms. Alexander Leslie of Balgony, a little 
 crooked Fieldmarshal in big cocked hat, presides over it all, 
 with supreme natural discretion, and military vigilance and 
 experience ; a man equal to all emergencies, whom years, hard 
 German service, and example of Gustavus Adolphus, Lion of 
 the North, have taught wisdom ; who has looked in the face of 
 Wallenstein before now, and rolled him back from Stralsund 
 ineffectual after a siege of many months with all his big guns. 
 Little Alexander in his big cocked hat, is thought to under- 
 stand these matters. His Majesty looks at the phenomenon 
 through his spy-glass on the other side of the river from Birks 
 near Berwick, where his royal army lies encamped. Your 
 Majesty, we are come out to petition, at the Borders of our 
 poor country here, if your Majesty before invading us with 
 sword. Service-book, and actual execution, would but hear our 
 humble loyal desires ! Men ioyaller to your Majesty, breathe 
 not under God's sun. We kiss the hem of your Majesty's 
 cloak, and fling our hair under your Majesty's feet, and indeed 
 are inclined to be flunkies, rather than rebels, but we dare 
 not worship the living God with Drury Lane gesticulations, 
 Prompter's Service-book, Chinese beckings to the East. Alas, 
 we dare not and must not ; and upon the whole we will not. 
 We are here as your sacred Majesty sees, the representatives 
 of a whole Nation, driven to petition at last with muskets in 
 our hands. May it please your Majesty, reverse that Prompter's 
 Service-book, we will not have it, we will be cut in pieces 
 sooner ! 
 
 To such height has the matter come in two years. Mat- 
 
326 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 ters long compressed rapidly expand themselves when they 
 do burst forth. On signal of Jenny Geddes's stool, the whole 
 Scotch Nation rose, — not in violence and musketry ; very far 
 from that ; their fire we hope lay deeper in them than that. 
 By skilfullest management, guidance, wise, gentle as the dove, 
 walking always by the old law, or gently stretching it so that 
 it never broke, by petitions, legal protestings, by Convoca- 
 tion Tables, by National Covenant, Sacrament, and General 
 Assembly, here we are, peasant and peer of us, man, woman and 
 child of us, a whole Nation gone forth in the name of God to 
 protest against this thing, and have the happiness to be repre- 
 sented by 30,000 armed men under Fieldmarshal Leslie here. — 
 His Majesty looking close at it sees good to accept the Petition, 
 or seems to accept it, SoH droit Jait^ and we all go home again, 
 each in a wliole skin for the present. Not a stroke was struck 
 in this ' Bellum Episcopale.' ^ Earl Holland, he that built the 
 extant Holland House, and lost his own head at last, poor 
 man ; he, as Master of the Horse in this royal army, did ride 
 across in a warlike manner, towards Kelso as if he had meant 
 something, but the steel beginning all to glitter on the hill 
 sides as he came near, and Scotch trooper regiments to rendez- 
 vous themselves in a deliberate manner, his Lordship saw good 
 to call Halt and ride back again, without blood drawn. The 
 s-littering; steel masses followed him ; not chased him, Heavens, 
 no ! — escorted him rather, as a guard of honour, and saw him 
 safe over Berwick Bridge again. The truth is, this English 
 army had not the slightest disposition to embark in butchery 
 with these poor Scots on any such (quarrel. They wished them 
 well rather, said ni their hearts very many of them, God speed 
 you, poor Scotch people ; and deliver us from the heat of the 
 weather in Palace Yard - and elsewhere. You are in the van, 
 the forlorn hope, we also seem to stand amongst you, in the 
 rear of the same host. The management of the Scots in stand- 
 ing firmly on their guard, yet offering on the great and on the 
 little every conciliation to their individual brethren of England, 
 ' The ' First Bishops' War,' so called. - See ante, p. 273. 
 
CHAP. XXV.] THE SCOTTISH DECLARATION 327 
 
 is considered to have been of a very superior description. This 
 was the Pacification of Berwick, not destined to hold long. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 PUBLIC BURNING OF THE SCOTTISH DECLARATION 
 
 [1639-40] 
 
 Ox [a day in] ^ August 1639 at Cheapside the hangman is 
 again busy with braziers and kindled coal fires, escorted by 
 halberdiers and mounted or walking constables, presided over 
 by long-gowned Sheriffs and official persons, — doing stern 
 execution by fire, happily on Papers only : He is conflagrating 
 publicly in this solemn manner, a printed Paper called Scots' 
 Declaration ; ^ sending up in flames and down as black powdery 
 ashes, so many copies as he can procure of it ; how many, I 
 have nowhere learned. There rises the flame, crackling aloft, 
 there fall the ashes, at Cheapside ; emblematic of royal indig- 
 nation ; — the history of which transaction looks forward and 
 looks backward. Backward it is as follows : 
 
 The Pacification of Berwick was drawn out fully on official 
 paper, for anything I know, on sheepskin and vellum, but there 
 were some subsidiary corollaries and annotations, which in the 
 great hurry and anxiety it was only found possible to carry off 
 by word of mouth. For example, his Majesty in the written 
 Pacification could not well depart from the phrase ' Pretended 
 * Assembly,' as applied to the Glasgow General Assembly of the 
 
 ^ Blank left in the MS. for the day of the month, which was probably the 
 nth,— the day on which the Proclamation for burning the papers was issued by 
 the King and Council. 
 
 - The Papers burnt were: 'The Scottish Exposition of the Treaty of Berwick, 
 entitled "Some Conditions of his Majesty's Treaty with his subjects in Scotland, 
 before the English Nobility, set down here for remembrance." To which is 
 subjoined the Scottish Army's Declaration concerning their acceptance of the 
 King's answer.' — .S". P. Dom., ccccxxvii. 14; Rushworth, iii. 965. 
 
 The order for burning these Papers was made at a meeting of the Council, 4th 
 August, 1639. 
 
328 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 year before, which the Scots believed and asserted one and all 
 of them by tongue and pen, and were there to assert by pike 
 and gun, and every organ of soul and body, to be a most true 
 irrefragable Assembly; — the Acts of which his Majesty indeed, 
 as the basis of the whole Pacification, had consented to accept 
 and substantiate by a new Parliament and a new Assembly to 
 which there should no objection lie. Why did he not then 
 retract the phrase ' Pretended ' ? Well, perhaps it had been 
 better. Our haste is great, our anxiety to get the matter done. 
 Two hungry armies lying within wind of one another, hovering 
 and parading round one another: judge if this is a time to 
 spend hours, any hour of which may produce explosion, on 
 mere points of form : but his Majesty ""s temper, none of the 
 sweetest, had been sorely tried in regard to essential points ; 
 why fret him and get into new discusssions about points seem- 
 ingly more of form than substance.? You know what his 
 Majesty meant; his Majesty with his royal lips in our hearing 
 gives assurance that he means it so. The Scotch Commis- 
 sioners, as anxious as the English to have done, accept the 
 word-of-mouth assurances, leaving the writing as it is, report 
 in their own camp, redact and publicly sign the word-of-mouth 
 assurances as expository of the Treaty ; — and so with mutual 
 civilities, public dinners, speeches, prayers and great waving 
 of caps and friendly gesticulations, retire Northward, their 
 brethren of England retiring Southward, as from a business of 
 powder magazine and lit matches, — a business that could not 
 end too soon. And so the new Scotch Assembly have met, 
 and the new Scotch Parliament, and have done or are doing 
 what was consented on, and the word-of-mouth assurances 
 put to paper on Dunse Law in the year 1639, are put to 
 print in Edinburgh ; these with the needful developments 
 are put to print, and come forth as the Scotch Declaration ; 
 — which his Majesty, revolving in his altered soul the past and 
 the present phases of things, is now getting burnt by the 
 Hangman at Cheapside. That is his Majesty's resolution 
 touching those same word-of-mouth assurances, touching this 
 
CHAP. XXV.] THE SCOTTISH DECLARATION 329 
 
 version of them : hateful they and all versions and reminiscences 
 and accidents and qualities of them, worthy of the Hangman 
 alone. For his Majesty has now got other game afoot than 
 those word-of-mouth assurances, or any version of them true 
 or untrue. He has got Strafford over from Ireland, prospect 
 of Irish subsidies, Clergy subsidies, benevolences, and an English 
 army : War and vce victis to the treasonous Scots rebels. We 
 will summon a new Parliament for the fourth time, — an 
 English Parliament, — we will ask them for supply against 
 Scotch rebels : if they refuse, your Majesty is absolved before 
 God and man, and must have recourse to other methods. 
 Your Majesty has an Irish army to control that country, — 
 'that country,' or was it 'this country"'.'' Sir Henry Vane the 
 Elder's recollections are uncertain, nor could the world ever 
 yet entirely decide.^ Backward such is the history of that 
 transaction of the Hangman at Cheapside. 
 
 Forward, it issues in what the following Chapters will show. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 MEETING OF OLIVER ST. JOHN AND EDWARD HYDE^ 
 
 [1640] 
 
 These two Barristers happen to meet one another in West- 
 minster Hall on 5th May, 1640. Hyde is a firm -built, 
 eupeptic Barrister, Avhose usual air is florid-hopeful still ; a 
 massive man ; unknown depths of impetuosity kept down 
 under mountain rock-strata of discretion, which yearly pile 
 themselves higher and higher and are already very high for 
 his years. The other is a slouching, lean, long man, seems 
 
 ^ ' The Earl of Clare and others debated with Vane (the elder Vane) sharply, 
 What ^^ this kingdom" did mean; England or only perhaps Scotland? 
 Maynard quickly silenced him : " Do you ask, my Lord, if this kingdom be this 
 kingdom or not?"' — Baillie (cited by Carlyle, Miscellanies, vi. 60). 
 
 - Edward Hyde was created Earl of Clarendon in i66r. 
 
330 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 of atrabiliar humour, deep - eyed, internal fire enough, but 
 burning as in a reverberatory furnace, under thick iron covers, 
 only gleams of it shining through in crevices, rather question- 
 able-looking. The man is of immense legal toughness and 
 talent; gained immortal or quasi-immortal law laurels the 
 year before last pleading for Mr. Hampden in the Ship-money 
 case. The two Barristers as they meet in Westminster Hall 
 this day, seem to have changed characters : the florid, hopeful 
 Barrister looks sad; the gloomy lean Barrister looks joyous, 
 the dark-lantern visage of St. John shines almost like a light- 
 lantern. 'How now?' says Barrister Hyde. 'You do not seem 
 ' sorry that his Majesty has dissolved us all, and rashly smitten 
 ' his good Parliament^ in pieces today?" — ' Yes, our good Par- 
 ' liament, as you call it, could never have done the business. 
 ' We shall get a better Parliament before long. Things are in 
 ' the wind that will bring a really good Parliament. We must 
 ' be worse before we can be better and well."* — For his Majesty 
 has this day dissolved his Parliament, in a very short style 
 he asked them for supply against Scotch rebels, that he might 
 first chastise rebels, and then redress all manner of grievances 
 that it had entered into the heart of man to conceive. The 
 Parliament after due hemming and hawing, signified that it 
 would prefer the other method, — grievances redressed first, 
 or at least grievances and supply going pari passu. Are you 
 serious, are you inflexible? asked his Majesty, in the official 
 dialect, yet with haste, haste indorsed on all his questions. 
 The Parliament with much hemming and hawing managed 
 to grunt out decisively. We are serious, we are inflexible. 
 Then disajipear, hastily answered his Majesty. — 
 
 And so the Barristers, Ex-members, meet in Westminster 
 Hall, as above said ; and all Ex-members are busily packing up 
 their goods to be gone from Town again ; and Mr. Oliver Crom- 
 well, Ex-member for Cambridge, is packing up, and intending 
 for Ely and stock-farming in these Fen regions, and will pro- 
 bably take Cambridge by the way, and render some account of 
 ^ The Short rarlianicnt, which met on the 13th of April 1640. 
 
