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 THE SPANISH STOEY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ARMADA 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, 
 
 UlTK REGIUS PROFBSSOU OF MODERN HISTORY IX THE UXIVERSITV OF OXFORD. 
 
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 ■noAefiou t' (u r)p(aia(.i aperaicrii' 
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 Juru IS96, Auffuti 1899 July 1001. OctoUr lOOU. 
 
 Augutl 1009.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 AFTER completing my History of England from the 
 fall of Wolsey to the defeat of the Spanish 
 Armada, I had intended to pursue the story of the 
 sixteenth century, and to write the lives of Charles the 
 Fifth and Philip the Second. To them had fallen the 
 task of confronting the storm which had broken over 
 the rest of Europe. The opening of the Archives of 
 Spain, Paris, and Vienna had for the first time made it 
 possible to see the position in which they found them- 
 selves, to understand their characters and to weigh 
 impartially their conduct in a situation so extraordinary. 
 My own partial researches had already shown me that 
 the prevailing opinions about these two princes required 
 wide correction, and I thought that I could not better 
 employ the remainder of my life than on an enquiry 
 so profoundly interesting. To regard the Emperor, to 
 regard Philip merely as reactionary bigots, is as unjust 
 as it is uninstructive. They had to deal with a world 
 in atms, with a condition in which society was disin- 
 tegrated by a universal spiritual revolt, of which the 
 outcome was still utterly uncertain, and at such a crisis
 
 «i rREFACIi. 
 
 tlio wi«eHt .statesmen must have necfssarily been divided 
 Mil tln» condnrt wliich duty rcfjuired of them. 
 
 The hihoiir of investig.ition would have been very 
 gri'at, and the years which I could liave devoted to it 
 would at most have been none too many for so ambitious 
 an enterprise. I was obliged by circumstances to lay 
 my purpose aside until it was too late to begin ; and 
 it will fall to others, perhaps better (jualified than 
 niyself, to execute what, if successfully performed, will 
 be the best service that can now be rendered to modem 
 history. Of my own attempts nothing has come, or 
 now can come, save a few separate studies, such as the 
 story of Queen Catherine's Divorce as related by Charles 
 the Fifth's ambassadors, with the slight essays which 
 form half this present volume, and have been already 
 published in different peiiodicals. 
 
 The Divorce of Catiierine luis been brought out in 
 a separate form as a supplement to my History of 
 Kngland. The essays I reproduce because they were 
 carefully written, and I hope may have some interest 
 to historical students. The defeat of the Armada trans- 
 ferred the Empire of the Sea from Spain to England, 
 :uid the Spanish account of it cannot be read without 
 curiosity auil even sympathy. The ' Relacion ' of 
 Antonio Perez has, for three centuries, been the chief 
 authority for the private character of Philip the Second. 
 Philip wa^ once titular King of England. I have 
 thought it worth while to examine the character of 
 bis accuser. Tlie Life of Saint T-nesa exhibits the
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 spiritual entlmsiasm of the Spanish nation in its ooblest 
 form. 
 
 The subjects which occupy the remainder of the 
 volume have no connection with the sixteenth century. 
 Others, however, beside myself will have observed, at 
 least with curiosity, the majestic figures which lie on 
 the floor of the Antechapel in the Temple Church, and 
 will have asked themselves who and what these men 
 could have been when they lived on earth in flesh and 
 blood. The publication of the ' Proces des Templiers ' 
 by M. Michelet provides an answer to the question. 
 
 Sir George Lewis said that life would be very toler- 
 able if it was not for its amusements. Life, however, 
 without any amusements would be tedious, and books 
 given wholly to serious matters are tedious also. 
 Authors, like school-boys, require holidays, and the 
 sketches of the Norway Fjords are the records of two 
 summer excursions into those dehghtful regions, as a 
 guest in the yacht of a friend. Our graver writings 
 are the reflections of our studies. Some taste of the 
 flavour of our enjoyments may be preserved in the 
 diaries of our idleness.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 fKGi 
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA i 
 
 ANTONIO PEREZ: AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE 103 
 
 SAINT TERESA ^7^ 
 
 THE TEMPLARS 250 
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS 3" 
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE 359
 
 S THE SPANISH STORY OF THE AKMAD.U 
 
 sleep in the sIumIcs of their public offices, and what the 
 SpuiUHh commanders might have themselves to say of 
 their dt-feat and its causes has been left liitherto un- 
 printed. I discovered myself at Simancas the narrative 
 of the Accountant-General of the Fleet, ])on Pedro 
 Coco Calderon, and made use of it in my own history. 
 But Don Pedro's account showed only how much more 
 remained to be discovered, of which I myself could find 
 no record either in print or MS. 
 
 The defect has now been supplied by the industry 
 and patriotism of an officer in the present Spanish 
 Navy, who has brought together a collection of letters 
 and documents bearing on the subject which are signally 
 curious and interesting.^ Captain Fernandez Duro 
 deserves gratefid thanks and recognition, as enabling us 
 for the first time really to understand what took place. 
 But more than that, he reproduces the spirit and genius 
 of the time ; he enables us to see, face to face, the De 
 Valdez, the Recaldes, the Oquendos, the De Leyvas, 
 who had hitherto been only names to us. The ' Iliad ' 
 would lose half its interest if we knew only Agamemnon 
 and Achilles, and knew nothing of Priam and Hector. 
 The five days' battle in the English Channel in August 
 1588 was fought out between men on both sides of a 
 signally gallant and noble nature ; and when the as- 
 perities of theology shall have mellowed down at last, 
 Spanish and Enghsh authorities together will furnish 
 materials for a great epic poem. 
 
 * La Annada Invcncible. Por el Capitan Fernandez Duro.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. % 
 
 Until that happy and still far-distant time shall 
 arrive, we must appropriate and take up into the story 
 Captain Duro*s^ contribution. With innocent necro- 
 mancy he calls the dead out of their graves, and makes 
 them play their drama over again. With his assistance 
 we will turn to the city of Lisbon on April 25 of the 
 Annus Miralnlis. The preparations were then all but 
 completed for the invasion of England and the over- 
 throw of the Protestant heresy. From all parts of 
 Catholic Europe the prayers of the faithful had ascended 
 for more than a year in a stream of passionate entreaty 
 that God would arise and make His power known. 
 Masses had been said day after day on fifty thousand 
 altars ; and devout monks and nuns had bruised their 
 knees in midnight watches on the chapel pavements. 
 The event so long hoped for was to come at last. On 
 that day the consecrated standard was to be presented 
 in state to the Commander-in-Chief of the Expedition. 
 Catholics had collected from every corner of the world : 
 Spanish and Italian, French and Irish, English and 
 German, owning a common nationality in the Church. 
 The Portuguese alone of Catholic nations looked on in 
 indifference. Portugal had been recently annexed by 
 force to Spain. The wound was still bleeding, and 
 even religion failed to unite the nobles and people in 
 common cause with their conquerors. But Lisbon had 
 ceased to be a Portuguese city. Philip dealt with it as 
 he pleased, and the Church of Portugal, at least, on this 
 occasion, was at Philip's disposition. 
 
 There was something of real piety in what was going
 
 4 lllE SPANISH STORY 01 THE ARMADA. 
 
 (Ml ; :in<l tlierc was much of the artificial emotion which 
 horo the same relation to piety which tlio enthusiasm 
 of the Kiiiglit of La Manclia bore to true chivalry. 
 IMiihp liimsulf in certain aspects of his character was 
 not unlike Don Quixote. He believed that he was 
 divinely commissioned to extirpate the dragons and 
 ' monsters of heresy. As the adventure witli the en- 
 chanted horse had been specially reserved for Don 
 Quixote, so the ' Enterprise of England,' in the inflated 
 language of the time, was said to have been reserved 
 for Philip; and as analogies are apt to complete them- 
 selves, the short, good-humoured, and entirely incapable 
 Medina Sidonia, who had been selected for Commander- 
 in-Chief, had a certain resemblance to Sancho. The 
 Duke of Medina had no ambition for such adventures; 
 he would have greatly preferred staying at home, and 
 only consented to take the command out of a certain 
 dog-like obedience to his master. The representatives 
 of the imaginary powers had been called in to bring 
 him to accept the dangerous responsibility. A pious 
 hermit told him that he had been instructed by the 
 Almighty to promise him victory. The Prioress of the 
 Annunciata, Maria de la Visitacion, who had received 
 the five wounds and was punished afterwards as a 
 detected impostor, liad seen Santiago and two angels 
 smiting Drake and his imbelieving comrades, and she 
 a.ssurcd the Duke of glory in both worlds if he went. 
 The Duke's experience of English Admirals had been, 
 so far, not glorious to him at all. He had been in 
 command at Cadiz a year before when the English fleet
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 5 
 
 sailed up the harbour, burnt eighteen large ships, and 
 Avent off unfought "with, taking six more away with 
 them. All Spain had cried shame and had called the 
 Duke a coward, but Philip had refused to be displeased, 
 and had deliberately chosen him for an undertaking far 
 more arduous than the defence of a provincial port. 
 On this April 25 he was to receive his commission, 
 with the standard under which he was to go into 
 action, and the Catholic Church was to celebrate the 
 occasion with its imposing splendours and imperious 
 solemnities. 
 
 The Armada lay in the Tagus waiting the completion 
 of the ceremony. It was the most powerful armament 
 which had ever been collected in modern Europe, a 
 hundred and thirty ships — great galleons from a thousand 
 to thirteen hundred tons ; galeasses rowed by three 
 hundred slaves, carrying fifty guns; galleys almost as 
 formidable, and other vessels, the best appointed which 
 Spain and Italy could produce. They carried nine 
 thousand seamen, seasoned mariners who had served in 
 all parts of the world, and seventeen thousand soldiers, 
 who were to join the Prince of Parma and assist in the 
 conquest of England. Besides them were some hundreds 
 of nobles and gentlemen who, with their servants and 
 retinues, had volunteered for the new crusade, gallant, 
 high-spirited youths, quite ready to fight with Satan 
 himself in the cause of Spain and Holy Church. In 
 them all was a fine profession of enthusiasm — qualified, 
 indeed, among the seamen by a demand for wages in 
 advance, and a tendency to desert when they received
 
 6 THE SPAmSfl SrOKY Of THE ARMADA. 
 
 tliein. r»iit :i regiment of priests dispersed through tlie 
 various sfpiailrons kept alive in most the sense that 
 they w( re going on the most glorious expedition ever 
 tindcrtiken by man. 
 
 ^le standard which was to be presentedjteelf indi- 
 cated tlio~sacrccrcharacter of the war. Into the Royal 
 Anns of Spain there liad been introduced as supporters 
 on one side Christ on the Cross, on the other the Virgin 
 niotlicr; and on the scroll below was written : 'Exsurge 
 ])cus et vindica causam tuam,' 'Arise, Lord, and 
 avenge thy cause.' ' Philip, by the grace of God King 
 of Castile, of Leon, of dragon, the Two Sicilies, Jeru- 
 salem, Portugal, Navarre, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, 
 Gallicia, ilajorca, Sardinia, Cordova, Corsica, Murcia, 
 Jaeu, Algarvcs, Algcsiras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, 
 the East and West Indies, the Isles and Continents of 
 the Ocean; Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, 
 of Brabant and Milan, Count of Hapsburgh, Count of 
 Flanders, Tirol, and Barcelona ; Lord of Biscay and 
 Molina,* &c. ; the monarch, in short, whose name was 
 swathed in these innumerable titles, had 'aetermined to 
 commit the sacred banner to his well-beloved Don 
 Alonzo de Guzman, surnamed El Bueno, or the Good, 
 and under its folds to sweep the ocean clear of the 
 piratical squadrons of the English Queen. The scene 
 was the great metropolitan church of Lisbon, the Iglesia 
 Major. It was six o'clock in the morning; streets and 
 squares were lined with troops who had been landed 
 from the ships. The King was represented by his 
 nephew, the Cardinal Archduke, who was Viceroy of
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. ^ 
 
 Portugal. The Viceroy rode out of the Palace with the 
 Duke on his right hand, followed by the gentlemen 
 adventurers of the expedition in their splendid dresses. 
 At the church they were received by the Archbishop. 
 The standard was placed on the altar. Mass was sung. 
 The Viceroy then led the Duke up the altar steps, lifted 
 a fold of the standard and placed it in his hands, while, 
 as the signal was passed outside, the ships in the river 
 and the troops in the streets fired a salute — 'una 
 pequeiia salva,' a small one, for powder was scarce and 
 there was none to waste. The scene was not impres- 
 sive ; and the effect was frittered away in a complexity 
 of details. The Archbishop took the Holy Sacrament 
 and passed out of the church, followed by a stream of 
 monks and secular clergy. The Archduke and the 
 newly-made Admiral went after them, the standard 
 being borne by the Duke's cousin, Don Luis of Cordova, 
 who w^as to accompany him to England. In this order 
 they crossed the great square to the Dominican Con- 
 vent, where the scene in the Iglesia Major was repeated. 
 The Dominicans received the procession at the door. 
 The standard was again laid on the altar, this time by 
 the Duke of Medina himself, as if to signify the con- 
 secration of his own person to the service of the beings 
 whose forms were embroidered upon it. The religious 
 part of the transaction finished, they returned to the 
 Palace, and stood on the marble stairs while the troops 
 fired a second volley. The men were then marched to 
 their boats, with an eye on them to see that none 
 deserted, and His Koyal Highness and the Captain-
 
 8 THE SPANISH STORY OF 'JHE ARMADA. 
 
 UonemI of tlio Ocoan, as tin; Duko w.'is now cntitlcfl, 
 went ill to breakfast. 
 
 The prrsciitation liad wanted dignity and perliaps 
 seriousness. There was no spontaneous enthusia.sra. 
 The ritrtuguosc aristocracy were pointedly absent, and 
 tlic eflect was ratlicr of some artificial display got up 
 by the clergy and the Govcnimcnt. And yet the 
 c.\i>edition of wliich tliis scene was the preliminary had 
 for sixty years been the dream of Catholic piety, and 
 the discharge at last of a duty with which the Spanish 
 nation appeared to be peculiarly cliargcd. Tlie Reform- 
 ation in En«iland had commenced with the divorce of a 
 Spanish Princess. Half the English nation had been on 
 Catherine's side and had invited Philip's father to send 
 troops to help theui to maintain her. As the quarrel 
 deepened, and England became the stronghold of heresy, 
 the English Catholics, the Popes, the clergy universally 
 had entreated Charles, aiul Philip after him, to strike 
 at the heart of the mischief and take a stej) which, if 
 successful, would end the Protestant rebellion and give 
 peace to Europe. The great Emperor and Philip too 
 had listened reluctantly. Rulers responsible for the 
 administration of kingdoms do not willingly encourage 
 subjects in rebellion, even under the plea of religion. 
 The divorce of Catherine had been an affront to Charles 
 the Fifth and to Spain, yet it was not held to be a 
 sufficient gromul for war, and Philip had resisted for a 
 quarter of a century the supplications of the suffering 
 saints to deliver them from the tyranny of Elizabeth. 
 It was an age of revolt against established authority.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 9 
 
 New ideas, new obligations of duty were shaking 
 mankind. Obedience to God was held as superior to 
 obedience to man; while each man was forming for 
 himself his own conception of what God required of 
 him. The intellect of Europe was outgrowing its creed. 
 Part of the' world had discovered that doctrines and 
 practices which had lasted for fifteen hundred years 
 were false and idolatrous. The other and larger part 
 called the dissentientslrebels and children of the Devil, 
 and set to work to burn and kill them. At such times 
 kings vand princes have enough to do to maintain order 
 in their own dominions, and even when they are of 
 opposite sides have a common interest in maintaining 
 the principle of authority. Nor when the Pope himself 
 spoke on the Catholic side were Catholic princes com- 
 pletely obedient. For the Pope's pretensions to deprive 
 kings and dispose of kingdoms were only believed in by 
 the clergy. No secular sovereign in Europe admitted 
 a right which reduced him to the position of a Pope's 
 vassal, Philip held that he sufficiently discharged his 
 own duties in repressing heresy among his own subjects 
 without interfering with his neighbours. Elizabeth was 
 as Kttle inclined to help Dutch and French and Scotch 
 Calvinists. Yet the power of princes, even in the six- 
 teenth century, was limited, and it rested after all on 
 the goodwill of their own people. Common sympathies 
 bound Catholics to Catholics and Protestants to Pro- 
 testants, and every country in Europe became a caldron 
 of intrigue and conspiracy. Catholics disclaimed allegi- 
 ance to Protestant sovereigns, Protestants in Catholic
 
 lo THE SPANISH STORY OF TJIF. ARMADA. 
 
 countries looked to their fellow-religionists elsewhere to 
 save thcrn from stake and sword, and thus between all 
 parties, in one form or another, tlicre were perpetual 
 collisions, which the forbearance of statesmen alone 
 prevented from breaking out into universal war. 
 
 Complete forbearance was not possible. Community 
 of creed was a real bond which could not be ignored, 
 nor in the general uncertainty could princes afford to 
 reject absolutely and entirely the overtures ma<le to 
 them by each other's subjects. When they could not 
 assist they were obliged to humour and encourage. 
 Charles the Fifth refused to go to war to enforce the 
 sentence of Rome upon Henry the Eighth, but he 
 allowed his ambassadors to thank and stimulate 
 Catherine's English friends. Philip was honestly un- 
 willing to draw the sword against his sister-in-law, 
 Elizabeth ; but he was the secular head of Catholic 
 Christendom, bound to the maintenance of the faith. 
 He had been titular King of England, and to him the 
 English Catholics naturally looked as their protector. 
 He had to permit his De Quadras and his Mendozas to 
 intrigue with disaffection, to organise rebellion, and, if 
 other means failed, to encourage the Queen's assassina- 
 tion. To kill dangerous or mischievous individuals was 
 held permissible as an alternative for war, or as a means 
 of ending disturbance. It was approved of even by Sir 
 Thomas More in his Utopia. William the Silent was 
 nmrdercd in the Catholic interest. Henri Quatre" was 
 murdered in the Catholic interest, and any one who 
 would do the same to the English Jezebel would be
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. ii 
 
 counted to have done good service. Elizabeth had to 
 defend herself with sucHr~fesources as she possessed. 
 She could not afford to demand open satisfaction ; but 
 she could send secret help to the Prince of Orange ; she 
 could allow her privateers to seize Spanish treasures on 
 the high seas or plunder Philip's West Indian cities. 
 She could execute the traitorous priests who were found 
 teaching rebellion in England. Philip in return could 
 let the Inquisition burn English sailors as heretics when 
 they could catch them. And thus the two nations had 
 drifted on, still nominally at peace, and each unwilling 
 to declare open war ; but peace each year had become 
 more difficult to preserve, and Philip was driven on by 
 the necessities of things to some open and decided 
 action. The fate of the Reformation in Europe turned 
 on the event of a conflict between Spain and England. 
 Were England conquered and recovered to the Papacy, 
 it was believed universally that first the Low Countries 
 and then Germany would be obliged to submit. 
 
 Several times a Catholic invasion of England had 
 been distinctly contemplated. The Duke of Alva was 
 to have tried it. Don John of Austria was to have 
 tried it. The Duke of Guise was to have tried it. 
 The nearest and latest occasion had been after the 
 Conquest of Portugal and the great defeat of the 
 French at the Azores in 1583. The Spanish Navy 
 was then in splendid condition, excited by a brilliant 
 victory, and led by an officer of real distinction, Alonzo 
 de Bazan, Marques de Santa Cruz, A feSv'English 
 privateers had been in the defeated fleet at the Battle
 
 12 THE STAMSIl STOKY OF TJIE ARMADA. 
 
 of Tcnrini ; and SiintH Cruz, with tlie other naval 
 (•oimiiaiiilns, w.'us eager to follow up liis success ami 
 avenge tlio insults which lia<l been offered for so many 
 years to the Spanish flag by the English corsairs. 
 France, like all Northern Europe, was torn into factions. 
 'X\v\ Valois ]»rinces were Liberal and anti-Spanish. 
 The House (jf Guise was fanatically Catholic, and too 
 I)owerful for the Crown to control. Santa Cruz was a 
 diplomatist as well as a seaman. He had his corre- 
 spondents in England. In Guise he had a friend and 
 confederate. The plan of action had been secretly 
 : arranged. One of the many plots was formed for the 
 I murder of Elizabeth. Santa Cruz and the Spanish 
 Navy were to hold the Channel. Guise was to cross 
 under their protection and land an army in Sussex. 
 The Catholics were to rise, set free Mary Stuart, and 
 make her Queen. This was the scheme. The fleet 
 was ready. Guise was ready ; and only Philip's per- 
 mission was waited for. Santa Cruz was a rough old 
 sailor, turned of seventy, who meant what he said and 
 spoke his mind plainly. Like his countrymen gener- 
 ally, he was tired of seeing his master for ever halting 
 on his leaden foot {j)i6 dc •plomo)'^ and on August 9, 
 1 5831 while still at the Azores, he wrote to stimulate 
 him to follow up his success by still more splendid 
 achievement. Philip was now master of the Portuguese 
 Empire. He (Santa Cruz) was prepared, if allowed, to 
 add England to his dominions. The Low Countries 
 would then surrender, and the Jezebel who had wrought 
 so much evil in the world would meet her deserts.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. \\ 
 
 Now was the time. The troops were ready, the 
 fleet was in high condition. Philip talked of expense 
 and difficulty. If difficulty was an objection, the bold 
 admiral said that nothing grand could ever be achieved ; 
 and for money, great princes could find money if they 
 wished. The King should have faith in God, whose 
 work he would be doing ; and if he was himself per- 
 mitted to try, he promised that he would have as good 
 success as in his other enterprises. 
 
 Charles the Fifth, among his other legacies to his 
 son, had left him instructions to distrust France and to 
 preserve the English alliance. The passionate Catholics 
 had assured Philip over and over again that the way to 
 keep England was to restore the faith. But plot after 
 plot had failed, Elizabeth was still sovereign, and 
 Catholic conspiracies so far had only brought their 
 leaders to the scaffold. Mary Stuart was a true 
 believer, but she was herself half a Frenchwoman, and 
 Guise's father had defeated Philip's father at Metz, 
 and Guise and Mary masters of France and England 
 Doth was a perilous possibility. Philip did not assent ; 
 ne did not refuse. He thanked Santa Cruz for his 
 zeal, but said that he must still wait a little and watch. 
 His waiting did not serve to clear his way. Elizabeth 
 discovered what had been designed for her, and as a 
 return Sir Francis Drake sacked St. Domingo and 
 Carthagena. More than that, she had sent open help 
 to"°ETs~insurgent provinces, and had taken charge, with 
 the consent of the Hollanders, of Flushing and Brill. 
 Santa Cruz could not but admire the darinsr of Drake
 
 M THE SPANISH STORY OF THE AR.^fADA. 
 
 .-iixl tlio j;cuius of the English Queen. Tliey were 
 iictin^ while liis own ma.ster was asleep. He tried 
 again to rouse him. The Queen, he said, ha^l ina<]e 
 herself a name in the worUl. She liad enriched her 
 own subjects out of Spanish spoil. In a single month 
 they had taken a million and a half of ducats. 
 Defensive war was always a failure. Once more the 
 opportunity was his own. France was paralysed, and 
 Elizabeth, though strong abroad, was weak at home, 
 through the disaffection of the Catholics. To delay 
 longer would be to see England grow into a power 
 which he would be unable to deal with. Spain would 
 decline, and wouM lose in mere money more than four 
 times the cost of war.^ 
 
 This time Philip listened more seriously. Before, 
 he had been invited to act with the Duke of Guise, and 
 Guise was to have the spoils. Now, at any rate, the 
 lead in the campaign was to be his own. He bade 
 Santa Cruz send him a plan of operations and a calcula- 
 tion in detail of the ships and stores which would be 
 required. He made him Lord High Admiral, com- 
 missioned him to collect squadrons at Cadiz and Lisbon, 
 take them to sea, and act against the English as he saw 
 occasion. Santa Cruz would probably have been allowed 
 his way to do what he pleased in the following year but 
 for a new complication, which threw Philip again into 
 ])erple.\ity. The object of any enterprise led by Santa 
 Cruz would have been the execution of the Bull of 
 
 ' SanU Cnu: to Philip the Second, January 13, 15S6.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 1$ 
 
 Pope Pius, the detbrouement of Elizabeth, and the 
 transference of the crown to Mary Stuart, who, if placed 
 on the throne by Spanish arms alone, might be relied 
 on to be true to Spanish interests. Wearied out with 
 Mary's perpetual plots, Elizabeth, when Santa Cruz's 
 preparations were far advanced, sent her to the scaffold, 
 and the blow of the axe which ended her disconcerted 
 every arrangement which had been made. There was 
 no longer a Catholic successor in England to whom tlie 
 crown could go on Elizabeth's deposition, and it was 
 useless to send an army to conquer the country till 
 some purpose could be formed for disposing of it after- 
 wards. Philip had been called King of England once. 
 He was of the blood of the House of Lancaster. He 
 thought, naturally, that if he was to do the work, to 
 him the prize should belong. Unfortunately, the rest 
 of the world claimed a voice in the matter. France 
 would certainly be hostile. The English Catholics 
 were divided. The Pope himself, when consulted, refused 
 his assent. As Pope Sextus the Fifth, he was bound to 
 desire the reduction of a rebellious island ; as an Italian 
 prince, he had no wish to see another wealthy kingdom 
 added to the enormous empire of Spain. Mary Stuart's 
 son was natural heir. He was a Protestant, but srati- 
 tude might convert him. At any rate, Philip was not 
 to take Elizabeth's place. Sextus was to have given a 
 million crowns to the cost of the armament ; he did not 
 directly withdraw his promise, but he haggled with the 
 Spanish Ambassador at the Holy See. He afifected to 
 doubt the possibiUty of Philip's success, and even his
 
 l6 THE SPANISH SJOKY OI- yj/l-: AKAfADA. 
 
 {Kirsunal sincerity. He declined to advance a ducat till 
 ■\ Spanish aiiny was aciually on English soil. The 
 Prince of rarnia, who was to cross from Flanders and 
 conduct the campaign in England itself, was diffident, 
 if not unwilling ; and Philip had to feel that even the 
 successful occupation of London might prove the begin- 
 ning of greater troubles. He had been driven forward 
 himself against his inclination. The chief movers in 
 the enterprise, those who had fed the fire of religious 
 animosity through Europe, and prevented a rational 
 arrangement between the Spanish and English nations, 
 were the Society of Jesus, those members of it espe- 
 cially who had been bred at Oxford in the Anglican 
 Church, and hated it with the frenzy of renegades. 
 From them came the endless conspiracies which Spain 
 was forced to countenance, and the consequent severities 
 of the English Government, which they shrieked in 
 Philip's cars ; and Philip, half a bigot and half a 
 cautious statesman, wavered between two policies till 
 . fate decided for him. Both on Philip's part and on 
 j Elizabeth's part there was a desire for peace if peace 
 I could be had. Philip was weary of the long struggle in 
 the Low Countries, which threatened to be endless if 
 Elizabeth supported it. Elizabeth herself wished to 
 be left in quiet, relieved of the necessity of supporting 
 insurgent Protestants and hanging traitorous priests. 
 An arrangement was possible, based on principles of 
 general toleration. 
 
 The Pope was right in not wholly trusting Philip. 
 The Spanish King was willing to agree that England
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 17 
 
 should remain Protestant if England wished it, pro- 
 vided the Catholics were allowed the free exercise of 
 their own religion, and provided Elizabeth would call 
 in her privateers, surrender to him the towns which she 
 held in Holland, and abandon her alliance with the 
 Dutch States. Elizabeth was perfectly ready to tolerate 
 Catholic worship if the Catholics would cease their 
 plots against her and Spain would cease to encourage 
 them. It was true that Flushing and Brill had been 
 trusted to her charge by the States, and that if she 
 withdrew her garrison she was bound in honour to 
 replace them in the States' hands. But she regarded 
 the revolt of the Low Countries as only justified by 
 the atrocities of the Blood Council and the Inquisition. 
 If she could secure for the Dutch Confederation the 
 same toleration which she was willing herself to concede 
 to the English Catholics, she might feel her honour to 
 be acquitted sufficiently, and might properly surrender 
 to Philip towns which really were his own. Here only, 
 so far as the two sovereigns were concerned, the diffi- 
 culty lay. Philip held himself bound by duty to allow 
 no liberty of religion among his own subjects. On the 
 other hand, if peace was made the Spanish garrisons 
 were to be withdrawn from the Low Countries; the 
 Executive Government would be left in the hands of 
 the States themselves, who could be as tolerant practi- 
 cally as they pleased. On these terms it was certain 
 that a general pacification was within reach. The 
 Prince of Parma strongly advised it. Philip himself 
 
 wished for it. Half Elizabeth's Council recommended 
 
 c
 
 1 8 THE SI'ANISII STORY Of- THE ARMADA. 
 
 if, 1111(1 she herself wished for it. Unless Catholics and 
 Protestants intended to fight till one or the other was 
 exterminated, tliey must come to some such terms at 
 last; and if at last, why not at once? With this 
 purpose a conference was being held at Ostend Between 
 Elizabeth's and Parma's commissioners. The terms 
 were rational. The principal parties, it is now possible 
 to see — even Philip himself — were sincere about it. 
 How long the terms of such a peace would have lasted, 
 with the theological furnace at such a heat, may be 
 fairly questioned. Bigotry and freedom of thought had 
 two centuries of battle still before them till it could be 
 seen which was to prevail. But an arrangement might 
 then have been come to at Ostend, in the winter of 
 1587-8, which would have lasted Philip's and Elizabeth's 
 lifetime, could either party have trusted the other. In 
 both countries there was a fighting party and a peace 
 party. In England it was said that the negotiations 
 were a fraud, designed only to induce Elizabeth to relax 
 her preparations for defence. In Spain it was urged 
 that the Inrgor and more menacing the force which 
 cuuld be collected, the more inclined Elizabeth would 
 be to listen to reason ; while Elizabeth had to show on 
 her part that frightened she was not, and that if Philip 
 preferred war she had no objection. The bolder her 
 bearing, the more likely she would be to secure fair 
 terms for the Hollanders. 
 
 The preparations at Cadiz and Lisbon were no secret. 
 All Europe was talking of the enormous armament 
 which Spain was preparing, and which Santa Cruz w\as
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 19 
 
 to convoy to the English Channel. Both the Tagus 
 and Cadiz Harbour were reported to be crowded with 
 ships, though as yet unprovided with crews for them. 
 With some misgivings, but in one of her bolder 
 moments, the Queen in the sj^ring of 1587 allowed 
 Drake to take a flying squadron with him down the 
 Spanish coast. She hung about his neck a second in 
 command to limit his movements ; but Drake took 
 his own way, leaving his vice-admiral to go home 
 and complain. He sailed into Cadiz Harbour, burnt 
 eighteen galleons whicK were lying there, and, remain- 
 ing leisurely till he had finished his work, sailed away, 
 intending to repeat the operation at Lisbon. It might 
 have been done with the same ease. The English 
 squadron lay at the mouth of the river within sight of 
 Santa Cruz, and the great admiral had to sit still and 
 fume, unable to go out and meet him por falta de gente 
 — for want of sailors to man his galleons. Drake might 
 have gone in and burnt them all, and would have done 
 it had not Elizabeth felt that he had accomplished 
 enough, and that the negotiations would be broken off 
 if he worked more destruction. He had singed the 
 King's beard, as he called it ; and tKe" King, though 
 patient of affronts, was moved to a passing emotion. 
 Seamen and soldiers were hurried down to the Tagus. 
 Orders were sent to the Admiral to put to sea at once 
 and chase the English off the shore. But Philip, too, 
 on his side was afraid of Santa Cruz's too great audacity. 
 He, too, did not wish for a collision which might make 
 peace impossible. Another order followed. The fleet
 
 ao THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 was to stay where it was and to continue its preparations. 
 It was to wait till tlie next spring, when the enterprise 
 should be undertaken in earnest if the peace conference 
 at Osteud should fail in finding a conclusion. 
 
 Thus the winter drove through. Peace perhaps was 
 not really possible, however sincerely the high contract- 
 ing parties might themselves desire it. Public opinion 
 ill Spain would have compelled Philip to leave the 
 conqueror of Terceira in command of the expedition. 
 Santa Cruz would have sailed in March for the English 
 Channel, suf>ported by officers whom he liad himself 
 trained ; and, although the Armada might still have 
 failed, history would have had another tale to tell of its 
 exploits and its fate. But a visible coldness had grown 
 up between the King and the Admiral. Philip, like 
 many men of small minds raised into great positions, 
 had supreme confidence in his own powers of manage- 
 ment. He chose to regulate everything, to the diet 
 and daily habits of every sailor and soldier on board. 
 He intended to direct and limit the action of the Armada 
 even when out and gone to its work. He had settled 
 perhaps in his own mind that, since he could not him- 
 self be King of England, the happiest result for him 
 would be to leave Elizabeth where she was, reduced to 
 the condition of his vassal, which she would become if 
 she consented to his terms ; and with the presence of 
 an overpowering Beet in the Channel, a moderate but 
 not too excessive use of force, an avoidance of extreme 
 and violent measures, which wouhl make the strife 
 internee ine and make an arrangement hopeless, he con-
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 21 
 
 ceived that lie could bring Elizabeth to her knees. For 
 such a purpose Santa Cruz was not the most promising 
 instrument; he required some one of more malleable 
 material who would obey his own instructions, and would 
 not be led either by his own ambition or the enthusiasm 
 and daring of his officers into desperate adventures. It 
 was probably, therefore, rather to his relief than regret 
 that in February, when the Armada was almost ready 
 to sail, the old Admiral died at Lisbon. Santa Cruz 
 was seventy-three years old. He had seen fifty years 
 of service. Spanish tradition, mourning at the fatal 
 consequence, said afterwards that he had been broken- 
 hearted at the King's hesitation. Anxiety for the honour 
 of his country might have worn out a younger man. 
 He came to his end, and with him went the only chance 
 of a successful issue of the expedition. He was proud 
 of his country, which he saw that Philip was degrading. 
 The invasion of England liad been his dream for years, 
 and "Be liad correspondents of his own in England and 
 Ireland. He was the ablest seaman that Spain possessed, 
 and had studied long the problems with which ho would 
 have had to deal. Doubtless he had left men behind 
 among those who had served under him who could have 
 taken his place, and have done almost as well. But 
 Philip had determined that, since the experiment was 
 to be made, he would himself control it from his room 
 in the Escurial, and in his choice of Santa Cruz's suc- 
 cessor he showed that naval capacity and patriotic 
 enthusiasm were the last qualities for which he was 
 lookino-.
 
 2.' THE SPANISH STOhV OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 J)i>ii Alotizo (It: Giizm.'iii, Duke of Medina Sidonia, 
 wjus tlio richest peer in Spain. He was now thirty-eight 
 years old, and his experience as a public man was limited 
 to Ids failiin; to defend Cadiz against Drake. He was 
 a short, broad-shouldered, olive-complexioned man, said 
 to bo a good rider; but, if his wife was to be believed, 
 ho was of all men in Spain the least fitted to be trusted 
 with the conduct of any critical undertaking. The 
 Duchess, Dona Ana do Mendoza, was the daughter of 
 Philip's ^linister, Ruy Gomez, and of the celebrated 
 Princess of Eboli, whom later scandal called Philip's 
 mistress, and whose attractions were supposed to have 
 influenced Philip in favour of her son-in-law. Royal 
 scandals are dreary subjects. When they are once 
 uttered the stain is indelible, for every one likes to 
 believe them. The only contemporary witness for the 
 amours of Philip and the Princess of Eboli is Antonio 
 Perez, who, by his own confession, was a scoundrel who 
 deserved the gallows. Something is known at last of 
 the history of the lady. If there was a woman in Spain 
 whom Philip detested, it was the wife of Ruy Gomez. 
 If there was a man whom the Princess despised, it was 
 the watery-blooded King. An intrigue between a wild 
 cat of the mountain and a narrow-minded, conscientious 
 sheep-dog would be about as probable as a love-affair 
 between Philip and the Princess of Eboli ; and at the 
 time of her son-in-law's appointment she was locked up 
 in a castle in defiant disgrace. The Duke had been 
 married to her daughter when he was twenty-two and 
 his britlo was eleven, and Dona Ana, after sixteen years'
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 23 
 
 experience of him, had observed to her friends that he 
 was well enough in his own house among persons who 
 did not know what he was ; but that if he was employed 
 on business of State the world would discover to its cost 
 his real character. That such a man should have been 
 chosen to succeed Alonzo de Bazan astonished every 
 one. A commander of Gold, it was said, was taking 
 the place of a commander of Iron. The choice was 
 known to Santa Cruz Avhile he still breathed, and did 
 not comfort him in his departure. 
 
 The most astonished of all, when he learnt the 
 honour which was intended for him, was the Duke 
 himself, and he drew a picture of his own incapacity as 
 simple as Sancho's when appointed to govern his island. 
 
 * My health is bad,' he wrote to Philip's secretary, 
 ' and from my small experience of the water I know 
 that I am always sea-sick. I have no money which I 
 can spare. I owe a million ducats, and I have not a 
 real to spend on my outfit. The expedition is on such 
 a scale and the object is of such high importance that 
 the person at the head of it ought to understand 
 navigation and sea-fighting, and I know nothing of 
 either. I have not one of those essential qualifications. 
 I have no acquaintances among the officers who are to 
 serve under me. Santa Cruz had information about 
 the state of things in England ; I have none. Were I 
 competent otherwise, I should have to act in the dark 
 by the opinion of others, and I cannot tell to whom I 
 may trust. The Adelantado of Castile would do better 
 than T. Our Lord would help him, for he is a good
 
 2, 11 IE SPAMSn STONY OF 'IIIE ARMADA. 
 
 Cliristian and lins fought in naval battles. If you seud 
 mc, (lu[»on<l upon it, I sliall liavc a bad account to 
 rendtT of my trust.' ' 
 
 'J'lic Duchess, perhaps, guided her husband's hau<l 
 when he wrote so faitliful an account of liimself. But 
 his vanity was flattered. Philip persisted that he must 
 go. He and only he would answer the purpose in view, 
 so he allowed him.self to be persuaded. 
 
 ' Since your Majesty still desires it, after my con- 
 fession of incompetence,' he wrote to Philip, ' I will try 
 to deserve your confidence. As I shall be doing God's 
 Work, I may iiopc that He Avill help me.' 
 
 Philip gratefully replied : 'You are sacrificing your- 
 self for God's service and mine. I am so anxious, that 
 if I was less occu|)ied at home I would accompany the 
 fleet myself, and I should be certain that all would 
 go well. Take heart ; you have now an opportunity 
 of showing the extraordinary qualities which God, the 
 author of all good, has been pleased to bestow upon 
 you. Happen what may, I charge myself with the care 
 of your children. If you fail, you fail ; but the cause 
 being the cause of God, you will not foil.' 
 
 Thus the Duke was to command the Armada and 
 to sail at the earliest possible moment, for the com- 
 missioners were sitting at Ostcnd, and his presence in 
 the Channel was of pressing consequence. Santa Cruz 
 besides had fixed on the end of March as the latest 
 
 ' Medina Sidonia to Secretary Idiaquez, Feb. 16, 15S8. Duro, vol. 
 i. p. 414.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 2$ 
 
 date for the departure, on account of the north winds 
 which later in the season blow down the coast of 
 Portugal. The Duke at the time of his nomination 
 was at his house at San Lucar. He was directed to 
 repair at once to Lisbon, where his commission would 
 reach him. An experienced but cautious Admiral, 
 Don Diego Flores De Valdez, was assigned to him as 
 nautical adviser, and Philip proceeded to inflict upon 
 him a series of instructions and advice as wise and 
 foolish as those with which Don Quixote furnished his 
 squire. Every day brought fresh letters as suggestions 
 rose in what Philijo called his mind. Nothing was too 
 trifling for his notice, nothing was to be left to the 
 Duke's discretion which could possibly be provided for. 
 In a secret despatch to the Prince of Parma, the King 
 revealed alike his expectations and his wishes. He 
 trusted that the appearance of the Armada and some 
 moderate victory over the English fleet would force 
 Elizabeth to an agreement. If the Catholic religion 
 could be tolerated in England, and if Flushing and Brill 
 were given up to him, he said that he was prepared to 
 be satisfied. To Medina Sidonia he reported as his 
 latest advice from England that the Queen was 
 inclining to the treaty, but was dissuaded by Leicester 
 and Walsingham, and he gave him a list of the English 
 forces which he might expect to meet, which was 
 tolerably accurate and far inferior to his own. 
 
 So far Philip wrote like a responsible and sensible 
 prince, but the smallest thing and the largest seemed 
 to occupy him equally. He directed the Duke to
 
 a/; THE srANISIf STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 provide liirnsclf witli competent Channel pilots, as if 
 this was a point which might be overlooked. He laid 
 down ri'md.itions for the health of the crews, he fixed 
 himself tin; alhtwanccs of biscuit and wine, salt fish and 
 bacon. Beyond all, lie charged the Duke to attend to 
 their morals. Tiiey were in the service of the Lord, 
 1 and the Lord must not be offended by the faults of 
 I His instruments. The clergy throughout Spain were 
 praying for them and would continue to pray, but 
 .soldiers and sailors must do their part and live like 
 Christians. They must not swear; they must not 
 gamble, which led to swearing. If they used low 
 language God would be displeased. Every man before 
 he embarked must confess and commend himself to the 
 Lord. Especially and pre-eminently, loose women 
 must be kept away, and if any member of the ex- 
 pedition fell into the pccado nefarido he must be 
 chastised to the example of the rest. This was well 
 enough also, but from morals the King went next to 
 naval details, of which he could know nothing. He 
 had heard, he said, that the gentlemen adventurers 
 wantctl state-rooms and private berths. It would 
 encumber the ships, and the Duke was not to allow it. 
 As the Duke was ignorant of navigation, the King held 
 himself competent to instruct. He was to make 
 straight for the English Ciiannel, advance to the North 
 Foreland, and put himself in communication with 
 Parma. If foul weather came and the ships were 
 scattered, they were to collect again, first at Finisterre, 
 and tiien at the Scilly Isles. In the Channel he must
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 27 
 
 keep on the English side, because the water was deeper 
 there. Elizabeth's fleet, Philip understood, was divided, 
 part being under Drake at Plymouth, and part in the 
 Straits of Dover. If the Duke fell in with Drake he 
 was to take no notice of him unless he was attacked, 
 and was to keep on his course. If he found the two 
 squadrons united, he would still be in superior force 
 and might join battle, being careful to keep to 
 windward. 
 
 There were limits even to Philip's confidence in 
 his ability to guide. He admitted that he could not 
 direct the Duke specifically how to form the ships for 
 an engagement. Time and opportunity would have 
 to determine. 'Only,' he said, 'omit no advantage, 
 and so handle the fleet tliat one part shall support 
 another. The enemy Avill try to fight at a distance 
 with his guns. You wiU endeavour to close. You 
 will observe that their practice is to shoot low into 
 the hulls rather than into the rigs^incj. You will find 
 how to deal with this. Keep your vessels together, 
 allow none to stray or go in advance. Do not let 
 them hurry in pursuit of prizes after a victory. This 
 fault has often caused disaster both on sea and land. 
 Conquer first, and then you will have spoil enough. 
 The Council of War will order the distribution of it. 
 What I am now saying implies that a battle will have 
 to be fought ; but if the enemy can be got rid of with- 
 out an action, so much the better. The effect will be 
 produced without loss to yourself. Should the Prince 
 be able to cross, you will remain with the Armada
 
 2S 11 Hi SPAN/Sf/ STORY OF 71/ E ARMADA. 
 
 at tlio iiiDutli of tliG Tliamcs, lending such assistance 
 as you can. Consult with the Prince, and land none 
 of your forces without his approval, lieniember that 
 your only business is to fight at sea. Dififerences 
 between leaders are injurious, and always to be avoided. 
 I am confident that you will co-operate cordially with 
 tlie rrince as my service demands; but I must charge 
 you to follow these injunctions of mine strictly 
 according to the exact words. I have similarly 
 ilirccted the Prince on his own conduct, and if you two 
 acting together can succeed in your undertaking, there 
 will be honour to spare for both of you. You will 
 remain at the Thames' mouth till the work is done. 
 You may then, if the Prince approves, take in han<l 
 Ireland, in Avhich case you will leave your Spanish 
 troops with him and exchange them for Germans and 
 Italians. You will be careful in what you spend. You 
 know how costly the Armada has been to me. You 
 will also see that I am not cheated in the muster rolls, 
 and that the provisions are sound and sufficient. You 
 will watch the conduct of the officers and keep them 
 attentive to their duties. This is all which occurs to 
 me at present. I must leave the rest to your own care 
 and prudence, and for any further advices which I may 
 have to send you.' ^ 
 
 Much of all this was no doubt reasonable and true. 
 But Generals chosen to conduct great enterprises do 
 
 ' Philip the Second to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, April i. Dure, 
 vol. ii. pp. 5—13.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 29 
 
 not require to be taught the elements of their duties. 
 That Philip thought it necessary to write all these 
 details was characteristic both of himself and of the 
 Duke. But it was characteristic of Philip also, that 
 he had not made up his mind what the fleet was after 
 all to do, or what he himself wished it to do. The first 
 set of instructions was followed by a second, addressed 
 both to the Duke and the Prince of Parma. The 
 original purpose was that the fleet should make its way 
 to the North Foreland. Parma was to use its presence 
 in the Channel, to cross at once with the army, advance 
 to London and take possession of the Government, 
 where, in conjunction with Cardinal Allen and the 
 Catholic Nobles, he was to restore the authority of the 
 Roman Church. This, however, implied that the 
 English squadrons should have been first destroyed, or 
 driven off the sea into their harbours. It was possible, 
 as Philip foresaw, that the victory at sea might be less 
 complete. He assumed that the English would be 
 overmatched, but they were bold and skilful, and, even 
 if defeated, might be left in a condition to be trouble- 
 some. The passage of the army might in that case be 
 dangerous; and Parma was left on his own responsi- 
 bility to resume the negotiations at Ostend, Medina 
 Sidonia was to gain and fortify the Isle of Wiglif'f'SSd 
 the" presence of the Armada in the Solent was to be 
 used as an instrument to extort favourable terms from 
 Elizabeth's Government. It would be no longer 
 possible to demand the restoration of Catholicism in 
 England, but the free exercise of the Catholic religion
 
 30 THE SPANISH STOh'Y OF 7 HE /l/^Af/ir>A. 
 
 was to be insisted on. As the fust point, and for the 
 Rake of the toleration of the Catholics, Philip would 
 be willing to abandon his claim to compensation for the 
 plundering expeditions of Francis Drake. The next 
 condition was to be the restoration to the King of the 
 towns which Elizabeth held in tlie Low Countries. It 
 was possible that, before consenting, the Queen would 
 demand the same liberty of religion for the Protestants 
 of the Low Countries which she was required to grant 
 to her own Catholics. To this, however, Parma was in 
 no case to consent. The English might argue that tlie 
 Husruenots were tolerated under the Edicts in France. 
 Parma was to answer that the example was not to the 
 |)oint, that the King, at any rate, would not give way. 
 The Isle of Wight would be in his own hands. The 
 fleet would be safe in the Solent. Other fortresses 
 could be seized along the coast, and Elizabeth would 
 be forced to consent to a peace, under which she would 
 be virtually reduced into the position of Philip's vassal. 
 
 Accidents, however, might happen, and the Prince 
 of Parma also was perplexed with minute conditional 
 instructions. 
 
 Disast er it is evident that^hilip did not anticipate. 
 Something less than complete success In I'lobahly did 
 anticipate, and on the whole might prefer it. Satisfied 
 with having provided fur all contingencies, he was now 
 only anxious to see the Armada on its way. The nuns 
 and hermits, meanwhile, had removed the alarms of 
 Medina Sidonia, had convinced him that God could not 
 neglect a business in whieh }Jo was so peculiarly con-
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 31 
 
 cerned, and that, in the fine language of theological 
 knight-errantry, the service which he was to execute 
 had been specially reserved by Providence for the 
 King to achieve.^ 
 
 Such thoughts and such experiences were doubtless 
 indications of a high-wrought frame of mind ; but men 
 may dwell too exclusively on the conviction that God 
 is on their side, and perhaps forget that God will not 
 be found there if they neglect to do their own parts. 
 While the priests were praying and the King and the 
 Duke were calculating on the Divine assistance, they 
 were omitting, all of them, the most obvious pre- 
 cautions by which moderate success could be looked 
 for. Santa Cruz had reported that the fleet was almost 
 ready to sail. The stores of provisions had been laid 
 in while he was still alive, and the water-casks had 
 been filled. But after his death there was no responsible 
 person left in Lisbon to see to anything. Great naval 
 expeditions were nothing new in Spain. The West 
 Indies and Mexico and Peru had not been conquered 
 by men in their sleep ; and what ships and ships' crews 
 required for dangerous voyages was as well understood 
 at Lisbon and Cadiz as in any harbour in the world. 
 But the Armada was surrounded by a halo of devout 
 imagination which seemed to paralyse all ordinary 
 sense. It was to have sailed in Llarch, but, even to 
 the inexperienced eye of Medina Sidonia when he 
 
 ^ 'Y que lo tiene guanlado a 
 V. Md. para que por su mano y 
 con su gran zelo y christiandad, se 
 
 reduzca aquel Regno al grcmio j' 
 obediencia de su Iglesia.' Medina 
 Sidonia to Philip, April 1 1.
 
 32 THE sr.t\/s// sTOJ^y or the armai>a. 
 
 jinivfil .'it liis coiiiiii.-iiiil, tlic iii;ul»j(juacy of tlic pre- 
 parations was too obvious. The casks of salt meat 
 were foiiiul to be putrefying; tlie water in the tanks 
 hail not been renewed, and had stood for weeks, grow- 
 ing foul and poisonous under the hot Lisbon sun. Spare 
 rope, spare spars, spare anchors — all were deficient. 
 The powder-supply was short. The balls were short. 
 The contractors had cheated as audaciously as if they 
 had been mere heretics, and the soldiers and mariners 
 so little liked the look of things that they were desert- 
 ing iu hundreds, while the muster- masters drew pay 
 for the full numbers and kept it. Instead of sailing in 
 March, as he had been ordered, the Duke was obliged 
 to send to Madrid a long list of indispensable neces- 
 saries, without which he could not sail at all. Nothing 
 had been attended to save the state of the men's souls, 
 about which the King had been so peculiarly anxious. 
 They at any rate had been sent to confession, had 
 received each his ticket certifying that he had been 
 absolved and had duly commended himself to the Lord. 
 The loose women had been sent away, the cards and 
 dice prohibited, the moral instructions punctually com- 
 plied with. All the rest had been left to chance and 
 villainy. The short powder-supply was irremediable. 
 The Duke purchased a few casks from merchant ships, 
 but no more was to be had. For the rest, the King 
 wrote letters, and the Duke, according to his own 
 account, worked like a slave, and the worst defects 
 were concealed if not supplied. Not, however, till the 
 end of .\pril wore the conditions advanced sufficieutlv
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 33 
 
 for the presentation of the standard, and even then tlie 
 squadron from Andalusia had not arrived. 
 
 All was finished at last, or at any rate seemed so. 
 The six squadrons were assembled under their respective 
 commanders. Men and officers were on board, and 
 sailing orders, addressed to every member of the ex- 
 pedition, were sent round, in the Duke's name, to the 
 several ships, which, remembering the fate to which all 
 these men were being consigned by their crusading 
 enthusiasm, we cannot read without emotion, 
 
 'From highest to lowest you are to understand the 
 object of our expedition, which is to recover countries 
 to the Church now oppressed by the enemies of the 
 true faith. I therefore beseech you to remember your 
 calling, so that God may be with us in what we do. 
 I charge you, one and all, to abstain from profane oatha 
 dishonouring to the names of our Lord, our Lady, and 
 the Saints. All personal quarrels are to be suspended 
 Avhile the expedition lasts, and for a month after it is 
 completed. Neglect of this will be held as treason. 
 Each morning at sunrise the ship boys, according to 
 custom, shall sing " Good Morrow " at the foot of the 
 mainmast,^ and at sunset the "Ave Maria." Since bad 
 weather may interrupt the communications, the watch- 
 woid is laid down for each day in the week : — Sunday, 
 Jesus; the days succeeding, the Holy Ghost, the Holy 
 Trinity, Santiago, the Angels, All Saints, and our Lady. 
 
 ^ 'X/os pajes, seguu es costumbre, daran los buenos dias al pie del 
 mastil major.' 
 
 D
 
 34 rnj: srAMsn story or riir. armada. 
 
 At sea, every evening, cndi ship shall pass with a 
 salute under the loe of the Conimanflcr-in-Chief, and 
 shall follow at night the light which ho will carry in 
 his stern.' 
 
 So, as it were, singing its own dirge, the doomed 
 Armada went upon its way, to encounter the arms and 
 the genius of the new era, unc(iually matched with 
 unbelievers. On M^yI4 it dropped down the river to 
 Belem, and lay there waiting for a wind. A brief 
 account may here be given of its composition and its 
 chief leaders. The fleet consisted of a hundred and 
 thirty ships. Seven of them were over a thousand 
 tons and sixty-seven over five hundred. They carried 
 two thousand five hundred guns, chiefly small, however 
 — four, six, and nine-pounders. Spanish seamen under- 
 stood little of gunnery. Their art in their sea-battles 
 was to close and grapple and trust to their strength 
 and courage in hand-to-hand fighting. Large for the 
 time as the galleons were, they were still overcrowded. 
 Soldiers, sailors, officers, volunteers, priests, surgeons, 
 galley-slaves, amounted, according to the returns, to 
 nearly thirty thousand men. The soldiers were the 
 tinest in Europe ; the seamen old trained hands, who 
 had learnt their trade under Santa Cruz. They were 
 divided into six squadrons, each with its Vice-Admiral 
 and Capitana or flag-ship. The Duke carried his 
 standard in the San Martin, of the squadron of Por- 
 tugal, the finest vessel in the service, and, as the 
 Spaniards thought, in the world. The other five, of 
 Biscay, Castile, Andalusia, Guypuscoa, and the Levant,
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 35 
 
 were led by distinguished officers. Tlicre was but oue 
 commander in the fleet entirely ignorant of his duties, 
 tliough lie, unfortunately, was Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 As the names of these officers recur frequently in 
 the account of what followed, some description may be 
 given of each. /\ / 
 
 The Vice-Ad miral of the Biscay squadron was Juan \i/-\'-i^^ 
 Martinez de Recalde, a native of Bilbao, an old, battered 
 sea-wariior, who had fought and served {n'alT^arts of 
 the^cean. He knew Ireland; he knew the Channel; 
 he had been in the great battle at Terceira, and in the 
 opinion of the service was second only to Santa Cruz. 
 His flagship was the Santa Ana, a galleon of eight 
 hundred tons; he sailed himself in the Gran Grin, of 
 eleven hundred; so far fortunate, if any one in the 
 expedition could be called fortunate, for the Santa 
 Ana was disabled in a storm at the mouth of the 
 Channel. 
 
 The leaders of the squadrons of Castile and Anda- 
 lusia were two cousins, Don Pedro and Don Diego de 
 Valdez. Don Diego, whoin~lPhilip had chosen for the 
 Duke's mentor, was famous as a naval architect, had 
 been on exploring expeditions, and had made a certain 
 reputation for himself. He was a jealous, suspicious, 
 cautious kind of man, and Philip had a high opinion of 
 him, Don Pedro was another of the heroes of Terceira, ^-^ 
 a rough, nS^ld seaman, scarred in a hundred actions 
 with English corsairs, and between the two kinsmen ^ 
 r there was neither resemblance nor affection. Don 
 Pedro's misfortune in the Channel, which will soon be
 
 > 
 
 36 Tin-: SPANISH story of the armada. 
 
 hriinl of, l)r()n<;lit liiiii more lioiiour tl)an JJoii iJiciiO 
 osirnc'fl by his tiiniclity. He lived long after, and was 
 for eight years Governor of Cuba, where tlie Castle of 
 the Moro at Ilavannah still stands as his monument. 
 Two other officers deserve peculiar mention : Miguel 
 de Oquendo, who sailed in the Senora de la Rosar,'l)f 
 GiTypuscoa, and Alonzo de Leyva,""Svh6 lia/1 aT sliip of 
 his own, the Rata Coronada. Oquendo's career had 
 been singularly distinguished. He had beeu the terror 
 of the Turks in the Mediterranean. At Terceira, at a 
 critical point in tlie action, he had rescued Santa Cruz 
 when four French vessels were alongside of him. He 
 had himself captured the French Admiral's flagship, 
 carrying her by boarding, and sending his own flag to 
 her masthead above the smoke of the battle. He was 
 an excellent seaman besides, and managed his ship, 
 as was said, as easily as a horse. Alonzo de Xeyva 
 held no special command^ beyond his own vessel ; but 
 he had been named by Philip to succeed Medina 
 Sidonia in case of misadventure. With him, and 
 under his special charfje, were most of the hifjh-born 
 adventurous youths who had volunteered for the 
 crusade. Neither he nor they Avere ever to see Spain 
 again, but Spanish history ought not to forget him, 
 and ought not to forget Oquendo. 
 
 Of priests and friars there were a hundred and 
 eighty ; of surgeons, doctors, and their assistants, in the 
 entire fleet, not more than eighty-five. The numbers 
 might have been reversed with advantage. Among the 
 adventurers one only may be noted particularly, the
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 37 
 
 poet Lope de Vega, then smarting from disappointment 
 in a love-affair, and seeking new excitement. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Avinds were iinpropitious. For four- 
 teen days the fleet lay at anchor at the mouth of the 
 Tagus unable to get away. They weighed at last on 
 May 28, and stood out to sea ; biit a noFtherly breeze 
 drove them to leeward, and they could make no pro- 
 gress, while almost instantly on their sailing the state 
 of the stores Avas brought to light. The water had 
 been on board for four months ! the casks were leaking, 
 and what was left of it was unfit to drink. The pro- 
 visions, salt meat, cheese, biscuit, were found to be half 
 putrid, and a remarkable order was issued to serve out 
 first what was in worse condition, that the supplies 
 might hold out the longer. As the ships were to keep 
 together, the course and speed were necessarily governed 
 by those which sailed the worst. The galleons, high 
 built, and with shallow draught of water, moved toler- 
 ably before the wind, but were powerless to work 
 against it. The north wind freshened. They were 
 carried down as low as Cape St. Vincent, standing out 
 and in, and losing ground on each tack. After a fort- 
 night's labour they were only in the latitude of Lisbon 
 again. Tenders were sent in every day to Philip, with 
 an account of their jjrogress. Instead of being in the 
 mouth of the Channel, the Duke had to report that he 
 could make no way at all, and, far worse than that, the 
 entire ships' companies were on the way to beino- 
 poisoned. Each provision cask which was opened was 
 found worse than the last. The biscuit was mouldy,
 
 38 THE SPANlSir STOKY Ol- 'IHE ARMADA. 
 
 the meat and fisli stinking, tlif; water foul aii(J breeding 
 (lysentery. Tlio crews and companies were loud in 
 complaint; the officers had lost heart, and the Duke, 
 who :it starting liad been drawing pictures in his 
 imagination ol" glorious victories, had already begun to 
 huncnt his weakness in having accepted the command. 
 He trusted fJod would help him, he said. He wi.shed 
 no harm to any one. He had left his quiet, and his 
 home, and his children, out of pure love to his ^lajesty, 
 and he hoped his Majesty would remember it.^ The 
 .state of the stores was so desperate, especially of the 
 water, that it was held unsafe to proceed. The pilots 
 said that they must put into some port for a fresh 
 supply. The Duke feared that if he consented the men, 
 in their present humour, would take the opportunity 
 and desert. 
 
 At length, on June lo, after three weeks of inef- 
 fectual beating up and down, the wind shifted to the 
 south-west, and the fleet could be laid upon its course. 
 The anxiety was not much diminished. The salt meat, 
 salt fish, and cheese were found so foul throughout that 
 they were thrown overboard for fear of pestilence, and 
 the rations were reduced to biscuit and weevils. A 
 despatch was hurried off to Philip that fresh stores must 
 instantly be sent out, or there would be serious disaster. 
 The water was the worst of all, as when drunk it j^ro- 
 duced instant diarrhoea. On June 13 matters mended 
 a little. The weather had cooled. The south-west 
 
 * Medina Sidonia to Philip tJie Second, May 30.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 39 
 
 wind liad brought rain. The ships could be aired and 
 purified. They were then off Finisterre, and were on a 
 straight course for the Channel. Philip's orders had 
 been positive that they were not to delay anywhere, that 
 they were to hurry on and must not separate. They 
 had five hundred men, however, down with dysentery, 
 and the number of sick was increasing with appalling 
 rapidity. A council was held on board the San Martin, 
 and the Admirals all agreed that go on they could not. 
 Part of the fleet, at least, must make into Ferrol, land 
 the sick, and bring off supplies. The Duke could not 
 come to a resolution, but the winds and waves settled 
 his uncertainties. On the 19th it came on to blow. 
 The Duke, with the Portugal squadron, the galleys and 
 the larger galleons, made in at once for Corunna, 
 leaving the rest to follow, and was under shelter before 
 the worst of the gale. The rest were caught outside 
 and scattered. They came in as they could, most of 
 them in the next few days, some dismasted, some leaking 
 with strained timbers, the crews exhausted with illness ; 
 but at the end of a week a third part of the Armada 
 was"°"still missing, and those which had reached the 
 harbour "were' scarcely able to man their yards. A 
 hospital had to be established on shore. The tendency 
 to desert had become so general that the landing-places 
 were occupied with bodies of soldiers. A despatch went 
 off to the Escurial, with a despairing letter from the 
 Duke to the King. 
 
 ' The weather,' he said, ' though it is June, is as wild 
 as in December, No one remembers such a season. It
 
 40 TIIR SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 is the more strange since wc arc on the business of the 
 Lord, an<l some reason there must be for what lias 
 befjillt'n us. I told ycnir Majesty that I was unfit for 
 this coimiiund when you asked mc to undertake it. I 
 obeyed your orders, and now I am here in Corunna with 
 the .ships dispersed and tlie force remaining to me 
 inferior to the enemy. The crews are sick, and grow 
 d.'iily worse from bad food and water. Most of our 
 provisions liave pcrislicd, and wc have not enough for 
 more than two months' consumption. Much depends 
 on the safety of this fleet. You have exhausted your 
 resources to collect it, and if it is lost you may lose 
 Portugal and the Indies. The men are out of spirit. 
 The officers do not understand their business. We are 
 no longer strong. Do not deceive yourself into thinking 
 that we are equal to the work before us. You remember 
 how much it cost you to conquer Portugal, a country 
 adjoining Castile, where half the inhabitants were in 
 your favour. We are now going against a powerful 
 kingdom with only the weak force of the Prince of Parma 
 and myself. I speak freely, but I have laid the matter 
 before the Lord ; you must decide yourself what is to 
 be done. Recollect only how many there are who envy 
 your greatness and bear you no goodwill.'^ 
 
 On the 27th thirty-five ships were still absent, and 
 nothing had been heard of them. The storm, Tio we ver, 
 after all iiad not been especially severe, and it was not 
 likely that they were lost. The condition to which the 
 
 ' Medina Sidouia to Philip the Second from Corunna, June 2\.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 41 
 
 rest were reduced was due merely to rascally contractors 
 and official negligence, and all could easily be repaired 
 by an efficient commander in whom the men had con- 
 fidence. But the Duke had no confidence in himself 
 nor the officers in him. Four weeks only had passed 
 since he had left Lisbon and he was already despond- 
 ent, and his disquieted subordinates along with him. 
 He had written freely to Philip, and advised that the 
 expedition should be abandoned. He again summoned 
 the Vice-Admirals to his cabin and required their 
 opinions. Should they or should they not go forward 
 with their reduced force ? The Inspector-General, Don 
 George Manrique, produced a schedule of numbers. 
 They were supposed, he said, to have twenty-eight 
 thousand men besides the galley-slaves. Owing to 
 sickness and other causes, not more than twenty-two or 
 twenty-three thousand could be regarded as effective, 
 and of these six thousand were in the missings aalleons. 
 The Vice-Admirals were less easily frightened than their 
 leader. None were for giving up. Most of them 
 advised that they should wait where they were till the 
 ships came in, repairing damages and taking in fresh 
 stores. Pedro de Valdez insisted that they should go 
 on as soon as possible. While they remained in harbour 
 fresh meat and vegetables might be served out, and the 
 crews would soon recover from a sickness which was 
 caused only by bad food. With vigour and energy all 
 that was wrong could be set right. The missing ships 
 were doubtless ahead expecting them, and would be 
 fallen in with somewhere.
 
 42 /7/A SPANISH srOh'Y OF Tll/i ARMADA. 
 
 Dun Pedro was juldrcssin;,' brave inen, and carrietl 
 tlio (council alnn;,' witli liitn. He wrote himself to Philip 
 to tell him what harl passed. 'The Duke,' he said, 
 'Ixtrc him no goodwill for his advice, but he intended 
 to persist in a course which he believed to be for his 
 Majesty's honour.' 
 
 A day or two later tlie wanderers came back and 
 restored the ])uke's courage. Some had been as far 
 
 /as Scilly, some even in Mount's Ba*y,but none had been 
 lost" and none had been seriously injured. The fresh 
 meat was supplied as Don Pedro advised. The sick 
 recovered ; not one died, and all were soon in health 
 again. Fresh supplies were poured down out of the 
 country. The casks were refilled with pure water. In 
 " short, the sun began to shine once more, and the despond- 
 ency fit passed away. Philip wrote kindly and cheerily. 
 ' ?]verything would be furnished which they could want. 
 The Duke might .spend money freely, and need spare 
 nothing to feed the men as they ought to be fed. If 
 they had met with difficulties in the beginning they 
 would have greater glory in the end. There were diffi- 
 culties in every enterprise. They must overcome them 
 and go on.' The Duke still hesitated. He said truly 
 enough that other things were wanting besides food : 
 powder, cordage, and the thousand minor stores which 
 ought to have been provided and were not. But the 
 rest of the chief officers were now in heart ajjain. and 
 he found himself alone ; Recalde only, like a wise man, 
 begging Philip to modify his instructions and"alIow'him 
 /, to secure Plymouth or Dartmouth on their advance, as,
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 43 
 
 although they might gain a victory, it was unlikely to 
 be so coinplete as to end' tlie' struggle, and they might 
 require a harbour to shelter the fleet. 
 
 Philip, unfortunately fof'lirmself, paid no attention 
 to Recalde's suggestion, but only urged them to begone 
 at their best speed. The ships were laid on shore to be 
 scraped and tallowed. The gaps in the crews were 
 filled up with fresh recruits. Another ship was added, 
 and at the final muster there were a hundred and thirty- 
 one vessels, between seven and eight thousand sailors 
 and seventeen thousand infantry, two thousand slaves, 
 and fourteen hundred officers, priests, gentlemen, and 
 servants. With restored health and good-humour they 
 were again commended to the Lord. Tents were set 
 up on an island in the harbour, with an altar in each 
 and friars in sufficient number to officiate. The ships' 
 companies Avere landed and brought up man by man 
 till the whole of them had again confessed and asrain 
 received the Sacrament. 
 
 * This,' said the Duke, ' is great riches, and the most 
 precious jewel which I carry with me. They now are 
 all well, and content, and cheerful.' 
 
 II. 
 
 Two months of summer were still left when the 
 Armada made its second start out of Corunna on 
 Friday, July 22, with fresh heart and better provision. 
 On the 23rd the last vessel in the fleet had passed
 
 44 Till': SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 (!iij)e Orte<,'iil, iiiitl tli<^ wiml, ;i.s if to make amends for 
 past persecution, blew lairuiid inotlcrate from the .'•outli. 
 Saturday, Sunday, and Monday the galleons swept 
 easily al<jng across the Bay of Biscay, and on the Mond ay 
 night, the 25th, the Uuke found himself with all his 
 flock about him at the mouth of the English Chan nel. 
 Tuesday broke calm and cloudy, with a draft of 
 northerly air. Heavy showers fell. One of the galleys 
 had sprung a leak, and was obliged to go home. On 
 Wednesday the wind backed to the west, and rose into 
 a gale, blowing hard with a high sea. The waves broke 
 into the stern galleries of the galleons, and the fleet 
 was hove to. On Friday the storm was over, but there 
 was still a long, heav}' roll. The ships were unmanage- 
 able, and from the maintop of the San Martin forty sail 
 were again not to be seen. The remaining galleys, finding 
 that in such weather they were like to be swamped, 
 had made away for the coast of France ; the Santa 
 Ana, the Capitana of the Biscay squadron, had dis- 
 appeared completely, and was supposed to have been 
 sunk. She had in fact lost her reckoning, and at last 
 found her way into Havre. The rest of the missing 
 ships proved only to be a few miles ahead. After a 
 slight flutter, the Armada, shorn of its galleys and the 
 Santa Ana, was again complete, and with the sky 
 clearing from south-west went en upon its way. As yet 
 they had seen nothing — not a sail or a boat ; but being 
 on the enemy's coast they put themselves into fighting 
 order. They were in three divisions. The Duke was 
 in the centre with the main battle. Alouzo de Leyva
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 45 
 
 led the advance as the post of houour. The rear was 
 under Martinez de Recalde, the formation being like an 
 oblique crescent, or like the moon when it lies on its 
 back, De Leyva and Recalde being at the two horns. 
 
 In this order tTiey"saTI^~slbwTy~oh througb tbe day, 
 still with nothing in sight, but knowing by observation 
 and soundings that they were coming up to land. The 
 sun on Friday, at noon, gave them 50 degrees, and the 
 lead 56 fathoms. At four in the afternoon the grey 
 ridge of the Lizard rose above the sea three leagues off. 
 They were now in sight of the den of the dragon which 
 they were come to slay, and Medina Sidonia ran up to 
 his niastEead^ a special flag of h'ls own, which had been 
 embroidered for the occasion — Chiist on the Cross, and 
 Our Lady and the Magdalen on either side of Him. As 
 the folds unrolled in the breeze, each ship in the fleet 
 fired'a'broadside, and the shi]3s' companies gathered and 
 knelt on the deck to give tlianks to the Almighty. 
 
 TTiat evening tlieT)uke despatched the lasT letter to 
 the King which for a month he had leisure to write. 
 So far, he said, the enemy had not shown himseir, and 
 he was going forward in the dark ; no word had come 
 from Parma; before him was only the silent sea, and 
 the long line of the Cornish coast, marked at intervals 
 by columns of smoke which he knew to be alarm beacons. 
 The sea that was so silent would soon be noisy enough. 
 With a presentiment of danger, the Duke told the King 
 that he must so far disregard his orders that, until Parma 
 had communicated with him, he proposed to halt at the 
 Isle of Wif-ht and to go no further. Sail was taken in that
 
 46 THE SPANISH STORY OF TJJ/i ARMADA. 
 
 iiiglit. On tlio Saturday inoruiTig a despatch boat was 
 sunt away with tlie letter to tlie King, and the fleet crept 
 on slowly and cautiously. They had hoped to fall in 
 with a fishing-smack, but none were to be discovered : 
 nor was it till Saturday uight, or rather at one o'clock on 
 the Sunday morning, that they were able to gather any 
 information at all. At that hour, and not before, a 
 jjinnace that had gone forward to observe came back with 
 four Falmouth fishermen who had been fallen in with 
 at sea. Trom them the Duke and the admirals learnt 
 that Drake and Howard had come out that morning 
 from Plymouth harbour, and were lying in the Sound, 
 or outside it, waitintr for them. The burning beacons 
 had brought notice on the Friday evening that the 
 Armada was in sight, and the English had instantly got 
 under way. The Spanish records and diaries say dis- 
 tinctly that from these fishermen they had gathered 
 their first and only knowledge of the English movements. 
 j The charge afterwards brought against the Duke, there- 
 \ fore, that he bad learnt that Plymouth was undefended. 
 that Oquendo and Recalde urged him to go in and take 
 it, and that he refused and lost the opportunity, is proved 
 to be without foundation. Very likely a council of 
 admirals did advise that Plymouth sTiould be attacked if 
 they found Howard and Drake still in the Sound, for in 
 the narrow space the ships would be close together, and 
 the superior numbers of the Spaniards and tlieir superior 
 strength in small arms and musketry would be able to 
 assert themselves. Medina Sidonia may have agreed, 
 for all that any one can say to the contrary, but the
 
 // 
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 47 
 
 opportunity was never allowed bim. The English fleet [ 
 Avas already outside, and the Duke could not enter till I 
 he had fought an action. A 
 
 An hour after midnight, on the Sunday morning, the P^ y .. 
 Falmouth boatmen gave their information. Four hours h 
 later," directly off Ramhead, the two fleets were engaged. J jf 
 The air through the night had been light from the 
 west. The water was smooth. At fi ve o'clo ck, just after I 
 sunrise, eleven large vessels were seen from the deck of l 
 the San Martin three miles to leeward, outside the j| 
 Mewstone, manoeuvring to recover the wind, wETclilvas 
 beginning to freshen. Forty others were counted 
 between the Armada and the land to the west of the 
 Sound. The squadron first seen consisted of the 
 Queen's ships under Lord Howard; the others were 
 Drake and the privateers. The breeze rose rapidly. 
 The Duke flew the consecrated standard, and signalled 
 to the whole fleet to brace round their yards and hold 
 the wind between the two English divisions. Howard, 
 however, with apparent ease, went on to v.indward and 
 joined Drake. Both of them then stood out to sea 
 beHind the whole Armada, firing heavily into Recalde 
 and the rearward Spanish squadron as they passed. 
 Kecalde tried hard to close, but Sir John Hawkins had 
 introduced new lines into the construction of tlieEng- | 
 lish sEips. Tlie high castTes at poop and stem had been » 
 reduced, the length increased, the beam diminished. 
 They could sail perhaps within five points of the wind. 
 They showed powers, at any rate, entirely new to 
 Recalde, for they seemed to be able to keep at any
 
 J 
 
 48 THE SPANISH STOKY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 <li8Uinco whicli tlicy pleased from liim. They did not 
 try to hirak liis line or capture detached vessels. With 
 their heavy gnns, which he found to his cost to he of 
 weightier nictal and to carry farther than his own, they 
 poured their hroadsides into him at their leisure, and 
 he could make no tolerable reply. Alonzo dc Leyva 
 and Oquendo, seeing that Recalde was sufTenng severely, 
 went to his assistance, but only to experience themselves 
 the effects of this novel method of naval combat and 
 naval construction. To fight at a distance was contrary to 
 Spanish custom, and was not held worthy of honourable 
 men. But it was effective ; it was perplexing, it was 
 deadly. The engagement lasted on these conditions 
 through the wliole Sunday forenoon. The officers of 
 the Armada did all that gallant men could achieve. 
 They refused to recognise where the English superiority 
 lay till it was forced upon them by torn rigging and 
 shattered hulls. Recalde's own ship fired a hundred 
 and twenty shot, aud it was thought a great thing. 
 But the English had fired five to the Spanish one, and 
 the effect was the greater because, as in Rodney's action 
 at Dominica, the galleons were crowded with troops, 
 among whom shot and splinter had worked havoc. 
 The Castilians and Biscayaus were brave enough ; there 
 were no braver men in the world ; but they were in a 
 position where courage was of no use to them. They 
 were perplexed and disturbed ; and a gentleman present 
 who describes the scene observes that ' este dia mos- 
 traronsede nuestra Armada algunos officiales medrosos* 
 — this day some of the officers of our fleet showed
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 49 
 
 cowardice. The allusion was perhaps to the Duke, who 
 had looked on and done nothing. 
 
