OF & 3485 CROMWELL. AN HISTORICAL NOVEL. AUTHOR OF " THE BROTHERS," &c. v \ " Yet is (he tale, true, though it be, as strance, As full, inethinks, of wild and wondrous change, As any that 'he wandering tribes require, Sirelch'd in the desert round their evening fire; As any sung of old in hall or bower To minstrel harps at midnight's witching hour." ROGERS. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW-YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF ST. 1838. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1837, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New- York, "PS TO GEORGE MACARTNEY BUSHE, M.D., AS A SMALL, THOUGH SINCERE, TESTIMONY OF GRATITUDE FOR HIS DISINTERESTED KINDNESS, AND FOR THE INESTIMABLE BENEFITS DERIVED FROM HIS PROFESSIONAL SKILL, THIS NOVEL IS AF FECTIONATELY DEDICATED, BY HIS OBLIGED AND FAITHFUL FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. THE above lines were written a short time before the ' day when, in accordance to the hidden workings of that Providence which it is not for man to comprehend or question, the great and glorious intellect to which they are addressed was fatally cut off from its mature career of usefulness, benevolence, and wisdom. It seems, however, to the writer, that the deplorable event which has deprived so many homes of their protector and their friend has but increased the fitness of this humble trib ute ; since, now that memory and grief are only left to us, it is admissible to speak aloud of those pre-eminent endowments which, while the owner lived, must have been tacitly recorded in his name alone. New-York, June 12, 1837. 328135 CROMWELL. CHAPTER I. " Can this be HE That hath no privilege of gentle birth, Beauty, nor grace, nor utterance sublime Of words persuasive, nor the blood-bought skill That wins i' the foughten field ?" " BUT even as you will, fair sir even as you will ! Though, an' you ride for Huntingdon this night, and wish not, ere it be two hours the later, that you had tarried here at the White Dragon, then am not I called Walter Danforth, nor have I drawn good ale in Royston these forty years and better." With this prophetic sentence did the lord of cup and can wind up a long narration of roads impas sable, and bridges broken, and " all the moving ac cidents of flood and field," with which, according to time-honoured usage among the heroes of the spigot, he was endeavouring to beguile the lated wayfarer. In the present instance, however, it would seem that the ominous warnings of the wor thy Boniface were destined to be of none effect, for with a cheery smile the traveller answered " 'Tis like enough, good host of mine 'tis like enough so all the cates of the White Dragon vie with this puissant Bourdeaux ;" and, as he spoke, he proffered to the landlord's grasp the mighty flagon of bright pewter, which, despite his eulogy, he had left still mantling with its generous 10 CROMWELL. liquor, " but, were the venture deeper, I must on to-night^and, in good sooth, too often have I jour neyed fhrough the midnight passes of the wild Ab- ruzzi, and the yet wilder Pyrenean hills of Spain, to ponder gravely on a late ride or a sprinkled doublet among these chalky wolds of Hertford shire." " Ay ! were that all " returned the other, heaving a long breath after the potent draught with which he had exhausted the flagon, and ey ing wistfully the coins which had dropped with so sweet a jingle into his greasy palm, " Ay, were that all but there are worse customers on Ermine- street than darkness, or storm either, though the clouds be mustering solblack in the west yonder, over the woods of Potton. Wise men ride not forth nowadays an hour after sundown, nor earli er, save in company." " Then must Old England be sore changed since last I left her," replied the traveller, a shade of thought or sorrow, for it might be either, crossing his features, and not entirely effaced by the frank smile which followed it. " And if she be " he paused, unwilling, as brave men ever are, to utter sentiments which might, however justified by the occasion, sound boastfully. " And if she be ?" inquired the interested Wal ter, seeing that his guest hesitated to complete his sentence, "and if she be sore changed ?" " Why, then hath brown Bess borne me through worse frays than I am like to meet, I trow, on this side Huntingdon ; nor will it be small peril that shall arrest her now ; and so good e'en, fair land lord." " A bold bird and a braggart !" muttered the dis concerted publican, as the horseman, giving the spur to the highbred mare of which he had just CROMWELL. 11 spoken, rode briskly off. " But if he meet with those I wot of, he may yet crow craven. Who those were to whom his words so pointed ly alluded, is not perhaps a question of .-more than ordinary moment, unless it be from the vast con ception of their prowess which appears to have been entertained by the landlord of the White Dragon; for, in truth, the gentleman who had earned his ill-will merely by a natural re uctance to tarry in Royston when his occasions called him elsewhere, was of very different mould from one of whom it would be said that he was like to fall an easy or unresisting prey to any who should dare dispute his progress. Removed alike from the greenness of inconsiderate youth and from the in activity of an advanced age, the rider might be looked upon as exhibiting a specimen of manhood, in the full vigour of its endowments, both mental and corporeal, as fair as is permitted by the imper fections of humanity. Considerably above the or dinary height of men, broad-shouldered, deep- chested, and thin-flanked, he sat his charger with an ease and firmness resulting more from natural arace and flexibility of limb than from the prac tised art of the manege. His eye was clear and even quick, though thought and calmness seemed to belong, rather than energy or fire, to its general expression, qualities belied neither by the broad imaginative forehead, nor by the firm and slightly compressed outline of his chiselled lips. He wore a small mustache, but neither beard nor whiskers, although both these were common in the last years of the unhappy monarch who at that time swayed the destinies of England. His hair, as was the wont among the higher classes of society, flowed in loose curls, trained with peculiar care, far down the neck and over the collar of the doublet, while 12 CROMWELL. a single ringlet, longer and more assiduously cher ished than the rest, seemed to indicate that the wearer was not of one mind with the pamphlet lately published by the notorious Master Prynne on the " unloveliness of love-locks." The dress of this cavalier, a loose velvet jerkin of that peculi ar shade which, from being the favourite colour of the greatest painter of his day, has been dignified with the immortal title of Vandyke, was slashed and broidered with black lace and satin ; tight breeches of buff leather, guarded with tawny silk, high boots, and massive spurs, completed his attire ; all save a broad-leafed hat of dark gray beaver, with one black ostrich feather drooping from the clasp which held it over the left eyebrow. His military cloak of sable cloth and velvet was buck led to the croup of his war-saddle, while from beneath the housings of the bow peered out the heavy pistols, which had not long before supplant ed the lance as the peculiar weapon of the horse man. A long rapier, with its steel scabbard and basket-hilt of silver delicately carved, hung from a shoulder-scarf of the lame colour with his doublet, matched by a poniard of yet more costly fabric in his Cordovan leather girdle. When it is added that the mare which he had styled "brown Bess" was an animal that might be pronounced unrivalled for the rare union she dis played of strength and beauty, of English bone and high Arabian blood the latter manifested in the clean limb, full eye, and coat glancing like polished copper to the sunlight naught will be wanting to the picture of the traveller who was now journey ing right onward, undismayed, if not incredulous of all that he had heard, across the bleak and barren hills which skirt the southern verge of Cambridge shire. CROMWELL. 13 The season was that usually the most delicious of the English year the bright and golden days of early autumn when the promises of spring and summer are fulfilled in the rustling harvest-field and the rich orchard, and before the thoughts of change, decay, and death are forced upon the mind by the sere leaf and withered herbage. The day had been mild and calm, and, though evening was far advanced, the sun was still shooting his slant rays over the rounded summits and grassy slopes of the low hills through which the ancient Roman way holds its undeviating course. Ere long, how ever, the clouds of which the landlord had spoken as gathering so darkly to the westward, though at that time visible only in a narrow streak along the edge of the horizon, began to rise in towering masses, until the light of the declining day-god was first changed to a dark and lurid crimson, and then wholly intercepted. After a while the wind, which had been slight and southerly, veered round and blew in fitful squalls, now whirling the dust and stubble high into the air, and again subsiding into a stillness that from the contrast seemed un natural. Such was the aspect of the night when the sun set, and the little light which had hitherto struggled through intervals of the increasing storm- cloud, waned rapidly to almost utter darkness. To render the traveller's position yet less enviable, he had already passed the open country, and was now involved in the mazes of scattered woodland, which in the seventeenth century overspread so large a por tion of that country. The way too, which had thus far been firm and in good order, now running be tween deep hollow banks, resembled rather a water course deserted by its torrent than a public thorough fare ; so that his progress was both slow and pain ful until he reached the banks of the Cam at that VOL. I.B 14 CROMWELL. place, as throughout much of its course, a strong and turbid stream, wheeling along in sullen eddies between shores of soft black loam. Here daylight utterly deserted him, its last glimpse barely suffi cing to show that the bridge had been carried away, and that the river was apparently unfordable ; since a miry track wandered away from the brink to the left hand, as though in search of a place where it might pass the current, and resume its natural direc tion to the northward. While he was considering what course it would be most advisable that he should pursue, a few large heavy drops of rain plashed on the surface of the gloomy stream, warn ing the stranger to hasten his decision. Then, as he turned to follow, as best he might, the devious and uncertain path before him, the windows of the heavens were opened, and down came the thick shower, pattering on the thirsty earth, and lashing the river's bosom into a sheet of whitened spray. Thoroughly drenched, and almost hopeless of re covering the true direction of his journey until the return of daylight, it was yet not a part of that man's character to hesitate, much less to falter or despair. Having once determined what it would be for the best to do, he went right onward to his purpose, though it oftentimes required the full ex ercise of spur and rein to force the gallant animal which he bestrode against the furious gusts and pelting storm. For a weary hour or more he plod ded onward, feeling his way, as it were, step by step, and guided only by the flashes of broad light ning which from time to time glared over the des olate scene, with an intensity that merely served to render the succeeding gloom more dreary. At length, by the same wild illumination, he discover ed that his path once more turned northward, sink ing abruptly to the verge of that black river. Of CROMWELL. 15 the farther bank he could distinguish nothing ; and though for many minutes he awaited the return of the electric light before attempting to stem the un known ford, with that singular perversity which even things inanimate and senseless at times seem to exhibit, the flashes returned no more. Still no word of impatience or profanity rose to his lip, as he spurred the reluctant mare resolutely down the steep descent, holding his pistols, which he had drawn from their holsters, high above his head. At the first plunge, as he had well expected, all foot-hold was lost, and nothing remained but a perilous swim, not without considerable risk of finding an imprac ticable bank at the farther side ; but whether it was the result of skill or of fortune, or, more probable than either, a combination of the two, after a few rough struggles and a scramble through the tena cious mire, horse and man stood in safety on the northern verge. Not yet, however, could the ad ventures of that night be deemed at an end ; for, having once deviated from it during the hours of darkness, it was no easy matter to recover the line of the high road. The storm, it is true, after a while abated ; and the by-path into which he struck was sufficiently hard to enable the cavalier to travel at a pace more rapid than he had tried since quit ting Royston; but notwithstanding this, so much time had been lost, and so small did the prospect seem of reaching his destination, or indeed any other village at which to pass the night, that the merciful rider was beginning to occupy himself in searching for such temporary shelter as a cattle- shed, or the lee-side of some lonely haystack might afford, when his eye was attracted by a distant light now seen, now lost among the young plan tations, or scattered stripes of forest which checker ed everywhere the scenery. It required but a mo- 16 CROMWELL. ment's pause to discover that the light was in mo tion, and at a smaller distance than he had at first conjectured; and though there might have been grounds for suspicion and distrust to the weak or timid in the place and manner of its appearance, quickening his pace to a gallop, and somewhat al tering his course, he rode straight for the object. Five minutes brought him to a bank and ditch, evidently skirting the road of which he was in quest ; the clatter of the horse's hoofs as he leaped the trifling obstacle, and landed safely on the rough pavement of the Roman way, was, it should seem, the first intimation of his approach that reached the bearers of the light ; for ere he could distinguish more than the figures of two or three rude-looking countrymen, one of them bearing on his shoulders what resembled the carcass of a deer, it was eithe: extinguished altogether or suddenly veiled fro: sight. " They are upon us," cried a hoarse voice, " shoot, Wilkin !" and instantly the clang of a steel crossbow, and the whistle of the heavy bolt, as it narrowly missed the rider's ear, showed that the mandate was complied with as promptly as deliv ered. " Hold ! hold your hands !" he shouted, " or ye will fare the worse. Ye know me not, nor care I aught for ye." " Fare the worse, shall we ?" interrupted the other, " that shall we see anon. Come on, brave boys, and down with this proud meddler !" and with a loud fierce cry, some six or seven ruffians, as he judged from the sound of their footsteps, rushed against him. In the moment which had elapsed since the first outrage, he had prepared his weapons, and was already on his guard; but it was not destined that he should this time need their ser- CROMWELL. vice ; for just as he reined up his steed, and parri ed the first blow aimed at him with a crowbar or a quarterstaff, the quick tramp of coming horsemen was heard upon the road behind him ; and with their swords drawn, as if excited by the shout of the ruffians, two or three persons galloped rapidly to his assistance. " What knaves be these ?" inquired a loud and dissonant voice from the foremost of the new-com ers, as the cavalier fell back toward his welcome rescuers. " What knaves be these that raise this coil on the highway ?" " Down with the thieving Girgashites !" shouted another of the riders, ere an answer could be ren dered to the querist ; and, at the word, he fired a petronel at random, its momentary flash displaying ~,..the marauders struggling, as best they might, thorough a strong blackthorn fence, which parted the road from a wild tract of coppice, glade, and wood land. " Deer-stealers, Master Oliver," he continued, reslinging his now useless weapon, " after the herds of my Lord De la Warr. But I have scared them for the nonce !" " More shame to thee, Giles Overton," cried the same voice which had first spoken, " and more sin likewise, to use the carnal weapon thus in cause less strife; setting the precious spirit of a being like to, or it may well be better than thyself, upon the darkling venture of chance-medley, and barter ing a human life against the slaughter of a value less and soulless beast. Go to, Giles Overton, see that thou err not in the like sort again ! But art thou hurt, good sir ?" proceeded the speaker, turn ing in his saddle toward the traveller, for whose safety he had come up so opportunely, " or have we, by the mercy of the Lord, who may in this if it be not presumptuous in me, considering how B2 18 CROMWELL. unprofitable I am, and the mean improvement of my talent, so to judge of his workings vouch safe to preserve thee for a chosen vessel. Have we, P would say, come in season to protect thee from these sons of Ammon ?" " Thanks to your timely aid, fair sir," replied the cavalier, not a little astonished at the strange address of his preserver ; for he had but recently returned to his native land after protracted absence, and, at the time of his departure, the reign of the saints had not yet commenced on earth " I am uninjured ; and now, I pray you to increase yet farther this your kindness, by informing me the straightest road for Huntingdon ; it cannot be, I do suppose, far distant." " Good lack a stranger, by your questioning," answered he who had been called Oliver ; " Hun tingdon do I know right well ay ! even as one knoweth the tabernacle of his abode, and the burial- place of his fathers ; but I profess to you that it is distant by full thirteen miles, and those of sorry road. But ride thou on with me to Bourne, some three miles farther, and I will bestow thee at a house where thou mayst tarry until morn the Fox Tavern, I would say Phineas Goodenough, my glove hath fallen ; I pray thee reach it to me a clean house, truly, kept by a worthy man yea, verily, a good man, one that dwelleth in the fear of the Lord alway." " A stranger am I doubtless," returned the other, " else had I not inquired of thee that which I then had well known ; and, of a truth, I know not now that I can do aught better than to accept your prof fer frankly as it is made !" " Be it so !" was the ready answer. " Will it please you to ride somewhat briskly ; for myself, I i CROMWELL. 19 am bound an hour's ride farther to worshipful Mas ter Pym's, nigh Caldecote !" " Ha ! Pym, the friend of Hampden and John Milton I knew not he lived hereabout," exclaimed the cavalier. "And what knowest ihou, so I may ask it," queried Oliver, "of Hampden or John Milton? Truly, I took thee for a carnal-minded person ; but, of a surety, it is not for a man to judge !" " For what it liked your wisdom to mistake me, I know not ; nor, to speak frankly, do I care great ly," replied the other ; " but, to satisfy your ques tion, of Hampden I know nothing, save that the mode of his resistance to that illegal claim of ship- money hath reached my ears, even where the tongue of England would have sounded strangely. John Milton, if it concerns you any thing to hear of him, was, and that too for many months, my chosen comrade of the road, and my most eloquent tutorer in the classic lore of Italy !" " In Italy, saidst thou ? In Italy, and with John Milton ?" answered Oliver, after a long and medita tive pause ; and, as he continued, his own voice had lost much of its harshness, and his manner not a little of its offensive peculiarity. " A better com rade couldst thou not have chosen than that pure- minded Christian, that most zealous patriot. Verily, I say to you, that, in consorting with that sanctified, elected vessel, you must needs have imbibed some draughts more worthy than the profane and carnal lore of those benighted heathens, whose bestial and idolatrous rites are even now to be found cor rupting with their accursed stench the faith which claims to be of Jesus, even as the stinking fly poisoneth the salve of the mediciner. Verily I will believe that he hath opened unto you the door of that wisdom which is alone all in all ! Ay ! and 20 CROMWELL. as I find you here returning hard upon his heels, even as he hath of late returned from the city of her that sitteth on the seven lulls, clothed in the purple of the harlot, may I not humbly hope I would say confidently trust, that you will also draw the sword of truth to defend this sore- aggrieved and spirit-broken people from the tyran nous oppression of their rulers, and the self-seek ing idolatries of those that sit in the high places of the land !" " Fair sir," replied the cavalier, " you question somewhat too closely ; and converse, methinks, too freely for a stranger. That I come, summoned homeward by the rumour of these unhappy broils between our sovereign and his parliament, is not less true than that I care not either to conceal or to deny it ! Beyond this what part soever I may play in that which is to come pardon my plain ness, sir, I do not deem it wisdom to discourse with a chance customer. Nor. have I yet indeed decided what that part shall be, until I search more narrowly the grounds, and so find out my way 'twixt over license on the one hand, and, as it seems to me, intemperance on the other, and too fiery zeal !" " Edgar Ardenne," returned the puritan, his naturally harsh voice subsiding into a hollow croak, " Edgar Ardenne for I do know you, though, as you have truly spoken me, a stranger I tell you now, this nation totters on the brink of a most strange and perilous convulsion ! We are the instruments vile instruments, it is true, but still instruments in the hands of Him who holds the end of all things. Watched have we, and prayed; yea, wrestled with him in the spirit for a sign, and lo ! a sign was sent us. It may be we shall achieve deliverance for our country free- CROMWELL. 21 dom from corporeal chains and spiritual bondage ! It may be we shall fail, and, failing, seek the shel ter of that New Jerusalem beyond the Western Ocean, wherein there be no kings to lord it o'er men's consciences, and to compel them how to worship God ! But fail we, or succeed, the sign hath been given to us from on high, and therefore shall we venture ! and fail we, or succeed mark my words, Edgar Ardenne, for thou shall think on them hereafter thy lot is cast with ours ! Thy spirit is of our order, thy heart is with us, and thy tongue shall be, yea, and thy sword likewise !" " How you have learned my name, I compre hend not," answered Ardenne, for so must he be styled henceforth, veiling whatever of suspicion or annoyance he might feel beneath the semblance of a cold and dignified indifference ; " but, were it worth the while, I could assure you that, in learn ing this, you have learned all ! What part you play in this wild drama, whether you be hypocrite or zealot, patriot or traitor, I care nothing ; but, if we meet hereafter, you will learn that neither sophistry nor canting can affect my head, nor the dark phrensy of fanaticism reach my heart !" " We shall meet," answered the stranger ; " we shall meet again, and shortly ! and then shall you too learn if I be saint or hypocrite if I be patriot or traitor ! and, above all, then shall you learn if, in these things that I have spoken, I be a lying prophet or a true ! But lo you now this is the Fox at Bourne, and here comes honest Langton, to whose good offices I do commit you !" As he spoke, they drew up their horses before the door of the little wayside hostelry, a low and whitewashed tenement, unbosomed in deep wood lands, and nestling, as it were, amid the verdant foliage of jessamine and woodbine ; while, warned 22 CROMWELL. already of their coming by the clatter of hoofs and the sound of voices, the puritanic person of mine host, bearing on high a huge and smoky flambeau, which poured its red light far into the bosom of the darkness, stalked forth to meet them. On his lean and starveling form, however, Ardenne cast but a passing glance, being employed in scrutini zing, by the wild illumination which streamed full upon them, the features of his singular companion ; who had paused for a moment to allow his horse to drink, and to hold a whispered conversation with the landlord. There was, however, nothing famil iar to him, though he probed his memory to its lowest depth of youthful recollections, in that manly yet ungraceful figure, or in those linea ments, harsh and ill-favoured to the verge of down right ugliness. Ill-favoured was that countenance indeed, with its deeply-furrowed lines and its san guineous colouring; its sunken eyes, twinkling below the penthouse of the heavy matted brows ; and its nose, prominent, rubicund, and swollen. Yet was there a world of thought in the expansive temples and the massive forehead an expression of firmness that might restrain an empire in the downward curve of the bold mouth and a general air of high authority and of indomitable resolution pervading the whole aspect of the man. The head of this remarkable-looking individual, at a period when the greatest attention was lavished on the Jiair by all of gentle birth, was covered with coarse locks, already streaked with gray, falling in long disordered masses on either cheek, and down the muscular short neck, from underneath a rusty beaver, steeple-crowned and unadorned by feath er, loop, or tassel. Instead of the cravat of Flan ders lace, he wore a narrow band of soiled and rumpled linen ; and his .sword, a heavy iron-hilted * CROMWELL. 23 tuck, was not suspended from a scarf or shoulder- knot, but giit about his middle, over a doublet of black serge, by a belt of calf-skin leather, corre sponding to the material of his riding-boots, which were pulled up above the knee to meet the loose trunk hose, fashioned, as it would be supposed, by some ill country tailor from the same unseemly stuff with his cloak and doublet. The only part of his appointments which would not have disgraced the commonest gentleman was his horse, a tall gray gelding of great power and not a little breed ing ; yet even he was badly accoutred with mean and sordid housings. Such was the appearance of the person whose conversation had not been list ened to by Edgar Ardenne without deep interest ; and now even while he confessed to himself that the man's frame and features entitled him to no regard as a person of superior caste or bearing there was still something in his air which produced an indescribable effect on the mind of the cavalier, forcing him, as it were, despite his senses, to admit that he was in somewise remarkable, above, and at the same time apart from, ordinary mortals, and not unlike to one who might be indeed the mover of great changes in the estate of nations. While he was yet gazing on him with ill-dis sembled curiosity, the stranger, in his loud hoarse notes, bade him adieu, and, striking at once into a rapid trot, was swallowed up with his companions in the surrounding gloom. Edgar, after a fruitless effort at ascertaining from the saintly and abstracted publican the name and quality of his late compan ion, applied himself to creature comforts, as the landlord termed them, of a higher order, and to a bed more neatly garnished, than he could have augured from the 'lowly exterior of the village inn. 24 CROMWELL. CHAPTER II. " A gentle being, delicately fair, Full of soft fancies, timorous, and shy ; Yet high of purpose, and of soul so firm, That sooner shall you the round world unsphere, Than warp her from the conscious path of right. A bright domestic goddess, formed to bless, And sooth, and succour oh most meet to be The shrined idol of a heart like his." Two days had elapsed, and the third was al ready drawing toward its close, since the encoun ter of the cavalier with his saintly ally ; for the sun, scarce elevated thrice the breadth of his own disk above the horizon, was now almost percepti bly declining in the west, though he still darted long pencilled rays of light athwart the landscape from between the folds of gauze-like mist which veiled his splendours from the eye. One of these straggling beams while others might be discern ed shedding their bright intelligence upon some verdant slope or twinkling waterfall, thus rescued, although miles away, from the hazy indistinctness that steeped the distant hills, and rendered promi nent, like epochs marked by fame amid the gloom of ages else forgotten one of these straggling beams had found its way into a nook as sweet as ever poet sung or fairy haunted. It was an angle in one of those broad green lanes which form so beautiful a feature in the rural scenery of England. Carpeted with deep unfaded verdure, through which meandered a faint wheel-track ; bordered by hedges so thick and tangled as to resemble natural coppices rather than artificial fences ; imbowered CROMWELL. 25 by the fragrant honeysuckle, and spangled with the dewy flowers of the yet sweeter eglantine ; decked with the golden blossoms of the broom, the fringe- like brachens, and the flaunting bells of the white and crimson fox-gloves ; canopied by the dense umbrage of the broad-leaved sycamore, the gnarl ed and ivy-mantled oak, or the lighter and more graceful ash ; and watered by a tiny brooklet, that stole 1 along, now on one side, now on the other, of the rarely-trodden path here tinkling over its many-coloured pebbles with a mirthful music, there* silently reflecting the tufted rushes and the mossy log that spanned its surface with a sylvan bridge that solitary nook might well have furnished forth a tiring-room for Shakspeare's wild Titania. Nor, though the days of Puck and Oberon were already numbered with the things that had been, did that lone bower lack its presiding genius ; for on a trunk, cushioned with hoary lichens, and overlook ing a crystal basin formed by the rill which under mined its tortuous roots, and had, perchance, in by gone ages, caused its decay and ruin, there sat a female form, loveliest among the lovely, gazing, as at first sight it seemed, Narcissus-like, upon her watery image, but in truth so deeply buried in her own imaginings that she was no less ignorant of all she looked upon than was the senseless stump on which she leaned so gracefully. She was a girl perhaps of twenty summers ; for, looking on her, it had been impossible to reckon save by sum mers, so sunny was the style of her young beauty. On either side of her white and dazzling forehead, ringlets in rich exuberance of the deepest auburn so deep that, saving where they glittered gold- like in the sunshine, they might have been deemed black fell off behind her ears and wantoned down her swan-like neck ; while, in the luxury of calm VOL. I. C 26 CROMWELL. abandonment, her velvet hat, dropped by her side, lay on the grass, its choice plumes ruffling the mirror of the pool. Her eyes were bent so stead fastly upon the waters at her feet, that it was by the long dark lashes only, pencilled in clear relief against the delicate complexion of her cheek, that they could be judged large, and suited to the char acter of her most eloquent features. Of an almost marble paleness, with scarce a rosy trace to tell of the pure blood which coursed so warmly through those thousand azure channels that veined her neck and bosom, there was yet a transparency, a glow ing hue in her fair skin that spoke of all the lively elasticity of health ; while, to remove a doubt, if doubt could have existed, the sweet curve of that small mouth, wooingly prominent, was tinged with the rich hue of the dark red carnation. Though Grecian in their chiselled outlines, there yet was more of intellect and energy in the expression of her features than of that poetical repose which forms the general character of the classic model. Her shape, as she reclined along her rustic couch, though of voluptuous roundness, was rather slight than full ; and the ankle, displayed somewhat too liberally by the disordered draperies of her satin riding-dress, was slender as a sylphid'js limb, while her dimpled chin was propped, in attitude of busy thought, on so diminutive a hand as would alone have proved her pedigree from the unconquered race of Normandy. Nor was the attitude belied by aught of consciousness or coquetry, for all be tokened the deep hush of natural and unstudied meditation. A beautiful white palfrey, with decora ted rein and velvet housings, which stood unfettered at her side, awaiting, docile and gentle creature, the pleasure of his mistress, would stamp and toss his head till the silver bits rang audibly, and utter- CROMWELL. 27 ed once or twice a tremulous impatient neigh, un heeded at the least, if not unheard. A vagrant spaniel of the Blenheim breed, with soft dark eyes, and ears that almost swept the ground one from a number that had followed the fair girl, and now dozed listlessly upon the grass around her had been for some time rustling among the dewy bush es, and now sent forth a shrill and clamorous yelp ing, as pheasant after pheasant whirred up on noisy wings into the higher branches, whence they crow ed, with outstretched necks, defiance to their pow erless assailant. Still there was no sign in the de meanour of the lady to indicate that she had mark ed the sounds, harmonizing as they did with the spirit of the place and hour, and blending naturally with the low of the distant cattle, the cawing of the homeward rooks, and the continuous hum of the myriad insect tribes which were still disporting themselves in the September sunset, not the less merrily that their little glass of life had already run even to its latest sands. But anon a noise arose, which, in' itself by no means inharmonious, was n6t so much attuned to the rural melodies around but that it jarred discordantly on the ear. It was the clear and powerful voice of a man, venting his feelings as he rode along for at times the tramp of a horse might be distinguished, when his hoof struck upon harder soil than common, mingling with the measured tones, as, perhaps unconscious of his occupation, the rider recited aloud such pas sages from the high poets of the day as were sug gested to his memory by all that met his senses. At first the accents were indistinct from distance, and their import quite inaudible ; then, as the speaker drew so nigh that his words might par tially be understood, the voice ceased altogether ; but after a brief pause it again broke forth in the pure poetry of Drummond. 28 CROMWELL. " Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world, doth Jive his own, Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love : O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan, Or the hoarse sobbings of the widowed dove, Than those smooth whispers near a prince's throne, Which make good doubtful " As the words passed his lips the horseman turned the last angle of the winding lane ; and for the first time discovering that the free outpourings of his spirit had found a listener, Edgar Ardenne for the moralist was no other paused in his sonnet and checked his steed by a common impulse, and, as it seemed, a single movement. His eyes flashed joyfully as they met the large and violet-coloured orbs which the fair girl had raised at first in sim ple wonderment, but which now lightened with a gleamy radiance that he was not slow to construe into delighted recognition. " Sibyl sweet Sibyl ! " " Edgar, can it indeed be you ? Welcome, oh welcome home !" At once, without a moment's interval, the words burst forth from either as they hastened he with impetuous hurry from his charger, she gathering her ruffled robes about her, and rising from her rus tic throne with the unblushing ease of conscious modesty to manifest their pleasure at this unex pected meeting. Were they friends, or kindred, or more dearly linked than either by the young ties of holy, unsuspicious, and unselfish love ? They met ; the formal fashions of the day would scarcely have allowed the gallant to fold even a sister to his bosom ; Edgar clasped her not, therefore, in the arms that evidently yearned to do so; but with a polished ease, belied by the flushed brow and frame that quivered visibly with eagerness, himself un- gloving, he raised her white hand to his lips, which CROMWELL. 29 dwelt upon it even too fervently for brotherly affec tion. A deep blush, glowing the more remarkably from its contrast to her wonted paleness, over brow and cheek, and visible, though with a fainter hue, even upon her neck and such brief portion of the bosom as might be descried between the fringes of rich lace that edged her bodice, she yet expressed not aught of wonder or of reluctance to his famil iar greeting. Though the small hand trembled in his grasp with a perceptible and quick emotion, it was not withdrawn ; nor, while he gazed upon those eloquent eyes as steadfastly as though through them he would have read the inmost feel ings of the soul that so informed them, did she shrink from his evident though chastened admira tion. A moment or two passed ere either again spoke ; it might be that their passionate feelings . were better to be interpreted from silence than ex pressed by words it might be that their hearts were full to overflowing, and that so they dared not to unlock those secret channels lest they might be led he into such betrayal of his feelings as is deemed weak and womanish by the great mass of men, themselves too calculating or too cold to feel at all she into such disclosure of her soul's treas ured secret as oftentimes is censured, and not per haps unjustly, as at the least impolitic, if not im modest or unmaidenly. It was, however, Sibyl who, with the delicate and ready tact peculiar to her sex, first broke the silence, which had endured so long already as to become almost embarrassing ; and as she spoke, her words explained their rela tive position, although it might even then be doubt ed whether the full extent of their connexion was as yet divulged. " J can hardly," she said, in those low and mu- 02 30 CROMWELL. sical notes which are indeed an excellent thing in woman " I can hardly trust my eyes, dear cousin, when they tell me, truant as you are and traitor, that you stand bodily before me. So long have our hearts been rendered sick by hope deferred so often have we gazed, from peep of morn till the sad close of evening, for your expected, for your promised coming, and gazed but to be disappoint ed that now, when you have truly come, we had ceased, not to hope, indeed, and pray, but surely to expect." " Oh, Sibyl, did you know how many an anxious thought, how many a bitter pang these wearisome delays have cost me, you would pity rather than upbraid." " Fair words, good cousin Edgar," she replied, with an arch glance, and a light thrilling laugh ; " fair words, and flowery all ! and with such, you lords of the creation, as in your vanity you style yourselves, deem you can wipe away the heaviest score of broken vows and perjured promises from the frail memories of easy and deluded damsels. But, in good sooth, I marvel not that you should slight poor me, when you have questioned nothing, and that too after a three years' absence, of your noble father ; and when you stand here dallying within a scant mile of his presence, rounding your false excuses into a credulous lady's ear. For shame, sir ! for my part, if I felt it not, then would I feign at least some natural affection." " Wild as thou ever wert, fair Sibyl," answered Edgar, a beautiful smile playing over his grave features, and revealing a set of teeth even and white as ivory ; " I hoped, when I beheld you so pensive and so melancholy, musing beside yon lonely pool, that years growing toward maturity might have brought something of reflection to tame CROMWELL. 