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 THE DRAYTONS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "CHRONICLES OF THE SCHUNBERG-COTTA FAMILY." 
 
 COPYRIGHT EDITION. 
 
 , IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERN HARD TAUCHNITZ 
 
 18 68. 
 
 The Right of Translation is reserved.
 
 HM53 
 
 iU^2 THE 
 
 DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 1 ESTERDAY at noon, when the house and all the 
 land were still, and the men, with the lads and 
 lasses, were away at the harvesting, and I sat alone, 
 with barred doors, for fear of the Indians (who have 
 of late shown themselves unfriendly), I chanced to 
 look up from my spinning-wheel through the open 
 window, across the creek on which our house stands. 
 And something, I scarce know what, carried me back 
 through the years and across the seas to the old house 
 on the borders of the Fen Country, in the days of 
 my childhood. It may have been the quiet rustling 
 of the sleepy air in the long grasses by the water- 
 side that wafted my spirit back to where the English 
 winds sigh and sough among the reeds on the borders
 
 6 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 of the fens; it may have been the shining of the 
 smooth water, furrowed by the track of the water- 
 fowl, that set my memory down beside the broad 
 Mere, whose gleam we could see from my chamber- 
 window. It may have been the smell of this year's 
 hay, which came in in sweet soft gusts through the 
 lattice, that floated me up to the top of the tiny hay- 
 stack, made of the waste grass in the orchard at old 
 Netherby Manor, at the foot of which Eoger, my 
 brother, used to stand while I turned up the hay, 
 assisted by our Cousin Placidia (when she was con- 
 descending), and by our Aunt Gretel, my mother's 
 sister, whenever we had need of her. Most probably 
 it was the hay. For, as the excellent Mr. Bunyan 
 has illustriously set forth in his work on the Holy 
 War, the soul hath five gates through which she 
 holdeth parlance with the outer world. And cor- 
 respondent with these outer gates from the sensible 
 world in space, meseemeth, are as many inner gates 
 into the inner, invisible world of thought and time; 
 which inner gates open simultaneously with the outer, 
 by the same spring. But of all the mystic springs 
 which unlock this wondrous inward world, none act 
 with such swift, secret magic as those of the Gate of 
 Odours. There stealeth in unobserved some delicate 
 perfume of familiar field flower or garden herb, and 
 straightway, or ere she is aware, the soul is afar off
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. i 
 
 in the world of tlie past, gathering posies among the 
 fields of childhood, or culling herbs in the old corner 
 of the old garden , to be laid , by hands long since 
 cold, in familiar chambers, long since tenanted by- 
 other owners. 
 
 Wherefore, I deem it was the new, sweet smell 
 of our New England hay which more than anything 
 carried me back to the old house in Old England, 
 and the days so long gone by. 
 
 With my heart in far-off days, I continued my 
 spinning, as women are wont, the hand moving the 
 more swiftly for the speed wherewith the thoughts 
 travel, until my thoughts and my work came to a 
 pause together by the flax on my distaff being ex- 
 hausted. I went to an upper chamber for a fresh 
 stock; and while there my eye lighted on an old 
 chest, in the depths whereof lay many little volumes 
 of an old journal written by my hand through a 
 series of buried years. 
 
 An irresistible attraction drew me to them; and 
 as I knelt before the old chest, and turned over these 
 yellow leaves, in some cases eaten with worms, and 
 read the writing — the earlier portions of it in large, 
 laborious, childish characters, as if each letter were a 
 solemn symbol of weighty import — the later scrawled 
 hastily in the snatched intervals of a busy and 
 tdngled life — I seemed to be looking through a
 
 8 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVBNANTS : 
 
 series of stained windows into the balls of an ancient 
 palace. On the windows were the familiar portraits 
 of a little eager girl, and a yonng maiden familiar 
 to me, yet strange. But the paintings were also 
 window panes; and, after the first glance, the painted 
 panes seemed to vanish, and I saw only the palace 
 chambers on which they looked. Not empty cham- 
 bers, or shadowy, or silent, but solid, and fresh, and 
 vivid, and full of the stir of much life; so that, when 
 I laid down those old pages, and looked out through 
 the declining light over these new shores, across this 
 new sea, towards the far-off England which still lives 
 beyond, it seemed for a moment as if the sun setting 
 behind the wide western woods, the strip of golden 
 corn-fields, the reapers returning slowly over the hill, 
 the Indian burial-mounds beside the creek, the trim 
 new house, my old quiet self, were the shadows, 
 and that old world, in which my spirit had been so- 
 journing, still the living and the real. 
 
 Neighbour Hartop's cheery voice roused me out 
 of my dream, and I hurried down to open the door, 
 and to set out the harvest supper. 
 
 But as I look at the old crumpled papers again 
 to-day, the past lives again once more before me, 
 and I will not let it die. 
 
 There is an hour in the day, when the sun has 
 set, and all the dazzle of day is gone, and the dusk
 
 A STORY OF THK CIVIL WARS. » 
 
 of night has not set in, when I think the world looks 
 larger and clearer than at any other time. The sky 
 seems higher and more heavenly than at other hours ; 
 and yet the earth, tinted here and there on its high 
 places with heavenly colour, seems more to belong 
 to heaven. The little landscape within our horizon 
 becomes more manifestly a portion of a wider world. 
 And is there not such an hour in life? Before it 
 passes, let me use the light, and fix in my mind the 
 scenes which will so soon vanish into dreams and 
 silence. 
 ^ The first entry in those old Journals of mine is: — 
 
 '■'■The ticenty-cighth day of March, in the year of our Lord 
 sixteen hundred and thirty-seven. — On this day, tv/elve years 
 since , King Charles was pi-oclaimed king at Whitehall 
 Gate , and in Cheapside , the while the rain fell in heavy 
 showers. My father heard the herald; and my Aunt 
 Dorothy well remembers the rain, because it spoiled a 
 slashed satin doublet of my father's (the last he ever 
 bought, having since then been habited more soberly): 
 also because many of the people said the weather was of 
 evil promise for the new reign. But father saith that is a 
 superstitious notion, unworthy of Christian people. 
 
 "Also , my father was present at the king's coronation, 
 on the 5th of February in the following year. Our French 
 queen would not enter the abbey on account of her Popish 
 faith. When the king was presented bareheaded to the 
 people, all were silent, none crying, 'God save the king,' 
 until the Earl of Arundel bade them; which, my father 
 saith, was a worse omen than if the clouds had jioured 
 down rivei's."
 
 10 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVEXANTS: 
 
 These in large characters, eacli letter formed 
 with conscientious pains. 
 
 The second entry is diverse from the first. It 
 runs thus: — 
 
 "April the tenth. — The brindled cow hatli died, leaving 
 an orphan calf. Aunt Gretel saith I may bring up the calf 
 for my own, with the help of Tib the dairywomau. 
 
 The diversity between these entries recalls many 
 things to me. On the day before the first entry, 
 father brought to Roger my brother, my Cousin 
 Placidia, and me, three small books stitched neatly 
 together, and told us these were for us to use to note 
 down any remarkable events therein. "For," said 
 he, "we live in strange and notable times, and you, 
 children, may see things before you are grown; yea, 
 and perchance do or suffer such things as history is 
 made of." 
 
 The stipulation was, that we were each to write 
 independently, and not to borrow from the other. 
 Which was a hard covenant for me, who seldom 
 then meditated or did anything without the co-opera- 
 tion or sanction of Roger. 
 
 After much solitary pondering, therefore, I ar- 
 rived at the conclusion that history especially con- 
 cerns kings and queens, and lesser people only as
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 11 
 
 connected with them. That is, when there are kings 
 and queens. lu the old Greek history I remembered 
 there were heroes who were not kings, but I sup- 
 posed they did instead. But the English history 
 was all made up of what happened to the kings. 
 One was shot while hunting; another was murdered 
 at Berkeley Castle; the little princes were smothered 
 in the Tower. King Edward III. gained a great 
 victory at Cre9y in France; King Henry V. gained 
 another at Agincourt. Of course other people were 
 concerned in these things. Sir Walter Tyrrel shot 
 the arrow by accident that killed King William, and 
 some wicked people must have murdered King Ed- 
 ward and the little princes on purpose. And, of 
 course, there were armies who helped King Edward 
 and King Henry to gain their victories; but none of 
 these people would have been in history, I thought, 
 except as connected with the kings. At the same 
 time, I thought it was of no use to relate things 
 which no one belonging to me had had anything to 
 do with, because any one else could have done that 
 without my taking the trouble to write a note-book 
 at all. Therefore it seemed to me that my father, 
 and even my father's slashed satin doublet, fairly 
 became historical by having been present at the 
 king's proclamation, and Aunt Dorothy by having 
 commented thereon.
 
 12 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 The second entry was caused by an entirely dif- 
 ferent theory of history, having its origin in a talk 
 with Eoger. Roger said that we never can tell what 
 things are historical until afterwards, and that, there- 
 fore, the only way was to note down what honestly 
 interested us. If these things prove afterwards to be 
 things which interest the world, our story of them 
 becomes part of the world's story. If not, they are 
 at least our own true story, and as such, history to 
 the people who care for us. But to note down 
 feeble echoes of far-off great events, in which we 
 think we ought to be interested, is no human speech 
 at all, Roger thought, but mere monkey's imitative 
 chattering. Every one, Roger thinks, sees every- 
 thing just a little differently from any one else; and 
 therefore, if every one would describe truly the little 
 bit they do see, in that way by degrees we might 
 have a perfect picture. But to copy what others 
 have seen, is simjjly to depart with every fresh copy 
 a little further from the original. If, for instance, 
 said he, the nurse of Julius Caesar had told us nur- 
 sery stories of what Julius Csesar did when he was 
 a little boy, it would have been history, but the 
 opinions of Julius Caesar's nurse on the politics of 
 the Roman republic would probably not have been 
 history at all, but idle tattle. 
 
 With respect to kings and queens being the only
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 13 
 
 true subjects for history, also, Roger was very scoru- 
 ful. He had lately been paying a visit to Mr. John 
 Hampden, Mr. Oliver Cromwell, and others of my 
 father's friends, and he had returned full of indigna- 
 tion against the tyranny of the court and the pre- 
 lates. The nation, he said, wise men thought, was 
 not made for the king, but the king for the nation. 
 And, to say nothing of the Greek history, the Bible 
 history was certainly not filled up with kings and 
 queens, but with shepherds, herdsmen, preachers, and 
 soldiers; or if with kings, with kings who had been 
 shepherds and soldiers, and who were saints and 
 heroes as well as kings. 
 
 All which reasoning decided me to make my 
 next entry concerning the calf of the brindled cow, 
 which at that time was the subject in the world 
 which honestly interested me the most. If my 
 father, or Roger, or Cousin Placidia, or Aunt Gretel, 
 ever became historical personages (and, as Roger 
 said, who could tell?), then anecdotes concerning the 
 calf of the cow which my father owned and Aunt 
 Gretel cherished, and which Cousin Placidia thought 
 it childish to care so much about, might become, in 
 a secondary sense, historical also. At all events, I 
 resolved I would not be, like Julius Caesar's nurse, 
 babbling of politics. 
 
 The next entry was: —
 
 14 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 ^'■August 4, 1637. — Di-. Antony has spent the evening 
 with us , and is to remain some days , at father's entreaty, 
 to recruit his strength; Aunt Dorothy having knowledge 
 of medicinal herbs, and Aunt Gretel of savoury dishes, 
 which may be of use to him. He hath narrowly escaped 
 the jail-sickness, having of late visited many afflicted good 
 peojjle in the prisons through the country, as is his custom. 
 'Sick and in jjrison,' Dr. Antony saith, 'and ye visited me,' 
 is plain enough to be read by the dimmest light, whatever 
 else is hard to understand. He told us of two strange 
 things which happened lately. At least they seem very 
 strange to me. 
 
 "In the Palace Yard at Westminster, "on the 30th of 
 last June (while Roger and I were making hay in the 
 pleasant simshine in the orchard) , Dr. Antony saw three 
 gentlemen stand in the pillory. The pillory is a wooden 
 frame set up on a platform, where wicked people are 
 fastened helplessly, like savage dogs, with their heads and 
 hands coming through holes, to make them look ridiculous, 
 that jjeople may mock and jeer at them. But father and 
 Dr. Antony did not think these gentlemen wicked, only 
 at worst a little hasty in speech. And the jieople did not 
 think them ridiculous; they did not mock and fleer at them, 
 but kept very still, or wejit. Theu' names were j\Ii'. Prynne, 
 a gentleman at the bar; Dr. John Bastwick, a physician; 
 and Mr. Burton, a clergyman of a parish in London. There 
 they stood many hours , while the hangman came to each 
 of them in turn and sawed oif their ears with a rough knife, 
 and then burnt in two cruel letters on their cheeks, S.L., 
 for seditious libeller. Dr. Antony did not say the three 
 poor gentlemen made one cry or complaint, but bore them- 
 selves like brave men. But the bravest of all, I think, was 
 IVIi-s. Bastwick, the doctor's wife. She stayed on the 
 scaffold, and bore to see all her husband's pain, without a 
 word or a moan, lest she should make him flinch, and then 
 received his ears in her lap , and kissed his poor wounded
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 15 
 
 face before all the people. Sweet brave heart! I would 
 fain have her home amongst us here, and kiss her faithful 
 hands like a queen's, and lay my head on her brave heart, 
 as if it were my mother's! The sufferers made no moan; 
 but the 'people broke their pitiful silence once with an 
 angry shout, and many times with low hushed groans, as 
 if the jjain and shame were theirs (Dr. Antony said), and 
 they would remember it. And Mr. Prynne, Avhen the irons 
 were burning his face, said to the executioner, 'Cut me, 
 tear me, I fear not thee; I fear the fire of hell.' Mr. Bur- 
 ton spoke to the jjeojjle of God and his truth , and how it 
 was worth while to suffer anything rather than give up 
 that. He said, moreover, alluding to the pillory: 'The 
 gospel shall yet shine on England through those holes.' 
 And at last he nearly fainted; but when he was borne 
 away into a house near, he said, with good cheer, 'It is 
 too hot to last.' (He meant the pei-secution.) But the thi-ee 
 gentlemen are now shut ujj in three prisons — in Launces- 
 ton, Lancaster, and Caernarvon. And father and Dr. 
 Antony say it is Archbishop Laud who ordered it all to 
 be done. But could not the king have stopped it if he 
 liked! 
 
 "But will Koger and I ever turn over the hay again in 
 the pleasant June sunshine, without thinking how it burned 
 down on these poor, maimed, and woundied gentlemen? 
 And one day I do hope I may see brave Mistress Bastwick, 
 and tell her how I love and honour her, and how the 
 thought of her will help me to be brave and patient more 
 than a hundred sermons. 
 
 "Dr. Antony's other story was of one Jenny or Janet 
 Geddes, not a gentlewoman, for she kept an apple-stall in 
 Edinburgh streets, and, moreover, does not appear to have 
 used good language at all. The Scotch, it seems, do not 
 like bishops, and, indeed, will not have bishops. But Ai-ch- 
 bishop Laud and the king will make them. On Sunday, 
 the 23rd of last July, a month since , one of Archbishop
 
 16 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Laud's bishops began the Collect for the clay in St. Giles's 
 Cathedral, Edinburgh. Jenny Geddes had brought her 
 folding-stool (on wliich she sat by her apple-stall, 1 sup- 
 pose) into the church, and when the bishop came out in his 
 robes (which Archbishop Laud likes of many colours, 
 while the Scotch , it seems , will have nothing but black), 
 she took up her stool and flung it at the bishop's head, calling 
 the service the mass , and the bishop a thief, and wishing 
 him very ill wishes in a curious Scottish dialect, which, 
 I suppose, I do not quite understand; for it sounded like 
 swearing, and if Jenny Geddes was a good woman (though 
 not a gentlewoman) she would scarcely, I should think, 
 swear, at least not in church. Whether the bishop was 
 hurt or not , no one seems to know or care. I suppose the 
 stool did not reach his head. But it stojiped the service. 
 For all the people rose in great fury, not against Jenny 
 Geddes , but against the bishop , and the archbishop , and 
 the prayer-book, and against all bishops and all prayers 
 in books, not in Ediubm-gh only, but throughout the laud. 
 Which shows, father said, that a great deal of angTy talk 
 had been going on beforehand in the streets around Jenny 
 Geddes' apple-stall. There must always be some angry 
 person, father said , to throw the folding-stool, but no one 
 heeds the angry person unless there is something to be 
 angry about." 
 
 A very long entry, wliich cost me many hours 
 and many pages. 
 
 And' about the passages in my own history which 
 it led to, not a word. Indeed, throughout these 
 Journals I notice that it is more what they recall 
 than what they say which brings back the past to 
 me. I wonder if it is not thus with most diaries.
 
 . A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 17 
 
 For to keep to Roger's rule of writing the things 
 which really interest us at the time seems to me 
 scarcely possible; because at the time we scarcely 
 know what things are most deeply interesting us, 
 and if we do, they are the very things we cannot 
 write about. Underneath the things we see and 
 think and speak about, are the great, dim, silent 
 places out of which we ourselves are growing into 
 being, and where God is at work. The things we 
 are beginning to see we can not see, the things we 
 are feeling without knowing what we feel, the dim 
 struggling thoughts we cannot utter or even think. 
 Without form and void is the state of a world being 
 created. When the world is created, the creation is 
 a history, and can be written. While it is being 
 created, it is chaos; and from without can only be 
 described as without form and void — from within, 
 in the chaos, not at all. The Creator only under- 
 stands chaos, and knows the chaos before the new 
 creation from the mere waste and ruin of the old. 
 
 To understand the past is only partly possible 
 for the wisest men. 
 
 To understand the present is only possible to 
 God. 
 
 Because to understand the present would be to 
 foresee the future. To see through the chaos would 
 be to foresee the new creation. 
 
 The Drayions and the Davenauts. I. ^
 
 18 TUE DRATTOKS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Wherefore it seems to me all diaries are of value 
 not as records, but as suggestions. And all self- 
 examination resolves itself at last into prayer, say- 
 ing, "What I see not, teach Thou me." 
 
 "Search me and try me, and see Thou, and lead 
 Thou me." 
 
 The passages in my history that this story of 
 Dr. Antony led to, arise before me as clearly as if 
 they happened yesterday, although in the Journal 
 not a hint of them is given. 
 
 The Sunday after Dr. Antony had told us those 
 terrible things about the sufiPerers in the pillory, 
 Roger and I had gone to our usual Sunday after- 
 noon perch in an apple-tree in the corner of the 
 orchard furthest from the house. We had taken with 
 us for our contemj)lation a very terrible delineation, 
 which was the nearest approach to a picture Aunt 
 Dorothy would let us have on the Sabbath-day. This 
 she permitted us, partly, I believe, because it was 
 not the likeness of anything in heaven or earth (nor, 
 I hope, under the earth), and partly on account of 
 the very awful thoughts it was calculated to in- 
 spire. 
 
 It was a huge branching thing, like our old fa- 
 mily tree. But at the root of the tree, where would 
 be the name of Adam or Noah, or ^neas of Troy, 
 or Cassibelaun, or whoever else was recognised as
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 19 
 
 the head of the family, stood the sacred name of the 
 Holy Trinity. From this trunk forked ofF two lead- 
 ing branches, one representing the wicked and the 
 other the just, with words written along them to 
 show that the very same mercies and means of grace 
 which produce repentance and faith and love in the 
 hearts of the just, produce bitterness and false 
 security and hatred of God in the hearts of the 
 wicked. Further and further the branches diverged, 
 until one ended in an angel with wings, and the 
 other in the mouth of a horrible hobgoblin with a 
 whale's mouth, a dragon's claws, and a lion's teeth; 
 and both were united by the lines, — 
 
 " Wliether to heaven or hell you bend, 
 God will have glory in the end." * 
 
 Most terrible was this delineation to me, sitting 
 that sunny autumn day in the apple-tree, especially 
 because if you were once on the wrong branch, it 
 was not at all pointed out how you were ever to get 
 on the right. All seemed as irrevocable and in- 
 evitable as that point in our own pedigree where 
 Edwy, the eldest son, became a Benedictine monk 
 and vanished into a thin flourish, and Walter, the 
 
 * A similar tree is to be seen in the beginning of Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
 Progress , in the edition of 1698. 
 (142) 
 
 2*
 
 20 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAYENANTS : 
 
 second son, married Adalgiva, heiress of Netlierby 
 Manor, and branched off into us. And it looked so 
 terribly (with unutterable terror I felt it) as if it 
 mattered as little to tlie Holy Trinity what became 
 of any one of us, as to Cassibelaun or Noah what 
 became of his descendants, Edwy or Walter. 
 
 So it happened that Roger and I sat very awe- 
 stricken and still in our perch in the apple-tree, 
 while the wind fluttered the green leaves around us, 
 and the sunbeams ripened the rosy apples for their 
 work, and then danced in and out on the grass below 
 for their play. And I remember as if it were yester- 
 day how the thought shuddered through my heart, 
 that the same sun which was shining on Roger and 
 me, on that last 30th of June, making hay in the 
 orchard, was at the very same moment scorching 
 those poor wounded gentlemen in the pillory in 
 Palace Yard, and not losing a whit of its glory to 
 us by all the anguish it was inflicting, like a blazing 
 furnace, on them. And if this fearful tree were 
 true, did it not seem as if it were the same with 
 God? 
 
 I sat some time silent under the weight of this 
 dread. , It made me shiver with cold in the sunshine, 
 and at length I could keep it in no longer, and said 
 to Roger in a whisper, for I was half afraid to hear 
 my own words, —
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 21 
 
 "0, Eoger, why did not God kill the devil?" 
 
 At that moment something shook the tree, and I 
 clung to Roger in terror. I could not see what it 
 was from among the thick leaves where we were 
 sitting. I trembled at the echo of my own voice. 
 The dark thoughts within seemed to have brought 
 night with its nameless terrors into the heart of 
 day. But Roger leant down from the branch, and 
 said, — 
 
 "Cousin Placidia! For shame! You shook the 
 tree on purpose. I heard the apples fall on the 
 ground, and you are picking them up. That is 
 cheating." 
 
 For the fallen fruit was the right of us chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Said Placidia, in a smooth unmoved voice, — 
 
 "I came against the stem of the tree by accident, 
 and perhaps I did shake it a little more than I need, 
 when I heard what Olive said. They were very 
 wicked words, and I shall tell Aunt Dorothy." 
 
 "You may tell any one you like," said Roger 
 indignantly. "Olive did not mean to say anything 
 wrong. You are cruel enough to sit in the Star- 
 chamber, Placidia." 
 
 "She is exactly like our gray cat," he continued 
 to me, as she glided away, "with her soft noiseless 
 ways, and her stealthy, steady following of her own
 
 22 THE DRAYTONS ANB THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 interests. Wlien the fowl-house was burnt down last 
 year, and the turkeys were screaming, and the hens 
 cackling, and every one flying hither and thither 
 trying to save something or somebody, I saw the 
 gray cat quietly licking her lips in a corner over a 
 poor singed chicken. I believe she thought the 
 whole thing had been set on foot to roast her supper. 
 And Placidia would have done precisely the same. 
 If London were on fire, and she in it, I believe she 
 would contrive to get her supper roasted on the 
 cinders. And the provoking thing is, she thinks no 
 one sees." 
 
 Eoger was not often vehement in speech, but 
 Placidia was our standing grievance — his and 
 mine. There were certain little unfairnesses, not 
 quite cheating; certain little meannesses, not quite 
 dishonesties ; and certain little prevarications , not 
 quite lies, which always excited his greatest wrath, 
 especially when, as often happened, I was the loser 
 or the sufferer by them. 
 
 "Do you think she will tell Aunt Dorothy?" I 
 said; for that very morning Placidia and I had had 
 a quarrel, she having pinched my arm where it could 
 not be seen, and I having, to my shame, bitten her 
 finger where it could be seen. 
 
 "I don't know, and I don't care," said Eoger 
 loftily. "What is the good of minding? I siippose
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 23 
 
 we must all go through a certain quantity of punish- 
 ment, Olive; and it is to be hoped it will do us 
 good for the futvn-e, if we did not deserve it by the 
 past. At least Aunt Dorothy says so. Go on with 
 what you were saying." 
 
 So I recurred to my question. 
 
 "Oh, Roger, I wish I knew why God did not 
 destroy the devil in the beginning, or at least not 
 let him come into the garden. Because then nothing 
 would have gone wrong, would it? Eve would not 
 have eaten the fruit. Mr. Prynne and Dr. Bastwick 
 would not have been set in the pillory. And I 
 should not, most likely, have quarrelled with Pla- 
 cidia, because, I suppose, Placidia would not have 
 been provoking." 
 
 "I wish I knew why my father lets Cousin Pla- 
 cidia live with us, and always be making us do 
 wrong," said Roger. 
 
 "She is an orphan, and some one must take care 
 of her, you know," I said. "Besides, surely, father 
 has reasons, only we don't always know." 
 
 "And I suppose God has reasons," said Roger 
 reverently, "only we don't always know." 
 
 "But the devil is all bad," said I, "and will 
 never be better, and Cousin Placidia may. It could 
 not be for the devil's own sake God did not kill
 
 24 THE DRAYXONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 him, for lie only gets worse; and I do not see liow 
 it could be for ours." 
 
 "The devil was not always the devil, Olive," 
 said Roger, after thinking a little while. "He was 
 an angel at first." 
 
 "Then, Roger," said I eagerly, for the per- 
 plexity lay heavy on my heart, "why did not God 
 stop the devil from ever being the devil? That 
 would have been better than anything." 
 
 Roger made no reply. 
 
 "It cannot be because God could not," I pursued, 
 "because Aunt Dorothy says He can do everything. 
 And it cannot be because He would not, because 
 Aunt Gretel says He hates to see any one do wrong 
 or be unhappy. But there must be some reason; 
 and if we only knew it, I think everything else 
 would become quite plain." 
 
 "I do not see the reason, Olive," said Roger, 
 after a long pause. "I cannot see it in the least. I 
 remember hearing two or three people discuss it once 
 with father and Aunt Dorothy; and I think they all 
 thought they explained it. But no one thought any 
 one else did. And they used exceedingly long and 
 learned words, longer and more learned the further 
 they went on. But they could not agree at all, and 
 at last they became angry, so that I never heard 
 the end. But in two or three years, you know, I
 
 A STORY OF TUB CIVIL WARS. 25 
 
 am going to Oxford, and tlien I will try and find 
 out the reason. And when I have found it out, 
 Olive, I will be sure to tell you." 
 
 "But that is not at all the most perplexing thing 
 to me, Olive," he began, after a little silence; "be- 
 cause, after all, if we or the angels were to be per- 
 sons^ and not things, I don't see how it could be 
 helped that we might do wrong if we liked. The 
 great puzzle to me is, why we do anything, or if we 
 can help doing anything we do; that is, if we are 
 really persons at all, and not a kind of puppets." 
 
 "Of course we are not puppets, Roger," said I. 
 "Of course we can help doing things if we like. I 
 do not think that is any puzzle at all. I could have 
 helped biting Placidia's finger if I had liked — that 
 is, if I had tried. And that is what makes it 
 wrong." 
 
 "But you did not like," said Roger, "and so 
 you did not help it. And what was to make you 
 like to help it, if you did not?" 
 
 "If I had been good, I should not have liked to 
 hurt Placidia, however provoking she was," I said. 
 
 "And what is it to be good?" said he. 
 
 "To like to do right," I said. "I think that is 
 to be good." 
 
 "But what is to make you like to do right?"
 
 26 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "Being good, to be svire," said I, feeling myself 
 helplessly drawn into a whirlpool. 
 
 "That is going ronnd and round, and coming to 
 nothing," said Roger. "But leaving alone about 
 right and wrong, what is to make you do any- 
 thing?" 
 
 "Because I choose," said I, "or some one else 
 chooses." 
 
 "But what makes you choose?" said he. "What 
 made you choose, for instance, to come here this 
 afternoon?" 
 
 "Because you wished it, and because it was a 
 fine afternoon ; and we always do when it is," said I. 
 
 "Then you chose it because of something in you 
 which makes you like to please me, and because the 
 sun was shining. Neither of which you could help; 
 therefore you could not help choosing-, therefore you 
 did not really choose at all." 
 
 "I did choose, Roger," said I. "I might have 
 felt cross, and chosen to disappoint you, if I had 
 liked." 
 
 "But you are not cross; you are good-tempered, 
 on the whole, so you could not help liking to please 
 me. 
 
 "But I am cross sometimes with Placidia," I 
 said. 
 
 "That is because, as Aunt Gretel says, your
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 27 
 
 temper is like what our mother's was, quick but 
 sweet," said he; "and that is a deeper puzzle still, 
 because it goes further back than you and your 
 character, to our mother's character, that is to say, 
 and if to hers, no one can say how much further, 
 probably as far as Eve." 
 
 "But sometimes," said I, "for instance, when 
 you talk like this, my temper is tempted to be cross 
 even with you, Roger. But I choose to keep my 
 temper, and it must be I myself that choose, and 
 not my temper or my mother's." 
 
 "That is because, of the two motives, the one 
 which inclines you to keep your temper is stronger 
 than the one which inclines you to lose it," said he. 
 "But there is always something before your choice 
 to make you choose, so that really you must choose 
 what you do, and therefore you do not really choose 
 at all." 
 
 "But I do choose, Roger," said I. "I choose 
 this instant to jump down from this tree — so — 
 and go home." 
 
 "That proves nothing," said he, following me 
 down from the tree with provoking coolness; "you 
 chose to jump down, because there is a wilful feel- 
 ing in you which made you choose it, and that is 
 part of your character, and probably can be traced 
 back to Eve, and proves exactly what I say."
 
 28 THE DRAY TONS AND THE DAVEXAXTS: 
 
 "I am not free to do right or wTong, or any- 
 thing, Eoger!" I said. "Then I might as well be 
 a horse, or a tree, or a stone." 
 
 "I suppose you might, if you were," said Roger 
 drily. 
 
 "Is there no way out of the puzzle, Eoger?" I 
 said. 
 
 "I do not see any," he said, "at least, not by 
 thinking. But there seems to me no end to the 
 puzzles, if one begins to think." 
 
 He did not seem to mind it at all, but rather to 
 enjoy it, as if it were a mere tossing of mental balls 
 and catching them. 
 
 But I, on the other hand, was in great bewilder- 
 ment and heaviness; for I felt like being a ball my- 
 self, tossed helplessly round and round, without 
 seeing any beginning or end to it, and it made me 
 very unhappy. 
 
 We came back to the house at supper-time with 
 a vague sense of some judgment hanging over our 
 heads. Aunt Dorothy met us in the porch with a 
 switch in her hand. 
 
 "Naughty children," said she; "Placidia says she 
 heard you using profane language in the apple-tree, 
 taking God's holy name in vain." 
 
 "I was not speaking so much of God, Aunt 
 Dorothy," said I in confusion, "as of the devil."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL AVARS. 29 
 
 "Worse again," said Aunt Dorothy, "that is 
 swearing downright. It is as bad as the cavaliers 
 at the Court. Hold out your hand, Roger; and Olive, 
 go to bed without supper." 
 
 Roger scorned any self-defence. He held out his 
 hand, and received three sharp switches without 
 flinching. Only at the end he said, — 
 
 "Now I shall tell my father how Placidia stole 
 the apples, and get justice done to Olive." 
 
 "You will tell your father nothing, sir," said 
 Aunt Dorothy. "I have sent Placidia to bed three 
 hours ago for tale-bearing, and given her the chapter 
 in the Proverbs to learn. And you will sit down 
 and learn the same, and both of you say it to me 
 to-morrow morning before breakfast." 
 
 This was what Aunt Dorothy considered even- 
 handed justice. Time, she said, was too precious to 
 spend in searching out the rights of children's quar- 
 rels, and human nature being depraved as it is, all 
 accusations had probably some ground of truth, and 
 all accusers some wrong motive. And in all quar- 
 rels there is always, said she, fault on both sides. 
 She therefore punished accused and accuser alike, 
 without further investigation. I have observed some- 
 thing of the same plan pursued since by some per- 
 sons who aspire to the character of impartial historians. 
 But it never struck me as quite fair in the historians
 
 30 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 or in Aunt Dorotliy. However, I must say, in Aunt 
 Dorothy's case tliis mode of administering justice had 
 a tendency to check accusations. It must have been 
 an unusually strong desire of vengeance, or sense of 
 wrong, which induced us to draw up an indictment 
 which was sure to be visited with equal severity on 
 plaintiff and defendant. And although our sense of 
 justice was not satisfied, and Eoger and I in con- 
 sequence formed ourselves into a permanent Com- 
 mittee of Grievances, the peace of the household 
 was perhaps on the whole promoted by the system. 
 The embittering effects were, moreover, softened in 
 our case by the presence of other counteracting ele- 
 ments. 
 
 I had not been long in bed according to the de- 
 crees of Justice in the person of Aunt Dorothy, when 
 Mercy, in the person of Aunt Gretel , came to bind 
 up my wounds. 
 
 "Olive, my little one," said she, sitting down on 
 the side of my bed, "what hast thou been saying? 
 Thou wouldst not surely say anything ungrateful 
 against the dear Lord and Saviour?" 
 
 Whereupon I buried my face in the bed-clothes, 
 and sobbed so that the bed shook under me. 
 
 She took my hand, and bending over me, said 
 tenderly, — 
 
 "Poor little one! Thou must not break thy
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 31 
 
 heart. The good Lord will forgive, Olive, will 
 forgive all. Tell me what it is, darling, and don't 
 be afraid." 
 
 Still I sobbed on; when she said, — 
 "If thou canst not tell me, tell the dear Saviour. 
 He is gentler than poor Aunt Gretel, and knows 
 thee better. Only, do not be afraid of Him; no- 
 thing grieves Him like that, sweet heart; anything 
 but that." 
 
 Then I grew a little calmer, and moaned out, — 
 "Indeed, Aunt Gretel, I did not mean anything 
 wicked. But it is so hard to understand. There are 
 so many things I cannot make out. And oh, if I 
 should be on the wrong side of the tree after all! If 
 I should be on the wrong side of the tree!" 
 
 And at the thought my sobs burst forth afresh. 
 Aunt Gretel was sorely perplexed. She said, — 
 "What tree, little one? Where is thy poor brain 
 wandering?" 
 
 "The tree with God at the beginning," said I, 
 "and with heaven at one end and hell at the other, 
 and no way to cross over if once you get wrong, 
 and God never seeming to mind." 
 
 "A very wicked tree," said Aunt Gretel. "I 
 never heard of it. The only tree in the Bible is the 
 Tree of Life. And of that the blessed Lord will 
 give freely to every one who comes — the fruit for
 
 32 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 life, aud tlie leaves for healing. Never mind the 
 other, sweet heart." 
 
 "If there were only a way across!" said I; "and 
 if I could be sure God did care!" 
 
 "There is a way across, my lamb," said she. 
 "Only it is not a way. It is but a step. It is a 
 look. It is a touch. For the way across is the 
 blessed Saviour himself. And He is always nearer 
 than I am now, if you could only see." 
 
 "And Grod does care," said I, "whether we are 
 lost or saved?" 
 
 "Care! little Olive," said she. "Hast thou for- 
 gotten the manger and the cross? That comes of 
 trying to see back to the beginning. He was in the 
 beginning, sweet heart, but not thou or I! He is 
 the beginning every day and for ever to us. Look 
 to Him. His face is shining on you now, watching 
 you tenderly, as if it were your mother's, my poor 
 motherless lamb. Whatever else is dark , that is 
 plain. And you never meant to grieve or question 
 Him! You did not mean to say tlje darkness was 
 in Him, Olive! You never meant that. Put the 
 darkness anywhere but there, sweet heart; anywhere 
 but there. There is darkness enough, in good sooth. 
 But in Him is no darkness at all." And then she 
 murmured half to herself, "It is very strange. Dr. 
 Luther made it all so plain, more than a hundred
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 33 
 
 years ago. And it seems as if it all bad to be done 
 over again." 
 
 "Didst tbou say tby prayers, my lamb?" sbe 
 added. / 
 
 I bad. But it was sweet to kneel down witb 
 Aunt Gretel again, witb ber arms and ber warm 
 dress folded around me, and say tbe words after ber 
 — tbe Our Fatber, and tbe prayer for fatber, and 
 Roger, and all. 
 
 But wben I came to ask a blessing on Cousin 
 Placidia, my lips seemed unable to frame tbe words. 
 
 "Tbou didst not pray for tby cousin, Olive," 
 said Aunt Gretel. 
 
 "Sbe is so very difficult to love, Aunt Gretel," 
 said I; "sbe often makes me do wrong. And I bit 
 ber finger tins morning." 
 
 Aunt Gretel sbook ber bead. 
 
 "Poor little one," said sbe. "Ab, yes! it is 
 always bardest to forgive tbose we bave burt." 
 
 "But sbe pincbed my arm wbere no one could 
 see," said I. 
 
 "It will not belp tbee to tbink of tbat, poor 
 lamb," said Aunt Gretel-, "wbat tbou bast to do is 
 to forgive. Tbink of wbat will belp tbee to do tbat." 
 
 "I can't tbink of anytbing tbat belps me," said I. 
 
 "Dost tbou wisb anytbing bad to bappen to thy 
 cousin?" said Aunt Gretel after a pause. "If tbou 
 
 The DraijfoHs and the Davenauts. I. 3
 
 34 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 couldst bring txouble on lier by praying for it, wouldst 
 tliou do it?" 
 
 "No; not from God," said I. "Of course I could 
 not ask anything bad from God." 
 
 "Then wouldst thou ask thy father to send 
 her away, poor neglected orphan child that she 
 was?" 
 
 "No, no, Aunt Gretel," I said; "not that. But 
 I should like to see her punished by Aunt Dorothy." 
 
 "How much?" said Aunt Gretel. 
 
 "I am not sure. Only as much as she quite de- 
 serves." 
 
 "That would be a good deal for us all," said she; 
 " perhaps even for thee a little more than going to bed 
 one night without supper." 
 
 "Then, until she was good," said I. 
 
 "Thou wishest thy cousin to be good, then?" 
 said Aunt Gretel. "Then thou canst at least pray 
 for that." 
 
 "It would make the house like the garden of 
 Eden, I think," I said, "before the tempter came, if 
 Placidia were only not so provoking." 
 
 "Would it?" said she gravely. "Art thou then 
 always so good? Then perhaps thou canst ask that 
 thy cousin's trespasses may be forgiven even if thou 
 canst not forgive her, and hast none of thine own to 
 be forgiven!"
 
 A STOUY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 35 
 
 "0 Aunt Gretel," said I, suddenly perceiving 
 her meaning, "I see it all now! It is the bit of ice 
 in my own heart that made everything dark and cold 
 to me. It is the bit of ice in my own heart!" 
 
 She smiled, and folded me to her heart. 
 
 And then she prayed once more for Placidia the 
 orphan, and for me, and Roger, that God in His 
 great pity would bless us, and forgive us, and make 
 us good, and loving, and like Himself, and his dear 
 Son who suffered for us and bore our sins. 
 
 And after that I did not so much care even whether 
 Roger brought the answer he promised from Oxford 
 or not. 
 
 And it flashed on me for an instant, as if the 
 answer to Roger's other puzzle might come some- 
 how from the same point; as if it answered every- 
 thing to the heart to think, that light and not dark- 
 ness, love and not necessity, are at the innermost 
 heart of all. For love is at once perfect freedom 
 and inevitable necessity. 
 
 But before I fell asleep, while Aunt Gretel was 
 still sitting on the bedside with her knitting, I heard 
 her say to herself, — 
 
 "Not so very strange — not so strange after all, 
 although Dr. Luther did make it all clear as sun- 
 shine more than a hundred years ago. It is that bit 
 
 3*
 
 36 THE DRA.YXONS AND THE DAVEKANTS: 
 
 of ice in the heart — that bit of ice that is always 
 freezing afresh in the heart." 
 
 But Aunt Dorothy, on a night's consideration, 
 thought the affair of the apple-tree too important to 
 be passed over, as most of our childish quarrels were, 
 without troubling my father about them. 
 
 Accordingly, the next morning we were sum- 
 moned into my father's 2)rivate room, where he re- 
 ceived his rents as a landlord, and sentenced offenders 
 as a magistrate, and kept his law books, and many 
 other great hereditary folios on divinity, philosophy, 
 and things in general. A very solemn proceeding 
 for me that morning, my conscience oppressed with 
 a sense of having done some wrong intentionally, 
 and I knew not how much more without intend- 
 ing it. 
 
 Gradually, Koger and I standing on the other 
 side of the table, with the law books and the mathe- 
 matical instruments my father was so fond of be- 
 tween us, he drew from us what had been the sub- 
 ject of our conversation. 
 
 Then, to my surj)rise, as we stood awaiting our 
 sentence, he called me gently to him, and seating 
 me on his knee, pointed out a paper spread on a 
 huge folio volume which lay open before him. It 
 was a diagram of the sun and the planets, with the 
 four moons of Jupiter, the earth and the moon, com-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 37 
 
 plicated by circles and lines mysteriously intersect- 
 ing each other. 
 
 "Olive," said he, "be so good as to explain that 
 to me. It is made by a gentleman who learned about 
 it from the great astronomer Galileo, and is meant 
 to explain how the earth and the sun are kept in 
 their places." I looked at the complication of figures 
 and lines and magical-looking signs, and then in his 
 face to see what he could mean. 
 
 "You do not understand it!" he said, as if he 
 were surprised. 
 
 "Father," said I, "a little child like me!" 
 
 "And yet this is only a drawing of a little corner 
 of the world, Olive — the sun and the earth and a 
 few of the planets in the nook of the world in which 
 we live. The whole universe is a good deal harder 
 to understand than this." 
 
 "Father," said I, ashamed and blushing, "indeed 
 I never thought I could understand these things, at 
 least not yet-, I only thought you might, or some 
 wise people somewhere." 
 
 "Olive," said he, in a low voice, tenderly and 
 reverently stroking my head while he spoke, "be- 
 fore the great mysteries you and Roger have fallen 
 on, I can only wonder, and wait, and say like you, 
 ''Father, a little child like me!'' And I do not think 
 the great Galileo himself could do much more."
 
 do THE DRAYIONS AND THI;; DAVENANTS: 
 
 But to Eoger he said, rising and laying' liis liaud 
 on his shoulder, — 
 
 "Exercise your wits as much as you can, my 
 boy, but there are two kinds of roads I advise you 
 for the most part to eschew. One kind are the roads 
 that lead to the edge of the great darkness which 
 skirts our little patch of light on every side. The 
 other are the roads that go in a circle, leading you 
 round and round with much toil to the point from 
 which you started. I do not say, never travel on 
 these; you cannot always help it. Nor do I think 
 you should always wish to help it if you could. I 
 deem it one of our highest means of grace to stand 
 alone at times, on the edge of this world of ours, 
 when the veil of our daylight is drawn back, and to 
 look out into the infinite spaces of the night; hum- 
 bling and most exalting, if we remember that the 
 night is really only on the earth whence we are 
 looking, not among the stars at which we gaze. But 
 for the most part exercise yourself on the roads 
 which lead somewhere. The exercise is as good, 
 and the result better." And he was about to send 
 us away. 
 
 But Aunt Dorothy was not at all satisfied. "That 
 Signor Galileo was a very dangerous person," she 
 said. "He said the sun went round, and the earth 
 stood still, which was contrary at once to common
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 39 
 
 sense, the five senses, and Scripture; and if chits 
 like Roger and me were allowed to enter on such 
 false philosophy at our age, where should we have 
 wandered by hers?" 
 
 "Not much further, sister Dorothy," said my 
 father, " if they reached the age of Methuselah. Not 
 much further into the question, and not much nearer 
 tlie answer." 
 
 "I see no difficulty in the question at all," said 
 Aunt Dorothy. "The Almighty does everything 
 because it is His will to do it. And we can do no- 
 thing except He wills us to do it. Which answers 
 Olive and Roger at once. All doubts are sins, and 
 ought to be crushed at the beginning." 
 
 "How would you do this, sister Dorothy?" asked 
 my father; "a good many persons have tried it be- 
 fore and failed." 
 
 "How! the simplest thing in the world," said 
 Aunt Dorothy. "In the first place, set people to 
 work, so that tliey have no time for such foolish 
 questions, and genealogies, and contentions." 
 
 "A wholesome plan, which seems to be very 
 generally pursued with regard to the whole human 
 race," said father. "It is mercifully provided that 
 those who have leisure for such questions are few. 
 But what else would you do?" 
 
 "For the children there is the switch," said Aunt
 
 40 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Dorothy. "They would be thankful enough for it 
 when they grew wiser." 
 
 "So think the Pope and Archbishop Laud," re- 
 plied my father; "and so they set up the Inquisition 
 and the Star Chamber." 
 
 "I have no fault to find with the Inquisition and 
 the Star Chamber," said Aunt Dorothy, "if they 
 would only punish the right people." 
 
 "But sometimes we learn we have been mistaken 
 ourselves," said father. "How can we be sure we 
 are absolutely right about everything?" 
 
 " /am," said Aunt Dorothy, emphatically. " Thank 
 Heaven, I have not a doubt about anything. Heresy 
 is worse than treason, for it is treason against God, 
 and worse than murder, for it is the murder of im- 
 mortal souls. The fault of the Pope and Arch- 
 bishop Laud is, that they are heretics themselves, 
 and punish the wrong people. 
 
 This was a point often reached in discussions 
 between my father and Aunt Dorothy, but this time 
 it was happily closed by the clatter of a horse's 
 hoofs on the pavement of the court before the 
 house. 
 
 My father's face brightened, and he rose hastily, 
 exclaiming, "A welcome guest, sister Dorothy — 
 the Lord of the Fens — set the table in the wain- 
 scotted parlour."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 41 
 
 He left the room, and we cliildren watched a 
 tall, stalwart gentleman, well known to ixs, with a 
 healthy, sunburnt face, alight from his horse. 
 
 "The Lord of the Fens, indeed!" said Aunt 
 Dorothy, in a disappointed tone, as she looked ou.t 
 of the window. "Why, it is only Mr. Oliver Crom- 
 well of Ely, with his coat as slovenly as usual, and 
 his hat without a hat-baud. I am as much against 
 gewgaws as any one. If I had my way, not a 
 slashed doublet, or ribboned hose, or feather, or 
 lace, should be seen in the kingdom. But there is 
 reason in all things. Gentlemen should look like 
 gentlemen, and a hat withou.t a hat-band is going 
 too far, in all conscience. The wainscotted parlour, 
 in good sooth! Why, his boots are covered with 
 mud, and I dare warrant it, he will never think of 
 rubbing them on the straw in the hall. And they 
 will get talking, no one knows how long, about that 
 everlasting draining of the Fens. I can't think why 
 they won't let the Fens alone. They did very well 
 for our fathers as they were, and they were better 
 men than we see now-a-days; and if the Almighty 
 made the Fens wet, I suppose He meant them to be 
 wet; and people had better take care how they run 
 against His designs. And they say the king is 
 against it, or against somebody concerned in it, so 
 that there is no knowing what it may lead to. All
 
 42 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Scotland in a tumult, and the godly languishing in 
 prison, and our parson puttirig on some new fur- 
 below and setting up some new fandango every 
 Sabbath; and a godly gentleman like Mr. Oliver 
 Cromwell (for he is that, I don't deny) to have no- 
 thing better to do than to try and squeeze a few 
 acres more of dry land out of the Fens!" 
 
 But Eoger whispered to me — 
 
 "Mr. Hampden says Mr. Cromwell would be the 
 greatest man in England if things should come to 
 the worst, and there should be any disturbance with 
 the king." 
 
 At that moment my father called Roger, and to 
 his delight he was allowed to accompany him and 
 our guest over the farm. 
 
 And the next entry in my Journal is this: — 
 
 "]Mr. Oliver CromweU of Ely was at our house yester- 
 day. Roger walked over the farm with him aud my father. 
 Their discoui'se was concerning twenty shillings which the 
 king wants to obhge Mr. Hamjiden of Great Hampden to 
 lend him , which Mr. Hampden will not 5 not because he 
 cannot aiford it, but because the king would then be able 
 to make every one lend him money whether they like it or 
 not, or whether they are able or not. They call it the ship- 
 money. Concerning this, and also concerning some good 
 men, ministers or lecturers , whom Mr. Cromwell wishes to 
 set to preach the Gosj^el to the jjeople in jilaces where no 
 one else preaches, so that they can understand, but whom 
 Archbishop Laud has silenced with fines and many thi'eats.
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 43 
 
 Aunt J)orotliy thinks it a pity godly men like Mr. Hampden 
 and Mr. Cromwell ahould concern themselves about such 
 poor worldly tilings as shillings and pence, liegarding the 
 lecturers, she says they have more reason. Only, she says, 
 it is a wonder to her they will begin with such small in- 
 significant things. Let them set to work, root and brauch 
 (says she) , against Popery under false names and in high 
 places, and these lesser matters will take care of them- 
 selves. But father says, 'jjoor worldly things' are just the 
 things by which Ave are tried and proved whether we Avill 
 be faithful to the higli unworldly calling or not. And 
 'small, insignificant things' are the beginnings of every- 
 thing that lives and eudm-es, from a British oak to the 
 kingdom of heaven."
 
 44 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 n. 
 
 "May Dm/, 1658. 
 
 This morning, before break of day, I went to bathe my 
 face in !tlie IMay dew by the Lady Well. There I met 
 Lettice Davenant with her maidens. She was dressed in 
 a kirtle of grass-green silk, with a blue taffetas i^etticoat; 
 and her eyes were like wet \'iolets, and her brown hair like 
 wavy tangles of soft glossy mispun silk, specked and 
 woven with gold; and she looked like a sweet May flower, 
 just lifting itself out of its green sheath into the sunshine, 
 and all the colours changing and interweaving into each 
 other, as they do in the flowers. And she laid her soft, 
 little hand in mine , and said her mother loved mine , and 
 she wished I would love her, and be her friend. And she 
 kissed me with her dear, sweet little mouth, like a rosebud 
 — like a child's. And I held her close in my anns, with 
 her silky hair falling on my shoidder. She is just so much 
 shorter than I am. And her heart beat on mine. And 1 
 will love her all my life. No wonder Roger thinks her fail-. 
 
 "I will love her all my life, whatever Aunt Dorothy 
 says. 
 
 "Firstly, because I cannot help it. And secondly, be- 
 cause I am sure it is right — right — right to love; always 
 right to love — to love as much, as dearly, as long, as 
 deep as we can. Always right to love , never right to de- 
 spise, or keep aloof, or turn aside. Sometimes right to 
 hate, at least I think so; sometimes right to be angry, I 
 am sm-e of that; but never right to despise; and always, 
 always right to love. 
 
 "For Roger and I have looked well all through the
 
 A STORY or THE CIVIL WARS. 45 
 
 Gospels to sec. And the Pharisee despised, the priest and 
 the Levite passed by, and the disciples said once or twice, 
 Send her away. But the Lord drew near, called them to 
 Him, touched, took in His arms, loved, always loved. 
 Loved Avhen they were wandering — loved when they would 
 not come; loved even when they 'went away.' 
 
 "And Aunt Gretel thinks the same. Only I sometimes 
 wish we had lived in the times she speaks of, told of in 
 certain Family Chronicles of hers, a century old. For then 
 it was the peojile with the wrong religion who despised 
 others , and were harsh and severe. And they went into 
 convents , which must have been a great relief to the rest 
 of the family. And now it seems to be the peoj)le with the 
 right religion who do like the Pharisees. And they stay 
 at home , which is more difficult to understand , and more 
 unpleasant to bear." 
 
 A very veliement utterance, crossed througli with 
 repentant lines in after times, but still quite legible, 
 and of interest to me for the vanished outer world 
 of life, and the tumultuous inward world of revolt it 
 recalls. 
 
 For that May morning, on my way home through 
 the wood, I met the village lads and lasses bringing 
 home the May; and when I reached the house, it 
 was late; the serving men and maidens had finished 
 their meal at the long table in the hall, and Aunt 
 Dorothy sat at one end of the table, which crossed 
 it at the top, and span; and Cousin Placidia sat 
 silent at the other end and span, the whirr of their 
 spinning-wheels distinctly reproaching me in a steady
 
 46 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVEUANTS: 
 
 hum of displeasure, until I was constrained to reply 
 to it and to Aunt Dorothy's silence. 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy, prithee, forgive me. I only went 
 to bathe my face in the May dew by the Lady Well. 
 And there I met Lettice Davenant." 
 
 "I never reproached thee, child," said Aunt 
 Dorothy. "There is too much license in this house 
 for that. But this I will say, the excuse is worse 
 than the fault. How often have I told thee not to 
 stain thy lips with the idolatrous title of that well? 
 And as to bathing thy face in the May dew, Olive, 
 it is Popery — sheer Popery." 
 
 "Not Popery, sister Dorothy," said my father, 
 looking up from his sheet of news just brought from 
 London. "Not Popery; Paganism. The custom 
 dates back to the ancient Romans, probably to the 
 festival of the goddess Maia, mother of Mercury; 
 but here antiquarians are divided." 
 
 "And well they may be," said Aunt Dorothy; 
 "what but sects and divisions can be expected from 
 such tampering with vanities and idolatries? For my 
 part, it matters little to me whether the custom dates 
 to the modern or the ancient Romans, or to the 
 Hittites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, and the Jebu- 
 sites. Wlioever painted the idol, I have little doubt 
 who made it. And of the two, I like the unchristened 
 idols best."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 47 
 
 "Not quite, sister Dorothy, not always," remon- 
 strated my father. "It is certainly a great mistake 
 to worship the Virgin Mary. But the Moloch to 
 whom they burned little children was worse, much 
 worse." 
 
 "If he was, the less we hear about him the better, 
 brother," said Auut Dorothy. "But as to the burn- 
 ing, I see little difference. You can see the black 
 sites of Queen Mary's fires still. And Lettice Dave- 
 nant has been up at the court of the new Queen 
 Marie (as they call her); — an unlucky name for 
 England. And little good she or hers are like to do 
 to ovir Olive." 
 
 On which I turned wholly into a boiling caldron 
 of indignation; and to what it might have led I 
 know not, had not Aunt Gretel at that moment in- 
 tervened, ruddy from the kitchen fire, and with the 
 glow of a pleasant purpose in her kindly blue eyes. 
 
 "They are like to have the blithest May to-day 
 they have seen for many a year," said she. "Our 
 Margery, the daughter of Tib the dairywoman, is to 
 be qiieen. And a better maiden or a sweeter face 
 tliere is not in all the country side. And Dickon, 
 the gardener's son at the Hall, is her sweetheart; 
 and the Lady Lucy Davenant has let them deck the 
 bower with posies from her own garden; and they 
 are coming from the Hall — the Lady Lucy and Sir
 
 48 THE DRAYTONS AND THfi DAVENANTS : 
 
 Walter, and Mistress Lettice and her seven brothers 
 — to see the jollity." 
 
 "Tell Tib's goodman to broach a barrel of the 
 best ale, sister Gretel," said my father, "and we will 
 go and see." 
 
 This was said in the tone Aunt Dorothy never 
 answered, and she made no remonstrance except 
 through the whirr of her spinning-wheel, which always 
 seemed to Roger and me to be a kind of "/«»^«Z^w," 
 or a secondself to Aunt Dorothy (of course of a 
 white, not a black kind), saying the thing she meant 
 but would not say, and in a thousand ways spinning- 
 out and completing, not her thread only, but her life 
 and thought. 
 
 My father soon rose and went to the farm. Aunt 
 Dorothy span silent at one end of the table, and 
 Cousin Placidia at the other, while I sat too in- 
 dignant to eat anything, and Aunt Gretel moved 
 about in a helpless, conciliatory state between. 
 
 "The Bible does speak of being merry, sister 
 Dorothy," said she at length, metaphorically putting 
 her foot into Aunt Dorothy's spiritual spinning, as 
 she was wont to do. 
 
 "No doubt it does," said Aunt Dorothy. "'Is 
 any merry among you, let him sing psalms.' " 
 
 "lam sure I wish they would," said Aunt Gretel ; 
 "there is nothing I enjoy so much. And," pursued
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 49 
 
 she, waxing bold, "after all, sister Dorothy, the whole 
 world does seem to sing and dance in the green May: 
 the little birds hop and sing (sing love-songs too, 
 sister Dorothy), and the leaves dance and rustle, and 
 the flowers don all the colours of the rainbow." 
 
 "As to the flowers," said Aunt Dorothy, "they 
 did not choose their own raiment, so no blame to 
 them, poor perishing things. I hold they were clothed 
 in their scarlet and purple, like fools in motley, for 
 the very purpose of shaming us into being sober and 
 grave in our attire. The birds, indeed, may hop and 
 sing if they like it. Not that I think they have 
 much cause, poor inconsiderate creatures, what with 
 the birds'-nesting, and the poaching, and Mr. Crom- 
 well draining the fens. But they have no foresight, 
 and they have not immortal souls; and if they're to 
 be in a pie to-morrow they don't know it, and they 
 are no worse for it the day after." 
 
 "But," said Aunt Gretel, "we have immortal 
 souls, and I think that ought to make us sing a 
 thousand-fold better than the birds." 
 
 "We have not only souls, we have sins," said 
 Aunt Dorothy; "and there is enough in sin, I hold, 
 to stop the sweetest music in the world when the 
 burden is felt." 
 
 "But we have the Gospel and the Saviour," said 
 Aunt Gretel; "glad tidings of great joy to all people." 
 
 The Draytons and the Davenants. I. 4
 
 50 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "Tell tbem, then, to the people," said Aunt 
 Dorottiy, "get a godly minister to go and preach 
 them to the poor sinners in the village, and that will 
 be better than setting vip May-poles and broaching 
 beer barrels." 
 
 "I do tell them whenever I can, sister Dorothy," 
 said Aunt Gretel meekly, "as well as I can. But 
 the best of us cannot always be listening to ser- 
 mons." 
 
 "We might listen much longer than we do if we 
 tried," said Aunt Dorothy, branching off from the 
 subject. "In Scotland, I am told, the Sabbath ser- 
 vices last twelve hours." 
 
 Aunt Gretel sighed; whether in compassion for 
 the Scottish congregations, or in lamentation over her 
 own shortcomings, she did not explain. 
 
 "But," she resumed, "it does seem that if the 
 good God meant that there should have been no 
 merry-making in the world, he would have arranged 
 that people should have come into the world full- 
 grown." 
 
 "Probably it would have been better if it could 
 have been so managed," said Aunt Dorothy; "but I 
 suppose it could not. However that may be, the best 
 we can do now is to make people grow up as soon 
 as they can, and not keep them babies with May 
 games, and junketings, and possetings."
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 51 
 
 "But," said Aunt Grretel timidly, "after all, sister 
 Dorothy, the Bible does not give us any strict rules 
 by which we can judge other people in such things." 
 
 "I confess," replied Aunt Dorothy, "that if there 
 could be a thing to be wished for in the Bible (with 
 reverence I say it), it is just that there loere a few 
 plain rules. St. Paul came very near it when he 
 was speaking of the weak brethren at the idol-feasts ; 
 but I confess I do think it would have been a help 
 if he had gone a little further while he was about it. 
 Then, people would not have been able to pretend 
 they did not know what he meant. I do think it 
 would have been a comfort if there could have been 
 a book of Leviticus in the New Testament." 
 
 "But your Mr. John Milton," said Aunt Gretel, 
 "in his new masque of Comus, which your brother 
 thinks beautiful, introduces mnsic and dancing." 
 
 "Mr. Milton is a godly man," said Aunt Dorothy, 
 "but, poor gentleman, he is a poet; and poets cannot 
 always be expected to keep straight, like reasonable 
 people." 
 
 "But Dr. Martin Luther himself dearly loved 
 music," said Aunt Gretel, driven to her final court of 
 appeal, "and even sanctioned dancing, in a Christian- 
 like way, without rioting and drunkenness." 
 
 " Dr. Luther might," rejoined Aunt Dorothy. " Dr. 
 Luther believed in consubstantiation , and rejected 
 
 4*
 
 52 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 the Epistle of St. James. And, besides, by tliis time 
 he has been in heaven, it is to be hoped, for nearly 
 a hundred years, and there can be no doubt he knows 
 better." 
 
 Aunt Gretel was roused. 
 
 "Sister Dorothy," she said, "Dr. Luther does not 
 need to be defended by me. But I sometimes think, 
 if he came to England in these days, he would think 
 some of you had gone some way towards painting 
 again that terrible jjicture of God, which made the 
 little ones fly from Him instead of taking refuge 
 with Him, and which it took him so much toil to 
 destroy." 
 
 And she fled to the kitchen, rosier than she 
 came , but with tears instead of smiles in her eyes. 
 
 "If people could enjoy themselves harmlessly, 
 without rioting and drunkenness," said Aunt Dorothy, 
 half yielding, "there might be less to be said 
 against it." 
 
 "What is rioting, Aunt Dorothy?" asked Placidia 
 from her spinning-wheel. 
 
 "Idling and romping, and doing what had better 
 not be done or talked about." 
 
 "Because, Aunt Dorothy," said Placidia solemnly, 
 "I saw Dickon trying to kiss our Tib's daughter, 
 Margery, behind the door; and she would not let
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 53 
 
 him. But she laughed, and did not seem angry. Is 
 that rioting?" 
 
 "Dickon may kiss Margery as often as he likes 
 without hurting you or any one, Placidia," said 
 Aunt Dorothy incautiously. "Margery is a good 
 honest girl, and can take care of herself And you 
 have no right to watch what any one does behind 
 doors. You, at least, shall not go to the May-pole 
 to-day, but shall stay with me and learn the thir- 
 teenth of First Corinthians." 
 
 "I do not wish to go to any rioting or May 
 games," said Placidia. "I like my spinning and 
 my book. I never did care for dancing and play- 
 ing and fooling, Aunt Dorothy, I am thankful to 
 say." 
 
 "Don't be a Pharisee, Placidia," said Aunt 
 Dorothy, turning hotly on her unwelcome ally. 
 "Better play and dance like a flipperty-gibbet , than 
 watch what other people do behind doors, and tell 
 tales." 
 
 And I left them to settle the controversy, while 
 I went to join Aunt Gretel, who was in my father's 
 chamber, preparing for me such sober decorations in 
 honour of the festivities as our Puritan wardrobes 
 admitted of It was a great day for me; chiefly for 
 the expectation of meeting the Lady Lucy and the 
 sweet maiden Lettice.
 
 54 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 I was Starting full of glee when the sight of 
 Auut Dorothy, spinning silently in the hall as we 
 passed the door, with Placidia beside her, threw a 
 little shadow over my contentment. Aunt Dorothy 
 so completely represented to me the majesty of law, 
 and at the bottom of onr hearts both Roger and I 
 so trusted and honoured her, that in spite even of 
 my father's sanction, something of misgiving troubled 
 me at the sight of her grave face. With a sudden 
 impulse I ran back, and, standing before her, 
 said: — 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy, you are not angry? I shall not 
 dance, only look, and soon be at home again, and 
 all will go on the same as ever." 
 
 She shook her head, but more sorrowfully than 
 angrily. 
 
 "Eve only looked," said she, "but nothing went 
 on the same evermore." 
 
 At that moment my father came back to seek 
 me, and catching Auut Dorothy's last words, he 
 said kindly but gravely, "Do not let us trouble the 
 child's conscience with our scruples. It is a serious 
 danger to force our scruples on others. When ex- 
 perience of their own peculiar weaknesses and 
 besetments has led them to scruple at things for 
 themselves, it is another matter. But to add to 
 God's laws is almost as tremendous a mistake as to
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. OO 
 
 subtract from them. Our additions, moreover, are 
 sure to end in subtractions in some other direction. 
 Indifferent things done with a guilty conscience 
 lead to guilty things done with an indifferent con- 
 science. In inventing imaginary sins you create real 
 sinners." 
 
 "Well, brother, it is as you please," said Aunt 
 Dorothy; "but I should have thought our new par- 
 son reading from that blasphemous 'Book of Sports' 
 from the pulpit, commanding the people to dance 
 around the May-poles on the Sabbath afternoons, 
 was enough to turn any serious person against 
 them." 
 
 "Nay; that is exactly one of the strongest reasons 
 why I go to-day," said my father. "I go to show 
 that it is not the May-poles we scruple at, but the 
 cruel robbing of the poor by the desecration of the 
 day given them by God for higher things." 
 
 And he led me away. But my free, innocent 
 gladsomeness was gone. 
 
 Conscience had come in with her questionings, 
 and her discemings, and her dividings. I was not 
 sure whether God was pleased with me or with any 
 of us. Even when I looked at the garlanded May- 
 pole, I thought of the old tree in Eden with its 
 pleasant fruit, which I had embroidered with a ser-
 
 56 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 pent coiled round it, darting out his forked tongue 
 at Eve. I wondered whether if my eyes were 
 opened I should see him there, writhing among the 
 hawthorn garlands, or hissing envenomed words 
 into the ear of our Tib's Margery as she sat in her 
 royal bower of green boughs crowned with flowers, 
 or gliding in and out among the dancers, as hand 
 in hand they moved singing around the May-pole, 
 wreathing and unwreathing the long garland which 
 united them, and making low reverences, as they 
 passed, to their blushing Queen. I wondered 
 whether the whole thing had some mysterious con- 
 nection with idolatry, and heaven itself were after 
 all watching us with gi-ieved displeasure, like Aunt 
 Dorothy, and secretly preparing fiery sei'pents, or a 
 rain of fire and brimstone, or a thunderstorm, or 
 whatever came instead of fiery serpents and fire and 
 brimstone in these days when there were no more 
 miracles. 
 
 These thoughts, however, all vanished when the 
 family appeared from the Hall. The Lady Lucy 
 was borne by two nien in a sedan-chair which she 
 had brought from London, a thing I had never seen 
 before. It so happened that I had never seen the 
 Lady Lucy until that day. The family had been 
 much about the court, and on the few occasions on 
 which they had spent any time at the Hall, the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 57 
 
 Lady Lucy's health had been too feeble to admit 
 of her attending at the parish-church with the rest 
 of the family. From the moment, therefore, that 
 Sir Walter handed her out of the chair and seated 
 her on cushions prepared for her, I could not take 
 my eyes from her, not even to look at Lettice. So 
 queenly she appeared to me, such a perfection of 
 grace and dignity and beauty. Her complexion 
 was fair like Lettice's, but very delicate and pale, 
 like a shell; and her hair, still brown and abundant, 
 was arranged in countless small ringlets around her 
 face. On her neck and her forehead there was a 
 brilliant sparkle and a glitter, which must, of course, 
 have been from jewels; and her dress had a sheen 
 and a gloss, and a delicate changing of gorgeous 
 colours on it which must have been that of velvet 
 and brocade and rare laces. But in my eyes she 
 sat wrapped in a kind of halo of unearthly glory. 
 I no more thought of resolving it into the texture of 
 any earthly looms than if she had been a lily or a 
 star. All around her seemed to belong to her, like 
 the moon-beams to the moon or the leaves to a 
 flower. Not her dress only, but the green leaves 
 which bent lovingly down to her, and the flowery 
 turf which seemed to kiss her feet. If I thought of 
 any comparison, it was Aunt Gretel's fairy tale of 
 the princess with the three magic robes, enclosed in
 
 58 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 the magic nut-shells, like the sun, like the moon, 
 and like the stars. 
 