 No prizes were taken. Drake and Howard under- 
 stood their business too well to waste life upon single 
 captures. Their purjoose was to harass, shatter, and 
 weaken the entire Armada, as opportunity might offer, 
 with the least damage to themselves, till shot and 
 weather, and the casualties likely to occur under such 
 conditions, had reduced the fleets to something nearer 
 to an equality. Tactics so novel baffled the Spaniards. 
 They had looked for difficulties, but they had counted 
 with certainty on success if they could force the English 
 into a general engagement. No wonder that they were 
 unpleasantly startled at the result of the first experiment. 
 
 The action, if such it could be called when the 
 Armada had been but a helpless target to the English 
 guns, lasted till four in the afternoon. The south-west 
 wind then"was bToHving up, aricTthe'sea was rising. The 
 two fleets had by that time driven past the opening into 
 the Sound. The Duke could not have gone in if he 
 had tried, nor could De Leyva himself, under such cir- 
 cumstances, have advised him to try ; so, finding that 
 he could do nothing, arid was only throwing away life, 
 he signalled from the San Martin to bear away up 
 Channel. The misfortunes of the day, however, were 
 not yet over. The Spanish squadrons endeavoured to 
 resume their proper positions, De Leyva leading and 
 Recalde coverino- the rear. The English followed 
 leisurely, two miles behind, and Recalde's own vessel 
 had suffered so much in the engagement that she was 
 
 E
 
 50 HIE SPANISH STORY ()/■ THE ARMADA. 
 
 obseivctl to be dioj)|»ing back, and to be in danj^er of 
 beiiij,' Kit alone and overtaken. Pedro de Valdez, in 
 the C.'ijiitana of tlic Andalusian squadron, one ortlie 
 finest ships in the fleet, observing his old comrade in 
 difticulties, bore up to help him. After such a day, the 
 men, perhaps, were all of them disturbed, and likely to 
 make mistakes in difficult manoeuvres. In turning, 
 the Capitana came into collision with the Santa Cata- 
 lina and broke her own bowsprit; the fore-topmast 
 followed, and the ship became an unmanageable wreck. 
 She had five hundred men on board, besides a con- 
 siderable part of the money which had been sent for 
 the use of the fleet. To desert sucb a vessel, and desert 
 along with it one of the principal officers of the 
 expedition, on the first disaster, would be an act of 
 cowardice and dishonour not to be looked for in a 
 Spanish nobleman. But night was coming on. To 
 bear up was to risk a renewal of the fighting, for which 
 the Duke had no stomach. He bore Don Pedro a 
 grudge for having opposed him at Corunna, when he 
 had desired to abandon the expedition ; Diego Florez, 
 his adviser, had also his di.slike for Don Peciro, and, to 
 the astonishment of every one, the signal was made that 
 the fleet was not to stoji, and that Don Pedro was to be 
 left to his fate. De Leyva and Oquen367 unable to 
 believe tlie order to be serious, hastened on board the 
 San Martin to protest. The Duke hesitated ; Diego 
 Florez, however, said that to wait would be to risk the 
 loss of the whole fleet, and by Diego Florez Philip had 
 directed the Duke to be guided. Boats were sent back
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 51 
 
 to bring off the Capitana's treasure aud the crew, but in 
 the rising sea boats could do nothing. Don Pedro was 
 deserted, overtaken, and of course captured, after a 
 gallaiit resistance. The shij^ was carried into Dart- 
 mouth, and proved a vakiable prize. Besides the 
 money, there was found a precious store of__powder, 
 which the Enghsh sorely needed. Among other articles 
 Avas a chest of swords, richly mounted, which the Duke 
 was taking over to be presented to the English Catholic 
 peers. Don Pedro himself was treated with the high 
 courtesy which he deserved, to be ransomed at the end 
 of a year, and to be spared the ignominy of further 
 service under his extraordinary commander-in-chief. 
 
 The loss of Don Pedro was not the last, and not the 
 worst, calamity of the night. Soon after dark the air 
 was shaken and the sky was lighted by an explosion in 
 the centre of the Spanish fleet. Oquendo's ship, Our 
 Lady of the Rose, was blown up, and two Kundre3"inen, 
 dead aud wounded, were hurled into the sea. The 
 wreck that was left was seen to be in a blaze, in which 
 the rest on board were like to perish. Oquendo him- 
 self was absent. Some said it was an accident, others 
 that^it had been done by an Englishman in disguise, 
 others that there had been some quarrel, and that one 
 of the parties in a rage had flung a match- into the 
 magazine and sprung overboard. This time the Armada 
 was rounded to ; the burning ship was covered by the 
 main body. The money on board, for each galleon 
 ,had its own treasury, was taken out with the survivors 
 of the crew. The hull was then abandoned to the 
 
 J
 
 52 77/ /r SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 English. A few casks of stores were still f(Hin(l in licr 
 hold which liad escaped destruction. Shortly afterwards 
 she sank. 
 
 From tlio day on which it sailed the fleet had been 
 pursued by misfortune. Two such disasters following 
 on the unexpected and startling features of the first 
 engagement struck a chill through the whole force. 
 The ofHcers had no longer the least trust in a commander- 
 in-chief whom they had ill liked from the first. The 
 national honour was supposed to be touched by the 
 desertion of P edro d o Valdez, who was universally loved 
 and respected. The Duke was suspected to be no better 
 than a poltroon. The next morning, August i, broke 
 heavily. The wind was gone, and the galleons were 
 rolling in the swell. The enemy was hull down behind 
 them, and the day was spent in repairing damages, 
 knotting broken ropes, and nailing sheets of lead over 
 the sliot-holes. llecalde's ship had been so roughly 
 handled that the disposition of the squadrons was 
 altered. Do Leyva took charge of the rear in the Rata 
 Coronada, where the danger was greatest. Don Martinez 
 was passed forward into the advance, where he could 
 attend to his hurts out of harm's way. The Duke in 
 sour humour found fault all round, as incompetent 
 conunanders are apt to do. Orders were issued that 
 each ship should keep a position definitely laid down ; 
 and any captain found out of his place was to be im- 
 mediately hanged. Men will endure much from leaders 
 whom they trust. Severity at such a moment was 
 resented as ill-timed and undeserved. The day passed
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 53 
 
 without incident. With the sunset the sea fell smooth, 
 and not an air was stirring. The English fleet had come 
 up, but was still a league behind. Both fleets were 
 then off Portland. An hour after midnignTDeL'eyva, 
 Oquendo, and Recalde, burning with shame and indig- 
 nation, came on board the San Martin, woke the Duke 
 out of his sleep, and told him that now was the tiine for 
 him to repair his credit. By the light of the rising 
 moon the English ships could be seen drifted apart with 
 the tide, and deprived in the breathless calm of their 
 superior advantages. The galeasses, with their oars, 
 should be sent out instantly to attack single vessels. 
 The dawn it was likely would bring a breeze from the 
 east, when the galleons could gather way and support 
 them. The Duke roused himself. Oquendo himself 
 carried the orders to the captain of the galeasses, Don 
 Hugo de MonQada. The galeasses prepared for action. 
 The easterly air came up as was expected, and with the 
 first clear light Howard was seen dead to leeward stand- 
 ing in for the land, and endeavouring, as he had done 
 at Plymouth, to recover the weather-gauge. The gale- 
 asses proved of small service after all, for the wind was 
 soon too fresh ; and they Avere useless. They could do 
 nothing except in a calm. But the San Martin and her 
 leading consorts bore down with all sail set. Howard, 
 being near the shore, had to tack and stand off to sea. 
 He had thus to pass out through the centre of the whole 
 Spanish fleet. The ships became intermixed, the Ark 
 Raleigh Avas surrounded with enemies, and every Spanish 
 captain's heart was bounding with the hope of boarding
 
 54 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE AKMADA. 
 
 Iicr. If they could once grapjilc they were justly con- 
 fuleiit in the numbers and courage of their men. So 
 near the chances were at one moment, that Martin dc 
 Hretandona, the Levantine commander, might liave 
 closed with one of the largest of the English ships ' if 
 he covdd have been contented with less than the vessel 
 which carried Howard's flag.' But the wind freshened 
 up with the day, and Don Martin and his friends saw 
 vessels handled in a style which they had never seen 
 before. It lias been often confidently urged, as a rea.son 
 for reducing the naval estimates, that Howard's fleet 
 was manned by volunteers, and not by professional 
 seamen. It is true that the English crews were not 
 composed of men who were in the permanent service 
 of the Crown, but never in the history of the country 
 were a body of sailors gathered together more experi- 
 enced in sailing ships and fighling them. They were 
 the rovers of the ocean. To navigate the wildest seas, 
 to fight Spaniards wherever they could meet them, had 
 for thirty years been their occupation and their glory. 
 Tacking, wearing, making stern way where there was 
 no room to turn, they baffled every attack by the swift- 
 , ness of their movements, and cleared their way out of 
 f the throng. Once more tliey drew away to windward; 
 took at their leisure such positions as suited them, and, 
 themselves beyond the reach of the feeble Spanish 
 artillery, fii-cd into the galleons with their long heavy 
 guns till five o'clock in the afternoon. This day the 
 Duke personally behaved well. The San Martin was 
 in the thickest of the fight, and received fifty shots in
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 55 
 
 lier hull. The famous standard Avas cut in two. The 
 
 leaks were soTnany'and ■ so formidable that the divers 
 
 were again at work all night plugging and stopping the 
 
 holes. But the result was to show him, and to show 
 
 them all, that the English ships were superior to theirs 
 
 in speed and power and weight of artillery, and that to 
 
 board them against their will was entirely hopeless. 
 
 Another observation some of them made which was 
 
 characteristic of the age. The galleons which had no 
 
 gentlemen on board had been observed to hold off and 
 
 keep out of range. In the evening the wind fell. With 
 
 the last of it, Howard and Drake bore away and left 
 
 them, as, with the calm, the galeasses might again be » ^ \. 
 
 dangerous, Wednesday was breathless. The English t-};^'-*'^'^' 
 
 wanted powder oesides, having used what they had ^^ 
 
 freely; and they were forced to wait for fresh supplies, 
 
 which came up in the course of the afternoon. The 
 
 Duke, as has been seen, was superstitious. So far the 
 
 nuns' and the hermits' visions had not been realised, 
 
 but, perhaps, his past ill-success had been sent only 
 
 as a trial of his faith. ^^ . 
 
 The 4th of August, Thursday, was St. Dominic's / Lm''^ 
 Day. The house of Guzman de Silva claimed St. *J^ 
 Dominic as a member of their family ; and St. Dominic, 
 the Duke was assured, would now lend a hand to his 
 suffering kinsman. The Isle of Wight, where he had 
 announced to Philip that he intended to stop", was 
 directly under his lee. Once anchored in St. Helen's 
 Roads he would have the Armada in a safe shelter, 
 where, if the English chose to attack him, they must
 
 56 llir. SPANISH STORY OF IIIE AKMADA. 
 
 coiik; to clusur (HiJirters, as tliero \voul<l not be sea room 
 for the inanceuvrcs which liad been so disastrous to 
 liiin.' If ho coulil hiiul ten thousand men lie might 
 take the island ; and, perplexed, agitated, and harassed 
 by tlic unexpected course which events had taken with 
 him, he probably still intended to act on this resolution, 
 which was tlic wisest which he could have formed. He 
 wouM have another action to fight before he could get 
 in, but with St. Dominic's help he might this time have 
 better fortune. 
 
 Howard and Drake seemed willing to give St. 
 Dominic an opportunity of showing what he could do. 
 They had received their powder. They had been re- 
 inforced by a few privateers who had come out from the 
 Needles, and they showed a disposition to engage at a 
 nearer distance than they had hitherto ventured. They 
 were so far at a disadvantage that the wind was light, 
 but, using what there was of it, the Ark Raleigh led 
 straight down on the San Martin, ranijed alonoside, and 
 opened a furious fire from her lower ports, as it appeared 
 to the Spaniards, with heavier guns than she had used 
 ill the previous actions. Again the San Martin was 
 
 ^ The Duke's intention of slop- 
 ping at tlie Isle of Wight was ex- 
 pressed by him as clearly as possible. 
 Writing on July 30 to the King, 
 lie said he ninst advance 'poco a 
 poco con toda el Armada junta en 
 mis escuadrones hasta isla D'Wich 
 y no panar adelante hasta tener 
 aviso del Du(]ue de Parma. Torque 
 si yo salieso de alii con csta, la 
 
 costa de Flandes no habiendo en 
 toda ella puerto ni abrigo ninguno 
 para estas naves, con el primer tem- 
 poral que les diese los echaria a los 
 bancos, doude sin ningua remedio 
 se habrian de perder ; y por excusar 
 este peligro tan evidente, me ha 
 parecido no pasar adelante de aquel- 
 la isla hasta saber lo que el Duque 
 hace,' etc. — Duro, vol. ii., p. 221.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA 57 
 
 badly cut up. Many of her men were killed and more 
 were wounded. Seeing her hard pressed, Recalde and 
 Oquendo came to the Duke's support. Oquendo drove 
 his own ship between the Ark and the San Martin, 
 receiving the broadside intended for her, and apparently 
 causing some confusion on board the Ark by a shot of 
 his own. At this moment the wind dropped altogether. 
 An eddy of the tide carried off the other English ships, 
 leaving Howard surrounded once more by the enemy 
 and in worse difficulties than in the fight off Portland. 
 Three large galleons were close on board of him, with 
 Oquendo, the boldest officer of the Armada, in one Of 
 them. Eleven boats, to the amazement of the Spaniards, [ 
 dropped over the Ark's side. Hundreds of men sprang j 
 into them, seized their oars, and took the Ark in tow, I 
 careless of the storm of musketry which was rattling 
 upon them. She was aleady moving when the breeze 
 rose again. Her sails filled and she flew away, dragging 
 her own boats, and leaving behind the swiftest of the 
 pursuing galleons as if they Avere at anchor.^ 
 
 Again the experience was the same. St. Dominic 
 had been deaf or impotent, and a long day of fighting 
 at disadvantage ended as usual. The ammunition of 
 the Armada, which the Duke knew from the first to be 
 insufficient, was giving out under the unprecedented 
 demands upon it. Had he been wise he would still 
 have made a desperate attempt to force his way into St. 
 
 ^ ' Se fue saliendo con tanta 1 ser los mas veleros de la Armada, 
 velocidad que el galeon San Juan que le fueron dando cat;a, en com- 
 de Fernando y otro ligeri'simo, con | paracion se quedarou surtos.'
 
 S8 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 Helen's. J I is strength was not very niucli reduced. 
 Though the loss of life had been considerable, Pedro de 
 Valdez's ship \v:i3 the only one which had been^jilcen 
 To prevent him from entering the Solent theTinglish 
 must have closed with him, which they still hesitated 
 to do, as they could not now tell hoAv much hurt they 
 had inflicted. The Duke had still this single chance 
 of recovering his credit. lie might have gone in. Had 
 he done it, he might have taken the Wight, have even 
 taken Portsmouth or Southampton; at all events, he 
 would have placed the Armada in a position out of 
 which it would have been extremely difficult to dislodge 
 it. But the unfortunate man had lost his head. He 
 hated his work. He determined to look neither rijiht 
 nor left, but stick to Philip's own instructions, go on to 
 the Straits of Dover as he had been told to do, send 
 Parma notice of his arrival, and leave the rest to fate. 
 He despatched a messenger to tell the Prince to expect 
 him and to have his army embarked ready to cross on 
 the instant of his arrival. He asked for a supply of 
 fly-boats, gun-boats worked with oars, which Parma 
 could not send him, and for ammunition of which the 
 Prince had none to dispose, expecting himself rather 
 to be furnished from the fleet. Then, taking the worst 
 resolution possible, and going forward to inevitable ruin, 
 he signalled to his flock to follow him, and pursued 
 his way up Channel, followed by the English as before. 
 The Isle of Wight once passed, the worst danger to 
 England was over. Lord Henry SeymouFs' ^squadron 
 wjis in the Downs. Howard and Drake 'wOiild soon
 
 V- 
 
 I 
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 59 
 
 join hands with him, and they could then concert what 
 was next to be done. A\ 
 
 The Armada drifted on before a light west wind ' ^"^^ 
 through Thursday nigTit, alT Friday, and till Saturday 
 afternoon. They were then at Calais and dropped 
 anchor in the roads. Like a shadow which they could 
 not shake ofif, the EnglishTIun'g to them behind. As 
 they anchored, the English anchored also, a mile and a 
 half astern, as if the infernal devils, csta cndemoniada 
 (jerde, had known what the Duke was going to do. 
 Philip's advice had been to avoid the French coast, to \ 
 keep the other side, and to bring up behind the North 
 Foreland, The Duke, like Sancho in the night 
 adventure with the fulling-hammers, was flying for 
 safety under the skirts of Parma's coat, and thought 
 tliat the nearer he could be to him the better it would 
 be. He had thus brought his charge to the most 
 dangerous roadstead in the Channel, with an enemy 
 close to him who had less cause to fear the weather 
 than he, and almost within gunshot of the French shore, 
 when he did not know whether France was friend or 
 foe. For the moment he thought himself secure. The 
 wind was off the land. He looked to see the Prince \ 
 of PaiTXia and his boats coming out of Dunkirk at i 
 latest on the Monday morning. The French Governor 4 
 came off to call before dark, expressed his surprise to ' 
 see him in a position where a shift of weather might . 
 
 be inconvenient, but offered him, meanwhile, the hos- / ^ 
 pitaKties of the port. On the Sunday morning, August I ^ *jj> 
 7, the purveyor of the fleet wehTbn sTiore to' buy I
 
 6o THE SPANISH SrORY OF TIH: AN MA PA. 
 
 vcgotjiblcs. Tilt! men wore employed cleaning up llic 
 guns ;iii(l setting the ships in order after tlie confusion 
 of the past week, and so much work had to be done 
 that the daily rations were not served out, and the 
 Sunday holy day was a harassed fast. As the day 
 wore on messengers came in from Parma. His trans- 
 ))orts wci-e~Tying Ih""T)unkirlc71But nothing was ready, 
 and the troops could not be embarked for a fortnight. 
 iTe was himself at Bruges, but promised to Inirry down 
 to the port and to use all possible expedition. This 
 was not consoling intelligence. In the uncertain 
 weather the Calais roadstead was no place to linger 
 in ; and the Duke's anxieties were not diminished when 
 the English squadron of the Downs under Seymour and 
 Sir John Hawkins sailed in and anchored with their 
 consorts. Hawkins — Achiues they called him — was an 
 object of peculiar terror to the Spaniards from his 
 exploits in the West Indies. Next to Drake, or the 
 Dragon, he was more feared than any other English 
 seaman. The galleons were riding wuth two anchors 
 on account of the tide. An English pinnace, carrying 
 a light gun, ran down in the afternoon, sailed up to the 
 San Martin, lodged a couple of sliots in her hull, and 
 went off again. Hugo de Mon^ada sent a baTl after 
 her from the Capitana galeass which cut a hole in 
 her topsail, but she flew lightly away. The Spanish 
 officers could not refuse their admiration for such airy 
 impertinence. 
 
 If the Duke Avas uneasy the English commanders 
 did not mean to nive him time to recover himself.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 6l 
 
 Calais Roads might be an awkward anchorage, but the 
 weather might settle. August weather in the Channel 
 often did settle. There had been a week of fighting 
 and the Armada had got the worst of it, but still there 
 it was, to outward appearance, not much daiiiaged and 
 within touch of the Prince of Parma. The backward 
 state of Parma's preparations was unknown and un- 
 suspected by the English commanders. Any morning- 
 he might be looked for, issuing out of Dunkirk with his 
 fleet of gunboats, his array on board his barges, and 
 making his way across the Straits with the Armada to 
 protect him. That Sunday evening Howard, Drake, 
 Hawkins, Seymour, and Martin Frobisher held a con- 
 sultation in the Ark's main cabin. The course which 
 they intended to follow had probably been resolved on 
 generally when Howard anchored so near the enemy 
 on the previous evening, and the meeting must have 
 been only to arrange the method and moment of action. 
 After nightfall, the flood tide would be running strong 
 along the coast, and an intermittent but rising wind 
 was coming up from the west. The Duke, as he 
 restlessly paced his deck, observed lights moving soon 
 after dark among the English vessels. He expected 
 mischief of some kind and had ordered a strict look- 
 out. About midnight eight large hulks were seen 
 coming slowly down with tide and wind. Sjjars, ropes, 
 and sails had been steeped in pitch, and as they 
 approached nearer they burst out into flame and smoke. 
 Straight on they came, for they had crews on board to 
 direct the course, who only retreated to their boats when 
 
 I
 
 62 THE SrANlSll SrONV OF 'JIIK ARMADA. 
 
 I it was iuipossiblo to remain lunger. The Spaniards, 
 
 already agitated by the strange tricks of their English 
 
 .' foes, imagined that tlie fire-ships were floating mines 
 
 {like those which had blown to pieces so many thousands 
 of men at the bridge at Antwerp. The Duke, instead 
 of sending launches to tow them clear, fired a signal 
 for the whole fleet to get instantly under way! In the 
 ; hurry and alarm, and with two anchors down, they had 
 •j no time to weigh. They cut their cablevTeaving buoys 
 by which to recover them at daylight, and stood out 
 into the Channel, congratulating themselves for the 
 moment at having skillully and successfully avoided a 
 threatening danger. Medina Sidonia's intention had 
 been to bring up again outside. He himself let go an 
 anchor two miles off, and the best-apijointed galleons 
 followed his example. The main body, unfortunately, 
 had been sent to sea so ill-provided that their third 
 anchors, where they had any, Avere stow^ed away below 
 and could not be brought up in time. Thus, when 
 day dawned, the Duke found himself with less than 
 half his for<;e about him. The rest had drifted away 
 on the tide and were six miles to leeward. The purpose 
 of his enemy's ' traicion/ treason, as the Spaniards 
 regarded it, was now apparent. The San Martin, and 
 the vessels which remained with her, hoisted anchor 
 and signalled to return to the roadstead. Seventy of 
 the Duke's ships were far away, unable to obey if they 
 had tried. The wind had drawn into the north-west; 
 they were driving seemingly on the fatal Tanks, and 
 when the Duke proposed to go after them, the pilots
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 63 
 
 told him that if he did they would probably be all lost 
 together. 
 
 The spectacle on the shore was yet more dispiriting. 
 The Capitana galeass, in clearing out from the fire-ships, 
 hadHPouled the cable of another vessel, Mon^ada, who 
 commanded her, knew as little of seamaiiship as his 
 commander-in-chief. Her helm was jammed. An 
 English crew with two hundred men at the oars would 
 have found a way to manage her, but with galley- 
 slaves nothing could be done. She had drifted ashore 
 under the town, and as the tide had gone back, was 
 lying on her side on the sands, defending herself 
 desperately agaiust the crews of six English ships, one 
 of them Howard's Ark, who were attacking her in their 
 boats. Mongada fought like a hero till he was killed 
 by a musT^Pshot, the slaves jumped overboard, the 
 surviving sailors and soldiers followed their example, 
 and the galeass was taken and plundered. 
 
 To the Duke such a sight was sad enough ; but he 
 had little time to attend to it. While Howard was 
 losing time over the galeass, Drake ancT Hawkins had 
 stooped on a nobler quarry. The great fleet was parted ; 
 forty ships alone were present to defend the consecrated 
 banner of Castile which was flying from the mainmast 
 of the San Martin. Forty only, and no more, were 
 engaged in the battle which stripped Spain of her 
 supremacy at sea. But in those forty were Oquendo, 
 De Leyva, Recalde, Bretandona, all that was best and 
 bravest in the Spanish service. The first burst of the 
 storm fell on the San Martin herself. Drake, deter-
 
 64 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ANMADA. 
 
 mined to make the most of his opp<>rninity, no longer 
 held olT at long range, but closed up, yardarrn to yard- 
 arm ; not to make prizes of the galleons, but to destroy, 
 sink, or disable them. The force which the English 
 brought into the action was no longer unequal to that 
 of the enemy. The air was soon so full of smoke that 
 little could be seen from one ship of what was passing 
 in another part of the action. Each captain fought his 
 own vessel as he could, Medina giving no orders. He 
 who, till the past few days, had never heard a shot 
 fired in anger, found himself in the centre of the most 
 furious engagement that history had a record of. He 
 was accused afterwards of having sTiown cowardice. It 
 was said that his cabin was stuffed with woolpack?, and 
 that he lay himself during the fight in the middle of 
 them. It was said, also, that he charged his pilot to 
 take his ship where the danger was least. If he did, 
 his pilot disobeyed his orders, for the San Martin was 
 in the hottest part of the battle. It could not be other- 
 wise. The flag which she carried to the end of it 
 necessarily drew the heaviest fire upon her. The 
 accounts of eye-witnesses charge the Duke only with 
 the helpless incapacity which he had himself been the 
 first to acknowledge. Though the San ^lartin's timbers 
 were of double thickness, the shot at close range went 
 through and through her, ' enough to shatter to pieces 
 a rock.' Her deck became a slaugliter-house. Half 
 her crew were killed or wounded, and she would have 
 been sunk altogether had not Oquendo and De Leyva 
 dashed in and forced the English to turn their guns
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 65 
 
 upon them, and enabled the unhappy Duke to crawl 
 away and stop his leaks again. This was about noon ; 
 and from that time he himself saw no more till the 
 engagement was over. Even from his maintop nothing 
 could be made out for the smoke ; but the air was 
 shaking with the roar of the artillery. The Spanish 
 officers behaved with the desperate heroism which 
 became the countrymen of Cortez and Santa Cruz, and 
 never did Spanish soldier or seaman distinguish himself 
 more than on this tremendous day. There was no 
 flinchinof, thouorh the blood was seen streaming out of 
 the scuppers. Priests went up and down under the 
 hottest fire, crucifix in hand, confessing and absolving 
 the dying. Not a ship struck her colours. They stood 
 to their guns till their powder was all gone, and in half 
 the ships not a round was left. 
 
 Happily for them, the English were no better fur- 
 nished ; Howard's ammunition was all exhausted also, 
 and the combat ended from mere incapacity to continue 
 it. But the engagement from the first preserved the 
 same character which had been seen in those which 
 had preceded it. The Spaniards* courage was useless 
 to them. Their ships could not turn or sail; their 
 guns were crushed by the superior strength of the 
 English artillery ; they were out-matched in practical 
 skill, and, close as the ships were to one another, they 
 could not once succeed in fixing a grappling-iron in an 
 English rigging. Thus, while their own losses were 
 terrible, they could inflict but little in return. They
 
 66 THE SPANISH STORY OF Tllfi A KM A DA. 
 
 liad cinluix'd for fivu liuiirs to be tcjni to pieces by 
 cannon-shot — and that was all. 
 
 Before sunset the firing liad ceased ; the wind rose, 
 the smoky canopy drifted away, and the San Afartiii 
 and her comrades were seen floating, torn and tattered, 
 casi 8171 poder haccr mas resistencia, almost powerless to 
 resist longer. If the attack had continued for the two 
 hours of daylight that remained, they must alt have 
 sunk or surrendered. A galleon in Recalde's squadron 
 had gone down with all hands on board. The San 
 Philip and the San Matteo were falling away dismasted 
 and lielpless towards the Dutch coast, where they after- 
 wards went ashore. The condition of the rest was little 
 better. The slaughter had been appalling from the 
 crowd of soldiers who were on board. They had given 
 themselves up as lost, when it pleased God, for they 
 could give no other explanation, that the enemy ceased 
 to fire, drew off, and left them to bring their vessels to 
 the wnd, throw their dead overboard, and see to the 
 hurts of the wounded, who were counted by thousands. 
 They were so crippled that they could not bear their 
 canvas, and unless they could repair their damages 
 swiftly, the north-west wind which was rapidly rising 
 would drive them on the banks above Dunkirk. From 
 the day on which they left Lisbon an inexorable fatality 
 had pursued them. They hatl started in an inflated 
 belief that they were under the especial care of the 
 Almighty. One misfortune had trod on another's heel; 
 the central misfortune of all, that they had been com-
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 67 
 
 mantled by a fool, bad begun to dawn on the whole of 
 them. ~ But the conviction came too late to be of use, 
 altKl only destroyed what was left of discipline. The 
 soldiers, finding that tbej outnumbered the seamen, 
 snatched the control, chose their own course, and forced 
 the pilots to steer as they pleased. The night passed 
 miserably in examining into injuries, patching up what 
 admitted of being mended, and discovering other hurts 
 which could not be mended. The fresh water which 
 they had brought from Corunna had been stowed on 
 deck. The casks had been shot through in the action, 
 and most of it was gone. The Ave Maria, if it was 
 sung that evening, must have been a dirge, and the 
 Buenos Dias of the ship boys in the morning a melan- 
 choly mockery. Yet seventy vessels out of the great 
 fleet were still entire. They had not come up to join 
 in the fight, iDecause they could not. Their hulls were 
 sound, their spars were standing, their crews untouched 
 by any injury worse than despondency. The situation 
 was not really desperate, and a capable chief with such 
 a force at his disposition might have done something 
 still to retrieve his country's credit, if only these ships 
 could be made use of. Yet when day broke it seemed 
 that a common fate would soon overtake those who had 
 fought and those who so far had escaped. , 
 
 They came together in the night. The dawn found j 
 them dragging heavily into the North Sea. The north- I 
 west wind was blowing hard, and setting them bodily 
 on the banks. The bad sailers could not go to windward 
 at all. Those which had been in the fight could not
 
 68 THE SPANISH STORY 01- THE ARMADA. 
 
 bear sail enough to liold a course which, when sound, 
 they might have found barely possible. The crews 
 were worn out. On the Sunday they liad been dinnor- 
 less and svipperlcss. All Monday they had been fight- 
 ing, and all Monday night plugging shot-holes and 
 fishing spars. The English fleet hung dark and threat- 
 ening a mile distant on the weather quarter. The 
 water was shoaling every moment. They could see the 
 yellow foam where the waves were breaking on the 
 banks. To wear round would be to encounter another 
 battle, for which they had neither heart nor strength, 
 while the English appeared to be contented to let the 
 elements finish the work for them. The Englisli vessels 
 drew more water, and would have grounded while the 
 galleons Avcre still afloat. It was enough for them if 
 they could prevent the Armada from turning round, and 
 could force it to continue upon a course of which an 
 hour or two would probably see the end. The San 
 Martin and Oquendo's ship, the San Juan, were furthest 
 out. The sounding-line on the San Martin grave at last 
 but six fathoms; the vessels to leeward had only five. 
 Some one, perhaps Diego Florez, advised the Duke to 
 strike his flag and surrender. Report said that a boat 
 was actually lowered to go off to Howard and make 
 terms, and that Oquendo liad prevented it from pushing 
 off, by saying savagely that he would fling Diego Florez 
 overboard. The Duke's friends, however, denied the 
 charge, and insisted that he never lost his faith in God 
 and God's glorious mother. Certain it is, that witn 
 death staring them in the face and themselves helpless,
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 69 
 
 men and officers betook themselves to prayer as the 
 only refuge left, and apparently the prayer was answered. 
 A person who was on the San Martin describes the 
 scene. Every one was in despair, he said, and only 
 looking for destruction. Had the enemy known the 
 condition in which they were, and borne down and 
 attacked them, they must all have given in, for they 
 were without power to defend themselves. At the last 
 extremity, somewhere about noon, ' God was pfeased to 
 work a miracle,' The wind shifted, backing to the 
 south-west, and ceased to jam them down xv^ow the 
 sands. With eased sheets they were able to point tlieir 
 heads northwards and draw out into the deep water. 
 The enemy followed, still keeping at the same distance, 
 but showed no further disposition to meddle with them ; 
 and the Armada breathed again, though huddled together 
 like a flock of frightened sheep. A miracle they thought 
 it. Being pious Catholics and hving upon faith in the 
 supernatural they recovered heart, and began to think 
 that God's anger was spent, and that He would now be 
 propitious. He had been with them when they thought 
 they were deserted. He had brought the survivors of 
 them ' through the most terrible cannonade ever seen 
 in the history of the world ' (la mas fuerte bateria y 
 major que los nacidos han visto ni los escriptores ban 
 escrito). He had perhaps been disciplining them to do 
 His work after all. Death at any rate was no longer 
 before their eyes. 
 
 Alas ! if the change of wind was really an act of 
 Providence in answer to prayer. Providence was playing
 
 70 Till: SPANISH S'lOh'Y ()/■ 1111. AKMADA. 
 
 Willi t.lieir credulity, and reserving tliein deliberately for 
 an end still more miserable. Tin- Tn.^iliy, August 9, 
 was the day of Philip's patron aiut, .St. Lawrence, 
 wliosc arm he had lately added to his sacred trea.sure8 
 in the Escurial. In tlic afternoon a council of war was 
 I again held on board the flag-ship, consisting of the 
 I Duke, Alonzo de Leyva, Recalde, Don Francisco de 
 ■ Bobadilla, and Diego Florez. They had little pleasant 
 to say to each other. Oquendo was at first absent, but 
 came in while they were still deliberating. O Sehor 
 Ocjuendo, they cried, ' que harernos/ ' What shall we 
 do ? ' ' Do ! ' he replied, ' bear ujd and fight again.' It 
 was the answer of a gallant man who prefeired death to 
 disgrace. But the Duke had to consider how to save 
 what was left of his charge, and the alternatives had to 
 be considered. Tlie^were before^ the wind, running 
 right up the North Sea. The Duke explained that 
 every cartridge had been spent in the vessels which 
 had been engaged, and that, although some were left in 
 the rest of the fleet, the supply was miserably short. 
 Their ships were leaking. Half the sailors and half the 
 artillerymen were killed or wounded. The Prince of 
 Parma was not ready, and they had found by experience 
 that they were no match for the English in fighting. 
 The coast of Spain was at present unprotected, and 
 unless they could carry the fleet home in safety would 
 be in serious danger. The Duke's own opinion was 
 that tliey ought to make haste back, and by the sea 
 route round the North of Scotland and Ireland. To 
 return through the Straits implied more battles, and in
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 71 
 
 their battered state it Avas doubtful whether they could 
 work their way as the wind stood, even if the enemy 
 left them alone. 
 
 Flight, for it was nothing else, after such high ex- 
 pectations and loud prayers and boastings, flight after 
 but a week's conflict,- seemed to the old companions of 
 Santa Cruz an intolerable shame. De Leyva was 
 doubtful. He admitted, as the Duke said, that the 
 English were too strong for them. They had done their 
 best and it had not availed. His own ship would 
 hardly float, and he had not thirty cartridges left. 
 Recalde and Bobadilla supported Oquendo, and insisted 
 that, at whatever risk, they must endeavour to recover 
 Calais Roads. They were old sailors, who had weathered 
 many a storm, and fought in many a battle. The 
 chances of war had been against them so far, but would 
 not be against them always. If the English fleet could 
 go down Channel, it was not to be supposed that a 
 Spanish fleet could not, and if they were to return home 
 tlie Channel was the nearest road. If the worst came, 
 an honourable death was better than a scandalous retreat. 
 
 Spanish history has accused Medina Sidonia of 
 having been the cause that the bolder course was 
 rejected. Independent contemporary witnesses say 
 that it was made impossible by the despondency of 
 the men, who could not be induced to encounter the 
 English again. 
 
 Though he determined against returning through 
 the Cliannel, more than one alternative was still open 
 to him. The harbours of Holland and Zealand were
 
 7a THE SPANISH stony of the anmada. 
 
 in tlie hands of Dutch rebels. But there was the P^Ibc, 
 there was tlic Baltic, there was Norway. If the Duke 
 had been a man of daring and genius there was the 
 Frith of Forth. Had he anchored oflf Leith and played 
 his cards judiciously, there was still a possibility for 
 him to achieve something remarkable. Tlie Duke, 
 however, probably know that his master had intended 
 to exclude the King of Scots from the English succes- 
 sion, and may have doubted the reception which he 
 might meet with. Or, and perhaps more prubably, he 
 was sick of a command which had brought him nothing 
 but defeat and distraction, and was only eager to 
 I surrender his trust at the earliest possible moment. 
 Thus forlorn and miserable, the great Armada, 
 which was to have made an end of the European 
 Reformation, was set upon its course for the Orkneys, 
 from thence to bear away to the West of Ireland, and 
 so round to Spain, Drake and Howai'd, not conceiving 
 that their object would be so lightly abandoned, and 
 ignorant of the condition to which the enemy was 
 reduced, followed them at a distance to see what they 
 would do, and on the Wednesday had almost taken 
 Recalde, whose disabled ship was lagging behind. The 
 Duke, however, did not dare to desert a second admiral. 
 He waited for Recalde to come up, and the English did 
 not interfere. In fact they could not. Owing to Eliza- 
 beth's parsimony, their magazines were hardly better 
 furnished than the Spanish. In pursuing the Armada 
 they acknowledged that they were but ' putting on a 
 brag ' to frighten the Duke out of turning back. They
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 73 
 
 could not have seriously attacked him again, at all 
 events for many days, and the bravest course Avould 
 after all have proved the safest for him. As it was, he 
 saved Recalde, and went on thanking Providence for 
 having: induced the English to let him alone. 
 
 III. 
 
 On Friday the 12th tlie Armada passed the mouth 
 of tKe~FortTi. 'Howard had followed so far, expecting 
 that it might seek shelter there. But it went by with 
 a leading wind. He knew then that till another season 
 they would see no more of it, so put about and returned 
 to Margate. 
 
 Relieved of his alarming presence, the Spaniards 
 were able to look into their condition and to prepare 
 for a voyage which might now be protracted for several 
 weeks. The Duke himself was short and sullen, shut 
 himself in his state-room, and refused to see or speak 
 with any one. Diego Florez became the practical 
 commander, and had to announce the alarming news 
 that the provisions taken in at Corunna had been 
 wholly inadequate, and that at the present rate of 
 consumption they would all be starving in a fortnight. 
 The state of the water supply was worst of all, for the 
 casks had most of them been destroyed by the English 
 guns. The salt meat and fish were gone or spoilt. The 
 rations were reduced to biscuit. Half a pound of biscuit,
 
 74 'J III: SrANISIl STORY OF 11 IF. ARMADA. 
 
 ;i )iiiit, of water, aii'l liali" a ])iiit, of wine were all tliat 
 each person cuiild be allowed. Men and officers fared 
 alike; and on this miserable diet, and unprovided with 
 warm clothing, which they never needed in their own 
 sunny lands, the crews of the Armada were about to 
 face the cold and storms of the northern latitudes. 
 
 They had brought with them many liundreds of 
 mules and liorses. They might have killed and eaten 
 them, and so mitigated the famine. But they thought 
 of notiiing. The wretched animals were thrown over- 
 board to save water, and the ships in the rear sailed 
 on through floating carcases — a ghastly emblem of the 
 general wreck. The Duke felt more than tlie officers 
 gave him credit for. In a letter Avhicli he despatched 
 to Philip on August 21, in a forlorn hope that it miglit 
 reach Spain somehow, he described the necessity which 
 had been found of cutting down the food, and the 
 consequent suffering.^ That alone would have been 
 enough, for the men were wasting to a shadow of 
 themselves, but besides there were three thousand sick 
 with scurvy and dysentery, and thousands more with 
 wounds uncurcd. 
 
 But if he sympathised with the men's distresses he 
 did not allow his sympathy to be seen. He knew that 
 he was blamed for what had happened, that he was 
 
 * ' I'or scr tan pocos los basti- ' se media libra de biscocho, y \\\\ 
 mcntos que sc He van, que, para cuartillo de agua, y medio de vino 
 que pucdan durar un mes, y el sin nin:,iina otra cosa, con que se 
 agua, se ban acortado las racioncs va padeciendo lo que V.M. podra 
 goncralnionte sin cxcoptuar jwr- juzgar.' — Medina Sidonialo Philip, 
 sona, porquo no ]v)rczcau, dando | August 2i. Duro, vol. ii. ]>. 226.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARM AD A. 75 
 
 distrusted and perhaps despised ; and while keeping 
 aloof from every one, he encouraged their resentment 
 by deserving it. Many persons might have been in 
 fault. But there is a time for all things, and those 
 wretched days, wretched mainly through the Duke's 
 own blunders, were not a time for severity ; yet it 
 pleased him, while secluded in his cabin, to order an 
 inquiry into the conduct of the commanders who had 
 lost their anchors at Calais, and had failed to support 
 him in the action which followed. He accused them 
 of cowardice. He held a court-martial on them and 
 ordered twenty to be executed. Death with most was 
 exchanged for degradation and imprisonment, but two 
 poor wretches were selected on whom the sentence was 
 to be carried out, as exceptionally culpable. When he 
 had decided to fly, the Duke had ordered that the 
 whole fleet should follow and not go in advance of 
 the San Martin. A Captain Cuellar and a Captain 
 Christobal de Avila had strayed for a few miles ahead, 
 intending, as the Duke perhaps supposed, to desert. 
 Don Christobal, to the disgust of the fleet, was executed 
 with a parade of cruelty. He was hanged on the yard 
 of a pinnace, which was sent round the squadrons with 
 Don Christobal's body swinging upon it before it was 
 thrown into the sea. Cuellar's fate was to have been 
 the same. He commanded a galleon called the San 
 Pedro. He had been in the action and had done his 
 duty. His ship had been cut up. He himself had not 
 slept for ten days, having been in every fight since the 
 Armada entered the Channel. When all was over, and
 
 76 THE SPANISH STORY ()/■ TJ/Ii ARMADA. 
 
 the strain lia<l Ixoii taken off, he had dropped off ex- 
 luvustcd. Jlis saiUng-inaster, finding the San Pedro 
 leaking,', had gone in advance to lay-to and examine 
 her hurts. Exasperated at tlie disobedience to his 
 directions, the Duke sent for Cucllar, refused to Hsten 
 to his defence, and ordered him to be lianged, Don 
 Francisco de Bobadilla with difficulty obtained his hfe 
 for him, but he was deprived of his ship and sent under 
 arrest to another galleon, to encounter, as will be seen, 
 a singular adventure. 
 
 The display of temper, added to the general con- 
 viction of the Duke's unfitness for his place, may have 
 been the cause of the dispersal of the Armada Avhich 
 immediately followed. The officers felt that they must 
 shift for themselves. The tleet held together as far as 
 the Orkneys. The intention was to hold a northerly 
 course till the 6oth parallel. Assuming the wind to 
 remain in the west, the pilots held that from this 
 altitude the galleons could weather the Irish coast at 
 sufficient distance to be out of danger — to weather Cape 
 Clear, as they described it, but the Cape Clear which 
 they meant — a glance at the map will show it — was 
 not the point so named at present, but Clare Island, 
 the extreme western point of Mayo. The high-built, 
 broad and shallow galleons were all execrable sailers, 
 but some sailed worse than others, and some were in 
 worse condition than others. They passed the Orkneys 
 together, and were then separated in a gale. The 
 nights were lengthening, the days were thick and 
 misty, and they lost sight of each other. Two or three
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 77 
 
 went north as far as the Faroe Islands, suffering piti- 
 fully from cold and hunger. Detachments, eight or ten 
 together, made head as they could, working westward, 
 against wind and sea, the men dying daily in hundreds. 
 The San Martin, with sixty ships in company, kept far 
 out into the Atlantic, and they rolled down towards the 
 south dipping their mainyards in the tremendous seas. 
 On August 21, the day on which the Duke wrote to 
 Philip, they were two hundred miles west of Cape 
 Wrath, amidst the tumult of the waters. ' The Lord,' 
 he said, ' had been pleased to send them a fortune 
 different from that which they had looked for; but 
 since the expedition had been undertaken from the 
 beginnincr in the Lord's service, all doubtless had been 
 ordered in the manner wnich would conduce most to 
 the King's advantage and the Lord's honour and glory. 
 The fleet had suffered so heavily that they had con- 
 sidered the best thing whicL they could do would be to 
 bring the remains of it home in safety. Their finest 
 ships had been lost, their ammunition had been ex- 
 hausted, and the enemy's fleet was too strong for what 
 was left. The English guns were heavier than the 
 Spanish ; their sailing powers immeasurably superior. 
 The sole advantage of the Spaniards was in small arras, 
 and these they could not use, as the enemy refused to 
 close. Thus, with the assent of the vice-admirals, he 
 was making for home round the Scotch Isles. The 
 food was short ; the dead were many ; the sick and 
 wounded more. He himself could but pray that they 
 might soon reach a port, as their lives depended on it.'
 
 78 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 Tliis letter, though scut off out uf the Western 
 Oeciin, (lid eventually roach the King's hands. Mean- 
 while the weather grew wilder and wilder. The number 
 of vessels which could bear up against the gales 
 diminished daily, and one by one they fell to leeward 
 un the fatal Irish sliore. Leaving Medina Sidonia and 
 the survivors which reached home along with him, the 
 story must follow those which were unequal to the 
 work required of them. The Spaniards were excellent 
 seamen. They had navigated ships no worse than 
 those which were lumbering through the Irish seas, 
 amoncr West Indian hurricanes and through the tern- 
 pests at Cape Horn. But these poor wretches were 
 but shadows of themselves; they had been poisoned 
 at the outset with putrid provisions; they were now 
 famished and sick, their vessels' sides torn to pieces 
 by cannon-shot and leaking at a thousand holes, their 
 wounded spars no longer able to bear the necessary 
 canvas ; worst of all, their spirits broken. The super- 
 stitious enthusiasm with which they started had turned 
 into a fear that they were the objects of a malignant 
 fate with which it was useless to struggle. Some had 
 been driven among the Western Islands of Scotland ; 
 the ships had been lost; the men who got on shore 
 alive made their way to the Low Countries. But 
 these were the few. Thirty or forty other vessels had 
 attempted in scattei'ed parties to beat their way into 
 the open sea. But, in addition to hunger, the men 
 were sulTering fearfully for want of water, and perhaps 
 forced the pilots either to make in for the laud, or else
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA, 79 
 
 to turn south before they had gained sufficient offing. 
 Thus, one by one all these drove ashore, either on the 
 coast of Sligo or Donegal, or in Clew Bay or Gahvay 
 Bay, or the rocks of Clare and Kerry, and the wretched 
 crews who escaped the waves found a fate only more 
 miserable. The gentlemen and officers, soiled and 
 battered though they were, carried on land such orna- 
 ments as they possessed. The sailors and soldiers had 
 received their pay at Corunna, and naturally took it 
 with them in their pockets. The wild Irish were 
 tempted by the plunder. The gold chains and ducats 
 were too much for their humanity, and hundreds of 
 half-drowned wretches were dragged out of the waves 
 only to be stripped and knocked on the head, Avhile 
 those who escaped the Celtic skenes and axes, too 
 weak and exhausted to defend themselves, fell into the 
 hands of the English troops who were in garrison in 
 Connaught, The more intelligent of the Irish chiefs 
 hurried down to prevent their countrymen from dis- 
 gracing themselves. They stopped the robbing and 
 murdering, and a good many unfortunate victims found 
 shelter in their castles. Such Spaniards as were taken 
 prisoners by the English met a fate of which it is 
 impossible to read without regret. Flung as they were 
 upon the shore, ragged, starved, and unarmed, their 
 condition might have moved the pity of less generous 
 foes. But the age was not pitiful. Catholic fanaticism [ 
 had declared war against what it called heresy, and the \ 
 heretics had to defend their lives and liberties by such | 
 means as offered themselves. There might be nothintf !
 
 8o THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 to tear fniin the Spanish prisoners in their present 
 c'xtreniil.y, but if allowed to recover and find jirotcction 
 IVoni Irish hospitality, they might and would become 
 eminently dangerous. The number of P^nglish was 
 small, far too small, to enable them to guard two or 
 three thousand men. With the exception, therefore, 
 
 (of one or two ofhcers who were reserved for ransom, 
 all tliat were captured were shot or hanged on the 
 spot. 
 
 The history of these unfortunates must be looked 
 for in the English records rather than the Spanish. 
 They never returned to Spain to tell their own story, 
 and Captain Duro lias little to say about them 
 beyond what he has gathered from English writers. 
 Among the documents published by him, however, 
 there is an extraordinary narrative related by the 
 Captain Cuellar who so nearly escaped hanging, a 
 narrative Avhich not only contains a clear account of 
 the wreck of the galleons, but gives a unique and 
 curious picture of the Ireland of the time. 
 
 The scene of the greatest destruction among the 
 g^ ships of the Armada was Sligo Bay. It is easy to 
 see why. The coast on the llayo side of it trends 
 away seventy miles to the west as far as Achill and 
 Clare Island, and ships embayed there in heavy south- 
 westerly weather had no chance of escape. On one 
 beach, five miles in length, Sir Jetirey Fenton counted 
 eleven hundred dead bodies, and the country people 
 told him, * the like was to be seen in other places,* 
 Sir William Fitzwilliam saw broken timber from the
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 8i 
 
 wrecks lying between Sligo and Ballyshannon, ' suffi- 
 cient to have built five of the largest ships in the 
 world,' besides masts and spars and cordage, and boats 
 bottom uppermost. Among the vessels which went 
 ashore at this spot to form part of the ruin which Fitz- 
 william was looking upon was a galleon belonging to 
 the Levantine squadron, commanded by Don Martin de 
 Aranda, to whose charge Cuellar had been committed 
 when Bobadilla saved him from the yard-arm. Don 
 Martin, after an ineffectual struggle to double Achill 
 Island, had fallen off before the wind and had anchored 
 in Sligo Bay in a heavy sea with two other galleons. 
 There they lay for four days, from the first to the fifth 
 of September, when the gale rising, their cables parted, 
 and all three drove on shore on a sandy beach among 
 the rocks. Nowhere in the world does the sea break 
 more violently than on that cruel shelterless strand. 
 Two of the galleons went to pieces in an hour. The 
 soldiers and sailors, too weak to struggle, were most 
 of them rolled in the surf till they were dead and then 
 washed up upon the shingle. Gentlemen and servants, 
 nobles and common seamen, shared the same fate. 
 Cuellar's ship had broken in two, but the forecastle 
 held a little longer together than the rQst, and Cuellar, 
 clinging to it, watched his comrades being swept away 
 and destroyed before his eyes. The wild Irish were 
 down in hundreds stripping the bodies. Those who 
 had come on shore with life in them fared no better. 
 Some were knocked on the head, others had their 
 clothes torn off and were left naked to perish of cold.
 
 82 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 , , Don Diego Enriqtio/, a high-born patrician, passed, 
 
 jl jJ'' with the Conde dc Viliafranca and sixty-five others, 
 into his sliip's tender carrying bags of ducats and 
 jewels. Tlicy went below, and fastened down tlie 
 hatchway, hoping to be rolled alive on land. A huge 
 wave turned the tender bottom upwards, and all who 
 were in it were smothered. As the tide went back 
 the Irish came with their axes and broke a hole open 
 in search of plunder; while Cucllar looked on speculat- 
 ing how soon the same fate would be his own, and 
 seeing the corpses of his comrades dragged out, stripped 
 naked, and left to the wolves. His own turn came 
 at last. He held on to the wreck till it was swept 
 away, and he found himself in the water with a brother 
 officer who had stuffed his pockets full of gold. He 
 could not swim, but he caught a scuttle board as it 
 floated by him and climbed up upon it. His com- 
 panion tried to follow, but was washed off and drowned. 
 Cuellar a few minutes later was tossed ashore, his leg 
 badly cut by a blow from a spar in the surf. Drenched 
 and bleeding as he was, he looked a miserable figure. 
 The Irish, who were plundering the better dressed of 
 the bodies, took no notice of him. He crawled along 
 till he found \ number of his countrymen who had 
 been left with nothing but life, bare to their skins, and 
 huddled together for warmth. Cuellar, who had still 
 his clothes, though of course drenched, lay down among 
 some rushes. A gentleman, worse off than he, for he 
 was entirely naked, threw himself at his side too spent 
 to speak. Two Irishmen came by with axes who, to
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 83 
 
 Cuellar's surprise, cut some bushes, which they threw 
 over them for a covering, and went on to join in the 
 pillage on the shore. Cuellar, half dead from cold 
 and hunger, fell asleep. He was woke by a troop of 
 English horsemen galloping by for a share in the spoil. 
 He called his comrade but found him dead, while all 
 round the crows and wolves were busy over the naked 
 carcases. Something like a monastery was visible not 
 far off. Cuellar limped along till he reached it. He 
 found it deserted. The roof of the chapel had been 
 lately burnt. The images of the saints lay tumbled on 
 the ground. In the nave twelve Spaniards were hang- 
 ing from the rafters. The monks had fled to the 
 mountains. 
 
 Sick at the ghastly spectacle, he crept along a path 
 through a wood, when he came upon an old woman 
 who was hiding her cattle from the English. Her cabin 
 was not far distant, but she made signs to him to keep 
 off, as there were enemies in occupation there. Wander- 
 ing hopelessly on, he fell in with two of his countrymen, 
 naked and shivering. They were all famished, and 
 they went back together to the sea, hoping to find 
 some fragments of provisions washed on land. On the 
 way they came on the body of Don Enriquez and 
 stopped to scrape a hole in the sand and bury it. While 
 they were thus employed a party of Irish came up, who 
 pointed to a cluster of cabins and intimated that if they 
 went there they would be taken care of. Cuellar was 
 dead lame. His companions left him. At the first 
 cottage which he reached, there was an old Irish
 
 84 THE SPANISH STORY 01' Tllli ARMADA. 
 
 'savage/ an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a girl. 
 The Englishman struck at liim with a knife and gave 
 him a second wound. Tliey stripped him to his shirt, 
 took a gold chain from him, which they found concealed 
 under it, and a purse of ducats. They would have 
 left him en ciccros, like the rest, without a rag upon 
 him, had not the girl interposed, who affected to be 
 a Christian, ' though she was no more a Christian than 
 Mahomet.' The Frenchman proved to be an old sailor 
 who had fought at Terceira. In him the Sjjanish 
 captain found some human kindness, for he bound up 
 liis leg for him and gave him some oatcakes with butter 
 and milk. The Frenchman then pointed to a ridge 
 of distant mountains. There, he said, was the country 
 of the O'Rourkc, a great chief, who was a friend of the 
 King of Spain. O'Rourke would take care of him; 
 many of his comrades had already gone thither for pro- 
 tection. With his strength something restored by the 
 food, Cuellar crawled along, stick in hand. At night 
 he stopped at a hut where there was a lad who could 
 speak Latin. This boy talked with him, gave him 
 supper and a bundle of straw to sleep upon. About 
 midnight the boy's father and brother came in, loaded 
 with phmder from the wrecks. They, too, did him no 
 hurt, and sent him forward in the morning with a pony 
 and a guide. English soldiers were about, sent, as 
 he conjectured, probably with truth, to kill all the 
 Spaniards they could fall in with. The first party that 
 he met did not see him. With the second he was less 
 fortunate. His guide saved his life by some means
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 85 
 
 which Cuellar did not understand. But they beat him 
 and took his shirt from him, the last of his garments 
 that had been left. The boy and pony went off, and 
 he thought then that the end was come, and prayed 
 God to finish with him and take him to His mercy. 
 Forlorn as he was, however, he rallied his courage, 
 picked up a piece of old matting, and with this and 
 some plaited ferns made a shift to cover himself : thus 
 costumed he went on to a hamlet at the side of a lake ; 
 the hovels of which it consisted were all empty; he 
 entered the best-looking of them, found some fagots of 
 oat-straw, and was looking about for a place to sleep 
 among them, when three naked figures sprang suddenly 
 up. He took them for devils, and in his extraordinary 
 dress they thought the same of him ; but they proved 
 to have belonged to the wrecked galleons ; one of them 
 a naval officer, the other two soldiers. They explained 
 mutually who they were, and then buried themselves 
 in the oat-sheaves and slept. They remained there for 
 warmth and concealment all the next day. At night, 
 having wrapped themselves in straw, they walked on 
 till they reached the dominions of the chief to whom 
 they had been directed. O'Rourke himself was absent 
 ' fighting the English,' but his wife took them in, fed 
 them, and allowed them to stay. As a particular 
 favour she bestowed an old cloak upon Cuellar, which 
 he found, however, to be swarming with lice. The 
 hospitality was not excessive. A report reached him 
 that a Spanish ship had put into Killybegs harbour, 
 was refitting for sea, and was about to sail. He hurried
 
 86 THE SFANIsrr STORY OF 'J HE ARMADA. 
 
 down tt) join litr, hut sIjc was gone. He learned after- 
 wards that slie had been wrecked and that all on board 
 had perished. 
 
 J To was now like a hunted wolf. Tlie English 
 vT* dej)uty had issued orders that every Spaniard in the 
 country must be given up to the Government. I'he 
 Irish did not betray Cuellar, but they did not care to 
 risk their necks by giving him shelter, and he wandered 
 about through the winter in Sligo and Donegal, meet- 
 ing with many strange adventures. His first friend 
 was a poor priest, who was performing his functions 
 among the Irish, in spite of the law, disguised as a 
 layman. From this man he met with help. He 
 worked next as a journeyman with a blacksmith, whose 
 wife was a brute. The priest delivered him from these 
 people, and carried him to a castle, which, from the 
 description, appears to have been on Lough Erne, and 
 here, for the first time, he met with hearty hospitality, 
 in the Irish understanding of the term. The owner of 
 the castle was a gentleman. He recognised an ally in 
 every enemy of England. He took Cuellar into his 
 troop of retainers, and dressed him in the saffron mantle 
 of the Irish gallowglass. For some weeks he was now 
 permitted to rest and recover himself, and he spent the 
 time in learning the manners of the people. The 
 chief's wife was beautiful, unlike the blacksmith's, and 
 the handsome and unfortunate Spanish officer was an 
 interesting novelty. Besides the lady there were other 
 girls in the castle, who came about him perhaps too 
 ardently, asked him a thousand questions, and at
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 87 
 
 length insisted that he sliould examine their hands and 
 tell their fortunes. He had learnt palmistry from the 
 gipsies in his own land. His invention Avas ready. 
 He spoke Latin, which they could understand, and he 
 gathered from their lips broken fragments of their own 
 Irish. At length, with his art and his attractiveness, 
 he gives the reader to understand that he was incon- 
 veniently popular; men and Avomen persecuted him 
 with demands and attentions, and he had to throw 
 himself on the protection of the chief himself. He 
 describes the habits and character of the people as if he 
 was writing of a fresh discovered island in the New 
 World. 
 
 They lived, he said, like mere savages about the 
 mountains. Their dwelling-places were thatched hovels. 
 The men were large-limbed, well-shaped, and light as 
 stags {sueltos como corzos). They took but one meal a 
 day, and that at night. Their chief food was oatmeal 
 and butter; their drink sour milk, for want of anything 
 better, and never water, though they had the best in 
 the world. The usquebaugh Cuellar does not mention. 
 On feast days they dined on undone boiled meat, which 
 tliey ate without bread or salt. The costume of the 
 men was a pair of tight-fitting breeches with a goatskin 
 jacket; over this a long mantle. Their hair they 
 wore low over their eyes. They were strong on their 
 legs, could walk great distances, and were hardy and 
 enduring. They, or such of them as he had known, 
 paid no obedience to the English. They were sur- 
 rounded by swamps and bogs, which kept the English
 
 J 
 
 88 Tlir. SPANISH STORY 01- THE ARMADA. 
 
 ;it a distance, and there was constant war between 
 the races. Even among themselves they were famous 
 thieves. They rubbed from each other, and every day 
 there was fighting. If one of them knew that his 
 neighbour had sheep or cow, he would be out at night 
 to steal it, and kill the owner. Occasionally a fortunate 
 robber would liave collected large herds and flocks, and 
 then the English would come down on him, and he liad 
 to fly to the liills with wife, and children, and stock. 
 Sheep and cattle were their only form of property. 
 They had no clothes and no furniture. They slept on 
 the ground on a bed of rushes, cut fresh as they wanted 
 them, wet with rain or stiff with frost. The women 
 were pretty, but ill dressed. A shift or a mantle, and 
 a handkerchief knotted in front over the forehead, 
 made their whole toilet ; and on the women was thrown 
 all the homework, which, after a fashion, they managed 
 to do. The Irish professed to be Christians. Mass was 
 said after the Roman rule. Their churches and houses 
 of religion had been destroyed by the English, or 
 by such uf their own countrymen as had joined the 
 Englisli. In short, they were a wild lawless race, and 
 every one did as he liked. They wished well to the 
 Spaniards because they knew them to be enemies of 
 the English heretics, and had it not been for the 
 friendliness which they had shown, not one of those 
 who had come on shore would have survived. It was 
 true at first they plundered and stripped them naked, and 
 fine spoils they got out of the thirteen galleons which 
 were wrecked in that part of the country ; but as soon
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 89 
 
 as they saw that the Spaniards were being killed by 
 the English, they began to take care of them. 
 
 Such was Cuellar's general j)icture, very like what 
 was drawn by the intruding Saxon, and has been 
 denounced as calumny. Cuellar was, at any rate, im- 
 partial, and rather liked his hosts than otherwise. The 
 Lord Deputy was alarmed at the number of fugitives 
 who were said to be surviving. As the orders to 
 surrender them had not been attended to, he collected 
 a force in Dublin and went in person into the West 
 to enforce obedience. Cuellar's entertainer had been 
 especially menaced, and had to tell his guests that he 
 could help them no further. He must leave his castle 
 and retreat himself with his family into the mountains, 
 and the Spaniards must take care of themselves. 
 Cuellar calls the castle Manglana ; local antiquaries 
 may be able to identify the spot. It stood on a 
 promontory projecting into a long, deep, and broad 
 lake, and was covered on the land side by a swamp. 
 It could not be taken without boats or artillery, and 
 the Spaniards offered to remain and defend it if the 
 chief would leave them a few muskets and powder, 
 with food for a couple of months. There were nine of 
 them. The chief agreed, and let them have what they 
 wanted ; and, unless Cuellar lies, he and his friends 
 held ' Manglana ' for a fortnight against a force of 
 eighteen hundred English, when God came to their 
 help by sending such weather that the enemy could 
 not any longer keep the field. 
 
 The chief, finding the "* value of such auxiliaries,
 
 J 
 
 90 77//: SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 wished to keep tliein pcrnmncntly ut liis hide, ami 
 ofVered Cuollar his sister for a wife. Cuellar, liowever, 
 was hanging lor lioine. He supposed tliat if he couM 
 reach Scotland he could cross easily from thence to 
 Flanders, One night after Christmas he slipped away 
 ;ind made for Antrim, travelling, seemingly, only in the 
 dark, and hiding during the day. He was in constant 
 danger, as the tracks were watched, and suspected 
 persons were seized and searched. He got as far as the 
 Giant's Causeway ; there he heard particulars of the 
 wreck of the ship which he had tried to join at Killy- 
 begs. It was a galeass with Alonzo de Leyva on board 
 and two or three hundred others with Him. They were 
 all dead, and Cuellar saw the relics of them which the 
 people had collected on the shore. Alonzo de Leyva 
 was the best loved of all the Spaniards in*'£Tie' fleet, and 
 the sight of the spot where he had perished was a fresh 
 distress. He was afraid to approach a port lest he 
 should be seized and hanged. For six weeks he was 
 hid away by some women, and after that by a bishop, 
 who was a good Christian, though dressed like a savage. 
 This bishop had a dozen Spaniards with him, fed, 
 clothed, and said Mass for them, and at last found a 
 boat to carry them across the Channel. They went, 
 and after a three days' struggle with the sea contrived 
 to land in Argyllshire. They had been led to hope for 
 help from James. Cuellar says that they were entirely 
 mistaken. James never gave them a bawbee, and 
 would have handed them over to the English if he had 
 not been afraid of the resentment of the Scotch Catholic
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 91 
 
 nobles. The Calvinist Lowlanders showed them scanty 
 hospitality. The Prince of Parma was informed of their 
 condition, and agreed with a Flemish merchant to 
 bring over to him all the Spaniards, now numerous, who 
 were on Scotch soil, at five ducats a head. Even yet 
 misfortune had not tired of persecuting them. In 
 their passage they were chased and fired on by a Dutch 
 frigate. They had to run ashore, where they were 
 intercepted by the Hollanders, and all but Cuellar and 
 two of his companions were killed. ., 
 
 So ends the Spanish captain's story. The wide 
 calamities involving multitudes are but the aggregate 
 of the sufferings of each individual of whom the multi- 
 tude is composed. Cuellar came off luckily compared 
 with most of his companions. Each of the twenty-nine 
 thousand men Avho sailed in July from Coruuna would 
 have had to relate a tale of misery at least as pitiful as 
 his, and the worst of all was that no one's neck was 
 wrung for it. 
 
 The sixty galleons which remained with tlie Duke 
 till the end of August were parted again by a south- 
 westerly gale, off the point of Kerry. The Duke him- 
 self passed so far out to sea that he did not see the 
 Irish coast at all. Recalde, with two large ships besides 
 his own, had come round Dunraore Head, near the land. 
 His crews were dying for want of water. He seems to 
 have known Dingle. Dr. Sanders, with the Pope's con- 
 tingent, had landed there eight years before, and a 
 statement in an account of Recalde's life that he had 
 once carried a thousand men to the coast of Ireland,
 
 93 THE SPANISH STORY OF mii ARMADA. 
 
 refers probably to that occasion. At all events, be was 
 aware that there was a harbour in Dingle Bay, an«l he 
 made for it with bis consorts. One of them, ' Our La'Jy 
 of the Rosary,' was wrecked in Blasket Sound. She 
 carried seven hundred men when she sailed out of Lis- 
 bon. Two hundred out of the seven were alive in her 
 when she struck the rock, and every one of them 
 perished, save a single lad. Recalde, with the other 
 galleon, anchored in the Dingle "estuary, and sent in to 
 the town a passionate entreaty to be allowed to fill his 
 water-casks. The fate of the Papal troops, who had 
 been all executed a few miles off, had so frightened the 
 Irish there that they did not dare to consent. The 
 English account states that Rccaldc had to sail as he 
 was, to live or die. The belief in Spain was tiiat be 
 took the water that he wanted by force. Perhaps the 
 inhabitants were not entirely inhuman, and did not in- 
 terfere. He saved the lives for the moment of the 
 wretched men under his chariie, thouoh most of them 
 perished when they reached their homes; he brought 
 back his ship to Corunna, and there died himself two 
 days after his arrival, worn out by shame and misery. 
 
 Oquendo also reached Spain alive. The persevering 
 west wmds drove him down the Bay of Biscay, and he 
 made his way into St. Sebastian, where he had a wife and 
 children : but he refused to see them ; he shut himself 
 into a solitary room, turned his face to the wall, and 
 ended like Recalde, unable to outlive the disgrace of the 
 gallant navy which he had led so often into victory. 
 They had done all that men could do. On the miser-
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 93 
 
 able day when their commander decided to turn his back 
 and fly they would have forced him upon a more 
 honourable course, and given the forlorn adventure an 
 issue less utterly ignominious. But their advice had 
 been rejected. They had sailed away from an enemy 
 whose strength at most was not greater than theirs. 
 They had escaped from a battle with a human foe to a 
 more fatal war with the elements, and they had seen 
 their comrades perish round them, victims of folly and 
 weakness. The tremendous catastrophe broke their 
 hearts, and they lay down and died. Oquendo's ' Capi- 
 tana ' had been blown up after the fight at Plymouth. 
 By a strauge fatality the ship which brought him home 
 blew up also in the harbour at St. Sebastian. The ex- 
 plosion may have been the last sound which reached 
 his failing sense. The stragglers came in one by one ; 
 sixty-five ships only of the hundred and thirty who, in 
 July, liad sailed out of Corunna full of hope and enthu- 
 siasm. In those hundred and thirty had been twenty- 
 nine thousand" Human creatures, freshly dedicated to 
 what they called the service of their Lord. Nine or ten 
 thousand only returned ; a ragged remnant, shadows of 
 themselves, sinking under famine and fever and scurvy, 
 which carried them off like sheep with the rot. When 
 tliey had again touched Spanish soil, a wail of grief rose 
 over the whole peninsula, as of Rachel weeping for her 
 children ; yet above it all rose the cry, Where was 
 Alonzo de Leyva ? Where was the flower of Spanish 
 chivalry ? Cuellar knew his fate ; but Cuellar was with 
 his Irish chief far away. Weeks, even months, passed
 
 94 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 before certain news arrived, and rumour invented ima- 
 
 . ginary glurios for liim. He had rallied the missing 
 
 galleons, he had fallen in with I3raki', had beaten and 
 
 I captured hitn, and had sunk half the English fleet. 
 Vain delusion ! De Leyva, like Oquendo and Recalde, 
 had done all which could be done by man, and God had 
 not interposed to help him. He had fought his 'Rata 
 Coronada ' till her spars were shot away and her timbers 
 pierced like a sieve. She became water-logged in the 
 gales on the Irish coast. A second galleon and a surviv- 
 ing galeass were in his company. The 'Rata' and the 
 { galleon drove ashore. De Leyva, in the galeass, made 
 : Killybcgs harbour, and landed there with fourteen hun- 
 1 dred men. It was the country of the O'Neil. They 
 were treated with the generous warmth which became 
 the greatest of the Irish chieftains. But their presence 
 was known in Dublin. O'Neil was threatened, and De 
 Leyva honourably refused to be an occasion of danger 
 to him. He repaired the galeass at Killybegs. The 
 October weather appeared to have settled at last, and 
 he started again with as many of his people as the 
 galeass would carry to make the coast of Scotland. She 
 had passed round the north of Donegal, she had kept 
 along the laud and had almost reached the Giant's 
 Causeway, when she struck a rock and went to pieces, 
 and De Leyva and his companions went the way of the 
 rest. ^ — - .- - 
 
 { The men who came back seemed as if they had 
 been smitten by a stroke from which they could 
 not rally. One of them describes pathetically the de-
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 95 
 
 light Avitli which, after those desperate storms, and 
 hunger and cold and thirst, they felt the warmth of the 
 Spanish sun again ; saw Spanish grapes in the gardens 
 at Santander, and the fruit hanging on the trees ; had 
 pure bread to eat and pure water to drink. But the 
 change brouofht no return of health. For the first 
 weeks they were left on board their ships, no prepara- 
 tion on shore having been made to receive them. 
 When the mortality was found rather to increase than 
 diminish, they were moved to hosj^itals, but they died 
 still by hundreds daily, as if destiny or Providence was 
 determined to sweep off the earth every innocent rem- 
 nant of the shattered expedition, while those who were 
 really to blame escaped unpunished. 
 
 Medina Sidonia had been charged by Philip to 
 report his progress to him as often as messengers could 
 be sent off. He had written when off the Lizard before 
 his first contact with the enemy. He had written again 
 on August 21 among the Atlantic rollers, when he be- 
 lievedthathe was bringing home his charge at least safe 
 if not victorious. On September 22 he arrived at San- 
 tander, and on the 23rd reported briefly the close of the 
 tragedy so far as it was then known to liim. The 
 weather, he said, had been terrible since he last wrote. 
 Sixty-one vessels were then with him. They had held 
 tolerably well together till September 18, when they 
 were caught in another gale, and fifty of them had gone 
 he knew not where. Eleven only had remained with 
 himself They had made the coast near Corumia, and 
 had signalled for help, but none had come off. They
 
 96 THE SPANISH STORY OF 7//E ARMADA. 
 
 li;nl then struggled on to Santander and were lying 
 there at anchor, lie had liiinself gone on shore, being 
 broken down by suffering. The miseries which they 
 had experienced had exceeded the worst that had ever 
 before been heard of. In some ships there liad not 
 been a drop of water for fourteen days. A hundred and 
 eighty of the crew of the ' San Martin ' had died, the 
 rest were down with putrid fever. Of his personal 
 attendants all were dead but two. There was not food 
 enough left on board for those who were alive to last 
 two days. The Duke ' blessed the Lord for all that He 
 had ordained ; ' but prayed the King to see instantly to 
 their condition, and to send them money, for they had 
 not a maravedi in the fleet. He was himself too ill to 
 do anything. There was no person whose duty it was 
 to help tliem, neither inspector, purveyor, nor pay- 
 master. They could obtain nothing that they wanted. 
 He had written to the Archbishop of Burgos for assist- 
 ance in establishing a hospital.^ 
 
 The opinion in Spain was savagely hostile to the 
 Duke. It was thought that if he had possessed the feel- 
 ings of a gentleman, he would have died of the disgrace 
 like Oquendo and Recalde. Tlie Duke, so far from feel- 
 ing that he was himself to blame, considered that he 
 above the rest had most reason to complain of having 
 been forced into a position which he had not sought and 
 for which he had protested his unfitness. Being Lord 
 High Admiral, his business was to remain with the 
 
 ' The Duke of Medina Sidonia to Philip, September 23, from Sautander.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 97 
 
 fleet, however ill he might be, till some other respon- 
 sible officer could be sent to relieve him. His one 
 desire was to escape from the sight of ships and 
 everything belonging to them, and hide himself and 
 recover his spirits in his palace at San Lucar. Not 
 Sancho, when he left his island, could be in greater 
 haste to rid himself of his office and all belonging to it. 
 On September 27, before an answer could arrive 
 from Philip, he wrote again to Secretary Idiaquez. 
 Almost all the sailors were dead, he said. Many of the 
 ships were dismasted ; no one could believe the state in 
 which they were. Idiaquez must look to it. For him- 
 self, his health was broken ; he was unfit for further 
 duty, and even if he was perfectly well he would never 
 go on shipboard again. He was absolutely without any 
 knowledge either of navigation or of war, and the King 
 could have no object in forcing him to continue in a 
 service from which the State could derive no possible 
 advantaoe. He begged that he might be thought of 
 no more in connection with the navy, and that, since 
 the Lord had not been pleased to call him to that voca- 
 tion, he might not be compelled to return in a situation 
 of which he could not, as he had many times explained, 
 conscientiously discharge the duties. His Majesty, he 
 said, could not surely wish the destruction of a faithful 
 subject. With sea affairs he neither could nor would 
 meddle any further, though it should cost him his head.^ 
 
 ^ ' En las cosas de la mer, por ninguu caso ni por alguna via tratare 
 dellas, aunque me costase la cabeza.' 
 