CH. XXVI.] OLIVER ST. JOHN AND E. HYDE 331 
 
 his stewardship to the Freeholders and corporation there. And 
 his Majesty is now intent on raising supply by other ways, 
 which in the course of that summer he does, by private sub- 
 scription, by clergy benevolence, by every devisable method. 
 Not in the successfullest Avay. Official men indeed subscribe. 
 Strafford dashes down his name for 20,000/, at one stroke, the 
 decisive Strafford. His Grace of Canterbury keeps his con- 
 vocation sitting, passing canons, an Etcetera Oath,^ mucii 
 noised of then ; granting clergy subsidies. Walter Montague 
 and Kenelm Digby urge the Papists to come forward in a 
 body, now or never, in his Majesty*'s extreme need; Scotch 
 rebels hanging on him and refractory English Puritans hanging 
 back from him. Down with your dust now ! Alas, it comes 
 to little. The City of London, requested to favour Majesty 
 with the loan of 100,000/., grimaces in the painfullest way, 
 and at length answers, 'Cannot, your Majesty'! We have 
 not the sum convenient, just at this juncture. Whereby the 
 Commission of Array and Second Bellmn Episcopalc cannot 
 have a fair chance, I should doubt. War and no sinews of war. 
 For all England is as the City of London ; answers in every 
 way, ' Cannot, your Majesty ' ; — our hearts are in no way set to 
 this second Episcopal War ; they are set totally against it, 
 your Majesty. Why should we shoot the poor Anti-episcopal 
 Scots for the little shrill Archbishop's sake ? It were sheer 
 suicide; shooting our own forlorn hope. We wish the Scots 
 right well in this business. Distressed to say we have not the 
 sum ; we have not any sum or thing in the shape of help con- 
 venient just at this juncture! The apprentices of London, 
 what we should now call the City Shopmen and such like, five 
 hundred of them, not without firearms, roll down in tumult- 
 uous assemblage to Lambeth, grimly inquiring after Laud, his 
 
 1 An Oath imposed by the Canons of 1640 : ' I,' A. B., 'do swear that . . . 
 I will never give my consent to alter the government of this Church by Arch- 
 bishops, Bishops, Deans, and Archdeacons, etc' ' A prodigious, bottomless 
 and unlimited Oath,' as a writer of that period calls it. The people protested 
 vigorously against being required to swear to an etc., hence the name of the 
 Oath. It is printed in Rushworth, iii. 11S6. 
 
332 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 little Grace.i His little Grace, the red face growing piebald 
 with fear, barricades his palace, ducks off to Whitehall, to 
 Croydon, to various successive places, and becomes a Chief 
 Priest eclipsed, or Archbishop girt-with-trcnibling.- Tlie 
 apprentices ransack his Lambeth, smash all glass in pieces, 
 disappointed of their Archbishop, and one of them gets 
 hanged, drawn and quartered for it, — his head and limbs 
 blacken aloft on London Bridg-e for a sign."^ Not satis- 
 factory to the apprentice mind ; unsatisfactory, though com- 
 pescent for the hour. — And the straggling armv marches 
 towards the rendezvous at Selby, at York, or Newcastle, with 
 few muskets or munitions in it, and such a temper as I have 
 rarely seen. Vociferous against Bishops and their chimerical 
 Mandarin fugle-work, now like to issue in cloven crowns; 
 decided not to be officered by Popish rascals ; ' you are a 
 ' Papist ; you shall not lead us, that 's flat ! ' Poor thick- 
 headed, heavy-handed, hobnailed men, hauled from the work- 
 shop and furrow-field, set marching on such an errand ; they 
 aggravate one another all day through the weary march : 
 Popish ceremonies, surplices at Allhallowtide, pampered High 
 Priests riding prosperous, and godly Mr. Burtons set in the 
 pillory to have their ears sawed off; and we marching here in 
 the dusty weather, in the broiling sun, and not a cup of beer 
 rightly allowed us ; for the beer is ineffectual, — and we have 
 never seen the colour of money, for they seem to have no money 
 
 1 On nth May 1640. ^ See ante, p. 295 ;/. 
 
 •' The name of this unfortunate man was, I beheve, John Archer. He was 
 a glover by trade, and had been acting as drummer to the rioters ; was captured 
 and put to the rack that he might disclose the names of the more important 
 instigators or ringleaders of the attack on the Archbishop's Palace. He main- 
 tained silence ; and in a day or two was hanged, drawn and quartered. Archer's 
 case is notable as being the last instance of Torture in England. More than 
 eleven years before, when Felton was tried, the Judges had unanimously 
 declared that Torture was altogether illegal ; Charles, however, by royal pre- 
 rogative since the law would not serve him, ordered the rack for poor Archer. 
 The warrant, 'Given under our signet, at our Court at Whitehall, 21st May, 
 1640,' still exists in the State Paper Ofiicc. See Masson's Life of Milton, 
 ii- 133-4- 
 
CH. XXVI.] OLIVER ST. JOHN AND E. HYDE 333 
 
 and no credit ! ' Steady men ! ' cries the marching Lieutenant. 
 ' Steady ? ' answer they under breath and sometimes above 
 breath, with huge universal growl, recovering tiieir few avail- 
 able muskets, bursting out into sheer mutiny. ' Several of 
 ' their Officers were shot by them during the march ''; the reader 
 can expand that little sentence ; and this, ' They broke into 
 ' Churches tricked out according to the Laud fashion, tore away 
 ' the Altar-rails and other newfangled tackle,' kick them down 
 and I daresay with curses, and reduce matters to the old foot- 
 ing. Puritan painful ministers had reverent salutation from 
 them ; Anti-puritan found it convenient to become rapidly 
 absent. Such detached cloud streaks of military force are 
 wandering from all sides of England towards Selby and the 
 Northern parts ; — likely when combined to make a formidable 
 army indeed ! They have no money, few muskets, the arms are 
 not yet come up, men are only carting them from Hull, and 
 conveyances are scarce owing to want of money : what thing 
 have they ? The Earl of Strafford — yes, he is a thing ; but he 
 is not all things. Where was the Earl of Strafford's wisdom 
 when he embarked himself, life and fortune, on such an inco- 
 herent, explosive, self-divulsive flotilla as this same ? I cannot 
 esteem him wise, I esteem him rash and desperate, if he think 
 to face Scotch Puritanism, the practical Fieldmarshal of Stral- 
 sund, solemn Covenant, and dear Sandy's^ troops with such 
 an apparatus as this. He will do it, he says ; yes, by the help 
 of God, and that Irish army. Papists mostly. He is sick but 
 unwearied, hopes against hope. Had all men been Straffbrds ; 
 — yes, but there is only one Strafford. Flaming fire cannot 
 kindle brick-dust, but must itself die amid the rubbish. What 
 kind of army this was, full of mutiny, without arms, munitions 
 or money, Lord Conway the practical general knows best ; as 
 readers may still see in his narrative ; an army full of mutiny, 
 empty of money, discipline, arms and goodwill. 
 
 ^ Sir Alexander Hamilton's. 
 
334 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 A SCOTCH ARMY ENTERS ENGLAND THE 
 
 SECOND 'bishops' WAR' 
 
 [1640] 
 
 A Scotch army marching with pike and musket, sonorous 
 with the voice of psalms and the noise of fifes and drums ; ' a 
 ' travelling Presbytery' goes with it, the regimental chaplains 
 make a Presbytery. It has waded solemnly across the Tweed 
 at Dunse, Montrose marching with decisive splash solitarv in 
 the van ; and day sets on Norham's castled steep somewhat 
 otherwise than it did in Marmion's journey six score years 
 before. This Scotch army, Officers and all, in blue-bonnets, of 
 the Kilmarnock species as I take it, with a cockade of Covenant 
 ribbons at the ear ; — men had called them in derision blue- 
 caps ; and they, with their very Colonels, Earls, Peers, Digni- 
 taries most of them, mounting the derided head-gear, had 
 symbolically answered, ' Yes, our caps are very evidently blue ; 
 ' — have you any objection?' 'None I, for my share.' To 
 have seen this army either in hats or caps, — to have seen the 
 Montrose head with its stern still eyes, with its haughty close- 
 shut lips and look of sorrow and valour, the face of one of 
 Plutarch's heroes, as a good judge ^ called him; to have seen 
 this face, I say, in blue-bonnet and cockade as he stept with 
 decisive splash across the Tweed, would have given me real 
 pleasure, — in whatever bonnet it had been ; — and the reader 
 can advise me whether mocking of it, except in a very 
 taciturn way, is like to turn out well. 
 
 On the 28th of August, accordingly, we find the little 
 crooked Fieldmarshal Leslie, having now fairly crossed South- 
 ward with his blue-caps, committees, leather and iron guns and 
 
 ' Cardinal de Relz, See ante', p. 266. 
 
CH. XXVII.] SCOTCH ARMY ENTERS ENGLAND 335 
 
 other apparatus, paying his way in the handsomest manner, and 
 emitting Proclamations of the most brotherly and consolatory 
 character, decides that he will wade the Tyne at Newburn, 
 the first ford above Newcastle, being desirous once more ' to 
 * present a petition to his Majesty.'' A petition backed by 
 Twenty Thousand armed men and a practical Fieldmarshal 
 with artillery and Committees of Estate. Alas, yes, fewer 
 men might carry the petition, but a malignant faction round 
 his Majesty would not permit it a hearing. His Majesty, in 
 sight of the 20,000, will perhaps hear it. We crave leave of 
 my Lord General here at Newburn, to pass peaceably and trv. 
 ' Three himdred of you may pass with the petition,'' answers 
 Conway ; ' more I cannot suffer to pass. I must stand to mv 
 ' field-works and my guns in case of more.' — ' Alas ! ' answers 
 the practical Fieldmarshal, who however has already over 
 night been busy at his own great guns withal. There are nine 
 of them, I think, rightly planted, manned, masked with bushes 
 on the brae-side, and Sir Alexander Hamilton, whom we call 
 dear Sandy, waiting but a signal. Who could expect other, 
 this long while ? Gloomy Rushworth ^ is on the height behind 
 Conway's batteries, out of gun range, with ass-skin and black- 
 lead ready ; he has come North into his own country, that he 
 might take all this in characters. Thanks, my gloomy friend ; 
 look then, and let us look. 
 