 Even Sir Walter, burly, and sturdy, and noisy, 
 and substantial as he was, seemed to me to acquire 
 a kind of reflected glory by her speaking to him. 
 And her seven sons girdled her like the planets 
 around the sun, or like the seven electors Aunt 
 Gretel told us about around the emperor. But when 
 at last her eyes rested on me, and she whispered 
 something to Sir Walter, and he came across and 
 doffed his plumed hat to my father, and then led 
 me across to her, and she looked long in my face, 
 and then up in my father's, and said, "The likeness 
 is perfect," and then kissed me, and made me sit 
 down on the cushion beside her with her hand in 
 mine, I thought her voice like an angel's, and her 
 touch seemed to me to have something hallowing in 
 it which made me feel safe like a little bird under 
 its mother's wing. The silent smile of her soft eyes 
 under her smooth, broad, unfurrowed brow, as she 
 turned every now and then and looked at me, fell 
 on my heart like a kiss. And I thought no more 
 of Eve and the serpent, or Aunt Dorothy, or any- 
 thing, until she rose to go. And then she kissed 
 me again. But I scarcely seemed to care that she 
 should kiss me. Her presence was an embrace; her 
 smile was a kiss; every tone of her voice was a
 
 A STOnV OF THE CIVIL WARS. 59 
 
 caress. A tender motherliness seemed to fold me 
 all round as I sat by her. As she left me she said 
 softly, — 
 
 "Little Olive, you must come and see me. Your 
 mother and I loved each other." Then holding out 
 her hand to my father, she added, — 
 
 "Politics and land-boundaries, Mr. Drayton, must 
 not keep us any longer apart." 
 
 He bowed, and they conversed some time longer; 
 but the only thing I heard was that he promised I 
 should go and see her at the Hall, 
 
 I think every one felt something of the soft 
 charm there was in her. For, quiet and retiring as 
 she was, when she left, a light and gladness 
 seemed to go with her. Before long the dancing 
 and singing stopped, the tables were set on the 
 green, and the feasting began, and we left and went 
 home. 
 
 "Oh, Roger," said I, when we were alone that 
 evening, "there can be no one like her in the 
 world." 
 
 "Of course not," said Eoger decisively. "Did I 
 not always say so?" 
 
 "But you never saw her before." 
 
 "Never saw her, Olive? How can I help seeing 
 her every Sunday. She sits at the end of the pew 
 just opposite mine."
 
 60 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "She never came to church, Roger." 
 
 "Never came to church! Who do you mean?" 
 
 "Mean? The Lady Lucy, to be sui-e." 
 
 "Oh," saidEoger, "I thought, of course, you were 
 speaking of Mistress Lettice." 
 
 But when we came back to I\ etherby, full as my 
 heart was of my new love, there was something in 
 Aunt Dorothy's manner that quite froze any utterance 
 of it, and brought me back to Eve and the apple. 
 Yet she spoke kindly, — 
 
 "Thou lookest serious, Olive," said she. "Per- 
 haps thou didst not find it such a paradise after 
 all. Poor child, the world's is a shallow cup, and 
 the sooner we drain it the better. I think better 
 of thee than that thou wilt long be content with 
 such May games and vanities. Come to thy sup- 
 per." 
 
 But my honesty compelled me to speak. I did 
 not wish Aunt Dorothy to think better of me than 
 I deserved. 
 
 "It loas rather like Paradise, Aunt Dorothy," I 
 said. 
 
 "Paradise around a May-pole," said she compas- 
 sionately. "Poor babe, poor babe!" 
 
 "It was not the May-pole," said I, my face 
 burning at having to bring out my hidden treasure 
 of new love; "not the May-pole, but Lady Lucy."
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 61 
 
 "Lady Lucy took a fancy to tlie cliild, sister 
 Dorothy," said my father, "and asked her to the 
 HaU." And h)wering his voice, he added, "She 
 thought her like Magdalene." 
 
 1 had scarcely ever heard him utter my mother's 
 Christian name before, and now it seemed to fall 
 from his lips like a blessing. 
 
 Aunt Dorothy's brow darkened. 
 
 "Thou wilt never let the child go, brother?" 
 
 He did not at once reply. 
 
 "Into the very jaws of Babylon, brother? The 
 Lady Lucy is one of the favourites, they say, of the 
 Popish queen." 
 
 "Very probably," said my father dryly; "I do 
 not see how the queen or any one else could help 
 honouring or favouring the Lady Lucy." 
 
 My heart bounded in acquiescence. 
 
 " They say she has a chapel at the Hall fitted up 
 on the very pattern of Archbishop Laud, and priests 
 in coats of no one knows how many colours, and 
 painted glass, and incense. Thou wilt never let the 
 poor unsuspecting lamb go into the very lair of the 
 Beast?" 
 
 "There are jewels in many a dust-heap, sister 
 Dorothy, and the Lady Lucy is one," said my father 
 a little impatiently, for Aunt Dorothy had the faculty 
 of arousina: the latent wilfulness of the meekest of
 
 G2 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 men. "Let us say uo more about it. I liave made 
 up my mind." 
 
 Had he known liow deep was tlie spell on me, 
 he might have thought otherwise. For, ungrateful 
 that I was, having lost my heart to this fair strange 
 lady, I sat chafing at Aunt Dorothy's injustice, in 
 a wide-spread inward revolt, which bid fair to ex- 
 tend itself to everything Aunt Dorothy believed or 
 required. All her life-long care and affection, and 
 patient (or impatient) toiling and planning for me 
 and mine, blotted out by what I deemed her blind 
 injustice to the object of my worship, who had 
 but kissed me twice, and smiled on me, and said 
 half-a-dozen soft words, and had won all my childish 
 heart! 
 
 And yet, looking back from these sober hours, I 
 still feel it was not altogether an infatuation. Such 
 true and tender motherliness as dwelt in Lady Lucy 
 is the greatest power, it seems to me, that can invest 
 a woman. 
 
 All mothers certainly do not possess it. On some, 
 on the contrary, the motherly love which passionately 
 enfolds those within is too like a bristling fortifica- 
 tion of jealousy and exclusiveness to those without. 
 Or rather (that I dishonour not the most sacred thing 
 in our nature), I should say, the mother's love which 
 is from above is lowered and narrowed into a passion
 
 A STORY OP THE ClVII; WA1?S. 63 
 
 by the selfisliness which is not from above. And 
 some unmarried -women possess it; some little maidens 
 even, who from infancy draw the little ones to them 
 by a soft irresistible attraction, and seem to fold 
 them under soft dove-like plumage. "Without some- 
 thing of it, women are not women, but only weaker, 
 and shriller, and smaller men. But where, as in 
 Lady Lucy, the whole being is steeped in it, it seems 
 to me the sweetest, strongest, most irresistible gpwer 
 on earth to control, and bless, and purify, and raise, 
 and the truest incarnation (I cannot say anything so 
 cold as image), the truest embodying and ensouling 
 of what is divine. 
 
 But that night it so chanced that I, who had 
 fallen asleep lapped in sweet memories of Lady Lucy 
 and in the protection of Aunt Gretel's presence, was 
 awakened by the long roll of a thunder-peal, which 
 seemed as if it never would end. 
 
 For some time I tried to hide myself from the 
 flash and the terrific sound under the bed-clothes. 
 But it would not do. At length I sprang speechless 
 from my little bed to Aunt Gretel's. She took me 
 in close to her. And there, with my head on her 
 shoulder, speech came back to me, and I said, in a 
 frightened whisper (for it seemed to me like speaking 
 in church), —
 
 64 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "Aunt Gretel, will the last trumpet be like 
 that?" 
 
 "I do not know, Olive," said ske quietly. "More 
 awful, I tkink, yet plainer, for we shall all under- 
 stand it; even those in the graves; and it will call 
 us home." 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Gretel," I said at last, "can it have 
 anything to do with the May-pole?" 
 
 '^What, sweet heart! the thunder?" 
 
 "It is God's voice, is it not? Does not the Bible 
 say so? And it does sound like an angry voice," I 
 whispered, for the windows were rattling and the 
 house was quivering with the repeated peals, as if in 
 the grasp of a terrible giant. 
 
 "There is much indeed to make the good God 
 angry, my lamb, much more than May-poles." 
 
 "Yes," said I, "there were the three gentlemen 
 in the pillory! That must have been worse certainly. 
 But do you think God can be angry with me, Aunt 
 Gretel?" 
 
 "For what, sweet heart?" 
 
 "For loving Lady Lucy," said I; "she is so very 
 sweet." 
 
 "God is never angry with any one for loving," 
 said Aunt Gretel, "only for not loving. But there 
 is a better voice of God than the thunder, Olive,"
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIIi WARS. 65 
 
 added she. "A voice that does not roar but speaks, 
 sweet heart. Hast thou never heard that?" 
 
 I was silent, for I half guessed what she 
 meant. 
 
 "'/i( is /, he not afraid^'''''' she said, in a low, 
 clear tone, contrasting with my awe-stricken whisper. 
 "Whenever thou dost not understand the voice that 
 thunders, sweet heart, go back to the voice that 
 speaks, and that will tell thee what the voice that 
 thunders means." 
 
 "Aunt Gretel," said I, after a little silence, "it 
 seemed to me as if Lady Lacy were like some words 
 of our Saviour's. As if everything in her were 
 saying in a soft dove's voice, 'Suffer the little 
 children to come unto Me.' Was it wrong to think 
 so? It seemed as if I were sitting beside my mother, 
 and then I thought of those very words. Was it 
 wrong?" 
 
 "Not wrong, my poor motherless lamb," said 
 she; "no, surely not wrong. Remember, Olive, from 
 Paradise downwards the worst heresy has been slander 
 of the love of God; distrust of His love, and dis- 
 belief of the awful warnings His love gives against 
 sin. Whenever we feel anything very tender in any 
 human love, we should feel as if the blessed God 
 were stretching out His arms to us through it, and 
 
 The Draytons and the Vavenmits. I. 5
 
 66 THE DKAYTOXS A>"D THB DAVEXANTS : 
 
 saying, 'That is a little like tlie way I love tLee. 
 But only a little, only a little.'" 
 
 And the thunder rolled on, and the lightning 
 that night cleft the great elm by the gate, so that 
 in the morning it stood a scorched and blackened 
 trunk. 
 
 And Aunt Dorothy said what an awful warning 
 it was. But to me, if it was an "awful warning," 
 it stood also like a parable of mercy. I could not 
 exactly have explained why, but I thought I could 
 read the meaning of the Voice that thundered by the 
 Voice that spoke. 
 
 I thought how He had been scathed and bruised 
 for us. 
 
 And I pleaded hard with my farther that the old 
 scathed tree might not be felled. For to me its 
 great bare blackened branches seemed to shelter the 
 house like that accursed tree which had spread its 
 bare arms one Good Friday night outside Jerusalem, 
 and had pleaded not for vengeance, but for pity and 
 for pardon.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 67 
 
 m. 
 
 I THINK the resentment of injustice is one of the 
 first-born and strongest passions in an ingenuous 
 heart. And to this, I believe, is often due the falling 
 off of children from the party of their parents. They 
 hear hard things said of opponents; on closer ac- 
 quaintance they find these to be exaggerations, or, 
 at least, suppressions; the general gloom of a picture 
 being even more produced by effacing lights than by 
 deepening shadows. The discovery throws a doubt 
 over the whole range of inherited beliefs, and it is 
 well if in the heat of youth the revulsion is not far 
 greater than the wrong; if in their indignation at 
 discovering that the heretic is not an embodied 
 heresy, but merely a human creature belie%'iug some- 
 thing wrong, they do not glorify him into a martyr 
 and a model. 
 
 For Roger and me, it was the greatest blessing 
 that our father was just and candid to the extent of 
 seeing (often to his own great distress and per- 
 plexity) even more clearly the defects of his own 
 party which he might correct, than of the other side, 
 which he could not; and that Aunt Gretel was apt 
 
 5*
 
 68 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVESANTS : 
 
 to see all opiuions and characters melted into a haze 
 of indiscriminate sunshine by the light of her own 
 loving heart. 
 
 Our indignation, therefore, during the period of 
 our lives which followed on this May-day was al- 
 most entirely directed against Aunt Dorothy. 
 
 My idol remained for some time precisely at the 
 due idolatrous distance, enshrined in general behind 
 a screen of sweet mystery, with occasional flashes of 
 beatific vision; the intervals filled up with rumours 
 of the music, and breaths of the incense of the inner 
 sanctuary, enhanced by what I deemed the unjust 
 murmurs of the profane outside. 
 
 My father fulfilled his promise of taking me to 
 the Hall. On our way to Lady Lucy's drawing- 
 chamber I caught a glimpse through a half-open 
 door into her private chapel, which left on my me- 
 mory a haze and a fragrance of coloured light falling 
 on the marble pavements thi'ough windows like 
 rubies and sapphires, of golden chalices and cande- 
 labras, of aromatic perfumes, with a rise and fall of 
 sweet chords of sacred music, all blended together 
 into a kind of sacred spell, like the church bells on 
 Sunday across the Mere. The Lady Lucy herself 
 was embroidering a silken church vestment with gold 
 and crimson; skeins of glossy silk of brilliant 
 colours lay around her, which thenceforth invested
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 69 
 
 the descriptions of the broidered work of the 
 tabernacle for me with a new interest. She received 
 my father with a courtly grace, and me with her 
 own motherly sweetness. She made me sit on a 
 tabouret at her feet, while she conversed with my 
 father, and gave me a French ivory puzzle to un- 
 ravel. But I could do nothing but drink in the soft 
 modulations of her voice, without heeding what she 
 said, except that the discourse seemed embroidered 
 with the names of the king and the queen , and the 
 princes and princesses, which seemed as fit for her 
 lips as her rich dress was for her person. She 
 seemed to speak with a gentle raillery, reminding 
 him of old times, and asking why he deserted the 
 court. But his words and tones were very grave. 
 Then, as he spoke of leaving, she unlocked a little 
 sandal- wood cabinet, and took out a locket contain- 
 ing a curl of fair hair, and she said softly, "This 
 was Magdalene's!" and held it beside mine. And 
 then, as she carefully laid it aside again, the con- 
 versation for a few moments rose to higher things, 
 and a Name higher than those of kings and queens > 
 was in it. And she said reverently, "In whatever 
 else we differ, that good part, I trust, may be mine 
 and yours, as we know so well it was hers." And 
 my father seemed moved, took leave, and said no- 
 thing more until we had passed through the outer
 
 70 THE DRAYTOI\S AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 gate, when in tlie avenne Lettice met us, cantering 
 on a white palfrey, in a riding coat laced with red, 
 blue, and yellow, and springing off, left her horse to 
 go whither it would, as she ran to welcome me, 
 saying a thousand pretty, kindly things, while I, in 
 a shy ecstasy, could only stand and hold her hand, 
 and feel as if I had been transported, entirely un- 
 prepared, straight into the middle of a fairy tale. 
 
 After that for some weeks there was a stream of 
 courtly company at the Hall, and Roger and I only 
 saw Lettice and occasionally the Lady Lucy at 
 church, or met them now and then in our rides and 
 rambles by the Mere or through the woods. But 
 whenever we did meet there was always the same 
 eager cordial greeting from Lettice, and the same 
 affectionate manner in her mother. And from time 
 to time we heard, through Margery's sweetheart 
 Dickon, of the gracious little kindnesses of both 
 mother and daughter, of their thoughtful care for 
 tenant and servant, of the honour in which they 
 were held by prince and peasant. And so on me 
 and on Roger the spell worked on. 
 
 The Draytons were of as old standing in the 
 parish as the Davenants. Indeed, if tradition and 
 our family tree spoke true, many a broad acre 
 around Xetherby had been in the possession of our 
 ancestors, maternal or paternal, when the forefathers
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 71 
 
 of the Davenants bad been bolding insignificant 
 fiefs under Norman dukes, or cruising on very doubt- 
 ful errands about tbe nortbern seas. Our pedigree 
 dated back to Saxon times; tbe porcb of tbe oldest 
 transept of tbe cburcb bad, to Aunt Dorotby's 
 mingled pride and borror, an inscription on it re- 
 questing prayers for tbe soul of one of our pro- 
 genitors; and tbe oldest tomb in tbe cburcb was 
 ours. But wbile our family bad remained stationary 
 in place as well as in rank, tbe Davenants bad 
 climbed far above us. Our old Manor House bad 
 received no additions since tbe reign of Elizabetb, 
 wben tbe tbird gable bad been built witb the large 
 embayed window, and tbe tbree terraces sloping to 
 tbe fisli-pond and tbe orchards, wbile on tbe other 
 side of the court extended, as of old, tbe cattle-sheds 
 and stables. Meantime the old Hall of tbe Dave- 
 nants bad been degraded into farm-buildings, whilst 
 a new mansion, witb sumptuous banqueting balls, 
 and dainty ladies' withdrawing -chamber like a 
 palace, bad gradually sprung up ai'ound the remains 
 of the suppressed priory, which bad been granted to 
 tbe family; tbe ancient Priory Cburcb serving as 
 Lady Lucy's private chapel, the monk's refectoiy 
 as the family dining ball, whilst all signs of farm 
 life bad vanished out of sight, and scent, and 
 bearing.
 
 7-2 
 
 THE DRAYTOXS A:s'D THE DAYEXAl^TS ; 
 
 During' the same period, tlie new transept of our 
 parish-cliurch, •wlaicli had been the Davenants' family 
 chapel, had become enriched with stately mouu- 
 ments, where the effigies of knight and dame rested 
 under decorated canopies. The titles and armorial 
 bearings of many a noble family were mingled with 
 theirs on monumental brass and stained window; 
 whilst the plain massive ai'chitecture of our hereditary 
 portion of the chm'ch was not more contrasted with 
 the rich and delicate carving of theirs than were we 
 and our serving-men and maidens, in our plain, sad- 
 coloured stuffs, unplumed, unadorned hats, caps or 
 coifs, and white linen kerchiefs, with the brocades, 
 satins, and velvets, ostrich feathers and jewels, rib- 
 boned hosen and buckled shoes of the Hall. 
 
 The contrast had gone deeper than mere ex- 
 ternals, as external contrasts mostly do in this sym- 
 bolical world. In the Civil Wars, when no political 
 principle was involved, it had chanced that the 
 Draytons and the Davenants had seldom been on 
 the same side. But at and after the Reformation 
 the difference manifested itself plainly and steadily. 
 
 The Davenants had recognised Henry the Eighth's 
 supremacy to the extent of receiving from him a 
 grant of the lauds belonging to the neighbouring- 
 abbey. But it had probably cost them little change 
 of belief to return zealously to the old religion under
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 73 
 
 the rule of Queen Mary; whereas the Dray tons, ad- 
 hering with Saxon immobility to the Papal authority 
 when Henry VIII. discarded it, had slowly come 
 round to the conviction of the truth of the reformed 
 religion by the time it became dangerous; and we 
 hold it one of our chief family distinctions that we 
 have a name closely connected with us enrolled 
 among the noble army in Fox's "Book of Martyrs." 
 Indeed, throughout their history our family had an 
 unprosperous propensity to the dangerous side. The 
 religious convictions, so painfully adopted and so 
 dearly proved, had throughout the reign of Eliza- 
 beth given our ancestors a leaning to the Puritan 
 side; deep religious conviction binding them from 
 generation to generation to the noblest spirits of 
 their times, whilst a certain almost perverse honesty 
 and inflexibility of temper naturally drove them to 
 resist any kind of pressure from without, and a taste 
 for what is solid and simple rather than for what is 
 elegant and gorgeous, whether in life or in ritual, in- 
 clined them to the simplest forms of ecclesiastical 
 ceremonial. 
 
 It was this strong hereditary Protestantism which 
 had led my father to join the religious war in Ger- 
 many. He held King Gustavus Adolphus, the 
 Swede, to be the noblest man and the greatest 
 general of ancient or modern times. And he held
 
 74 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 that the fearful conflict by which that great king 
 turned the tide against the Popish arms was little 
 less than a conflict between trnth and falsehood, bar- 
 barism and civilization, light and darkness. It was 
 enough to make any one believe in the necessity of 
 hell, he said, to have seen, as he had, the city of 
 Magdeburg, ten days after Tilly's soldiers had sacked 
 it, when scarce three thousand corpse-like survivors 
 crept around the blackened ruins where lay buried 
 the mangled remains of their fourteen thousand hap- 
 pier dead. To see that, said my father, would make 
 any one understand what is meant by the icrath of 
 the Laiiib; and that there are things which can make 
 a gospel of vengeance as precious to just men as a 
 gospel of mercy. And some foretaste of that merci- 
 ful vengeance, he said, had been given abeady. For 
 after Magdeburg, it was said, Tilly never won a 
 battle. My father fought with the Swedish army 
 till the death of the king, on the 6th of November 
 1632 •, and that day of his victory and death at 
 Liitzen, was always kept in our household as a day 
 of family mourning. 
 
 Had Elizabeth been on the throne, my father 
 used to say, and Cecil at the helm of state, it would 
 not have been the little northern kingdom of Sweden 
 which should have stemmed the torrent of Popish 
 and Imperial tyranny, while England stood by
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 75 
 
 wringing helpless womanish hands, beholding her 
 brethren in the faith tortured and slaughtered, her 
 own king's daughter exiled and dethroned, and, at 
 the same time, her brave soldiers and sailors trifled 
 to inglorious death by thousands, at the bidding of 
 a musked and curled court favourite at Rh^ and 
 Rochelle. 
 
 It was in Germany that my father met my 
 mother. She was a Saxon from Luther's own town, 
 Wittenberg. Her name was Reichenbach, and her 
 family retained affectionate personal memories of 
 the great Reformer, as well as an enthixsiastic devo- 
 tion to his doctrines. She and Aunt Gretel (Magda- 
 lene and Margarethe) were orphan daughters of an 
 officer in the Protestant armies. And I often count 
 it among my mercies, that our family history linked 
 us with more forms of our religion than one, and 
 extended our horizon beyond the sects and parties 
 of England. 
 
 Our mother died two years after my father's re- 
 turn to England, leaving him us two children, and 
 the memory of a love as devoted, and a piety as 
 simple, as ever lit up a home, by keeping it open to 
 heaven. 
 
 It was during these years she made the acquaint- 
 ance of Lady Lucy. They had been very closely 
 attached, although political differences, and the long
 
 76 THE DRAYTONS AND THE BAVENANTS: 
 
 absences of the Davenants at Court, had prevented 
 much intercourse between the families since her 
 death. 
 
 Roger recollected her face and voice, and her 
 foreign accent, and one or two things she said to 
 him. I remember nothing of her but a kind of 
 brooding warmth and care, tender caressing tones, 
 and being watched by eyes with a look in them un- 
 like any other, and then a day of weeping and 
 silence and black dresses and sad faces, and a wan- 
 dering about with a sense of something lost. Lost 
 for ever out of my life. As much as by any possi- 
 bility could be. Aunt Glretel made up the tenderness, 
 and Aunt Dorothy the discipline; and my father did 
 all he could to supply her place by a fatherly care, 
 softened into an uncommon passion by his sorrow, 
 and deepened into the most sacred principle by his 
 desire to remedy our loss. Yet, in looking back, I 
 feel more and more we did indeed inevitably lose 
 much. All these balancing and compensating cares 
 and affections and restraints from every side, yet 
 missed something of the tender constraint and the 
 heart -quickening warmth they would have had all 
 living, blended, and consecrated in the one mother's 
 heart. Yet to Roger, perhaps, the loss was at various 
 points in his life even greater than to me. 
 
 If she had lived, perchance the lessons we had
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 77 
 
 to learn after that May-day would have been learned 
 with less of blundering and heat. Yet how can I 
 tell? It seems to me the true painter keeps his pic- 
 tures in harmony not by mixing the colours on the 
 palette, but by blending them on the canvas-, not by 
 painting in leaden, monotonous grays, but by inter- 
 weaving and contrasting countless tints of pure and 
 varied colour. And in nature, in history, in life, it 
 seems to me the Creator does the same. 
 
 Yes; God forbid that in lamenting what we lost 
 I should blaspheme the highest love — the love 
 which, as Aunt Gretel says, takes every image of 
 human affection, and fills and overfills it, and casts 
 it away as too shallow; in its unutterable intensity 
 putting, as it were, a tender paradox of slander on 
 even a mother's love for her babes, and saying, 
 "They may forget, yet will not I." 
 
 For that Love, we believe, gave and took away, 
 and has led us through fasting and feasting, dangers 
 and droughts, Marahs and Elims, chastenings and 
 cherishings, ever since.
 
 78 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 IV. 
 
 At lengtli the time arrived when my dark ages 
 of mystery and adoration were to close. The pesti- 
 lence so constantly hovering over the wretched 
 wastes of devastated Germany had been brought to 
 Netherby by a cousin of my mother's, who had come 
 on a visit to us. He fell sick the day after his 
 arrival, and died on the third day. That evening 
 Tib, the dairy woman, sickened; and before the next 
 morning Margery, her daughter. A panic seized 
 the household. My father accepted Lady Lucy's 
 generous offer to take charge of Roger and me, we 
 happening to have been from the first secluded from 
 all contact with the sick Aunt Dorothy made a 
 faint remonstrance. There were, said she, contagions 
 worse than any plague. If her brother would answer 
 for it to his conscience, it was welh She, at least, 
 would wash her hands of the whole thing. But my 
 father had no scruples. "He only hoped," he said, 
 "that Lady Lucy might touch us with the infection 
 of her gracious kindliness. Olive would be only 
 with her; and as to Roger and the rest of the house- 
 hold, if he was ever to be a true Protestant, the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 79 
 
 time must come when be must learn, if necessary, to 
 protest." 
 
 So mucli to Aunt Dorothy. To Eoger himself 
 he said, in a low voice, as we were riding off, with 
 his hand on the horse's mane, — 
 
 "Remember, my lad, there is no true manliness 
 without godliness." 
 
 Aunt Gretel watched and waved her hand to us 
 from the infected chamber window, where she sat 
 nursing Margery, and when I opened my bundle of 
 clothes that evening, I found in the corner a little 
 book containing my mother's favourite psalms copied 
 in English for us — the 4Gth (Dr. Luther's own 
 psalm), the 23rd, and the 139th. 
 
 Thus armed, Roger and I sallied forth into our 
 enchanted castle. 
 
 To be disenchanted. Not to be repelled, but 
 certainly to be disenchanted. Not by any subtle 
 spell of countermagic, or rude shock of bitter dis- 
 covery, but by the slow changing of the world of 
 misty twilight splendours, of dreams and visions, 
 guesses and rumours, into a world of daylight, of 
 sight and touch. 
 
 My first disenchantment was the Lady Lucy's 
 artificial curls. She allowed me to remain with her 
 while her gentlewoman disrobo'l her that evening. I 
 shalF never forget the dismay with which I beheld
 
 80 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 one dainty ringlet after another, of tlie kind called 
 "heart-breakers," disentangled from among her hair 
 — itself still brown and abundant — and laid on 
 the dressing-table. The perfumes, essences, powders, 
 ointments, salves, balsams, crystal phials, and porce- 
 lain cups, among which these "heart-breakers" were 
 laid (mysterious and strange as they were to me, 
 who knew of no cosmetics but cold water and fresh 
 air), seemed to me only so many appropriate decora- 
 tions of the shrine of my idol. But the hair was 
 false, and perplexed me sorely, Puritan child that I 
 was, brought up with no habits of subtle discern- 
 ment between a deception and a lie. 
 
 The next morning brought me yet greater per- 
 plexity. I slept in a light closet in a turret off the 
 Lady Lucy's chamber. The Lady Lucy's own 
 gentlewoman came in to dress me-, but before she 
 appeared I was already arrayed, and was kneeling 
 at the window-seat of my little arched window, read- 
 ing my mother's psalms. 
 
 I thought she came to call me to prayers, with 
 which we always began the day at home — my 
 father reading a psalm at daybreak, and offering a 
 short solemn prayer in the Hall, where all the men 
 and maidens were gathered, after which we sat down 
 at one table to breakfast, as the family had done 
 since the days of Queen Elizabeth. But when I
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 81 
 
 asked her if she came for this, she smiled, and said 
 it was not a saint's day, so that it was not likely the 
 whole household would assemble, though no doubt 
 my Lady and Mistress Lettice would attend service 
 with the chaplain in the chapel. But she said I 
 might attend Lady Lucy in her chamber, before she 
 rose. I gladly accepted, and Lady Lucy invited 
 me to partake of a new kind of confection called 
 chocolate, brought from the Indies by the Spaniards, 
 which finding I could not relish, she sent for a cup 
 of new milk and a manchet of fine milk-bread, on 
 which I breakfasted. Then she began her dressing; 
 and then ensued my second stage of disencliantment. 
 Out of the many crystal and porcelain vases on the 
 table, her gentlewoman took powders and paints, 
 and, to my unutterable amazement, actually began 
 to tint with rose-colour Lady Lucy's cheeks, and to 
 lay a delicate ivory-white on her brow. She made 
 no mystery of it; but I suppose she saw the horror 
 in my eyes, for she laughed and said, — 
 
 "You are watching me, little Olive, with great 
 eyes, as if I were Eed Riding Hood's wolf-grand- 
 mother. What is the matter?" 
 
 I could not answer, but I felt myself flush crim- 
 son; and I remember that the only word that seemed 
 as if it could come to my lips, was "Jezebel." I 
 quite hate myself for the thought — the Lady Lucy 
 
 The Diaytons and the Davenants. I. O
 
 82 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 was SO tender aud good! Yet all tlie day, through 
 the service in the chapel, and my plays with Lettice, 
 and my quiet sitting on my favourite footstool at 
 Lady Lucy's feet, those terrible words haunted me 
 like a bad dream: "And she painted her face, and 
 tired her head, and looked out at a window." A 
 thousand times I drove them away. I repeated to 
 myself how she loved my mother, how my father 
 honoured her, how gracious and tender she was to 
 me and to all. Still the words came back, with the 
 visions of the false curls, and the paint, and the 
 powder. And I could have cried with vexation that 
 I had ever seen these. For I felt sure Lady Lucy 
 was inwardly as sweet and true as I had believed, 
 and that these were only little court customs quite 
 foreign to her nature, to which she, as a great lady, 
 had to submit, but which no more made her heart 
 bad than the washed hands and platters made the 
 Pharisees good. Yet the serene and perfect image 
 was broken, and do what I would I could not re- 
 store it. 
 
 My third disenchantment was more serious. 
 
 At the ringing of the great tower bell for dinner, 
 summoning the household, and inviting all within 
 hearing to share the hospitality of the Hall, a caval- 
 cade swept up the avenue, consisting of the family 
 of a neighbouring country gentleman. Lady Lucy,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 83 
 
 wlio was seated at her broidery-frame in the drawing- 
 chamber, was evidently not pleased at this announce- 
 ment. "They always stay till dark," she said, "and 
 question me till I am wearied to death, about what 
 the queen wears, what the princesses eat, or how the 
 king talks, as if their majesties were some strange, 
 foreign beasts, and I some Moorish showman hired 
 to exhibit them. Lettice, my sweet, take them into 
 the garden after dinner, or I shall not recover it." 
 
 Yet, when the ladies entered she received them 
 with a manner as gracious as if they had been anx- 
 iously expected friends. 1 reasoned with myself 
 that this graciousness was an inalienable quality of 
 hers, as little voluntary or conscious as the soft tones 
 of her voice; or that probably she repented of having 
 spoken hastily of her visitors, and compensated for 
 it by being more than ordinarily kind. But when 
 it proved that they had to leave early, and she la- 
 mented over the shortness of the visit, and yet im- 
 mediately after their departure threw herself languidly 
 on a couch, and sighed, "What a deliverance!" I 
 involuntarily shrank from her to the farthest corner 
 of the room, and watching the departing strangers, 
 wished myself departing with them. 
 
 I stood there long, until she came gently to 
 me and laid her hand kindly on my head. I looked 
 
 6*
 
 84 THE DRAYTOKS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 up at her, and longed to look straight into ter 
 heart. 
 
 "Tears on the long laslies!" said she caressingly. 
 "What is the matter, little one?" 
 
 My eyelids sank, and the tears fell. 
 
 "What ails thee, little silent woman?" said she, 
 stooping to me. 
 
 I threw. my arms aroitnd her and sobbed, "You 
 are really glad to have me. Lady Lucy; are you not? 
 You would not like me to go?" 
 
 She seemed at first perplexed. 
 
 "You take things too much to heart, Olive, like 
 your poor mother," she said at last, very gently. 
 "Those ladies are nothing to me; and your mother 
 was dear to me, Olive, and so are you." 
 
 But in the evening, when I was in bed, she came 
 herself into my little chamber, and sat by my bed- 
 side, like Aunt Gretel, and played with my long 
 hair in her sweet way; and then, before she left, 
 said tenderly, — 
 
 "My poor little Olive, you must not doubt your 
 mother's old friend. I am not all, or half I would 
 be; but I could not bear to be distrusted by you. 
 But you have lived too much shut up in a world of 
 your own. You wear your heart too near the sur- 
 face. You bring heart and conscience into things 
 which only need courtesy and tactics. You waste
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 85 
 
 your gold where beads and copper are as valuable. 
 I must be courteous to my enemies, little one, and 
 gracious to people who weary me to death; but to 
 you I give a bit of my heart, and that is quite a 
 different thing." 
 
 And she left me reassured of her affection, but 
 not a little perplexed by this double code of morals. 
 That one region of life should be governed by the 
 rules of right and wrong, and another by those of 
 politeness, was altogether a strange thing to me. 
 
 Meantime Lettice and I were rapidly advancing 
 from the outer court of courtesies into the inner one 
 of childish friendship, spiced with occasional sharp 
 debates, and very undisguised honesties towards each 
 other; as Lettice and her brothers initiated me and 
 Roger into the various plays and games in which 
 they were so much superior to us, and we became 
 eager on both sides for victory. A very new world 
 this play world was to us, who had known scarcely 
 any toys but such as we made for ourselves, and no 
 amusements but such as we had planned for our- 
 selves. 
 
 Very charming it was to us at first, the billiard- 
 table, the tennis-court, or pall-mall; and great de- 
 light Roger took in learning to vault and throw the 
 dart on horseback, to wheel and curvet, or pick up 
 a lady's glove at full speed, and in the various
 
 86 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 courtly exercises and feats, Spanish, Frencii, or 
 Arabian, wliicli tlie young Davenants had learned 
 from their riding-master. Naturally agile, he had 
 been trained to thorough command of his horse by 
 following my father through flood and fen, while his 
 eye had learned quickness and accuracy from hunt- 
 ing the wild-fowl, and tracking hares and foxes 
 through the wild country around us; and these ac- 
 complishments came easily enough to him. Yet, 
 with all these ingenious arrangements for passing the 
 time, it seemed to hang more heavily on hand at the 
 Hall than at Netherby; it came, indeed, to Roger 
 and me as something completely new that any ar- 
 rangements should be needed to make the time pass 
 quickly. What with spinning, and sewing, and my 
 helping my aunts, and his learning Greek, and 
 Latin, and Italian of my father, and helping him 
 about the farm, our holiday hours had always seemed 
 too brief for half the things we had to do in them. 
 Every morning found an eager welcome from us, 
 and every evening a reluctant farewell; and it was 
 not until we spent those days at the Hall that the 
 question, "What are we to do next?" ever occurred 
 to us, not in hesitation which to select of the count- 
 less things we had to do in our precious spare hours, 
 but as an appeal for some new excitement. 
 
 Moreover, while in outward accomplishments and
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 87 
 
 graces we felt our inferiority, in many things we 
 could not but feel that our education had been far 
 more extensive than that of the Davenants. 
 
 Allusions to Greek and Eoman history, and to 
 new discoveries in art and science, and even to 
 stories of the modern European wars, which were as 
 natural to us as household words, were plainly an 
 unknown tongue to them. Even on the lute and 
 the harpsichord, Lettice's instructions had fallen 
 short of those my father had procured for me, al- 
 though her sweet clear voice, and her graceful way 
 of doing everything, made all she did seem done 
 better than any one else could have done it. 
 
 The brothers, for the most part, laughed off their 
 deficiencies, and often made them seem for the mo- 
 ment a kind of gentlemanlike distinction, bantering 
 Roger as if learning were but a little better kind of 
 servile labour, beneath the attention of any but those 
 who had to earn their bread. All that kind of thing, 
 they said, was going out of the mode. The late 
 King James had tired the court out with overmuch 
 pedantry and learning; the present king, indeed, was 
 a grave and accomplished gentleman, but merrier 
 days would come in with the French cjueen's court 
 and the young princes, when the "gay science" 
 would be the only one much worth cultivating by 
 men of condition. Meantime the elder brothers paid
 
 88 t:ie drayto2^s and the davenants: 
 
 me many choice and graceful compliments on my 
 hands and my hair, my eyes and my eye-lashes, my 
 learning and my accomplishments, jesting now and 
 then in a conrtly way on my sober attire; and, child 
 that I was, sent me looking with much interest and 
 wonder at myself in the long glass in Lady Lucy's 
 drawing-chamber, to see if what they said was true. 
 I remember, one afternoon, after a long survey of 
 myself, I concluded that much of it was, and thanked 
 God that evening for having made me pleasant to 
 look at. A few years later, the danger would have 
 been different. 
 
 But Lettice was of a different nature from all 
 her brothers except one. Generously alive to what- 
 ever was to be loved or admired in others, and ready 
 to depreciate herself, she wanted Roger and me to 
 teach her all we knew. She made him hunt out the 
 books which would instruct her in Sir Walter's 
 neglected library. She sat patiently three sunny 
 mornings trying to learn from Roger the Italian 
 grammar, which she had pleaded hard he should 
 teach her. She made him read the poetry to her, 
 and said it was sweeter than her mother's lute. But 
 on the fourth morning her patience was exhausted; — 
 she declared it was a wicked prodigality to waste 
 the sunny hours in-doors, and danced us away to 
 the woods; and all Roger's remonstrances could not
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WAKS. 89 
 
 bring her back to such unwonted work. Indeed, 
 the more he remonstrated, the more idle and indif- 
 ferent she chose to be, insisting instead on showing 
 him some new French dance, or singing him some 
 snatch of French song she had learned from the 
 cj^ueen's ladies, until he gave up in despair; when 
 she declared that, but for his want of patience, she 
 had been fau-ly on the way to become a feminine 
 Solomon.
 
 90 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 It was Monday when our visit commenced, so 
 that we were no longer strangers in tlie Louse by 
 the following Sunday. But we were not prepared 
 for the contrast between the Suijdays at Davenant 
 Hall with those at Nether by. At our own home, 
 grave as the day was, there was always a quiet 
 festival air about it. The hall was fresh swept, and 
 strewn with clean sand. My father and my aunts, 
 the maids and men, had on their holiday dresses. 
 That morning at prayers we always had a psalm, 
 and the mere thrill of my voice against my father's 
 rich deep tones was a pleasure to me. Then after 
 breakfast Roger and I had a walk in the fields with 
 him, and he made us hear and see a hundred things 
 in the ways of birds and beasts and insects that we 
 should never have known without him. One day it 
 was the little brown and white harvest-mouse, which, 
 by cautiously approaching it, we saw climbing by 
 the help of its tail and claws to its little round nest 
 woven of grass suspended from a corn-stalk. Another 
 day it was a squirrel, with its summer house hung
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 91 
 
 to the branch of a tree with its nursery of little 
 squirrels ; and its warm winter house, lined with hay, 
 in the fork of an old trunk; or a colony of ants 
 roofing their dwellings in the wood with dry leaves 
 and twigs. Or he would turn it into a parable, and 
 show us how every creature has its enemies, and 
 must live on the defensive, or not live at all. Or 
 he Avould watch with us the butterfly struggling 
 from the chrysalis, or the dragon-fly soaring from its 
 first life in the reedy creeks of the Mere to the new 
 life of freedom in the sunshine. Or he would point 
 out to us how the field-spider had anticipated mili- 
 tary science; how she threw up her bulwarks and 
 strengthened every weak point by her fairy buttresses, 
 and kept up the communication between the citadel 
 and the remotest outwork. Or he would teach us 
 to distinguish the various songs of the birds — the 
 throstles, the chaffinches, the blackbirds, or the 
 nightingales. God, he said, had filled the woods 
 with throngs of sacred carollers, and melodious 
 troubadours, and merry minstrels; some with one 
 sweet monotonous cadence, one bell-like note, one 
 happy little "peep" or chirp, and no more, and 
 others overflowing with a passion of intricate and 
 endlessly varied song; and it was a churlish return 
 for such a concert not to give heed enough to learn 
 one song from another. Or, together, we would
 
 92 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 watch the rooks in the great elm grove behind the 
 house, how strict their laws of property were, the 
 old bu'ds claiming the same nest every year, and the 
 young ones having to construct new ones. Or he 
 would tell us of the different forms of government 
 among the various creatures: how the bees had an 
 hereditary monarchy, yet owned no aristocracy but 
 that of labour, killing their drones before winter, 
 that if any would not work neither should he eat; 
 and how the rooks held parliaments. Everywhere 
 he made us see, wonderfully blended and balanced, 
 fixed order, with free, spontaneous action; freaks of 
 sportive merriment, free as the wildest play of child- 
 hood, with a fixedness of law more exact than the 
 nicest calculations of the mathematician; "service 
 which is perfect freedom;" delicate beauty with 
 homely utility; lavish abundance with provident care. 
 And everywhere he made us feel that the spring of 
 all this order, the source of all this fulness, the smile 
 through all this humour and play of nature, the soul 
 of all this law, was none other than God. So that 
 often after these morning walks with him we fell 
 into an awed silence, feeling the warm daylight 
 solemn as a starry midnight, with the Great Presence; 
 and entered the church-porch almost with the feeling 
 that we were rather stepping out of the temple than 
 into it; that, sacred as was the place of worship and
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 93 
 
 of the dead, it was not more sacred or awful than 
 the world of life we left to enter it. 
 
 The other golden hour of our golden day (for 
 Sunday was ever that to us), was when, in the 
 evening, he read the Bible with Roger and me in 
 his own room. I cannot remember much that he 
 iTsed to say about it. I only remember how he 
 made us reverence and love it-, its fragments of bio- 
 graphy which make you know the pecTple better 
 than volumes of narrative; its characters that are 
 never mere incarnations of principles, but men and 
 women; its letters that are never mere sermons con- 
 centrated on an individual; its sermons that are never 
 mere dissertations, peculiarly applicable to no one 
 time or place, but sfeeclies intensely directed to the 
 needs of one audience, and the circumstances of one 
 place, and, therefore^ containing guiding wisdom for 
 all; its prayers that are never sermons from a pulpit, 
 but brief cries of entreaty from the dust, or flaming 
 torrents of adoration piercing beyond the stars, or 
 quiet asking of little children for daily bread; its 
 confessions that are as great drops of blood wrung 
 slowly from the agony of the heart; its hymns that 
 dart upward, singing and soaring in a wild passion 
 of praise and joy. 
 
 I can recall little of what my father said to us 
 in those evening hours; but I remember that they
 
 94 THE DEAYTONS AND THE DAYEXANTS : 
 
 left on our minds the same kind of joyous sense of 
 having found something inexhaustible which came 
 from our morning walks. They made us feel that 
 in coming to the Bible, as to nature, we come not 
 to a cistern or a stream or a ponded store, though 
 it might be abundant enough for a nation; but to a 
 Fountain, which, though it might seem at times but 
 a gentle bubbling up of waters just enough for the 
 thirsty lips which pressed it, was, nevertheless, living, 
 inexhaustible, eternal, because it welled up from the 
 fulness of God. 
 
 The usual name for the Sabbath in our home 
 was the Lord's Day, because of our Lord's resurrec- 
 tion. On other days my father read to us, and 
 made us read and love other books — books of 
 history and science, as well as of religion, Shakspeare, 
 Spenser, the early poems of Mr. John Milton, and, 
 when we could understand them, the Italian poet 
 Dante, or Davila, and other great Italians who spoke 
 nobly of order and liberty. 
 
 But on this day of God he never read but 
 from these two divine books. Nature and the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
 In church we had not always any sermon at all. 
 Preaching had not been much encouraged since the 
 days of Queen Elizabeth. Occasionally one of the 
 lecturers, or gospel preachers, whom Mr. Cromwell
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 95 
 
 and other good men were so anxious to supply at 
 their own cost, used, in our earlier days, to enter 
 our pulpit and arouse us children with bursts of 
 earnest warning or entreaty (our parish minister 
 then being a meek and conformable person). But 
 Archbishop Laud soon put a stop to this, and sent 
 us a clergyman of his own type, who fretted Aunt 
 Dorothy by changing the places and colours of things, 
 moving the communion-table from the middle of the 
 church, where it had stood since the Reformation, 
 to the east end, wearing white where we were used 
 to black, and coats of many colours where we were 
 used to white, and in general moving about the 
 church in what appeared to us Puritan children, un- 
 instructed in symbolism, a restless and unaccountable 
 manner; standing when we had been wont to sit, 
 kneeling Avlien we had been wont to stand, making 
 little unexpected bows in one direction and little in- 
 explicable turns in another, in a way which provided 
 matter of lively speculation to Roger and me during 
 the week, since we never knew what new movement 
 might be executed on the following Sunday. But 
 to Aunt Dorothy these innovations were profanities, 
 which would have been utterly intolerable had she 
 not consoled herself by regarding them as signs of 
 the end of all things. For what to Mr. Nicholls, 
 the parson, was the "beauty of holiness," and to our
 
 96 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 father "personal peculiarities of Mr, Nicbolls," and 
 to Aunt Gretel but one more of our "incompre- 
 hensible English customs," were to Aunt Dorothy 
 the infernal insignia of the "Mother of abomina- 
 tions." 
 
 She therefore remained resolutely and rigidly 
 sitting and standing as she had been wont, a target 
 for fiery darts from Mr. Nicbolls' eyes, and a sore 
 perplexity to Aunt Gretel, who, never having mas- 
 tered our Anglican rubric, had hitherto had no cere- 
 monial rule but to do what those around her did, 
 and was thus thrown into inextricable difficulties be- 
 tween the silent reproaches of Aunt Dorothy's com- 
 pressed lips if she did one thing, and the suspicious 
 glances of the parson's eyes if she did another. 
 
 On our return, Aunt Dorothy frequently made 
 us repeat the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of 
 the Revelation. We understood that she regarded 
 both these chapters as in some way directed against 
 ]VIr. Nicbolls. In what way — we discussed it often 
 — Eoger and I at that time could never make out. 
 The great wicked city, with ships, and merchants, 
 and traders, and pipers, and harpers, seemed to us 
 more like London town, with the Court of the king, 
 than like the parish-church at Netherby. But how- 
 ever that may be, I am always thankful for having 
 learned those chapters. Many and many a time,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 97 
 
 when in after-life tlie world lias tempted me with its 
 splendours, or straitened me with its cares, and I 
 have been assailed with the Psalmist's old temptation 
 at seeing the wicked in great prosperity, the grand 
 wail over the doomed city has pealed like a triumphal 
 march through my soul, and the whole gaudy pomp 
 and glory of the world has lain beneath me in the 
 power of that solemn dirge, like the tinsel decorations 
 of a theatre in the sunbeams, whilst above me has 
 arisen, snow-white and majestic, the vision of the 
 Bride in her fine linen "clean and white" — of the 
 City coming down from heaven "having the glory 
 of God." 
 
 Aunt Gretel, on the other hand, would frequently 
 quiet her ruffled spirits after her perplexities, by 
 making Roger and me read to her the fourteenth 
 chapter of the Romans, ending with, "We then that 
 are strong ought to bear with the infirmities of the 
 weak. Let every one of us please his neighbour 
 for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased 
 not himself." — A rubric which secretly seemed to 
 us to have two edges, one for Aunt Dorothy and one 
 for Mr. Nicholls, but of which Aunt Gretel contrived 
 to turn both on herself. 
 
 "You see, my dears," she would say, "that is a 
 rule of which I am naturally very fond. Because, 
 of course, I am one of the weak. And it certainly 
 
 The DrcujtoHs and the Davenants. I. '
 
 98 TEE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 would be a relief to me if ttose wlio are strong- would 
 have a little more patience with me. But then it is 
 a comfort to think that He who is stronger than all 
 does hear with me. For he knows I do not wish to 
 please myself, and would be thankful indeed if I 
 could tell how to please my neighbours." Which 
 seemed to us like the weak bearing the infirmities of 
 the strong. 
 
 After this learning and repeating our chapters 
 from the Bible, while my father and my aunts were 
 going about the cottages and villages near us on 
 various errands of mercy, Eoger and I had a free 
 hour or two, during which we commonly resorted in 
 summer to our perch on the apple-tree, and in winter 
 to the chamber over the porch where the dried herbs 
 were kept, where we held our weekly convocation 
 as to all matters that came under our cognizance, 
 domestic, personal, ecclesiastical, or political. Placi- 
 dia was not excluded, but being four years older, 
 she preferred "her book" and tbe society of our 
 aunts. Then came the sacred hour with our father 
 in his own chamber. Afterwards, in winter, we 
 often gathered round the fire in tbe great hall, we 
 in the chimney-nook, and the men and maidens in 
 an outer circle, while my father told stories of the 
 sufferings of holy men and women for conscience' 
 sake, or while Dr. Antony (when he was visiting us)
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 99 
 
 narrated to us his interviews witli those wlio were 
 languishing for truth or for liberty in various prisons 
 throughout the realm. 
 
 And so the night came, always, it seemed to us, 
 sooner than on any other day. Although never until 
 our visit at Davenant Hall did I understand the un- 
 speakable blessing of that weekly closing of the doors 
 on Time, and opening all the windows of the soul 
 towards Eternity; the unspeakable lowering and nar- 
 rowing of the whole being which follows on its 
 neglect and loss. To us the Lord's Day was a day 
 of Paradise; but I believe the barest Sabbath which 
 was ever fenced round with prohibitions by the most 
 rigid Puritanism, looking rather to the fence than 
 the enclosure, rather to what is shut out than to what 
 is cultivated within, is a boon and a blessing com- 
 pared with the life without pauses, without any con- 
 secrated house for the soul built oxit of Time, with- 
 out silences wherein to listen to the Voice that is 
 heard best in silence. 
 
 It was a point of honour and a badge of loyalty 
 with many of the Cavaliers to protest practically 
 against the Puritan observance of the Sabbath. The 
 Lady Lucy, indeed, welcomed the sacred day, as she 
 did everything else that was sacred and heavenly. 
 She sang to her lute a lovely song in praise of the 
 day from the new "Divine Poems" of Mr. George 
 
 7*
 
 100 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVEKAKTS.' 
 
 Herbert, and told me liow lie had sung it to Ms lute 
 on his deatli-bed only a few years before, in 1632. 
 
 "On Sunday heaven's gates stand ope," 
 
 she sang; and I am sure they stood ever open to 
 lier. 
 
 But the rest of the family, while reverencing her 
 devout and charitable life, seemed to have no more 
 thought of following it than if she had been a nun 
 in a convent. Indeed, in a sense, she did dwell 
 apart, cloistered in a hallowed atmosphere of her 
 own. 
 
 Her husband and her sons requested her prayers 
 when they went on any expedition of danger, as their 
 ancestors must have sought for the intercessions of 
 priest or canonized saint. The heavier oaths, except 
 under strong provocation, were dropped (by instinct 
 rather than by intention) in her presence; and mild ad- 
 jurations, as by heathen gods or goddesses, or by a 
 lover's troth, or by a Cavalier's honour, substituted for 
 them. They would listen fondly as she sang "divine 
 poems" to her lute, and declare she had the sweetest 
 warbling voice and the prettiest hands in His Majesty's 
 three kingdoms. But it never seemed to occur to them 
 that her piety was any condemnation or any rule to 
 them. Indeed, she had so many minute laws and 
 ceremonies that, easily as they suited her, it would
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL, WAKS. 101 
 
 have been difficult to fit them into any but a lady's 
 life of leisure. She had special prayers and hymns 
 for nine o'clock, mid-day, three o'clock, six o'clock. 
 And once awaking in the night, I heard sounds like 
 those of her lute stealing from the window of the 
 little oratory next her chamber. She had what seemed 
 to me countless distinctions of days and seasons, 
 marked by the things she ate or did not eat, which 
 she observed as strictly as Aunt Dorothy her pro- 
 hibitions as to not wearing things. Only in one thing 
 Lady Lucy was happier than Aunt Dorothy; for 
 whilst Aunt Dorothy fondly wished for a book of Leviti- 
 cus in the New Testament, and could not find it, Lady 
 Lucy had her book of Leviticus — not indeed exactly 
 in the New Testament, but solemnly sanctioned by 
 the authority of Archbishop Laud. 
 
 A complex framework to adapt to the endless 
 varieties and inexorable necessities of any man's life, 
 rich or poor, in court, or camp, or city; or indeed 
 of any woman's, unless provided with waiting gentle- 
 women. 
 
 In fact, the Lady Lucy herself sometimes spoke 
 with wistful looks and sighs of Mr. Farrar's Sacred 
 College at Little Gidding (not far from us), between 
 Huntingdon and Cambridge , where the voice of 
 prayer never ceased day nor night, and the psalter 
 was chanted through in a rotatory manner by suc- 
 
 TTBTlARY
 
 102 TIIE DRAYTOKS AND THE DAVBNANTS: 
 
 cessive worshippers once iu every four-and-twenty 
 hours. 
 
 Sir Walter and her sons never attempted to im- 
 itate her. She floated, in their imagination, in a land 
 of clouds between earth and heaven. Her religion 
 had a dainty sweetness and solemn grace about it 
 most becoming, they considered, to a noble lady; 
 but for men, except for a few clergymen, as in- 
 applicable as Archbishop Laud's priestly vestments 
 for the street or the battle-field. 
 
 In our Puritan homes there was altogether another 
 stamp of religion. Whatever it might lack iu grace 
 aud taste, it was a religion for men as much as for 
 women, a religion for the camp as much as the ora- 
 tory. Eough it might be often, and stern. It was 
 never feeble. It had no two standards of holiness 
 for clergy aud laity, men aud women. All men and 
 women, we were taught, were called to love God 
 with the whole heart; to serve Him at all times. If 
 we obeyed, we were still (in our sinfulness) ever 
 doing less than duty. If we disobeyed , we were in 
 revolt against the King of heaven. There were 
 no neutrals in that war, no reserves in that obedi- 
 ence. 
 
 And unhappily the Lady Lucy's family, in sur- 
 rendering any hope of reaching her eminence of piety, 
 surrendered more. For it is not elevating , it is
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 103 
 
 lowering, to liave constantly before us an image of 
 holiness which we admire but do not imitate. 
 
 In the morning the household met in the family- 
 chapel (the parish-church being for the present avoided 
 until danger of the infectious sickness was over). In 
 the afternoon, Sir Walter and his sons loyally played 
 at tennis and bowls with the young men of the house- 
 hold. And in the evening there was a dance in the 
 hall, in which all joined. 
 
 The merriment was loud, and reached Lettice 
 and me Avhere we sat with the Lady Lucy and her 
 lute. 
 
 Yet now and then one of the boys would come 
 in and complain of the tedium of the day. It was 
 such an interruption, they said, to the employments 
 of the week, and just at the best season in the year 
 for hunting, and with their father's hounds in per- 
 fect condition and training. Tennis, they said, was 
 all very well for boys, and morris-dancing for girls, 
 but there was no real sport in such things after all^ 
 except to fill up an idle hour or two. The next day 
 there was to be a rare bear-baiting at Hunting- 
 don, and the day after a cock-fight in the next vil- 
 lage. And at the beginning of the following week 
 Sir Walter had promised to give them a bull to be 
 baited. And the "Book of Sports," in their opinion, 
 let the Puritans say what they like, was too rigid
 
 104 THE DRAYXOHS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 by half in proHbiting sucb true old English sports 
 on Sundays. 
 
 The Lady Lucy said a few pitiful tender words 
 on behalf of Sir "Walter's bull, which they listened 
 to without the slightest disrespect, or the slightest 
 change of mind — kissing her hand, and laughingly 
 vowing she was too tender and sweet for this 
 world at all, and that if she had had the making 
 of it she would certainly have left bears and bulls 
 altogether out of the creation. 
 
 It was without doubt a long and dreary Sunday 
 to Eoger and me. It would naturally have been 
 long and melancholy anywhere without our fa- 
 ther. 
 
 I missed the busy work of the week, which made 
 it not only a sacred day but a holiday. I missed 
 Aunt Dorothy's laws, which made our liberty pre- 
 cious. 
 
 But to Roger the day had had other trials. 
 
 In the evening he and I had a few minutes 
 alone together in the window of the drawing- 
 chamber. 
 
 "Oh, Eoger," said I, "I am afraid it cannot be 
 right; but I am so glad Sunday is over." 
 
 "So am I — rather," he said. 
 
 "Has it seemed long to you? I thought I heard 
 your voice in the tennis-court all the afternoon."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 105 
 
 "You did not hear mine," he said. 
 
 "You did not think it right?" I asked. "I won- 
 dered how they could." 
 
 "I am not sure ahout its being right or wrong 
 for other people," said Eoger. "But I was sure it 
 was wrong for me. My father would not have liked 
 it, and therefore I could not think of doing it; espe- 
 cially when he was away." 
 
 "Were they angry?" I asked. 
 
 "Not exactly," he said. "They only laughed." 
 
 '■''Only laughed!" said I. "I think that is worse 
 to bear than anything." 
 
 "So do I," he said. 
 
 "But you did not hesitate?" 
 
 "Not after they laughed, certainly," said he. 
 "That set my blood up, naturally; for it was not so 
 much at me, as at my father and all of us. They 
 said I was too much of a man for such a crew." 
 
 "They laughed at our father!" said I, in horror. 
 
 "Not by name," said he, "but at all he thinks 
 right — at the Puritans, or Precisians, as they 
 call us." 
 
 "What did you do, Roger?" I said. 
 
 "Walked away into the wood," he replied. 
 
 "Why did you not come to us?" I asked. 
 
 "Because they told me to go to you," he said, 
 flushing.
 
 106 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "That was a pity; we were singing sweet 
 hymns." 
 
 "I heard yon," he said. "Bnt I do not think 
 it was a pity I did not come." 
 
 "What did you find in the wood, then?" said I. 
 
 "I do not know that I found anything," he 
 said. 
 
 "What did you do then, Eoger?" 
 
 "I went to the Lady Well, and lay down among 
 the long grass by the stream which flows from it to- 
 wards the Mere , and separates my father's land from 
 Sir Walter's , at the place where you can see Davenant 
 Hall on one side and Netherby among its woods on 
 the other. And I thought." 
 
 "What did you think of?" said I. 
 
 "I thought I had rather live as a hired servant 
 at my father's than as master here," said he. 
 
 "Was that all?" said I. 
 
 "I thought of our talk in the apple-tree about 
 our being puppets, or free." 
 
 I was silent. 
 
 "And Olive," he continued, "I seemed like some 
 one waking up, and it flashed on me that God has 
 no puppets. The devil has puppets. But God has 
 free, living creatures, freely serving him. And I 
 thought how glorious it would be to be a free servant 
 and son of his. And then I thought of the words.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL Vv^AKS. 107 
 
 Thou bast redeemed us to God by tby blood-,' not 
 Tom God, Olive, but to God, to be bis free servants 
 'or ever." 
 
 "That was a great deal to think, Eoger," said 
 
 "I think you did find something in the wood." 
 ,"I found I wanted something, Olive," he said 
 T^ery gravely; "and I thought of something Mr. 
 Jromwell once said when people were talking about 
 ects and parties — 'To be a seeker is to be of the 
 )est sect next to being a finder.' He meant not a 
 eeker of happiness, or wealth, or peace, or any- 
 hing in the world, Olive, but a seeker of God." 
 
 We were looking out across the wolds to the 
 MCere, which we could also see from Netherby. The 
 'Vater was crimson in the sunset, and beyond it the 
 lats stretched on and on, dark and shadowy, except 
 vhere the rows of willows and alders in the distance, 
 md some cattle on an embankment, stood out dis- 
 inct and black, like an ink etching, against the 
 golden sky. 
 
 And something in Roger's words made the sky 
 ook higher and the world wider to me than ever 
 jefore.
 
 108 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 VI. 
 
 The next week, Lady Lucy's eldest son Harry 
 came from London to the Hall , with an acquaintance 
 of his, Sir Launcelot Trevor. 
 
 I thought Hany Davenant the most polished 
 gentleman I had ever seen. He was the first person 
 who ever called me Mistress Olive, and treated me 
 with a gentle deference, as if I had been a woman, 
 I admired his manners exceedingly. His voice, 
 though deep and strong, had something of the soft 
 cadence of Lady Lucy's. He always saw what 
 every one wanted before they knew it themselves. | 
 He always seemed to listen to what you said as ifl 
 he had something to learn from everyone. His whole 
 soul always appeared to be in what he was saying 
 or what you were saying, and yet there seemed to 
 be another kind of porter-soul outside, quite inde- 
 pendent of this inner soul, always on the watch to 
 render any little courtesy to all around. I supposed 
 these courtly attentions had become an instinct to 
 him, so that he could attend to them and to other 
 things at the same time , as easily as we can talk 1 
 while we ai'e eating or walking. 1
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 109 
 
 He was his motlier's greatest friend. Sir Walter 
 never was this. He was always almost lover-like in 
 lis deference and attention to her, stormy and soldier- 
 ike as his usual manner was. But into her thoughts 
 le did not seem to care to enter, any more than into 
 ler oratory. They had some portion of their worlds 
 n common, but the largest portion, by far, apart. 
 A.nd the younger boys were like him, more or less. 
 But whatever Lady Lucy might have missed in him 
 ,va.s made up to her in her eldest son. 
 
 He was a cavalier to her heart — grave, reli- 
 gions, cultivated; a soldier from duty — but finding 
 lis delight in poetry and music, and all beautiful 
 liiiigs made by God or by man. It was a great 
 nterest to me to sit at Lady Lucy's feet and listen 
 i;o their discourse about music and painting — about 
 ;he great Flemish painter Eubens, who had painted 
 ;he ceiling of the king's banqueting-house at White- 
 lall, the grand building which Mr. Inigo Jones had 
 ust erected ; and about the additions the king had 
 ately made to his superb collection of pictures. He 
 ind Lady Lucy spoke of the purchase of the car- 
 ;oons of Raffaelle and of other pictures by this great 
 naster, and by Titian, Coreggio, and Giulio Romano, 
 )r by Cornelius Jansen and other Flemish painters, 
 ivith as much triumph as if each picture had been a 
 Drovince won for the crown. He spoke also with
 
 110 Tin^ DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS; 
 
 the greatest enthusiasm of the painter Vandyke, who 
 was painting the portraits of the Eoyal Family, and 
 the great gentlemen and ladies of the Covirt. He 
 had brought a portrait of himself by Vandyke as a 
 present to his mother (only, he said, as a bribe for 
 her own by the same hand); and it seemed to me 
 that Mr. Vandyke mu.st be as fine a gentleman as 
 Harry Davenant himself, or he never could have 
 painted so perfectly and nobly the noble features, the 
 grave — almost sad — look of the eyes, the long 
 chestnut-coloured love-locks, the courtly air, and the 
 dress so easy and yet so rich. 
 
 All this was very new discourse to me; paintings^ 
 especially religious paintings, such as the Holy 
 Families and Crucifixions by the foreign masters 
 which Harry Davenant described, never having been 
 )nuch encouraged among us. 
 
 When he spoke of music and poetry I was more 
 at home, and when he alluded with admiration to* 
 the Masque of Comus, by Mr. John Milton, I feltl 
 myself flush as at the praise of a friend. 
 
 For the names revered at Davenant Hall and a<| 
 Netherby were usually altogether different. For in- 
 stance, of Archbishop Laud and Mr. Wentworth 
 (afterwards Lord Strafford), whom Lady Lucy and.| 
 her son seemed to regard as the two pillars of Church- 
 and State, I had only heard as the persecutors of^
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 111 
 
 Mr. Prynne, and tlie subvertors of tlie liberties of 
 the nation. 
 
 But indeed the nation itself seemed to be little 
 in Harry Davenant's esteem, except as a royal estate 
 with very troublesome tenants, wlio had to be kept 
 down; and liberty, which in om- home was a kind 
 of sacred word, fell from his lips as if it had been 
 a mere pretext for every kind of disorder. 
 
 With all his refinement, however, it did seem 
 strange to me that Harry Davenant should enter 
 with apparent zest into the bull-baiting, bear-baiting, 
 and cock-fighting, which were the festivities of the 
 next week. But he said these were fine old English 
 amusements, and it was right to show the people 
 that the polish of the Court did not make the courtiers 
 dainty or womanish, or prevent their entering into 
 these manly sports. 
 
 Sir Launcelot Trevor was a man of a different 
 stamp. He had bold handsome features, black hair, 
 black eyes, a low forehead, a face Avith those sharp 
 contrasts of colour some people think handsome. But 
 there was something in him from which, even as a 
 child, I shrank, although he paid the most finished 
 compliments to the Lady Lucy, Lettice, and me, 
 and to everything we did or said. His compliments 
 always seemed to me like insults. When Harry 
 Davenant spoke of beauty in women, or pictures, or
 
 112 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 nature, lie made you feel it sometliing akin to God 
 and truth, to reverence and give tlaanks for. Wlien 
 Sir Launcelot spoke of beauty, lie made you feel it 
 a tiling akin to tke dust, to be fingered and smelt 
 and tasted, and then to fade and perish. 
 
 Harry Davenant's was a polish bringing out the 
 grain, as in fine old oak. Sir Launcelot's was like 
 a glittering crust of ice over a stagnant pond, with 
 occasionally a flaw giving you a glimpse into the 
 black depths beneath. 
 
 : But I suppose it was the way in which he be- 
 haved to Eoger that more than anything opened my 
 eyes to what he was. So that, behind all his bland 
 smiles on us, I always seemed to see the curl of the 
 mocking smile with which he so often addressed 
 Roger. From the first they seemed to recognize each 
 other as antagonists. ' 
 
 Two days after his coming, Sir Walter's bull 
 was to be baited in a field near the village. Lettice 
 and I were standing in the hall porch, debating 
 whether we ought at once to report to Lady Lucy a 
 dangerous adventure from which we had just escaped, 
 or whether it would alarm her too much, when we 
 heard voices approaching in eager and rather angry 
 conversation. First, Sir Walter's, rather scorn- 
 ful, — 
 
 "Let the boy alone. If his father chose to bring
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 113 
 
 liim up as a monk or a mercer, it is no concern of 
 yours or mine." 
 
 Then Sir Launcelot's smooth tones, — 
 
 "Far from it. Is there not indeed something 
 quite amiable in such compassion as Mr. Roger dis- 
 plays for your bull? In a woman it would be 
 irresistible. Should we not almost regret that the 
 hardening years are too likely to destroy that delight- 
 ful tenderness?" 
 
 Then Roger's voice, monotonous and low, as 
 always when he was much moved, — 
 
 "I see nothing more manly. Sir Launcelot, in 
 tormenting a bull than a cockchafer, when neither 
 of them can escape. My father says it is not so 
 much because it is savage, as because it is mean, 
 that he will have nothing to do with cock-fighting, 
 or bear and bull-baiting." 
 
 Then a chorus of indignant disclaimers of the 
 comparison from the boys, — 
 
 "If you are too tender to stand a bull-baiting, 
 how would you like a battle?" 
 
 But the next moment little Lettice, sweet, gener- 
 ous Lettice (herself Roger's prime tormentor when 
 he was left to her), confronting the whole company 
 — the five brothers and Sir Launcelot — and seizing 
 her father's hand in both hers, exclaimed, — 
 
 "For shame on you all, Robert, and George, and 
 
 The Draytons and the Davettants. 1. o
 
 114 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Roland, and Dick, and Walter" (Harry was not 
 there, and she scornfully omitted Sir Launcelot); 
 "you are all baiting Roger. And that is worse than 
 baiting a dozen bulls. Don't let them, father. He 
 has done a braver thing this very day for us than 
 baiting a hundred bulls. This very morning he 
 faced that very bull in the Priory meadow; not an 
 hour ago. We were crossing it, Olive and I, and 
 the bull ran at us, and Roger saw him, and leapt 
 over the hedge and fronted him, holding up my 
 scarlet kerchief, which I had dropped, and then 
 moved slowly backward, never turning till we were 
 safe over the paling beyond the bull's reach." 
 