 U
 
 98 THE SPAMSII STORY OF THE ARMADA 
 
 Better so than fail in an office of the duties of wliich he 
 was ignorant, and wliere lie had to be guided by the 
 advice of others, in whose honesty of intention he could 
 feel no confidence. 
 
 Tlie last allusion was of course to Diego Florez on 
 whom, since it was necessary to punish somfe one, the 
 blame was allowed to fall. In justice, if justice was to 
 have a voice in the matter, the person really guilty was 
 Don Piiilip. Of the subordinates, Diego Florez wa.s 
 probably the most in fault, and he was imprisoned in 
 the Castle of Burgos. For the rest, Philip was singu- 
 larly patient, his conscience perhaps telling him that if 
 ,' he was to demand a strict account he would have to 
 I begin with himself. The popular story of the com- 
 posure with which he heard of the fate of the Armada 
 is substantially true, though rather too dramatically 
 pointed. The awful extent of the catastrophe became 
 ! known to him only by degrees, and the end of Alonzo 
 
 ide Leyva, which distressed him most of all, he only 
 heard of at Christmas. 
 
 To the Duke's letter he replied quietly and affec- 
 tionately, without a syllable of reproach. Unlike 
 Elizabeth, who left the gallant seamen who had saved 
 her throne to die of want and disease in the streets of 
 Margate, and had to be reminded that the pay of those 
 who had been killed in her service was still due to their 
 relations, Philip ordered clothes, food, medicine, every- 
 thing that was needed, to be sent down in hottest haste 
 to Corunna and Santander. The widows and orphans 
 of the dead sailors and soldiers were sousfht out and
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 99 
 
 pensioned at the cost of the State. To Medina Sidonia 
 he sent the permission which the Duke had asked for, 
 to leave the fleet and go home. He could not in fair- 
 ness have blamed the commander-in-chief for having 
 failed in a situation for which he had protested his 
 incompetence. The fault of Philip as a king and 
 statesman was a belief in his own ability to manage 
 things. In sending out the Armada he had set in 
 motion a mighty force, not intending it to be used 
 mightily, but that he might accomplish with it what he 
 regarded as a master-stroke of tame policy. He had 
 selected Medina Sidonia as an instrument who would do 
 what he was told and would make no rash experiments. 
 And the effect was to light a powder-magazine which 
 blew to pieces the naval power of Spain. It is to his 
 credit, however, that he did not wreak his disappoint- 
 ment upon his instruments, and endured patiently what 
 had befallen him as the Will of God. The Will of 
 God, indeed, created a difficulty. The world had been 
 informed so loudly that the Armada was going on the 
 Lord's work, the prayers of the Church had been so 
 long and so enthusiastic, and a confidence in what the 
 Lord was to do had been generated so universally, that 
 when the Lord had not done it, there was at once a 
 necessity for acknowledging the judgment, and embar- 
 rassment in deciding the terms in which the truth 
 was to be acknowledged. Philip's formal piety pro- 
 vided a solution which might have been missed 
 by a more powerful intellect, and on the 13th of 
 October the following curious letter was addressed by
 
 loo J HE SPANISH STORY OF TIJE ARMADA. 
 
 hiiM to the bi.sliops and archbishops throughout his 
 (loiniiiioiis : — 
 
 Most Reverend, — The uncertainties of naval enterprisfja are 
 well known, and llie fate which has befallen the Armada ifl an 
 instance in point. You will have already heard that the Duke of 
 Medina Sidunia has returned to Santander, bringing back with 
 him part of the fleet. Others of the ships have reached various 
 ports, some of them having suffered severely from their long and 
 arduous voyage. We are bound to give praise to God fur all 
 things which He is pleased to do. I on the present occasion 
 have given thanks to Ilim for the mercy which He has shown. 
 In tlie foul weather and violent storms to which the Armada has 
 been e.\posed, it might have experienced a worse fate ; and that 
 the misfortune has not been heavier is no doubt due to the 
 prayers -whicli have been offered in its behalf so devoutly and 
 continuously. 
 
 These prayers must have entailed serious e.xpense and trouble 
 on those who have conducted them. I wish you, therefore, all to 
 \inderstand that while I am, so far, well pleased with your exer- 
 tions, they may now cease. You may wind up in the cathedrals 
 and churclies of your dioceses with a solemn Thanksgiving Ma.ss 
 on any day which you may appoint, and for the future I desire 
 all ecclesiastics and other devout persons to continue to commend 
 my actions to the Lord in their secret devotions, that He may so 
 direct them as shall be for His own service, the exaltation of His 
 C'hurch, the welfare and safety of Christendom, which are the 
 objects always before me. ^r 
 
 From the Escurial : October 13, 1588.^ ^^ 
 
 Medina Sidonia reconsidered his resolution to have 
 no more to do wTtli ships and fighting. He was con- 
 tinued in his office of Lord High Admiral; he was 
 again appointed Governor of Cadiz, and he had a second 
 opportunity of measuring himself against English sea- 
 men, with the same result as before. Essex went into 
 
 ^ Duro, vol. ii. p. 314.
 
 THE SPANISH STORY OF THE ARMADA. loi 
 
 Cadiz in 1596, as Drake had gone in 1587. The Duke 
 acted in the same manner, and withdrew to Seville to 
 seek for reinforcements. He ventured back only after 
 the English had gone, and was again thanked by his 
 master for his zeal and courage. As if this was not 
 enough, Philip, in 1598, raised him to the rank of 
 Consejero alti'simo de Estado y Guerra, Supreme Coun- 
 cillor in Politics and War. Who can wonder that under 
 such a King the Spanish Empire went to wreck ? 
 
 The people were less enduring. Clamours were 
 raised that he had deserted the fleet at Santander, 
 that he had shown cowardice in action, that he had 
 neglected the counsels of his wisest admirals, that he 
 was as heartless as he was incapable, and that, leaving 
 the seamen and soldiers to die, he had hastened home 
 to his luxuries at San Lucar. In reality he had gone 
 with the King's permission, because he was useless and 
 was better out of the way. He was accused of having 
 carried off with him a train of mnles loaded with ducats. 
 He had told Philip that he had not brought home a 
 maravedi, and if he had really taken money he would 
 have done it less ostentatiously and with precautions 
 for secrecy. 
 
 But nothing could excuse him to Spain. Every 
 calumny found credit. He had shown 'cobardia y 
 continual pavor y miedo de morir, avaricia,, dureza y 
 crueldad ' — cowardice, constant terror and fear of death, 
 avarice, harshness, and cruelty. His real faults were 
 enough without piling others on him of which he was 
 probably innocent. With or without his will, he had
 
 I02 y/Z/c srANlSH STORY OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 been in tlio tliickcst and liottcst parts of the lianlest 
 engagements, and tljc 'San Martin' liad suffered as 
 severely as any ship in the fleet. lie knew nothing of 
 tlie work which he was sent to do ; that is probably the 
 worst which can justly be said of him; and he had not 
 sought an appointment for which he knew that he was 
 unfit. But an officer who tried to defend him was 
 obliged to admit that it would have been happy for his 
 country if the Duke had never been born ; that he 
 threw away every chance which was offered him, and 
 that he talked and consulted when acts and not words 
 were wanted. 
 
 His journey home across Castile was a procession of 
 ignominy. The street boys in Salamanca and Medina 
 del Campo pelted him with stones; crowds shouted 
 after him 'A las gallinas, a las almadradas' — 'To the 
 hens and the tunnies' — the tunnies being the fattest 
 and the most timid of fish, and the tunny fishing being 
 a monopoly of his dukedom. He was lold that he had 
 disgraced his illustrious ancestors, and that had he 
 the spirit of a man he would not have outlived his 
 shame. 
 
 History does not record the reception which he met 
 with from his wife when he reached his palace.
 
 ANTONIO PEEEZ : AN UNSOLVED 
 JIISTOmCAL KIDDLE.^ 
 
 ONE day early in the spring of the year 1590, while 
 Spain was still bleeding from the destruction of the 
 Great Armada, Mass was being sung in the church of 
 the Dominican convent at Madrid. The candles were 
 burning, the organ was pealing, the acolytes were 
 swinging the censers, and the King's confessor was 
 before the altar in his robes, when a woman, meanly 
 dressed, rushed forward amidst the fumes of the 
 incense. Turning to the priest, she said : ' Justice ! 
 I demand justice ; I demand that you hear me ! Are 
 you deaf, that I come so often to you and you will not 
 listen ? ' Then I appeal to One who will listen ; I appeal 
 to Thee my God who art here present ; I call on God 
 to be my witness and my judge ; He knows the wrongs 
 which I suffer. Let Him punish yonder man who is 
 my oppressor.' 
 
 The confessor turned pale as death. He stood 
 
 / 
 
 Nineteenth Centwry, Aiiril, May, 1883,
 
 I04 ANTONIO PENEZ: 
 
 speechless for a few moments. He then beckoned to 
 the attendants. ' Bid the lady prioress come hither/ 
 he said, ' and the sisterhood, and this woman's 
 sister, wlio is one of them. Say I require their 
 presence.' 
 
 The lady mother came fluttering with her flock 
 behind her. They gathered to the grating which 
 divided the chancel from the convent precincts, 
 
 'Holy mother,' the confessor said, 'this lady here 
 present charges me on my soul and conscience. She 
 calls on God to judge her cause, and she clamours for 
 redress. I do not wonder ; I should wonder rather if 
 she held her peace. But what can I do that I have 
 left undone ? I have told the King that it is his duty 
 to despatch the business of the lady's husband and 
 restore him to his family ; what would she have from 
 me more ? ' 
 
 ' I would have this much more, senor,' the lady 
 replied. ' If the King will not do what you command 
 him, refuse him absohition and withdraw to your cell. 
 You will be nearer heaven there, than where you now 
 stand. As the King's confessor you are his judge. 
 The King is the offender; I am the injured woman 
 of St. Luke's Gospel. The King may wear the crown 
 on his head ; but you are higher than he.' 
 
 The confessor could not answer her. 
 
 The scene shifts to the reception hall of Rodrigo 
 Vasquez, the President of the High Court of Justice. 
 The president was a grave, dignified man, seventy years 
 old. Before him stood a family of children, the eldest
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 105 
 
 a girl of sixteen, the little ones holding her hands or 
 clinging to her dress. 
 
 The girl did not seem daunted by the presence 
 in which she stood. ' Your lordship/ she said, * has 
 promised us this, that, and the other; you tell us 
 one day that something shall bo done on the morrow, 
 and then the next, and the next, as if a last " morrow " 
 there would never be. You have brought our home 
 to desolation. You have deceived a girl like me, and 
 you think it a grand victory, a glorious distinction. 
 You thirst, it seems, for our blood ; well, then, you 
 shall have it. Old men, it is said, go again to the 
 breast for milk to keep the life in them. You require 
 blood, fresh from the veins of its owners. We had 
 rather not be swallowed piecemeal, so we are come 
 all to you together. You perhaps w^ould prefer to 
 linger over us, but we cannot wait. Let your lordship 
 make an end with us. Here we are.' 
 
 Don Rodrigo started out of his chair. He marched 
 up the hall, and down, and tlien to the four corners. He 
 twisted his fingers, he crossed his arms. He appealed to 
 an old aunt and uncle who had brought the children. 
 
 ' Senora, sefior,* he said, ' I beseech you make that 
 young woman hold her peace, and say no more.' 
 
 The young Avoman would not hold her peace. 
 
 'Pray sit down, your lordship,' she said; 'pray be 
 calm. We are young; some of us were born, so to 
 say, but yesterday. But you have made our lives a 
 burden to us. Finish the work ; take our blood, and 
 let our souls depart from this miserable prison.'
 
 io6 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 These two inci(Jcnts, if the children's father wn^te 
 the trutli, happened precisely as I have described them, 
 and are as literal facts as usually pass for history. 
 Perhaps they are not exaggerated at all. The priest 
 in the Dominican convent was Diego de Chaves, 
 sj)iritual adviser to Philip the Second. The woman 
 before the altar was Juana de Coello, wife of Antonio 
 Perez, his Majesty's Secretary of State and confidential 
 minister. The girl in the Court of Justice was his 
 daughter Dona Gregoria, and the little ones were her 
 brothers and sisters. 
 
 Wliat stranjre cause could have wroujiht a mother 
 and child into a state of passion so unnatural ? 
 
 For three centuries after the Reformation, Philip 
 the Second was the evil demon of Protestant tradition. 
 Every action which could be traced to him was ascribed 
 to the darkest motives. He was like some ogre or 
 black enchanter sitting in his den in the Escurial, 
 weaving plots for the misery of mankind, in close 
 communion and correspondence with his master the 
 Antichrist of Rome. He was the sworn enemy of the 
 light which was rising over Europe ; he was the assassin 
 of his subjects abroad ; he was a tyrant at home, and 
 even in his own household ; he was believed universally 
 to have murdered his own son, and if not to have 
 murdered his wife, to have driven her to death with 
 a broken heart. The Inquisition was his favourite 
 instrument, and his name has been handed down 
 through modern history by the side of the most 
 detestable monsters who ever disgraced a throne.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 107 
 
 All this violence of censure was perfectly natural. 
 Men engaged in a deadly struggle for what they regard 
 as a sacred cause are seldom charitable to their adver- 
 saries. It was the Spanish power indisputably which 
 stemmed the Reformation, and more than once was 
 near extinguishing it. The conflict was desperate and 
 at last savage, and deeds were done which have left 
 a stain on all who were concerned in them. 
 
 But as time has gone on, and as it has appeared 
 that neither Lutheranism nor Calvinism nor Anglican- 
 ism can be regarded as a final revelation, we have been 
 able to review the history of the sixteenth century in 
 a calmer temper. For a thousand years the doctrines 
 of the Catholic Church had been guarded by the civil 
 power as the most precious of human possessions. 
 New ideas on such subjects, shaking as they do the 
 foundations of human society, may be legitimately 
 resisted on their first appearance from better motives 
 than hatred of truth ; and although, in a strife so 
 protracted and so deadly, evil passions dressed them- 
 selves in sacred colours, and crimes were committed 
 which we may legitimately assign to the devil, yet 
 it has been recognised that, on fair grounds of principle, 
 right-thinking men might naturally have taken opposite 
 sides, and that Catholics as well as Protestants might 
 have been acting on conscientious convictions. The 
 dust has settled a little, the spiritual atmosphere has 
 cleared itself, and among the consequences the cloud 
 which hung over Philip the Second has partially lifted. 
 The countrymen of Cervantes were not a nation of
 
 io8 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 (la-rc bigots; yet it is clear lliat tlie whole Spanish 
 people went with the Kinjjj entliusifistically in defence 
 of the Church, and complained only when his -pU (le 
 plomo, his foot of lead that he was so proud of, would 
 not move fast enough. The romance of Don Carlos 
 has gone into the air of which it was made. Don 
 Carlos is known now to have been a dangerous lunatic, 
 whom it was necessary to cage like a wild animal; the 
 exact manner of his death is unknown; but his father 
 acted throughout by the advice of the Council of State, 
 and it was by their advice also that so distressing a 
 secret was concealed from public curiosity. As we look 
 at Philip with more impartial attention, the figure 
 comes out before us of a painstaking, laborious man. 
 prejudiced, narrow-minded, superstitious, with a conceit 
 of his own abilities not uncommon in crowned heads, 
 and frequently with less justification, but conscientious 
 from his own point of view, and not without the 
 feelinofs of a iientlenian. 
 
 I purpose to reconstruct on these more tolerant 
 lines the story of the relations between Pi)ilip the 
 Second and Antonio Perez which have so long per- 
 plexed historical inquirers — on the surface a mere palace 
 intrigue, but developing from its peculiar features into 
 a nine days' wonder throughout Europe, and occasion- 
 ing, if not causing, the overthrow of tiie constitutional 
 liberties of Araijon. 
 
 Students of the history of the sixteenth century 
 must be fau^iliar with the name of Gonzalo Perez. 
 He was State Secretary to Charles the Fiftli, and his
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 109 
 
 signature stands at the bottom of the page on thousands 
 of Charles's despatches which are now extant. When 
 the Emperor abdicated, Gonzalo remained in office with 
 Philip, and had been forty years in the pubhc service 
 when he died. Antonio Perez passed as Gonzalo's 
 natural son. He was born in 1542, and was legitimat- 
 ised immediately by an Imperial diploma. There were 
 those who said, and spoke of it as notorious, that 
 Antonio was not Gonzalo's son at all, but the son 
 of Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli and Duke of Pastrana, 
 Philip's favourite minister. Ruy Gomez, at any rate, 
 took charge of the boy, removed him from school, 
 brought him up in his own family, and introduced 
 liim into a public department. Being quick and 
 brilliant, he was rapidly promoted ; and when Ruy 
 Gomez died in 1567 he left Antonio, at the age of 
 twenty-five, chief secretary to the Council of State 
 with a salary of four thousand ducats a year, in addition 
 to which, and as a sinecure, he was Protonotary of 
 Sicily with two thousand ducats a year. A rise so 
 swift implied extraordinary private intiuence, or extra- 
 ordinary personal quahties; and this was but the 
 beginning of his fortunes. On losing Ruy Gomez, 
 Philip took Perez as his own confidential secretary; 
 and along with him another youth, Juan de Escovedo, 
 who had also been a pupil of Ruy Gomez, and had 
 been brought up at Perez's side. The two young 
 men had been, and still continued, intimate personal 
 friends. 
 
 The Spanish administration was divided into separate
 
 no ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 councils, the secretaries of which were each i^ close 
 relation with the King, who insisted on knowing all 
 that was going on. Besides these there were the 
 secretaries who deciphered despatches, who were thus 
 admitted into State mysteries and were necessarily 
 treated with confidence. But of the whole number 
 Antonio Perez and Escovedo were nearest to the King, 
 and Perez the closer of the two. He and he alone 
 was admitted into the interior labyrinths of Philip's 
 mind. 
 
 He was thus a person of extraordinary consequence. 
 He was courted by great men in Church and State. 
 The Italian princes sent him presents to advance their 
 interests. He was the dispenser of royal favours. He 
 treated dukes as his equals, and the splendour in which 
 he lived was envied and criticised ; but his legitimate 
 income was considerable ; in all countries in that age 
 influential statesmen accepted homage in the shape 
 of offerings; and, considering the opportunities the 
 favoured secretary had, he does not seem to have 
 exceptionally abused them. 
 
 Perez being thus upon the stage, we introduce a 
 more considerable figure, Don John of Austria, the 
 King's brother, illegitimate sonr"of Charles the Fifth. 
 An illegitimate prince is always in a delicate position, 
 especially when his father happens to have brought 
 him up as a real one. He is of royal blood, but with- 
 out the rights belonging to it. He is uncertain of 
 his rank, and may generally be presumed to be dis- 
 contented. But Philip had shown no suspicion of his
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. ni 
 
 brother. He had trusted him, employed him, refused 
 him no opportunities which he could have desired had 
 he come more regularly into the world. Don John 
 was chivalrous, ardent, ambitious. He had every 
 quality which promised distinction, if in his youth he 
 had been wisely guided. Ruy Gomez had furnished 
 him with a secretary supposed to be prudence itself, 
 Juan de Soto, who had been trained in the War Office. 
 Thus accompanied, when the Moors broke into insurrec- 
 tion, Don John was sent to Granada to reduce them. 
 He did his work well ; he became a popular favourite, 
 and went next to command the allied Catholic fleet in 
 the Mediterranean. De Soto only had given imperfect 
 satisfaction. Don John had high-flying views for 
 himself, and De Soto, it was feared, had not sufficiently 
 discouraged them. Perez and Escovedo were instructed 
 to give him an admonition, which they did, and with 
 this friendly warning Don John and his secretary went 
 their way into Italy. The battle of Lepanto followed, 
 and the young irregular Spanish prince blazed out into 
 a hero of romance. Philip was a faithful son of the 
 Church, and of the Pope in his spiritual capacity ; but 
 he was King of Naples and Sicily, with interests in the 
 Peninsula not always identical with the interests of 
 the court of Rome. Pius the Fifth, who had just then 
 absolved England from its allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, 
 and believed it his mission to sweep away heresy, 
 found in Don John a child much nearer to his heart. 
 Don John was to be the Church's knight, the chosen 
 * soldier of the Lord, and immediately after Lepanto
 
 112 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 Pius had I'urmed views for constituting him an 
 indepeudent sovereign. Tunis was to be the first scene 
 of liis greatness. The Emperor Charles liad won 
 immortal glory in his African campaign. De Soto had 
 studied history and dreamt of the possibility of reviving 
 the Carthaginian empire. Don John, set on by the 
 Pope, re-fortified the Goleta, and transported on his 
 own authority, out of Italy, the best part of the Spanish 
 troops there, while the Papal Nuncio at Madrid 
 requested Philip in Pope Pius's name to allow his 
 brother to take the title of King of Tunis. The 
 Spanish council knew better than his Holiness the 
 value of tiie Emperor's African con<juests. They had 
 been a drain upon the treasury and the gi'ave of 
 thousands of their bravest men. Instead of indulfjing 
 Don John they sent orders that the fortresses should be 
 demolished and the troops withdrawn. But the order 
 came too late. The Goleta was assaulted by the Turks 
 in overwhelming numbers, and the garrison was cut ofif 
 to a man. Philip had good reason to be displeased. 
 The independent action of a commander cannot expect 
 to be regarded, when unsuccessful, with especial 
 leniency, nor were matters mended by the signs which 
 his brother was manifesting of a restless ambition. He 
 replied politely to the Pope, however, that the establish- 
 ment of a kingdom in Tunis was not at the time 
 expedient. He found no fault with Don John, but laid 
 the blame on bad advisers. He gently removed De 
 Soto, leaving him as commissary-general of the army ; 
 and secretary Escovedo, who had been especially
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 113 
 
 eloquent in the cabinet on De Soto's rashness, was 
 sent to take his place as a safer companion to the 
 prince. 
 
 Philip, however, was again unfortunate. The mis- 
 chance at the Goleta had not been sufficient to dim the 
 glories of Lepanto, or cool the hopes which so brilliant 
 a victory had inspired. Don John was still persuaded 
 that there were great things in store for him. It 
 seemed as if he had an especial power of turning the 
 heads of the secretaries, and Escovedo himself was soon 
 embarked with him in a yet wilder scheme, to which 
 the Pope and the Fates were beckoning the way. 
 
 After a struggle of ten years with his revolted 
 subjects in the Low Countries, experience was beginning 
 to teach Philip that it might be expedient to try milder 
 ways with them. The Duke of Alva with his blood 
 and iron had succeeded only in enlisting the whole of 
 the seventeen provinces in a common rebellion, and if 
 the war continued, the not unlikely end of it would be 
 that Spain would finally lose them all. Holland and 
 Zealand might become English, Belgium be absorbed 
 into France, and the rest drift away into Germany. 
 Bitter Catholic as he was, Philip had some qualities of 
 a statesman. He had determined on an effort to make 
 up the quarrel. The provinces were to be left with 
 their constitutional rights, securities being given for the 
 safety of religion. The Spanish army was to be with- 
 drawn, and by abandoning attempts at coercion he 
 hoped that it might not be too late to recover the 
 hearts of the people.
 
 114 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 To cany out this purpose he had pitched upon his 
 brother Don John. Tlie Emperor's memory was still 
 honoured in the Low Countries. Charles liad always 
 been more a Fleming than a Spaniard. Don John, 
 with his high rank and chivalrous reputation, was 
 likely to be welcome there, or at least more welcome 
 than any other person who could be selected ; and an 
 opportunity was thrown in his way, if he could use it, 
 of winning laurels for himself more enduring than 
 those which grow on battle-fields. 
 
 The opportunity, however, was one which a wise 
 man only could appreciate. Young soldiers, especially 
 soldiers who have been distinguished in arms, are 
 seldom in love with constitutions : and to be governor 
 at Brussels, with a council of successful rebels to tie 
 his hands, was a situation wliicli woidd have had no 
 attraction for the victor of Lepanto, had there not 
 been attached to it a more interesting possibility, the 
 cmpoxsa de Inglatcrra, the invasion and conquest of 
 England. Philip himself had for a few years been 
 called Kincf of Enfjland. His name remains in our 
 Statute Book. It was asserted by the Jesuits, it was 
 believed by nine-tenths of the orthodox world, that the 
 English Catholics, who were two-thirds of the nation, 
 were waiting only for the help of a few thousand 
 Spaniards to hurl from the throne the excommunicated 
 usurper. The Queen of Scots, the Lady of Romance, 
 was lying a prisoner in Sheffield Castle. To carry over 
 the army when it left the Netherlands, to land in 
 Yorkshire, to ileliver the enchanted princess, and reign
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE, 115 
 
 at her side with the Pope's blessing over an England 
 restored to the faith — this was a glorious enterprise, 
 fit to fire the blood of a Christian knight who was also 
 the countryman of Don Quixote. 
 
 Don John was still in Italy when the oifer of the 
 appointment was made. If it was accepted, the King's 
 order to him was to proceed with his secretary directly 
 to Brussels without returning to Spain. Not the 
 pacification of Flanders, but the empresa de Inglaterra 
 was the thought which rushed into the minds of Don 
 John and Escovedo. Instead of setting out as they 
 were enjoined, they went to Rome to consult Pope 
 Pius's successor, to ask for his sanction, to ask for men, 
 to ask for the title which had been borne by his 
 brother, and all this without so much as going through 
 the form of consulting his brother on the subject. 
 
 The Pope was of course delighted. If the attempt 
 was made, God would not allow it to fail. The Jesuits 
 had all along insisted that Philip's dilatoriness had 
 alone allowed heresy to take root in England. Philip 
 himself, who knew something of the country, was under 
 no such illusion. Five years before he had consented 
 unwillingly to the Ridolfi conspiracy. Elizabeth was 
 then to have been assassinated ; Spanish troops were 
 to have lauded, and the Queen of Scots was to have 
 had the crown. The end of this fine project had been 
 the execution of the Duke of Norfolk, the near escape 
 from execution of Mary Stuart, a plague of pirates and 
 privateers on the shores of Spanish America, and 
 increased severities against the English Catholics. Of
 
 ii6 ANTONIO I'EKEZ- 
 
 the Queen of Scots Philip had the very worst opiuiou. 
 To strike a blow at that nioinent at Elizabeth could 
 not fail to re-exasperate the Low Countries, English 
 soldiers would land in Holland, English corsairs would 
 swarm in the Atlantic and seize his treasure-ships. 
 
 None of these considerations occurred to Don John 
 or his fiery adviser. Escovedo was even hotter that his 
 master, and audacious even to insolence. From Rome, 
 in spite of his orders, he went to Madrid ; and Don 
 John soon after followed him thither, leavinij their 
 purposes to reach Philip indirectly from another 
 quarter. This was in the summer of 1576, and we now 
 a[)proach the critical part of the story. Shortly after 
 Escovedo arrived at the court, the Nuncio sent one 
 morning for Antonio Perez and inquired who a certain 
 Escoda was. He had been all night, he said, decipher- 
 ing a despatch from his Holiness. It referred to the 
 ' enterprise of England ' which was to be undertaken, 
 if the King would allow it, by Don John. Escoda 
 would inform him of the particulars. 
 
 ' Escoda ' could be no one but Escovedo. Perez 
 carried his information to the King, who was again 
 naturally extremely dissatisfied ; the more so perhaps 
 that Don John's popularity, and the general favour with 
 which Spanish sentiment was likely to take up the 
 adventure, obliged liim to keep his displeasure to him- 
 self. Escovedo evidently thought himself secure. He 
 addressed Philip in so rude a letter that Philip com- 
 plained of it to Perez. ' If he had spoken to me as he 
 has written,' the King said, ' I believe I could not have
 
 AM UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 117 
 
 contained myself.' Words still more rash had fallen 
 from Escovedo's lips. ' Don John, when master of Eng- 
 land, was afterwards to take charge of Spain.' 
 
 Philip, like most small-minded men, shrank from 
 meeting dilficulties openly. He took no notice of 
 Escovedo's impertinence, and he was afraid or unwilling 
 to quarrel with his brother. He allowed the Nuncio to 
 give liim the Pope's message, and put him off with a 
 vague answer. Don John ventured on ground still 
 more delicate by asking for the ' chair and canopy,' the 
 insignia of a legitimate prince of the blood royal. Even 
 this Philip did not refuse. He required only that Don 
 John should repair first to his government, compose the 
 provinces, and withdraw the army. When this was 
 done it would be time to think of ' English enterprises' 
 and chairs and canopies. 
 
 Don John went, and it seemed as if all was smooth 
 again. Escovedo was left at Madrid professedly to 
 complete some defective arrangements for bis master. 
 Perhaps Philip was uncertain whether he would trust so 
 doubtful an adviser at his brother's side any more. 
 
 I am not writing the history of the wars in the 
 Netherlands ; it is enough to say that any hopes which 
 had been built on the popularity of Don John were 
 disappointed. Tlie Estates refused to admit him as 
 governor while the Spanish troops were in the fort- 
 resses ; the troops were sullen, and would not move till 
 they were paid their wages. Don John Avished to 
 remove them by sea, meaning, when they wei'e in the 
 Channel, to fly at England permitted or unpermitted ;
 
 118 ANTONIO PKREZ: 
 
 Itiit Mli/,;il)i:tli and tliu Prince of Orange liad their eyes 
 open ; the Estates insisted that the army sliould retire 
 by land, and declined to advance a dollar till they were 
 on the march. Don John, being without a friend 
 whom he could trust, begged that Escovedo might rejoin 
 him ; and Escovedo, not without emphatic warnings 
 and reiterated instructions, was allowed to go. The 
 demands of the Estates were to be complied with to 
 the letter. Tlie army, at whatever sacrifice of bolder 
 purposes, was to retire as the Estates desired. Philip 
 required peace, and was prepared for the price that was 
 to be paid for it. The humiliation was too deep for 
 Don John. For the knight-errant of the Church to 
 retreat before a burgher council was ignominy. Some- 
 thing, he knew not what, must be done to repair it, 
 and his thoughts went everywhere except where they 
 ought to have been. Escovedo had no sooner arrived 
 than a secret correspondence began again with the 
 Pope. The religious war was raging in France. Don 
 John might join the Duke of Guise and the Catholic 
 League, and they might manage England between 
 them. Then again lie thought how he might satisfy 
 his ambition at home. On February 3, 1577, Escovedo 
 wrote to Perez to revive the request for the chair and 
 canopy. It would give Don John a seat in the Council 
 of State. He and Perez and their friends the Arch- 
 bishop of Toledo and the Marques de los Velez could 
 rule the country as they pleased, and relieve his brother 
 of the cares of government. On reflection he perhaps 
 remembered that Philip might not be so anxious to be
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 119 
 
 relieved ; for some days after the purpose was changed ; 
 Don John was to take his army into France as an 
 adventurer, and help the Duke of Guise to destroy the 
 Huguenots. Victorious there, he could hold the Estates 
 in check, the shame of the retreat would be covered, 
 and the ' great design ' on England could go forward. 
 Royal princes are excused their follies at the expense of 
 their servants. These feverish dreams were set down 
 at the Escurial to Escovedo's account, and probably 
 with excellent reason. 
 
 Meanwhile, Philip's orders were being obeyed. He 
 had agreed to all which the Estates demanded. On 
 February 1 2 the arrangement known as the * Perpetual 
 Edict ' was provisionally accepted, and was forwarded 
 to Madrid for ratification. Don John was distracted. 
 He believed that he might write to Perez confidentially; 
 for Perez, by Philip's order, had encouraged him to sup- 
 pose so ; and much eloquence has been expended on 
 the assumed treachery. But kings may be judged too 
 harshly in such matters, when they have reason to 
 fear that persons whom they have trusted are playing 
 tricks with them. If Don John was acting loyally, he 
 had nothing to fear. After the edict was sent off, Don 
 John wrote again to Perez that he must resign. Sooner 
 than remain to govern Flanders on such conditions, he 
 would turn hermit. If the King insisted on keeping 
 him there he would become desperate, fling up the 
 reins and go home, though he lost his life for it. He 
 implored that he might not be driven to choose between 
 disobedience and infamy.
 
 120 ANTONIO PKREZ: 
 
 Perez sliowcd Philip all tliese letters; and they 
 were considered in the cabinet. The blame was laid on 
 Escovedo, who was held to have betrayed his trust. 
 Don John was informed kindly, but peremptorily, that 
 his return at such a time would be prejudicial to the 
 public service. No one could be so fit as the King's 
 brother to recover the loyalty of the Estates. The 
 King said that he understood his feelings, and coidd 
 sympathise with him ; but he must try to be patient ; 
 least of all must he rush off into France, where the 
 Government had not asked for his assistance. The 
 English project and his other wishes should be con- 
 sidered when the time for them was come ; but his 
 present duty was to reconcile Flanders, and there he 
 must remain. Escovedo had spoken of returning him- 
 self to speak to the King. Perez told him that if he 
 came back ■without permission, it would be taken as a 
 serious offence, and was not to be thought of. 
 
 Don John acquiesced, or seemed to acquiesce. The 
 Perpetual Edict was ratified. The troops began the 
 evacuation, and on May 2 Don John was received at 
 Brussels, and installed as governor. Had he been 
 sincere, the storm would have blown over ; but the 
 next news which arrived about him at Madrid was that 
 he had actually made a private treaty with the Court 
 of Rome. The Pope had promised him 6000 men 
 and 150,000 ducats for the English expedition, while 
 before the Brussels settlement had lasted a fortnight 
 he was again in correspondence with the Duke of Guise, 
 and was threatening open hostilities against Holland
 
 A.V UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 121 
 
 and Zealand, which were making difficulties about 
 liberty of worship. The difficulty need not have been 
 insuperable ; and the Estates refused to sanction imme- 
 diate violence. Don John snatched at the excuse to 
 break with tliem on his own authority ; with such 
 regiments as had not yet gone, he seized Namur ; and 
 Escovedo, in spite of his positive orders, rushed home 
 after all, to press Philip to allow the army to return. 
 The war should then be carried on in earnest. Tlie 
 Spanish forces could live in the rebel provinces as in 
 an enemy's country, and lay them waste with fire and 
 sword. 
 
 Information more unwelcome never reached PhiHp. 
 He longed for peace ; he had been acting in good faith ; 
 he refused to counter-order the troops ; he blamed the 
 seizure of Namur, and abhorred the very mention of 
 fire and sword. Still at the eleventh hour he clung to 
 the hope of reconciliation. The Estates declared Don 
 John a public enemy, and invited the Archduke Matthias 
 to take his place. Even so, Philip persevered. He sent 
 a commission to offer a complete amnesty, with the 
 instant and perpetual removal of the army. The 
 Estates might choose their own governor, either the 
 Archduke Matthias, or the Archduke Ferdinand, or 
 the Prince of Parma. But it was too late ; the day 
 for peace was gone. Confidence was irrecoverably 
 lost, and the quarrel had to be fought out to the end. 
 The army went back — there was no help for it — with 
 the Prince of Parma at its head ; while it was said 
 ' and beheved that Don John was treatinof with tlie
 
 t22 ANTONIO PEKhZ: 
 
 ])uU(; (jf" Cui.so lor ;ui o|t(jii alliance, without rcgani 
 to tliuir rcspcctivo sovereigns — a very strange ami 
 questionable performance. Both Guise and Philip 
 were no doubt defending the Catliolic relitjion. But 
 respect for forms and secular interests wore not to 
 pass for notliing. Spain and France were tlie rivals 
 for Continental supremacy. They had been at war off 
 and on for three-quarters of a century, and, if the 
 religious question was settled, might at any time be 
 at war again. Philip had not forgotten that it was 
 a Duke of Guise who had defended Metz against his 
 father; and for his brother to take on himself to settle 
 points of international policy with the subject of another 
 sovereign, was something not very far removed from 
 treason. 
 
 But we must now return to the scapegoat who was 
 to bear the blame for all these things, the unlucky 
 Escovedo. Flying home, as we saw him, in the teeth 
 of a positive command, he landed at Santander on 
 July 21. The worst had not yet happened ; for it was 
 not till the January following that the commission went 
 with the last overtures for peace, nor was the treating 
 with Guise as yet more than an unjDleasant rumour. 
 But Philip was legitimately incensed with Escovedo, 
 and, if we can believe M. Mignet, had prepared a 
 peculiar reception for him ; nay, was expecting that 
 Escovedo Avas coming with murderous intentions against 
 hinJself. Perez having informed the King in a note of 
 Escovedo s approach, Philip, according to his habit, and 
 in his well-known abominable hand, scrawled on the
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 123 
 
 margin, ' Menestcr sera prevenir nos bien de todo y dar 
 nos mucha priesa k despacharle antes que nos mate/ 
 The verb ' despachar,' like its English correspondent 
 'despatch,' has two meanings, and 'matar' has two 
 meanings. M. Mignet su23poses the words to mean, 
 ' We must bo quick and assassinate him before he kills 
 us.' He makes Philip suspect Escovedo of intended 
 treason, and resolve to be beforehand with him. But 
 no one would have thought of so interpreting the 
 passage if Escovedo had not in fact been assassinated 
 at a later period. The natural translation would be, 
 'We must despatch him quickly (t. c. send him about 
 his business) before he worries us to death ; * and as 
 Escovedo remained, for some months after his arrival, 
 not only unmolested, but tr<insacting business with the 
 King, I cannot infer, with M. Mignet, that Philip had 
 already formed so sanguinary a purpose against him. 
 Unquestionably, however, no good will was felt towards 
 a man who had responded so ill to the confidence which 
 had been placed in him. If Philip could have conve- 
 niently punished him without irritating his brother, he 
 would gladly have read him a sharp lesson, and the 
 irritation was likely to be increased as the consequences 
 of his misdoings developed themselves. The especial 
 uneasiness was on the side of France. In the autumn 
 (1577), three months after Escovedo's arrival, Philip 
 sent a new ambassador there, Juan de Vargas Mexia, to 
 inquire particularly into what was passing between his 
 brother and the Duke of Guise. Mexia ascertained 
 that the correspondence was real and that secret agents
 
 124 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 were going to and fro between them, though to what 
 purpose lie could not tell. The suspicious feature was 
 the Complete silence on the subject both of Don John 
 and his secretary. Escovedo's manners were abrupt 
 and arbitrary. In January Philip received a letter 
 from him, which he described happily as dcscosido, loose, 
 unstitched, visionary. He handed it to Perez, that he 
 might see how ' sanguinary ' it was. 
 
 Don John, at the reopening of the war, had begun 
 with a success. He had defeated the Prince of Orange 
 at Gemblours. He wrote passionately for reinforce- 
 ments. The victory had to be followed up, and all 
 would be won. He demanded money — money anrl 
 Escovedo. Philip, unhappily, had won victories before 
 in the Low Countries, and knew better what to expect 
 from them. His own more temperate policy had been 
 thwarted and ruined, and it was but too natural that 
 he should hold his brother's wild adviser as responsible. 
 If he sent him back, it would be only to throw fuel on 
 the fire. Don John, and the Pope, and the Guises would 
 set all Europe in confusion. Escovedo was no fool. He 
 could not be kept waiting at Madrid with dilatory 
 excuses. To imprison him, or bring him to trial, might 
 drive Don John at once into some dangerous course. It 
 would lead to investigations and the publication of State 
 secrets which ought not to be revealed. 
 
 There was a theory much in favour at the Spanish 
 court, that criminals who had forfeited their lives, or 
 persons whose lives were for any reason inconsistent 
 with public safety, might, when the facts were certain,
 
 AlV UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 125 
 
 and when an open prosecution would be inconvenient, 
 be removed privately by orders of the Council of State. 
 So Don Carlos had been disposed of; so the Flemish 
 envoy at Simancas. Spain was not the only country 
 where in extreme cases such proceedings were held 
 permissible. Elizabeth would have been grateful to 
 Sir Amyas Paulet if he would have relieved her of the 
 Queen of Scots. In Italy, in France, in Scotland, a 
 stab with a dagger w^as an expedient adopted in emer- 
 gencies, with no great care to ascertain that it was 
 deserved. Spain and England were rather in advance 
 of other nations than behind them ; and in Spain, 
 heartily loyal as it was, the public had begun to doubt 
 whether these secret executions ought to be continued. 
 A zealous court p)reacher had maintained, in a 
 sermon at which Philij) was present, that kings had 
 absolute power over the lives and fortunes of their 
 subjects. The Inquisition, of all courts in the world, 
 took up the question. The preacher was obliged to 
 retract his proposition in the same pulpit, and to confess 
 that kings had no more power over their subjects than 
 divine and human law allowed them. The old view, 
 however, held its ground in spite of the Holy Office, 
 and was professed in its extreme form by no less a 
 person than the King's spiritual adviser, the same Diego 
 de Chaves who was mentioned at the opening of our 
 story. Don Diego's opinion was this : ' So far as I 
 understand the law,' he said, * a secular prince who for 
 sufficient cause can take his subjects' lives from them 
 by course of law can also do it without course of law when
 
 ,2f, ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 the evidence of the guilt is clear. Form and order are 
 not essentials in such sense that thoy cannot be dis- 
 pensed with ; and if the prince has sufficient reasons 
 for proceeding irregularly, the vassal who by his com- 
 mand puts to death another vassal is doing no more 
 than his duty. He is bound to assume the cause to be 
 adequate. The presumption in all cases is that the 
 prince has rea.son for what he does.' 
 
 This doctrine was still held by Philip; and the 
 difficulty with Escovedo was precisely of the kind where 
 the application of it was convenient. Escovedo's guilt 
 miijht be assumed. He was a confidential minister who 
 had disobeyed his orders, and had caused a great public 
 calamity, involving the renewal of a civil war. If allowed 
 to live, he would still be dangerous. To bring him to 
 an account openly Avould be dangerous also. Philip 
 directed Antonio Perez to consult the Marques de los 
 Velez. The opinion of the marquis was decided, that 
 Escovedo should be killed; yet that the King must not 
 appear to have directed his execution, lest Don John 
 should be exasperated. Some scheme should be con- 
 trived by which it could appear that he had been sacri- 
 ficed to private revenge. A Government must have 
 been singularly lieljiless which could liave recourse to 
 such expedients. But so it was. For the act itself De 
 los Velez had so little hesitiition that, ' with the Sacra- 
 ment in his mouth,' he was ready to assert the necessity 
 «>f it. The best method, he thought, would be to give 
 Escovedo ' something to eat * from which he should not 
 recover.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 127 
 
 There was nothing in such a proposal to disturb 
 Philip's ignoble conscientiousness. He sincerely believed 
 that by consenting he was discharging a public duty, 
 and with no more personal resentment than if he had 
 been signing a warrant for an ordinary execution. It 
 has never been suggested that Philip had any private 
 malice against Escovedo, or had any motive beyond 
 what was afterwards alleged. Why Antonio Perez 
 should have encouraged him, why he should himself 
 have so readily undertaken a treacherous office, is 
 another question on which speculation has been busy. 
 He had been Escovedo's personal friend. They had 
 grown ujj as boys together in the family of Ruy Gomez. 
 They hud been transferred together to the King's 
 service. They had never differed politically until 
 Escovedo had become Don John's secretary, and they 
 bad corresponded afterwards on terms of the closest 
 intimacy. It is true that Perez had been the strongest 
 advocate for a policy of j)eace, and Escovedo for war ; 
 but an antagonism of opinion scarcely explains the 
 readiness with which one Secretary of State undertook 
 to murder another. And it has been assumed as a 
 matter of course that Perez must have had some 
 private motives of his own. 
 
 Before entering into these dark regions I will describe 
 biiefly what actually happened. The ' something to 
 eat ' was administered as De los Velez recommended. 
 Perez took into his confidence his own master of the 
 J household, Diego Martinez : he told him that the King 
 and council considered Escovedo's life to be dangerous
 
 ,2S ANTONIO PEKEZ: 
 
 to tlic jHMCc of Kuropc, ;iii<l tliat Escovedo must be 
 secretly iiia<lc away with. To satisfy Martinez's scruples 
 he showed him a letter in the King's hand. Enriquez, 
 a J)age, was also admitted into tlie mystery. An apo- 
 thecary was found far away in Aragon who could mix 
 a potion, and Escovedo was invited to dinner. Two or 
 tiiree experiments were tried with imperfect success. 
 The unlucky wretch became very ill after swallowing a 
 dish of cream with some white powder in it; but he 
 lja«l not taken enough. He suspected foul play, and 
 afterwards dined alone in his apartments in the palace. 
 A page in the palace kitchen was bribed to put a larger 
 dose into a plate which was sent up to him. Escovedo 
 discovered the poison, and an innocent slave-girl who 
 had dressed tiie dish was strangled in the Plaza at 
 Madritl. 
 
 The fate of this poor creature, so piteous because so 
 utterly undeserved, passed as a mere incident; Perez 
 scarcely gave a second tiiought to it, and the King's 
 conscience could not descend to a kitchen wench. But 
 poison, it was clear, could not be depended on ; and 
 steel was a surer method. Escovedo's habits were 
 watched. He was out much after dark, and returned 
 late to his apartments. Bravoes were brought up by 
 the exertions of Diego Martinez from remote parts of 
 the Peninsula. Easter had come, and Perez, to be out 
 of the way, went for the Holy Week to Alcala de 
 Henares. On the night of Easter Monday, March 31, 
 1578, Don Joim's secretary was run through the body 
 iu a public street, and was killed on the spot.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. lay 
 
 Matlrid was an orderly city, and open assassinations 
 were unnsual. A person, himself of so much conse- 
 quence, and the notorious favourite of a prince who was 
 the idol of the people, could not be found lying dead 
 without a considerable stir being caused by it. The 
 police were out like hornets. The gates were guarded, 
 and no one was allowed to pass. The hotels and lodging- 
 houses Avere called on for a list of their guests. The 
 assassins were out of reach, iox they were secreted in 
 Perez's own house, and no clue could be found ; yet 
 suspicion at once and instinctively pointed to Perez as the 
 instigator, and his absence at Alcala was not enough to 
 clear him. His wife, Juana Coello, called to condole 
 with Escovedo's widow. The widow had not forgotten 
 the dinners and the illness which followed, and the 
 detected attempts at poison. She said significantly she 
 feared the blow had been aimed by a friend's hand. 
 Perez hurried back to the capital, pretending to be 
 horrified. He saw Escovedo's son. He told the alcalde 
 of the court that Escovedo had many enemies; there 
 were rumours of a love affair in Flanders ; Escovedo, 
 he knew, had lately received a message, bidding him 
 beware of some jealous Fleming. Perhaps he over- 
 acted his part. The alcalde and the alcalde's son, Garcia 
 de Arce, cross-questioned him unpleasantly. The King 
 was out at the Escurial, where, of course, reports reached 
 him from the magistrates ; but he was anxious for par- 
 ticulars. On April 3, three days after the murder, Perez 
 .^. wrote to liim, and a copy of the letter survives, with 
 Philip's marginal remarks upon it. Perez told him
 
 I30 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 what had passed with the alcalde, and mentioned what 
 he had said about the love affair. Philip noted, ' This 
 was very right.' Garcia de Arce had asked Perez 
 whether there had been a cpiarrel between him and 
 Escovedo, implying that he had licard something to that 
 eHect from Escovedo's wife. Philip (jb.served, ' There 
 will be danger from that woman.' ' The alcalde,' Perez 
 said, ' had discovered that strange things had been going 
 on during the winter in Escovedo's house; mysterious 
 visitors, night expeditions none knew where, and secret 
 boxes of papers, and keys of other people's houses,' 
 Philip, who evidently looked on himself as a careful, 
 well-intentioned prince, who had disposed of a public 
 enemy in a skilful manner, thought more of Escovedo's 
 plots than of awkward consequences from his murder. 
 He remarked that these keys and visits had a bad com- 
 plexion ; the alcalde must look more closely into that 
 matter, and search it to the bottom. Perez was uncom- 
 fortable about his bravoes, whom he knew not how to 
 dispose of. He had thought of sending them away 
 with despatches as Government couriers; but it seemed 
 too dangerous. He recommended Philip to put the 
 inquiry into the alcalde's hands exclusively, and to forbid 
 any other person to meddle with it. Philip prudently 
 observed that to interfere with the investigation would 
 provoke suspicion. He would communicate with the 
 alcalde, and would do what he could. The bravoes must 
 be kept for the present where they were, and Perez 
 meanwhile might come out to the Escurial to see him. 
 Finally, to quiet Perez's evident alarm, he said : ' If
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 131 
 
 Escovedo's widow desires to speak with me, I cannot 
 refuse to see her ; but do not fear that you will be 
 unsupported. I am with you, and will not fail you in 
 anything that may be expedient or necessary. Assure 
 youTself of this. You know it well.' 
 
 There is no doubt at all that in the last extremity, 
 and if Perez's life was in danger, Philip intended 
 honestly to tell the truth. 
 
 Strong, however, as suspicion was, suspicion was not 
 proof; and proof against Perez there was none. He 
 had been many miles from Madrid when the murder 
 was committed. His servants, Diego Martinez and 
 Enriquez, knew that they had been acting by the King's 
 authority. They had everything to gain by keeping 
 counsel, and might be in serious danger if they betrayed 
 their secret. The bravoes slipped away after a week or 
 two, when the vigilance had relaxed. Each of them 
 had a bag of doubloons with a commission as alferez 
 (ensign in the army, unattached). They dispersed to 
 Italy, to Central Eurojae, to all the winds. Every trace 
 was thus swept out which could connect Perez with the 
 murder. The excitement died gradually away, and the 
 affair seemed to be forgotten. 
 
 But poisoned wounds will not heal, though they be 
 skinned over. The sore was to break out again, and 
 the story to assume a form which has given it a place 
 among the causes cdlihrcs of the world. 
 
 Brilliant writers of history are subject to one general 
 temptation — they desire to give their narrative dramatic 
 completeness. The drama, if it is to have flavour, must
 
 ijj ANTONIO rnREZ: 
 
 nrvolvc U|)nii jirrsoiial nM)tivi-.s, .-iiid history must follow 
 on tin,' s.-itik; lines. Sovereigns ami statesmen wlio have 
 been charged witli the fortunes of nations, are assumed, 
 wht-ro their actions recjuire exjjlanation, to liave been 
 iiitluciicrd by no other passions than those Avhich 
 govern private indivi(hials in their own more limited 
 spheres. When a woman's name appears as connected 
 with such liigh pcrson.s, the connection is al ways assumed 
 to have btM-n of one peculiar kind. To ask for evidence 
 or look for otlier explanations is taken as a sign of 
 simplicity or of ignorance of human nature. 
 
 The legend uow stereotyped in European tradition 
 is that the wife of Ruy Gomez, the Princess of Eboli, 
 was the mistress of Philip the Second, and tliat the 
 Princess of Eboli preferred Antonio Perez to the King. 
 Escovedo, it is said, discovered the intrigue and threat- 
 ened to reveal it. Perez, in consequence, calumniated 
 Escovedo to Philip. Philip allowed him to be murdered, 
 but discovered afterw^ards that he had been the dupe of 
 a treacherous minister and a bad woman, and regarded 
 Perez thenceforward with implacable hatred. 
 
 Now, before going further, I have to observe that 
 the eleven years dining which Philip is assumed to 
 have been occupied with these emotions and the cflfort 
 to give eftect to them, were the busiest in the whole of 
 his long, laborious reign. They were the years in which 
 he annexed Portugal. They were the years of Parma's 
 administration of the Netherlands. They were the 
 years of preparation for the Armada. There was the 
 civil war in Franco to be watched and oniided. There
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 133 
 
 were Naples and Sicily to be ruled, and the Turks to 
 be held iu check in the Mediterranean. There were 
 the ambassadors' despatches from foreign courts. There 
 was a close, constant, and elaborate correspondence to 
 be maintained with the Pope. There were the reports 
 of the Inquisition to be received and studied. There 
 were English, Scotch, and Irish Catholic conspiracies 
 to be kept in hand. There was the great new empire 
 across the Atlantic, and Drake and Hawkins, and the 
 English corsairs. There were the various Councils of 
 State fur the internal administration at home, and in 
 every one of these departments Phili^D not only inter- 
 fered but exercised the most unrelaxing supervision. 
 Whether he did his work well or ill is not to the 
 purpose ; mind and body were incessantly engaged upon 
 it. Minutes of council, tens of thousands of ciphered 
 despatches with rough drafts of as many ciphered 
 answers to them, survive to witness to the industry of 
 a sovereign who permitted nothing to bo done without 
 his knowledge in all his enormous dominions. There 
 is scarcely one of these documents which is not annotated 
 in his hand, and often elaborately; and students who, 
 like myself, have toiled through these mountains of 
 papers, have cursed the writing, the worst perhaps that 
 ever was seen, but have had to confess, when the mean- 
 ing was arrived at, that the meaning was a real and 
 often a wise one. The poor King did patiently 
 endeavour to understand the subjects before him, and 
 to resolve upon them with the best efforts of his limited 
 ability; while if the working hours of every day had
 
 134 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 been doubled, and thus d«Miblcd had been devoted all 
 to duty, til- V would still seem insuflicient for the 
 business which ho deinoiislrably got through. 
 
 That a mind so occupied should have had leisure 
 to trouble itself with 'jealousies ' and ' mistresses/ or 
 indeed to give more than a passing thought to the 
 Escovedo atfair at all after the public dangers from him 
 had coaseil, is to me not easily conceivable, for the 
 simple reason that there was no time for it. The King 
 was occupied all but exclusively with other matters. 
 The murder was an angry spot wliich would not lieal ; 
 he had fallen into a scrape, and his behaviour was 
 singular; but it can be more easily explained by clumsy 
 efforts to extricate himself than by a romance of which 
 nine-tenths is conjecture, and the tenth remaining 
 inconsistent with admitted facts- 
 It is, however, true that the Princess of Eboli was 
 soon supposed to have been connected in some Avay 
 with Escovodo's assassination. The widow of Escovedo 
 knew that high words had passed between her husband 
 and Autuuio Perez in which the name of the Princess 
 had been mentioned. Perez had been more successful 
 in life than his companion oflScials, and had borne him- 
 self in his prosperity with less moderation than jirudence 
 wouM have rocommended. One of these, a priest named 
 iMatteo Vas»picz, and himself one of Philip's secretaries, 
 disliked Perez, and was also employed in some law-suit 
 against the Princess. He sought out Escovedo's family 
 and learnt what they had to tell. He was busy all the 
 summer and the winter following pushing his inquiries,
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 135 
 
 aud thought cat last that he had made a notable dis- 
 covery. In December, nine months after the murder, 
 be wrote and circulated an anonymous 'pasqidly full of 
 scandalous reflections on Perez and the lady, while 
 simultaneously Escovedo's widow and her son directly 
 charged Perez with the crime, adding that it had been 
 committed to gratify the Princess of Eboli. Perez 
 carried the imsqiiil to Philip — a daring act on his part, 
 if ho know himself to be the King's successful rival. 
 Philip again assured him, both by word and writing, 
 that he need not be uneasy, that no harm should befall 
 him ; but Perez knew his master well ; he knew his 
 unwillingness that his own share in the matter should 
 be made public, and he observed that Philip seemed 
 not displeased that Vasquez and the Escovedos should 
 be running on a false scent. 
 
 It is time, therefore, to say a few words about this 
 famous lady; to tell who she was, aud how she came to 
 be concerned in a matter which appeared to be wholly 
 political. 
 
 Dona Aha, widow of Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli, 
 was the only child of Don Diego Hurtado, chief of the 
 great house of Mendoza. There were many Mendozas 
 in the Spanish peerage. Don Diego's was the eldest 
 branch. On her father's death a part, but not all, of 
 the inheritance descended to the daughter. She was 
 Princess of Eboli as her husband's widow. Her eldest 
 son, a youth of twenty or thereabouts, was Duke of 
 Pastrana and Prince of Melito, She had five younger 
 children. One of them, a daughter, was married to
 
 ,jO AN ION 10 PEKEZ: 
 
 AIoiizo tho (j«'u<l, Duke of Mediua Sidonia, kuown to 
 history ns the admiral of the Armada. Family disputes 
 serm to have arisen about Dun Diego's succession. 
 Some suit^vas pending between her and other members 
 of Ihe family. The Princess was detaining money, 
 jtwels, and other possessions, to which her relatives laid 
 claim ; and the quarrel was further complicated by the 
 political leanings of the young Prince of Melito, who 
 had deserted the old party of his father, Ruy Gomez, 
 and had gone over to the Duke of Alva. 
 
 The Princess herself was now thirty-eight years old. 
 She had lost one eye, and was otherwise not beautiful ; 
 but she was energetic, imperious, with considerable 
 talents, and able, if she pleased, to be fascinating. That 
 she had been Philip's mistress was an Italian scandal; 
 nothing had then been heard of it in Spain; but Perez 
 gave mysterious hints that the King would have been 
 more intimate with her if she had encouraged him. 
 Any way, she had lost Philip's favour. Visitors at the 
 Eboli palace were frowned upon at the Escurial ; the 
 world said that the King was irritated at the rejection 
 of his advances,^ and that 'wishes unsatisfied w^ere more 
 exasperating than a thousand offences.' 
 
 This was perhaps but court gossip; but, whether 
 fact or Kgend, it is certain on the other hand that the 
 relations between the Princess and x\ntonio Perez were 
 intimate and even affectionate. He had been her 
 
 * Tor vivir cl Roy olFcndiJo 
 de 1.1 aiitipia y coutiuua Juracion 
 lie la ciitrrcz.1 ile la Princosa ilo 
 
 Eboly bacicndole uienosprccio. 
 lu-lacion de Anionio Perez.
 
 A.V UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 
 
 137 
 
 husband's adopted son. The Princess professed to 
 believe that Ruy Gomez was his real father, and to her 
 Perez's devotion was unconcealed and unboiinded. He 
 describes in an enigmatic letter the position in which 
 he stood towards her. M. Mignet says that there can 
 be no doubt of his meaning, and rushes to a preconceived 
 conchision. The letter is intentionally obscure; the 
 press is uncorrected ; and the text in parts is hopeless. 
 But he alludes to the suggestion that he was the 
 Princess's lover only to fling it from him with disgust. 
 His love was for his own wife, whose attachment to 
 him is the finest feature in the whole of this distracted 
 story. The Princess of Eboli he worshipped as a being 
 beyond his sphere. He spoke of her as ' a jewel 
 enamelled in the rarest graces of nature and fortune.' 
 To her husband he owed all that he had become, and 
 he repaid his debt by helping his widow in her <lifiicul- 
 ties. He made her large advances of money, he collected 
 her rents from Italy ; she in turn made him handsome 
 presents; but that either with the King or with Perez 
 the Princess had any personal intrigue is a romantic 
 imagination like the legend of Don Carlos and his 
 step mother.^ 
 
 ' There is uo evideucc for it 
 except what is supposed to lie in 
 the letter of Antonio Perez ' k un 
 Gran Personage,* which formed 
 part of his public defence. What 
 that letter means it is impossible 
 to say, or even what it was intended 
 to suggest. Perez says that tlic 
 King disappi-oved of the intimacy 
 
 brtween himself and the Princess, 
 and that there was a mystery con- 
 nected with this. But a mystery 
 was not necessarily a love affair, 
 nor docs it follow that there was a 
 mystery because such a person as 
 Perez wished to make himself inter- 
 esting by hinting at one.
 
 Ij8 ANTONIO PEREZ 
 
 It wa.s liiit niitiinil, Miidtr tliu ciiciiuistances, that 
 tliu Mc!ri(l()/,!i nunily .slioiiM bear no love to Perez, 
 because ill the feuds \vhi<;li had arisen he was taking 
 tlie Princess's side. The Prince of Melito had threatened 
 to run him through tlic body. The Marques do Fabara 
 autl the (Jonde de Cifuentcs called one day on the 
 Princess, and were kept waiting because she was 
 closeted with the Secretary. Both of them thought 
 that such a follow was not fit to live. Escovedo, it 
 came out, had taken the opposite side to Perez. He, 
 too, had been brought up by Ruy Gomez, and claimed 
 a riaht to interfere in defence of his old master's honour, 
 lie had disapproved of the acquaintance; he had said 
 tliat it must and should be put an end to ; and he had 
 ti[H)kcn to the I'rinccss with so rude a tongue, that she 
 called him a foul-mouthed villain. 
 
 A quarrel of this kind explains the ease with which 
 Perez consented to kill Escovedo. We knoAV no actual 
 good of Perez, and there would have been nothing 
 surprising it", out of revenge, he really had misled the 
 King into thinking Escovedo more guilty than he was. 
 But the attempt to prove it broke down ; Philip had 
 been influenced by Don John's and Escovcdo's own 
 despatches, which had been deciphered by another 
 hand ; and never to the last felt certain that his 
 ►secretary had in this matter deceived him. Some 
 pei-sonal resentment there was, and the Princess was in 
 some way the occasion of it, but in fi\ct Philip's conduct 
 re([uires no secret passion to make it intelligible. He 
 did not doubt, at least at first, that he had done right,
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 139 
 
 but he was unwilling to admit the truth. He had to 
 maintain his respectability, and, therefore, would not 
 try to prevent the Escovedos and their friends from 
 prosecuting their complaints, while he was not ill- 
 pleased that their suspicions should run wide of himself, 
 and fasten in a quarter where he knew that there was 
 nothing to be discovered. It was just the course which 
 small, commonplace cunning would naturally pursue. 
 The Marques de los Velez could not understand it ; he 
 did not like the look of things, and applied for the 
 governorship of Peru : Perez offered to retire from the 
 public service and satisfy his enemies thus : but the 
 King refused to accept Perez's resignation ; he said that 
 he could not spare him ; he reiterated, on the word of 
 a gentleman, ' that he Avould never forsake him, and 
 that Perez knew his word could be depended on.' 
 
 More and more loudly Mattco Vasquez and the 
 Escovedos demanded a trial. The King could not 
 directly refuse. Perez himself advised acquiescence; 
 the actual assassins, he said, were beyond reach of 
 discovery ; there was no evidence ; he was ready to face 
 the prosecution ; the name of the Princess need not be 
 mentioned. Philip, however, had a conscience above 
 peijury ; he was not ashamed to admit what he had 
 done, if it was known only to discreet persons who 
 could be safely trusted. The case was to be heard 
 before the High Court of Castile. The King sent for 
 Don Antonio de Pazos, who was then President, told 
 him everything, and asked his advice. The President 
 thought that the prosecution must be silenced; he
 
 I40 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 infurmc'l v<»Miig Escovedo that if he insisted on justice 
 he shoidd have it, but he was accusing persons of liigh 
 rank in the State; his cliargo, if lie faihjd to make it 
 gooil, would recoil on himself; and he assured hiin on 
 the word (;f a priest that Perez and the Princess were 
 as innocent as himself. With Matteo Vasquez the 
 President was more peremptory. Vastpiez, he said, 
 was no relation of Escovedo's ; his interference, espe- 
 cially as he was a priest, was gratuitous and \mbecom- 
 ing; on the facts he was mistaken altogether. Tlie 
 Escovcdos yielded and promised to go no further; 
 Vas»iuez was obstinate, and persisted. Public curiosity 
 had been excited ; it was felt instinctively that the 
 King was in the secret, and there was now a widespread 
 desire to know what that secret was. Yasqucz hat<;d 
 Perez and the Princess also, and made liimself the 
 rejirescntative of the popular anxiety. 
 
 Philip had been contented that opinion should run 
 in a false diicctiou ; and he had hoped to prevent too 
 close an inquiry by bis confidence with the President. 
 He had failed, and be had seemed to wish in conse- 
 quence to silence Yasquez, and, if possible, to reconcile 
 him with the Princess whom he had calumniated. But 
 now the difficulty w^as on her side. She, the gi'eatest 
 lady in Spain after the Queen, had been insulted and 
 slandered ; it was not for her to leave a cloud upon her 
 name by stooping to take the hand of her accuser. 
 The Cardinal Aichbishop of Toledo was sent to reason 
 with her, but the Archbish(,>p was too much of her oavd 
 opinion to make an impression on her indignation.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 141 
 
 She had aheady a long catalogue of grievances, and 
 this last insult was too much. She wrote Philip a 
 letter which he showed to Perez, and Perez preserved it. 
 
 Senor, — Your Majesty h.as commanded the Cardinal of Toledo 
 to speak witli me in tlie matter of Antonio Perez. Matteo 
 Vasquez and his friends have said openly that all who enter my 
 house lose yoixr favour. Tliey have stated also that Antonio 
 Perez killed Escovedo on my account ; that he was under so 
 many obligations to my family, that he would do whatever I 
 asked him. They have published abroad these speeches ; and I 
 require your Majesty, as a king and a gentleman, to take such 
 notice of this conduct as the world shall hear of. If your 
 Majesty declines, if the honour of my house is to be .sacrificed, 
 as our property has been sacrificed, if this is to be the reward of 
 the long and faithful services of my ancestors, be it so. I have 
 discharged my conscience ; self-re.spect forbids me to say more. 
 
 1 write to your Majesty in resentment at the offences which 
 I have received, and I write in confidence, supposing myself to 
 be addressing a gentleman. 
 
 The President presses me about a letter, which I wrote to 
 
 your Majesty, touching bribes taken by (word omitted). I 
 
 am charged with having said something of the Duke of . 
 
 My character suffers from the.se tokens of yoiir Majesty's good- 
 will. Though justice is on my side, my suit is before a tainted 
 tribunal ; I shall lose it and be put out of possession. When I 
 ask the President why he acts thus towards me, he says that your 
 Majesty will have it so. Melchiur de Herrera (?) allows that I 
 am right ; but he swears me to this and that, and pretends that 
 it is your pleasure. You have sent him a memorial from Don 
 Inigo.i Why am I to be twice memorialised ? It is important 
 to me to withdraw the security under which I and my children 
 are bound for Don Inigo. He has broken his obligations, and 
 may leave Valladolid. Antonio de Padilla confesses that it is so ; 
 but your Majesty forbids him to interfere. If this is true, I may 
 as well abandon my suit, and my children too. This is the 
 natural conclusion from the position which you assume towards 
 
 ^ Inigo de Mendoza Marquis of Almenars
 
 142 
 
 ANTONIO PEREZ. 
 
 mo. Wlifu I iillcct what my liusljand's merits were, eucli 
 treatment woulil make mc lose my Konsea (li<l I not n«^ed them 
 all to guard myself from this Moorisli cur (Matteo Viusquez) 
 whom your Majesty kcep.s in your service, I demand that 
 neither I nf)r any of mine may be placed in that man's power. 
 
 I liave given this letter, tliough it strays far beyond 
 our immediate subject, because it sliows liow imper- 
 fectly the circumstances are known to us which 
 surround the story ; and how idle it is for us to indulge 
 imagination beyond what is written. Long avenues of 
 questions lie open before us, which must remain for 
 ever unanswered, yet in the answer to wliich alone can 
 lie a complete explanation of the relations between the 
 Princess of Eboli and the King of Spain. 
 
 Submit to bo reconciled with tlie ' Moorish cur ' it 
 was plain she would not. Tie had circulated slanders 
 against her in the court, and she insisted that he should 
 withdraw them.^ Perez was obstinate too, for his 
 
 ^ This article had been written, 
 and was partly in type, before I 
 had seen the interesting work, 
 latily published, on the Princess 
 of Eljoli, by Don Gas^iar Moro. 
 Although the documents dis- 
 covered by Don Caspar have 
 added largely to our knowledge of 
 the secret history of the Princess, 
 I have found it unnecessary to 
 withdraw or alter any opinion 
 which I had formed. I have hail 
 the pleasure of finding my ow)i 
 conjectures for the n»ost part 
 confinned and converted into 
 certainties by evidence not open 
 
 to dispute. Don Caspar has dis- 
 proved conclusively the imagined 
 liaison between the Princess and 
 Philip the Second. He continues 
 to believe that improper relations 
 existed between her and Antonio 
 Perez ; but as he alleges nothing 
 fresh in proof of it bej'ond what 
 was already known, I look on this 
 as no more than part of the old 
 legeml which has continued to 
 .adiiere to Don Caspar with no 
 more authority for it than tra- 
 dition. Tiic passionate love which 
 existed between Perez and his own 
 wife is inconsistent with a belief,
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 
 
 143 
 
 honour was touched. The Archbishop of Toledo aud 
 the King's special preacher, Fray Hernando de Castillo, 
 
 at least ou lier part, that any such 
 relation had been formed. Be this 
 as it may, however, Don Caspar 
 has proved that the jealousy of 
 which Perez speaks, as having 
 governed Philip's conduct, was no 
 jealousy of the preference of Perez 
 to himself by the Princess, but a 
 jealousy of the influence of a 
 woman, with whom he was on tlie 
 worst possible terms, over his own 
 secretary. Don Caspar has found 
 and printed more than a hundred 
 letters of Mattco Vasquez, whose 
 connection with the Escovedo 
 prosecution was so close, and had 
 hitlierto been so unintelligible. 
 The Crown was in some way 
 interested in the great law-suits 
 which the Princess was carrying 
 on. In all that related to her 
 Matteo Vasquez was as deep in 
 Philip's confidence as Antonio 
 Perez in the wider world of 
 politics. His relations with each 
 of them were carefully concealed 
 from the other. Perez might 
 know that Matteo Vasquez was 
 employed by his master against 
 the Princess ; but Matteo Vasquez 
 never guessed that his master had 
 ordered Perez to assassinate Es- 
 covedo : and thus Philip himself, 
 by his passion for secrecy, and for 
 what he regarded as skilful 
 management, had entangled his 
 two secretaries in a furious an- 
 tagonism. Perez had no know- 
 
 ledge how far Philip had engaged 
 himself in the Eboli litigation. 
 To him Matteo Vasquez appeared 
 to have thrown himself gratui- 
 tously into the quarrel. The King 
 was irritated at Perez for nncon- 
 sciousl}' thwarting him by taking 
 up the Princess's cause. Matteo, 
 who evidently, from his letters, 
 hated the Princess, had almost 
 succeeded in dragging into light 
 his master's complicity with 
 Escovedo's murder, by his inno- 
 cent belief that Perez and the 
 Princess were the guilty parties, 
 and that tlie cause of the murder 
 was resentment at the part which 
 Escovedo had taken in attempting 
 to separate the Princess from 
 Perez. Not a hint, not a sugges- 
 tion of any love-scandal appears in 
 the whole of the correspondence. 
 Some great question was at issue, 
 the very nature of which cannot 
 now be accurately made out, on 
 wliich the court was divided, and 
 which was enveloped in a network 
 of intrigue — the King sitting in 
 the middle of it, playing the part 
 of Providence with the best 
 intentions, with extremely limited 
 ability, and with the most un- 
 fortunate results — for he affected 
 especially to imitate Providence 
 in the secrecy of its methods ; and 
 secrecy is only safe to a judgment 
 which cannot err.
 
 I.,., ANTOMO I'Eh'EZ: 
 
 stood by tlitjin, and tlic (juarrel li;i<l ^one into a new 
 form. Philip's position Wiis a ridiculous one. If 
 Va.squez persisted in prosecuting Perez before a judge 
 who was acquainted with the truth, it was scarcely 
 possible that the truth would be unrevealed. Secretary 
 Va-squez is a dark figure. The letter of the Princess 
 shows that Philip was secretly employing this man in 
 various matters in which she supposed herself to be 
 wronged, and there were rea.sons for his conduct 
 at which, with our imperfect knowledge, it is idle to 
 guess. Consulting no one but his confessor, the King 
 gave orders for the arrest botli of Perez and of the 
 Princess also, and on July 29, 1579, they were ordered 
 into separate confinement. The laily's relations, it is 
 likely, required no explanations, but for form's sake 
 Philip oifered them. The same night he wrote to the 
 Duke of Infantado and to Medina Sidonia, A dispute 
 had arisen, he said, between his two secretaries, Antonio 
 Perez and Alatteo Vasquez, with which the Princess 
 was concerned. She had complained to him un- 
 reasonably, and his confessor had vainly endeavoured 
 to persuade her to be reconciled to Vasquez. She had 
 been committed, therefore, to the fortress of Pinto, and 
 he had thought it right to give them immediate 
 information. The resentment of the Duke of Infantado 
 was not hkely to be deep; Medina Sidonia replied 
 coolly that so wise a sovereign had doubtless good 
 reason ^^^x his actions. He was himself laid up with 
 gout, and the pain was in his mind as well as in his 
 body. He trusted that his Majesty would be gracious
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 145 
 
 to the Princess, aud tliat the grace would be even more 
 marked than the punishment. 
 
 The Archbishop of Toledo called the next morning 
 on Juana de Coello, Perez's wife. He told her from the 
 King that she was not to be alarmed. Her husband's 
 life was in no danger, nor his honour either. The 
 imprisonment was a mere matter of precaution to 
 prevent other mischiefs. 
 