31 those girlish spirits but, in good faith, I should have known you better. But am I not assured, were it but by your being here so blithe and beau tiful, that all goes well at home ?" " Well parried, if not honestly," still laughing she replied ; " and for your taunts on my demean our, I defy you ! But help me to my horse, sir loi terer, and we will homeward ; for I do believe, de spite your manifold enormities, that you would fain see those who, to your shame be it spoken, will feel more joy to greet you, than you have shown alacrity to do so much as ask of their well-being. I warrant me, if you had met Sir Henry first, you had not once inquired whether poor I were in ex istence." In another moment the lady was mounted on her white palfrey, and, with the cavalier beside her bridle-rein, rode toward her home more joyously than she had done for many a month before. Not, however, in loud mirth, nor even in the sprightly raillery which she had adopted on their first meet ing, was her happiness divulged to common ears ; but her soft eyes, dwelling fondly on the features long unseen of her accepted and acknowledged lover, though they were lowered modestly so often as they caught his answering glances with the subdued and quiet tones of her melodious voice as they conversed of old home scenes and sweet fa miliar recollections, more endeared to them, all trivial as they were, than loftier memories were confirmations strong as an angel's voice of her un changed affection. After a short ride, rendered shorter yet to them by the enjoyment for so long a time unused, though not forgotten, of each other's converse ; by the sweet consciousness of mutual love ; and by the full expansion of their feelings, unrestrained by the cold formalities of that most 32 CROMWELL. heartless intercourse which men have styled so ciety, and untrammelled by any chains save those instinctive bonds of pure and delicate propriety which noble natures ever wear about them in the guise of flowery garlands, gracing, while they dig nify, the motions which they in no respect im pede after a short ride through the windings of that verdant lane here rendered almost gloomy by the shadows of occasional woodlands which it traversed ; here running past the door of some se cluded cottage, its thatched porch overhung with bowering creepers, and its narrow garden gay with tall hollyhocks and ever-blooming peas; and here looking forth from intervals in the tall hedges over some sunny stubble-field, on which the golden shocks stood fair and frequent, or some deep pas ture, its green surface dotted with sleek and come ly cattle they reached a rustic gate of unbarked timber, woven into fantastic shapes, and through it gained admittance into a demesne, as rich as ever was transmitted by its first winner of the bloody hand to a long line of undegenerate posterity. Even to the wandering and homeless stranger there is a calm and quiet joy in the stately solitude of an English park, in its broad velvet lawns, sloping southwardly away, studded with noble clumps, or solitary trees more noble yet, down to the verge of some pellucid lake or brimful river, in its swel ling uplands, waving with broom and brachens sweet haunt for the progeny of the timid doe whence glitter frequently the white stems of the birch or the red berries of the mountain ash, in the wild belling of the deer, heard from some rock- ribbed glen, where they have sheltered during the hot noontide, in the cooing of the pigeon, or the repeated tap of the green woodpecker, in the harsh cry of the startled heron, soaring on his CROMWELL. 33 broad vans from the sedgy pool before the intru der's footstep, in the lazy limp of the pastured hares, and in the whirr of the rising covey. What then must be the feeling summoned by the same picture to the heart of one who hears in every ru ral sound, and witnesses in every sylvan scene, the melodies that soothed his earliest slumber, and the sights that nursed his youngest meditations ? To him these stately solitudes are peopled with a thousand holy recollections ; the step, perchance, of a departed mother still roams beneath those imme morial trees ; her musical voice still speaks to his heart audibly, and in the very tones his childhood lis tened, when all its cares were hushed ; to him each bosky bourn and twilight dingle has its memory of boyish exploit, each chiming rill of boyish rev- ery. Home home hackneyed as is the thought and time-worn what a world of treasured sweet ness is there in that one word Home ! The hum- olest as the highest in sorrow as in mirth to the needy exile as to the successful adventurer for ever dear, for ever holy. Crowded out perhaps from the selfish spirit by the bustle, the tumult, the conflict of the day but still returning with un- diminished force when the placid influence of night and slumber shall have stilled the fitful fever, and restored to the sullied heart, for one short hour, the purity it knew of yore. Oh ! if there be on the broad face of earth the wretch that loves not, with an unquenchable and ever-living love, the native home curse him not when ye meet, he is accur sed already. Vindictive men have warred against, ambitious men have sacrificed, and sordid men have sold their countries. ; but these, ay, each and all of these, if we could read their souls, have had their moments of repentant thought, their moments of triumphant fondness. What then must be the 34 CROMWELL. feelings of a mind like that of Ardenne a mind coupling the severe and disciplined philosophy of schools with the warm and wild romance of a po etic fancy a mind which had learned wisdom without learning vice, amid the fierce pleasures and the fiercer strife of a licentious world a mind no less unselfish than it was reasoning and regular a mind, filled with the beautiful principles of that universal love, which is honour, and patriotism, and every shape of virtue virtue, not cold in it self, as the wicked say, and chilling all things that it touches, but genial, and enlivening, and warm with every generous aspiration ? What must have been the feelings of a man, endowed with such a mind, returning to his unforgotten home from years of restless wandering, in pursuit not of the idol mammon, not of the phantom fame, but of that high philosophy which is derived from the perusal of men, not books ; which is learned, not in the solitary chamber nor by the midnight lamp, but on the tented field and in the dazzling court; at the banquet and the masque ; amid the treacheries of men and the wilier fascinations of beauty ; riding by the bridle of his own betrothed, through the very fields in which he had won, years before, her virgin heart ; hastening to the embrace of a father, whom, much as he revered and honoured him, he loved yet more ? Who may describe that wonder ful and deep sensation, that tincture of joy and sor row, of bitterness and pleasure, which must be mingled to make up the draught of human happi ness, exhibited no less in the gushing tear than in the glittering smile in the choked voice and suf focating spasm, than in the flashing eye and the ex ulting pulse ? Enough he was for the moment happy, absolutely and if aught mortal may be called perfect perfectly happy. The antiquated CROMWELL. 35 hall burst on his vision as he passed a belt of shel tering evergreens, its tall Elizabethan chimneys sending their columns of vaporous smoke far up into the calm heaven ; its diamond-paned oriels glowing like sheets of fire to the reflected sun ; its hospitable porch yawning to admit stranger or guest alike with kindly welcome ; its freestone ter races, with a group of lazy greyhounds basking on the steps, and a score or two of peacocks perched upon the balustrades, like the ornaments of an eastern throne, or strutting to and fro on the broad flag-stones in all their pride of gorgeous plumage. He saw he had no words but his gentle com panion might perceive his nether lip to quiver with strong emotion, and a tear, unrestrained by selfish pride, to trickle down his manly cheek. A heavy bell rang out; there was a bustle, and a rush of many servitors, badged and blue-coated men, with hoary heads and tottering limbs the heir-looms of the family, transmitted, with the ancestral armour and the ancient plate, from sire to son. With dif ficulty extricating himself from the familiar greet ing of these domestic friends, he hurried up the steps ; but, ere he crossed the threshold, a noble- looking man, far past the prime of life as might be seen from his long locks, already streaked with wintry hues of age, but vigorous still and active fell upon his neck with a quick shrill cry, " My son ! my son !" the hot tears gushing from his eyes not that he mourned, but that he did rejoice to borrow the magnificent words of the Greek lyrist as he beheld his chosen offspring, the stateliest of the sons of men. 36 CROMWELL. CHAPTER III. " Minstrel of freedom England's holiest bard His were the electric strains, that spurn control ! That stir with lightning-touch a nation's soul, Filling each heart with aspirations high, With zeal to do to suffer and to die ! With fear of tyrants conquering fear of strife ! With that high love more strong than love of life Which arms may not subdue, nor fetters pine, The deathless love of liberty divine !" IT was a beautiful and tranquil evening; the broad bright hunter's moon was riding through the cloudless firmament, bathing the whole expanse of heaven with a radiance so pervading, that the myriad stars were wellnigh quenched in her more lustrous glory. It was one of those evenings on which we cannot gaze without comparing the pure and passionless quiet of the world above with the fierce solicitudes, the selfish strife, the angry tur moil of the world around us one of those even ings which at any time must infuse a sentiment of peaceful melancholy into every bosom, even of the wild and worldly; but which has at no time so deep an influence on the spirit as when contem plated from the near vicinity of some large city The contrast between the chaste paleness of those celestial lamps, and the ruddy glare of the terrene and lurid fires glancing from many a casement, between the perfect calm aloft, unbroken save by the gentle murmur of the wind, and the confused uproar below, rife with the din of commerce, the dissonance of mingled tongues, and now a distant scream, and now a burst of unmelodious laughter, must needs impress more strongly on the mind CROMWELL. 37 than aught of homily or lecture, that loathing of the mortal world, and the base things its tenants, that ardent and inexplicable yearning after some thing of truer and more substantial happiness than we can here conceive, that wish for " wings like a dove, that we might flee away and be at rest," which constitutes perhaps the most essential differ ence, as exhibited on earth, between ourselves and the yet lower animals, content to fatten and to perish. Such was not improbably the strain of thought into which the aspect of the night had led one a man, not yet advanced beyond the prime of life, of elegant though low proportions who stood gazing heavenward as he leaned against the low wall of a pleasant garden, which, girt about with its tall hedges of clipped box or hornbeam, its gay parterres, and its pleached bowery walks, a fair suburban villa ; situate in what was then, as now, termed Aldersgate, though at that period not a densely-peopled thoroughfare, but a long strag gling street, half town half country, with leafy elms lining the public way, and many a cultivated nursery and many a grassy paddock intervening between the scattered dwellings of the retired trader or the leisure-loving man of letters. The countenance of this person, as it was directed upward with a pensive wistful gaze toward the melancholy planet, receiving the full flood of its lustre, was singular for softness and attraction. He wore no covering on his head, and his luxuri ant tresses of light brown hair, evenly parted on the foretop, hung down in silky waves quite to his shoulders. The hues of his complexion, delicately coloured as a woman's, and the somewhat sleepy expression of his full gray eye, accorded well with the effeminate arrangement of his locks, and indeed entitled him to be considered eminently handsome ; VOL. I. D 328135 38 CROMWELL. for there was so much of intellect and of imagina tion in the forehead, low but expansive, and so many lines of thought about the slightly-sunken cheeks, now faintly traced and transient, but which would, with the advance of years, increase to fur rows, that the softer traits, while adding to the beauty, detracted nothing from the dignity and manhood of his aspect. His form, though low and small, was yet compact and muscular, affording promise of that powerful agility which is paramount even to superior strength in the use and skill of weapons. Neatly clad enough in a loose coat of dark gray cloth, with vest and hose of black, cut plainjy without lace or fringe ; and, above all, not wearing even the common walking-sword, at that time carried throughout Europe by all of gentle rank, the meditative loiterer would have excited little or no attention among the greater body of mankind, ever caught by the glitter, and deluded by the glare, but careless as it is undiscerning of true merit, when harbingered to its opinion by naught of pride or circumstance. He might have been an artisan or merchant of the city, but that the slouched hat, lying with a staff of ebony beside him on the wall, distinguished him from the flat- capped dwellers to the east of Temple Bar ; while his hands, which were delicately white, and tender as a lady's, showed that they had never been exer cised in the ungentle labour of a mechanic calling. But, stronger even than these tokens, there was that vivid and inexplicable impress of exalted genius, that looking forth of the immortal spirit from the eyes, that strange mixture of quiet melan choly with high enthusiasm, pervading all his fea tures, which must have made it evident to any moderately keen observer, that figure or decoration CROMWELL. 39 could be but of small avail when considered as the mere appendages to such a mind. He stood a while in silence, though his lips moved at intervals, perusing the bright wanderers of heav en with a gaze so fixed and yearning as though his spirit would have looked through them, the win dows of the firmament, into the very tabernacle and abode of the Omnipotent. At length he spoke ar ticulately, in a voice deep, slow, majestic, and me lodious, but in the unconscious tones of one who meditates or prays aloud, without reference or respect to aught external. " Beautiful light," he said ; " beautiful lamp of heaven what marvel that the blinded and benight ed heathen should ignorantly worship thee ? What marvel that a thousand altars, in a thousand ages, should have sent up their fumes of adoration unto thee the mooned Asntaroth, unto thee the Tauriform Diana, unto thee the nightly visitant of the young- eyed Endymion ? What marvel that to those who knew not, neither had they heard of the One, Un- create, Invisible, Eternal, thou shouldst have seemed meet Deity to wh^om tq bend the knee, thou first born offspring of his first-created gift thou blessed emanation from his own ethereal glory when I, his humble follower, his ardent though unworthy worshipper, when I, an honest though an erring Christian, do strive in vain to wean my heart from love of thee ; indoctrinating so my spirit that I may kiss the rod with which, I am assured too well, HE soon will chastise me, in changing the fair light, that glorious essence in which my soul rejoiceth, for one black, everlasting, self-imparted midnight ? Yet so it shall be. A few more revo lutions of these puissant planets, a few more mu tations of the sweet-returning seasons, and to me there shall be no change again on earth for ever ! 40 CROMWELL. No choice between the fairest and the foulest ! No difference of night or day ! No charm in the rich gorgeousness of flowery summer above the sere and mournful autumn ! No cheery aspect in the piled hearth of winter! No sweet communion with the human eye compassionate ! No inter course with the great intellects of old, dead, yet surviving still in their sublime and solid pages !" He paused for a space, as though he were too deeply moved to trust his thoughts to language ; but, after a moment, drawing his hand across his eyes " But if it be so," he continued, " as I may not doubt it will if his fiat be pronounced against me of dark corporeal blindness, what duty yet re mains ? What but to labour that the blindness be not mental also ? What but to treasure up even now, during my brief-permitted time, such stores of hoarded wisdom as may in part suffice, like to the summer-gathered riches of the indus trious and thrifty bee, to nourish and to cheer me at the coming of my senseless season ? What but to profit, even as best I may, by those good opportunities which his great mercy hath vouch safed to me ; to sow the seed even now, during the fertile autumn, that by his blessing it may swell and germinate during the brumal darkness of the approaching winter, and in his good time give forth to light a crop improved and gloriously surpassing that from which it sprung? What but to give thanks alway, and to praise the tender-heartedness and love of Him, to whom it were no harder task to plunge the mind in lunatic and senseless stupor, than to seal up the fount of light to the poor eye. Of Him, who, giving all the thousand blessings I enjoy, judges it fitting to deprive me but of one, haply that from its single loss others may fructify, and bear good harvest to my use ? Wherefore, oh CROMWELL. % 41 merciful and mighty One, be it unto me as thou wiliest, and thou only. And oh ! above all things, be it unto me, as now, so alway, humbly to cry, and happily, Thy will be done." Even as the pious scholar brought his medita tions to a close, the footsteps of one advancing, though still unseen, through the mazes of the shrubbery, were heard upon the crisp and crack ling gravel; and, ere he had resumed his hat, which was steeple-crowned and of the puritanic fashion, the intruder made his appearance, in the guise of an humbly-clad and grave-eyed serving- man, who announced, in phrase ungarnished by much form of reverence toward his master, the presence of three gentlemen within, praying to speak with him. "In faith," returned the other, "in faith, good Andrew, 'tis an unseasonable hour for visitants ! Who be these gentles ?" " Master Cromwell is among them," answered the attendant; "but of the rest I know not, save that I heard the name of St. John pass between them. They await your coming in the summer parlour." Without farther query or reply, the scholar, as if satisfied that his presence was indeed required, traversed the garden with quick steps ; and en tering the house, a small but cheerful dwelling, through an entrance hung round with maps and charts of statistics or chronology, passed to the chamber in which his guests expected him. It was a pleasant room, with a bay-window look ing upon the garden, but cheaply decorated with hangings of green serge, to which a splendid or gan, by the first maker of the day, and a choice collection of rare books, several of the number being papyri of great worth, afforded a remarkable D2 42 CROMWELL. contrast. In the recess formed by the window there stood a reading-desk, curiously carved in old black oak, with cushions of green velvet, somewhat the worse for wear, supporting a noble folio Bible in the Greek text of Geneva. The table was loaded with a heterogeneous mass of books and papers, an original manuscript of the Bacchae of Euripides, reposing on a Hebrew copy of the Septuagint, and a stray duodecimo of Pe trarch's sonnets, marking the place at which the reader had closed the pages of a huge tome of controversial divinity; while, on a marble slab opposite the chimney, lay a couple of foils, with their wire masks and gloves, partially hidden by the draperies of a threadbare mantle of black vel vet ; a violin, a guitar, some written music, and, peering out from beneath the whole, the iron bas ket-hilt and glittering scabbard of a heavy broad sword. In this the student's sanctum, he found the three gentlemen who had been announced, evidently en gaged in whispered conversation of deep import, for they did not perceive the presence, till he had stood for a moment or two almost beside them, of their host; who had thus ample opportunity of examining their persons, by the light of a brazen lamp of antique form, with several burners, which hung from the ceiling immediately above the ab stracted group. Nearly opposite the door, with his searching eyes fixed upon another of the com pany, who was speaking with considerable em phasis, though in an under tone, stood the same individual who had assisted Ardenne on the night of his adventure near to Royston ; wearing the very garb in which he had appeared on that occa sion, save that, for his riding-boots, he had sub stituted a pair of coarse gray woollen stockings, CROMWELL. 43 drawn tight to the mid-thigh, with ill-blacked shoes of calfskin, laced to the instep, and bearing neither rose nor buckle. The speaker, to whose words he lent so careful heed, was a tall and slen der person, handsomely, though gloomily, attired in a full suit of black, with silken hose and velvet cloak to match, a mourning rapier hanging at his side, though evidently worn for fashion rather than for use. His countenance, though not of pleasant favour, much less such as could be termed hand some, was nevertheless one from which men could not easily withdraw their eyes, possessing attri butes of unquestionable talent, though accompanied by an expression which none so dull but they would wish to fathom. His eyes, which were large and black, had a bright and flashing glance when under influence of excitement almost painful to the beholder ; while a continual, and, as it would seem, involuntary sneer, sat on his thin and wri thing lip. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was long and curling, though not worn after the flow ing fashion of the cavaliers ; but the most remark able trait of his aspect was the immoveable gloom which overshadowed his dark saturnine features with a cloud so constant, that it has been recorded of him, that seldom, even in his moments of hilar ity, was he beheld to smile. The remaining person of the trio was a finer and more comely man than either of his comrades ; fairly proportioned, though not above the middle height, with a brow rather full than lofty, a quick and penetrating eye, and an intelligent expression, thoughtful rather than grave, and with no touch of sternness or morosity on his noble features, lighted up, as they were from time to time, by a smile of singular and cheerful sweet ness. He was habited as became a gentleman, in a rich garb of marone-coloured velvet, his costly 44 CROMWELL. sword suspended from a scarf of good white taf feta, and a white feather in his beaver ; the whole though plain enough, if compared with the luxuri ous bravery of the cavaliers, whose dresses would oftentimes have been too cheaply rated at a year's income of their patrimony conveying an idea of absolute magnificence, when viewed beside the simple habiliments of his fellow-visiters. After he had surveyed this group for a few moments' space, satisfied apparently with the survey, the master of the house stepped forward, startling them slight ly by his motion, and cutting short their converse. " Give you good evening, Master Cromwell," he said, addressing himself to the most slovenly-ap parelled of the company ; " it shames me to have caused you wait my coming." " Not so, good sir," returned the other ; " it is we rather who have trespassed on your studies, coming thus at an hour surely unseasonable. But, of a truth, I had forgotten I pray you. Master Milton," for it was no other than the immortal poet, who had deplored, in such heartfelt yet un- repining language, the advent of that dread calam ity, which had already been predicted to him by the first physicians of the day as the sure conse quence of his persisting in his arduous and unre- mitted labours, " I pray you, Master Milton, know these most worthy and God-fearing gentle men ! This," motioning with his hand toward the taller and more gloomy figure, "this, my good friend, Master Olivef^St. John ; and this, my well- beloved and trusty cousin, honest John Hampden." " Of a truth, Master Cromwell," replied the poet in those days better known by his magnifi cent and stately prose, for a controversial writer of unequalled power, than by the slight though beautiful effusions of poetry which hitherto he had CROMWELL. 45 cast forth merely as the erratic sports of leisure moments, stolen from graver studies, and not yet as the sublime continuous soarings of his unrivalled genius, " of a truth, Master Cromwell, I owe you more of thanks than I am wont to offer, that you have brought to my poor dwelling these, the most constant and the noblest cultivators of that fair vineyard, to the renewal and reform of which I too, an humble fellow-tiller, have devoted my unworthy labours !" And he turned to the com panions of his friend, esteemed already by all the worshippers of freedom as the wisest, the purest, and the best of her adorers ! as the pilots, who might alone be trusted to hold the shattered helm of state aright, amid the terrors, the confusion, and the storm of the approaching crisis ! as the cham pions, who had already reared the banner of un daunted opposition to all that was corrupt, or bigot ed, or arbitrary, in religious or in civil rule ! as the leaders, who, above all others, were endowed with the talent, and the worth, and, more than these, with the unflinching energy to wring the iron sceptre of usurped prerogative from the high hand that wielded it with such despotic- sway ! He greeted them with words savouring more of courteous deference than of that plain-spoken and uncompromising brevity, on the use of which his party prided themselves so deeply in their inter course of man with man. There was, however, nothing of vain or worldly adulation, much less of that fawning sycophancy, that low servile man- worship, for which the courtiers of the day were so deservedly contemned by the stern puritans, in his frank though reverential bearing. After a few seconds spent in civilities, which were accepted, as indeed they were intended, for the befitting homage of one surpassing intellect to 46 CROMWELL. others, though in a different sphere, of not inferior merit homage, degrading not the giver, while it added to the real dignity of the receiver, the party fell into the ordinary demeanour of men familiar, if not with the persons, at least with the minds and principles each of the other ; and the conversation flowed as quietly on the accustomed topics of the time as though the speakers had been in the daily wont of mingling in the same social inter course. There was, however, not only naught of levity or license, but naught of common import or every-day occurrence, in the interchanged ideas of those high spirits, devoted, one and all, to the same pursuit of patriotism, and equally engrossed in the quick-succeeding incidents of fearful and pervading interest, which rendered every hour of that eventful year a great historic epoch. " Have ye received aught new from Ireland," inquired the poet " ye of the lower house, touch ing this perilous and damnable rebellion ?" " Ay, of a surety have we !" answered Crom well, " full confirmation full, ay, and overflowing all that we had heard before !" " All Ulster is in one light blaze," cried St. John, his dark eye flashing with indignant fire ; " the forts all captured, and that most subtle villain, Phe- lim O'Neil, wading knee-deep with thirty thou sand fanatic and phrensied papists knee-deep in Protestant and English gore ! Connaught and Lein- ster revelling in red-handed massacre, and the five counties of the Pale, arrayed by the lords-justices to quell the insurrection, united to their brother rebels !" " None may conceive the horrors none may enumerate the sufferings or recount the wretched sufferers," continued Hampden, a deep shade of melancholy settling down on his fine lineaments ; CROMWELL. 47 "at the least reckoning, twenty thousand of our brethren, men, women, and children, yea, the very infants at the breast, have perished ! No insult, no atrocity, that Romish perfidy could plan, or fiendish cruelty perform no last extremity of famine, cold, or torture, has been spared to their defenceless victims by the barbarian Irish the very priests setting the torch of midnight confla gration to the planter's dwelling, and hounding on their furious followers to massacre and havoc !" " But of the king, fair sirs ?" " Well hast thou said, John Milton," interrupt ed the harsh voice of Cromwell before the other had concluded his inquiry ; " well hast thou said and truly ! 'tis of that man of Belial ! ay, root and branch of him, and his self-seeking carnal cava liers !" " It is, we fear, too true " said Hampden, in re ply to the bewildered looks of the anxious auditor ; *' it is, we fear, too true ! O'Neil, in his dark proc lamation, boasts openly his own authority from the great seal of Scotland. Sir William St. Leger, trusty alike and brave, hath, as we learn, dismis sed his levies, and laid down the arms he had assumed on the first outbreak of the rebels, at sight of a commission, with Charles Stuart's man ual sign, held by that murderous bigot Lord Mus- querry." " And last, not least,'* sneered Oliver St. John, 41 Mac Mahon hath confessed, at shrewd solicita tion of the rack, that the original scheme of this rebellion was brought to Ireland, from our gra cious king and governor, by Dillon and the mem bers of the late committee." " Of a truth," said Cromwell, in reply to the words of his milder cousin, " of a truth, there may be cause for fear, ay, and for grief yet where- 48 CROMWELL. fore ? Verily 'tis a hard thing to rejoice, to re* joice in the midst of slaughter and abomination ! Yet who shall deem or boast himself to know of that which is to come, save He that holdeth the end, I say the end and the accomplishment of all things, in the hollow of his hand ? But I will tell ye this yea, but mistake me not, this will I avouch to ye, that I fear not, but do rejoice ! Tis a sad thing, in truth, that an anointed king, even a king in Israel, should arm his hand against his people, and turn away his countenance from the well-beloved of the Lord, inclining his ear like wise unto the idolatries of the beast, and unto the charmirigs of the Moabitish woman; yea, and pour out the vials of his wrath upon the heads of the sons of righteousness ! But, of a surety, it is not for a man to judge save thus for I will speak even as it is put into my mouth, save thus that, to a man foreweaponed and forewarned, less dan gerous is an open enemy yea, if he be mightier by tenfold, than one who lurketh privily beneath the vesture of a friend, looking in secret whom he may devour !" "Forewarned indeed ye are," replied the poet, musingly, " and your own fault 'twill be if ye be not foreweaponed likewise ; for, in good sooth, I do believe the lives of none are safe the lives and lib erties of none who dare uplift their voices in defence ftf England's constitution or the church's purity." " And is it not to this end," cried Oliver, " and is it not to this end that we are watching, even now, with our loins girded, and our lights burning, watching unto the protection of those that are de fenceless, and unto the enlightening of those that sit in darkness ? And is it not to this end that we have now come to thee, John Milton, trusting to gain a strong ally even a valiant, and a heart- CROMWELL. 49 whole, and a spirit-serving soldier ! seeking to learn from thee so far as it is for man to learn of man, yet neither confident in worldly wisdom, which is ignorance before the Lord, nor relying altogether on the judgment of a fellow-worm, how excellent soever he may be in the gifts of carnal knowledge, seeking, I say, to learn from thee the character and principles of one with whom we do believe that you so long have communed as to know the thoughts of his heart, ay, and to inter pret the workings of his inward man !" " Such is indeed our object," continued Hamp- den, while St. John fixed his searching eye upon the beautiful features of the listener with keen and interested scrutiny ; " such is indeed our ob ject in this untimely visit. We have but now re ceived intelligence of the decease of that shrewd counsellor and honest patriot, Elias Chaloner, the fellow-townsman of my worthy cousin Cromwell, and lately member for the godly town of Hunting don ; and, with this same intelligence, the great charge has been laid upon us, by the zealous burghers of the place, of commending to their choice a person who shall honourably fill the post of him that is departed." "And how? you would ask, John Milton," Cromwell broke in, " for I can read the query on your brow how, you would ask, can you assist us in this matter ? Verily thus for it hath been suggested to our souls when we were seeking out the Lord in prayer, yea, wrestling with him in the spirit, that he should guide us to a sure election, it was, I tell you truth, I do profess, borne in upon the ears of our minds, as with an audible and spoken voice, 'Ye shall call to aid the man even the young man Edgar Ardenne ' " " With whom," interrupted St. John, evidently VOL. I. E 50 CROMWELL. weary of the prolix, verbose haranguing of the other, " with whom, as we are well assured, you, Master Milton, have mingled much in foreign travel, having thereby good opportunity to judge of his opinions and to learn his heart. We would hear from you, therefore, worthy sir, whether this gentleman of high extraction, born of a race devo tedly, I had wellnigh said slavishly, loyal wheth er this gentleman be indeed, as we would wish to find him, a firm, uncompromising lover of his country one who would pledge himself, and keep his plight religiously, to advance the views and serve the interests of our party ! May it please you, tell us fully what of yourself you know, and what may be your judgment of this your fellow-traveller and, above all, whether he may be wrought, and by what means, to further our purposes !" " For years," replied the poet, after a moment's pause, " for years have I been wont to read the living minds of men with even more of study than I have expended on their embalmed and written thoughts for years ! and never I can say it honestly and freely, for I do believe I know his inmost aspirations even as I am conscious of my own never have I found, or even read of such a head, combined with such a heart, as that of Edgar Ardenne. A worshipper of wisdom, of liberty, of truth purer and far more fervently devoted than the great spirits of the old republics ! A scholar in the study, and that too of the ripest an orator in the forum, strong, stirring, and persuasive a soldier in the field, well tried, and as well proven ! An adorer of all that is beautiful, but one who sees no beauty save in virtue ! A Christian, fervent and sincere, yet tolerant, and of much charity ! Ambitious but ambitious only to do good ! If CROMWELL. 61 ever there was born a man wholly unselfish, that man is Edgar Ardenne. Such and on my judg ment well may you rely such is the man whom you would take into your counsels. Gain him, then gain him, if ye may for certainly as Ed gar Ardenne could achieve aught to benefit his country, though every hope, every feeling, every passion of his soul were listed to oppose it, so cer tainly would he tread hope, feeling, passion, into the very dust beneath his feet. He has a head so clear, he cannot fail to see the right he has a heart so true, he would not fail though at the price of all he holds most dear io follow it. Be ware, however, beware, if ye decide to gain him, how you show aught of doubt, much less suspicion ! proffer to him the seat for Huntingdon untram melled ! say not a word of party not a word of opposition to the court make ye not one condi tion ask not one pledge ! for had ye heaven itself to tender him, and were to tender it, so bri bing him ay, were it even to act well my life ! he would refuse even heaven ! If, therefore, ye can resolve unpledged to trust him, seek not to sound his views for as well might ye assay to fathorn the most central depths of ocean ; seek not to bind his actions for as well might ye go forth to chain the subtle and pervading lightning; but proffer to him, in plain terms, the seat at the free choice of the burghers and if he do accept it, as well I trust he will, be sure there is no man in England that better knows the duties of a member in the commons House of Parliament, or trulier will discharge them !" " You have described," replied the calm and meditative Hampden, " you have indeed descri bed a man, such as there are but few this side the grave ! Your words, too, tally well with 52 CROMWELL. the surmises I have formed from his known actions !" "And would you then," asked the moody St. John, " would you then set so great a matter on the casting of a die ? Do you not know that even now we have but a majority not over-strong nor over-certain ? that many have been already won or put to silence that Hyde and his moderate par tisans daily gain strength, and only lack occasion to join the court in open and unblushing servitude ? Know you not that Falkland wavers, and that, if he go over, ten votes at least will instantly apos tatize ? and would you then elect this cavalier, for such in truth he is, on vague hopes and uncertain indications ?" " I said not so," replied Hampden, quickly ; " I said not so ! but only that I believe him wise and honest ! Farther I will say now, that if, on any terms, we shall decide to recommend him to the choice of the electors my voice is for so doing with nothing of restriction ! If he be honest, it needs not to bind him by a promise if otherwise, 'twere madness to suppose that promises will bind him ! But on this matter we will speak more anon we have already trespassed over long upon the leisure and the patience of our honourable host." St. John replied not; and Cromwell, who had perhaps made up his mind already, had fallen into a long and rambling exposition of some doctrinal point, wholly remote from the subject in question, to which Milton listened with a tranquil smile play ing about his well-turned lip, and with the aim appa rently of discovering what was the meaning, if there indeed were any, of the wild and ill-digested ora tory of the member for Cambridge, at this time just beginning to attract the notice of the house, though CROMWELL. 53 no one could perhaps assign a cause for his in creasing influence. For a short space the others spoke apart, warmly, though in an under tone Hampden, as it seemed, urging on his grave con federate some dubious or unpalatable measure ; the energy of his manner gradually rising, while the opposition of his friend waxed fainter, until the habitual sneer departed from his lip, and the accus tomed cloud partially yielded to an opener and more cheery aspect. " Be it so !" he said at length, rais ing his voice, as the discussion was finished by his assent ; " be it so, if you will and, in faith, I be lieve you are in the righfr on't ! Now, Master Cromwell," he continued, turning toward him as he spoke, " it lacks but a scant hour of midnight, and our host's oil, I trow, is wont to lend its light to purposes of more importance than our farther converse ! Give you good night, fair sir," he added, with a short inclination to the poet, as, gathering his cloak about him, he led his com rades, after brief ceremony, into the moon-lit streets ; while he whom he had last addressed applied himself, in solitary diligence, to the exer cise of his pen, slight instrument of mightiest pow ers, whether for good or evil, and, in the hand of the philosopher, prime mover of more potent revo lutions than its dread rival and confederate the mortal sword ! E 2 54 CROMWELL. CHAPTER IV. " Oh what more blest than that serene repose, Which steeps the soul forespent with foreign woes, What time we turn, our weary wanderings o'er, To the old homestead, thence to roam no moie^^gjjjt And stretch our limbs incalm luxurious rest, On the dear bed our careless childhood pressed." CATULLUS. Free Translation. NONE know, but those who have for years been wanderers from the paternal roof, whether of choice or of necessity it matters not, who have for years been sojourners, not dwellers, on the broad desert earth, who, in the midst of friends almost as dear as those, who girt as with a magic cestus the un- forgotten fireside of their childhood, have craved, with an insatiate and yearning appetite, the well- known aspect of the old home-places, who have languished for a father's blessing, a mother's wist ful eye, a sister's holy kiss, who have felt, with the patriotic Syrian, that " Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus," are truly to the exile " better than all the waters of Israel ;" none know, but these, the deep calm happiness of being once again the centre of that sweet domestic circle ; of re ceiving the fond welcome of every living thing ay, even to the household dog, or superannuated horse, that yelps or whinnies in the fulness of his recognition ; of lying down to rest beneath the very curtains, and on the very bed, which had so often wooed them to repose before they knew the bitter ness of sin or sorrow. Fully indeed, and far more sensibly than it is tasted by the common pilgrim of life's journey, did CROMWELL. 