 Sir Walter's eyes kindled as he turned and held 
 out his hand to Roger. 
 
 "Why did you not tell me of tbis, my boy?" 
 he said. 
 
 "I did not think it had anything to do with it," 
 said Roger, quietly. "I did not know any one 
 thought I was a coward." 
 
 Sir Laiincelot took off his plumed hat and bowed 
 low to Lettice. 
 
 "Heaven send me such a fair defender. Mistress 
 Lettice, when I am assailed." 
 
 She looked up in his face with her large deep 
 eyes, and said indignantly, — 
 
 "I am not Roger's defender. He was mine."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 115 
 
 He lauglied, but not pleasantly. 
 
 "Few would take much lieed of sucli a danger 
 for such a reward," he said. 
 
 After this he professed to treat Roger with the 
 profoundest deference. 
 
 "A hero and a saint, a Don Quixote and one of 
 the godly all in one," he said; "and such a paragon 
 at sixteen! What might not England expect from 
 such a son?" 
 
 He was, moreover, continually referring questions 
 of conscience to Eoger: asking him whether it was 
 consistent with Christian compassion to play at tennis ; 
 he had heard of a tennis-ball once hitting a man in 
 the eye, and who could say but that it might happen 
 again? or whether he seriously thought it charitable 
 to ride horses with sharp bits, since it was almost 
 certain they did not like it; or whether certain 
 equestrian feats were not positively profane, since 
 they were brought to Europe.by the Moors ; or whether, 
 indeed, there was not a text forbidding the riding of 
 horses altogether. 
 
 He did not venture on these taunts when Harry 
 Davenant was present. But he generally contrived 
 to make them with such a quaint and good-humoured 
 air, that the boys joined in the laugh, and Roger, 
 having neither so nimble nor so practised a wit, could 
 only flush with indignation, and then with vexation 
 
 8*
 
 116 THE DEAYTONS AND THE DAYENANTS: 
 
 at himself that he couM not control the quick rush 
 of blood which always betrayed that he felt the 
 sting. 
 
 Sir Lanncelot had many of the qualities which 
 command the regard of boys: an indifference to ex- 
 penditure sustained by the Fortunatus purse of an 
 unbounded capacity for getting into debt, which 
 passed for generosity ("If the worst comes to the 
 worst," said he, "I can but make interest with the 
 king for a monopoly"); a wit never too heavily 
 weighted to wheel sharp round on an assailant; skill 
 and quickness in all the accomplishments of a cava- 
 lier, from commanding a squadron of horse to tuning 
 a lady's lute; a dashing courage which shrank from 
 no bodily danger {brave I could not call him, for to 
 be brave is a quality of the spirit, and spirit it was 
 very difficult to conceive Sir Launcelot had, except 
 such as there is in a mettlesome horse); a kindly in- 
 stinct which would make him take care of his horses 
 or dogs, or fling a piece of money to a crying child, 
 or in the wars share his rations with a hungry soldier 
 (plundering the next Puritan cottage to repay him- 
 self). For cruel he was not, at least not for cruelty's 
 sake; if his pleasures, whether at the bull-baiting or 
 bear-baiting, or of other baser kinds, proved cruelty 
 to others, that was not his intention, it was only an 
 attendant accident, not ("of course") to be avoided,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 117 
 
 since life was short, and enjoyment must be had, 
 follow what might. 
 
 But of all that went on in the tennis-court and 
 the riding-ground I knew little, except such glimpses 
 as I have given, until long afterwards, when Lettice, 
 who heard it from her brothers, told me — Roger 
 scorning to breathe a word of complaint on the sub- 
 ject, either while at the Hall or after our return. 
 
 But oh! the joy when one morning my father 
 came up to the Hall with two led horses following 
 him; the sjjeechless joy with which, rushing down 
 from Lady Lucy's drawing-chamber, I met him at 
 the great door, and threw myself into his arms as he 
 dismounted. 
 
 "Why, Olive," he said, "you are like a small 
 whirlwind." 
 
 Yet I shed many tears when the moment came 
 to go. Lady Lucy, if no more a serene goddess, 
 and embodiment of perfect womanhood to me, was 
 in some sense more by being less. I loved her as 
 a dear, loving, mother-like woman. Her tender 
 words that night by my bedside, — "Olive, I am 
 not all or half I would be. But I could not bear to 
 be distrusted by you!" and all her frank, gracious, 
 considerate, self- forgetful ways had made my heart 
 cling with a true, reverent tenderness to her, far 
 deeper rooted than my old idolatry. And Lettice,
 
 118 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 generous, eager, wilful as the wind, truthful as the 
 light, now imperious as an empress, now self-distrust- 
 ful and confiding as a little child; her sweet chang- 
 ing beauty seemed to me only the necessary raiment 
 of the ever-changing, varying, yet constant heart, 
 that glowed in the brilliant flush of her cheek, and 
 beamed or flashed through her eyes. 
 
 Lettice and I were friends by right of our dif- 
 ferences and our sympathies, by right of a common 
 antagonism to Sir Launcelot Trevor, and our com- 
 mon conviction of our each having, in Roger and in 
 Harry Davenant, the best brothers in the world. 
 Lettice and Harry royalists, and Roger and I patriots 
 to the core ; they devoted to the King and the Queen 
 Marie, and we to England and her liberties; they 
 persuaded that Archbishop Laud was a new apostle, 
 we that he was a new Diocletian. 
 
 I shall never forget the joy of waking early the 
 next morning in my old chamber, and looking up 
 and seeing the sheen of the morning in the Mere, 
 and watching Aunt Gretel asleep in the bed close to 
 mine, and hearing the first solitary crow of the king 
 of the cocks, and then the clacking of his family as 
 they woke up one by one; the bleating of the sheep 
 in the orchard meadow, and the lowing of cows in 
 the sheds — the lowing of Whiteface, and Beauty,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 119 
 
 my own orphaned calf, and Meadow-sweet; and tten 
 the cheery voice of Tib, the dairy-woman, recovered 
 from the sickness, remonstrating with them on their 
 impatience; and the calls of Bob, Tib's husband, to 
 his oxen, as he yoked them and drove his team 
 afield; and, mingled with all, the deep soldierly bay 
 of old Lion, the watch-mastiff, and the sharp busi- 
 ness-like bark of the sheep-dogs driving the flocks 
 to fresh pastures. It was such a delight to be among 
 all the living creatures again. It felt like coming 
 out of an enchanted castle, drowsy with perfumes 
 and languid strains of music, into the fresh open air 
 of God's own work-a-day world — a world of day- 
 light, and truth, and judgment, and righteousness, 
 and duty. 
 
 I was dressed before Aunt Gretel was fairly 
 awake, and down among the animals, eager to learn 
 from Tib the latest news of all my friends in field 
 and poultry-yard. 
 
 But Roger was out before me. And before 
 breakfast we had visited nearly all our familiar 
 haunts — the heronry by the Mere, the creek where 
 the water- fowl loved to build among the rushes, the 
 swan's nest on the reedy island, the shaded fish- 
 ponds in the orchard, the little brook below where 
 he and I had made the weir, the bit of waste low 
 ground which the brook used to flood, which, with
 
 120 THE BRAYIONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Bob's help, we liacl dyked and embanked into corn- 
 ground for Roger's pigeons. 
 
 My very spinning task witb Aunt Dorothy was 
 a luxury. I could scarcely help singing with a loud 
 voice as I span; my heart was singing and dancing 
 every moment of the day. The lessons for my father 
 were a keen delight, like a race on the dykes in a 
 fresh wind-, the Latin grammar was like poetry to 
 me. It was such a liberation to have come into a 
 busy, every-day, working world again-, — a world 
 of law, and therefore of liberty, where every one had 
 his task, and every task its time, and the play-hours 
 were as busy as the working-hours to heads and 
 hands vigorous with the rebound of real necessary 
 labour. 
 
 All the world became thus again our play-ground, 
 and all the creatures our play-mates, by the mere 
 fact that when not at play we, too, were fellow- 
 workers with them — working as hard in our way 
 as ant, or bee, or happy building bird, or cleansing 
 winds, or even the glorious ministering sunbeams 
 themselves, whose work was all joyous play, and 
 whose play was all world-helpful work. 
 
 And then it was insjjiring to hear once more the 
 great old honoured names of our childhood — Sir 
 John Eliot (honoured in his dishonoured grave), and 
 Hampden, and Pym, and Sir Bevill Grenvil (loyal
 
 A STORT OF THE CIVIL WARS. 121 
 
 tlieu to Lis country and Lis king, and afterwards, as 
 Le believed, to Lis king for Lis country's sake), and 
 Mr. Cromwell, wLo, wLetLer in Parliament, in tLe 
 Fens, or on tlie "Soke of SomersLam," understood 
 liberty to be, liberty to restrain tlie strong from op- 
 pressing tLc weak — liberty to speak tLe trutL loud 
 enougL for all tLe world to Lear. 
 
 I tLougLt I began to understand wLat was meant 
 by, "TLou Last set my feet in a large room." For 
 it seemed like coming fortli from tLe ante-room of a 
 court presence-cLamber, witL low-toned voices, per- 
 fumed atmospLere, constrained, soft movements, into 
 our own dear, free Old England, wLere we migLt 
 run, and sing, and freely use every free faculty to 
 tLe utmost, beneatL tLe glorious open Leavens, wLicL 
 are tLe presence-cLamber of tLe Great King.
 
 122 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAYENANTS: 
 
 VII. 
 
 The very afternoon of Roger's and my return 
 from Davenant Hall, Dr. Antony came on one of his 
 ever-welcome visits. He had, by dint of much 
 trouble and perseverance, obtained access to Mr. 
 Prynne, in his solitary cell at Caernarvon, and to 
 Mr. Bastwick and Mr. Burton in theirs, in Laun- 
 ceston and Lancaster Castles; and afterwards to the 
 prisons to which they were removed, in Guernsey, 
 Jersey, and the Scilly Islands, and also to old Mr. 
 Alexander Leighton, in his prison, after his most 
 cruel mutilations. 
 
 Often, in the summer. Dr. Antony left his patients 
 for a season, to visit such throughout the land as 
 were in bonds for conscience' sake, bearing them the 
 tidings, so precious to the solitary captive, that in 
 the rush of life outside they were not forgotten; 
 taking them food or physic, and such poor bodily 
 comforts as were permitted by the hard rules of their 
 imprisonment, and bringing back messages to their 
 friends and kinsfolk. This last year Dr. Antony 
 himself (as we heard from others) had been some- 
 what impoverished by a fine of ,£250 sterling, to which
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 123 
 
 he had been sentenced by the Star-Chamber on ac- 
 count of these visits of compassion; although there 
 was no law against them. 
 
 This time he brought us grievous tidings from 
 many quarters; and very grave was the discourse 
 between him and my father. 
 
 Everywhere disgrace and disaster to our country : 
 the French Huguenots cursing our Court for encour- 
 lagiiig them to insurrection, and then sending ships 
 against them to Rochelle (though, thank Heaven! 
 scarcely one of our brave sailors would bear arms 
 against their Protestant brethren — officers and men 
 Ideserting in a body when they discovered against 
 whom they had been treacherously sold to fight); 
 our own fisheries on the east coast sold to the Hol- 
 landers , and the capture of one of our Indiamen by 
 Dutch ships; the Barbary corsairs landing on the 
 I coast near Plymouth, and kidnapping our country- 
 jmen and countrywomen from their village homes, 
 to sell them as slaves to the Moors in Africa; the 
 king of Spain , the very pillar of Popery and perse- 
 jcution, the sworn foe of our religion and our race 
 from the days of the Armada, permitted to recruit 
 for his armies in Ireland; the Government, with 
 jWentworth (traitor to liberty) and Archbishop Laud 
 at the head of it, weak as scorched tow to chastise 
 our enemies abroad, yet armed with scorpions against
 
 124 THE DRAYTOXS AND THE DAVLNANTS : 
 
 every defender of our ancient rights at home. The 
 decision but lately given by the judges against the 
 brave and good Mr. Hampden as to ship-money, 
 placing our fortunes at the mercy of the Court, who 
 chiefly valued them as means wherewith to destroy 
 our liberties; Justice Berkeley declaring from the 
 judgment-seat that Lex was not Rex, but that Rex 
 was Lex; thirty-one monopolies sold, thus making 
 nearly every article of consumption at once dear and 
 bad. The sweeping, steady pressure of Lord Straf- 
 ford's (Mr. Wentworth) "Thorough" wi-ought into a 
 vexation for every housewife in the kingdom, by the 
 king's petty monopolies. The heavy links of Weut- 
 worth's imperious despotism, filed and twisted by 
 Archbishop Laud's petty tyrannies into needles where- 
 with to torture tender consciences, and wiry ligatures 
 wherewith to tie and bind every limb. "Regulations 
 as to the colours and cutting of vestments, worthy 
 (Aunt Dorothy said) of a court tailor, enforced by . 
 cruelties minute and persevering enough for a ma- 
 lignant witch." Dark stories, too, of private wrong 
 wrought by Wentworth in Ireland, worthy of the 
 basest days of the Roman emperors; tales of royal 
 forests arbitrarily extended from six miles to sixty, 
 to the ruin of hundreds of gentlemen and peasants; 
 disgraceful news of faith broken with Dutch and 
 French refugees welcome to the heart of England]
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 125 
 
 since the clays of Elizabeth, made secure with rights 
 confirmed to them by James and by King Charles 
 himself, now forbidden by Archbishop Laud to wor- 
 ship God in the way for which their fathers had suf- 
 fered banishment and loss of all things — driven to 
 seek another home in Holland, and in their second 
 exile ruining the flourishing town of Ipswich , where 
 they had lived, and carrying over the cloth-trade, 
 which was the support of our eastern counties, to 
 our rivals the Dutch. 
 
 "You have a copy of Fox's Book of Martyrs?" 
 Dr. Antony asked of my father, after he had been 
 speaking of these lamentable things. 
 
 "What good Protestant English household is 
 without one?" exclaimed Aunt Dorothy, "least of 
 all such as this, whose forefathers are enrolled in its 
 lists." 
 
 "Take good care of it, then," Dr. Antony re- 
 plied, "for the Primate hath forbidden another copy 
 to be printed, under penalties the Star-Chamber will 
 not fail to enforce." 
 
 "The times are dark," he continued; "dark and 
 silent. I stood this spring by the grave of Sir John 
 Eliot , in the church of the Tower — as brave, and 
 loyal, and devout a gentleman as this nation ever 
 knew, killed by inches in prison for calmly pleading 
 the ancient rights of England in his place in Parlia-
 
 126 THE DIIA.YTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 ment, and then liis body refused to liis family for 
 honourable burial among bis kindred in bis parish- 
 cburcb in Cornwall, and cast like a felon's into a 
 dishonoured grave in the precincts of the prison where 
 he died. And I thought how it might have thrown 
 a deeper shadow over his deathbed if he could have 
 foreseen how, during these six years, the tyranny | 
 would be tightened, and the voice of the nation never j 
 once be heard in her lawful Parliaments." 
 
 "The voice of the nation is audible enough to 
 those who have ears to hear," said my father. 
 
 "Yea, verily," said Dr. Antony, "if you had jour- 
 neyed through the country as I have, you would say 
 so. When will kings learn that moans and subdued 
 groans between set teeth are more dangerous from 
 human lips than any torrents of passionate speech?" 
 
 "And," added my father, "that the*re is a silence 
 even more significant and perilous than these!" 
 
 "But there are two points of hope," said Dr. 
 Antony. "One is the Puritan colony in New Eng- 
 land, where our brethren have exchanged the vain 
 struggle with human blindness and tjTanny for the 
 triumphant struggle with Nature in her primeval 
 forests and untrodden wilds. Four thousand good 
 English men and women, and seventy-seven clergy- 
 men, have taken refuge there during these last 
 twenty years. Not poor men only, for they have
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. ■ 127 
 
 taken many thousand pounds of English money, or 
 money's worth, with them, forsaking country and 
 comfortable homes for the dear liberty to obey God 
 rather than man. And these plantations, after the 
 severest struggles and privations, are beginning to 
 grow. 
 
 "What they hope and mean to be is shown by 
 this, that two years since, while food was still hard 
 to win from the wilderness, and roads and bridges 
 had yet to be made, the plantation of Massachusetts 
 voted ,£'400 for the founding of a college. Such an 
 act might seem more like the foresight of the fathers 
 of a nation than the care of a little exiled band 
 struggling for existence with the Indians, the wilder- 
 
 'ness, and a hostile Court at home. 
 
 "The other point of hope is the Greyfriars' Church 
 in Edinburgh, where, on the ist of last March, after 
 long prayers and preachings, the great congregation 
 rose, gathered from all corners of the kingdom — 
 nobles, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers — lifted their 
 hands solemnly to heaven, and swore to the Cov- 
 enant." Then Dr. Antony took a manuscript paper 
 from the breast of his coat, and read: — " 'We ab- 
 
 ijure,' they swore, 'the Roman Anti-christ; all his 
 tyrannous laws made upon indifferent things against 
 our Christian liberty; his erroneous doctrine against 
 the written Word, the perfection of the law, the office
 
 128 THE DRAYTOXS AXD THE DAYENAXTS : 
 
 of Clirist, and His blessed Evangel; liis cruel judg- 
 ments against infants departing this life without the 
 sacraments ; his blasphemous priesthood ; his canoniza- 
 tion of men; his dedicating of kirks, altars, days, 
 ■^ows, to creatures; his purgatory, prayers for the 
 dead, praying or speaking in a strange language; his 
 desperate and uncertain repentance; his general and 
 doubtsome faith; his holy water, baptizing of bells, 
 conjuring of spirits, crossing, saving, anointing, con- 
 juring, hallowing of God's good creatures.' 'We, 
 noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, 
 and coramons, considering the danger of the true 
 Reformed religion, of the king's honour, and of the 
 public peace of the kingdom, by the manifold inno- 
 vations and evils generally contained and particularly 
 mentioned in our late supplications, complaints, and 
 protestations, do hereby profess, and before God, his 
 angels, and the world, solemnly declare, that with 
 our whole hearts we agree and resolve all the days 
 of our life constantly to adhere unto and defend the 
 foresaid true religion, and forbearing the practice of 
 all novations already introduced in the matter of the 
 worship of God, or approbation of the corruptions of 
 the public government of the Kirk, till they be tried 
 or allowed in free Assemblies and in Parliaments, to 
 labour by all means lawful to recover the purity and 
 liberty of the gospel.' 'Neither do we fear the asper-
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 129 
 
 sious of rebellion, combination, or what else our ad- 
 versaries, from their craft and malice, could put upon 
 us, seeing what we do is well warranted, and ariseth 
 from an unfeigned desire to maintain the true wor- 
 ship of God, the majesty of our king, and the peace 
 of the kingdom, for the common happiness of our- 
 selves and posterity. And because we cannot look 
 for a blessing of God on our proceedings, except with 
 our subscription we gave such a life and conversation 
 as becometh Christians who have renewed their cov- 
 enant with God, we therefore promise to endeavour to 
 be good examples to others of all godliness, sober- 
 ness, and righteousness, and of every duty we owe 
 to God and man. And we call the living God, the 
 Searcher of hearts, to witness, as we shall answer to 
 Jesus in that great day, under pain of God's ever- 
 lasting wrath and of infamy; most humbly beseech- 
 ing the Lord to strengthen us with his Holy Spirit 
 for this end.' And this," added Dr. Antony, "has 
 been sworn to, not in the Greyfriars' Church alone, 
 but by crowds, signed with their blood on parchment 
 spread on the stones of the churchyards in Edinburgh 
 and Glasgow; yea, in church after church, in city, 
 village, and on hill-side, from John o'Groat's House 
 to the Borders, from Mull to Fife, with tears, and 
 shouts, and fervent prayers." 
 
 "And this means?" said my father. 
 
 The Dray tons and the Davenants. L "
 
 130 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAYENANTS: 
 
 "It means that the Scottish nation will rather 
 die than submit to Archbishop Laud's ceremonies and 
 canons; but that they mean neither to die nor to 
 submit; that every covenanted congregation will be 
 a recruiting-ground, if necessary, for a covenanted 
 army; that the oath sworn in the Kirk they are pre- 
 pared to fulfil on the battle-field." 
 
 "And a goodly army they might soon discipMne," 
 said my father, "with the military officers they have 
 trained under the great Gustavus." 
 
 "It means," added Dr. Antony, lowering his voice, 
 "that they are ready to kindle a fire for religion and 
 liberty in Scotland which will not stop at the Bor- 
 ders, and will find fuel enough in every county in 
 England." 
 
 "The Court had better, for its own peace, have 
 heeded Jenny Geddes' folding-stool," said my father. 
 
 "For its own peace," rejoined Aunt Dorothy, 
 "but scarcely for ours."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 131 
 
 VIU. 
 
 From that time (1638), through more than a 
 quarter of a century, public and private life were so 
 intertwined, that no faithful history can divide them. 
 In quieter times, while the great historical paintings 
 are being wrought in parliament-houses and palaces, 
 countless small family- pictures are being woven, en- 
 tirely independent of these, in countless homes. But 
 in times of revolution, national history and private 
 story are interwoven into one great tapestry, from 
 Avhich the humblest figure cannot be detached with- 
 out unravelling the whole web. 
 
 Such times are hard, but they are ennobling; or 
 at least they are enlarging. Faults and ordinary 
 virtues become crimes or heroical virtues by mere 
 force of temperature and space. Principles are tested; 
 pretences are dissolved by the fact of being pre- 
 tences. Such times are ennobling, but they are also 
 necessarily tragical. All noble lives — all lives' 
 worth living — are expanded from the small circles 
 of every-day domestic circumstance into portions of 
 the grand orbits of the worlds. Yet, doubtless, 
 thereby in themselves such lives must often become 
 
 9*
 
 132 THE DRAYTONS AND THE UAVENANTS: 
 
 fragments instead of wholes, must seem in them- 
 selves unfinished, must be in themselves inexplicable. 
 
 But, indeed, are not the histories of nations and 
 revolutions themselves, even the grandest, but frag- 
 ments of those greater orbits of which we scarcely, 
 even in centuries, can trace the movement? Is it any 
 wonder, then, that national histories as well as per- 
 sonal should often seem tragical? As now, alas! to 
 us, poor tempest-tossed fragments of the ship's com- 
 pany which we deemed should have brought home 
 the argosies for ages to come, driven to these un- 
 trodden far-off shores; whilst to England, instead of 
 the golden fleece of peace and liberty, our enterprise 
 may seem but to have brought a tyranny more cruel 
 and a court more corrupt. Yet may there be some- 
 thing in the future which, to those who look back, 
 will explain all! 
 
 For England; and perhaps even for these wild 
 shores which we fondly call New England! 
 
 Can it be possible that we have won the Golden 
 Fleece, and have brought it Jdther? 
 
 There is something, moreover, in having lived in 
 times of storm. The temperature is raised at such 
 times; all life is keener, colour more vivid, and 
 growth more rapid. 
 
 A nation in revolution is, in more ways than one, 
 like a ship in a storm. The dividing barriers of
 
 A STORY OP THK CIVIL WAKS. 133 
 
 selfishness are dissolved for a time into a common 
 passion of patriotic hope, purpose, and endeavour. 
 We feel our common humanity in our common throbs 
 of hope and fear, in our common efforts for deliver- 
 ance. And we are (or ought to be) nobler, and 
 more large of heart for ever afterwards. And I think 
 the greater part are. Perhaps, in some measure, all; 
 unless, indeed, it be the ship's cats, who, no doubt, 
 privately pursue the ship's mice with undeviating 
 purpose through the raging of winds and waves, 
 and look on the strife of the elements as a provi- 
 dential arrangement to enable them to fulfil their 
 mousing destinies with less interruption. 
 
 And what such times of revolution do for a na- 
 tion, ought not Christianity, the great perpetual 
 revolution, to do for us always? 
 
 The great hindrance seems to me to be, that it 
 is so much easier to be partizans than patriots, 
 whether in the Church or State. 
 
 If men would do for the country what they do 
 for the party, what a country we should have! 
 
 If Christians would do for the Church what 
 they do for their sect, what a world we should 
 have! 
 
 For a quarter of a century, from the signing of 
 the Covenant in the High Kirk of Edinburgh, the 
 long struggle went on. Nor has it ceased yet.
 
 131 TUB DRAYTOKS AND THE DAVEKANTS : 
 
 though the combatants have changed, and the battle- 
 field. 
 
 The Scottish covenanted congregations grew 
 c[uickly indeed into a covenanted army, and ad- 
 vanced to the Border. The king, by Archbishop 
 Laud's counsel, disbelieving in the Covenant, pro- 
 claimed that if within six weeks the Scotch did not 
 renounce it, he would come and chastise them (in 
 a fatherly way) with an army. The king and 
 Ai'chbishop Laud regarded the Covenant as a freak 
 of rebellious, misguided children. The Scotch re- 
 garded it as the portion of the eternal law of God 
 which they then had to keep — and would keep, or 
 die. 
 
 A difference not to be settled by royal proclama- 
 tion. 
 
 The Scotch had the advantage of being their own 
 army, ready to fight for their divine law; while the 
 king had to pay his army with the coin of the 
 realm, and never could inspire them to the end with 
 the conviction that they were fighting for anything 
 but coin of the realm. 
 
 The coin of the realm, moreover, lay in the 
 keeping of those dragons called Parliaments, which 
 His Majesty had termed "vipers" at their last 
 meeting, and, in a letter to Strafford, had compared 
 to "cats," tameable when young, "cursed" if allowed
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 135 
 
 to grow old, and wliich he had therefore banished 
 underground for eleven years, into shadow and 
 silence. 
 
 When, therefore, the king and the covenanted 
 army met on the Borders, it was found that the 
 Scotch were commanded, as my father said, by old 
 Gustavus Adolphus' officers, — every regiment as 
 in that old Swedish army, also a congregation, meet- 
 ing morning and evening round its banner of 
 "Christ's Crown and Covenant" for prayer, — was 
 a rock against which the English army might vainly 
 break; but from which, as the event proved, it pre- 
 ferred to ebb silently away, the pay for which only 
 it professed to fight being, moreover, exhausted. 
 
 The king took refuge in a treaty, promising to 
 leave Kirk affairs in the hands of the Kirk, and to 
 call a free assembly. Poor gentleman, his promises 
 were still believed to have some small amount of 
 truth in them, and a pacification was effected. 
 
 Then came the moment of hope for those who had 
 been watching those movements with the intensest 
 interest in England. 
 
 Of the two evils , a remonstrating Parliament in 
 London and a fighting Kirk in Scotland , the former 
 now appeared to the king the least. In the keeping 
 of the Parliament, dragon-monster as it seemed to 
 him, lay the gold. And once more, after a silence
 
 136 THE DRAYTONS AND THK DAVENANTS : 
 
 of eleven years, on tlie 15tli of April 1640, the Par- 
 liament was summoned — a weapon welded by the 
 wrongs and the patience of eleven years into a temper 
 the king had done well to heed. 
 
 Pym and Hampden were the chief spokesmen, 
 and Mr. Cromwell sat for Huntingdon. 
 
 At the last Parliament they, and brave men like 
 them, had wept bitter tears at the king's arbitrary 
 measures, and at his false dealing. 
 
 At this Parliament there were no tears shed. 
 There were no disrespectful or hasty words spoken. 
 
 It was as if in spirit they met around the grave 
 of the martyred Sir John Eliot, and would do or 
 say nothing to dishonour the grave to which, since 
 last they met, he had been brought for liberty. 
 
 But no portion of the hoarded treasure could the 
 king force or cajole from their grasp. The Court 
 insisted on supplies. The Parliament insisted on 
 grievances. 
 
 And on May the 5 th the king dissolved the Par- 
 liament. 
 
 My father's voice trembled with emotion when 
 he heard it. "They would have saved him!" he 
 said. "They would have saved the country and the 
 king!" 
 
 Said Aimt Dorothy grimly, — "The king pre-
 
 A STOUY OF THK ClVlIi WARS. 137 
 
 fers armies to parliaments ; and no doubt lie will 
 have his choice." 
 
 A second royal army was raised by enforcing 
 ship-money, seizing the pepper of the Indian mer- 
 chants, and compelling loans — filling the towns 
 and cities with angry men who dared not resist, and 
 the prisons with brave men who dared. And to 
 rouse the country further, the queen appealed pub- 
 licly for aid to the Roman Catholics, whilst Arch- 
 bishop Laud demanded contributions of the clergy. 
 Earl Strafford, recalled from Ireland, was appointed 
 commander-in-chief The Court endeavoured also to 
 enkindle the fury of the old Border war-memories; 
 but the Borderers were brethren in the faith, and, 
 refusing to hate each other, combined in hating the 
 bishops. 
 
 The second army melted like the first, after some 
 little heartless fighting in a cause they hated; having 
 distinguished itself mainly by shouting its sympathy 
 with the Puritan preachers in the various towns 
 through which it passed; by insisting on testing 
 whether its commanders were Papists before it would 
 follow them to the field; and by draining the king's 
 treasury, so that he could proceed no further without 
 once more looking to the dreaded guardians of the 
 gold. 
 
 "They meet in a different temper from the last,"
 
 138 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 my father said, as we walked home from the vil- 
 lage, where we had eagerly hastened to meet the 
 flying Post, who galloped from one patriot's house 
 to another with printed sheets and letters containing 
 the account of the king's opening speech on the 3d 
 of November; "as different as the sweet May days 
 of promise, during which the Little Parliament de- 
 bated, from the gray fogs which creep along the 
 Fens before our eyes to-day. Summer, and hope, 
 and restitution brightened before that April Parlia- 
 ment. Over this lower winter, storms, and retribu- 
 tion; slow clearing of the stubble-fields of centuries, 
 stern ploughing of the soil for better harvests, not to 
 be reaped, perchance, by the hands that sow." 
 
 For the six months between had been ill filled 
 by the Court party. 
 
 I remember now how, one day during those 
 months, my father's hands trembled, and his voice 
 grew low as a whisper, as he read to us a letter 
 telling how a poor reckless young drummer lad, 
 who, when on leave from the army in the north, 
 had joined a wild mob of London apprentices in an 
 attack on Lambeth Palace, had been racked and 
 tortured in the Tower to make him confess his ac- 
 complices; and torture failing to make him base, poor 
 boy, how he had been hanged and quartered the day 
 after.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 139 
 
 "They dared not torture Felton a few years 
 since for the murder of Buckingham," my father 
 said-, "and now they twist this boy's offence into 
 treason, because, forsooth, a drum chanced to be 
 sounded by the mob, that the poor misguided lad 
 may suffer the traitor's doom, and the honour of his 
 Holiness, their Pontifex Maximus, their Archangel, 
 as they call him, be avenged." 
 
 (These were the things that silenced the plead- 
 ings of pity in good and merciful men when, in 
 after-years, the archbishop was brought to the scaf- 
 fold. 
 
 Now that the crime and its avenging all are past, 
 and victim, slayer, avenger, all have met before the 
 great Bar, it is hard to recall the passion of indig- 
 nation these deeds awakened in the gentlest hearts 
 when they were being done with little chance of 
 ever being avenged. But is not the most inflexible 
 judgment the offspring of outraged mercy?) 
 
 All through that summer the king, the arch- 
 bishop, and Strafford went on accumulating wrongs 
 on the nation, too surely to recoil on themselves. 
 
 There may have been many tyrannies more ter- 
 rible. Never could there have been one more irri- 
 tating, more ingenious in sowing discontents in every 
 corner of the land. 
 
 The archbishop, in convocation, made a new
 
 140 THE DRAYTONS AND THK DAVKNANTS: 
 
 canon, requiring every clergyman and every graduate 
 of the universities to take an oath that all things 
 necessary to salvation were contained in the doctrine 
 and discipline of the Church of England, as distin- 
 guished from Presbyterianism and Papistry. 
 
 I remember that canon especially, because it 
 brought Roger home from Oxford, where he had 
 been studying during the past two years, and was 
 about to take his degree, and led to results sad in- 
 deed for us, though not exactly among the miseries 
 to be set down to the archbishop. Roger would 
 not swear, he said, against the religion of half the 
 kingdom, at least without understanding it better. 
 
 From Northamptonshire, Kent, Devonshire — 
 old conservative Kent and the loyal West — came 
 up indignant petitions against this canon. London 
 was exasperated by the committal of four aldermen 
 who refused to set before the king the names of 
 those persons within their wards who were able to 
 lend His Majesty money, every borough in the king- 
 dom was aroused by the presence of its members 
 ignorainiously dismissed from the dissolved Parlia- 
 ment; nine boroughs were still more deeply moved 
 by the absence of their members, imprisoned the day 
 after the dissolution in the Tower. Every day 
 brought reports of some fresh victim fined in the 
 Star-Chamber on account of the odious ship-money.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 141 
 
 Especial complaints came from the North, which 
 Strafford was grinding with the steady pressure of 
 his presence in the council at York. 
 
 And meantime, the friendly Scots were practically 
 inculcating Presbyterianism and the advantages of 
 armed resistance in the four counties beyond the 
 Tees, where they had been left in possession until 
 they received the price wherewith the king had paid 
 them for rebellion. 
 
 There was much stir and movement in the land 
 all through those months. Netherby lay close to 
 the high road, and we had many visitors. Mr. Crom- 
 well once, on his way to Cambridge (for which place 
 he then sat in Parliament), brief in speech and to 
 the point, hearty in look, and word, and gesture, 
 and also at times in laughter. Mr. Hampden, digni- 
 fied and courtly as any nobleman of the king's court. 
 Mr. Pym, with firm, close-set lips and grave eyes. 
 He came more than once on horseback, and put up 
 for the night, on one of the many rides he took at 
 that time around the country to stir up the patriots 
 to act together. My father also was often absent 
 attending meetings of the country party at Brough- 
 ton Hall (the Lord Brook's mansion), near Oxford, 
 where Roger, being at the university, sometimes met 
 him. 
 
 So the summer parsed on, its perishable things
 
 142 THE DRAYTOXS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 fading, and its enduring things ripening into autumn. 
 Crop after crop of royal promises budded and 
 bloomed and bore no fruit, until the people grew 
 sorrowfully to landerstand that royal words, like 
 flowers cultivated into barrenness in royal gardens, 
 were never purposed to bear fruit, but only to at- 
 tract with empty show of blossom. The nobles 
 petitioned for a Parliament; ten thousand citizens 
 of London, in spite of threats, petitioned for a 
 Parliament; and at last, once more the king sum- 
 moned it. 
 
 A month afterwards, early in December, my father 
 called the household around the great hall fire to 
 hear a letter from Dr. Antony: 
 
 " To my very loving friend, 
 
 ^^Roger Drayton, Esq. 
 
 ^'- Novemler 28th. 
 '"'■ Present these. 
 
 "HoNouKED Sir, — Let us rejoice and praise God to- 
 gether. My occupation is gone. The prisons bid fau- to 
 be cleared of all save their rightful tenants. Parish after 
 parish will welcome back faithful ministers, undone and 
 imprisoned by Star- Chamber and High Commission. 
 Heaven grant that persecutions and imprisonments have 
 made their voices strong and gentle, and not shar2D and 
 shrill ; for I have found the de^al not locked out by prison- 
 bolts. And too siu-ely also he will find his way into 
 triumphal processions such as we have had in London to- 
 day, on behalf of Mistress Olive's old friends, Mr. Prynne,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 143 
 
 Mr. Bastwick , and Mr. Biu-tou. But let me set my nar- 
 rative in order. 
 
 "A fortnight before the Parliament was opened, two 
 thousand rioters had torn down the benches in St. Paul's 
 — where the cruel High Commission were sitting — shout- 
 ing that they would have no bishop, no High Commission. 
 Now these disorders cease. Once more the gag is off the 
 lips of every borough and county in Old England; and the 
 bitter helj^less moans and wild inarticulate cries which 
 have vainly filled the land these eleven years , give place 
 to calm and temperate speech. Petitions and remon- 
 strances pour in fi-om north, south, east, and west; some 
 brought by troops of horsemen. The calmest voices are 
 heard most clearly. 
 
 '"He is a great stranger in Israel,' said Lord Falkland, 
 'who knoweth not that this kingdom hath long labom-ed 
 imder great oppression both in religion and liberty. Under 
 pretence of uniformity they have brought in superstition 
 and scandal; under the titles of reverence and decency 
 they have defiled oiu* Church by adorning our churches. 
 They have made the conforming to ceremonies more im- 
 portant than the conforming to Christianity.' 
 
 " Said Sir Edward Deering, in attacking the High Com- 
 mission Court, — 
 
 " 'A pope at Rome will do me less hm-t than a patriarch 
 at Lambeth.' 
 
 "Said Sir Benjamin Rudyard, — 
 
 "'We have seen ministers, their wives and families, 
 undone against law, against conscience, about not dancing 
 on Sundays. They have brought it so to jiass, that under 
 the name of Puritans all our religion is branded. Whoso- 
 ever squares his actions by any rule , divine or human , he 
 is a Puritan ; whosoever would be governed by the king's 
 laws, he is a Puritan; he that will not do whatsoever other 
 men will have him do, he is a Puritan.'
 
 144 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "The Commons had not sate fom^' days when, on the 
 7th of November , by warrant of the House , they sent for 
 Mr. Prynne, Mr. Bastwick, and Mr. Burton, from their 
 pi'isons beyond the seas, to certify by whose authority 
 they had been mutilated, branded, and imprisoned. 
 
 "And now, after three weeks, these thi'ee gentlemen — 
 freed from their sea- washed dungeons in Jersey, Guernsey, 
 and the Scilly Islands — have this day arrived in the city. 
 All the way from the coast they have been eagerly wel- 
 comed, escorted by troops of friends with songs and gar- 
 lands, from town to town. 
 
 "Five thousand citizens of condition rode forth on 
 horseback to meet them, among them many a citizen's 
 wife, and all with bay and rosemary in their hats and caps, 
 to do honoiu" to those their enemies had vainly sought to 
 shame. I trow brave Mrs. Bastwick, who stood tearless 
 by her husband at the pillory, and who hath not been suf- 
 fered to see him in his prison since, thought it no shame to 
 imman bim by shedding tears of joy to-day. Old gray- 
 haired Mr. Leighton, moreover, bent with imprisonment 
 and torture, and yomig John Lilburu, for whom Mr. Crom- 
 well so fervently pleaded, were there to share the triumph, 
 all marked with honourable scars from the Star-Chamber. 
 This outside the city. And within, at Westminster, an- 
 other victory — not a triumph, but a victory — not festive, 
 but solemn and tragical, as victories on battle-fields are 
 wont to be. 
 
 " This day , at the bar of the House of Peers , about 
 three of the clock in the afternoon, Mr. Pym, in the name 
 of all the Commons of England, impeached Thomas, Earl 
 of Strafford , of high treason. And this night Lord Straf- 
 ford lodges in the Tower. 
 
 "He is too stately a cedar that there should not be 
 something great in his fall. 
 
 " Scorning the Commons' message, with a proud gloom-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 145 
 
 ing countenance tlie earl made towards his place at the 
 head of the board. But at once many bade him void the 
 house. Sullenly he had to move to the door till he was 
 called. There he , at whose door so many vainly waited, 
 had to wait till he was summoned. Loftily he stood to 
 hear the sentence of the House. He was commanded to 
 kneel, and on his knees he was committed prisoner to the 
 Kpeper of the Black Rod. He would have spoken, but he 
 who had silenced England for eleven years Avas sternly 
 silenced now, and had to go without a word. In the outer 
 room they demanded his sword. The earl cried to liis 
 serving-man with a loud voice to take my Lord-Lieute- 
 nant's sword. A crowd thronged the doors of the House 
 as he stepped out to his coach. No fellow capjicd to him 
 before whom yesterday not a noble in England would have 
 stood uncovered with impunity. One ci'ied to another, 
 'What is the matter?' 'A small matter, I warrant you,' 
 quoth the earl. Coming to where he had left his coach he 
 fomid it not, and had to walk back again through the 
 gazing, gaping crowd. He was not suffered to enter his 
 own coach, but was carried away a prisoner in that of the 
 Keeper of the Black Eod. 
 
 "And this night he lodges — scarce, I trow, rests or 
 sleeps — in the Tower. Will the memoiy of his old com- 
 panion in the days before he tui-ned traitor to England and 
 liberty, our noble murdered patriot Eliot, haunt his 
 memory there? From his ghost the eai'l is safe enough. 
 Such ghosts are in other keeping and other company. And 
 for the earl's memory^ darker recollections than that of 
 Eliot, with all his wrongs, may well haunt it, if report 
 speaks truth; recollections which the old Tower itself, 
 with all its chambers of death, can scarce outgloom. 
 
 "But Lord Strafford is not a man to dream while there 
 is work to be done , or to look back when life may hang 
 on his wisdom in looking forward. 
 The Draytons and the Davenants. I. 10
 
 146 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "The first stroke Is struck, but the cedar is not felled 
 yet. Nor can any surmise what it may bring down with 
 it if it falls. 
 
 "Your faithful servant and loving friend, 
 
 "Leonard Antony. 
 
 "Koger will like to hear that his friend Mr. Cromwell 
 presented the petition for poor John Lilburn (some time 
 writer for Mr. Piynne), that was scom-ged from West- 
 minster to the Fleet prison. And also that he hath warmly 
 espoused the cause of cei-tain poor countrymen whom he 
 knows near St. Ives, robbed of their ancient pasture-rights 
 on a common tyrannously enclosed by one of the queen's 
 servants. 
 
 "]\L-. Cromwell seemed to take these poor men's wrongs 
 sorely to heart, and spoke with a flushed face and much 
 vehement eloquence concerning them, in a voice which 
 certain courtiers thought loud and imtunable, clad in a 
 coat and band they thought unhandsome and made by an 'ill 
 country-tailor,' and in a hat without a hat-band. But the 
 Parliament hearkened to him with much regard , and gave 
 great heed to what he counselled." 
 
 Roger's eye kindled. 
 
 "Mr. Cromwell will never forget the old friends 
 for tlie new," said my father, "nor pass by little 
 duties in hurrying to great ends." 
 
 Then our household broke into twos and threes, 
 debating the news. 
 
 Aunt Dorothy shook her head. "I do mourn 
 over it," said she. "Mr. Cromwell might do great
 
 A STORY OP THE ClVIIi WARS. 147 
 
 tilings. And here are the Church and State all on 
 fire, and the Almighty sending his lightnings on the 
 cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan, while 
 Mr. Cromwell keeps harping on these petty worldly 
 things; on the wrongs of an insignificant servant of 
 Mr. Prynne's, which no doubt would get set right 
 of themselves when once the great battle is fought; 
 and on whether some poor clodpoles near St. Ives 
 get a few acres more or less to feed their sheep on. 
 And, meanwhile, the sheep of the Lord's pasture 
 wandering on the mountains without pasture or 
 shepherd! I do think it a pity, too, that Mr. Crom- 
 well does not change his tailor; we ought to provide 
 things honest in the sight of all men. Not but that 
 I will say," she concluded, "Mrs. Cromwell and her 
 maidens might take some of these matters on her- 
 self." 
 
 I remember that night asking Aunt Gretel if she 
 thought it would be wrong to put Earl Strafford's 
 name into my prayers. He was not exactly an 
 enemy of mine, or there would be a command to do 
 so; and he certainly was not a friend, nor, now, any 
 longer "one in authority." But it went to my heart 
 to think how in a moment all his glory seemed turned 
 to dishonour, the crowd gaping on him, and no man 
 capping to him. 
 
 10*
 
 148 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVBNANTS: 
 
 "What wouldst tliou pray for, Olive?" said Aunt 
 Gretel, "Certainly not ttat lie may Lave power 
 again, and set up the Star-Chamber, and send the 
 three gentlemen to the pillory once more." 
 
 "Would he do that if he got out of the Tower?" 
 said I. 
 
 "The wise and good men think so, or they would 
 not have sent him there," said she. 
 
 "But might he not be better always afterwards?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "People cannot trust that he would," she said. 
 "Even if he promised ever so much, and intended 
 it, they could not at once trust him." 
 
 "Is it too late then for him to be forgiven?" I 
 said. 
 
 "Too late, it seems, for men to forgive him," 
 said she, very gravely. 
 
 "But never too late for God?" I said. 
 
 "No, never too late for God," said she, slowly. 
 "Because God knows when we really intend to give 
 up sinning, even when we can do nothing to show it 
 to men. So it is never too late for Him to take His 
 prodigals home to His bosom." 
 
 "Then I can ask for that," said I. And I 
 did. 
 
 But that night there sank down on my heart for 
 the first time (the first time of so many in the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 149 
 
 solemn years that followed) the terrible words, ''''Too 
 late;'''' the terrible sense that an hour may come 
 when, if repentance towards God is still possible, re- 
 paration to man and mercy from man are possible 
 no longer.
 
 150 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS I 
 
 IX. 
 
 This fervour of patriotic life wliicli animated us 
 all at Netherby made us rather hard, I am afraid, on 
 Cousin Placidia. 
 
 Throughout the year, after our sojourn at Dave- 
 nant Hall, she had tried Roger and me (and I be- 
 lieve also secretly Aunt Dorothy) very seriously by 
 becoming in her way exceedingly religious. One 
 winter morning, when Roger and I were busy with 
 my father about our Italian lessons at one end of 
 the hall, the following discussion took place between 
 Placidia and Aunt Dorothy over their spinning near 
 the hearth. Placidia had seen, she informed Aunt 
 Dorothy, the vanity of all things under the sun, the 
 folly of pride, and the wickedness of all worldly 
 pomp, and she wished decidedly to take her place 
 "on the Lord's side," to work out betimes her own 
 salvation, and to secure for herself an abundant en- 
 trance into the kingdom. Aunt Dorothy spoke of 
 the heart being deceitful, and hoped Placidia would 
 make sure of her foundation. Placidia rejoined with 
 some slight resentment as to any doubts of her ortho- 
 doxy, that she humbly trusted that she knew as well
 
 A STORY or THE CIVIL WARS. 151 
 
 as any one that every one's heart was indeed deceit- 
 ful above all things and desperately wicked — that 
 is, every ungodly person's; indeed, one only needed 
 to look around in any direction to see it. Aunt 
 Dorothy replied that, for her part, she found her own 
 heart still very ingenious in deceiving her, and in 
 need of a great deal of daily watching. 
 
 Placidia admitted the necessity. Indeed, she said 
 that, on a review of her life, she felt that, although 
 she had been mercifully preserved from many in- 
 firmities which beset other people (her temper being 
 naturally even, and her tastes sober), still, no doubt, 
 she shared in the universal depravity. But she had, 
 like Jacob at Bethel, she said, made a solemn cove- 
 nant with God, promising to give Him henceforth 
 His due portion of her*affections and substance; she 
 had signed and sealed it on her knees, and she be- 
 lieved she was accepted, that she was on the Lord's 
 side, and that, as with Jacob, He would henceforth 
 be on hers. 
 
 Aunt Dorothy's spinning-wheel flew with ominous 
 rapidity, but some moments passed before she replied. 
 Then she said: 
 
 "My dear, I trust you know the difference be- 
 tween a covenant and a bargain. The patriarch Jacob, 
 on the whole, no doubt meant well, but I never 
 much liked his 'ifs' and 'thens' with the Almighty.
 
 152 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 The best kind of covenants, I think, are those which 
 begin on the other side. As when the Lord said to 
 Abraham, 'Fear not, Abraham; I am thy shield and 
 thy exceeding great reward.' Or, 'I am the Almighty 
 God, walk before me and be thou perfect.' Then 
 follow the promises, lavish as His riches, which fill 
 heaven and earth — free as the air he gives us to 
 breathe. When God gives there is no limit, no re- 
 serve, no condition. But, on the other hand, neither 
 is there reserve, or condition, or limit when He de- 
 mands. It is not so much for so much, but all sur- 
 rendered in absolute trust. It is, 'Be thou perfect;' 
 it is, 'Leave thy country, and thy kindred, and thy 
 father's house;' it is, 'Give me thy son, thine only 
 son Isaac, whom thou lovest.' Is this what you 
 mean by a covenant with God? Think well, for 
 He 'is not mocked.' His hand is larger than ours, 
 as the sea is larger than a drinking-cup ; but he will 
 not accept our hands half full." 
 
 Said Placidia: 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy, I have no intention whatever of 
 being half for the world and half for God. I have 
 no opinion at all of the religion which can dance 
 round May-poles on the week-day, and attend the 
 worship of God on Sundays; or fast and pray on 
 Fridays, wear mourning in Lent, and be decked out 
 in curls, and laces, and jewels on feast-days. I have
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 153 
 
 made up my mind never to wear a feather, or a 
 trinket, or a bit of lace to my band, or a laced 
 stomacher; nor to use crisping-tongs , nor to indulge 
 in any kind of 'dissoluteness in hair,' nor ever to 
 sport any gayer colour in mantle or wimple than 
 gray, or at the most 'liver colour.' I have not the 
 least intention, Aunt Dorothy, of trying to serve 
 two masters. I know in that way we gain nothing. 
 But I do believe that those that honour Him He 
 will honour, and that godliness hath promise of 
 the life that now is as well as of that which is to 
 come." 
 
 "The Lord's honours are not often like King 
 Ahasuerus's," said Aunt Dorothy gravely ; " the crowns 
 of those He delighted to honour have sometimes 
 been of fire, and their royal apparel of sackcloth. 
 There is such a thing," she continued, her wheel 
 whirling like a whirlwind, "as serving only one 
 master, yet that not the right one, though taking 
 His name. And we are near the brink of that pre- 
 cipice whenever we seek any reward from the Master 
 beyond His 'Well done.' '/ am thy shield,'" she 
 concluded, "'/, the Lord Himself;'' not what He pro- 
 mises or what He gives, though it were to be the 
 half of His kingdom." 
 
 By this time my father's attention had been
 
 154 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 aroused to the discussion, and rising from the table 
 and approaching the spinners, he said, — 
 
 "What you say, sister Dorothy, reminds me of 
 some words I heard lately in a letter of Mr. Crom- 
 well's. 'Truly no creature hath more cause,' he 
 wrote , ' to put himself forth in the cause of his God 
 than I. I have had plentiful wages beforehand, and 
 I am sure I shall never earn the least mite.'" 
 
 "Yea, verily," said Aunt Dorothy, "Mr. Crom- 
 well may waste too much thought on draining and 
 dykiug; but he is a godly gentleman, and he under- 
 stands the Covenant." 
 
 Cousin Placidia, however, pursued her course, 
 and continued a living rebuke to Roger and me if 
 we indulged in too noisy merriment, and to any of 
 the maids who were tempted into a gayer kirtle or 
 ribbon than ordinary. On Sunday she was never 
 known to smile, nor on any other day to laugh, 
 except in a mild and moderate manner, as a polite 
 concession to any one who expected it in response 
 to a facetious remark. 
 
 Her conversation meantime became remarkably 
 scriptural. She did not allow herself an indulgence 
 which she did not justify by a text; if her dresses 
 wore longer than usual, so as to spare her purse, 
 she looked on it as a proof that she had been mar-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 155 
 
 vellously helped with wisdom in the choice. If she 
 escaped the various accidents which not unfrequently 
 brought me into disgrace, and my clothes to pre- 
 mature ruin, she regarded it as an interference of 
 Providence, like to that which watched over the 
 Israelites in the wilderness. 
 
 Indeed, it seemed to Roger and me, that Placidia's 
 primary meaning of being "on the Lord's side" was, 
 •that in a general way the Almighty should do what 
 she liked; and that in particular the weather should 
 be arranged with considerate reference as to whether 
 she had on her new taffetas or her old woolsey. 
 Great therefore was our relief, although great also 
 our astonishment, when Aunt Dorothy announced to 
 us one day that Cousin Placidia was about to be 
 married to Mr. Nicholls, the vicar of Netherby. 
 
 "Are you not surprised?" I ventured to ask of 
 my father. "Cousin Placidia is such a Precisian, 
 as they call it, and Mr. Nicholls thinks so much of 
 Archbishop Laud." 
 
 "Not much surprised, Olive," he said. "I think 
 Placidia's religion and Mr. Nicholls' are a little alike. 
 Both have a great deal to do with the colour and 
 shape of clothes, and with the places and times at 
 which things are done, and the way in which they 
 are said. And both are prudent persons, desirous of
 
 156 THE DRAYTOKS AND THE DAVEXANTS : 
 
 taking a respectable place in the world in a religious 
 way. I should think they would agree very well." 
 
 Aunt Dorothy was at once indignant and con- 
 soled. 
 
 "I never quite trusted Placidia's professions," 
 said she; "but this, I confess, goes beyond my fears. 
 A person who never passes what he calls the altar 
 without making obeisances such as the old heathens 
 made to the sun and the moon, and who, not six 
 months ago, defiled the house of God with Popish 
 incense!" 
 
 But Cousin Placidia had explanations which were 
 quite satisfactory to herself. 
 
 "She had had so many providential intimations," 
 she said (one of the habits of Placidia that always 
 most exasperated Roger was her way of always 
 doing what she wished, because, she said, some one 
 else wished it; and since she had become religious, 
 she usually threw the responsibility on the Highest 
 Quarter) — "intimations so plain, that she could not 
 disregard them without disobedience. Mr. Nicholls' 
 coming to Netherby at all was the consequence of a 
 series of most remarkable circumstances, entirely 
 beyond his own control. The way in which the 
 prejudice against each other, with which they began, 
 had by degrees changed into esteem, and then into 
 something more, was also very remarkable. And
 
 A STORY OF TUB CIVIIi WARS. 157 
 
 what was most remarkable of all was, that on the 
 very morning of the day when he proposed to her, 
 she had — quite by chance, as it might seem, but 
 that there was no such thing as chance — opened 
 the Bible on the passage, 'Get thee out from thy 
 country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's 
 house, into a land that I will shew thee: and I will 
 bless thee.'" 
 
 "But, my dear," remarked Aunt Gretel, to whom. 
 Aunt Dorothy being unapproachable, Placidia had 
 made this explanation — "my dear, you are not 
 going to leave your country, are you? and you do 
 know the land to which you are going." 
 
 "Of course," said Placidia, "there are always 
 differences. But the application was certainly very 
 remarkable. Mr. Nicholls quite agreed with me, 
 Avhen I told him of it." 
 
 "No doubt, my dear; no doubt," said Aunt Gretel, 
 retreating. "But there does seem a little difference 
 in your opinions." 
 
 "Uncle Drayton says we should look on the 
 things in which we agree, more than on those in 
 which we differ," said Placidia. "Besides, if Aunt 
 Dorothy would only see it, I really trust I have 
 been already usefixl to Mr. Nicholls. He said, only 
 yesterday, he thought there was a good deal to be 
 said in favour of some late ordinances of the Parlia-
 
 158 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 ment against too close approacli to Papistical cere- 
 monies. Mr. Nicholls bad never any propension to- 
 wards the Pope; and he thinks now that, it may be, 
 his canonical obedience to Archbishop Laud led him 
 to some unwise compliances. But the powers that 
 be, he says, must always have their due honour. 
 The great point is, to ascertain which powers be, 
 and which only seem to be. And now that the 
 Parliament has impeached Archbishop Laud, and 
 sent him to the Tower, this is really an exceedingly 
 difficult question for a conscientious clergyman, who 
 is also a good subject, to determine." 
 
 Aunt Gretel did not pursue the subject, she 
 being always in fear of losing her way, and straying 
 into wildernesses, when English politics or rubrics 
 came into question. 
 
 And in due time Placidia became Mistress 
 Nicholls, and removed to the parsonage, with a 
 generous dowry from my father, and everything that 
 by the most liberal interpretation could in any way 
 be construed into belonging to her, down to a pair 
 of perfumed Cordova gloves which had been given 
 her by some gay kinswoman, and, having been 
 thrown aside in a closet as useless vanities, cost 
 Aunt Dorothy a long and indignant search. Every- 
 thing might be of use, said Placidia, in their humble 
 housekeeping. And she had always remembered a
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 159 
 
 sajing she had once heard Aunt Gretel quote from 
 Dr. Luther, — "That what the husband makes by 
 earning, the wife multiplies by sparing." 
 
 "An invaluable maxim," she remarked, "for 
 people in narrow circumstances, who had married 
 from pure godly affection, without passion or ambi- 
 tion, despising all worldly considerations, like her- 
 self and Mr. Nicholls."
 
 160 THE DRAYTOXS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 It was a strange Christmas to many in England, 
 that first in the stormy life of the Long Parliament. 
 Earl Strafford had been in the Tower since the 
 28th of November. A week before Christmas-day 
 Archbishop Laud had been impeached and com- 
 mitted to custody. There was no thought of the 
 Parliament dispersing. Mr. Pym and others of the 
 patriot members were occupied with preparing for 
 Lord Strafford's trial, which did not begin until tlie 
 22nd of the following March. 
 
 On the other hand, faithful voices, long silent in 
 prisons, were heard again in many pulpits through- 
 out the land. 
 
 Judge Berkeley, who had given the unjust deci- 
 sion in favour of ship-money, was seized on the 
 bench in his ermine, and taken to prison like a 
 common felon. 
 
 The thunder-cloud of the Star-Chamber and the 
 High Commission Court had dispersed. The Puritans 
 and patriots breathed once more, and the great voice 
 of the nation, speaking at Westminster the words 
 which were deeds, while it quieted the cries and
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 161 
 
 groans of the oppressed country, set men's tongues 
 free for earnest and determined speech by every 
 hall hearth, and every blacksmith's forge, and ale- 
 house, and village-green, and place of public or 
 social talk throughout the country. 
 
 The blacksmith's forge in Netherby village was, 
 indeed, a place well known to Koger and me. Job 
 Forster, the smith, a brave, simple-hearted giant 
 from Cornwall (given to despising our inland pea- 
 sants, who had never seen the sea, and suspected of 
 being the mainstay of a little band of sectaries in 
 the neighbourhood), having always been Roger's 
 chief friend; while Eachel, his gentle, sickly, saintly 
 little wife (whom he cherished with a kind of timor- 
 ous tenderness, like something almost too small and 
 delicate for him to meddle with), had always given 
 me the child's place in her motherly heart, which no 
 child had been given to their house to fill. When- 
 ever we were missed in childhood, it was commonly 
 by Job Forster's forge we were sought and found. 
 And by this means we learned a great deal of poli- 
 tics from Job's point of view, as well as many mar- 
 vellous stories of God's providence by sea and land, 
 which seemed to us to show that God was as near to 
 those who trust Him now, as to the Israelites of old, 
 which, also. Job and Rachel most surely believed. 
 But, meantime, while the clouds over England 
 
 27(6 Draytons and the Davenauts. I. 11
 
 162 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 seemed scattering, a lieavy cloud gathered over us 
 at Netherby. 
 
 The Davenant family bad come to tbe Hall for 
 tbe Christmas festivities. We met often during the 
 time they were there, more than ever before. The 
 ties of friendship and of neighbourhood seemed to 
 prevail over the party strife which had so long kept 
 us apart. 
 
 Hope there was, also, that those party conflicts 
 at last might cease with the disgrace of the hated 
 Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 His sudden abandonment of the patriot side, his 
 rapid rise, and his lofty, imperious temper, had not 
 failed to make enemies even among those of his own 
 party. Sir Walter Davement said he had no liking 
 for turncoats. They always over -acted their new 
 part, and commonly did more to injure the party 
 they joined than the party they betrayed. The haughty 
 earl once out of the way, the king would listen to 
 truer men and better servants. 
 
 The Lady Lucy held in detestation the earl's 
 private character. The king, she said, was a high- 
 minded gentleman, an affectionate husband and 
 father — his presence and life had done much to 
 reform the Court; the earl was a man of commanding 
 ability, but his hands were not pure enough to de- 
 fend so lofty a cause. Better men, she thought, if
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 163 
 
 in tliemselves weaker, would yet form stronger stays 
 for tlie tLrone of the anointed of God. If Lord 
 Strafford were displaced, slie tliouglit, the best men 
 of all parties would unite-, would understand each 
 other, would understand their king, and all might 
 yet go well. My father, though less sanguine, was 
 not without hope, although on rather different 
 grounds. While Lady Lucy believed that Lord 
 Strafford's violence and evil life were a weakness to 
 the cause she deemed in itself sacred, my father 
 thought that Lord Strafford's power of character and 
 mind were a fatal strength to the cause he deemed 
 in itself evil. The earl once gone, he believed the 
 king would never find such another prop for his 
 arbitrary measures; the lesser tyrants would fall like 
 an arch with the key-stone out, and the king would 
 yield, perforce, to the just demands of the nation. 
 
 Thus it happened that for the time Lord Strafford's 
 imprisonment formed a bond of sympathy between 
 the two families, to Roger's and my great content. 
 Much friendly rivalry there was in the Christmas 
 adornment of the two transepts with wreaths of ivy 
 and holly, ending in a free confession of defeat on 
 our part, as our somewhat clumsy bunches of ever- 
 green stood out in contrast with the graceful wreaths 
 and festoons with which Lettice had made the mem- 
 ory of the Davenants green. 
 
 11*
 
 164 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVEKANTS: 
 
 For a moment she enjoyed her triumph, and 
 then begging permission to make a little change in 
 our arrangements, with that quick perception of hers, 
 and those fairy fingers which never could touch any- 
 thing without weaving something of their own grace 
 into it, in an hour or two she had made the massive 
 columns and arches of our ancestral chapel light and 
 graceful as the most decorated monument of the 
 Davenants, with traceries of glossy leaves and 
 berries. 
 
 Lettice's birthday was on Twelfth Xight. She 
 was fifteen, nearly two years younger than I was, 
 and three than Roger. 
 
 There was great merry-making at the Hall that 
 day. In the morning distributings of garments to all 
 the maidens in the parish of Lettice's age, by her 
 own hands. She had some kindly or merry word 
 for every one, and throughout the day was the soul 
 of all the festivities. There was such a fulness of 
 life and enjoyment in her; such a power of going 
 out of herself altogether into the pleasures or wants 
 of others. She seemed to me the centre of all, just 
 as the sun is, by sending her sunbeams everywhere. 
 While every one else was full of the thought of her, 
 she was full only of shining into every neglected 
 corner and shy blossom, making every one feel glad 
 and cared for, down to Gammer Grindle's idiot boy.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 165 
 
 It was a wonderful joy for me to be Lettice's 
 friend. I bad almost as mucb deligbt in ber as Sir 
 Walter, wbo watcbed ber witb sucb pride; or Lady 
 Lucy, wbose eyes so oft moistened as they rested on 
 ber. She would bave it tbat Roger and I must be 
 at ber rigbt band in everytbing. 
 
 In tbe afternoon Harry Davenant came witb Sir 
 Launcelot Trevor. Harry looked ratber grave, I 
 tbougbt, but be was naturally tbat; and Lettice's 
 gaiety soon infected bim so tbat be became foremost 
 in tbe games, wbicb lasted until tbe sun went down, 
 and tbe servants and villagers dispersed to kindle up 
 tbe twelve bonfires. But Sir Launcelot looked 
 sorely out of temper. His beavy brows qnite 
 lowered over bis keen, dark eyes, so tbat tbey 
 flasbed out beneatb like tbe stormy liglit under a 
 tbunder-cloud. He scarcely bent to my fatber or to 
 any of us; and altbougb be was lavisb as ever of 
 compliments to Lady Lucy and Lettice, bis brow 
 scarcely relaxed to correspond witb tbe lip-smiles 
 witb wbicb be accompanied tbem. 
 
 Wben tbe sun was fairly set, tbe twelve fires 
 were kindled, tbis time on tbe field in front of tbe 
 Hall, in bonour of Lettice, instead of, as usual, on 
 tbe village green. 
 
 We waited to see tbem kindle iip, and tben we 
 left. Eoger stayed bebind us. Tbere were to be
 
 166 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 songs and dances round tlie fires, and then feasting 
 in the Hall late into the night. But Roger only in- 
 tended to remain a little while, to see the merri- 
 ment begin. 
 
 I remember looking back for a last glimpse of 
 the fires as tliey leapt and sank, one moment light- 
 ing up every battlement of the turrets and every 
 carving of the windows with lurid light, and flashing 
 back from the glass so that it glowed like carbuncles ; 
 the next substituting for the reality their own fan- 
 tastic light and goblin shadows, so that not a corner or 
 gable of the old building looked like itself. And I 
 remembered afterwards that close by one of the 
 fires were standing Roger, and Lettice and Sir Launce- 
 lot, near each other; Roger piling wood on the fire 
 at Lettice's direction, and Sir Launcelot standing a 
 little apart with folded arms watching them. His 
 face looked red and angry. I thought it was per- 
 haps because of the angry glare of the flames. Yet 
 something made me long to turn back and bring 
 Roger away with us. It was impossible. But in- 
 voluntarily I looked back once more; the flames 
 leapt up at the moment, and then I saw Sir Launce- 
 lot and Roger as clearly as in daylight, apparently 
 in eager debate. 
 
 I lingered to watch them, but just then the fitful
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 167 
 
 flames fell ; I could see no more, and I had to hasten 
 on to follow my father and Aunt Gretel home. 
 
 Before we reached home, the clouds, which had 
 been threatening all day, began to fall in showers of 
 hail. We had not been in an hour when, as we 
 were sitting over the hall fire, talking cheerily over 
 the doings of the day, Roger suddenly entered, his 
 face ashen-white, his eyes like burning coals, and, in 
 a low voice, called my father out to speak to him 
 outside. For a few minutes, which seemed to me 
 hours, we sat in suspense, Aunt Gretel's knitting 
 falling on her lap, in entire disregard of consequence 
 to the stitches; Aunt Dorothy's spinning-wheel 
 whirling as if driven by the Furies. Then my 
 father returned alone, as pale as Roger. 
 
 He seated himself again, with his arms on his 
 knees and his hands over his face — an attitude I 
 had never seen him in before. It made him look 
 like an old man; and I remember noticing for the 
 first time that his hair was growing gray. 
 
 No one asked any questions. 
 
 At length, in a calm, low voice, my father 
 said, — 
 
 "Roger and Sir Launcelot Trevor have quar- 
 relled. Roger struck Sir Launcelot, and he fell 
 against one of the great logs of the bonfires. He is
 
 168 THE DRAYTONS AND THK DAVENANTS : 
 
 wounded severely, and Eoger is going to ride to 
 Cambridge for a physician." 
 
 "In sucli a night!" said Aunt Gretel; "not a 
 star; and the hail has been driving against the panes 
 this half hour!" 
 
 "It is the best thing Eoger can do," said my 
 father, quietly. 
 
 The next minute we heard the ring of a horse's 
 hoofs on the pavement of the court, and then the 
 sound of a long gallop dying slowly away on the 
 road amidst the howling of the wind and the clatter- 
 ing of the hail. 
 
 But no one spoke until the household were 
 gathered for family prayer. 
 
 There was no variation in the chapter read or in 
 the usual words of prayer; only a tremulous depth 
 in my father's voice as he asked for blessings on 
 the son and daughter of the house. 
 
 And afterwards, as I wished him good night, he 
 leant his hand on my head, and said, — 
 
 "Watch and pray, Olive; watch and pray, my 
 child, lest ye enter into temptation." 
 
 Then I knelt down, and hid my face on his 
 knee, and said, — 
 
 "0 father, Roger must have been sorely pro- 
 voked — I am sure he was. I am sure it was not
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 169 
 
 Roger's fault — I am sure; so sure! Sir Launcelot 
 is so wicked; and I will never forgive him." 
 
 "Roger said it toas his fault, my poor little Olive," 
 replied my father, very tenderly, "and that he will 
 never forgive himself. And whatever Sir Launcelot 
 said or did, you must forgive him, and pray that 
 God may forgive him; for he is very seriously hurt, 
 and may die." 
 
 "Roger would be sure to say that," I said. "He 
 is always ready to blame himself and excuse every 
 one else. But, father, God will not let Sir 
 Launcelot die! What can we do?" 
 