 The Princess now drops out of the scene. Philip 
 informed her that if she would undertake to hold no 
 more communication with Perez, she Avould be received 
 to favour, and might return to the court. She replied 
 that if Perez ever wrote to her or sent her a message, 
 the King should know of it. But this was not sufficient. 
 After a brief confinement she was allowed to retire 
 to her castle at Pastrana, and there without further 
 disturbance she remained to the end of her life. 
 
 Meanwhile, if Philip's object had been to stop the 
 prosecution for Escovedo's inurder, and to divert sus- 
 picion from himself, both pvirposes had been attained. 
 Matteo Vasquez must have been satisfied, for his name 
 was never mentioned again. Popular opinion had 
 accused Perez of having committed the murder at the 
 Princess's instigation. Their simultaneous arrest led to 
 a general belief that the suspicion was not unfounded. 
 If the King had made a second confidant of Vasquez, 
 aud had concerted the details of the comedy with him, 
 the result, at least for a time, did credit to his ingenuity. 
 ^ Perez's fault, whatever it had been, was not to appear 
 unpardonable. He was left four months in charge of
 
 146 AffTONlO PEREZ: 
 
 the alcalde of the court. He w:us treated with kind- 
 ness, and even distinction, and was permitted to have 
 his chiNhen with him. In the November following he 
 became unwell, and was permitted further to return to 
 his own house, though still as a prisoner. Next he was 
 recjuired to sign a bond of 'phylohome,na(jc, by whicli he 
 and ^latteo Vasquez engaged as king's vassals not to 
 injure each other. The guard was then removed. He 
 recovered his freedom and resumed his duties as 
 secretary to the Council of State, though no longer as 
 confidential secretary to the King. The wliole matter 
 seemed to have been thus wound up, and public 
 interest was soon directed on worthier objects. The 
 death of Don Sebastian in Africa had left vacant the 
 Portuguese throne. Philip took possession of the suc- 
 cession as the nearest heir. The ])uke of Alva with 
 a few skilful movements disposed of the pretender. 
 Philip went to Lisbon to be installed as sovereign, and 
 in the glory of this grand achievement Escovedo'.s 
 assassination might have gone the way of other 
 scandals. 
 
 But, as Perez said, ' it was a thing which had no 
 beginning and could have no end.' A cloud still huuor 
 over him, and his slightest movements were watched. 
 The Princess of Eboli sent him presents from Pastrana. 
 It was immediately reported to Philip. He had many 
 friends, the Archbishop of Toledo, and 'grandees' of 
 highest rank. They came often to see him, but he was 
 forbidden to return their visits, Philip evidently chose 
 that ;\ sinister suspicion should still remain attached to
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 147 
 
 him. Antonio de Pazos, the President of Castile, knew 
 the whole story, for the King had told him. Juana de 
 Coello complained to him of her husband's treatment, 
 and insisted that his reputation ought to be cleared. 
 The President was of the same opinion, and so informed 
 the King. ' If Antonio Perez has committed a crime,' 
 he said, 'give him a formal trial and hang him. If he 
 is innocent, let him go on his good behaviour, and if he 
 offends again, punish him.' 
 
 The King answered : ' If the matter were of a kind 
 which would allow a judicial process, it should have 
 been ordered from the first day. You must tell the 
 woman to be quiet ; no change is possible at present.' 
 
 ' Time,' Philip used to say, ' cures all evils.' ' Time 
 and I never fail.' And so he went on trusting to time 
 when time could not help him. 
 
 Perez had friends, but he had enemies also. Matteo 
 Vasquez had withdrawn, but others had taken his place, 
 and Philip's ambiguities encouraged them. Among 
 these were the powerful Mendozas. Perez had managed 
 the Princess's money affairs. He had jewels in his 
 charge and other things also which they conceived to 
 belong to them. His habits were luxurious, and 
 remained so in spite of his semi-disgrace. His palace. 
 Ins plate, his furniture, his equipments, and entertain- 
 ments were the most splendid in Madrid. Ho gambled 
 also ; perhaps he won, perhaps he lost ; in either case it 
 was a reproach. How, men asked, could Antonio Perez 
 support such a vast expenditure ? and the answer sug- 
 gested was, of course, corruption or malversation. He
 
 I, ,8 ANTONIO PEREZ- 
 
 liad six tliousand ducats a year from liis offices; but 
 tlic Aridibishop of Seville, a friendly witness, said that 
 lie must be spending fifteen or twenty thousand. The 
 King was advised to order au inf[uiry into the accounts 
 of all the public offices, and of Perez's, of course, among 
 them. A ' lion's moutli,' like that at Venice, wa.s 
 opened for secret information, and was not long in 
 want of sustenance. Accusations poured in as venom- 
 oils as hatreil couM distil. Rodrigo Vasquez de Arce,' 
 who afterwards became President of tlie High Court, 
 conducted the investigation of them, and the result 
 was not favourable to Perez. Undoubtedly he had 
 received sums of money from all parts of the empire 
 to exjiedite business, just as Bacon did in England, and 
 as high officials everywhere were then in the habit of 
 doing. They looked on such things as recognised per- 
 quisites so long as nothing avus said about them ; but 
 gratuities were formally prohibited, and, when exposed, 
 were incapable of defence. 
 
 On the Report being presented, Philip allowed 
 Perez to be prosecuted for corrupt practices, and it was 
 then that, at a venture, he was accused further of 
 having altered ciphered despatches. 
 
 No one knew better than Philip that, under the 
 arrangements of his cabinet, the alteration of despatches 
 without his own knowledge was impossible. Perez 
 wrote to Philip to remonstrate. ' He could not answer 
 such a charge,' he said, ' without producing his papers,' 
 
 * It does not appear whether he was a relation of Matteo Yasquez.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 149 
 
 and among iliem the King's own notes upon Escovedo's 
 death. The confessor was seut to see these papers, and, 
 having read them, could only recommend liis master 
 to let the charge fall. As to corrupt practices, he 
 advised Perez to make no defence, and assured him 
 that he should not be condemned in the value of a pair 
 of gloves. The sentence went beyond the pair of 
 gloves. Perez was suspended from his office for ten 
 years. He was to suffer two years' imprisonment, and 
 was to pay besides thirty thousand ducats, half to the 
 Crown, and half to the family of the Princess of Eboli, 
 as property belonging to them which he had unlawfully 
 appropriated. 
 
 This judgment was delivered on January 23, 1585. 
 It was not published ; nor is it certain how much of 
 it was enforced. But there were reasons why, at that 
 moment, the sentence of imprisonment was convenient. 
 The Escovedo business was bursting up again. Enriquez, 
 the page, who had assisted at the murder, had let fall 
 incautious speeches. The President, Rodrigo Vasquez, 
 took the subject into the scope of his inquiries. He 
 sent for Enriquez and examined him. On his evidence 
 Diego Martinez was arrested also. If these two could 
 be induced to tell the truth, the proofs against Perez 
 would be complete. He might produce his papers, but 
 in a close court the judges might refuse to receive or 
 look at them to save the King's credit; and Perez 
 would certainly be executed. The King was just then 
 ^oing down to Aragon for the opening of the Corte?. 
 In Aragon trials were public, with equal justice betweer
 
 150 ANTONIO PEREZ. 
 
 kir)g and subject. Purez, iiiinsult' an Aiagonese, it left 
 free might follow the King thither, and put himself 
 under the protcctiim of the laws of the Province. 
 There certainly, if not in Madrid, his exculpation would 
 bo heard. It was therefore determined that he should 
 be at once arrested, and a guard was sent to his house 
 to take him. 
 
 Perez from first to last had an honest friend at the 
 court, Cardinal Quiroga, Archbishop of Toledo. The 
 Archbishop saw, or feared, tliat Perez was about to be 
 sacrificed, and his sense of equity, though he was Grand 
 Iiupiisitor, was outraged. He recommended Perez to 
 take sanctuary. He wonld then be a prisoner of the 
 Church, and his case would be heard in the Holy 
 Ofhce. The Inquisition had already denounced Philip's 
 method of removing doubtful subjects. It would sttmd 
 by Perez now and prevent a scandalous crime. 
 
 Perez took the Cardinal's advice and fled to the 
 nearest church. But the Crown officials were deter- 
 mined to have him, and the sanctuary was not respected. 
 The churnh door was burst in ; he was torn out of his 
 hiding-place, and carried off again to a State prison. 
 His pi-operty was sequestrated, his papers Avere seized, 
 and the Nuncio, when he protested, was threatened 
 with dismissal. Henry the Eiglith liimself could not 
 have been more peremptory in his contempt of sacred 
 privileges than the ministers of the Most Catholic 
 King. The documents were at once examined. The 
 secret correspondence was found to have been abstracted. 
 Juana de Coello was supposed to have it ; and, to extort
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 151 
 
 it from her, she and her children were carried off also, 
 and confined in the same castle with her husband. It 
 was true that she had some part of the private papers, 
 and threats of torture could not wring them from her 
 till she had ascertained that those of most special con- 
 sequence were not among them. She found some one 
 who would take a note to her husband. Being without 
 ink she wrote it with her blood. Tlie answer came 
 back that she might deliver the papers without fear, 
 the Escovedo notes being secured elsewhere. She 
 mentioned where the boxes would be found. The 
 King's confessor himself came to her to receive the 
 keys. He, too, had some sense remaining of right and 
 wrong, and he told her that if Perez was troubled any 
 further, he would himself go ' como un loco,' like a 
 madman, into the Plaza, and proclaim the truth to all 
 the world. 
 
 The boxes being surrendered, Juana de Coello and 
 the children were sent home, there being no longer 
 occasion for keeping them. As the confessor was going 
 off, she could not help telling him that there Avere still a 
 few papers reserved. The King, when he came to look, 
 must have discovered that this was fatally true. All 
 else was in its place, even to the most secret ciphered 
 correspondence; but the fifty or sixty especial letters, 
 which he knew himself to have written, about Escovedo, 
 and knew also that Perez had preserved — these were 
 not to be discovered. That, if he had got possession 
 of these letters, Philip would have allowed Perez to be 
 tried and executed, is not certain; but it may have
 
 13^ ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 l)uen well for liiin that he was not exposed to the 
 temptation. As matters stood, the judges might refuse 
 to a<hnit tlie letters, and might pass sentence on the 
 evidence. But Juana de Coello could cany the damn- 
 iiiff records into Araijon, or across the frontier, and 
 publish them; and all Europe would cry out 'Shame!' 
 Nor was the Church idle. The Church authorities, 
 with the Pope behind them, demanded that Perez 
 should be restored to sanctuary. Worried, impatient, 
 cursing the day that he had ever blundered into so 
 detestable a quagmire, the King again paused. Once 
 more the prison doors were opened ; once mure Perez 
 was brought back to Madrid, and lodged in a handsome 
 house with his family. Evidently the unfortunate 
 King was at his wits' end, and could not determine 
 what course to choose. Perez went to church for 
 mass. The great jDeople came as before to show him 
 countenance. He himself addressed many letters to 
 the King, which were carefully read, if not answered. 
 The Archbishop of Toledo, in particular, was confident 
 that all would Ijc well. The attitude of the Church 
 alone, he said, would suffice to protect Perez. The 
 President Rodrigo would have gone on gladly with the 
 trial, but obstacles were continually arising. Some one 
 asked him what was to be done. ' How can I tell 
 you ? ' he replied. ' One day the King says go on, the 
 next he says hold back. There is a mystery which I 
 cannot make out.' 
 
 Fourteen months thus drifted away. At the end of 
 them the Kiui^ could hold out no loncjer. There was
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 153 
 
 still but a single Avitness, for Diego Martinez had so far 
 continued staunch. He might confess, perhaps, if he 
 was tortured, but torture could not be used without the 
 King's permission. Philip wrote to Perez telling him 
 generally that he might rely on his protection, but 
 without saying what steps he was prepared to take. 
 Perez was brought to trial at last before President 
 Rodrigo. He stood upon his innocence, denied that he 
 had murdered Escovedo, and denied all knowledge of 
 the matter. Enriquez gave his evidence with correct- 
 ness; but Diego Martinez, who was confronted with 
 him, said he was a liar, and his story a fabrication. 
 Conviction on such terms was not to be had. Perez's 
 papers were handed to President Rodrigo to be examined. 
 He searched them through, but found nothing to the 
 purpose. Perez, after all, would probably have been 
 acquitted, but for the intervention of a *Deus ex 
 machina,' Philip himself, who interposed in a manner 
 the most unlooked for. This is the most extraordinary 
 feature in the whole extraordinary story. Philip, it 
 might have been thought, would have Avelcomed Perez's 
 acquittal as the happiest escape from his embarrass- 
 ments; but it seems that his conscience was really 
 disturbed at the success of deliberate perjury. Just as 
 it became clear that the prosecution had failed, and that 
 Perez, whether guilty or not, could not be pronounced 
 guilty without a violation of the laws, Philip's confessor, 
 as if from himself, but of course with his master's 
 sanction, wrote to him to say that altliough he had 
 killed Escovedo, he had a complete defence for it.
 
 154 ANTONIO PEREZ. 
 
 Wlicii (In; tnitli \v;us known, liis character would be 
 cleared ; lie advised Idm, therefore, to make a complete 
 confession, and at once say that he had acted by tlie 
 King's onler. 
 
 This was written on September 3, the year after the 
 defeat of the Amiada. Through all that famous 
 enterprise, from its first conception to the final catas- 
 trophe, this mean business had simmered on, and was 
 at last at boiling-point. 
 
 Well as Perez knew his master, he was not prepared 
 for this last move. What could it mean ? The King 
 had promised to stand by him. But if he confessed, 
 his guilt would be clear. He might say what he pleased, 
 but the judges might hang him notwithstanding. 
 There was Diego Martinez, too, to be thought of. He 
 would he hanged, at any rate. So long as the proof 
 was deficient, confession would be insanity. The King, 
 besides, had positively ordered that the motives for the 
 murder ^Yere not to be introduced. 
 
 In this tone he replied to Diego de Chaves; but 
 the confessor stood to his opinion. Evidently he had 
 consulted Philip again. 
 
 ' The plain course for you,' he answered, ' is to say 
 directly that you had the King's orders for Escovedo's 
 death. You need not enter on the reasons. You 
 ought not to make a false oath in a court of justice ; 
 and if you have done so already you ought not to 
 ])ersevere in it. Where there has been no fault there 
 can be no punishment, and confession will only show 
 the innocence of yourself and your accomplice. When
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 155 
 
 the truth is out, the wound will heal, and his Majesty 
 will have given the Escovedo family the justice which 
 they demand. If they persist after this, they can be 
 silenced or banished. Only, once more, the causes 
 which led the King to act as he did are not to be 
 mentioned.' 
 
 M. Miguet considers that these letters were written 
 to tempt Perez to a confession, in order that he might 
 be destroyed. The judges would ask for proof, and, 
 having lost his papers, he would be unable to produce 
 it. The answer is simple. Both Philip and the confessor 
 were aware that the compromising letters were still in 
 possession of either Perez or his wife. Perez, who was 
 not troubled about perjury, thought it safer to risk an 
 uncertainty than to act as the confessor advised. To 
 confess was to place his life in the judges' hands. He 
 could feel no certainty that the King's orders would be 
 held a sufficient authority, Philip's conduct had been 
 strange from the beginning, and kings' consciences are 
 not Jke the consciences of private individuals. They 
 may profess to wish one thing, while their duty as 
 sovereigns requires another. There was another alter- 
 native; the Escovedos, who were now the only pro- 
 secutors, might agree to a compromise. Perez proposed 
 it to tho confessor; the confessor permitted Perez to 
 try, if the King was not to be a party to the trans- 
 action : overtures were made, and were successful. The 
 Escovedo family consented to withdraw their suit on 
 receiving twenty thousand ducats. 
 
 This seemed like the end ; and if there had been
 
 156 ANTONIO PEREZ i 
 
 iiolliiii;^ iiiu!(! Ill Kscovt'ilo's death t,li;m an ordinary 
 munlcr, the compt'iisatiuii ^vould liave been Jield 
 sutlicicnt, and the end wijidil have really come. But 
 behind the private wrong there was a great question at 
 issue, whether the sovereign had or liatl not a right to 
 make away with his subjects when lie believed them 
 criminal, because lor reasons of State it was inexpedient 
 to bring them to trial. Though Castile had no longer 
 constitutional rights like Aragon, a high-minded people 
 (as the Castilians were) had a regard for their own 
 security. The doctrine had been condemned by the 
 Holy Office, and the judges can have liked it as little. 
 
 The opportunity of bringing the matter to a point 
 was not to be lost. The President Rodrigo wrote to 
 Philip that his reputation was at stake. The prosecu- 
 tion had been dropped, but the world was convinced, 
 notwithstanding, that the murder had been committed 
 by his order. It concerned his honour that Perez 
 should explain why that order had been given. He 
 begged the King to send him an instruction in the 
 following terms: 'Tell Antonio Perez, in my name, 
 that, as he knows the causes for which I commanded 
 him to kill Escovedo, I desire him to declare what 
 those causes were.' 
 
 ;M. Miguet adheres to his opinion that Perez was to 
 be betrayed ; that, being without his papers, he must 
 fail to prove what he was required to reveal, and could 
 then be executed as a slanderer and an assassin. It 
 would be difficult for him and perha^js impossible to 
 recall satisfactorily a condition of things which was now
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 157 
 
 buried under the incidents of twelve eventful years. 
 But there is no occasion to suspect Philip of such 
 deliberate treachery. The stages through which his 
 mind had passed can easily be traced. He never 
 doubted the righteousness, of Escovedo's execution; 
 but he had been afraid to irritate his brother, and had 
 therefore "wished his own part in it to be concealed. 
 Therefore, when Perez was first suspected, he had not 
 come forward to protect him ; and therefore also he 
 had connived at the direction of the suspicion on the 
 Princess of Eboli. A long time had passed away, Don 
 John was gone, the aspect of Europe had changed. 
 He had no longer the same reluctance to admit that he 
 had ordered the murder ; but he had bidden Perez be 
 silent about the causes, because, though sufficient for 
 his own conscience, it would be hard, when circum- 
 stances were so much altered, to make them intelligible 
 to others. The Spaniards of 1590, smarting under the 
 destruction of the Armada, might well have thought if 
 Don John and the Duke of Guise had tried the ' enter- 
 prise' together, when the Queen of Scots was alive, 
 so many of their homes would not then have been 
 desolate. 
 
 But public opinion was excited. The compromise of 
 the prosecution seemed to imply that there was some- 
 thing disgraceful behind, A secret half revealed is 
 generally more dangerous than the truth ; and thus, 
 when called on by the judges to direct Perez to make 
 a full confession, the King felt that it was better to 
 consent.
 
 IS8 AiWTONIO I'KRF//.: 
 
 Tliis explanatiou seems sutlicieut, witliout looking 
 tor sinister motives. The order was written, and Perez 
 was required to obey. 
 
 It miglit have been thought tliat lie would have 
 scon in such an order the easiest escape from his 
 troubles. To speak was to be acquitted (at least 
 morally) of a worse crime than of having been a too 
 faithful servant. But it is likely that he did feel it 
 would be difficult for him to make out a satisHictory 
 case. He could produce the King's instructions, and 
 could describe the motive in general terms. But State 
 reasons for irregular actions are always looked askance 
 at, and loyal subjects are inclined to excuse their 
 sovereigns at the expense of their advisers. Perez 
 miglit naturally fear that he would bo accused of 
 having misled the King, perhaps througb malice. This 
 view was taken of the case by the Archbishop of Toledo. 
 'Sonor,' he said to the confessor when he heard of this 
 fresh conunand, 'either I am mad or this whole aflair is 
 mad. If the King bade Perez kill Escovedo, why does 
 he ask for the causes ? The King knew them at the 
 time. Perez was not Escovedo's judge. He placed 
 before the King certain despatches. The King directed 
 a course to be taken upon tliem, and Perez obeyed. 
 Now after twelve years, without his papers, with so 
 many persons gone who could have given evidence, he 
 is asked for explanations. Give him back his papers, 
 bring back five hundred persons now dead out of their 
 graves ; and even then he will not be able to do it. 
 
 The Archbishop protested, the Nuncio protested.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 159 
 
 Juana de Coello and Perez's children wept and 
 clamoured; but President Rodrigo, with the King's 
 orders in his hand, persisted that Perez should spealc. 
 Three times successively, in the course of a month, he 
 was brought into court, and he remained stubborn. He 
 says that he would not confess, because the King had 
 personally ordered him to be silent, and that a written 
 form could not supersede an immediate direction, 
 without a private intimation that it was to be obeyed. 
 This is evidently an insufficient explanation. He must 
 have felt that if he detailed the causes for the murder 
 he admitted the fact ; and that if he admitted the fact 
 he might be sacrificed. 
 
 But the King was determined that the whole truth 
 should be told at last, and that, as he could not tell it 
 himself, it should be told by Perez. After a month's 
 resistance, the question was applied in earnest. Perez 
 was tortured. He broke down under the pain, and 
 told all. It was then that Dona Juana appealed to 
 God against Diego de Chaves in the Dominican chapel. 
 It was then that Dona Gregoria dared President 
 Rodrigo in his hall. What the King or the judges 
 had intended to do next, is mere conjecture. Diego 
 Martinez, when his master had spoken, confessed also. 
 He was not punished, and Perez perhaps would not 
 have been punished either. The judges might have 
 been contented with the ex^josure. But Perez did not 
 cai'e to tempt fortune or Philip's humours further. His 
 wife was allowed to visit him in prison. He escaped 
 disguised in her clothes. Horses were waiting, he rode
 
 l6o ANTONIO PEREZ. 
 
 for his life to Aragon, .ind the next day was safe 
 beyond the frontier. 
 
 So ends tlio first part of the tragi-comedy. The 
 next opene<l on another stage and witii wider issues. 
 
 The Fueros or ' Liberties ' of Aragon were tlie only 
 surviving remnant of the free institutions of the Penin- 
 sula. At the beginning of tlie sixteenth century, the 
 two Castiles, Valencia, Gransula, and Aragon had their 
 separate administrations and their separate legislatures. 
 The great cities had their municipal corporations, while 
 Portugal till within ten years had been an independent 
 kingdom. One by one they had been absorbed. Ara- 
 gon remained still free, but with a freedom which had 
 been found inconvenient at Madrid, and was unvalued 
 by the most powerful of the Aragonese nobles them- 
 selves. The tendency of the age was toAvards centralis- 
 ation, and the tenure of the Fueros had been sfrowintj 
 yearly more precarious. Isabella had been impatient 
 for a revolt which would give her an excuse for extin- 
 guishing them. The Duke of Alva more lately, on 
 some provocation, said that with throe or four thousand 
 of his old soldiers he would make the King's authority 
 supreme. Such as it was, however, the Constitution 
 still subsisted, being supported chiefly by the populace 
 of the towns, who, as long as noise and clamour were 
 sufficient, were the enthusiastic champions of their 
 national privileges. A council for the administration 
 of the province sat at Madrid, but its powers were 
 limited to advice. The Cortes met annually at Sara- 
 gossa to vote the taxes, but the King could neither
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL KIDDLE. i6i 
 
 prorogue uor dissolve them without their own consent. 
 A Committee of the Cortes carried on the government, 
 and in the intervals of the sessions remained in office. 
 The Aragonese had their own laws, their own judges, 
 their own police, their own prisons: and no 'alien' 
 armed force was permitted within their boundaries. 
 The Grand Justiciary, the highest executive officer, was 
 nominated by the King, but could not be deprived by 
 him. A Royal Commissioner resided in Saragossa, to 
 observe and to report, to act in cases to which the 
 Crown was a party, perhaps irregularly to distribute 
 favours and influence opinion. But this was the limit 
 of his interference. The Commissioner in the year 
 1590 was Inigo de Mendoza, Marquis of Almenara, the 
 cousin and the chief antagonist of the Princess of Eboli. 
 Such was Aragon when Antonio Perez sought an 
 asylum in the land of his fathers. He professed to 
 have been tortured till his limbs were disabled, but he 
 was able to ride without resting till he had crossed the 
 frontier and had reached Calatayud. He made no effort, 
 perhaps he was too weak, to go further, and he took 
 refuge in a Dominican convent. Within ten hours of 
 his arrival an express came in from Madrid to a private 
 gentleman, Don Manuel Zapata, with orders to take 
 him, dead or alive, and send him back to his master. 
 Perez says that when his flight was known at the 
 court, there was general satisfaction. ' Uncle Martin,' 
 the palace jester, said to Philip the next morning, ' Sir, 
 r all the world rejoices at the escape of Antonio Perez ; 
 he cannot be very wicked ; you should rejoice too.'
 
 163 ANTONIO rr-.REZ: 
 
 J'liilij) (lid not lojoicc at all. He had put himself in 
 the power of one of ids subjects, and he did not choose 
 to rrniain any longer in so de<,n!tding a position. When 
 hi» had been liiinself willing to submit his conduct to a 
 judicial inquiry, Perez, who hfwl less to fear if he had 
 been acting uprightly, had shown so much unwilling- 
 ness that possibly Philip may have now doubted 
 whether Escovedo'a conduct had after all been properly 
 represented to him. Perez had fled, carrying the com- 
 promising documents along with him ; he was probably 
 on his way to France, to delight Philip's enemies with 
 the sight of them, and with the tale of his own wrongs. 
 Anticipating pursuit, Perez had sent a friend, Gil de 
 Mesa, to the Grand Justiciary, to signify his arrival, 
 and to put himself under the protection of the law. 
 Meanwhile, the town mob at Calatayud rose in his 
 defence, and when Don Manuel arrived at the monas- 
 tery he found the priests and students in amis to 
 protect their sanctuary. Fifty soldiers arrived immedi- 
 ately after from Saragossa. The orders of the Justiciary 
 were to bring Perez at once to the national prison of 
 the Mauifestacion, where he was to be detained till the 
 King could be communicated with. The King's reply 
 was an order to the Marquis of Almenara to prosecute 
 him immediately in the Court of Aragon on three 
 charges. 
 
 1. For having caused the death of Escovedo, falsely 
 pretending the King's authority. 
 
 2. For having betrayetl secrets of State and tam- 
 pered with ciphered despatches.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 163 
 
 3. Fur liaving fled I'roin justice wheu Lis coaduct 
 was being judicially inquired into. 
 
 If Perez bad been wholly innocent, be would have 
 I'elt that he had at last an opportunity of setting him- 
 self clear in the face of the world. The court would 
 be open, the trial public, and his defence could neither 
 be garbled nor suppressed. His reluctance was as 
 vehement as ever, and was not concealed by his affecta- 
 tion of a desire to spare his master. From Calatayud, 
 and from Saragossa afterwards, he wrote letter upon 
 letter both to Philip and to Diego de Chaves, protesting 
 his loyalty, entreating to be left in quiet with his wife 
 and children; indicating that he had the means of 
 defending himself, but hoping that he might not be 
 forced to use them. These letters being left unanswered, 
 he took into his confidence a distinguished Aragonese 
 ecclesiastic, the Prior of Gotor. He showed the Prior 
 the mysterious papers which he had brought with him, 
 with Philip's notes upon them, and desired him to go 
 at once to Madrid and demand an audience of Philip. 
 ' His Majesty,' Perez said in his instructions to the 
 Prior, ' must know that I possess these documents. 
 They contain confidential secrets affecting others be- 
 sides Escovedo ; let his Majesty judge whether it is 
 desirable that evidences should be produced in court 
 which touch the reputation of distinguished persons, 
 which will create a scandal throughout Europe, and 
 will reflect on the prudence and piety of his Majesty 
 f himself. Though the confessor has taken most of my 
 papers from me, Providence has been pleased that I
 
 lis-, ANTON l(^ I'F.RE'/.: 
 
 sImhiM irluiii tlifsu, ;iMil tlitsc; will suffice f(;r my (Jo- 
 I'oncc, If brought t(j trial I shall certainly beacriuittcd, 
 but I prefer to save the King's reputation ; my ease is 
 now notorious, and it will not bo wise to challenge the 
 world's opinion. I have been shorn like a lamb for 
 eleven years, and I have held my p£;ace. My blood has 
 been shed. I have been tortured iu a dungeon, and 1 
 have remained faithful. In eight or ten days I must 
 give in my answer, Some people tell me that I ought 
 rather to lose my head than speak; but if I am driven 
 to it the truth must be told.' 
 
 The Prior went. Philip saw him more than once, 
 and heard what he had to say. There could be no 
 doubt that Perez had the compromising letters, for the 
 Prior had seen them. Yet Piiilip's courage did not fail 
 him. After Perez's flight the Court of Castile had 
 given judgment against him in default. He was to be 
 dragged through the streets and hanged. His head 
 was to be cut ofif and exposed, and all his property was 
 to be confiscated. The answer to the mission of the 
 Prior of Gotor was the publication of his sentence. 
 
 Perez thus driven to bay took up the challenge. 
 He drew a memorial containing: his own account of the 
 causes of Escovedo's murder. He attached it to such 
 notes as sufficed to prove the King's complicity, reserv- 
 ing others in case of future necessity; and this was 
 publicly presented as his reply to the Marquis of 
 Almenara. The King had probably expected that the 
 judges of Aragon would not lightly accept so grave a 
 charge against their sovereign ; that they would respect
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 165 
 
 the sentence of the better-informed Court of Castile, 
 and would understand that there was something behind 
 which was left unexplained. But Aragon was excited, 
 and chose to show its independence. After the 
 admission of the memorial Don Inigo sent word to the 
 King, that if no further evidence were produced, Perez 
 would certainly be acquitted. The King believed that 
 he had other resources at his disposition by which com- 
 plete defeat could be avoided, and at the last moment 
 directed that the case before the Grand Justiciary should 
 be abandoned. ' If,' said Philip, ' it was possible to reply 
 with the same publicity which Perez has given to his 
 defence, his guilt woidd be proved, and he would be 
 condemned. Throughout this whole affair I have con- 
 sidered only the public good. The long imijrisoument 
 of Perez, the entire course which the cause has taken, 
 has had no other object. Abusing my clemency, and 
 afraid of the issue, he so defends himself that to answer 
 him I must publish secrets which ought not to be 
 revealed, and involve persons whose reputation is of 
 more consequence than the punishment of a single 
 offender. Therefore, I shall go no further with the prose- 
 cution in the Court of Aragon. I declare Perez to have 
 sinned worse than ever vassal sinned before against his 
 sovereign — both in time, form, and circumstance ; and I 
 desire this my declaration to be entered with my notice 
 of withdrawal. Truth, which I have always main- 
 tained, must suffer no injury. And I reserve such rights 
 J as ap]>ertain, or may appertain to me, of bringing the 
 offender to account for his crimes in any other manner.'
 
 iM ANTON/0 riiKEZ: 
 
 Tilt; 'oUicr ninniM-r' was tlirou;,'li tlic Court of En- 
 rjuesta. In the Constitution of Aragon, a special 
 reservation excluded from protection the King's servants 
 and officials. Over these the law of the province had 
 no more authority than the King was pleased to allow 
 — and the Kinfj under this clause claimed to have 
 Perez surrendered to himself. The lor-al lawyers, how- 
 ever, interpreted ' servants ' to mean only servants in 
 Aragon and engaged in the affairs in Aragon, not persons 
 belonging to other countries or other provinces, Ara- 
 gonese, who accepted Crown employment, undertook it 
 with theif eyes open and at their own risk, and might 
 be supposed to have consented to their exemption ; but 
 such a case as that of Perez had not been contemplated 
 when the clause in the Constitution was allowed. But 
 the King had one more resource. Though acquitted, 
 the prisoner was still detained, as if the authorities 
 were unsatisfied of his real innocence, Perez had 
 grown imjDatient, and, in his loose, vain way, had 
 babbled to liis companions in the Manifestacion, and 
 his language had been so extravagant that it had been 
 noted down and forwarded to the court. He had 
 threatened to fly to France or Holland, when he would 
 make the King repent of his treatment of him. He 
 had compared himself to Marius, who had been driven 
 into exile and had returned to the consulship. He 
 said that he would raise a revolt in Castile ; he would 
 bring in Henry the Fourth ; he would make Aragon 
 into a Free Republic like Venice. He spoke of Philip 
 as another Pharaoh. He had ventured into more
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 167 
 
 dangerous ground, and had called into question the 
 mysteries of the faith. Some of these rash expressions 
 had been noted down in writing, with the solemn reflec- 
 tions on them of the King's confessor. The impatient 
 wretch had said, that ' if God the Father had allowed 
 the King to behave so disloyally to him he would take 
 God the Father by the nose.' The confessor observes, 
 ' This proposition is blasphemous, scandalous, offensive 
 to pious ears, and savouring of the heresy of the 
 Vadiani, who affirmed that God was corporeal and had 
 human members. Nor was it an excuse to say that 
 Christ, being made man, had a nose, since the words 
 were spoken of the First Person.*- 
 
 Again, Perez had said, ' God is asleep in this affair 
 of mine. If He works no miracle for me, it will go near 
 to destroy the faith.' 
 
 ' This pi-oposition,' the confessor noted, ' is scandalous. 
 The prisoner has been accused of the greatest enormities; 
 he has been tried by course of law and condemned to 
 death, and he speaks as if he was without fault.' 
 
 Worse still. Perez had gone on, ' God sleeps ! God 
 sleeps ! God is an idle tale ; there cannot be a God ! ' 
 
 The confessor observes, ' This proposition is heretical, 
 as if God had no care for human things, when the Bible 
 and the Church affirm that He does care. To say that 
 there cannot be a God is heresy, for though it be said in 
 doubt, yet doubt is not allowed in matters of faith ; we 
 must believe without doubt.' 
 
 Lastly, Perez had said, ' If things pass thus, I cannot 
 believe in God.'
 
 iM ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 Tlic confessor notes, ' Tliis i.s blasphemous, scandal- 
 ous, and offensivG, and savouis of lieresy also.' 
 
 Till! confessor's cars l)ad no doubt been outraged. 
 Many a jxjor sinner had gone to tlie stake for less 
 audacious utterances. For nine months after tlic failure 
 with the En(|uesta, Perez remained in the Manifestaciou, 
 pouring out these wild outcries. At the end of them 
 an order cauie from tlie Holy Office at Madrid to the 
 tliree In<iuisitors at Saragossa to take possession of his 
 person and remove him to tiieir own prison in the oM 
 Moorish palace of the Aljaferia. 
 
 The In(iuisitor-General of Spain was his old friend 
 the Archbishoji of Toledo. In Madrid the Inquisition 
 had been well disjMjsed towards him, and once he had 
 thrown himself uu its protection. Had he now sub- 
 mitted voluntarily, he would probably have been safe 
 from serious injury, and an impartial decision would 
 have been arrived at. The Innuisition, be it remem- 
 bered, was no slave of the Crown, and, though a cruel 
 guanliaii of orthodoxy, would not have looked too 
 narrowly at the fretful words of a man whom the Arch- 
 bishop believed to have been ill used. The judges of 
 Aragon were by this time satisfied that Perez was not 
 entirely the martyr whieli he pretended to be, and that 
 the King had something to say for himself. Philip, 
 who appears to PnHestant Europe a monster of in- 
 justice, was in Sp:iiu respected and esteemed. The 
 Grand Justiciary did not wish to (piairel with the 
 Crown in a case so doubtful, still less to quarrel with 
 the Holy Ollice, and wa.s preparing quietly to comply.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 169 
 
 But Perez would not have it so, and preferred to trust 
 to popular jealousy. A mob is always ready to listen 
 when it is told that Liberty is in danger. A story was 
 circulated in Saragossa that the Marquis of Almenara 
 had bribed the prisoners in the Manifestacion to send 
 in a false account of Perez's language, that the Inqui- 
 sition was claiming a riglit whicli did not belong to it, 
 that the Fueros were being betrayed, and that the 
 Aragonese were to be made slaves of the Castilians. 
 Symptoms showed themselves of an intended rising, 
 and the Justiciary and Don Inigo, after a night's con- 
 ference, agreed that Perez should be removed at once 
 and without notice to the Inquisition prison. At noon 
 on May 24, 1 59 1, he was quietly placed in a carriage at 
 tlie Manifestacion Gate. A knot of young men tried 
 to stop the horses, and clamoured for the Constitution ; 
 but they were told that it was cosa de fey, an affair of 
 religion, and that they must mind their own business. 
 The carriage reached the Aljaferia without interruption, 
 and Perez was in tlie Inquisitors' hands. But on the 
 instant Saragossa was in arms. The alarm bell boomed 
 out. The market-place swarmed with a furious multi- 
 tude shouting ' Fueros, Fueros ! Libertad, Libertad ! ' 
 Tlieir plans had been already hiid. Half the mob went 
 to attack the Aljaferia, tlie others to the house of 
 Philip's representative, the Marquis of Almenara. He, 
 too, it is likely, had remembered that Perez was the 
 friend of the Princess of Eboli, and had thrown himself 
 into the quarrel with some degree of personal animosity. 
 He was now to expiate his oageru-^ss. He was urged
 
 I70 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 to fly. The Mendozas, lie answered, never fled. The 
 palace d(X)r wjis dashed in. The Justiciary, who had 
 hurried to protect him, was thrown down and trampled 
 on. Don Tnigo was seized, dragged out, and borne 
 away atnong cries of * Muera, muera ! Kill him, kill 
 liim!' Stripped naked, his clothes torn off, his arms 
 almost forced out of their sockets, struck and pelted 
 with stones, he was at last rescued by a party of police, 
 who carried him into the city prison. There, a fortnight 
 after, he died of his injuries, so ending his lawsuit with 
 the widow of Ruy Gomez. 
 
 The Inquisitors at the Aljaferia had a near escape 
 of the same fate. The walls were strong and the gates 
 massive. But the fierce people brought faggots in 
 cartloads, and raised a pile which would have reduced 
 the palace and all in it to dust and ashes. Tlie In- 
 quisitors, they said, had burnt others ; they should now 
 burn themselves unless Perez was instantly released. 
 The Inquisitors would have held out, but the Arch- 
 bishop of Saragossa, Almenara's brother, insisted that 
 they must yield. Perez, four hours only after they had 
 seized him, was given back to his friends, and borne 
 away in triumph. 
 
 But the mob had risen for the rights of Aragon, and 
 not, after all, for a jtrisoner of whose innocence even 
 they were unconvinced. Perez imagined himself a 
 national hero. He had expected that the Cortes would 
 take up his case, that he svould be allowed to present 
 himself at the bar, and detail the story of his wrongs 
 in Philip's own presence. The leaders of the people
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 171 
 
 had formed a cooler estimate of his merits. They con- 
 tented themselves with taking him back to the Mani- 
 festacion. The officials of the province went up to 
 Madrid, to deliberate with the court what was next to 
 be done. 
 
 For Perez personally there was no enthusiasm. If 
 the Inquisition would acknowledge the Fueros, the 
 sensible people of Saragossa were ready to surrender 
 him. The Inquisition made the necessary concessions, 
 and Perez's own supporters now advised him to submit 
 unreservedly. But this he did not dare to do ; he tried 
 to escape from the Manifestacion and failed. He ap- 
 pealed again to the mo]). Broad-sheets were printed 
 and circulated declaring that the officials were betray- 
 ing the Fueros, and though the chiefs of the first 
 insurrection had withdrawn, the multitude could still 
 be wrought upon. Unfortunately for Aragou, the Grand 
 Justiciary, Don Juan de Lanuza, a wise and prudent 
 man, suddenly died. Had he lived a few weeks longer 
 he might have saved his country, but it was not so to 
 be. The nomination of his successor belonged to the 
 King, but the office had by custom become hereditary 
 in the Lanuza family ; Don Juan's son, a generous hot- 
 headed youth, claimed to act without waiting for the 
 King's sanction, and, fatally for himself, was ruled or 
 influenced by his uncle, Don Martin, wlio was Perez's 
 most intimate ally. The officials had returned from 
 the court. The Council of Saragossa had decided that 
 Perez should be restored to the Holy Office. The 
 removal was to be effected on the following morning,
 
 172 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 Septcinbcr 24 ; but wlicn llie morning came the mob 
 wore out again. The Manifestacion was broken open, 
 the council room was set on fire, and Perez was again 
 released. It was understood, however, that he was not 
 to remain any hunger at Saragossa to be a future occasion 
 of (juarreL lie was escorted a league out of the city 
 on the road to the Pyrenees, and he was made to know 
 that if lie returned lie would not be protected. He did 
 return; he pretended that the roads were unsafe, hut 
 he came back in secret, and in the closest disguise, and 
 lay conccaleil in Don Martin's house till it could be 
 seen how thi; King would act. 
 
 Constitutional governments which cannot govern 
 are near their end. When the intelligent and the 
 educated part of the population are superseded by the 
 iiinb, they cannot continue zealous for forms of freedom 
 which to them are slavery. The mob has usurped the 
 power ; if it can defend its actions successfully, it makes 
 good the authority which it has seized; if it fails, the 
 blame is with itself. The Aragon executive had pro- 
 tected Perez on his arriva,l in the province, they had 
 given him the means of making an open defence, and, 
 so far as their own council could decide in his cause, 
 tiiey had pronounced him acquitted. But there were 
 cliarges against him which could not be openly pleaded, 
 and his innocence was not so clear that it would be 
 right as yet to risk a civil war in a case .so ambiguous. 
 The judges considered that enough had been done. The 
 mob and the young Justiciary iliought otherwise, and 
 with th.io the responsibility rested.
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 173 
 
 Philip was iu no hiiriy. Tcu Liiousaud meu were 
 collected quietly on the frontier under Don Alonzo de 
 Vargas. The sentiments of the principal persons were 
 sounded, and it was ascertained that from those who 
 could offer serious resistance there was none to be 
 anticipated. Liberty had lost its attractions when it 
 meant the protection of criminals by the town rabble. 
 That the mob had shaken themselves clear of Perez 
 made little difference to Philip, for they had taken him 
 by force out of prison. The middle-class citizens, who 
 still prized their Constitution, believed, on the other 
 hand, or at least some of them believed, that the King 
 had no longer an excuse for interfering with them. 
 Philip so far respected their alarm that before he 
 ordered the advance of the troops he sent out a pro- 
 clamation that the Constitution would not be disturbed; 
 and possibly, if there had been no opposition, he would 
 have found his course less clear. But the more eager 
 spirits coidd not be restrained ; the nobles held aloof ; 
 the young Justiciary, however, was ardent and enthusi- 
 astic — he was compromised besides, for he had taken 
 office without waiting for the King's permission. The 
 invasion was an open breach of the Fueros. He called 
 the citizens of Saragossa to arms, and sent appeals for 
 help to Barcelona and the other towns. 
 
 There was no response — a sufficient proof either 
 that the province was indifferent, or that the cause was 
 regarded as a bad one. Lanuza led out a tattered 
 multitude of shopkeepers and workmen to meet the 
 Castilians ; but, though brave enough in a city insur-
 
 174 ANTONIO PEREZ: 
 
 lection, tliey li.nl no stomach for fighting with a 
 (li.sciphnc«l force, Tlicy turned and scattered without 
 a blow, and Alonzo de Vargas entered Saragossa 
 November 12, 1591. 
 
 The modern doctrine, that political offences are 
 virtues in disguise, was not yet the creed even of the 
 most advanced philosophers. The Saragossa rabble 
 liad resisted the lawful authorities of the province. 
 They had stormed a prison ; they had murdered the 
 King's representative; fatallest of all, they had taken 
 arms for liberty, and had wanted courage to fight for it. 
 The Justiciary was executed, and fifteen or twenty other 
 persons. The attack on the Aljaferia was an act of 
 sacrilege, and the wrongs of the Inquisition were 
 avenged more severely. A hundred and twenty- three 
 of the most prominent of the mob were arrested. Of 
 these, seventy-nine were burnt iu the market-place. 
 The ceremony began at eight in the morning; it closed 
 at night, when there was no light but from the blazing 
 faggots ; the last figure that was consumed was the 
 effigy of Antonio Perez, the original cause of the catas- 
 trophe. The punishment being concluded, the Consti- 
 tution was abolished. The armed resistance was held 
 to have dispensed with Philip's promises, and the Fueros 
 of Aragon were at an end. 
 
 Perez himself escaped on the night on which the 
 Castilians entered, and made his way through the 
 Pyrenees to Pau. He published a narrative of his 
 sufi'erings — that is, his o>vn version of them, with the 
 further incriminating documents which the Protestant
 
 AN UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 175 
 
 world at once received with greedy acclamations. Much 
 ol' what he said was probably true ; much might have 
 worn another complexion if the other side had been 
 told. But Philip never condescended to reply, Perez 
 was taken uj) by Henry the Fourth, pensioned, trusted, 
 and employed so long as the war with Spain continued. 
 He was sent into England. He was received by Eliza- 
 beth ; entertained by Essex, and admitted into ac- 
 quaintance by Francis Bacon — not with the approval 
 of Bacon's mother, who disliked him from the first. He 
 was plausible ; he was polished ; he Avas acute. He 
 had been so long intimately acquainted with Spanish 
 secrets, that his information was always useful and 
 often of the highest value. But he was untrue at the 
 heart. Even his own Belacion is in many points 
 inconsistent with itself, and betrays the inward hollow- 
 ness ; while his estimate of his own merits went beyond 
 what his most foolish friends could believe or acknow- 
 ledge. Gradually he was seen through both in Paris 
 and London. When peace came he was thrown aside, 
 and sank into neglect and poverty. He attempted 
 often, but always fruitlessly, to obtain his pardon from 
 Philip the Third, and eventually died miserably in a 
 Paris lodging, a worn-out old man of seventy-two, on 
 November 3, 161 1. 
 
 So ends the story of a man who, if his personal 
 merits alone were concerned, might have been left 
 forgotten among the unnumbered millions who have 
 played their chequered parts on the stage of the world. 
 Circumstances, and the great religious revolution of the
 
 176 iN'ro.y/o fERf-:/. 
 
 sixtcrutli ((iiliiry, cnnv* rttil I'liilip in tlic eyes of lialf 
 Knropc into a inuligiuint deinori. The darkest iuter- 
 pretations were tlirown upon every unexplained action 
 wliicli lie committed; and Antonio Perez became the 
 hero of a romance fitter for a third-rate theatre than 
 the pa_i,'e.s of accredited history. The imar,niiativo 
 features of it liave now disappeared, but there remains 
 an instructive picture of Philip's real character. He 
 said that he had been guided tliroughout by no motive 
 save concern for the public welfare, and there is no 
 reason to suppose that he was saying anything except 
 what he believed to be true ; yet he so acted as to invite 
 suspicion in every step which he took. 
 
 Escovedo, as his conduct was represented by Pirez, 
 deserved to be punished, perhaps to be punished 
 severely. To prosecute him publicly would have been 
 doubtless inconvenient; and Philip, without giving him 
 an opportunity of defending himself, undertook the 
 part of a secret Providence, and allowed him to be 
 struck in the dark without explaining his reasons. 
 Providence does not permit vain mortals, even though 
 they be Catholic kings, to usurp a jurisdiction which is 
 reserved for itself. It punished Philip by throwing him 
 into the power of an unscrupulous intriguer, who had, 
 perhaps, in some measure really mislead him on the 
 extent of Eseovedo's faults. 
 
 He tried to extricate himself, but he was entangled 
 in the net which his own hands had woven; and, when 
 Perez refused to assist him, and preferred to keep him 
 struggling at his mcrcv, he was driven to measures
 
 AM UNSOLVED HISTORICAL RIDDLE. 177 
 
 wliich could be represented to the world as a base 
 persecution of the instrument of his own crimes. Thus 
 out of an unwise ambition to exercise the attributes of 
 omniscience, the poor King laid himself open to ground- 
 less accusations, and the worst motives which could be 
 supposed to have actuated him were those which found 
 easiest credit. 
 
 But the legend of the loves of Philip the Second 
 and the Princess of Eboli was not of Spanish growth. 
 The Bdacion of Perez was read in the Peninsula, but 
 it did not shake the confidence with which Philip was 
 regarded by his subjects. The Fueros of Aragon 
 perished, but they perished only because constitutional 
 liberties which degenerate into anarchy are already ripe 
 for an end.
 
 SAINT TERESA/ 
 
 Reprinted from the ' QiMrtcrly Review. ' 
 
 ON the western slope of the Guadanama mountains, 
 midway between Medina del Campo and tlie Escu- 
 rial, stands the ancient town of Avila. From the windows 
 of the railway carriage can be seen the massive walls 
 and flanking towers, raised in the eleventh century in 
 the first heat of the Spanish crusade. The fortifications 
 themselves tell the story of their origin. The garrison 
 of Avila were soldiers of Christ, and the cathedral was 
 built into the bastions, in the front line of defence, as 
 an emblem of the genius of the age. Time has scarcely 
 touched the solid masonry. Ruy Diaz and his con- 
 temporaries have vanished into legend ; but these 
 silent monuments of the old Castilian character survive 
 to remind us what manner of men the builders of them 
 were. Revolutions on revolutions overflow the Spanish 
 
 * I. Ada S. Tcrcsm a Jcsu, 
 Carinclitarum slrictioris Ob^cr- 
 vaiilict Parentis. Illustrata a 
 Joaeplio VauJonnoero, Societatia 
 
 Jesu Presbytcro Theologo. Bra- 
 xellis, 1845. 2. Obras de Santa 
 Teresa de Jisiis. Barcelona, 1844.
 
 SAIMT TERESA. lt$ 
 
 peninsula, condemn the peasantry to poverty, and the 
 soil to barrenness; but they have not in these later 
 times unearthed in the process a single man like those 
 whose names are part of European history. They have 
 produced military adventurers, and orators like Castelar, 
 of ' transcendent eloquence ' ; but no Cid, no Grand 
 Captain, no Alva, not even a Cortez or a Pizarro. The 
 Progresista of our age has a long ascent before him if 
 he is to rise to the old level. 
 
 The situation of Avila is extremely picturesque, 
 standing in the midst of grey granite sierras, covered 
 with pine forests, and intersected with clear mountain 
 rivulets. It is now thinly populated, and, like most 
 towns in Spain, has fallen into decay and neglect ; but 
 the large solid mansions, the cathedral, the churches, 
 the public buildings, the many convents and monasteries, 
 though mostly gone to waste and ruin, show that once 
 it was full of busy, active life, of men and women 
 playing their parts there in the general drama of their 
 country. 
 
 In the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella there were 
 two peculiarities : first, that there was no recognised 
 capital, for the provinces which formed the monarchy 
 were still imperfectly cemented; and secondly, that 
 the nobles and gentry, the senores and the hidalgos, 
 had their chief residences in the towns, and not on their 
 estates. The causes and consequences of this practice 
 of theirs it would be interesting to trace, were the 
 , present the occasion for it, but of the fact itself there is 
 no doubt at all. Of feudal chateaux and manor-houses,
 
 i8o SAINT TERESA. 
 
 so muiieiuus in Fnincc and Kngland, there were not 
 many in any part of Spain, ami vory low in the Ciistiles. 
 Tlio landed aristocracy congregated within the walls of 
 the provincial cities. Thoir palaces are still to be seen 
 in grand ami gaunt neglect, with their splendid stair- 
 rases, their quadrangles, their columned verandahs, the 
 coats of arms carved over the portals. In the cities 
 also were the learned professions: the lawyers, the 
 doctors, the secular clergy, the religious orders. The 
 Court moved from place to place, and there was no 
 central focus to draw away men of superior rank (jr 
 superior talents from their local homes. The com- 
 munications were difficult; the roaxis were horse-tracks ; 
 the rivers, save where some enterprising municipality 
 had built a bridge, were crossed only by fords and 
 pontoons. Thus each important town was the heart of 
 a separate district, a complete epitome of Spanish life, 
 with all its varied circles. An aristocracy was in each, 
 proud and exclusive. A religious world was in each ; a 
 world of art and literature, of commei'ce and adventure. 
 Every family had some member pushing his fortunes in 
 the army or in the New Hemisphere. The miuds of 
 men were in full activity. They were enterprising and 
 daring. Their manners were polished, and their habits 
 splendid ; for into Spain first had poured the fruits of 
 the discoveries of Columbus, and the stream of gold was 
 continually growing with fresh conquests. Perhaps 
 nowhere on the earth was there a finer average of dis- 
 tinguished and cultivated society than in the provincial 
 C:\stilian cities, as it is described in Cervantes's novels.
 
 SAINT TERESA. l8l 
 
 The Castilians were a nation of gentlemen, higli bred, 
 courteous, chivalrous. In arms they had no rivals. In 
 art and literature Italy alone was in advance of them, 
 and Italy led by no great interval ; while the finest 
 characteristics were to be met with equally in every 
 part of the country. 
 
 They were a sincere people too ; Catholic in belief, 
 and earnestly meaning what they professed. In the 
 presence of the Moors, Christianity had retained its 
 mediaeval features. Of Christianity itself they knew no 
 form, and could conceive of none, save that for which 
 they had fought against the Moslem ; and the cause of 
 the Church was the cause of patriotism. Therefore, 
 when the Reformation began in Germany, the Spaniard 
 naturally regarded its adherents as the old enemy in 
 another dress. An Italian priest could mutter at the 
 altar, ' Bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain.' 
 No such monster could have been found in the Spanish 
 Peninsula. Leo the Tenth was said to have called 
 Christianity a profitable fable. To the subjects of 
 Isabella it was a truth, which devils only could deny. 
 
 The Northern nations revolted from the Church in 
 the name of liberty. The Spaniards loved liberty, but 
 it was the liberty of their country, for which they had 
 been fighting for centuries against the Infidel. As 
 aristocrats, they were instinctively on the side of 
 authority. United among themselves, they believed 
 in the union of Christendom ; and they threw them- 
 selves into the struggle against heresy with the same 
 enthusiasm with which they contended with the
 
 {83 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 Crescent in the Mcditerranciin. Tlioy sent their 
 chivalry to the Low Countries as if to a crusade. 
 Two Spaniards, Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier, 
 created the spiritual army of the Jesuits, While some 
 were engaged with the enemy abroad, the finer spirits 
 ainonfr them undertook the task of setting in order 
 their own house at home. They, too, required a Refor- 
 mation, if they were to be fit champions of a Holy 
 Cause ; and the instrument was a woman, with as few 
 natural advantages as Ignatius himself, distinguished 
 only in representing, as he did, the vigorous instincts 
 of the Spanish character. 
 
 The Church of Rome, it has been said, does not, 
 like the Church of England, drive her enthusiasts into 
 rebellion, but j^reserves and wisely employ's them. She 
 may employ them wisely while they are alive, but 
 when they are dead she decks them out in paint and 
 tinsel, to be worshipped as divinities. Their history 
 becomes a legend. They are surrounded with an 
 envelope of lies. Teresa of Avila has fared no better 
 than other saints in the calendar. She has been the 
 favourite idol of modern Spain, and she deserved more 
 modest treatment. 
 
 The idolatry may merit all that Mr. Ford has said 
 about it, but the account which he has given of the 
 lady herself is so wide of the original, that it is not 
 even a caricature. Ford, doubtless, did not like 
 Catholic saints, and the absurdities tolJ about them 
 disgusted him ; but the materials lay before him for a 
 real portrait of Teresa, had he cared to examine them ;
 
 SAINT TERESA. 183 
 
 and it is a pity that he did not, for no one could have 
 done better justice to his subject. 
 
 Teresa de Cepeda was born at Avila on March 28, 
 15 1 5 — -the time, according to her biographer, ' when 
 Luther was secreting the poison which he vomited out 
 two years later.' . . . She was one of a large family, 
 eleven children in all, eight sons and three daughters. 
 Her father, Don Alfonso, was twice married. Teresa's 
 mother was the second wife, Beatrice de Ahumada, a 
 beautiful, imaginative woman, whom bad health con- 
 fined chiefly to a sofa. The Cepedas were of honour- 
 able descent ; Don Alfonso was a gentleman of leisure 
 and moderate fortune. He spent his time, when not 
 engaged with works of charity, in reading Spanish 
 literature — chiefly Church history and lives of the 
 saiuts. His library, if the Barber and Curate had sat 
 upon it, would have been sifted as ruthlessly as the 
 shelves of the Ingenious Knight of La Mancha, for half 
 of it was composed of books of Knight Errantry — the 
 same volumes probably which those stern Inquisitors 
 condemned to the flames. These books were devoured 
 as eagerly by the delicate Beatrice as the graver pages 
 by her husband, and lier example was naturally imitated 
 by her children. They sat up at nights in their 
 nursery over Rolando and Don Belianis and Amadis of 
 Gaul. Teresa composed odes to imaginary cavaliers, 
 who figured in adventures of which she was herself the 
 heroine. They had to conceal their tastes from their 
 father, who would not have approved of them. He was 
 a very good man, exceptionally good. He treated his
 
 ,84 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 servants as if thoy wore liis sons and daughters. He 
 was ntivor lieaid to swear, or to speak ill of any one. 
 He was tlie constant friend of the Avila poor. If too 
 indulfrent, he had sense and information, and when he 
 discerned wliat was going on, he diverted Teresa's 
 tastes in a safer direction. By nature, she says, slie was 
 the least religious of her family, hut her imagination 
 was impressible, and she delighted in all forms of 
 human heroism. She early forgot her kniglits, and 
 devoted herself to martyrs; and li ere, being concrete 
 and practical, she thought she would turn her new 
 enthusiasm to account. If to be in heaven was to be 
 eternally happy, and martyrs went to heaven straight, 
 without passing through Purgatory, she concluded that 
 she could do nothing more prudent than become a 
 martyr herself. When she was seven years old, she 
 and her little brother Antonio actually started oflF to go 
 to the Moors, who they expected would kill them. The 
 children had reached the bridge on the stream which 
 runs through the town, when an uncle met them and 
 brought tl.em back. As they could not be martyrs, 
 they thought, as next best, that they would be hermits. 
 They gave away their pocket-money to beggars. They 
 made themselves cells in the garden. Teresa's ambition 
 grew. When other girls came to see her, they played 
 at nunneries, when she was perhaps herself the abbess. 
 Amidst these fancies her childish years passed away. 
 She does not seem to have had much rejjular teaching. 
 Nothing is said about it; and when she grew up she 
 had difficulty in reading her Latin Breviary.
 
 SAINT TERESA. 185 
 
 The Knight Errantry books, however, had left their 
 traces. Her mother died while she was still very young, 
 and she was much affected. But natural children do 
 not long continue miserable. As she passed into girl- 
 hood, her glass told her that she was pretty, and she 
 was pleased to hear it. She was moderately tall, well 
 shaped, with a fine complexion, round brilliant black 
 eyes, black hair crisp and curly, good teeth, and firmly 
 chiselled lips and nose. So fair a figure deserved that 
 pains should be taken with it. She was j^articular 
 about her dress ; she liked perfumes ; her small dainty 
 hands were kept scrupulously white. Cousins male 
 and female went and came ; and there were small 
 fiirtations with the boys, and with the girls not very 
 wise confidences. One girl cousin there was especially, 
 whom the mother, while she lived, would not allow to 
 visit at the house, and whom an elder sister would still 
 have kept at a distance had she been able. But Teresa 
 was wilful, and chose this especial young lady as her 
 principal companion. There were also sill}^ servants, 
 too ready to encourage folly, and Teresa says that at 
 this time nothing but regard for her honour kept her 
 clear of serious scrapes. 
 
 Don Alfonso grew uneasy ; the elder sister married 
 and went away ; so, feeling unequal himself to tlie task 
 of managing a difficult subject, he sent Teresa to be 
 educated in an Augustiniau convent in the town. 
 Neither her father nor she hail any thoughts of her 
 adopting a religious life. He never wished it at any 
 time. She did not wish it then, and had undefined
 
 |86 
 
 SAmr TERESA. 
 
 notions of marrying as iiur sister lia<l done. The con- 
 vent to licr was merely a school, where there were 
 many other girls of her own age, nor did she wholly 
 like the life there. She made friends among the elder 
 nuns, especially with one, a simple pious woman, who 
 slept in the same room with her. But the younger 
 sisters were restless. They had acquaintances in the 
 town, and were occupied with other things beside 
 rehgious vows. Within the convent itself all was not 
 as it should have been. The vicar of the Order had 
 the whole spiritual management both of the nuns and 
 of their pupils. No one but himself might hear their 
 confessions, and the prioress could not interfere with 
 him, since by his position he was her superior. Teresa 
 does not hint that there was anything positively wrong, 
 but when she came to lay down rules in later years for 
 the regulation of her own houses, she refers to her 
 recollections of what went on in language curiously 
 frank : — 
 
 ' The confessor in a convent,' she says, ' ought not to be the 
 vicar or the visitor. He may take a special interest in some 
 sister. The Prioress will be unable to prevent him from talking 
 to her, and a thou.^and mischiefs may follow. . . . The si-ters 
 should have no intercourse with the confessor except at the 
 confessional. . . . The very existence of our institutions depends 
 on preventing Uksc black devotees from destroying the spouses of 
 Christ. The devil enters tliat way unperceived.' ^ 
 
 * Va nos todo nuestro Ser, en 
 quitar la ocasion para que no liaya 
 estos uegros devolos destruidoies 
 de las esposas do Cliristo, que es 
 meuester pensar sienipre en lo peor 
 
 que puede suceder, para quitar esta 
 ocasion, que se eiitra sin sentirlo 
 per aqui el demonic' — Cartas df 
 la Santa Madre, vol. vi. p. 232.
 
 SAINT TERESA. 1S7 
 
 The vicar confessor encouraged Teresa in her views 
 for marriage, but her fancies and her friendship were 
 suddenly broken off by an attack of illness. She 
 required change of air ; she was sent on a visit to her 
 sister; and on her way home she spent a few days with 
 an uncle, a man of secluded and saintly habits, who 
 afterwards withdrew into a monastery. The uncle 
 advised his niece to take the same step that he was 
 himself meditating; and she discussed the question 
 with herself in the same spirit with which she had 
 designed throwing herself among the Moors. She 
 reflected that convent discipline might be painful, but 
 it could not be as painful as Purgatory, while if she 
 remained in the world she might come to something 
 worse than Purgatory. She read St. Jerome's Epistles ; 
 she then consulted her father, and was distressed to 
 meet with strong objections. Don Alfonso was attached 
 to his children, and Teresa was his especial favourite. 
 The utmost that she could obtain was a permission to 
 do as she pleased after his own death. But ' a vocation' 
 was held to dispense with duties to parents. She made 
 up her own mind, and, like Luther, she decided to act 
 for herself, and to take a step which, when once 
 accomplished, could not be recalled. One morning 
 she left her home with her brother, and applied 
 for admission at the Carmelite Convent of the In- 
 carnation. She was then eigliteen. Slie had been 
 disappointed with the Augustiuians ; but the Car- 
 melites had a reputation for superior holiness, and 
 she threw herself among thcin with the passionate
 
 l8S SAINT TERESA. 
 
 enthusiasm of :iu anient girl, who believed tiiat she 
 was securing her peace in this world, and happiness in 
 the next. Again she was to be undeceived. The Order 
 of Mount Carmel had been founded by Albert, Patriarch 
 of Jerusalem, in the second Crusade. The rule had 
 lieen austere — austere as the rule of the Carthusians — 
 with strict seclusion, silence, solitude, the plainest dress, 
 the most ascetic diet. But by the beginning of tlje 
 sixteenth century time and custom had relaxed the 
 primitive severity, and Carmelite convents had become 
 :i part of general society; the nuns within the cloisters 
 living and occupying themselves in a manner not very 
 different from their friends outside, with wliom they 
 were in constant communication. Austerity was still 
 possible, but it was not insisted on, and was a sign of 
 presumption and singularity. In the ' Incarnation ' 
 there were a hundred and ninety sisters, and the dis- 
 cipline among them was scarcely more than a name. 
 They went in and out as they pleased ; they received 
 visits and returned them ; they could be absent from 
 the cloister for months at a time. Catholics accuse 
 Protestants of having libelled the monastic life of 
 Europe as it existed before the Reformation. Luther 
 himself has said nothing harsher of it than the saint 
 of Avila. She followed the stream, she said ; she 
 abandoned herself to vanity and amusement, and 
 neither custom nor the authority of her superiors laid 
 the slii^htest check upon her. She had as much liberty 
 as she liked to ask for, and liberty in a convent meant 
 free opportunities of evil. She does not assert that
 
 SAINT TERESA. l«9 
 
 there was gross licentiousness ; but she does assert that 
 to ' ill-disposed women ' convent life ' was rather a road 
 to hell than an aid to Aveakuess ' ; and that ' parents 
 would do better to marry their daughters honestly than 
 to place them in relaxed houses of religion ' : — 
 
 'The girls themselves,' she says, 'are not so nuich to blame, 
 for they do no worse than they see others do. They enter con- 
 vents to serve the Lord and escape the dangers of the world, and 
 they are flung into ten worlds all together, with youth, sensuality, 
 and the devil, tempting them to evil. ... In the same house are 
 two roads, one leading to virtue and piety, another leading awa\ii 
 from virtue and piety ; and the road of religion is so little 
 travelled, that a sister who wishes to follow it has more to fear 
 from her companions than from all the devils. She finds it easier 
 far to make intimacies with the devil's instruments than to seek 
 friendship with God.' 
 
 How dangerous this lax temper might have been to 
 herself Teresa tells us in an instructive incident. Her 
 health was never strong, and the convent had disagreed 
 with her. She was sick every morning, and could touch 
 no food till noon. She often fainted, and there were 
 symptoms of heart disorder. Nor was she happy in 
 herself She had tried to be good, and had only made 
 enemies by her efforts. She found herself rebuked for 
 small offences of which she was wholly innocent. She 
 lived much alone, and the sisters thought she was dis- 
 contented. Her father became alarmed for her, and 
 again sent her away into the country, with a single 
 mm for a companion. At the place where she went to 
 reside tlierc was an attractive priest, a man of intellect 
 and culture. Teresa was fond of cultivated men. She 
 took the priest for her confessor, and found him more
 
 190 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 .11 111 iiKjrc agreeable. He flattered her conscience by 
 telling her that she could never wish to do wrong. 
 lie said it was his own case also, and they became 
 extremely intimate. She was informed after a time 
 that this charmingly innocent person had been living 
 for some years witli a female companion, while he 
 continued to say mass as if nothing were the matter. 
 She was at first incredulous. She made inquiries, but 
 the scandal was notorious. Every one was aware of it, 
 but the offender had influence, and it was unsafe to 
 interfere with him. Even so, however, Teresa would 
 not abandon her friend, and looked for excuses for him. 
 The woman, she found, had given him an amulet, and 
 while he wore it he was under a spell. He told her 
 this iiiniself, and her interest was now increased by pity 
 ;ind anxiety. She admits that she was unwise, that 
 she ought at once to have ended the acquaintance. 
 She preferred to endeavour to save a perishing souL 
 She was but twenty; she was very beautiful; she 
 spoke to the attractive sinner of God ; and of course to 
 a lesson from such lips he was delighted to listen. She 
 perceived the cause, but was not discouraged. She 
 pressed him to give her the amulet, and equally of 
 course he consented. She threw it into the river, and 
 he at once broke oft' his guilty connection, and devoted 
 himself to spiritual communion with herself. She 
 flattered herself that he was penitent, though it was 
 equally clear that he was in love with her; and he 
 abandoned himself to his aUection with the less reserve, 
 because she says he had confidence in her virtue, and
 
 SAINT TERESA. I9» 
 
 supposed that he could do so without danger. The 
 danger was as great as it usually is under such cir- 
 cumstances. They had ' opportunities of sin,' she said, 
 and though she believed that they would not have 
 fallen mortally, she admits that they might have gone 
 seriously Avrong if they had not kept God before their 
 eyes. The priest died a year after, and, as Teresa 
 observes naively, was delivered from further temptation. 
 She long retained some tenderness for him ; twenty 
 years later, when she wrote the story, she expressed a 
 conviction that he was saved : but the experience must 
 have helped her to the opinion, which she afterwards so 
 strongly insisted on, that confessors were the most unsafe 
 of friends. 
 
 After this adventure, which she relates witli perfect 
 simplicity, she returned to the convent. Her health 
 was not improved. She was still constantly sick ; she 
 had paroxysms of pain ; her nervous system was 
 shattered, and the physicians were afraid of madness. 
 In this state she remained for three years. At the end 
 of them it occurred to her to pray for help to San Josef. 
 From some cause she became comparatively better ; 
 and to San Josef she suj^posed that she owed her re- 
 covery. 'God,' she says, 'has allowed other saints to 
 help us on some occasions ; my experience of this 
 glorious saint is that he helps us in all : as if the Lord 
 would teach us that, as he was subject to San Josef on 
 earth, and San Josef was called his father though only 
 ■« his guardian, so San Josef, though in heaven, has still 
 authority with him.'
 
 103 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 'I'Ik; illiit'.s.s liutl liuctjiiic less acute ; but, as tlie \)\\\\\ 
 of body grew less, Teresa became conscious of spiritual 
 inal:i(lies that were left uiicured. ' She loved God witli 
 half lier mind, but slie loved the world with the other.' 
 Her j)rayers troubled her, she says, for she could not fix 
 her mind on them. Meditation was yet more difficult. 
 'She had a slow intellect and a torpid imagination.' 
 She required a book to help her, for the right reflections 
 and emotions wouM not occur to herself; other thoughts 
 persisted in intruding themselves ; and at length, being, 
 as she was, a veracious woman, she abandoned prayer 
 altogether. Among all her faults, she says she was 
 never a hypocrite, and prayer when it was no more 
 than a f(jrm of words seemed an indecent mockery. 
 
 Her confessor, when she explained her troubles, 
 only thought her morbid. In the convent she was 
 regarded as exceptionally strict, and wide as was the 
 general liberty, with her every rule was dispensed with. 
 She spent her time in the society of Avila with more 
 enjoyment than she was herself aware of, and when a 
 pious old nun told her that she was causing scandal, she 
 would not understand it, and was oidy angry. 
 
 'Unless God liad brought me to the truth,' she says, ' I shouKl 
 most iipsuredly have gone at. last to hell. I had many friends to 
 help mo to fall, while, as to rising again, I was uttoily alone. My 
 confessor did notlung for me. For twenty years I was tossed 
 about on a stormy sea in a WTetched condition, for if I had small 
 content in the worKl, in God I had no pleasure. There were 
 months, once there was an entire yeiir, when I was careful not to 
 offend ; but of all those years, eighteen were years of battle. At 
 prayer time I watched for the clock to strike the end of the hour.
 
 SAINT TERESA. 193 
 
 To go to the oratory was a vexation to me, and prtiyer itself a 
 constant effort.' 
 
 Such was Teresa's conventual experience, as de- 
 scribed by herself. She began her noviciate in iS34- 
 The twenty years, therefore, extended to 1554, the year 
 in which Philip went to England to be married to our 
 Queen Mary. She was then nearly forty, and her 
 efforts so far in the direction of religion had consisted 
 rather in helping others (which she says she was always 
 eager to do) than in framing any steady resolutions for 
 herself. Her conversion, as it is called, her first attempt 
 to think with real seriousness, was occasioned by the 
 death of her father. She had watched by him in his 
 last illness. She saw his spirit take flight, and heard 
 the assurance of his Dominican confessor that it had 
 gone straight to heaven. She had been deeply attached 
 to him. She woke up out of her irresolutions, and 
 determined to use the rest of her life to better purpose 
 than the beginning. 
 
 She was not a person to do anything by halves. She 
 thought of Mary Magdalene. She read the ' Confessions ' 
 of St. Augustine, and saw an image there of her own 
 state of mind. One day, as she was entering the 
 oratory, she was struck by the sight of an image which 
 had been brought thither for an ajDproaching festival. 
 It was a wounded Christ, the statue coloured with the 
 painful realism which suited the Spanish taste, the 
 blood streaming over the face from the thorns, and 
 f running from the side and the hands and feet. Pro- 
 testants and Catholics experience an identical emotion
 
 I9i SAINT TERESA. 
 
 wlioii the mcauiug of ChristiauiLy is biuu^'ht home to 
 tlicin. Ejicli poor sinner recognizes, as by a flash of 
 liglituing, tliat these tortures were endured f<jr him or 
 her — tliat he or she was actually present in the Saviour's 
 niiiid wlicn he was suffering on tlie cross. The thought 
 when it comes is overpowering. Teresa felt as if her 
 heart was wrenclied in two. She fell in tears at the 
 feet of the figure. She did not seek for sentimental 
 emotions. She surrendered herself wholly and for ever 
 to the Being whose form was fastened on her soul, and 
 from that moment every worldly feeling was gone, 
 never to return. Her spiritual life had begun. She 
 explains the condition in which she found herself by an 
 image familiar to every one who has seen the environs 
 of a Spanish village. She apologises for its simplicity, 
 but it is as true and pregnant as a Gospel parable. 
 
 ' A man is directed to make a garden in a bad soil overrun 
 witli sour grasses. The lord of the land roots out the weeds, sows 
 seeds, and plants herbs and fruit trees. The gardener must then 
 care for them and water them, that they may thrive and blossom, 
 and that " the Lord " may find pleasure in his garden ami come 
 to visit it. There are four ways in which the watering may be 
 done. There is water which is drawn wearily by hand from the 
 well. There is water drawn by the ox-wheel, more abundantly 
 and with lighter labour. There is water brought in from the 
 river, which will saturate the whole ground ; and, last and best, 
 there is rain fnjm heaven. Four sorts of prayer correspond to 
 these. Tlie first is a wciiry effort with small returns ; the well 
 may run ilry ; the gardener then must weep. The second is 
 internal prayer and meditation upon God ; the trees will then 
 show leaves and tlower-buds. The third is love of God. The 
 virtues then become vigorous. We converse with God face to 
 face. The flowers open and give out fragrance. The fourth kind 
 cannot be described in words. Then there is no more toil, and
 
 SAINT TERESA. I95 
 
 the seasons no longer change ; flowers are always blowing, and 
 fruit ripens perennially. The soul enjoys undoubting certitude ; 
 the faculties work without effort and without consciousness ; the 
 heart loves and does not know that it loves ; the mind perceives 
 yet does not know that it perceives. If the butterfly pauses to 
 say to itself how prettily it is flying, the shining wings fall off, 
 and it drops and dies. The life of the spirit is not our life, but 
 the life of God within us.' 
 