55 this impression of tranquil bliss pervade the breast of Ardenne, as he leaned, gazing upon the familiar landscape, from out the open casement of his cham ber ; that chamber, which had never for a moment faded from his memory, with its oaken wainscoting and faded tapestries, its angular recesses, peopled by his youthful fantasy with lurking shapes of tejffor, its pleasant seats in" the deep bay windows, its brazen-handled cabinets of quaint device its bed with sculptured tester and dark hangings, and, more than all, its ebon desk, with the velvet-bound and silver-studded Bible, whence his long-lost and long-regretted mother had lessoned him so lovingly while he was yet a boy. The moonlight lay upon the velvet park and tufted elms, as though it loved to sleep among that peaceful scenery ; and if, at intervals, it shone reflected from the surface of some quiet water, it lingered even there with a half-shadowed lustre, not flashing out with the bright gleams of gorgeous sunshine, but calmly harmonizing with the spirit of the place and hour. So clear, however, was the mellow light, that the graceful attitudes of the slumbering deer might be distinguished on the open lawns, while the pinion of the gliding owl was seen to glance against the massy shadows of the surrounding forest. Yet now, although he gazed upon all that was most beautiful of natural scenery, all that was most endeared to him by boyish recollections, although he was surrounded by the very objects that he had most earnestly desi red to see, although he was at the very point which he but yesterday would have esteemed the summit of fruition he was not happy. It is true, that he had found in her on whom his mind had dwelt most fondly and most frequently during his absence, the very being he had loved so fervently of yore bear- 56 CROMWELL. ing no traces of the years which had elapsed, save in the ripening of her mind to excellent maturity, and in the rounding of her sylph-like figure into the exquisite proportions of young womanhood ! It is true that the father, whom he had honoured and obeyed with that old-fashioned filial reverence, which ill betide the change has long since passed away, together with the diamond-hilled rapiers, aud the somewhat formal courtesy of our progenitors, had welcomed hioi to his affections, a man yet in the prime of inte^ectual vigour ! It is true that he had brought back to his native land a heart \Ai- tainted by the follies and the sins of foreign coun tries ; a mind well satisfied, not by the baseless arguments of boyish prejudice, but by the strong convictions of experience, that his own earth-fast island was indeed the home best calculated for the seekers of that sweet domestic quietude, that fire side, church-going happiness that calm enjoy ment of the duties, the labours, and the pleasures of a country life, blent, as these ever are, with a romantic taste for the green fields and slumbering woodlands, the gentle river and the smooth hill side which have at all times formed a feature so distinctive in the English character ! But it is no less true that, even at the moment when his hand might have been said to grasp all that his soul de sired, his spirit was disturbed, and his heart ill at ease. It were perhaps the wisest, as it surely were the happiest course, for mortals to obey the dictates equally inculcated by the disciples of two schools, which, seemingly the most at variance with each other, are nevertheless in truth as similar in not a few essentials, as it is possible for creeds to be in other points so diverse as those entertained by the followers of Epicurus and with reverence be it CROMWELL. 57 spoken of the Saviour, both recommending nay, both strenuously urging the necessity, and in words almost identical, that we " take no heed for the morrow." Yet, in a mortal sense, obedience to this injunction is perhaps impossible impossi ble at least to any man endowed with enough of intellect and mental vigour to perceive the connexion between present causes and eventual effects to foresee with prescient sagacity the crop which will spring up to-morrow from the seed laid in the ground to-day ! For who could sit at ease, ap preciating the full quality of each delicious viand, pleasantly debating on the flavour of each fragrant wine, knowing that the sword of Damocles was swinging by a single hair and that, too, yielding at every instant to the weight above his head ? Had it not been for this had it been possible for Ar- denne to seal up his eyes arid close his ears against the evidence of what to-morrow must bring forth had he lacked the wisdom to discover the' future destinies of England, her vitals even now con vulsed by the first throes of the incipient earth quake or the patriotism to sympathize with the afflictions which, as that wisdom taught him, must ere another year befall his country he might have surrendered himself to momentary pleasure, care less or ignorant of the approaching wo. And so rare of occurrence, and so brief when they do oc cur, are the periods during human life even of comparative happiness perhaps, had he so done, he had been able to look back in after days to more of sunny hours than he could count among the strange and mingled incidents of his eventful life. But, constituted as he was, it was not in his power to fix his gaze on the bright present aspect of the things around him, without observing the huge melancholy clouds which were rising up on 58 CROMWELL. the political horizon, threatening to overshadow with their gloomy pall, and perhaps to overwhelm in the wild tempest they must soon discharge, the feeble shallop of his fortunes, together with the stronger vessel of the constitution. At an early period of his life a visiter of south ern lands where he had wandered, not to mark alone the sunny skies and desolated fields, the ru ined temples and the beautiful cascades, but to muse on the condition of the nations once so pow erful and so degraded now ; to ponder on their rise and fall ; to draw deep lessons of the future from the contemplation of the past ; he had learned to cherish liberty the more from having witnessed, if not himself endured, the wrongs, the misery, and the oppression of unlimited authority. Summoned of late by rumours rife throughout the world of present disagreement and of coming strife between the king and parliament of his own country, he had returned to England at the instigation of his natural sense of duties, which forbade him to expend his energies of heart and hand in the service of a for eign prince, when both might be required to aid the better cause of liberty or loyalty ; no less than at the dictates of those natural affections which, sooner or later, will point, as surely as the magnetic needle to the north, toward the home of childhood. While on the journey, all his thoughts had been of joy- of that serene and moderate happiness which makes the days flow onward like a broad and tran quil river, fertilizing some fair plain, rich with the hopes of thousands beautiful, but with an inde scribable and unromantic beauty presenting none of those wild charms, those scenes at once sub lime and lovely to the eye, which mark the course of far-famed torrents amid the savage glens of moorland, moss, and mountain but leaving on the CROMWELL. 59 mind a mingled sentiment of gratitude and bliss that will be fresh and vivid when the sterner mem ory of its rivals shall have yielded to oblivion. His spirit had looked forward to a long perspective of sunshiny years years not to be degraded by the selfish sloth of luxury ; not to be wasted in the mere sports of the field, which, useful, ay, and en nobling in their tendencies, when partaken but as a relief to grave and solid duties, so surely brutal ize if they be exalted to a daily occupation ; not to be dreamed away in apathetic musings and would- be philosophy; but to be dignified by high and patriotic labours by the cultivation of the sciences and arts by the promotion of public virtue and domestic worth to be enlivened by the gay com munion of the noble and the good to be softened by the sweet charities, the endearing ties, the holy sympathies that clasp within their pale the mem bers of a happy family and to be closed at length by a calm death-bed amid weeping friends, and by a grave beneath the elms of the ancestral church yard, still to be decked with flowers, and pointed out to far posterity as the long home of one whose life had been a course, to which death had but brought the consummation, of unbending honour. Such, when the chalky cliffs loomed white and lofty, such were the fond anticipations, the imagi nations, never perhaps to be realized, which pour ed their gilded halo round his heart ; and when he felt his foot once more securely planted on the pa rent soil, when all those gushing influences of min gled ecstasy and tenderness swept in an over whelming torrent over his evejy sense, he deemed that all his hopes were on the point of being grat ified that he was indeed about to be the happiest of men. The rumours of evil seemed to fade away ; the menaces of political discord, perchance 60 CROMWELL. even of civil strife, to mutter only at a distance, if not unheard, at least unworthy to create solicitude ; the fears that would at times arise unbidden, cloud ing with darker shades the bright hues of his men tal painting, were all forgotten ; and when he arri ved, as he had done that evening, at the dear home of his boyhood ; when he perceived the mighty pleasure that lightened forth from every feature of his admiring father; when he found himself rev elling in the manifest affections of his destined bride, and knew that she partook of the same rap ture, and in no less degree, he for a while abandon ed his whole soul to the tide of feeling ; he suffer ed himself to be carried away by his enjoyment of the present, careless and fearless of the future ; he felt, perhaps for the first time of his life, during those brief hours that elastic buoyancy of temper which seems to tread the earth with winged steps, about to soar aloft, insensible to aught that may depress, reckless of all that may oppose that rapt intoxication of the spirit, which is succeeded so in variably by the contrary extreme of listless, sad despondency, that, in the northern parts of Britain, it has given rise to a pervading superstition, to an undoubting creed, that such is the forerunner and the omen, not of a causeless gloom, but of a com ing evil. However this may be, it nevertheless is certain, that scarcely had he retired from that deli cious intercourse to the seclusion of his own apart ment, ere the exhilaration, which had almost sur prised himself while he indulged it, gave place, first, to an uncertain sense of restlessness then to a consciousness of some impending evil, increasing in distinctness moment after moment, till it assu med at length the shape of an anxiety, if not a fear, positive, well-defined, and, alas ! but too well grounded. Nothing, indeed, but the whirl of min- CROMWELL. 61 J..i. --. i - / gled sensations, leaving room for naught of serious meditation, could have, even thus far, blinded Ar- denne to the difficulties and the dangers of his fu ture course. The boasted loyalty of his forefa thers their fond devotion, stronger almost than life, to the king, not as a person, but as a portion, and that the most important, of the state their orthodox and sturdy zeal, condemning all as secta ries and fanatics who differed in the least from the established canons of the church their prejudiced affection for all that was antique, even for antique error ! their holding up all those who would im prove or alter, with the most diffident and sparing hand, as innovators on the good old times, as lev ellers of rank and order, as iconoclasts of the holy constitution, as traitors to their monarch, to their country, to their God ! All these, he could not but remember, had been the principles impressed upon his dawning intellect as the very elixir of po litical wisdom as the examples which must point the steps of every Ardenne as the dogmata for the maintenance of which he must, if ever called upon to do so, rejoicingly expend his fortune and his blood ! All these, he could not but foresee, must still, according to all human calculation, be the favourite maxims of his father, who as he felt in contradiction of those hopes, which, even in spite of hope, he knew unfounded would be too like to deem the slightest deviation from the foot steps of his idols as the worst apostacy ! the most respectful opposition to the arbitrary will of the misguided sovereign as flat rebellion ! the most moderate interference in behalf of liberal views and privileges of the people as a banding against the legitimate aristocracy of the land with all that was low, and sordid, and degraded ! too like, in short, to deem the part which Edgar felt already to VOL. I. F 62 CROMWELL. be the only one he could in honour or in honesty espouse, a base abandonment of his natural posi tion a shameful dereliction from the principles and virtues of his race a crime not to be atoned for, even by exclusion from his heart and expulsion from the home of his fathers ! And had he been able even heretofore and at a distance to close his eyes against this fatal certainty, he must indeed have been both blind and deaf of heart had he not marked the words of blasting sarcasm, of fierce and fiery hatred, which flashed forth as oft as any casual mention intervened of those who had stood forth to check the headlong declination of the Eng lish Church toward dreaded popery, or the more rapid increase of prerogative toward absolute and autocratic sway. But they had not escaped him. Although unnoted, or at least unremarked, amid the free and flowing conversation of that first evening, and unable for the time to dash his most unusual exuberance of animal spirits, they had sunk deep into his heart; and now they rose in long array against him, ghastly and gloomy shapes, reproach ing him with his unnatural and foolish joy, and pointing to an endless course of tribulation and of sorrow. Nor was this all ! though this had been enough to overshadow a temperament more san- guinely inclined than that of Edgar Ardenne, de termined as he was to follow that which he himself should deem the wise, the upright, and the honoura ble way of action, though such should be avenged by the prostration of all his fancy's idols by the ruin of his fortunes by the blighting of his nearest and dearest aspirations and, more intolerable far than all beside, by the forfeiture of that high opin ion which his merit had induced, and the frustration of that just expectance which his promise had ex cited in the bosoms of his friends and kinsmen. CROMWELL. 63 Nor was this all ! For, as he pondered now in the lone stillness of the night, as he reviewed with a dispassionate, keen-sighted judgment the occur rences of the past day as he recurred to every word that had fallen from the lips to which he looked for love, and life, and every thing to every expression which had wreathed in smiles, or clouded with disapprobation, the soul-fraught linea ments of Sibyl he could not bless himself with the conviction, scarce even with the hope, that she was not, although in a less stern degree, a hold er of the same ancestral prejudices a worshipper of the same creed, hallowed as it was by much that naturally would call forth the sympathies of a mind imbued with all the poetry of feudal recol lections, not as yet faded from the earth by the high chivalrous devotion the noble and unselfish confidence- the enthusiastic valour the unsullied memory and cloudless glory, of the days when kings were loved as second only to the gods when loyalty was regarded as a virtue among men, in the same rank with piety toward Heaven. Whither then whither had fallen his exulting fan cies whither had flown his visionary prospects of a useful and a happy life, of an honoured and regretted end if the paths of happiness and honour were destined to run diverse ? If his heart burn ing with the pure and hallowed flame of liberty, his head clearly appreciating the miserable and abhorred aims of the rash man who wore the crown of England, his whole soul glowing with patriotic ardour he must either prostitute his ener gies to make what to him seemed the worse ap pear the better cause must either lift his voice to justify and to defend time-honoured wrong and new-devised oppression must either edge the weapon of the despot with all the powers of his 64 CROMWELL. arm or, following the dictates of his own con science, ranking himself among the vindicators of the constitution to its early purity, among the as- sertors of a legitimate and tempered freedom as far removed from the wild anarchy and license of falsely styled republics, as from the forced obedi ence and intolerant rule of arbitrary governors must be content to sacrifice all that his heart held worthy its acceptance ! if, in short, he must act a part dishonest and unworthy, so to gain those or dinary means of happiness, to which none so lowly but they do aspire ; or must surrender every hope, nay, every possibility of earthly bliss, at the inflex ible commands of duty and of honour ? These were the dark reflections into which the mind of Ardenne had relapsed, as he stood alone, gazing from the lattice of his chamber into the bosom of the night, profiting by, if not enjoying, the first moments of calm solitude, the first opportunity for quiet and heart-searching meditation, that had fal len to his lot since he had been numbered once again among the dwellers beneath the oaken shades of his paternal Woodleigh. Nor, as the hours of night passed, not unheralded by musical chimes from the old belfry, and the moonlight waned in the peaceful sky, did his wild thoughts and sad forebodings give way to aught of weari ness ; the more he pondered, and the less able did he seem to find the slightest clew to guide his footsteps through the gloomy labyrinth of the future the longer he sat gazing on the pallid stars, and the less he felt disposed for slumber till at length, the spirit moving, as it were, too rapidly, and the blood coursing through his veins too fiercely to permit the body to remain inactive, he arose, scarce conscious that he did so, and paced the oaken floor, backward and forth, with CROMWELL. 65 swift irregular steps, the livelong night. Grad ually the coming of the early twilight dappled the darkness of the eastern sky; a bird or two, of those which had securely roosted under the ivy- curtained eaves, awaking with a lively chirp, gave notice of the dawn ; and anon the calm and colour less light of an autumnal morning crept into Ar- denne's chamber, dispelling from its every nook the massy shadows which had[ nestled, like unholy spirits, in those deep recesses, beneath the partial influence of the moon. But all unnoted by its occupant had those successive changes circled the firmament ; and when the sound of voices and of footsteps, passing to and fro the corridors, announ ced the return of those bright hours allotted to so much of human toil and sorrow, he absolutely started in surprise, and almost doubted whether it could indeed be morning, that had stolen on his waking dreams, and found him still a watcher. With something like a smile at his own thought ful carelessness, he turned to change and alter his discomposed attire ; and as he dashed the pure cold water over his throbbing temples, and bathed his feverish hands, he perceived that its refreshing coolness pervaded not his body only, but calmed and soothed his mind ; and when the merry bell summoned its hearers to that most unrestrained and sociable of meetings, the morning meal, he descended the old staircase, gazing on its walls, decked with time-honoured banners, and glittering with starry groups of weapons and on its landing- places guarded by complete panoplies of steel, standing erect with advanced arms and lowered visors, as if still tenanted by the strong frames that had supported them of yore amid the din of battle, if not with a heart at ease, at least with a countenance that bore no traces of the conflict still F2 66 CROMWELL. at work within. On entering the summer parlour, as such rooms were termed in the quaint language of the time, wherein meet preparations for a break fast, far more solid than are used in these degen erate days, had been already made, he found his destined bride alone, in a projecting oriel window, seated on the broad-cushioned ottoman which cir cled the recess, with a light frame before her, filled with a gorgeous Indian silk, on which her art had traced some fair embroideries, yet incomplete but, though the many-coloured skeins assorted within reach, and the well-filled needle between her taper-fingers, showed that she had commenced her feminine and graceful occupation, the thought ful attitude of her head, languidly propped on her left hand, while the right lay motionless on the rich texture, belied her fancied industry. So noiselessly had Edgar's step fallen on the soft Turkey carpet that she had not perceived his en trance ; and so beautiful was the picture of still life which she afforded to her lover's gaze, that he lin gered for a moment ere his voice should rouse her into animation. A flood of morning lustre stream ed downward with a golden hue, caught from the teinted panes, upon her glossy hair and pure com plexion, circling her entire form with a halo of rich light, not unlike that with which the painters of the Romish school are wont to dignify their female saints and martyrs. The outlines of her beautiful shape were mellowed, as it were, and shrouded partially by the hazy beams of sunshine which fell in oblique lines between her person simply arrayed in a close bodice, accurately fitted to her fine bust, and a full robe of white and the observer's eye. Her luxuriant tresses folded plain ly about the contour of her small and classic head, without ornament or gem of any kind, and the ex- CROMWELL. 67 ceeding repose, if it might not be termed melan choly, of her sweet features, giving, together with the accidents of light and shade, a madona-like and sainted aspect to her figure, which would have enchained an artist with no less of fascina tion than it exercised, from different reasons, over the mind of Ardenne. As he approached, her delicate ear detected him ; she turned her head, and springing to her feet, " Dear Edgar," she ex claimed, her eye discovering with instinctive quick ness the trace of melancholy left upon his linea ments, however faintly, by his nightly musings ; " Dear Edgar you are ill at ease nay, smile not 'tis a ghastly smile, not of your own expression ! you are ill at ease have passed a sleepless night " " Sweet Sibyl," he replied, with a wan smile, and gently pressing her extended hand, "you are in deed a keen observer ; too keen, believe me ! How should I be but well and happy, surrounded thus by all I love most tenderly ?" "How indeed, Edgar?" she answered, even more sadly than before. " How indeed if you do love so tenderly ? But ill at ease you are, and have been sleepless ! All night long have I heard your heavy strides upon the chamber floor, and those not regular and measured as your wont, but fitful and uncertain. So do not pass the happy their first night beneath the roof that saw their birth." " If I do love, Sibyl, if!" he exclaimed, with deep, almost reproachful energy; "but, in good truth, I am a poor dissembler, and could scarcely feign, were it to win even thy heart, Sibyl and, for it seems I must confess me, I am somewhat, though slightly, ill at ease " "I knew I knew it at a glance," she inter- 68 CROMWELL. rupted him ; " and wherefore then conceal it ? Good Dr. Masters, though somewhat past his prime, still ministers, and skilfully, to his familiar patients an hour will have him here " and she moved hastily toward a silver hand-bell, which stood, with books, and drawings, and a lady's lute, upon a fairy-looking cabinet of tortoise-shell and marquetry. " Nay ! nay !" he cried, gently arresting her, " I meant not so ! Be not alarmed, dear Sibyl, mine is a robust frame, not oft or easily affected by aught of feebleness or ailment. My mind hath been of late somewhat overwrought but a few days, consumed in the enjoyment of home-happi ness and the delights of your society, shall speedily restore me. Look not so grave so sad 1 do be seech you." " Oh, Edgar," she interrupted him again, " tell me, if you do love me, tell me all ! long years have we been parted parted, as I have hoped as, from your kind and fervent letters, I have well believed in body, not in soul ! and is it now oh, is it to be thus ? Are we to be but more divided when we are more together? Have we but met to be more widely and more coldly severed ! Oh ! if you love me, let me know your griefs ! Who be fore me should know ? or who, as I, would share them?" " All all," he answered, in the hollow voice of one who struggles vainly with his feelings, forcing a smile as faint as a December's sunbeam, " you shall share all grief happiness life death eternity ! All, all, sweet Sibyl, if that indeed you be so minded ! From you I have had I will have no secrets but now, I do assure you, I am not in grief how should I ? Something of gloomy thought may have come over me something of CROMWELL. 69 moody sadness causeless and senseless such as will float at times across the brains of all who think as I do deeply. But no, Sibyl, no; I am not unhappy ! Not for the proudest station upon earth would I exchange this fond proximity to thee not for the universal blast of the world's ap probation would I barter that bright tear shed for me, Sibyl or that yet brighter smile that chases it. Cheer up, my own own love ; we will talk more of this anon for lo ! there comes my father !" And as he spoke, attired in hunter's garb of green, booted to the mid-thigh, with bugle-horn and wood-knife usurping the place of rapier and of poniard, and with two gallant stag-hounds at his heel, the noble veteran entered. " Alert alert !" he cried, with a gay smile ; " you of young blood ! Methought I was myself full early stirring, but here are ye, in rising as in all else, beforehand with me. What ho ! ye loiter ing knaves hurry our breakfast! 'Tis a rare morning, Edgar a soft mild wind, a heavy dew last eventide, and the clouds gently rising. Old Stavely tells me he has harboured a right hart of grease a stag of ten ! and I have sent out riders these four hours agone to rouse the country. The Outrams will be here anon you mind the Out- rams, boy, your college mates of yore, and now right noble gallants and Atherstone, of Ashstead Hall and old Lord Middleton, with his brave sons ! Friends all true friends, though some of them, I doubt, forgotten ! But, 'fore George, we will make a day of it !" Thus the old man ran on, overlooking in his light-hearted cheerfulness the evident abstraction of his listeners, although they rallied up enough of animation to maintain some sort of conversation during their hasty meal, which scarce was ended, 70 CROMWELL. ere Sir Henry started from his seat. " See ! see !" he cried, as a fair cavalcade swept past the win dows, their plumes waving in the light west wind, spurs jingling, and steeds curvetting " see ! they be here, even now ; and lo ! the pack !" As with their attendant huntsmen and half a score of prick ers, splendidly mounted on blood horses, in forest jerkins sumptuously laced, round caps, and huge French horns encircling their shoulders restrained by many an echoing shout and many a clanging lash, some twenty couple of tall northern blood hounds came trotting slowly up the lawn, in all that accuracy of condition and perfection of detail which has, in every period of her history, been so distinctive of the field-sports of England ! " Fly, Sibyl fly, my fairy," cried the impatient veteran. " Do on your riding gear right speedily. Ariel is champing on his bits even now to summon you ! Edgar and I meanwhile will look to our guests in the great hall. Dally not, girl, I pray you the sun is shrouded even now, and the scent will lie most bravely. I would not, to be Prince of Wales, lose such a morning ! What ho ! my jovial roisters," he continued in a louder tone, striding into the huge vaulted hall through one door, as his fair niece vanished at the other. " What ho ! my jovial roisters," addressing the laughing group who waited his arrival. " Here have ye an old friend, whom some of ye perchance have not as yet forgotten." And with a prouder air and more exulting smile, he introduced his gal lant son, unseen for many a year, to his admiring friends. A short half hour flitted pleasantly away in heartfelt greetings and gay converse of light moment, but lively, joyous, and sincere. Then every high-plumed hat was doffed, and every voice was lowered, as Sibyl Ardenne, with her at- CROMWELL. 71 tendant maidens, meetly equipped for the field, en tered the hall ! " To horse ! to horse !" and the ladies were assisted to their velvet selles by fa voured cavaliers, and the gallants vaulted to their saddles, and threw their chargers on their haunch es by dint of curb and spur, and drew their forms to the most graceful attitude, as with courtly merri ment and sylvan music they swept away through shadowy avenues and over shaven lawns, to the wilder coppices and more secluded glades of chase and forest. CHAPTER IV. " The chase is o'er. Go couple up the pack, And let your lusty horn ring holyday To the swinked foresters. We'll hunt no more, Since duty calls of gravest import stern, And deep election of high causes twain Which is the better !" THE hunt was at its height ! The noble stag which had been harboured on the previous night in a deep swampy thicket, situate at the extreme western verge of the chase, and adjoining a wild tract of semi-cultivated moorland disdaining to seek refuge in the recesses of the devious wood land, had broken covert gallantly, as the first crash of deep-mouthed music burst from his stanch pur- sue^s ; and clearing by a gigantic effort the rough park-palings, had taken to the open country, cross ing hill and dale in a line scarce less direct than the crow's flight, and at a pace that, ere an hour had passed, reduced the number of those who fol lowed the now mute and panting hounds from a 72 CROMWELL. score or two of fearless horsemen to a scant half- dozen of the boldest and best-mounted riders. The ladies of the party had long since been thrown out, scarcely indeed having cantered a half mile along the nearest road, after the hounds had left the con fines of the park ; but still the foremost of the field, with all the hair-brained courage of a boy, and all the deep sagacious foresight of a veteran sports man, rode old Sir Henry Ardenne ; his manly fea tures flushed with the excitement of his healthful exercise, and his gray hair floating in the current of air created by his own swift motion, as, cap in hand, he cheered the laggards of the pack with a voice that had lost nothing of its full-toned round ness. At length, in a sequestered dell, clothed on each hand with a dense growth of underwood feathering its rocky and precipitous declivities, down which a sandy road wound in short toilsome curves, and watered by a bright and brawling rivu let, hard pressed and weary, the brave quarry turned to bay. The deep note of the leading hound changed to a shrill and savage treble as he viewed his prey, and at the same instant the loud death- halloo rang from the exulting lips of the old baron et as he caught and comprehended the import of that sharp yell. Another minute brought him to the brink of a wide pool, embayed between rough cliffs of sandstone, and overlooked by a gnarled and leafless oak, on the highest branch of which a solitary raven sat, unmoved by the fierce clamour, and expecting, with a sullen croak, its share of the after-carnage. In the farther corner of this basin, clear as the virgin crystal in its ordinary state, but turbid now and lashed to foam by the wild conflict of the animals, the stag had turned on his pursuers nor had he turned in vain ; for one, a brindled bloodhound, the boldest of the pack, unseamed CROMWELL. 73 from shoulder-blade to brisket by a thrust ot the terrible brow-antler, lay underneath his stamping hoofs a lifeless carcass ; while others bayed at a distance, reluctant, as it seemed, again to rush upon an enemy who had already left such painful evidences of his strength and valour on their gored and trampled limbs. Nor, though his velvet coat was clogged and blackened with the dust and sweat, and though the big tears tokens of anguish in its expression wellnigh human rolled down his hairy cheeks, did he exhibit aught of craven terror at the approach of his inveterate pursuers ; but, as the veteran advanced upon him, with the glittering wood-knife bared and ready, leaving the dogs, as if beneath his notice, he dashed with a bold spring against his human persecutor, eye, hoof, and horn, in perfect concert of quick move ment. The slightest tremour in the huntsman's nerves, the most trifling slip or stumble, might have well proved fatal ; but, although seventy win ters had shed their snows upon his head, his mus cles had been indurated so by constant exercise in his beloved field-sports, that many a younger arm had failed in rivalling their powerful though une- lastic firmness. When the despairing deer made his last effort, eluding by a rapid turn his formida ble front, Sir Henry struck a full blow as he passed, completely severing the tendons of the hinder leg hamstrung and crippled, the gallant brute plunged headlong forward, and received in the next instant the keen point in his gullet one short gurgling bleat, and two or three convulsive struggles of the agile limbs the full eye glazed, and in a moment all the fiery energy, the bounding life, that had so lately animated that beautiful form, was utterly ex tinct for ever. Then came the thundering shouts, and the long cadences of the French horns, their VOL. I. G 74 CROMWELL. joyous notes multiplied by the ringing echoes, and sent back from every heath-clad knoll or craggy- eminence, the merry narrative of harmless acci dents, the self-congratulations of the select and lucky few, who, from the start to the death, had kept the hounds in view, the queries for the ab sent, the praises of some favourite horse or daring rider, the stingless raillery, the honest unfeigned laughter ! " Who hath seen Ardenne ? What chance hath hindered Edgar?" suddenly inquired one of the younger of the party. " Edgar not here !" exclaimed his father, for the first time discovering his absence ; " Edgar not here ! Tore George ! but he must bide the jest for this !" " 'Tis strange, Sir Henry passing strange, though !" interposed an old gray-headed forester. " None here can match the master's horsemanship ; and that brown mare hath the pace in her, and the bottom too. Pray Heaven he be not hurt." " I fear he may I fear he may be hurt," ex claimed another. " He was beside me just before we crossed the northern road. I marked him charge the Hartley burn right gallantly, and no ticed the mare's stride nigh thirty feet, I warrant it." In a moment or two the wonder had increased until it might be called anxiety excitement the more so, as at intervals the laggards of the chase came straggling in, with mud-stained garb and ja ded horses ; yet none brought tidings of the absent cavalier. At length, sounding their horns from time to time, they turned their horses' heads to ward home, asking for tidings of their missing comrade from every traveller or peasant they en countered. Naught did they learn, however, till CROMWELL. 75 they had reached the park, when an unlucky groom, leading his lame and weary hunter by the rein, in formed them that the young master had been ac costed, as he crossed the great north road, by a passing stranger a marvellously sour-looking knave, the servant said, with a cropped pate and puritanic garb ; that he had curbed his horse to lis ten to him, and on the receiving of some packet or despatches, he knew not whether, had ridden slow ly homeward in deep converse with the bearer. " St. George ! and with a puritan !" cried one of the young Outrams, a hair-brained, light-hearted cavalier " a rascally, starved roundhead !" " He must be strangely altered then, I trow," muttered the aged huntsman, who perhaps had taught him when a boy to ride so well, " an' he be gone home with a musty beggar the hounds run ning breast high, too, o'er the vale of Bardsey !" " Tush ! tell me not ; he is too true an Ar- denne," cried his father, almost angrily, "that he should e'er consort with base and brutal fanatics, Heaven's curse upon them !" It was true, notwithstanding the report of the fallen rider to its most minute particular of cir cumstance ; for as he leaped the fence into the road, and pulled upon his rein to spare his horse's feet on the rough pavement, a strange-looking man gaunt, grim, and tall, with an affected air of sanctified austerity on his pinched features, wear ing his coarse and foxy hair shorn close to the skin, and clipped into small peaks alike unseemly and ri diculous, with a tall steeple-crowned hat, and a sad- coloured doublet, threadbare and travel-worn, pre senting altogether an appearance as dissimilar as possible to that of a gentleman called to him in a pert shrill voice " Canst tell the distance hence to Woodleigh, 76 CROMWELL. the residence of Ardenne him men call Sir Hen ry ; cumbering their tongues with vain distinctions, titles alike unsavoury and profitless ?" " A brief three miles," frankly returned the cav alier. " But you may spare yourself even that short distance, an' you list. There rides Sir Hen ry he on the chestnut horse ! I will o'ertake and stop him, an' your business may not tarry !" " Nay, friend," returned the other, " my call is not with the old, vain-minded, carnal cavalier, but with his son a godly youth, men say honest and sanctified ! yea, one of the elect " " A truce to thine impertinence, sir knave !" Ed gar replied, in a quick angry tone ; "a truce to thine impertinence, an' thou wouldst not receive its wages ; nor deem thy fulsome flattery toward my self shall anywise excuse thy ribald scoffing at my father! Begone, sir; tempt me, an' you be wise, no farther !" and he had already touched his mare with the spur in order to regain his place be side the hounds, which had gained on him some two fields' width during the interruption, when the puritan reined his hackney short across the path, crying out in a voice somewhat diminished of its self-importance, "Nay! no offence!" he said; "for if thou be'st the man, 'twere worth thy while to tarry. I am the bearer of a letter ! yea, of two letters, for the good youth, Edgar Ardenne. I pray thee to relieve me of the charge." " Begone, sir ! To your duty !" again vocifera ted Ardenne, in a tone yet sterner than he had used before. " Begone to Woodleigh and await my leisure. When I return, 'twill be, I warrant me, right soon enough to look to these despatches. I know not who should write to me by such a low and scurvy comrade, that I should lose my sport to minister to his convenience !" CROMWELL. 