 To the eyes of Rushworth - there emerges first from the 
 indistinct mass, a Scotch horseman with black plumes, pranc- 
 ing exploratory on the farther side of the river, Rushworth 
 knows not distinctly why. See, there rapidly deploy them- 
 selves three hundred other horsemen, ride deliberately into 
 the stream, deliberately advance with drawn sabres towards 
 Conway's battery ; Conway's battery fires, the horse skip deftly 
 to the right, still to the right, and rather backwards, ... 
 
 1 ' A man,' says Carlyle, elsewhere, ' of simple aspect, yet assiduous, whose 
 gloomy look is not that of moroseness or ferocity, but merely that of severe 
 industry feeling conscious how severe it is.' 
 
 2 Collections, ii. 1237, 
 
336 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 [llie remainder of this Paper is lost. It was probably extracted from 
 the rest of the nis. to be used in The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Crom- 
 well. In the Chapter entitled 'Two Years' (Library Edition, i. 106) 
 there is a short account of this ' Battle of Newburn,' as it is sometimes 
 called, and of the events which rapidly followed it. It appears that the 
 Scottish Officer mentioned above had come down to the river merely to 
 water his horse, suspecting no danger, the men of both armies being on 
 good terms with each other. An English soldier, provoked by the 
 leisurely manner of the Scot, who was gazing at the English trenches 
 while his horse drank from the river, suddenly raised his musket and 
 fired : the Officer dropt from his saddle, wounded. Thereupon the 
 battle began. The crackle of musketry was soon followed by the roar of 
 cannon. Tlie Scottish artillery from the hillside and even from New- 
 burn Church steeple played down upon the English trenches with 
 such effect that their first trench was soon vacated. As soon as the tide 
 would permit, Leslie ordered the three hundred horsemen, above men- 
 tioned, to cross the Tyne, — the Scottish cannon meanwhile directing 
 their fire on the English second trench. This, too, was soon abandoned. 
 The three hundred got safely over, followed by others and again by 
 others. Before the Scotch army had all crossed the river the English, 
 who made only a half-hearted resistance, turned and fled. Their loss 
 was sixty killed and ' some prisoners ' ; the Scotch loss was soms ten or 
 twelve killed. The Scots took possession of Newcastle next day ; and 
 gradually of all Northumberland and Durham, and remained in various 
 towns and villages for about a year, on an allowance from England of 
 850/. a day ; and were very welcome to the English Puritans. A peace 
 was patched up at Ilipon, and Charles, after vainly trying various ex- 
 pedients to raise funds, was forced to consent to the summoning of 
 another English Parliament, — the Long Parliament, spoken of in the 
 next Chapter.] 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE LONG PARLIAMENT 
 
 [1640] 
 
 On Tuesday the Third of November, 1640, there sat down 
 a Parliament which, as begins now to be more and more 
 apparent, was the flower of all Parliaments, what we may call 
 the acme where they attained their maximum, became notable 
 and in due time imitable by all Nations, as we see them in 
 
CHAP. XXVIII.] THE LONG PARLIAMENT 337 
 
 these days; wherefrom again they are gradually dwindling 
 down towards their minimum whatever that may be. This 
 was called the Long Parliament, for indeed it sat some thirteen 
 years, had strange fortunes, and took preternatural-looking 
 spectres bv the beard, was extolled to heaven and deprecated 
 to Tophet ; but it might also be called the Great Parliament, 
 the Father of Parliaments. Had the French Constituent 
 Assembly, the French Convention, been foremost in time, they 
 doubtless might have vied with it or surpassed it in singularity ; 
 but they were only children of it ; if we will regard them well, 
 they sprang from it as emanations, imitations in many ways ; 
 it was the grand original : that makes the peculiarity of it. 
 For this Long Parliament did, after being duly extolled to 
 heaven and deprecated to Tartarus, contrive to accomplish its 
 task in this world ; the task, in a rude shape, lay done and 
 ineffaceable ; no Charles-Second's Parliaments could erase 
 'from the Journals,"' no man, not even a god, could erase the 
 Fact this Long Parliament had performed among the sons of 
 men. The gods themselves cannot alter the action that is 
 done. Its task lay rude but accomplished ; went on complet- 
 ing, perfecting, itself, the everlasting powers of Nature co- 
 operating with it. And so in 1688, in a milder Second 
 Edition, it came out presentable in polite drawing-rooms, as 
 a ' glorious revolution of '88,'' to the satisfaction of all parties 
 whatsoever ; celebrated with infinite bonfires, expenditure of 
 ale and constitutional eloquence, from end to end of English 
 land. And remains now as a Fact, presentable, patent, solicit- 
 ing observation from all mortals. So that, in 1774 an 
 American Declaration of Rights, an American Congress we may 
 say, as the eldest son of it, could take effect. And then, and 
 therefrom, in 1789, a French Constituent and Revolutionary 
 Convention, — which properly therefore is the second in descent 
 from it — its eldest grandson. The notablest grandson it ever 
 had ; a grandson set on a hill, a flaming mount, far-blazing 
 with intolerable radiance, at one time like to have burned up 
 the whole civilised world. Truly the notablest of all grand- 
 
 Y 
 
338 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 sons that had been or will be. But so conspicuous, at any rate, 
 that now all peoples and kindreds are bent on having their 
 Parliament as the one thing needful, — and evidently will and 
 must have it, so that the great and other grandsons of this 
 same Long Parliament are like to be many, as many in fact as 
 there are civilised nations in the Earth. For even kings do 
 now everywhere begin to see that this Parliament, freedom of 
 debate, ballot, taxing, and such like, will go the round of the 
 world, and cannot by earthly art be hindered from working 
 itself out to a consummation, that all mortals may see clearly 
 what it is, — whether the one thing needful or only one of the 
 things needful. From the English Long Parliament and its 
 works and King-killing, all this, as the Historical genealogist 
 can see, takes its pedigree. 
 
 For man is such an imitative creature — very observable even 
 in the genus Simia ; ^ left in the deserts, and night coming 
 on, the poor creature gazes nigh desperately to see if there be 
 no human vestige ; the print of human feet is in every sense as 
 a guidance to him, as hope to his heart and light to his eyes. 
 His imitative virtue : take that away from a man, you have 
 taken all from him. You have stript him not of his clothes 
 and shirt only, but almost of his very skin. He has no Tra- 
 dition or continuance of Past into Future ; the career of 
 human development, the history of civilisation, extends to a 
 maximum of three score and ten years. The man cannot 
 speak ; it is thousands of ages and their dumb struggle to 
 express themselves that have taught men to speak. If, as 
 Richter says, one new metaphor between the two Leipzig Book- 
 fairs be a fair average, what length of time must the building 
 of a Greek Language have cost ? Stript of imitation the poor 
 man cannot speak, he cannot even think, except extempore. 
 AVhat his wild eyes can discern as they flash out from him in 
 wonder, in want, in thousandfold eagerness, that is his thought; 
 not a stock of thought at all, but a scantling of insight from 
 hand to mouth ! When I think what man derives from imita- 
 
 1 The Monkey tribes. 
 
CHAP. XXVIII.] THE LONG PARLIAMENT 339 
 
 tion, his whole life-furniture, what he believes, knows, pos- 
 sesses, his dwelling-houses, his bookprintings, his very tastes, 
 wishes and religions, — can I wonder that the Past seems 
 worshipful, seems divine ? Puseyisms, etc. and (' we will be- 
 lieve as our forefathers believed ') cease to be wonderful to me. 
 Spiritual pedigrees are worth taking note of in a slight way ; 
 if much run upon they do not yield much, — and belong more 
 properly to the province of Dryasdust and Co. To whom at 
 present let us leave them. 
 
 Looking through the rubbish-continent and Rushworthian 
 chaos, one discerns dimly afar off, two hundred years off, an Old 
 London, — very curious, very dim, which one would like to see 
 so clearly ! Good Heavens, is it not certain as if we saw it 
 face to face (having flown thither with the Time-hat ^ on our 
 head), that they had all awoke out of sleep that morning in 
 variety of humours, eaten breakfast, and set to their trades 
 and tasks, such as were then going. Some five hundred thou- 
 sand (?) human individuals as I learn or guess under the fog 
 canopy. Reader, I will ask thee to do me the favour of asking 
 thyself not in word only but in thought, whither that Day 
 with the works, faces, persons, etc., that were in it has gone ? 
 The said Day in short where is it ? Not nowhither, for I still 
 see it. Thou standest mute. Thou hast no answer. Thy 
 inability to answer is in proportion to the intellect thou hast ! 
 Grant me accordingly this other practical favour, To cease 
 altogether talking about preternatural machinery and Epic 
 Hero-biographies that cannot go on without visible descent of 
 gods and such like. If all Olympus with Valhalla in the rear 
 of it Avere to descend visibly some morning, and vanish again, 
 so that one might take affidavit of it, what new wonder were 
 there for any except children and minors ? London city of 
 3rd November, 1640, was it not, and now in 1843 is it ? 
 
 ^ ' Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see 
 ourselves in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thauniaturgy, 
 and feats of Magic, were outdone.' — Sartor Kesarttis, p. 254. 
 
340 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 Gazing with inexpressible trembling curiosity into these 
 old magic tombs of our Fathers, into that far vanished 3rd of 
 November, 1640, I can see a city in considerable commotion, a 
 character of excitation, expectation superadded to the common 
 physiognomy of the place. The King it is true does not ride 
 the city to-day, as the wont is, but comes almost privately by 
 water. He rode the city three days ago with endless pomp, 
 returning from the Scotch army and the treaty of Kipon, — a 
 certain slender young man, of pale intelligent look not without 
 an air of dandyism, by name John Evelyn,^ saw him. The 
 King does not come to ride again ; but comes in gilt barge, 
 only bargemen and a river population getting leave to look. 
 His gilt barge and beefeaters, somewhat like his worship the 
 present Lord Mayor's, I suppose, are a matter wonderfully 
 indifferent to me,— by no means the thing I was in quest of. 
 
 People I do see there, whom I would give something to see 
 clearly ! That double-chinned elderly man, for instance, with 
 the brisk smiling eyes though the face does not smile, but is 
 heavy with long toil, imprisonment, the learned Mr. John 
 Pym of Brymore. Or Mr. Hampden, Member for Bucks. 
 Cheers from a stout population with doffed cap whenever he 
 is discovered, I think I can discern for that man. A man 
 of firm close-shut mouth, firm-set figure, and eyes beaming 
 with intelligence and energy close-shut ; the whole figure of 
 him expressing delicacy almost female, reluctant to offend ; 
 beautifully veiling, tempering, in mildest habitudes, cour- 
 tesies, principles, a fierce enough manly fire; what we call a 
 thoroughly bred man of the English stamp : great delicacy, 
 great firmness ; and indeed as the centre of all, a very great 
 pride, if thou wilt call it by such a name. Why should not 
 such a man be prideful, himself equal to the highest men ? A 
 most proud but most cultivated, thoroughly well-bred man, 
 Hampden of the Ship-money. 
 
 Antiquarianism goes for little with me : Good Heavens, do 
 we not know that we too shall one day be antiquities ? Never- 
 ^ The celebrated Diarist. 
 