 This is very beautiful. It is the same, in fact, as 
 what Bishop Butler says, in less ornamented prose, of 
 the formation of moral habits. Wo first learn to do 
 right with effort. The habit grows till it pervades the 
 nature, and afterwards we act as we ouglit spontaneously, 
 with no more consciousness than animals have, which 
 do what they do by instinct. 
 
 But we are now on the edge of the abnormal features 
 of Teresa's history, and before I enter on the subject I 
 must explain briefly how I myself regard the aberrations 
 which will have to be related. All physicians, all 
 psychologists of reputation, agree that besides sleeping 
 and waking there are other conditions — trances, ecstasies, 
 catalepsies, and such like — into which the body is liable 
 to fall; and, as in sleep images present themselves 
 more vivid than can be called up by waking memory or 
 waking fancy, so in these exceptional states of the 
 system peculiar phenomena appear, which are none the 
 less real because fools or impostors have built extrava- 
 gant theories upon them. The muscles sometimes 
 become rigid, the senses become unnaturally susceptible. 
 The dreaming power is extraordinarily intensified, and 
 visions are seen (we say ' seen ' for want of a more
 
 196 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 BcientiHc exprcssiuiij jj;il|niblc as sense itself. Such 
 conditions are usually brought about by ordinary causes. 
 l*erha|).s tliey may be created artificially. They arc not 
 Bupcrnatural, for they have an exact analogy in the 
 univei'sal experience of sleep. They are considered 
 supernatural only because they are exceptional, and the 
 objects perceived are always supplied out of the stores 
 with which memory is furnished. Teresa's health was 
 peculiar. For twenty years she had been liable to 
 violent nervous attacks — those, too, an imperfectly 
 understood form of disorder. She was full-blooded, 
 constantly sick, constantly subject to fainting fits and 
 weakness of the heart. Her intellect and moral sense, 
 on the otlier hand, were remarkably strong. She was 
 not given to idle imaginations. She was true and 
 simple, was never known to tell a he or act one. But 
 her mental constitution was uimsual. Objects that in- 
 terested her, she says, never ran into words, but fastened 
 themselves as pictures upon her brain. Meadows, trees, 
 and rivers, effects of sky, all materials of landscape 
 beauty, gave her intense emotions, but emotions which 
 she was unable to describe. She was a painter, but 
 without the faculty of conveying her impressions to 
 canvas. She perceived with extreme vividness, but the 
 perception ended in itself. If slie wanted phrases she 
 had to look for them in books, and what she found in 
 books did not satisfy her because it did not correspond 
 to her own experience. 
 
 This was her general temperament, on which 
 powerful religious emotion was now to work. The
 
 SAINT TERESA. 197 
 
 tigure of Christ had first awakened her. The shock 
 threw her into a trance. The trances repeated them- 
 selves whenever she was unusually agitated. Such a 
 person would inevitably see ' visions,' which she would 
 be uuable to distinguish from reality ; and if she 
 believed herself subject to demoniac or angelic visita- 
 tions, she was not on that account either weak or 
 dishonest. 
 
 In the life of every one who has really tried to make 
 a worthy use of existence, there is always a point — a 
 point never ' afterwards forgotten — when the road has 
 ceased to be downhill, and the climb upward has com- 
 menced. There has been some accident perhaps ; or 
 some one has died, or one has been disappointed in 
 something on which the heart had been fixed, or some 
 earnest words have arrested attention ; at any rate, 
 some seed has fallen into a soil prepared to receive it. 
 This is called in I'eligious language conversion • the 
 turning away from sin and folly to duty and righteous- 
 ness. Beginnings are always hard. Persons who have 
 hitherto acted in one particular way, and suddenly 
 change to another way, arc naturally suspected of 
 having unworthy personal motives. They have lived 
 so far for themselves. They cannot be credited at once 
 with having ceased to live for themselves. They must 
 still be selfish. They must have some indirect object 
 in view. 
 
 Teresa in her convent had resolved to be thence- 
 forward a good woman, and to use to better purpose the 
 means which the Church offered to her. Siie found at
 
 ,0S SAINT TERESA. 
 
 once that alio was misunderstood and disliked. She 
 wished to be peculiar, it was said ; she wished to be 
 thnuf,dit a saint; she was setting herself up to be better 
 than other people. Her trances and fits of unconscious- 
 ness were attributed to the most obvious cause. She 
 was said to bo 'possessed' by a devil. She had been 
 humbled in her own eyes; and she herself thought that 
 jH'rhaps it was a devil. She could not tell, and her 
 spiritual adviser could not tell any better. The Jesuits 
 were then i isiug into fame, Francisco Borgia, ex-Duke 
 of Gandia, had joined them, and had been made Pro- 
 vincial General for Spain. He came to Avila, heard of 
 Teresa, and took charge of her case. He put her under 
 a course of discipline. He told her to flog herself with 
 a whip of nettles, to wear a hair-cloth plaited with 
 broken wires, the points of wdiich would tear her skin. 
 Had her understanding been less robust, he would have 
 driven her mad ; as it was, he only intensified her 
 nervous agitation. He bade her meditate daily on the 
 details of Christ's Passion. One day, while thus occu- 
 pied, she became unconscious ; her limbs stifiened, and 
 she heard a voice say, 'Thou shalt no more converse 
 witii men, but with angels.' After this the fits always 
 returned when she was at prayers. She saw no distinct 
 form, but she felt that Christ was close to her. She 
 told her confessor what she had experienced. He asked 
 how she knew that it was Christ. She could not 
 explain. A few days after, she was able to tell him 
 that she had artually seen Christ. She had seen liiui, 
 .she said (without being aware that she was explaining
 
 SAINT TERESA. 195 
 
 from whence the figure had been derived), exactly as 
 he was painted rising from tlie sepulchre. The story 
 went abroad. The ill-natured sisters made spiteful 
 remarks; the wisest shook their heads. Teresa had 
 not been noted for special holiness in the many years 
 that she had been among them. Others, much more 
 like saints than she, had never seen anything wonder- 
 ful ; why should God select her to visit with such 
 special favour ? They were more clear than ever that 
 site was possessed. She was preached at from the 
 pulpit ; she was prayed for in chapel as bewitched. 
 She could not tell how to behave: if she was silent 
 about her visions, it was deceit ; if she spoke of them, 
 it was vanity. She preserved her balance in this 
 strange trial remarkably well. Her confessor had been 
 warned against her, and was as hard as the rest. She 
 continued to tell him whatever she supposed herself to 
 see and hear, and absolutely submitted to his judgment. 
 He confidently assured her it was the devil, and directed 
 her when Christ appeared next to make the sign of the 
 cross and point her tliumb at him. God would then 
 deliver her. She obeyed, though with infinite pain. 
 Christ's figure, whoever made it, ought, she thought, to 
 be reverenced ; and to point her thumb was to mock 
 like the Jews. As her trances recurred always at 
 her devotions, she was next forbidden to pray. Under 
 these trials Christ himself interposed to comfort her. 
 He told her that she was right in obeying her confessor, 
 though the confessor was mistaken. The inhibition to 
 pray, he said, was tyranny, and, in fact, it was not long
 
 200 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 m.'iintaincd. The apparitions grew more frequent and 
 more vivid. One day the crosg attached to her rosary 
 was snatched out of her hands, and when it was given 
 back to her it was set with jewels more brilliant than 
 diamonds, A voice said that she would always see it 
 so, though to others it would seem as before. She had 
 often an acute pain in hor side; she fancied once that 
 an angel came to her with a lance tipped with fire, 
 which he struck into her heart. In after years, when 
 she became legendary, it was gravely declared that 
 the heart had been examined, and had been found 
 actually pierced. A large drawing of it forms the 
 frontispiece of the biography provided for the use of 
 pious Catholics. 
 
 This condition continued for several years, and 
 became the talk of Avila. Some held to the possession 
 theory ; others said it was imposture ; others, especially 
 as there was no further harm in poor Teresa, began to 
 fancy that perhaps the visions were real. She herself 
 knew not what to think. Excellent people were 
 satisfied that she was under a delusion, and the excel- 
 lent people, she thought, might very likely be right, for 
 the apparitions were not all of a consoling kind. She 
 had seen Christ and the angels, but also she had seen 
 the devil. ' Once,' she says, ' the devil appeared to me 
 in the oratory ; he spoke to me ; his face was awful, and 
 his body was of flame without smoke. He said that I 
 had escaped him for the present, but he would have 
 me yet. T made the sign of the cross ; he went, but 
 returned ; I threw holy water at him, and then he
 
 SAINT TERESA. 201 
 
 vanished.' At another time she was taken into hell ; 
 the entrance was by a gloomy passage, at the end of 
 which was a pool of putrid water alive with writhing 
 snakes. She fancied that she was thrust into a hole in 
 a wall where she could neither sit nor lie, and in that 
 position was tortured with cramps. Other horrors she 
 witnessed, but did not herself experience : she was 
 shown only what would have been her own condition if 
 she had not been rescued. 
 
 One act she records, exceedingly characteristic. 
 Avila was not wholly unbelieving. Afflicted persons 
 sometimes came to her for advice. Among the rest a 
 priest came, who was living in mortal sin, miserable, 
 yet unable to confess in the proper form, and so made 
 fast in the bonds of Satan. Teresa prayed for him ; 
 and then he managed to confess, and for a time did 
 not sin any more ; but he told Teresa that the devil 
 tortured him dreadfully, and he could not bear it. She 
 then prayed that the tortures might be laid on her, and 
 that the priest might be spared. For a month after 
 the devil was allowed to work his will upon her. He 
 would sit upon her breviary when she was reading, and 
 her cell would fill with legions of imps. 
 
 An understanding of less than unusual strength 
 would have broken down under so severe a trial. 
 Teresa knew nothing of the natural capacities of a 
 disordered animal system. She had been taught 
 theologically that angels and devils were everywhere 
 busy, and it was inevitable that she should regard 
 herself as under a preternatural dispensation of some
 
 9OT SA/NT TERESA. 
 
 kind; but, a.s long ;us .she was uncertain of wliat kind, 
 she kept ln-r ju(li,'ni(nt undisturbed, and slie thought 
 and reasoned <>n the common subjects of the day like a 
 superior person of ordinary faculty. 
 
 Society at Avila, as throughout Spain, was stormily 
 agitated at the advance of the Reformation. From 
 Germany it was passing to the Low Countries and into 
 France. England, after a short-lived recovery, had 
 relapsed into lieresy, and dreadful stories were told of 
 religious houses suppressed, and monks and nuns 
 breaking their vows and defying heaven by marrjang. 
 Antichrist was triumphing, and millions of souls were 
 rushing headlong into the pit. Other millions too of 
 ignorant Indians, missionaries told her, were perishing 
 also for want of vigour in the Church to save them. 
 Teresa, since she had seen hell, had a very real horror 
 of it. Torment without end ! What heart could bear 
 the thought of it? To rescue any single soul from so 
 teiTible a fate, she felt ready herself to die a thousand 
 deaths ; but what could one poor woman do at such a 
 time — a single unit in a Spanish country town ? 
 Something was wrong when such catastrophes could 
 happen. What the wrong wa.s, she thought .=;he saw 
 within the limits of her own experience. The religious 
 orders were the Church's regular soldiers. Their 
 manual was their rule ; their weapons were penance, 
 prayer, and self-donial ; and as long as they were dili- 
 gent in the u.se of them, God's favour was secured, and 
 evil couKl not prevail. But the rules had been neg- 
 lected, penance laughed at, and prayer become half-
 
 SAINT TERESA. 203 
 
 hearted. Cloister discipline had been accommodated to 
 the manners of a more enlightened age. 
 
 ' Hoc fonte derivata clades 
 In patriam populumque fluxit.* 
 
 Here was the secret of the great revolt from the 
 Church, in the opinion of Teresa, and it was at least 
 part of the truth ; for the cynical profligacy of the 
 religious houses had provoked Germany and England 
 more than any other cause, Teresa herself had learnt 
 how little convent life in Spain could assist a soul in 
 search of perfection. At the Incarnation she could not 
 keep her vows if she wished to keep them ; for the 
 cloister gates were open, and the most earnest desire 
 for seclusion could not ensure it. Friends who wanted 
 a nun to visit them had only to apply to the provincial, 
 and the provincial would give a dispensation, not as 
 a permission, but as a mandate which was not to be 
 disobeyed. 
 
 Puzzled with what she found, Teresa had studied 
 the ancient rule of the Carmelite Order before it was 
 relaxed by Eugenius the Fourth. If a house could be 
 founded where that rule could be again kept, she con- 
 sidered, how much easier her own burden would be ; how 
 much better God would be served ; and then, perhaps, 
 the Church would regain her strength. No improve- 
 ment could be looked for in the Convent of the Incar- 
 nation itself. Two hundred women, accustomed to 
 indulgences which a Poj)o had sanctioned, were not 
 likely to bo induced to submit again to severities. She
 
 304 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 talkeil of her scliemc with her fiiends in the town. 
 Tli(3 (lifliculties seemed enormous; she had no money 
 t«) begin with, and her friends had little. If this 
 obstacle could be overcome, she had another and a 
 worse before her; she could do nothing without the 
 consent of the provincial, and for such a consent she 
 knew that it would be idle to a.sk. She was thinking 
 the matter over one day after communion, when she 
 fell into her usual trance. * The Lord ' appeared and 
 told her tiiat her design was to be carried out. A 
 house was to be founded, and was to be dedicated to 
 her old patron San Josef. It would become a star 
 whicli would shine over the earth. She was to tell her 
 confessor what he had said, and to require him to make 
 no opposition. 
 
 The apparition was a natural creation of her own 
 previous musings, but it fell in so completely with her 
 wishes that she would not and could not doubt. It 
 appeared again and again. She wrote an account of it 
 by her confessor's orders, and it was submitted to the 
 provincial and the bishop. If they hesitated, it was 
 but for a moment ; they naturally consulted Teresa's 
 prioress, ami at once the tempest was let loose. ' This 
 then,' exclaimed the incensed mother and the rest of 
 the sisterhood, ' this is the meaning of the visions we 
 have heard so much of. Sister Teresa thinks herself 
 too good for us. We are not holy enough for her. 
 Pretty presumption ! Let her keep the rule as it 
 stands before she talks of mending it.' From tiie 
 convent the disturbance passed to the town. The
 
 SAINT TERESA. 205 
 
 Spaniards had no love for novelties; they believed in 
 use, and wont, and the quiet maintenance of established 
 things. They looked on ecstasies and trances as signs 
 rather of insanity than sanctity ; they thought that 
 people should do their duty in the state of life to which 
 they had been called, and duty was hard enough with- 
 out artificial additions. Teresa's relations told the 
 provincial she was out of her mind. Some thought 
 a prison would be the best place for her : others hinted 
 at the Inquisition and a possible trial for witchcraft. 
 Her confessor called lier scheme a woman's nonsense, 
 and insisted that she should think no more of it. 
 
 She went for refuge to her master. The Lord told 
 her that she was not to be disturbed ; good things were 
 always opposed when first suggested ; she must wait 
 quietly, and all would go well. Though Avila seemed 
 unanimous in its condemnation, there were two priests 
 there of some consequence — one a Dominican, the other 
 a Franciscan — who were more on a level with the times. 
 They saw that something might be made of Teresa, and 
 they wrote to their friends in Rome about her. Her 
 Jesuit confessor held to bis own opinion, but a new 
 rector came to the college at Avila, with whom they 
 also communicated. The rector, after a conversation 
 with her, removed the confessor and appointed another. 
 The provincial remained obstinate, but the bishop, 
 Alvarez de Mendoza, was privately encouraging. Teresa 
 was made to feel that she was not deserted, and, with a 
 new spiritual director to comfort her, she took up her 
 project again.
 
 2o6 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 She was m ;i ilifHcuIty, for slic was bound by hor 
 vows to obey tlio pruviucijil ; he liad akcady refused 
 his permission, and she dared not apply to him again. 
 But she probably knew that an appeal had been made 
 to the I*'>p<', and, pending the results of this, she tliouglit 
 that she might begin her preparations. She had to be 
 secret — almost deceitful ; and might have doubted if 
 she was keeping within even the letter of her duty if 
 her visions had been less inspiriting. A widow friend 
 in the town bought a house as if for her own private 
 occupation. Alterations were wanted to make it suit- 
 able for a small convent, and Teresa had no money to 
 pay for them ; but San Josef told her to engage work- 
 men, and that the money sliould be found ; and in fact 
 at that moment a remittance came unexpectedly from 
 a brother in Lima. She was afraid of the Carmelite 
 authorities. The house, Christ told her, should be 
 under the bishop, and not under the Order; she was 
 herself to bo the superior, and she saw herself robed 
 for office by San Josef and tlie Virgin in person. 
 
 Careful as she was, she still feared tliat the pro- 
 vincial would hear what she was doing, and would 
 send her an inhibition, to which, if it came, she had 
 resolved to submit. It became expedient for her to 
 leave Avila till the answer from Rome could arrive. 
 At that moment, most conveniently, Dona Aloysia de 
 la Cerda, sister of the Duke of Medina Celi, wrote to 
 the provincial to say that she wished Teresa to pay her 
 a visit at her house at Toledo. Dona Aloysia was a 
 great lady, whose requests were commands. The order
 
 SAINT TERESA. 207 
 
 came to her to go, and she was inl'ormed by the usual 
 channel that the invitation had been divinely arranged. 
 She was absent for six months, and became acquainted 
 with the nature and habits of Spanish grandees. Dona 
 Aloysia treated her with high distinction; she met 
 other great people, and was impressed with their breed- 
 ing and manners. But the splendour Avas disagreeable. 
 She observed shrewdly, that between persons of rank 
 and their attendants there was a distance which forbad 
 familiarity ; if one servant w^as treated with confidence, 
 the others were jealous; she was herself an object of 
 ill-will through DoiiA Aloysia's friendship ; and she 
 concluded that it was a popular error to speak of ' Lords 
 and Ladies ' ; for the high friends whom she had made 
 were slaves in a thousand ways. Her chief comfort at 
 Toledo was the Jesuit College, where she studied at 
 leisure the details of monastic rule. Her visit was 
 unexpectedly ended by a letter from her provincial. 
 The feeling in the Incarnation convent had suddenly 
 changed ; a party had formed in her favour, who wished 
 to choose her as prioress. The provincial, who disliked 
 her as much as ever, desired Doiia Aloysia privately to 
 prevent her from going home; but 'a vision' told her 
 that she had prayed for a cross, and a cross she should 
 have. She concluded that it was to be the threatened 
 promotion, and after a stormy scene with her hostess 
 she went her way. 
 
 She was mistaken about the cross. On reaching 
 Avila, she found that she had not been elected, but 
 tliat the bull had arrived privately from Rome for her
 
 ao8 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 iiuw coiivrnf. Tlic I'oiH' had placed it under the 
 bishop, as ' tlio Lord ' had lorolold, and the bishop had 
 uudtTtaken tho charge. The secret liad been profoundly 
 kept ; the house was ready, and nothing remained but 
 to take possession of it. It was to be a house of 
 ' Descalzos ' (Barcfoots), the name by which the reformed 
 Order was in future to be known in opposition to the 
 Relaxed, the Calzados. The sisters were not to be 
 literally ' shoeless ' ; ' a barefoot,' as Teresa said, ' makes 
 a bad beast of burden.' They were to wear sandals of 
 rope, and, for the rest, they were to be confined to the 
 cloister strictly, to eat no meat, to sleep on straw, to 
 fast on reduced allowance from September till Easter; 
 they were to do needlework for the benefit of the poor, 
 and they were to live on alms without regular endow- 
 ment. Teresa had been careful for their health; the 
 hardships would not be greater than those borne with- 
 out complaint by ordinary Spanish peasants. The dress 
 was to be of thick uudyed woollen cloth, with no orna- 
 ment but cleanliness. Dirt, which most saints regarded 
 as a sign of holiness, Teresa always hated. The number 
 of sisters was to be thirteen ; more, she thought, could 
 not live together consistently with discipline. 
 
 Notwithstanding the Pope's bull, difficulty was an- 
 ticipated. If the purpose was known, the Carmelites 
 would find means of preventing the dreaded innovation ; 
 an accomplished fact, however, would probably be 
 allowed to stand. Teresa selected four poor women 
 as the first to take the habit, and quietly introduced 
 thorn into the house. She had <rone out on leave from
 
 SAINT TERESA. 209 
 
 her own cloister, as if to attend a sick relative, and was 
 thus unobserved. On August 24, 1562, ten years exactly 
 before the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the sacrament 
 was brought into the tiny chapel of San Josef's, a bell 
 was hung, mass was said, and the new Order had begun 
 to exist. 
 
 Teresa was still bound by her vows to her convent. 
 When the ceremony was over, she returned to the 
 Incarnation, half frightened at what she had done. 
 She had stirred a hornets' nest, as she was immediately 
 to find. The devil attacked her jfirst ; he told her that 
 she had broken obedience, she had acted without the 
 provincial's leave, and had not asked for it because she 
 knew it would be refused ; her nuns would starve ; she 
 herself would soon tire of a wretched life in such a 
 wretched place, and would pine for her lost comforts. 
 She lay down to rest, but was soon roused by a storm. 
 The townspeople were the first to discover what had 
 happened. It was easy to foresee the anger of the 
 Carmelites; why the townspeople should have been 
 angry is less obvious. Perhaps they objected to the 
 establishment of a colony of professed beggars among 
 them ; perhaps they were led by the chiefs of the other 
 religious Orders. A riot broke out; the prioress sent 
 for Teresa; the provincial arrived, hot and indignant. 
 She was rebuked, admonished, informed that she had 
 given scandal, and required to make instant submission 
 before the assembled convent. The Alcalde meanwhile 
 f had called a meeting of the citizens, where the pro- 
 vincials of the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augus-
 
 2IO SAINT TERESA. 
 
 tiiii;iii8 attended. A resolution waa first passed for the 
 instant dissolution of the new house and the removal 
 of the sacrament; on second tiioughts, it was decided 
 to refer the matter, heing of such liigli importance, to 
 the Council of State at Madrid. Teresa liad but one 
 friend to go to. ' My Lord,' she said, on her knees, 
 'this house is not mine, it is yours; all that I could 
 do is done. You must see to it.' She was not to be 
 disappointed. 
 
 The bishop prevented immediate violence, and Avila 
 waited for the action of the Council. The Council was 
 in no hurry with an answer. Certain persons wrote to 
 Philip ; Philip referred to the Pope, and there were 
 six months of suspense, the four poor sisters living as 
 they could, and Teresa remaining in disgrace. The 
 town authorities cooled ; they said the house might 
 stand if any one would endow it. Afterwards, finding 
 that they were not likely to be supported from Madrid, 
 they were ready to dispense with endowment. On the 
 arrival of a fresh bull from Pius the Fifth all remains 
 of opposition vanished, except among the Carmelites, 
 and the Carmelites found it prudent to suppress their 
 objections. Public opinion veered round ; the found- 
 ation was declared to be a work of God, and Teresa to 
 be His special scr\ant, instead of a restless visionary. 
 The provincial gave her leave to remove and take 
 charge of her flock. The luggage which she took with 
 her from the Incarnation was a straw mattress, a 
 patched woollen gown, a whip, and a hair-cloth shirt ; 
 that was alL
 
 SAINT TERESA. iit 
 
 Thus furnished, she entered on the five happiest 
 years of her life. Other sisters joined, bringing 
 small dowries with them, and the number of thirteen 
 was soon filled up. Her girls, she says, were angels, 
 perfect especially in the virtue of obedience. She 
 would try them by orders contradictory or absurd ; they 
 did their best without a question. One sister was told 
 to plant a rotten cucumber in the garden : she merely 
 asked if it was to be planted upright or lengthways. 
 
 The visions were without intermission. She was 
 taken up to heaven and saw her father and mother 
 there. The Virgin gave her a cope, invisible to all 
 eyes but her own, which would protect her from mortal 
 sin. Once at ' hours ' she had a very curious experience. 
 She fancied tliat she was a mirror without frame, with- 
 out dimensions, with Christ sliining in the centre of it, 
 and the mirror itself, she knew not how, was in Christ. 
 He told her that when a soul was in mortal sin the 
 glass was clouded, and though he was present, it could 
 not reflect him. With heretics the glass was broken, 
 and could never be repaired. 
 
 Heretics and the growth of them still occupied her, 
 and the more keenly as the civil war grew more en- 
 venomed in France. They were too strong, she thought, 
 to be overcome by princes and soldiers. In such a 
 contest the spiritual arm only could prevail. In a 
 trance she saw seven Carmelite monks, of the pristine 
 type, reformed like her own sisterhood, with swords in 
 { their hands on a battle-field. Their faces were flushed 
 with fighting. The ground was strewn with the slain,
 
 it 2 SA/NT TERESA. 
 
 and they were smiting still, and the flying enemy were 
 the hosts of Luther and Calvin. These air-drawn 
 pictures, lately called illusions of Satan, were now 
 regarded as communications direct from heaven. They 
 were too important to be lost. Her superior ordered 
 her to write them down, and the result was the singular 
 autobiography which has hitherto been our guide to 
 her history. 
 
 She wrote it unwillingly; for it is evident that, 
 deeply as these communications had affected her, and 
 definitely as lier spiritual advisers had at length assured 
 her of their supernatural origin, she was herself still 
 uncertain of their nature. Many of her visions, she 
 was confident, had been the creation of her own biain. 
 If any had come from another source, she did not regard 
 them as of particular importance, or as symptoms of a 
 high state of grace. This is certain, from a passage on 
 the subject in one of her writings. Hysterical nuns 
 often fancied that they had received revelations, and 
 their confessors were too apt to encourage them. She 
 says : — 
 
 ' Of '• revelatious " no account should be made ; for though 
 8on)e may be authentic, many are certainly false, and it is foolish 
 to look for one truth amidst a hundred lies. It is dangerous 
 also, for " revelations " are apt to stray from the right faith, and 
 the right faith is of immeasurably greater consequence. People 
 fancy that to have "revelations" implies exceptional holiness. 
 It implies nothing of the kind. Holiness can be arrived at only 
 by acts of virtue imd by keeping the commandment?. We women 
 are easily led away by our imagination ; we have less strength 
 and less knowledge than men have, and cannot keep things in 
 their proper places. Therefore I will not have mv sisters read
 
 SAINT TERESA. 213 
 
 my own books, especially not my autobiography, lest they look 
 for revelations for themselves in fancying that they are imitating 
 me. The best things that I know came to me by obedience, not 
 by revelation. Sisters may have real visions, but they must be 
 taught to make light of them. There is a subtle deceit in these 
 experiences. The devil may lead souls to evil on a spiritual road.' 
 
 The priest editor of Teresa's works makes an honest 
 observation on this remarkable acknowledgment. 'I 
 know not how it is/ he says, 'but the revelations 
 received by women seem of consequence to men, and 
 those received by men of consequence to women.' 
 Though he pretends that he did not know how it 
 was, he knew very well, for he goes on : 'It must 
 arise from those accursed sexual inclinations — each 
 sex believes most where it loves most.' He should 
 have drawn one more inference — that j'oung men 
 were the worst possible spiritual advisers for young 
 women. 
 
 Teresa was not to be left to enjoy her quiet. A 
 single convent had hitherto sufficed for her ambition; 
 but she had been told that it was to be a star which 
 was to shine over the earth, and at that solitary taper 
 other flames were now to be kindled. The Church of 
 Rome was rallying from its confusion, and was setting 
 its house in order. The clergy were clearing themselves 
 of the scandals which had brought such tremendous 
 consequences on them. The Catholic powers were 
 putting out their strength, and Teresa's energetic spirit 
 would not allow her to rest. The Carmelites them- 
 'selves now partially recognised her value. The General 
 came to Spain, and visited her at Avila. He reported
 
 214 SAINT rr.RF.SA. 
 
 what he had seen to IMiilip, and, with Philip's sanction, 
 he sent her powers to found otlicr houses of Descalzos, 
 forhi<lding the provincials to inlcrfere with lier. The 
 champions wliom she had seen on the battle-field in 
 a vision bad been h'othcrs of her reformed Order. The 
 CJeneral empowered her to establish institutions of men 
 as well as women, if she could find recruits who were 
 willing. In other respects she was left to herself, 
 and she was to show what a single woman, with no 
 resources but her own internal force, was able to 
 accomplisli. She was now fifly-two, with bad health, 
 which was growing worse by age. Tlie leaders of the 
 Church were awake ; princes and statesmen were 
 awake; but the body of the Spanish people was still 
 unstirred. She had to contend with official pedantry, 
 with the narrow pride of bishops, with dislike of 
 change, and the jealousies of rival jurisdictions. As to 
 barefoot monks, it was long before she could find a 
 single man in flesh and blood whom she could tempt to 
 join with her. 
 
 Her adventures in the fifteen years of her pilgrimage 
 would fill a long volume. We must content ourselves 
 with fragmentary incidents of her wanderings, a few 
 pictures of persons with whom she came in contact, a 
 few glimpses of Peninsular life in the sixteenth century, 
 and the human features of a remarkable person still 
 traceable behind the paint and tinsel of miracle, with 
 which her biographers have disfigured Teresa de 
 Cepeda. 
 
 Her first enterprise wa.s at Medina del Campo, a
 
 SAINT TERESA. 215 
 
 large town fifty miles from Avila, on the road to 
 Valladolid, and lately the residence of Isabella's Court. 
 A lady of Medina, of small property, had applied for 
 admission into San Josef's, and could not be received 
 for want of room. She purchased a house, at Teresa's 
 suggestion, which could be turned into a second convent. 
 Difficulties were to be anticipated, of the same kind 
 which had been encountered at Avila, and promptitude 
 and secrecy were again necessary. A house itself was 
 not enough. Medina could not provide the first sisters, 
 and a colony had to be introduced from the parent 
 stock. Teresa set out with two nuns from San Josefs, 
 and four from the Incarnation, of whom two went with 
 sinking hearts. Julian of Avila, the chaplain, was 
 their single male escort and companion. They travelled 
 in a cart, with a picture or two, some candlesticks for 
 the altar — probably of tin, for they were utterly poor 
 — a bell, and the sacrament. To a stranger who met 
 them they must have appeared like a set of strolling 
 mountebanks. In Avila itself they were thought mad, 
 and the bishop had much the same opinion, though he 
 would not interfere. It was hot August weather — the 
 eve of the Feast of the Assumption — and the roads 
 were parched and dusty. On the way they were met 
 by the news that the Augustinians, whose wall adjoined 
 the building which the lady had bought, intended to 
 prevent them from settling there. They went on, 
 nothing daunted, and reached Medina at nightfall. On 
 the road they had been in danger of being arrested as 
 vagrants by the police. Within the gates they were in
 
 ai6 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 worse peril ; fur the next d.ay there was to be a bull- 
 fif^ht, and the l)iills wore bein;:f driven in through the 
 streets. But nothing could stop Teresa. She had 
 resolved to take possession at once, before she could be 
 interrupted, and she went straight to her point. The 
 jiarty arrived at midnight, and never did intending 
 Bottlers in an American forest look round upon a less 
 promising scene. The courtyard walls were in ruins, 
 the doors were off their hinges, the windows shutterless, 
 the roof fallen in, the single room which would serve 
 for a chapel half open to the air, and littered with dirt 
 and rubbish. The group and the surroundings would 
 have made a subject for ^rurillo — seven poor women 
 and their priest, with the sacrament, for which they 
 were more alarmed than for themselves, the desolate 
 wreck of a place, ghastly in the moonlight, to which 
 tliey had come expecting to find a home. Four hours 
 of night remained, and then daylight would be on 
 them, Teresa's energy was equal to the occasion. 
 Not a thought was wasted on their own accommodation. 
 The sisters were set to clear the dirt from the chapel. 
 In a garret, the one spot that was waterproof, were 
 some tapestries and bed-hangings. These would protect 
 the altar. They had no nails, and at that hour the 
 shops were closed ; but they ]iicked as many as they 
 wanted out of the walls. By dawn the altar was 
 furnished, the bell was hung, mass was said, and the 
 convent was an instituted fact. 
 
 Sleepless and break fasti ess, the unfortunate creatures 
 t-ben looked about them, and their hearts sank at their
 
 SAINT TERESA. 2I> 
 
 prospects. They crept disconsolate into their garret, 
 and sat watching the sacrament through a window, lest 
 rude hands might injure it. In the evening a Jesuit 
 father came. Teresa begged him to find lodgings for 
 them till the house could be put in order ; but the 
 town was full and for a week no suitable rooms could 
 be found. Medina, naturally, was excited at the strange 
 invasion, and was not inclined to be hospitable. At 
 length a charitable merchant took compassion. An 
 upper floor was provided, where they could live secluded, 
 with a hall for a chapel. A Senora de Quiroga, a relation 
 perhaps of the Archbishop of Toledo, undertook the 
 repairs of the convent. The citizens relented and gave 
 alms; and in two months the second house of the 
 reformed Descalzos was safely established. 
 
 This was in 1567. In the next year a third convent 
 was founded at Malaga, with the help of another sister 
 of the Duke of Medina Celi. From Malaga Teresa 
 was 'sent by the Spirit' to Valladolid, where a young 
 nobleman offered a villa and garden. While she was 
 considering, the youth died ; he had led a wild life, and 
 she was made to know that he was in purgatory, from 
 which he was to be released only when the first mass 
 was said on the ground which he had dedicated. She 
 flew instantly across Spain with her faithful Julian. 
 The villa did not please her; for it was outside the 
 town, near the river, and was reported to be unhealthy. 
 But the gardens were beautiful. Valladolid, stern and 
 J sterile in winter, grows in spring bright with flowers 
 and musical with nightingales. Objections melted
 
 2i8 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 bctuo! the tliought of a soul in penal fire. She took 
 possession ; tlie mass was said; and, as the Host was raised, 
 the pardoned benefactor appeared in glory at Julian's 
 side on his way to paradise. Another incident occurred 
 Ix-fore she left the neighbourhood. Heresy had stolen 
 into Castile : a batch of Lutherans were to be burnt in 
 the great S([uare at Valladolid ; and she h»'ard that 
 they meant to die impenitent. That it could be 
 anything but right to burn human beings for errors 
 of belief could not occur to lier ; but she prayed that 
 the Lord would turn their hearts, and save their 
 souls, and inflict on her as much as she could bear 
 of their purgatorial pains. She supposed that she had 
 been taken at her word — the heretics recanted at the 
 stake — .she lierself never after knew a day without 
 suffering. 
 
 Toledo came next. She was invited thither by her 
 Jesuit friends. She was now famous. On her way she 
 passed through Madrid. Curious people came about 
 her, prying and asking questions. ' What fine streets 
 Matlrid lias ! ' was her answer on one such occasion. 
 She wouUl not stay there. Philip washed to see her, 
 but she had already flown. She had two sisters with 
 her to start the colony ; of other property slie had four 
 ducats, two jtiotures, two straw pallets, and UDthing 
 besides. She had gone in faith, and faith as usual 
 works miracles. Dona Aloysia had not forgiven her 
 desertion, and from that quarter there was no assistance; 
 but a house was obtained by some means, and the 
 sistei^s and she, with their possessions, were introduced
 
 SAINT TERESA. 219 
 
 into it. Of further provision no care had been taken. 
 It was winter, and they had not firewood enough to 
 ' boil a herring.' They were without blankets, and 
 shivered with cold; but they were never more happy, 
 and were almost sorry wdien fresh recruits came in and 
 brought money and ordinary conveniences. 
 
 The recruits were generally of middle rank. ' The 
 Lord' had said that he did not want membez'S of high 
 families ; and Teresa's own experience was not calcu- 
 lated to diminish her dislike of such great persons. 
 Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli and Duke of Pastrana, was 
 Philip's favourite minister. His wife was the famous 
 Ana de Mendoza, whom history has determined to liave 
 been Philip's mistress. I have told the story elsewhere.^ 
 The single evidence for this piece of scandal is the 
 presumption that kings must have had mistresses of 
 some kind. Antonio Perez says that Philip was jealous 
 of his intimacy with her. It is a pity that people will 
 not remember that jealousy has more meanings than 
 one. Perez was Philip's secretary. The Princess was 
 a proud, intriguing, imperious woman, with whom 
 Philip had many difficulties; and he resented the 
 influence which she was able to use in his cabinet. 
 More absurd story never fastened itself into human 
 annals, none which more signally illustrates the appetite 
 of mankind for garbage. For a short period Teresa 
 was brought in contact with this high lady, and we 
 catch an authentic glimpse of her. She wanted some 
 
 1 Vide supra, pp. 136, 137.
 
 3..0 SAfUT TERESA. 
 
 new excitomcnt, ;is litdios of rank occasionally do. She 
 proposed to found a nunnery of a distinguished kind. 
 She had licard of the Nun of Avila as one of the 
 wonders of tlie day, and she sent for her to Pastrana. 
 Teresa liad not liketl the Princess's letters; but Ruy 
 Gomez was too great a man to be affronted, and her 
 confessor told her that she must go. A further induce- 
 ment was a proposal held out to her of a house for 
 monks, also of the reformed rule, for which slie had 
 been trying hitherto in vain. The Princess had a young 
 Carmelite about her, a Father Mariano, who was ready 
 to take charge of it. 
 
 Teresa was received at Pastrana with all distinction. 
 A casa was ready to receive sisters, but she found that 
 the Princess had already chosen a prioress, and that in 
 fact the convent was to be a religious plaything of a 
 fashionable lady. Three months were wasted in discus- 
 sion ; and in the course of them Teresa was questioned 
 about her history. The Princess had heard of her 
 autobiography, and begged to see it. She was not vain 
 of her visions, and consented only when the Princess 
 promised that the book should be read by no one but 
 herself and her hu.sbaml. To her extreme disgust she 
 found that it became the common talk of the house- 
 hold, a subject of Madrid gossip, and of vulgar imper- 
 tinence. Dona Ana herself said scornfully that Teresa 
 was but another Magdalen de la Cruz, an hysterical 
 dreamer, who had been condemned by the Inquisition. 
 
 Ruy Gomez had more sense than his wife, and 
 better feeling. The obnoxious prioress was withdrawn.
 
 Saint tMresa. 
 
 and the convent was started on the usual conditions. 
 The Barefoot Friars became a reality under Father 
 Mariano, whom Teresa liked perhaps better than he 
 deserved. As long as Ruy Gomez lived, the Princess 
 did not interfere. Unfortunately he survived only a 
 few months, and nothing Avould satisfy Doiia Ana in 
 her first grief but that she must enter the sisterhood 
 herself. She took the habit, Mariano having provided 
 her with a special dress of rich materials for the 
 occasion. In leaving the world she had left behind 
 her neither her pride nor her self-indulgence. She 
 brought her favourite maid with her. She had a 
 separate suite of rooms, and the other sisters waited 
 upon her as servants. Teresa had gone back to Toledo.^ 
 The Princess in her absence quarrelled with tlie prioress, 
 who had been substituted for tlic woman whom she had 
 herself chosen; and finally she left the convent, returned 
 to the castle, and stopped the allowance on which the 
 sisters depended. 
 
 Teresa, when she heard what had passed, ordered 
 the removal of the establishment to Segovia. Two 
 years later we find her on the road to Salamanca. It 
 was late in autumn, with heavy snow, the roads almost 
 impassable, and herself suffering from cough and fever. 
 This time she had but one companion, a nun older and 
 scarcely less infirm than herself. *0h these journeys !' 
 
 ^ The Princess had sent her 
 back in her own carriage. ' Pretty 
 saint you, to be travelling in such 
 style as that 1 ' said a fool to her 
 
 as she drove into Toledo. ' Is 
 there no one but this to remind 
 me of my faults ? ' she said, and 
 she never entered a carriage again.
 
 iU SAINT TERESA. 
 
 she exclaims. SIhj was fustnintMl only by the recollection 
 of the iii.'iiiy cuiivents which the ' Lutherans' had de- 
 stroyed, and the loss of which .she was trying to repair. 
 It was All Saint.s' Eve when they reached Saiamanca. 
 The cliiiich htils wcic tolling dismally for the departed 
 souls. The Jesuits had })roTnised that she should find 
 a liabitation ready, but they found it occupied by 
 students, who at first refused to move. The students 
 were with difficulty ejected. It was a great straggling 
 place, full of garrets and passages, all filthily dirty. 
 The two women entcrc 1 worn and weary, and locked 
 themselves in. The sister was terrified lest some loose 
 youth might be left hidden in a corner. Teresa found 
 a straw-loft, where they laid themselves down, but the 
 sister could not rest, and shivered with alarm. Teresa 
 asked her what was the matter. ' I was thinking,' she 
 said, ' what would become of you, dear mother, if I was 
 to die.' ' Pish,' said Teresa, wdio did iiot like nonsense, 
 ' it will be time to think of that when it really happens. 
 Let me go to sleep.' 
 
 Two houses were founded at Alva with the help of 
 the Duke and Duchess ; and the terrible Ferdinand of 
 Toledo, just returned from the Low Countries, appears 
 here with a gentler aspect. Teresa's ' Life ' was his 
 favourite study; he would travel many leagues, he said, 
 only to look upon her. In one of her trances she had 
 seen the Three Persons of the Trinity. They were 
 painted in miniature under her direction, and she made 
 the likenesses exact with her own hand. These pictures 
 liad fallen into the Duchess's hands, and the miniature
 
 SAINT TERESA. ii^ 
 
 of Christ was Avorn by the Duke when he went on his 
 expedition into Portugal. 
 
 After this Teresa had a rest. In her own town she 
 was now looked on as a saint, and the sisters of the 
 Incarnation were able to have their way at last and to 
 elect her prioress. There she was left quiet for three 
 years. She had much suffering, seemingly from neu- 
 ralgia, but her spirit was high as ever. Tliough she 
 could not introduce her reformed rule, she could insist 
 on the proper observance of the rule as it stood. She 
 locked up the locutoria, the parlours where visitors 
 were received, keeping the keys herself, and allowing 
 no one to be admitted without her knowledge. A 
 youth, who was in love with one of the nuns, and was 
 not allowed a si!]fht of her, insisted once on seeing 
 Teresa and remonstrating. Teresa heard his lament- 
 ations, and told him then that if he came near the 
 house again she would report him to the King. He 
 found, as he said, ' that there was no jesting with that 
 woman.' One curious anecdote is told of her reign in 
 the Incarnation, which has the merit of being authentic. 
 Spain was the land of chivalry ; knights challenged 
 each other to tilt in the lists ; enthusiastic saints 
 challenged one another to feats of penance, and some 
 young monks sent a cartel of defiance to Teresa and 
 her convent. Teresa replied for herself and the sisters, 
 touching humorously the weaknesses of eacii of her own 
 party :— 
 
 'Sister Anne of Burgos says that if any Kniglit will pray tho 
 Lord to grant her humility, and the prayer is answered, she will 
 give him all the merits which she may hereafter earn.
 
 i2i SAINT TERESA. 
 
 'SJBter Hcntrice Jiinrcz wiyH that bIk; will ^ivc to any knight, 
 who will pniy the Lonl to give her grace to hold her Ufngue till 
 .■^Ih^ hjw considcn-d what nhc h.xs to sjiy, two years of the merits 
 which who ha.-^ gaineil in tending the sick. 
 
 ' Iwibcl de la Cruz will give two years' nierita to any knight 
 who will induce the Lord to take away her self-will, 
 
 ' Tcrcsii de J^sus says tliat, if any knight will resolve firmly 
 to obey a superior who may be a fool and a glutton, she will give 
 liini on the day on which he forms such a resolution half her 
 own merits for that day — or, indeed, the whole of them — for the 
 whole will be very little.' 
 
 The best satire of Cervantes is not more dainty. 
 
 The sisters of the Incarnation would have re-elected 
 their prioress when the three years were over ; but the 
 provincial interfered, and she and lier cart were soon 
 again upon the roar]. She had worse storms waiting 
 fur her than any which she had yet encountered. 
 
 At Pastrana, besides Mariano, she had become 
 acquainted with another Carmelite, a Father Gratian, 
 who had also become a member of the Descalzos. 
 Gratian was then about thirty, an eloquent preacher, 
 ambitious, passionate, eager to rule and not so eager to 
 obey, and therefore no favourite with his superiors. On 
 Tcrt'sa this man was to exert an influence beyond his 
 merits, for his mind was of a lower type than hers. 
 Such importance as he possessed he derived from her 
 regard ; and after her death he sank into insignificance. 
 He still tried to assume consequence, but his pretensions 
 were mortified. In a few years he was stripped of his 
 habit and reduced to a secular priest. He wandered 
 about complaining till he was taken by the Moors, and
 
 SAINT TERESA. 225 
 
 was set to work in a slave-yard at Tunis. Ransomed 
 at last, he became confessor to the Infanta Isabella in 
 Flanders, and there died. But it was his fate and 
 Teresa's, that before these misfortunes fell upon him 
 he was to play a notable part in connection with her. 
 He had friends in Andalusia, and he persuaded Teresa 
 that she must found a convent at Seville. It was a 
 rash adventure, for her diploma extended only to the 
 Castiles, She set out with six sisters and the insepar- 
 able Julian. The weather was hot, the cart was like 
 purgatory, and the roadside posadas, with their window- 
 less garrets at oven heat, were, she said, ' like hell.' 
 ' The beds were as if stuffed with pebbles.' Teresa fell 
 into a fever, and her helpless companions could only 
 pray for her. When they were crossing the Guadal- 
 quivir in a pontoon, the rope broke. The ferryman was 
 thrown down and hurt ; the boat was swept away by 
 the current. They were rescued by a gentleman who 
 had seen the accident from his terrace. Cordova, when 
 they passed through it, was crowded for a fete. The 
 mob, attracted by their strange appearance, ' came 
 about them like mad bulls.' At Seville, where Gratian 
 professed to have prepared for their reception, they 
 were met by a flat refusal from the archbishop to allow 
 the establishment of an unendowed foundation, and to 
 live on alms only was an essential to their rule. Teresa 
 was forced to submit. 
 
 ' God,' she wrote, ' has never permitted any foundation of 
 'mine to be set on its feet without a world of wony; I had not 
 heard of the ubjectiou till I arrived. I was most unwilling to 
 
 Q
 
 396 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 yield, for in ii t<j\vn B(; ncli hh Seville alms could liave been 
 collecle<l witliotit the leu^t dilliculty. I would liuve goue back 
 upon the >-j)ot, but I wu-s penniles.s, all my UKjney having been 
 Bpeiil upiin the way. Ncithir the sisters nor I j^ossessed anything 
 but the clothes on our backs and the veils which we had worn in 
 the curt. But wc could nut have a mass without the archbishop's 
 leave, and leave lie would not give till we consented.' 
 
 But sharper consequences were to follow. In 
 overstepping the boundaries of" her province, Teresa 
 had rashly conmiitted herself. From the first the great 
 body of the Carmelites had resented her proceedings. 
 Circumstances and the Pope's protection had hitherto 
 shielded her. But Pius the Fifth was gone. Gregory 
 the Thirteenth reigned in his stead, and a chapter- 
 general of the Carmelite Order held at Piacenza in 
 1575 obtained an injunction from him prohibiting the 
 further extension of the reformed houses. The founda- 
 tion of the Seville convent was treated as an act of 
 defiance. The General ordered its instant suppression. 
 Teresa's other foundations had been hitherto quasi-inde- 
 pendent; Fatlier Jerome Tostado was dispatched from 
 Italy as Cummissioner to Spain, to reduce them all 
 under the General's authority; and a new nuncio was 
 appointed for the special purpose of giving Tostado 
 his support. If Philip objected, he was to be told that 
 the violation of order had caused a scandal to the whole 
 Church. 
 
 Little dreaming of what was before her, Teresa had 
 been nourishing a secret ambition of recovering the 
 entire Carmelite body to their old austerities. The late 
 nuncio had been a hearty friend to her. She had
 
 SAINT TERESA 227 
 
 written to tlic King to ask that Gratiau might be 
 appointed visitor-general of her own houses for the 
 wliole peninsula. The King had not only consented 
 to this request, but with the nuncio's request, irregular 
 as it must have seemed, Gratian's jurisdiction was ex- 
 pended to all the Carmelite convents in Spain. Philij) 
 could nut have taken such a step without Teresa's 
 knowledge, or at least without Gratian's; and in this 
 perhaps lies the explanation of the agitations in Italy 
 and of Tostado's mission. Evidently things could not 
 continue as they were. Teresa's reforms had been 
 made in the teeth of the chiefs of the Order, and her 
 houses, so far as can be seen, had been as yet under no 
 organised government at all. She might legitimately 
 have asked the nuncio to appoint a visitor to these ; for 
 it was through the Pope's interference that she had 
 established them; but she was making too bold a 
 venture in grasping at the sovereignty of a vast and 
 powerful foundation, and she very nearly ruined herself. 
 Gratian was refused entrance to the first convent which 
 he attempted to visit. The new briefs arrived from 
 Rome. Teresa received a formal inhibition against 
 founding any more houses. She was ordered to select 
 some one convent and to remain there; while two 
 prioresses whom she had instituted were removed, and 
 superiors in whom Tostado had confidence were put in 
 their places. Teresa's own writings, on which suspicion 
 had hung since they had been read by the Princess, 
 'were submitted to the Inquisition. She herself chose 
 Toledo for a residence, and was kept there under arrest
 
 j2» SAINT TERESA. 
 
 for two years. 'I'lic Imiuisiturs could find no heresy in 
 her books; and, her pen not being un<ler restriction, she 
 composed while in confinement a history of her founda- 
 tions as a continuation of her autobiography. Her 
 corrcspondenre besides was voluminous. She wrote 
 letters (the handwriting l)old, clear and vig<jrous as a 
 man's) to princes and prelates, to her suffering sister* 
 to her friends among the Jesuits and Dominicans. 
 
 The sc([uel is exceedingly curious. There is a belief 
 that tiic administration of the Roman Church is one 
 and indivisible. In this instance it proved very divisible 
 indeed. The new nuncio and the General of the Car- 
 melites intended to crush Teresa's movement. The 
 King and the Archbishop of Toledo were determined 
 that she should be supported. The Spanish Govern- 
 ment were as little inclined as IFenry the Eighth to 
 submit to the dictation of Italian priests; and when the 
 nuncio began his operations, Philip at once insisted that 
 he should not act by himself, but should have four 
 assessors, of whom the Archbishop of Toledo should be 
 one. It was less easy to deal with Tostado. Each 
 religious Order had its own separate organisation. 
 Teresa had sworn obedience, and Tostado was her 
 lawful superior. She acted herself as she had taught 
 others to act, and at first refused Philip's help in 
 actively resisting him. The nuncio had described her 
 as ' a restless woman, unsettled, disobedient, contu- 
 macious, an inventor of new doctrines under pretence 
 of piety, a breaker of the rule of cloister residence, a 
 despiser of the apostolic precept which forbids a woman
 
 SALKT TERESA. 229 
 
 to teach.' Restless she had certainly been, and lier 
 respect for residence had been chiefly shown in her 
 anxiety to enforce it on others — but disobedient she was 
 not, as she had an opportunity of showing. In making 
 the chancre in the cjovernmeut of her houses, Tostado 
 had found a difficulty at San Josef's, because it was 
 under the bishop's jurisdiction. The alteration could 
 not be made without her presence at Avila. He sent 
 for her from Toledo. She went at his order, she gave 
 him the necessary assistance, and the house was reclaimed 
 under his authority. 
 
 By this time temper was running high on all sides. 
 Tostado was not softened by Teresa's acquiescence. The 
 nuncio was exasperated at the King's interference with 
 him. He regarded Teresa herself as the cause of the 
 schism, and refused to forgive her till it was healed. 
 She was now at Avila. The office of prioress was again 
 vacant at the Incarnation. The persecution had en- 
 deared her to the sisters, and a clear majority of them 
 were resolved to re-elect her. Tostado construed their 
 action mto defiance ; he came in person to hold the 
 election ; he informed the sisters, of whom there were 
 now a liundred, that he would excommunicate every 
 one of them who dared to vote for a person of whom 
 he disapproved. The nuns knew that they had the 
 right witli them, for the Council of Trent had decided 
 that the elections were to be free. Fifty-five of them 
 defied Tostado's threats and gave their votes for Teresa. 
 As each sister handed in her paper, Tostado crushed it 
 under his feet, stamped upon it, cursed her and boxed
 
 Jn SAINT TERESA. 
 
 Iior ears. The minority cliuse a prioress who was 
 iigrouabic to liini; ho doclarod tliis nun (hily elected, 
 ordered Teresa into imprisonment aj^ain, and left her 
 supporters cut otJ from mass and confession till they 
 submitted. The brave women would not submit. They 
 refused to obey the superior who had been forced on 
 them, except as Teresa's substitute. The theologians 
 of Avila declared unanimously that the excommunica- 
 tion was invalid. Tostado was only the more peremp- 
 tory. He flogged two of the confessors of the convent, 
 who had been appointed by the late nuncio, and he sent 
 them away under a guard. ' I wish they were out of the 
 power of these people,' Teresa wrote. ' I would rather 
 see them in the hands of the Moors.' 
 
 One violence was followed by another. Father 
 CJratian was next suspended, and withdrew into a 
 hermitage at Pastrana. The nuncio, carino: nothing 
 about the assessors required him to surrender the com- 
 mission as visitor which he had received from his pre- 
 decessor. Gratian consulted the Archbishop of Toledo, 
 who told him that he had no more spirit than a fly, and 
 advised him to appeal to Philip. The nuncio, without 
 waiting for an answer, declared Gratian's commission 
 cancelled. He cancelled also Tcre.a's regulations, and 
 replaced her convents under the old relaxed rule. The 
 Bishop of Avila was of opinion that the nuncio had 
 exceeded his authority and had no right to make such 
 a change. Teresa told Grati:in that he would be safe 
 in doing whatever the bishop advised ; and she recom- 
 UKMidcd an appeal to the Pope and the King for a
 
 SAINT TERESA. 231 
 
 formal division of the Carmelite Order, Tostado had 
 put himself in the wrong so completely in his treatment 
 of the sisters of the Incarnation, that she overcame her 
 dislike of calling in the secular arm, and wrote a detailed 
 account of his actions to Philip. Gratian himself lost 
 his head and was only foolish. One day he wrote to 
 the nuncio and made his submission. The next, he 
 called a chapter of the Descalzos and elected a separate 
 provincial. The nuncio replied by sending Teresa back 
 as a prisoner to Toledo, and Gratian to confinement in 
 a monastery. 
 
 But the Spanish temper was now thoroughly roused. 
 Philip and the Archbishop of Toledo had both privately 
 communicated with the Pope on the imprudence of the 
 nuncio's proceedings ; and the King on his own account 
 had forbidden the magistrates everywhere to support 
 either Tostado or his agents. The Duke of Infantado, 
 the proudest of the Spanish grandees, insulted the 
 nuncio at Court; and the nuncio, when he appealed to 
 Philip for redress, was told coldly that he had brought 
 the insult upon himself. The Pope, in fact, being better 
 informed, and feeling that he would gain little by irri- 
 tating the Castilians for the sake of the relaxed Carme- 
 lites, had repented of having been misled, and was only 
 eager to repair his mistake. Teresa's apprehensions 
 were relieved by a vision. Christ appeared to her, 
 attended by his mother and San Josef San Josef and 
 the Virgin prayed to him. Christ said ' that the infernal 
 powers had been in league to ruin the Descalzos ; but 
 they had boon instituted by himself, and the King in
 
 t29 SAlh'T TEKF.SA. 
 
 liitun' wiiuld hi.' tlit'ir I'lioud and patron.' The Virgin 
 told Teresa that in twenty days her imprisonment would 
 be over. Not her imprisonment only, but the struggle 
 itself was over. The nuncio and Tostado were recalled 
 to Italy. Spain was to keep her ' barefoot ' nuns and 
 friars. We need not follow the details of the arrange- 
 ment. It is enough to say that the Carmelites were 
 divided into two bodies, as Teresa had desired. The 
 Descalzos became a new province, and were left free 
 to choose their own officers. We have told the story 
 at so much length, because it illustrates remarkably 
 the internal character of the Spanish Church, and the 
 inability of the Italian organisation to resist a national 
 impulse. 
 
 All was now well, or would have been well, but for 
 mortal infirmity. Gratian went to Rome to settle legal 
 technicalities. Teresa resumed her wandering life of 
 founding convents. Times were changed since her 
 hard fight for San Josef. Town Councils met her now 
 in procession. Te Deums were sung in the churches, 
 and eager crowds waited for her at the roadside inns. 
 But so far as she herself was concerned, it is a question 
 whether success added to her happiness. So long as an 
 object is unattaincd, we may clothe it in such ethereal 
 colours a.s we please ; when it is achieved, the ideal has 
 become material ; it is as good perhaps as what we 
 ought to have expected, but is not what we did expect. 
 Teresa was now sixty-four years oUl, with health irre- 
 vocably broken. Her houses having assumed a respect- 
 able legal character, manv of them had after nil to be
 
 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 233 
 
 eudowed, and she was encumbered with business. ' The 
 Lord,' as she said, continued to help her. When she 
 was opposed in anything, the Lord intimated that he 
 was displeased. If she doubted, he would reply, ^ Bgo 
 sum,' and her confessor, if not herself, was satisfied. 
 But she had much to do, and disheartening difficulties 
 to overcome. She had been working with human beings 
 for instruments, and human beings will only walk straight 
 when the master's eye is on them. In the preliminary 
 period the separate sisterhoods had been left very much 
 to themselves. Some had grown lax. Some had been 
 extravagantly ascetic. In San Josef, the first-fruits of 
 her travail, the sisters had mutinied for a meat diet. A 
 fixed code of laws had to be enforced, and it was received 
 with murmurs, even by friends on whom she had relied.^ 
 She addressed a circular to them all, which was charac- 
 teristically graceful : — 
 
 ' Now then we are all at peace — Calzados and Descalzados. 
 Each of us may serve God in our own way, and none can say ns 
 nay. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, as he has heard your 
 prayer, do you obey him with all your hearts. Let it not be 
 said of us as of some Orders, that only the beginnings were 
 creditaljle. We have begun. Let those who come after us go on 
 from good to better. The devil is always busy looking for means 
 to hurt us ; but the struggle \vill be only for a time ; the end will 
 be eternal.' 
 
 ' One of the rules referred to 
 prayers for the King, which were 
 to be accompanied by weekly whip- 
 pings, such as Merlin ordered for 
 the disenchantment of Dulcinea. 
 ' Statntum fuit ut per[ietuis tem- 
 poribns una quotiilie Missa, preces 
 
 item continure, et una per singulas 
 hebdomadas corporis flagellatio pro 
 Rege Hispaniae ejusr|ue familia in 
 universisconventibusCarmelitarum 
 utriusque sexus excakeatorum Deo 
 nfferatur.'
 
 7X4 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 I'lircc years were spent in organisation — yt-ars ol 
 outward lionour, but years of suffering — and then the 
 close came. Ju tlie autumn of 1581 Gratian had 
 arranged that a convent was to be (Opened at Burgos. 
 Teresa was tube present in person, and Gr;itian accom- 
 panied her. They seem to have travelled in the old 
 way — a party of eight in a covered cart. The weather 
 was wretched ; the floods were out ; the roads mere tracks 
 of mud, the inns like Don Quixote's castle. Teresa 
 was shattered with cough ; slie could eat nothing ; the 
 journey was the worst to which she had been exposed. 
 On arriving at Burgos she was taken to a friend's house ; 
 a great fire had been lighted, where she was to dry her 
 clothes. The damp and steam brought on fever, and 
 slio was unable to leave her bed. 
 
 The business part of her visit had been mismanaged. 
 Gratian had been as careless as at Seville, and the same 
 difficulties repeated themselves. The Council of Trent 
 had insisted that all new convents should be endowed. 
 The Archbishop of Burgos stood by the condition, and 
 no endowment had been provided. Teresa was too ill to 
 return to Avila. Month after month passed by. A wet 
 autumn was followed by a wetter winter. Terms weie 
 arranged at last with the Archbishop. A builJing was 
 found which it was thought would answer for the 
 convent, and Teresa removed to it; but it was close to 
 the water-side, and half in ruins. The st;irs shone and 
 the rain poured through the rents of the roof in the 
 garret where she lay. The river rose. The lower story 
 of the house was floodeil. The sisters, who watched
 
 SATNT TERESA. 235 
 
 day and nii;ht by ber bod, bad to dive into tbe kitcbeu 
 fui- the soaked crusts of bread for their own food and 
 hers. The communication with the town beings cut off, 
 they were nearly starved. Friends at last swam across 
 and brought relief. Wben the river went back, the 
 ground floors were deep in stones and gravel. 
 
 Sister Anne of St. Bartholomew, who was herself 
 afterwards canonised, tells the rest of the story. When 
 spring came the weather mended. Teresa was slightly 
 stronger, and, as her own part of the work at Burgos was 
 finished, she was able to move, and was taken to Valla- 
 dolid. But it was only to find herself in fresh ti'ouble. 
 One of her brothers had left his property to San Josefs. 
 The relations disputed the will, and an angry lawyer 
 forced his way into her room and was rude to her. She 
 was in one of her own houses, where at any rate she 
 might have looked for kindness. But the prioress had 
 gone over to her enemies, shown her little love or 
 reverence, and at last bade her 'go away and never 
 return.' 
 
 She went on to Medina. She found the convent in 
 disorder ; she was naturally displeased, and found fault. 
 Since the legal establishment of the De.scalzos, she had 
 no formal authority, and perhajjs she was too imperious. 
 The prioress answered impertinently, and Teresa was 
 too feeble to contend with her. Twenty years had 
 passed since that gipsy drive from Avila, the ruined 
 courtyard, the extemporised altar, and the moonlight 
 watch of the sacrament. It had ended in this. She 
 was now a broken old woman, nnd her own children had
 
 ajft SAINT TENESA. 
 
 t.iiriKMl ai^'ain.st Imt. SIio ate notliing. Slio lay all niglit 
 sleepless, and the next morning she left Medina. Siie 
 had meant to go to Avila, but slie was wanted for some 
 reason at Alva, and thither, in spite of her extreme 
 weakness, she was obliged to go. She set out before 
 breakfast with one faithful companion. They travelled 
 all day without food, save a few dried figs. They arrived 
 at night at a small pueblo, all exhausted, and Teresa 
 fainting ; they tried to buy an ^gg or two, but eggs 
 were not to be had at the most extravagant price. 
 Teresa swallowed a fig, but could touch nothing more. 
 Slie seemed to bo dying. Sister Anne knelt sobbing at 
 her side. * Do not cry,' she said ; ' it is the Lord's will.' 
 More dead than alive, she was carried the next day to 
 Alva. She was just conscious, but that was all. She 
 lay quietly breathing, and only seemed uneasy wlien 
 Sister Anne left her for a moment After a few hours 
 she laid her head on Sister Anne's breast, sighed lightly, 
 and was gone. It was St. Michael's day, 1582. 
 
 Nothing extraordinary was supposed to have hap- 
 pened at the time. A weak worn-out woman had died 
 of sutTerings which would have desti'oyed a stronger 
 frame. That was all. Common mortals die thus every 
 day. They are buried ; they are mourned for by those 
 who had cause to love them ; they arc then forgotten, 
 and the world goes on with its ordinary business. 
 Catholic saints are not left to rest so peacefully, and 
 something has still to be told of the fortunes of Teresa 
 of Avila. But we must first touch for a moment on 
 aspects of her character which wc have passed over in the
 
 SAINT TERESA. iyj 
 
 rapid sketch of her life. It is the more necessary since 
 she lias been deified into an idol, and the tenderness, 
 the humour, the truth and simplicity of her human 
 nature, have been lost in her diviner glories. Many 
 volumes of her letters, essays, treatises, memoranda of 
 various kinds, survive in addition to her biography. 
 With the help of these we can fill in the lines. 
 
 She was not learned. Slie read Latin with difficulty, 
 and knew nothing of any other language, except her 
 own. She was a Spaniard to the heart, generous, 
 chivalrous, and brave. In conversation she was quick 
 and bright. Like her father, she was never heard to 
 speak ill of any one. But she hated lies, hated all 
 manner of insincerity, either in word or action. In 
 youth she had been tried by the usual temptations ; 
 her life had been spotless ; but those whose conduct has 
 been the purest are most conscious of their smaller 
 faults, and she had the worst opinion of her own merits. 
 The rule which she established for her sisterhoods was 
 severe, but it was not enough for her own necessities. 
 She scourged herself habitually, and she wore a 
 peculiarly painful hair-cloth; but these were for herself 
 alone, and she did not prescribe them to others. She 
 sent a hair shirt to her brother, and she bade him be 
 careful how he used it. ' Obedience,' she said, ' was 
 better than sacrifice, and health than penance.' One of 
 her greatest difficulties was to check the zeal of young 
 people who wished to make saints of themselves by 
 ' force. A. prioress at Malaga had ordered the sisters 
 to strike one another, with a view to teaching them
 
 23X SAINT TERESA. 
 
 liuruility. Tciosii said il wu.s ii suggestion of the devil. 
 ' The sisters are not slaves/ she wrote ; ' mortifications 
 iire of no use in themselves; obedience is the first of 
 virtues, but it is not to be abused.' The prioress of 
 Toledo again drew a .sharp rebuke upon herself. She 
 ha<l told a sister who had troubled her with some 
 ([uestion to go and walk in the garden. The sister went, 
 and walked and walked. She was mi sed the next 
 mornmf; at matins. Siie was still walkiir' Another 
 prioress gave the Penitential Psalms for a general dis- 
 cipline, and kept the sisters repeating them at irregular 
 hours. 'The poor things ought to have been in bed,' 
 Teresa wrote. ' They do what they are told, but it is 
 all wrouLj. Mortification is not a thing of oblif^ation.' 
 
 Gratian himself had to be lectured. He had been 
 inventing new ceremonies. ' Sister Antonia,' she wrote, 
 ' has brought your orders, and they have scandalised 
 us. Believe me, father, we are well as we are, and want 
 no unnecessary forms. For charity's sake remember 
 this. Insist on the rules, and let that suflBce.' Gratian 
 had given injunctions in detail about dress and food, 
 ' Do as you like,' she said, ' only do not define what our 
 shoes are to be made of. Say simply, we may wear 
 shoes, to avoid scruples. You say our caps are to be 
 of hemp — why not of flax ? As to our eating eggs, or 
 eating preserves on our bread, leave it to conscience. 
 Too much precision only does harm.' 
 
 Iler own undergarments, though scrupulously kept 
 clean, were of horse-cloth. She slept always on a sack 
 of straw. A biscuit or two, an ii^^g, a few peas and
 
 SAINT TERESA. 239 
 
 beans, made her daily food, varied, perhaps, on feast- 
 days, with an egg aud a slice of fish, with grapes or 
 raisins. 
 
 Her constant trances were more a trial than a 
 pleasure to her. Slie writes to her brother : ' Buen 
 anda Nuestro Senor. — I have been in a sad state for 
 this week past. The fits have returned. They come 
 on me sometimes in public, and I can neither resist nor 
 hide them. God spare me these exhibitions of myself, 
 I feel half drunk. Pray for me, for such things do me 
 liarm. They have nothing to do with religion,' 
 
 Nothin<.r can be wiser than her general directions 
 foj the management of the sisterhoods. To the sisters 
 themselves she says : — 
 
 ' Do not be curious about matters whicli do not concern you. 
 Say no evil of any one but yourself, and do not listen to any. 
 Never ridicule any one. Do not contend in words about things of 
 no consequence. Do not exaggerate. Assert nothing as a fact of 
 whicli you are not sure. Give no hasty opinions. Avoid empty 
 tattle. Do not draw comparisons. Be not singular in food or 
 dress ; and be not loud in your laughter. Be gentle to others, 
 and severe to yourself. Speak courteously to servants. Do not 
 note other people's faults. Note your own faults, and their good 
 points. Never boast. Never make excuses. Never do anything 
 wlien alone which you would not do before others.' 
 
 Her greatest difficulty was with the convent con- 
 fessors. Teresa had a poor opinion of men's capacities 
 for understanding women, * We women,' she said, ' are 
 not so easily read. Priests may hear our confessions for 
 , years and may know nothing about us. Women cannot 
 describe their faults accurately, and the confessor judges
 
 240 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 l)y what they tell liiiii.' Slie liud a particular dislike 
 of melancholy women, who fancied that they had fine 
 sensibilities which were not understood or appreciated. 
 She found that confes.s(;rs became foolisldy interested in 
 such women, and confidences can)e, and spiritual com- 
 niuiiications of mutual feelings, wliich were nonsense 
 in themselves and a certain road to mischief. Teresa 
 })crhaps remembered some of her own experiences in 
 her excessive alarm on this point. She insisted that 
 the confessor should have no intercourse with any sister, 
 except officially, and in the confessional itself. At the 
 direction of her superiois, she wrote further a paper of 
 general reflections on the visitation of convents, which 
 show the same insiuht and ijood sense. 
 
 The visitor was the j^rovincial or the provincial's 
 vicar, and his business was to inspect each convent once 
 a year. 
 
 'The visitor,' she said, 'must have no partiality, and, above 
 all, no weakness or sentimentality. A superior must inspire fear 
 If he allows himself to be treated as an equal, especially by 
 women, his power for good has gone. Once let a wouum see that 
 he will pass over her faults out of tenderness, she will become 
 ungovernable. If he is to err, let it be on the side of severity. 
 He visits once only in a twelvemonth, and unless the sisters know 
 that at the end of each they will be called to a sharp reckoning, 
 discipline will be impossible. Prioresses found unfit for office 
 must be removed instantly. They may be saints in their personal 
 conduct, but they may want the qualities essential to a ruler, and 
 the visitor must not hesitate. 
 
 ' He must look strictly into the accounts. Debt of any kind is 
 fatal. He must see into the work which each sister has done, 
 and how much she has earned by it. This will encourage 
 industry. Each room in the hou.se must be examined, the
 
 SAINT TERESA. 241 
 
 parlour gi'atings especially, that no oue may enter unobserved. 
 The visitor must be careful too with the chaplains, learn to whom 
 each sister confesses, and what degree of comniuuication exists 
 between them. The prioress, as long as she retains office, must 
 always be supported. There can be no peace without authority, 
 and sisters sometimes think they are wiser than their superiors. 
 No respect must be shown for morbid feelings. The visitor must 
 make such women understand that, if they do wrung, they will 
 be punished, and that he is not to be imposed upon. 
 
 ' As to the prioress, he must learn first if she has favourites ; 
 and he must be careful in this, for it is her duty to consult most 
 with the most discreet of the sisters ; but it is the nature of us 
 to overvalue our o-\\ti selves. When preference is shown, there 
 will be jealousy. The favourite will be supposed to rule the 
 Holy Mother : the rest will think that they have a right to 
 resist. Sisters who may be far from perfect themselves will be 
 ready enough to find fault. They will tell the visitor that the 
 prioress dues this and that. He will be perplexed what to think ; 
 yet he will do infinite harm if he orders changes which are not 
 needed. His guide must be the Rule of the Order, If he finds 
 that the prioress dispenses with the rule on insufficient grounds, 
 thinking this a small thing and that a small thing, he may be 
 sure that she is doing no good. She holds office to maintain the 
 rule, not to dispense with it, 
 
 ' A prioress is obviously unfit who has anything to conceal. 
 The sisters must be made to tell the truth ; they will not directly 
 He perhaps, but they will often keep back what ought to be 
 known. 
 
 ' Prioresses often overload the sisters with prayers and pen- 
 ances, so as to hurt their health. The sisters are afraid to com- 
 plain, lest they be thought wanting in devotion ; nor ought they 
 to complain except to the visitor. . . . The visitor, therefore, 
 must be careful about this. Especially let him be on his guard 
 against saintly prioresses. The first and last principle in manag- 
 ing women is to make them feel that they have a head over them 
 who will not be moved by any earthly consideration ; that they 
 are to observe their vows, and will be punished if they break 
 them ; that his visit is not an annual ceremony, but that he keeps 
 t his eye on the daily life of the whole establishment. Women 
 generally are honourable and timid ; they will think it wrung 
 
 B
 
 242 
 
 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 BoinctiiiieH t<j rcpitit tlic jmorcHs's fuulUs. He will want all Lia 
 iliBcrcLioii. 
 
 'Hcehoiild ciuiuire about the singing in the choir ; it ought 
 not to be loud or unibilious ; line singing dieturbs devotion, and 
 the singers will like to be admired. He should notice the dresses 
 loo ; if he observe any ornament on a sister's dress, he should 
 burn it publicly. Tiiis will be a lesson to her. He should 
 nuike his inspection in the morning, and never stay to dinner, 
 though he be pressed ; he comes to do business, not to talk. If 
 he does stay, there must only be a modest entertainment. I 
 know not how to prevent excess in this respect, for our present 
 chief never notices what is put before him — whether it is good or 
 bad, much or little.^ I doubt whether he even understands. 
 
 'Finally the visitor must be careful how he shows by any 
 outward sign that he has u special regard for the prioress. If he 
 does, tlie sisters will not tell him what she really is. Each of 
 them knows that she is heard but once, while the prioress has 
 as much time as she likes for explanations and excuses. The 
 prioress may not mean to deceive, but self-love blinds us all. 1 
 have been myself taken in repeatedly by mother superiors, who 
 were such servants of God that I could not help believing them. 
 After a few days' residence, I have been astonished to find how 
 misled 1 have been. The devil, having few opportunities of 
 tempting the sisters, attacks the superiors instead. I trust none 
 of them till I have examined with my own eyes.' 
 
 Shrewder eyes were not perhaps in Spain. 'You 
 deceived mo in saying she was a woman,' wrote one of 
 Teresa's confessors. 'She is a bearded man.' 
 
 To return to her story. She died, as has been said, 
 at Alva, and there was nothing at first to distinguish 
 her departure from that of ordinary persons. Slie liad 
 fought a long battle. She had won the victory ; but 
 the dust of the conflict was still flying; detraction was 
 
 ' Tills was meant as a hint to 
 Gratiiui, who was much too fond 
 of diuiiig with tho sisteiliouds. 
 