 "Pray! Olive," he said in a trembling voice — 
 "pray!" and he went to his own room. 
 
 But all night long, whenever I woke from fitful 
 snatches of sleep, and went to the window to look 
 if the storm had passed, and if Roger wei'e com- 
 ing, I saw the light burning in my father's 
 window. 
 
 The last time Aunt Gretel crept up softly be- 
 hind me, and, throwing her large wimple over me, 
 drew me gently away. 
 
 "I have kept such a poor watch for Roger!" I 
 said; "and see! my father's lamp is burning still. 
 He has been watching all night." 
 
 "There is Another watching, Olive," she said,
 
 170 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 softly, " night and day. The Intercessor slumbers 
 not, nor sleeps. It is never dark now in the Holiest 
 Place, for he is ever there; and never silent, for he 
 is ever interceding."
 
 A STOUY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 171 
 
 XI. 
 
 "When I awoke again, the cheerful stir of life 
 had begun within .and without the house — the 
 ducks splashing in the pond in the front court; the 
 unsuccessful swine and poultry grunting and cackling 
 out their bill of grievances against their stronger- 
 snouted or quicker-witted rivals; Tib's cheery voice 
 instructing her cows and calves; while the absence 
 of the pleasant regular beat of the flail in the barn, 
 where at this season they were threshing the corn, 
 striking steady time to all the busy irregular sounds 
 of animal life, and bringing them into a kind of 
 unity, — reminded me that it was Sunday. 
 
 All these homely, quiet sounds seemed stranger 
 to me than the howling of the winds, and fitful 
 clattering of the hail, through the night. They made 
 me feel impatient with the animals, and with Tib, 
 and with the inflexible every-day course of things. 
 Was not Roger — our own Roger — in agony 
 worse than mortal sickness; in suspense whether or 
 not his hand had dealt a death-blow? Were not we 
 in dreadful suspense whether his whole life might
 
 172 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 not be oversliadowed from this moment as with a 
 curse ? 
 
 And yet the calves must be fed, and the swine 
 snufi" at their troughs, and grudge if they be not 
 satisfied, and the ducks splash and preen themselves 
 as if nothing was the matter. 
 
 There are many seasons in life when the quiet 
 flow of the stream of every-day life, as it prattles 
 past our door among the familiar grasses and pebbles, 
 falls on the heart with a sense of inflexibility more 
 terrible than the storm which ploughs the waves of 
 the Atlantic into mountains, and snaps the masts of 
 great ships like withered corn-stalks. 
 
 But that morning was the first on which I 
 learned it. 
 
 The storm had quite passed. The da^oi was 
 still struggling with the cold winter moonlight. Far 
 ofi" the gray morning shone with a steely gleam on 
 the creek of the Mere, where I used to sit quite still 
 for hours while Roger angled, holding his fish- 
 basket, amply rewarded at last by his dictum that 
 there was one little woman in the world who knew 
 when to hold her tongue, and by the reflected glory 
 of his triumph when he brought the basket of fish 
 to Tib for my father's supper. Only last autumn, 
 and now it seemed as if it had happened in another 
 life! 
 
 I
 
 A STOKY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 173 
 
 Close to us, in tlie high-road, the moonlight still 
 glimmered on the pools. 
 
 Aunt Gretel was dressed and gone. My last 
 sleep had been sound. I reproached myself for my 
 hard-heartedness in sleeping at all. 
 
 It was still dusk enough to show the faint 
 red light in my father's chamber. Was he still 
 watching? ^ 
 
 My question was answered by the sound of the 
 psalm coming up from the hall, where the household 
 were gathered for family prayer. I knelt at the 
 window while they sang. I heard my father's voice 
 leading the psalm, and Aunt Dorothy's deep second, 
 and Aunt Gretel's tremulous treble; but not Roger's. 
 It felt so strange to be listening, instead of joining 
 in the song. Such a thing had never happened to 
 me before. Aunt Gretel must have thought it good 
 for me to sleep on, and have crept down-stairs like 
 a ghost. But the feeling of being outside was ter- 
 rible to me that morning. It brought back my old 
 terror about being "on the wrong side of the tree." 
 But not so much for myself. For Eoger! for Roger! 
 What if he should be feeling left outside like this! 
 — outside the prayers, outside the hymns, outside 
 the holy family gatherings, outside the light and the 
 welcome! That morning I felt something of what 
 must be meant by the outer darkness. The dark-
 
 174 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENAKTS : 
 
 ness outside! Even the "darkness" did not seem to 
 me so terrible as the being outside! For it showed there 
 was a within — a home; light within, miisic within, 
 the father's welcome within, and we ontside! Could it 
 be that Roger was feeling this now? 
 
 All this rushed through my heart as I knelt to 
 the music of the family psalm. 
 
 Then, dressing hastily, I weftit down. 
 
 "Roger has been here, Olive," said my father, 
 answering my looks. "He brought the chirurgeon. 
 to the hall, and came home an hour since, and then- 
 went back again to watch." 
 
 "Then Sir Launcelot is not out of danger," I said 
 
 "No," he replied; "but there is hope." 
 
 There was no morning walk for us that day 
 My father went to his chamber, my aunts to theirs, 
 and I to the chamber where the dried herbs lay, 
 partly because it was Roger's and my Sunday par- 
 liament-house, and partly because from it I could see 
 the towers of Davenant Hall. 
 
 In our Puritan household we were brought up 
 with great faith in the virtues of solitude. A very 
 solemn part of our ritual was, "Thou, when thou 
 prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door, and 
 pray to thy Father which is in secret." "The one 
 minute and unmistakable rubric," my father called 
 it, "in the New Testament." For he used to say,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 175 
 
 "Not only is tlie solitary jilace tlie place for tlie 
 Redeemer's agonies and the apostle's bitter weeping; 
 it is the place of the largest assemblies. For therein, 
 passing the barriers of the congregation, we enter 
 into the assembly and Church of the first-born, and 
 into the temple not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens. Any religion," said he, "whose secret 
 springs do not exceed its surface waters, will eva- 
 porate in the burden and heat of the day." 
 
 We went to church as usual, and slowly and 
 silently we were coming away, avoiding as much as 
 possible the usual greetings with neighbours, and I 
 feeling especially anxious to escape Placidia's sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 But that was impossible. However, as she joined 
 us she looked really anxious; too anxious even to 
 find an appropriate text. She took my hand kindly, 
 and said, — 
 
 "We must hope for the best, Olive." 
 
 And there was something in the "we," and the 
 briefness of her words, which brought tears into my 
 eyes, and made me think I might still have been 
 keeping a hard place in my heart which would have 
 to be melted. 
 
 But we had only just left the churchyard, and 
 gone a few steps beyond the gate on the field-path 
 to Netherby (I walking behind the rest), when a soft
 
 176 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 hand was laid on my slioulder, and my face was 
 drawn down to Lettice Davenant's kisses, as in a 
 low voice sLe said, — 
 
 "Oh, Olive, I am sure Sir Lancelot will get 
 well. My mother has been saying prayers all night. 
 And Roger is so good. Indeed, it was not nearly 
 half Roger's fault. Sir Launcelot did say terribly 
 provoking things about the Precisians, and hypocrisy, 
 and your father." 
 
 " What did he say, Lettice?" I asked passion- 
 ately. 
 
 "My mother says we ought to forget bitter 
 words," she said; "and I think we ought — at all 
 events, until he gets better." 
 
 "Oh, Lettice," I implored, "tell me, only me! 
 that I may know if he should not get better. Roger 
 told my father it was all his fault; but I know — I 
 always knew — it was not. I shall know this if you 
 will not tell me another word, and perhaps think 
 even worse things than were said." 
 
 "It was not so much the words — they were 
 ordinary enough — it was the tone," said she. And, 
 besides, it is so difficult to repeat any conversation 
 truly; and it was all in such a moment, I can 
 scarcely tell. It began about Lord Strafford, and 
 about Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym being canting 
 hypocrites, and Mr. Cromwell being a beggarly
 
 A STORY OF THK CIVIL WAKS. 177 
 
 brewer; and tbeu Sir Lauucelot muttered sometliing 
 in a whining tone about wondering that Roger's 
 father permitted him to indulge in such ungodly- 
 amusements as bonfires; and Roger said it was not 
 fair to attack when he knew there could be no 
 retort (meaning because I was there); and Sir Laun- 
 celot said he believed the Precisians never thought 
 it fair to be attacked except behind some good city- 
 walls. And then followed a fire of words about 
 cowardice, and hypocrisy, and treason; and then 
 something about your father ha-ving taken care to 
 leave the German wars in good time for his own 
 safety. Then I saw Roger's hand up, thrusting Sir 
 Launcelot away, rather than striking him, I thought. 
 But the next insljant Sir Launcelot lay on the 
 ground, with his head against a jagged log, the 
 other end of which was in the bonfire, and Roger 
 was pulling him back, and Sir Launcelot swearing 
 something about a 'Puritan dog,' and being 'mur- 
 dered.' And then I saw the blood flowing from a 
 wound in his head. I gave Roger my veil to staunch 
 it with. But it would not stop. Sir Lauucelot 
 fainted; and Roger told me to run to my mother. 
 In five minutes all the people were on the spot, and 
 Roger was on horseback riding ofi" for the physician. 
 There! I have told you all I know," she said, 
 "whether I ought or not. But don't tell Roger; for 
 
 The Draijtous and the Bavenauts. I. 12
 
 178 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 I tried to comfort liim by saying liow lie bad been 
 provoked. But it did not comfort bim in tbe least. 
 He looked quite fierce at me — at me!" said little 
 Lettice, tbe tears overflowing, "wben be was always 
 so kind! And be said tbere was no excuse for 
 murder. He was wild witb trouble," sbe continued, 
 sobbing; "not a bit like bimself, Olive. And since 
 tbat, I cannot tell wbat to say to bim. Your ways 
 and ours are not exactly tbe same, you know. So 
 I bave been witb my motber in ber oratory. It is 
 so hard to understand anybody. But I bope God 
 understands us all. I do bope He does. My motber 
 could not find one of tbe cburcb prayers tbat quite 
 fitted; but sbe joined tM^o or tbree togetber in tbe 
 Collects, and tbe Visitation of tbe Sick, and tbe 
 Litany, wbicb seemed to say all sbe wanted wonder- 
 fully. I never knew bow mucb tbey meant before. 
 And it does seem as if God must bear; and Roger 
 always so good. He may say wbat be likes — always 
 so good, to me and to every one." 
 
 Lettice's tears opened tbe sluices of mine, and 
 were a great comfort; and it was a comfort, too, to 
 tbink of tbose dear kind voices joining in Lady 
 Lucy's oratory. 
 
 Wben we reacbed bomc, tbe great table was 
 spread in tbe ball, and tbe serving-men and maidens 
 were standing: round it.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 179 
 
 My father moved to the head, and asked the 
 blessing on the meal; then he said: — 
 
 "Friends, the hand of God is heavy on me to- 
 day, and you will not look that I should eat bread 
 while a life is in peril through deed of one who is to 
 me as my own soul. I might brave it out, and put 
 on a cheerful countenance. But I would have you 
 know I am humbled. The blows of an enemy we may 
 face as men. Beneath the rod of the Lord we must 
 bow like smitten children. And I would have you 
 know I do. Yet I cannot refrain from telling you 
 also that it was for bitter words against good men 
 that the blow was struck. So much I must say for 
 the boy, though God forbid I should hide the sin." 
 
 He left the hall, and every eye was moist as it 
 followed him. 
 
 The general judgment was anything but harsh 
 against Roger, as was easy to see from the few low, 
 broken words which interrupted the silence of that 
 sorrowful meal, and from the response of Tib, to 
 whom I secretly ventured to tell how sorely Roger 
 had been provoked. 
 
 "No need to tell me, Mistress Olive," said she. 
 "That Sir Launcelot is enough to rouse a saint, his 
 groom told my Margery's Dickon. And they may 
 say what they like, but I wouldn't give a farthing 
 for any saint that can't be roused." 
 
 12*
 
 180 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVEXANTS: 
 
 It was not tlie public verdict Roger bad to fear. 
 Aunt Dorotby took my fatber's place at tbe bead of 
 tbe table, ber face wbite and rigid, carving tbe 
 meat, but eating not a morsel, nor uttering a word. 
 Aunt Gretel moved about on one pretence and 
 anotber, bolding balf-wbispered discourse witb tbe 
 elder servants of tbe house, from tbe broken snatcbes 
 of wbicb I gathered tbat slie fell into great historical 
 difficulties in her double anxiety to say nothing 
 harsh of the wounded gentleman, and at the same 
 time to prove that Roger bad meant no harm. And 
 I, meantime, could scarce have sat through that 
 terrible meal at all, but for Roger's stag-hound Lion, 
 who nestled in close to me, pressing bis great head 
 under my hand, and calling my attention, by a soft 
 moan, and from time to time secretly relieving me 
 of the food I could not touch, bolting it in a sur- 
 reptitious manner, regardless of consequences, wbicb 
 said as plainly as possible, "Thou and I understand 
 each other. Our hearts are in the same place. I 
 eat, not because I care a straw about it, but to 
 please thee and help /«'/«." Only once, when my 
 tears fell fast on his nose, as I stooped over him to 
 hide them, his feelings betrayed him, and his great 
 paws appeared for a moment on tbe clean Sabbath 
 cloth, as with an inquiring whine he started up and 
 tried to lick my face, which I supposed was his way
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 181 
 
 of figuratively wiping away my tears. But at the 
 gentlest toucli on Ms paws he subsided, casting one 
 anxious glance at Aunt Dorothy, who, however, 
 neither saw him nor the brown footprints on the 
 table-cloth. Always afterwards he maintained his 
 gentleman-like reserve, limiting all further expression 
 of his feelings to spasmodic movements of his tail, 
 and to his great soft wistful eyes, which he never 
 took off from me. For dogs always know when 
 anything is the matter. Their misfortune is, they 
 can never make out what it is. Roger's ancient 
 foe, the old gray cat, meantime made secretly off 
 with a piece of meat which Lion had dropped. 
 And I caught sight of her slowly luxuriating over 
 it in a corner, entirely regardless of the family 
 circumstances. 
 
 Every most trivial incident in that day glows as 
 vividly and distinctly in my memory, in the fire of 
 the passion that burned through it all, as every de- 
 tail of the carving of Davenant Hall in the flames of 
 the twelve bonfires. 
 
 The meal passed in a silence so deep that every 
 whisper of Aunt Gretel's, and every moan of Lion's, 
 were clearly heard. But afterwards the men slunk 
 hastily away to the farm-yard and stables, and Tib 
 with bones and fragments to her hens and pigs, and 
 .the maidens began to clear away the wooden trench-
 
 182 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 ers and our pewter dishes, the clatter and rattle 
 sounding singularly noisy without the cheerful talk 
 which generally accompanied it. 
 
 Aunt Dorothy, Aunt Gretel, and I, went, at 
 his summons, into my father's justice-room. "Where 
 two or three are gathered together," said he; and 
 without further j)reamhle we all knelt down, while 
 he prayed, in few words and quiet (to the ear). 
 For he seemed to feel the great, loving, omnipotent 
 Presence; not far off, where cries only could reach, 
 but near, close, overshadowing, indwelling — too 
 near almost for speech. And we felt the same. 
 
 When he ceased, it was some minutes before we 
 rose. And the silence fell on me like an answer, 
 like an "Amen," like one of those "Verilys" which 
 shine through so many of the Gospel words, and 
 illumine them so that they maybe read in the dark; 
 in the dark, when we most need them. 
 
 Before we left, I told him of Lady Lucy and 
 Lettice praying the Collects for Eoger in her 
 oratory. 
 
 My father turned away with trembling lips to the 
 window. Aunt Gretel sobbed. Aunt Dorothy said, 
 with a faint voice, — 
 
 "God forgive me if I said anything of Lady 
 Lucy I should not have said."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 183 
 
 We liad not left the room when Lettice's white 
 palfrey flashed past the door, and in another moment 
 she had met, us in the porch. 
 
 "Sir Launcelot will live!" she said. "The phy- 
 sician says there is every hope; and he sleeps. If 
 he wakes better, all will be rig-ht; and Roger waits 
 to see, because he still fears. But I am sure all will 
 be well. And I could not bear you should wait-, so 
 my mother let me come." 
 
 In his thankfulness my father forgot the stately 
 courtesy with which he usually treated Lettice, and 
 stooping down, took her in his arms, as if she had 
 been me, and kissed and blessed her, and called her 
 "God's sweet messenger and dove of hope!" and 
 prayed she might be so all her life. And Aunt 
 Gretel disappeared to tell every one. But Aunt 
 Dorothy stood still where she was, and covered her 
 face with her hands, and wept unrestrainedly in a 
 way most uncommon with her. 
 
 Lettice, with her own sweet instinct when to 
 come and when to go, was on the steps by the door 
 in a moment (anticipating her groom's ready hand), 
 on her white pony, waving her hand to us as we 
 watched her in the porch, and away out of sight, 
 escaping our thanks, and leaving us to our hope. 
 
 Slowly the dispersed household — who had all been 
 invisibly bound to the centre they nevertheless would
 
 184 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENAXTS : 
 
 not approach — gatliered in the hall fiom stall, and 
 shed, and field. 
 
 And then my father said, — 
 
 "Friends, God has given lis hope. Therefore 
 let us pray." And for a few minutes we all knelt 
 together while he prayed, in brief trustful words, 
 ending with the Lord's Prayer, in which all the 
 voices joined, at least all that could, for there were 
 many tears. 
 
 Then my father read Luther's psalm, "God is 
 our refuge and strength, a very present help in time 
 of trouble." 
 
 And we felt it was true. And so the service 
 ended. And once more the household scattered. 
 For Roger had yet to return, and we all felt a 
 family-gathering would be a welcome he could ill 
 bear. So Aunt Dorothy went to her chamber, and 
 Aunt Gretel to her German hymn-book by the fire- 
 side, and I to my place at her feet, and then to 
 watch from the porch. For my father went out to 
 meet Roger. 
 
 And of that meeting neither of them ever spoke. 
 
 They came back together, my father's hand on 
 Roger's shoulder, half as on a child's for tenderness, 
 half as an old man's on a son's for support. 
 
 "Sir Launcelot is out of danger!" said my father, 
 when he came into the hall.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 185 
 
 Roger kissed me and Aunt Gri*etel as he passed, 
 and took my hand and tried to say something; but 
 said nothing, only let me sob a minute on his shoulder, 
 and then went up to his chamber. 
 
 We were used rather to repress than to give 
 utterance to feeling in our Puritan households. And 
 Lion was the only person who made much show of 
 what he felt, twisting and twining and fondling round 
 Roger in a way very unsuited to his giant bulk. We 
 heard him pacing after Roger to the foot of the great 
 staircase. Up-stairs no dog under Aunt Dorothy's 
 rule would venture, under the strongest excitement; 
 so after lying expectant at its foot for some time, 
 Lion returned to express his satisfaction in a more 
 composed manner to me. 
 
 At family-prayer that night, my father made one 
 brief allusion of fervent thankfulness to the mercy 
 of the day. More neither he nor Roger could have 
 borne. 
 
 And so that Sabbath of unrest ended. To us, 
 but not to Roger; although I only learned this long 
 afterwards. For no lamp marked the watch of agony 
 he kept that night. And on his haggard counte- 
 nance, when he came down the next morning, no 
 one dared question nor comment. 
 
 For' while others rejoiced in the deliverance, he 
 writhed in agony under the burden and in the coils
 
 186 THE DRAYTONS AMD THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 of his sin. The accident of the log being at hand, 
 that might have made it murder; and the other ac- 
 cident, that the wound had not been an inch nearer 
 the temple or a barley-corn deeper, made absolutely 
 no difference in the burden that weighed on him. 
 If Sir Launcelot had died, the punishment would 
 have been heavier; but not the remorse. And al- 
 though his living was the deepest cause of thank- 
 fulness, yet it was no lightening of the sin. For it 
 was the fountain of the sin, within, that was Roger's 
 misery; the fountain deep in the heart. 
 
 Now he began fo feel the meaning of the words, 
 "Out of the heart." Now the old difficulties he and 
 I had discussed in the apple-tree and in the herb- 
 chamber rushed back on him. Now he began to feel 
 that it was no mere entertaining question in meta- 
 physical dynamics whether he was a free agent 
 or not, but a question of moral and eternal life or 
 death. 
 
 Could he have resisted the temptation to strike 
 Sir Launcelot? Or could he not? His hand had 
 stirred to deal that blow, at the bidding of the bitter 
 anger in his heart, as instinctively and almost as 
 unconsciously as the indignant blood had rushed to 
 the cheek. What had stirred the sudden movement 
 of anger in his heart? Far bitterer words from the 
 lips of a stranger had not moved him as those mocking
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 187 
 
 tones of Sir Launcelot's. The strength of that fatal 
 impulse was but the accumulated force of the irrita- 
 tion of countless petty provocations, not retaliated 
 outwardly, but suffered to ferment in the heart. Nor 
 was that last sin altogether rooted in sin. Roger's 
 search into his own heart was made with too intense 
 a desire of being true to himself and to God for him 
 to fall into that blind passion of self-accusing. It 
 had been more than half-rooted in justice, just anger 
 against injustice, generous indignation against un- 
 generous slander, truth revolting against ftilsehood. 
 And so gradual (and in part so just) had been the 
 growth of deep-rooted detestation of Sir Launcelot's 
 character, that the last act — which might have 
 been crime in the eyes of man, which was crime in 
 the eyes of God, whose judgm-ent is not measured 
 by consequences — had become almost as irresistible 
 and instinctive as the movement of the eyelid to 
 sweep a grain of dust from the eye. 
 
 When, then, could he have begun to resist? 
 Wlien would it have been possible to stem the little 
 stream which had swollen into a torrent that had all 
 but swept his life into ruin? Where was the point 
 where sin and virtue, hatred which leads to murder, 
 and justice which is the foundation of all virtue, 
 began to intertwine until they were ravelled inex- 
 tricably beyond his power to sever or distinguish?
 
 188 TKE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Had there ever been sucli a point? Must not all, 
 he being as he was by nature, and things being as 
 they were, and Sir Launcelot being as he was, have 
 necessarily gone on as it had, and led to the result 
 it led to? 
 
 But here came in the low, inextinguishable voice 
 of conscience, — 
 
 "This anguish is no fruit of inevitable necessity. 
 It was sia — it was sin. I have sinned." And 
 then, — 
 
 "I have sinned, because there is sin in me. Sin 
 in me; no mere detached faults, no isolated wrong 
 acts, but a fountain of evil within me, from which 
 every evil thing proceeds. Out of the heart — out 
 of the heart; not from without, not something merely 
 in me. It is / myself that am sinful, that have 
 sinned. This one evil thing, which, unlike all other 
 seemingly evil things — storms or frosts, or corrup- 
 tion and death itself — never produces good frviit, 
 but only evil fruit, is springing in an inexhaustible 
 flow from the depths of my inmost being. 
 
 "Free? I am not free! I am in bondage. I 
 am a slave. I am tied and bound. Yet this bon- 
 dage is no excuse; it is the very essence of my sin. 
 I cannot explain it; but I feel it. I feel it in this 
 anguish which I cannot escape any more than we 
 can escape from anguish in the bones by writhing.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAllS. 189 
 
 For this is not tlie anguish of blows or of wounds, 
 but of disease within , growing from my inmost heart, 
 preying on my inmost life. God, I have sinned, 
 I am a sinful man. In me is no help. Is there 
 none in the universe, none in Thee?" 
 
 Then from the depth of the anguish came the 
 relief. The thought flashed through him, — • 
 
 "Unless one worse than the worst conception 
 man ever formed of the devil is the Maker of man 
 and the Omnipotent Euler of the world, it is im- 
 j^ossible that we should be so powerless in ourselves 
 to overcome sin , and so agonized in remorse for it, 
 and yet that there should be no deliverance." 
 
 That thought made a lull in his anguish for a 
 time, a silence; that thought, and the mere exhaustion 
 of the conflict. For his thoughts had whirled him 
 round until thought, with the mere rapidity of motion, 
 became imperceptible. In the centre of the whirl- 
 wind there was stillness, and therein he lay prostrate, 
 dumb, and exhausted. 
 
 But not alone. 
 
 On his mind, wearied out with vain thinking, on 
 his heart, numb with suffering, fell in the pause of 
 the storm old sweet, familiar words, still small voices, 
 soft echoes of sacred hymns learned in childhood; 
 these old familiar, sim23le words, wherewith the Spirit, 
 moving like a dove on the face of the waters, knows
 
 190 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVEXANTS: 
 
 how to win entrance into souls tempest-tossed, when 
 new words, though wise and deep as an archangel's, 
 would only sweep past its closed doors undistinguished 
 from the wail of the winds , or the raging of the seas 
 on which it tosses. 
 
 Old familiar words, — 
 
 "Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee." 
 
 Words of healing to so many! 
 
 Forgiveness; not as a far-oflF result of a life of 
 expiation, but free, complete, present. Peace; not 
 after years of doubtful conflict, but now, to strengthen 
 for the conflict. Yet these were not the words he 
 most wanted then. It was not so much that guilt 
 pressed on him as a burden, as that sin bound him like 
 a chain. Not peace he most wanted, but power; 
 freedom to fight, jpower to overcome. It seemed to 
 him as if what he longed for was not so much "Go 
 in peace," as "Come! and I will chasten thee, smite 
 thee low, humble thee in the dust; but make thee 
 whole." 
 
 Not soft words of comfort, but strong words of 
 hope and promise, were what he needed, aud they 
 did not seem to come. 
 
 He crept out of the house before dawn, to ob- 
 tain tidings at the Hall of Sir Launcelot, and to 
 quiet the restlessness of his heart by outward move- 
 ment.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 191 
 
 On Lis way lie passed the forge where Job Forster, 
 the blacksmith, lived alone with his wife at the edge 
 of the village opposite to ours, on the way to the 
 Hall. 
 
 There was a light in Job's window; a strange 
 sight in his orderly and childless home. The red 
 glare it cast across the road was struggling with the 
 growing dawn. As Roger approached it was put out; 
 and just when he reached the door it was opened, and 
 Job's tall figure issued forth. 
 
 Job strode forward and grasped Roger's hand. 
 
 "Thee had best not be roaming about the country 
 by theeself in the dark like a ghost," said he. "It's 
 wisht!" 
 
 "Is anything the matter?" asked Roger, diverting 
 the conversation from himself. 
 
 "There's nought the matter with us," said Job. 
 
 "There was a light in your window, so I thought 
 Rachel might be ill," said Roger. 
 
 "There's nought ailing with us," repeated Job; 
 and after some hesitation he added, "we were but 
 thinking of thee." 
 
 "You used not to need a lamp to think by," said 
 Roger, touched more than he liked to show. 
 
 "No, nor to pray by," said Job. "But we 
 wanted a promise, she and I." (Job seldom called 
 his wife anything but she) "We wanted a promise,
 
 192 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 master, for tbee. For sLe thought the devil would 
 be sure to be busy with thee just now , and so 
 did I." 
 
 "Did you find one?" asked Roger. 
 
 "They are as plenty as the stars," said Job, "but 
 we couldn't light on the one that would fit. And 
 it's bad work hammering them promises to fit, if they 
 don't go right at first." 
 
 "As many as the stars, and not one that fits me!" 
 said Eoger, unintentionally betraying the struggles 
 of the night. "Peace, and pardon, and everything 
 every one wants, but not what I want. You found 
 none. Job? Then, of course, there was nothing more 
 to be done. You and Rachel wouldn't give in 
 easily." 
 
 "Well, Master Roger," said Job, "we didn't. 
 But we came to a stand, and for a while gave up 
 looking altogether. And I sat down on one edge of 
 the bed and she on the other, and we said nothing. 
 But she wept nigh as bitter as Esau; for she ever 
 had a tender heart for thee, having none of her own, 
 and thee no mother. When all at once she flashed 
 up through her tears, and said, 'Why, Job, we've 
 gone a-hunting for a promise, and we've got them 
 all to our hand. All in Him! Yea and amen, in 
 Him! We've forgotten the blessed Lord!' Then it 
 struck me all of a heap what fools we were; and I
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 193 
 
 could have laughed for gladness, but that she might 
 have thought I'd goue mazed. So I only said, 'Why, 
 child, here we've been chattering like cranes, as if 
 we'd been all in the twilight, like poor old Hezekiah. 
 We've been hunting for the promises, and we've got 
 the Gift! We've been groping for words, and we've 
 got the Word.' So we knelt down again, and begged 
 hard of the Lord to mind how he was tempted 
 and forsaken, and to mind thee, Master Roger, and 
 help thee any way He could. And we rose up won- 
 derful lightened, she and I. And then the promises 
 came falling about us as thick as hail; and upper- 
 most of them all, 'If the Son shall make you free, 
 you shall be free indeed;' 'Eeconciled to God by 
 His death; saved by His life;' and, 'I am come that 
 they might have life!' " 
 
 "Job," said Roger, "I think that will do; I think 
 that will fit me." 
 
 "Maybe, Master Roger," said Job. "They're 
 mighty words. But, please God, thee and she and 
 I never forget what we learnt to-night. Words are 
 not so strong always the thousandth time as the first. 
 But His voice goes deeper every time we hearken to 
 it. And every sore needs a fresh salve. But His 
 touch is a salve for all sores. Never you be such a 
 fool as we were, Master Roger. Never you go creep- 
 ing back into the dark hunting for a promise, and 
 The Draijtons and the Davcnanis. I. . 1«^
 
 194 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 forget that they are all, yea and amen, in the Lord. 
 No more ifs, or maybe's, or perad venture's, but 
 yea and amen in Him for us all for ever." 
 
 Eoger grasped Job's hand in silence, and went 
 on to hear tidings of Sir Launcelot. 
 
 The night had been quiet; the fever had sub- 
 sided, and the danger was over. And Roger came 
 back to his chamber at Netherby to give thanks to 
 God: for danger averted from others, for a curse 
 averted from himself, but above all, for the glorious 
 promise of freedom now and for ever — freedom to 
 overcome sin, freedom to serve God. Freedom in 
 the liberating Saviour, life in the Life, sonship in the 
 Son, now and for ever.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 195 
 
 xn. 
 
 The various streams of the various lives which 
 had been flooded into one by the common anxiety 
 about Roger and Sir Launcelot soon shrank back into 
 their various separate channels. 
 
 Ah! if we could all keep at the point, "/ ivill 
 arise ^'' or, better still, at the place where the Father 
 meets us, how good, and lowly, and tender-hearted 
 we should be! No, ''''Thou never gavest me a kid;'''' 
 no, ''''This thy son, which hath devoured thy stibstance!'''' 
 Strange that the memory of such moments (and what 
 Christian life can be without such?) should not keep 
 the heart ever broken and open. The best way to- 
 wards this, no doubt, is to have such an arising and 
 such an embracing every day we live. I am sure 
 we need it. However, we did not exactly do this 
 at that time at Nethei'by. 
 
 Aunt Dorothy, on thinking matters over with her 
 "sober judgment," thought it a duty to warn us 
 against the "spirit of bondage," which, with all her 
 sweetness, had restrained poor Lady Lucy's prayers 
 to the limits of the Prayer-book. Cousin Placidia, 
 
 13*
 
 196 THE DRATTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 the immediate anxiety having subsided, could not 
 but feel that Roger's vehemence had added another 
 step to the distance which already separated them. 
 Once on that Pharisaic height, to which, alas! we so 
 easily rise without any trouble of climbing, being 
 puffed up thither by windy substances within and 
 without, other people's falls necessarily increase our 
 comparative elevation above them; and whether this 
 is caused by their descent or by our ascent is difficult 
 to determine; just as in the case of one boat passing 
 another, it is difficult by the mere sense of sight to 
 ascertain which is moving. Not that Placidia asserted 
 this conscious superiority by reproaches. Did she 
 need to descend to speech? Was not her life a re- 
 proach? That placid life, unbroken by any move- 
 ment deeper than the soft ripples of an approving 
 conscience; or a calm disajDproval of any one at- 
 tempting an encroachment on her rights — which, 
 of course, she never permitted. Had she not heard 
 of Archbishop Laud's cruelties to the three gentle- 
 men in the pillory with no further emotion than a 
 gentle regret that the three gentlemen could not have 
 held their tongues? Had she not, on the other hand, 
 heard the tidings of Lord Strafford's arrest, and the 
 destruction of the Star-Chamber Court, with no more 
 vehement feeling than a remark on the vanity of 
 human greatness, and a gentle hope that it might
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 197 
 
 lead to the abolition of the vei'y inconvenient mono- 
 polies on pepper and soap? 
 
 Had sLe not always warned Roger and me against 
 severity on Sir Launcelot? Had she not even gone 
 the length of pronouncing him a very fine gentle- 
 man? And what could be more striking ' than the 
 subsequent justification of her warnings by the re- 
 vengeful act to which Roger had been betrayed? 
 
 Under all these circumstances, Placidia's for- 
 bearance must have seemed to herself remarkable. 
 She uttered no rebuke, she pointed no moral, by 
 reminding us of her prophetical sayings. She merely 
 towered above us on her serene heights a little higher, 
 a little more serene — a very little — than before. 
 And she called me "Olive, my dear," and Roger 
 "poor Roger." But that was partly, no doubt, on 
 account of her being married. 
 
 Roger bore her superiority most meekly. In- 
 deed, I believe he felt it as much as she did. For 
 Roger did remain at that point of penitence and par- 
 don where the heart keeps sweet, and lowly, and 
 tender. Which, most certainly, I very often did not. 
 For Placidia's condescension, especially to Roger, 
 chafed me often past endurance. 
 
 Only once I remember his being roused. 
 
 She had been saying (I forget in what connection) 
 that she hoped Roger would not be too much cast
 
 198 THE DRAYT0N3 AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 down. "It was never too late to turn over a new 
 leaf; and then there was the consoling example of 
 the Apostle Peter. There was reason to believe that 
 the Apostle Peter was a wiser and better man all 
 his life from his terrible fall. And we know that 
 all things work for good," said she, "to them that 
 are called." 
 
 Then Roger, sitting at the other end of the hall 
 cleaning his gun, as we believed out of hearing, sud- 
 denly rose, and coming to where we were sitting, 
 stood before Placidia with compressed lips and arms 
 folded tightly on his breast. 
 
 "Cousin Placidia," he said, "never, never say 
 that again. St. Peter was not wiser and better, or 
 even humbler, for denying Christ. No doubt he 
 was wiser, and better, and tenderer for that look, for 
 ever and ever; and better for the bitter weeping; 
 but not for the denial, not for the sin." 
 
 Said my father, who came in behind Roger as 
 he spoke, laying his hand on Roger's shoulder, — 
 
 "True, Roger, true; but though our sin can 
 never work for our good, the memory of sin may; 
 and at any point in the lowest depths where we turn 
 our back on the husks and our face to the Father's 
 house, God will meet us, and from that moment 
 make the consequences, bitter as they may be, begin 
 to work for good to us."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 199 
 
 "To us! father, to us!" said Eoger; "but to 
 others — how to others? To those our misdoing 
 may have misled or confirmed in evil? We may 
 stop a rotk hurled down a precipice. But who can 
 stop all it has set in motion, or undo the ruin it has 
 wrought in its way?" 
 
 '"'' Nothif.g works for good," said my father mourn- 
 fully, "to "ihose whose faces are turned from God. 
 But He can help us , and will , if we set our whole 
 hearts to it to counter- work the evil we have 
 wrought. Coiiuter-work , I say, not undo; for to 
 undo a deed done is impossible, even to Omni- 
 potence. And that makes sin the one terrible and 
 unalterably evil and sorrowful thing in the world, 
 and the only one.' 
 
 The words fell heavily on my heart. Was this 
 the gospel? I thougit. Evil never, never to be un- 
 done; sin never to be the same as if it had not been? 
 Placidia said no morv until Eoger and my father 
 went out on the farm together, and we were left 
 alone with Aunt Gretel, and then she observed, in 
 her deliberate way, with aslow shake of her head, — 
 
 "I hope Cousin Eoger is not still in the dark. 
 I trust he understands the gispel — " 
 
 "What do you mean by the gospel, Placidia?" 
 said I, half roused on Eoge's account and half 
 troubled on my own.
 
 200 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Placiclia, always ready (at that time) with a theo- 
 logical definition, neatly folded and packed, entered 
 into a disquisition of some length as to what she 
 understood by "the gospel." In a deliberate and 
 business-like manner she undertook to explain the 
 purposes of the Almighty from the beginning, as if 
 she had, in some inexplicable way, been in the con- 
 fidence of Heaven before the beginning, and com- 
 prehended not only all the purposes of the Eternal, 
 but the reasons on which these purposes vere founded. 
 The effect produced on my mind was as if the whole 
 life-giving stream of redeeming love flowing fi-om 
 the glorious unity of the living God, the Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Spirit, had be^n frozen into a 
 rigid contract between certain high sovereign powers 
 for the purchase of a certain imeritance for their 
 own use, in which the utmost cire was taken on all 
 sides that the quantity paid ind the quantity re- 
 ceived should be precisely eqiivalent. It was as if 
 the whole living, breathing »vorld, with its infinite 
 blue heavens , its abounding rivers , its waving corn- 
 fields, its heaving seas, aid all the living creatures 
 therein, had been shriv(iled into a map of estates, 
 in which nothing was of importance but the dividing 
 lines. These "dividing lines" of her system might, 
 for aught I knew, be correct enough, might be those 
 of the Bible itself; K^t the awful Omnipresence, the
 
 A STORY Oi'' THE CIVIL WARS. 201 
 
 real holy iuclignation against wrong, the love, the 
 life, the yearning, pitying, repenting, immutably just, 
 yet tenderly forgiving heart which beats in every 
 page of the Bible, had vanished altogether. All the 
 while she spoke, as it were in spite of myself, 
 the words kept running through my head, "They 
 that make them are like unto them." 
 
 At the close she said, turning to Aunt Gretel, — 
 "I think I have stated the gospel clearly. I only 
 hope Cousin Roger understands it." 
 
 "I am sure I do not know, my dear," said Aunt 
 Gretel (for Aunt Gretel, being always afraid of in 
 some way compromising Dr. Luther by any confu- 
 sion in her theological statements, seldom ventured 
 out of the text of Scripture). "I am sure, my dear, 
 I do not know. I am no theologian. And it is a 
 blessing that the Holy Scriptures provide what 
 Dr. Luther calls a gospel in miniature for those who 
 are no theologians — 'God so loved the world, that 
 He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever be- 
 lieveth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life.' That is my gospel, my dear. It is 
 shorter, you see, than yours, and I think rather 
 better news; especially for the wandering sheep and 
 prodigal sons, and all the people outside, and for 
 those who, like me, trust they have come back, but 
 still feel, as I do, very apt to go wrong again."
 
 202 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "Mr. Nicliolls always says I have rather a re- 
 markably clear head for theology," said Placidia. 
 "But gifts difter, and we have none of us anything 
 to be proud of." 
 
 "No doubt, my dear," said Aunt Gretel. "At 
 least I am sure I have not. But I cannot say I 
 think the punishment, or at least the sad conse- 
 c[uences of sin are all exactly taken away for us, at 
 least in this life. For instance, there is Gammer 
 Grindle's grandchild, poor Cicely, as pretty a girl as 
 ever danced round the May-pole, that people say 
 Sir Lauucelot Trevor tempted away to London, and 
 left to no one knows what misery there. (If it was 
 not Sir Launcelot, may I be forgiven for joining in 
 an unjust accusation; but he was seen speaking to 
 her the evening before she left.) Now, if Sir Lauuce- 
 lot were to repent, as I pray he may, that would 
 not bring back the lost innocence to little Cicely, 
 nor do I see how the thought of her could ever 
 bring anything but a bitter agony of remorse to 
 him." 
 
 ("Ah," interposed Aunt Dorothy, who had joined 
 us, '"''I did speak my mind, I am thankful to say, 
 about those May-poles.") 
 
 "What is forgiveness, then?" resumed Placidia. 
 "And what is the good of being religious, if we are
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 203 
 
 to be punished just tlie same as if we were uot for- 
 given?" 
 
 "The blessing of forgiveness," said Aunt Do- 
 rothy, "is leing forgiven; and the good of being 
 godly is, I should think, being godly." 
 
 "Forgiveness, my dear," added Aunt Gretel — 
 "what is forgiveness? It is welcome back to the 
 Father's heart. It is the curse borne for us, and 
 taken from us out of everything — out of death it- 
 self. It is God with us against all our sins, God 
 for us against all our real foes. It is the broken 
 link re-knit between us and God. It is the link 
 broken between us and sin. What would you have 
 better? what could you have more? Once on the 
 Father's heart, can we not well leave it to Him to 
 decide what pain we can be spared, and what we 
 can not be spared, without so much the more sin, 
 which is so infinitely worse than any pain?" 
 
 "My theology," Aunt Dorothy continued, "is the 
 doctrine Nathan taught when he said to David, 'The 
 Lord hath put away thy sin, but the child shall die:' 
 and to the Apostle Paul when he wrote, ' God is not 
 mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap:' the theology our Puritan fathers taught us — 
 no gospel of tolerating sin, but of forgiving and 
 destroying it. 'Christ has redeemed us from the 
 curse of the law, being made a curse for us.' He
 
 204 THE DRAVXOKS AND THK DAVENANTS: 
 
 has brought i;s under the rod of the covenant, hav- 
 ing Himself 'learned obedience through the things 
 which He suflered.' There is as much mercy and 
 as much justice in one as in the other. 1 hope, my 
 dear," she concluded, "you and Mr. Nicholls do in- 
 deed understand the gospel. But, I confess, people 
 who get into the covenant so very easily do puzzle 
 me. They say the anguish all but cost Dr. Luther 
 his life, and Mr. Cromwell his reason." 
 
 Placidia, from her double height of spiritual 
 serenity and semi-clerical dignity, looked mildly 
 down on Aunt Dorothy's suggestions. 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy," said she, "I have often thought 
 you scarcely comprehend Mr. Nicholls and me. But 
 it is written, 'Woe unto you when all men speak 
 well of you.' And as to Cousin Roger's Gospel, I 
 should call it simply the Law." 
 
 Soon after, Placidia rose to leave. But as she 
 was putting on her mufflers, she remarked , as if the 
 thought had just occurred to her, — 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy, those three beautiful cows Uncle 
 Drayton gave me, I am a little anxious about them. 
 The glebe farm is on high ground, and the grass is 
 not so rich as they have been used to; and I was 
 saying to Mr. Nicholls yesterday morning that I was 
 sure Uncle Drayton would be quite distressed if he
 
 A STORY OF Tlin CIVIL WAKS. 205 
 
 saw Low mucli less yellow and ricli tlie butter was 
 tban it used to be. And Mr. Nicholls said be quite 
 felt witli me. And Uncle Dray ton is always so kind. 
 So I said I tbougbt I bad better be quite frank witb 
 Uncle Drayton. You know I always ^m frank, and 
 speak out wbat I tbink. It is no merit in me. It 
 is my nature, and I cannot belp it. And Mr. Nicbolls 
 said be tbougbt I bad.. And yesterday evening it 
 bappened tbat we were passing tbe meadow by tbe 
 Mere, and tbere were no cattle on it. And I said to 
 Mr. Nicbolls at once, wbat a pity tbat beautiful grass 
 sbould run to seed, and our butter be sucb a poor 
 colour. And Mr. Nicbolls saw it at once. And be 
 advised me — ■ or I suggested and be approved of it, 
 I cannot be certain wbicb (and I am always so anx- 
 ious to report everytbiug exactly as it bappened) — 
 at once to go to Uncle Drayton and ask bim if be 
 would allow our tbree cows just to stand for a little 
 wbile in tbat meadow, wbile tbere are no otber 
 cattle to put in it, just to prevent tbe pasture run- 
 ning to waste, wbicb I know would be quite a trouble 
 to Uncle Drayton if be tbougbt of it; only no one 
 can be in every place at once, and no doubt be bad 
 forgotten it." 
 
 " Very few people's eyes can be in every place 
 at once, certainly, Placidia," said Aunt Dorotby witb 
 point. "But it so bappens tbat your uncle bad not
 
 206 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 forgotten that meadow. And this morning Bob drove 
 all our cows there." 
 
 "Oh," said Placidia, "that is quite enough. I 
 only felt naturally anxious that nothing should he 
 wasted, especially when we happened to be wanting 
 it. But, of course, a poor parson's wife cannot ex- 
 pect such butter as you have at Netherby, only I 
 always remember the 'twelve baskets,' and how im- 
 portant it is 'nothing should be lost,' and the vir- 
 tuous woman at the end of the Proverbs. I shall 
 always have reason to be grateful to you. Aunt 
 Dorothy, for making me learn so much Scripture." 
 
 "Thank you, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy, 
 "you always had an excellent memory. But it is 
 very important with the Holy Scriptures, at least 
 the English version, not to read them from right to 
 left." 
 
 So Cousin Placidia departed, leaving Aunt Do- 
 rothy with a comfortable sense of having defeated 
 a plot. 
 
 But half an hour afterwards my father came in. 
 
 "Poor Placidia," said he; "I met her on her 
 way home, and I really was quite touched by her 
 gratitude for those few cows I gave her, and also by 
 the feeling she expressed about Roger. It seems the 
 glebe pasture does not agree with the beasts as well 
 as ours, and she had been rather troubled about the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL AVARS. 207 
 
 butter, but had not liked to speak of it, especially 
 when we were in such anxiety about Roger. It really 
 shows more delicacy of feeling than I thought Placidia 
 possessed, poor child. And it shows how careful we 
 ought to be not to form uncharitable judgments. So 
 I ordered Bob to put those three cows with ours in 
 the Mere meadow for a little while." 
 
 "Did Placidia mention the Mere meadow?" said 
 Aunt Dorothy. 
 
 "Well, I cannot be sure, but I think she did; 
 and I think it was a very sensible notion." 
 
 "What did Bob say?" said Aunt Dorothy grimly. 
 
 "Bob spoke rather sharply," said my father; "he 
 is apt to be very free-spoken at times. He said he 
 had like to look well to our pastures if we were to 
 give change of air to all Mistress Nicholls' cattle. It 
 was not likely. Bob thought, they would be in any 
 hurry to change back again." 
 
 "Well, there are men," murmured Aunt Dorothy, 
 "who are as harmless as doves, and there are women 
 who are as wise as serpents. And the less the two 
 meet the better. I don't care a rush who feeds 
 Placidia's cows; but it is almost more than I can 
 bear that she thinks no one sees through her schemes." 
 
 But Placidia had triumphed. And the parsonage 
 cows never needed any further change of residence. 
 
 It irks me somewhat to intertwine these coarse,
 
 208 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 unlovely threads with the story of those so dear to 
 me; but the whole would drop into unmeaningness 
 without them. Placidia and Mr. Xicholls made many 
 a calumny of the enemy's comprehensible to me. 
 For in later days it became the fashion to assert that 
 characters of that stamp formed the staple of our 
 Commonwealth men and women. Characters of this 
 stamp winNaseby and Worcester! save the persecuted 
 Vaudois! make England the reverence of the world! 
 conceive the "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Axeopagitica," 
 and the "Living Temple!" sacrifice two thousand 
 livings for conscience' .sake. 
 
 No! Pharisees, doubtless, there were among us, 
 as, alas, doubtless there is the root of Pharisaism 
 within us. But they were of the make of Saul, the 
 disciple of Gamaliel, not of those who tithed the 
 "mint, anise, and cummin."
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 209 
 
 xin. 
 
 At first it seemed to me that Placidia's "Gospel" 
 was more likely to be fulfilled in Roger's case tlian 
 his own forebodings. 
 
 Good seemed to come out of that hasty act of 
 his rather than evil. The feeling he, usually so self- 
 repressing, had shown about Sir Launcelot, revealed 
 him in a new light to Lady Lucy. 
 
 "I thought him rather stony, I must confess," 
 she said; "but now I see it was only a little of your 
 Puritan ice, if I may say so without ofi"ence-, and 
 that there is an ocean of feeling below. My dear, 
 now all has ended well, he really must not take it 
 so much to heart. He has grown too grave. We 
 cannot have precisely the same standard for young 
 men, with all their temptations and strong passions, 
 as for sweet innocent girls sheltered tenderly in 
 homes, with our softer natures. I should always 
 wish to be severe to myself But young men — ah, 
 my child, the king is a good man; but if you had 
 seen a little even of our Court, you would think 
 Roger an angel." 
 
 Compared with Sir Launcelot, I most sincerely 
 
 The DrwjUns and the Davenaiits. I. 14:
 
 210 THE DRAYTON'S AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 believed lie was. But this double standard was un- 
 known in our Puritan bome. One law of righteous- 
 ness, and purity, and goodness we knew, and only 
 one, for man and woman. And in this I learned to 
 think Aunt Dorothy's grimmest sternness more pitiful 
 than Lady Lucy's pity. I do not wish to set down 
 what seemed to me Lady Lucy's mistakes to any 
 sect or any doctrine. In theory all Christian sects 
 are agreed as to the moral standard. But I believe 
 in my heart it was the high moral standard set up 
 in those days, chiefly (never only) in our Puritan 
 homes, which will be the salvation of England, if 
 ever that pest-house called the Court is to be cleansed, 
 and if England ever is to be saved. 
 
 Lady Lucy's religion was one of tender, devo- 
 tional emotions, minute ceremonial, and gorgeous 
 ritual. When braced up by Christian principle, it 
 was unspeakably beautiful and attractive. The Puritan 
 religion was one of principle and doctrine. When 
 inspired by divine love, it was gloriously deep and 
 strong. 
 
 Meantime, with Sir Walter and his boys, Roger 
 had manifestly risen many degrees by his "spirited 
 conduct." Sir Launcelot's jests, they admitted, could 
 bite, and it was just as well he should have a lesson, 
 though rather a severe one. 
 
 Sir Launcelot himself, moreover, took a far dif-
 
 A STORY OF THB CIVIL WARS. 211 
 
 ferent demeanour towards Roger. "Saints with that 
 amount of fire in tlieir temper," be observed, "migbt 
 be dangerous, but were certainly not despicable." 
 
 ■ And as to Lettice, whose moral code was chival- 
 rous rather than scriptural, and to whom generosity- 
 was a far more admiraole virtue than justice, and 
 honour a more glorious thing than duty, she said 
 candidly she was delighted Roger had lost his tem- 
 per for once, just to show every one how much heart 
 and spirit he had. 
 
 "You and I knew what he was, Olive," said she; 
 "but I wanted the rest to feel it too." 
 
 And yet there was something lost. Slowly I grew 
 to see and feel it. 
 
 Firstly, in the relative position of Roger and Sir 
 Launcelot. Deeds of violence inevitably place the 
 one who does them morally below the one who 
 suffers. There had been a real honour to Roger in 
 Sir Launcelot's previous mockery; there was a real 
 dishonour in the assumption he now made that Roger 
 stood on his own level. Moreover, Roger's own 
 generous self-reproach deprived him of the power of 
 retort. 
 
 And secondly (but chiefly), in Lettice's altered 
 feeling about Sir Launcelot. Roger never spoke of 
 him; but now that he had recovered, I felt that I 
 could not forget how, by Lettice's own account, he 
 
 14*
 
 212 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS*. 
 
 liad provoked the blow; nor could I see tliat the fact 
 of his having received a blow which he had provoked 
 in any way made his character diflFerent from what 
 it had been. Many debates we had on the subject, 
 for we met often during those weeks — those weeks 
 of winter and early spring/ when the whole nation 
 was in suspense about Lord Strafford's trial, watch- 
 ing during the ploughing and sowing of the year the 
 solemn reaping of the harvest he had sown. One of 
 these debates in particular I remember, because of 
 the way in which it closed. 
 
 It was on Thursday, the 13th of May (1641). 
 We had met in the wood by the Lady Well. There 
 seemed a marvellous melody that day in the music 
 of the little spring, as it bubbled up into its stone 
 trough, echoing back from the stone roof of the little 
 sacred cell the monks had lovingly made for it seven 
 hundred years ago. The inscription could still be 
 read on the front: — 
 
 "Ut jucundas cervus undas 
 .Estiians desiderat, 
 Sic ad rivum Dei vivum 
 Mens fidelis properat." 
 
 Lettice and I knelt and listened to it. 
 
 "It is as if all the bells in fairy-land were ring- 
 ing," said she at length, softly: "only hear how the 
 soft peals rise and fall, and go and come, and how
 
 A STOUY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 213 
 
 one sound drops into another, and blends with it, 
 and flows away and comes back, and meets the next, 
 until there is no following them." 
 
 "Then," said I, "there must have been choirs 
 and church-bells in fairy-land, for there is surely 
 something sad and sacred in the sound. It sounds 
 to me like those bells the legends tell us of, buried 
 beneath the sea, tolling up to us from far beneath 
 the dark waters of the past." 
 
 Then Lettice fastened back her long hair, and 
 stooped down and drank of the crystal water, bathing 
 her face as she drank. 
 
 "Those Israelitish soldiers understood how to 
 enjoy water," said she, rising from her draught. 
 "That is delicious!" 
 
 For we were tired and thirsty with gathering 
 lapfuls of the blue-bells, of which the woods were 
 full. 
 
 As she stood, her moist parted lips, the rich glow 
 on her cheeks, her eyes dancing with life, her arms 
 full of flowers, she said, — 
 
 "It never seems enough to look at the beautiful 
 world, Olive. I seem to want another sense for it. 
 I want to drink of it like this spring; to take it to 
 my heart, as I do these flowers. And I suppose that 
 is why I delight to gather them, just as when I was 
 a little child. Do you understand?"
 
 214 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 I did; but I thought of the inscription on the 
 Lady Well. 
 
 "I suppose we do want to get nearer, Lettice," I 
 said; "we want to drink of the Fountain. We want 
 to rest on the Heart." 
 
 "Do you think that is what this strange unsatis- 
 fied longing means," said she, "which all great joys 
 and all very beautiful things give me?" 
 
 For a few moments she was silent. Then she 
 said, — 
 
 "What life there is everywhere! Everything 
 seems filled too full of joy, and brimming over — 
 the birds into songs, the fields into flowers, and the 
 trees into leaves, the oldest and grayest of them. 
 And I feel just like them all, Olive. On such a 
 morning one must love every one and every thing, 
 altogether regardless of their being lovable, just for 
 the sake of loving. Olive," she added, with one of 
 her sudden turns of thought, "to-day you must for- 
 give Sir Launcelot from the very bottom of your 
 heart, once for all." 
 
 "Oh, Lettice," said I, "I do forgive him. I 
 really think I did long since; at least for everything 
 but his forgiving Roger in that gracious way, as if 
 Roger had nothing to forgive him. I have forgiven 
 him, but I cannot think him good." 
 
 "Ungenerous!" said she, half in jest and half in
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 215 
 
 earnest; "you ought to tliiuk every one good on 
 such a morning as this. Besides, Sir Launcelot 
 always speaks so kindly and generously of you: he 
 says you are goodness itself." 
 
 "I cannot think what is not true, just because 
 the sun shines and the birds sing," said I; "and I 
 certainly cannot think any one good because they 
 call me good, or goodness itself. How can I, Lettice? 
 How can I believe a thing because I wish to believe 
 it?" 
 
 "Truth, truth!" said she, a little petulantly; 
 "truth and duty, right and wrong, I wish those cold 
 words were not so often on your lips. There are 
 others so much warmer and more beautiful — noble- 
 ness, and generosity, and loyalty and devotion; those 
 are things I love. Yours is a world of daylight, 
 Olive. I like sunshine, glowing morning and even- 
 ing like rubies and opals, veiling the distance at 
 noon with its own glorious haze. I hate always to 
 see everything exactly as it is, even beautiful things ; 
 and ugly things I never will see, if I can help it." 
 
 "I love to see everything exactly as it is," said 
 I; "I want, and I pray, to see everything as it is. 
 And in the end I am sure that is the way to see the 
 real beauty of everything in the world. For God 
 has made it, and not the devil. And therefore we 
 need never be afraid to look into things. And I
 
 216 THE DRAYXONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 shall always think truth and duty the most beautiful 
 words in the world." 
 
 "Very pretty!" said she perversely, "and under 
 all those beautiful words you bury the fact that you 
 will never forgive poor Sir Launcelot." 
 
 "I have long forgiven him," said I; "but I can- 
 not think him good, if I tried for ever, until he is. 
 I cannot help thinking of poor little Cicely, Gammer 
 Grindle's grandchild, wandering lost in London." 
 
 "Hush, Olive, hush," said she passionately, 
 "that is ungenerous and unkind. I will not listen 
 to village gossip. My mother says we must not be 
 harsh in judging those whose temptations we cannot 
 estimate. But she means to do all she can in London 
 to help poor Cicely." 
 
 "Oh, Lettice," said I, "it is not a question of 
 more or less pity, but of loho needs our pity most." 
 
 "You are all alike," she rejoined; "yet I love 
 you all, and I love you, Olive, dearly. Without 
 your Puritan training, Olive, you and Roger would 
 have been the best people and the pleasantest in the 
 world; but, as my mother says, all these severe 
 doctrines about law, and justice, and conscience, do 
 make people harsh in judging others, and bitter in 
 resenting wi'ong." 
 
 I could say no more. She had taken refuge under
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 217 
 
 the shadow of Eoger's hasty act, and the ai'gument 
 was closed. 
 
 When we reached Davenant Hall an unusual 
 crowd was gathered at the front door — a silent 
 eager throng — around a horseman whose horse was 
 covered with foam, from the speed with which he 
 had come. It was Harry Davenant. And the tidings 
 he brought were that on yesterday morning Lord 
 Strafford had been beheaded on Tower Hill, a hundred 
 thousand people gathered there to see; but through 
 all the silent multitude neither sighs of sympathy nor 
 sounds of triumph. 
 
 The servants silently dispersed. Harry's horse 
 was led to the stables, and we went in with Lady 
 Lucy, Sir Walter, and Sir Launcelot, into the hall. 
 
 "That is what they were doing in London while 
 we were gathering blue-bells!" said Lettice. And 
 she threw her flowers on the stone floor. "I will 
 never gather any more." 
 
 She buried her face in her hands and burst into 
 tears. "Cruel, cruel," she said, "of the king, of the 
 queen, to let him die." 
 
 "It was the Parliament which hunted him to 
 death," said Harry bitterly. "And the king did try 
 to save him." 
 
 "The Parliament is wicked, and hated him, and 
 I don't care what they did," said Lettice, looking
 
 218 THE DRATXONS AND THE DAVENANXS: 
 
 up witli a fluslied face-, "but the king, oli, motlier, 
 you said tte king would never let Lord Strafford 
 die. What is the use of being a king, if kings can 
 only try to do things like other jjeople? I thought 
 kings could do the things they thought right. He 
 was faithful to the king, was he not, mother?" 
 
 "A devoted servant to the king Lord Strafford 
 surely was," said Lady Lucy, "whether a good 
 counsellor or no. I did not think the king would 
 have given him up. Did no one plead for him?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "He pleaded with a wonderful eloquence for him- 
 self," said Harry Davenant, "that might wellnigh 
 have turned the heads of his bitterest enemies, and 
 did win the hearts of every one who heard him." 
 
 "But the king did try to save him?" said Lady 
 Lucy, clinging to this. 
 
 "The king called his privy council together," 
 said Harry Davenant, "last Sunday, when the bill 
 of attainder had passed through the Lords and Com- 
 mons, and said he had doubts and scruples about 
 assenting to it, and asked their advice. Dr. Juxon, 
 Bishop of London, counselled him never to consent 
 to the shedding of what he believed innocent blood. 
 But the rest of the council advised him to yield. — 
 And the king yielded." 
 
 "Some people," he continued, "think the king
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 219 
 
 was justified by a letter the earl wrote him on the 
 Tuesday before, wherein he offered his life in this 
 world to the king with all cheerfulness; nay, even 
 counselled the sacrifice to reconcile him to his people, 
 saying, 'To a willing man there is no injury done.'" 
 
 "Oh, Harry," said Lettice, "the king could give 
 him up after that?'''' 
 
 "It is said the earl scarcely believed it when he 
 heard it, and that he laid his hand on his heart and 
 exclaimed, 'Put not your trust in princes.'" 
 
 "And well he might!" exclaimed Lettice, her 
 tears dried by the fire of her indignation. 
 
 "Hush, child, hush!" said Lady Lucy. 
 
 "The king made another effort to save him," 
 Harry continued; "he wrote to the Lords recommend- 
 ing imprisonment instead of death ; and at the end of 
 the letter he added a postscript: 'If he must die, it 
 were charity to relieve him till Saturday.'" 
 
 "A miserable, cold request!" exclaimed Lettice 
 vehemently; "more cruel than the sentence." 
 
 "I would have expected this from his father," 
 murmured Sir "Walter, "but not from the king." 
 Then turning from a painful subject, he added, 
 "The earl died bravely, no doubt." 
 
 "As he passed the windows of the chamber where 
 Archbishop Laud was, he bowed to receive his bless- 
 ing, and he said, 'Farewell, my lord, God protect
 
 220 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 your innocence.' He marched to the Tower Hill 
 more with the bearing of a general leading his army, 
 than a sentenced man moving to the scaffold. At 
 the Tower Gate the lieutenant desired him to take 
 coach, fearing the violence of the people, but the 
 earl refused: 'I dare look death in the face,' said he, 
 'and I hope the people do. Have you a care I do 
 not escape, and I care not how I die, whether by 
 the hand of the executioner or by the madness of 
 the people. If that give them better content, it is 
 all one to me.' And so, after protesting his inno- 
 cence, saying he forgave all the world, and sending 
 .a few affectionate words to his wife and four children, 
 he laid his head on the block. There was no base 
 triumphing in the crowd, I will say that for them; 
 they behaved like Englishmen. The earl fell in 
 silence. But in the evening the brutish populace 
 cried out in exultation, 'His head is off! his head 
 is off!' and the city was blazing with bonfires. The 
 people feel they have gained the first step in a vic- 
 toryi The Court thinks it has made the furthermost 
 step in concession, and that thenceforward all must 
 be peace. Would to heaven the king and the Court 
 might be right; but it is hard to say." 
 
 It was dusk before all this converse was ended 
 and I left the Hall. Harry Davenant persisted in
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 221 
 
 guarding me across tlie fields to Netlierby, until we 
 came to the high road close to the house. There he 
 took leave. 
 
 "My father would like to see you," I said. 
 
 "Mr. Drayton would be courteous to his mortal 
 enemy," said he. 
 
 "We are not enemies," I said, a little pained. 
 
 "Heaven forbid," he replied; "but I had better 
 not come; not to-day. The fall of the earl scarcely 
 means the same thing in your home as in ours." 
 
 "There will be no mean triumphing over Lord 
 Strafford's death at Netherby," I said, with some in- 
 dignation. 
 
 "There will be no low, or ungenerous, or mean 
 thing said by one of the Draytons ! " he said warmly. 
 "But I had better not see Mr. Drayton this evening." 
 
 And waving his plumed hat, he vaulted over the 
 stile; and I felt he was right. Looking back at the 
 turn leading to the house, I saw he was watching 
 me from the field. But as I turned the corner and 
 came in sight of the gables of the Manor, a fore- 
 boding came on me, as of siftings and severings to 
 come — of a few pebbles, or a few rushes, gently 
 giving the slightest turn to the course of two little 
 trickling springs, and their waters flowing, ever after, 
 by different banks, and falling at last into oceans 
 which wash the shores of opposite worlds. But not
 
 222 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVILNANrS: 
 
 Lettice, never Lettice; tlie whole world, I tliouglit, 
 should be no barrier to sever us from Lettice! Nor 
 should all the political or ecclesiastical diflferences in 
 the world ever check or chill the current of our love 
 and reverence to all the true, and brave, and just, 
 and good, and godly. For politics, even ecclesias- 
 tical politics, are of time; but truth, and courage, 
 and justice, and goodness and godliness, are of 
 God, and are eternal.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 223 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The six months of the year 1641, from early 
 May till November, shine back on me beyond the 
 stormy years which part them from us, like a mea- 
 dow bright with dew and sunshine on the edge of a 
 dark and heaving sea. Beyond those months, in the 
 further distance, stretches the dim Eden of childhood, 
 with its legends and its mysteries, and its gates of 
 Paradise scarcely closed. Bordering them, on the 
 further side, glooms the broad shadow of Roger's 
 temptation and bitter repentance. On the hither 
 side heaves the great intervening sea of civil war. 
 But through all, that little sunny space beams out, 
 peaceful, as if no stormy waves beat against it; dis- 
 tinct, as if no long space of life parted it from us. 
 
 Did I say childhood was the Eden? Then youth 
 is the "garden planted eastward in Eden," the Para- 
 dise which "the Lord God plants" in the outset of 
 the dullest or stormiest life, where the river which 
 compasseth the land flows over golden sands, "and 
 the gold of that land is got)d." Not childhood, 
 surely, but early youth, "the youth of youth," is 
 the golden age of life. Childhood is the twilight.
 
 224 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Youth is tlie beautiful dawn. Childhood is the dream 
 and the struggling out of it; youth is the conscious, 
 joyful waking. If childhood has its fairy robes spun 
 out of every gossamer, its fairy treasures in every 
 leaf, it has also its eerie terrors woven of the twi- 
 light shadows, its overwhelming torrents of sorrow 
 having their fountains in an April shower, as it steps 
 uncertainly through the unknown world. And neither 
 its joys, nor its sorrows, nor its terrors, nor its trea- 
 sures, can it utter. 
 
 Childhood is the dim Colchis where the Golden 
 Fleece lies hidden-, youth is the Jason that brings 
 thence the "Argosy." Childhood is the sweet shadowy 
 Hesperides, lying dreamily in the tropic sunshine, 
 where the golden fruit ripens silently among the 
 dark and glossy leaves. Youth is the Hero who 
 penetrates the garden and makes it alive with human 
 music, and wins the fruit and bears it forth into the 
 free wide world. If childhood is the golden age, 
 youth is the heroic age, when the heart beats high 
 ^with the first consciousness of power, and the first 
 stir of half-conscious hopes; when the earth lies be- 
 fore us as a field of glorious adventure, and the 
 heaven spreads above us as a space for boixndless 
 flight; before we hafe learned how mixed earth's 
 armies are, how slow the conquests of truth; how 
 seldom we can fight any battle here without wovxnd-
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 225 
 
 ing some we would fain succour; or win any victory 
 in which some things, precious as those borne aloft 
 before us in triumph, are not trailed in the dust be- 
 hind us, dishonoured. and lost. 
 
 Not that the most vivid and golden hopes of 
 youth are delusions. God forbid that I should blas- 
 pheme His writing on the heart by thinking so for 
 an instant! It is but that the Omniscient, who 
 knows the glorious End that is to be, sets us in 
 youth on the mountain-tops to breathe the pure air 
 of heaven, foreshortening the intervening distance 
 from these heights of hope and by its sunny haze, 
 as eternity foreshortens it to Him; that, forgetting 
 the things that are behind, and overspanning the 
 things that are between, every brave and trusting 
 heart may go down into the battle-field strong in the 
 promise of the End , of the Triumph of Truth that 
 shall yet surely be, and of the Kingdom of Righte- 
 ousness that shall one day surely come. 
 
 Such, at least, was youth to us: to Lettice 
 Davenant, and Roger, and me. And, looking back, 
 this sunny time of youth seems all gathered up into 
 those six months before the beginning of the Civil 
 War. 
 
 For we were continually meeting through that 
 summer; and the land was quiet. At least so it 
 seemed to us at Netherby. 
 