77 "Well, be it as thou wilt," muttered the puritan; " but, an' John Milton's worshipful John Milton's letter meet with no better treatment, I had as well wend back again to Huntingdon !" " Milton ! ha !" answered Ardenne, who had al ready moved to some considerable distance before he caught the name ; " Milton ! why saidst not so before, perverse and insolent ? Dally with me no farther, thou wert best, but give at once thy mis sives, and follow me direct to Woodleigh." Ere he had finished speaking he received the packets the one a large and cumbrous parcel, wrapped in a skin of thick discoloured parchment, and fastened by a triple band of flaxen thread, with a huge seal stamped with armorial bearings, char ged on a broad municipal escutcheon the other a small neatly-folded letter of smooth white vellum, secured by a skein of delicate sleave silk and drop of wax impressed with a superb antique the stern and rigid features of the elder Cato. The former was addressed, with cramped mercantile penman ship, to " Edgar, son of the worshipful Sir Henry Ardenne, knight banneret, and baronet of Wood leigh, nigh to Buxton, in the good shire of Der by, with haste and diligence, post haste !" The latter was directed, in a beautiful but bold and manly hand, " To the noble youth Edgar Ar denne." This was the first he opened, and a pleasing smile played over his fine features as he perused the well-turned periods of his already cel ebrated friend. " I much rejoice to hear," thus did the letter run "most excellent and esteemed sir, that you have now accomplished, with no hurt or detriment, your long looked-for return to England ; and, what redounds so vastly to your credit, that you have come weaning your thirsty soul from those deli- G2 78 CROMWELL. cious draughts of pure Parnassian waters in which you have so bathed of late your fancy, and casting aside your delectation in those Italian cities where in you have so profited by cultivating high pursuits of literature and conversations of the learned to turn the complete vis and vigour of your intellect toward the miserable strait in which our native land lies struggling, ' Ut clausus Gyarae scopulis parvaque Seripho,' a strait so fearful, that she wellnigh has lost, not only the fruition, present and temporal, of her lib erties, both civil and religious, but the very hope of their redemption. And yet more earnestly do I rejoice that you are called so suddenly, and with so honourable circumstance, to take your place in that high council of the nation, for which your genius and your talents so excellently do befit you. I would not wish you in so much to ponder on the character and principles of them that have united in this tribute to your worth, if they should be in aught although good patriots and true distaste ful to your feelings ; as on the mighty services you well may be an instrument to render, and on the duty paramount which should enforce you so to render them, in that most glorious and free assem blage on which hangs every hope of England. But, with respect to this, without attending my in junctions, you have an admirable monitor, a very entire and pure guide, in your own sense of right, which to obey is to be virtuous and wise, and in obeying which you shall at once fulfil the wishes of your oppressed and lamentable country, and give the highest pleasure to your well-wisher and friend constantly, JOHN MILTON, " From my villa, Aldwsgate, Oct. 12, 1641." . CROMWELL. 79 The calm deliberation with which the cavalier had opened and applied himself to read the famil iar letter of his trusty fellow-traveller, gave way, long ere he had concluded, to manifest and restless eagerness ; and if he read it through before he tore asunder the fastenings of the larger packet, it was rather that he hoped within itself to find a clew whereby to solve its mystery, than that he was in different to learn what was the nature of the call to which his friend alluded. But when he closed it, still in ignorance of that which it behooved him most to know, his colour went and came, and his heart beat quick as he turned hastily to the sole remaining source of information. The paper that first caught his eye on opening the packet was a fair document, in large clear characters, engrossed on vellum, and purporting to be an invitation from the freeholders of the good town of Huntingdon to Edgar Ardenne, that he would present himself a candidate to fill the -seat as member for their borough in the most worshipful the commons House of Parliament, lately made vacant by the un timely death of their regretted and right trusty del egate, Elias Chaloner. The second was a brief explanatory statement, signed by the mayor and several of the leading burghers of the town, assu ring him, that all he had to do in order to secure election was to make known to them his willing ness to serve in parliament, as no other candidate w%g in the field ; nor, if there were, could any have the smallest chance of coping with success against a nominee so universally admired and approved by every class of voters. No pledge was asked no line of conduct indicated, to which it was expected that he shojild adhere no query hinted at, con cerning his attachment to either of the parties, be tween which the whole of England was at that 80 CROMWELL. time divided. They were sufficiently assured, the letter stated, of the integrity, the wisdom, and the constancy of him on whom their choice had fallen ; so well assured, that they were perfectly content, without condition specified or question asked, to place their interests, their hopes, their fortunes, and, if need were, their lives, at his disposal. In mute astonishment he read successively these sev eral documents ; and still, the more he read, the more his wonder and his doubts increased. That he, who had been absent from the land of his fa thers almost from the day on which he first wrote man that he, unstamped by any public act or pri vate declaration ; uncommitted to any party or opinion, nay, undecided, for aught that the world knew, in his own mind as to which cause he should espouse in the approaching contest, foreseen by him as by all men endowed with ordinary pre science of events that he should be thus sum moned, within two weeks of his arrival in his na tive country, and that without a pledge, to fill a place the most conspicuous to which a private in dividual can well aspire that he should be thus eminently trusted, and by men whose very names were strangers to his ears; whose town he had never even entered save as a passing traveller; whose principles, but from the somewhat formal and affected plainness of their style, together wijh the unseemly garments and austere demeanour of their messenger, he had no means of so muchaas conjecturing ; and who, so far as he could compre hend, must be still more at a loss to judge of the parts or principles of him, to whom they had so confidently offered the representation of their in terests, the proxy of their united voices ; all this was indeed sufficiently "embarrassing, nay, unac countable at any time ; and the more so at a period CROMWELL. 81 when political intrigue and treachery were rife, be yond all precedent, among the men reputed as the leaders in the councils of the nation. That such a call was flattering, and that in a degree not trivial or accustomed, could not be doubted or denied but while he felt that sweetest, most ennobling of sensations, the conviction that his character was understood and his worth appreciated by his fellow- citizens, mingled with a high consciousness that his eloquence, his learning, and experience might indeed minister not smally to the welfare of his country, Ardenne was yet perplexed, anxious, and doubtful. Nor did it seem that he was destined easily or by any effort of his own to extricate himself from this uncertainty ; for when, after musing long and vainly on the import of the letters, he turned for information to the messenger, that worthy, doubt less resenting with all the rancour of a petty mind the merited rebuke of Edgar, wrapped himself up in such a veil of real or pretended dulness as de fied every species of cross-examination applied to wring from his fanatic obstinacy the reluctant truth. He had been sent, he said, an hired messenger, to carry certain missives, not to expound enigmas, nor to illuminate the darkness of those whom, it might be, Jehovah had for their sins involved in- th^ dark night of ignorance. He knew not aught of the matter; nor, if he had known, should he ha^p deemed it fitting to reveal that which those worthy persons, his employers, had found it meet to leave uncertain. The burgh of Huntingdon, he answered, when Edgar varied the subject and the manner of his investigation the burgh of Hunt ingdon was a tr,\e. town and godly its late mem ber, good Elia-s Cbaloner, a man learned beyond his fellows, not' in the vain and carnal lore of the 82 CROMWELL. idolatrous and God-defying heathen, but in the pure and sanctifying wisdom of the gospel ! Of its pol itics he knew not any thing, nor cared. Some cav aliers there were debosht rakehelly profligates such as the Knight of Hinchinbrook, uncle of wor thy Master Cromwell, now sitting in the commons house for the right saintly town of Cambridge, and others not a few. But of a truth the citizens, craftsmen, and artisans, ay, and the mayor and council, were pious and God-fearing men, seeking the Lord alway, day and night, in prayer and med itation. For the rest, if it were so that they had summoned Master Ardenne to be their deputy in parliament, verily theirs was the power to do so ay, and they knew right well the wherefore ! They were not men, he trowed, to leap i' the dark and to repent at leisure. If Master Ardenne thought it good to suit himself to this promotion, his, as was very fitting, would be the honour and advancement. If not, the men of Huntingdon would be at little trouble to elect as good if not an abler statesman to represent their voices. In this unsatisfied and dubious state of mind Edgar, with his uncourtly comrade, arrived at the park gates ; and, quickening his pace, rode hastily along the noble avenue of elms to the main en trance, flung his rein to a groom, and consigning his companion to the attentions of the gray-headed steward, passed with a hurried and irregular step to his own chamber ; there, in undisturbed and*si- lent solitude, to ponder on his singular position. An hour fled by, as with his head propped on his hands, and his eyes fixed on the characters of which his mind however took no note, he racked his brain with almost hopeless efforjts to conjecture who might be the secret movers in this matter. That his friend Milton had ever been an ardent CROMWELL. 83 votary of liberty, in its most liberal and extended sense a dreamer of those bright Utopian visions concerning perfect commonwealths and absolute equality of man, which, in whatever age or country, never have been never can be realized a mod eller of constitutions excellent in contemplation, but untested by experience ; or, if tested by the self- styled republics, but real aristocracies, of early Rome or earlier Greece, proved only to be fickle, changeful, and unstable, Ardenne well knew ; and often with delighted ears had listened, and with a mind that yielded to the inthralling grandeur of those theoretic dreamings, while it perceived their fallacy, to the deep-souled and burning eloquence with which he loved to advocate his wild but splendid projects. He had moreover heard, that subsequently to his return from Italy, the sage en thusiast had devoted himself with stern and self- denying application to the maintenance of the most rigid puritanic forms of Protestant morality and doctrines against the laxer customs of the Church of England, at that time assimilating it self daily more and more, through the bigoted ob stinacy of its reckless monarch, and of that most dangerous of all his counsellors, the haughty and half papish Laud, to the detested ritual and creed of Rome. Nor could he doubt, well as he was infcrmed of the almost inseparable league between puritanism in religion and the love of freedom in the state, that the already celebrated author of "Reformation in England," and "the Reason of Church Government," was no less strongly inter ested in opposition to that extension of prerogative, already stretched to the very verge of absolute and irresponsible autocracy, than his illustrious admi rers and associates, Hampden and Pym. Still he could not easily give credence to the fancy, that 84 CROMWELL. Milton only for to him alone, of all those patriots with whom his spirit sympathized so warmly in their devoted struggles in behalf of England's con stitution, was he personally or intimately known should have possessed the power to procure him that untrammelled offer of a seat, which individuals of far greater eminence might have been proud to occupy. Amid these painful meditations too there ran a mingled strain of deeper, because more personal, disquietude an agonizing apprehension, amounting almost to a certainty, that a seat in par liament, entailing on him, as it necessarily must, the highest of all moral obligations binding him, with fetters stronger a hundred-fold than the poetic adamant, to the upholding of that cause which his mature unbiased judgment should deem right must set him on the instant in direct unnatural op position to his father; and yet worse, must sever him from her whose love he surely prized above all mortal blessings. It was in vain that he at tempted to shake off the leaden weight of this dark apprehension it was to no purpose that hope whispered to his bosom how all might yet be well it was to no purpose that he strove to reconcile the diverse paths of duty arid of pleasure. A dozen times he took his pen in hand to write an answer to the perplexing invitation ; and as often threw it from him in utter inability to frame a single se/i- tence. Once, at suggestion of his warmer pas sions, and yielding to the persuasion of that single grain of selfishness, which must still lurk in every bosom, even of the best and purest, his fingers traced three lines of absolute denial ; but, ere the clause was finished, the juster sense returned, and the torn sheet was in an instant shrivelling arnid the logs that crackled on the hearthstone. " No, no !" he cried aloud, in the low husky tones which CROMWELL. 85 tell so fearfully of inward agony. " No, no my country never will I betray thee at thine utmost need ! What though my heart be broken in the strife what though I lose all things that make this earth a paradise and not a hell what though I per ish or, yet worse, live homeless, friendless, father less, deserted hated by whom I most adore, and cursed by whom I bless what though J, /, one man and for one little life, must bear all anguish that a life can compass, shall I for this shrink back, knowing that England needs the voice, the hand, the soul of every son she has, to save her from destruction to redeem her living millions her millions yet unborn from countless centuries of servitude and sorrow ! The cup the cup is filled ! God grant me strength to drain it ay, to the very dregs !" And with a calm unfaltering hand he drew a brief but full acceptance of the trust so proffered to his choice, pledging himself to act, so long as he should represent their voices, so, and so only, as his own heart should dictate. " I would," he wrote, " before investing myself with the great and onerous responsibility you wish to impose upon me I would that you should clearly know and apprehend my principles and rule of action. All party I disclaim all precon ceived opinion from my soul I disavow ! To hold the .freedom of our land inviolate of our religion pure, I do esteem the first of duties. But the freedom which I look to I do pray you mark me now, so shall there be no blame hereafter is the freedom of our British Constitution, not the licen tious anarchy of democratic innovation and the religion which I will maintain is the religion of my fathers the reformed church of England, equally aloof from the debasing superstitions of the Romish creed, and from the stem fanaticism of Lutheran VOL. I. H 86 CROMWELL. or Calvinistic sectaries. If, then, on knowing these my tenets both of church and state, ye make it your election still to go forward in this matter, I shall so labour with such powers both of mind and body as God in his good wisdom has assigned me as I may deem the fittest to secure unto our selves, and unto our posterity for ever, the blessings of a government at once liberal and firm of a re ligion pure, no less than tolerant and free. If, on the other hand, ye doubt in aught my motives, or disapprove my principles as stated heretofore if ye do look that I should yield at any time, or un der any circumstance, my own conviction to the opinion or the prejudice of others even of your selves, my own constituents then make at once a fresh selection, choosing a man more suited to your purposes ; accepting in meanwhile my high consideration of the honour ye have done me, in thus summoning me, as yet a stranger, to the high est station of your trust." Scarcely had he concluded his epistle, ere a quick heavy footstep sounded through the corridor approached his chamber door, and paused beside it, followed by a short firm tap upon the oaken pan el. " Now comes the crisis of my fate," inwardly muttered Ardenne, as, recognising on the instant the footstep of his father, he hurried to admit him. " So studious, Edgar ?" cried the veteran ; " plunged to your very neck in parchments ! The matter must, I trow, be all-important, that should have won you homeward from such music as was ringing in your ears, when you this morning left us in the Vale of Bardsey ! 'Fore George, but he ran gallantly and straight, poor dapple ! turned him to bay in the Witch hollo w beneath Leader hill gored brindled Mortimer to the death ere I came up with CROMWELL. 87 him, and hurt some six or eight of the others. What in the fiend's name called you home ? What clouds your face even now so darkly ? Speak, Ed gar, hast ill tidings ?" " Not ill, sir, not ill tidings, but of weighty im port," answered Ardenne, as his father threw him self upon a massive settle in the chimney corner ; " and such as have urged on me much grave thought ere I might answer them !" and, as he spoke, he tendered to his hand the invitation from the burgh of Huntingdon. " Here, if my visage be o'ercast, here shall you find the cause and this, when you shall have perused the first, contains my answer." With deep anxiety did the eye of Edgar dwell upon the keen intelligent features of the aged man, fitfully lighted up by the uncertain gleams from the piled hearth for evening had crept on them unper- ceived, and the sky was growing dark apace as he read the letters by the firelight. Changes there were indeed upon the broad unwrinkled forehead, chasing each other over it in quick succession now a deep frown corded the muscles of the brow, but more perhaps from the effects of thought than from disgust or anger anon it was relaxed, and a more bland expression played around the mouth, and the full open eye shone cheerfully. Again the glance was clouded, and the lip curled in scorn, till every hair of his mustache worked as it were instinct with life. " The roundhead scurvy villains !" he exclaimed at length, striking the extended parchment forcibly with the forefinger of his right hand ; " the base mechanical burghers ! I marvel they should dare pollute a gentleman's ear with their accursed puri tanic cant. You have refused them, Edgar indig nantly hurled back their most insulting proffer in their teeth ! Is it not so ? now, on your life, say ay!" 88 CROMWELL. " I see it not in this light, sir," Edgar replied, respectfully but firmly ; " I see it not at all in this light nor is there aught, to my poor comprehen sion, either of cant or insult in this invitation." " Doubtless you have accepted it this flattering invitation !" interrupted the old man, with an expres sion of the most bitter irony ; " doubtless you have !" " I have accepted it," calmly returned his son ; "I have indeed accepted it, nor can I possibly conceive " " You have not, Edgar Ardenne," his 'father almost shouted, as he sprang to his feet, spurning the footstool from beneath them to the farther cor ner of the room ; " you have not dared to do so ! You ! you ! an Ardenne heir to some twenty generations of high-minded, noble, loyal cavaliers you blend yourself with the foul puddle blood of craftsmen and pinched beggarly mechanics you band yourself with hypocrites and traitors against your church, your country, and your king ! No, no ! it can not be !" u Indeed ! indeed ! it could not," replied Edgar, in tones almost femininely soothing ; " indeed it could not be, that I should ever mix myself with aught degenerate or base, much less with aught unprincipled or traitorous. But, of a truth, my father, I apprehend not any thing though strain ing to the utmost of my understanding I appre hend not any thing here written to imply aught that can by any means be tortured into treason or fanaticism. Nay, for my part, I find not aught that would restrain me, if I should be so minded, from degrading loyalty, even as the member for this very borough, into most prostrate oriental slavish- ness from bartering our reformed religion for Romish superstition ! A seat is proffered to me freely without condition, pledge, or hint of any CROMWELL. 89 interference. Nay ! the constituents aver that they refer themselves in all things to my judgment submit themselves to absolute dictation of my individual will. Now, sir, it seems to me I pray you so far pardon me as to permit me speak to the end it seems to me, if as I see no cause to deem them such these men of Huntingdon be fanatics and traitors, there cannot be a better mode of frustrating their ill intentions, than that I, who most assuredly am neither, should accept their offer, and represent their bigoted and treasonable voices by a most tolerant and patriotic vote !" Sir Henry's passions had displayed their prog ress on his features during his son's rejoinder even more strongly and with more definite changes than before. At the first, every line and feature was inflamed almost to bursting with fierce and fiery indignation varying as Edgar proceeded to that air of obstinate unwilling coolness with which a man resigns himself to some infliction which he may not avoid. Then, as the truth of what was said impressed itself by slow degrees upon his senses, he listened with attention approaching somewhat to respect, till, when the last sentence fell upon Ids ear, and he fancied that the full policy of his son was there disclosed to him, the mighty satisfaction flashed from his whole face as he ex claimed " Excellent ! I was dull indeed ! excellent ! Edgar; and so 'hoist the knave engineers, e'en with their own petard !' Tore George but you surpass, not your old father's talents only that you did ever but his uttermost wishes ! And so, when the fool puritans would have you rob the church and manacle the king, vote like a loyal cavalier ! Now out on me for an old superannu ated dolt that would not hear or comprehend !" H2 90 CROMWELL. "Nay, sir; but even now," said Edgar, not a little astonished by this ebullition of mistaken pleasure " even now you do misapprehend me somewhat. I have accepted this same seat in the Commons, giving the men of Huntingdon to know that I will hold myself responsible to no authority save that of my own conscience. Party, or place, I hold not to, nor covet. In all high honour and in all accordance with my own sense of just and right, will I vote ever ! If these men should dare pro pose to me, or hint that I should swerve one hair breadth from the course of truth and honour then would I surely disobey them spit at them, and spurn them. But, if they should prove honest, as surely will I compromise no tittle of their interests or their opinions ; and so far am I from suspecting aught of this, that I do well believe that my constit uents will prove right honest men and true else, under favour be it spoken, I deem it most unlikely they should have fixed their choice on me a man perhaps not altogether void of some repute of hon our, and if unknown myself at least a scion of a family that has not ever stooped to fraud or to dis grace !" " Enough said ! Edgar ; enough said ! I was a fool to doubt thee ;" and the old man grasped his hand with warm affection as he answered, while a tear slid down his withered cheek ; " I was a fool to doubt thee for thou wert ever true and noble, as I was eve^over-choleric and rash. Some things too, in good sooth, there are, that might be well amended ! This ship-money I like not altogether nor these violent forced subsidies yet less like I the sordid puritanic knaves who do oppose them, not that they know or understand the evil of the measures which they rail at, but that they would embarrass and annoy, and, if their means were mated to their CROMWELL. 91 will, perchance o'erturn the government from which those measures emanate not that they love their country, but that they hate their king because, being base themselves, they loathe the very name of what is high, or generous, or noble because, having naught to lose even in England's ruin, they may gain all in the midst of uproar and confusion. But enough said ! you shall receive their offer, since so you will it, although I hold a promise of a borough from my Lord of Middleton awaiting your acceptance, for which I speak it in all candour I would far rather have you member than for this beggarly psalm-singing body corporate of Hunting don. But enough said ! Bear with me, Edgar, for I am old, and choleric withal, and hasty ! And now to supper ! For John, cook, will be foaming an his goosepie be burnt, or his beef boiled to rags as with o'erflowing eyes he swore to me they were last night, and all through fault of mine !" CHAPTER VI. " 'Tis hard to part When youthful hearts with treasured dreams are high Of sunny days, and calmest nights serene, A happy future ! but oh harder far, When dark anticipation veils the scene With melancholy clouds, and hard at hand Sits chill despair that vulture of the soul Watching the latest gleam of hope expire To pounce her conscious prey." TIME journeyed onward and with a flight as rapid, when every day and hour was charged with tidings of some great event, with some terrific ru mour, or some perilous foreboding, as though it had 92 CROMWELL. ebbed noiselessly away in peace and in obscurity. The golden days of autumn had already flown the last slow wain had dragged its freight to the piled threshing-floor the last flower had shed its petals scentless and colourless upon the frosted grass. The leaves, that had for many weeks clothed grove and forest in a rich garb of many- coloured splendour, now detached themselves one by one from the sere branches, and fell whirling slowly in the heavy atmosphere, like hopes blight ed before accomplishment, to the dank steamy earth the glimpses of the sun were rarer and more pallid than their wont, and often in the depth of night the mighty winds went forth, wailing as if in sorrow o.ver the faded glories of the year. Nor were the signs of the times less gloomy than the tokens of the season. All England was in con fusion and dismay, and both these hourly increas ing, till the one half of the people was wellnigh maddened by its fears, the other by the excitement of its own fierce and stormy passions. To-day a rumour was abroad of mighty armaments levied be yond the sea; and even now preparing to pollute with foreign weapons the free soil of England, and to erect the power of her monarch, already stretched beyond all limits of constitutional sway, into abso lute and self-controlling tyranny. On the next, a tale was rife that Pym, the champion of the peo ple's cause and king of their affections, had been assailed, perhaps even murdered, by the hired emissaries of a sovereign stern and cold by nature, and rendered merciless and cruel by the extremity of terror. Then came the one great accusation, swallowing up in its atrocity all lesser charges, all inferior crimes, as the sunshine drinks up and blots from heaven the fainter lustre of the stars ! The one great accusation, at that time generally credited CROMWELL. 93 by men of every class except perhaps a few of the most confiding and most generous cavaliers and since those days confirmed almost beyond the possibility of doubt that the Irish rebellion, with all its horrible features of midnight massacre and midday conflagration, was the premeditated, coolly calculated, work of Charles and Henrietta ! The one great accusation, penetrating every breast, in every rank of persons, with mingled sentiments of pity, horror, hatred, and disgust; imbittering still more against him the foes of the misguided sover eign, and alienating from his side many of those devoted and enthusiastic spirits, that never would have swerved from their allegiance, so long as they had sense or being, had he but shown himself in the most trivial circumstances constant, not to his faithful servants, but to his own true interests, or even to himself. In the Commons house the minds of men were even more unsettled than in the world at large parties ran daily higher, and with a greater share of virulence and private animosity than at any previous period ; and, indeed, it seemed that the king himself was labouring as earnestly to the ad vantage of his enemies, the puritans, as they them selves could wish. At the first meeting of the parliament, a committee had been appointed " to draw up a general remonstrance of the state of the kingdom, and the particular grievances it had sus tained ;" which, after its first nomination, had, how ever, scarcely ever met, and was almost forgotten. But now, during the causeless and protracted absence of the ill-fated monarch in the sister kingdom irritated by his apathy with regard to bleeding Ireland appreciating fully his dishonest motives in lingering at a distance from his parlia ment and goaded almost to madness by his attempt to seize or to assassinate, as many did in 94 CROMWELL. truth believe, Argyle and Hamilton the party came to the resolve of reproducing that moment ous question ; and, in accordance with their views, upon Strode's motion, it was carried, that "the committee of remonstrance be revived, and or dered without more delay to meet ;" and time and place incontinently were appointed. Within a few days of this measure, a bill of far more ques tionable character, and justified alone if it might any way be justified by the unwonted and most unbecoming violence of the spiritual lords, who lent themselves in every instance as willing instru ments to aid the usurpation of the sovereign, and scrupled not to violate the spirit and the letter of the laws against the Romish church was intro duced, ordered by a majority of voices to be read, and, without any opposition worthy of remark, transmitted to the lords, for the disabling the bishops from the exercise of voting in the upper house, or of any temporal office throughout the kingdom. Just at this critical and anxious junc ture, with his accustomed rashness and inveterate obstinacy, Charles deemed it fitting to collate five preachers of undoubted eminence and learning, but known as well for principles of state the most ob noxious as for their talents, to as many sees vacant by death or by translation in absolute defiance, as it seemed, to the desires of the popular branch of legislation, and contrary to the advice of his most trustworthy and valuable counsellors. In the midst of the tumults for to an extent which scarcely can be designated by a less forcible word was the vio lent struggle carried between the upper and the lower houses consequent upon this doubtful meas ure, tidings arrived in London, that on a day ap pointed, having arranged all matters in that king dom to the general satisfaction, his majesty intended CROMWELL. 95 to depart from Scotland on his homeward progress ; and straightway the committee offered the report of their proceedings, together with a draught of the remonstrance, to the house ; which instantly, al though divided much in sentiment, and, as many thought, in general opposed to this decisive stroke, proceeded to discuss it with a degree of bitterness and fury perhaps unprecedented except in the debates upon the case of Strafford. In the mean while an answer had been returned to Ardenne by his constituents of Huntingdon, agreeing fully lo the terms he had proposed, whereon to serve them in the Commons as their representative and mem ber ; and urging him, so soon as it might be con sistent with his leisure, to betake himself to Lon don, there to assume his seat. All preparations had been made for his departure ; chambers secured for him in Westminster; his retinue and horses sent before him ; nay, even a day fixed whereon again to leave, after so brief enjoyment of its serene and tranquil pleasures, his paternal home. He felt not, it is true, that terrible sensation of passionate and overwhelming sorrow which drowns the hearts of the young at their first setting forth into the wide and cheerless world, from the dear roof that saw their birth ! much less that sullen and collected bitterness with which the exile gazes, ere he turn from them for ever, upon the scenes never before so beautiful or so beloved ! but he did feel a heavy and continual gloom clouding, he knew not wherefore, all his anticipations of the future an ominous and all-engrossing sense of coming evil a prophetic fear, that it would ne'er be his again to cast away the burden of his sor rows, and be, as it were, once again a child in spirit, beside that old domestic hearth a fear not justi fied, perhaps, by any clear perception, nor founded 96 CROMWELL. upon any evidence of judgment ; but still oppres sing his mind, no less than the influence of a coming thunder-storm is often seen to agitate the lower grades of animal creation, when not a speck of cloud is visible as yet above the clear horizon. As far indeed as regarded any real or well-founded apprehensions, Ardenne had every following day less cause to dread a rupture with his father in consequence of any difference in politics ; for so completely had the old man taken up the notion that his son intended to apply his nomination by the puritanic party to the advancement of the royal interests, that Edgar fruitlessly endeavoured to apprize him of the error, and to convince him of his own sincerity and singleness of purpose. " Right ! right ! boy," he would cry ; " never be tray your counsel ! and in good sooth thou hast a perilous part to play, and a politic best vote a few times with the canting knaves so better to throw dust i' their eyes, that they discover not thy game ere it be fit time to disclose it, husbanding so thy powers as to aid our gracious master in his real straits, an' it should come which God avert to such an issue !" For a time, indeed so utterly abhorrent was the smallest shadow of deception to his ingenuous mind and rigid sense of honour he strenuously and sincerely strove to make Sir Henry compre hend his principles his entire devotion to the laws and constitution of his country, as established by the precedent of ages, not as interpreted by the corrupt and pensioned lawyers of the court his firm attachment to the privilege of Parliament, as opposed to the prerogative of the crown and, over all, his absolute disgust at the late proceed ings taken by the king in relation to the claim of ship-money especially, and to the infringement of CROMWELL. 97 the anti-Catholic statutes ; but finding all endeav ours vain to overturn his preconceived opinion, he abandoned altogether the ungracious task, in an un certain state of mind, bordering at one moment on hope, at another on its opposite extreme, despair; arguing within himself, when brighter thoughts prevailed, that, as his father's violence of loyalty was even now so greatly modified as to permit him to allow the participation of corrupt men, and the existence of evil measures, in the councils of his kingly idol, his own course might so far tally with his views, or, at the worst, might differ from them only in so small particulars as to call forth no very strenuous or lasting reprobation ; and again, when giving way to gloomier though perhaps more probable imaginations, foreseeing that the obstinate determination of the sovereign to dispense with parliaments ; to recognise the laws of the land but so far as they should further his own imperious wishes ; to rule, in short, as an absolute and arbi trary monarch and the noble stand assumed by the delegates of the people in defence of the peo ple's rights would by no means ever be composed or reconciled except by arbitration of the sword ; and farther, that in such a case, as certainly as he should be himself found warring in the ranks of freedom, so surely would Sir Henry arm to buck ler the time-hallowed names of church and king, although the former should be almost Romish, and the latter utterly despotic. Thus was the mind of Edgar balanced during the interval which elapsed between his first accept ance of the proffered honour and his departure for the metropolis its moods as various as the changes of an April day, now bright with sunshiny and azure skies, now blackened with the scudding rack, and howling with the stormy gusts. The days, how- VoL. I. I 98 CROMWELL. ever, wore onward the chase in the morning, with its heart-stirring sounds and high associations, or the stroll through the highly-cultivated grounds about the homestead, or the familiar visit to the independent yeomen or the sturdy peasantry, con sumed the earlier hours ; and, when the mid-day meal was ended, the ramble in the beautiful broad park, beneath the autumnal trees, with his sweet cousin the ramble, finished, as it seemed to them, almost before it was commenced beguiled the hours till twilight, when the lamps would all be lighted, and the guests assembled in the lordly hall, or the smaller circle gathered about the parlour fire, to cheat the evening with lay and legend, or with sprightly converse, more pleasantly than with loud minstrelsey and the gay dance. The days, however, wore onward and although none else perceived the constant cloud that dwelt on Edgar's brow, Sibyl had marked and understood it ; and, as if in sympa thy, her own transparent skin showed less and less the healthful hues of her elastic blood and her deep eye was always dimmer than its wont, and often tearful, as it would dwell unnoticed on the overshadowed features of her lover, now constantly absorbed, as he had rarely been of yore, in fits of meditation, abstracting him entirely from the busi ness or the pleasure of the moment. After the morning following his return to Woodleigh, al though on other topics there had been no reserve however trivial, no hesitancy or concealment of action, thought, or motive, neither had again alluded to the subject of their interrupted conver sation he shunning it, not merely because he could have naught agreeable, but because he had naught definite which to communicate, and there fore was unwilling, needlessly perhaps, to cloud her prospects with certainly a distant, and not im- CROMWELL. 99 probably a causeless, terror ! and she not pressing it, because, relying with a pure and holy confidence upon her promised husband a confidence inferior only to her trust in her Creator ! because seeing, that, be his secret sorrow what it might, he felt it not his duty at that time to impart it to her ear ! and because she would have scorned herself could she have entertained the thought but for a moment of obtaining that from his fondness, which his judg ment would not warrant his bestowing ! It was not long, however, before Sibyl had another and a surer reason for her silence ; for, with that wondrous shrewdness which a woman's heart possesses in divining and discovering any thing that may affect it in its own particular province, she fancied herself ere long to be the mistress of the causes of his hidden grief. She saw the struggle in his heart between his love for her and for his father, and his devotion to his coun try. She knew that in the heart of such a man the struggle could last but for a single hour ere it must be decided she suffered no diminution of her self- respect, no fretting of her vanity, as she acknowl edged that her ow r n claims to his affection must surely yield to the overruling amor patrice and, while she sorrowed with the deep sincerity of a true and loving heart over the election which, she was assured, he had already made, she yet thought she hardly could desire that he had decided other wise ! And even yet there was another cause ! a lingering hope that she might yet have been in error that she might falsely have interpreted the outward workings of his mind a fear of banishing that lingering hope, by questioning of that which she most yearned to know a dread of learning that, which even now almost knowing true, she would have given worlds to know unreal. 100 CROMWELL. The days wore onward, and the last morning broke, and the last sun arose, which was to shine on Edgar a dweller in his father's house. It was a clear, bright, cheerful morning a slight touch of frost on the preceding evening had imparted just enough of coldness to the atmosphere to ren der it more pure and bracing, but the sun shone warmly out, and the dew sparkled laughingly upon the shrubs and grass, and the rooks clove the liquid firmament with their exulting wings at an immeas urable pitch all nature seeming to rejoice with a more healthful and elastic joy than in the fullest flush of summer. It was, in short, just such a morning as would make the careless and unbur dened heart sit lightlier on its throne as would impel the mounted traveller to give his horse the spur, and let his spirits loose by a free and fearless gallop as would swell the pedestrian's chest, and plant his stride more firmly on the sod, and per chance unclose his lips with something of a song but it was such a one withal as would cause one departing from some loved and lovely scene, to need a stronger effort to tear himself away than he would have been called on to exert had the skies been lowering, and the day in nearer unison with his own sad sensations. Accordingly, the tone of Edgar's feelings were" depressed beyond their wont, even as the aspect of all visible things was fairer than the promise of the season his mien was careworn, and at times it scarcely would have been too strong a term to call it haggard his gait was various and irregular, hasty at times and hur ried, and at times unusually slow his eye was often fixed on vacancy, and those who would ad dress him were compelled to speak their wishes more than once ere they appeared to reach his un derstanding. The earlier hours were consumed in CROMWELL. 