 Torhaiis much of the rest was also 
 iu tended for him.
 
 SAINT TERESA. 243 
 
 still busy ; and honour with the best deserving is seldom 
 immediately bestowed. The air has to clear, the passions 
 to cool, and the spoils of the campaign to be gathered, 
 before either the thing accomplished or the doer's 
 merits can be properly recognised. Teresa's work was 
 finished; but she had enemies who hated her; half 
 friends who were envious and jealous ; and a world of 
 people besides, to say that the work was nothing very 
 wonderful, and that they could have done as well 
 themselves if they had thought it worth while. ' 
 
 It is always thus when persons of genuine merit first 
 leave the earth. As long as they are alive and active 
 they make their power felt ; and when they are looked 
 back upon from a distance they can be seen towering 
 high above their contemporaries. Their contemjDoraries, 
 however, less easily admit the difference ; and when 
 the overmastering presence is first removed, and they 
 no longer feel the weight of it, they deny that any 
 difference exists. 
 
 Teresa wrs buried where she died. Spanish tombs 
 are usually longitudinal holes perforated in blocks of 
 masonry. The coffin is introduced ; the opening is 
 walled up, and a tablet with an inscription indicates and 
 protects the spot. In one of these apertures attached 
 to the Alva convent Teresa was placed. The wooden 
 coffin, hastily nailed together, was covered with quick- 
 lime and earth. Massive stones were built in after it, 
 and were faced with solid masonry. There she was left 
 to rest ; to be regarded, as it seemed, with passionate 
 affection by the sisters who survived her, and then to
 
 244 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 tad*' into ;i slia<^low aud bu leineuibered uo more for 
 ever. Jiut the love of those sisters was too intense, and 
 their faith too deep. 'Cahininy/says Sir Artliur Helps, 
 ' can make a cloud seem a mountain ; can even make 
 a cloud become a mountain.' Love and faith are no 
 less 2^*JWerful encliantcrs, and can convert into facts 
 the airy phantoms of the brain. The sisters "vvhen 
 they passed her resting-place paused to think of her 
 and her figure as it came back to them breathed frajj- 
 ranee sweet as violets. Father Gratian, who had been 
 absent from the deathbed, came on a visitation to the 
 convent nine months after. His imagination was as 
 active as that of the sisterhood : he perceived, not the 
 violet odour only, but a fragrant oil oozing between the 
 stones. The tomb was opened, the lid of the coffin was 
 found broken, and the earth had fallen through. The 
 face was discoloured, but the flesh was uncorrupted, and 
 the cause of the odour was at once apparent in the 
 ineffable sweetness which distilled from it. The body 
 was taken out and washed. Gratian cut off the left 
 liand and secured it for himself. Thus mutilated, the 
 body itself was replaced, and Gratian carried off his 
 prize, which instantly worked miracles. The Jesuit 
 Ribera, who was afterwards Teresa's biographer, and 
 had been present at the opening, saved part of the earth. 
 He found it 'sweet as the bone of St. La^vrence which 
 was preserved at Avila.' The story flew from lip to lip. 
 Gratian, zealous for the honour of the reformed branch 
 of the Carmehtes, called a chapter, and brought his 
 evidence before it tliat their founder was a saint.
 
 SAINT TERESA. 245 
 
 Teresa's communications with the other world at once 
 assumed a more awful aspect. The chapter decided 
 that, as at Avila she was born, as at Avila she was first 
 admitted to converse with Christ, and as there was her 
 first foundation, to Avila her remains must be removed, 
 and be laid in the chapel of San Josef. The sisters at 
 Alva wept, but submitted. They were allowed to keep 
 the remnant of the arm from which Gratian had taken 
 off the hand. Other small portions were furtively 
 abstracted. The rest was solenmly transferred. 
 
 This was in 1585, three years after her death. But 
 it w^as not to be the end. The Alva family had the 
 deepest reverence for Teresa. The Great Duke was 
 gone, but his son who succeeded him, and his brother, 
 the Prince of St. John's, inherited his feelings. They 
 were absent at the removal, and had not been consulted. 
 When they heard of it, they held their town to have 
 been injured and their personal honour to have been 
 outraged. They were powerful. They appealed to 
 Rome, and were successful. Sixtus the Fifth, in 1586, 
 sent an order to give them back their precious posses- 
 sion, and Teresa, who had been a wanderer so long, was 
 sent again upon her travels. A splendid tomb had 
 been prepared in the convent chapel at Alva, and the 
 body, brought back again from Avila, lay in state in 
 the choir before it was deposited there. The chapel 
 was crowded with spectators : the Duke and Duchess 
 were present with a train of nobles, the Provincial 
 Gratian, and a throng of dignitaries, lay and ecclesiastic. 
 The features were still earth-stained, but wore other-
 
 t46 SAINT TERRS A. 
 
 wiso unaltered. Tlio miraculous perfume was over- 
 powering. Ribora contrived to kiss the sacred foot, 
 and to toufh the remaining arm. He feared to wash 
 his hands afterwards, lest he should wash away the 
 fragrance; but he found, to his deliglit, that no washing 
 affected it. Gratian took another finger for himself; a 
 nun in an ecstasy bit out a portion of skin ; and for 
 this time the obsequies were ended. Yet, again, there 
 was another disentorabment, that Teresa might be 
 more magnificently coffined, and the General of the 
 Carmelites came from Italy tliat he might see her. 
 This time, the Pope had enjoined that there should be 
 no more mutilation; but nothing could restrain the 
 hunger of affection. Illustrious persons who were 
 present, in spite of Pope and decency, required relics, 
 and were not to bo denied. The General distributed 
 portions among the Alva sisterhood. The eye-witness 
 who describes the scene was made happy by a single 
 finger-joint. The General himself shocked the feelings 
 or roused the envy of the bystanders by tearing out an 
 entire rib. Then it was over, and all that remained of 
 Teresa was left to the worms. 
 
 But the last act had still to be performed. Spanish 
 opinion had declared Teresa to be a saint; the Church 
 had to ratify the verdict. Time had first to elapse for 
 the relics to work miracles in sufficient quantity, and 
 promotion to the highest spiritual rank could only be 
 gradual and deliberate. Teresa was admitted to the 
 lower degree of beatification by Paul the Fifth in 1 6 14. 
 She was canonised (relata into' Decs) eight years later
 
 SAINT TERESA. 247 
 
 by Gregory the Fifteenth, in the company of St. Isidore, 
 Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Philip Neri, If 
 a life of singular self-devotion in the cause of Catholic 
 Christianity could merit so lofty a distinction, no one 
 will challenge Teresa's claim to it. She had been an 
 admirable woman, and as such deserved to be remem- 
 bered. But she was to be made into an object of 
 popular worship, and evidence of mere human excel- 
 lence was not sufficient. A string of miracles were 
 proved to have been worked by her in her lifetime, 
 the witnesses to the facts being duly summoned and 
 examined. Her sad, pathetic death-scene was turned 
 into a phantasmagoria. Old people were brought to 
 swear that the Convent Church had been mysteriously 
 illuminated ; Christ and a company of angels had stood 
 at the bedside to receive the parting soul; and th« 
 room had been full of white floating figures, presumed 
 to be the eleven thousand virgins. Others said that a 
 white dove had Hown out of her mouth when she died, 
 and had vanished through the window; while a dead 
 tree in the garden was found next morning covered 
 with white blossom. 
 
 The action of the relics had been still more 
 wonderful. If cut or punctured they bled. They 
 had continued uncorrupted. They were still fragrant. 
 A cripple at Avila had been restored to strength by 
 touching a fragment; a sister at Malaga with three 
 cancers on her breast had been perfectly cured — with 
 much more of the same kind. 
 
 Next the solemn doctors examined Teresa's cbarac-
 
 S48 SAINT TERESA. 
 
 ter, licr virtues of the first degree, lior virtues of tlie 
 secoud degree, the essentials of saTidilas in specie. 
 Faith, Hope, Cliarity, love of Christ, were found all 
 satisfactory. Her tears at the death of Pius the Fifth 
 ])roved her loyalty to the Church. The exceptional 
 features fallowed, her struggles with the cacodjEmon, her 
 stainless chastity, her voluntary poverty, her penance, 
 her whip, her hair-cloth, her obedience, her respect for 
 priests, her daily communion, her endurance of the 
 devil's torments, and, as the crown of the whole, her 
 intercourse with San Josef, the Virgin, and her Son. 
 
 Her advocate made a splendid oration to the Pope. 
 The Pope referred judgment to the Cardinals, Arch- 
 bishops, and Bishops, whose voices were unanimou.s, 
 and Teresa was declared a member of the already 
 glorified company to whom prayers might lawfully be 
 uttered. 
 
 Teresa's image still stands in the Castilian churches. 
 The faithful crowd about her with their offerings, and 
 dream that they leave behind them their aches and 
 pains; but her words were forgotten, and her rules 
 sank again into nesrlect. The Church of Rome would 
 have done better in keeping alive Teresa's spirit than 
 in converting her into a goddess. Yet the Church of 
 Rome IS not peculiarly guilty, and we all do the same 
 thing in our own way. When a great teacher dies who 
 haa told us trutlis which it would be disagreeable to act 
 upon, we write adoring lives of him, we place him in 
 the intellectual pantheon ; but we go on as if he had 
 never lived at all. We put up statues to him as if that
 
 SAINT TERESA. 249 
 
 would do as well, and the prophet who has denounced 
 idols is made an idol himself. Yet good seed scattered 
 broadcast is never wholly wasted. Though dying out 
 in Spain and Italy, the Carmelite Sisterhoods are 
 reviving in Northern Europe, and they owe such life 
 as they now possess to Teresa of Avila. The nuns of 
 Compiegne, who in 1794 fell under the displeasure 
 of Robespierre, were Carmelites of Teresa's order. 
 Vergniaud and his twenty-two companions sang the 
 Marseillaise at the scaffold, the surviving voices keeping 
 up the chorus, as their heads fell one by one till all 
 were gone. Teresa's thirteen sisters at Compiegne 
 sang the 'Veni Creator' as the knife of the Convention 
 made an end of them, the prioress singing the last 
 verse alone amidst the bodies of her murdered flock.
 
 THE TEMPI. A KS. 
 
 I. 
 
 I HAVE chosen, I fear, a somewhat remote subject 
 for these lectures,^ and the remoteness is not the 
 only objection. I might have gone farther back, and 
 yet been nearer to our modern interests. I might 
 have given you an account, had I known anything 
 about the matter, of the people who lived in the pile- 
 dwellings in the Swiss lakes; or of the old sea-rovers 
 who piled up the kitchen-middens on the shores of the 
 Baltic; or I might have gone back to the primaeval 
 missing link between us and the apes, the creatures 
 who split the bones which we find in Kent's Cavern, 
 and were the contemporaries of the cave-bears and the 
 big cats who then lived in these islands. In talking 
 about any of these I should have been on a level with 
 modern curiosity. We are all eager to know more 
 about these ancestors of ours, since Darwin has thrown 
 doubts upon our supernatural origin. At any rate, 
 
 ' These papers were originally lectures delivered at Edinburgli 
 before the Philosophical lustitutiou in 1S85.
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 251 
 
 however, I shall not ask you to go so far back with me 
 by a good many thousand years. The military Orders 
 of the Middle Ages, if different from ourselves, are but 
 creatures of yesterday in comparison, and there is an 
 interest even of a scientific kind in observinoj the 
 strangely varied forms wliich human nature is capable 
 of assuming. Whatever has come out of man lies 
 somewhere in the character of man. Human nature 
 is said to be always the same ; but it is the same only 
 in the sense that the crab apple and the endless 
 varieties of garden apples are the same. Analyse the 
 elements and you find them to appearance the same. 
 There is some force in the seed (we cannot tell what) 
 which makes one plant a crab and another a fruit-tree. 
 Tn the man the difference lies in the convictions which 
 he entertains about his origin, his duties, his responsi- 
 bilities, his powers. With him, too, there is an original 
 vital force which will make each individual something 
 different from his neighbour ; but the generic type is 
 formed by his creed. As his belief, so is his character. 
 According to his views of what life is given him for, 
 he becomes a warrior, a saint, a patriot, a rascal, a 
 sensualist, or a comfortable man of business, who keeps 
 his eye on the main chance, and does not go into 
 dreams. And as you look along the ages you see a 
 tendency in masses of men to drift into one or other of 
 these forms. 
 
 Carlyle tells of a conversation at which he was once 
 present in this city more than fifty-six years ago. Some 
 one was talking of the mischief which beliefs had pro-
 
 S51 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 ducc<l in the world. 'Yes,' Carlyle said 'belief hab 
 done much evil ; but it has done all the good.' Wo do 
 not, we cannot certainly know what we are, or where we 
 are going. But if we believe nobly about ourselves, we 
 have a chance of living nobly. If we believe basely, 
 base we shall certaiidy become. 
 
 In a lecture which I had once the honour of addres.s- 
 ing you in this place I spoke of the effect of the Re- 
 formation on the Scotch character. I described it as 
 like turning iron into steel. There had been steel 
 enough before among the lairds and barons, but the 
 people had been soft metal : they followed their chiefs, 
 going this way and that way as they were told. After 
 Knox's time they had wills of their own, and we all 
 know what they became. The military Orders about 
 whom I am now to speak grew into a shape at least 
 equally noticeable. Their history is extremely curious. 
 It raises the most intricate questions as to the value of 
 historical evidence. , It illustrates both sides of helicf, 
 the good of it and the evil of it. I speak of Orders, but 
 I shall confine myself to one — to the Order of the 
 Templars. There were three great military Orders — 
 the Templars, the Knights Hospitallers, and the Teu- 
 tonic Knights. Other smaller bodies of the same kind 
 grew up beside them ; but it was in the Templars that 
 the idea, if I may call it so, was perfectly realised. 
 To understand them is to understand the whole 
 subject. 
 
 Scotch and English people, when they hear ot 
 Templai-s, all think instinctively of Brian de Bois
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 253 
 
 Guilbeit. In Sir Brian a Templar stands before us, 
 or seems to stand in flesh and blood, and beside him 
 stands Scott's other Templar, Sir Giles Amaury, the 
 Grand Master, in ' The Talisman.' No one can doubt 
 that we have here real men, as distinct as genius could 
 produce. The Germans say that when a genuine char- 
 acter has been brought into being, it matters nothing 
 whether such a figure ever existed in space and time. 
 The creative spirit has brought him forth somehow, and 
 he belongs thenceforward to the category of real exis- 
 tences. Men, doubtless. Sir Brian and Sir Giles both 
 were ; but Scott, like Homer, sometimes slept. They 
 were men, but in one important respect, at least, they 
 were not Templars. Rebecca calls Sir Brian a perjured 
 priest. Sir Giles Amaury hears Conrad's confession 
 before he gives him absolution with his dagger. The 
 Templars were not priests; they were laymen as much 
 as kings and barons. Tliey bound themselves by the 
 three monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi- 
 ence. They were, as a religious Order, subject to the 
 Pope, and soldiers of the Church. Other orders they 
 had none. They had chaplains affiliated, who said mass 
 for them and absolved them. But these chaplains were 
 separate and subordinate. They could hold no rank in 
 tlie society. Grand Masters, preceptors, priors, were 
 always lay. They were a new thing in Christendom, as 
 St. Bernai'd said. The business of priests was to pray. 
 The business of the knights was to pray too, but only as 
 all other men prayed. Their peculiar work was to fight. 
 Sii- Walter was an Episcopalian, but owing, perhaps, to
 
 154 I'lfE TEM/'/..4A'S. 
 
 his Nortli-Britisli training, lie never ctjinpletely appre- 
 hended tlio great mystery of apostolical succession. To 
 him a monk was a priest. We in this generation, who 
 have learnt the awful nature of the difference, must 
 clear our minds of that error, at any rate. 
 
 Now for what the Temj)Iars were. 
 
 A good many of us have probably been in the Temple 
 Church in London. The Templars were famous for the 
 beauty of their churches, and this particular church, 
 now that the old pews have been cleared out, is almost in 
 the condition in which they left it. In the ante-chapel 
 there lie on the floor the figures of nine warriors, repre- 
 sented, not as dead or asleep, but reclining as they 
 might have reclined in life, modelled all of them with 
 the highest contemporary art, figures that have only to 
 rise to their feet to stand before us as they actually were 
 when quick and breathing on earth. The originals of 
 them, if they are rightly named, were not themselves 
 Templars : they were great Barons and Statesmen. But 
 they were associates of the Order, and in dress and 
 appearance doubtless closely resembled them. They 
 are extremely noble figures. Pride is in every line of 
 their features, pride in every undulation of their forms ; 
 but it is not base, personal pride. There is the spirit 
 in them of the soldier, the spirit of the saint, the spirit 
 of the feudal ruler, and the spirit of the Catholic 
 Church — as if in them was combined the entire genius 
 of the age, the pride of feudalism and the pride of 
 the Church, the pride of a soul disdainful of all 
 personal case or personal ambition.
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 255 
 
 That they were placed where tliey are, and that they 
 were allowed to remain there, is at least some indication 
 that the charges on which the Templars were condemned 
 found no belief in England. The monuments of the 
 Pembrokes would never have been allowed to remain in 
 a scene which had been desecrated by unimaginable 
 infamies. What the charges were, and how the Order 
 fell, it will be my business to tell you. I have no cause 
 to defend, or sympathy to tempt me to make out a case 
 one way or the other. The Templars in Europe, if they 
 had been allowed to survive, would have become the 
 Pope's Janissaries, and so far as I have any special lean- 
 ing in those mediaeval quarrels, it is towards the Civil 
 Powers and not towards the Church. I believe that it 
 would have been worse for Europe, and not better, if the 
 Popes had been able to maintain their pretensions. If it 
 had really been made out that there was as much vice in 
 tlie Templars' houses as there undoubtedly was among 
 the other celibate Orders, there would have been nothing 
 in it to surprise me, and it would have interfered with 
 no theory of mine. So now I will go on with the story. 
 
 The Templars grew out of the Crusades — that 
 supreme folly of the Middle Ages, as it is the fashion 
 now to call them. For myself, I no more call the Cru- 
 sades folly tban I call the eruption of a volcano folly, or 
 the French Revolution folly, or any other bursting up of 
 the lava which lies in nature or in the hearts of man- 
 kind. It is the way in which nature is pleased to shape 
 the crust of the earth and to shape human society.
 
 256 THE TEMrLARS. 
 
 ( )ui hiisiiiess with these things is to understand them, 
 not to sit in judgment on them. 
 
 In the eleventh century u great wave of religious 
 enthusiasm passed over Christendom. Men had ex- 
 pected that the world would end at the year IGOO. 
 When it did not end, and went on as before, instead of 
 growing careless, they grew more devout. The Popes 
 under the influence of this pious emotion, acquired a 
 universal ami practical authority, such as had never 
 before been conceded to them. Religion became the 
 ruling principle of life to an extent which has never 
 perhaps been equalled, save in Protestant countries in the 
 century which succeeded the Reformation. There was 
 then one faith in Western Christendom, one Church, and 
 one Pope. The creed, if you please, was alloyed with 
 superstition, but the power of it, so long as the super- 
 stition was sincere, was not less on that account, but 
 was greater; and Christendom became capable of a 
 united action which had not before been possible. In 
 times when religion is alive Christianity is not a history, 
 but a personal experience. Christ himself was supposed 
 to be visibly present on the altar of every church and 
 chapel. His mother, the apostles, and the saints were 
 actively at work round the daily life of every one. The 
 particular part of the earth where the Saviour had been 
 born and had lived, where the mystery of human 
 redemption had been wrought out, where occurred all 
 the incidents which form the subject of the Gospel 
 story, Nazareth and Capernaum, Bethlehem and Jeru-
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 257 
 
 saleni; acquired a passionate interest in proportion to 
 the depth of the belief. 
 
 People didn't travel in those days for amusement. 
 There was no Mr. Cook to lead them in flocks over the 
 globe, or Murray's Handbooks, or omnibuses making 
 the round of the Pyramids, but they travelled a great 
 deal for their own purposes ; they travelled to scenes of 
 martyrdom and to shrines of saints; they travelled for 
 the good of their souls. We cfo ourselves to Stratford- 
 on- A von, or to Ferney, or to Abbotsford ; some of us 
 go already to Ecclefechan and Craigenputtock, and the 
 stream in that direction will by-and-by be a large one. 
 Multiply the feeling which sends us to these spots a 
 thousandfold, and you may then conceive the attractions 
 which the Holy Places in Palestine had for Catholic 
 Christians in the eleventh century. Christ was all 
 which gave the world and their own lives in it any real 
 significance. It was not a ridiculous feeling on their 
 part, but a very beautiful one. Some philosopher after 
 reading the Iliad is said to have asked, ' But what 
 does it prove ? ' A good many people have asked of 
 what use pilgrimages were. It depends on whether 
 we have got souls or not. If we have none, the Iliad is 
 a jumble of nonsense, and the pilgrim's cockle-shell was 
 no better than a fool's cap and bells. But the prevailing 
 opinion for the present is, that wc have souls. 
 
 From the beginning there had been pilgrimages to 
 the Holy Places. Even after the Saracens had con- 
 quered Palestine the caliphs had so far respected Chris- 
 tian piety as to leave the Holy Sepulchre undesecrated
 
 258 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 uihI .illow pil^'rinis to go and come unmolested. But 
 tlie calii>li.s' <Mnj>irc was now disturbed by the wild 
 tribes from the, north behind the Caspian Sea, wIkj had 
 )iomt'd down into Syria. New and fiercer bands of 
 M.ihonirtans had possession of Palestine, and just when 
 Europe was under the influence of tbc most powerful 
 reliffious emotion, and had become able to combine to 
 give effect to it, the Seljuks, Turcomans, miscellaneous 
 Arabian robbers, became masters of the one spot on 
 earth which was most sacred in the eyes of the western 
 nations, and the pilgrims had no longer access to it. 
 
 With a single impulse Christian Europe rose. They 
 rushed blindly at their object, without preparation, 
 without provision, half of them without arms, tnisting 
 that as they were on God's service God would pro- 
 vide. Famine, disease, the sword swept them away 
 in multitudes, and multitudes more followed, to die 
 like the rest. The Crusades altogether are supposed 
 to have cost six million lives, some say ten, but the end 
 was for a time attained. In the last decade of the 
 eleventh century Godfrey of Bouillon fought his way 
 into Palestine with sixty thousand princes, peers, knights, 
 and their own personal followers. He took Jerusalem. 
 He made a Latin kingdom of it. For eighty-seven years 
 the Holy City was ruled by a Christian sovereign; 
 Palestine was distributed into fiefs, to be held by 
 knights serving under the King of Jerusalem ; and 
 Christian Europe believed that it had done its duty. 
 Alas ! it had but half done it. The object was to open 
 the Holy Places again to western piety. Jerusalem
 
 TPIE TEMPLARS. 259 
 
 might be Christian, but the country between Jerusalem 
 and the sea swarmed with bands of roving Bedouins. 
 The pilgrims came loaded with offerings, and fell as a 
 rich prey to robbers at every turn of the road. The 
 crusading knights in their iron coats could meet armies 
 in the field, and take towns which could not run away ; 
 they could build castles and portion out the districts, 
 and try to rule on the European system ; but Europe 
 was not Asia, and they could as little brush away the 
 Saracen banditti as they could brush away the mosqui- 
 toes. So it went on year after year, and Jerusalem was 
 hardly more accessible to pious devotees than it had been 
 before the conquest. 
 
 At last in the very spirit and genius of the age, a 
 small company of young French nobles volunteered 
 their services as a pilgrim's guard. It was a time 
 when all great work was done by volunteers. There 
 was already a hospital volunteer service like our own 
 modern Red Cross. The Crusaders had suffered miser- 
 ably from wounds and sickness. A company of 
 Hospitallers had been established with its head-quarters 
 at Jerusalem, who grew afterwards into the Knights of 
 St. John. 
 
 Exactly on the same principle there was formed a 
 fighting company, who undertook to keep the road 
 between Acre and Jerusalem. The originators of it 
 were two young French knights of noble birth, Hugh 
 de Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer. They found 
 seven others ready to join them, all like themselves of 
 high rank, who had won their spurs in the battle-field.
 
 afo THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 Tlicy called tliciiiselvcs poor brothers in Christ. They 
 devoted themselves to Chri.st's service and his mother's. 
 Tliey took vows in the presence of the Patriarch, vows 
 of the usual kind, to cut themselves ofif from all worldly 
 interests j the vow of poverty, the vow of chastity, the 
 vow of absolute obedience to the Patriarch, and to the 
 one among them whom they should choose as their 
 head. Thus organised, they took the field as mounted 
 police on the pilgrims' road. 
 
 The palace of the Latin kings was on the site of 
 Solomon's Temple. A wing of it was set apart as a 
 pilgrims' iiome, and as the home and station of their 
 guards. The knights had their suite of rooms, with 
 appointments for their horses and servants, and it was 
 from this that they took their name as Brothers of 
 tlie Order of the Temple. The Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre was their chapel. They had a Gothic hall 
 with lances in rack, and suits of armour hanging on the 
 Avails, and long swords, and crossbows, and battleaxes — 
 very strange objects in the Temple of Jerusalem, almost 
 as strange as the imaginary Gothic castle in the moun- 
 tains above Sparta to which Faust and Mephistopheles 
 transported Helen of Troy. 
 
 It was here and thus that the Knight-Templars, 
 who were so soon to fill so large a place in the world, 
 began their existence — nine young gentlemen whose 
 sole object in life was to escort pious souls to the scene 
 of Christ's sufferings and resurrection. So much belief 
 was able to do. Their life was spent in fighting. 
 They had a battle-cry by which to know each other —
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 261 
 
 Bcauc^ant, as we know from ' Ivanlioe ' ; but what 
 Beauc^ant meant, no one can tell with certainty. It 
 was, I believe, a cry of the Burgundian peasantry — a 
 sort of link with the old home. 
 
 Every prince and baron had his armorial bearings. 
 The Templars had theirs, though again we are astray 
 for a meaning. It was two knights riding on one horse, 
 and has been supposed to indicate their original poverty. 
 But two knights on a single horse would have made 
 but poor work with the light-armed and lightly 
 mounted Bedouins ; and we know, besides, that each 
 knight had two or three horses with servants to wait on 
 him and them. Some think it meant brotherly love ; 
 some that it was a badge of humility and simplicity. 
 But this is guesswork ; the Templars were not clerks, 
 and have left no explanatory records behind them ; when 
 they perished, they perished entirely, and scarcely any 
 documents of their own survive to gratify our curiosity. 
 Anyway, it is clear that, though individually vowed to 
 poverty, they were supplied either by the King or out 
 of their own combined resources with everything that 
 was necessary to make their work effective. The only 
 fault among them was that they were too few for the 
 business which they had undertaken. 
 
 But enthusiasm was contagious in those days. 
 These Brothers of the Temple made a noise in Europe ; 
 the world talked about them. Popes and bishops sang 
 their praises. Other earnest youths were eager to join. 
 The Order was like a seed thrown into a soil exactly 
 prepared for it. So far there were but nine knights
 
 362 THE TEMPLAR!^. 
 
 Iicld together by their own wills and their own vow». 
 It was (lesirahlo to give them more cohesion and an 
 cnduriuL' form. One of the nine was a kinsman of 
 St. Bernard of Clairvaux. At the end of nine years, in 
 1 1 27, there was to be a great Church Council held at 
 Troye.s. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, sent two of tlie 
 brethren to Europe to see St. Bernard, to see if possible 
 Pope Houorius, to give an account to the Council of 
 themselves and their doings, and to learn if it would 
 be possible to enlarge their numbers. Evidently Kirig 
 Baldwin thought that if he was to hold Palestine he 
 must have a military force of some kind for constant 
 service. The Crusades were single efforts, exhausting 
 and expensive. The Christian nobles came at their 
 own cost ; they fought gallantly, but if they were not 
 killed they went home after their first campaign. The 
 Holy Land could not be held thus. An organised 
 army, with paid troops, and regimental chests, and a 
 commissariat, was out of harmony with the time. If 
 the enthusiasm of Europe was to take a constant 
 form, it could take effect bost in a religious military 
 Order, to be sustained in perpetuity as a permanent 
 garrison. 
 
 St. Bernard received his visitors with open arms. 
 He carried them to the Pope. The Pope gave them 
 his blessing and sent them on to the Council. The 
 Council gave them a Charter, as we may call it, and 
 formed them into an Order of regulars; and at once, 
 from all parts of Europe, hundreds of gallant young 
 men came forward to enter the ranks. The Pope had
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 263 
 
 promised heaven to all who would take the Cross 
 against the infidels. Service in person could be com- 
 muted in favour of any one who would give lands to 
 support the Knights of the Holy Brotherhood. The 
 kings took up the cause. Hugh de Payens came back 
 in person ; he was received in Paris ; he was received 
 in London by our first Henry. Rich manors were 
 settled on the Order in France, in England, in Spain, 
 and in Germany. Priories were founded on each estate, 
 to be as depots to a regiment, where novices could be 
 received and learn their duties, and from which they 
 could be passed on to the Holy Land as their services 
 were required. The huge torrent of crusading enthu- 
 siasm was, as it were, confined between banks and made 
 to run in an even channel. 
 
 A regular Order required a rule, and St. Bernard 
 drew up a rule for the Knights of the Temple. There 
 was now, he said, to be a war the like of which had 
 never been seen before ; a double war against the whole 
 powers of the devil in the field of battle and in the 
 heart of man. The rule of the Templars had, of course, 
 to be something different from the rules of the Bene- 
 dictines and Cistercians. They were not humble men 
 of peace, meek recluses whose time was divided between 
 cloister and garden, whose chief duty was to sing masses 
 for the souls of erring mankind. They were soldiers to 
 whom peace was never known, who were to be for ever 
 in the field on desperate and dangerous errands. They 
 were men of fiery temper, hot of blood, and hard of 
 hand, whose sinew had to be maintained in as nnich
 
 ^ THE TEMrLARS. 
 
 efficiency as their si)iiits. Tiiey were all nobly born, 
 too ; younger sons of dukes, and counts, and barona 
 Very curious to look at, for we can see in them what 
 noble blood meant at the time when the aristocracy rose 
 to the command of Europe. 
 
 If you please, therefore, we will look at this rule of 
 theirs. It lias not come down to us precisely as St. 
 Bernard drew it up. It received additions and altera- 
 tions as the Order enlarged. In essentials, however, 
 the regulations remained unchanged as they had been 
 at the becrinninc;. St, Bernard was a Cistercian. He 
 followed as far as he could his own pattern. The 
 Templars were to be purely self-governed. The head 
 was called the Grand Master. They chose him them- 
 selves, and he was to reside always at the post of 
 danger, in Palestine. Under him were Preceptors — 
 four or five in each of the great nations of Europe. 
 Under them were Priors, the superiors of the different 
 convents of the Order. All these officers were knishts, 
 and all laymen. The knights, as I said, took the three 
 monastic vows. They abjured all personal property ; 
 they swore to remain pure; they swore to obey the 
 order of their superiors without question, without hesit- 
 ation, as if it came from God. We need not think 
 this servile. Even in our own days of liberty such 
 obedience is no more than is required of every officer 
 and private in a modern array. Except in battle, their 
 dress was a white cloak, on which a red cross was after- 
 wards embroidered ; white signifying chastity. Unless a 
 knight remained chaste he could not see God. He had
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 265 
 
 no lady-love in whose honour he could break a lance iu 
 the tournament, he had not even an imaginary Dulcinea, 
 like Don Quixote, or a Gloriana, like the Paladins of 
 King Arthur's court. The only woman to whom a 
 Templar might devote himself was the Queen of 
 Heaven. They were allowed no ornaments ; hair and 
 dress were to be kept plain and simple. Abundant 
 food was provided for them, meat and wine and bread 
 and vegetables. And there is a very curious provision 
 that they were to eat in pairs, each pair at a single 
 board, that one knight might keep watch over the 
 other, and see that he ate his dinner properly, and did 
 not fast. To fast it seems was a temptation, to eat and 
 drink a penance. 
 
 Besides the general servants of the house, eacli knight 
 had a special attendant of liis own. The knight was 
 forbidden to speak sharply to him, and was specially 
 foi'bidden to strike him. 
 
 Religious duties were strictly prescribed, but were 
 modified by good sense. The knights, as a rule, were 
 to attend the regular chapel services ; but if they had 
 been out on duty at night they were let off matins, and 
 might say their prayers in bed. If they had done any- 
 thing wrong or foolish they were to confess to the Grand 
 Master or head of the house ; if it was a breach of 
 discipline the head of the house set tliem a penance ; if 
 it was a sin they were sent to a priest, who at first was 
 a secular outside the Order. They had little leisure ; 
 their chief occui)ation was war. When not in the field 
 they had their arms and horses to look after, which they
 
 a66 THE TE Mr LARS. 
 
 were allowed to bii}' for Lliemsclves, charging the account 
 to tho house. 
 
 Except by leave of the superior, they were to hold 
 no correspondence with any one in the outer world, not 
 even with mothers, sisters, or brothers. No brother of 
 the Order might walk about alone, or, when in a town, 
 go into the streets, unless with leave asked and given. 
 Fighting men had hot blood, and Jiut bl(jod required 
 to be restrained. Even an angry word spoken by 
 one to another was instantly punished, and so was all 
 light talk, especially when it turned on the other sex. 
 If a brother of the Temple wanted to converse, it 
 must be on serious or, at least, rational subjects. 
 The most innocent amusements were considered 
 trifling, and were not to be encouraged. A Templar 
 was not to hunt, or hawk, or shoot, still less to play 
 idle games. One exception only was made : it is a 
 very noticeable one, and had not escaped Sir Walter. 
 In Syria and Palestine there were still wild beasts, as 
 there had been in David's time. St. Bernard could 
 not permit liis Templai's to hunt deer or net partridges; 
 he did, however, by special statute, allow them to hunt 
 lions. And, mind, those were not days of repeating 
 rifles and explosive bullets : it was man and lion face 
 to face, with spear and knife against teeth and claws. 
 The lion no doubt in St. Bernard's mind was a type of 
 the adversary; to hunt the lion was to hunt Satan. 
 None the less, just as he had taken care that they 
 should eat and drink enough, and not emaciate them- 
 selves like intending saints, so he would have them
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 267 
 
 men at all points, and give them sport, too, so long 
 as it was dangerous, and needed courage. 
 
 We have travelled far since those days. The taste 
 for sport still survives among us, and along with it at 
 bottom there is, I dare say, in our young aristocrats as 
 firm a temper and as high a spirit as in those young 
 pupils of the Abbot of Clairvaux, were there any 
 modern abbots who could give their lives a meaninsf 
 and a purpose suited to our own times. I heard the 
 other day of a very fine young fellow, who in the 
 twelfth century might have been spearing lions and 
 escorting pilgrims auiong the Templars, performing 
 the extraordinary exploit of shooting fifty brace of 
 grouse in twenty-five minutes on some moor in York- 
 shire ; and the feat was considered so memorable that a 
 granite column was erected on the spot to commemorate 
 it. Some modern St. Bernard seems to me to be 
 desperately needed, 
 
 I will mention one more point in the rule of the 
 Templars. It was customary in those days when men 
 of rank Avere taken in battle to hold them to ransom, 
 the price of redemption being measured by their 
 wealth. The Templars had no personal wealth ; and 
 the wealth of the Order was to bo spent in God's 
 service, not in man's. If a Templar was taken by the 
 Saracens no ransom was to be paid for him ; he was to 
 be left to his fate. His fate invariably was to be offered 
 the alternative of the Koran or the sword ; and there 
 is scarcely a recorded instance in which a Templar 
 saved his life by abandonin<f his faith.
 
 268 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 I have said enough about these rules to sliow what 
 sort of people the Templars were at the time when 
 they began their career as a regular Order. Their 
 numbers increased with extraordinary rapidity, A 
 special branch was established in Aragon, where they 
 could fight tlie Moors without leaving Europe. Hugli 
 de Paycns took three hundred knights back with idni 
 to Palestine, and if they wanted fighting he gave tiiem 
 enough of it. In every battle the Templars were in 
 the front. Five years after nearly every one of the 
 three hundred had been killed. Popes and bishops 
 glorified them as martyrs, and the ranks filled faster 
 than death could empty them. They were the passion 
 and the ailmiratinn of the whole Christian world. 
 
 II. 
 
 As time went on, and the first enthusiasm passed away, 
 the Templars became a political and spiritual force in 
 the European system. The Grand Master took rank 
 among the peers in the councils of princes, and in 
 ordinary times he had the command of the military 
 defence of Palestine. The kingdom of Jerusalem was 
 never the stablest of monarchies ; but even the 
 Saracens were sometimes exhausted. There were 
 intervals of truce, intervals of peace; negotiations and 
 treaties had to pass between the Christian and the 
 Moslem powers. The conduct of these negotiations
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 269 
 
 fell to the Templars, and between them and the 
 Saracens there grew up some kind of acquaintance. 
 Having their home in the East they got to know the 
 Eastern character. It was alleged afterwards that in 
 this way their faith became corrupted. Scott has taken 
 this view in his character of Sir Brian. Whether it 
 was so or not I shall consider by-and-by. Nothing to 
 their discredit can be concluded from the fact of the 
 intercourse, because it was inevitable. Nor was any 
 suspicion of the kind ever breathed till the eve of 
 their fall. All that appears for certain is that, being 
 soldiers, they became statesmen also, and the general 
 experience is that soldiers make very good statesmen. 
 Only this is to be observed, that they became more 
 closely connected with the Popes, and the Popes with 
 them. For the first thirty years they were subject to 
 the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, while secular priests, 
 under the patriarchs' authority, heard their confessions 
 and said mass for them. As a reward for their services 
 the Popes relieved them from the patriarchs' jurisdiction, 
 and took them specially to themselves. In their houses 
 and on their domains in Europe they were exempted 
 from all authority except that of Rome. No bishop 
 anywhere was allowed to interfere with them. Instead 
 of secular priests they were permitted to have special 
 chaplains, ordained by bishops, but subject, after their 
 introduction, to the rule of the Temple only. They 
 were entirely isolated from all the other regulars. No 
 brother of the Temple might leave it and become a 
 Benedictine ; and the more separate they became the
 
 STo THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 ampler the privileges wliinli the Popes seemed delighted 
 to heap upou them. Many tliousands of them by this 
 time were spread over France, and England, and Spain. 
 Their lands were released from tithe; no priest or 
 bishop's officer could levy tax or rate on a Templar's 
 manor, while the Templars on their side might take 
 the tithe which the priests looked on as their own. No 
 prelate, no prince even, might put a Templar on his 
 oath, or call on him for any feudal service. Popular 
 as they had been at the beginning, the extraordinary 
 favour with which the Popes honoured them began to 
 be looked on with jealousy and resentment. And they 
 had another privilege, peculiarly irritating to the 
 bishops, and even to the Benedictines and Cistercians, 
 who thought that if conferred on one Order it should 
 have been conferred on all. Those who are acquainted 
 with the state of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries know generally what an interdict meant. 
 Wiien any country or province was under an interdict 
 the churches were closed, the church services were 
 suspended ; the young could not get married, the sick 
 could not be absolved, the dead could not be buried in 
 consecrated ground, but lay in ditches like dogs ; 
 human life stood suspended as if under a horrible 
 curse. You may think so frightful a sentence was 
 only issued on extraordinary occasions. On the 
 contrary, it was the bishops' universal weapon, the 
 instrument of their power, the unfailing fountain of 
 their revenue, for an interdict once issued was not 
 ca.sily raised till every person in the province had bled
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 271 
 
 for it. When bishops and nobles quarrelled, when 
 archbishops quarrelled with bishops, or quarrelled with 
 their flocks, tliey launched their interdicts like thunder- 
 bolts, striking whole districts without discrimination. 
 To the astonishment and rage of these great persons 
 the manors of the Templars were made a land of 
 Goshen, which the plague could not touch. Nor was 
 this all. Wherever any Templar went on business of 
 the Order the interdict was suspended, the church bells 
 rang out, the sacraments were dispensed to the flocks, 
 the bodies of the dead could be laid peacefully in 
 hallowed graves. It was even believed, so bitter was 
 the animosity, that individuals who were excommuni- 
 cated were allowed to confess and receive absolution in 
 the Templars' chapels. 
 
 Thus protected, thus curtained round with exemp- 
 tions and securities, it is not to be wondered at that if 
 the rival clergy looked askance at the Templars, they 
 came to think considerably of themselves. They were 
 dangerous from their military strength ; they owed 
 allegiance to no earthly power, secular or spiritual, 
 except the Pope's. To the Popes they owed their 
 position, and in those long conflicts between the See of 
 Rome and the kings and emperors, they repaid the 
 Papacy by standing by it in all its quarrels. Princes 
 feared them, bishops hated them for their independence, 
 the clergy envied their liberties. They cared little; 
 they were rich, they were strong; their persons were 
 sacred. Being regarded so doubtfully, it is very re- 
 markable that for the two centuries during which they
 
 272 THE TEMPr.ARS. 
 
 were in tlieir vigour, and down to the moment of 
 tlicir fall, you rarely find anywliere in the contemporary 
 monastic writers any moral scandals reported of them, 
 Giraldus Cambrensis and others are never weary of 
 drawing pictures of the gluttony and sensuality in the 
 monasteries. Abbots and priors, if you can believe 
 what is told by chroniclers and satirists, were wrapped 
 often in the seven deadly sins, and bishops were not 
 much better. But there is a curious silence about the 
 Templars. They are credited invariably with desperate 
 courage in the field. They are hardly ever, that I 
 remember, accused of being false to their vows, and, 
 undoubtedly, if there had been notorious ground for 
 scandal we should have heard enough of it. For we 
 do hear complaints of them of another kind, complaints 
 of them as laymen encroaching on churchmen's functions, 
 and of their overbearing ways. Now and then they 
 were rebuked, even by the Popes, for overstraining tlieir 
 privileges. Very generally, indeed, you find remarks 
 upon their haughty bearing. They had the double 
 loftiness in them of churchmen and warriors, loftiness 
 too great when single, when double past endurance. 
 You see it in all their actions, you see it in the lines 
 of those recumbent figures in the Temple Church, lines 
 fashioned by the habitual tone of their thoughts, and 
 perpetuated in stone by the artist wdio had seen antl 
 known them. 
 
 King Richard (our Coeur de Lion) being sick ouce 
 was attended by a French priest. The father spoke to 
 him especially of three questionable daughters that he
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 273 
 
 had, called Avarice, Sensuality, and Pride. Richard 
 said, ' I have disposed of those three you speak of, I 
 have given my avarice to the Cistercians ; I have given 
 
 my sensuality ' (It is a well-known story, but the 
 
 authors differ on the recipient of this quality. Some 
 say to the Black Friars, some to the bishops, some to 
 the clergy. I fear the variety implies that it fitted 
 with each of them) ; but all agree on the last, that he 
 gave his pride to the Templars. 
 
 Proud they were, but with the pride of soldiers. 
 Always on the testimony of their worst enemies, 
 wherever there was fighting to be done with the 
 infidel the Templars were in the thickest of it. No 
 man ever knew a Templar a coward. Again and again 
 in Palestine, when their ranks were thin and the 
 Saracens hemmed them round in thousands, the 
 Templars stood till the last man of them fell on the 
 field, or fell afterwards for his faith if carried off a 
 wounded prisoner. Such fighting was rarely or never 
 seen among the bravest men that ever lived. 
 
 In 1 187, when Saladin destroyed the Christian 
 army near the Lake of Gennesareth, and when the 
 wood of the true cross which they had with them fell 
 into Saladin's hands, the Grand Master of the day and 
 a number of knights were taken prisoners. Saladin 
 admired their daring. He would have made them 
 princes of his own empire if they would have changed 
 their creed ; they all refused, and were all slain. 
 
 Yet the kings did not like tliem : they were always 
 too true to the Popes. The Templars were a thorn in
 
 274 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 the side of Occur du Lion. 1'liey were a thorn in the 
 side of the great Frederic the Second of Germany. I 
 need not ^'o tlirougli the details of their history. The 
 kin^'doin of Jerusalem lasted but eighty-seven years; 
 Saladin then took the Holy City, and the Templars 
 built themselves a great feudal castle near Acre, where 
 they continued to protect the pilgrims. Pilgrims* 
 Castle was the name of it — a palatial fortress like old 
 Windsor, vast, stern, and splendid. Here henceforth 
 were the headquarters of the Order. Here the Grand 
 Master held his chapters and ruled as a sovereign ; 
 hither came the fresh drauiihts of knights from the 
 European preceptories. Rich as they were, the austere 
 severity of their habits never seems to have been 
 relaxed. Their wealth was all expended upon the 
 wars; they were powerful but they stood apart from 
 all other men, loved by few and feared by all. They 
 had no personal ties : they had no national ties : their 
 nation was the Catholic Church : their chief was the 
 Holy Father, and his enemies Avere theirs. They were 
 in France, in England, in Scotland, in Spain, but they 
 were not French, or English, or Scots, or Spaniards. 
 They rarely mixed in any national struggles, and only 
 when the Pope's interests were concerned — as, for 
 instance, when they supported the legate, Pandulf, 
 against King John. From the nature of the case, 
 therefore, they could take no root in the national life 
 anywhere. They were maintained only by the surviv- 
 ing enthusiasm for the Crusades, and the unquestioned 
 constancy with which they upheld the Cross against
 
 THE TEMPLARS. it% 
 
 the Crescent. Yet even in Palestine they were watched 
 with jealousy. They knew the country. From long 
 experience they knew the Arab nature ; and they had 
 become prudent. If left to themselves, they would 
 have made peace with the Soldans; they could have 
 secured the neutralisation of Jerusalem, and a peaceful 
 access to it for the pilgrims. But when they advised 
 anything of this kind tliey were accused of treacherous 
 correspondence with the enemy, and had to wipe the 
 charge out by fresh acts of desperate gallantry. They 
 would have saved the army of St. Louis in Egypt in the 
 last fatal Crusade, but their advice was not taken. 
 Tliey were suspected of bad faith. Sir William of 
 Sonnac, the Grand Master, when he could not be 
 listened to in the council of war (one of his eyes had 
 been dashed out in battle the day before, and the 
 socket was still bleeding), cried out : ' Beauceant to the 
 front ! The army is lost. Beauceant and death ! ' 
 He and all his comrades fell sword in hand. 
 
 Surely those Templars were an extraordinary form 
 of human beings. Loved they could not be ; they were 
 anomalous, suited only to an anomalous state of things, 
 yet someway admirable too ; for, whatever else they 
 were, they could never have entered such an institution 
 for their own pleasure. Dangers were gathering about 
 them towards the end of the thirteenth century. Their 
 lands were sometimes plundered, and the law was slow 
 to help them. Bishops, in spite of Rome and its orders, 
 now and then excommunicated individual Templars, 
 and a Pope had to issue another angry bidl to protect
 
 i^f^ THE TEAfPLARS. 
 
 tlicin. Kings began to (liink tliut they were too rich 
 .iiiil to covet some of their treasures. Our Henry the 
 Third toltl the Grand Preceptor of England that they 
 had beon indulged too much, and that he must have 
 money out of them. The Templars answered coldly 
 that the King spoke as one that was not wise, and that 
 the attempt might cost him his throne. It was their 
 own existence that was in peril, not the Crown's, if they 
 had known the truth of their position. 
 
 The meaning of them was as a garrison for Palestine. 
 Their strength was the service which they were render- 
 ing in the cause of the Crusades; and the Crusades 
 and all that they had accomplished were now coming 
 to an end. 
 
 The campaign of St. Louis in Egypt was the last 
 serious effort. After the defeat of St. Louis on the 
 Nile, the Crusading spirit died away. The fortresses 
 which the Christians held in the Holy Land fell one 
 by one, and at last, after two hundred years of fighting, 
 nothing was left of their conquests except the town of 
 Acre and the country for a few miles round. The 
 management of the defence rested on the Templars. 
 The European princes had professed to maintain a 
 garrison in Acre independent of them, but in 1289 the 
 Templars had to report that the garrison were a mere 
 company of vagabonds, ill fed and unpaid, and a 
 universal nuisance. There had been a peace of several 
 years with the Saracens, but the Acre soldiers plundered 
 the country indiscriminately. The Saracens could get 
 no redress. They declared war again, and this time
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 2^7 
 
 they meant to rally all their strength and drive thie 
 Christians finally out. They came down on Acre with 
 150,000 men. The Grand Master took the command 
 of the miserable troops there, but against such a force 
 he could do nothing. Pilgrims' Castle was evacuated 
 and destroyed ; Acre was taken by storm : out of his 
 own five hundred Templars only ten escaped : the 
 garrison was destroyed, and the Holy Land from one 
 end to the other was once more in the hands of the 
 successors of Mahomet. The ten surviving Templars, 
 with a few of the Hospitallers, escaped to Cyprus, 
 which our Richard had taken one hundred years before. 
 They chose a new Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, 
 who was to prove their last. They refilled their ranks ; 
 they had saved their treasury, and they renewed the 
 war in Syria. But it was the feeble flicker of a dying 
 flame. The mission of the Templars in the East was 
 over. They held their vast estates for a purpose which 
 was no longer a reality, and it became a question what 
 was to be done with them. 
 
 In Europe they were still strong and formidable, 
 and to one of the great parties into which Europe was 
 divided they could still be extremely serviceable. The 
 Popes and the great powers of Europe had not yet 
 settled their long differences. The successor of St. 
 ■Peter still pretended to Avield both the swords of the 
 Apostle. Boniface the Eighth was as firm a champion 
 of the pretensions of the Roman See to universal 
 sovereignty as the boldest of his predecessors. As the 
 military Orders were no longer reipiired in Palestine,
 
 «78 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 IJonilace perhaps conceived that they could be employed 
 no better than as soldiers of the Church at home. He 
 proposed, as Innocent the Third had proposed before, 
 to unite the three military Orders — Templars, Hospi- 
 tallers, and the Teutonic Knights — into a single body. 
 Could he succeed, he might then keep them in his own 
 hand, to bring princess to order, who, like Frederic 
 the Second of Germany, were not afraid of excom- 
 munication. 
 
 It was a daring scheme, and worthy of the head 
 which desi<:;ned it. If caiTied out, it might have 
 changed the face of Europe. The smaller Orders must 
 have been absorbed in the stronger, and the new organ- 
 isation would have been simply the Templars enlarged. 
 The Holy See could count with certainty on their 
 allegiance. Like the Jesuits, they had renounced all 
 natural ties ; they had no nation but the Church, and, 
 like the Jesuits also, tliey had been trained in habits of 
 unquestioning obedience. Their exceptional privileges 
 wero a retaining fee. They could keep these privileges 
 only by tiie Pope's favour and in virtue of the fear 
 which the Pope still inspired in the bishops and clergy 
 of the National Churches. No temptation could be 
 ofifered which would induce them to waver in their 
 dependence, and it is quite possible that if the Popes 
 could have secured to themselves the service of so 
 strong an arm, the theocratic despotism of the Gre- 
 gories and the Innocents might have been fixed for 
 some centuries longer on the kingdoms of Western 
 Christendom.
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 279 
 
 Whether such a despotism would have been good 
 for mankind is another question. If the Popes were 
 infallibly wise, or infallibly good, or if they were wiser 
 and better than the civil authorities ; if, under their 
 rule, with the Templars to help them, the poor man 
 would have found more justice, and the wrongdoer have 
 been made to smart more surely for his sins, I, for one, 
 am not so much in love with liberty but that I could 
 have wished the Popes better success than they found. 
 We ought to welcome, all of us, the rule and authority 
 of those who have more knowledge of what is right and 
 good than ourselves. 
 
 If it was so; but the 'if is the difficulty. We 
 cannot be sure of this supreme excellence of the Popes 
 — at least some of us cannot. The intellectual revolt 
 was only beginning, but wherever Albigenses or other 
 speculative people were thinking for themselves, the 
 Popes had betaken themselves already to sword and 
 faggot. As to morals, princes might be wilful and 
 ambitious, and barons harsh, and law courts venal ; but 
 prelates, too, could be overbearing, and the Church 
 courts were no purer than the civil courts. Every- 
 mediaeval chronicler, every monastic annalist is for ever 
 declaiming at the avarice and rapacity of Rome. 
 
 If the Popes had reason for wishing to keep the 
 military Orders for their Janissaries, the French and 
 English kings and the German Emperor might reason- 
 ably enough regard such an arrangement with alarm. 
 
 I have the greatest admiration for the poor brothers 
 of the Temple. The fate which overtook them was as
 
 aSo THE TEM PLANS. 
 
 undeserved as it was cniol. But Nature, or Providence, 
 or the tendencies of things, do as a fact sweep away 
 obstacles which stand in the way of human development 
 Institutions may loni; survive tlicir usefulness ; but they 
 are taken away when they become actively mischievous. 
 One could otdy wish that the process of taking them 
 away was not so often tainted with a violent injustice 
 which blinds us to the necessity of their removal. 
 
 Their proper work was gone. If work was to be 
 found for them in the future, it was to be as the armed 
 hand of the Papacy. But the Hildebrand theory of 
 tilings was near its close also. The struggle between 
 the Popes and the temporal princes was to end in a 
 compromise. The Popes were to have the .shadow, or 
 the spiritual .supremacy ; the civil powers were to have 
 the substance, and thus for such a body as the Templar.s 
 there was no place left. The kings in Europe intended 
 to be sovereign, each in his own dominions. The 
 Templars were, or might be, in the way. They had 
 vast revenues, which, now that the war in the East Avaa 
 over, they would be free to use for other aims and 
 ambitions. The national bishops and clergy resented 
 their arrogance, and were jealous of their inununities. 
 In some way or other the kings would find it necessary 
 to suppress them. But it was no easy task. They 
 were brave, they were nuble. As soldiers they were 
 the best organised in Europe. They were careless of 
 death, and ns long as they had the Popes at their back 
 it was quite certain that they would not fall without a 
 struggle, while the Popes could not in honour consent
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 28 1 
 
 to the abolition of an Order whose only crime was too 
 great fidelity to the Holy See. It was accomplished by 
 making the Templars the victims of an extraordinary 
 accusation, which was intended to render them odious 
 to mankind, and the story is one of the most curious in 
 media3val history. 
 
 As a rule I think it unwise to attempt to ijo behind 
 the legal verdicts of distant ages. As a rule those who 
 have been convicted of great crimes were probably 
 guilty of them. Men have different ways of arriving at 
 truth, but it is generally truth which they aim at, and 
 so many circumstances are known to contemporaries of 
 which posterity is absolutely ignorant, that it argues 
 some presumption in posterity when it reviews con- 
 fidently contemporary judgments. But the process of 
 the Templars was peculiar. It was considered violent 
 even in a violent age. The details are preserved almost 
 to the smallest particulars, and are worth examining, if 
 only as a picture of the manners of the time. 
 
 The French king at that time was Philip le Bel — 
 Philip the Beautiful — one of the most remarkable 
 sovereigns that France ever had. His daughter we 
 know of as Edward the Second's queen — Hlie Wolf, as 
 the poet Gray calls her. The parent wolf was born in 
 1268. He became king at sixteen. He fell early into 
 wars with England and Burgundy, extended his frontiers, 
 drilled into subjection his own vassals. He then 
 quarrelled, on the old grounds of the Papal pretensions, 
 with Pope Boniface the Eighth. He had required a 
 subsidy from his clergy. The Pope forbade them to
 
 28a 11 If- TEMI'LARS. 
 
 pay. Pliilip answered with railing tlic Pope a fool, 
 changing ymir ' Holiness ' into your ' fatuity.' Boniface 
 excommunicated Philip. Philip burnt tlie bull as 
 boldly as Luther burnt Pope Leo's. He denounced 
 Boniface as a heretic, made war upon him, and took 
 him prisoner. The poor Pope died three days after, it 
 was said of rage and mortification. Philip had been 
 swift ; Napoleon was not quicker in his movements. 
 The Templars had supplied Boniface with money. 
 They had not time to help him with arms. Boniface's 
 successor, Benedict the Tenth, made peace on Philip's 
 own terms. The French clergy were made to give him 
 all that he wanted. The Templars appealed to their 
 privileges ; but they, too, had to submit under protest. 
 The King was master of the situation, and meant to 
 make the most of his victory. Benedict the Tenth 
 reigned only for a year. The majority in the College of 
 Cardinals was French. They chose after him the 
 French Archbishop of Bordeaux, who was to reside in 
 France, and could be made to do the King's biddingf. 
 Archbishop Bertrand became Pope at the beginning of 
 1305, under tlie name of Clement the Fifth. 
 
 So much for the position, which I have merely 
 sketched in outline. 
 
 The Templars had no suspicion of their danger, and 
 that no hint of it reached them is a proof how few 
 friends they could have had. In outward respect they 
 stood high as ever. No scandal liad been breathed 
 against them. Their churches were the admiration of 
 Kurope. Faithful as they were to their salt, they had
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 283 
 
 never so much as dreamed that the master whom they 
 had served so loyally could betray them. What could 
 they have to fear ? And yet it got abroad somehow 
 that the King would be well pleased if evidence could 
 be found of the Templars' misconduct, and when 
 evidence is wanted, especially if it will be well paid 
 for, sooner or later it will be forthcoming. 
 
 In the Temple, as in other bodies, there were black 
 sheep. Knights or servants of the Order now and then 
 broke the rules, and had to be punished, and, if incor- 
 rigible, to be expelled. At the accession of Clement 
 the Fifth there were two knights thus degraded, in 
 prison, at Toulouse ; one of them, Esquin von Florian, 
 who had been j^rior of Montfaucon, and the other with 
 the unusual name of Noffodei. These men, after their 
 expulsion, had been engaged in some conspiracy at 
 Paris, and were under sentence of death. They in- 
 formed the governor of the gaol that they could possess 
 the King of a secret which would be worth another 
 realm to him, and that if their lives were spared they 
 would reveal it. They were sent up to the court ; 
 Philip examined them himself, and they made the 
 following singular statement : — 
 
 1. Ever}^ Templar on his admission to the Order 
 swore to defend it for his life long, in all causes, just or 
 unjust, without exception. 
 
 2. The chiefs of the Order corresponded with the 
 Saracens, and were more like Mahometans than Chris- 
 tians. The Novices were required to spit upon the 
 cross, and trample on it, and deny Christ.
 
 ag4 THE TEAf PLANS. 
 
 3. Any one suspected of intending to betray the 
 secrets of the Order was murdered and secretly buried. • 
 
 4. The Templars despised the sacraments. They 
 worshipped iduLs, and were heretics. 
 
 5. They committed unnatural crimes. Their houses 
 were nests of vice and profligacy. 
 
 6. They betrayed the Holy Land, and lived without 
 fear of God. 
 
 These were the chief articles of a long list. There 
 were many others ; such as incest, worship of the devil 
 under various forms, &c. &c. 
 
 It is certainly strange that if the Templars were so 
 horribly depraved no wiiisper of their enormities should 
 hitherto have gone abroad. It is strange that, as the 
 secrets of the Order were necessarily known to all its 
 menibers, they should have ventured to expel mis- 
 demeanants who could so easily betray them. If they 
 killed every one that they suspected of letting out their 
 mysteries, it is strange that they should have allowed 
 the knights to confess to secular priests outside the 
 Order, as it is certain that in the absence of their own 
 chaplains they habitually did. 
 
 The King took down the depositions, and, without 
 going into the particulars of them, wrote privately to 
 the Pope. On August 24, 1305 — the dates are impor- 
 tant — the Pope replied that it was a singular story. 
 The King's letter was so positive, however, and the 
 persons who had brought the letter to him were so 
 positive also, that he supposed the charges must be 
 true. It seemed, however, that some rumour of the
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 285 
 
 matter had by this time reached the Templars them- 
 selves. The Pope added that the Grand Master and 
 the preceptors had also written to him, alluding to the 
 accusations, and begging him to examine into them. 
 This he would do, and would inform the Kinj; of the 
 result. 
 
 The inquiry so conducted would have been fair 
 enough, but for some reason it did not suit Philip's 
 purpose. He sent the Pope the depositions themselves. 
 The Pope made no further move. The whole matter 
 was allowed to drop for a year; and the next thing 
 which we find is a confidential and affectionate letter 
 from the Pope to the Grand Master, who was in Cyprus, 
 written in the following summer. Not a word was 
 said by him about the accusations. The Pope seemed 
 to have forgotten them. He merely told the Grand 
 Master that he wished to consult liim about various 
 subjects of great consequence — the condition of the 
 East, the prosj)ects of the Crusades, and the general 
 state of Christendom. He therefore begged De Molay 
 to come to him in France as soon as he could, and to 
 bring with him such of the knights as he had most 
 dependence on. 
 
 De Molay clearly had no suspicion. He was under 
 the impression that the headquarters of the Templars 
 were to be transferred from Cyprus to France, They 
 had a grand palace in Paris. The site of it still bears 
 the old name, and the palace itself was the prison of 
 the royal family in the Revolution. Thither came De 
 Molay, bringing with him the chest, or chests, of the
 
 S86 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 Order — twelve inul<'.s' Iftjvl ol" goM aixl silver. The 
 King received him with the proper courtesies. There 
 was 110 sign of displeasure. The treasure was put 
 away iu the Templars' vaults. The Pope was at 
 Poitiers. De Molay and tlie preceptors went to him, 
 and hatl a long friendly conversation with him. The 
 projected union of the military Orders was certainly 
 the subject of part of it, and De Molay was less cordial 
 on the subject than perhaps Clement wished. This 
 was at the end of 1 306, nearly two years after the 
 two knights had told their story. All was outwardly 
 smooth. The winter went by. In the spring there 
 were once more rumours in the air which made 
 De Molay uneasy. In April, 1307, he went again 
 to the Pope, taking the four French preceptors with 
 him, and spoke very earnestly about it. The Pope 
 listened with apparent satisfaction, and dismissed 
 them as if perfectly assured that the accusations were 
 baseless. 
 
 Again one asks, Was all this treachery ? — was it a 
 plan agreed upon between the Pope and the King to 
 put the Templars oft' their guard, to seize the treasure, 
 and get into their power the persons of the Grand 
 Master and the leading knights ? That certainly was 
 the effect. Such a plot, supposing it real, might be 
 defended if the charges against the Templars were true. 
 They were a formidable body. Had they been alarmed, 
 and had their chief been at large, they could perhaps 
 have set the King at defiance. At least they could 
 not have been suppressed without desperate bloodshed
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 287 
 
 But all turns on the truth of the charges, or on the 
 King's sincere belief in them. 
 
 Even kings and popes are seldom deliberately and 
 consciously wicked. But, like other men, they have a 
 power of convincing themselves of what they wish to 
 believe. The Pope was afraid of Philip, and wished 
 to please him. The Templars had really become an 
 anomaly. They were a danger to the State. Philip 
 might legitimately wish to bring the Order to an end. 
 From a wish to end them to a conviction of their 
 crimes the step would be short in a politic ruler's mind. 
 Politics are a corrupting trade. 
 
 Any way, the Templars were lulled into absolute 
 security. They were spread all over France in their 
 various houses. At the beoiunini:^ of October this same 
 year, 1307, the King sent a secret instruction round 
 the provinces for their universal and simultaneous 
 arrest. Not a whisper was allowed to reach them. 
 They had lived in friendless and haughty isolation. 
 They had relied on the Pope, and the Pope had failed 
 them. The only support which never fails — some 
 legitimate place among the useful agencies of the time 
 — this was wantinti. 
 
 III. 
 
 At the break of day on October 1 3, 1 307, the Templars 
 were surprised in their beds, carried off to the provincial 
 prisons of the different bishops and flung into dungeons.
 
 288 THE TEMrLAF:S. 
 
 More willing gaolers they could not have had. They 
 had long defied the bishops, and the bishops' turn was 
 come. They took on themselves the responsibility ol 
 the King's action. Such prelates as were in Paris, with 
 the heads of the University and the abbots and priors 
 of the religious houses, assembled two days after in the 
 Templars' Hall. They drew up an Act of Accusation, 
 in which the knights were described as ravening wolves, 
 idolaters, perjurers, and guilty of the vilest crimes. 
 They asserted, to meet the inevitable incredulity, that 
 the Grand Master and the preceptors had confessed 
 their guilt. The Templars belonged to Europe — not 
 to France alone. Philip sent circulars to Edward 
 the Second of England, to Germany, to the Kings of 
 Aragon, Portugal, and Castile, telling his story, and 
 inviting them to follow his example. His letter was 
 read in England with astonishment. A great council 
 was called at Westminster. Edward with his peers 
 and prelates replied that the charges were incredible. 
 The Templars were men of unstained honour. The 
 Pope must examine into the matter. He would take 
 no action till the Pope had decided. He sent his own 
 protest to his brother princes. 
 
 The Pope — the poor, infallible Pope — was in straits; 
 he had not been consulted before the arrest ; he could 
 not refuse an inquiry ; yet, perhaps, he knew too well 
 how an honest inquiry would terminate. The King 
 and the bishops had begun the work, and they had no 
 choice but to go through with it. Before the Pope 
 could proceed the bishops might prepare their case. It
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 289 
 
 was Avinter. The Templars had been flung into cold, 
 damp dungeons, ill-fed and ill-clothed. In the first 
 month they had begun to die of mere hardship. They 
 were informed of the charges against them ; they were 
 told that denial was useless, that the Grand Master and 
 preceptors had confessed, and wished them all to 
 confess. They were promised rewards and liberty if 
 they obeyed ; imprisonment and torture if they were 
 obstinate. After some weeks of this, to bring them into 
 a proper frame of mind, the bishops issued commissions 
 to examine them. 
 
 And I must now beg you to attend. What I am 
 about to tell you is strict fact ; as well authenticated as 
 any historical facts can be. Belief, or the credulity of 
 nobleness, had created the Templars. Belief, the ugly 
 side of it, the credulity of hatred, was now to destroy 
 them. Universal confession would alone satisfy the 
 world's suspicions, and confession the King and his 
 prelates were resolved to have. Wasted with hunger 
 and cold, the knights were brought one by one before 
 the bishops' judges. The depositions of the two 
 approvers were formed into interrogatories. Did the 
 knights, on their admission to the Order, spit on the 
 cross? Did they deny Christ? Did they receive a 
 dispensation to commit unnatural offences ? Did 
 they worship idols ? A paper was read to them pro- 
 fessing to be the Grand Master's confession; and to 
 these questions they were required to answer yes 
 "or no. A few said yes, and were rewarded and dis- 
 missed. By far the greater number said that the
 
 20O 77/A' TEMI'I.ARS. 
 
 cliaigcs were lies; they said they diil not believe that 
 tlje Grand Master had confessed ; it" lie had he had 
 lied in his throat. And now what happened to the 
 men who answered thus ? They were stripped naked, 
 their hands were tied behind their backs; a rojie was 
 fastened to their wrists, tlie other end of which was 
 slung over a beam, and they were dragged up and down 
 till they were senseless, or till they acknowledged what 
 the bishops wanted. If this failed, their feet were 
 fixed in a frame like the old English stocks, rubbed 
 with oil, and held to the fire till the toes, or even the 
 feet themselves, dropped off. Or the iron boot was 
 used, or the thumb-screws, or another unnameable and 
 indescribably painful devilry. Thirty-six of them died 
 under these tortures in Paris alone. The rest so treated 
 said anything which the bishops required. They pro- 
 tested afterwards that their confessions, as they were 
 called, had been wrung out of then:i by pain only. They 
 were returned to their dungeons, to be examined again 
 when the Pope pleased. But having confessed to 
 heresy, they were told that, if they withdrew their con- 
 fessions afterwards, they would be treated as relapsed 
 heretics, and wouhl be burnt at the stake. Such was 
 then the Church's law ; and it was no idle threat. 
 
 I am not telling you a romance. These scenes did 
 actually occur all over France ; and it was by this 
 means that the evidence was got together under which 
 the Templars were condemned. But we are only at 
 the first stage of the story. 
 
 The confessions were published to the world, and
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 291 
 
 the world, uot knowing how they had been obtained, 
 supposed that they must bo true. The Pope knew 
 better ; he remonstrated ; he said tliat the Templars 
 were not subject to the bishops, who were going beyond 
 their power. The King accused him of trying to shield 
 the Templars' guilt; the bishops, he said, were doing 
 nothing but their duty, and the Faculty of Theology at 
 Paris declared that no piivilcge coidd shelter heresy. 
 The conduct of the Grand Master and the four pre- 
 ceptors is a mystery. They were evidently bewildered, 
 disheartened, shocked, and terrified, and confessions 
 alleged to have been made by them were certainly 
 taken down and published. It appears, also, that in 
 January, 130S, three months after the arrest, they were 
 brought before the Pope, and they were alleged to have 
 confessed again on this occasion, and to have received 
 absolution from him. But the Pope did not confirm 
 this allegation, and was still incredulous. The other 
 Powers of Christendom msisted on a fuller inquiry. 
 The formal sanction of the Papacy was required before 
 the Order could be suppressed, and even Clement, 
 pliable as he was, could not proceed on the evidence 
 before him. In the summer, six months later, seventy- 
 two Templars — seventy-two only of the thousands still 
 surviving in France — were found willing to appear 
 before him and give the required answers to the inter- 
 rogatories. These seventy-two did say that they had 
 abjured Christ, had spit on the cross, had worshipped 
 idols, and the rest of it. They were asked why they 
 had at first denied these things ? They said that they
 
 292 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 Iiiul l"org(jtU!ii, but had since remembered. Seventy- 
 two, after all that bribes and tortures and threats 
 could do, were not enough. The Pope was answerable 
 to Christendom. The French bishops themselves were 
 on their trial before the rest of the world ; the sentence 
 could not rest on their word alone. The Pope found 
 himself obliged to appoint au independent commission, 
 when the knights could be heard in their own defence 
 with an appearance of freedom. A cardinal or two, an 
 archbishop, and two or three papal lawyers, were 
 formed into a court which was to sit in Paris. All 
 preciiutions were alleged to be taken that the 
 Templars should have a fair hearing if they wished 
 it, without fear or prejudice. Every prisoner who 
 would say that ho was ready to defend the Order was 
 to be brought to Paris to be heard. Notice of the 
 appointment of the commission was sent round to all 
 the courts of Europe. 
 
 Tf Philip, if the bishops really believed in the 
 Templars' guilt they ought to have -welcomed the 
 Pope's action. They had been cruel, but if they could 
 prove their case their rough handling would not be 
 judged severely. They were in no haste, however. The 
 commission was appointed in August, 1308. It did not 
 sit for another year. The Templars were now dying 
 by hundreds. Their death-bed declarations were all 
 protests of innocence. The survivors demanded in vain 
 that these declarations should be made public. When 
 they learnt that they were to be heard before represent- 
 atives of the Pope their hopes revived, and more than
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 293 
 
 a thousand at once gave their names as ready to appear 
 in the defence. 
 
 In August, 1309, the court was opened. It sat 
 in the Convent of St. Genevieve. Citations were 
 issued, but no one appeared. The Templars had been 
 brought up to Paris, but they had been told on the 
 way that if they retracted their confessions the Pope 
 intended to burn them as relapsed ; and, after the 
 treatment which they had met with, anything seemed 
 possible. They claimed to be heard by counsel. This 
 was refused. The court adjourned till November 22, 
 when some twenty of the knights were brought in and 
 were asked if they were ready with a defence. They 
 said that they were illiterate soldiers; they knew 
 nothing of law pleading. If they might have their 
 liberty with arms and horses they would meet their 
 accusers in the field. That was all that they could do. 
 
 It was necessary to begin with the Grand Master. 
 On November 26, De Molay himself was introduced 
 into the court. He was an old man, battered by a life 
 of fighting, and worn by hard treatment in prison. 
 Being asked what he had to say, he complained of the 
 refusal of counsel. He claimed for himself and the 
 Order to be heard before a mixed court of lay peers and 
 prelates. To such a judgment he said that they were 
 willing to submit. They protested against a tribunal 
 composed only of Churchmen. 
 
 Unfortunately for themselves the Templars were a 
 religious Order, and the Church alone could try them. 
 The commission under which the court was constituted
 
 894 ^^'^^ TFAfrr.ARS. 
 
 was road over. It was tliero stated that the Grand 
 Master ha<l mailo a full confession of the Order's guilt; 
 and fntin his behaviour it might liave been thought 
 tliat he was hearing of this extraordinary assertion for 
 the first time. We have the account of the proceedings 
 exactly as they were taken down by tlie secretary. He 
 crossed himself thrice. ' Videbatur se esse valde stupe- 
 factum.' He seemed entirely stupefied. When he 
 found his voice he said that if the commissioners had 
 not been priests lie would liave known how to amswer 
 them. They were not there, they replied, to accept 
 challenges. He said he was aware of that, but he 
 wished to God that tliere was the same justice in 
 France as there was among the Turks and Saracens, 
 where a false witness was cut to pieces. No confession 
 wns produced to which he had attached his hand, and 
 of other evidence there was none. The King's chan- 
 cellor read a passage from a chronicle to the effect that 
 Saladin, a hundred and twenty years before, had called 
 the Templars a set of villains. Again De Molay 
 appeared stupefied — as well he might. He claimed 
 privilege, and demanded to be heard by the Pope in 
 person. 
 
 The Preceptor of Payens then appeared. He 
 admitted that he had confessed with many of his 
 brethren, but he protested that their confessions were 
 false. They had been handed over to a set of men, 
 some of whom ha<l been expelled from the Order for 
 infamous crimes. They had been tortured, and many 
 of tlioin had died on the rack. He for himself had had
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 295 
 
 his hands crushed till the blood ran from his nails. He 
 had been flung into a well and left lying there ; he had 
 been for two years in a dungeon. He could have borne 
 to be killed — -to be roasted, to be boiled — anything 
 which would be over in a moderate time, but such 
 prolonged agonies were beyond human strength. If he 
 was treated so again he would deny all that he was 
 then saying, and renew his confession. He was 
 remitted to custody, and the commissioners cautioned 
 the gaoler not to deal hardly with him for what he had 
 said. The caution was necessary. Many of the knights 
 were still afraid to speak, or would say nothing except 
 that they had been tortured, and would speak if they 
 were set free. As long as they were kept prisoners 
 they dared not. The commissioners, to encourage them, 
 sent out a warning to the bishops, and again assured 
 the knights of protection. The court, they said, wanted 
 nothing but the truth. The knights might tall it 
 freely; no harm should haj^pen to them. 
 