 The DraytoHs and the Davenants. I. 15
 
 226 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 The king had granted triennial Parliaments; had 
 granted that this Parliament should never be dis- 
 solved, like its predecessors, by his arbitrary will, 
 but only with its own consent; had seemed, indeed, 
 ready to grant anything. Strafford, the strong prop 
 of his despotism, had fallen; Archbishop Laud, his 
 instigator to all the petty in'itations of tyranny, 
 which had well-nigh driven the nation mad, lay 
 helpless in the Tower; the unjust judges, who had 
 decreed the evil decrees about ship-money, had fled, 
 disgraced, beyond the seas. What, then, might not 
 be hoped, if not from the king's active good- will, 
 at least from his passive consent? There had, in- 
 deed, been an attempt to bring Pym and Hampden 
 into the royal councils; and if this had not quite 
 succeeded, at least the patriot St. John was solicitor- 
 general. 
 
 During much of the summer, after assenting to 
 everything the Parliament proposed, the king so- 
 journed in Scotland. It was true that the reports 
 that reached us thence were not altogether satis- 
 factory. There were rumours of army plots en- 
 coixraged in the highest quarters; rumours of some 
 dark plot called "The Incident," intending treachery 
 against Argyle and others; of His Majesty going 
 with five hundred armed men to the Scottish Parlia- 
 ment, to the great offence of all Edinburgh, rumours
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 227 
 
 that the English Parliament, hearing of "The In- 
 cident," had demanded a guard against similar out- 
 rages, if any "flagitious persons" should attempt them. 
 
 But, for the most part, hope predominated over 
 fear with us at Netherby. One thing was certain: 
 a Parliament alive to every rumour stood on guard 
 for the nation at St. Stephen's, vowed together by a 
 solemn "Protestation" to do or suffer ought rather 
 than yield our ancient rights and liberties; and until 
 the note of warning came thence, the nation might 
 peacefully pursue its daily work — not asleep, in- 
 deed, and with arms not out of reach, but for the 
 present called not to contend, but to work and wait. 
 
 There was just enough of stir in the air, and of 
 storm in the sky, to quicken every movement with- 
 out impeding it; to take all languor out of leisure; 
 to make moments of intercourse more precious, and 
 friendships ripen more quickly. 
 
 We were still one nation, we owned one law, 
 one throne, one national council. We were still one 
 national Church, gathering weekly in one house of 
 prayer; kneeling, at least at Easter, although with 
 some scruples, around one Holy Table; together 
 confessing ourselves to have "gone astray like lost 
 sheep;" together giving thanks for our "creation 
 and redemption;" kneeling reverently, and with one 
 voice saying, "Our Father which art in heaven;" 
 
 15*
 
 228 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 together standing as confessors of one Catholic faith, 
 and with one voice repeating the ancient creeds; 
 together praying (in the words ordered in King 
 James' reign) for our sovereign lord King Charles, 
 and (in the form in his own reign first appointed) 
 for the high court of Parliament, under him as- 
 sembled. 
 
 There were, indeed, words and postures and 
 vestments which were not to the liking of all, which 
 to some were signs of irritating defeat and to others 
 of petty triumph-, but in general — especially since 
 the "Book of Sports" had been silenced, and Arch- 
 bishop Laud had been kept quiet (and Mr. Nicholls 
 had forsaken his more novel practices) — there was 
 a strong tide of truth and devotion in the ancient 
 services, which swept all true and devout hearts 
 along with it. 
 
 And besides, there was, at this period, with some 
 of the Puritans, a hope of peacefully affecting some 
 slight further reformation, so that even Aunt Dorothy 
 was less controversial than usual; contenting herself 
 with an occasional warning against going down to 
 Egypt for horses, or against Achans in the camp; 
 and an occasional hope that, while his words were 
 smoother than butter, the enemy had not war in his 
 heart. But she did not distinctly explain whether 
 by these Achans and Egyptian cavalry she meant
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 229 
 
 Mr. Nicholls, Placidia, Lady Lucy, Lettice, and the 
 king; or, on tlie other hand, the little band of 
 Separatists, or Brownists, whom we met from time 
 to time coming from their worship in a cottage on 
 the outskirts of the village, against whom she con- 
 sidered my father not a little remiss in his magisterial 
 duty. These apparently inoffensive people were sus- 
 pected of Anabaptist tendencies. Aunt Gretel even 
 associated them in her own mind with some very 
 dangerous characters of the same name at Munster. 
 It was , indeed , the utmost stretch of her toleration 
 to connive at our Bob and Tib's occasional attend- 
 ance at their assemblies; but the consideration of 
 Tib's discreet years, and Bob's discreet character, 
 and Aunt Dorothy's somewhat indiscreet zeal, had 
 hitherto induced her to do so, her conscience being 
 further fortified by my father's solemn promise to 
 bring these sectaries to justice if ever they showed 
 the slightest tendency towards polygamy or homicide. 
 They consisted chiefly of small freeholders and in- 
 dependent hand-workers — the tailor, the village 
 carpenter, and, at the head. Job Forster the black- 
 smith; Tib and Bob were, I think, the only house- 
 hold servants among them. They were few, poor, 
 and quiet, doing nothing at their meetings, it seemed, 
 but read the Bible, listen to one reading or explaining 
 it, and praying — some among them having scruples
 
 230 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 as to whether it might not be a carnal indulgence 
 to sing hymns. Occasionally they were strengthened 
 by the visit of a preacher of their way of thinking 
 from Suffolk, where the sect was more numerous. 
 They were good to each other; not hurtful to any 
 one else. They would certainly, every one of them, 
 have died or gone into destitute exile for the minutest 
 scruple of their belief or disbelief, being satisfied 
 that every thread of the broidered work of their 
 tabernacle was as divinely ordered as the tables of 
 the law written with the finger of God. But as yet 
 there was nothing to show what their enthusiasm 
 would do when it was enkindled to action, instead 
 of smouldering in passive endurance; nothing to show 
 what germs of vigorous life lay dormant in that little 
 company, each holding his commission, as he be- 
 lieved, direct from God. Yet from these, and such 
 as these, at the touch of Oliver Cromwell, sprang 
 into life that crop of Ironsides terrible as Samsons, 
 chaste as Sir Galahad, unyielding as Elijah before 
 the threats of Jezebel, unsparing as Elijah with the 
 prophets of Jezebel on Carmel, which overthrew 
 power after power in the state, made England the 
 greatest power in the world; and, if the only human 
 hand that could command it had been immortal, 
 might have ruled England and the world to this day. 
 So many hidden germs of life lie around us un-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 231 
 
 developed everywhere. In the primeval forests of 
 this, our New England, when the pines are felled, 
 a succession of oaks springs up self-sown in their 
 stead. If the pines had not been felled, what would 
 have become of the acorns? Would they have 
 perished, or waited dormant through the ages, till 
 their hour should come? 
 
 But I am creeping back to Roger's ancient puzzle 
 of Necessity, wherewith he bewildered me of old as 
 we sat in the apple-tree at Netherby. 
 
 And after all, however these things be, it is only 
 the king's ministers that are changed in the universal 
 government of the nations. The King never dies. 
 
 Meantime these sectaries were the only outward 
 schism in the unity of the Church and Nation, as 
 represented at Netherby. Korahs, Dathans, and 
 Abirams, Aunt Dorothy called them, or (when she 
 was most displeased) "Anabaptists," and would 
 (theoretically) have liked them to be made examples 
 of in some striking and uncomfortable way, harmless 
 enthusiasts, my father called them, and let them 
 alone; well-meaning persons with dangerous tenden- 
 cies. Aunt Gretel considered them, and made them 
 possets and broth when they were ill. In Lady 
 Lucy's eyes they were misguided schismatics; in Sir 
 Walter's, self-conceited fools; in Harry Davenant's, 
 vulgar fanatics. Of all our circle, I think, none
 
 232 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 cared to find out what they really meant and wanted, 
 except Roger, who, especially after his great trouble, 
 had always the most earnest desire not to misjudge 
 any one; or, indeed, to judge any one as from a 
 judgment-seat above them. And Eoger said they 
 believed they had found God, and were living in 
 His presence, as truly as Moses, or Elijah, or any to 
 whom He appeared of old, which made everything 
 else seem to them infinitely small in comparison; 
 that they wanted, above all things, to do what God 
 commanded, whenever they knew what it was, which 
 made every homeliest duty on the way towards that 
 end seem to them part of the "service of the sanc- 
 tuary," any mountain of difficulty but as the small 
 dust of the balance; every obstacle as the chafi" be- 
 fore the whirlwind. Convictions which gave an in- 
 vincible power of endurance, and could give a 
 tremendous force of achievement, as events proved. 
 
 To this better estimate of them, Roger was, no 
 doubt, partly led by his friendship for Job Forster. 
 Job , indeed , through the whole of these six months, 
 so calm and full of hope to us at Netherby, continued 
 to forbode storms. "The weather was brewed," he 
 said, "on the hills and by the sea; and folks who 
 were bred on the flats, out of sight of sea and hills, 
 and who only kne\^ one half of the world, could not 
 reasonably be expected to understand the signs of
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 233 
 
 the sky. The Lord, in his belief, had plenty of 
 work to do on his anvil yet, before the swords were 
 beaten into ploughshares and the spears into pruning- 
 hooks. It was more likely the ploughshares would 
 have to be beaten into swords, and pruning-hooks 
 into spears." 
 
 And the village coulters, spades, and mattocks, 
 received from Job's hammer treatment all the more 
 vigorous on account of the warlike figures they sup- 
 plied. 
 
 Moreover, Pachel, his wife, looking out from her 
 chamber-window one stormy night across the Fens, 
 had seen wonders in the heavens, black -plumed 
 clouds, marshalled like armies, rolling far away to 
 the east, till the rising sun smote them to a blood- 
 red: while high above, from behind these, one white- 
 winged arm, as of an archangel, swept across the eye 
 untouched by the red glow of battle, raised majesti- 
 cally, as if to warn or to smite. 
 
 "There is something terrible going on some- 
 where," she had said, "or else something terrible to 
 come." 
 
 And Job, to whom Rachel's words had always a 
 tender sacredness in them, woven of the old reverence 
 of our northern race for the prophet-women; of 
 sacred memories of the inspired songs of Deborah 
 and Hannah, interpreted by his belief that the people
 
 234 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 in the Bible were not exceptional but typical; and 
 of his own strong love for her — believed Rachel's 
 visions with entire unconsciousness how much they 
 were reflections of his own convictions. "How," he 
 would say, "could a feeble creature like her, nurtured 
 and cherished like a babe, and busy all her life in 
 nought but enduring sicknesses or doing kindnesses, 
 know aught of wars and battle-fields, unless it was of 
 the Lord?" So Job foreboded, and we hoped, and 
 the summer months passed on. 
 
 Scarcely a day passed on which we and the 
 Davenants did not meet, especially Koger, and Let- 
 tice, and 1; for Roger had taken his degree, and 
 having overworked at it, was constrained to be idle 
 for a while; and the boy Davenants were most of 
 the time in London. At church, at the Hall, at the 
 Manor, riding, coursing, hay-making, nutting, boat- 
 ing on the Mere; on rainy days, hunting out wonder- 
 ful old illuminated manuscripts in Sir Walter's library, 
 or by the organ in my father's, singing glees and 
 madrigals; making essays at Italian poetry, generally 
 resulting in translations, metrical or otherwise, by 
 Roger, for Lettice's benefit. Lettice reigning in all 
 things, by a thousand indisputable royal rights: as 
 pupil; as sovereign lady; as the youngest; as the 
 most adventurous; as the most timid; by right of 
 her need of care, and her clinging to protection; by
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 235 
 
 ri^ht of minority, she being one, and we two; by 
 right of her true constancy and her little seeming 
 ficklenesses; by right of her brilliant, everchanging 
 ; beauty, and all her nameless, sweet, tyrannical, win- 
 ning, wilful ways; by right of all her generous self- 
 |i forgetfulness, and delight to give pleasure; and firstly 
 ; and lastly, by right of the subtle power which, through 
 I. all these charms, stole into Roger's heart, and took 
 ' possession of it, unchallenged and unresisted, then 
 and for ever. 
 
 We spoke little of politics. Lettice never had 
 any, except loyalty to the king; and at this time her 
 loyalty was sorely tried by reason of her perplexity 
 and distress at what seemed to her the ungenerous 
 desertion of Strafford in his need. 
 
 There were no forbidden topics between us. 
 There was one, indeed, which by tacit mutual con- 
 sent we always avoided, and that was all that con- 
 cerned Sir Launcelot Trevor. Lettice, always scent- 
 ing from afar the least symptom of what could pain, 
 never approached what had been the cause of so 
 much anguish to Roger; and me she never freed 
 from the suspicion of a certain sisterly injustice in 
 my sentiments towards my brother's enemy. But a 
 very insignificant and unnecessary chamber indeed 
 was this to be locked out of the palace of delights 
 through which we three roamed at will together.
 
 236 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Nor can I remember one pang of vexation at my 
 own falling from the first place to the second in 
 Eoger's thoughts. If I had not loved Lettice on my 
 own account as I did, there was nothing in Roger's 
 love for her that could have sown one miserable 
 seed of jealousy in my heart. If he loved her most, 
 he was more to me than ever before. The reflection 
 of his tender reverence for her fell like a glory on 
 all women for her sake. He was more to all for 
 being most to her. Mean calculations of more or 
 less, better or best, could not enter into comparison 
 in affections stamped with such a sweet diversity. 
 All true love expands, not narrows; strengthens, 
 not weakens; anoints the eyes with eye-salve, not 
 blinds; opens the heart, and opens the world, and 
 transfigures the universe into an enchanted palace 
 and treasure-house of joys, simply by giving the key 
 to unlock its chambers, and the vision to see its 
 treasures. 
 
 This was the innermost heart of the joy of those 
 our halcyon days, that Roger and Lettice and I were 
 together. We three made for ourselves our new 
 Atlantis. We should have made it equally in the 
 dingiest street of London city. Only, there the joy 
 within us would have had to transform our world 
 into a paradise. At Netherby, riding over the fields 
 with the fresh air in our faces, or roaming the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 237 
 
 I musical woods, or skimming the Mere while Roger 
 i! rowed, and dipping our hands in the cool waters, or 
 [■talking endlessly on the fragrant garden-terraces of 
 the manor and the hall, it had not to transform, only 
 i to translate. 
 
 i Outside this inner world of our own lay a bright 
 
 land friendly world all around us. First, our father, 
 
 i sweet Lady Lucy, and Aunt Gretel — scarcely in- 
 
 I deed outside , except by the fact of their not quite 
 
 I understanding what we had within, regarding us, as 
 
 ; they fondly did , as dear happy children not yet out 
 
 of our paradise of childhood; next Aunt Dorothy, 
 
 Job Forster, and Rachel, guarding us as fondly, 
 
 I though anxiously , as on the unconscious eve of en- 
 
 I counter with our dragons and leviathans; and beyond, 
 
 I the village , of which we were the children ; the 
 
 I country, which was our mother; the world, of which 
 
 we were the heirs. For to us in those days there 
 
 were no harassing Philistines, no crushing Babylon; 
 
 no Egyptians behind, nor Red Sea before. The 
 
 world was to be conquered, but not as a prostrate 
 
 foe, rather as a willing tributary to Truth and Right. 
 
 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles were to bring 
 
 presents; Sheba and Seba were to offer gifts. The 
 
 wilderness and the solitary place were to be glad for 
 
 us, and the desert was to rejoice and blossom as the 
 
 rose.
 
 238 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Meantime Lady Lucy came back to her old place 
 in my heart. Her sweet motherliness seemed to 
 brood like the wings of a dove over our whole happy 
 world. 
 
 Harry Davenant came more than once to the 
 Hall, and stayed a few days, to Lady Lucy's perfect 
 content, and entered into our pursuits as keenly as 
 any of us. Only with him there was always an 
 undertone of sadness, a despondency about the 
 country and the world, a bitterness about the times, 
 a slight cynicism about men and women, inevitable, 
 perhaps, to a noble spirit like his, which (as it seems 
 to me) has lost its way, and strayed into the back- 
 ward current, contrary to all the generous forward 
 movements of the age; but strongly contrasted with 
 the steadfast, hopeful temper, no danger could daunt 
 and no defeat could damp, which characterized the 
 nobler spirits on the patriot side. The noble Sir 
 Bevil Grenvill had bitter thoughts of his contem- 
 poraries; the generous Lord Falkland craved for 
 peace and welcomed death. Eliot, Pym, Hampden, 
 Cromwell, Milton, looked for liberty; believed in the 
 triumph of truth; thought England worth fighting 
 for, living for, if needful, dying for; they braved 
 death indeed like heroes, they met it like Christians, 
 but they did not long for it like men sick and hope- 
 less of the world. If God had willed it so, they had
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 239 
 
 rather have lived on, because of the great hopes that 
 inspired them, because they believed that not fate nor 
 the devil were at the heart of the world, or at the 
 head of the nations; but God. 
 
 Yet about such men as Harry Davenant there 
 was an inexpressible fascination. There is something 
 that irresistibly touches the heart in heroism which, 
 like Hector's of Troy, is nourished, not by hope, 
 but by duty; which sacrifices self in a cause which 
 it believes no courage and no sacrifice can make 
 victorious, and bates no jot of heart when all hope 
 has fled. 
 
 And to me he was always so gentle a friend. 
 We had so many things in common; our love for 
 his mother, his reverence for my father's goodness, 
 justice, and wisdom; his generous appreciation of 
 Roger; a certain protecting, shielding tenderness 
 we both had for Lettice, who was, indeed, a 
 creature so tender, and dependent, and wilful, so 
 likely to rush into trouble, so sure to feel it, that no 
 womanly heart could help feeling motherlike toward 
 her. 
 
 Yet there always seemed a kind of half-acknow- 
 ledged barrier between us, even from the first, more 
 distinctly acknowledged afterwards, which gave a 
 strange mixture of frankness and reserve, of nearness
 
 240 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 and separation, to our intercourse; wherein, perhaps, 
 lay something of its charm. 
 
 And across this world of ours flashed from time 
 to time, during those months, lofty visions of noble- 
 ness and wisdom from other spheres; especially 
 during the last six weeks, when the Parliament was 
 in recess, and many a worthy head found a night's 
 shelter in the guest-chamber at Netherby. 
 
 Mr. Hampden was in Scotland as Parliamentary 
 Commissioner, keeping watch over the king; Mr. 
 Pym, at his lodgings in Gray's Inn Lane, keeping 
 guard for the nation. But Mr. Cromwell went home 
 in the recess to his family at Ely, and spent some 
 hours with us on his way back to London. He was 
 forty-two years old then, my father said, and his 
 hair was not without some tinge of gray; tall, all 
 but six feet in stature, and firmly knit. Many 
 things seemed to lie hidden in the depths of his 
 grave eyes; a subdued fire of temper flashing forth 
 at times sufficiently to show that at the heart of this 
 gravity lay not ice, but fire; a hearty humour, as 
 of a soul at liberty, grasping its purpose firmly 
 enough to be able to give it play; keen to descry 
 likenesses in things unlike, inner diff'erences in things 
 similar, absurdities in things decorous, and the 
 meaning of men and things in general through all
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 241 
 
 seemings. Yet, withal, capacities aud traces of 
 heart-deep sorrow, as of one who had looked into 
 the depths on many sides, and found them unfathom- 
 able. Moreover, above all, his were eyes which 
 saw; not merely windows through which you looked 
 into the soul. Aunt Gretel said there was a look 
 in him which made her think of a portrait of Dr. 
 Luther which she had seen in her youth. He loved 
 music, too, which was another resemblance to Dr. 
 Luther. He was always kind to us children; and 
 now he spoke fondly of his two "little wenches" at 
 home — Bridget (afterwards Mistress Ireton), a little 
 beyond my age, and Elizabeth (Mistress Claypole), 
 then about eleven, his dearly-loved daughter-, and 
 the two blithe little ones, Mary and Frances, about 
 five and three. Methought his eye rested with a 
 sorrowful yearning on Roger; and my father told 
 us, after he left, he had only two years before, in 
 May, buried his eldest son Robert, about nineteen, 
 which was Roger's age. This son was buried far 
 from home, at Felsted Church in Essex — a youth 
 whose promise had been so great, that the parson of 
 the parish where he died had inserted a record of 
 him in the parish-register, which reads like a fond 
 epitaph amidst the dry unbroken list of names and 
 dates. Mr. Cromwell spoke also with much rever- 
 
 The DratjtoHS and the Davenanis. I. 16
 
 242 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 enee of liis aged mother, who dwelt in his house at 
 Ely. 
 
 Mr. Cromwell was full of a firm confidence in 
 the future of the Church and the country, but, like 
 Job Forster, he seemed to think there was much to 
 be done and gone through before the end was gained. 
 On his way through the village he had held some 
 converse with Job Forster, while having his horse 
 shod; and he said something of such men as Job 
 being the men for a Parliament army, if ever such 
 an army should be needed. 
 
 Whilst Job, on his part, as he told us after- 
 wards, was deeply moved by his interview with Mr. 
 Cromwell. "He was a man," said Job, "who had 
 been in the depths, and had brought thence the 
 sacred fire, which made two or three of his words 
 worth a hundred spoken by common men." 
 
 Then, towards the close of that happy time, 
 there was one evening in October which lingers on 
 my memory as its golden sunset lingered on the 
 many-coloui'ed autumn woods. 
 
 We were standing on the terrace at Netherby, 
 overlooking the orchard, Roger, Lettice, and I, in 
 the fading light — Lettice twining some water-lilies 
 Roger had just gathered from the pond. Through 
 the embayed window of the wainscotted parlour.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAES. 243 
 
 which stood open, povirecl forth the music of my 
 father's organ, in chords rich and changing as the 
 colours of the sunset on wood, and meadow, and 
 Mere. 
 
 Mr. John Milton was the musician, and as the 
 intertwined harmonies flowed from his hands — 
 
 "In linkfed sweetness long drawn out, 
 His melting voice through mazes running, 
 Untwisted all the chains that tie 
 The hidden soul of harmony." 
 
 As we listened, enrapt by the power of the music, 
 which seemed 
 
 "Dead things with imbreathed sense, able to pierce, 
 And to our high-raised phantasy present 
 That undisturbed song of pure concent 
 Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne, 
 To Him that sits thereon" — 
 
 the lilies dropped from Lettice's fingers, and she sat 
 like the statue of a listening nymph; the knitting 
 fell from Aunt Gretel's lap, and the tears came into 
 her eyes, and, thinking of my mother, she mur- 
 mured "Magdalene!" Eoger and I were leaning 
 on the window-sill, and all of us were so uncon- 
 scious of anything present, that Lady Lucy had 
 advanced from the other end of the terrace near 
 enough to touch me on the arm, without my hearing 
 a footstep. 
 
 16*
 
 244 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 By her side stood a courtly-looking youug 
 clergymau, with dark hair flowing from under his 
 velvet cap, and dark, meditative eyes, yet with 
 much light of smiles hidden in them, like dew in 
 violets. Him she introduced as "Dr. Taylor, one of 
 His Majesty's chaplains." He was not yet eight- 
 and- twenty years of age, but was in mourning for 
 his first wife, but lately dead. 
 
 Mr. Milton joined us soon with my father. He 
 was a few years older than Dr. Taylor, but in 
 appearance much more youthful; with his brown 
 un-Puritan love-locks, his short stature, his face 
 determined, almost to severity, yet delicate as a 
 beautiful woman's. 
 
 And then between these two, while we listened, 
 ensued an hour's converse, like the antiphons of 
 some heavenly choir. 
 
 Names of ancient heroes and philosophers — 
 Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Latin — dropped from 
 their lips like household words. Until at last they 
 rose into a chorus in praise of liberty of conscience, 
 and of thought — Dr. Taylor, I thought, basing 
 his argument more on the dimness of human vision, 
 and Mr. Milton on the inherent and victorious miglit 
 of truth — Dr. Taylor pleading for a charitable 
 tolerance for error, Mr. jMilton for a glorious free- 
 dom for truth. The which converse I often recalled
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 245 
 
 when, in after years, we read the Liberty of Pro- 
 phesying by the one, and the Liberty of Printing 
 by the other. 
 
 As they spoke, the glory faded from the sky 
 and the goklen autumnal woods; and when they 
 ceased, and we stepped from the terrace into the 
 gloom of the dark wainscotted parlour, it seemed to 
 me as if we had stepped out of a fragrant and 
 melodious elysium into a farm-yard, so homely and 
 unmeaning, like the cacklings or lowings of animals, 
 did all common discourse seem afterwards. 
 
 The next day, when Mr. Milton had left us, and 
 we were speaking together of this discourse, Aunt 
 Gretel said it was like beautiful music; only, being 
 mostly in a kind of Latin, was, of course, beyond 
 her comprehension. Aunt Dorothy only consoled 
 herself for what she regarded as the dangerous 
 license of their conclusions, by the thought that 
 their path to them was too fantastic and fine for any 
 common mortals to tread. And my father said 
 afterwards, that it seemed to him as if Dr. Taylor's 
 learning and fancy hung around his reason like the 
 jewelled state-trappings of a royal palfrey; you 
 wondered how his wit could move so nimbly under 
 such a weight of ornament: whilst Mr. Milton's 
 learning and imagination were like wings to the 
 strong Pegasus of his wisdom, only helping him
 
 246 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 to soar. When Dr. Taylor alluded to the lore 
 of the ancients, it seemed like a treasury where- 
 with to adorn his fancies or to wing his airy shafts. 
 But to Mr. Milton it seemed an armoury common to 
 him and to the wise men of whom he spoke, and to 
 which he had as free access as they — to draw thence 
 weapons for his warfare and theirs, and to add 
 thereto for the generations to come. 
 
 Yet, hrilliant and glowing as their speech was, 
 Roger would have it that Mr. Cromwell's brief and 
 rugged words had in them more of the red heat that 
 fuses the weapons wherewith the great battles of life 
 are fought. For we spoke often of that evening, 
 Roger, and Lettice, and I, in the few short days 
 that remained of our golden age of peace.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 247 
 
 XV. 
 
 Scarcely a fortnight after that evening at 
 Netherby, tidings of the Irish massacre thrilled 
 through all the land with one shudder of horror and 
 helpless indignation for the past; awakening one 
 bitter cry for rescue and vengeance in the future. 
 
 On the 20th of October the Parliament had met 
 again. 
 
 It was a gray and comfortless evening early in 
 November when a Post spurred into the village of 
 Netherby, and stopped at Job Forster's forge to have 
 some slight repair made in the gear of his horse. 
 
 Rachel was there immediately, with a jug of ale 
 for the weary rider and water for the horse. The 
 horseman took both in silence. 
 
 "Thou art scant of greetings to-day, good master," 
 said Job, as he busied himself about the broken bit, 
 without looking in the rider's face. 
 
 But Rachel, who had caught in an instant the 
 weight of heavy tidings on the stranger's face, laid 
 her hand with a silencing gesture on her husband's
 
 248 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Then Job looked up, and meeting the horse- 
 man's eye, dropped the bit, and said abruptly, — 
 
 "What tidings, master? We are not of those 
 who look for smooth things." 
 
 "Rough enough," was the reply. "A hundred 
 thousand Protestants, * men , women , and children, 
 surprised, and robbed, and massacred in Ireland, 
 scarce more than a se'nnight agone. At morning, 
 met with good-days and friendly looks by the Papists 
 around them; before evening, driven from their 
 burning homes, naked and destitute, into the roads 
 and wildernesses. Thousands murdered amidst their 
 ruined homes; happy those who were only murdered, 
 or mixrdered quickly; no mercy on age or sex, no 
 memory of kindness; treachery and torture; women 
 and little children turning into fiends of cruelty. 
 Dublin itself only saved by one who gave warning 
 the evening before. But the worst was for the wo- 
 men, and the little helpless tortured babes." 
 
 "Softly, softly, master," said Job; for Rachel had 
 fallen on his shoulder fainting. "She can bear to 
 hear any dreadful thing, or to see any dreadful 
 sight, if she can be of any help ; but this is too much 
 for her." 
 
 * This was the number commonly believed among us at the time. 
 Since , I have heard it disputed. But that the slaughter and the atro- 
 cities wore terrible, there can be no doubt.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 249 
 
 Gently he bore her in and laid her on the bed, 
 and hesitated an instant what to do, not liking to 
 leave her. 
 
 "She always seems to know whether it's me or 
 any one else, even when she's clean gone like this," 
 he said-, "but yet I dare not hinder the Post." 
 
 "Leave her to me. Job," I said; "she'll not feel 
 strange with me." 
 
 And after a moment's further pause, lifting her 
 into an easier position, he went out. 
 
 Sprinkling water on her face and chafing her 
 hands, breathing on her lips and temples, as I had 
 seen Aunt Gretel do in such a case, I had the com- 
 fort of soon seeing Rachel languidly open her eyes. 
 For a moment there was a bewildered, inquiring look 
 in them, but quickly it gave place to a mournful 
 collectedness. 
 
 "I knew it — I knew it, Mistress Olive!" she 
 said. "I knew something must come. But I thought 
 the judgment would fall on the Lord's enemies ; and 
 Job and I have been pleading with Him for mercy, 
 even on them. I never thought the sword would fall 
 on the sheep of His pasture. Least of all on the 
 lambs," she added; "on the innocent lambs. But 
 maybe, after all, that was His mercy. They are but 
 gone home by a cruel path, poor innocents — only 
 gone home." Then a burst of tears came to her
 
 250 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 relief; a neighbour came in to help; and 1 left to go 
 home without further delay. 
 
 The few minutes which I had spent at Rachel 
 Forster's bedside had sufficed to gather all the vil- 
 lage around the forge; women with babies in their 
 arms and little ones clinging to their skirts; men on 
 their way home from the day's labour with spades 
 and mattocks on their shoulders; the tailor needle in 
 hand; the miller white from the mill; women with 
 hands full of dough from the kneading-trough; none 
 waiting to lay aside an implement, none left behind 
 but the bedridden, yet none asking a question, or 
 uttering an exclamation, as they pressed around the 
 messenger, drinking in the horrible details of the 
 slaughter. Only, in the pauses, a long-drawn breath, 
 or now and then a suppressed sob from the women. 
 
 Job meanwhile continued, as was his wont, work- 
 ing his feelings into the task he had in hand, so that 
 long before the villagers were weary of listening 
 while the Post told the cruel particulars, heightening 
 the excitement and deepening the silence, the bit was 
 mended, every weak point of hoof or harness had 
 undergone Job's skilful inspection, and offering the 
 messenger another draught at the beer-can, he said 
 to him in his abrupt way, — 
 
 "Whither next, master? We may not delay such 
 tidings."
 
 A STOUY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 251 
 
 "I have letters for Squire Drayton of Netherby 
 Manor," was the reply. 
 
 "Trust them to me," said Eoger. 
 
 "The best hands you can trust them to," said 
 Job. 
 
 In consideration of the urgent need of haste, the 
 iPost gave us a letter in Dr. Antony's writing to 
 'Roger, and in another minute was out of sight beyond 
 khe turn of the village street. 
 
 I A little murmur arose among the village-gossips. 
 |"No need for breaking a Post short like that, good- 
 iman Forster," said the miller's wife; "sure he knows 
 ihis own business best." 
 
 "What did we need to hear more, goodwife?" 
 jwas Job's reply. "All England has to hear it yet! 
 jThousands of prayers have to be stirred up through- 
 lout the land before night. And haven't we heard 
 (enough to make this night a night of watching? 
 Hearkening to fearful tales helps little; and talking 
 less. For this kind goeth not out but with prayer 
 sand fasting." 
 
 And Job turned away into his cottage. But as 
 Eoger and I hastened up the street, the village had 
 already broken into little eager groups, and the 
 words, "the Irish Popish Army," and "the Popish 
 Queen," came with bitter emphasis from many 
 voices.
 
 252 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Deep was the excitement at home wheu we 
 brought the terrible tidings. Dr. Antony's letter too 
 dreadfully confirmed them, telling how the House of 
 Commons received the news, brought in by one 
 O'Conolly, in an awesti-icken silence; how nearly all 
 Ulster, the head-quai-ters of the Protestants, was still 
 in the hands of the insurgents; the towns and villages 
 in flames. 
 
 "Tilly and Magdeburg!" were the first words 
 that broke from my father's lips. "The same strife, 
 the same weapons, the same fiendish cruelty, in the 
 name of the All Pitiful. If such another conflict is 
 indeed to come, God send England weapons as good 
 wherewith to wage it; soldiers that can pray; and, if 
 such can be twice in one generation, another Gus- 
 tavus!" 
 
 Fervently he pleaded that night together with 
 the gathered household for the robbed and bereaved 
 sufferers in Ireland. Far into the night Eoger saw 
 the lamp burning in his window. No doubt he had 
 sought Job Forster's Refuge. 
 
 But the next morning, v/hen we came in to 
 breakfast, he had taken down the old sword he had 
 worn through the German wars, and was trying its 
 edge. 
 
 "The good God keep us from war, brother!" said 
 Aunt Gretel, trembling at the thoughts that old
 
 A STOllY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 253 
 
 vreapon recalled. "I was thinking we might search 
 )ut onr stores for woolseys and linseys. They will 
 36 sure to be sending such to the poor sufferers, and 
 hey will be building orphan-houses." 
 
 "Citadels have to be built and kept first!" said 
 ny father. "There are times when war is as much 
 (I work of mercy as clothing the naked and feeding 
 the hungry." 
 
 " But war with whoyn, brother? " said Aunt Dorothy 
 jointedly. "It is little use lopping the branches and 
 paring the tree. What has become of the Irish 
 i^opish army the king was so loath to dismiss? Of 
 vhat avail is it to smite a few poor blind fanatics, 
 s^hen the Popish queen and her Jesuits rule in the 
 Palace? It wearies me to the heart to hear of honest 
 aien like Mr. Hampden , Mr. Pym , and all of them, 
 mpeachiug Lord Strafford and imprisoning Arch- 
 bishop Laud, who, I believe (poor deluded man), 
 ;hought himself doing God's service; and yet kissing 
 ;he hand that appointed Laud and Strafford, and 
 ivould sign death-warrants for every patriot and Pu- 
 itan in the kingdom to-night if it were safe." 
 
 "Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, and Mr. Cromwell are 
 3oing their best to make it not safe, sister Dorothy," 
 was my father's reply. "And meantime there is more 
 strength in silence than in invective." 
 
 "A Parliament of women," said Aunt Dorothy,
 
 254 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "would have gone to the jjoint months since, and let 
 the king understand what they meant." 
 
 "Probably," said my father; "but the great thing 
 is to gain the point." 
 
 Unusually early in the day for her. Lady Lucy 
 appeared at the Manor, with Harry and Lettice walk- 
 ing beside her horse. 
 
 She looked very pale as my father led her into 
 the wainscotted parlour. 
 
 "Mr. Drayton," she said, "who ever could have 
 dreamed of such tidings! The only ray of comfort 
 is that they may help to unite our distracted country. 
 There can be but one mind throughout the land 
 about such deeds as these. The king went at once 
 to the Scottish Parliament with the news, to seek 
 their counsel and aid. Now at least the king, par- 
 liament, and nation, will be one in their indigna 
 tion." 
 
 "It would be well if the king had dismissed be- 
 fore this the Irish Catholic army which Lord Straf- 
 ford raised for him," said my father. "It is well 
 known that its officers have been in communication 
 with the assassins." 
 
 "The king did send orders to disband it long 
 since," she said. 
 
 "Yes, public orders," my father replied; "but 
 
 I
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 255 
 
 there are rumours of secret instructions having ac- 
 companied, not precisely to the same effect." 
 
 "Rumours!" she said eagerly; "Mr. Drayton, 
 mere rumours! You are too just and generous to 
 listen to vulgar report, with the king's word against 
 it." 
 
 "Madam," he replied, very gravely, "it would 
 have been the salvation of the country long since if 
 the king's word had been a sufficient reply to attacks 
 on his policy. There is nothing so revolutionary as 
 falsehood in high places." 
 
 "You call the king a revolutionist?" she said. 
 
 "I call untruth the great revolutionist," he replied. 
 "Without truth and trust all communities must ulti- 
 mately fall to pieces, with more or less noise, ac- 
 cording as they are assailed by a strong hand from 
 without, or simply crumble from within. The ruin 
 is certain." 
 
 "But all good men must be agreed in detesting 
 these barbarous deeds," she said. "Even the Earl 
 of Castlehaven , a Catholic , has said that all the 
 water in the sea would not wash off from the Irish 
 the stain of their treacherous murders in a time of 
 settled peace." 
 
 "No doubt there are Catholics, madam, who speak 
 the truth and hate injustice," said my father. 
 
 "You are unjust, you are cruel to His Majesty,"
 
 256 THE DRAYTOHS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 she said, with tears in lier eyes, "if you could be un- 
 just or cruel to any one." 
 
 "Lady Lucy," lie replied, "this is a time for all 
 men who fear God and love England to be united. 
 Would Lord Strafford (could he come back among 
 us) contradict the words wrung fi-om him when the 
 king signed his death-warrant? "Would he say, 'Put 
 your trust in princes?' " 
 
 Harry Davenant passionately interposed. 
 
 "It is too bad to drive the king to actions he 
 detests, and then to reproach him for them. He 
 would have saved Lord Strafford , as all men know, 
 if he could. It is the distrust of the country that has 
 compelled the king to have recourse to subtleties no 
 gentleman would choose." 
 
 "Harry Davenant," said my father, "I am con- 
 fident no measure of unjust distrust would drive you 
 to the policy of making promises you never meant 
 to keep." 
 
 "My life is simple, sir," was the mournful reply, 
 "and it is my own. If I choose any evil to myself, 
 rather than go from my word, or imply the thing I 
 do not mean, I am at liberty to do so. But the 
 king's life is manifold. He stands before the High- 
 est with the nation gathered up into his single person. 
 He stands above the nation as the anointed represen- 
 tative of the King of kings. God himself is only in-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 257 
 
 directly King of nations by being King of kings. 
 He stands between the past and the future with a 
 sacred trust of prerogative and right to guard and 
 transmit. It is not for us to apply the standards of 
 our private morality to him." 
 
 "Apply the standards of divine morality to all!" 
 said my father. "Truth is the pillar of heaven as 
 well as of earth. There is no bond of society like a 
 trusted word." 
 
 "At least, sir," rejoined Harry Davenant, gently 
 but loftily, "it is not for me who eat the king's 
 bread to say or hear ought disloyal to him. Nor 
 will I." And he rose to leave. 
 
 My father held out his hand to grasp his. 
 
 "One word more," he said; "disloyalty is a ter- 
 rible word, axid we may hear more of it in these com- 
 ing years. Let me say to you, once for all, the 
 question is not one of loyalty and disloyalty, but to 
 whom our loyalty is due. I believe it is to England 
 and her laws; to the king if he is faithful to these." 
 
 "What tribunal can judge the king?" Harry 
 Davenant replied. 
 
 "More than one," said my father solemnly. "The 
 English laws he has sworn to maintain; the eternal 
 Lawgiver from whom you say he holds his - crown, 
 whose laws of truth and equity are no secret, and are 
 as binding on the peasant as the prince." 
 
 The Draytons and the Davenants. I. 1 <
 
 258 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Lady Lucy's manner had a peculiar tenderness 
 in it to me as slie wislied me good-bye. 
 
 "Very difficult times, Olive!" she said, kissing 
 me; "but we will remember women have one work 
 at all times ; to make peace and pour balm into 
 wounds." 
 
 And Lettice whispered to me and Roger, — 
 
 "Don't believe those wicked things about the 
 king, or I shall not be able to come to Netherby." 
 
 Roger looked sorely perplexed. 
 
 "But how can we help believing them," he said, 
 "if we find them true?" 
 
 "I can always help believing things I don't like," 
 she said. "Wishing is half-way to believing." And 
 she slipped away, leaving a very heavy shadow on 
 Roger's face as he turned back to the house. 
 
 "Not quite so clear, Olive," said Aunt Dorothy, 
 when I repeated to her Lady Lucy's words as a proof 
 of her good-will. "There are times when Deborah 
 is as necessary as Barak, and more so. And then 
 there was Judith, a valiant and godly woman, al- 
 though she is in the Apocrypha. And there are 
 times when the knife is kinder than all the balm in 
 Gilead." 
 
 "Knives are never safe, however," added my 
 father, "except in hands that use them for the same 
 purpose as the balms."
 
 A STOllY OF TIXK CIVIL WARS. 259 
 
 The intercourse of the two families did not cease 
 after that little debate. It rather became more fre- 
 quent. The uneasy consciousness of the many- 
 public differences that might at any time sever us, 
 only made us cling the more tenaciously, although 
 with trembling, to the private ties that united us. For 
 a fortnight after the Irish tidings reached us. Lady 
 Lucy, Aunt Gretel, and even Aunt Dorothy, found 
 a practical bond of union in collecting all the clothes 
 and provisions they could to send to the sufferers by 
 the Irish massacre. 
 
 Then came the news of divisions in the patriot 
 party in the Parliament, with reference to the fram- 
 ing and printing of the Grand Remonstrance, voted 
 to be printed on the 8th of December. Lady Lucy 
 dwelt much on the conciliatory intentions of the king, 
 on the feastings and welcomes prepared for him in 
 the city of London, and especially on the defection 
 of the gallant Sir Bevil Grenvill, Lord Falkland, 
 and Mr. Hyde, from the popular cause. "All mo- 
 derate men," she said, "felt it was becoming the 
 cause of disorder, and were abandoning it; and my 
 father, the most moderate and candid of men, would 
 not, she was sure, remain with a little knot of fana- 
 tics and levellers." 
 
 That Christmas-tide the Grand Remonstrance, 
 
 17*
 
 260 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAYENAKTS : 
 
 with its long list of royal and ecclesiastical oppres- 
 sions, and its statement of the recent victories of 
 Parliament over evil laws and evil councillors, was 
 read and eagerly debated at every fire-side in the 
 kingdom. 
 
 "But what do they want?" Lady Lucy would say. 
 "They seem, from their own statements, to have 
 gained all they sought." 
 
 "They want security for everything!" my father 
 would reply; "security for what they have won; a 
 guard of their own appointing to keep them free, to 
 secure them against the guard of his own appointing, 
 with which they believe the king is endeavouring to 
 surround and make them prisoners." 
 
 "Will no promises, no assurances of good- will 
 satisfy them?" she said. "They have sent ten more 
 prelates to keep the archbishop company in the 
 Tower. What further guarantees would they de- 
 mand?" 
 
 "It is hard indeed," he said, sorrowfully, "for 
 all the concessions in the world to restore broken 
 confidence. All the fortresses in England, or a stand- 
 ing army of a million, would not be such a safeguard 
 to the king as his own word might have been. There 
 is no cement in heaven or earth strong enough to re- 
 store trust in broken faith." 
 
 "It is not always so easy to be sincere," she
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 261 
 
 said; "and God forgives and trusts us again and 
 again." 
 
 "God forgives because he sees," lie said. "Nations 
 are not omniscient, and therefore cannot forgive, nor 
 trust when they have been betrayed." 
 
 " The Parliament is unreasonable," she said, with 
 tears in her eyes; "they judge like private gentlemen. 
 Statesmen and princes cannot speak with the simple 
 candour of private men. Politics are like chess. 
 You would not confide every move before-hand to 
 your enemy." 
 
 "The king and the Parliament do not profess to 
 be on opposite sides of the game," he replied. "But 
 if, in fact, it has come to that, can you wonder at 
 any amount of mutual suspicion? Yet our Puritan 
 faith is, that there is but one law of truth and equity 
 in heaven and earth for prince, soldier, peasant, wo- 
 man and child. And I believe that , even with 
 hostile nations, not all the diplomatic subtleties in 
 the world would give us the strength there is in a 
 trusted word. Let it once be felt of man or nation, 
 'They have said it, therefore they mean it;' and 
 they have a strength nothing else can give. There 
 must be two threads to weave a web of false policy. 
 Withdraw one, and the other falls to pieces of itself. 
 I believe the ruler who could make the word of an 
 Englishman a proverb for truth, Avould do more for
 
 2n2 THE DRAYTOXS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 the strength of England than one wlio won her for- 
 tresses on every island and coast in the world." 
 
 "But see how the king trusts the people, Mr. 
 Drayton," she said. "His presence in that very 
 tumultuous disorderly city ought to make them be- 
 lieve him." 
 
 "I do not see that His Majesty has had reason 
 to distrust the people," my father replied. 
 
 "Ah!" she sighed; "if you had only seen His 
 Majesty amidst his family, his chivalrous tenderness 
 to the queen, his native stateliness all laid aside in 
 playful fondness for his children." 
 
 "It might have made it more painful to have to 
 distrust him as a king," my father replied. "It 
 could scarcely have made it more possible to trust." 
 
 "Well," she said, "either the nation will learn, 
 ere long, to trust his gracious intentions as he de- 
 serves, or will learn to their cost what a sovereign 
 they have distrusted!"
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 263 
 
 XVI. 
 
 But scarcely a week afterwards the wliole coun- 
 try was set in a flame by the tidings that His Ma- 
 jesty had gone in person — attended by five hundred 
 armed men, many of them young desperadoes, 
 feasted the night before at Whitehall — to arrest 
 the five members (Pym, Hampden, Hazelrig, Denzil 
 Hollis, and William Strode) in the inviolate sanc- 
 tuary of the nation, the Parliament House itself. 
 
 And after that my father and Lady Lucy ceased 
 to hold any more political debates. 
 
 He simply said, when, on the evening of those 
 tidings, we met in the village, — 
 
 "The meaning of His Majesty's promises seems 
 plain at last." 
 
 And she replied, — 
 
 "But if all good men distrust His Majesty, will 
 he not be driven to trust to evil men?" 
 
 "I am afraid the course of falsehood is ever 
 downward," he answered, very sadly, "and the 
 breaches of just distrust ever widening." 
 
 "But, for heaven's sake, Mr. Drayton," she said, 
 with an imploring accent, as we» returned with her
 
 264 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 to the Hall, "think before you plunge into these 
 terrible divisions." 
 
 "I have thought long, madam," he said; "for I 
 have fought in the Thirty Years' War, and seen 
 how war can devastate." 
 
 "But that was easy," she said; "that was church 
 against church, state against state, prince against 
 prince. This will be the church divided against it- 
 self, the nation divided against itself, subject against 
 king, one good man against another. Think, if you 
 join Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym, what noble and 
 wise men you will have against you ! (for you honour 
 Sir Bevil Grenvill and Lord Falkland as much as 
 we do); what violent and fanatical men with you!" 
 
 "If all good men were on one side," he said, 
 sorrowfully, "there need be few battles in church 
 or state." 
 
 "It seems to me," she added, "there is no party 
 one would willingly join save that of the peace- 
 makers." 
 
 "That indeed is the very party I would seek to 
 join," said my father. "But that seems to me the 
 very party which, from ancient times, has been stig- 
 matized as those who turn the world upside down. 
 Since the Fall peace can seldom be reached save 
 through conflict."
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL. WARS. 265 
 
 MeanwMle Roger liad joined us, and Lettice, as 
 we were about to separate, whispered to me, clasping 
 my hands in hers, — 
 
 "They may turn the world upside down, Olive; 
 but they shall not separate us! How happy it is for 
 us," she said, turning to Eoger, who was standing a 
 little apart, "that, as Harry says, women have no- 
 thing to do with politics." 
 
 "I am afraid," he said in his abrupt way, "wo- 
 men have often more than any to suffer from 
 politics." 
 
 "You take things so gravely, Eoger," she said. 
 " Everything would be right if you would not all of 
 you be so hard on people who have done a little 
 wrong; and would only try and believe what we 
 must all wish, and so bring it about." 
 
 "Everything will be lorong^'' said Eoger, with 
 melancholy emphasis, "if you will believe things 
 and people because you wish^ and not because they 
 are true." 
 
 For Eoger, true to every one, was truthful to 
 scrupulousness with Lettice; what she was, or be- 
 came, being of more moment to him than even what 
 she thought of him. 
 
 But Lettice only laughed, and said, — 
 
 "I am not sixteen, and I have seen the country
 
 2GG THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 at the point of ruin, I cannot tell how many times. 
 Other clouds have blown over, and so will this." 
 
 And she sped away to rejoin her mother, only 
 once more turning back to wave her hand, and 
 say, — 
 
 "To-morrow morning, Olive, at the Lady Well! 
 The ice will be strong enough on the Mere for skat- 
 ing. To-morrow!" 
 
 But the next morning, when Roger and I went 
 to the Lady Well, no Lettice was there. 
 
 Snow had fallen in the night. 
 
 The frozen surface of the Mere was strewn with 
 it, except in places where it was sheltered by the 
 overhanging brushwood, where it lay black as steel 
 against the white banks. All the music was frozen 
 in stream and wood. The drops, whose soft 
 trickling into the well beneath, had floated Lettice 
 and me into fairy-land last summer, hung in glitter- 
 ing silent icicles around the stone sides of the well. 
 
 And Roger and I went silently home. 
 
 "The snow has detained her," I said. 
 
 "She is not so easily turned aside from a pro- 
 mise," he said. 
 
 And when we reached home we found a mes- 
 senger and a letter from Lettice, saying Lady Lucy 
 had been summoned to attend the queen at Windsor, 
 that Lettice had accompanied her, and that Harry
 
 A SlOnV OF THE CIVIL WARS, 267 
 
 Davenant and Sir Walter being engaged about the 
 king's person, Sir Launcelot Trevor had come to es- 
 cort them. 
 
 "The Princess Mary is about to be married to 
 the Prince of Orange," Lettice wrote; "and as the 
 queen is to accompany her to the Low Countries, 
 she wishes to see my mother before she leaves the 
 country." 
 
 "It would be a good service to us all if the 
 queen would stay away for ever," said Aunt Dorothy 
 — and she expressed the feeling of a large part of 
 the nation — "the king would lose the worst of his 
 evil counsellors." 
 
 "That depends," said my father, sadly, "on 
 whether the king is not his own worst counsellor. 
 If the evil has its origin in others, the queen may 
 indeed injure him more by remaining here. But, on 
 the other hand, she may succour him more on the 
 Continent." 
 
 "Well, at all events," said Aunt Dorothy, "her 
 absence may be a blessing to Lady Lucy and Mistress 
 Lettice. For that child is not without gracious dis- 
 positions. Last week she called when every one else 
 was out, and wishing to turn the time to account, I 
 set her to read aloud from the sermons of good Mr. 
 Adams; and she read two and part of the third, 
 only twice going to the window to see if any one
 
 268 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS ! 
 
 was coming, and never even looking up, after I once 
 asked ker if ske was tired." 
 
 "Do you tkink ske really enjoyed tkem. Aunt 
 Dorotky?" I asked; knowing kow difficult it was to 
 ascertain Lettice's distastes, on account of ker pre- 
 domiuant taste of doing wkat pleased otker people. 
 
 "I tkink better of tke ckild tkan to deem ske 
 would seem pleased witk augkt ske did not really 
 like," said Aunt Dorotky, and, altkougk uncon- 
 vinced, I rejoiced tkat Aunt Dorotky kad fallen 
 under tke sjiell. 
 
 "Wkat did ske say?" I asked. 
 
 "Tke first sermon was 'Tke Spiritual Navigator 
 Bound for tke Holy Land' about tke glassy sea; and 
 ske said it was near as pretty reading as Spenser's 
 'Faery Queen' — a remark wkick, tkougk it skowed 
 some lack of spiritual discernment, was sometking, 
 in tkat it skowed ske was entertained. Tke second 
 was 'Heaven's Gate;' and wken we came to tke 
 place about tke gate being in our own keart, — 
 'Great manors kave answerable porckes. Heaven 
 must needs be spacious, wken a little star fixed in a 
 far lower orb exceeds tke eartk in quantity; yet it 
 katk a low gate, not a lofty coming-in,' — ske said 
 ske kad tkougkt tke Gate of Heaven was only 
 opened wken we die, not kere wkile we live, and it 
 was a strange tking to tkink on. Tke tkird sermon
 
 A STORY Oi' THE CIVIL WARS. 269 
 
 was 'Semper Idem, the Immutable Mercy of Jesus 
 Christ,' and in that we did not read far; for when 
 she read 'the sun of divinity is the Scripture, 
 the sun of Scripture is the gospel, the sun of the 
 gospel is Jesus Christ. Nor is this the centre of 
 His word only, but of our rest. Thou hast made 
 us for Thee, Christ, and the heart is unquiet till 
 it rest in Thee; seeking, we may find Him — He 
 is ready; finding, we may still seek Him; He is in- 
 finite,' — her voice trembled, and, with tears in her 
 eyes, she looked up and said, 'I suppose that is 
 what the other sermon means by entering the Gate of 
 Heaven now.'' And I deem that a wise thing for a 
 child to say, brought up as she has been under the 
 very walls of Babylon. And the poor young thing's 
 ways pleased me so that I gave her the three ser- 
 mons to keep. And she promised to set store by 
 them, and treasure them in a cedarii box she hath, 
 together with some books by Dr. Taylor. And al- 
 though Dr. Taylor is an Arminian, I had not the 
 heart to cross the child. Especially as books are not like 
 us; they are none the worse for being in bad company." 
 
 But Roger made no comment. Only the next 
 Sunday, as we were walking home from church to- 
 gether, he said sorrowfully, — 
 
 "Oh, Olive, so ready to be pleased with every- 
 thing as she is, so pleased to please every one, so
 
 270 THE DRAYiOXS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 sure to please, so true and generous, so ready to Le- 
 lieve good of every one — that she should be 
 launched into that false Court! I shall always dread 
 to hear any one say 'To-morrow.' If we could only 
 have known, there were so many things one might 
 have said or have left unsaid. The last thing I said 
 to her seems to me now so harsh. She will always 
 think of us as rebuking her. And her last look was 
 a defiant little smile! If we could only know what 
 days, or what words are to be the last. To-morrow," 
 he added, "she was to have met us at the old well, 
 and now she is at the king's Court; and between us 
 lies a great gulf of civil war; and the whole country 
 in such tumult — it seems a kind of disloyalty to 
 England to think of our own private sorrows." 
 
 And Roger spoke but too truly. For it is im- 
 possible to say how deeply that act of the king's in 
 invading the Parliament had incensed the whole na- 
 tion. It showed, as nothing else could have done, 
 my father said, that what was holy ground to the 
 nation was mere common soil to the king. Men had 
 borne to have soldiers illegally billeted upon their 
 homes; fathers torn, against law, from their families, 
 and left to die in prisons. Each such act of tyranny 
 was exceptional or partial, and might be redressed 
 by patient appeals to our ancient laws. Much of 
 personal liberty might be sacrificed rather than
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 271 
 
 violate the order on which all true liberty is based. 
 But the Parliament House during the sitting of the 
 Parliament was the sacred hearth of the nation it- 
 self. Every man felt his own hearth violated in its 
 violation. Henceforth nothing was sacred — nothing 
 was safe — throughout the land. And from that 
 day my father, dreading civil war as only a soldier 
 can who knows what the terrors of war are, never 
 seemed to have a doubt that it must come. Nor, 
 candid as he was — to the verge of weakness (as 
 Aunt Dorothy thought), in his anxiety to allow what 
 was jiTst to all sides — did he ever seem after that 
 to doubt, if the strife came, on which side he must 
 stand. 
 
 There was a strange mixture of rigid adherence 
 to ancient forms, with the boldest spirit of liberty, 
 in that scene in Parliament on the 3rd of January 
 1642. 
 
 Dr. Antony wrote us how all the members rose 
 uncovered before the king, how the speaker on his 
 knee beside his own chair — which the king had 
 usurped — refused to answer His Majesty's questions 
 as to the absence of the five members, whom his eye 
 vainly sought in their vacant places, saying: "Please 
 your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor ears 
 to hear, nor tongue to speak in this place, save as 
 the House directs me." "Words," wrote Dr. An-
 
 272 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 tony, " respectful enougli for a courtier of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, with a meaning as kingly as those of any 
 Caesar." Not a disrespectful word or gesture was 
 directed against the king as he retired baffled from 
 the House, saying that he saw the birds had flown, 
 and protesting that he had intended no breach of 
 privilege. But before he descended the steps of the 
 Hall to rejoin the armed guard outside, the civil 
 war, my father said, had begun. 
 
 The next day the king had returned baffled from 
 another attempt to arrest the five members in the 
 city. The aldermen — true representatives of the 
 great merchants of England — were as resolute as 
 the Parliament. They made His Majesty a great 
 feast, but no concessions. 
 
 Within a week a thousand seamen from the good 
 ships in the broad Thames had offered their services 
 to guard the Parliament from their refuge in the city 
 by water to Westminster, whilst as many 'prentices 
 had entreated to be permitted to render a similar 
 service by land; four thousand freeholders from 
 Buckinghamshire (Hampden's county) had entered 
 London on horseback with petitions against wicked 
 councillors, and (on the 10th of January) the king 
 had left Whitehall for Hampton Court. 
 
 But no man knew he would not return thither
 
 A STOKY OF THi;: CIVII. WARS. 273 
 
 until seven years later, on another January day, 
 never to leave it more. 
 
 So few last days come to us clothed in mourn- 
 ing, announcing themselves as the last. We step 
 smiling into the ferry-boat which is to carry us for 
 a little while, as we think, across the narrow stream, 
 and wave our hands and say to those who watch us 
 from the familiar shore, '"'' To-morrow V and before we 
 are aware the stream is a sea, the ferry-boat is 
 the boat of Charon, the familiar shore is out of 
 sight-, — the window of the banqueting-hall has be- 
 come the threshold of the scaffold, and to-morrow is 
 eternity. 
 
 The Draijlons and the Davenants. I. 18
 
 274 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAYENANIS: 
 
 XVII. 
 
 When I think of the months which passed be- 
 tween the king's attempted arrest of the five mem- 
 bers and the first battle of the Civil War, I some- 
 times wonder how any one can ever undertake to 
 write history. 
 
 In the little bit of the world known to vis, parties 
 were so strangely intertwined, so strangely divided, 
 and so heterogeneously composed. The motives that 
 drew men to one side or the other were so various 
 and so mixed, that I think scarce one of those we 
 knew fought on the same side for the same reason; 
 while the differences which separated many men in 
 the same party were certainly wider in many re- 
 spects than those which separated them from others 
 against whom they fought. 
 
 How world-wide the difference between Harry 
 Davenant and Sir Launcelot Trevor! How nicely 
 balanced the scales that made my father and John 
 Hampden "rebels," and Harry Davenant or Lord 
 Falkland "malignants!" 
 
 Yet the distinctions were real, at least so it seems 
 to me. Nor do I see how, if all were to be again
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 275 
 
 starting from the same point, either could avoid com- 
 ing to the same issue. 
 
 Harry Davenant believed revolution to be ruin, 
 and chose the most arbitrary rule instead. 
 
 My father, equally dreading revolution, believed 
 the king to be the great revolutionist; by his ar- 
 bitrary will changing times and laws; by his hope- 
 less untruth subverting the foundations of society. 
 Slowly he stepped down into the cold bitter waters 
 of civil war, having for his watchword, "Loyalty to 
 England and her laws!" His chief hope lay in Mr. 
 Hampden. 
 
 Roger again, and others like him, hoping more 
 from liberty than they feared from revolution, and be- 
 lieving the contest would be fiery, but brief and de- 
 cisive, plunged gallantly into the flood, with Liberty 
 blazoned on their banners — liberty to do right and 
 to speak the truth. His chosen captain was Mr. 
 Cromwell, in whose troop he served from the first. 
 God only knew the bitter pang it cost him (I knew 
 it not till years afterwards) to take his post on the 
 field which must, he knew, make so great a gulf 
 between him and the Davenants. It was seldom Roger 
 spoke of what he felt ; scarce ever of what he suffered. 
 
 Dr. Antony wrote, meanwhile, from London: — 
 
 " Chirurgeons , like women, have indeed their 
 place on the battle-field, and not out of reach of the 
 
 18*
 
 276 THE DRAYXONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 danger. But their work is witli tlie wounded, and 
 tlieir weapons are turned against the enemy of all; 
 the 'last enemy,' scarce to be destroyed in this war! 
 I hope to succour on the battle-field those I sought 
 to comfort in the prisons. God grant I find the air 
 of the field as wholesome to the spirits of my pa- 
 tients as that of the duugeon." 
 
 Job Forster never hesitated for a moment as to 
 which was the right side. To him England was in 
 one sense Canaan to be conquered, in another the 
 Chosen Land to be kept sacred. The king was 
 Saul; or, in other aspects, Sihon, king of the Amo- 
 rites, or Og, king of Bashan. The Parliament, at 
 first, and then the Lord Protector and the army, 
 were the chosen people, Moses, Joshua, David. His 
 only hesitation was whether he himself ought to fight 
 on the field, or to work at the forge and protect 
 "Rachel and the village at home. "The Almighty," 
 he said, "has not given me this big body of mine 
 for nought. God forbid it should be said of Job 
 Forster, Why abodest thou amidst the sheep-folds to 
 hear the bleatiugs of the flocks? — that is, the ring 
 of the hammer and anvil, which is as the bleating 
 of my flocks to me. Yet there is Rachel! And the 
 old law was merciful ; and if it forbid a man to leave 
 his new-married wife, how should I answer for leav- 
 ing her who has more need of me, and has none
 
 A STORY OF THR CIVIL WARS. 277 
 
 but me? and she so ailing, and I, to whom the Lord 
 has said as plain as words can speak, 'Be thou better 
 to her than ten sons.'" 
 
 It was perhaps the first perplexity he had never 
 confided to her, and sorely was Job exercised, until 
 one morning in August he came to my father with 
 a lightened countenance, and said, — 
 
 "Mr. Drayton, she has given the word, as plain 
 as ever Deborah spoke to Barak. I've got my com- 
 mission, and I'm ready to go this night." 
 
 Afterwards, in an intimate talk by a camp-fire, 
 he once told Roger how that morning, between the 
 lights, he woke up and saw her kneeling down with 
 her arms crossed upon the Book, and her eyes raised 
 up to heaven, and running fast with tears. "I lifted 
 myself," he said, "on my elbow, and I looked at 
 her. But I didn't like to speak; I saw there was 
 something going on between her soul and the Lord. 
 At last she rose and came to me with a face as pale 
 as the sheet, but without a tear in her eyes or a 
 tremble in her voice, and she said, 'Job, thou shalt 
 have thy way, the Lord has made me ready to give 
 thee up.' And I said, sheepish-like, 'How canst 
 thee know what I willed? I never said aught to 
 thee!' Then she smiled and said, 'Thee never thinks 
 thee says aught except thee speaks plain enough for 
 the town-crier. Have not I heard thy sighs, and
 
 278 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 seen thy hankering looks whenever any of the lads 
 listed these weeks past? But I could not speak be- 
 fore; now I can. For I've gotten the word from 
 the Lord for thee and for me, and woe is me if I 
 hold my peace. The word for me was: "Now I 
 know that thou fearest God, seeing thoii hast not 
 withheld thy son, thy only son, from me." And 
 that,' said she, 'means thee. Job; for thou art more 
 to me than that,' said she, 'more than that, only 
 and all. I have no promise to hold thee by, like 
 Abraham had for Isaac, yet if the Lord calls, what 
 can I do?' And there her voice gave way, but she 
 hurried on — 'And I've gotten a word for thee, 
 "J3«re not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a 
 good courage, for the Lord thy God is with thee 
 wheresoever thou goest."' So," concluded Job, "I 
 got my word of command; and there was no more 
 to be said. We knelt down together and gave our- 
 selves up; and as soon as it was fairly day I came 
 to give in my name." 
 
 That was Job Forster's motive. He believed he 
 had the word of command direct from the King of 
 kings. And this was the motive, I believe, of hundreds 
 and thousands more or less like him; men who, as 
 the Lord Protector said when the strife was over, 
 were "never beaten." Gloriously distinct the two 
 armies and the two causes seemed to him, perplexed
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 279 
 
 by no subtle perceptions of right on the wrong side, 
 or of vn-ong on the right. 
 
 To Aunt Dorothy also matters were equally 
 clear, although her point of view was not precisely 
 the same, and in the subsequent subdivisions she 
 and Job became seriously opposed. Aunt Dorothy 
 believed tliat she saw in the New Testament a model 
 of church ritual and government, minutely defined 
 to the last stave or j)in or loop of the tabernacle; 
 and rather than abandon the minutest of these sacred 
 details, she would willingly have suffered any tem- 
 poral loss. The whole Presbyterian order of church 
 government she saw clearly unfolded in the Acts 
 and the Epistles-, and that godly men like Mr. 
 Cromwell on the one hand, or learned men like 
 Dr. Jeremy Taylor on the other, should fail to see 
 it also, was a miracle only to be accounted for by 
 the blinding power of Satan, especially predicted in 
 these last days. With regard to the government of 
 the state, also, her belief was equally definite, derived, 
 as she considered, from the same divine source. The 
 king was "the anointed of the Lord." In this, she 
 said. Lady Lucy had undoubted insight into the 
 truth. His wicked councillors might be put to death, 
 as traitors at once against him and the realm; armies 
 might by his Parliament be raised against him; but 
 it must be in his name, with the purpose of setting
 
 2>!0 THE DRAYXOXS AND THE DAVENAKTS : 
 
 liim free from those evil councillors by whom he 
 was virtually kept a prisoner; his judgment being 
 by them enthralled, so that he was irresponsible for 
 his acts, and might quite lawfully by his faithful 
 covenanted subjects be placed, respectfully, under 
 bodily restraint, if thereby his mind might be dis- 
 enthralled from the hard bondage of the wicked. 
 But beyond this no subject might go. The king's 
 person was sacred; no profane hand could be lifted 
 with impunity against him. Any difficulty, disorder, 
 or evil, must be endured, rather than touch a hair 
 of the consecrated head. This also was a conviction 
 for which Aunt Dorothy was fully prepared to en- 
 counter any amount of contradiction or disaster. The 
 narrow ridge on which she walked erect, without 
 wavering or misgiving, was, she was persuaded, 
 marked out as manifestly as the path of the Israel- 
 ites through the Red. Sea by the wall of impassable 
 waters on either hand, by the pillar of cloud and 
 fire behind. To this narrow way she would have 
 allured, led, or, if needful, compelled every human 
 soul, for their good and the glory of God. No vicis- 
 situdes of fortune affected her convictions; the sor- 
 rows of all who deviated from this narrow path be- 
 ing, in her belief, from the Sword of the Avenger, 
 while the sorrows of those who kept to it were from 
 the Eod of the Comforter. My father's adherence
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 281 
 
 to very much tlie same course of conduct, from a 
 belief of its expediency, and Aunt Gretel's from the 
 tenderness of sympathy which inevitably drew her 
 to the side on which there was the most suffering, 
 seemed to Aunt Dorothy happy accidents, or especial 
 and uncovenanted mercies, singularly vouchsafed to 
 j)ersons of their vmcertain and indefinite opinions. 
 Not that Aunt Dorothy's nature was in any way 
 low or small. Her heart was deep and high, if not 
 always wide. To her convictions she would have 
 sacrificed first herself, then the universe. Her con- 
 venience she would have sacrificed to the comfort of 
 the meanest human being in the universe. She would 
 not have swerved from her ridge of orthodoxy for 
 the dearest love on earth. She would have stooped 
 from it to save or help the most degraded wanderer, 
 or her greatest enemy. 
 