101 preparations till high noon came round, and he sat down to the last meal he was for many a month to taste in fellowship with those who sat beside him, while the unwelcome thought would still intrude itself, that it might be verily the last. In silence then, if not in sorrow, dinner went by, until the board was cleared of all save cup and flagon, and the old servitors withdrew, and Sibyl vanished to attend, perchance, her household duties, or, more probably, to give in pri vate vent to the gushing feelings which she in public was compelled to smother and sire and son were left without companions. For a while the old man spoke not, resting his head upon his hand as if in anxious thought ; and, although once or twice he raised it and made as if about to speak, he yet seemed at a loss for words at length, as if with something of an effort, he aroused himself, filled up his goblet from the stoop of Bordeaux wine before him, and, pushing it toward his son, motioned that he should follow the example gazed for a moment wistfully upon the clouded features that met his eye, and with a nod and smile that vainly struggled to be lightsome, emptied his winecup. " Come, Edgar, come !" he said, " this gloom will never do ! Cheer up, kind heart, cheer up ! Thou takest on more sadly now methinks than when thou left us for thy three years term of ser vice in the Low Countries ! but I can see how sits the wind old though I be, and past these toys this many a winter's day I mind when I was a young cavalier, and not although I say it who should not the most unlikely in the court of good Queen Bess, we ne'er shall look upon her like again I mind how I was wont to droop at parting from poor Alice ! Sibyl, though passing fair, is 12 102 CROMWELL. naught for beauty to what she was ! Well toe> well ! do I mind it." Ardenne, who had shaken off his air of abstrac tion for a moment as his father drank to him, was again relapsing into the same listless mood on per ceiving that his words were rather unconnected musings than such as called for answer or remark but when the name of Sibyl caught his ear, his eye lightened, and the colour rushed to his brow, as he perceived that his inmost thoughts were about to be subjected to the keen probe of mental sur gery ! " Ay ! ay ! I can see plain enough how sits the wind," continued Sir Henry, without paus ing for a reply ; " though why you should be so cast down, I may not comprehend so readily. Your cousin Sibyl, I do know right well, has long possessed your love, and as long too returned it. That I have in all things approved of this, I need not tell you now, seeing that you must well con ceive, that knowing this and not prohibiting was to all needful ends consenting. That you should be cast down at leaving of so sweet a girl as Sibyl, is I gainsay it not right natural ; nathless I can not but imagine that you do apprehend some greater evil than a mere temporary separation. Now, boy, to the point ! You would espouse your cousin Sibyl she says not nay ! and if my interference be a cause of dread to you, I say but this, that you have cruelly misjudged your father's heart ! My benison on you both ! I know no sweeter balm for all the manifold griefs of age, than to make, and to see, the youthful happy. So set your soul at ease brave boy you shall wed Sibyl when you will ; and the more quickly the more gladly and more surely shall I witness it. You start for Westminster to-night ; and I have meditated some what often now of late on passing this next -Christ- CROMWELL. 103 mas-tide in London. Sibyl, poor child, hath seen naught of court-gayety nor of the world as yet, and this is but a lonesome place in winter the more so now that half the gentles of the land will, as it seems too likely, be detained till spring in the city by these protracted sittings of the Houses, which men speak of. I have determined now to give you a commission choose me a fitting mansion whether to rent or purchase I care not a maravedi in the Strand if thou mayst, if not in Westmin ster or Charing ! see it right nobly furnished, and write me when 'tis done. I will bring Sibyl thither straightway, and, sith you may not spend these holydays with us, why we will keep them up with you, I warrant me. And now away to Sibyl ; say to her all that I have said to you, and what beside seerns fitting to your melancholy mood. Thou needst not me, I trow, to woo her. Fix, if you may prevail on her, your bridal day at once whene'er ye list, 'twixt Christmas-tide and Easter. Be happy, Edgar, be happy, and let me see you so such is my only wish this side eternity, be fore I go to. my long home."*'"* . *^'; " My good my generous my gracious father !" cried Ardenne, affected to the point of weeping, as he threw himself upon the old man's neck ; " too good ! too generous !" " Tush ! tush, boy ! None of this !" exclaimed the veteran, hemming away the husky weakness from his throat ; " none of this but away with you to Sibyl she is more fitting object for these raptures than an old weather-beaten trunk like me. Away with you ! but hark ye here is the ring that plighted my departed angel. Let me behold it on her hand, whom I have loved the best nay, I might say, the only one of women, since my own Alice left me, to drag out my pilgrimage alone, 104 CROMWELL. . .." without one hope to cheer it save that of meeting her once more, when it shall be, O Lord, thy mer ciful and blessed will." It would have been of no avail so bent was the old knight on his benevolent design it would have been of no avail, even had Edgar been so minded, to strive to alter or oppose his projects. They were not such, however, as to leave a possible desire to his son, which would not be, by their accomplish ment, at once achieved. He had no words to answer but the hot blood rushed tumultuously through his veins and his strong frame quivered visibly with the excitement of his spirits, as he hurried from the hall to seek his beautiful be trothed. " Once mine, and all beside is nothing ! once mine, there will be no more struggle ! Duty and pleasure will go hand in hand ! Once wedded, and no difference of opinion then may put those asunder whom God has joined together !" Such were the thoughts that thronged with irresistible impetuosity, and with the speed of light, upon his busy brain but he had not made six steps beyond the threshold before reflection changed the pros pect. " Would it be noble honourable upright" thus did he commune with himself; " would it be worthy of an Ardenne the supporter of an unblot- ted fame of generations nay, rather, would it not be sordid base dishonest and degrading to the lowliest gentleman, to win a credulous confiding woman by a fraud by an implied, if not a spoken, lie ? To let her wed, believing him she wedded a supporter of the cause she deemed most holy, a soldier armed for the warfare which alone to her seemed just and sacred to let her wed in haste, and then find out at leisure that she had been deceived vilely deceived by him she had just sworn to honour ? Not so !" he cried aloud. CROMWELL. 105 " It shall not be, by Heaven ! She shall know all all every thing! Knowing, she shall accept my hand or knowing, cast me off, but not at least despise me !" And, as his mind arrived at its mature though swift conclusion, he reached the door of Sibyl's oriel parlour with a hesitating hand he struck the panel, and so slight was the sound that it conveyed no tidings to the inmate at least it was unanswered again he knocked, and louder than before he listened, and still all was silence. Supposing her he sought to have gone forth, he had already turned away to follow her, when a faint noise, as of a person breathing heavily, or perhaps gently weeping, attracted his attention ; he knocked a third time, and then though still unbidden entered. She was within she was alone ! in the prostration in the abso lute abandonment of feminine and hopeless grief! Her face was buried in her hands, as she lay stretched at length on the broad pillowed settle which encircled the bay window. Her light brown hair, which had broken loose from the confinement of her silken headgear, flowed in redundant waves over the voluptuous outline of her shoulders, trail ing down even to the ground. Her features were, of course, concealed; but the large pearly tears, forcing their way one by one between her fingers, had already left a visible trace of moisture on the damask cushions, while the convulsive starts that agitated her entire frame told even more the depth and anguish of her sorrow than all her weeping. " Sibyl," he whispered, stealing with noiseless steps over the three-piled Persian carpet till he was close beside her; "my own own Sibyl!" there was a deep fond pathos in his musical ac cents which no description could express a liquid, melancholy tenderness, that sank directly to the 106 CROMWELL. heart ; ft My own own Sibyl." And with the most respectful delicacy he lifted her from her recumbent attitude ; " and weeping too for me ! but weep no longer, dearest one I come I come ! Oh grant it, God, that it may be so to wipe those tears away to make you mine for ever !" She gazed upon him for a second's space, wildly -distrustfully then, as she perceived his earnest air, and marked the hope that kindled in his smile then brighter thoughts prevailed ; and with the sudden strange revulsion, abandoning herself to the full tide of her warm, passionate feelings, she sank half fainting on the bosom of her lover. " Oh grant it, Father of all mercies grant it, that this too mighty treasure shall indeed be mine !" he murmured fervently, as he supported her, and with considerate expressions of calm fondness recalled her gradually to her self-posses sion, suppressing every sentiment that might em barrass her returning consciousness that might in any wise offend or agitate her girlish sensibilities ; holding her hand in his the while, but with a quiet, unimpassioned pressure, liker to the expression of a kind brother's love than to the rapturous devo tion of a youthful suiter; soothing her with the gentlest tones of his familiar voice, till she was at the least sufficiently composed to listen* to his self- restrained and self-accusing pleadings. " Sibyl," he said at length, as her deeply-drawn sighs subsided, and her tears ceased to flow in such unnatural profusion ; " Sibyl dear cousin ; soon soon, I trust, to be addressed by a far dearer title, I have much much that I would say to you before I go from hence, never unless at your per mission to return ! much from my father for CROMWELL. 107 myself yet more ! Dry your tears, dearest, dry them, I beseech you it is agony to me to look on them ! dry them, and listen to me, that we may, if it be Heaven's pleasure, be happy as the happi est of earth's inhabitants." " Say on," she difficultly faltered forth the words, " say on, dear Edgar with my whole soul I do attend you." " Not here," he answered, " not here, sweet one and not yet ! But do your mantle on, and walk forth with me for a little space. You are too greatly agitated yet, calmly to hear, and freely to decide on that, which, for your happiness' for your life's sake, you must consider warily and well ! The pleasant sunshine, the fresh grateful air, and, above all, the peaceful and quiescent scenery, will tranquillize your mind. Moreover, I would not that this sun should set unwitnessed by us twain together. You will go forth, then, dearest will you not, Sibyl ?" A smile, exquisitely sweet, glancing from out her tears, was her sole token of assent, as she dis engaged herself half blushingly from his supporting arms, and, gathering her dishevelled tresses, folded them simply, but in the most perfect taste, around her classically moulded temples. " Wait for me in the vestibule," she said " I will be there ere you shall have the time to miss me ;" and vanished from the room, leaving a stronger hope in Ardenne's breast than he had entertained for many a day. He was assured in his own mind, beyond the possibility of doubt, that she had marked the secret conflict of his soul, that she had penetrated his sole mystery, and was aware already of his apprehensions, as to the part which it might ere long be his duty to sustain, whether it should lie in the grave and subtle forum, or in the lament- 108 CROMWELL. able field of civil strife ; and he now listened to the flattering voice within, which whispered that it might well be, a maiden so affectionate, so warm, and, above all, so deeply and devotedly attached, would overlook the difference in their political creeds, as counterbalanced, rendered nugatory, and a thing of naught, by their entire harmony of soul on every other subject. It might well be. that one so strong herself in principles of honour and integ rity, would find more to admire in the inflexible and stern uprightness which will not sacrifice one particle of conscience one straw's bulk of that which it considers duty before the shrine of its most intimate and near affections, than to rebuke or reprobate in the opinions or the principles on which that duty hinges. But he had not long time to w r aste in thought or speculation ; for, as he reached the entrance of the hall, the form he loved so well to look upon came gliding down the stair case, wrapped in her walking-robe fitted above the waist with accurate precision to the mould of her unrivalled shape, but full below and flowing of dark velvet, furred at the cape and cuffs with the most costly minever ; and wearing on her head a cap of ermine, its silken crown and lining protru ding from above the border of deep fur, and hanging gracefully down, with a white ostrich-feather droop ing over it, so as to flush one delicate cheek more warmly than its sister with a teint borrowed from its own bright crimson. With a passionate and fitful light, far different from the calmness of their wonted radiance, the eyes of Edgar dwelt upon the finely-modelled person, and the features, not the less exquisitely fair that they now wore a mel ancholy, downcast aspect, of her, on whose accept ance or denial of his present suit his all of hope was fearfully suspended. So long, indeed, and CROMWELL. 109 evident was that fixed gaze of admiration, and so much was she pained by its expression, that the bashful hlood rushed like a torrent to brow, cheek, and neck, with blushes scarcely natural, so vivid was their hectic colour. Perceiving instantly the cause of her confusion, with an air of deep humility he lowered his offending eyes, and, as he took her hand to lead her forth, " Pardon," he whispered, in low, reverential tones " pardon me, gentle cousin, my most unwitting and involuntary fault ! if fault it be " he added, with a voice that faltered, and then abruptly paused, as if he were unable to com plete the sentence. A quiet pressure of the fingers that yet lingered in his tender grasp, replied at once, and reassured him ; and in the silence caused by feelings or by thoughts too powerful for utter ance how widely different from that of apathy or dulness ! they for the last time wandered forth into the pleasant solitudes of the broad sylvan chase. Throughout the greater part of its extent, this ornamented tract, although diversified enough by change of dale and upland to redeem its beauties from the charge of lameness or monotony, was rather of a level than a broken character ; its charms were chiefly of that tranquil and composing cast which is found rather in expanses of deep meadow-land, carpeted by a sward so fresh and so luxuriant as to lose little of its verdure even in the dead months of winter in the massive foliage of the scattered clumps, or more continuous groves of stately timber-trees and in the sheets of limpid but unrippled water, than in the features of a sce nery, which, if more romantic, is far less alluring; if more enchanting to the first astonished glance, bears not so well the test of daily and familiar ob servation. Towards its northern and northwestern VOL. L K 110 CROMWELL. boundaries, however, the ground was swelling and uneven ; the hills heaved up more boldly from the valleys, which were in places so abrupt and narrow as almost to deserve the name of glens, or dingles, and often wore a coronet of gray and rifted sand stone above the purple heather, that clothed their flanks with a dark russet mantle wheresoever the soil was too poor or too shallow to support the taller growth of hazel, birch, and mountain ash, which clustered round their bases, or straggled up their sides where any casual streamlet had worn a channel to protect them from the western gales, and afforded by its waters a grateful although scanty nutriment to their dwarfed and thirsty roots. Imbosomed in these rugged eminences, at a short mile's distance from the manor, there lay a Hub tarn or mountain lake, scarce rarger than an arti ficial pool, but so deep that its glassy waters shone black as polished jet even beneath the azure skies of June. Narrow, however, as it was, it yet could boast its islets two, fringed from the water's edge with tangled underwood, above which waved some three or four tall trees ; the third, a bold and barren rock, whereon some feudal ancestor 'had perched his solitary fastness, dismantled now and roofless. On every side but one the hills sank steeply down to the lake's brink, leaving no space for the adventurous foot of man, feathered with coppice springing from every rift or crevice of their rocky sides ; but on that one a turfy glade sloped gently to the marge, where it was bordered by a stripe of silver sand, which formed a bright and sunny frame to the dark mirror it enclosed. Just where the turf and sand united, a single and gigan tic oak, known as the "friar's tree" for miles around, reared its short massive trunk, garnished with limbs as tortuous and forked as the antlers of CROMWELL. Ill the wild herds that loved to rub their budding horns against it in the early springtide ; but supporting, even in the flush of summer, only a sparse and scanty garland of green leaves, which rustled now, all sere and yellow, in the melancholy breath of autumn. Immediately beneath the shadow of this forest patriarch, and partly overlapped by the en croachment of its twisted roots, lay a huge block of deep-red freestone, bearing the marks of rude and half-obliterated sculptures, in which some vil lage antiquarian had traced or fancied a resem blance to a cowled and sandalled figure, whence the prevailing appellation of the tree ; which, an cient as that relic evidently seemed, had probably been in its prime already when there it had been placed placed only to survive the memory of the event or actor it had fondly been intended to im mortalize. It might have been the cover of a tomb it might have been a monument designed to cele brate some great or wonderful achievement but, whatever was its pristine use or destination, it afforded now a pleasant seat, cushioned with soft luxurious mosses, and sheltered equally from sum mer heat and wintry gales by the huge stem and gnarled boughs that overhung it. A lovely and romantic spot this was so still, so lonely, so se questered from the eye by intervening thickets, that, although situate at scarce a bowshot from the most frequented walks, it yet was rarely visited but by some passing forester, or some true lover of the undecorated face of nature. For this cause, per haps, it had ever been a favourite haunt of Sibyl, who, when a fairy maiden of fifteen, was wont to resort thither with book, lute, or pencil, as the fancy of the moment prompted, and for no other reason had it been the usual termination of her young wooer's wanderings. What was the aim of 112 CROMWELL. Edgar in choosing this fair solitude to be the scene of that most sacred audiepce which he had come forth to demand, he could not have, perhaps, him self explained. It might be he had formed some half-confessed and indistinct idea, that here, in the familiar trysting-place the home of so sweet rec ollections, the shrine of so innumerable hopes she would " lean to the soft side of the heart" would be more liable to yield herself to fond and pas sionate impressions, than to weigh matters with an equable, calm scrutiny. It might be that habit merely, and the trick of old association, had con ducted his feet thither, while the mind was far re moved from thought of time or place ; or it might be that, wise and philosophic as his spirit was, there yet lay dubiously concealed within it one of those strange superstitious touches those creeds of the heart, not of the judgment from which the bosoms of so few, even the coolest and most stern inqui rers, can altogether wean themselves one of those fancies which we all at times have felt, that some peculiar spot, or hour, or person, is secretly con nected with the clew and crisis of our destiny is, as it were, the hinge whereon the portals of our fortune turn, opening to our steps the unknown paths of future good or evil. Whatever were his thoughts, however, during their silent progress to the friar's tree, scarcely had he placed her on the monumental stone, and stretched himself before her on the dry white sand, ere he poured forth, in a voice of so sweet harmony as might have well be guiled the ear and won the heart of the most deter mined votary of celibacy, a tide of language fraught with such eloquence, and yet so practical in mean ing so deep in sentiment, and yet so pointed in expression that few lips, perhaps, but his, could have delivered it, without incurring some reproach CROMWELL. H3 of studied insincerity, or awakening some feeling of distrust. He told her of his hopes, his doubts, his terrors he told her how a cloud, he knew not wherefore, had overshadowed his horizon, chilling, as it were, the very sources of his most permanent and warm affections ; he told her how he valued her the most of all things earthly the most of all things, save his God, his country, and his honour ! How to him her wedded love would be indeed the all in all capable of making that which else were misery the highest and most pure enjoyment ; how, to win it, he would lay down willingly rank, name, fame, fortune, every thing save virtue ! He told her that, without that crowning gift, he should, though wealthier than the wealthiest, bear but a beggared heart though girt with myriad friends, be desolate and lonely though dwelling in his very birthplace, be a divorced and home-sick exile ! He told her of the violent and ceaseless strife between his passion and his conscience of his profound devotion to herself, battling and scarcely to be overcome by his more deep devotion to his country's weal. " It may be," he continued " it may be that I am but a timorous dreamer but a trembling visionary, shaking at causeless and unreal terrors. It may be that the trials, which I shudder merely at foreseeing, shall never come to the proof; but this is what I. dread and what, though dreading, I may not, 'if it come to pass, avoid or shrink from, even to win what were to me a thousand times more dear than life the miser ies of intestine war let loose to devastate our smi ling country ! a wild and bloody strife, dividing brother against brother, sire against son, husband sweet Sibyl husband against wife ! A strife between a king determined to be absolute, a people to be free ! If these things come to pass though K2 114 CROMWELL. my life be barren, and my deathbed deserted yea, though my heart be Broken in the conflict yet must I be for ever the sworn soldier of my country's freedom. It may however be Heaven grant it so ! that I do falsely calculate the signs of corning wrath ; it may moreover be, that, as I am, so are you a friend to liberty and justice, more than a worshipper of kings ! and, if so, all shall yet be well. My father, Sibyl, my old, kind father, hath proffered freely his consent hath urged me to obtain your promise, that you will be my own before this coming winter shall have made way for spring flowers hath implored me ' that he may see us happy such is his only wish this side eternity before he go to his long home !' Be mine, then, Sibyl oh be mine, ere the fierce storm *>f -war shall burst, which may divide us, and for ever be mine to cheer, to guide, to comfort, and to bless be mine for weal and wo for time and for eternity !" While he had spoken, though her lips quivered often, and parted more than once, as if she would have interrupted him though her colour went and came in brief and fitful flashes the lovely girl had never once withdrawn her eyes from his pale face pale with the struggle of contending passions nor yet relaxed her pressure of his cold damp hand ; and, as he paused from his deep-souled and eager pleading, she replied at once, though her voice fal tered, and the big tears slid down her cheeks. " It is, then," she said, " it is, then, as I dreaded ! and our young hopes have been but as a morning vision ! Oh, Edgar, Edgar I have thought, I have hoped, I have prayed that these things might not be, and yet too oh, too surely have I known they must !" and she hurried onward with her speech, as if she feared that she should lack the . CROMWELL. 115 strength to act up to her resolution. " Men will say," she went on, with increasing passion " men will say, and say truly but J care not that it is unmaidenly in me to speak in words how madly, how devotedly I love you. My hope of hopes has been you cannot doubt it, Edgar, no ! no ! you cannot to know myself your wife ; and now my hopes are anguish and despair. But think not that I blame you that I love you, honour you, adore you, one thousandth part the less when I say God grant me strength to bear it when I say, that we can never never now be one. Your father has to me been as nay, more more father. To his heart your defection such and feel it your defection from the ur high race will strike a wound, that but JI^Hfrier blow could aggravate or deepen. Were ^^ fall off likewise, he would die, Edgar ; die, and leave to us his sole bequest a father's malison. No, no ! I must stay with him must console the old man in his barren and unfriended sorrows ; must sooth his cares, and turn aside his anger, lest it wax hotter and more deadly than you, you, Edgar, shall be able to endure. Nor is this all. I am a poor, weak girl a frail, confiding creature, of a sex whose duty and whose nature is obedience obedience to our king, our husband, our God ! I argue not ! I hope not, fancy not, that I can change your judgment, founded, as it must be, on firm conviction ; nor would I change it if I could ! That which in women is nature, virtue, may well in men be cowardice and crime ! Your intellect is strong, and wise, and wonderful mine womanish and weak ! Nor should I love and venerate you as I do, could you surrender up your wisdom at the bidding of my weakness. Then, as I respect your scruples, respect mine 116 CROMWELL. also. The sapling bends, indeed, to the wild blast that bows it ; but, when the hurricane is overpast, it stands no less erect than the proud oak that yielded not an inch to the storm's fury. I in my weakness you in your strength we are alike im- moveable. Yours 1 can not be now may not be ever ! But of this be certain wedded or single, royalist or republican, living or in death, you only shall I lov.e, you only honour honour and love more deeply, that I know you greater in adherence to that which I must deem fancied and erroneous duty, than did you think as I. There is one hope for us ! Edgar, my Edgar, one ! If this wild storm pass by if the green homes of England unstained with native blood and how. vently than ever shall I now pray the] may we yet be happy." The blood rushed coldly to his h^Hlas he heard her out, nor, though he had expected every word she uttered, was the shock less stunning or the anguish lighter than if the stroke had fallen on him unaware. Too well, however, did he know, and too entirely respect, the principles which doomed him to eternal and unutterable sorrow, to speak one syllable in answer or entreaty. " One kiss," he murmured, through his set teeth " one last kiss, my own lost Sibyl." And she fell upon his bosom unresisting, and her white arms were twined about his neck with a convulsive clasp, and their cold lips mingled in a long embrace that had no taste of passion or of pleasure, and their tears flowed together in that gush of unchecked misery. Before an hour elapsed Ardenne had left the mansion of his fathers. The old knight wondered, and was grieved, but silent; he saw, at an eye's glance, that his own hopes his first-born's happi- CROMWELL. ness had been dashed rudely down ; but, to ima gine wherefore, conjecture was itself at fault. wept upon his neck, blessed him, and sent him forth ! A pale form, indistinctly seen through the fast gathering twilight, stood in the oriel window as Edo-ar slowly mounted but the burst of ago- mang sobs that followed his departure was dis tinctly audible. Enough! Timanthes veiled the face on which the extremity of sorrow was en graved in characters so fearful as to deiy the utmost skill of human portraiture. CHAPTER VII. This is true liberty, when freeborn men, Having to advise the public, may speak free, Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace ; What can be juster in a state than this f IT was a dark and gloomy afternoon in the latter days of November, when Ardenne, having already gone through all the necessary steps preliminary to his entering on his novel duties, and having de voted a few days to renewing ancient intimacies, or forming neW relations, with some of the most leading men of either party, took his way for the first time toward the honoured precincts of bt. Stephens, around the walls of which-now, alas! levelled to the ground for ever-the collective elo quence of ages had shed even then a halo of more than mortal glory. The house had been some time in session when he entered, and, to his al most irrepressible surprise, in passing to his seat, 118 CROMWELL. the object that first met his eye was the ungainly figure of the stranger who had succoured him near Royston, habited, as heretofore described, in gar ments coarse, unseemly, and ill-made, standing be side the table, which at times he violently struck with his clinched hand, and speaking in a sharp, croaking voice, against delay in the discussion of some motion then before the house. It did not seem to Edgar, as he looked hastily around him, that the members listened with much attention to the fiery but somewhat involved declamations of this worthy; but, after a few moments 1 survey, his notice was attracted by the bent brows and com pressed lips of a considerable number gravely- ._ attired and stern-looking men, who sat ar^^^mM from those who were completely rLlifcver '^jstened heretofore to any one combi ning TTBf-s0^eminent a degree persuasiveness and strengtVrif language. From the Lord Falkland's words he quickly gathered that the measure under consideration was no other than the famous and much contested bill of general remonstrance, which, it appeared, had been at this late hour brought for ward by the opposition party, when the morning had been wasted in minor and unprofitable ques tions, with the hope of smuggling it, as it were, through the house, during the absence of many, its most known opponents. The speech of the young nobleman was luminous, though brief; and touch ing in no respect on the principles or object of the bill, went clearly and directly to the point, assert ing that it should not, at that irregular and most indecent hour, be forced upon the assembly, un prepared, at least, if not reluctant to consider it. Loudly applauded by the moderate party, as well as by the open antagonists of the measure, through out the whole of his speech ; and not less warmly, though more sparingly, at times by its impartial 120 CROMWELL. and sincere espousers Hampden, and Pym, and Hollis he concluded with a motion that the house should presently adjourn, and that this question " should be entered upon the next morning at nine of the clock, and every clause debated, the speaker in the chair." As he sat down, a dozen members rose at once on opposite sides, and for some min utes all was clamour and confusion, trampling of feet, loud cries of " Question !" " Order !" and " Go on !" mixed with vociferated names of favourite orators, called on to utter their opinions. At length, however, Lenthal, the speaker of the house, with his clear, sonorous voice, enforced obedience to the chair, and quiet was again restored. Lord Falk land's motion instantly was seconded in a few words, forcibly but simply ui cessity that this great question should cussed and openly, by all who might decl^to take a part therein. The house was cleared for ques tion, and the adjournment carried with few dissent ing voices. There was but little tarrying within the body of the house ; but, as they passed into the lobby and down the parliament stairs, men fell into little knots of two or three, discoursing, some on the occurrences of the discussion just concluded, and some on matters of more general and varied interest. It was at this moment, just as Edgar fell into a group in which he had observed the figures of Hyde in after days more celebrated as Lord Clarendon and Chancellor of England St. John, Lord Digby, Colepepper, and Hampden, all spirits in some sort congenial to each other ; all being favourers, ostensibly at least, though differing in mode and measure, of reform, both in the church and state that the orator, whom he had judged at the first sight to be Lord Falkland, passed by so closely as almost to brush his person with his CROMWELL. 121 cloak, deeply engaged in conversation with his mysterious fellow-traveller. This latter cast a glance of recognition toward him, accompanied by a short, unceremonious nod, though without making any pause, or breaking off in his discourse, which he continued in such tones as reached the ears of Ardenne. "But verily," he said, "but verily, I see not wherefore you would have it thus put off for this day would right quickly have decided it." " There would not have been time enough," replied the other, shortly ; " for it would sure take some debate." " A very sorry one ! a very sorry one, my lord, if any," answered the puritan, who was already p^ssiAo^iit of sight, when Edgar touched the shoula8j|cT John Hampden, whom he had pre viously addressed. " I pray you, of your courtesy," he whispered, " Master Hampden ; I pray you, tell me, who is yon slovenly and clownish-looking man in converse with my lord of Falkland ? for I do see he is on your side, by his warm speech to-day." " That sloven,"* answered Hampden and, in after days, when the undaunted breast of him who spoke was mouldering in its bloody cerements, not the least noble victim of that lamentable strife, his auditor remembered those prophetic words " whom you see before you, hath no ornament in his speech. That sloven, I say, if we should ever come to a breach with the king, which God forbid ! in such a case, I say, that sloven will be the great est man in England." * This very remarkable and prophetic speech was actually uttered by Hampden, in reply to the question, as given above, of Lord Digby, in the first year of the Long Parliament ; i.e., at a date a little earlier than that assigned to it in the test. VOL. I. L 122 CROMWELL. " Indeed !" said Ardenne, thoughtfully, " indeed ! I had not thought of him so highly. And yet, I do believe, nay, J am well assured, I have encoun tered him before. His name " " His name is Cromwell," replied the patriot ; "Oliver Cromwell member now for the good town of Cambridge, and little known as yet, or lis tened to, save by a few austere religionists; yet of great parts ! unwearied diligence undaunted courage penetration, that intuitively reads the wariest hearts, and perseverance, that will yield to nothing human ! That you have met him I can well believe at leastwise he doth know, and reck ons of you highly ! You will be here to-morrow, Master Ardenne," he continued, after a momentary pause ; " you will be here to-morrow ^J^Mri^^ ^j I trust ! If we should lose this bill, it \*fl I fear me much, go hard with England's liberties. 1 *' " Here I shall be, past question," answered Ed gar. " I scarce should hold myself an honest man were I to quit my station in the crisis of the storm ; although," he continued, with a smile, " al though that station be a new one, and its occupant but strange and inexperienced. Here shall I be, but more you must not ask of me. How I shall vote, or if indeed at all, till I have heard both rea sons and objections, I may not easily decide. Wherefore, good Master Hampden, if you do care, in truth, for the assistance of my vote, you were best call to aid that eloquence and depth of reason ing whereof I hear mtn bear such testimony ; and so convince me that my country's weal requires it at my hand ! Give you good-night, fair gentle men," he added, with a courteous motion toward the company ; " we meet again to-morrow." " If you be not in more than common haste," said Hampden, laying a slight detention on his CROMWELL. 123 arm as he turned round to leave the lobby, " I will entreat you tarry, while I speak ten words with my Lord Digby. Your lodging lies, if I, mistake not, this side Charing; and my road is the same. If you can wait on me five minutes at the farthest, I will rejoice to have your homeward company ; and will upon the way, I do assure you, exert what reasons I possess to win you to con viction." Ardenne assented. Nor did the minutes which elapsed while that high-minded patriot remon strated as it would seem by his quick, energetic whispers with the tergiversating noble, pass heav ily, as he conversed with the distinguished men who seemed to give desirous each, perhaps, of winninfid^his respective faction a partisan so like to provirTjf weight in the then equally poised state of parties that eager and respectful heed to every word he uttered, which cannot fail to please the minds even of those the least accessible to ordi nary adulation. With a glance pregnant of mean ing, and an admonition strongly urged, although its import could not be distinguished by the by-stand- ers, Hampden turned from Lord Digby and an nounced his readiness to walk, flinging his cloak in several folds over his left arm, and bringing round his rapier's hilt to meet his grasp if needed precautions not uncalled for in those times of fierce and virulent commotion. As they passed down the stairs, the men in waiting recognised their masters, and fell at once into their places ; two moving on in front with lighted links or flambeaux, necessary in those days, when the most frequented thoroughfares of the me tropolis could boast few lamps but those which graced the residence of some great noble and two stepping along three paces in the rear, their 124 CROMWELL. eyes warily moving to and fro, and watching with keen scrutiny the air of every passenger who met or overtook them ; and their hands in frequent con tact with the pommels of their swords. For, not withstanding the eulogium passed some years be fore by a French resident of high distinction on the orderly and peaceful regulation of the English capi tal, in honourable contrast to the debauched and dangerous turbulence of Paris, party spirit at this time ran to such a height, and tumults were so con stant between the factions recently accommodated with distinctive titles of cavaliers and roundheads tumults in which much blood was spilt and even some lives lost, the sturdy citizens resisting with their bats and cudgels the rapiers of the disbanded officers and other desperadoes ever tp^^p found about the palace of Whitehall that fe^^whose purses could maintain such followers, esteemed it- safe to walk the streets by night without their armed attendance ; particularly such as were ob noxious to assault, or insult at the least, in conse quence of party eminence or of political renown. At a few steps distance from the house they en countered a stout body of the train-bands, well equipped with muskets, swords, and bandoleers, forming a portion of the guards which, on the news of the attempt against Argyle and Hamilton, the commons had required to be detailed for their protection by the Earl of Essex, at that time gen- eral-in-chief on this side Trent ; and to this it might perhaps in some degree be owing, that during their walk homeward no circumstance of annoyance or attack occurred to interrupt the converse of these high-minded men ; who, though but newly and im perfectly acquainted, already felt, each for the other, that reverential admiration which is often the precursor to familiar friendship. At Ardenne's CROMWELL. 