 This gave them courage. Six hundred of them now 
 came forward, one after the other, and told the secrets 
 of their prisons, with the infernal cruelties which they 
 had suffered there. A list was produced of those who 
 had died. One very curious letter was read which had 
 been written by a high official and sent to a party of 
 Templars at Sens. It was to the effect that the Bishop 
 of Orleans was coming to reconcile them. They were 
 advised to make submission, and in that case were 
 promised all kindness ; but they were to understand 
 that the Pope had distinctly ordered that those wUq
 
 ag6 rilE TEMPLARS.. 
 
 retracted their confessions shouM Ijc burnt. Tlio official 
 in question was called in. He said that lie did not 
 think that lie could have written such a letter ; the seal 
 was his, but it might have been written by his clerk. 
 
 One prisoner was carried into the court, unable to 
 stand. His feet had been held to the fire until they 
 had been destroyed. 
 
 The evidence was still utterly inconsistent. Priests 
 came forward, who said they had habitually heard 
 Templars' confessions, yet had heard nothing of the 
 alleged enormities. Others, on the other hand, ad- 
 hered to the story, telling many curious details — how 
 Templars had told them that they had been required 
 to spit on the cross, how they had been frightened and 
 refused, but had at last consented — ' non corde sed ore ' 
 — not with their hearts, but with their lips. But the 
 great majority were still resolute in their denials. At 
 last the whole six hundred made a common affirmation 
 that every one of these Articles named in the Pope's 
 Bull was a lie — the religion of the Templars was pure 
 and immaculate, and so had always been, and whoever 
 said to the contrary was an infidel and a heretic. This 
 they were ready to maintain in all lawful ways, but 
 they prayed to be released and be heard, if not before 
 a mixed tribunal, then before a General Council. Those 
 who iiad confessed had lied ; but they had lied under 
 torture themselves, or terrified by the tortures which 
 they witnessed. Some might have been bribed, which 
 they said was public and notorious; the wonder was 
 that any should have dared to tell the truth. As a
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 297 
 
 refinement of cruelty, the bishops had refused the 
 sacraments to the dying. 
 
 The commissioners were now at a loss. Individuals 
 might be worked upon by fear and hope to repeat their 
 confessions, but the great body of the Order were con- 
 sistent in their protest. The commissioners said that 
 they could not hear them all. They had asked for 
 counsel ; let them appoint proctors who could speak for 
 them. This seemed fair; but the unfortunate men 
 were afraid of trusting themselves to proctors. Proctors 
 being few, might be tempted or frightened into betray- 
 ing them. They still trusted the Pope. They had 
 been invited to speak, and they had been promised 
 protection. The members of the court had some kind 
 of conscience, and it began to seem likely that the case 
 might not end as the King and the bishops required. 
 They could not afford to let it go forth to the world 
 that the Templars were innocent after all and had been 
 brutally and barbarously treated without sufficient 
 cause; public opinion did not go for much in those 
 (lays, but they were at the bar of all Europe. 
 
 We need not assume that they themselves did not 
 believe in the Templars' guilt; men have a wonderful 
 power of making themselves believe what they wish to 
 believe. If the Templars had been formidable before 
 the attack on them Avas begun, they would be doubly 
 formidable if they came out of their trial clean as their 
 ^ own white robes ; it was necessary to stop these pleas 
 of innocence, and the French prelates were equal to the 
 occasion.
 
 398 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 While the Pope's commissioners were sittin;:^ at St. 
 (lonevieve the Arclibishop of Sons opened a ])rovincial 
 eoiirl. of his owii in another part of Paris, Tiie list of 
 knights was brought before him who had given their 
 names as intending to retract their confessions. On 
 May lO, 1 3 10, four of the Templars demanded audience 
 v)f the Papal judges. They said that the knights had 
 been invited by the Pope to defend the Order; they 
 had been told to speak the truth without fear, and had 
 been promised that no harm should happen to them. 
 They now learnt that in consequence of what tliey had 
 .said, on the very next day a great number were to be 
 put on their trial before the Archbishop of Sens as 
 relapsed heretics. They said truly, that if this was 
 permittctl, it would make the inquiry a farce — it would 
 stain irreparably the honour of the Holy See. They 
 entreated tbe commissioners to interpose and prevent 
 the Archbishop from proceeding. 
 
 The commissioneis professed to be sorry — they 
 could hardly do less; but they said that the Archbi.shop 
 was not under their jurisdiction. They themselves 
 represented the Holy See ; the bishops had an in- 
 dependent authority ; they had no power over the 
 bishops nor the bishops over them. They did promise, 
 however, to think the matter over and see if anything 
 could be done. 
 
 The Archbishop did not allow them time for much 
 thinking ; ho was a sturdy prelate and had the courage 
 of his office. Two days after, on the morning of the 
 1 2th, just as the commissioners were going to chapel
 
 THE TEMPLARS 299 
 
 (they were particular about all these things it seems), 
 word was brought them that fifty-four of the knights 
 who had applied to be heard before them had been 
 tried and sentenced and were to be burnt at the stake 
 that very afternoon. This time the commissioners were 
 really disturbed. They were not prepared for such 
 prompt action — their own dignity, the Holy Father's 
 dignity was compromised. They sent in haste to the 
 Archbishop, to beg him at least to postpone the execu- 
 tion; every Templar who had died hitherto had declared 
 the Order innocent, and these would do the same. If 
 witnesses were invited to speak, and were then burnt 
 for speaking, they would have to close their court. 
 Already the very report of the Archbishop's intentions 
 had so terrified the knio^hts that some of them had srone 
 out of their minds. 
 
 The Archbishop was made of tougher stuff — 
 Fouquier Tinville and the Revolutionary tribunal were 
 not more resolute. To terrify the knights into silence 
 was precisely what he intended. Accordingly that 
 same afternoon, as he had ordered, those fifty-four ' poor 
 brothers in Christ,' whose real fault had been that they 
 were too faithful to the Father of Christendom, were 
 carried out to the Place St. Antoine, near where the 
 Bastille stood, and were tlicre roasted to deatli. They 
 bore their fate like men. Every one of them, torn and 
 racked as they had been, declared with his last breath 
 that, so far as he knew, the accusations against the 
 Order were groundless and wilful slanders, llalf-a- 
 dozen more were burnt a day or two after to deepen
 
 joo TTIE TEMPLARS. 
 
 the effect. The Archbishop clearly was not afraid of 
 man or ilt^vil. Some say a sensitive conscience is a 
 siirn of a weak cliaractcr. No one can accu.se the Ar(;h- 
 bishop of Sens of havin<^ a weak character ; he knew 
 what he was doing and what would come of it. 
 
 I will read you a declaration made the next day 
 before the Pope's commissioners by Sir Amaric de 
 Villiers, one of the prisoners. He said that he was 
 fifty years old and had been a brother of the Order for 
 twenty. The clerk of the court read over the list of 
 crimes with which the Order was charged. He turned 
 pale; he struck his breast; he raised his hand to the 
 altar; he dropped on his knees. On peril of liis soul, 
 he said, on peril of all the punishments denounced on 
 perjury, praying that if he was not speaking truth the 
 ground might open and he might go down quick into 
 hell, those charges were all false. He allowed that he 
 had confessed on the rack. He had been taken to St, 
 Antoine the evening before. He had seen his fifty-four 
 brethren brought in carts and thro^wn into the flame.'?. 
 He had been in such fear that he doubted if he himself 
 could endure to be so handled. With such an end 
 before him, he might say if he was brought again before 
 the bishops, and they required it of him, that ho had 
 not only denied his Lord, but had murdered him. He 
 implored the judges to keep to themselves what he was 
 then saying. If the Archbishop got hold of it, he would 
 be burnt like the rest. 
 
 The terror had cut deep. The Pope's comniissioners 
 had neither the courage to adopt the Archbishop's
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 301 
 
 methods nor to repudiate and disown them. They 
 sent to him to say that they must suspend their sit- 
 tings. He answered scornfully that they might do as 
 they pleased. He and his suffragans had met to finish 
 the process against the Templars, and they intended to 
 do it, A few more victims were sacrificed. The rest 
 of the knights, who had offered to speak before the 
 commissioners, were naturally silent. The commis- 
 sioners could not help them. They withdrew their 
 defence, and the commission was adjourned till the 
 following November. 
 
 The tragic story was now winding up. When 
 November came the court sate again, reduced in 
 number and reduced to a form. The duty of it thence- 
 forward was simply to hear such of the Order as had 
 been broken into submission, and were willing to 
 repeat the story which had been thrust into their 
 mouths, with such details as imagination or reality 
 could add to it. I do not suppose that the accusations 
 were absolutely without foundation. Very often the 
 witnesses seemed to be relating things which they 
 really remembered. The Templars were a secret 
 society, and secret societies have often forms of initia- 
 tion which once had a meaning, with an afifectation of 
 solemnity and mysticism. I am not a Freemason. 
 Many of you no doubt are. I have heard that the 
 ceremonies of that Order, though perfectly innocent, are 
 of a kind which malice or ignorance might misinterpret, 
 if there was an object in bringing the Freemasons into 
 disrepute. You know best if that is so. Somewhere
 
 303 T[fE TEMPLARS. 
 
 ;il»iu;ul 1 warf myself ouce iulniitted into a mysterious 
 brotlicrliood. I was sworn to secrecy, and therefore I 
 can tell you little about it. I was led throut^li a narrow 
 passage into a vast darkened liall, where some hundred 
 dim, lialf-sccn figures were sitting in silence. I was 
 taken to a table in the middle with a single candle on 
 it. There — but my revelations must end. I could 
 have believed myself before the famous Vehni Gericht. 
 The practices alleged against the Templars as crimes 
 were in fact most of them innocent. They were 
 accused of worshipping a skull ; some said it had jewels 
 in its eyes, some that it had none. An accidental 
 question brought out that it Avas a relic ui an Eastern 
 saint, such as any Catholic might treat with reverence. 
 The officers of the Order were accused of hearing con- 
 fessions and giving priestly absolution, and this was a 
 deadly offence. By the rules of the Order the lay 
 superiors were directed to hear confessions and inflict 
 penance, but were forbidden to absolve. Confusion 
 might easily have arisen. 
 
 The Novices were said to receive licenses to commit 
 an abominable sin, yet there was scarcely a single knight 
 who could be brought to say that he had even heard of 
 such a sin being committed. 
 
 The spitting on the cross and the denial of Christ 
 are less easy to explain. Thousands of the knights 
 absolutely denied that such outrages were ever seen or 
 heard of, yet a great many did with considerable con- 
 sistency describe a singular ceremony of that kind. It 
 has been supposed that the Templars by their long
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 303 
 
 residence in Syria had ceased to be Christians, and had 
 adopted Eastern heresies, that they were Gnostics, 
 Manichees, or I know not what. This is a guess, and 
 I do not think a likely one. They were mere soldiers. 
 They were never a learned Order. They left no books 
 behind them, or writings of any kind. The services in 
 the Templars' chinches were conducted with peculiar 
 propriety. Every witness declared that the very crosses 
 which they said had been spit upon were treated after- 
 wards with the deepest reverence. Nor was there 
 really any attempt at concealment. Those who had 
 been frightened at the forms of initiation were told to 
 go and confess to secular priests in the neighbourhood. 
 Several instances of such confessions were produced. 
 The confessors sometimes had treated what they heard 
 as of no consequence. They had satisfied their peni- 
 tents' consciences, not always in the same way. One 
 said that the spitting on the cross was meant as a trial 
 of constancy. The Saracens if they were taken prisoners 
 would require them to deny Christ or be killed. The 
 officers of the Order vv'anted to see how they would abide 
 the test. Another said it was a trial of obedience. 
 The Novice swore to obey his superiors in all things 
 without exception. The spitting on tlie cross may have 
 been the severest trial which could be imagined. In no 
 instances at all was it ever suggested that the forms of 
 initiation pointed to any real impiety. 
 
 So strange a tale is not likely to have rested upon 
 nothing. I suppose the custom may have varied in 
 different houses. Men are men, and may not have been
 
 304 THE TEMPI. ARS. 
 
 iiniforinly wise. But the more one reads the evidence 
 the plainer it becomes that the confessions, and even 
 the teiius of them, were arranged beforeliand. Tiie 
 witnesses produced after the commission met again told 
 one tale. If they ever varied from it they were brought 
 swiftly back into harmony. Sir John de Pollencourt 
 gave the stereotyped answer. He had spat on the 
 cross. He had dune this and tliat; but we read in the 
 Record : The commissioners, seeing him pale and terri- 
 fied, bade him for his soul's welfare speak the truth, 
 whatever it might be. He need not fear. They would 
 tell no one what he might say. He hesitated ; then, on 
 his oath, he declared that lie had spoken falsely. He 
 had not denied Christ. He had not spat on the cross. 
 He had not received license to sin. He had confessed 
 before the bishops in fear of death, and because his 
 fellow-prisoners said that they would be killed unless 
 they admitted what the bishops required. 
 
 The commissioners were not as secret as they pro- 
 mised to be. Sir John de Pollencourt was made to 
 know behind the scenes what would happen to him if 
 he was not submissive. Accordingly, four days after, 
 the same witness was brought in again, withdrew his 
 denial and again confessed. It is easy to see what had 
 happened in the interval. 
 
 So handled, the rest of the process w^ent on smoothly. 
 Parties of knights who had escaped the torture-cham- 
 bers of the bishops and thus had not been forced into 
 confession continued to speak out. On one occasion 
 twenty or thirty appeared in a body, and pointed to the
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 305 
 
 red crosses broidered on their clothes. That cross, they 
 said, signified that they would shed their blood for their 
 Redeemer. If, as they were told, their Grand Master 
 had confessed that they had denied Christ, or if any of 
 their brethren had confessed it, they had lied in their 
 throats, to the peril of their own souls. But the mass 
 of the knights had by this time abandoned their cause 
 as hopeless. By the end of nine months a sufficient 
 number of so-called confessions had been repeated 
 before the commissioners to satisfy the Pope's scruples. 
 The commissioners were themselves only too eager to 
 wind up the scandalous inquiry. Not so much as an 
 effort had been made to discover the real truth. The 
 result was a foregone conclusion, and every utterance 
 which could interfere with it had been stifled by cord 
 or fire. The report was sent to Clement. A council of 
 bishops was called together. It was laid before them 
 and accepted as conclusive. The Order of the Templars 
 was pronounced to have disgraced itself, and was sup- 
 pressed. The sinning knights were scattered about the 
 world — some went back to the world — some became 
 Benedictines or Cistercians. Some gave their swords 
 and services to secular princes, having had enough of 
 the Church. Some disappeared into their families. 
 Their estates the Pope had insisted must be reserved 
 to the Church, and were nominally given to the 
 Knights Hospitallers. But the King extorted such an 
 enormous fine from them that the Hospitallers gained 
 "little by their rivals' overthrow. 
 
 The Grand Master's end remains to be told. The
 
 3o6 THF. TEMPLARS. 
 
 coufessions wliiili liu mid tliix-e uf the head preceptors 
 were alleged to have made are extant, and resembled 
 the rest, but we liave seen how lie behaved when the 
 confession attributed to himself was read over to him 
 before the commissioners. He had appealed to the 
 Pope, but without effect, and had been left willi the 
 three preceptors in prison. When the edict fur the 
 suppression was issued, and the other knights were 
 dismissed, De Molay and his companions were sentenced 
 to perpetual confinement. But the world was after all 
 less satisfied of the Templars' guilt than Philip could 
 have wished, and in some way or other it was necessary 
 to convince the public that the Grand Master's confession 
 was genuine. 
 
 The bull of suppression was to be read aloud to the 
 people of Paris. It was brought up with special solem- 
 nity by a bishop and a cardinal, and De Molay and the 
 others were to be publicly shown upon a stage on the 
 occasion. On March i8, 13 14, a platform had been 
 erectod in one of the squares, with chairs of state for 
 the cardinal, the Archbishop of Sens, and other dis- 
 tinguished persons. The Grand Master and his com- 
 rades were produced and were placed where the world 
 could see them. The cardinal rose to read the sentence. 
 When he came to the list of enormities of which, as the 
 bull alleged, the Templars had been found guilty, and 
 when the Grand Master heard it stated that he had 
 himself admitted the charges to be true, he rose up, and 
 in a loud voice which everyone could hear, he ciied out 
 lliai it was false.
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 307 
 
 IMiilij) himself was not present, but he was iu Paris 
 aiul not far off. Word was brought him of the Grand 
 Master's contumacy. Not troubling himself with forms 
 of law, he ordered that the Grand Master should be 
 instantly burnt, and his provincials along witli him, 
 unless they saved themselves by submission. Two of 
 them, Sir Hugh von Peyraud and Geoffrey de Gonville, 
 gave in and were sent back to their dungeons. De 
 Molay and the third were carried directly to the island 
 in the Seine, and were burnt the same evening in the 
 light of the setting sun. 
 
 In his end, like Samson, De Molay pulled down the 
 fabric of the prosecution. There was thenceforward a 
 universal conviction that the Templars had been unjustly 
 dealt with. The popular feeling shaped itself into a 
 tradition (possibly it was a real fact), that as the flames 
 were choking him, the last Grand Master summoned 
 the Pope and the King to meet him before the tribunal 
 of God. Clement died in agony a few weeks after. A 
 little later Philip the Beautiful was flung by a vicious 
 horse, and he too went to his account. 
 
 A very few words will tell now how the Templars 
 fared in the rest of Europe. There was no real belief iu 
 their guilt ; but their estates had been given to them 
 for a purpose which no longer existed. They were rich, 
 and they had nothing to do. They were an anachron- 
 ism and a dnnger. When the Pope agreed to their 
 suppression, there was no motive to resist the Pope's 
 decision; and they did not attempt to resist it them- 
 selves. Nothing is more remarkable in the wliole stury
 
 jo8 THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 ili.iii the almost universal acquiescence of an armed 
 and disciplined body of men in the Pope's judgment. 
 They had been trained to obedience. The Pope had 
 been their sovereign. The Pope wished that they 
 should cease to exist ; and they fell to pieces without a 
 word, unless it were to protest their innocence of the 
 crimes of which they were accused. 
 
 In England Philip's charges had at first been 
 received with resentful incredulity, but neither king, nor 
 peers, nor Church had any motive to maintain the 
 Templars after the Pope had spoken. For form's sake 
 there was an investigation on the lines of the French 
 interrogatories, but there was no torture or cruelty. 
 They knew that they Avere to go, and that they would 
 be dealt with generously. The process was a curious 
 one. As a body the English Templars stated that the 
 forms of admission to the Order were, as far as they 
 knew, uniform. What was done in one houec was done 
 in all. If any of the brethren liked to depose to this or 
 til at ceremony being observed they Avould not contra- 
 dict them, and thus the difficulty was got over. A 
 certain number of knights were ready to give the 
 necessary evidence. Some hundreds of outside persons, 
 ch icily monks or secular priests, deposed to popular 
 rumours, conversations, and suchlike, names not given; a 
 certain person heard another person say this and that. 
 What was got at in tliis way was often not dreadful. A 
 pirceptor in Lincolnshire had been heard to maintain 
 that 'men died as animals died'; therefore, it might 
 be inferred that he did not believe in immortality.
 
 THE TEMPLARS. 309 
 
 Templars sometimes had crosses worked into their 
 drawers; therefore they were in the habit of sitting 
 upon tlie cross. The English evidence threw light 
 often on the manners of the age, but I cannot go into 
 that. I have tried your patience too long already. I 
 will, therefore, sum up briefly. 
 
 When all is said the story is a strange one, and I 
 cannot pretend to leave it clear of doubt. But no 
 lawyer, no sensible man, can accept as conclusive evidence 
 mere answers to interrogatories extorted by torture and 
 the threat of death. A single denial made under such 
 circumstances is worth a thousand assents dragged out 
 by rack and gibbet. If the Order had really been as 
 guilty as was pretended, some of the knights at least 
 would have confessed on their death-beds. Not one 
 such confession was ever produced, while the dying 
 protestations of innocence were all suppressed. The 
 King and the Inquisitors force us into incredulity by 
 their own unscrupulous ferocity. It is likely enough 
 that, like other Orders, the Templars had ceremonies, 
 perhaps not very wise, intended to impress the imagin- 
 ation, but that those ceremonies were intentionally 
 un-Christian or diabolical, I conceive to be entirely 
 unproved. They fell partly because they were rich, 
 partly for political reasons, which, for all I know, may 
 have been good and sound ; but the act of accusation 
 I regard as a libel invented to justify the arbitrary 
 destruction of a body which, if not loved, was at least 
 admired for its services to Christendom. 
 
 It remains only to emphasise the moral that
 
 3IO THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 mstitutions ran only be kept alive wliilc they answer 
 tlic end for wliidi thoy were created. Nature will n<.t 
 tolerate tliem longer, and in one way or another shakes 
 Ihem down. The Templars had come into existence t<j 
 li'^'ht the infidels in Palestine. Palestine was abandoned 
 to the infidels, and the Templars were neetled no longer. 
 They were outwardly strong as ever, brave, organised, 
 and in character unblcmishcil, but the purpose of them 
 being gone, they were swept away by a hurricane. So 
 it is with all human organisations. They grow out of 
 man's necessities, and are mortal as men are. Empires, 
 monarchies, aristocracies, guilds, orders, societies, reli- 
 gious creeds, rise in the same way, and in the same way 
 disappear when they stand in the way of othei things. 
 
 But mankind arc mean creatures. When they 
 destroy these creations of theirs they paint them in the 
 blackest colours to excuse their own violence. The 
 black colours in which Philip the Beautiful and his 
 bi.-.ho[)s were pleased to paint the Templars will, per- 
 haps, if history cares to trouble itself about the matter, 
 be found to attach rather to the extraordinary men 
 calling themselves successors of the Apostles who racked 
 and roasted them. 
 
 You in Scotland found no great reason to love 
 bishops, and the history of the Templars does not 
 increase our affection for them.
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 ON June 30, 1 88 1, we sailed from Southampton 
 Water in the steam yacht ' Severn ' to spend ten 
 weeks in the Norway Fjords — Fjords or Friths, for the 
 word is the same. The Scandinavian children of the 
 sea carried their favourite names witli them. Frith is 
 Fjord ; our Cumberland Scale Force would be called 
 Scale Foss between the North Cape and the Baltic. 
 The yacht was sjDacious ; over 300 tons. Cabins, equip- 
 ments, enfjines, captain, steward, crew the best of their 
 kind. Our party was small ; only four in all. My 
 
 friend, whose guest I was, and whom I shall call D , 
 
 two ladies, and myself D had furnished himself 
 
 with such knowledge as Avas attainable in London, for 
 the scenes which we were to explore. He had studied 
 Norse. He could speak it : he could understand and 
 be understood. He was a sportsman, but a sportsman 
 only as subsidiary to more rational occupations. He 
 was going to Norway to catch salmonidae : not, however, 
 to catch them only, but to study the varieties of that 
 most complicated order of fish. He was going also 
 to geologise and to botanise, to examine rocks and
 
 312 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 rivers and glaciers and flowers; wliile all of us were 
 moaning to acquaint ourselves as far as we could 
 with the human specimens still to be found in the 
 crater of the old volcano from which those shiploads of 
 murdering ' Danes ' poured out ten centuries ago to 
 change the face of Europe. 
 
 And to see Norway, the real Norway, within moder- 
 ate compass of time is possible only with such means as 
 a steam-yacht provides. There are great lines of road 
 in Norway along the practicable routes, but very few 
 rtrc practicable ; nine- tenths of the country, and the 
 most interesting parts, are so walled off by mountains, 
 are so intrenched among the fjords, as to be for ever 
 unapproachable by land, while the water highways 
 lead everywhere — magnificent canals, fashioned by the 
 elemental forces, who can say how or when ? 
 
 From the west coast there run inland with a general 
 easterly direction ten or twelve main channels of sea, 
 penetrating from fifty to a hundred miles into the very 
 heart of the Northern Peninsula. They are of vast 
 depth, and from half a mile to two miles broad. The 
 mountains rise on both sides sheer from the water's 
 edge ; the lower ranges densely timbered with pine and 
 birch and alder. Above these belts of forest soar 
 ranges of lofty peaks, five or six thousand feet up, the 
 snow lying thick upon them in the midst of summer, 
 glaciers oozing down the gorges, like catai'acts arrested 
 in their fall by the Frost Enchanter, motionless, yet 
 with the form of motion. From the snow, from the ice 
 when the glaciers reach a warmer level, melt streams
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 313 
 
 which swell at noon, as tlie sun grows hot, descend in 
 never-ending waterfalls, cascade upon cascade, through 
 the ravines which they have cut for themselves in 
 millions of years. In the evening they dwindle away, 
 and at night fall silent as the frost resumes its power. 
 
 From the great central fjords branches strike out 
 right and left, some mere inlets ending after a few miles, 
 some channels which connect one iQord with another. 
 The surface of Norway, as it is shown flat upon a chart, 
 is lined and intersected by these waterways as the sur- 
 face of England is by railways. The scenery, though 
 for ever changing, changes like the pattern of a kaleido- 
 scope, tlie same materials readjusted in varying com- 
 binations ; the same great rivers of sea- water, the same 
 mountain walls, the same ice and snow on the summits, 
 the same never-ending pines and birches, with an 
 emerald carpet between the stems where in summer 
 the universal whortleberry hides the stones under the 
 most brilliant green. The short fjords and the large 
 are identical in general features, save that, lying at 
 right angles to the prevailing winds, the surface of 
 these lateral waters is usually undisturbed by a single 
 ripple ; the clouds may be racing over the high ridges, 
 but down below no breath can reach. Hence the light 
 is undispersed. The eye, instead of meeting anywhere 
 with white water, sees only rocks, woods, and cataracts 
 reversed as in a looking-glass. This extreme stillness 
 and the optical results of it, arc the cause, I suppose, of 
 the gloom of Norwegian landscape-painting. 
 
 How these ^ords were formed is, I believe, as yet
 
 314 TIIR NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 undctormiii'il. Wuk'i li;is f'lirruwcfl the .suiTare of the 
 v^lobe into many a singular shape; water, wo are toM, 
 cut, out llio long gorge below Niagara; but water, act- 
 ing as we now know it, scarcely scooped out of the 
 hardest known rock those multitudinous fissures so 
 uniform in character between walls which pierce the 
 higher strata of the cloa<ls, between cliffs which in some 
 places rise, as in the Geiranger, perpendicular for a 
 thousand feet; the fjords themselves of such extra- 
 ordinary depth, and deepest always when furthest from 
 the sea. Whore they enter the Atlantic, there is bottom 
 generally in a hundred fathoms. In the Sogne, a 
 hundred miles inland, you find 700 fathoms. Rivers 
 cutting their way through rock and soil could never 
 have achieved such work as this. Ice is a mighty 
 thaumaturgist, and ice has been busy enough in Norway. 
 The fjords were once filled with ice up to a certain 
 level ; the level to which it rose can be traced on the 
 sharp angles ground off the rounded stone, and the 
 scores of the glacier plane on the polished slabs of gneiss 
 or granite. But at some hundreds of feet above the 
 present water-line the ice action ends, and cliffs and 
 crags are scarred and angular and weather-splintered 
 to where they are lost in the eternal snow. The vast 
 moraines which occasionally block the valleys toll the 
 same story. The largest that I saw was between four 
 and five hundred feet high, and we have to account for 
 chasms which, if we add the depth of the water to the 
 height of the mountains above it, are 9000 feet from 
 tiio bottom to the mountain crest.
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 315 
 
 The appearance of Norway is precisely what it would 
 have been if the surface had cracked when cooling into 
 a thousand fissures, longitudinal and diagonal, if these 
 fissures had at one time boon filled with sea-water, at 
 another with ice, and the sides above the point to which 
 the ice could rise had been chipped and torn and weather- 
 worn by rain and frost througli endless ages. Whether 
 this is, in fact, the explanation of their form, philoso- 
 phers will in good time assure themselves ; meantime, 
 this is what they are outwardly like, which for present 
 purposes is all that need be required. 
 
 A country so organised can be traversed in no way 
 so conveniently as by a steam-yacht, which carries the 
 four-and- twenty winds in its boiler. It is not the 
 romance of yachting; and the steamer, beside the grace- 
 ful schooner with its snowy canvas, seems prosaic and 
 mechanical. The schooner does well in the open water 
 with free air and sea room ; but let no schooner venture 
 into the Norway fjords, where slant winds come not by 
 which you can make a course by a long reach, where 
 there is either a glassy calm or a wind blowing up or 
 down. If you reached the end of the Sogne you might 
 spend a season in beating back to the sea, and, except 
 in some few spots where you might not be able to go, 
 you cannot so much as anchor on account of the depth 
 of water. Shut in among these mountains, you may 
 drift becalmed in a sailing-yacht for weeks togethei-, 
 while to a steamer the course is as easy and sure as to 
 a carriage on a turnpike road. Your yacht is your 
 house; like a wishing carpet, it transports you whev'
 
 3ifi THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 evur you please to go, and is liere and there and any- 
 where. You note your position on the chart ; you scan 
 it witli tiie sense that the world of Norway is all before 
 you to go where you like ; you choose your next anchor- 
 ing-place ; you point it out to the pilot ; you know your 
 speed — there is no night in the summer months — you 
 dine ; you smoke your evening cigar ; you go to your 
 berth ; you find yourself at breakfast in your new 
 surroundings. 
 
 So then, on that June evening, we steamed out of 
 the Solent. Our speed in smooth water was ten knots; 
 our distance from Udsire Light, for which our course 
 was laid, was 700 miles. It was calm and cloudless, 
 but unusually cold. When night brought the stars we 
 saw the comet high above us, the tail of him pointing 
 straight away from the sun, as if the head was a lens 
 through which the sun's rays lighted the atoms of ether 
 behind it. Sleep, which had grown fitful in the London 
 season, came back to us at once in our berths unscared 
 by the grinding of the screw. We woke fresh and 
 elastic when the decks were washed. The floors of the 
 cabins lifted on hinges, and below were baths into which 
 the sea-water poured till we could float in it. When w^e 
 came up and looked about us we were running past the 
 North Foreland. With the wind aft and the water 
 smooth we sped on. I lay all the morning on a sofa 
 in the deck cabin, and smoked and read Xenophon's 
 ' Memorabilia.* So one day passed, and then another. 
 On the evening of July 2 we passed through a fleet of 
 English trawlers, a few units of the ten thousand feeders
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 317 
 
 of the London stomach, the four million human beings 
 within the bills of mortality whom the world combines 
 to nourish. We were doing two hundred miles a day. 
 The calm continued, and the ladies so far had suffered 
 nothing. There was no motion save the never-resting 
 heave of the ocean swell. Homer had observed that 
 long undulation ; Ulysses felt it when coming back from 
 Hades to Circe's island. The thing is the same, though 
 the word ' ocean ' has changed its meaning. To Homer 
 Ocean was a river which ran past the grove of Proser- 
 pine. It was not till the ship had left the river mouth 
 for the open sea that she lifted on the wave.^ 
 
 On the third afternoon the weather changed. The 
 cold of the high latitude drove us into our winter 
 clothes. The wind rose from the north-west, bringing 
 thick rain with it, and a heavy beam sea. The yacht 
 rolled 20° each way. Long steamers, without sails to 
 steady them, always do roll, but our speed was not 
 altered. We passed XJdsire Light on the 3rd, at seven 
 in the evening, and then groped our way slowly, for, 
 though there was no longer any night, we could see 
 little for fog and mist. At last we picked up a pilot, 
 who brought us safely into the roadstead at Bergen, 
 where we were to begin our acquaintance with Norway. 
 Bergen stands fifteen miles inland, with three fjords 
 leading to it, built on a long tongue of rock between 
 two inlets, and overhung witli mountains. There is a 
 
 ' Al/rap \.Tlll TTOTUfloio XlVfl' f)6oV 'HKKlt'olo 
 
 titjv^, (iTTo 0' 'iKtTO Kuna 9a\d<Ta))<; tvfjvnopuio. 
 
 Odyssey, xii. i, 2.
 
 31 8 -niE NON WAY FJORDS. 
 
 •^Toat trade llicif, oliicHy in salt lisli, I bulievu — any 
 way the forty thousand inhabitants seemed, fiuui the 
 stir on .shore and iu the harbour, to have plenty to 
 occupy them. We lauded and walked round. There 
 are no liandsome houses, but no beggars and no signs 
 of poverty. ' You have poor here,' I said to a coal 
 merchant, who had come on board for orders, and could 
 speak English. 'Poor?' he said; 'yes, many; not, of 
 course, such poor as you have in England. Every one 
 has enough to eat.' To our sensations it was extremely 
 cold ; cold as an English January. But cold and heat 
 are relative terms; and an English January miglit seem 
 like summer after Arctic winters. The Bergen people 
 took it to be summer, for we found a public garden 
 where a band played ; and there were chairs and tables 
 for colTce out of doors. Trees and shrubs were acclima- 
 tised. Lilacs, acacias, and horse-chestnuts were in 
 flower. There were roses in bud, and the gardeners 
 were planting out geraniums. We saw the fish market ; 
 cvcrysvliere a curious place, for you sec there the fish 
 that are caught, the fishermen who catch them, with 
 their boats and gear, the market women, and the 
 citizens who come to buy. It is all fish in Bergen. 
 The telegrams on the wall in the Bourse tell you only 
 how fish are going in Holland and Denmark, The talk 
 is of fish. On the rocks outside the town stand huge 
 ricks, looking like bean-stacks, but they are of dried 
 cod and ling. The streets and squares smell of fish. 
 A steamer bound for Hull lay close to us in the road- 
 stead ; which to leeward might liave been winded for
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 31$ 
 
 a mile. Lads stagger about the streets cased between 
 a pair of lialibutSj like the Chelsea paupers between two 
 advertisement boards inviting us to vote for Sir Charles 
 Dilke at an election. Still, exceistiug the odours, we 
 liked Bergen well. You never hear the mendicant 
 whine there. Those northern peoj^le know how to 
 work and take care of themselves, and loafers can find 
 no living amontr them. I do not know whether there 
 is so much as a beggar in the whole town. They are 
 quiet, simple, industrious folk, who mind their own 
 business. For politics they care little as yet, not sup- 
 posing that on this road is any kind of salvation for 
 them, though, perhaps, their time will come. They are 
 Lutherans ; universally Lutherans. It is the national 
 religion, and they are entirely satisfied with it. Pro- 
 testant dissent is never heard of. There is a Catholic 
 church in Bergen for the foreign sailors, but I doubt if 
 the priests have converted a single Norwegian. They 
 are a people already moderately well-to-do in body and 
 mind, and do not need anything which the priests could 
 give them. The intellectual essentials are well looked 
 after — the schools are good, and well attended. The 
 Bergen museum is a model on a small scale of what a 
 local museum ought to be, an epitome of Norway itself 
 past and present. Perhaps there is not another in 
 Europe so excellent of its kind. In the gallery of an- 
 tiquities there is the Norway of the sea kings, Runic 
 tablets and inscriptions, chain armour, swords and clubs 
 ■* and battleaxcs, pots of earthenwnre, stone knives and 
 hammers of a still earlier a<re. There are t)ie traces
 
 320 'HIE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 of their marauding expeditious, Greek and Italian 
 statuettes, rings, chains, bracelets, and drinking-cups, 
 one or two of these last especially curious, for glass was 
 rare and precious when they were made or mended. 
 The glass of one has been broken, and has been pieced 
 with silver. These obviously were the spoils of some 
 cruise in the Mediterranean, and there is old church 
 plate among them which also tells its story. By the 
 side of these arc the implements of the Norsemen's 
 other trade — fishing : specimens of nets, lines, hooks, 
 spears and harpoons, for whale and walrus, and cross- 
 bows, the barbed arrow having a line attached to it for 
 shooting seals. In the galleries above is a eery complete 
 collection of the Scandinavian mammalia — wolves, bears, 
 lynxes, foxes, whales, seals, and sea-horses, every kind 
 of fish, every bird, land or water, all perfectly well classi- 
 fied, labelled, and looked after. Superior persons are 
 in charge of it, who can hold their own with the leading 
 naturalists of France or England ; and all this is main- 
 tained at a modest cost by the Bergen corporation. 
 
 The houses are plain, but clean ; no dirt is visible 
 anywhere, and there is one sure sign of a desire to 
 make life graceful. The hardiest flowers only will grow 
 out of doors, but half the windows in the town are filled 
 with myrtles, geraniums, or carnations. With the people 
 themselves we had little opportunity of acquaintance ; 
 but one evening, the second after our arrival, we were 
 on deck after dinner between ten and eleven in the 
 evening. The sunshine was still on the hills. Though 
 chilly to us, the air was warm to Bergen ; the bay was
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 321 
 
 covered with boats ; family groups of citizens out enjoy- 
 ing themselves ; music floating on the water and songs 
 made sweet by distance. Others were anchored fishing. 
 
 D rowed me out in the yacht's punt to a point half 
 
 a mile distant. We brought up at an oar's length from 
 some young ladies with a youth in charge of them. 
 Some question asked as an excuse for conversation was 
 politely answered. One of them spoke excellent Eng- 
 lish ; she was a lively, clever girl, had been in Ireland, 
 and was quick with repartee, well bred and refined. 
 Their manners were faultless, but they fished as if they 
 had been bred to the trade. They had oilskin aprons 
 to save their dresses, and they pulled up their fish and 
 handled their knives and baits like professionals. 
 
 Our first taste of Norway, notwitlistanding the per- 
 fume of salt ling, was very pleasant ; but we had far to 
 go — as far as Lofoden if we could manage it — and we 
 might not loiter. We left Bergen on tlie 6th with a 
 local pilot. Trondhjem or Drouth eim was the next 
 point where we were to expect letters, and two courses 
 lead to it — either by the open sea outside the shoals and 
 islands, or inland by the network of fjords, longer but 
 infinitely the most interesting, with the further merit 
 of water perfectly smooth. We started at six in the 
 morning and fiew on rapidly among tortuous channels, 
 now sweeping through a passage scarcely wider than 
 the yacht's length, now bursting into an archipelago of 
 islets. The western coast of Norway is low and level — 
 '*a barren undulating country, with the sea flowing freely 
 through the hollows. Here and there are green patches
 
 322 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 lit incailuw with ;i lew trees, wlierc tlieie would be a 
 bunilcr'sor ycoiiian's larm. Prettily painted lighthouses 
 with tlieir red roofs marked our course for us, and a girl 
 ur two would come out upon the balconies to look at us 
 as we ruslied by within a gun-shot. Eider-ducks flaslied 
 out of the water, the father of the family as usual tlic 
 first to fly, and leaving wife and children to take care of 
 tiicmsclvcs. Fisliing-boats crossed us at intervals, and 
 now and then a whale spouted : other signs of life there 
 were none. Towards midday we entered the Sognc 
 Fjord; we turned eastward towards the great mountain 
 ranges ; and, as in the fairy talc the rock opens to the 
 lOnchanted Prince, and he finds himself amidst gardens 
 and palaces, so, as we ran on seemingly upon an im- 
 penetrable wall, cliff and crag fell apart, and we entered 
 on what might be described as an infinite extension of 
 Loch Lomond, save only that the mountains were far 
 grander, the slopes more densely wooded, and that, far 
 up, we were looking on the everlasting snow, or the 
 green srlitter of the glaciers. 
 
 On either side of us, as we steamed on, we crossed 
 the mouths of other fjords, lateral branches precisely 
 like the parent trunk, penetrating, as we could see upon 
 our chart, for tens of miles. Norse history grew intel- 
 ligible as we looked at them. Here were the hiding- 
 places where the vikings, wickelings, hole-and-cornei 
 pirates, ran in with their spoils ; and here was the ex- 
 jtlanation of their roving lives. The few spots where a 
 family can sustain itself on the soil are scattered at 
 intervals of leagues. The woods ai'e silent and desolate ;
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. .323 
 
 v.'ild animals of any kind wc never saw : Imnting there 
 could have been none. The bears have increased since 
 the farming introduced sheep ; but a thousand years ago, 
 save a few reindeer and a few grouse and ptarmigan, 
 there was nothing which would feed either bear or man. 
 Few warm-blooded creatures, furred or feathered, can 
 endure the winter cold, A population cannot live by 
 fish alone, and thus the Norsemen became rovers by 
 necessity, and when summer came they formed in fleets 
 and went south to seek their sustenance. The pine 
 forests were their arsenal ; their vessels were the best 
 and fastest in the world ; the water was their only 
 road ; they were boatmen and seamen by second nature, 
 and the sea-coasts within reach of a summer outing were 
 their natural prey. 
 
 We were bound for Trondhjem, but we intended to 
 stop occasionally on the way, and see what deserved to 
 be seen. We were looking for an anchoring-place where 
 there was a likelihood of fishing ; and we had seen an 
 inlet on the chart, turning out of the Sogne, which seemed 
 promising. At the upper end two rivers appeared to run 
 into it out of freshwater lakes close by ; conditions likely 
 to yield salmon. It was our first experiment, A chart 
 is flat. Imagination, unenlightened by experience, had 
 pictured the fjord ending in level meadows, manageable 
 streams winding through them, and, beyond, perhaps some 
 Rydal or Grasmere lying tranquil among its hills. The 
 pilot said that he knew the place, but could give us no 
 description of it. Anticipation generally makes mistakes 
 on such occasions, but never were fact and fancy moi'e
 
 ^24 rilE NO N WAY FJORDS. 
 
 startliiigly ;it variance. Lonl Salisbury advised people 
 to study geography on large maps. Flat charts are more 
 convenient than models of a country in relief, btit they 
 are trcacliorous mislcadors. Grand as the Sugnc had 
 been, the inlet into which we were now striking was 
 grander still. The forests on the shores were denser, the 
 slopes steeper, the cliffs and peaks soaring up in more 
 stupendous majesty. We ran on thus for eight or ten 
 miles ; then, turning round a projecting spur, we found 
 ourselves in a landlocked estuary smooth as a mirror, 
 the mountains on one side of it beautiful in evening 
 sunlight, on the other darkening the water with their 
 green purple shadows ; at the far extremity, which was 
 still five miles from us, a broad white line showed, 
 instead of our ' meadow stream,' a mighty torrent pour- 
 ing in a cataract over the face of a precipice into the 
 sea. 
 
 At the foot of this fall, not three liundred yards 
 from it (no bottom was to be found at a greater distance) 
 we anchored half-an-hour later, and looked about us. 
 We were in the heart of a primitive Norwegian valley, 
 buried among mountains so lofty and so unbroken that 
 no road had ever entered, or could enter, it. It was the 
 first of many which we saw afterwards of the same type, 
 and one description will serve for all. 
 
 We were in a circular basin at the head of the fjord. 
 In i'iout of us was a river as large as the Clyde rushing 
 out of a chasm a thousand feet above us, and plunging 
 down in boiling foam. Above this chasm, and inac- 
 cessible, was one of the lakes which we had seen on the
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 325 
 
 chart, and in wliich we had expected to catch salmon. 
 The mountains round were, as usual, covered with wood. 
 At the foot of the fall, and worked by part of it, was a 
 large saw-mill with its adjoining sheds and buildings. 
 The pines were cut as they were wanted, floated to the 
 mill and made into planks, vessels coming at intervals 
 to take them away. The Norwegians are accused of 
 wasting their forests with these mills. We could see no 
 signs of it. In tlie first place, the sides of the fjords 
 are so steep that the trees can be got at only in com^ 
 paratively few places. When they can be got at, there 
 is no excessive destruction ; more pines are annually 
 swept away by avalanches than are consumed by all the 
 mills in Norway ; and the quantity is so enormous that 
 the amount which men can use is no more likely to 
 exhaust it than the Loch Fyne fishermen are likely 1o 
 exhaust the herring shoals. 
 
 On the other side of the basin where we lay was the 
 domain of the owner of the mill. Though the fjord 
 ended, the great ravine in which it was formed stretched, 
 as we could see, a couple of miles further, but had been 
 blocked by a moraine. The moraines, being formed of 
 loose soil and stones deposited by ice in the glacial 
 period, are available for cultivation, and are indeed 
 excellent land. There were forty or fifty acres of grass 
 laid up for hay, a few acres of potatoes, a red-roofed 
 sunny farmhouse with large outbuildings, carts and 
 iiorses moving about, poultry crowing, cattle grazing, a 
 boathouse and platform where a couple of lighters were 
 unloading. Here was the house of a substantial, pros-
 
 22f> THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 perous fanner. His nearest neighbour must have beeu 
 twelve miles from him. He, his children, and farm- 
 servants were tlie sole occupants of the valley. The 
 saw-mill was theirs; the boats were theirs; their own 
 hands supplied everything that was wanted. They were 
 their own carpenters, smiths, masons, and glaziers ; they 
 sheared their own sheep, spun and dyed their own wool, 
 wove their own cloth, and cut and sewed their own 
 dresses. It was a true specimen of primitive Norwegian 
 life complete in itself — of peaceful, quiet, self-sufficient, 
 prosperous industry. 
 
 The snake that spoiled Paradise had doubtless found 
 its way into Nord Gulen (so our valley was named) as 
 into other places, but a softer, sweeter-looking spot we 
 had none of us ever seen. It was seven in the eveniucj 
 when we anchored ; a skifif came otf, rowed by a couple of 
 plain stout girls with offers of eggs and milk. Fishing- 
 lines were brought out as soon as the anchor was down. 
 Tlie surface water was fresh, and icy cold as coming out 
 of the near glaciers ; but it was salt a few fathoms down, 
 and almost immediately we had a basket of dabs and 
 whiting. 
 
 After dinner, at nine o'clock, with the sun still 
 
 shining, D and I went ashore with our trout rods. 
 
 We climbed the moraine, and a narrow lake lay spread 
 out before us, perfectly still, the sides steep, in many 
 places precipitous, trees growing wherever a root could 
 strike. Tiie lake was three miles long, and seemed to 
 end against the foot of a range of mountains 5000 feet 
 high, the peaks of which, thickly covered with snow,
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 327 
 
 were flushed with the crimson light of the evening. The 
 surface of the water was spotted with rings where the 
 trout were rising. One of the fanner's boys, who had 
 followed us, offered his boat. It was of native manu- 
 facture, and not particularly watertight, but wo stowed 
 ourselves, one in the bow and the other in the stern. 
 The boy had never seen such rods as ours ; he looked 
 incredulously at them, and still more at our flies; but 
 he rowed us to the top of the lake, where a river came 
 down out of the snow-mountain, finishing its descent 
 with a leap over a cliff. Here he told us there were trout 
 if we could catch them ; and he took ns deliberately 
 into the spray of the waterfall, not understanding, till 
 we were nearly wet through, that we had any objection 
 to it. As the evening went on the scene became every 
 minute grander and more glorious. The sunset colours 
 deejjened \ a crag just over us, 2000 feet high, stood out 
 clear and sharp against the sky. We stayed for two or 
 three hours, idly throwing our flies and catching a few 
 trout no longer than our hands, thereby confirming our 
 friend's impression of our inefficiency. At midnight we 
 were in the yacht- again — midnight, and it was like a 
 night in England at the end of June five minutes after 
 sunset. 
 
 This was our first experience of a Norway fjord, 
 and for myself I would have been content to go no 
 further ; have studied in detail the exquisite beauty 
 which was round us; have made frien.ls with the owner 
 and his household, and found out what they made of 
 their existence under such conditions. There in epitome
 
 328 THE A'Oh'irAV rjORDS. 
 
 1 should liave been seeing Norway and the Norwegians. 
 It was no Arcadia of piping shepherds. In tlie summer 
 the young men are away at the mountain farms, high 
 [rraziner trround underneath the snow-line. The women 
 work with their brothers and husbands, and weave and 
 make the cluthos. They dress plainly, but with good 
 taste, with modest embroidery ; a handsome bag hangs 
 at the waist of the housewife. There is reading, too, 
 and scholarship, A boy met us on a pathway, and spoke 
 to us in Euglisli. Wc asked him when he had been in 
 England, He had never been beyond his own valley ; 
 in the long winter evenings he had taught himself with 
 an English grammar. No wonder with such ready adapt- 
 abilities the Norwegians make the best of emigrants. 
 The overflow of population which once directed itself in 
 such rude fashion on Normandy and England now finds 
 its way to the United States, and no incomers are more 
 welcome there. 
 
 But a yacht is for movement and change. We were 
 to start again at noon the next day. The morning was 
 hot and bright. While the engineer was getting up 
 steam, wo rowed to the foot of the great fall, I had 
 my small trout rod with me, and trolled a salmon fly 
 on the chance. There were no salmon there, but we 
 saw brown trout rising ; so I tried the universal 
 favourites — a March brown and a red spinner — and in 
 a moment had a fish that bent the rod double. An- 
 other followed, and another, and then I lost a large one. 
 
 I passed the rotl to D , in whose hands it did still 
 
 better service. Tn an hour wo had a basket of trout
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 329 
 
 that would have done credit to an English chalk stream. 
 The largest was nearly three pounds weight, admirably 
 grown, and pink; fattened, I suppose, on the mussels 
 which paved the bottom of the rapids. We were off 
 immediately after, still guided to a new point by the 
 chart, but not in tins instance by the chart onl}'. There 
 was a spot which had been discovered tlie year before 
 by the Duke of , of which we had a vague descrip- 
 tion. We had a log on board which had been kept 
 by the Duke's mate, in wliich he had recorded many 
 curious experiences; among the rest an adventure at 
 a certain lake not very far from where we were. The 
 Duke had been successful there, and his lady had been 
 very nearly successful. * We had grief yesterday,' the 
 mate wrote, ' her Grace losing a twelve-pound salmon 
 whicii she liad caught on her little line, and just as 
 they were going to hook it, it went off, and we were 
 very sorry.' The grief went deep, it seemed, for the 
 next day the crew were reported as only ' being as well 
 as could be expected after so melancholy an accident.' 
 We determined to find the place, and, if jjossible, avenge 
 her Grace. We crossed the Sogne and went up into 
 the Nord Fjord — of all the fjords the most beautiful ; 
 for on either side there are low terraces of land left by 
 glacier action, and more signs of culture and human 
 habitations. After running for fifty miles, we turned 
 into an irdet corresponding tolerably with the Duke's 
 directions, and in another half-hour we were again in a 
 mountain basin like that which wo had left in the 
 inoining. The cataracts were in their glory, the day
 
 330 'HIE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 iiaving been warm for a wftiider. J counted seventeen 
 all close about us when we anchored, any one of which 
 wotild have made the fortune of a Scotch hotel, and 
 would have been celebrated by Mr. Murray in pages of 
 passionate eloquence. But Stromen, or ' the Streams/ 
 as the place was called, was less solitary than Nor<l 
 Gulen. There was a large farm on one side of us. 
 There was a cluster of houses at the mouth of a river, 
 half a mile from it. Above the villafjo was a lake, 
 and at the head of the lake an establishment of saw- 
 mills. A gun-shot from where we lay, on a rocky knoll, 
 was a white wooden church, the Sunday meeting-place 
 of the neighbourhood ; boats coming to it from twenty 
 miles round bringing families in tlieir bright Sunday 
 attire. Roads there were none. To have made a 
 league of road among such rocks and precipices would 
 have cost the State a year's revenue. But the water 
 was the best of approaches, and boats the cheapest of 
 cariiages. We called on the chief proprietor to ask for 
 leave to fish in the lake. It was granted with the 
 readiest courtesy; but the Norsemen are proud in their 
 way, and do not like the Englishman's habit of treating 
 all the world as if it belonged to him. The low 
 meadows round his house were bright with flowers : 
 two kinds of wild geranium, an exquisite variety of 
 harebell, Fea-])ride, pansies, violets, and the great pin- 
 guicola. Among the rocks were foxgloves in full 
 splendour, and wild roses just coming into flower. The 
 roses alone of the Norway flora disappointed me ; the 
 leaves are large, dark, and handsome ; fho flower is
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 331 
 
 insignificant, and falls to pieces within an hour of its 
 opening. We were satisfied that we were on the right 
 spot. The church stood on a peninsula, the neck of 
 which immediately adjoined our anclioiage. Behind 
 it was the lake which had been the scene of tlie 
 Duchess's misfortune. We diil not repeat our midnight 
 experiment. We waited for a leisurely breakfast. Five 
 of the crew then carried the yaclit's cutter tlirough 
 fifty yards of bushes; and we were on the edge of the 
 lake itself, which, like all these inland waters, was 
 glassy, still, deep, and overhung with precipices. Tlie 
 owner had suggested to us that there were bears among 
 them, which we might kill if we pleased, as they had 
 just eaten seven of his sheejx So little intention had 
 we of shooting bears that we had not brougiit rifle or 
 even gun with us. Our one idea was to catch the 
 Duchess's twelve-pound salmon, or, if not that one, at 
 least another of his kindred. 
 
 In a strange lake it is well always to try first with 
 spinning tackle, a bait trolled with a long line from the 
 stern of a boat rowed slowly. It will tell you if there 
 are fish to be caught; it will find out for you where 
 the fish most haunt, if there are any. We had a 
 curious experience of the value of this method on a 
 later occasion, and on one of our failures. We had 
 found a lake joined to an arm of a fjord by a hundred 
 yards only of clear running water. We felt certain of 
 finding salmon there, and if we had begun with iiies 
 we might have fished all day and have caught nothing. 
 Instead of this we began to spin. In five minutes we
 
 332 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 li:ul ii run ; we wiitched eagerly to see what we had 
 got. It was a whiting pollock. We went on, \\'e 
 hooked a heavy fish. We assured ourselves that now 
 we had at least a trout. It turned out to be a cod. 
 The sea fish, we found, ran ficely into the fresh water, 
 and had chased tmut and salmon completely out. At 
 Stromen we were in better luck. We started with 
 phantom minnows on traces of strong single gut, forty 
 yards of line, and forty more in reserve on the reel. 
 Two men rowed us up the shore an oar's length from 
 the rocks. Something soon struck me. The reel flew 
 round, the line spun out. In the wake of the boat 
 there was a white flash, as a fish sprang into the air. 
 Was it the Duchess's salmon ? It was very like it, any 
 way; and if we had lost him, it would have been 
 entered ilown as a salmon. It proved, however, to be 
 no salmon, but a sea trout, and such a sea trout as we 
 had never seen ; not a bull trout, not a peel, not a 
 Welsh sewin, or Irish wliite trout, but a Norwegian, of 
 a kind of its own, diflerent from all of them. This was 
 the first of many which followed, of sizes varying from 
 three pounds to the twelve pounds which the mate had 
 recorded ; fine, bold, fighting fish, good to look at, good 
 to catch, and as good to eat when we tried them. 
 Finally, in the shallower water, at the upper end, a 
 fish took mo, wdiich from its movements was something 
 else, and proved to be a large char, like what they take 
 in Derwentwater, oidy four times the weight. Looking 
 carefully at the water we saw more char swimming 
 leisurely near the surf;\ce, taking flies. Wo dropped
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 333 
 
 our spinning tackle, and took our fly rods ; and presently 
 we were pulling in char, the blood royal of the salmon- 
 idie, the elect of all the finned children of the fresh 
 water, as if tliey had been so many Thames chub. 
 
 What need to talk more of fish ? The mate's log 
 had guided us well. We caught enough and to spare, 
 and her Grace's wrongs were avenged sufficiently. We 
 landed for our frugal luncheon — dry biscuits and a 
 whisky flask — but we sate in a bed of whortleberries, 
 purple with ripe fruit, by a cascade which ran down 
 out of a snow-field. Horace would have invited his 
 dearest friend to share in such a banquet. 
 
 The next day was Sunday. The sight of the boats 
 coming from all quarters to church was very pretty. 
 Fifteen hundred people at least must have collected. 
 I attended the service, but could make little of it. I 
 could follow the hymns with a book ; but copies of the 
 Liturgy, though printed, are not provided for general 
 use, and are reserved to the clergy. The faces of the 
 men were extremely interesting. There was little in 
 them to suggest the old freebooter. They were mild 
 and gentle-looking, with fair skins, fair hair, and light 
 eyes, grey or blue. The expression Avas sensible and 
 collected, but with nothing about it specially adventur- 
 ous or daring. The women, in fact, were more striking 
 than their husbands. There was a steady strength in 
 their features which implied humour underneath. Two 
 gii'ls, I suppose sisters, reminded me of Mrs. Gaskell. 
 "* With the Lutheran, Sunday afternoon is a holiday. A 
 yacht in such a place was a curiosity, and a fleet of
 
 334 i'llP^ NOR IV A Y PJORDS. 
 
 boats .siuinmiili (1 us. Such as liked came on board and 
 looked about tlicin. Tliey were well-bred, and showed 
 110 foolish sur[)rise. One old dame, indeed, being t'lken 
 down into the ladies' cabin, did find it too much for her. 
 She dropped down and kissed the carpet. One of our 
 party wondered afterwards whether there was any 
 chance of the Norwegians attaining a higher civilisation. 
 T asked her to define civilisation. Did industry, skill, 
 energy, sufficient food and raiment, sound practical 
 education, and piety which believes without asking 
 questions, constitute civilisation; and would luxury, 
 newspapers, and mechanics' institutes mean a higher 
 civilisation ? The old question must first be answered, 
 What is the real purpose of human life ? 
 
 At Stromen, too, we could not linger ; we stopped a 
 few hours at Daviken on our way north, a considerable 
 place for Norway, on the Nord Fjord. There is a 
 bishop, I believe, belonging to it, but him we did not 
 see. We called at the parsonage and found the pastor's 
 wife and children. The pastor himself came on boaid 
 afterwards — a handsome man of sixty-seven, with a 
 broad, full forehead, large nose, and straight grizzled 
 hair. He spoke English, and would have spoken Latin 
 if we had ourselves been equal to it. He had read 
 much English literature, and was cultivated above the 
 level of our own average country clergy. His parish 
 was thirty miles long on both sides of the fjord. He 
 had several churches, to all of which he attended in 
 turn, with boats in summer, and occasionally perhaps 
 with the ice in winter. We did not ask his salary ; it
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 335 
 
 was doubtless small, but sufficient. He had a school 
 under him which he said was well attended. The 
 master, who had a state certificate, was allowed 25/. a 
 year, on which he was able to maintain himself. We 
 could not afford time to see more of this gentleman, 
 however. We were impatient for Trondhjem ; the 
 engineer wanted coals; we wanted our letters and 
 newspapers ; and the steward wanted a washerwoman. 
 On our way up, too, we had arranged to give a day or 
 two to Romsdal, Rolf the Ganger's country. On an 
 island in Romsdal Fjord the ruins can still be seen of 
 Rolf's Castle. It was there thtit Rolf, or Rollo as we 
 call him, set out with his comrades to conquer Normandy, 
 and produce the chivalry who fought at Hastings and 
 organised feudal England. This was not to be missed ; 
 and as little, a visit which we had promised to a 
 descendant of one of those Normans, a distinguished 
 Tory member of the House of Commons, and lord of 
 half an English county, who had bought an estate in 
 these parts, with a salmon river, and had built himself 
 a house there. 
 
 Romsdal, independent of its antiquarian interest, is 
 geologically the most remarkable place which we saw 
 in Norway. The fjord expands into a wide estuary or 
 inland lake, into wliich many valleys open and several 
 large streams discharge themselves. Romsdal proper 
 was once evidently itself a continuation of the Great 
 Fjord. The mountains on each side of it are peculiarly 
 magnificent. On the left Romsdal's Horn shoots up 
 into the &ky, a, lui^i! ))eak which no one at that time
 
 336 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 Ii.ul (vrr cliiiilxMl, and will try tlic inottle of the Alpine 
 Cliil) when th(;y have conquered Switzerland. On the 
 riglit is a precipitous wall of" cliffs and crags as higii 
 and bold as the Horn itself. The upper enfl of the 
 valley which divides them terminates in a narrmv fissure, 
 through which a river thunders down that carries the 
 water of the great central ice-field into the valley. 
 From thence it finds its way into the fjord, nmning 
 tlirou"h the rrlun itself, wliich is seven or eight miles 
 long, two miles wide, and richly cultivated and wooded. 
 From the sea the appearance of the shore is most 
 singular. It is laid out in level grassy terraces, stretch- 
 ing all round the bay, lisiug in tiers one above the 
 other, so smooth, so even, so nicely scarfed, that the 
 imagination can hardly be persuaded that they are not 
 the work of human engineers. But under water tlie 
 formation is the same. At one moment you are in 
 twenty fathoms, the next in forty, the next your cable 
 will find no bottom ; and it is as certain as any conclu- 
 sion on such subjects can be, that long ago, long ages 
 before Rolf, and Knut, and the Vikings, the main fjord 
 was blocked with ice ; that while the ice barrier was 
 still standing, and the valleys behind it were fresh- 
 water lakes, the rivers gradually filled them with a 
 ddWis of stone and soil. Each level terrace was once a 
 lake bottom. The ice broke or melted away at inter- 
 vals. The water was lowered suddenly forty or fifty 
 feet, and the ground lately covered was left bare as the 
 ice receded. 
 
 We found uur Enu'lishman. His house is under the
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 337 
 
 Horn at the bend of the valley, where the ancient fjord 
 must have ended. It stands in a green open meadow, 
 approached through alder and birch woods, the first 
 cataract where the snow-water plunges through the 
 great chasm being in sight of the windows, and half-a- 
 dozen inimitable salmon pools within a few minutes' 
 walk. The house itself was simple enough, made of 
 pine wood entirely, as the Norway houses always are, 
 and painted white. It contained some half-dozen 
 rooms, furnished in the plainest English style, the sum- 
 mer-house of a sportsman who is tired of luxury, and 
 finds the absence of it an agreeable exchange. A man 
 cannot be always catching salmon, even in Norway, and 
 a smattering of science and natural history would be a 
 serviceable equipment in a scene where there are so 
 many curious objects worth attending to. Our friend's 
 tastes, however, did not lie in that direction. His 
 shelves w^ere full of yellow-backed novels — French, 
 English, and German, His table was covered with the 
 everlasting Saturday Review, Pall Mall Gazette, Times, 
 and Standard. I think he suspected science as a part 
 of modern Liberalism ; for he was a Tory of the Tories, 
 a man with whom the destinies had dealt kindly, in 
 whose eyes therefore all existing arrangements were as 
 they should be, and those who wished to meddle with 
 them were enemies of the human race. He was sad 
 and sorrowful. The world was not moving to his mind, 
 and he spoke as if he was ultimus Romanoruni. But 
 if an aristocrat, he was an aristocrat of the best type — 
 princely in his thoughts, princely in his habits, princely
 
 338 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 oven in liis .sulnioii fi.sliirig. The pools in tlie river 
 being divided by diflicult rajjids, he had a boat and a 
 boatman fur each. The sport was ample but uniform. 
 There was an ice cellar under the house wlierc we saw 
 lialf-a-dozen great salmon lying which had been caught 
 in the morning. One salmon behaves much like 
 ;inotlier; and after one has caught four or five, and 
 when one knows that one can catcli as many more as 
 one wishes, impatient people might find the occupation 
 monotonous. Hapj)ily there was a faint element of 
 uncertainty still left. It was possible to fail even in 
 the Rumsdal. We were ourselves launched in boats in 
 different pools at the risk of our lives to try our hands ; 
 w'c worked diligently for a couple of hours, and 1 at 
 least moved not so much as a fin. It was more enter- 
 tainiu'r a iireatdeal to listen to our host as ho declaimed 
 upon the iniquities of uur present Radical chief. 
 Politics, like religion, are matters of faith on winch 
 reason says as little as possible. One passionate belief 
 is an antidote to another. It is impossible to continue 
 to believe enthusiastically in a creed which a fellow- 
 mortal with as much sense as oneself denies and exe- 
 crates, and the collision of opinion produces the prudent 
 scepticism which in most matters is the least mischievous 
 frame of mind. 
 
 Here, too, in these pleasant surroundings we would 
 gladly have loitered for a day or two ; but the steward 
 was clamorous over his dirty linen, and it was not to 
 be. My last impressions of Ronisdal fell into the 
 form of a few doggrel verses, an indulgence ou which
 
 THE XORWAY FJORDS. 339 
 
 I rarely venture, and which for once, therefore, may 
 be pardoned. 
 
 ROMSDAL FJORD. 
 
 July II, i88i. 
 
 So this, then, was the Rovers' nest, 
 
 And here the chiefs were bred, 
 Who broke the drowsy Saxon's rest 
 
 And scared him in his bed. 
 
 The north wind blew, the ship sped fast, 
 
 Loud clieered the Corsair crew, 
 And wild and free above the mast 
 
 The Raven standard flew. 
 
 Sail south, sail south, there lies the land 
 
 Where the yellow corn is growing ; 
 The spoil is for the warrior's hand, 
 
 The serf may have the sowing. 
 
 Let cowards make their parchment laws. 
 
 To guard their treasured hoards ; 
 The steel shall plead the Rovers' cause. 
 
 Their title-deeds their swords. 
 
 The Raven still o'er Romsdal's peaks 
 
 Is soaring as of yore. 
 But Viking's call in cove or creek 
 
 Calm Ronisdal hears no more. 
 
 Long ages noAV beneath the soil 
 
 The Ganger has been lying. 
 In Romsdal's bay his quiet toil 
 
 The fisherman is plying. 
 
 The English earl sails idly by, 
 * And from his deck would trace. 
 
 With curious antiquarian eye, 
 'I'iie cradle of his race.
 
 X\o nik NORWAY FJORD!^. 
 
 Willi time anil liilo \vn cliange ami cliangt", 
 
 Yet still tlie world is yoiiiij,', 
 Still free the proudest spirits range, 
 
 The prize ii for the strong. 
 
 Wc deem it chief of glorious things 
 
 In parliaments to shine, 
 That orators are modern kings, 
 
 And only not divine. 
 
 But men will yet be ruled by men, 
 
 Though talk may have its day, 
 And other Rolfs will ri-e again 
 
 To sweep the rogues away. 
 
 Tiondlijein, on wliicli our iutentions liad l.eeu i^o 
 long fixed, was reached at last. The weather had 
 grown cold again, cold with cataracts of rain. Let 
 no one go to Norway even in the dog-days without a 
 winter wardrobe. The sea-water in our baths was at 
 47°; we had fires in the cabin stove, and could not 
 warm ourselves ; we shivered under four blankets in 
 our berths. The mountains wore buried in clouds, and 
 the landscape was reduced to a dull grey mist; but the 
 worst of weathers will serve for reading letters, laying 
 in coal, and wandering about a town. 
 
 Trondhjcm ought to have been interesting. It 
 was the capital of the old Norte kings. There reigned 
 the Olafs. It lies half-way up the Norway coast in the 
 very centre of the kingdom, on a broad landlocked bay. 
 The situation was chosen for its strength ; for a deep 
 river all but surrounds the peninsula on which the town 
 is built, and on the land siile it must have been impreg- 
 luible. The country behind it is excei)tionally fertile,
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. -341 
 
 and is covered over with thriving farms ; but. streets 
 and shops are wearisome, and even the cathedral did 
 not tempt us to pay it more than a second visit. It is 
 a stern solid piece of building ; early Norman in type, 
 with doors, windows, and arches of zigzag pattern. It 
 had fallen out of repair and. was now being restored by 
 the State; hundreds of workmen were busy chipping 
 and hammering, and were doing their business so well 
 that the new work can hardly be distinguished from 
 the old. But Catholic Christianity never seems to have 
 got any hearty hold on Norway. St. Olaf thrust it 
 upon the people at the sword's point, but their imagiur 
 ations remained heathen till the Reformation gave them 
 a creed which they could believe. I could find but few 
 tombs in the cathedral. I inquired where the old kings 
 and chiefs were buried, and no one could tell me. I 
 found, in fact, that they had usually come to an end in 
 some sea-battle, and had found their graves in their own 
 element. Olaf Tryggveson went down, the last sur- 
 vivor in the last ship of his fleet, the rays of the sunset 
 flashing on his armour as the waves closed over him. 
 St. Olaf died in the same way. The absence of monu- 
 mental stones or figures in the great metropolitan 
 church of Norway is strange, sad, and impressive. 
 
 The town being exhausted, we drove a few miles 
 out of it to see a foss, one of the grandest in the 
 country. We said 'Oh ! ' to it, as Wolfe Tone did to 
 Grattan. But waterfalls had become too common with 
 us, and, in fact, the excitement about them lias always 
 seemed exaggerated to me. I was staying once in a
 
 ^42 Tfir. XORIVAV FJORDS. 
 
 house in the north of New York State when a gentle- 
 man came in fresh from Niagara, and poured out Ijia 
 astonisliment over tlie enormous mass of water fall- 
 ing into the caldron below. ' Why is it astonishing ? 
 asked a Yankee who was present. ' Why shouldn't 
 the water f;dl ? the astonishing thing wouM be if it 
 didn't fall.' 
 
 In short, we left the washerwoman in possession of 
 the linen, which we could return and pick up when it 
 was done, and we steamed away to examine the great 
 Trondhjem Fjord ; fishing and making bad sketches as 
 the weather would allow. The weather generally allowed 
 us to do very little, and drove us upon our books, which 
 we could have read as well in our rooms at home. I 
 had brought the 'Elective Affinities' with me. I had 
 not read it for thirty years. Then it had seemed to me 
 the wisest of all didactic works of fiction. 'Uncon- 
 scious cerebration,' as Dr. Carpenter calls it, when I 
 read the book again, had revolutionised ni}' principles 
 of judgment. I could still recognise the moral purpose. 
 There are tendencies in human nature, like the chemical 
 properties of material substances, which will claim 
 possession of you, and oven appear to have a moral 
 right over you. But if you yield you will be destroyed. 
 You can command yourself, and you must. Very true, 
 very excellent; and sot forth with Goethe's greatest 
 power of fascination ; but I found myself agreeing with 
 the rest of the world that it was a monstrous book after 
 all. To put the taste out I tried Seneca, but I scarcely 
 improved matters. Seneca's fame as a moralist and
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 343 
 
 philosopher was due, perhaps, in the first instaucc, to 
 liis position about the Court, and to his enormous 
 wealth, A little merit passes for a great deal when it 
 is framed in gold, and once established it would retain 
 its reputation, from the natural liking of men for virtu- 
 ous cant. Those lectures to Lucilius on the beauty of 
 poverty from the greatest money-lender and usurer in 
 the Empire ! Lucilius is to practise voluntary hard- 
 ships, is to live at intervals on beggars' fare, and 
 sleep on beggars' pallets, that he may sympathise 
 in the sufferings of mortality and be independent of 
 outward things. If Seneca meant all this, why did 
 he squeeze five millions of our money out of the 
 provinces with loans and contracts ? He was barren 
 as the Sahara to me. Not a green spot could I 
 find, not a single genial honest thought, in all the four 
 volumes with which I had encumbered myself. His 
 finest periods rang hollow like brass sovereigns. The 
 rain would not stop, so we agreed to defy the rain and 
 to fish in spite of it. We had the fjord before us for a 
 week, and we landed wherever we could hear of lake 
 or river. For twelve hours together the waterspout 
 would come down upon us; we staggered about in 
 thickest woollen, with mackintoshes and indiarubber 
 boots. With flapped oilskin hats we should have been 
 waterproof, but with one of these I was unprovided ; 
 and, in spite of collars and woollen wrappers, the 
 water would find its way down my neck till there 
 was nothing dry left about me but the feet. Clothes 
 grow heavy under such conditions; we had to take
 
 341 'J'HE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 our lightest 1(kIs witli us, and u<jw and tlion came to 
 grief. I was fishing alone one day in a broad rocky 
 stream fringed witli alder bushes, dragging my landing- 
 net with mo. At an open s})ot where there was a likely 
 run within nach I had caught a four-pound sea trout. 
 I threw again ; a larger fish rose and carried off my fly. 
 1 mounted a 'doctor,' blue and silver, on the strongest 
 casting line in my book, and on the second cast a 
 salmon came. The river in the middle was running 
 like a mill-sluice. I could not follow along the bank 
 on account of the trees ; my oidy hope was to hold on 
 and drag the monster into the slack water under the 
 shore. My poor little rod did its best, but its best was 
 not enough ; the salmon forced his way into the waves, 
 round went the reel, ofif flew the line to the last inch, 
 and then came the inevitable catastrophe. A white 
 streak flashed wildly into the air, the rod straightened 
 out, the line came home, and my salmon and my bright 
 doctor sped away together to the sea. 
 
 We were none the worse for our wettings. Each 
 evening we came home drip])ing and draggled. A 
 degree or two more of cold would have turned the rain 
 into snow. Yet it signified nothing. We brought back 
 our basketfuls of trout, and the Norwegian trout are 
 the best in the world. We ancliored one evening in a 
 chasm with the mountain walls rising in precipices on 
 both sides. The next morning as 1 was lying in my 
 berth I heard a conversation between the steward and 
 the captain. The captain asked the orders for the day ; 
 the steward answered (he was the wit of the ship),
 
 77/^5' NOR IV AY FJORDS. 345 
 
 ' Orders are to stretch an awning over the fjord that 
 his lordship may fish.' 
 