CHAP. XXVIII.] THE LONG PARLIAMENT 341 
 
 theless, it would gratify me to understand in what manner 
 Edward Hyde was dressed that day. And the little Lord 
 Falkland, with his screeching voice but extreme gentility and 
 intellectuality — in a clean shirt, he, I cannot doubt. Did Mr. 
 Hampden ride up to Town attended by grooms ? 
 
 Let the dead bury their dead. Why should any man re- 
 enter upon the Laudian (Canterburian) controversy whether 
 Altars should be built into the East wall, or on the long settled 
 Divine Right of Kings? It is two hundred years ago, and 
 much has come and gone since then. . . . 
 
 So that in these Long Parliament matters it is to be owned 
 that the most part of the business has fairly escheated some 
 time since to the Antiquarian Societies and Picturesque 
 History Writers ; in whose hands may it have a blessing. 
 With the unconsumable in that business have we to do. If 
 there be no unconsumable ? But there is ! 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL JAMES HEATH AS BIOGRAPHER 
 
 Till Oliver's seventeenth year all records of him fail, except 
 the sham records of Carrion Heath and others, not worthy of 
 repeating any more. The Destinies have said, Be this man''s 
 youth and boyhood forever unknown to me. Let him emerge 
 from the obscure, a full-grown man ; with an athletic figure, 
 to fix the world's eye, to make the world ask, Whence came 
 these thews and sinews.? but to ask without any especial 
 response at all. Let the world try how it will respond ; trace 
 out significantly its own wisdom and folly by its manner of 
 responding ! Such being the arrangement of Destiny itself, 
 clearly enough all aesthetic regulations, and historical wishes 
 and regrets, have nothing to do but repress themselves and 
 go cheerfully to work in conformity. 
 
 Smelfungus calls poor James Heath, who was son of the 
 King's cutler and a royalist inhabitant of Grubstreet at that 
 early epoch, generally by no other name than Carrion Heath, 
 being to the heart indignant with him. Poor Heath, he had 
 to write Pamphlets, compilations and saleable rhapsodic matter 
 
342 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 for a living, at frightfully exiguous rates per sheet, we are 
 afraid ; and with a world all got into amazing alterations 
 since he quitted Oxford, and fancied he understood it all ! 
 This poor inhabitant of the Literary republic, was his fate 
 a gentle one ? — ' I will ask thee,' says Smelfungus, ' what kind 
 ' of blasphemy there is which can equal this of defacing the 
 ' image of the Highest when such is beneficently sent among 
 ' us, as at rare intervals it happens to go about in our Earth 
 ' under the shape of a heroic man ? Mark him who plies in the 
 ' puddles to cover it with mud ! He who thinks it worthy of 
 ' such treatment, what kind of thinking apparatus, of soul as 
 ' we say, must there be in him ? It fills me with a certain 
 ' sacred horror. Is Heroism common as road pebbles, then, in 
 ' this country ? Must industrious individuals get out of bed to 
 ' obliterate the exuberance of it by long-continued discharges 
 'of mud ? What can I call such a man but carrion ? There 
 ' was never any soul in him, or he would have taken to another 
 ' trade ; he would have died ten times rather than live by such 
 ' a trade. He had no soul, I say, or his thought would not 
 ' have been such a misthought, the summary of all conceivable 
 ' misthoughts. He was a living carrion even while he digested 
 ' and made a pretence to be thinking in Grub Street ; he is 
 ' become a dead carrion, and all men know him for what he is ! ' 
 — O Smelfungus, my dark friend, why this severity ? Heath 
 and his like are a kind of DeviPs Advocates, not without 
 their uses in the world. Unsafe to canonise anybody with- 
 out having heard the Advocatus Dmboli also to an end. 
 Advocates claim a kind of privilege even to lie ; much more 
 may DeviPs Advocates, Living Carrion, my dark friend. 
 
 But Smelfungus has his own notions about Carrion. This 
 is what I find on a leaf concerning Toleration : ' JMahomet 
 ' was quite right to say to men. Believe in Allah, or it 
 ' shall go worse with you, ye scandalous individuals in the 
 ' form of humanity. God is great and these appetites and 
 ' breechespockets of yours are small. Awaken from your grease- 
 ' element, or it will be merciful to extinguish you in it. Whtit 
 
CHAP. XXVIII.] THE LONG PARLIAMENT 343 
 
 ' good can you ever do, what good ever experience .'' Darkness 
 ' is in you. Darkness will alone come out of you. The living 
 ' carrion that says there is no God, I will mercifully slay him, 
 ' make him authentic carrion at least."* Heard ever mortal the 
 like ? What hope is there of the Abolition of Capital Punish- 
 ment, and any general condolence with criminal persons, if 
 men of genius, secretaries of Dryasdust societies speak such 
 things ! We shall have wars again, perhaps civil wars, men 
 rising up in the general putrescence of social things, and say- 
 ing, ' O general putrescence, behold, we are totally weary of 
 ' thee, behold, we will not live beside thee, we are in duel with 
 ' thee, and thou shalt die or we ! ' Was there nothing worse 
 yet heard of than death ? Woe to the mortal sons of men 
 when in their benevolences, gluttonies, pruriencies and bottom- 
 less pocketocracies, they take to twaddling to one another 
 extensively in that dialect ! Their day is not distant then. 
 An awakening is at hand, or else the eternal sleep. 
 
 The thing that thou actually lovest, choose that, even as 
 thou art minded ; it is the voice of thy whole being that 
 speaks then. Paint that, sing it, celebrate it, work towards 
 doing it and possessing it, deaf to all else. It is rich with 
 blessedness for thee ; every feature and figure of it emblematic 
 of good to thee : it is thy counterpart, that. 
 I This man Oliver Cromwell, from Ely, more than any other 
 of these Members of the Long Parliament, vibrates my mind 
 towards him, excites all my curiosity. With what interest do I 
 see him ambling up at a firm journey-pace to Town for the dis- 
 charge of Parliamentary duties, in rude country habiliments, 
 well wrapped against the cold, — with rugged weather-beaten 
 countenance ! Did he ride alone, or came he up perhaps 
 with Mr. Hampden, his Cousin ? At which Inn did he lie, 
 what manner of horse rode he ? All this I would dispute with 
 Antiquarian Societies ; but, alas, neither of us knows aught of 
 it. Consider the dim weather, the muddy ways, the por- 
 tentous aspect of the time, long heavy darkness, uncertain 
 gleam of deliverance peering through it. Mr. Cromwell, 
 
344 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 doubt it not, has cloaks, rough country wrappages of rather 
 antiquarian style and cut, the cut of which can now be of no 
 use to any tailor, or other; and rides with an infinitude of 
 thoughts, spoken thoughts, or mostly unspoken. The in- 
 finite element of Thought, stern, solitary, sad and great, like 
 the primeval sea with firmaments not yet divided, encompasses 
 him always, bodies itself from time to time into Thoughts, — or 
 does not so body itself, but lies silent as in obstruction as of 
 death, which is but an obstruction of travail and of birth, 
 equally painful, though a little profitabler ! I have marked 
 Mr. Cromwell as a choleric man ; indeed his face speaks it. 
 Look at that mouth, at those wild deep grey eyes, at that wart 
 on the brow, at that massive nose ; not beautiful, nor yet, in 
 spite of calumnies, ugly: meseems in that peaceable flattish fea- 
 ture there lies a capacity, like that of Chimera^s : of breathing 
 fire ! A troublous dark face, full of sorrow, full of confused 
 energy and nobleness. I regret much that it is not of a 
 Grecian ideal structure, the facial angle is not that of Mars 
 or the Phidian Thunderer : what a pity not ! It is the wearing 
 work-day face of an Englishman, not the holiday exhibition of a 
 Greek or other Jupiter. (A mixture of the lion and the mastiff, , 
 say physiognomists.) Mr. Cromwell, it must be added, is 
 given to weeping : incredible as it may seem. I have seen that 
 stern grim face dissolved in very tears like a girl's. For this is 
 withal a most loving man : who knows what tremulous thrill- 
 ings, wild pangs of fear and sorrow, burstings of woe and pity, 
 dwell in such a soul! Hope is there, high as the Heaven; Fear 
 also, deep as the Bottomless. — Let us look at INIr. Cromwell as 
 he plods along from Ely City, out of the marsh countrv towards 
 London and a Parliament which will be called Long. — O, j\Ir. 
 Cromwell, did thinking being ever find himself in a more 
 miraculous scene than this same P The sun and blue heavens 
 overhead, the green earth underfoot, and these deep fog- 
 continents that swim there. And this ugly mud-element of 
 November will brighten into May and summer : it is enough 
 to strike a man dumb. And I, how came I here.'' That is the 
 
CHAP. XXVIII.] THE LONG PARLIAMENT 345 
 
 miracle of miracles. Awakened out of still Eternity, I live, 
 and for a kingdom and inheritance all this Immensity has been 
 given me. Me I say ; for though I draw not the rents or sign 
 the lease-contracts of much or of any of it, yet according to 
 my capabilities, — as I can look or hear, listen or understand, — 
 from beyond the Dogstar to the Cambridge turnpike liere, 
 from the Fall of Adam, through the Four Monarchies,^ down 
 to the Long Parliament of Charles Stuart and present dull 
 month of November, is it not mine, to look upon, to listen to, 
 to understand, to sympathise with, — in a word to livie in and 
 possess, so as no mere rent-drawer can ? Immensity is my 
 Inheritance, and also the Eternity that is to come. Yes, 
 Mr. Cromwell, that is the amazement. 
 
 To depicture the thoughts of Mr. Cromwell as he plods 
 along on muddy highways towards London, at that epoch of 
 scientific and literary history, with such theories of the universe 
 and of Mr. Cromwell as a man could then have in the head and 
 heart of him, were a wonderful task ; which only a few readers, 
 of the intensest kind, could be expected to take interest in. 
 This man is of the sort we now call original men, men of 
 genius or such like ; the first peculiarity of which is that they 
 in some measure converse with this universe at first-hand, and 
 not under the employment of any scientific theory or in the 
 nakedness of none, — these have ever, deny it as we will, a kind 
 of divine worth for us. 
 
 Yes, had any James Boswell, riding cautiously alongside of 
 these two, with ass-skin and black-lead, with understanding- 
 heart and ear, jotted down the dialogue of Mr. Hampden and 
 Cousin Oliver ! What fraction of the Bodleian Library, of all 
 manner of Libraries, wouldst thou have been disposed to give 
 in exchange for it ? All Divinity Logics, Controversies of the 
 Altar, Episcopacy, etc. ? But so it is, O reader. Men have 
 no eye for the gods ; and Boswells I think are rarer than 
 even Johnsons. In Idolatrous ages it is nothing but empty 
 shambling clothes-screens and other Idols that they give us, 
 ^ Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman. 
 
346 HISTORICAL SKETCHES [part ii. 
 
 and it would almost seem as if there had been no gods there. 
 The seven hundred and fifty-three still extant portraits of 
 Charles i., what intrinsically are they worth to thee ? Was it 
 much nourishment that thy soul derived from looking never so 
 deep into that man, or was it little or almost none ? A bad 
 world, my masters. 
 