125 lodging door, with feelings of increased respect, and with- renewed promises of a meeting on the morrow, they then parted the one hastening to some nightly conclave, there to deliberate with his associate patriots on measures rife with England's weal the other to stretch his limbs upon a sleep less couch, and ponder the effects of his accession to the popular party on his own fate and fortunes. Kind sleep, however, came at last, to seal up for a little space the sources of his deep disquietude, and to allay, until another sun should wake him to fresh struggles, fresh anxieties, the feverish tumults of his bosom. Still, so engrossing was the subject which last had occupied his mind before he sunk into slumber, and so powerful the operation of his spirit frjtfpl while the body was buried in what seemed iio^olute oblivion, that scarcely had the earliest indications of the wintry twilight crept through the fogs of the near river ere he awoke, and, starting instantly from his bed, began to do his garments on, summoning the while his sluggard followers to prepare his morning meal. But, not withstanding all his haste, so gloomy was the dawning, and so late, at that drear season, the up rising of the sun, that he had scarce the time to snatch a hasty morsel before his horses were an nounced to bear him to St. Stephen's, and, almost at the self-same instant, two gentlemen to speak with Master Ardenne ! and, with the word, John Hampden entered the apartment, accompanied by a person of most " unusual" and forbidding aspect. Austere, fanatical, and gloomy he might have been pronounced at the first sight by any person mod erately skilful at deciphering men's characters from the expression of their features. His dress would not, perhaps, entirely bear out the charge for such, and a most grave one, was it deemed by the wild L2 126 CROMWELL. cavaliers of puritanism; for, although uniform and rather grave in colour, it yet was cut with at tention to the prevailing mode, as well as to the setting off a person infinitely less ungainly than his countenance was harsh and extraordinary. His hat, too, which he carried in his hand, was decora ted with a feather, and his sword hung from a shoulder-knot adorned with fringe and tassels. Be fore, however, Edgar had well surveyed the stran ger, he was addressed by his companion of the pre vious evening. " We have, I fear, intruded some what on your privacy," he said, " at this unwonted hour, I and my good friend, Harry Vane the young er; whom I beseech you, Master Ardenne, know as such ; right soon, I trust, to stand in similar relation to yourself; but we were both desina^rtf your company this morning to the house, anfff would fain propose that you shall for the present occupy a seat nigh mine. Till you shall be in some de gree accustomed to the usages and method of the house, it may be my experience shall in somewhat profit you ; and I fear not to make this offer, see ing that, should you find hereafter that your con science may not justify your being one of us, I shall provide that none may look on you as a de faulter from our party and I have heard and seen enough, methinks, already of your character and bearing to know that, even should you differ irom us as to the quality or manner, you are not like to be against us as to the needfulness of some reform ; so that to be seen companying one so hateful to the courtly faction as John Hampden, shall in no sort prevent you of advancement." " Most thankfully," said Edgar, after exchanging courtesies with Vane, "do I accept your offer; the rather, that as yet I know not, though I fain would learn, the persons of many among your fa- CROMWELL. 127 mous orators and for the rest, my vote will not, nor my opinion either, be affected anywise by sit ting in this place or that. But now, if I mistake not, time is urgent, and we should be on our way. Ride you, fair gentlemen ? My horses wait even now ; but if you walked thus far I shall dismiss them" " We came on horseback, and it is indeed full time we were at the house ; the bells rang nine some time ere we arrived," replied Sir Harry. " We will, if it so please you, get us at once to horse." The pace at which they rode, when they had mounted, prevented the possibility of any serious or connected conversation, and but few minutes were consumed in the brief gallop that brought them to the low-Drowed portal of St. Stephen's. The pri vates of the civic guard on duly at the door pre sented arms, as if to some high officer, as the pat riot leaders passed them ; and it was not long ere they were seated all together in the body of the house, at no great distance from the speaker's chair. The galleries were crowded, as it seemed, wellnigh to suffocation, not with the ordinary idlers who re sorted thither only to dissipate the tedium of an hour not otherwise employed, but with men whose anxious faces, and limbs that almost trembled with excitement, announced the deep and painful inter est they took in the debate, which had commenced already ; and with a spirit so unusual at the opening of a measure as might be held a sure prognostic of the fiery and determined ardour with which it would be carried on ere it might come to question. At the moment when they entered, Hollis was on his legs, urging with logical and beautiful precision the absolute necessity of fixing, and on grounds so sure that they should never more be moved the limits 128 CROMWELL. between right constitutional prerogative and abso lute despotic power pointing out the gradual and successive innovations by which the ruling mon arch had encroached on all the liberties, both civil and religious, of the English people the tamper ing with jesuited papists the evident dislike to parliaments the most illegal levyings of money by violent and arbitrary contribution the billeting of irresponsible and lawless soldiery on private householders the imprisoning of members con trary to privilege of parliament, for words or senti ments expressed therein " One of whom," he pro ceeded " one noble, and eloquent, and wise, and loyal^ than whom no better subject breathed the breath of life within the girt of the four seas that compass Britain DIED miserably died for want of natural refreshment ! "Whose blood," he" added, in loud and pealing tones, that woke an echo in the breast of every free-souled man " whose blood of life, untimely and unrighteously dried up, still cries cries even from the dungeon-walls wherein yet lies the mouldering clay whence persecution drove the free and fearless spirit still cries, I say, to every English heart cries, trumpet-tongued, for vengeance!" Wildly and fiercely rose the mingled shout for it was nothing less of appro bation and disgust. " Eliot !" exclaimed one bolder than the rest, making aloud the application which all had tacitly perceived ; " Eliot ! the murdered Eliot !" while the hall rang with diverse cries of "Treason!" "Vengeance!" "Order!" the latter word prevailing gradually, even as the rest subsi ded, till the orator again obtained a clear field for his manly elocution. With a lower voice and less impassioned manner, he proceeded to recount a train of grievances that seemed to defy enumera tion the new and unfair tax of ship-money the CROMWELL. 129 seas ill guarded, and the mariners left naked to the violence of Turkish pirates the depopulating of the city, so to raise enormous fines the seizing of the merchants' money in the mint the shame less project of brass coinage the barbarous and reckless censures of self-constituted courts "with their imprisoning and banishing their stigmati zing, gagging, scourging, and mutilating ay ! I said mutilating /" he went on, with energy befit ting well his subject " mutilating the free limbs of uncondernned and unoffending Britons ! And I say this," he cried, louder and clearer yet, " I say this, not of an Ottoman Divan not of a Spanish Inquisition but of an English Chamber ! of a Star Chamber HERE ! Here, in the land of Magna Charta ! Here, where the code of Alfred is not as yet forgotten or extinct ! A chamber judging not by law, and trying not by jury ! "A chamber forcing men to yield their substance to be wasted in the raising armies and equipping fleets for what ? what, but to compel their fellows, their Protestant and pious brethren, to worship HIM who made them, according, not to conscience nor to faith, but to the will of painted potsherds ! scarlet iniquities ! hoary and venerable sins ! wolves in sheep's clothing ! faithless and hireling shepherds, hounding the dogs upon the flock which they should guard and cherish ! prebends, and deans, and bishops !" And, amid a tumult of ap plause, the popular and weigKty orator resumed his seat, while Hyde uprose not, as it seemed, to an swer, but to palliate, to palter, to procrastinate ; for not once did he summon courage to question or deny that which no earthly wit or wisdom could disprove. And fiercely as the measure was dis cussed, it was yet most remarkable that not one of the royal partisans, maintaining, as they did most 130 CROMWELL. resolutely, the debate from morning till past mid night, spoke so much as a word to the denial of these charges urging alone the wantonness of representing with such sharp reflections things, some of which already were amended, and others in fair state of promise toward adjustment the impolicy of alienating more the good-will of the king, now well disposed to gracious reformation or, above all, the wickedness of thus infusing jeal ousies, and strife, and discord into the bosom of a state at this time flourishing, as some had the au dacity to add, beyond all previous precedent in the fair growth of freedom. All this made forcible im pression on the clear mind of Ardenne, as he lis tened with enthusiastic feelings, it is true, but still with calm discrimination, to the successive bursts sometimes of eloquence, thrilling, sublime, and al most superhuman in its majesty sometimes of coarse, fanatical, and phrensied ravings while Glyn and Maynard, Cromwell and Pym, and lastly, the unrivalled Hampden, advocated this great measure equals all, if not in perspicuity of argument or vividness of torrent elocution, if not in talent or ability, at least in truth and fervour, and in that sin gle-minded 'earnestness which proved past doubt their genuine and deep sincerity. At first he wait ed with strong interest the rising of some champion who should turn, or at the least dispute, the tri umph with the speakers of the liberal party ; then, as one after one they took their places at the table, and spoke their speeches, varied in vigour and in brilliance, but monotonous in argument, or rather in the want of it, a sense of disappointment overcame him ; and by slow degrees the strong conviction gained, that the cause must be indeed vicious and feeble for which its most devoted favourers, wise, eloquent, and witty as confessedly they were, had CROMWELL. 131 nothing to advance beyond what he had that day heard with mingled feelings of contempt and won der. Hours flew past like moments ; and, before Edgar knew that it was noon, evening fell dark on the discussion; then, neither party willing to ad journ, candles were called for, and the strife of words went on, waxing more wild and fierce as each successive speaker added his mite of fuel to the fast-kindling blaze. Meantime the house grew thinner, as the weary and the weak, the delicate in health or frail in years, reluctantly departed, actu ally worn out by the lassitude that succeeds ever to unnatural excitement ; and the arena of the men tal gladiators became more open to their virulent contention. And still, at each succeeding pause, the liberal party seemed to gain in strength the mighty hum of approbation rose more audibly at every bold and popular sentiment; while the cheers of the diminished royalists now failed to rouse their flagging and disheartened orators. So wondrous was the prevalent excitement, that it drove even the calm, dispassioned blood of Ardenne dancing through all his veins like streams of liquid fire ; and he found himself ere long lending his breath to swell the shout of admiration that followed every sentence uttered by the latter speakers. At length the house divided on the passing of the bill ; and however certain the result had seemed while dis tant, so thickly mustered the opponents of the measure, that many an honest heart fluttered in doubt, and many a face of England's noblest sons was dark as midnight with despondency. During the moment of confusion which always must occur at such a crisis, a whisper fell upon the ear of Ed gar a low, stern whisper, not addressed to him, nor at that instant comprehended uttered, as he fancied, in the sneering tones of St. John. " Look 132 CROMWELL. now !" it said " look now, friend Oliver, to your most promising recruit !" The answer came, though he saw not the speaker, in the harsh voice of Cromwell " Nay, verily ! but do thou look and thine eyes shall see the truth of that I told thee !" All, at the time, passed with the speed and nearly with the tumult of a whirlwind ; nor, although after ward he sometimes deemed the words had refer ence to himself, did they then penetrate beyond his outward ear. Without a momentary doubt, a thought of hesitation, Edgar stepped forth, and sealed the downfall of his private fortunes by the vote which he recorded in the cause of England's liberty. A small majority of but eleven voices passed that eventful bill, the loss of which would have exiled hundreds 'the best and wisest of the land driving them forth to seek, amid the snow- clad wilds of the New-England shore, what they had then despaired at home " freedom to worship God." Scarce had the hearty cheering which followed this announcement ended, ere Hampden rose again, to move " that there might be an order entered for the present printing of it" and straightway, as if all that had preceded it were but the prelude and slight skirmish which so generally leads to a pitched battle, a debate if that which was all animosity, and virulence, and fury can be called debate en sued, which speedily effaced all recollection of the previous struggle, and had wellnigh steeped the hands of the contending factions in each other's gore. Hyde started to his feet the first, praying that he might have permission to enter his protest believing, as he said, such printing of the bill, without concurrence of the lords, to be alike un precedented and illegal ; and, ere he had well end- CROMWELL. 133 ed, up sprang Jeffry Palmer, a member of high standing in the house for wisdom and experience, no less than for distinguished talent, with flashing features and a voice that quivered with hot passion, moving " that he likewise might protest !" The mildest and most stately of demeanour among the assembled counsellors might be seen with blood shot eyes, and tones husky and cracked with clam ouring and the more sullen and fanatical sitting with teeth hard set, and hands upon their hilts, as if but waiting for a voice to cry " The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," or some other text of warlike and blood-thirsty import, before they should betake them, in their own language, to the carnal weapon. So critical, indeed, was the conjuncture of affairs, and to such lengths had private pique and public animosity been carried, among men all armed in token of their gentle birth, that, writing coolly in his journal after the heat and passion of the contest had gone by, Sir Philip Warwick has recorded, " that when they voted it I thought we had all sat in the valley of the shadow of death ; for we, like Joab and Abner's young men, had catched at each other's locks, and sheathed our swords in each oth er's bowels, had not the sagacity and great calm ness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented us, and led us to defer our angry debate until next morning." And so in truth it was ; for at two of the clock past midnight, when he saw that nothing could be hoped in the then temper of the house, that wise and upright statesman moved an adjourn ment until two of the next afternoon, prescribing motives so replete with good sense and good feel ing, that none so stubborn as could, with any show of right, gainsay him. Worn out and wearied, body and mind alike, with the protracted contest, men of both parties VOL. I. M 134 CROMWELL, mingled hurriedly as they flocked homeward ; and again it was the chance of Ardenne strangely enough to be ear-witness to a conversation be tween Cromwell and Lord Falkland. .The for mer he had joined, hard by the foot of the great staircase, desiring in some degree to cultivate rela tions with a man whose words and aspect had im bued him with a feeling which he could not well account for or define, but which in after days he mentioned as a prophetic awe, for that he was in presence of a spirit mightier than his own. The latter overtook them suddenly, and was passing onward at the first without addressing either, till he caught the eye of Cromwell. " Ha !" he said, with a quiet smile, not wholly free from irony "Ha ! Master Cromwell, think you there hath been a debate to-day ?" " Another time," replied the puritan " another time, and I will take thy word but verily, I say to you verily, as the Lord Jehovah liveth, had this remonstrance been rejected, then had I sold mine all of worldly substance on the morrow ay ! and had taken up my staff, and girt me with my sword upon my thigh, and never had seen England any more !" " Nor you alone, perchance !" answered the youthful noble, after a moment of reflection. " Me- thinks I have heard others named for a like reso lution !" " Perchance ! Me no perchance !" cried Oliver, with a triumphant smile. " Had the malignants carried it, I tell you that their victory had robbed old England of her trustiest spirits ! But now, my lord, mark well my words ! and you too, friend if that you be, as I do partly think you are and if you be not, and I be in error, then may the Lord enlighten and amend you a friend to liberty, mark CROMWELL. 135 well my words ! There shall be no stint more, nor let, nor hinderance ! Papists and tyrants in this soon-to-be-regenerated land shall no more hold do minion ! The name of Englishman, now scorned and scoffed at throughout Europe you, Edgar Ardenne, you do know the truth of that which I aver shall be as far and wide revered as ever was the name of antique Roman ! For verily I tell ye and I tell ye truth that now the Lord's good time hath come, when he shall choose him out a MAN ! I say not whom nor were it meet that I, the vilest and most worthless of his instruments, should judge whom the Lord listeth to appoint but verily, I say, a MAN, who shall bring mighty things to pass in Israel !" CHAPTER VIII. " Lo ! how 'tis ever on the stillest day When the breeze stirs not in the topmost bough The aspen's quivering leaf when peaceful clouds Hang balanced in the dull and moveless air When earth and ocean bask in deep repose, Securely tranquil that the thundrous storm Rends the calm sky which bred it." AFTER that mighty trial of the strength of par ties the bill of general remonstrance. had passed through the house, there followed a short pause a lull, as it were, in the loud tempest of commotion a breathing-space snatched from the midst of battle. With the exception of a short and some what turbulent debate on the day following that of the main question, originating in a wish on the part of the puritanic leaders to punish those who had 136 CROMWELL. protested on the previous night, but resulting merely in a penalty of form inflicted on one person, Jeffry Palmer the commons seemed to relax in the vig our of their defensive warfare against the crown. The bill for regulation of the militia and prevention of forcible impressment, unless in case of actual invasion, was, it is true, brought forward, but with out any of that inveterate and rancorous spirit which had signalized their earlier measures. The king, on his return from Scotland, was received chiefly in consequence of the exertions of Sir Rich ard Gourney, the lord mayor of London, an active and uncompromising loyalist with loud, if not sin cere, manifestations of welcome and affection was feasted at the Guildhall with more than ordinary splendour, and hailed, as he passed to and fro the city, with thundering acclamations by the wavering and worthless populace. A farther triumph still awaited him in the address presented at his resi dence of Hampton Court, by aldermen deputed from the city, requesting him to take up his abode among them, and to hold his court, as heretofore, in his palace of Whitehall. This loyal and well- timed address reputed, as it was, to be distasteful in no small degree to parliament was graciously accepted ; the deputies all knighted, and the request granted joyfully. The bills, moreover, most ob noxious to the king that principally which would exclude the bishops' votes made but slow prog ress, and, even should it pass the commons, was not expected to receive the sanction of the lords. Falkland and Colepepper, heretofore active mem bers of the reforming parly, although moderate and wary, now having taken office openly the former being secretary of state in lieu of Vane, the latter chancellor of the exchequer held nightly con ferences at the house of Hyde for the well and CROMWELL. 137 wisely ordering the shaken and dismantled princi ples of government ; and would, as it seems prob able, have met with eminent success in their be neficent and patriotic measures, had it not been for secret influences and the prevalence of counsellors behind the throne, unseen and unsuspected, but ex ercising and for ends most infamous and selfish a power, to which, unhappily for him and for his kingdom, the mind of Charles, easily led, and prone to arbitrary counsels, though obstinate and inacces sible to aught of argument unsuited to his own opinions, yielded complete obedience. Such was the state of matters things gradually looking brighter and more bright for the royal party, and the remonstrant leaders, Hampden especially, not only becoming less violent in their opposition, but beginning to judge more favourably of the king's motives and intent when the insane and childish protest of the bishops, instigated to it by the proud and angry Williams, was sent forth, declaring " all laws, orders, votes, resolutions, and determinations already passed, or such as shall hereafter pass, during their absence from that most honourable house" compulsory, as they affirmed it " null and of none effect." The consequence was an immediate and almost unanimous vote, both of the lords and commons, for the committal of the pre lates to the tower one solitary member only so far opposing it, as to declare that he believed them ut terly insane, and therefore recommended Bedlam, rather than the tower, -\s a fit place for their deten tion. Then came reports of plots rumours of ag gressions meditated on the lower house doubts, and despondencies, and wrath, and panics ! It was believed on all sides, that, without confident assu rance of support, the bishops had not dared to rush to such extremities. Petitions were poured in from M2 138 CROMWELL. every quarter ! One from the city, setting forth that, since their loyal gratulations on his majesty's return had been misconstrued as though they would disown the doings of the parliament, they now de clared their full resolve to live and die with them for the good of the commonwealth. Addresses multiplied, and were accompanied, even to the pal ace, by such crowds, that, in a message to the com mon council, the king complained of the tumultuous assemblages daily increasing, to the disturbance of his palace of Whitehall. On the same day the parliament petitioned him to grant to them a guard, commanded by the Earl, of Essex that detailed for their protection during his absence in the north having been instantly disbanded on his late return on account of a malignant party now daring openly to threaten them with violence. To this request, reasonable as after events proved it to have been, the self-willed monarch returned a negative, though offering that such a guard should wait on them under a leader of his own choice, utterly subservient to his will " as he would be answera ble for to Almighty God !" This proposition they of course declined, perceiving, doubtless, that the guard so ordered would be more like to militate against their liberties, if not their persons, than to defend them from external outrage. It was upon the very day that followed this insidious offer for such it must be deemed that, urged by his worst counsellor, the false and faithless Henrietta, to that most rash and headlong step which rendered his affairs for ever irretrievable, and reconciliation with his subjects hopeless elated still by his reception in the city, and heedless of the daily proofs of pub lic feeling and opinion, he went on to commit his last and desperate aggression on the privilege of parliament an aggression ! which, had they tame- CROMWELL. 139 ly borne, his throne would have been fixed for ever on the firm basis of despotic rule, and England would have lain a fettered captive at his tyrannous footstool. It was on the next day, while the pro testation that he would be answerable to Almighty God for the safe-guarding of their liberties and per sons was yet fresh on his lips, that he struck that blow at the very existence of parliaments, which, had it fallen as intended, must have destroyed them root and branch. For, on the afternoon of that eventful day, Herbert, the king's attorney-general, entered the house of peers, then sitting, and, draw ing out a paper in the king's own writing, read it aloud ; by which the Lord Kimbolton, present there and then and of the commons, Denzil Hollis, and Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Pym, Strode, and Hampden, stood each and all accused of treason, as conspira tors against the king and constitution. The peers sat actually panic-stricken and aghast at this tre mendous stroke of folly and misgovernment, hear ing in sullen silence the grave accusation, while Kimbolton, springing to his feet, with eloquent and strenuous indignation, professed his total inno cence ; nor was there any lord so hardy to so much as move for his committal on his majesty's behalf. Meanwhile the commons' house was en tered by the king's sergeant, demanding that the speaker should deliver up the bodies of the mem bers named above, to answer to a charge of trea son bearing no warrant or authority from magis trate or counsellor, but acting solely at the king's behest, and without intervention of the law. News came at the same instant that the private lodgings of those members had been visited by royal mes sengers, their trunks and studies sealed up, and their papers violently seized. With bold and mas culine resolve, well suited to the peril of the crisis, 140 CROMWELL. did the house meet this haughty and high-handed insolence ! The sergeant, having gone through his message, was desired to avoid the chamber; but word was sent the monarch by a deputation, assu ring him those members should be instantly forth coming so soon as any legal charge should be pre ferred against them the house declaring, by a pow erful vote, those violent acts of seizure breaches of privilege, audacious, and illegal ! empowering their members to resist ; calling on all men to abet and aid them in resisting such attempts upon their liberties as freeborn Britons ; and instantly ad journing for the night until the wonted hour on the morrow. It was at a late hour in the evening of this fatal day that several ladies of the court, richly and splendidly attired, might have been seen col lected in a proud saloon, decked with the master pieces of Vandyke and Rubens, with tapestries of Gobelins and Arras hangings, with cabinets of buhl and marquetry, buffets of antique golden plate and yet more costly porcelain, and all those priceless luxuries which mark a royal dwelling. Among this glittering group, and seemingly its principal, was one a lady of low, slender stature, and a shape slightly awry, though, by skill of her tire woman, this defect was so disguised as to be scarce perceptible. Her hands were delicate, and gem med as were her ears, her neck, the bosom of her robe, and the rich volumes of her jet-black hair with Indian brilliants. Her features were agreea ble and sprightly, yet such as could not properly be praised as regular or beautiful ; a pair of bright black eyes and a coquettish smile forming their chief attraction. Her conversation, lively, and per haps even brilliant, though flippant and unguarded, was listened to by her attendant ladies, and by the only cavalier admitted to the presence a man of CROMWELL. 141 loble bearing, easy yet dignified, and withal in aerson eminently handsome with an attention so Drofound that it denoted even without the bended inee and the averted back the speaker to be one )f royal rank. Music and cards were in the cham- )er, and a most lovely girl, of some seventeen or ;ighteen years, was dancing to the amatory strains )f some concealed musician, in a style which would )e now esteemed far too voluptuous, if not abso- utely meretricious, to be performed by the chaste imbs of ladies, or looked upon by modest eyes. Yet neither lansquenet, nor the soft melody, nor the ;xciting graces of the beautiful dancer, appeared sufficient to banish some uneasiness which lowered >ver that fair company. The brow of Henrietta, or she it was, was dark and gloomy, much against ts wont, and her ill-humour had been so far t con- agious as to affect her bright companions with all he outward signs of discontent and sorrow. While >he was talking earnestly to the Lord Digby, now since the flight of Jermyn, her adulterous para- nour her most beloved and trusty counsellor, a short and hasty step was heard without, accompa- lied by a slight bustle, as if some more distin guished personage had suddenly and by surprise ;ome on the unexpectant chamberlains and pages, sole inmates of the antechamber. The door of polished oak flew open, and, bearing evident marks }f discomposure in his lip depressed and overshad- Dwed brow, a gentleman of graceful presence en tered the apartment. Of that time of life when the rashness and the fire of youth are tempered by the sedateness of increasing years, although the face has lost no trait of its attraction, nor the limbs of their alert and agile motion, Charles Stuart for the new-comer was no other was of a middle height, but strong and well proportioned, excepting that 142 CROMWELL. his legs were triflingly bowed outward, a circum stance which, while detracting somewhat from the grace and symmetry of his appearance, was favour able more than otherwise to his accustomed exer cise of horsemanship to which, indeed, it might have been in some sort owing. His visage, of a just and oval form, was pleasing, although dark- complexioned ; his features regular and comely, with a full dark eye ; gentle, and somewhat dull in its expression, unless its owner were aroused to sud den anger, when it could kindle up and flash as brightly as the keenest ; he wore mustaches, some what unusually large and curling upward, with a small pointed beard of that precise and formal cut which is so often met with in the portraits of Van dyke. The most remarkable trait, however, of his whole appearance, was that continual cloud of mild and softened melancholy from which his dignified and stately aspect rarely or never brightened ; for, even when he smiled, it was a faint and transient flash, scarce clearing up the gloom of that accus tomed sadness which brooded over his counte nance although his disposition was cheerful more than otherwise, and, if not buoyant, certainly nei ther mournful nor despondent and which, as fan ciful and superstitious men have oftentimes ima gined, is ominous of an untimely end. His dress, of plain black velvet, slashed and lined with satin, differed in nothing save that upon the left side of his cloak glittered the diamond star belonging to the order of the garter from the garb of any pri vate gentleman. He wore his hat above his sable hair, long-curled and flowing, and in his hand he carried a strong cane or ferule, with a crutch head of gold, which he struck passionately upon the car pet as he entered. " The undutiful, disloyal varlets !" he exclaimed, CROMWELL. 143 in tones of strong excitement. " The false, rebell ious knaves ! to deal thus with their sovereign !" and for several moments he paced to and fro the room, regardless of the eager entreaties of his af frighted wife to speak the cause of his distemper- ature. " A message !" he burst forth at length, but in a voice broken and faltering with passion. "To me ! to me a message ! I tell you, Marie, an' they have their will, I may indeed be called your maj esty be served upon the knee be waited on bare headed but I shall be no more a king nay, ten times less the master even of myself, than the most lowly gentleman in all my wide dominions. But so shall it not be ! No ! By God never !" and in a few disjointed sentences he told her how he had demanded of the parliament the bodies of six members, on a charge of treason against himself and them and had received, not prompt obedi ence to his orders, but a message ! " And is it possible," she cried, artful and evil woman that she was, in feigned astonishment and indignation " and is it possible, my lord, that you you, heir to such a line of mighty sovereigns you, monarch of Great Britain will be thus braved and thwarted will be controlled, defied, and tram pled on by such a scum of low and scurvy fel lows as this parliament ? That you will brook to have your crown robbed of its brightest jewels of prerogative your sceptre wrested from your hands without one struggle ? Would wretched princess that I am oh, would to God that I had tarried in my own glorious France, or that I had been wedded to a MAN !" " Madam, go to !" the king retorted sharply for, all uxorious as he was, and prone to hold her slightest words as mandates to his will, his temper, naturally hasty and unpliant, was aggravated now, 144 CROMWELL. even beyond its wont, by the commingled influence of anger and irresolution. " Be silent and dare not impugn our energy and courage. England and you shall know, and that right speedily, that nei ther will Charles Stuart brook insolence at home, nor usurpation of his rights abroad ! And for these rash and reckless rogues they too shall learn that I am yet a king !" " Well said ! well said, my gracious sover eign ?" exclaimed Digby, with an exulting voice and an elated eye. " Better to crush at once this spawn of venomous and vicious serpents in the dark den wherein they have engendered, than one by one to scotch them, when they shall have crawled forth to pollute the blessed daylight, and swelled from grovelling reptiles to the full growth of ram pant dragons !" " In this," cried Henrietta " in this most noble wrath, again I recognise the worthiest, the most high-souled of men ! To-morrow shalt thou pull these vile rogues by the ears from out their infa mous cabal ! Else never look me in the face again !" " Brave girl," replied the facile king, ruing al ready his late burst of anger " Brave, brave Ma rie, and beautiful as brave !" and, throwing one arm round her waist, he led her to a sofa at the farthest end of the saloon, where, seating himself at her side, he hung, with all the manifest and ardent pas sion of a boy-lover over the wily Delilah, who prodigal in secret to another than himself of her voluptuous charms had yet the perfidy, and with it too the power, to woo him, by a scanty and re luctant show of public fondness, to measures, her only interest in which was to bring back a banished lover to her guilty arms how ruinous soever they might be, she recked not, to her too trusting hus band. CROMWELL. 145 CHAPTER IX. "A King? A Tyrant! It is a King's to hold his sceptre firm By love, not terror his assured throne, A people's confidence his sword, the law Tempered with mercy and to guard the right, The sole condition that aftears his crown ! A Tyrant's by enforcement stern to reign, And slavish fear no charter to admit Beyond his present pleasure nor no rule His absolute yea beside." DURING the first part of the night which followed this aggression of the monarch, the city was all tu mult and confusion men running to and fro, in crowds or singly, conversing eagerly with white and panic-stricken visages women, increasing, with their shrill and anxious voices, the wild din and children, long hours past the wonted time when they should have been sleeping peacefully in their warm chambers, wandering to and fro, with looks of frightened and inquiring wonderment cast upward toward the agitated features of their pa rents ; but the necessity of rest will conquer even the quickest and most moving causes of excite ment ; and ere the stars began to pale in the cold, frosty sky, the thoroughfares of the metropolis were quiet and deserted as though no turbulence of party strife had ever interrupted their security and silence. The morning broke in its due season, and the only thing observable in the demeanour of the groups who gradually filled the streets, passing this way or that, as men engaged in their accus tomed avocations in their pursuits of profit or of pleasure was an air of general and pervading VOL. I. N 146 CROMWELL. sternness not merely gloom, but resolute and dark determination. There was no light or tri fling conversation ! no jests ! no laughter ! What ever of discourse seemed absolutely needful was couched in brief and pithy sentences, and uttered in a tone not puritanic nor morose, but sad, and at the same time full of energy, grave, and severe, and wellnigh awful in its character. Then, as the day advanced, the members of the lower house might be seen hurrying toward St. Stephen's some mounted, some on foot, but all accompanied by at least one retainer; and these were greet ed severally by the multitude with shouts of appro bation, or with groans of censure and reviling, ac cordingly as they were known for men of popular or loyal principles. Meanwhile, in a small cham ber of the palace at Whitehall, richly adorned with painted walls and splendid oaken carvings, and overlooking, from its lofty casements, the street through which the crowds were flowing toward the parliament, sat Henrietta, with a single lady, and a page awaiting, near the door of the apartment, the pleasure of his royal mistress. A frame filled with embroidery stood before her, at which it seem ed she had but recently been occupied ; though now she held a volume of some French romance, from which, however, her eyes glanced so often toward the windows, attracted by the mingled clamours of applause and hatred, rising at times even until they penetrated her reluctant ears, as to denote that lit tle of her mind was given to the wild, witty author who apparently engaged her. Her eyes were full of bright and keen excitement ; a hectic flush glow ed in a spot of vivid crimson high up on either cheek, and her hands trembled with a visible and nervous agitation. Her conversation, also, if the light and frivolous sentences that fell from her lips CROMWELL. 