 . But the weather so far beat us that we were obliged 
 to abandon Lofoden. We were now at the end of July, 
 and it was not likely to mend, so we determined to turn 
 about and spend the rest of our time in the large fjords 
 of South Norway. Trondhjem had been our furthest 
 point ; we could not coal there after all, so we had to 
 make for Christiansund on the way. I was not sorry 
 for it, for Christiansund is a curious little bustling place, 
 and worth seeing. It is the headquarters of the North 
 Sea fishing trade near the oj^en ocean, and the harbour 
 is formed by three or four islands divided by extremely 
 narrow channels, with a deep roomy basin in the middle 
 of them. One of our crew was ill, and had to be taken 
 for two or three days to the hospital. The arrange- 
 ments seemed excellent, as every public department is 
 in Norway. The town was pretty. The Norwegians 
 dress plainly ; but they like bright colours for their 
 houses, and the red-tiled roofs and blue and yellow 
 painted fronts looked pleasant after our clouds of mist. 
 The climate, from the proximity of tlie ocean, is said 
 to be mild for its latitude. The snow, we were told, lay 
 up to the lower windows through tlic winter, but that 
 went for nothing. There were stocks and columbines 
 in the gardens ; there were ripe gooseberries and red 
 currants and pink thorn and laburnum in flower. The 
 harbour was full of fishing smacks, like Brixham 
 trawlers, only rather more old-fashioned. Gay steam- 
 ferry boats rushed about from island to island ; large
 
 346 THE NORWAY F'JOKDS. 
 
 sliips were loading; well-dressed strangers were in the 
 streets and shops ; an English yacht had come like our- 
 selves to take in coal, and was moored side by side with 
 us. Tiiere are fewer people in the world than we 
 imagine, and wo fall on old acquaintances when we least 
 
 expect them. The once beautiful was on board, 
 
 whom I had known forty-five years before. She had 
 married a distinguished engineer, who was out for his 
 holiday. 
 
 We stayed atChristiansund or in the neighbourhood 
 till our sick man was recovered, and then followed 
 (under better auspices as regarded weather) ten days 
 of scenery hunting which need not be described. We 
 went to Sondal, Loerdal, Nordal, and I don't know how 
 many ' dais,' all famous places in tiieir way, but with a 
 uniformity of variety which becomes tedious in a story. 
 One only noticeable feature I observed about the sheds 
 and poorer houses in these out-of-the-way districts. 
 They lay turf sods over the roofs, Avhich become thick 
 masses of vegetation ; and on a single cottage roof you 
 may see half-a-dozen trees growing ten or fifteen feet 
 high. For lakes and mountains, however beautilul, the 
 appetite becomes soon satiated. They please, but they 
 cease to excite ; and there is something artificial in the 
 modern enthusiasm for landscapes. Velasquez or Rubens 
 could appreciate a fine effect of scenery as well as 
 Turner or Stanfield ; but with them it was a frame- 
 work, subordinate to some human interest in the centre 
 of the picture. I suppose it is because man in these 
 democratic (lays has for a time ceased to touch the
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 347 
 
 imagination that our poets and artists are driven back 
 upon rocks and rivers and trees and skies ; but the 
 eclipse can only be temporary, and I confess, for myself, 
 that, sublime as the fjords were, the saw-mills and farm- 
 houses and fishing-boats, and the patient, industrious 
 people wresting a wholesome living out of that stern 
 environment, affected me very much^ more nearly. I 
 cannot except even the Geiranger, as tremendous a 
 piece of natural architecture as exists in the globe. 
 The fjord in the Geiranger is a quarter of a mile wide 
 and 600 fathoms deep. The walls of it are in most 
 places not figuratively, but literally, precipices, and the 
 patch of .sky above your head seems to narrow as you 
 look up, I hope I was duly impressed with the wonder 
 of this ; but even here there was something that im- 
 pressed me more, and that was the singular haymaking 
 which was going on. The Norwegians depend for their 
 existence on their sheep and cattle. Every particle of 
 gi-ass available for hay is secured ; and grass, peculiarly 
 nutritious, often grows on the high ridges 2000 feet up. 
 This they save as they can, and they have original ways 
 of doing it. In the Geiranger it is tied tightly in 
 bundles and Hung over the cliffs to be gathered up in 
 boats below. But science, too, is making its way in 
 this northern wilderness. The farmhouses, for shelter's 
 sake, are always at the bottom of valle3's, and are 
 generally near the sea. At one of our anchorages, shut 
 in as usual among the mountains, we observed one 
 evening from the deck what looked like a troop of 
 green goats skipping and bounding down the cliffs. We
 
 3iS 'JIIF NO K WAY IJOKDS. 
 
 discovered tlirough a binocular tliat tlicy were bundles 
 of liay. Tlic clever bonder bad carried up a wire, 
 like a telegrapb wire, from bis courtyard to a pro- 
 jecting point of mountain : on tliis ran iron rings 
 as travellers wbicb brougbt tlie grass directly to bis 
 door. 
 
 Twice only in our wanderings wo bail fallen in witb 
 our tourist countrymen : once at Lrerdal, wbere a liigb 
 road comes down to a pier, and is inot tbere by a 
 corresponding steamer; tbe second time coming down 
 from tbe Geiranger, wben we passed a boat witb two 
 ladies and a gentleman, Englisb evidently, tbe gentle- 
 man toucbing bis bat to tbe Yacbt Club flag as we 
 went by. Strange and pleasant tbe sbort glimpse of 
 Englisb faces in tbat wild cbasm ! But we were plunged 
 into tbe very middle of our countrymen at tbe last spot 
 in wbicb we went in searcb of tbe picturesque — a spot 
 wortb a few words as by far tbe most regidarly beauti- 
 ful of all tbe places wbicb we visited. At tbe bead of 
 one of tbe long inlets wbicb runs soutb, I tbink, out of 
 tbe Hai'danger Fjord (but our rapid movements were 
 confusing) stands Oddo, once a boly place in Scandi- 
 navian mytbological bistory. Tbere is anotber Odde in 
 Iceland, also sacred — 1 suppose Odin bad sometbing 
 to do witb it. The Odde Fjord is itself twenty miles 
 long, and combines tbe softest and grandest aspects of 
 Norwegian scenery. Tbe sliores are exceptionally well 
 cultivated, richer than any wbicb we bad seen. Every 
 half-mile some pretty farmhouse was shining red through 
 clumps of trees, tbe many cattle-sheds speaking for the
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 349 
 
 wealth of the owner. Above, through the rifts of higher 
 ranges you catch a sight of the Central Ice-field glacier 
 streaming over among the broken chasms and melting 
 into waterfalls. At Odde itself there is an extensive 
 tract of fertile soil on the slope of a vast moraine, 
 which stretches completely across the broad valley. 
 On the sea at the landing-place is a large cnurch and 
 two considerable hotels, which were thronged with 
 visitors. A broad road excellently engineered leads 
 down to it, and we found a staff of English-speaking 
 guides whose services we did not require. We had seen 
 much of the ice action elsewhere, but the perform- 
 ances of it at Odde were more wonderful even than at 
 Romsdal. The moraine is perhaps 450 feet high ; the 
 road winds up the side of it among enormous granite 
 boulders, many of them weighing thousands of tons, 
 which the ice has tossed about like pebble-stones. On 
 reaching the crest you sec a lake a ([uarter of a mile 
 off; but before you come to it you cross some level 
 fields, very rich to look at, and with patches of white- 
 heart cherry-trees scattered about, the fruit, when we 
 came there at the end of August, being actually ripe 
 and extremely good. These fields were the old lake 
 bottom ; but the river has cut a dyke for itself through 
 the top of the moraine, and the lake has gone down 
 some twenty feet, leaving them dry. 
 
 The weather (penitent, perhaps, for having so long 
 persecuted us) was in a better humour. Our days at 
 Odde were warm and without a cloud, and we spent 
 them chiefly by the lake, which was soft as Winder-
 
 356 THE NORWAY F/ORDS. 
 
 mere. Wc had coinu into a land of iruit; not cherries 
 only, but wild raspberries and strawberries were offered 
 us in leaves by the girls on the road. The road itself 
 followed the lake margin, among softly rounded and 
 wooded hills, the great mountains out of sight behind 
 them, save only in one spot where, througli a gorge, 
 you looked straight up to the eternal snow-field, from 
 wliich a vast glacier descended almost into the lake 
 itself, the ice imitating precisely the form of falling 
 water, crushing its way among the rocks, parting in two 
 where it met a projecting crag, and uniting again 
 behind it, seeming even to heave and toss in angry 
 waves of foam. 
 
 From this glacier the lake was chiefly fed, and was 
 blue, like skimmed milk, in consequence. We walked 
 along it for several miles. Fishing seemed hopeless in 
 water of such a texture. As we turned a corner two 
 carriages dashed by us with some young men and dogs 
 and guns — cockneys out for their holiday. ' Any sport, 
 sir ? ' one of them shouted to me, seeing a rod in my 
 hand, in the cheerful familiar tone which assumed that 
 sport must be the first and only object which one could 
 have in such a place. They passed on to the hotel, 
 and the presence of so many of our own countrymen 
 was inclining us to cut short our own stay. Some of 
 the party, however, wished to inspect the glacier. We 
 were ourselves assured that there were salmon in the 
 lake, which, in spite of the colour, could be caught 
 there. It was the last opportunity which we should 
 have as after Odde our next move was to be Christi-
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 35t 
 
 ania. So we ugieed to take one more day there and 
 make the most of it. We got two native boats, and 
 started to seek adventures. Alas ! Ave had the love- 
 liest views ; but the blue waters of Odde, however fair 
 to look upon, proved as ill to fish in as at the first 
 sight of them we were assured they must be. Our 
 phantom minnow^s could not be seen three inches off, 
 and the stories told us we concluded to be fables 
 invented for the tourists. I, for my own part, had 
 gone to the- furthest extremity of the lake, where it 
 ended in a valley like Borrodale. I was being rowed 
 listlessly back, having laid aside my tackle, and wishing 
 that I could talk to my old boatman, who looked as if 
 all the stories of the Edda were inside him, when my eye 
 was suddenly caught by a cascade coming down out of 
 a ravine into the lake which had not been bred in the 
 glaciers, and was as limpid as the Itchen itself. At the 
 mouth of this it was just possible that there might be 
 a char or something with fins that could see to rise. 
 It was my duty to do Avhat I could for the yacht's 
 cuisine. I put together my little trout rod for a last 
 attempt, and made my boatman row me over to it. 
 The clear Avater Avas not mixing Avith the blue, but 
 pushing its Avay through the milky masses, Avhich were 
 eddying and rolling as if they Avere oil. In a moment 
 I had caught a sea trout. Immediately after I caught 
 a second, and soon a basketful. They had been attracted 
 by the purer liquid, and Avcre gathered there in a 
 shoal. They Avere lying Avith their noses up the 
 stream at tlie furthest point to Avhicli they could go. I
 
 352 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 got two or tlirce, anil those tlic largest, by tlirowing my 
 
 (ly against the rocks exactly at the fall. I) came 
 
 afterwards and caught more and bigger fish than I did ; 
 and our sj^ort, which indeed we had taken as it came 
 without specially seeking for it, was brought to a good 
 end. The end of August was come, and with it the 
 period of our stay in the Qords. We had still to see 
 Christiania, and had no time to lose. But of all the 
 bits of pure natural loveliness which we had fallen in 
 with, Odde and its blue lake, and glacier, and cherry 
 orchards, and wild strawberries has left the fairest im- 
 pression ; perhaps, however, only because it was the 
 last, for we were going home ; and they say that when 
 a man dies, the last image which he has seen is 
 pliotographed on his retina. 
 
 But now away. The smoke pours through the 
 funnel. The engine is snorting like an impatient horse. 
 The quick rattle of the cable says that the anchor is 
 off the ground. We were off, and had clone with fjords. 
 The inner passages would serve no longer; we had to 
 make for the open sea once more to round the foot of 
 the peninsula. It is at no time the softest of voyages. 
 The North Sea is not the home of calm sunsets and 
 light- breathing zephyrs, and it gave us a taste of its 
 quality, which, after our long sojourn in smooth water, 
 was rather startling. If the wind and sea are ever 
 wilder than we found them in those latitudes, I have 
 no desire to be present at the exhibition. We fought 
 the storm for twenty-four hours, and were then driven 
 for refuge into a roadstead at the southern extremity
 
 THE XORIVAY FJORDS. 353 
 
 of Norway, near Maadal, The neigliboiirhood was 
 interesting, if we had known it, for at Mandal Mary 
 Stuart's Earl of Bothwell was imprisoned when he 
 escaped from the Orkneys to Denmark. The dungeon 
 where he was confined is still to be seen, and as the 
 Earl was an exceptional villain, the authentic evidence 
 of eyesight that he h;i,d sj)ent an uncomfortable time in 
 his exile would not have been unwelcome. But we 
 discovered what we had lost when it was too late to 
 profit by our information. We amused ourselves by 
 wandering on shore and observing the effect of the 
 change of latitude on vegetation. We found the holly 
 thriving, of which in the north we had not seen a trace, 
 and the hazel bushes had ripe nuts on them. There 
 was still a high sea the next day ; but we made thirty 
 miles along the coast to Areudal, an advanced thriving 
 town of modern aspect built in a sheltered harbour, 
 with broad quays, fine buildings, and a gay parade. It 
 was almost dark when we entered ; and the brilliant 
 lights and moving crowds and carriages formed a singu- 
 lar contrast to the unfinished scenes of unregenerate 
 nature which we had just left. The Norse nature, too, 
 hard and rugged as it may be, cannot resist the effect 
 of its occupations. Aristotle observes that busy sea 
 towns are always democratic. Norway generally, though 
 Republican, is intensely Conservative. The landowners, 
 who elect most of the representatives, walk in the ways 
 of their fathers, and have the strongest objection to new 
 "ideas. Arendal, I was told, sends to Parliament an 
 eloquent young Radical, the admired of all the news-
 
 354 'I'll/'- NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 paiicis. There is, 1 believe,' no present likelihood that 
 he will brin;^ iibotit a revolution. Ijiit tliere is no 
 knowing wlieii the king is an absentee. We .si)eiit one 
 ni<f]it at Arcnilal. In the morning the storm had left 
 us, and before sunset we were at anchor at Christiania. 
 It was Sunday. Tiic weather w;is warm, the water 
 smooth, the woody islands wdiich surround and shelter 
 the anchorage were glowing in gold and crimson. 
 Christiania, a city of domes and steeples, lay before 
 us with its fleets of steamers and crowded shipping. 
 Hundreds of tiny yachts and pleasure-boats were 
 glancing round us. There is no sour Sabbatarianism 
 in Norway. One of the islands is a kind of Cremorne. 
 When night fell the music of the city band came fitfully 
 across the water ; blue lights blazed and rockets flashed 
 into the sky with their flights of crimson stars. It was 
 a scene which we had not expected in these northern 
 regions; but life can have its enjoyments even above 
 the sixtieth parallel. 
 
 There is much to be seen in Christiania. There is 
 a Parliament liouse and a royal palace, and picture 
 galleries and botanical gardens, and a museum of 
 antiquities, and shops where articles of native work- 
 manship can be bought by Englishmen at three times 
 their value, and ancient swords and battleaxes, and 
 drinking-horns and rings and necklaces, genuine, at 
 present, for all I know to the contrary, but capable of 
 
 * Written in i!>;Si. The iiiovcinciit for separation from Sweden lias 
 advanced raiiiilly in tlio last leu years.
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 355 
 
 imitation, and likely in these days of progress to bo 
 speedily imitated. If tlic Holy Coat of Treves has 
 been multiplied by ten, why should there not be ten 
 swords of Olaf Tryggveson ? But all these things are 
 written of in the handbook of Mr. Murray, where the 
 curious can read of them. One real wonder we saw 
 and saw again at Christiania, and could not satisfy our- 
 selves with seeing; and with an account of this I shall 
 end. It was a Viking's ship; an authentic vessel in 
 Avhich, while Norway was still heathen, before St. Olaf 
 drilled his people into Christianity with sword and 
 gallows, a Norse chief and his crew had travelled these 
 same waters, and in which, when he died, he had been 
 laid to rest. It had been closed in with peat, which 
 had preserved the timbers. It had been recovered 
 almost entire — the vessel itself, the oars, the boats, the 
 remnants of the cordage, even down to the copper 
 caldron in which he and his men had cooked their 
 dinners ; the names, the ago, the character of them all 
 buried in the soil, but the proof surviving that they 
 had been the contemporaries and countrymen of the 
 * Danes ' who drove the English Alfred into the marshes 
 of Somersetshire. 
 
 Ouryaclit's company were as eager to see this extra- 
 ordinary relic as ourselves. We went in a body, and 
 never tired of going. It had been found fifty miles 
 away, had been brought to Christiania, and had been 
 given in charge to the University. A solid weather- 
 proof shed had been built for it, where we could study 
 its structure at our leisure.
 
 356 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 
 
 I'Ikj tir.st tliiii>^f tlial stiiick ii.s all was tlie beauty 
 of tlio niuilcl, as little resembling the oM drawings of 
 Norse or Saxun ships as the figures which do duty there 
 as men resemble Imniau beings. White, of Cowes, 
 could not build a vessel with liner lines, or offering less 
 resistance to the water. She was eighty feet long, and 
 seventeen and a half feet beam. She may have drawn 
 three feet, scarcely more, when her whole complement 
 ■was on board. She was pierced for thirty-two oars, 
 and you could see the marks on the side of the rowlocks 
 where the oars had worn the tiud)cr. She ha<l a single 
 mast, stepped in the solid trunk of a tree which had 
 been laid along the keel. The stump of it was still in 
 the socket. Her knee timbers were strong; but her 
 planks were unexpectedly slight, scarcely more than 
 half an inch thick. They hatl been formed by careful 
 splitting; there was no sign of the action of a saw, and 
 the ends of them had been trimmed off by the axe. 
 They had been set on and fastened with iron nails, and 
 the seams had been carefully caulked. Deck she had 
 none — a level floor a couple of feet below the gunwale 
 ran from stem to stern. The shields of the crew formed 
 a bulwark, and it was easy to see where they had been 
 fixed. Evidently, therefore, she had been a war-ship ; 
 built for fighting, not for carrying cargoes. But there 
 was no shelter, and could have been none ; no covered 
 forecastle, no stern cabin. She stood right open fore 
 and aft to wind and waves ; and though she would have 
 been buoyant in a sea-way, and in the heaviest gale 
 would have shipped little water, even Norsemen could
 
 THE NORWAY FJORDS. 357 
 
 not have been made of such impenetrable stuff that 
 they would have faced the elements with no better 
 protection in any distant expedition. That those who 
 sailed in her were to some extent careful of themselves 
 is accidentally certain. Among the stores was a plank 
 with crossbars nailed upon it, meant evidently for 
 landing on a beach. One of our men, who was quick 
 at inferences, exclaimed at once : ' These fellows must 
 have worn shoes and stockings. If they had been bare- 
 legged they would have jumped overboard and would 
 not have wanted a landing-plank.' 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that she was not the kind of 
 vessel of which the summer squadrons were composed 
 that came down our English Channel, but that she was 
 intended either for the fjords only, or for the narrow 
 waters between Norway and Sweden and Denmark at 
 the mouth of the Baltic. Her rig must have been 
 precisely what we had been lately seeing on the Sogne 
 or Hardanger; a single large sail on a square yard fit 
 for running before the wind, or with the wind slightly 
 on the quarter, but useless at any closer point. The 
 rudder hung over the side a few feet from the stern, a 
 heavy oar with a broad blade and a short handle, shaped 
 so exactly like the rudders of the Roman vessels on 
 Trajan's Column, tliat the Norsemen, it is likely, had 
 seen the pattern somewhere and copied it. 
 
 Such is tliis strange remnant of the old days which 
 has suddenly started into life. So vivid is the impres- 
 sion which it creates, that it is almost as if some Sweyn 
 or Harold in his proper person had come back among
 
 35.S T[!F. NORW'A Y FJORDS. 
 
 US fViiin the gravu. If \vc wore iictually to set; siicli n 
 man \vc should be less conscious perliaps of our personal 
 superiority tlian wc are apt to imagine. A law of 
 compensation follows us through our intellectual and 
 mechanical progress, Tlie race collectively knows and 
 can execute innneasurahly greater tilings than the 
 Norsemen. Individually tliey may have been as ready 
 and intelligent as ourselves. The shipwright certainly 
 who laid the lines of the Viking's galley would have 
 something to teach as well as to learn in the yard of 
 a modern yacht builder. 
 
 But enough now of Norway. Our time was out ; our 
 tour was over; wo seated ourselves once more on our 
 wishing carpet, and desired to be at Cowes ; we were 
 transported thither with tlie care and almost the speed 
 with which the genius of the lamp transported tbe 
 palace of Aladdin ; and we felt that we had one 
 superiority at least which the Viking wouKl have 
 cu\ied us.
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 WHEN I published two years ago a sketch of a 
 suminev holiday iu the Norway fjords I sup- 
 posed that I had seen my last of Norse mountains 
 and lakes, and bonder farms, and that this httle record 
 would be all which would remain to me of a time 
 which was so delightfid in the enjoyment. The poor 
 'Severn,' which in 1881 was our floating home, now 
 lies among the krakens at the bottom of the North 
 Sea, or ground to pieces by the teeth of the rocks 
 which one treacherous July morning seized and 
 devoured her. Fai'hfuUy the poor yacht had done 
 her duty, bearing us from lake to lake and wonder 
 to wonder, like Prince Ahmed's enchanted carpet. She 
 had been cut off in her youth, before her engines had 
 rusted or screw-shaft cracked. She had ended in 
 honour, and had not been left to rot away ingloriously 
 or subside into tug or tender. 
 
 Dead, however, as was the ' Severn's ' body, the. soul 
 
 *or idea of her was not dead, but in another year had 
 
 revived again, and gathered a second botly about it,
 
 3r,o XORIVAV ONCE MORE. 
 
 more beautiful tlinu the lirst. In spite of Destiny, her 
 owner per.sovcrotl in his rcsohition to penetrate again 
 tliose virgin inlets, wliich arc yet unhaunted by tourists; 
 to fish again in those waters where the trout are still 
 /crcc rki^Jtroj, unrcarcd in breeding ponds, and unwatched 
 by gamekeepers. He invited me to be once more his 
 companion, and here, in consequence, is a second record 
 of our wanderings, set idly down for my oavu pleasure. 
 In one sense the whole experience was new, for in 1881 
 winter stayed to spend the summer in Norway, and 
 when it did not rain it snowed. In 1884, fur half July 
 at least, we were treated to slcy and mountain which 
 were dazzling in their brilliancy, and to the tropical 
 temperature of which we had read in guide-books, 
 hitherto with most imperfect belief. But besides, I 
 have actual novelties (three at least) which deserve to 
 be each in some way related — one an incident in- 
 structive to English visitors in those parts, one a freak 
 of nature in a landscape, the third a small idyllic figure 
 of Norwegian life. If I can do justice to these, or even 
 to either of them, I flatter myself that I shall not be 
 reproached with being tedious. They will come in 
 their places, and I will note each as I arrive at it. 
 
 We were going to amuse ourselves — to fish, perhaps, 
 in the first instance, but not entirely to fish. We had 
 no river of our own. The best salmon streams were all 
 let, and we had to depend on the hospitality of the 
 native proprietors. And of the brown trout, which are 
 so large and so abundant in the inland waters, there 
 are none in those which communicate with the fjords,
 
 JVO/?IVAV ONCE MORE. 361 
 
 for tliey are eaten up by their large relations from the 
 sea, which annually spend the autumn there. We 
 meant to loiter at our pleasure among the large 
 estuaries while the woods were still green and the 
 midnight sun was still shining on the snow peaks ; to 
 anchor where we could find bottom, which in those long 
 water-filled crevasses is usually out of cable reach ; in 
 the way of fishing, to take what might offer itself, 
 and be as liappy with a little as with much. Our 
 party was small — our host, myself, and my son A., who 
 had just done with the University, and had his first 
 acquaintance to make with the Salmonidae. 
 
 We steamed out of Harwich in the first grey of 
 morning on June 27. The engines waking into life, 
 and the rattling of the anchor chains, disturbed our 
 dreams; but we sank to sleep again under the even 
 pulsation of the screw. When we came on deck we 
 were far out in the North Sea, the water shining like 
 oil, the engines going a hundred to the minute, our 
 head pointing as on our first expedition to Udsire 
 Light, 500 miles NN.E. of us, and the yacht rushing 
 steadily on at an accurate nine knots. Yacht life is 
 active idleness — we have nothing to do, and we do it. 
 Vessels come in sight and pass out of it. We examine 
 them with our binoculars, ascertain what they ai'e and 
 whither they are bound. We note the water, and judge 
 the depth of it by the colour. We liave the chart 
 before us; we take our observations, and prick down 
 our position upon it with a precision which can be 
 ixieasured by yards. We lie on sofas and read novels ;
 
 ir,2 NOA'irAY OjYce moke. 
 
 I read a tianslatioii, in M.S., wliidi our cntcilainer 
 himself was just conipleting, of a Norse novel, a story 
 of an old rough sea raptain who in an ill day for him- 
 self fell amonir the Methodists, had his tough heart 
 nearly broken hy thcni, and recovered only his wits and 
 his native strength of soul when his life was leaving his 
 body. When we tire of our studies we overhaul our 
 fishing tackle, knot casting lines, and splice new traces. 
 Our host himself is an experienced fisherman. His 
 skill in this department is inherited. He tells us a 
 story of his great-grandfather, who, when he could walk 
 no longer, for gout an<l rheumatism, fished from the 
 back of a steady old cart-horse, and had the mane and 
 tail of his charger shaved off to prevent his flies from 
 catching in them. 
 
 At midday we see a smack ahead of us making 
 signals. She lowers a boat. We stop our engines and 
 the boat comes alongside, with tliree as choice specimens 
 of English sea rnirians as eye had ever rested on. They 
 had mackerel to dispose of. They wanted to exchange 
 their mackerel for schnapps. They would uot take 
 money. It was to be ?.piriU or no trade. They looked 
 already so soaked with spirits that a gallon of alcohol 
 might have been distilled out uf the blood of either 
 of them. They had a boy with them with a bright 
 innocent laughing face. Poor little fellow, flung by the 
 fates into such comjianionship ! They got no schnapps 
 from us, and we got no mackerel. They rowed back, 
 and probably, before the day was out, fell in with le.ss 
 scrupulous passers-by.
 
 NORWAY ONCE MOKE. 363 
 
 Our yacht is proud of her punctuality. We know 
 our speed aud we know our distance each within a 
 decimal fraction. We had sent word that we should 
 reach Bergen at 3 o'clock on Sunday afternoon. At 
 the mouth of the Qord which leads up to the great 
 emporium of the fish trade we were five minutes before 
 our time, but the error was accounted for by three 
 hours of a favourable tide. As we passed in we saw 
 the glassy swell combing over the rock where the 
 'Severn' lies buried. On that fatal morning it so 
 happeneil that the sea was absolutely still ; the 
 treacherous surface was unbroken oven by a line of 
 foam, and slie had rushed blindly upon her fate. We 
 do as the wise men bid us do, waste no time in 
 mourning over the unalterable past. We were not 
 wrecked this time. In a few minutes we were flying 
 up the low deep narrow channels between the islands 
 which fringe the western side of the Scandinavian 
 peninsula. The smallest boats traverse these natural 
 roads without danger from wmd or wave; the largest, 
 when the entrance is once jmssed, fear nothing from 
 rock or shoal, the few dangerous spots being faithfully 
 marked by perches. Instead of fog and mist and rain, 
 with which Norway had last welcomed us, we saw it 
 now under the softest, bluest, calmest summer sky. 
 Snow was still visible on the high intciior ranges, but 
 in patches which were fast dissolving, the green farm- 
 steads and woods and red-roofed houses gleaming as if 
 we were in a land of eternal sunshine. In two hours 
 we were at Bergen, the City of Hills. Twice T had
 
 364 NO/!fVAy ONCE MORE. 
 
 Ix'cn there before. I lia<l studied its markets and its 
 museums, and I thought I knew what it was like. But 
 Berjien itself I had never seen till now. The ro(;f of 
 cloud which had lain half down the mountain had now 
 lifted off. As it was Sunday the shipyards were silent. 
 The harbour was dotted over with boats, with smart 
 young ladies in bright dresses and with coloured 
 parasols. Steam-launches rushed to and fro. The 
 merchants' villas shone wliite among the elms and 
 limes. Brigs and schooners were resting at their 
 anchors. Even the huge and hideous Hull steamers 
 suggested life and prosperous energy. ' Have you many 
 rich people here ? ' I asked of a citizen who came on 
 board. ' Not rich,' he said, ' but plenty who can have 
 everything they wish for.' In Norway too they have at 
 last caught the plague of politics. Parties run high, 
 and Bergen is for progress and Radicalism : but Radicals 
 there, as the same gentleman explained to me, would 
 be called Conservatives in England; they want ministers 
 responsible to the Storthing, economy in the Govern- 
 ment, and stricter adherence to the linos of the 
 Constitution — that is all. We landed and heard the 
 Lutheran evening service at the cathedral, which has 
 been lately repaired — the wave of church restoration 
 having spread even to Norway. 
 
 We gave one clear day to Bergen, and oil July 2, with 
 pilot on board, we lifted anchor and sped away through 
 the iidand channels up north to the Sogue Fjord. We 
 had no clear route laid out for us. Our object, as 
 before, was to find quiet nooks or corners where we
 
 NORIFAY ONCE MORE. 365 
 
 could stay as long as Ave pleased, with the yacht for 
 quarters, go ashore, fish, botanise, geologise, and make 
 acquaintance with the natives and their ways. The 
 Sogne runs up into the heart of the Giant Mountains 
 — the homo of the Trolls and Jotuns; the shores on 
 either side rising sheer out of the narrow channel ; the 
 great glaciers, showing between the rents of the crags, 
 four thousand feet above us, pouring out their torrents 
 of melted ice, and in such sultry weather as we were 
 then experiencing tinting the lakes with blue. Our 
 Bergen friends had marked out a few places which 
 they thought might answer for us, and we tried them 
 one after the other. We saw scenery of infinite variety 
 — now among precipices so vast that the yacht seemed 
 dwarfed into a cock-boat; now in sunny bays with 
 softer outlines, where the moraines, left by the ice, 
 were covered with thriving homesteads, pretty villages 
 with white church and manse and rounded pine woods. 
 There, for the most part, are the homes of the Norway 
 peasantry. Eleven-twelfths of the whole surface of the 
 country is rock or glacier or forest, uncultivated, un- 
 inhabitable by living creature, brute or human. But 
 the Norwegian makes the most of the stinted gifts 
 which Nature has allowed him. A\nierever there is a 
 rood of soil which will feed cattle or grow an oat-crop, 
 there his hand is busy. If he cannot live there, he 
 carries over his sheep and cows in his boats to feed. 
 On the ancient lake-bottoms, formed when the fjords 
 were filled with ice, and left dry when the water fell, 
 there are tracts of land which would be called rich and
 
 366 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 beaiitiliil in ;iiiy (•uuiitry in the wuilil. In sucli spots, 
 and in .such wcatht^r, wu might well be teinptt.'d to 
 linger! Tourists make long jouincjys to sec Windcr- 
 njcrc or Loch Katrine. Wc had Windermere and Loch 
 Katrine ten times magnified at every turn of the wind- 
 iii"'' Soune — wc could choose as wc pleased between 
 desolate grandeur and the gentler homes of industry 
 and humaa life. 
 
 Any one of these idaces might have suited us had 
 wc been obliged to stay there, but we had free choice 
 to go anywhere, atid we wanted all the various charms 
 combined. We wanted a good haibour. Wc wanted 
 trout or salmon for ourselves, and sea-fisii for the crew, 
 fresh meat being hard to come by. At one place we 
 were promised a sheep, if the bears had not eaten it. 
 1 believe in that instance we did get the sheep, being 
 a lean, scraggy thing which the bears had de.spised ; 
 but we had many mouths to feed, and the larder could 
 not be left to chance. The flowers everywhere were 
 most beautiful; the wild roses, which in iSSi had been 
 checked by the coki, were still short-lived, but the 
 fullest, reddest, and most abundant that I had ever 
 seen. The long daylight intensifies the colours. The 
 meadows were enamelled with harebells. On the uioist 
 rocks on the lake sides grew gigantic saxifrages, pure 
 white, eighteen inches high. On a single stem I 
 counted three hundred blossoms, and they were so 
 hanly that one plant lived in full flower for a fortnight 
 in a glass on our cabin table. There were curious 
 aspects of human life too. One night, July 2 — St.
 
 JVO/?lVAV ONCE MORE. 367 
 
 John's Day by the old reckoning — as wc lay at anchor 
 in a Korfie, which from the land must have been in- 
 accessible, we saw a large fire blazing, and figures 
 leaping tJuough the flame. It was the relic of a 
 custom, once wide as the Northern hemisphere, on the 
 festival of the summer solstice, old as the IsraeHtish 
 prophet who saw tiie children passed through the fire 
 to Moloch. I observed the same thing forty-three 
 years ago in the market-place at Killarney. Thousands 
 of years it has survived, down to these late times of 
 ours, in which, like much besides, it will now end 
 — dissolved in the revolutionary acids of scientific 
 civilisation. 
 
 These things had their interest, but we were still 
 dissatisfied, and we flew from spot to spot in a way to 
 make the pilot think us maniacs. 'Tout va bien,' said 
 the Paris Terrorist in 1793; ' mais le pain manque.' 
 All was well with us, but fish were wanting ; and Avhen 
 we had wasted a week of our month in following the 
 directions of our acquaintance at Bergen, we decided 
 to lose no more time in exploring, and to make for 
 quarters of which we had ourselves had experience on 
 our first visit. I shall mention no names, for one of 
 these places is a secret of our own, and we do not wish 
 them to become tourist-haunted. No road goes near 
 them, nor ever can, for they are protected on the land 
 side by mountains steeper and vaster tlian the walls of 
 Rasselas's enchanted valley. But yacht-visitors might 
 reach them, nay, have actually reached, not the one 
 I speak of, but another, leaving an unpleasant taste
 
 368 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 behind tluMn. I will not cxtund their opportunities of 
 inakint,' KiiLjIishiiien uiipopuhir. 
 
 Well, then, to decide was to execute. A few hours 
 later we found ourselves anchored in a landlocked bay 
 which I will call for convenience' sake Bruysdal. There 
 are fifty Bruysdals in Norway, and this is not one of 
 them. That is all which I need say. It forms the 
 head of a deep inlet, well stocked with dabs and 
 haddock, and whiting, and wolf-fish and other monsters. 
 The landscape is at once grand and gentle; mighty 
 snow-capped mountains cleft into gorges so deep and 
 dark that the sun, save in the height of sunimer, can 
 never look into them, while on the immediate shores 
 rich meadow-land and grassy undulating hills stretch 
 along the fjord for miles; and from the estate of a 
 prosperous yeoman who rules paternally over his moun- 
 tain valley, a river runs in near our anchorage, •which, 
 after leaving a lake half a mile from the sea, Avinds 
 down with an ever-flowing stream, through heathery 
 pine-clad slopes and grassy levels covered with wild 
 roses and bilberries. The cuckoos were calling in the 
 woods as we came up ; widgeon and wild duck were 
 teaching their young broods to take care of themselves; 
 oyster-catchers flew to and fro — they have no fear of 
 men in a place where no one cares to hurt them. Boats 
 with timber were passing down the river to a saw-mill 
 opposite the mouth. The lake out of which it flows is 
 two miles long, and ends in a solitary glen, closed in by 
 precipices at the head and on either side. There was 
 beauty here, and grandeur, with food of all kinds, from
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 369 
 
 mutton to bilberries, now ripe and as large as outdoor 
 grapes. Above all, we knew by past experience that 
 sea-trout swarmed in the lake, and trout in the river. 
 The owner's acquaintance we had made before, and the 
 old man, learning from the pilot who we were, came on 
 board at once with liis son and the schoolmaster to pay 
 his respects. He himself was hale and stout, age 
 perhaps about sixty ; with dark hair which as yet had 
 no grey streaks in it ; in manner very much that of a 
 gentleman doing the honours of his country and his 
 dominions with rough dignity. His lake, his river, all 
 that he had, he gave us free use of. The fish had not 
 come up in any number yet, but perhaps there might 
 be some. He accepted a glass of wine, being temperate 
 but not severely abstemious. The younger ones touched 
 nothing of that kind — To-tallers they called them- 
 selves. They were two fine-looking men, but without 
 the father's geniality, and with a slight tinge of self- 
 righteousness. The interest of the moment was a bear 
 which they had just killed among them, having caught 
 him committing murder among the sheep. As the 
 flocks increase, the bears multiply along with them; 
 and the shooting one is an event to be made much of. 
 This particular offender's head came home with us, 
 swinging in the rigging, and looked so savage, grinning 
 there, as much to reduce the pleasure of the crew in 
 going ashore among the bilberries. 
 
 At Bruysdal all our desires were at last fulfilled. 
 
 'The steward could get his milk and mutton. The sea 
 
 fish swarmed. The spot itself combined the best
 
 y^o JVOA'ir.tV OXC/i MORE. 
 
 beauties of tlic Norwegian landscapes — \\\V\ nature 
 and thriving Ininian liistory. In the hike, as our enter- 
 tainer had said, there were not many iisii, but there 
 were enough. The water was as clear as tlic air. A 
 tropical sun sIiddg ficncly on its windless surface, 
 conditions neither of them especially favourable for 
 salmon-fishing; but, rowing along the shores, on the 
 edge 'between the deep and the shallow,' with our 
 phantom minnows, we caught what satisfied, without 
 surfeiting, tlie appetite for destiuction; salmon-pecl, 
 sewin, sea-trout, or whatever we pleased to call them, 
 from three to nine pounds weight, gallant fellows that 
 would make the reel spin and scream. And then the 
 luncheon, never to be forgotten, on biscuits soaked in 
 the ice-cold stream, tlie purple bilberries, the modest 
 allowance from tlic whisky flask, and the })ipe to follow, 
 in the heather under the shade of a pine-tree or a 
 juniper, surrounded by ferns and flowers of exquisite 
 variety. I should have no good opinion of any man 
 who, in such a scene, had anything left to wish for. 
 
 One day there was another bear-hunt. Three sheep 
 had been killed in the night again, in the glen at the 
 head of the lake. The bonder's people turned out, and 
 the cries of the beaters among the crags, and the cow- 
 horns echoing from cliff to cliff, brought back memories 
 of old days, on the middle lake at Killarney ; when 
 the Herberts reigned at Mucross, anil the bay of the 
 bloodhounds was heard on the hills, and the driven 
 deer would take the water, and meet his end from a 
 rifle bullet, and the huntsman would wind his death-
 
 ^OJiWAY OMCE MORE. -S^X 
 
 note on the bugle. Beautiful ! all that was, and one 
 cannot think of it without regret that it is gone. But 
 it was artificial, not natural. Our Norway bear-hunt 
 Avas nature and necessity, the genuine chase of a 
 marauding and dangerous animal. This time unfor- 
 tunately it was not successful. The brown villains had 
 stolen off through a pass in the mountains, and escaped 
 the penalties of their sins. 
 
 Settled down as we were in Bruysdal we did not 
 hurry ourselves, and took our pleasure deliberately. 
 One evening after dinner our host and A. went to the 
 la,ke ; I stayed behind, and was rowed about by one of 
 the crew with a fly rod in the mouth of the river. The 
 soft midnight gloaming, the silence broken only by the 
 late call of the cuckoo in the woods, made me careless 
 about the trout, and, after catching four or five, I pre- 
 ferred to talk to my companion. As a seaman he hail 
 been all over the world. He had been np the great 
 rivers in the tropics, had seen pythons and alligators 
 there, and was rather disappointed to find no alligators 
 in the fjords. Alligators, I explained to him, would 
 find a difficulty in getting a living there. In the winter 
 they would be frozen into logs, and would be found 
 dead when they thawed again, and on the whole they 
 preferred a warm climate. As the thermometer had 
 been standing at 80° that day in our deck cabin, and 
 was 70° at that moment though it was midnight, my 
 account was clearly unsatisfactory, but he dropped the 
 subject, and from alligators travelled to human beings. 
 He admired his own countrymen, but could not abso-
 
 372 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 lately approve of them. Tfc Iiarl seen savages little if 
 at all superior to apes, but nowhere had he fallen in 
 with men of any clescriplion, who made such brutes of 
 themselves as Englishmen and Scotchmen when the 
 drink was in them. He himself had drunk water only 
 for fifteen years, and intended to keep to it. I could 
 not but admit that it might be so. Those precious 
 beauties wIkmh we had just seen in the North Sea were 
 illustrations not to be gainsaid. 
 
 One difficulty Avas to know when to go to bed. The 
 sun might set, but the glow lasted till it rose again ; 
 and the cool night air was so deiicitjus and so invigor- 
 ating that to sleep was a waste of our opportunities. 
 That evening when I went to my cabin, I stood looking 
 out through the port-hole on the pink flushed hills and 
 water, the full moon just rising behind a hollow between 
 the high mouutaius and pouring a stream of gold upon 
 the fjord. Now would be the time, I thought, if any 
 Nixie would rise out of the water and sins: a sons: to 
 me of the times long ago. It would have been a rash 
 experiment once. The knight who listened to the 
 Nixie's song forgot country, and home, and wife, and 
 child, plunged wildly into the waters, and was borne 
 away in the white arms of the seducing spirit, never to 
 be seen on earth again. But the knight was young— 
 and I, with the blood creeping slowly in my old veins, 
 felt that for my part I could listen safely, and should 
 like for once to hear such a thing. Alas ! as I stood at 
 the window there came no Nixie, but the pale figure 
 floated before me of , first as she was in her beauty
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 373 
 
 five-and-forty years ago, then dissolving into the still 
 fair, but broken and aged, woman as I had last seen 
 her, fading away out of a life which had blighted the 
 promise of the morning. Her widowed daughter sleeps 
 beside her, having lost first her young husband and 
 then the mother whom she worshipped. The Nixies 
 are silent. The Trolls work unseen among the copper 
 veins in the mountain chasms, and leave unvexed the 
 children of men. Valhalla is a dream, and Balder has 
 become a solar myth; but ghosts still haunt old eyes 
 which have seen so many human creatures flit across 
 the stage, play their parts, sad or joyful, and vanish as 
 they came. 
 
 We stayed a whole week at Bruysdal. There was 
 another spot which we knew of, as wild, as inaccessible, 
 and as fertile, when we tried it last, in the desired 
 sea-tiout; and besides sea-trout there were char — not 
 miserable little thinsfs like those that are caueht in 
 Derwentwater and Crummock, but solid two and three 
 pounders that would fight for their lives like gentlemen. 
 
 Across the mountain to Elversdale (that, again, is 
 'not the right name) an eagle might fly in half an hour, 
 but he would fly over sheets of glacier and peak and 
 ridges six thousand feet high. In fact, for human feet 
 there was no road from Bruysdal thither, and the way 
 round by water was nearly a hundred miles. But what 
 were a hundred miles to the fiery dragon in the yacht's 
 engines ? All he asks for is a ton or two of coal, and 
 he thinks as little of taking you a hundred miles as 
 you think yourself of an afternoon walk. We had the
 
 374 A'OA-fVAY ONCE MOKE. 
 
 ship's washing, too, to pick U]) on the way, and, bcsiflea 
 tlie washing, the letters and newspapers which had 
 been accumulating for a fortnight — something to amuse 
 us in the few hours wliich would be required for our 
 transportation. After a week or two's absence from 
 London one finds oneself strangely indifferent to what 
 seems so important when one is in the middle of it. 
 Speeches in Parliament remind one of the scuffling 
 of kites and crows which Miltou trdks of. On this 
 occasion, however, we had all of us a certain curiosity 
 to hear what had become of the Franchise Bill, 
 especially as our host is a sound hereditary Liberal, 
 sounder and stauncher a great deal than I am, and had 
 duly paired on the Government side before he sailed. 
 We bore the news, when it reached us, with extra- 
 ordinary equanimity. Our appetite for luncheon waa 
 not aftected. The crew did not mutiny, though three- 
 fourths of them must have been among the two millions 
 expectant of votes. For my own particular, I was 
 conscious of pleasure greater than I had ever expected 
 to receive from any political incident in the remainder 
 of my life. In the first place, it is always agreeable to 
 see men behave courageously. The Peers had refused 
 to walk this time through Coventry with halters about 
 their necks. In the next, if they persevered, it might, 
 one "way or another, bring another sliam to an end. 
 The House of Lords had seemed to be something, and 
 they were becoming a nothing. The English Sovereign, 
 loo, is in a position not altogether befitting a human 
 being with an inunortal soul. No man or woman ought
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 375' 
 
 to be forced to say this or tliat, to profess to approve of 
 what he or she detests, in obedience to majorities in 
 the House of Commons. Some day, perhaps, an English 
 Sovereign will be found to say : ' If you want an orna- 
 mental marionette at the top of you, to dance at your 
 bidding, you must find some one else. I, for one, 
 decline to figure any longer in that character. I will 
 be a reality, or I will not be at all.' In constitutional 
 countries those who hold high offices do tend to drift 
 into a similar marionette condition. A dean and 
 chaj)tor who receive a mandate to choose A. B. as their 
 bishop, who invite divine assistance to help them to 
 elect a fit person, and then duly appoint the said A. B., 
 they too are not to be envied. Sovereigns and high 
 persons of all kinds in such situations are idols set up 
 in high places, with the form of dignity and without 
 the power; and if we must have idols they should be 
 wood or stone, or gutta-percha, as more flexible, not 
 human creatures, with blood running in the veins of 
 them. I had been very sorry to see the English peers, 
 ostensibly the flower of the whole nation, la^Dsing 
 gradually into a similar gilded degradation, the lay 
 lords sinking to the level of the spiritual, and by the 
 wise to be mentioned only with a smile. They had at 
 last stood fast, though, alas, it was only for a time. 
 They had recovered the respect of all honest men in 
 doing so, and seemed on the way to become honest 
 men themselves again in one shape or another, and not 
 despised humbugs. 
 
 I liave high honour for the Peers; I think them an
 
 376 NOA'ir.'IV ONCE MORE. 
 
 ex(X'll(jiit iiistitutiuii, jioliticiil .'iiul social, but one must 
 draw a line somewhere, and I draw one at dukes. From 
 their cradle upwards all persons, things, circumstances, 
 combine to hide from dukes that they are mortal, subject 
 to limitations like the lost of ns. A duke, at least an 
 English duke, though he may be called a peer, yet is a 
 peer only by courtesy. He has no social equal. He is 
 at the summit of the world, and has no dignity beyond 
 his own to which he can aspire. He grows up in 
 possession of eveiything which the rest of mankind are 
 striving after. In iiis own immediate surroundings, on 
 his vast estates, among his multitudinous dependents, 
 he has only to will to be obeyed. When he goes out 
 among his fellow-creatures, they bow before so great a 
 presence with instinctive deference. In him, offences 
 are venial which would be fatal to an ordinary man. 
 The earth, so far as he is able to know anything of it, 
 is a place where others have to struggle, but where he 
 has only to desire. To do without wliat at any moment 
 he happens to wish for, whicli moralists consider so 
 important a part of education, is a form of discipline 
 denied to a duke from his cradle, and if the moralists 
 are right he is so much the worse for the want of it. 
 
 I think we could do without dukes. That is the 
 only reform which I wish fur in the Upper House. At 
 any rate, they are over large figures for a quiet Norwe- 
 gian valley. 'There came three Dukes a-ridiug.'^ 
 Several dukes have looked in at Ehersdale of late 
 
 *Iieither of these was the gootl duke alhuleJ to at page 329.
 
 ATO/dlFAV ONCE MORE. 377 
 
 years in their floating palaces. They have gone for 
 sport there, as in fact we were doing ourselves, and it is 
 hard to say that they had not as good a right as we had. 
 But the Norse proprietors, at least some of them, are 
 Republicans, and are not altogether pleased to see these 
 lordly English looking in upon their quiet homes. The 
 shores of the fjord, the rivers, the lakes, are their pro- 
 perty. They are liberal and hospitable ; the land they 
 live in is their own ; but they are courteous and gra- 
 cious, and have been willing hitherto to allow their 
 visitors all fair opportimities of entertaining themselves. 
 They are aware, however (it cannot be a secret to 
 them), that if a Norwegian, or any stranger, American, 
 French, or German, travelling without introduction in 
 Scotland, were to ask for a day's sporting in a preserved 
 forest or salmon river, he would not only be refused, but 
 would be so refused as to make him feel that his request 
 was an impertinence. The Lord of the soil in Norway 
 perhaps may occasionally ask himself why he should 
 be expected to be more liberal. His salmon and trout 
 are an important jmrt of his winter provision. He 
 nets them, salts and stores them for the long nights and 
 short days, when the lakes are frozen, and the valleys 
 are full of snow, and there is no food for man or beast, 
 save what is laid up in summer. Why should he give 
 it away ? 
 
 There are two rivers in Elvcrsdale and two sets of 
 lakes, the respective valleys meeting at the head of the 
 fjord, where on a vast and prettily-wooded moraine 
 there stands, as usual, a white church, the steeple of
 
 37S NORWAY ONCK MORE. 
 
 whicli shows far up ulmi^f the glens, the scattered pea- 
 sants gathering thither in their boats on Sundays. Two 
 great owners divide the domain, one of tliem having 
 the best fishing. It was in one of his lakes close to the 
 fjord that in iSSl we filled our baskets, and now hoped 
 to fill them again. For this lake, at what we considered 
 an unusually high price, we got leave; but we soon 
 found that it had been given us in irony. The sultry 
 weather had melted the edges of the great glacier which 
 we could see from our dock. The ice-water, pouring 
 down in a cataract, tinted the limpid water into a colour 
 like soap-suds, and not a fish would take. Round and 
 round the lake we rowed, with wearisome repetition ; 
 nothing came to our minnows. In the boats we sat, 
 tormented, ourselves, by tiies such as are seen nowhere 
 but in Norway. There is one as big as a drone, and 
 rather like one, but with a green head, and a pair of 
 nippers in it that under a magnifying-glass are a wonder 
 to look at. This, I suppose, is the wretch described by 
 ' Three in Norway,' who speak of a fly that takes a piece 
 out of you, and flies to the next rock to eat it. We 
 were tortured, but caught nothing save a few tiny char 
 which ventured out upon the shallows when the mon- 
 sters were lying torpid. We soon saw how it was. 
 Where we were there was nothing to be done, but two 
 miles up the valley, above the hay meadows and potato 
 fields, was another lake into which no glacier water 
 ran, splendidly rich in char and trout. There flies 
 might torment, but there was at least sport — legitimate, 
 ample, and subject to no disappointment. Thither we
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 375 
 
 applied for leave to go, and (it was perhaps the first 
 time that such a thing ever happened to any English- 
 man in that country) we met with a flat refusal. The 
 owner was tired of being called upon to provide sport 
 for strangers of whom he knew nothing. He gave no 
 reason; when we pressed for one he answered quietly 
 that the fish were his, and that he preferred to keep 
 them for himself. In our first impatience we anathe- 
 matised him to ourselves as a brute, but we reflected 
 that he was doing only what every one of us at home 
 in possession of a similar treasure would do as a matter 
 of course. England is more advanced than Norway, 
 but English principles and habits are making way 
 there ; that is all. This is the first of my three 
 novelties. 
 
 By the proprietor of the other glen and the other 
 lakes we were entertained more graciously. He 
 remembered us. He and his family had visited the 
 drowned yacht. His boys had been fed with sugar- 
 plums, his daughters had been presented with books 
 and coloured prints, which still liung about his farm- 
 house. His waters were not the best; but the scenery 
 about them was at any rate most beautiful, and river, 
 lakes, boats, all that he had, was placed at our disposal. 
 Three lovely days we s^icnt there — rocks and moun- 
 tains, trees and cataracts, the belts of forest, and the 
 high peaks above them soaring up into the eternal blue. 
 _, These were our surroundings, changing their appearance 
 every hour as the shadows shifted with the moving sun. 
 The rare trout rose at the fly, the rarer salmon-trout
 
 38o NO K WAY ONCE MO A' P.. 
 
 run at the pliautums at distant intervals. In the hot 
 midday we would land and seek shade from nut bush 
 or alder. The ice-cold rivulets trickled down out of the 
 far-off snow. The cuckoos called in the woods. The 
 wild roses clustered round us, crimson buds and pale 
 pink flowers shining against the luxuriant green of the 
 leaves. The wild campanulas hung their delicate heads 
 along the shores, fairest and daintiest of all the wild 
 flowers of nature, like pieces of the azure heaven itself 
 shaped into those cups and bells. The bilberry clus- 
 tered among the rocks, hanging out its purple fruit to 
 us to gather as we sat. All this was perfectly delight- 
 ful, and it was only the brutal part of our souls that 
 remained a little discontented because we had not fish 
 enough, and sighed for the yet more perfect Eden from 
 which we were excluded. 
 
 Sunday came, and it was very pretty to see, on the 
 evening before and in the early morning, the boats 
 streaming up the fjord and down from the inland lakes. 
 One boat passed the yacht, rowed by ten stalwart young 
 women, who handled their oais like Saltash fishwives. 
 With a population so scattered, a single priest has two 
 or more churches to attend to at considerable distances, 
 pastors being appointed according to the numbers of 
 the flock, and not the area they occupy. Thus at 
 Elversdale there was a regular service only on alternate 
 Sundays, and this Sunday it was not Elversdale's turn. 
 But there was a Samling — a gathering for catechising 
 and prayer — at our bonder's house, where the good man 
 himself, or some itinerant minister, officiated. Several
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 381 
 
 hundreds must have collected, the children being in 
 the largest proportion. The Norse people are qniet, 
 old-fashioned Lutherans, who never read a newspaper, 
 and have never heard of a doubt about the trutli of 
 what their fathers believed. When the meeting: was 
 over, many of them who were curious to see an English 
 yacht and its occupants came on board. The owner 
 welcomed the elders at the gangway, talked to them 
 in their own tongue, and showed them over the ship. 
 
 A had handfuls of sugar-plums for the little ones. 
 
 They were plain-featured for the most part, with fair 
 hair and blue eyes — the men in strong homespun 
 broadcloth, the women in black serge, with a bright 
 sash about the waist, and a shawl over the shoulders 
 with bits of modest embroidery at the corners. They 
 were perfectly well-behaved, rational, simple, unself- 
 conscious, a healthy race in mind and body whom it 
 was pleasant to see. I could well understand what the 
 Americans mean when they say that, of all the colonists 
 who migrate to them, the Norse are the best — and 
 many go. Norway is as full as it can hold, and the 
 young swarms who in old days roved out in their pirate- 
 ships over France and England and Ireland now pass 
 peaceably to the Far West. 
 
 Our time was slipping away, we had but a few days 
 left. Instead of exploring new regions we agreed to go 
 back once more to Bruysdal, and its trout, and its bears. 
 We knew that there we should be welcome again. 
 And at Elversdale, too, we were leaving friends. Even 
 the stern old fellow who had been so sulky might have
 
 382 NO Ji IV AY ONCE MORE. 
 
 opened his arms if" \vc li;ul stuycd a little Ic^ngor. But 
 we (lid not put liiiii lu the test. The evening before 
 we sailed, our landlord came to take leave, brinjjinf; Ijis 
 Avite with him, a sturdy little woman with a lady's 
 manners under a rough costurao. He was presented 
 with a few pounds of best Scotch oatmeal, a tin of 
 coflfee for his old mother, and a few other delicacies in 
 true Homeric style. He in turn came ne.xt morning at 
 daybreak, as the anchor was coming up, with a fresh- 
 run salmon, which he had just taken out of his trammels. 
 We parted with warm hopes expressed that we miglit 
 one day meet again; and the next quiet Englishman 
 who goes thither will find all the waters open to him as 
 freely as they used to be. 
 
 Yacht life gives ample leisure. I had employed 
 part of mine in making sketches. One laughs at one's 
 extraordinary performances a day or tAvo after one has 
 completed them. Yet the attempt is worth making. 
 It teaches one to admire less grudgingly the work of 
 real artists who have conquered the dilliculties. JJooks 
 are less trying to vanity, for one is producing nothing 
 of one's own, and submitting only to be interested or 
 amused, if the author can succeed in either. One's 
 appetite is generally good on these occasions, and one 
 can devour anything; but in the pure primitive element 
 of sea, and mountains, and unprogressive peasantry I 
 had become somewhat fastidious. I tried a dozen 
 novels one after the other without success; at h\st, 
 perhaps the morning we left Elversdale, I found on the 
 library shelves ' Le Pere Goriot.' I had read a certain
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 383 
 
 quantity of ' Balzac ' at other times, in deference to the 
 
 high opinion entertained of him. N , a fellow of 
 
 Oriel and once member for Oxfurd, I remembered 
 insisting to me that there was more knowledge of 
 human nature in 'Balzac' than in Shakespeare. I 
 had myself observed in the famous novelist a knowledge 
 of a certain kind of human nature which Shakespeare 
 let alone — a nature in which healthy vigour had been 
 corrupted into a caricature by highly seasoned artificial 
 civilisation. Hothouse plants, in which the flowers had 
 lost their grace of form and natural beauty, and had 
 gained instead a poison-loaded and perfumed luxuriance, 
 did not exist in Shakespeare's time, and if they had they 
 would probably not have interested him. However, I 
 had not read ' Lc Pere Goriot,' and as I had been 
 assured that it was the finest of Balzac's works, I sat 
 down to it and deliberately read it through. My first 
 impulse after it was over was to plunge into the sea to 
 wash myself. As we were going ten knots, there were 
 objections to this method of ablution, but I felt that I 
 had been in abominable company. The book seemed 
 to be the very Avorst ever written by a clever man. 
 
 But it, and N 's reference to Shakespeare, led me 
 
 into a train of reflections. Le Pere Goriot, like Kinsr 
 Lear, has two daughters. Like Lear, he strips himself 
 of his own fortune to provide for them in a distin- 
 guished manner. He is left to poverty and misery, 
 while his daughters live in splendour. Why is Lear so 
 grand ? Why is Le Pere Goriot detestable ? In the 
 first place, all the company in Balzac are bad. Le
 
 384 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 I'ere Goriot is so wiai)|)<'il u|» in his (ieliglitf'ul children, 
 that tlieir vfiy vices cliaiiii iiiiii, and their scented 
 boudoirs seem a kind of Paradise. Lear, in the first 
 scene of the play, acts and talks like an idiot, but still 
 an idiot with a moral soul in him. Take Lear's own 
 noble nature from him, take Kent away, and Edgar, 
 and the fool, and Cordelia — and the actors in the play, 
 it must be admitted, are abominable specimens of 
 humanity — yet even so, leaving the story as it might 
 have been if Marlowe had written it instead of Shake- 
 speare, Goneril and Regan would still have been terrible, 
 while the Paris dames of fashion are merely loathsome. 
 What is the explanation of the difiference ? Partly, 1 
 suppose, it arises from the comparative intellectual 
 stature of the two sets of women. Strong natures and 
 weak may be cciually wicked. The strong are interest- 
 ing, because they have daring and force. You fear 
 them as you fear panthers and tigers. You hate, but 
 you admire. M. Balzac's heroines have no intellectual 
 nature at all. They are female swine out of Circe's sty ; 
 as selfish, as unscrupulous as any daughter of Adam 
 could conveniently be, but soft, and corrupt, and 
 cowardly, and sensual ; so base and low that it would 
 be a compliment to call them devils. I object to being 
 brought into the society of people in a book whom I 
 would shut my eyes rather than see in real life. Goneril 
 and Regan would be worth looking at in a cage in the 
 Zoological Gardens. One would have no curiosity to 
 stare at a couple of dames caught out of Coventry 
 Street or the Quadrant. From Shakespeare to Balzac,
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 385 
 
 from the i6tli century to the 19th, we have been pro- 
 gressing to considerable purpose. If the state of litera- 
 ture remains as it has hitherto been, the measure of our 
 moral condition, Europe has been going ahead with a 
 vengeance, I put out the taste of ' Le Pere Goriot ' 
 with ' Persuasion.' Afterwards I found a book really 
 worth reading, with the uninviting title of * Adventures 
 in Sport and War/ the author of it a young Marquis de 
 Compi^gne, a ruined representative of the old French 
 noblesse, who appears first as a penniless adventurer 
 seeking his fortune in America as a bird-stufifer, and 
 tempted by an advertisement into the swamps of Florida 
 in search of specimens, a beggarly experience, yet told 
 with naiveU and simplicity, truth and honour surviving 
 by the side of absolute helples&ness. Afterwards we 
 find our Marquis in France again, fighoing as a private 
 in the war with Germany, and taken prisoner at Sedan ; 
 and again in the campaign against the Commune, at 
 the taking of Paris, and the burning of the Tuileries — 
 a tragic pictui-e, drawn, too, with the entire unconscious- 
 ness of the condition to which Balzac, Madame Sand, 
 and the rest of the fraternity had dragged down the 
 French nation. 
 
 But by this time we are back in Bruysdal, and I 
 come now to the second of my three incidents in which 
 the reader was to be interested: — a specimen of what 
 Norway can do when put upon its mettle in the way of 
 landscape effect. The weather had changed. When we 
 left, the temperature in our deck cabin was 80°. The 
 
 mercury in our barometer stood at 30 and 3"ioths. 
 
 c c
 
 386 NORWAY ONCE MOKE. 
 
 When WO returned the pressure had relaxed U) 29, while 
 the temperature had fallen nearly forty degrees. Our 
 light ilannels had gone back to the drawers, and the 
 thickest woollens would hardly keep out the cold. The 
 rain was falling as in a universal shower bath, lashing 
 into bubbles the surface of the fjord. The cataracts 
 were roaring down ; the river was in a flood, tJje shore 
 and the trees dimly visible through the descending 
 torrent. Here, if ever, was a fishing day for those who 
 were not afraid of being dissolved like sugar. Our host 
 challenged us to venture, and we were ashamed to 
 hesitate. In huge boots and waterproof and oilskin 
 hats (may the wretch who made my mackintosh for me 
 in London be sent to the unpleasant place and punished 
 appropriately) we were rowed up into the lake, sent out 
 our spinners, and were soon iu desperate battle each 
 with our respective monster, half-blinded by wind and 
 rain. On days like this the largest fish roam the waters 
 like hungry pike. We had two hours of it. Flesh and 
 blood could stand no more. We made one cii'cuit of the 
 lake ; neither we nor the boatmen could face a second, 
 and we went home with our spoils. Enough said about 
 that. Now for my landscape. On one side of Bruysdal 
 the mountains rise from the water in a series of preci- 
 pices to the snow-line, and are broken into deep wooded 
 gorges. Down these the cataracts were raging ; very 
 fine in their way, but with nothing uncommon about 
 them. The other side of the valley is formed quite 
 differently. A long broad plateau of smooth unbroken 
 rock ascends at a low orradient for miles, reachins event-
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 3S7 
 
 ually an equal altitude, and losing itself among the 
 clouds. At the hollow where the lake lies, this plateau 
 is as if broken sharjjly off, ending in an overhanging 
 precipice perhaps a mile long, and from 300 to 400 feet 
 high; higher it may be, for the scale of everything is 
 gigantic, and the eye often underrates what it sees. Over 
 the whole wide upper area the rain had been falling for 
 hours with the fury of a tropical thunder shower. Thei'e 
 being no hollows or inequalities to collect the water, and 
 neither grass nor forest to absorb the flood, it ran straight 
 down over the smooth slopes in an even shallow stream. 
 On reaching the cliffs it fell over and scattered into spray, 
 and there it seemed to hang extended over a mile of 
 perpendicular rock, like a delicately transparent lace veil 
 undulating in the eddies of the wind. It was a sight 
 to be seen once and never to be forgotten. Water is a 
 strange Pi'oteus — now transparent as air, now a mirror, 
 now rippled and the colour of the sky. It falls in foam 
 in the torrent. It is level as quicksilver, or it is broken 
 into waves of infinite variety. It is ice, it is snow, it is 
 rain, it is fog and cloud, to say nothing of the shapes 
 it takes in organic substances. But never did I see 
 it play so singular a part as when floating to and fro in 
 airy drapery, with the black wet rock sho^ving like a 
 ghost behind it. The whole valley was dim with the 
 falling rain, the far mountains invisible in mist, the near 
 rocks and trees drenched and dripping. Some artist of 
 the Grosvenor Gallery might make a picture of the 
 place as a jmrt of Hades, and people it with moist spirits. 
 In honour of our endurance and our success, and to
 
 5SS ^ OK WAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 put US in heart again for the next day, we had a bottle 
 of champagne at dinner, I in silence drinking to myself 
 the health of the House of Lords in general as well as 
 that of our entertainer. And now I have only to relate 
 the disgrace which befell myself when the next day 
 came, to end what I have to say about our fishing. I 
 had a precious phantom minnow, a large one which had 
 come victorious out of that day's conflicts. Before put- 
 ting it on again ray eye was caught by the frayed look 
 of the gut trace. It seemed strong when I tried it ; but 
 perhaps I wished to save myself trouble., and treated it 
 as Don Quixote treated his helmet the second time. 
 Well, we started in our boat again, a hundred yards 
 below the point where the river leaves the lake. We 
 were rowing up the strong stream, I carelessly letting 
 out my line, and in that place expecting nothing, when 
 there came a crash ; the slack line was entangled round 
 the reel, which could not run, the rod bent double from 
 the combined weicrht of some sea-trout huger than usual 
 and the rapid water. Alas ! in a moment the rod had 
 straightened again, and sea-trout, phantom, and my own 
 reputation as a fisherman were gone together. I could 
 not get over it, and the sport had lost its charm. We 
 caught several fish afterwards, and my son got one 
 nearly ten pounds Aveight. I was glad for him, but for 
 myself the spirit had gone out of me. In the afternoon, 
 the river being in high order, we put our lighter rods 
 
 together to try the pools with salmon flies. D 
 
 caught a salmon-peel of four pounds weight. I had 
 another smaller one ; afterwards scrambling along some
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 389 
 
 steep slippery rocks I reached a promising-looking run, 
 and, letting my fly go down over it, I rose a true salmon 
 and a big one. I drew back and changed my fly. A 
 salmon, under such conditions, will almost always come 
 again if you wait a minute or two and throw him a 
 new temptation. I was looking to be consoled for my 
 morning's misfortune, when at the moment a native 
 boat dashed over the spot loaded with timber. My 
 salmon vanished into space, and I saw him no more. 
 I ought to have been disgusted. I discovered myself 
 reflecting instead, that after all the salmon was better 
 off as he was, and I no worse — a state of luind unper- 
 mitted to a fisherman, and implying that my connection 
 with the trade, now more than fifty years old, may be 
 coming to an end. Alas, that all things do come to an 
 end 1 Life itself runs to an end. Our Norway holiday 
 was running to an end, though the prettiest part of it 
 was still to come. We had to look in at Bergen again 
 on our way home to pick up letters, &c. Bergen was 
 nearly 200 miles from us, and to break the distance we 
 were to anchor somewhere about half-way. Our last 
 day at Bruysdal was a Sunday again. We were popular 
 there, and on Sunday evening we had a small fleet about 
 us, with boys and girls and music. An ingenious lad 
 had fitted a screw propeller of his own making to his 
 boat, which he worked with a crank. With this, and 
 the Norwegian flag flying, he careered round and round 
 the yacht at a most respectable pace, the lads and lasses 
 following in their Sunday dresses, like the nymphs and 
 Tritons after Neotune's car. A boat came on boaril \xb
 
 390 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 with two mou in lier whom we did not know. Tliey 
 had a sick relation at liome, and wanted medicine. We 
 gave them what we had. They innocently asked how 
 much they were to pay, bringing out their pocket-books, 
 
 and were perplexed when D laughed and told them 
 
 'nothing' They doubted, perhaps, the efficacy of the 
 remedies. Anyhow they were gratified. Tiie Bruysdal 
 community fired a gun wheu we steamed away next 
 day, and saluted us with their flag from the school- 
 house ; there too Ave shall find a welcome if we ever 
 return : meanwhile we were gone, for the present to see 
 it no more. 
 
 In the evening we turned into a spot which our 
 pilot knew of as a quiet anchorage, which I will call 
 Orlestrund. We were by this time far away from the 
 mountains. We found ourselves in a soft landlocked 
 bay, with green meadows and low softly-wooded hills; 
 the air w^as sweet with the scent of the new-mown hay; 
 there were half-a-dozen farmhouses, which seemed to 
 share between them the richly-cultivated and smiling 
 soil. A church stood conspicuous near the shore ; on 
 one side of it was what seemed to be a school ; on the 
 other, among high trees, we saw the roof and chimnevs 
 of the pastor's house, a respectable and even superior- 
 looking residence. Work for the day Avas over when 
 we let fall our anchor. It was about eight o'clock, a 
 lovely summer evening, with three hours of subdued 
 daylight remaining. The boys and young men, dis- 
 missed from the fields, were scattered about the bay in 
 Doats catchinof haddock and Avhitinfj. Lookinn round
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 391 
 
 the pretty scene we saw a group outside the gate of the 
 manse, which was evidently the pastor and his family, 
 himself an elderly gentleman, his wife, and six young 
 ones, descending from a girl of perhaps sixteen to little 
 ones just able to take care of themselves. They were 
 examining the yacht, and it was easy to see what 
 happened. The old couple, with the three youngest 
 children, turned in to their gate and disappeared. The 
 others, the eldest girl and two brothers, had got leave 
 to go out in the boat and look at us, for they flew along 
 the shore to their boat-house, and presently came out 
 on the fjord. Not wishing to seem too curious they 
 lingered awhile with their lines and caught four or five 
 haddock. They then gradually drew nearer, the girl 
 
 rowing, her two brothers in the stern. D beckoned 
 
 to them to come closer, and then, in Norse, invited 
 them on board. They were roughly dressed, not better 
 perhaps than the children of the peasantry, but their 
 looks were refined, their manner modest and simple, 
 free alike from shyness and forwardness. The daughter 
 spoke for the rest. She was tall for her years, with 
 large eyes, a slight but strong figure, and features almost 
 
 handsome. D took her round the ship. She moved 
 
 gracefully, answered questions and asked them with as 
 much ease as if she had been among friends and rela- 
 tions. She kept her young brothers in order by a woi'd, 
 and in short behaved with a composure which would 
 have been surprising in any girl of such an age when 
 thrown suddenly anioug strangers. She asked if we 
 had ladies on board, and seemed disappointed, but not
 
 392 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 the least disturbed, when we told her that there were 
 only ourselves. Presently she began to speak English, 
 with a fair accent too, better than most French or 
 Germans ever arrive at. We asked her if she had been 
 in England. She had never been away from Orlestrund. 
 She had taught herself English, she said quite simply, 
 
 ' from book.' D accuses her of having asked 
 
 him if he could speak Norse, after he had been talking 
 in that language to her for ten minutes. I insisted, 
 with no knowledge of the language myself, but merely 
 drawing my inference from the nature of things, that a 
 creature of such fine behaviour could not have put it 
 as question, but must have observed, ' And you too 
 speak Norse ! ' We asked her name. She was called 
 Theresa. Theresa certainly, but I could not catch the 
 surname with entire clearness. She wished to bring 
 her father to see us. We would gladly have seen both 
 the father and the mother who in such a spot had 
 contrived to rear so singular a product. She gathered 
 up her two boys, sprang into her skiff, seized the oars, 
 and shot away over the water. We saw her land and 
 vanish into the shrubbery. In a few minutes she 
 appeared again, but only with a little sister this time. 
 She came to tell us that her father could not leave his 
 house at so late an hour. He was sorry he could not 
 use the opportunity of making our acquintance. He 
 
 desired to know who we were. D wrote his name 
 
 and gave it her. She went down the gangway again, 
 and joined her sister, who had hid herself in her shawl 
 in timid modesty.
 
 NORWAY ONCE MORE. 393 
 
 They glided off into the gloaming, and we saw them 
 no more. Very pretty, I thought, this Norse girl, so 
 innocent, so self-possessed, who seemed in that lonely 
 spot, surrounded only by peasants, to liave educated her- 
 self into a character so graceful. If our modern schools, 
 with competition and examinations, and the rights 
 of woman, and j)rogress of civilisation, and the rest of 
 it, turn out women as good and as intelligent as this 
 young lassie, they will do better than I, for one, expect 
 of them. Peace be with her, and a happy, useful life 
 at the side of some fit companion ! In the wide garden 
 of the world, with its hotbed luxuriance and feverish 
 exotics, there will be one nook at any rate where nature 
 combined with genuine art will bloom into real beauty. 
 
 So ends my brief journal — ends with Theresa, for I 
 can add nothing which will not be poor and trivial after 
 •so fair a figure — and, indeed, there is nothing more to 
 say. The next morning we hastened on to Bergen. 
 The afternoon which followed we were out again on the 
 North Sea, which we found this time in angry humour. 
 But the engines made their revolutions accurately. The 
 ?og gave the speed which was expected, and we made 
 the passage to Harwich again in the exact period 
 which had been predetermined. We were late, indeed, 
 by twelve minutes, after allowing for the difference of 
 longitude, and these minutes lost required to be ac- 
 counted for. But we recollected that we had stopped 
 precisely that number of minutes on the Dogger Bank to 
 take soundings, and the mystery was perfectly explained. 
 It reminded me of a learned Professor of Oxford, who
 
 394 NORIVAY ONCE MORE. 
 
 was encfaged on sacred chronolo;?y. He told us one 
 night in Common Room that he had the dates of every 
 event complete from the Creation till the present day. 
 He had been so minutely successfid that his calculations 
 were right to twelve hours. These hours had puzzled 
 him till he recollected that when the sun was arrested 
 by Joshua it had stood still for a whole day, exactly the 
 period which he wanted, and the apparent error had 
 only verified his accuracy.
 
 Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 
 
 bread street hill, e.c., and 
 
 bungay, suffolk.
 
 DATE 
 
 JAN 4 
 
 m 4 
 
 OCT 2 3 1 969 
 
 OCT 2 3 |98S M 
 7^ 
 
 1967 
 
 367 Z 
 
 AA 
 
 001 325 813 
 
 IffTingTs 
 
 JUN 3 
 
 lifflj/l/V 
 
 1980 
 
 5-198^- 
 
 5 
 
 ffil 
 
 -Cl£C- 
 
 I9fi9 5 
 
 NOV 
 
 2 1970 
 
 NOV 1 ^ 19T0 1 
 
 219" 
 
 fj 
 
 4iy/0 9 
 
 MAY 'i 3 19'« 
 
 MAY ^ ;i ly/z a 
 
 JUNl 
 
 ri9TT 
 
 MAY 3 
 
 1 1973 I 
 
 -4UN-1 
 
 g-iam- 
 
 MAR 1 5 
 
 msA 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 3 1210 00339 0679 M