 One fancies Mr. Cromwell riding Townwards in company 
 with Hampden and others. A man not beautiful to look 
 upon, grim, other than comely. O, ye Daughters of England, 
 happily he is not bound to be beautiful ; can without penalty 
 suffer himself to continue ugly. — Ugly, and yet that is not the 
 word. Look in those strange, deep, troubled eyes of his, with 
 their look of never-resting, wearied thought-struggle, with 
 their wild, murky sorrow and depth; — on the whole wild face 
 of him ; a kind of murky chaos : almost a fright to weak 
 nerves ; at which nevertheless, you look a second time, and 
 sundry other times, and find it to be a thing in the highest 
 degree worth looking at. For the chaos is indeed deep and 
 black, yet with morning beams of beautifuUest new creation 
 peering through it. I confess I have an interest in this Mr. 
 Cromwell ; and indeed, if truth must be said, in him alone. 
 The rest are historical, dead to me ; but he is epic, still living. 
 Hail to thee, thou strong one ; hail, across the long-drawn 
 funeral aisle and night of Time ! Two dead centuries, with all 
 that they have born and buried, part us ; and it is far to speak 
 together : how diverse are our centuries, most diverse, yet our 
 Eternity is the same : and a kinship unites us which is much 
 deeper than Death and Time. Hail to thee, thou strong one, 
 for thou art ours, and I, at least, mean to call thee so. 
 
 FINIS 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury (1611-33), 85, 93, 94, 95, 98; 
 refuses to take part in Ladj- Essex' 
 Divorce Suit ; of Puritan tendencies ; 
 first recommended by the Earl of 
 Dunbar, 117 ; disapproves of the 
 'Book of Sports,' 139 n. ; advises 
 that England should aid the Elector, 
 164 n. 
 
 Adolphus, Gustavus, Lion of the North, 
 2, 263, 325. 
 
 Alum, manufacture of, 83. 
 
 Alured, Francis, 207, 208. 
 
 America, intercourse with, 86-89. 
 
 Anne (Queen of James i.), 48 n., 75, 78, 
 96, 98, 129, 130. 
 
 'Appello Caesarem.' See Montague, 
 Richard. 
 
 Arabella, Lady. See Stuart. 
 
 Archer, John, 332 n. 
 
 Aristocracy, Religious, 232. 
 
 Armada, Spanish, 149. 
 
 Armstrong, Archie, Court-fool, 245 n. 
 
 Arundel, Earl of, 141, 156, 254, 264, 
 265, 266. 
 
 Athole, Earl of, 3 n. 
 
 Azrael, Bridge of, 169, 169 n. 
 
 Bacon, Sir Francis (Lord Verulam, Vis- 
 count St. Albans), 33, 44, 56, 74, 93, 
 111 ; becomes Lord-keeper, 130 ; dis- 
 covered the new way of discovering 
 truth ; not a great soul, which he 
 seemed so near being ; a beautiful 
 kind of man, but of the earth, earthy, 
 131 ; ruined bj' ambition, secularity, 
 insincerity, bribery, 132 ; played 
 amazing tricks in the king's absence, 
 133; Arthur "Wilson on, 133 n.; over- 
 hauled by Parliament, told to ' Go,' 
 and goes the sorrowfullest of mortals, 
 170. 
 
 Balfour, Sir "William, 199, 210. 
 
 Balmerino, Lord (Elphinstone), forges 
 the king's signature to a letter to the 
 Pope, 71, 71 n. 
 
 Bancroft, Richard, Bishop of London, 
 
 takes part in Hampton-Court Confer- 
 ence, 24, 24 n. ; begs that ' schismatics 
 be not heard against their Bishops,' 
 30 ; heart of, ' melteth for joy that 
 Almighty God had given us such a 
 king as since Christ's time hath not 
 been,' 31. 
 Banks, Sir John, Attorney - General, 
 
 251. 
 Barlow, Bishop, Narrative of Hampton- 
 Court Conference by, 29. 
 Bastwick, Burton, and Prynne, 271-4 ; 
 speakers for the rights of Englishmen ; 
 fixed in pillories for two hours, muti- 
 lated and branded with red-hot iron, 
 amid a silence which had become 
 'pale,' 272-3. 
 Bellarmine, 53. 
 Berwick, 254; Pacification of, 324-327, 
 
 328. 
 Best, Captain Thomas, truculent sea- 
 bear, son of the Norse Sea-kings, 
 demolishes the Portuguese Fleet, 
 'nigh Surat in the Road of Swally,' 
 90, 91. 
 Bible, New Translation of, asked for by 
 the Puritans, 30 ; the Translation ap- 
 pears (in 1611), 85 ; ' barbarous enough 
 to rouse, tender enough to assuage,' 
 of a sincerity like verj- death, 85. 
 Bilson, Thomas, Bishop of "Winchester, 
 at Hampton - Court Conference, 24, 
 24 n. 
 Bohemia, and the Bohemians, 159-165. 
 Borroughes, Sir John, 196. 
 Bourchier, Elizabeth, marriage of, to 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, 144. 
 Bourchier, Sir James, 144. 
 Breadalbane Castle, 2. 
 Brown, Mrs. John, the carrier's wife, 
 
 273 n. 
 Bruce, Edward (second Lord Kinloss), 
 
 73, 99-103. 
 Buckingham, Duke of (George Villiers), 
 47, 47 n. ; description of, by D'Ewes, 
 143; goes Avith Prince Charles to 
 Madrid, 152 ; impeached by the Com- 
 347 
 
348 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 mons, 191 ; discomfiture of, at Rhe, 
 195-196 ; named by the Commons as the 
 bitter root of all these sorrows, 208 ; 
 will try to plaj- on the war-fiddle a 
 second time, 216 ; assassinated by 
 Felton at Portsmouth, 217. 
 
 Bull and Farnham, the Colchester Pro- 
 phets, 288-96. 
 
 Burlamachi, 198, 199, 210. 
 
 Canute, King, visits Ely, 59. 
 
 Car, Robert. See Somerset. 
 
 Catherine, Queen of Henry viii., at St. 
 Neot's, 13. 
 
 Cecil, Sir Edward, sails to attack Cadiz, 
 196, 197. 
 
 Cecil, Sir Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 47, 
 54, 71 n.. Ill, 113. 
 
 Cervantes, Don Miguel de, a celestial 
 Light - bringer ; last ride of, 104-5 ; 
 'you are that brave Miguel,' 105; 
 death of, 106 ; the Voice of the 
 Spanish Nation, 100 ; worth all the 
 Philips and one to boot, 107. 
 
 Chadderton, Lawrence, 24, 24 n., 29, 
 85, 123. 
 
 Chambers, Richard, refuses to pay 
 Tonnage and Poundage, 222, 223, 
 226. 
 
 Charles i., has thoughts of being Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, 78 ; 96, 97 ; goes 
 to JMadrid with Buckingham and 
 Richard Graham, 152, 182 ; charac- 
 terised, 181 ; Speeches and Letters of, 
 182; 'Eikon Basilike,' 182 n. ; mar- 
 ries Henrietta Maria, 183 ; expels the 
 Queen's French priests and attendants, 
 184 ; First Parliament of, 188 ; lends 
 eight ships to the French to fight 
 against Protestant Rochelle, 188 ; dis- 
 solves the Parliament of 1625, after 
 two short Sessions, 189 ; dissolves his 
 Second Parliament in a rage, 191 ; 
 changes his hand, tries to conciliate 
 the Commons, 209 ; has no sympathy 
 with the heart-tendency of England, 
 221 ; thinks Tonnage and Poundage 
 his, without grant from the Commons, 
 221 ; levies the same without a Bill, 
 222 ; dissolves his Third Parliament, 
 calls the Commons 'vipers,' 232; 
 Coronation of, at Edinbvirgh, 252-268 ; 
 described and characterised ; wholly 
 the great man cxce|)t the soul of him, 
 262 ; genealogy of, 263 ; at Birks, near 
 Berwick, 325 ; accepts the Scotch Peti- 
 tion and agrees to a peace, 32(i ; orders 
 the Scottish Declaration to be jiublicly 
 burnt by the hands of the hangman, 
 327; dissolves the Short I'arliament, 
 330 ; in the North, with a stiaggling 
 
 mutinous army to chastise the ' rebel 
 Scots,' 335; consents to the summon- 
 ing of another Parliament, 330 ; comes 
 privatel}', by water, to open the Long 
 Parliament, 340. 
 
 Chillingworth, 296, 318. 
 
 Chronicle, Parian, 265 n. 
 
 Clark, Archibald, Lord Provost of Edin- 
 burgh, 255 ; has a Speech to make, 
 and multiplex ceremonies to do, 256 ; 
 waits in painful expectancy, his 
 breathing fluttered into a series of 
 sighs ; presents the keys of the City 
 in a silver bason, 201. 
 
 Church, defined, 275 ; the true and the 
 seemimj, 275 ; grown to be an enor- 
 mous magic-tree with little or no root, 
 276, 277 ; the Scottish, under a fatal 
 cloud, 301. 
 
 Coke, Sir Edward (' Coke-upon-Lvttle- 
 ton '), 111, 120, 124 ; uplifts*^ the 
 Litan}-, 168 ; the cause of liberty in- 
 debted to ; never wanting with his 
 sharp jest and witty turn ; a master 
 of precedents, 176 ; works the Petition 
 of Right on the Potter's-wheel of a 
 debating House of Commons, 200 ; 
 thanks forever to, 200, 201 ; cannot 
 speak for weeping, 206 ; his voice 
 firmer now, 208. 
 
 Colchester Prophets, 288-296. 
 
 Conway (second Viscount), 333, 335. 
 
 Cook, Sir John, Secretary-, 201. 
 
 Cornwallis, Sir Charles, cited, 77 n. 
 
 Cotton, Sir Robert, 197. 
 
 ' Counterblast to Tobacco,' citation from, 
 54 n. 
 
 Court Precincts, 141-145. 
 
 Crew, Sir Thomas, 168. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, probably sees King 
 James at Hinchinbrook, 11 ; little 
 Oliver in the hand of his nursemaid, 
 11 n., 16; Nolh'kin all one wide-eyed 
 wonderment, Ki ; 60 ; member of a 
 New Company for draining the Fens, 
 63 n. ; 00 ; marriage of, to Elizabeth 
 Bourchier, 144 ; a sketch of, 145 : in 
 Charles's Third Parliament, 197, 'i03 ; 
 212; first Speech of, 224, 224 n. ; 229, 
 230, 299, 314, 341 ; dei)ictcd riding up 
 to Town to attend the Long Parlia- 
 ment, 343, 344 ; is epic, still living : 
 hail to thee, thou strong one ; hail 
 across the long-drawn funeral aisle and 
 niglit of Time, 34(). 
 
 Cromwell, Richard, ' my Darling, not 
 my Dick,' 13. 
 
 Cromwell, Robert, 12, 16, 61, 62. 
 
 Cromwell, Sir Oliver, son of the ' Golden 
 Knight,' 9, 16, 19, 02. 
 
 Cromwell, Thomas, 13. 
 
INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Dalbier, John, 198, 199, 210. 
 
 David, Scotch King, 12. 
 
 Davila, 296, 29() n., 318. 
 
 Declarationof the Commons to Charles i., 
 20;>, 209. 
 