147 at intervals merited such a title, was broken, inter rupted, and evidently embarrassed by some inter nal conflict which she hesitated to disclose. For a considerable time she struggled to maintain a semblance of composure ; but, as the hours passed onward, her trepidation became more and more ap parent. At every step that sounded in the long cor ridors, at every closing of a distant door, she start ed ; and once or twice, when the rattle of a car riage or the clatter of a horse's hoofs appeared to cease before the gates, she actually hurried to the balcony and gazed abroad into the town, exposing herself, as if unwittingly, to the rude stare of the transient multitudes, who failed to greet her with the smallest tokens of affection or respect. Twice or thrice, ere the bells chimed ten, the page in waiting was despatched to learn whether no tidings had arrived from parliament and each time he re turned the bearer of a negative, a peevish exclama tion of disgust escaped her, not unnoticed by the lady who attended on her privacy. At length, peal after peal, the steeples rang forth ten, and then, with an exulting smile, as though she could con tain herself no longer " Rejoice !" she cried, in high, triumphant tones " Rejoice, my Carlisle for ere now the king is master in his states ay ! and his enemies are all in custody !" " His enemies, your grace ?" exclaimed the pat riotic lady, to whom, with indiscretion equalled only by that of the rash, doting husband whom she thus betrayed, she had divulged her secret " His enemies ?" " His enemies, said I ?" returned the queen, in accents sharper than before. " In truth, then, I spake wrongly ! His traitors, rather ! His false, rebellious, and blood-thirsty traitors by God's help, now his captives Hampden, and Pym, and 148 CROMWELL. all their rabble rout !" And, as she spoke sweep ing across the room with such a port as would have well beseemed a Britoinart striding upon the pros trate necks of Romans, in their turn subdued and humbled and entering again the balcony, she cast a wistful glance down the long avenue. But scarcely had she turned her back before the high born lady whom she had addressed hastily tore a leaf from out her tablets, traced on it some half dozen words, and pleading, on the queen's return, some casual indisposition, quietly left the chamber. Ten minutes had not well elapsed ere she re-enter ed it nor would the change in her demeanour have escaped the close and subtle watchfulness of her imperial mistress, had not that royal lady been herself perturbed too deeply to investigate the mood of others. The Countess of Carlisle's fea tures, cast in the purest and the calmest mould of conscious aristocracy, had worn throughout the morning an expression of grave feminine anxiety, and her broad, placid eye had followed, with a quiet yet observing scrutiny, every unwonted movement, every nervous start, and every change of colour that had resulted from the queen's ex citement ; nor had she tardily discovered that some dread crisis was at hand though what that crisis was, not having been a party to the councils of the regal circle on the previous night, she might not even guess. The thoughtless words, however, of the fickle-minded Henrietta had given her at once the clew, which her quick apprehension followed, as it were, intuitively through all its labyrinth ; and she at once availed herself of the discovery she had made with a degree of cool and present cour age, that, even in that age of prompt and daring action, failed not to wake the admiration which it merited. Now, however, when the hardening ex- CROMWELL. 149 citement had passed over when the nerves, which had been strung so tensely to the performance of her duty, were no longer kept in play when she knew that her trusty messenger was on his way, and past the palace gates already, bearing the tidings of approaching insult outrage and peril to the liberties of England's parliament, the maj esty of England's laws, she for the first time trem bled, not for herself, but for her country ! She for the first time began to fear that she might be too late, and that the blow might have already fallen, ere her warning should arouse the destined victims to perception of their danger. Her face was paler than its wont, and her blue eye, so tranquil in its usual expression, was slightly anxious. Yet it was but a little while that her uncertainty continued for, ere an hour had elapsed, the queen, whose pas sions became more and more enkindled with every moment of suspense, sending another messenger to learn whether the houses were in session still, received for answer that they had just adjourned until one of the clock, and that the members even now were passing to their lodgings. " Heavens !" cried Henrietta, almost in despair at this unpleasing and most unexpected news " Just Heavens ! can it be that he hath failed me !" and casting herself down at length upon a couch, covered her head with a thick veil, and waited, in an agonized and speechless fit of mingled hope and terror, the result of her intriguing machinations. In the meantime the house, which had assem bled at the usual hour, not altogether unexpectant of some farther outrage on their privileges, had in deed, on receiving the well-timed announcement from the Countess of Carlisle, upon the instant voted an adjournment; that they might better so concert plans of resistance to that lawless violence N2 150 CROMWELL. which they were now too well assured their sover eign had resolved to perpetrate. It was at this moment, when all were hastening homeward, that Ardenne observed Cromwell hurrying to and fro among the leading favourers both of the popular and puritanic principles, and whispering to one a word or two, then passing to another and, as he gazed upon his compressed lip, and eye flashing with almost savage pleasure, he felt, even more strongly than at any prior moment, the conviction that this wily person was indeed engaged more in timately in directing the important springs of party action, than could have been supposed from the in ferior part which he was wont to play in its osten sible and open movements. He knew not at the time, any more than four fifths of the house, what were the secret news which had so suddenly pro duced adjournment ; and had, indeed, himself voted against a measure which he could not comprehend, although the private hints of Oliver and Hampden had not escaped his notice ; nor could he now con ceive the meaning of the strong excitement which kindled all who listened to the words of Cromwell, as it were, with an electric spark. Not long, how ever, was he destined to remain in ignorance ; for, with his harsh features even more than commonly inflamed and ruddy, the puritan approached him. " Ha !" he said, in a loud, sharp whisper " Ha ! Master Ardenne ; how is this, that you, to whom we confidently looked for succour, should, in this strait and peril, have turned against us, consorting with the men of Belial ?" " I know not, Master Cromwell," Ardenne re plied " I know not, in good truth, to what you do allude ; nor have I heard of any strait or peril. I saw, indeed, that you and Master Hampden were desirous I should vote for this adjournment; but CROMWELL. 151 seeing no cause wherefore, nor being, so far as I knew it, your follower or pledged supporter, assu redly I deemed it best for mine own honour to abide by the poor dictates of mine own opinion." " Call it you then no strait," asked Oliver, with a dark sneer upon his lip " no strait nor peril, that Charles Stuart should dare come hither with his accursed cavaliers with his lewd yeomen and rakehelly pensioners seeking out whom they may devour having their swords new-whetted, and their hearts a-fire, to shed the blood of the saints should dare come hither hither, within these priv- ileged,.time-honoured walls to lay his violent, ty rannical hands on those with whose salt only we are savoured?" " What mean you, sir ? speak out !" cried Ar- denne. " Will he indeed do this ? Can he be so infatuated so insane?" " Witt Charles Stuart dare it ?" said the other ; " say rather what he will-no? dare, if we, the watch ers and the guardians sitting on the tower, yea ! on the house-top, to give note of coming wo, blow not the trumpet through the land. Yea ! will he come, and that right shortly yea ! will he come, and if our hearts be not the stronger and our arms too, if need there be will trample down the liberties of England unto everlasting !" " Never ! no, never !" exclaimed Edgar, vehe mently moved " No, never shall he do so ! never while I if none beside have sword to wield, and hand with which to wield it." " Ay ! is it so ?" returned the other, his whole face blazing out with a triumphant ecstasy " Ay ! is it so ? and> would you draw the carnal sword if it were needed ?" " Would I ?" cried Ardenne " would I unsheath the sword to guard these holy walls from desecra- 152 CROMWELL. tion ? Would I uplift my arm against the hireling ministers of lawless and despotic violence ? ay, were those ministers ten thousand sworded spir its !" " Then fare thee well," cried Oliver " then fare thee well, and hold fast to thy good resolve, while I go wake the rest to a like sense ; above all, be thou in thy place when we again assemble, and then call thou me fool and liar, an' thou see not great things !" The interval passed speedily away, consumed in wise and seemly preparation. Notice was de spatched to the lord mayor and corporation of the threatened danger ; the citizens were all admon ished to stand upon their guard ; and members were sent down to the Temple and the Inns of Court to warn the students that the house was well aware how they had been already tampered with ; and to command they should not come, on any plea, to Westminster; and, ere the time appointed, the house was crowded. Edgar was in his place among the first ; and as he saw the five obnoxious members calmly resume their seats, as though no peril threatened them, a mingled sentiment of ad miration and regret thrilled to his heart at the idea, that, if indeed the king, with his wild, dissolute at tendants, should forcibly attempt to seize them, they surely would resist, and but too probably be slaughtered on the very spot which they had made to ring so often with their proud, patriotic elo quence. As he thus thought, a new impression shot with the speed of light into his mind " If they be absent if they be absent when he come the fearful consequences may be perchance avert ed, which otherwise must, beyond doubt, result from letting loose a band of reckless soldiery to rush in, sword in hand, on gentlemen armed like- CROMWELL. 153 wise, and almost unanimous to guard their liber ties with life." And on the instant he arose, and in a few words, powerful and manly, moved that the house should grant permission to those mem bers to withdraw themselves, lest tumult, and per haps even worse than tumult, fall of it. " I second it," cried Cromwell, starting to his feet " I second the most honourable member's motion. Let them withdraw them straightway to the city until this tyranny be overpast." Without a single voice or vote dissentient, the question then was carried ; and the house gave permission that they might re tire ; and, at solicitation from their friends, they in stantly departed. Scarce had the hurry and con, fusion consequent on their withdrawal ceased, ere a dull, trampling noise was heard without, as of a powerful band of men ; a word to halt was given, and for a while the sound was hushed, the mem bers sitting stern and silent in their places, dis daining to show any sign either of wrath or terror. Again the sounds were heard ascending the great staircase ; and now the clink of steel, as the broad blades of partisan or halberd clashed together and now a shout, " Fall on ! Fall on !" mixed with the shuffling tramp of feet, the jingling of scabbards, and all the bustle that accompanies a sudden and disordered march. Nearer and nearer came the tumult the lobby was already filled, to judge from the increasing clatter, with armed intruders ; and now the din of grounded arms rang audibly upon the ears of the undaunted counsellors. Then for the first time was a show of passion manifested among the younger gentlemen a dozen, at the least, impetuously started to their feet, and not a few grasped, with an energy that proved how fear lessly they would have used them, the hilts of the long rapiers which all of gentle birth at that time 154 CROMWELL. carried. A single word, however, from the speaker of the house a single cry of order, sufficed to bring them peacefully into their places. But there they sat, with eyes that actually lightened with strong indignation, and with that fiery aspect of the glad iator, which marked how rapturously they would have plunged into the fiercest conflict. At this in stant was the door thrown open, and a messenger sent in, who reverentially enough informed the house that the king was at the door, and that the speaker was commanded to sit still, with the mace lying on the board before him. Still not one word was spoken not a whisper not a breath, nor murmur, through that spacious hall! and every man sat fast, with head unmoved, and eyes fixed sternly straight before him ; as if they did not so much as vouchsafe to cast a glance, still less a thought, toward the violator of their rights. Had there been aught of riot or confusion had there been aught of armed and passionate resistance nay, had there been any fear, or doubt, or waver ing, it then had been an easier task for the misgui ded king to carry out his frantic and destructive purpose. But hard it is, and most revolting to all human feelings, to outrage and assault where there is neither terror nor resistance. It was perhaps a minute after the messenger retired, before aught new disturbed the silence that prevailed unbroken beneath the vaulted roof a mimite, fraught with the thronged sensations of unnumbered years a minute, that seemed longer than a life to every pat riot seated there, as gravely steadfast as those sen ators of early Rome, who waited in their robes of dignity, and on their curule chairs, the moment when the Gallic horde should pour out on their white, unshrinking heads the cups of massacre and vengeance. Then came a quick, irregular CROMWELL. 155 tread, that readily betokened, by its uncertain time, the irresolution and anxiety that were at work within the breast of him who was approaching. " Enter not, any of ye, on your lives !" was uttered in the harsh voice of the king, before his person came in view an order understood by all who heard, as it was doubtless meant by him who ut tered it, to be words, empty words, and spoken for effect ! Then, leaning on the shoulder of the pals grave, Charles Stuart advanced ! Those who stood nearest to his person might have seen a momentary pause a brief, involuntary hesitation a reluctance, hardly, perhaps, acknowledged to himself, to cross what was to be the Rubicon of all his future for tunes ; but so short was the pause, so small the effort it required to conquer that reluctance, that it would seem indeed as if according to the classic proverb destined already to destruction, he were deserted by his sanity of intellect. Perhaps he had expected fear abject and tame submission ! had supposed that he should stride in triumph, unop posed, and sued to on the bended knee, through that magnificent assemblage ! Perhaps he had expected anger, indignation, and defiance ! But now, as he looked up those lines of crowded benches, and met no glance of recognition en countered no full front either of wrath or scorn but caught alone, row behind row, those stern and masculine profiles, composed, severe, and passion less profiles, averted less in resentment than in proud, contemptuous sorrow his wayward spirit for a moment's space recoiled, and he half wished the perilous step untaken. It was but for the twinkling of an eye, however, that his rash mood of obstinacy failed him ; for, without a quiver of his nerves, a change of his dark features, he strode across the threshold, about a pace before his for- 156 CROMWELL. eign kinsman. The Earl of Roxborough, a tall and powerful man, armed, somewhat more than commonly, with a long military sword and heavy poniard at his belt, had followed close upon his master's footsteps, until he also stood upon the threshold ; he crossed it not, however, but stood there, leaning with his whole weight against the door, which opened outwardly, so that it would have been impossible for any from within the house to close it his right hand resting, as if carelessly, upon the pommel of his war-sword, and his left twirling, with a gesture of unbridled insolence, his long mustaches while many a fierce, licentious countenance might be seen glaring from behind him on the conservators of their country's freedom with a wild and wolfish aspect of malignant hatred. The king himself, attired as usual in a plain garb of sable velvet, wearing no weapon but an ordinary walking-sword, and carrying in his right hand, to gether with his staff, the dark-plumed beaver which he had doffed on entering, stalked coolly up the house the palsgrave following slowly, and, as it seemed, with a half timid arid reluctant step. Still all was silence ! silence so profound, that, save the heavy footsteps of the monarch, not a sound could be perceived unless it were when from without some weapon-clang was heard, or some rude threat or grisly imprecation was muttered in the ante chamber by the desperate attendants of a Lunsford or a Digby. The face of Charles, grave and even sorrowful by nature, was something paler than its wont ; but with that sort of paleness which conveys no thought of cowardice or trembling, but of re solve immoveable and icy. His mouth was firmly closed, but not compressed, nor showing aught of effort ! His eye, calm, searching, cold but keen and hard as iron ! His nostril only of his features CROMWELL. 157 gave token of emotion, or of any feeling hotter than determination ; for it was dilated, wide, and slightly quivering ! Yet was his hand steady as the col umns which upheld the roof above him, and his stride, now that he stood among his lieges how ever it had been irregular and hasty ere he entered was measured, long, and equal. As he advanced along the floor, he turned his head from side to side, perusing, with deliberate and steady glance, the lineaments of every mem ber whom he passed ; and if when at a distance not one eye had sought him, so when he now stood close beside them not one eye avoided him. Each, as Charles came into his line of direct vision, met his hard gaze with an unblenching and unloving brow ; for not one man even of those the most de voted to his will, of those who would have served him at that moment, who afterward did serve him with their whole hearts and lives but was dis gusted, angered, full of deep sorrow, almost of de spair. Little there was, however, of the stronger and more stormy passions painted upon the brows of those who sat thus fearlessly, braving the tem per of a king whose wrath was no less lasting and vindictive than it was hot and sudden. The ex pression that prevailed most largely was of min gled aspect, half pity, half defiance. But when the tyrant for that action, if that only, justified the title approached the seat of Cromwell per haps at that day scarcely known by name to the proud sovereign and his glance fell upon those grim, ungainly features then Ardenne witnessed for his eye was still attracted, why he knew not, with a strange sense of fascination toward the pu ritan then Ardenne witnessed that which in after times he often called to mind, and never without awe and wonder a dark conflict for such it VOL. I. 158 CROMWELL. *f .*. " ; might indeed be termed a conflict of eye, coun tenance, and bearing, between those men so emi nently thrown together, and blended in their spheres of good or evil action. The glance of Charles, when first it fell upon the coarse and most un- pleasing lineaments of Oliver, was instantly avert ed ; but averted merely as men ever turn the eye away from objects naturally hateful or unseemly. At that point of time the face of Cromwell was as tranquil, as immoveable, as that of his great future rival ; but the tranquillity was no less different, than is the stillness of a hushed volcano and the peace ful calm of heaven. The swollen and corded veins upon the temple the eyebrows lowered and con torted the balls gleaming beneath them with a fixed and baleful light the nostril rigidly distend ed, and the lips pressed so tightly that they alone ofjfis whole aspect were of a livid whiteness! E$6 Edgar had the time to think, had there been any matter yet for thought, the eye of Charles stole back, half timidly as it appeared, toward that tiger-like and glaring face. Then, as it met the sinister and ominous stare of fierce defiance, it brightened also vivid, and keen, and with a fal con-like and noble splendour. For some short space they gazed those two undisciplined and haughty spirits into each other's very souls mutually, as it seemed, conscious at a glance of irremediable and desperate hostility. The king's look, quiet, although high and angry, and most un utterably proud ! Cromwell's, sarcastic, bitter, fu rious, and determined and withal so savagely tri umphant, so mirthful in its dire malignity, that Ardenne thought he never had beheld a counte nance so fiendishly expressive ! And Charles Stuart's aspect after a fixed encounter of ten seconds' space Charles Stuart's haughty aspect CROMWELL. 159 quailed beneath it ; and, as he passed along for the whole occurred in less time than were needful to recite it he gazed no more around him, but went directly onward, looking and that, too, gloomily upon the ground, toward the speaker's chair. But the stern democrat, as conscious that his genius had prevailed, cast his eyes round him with an air of loftier and more sublimated feeling than Edgar had as yet observed him wear. It was a trifle at the period when it passed, and none but he have noticed or recorded it ; but after times and after deeds stamped it, no more to be erased, upon the tablets of his inmost soul. Meanwhile the king had reached the chair ; and Lenthall, the bold speaker, who had hitherto sat still, as proud and far more placid than his visiter, arose, and stepped out stately and cold to meet him. Then the king mounted to his place, and stood upon the step, but spake not, nor sat down; and there he stood, gloomily gazing on the house, with a dark look of sullen anger, for many minutes and after he had looked a great while " Gentlemen," he said, in a high voice, clearly audible, though neither mu sical nor pleasing, to the most distant corner " Gentlemen of the Commons, I am sorry for this my cause of coming to you. Yesterday I did send a sergeant to demand some, who, by my order, were accused of treason. Instead of prompt obe dience, I received a message !" and he uttered the last word with' the most concentrated scorn and insolence " I must, then, here declare to you, that though no king that ever was in England could be more careful of your privileges than I have been and shall be yet, I can tell you, treason hath no privilege i and therefore am I come to tell you that I must have these men, and will, wherever I may find them !" And, as he spoke, he looked 160 CROMWELL. around the hall with a deliberate air, scanning the faces of all present, if he might find his men ; then, raising his voice higher yet, he called aloud, till the roof rang again " Ho ! I say, Master Hollis ! Master Pym !" No answer was returned, nor any sound ; save an increased and angry tumult in the lobby, with a brandishing of partisans and a pro ducing of concealed but ready pistols, so that some members thought to see the soldiers instantly rush into the chamber. After a little pause, finding he got no answer, he turned to the speaker " Say," he exclaimed " say, Mr. Speaker, be any of these men here present ?" For a moment Lenthall paused, as doubting whether to hurl his own defi ance and that of the assembled commons into his very teeth ; but, ere the echoes of the monarch's voice had ceased, he had resolved upon the wiser and more prudent part, and bending, with most deferential courtesy, his knee " I have, sir," he replied, " nor eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, save as this house, whose servant I am sworn, shall order me. And therefore must I pray your majesty to pardon me that I return no farther answer !" " Ha ! sir," returned Charles, sharply, and with incipient fury but a moment's thought convinced him that the humble answer of the speaker defied at once and rendered hopeless any charge or vio lence against him. " Ha ! sir," again he said, but in a milder tone " I do believe my eyes are to the full as good as yours, and I do see my birds are flown ; but this I tell you, and so look ye to it I hold this house to send them to me ! Failing of which, I shall myself go seek them ! For, sirs, their treason is most foul, and such as you shall thank me, all of you, now to discover. And I as sure you on a king's word I assure you I never CROMWELL. 161 did mean any violence, and they shall have fair trial I meant not any other !" He waited not for farther words ; perchance he doubted what reply he might receive to this last false asseveration palpably, unquestionably false for wherefore brought he his disbanded soldiery, his rude and ruffian bravoes, with rapier, partisan, and pistol, into the very precincts of the house ? Wherefore, unless he had designed to hale the accused mem bers violently forth by the strong arm of tyrannous authority ? Stepping down from the chair, he walked, un covered still, but at a quicker pace than that with which he entered, toward the lobby ; but now, as he departed, his looks were not turned haughtily from side to side, but sadly bent upon the floor ; nor was his passage silent as before for member after member started up as Charles went past him, with bent brow and clinched hand ; and groans both loud and deep saluted him. As he came nigh the seat of Cromwell, the king raised his visage, haggard now and pale, as with an anxious curiosity to look upon the man before whose eye he felt him self to have recoiled and, as he met it, Oliver sprang upon his feet, his long tuck rattling in the scabbard as he rose, and, stamping on the floor with fury, shouted aloud, in tones not mild nor measured, the word " Privilege !" A dozen voices took it up, though not so loudly nor with so marked defiance as the first daring speaker, and the whole house was in the wildest and most uncontrolled confusion. Delightedly would the despotic prince, had he but dared it, at that moment have cried ON ! have given the word, expected by his myrmi dons, for massacre and havoc have bid the swords, which were already thirsting in their scabbards, leap forth and drink their fill of that most noble O 2 .1 162 CROMWELL. blood of England. But, thanks to Heaven, he dared not ! There would have been no object worthy of the risk no gain to justify the detesta tion he would have so heaped upon his head ! He did not dare; and therefore, smothering for the time his virulent and vengeful fury, he departed the door rang heavily behind him ; and with no muttered curses on the head of him who lacked the spirit to perform what he and they yearned equally to execute, frustrate of their desired ven geance, unsatisfied and balked, his hireling despe radoes filed out from the venerable walls their pres ence had so shamefully polluted. CHAPTER X. " He hath gone forth ! Not with the gorgeous majesty sublime Of marshalled hosts not with the brazen din Of trumps sonorous but heart-sick and sad, Despairing and dishonoured ! He hath gone Gone that his place shall never know him more Cursed of his people outcast from his throne A dim, discrowned king !" THE night fell dark as Hades, and tempestuous withal. The winds wailed mournfully at intervals, at intervals shrieked out with savage fury ; and as the giant clouds were driven reelingly across the firmament, blotting the faint light of the winking stars, fierce bursts of hail and rain came dashing to the earth, and ceased as suddenly as they com menced. And ever and anon the thunder growled remotely, but with a sullen rolling that seemed al most continuous, such was the length and frequen cy of the strong peals and lightnings flashed on ?**,. B CROMWELL. 163 every side the heaven, now in broad, quivering sheets of ghastly light, that transiently displayed the ragged edges of each fleeting storm-cloud in distinct relief, and now in wavy lines of most in tense and life-like fire, rushing athwart the rack from zenith to horizon. Yet, turbulent as was the night aloft the city, and ominous as showed the gathering of the elements, still more alarming was the turbulence that reigned in the full streets, and more portentous was the concourse of the armed and angry citizens. The train-bands had been mustered in the early evening, with arquebuse and pike, their lighted matches gleaming on all sides through the murky darkness, and the heavy tram pling of their companies everywhere audible, as they marched to and fro, vainly desirous to allay the tumult which had arisen instantly on the arri val of the accused members, seeking protection in the guarded, precincts of the city. From sunset until dawn the mayor patrolled the streets with his assistant magistrates, vainly endeavouring to quell the terrified and savage populace, with whom each court and alley, from the purlieus of Alsatia quite to the Tower, was blockaded and beset all armed as chance had ordered it, some with the perfect implements of modern warfare,, others with weapons obsolete and strange, brown-bills, and glaives, and maces. Chains were made fast athwart the most frequented avenues ; and barri cades of stone and timber, heaped rudely but ef fectively together, above which yawned the mouth of many a ponderous cannon, would have present ed no small obstacles to any who should dare in vade the sacred limits of the city. Huge bonfires blazed in every quarter, torches and flambeaux streamed and wavered in each gust of wind, cast ing a singular and ruddy glare upon the pallid faces CROMWELL. and unusual weapons of the unwashed artisans who formed the bulk of the assemblage ; though they were mingled here and there with grave and well- attired burghers, their morions and gorgets wildly at variance with their civic garbs and golden chains with young and ruffling templars, to whom aught savouring of frolic or of fight was most congenial and with sad-visaged and morose soldadoes, in suits of buff, tarnished and soiled by service, girded with broad-swords of unwieldy length, fresh from the German wars or the Low Countries, then, as in every after age, the battle-field of Europe all keeping up, throughout the livelong night, a disso nance of tongues as loud and jarring as ever rent the air around the heaven-defying Babel. At times a sudden panic would run through the crowd, none knowing whom to trust or whom to flee a cry would ring above the mingled din " The cava liers ! The cavaliers ! Fly ! Fly ! The king and his wild cavaliers are up to fire the city !" and, with out waiting to inquire or to hear, the mob would rush they knew not whither, trampling the aged and the feeble under foot, and turning oftentimes the very weapons they had belted on to guard their liberties against each other in the blind and reeling rout. And now, with words of fire and gestures of defiance, some bolder spirit would brave the panic-stricken throng, and rally it and lead it back, with brandished arms and inflamed features, to meet the foemen who existed only in their ima ginations, maddened with terror and excitement. Nor was the panic and confusion slighter within the royal palace. Between the hapless king and his perfidious consort, distrust recrimination wrath followed by feigned repentance on the one hand uxorious pardon on the other ! Among the counsellors, dismay and doubt high words, and CROMWELL. 165 mutual reproaches, and all the vehement disorder that ensues on the adoption and discomfiture of evil counsels ! Digby and Lunsford wearying Charles, faint-hearted now and dubious, for permission to assail the city gates, and drag the impeached trai tors forth from their stronghold at point of partisan and pike ! Others deploring the rash steps already taken, and protesting against farther violence ! and some, the nobler and more upright spirits Falkland, and Hyde, and their associates holding themselves aloof in deep, resentful sorrow, that all their wisdom had been wasted, and themselves dis trusted and deceived. Never a longer night was followed by a sadder morning ; for, although day light calmed the terror and the tumult, it allayed nothing of the concentrated wrath, diminished noth ing of the jealous apprehensions entertained by either party. After a short debate, the parliament, both lords and commons, adjourned for several days, appointing a committee to sit constantly, mornings and afternoons, at Merchants' Hall, with in the city walls, where they might be secure from farther outrage, and free to devise means for vindi cation of their members, and safeguard of their vio lated rights. Edgar, informed of the commotions, and anxious for the safety of the city, called for his horse the moment after the adjournment, and, with some six or seven followers, well mounted and equipped, rode up the Strand a scattered street at that day, occupied by the suburban dwellings pf the rich and noble, with terraced gardens sloping downward to the Thames full of calm resolution, and intending instantly to volunteer his aid for put ting down the riots, and establishing some govern ance of law. When he reached Temple-Bar the gates were closed with bolt and chain, a powerful band of musketeers, with gun and bandoleers, man- 166 CROMWELL. ning its loops, and mustering at every window that overlooked the area before it. But, at announce ment of his quality and name, the bolts were drawn, the heavy leaves unfolded, and he entered amid presented arms and muttered greetings of the sen tinels. With a pleased eye he saw at once that order was restored ; suspicion still prevailed, and vigilance, but tumult and confusion had given way to wise and watchful regulation. The shops were shut, and business was suspended, it is true, and all men who went forth wore weapons ; but the trained-bands patrolled the streets, with magistrates at the head of every company, no less to enforce internal quiet than to resist external force. Scarce had he ridden twenty yards within the gate ere a fresh summons roused the wardens, and a king's messenger, after some parley, was admitted, and conducted by a file of infantry to hearing of the aldermen, then sitting at the Guildhall. The busi ness on which Ardenne came directing him to the same quarter, and strong anxiety to learn the future movements of the court still farther prompting him, he at once wheeled to the rear of this small band, and, passing onward with them, was ushered in without delay to the mayor's presence, and, in consideration of his place in parliament, accommo dated with a seat whence he might witness the proceedings of the day, and lend his counsel, if need were, to these the magnates of the city. To his astonishment, as to that, indeed, of all, the mes senger announced that his majesty was already en tering his coach to wait upon the mayor, when he had left Whitehall; and that he prayed that digni tary to call a common council on the instant. Sir Richard Gourney, the then holder of that office, although inclined not slightly to the principles of the decided royalists, disclaiming, as did all the CROMWELL. 167 wiser of the party, any participation in, or knowl edge of, a course which, now that it had failed, they all professed to disapprove, was careful to display no symptom of subserviency ; perhaps, in deed, he truly felt that wrong had been committed, and was sincere, as he was evidently faithful to his trust, in the determination to maintain inviolate the privileges of which he was the guardian. The council was at the time in session, and scarcely had the messenger withdrawn before the king ar- ' rived not with the armed and dissolute attendants who had convoyed him to the halls of parliament, but with some two or three lords only, and those of the most moderate among his partisans. The shouts that ran like wildfire along the crowded streets, mingled with groans and yells the cries, " Privilege ! Privilege of parliament !" announced his presence at the doors of the Guildhall before he had alighted from his coach, and clearly proved the temper of the now thoroughly-aroused and fear less multitude; while, as a token of the perfect mastery of the law even at that moment of tre mendous and wellnigh unparalleled excitement, a daring pamphlet-writer, who had thrown into the monarch's coach a paper, bearing inscribed the scriptural watchword, " To your tents, O Israel," was instantly committed for contempt. The city dignitaries rose indeed from their seats on the king's entrance ; they tendered to him all all, to the most minute particulars that was his due of reverence and ceremonial greeting ; but there was no heart-inspired applause no loyal, spirit-stirring cry, " God save the king !" no smile no welcome ! Strange it may seem, yet he had hoped indeed, in fatuated man, that he should now succeed in gain ing the authorities to yield their honoured guests to his demand ; and so commenced what he es- 168 CROMWELL. teemed a rnild, conciliatory harangue, requiring their surrender full of false statements of his ven eration and regard, in all past time, for England's laws and liberties of his affection for the Protest ant religion of his enforcement of the penal stat utes against the dreaded papists and no less full of promises, unmeaning, insincere, and empty, con cerning his intentions for the future. Little ap plause and no obedience followed ! Baffled a sec ond time, and yet more deeply mortified, he left the Guildhall but, desirous still of pleasing, and imagining, short-sighted and deluded prince, that, by a slender show of condescension, he could efface the recollection of so many arbitrary acts against the corporate and individual interests of the city, he vouchsafed to one the worse affected toward his person of the sheriffs the honour of dining at his house ; was served, together with his retinue, with more than courtly luxury with all respect and honour, paid, not to himself, but to the station which he so ill occupied but with no semblance of that glad alacrity, that honest and ungrudging heart-service, which is well worth a world of bend ed knees and hollow ceremonial ; and in the even ing harassed in spirit and fatigued in body, irri tated by the reproachful hootings of the multitude that jarred, at every instant of his homeward prog ress, on his reluctant ear, and hopeless now of com passing his tyrannical ends retired ta his palace, there to give impotent and childish vent to his in dignant spleen, by publishing a proclamation against all men who should presume to harbour or conceal the persons whom he had previously denounced as traitors. Days passed away; each marked by some bold resolution of the commons by in creased tokens of the deep respect and admiration entertained by the great bulk of the metropolis to- CROMWELL. 