 But the most dangerous conviction she held was 
 unfortunately one of the deepest. It was that of her 
 own practical infallibility. It was strange that, with 
 the profoundest and most practical convictions of her 
 own sinfulness, she never could learn the impossibi- 
 lity that all error should be removed whilst any sin 
 remains; that there should be no darkness in the 
 mind while there is so much in the heart. Strange, 
 but not uncommon. Her sin she acknowledged as 
 her own. Her creed she identified entirely with the
 
 282 THE DEAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Holy Scriptures. It was not her own, slie said, it 
 was God's trutli to the minutest point, and, as such, 
 she would have suffered or fought for every clause. 
 Nevertheless, with advancing years Roger and I 
 grew into ever deeper reverence for her character. 
 If in our childhood she represented, to us Justice 
 with the sword and scales (often in our belief very 
 effectually blindfolded), whilst Aunt Gretel enacted 
 counteracting Mercy; in after-years we grew rather 
 to look on them as Trutli and Tenderness, acting 
 not counter to each other, but in combination. And 
 in this imperfect world, where truth and love are 
 never blended in perfect proportions in any one 
 character, it is difficult to say on which we leant the 
 most. It was strange to see how often their opposite 
 attributes led them to the same actions. "Speaking 
 the truth in love," was Aunt Dorothy's maxim; and 
 if the love were sometimes lost in the emphasis on 
 truth, neither truth nor love were ever sacrificed to 
 selfish interest. "First pure, then peaceable," was 
 her wisdom; and I cannot say she always got as far 
 as the "gentle, and easy to be entreated." But it is 
 something to be able to look back on a life like hers, 
 unprofaned by one stain of untruthfulness, or by one 
 low or petty aim. It is only in looking back that 
 we learn what a rock of strength she was to us all, 
 or how the tenderest memories of home often cling
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 283 
 
 like mosses around sucli rocks; the more closely, 
 sometimes, for their very ruggedness. Thus our 
 home at Netherby contained various elements, eccle- 
 siastical and political as well as moral, all of which, 
 however, at the commencement of the civil wars, were 
 gathered together under the watchword, "Loyalty 
 above all to the King of kings. Liberty to obey God." 
 
 It was this indeed, that, with all our internal 
 differences as to church government and secular 
 government, united us into one party. Whatever 
 varieties of opinion as to church government our 
 party contained — Presbyterian, Independent, Mo- 
 derate Episcopal , or Quaker •, classical , republican, 
 aristocratic, English constitutional, or, finally, the 
 adherents of the Deliverer, chosen (they deemed) as 
 divinely and to be obeyed as implicitly as any 
 Hebrew judge — all believed in the theocracy. 
 
 The liberty our party contended for was no mere 
 unloosing of bonds. It was liberty to obey the 
 highest law. It was no mere levelling to clear an 
 emjDty space for new experiments. It was sweeping 
 away ruins to clear a platform for the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 And this was another point in which the re- 
 collections of my life make me feel how vast and 
 complicated an undertaking it must be to write his- 
 tory.
 
 284 THE DRA.YTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 In our early days we used to be given histories 
 of the church and histories of the world. Profane 
 histories and sacred histories , as neatly and definitely 
 separated as if the church and the world had been 
 two distinct planets. 
 
 But in our own times, at least, it seems to me 
 absolutely impossible thus to separate them. The 
 Battle of Dunbar was to Oliver Cromwell and his 
 army as religious an act as their prayer-meeting at 
 Windsor. The righting the poor folks who lost their 
 rights on the Soke of Somersham was, I believe, as 
 religious an act to Mr. Cromwell as the appointment 
 of the gospel-lecturers. And as with the actions so 
 with the persons. Who can say which persons of 
 our time belong to ecclesiastical and which to secular 
 history? 
 
 Does the history of the Convocation, of the Star: 
 Chamber, or of the Westminster Assembly, belong 
 to sacred history; and the history of the Long Par- 
 liament, where decisions were made for time and 
 eternity, or of the battle-fields whence thousands 
 went to their last account, to profane? Is the making 
 of confessions of faith a religious act, and the living 
 by them or dying for them secular? Are Arch- 
 bishop Laud, Bishop Williams, Mr. Baxter, Dr. Owen, 
 Mr. Howe, ecclesiastical persons; and Lord Falk-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 285 
 
 land, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, or Oliver Cromwell, 
 secular? 
 
 In our times, as in my own life, it seems to me 
 absolutely impossible to say where sacred bistory 
 begins and wliere tlie profane ends. 
 
 My consolation is, that it seems to me much tbe 
 same in tlie Holy Scriptures. We call Genesis sacred 
 history, and what is it, chiefly, but a story of family 
 life? "What is Exodus but a record of national 
 
 ) deliverances ? What are the Chronicles and Kings 
 but histories of wars and sieges, interspersed with 
 pathetic family stories? What, indeed, are the 
 
 \ gospels themselves but the record , not of creeds or 
 ecclesiastical conflicts, but of a life, the Life, coming 
 in contact with every form of sickness, and sin, and 
 sorrow iu this our common everyday human life? 
 What would the gospels be with nothing but the 
 Sabbaths and the synagogues, and the Sanhedrim, 
 and the Scribes and Pharisees left in them? With 
 the Avidow's only son left out of them, and the ruler's 
 little daughter, and the woman who was a sinner, 
 and the five thousand fed on the grassy slopes - of 
 Galilee, and the one young man who departed sor- 
 rowful "for he had great possessions?" Would it 
 have been more truly church history for being the 
 less human history? 
 
 The Bible history seems to me to be a history
 
 286 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 of all human life in relation to God. The sins of 
 the Bible are terribly manifest, secular sins; in- 
 justice, impurity, covetousness, cruelty. Its virtues 
 are simple, homely, positive virtues; truth, upright- 
 ness, kindness, mercy, gratitude, courage, gentleness; 
 such sins and virtues as make the weal or woe of 
 nations and of homes. Ordinary ecclesiastical history 
 seems to me too often a record of secular struggles 
 for consecrated things, and names, and places, and 
 of selfish strivings for which shall be greatest. The 
 sins it blames , too often mere transgressions of rules, 
 mistakes as to religious terms, neglect of the tithe 
 of mint, anise, and cummin. The virtues it com- 
 mends, alas! too often negative renunciations of cer- 
 tain indulgences, scruples as to certain observances, 
 fasting twice in the week; things which, done or 
 undone, leave the heart the same. 
 
 But underneath all this a church history like that 
 of the Bible is being silently lived on earth, is being 
 silently written in heaven. Little glimpses of it we 
 see here from time to time. What will it be when 
 we see it all! 
 
 All through that summer the country was astir 
 with the enlistings for the king and the Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 These began about April.
 
 A STORY OF THE ClVIIi WARS. 287 
 
 On the 23rd of February Queen Henrietta Maria 
 had embarked at Dover for tbe Low Countries , with 
 the Princess Mary and tbe crown-jewels. 
 
 From tbe time that she was in safety, tbe king's 
 ! tone to tbe Parliament began (it was thought) to 
 ! change. Always chivalrously regardful of her, and 
 ; indiflPerent to danger for himself (for none of his 
 I father's timidity could ever be charged to him), he 
 began to give more open answers to the popular 
 demands. He hoped also, it was said, much from 
 the queen's eloquence and exertions in bis cause on 
 tbe Continent. It was his misfortune, my father 
 said, that any favourable turn in bis affairs made 
 him unyielding; and thus it happened that he only 
 came to terms when bis cause was at tbe worst, so 
 that bis treaties bad the double disadvantage of being 
 made under tbe most adverse circumstances, and 
 with men who knew from repeated experience that 
 not one of his most sacred promises would be kept 
 if he could help it. Such virtues as be possessed 
 seemed always to come into action at tbe wrong 
 moment; his courage when it could only kindle irri- 
 tation; his graciousness when it could only inspire 
 contempt. 
 
 Tbe queen being safely out of tbe country, and 
 the king safely out of the capital, from his refuge 
 at York came tbe renewal of the old irritating demand
 
 288 THK DRAVTONS AND THE UAVJiNANXS: 
 
 for tounage aucl pouudagc, rooting the opposition 
 firmer than ever in tlie irrevocable distrust of the 
 royal word. 
 
 The demand of the king for the old usurpations 
 was met by the assertion of the Parliament of old 
 rights, with the demand for new powers to secure 
 these; by the assertion of the power of the purse, 
 and the demand for power over the militia. 
 
 But to us women at Netherby all these negotia- 
 tions and fencings between the king and the Parlia- 
 ment sounded so much like what had gone on for 
 so long, everything was couched in such orderly and 
 constitutional language, that it was difficult to think 
 anything more than Protestations, Remonstrances, 
 Breach of Privilege, and Protests for Privilege , would 
 ever come of it. 
 
 The first thing that roused me to the sense that 
 it might end not in words but in battles, was the 
 news that reached us one April evening that the 
 king had gone in person with three hundred horse- 
 men to the gates of Hull, and had summoned Sir 
 John Hotham to surrender the city, that Sir John 
 had refused to surrender or to admit the king's troops 
 (offering all loyal courtesy at the same time to the 
 king himself); that the king and his three hundred 
 had thereon gone ofi" baffled to Beverley, and there 
 proclaimed Sir John Hotham a traitor.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 289 
 
 That night I said to Aunt Gretel, — 
 "This seems to me altogether to introduce a new 
 set of terms and things. Instead of Protestations 
 and Kemonstrances, we hear of Summonses and Sur- 
 renders. The king and his Cavaliers repulsed from 
 the closed gates of one of his own cities ! Aunt Gretel, 
 these are new words to us; does not this look like 
 war?" 
 
 And she replied, in a tremulous voice, — 
 "Alas, sweet heart, these are new words to me. 
 Your people seem to arrange many things others fight 
 about, by talking about them. And it is difficult 
 for me to say what words mean with you. But these 
 words are indeed terribly familiar to me. And in 
 my country they would certainly mean war." 
 
 And that night I well remember the perplexity 
 that crossed my prayers, whether in praying as 
 usual for the king I might not be praying against 
 the Parliament, and against my father and Roger, 
 and the nation; until after debating the matter in my 
 own mind for some time, I came to the conclusion 
 that on whatever dark mountains scattered, and by 
 whatever deep waters divided, to Him there is still 
 "One flock, one Shepherd," and that however ill I 
 knew how to ask. He knew well what to give. 
 
 The Dra>itons awl the Dcwenants. I. 
 
 19
 
 290 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 XVIU. 
 
 LETTICE DAVENANT's DIARY. 
 [from another source.] 
 
 "York, April 1642. — It has actually begun at 
 last. The rebellion has begun. Sir John Hotham 
 (Sir I hesitate to call him, for what knight is worthy 
 the name who turns his disloyal sword against the 
 very Fountain of knighthood and of all honour?) 
 has closed the gates of Hull against the summons — 
 against the very voice and j^erson of His Sacred 
 Majesty. At once the king withdrew to Beverley, 
 and, under the shadow of the grand 0I4 Minster, 
 proclaimed the false knight a traitor. 
 
 "The rebellion has begun, but every one says , 
 it cannot last long. Next Christmas at latest must ! 
 see us all at peace again; the nation once more at 
 the feet of the king. My mother says like a pro- 
 digal child; Sir Launcelot says like a beaten hound. 
 Mobs, says he, like dogs, can only learn to obey 
 by being suffered to rebel a little, and then being 
 whipped for it. (I like not well this talk of Sir 
 Launcelot. If the nation is like a hound, at what
 
 A STOltY OF TUB CIVIL WARS. 291 
 
 point ill the nation does the dog-nature begin, and 
 the human end?) Speaking so, I tokl him, we 
 might include ourselves. But he laughed, and said, 
 such discerning of spirits required no miraculous 
 gift. Moreover, he said, tlie king himself had once 
 compared the Parliament to 'cats, to he tamed when 
 young but cursed when old;' and had called his 
 sailors in tlie Thames who offered to guard the 
 Parliament 'water-rats.' If the king said so, I con- 
 fess I think His Majesty miglit have chosen more 
 courtly similes. But I do not believe he did. I will 
 never believe any evil of His Majesty, whoever says 
 it , scarcely if I were to see it myself, for my eyes 
 might be deceived. 
 
 "Only I should be sorely vexed if they heard 
 these things at Netherby; because they never said 
 rough things of any one. Especially now I am not 
 there to explain things. For I am not allowed to 
 write to them, nor to see them again, until things 
 are right again in the country; which makes me 
 write this. 
 
 "However, it cannot last long. Every one here 
 agrees in that. Every one except Harry, whom we 
 call 'II Penseroso.' He sees such a long way, and 
 on so many sides, or at least he tries to do so; and 
 he talks of the Wars of the Roses, and the wars in 
 Germany; as if there were any resemblance! In 
 
 19*
 
 292 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS.' 
 
 Germany tliere were kings and states opposed. In 
 the Wars of the Roses royal persons, with some 
 kind of claim to reign. But this is nothing but flat 
 rebellion. The family against the father; sworn 
 liegemen against their sovereign lord; the body 
 against the head. And how can any one think for 
 a moment there can be any end to it but one, and 
 that soon? Yes; at Christmas, I trust, we Dave- 
 nants shall be at the Hall again, and the Draytons 
 at Netherby, looking back to the end of this frantic 
 and unnatural outbreak. 
 
 "And I mean to be most generous to them all 
 about it. I do not mean even to say, 'I always 
 told you how it would end.' They will see, and 
 that will be enough. The king will forgive every 
 one, I am sure, he is so gracious and gentle — (he 
 spoke to me like a father the other day, and yet 
 with such a knightly deference!) — except, perhaps, 
 a very few, who will have to be made examples of, 
 unless they make examples of themselves by running 
 out of the country, which I hope they may. For 
 once having re-asserted his rightful authority, the 
 king will be able to be forgiving without being 
 suspected of weakness. There need not be any 
 more poor mistaken people set in the pillory, which 
 really seems to do no one any good, as far as I can 
 see, and to make every one so exceedingly angry.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 293 
 
 The Puritans (that is, those among them who have 
 any sense) will see that it really can make no 
 difference whether the clergyman says the prayers 
 in a white dress or a black. Perhaps even the bishops 
 and archbishops might own the same. Because, 
 although it cannot be good management to give a 
 naughty child its way for crying, if it stops crying 
 and is good, it is quite another thing. 
 
 "And then everything would go on delightfully. 
 The very troublesome and obstinate people (on both 
 sides, I think) might, perhaps, all go to America, 
 some to the north and some to the south. For the 
 American plantations are very wide, they say, and 
 by the time they met — say in one or two hundred 
 years — their great-great-grandchildren might have 
 given up caring so much about the colours of the 
 vestments and the titles of the clergymen who do 
 the services in the Church. So that by that time 
 everything would go on delightfully in America as 
 well as in England. And by next Christmas, from 
 what the gentlemen and ladies about us here say, 
 I should think this might all have begun. Only 
 just now this little unpleasant contest has to be gone 
 through first. And I am very much afraid as to 
 what Mr. Drayton and Eoger may do, or even 
 Olive. They are so terribly conscientious. They 
 will pick up the smallest questions with their con-
 
 291 THE DRAYTONS y\ND THE DAVEXANTS : 
 
 sciences instead of with their common sense; which 
 seems to me like watering a daisy with a fire-engine, 
 or weeding a flower-bed with a plough. Mistress 
 Dorothy is the worst of them (dear, kind, old soul, 
 I must now and then look at her sermons, in order 
 to make it quite clear to myself I was not a hypo- 
 crite in listening to them all that time). But I do 
 not think any of them are quite safe in this way. 
 And yet I know, in my inmost heart, they are 
 better than any one in the world, except my mother, 
 and perhaps Harry. (Of His Majesty it is not for 
 me to speak.) And I love them better than any 
 one in the world, which, I am afraid, they will not 
 believe, now I am not allowed to write to them. I 
 love them for their noble perverseness , and their 
 heroic conscientiousness, and their terrible truthful- 
 ness, and everything that separates us. And these 
 last months at home have been the happiest of my 
 life. I feel growing quite good. And one thing I 
 have resolved. I will not say one word I should 
 mind their hearing, so that when we meet again I 
 may have nothing to explain or to unsay. For it is 
 only misunderstanding that will ever make any of 
 them take the wrong side; nothing but misunder- 
 standing. And facts will set that all right when 
 they see how things really are. As they will, I 
 trust, before Christmas.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 295 
 
 "It is not so easy to be good here as at Ne- 
 tlierby. People say so many pretty things to me. 
 My mother says I must not heed them; they are 
 only Court ways of speaking, which mean nothing-, 
 and that, rightly used, I might even make them 
 means of mortification, saying every time I hear 
 such pretty phrases, as good Dr. Taylor recom- 
 mended, 'My beauty is in colour inferior to many 
 flowers; and even a dog hath parts as well propor- 
 tioned to the designs of his nature as I have; and 
 three fits of an ague can change it into yellowness 
 and leanness, and to hollowness and wrinkles of 
 deformity.' But this I find not so easy. If I were 
 a rose, I should be pleased at being a rose, and at 
 being thought sweet and fair. And even a well- 
 favoured dog, meseems, hath some harmless delight 
 in his good looks. And as to the ague, I see no 
 likelihood of it. And as to becoming yellow and 
 lean, the more I think of it, the gladder I am to 
 think I am not. And yet there is some flutter in 
 my pleasure at these fair speeches which hardly 
 seems to me quite altogether good. And I do not 
 think my mother quite knows what nonsense these 
 young Cavaliers talk. Perhaps no one did ever 
 talk nonsense to her. Or, if they did, I am sure 
 she never liked it. And I am afraid I do sometimes 
 a little. Else, why should it all come back into my
 
 296 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 mind at wrong times? — in tlie Minster or at 
 prayers. Heigh, lio! I wish I was at Netherby. 
 No one ever called me fair enchantress there, or my 
 cheeks Aurora's rose-garden, or my teeth strings of 
 pearls, or my hands lilies, or my hair imprisoned 
 sunbeams, or my voice the music of the spheres. 
 Sir Launcelot talked enough of that kind of poetry 
 to me, between Netherby and Windsor, to make a 
 book of ballads. (For my mother was in the sedan- 
 chair, whilst I rode most of the way with Sir 
 Launcelot.) And yet, I think, there is more honour 
 in Roger Drayton's telling me in his straight-forward 
 way he thought me wrong, as he so often did, than 
 in all Sir Launcelot's most honeyed compliments. 
 
 "Not that I think Olive just to poor Sir Launce- 
 lot. If she could have seen his deho7imr and courte- 
 ous ways to every clown and poor wench we met, 
 and how he flung his crowns and angels to any 
 beggar, she must have felt there is much kindliness 
 in him, with all his wild ways. 
 
 "And when he saw I liked not so many fair 
 speeches, he gave them up in a measure. I must 
 say that for him-, and he has been as deferential to 
 me ever since at the Court, as if I were one of the 
 princesses. Only I wish he would not always see 
 when I drop my glove or my posy; at least, I think 
 I do. Yet it is rather pleasant, too, at times to
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 297 
 
 feel there is some one who cares about one among 
 so many strange people, and some one who is always 
 ready to talk about poor old Netherby, and who 
 honours the Dray tons, moreover, so generously. I 
 wish Olive knew this. 
 
 "And I wish I were like my mother, and had *a 
 chapel built in my heart.' Or else that I could live 
 at Netherby. 
 
 "Sir Launcelot admires the 'beauty of holiness' 
 in my mother. He says, in all times, happily, there 
 have been these sweet exalted saints, especially 
 among women, bright particular stars, celestial beau- 
 ties, and princesses, that all men must revere. Quite 
 another kind of thing, he says, from the Puritan 
 notion of calling all men to be 'saints,' or else con- 
 signing them to reprobation as among the wicked. 
 
 ''^Note. — I am at a loss what to call this writing 
 of mine. It is scarcely a Diary or Journal, for I 
 certainly shall not do anything as regular as write in 
 it every day. It shall not be 'Annals;' for I hope 
 to have done with it before Christmas, when I shall 
 have met Olive and all of them again at home. 
 'Chronicles' are more solemn still. 'Thoughts?' 
 where shall I find them? 'Facts?' how is one to 
 know them, when people give such different accounts 
 of things? 'Meditations?' worse again. 'Eeligious 
 Journals,' 'Confessions,' &c., always puzzled me. I
 
 298 TriE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 could never make out for whom they were written. 
 Especially the prayers I have seen written out at 
 length in them. They cannot be meant for other 
 people to read. That would be turning the 'closet' 
 into 'the comers of the street.' They cannot be 
 meant for the people themselves to read. For what 
 good could that do? It would not be praying to 
 see how I prayed some years since. They cannot 
 surely be meant for God to read. He is always 
 near, and can hear or read our hearts, which is quite 
 another thing from reading our diaries, 
 
 "J/«y 30, Yorlc. — The birds begin to sing in 
 the trees around the Minster. Our lodging is op- 
 posite. And the courtiers begin to gather once more 
 around the king. Many lords have come these last 
 days from London, with some faithful members of 
 the Commons' House, and old Lord Littleton has 
 come, with somewhat limping loyalty, they say, 
 after the Great Seal, now in the right hand. So 
 that this grave old town begins to look gay. Cava- 
 liers caracoUing about the streets, doffing their hats 
 to fair faces in the windows. Troops mustering but 
 slowly;- somewhat slowly. Nor can I make out if 
 these townspeople altogether like us and our ways. 
 There are so many Puritans among these traders. 
 And Sir Launcelot says they have great sport in the
 
 A STOTIY OF THE CIVIL "WARS. 299 
 
 Puritan household where he is quartered, in iraking 
 the Puritan Lads learn the 'Distracted Puritan,' and 
 other roystering Cavalier songs, and drink confusion 
 to the Covenant; and in making the host and hostess 
 bring out their best conserves, linen, and plate, for 
 the use of the men. Sir Launcelot told them, he 
 said, that they should only look on it as the payment 
 of an old debt the children of Israel had owed to 
 the Egyptians these three thousand years. I do not 
 think such jokes good manners in any other person's 
 house, and I told him so. But he said their ridi- 
 culous gravity makes the temptation too sti'ong to be 
 resisted. If they would jest good-humouredly in 
 return, said he, they would soon understand each 
 other. But would they? I am not quite sure how 
 Sir Launcelot enjoys not having the best of a joke. 
 And I could not bear his calling the Puritans all 
 canting or ridiculous. He knows better. And I 
 told him so. I felt quite indignant, and the tears 
 were in my eyes (for I thought of them all at 
 Netherby). He seemed penitent. Indeed, I hope it 
 did him good. 
 
 ''^June. — The Parliament are growing more in- 
 solent every day; they dared to say in one of their 
 ridiculous Remonstrances that 'the king is for the 
 kingdom, not the kingdom for the king, that even 
 the crown-jewels are not His Majesty's own, but
 
 300 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : i 
 
 given him in trust for the regal power.' However, 
 they will soon learn their mistake about that, for 
 the crown-jewels are safe in Holland, and have there 
 purchased for the Crown good store of arms and 
 ammunition. These were all embarked in a Dutch 
 ship called the Providence. A great Providence, my 
 mother says, attended her. For although she was 
 wrecked on the coast of Yorkshire, nevertheless all 
 her stores have this day been safely brought into 
 York. 
 
 "Now we shall see what gentlemen can do against 
 tapsters, and tailors' and haberdashers' 'prentices, 
 such as make up the wretched army they have been 
 mustering in London! The citizens' wives actually 
 brought their thimbles and bodkins, it is said, to 
 pay the men; to such mean and ludicrous straits are 
 they reduced. The Cavaliers call it 'the Thimble 
 and Bodkin Army.' 
 
 '''' July 20. ■ — ■ Sir John Hotham is said to be 
 wavering back to loyalty. A day or two since, a 
 gallant little army of four thousand men rode forth 
 hence through the Mickle Bar, to demand the sur- 
 render of that presumptuous city, Hull, and if 
 refused, to storm it. Better they had listened to 
 His Majesty's gentle summons with his three hundred. 
 How gallant and brave they looked. Plumed helmets 
 gleaming, swords flashing, pennons flying, horses
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 301 
 
 looking as proud of the cause as tlie riders. Not a 
 cavalier among them who would not face battle as 
 gayly as the hunting-field. 
 
 ''''July 22. — Those treacherous townspeople! 
 Not a troop of them is to be relied on. Our gallant 
 Cavaliers came back in disorder. And all because 
 of the faithless train-bands, and those turbulent 
 citizens of Hull. Lord Lindsay, with three thousand 
 men, was at Beverley, and on the lighting of a fire 
 on Beverley Minster, the gates of Hull were to be 
 opened by some loyal men inside. But five hundred 
 rebels within the town, hearing too soon of the 
 intention of these loyal men, made a sortie under 
 the command of Sir John Hotham. The true Cava- 
 liers would have stood firm, every one says, but the 
 Yorkshire train-bauds would not draw sword against 
 their neighbours, but ran away to Beverley; and so 
 the whole ended in disgrace and defeat. If we could 
 only have an army entirely composed of gentlemen, 
 and their sons, and retainers, the Parliament could 
 not stand a day. But the worst news that has 
 reached us lately, is the treachery of the Earl of 
 Warwick and the navy. They have all gone over 
 to the Parliament, in spite of the king's offering 
 them better pay than they ever received before. 
 Five ships stood firm at first, but the rest over- 
 powered them. I hope no one ever told them about
 
 302 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 tlieir being called 'water-rats;' but tbere are always 
 some malicious people who deligbt to make mischief 
 by telling tales. I should think royal persons ought 
 to be very careful about their jests. 
 
 ''''August. — We are on the point of leaving 
 York to spend a few days at Nottingham, where the 
 king's standard is to be set up. 
 
 "I am not sorry to leave this old town. I miss 
 the pleasant walks at home. For here one dare 
 scarce venture much out of doors. If the Cavaliers 
 are as dangerous to their enemies as they are some- 
 times to their friends, the Parliament has good cause 
 to tremble. The streets echo dismally at night with 
 the shouts of drunken revelry. But, I suppose, all 
 armies are alike. Only it is rather unfortunate for 
 us that gravity and the show of piety being the 
 badge of the Puritans, levity and a reckless dashing 
 carriage are taken up as their badge by many of the 
 young Cavaliers. 
 
 "I would they took example by the king. His 
 Majesty has been riding around the country lately 
 himself, calling his lieges to follow him. And his 
 majestic courtesy and grace, with his loving and 
 winning speeches, such as he made at Newark and 
 Lincoln, showing his good intentions and desires for 
 their liberty and welfare, must, I am sui-e, be worth
 
 A STORY OF TllK CIVIL, WAKS. 30o 
 
 him a mint of such money as the London citizens 
 can coin out of their thimbles and bodkins. 
 
 "The North country is well disposed, they say; 
 and Lancashire, where the queen hath much hold on 
 the Catholic gentlemen of ancient lineage there; and 
 the West country, where brave Sir Bevil Grenvill 
 lives, is full of loyalty. Mr. Hampden has done 
 mischief in Buckinghamshire, and Mr. Cromwell (a 
 brewer, Sir Launcelot says, rather than a country- 
 gentleman, though not of low parentage) calls him- 
 self captain, and is disaffecting the eastern counties, 
 already disloyal enough with their French Huguenot 
 weavers, and their 'Anabaptists, Atheists, and Brown- 
 ists,' as His Majesty calls them. 
 
 "The towns are the worst, however. I suppose 
 there is something in buying and selling, and tinker- 
 ing and tailoring, which makes people think more 
 of mean money considerations, than of loyalty and 
 honour. Then there are so many Puritans in the 
 town. Perhaps the narrow dark high streets make 
 them naturally inclined to be gloomy and strait- 
 laced. I think, however, the less our Cavalier soldiers 
 are quartered in the towns, the better, till they mend 
 their manners. It may make the citizens less pleased 
 than ever with the Book of Sports. 
 
 ''''Nottingham, Aiujiist 23. — This evening the 
 king himself set up his standard on the top of the
 
 304 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 field behind the castle. There was much sounding 
 of drums and trumpets. Several hundreds gathered 
 around the royal partj, and we watched a little way 
 off. But, I know not how, the act did not seem as 
 solemn as the occasion. The night was stormy, and 
 the trumpets and drums, and then the voice of the 
 herald reading the royal proclamation, sounded small 
 and thin against the rush and howling of the winds. 
 The troops have not yet answered the king's call as 
 they should, and those present were mostly the train- 
 bands. Then His Majesty, on the spot, made some 
 alterations in the proclamation, which perplexed the 
 herald, so that he blundered and stumbled in read- 
 ing it. Altogether I wish I had not been there. 
 
 "The king's standard ought to be something 
 more than a pole no higher than a May-pole with a 
 few streamers, and a common flag at the top. And 
 the trumpets which are to rouse a nation, ought to 
 have a certain magnificence in them, altogether dif- 
 ferent from the trumpets they blow at the carols at 
 Netherby at Christmas. I am siire I cannot tell 
 how. But I always pictured it so. The words are 
 grander than the things. 
 
 "Perhaps all our pomps and solemnities look 
 poor and mean under the open sky. We had better 
 keep them beneath roofs of our own making. The 
 pomps we are used to under the open sky are the
 
 A STOHY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 305 
 
 purple and crimson and gold of sunset and sunrise, 
 great banners of storm-clouds flung across the sky. 
 And tlie solemnities are the thunders, and the mighty 
 winds, and the rushing of rivers, and the dashing of 
 seas. 
 
 "The things are grander, infinitely, than any 
 words wherewith we can speak of them. 
 
 "JUit when I said so to my mother, she said, 
 *And yet, my child, one soul, and even one human 
 voice, is grander, and more godlike than all the 
 thunders. It is their significance, Lettice, which 
 gives the grandeur to any solemnities of ours. If 
 we heard those trumpets summon our countrymen hy 
 thousands to the battle, or saw that flag borne blood- 
 stained from the field, we should not think the voice 
 of the trumpet wanted a terrible magnificence, or call 
 the flag a common thing ever more.' 
 
 "Perhaps, after all, it was only a little inward 
 depression that made me feel this disappointment. 
 For only three days before, Coventry had shut her 
 gates in the king's face, and the Earl of Essex is at 
 hand, they say, with a great army, and so few flock- 
 ing loyally to the king. 
 
 "But worst of all, I think, is this Prince Rupert. 
 His mother's name, Elizabeth of Bohemia, has been 
 like a sacred name in the country for years; a saint 
 and a heroine in courage and patience. But this 
 
 The Draytons and the Daveuants. L ^0
 
 306 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 prince is so noisy and reckless, and takes so mucli 
 upon himself, that he angers the older gentlemen and 
 experienced soldiers sorely. My father says he is 
 little better than a petulant boy. Yet he has great 
 weight with the king, his uncle, and takes the com- 
 mand into his own hands; so that the gallant old 
 Earl of Lindsay deems his own command little better 
 than nominal. And, meanwhile, the younger Cava- 
 liers take their colour from him, and use that new 
 low cant word of his, 'plunder,' quite as a jest, as if 
 it meant some new sport or sword- exercise, instead 
 of meaning, as it does, scouring all over the country, 
 burning lonely farm-houses, robbing the inmates, and 
 sometimes hanging the servants at the doors for re- 
 fusing to betray their masters, sacking villages, and 
 I know not what other wickednesses. In the fort- 
 night he has been here, he has flown through Worces- 
 tershire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Leicester- 
 shire, and Cheshire. And not a night but we have 
 seen the sky aglow with the fires of burning villages 
 and homesteads. I should fear to hear how the 
 people along his line of march, coming back to their 
 ruined homes, speak of the king! 
 
 " Moreover, it is said, the rebel troops are strictly 
 forbidden to take anything without paying for it, a 
 contrast worth them much. 
 
 '"''August 23. — This morning, before I rose, my
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 307 
 
 mother's waiting gentlewoman brought dismal news. 
 The royal standard, said she, has been blown down 
 iu the night, and lies a wreck along the hill. 
 
 "My mother says it is heathenish to talk of omens 
 and auguries. And my father says these foreigners 
 are the worst omen, and all would be well enough 
 if they would leave Englishmen to fight out their 
 own quarrels, like neighbours who exchange blows 
 and are friends again, instead of like wretched hired 
 Lanzknechts or Free Companions. 
 
 "But SirLauncelot laughs, and says it is a good 
 thing to give the whining Puritans something to cry 
 for at last. And Harry sighs, and says he supposes 
 it is necessary to make the rebels see we are in 
 earnest. 
 
 "Altogether, we do not seem in a very good 
 humour with each other just now. However, a few 
 victories will, no doubt, set us all right again. There 
 can be no reasonable doubt that the king will bring 
 these rebels to their senses sooner or later; in a few 
 months at latest. 
 
 "Only, I had not vinderstood at all how very 
 melancholy war is. I thought of it as concerning no 
 one but the soldiers. And men must incur danger 
 one way or another. And there is the glory, and 
 the excitement, and the exercise of noble courage, 
 
 20*
 
 308 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 making such men as nothing but such trials can 
 make. 
 
 "But the battles seem but a small part of the 
 misery, the misery without glory to any one. 
 
 "On our way hither from York, my mother was 
 faint and tired, and we stopped at a little farm- 
 house with an orchard. It was evening, and the 
 woman had just finished milking the cows by the 
 door, and she gave my mother a cup of new milk 
 while she rested on the settle in the clean little 
 kitchen. There were two little children playing 
 about, and the father was at work in the orchard, 
 and one of the children called him, and he brought 
 my father a cup of cider. And there was a Bible 
 on the table with woodcuts; and I found the eldest 
 child knew the meaning of them. He said his father 
 had told him. They were very kind and pleasant 
 to us. 
 
 "And a few days since Harry told me they had 
 passed a little farm with an orchard, and the man 
 was surly and a Puritan, and refused to tell the 
 way some fugitives had fled; and Prince Rupert had 
 him hanged on his own threshold, and drove off the 
 cows for plunder. 
 
 "And from what Harry says I feel sure it is the 
 same. 
 
 "And I have scarcely slept since, thinking of that
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 309 
 
 poor man, and the silent voice that will never any 
 more explain the woodcuts in the old Bible, and the 
 poor hands that will never show their willing hospi- 
 tality again. 
 
 "But it is only one, Harry says, among hundreds; 
 and such things must be, and I must not think 
 of it. 
 
 "But every one of the hundreds is just that ter- 
 rible oyilij one^ which leaves the world all lonely to 
 some poor mourner! 
 
 "Those gentlemen in Parliament have dreadful 
 things to answer for. 
 
 "Why did not Mr. Hampden pay a thousand 
 .times his miserable ship-money rather than lead the 
 country on to such horrors? 
 
 "For the king cannot have his commands dis- 
 obeyed. If he did, how could he be a king? 
 
 "I do wish he could be more a king with his 
 own troops; I am sure he hates this ravaging and 
 marauding. But so many of the gentlemen serve, 
 and, indeed, keep their regiments at their own cost, 
 which makes them difficult to control. 
 
 " October. — Prince Eupert has been driven from 
 Worcester. If it were only a lesson in reverence 
 and modesty for the prince, it would not so much 
 matter, some think, that he left twenty good and 
 true men dead there. The Earl of Essex occupies
 
 310 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS. 
 
 the city. He has been there a fortnight doing no- 
 thing. Some remnants of loyalty, we think, hinder 
 him from coming to open collision. But what the 
 use of collecting an army can be unless it is to fight, 
 it is hard to see. The truth is, perhaps, that he 
 begins to feel the peril of setting his haberdashers' 
 and grocers' 'prentices, commanded by a forsworn 
 peer, against gentlemen's sons fighting under their 
 king! Meantime, our army is gathering at last, and 
 only too eager, they say, to give the rebels a lesson. 
 Once for all, God grant it be a lesson once for all. 
 Although the battles do not seem to me half so 
 dreadful as these 'plunderings.' But, perhaps, that 
 is because I never came near a battle; nor, indeed, 
 can the oldest man in England remember any one 
 that ever did on English soil." 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 THE DRAYTONS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOIt OF 
 
 "CHRONICLES Of THE SCHuNJJERCi-COTTA FAMILY." 
 
 COPYBIGET F.DITION. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. 11. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 B E R N H A R D T A U C H N I T Z 
 
 18G8. 
 
 Th: liiijlil of Translatlnn is rcscrvvd.
 
 THE 
 
 DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 
 
 XIX. 
 
 OLIVE Drayton's recollections. 
 
 All through the summer the armies were gather- 
 ing. In our seven eastern counties — Essex, Norfolk, 
 Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincoln, Huntingdonshire, 
 and Hertfordshire — called the associated counties, 
 because bound by Mr. Hampden and Mr. Cromwell 
 into an association for mutual defence, the King's 
 Commission of Array and the Parliament's Ordinance 
 of Militia clashed less than elsewhere. In August 
 Mr. Cromwell seized a magazine of arms and ammu- 
 nition at Cambridge. The stronghold of the Puritans 
 was in these eastern regions; and except where a few 
 Royalist gentlemen, like the Davenants, led off their 
 retainers, the Parliament had, amongst us, mostly its 
 own way. All the more reason, my father said, for
 
 6 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENAi^TS: 
 
 our men to risk their persons, since our homes were 
 safer than elsewhere. 
 
 My father, from his old military experience, had 
 much to do with training and drilling the men. 
 Strange sounds of clanging arms and sharp words of 
 command echoed from the old court of the Manor. 
 Old arms, the very stories belonging to which were 
 well-nigh forgotten, were taken down; arms which 
 had hung on the walls of manor-house and farm- 
 house since the Wars of the Roses. The newest 
 weapon we had at Netherby which had seen service 
 in England, was a short jewel-hilted sword the Dray- 
 ton of the day had worn at the Battle of Bosworth 
 Field, fighting, by a rare piece of good luck for us, 
 under Henry VII., on the winning side. Since then 
 the Reformation had revolutionized the Church, and 
 gunpowder had revolutionized the art of war; so that 
 instead of the sturdy bowmen, each provided with 
 his weapon and ready trained to the use of it, whom 
 his ancestors brought to the field, my father could 
 only muster a few labourers and servants, without 
 weapons and without training, with no further pre- 
 paration for war than hands iised to labour, wits 
 ready to learn, and hearts ready to dare. 
 
 My father did not mean to lead his own men. 
 Having had experience of engineering in the Grerman 
 wars, he was employed here and there as his direc-
 
 A STORY OF TUB CIVIL WARS. / 
 
 tions were needed. Roger and those who went from 
 Netherby served from the first with Mr. Cromwell's 
 Ironsides; my father, as his contribution, providing 
 the armour, which, like that of Haselrigge's Lobsters, 
 was complete and costly. Other bands passed and 
 repassed often, and shared the hospitalities of the 
 Manor, to join Lord Brook's purple-coats. Lord Say 
 and Lord Mandeville's blue- coats. Hollis' red-coats 
 were London men, and Mr. Hampden's green-coats 
 all from his own county, Buckinghamshire; while 
 the badge of all was the orange scarf round the 
 arm — the family colours of Lord Essex, the general. 
 Each regiment had its own motto — Hampden's, 
 " Vestiijia nulla retrorsum;'''' Essex's (pointing many a 
 Cavalier jest, if seen in plunder or retreat), ''''Cave 
 adsum.^'' On the reverse of each banner was the 
 common motto of all, "God with us" — the watch- 
 word of so many a battle. 
 
 Money was not stinted; the city of London head- 
 ing the contributions in January with £' 50,000, and 
 the Merchants' Companies with nigh as large a sum 
 (then intended to avenge the Irish massacre); whilst 
 Mr. Hampden gave £ 1000, and his cousin, Mr. Crom- 
 well, £ 500. 
 
 Women brought their rings and jewels; cherished 
 old family-plate was not held back. We in our 
 sober Puritan household had few jewels to bring, but
 
 b THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 such* as we had were disinterred from theLr caskets, 
 and the few silver drinking-cups which distinguished 
 our table from any farmers round were packed up 
 by Aunt Dorothy's own hands, and despatched to 
 the London Guildhall, not without sighs, but with- 
 out hesitation, with all the money that could be 
 spared. 
 
 Cousin Placidia also offered what she called her 
 "mite;" when she heard that the poor citizens' wives 
 in London had even offered their thimbles and bod- 
 kins. 
 
 "I am but a poor parson's wife," said she, "but 
 I am thankful they will receive even such poor offer- 
 ings as I can bring." 
 
 And she brought those embroidered Cordova 
 gloves, the search for which had so incensed Aunt 
 Dorothy. 
 
 "It is remarkable," she observed, "that I always 
 said one never knew what use anything might be in 
 a poor parson's household; and now I have found 
 the use." 
 
 "What use, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy, "do 
 you think the Parliament soldiers will fight in em- 
 broidered gloves?" 
 
 "Spanish leather is dear," replied Placidia, "and 
 things will always sell. It is only a poor mite, I 
 know, but so is a thimble. The Parliament soldiers
 
 A STORY OF lUK CIVIL WARS. 9 
 
 cannot, of course, figlit in thimbles any more than 
 in gloves; and the widow's mite was accepted." 
 
 "^1 mite and the 'widow's mite' are some way 
 apart, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "your 'widow's 
 mite,' I suppose, might perhaps, for example, include 
 the glebe and those cows in your uncle's park and 
 meadow. Take care what you offer to the Lord. He 
 sometimes takes us at our word. And there are 
 plunderers abroad who take their own estimate of 
 people's mites, widows' and others." 
 
 Said Placidia, never taken aback — 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy, Mr. Nicholls and I regard the 
 glebe as a sacred trust, of which we feel we must on 
 no account relinquish the smallest fraction. And as 
 to the cows Uncle Drayton gave me, I wonder you 
 can suspect me of such ingratitude as to give them 
 up to any one." 
 
 "I did not, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy, 
 quietly. "What shall I label your Cordova gloves? 
 Scarcely a parson's mite; it might be mistaken to 
 mean 'all his living.' Nor can I exactly say 
 'widow's.'" 
 
 "An orphan's perhaps, Aunt Dorothy." 
 
 "Very well, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "I 
 should think that would aff'ect the Parliament very 
 much. It may even get into history." 
 
 With which this little passage at arms closed.
 
 10 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVEXANTS : 
 
 Happily for tlie popular cause, the commou inter- 
 pretation of acceptable "mites" differed from Pla- 
 cidia's, so tliat in a short time a considerable army 
 was levied. 
 
 The navy ever remained true to the Parliament; 
 irritated, some foolish persons said, by a report that 
 the king had called them "water-rats." As well say 
 the whole Parliament stood firm, because the king 
 once compared them to cats. The navy had its own 
 watchwords, better pointed than by the sting of a 
 sorry jest. English seamen were not likely to trust 
 too implicitly to the promises of the sovereign who 
 had tried to sell them to aid in the destruction of 
 the brave little beleaguered Protestant garrison at 
 Rochelle. 
 
 All through the summer the armies were being 
 levied and the breach was silently widening. 
 
 In July an incident showed, my father said, as 
 much as anything could, how entirely the king's 
 mind was unchanged, and how "thorough" would 
 have been the tyranny established in his hands, 
 though Laud, and Strafford, and the queen, and 
 every violent councillor, had been removed. My old 
 friend, Dr. Bastwick, the physician, was seized by 
 the royal forces at Worcester while engaged in levy- 
 ing men for the Parliament, under Earl Stamford, 
 who retreated. It was with the greatest difficulty that
 
 A STOUY OP THE CIVIL WARS. _ 11 
 
 one of the judges restrained the king from having 
 him hanged on the spot, although there could be no 
 reason why he should have been sentenced with this 
 exceptional severity except the fact that he had al- 
 ready been scourged, pilloried, and maimed by the 
 cruelty of the Star-Chamber. 
 
 The deep distrust which such indications of the 
 king's true mind produced, cost him more than 
 many lost battles. 
 
 They tended to inspire such resistances as that 
 made a few weeks afterwards by the brave com- 
 moners of Coventry, when, withoiit garrison, with- 
 out engineers, with no defence but their feeble an- 
 cient walls, they shut their gates in the sovereign's 
 face, defied the royal forces, and when the breach 
 was made by artillery in the old tottering walls, bar- 
 ricaded the streets with barrows and carts, made a 
 sally, carried the nearest lines, seized the guns, and 
 turned them against the besiegers, compelling them 
 at last to retire baffled. 
 
 But it was Prince Eupert, "the Prince Robber," 
 who, perhaps, more than any, turned the hearts of 
 the people against the sovereign who could use such 
 an instrument. Trained in the cruel school of the 
 Palatinate wars, he had read its terrible lessons the 
 wrong way, having learned from the sufferings of 
 his father's subjects not pity, but a savage reckless-
 
 12 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 ness of suffering. He brouglit home to hundreds of 
 burning villages and plundered lonely farms, which 
 no Parliamentary remonstrances or declarations would 
 have reached, the conviction that the king looked on 
 his people, not as a flock, but as mere live-stock on 
 an estate, to be kept up if profitable and manage- 
 able, and if not to be sacrificed ,to any system of 
 management which gave less trouble and brought in 
 more profit. 
 
 " Whose own the sheep are not^^'' was written in 
 the ashes of every home ruined by Prince Rupert in 
 the king's service. 
 
 With these deeds the people contrasted the well- 
 kept orders of the Parliament to Lord Essex. "Yoii 
 shall carefully restrain all imj)ieties, profaneness, and 
 disorders, violence. Insolence, and plundering in your 
 soldiers, as well by strict and severe punishment of 
 such offences as by all other means which you in 
 your wisdom shall think fit." 
 
 And we grew to think that, whoever the true 
 shepherd and king of the people might be, it was 
 scarcely one who employed the wolf for a sheep-dog. 
 
 It was but slowly and reluctantly that this con- 
 viction grew on the nation. Those who look back 
 on the king's life, hallowed by the shadow of his 
 death, little know how slowly and reluctantly. We 
 would fain have trusted him if he would Irave let us.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 13 
 
 The nation tried it again and again, and only too 
 mucli was sacrificed before tliey would believe it was 
 in vain. Still there had been no battle. The Earl 
 of Essex , after following the prince from Worcester, 
 lingered there three weeks, doing nothing. No battle 
 worth the name for nearly a hundred and seventy 
 years, until Sunday the 23d of October 1642. 
 
 Then came the first great shock. All that Sun- 
 day afternoon our countrymen, husbands, brothers, 
 fathers, sons of the women left in the quiet villages 
 at home, were fighting in the desperate struggle for 
 life and death, until at night four thousand English- 
 men lay dead on the slopes of Edgehill, or dying in 
 the villages around — the day before as tranquil and 
 peaceful as ours. 
 
 I remember there was a peculiar quiet about that 
 Sunday at Netherby. So many of the men of the 
 village had gone to the war. lioger had been away 
 many weeks, and my father had left some days be- 
 fore to join Lord Essex at Worcester. In all our 
 household there were no men left except Bob the 
 herdsman. The church was strangely deserted. The 
 Hall pew empty. Scarcely one deep manly voice in 
 response or psalm. On the benches in the village a 
 few old men had an unwonted monopoly of talk, 
 and the lads on anything like the verge of manhood 
 strode heavily about with a new sense of importance.
 
 14 THE DEAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 One asked another for news. But there was none 
 save rumours of mysterious marcliings and counter- 
 marcliings of troops, without any aim that we knew, 
 or the echo of some far-off foray of Prince Rupert's. 
 There was a dreamy stillness all around. Tib's 
 voice came up alone from the kitchen as she moved 
 about some Sabbath work of necessity, and carolled 
 rather iincertainly snatches of the psalm we had sung 
 at prayers in the morning. From the slope where 
 the house stood (which gave us that wide range over 
 the levels which I miss everywhere else), I saw the 
 cattle feeding far off in the marshy lands, too far 
 for any sound of their voices to reach me. The 
 harvest was over on the nearer slopes, so that there 
 was no music of the wind rustling through the corn. 
 The land lay half-slumbering in its autumn rest, like 
 Roger's faithful Lion in his Sunday afternoon sleep 
 on the terrace below. But, I knew not why, there 
 seemed to me a kind of expectancy in this calm. A 
 waiting and listening seemed to palpitate through 
 this stillness of the land such as pervaded Lion's 
 slumber as he couched, quivering at every sound, 
 vainly waiting for Roger's voice to summon him as 
 usual at this hour for a walk in the fields. 
 
 The feeling grew on me, till all this quiet 
 seemed not as the rest after a calm, but the calm 
 before a storm; and the silence excited in me as if
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 15 
 
 it Avero the breathless hush of thousands of beating 
 hearts. 
 
 Then I thought of Eachel Forster in her lonely 
 home. And it was a relief to rise at once and go to 
 her. Her door was open. She was sitting before 
 the old Bible. It was open, but she was not read- 
 ing. Her hands were clasped on her knees. There 
 was a stillness on her face as great as that over the 
 country. But in this calm there was something that 
 calmed me. 
 
 It seemed to me conscious and victorious, not 
 dreamlike, and liable at any moment to a terrible 
 waking. 
 
 1 told her the restlessness I had been feeling. 
 
 "Can we wonder, Mistress Olive?" said she. 
 "Do we not know what we might be giving them 
 up for?" 
 
 "This quietness of the world seems awful to me 
 to-day, Eachel," said I, "but in yon there is some- 
 thing that quiets me. You find peace in prayer, 
 Rachel," said I. "Is it not that?" 
 
 "I scarce know whether it is prayer. Mistress 
 Olive. It is nothing but going to the Kock that is 
 higher than I, and taking all that is precious to me 
 there, and staying there. It is just creeping to the 
 foot of the Cross, and keeping there."
 
 16 THE DRAYTONS AKD THE DAVliXANTS : 
 
 "You feel, tlien, as if sometliing terrible were 
 coming, Kacliel," I said. 
 
 "I hnow sometliing terrible must come," she said, 
 witb a tremulousness in her voice wbich was more 
 from enthusiasm than from fear. "To-day, or to- 
 morrow, or some day. For the Day of Vengeance 
 is come; and the year of His redeemed is at hand." 
 
 "Oh, Eachel," I said, "I cannot silently rest as 
 you do. I want words, entreaties for Roger, for my 
 father, for Job, and also for the good men who, if 
 the battle comes, must die on the wrong side, and 
 for the king; the king who, if he would but be true, 
 might set all right again." 
 
 And she knelt down and prayed in words brief 
 and burning, like the prayers in the Bible. 
 
 "You do not feel it too lonely here, Eachel?" I 
 said as I left. "Why not come up to us? Your 
 presence would be like a strong wall and fortress to 
 me." 
 
 "I am less lonesome here, Mistress Olive," said 
 she. "Job made so many little plans to spare me 
 trouble before he went. I see his hand everywhere. 
 There is the pile of wood close to the fire, and the 
 little pipe carrying the water to the very door. It 
 would seem like making light of his work not to use 
 it all. And besides," she added, "there's a few poor 
 tried folk who used to look to Job for a good
 
 A fciTUllY OF Till': ClVii. WAKS. 17 
 
 word aucl a good turn, and now some of tliem 
 look to me. And I could not fail them for tlie 
 world." 
 
 As I wished her good-bye, and walked home and 
 thought of her, a glorious new sense came on me of 
 the strength there is in waiting on God, of the pos- 
 sibility of the feeblest who lean on Him being not 
 only sustained, but becoming themselves strong to 
 sustain others. 
 
 When I went to see Eachel, the whole solid 
 world had seemed to me, in my anxiety for the pre- 
 cious lives I could do nothing to preserve, but as 
 some treacherous and quaking ground among our 
 marshes, ready to sink down and overwhelm us, be- 
 neath the weight of our passing footsteps. 
 
 As I returned, the world, though in itself as 
 transitory and uncertain as ever, was once more a 
 solid pathway to me, because underneath it stood the 
 foundation of an Almighty love, one word from whom 
 was stronger and more enduring than all the 
 worlds. 
 
 So we sang our evening psalm, and slept quietly 
 that night at Netherby, knowing nothing of the four 
 thousand pale and rigid corpses that lay stretched 
 on the blood-stained battle-slopes at Edgehill, while 
 Lord Essex encamped on the silent battle-field, and 
 the king's watchfires were kindled on the hill above. 
 
 The Draytons and the Davenants. II. ^
 
 18 THE DKAYIONS AND THE DAVENAKTS: 
 
 wliere lie began the clay, and no ground was gained 
 on either side; only the lives of four thousand men 
 lost. 
 
 If we may say "lost" of any life yielded up to 
 duty, and called back by God! 
 
 In the tongues of men, we speak of lives lost 
 on battle-fields; perhaps in the tongue of angels 
 they speak of lives lost in easy and luxurious 
 homes.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 19 
 
 XX. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 It was not till mid-day on Monday the 24th of 
 October 1042, that the first tidings reached us of 
 Keinton Fight, or, as some call it, the Battle of 
 Edgehill. Tidings indeed they scarcely were, only 
 rumours, as of far-oflf thunder faintly moaning through 
 the heat and stillness of a summer's noon, mysterious, 
 uncertain, scarcely louder than the hum of insects in 
 the sunshine, yet almost more awful than the crash 
 of the thunder-peal overhead. "Wars and rumours 
 of wars." Until that Monday I had no conception 
 of the significance of that word "rumours." I had 
 anticipated the sudden shocks, the ruthless desola- 
 tions of war; I had not thought Oi its terrible un- 
 certainties, its heart-sickeuing suspenses. 
 
 At noon, when the few liien left in the village 
 
 were all away in the fields at work, a travelling 
 
 tinker passed by who that moiaing about daybreak 
 
 had done some work at a farm where the swineherd 
 
 keeping his swine the evening before, on the edge 
 
 of a beech-forest some miles to the south, had heard 
 
 2*
 
 20 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 sounds far off iu the south-west, in the clkection of 
 Oxford, like the thunder of great guns and the sharp 
 cracking of musketry. 
 
 The tinker did what tinkering was needed in the 
 village, in the absence of Job the village smith, and 
 went on his way. Just after he left, Aunt Gretel 
 and I went to take broken meat and broth to two or 
 three sick and aged people, and we found all the 
 women gathered around the black and silent forge, 
 or rather around Rachel, while she sat quietly patch- 
 ing in the porch of the cottage; the latticed, narrow 
 cottage-windows letting in too little light for any 
 work that required to be neatly done. 
 
 An eager, excited crowd it was, the scanty mea- 
 sure of the text only furnishing wider margin for 
 the commentary. Rachel, meanwhile, sat quietly in 
 the middle, like a mother among a number of eager 
 chattering children. 
 
 As we reached the group, poor Margery, Dickon's 
 young wife, with her child in her arms, half 
 sobbed, — 
 
 "I wonder, Rachel, thee can bear to go on stitch, 
 stitch. Since the news came I have been all of a 
 tremble thinking of my goodman, who went off with 
 yourn. I couldn't bring my fingers togethef' to hold 
 a needle, do what I would." 
 
 "I don't know that I could well bear it without
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 21 
 
 the stitching, neighbour," said Rachel, softly. "When 
 trouble has come, we may well sit still and weep. 
 The Lord calls us to it. But in the waiting-times I 
 see nought for it but to brace up the heart and 
 work." 
 
 When we came, all turned to tell us of the dread 
 rumour. Aunt Gretel brought one or two cheering 
 stories of providence and deliverance out of the 
 eventful histories of her youth; and then we went 
 on our errands. Aunt Gretel thinking we should do 
 more to soothe and quiet these agitated hearts by 
 the example of steadily pursuing our task, than by 
 the wisest talking in the world. 
 
 "For," said she, "the true tidings have yet to 
 come; and they are like to be sad enough to 
 some. And how will they bear it, if all the 
 strength is wasted beforehand in vain and mournful 
 
 The result proved her right, for when our baskets 
 were emptied, and Aunt Gretel returned home, while 
 I went to see Rachel again, the village was stirring' 
 as usual with quiet sounds of labour in house after 
 house, and the excited group around the porch had 
 dispersed. Only poor Margery lingered, Rachel hav- 
 ing found her occupation in lighting the fire and 
 preparing supper, to save her returning to her lonely
 
 22 THE DRAYTONS AND THK DAVENANXS: 
 
 cottage; while the baby crowed and kicked on the 
 ground at Rachel's feet. 
 
 "But, Eachel," I said, "would it not have 
 quieted the neighbours to pray together, you with 
 them?" 
 
 "Maybe, sweet heart," she said. "But I did not 
 feel I could. If the news is true, the fight is over. 
 It's over hours since. The dead are lying cold, out 
 of the reach of our prayers. And the living are 
 saved and are giving thanks; and the wounded are 
 writhing in their anguish; and we know not who is 
 dead, or wounded, or whole. And when we look to 
 the earth to think, it comes over us like a rush of 
 dark waters when the dykes are pierced. So I can 
 but look to heaven and work. It's light and not 
 dark where He sitteth. And beyond the thunders 
 and the lightnings He is caring for us in the great 
 calm of the upper sky. Caring for us, sweet heart, 
 as the poor mother cares for this babe; not sitting on 
 a throne and smiling like the king in the picture, 
 with both hands full of his sceptre and his bauble; 
 but with both hands free, to help and to uphold. So 
 I try to do the bit of work He sets me, and to look 
 up to Him and feel, ' There i« no fear but that Thou 
 wilt do the work Thou hast set Thyself; and that is, 
 to care for us all.' And I told the neighbours they 
 had best try the same."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 23 
 
 The words were scarcely out of lier lips, when 
 a horseman came clattering clown the village and 
 stopped at Job's well-known forge. 
 
 "What news?" asked a score of voices one after 
 another, as the women crowded round him. 
 
 "Dismal news enough for some, and glorious for 
 others," he sjvd. "The king's army and Lord Es- 
 sex's met yesterday. Lord Essex below in the Vale 
 of the Red Plorse, and the king on Edgchill above. 
 Prince Rupert charged down on the Parliament 
 horse under Commissary-General Ramsay, broke 
 them in a trice, and pursued them to Keinton, killing 
 and plundering. 1 heard it from one of the routed 
 horsemen who escaped. Everything is lost, he said, 
 for Lord Essex; and I liasten to carry the news to 
 one who loves the king." 
 
 Hastily draining Rachel's can of home-brewed 
 ale, he was off in a minute, and oixt of sight. 
 
 All through the afternoon confused and contra- 
 dictory news continued to drop in from one and an- 
 other. But it was not till the next day (Tuesday) 
 that we could collect anything like a true ac- 
 count of the battle, — how for hours, all through 
 the noontide of that autumn Sunday, the two 
 armies had couched, like two terrible beasts of 
 prey watching each other; the king on the height, 
 and Essex in the plain — as if loath to break with
 
 24 THE DRAYTONS AHD THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 tlie murderous roar of cannon our England's two 
 centurie^Prpeace. 
 
 Prayers, no doubt, there were, many and deep, 
 breaking tbat silence, to the ear of God; but few, 
 perhaps, better than that of gallant Sir Jacob Ashley, 
 one of the king's major-generals: "Lord, Thou 
 knowest I must be busy this day; if I forget Thee, 
 do not Thou forget me." 
 
 Who began the fight at last, we could not well 
 make out. The most jiart said Lord Essex, directing 
 a sally up the hill, which Prince Eupert answered 
 by dashing down, like a torrent, from the royal van- 
 tage-ground to the plain, on the left wing of the 
 Parliament army. The men fell or fled on all sides 
 before his furious charge; and he pursued them to 
 the village of Keinton, where Lord Essex had en- 
 camped the day before. Deeming the day won, his 
 men gave themselves up to plundering the baggage, 
 and slaughtering the waggoners and unarmed la- 
 bourers. But meantime Sir William Balfour, on the 
 right wing, charged the king's left, broke it, seized 
 and spiked many of the king's guns, took the royal 
 standard after a struggle which left sixty brave men 
 dead in sixty yards aroiTud it, and drove nearly the 
 whole royal army to their morning's j)Osition up the 
 hill. There they rallied. Prince Eupert returned, 
 laden with his blood-stained plunder, to find the king's
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL, AVAKS. 25 
 
 army in confusion. But darkness was setting in; it 
 is said the Parliament gunpowder began-t!c?vf^ili so 
 no further pursuit was made, and on Sunday night 
 again both armies encamped on the ground where 
 they had begun the battle. The king's camp-fires 
 blazed on the hill, and the Parliament's in the Vale 
 of the Eed Horse. But between them lay four thou- 
 sand dead Englishmen, — that Sabbath morning full 
 of life and courage, now lying stiff and helpless on 
 the quiet slopes where they had fallen in the tumult 
 of the mortal conflict. 
 
 It is said, most of those who fell on the king's 
 side fell standing firm, and of ours running away; 
 which means, I suppose, that they lost their bravest, 
 and we our cowards. 
 
 I found my father, and many of the soldiers I 
 know, always loath to speak much of the battle-field 
 after a battle. My father and Roger would discuss 
 by the hour the handling of troops and the strategy 
 of the commanders, and all which related to war 
 as an art or a science, and regarded the troops as 
 pieces on a board. But of the after-misery, when 
 the terrible excitement and the skilful manoeuvres of 
 the day were over, and the troops and regiments had 
 again become only men — wounded, weary, dead — 
 I never heard them speak save in few and broken 
 words.
 
 26 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 The difference of language served a little to veil 
 the common humanity in the German wars , my 
 father said; but to hear the fallen entreating fur 
 quarter, or the dying calling on God and on dear 
 familiar names , or the wounded praying for help 
 which, in the rush of the battle, could not be given, 
 in the old mother- tongue, Was enough, he said, to 
 take all the pomp and glory out of war, and to lea^e 
 it nothing but its agony and its horror. 
 
 Both sides claimed the victory, — Lord Essex 
 by right of encamping on the field, and the king 
 (some said) by the weight of Prince Eupert's plun- 
 der. 
 
 However that might be, uefther side pursued the 
 advantage they both boasted to have gained. 
 
 The king, who was between the Parliament army 
 and London, to the great anxiety of the city, did not 
 advance, but retired on Oxford, — the Parliament 
 garrison of Banbury, however, surrendering to him 
 without a struggle. 
 
 Lord Essex made no pursuit, but, withdrawing 
 to London, left the country open to Prince Rupert's 
 foragers. 
 
 But victory or defeat were scarcely the chief ques- 
 tions to us women that day at Netherby. 
 
 Margery's anxieties were the first relieved. Her 
 husband Dickon being in the king's army, sent her an
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 27 
 
 orauge scarf taken from a Parliament horseman at 
 Keinton, in token of his safety. 
 
 Then, on Wednesday, poor Tim, Gammer Grindle's 
 half-witted grandson, who would, in spite of all that 
 could be said, follow lloger to the war, came limping 
 into the village, emaciated and footsore, with his 
 arm bound up in a sling. He stopped at Rachel 
 Forster s door, and began stammering a confused ac- 
 count of Master Roger and Job lying wounded at 
 Keinton, and the prince's men murdering some of the 
 wounded, and carrying off Roger and Job, pinioned, 
 in a cart to gaol, and Tim's trying to follow on foot, 
 and having his arm broken by a musket-shot, and his 
 leg wounded , and so , being left behind , having 
 limped home to tell Mistress Olive. 
 
 But where the gaol was, or how severe Roger's 
 wound was, or Job's, could in no way be extracted 
 from poor Tim's confused brain and tongue. "Poor 
 Tim!" he said, apologising with broken words, as a 
 faithful dog might with wistful looks , for having 
 escaped without his master, "Poor Tim tried hard to 
 follow Master Roger — tried hard! Master Roger 
 knows Tim did not wish to leave him ; Master Roger 
 knows. Master Roger said, 'Tim, you've done all 
 jox\ could. Go home. And tell them Master Roger's 
 all right.'" When first he saw Rachel, he said.
 
 28 THE DRAYTOKS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "Poor Job said, 'Take care!'" And tlien clench- 
 ing Ms hand, with a smile "Poor Tim took care!" 
 But he never repeated or explained it. It was quite 
 useless to question him. That one purpose of obey- 
 ing Roger possessed the whole of his poor brain. The 
 poor creature was faint from pain, and weariness, and 
 loss of blood. Rachel would have made him a bed 
 in the cottage, and not one of vis at Netherby but 
 would have counted it an honour to have nursed him 
 for his love to Roger; but he shook his head: Master 
 Roger said, "Tim, you've done all you could. Go 
 home." And nothing would satisfy him but to go on 
 to the hovel by the Mere, where his grandmother 
 lived. 
 
 Gammer Grindle was a poor, wizened, old wo- 
 man, soured by much trouble and by the constant 
 fretting of a sharp temper against poverty and wrong, 
 until few in the village liked to venture near her. 
 Indeed, there were dark suspicions afloat about her. 
 Many a labouring-man would have gone a mile round 
 rather than pass her door after dusk, and many a 
 yeoman farmer and goodwife who had lost an unusual 
 number of sheep or poultry would propitiate her by 
 the present of a lamb or a fat pullet. And , in 
 general, in the neighbourhood she was spoken of with 
 a reverent terror much akin to that of the man who, 
 after hastily using the name of the devil, crossed him-
 
 A SIOKY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 29 
 
 solf, and said, "May he pardon me for taking Lis 
 holy name in vain." 
 
 But Eoger and I happened to have come across 
 ]ier on another and a very different side. In our 
 llshing expeditions on the Mere, her grandson Tim 
 had often followed us with the fish-hasket or tackle; 
 and the rare contrast of Roger's kindly tones and 
 words with the jeerings of the rough boys in the 
 village, had won him in Tim's heart an affection in- 
 tense, absorbing, disinterested, and entirely free from 
 ; dcMuand of return or hope of reward; more like that 
 : of a faithful dog than of a human being with purposes 
 and interests of his own. 
 
 This had given us access to his grandmother's 
 hovel, and many a time she had saved me from the 
 consequences of Aunt Dorothy's just wrath by kindling 
 up her j)oor embers of fire to dry my soaked shoes, 
 and cleaning the mud from my clothes. Simple easy 
 (Services, but such as made it altogether impossible 
 for Roger and me to regard the poor, kind, shrivelled 
 Lands that had rendered them as having signed a 
 compact with Satan. Besides, did we not see how 
 good she was, with all her scoldings, to Tim, and 
 know from broken words which had dropped now and 
 then how she had loved her only daughter , the 
 mother of Cicely and Tim, and how sore her heart 
 was for the poor, lost girl, and what a power of
 
 30 THE DRAYTONS AND TUE DAVENANTS: 
 
 wronged and disappointed love lay seething and fer- 
 menting beneatli the sour sharp words she spoke? 
 
 Roger and I knew that Gammer Grindle was no 
 outlaw from the pale of humanity by seeing it; and j 
 Rachel Forster knew it, I believe by seeing Him at j 
 whose feet so many outcasts from human sym- 
 pathy found a welcome. And so it happened, that 
 of all the village no one but Rachel, Roger, and I J 
 sought access, or would have had it, to Gammer 
 Grindle's hovel, so that Rachel that day accompanied 
 Tim home, and was permitted to share his grand- 
 mother's watch that night. 
 
 For Tim's exhaustion soon changed to delirious 
 fever, as his wound began to be inflamed, and it 
 was as much as both the women could do to keep 
 him from rushing out of the hovel to "follow Master 
 Roger." 
 
 All the time, they noticed he kept the hand of 
 his unwounded arm firmly clenched over something. 
 But no coaxing or commands, even from his grand- 
 mother's voice, which be was so used to obey, would 
 induce him to unclasp his hand or let it go. 
 
 All that night and the next day the two women 
 watched by the poor lad, bathing his head, and try- 
 ing vainly to keep him still. But towards evening 
 his strength began to fail, and it was plain that the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 31 
 
 lever, having done its Avork, was relinquishing its 
 hold to the cold grasp of Another stronger than it. 
 
 The poor lad's delirious entreaties ceased, and he 
 lay so still, that Rachel could hear the cold ripples 
 of the Mere outside plashing softly among the rushes, 
 stirred by the night wind; and they sounded to her 
 like the slow waters of the river of Death. 
 
 Only now and then he said, in a low voice, like 
 a child crooning to itself, "Poor Tim, Master Roger 
 knows. Master Roger said, you have done all you 
 could. Go home." 
 
 Once also his eye brightened, and he said, "Cicely, 
 sister Cicely! Tell her to come soon — soon. I 
 have watched for her so long!" 
 
 Rachel tried to speak to him about Jesus, the 
 loving Master of us all; he did not object, biit whether 
 he understood or not, she could not tell. He did not 
 alter the words which had been so engraven on his 
 poor faithful heart. Only they grew fainter and 
 fainter, and fewer and more broken, until, with one 
 sigh, "Master — home," the poor feeble spirit de- 
 parted, and the poor feeble body was at rest. 
 
 But Rachel said it seemed to her as if the blessed 
 Lord would most surely not fail to understand the 
 poor lad who could not understand about Him, yet 
 had served so faithfully the best he knew. And she 
 almost thought she heard a voice from heaven say-
 
 32 THE DRAYXONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 ing, "Poor Tim! the Master knows. You Lave done 
 tlie best you could. Come home!" 
 