 Declaration, Scottish, burned at Cheap- 
 side, 327. 
 
 Denbigh, the 3"oung Earl of (Basil 
 Fielding, Buckingham's nephew), offers 
 to change clothes with Buckingham (at 
 Plymouth), 19(5. 
 
 Denbigh, Earl of ("William Fielding), 
 goes in command of a Fleet for the 
 relief of Rochelle, 196. 
 
 Denbigh, Lady (Buckingham's sister), 
 216. 
 
 Devereux, Robert. See Earl of Essex. 
 
 Devorgilla, Lady, 137. 
 
 D'E\ve.s, Sir Simonds, 141, 142; cited, 
 143-144, 155-157 ; 164. 
 
 Digges, Dudlej-, 191. 
 
 Discourse, King James's, in the Star- 
 Chamber, 125-127. 
 
 'Dovetail,' sees an effigy of Guy Faux in 
 the New Cut, 66 ; describes the same, 
 making reflections and drawing deduc- 
 tions, 67. 
 
 Drummond, AVilliam, of Hawthornden, 
 259 ; cited, 259 n., 260, 260 n. 
 
 Drurv-Lane Theatre, burning of, 127- 
 130. 
 
 Dryasdust, 4 n. ; loves only his own 
 dreary jottings, 23 ; why summon 
 spectres from the vasty deep of, 110 ; 
 can't be sued in any Court of law, 
 304. 
 
 Duel, Sackville and Bruce, 99-103. 
 
 Duels, 78 n. 
 
 Dumfries, King James at, 137. 
 
 Edinburgh, Old, described, 253, 258, 304, 
 305. 
 
 Egerton, Chancellor. See Ellesmere. 
 
 Elder-Dramatists, 76 ; affair of, reaches 
 its culmination, 85. 
 
 Eliot, Sir John, carries impeachment of 
 Buckingham to House of Lords ; sent 
 to the Tower, and emitted again, 191 ; 
 speaking like pistol-bullets, his very 
 silence eloquent, 202; 227, 229; lies 
 dead and cold, 298. 
 
 Elizabeth, Princess, the flower of the 
 Court, 77 ; marriage of, to the Pals- 
 grave, 97 ; a Queen of Hearts, if not 
 otherwise a Queen, 98 ; 158, 164. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, Funeral of, 19 - 21 ; 
 bemoaned with true tears, 20 ; a brave 
 and great-souled woman, 21 ; 35. 
 
 Ellesmere, Lord (Thomas Egerton), 29, 
 31 ; acts as Lord High-Steward at the 
 Overbury Murder Trials, 124. 
 
 Elphinstone, Sir James. See Balmerino. 
 
 Elwes, Sir Jervis, appointed Lieutenant 
 of the Tower, 119 n. ; is tried, con- 
 demned, and hanged for connivance in 
 the poisoning of Overbury, 122 ; speech 
 of, from the gibbet, 123. 
 
 Essex, Earl of (Robert Devereux), strikes 
 Prince Henr}- for calling him ' son of 
 a traitor,' 112; 114; marries Lady- 
 Frances Howard; goes abroad, 114; 
 returns to England, and is divorced 
 b}' Lady Frances; goes abroad again 
 to learn the art of war, 116 ; 165 ; 
 commands the Parliamentary army 
 at the beginning of the Civil War, 
 114 n. 
 
 Evelyn, John, 340. 
 
 Falkland, Lord, 341. 
 
 Faux, Guy, and the Gunpowder Plot, 
 66-71 ; 219, 233. 
 
 Felton, John, buys a knife, 215 ; rides 
 into Portsmouth, assassinates Bucking- 
 ham, 217 ; in prison, 219 ; executed at 
 Tyburn, 220. 
 
 Fen Country, unpicturesque, but in- 
 teresting ; the Islands in, 58 ; King 
 Cniit visits, 59, 59 n. ; Guthlac settles 
 at Crowland in the, 60 ; draining of 
 the, 61, 62, 63, 63 n. 
 
 Ferdinand, King of Romans, 160. 
 
 Ferrar, Nicholas, 234-241 ; at Little Gid- 
 ding, 235 ; interviewed by Mr. Lenton, 
 238-240. 
 
 Finch, Sir John (the Speaker), 1.52, 201 ; 
 brings a message from the king, 205 ; 
 206, 208 ; dare not put the question, 
 227 ; is held down in his chair, 229 ; 
 becomes Lord Chief -Justice, 251. 
 
 Fortesque, Dc Laudihux, 296. 
 
 Frankenthal, Siege of, 165. 
 
 Franklin, the apothecary, concerned in 
 Overbury's murder, 118 ; peaches and 
 is hanged, l2l. 
 
 Friedrich, the ' AYinter-king, ' chosen king 
 of Bohemia, 161 ; sudden flight of, to 
 Holland, 162. 
 
 Fryer, Sir Thomas, 217 n. 
 
 ' Gaberlunzie ' Song, 3. 
 
 Galloway, Mr., Minister of Perth, 29. 
 
 Gates, General, 86. 
 
 Geddes, Jenny, dimly seen in deej) 
 Closes, scorning, sweeping, as a poor 
 servant ; will one da\- send the king a 
 message of a kind, 257 ; there remains 
 b\it the shadow of her name, 307 ; 
 belief of, 308 ; in St. Giles's Cathedral, 
 smites a hired 'clacker,' exclaiming. 
 'Thou false thief, wilt thou sing a 
 mass at my lug ? ' 309 ; hurls her stool 
 
350 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 at the Bishop's head ; is a Deborah in 
 Israel, 310. 
 
 Gibb, John, brings a reprieve for Raleigh, 
 112, 140; unjustly assaulted and abused 
 by King James, who is filled with re- 
 morse therefor, 146, 147. 
 
 'Gidding Parva.' See Little Gidding. 
 
 Godmanchester, 12. 
 
 Graham, Richard, 152. 
 
 Graham, Sir Robert, 3 n. 
 
 Gunpowder Plot, 66 ; Guido Faux and 
 Co. in Whinniard's cellar, with thirty- 
 six barrels of gunpowder, G9 ; failure 
 of, 69 ; the conspirators (AVarwick- 
 shire Hunt) all killed or hanged and 
 headed, 70. 
 
 Guthlac, 60. 
 
 Hamilton, Duchess of, 308. 
 
 Hamilton, Marquis of, 143, 254, 263, 
 263 n., 264. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir Alexaudei', 333, 335. 
 
 Hampden, John, in Charles's Third Par- 
 liament, 202, 206, 229 ; Manor-house, 
 Church and Alansion of, 317 ; occupa- 
 tion and character of, 318, 318 n. ; 
 impatience of, with Vatican Popes and 
 Lambeth Pontiffs, 319; the noble 
 speaker, has a talent of silence, too, 
 319 ; 340, 345, 346. 
 
 Hampton Court, Conference at, 23-43. 
 
 Hay, James (' Sardanapalus '), Earl of 
 Carlisle, 50 ; made a Knight of the 
 Bath, 73. 
 
 Hearne, Thomas, 236 ; extract from, 
 238-241. 
 
 Heath, James, 'Carrion Heath,' 341; 
 Smelfungus on, 342. 
 
 Heath, Sir Robert, Lord Chief-Justice, 
 removed from the Common - pleas, 
 251. 
 
 Henrietta Maria (Queen of England), 
 183, 184; beavitif ul and sprightly, but 
 unfortunate in her religion ; accom- 
 panied by a retinue of Jesuits and 
 tonsured priests with jjy xes and Popery 
 equipments, the root of infinite sor- 
 rows to her ; set to do penance ; is 
 driven quite beyond the vaporific 
 l)oint, 184. 
 
 Henry viii., 13; dissolution of monas- 
 teries by, 25. 
 
 Henry iv. (of France), assassination of, 
 92; 95, 95 n., 18.3. 
 
 Henry, Prince, knighting of, 72 - 78 ; 
 description of, by Sir C. Cornwalli.s, 
 77 n. ; death of," 94-96, 96 n, ; calls 
 Robert Devereux 'son of a traitor,' 
 112, 114. 
 
 Henry ii. 12. 
 
 Hereditary I'rincipk', 1, 2. 
 
 Hinchinbrook, King James at, 9-19 ; 
 once a Nunnery, 11 ; all in gala, 11 ; 
 ambrosial sumptuosities at, 14 ; has 
 become one of the houses of the 
 Zodiac, 14. 
 
 Hobart, Sir Miles, locks the door of the 
 House of Commons, 230, 232. 
 
 Holiday, Sir Leonard, with Nicholas 
 Leate, drains Moorfields, 79, 80. 
 
 Holland, Earl of, 254 ; at Berwick, 326. 
 
 Holies, Deiizil, 202; holds down the 
 Speaker, 229 ; puts three Resolutions, 
 231. 
 
 Holies, Sir John (Lord Houghton, 1616 ; 
 Earl of Clare, 1624), 73, 78 n., 141, 
 202 n. 
 
 Honours, sale of, 49. 
 
 Hopton, Sir Ralph, 203. 
 
 Hotham, Sir John ' ear-marked ' the 
 Devil his,' 202. 
 
 Howard, Lady Frances, daughter of the 
 Earl of Suffolk, 113 ; married to the 
 Earl of Essex, 114 ; turns her ambi- 
 tious thoughts on the Earl of Somerset, 
 114 ; gets a divorce from Essex, 117 ; 
 is married to Somerset, 120 ; tried for 
 the murder of Overbury, pleads guilty, 
 and is sentenced to be hanged, 124 ; 
 pardoned, and released from the Tower, 
 125, 125 n. 
 
 Howard, Thomas. See Arundel, Earl of. 
 
 Howell, James, Letters of, 153, 153 n. 
 
 Huntingdon, 9, 11, 12, 13 ; Oliver Crom- 
 well Burgess for, 203. 
 
 Hyde, Edward (Earl of Clarendon, 1661), 
 264 ; meets Oliver St. John, 329-333. 
 
 India, intercourse with, 90-91. 
 