169 ward the vindicators of its rights and by some weak and useless aggravation of his former meas ures on the part of the misguided and wife-gov erned monarch. A week had scantly rolled above their heads, before the house, conscious of its own strength, and knowing the entire impotence of the king's party, determined to bring back their mem bers to Westminster, as being men against whom no legitimate or constitutional charge was pending ; and preparation of unwonted splendour and extent was made for reconducting them in triumph to their seats. The news might not escape the ears of Charles, bruited as it was all joyously abroad through every class of persons, and pleasing as it was to nearly all for not a few, even of those who heretofore had backed him with their voices and opinions in all his troubles, and who in after days as faithfully assisted him with life and fortune, were not entirely soriy for the occurrence of a marked reverse, which might, they fondly hoped, avail to check him in his inordinate and reckless cravings cravings which, to their own eyes, they could not now disguise or palliate for power, un constitutional at least, if not tyrannical and abso lute. Bitter most bitter were his feelings, as he went, ungreeted by one loyal acclamation his absence unlamented by one loyal tear forth from the palace of his fathers almost alone in actual fact, but absolutely so in sentiment the queen, for whose sake mainly he had embroiled himself with his true-hearted subjects, ungratefully and spite fully upbraiding him, not for the folly of his meas ures, but for his failure in their execution his courtiers, who had urged him on to every fresh aggression, and lauded every new caprice, now si lent and dejected and the very guards who rode before his coach dispirited and crest-fallen. VOL. I. P 170 CROMWELL. Bitter most bitter were his feelings ; but it was not with the bitterness of manly and upright repentance not with the bitterness upspringing from the sense of wrong committed, and resulting in a promise of amendment but with the bitter ness of discontent and disappointment, of unholy wishes frustrated, and merited reverses sullenly remembered. Such were the feelings of that bad monarch and unhappy man as he drove forth that BO he might avoid the triumph of his disaffected subjects after the shades of early evening had al ready gathered dark and cold about the misty streets, toward Hampton Court, as virtually ex iled from the metropolis of his oppressed and groaning country, and from the jeoparded, dishon oured throne of his forefathers, as from the hearts of his once loving subjects. But the sun rose upon a nobler and more glori ous spectacle a spectacle rife with great blessings for the present, and brilliant omens for the future the spectacle of a vast people, free and united ! victorious, not by the sword, nor over slain and mu tilated carcasses but by the strength of popular opinion, founded on the broad base of justice ani mated by the deathless love of liberty and direct ed by such a knot of patriots as England in no other age had witnessed ! On came the fair pro cession, marshalled by loud, triumphant music, and the yet louder shouts of honest and exulting myri ads ; gay with a thousand flags and banners flaunt ing to the wintry sun, which wore, on that proud morning, his brightest and most gorgeous aspect ; guarded by all the sober strength of civil discipline, and all the orderly and bright array of the well- trained militia of the city ; not fluttering, indeed, with tasselled scarfs or many-coloured plumes, but well equipped with morions of steel, polished CROMWELL. till they shone out like silver, and stout buff-coats, all service-like and uniform with their puissant pikes thick as a grove of pines, their broad heads glinting back the sunbeams and arquebuses clearly burnished as when they left the armory. Fifty in front they marched, in close and serried order, striding along with regular and sturdy steps, rank after rank, each as a single man with that erect, undaunted bearing which belongs only to the free; and with the tranquil eye and calm though proud expression which mark the disciplined, law- loving citizen, and not the fierce, unruly democrat. The companies were all arrayed beneath the civic banners of their respective wards, and headed by their captains, mounted well on strong and service able chargers, and gallantly equipped in scarlet cassocks and steel corslets. Behind this stately host, preceded by the bearers of his mace and sword, and all the glittering insignia of city pomp, Sir Richard Gourney rode along, curbing a splen did courser, whose footcloth, blazoned with rich armorial bearings, almost swept the ground, sorely, as it would seem, against his will, to slow proces sion pace ; then, two and two, in flowing robes of scarlet, with chains of gold about their necks, and tall white feathers floating above their velvet bon nets, the sheriffs and the aldermen advanced ! and then, received by acclamations that were heard for many a mile around, clad in their ordinary garbs, and wearing in their grave demeanour no tokens of undue importance or unfitting exultation, the de nounced patriots rode steadily along ; and, headed by their speaker, the whole house of commons fol lowed. No banners waved above them no gor geous dresses pointed them for public admiration no high assumption called the eye to them yet, as they swept slowly forward, a band of gentlemen, 172 CROMWELL. mostly of noble, all of reputable birth chosen for worth and wisdom to be the delegates of a great people of a people the most manly, and intelli gent, and free of the wide universe they could not but have attracted the eye and fixed the un taught admiration^of the most stolid or most sla vish ; what then must they have done when they were passing before those whose liberties they had asserted at the risk of all that men hold dear ? Close trooping in the rear of these another strong battalion of the train-bands marched several bri gades of field artillery, huge, cumbrous iron guns, with tumbrils following and matches lighted, rat tled and groaned over the rugged pavements, and a long train of well-appointed horse of each denom ination then in use the heavy cuirassiers, with helmets, breast and back pieces, poldrons and tas- lets of bright polished steel, bearing long two- edged broad-swords, and pistolets with barrels full two feet in length mounted arquebusiers, with short but ponderous matchlocks and formidable ra piers lancers, with no defensive arms save morion and gorget, and no weapons save their spears of fifteen feet and light curved sabres, in imitation of the Polish horse, already celebrated in the German wars a splendid cavalcade, brought up the rear. While thousands and tens of thousands strong men and tottering children, matrons and hoary- headed sires, and maidens delicate and tender the vast population of the city and its suburbs poured out to meet their champions, hindering their progress by their living masses, and cling ing even to the horses they bestrode, with fer vent prayers and blessings, and with tears of holy joy, and waving kerchiefs, and exulting shouts, to greet the people's friends ; and with wild curses on the king and on his cavaliers, concerning whom CROMWELL. 173 they oft and sneeringly inquired, " Where be they now, and whither have they fled?" Meanwhile adown the Thames another pomp was floating, to ward the stairs at Westminster, second, if second, only to the landward show hundreds of lighters, pinnaces, and long-boats, dressed up with waist- cloths and with streamers, laden with musketry and ordnance, manned by a host of British mari ners, whose meteor flag even then " had braved, a thousand years, the battle and the breeze," fur rowed the broad and placid river ; while ever and anon the salvos of their cannon, thundering above the din and clamours of the mighty concourse, an nounced to the disheartened monarch, even in his sad retreat at Hampton, the failure of his insolent aggressions, and the triumphant testimony borne by his indignant subjects to the untiring efforts and undaunted resolution of those noble spirits, whom his oppressive madness had converted, step by step, from the most steady guardians to the most con stant foemen of his person and his crown. P 2 CROMWELL. BOOK II. " They have drawn to the field Two royal armies, full of fiery youth ; Of equal spirit to dare, and power to do : So near intrenched, that 'tis beyond all hope Of human counsel they can e'er be severed, Until it be determined by the sword Who hath the better cause ; for the success Concludes the victor innocent, and the vanquished Most miserably guilty." MASSINGER The Duke of Milan. 4P, (J 1 r t - - r ( f- \D'J J.Jo-Z CHAPTER I. " Jtfa?. Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there Weep our sad bosoms empty. Macd. Let us rather Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good meii Bestride our downfallen birthdorn." SHAKSPEARE Macbeth. A YEAR had passed since Ardenne's landing on his native shores, unfixed of purpose, and, above all, an advocate for peace ! a year in which events had taken place that rendered hopeless all accom modation between the hostile parties, until one should have been proved decidedly superior. The very day on which the king had fled from London, lest he should witness the return of the five mem bers to the house, having been signalized by a most wild and ill-digested movement of the fiery Luns- ford, sufficiently disclosed the intentions of the roy alists in an attempt to seize a magazine of arms at Kingston. Then came the treachery of Goring the king's fruitless effort against Hull the calling out of the militia the arming on both sides and all the small guerrilla skirmishes that were occur ring daily for some months previous to the nominal commencement of the war. The queen, who had escaped to Holland, stealing and bearing with her the crown jewels, which were pawned at once to furnish arms, and men, and money, was setting 178 CROMWELL. every spring in motion on the continent. Rupert and Maurice had arrived in England, and the for mer was, on his first interview, appointed general of the cavalry. The royal standard had been raised, some two months past, at Nottingham, with evil omens, and under auspices the most unfavour able a mighty tempest having poured its fury on the gathering of the troops, dispirited and few in number, and unfurnished with the most evident and indispensable equipments of an army weap ons, and clothes, and ammunition. The flag itself, displaying, in addition to the wonted quarterings of England, a small escutcheon, charged with the royal bearings and the crown, and compassed by a scroll, with the proud motto, " Render his due to Cesar !" was scarcely elevated ere a heavier gust of wind, accompanied with floods of rain and a fierce crash of thunder, shivered the staff in twain, and dashed the ensign violently to the ground ; while such was the increasing fury of the tempest that two whole days elapsed before it could be reared again. Still, although by this overt act the king had most un questionably issued his appeal to the sword as to the sole remaining arbiter, matters went on but heartlessly and slowly. Each side, averse to throw away the scabbard, paused in a grim and terrible suspense, irreconcileably hostile to the other, yet unwilling to incur the blame of being first to strike, or foremost to refuse accommoda tion. The royal forces, far too weak to court the brunt of battle, aimlessly marched and counter marched, levying contributions in this place, and mustering volunteers in that ; while the superior party of the parliament, already strong enough to have surprised and crushed the royalists at a single blow, lay in their quarters, waiting, as it would seem, till they should muster resolution to com- CROMWELL. 179 mence hostilities. The truth, which has been strangely overlooked by all historians of these tur bulent and most important times, was simply this that, in the outset of that fearful strife, there was but little difference between the views, and hopes, and fears of the most eminent and upright men of either party. How it should ever have been fan cied, much less gravely argued, that the great body of the English gentry and nobility were anxious to subvert the constitution, which had been freed from the arbitrary power of the Norman princes by the sole efforts of their order, and to erect an absolute and unchecked despotism, which must have neces sarily ruined their own caste, it is most difficult in deed to comprehend or to conjecture. Nor is it less absurd to hold that the more liberal peers, who, neither few in number nor deficient in saga city, were enlisted on the people's side, were in the least degree prepared to overthrow that ancient monarchy from which they all derived their great ness, and to descend at once from their exalted grade to mere equality with their less elevated countrymen. In simple fact, the leading men of either party dreaded defeat or victory with a nearly equal apprehension ; knowing that such an over throw befalling either host, as should conclude the , other absolutely masters of the game, would be most hopelessly destructive to the liberties of Eng land. It was then in this spirit that the counsellors of Charles, scarcely more fearful of reverses which should deliver them a prey to their stern foemen, than of success which would inflame and aggravate the monarch's native haughtiness, laboured, with all their powers, to bring about some reconciliation; but in vain, their every effort being frustrated by the imbecile insincerity and double-dealing of their principal ! At length, when the last hopes were 180 CROMWELL. quenched of peace unbought by victory, the fiery Rupert, who, from the first, had been the open ad vocate of instant battle, acting with indefatigable and almost sleepless energy, collected horses, men, and cannon from the northern and the midland coun ties, until the royal army amounted to the number of ten thousand three foot brigades under Sir Ja cob Astley, and the Earl of Lindsey, an officer ex perienced in the wars of the Low Countries three dragoon regiments, to act as horse or infantry as need might be, under Sir Arthur Aston Lord Bernard Stuart commanding the king's guards, a troupe dorte, composed entirely of gentlemen, whose annual incomes are said to have exceeded the united fortunes of all the members who, at the outbreaking of the war, were voters in both houses a good park of artillery, under the trusty Sir John Heydon and the adventurous prince himself a host leading the cavalry, consisting of the very flower of the youthful gentry, practised in arms, and high in chivalrous and daring spirit. Then, early in October, having resolved to strike a blow, and anxious to give battle to his enemies, the king marched hastily from Shrewsbury upon the capital. Meantime the Earl of Essex, who had been re cently appointed by the parliament their general- in-chief, left the metropolis with an array some fif teen thousand strong, more thoroughly equipped and better armed than were the gentlemen of the opposing host, but far inferior to them in that sus tained and burning spirit, which is of more avail than tenfold numbers in the day of battle. The earl's instructions were to tender to the king a joint petition of the houses beseeching him to leave the gathering of malignants, whose ill counsels had so far prevailed to alienate him from his loving sub jects, and to repair at once to the vicinity of his CROMWELL. 181 most loyal parliament and, in the case that this petition should prove of none effect, to rescue him, by force of arms, from the foul traitors who sur rounded and misled him. To this intent, he was prpvided with all the requisites that constitute an army a heavy train of well-arranged artillery, with ammunition and supplies of all Idnds in pro fuse abundance a powerful brigade of horse, under the Earl of Bedford and Sir William Balfour; and a picked body of the London train-bands, well dis ciplined and admirably well appointed ! Among the numerous nobles who accompanied the general of the parliament, two, perhaps, merit an especial notice the young lords Rochford and Feilding as being destined soon to meet, as foemen in the shock of battle, their own fathers, the earls of Do ver and of Denbigh, who were enrolled as volun teers in the king's guard of horse ! Many there were, indeed, in this array, who yielded not in spirit or in valour to the proudest cavalier of Charles ! many who panted for the onset with all the patri otic zeal of freemen trampled and oppressed with all the bitter and fanatic rancour of religious preju dice and these were more than matches for the best of Rupert's soldiery ! but more were doubt ful, and reluctant, and affected by the cold and backward spirit of their leaders, who felt, perhaps, a secret apprehension that, in battling for the liberty and constitution of their land, they might in some degree be warring with the interests of their order. Such was the aspect of affairs, and such the state of parties, when, on a brilliant morning to ward the last days of October, a gallant regiment of horse was winding through the deep green lanes and devious woodlands of Northampton toward the little town of Keinton, distant, perhaps, some twen ty miles, at which it was beginning to be understood VOL. I. Q 182 CROMWELL. that Essex had established his headquarters. An animating spectacle they formed, and lively, as they gleamed out and disappeared among the lofty hedges and dense coppices, still glorious in the leafy garniture of variegated autumn, their polish ed armour glinting back the cloudless sunshine in long and dazzling flashes, their colours fluttering in the cheerful breeze, their videttes warily survey ing every thicket, the matches of their arquebuses ready kindled, and their extended lines sweeping along the irregular wood-roads in serpentine and wavy order pausing at every brook or dell where they might possibly be set upon at disadvantage, until their advanced guard should fall back with tidings that their path was unobstructed and va rying their array from open file to solid column, as the nature of the ground might dictate. The leader of this splendid body was a fine-looking figure, in the prime of life, well formed and stately, and far above the ordinary height of men. He wore a military coat of strong buff leather, garnished with fringe of tawny silk three inches broad, and loops of golden braid, partially covered by a breast-plate and its corresponding back-piece, polished till they shone bright as silver. He had no gorget, but a rich cravat of Flanders lace, with long, trans parent ends, half veiling the clear steel on which it fell. His dark curled hair flowed down his neck beneath the rim of a steel cap or morion, exquis itely damasked, but without crest or feather ; his hands were guarded by high gauntlets, and his lower limbs by breeches of the same material, simi larly ornamented with his cassock, and strong jack boots that would have set a sabre-cut at naught. His sword, a two-edged, basket-hilled rapier of un common length, hung from an orange-coloured scarf, betokening his adherence to the parliament CROMWELL. 183 its army having adopted for their badge that col our frorrAhe ancient liveries of Essex, as the cav aliers had assumed for their distinctive uniform black feathers and blue shoulder-knots although the fashion of his garments and the general bearing of the wearer were more in character with the de meanour and the principles of their opponents, than of those stern and gloomy fanatics who are so gen erally and so erroneously believed to have compo sed the great numerical strength of the liberal, or to speak more justly constitutional party. The animal he rode, a mare of splendid action, symme try, and size, was evidently a practised charger, and accoutred, as became one, with demipique and holsters, and all that goes to the equipment of a war-horse. In these minutiae, no less than in the accurate array and perfect discipline of the tall, hardy-looking youths who rode along behind him in the strictest silence in the condition and the bitting of the horses and, above all, in the cool intelligence with which he listened to the varying reports of his subordinates, the quick, decisive firmness which made known, and the prompt en ergy which carried out, his orders might be dis covered at a glance the officer of many actions ! the soldier on whose mind no lesson of experience had been lost, until his very nature was no more the same ; that which was once an effort once the result of intricate and thoughtful calculation, arising now from an intuitive foreknowledge, more like the wondrous instinct of an animal than the deep reasoning combinations of a man ! It lacked, perhaps, an hour of noon when this de tachment, having extricated itself, without so much as hearing of an enemy, from the wide tracts of woodland, portions of which may still be seen in the adjacent counties of Huntingdon and Bedford,. 184 CROMWELL. had reached the summit of a considerable emi nence ; which, falling away steeply toward the west, commanded an extensive view over the vel vet pastures of Northampton, checkered with corn fields and dark tracts of fallow with many a white washed cottage peering from out the foliage of its orchards, and many a village steeple, with its mossy graves and tufted yew-trees, and here and there some castellated mansion, scarce seen amid its shadowy plantations stretching away till they were bounded far to westward by the blue hills of Warwickshire. Just on the brow of the decliv ity there stood a large and isolated farm, w r ith sta bling and outhouses sufficient to accommodate a hundred head of cattle ; upon the green before it the leader of the party drew his bridle, and, after a quick glance across the champaign at his feet, and another toward the sun, which had already passed its height, entering the dwelling, held short consultation with the sturdy yeoman who possessed the fertile acres. Before five minutes had elapsed he issued from the lowly doorway, ordering his party to dismount and pile their arms, and take what brief refreshment the farmhouse might offer during an hour's halt. A hasty bustle followed, as down the troopers sprang with jingling spur and scabbard, and merriment suppressed no longer by the rigid discipline enforced upon the march no oaths, however, or profane and Godless clamours were heard, disgracing equally the officers who tol erated and the men who uttered them. Gayety there was, and decent, sober mirth, but naught of boisterous, much less licentious revelling. Vi- dettes were stationed on commanding points, pa trols detailed and then, the horses picketed and well supplied with provender, fires were lighted, and canteens produced with all their savoury CROMWELL. 185 stores ; and the men, stretched at length on the smooth greensward, chatted and laughed as gavly over their hurried meal as though they were en gaged in some exciting sylvan exercise, and not in the tremendous toil of warfare. The hour allotted for their stay had \vellnigh passed when, from their farther outpost, a horseman galloped in, bloody with spurring, and, driving through the scat tered groups, flung his rein heedlessly upon his charger's neck, and turned him loose before the door while, with an air betokening the conscious ness of bearing high and stern intelligence, he hast ened to convey his tidings to his officer. There needed not, however, words to tell the men that danger was at hand ! A moment's anxious gaze at the vidette, and the jest ceased, the flagon was sus pended ere it reached the thirsty lip, the laugh was not laughed out ! Another moment, and the fires were all deserted the remnants of the meal laid hastily aside horses, recruited by their feed, were bridled swords buckled on, and helmets braced, and firearms inspected ; and, ere their leader came again among them, in anxious conversation with the messenger, they waited to mount only till the ready trumpets should sound boot and sad'dle ! " Get you to horse !" he said " get you to horse as silently as may be ! But spare your breath," he added, turning abruptly to the bugler, who was already handling his instrument, " till it be needed for a charge, which, an' we be so lucky as I deem we are, it may be and right early ! Sir Edmund Winthrop, have your men into line as speedily as may be ; but move not until farther signal ! My charger, Anderton and let a sergeant's guard mount instancy ! I go to reconnoitre a bugler with the party. Soh! Steady, men, steady !" and, without farther pause, he leaped into his saddle Q 2 186 CROMWELL. and, followed by the small detachment, galloped at a fierce pace down the hill-side, rugged and bro ken as it was, in company with the patrol who had brought in the tidings. Close to the bottom of the hill whereon the troops were halting there ran a deep and hollow gorge, cutting across the road which they had kept thus far directly at right an gles, and screened from observation on the upper side by a long, straggling belt of furze and under wood, with here and there a huge and weather- beaten oak or glossy beech, forming the outskirts of a heavy mass of forest that fringed, for several miles in length, the extreme left of the level coun try across which their line of march would lead them. Through this gorge, as the sentinel report ed, a powerful force of cavalry was moving toward the causeway at scarcely two miles distance ; but whether friends or foes he might not, as he said, determine. Checking his charger at the junction of the roads, the officer dismounted ; and, taking off his head-piece lest its glitter should betray him, stole forward through the trees to a high sandstone bluff commanding the whole gorge. From this he instantly discovered the approaching troops, who had so nearly come upon him unawares. There were at least five hundred horse in view, all cuiras siers completely cased in steel, escorting, as it seemed, a strong brigade of field artillery. When first they had been seen by the vidette, they were emerging from the forest-land alluded to before, and had attempted, as he said, a cross-road visible from the hill-side ; but it had proved so miry, as he judged from the slow progress of the guns, that they had countermarched, and were advancing steadily, as now beheld, under the guidance of a countryman who rode beside their .leader, toward the sandy gorge by which they evidently hoped to CROMWELL. gain the practicable road. Earnestly did the wary partisan gaze on the glittering columns, searching their movements, and examining their dress and arms with eager scrutiny, and ever and anon sweeping the country in their rear with an inqui- ring glance, that seemingly expected farther indica tions from that quarter. But it was all in vain ! The regiment in view wore neither scarfs, nor any badge that might inform him of their politics or party their colours were all furled around the staves and cased in oil-skin and all, from which he might in anywise conjecture of whether host they formed a portion, was the exact and veteran discipline their movements indicated far too ex act, as he supposed from the reports prevailing through the country, for the tumultuary levies of the Puritans. The hollow way on which they were advancing opened, at a mile's distance, on the plain, and it appeared that the new-comers were about to enter it unthinking of surprise, and confi dent, perhaps, in their own power. " If they be foes, we have them !" cried the partisan. " Back, Anderton, back to the regiment ride for yonr life ! tell Major Armstrong to lead down three troops dismounted, with their arquebuses ready, and their matches lighted beneath the cover of yon dingle on the hill-side till he shall reach this gorge, then line it with his musketry ! Let Ansiruther wheel, with three more, about yon round-topped hillock in half an hour he may debouche upon the plain or sooner, if he hear our shot and charge upon the rear of yon horse-regiment they will be in the trap ere then ! Sir Edmund Winthrop will lead down the rest by the same road we came I tarry him ! Away ! Be swift and silent ! Away ! for more than life is on your speed !" and, with the word, the subaltern dashed furiously away, spurn- 188 CROMWELL. ing the pebbles high into the air at every bound, and instantly was lost to sight behind the angle of the sandy banks, while he who had commanded, after another wistful gaze toward the approaching squadron, returned with leisurely and quiet steps to his good charger. With his own hands he drew the girths more tight, looked to each strap and buckle of his rein and stirrups, patted her arched crest with a fleeting smile, and mounting, rode, with half a dozen followers, sharply along the gorge, as if to meet the strangers, who now seemed disposed to pause upon the plain, and reconnoitre, ere they should enter a defile so perilous and nar row. Just at this moment while a score or two of troopers rode out from the advanced guard of the horse, which had now halted, and warily dis persing themselves among the broken ground, be gan to beat the thickets with deliberate and jealous scrutiny a low, stern hum arose from the dark corps of cuirassiers increasing still and swelling on the ear, till it was clearly audible for a full mile around, a burst of deep-toned, manly voices harsh perhaps in themselves, and tuneless, but harmonized by distance and the elastic atmosphere on which they floated, till they were blended at least into a solemn and melodious sound. Louder they rose, and louder on the breeze, and now were answered by a faint and dream-like echo from out the dim aisles of the forest in their rear, among the leafy screens of which the arms and standards of another and another band might fitfully be seen to glitter. It was the soul-inspiring crash of sacred music, the peal of choral voices untaught and undirected, save by the impulse of a thousand hearts attuned to one high key of patriotic piety unmixed with instruments of wind or string a deep, sonorous CROMWELL. 189 diapason the soldier's anthem to the God of bat tles and the Lord of Hosts ! " Arise ! arise !" the mighty sound went forth, its every syllable distinctly audible to the excited listener " Arise ! arise ! oh God our God arise ! Ride on in might, in terror, and renown A kindling flame, their nobles to consume A two-edged sword, to smite their princes down ! " Thou that dost break the arrows and the bow Thou that dost knap the ashen spear in sunder Thou, Lord of Hosts, that gav'st the horse his strength, And clothed the volumes of his neck in thunder " Be thou our rock our fortress of defence Our horn of safety, in whose strength we trust So shall their hosts be chaff before the wind So shall their thousands grovel in the dust ! " So shall our feet be crimson with their blood Their tongues our dogs shall purple with the same The fowls of air shall have them for a spoil Their pride a hissing, and a curse their name ! " For not in armour, nor the winged speed Of chargers, do we hope but only see By whose great aid their vauntings to outspeed Most Merciful most Mighty only Thee !" Scarce had the first sounds; reached the leader's ear, before he checked his mare abruptly " Wal ters," he cried at once, " away with you, and over take him ere he gain the regiment ! These be no enemies, but friends ! Let not a troop descend from the hill-side bid them await me, as they be, in order ! Spare not your spurs, nor fear to spoil your horseflesh we have no time to lose ! I well had deemed," he added, muttering to himself, after the orderly had galloped off with his commands ' ' I well had deemed their rear was many a mile advanced past this ere now. Pray Heaven that Essex lack not men to hold the king in check, as he is like to do, if that this news be sooth how he 190 CROMWELL. hath gathered head toward Keinton and Edgehill !" and, without farther words, he hastened down the road, to be, as soon as he had cleared the first pro jection of the broken banks, discovered by the re- connoitering parly in advance. A dozen carbines were presented on the instant at a short range " Stand ho !" " Friends ! friends !" he shouted, in reply, but without altering his pace " can you not see our colours?" waving his orange scarf abroad, as he closed with the foremost trooper. " Stand, friend, then ! if that friend you be stand, friend, and give the word !" returned the other, gruffly " stand ! or I do profess that I will shoot yea ! shoot thee to the death !" " How now, thou peevish knave," replied the officer, in high and ireful tones. " Recover in stantly thy carbine marshal me straight unto the leader of yon horse ! Who is he that commands them ?" For a moment's space the grim parliamentarian stubbornly gazed upon the features of the gallant who addressed him, as if reluctant to obey his mandate ; but then a gleam of recognition flashed across his sunburnt features " I crave your par don," he said, half abashed ; " it is, an' I mistake not, Lieutenant-colonel Ardenne, of the parlia ment's " " Lead on, then, sirrah ! since thou knowest me," interrupted Edgar, shortly "lead on, an' thou wouldst not repent it and tell me who commands yon horse brigade !" "Stout Colonel Cromwell," answ^ed the sol dier, more respectfully " stout and courageous Colonel Cromwell ! He will, I do believe, rejoice at this encounter. This way, good sir. Yonder he sits on the black horse beside the standard, CROMWELL. 191 awaiting our.return. 1/o^ou'T he sees us, and the files move onward !" And he spoke truly ; for, as the cavalry per ceived the videttes moving orderly and slowly back, they filed off, troop succeeding troop, toward the entrance of the lane, advancing on a gentle trot in regular and beautiful array. As they passed Ardenne, many a scrutinizing eye perused his fig ure and equipments, and in most instances a sanc tified and solemn sneer disturbed the dark repose of their grave features called up, as it would seem, by the rich dress and courtly air of the young officer, which, in their wonted parlance, were denounced as " fleshly lusts that war against the soul," devices of the Evil One, fringes, phylac teries, and trappings of the beast. Nor, in mean while, did Edgar turn a heedless or incurious glance toward those with whom, discarding friends and kindred, birthright, and rank, and chivalrous asso ciation as things of small avail compared to the great common weal, he had now cast his lot for ever. The first emotion of his mind .was deep anxiety the second wonder and the third un qualified and unmixed admiration. Never, he thought, in Germany or France never, among the veteran legions of the Lion of the North, the Prot estant Gustavus, had he beheld superior discipline, or men more soldier-like and promising. Mounted on strong black chargers of full sixteen hands in height, their furniture of the most simple kind, but well designed and in the best condition their iron panoply, corslet, and helm, and taslets, stainless and brilliant and, above all, their bearing and demeanour their seats upon their horses, firm yet easy their muscular and well-developed limbs their countenances full of resolution, and breath ing all despite the difference of individual char- 192 CROMWELL. acter, and the various operations of the same affec tion on minds of different bias a strange expres sion of religious sentiment solemn in some, and stern, or even sullen in others wild, fanatical, ex alted, and triumphant yet in all more or less ap parent, as evidently forming the great spring and motive of their action. Still, though attentive in the first degree to the essential rules of military discipline, keeping an accurate and well-dressed front, and managing their heavy chargers with pre cision, there was not any of that deep, respectful silence among these military saints which Edgar had been used to look for in the strictly-ordered service of the Netherlands, and to esteem. * requi site of soldiership but, on the contrary, as every troop rode past him, there was a constant hum of conversation, suppressed, indeed, and low, but still distinctly audible ; and he might mark the knot ted brows and clinched hands of the vehementlpdis- puters, arguing as it would seem from the dwci- ded gestures, and the texts which he occasionally caught lending an elevated savour to their homely language, and, more than all, from the continual appeal to the well-worn and greasy Bibles which each of these stern controversialists bore at his gir dle on questions of religious discipline or points of abstruse doctrine. Although this mixture of the soldier and religionist, this undue, and, as it seemed to him, irreverent blending of things good and holy with the dreadful trade of blood, jarred painfully on his correct and feeling mind, he could not but ac knowledge that this dark spirit of religious zeal, this confidence in their own overweening righteous ness, this fixed, unwavering belief that they were the elected and predestined instruments of the Most High "to execute," as he could hear them cry aloud, " vengeance upon the heathen and punish- CROMWELL. 193 ment upon the people ! to bind their kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron !" was in deed a mighty and effective agent to oppose ihat chivalrous, enthusiastic bravery, that loyal, self-de voting valour which inflamed the highborn army of the cavaliers to deeds of noble daring. Nor did he entertain a doubt, when he perceived the extraor dinary person who commanded them, occupied him self in preaching, or expounding rather, the myste rious prophecies of the Old Testament to which especially the puritans inclined their ear to an at tentive knot of officers, grouped, some upon their horses, and yet more dismounted, around the regi mental standard, but that he had some reason far more cogent than mere feelings of devotion for thus encouraging** spirit so unusual in the breasts of his stout followws. The colonel for to such rank had Cromwell recently been elevated, more even in consideration of the powerful and trusty regi ment which he had levied from the freeholders and yeomanry of Huntingdon by his own personal and private influence, than of his services performed al ready, riot either few or inconsiderable, keeping the cavaliers in check, surprising many of their lead ers, anticipating all their meditated risings, and cut ting off all convoys, whether of money or muni tions, throughout the counties of the Eastern As sociation the colonel, as he met the eye of Ar- denne, was seated on his powerful black war-horse, bestriding him, as it would seem, with giant strength, and perfect mastery of leg and hand, but with an air wholly unmilitary and devoid of ease or grace sheathed nearly cap-a-pie in armour of bright steel, heavy and exquisite^ finished, but ut terly without relief or ornament of any kind. A band or collar of plain linen, with a broad hem, fast ened about his short Herculean neck, varied alone VOL. I. R 194 CROMWELL. the stern simplicity of his attire ; no feather waved above his low and graceless casque no shoulder- knot or scarf bedecked his weapon, which was girt about his middle by a belt of buff three inches at the least in width, and balanced on the right side by a formidable dudgeon and the brass-bound case of the familiar Bible, which he now held extended in his left hand, while with the finger of his right he vehemently smote the open pages at each em phatic pause of his discourse. His features showed not now so sanguine or so kindled as when Ar- denne last beheld them ; but, on the contrary, there was a mild, half-veiled expression about the heavy eye ; and, though the lines were strong and marked as ever, there was more of deliberate and quiet resolution than of imperiousness denoted- by the firmness of his mouth. It was th^^ountenance, he thought, of a cairn visionary, pensive and itative in his mood, and rather steadjr in the tenance of his own fixed opinions than zealous proscribe or controvert the fancies or the rights of others. But he had little time for noting the ex pression, changed as he fancied it to be, of his su perior, much less for marking the diverse features of the martial auditors for, as he drew nigh to the spot whereon they stood, Cromwell had ended his discourse, and, with a word or two of military precept, was dismissing his attendants to their sev eral stations. Several dashed past him as he rode up to the little eminence on which the colours were erected, and but two were waiting near the colonel when he reached him one a bull-necked, coarse- featured, and ungainly-looking person, with a gay feather in his morion, a showy tassel on his rapier's hill, and a falling collar of some low-priced lace hanging above his gorget the other an erect and well-made man, not past the prime of youth, with CROMWELL. 195 features singularly noble and expressive, though of an almost Spanish swarthiness, and tinctured with a deep and melancholy gravity. " Ha ! Master Ardenne !" exclaimed Oliver, his eye joyfully flashing as he recognised him ' right glad am I to see you not carnally, nor with a worldly-minded and a selfish pleasure, but in that there will be work to do anon, in which the right eous cause shall need all arms of its supporters ! Have you a power at hand ? where be they ? in what force ? not travel-worn, I trust me !" " Three hundred horse," Edgar replied, " on the height yonder but for those trees you might be hold them where we stand ! I left them but just now, Jo reconnoitre your advance, under Sir Ed mund Wint^wp, my lieutenant." " Good ! ^iod !" cried Cromwell, eagerly ; "and hdv far have you marched to-day be your men tMfel-toiled your steeds leg-weary ? for verily ^jl have a march before us." ,. " We have but travelled six brief miles this fore noon, and barely sixteen yesterday my men are ' in right spirits, and my horses fresh ! I could ac complish twenty miles ere nightfall, and that with out fatigue !" " Surely the Lord is gracious," was the answer " and of his grace, too, shall we right soon make trial. My Lord of Essex hath, ere now, his post at Keinton and the man Charles of Stuart hath at length mustered head to face him. "Fis marvel that they be not at it even now. I fear me the lord general shall lack both horse and cannon ; but we have marched already a sore distance with our ponderous guns and heavy armature, nor may I now adventure to press on more hastily without dispersing my Command. Ride with me to your regiment, good sir; I trow you were best speedily 196 CROMWELL. move forward. Keinton is barely twelve miles distant, and the roads, they tell me, sound and pas- 1 sable ;" and, as he spoke, touching his charger lightly with the spur, he broke into a managed can ter. " Cornet, advance your colours," he ex claimed, in short, keen accents, strangely at vari ance with the monotonous and inexpressive tones of his discourse when unexcited " sound kettle drums, and march !" and, riding briskly forward, easily passed the troops while filing through the lane. " Halt them here, Irelon," he, said t the dark-favoured officer who had accompanied him, as he turned into the main road, having, outstripped the forces "halt them in column here, within the lane, till I return and, Desborough, dg thou ride back to Hampclen's regiment of foot it