 It was not until the poor lad was dead that they 
 found what he had been so tightly clasping in his 
 hand. 
 
 It was a fragment of paper containing a few 
 words written by Job Forster, of which Tim had 
 indeed " taken care," as the clasp of the lifeless hand 
 proved too well. 
 
 The words were, — 
 
 "Eachel, be of good cheer, as I am. I am hurt 
 on the shoulder, but not so bad. They are taking 
 me with Master Eoger to Oxford gaol. His wound 
 is in the side, painful at first, but Dr. Antony got 
 the ball out , and says he will do well. Thee must | 
 not fret, nor try to come to us. It would hurt thee 
 and do us no good. The Lord careth." 
 
 Rachel read this letter, with every word made :^ 
 emphatic, by her certainty that Job would make as 1 
 light as possible of any trouble, by her knowledge J 
 that his pen was not that of a ready writer, and by 
 her sense of what she would have done herself in 
 siinilar circumstances. 
 
 "Rachel!" — the word, she knew, had taken 
 him a minute or two to spell out, and it meant 
 a whole volume of esteem and love; and by the
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 33 
 
 same measure, "hurt" meant "disabled;" and "not 
 so bad," simply not in immediate peril of life; and 
 "thee must not come," to her heart meant "come if 
 thou canst, though I dare not bid thee." 
 
 It was not Eachel's way to let trouble make her 
 helpless, or even prevent her being helpful where 
 she was needed. God, she was sure, had not meant 
 it for that. She lived at the door of the House of 
 the Lord, and therefore, at this sudden alarm, she 
 did not need a long pilgrimage by an untrodden 
 path to reach the sanctuary. A moment to lay down 
 the burden and enter the open door, and lift up the 
 heart there within; and then to the duty in hand. 
 She remained, therefore, with Gammer Grindle until 
 they had laid the poor faithful lad in his shroud; 
 then she gave all needful orders for the burial, so 
 that it was not till dusk she was seated in her own 
 cottage, with leisure to plan how she should carry 
 out what, from the moment she had first glanced 
 at her husband's letter, she had determined to do. 
 
 Half an hour sufficed her for thinking, or 
 "taking counsel," as she called it; half an hour more 
 for making preparations and coming across to us at 
 Netherby, with her mind made up and all her ar- 
 rangements settled. 
 
 Arrived in the Hall, she handed Job's letter to 
 Aunt Dorothy. 
 
 The DraytoHS and the Davenants. II. «>
 
 34 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "What can be done?" said Aunt Dorotliy. "How 
 can it be that we liave not beard from my brother 
 or Dr. Antony? The king's forces must be between 
 us and Oxford, and the letters must have been 
 seized. But never fear, Eachel," she added, in a 
 consoling tone. "At first they talked of treating all 
 the Parliament prisoners as traitors; but that will 
 never be. A ransom or an exchange is certain. 
 Stay here to-night; it will be less lonely for you. 
 We can take counsel together; and to-morrow we 
 will think what to do." 
 
 "I have been thinking, Mistress Dorothy; and I 
 have taken counsel. I am going at daybreak to- 
 morrow to Oxford; and I came to ask if I could 
 do aught for you, or take any message to Master 
 Roger." 
 
 "How?" said Aunt Dorothy. "And who will 
 go with you? Who will venture within the grasp 
 of those plunderers?" 
 
 "I have not asked any one. Mistress Dorothy. I 
 am going alone on our own old farra-horse." 
 
 "FoM travel scores of miles alone, and into the 
 midst of the kiug's army, Rachel!" said Aunt 
 Dorothy. 
 
 "I have taken counsel, Mistress Dorothy," said 
 Rachel calmly, and , looking up , Aunt Dorothy met
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 35 
 
 that in Racliel's quiet eyes wliicli slie understood, 
 and she made no further remonstrance. 
 
 "We will write letters to Roger," she said, after 
 a pause. 
 
 In a short time they were ready, with one from 
 me to Lettice Davenant. 
 
 Neither my aunts nor I slept much that night. 
 We were revolving various plans for helping Rachel, 
 each unknown to the other. 
 
 I had thought of a letter to a friend of my father's 
 who lived half-way between us and Oxford, and 
 rising softly in the night, without telling any one, I 
 wrote it. For I had removed to Roger's chamber 
 while he was away, it seemed to bring me nearer 
 to him. 
 
 Then, before daybreak, feeling sure Rachel would 
 be watching for the first streaks of light, I crept out 
 of our house to hers. 
 
 She was dressed, and was quietly packing up 
 the great Bible which lay always on the table, and 
 laying it in the cupboard. 
 
 "Happy Rachel!" I said, kissing her; "to be old 
 enough to dare to go." 
 
 "There is always some work, sweet heart," said 
 she, "for every season, not to be done before or 
 after. That is why we need never be afraid of 
 growing old." 
 
 3*
 
 36 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 I gave her my letter. She took it gratefully; 
 but she said — 
 
 "Too fine folks for a plain body like me, Mis- 
 tress Olive. Grod bless you for the thought. But 
 in one village I must pass there is a humble godly 
 man who has oft tarried with us for a night, and has 
 expounded the word to us, and no doubt he will 
 give me a token to another. And if not, the seven 
 thousand are always known to the Lord. The 
 prophet Elijah, indeed, did not know, but after he 
 was told about it once for all, none of us ought ever 
 to say again, 'I only am left alone.'" 
 
 "But how will you manage when you get to 
 Oxford?" I said. 
 
 "God forbid I should presume to say, sweet 
 heart," said she. "Oxford is many steps off. And 
 the Lord has only shown me the next step. Job is 
 wounded and in prison and wants me, and will my 
 God, and his, fail to show me how to get to 
 him?" 
 
 As she spoke these last words, the force of re- 
 pressed passion, and of faith contending in them, 
 gave her voice an unwonted depth, which made it 
 sound to me like another voice answering her. 
 
 At that moment Aunt Gretel arrived, laden with 
 a small basket containing spiced cordials and pre- 
 served meats for Rachel's journey.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL, WARS. 37 
 
 And not a quarter of an hour afterwards, Aunt 
 Dorothy, on horseback, bent on protecting Rachel 
 through some portion of her way. 
 
 And then Margery and the babe, who had come 
 at Rachel's request. 
 
 Before mounting her horse, Rachel said, — 
 
 "You will have thought of being at poor Tim's 
 burying, Mistress Olive?" 
 
 We promised all to be there. 
 
 And Rachel from the mounting-steps climbed up 
 on the patient old horse, and was gone, only turning 
 back once to smile at us as we watched her. 
 
 She was not a woman for after-thoughts, or last 
 lingering words. She had always said what she 
 wanted before the last. 
 
 She had left us the heavy key of the cottage- 
 door, that we might give away the little stores which 
 she had divided the night before into various por- 
 tions for her poor neighbours. She had intended 
 committing them to Margery, but as we were there 
 first, we undertook the charge. How simply and 
 how unheralded events come which hallow our com- 
 mon tables and chambers with the tender solemnity 
 as of places of worship or of burial. The sound of 
 Rachel's horse-hoofs was scarcely out of hearing 
 when the empty cottage had become to us as a 
 sacred place. The little packets her neat hands had
 
 38 THE DRAYT02SS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 arranged so thouglitfully were no common loaves, 
 or meat, but sacred relics hallowed by her lovmg 
 touch. And it was hard to look at the firewood 
 Job had piled by the fire for her, and the little 
 stone channel he had made to bring the water near 
 the door, without tears.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL AVARS. o9 
 
 XXI. 
 
 LETTICE DAVENANT's DIARY. 
 
 "Oxford, November 1, 1642. — Victoria! The 
 first step is gained; the first lesson given, though at 
 some cost of noble lives to us and to the king. Lord 
 Essex is fain to retreat to London to console the 
 afi'righted citizens, leaving the whole countty open 
 to the king. Yet my father saith privately to us, 
 this victory of Edgehill might have been far more 
 complete had it not been for Prince Rupert's rash- 
 ness. Indeed, after the fight there had well-nigh 
 been a duel in the king's presence between the 
 prince and a gentleman who expressed his mind 
 pretty freely on the matter. The prince, after 
 pursuing the rebels to Keinton, lingered there, 
 plundering the baggage, and returned with his 
 horses laden with the spoils to find the royal army 
 not in such order as it might have been had his 
 troops kept with it. 'We can give a good account 
 of the enemy's horse, your Majesty,' he said. 'Yes,' 
 said this gentleman standing by, 'and of their carts 
 too.' For which jest the haughty hot-blooded prince
 
 40 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 would have had severe revenge, had not the king 
 with much ado brought them to an accommodation. 
 
 ^ Note. — The young Princes Charles and James, 
 of but ten or twelve years old, had a narrow escape. 
 Their governor, Dr. Harvey, a learned man, was 
 sitting quietly with them on the grass reading his 
 book, and never perceived anything was amiss until 
 the biillets came whizzing round him. I wonder 
 royal persons should be trusted to the care of people 
 whose wits are always at the ends of the earth, like 
 philosophers. Who knows how different things 
 might have been in the world if Dr. Harvey and 
 the young princes had sat there a few minutes 
 longer ! 
 
 "However, the best fruits of victory are begin- 
 ning to appear. Gentlemen, whose loyalty had been 
 somewhat wavering, are riding in from all quarters, 
 well accoutred, abundantly attended, finely mounted, 
 to offer their services to His Majesty. 
 
 "This grave and stately old city is gorgeous with 
 warlike array, and echoing with warlike music. 
 
 "My father, mother, and I are lodged in Lin- 
 coln College. A distant cousin of ours , Sir William 
 Davenant, who hath writ many plays and farces, 
 and now fights in the army, being of this col- 
 lege, and also others of our kindred from the 
 north country. I feel quite at home in the rooms
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 41 
 
 with tlieir thick walls, and high narrow arched win- 
 dows like those in the turret-chamber at the Hall, 
 more at home than the old quadrangles and walls 
 themselves can be with all this clamour and trumpet- 
 ing to arms. 
 
 "Not that there is much to be seen in the great 
 inner court on which my chamber-window looks. 
 An ancient vine climbs up on one side of the walls, 
 encircling the entrance arch, and its leaves, brown 
 and crimson with the autumn, stirred with the 
 breeze, are making a pleasant quiet country music 
 as I write. This vine is held in high honour in 
 the college, having illustrated the text of the ser- 
 mon, 'Look on this vine,' which inspired good 
 Bishop de Rotheram, more than two hundred years 
 since, to become the second founder of the college. 
 
 "Through this entrance-arch I look beyond its 
 shadow to the sunny street, crossed now and then 
 by the flash of arms, and gay Cavaliers' mantles, 
 or the prancings of a troop of horse. That is all 
 the glimpse I have of the outer world. But I think 
 my mother were content to live in such a place for 
 ever. Every day she resorts more than once to a 
 quiet corner of the new chapel to pay her orisons, 
 taking delight in the stillness, and in the brilliant 
 colours of the painted windows Bishop Williams 
 (once the antagonist of Archbishop Laud, and now
 
 42 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 with liim in tlie Tower) had brought but a few years 
 since from Italy. 
 
 "Outside this chapel there is a garden, where 
 we walk, and discourse of the prospects of the king- 
 dom, and of those friends at Netherby from whom 
 we are now so sadly parted. 
 
 "For Eoger and Mr. Drayton are in the rebel 
 army — alas! there is no longer any doubt of it 
 — and any day their hands and those of my seven 
 brothers, all in the king's army, may be against each 
 other. 
 
 '■'' Novemher Stk — The king and the army are 
 away at Reading, with my father and my brothers; 
 and the city is quiet enough without them. 
 
 "Sir Launcelot is now on service about the 
 castle. I would he were on the field, and one of 
 my brothers here. However, I am not like to see 
 much of him at present. He will scarce venture to 
 come after what I had to say to him this morning. 
 
 "He came in laughing, saying he had just seen 
 an encounter between an old rebel woman at the 
 gate and four of Prince Rupert's plunderers. 'She 
 was contending with them for the possession of a 
 sober Puritanical-looking old horse,' said he. 'They 
 claimed it for the king's service. She said "that 
 might be, but in that case she chose to give it up
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 43 
 
 herself unto the care of one of His Majesty's court, 
 to whom she had a letter." ' 
 
 '"Did you not give her a helping word?' said I. 
 
 "'I am scarcely such a knight-errant as that, 
 Mistress Lettice,' said he; 'I should have enough to 
 do, in good sooth. Moreover, the godly generally 
 make good fight for their carnal goods, and in this 
 instance the woman seemed as likely as not to have 
 the best of the debate, to say nothing of her being 
 wrinkled and toothless.' 
 
 "That made me flash up, as speaking lightly of 
 aged women always does, 'Poor chivalry,' said I, 
 'which has not recollection enough of a mother to 
 lend a helping hand to the old and wrinkled. We 
 shall be wrinkled and toothless in a few years, sir, 
 and our imagination is not so weak but that we can 
 fore-date a little while, and transfer all such heart- 
 less jests to ourselves. I have been used to higher 
 chivalry than that among the Puritans.' 
 
 "He laughed, and made a pretty pathetic depre- 
 cation. His mother had died (quoth he) when he 
 was too young to remember. Some little excuse, 
 perchance. However, Eoger Drayton's mother also 
 died when he was in infancy. But be that as it 
 might, I was in no mood to listen. And as we were 
 speaking, a serving-man came to tell me a poor
 
 44 THE DRA.YTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 woman from Netherby was in the ante-room craving 
 to see me or my mother. 
 
 "It was Eachel Torster. 
 
 "Her neat Puritan dress, and her plain close 
 hood (so dainty, I think, round her pale worn-looking 
 face), were rather ruffled, and although her eyes had 
 the wonted quiet in them (only a little loftier than 
 usual), she was trembling, and willingly took the 
 chair I offered her. 
 
 "'You did not find it easy coming through the 
 royal lines,' I said. 
 
 "'Nothing but a few rude jests at the gate. Mis- 
 tress Lettice,' said she; 'but I am not used to them, 
 or to going about the world alone. But I have been 
 taken good care of. And I am here^ she added fer- 
 vently; 'which is all I asked.' 
 
 "'Did they try to take your horse from you?' I 
 said. 
 
 "'They took him,' she said. 'But that matters 
 little. He was a faithful beast, and I am feared 
 how they may use him. But the beasts have only 
 now^ neither fore nor after, which saves them much.' 
 Then without more words she gave me a letter from 
 Olive. 
 
 "From this I found that Roger is a prisoner in 
 the castle here, with Job Forster.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 45 
 
 "I went into the other chamber, and asked Sir 
 Launcelot had he known of this. 
 
 "'I learned it a day or two since,' he replied 
 hesitating, but I did not tell you or Lady Lucy, 
 because you are so pitiful, I feared to pain you 
 uselessly.' 
 
 '" We might have judged whether it was uselessly 
 or not. Sir Launcelot,' said L 
 
 "'Can I do anything for you?' he asked, in 
 confusion. 
 
 "'Nothing,' said I. 'You might have helped an 
 aged woman, a friend of mine, whom you found in 
 difficulties at the gate this morning. But now, ex- 
 cuse me, I have no time to spare — I must go to 
 my mother.' And I withdrew to the inner room, to 
 bring my mother out at once to see what could be 
 done; leaving him to retire through the ante-room, 
 where Rachel Forster sat. 
 
 "I trow he will not be in a hurry to visit us again. 
 
 "My mother and Rachel had always been friends. 
 They both live a good deal at the height where the 
 party-colours blend in the one sunlight; and they 
 neither of them ever speak half as much as they feel 
 about religion. 
 
 "There was not much to say, therefore, when 
 my mother understood her errand. My mother's word 
 had weight, and in a few hours she had procured a
 
 ■16 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAYENANTS : 
 
 permit for Eachel to see her husbaud, provided the 
 interview was in her presence. 
 
 "It was a noisome place, she said — many per- 
 sons crowded together like cattle in dungeons, with 
 scant light or an*, and none to wait on them but 
 each other. Job was on some straw in a corner, 
 looking sorely altered — his strong limbs limp and 
 emaciated, and his eye languid. But it was wonder- 
 ful how his face lighted up when he saw Eachel. 
 
 '"I thought thee would* come,' said he, 'though 
 I bid thee not. I knew thee had learned how "all 
 things are possible.'" 
 
 " My mother's intercessions procured for them 
 the great favour of a cell, which, though narrow, 
 low, damp, and underground, they were to have to 
 themselves. And before she left, Rachel's neat 
 hands had made the straw and matting look like a 
 proper sick-bed, while her presence had lighted the 
 cell into a home. 
 
 "Then my mother went to see Roger Drayton. 
 His wound was not so severe as Job's, and his 
 lodging was better, though wretched enough. Great 
 complaints Avere made about the prisons. But, I 
 fear, all war-prisons, suddenly and not very tenderly 
 arranged, are hard enough. 
 
 "'Have you seen Job Forster?' was his first 
 question after greeting her.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WAKS. 47 
 
 "She told him what had been done. 
 
 "'I begged hard to be allowed to share his pri- 
 son. But they would not let me,' said Roger. 
 
 "Eoger, though far less suffering, looked less 
 tranquil than Job, my mother said. He did not 
 ask for me until he had read Olive's letter, and then 
 he said abruptly, — 
 
 "'Olive says she has written to Mistress Lettice.' 
 And his face flushed deeply as he added, 'Olive is 
 but a child in such things. Lady Lucy, and cannot 
 know the hard laws of war. You will not be offended 
 if she pleads, fancying you could do anything for 
 us. You must not let anything she says trouble 
 you, you are so kind. For I know nothing can be 
 done.' 
 
 "'Only one thing troubles me,' my mother said, 
 evasively, 'I would give much if that could be 
 changed.' 
 
 "She did not think it generous to say more, but 
 he understood, and answered, — 
 
 "'7%«^ can not be changed, unless all could be 
 changed. It makes me restless enough to be shut 
 up here. Lady Lucy, but it does not make me 
 doubt.^ 
 
 "Those Dray tons are like rocks — as firm, and 
 almost as hard. No, not hard. Nothing they ought 
 not to be, if only they were on the right side!
 
 48 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "And Roger called Olive a cliild. I wonder, 
 then, what he thinks me, who am two years younger! 
 
 "However, my mother thinks something can be 
 done for Roger. Exchanges can be made. Little 
 comfort in that. He is less dangerous to himself 
 and every one else where he is, than in the field 
 again. Yet my mother says the air and food of the 
 prison are none of the most wholesome. And, of 
 course, Olive wants to have him free. These are 
 most perplexing times. One cannot even tell what 
 to wish. 
 
 "I would send him a message when my mother 
 goes again, but that he scarcely even asked for me; 
 only defended himself against joining in Olive's 
 pleadings for himself. So proud! I will send hira 
 no message, not a word. Nothing but a few sweet 
 autumn violets from the college garden; because the 
 air of the prison is so bad. 
 
 '''' Fehruarrj 10. — Job Forster all but sank. He 
 must have died if my mother had not pleaded hard 
 and got permission at last for him to be taken home 
 to Netherby in one of our Hall waggons. She thought 
 it would scarce be more than to die. But to-day we 
 have had a letter from Rachel, saying, the very 
 sight of the forge and smell of the fields seemed to 
 work on him like a heavenly cordial, and she doubts 
 not he will rally. Dr. Antony hath been to see him,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 49 
 
 and Olive, and Mistress Gretel, and Mrs. Dorothy, 
 and brought him meats and strong waters, and read 
 him sermons, saith she, and they say he could not 
 he doing better. But, she adds, she hopes Lady 
 Lucy will not think it thankless that he should use. 
 his liberty to fight for the Parliament, as no condi- 
 tion was made on his return; and he thinks the 
 Covenant under which he fights must stand good, 
 and dares not break it. So my sweet mother hath 
 on her conscience the guilt of tenderly nourishing a 
 viper to sting what she loveth best! 
 
 "But Roger Drayton is to be exchanged for one 
 of our Cavaliers, and is to leave Oxford to-morrow. 
 All these weeks he hath been here, and never a 
 word between us, except some cold thanks for those 
 violets. So proud is he ! And it was not for me to 
 begin. 
 
 '"'' February 11. — Roger Drayton had the grace 
 to pay us his devoirs before he left at Lincoln Col- 
 lege. But he would scarce sit down. I trow he 
 was afraid of being vanquished if he ventured into 
 debate concerning his bad cause. He did not say 
 anything to me. If he had, I felt tempted to say 
 something angry. But he did not begin-, and why 
 should I? Until at last, as he was leaving, he 
 said, — 
 
 "'Mistress Lettice, I am going to join Colonel 
 
 The Drmftons and the Bavenrmts. II. 4
 
 50 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Cromwell at Cambridge. But I may see Olive by 
 the way. May I say a word to her from you? 
 Sometimes a message is better than a letter.' 
 
 "I could not think of anything to say. It took 
 me so by surprise after his silence. For it was just 
 like his old tone by the Mere, or in the woods, or 
 on the terraces at Netherby, and at the Hall. And 
 it so brought poor old Netherby back to me, and all 
 the old happy days, that I was afraid my voice 
 would tremble if I spoke. I could only think of 
 Mistress Dorothy's sermons; things come into one's 
 head so strangely. So, after a little while, I said 
 very abruptly, 'I sent Olive dear love — and to 
 tell Mistress Dorothy I had read her sermons.' 
 
 "But his voice trembled a little as he wished us 
 good-bye-, I certainly think it did. And he was not 
 out of the door when I thought of ten thousand 
 messages to send to Olive. But I could not go after 
 him to say them. I could only go to the window 
 and watch him through the court. I was almost 
 sorry I did. For he looked up and saw me, and 
 seemed half inclined to turn back. But, instead, he 
 made a strange little reverence, as if he did not 
 quite know whether to seem to see me or not. I 
 wonder if he also had thought of a few things he 
 would have liked to have said! He was always
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 51 
 
 rather slow in speech; I mean, his words always 
 meant about ten times as much as any other man's. 
 
 "And so he strode across the court and under 
 the shadow of the archway into the sunny street 
 outside. To join Colonel Cromwell. Colonel, in- 
 deed! By whose commission? Roger might at least 
 have spared us that. If it had been Mr. Hampden 
 even, or Lord Essex, it would not have been so 
 bad. But this fanatic brewer! 
 
 "However, I am glad I said nothing angry. 
 One never knows in these days where or when the 
 next word may be spoken. And then, alack! this 
 Mr. Cromwell they say, is sure to be just Avhere the 
 fighting is. 
 
 "He did not look amiss in that plain Puritan 
 armour. The cap-a-pie armour of the 'Ironsides,' as 
 some begin to call them. It seems to me more 
 martial and more manly than the gay trappings of 
 our Cavaliers. Grallant decorations are well enough 
 for a dance or a masque; but in real warfare I 
 Ithink the plainest vesture looks the noblest. At 
 Edgehill His Majesty must have looked most stately 
 in his suit of plain black velvet, with no ornament 
 but the George. 
 
 ''March 1643. - There is a Dr. Thomas Fuller 
 lodging here at present, who is a great solace to my 
 
 (mother, and also to me, being a kind of cousin of
 
 52 THE DEAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 ours, througli his maternal uncle, Dr. Davenant, 
 bishop of Salisbury. 
 
 "He is tall and athletic, with pleasant blue eyes, 
 full of mirth, and withal of kindness, of a ruddy 
 complexion, with fair wavy locks. He hath wit 
 enough for a j)lay-wright, and piety enough — I had 
 almost said for a Puritan — I should rather say for 
 an archbishop. 
 
 "He was in London a few weeks since, -and 
 preached a sermon to incline the rebels to peace, 
 which is all his desire. But they did not relish it, 
 and would have him sign one of their unmannerly 
 Covenants; which not being able to do, he has fled 
 hither. Yet am 1 not sure that he is more at home 
 among our rollicking Cavaliers. 
 
 "I would I could remember half the wise and 
 witty things he saith. I like his wit, because it 
 often cuts both ways — against Puritan and Cavalier; 
 and more especially at present against the younger 
 sort of the latter, whose reckless manners suit him ill. 
 The poor Puritans are so hit on all sides with the 
 shafts of ridicule, that in fairness I like to see some 
 of the darts flying the other way, especially against 
 such as assume to themselves the monopoly of wit. ■ 
 
 "'Harmless mirth,' said Dr. Fuller the other day, 
 'is the best cordial against the consumption of the 
 spirits; but jest not with the two-edged sword of
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 53 
 
 God's word. Will nothing please thee to wash thy 
 hands in but the font? or to drink healths in but 
 the church-chalice?' 
 
 "He is very busy, and is abstemious in eating 
 and drinking, and is an early riser. Sir Launcelot, 
 liking not, I ween, to feel the jest so against him- 
 self, calls him a Puritan in disguise; but Harry and 
 he are good friends, and to my mother he behaveth 
 ever with a gentle deference, as all men, indeed, are 
 wont to do. With her his wit seems to change its 
 nature from fire to sunshine. So tenderly doth he 
 seek to brighten her pensive and somewhat self- 
 reproachful spirit into peace and praise. She on her 
 part hath her sweet returns of sympathy for him, 
 drawing him forth to discourse of his young wife 
 lately dead, and his motherless infant boy. 
 
 "Religion with my mother is a life of affections, 
 not merely a code of rules; and, I suppose, like all 
 affections, brings its sorrows as well as its joys. 
 Otherwise I could scarce account for the heaviness 
 she so often is burdened withal. 
 
 "One day, when she was fearing to embrace the 
 cheering words of Scripture, Dr. Fuller encouraged 
 her by reminding her how in the Hebrews the pro- 
 mise, 'I will not leave thee, nor forsake thee,' thoxigh 
 at first made only to Joshua, is applied to all good
 
 54 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAYENANTS : 
 
 men. 'All who trust the Saviour and follow him,' 
 said he, 'are heirs-apparent to all the promises.' 
 
 "But she, who being a saint (by any laws of 
 canonization), ever bemoaneth herself as though she 
 were a penitent weeping between the porch and the 
 altar, put off his consolation with — 
 
 "'True, indeed, for all good men.' 
 
 "To which he, unlike most ghostly comforters I 
 have heard, replied with no honeyed commendation, 
 false or true, but said — 
 
 "'In the agony of a wounded conscience, always 
 look upward to God to keep thy soul steady. For, 
 looking downward on thyself, thou shalt find nothing 
 but what will increase thy fear — infinite sins, good 
 deeds few and imperfect. It is not thy faith, but 
 God's faithfulness thou must rely on. Casting thine 
 eyes down to thyself, to behold the great distance 
 between what thou desirest and what thou deservest, 
 is enough to make thee giddy, stagger, and reel 
 unto despair. Ever, therefore, lift up thine eyes to 
 the hills whence cometh thine help." 
 
 "'The reason,' quoth he afterwards, 'why so 
 many are at a loss in the agony of a wounded con- 
 science, is, that they look for their life in the wrong 
 place — namely, in their own piety and purity. 
 Let them seek and search, dig and dive never so 
 deep , it is all in vain. For though Adam's life was
 
 A STORY OF THK CIVIL WAKS. 55 
 
 hid in himself, yet, since Christ's coming, all the 
 original evidences of our salvation are kept in a 
 higher office — namely, hidden in God himself. 
 Surely many a despairing soul, groaning out his 
 last breath with fear to sink down to hell, hath pre- 
 sently been countermanded by God to eternal happi- 
 ness.' 
 
 "His words brought tears to my mother's eyes, 
 but comfort, said she, to her heart. 
 
 "Yet though she saw sunshine through the clouds, 
 she feared to find the cloud again beyond the sun- 
 shine; whereon he heartened her further by saying, 
 'Music is sweetest near or over rivers, where the 
 echo thereof is best rebounded by the water. Praise 
 for pensiveness, thanks for tears, and blessing God 
 over the floods of affliction, makes the most melo- 
 dious music in the ear of heaven.' 
 
 "Good and fit words for her who needs and de- 
 serves such. To me these other words of his are 
 more to the purpose: — 
 
 "'How easy,' saith he, 'is pen and paper piety. 
 It is far cheaper to work one's head than one's heart 
 to goodness. I can make a hundred meditations 
 sooner than subdue one sin in my soul.' 
 
 "He gave my mother also a sermon of his 'on 
 the doctrine of assurance,' which she much afi'ects. 
 'All who seek the grace of assurance,' he writes,
 
 ,56 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 'in a diligent and faithful life, may attain it without 
 miraculous illumination. Yet many there are who 
 have saving faith without it. And those who deny 
 this will prove racks to tender consciences. As the 
 careless mother killed her little child, for she over- 
 laid it, so this heavy doctrine would press many poor 
 but pious souls, many infant faiths, to the pit of 
 despair.' 
 
 ''April 1643. — Dr. Fuller hath left us to be 
 chaplain in the regiment of Lord Hopton , an honour- 
 able man , who will honour him , and give him scope 
 to do all the good that may be to the soldiers. 
 
 "He took leave of us in the college-garden, and 
 gave my mother a book of his imprinted last year, 
 when he was preacher at the Savoy in London. It 
 is intituled, the Holy State and the Profane State, 
 and seemeth wise and witty like himself. As he 
 parted from us, he begged her to remember that 'all 
 heavenly gifts, as they are got by prayer, are kept 
 and increased by praise.' 
 
 '''Note. — I like well what he writes of anger: 
 'Anger is one of the sinews of the soul. He that 
 wants it hath a maimed mind.' I would I had known 
 this saying to comfort Roger Drayton withal, when 
 Sir Launcelot provoked him to that blow. 
 
 "Yet another saying is perhaj)s as needful, at 
 least for me: 'Be not mortally angry for a venial
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 57 
 
 fault. He will make a strange combustion in the 
 state of his soul who at the landing of every cock- 
 boat sets the beacons on fire.' 
 
 "We miss Dr. Fuller sorely; my mother for his 
 words of ghostly cheer, and I for the just and 
 generous things he dares to say of good men on the 
 other side, and saith with a wit and point which 
 leaves no opening for scornful jest to controvert. 
 
 "If Dr. Fuller had been the vicar of Netherby, 
 and if the Dray tons had known him, maybe many 
 things had gone otherwise. 
 
 "Now, alack! there seems less hope of accommo- 
 dation by this Christmas than I had felt sure of by 
 the last. 
 
 " The Parliament Commissioners were here through 
 March, and have but now left. 
 
 "Some Lords and some Commons. But nought 
 could they accomplish. How, indeed, could aught 
 be hoped from subjects who presume to treat with 
 their liege lord as with a rival power? 
 
 "My Lord Falkland (now the king's secretary) 
 , comes now and then to converse with my mother. 
 jThose who knew him before this sad rebellion began, 
 [say he is sorely changed from what he was. Whereas 
 ■his mind used to be as free and open to entertain 
 lall wise and ])leasant thoughts of others, as his 
 mansion at Great Tew, near this, Avas free and open
 
 58 TUB DRAYrONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 to entertain their persons, so that they called it 'a 
 college of smaller volume in a purer air;' now, they 
 say, he is often preoccupied, and when in private 
 will sigh and moan 'Peace! peace!' and say he shall 
 soon die of a broken heai't, if this dire war be pro- 
 longed. This especially since the royal army was 
 driven back from Brentford on its way to London. 
 
 "But to us, who contrast him not with his former 
 self, but with other men, he seems the gentlest and 
 most affable of Cavaliers, ever ready to give ear and 
 due weight to thought and wish of any, the least or 
 the lowest. 
 
 "We had not known him much of old, because 
 he leant to the Puritan party (being a close friend 
 of Mr. Hampden), and thought ill of Archbishop 
 Laud, and spoke not too well of bishops or episco- 
 pacy. 
 
 "But in this conflict I think the noblest on each 
 side are those who are all but on the other; not, I 
 mean, in affection — for lukewarmness is never a 
 virtue — but in conviction and character. 
 
 "The queen is amongst us again, as graceful 
 and full of charms as ever. But some think the 
 king were liker to follow moderate counsels without 
 her. He holds her as ever in a perfect adoration, 
 and it is not likely to conciliate him that Parliament 
 have actixally dared to 'impeach' her. Blasphemy
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 59 
 
 almost, if it were not more like the folly of naughty- 
 children playing at being grandsires and gran- 
 dames! 
 
 ''''June 26. — Mr. Hampden is dead! By a sin- 
 gular mark of the divine judgment (Mr. Hyde says), 
 he was mortally wounded on Chalgrove Field, the 
 very place where he began, not many months since, 
 to proclaim the rebellious Ordinance Militia. It was 
 in a skirmish with Prince Rupert. The same night 
 the rumour spread among us that something beyond 
 ordinary ailed him, for he was seen to ride off the 
 field in the middle of the fight (a thing never before 
 known in him), with his head low drooping, and 
 his hands on his horse's neck. Less than a fortnight 
 afterwards, he died in sore agonies, they say, but 
 persevering in his delusion to the end, so that his 
 heart was not troubled. 
 
 "The king would have sent him a chirurgeon 
 of his own , had it been of any use. 
 
 "He was much on my mother's heart, since she 
 heard of his being wounded, for he was ever held 
 to be a brave and blameless gentleman. She grieved 
 sore that he uttered no one repentant word. 
 
 "(Yet the last word we heard he spoke was not 
 so ill a word to die with: '0 God, save my bleeding 
 country ! ') 
 
 " 'But,' said she, 'there are Papists who die with-
 
 60 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 out ever seeing any thing wrong in the mass, or in 
 regarding the blessed Virgin as Queen of Heaven, 
 who yet die calling on the blessed Saviour with such 
 piteous entreaty as he surely faileth not to hear. 
 And it may be trusted Mr. Hampden's heresy is no 
 worse.' 
 
 "To most around us, it is simply the rebels' loss 
 in him that is accounted of. And that, they say, is 
 more than an army. For he was the man best be- 
 loved in all the land. Some of us, however, speak 
 of the loss to England, and say that his and my 
 Lord Falkland's were the only right hands through 
 which this sundered realm might have met in fellow- 
 ship again. 
 
 "I see nothing glorious in the glories of this 
 war, nothing triumphant in its triumphs, no gain in 
 its spoils. 
 
 "It makes my heart ache to see Prince Rupert 
 and his Cavaliers return flushed with success and 
 laden with plunder from raids all over the country. 
 I cannot help seeing in my heart the poor farmers 
 wandering about their despoiled granaries and stalls, 
 and the goodwife bemoaning her empty dairy, and 
 the children missing the cattle and poultry, which 
 are not 'provision' only to them, but friends; and 
 soon, alack! poor foolish babes, to miss provision 
 too, and cry for it in vain.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL Vv'ARS. 61 
 
 "These are our own English homes that are 
 ravaged and wasted. What triumph is there in it 
 for any of us? I would the hearts of these Palatine 
 princes yearned a little more tenderly towards their 
 mother's countrymen. 
 
 "The only hope is, that all these horrors will 
 bring the end, the end, the 'Peace, peace,' for which 
 my Lord Falkland groans. 
 
 "But I know not; I think of Netherby and the 
 Dray tons; and I scarce deem English hearts are to 
 be won back by terror and plunder. 
 
 ''''August 28, 1643. — Better hopes! Something 
 like a glimpse of the end, at last. 
 
 "Two memorable months. 
 
 "Everything is going prosperously for the king 
 'and the good cause, north, and south, and west. 
 
 "In the North, on June the 3rd, the Earl of 
 Newcastle defeated Lord Fairfax and the rebels at 
 Atherton Moor. A few days afterwards York and 
 Gainsborough and Lincoln surrendered, and now not 
 a town remains to the Parliament between Berwick 
 and Hull. 
 
 "On the 1 3th of July, not a fortnight afterwards, 
 Sir William Waller was defeated and his whole 
 army scattered on Lansdowne Heath, near Devizes; 
 the only offset to this advantage being the death of 
 the brave and good Sir Bevil Grenvill, for whose
 
 62 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Tvife, Lady Grace, bound to him in the truest honour 
 and love, my mother mourned much. 
 
 "The West, they say, is loyal; Cornwall fervent 
 for the king. 
 
 "And on July 22nd, not a fortnight after this. 
 Prince Rupert took Bristol, thus doing much to se- 
 cure Wales, otherwise, moreover, well-affected. 
 
 "Our hopes are high indeed. In all the horizon 
 there seems but one shadow to mark a cloud, and 
 that so small I should scarce mention it, but that an 
 old friend is under it. Mr. Cromwell (or Colonel, 
 as they call him now, forsooth) gained some slight 
 advantage at Grantham and Gainsborough, and 
 stormed Burleigh House. Indeed, wherever he is, 
 they say, he seems just now to bring good fortune. 
 But this, I think, bodes no ill. Little weight, indeed, 
 can these unsuccessful skirmishes have to counter- 
 balance victories, and captured cities, and reviving 
 loyalty throughout the North, and West, and South. 
 And if the rebels are to succeed anywhere, I had 
 rather it were where Roger Drayton, is, because it is 
 in the nature of the Draytons to be more yielding in 
 prosperity than in ill fortune. 
 
 "His Majesty has just set forth with the army, 
 all in high feather, to besiege the obstinate and dis- 
 loyal city of Gloucester. 
 
 "Lord Essex, they say, is collecting an army to
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 63 
 
 meet liim. But we could wisli for no better. One 
 decisive battle, my Lord Falkland and other wise 
 men think, is the one thing to end the war. 
 
 '"'' September 22nd, 1643. — I cannot make it out. 
 They say there has been a victory at Newbury, yet 
 j nothing seems to come of it. The king is here 
 1 again, and the siege of Gloucester is given up, and 
 , our people begin to quarrel among themselves, tread- 
 ing on each other in their eagerness for places, and 
 titles, and honours. I think they might wait a little, 
 ; at all events, till the Court is at Whitehall again. 
 
 " One good sign is that three rebel earls — Bed- 
 ford, Holland, and Clare — have returned to their 
 allegiance. The Earl of Holland raised the militia 
 for the Parliament, so that he hath somewhat to re- 
 pent of. There is much discussion how they should 
 • be received; the elder Cavaliers recommending a 
 politic forgetting of their offence; but we, who are 
 younger, desire they should be received as naughty 
 children, if not with reproaches, at most with a cool 
 and lofty indifference, to show we need them not. It 
 would not look well to be too glad. And, moreover, 
 they are three more claimants for the royal grace, 
 and the faithful like not that the faithless should be 
 better served than they who have borne the burden 
 and heat of the day.
 
 64 THE DUAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "I thought prosperity would have made us one, 
 but it seems otherwise. 
 
 "And Harry says the noblest is gone. The 
 noblest, he says, always fall the first victims in such 
 conflicts as these, so that the strife, grows more cruel 
 and baser from year to year. 
 
 "The Lord Falkland was slain at Newbury. 
 He was missing on the evening of the fight, but all 
 through the night they hoped he might have been 
 taken prisoner. On the morrow, however, they 
 found him among the slain. 'Only too glad to re- 
 ceive his discharge,' Harry said. On the morning 
 of the battle he was of good cheer, as was his wont; 
 his spirits rising at the approach of danger. His 
 friends urged him not to go into the battle, he 
 having no command, but he would not be kept away. 
 He rode gallantly on in the front ranks of Lord 
 Byron's regiment, between two hedges, behind which 
 the Round-heads had planted their musketeers. 'I 
 am weary of the times,' he said to those who urged 
 him to withdraw; 'I foresee much misery to my 
 country, but I believe I shall be out of it before 
 night.' 
 
 "And so he was; and needeth now no more dole- 
 fully to moan for 'Peace, peace!' as so often in 
 these last months. He is singing it now, we trust, 
 
 i
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL, WARS. 65 
 
 I 
 
 where good men understand all perplexed things, 
 and each other. 
 
 "Falkland and Hampden! Alas! how many 
 more before the peace songs are chanted here on 
 earth ! 
 
 "The two right hands are cold and stiff through 
 which the king and the nation might have been 
 clasped together again in fellowship. 
 
 "Who, or what, will reunite us now?" 
 
 The Dynytons mid the Dacenanis. II.
 
 66 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 xxn. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 The Winter of 1642 — 43 was one of uneasy un- 
 certainty to us at Netlierby. The wliole world 
 seemed to lie dim and hazy, as if wrapped in the 
 heavy folds of a November fog. The next villages 
 seemed to become far-off and foreign, in the un- 
 settled state of the country. There was no knowing 
 the faces and voices of friends from those of foes, in 
 the rapid shifting of parties. The comrade of yester- 
 day was the opponent of to-day. Wlio could say 
 what the comrade of to-day might be to-moiTOW? 
 Mr. Capel, the Member for Hertfordshire, who had 
 been the first in Parliament to complain of griev- 
 ances, had become Lord Capel, and was threatening 
 the seven associated counties with his plunderers. 
 
 Lord Essex (many thought) seemed as frightened 
 at success as at failure. Victories lulled him into 
 fruitless negotiations-, and the only thing that roused 
 him to action was imminent ruin. Some murmured 
 that "professional soldiers love long wars as physi- 
 
 1
 
 A STOUY OF THK CIVIL WARS. 67 
 
 cians love long diseases." Some wliispered of treach- 
 ery, and others of divine displeasure. The explo- 
 sion of battle had come ; but the only consequence 
 seemed to be the loosening of the whole ground 
 around, the crumbling away of the nation in all 
 directions. 
 
 Partly, no doubt, this sense of vagueness and 
 dimness was caused by the absence from most homes 
 and communities of the most capable and manly 
 men in each — in the garrisons, on the field, taking 
 counsel with the king at Oxford, or taking counsel 
 for the nation at Westminster. Thus events were 
 left to be guessed and debated by old men de- 
 spondent with the decay of many hopes; or women, 
 draining in anxious imaginations the dregs of every 
 peril they could not share in fact; or boys delight- 
 ing in magnifying the dangers they hoped soon to 
 encounter, therewith to magnify themselves in the 
 eyes of mothers and maids. 
 
 Rachel Forster, on whose gentle strength the 
 whole village was wont to lean, was away; and Aunt 
 Dorothy, the manliest heart left among us, had a 
 belief in the general wickedness of men, and the 
 general going wrong of things in this evil world, 
 which was anything but reassuring to those whose 
 fears were quickened with the life-blood of more 
 vivid hopes than hers. 
 
 5*
 
 68 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Tlius we were ripe for all kinds of credulities 
 that winter at Netherby, 
 
 I can remember nothing rising prominently out 
 of the general hum and fog except two convictions, 
 which enlarged before us steadily, becoming more 
 solid instead of more shadowy as they came nearer. 
 The first was the impossibility of trusting the king. 
 The second was that everything went right where 
 Colonel Cromwell was — for by this time he was 
 Colonel Cromwell, at the head of his regiment, 
 which he was slowly sifting and compressing into 
 the firm invincible kernel of his invincible army. 
 
 A dim, dreary time it was for us from the Edge- 
 hill Fight, in October 1642, to the beginning of 
 February 1643. Roger in prison at Oxford with Job; 
 my father at Reading or in Loudon with Lord Essex 
 and the army. 
 
 But in the beginning of February a new time 
 dawned on us. My father came home to us for a 
 few days, to make the old house as tight as he could 
 against any assaults from Lord Capel, or any strag- 
 gling party of Prince Rupert's plunderers, who were 
 always making dashing forays into the counties 
 favourable to the Parliament, and appearing where 
 they were least expected. The old moat, which in 
 front of the house had long been the peaceful retreat 
 of many generations of ducks, and elsewhere had
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 69 
 
 been partially blocked up witli fallen stones and 
 trees, was carefully cleared out and filled with water. 
 The terraces which led to it on the steep side of the 
 house were scarped, all but the uppermost, which 
 was palisadoed, and had two great guns planted on 
 it. The drawbridge was repaired, and ordered to be 
 always drawn up at night. We were provided with 
 a garrison of four of the farm-servants, drilled as 
 best might be for the occasion, and placed under 
 the command of Bob, which virtually placed the 
 whole fortress under the command of Tib, whose 
 orders were the only ones Bob was never known not 
 to disregard. Meantime my aunts and I, with the 
 serving-maids, were instructed how to make car- 
 tridges, and prepare matches for the match-locks; and 
 Aunt Gretel gave us the benefit of her experience in 
 pulling lint, preparing bandages, and other hospital 
 work. 
 
 If an attack, however, were ever made, the 
 general belief in the household was that Aunt 
 Dorothy would take her place as commandant, her 
 courage being of the active rather than the passive 
 kind. Indeed I think the sense of danger to our- 
 selves was a kind of relief to most of us. It seemed 
 to make us sharers in the great struggle, which we 
 believed to be for God, and truth, and righteousness. 
 It took us out of the position of uneasy listeners for
 
 70 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 rumours, into tliat of sentinels on the alert for an 
 attack. And the whole spirit of the household rose 
 from dreamy disquiet into cheery watchfulness and 
 activity. 
 
 My father brought us the story of the king's at- 
 tempt to surprise London. "It was a treacherous, 
 unkingly deed," my father said, "enough to quench 
 in the heart of the people every spark of trust left in 
 His Majesty." 
 
 He said it happened on this wise. On Thursday, 
 the 11th of November 1642 (my father told us), the 
 king received messengers from the Commons with 
 proposals of peace, declared his readiness to negotiate, 
 and his intention to remain peaceably in the same 
 neighbourhood till all was amicably settled. The 
 Parliament, trusting him, ceased hostilities. Never- 
 theless, instautly after despatching this message, he 
 set off in full march for London. On Satvirday he 
 sent forces under Prince Rupert to surprise Brentford 
 under cover of a November fog, and of his own too 
 loyally trusted word. But Denzil Hollis, with part of 
 his regiment, made a noble stand, and stopped the 
 prince's progress. 
 
 Hampden came up first, and Lord Brook, to the 
 succour of Hollis' imperilled regiment; they tried to 
 fight through the royal troops, which had surrounded 
 Hollis and his men in the streets of Brentford. This
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 71 
 
 tliey could not effect. But Hollls' little band them- 
 selves fought to their last bullet, and then threw 
 themselves into the river, those who were not 
 drowned swimming past Prince Rupert's troops to 
 Hampden and his Green-coats. Lord Essex, hearing 
 the sound of guns in the Parliament House, where 
 he was at the time, took horse and galloped across 
 the parks and through Knights bridge to the scene of 
 action. After this, all through the Saturday night, 
 soldiers came pouring out from the roused city, until, 
 on Sunday morning, four and twenty thousand men 
 were gathered on Turnham Green. 
 
 Then the tables were turned, and Hampden fell 
 on the king's rear. 
 
 "And then?" asked Aunt Dorothy. 
 
 "And then," replied my father drily, "Lord Essex 
 recalled him, and so nothing further came of it; but 
 things have gone on simmering ever since — always 
 getting ready and discussing how things should be 
 done, and never doing them." 
 
 " How do Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym brook these 
 delays?" said Aunt Dorothy. 
 
 "Mr. Hampden would have had my Lord Essex 
 invest Oxford," said my father, "but he is a sub- 
 ordinate, and Lord Essex a veteran; and Mr. Hampden, 
 I trow, deems military obedience the best example he
 
 72 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 can give an army scarce six roontlis recruited from 
 tlie shop or the plough." 
 
 "And meantime," said Aunt Dorothy, "I warrant 
 Prince Rupert is active enough. There is no end to 
 the tales of his devastations — seizing whole teams 
 from the plough, setting fire to quiet villages at 
 midnight, with I know not what iniquities besides, 
 and carrying home the spoil from twenty miles 
 around to the king's quarters at Oxford. If Lord 
 Essex does not want to fight the king, why does 
 not he submit to him? Keeping twenty- four thou- 
 sand men armed and fed at the public expense, 
 and doing nothing, is neither peace nor war, to my 
 mind!" 
 
 "True, sister Dorothy," said my father, "I know 
 of no method by which war can be carried on in a 
 friendly way. And when Lord Essex has come to 
 the same conclusion, perhaps things will go a little 
 faster." 
 
 "Will they ever, under Lord Essex?" said 
 she. 
 
 "Time will show," said he. "We have scarcely 
 found our Great Gustavus yet." 
 
 "Colonel Cromwell has been doing something 
 better than dreaming what to do, at Cambridge, since 
 he saved the magazine there and £ 2000 of plate 
 for the Parliament last June," said Aunt Dorothy.
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WAltS. 73 
 
 "Troops are pouring up to him from Essex and 
 Suffolk, and all around, they say; and Cambridge 
 is being fortified; and they say it is owing to 
 Colonel Cromwell we are so quiet in these seven 
 counties." 
 
 "Colonel Cromwell has a rare gift of sifting the 
 chaff from the wheat; finding out who can do the 
 work, and setting them to do it," said my father, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 "So strict with his soldiers, too," said Aunt 
 Dorothy. "They say the men are fined twelve pence 
 if they swear a profane oath." 
 
 "Then," said my father, "he is doing what 
 he told his cousin, Mr. Hampden, must be done, 
 if ever the Parliament army is to match the 
 king's." 
 , "What is that?" said she. 
 
 "Getting men of religion," my father replied, "to 
 fight the men of birth. You will never do it," said 
 Colonel Cromwell, "with tapsters and 'prentice lads. 
 Match the enthusiasm of loyalty with the enthusiasm 
 of piety!" 
 
 "It is strange," rejoined Aunt Dorothy, "that 
 Mr. Cromwell never discovered his right profession 
 before. A farmer till forty- three, and then all at 
 once to find out he was made for a soldier!" 
 
 "What can make or find out soldiers but wars.
 
 74 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 sister Dorothy?" said my father. "Moreover, I war- 
 rant Colonel Cromwell has known what it is to wage 
 other kinds of war before this. It is only taking 
 up new weapons. It is only the same conflict for 
 the oppressed against the oppressor, in which he 
 contended for those of the Fen country against 
 Royal assumption, and for the poor men of Somers- 
 ham against the courtiers who would have ousted 
 them from their ancient common-rights 5 or for the 
 gospel-lecturers whom Archbishop Laud silenced. The 
 same war, only a new field and new weapons. At 
 any rate, I am glad the lad Roger is to serve under 
 him; and so you may tell him when he gets his 
 liberty and comes home, as I trust he will in a fort- 
 night." 
 
 This was said as my father was taking an early 
 breakfast alone with us in the Hall, with his horse 
 saddled at the door, ready to take him back to the 
 Lord General's quarters.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 75 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 Rachel and Job Forster came home before 
 Roger, in Sir Walter Davenant's waggon, stored with 
 provisions and cordials, and soft pillows, by Lady 
 Lucy. 
 
 I believe every one in Netherby slept with a 
 greater feeling of security on the night after their 
 return. Poor Margery, Dickon's young wife, said it 
 was like the Ark coming back from the Philistines, 
 regardless of the slur she thereby cast on the Royalist 
 army, in which Dickon fought. And yet there was 
 nothing very reassuring in Job's appearance. He 
 looked like a gaunt ghost, and stumbled into the 
 cottage like a tottering infant, and rather fell on the 
 bed, which had been made up for him in the kitchen, 
 than lay down on it, so broken was his strength. 
 AVhen the neighbours came in after a while, how- 
 ever, he had a good word to hearten each of them. 
 As to Rachel, she settled in at once, without more 
 ado, to her old ways and plans, doing everything
 
 76 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 with the purpose-like ([uietness which so calms the 
 sick. 
 
 Cheered by Job's greetings to the neighboixrs, 
 she told me it was not until the place was still, and 
 she was making up the fire for the night, that she 
 knew how low his strength was. As she took the 
 wood from the pile he had made for her close to the 
 fire, she was startled, she told me, by a sound like 
 a stifled sob from where he lay. 
 
 "Art laid uneasy?" said she, at his side in an 
 instant. "Does aught ail thee? Is the bed ill 
 made?" 
 
 "Nought," said he. "It's better than the bed of 
 Solomon to me, with the pillars of silver and the 
 bottom of gold. But I am like to them that dream, 
 laughing and crying all in one. For I used to think 
 before thee come to the gaol, how I should never 
 see thee kindle a fire in the old place again, and 
 how every stick thee had to take from where I laid 
 it for thee would go to thy heart like a stab. And 
 it shamed me not to have made a better shot at the 
 Lord's meaning for thee and me." 
 
 "How could thee tell his meaning," said Rachel, 
 "before he told thee? He gave thee no promise to 
 bring thee out of prison, nor me." 
 
 "Nay," said Job; "but it's making very bold 
 with him, and making fools of ourselves, to guess at
 
 A STORY OF THB CIVIL WARS. 77 
 
 Ilia words when they're half spoken, instead of wait- 
 ing to hear them out. And it grieves me I should 
 have suspected him when he was meaning us so 
 well. Kead me what the Scripture saith about the 
 foi-giveness of sins." 
 
 "But, Mistress Olive," concluded Rachel, when 
 she told me this little history, "when Elijah, worn 
 out with trouble, misunderstood the Lord, the angel 
 comforted him, not with a text, but with a cake 
 baken on the coals; so, when Job took to misunder- 
 standing the Almighty like that, thinking he would 
 be angered with what would not have fretted one of 
 the likes of us poor hasty creatures, instead of the 
 Bible I gave him a good cup of strong broth. I 
 knew it was the body, poor soul, and not the spirit 
 that was to blame, and that all those brave words 
 he spoke to the neighbours had cost more than they 
 were Avorth; and, of course, I was not going to pro- 
 fane the Holy Word by using it like the spell in a 
 witch's charm." 
 
 So for several days she kept every creature out 
 of the cottage, which deprived me of her counsel in 
 a moment of difficulty, which happened the week of 
 their return. 
 
 Lord Capel's troops continued to hover round, 
 and to keep the district in a state of suspense and 
 alarm, ripe for any marvellous stories of horror, or
 
 78 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 for any acts of terrified reveuge. For in stormy 
 times there are sure to be some cowardly spirits 
 ready to throw any helpless victim as an expiatory 
 sacrifice to the powers of evil. 
 
 One Saturday evening, late in February, I was 
 returning home through the village from Gammer 
 Grindle's cottage, which I had very often visited 
 since poor Tim's death. The old woman had seemed 
 gentler in her way of speaking of her neighbours, 
 and once or twice had betrayed her pleasure in see- 
 ing me by speaking sharply to me if I stayed away 
 longer than usual, as if I had been one of her own 
 lost grandchildren. 
 
 I had made rather a long circuit in returning, 
 not liking to try the high-road again, because, in 
 going, I had encountered a dozen or so of the king's 
 troopers, and as I was hurrying j)ast them, they 
 complimented me in a way I did not like, and came 
 after me. I recognized Sir Launcelot Trevor's voice 
 among them, and then I turned round and spoke to 
 him, and begged him to call his men away. "Which, 
 when he recognized me, he did; but not without 
 some more idle Cavalier jesting, which set my heart 
 beating, and made me resolve to come back by a 
 quiet path through the Davenant woods, which led 
 round through the village by Job Forster's. 
 
 Poor old Gammer was very friendly. I suppose
 
 "a STOIIY OP TUB CIVIL WARS. 79 
 
 I was trembling a little, thougli I did not tell her 
 wLy, for she declared I was chattering with cold, 
 and would have me drink a hot cup of peppermint 
 water, and kindled up the fire, and took off my 
 shoes, which were wet, and dried them, wrapping up 
 my feet, meanwhile, in her own best woolsey whimple. 
 Indeed, she was so gracious and approachable, that 
 I ventured to say something about the benefit of 
 coming to church, and mingling a little more with 
 her neighbours. 
 
 "Too late, too late for that!" said she, firing up. 
 "This twenty year, come Lammas, my Joan, Cicely's 
 mother, was buried, she and her man. Cicely's father, 
 in one grave. And the parson would do nothing 
 without his fee. So I sold tlie cover from my bed 
 to pay him. And I vowed I'd never darken his 
 church-door again." 
 
 "But that parson is dead, Gammer," said I, "and 
 it was not his church after all." 
 
 "That may be," said she. "But a vow is a vow. 
 Besides, I could never bear the folks' eyes speiring 
 at me. I'm ugly, and lone, and poor, and they 
 make mouths at me, and call me an old hag and a 
 witch. But it's only natural. All the brood will 
 peck at the lame chick. All the herd will leave the 
 stricken deer. Didn't all the village hoot and jeer 
 at my poor, tender, innocent Tim?"
 
 80 TUB DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENAJ^TS: 
 
 And then slie poured forth the story of her life 
 of sorrow as I had never heard it before. A heart 
 trained to distrust and suspect through a childhood 
 of bondage under the petty tyrannies of a stepmotlier 
 and her children. One year of happy married life, 
 ending in a sudden widowhood, which widowed her 
 heart also of all its remnant of hope in God, and 
 left her to struggle prayerless and alone with a hard 
 world, for bread for herself and her orphan babe. 
 The growing up of this child to be a stay and com- 
 fort, and, for three years, a second home with her 
 when she married. This second home broken up as 
 suddenly as the first, by the death of the daughter 
 and her husband in one month, from a catching sick- 
 ness , leaving the grandmother once more alone to 
 toil with enfeebled strength for two orphan babes; 
 the boy, poor, faithful Tim, half-witted and sickly; 
 the girl. Cicely, wilful and high-spirited, and the 
 beauty of the village. Then the terrible morning 
 when Cicely was gone, and no account could be got 
 of her beyond Tim's confused and exulting statement, 
 that Cicely had cried, and laughed, and kissed him, 
 and told him to wish grandmother good-bye for her, 
 and she would come back a lady and bring Tim a 
 gun like Master Roger's; to Gammer Grindle tidings 
 worse than bereavement or all the misery she had 
 known, for she came of an honourable yeoman's
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 81 
 
 liouse that had never known shame. Tim, however, 
 could never be brought to look on his sister's dis- 
 appearance in any but the most cheerful light, and 
 would watch for hours at the corner of the path 
 leading to the village for Cicely and the "gun like 
 Master Roger's," until, as time passed on, the ex- 
 pectation seemed to fade away, only to be awakened 
 once again by the mysterious touch of death. And 
 since then not a word of the poor lost girl. Tim in 
 the grave, and the vain longing that Cicely were 
 there too. And all the little world around her, as 
 she believed, leagued against her crushed but un- 
 conquered heart. She ended with, — 
 
 "But it's but natural. When the lightnings have 
 rent the trunk the winds soon snap the boughs. 
 They say the devil stands by me. If he did, no 
 one need wish him for a friend. They say the Al- 
 mighty is against me. And most times I think be- 
 like He is." 
 
 Then Aunt Gretel's words came back to me, 
 ^^ Ant/tvhere but there. Put the darkness anywhere hut 
 there;'''' and I said, — 
 
 "Never, Gammer, never. The devil said that 
 thousands of years ago; but the Lord Christ came 
 to show what a lie it was. He stood by the stricken 
 and wounded always. The lame and the blind came 
 to Him in the temple, and He healed them." 
 
 The Draytons and the Davenants. 11, t)
 
 82 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Slie listened as if sLe half believed, and then, 
 after a silence, she said, — 
 
 "The devil is no easy enemy to deal with, 
 mistress, but if I could be sure it was onhj Mm^ 
 maybe I might look up and try again." 
 
 At last she was persuaded so far as to let me 
 say I might call for her the next Sunday on my 
 way to church. "It was as like as not she would 
 not go, but at any rate it would do her no harm to 
 see me." 
 
 And as I left I heard something like a blessing 
 follow me, and I saw the poor, bent old figure lean- 
 ing out of the door and watching me. 
 
 But when I came back to Netherby I found the 
 whole village at the doors in a ferment of eager 
 talk. 
 
 I thought at once of Sir Launcelot and the 
 troopers, and asked if there had been another battle. 
 
 "Nay, nay," said the woman I spoke to, "it's 
 naught but folks going to reap their deserts at last". 
 
 Then came a chorus of grievances. 
 
 " Three of Farmer White's finest milch kine gone 
 in one night!" "Goodwife Joyce's best black hen 
 killed, and not a feather touched; no mortal fox's 
 work it was too plain to see!" "The dogs yelling 
 as if they were possessed, as belike they were, on 
 Saturday evening, seeing no doubt more than they
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 83 
 
 could tell , poor beasts , of what was going on in the 
 air!" "Lord Essex and his army lying spell-bound, 
 able to do nothing, while the Prince Robber was 
 plundering the land far and wide!" "Job and Master 
 Roger, the best in the village, the first stricken; too 
 clear where the blows came from!" "And to-day 
 the squire's own cattle driven off the meadow, with 
 Mistress Nicholl's, by a troop of plunderers, who 
 came no one knew whence, and had gone no one 
 knew whither!" "And finally, Tony Tomkin had 
 been pursued by a headless hound through the Dave- 
 nant woods, where he had only gone to take a rabbit 
 or two he had snared , and thought no harm , the 
 family being away and fighting against the country!" 
 "And" — but this was muttered under the breath — 
 "there toere those who said they had seen something 
 that was not smoke come out of Gammer Grindle's 
 chimney — something that flew away over the fens 
 faster than any bird. And this was only on last 
 Saturday night, and every one knew that Saturday 
 was the day of the witches' Sabbath ever since the 
 Jews had brought the innocent blood on their 
 heads!" 
 
 Then suddenly it flashed on me what it all meant. 
 They were going to execute some dreadful vengeance 
 on Gammer Grindle, believing her to be one of the 
 witches who were causing all the mischief in the land 
 
 6-*
 
 84 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 It was no use to set myself against tlie torrent of 
 fear and rage, so I said as quietly as I could, — 
 
 "What are tliey going to do, and when?" 
 
 "First," was the reply, "they're going to duck 
 her in the Mere before her own door. If she sinks 
 they will pull her out if they can, as it mayn't be 
 her doings after all. If she swims she's a witch, 
 clear and plain." 
 
 "And what then?" I said. 
 
 "Nothing too bad, Mistress Olive, for the like of 
 them. But the lads 'ill see when it comes to the 
 point. It isn't often their master helps the wretches 
 out at last, they say. And if she don't sink natural, 
 as a Christian ought, belike the lads '11 make her." 
 
 "When did they go to do this?" I asked. 
 
 "They're but just off," was the answer. "But 
 they'll make short work of it, never fear. It's time 
 a stop could be put to such things, if ever it was." 
 
 "If Eachel and Job had been among you this 
 would never have been," I thought. I longed to have 
 consulted Rachel, had it been possible. But there was 
 no time to hesitate. 
 
 My first impulse was to rush after the cruel boys ; 
 but I felt that in the maddened state of terror in 
 which the village was, they would most probably 
 keep me back. So, without saying a word or visibly
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 85 
 
 quickening my pace, I walked quietly on towards 
 home. 
 
 In the porch I found Aunt Gretel. She was 
 watching for me. 
 
 I took her arm, not violently, I was so afraid of 
 frightening her from doing what I had determined 
 must be done. And I said quite quietly, — 
 
 "Aunt Gretel, we must go together this instant 
 to Gammer Grindle's." 
 
 "What is the matter?" she said. 
 
 "I will tell you as we go," I said. "There is 
 no time to be lost." 
 
 She came with me. I turned into the path by 
 the meadows. 
 
 "Not this way, Olive," she said. "The plunderers 
 have been there to-day. Your father's best cattle are 
 taken, and Placidia's." 
 
 "If the cattle are gone, then belike so are the 
 plunderers," I said. "But if the king's whole army 
 were there we must take the shortest way." 
 
 And I told her the whole story. 
 
 She said nothing but, — 
 
 "Then the good God guard us, sweet heart, and 
 don't waste your breath in words." 
 
 We went quickly on. 
 
 Only once I thought I heard shouts, and I said, —
 
 86 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "Aunt Gretel, wliat do they do with witches at 
 the worst?" 
 
 "They have roasted them alive," she said, under 
 her breath. And we said no more. 
 
 As we came to the creek of the Mere, on the 
 opposite side of which the cottage was, we heard 
 yells and shouts too plainly borne across the water 
 in the stillness of the evening, unbroken now by the 
 lowing of the stolen cattle which had been feeding 
 there that morning. And in another moment we saw 
 the reflection of torches gleaming in the water, as we 
 stumbled along in the dusk among the reeds. I 
 listened eagerly for poor old Gammer's voice. But 
 I heard nothing. Indeed, my own heart began to 
 beat so fast, I could hear little but that. Until, just 
 as we reached the cottage, there was a dull splash, 
 and then a silence. It was followed by a low moan, 
 but by no cry. They were drowning the poor old 
 woman, and the brave broken heart would vouchsafe 
 them the triumph of no entreaty for mercy and no 
 cry of distress! I knew it as if I saw it. And 
 the next moment I had flown along the shore and 
 was in the midst of the crowd on the brink of the 
 water, clinging with one hand round the stem of an 
 alder, and stretching out the other till it grasped the 
 poor shrivelled hands which had caught at the 
 branches which drooped over the water.
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 87 
 
 "Cling to me, Gammer! — to me, Olive Dray- 
 tou! — I am holding fast — cling to me!" 
 
 I was scarcely prepared for the desperate tenacity 
 of the grasp which returned mine. I never felt till 
 that moment what it means to cling to Life. My 
 other arm held firm, but the bank was oozy and 
 slippery, and I felt as if I were losing my power, 
 when at that instant Aunt Gretel came and knelt 
 beside me, and clutching Gammer Grindle's dress, 
 between us we dragged her to land. 
 
 Then the second part of the work of rescue be- 
 gan, and the hardest. 
 
 The men, or rather lads (for they were few of 
 them more), who formed the crowd, had been startled 
 into inaction by our sudden appearance among them •, 
 but now they began to mutter angrily, and would 
 have pushed us rudely away, saying, "It was no 
 matter for women to meddle in. They had not come 
 there for nothing, and they would have it out. The 
 whole country-side should not be laid waste to save 
 one wicked old witch, that no one had a good word 
 to say for." 
 
 By this time Gammer Grindle had recovered so 
 far as to rise out of that mere instinct of self-pre- 
 servation with which she had desperately clung to 
 me. And disengaging herself from me, she said, 
 standing erect and facing her assailants, —
 
 CO THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "Let me alone, Mistress Olive. They say right. 
 They are all gone who would have said a good word 
 for me. Let me go to them." 
 
 Two of the men seized her again. 
 
 "Confess!" said one of them, shaking her rudely; 
 "confess, and we'll leave you to the justices. If 
 not, you shall try the water once more to sink or 
 swim." 
 
 And they dragged her again to the brink. The 
 touch of the cold oozing water made the horror and 
 weakness come over her again. Her courage for- 
 sook her, and she cried like the feeble old woman 
 she was, — 
 
 "Have pity on me, neighbours. I'll confess any- 
 thing, if you'll leave me alone — anything I can. 
 I've been a sinful old woman, and the Lord's against 
 me; the Lord's against me!" 
 
 "Hear her, mistress," said the men with a cry 
 of triumph; "she'll confess anything. She says the 
 Almighty's against her. It isji't fit such should 
 live." 
 
 They were forcing her on; her poor, patched, 
 thin garments tore in my hands as I clung to them. 
 Aunt Gretel, driven to the end of her English, as 
 usual with her in strong emotioti, was pouring forth 
 entreaties in German, when I caught sight of a 
 Netherby lad well known as the pest of the village,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 89 
 
 and the ringleader in all mischief. He was carrying 
 a torch. I caught his arm and looked in his face. 
 
 "Tony Tomkin," I said, "Squire Drayton shall 
 know of this , and it shall not be unpunished. It is 
 your wickedness, and such as yours, that brings the 
 trouble on us all, and not Gammer Grindle's. God 
 is angry with you^ Tonj ^ for breaking your little 
 brother's head, and idling away your time, while 
 your poor mother toils her life away to get you 
 bread. You will not give up your hearts to be good 
 like brave men, which is the only sacrifice God will 
 have; and instead, like a pack of cowards, you are 
 sacrificing a poor helpless old woman to the devil. 
 Isn't there one man here with the heart of a man in 
 him? What harm can the devil do you, much less 
 a witch, if you please God? And which of you 
 thinks God will be pleased by a troop of you slink- 
 ing here in the dark to murder a helpless old woman 
 at her own door? Can none of you lads of Netherby 
 remember poor Tim, and how he died for Master 
 Roger, and how good she was to him? Or can't 
 you trust Squire Drayton to do justice, and leave 
 her to him?" 
 