 Infanta (Princess Maria), sister of 
 
 Philip IV., King of Spain, 147 n., 183. 
 Ireland, the bloody gashes of, closed for 
 
 the first time in recorded History-, 81, 
 
 82. 
 Isle of Devils, the, 88, 89 n. 
 
 James i. (King of Great Britain, 1603- 
 1625), 3, 3 n. ; at Hinchinbrook, 9 ; 
 hangs a cutpurse at Newark, without 
 trial, 10 ; enters London, 18 ; presides 
 over Hampton Court Conference, 27 ; 
 gives small countenance to Reynolds 
 and Co. ; 'No Bishop no King,' 30, 
 31 ; declares that the Puritans must 
 conform or leave the country, 32 ; has 
 (juitted hold of the real heart of Eng- 
 land, 42 ; of clear vision, if it were 
 deep enough, 43 ; a semi - impostor 
 within ; wonderfully gifted, says 
 Bacon ; quick of speech and of ready 
 wit, 44, 44 n. ; of large, but rtaccid 
 heart, 45 ; government of, bad and 
 
INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 unsuccessful ; speciosities alone beau- 
 tiful, realities unintelligible to, 46 ; 
 favourites of, 41!, 47, 54; a 'Second 
 Solomon,' we vow, 48; ])rogresses, 
 huntings, and drinking-bouts of, 48 ; 
 selling honours, giving honour to whom 
 honour is not due, a contribution to the 
 great Bank of Social Falsehood, 50; in 
 continual want of cash, 50 ; hunger and 
 hope, the inspiring genii of, 50 ; pro- 
 nounced <livine Discourses in the Star- 
 chamber ; an immense ]5rood-fowl set 
 over England ( ' cluck-cluck, ye unfor- 
 tunate English '), 53 ; in trouble with 
 his Parliaments, 54 ; discovers in Lord 
 Monteagle's Letter a hint of the Gun- 
 powder Plot, (31) ; wants a Scotch Car- 
 dinal ; negotiates with the Pope, 71, 
 71 n. ; a Sham-king onlj-, and the Chief 
 Chimera of England, 110 ; summons 
 all the Judges to the Overbury Murder 
 Trial, 120 ; a Rhadamanthus, but in 
 theory only, 125 ; pardons fatal Frances 
 and her husband, 125 ; Discourse of, in 
 the Star-chamber, 125 ; a most vigilant, 
 vehement, roj'al clucker, an 'old and 
 experienced King,' 12(5 ; assumes the 
 part of a real king, 127 ; Journey of, 
 to Scotland, 134-138 ; loyal Addresses 
 to, 135, 135 n. ; business of, in Scot- 
 land, 135, 135 n. ; desires to strengthen 
 and extend Episcopacy in Scotland, 
 'No Bishop no King,' 13G ; returns by 
 Dumfries, gives the burghers a ' Silver 
 Gun, ' 137 ; promulgates his ' Book of 
 Sports,' 138, 139; abuses John Gibb, 
 and is filled with remorse, 146, 147 ; 
 desire for the Spanish Match, the 
 whole Foreign Polic}* of, 148 ; not wise 
 enough to discern the true grand- 
 tendency, 149 ; opens his Third Par- 
 liament, 155 ; Deputation of the 
 Commons received bj', 157 ; is forced 
 to go voluntarilj- to the aid of Bohemia, 
 164 ; description of, at a stag-hunt, 
 267 ; falls into the New River, 267 n. ; 
 thanks God that the Prince can manage 
 a dispute in Theology with the 
 learnedest clerk, 297 ; death of, 188. 
 
 Jesuits, come to grief in arguing with 
 James Ussher, Primate of Ireland, 232. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 72 ; a true singer-heart ; 
 melodious as the voice of wood-doves, 
 fitfully thrilling as the note of nightin- 
 gales, 74 ; writes the Masque ' Prince 
 Henry's Barriers,' 74 n. ; the 'Satyr,' 
 75 n. ; in wit-combat with Shakspeare, 
 76 ; 'honoured Shakspeare, on this side 
 idolatry, as much as any man,' 76 ; 144, 
 166. 
 
 Jourdan, Silas, 86. 
 
 Kepler, Johann, Almanack - maker to 
 Kaiser Matthias, 107 ; discovers the 
 laws of planetary motions, 108 ; 132, 
 160. 
 
 Kimbolton, Queen Catherine at, 13. 
 
 ' Kingis Quair,' 3 n. 
 
 Kings, Twelve chairs for the twelve, 35, 
 157, 157 n. 
 
 Kirton, Edward, 'hopes we have hearts 
 and hands and swords, too, for a 
 stroke with our enemies,' 207 ; words 
 of, justified by the Commons, 209, 214. 
 
 Knewstubs, John, 24, 24 n., 57, 123. 
 
 Lamb, Dr., murder of, 210, 211, 2l2. 
 
 Laud, old Mr. William, the clothier at 
 Reading, 83. 
 
 Laud, William (Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury), 83, 136, 137, 190, 214, 219 ; a 
 disturber of the Church of England, 
 225, 230 ; has a three days' wrestle 
 with Fisher, the Jesuit, 233 ; goes with 
 King Charles to Edinburgh, 253 ; be- 
 comes Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 253 n. ; promotion of, 268 ; Life of, by 
 Hej-lin, 274-280 ; perplexing character 
 of, 277 ; a clean - brushed, cultivated 
 man ; will prove it for thee by never- 
 ending logic, 278 ; at once persecutor 
 and martyr, 279 ; turns his attention 
 to the spiritual state of England, 282 ; 
 has pricked a man or two that has 
 handled him, 283 ; thinks the Church- 
 devotion has fallen into an imperfect 
 condition, 284 ; will reform this : ' All 
 ye that labovir and are heavy-laden, 
 come unto me and I will — order you 
 to buy Canonical cloaks,' 285-286 ; is 
 asked to say ' where Jonah found his 
 Prayer-book when sunk in the whale's 
 belly,' 287 ; finds ' no religion ' in Scot- 
 land, 287 ; is jjlaying a heavier game 
 than he wots of, 300 ; decides that the 
 Prayer-book and Liturgy shall be im- 
 ])ressed into all churches in Scotland, 
 302 ; barricades his Lambeth Palace 
 against a mob, and becomes a Chief 
 Priest eclipsed or Archbishop girt-with- 
 trembling, 332 ; impeached by the 
 Commons, sent to the Tower and be- 
 headed on Tower Hill, 279 n. 
 
 Leighton, Dr., seeks lodgings in London, 
 242 ; practises medicine, 243 ; in Hol- 
 land, preaching, 244 n. ; publishes 'An 
 Appeal to Parliament,' 244; in the 
 Star-chamber, 245; in the Fleet Prison; 
 makes his escape, 247 ; the ' Hue and 
 Cry' after ; branding and mutilation of, 
 248 ; Keeper of Lambeth House, 248 n. 
 Lenton, Mr., visits the Ferrars at Little 
 Gidding, 236 n. 
 
352 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 Leslie, Alexander, 325, 32G, 334, 335. 
 L'Estrange, Hammond, 182. 
 Lindsey, Bog of, 2.3, 4.5, 58-60, 123. 
 Little Gidding, Nunnery of, 234-241, 254. 
 Liverpool, 84. 
 London, improvement of, 78-81 ; no new 
 
 houses to be built in, 81. 
 Long, Walter, 228, 230. 
 
 Mansfeld, Count Ernest, 34, 107. 
 
 Manwaring, Dr. Roger, Sermons of, 194 ; 
 a priest- Hunky, 195 ; had his quietus 
 yesterday, 19'J ; promoted bj- the King, 
 21.3, 214. 
 
 Martinitz, Javeslav von, IGO ; thrown out 
 of window, IGl. 
 
 Masques, Ben Jonson's, 74-7() ; Beau- 
 mont's, at Princess Elizabeth's Mar- 
 riage, 98. 
 
 Match, Spanish, 45, 147-153 ; closely 
 related to James's Parliaments, 1.50 ; 
 rejoicings at the failure of, 1.52. 
 
 May, Sir Humphrey, 201. 
 
 Men and Women, English, in the time 
 of Puritanism, 268-271 ; in an evening 
 party of ; figures, looks, dress, temper 
 and conversation of, 269-271. 
 
 Michell, Sir F., 128 ; how dealt with by 
 a Puritan House of Commons, 171-173. 
 
 Milton, John, the scrivener's son, 81, 
 1,33 ; cited, 178 n., 274. 
 
 Mobs, Spanish, 149. 
 
 Mompesson, Sir Giles, a monopolist, 170 ; 
 sharp eyes and beaks upon, 171. 
 
 Jlonopolies, 50, 154, 1.55, 250, 251. 
 
 IMontague, Lord, founds an endowment 
 of £40 to commemorate the Gunpowder 
 Plot, 67, 70. 
 
 IMontague, Richard (Bishop of Chiches- 
 ter), writes ' New Gag for an Old 
 Goose,' 192 ; ' Appello Cwsarem,' 193 ; 
 sentenced by Parliament to be fined 
 and incapacitated, 193 ; keeps all his 
 ])laces, and becomes Bishop of Chiches- 
 ter, 214, 224. 
 
 Monteagle, Lord, Letter to, 43, 69. 
 
 Montgomery, Earl of (Philip Herbert), 
 143. 
 
 Montrose, Earl of, 260, 207, 334. 
 
 Morgan, Sir Charles, leads a force to 
 assist the King of Denmark, 197. 
 
 ]Morton, Bishop, 01. 
 
 Morton, James, Earl of, 254. 
 
 Muir, Elizabeth, mother or grandmother 
 of the Stuart line, 3, 181, 186, 203. 
 
 Mulberry-trees jjlanted in England, 82. 
 
 Murder, the Overbury, 112-127. 
 
 Neile, Richard (Bishop of Winchester, 
 
 Archbishop of York), 214, 218, 225. 
 Newburn, engagement at, 335-330. 
 
 ' New Gag for an Old Goose.' See Mon- 
 tague, Richard. 
 Newport, Captain, 86, 87, 88. 
 New River, the, led into London bv 
 
 Slieriff Myddleton, 81. 
 Northampton, Earl of (Henrj- Howard), 
 
 97, 118, 119, 120. 
 Northumberland, Earl of, 93, 254. 
 Noy, William, 98 ; hesitates to become 
 
 Attorney-General, then accepts, 249 ; 
 
 the hatefullest of all men to us, 249 ; 
 
 j)roposes the Ship-mone}^ Writ, 250 ; 
 
 ' post-mortem ' examination of, 251 ; 
 
 Will of, 251. 
 
 Oath, the Ex-Officio, 31 ; the 'Etcetera,' 
 331, 331 n. 
 
 O'Neill, Shane, 82 ; Kennet on, 82 n. 
 
 Ophiuchus, 178, 178 n. 
 
 Osborne, Francis, 92 : ' Historical Me- 
 moirs ' by, 92 n. 
 
 Ouse, the River, held up in Bedford 
 Levels, 12, 13, 62. 
 
 Overal (Dean, Bishop), 28. 
 
 Overbury, Thomas, becomes intimate 
 with Car (Earl of Somerset), 113 ; is 
 practically Under-Secretary of State, 
 113 ; vehemently opposes Somerset's 
 marrying Lady Essex, 115 ; is sent to 
 the Tower, 116 ; threatens mischief, if 
 he be not attended to, 117 ; intem- 
 I)erate of tongue, 118 ; dies by poison, 
 and is buried in the Tower, 120. 
 
 Palatinate, 48, 94 ; is on fire, 155 ; 1,58, 
 102. 
 
 Parliaments, in the olden time, 185-186 ; 
 divided into Lords and Commons, 186. 
 
 Parliaments, James's, 1.50-165. 
 
 Parliament of 1604-1611, 153. 
 
 Parliament, the 'LTndertaker,' 1,54, 155. 
 
 Parliament of 1020-1021, 1.55-165; makes 
 a clearance of Blonopolists, 173 ; gets 
 into contradiction with the ' Dread 
 Sovereign,' 173; strikes work. 174; 
 sends a Dejmtation to the King at 
 Newmarket, 175 ; is dissolved, 175. 
 
 Parliament of 1625, 188 ; takes to Peti- 
 tioning on Religion, and is slow about 
 Supply ; is dissolved after two short 
 Sessions, 189. 
 
 Parliament of 1625-1626, 190; takes to 
 censuring, impeachment and Remon- 
 strance ; grants no Sni)i)ly, and is dis- 
 solved as with a Hash of fire, 191. 
 
 Parliament, Charles's Third, — First Ses- 
 .lion, 197-213; investigates tlie Burla- 
 machi affair, Dalbier, Traili)aston, 198 ; 
 the Petition of Right, the Palladium 
 of our liberties, 199-200 ; glimpses of 
 the leading Members of, 201-202 ; De- 
 
INDEX 
 
 353 
 
 claration to the Kin;?, 203 ; message 
 from the King to, 205 ; the Members 
 of, burst not into parliamentary elo- 
 quence but into a passion of tears, 
 205-207 ; names the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham and jjroceeds Avith the Declara- 
 tion, 208 ; is prorogued, 212. 
 
 Parliament, Charles's Third, — Sccoiul 
 Session, 221-232 ; considers the state 
 of Religion before passing the Tonnage 
 and Poundage IJill, 223 ; Oliver Crom- 
 well's first recorded Speech in, 224 ; a 
 happy issue to, as good as impossible, 
 226 ; Speaker of, dares not put the 
 question, 227 ; royal proclamation for 
 dissolution of, already drawn, 228 ; 
 Mr. Speaker held down in his chair, 
 229 ; passes three Resolutions, 231 ; 
 vanishes into infinite night, 232. 
 
 Parliament, the Long, the flower of all 
 Parliaments, 336 ; might be called the 
 Great Parliament, the Father of Par- 
 liaments, 337 ; glimpses of some of the 
 Members of, 340-346. 
 
 Parliament, the Short, .330. 
 
 Pashur (Laud), girt-with-trembling, 295, 
 295 n. 
 
 Patience and Hope, 298-299. 
 
 Paul's Aisle, and Paul's Cross, 92-93. 
 
 ' Peblis to the Play,' 3 n. 
 
 Pembroke, Earl of, 254. 
 
 Perth Monastery, James i. (of Scotland) 
 slain in, 3. 
 
 Petition, Millenarv, 14, 24. 
 
 Petition of Right,*199, 200. 
 
 Philips, Sir Robert, 169, 206, 225. 
 
 Platier, Fabricius, committed to a fall of 
 sixty feet, 161. 
 
 Portuguese of Goa, and Captain Best, 
 90. 
 
 Powhattan, King, the pipe-clayed, shell- 
 girdled majesty, 89. 
 
 Prague Projectiles, 157-163. 
 
 Precedents, English love of, 176-177. 
 
 Progress, material, in England, 78-85 ; 
 Spiritual, 85-86. 
 
 Purbeck, Viscountess, 111. 
 
 Puritan Riot, 127-130, 149. 
 
 Puritanism, first official appearance of, 
 24 ; will not go to Hades without 
 doing a bit of work in this world, 33 ; 
 will be the parent of many Shak- 
 speares, 34 ; goes away abashed, but 
 will come again with sword drawn for 
 sheer battle, with headsman's axe for 
 regicide, 36 ; a part of the indestruct- 
 ible, perennial sum of human things, 
 36 ; persuades to 2^'>'<^ii'^(i'i heroism, 
 57 ; 212. 
 
 Puritans, receive no countenance from 
 Majesty at Hampton - Court Confer- 
 
 ence, 30 ; are ordered to conform or 
 leave the country, 32 ; are forbidden 
 to emigrate to New England, 298. 
 Pym, John, 166, 192, 201, 298, 340. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, .56 ; writing ' His- 
 tory of the "World,' 93, 112 ; execution 
 of, 140-141 ; death-si)eech, and life of, 
 inarticulate tragedy, 141 ; the greatest 
 sacrifice the Spaniards have j'et had, 
 141. 
 
 Reynolds, Dr. John, born and brought-up 
 a Papist ; converts his brother and is 
 converted hy him ; the leading Puritan 
 at Hampton - Court Conference ; the 
 'very treasury of erudition,' 28; 32, 
 36, 85. 
 
 Rochelle, 188, 188 n. ; beleaguered, 215 ; 
 surrenders to King Louis, 218, 219. 
 
 Rochester, Viscount. See Somerset. 
 
 Rolf, Mr., marries King Powhattan's 
 daughter, 89. 
 
 Rolle, John, an Hon. Member, refuses 
 to pay Tonnage and Poundage, 222, 
 226, 229. 
 
 Rowallan, Elizabeth Muir of, .3, 181, 263, 
 
 Rudd, Anthony, Bishop of St. David's, 
 at Hampton - Court Conference, 24, 
 24 n. 
 
 Rudyard, Sir Benjamin, 166, 201. 
 
 Rushworth, John, citation from 'His- 
 torical Collections ' of, 211 ; 335 n. 
 
 Rymer, Thomas, 106, 106 n., 142. 
 
 Sackville, Edward (fourth Earl of Dor- 
 set), kills Edward Bruce in Duel, 
 99-103 ; 162, 167, 168, 168 n., 202. 
 
 Sackville, Thomas, 100, 100 u. 
 
 St. John, Oliver, 329, 330. 
 
 Savile, Sir John, 322, 322 n., 323. 
 
 Scotdi Coronation, 252-268. 
 
 Scotch folk, speech of, full of picturesque- 
 ness, humour, sly, deep meaning; what 
 they are, and what they have done, 
 305, 306. 
 
 Scots, the, at Dunse Law, 324-327. 
 
 Scottish Declaration, Burning of, 327 n. 
 
 Sea-Venture, the ship, sails for Virginia, 
 86 ; in a ' most sharpe and cruell ' 
 storm, 86-87 ; wrecked on Bermudas, 
 88. 
 
 Selden, John, writes 'History of Tithes,' 
 192 ; speech of, cited from, 227 ; 265. 
 
 Shakspeare, beautif ullest soul in all Eng- 
 land, 21 ; makes Past, Present, and 
 Future brighter for us, 22 ; a right 
 roj-al, archiepiscopal one, 22 ; Plays of, 
 34 ; in wit-combat with Ben Jonson, 
 76 ; retires to Stratford-on-Avon, into 
 a silence which no Dryasdust or other 
 obscene creature will ever penetrate. 
 
854 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 7G ; death of, 103 ; brightest creature 
 known to me, adieu, 104. 
 
 Shirley, Sir Roljert, ambassador from 
 Persia, 90. 
 
 Slavata, Wilhelm von, one of the Prague 
 Projectiles, ICO. 
 
 Smelf ungus, on Revolutions, 25 ; his 
 striking 'modern Puritan Sermon,' 
 37-43 ; on speech and the Bog of 
 Lindsey, 63-60 ; on an ' indiscreet 
 Biographer,' 341, 342 ; on Toleration, 
 342, 343. 
 
 Smithfield, drained and paved, 80. 
 
 Somers, Sir George, 86, 88, 89. 
 
 Somerset, Earl of (Robert Car), Viscount 
 Rochester, 46, 110, 111 ; royal favourite; 
 Overbury his working Secretary, 113 ; 
 responds to Lady Essex's advances, 
 115 ; marries the divorced Lady Essex, 
 120 ; is tried for murder of Overbury, 
 123 ; pleads not guilty, 125 ; is con- 
 demned to be hanged ; pardoned by 
 the King, and emitted from the Tower, 
 125 ; death of, 125 n. 
 
 Soubise, M. de, 188 n., 217. 
 
 Southampton, Earl of, 15 ; kindness of, 
 to Shakspeare, 22, 23 ; 254. 
 
 Spenser, his frosty Allegories and Faery 
 Queens, 57 ; 296. 
 
 Steward, Sir Thomas, Knight of Stunt- 
 
 ■ ney, 16. 
 
 Stewart, Sir Robert, 3 n. 
 
 St. Neot's, Town and Church of, 13. 
 
 Stuarts, a dash of Gypsy tragic in ; 
 their character and destiny, 3 ; kings 
 of talent, but not of talent enough, 5. 
 
 Stuart, Mary, Queen of Scots, 4. 
 
 Stuart, James i. (of Scotland), the Poet- 
 King, a right brave man, 3 ; assassin- 
 ated at Perth, 3 n. 
 
 Stuart, James iv., a royal-looking man, 
 with face beautiful and stern, 2. 
 
 Stuart, James v., character of, 3. 
 
 Stuart, James i. (of England). See 
 James i. 
 
 Stuart, Lady Arabella, 93, 111. 
 
 Thomlinson, Mr., discovers the Thurloe 
 
 Papers, 310, 311, 312. 
 Thurloe Papers, the, 310. 
 Tobacco, 'Counterblast to,' 53, 54; 
 
 cited, 54 n. 
 Tonnage and Poundage, 154, 154 n.; the 
 
 sheet-anchor of royal finance, 221 ; 
 
 Chambers and Rolle refuse to pay, 
 222 ; not to be levied without consent 
 of Parliament, 231. 
 
 Tournaments, 141-145. 
 
 Trade' s-Incrcase, the ship, 90. 
 
 Tradition, 314-317. 
 
 Trailbaston, 198, 199, 210. 
 
 Turner, Mrs., tried for murder of Over- 
 bury ; condemned to be hanged ; ap- 
 pears at Tyburn in yellow ruffs got up 
 a la mode, 122. 
 
 Vane, Sir Henry (the elder), 329. 
 Vasa, the last, of Sweden, only the case 
 
 of a true king, 2. 
 Vere, Henry (Earl of Oxford), 156, 165. 
 Vere, Horatio (Lord Vere of Tilbury), 47. 
 Villiers, George. See Buckingham. 
 Virginia, settlement of, 89. 
 
 Wade, Sir AVilliam, removed from the 
 Lieutenancy of the Tower, 119 n. 
 
 War, the Thirty Years', 162. 
 
 Weldon, cited, 44 n. 
 
 Wentworth, Sir Thomas (Earl of Straf- 
 ford), 167, 201, 202, 321 ; Tyrannj-'s 
 strong right-hand man, 321 ; gone over 
 to the Four Surplices, to Whitehall 
 and the gilt-formulas ; an honourable 
 soul seduced, 322 ; sees a new shorter 
 course open to him, 323 ; a stern, dovvn- 
 looking man, full of thoughts, energies, 
 — of tender affections gone mostly to 
 the shape of pride and sorrow ; noble 
 enough, beautiful and tragical, at all 
 events terrible enough, 324 ; accom- 
 panies King Charles to York, in the 
 Second Bishops' War, 333. 
 
 Weston, Richard, Overbury's keeper in 
 the Tower, 120, l2l. 
 
 Weston, Sir Richard (Treasurer), walks 
 in the Duke's footsteps, 230. 
 
 Whitgift, Archbishop, in dread of a 
 'Scotch-mist,' 15; at Hampton-Court 
 Conference, 24 : his last words, ' Pro 
 Ecclesia Domini,' 32. 
 
 Widdrington, Sir Thomas, 255. 
 
 Williams, John (Bishop of Lincoln, 
 Archbishop of York, 1641), Lord- 
 Keeper, comes to high words witli 
 Buckingham, 190 ; a questionable 
 maxim of, 190 n. 
 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, gone " to lie abroad ' ; 
 sees Kejjler, 107. 
 
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