 Tony let his torch fall and slunk back. Then 
 two Netherby men came forward and said, — 
 
 "She's right; Mistress Olive is right! Squire 
 Drayton '11 see justice done."
 
 90 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Two or three others joined them. The cry 
 arose, "No one shall touch the old woman to-night, 
 as long as there's any Netherby lads to hinder it." 
 
 A scuffle ensued, during which Aunt Gretel and 
 I got hold of Gammer Grindle once more, and led 
 her back into the cottage. 
 
 Once there, we barricaded the door with the logs 
 and fagots which formed Gammer's store of firewood, 
 and felt safe. 
 
 But it was not until the angry voices had quite 
 died away in the distance, and we heard again the 
 quiet plashing of the water among the rushes, that 
 we could quiet the poor old woman so that she would 
 let go her clasp of our hands. Then she let us 
 kindle a fire, and wrap her in warm dry things. 
 
 We wanted to lay her in a clean comfortable bed 
 which was made in the corner of the hut. But this 
 she would not suffer. "It is Cicely's," she said. 
 "It's not for me." So we had to pack her up as 
 comfortably as we could upon the heap of straw and 
 rags laid on an old chest, which was her bed. 
 
 There she lay quite still for a long time, while 
 Aunt Gretel and I sat silent by the fire, hoping she 
 would sleep. 
 
 But in about an hour she said, in a quiet 
 voice, — 
 
 "Take away those logs from the door."
 
 A STOUV OF TUB CIVIIi WARS. 91 
 
 I went to her bedside. 
 
 "In the morning, Gammer," I said, "when it is 
 quite safe." 
 
 "This moment!" said she, starting up, and try- 
 ing to walk. But the terrors of the night had made 
 her so faint and feeble, that she fell helplessly 
 back. 
 
 "This moment. Mistress Olive!" she repeated, in 
 a faint querulous voice , very unlike her usual sharp 
 firm tones — "this moment! The poor maid might 
 come and try the door, and go away, and never 
 come again. I've been sharp with her, I know, and 
 she might be afraid, not knowing, poor lamb, how I 
 watch for her." 
 
 Aunt Gretel went to the door and began to un- 
 pile the logs. 
 
 "God will care for us, Olive," said she, with a 
 faltering voice. "He will know and care; He who 
 never closes the door against us." 
 
 And gently we withdrew the logs which formed 
 our protection. 
 
 "Set the light in the window," Gammer said. 
 
 By the window she meant a rough crevice in the 
 wall, with a canvas curtain hung before it. 
 
 Aunt Gretel ventured a little remonstrance. 
 
 "Hardly that to-night," said she. "It might guide 
 any evil-disposed people here."
 
 92 THE BRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "It will guide her^ and what does it matter for 
 anything else?" said G-ammer Grindle, almost 
 fiercely. "She knew there was always a light burn- 
 ing, and if she saw none, she might think I was 
 dead, and turn away." 
 
 And the lamp was placed in the window. 
 
 Then another long silence, broken again by 
 Gammer. 
 
 "What'll they think's come to you, my mis- 
 tresses? What a selfish old woman I've been. Why 
 didn't I let them do for me, and be quiet. I never 
 knew before what fear was. I've wished to die 
 scores of times-, but when death came near, I clung 
 to life like a drowning dog or cat, and never cared 
 who I pulled in to save myself I never thought I 
 should live to be such a pitiful old coward. But 
 the Lord's against me," she cried, going back to 
 her old wail — "the Lord's against me. Everybody 
 says so , and it must be true. He not only leaves 
 me to be drowned; He leaves me also to be as 
 selfish and wicked as I will. The Lord's against 
 me. Why did you try to save me? I must fall 
 into His hands at last!" 
 
 This was exactly what Aunt Gretel never could 
 hear with patience. , 
 
 "You are little better than those bad men, my 
 dear woman," said she. "You, none of you, can
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 93 
 
 see the differeuce between tlie good God and the 
 devil. You talk of falling into His hands, as if 
 His arms were hell. And all the while He is 
 stretching out His arms that you may fall on His 
 heart. You slander, grandmother, you slander God!" 
 she added. " He is not against you ; you are against 
 Him." 
 
 "Much the same in the end," moaned poor 
 Gammer, "if we're going against each other." 
 
 "It is not the same," said Aunt Gretel. "You 
 can turn and go Math Him, and He will not have 
 to drive you home. You can bow under His yoke, 
 and you will not feel it heavy. You can bow under 
 His rod, and you will find it comfort you as much 
 as His staff." 
 
 "Not so easy, mistress," said Gammer, after a 
 pause. "I have turned from Him so long, how can 
 I know if I should have a welcome?" 
 
 "That is what Cicely is waiting for. Gammer," 
 I whispered, kneeling down beside. "But the door 
 is open and the light is burning for her. If she 
 could only know! if she could only have a glimpse 
 inside!'''' 
 
 "If she could only know!" murmured the poor 
 old woman, her eyes moistening as she turned from 
 the thought of her own sorrows to those of her lost 
 child.
 
 94 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 And slie said no more. But there was something 
 in the quiet of her face which made me hope that 
 she herself had got a "glimpse inside." 
 
 And soon afterwards she fell asleep.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 95 
 
 XXIV. 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 Aunt Gretel and I were left to our watch. 
 
 [Then, for the first time, when we ceased to watch 
 
 I for sleep to come over the poor exhausted aged 
 
 j frame, I began to watch the noises outside, and feel 
 
 a creeping horror as I listened to the slow cold 
 
 plashing of the water among the rushes, and the 
 
 I soughing , and wailing , and whistling of the wind 
 
 [among the leafless boughs of the wood behind us. 
 
 There was one gnarled old oak especially, just out- 
 
 jside the house, whose dry boughs creaked in the 
 
 fwiud as if they had been dead beams instead of 
 
 [living branches. 
 
 Often I thought I heard long sighs and wailings 
 as of human voices, and with difficulty persuaded 
 myself that it was fancy. But at last there came 
 sounds which could not be mistaken — low whistles, 
 ■and short, peculiar cries, resjDonded to by others, 
 until we became sure that a number of men must be 
 
 moving about in the darkness around us. At first 
 
 '. 
 I
 
 96 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Aunt Gretel aud I thouglit it must be tlie witcli- 
 finders come again for Gammer Grindle, and very 
 softly we replaced the logs to barricade the door. 
 
 But other sounds began to mingle with those of 
 human voices, like the lowings of cattle forcibly 
 driven. Suddenly I remembered my encounter that 
 very morning with the royal troopers, which, with 
 all that happened since, seemed weeks distant. 
 
 "It is Sir Launcelot and the plunderers!" I ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 "That accounts for their not sending after us," 
 said Aunt Gretel. "They have tried to reach us, 
 no doubt, and cannot." 
 
 And we listened again. 
 
 Then came something like a soft knock and a 
 low cry, which seemed close to the door, aud a 
 heavy thud as of something falling. But, though 
 we listened breathlessly, no second sound came; and 
 the old stories of supernatural horrors haunting the 
 place crept back to us, and kept us motionless. 
 
 By this time the dawn was slowly creeping in, 
 and making the lamp in the window red and dim. 
 
 We sat crouching close together by the embers 
 of the dying fire, and took each others' hands, and 
 listened. 
 
 The voices came nearer, till we could plainly 
 distinguish them, and with them the sound of
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 97 
 
 trampling feet of men and horses, and then of men 
 springing from the saddle and approaching the hut. 
 
 "It's the old witch's den," a gruff voice said; 
 "she's burning a candle to the devil. No one ever 
 got good by going near her." 
 
 Then a laugh, and Sir Launcelot Trevor's mock- 
 ing voice, — • 
 
 "One would think you were a Roundhead, from 
 the respect with which you mention the old enemy's 
 name. At all events, witches don't live, like saints, 
 on air and prayers. We'll get some warmth and 
 comfort this bitter night out of the old hag's stores. 
 Some sack or malmsey, perchance, and a fat capon 
 or two bewitched from good men's cellars and 
 larders. Stay here, if you are afraid. And I will 
 storm this witch's castle for you." And his long 
 heavy stride approached the door. We sat with 
 beating hearts, expecting the rickety door to be 
 shaken or forced in by a strong hand. But, instead, 
 the steps suddenly ceased, and the intruder seemed 
 to start back as if struck by an invisible hand on 
 the threshold. 
 
 Then there was an exclamation of amazement and 
 horror, ending iu a fearful oath in a low deep tone, 
 very different from Sir Launcelot's usual bravado. 
 Afterwards a few hasty retreating steps, and as he 
 
 The Draytons and the Dawnants. II. *
 
 98 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 rejoined his men, some words in the old light tone, 
 but hurried and wild as of one overacting his part. 
 
 "Belike you are right, lads. Black art or white, 
 better keep to beer of mortal brewing than seize any- 
 thing from a witch's caldron , or touch anything of a 
 witch's brood. Besides, the country will be awake, and 
 it's as well we were in safe quarters with the booty. 
 Steady, and look out for pitfalls in this cursed place." 
 
 After which there was a splashing of horses' feet 
 on the reedy margin of the Mere. Then a heavy 
 trampling as they reached firmer ground, succeeded 
 by a sharp gallop across the meadow, until every 
 sound was lost in the distance, and we were left in the 
 silence to listen once more to the cold plashing of 
 the water among the rushes, and to the breathing of 
 poor old Gammer in her heavy sleep, as we watched 
 the slow breaking of the morning. 
 
 We had not sat half an hour after the last tramp 
 of the horsemen had died away, when we heard a 
 faint sound as of something stirring on the threshold. 
 
 Aunt Gretel laid her hand on mine. 
 
 '^^ What made Sir Launcelot turn back, Olive?" 
 she whispered. "He is scarcely a man likely to dream 
 dreams or see visions." 
 
 By one impulse we softly removed the logs with 
 which we had barricaded the door, and opened it.
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 99 
 
 There was a rude porch outside to keep ofif the 
 beat of the weather, and under it a low seat, where 
 Gammer used to sit in summer and carry on any- 
 work that needed more light than could be had in 
 the hut. 
 
 Across this lay stretched, in a death-like swoon, 
 the form of a woman. She was half kneeling, half 
 prostrate, her head towards the door, resting on the 
 seat, one arm beneath it, the other fallen helpless by 
 her side, half hidden in a heavy mass of long hair. A 
 puny little child lay cuddled up close to her, clasp- 
 ing the unconscious form with both arms, asleep. 
 
 The features were sharp as with age, and pallid 
 as with the touch of death, and the long soft hair 
 was gray; but it was still easy to recognize in the 
 sharp and altered face what memories it had brought 
 back to Sir Launcelot, and why that poor faded form 
 had guarded her threshold from him better than an 
 army of fiends. 
 
 It was the flaming sword of conscience which had 
 guarded us that night. 
 
 Poor pallid wasted face, so terrible in its mute 
 reproach ! 
 
 "We took her up between its. It was easy. She 
 
 was light enough to carry. We laid her on the old 
 
 bed which her grandmother had kept always ready 
 
 for her. Aunt Gretel loosened her dress and chafed 
 
 7*
 
 100 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 her Lands, while I took the poor puny child to the 
 fire to keep it quiet while I made some warm drink 
 to revive the mother. 
 
 But the poor sickly little one was not easily to 
 be quieted, In spite of all my soothing it awoke, 
 and began wailing for mammy. Perhaps, after all, 
 the best restorative! The sharp fretful cry aroused 
 the mother from her swoon, and the grandmother from 
 her heavy sleep. 
 
 In another instant the old woman was kneeling 
 by the poor girl's bedside, clasping and fondling her, 
 and calling her by tender, endearing, childish names, 
 such as no one at Netherby would have dreamed 
 could have poured forth from Gammer Grindle's lips. 
 The first words Cicely spoke when she fully recovered 
 consciousness and sate up (her beautiful large gray 
 eyes gleaming from her faded hollow cheeks like liv- 
 ing souls among a pale troop of ghosts), were — 
 
 "Gammer, I heard him — I heard his voice. 
 Where is he? I thought I saw his face. But it was 
 dusk, and faces change. But voices will be the same, 
 I think, even in heaven or in hell. And I heard 
 his voice, the same as when he called me darling and 
 wife." 
 
 "Wife!" said the old woman, starting and stand- 
 ing erect. "Say that again. Cicely." 
 
 "All in vain. Gammer!" she said, with a slow
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 101 
 
 hopeless tone. "With the priest and the ring! But 
 it was all false. He told me so when it was too late. 
 He said I must have known. But how was I to 
 know, Gammer? I trusted him; I trusted him. Yet, 
 perhaps, I ought to have known better, Gammer? I 
 suppose it must have been wicked of me. Every one 
 seems to think it was." 
 
 "Not me, sweet heart!" the old woman cried; 
 "never me! Thank God, my lamb comes back to 
 me as pure as she went. Thank God, Cicely my 
 darling, thank God, sweet heart, and take courage. 
 If all the cruel world hunted my lamb to death and 
 cried shame on her, there's one in the world who 
 knows she's as pure as the sweetest lady that ever 
 trod the church floor in her bride's white, with her 
 path strewn with roses." Then, taking the child 
 in her arms, and cuddling it to her, she added, "And 
 thy child's as much a crown of joy to thee and 
 me. Cicely, as to any lady in the land. Take 
 courage , sweet heart. What does all the world 
 matter, if grandmother knows; and Him that's above, 
 darling," she added, in a voice faltering again into 
 feebleness. "For He is above. Cicely, and He's not 
 against us, for He's brought thee home." 
 
 All this time the old woman and Cicely had 
 seemed quite unconscious of our presence, as we sat 
 in a shadowed corner of the dark old hut, keeping
 
 102 THE DRAYTOXS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 as quiet as sobs would let us. But when the poor 
 girl was calmed by the long- forgotten relief of a burst 
 of tears on a heart that trusted her, she looked up 
 and around with a quieter glance , and began to 
 ask again how it could be that she had heard the 
 voice. 
 
 Then I stepped forward to explain. 
 
 She started, and covered her face with her hands, 
 as if she would have hidden herself. 
 
 "It's only me, Cicely, Olive Drayton," I said, as 
 plainly as I could for weeping. "You've come back 
 among those that know you and trust you. Cicely." 
 
 Then, after giving her such explanation as I could 
 of the events of the night, and after Aunt Gretel had 
 made uj) the fire, we bade them farewell, and left 
 the three together to go over the mournful history 
 that lay between their meetings; while we hastened 
 away to assure those at home of our safety. 
 
 "What a night, Aunt Gretel!" I said, as we went. 
 "It seems like a life- time." 
 
 "Things come often thus in life," said she, "as 
 far as I have seen; the fruits ripened through the 
 long silent year, reaped in a day." I scarcely un- 
 derstood her then, but since, I have often thought 
 she was right. Sowing-times and gTowing-times, 
 long, silent, underground; and then bursts of flower- 
 ing days, reapings and gatherings; a life-time in a
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 103 
 
 day; a thousand long-prepared events bursting into 
 flower in a moment. A thousand ghosts of forgotten 
 deeds gathered together and confronting us at one 
 point. The probation thousands of years ; the judg- 
 ment a day. 
 
 Aunt Dorothy was a little doubtful as to our hav- 
 ing too much commerce with Gammer Grindle «*2 
 Cicely. "If Gammer was not a witch," said she, 
 "which God forbid — though that there are witches 
 who ill- wish cattle, and ride on broom-sticks, is as 
 certain as there are wandering stars and sea-serpents ; 
 at all events it is a solemn warning to every one on 
 the danger of not going to church like your neigh- 
 bours. And if Cicely was not as bad as had been 
 feared — for which God be praised — she was never- 
 theless an awful example of the danger of dancing 
 round May-poles, and wearing bits of ribbons and 
 roses on your head." 
 
 But when Job heard of it, his anger was greatly 
 kindled. 
 
 "One would think," said he, "the Book of Job 
 had been put into the Apocrypha, that men who pro- 
 fess themselves Christians should go worrying the 
 afflicted like Zojjhar, Bildad, and Eliphaz, heaping 
 coals on the devil's furnace. Witches, there were, 
 no doubt, poor wretches, or tliey could not have been 
 hanged and burned, although for the most part he
 
 104 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 believed tlie devil was too good a general to let his 
 soldiers waste their time in cavalcading about on 
 broom-sticks. But, be that as it might, it was ill 
 work piling wood on fires that were hot enough al- 
 ready, especially when you could not be sure who 
 had kindled the flames. The only comfort was, that 
 after all the devil was nothing more than the Al- 
 mighty's furnace-heater. All his toil only went to 
 heating it to -^he right point to fuse the silver. The 
 Master wou' ■ see that none of the true metal was 
 lost."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 105 
 
 XXV. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 At the end of February, Roger came to us. He 
 was pale with prison-air and meagre from prison- 
 fare, and the hair had grown on his upper lip. In 
 my eyes he had gained far more than he had lost. 
 His eyes had a look of purpose and command in 
 them, pleasant to yield to; though little enough of 
 command had he exercised during the last four 
 months, except, indeed, that command of himself 
 which is the true obedience, and lies at the root of 
 all true command. 
 
 He was even less given than of old to long nar- 
 ratives, or orations of any kind. 
 
 The history of what he had seen and heard 
 dropped from him in broken sentences, as he went 
 about seeing to various little plans for strengthening 
 the defences of the house, or as he repaired or 
 cleaned his arms in the evening. Of what he had 
 suffered he said nothing, except to make light of it 
 in answer to any questioning of mine. More than 
 once he mentioned, in a few brief words, Lady Lucy's
 
 106 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 kindness. But lie did not speak at all of Lettice 
 except once, when we were all sitting together round 
 the hall fire — Aunt Dorothy, Aunt Gretel, and I 
 — when he said carelessly, as if he had just remem- 
 bered it by accident, — 
 
 "Mistress Lettice told me she had read the ser- 
 mons you gave her. Aunt Dorothy. And she sent 
 you her love, Olive." 
 
 "There are gracious dispositions in the child," 
 said Aunt Dorothy. "I have been sure of it for a 
 long time." 
 
 And I ventured after a little while to say, — 
 
 "She sent me her love, Roger, and was that 
 all?" 
 
 "Her dear love, I think it was," said he dryly, 
 as if the adjective made little difference in the value 
 of the substantive. 
 
 "And she said no more, Roger? Not one mes- 
 sage?" 
 
 "I only saw her for ten minutes, Olive," said he, 
 a little impatiently, "and most of the time she was 
 talking to a little French poodle, a little wretch 
 with wool like a sheep and eyes like glass-beads." 
 
 "You are hard on the poor child, Roger," said 
 Aunt Dorothy, "consider her bringing up. I war- 
 rant she never spun a web, or learned a chapter in 
 Proverbs through in her life. What can you expect
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIIi "WARS. 107 
 
 from a mother who is a friend of the Popish queen, 
 and, I am only too sure, wears false hair and 
 paint?" 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy," said he, firing up, "the Lady 
 Lucy is as near a ministering angel as any creature 
 I ever wish to see. And if it were not so, it's not 
 for me, who have lived on her bread and on her 
 kind looks for months, to hear a word against 
 her." 
 
 And Roger arose, and strode out of the hall and 
 across the court, whistling for Lion; leaving Aunt 
 Dorothy in perplexity as to whether he were more 
 aggrieved with her for defending Lettice or for as- 
 sailing Lady Lucy, and me in equal perplexity as 
 to how I could ever venture to introduce Lettice's 
 name again, longing as I did to hear more of 
 her. 
 
 "You never saw Lettice after she gave you that 
 message?" I ventured at last to say one day when 
 we were walking alone together. 
 
 "How could I, Olive?" said he; "I went away 
 instantly, except, indeed," he added, "when I hap- 
 pened to look back, as I was leaving the court, I 
 saw her standing at the window with that poodle in 
 her arms. But I did not look again; for at the same 
 moment Sir Launcelot Trevor came out of another
 
 108 THE DRAYXONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 door, looking as if lie were, as no doubt lie is, quite 
 at home in the place with them all." 
 
 "0 Roger," I said, "some of us ought to write 
 to Lady Lucy at once to say how wicked he is!" 
 
 "What is the use, Olive?" said he, sadly. "It 
 is not from us, rebels and traitors, she will believe 
 evil of a good Cavalier. Least of all, from me or 
 mine, about Sir Launcelot!" he added, in a lower 
 voice. 
 
 "But he may be deceiving them all," I said, 
 passionately. "It is a sin to let him. Can nothing 
 be done? Have you never thought of it?" 
 
 "You had better ask me could I think of nothing 
 else, Olive?" said he. "For I had to ask myself 
 that many times as I paced up and down in prison, 
 and knew about it all. And the more I thought, 
 the more helpless I saw we were about it." 
 
 "And what did you decide on at last?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I decided that this was what the Civil War cost^^'' 
 he replied; "not battles and loss of limb or life only, 
 but misunderstandings and loss of friends. To have 
 all we say and do reported to those we love best 
 through those who think the worst of us, and to 
 have no power of saying a word in justification or 
 explanation. To be identified with the worst men 
 and the most violent acts on our side, and, in loyalty
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 109 
 
 to tlie principles of our party, not to be able to dis- 
 own them. To see often the people we love best 
 estranged more and more from the principles we 
 hold dearest; and to watch a great gulf widening 
 between us which no voice of man can reach 
 across." 
 
 "I feel sure nothing and no one could make 
 Lettice think harshly of us, lloger," I exclaimed; 
 "I feel as sure as if I had been speaking to her 
 yesterday." 
 
 "How can it be otherwise, Olive?" said he, 
 "especially when I am under Colonel Cromwell. 
 You should have seen the little start and scornful 
 look she gave when I mentioned his name. 'Colonel!' 
 said she, almost under her breath, as if she were 
 talking only to that poodle. But I heard her. 
 There is no one the Cavaliers hate like him." 
 
 "It seems almost a pity you must be with him!" 
 I said, thinking only of Roger and Lettice. 
 
 "A pity, Olive!" said he, flashing up. "The 
 Cavaliers hate Colonel Cromwell, lecmise wherever 
 he is there is doing instead of debating. And for 
 what better reason can we hold to him? If we fight 
 at all, it is because we believe there is something 
 worth fighting for to be lost or won; and where 
 Colonel Cromwell is, it is won. The country he de- 
 fends is defended; the city he holds is held; the men
 
 110 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 he trains figlit; and, thank God, my lot is with him, 
 to defend the old liberties under him, Olive, or, if he 
 fails, to find new liberty in the New England across 
 the seas." 
 
 The next day Roger went off to join his regi- 
 ment at Cambridge, where Colonel Cromwell was. 
 
 How silent and languid the old house seemed 
 when he left us, without his firm, soldier-like tread 
 clearing the stairs at a few bounds, and his whistle 
 to the dogs, and his voice singing with a firm pre- 
 cision, like the tramp of a regiment, snatches of the 
 grave, grand old psalm tunes which the Ironsides 
 loved to march to! 
 
 A fortnight afterwards. Job Forster followed him. 
 And then came again months of listening and wait- 
 ing, and of contradictory rumours, ending too 
 often in ill-tidings worse than the worst we had 
 feared. 
 
 For that whole year brought little but disaster 
 to the Parliament troops. Day after day in that 
 yellow old diary of mine is marked with black tid- 
 ings of defeat and death. 
 
 First comes — 
 
 '■'■June 18. — IVIr. Hampden wounded in trying 
 to keep off Prince Rupert's plunderers, until Lord 
 Essex came. Lord Essex did not come in time; and 
 Mr. Hampden went off the field sorely wounded.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. Ill 
 
 They say he felt himself death-stricken, and turned 
 his horse towards the house of his first wife, whom 
 he loved so dearly, that he might die there. But his 
 strength failed. It was as much as he could do to 
 make one last effort, and spurring his horse over a 
 little brook which bounded the field, to find his way 
 to the nearest village, and home. 
 
 '"''June 24. — Mr. Hampden died, thinking to 
 the last more of his country than himself In the 
 midst of terrible pain he wrote (my father tells us) 
 to entreat Lord Essex to act with more vigour, and 
 to collect his forces round London. He received the 
 sacrament, and spoke with affection of the services 
 of the Church of England, although not altogether 
 so of her bishops. He received the Lord's Supper, 
 and for himself looked humbly and peacefully to 
 God. But for England his heart looked sorrowfully 
 onward. And his last words were, 'Lord, have 
 mercy on my bleeding country;' and then another 
 prayer, the end not heard by mortal ears. My father 
 writes: 'His love for his country will scarce fail in 
 the better country whither he is gone. But his 
 counsel and all his slowly garnered treasures of wis- 
 dom are lost to us for ever.' " 
 
 The next death marked is — 
 
 ''''September 20. — A battle at Newbury, in 
 Gloucestershire. Lord Falkland killed. Once
 
 112 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Hampden's friend, and now (must it not be?) his 
 friend again. A good man, and gentle, and wise, 
 they say. I wonder how it all looks and sounds 
 there where they are gone." 
 
 And the next — 
 
 ''''November. — Mr. Pym is dead. They have 
 buried him among the kings in Westminster Abbey. 
 I wonder how many of the people who began the 
 war will be fighting at the end of it, and whether 
 these will be fighting on the same side, or for the 
 same things, as when they began." 
 
 Then, mixed up with these notices of the dead, 
 are long accounts of skirmishes and fights, which 
 every one thought all-important then, but which no 
 one thinks of now, save those who have their be- 
 loved dead lying beneath the fields where they were 
 fought. 
 
 And through it all a steady going downward 
 and downward of the Parliament cause, from that 
 fatal June 1643, when Hampden died, to near the 
 close of the following year. 
 
 "t/wwe 30, 1643. — The Fairfaxes defeated at 
 Atherton Moor. 
 
 "/«% 13. — Sir William Waller (once vainly 
 boasted of as William the Conqueror) defeated, and 
 his army scattered, in Lansdowne. 
 
 ''July 22. — Prince Rupert took Bristol."
 
 A STOliV OF Tl^ CIVIL WARS. 113 
 
 And so tlie war surged away to tlie Royalist 
 West and Royalist North, until in all the West 
 Country not a city was left to the Parliament but 
 Gloucester; and in the JN^orth Country, not a city 
 but Hull, which the Hothams had been baffled in an 
 attempt to betray to the king-, whilst in the counties 
 between, Prince Rupert and the plunderers were 
 having it much their own way. Very evil times we 
 thought them. And many different reasons were 
 assigned for the failure of the good cause. Aunt 
 Dorothy feared it was a punishment for a licentious 
 spirit of toleration to zealots and sectaries, and the 
 sins of the Independents. The zealous preacher who 
 came from Suffolk occasionally to expound at Job 
 Forster's meeting, was sure it was carnal compromise 
 lording it over God's heritage, and the sins of the 
 Presbyterians. And Rachel believed it was the sins 
 of us all, and of herself in particular, who had, she 
 considered, been too much like Ananias and Sapphira, 
 in that she had professed to give the whole price to 
 God and then would fain have kept back the half, 
 having indulged the deceitful hope that Job was 
 so wounded as never to be able to go to the wars 
 again. 
 
 Placidia and Mr. Nicholls were much " exercised." 
 Especially since the loss of the three parsonage cows, 
 i which were (by what Aunt Dorothy considered a 
 
 The Draijions and the Darenanis. II. 8
 
 114 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 very solemn warning to Placidia) swept off with my 
 father s by the plunderers from the meadow by the 
 Mere. "There were two texts," said Placidia, "which 
 had always seemed to her exceedingly hard to re- 
 concile. One was, 'Godliness hath promise of the 
 life which now is as well as of that which is to 
 come.' And the other, 'Whom the Lord loveth he 
 chasteneth.' What could be done with texts so ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to reconcile as these?" 
 To which Aunt Dorothy replied, — 
 "Give up trying to reconcile them at all, my 
 dear. Let them fight, as frost and heat do, fire and 
 water, sunshine and storm; and out of the strife 
 come the flower and the fruit, spring time and 
 harvest, which shall never cease. Not that I see 
 any difficulty in it. The promise is not meadows 
 or cows, but grace and peace. The perplexity is 
 over when you make up your mind that what you 
 want is not to feel warm for a day or two, but to 
 have tJiings grow; not a few sunny hours, but the 
 harvest." 
 
 Perhaps among us all, the person least perplexed 
 by these continued disasters was Aunt Gretel; be- 
 cause, leaving the whole field of politics as altogether 
 too complicated for her to comprehend, she con- 
 tinued to see only the links which bind every day 
 to the Eternal Day, and every event to the hand of
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 115 
 
 tlie merciful Father ; and thus her chief wonders ever 
 were the pity which forgave so many sins, and the 
 love which provided so many mercies. Overlooking 
 all the battles and skirmishes around us, she saw 
 but one Battle and one Battle-field, and but two 
 Captains. Overlooking all the subordinate divisions 
 of nations and parties, she saw only one Flock and 
 one Shepherd, and the Shepherd calling each one by 
 one, from the great Gustavus to little Cicely and 
 poor Tim; folded, one, in the heavenly fold of which 
 he knew nothing till he was in it, and the other in 
 the poor earthly house which she and her child and 
 her grateful love had made, once more, a home and 
 a refuge for poor old Gammer. For since Cicely's 
 return. Gammer's broken links with her fellow- 
 creatures began to be knit again; and more than one 
 at Netherby took Job's words to heart. The broad 
 shield of her love and welcome which she threw 
 around the wafiderer had shielded herself. 
 
 But side by side with the doleful records in my 
 Diary run two series of letters full of victory and 
 hope. 
 
 One was to my father from Dr. Antony, who 
 spent most of that period in London. And there, 
 throughout all these disasters, the courage of the 
 citizens seemed never to fail. 
 
 When Lord Essex returned from Edgehill with 
 
 8*
 
 116 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANtS: 
 
 very doubtful success, whicli he liad. entirely failed 
 to convert into lasting gain by his hesitations and 
 delays, London, of as brave and generous a heart as 
 old Rome, voted him £ 5000. 
 
 When Bristol fell before Prince Rupert, and 
 every city in the west save Gloucester fell into the 
 hands of the king, and Lord Essex timidly recom- 
 mended accommodation with His Majesty, and the 
 Lords would have petitioned him, the Commons, the 
 preachers, and the citizens (knowing that no accom- 
 modation with the -king could be relied on unless 
 secured by victory) rejected all such wavering thoughts. 
 The shops were all shut for some days, not to make 
 holiday, but for solemn fasting. These days were 
 spent in the churches, and the people came forth 
 from them ready for any sacrifice for the eternal 
 truth and the ancient liberty. It was detex'mined to 
 surround London with entrenchments. Knights and 
 dames went forth, spade in hand, to the beat of 
 drum, to share in the digging of the trenches, and 
 to hearten others to the work. And in a few days 
 twelve miles of entrenchment were dug. Whereof 
 we heard His Majesty took notice, and lost heart 
 thereby. 
 
 Throughout all those adverse times London never 
 lost heart. Plate and jewels kept pouring into the 
 Parliament's treasury at Giiildhall. Time spent by
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 117 
 
 the 'prentices in the Parliament army was ruled to 
 count as time served in their trades. And jests 
 against the courage of men bred in streets and 
 trained behind counters lost their point. Dr. Antony's 
 letters through all that dreary time had the cheer 
 and stir of a triumphal march in them, although he 
 had no triumphs to relate, but only defeats borne 
 with the courage which repairs them, and although 
 he himself went to the battle-field not to wound but 
 to bind up wounds. 
 
 The other series of letters was from Roger. And 
 these cheered us because they always told of victory. 
 They were brief, and mostly written from the battle- 
 field, to assure us at once of victory and safety. 
 They crossed the dark shadows of my Diary like 
 sunbeams. In June, when we were mourning over 
 the death of Hampden, and over the slow debates 
 of the Lord-General, what to do first for the bleed- 
 ing country, wounded in every part by the stabs of 
 plunderers and reckless Cavaliers, came Roger's first 
 letter, delayed on its way, dated, "Grantham, 18th 
 May 164.3." It spoke of a glorious victory won 
 that day against marvellous odds of number, the 
 enemy running away for three miles, four colours 
 taken, and forty- five prisoners, and many prisoners 
 rescued. Again in July, when we were bewailing 
 I the Fairfaxes defeated at Atherton Moor in the north,
 
 118 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Sir William Waller's army routed at Lansdowne 
 Heath in tLe west, and Bristol lost, Roger was writing 
 us, on the 31st, news from Gainsborough of a "notable 
 victory with a chase of six miles." 
 
 Mingled with these good tidings were sayings 
 which Roger had heard of Colonel Cromwell's. Some 
 of these sayings were like proverbs, so closely 
 did the word fit the thought. Others had in them 
 the ring of a war-song, as when he wrote to the 
 Commissioners at Cambridge. "You see by this 
 enclosed how sadly your affairs stand. It's no longer 
 disputing, but out instantly all you can. Raise all 
 your bands; send them to Huntingdon; get up what 
 volunteers you can; hasten your horses. Send these 
 letters to Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, without delay. 
 I beseech you, spare not. You must act lively; do 
 it without distraction. Neglect no means." Yet 
 often it seemed, when you listened to Colonel Crom- 
 well, as if it were by some marvellous accident his 
 thoughts did ever tumble into their right clothes, so 
 strangely did they come lumbering out. But every 
 now and then, if you had patience, amidst the 
 rattling of the rough stones and pebbles, flashed a 
 sentence, sharp cut and brilliant as a diamond, al- 
 though, apparently, as unconscious of its polish and 
 sharpness as the rest of their un,eouthness. "Subtilty 
 may deceive you; integrity never will." Truly, God
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 119 
 
 follows US with encouragements, who is the God of 
 blessings; and I beseech you, let him not lose his 
 blessing upon us! They come in season, and with 
 all the advantages of heartening, as if God should 
 say, 'Up, and be doing, and I will stand by you 
 and help you!' There is nothing to be feared but 
 our own sin and sloth." "If I could speak words 
 to pierce your hearts with the sense of our and your 
 condition, I would. It may be difficult to raise so 
 many men in so short time; but let me assure you 
 it's necessary, and, therefore, to he done." "God 
 hath given reputation to our handful (the Ironsides), 
 let us endeavour to keep it. I had rather have a 
 plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights 
 for, and loves what he knows, than that which you 
 call 'a gentleman' and nothing else. I honour a 
 gentleman that is so indeed." 
 
 "Yet," said Roger in one of his letters, "it gives 
 you little knowledge of what the colonel is, to 
 extract these bits of his sayings, and make them 
 emphatic, as if he meant them for epigrams, when 
 the force is that they are said without force; the 
 thought and purpose in him, which always go to the 
 point in deeds, from time to time flashing straight to 
 the point in words, which are then as strong as other 
 men's deeds. But this I know, when he says of us, 
 'We never find our men so cheerful as when there
 
 120 THE DRAYTON'S AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 is work to do,' or, ' God liatli given reputation to our 
 handful,' we all feel as if we were dubbed kniglits, 
 and were moving about glorious with Eoyal Orders." 
 So, slowly as the year passed on, some of us 
 began dimly to feel that a kingly being had arisen 
 among us, such a king as David was before he was 
 crowned, when he ruled in the hearts of the thousands 
 of Israel by right of the slain giant and the secret 
 anointing of the seer-, a mighty man, who felt 
 nothing impossible 'which he believed right, with 
 whom, if a thing was "necessary," it was "^o he 
 done."
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 121 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 'c 
 
 LETTICE DAVENANT S DIARY. 
 
 "Oxford, January oi)th^ 1G44. — Anotlier Christ- 
 mas, and another birth-day, shut up within these 
 monkish old stone walls. To my mother the chapel, 
 with the painted windows, and the organ, and the 
 daily services, make up for much that we lose. But 
 as to me, when I hear the same sounds, and see the 
 same sights from day to day, I scarcely seem to hear 
 ] or see them at all. They do not wake my soul up. 
 The sacred music of the woods and fields seems to 
 do me more good, at least on week-days. For it is 
 sacred, and it is never the same. And the choristers 
 there, while they are singing their psalms, are busy 
 all the time building their nests, and finding food 
 for their nestlings, which makes their songs all the 
 more tender and sacred to me. 
 
 "Not a word from them at Netherby. And not 
 a step nearer to the end. 
 
 "Yet it is wrong to complain. It is something 
 to have my father and my seven brothers still un- 
 touched, after being exposed during all this time to 
 
 1
 
 122 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 the risks of tlie war. I dread to think what a gulf 
 would yawn between me and Olive, and all of them, 
 if once one very dear to either of us fell in the 
 strife. 
 
 "I have nothing to complain of, but that things 
 do not change; and with what a passion of regret I 
 should long for one of these unchanging days, if one 
 of the terrible changes that might come, came. 
 
 "A wretched phantom of a Parliament appeared 
 here on the 22nd. of January. I would the king 
 had not summoned it. We should leave it to the 
 rebels, I think, to deal with shows and phantoms of 
 real things, with their presumptuous talk of colonels 
 and generals. I would His Majesty had not en- 
 countered their pretence of royal authority, with this 
 pretence of Parliamentary debate. Sixty Lords, and 
 a hundred Commons, or thereabouts, moving help- 
 lessly about these old university streets, with no 
 more power or life in them than the effigies of the 
 saints and crusaders in the churches. Indeed far 
 less, for the effigies are memorials of persons who 
 once were alive, and this Parliament is nothing but 
 a copy of the clothes and trappings of a power now 
 living. The king does not consult them, and the 
 nation does not heed them, and they only show how 
 real the division is amongst us. The king himself 
 calls them the 'mongrel Parliament.' His Majesty
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 123 
 
 is SO grand and majestic wlien he is grave, I feel 
 one could give up anything to bring a happy smile 
 over his sad and kingly countenance. But I would 
 he did not make these jests. Many grave persons, 
 I have noticed, when they set about jesting, are apt 
 to do it rather cruelly. Their jests want feathers. 
 They fall heavily, weighted with the gravity of their 
 character; and instead of pleasantly pricking and 
 stimulating, they wound. Therefore I wish His 
 Majesty would not jest. Especially about Parlia- 
 ments and the navy. People are apt not to see the 
 wit of being called 'cats,' or 'water-rats,' or 'mongrel.' 
 They only feel the sting. 
 
 '"''March. — The Scottish General Leslie has led 
 an army over the Borders. Traitor! When the 
 king was so gracious as to create him Earl of Leven 
 but a few years since. Oh, faithless Scottish men! 
 Infatuated by a thing they call Presbytery, and 
 treacherous to their compatriot and anointed king! 
 
 ''''June 1644. — Another summer within the walls 
 of this old city. Another summer away from the 
 woods at home. I am tempted sometimes to wish 
 the war would end in any way. Politics perplex 
 me more and more. So many people wishing the 
 same thing, for contrary reasons. So many people 
 wishing contrary things for the same reasons. So 
 many on our side whom one hates; so many against
 
 124 THE DRAYTOXS AND THE BAVEXAKTS : 
 
 US wliom we honour. The best meu cloing the worst 
 mischief by beginning the strife; and then dying, 
 or doubting, and giving place to the worst men, who 
 finish it — if ever it is to be finished. Hampden 
 gone, and Lord Falkland; and the names one hears 
 most of now, Prince Rupert and this Oliver Crom- 
 well. They call him General now. What nest? 
 A country gentleman, none of the most notable or 
 of the greatest condition, eking out his farming, 
 some say, with brewing ale, at Huntingdon, until he 
 was forty-two — and at forty-five, forsooth. General 
 Cromwell, with men of condition capping to receive 
 his orders. A fanatic, moreover, who preaches in 
 the open air to his men, between the battles. 
 
 "A cheerful life for Roger Drayton, methinks! 
 For commander, this fanatic brewer; for comrades, 
 preaching tailors and fighting cobblers; for recrea- 
 tion. General Cromwell's sermons; and for martial 
 music. Sir Launcelot says, Puritan Psalms, entoned 
 pathetically through the nose. A change for Roger 
 Drayton from Mr. Milton's organ-playing, or the 
 madrigals we sang at Netherby. And yet I question 
 whether our Harry would not find even that doleful 
 Puritan music more to his taste than many a mocking 
 Cavalier ditty wherewith our men entertain them- 
 selves. The times are grave enough, and I doubt 
 sometimes but the Puritan music suits them best.
 
 A Sl'UUY OF THE CIVIL, WARS. 125 
 
 '''■Juhj 20. — Tei-rible tidings, if true. Lord 
 Newcastle and Prince Rupert defeated at Marston 
 Moor, on the 2nd of July, by the Earl of Manchester 
 and Cromwell. A hundred colours taken, and all 
 the baggage; the royal army scattered in all direc- 
 tions. And ten days afterwards, York surrendered. 
 Loyal York, in the heart of the loyal North, His 
 Majesty's first retreat from his faithless capital! 
 
 "Strange that men speak more of Oliver Crom- 
 Avell than of the Earl of Manchester, in this battle. 
 Strange, if it is true, as some say, that this firebrand 
 was already in a ship bound for flight to America a 
 few years since, when the king forbade him to go. 
 My father says, however, that the man who really 
 won the victory for the Parliament was Prince 
 Rupert, who, saith he, is no general, but a mere 
 reckless chief of foraging-parties. It was he who 
 hurried the Marquis of Newcastle into battle, against 
 his judgment. And now it is reported that my Lord 
 Newcastle, despairing of himself, with such associates 
 (or of the cause with such leaders), has taken ship 
 for France. I would it were the Palatine princes 
 instead. Their standard was taken at Marston Moor. 
 
 "Three of my brothers were there-, one wounded, 
 but not severely ; the other two have gone northward 
 we know not where. 
 
 "Harry is much with us, being about the king's
 
 126 THE DPvATTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 person. He will liave notliing to do witli the prince's 
 plundering parties. But lie chafes at having missed 
 this battle, and is eager for the king to go westward 
 to inspire and reward loyal Devon and Cornwall by 
 his presence, and to pursue my Lord Essex, who 
 has gone thither with the rebel forces. 
 
 '"'' August. — The queen embarked on the 14th of 
 July for France. I marvel she can bear to put the 
 seas between her and the king at such times as 
 these. But my mother says she could not help it, 
 and sacrifices herself most, and most to the purpose, 
 by taking off the burden of her safety from His 
 Majesty, and going among her royal kindred, whom 
 she may stir up to fight. And indeed she did essay 
 to rejoin the king. After the birth of the little 
 princess at Exeter, she asked my Lord Essex for a 
 safe-conduct to the Bath to drink the waters; but he 
 offered lier instead a safe- conduct to London, 'where,' 
 quoth he, 'she would find the best physicians.' A 
 sorry jest I deem this, inviting her to run into the 
 very den of the disloyal Parliament, which lately 
 dared to 'impeach' her. 
 
 "Rebel galleys followed her from Torbay, but 
 she escaped safe to Brest, and I trow the king's af- 
 fection for her is so true he had rather know her 
 safe than have her with him. Yet, methinks, in her 
 case I would not have left it to him to decide. The
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 127 
 
 more one I so loved cared for my welfare and safety, 
 the more I would deliglit to risk and dare all. 
 
 ^''August. — They are o£P to the West, the faith- 
 ful West — the king, and my father, and Harry, 
 with an army enthusiastical in their loyalty, and 
 high in hope and courage. Prince Rupert not with 
 them, and Oliver Cromwell not with the rebels. 
 Surely there must be great things done! 
 
 '"'' 8e2)temher. — The glorious news has come: — 
 
 "Lord Essex's army is ruined, gone, vanished. 
 Not routed in a hard fight, but steadily pursued to 
 Fowey, in a corner of loyal Cornwall, there cooped 
 up ingloriously, closer and closer, until the general 
 was fain to flee by sea, and the whole of the foot 
 had to surrender. The cavalry, indeed, fought their 
 way through, which, being Englishmen, I excuse 
 them. Bvt.t never was ruin more complete. 
 
 "Harry writes from Tavistock, where His Ma- 
 jesty has retired, a small town nestled among wooded 
 hills at the foot of the wild moors. Mr. Pym was 
 member for it; nevertheless the place seems not ill- 
 disposed. 
 
 '"'' November. — Harry is with us. I have never 
 seen him so in spirits since the war began. 
 
 "The royal army received a slight check at New- 
 bury, a place fatal already with the blood of the 
 brave Lord Falkland.
 
 128 THB DEAYTONS AND THE DAVEKAJjTS: 
 
 "But Harry seems to tliiuk nothing of that in 
 comparison witli the state of tilings this battle hath 
 revealed among the rebels. Rebellion, saith he, is 
 at last obeying its own laws, and crumbling away 
 by its own inherent disorganization. 
 
 "After the second battle of Newbury the quiet 
 of our life was effectually broken by a threatened 
 attack on Oxford. 
 
 "Artillery booming at our gates, bullets falling 
 in our streets. At last I had a little taste of real 
 war. I did not altogether dislike it. There was 
 something that made my heart beat firmer in the 
 thought of sharing my brothers' and my father's 
 danger. But then, I must confess, it did not come 
 very near. The walls were still between us and the 
 enemy. After a short cannonading the rebels drew 
 off, from a cause, Harry says, worth us .many vic- 
 tories. Lord Essex and Sir William Waller, their 
 two generals, could not agree, and between them 
 the attack on Oxford was abandoned; and what was 
 more, the king, who was encamped outside the city, 
 with a force in numbers quite unequal to cope with 
 their combined forces was suffered to retreat withoixt 
 a blow to Worcester. 
 
 "But better than all. Harry says the rebel gen- 
 erals are assailing each other with all kinds of re- 
 proaches in the Parliament, accusing each other as
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 129 
 
 the cause of all the late failures. Lord Essex, Lord 
 Mancliester , and Sir William Waller, none of them 
 cordially uniting with each other against us, but all 
 most cordially uniting in assailing Oliver Cromwell, 
 who is the only one among them we have cause to 
 dread. And to complete the mel^e, the Scottish 
 preachers are having their say in the matter, and 
 solemnly accuse Mr. Cromwell of being an 'Incen- 
 diary!' 
 
 "Which it is quite plain to us he is. So that 
 now, when the Incendiaries themselves have set 
 about to fight each other, and to put out the flames, 
 it is probable the arson will be avenged, the flames 
 will be j)ut out, and we quiet and loyal subjects shall 
 have nothing left to do but to rebuild the ruins. 
 
 "Then we will try to say as little as we can 
 about who began the mischief, and only see who 
 can work best in repairing it. 
 
 "The king and the Parliament throughout the 
 land, and the Dray tons and the Davenauts at dear 
 old Netherby." 
 
 The Drayimis and the Da/venants, 11.
 
 130 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS; 
 
 xxvn. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 At the end of July 1644 we had a letter from 
 Eoger : — 
 
 '■'■Marston Moor, July 3rd. — To my dear sister, Mistress 
 Olive Drayton. — On the battle-field. A messenger going- 
 south will take tliese. 
 
 " Thank God we are here this day. And the enemy is 
 not here, but flying right and left, over moor and mountain. 
 No such victory has been vouchsafed us before. 
 
 "Yesterday, the 2ncl July, early in the morning, we 
 were moving off the ground — Lord Manchester, General 
 Leslie, and General Cromwell. 
 
 "Prince Rupert had gallantly thrown provisions into 
 York, which we wei'e beleaguering; but the generals 
 thought he would not venture an attack on oui- combined 
 forces. 
 
 "But when we were fairly in order of march the prince 
 fell on our rear. 
 
 "It took us till three in the day to face round, front 
 them, and secure the position we wanted. There is a rye 
 field here with a ditch in front, where the dead bear wit- 
 ness how we had to fight for it. 
 
 "At three. Prince Rupert gave their battle-cry: ^For 
 God and the king ;' and we ours: '■Godioitli us.^ From three 
 till five we pounded each other with the great guns. But 
 little impression was made on either side. And at five
 
 A STORY OF THE CXVITj WARS. 131 
 
 there was a pause. Two hours' silence, confronting each 
 other, from five to seven. Such silence as may be where 
 many are wounded, and many are waiting in agonies for 
 the summons to die , while the rest were waiting for the 
 summons to charge. At last, at seven, it came. 
 
 "Our foot, under Lord Manchester, ran across the 
 ditch before that rye field for which they had fought so 
 hard. Thus far was clear to all. The rest we know only 
 from comparing what we did, and seeing what we had 
 done afterwards. For immediately on the attack of the 
 foot came the charges of the horse. The left wing of the 
 king's army, on our right, they all but routed, driving the 
 Lord Manchester, Lord Fairfax, and the old veteran Leslie 
 from the field. Meantime our right — that is, we, the Iron- 
 sides with the general — charged their left. We were not 
 beaten. 1 trust we gave him no reason to be ashamed of 
 us. But evei\>T\4iere the fighting was hard. Having dis- 
 charged our pistols , we flung them fi-om us and fell to it 
 with swords. Then came the shock, like two seas meeting, 
 each man encountering the foe before him , but few know- 
 ing how the day was speeding elsewhere, till we found 
 ourselves with the whole front of the battle changed , each 
 victorious wing having wheeled round as they fought, and 
 standing where the enemy had stood when the fight began. 
 Then came up General Cromwell's reserves with General 
 Leslie's, and decided the day, sending Prince Eupert and 
 his plunderers flying headlong through the gathering dusk. 
 It was the first time they had encountered the Ironsides. 
 Their broken horse trampled, as they fled, on the broken 
 and flying foot, we spurring after them, till within a mile 
 of York. Ai'ms, ammunition, baggage, colours, all cast 
 away in the mad terror of the flight. To within a mile 
 from York we followed them, and then turned back, and 
 slept on the battle-field. 
 
 "Another silence, Olive*, not as before, in expectation 
 
 9*
 
 132 THE DRA.YTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 of auotlier figlit, but witli ovir work done, and foui- thousand 
 dead around us to be bm-ied. 
 
 " Job Forster is safe, and would have you tell Eachel 
 that the Lord has sent Israel a judge at last, and all must 
 go right now. 
 
 "He went about with Dr. Antony all night, seeing to 
 the wounded and the dying. 
 
 "When I awoke, the summer morning was shining on 
 the field , and I wondered how I could have slept with all 
 those sights and sounds around me. But, thank God, I did, 
 for there is more to be done yet. York has to be taken. 
 
 "Tell Eachel, by using my miUtary authority, I got 
 Job to lie down in my place, while I went romid with Dr. 
 Antony. At fii-st he wavered. But I said: 'The general 
 is sharp on any of us who neglect om* arms or powder. And 
 the body has to be looked to as well as the powder.' 
 Whereon he lay down in my cloak , and in a minute was 
 beyond the reach of any rousing, short of cannonade. 
 
 " iV. ii. — Two young Daveuauts fought well a few yards 
 from me ; scarcely more than lads. 
 
 "God grant we gained yesterday a step towards 
 peace." 
 
 A fortnight after, another letter, dated: — 
 
 "Fo?-I-, the loth July. — York has sm-rendered. The 
 North is om-s. This moment returned from a thanksgiving 
 in the minster. The grandest music of the organ scarce, 
 I think , could have echoed more solemnly among the old 
 roofs and arches than that psalm , sung by the thousands 
 of rough soldiers' voices. King David was a soldier , and 
 knew how to make such jisalms as soldiers need. Nor do 
 I think the old minster has often seen a congregation more 
 serious and devout. If some on the Cavalier side had 
 heard it, they could scarce have said afterwards, our Puri-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 133 
 
 tan religion lacked its solemnities. Our solemnities begin 
 indeed ivithin ; but when the tide of devotion is high and 
 deep enough, no music like that it makes in overflowing." 
 
 To Eoger, as to any one borne on the chariot of 
 the sun, the whole world seemed full of light. To 
 us, however, meanwhile in the Fens, things seemed 
 verging more and more from twilight into night. 
 
 Not much more than a month after the letter of 
 Roger's concerning the surrender of York, came 
 tidings which, it seemed to us, more than counter- 
 balanced these advantages. 
 
 The royal letter post, lately established on the 
 great North Road between London and Edinburgh, 
 and southward between London and Plymouth, had 
 been interrupted during the war. Netherby lay in 
 the line of one of the more recent branch-posts; and 
 we missed at first the pleasant sound of the horn 
 which the postman was commanded to blow four 
 times every hour, besides at the posting-stations. 
 
 At first Aunt Dorothy rather rejoiced. She had 
 been wont to say it was a grievous interference with 
 the liberty of the subject, that we should be com- 
 pelled to send all our letters by the hands of the 
 king's messengers, instead of by any private carrier 
 we chose. And, moreover, she deemed it highly 
 derogatory to His Majesty to demean himself to take 
 a few pence each letter for such services. But a few
 
 134 THE DRAYTOXS AKD THE DAVEXANTS: 
 
 months of return to tlie old private method, with all 
 its uncertainties and suspenses, made her receive the 
 public posts again as a boon, when the Common- 
 wealth government re-established them. 
 
 It was from Dr. Antony, therefore, that we first 
 heard the tidings of the Lord Essex's flight from 
 Fowey, and the ruiu of his whole army. 
 
 This was not until November. 
 
 He brought two letters from my father and 
 Roger. My father's was sad; Roger's was indig- 
 nant. Both spoke of divisions among the supporters 
 of the Parliament. They were written at different 
 times, but reached us together by Dr. Antony's hand 
 as the first safe opportunity. The first was from 
 Roger, dated late in September, speaking of the sur- 
 render of Lord Essex's foot: — 
 
 "Marstou Moor, with the four thousand that lie dead 
 there, was after all, it seems, not a step towards the end. 
 Everything gained there is thrown away again by the in- 
 decisions of noblemen who are afraid to Avin too much; 
 and old soldiers who will not move a finger except in the 
 fashion some one else moved it a hmidred years ago. As 
 if when war is once begun , there were any way to peace 
 but by the ruiu of one party, except, indeed, by the ruiu 
 of both; as if a lingering war were a kind of half peace, 
 instead of being, as it is, the worst of wars — the opening 
 of the nation's veins at a thousand points, whereby she 
 slowly bleeds to death. Lieuteuaut-General Cromwell 
 takes sadly to heart the sad conditions of our army iu the
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WxiES. 135 
 
 West. He saith, had we wiugs we would fly thither. In- 
 deed, wings he hath at command, in the hearts of his men, 
 'never so cheerful,' he says, 'as when there is work to do.' 
 But there are those whose chief business is to cliiJ these 
 wings , lest affairs fly too fast. The general saith , ' If we 
 could all intend our own ends less , and our ease too , our 
 business in this army would go on wheels for expedition.' 
 If he were at the head of aft'airs, we should not, in sooth, 
 lack wheels or wings." 
 
 The second letter was from my father, written 
 early in November, after the second battle of New- 
 bury (fought on the 27tli of October). 
 
 He wrote, — 
 
 "It is the old story, I fear, of our Protestant lack of 
 unity. Peojjle do not seem able to see that the military 
 unity of the Roman Church being broken , the only eccle- 
 siastical unity possible for us is the vmity as of an empire, 
 like that of Great Britain, with dift'erent races and local 
 constitutions under one sovereign; or the unity as of a 
 family of grown-up children, in free obedience to one 
 father. If Lutherans and Calvinists could have merged 
 their lesser differences in their real agreement, probably 
 that terrible war, which is still crushing the life out of 
 Germany, need never have begun. If Prelatists, Presby- 
 terians , and Independents could agree now to yield each 
 otlier liberty, this war of ours might end. But while they 
 had power, Prelatists would rather let the nation be torn 
 asunder than tolerate Presbyterians. And now the Pres- 
 byterians think they have power, they had rather lose 
 everything we have gained than tolerate Independents. 
 The merit of the Independents and Anabaptists being,
 
 136 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 perhaps , only this , that they never have had the power to 
 persecute. I cannot see whither it is all tending. 
 
 "We have lost an army in Cornwall; bnt that is little. 
 It seems to me some of us are losing all hold of what we 
 are fighting for. This success at Newbury shows our 
 weakness more than the ruin at Fowey. Lord Manchester 
 will not pursue the king, lest oui* last army should be lost ; 
 in which case, he says, His Majesty might hang us all. 
 As if the block or the fallows had not been the alternative 
 of success from the beginning. In consequence of a dis- 
 agreement between him and Sir William Waller, the com- 
 bined attack on Oxford failed; and eleven days after our 
 success at Newbvuy, His Majesty's troops were suffered 
 quietly to withdraw their artillery fi-om Donnington Castle, 
 in face of oui* victorious army lying inactive. 
 
 " The indignation in the army is unbounded. But all 
 minor divisions bid fair to resolve themselves into two great 
 factions of Presbyterians and Independents; Lieutenant- 
 General Cromwell having addressed a remonstrance to the 
 Parliament against Lord Manchester, and Lord Man- 
 chester, Lord Essex, and Hollis, with the Scotch Commis- 
 sioners, being set on crushing General Cromwell. 
 
 " The quarrel is of no new origin. The affair of Don- 
 nington Castle did but set the tinder to the train. It dates 
 back to the first sitting of the Westminster Assembly, 
 when the Presbyterians, not content with absorbing the 
 Church revenues, which would have been conceded to 
 them, would have had the magistrate imprison and con- 
 fiscate the goods of all whom they excommunicated. 
 ' Toleration ,' said one of them , ' will make the kingdom a 
 chaos, a Babel, another Amsterdam , a Sodom , an Egypt, 
 a Babylon. Toleration is the grand work of the devil; his 
 masterpiece and chief engine to support his tottering king- 
 dom. It is the most compendious , ready, siu'e way to de- 
 stroy all religion , lay all waste, and bring in all evil. As
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 137 
 
 (irigiual sin is the fimdameutal sin, having the seed and 
 spawn of all sin in it, so toleration hath all eiTors in it 
 and all evils.' They call toleration the 'great Diana of the 
 Independents.' Yet no one contends for toleration to ex- 
 tend beyond the orthodox Protestant sects. These divi- 
 sions set many of us thinking what we are fighting for. It 
 would be scarcely woi-th so much blood-shedding to estab- 
 lish one hundred and twenty Popes at Westminster, in- 
 stead of one at Lambeth. They are golden words of 
 General Cromwell's : 'All that believe have the real unity, 
 which is most glorious, because inward and spiritual, in the 
 Body and to the Head. For being united in forms, every 
 Christian will, for peace' sake, study and do, as far as con- 
 science will jiermit. And for brethren, in things of the mind, 
 we look for no compiilsion but that of light and reason.'" 
 
 "What does my brother mean, Master Antony?" 
 quotli Aunt Dorothy when she came to this passage. 
 "And what doth General Cromwell mean? 'No 
 compulsion!' and 'light and reason!' Most dangerous 
 words. An assembly of godly divines at Westminster 
 to settle everything! That is precisely what we have 
 been fighting for. Not for disorder; not for each 
 man to think what is right in his own judgment, 
 and do what is right in his own eyes. But for 
 those who believe right to have the power to in- 
 struct, or else to silence, those who believe wrong. 
 Light and reason indeed! The cry of all the heretics 
 from the beginning. Why, reason is the very source 
 of all error. And light is precisely what Ave lack, 
 and what the Westminster Assembly is providing for
 
 138 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 us; and wlien tliey have just kindled it, and set it 
 up like a city on a hill, does Mr. Cromwell, forsooth, 
 think we are going to let every tinker and tailor 
 kindle his xjirthing caudle instead, and lead people 
 into any wilderness he pleases?" 
 
 Said Dr. Antony, — 
 
 "There was a great light enkindled and set up 
 on a Sorrowful Hill sixteen hundred years ago. But 
 it has only enlightened the hearts of those who 
 would look at it. And if the Sun does not put out 
 these poor farthing candles. Mistress Dorothy, I am 
 afraid we shall find it a hard matter to do so with 
 our fingers." 
 
 "Well," said Aunt Dorothy, "I am sure I cannot 
 see whither things are tending." 
 
 And even Aunt Gretel remarked, — 
 
 "That Independents and Presbyterians should 
 agree might indeed be easy enough. But Lutherans 
 and Calvinists are quite another question. In the 
 next world — well, it is to be hoped. Death 
 works miracles. But in this, scarcely. The dear 
 brother-in-law is one of the wisest of men. But 
 it cannot be expected that the wisest Englishman 
 should quite fathom the religious differences of Ger- 
 many." 
 
 Of toleration towards Papists, Infidels, or Quakers, 
 no one dreamed. Infidelity, all admitted, comes
 
 A STORY OP THE ClVIIi WARS. 139 
 
 direct from tlie devil, and, of course, no Christian 
 should tolerate tlie devil or his works. The Papists 
 had within the memory of our older men sent fetters 
 to bind us, and fagots to burn us, in the Armada, 
 which the winds of God scattered from our coasts. 
 In France they had massacred our brethren in cold 
 blood to the number of one hundred thousand in 
 the slaughter which began on St. Bartholomew's Day. 
 They had assassinated our kindred by tens of thou- 
 sands in Ireland in our own times. And they were 
 binding, and burning, and torturing, and making 
 galley-slaves of our brethren still on the Continent 
 of Europe. Not as heretics we kept them under, but 
 as rebels. And as to the Quakers, they were reported 
 to be liable to attacks of objections to clothes very 
 perplexing to sober-minded Christians, and were pro- 
 bably many of them lunatics. These should not indeed 
 be burned, but they should at all events be clothed, 
 and, if possible, silenced, until they came to their 
 right mind. 
 
 The third letter which Dr. Antony had brought us 
 was from Job Forster. I went with Dr. Antony to 
 take it to Rachel. In it Job spoke much of Roger's 
 courage and goodness, in a way it made my heart 
 beat quick to hear. 
 
 "Master Roger fights like a lion-like man of 
 Judah," wrote Job, "and commands like one of the
 
 140 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 chief princes. And at otlier times he can tend a 
 wounded man, friend or foe, or speak good words to 
 the dying, most as tender, Kachel, as thee." 
 
 Job's letter was by no means doubtful or 
 desponding. He had the advantage of those in the 
 ranks. He saw only the rank and the step imme- 
 diately before him, and heard not the discussions of 
 the commanders but only the word of command. 
 "I think," he concluded, "we have come about to 
 1 Sam. xxTT. 14. Some time back we were in 
 1 Sam. XXII. 1, in cave Adullam: 'Every one that 
 was in debt, and every one that was discontented, 
 gathered themselves unto them,' and a sorry troop 
 they were. But that is over. The General saith 
 himself-, 'I have a lovely company; honest, sober 
 Christians; you would respect them did you know 
 them.' And respect us they do; leastways the 
 enemy. And now David (that is, General Cromwell) 
 is in Keilah. And they inquired of the Lord, and 
 the Lord said, 'They will deliver thee up.' But 
 God delivered him not. The rest has to come in its 
 season." 
 
 Job wrote also of " the young gentleman the 
 chirurgeon." "Of as good a courage as the best," 
 quoth Job. "For I hold it harder to stand about 
 among the whizzing bullets, succouring or removing 
 the wounded, than to fight. It is always harder
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVITi "WARS. 141 
 
 to stand fire tban to charge. Aud it is harder 
 to spend days and nights tending 'poor groaning 
 suflFering men than to suffer yourself. That is, 
 if you have got a heart. Which that doctor 
 hath. But every man hath his calling. And Dr. 
 Antony hath his. Straight from head-quarters, as I 
 deem." 
 
 It was curious that what struck me first in those 
 words of Job's was his calling Dr. Antony "young." 
 It set me wondering what his age might be; and 
 as we walked home together, I glanced at him to 
 see. I had always thought of him as my father's 
 friend, and therefore of another generation. Besides 
 there was the doctor's cap, and a physician is al- 
 ways, ex officio^ an elder. But when I came to con- 
 sider his face, it had certainly nothing of old age in 
 it. His carriage was erect and easy; his hair, raven- 
 black, had not a streak of gi'ay; his eyes, dark as 
 they were, had fire enough in them. These researches 
 scarce took me a moment, but his eyes met mine, and 
 it seemed as if he half guessed what I was thinking 
 of, for he said, — 
 
 "You wondered at Job's talking of the courage 
 of a chirurgeon." 
 
 "Not at all," said I, somewhat confused. "I was 
 only thinking how it was you were always our father's 
 friend instead of ours."
 
 142 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "Was I not yours?" he said, half smiliug. 
 
 "Oil, yes, of course," I said, "every one's." 
 
 "Everyone's, Mistress Olive," lie said inquiringly, 
 "only, not yours?" 
 
 "Mine, of course," I said, feeling myself be- 
 coming hopelessly entangled, "and every one's be- 
 sides." 
 
 "Thank you," he said gravely, "I should not 
 have liked the exchange." 
 
 "Is it easier, do you think, Dr. Antony," I said, 
 breaking hurriedly from the subject, "to fight than 
 to be a chirurgeon on the battle-field?" 
 
 "Easier, probably, to me," he said. "Fighting 
 is in our blood. My grandfather was a soldier, and 
 fought in the French wars of religion. 'He was 
 assassinated at the St. Bartholomew with Coligny. 
 My father, then a child, was seized, baptized, and 
 educated in a Catholic seminary. But he escaped, 
 at the risk of his life, to England. In France we 
 had enough of wars of religion. I have thought it 
 better work to devote myself as far as I may to suc- 
 cour the oppressed, and heal such as can be healed 
 of the wounds and sorrows of men. There is enough 
 of danger and of warfare in these days in such a 
 calling to satisfy a soldier's passion, and not to let 
 the blood stagnate or grow cold." 
 
 There was a subdued fire in his eye and a deep
 
 A STOHY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 143 
 
 sonorous ring in liis voice, whicli gave force to his 
 words. 
 
 "But Antony is not a French name," I said. 
 
 "It was my father's Christian name, which lie 
 adopted for safety. His name was properly Antoine 
 la Mothe Duplessis, from an estate our family had 
 held for some centuries. But, Mistress Olive," he 
 said, turning the discourse, as if it led to painful sub- 
 jects, or as if he shrank from continuing on a theme 
 so unusual with him as himself, "I understand you 
 are accused of upholding witches." 
 
 Whereby I was led into an earnest defence of 
 Gammer Grindle. 
 
 "But even if she had been a witch," I ventured 
 to say, in conclusion, "would it not have been 
 more like the Sermon on the Mount to rescue and 
 then to instruct her, than to drown her? And is 
 not the Sermon on the Mount the highest law we 
 have?" 
 
 "It is the last edition of the Divine law yet 
 issued. Mistress Olive," he said. "And one great 
 glory of it is, it seems to me, that it is not only 
 so plain itself as to need no commentary of lawyer 
 or scribe, but if we try to keep it, it has a wonder- 
 ful power of making other things plain as we go 
 on." 
 
 At which point we reached the porch at Netherby.
 
 144 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Said Auut Dorothy, as Dr. Antony was taking 
 leave the next day, — 
 
 "You must not trouble yourself to be our letter- 
 carrier. Less useful men can be spared on such 
 errands. I wonder my brother should have burdened 
 you therewith." 
 
 "I thank you, Mistress Dorothy," said he; "but it 
 was my free choice to come. And I promise you I 
 will only come when it is no burden." 
 
 Said she, holding his hand, — 
 
 "Pardon me; but I am old enough to be your 
 mother. Suifer an aged woman to warn you against 
 new-fangled notions. Beware of 'light' and 'reason,' 
 prithee, and such presumptuous pleas. The light 
 that is in us is darkness, and our reason is corrupt. 
 The spiritual armour your fathers fought in, Master 
 Antony, is proof still." 
 
 "I believe it, Mistress Dorothy," he replied; 
 " and if in new times and in new dangers I should 
 need new weapons, believe me, I will only go to 
 my fathers' armoury for them." 
 
 I was provoked with myself when he had left, 
 that of all the wise discourse that had been held 
 since he came, the things that kept recurring most 
 to my mind were what Job had said of Dr. Antony, 
 and how foolish I had been in the answers I gave 
 him on our way home from Rachel's. He must
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 145 
 
 deem me so unmannerly, I thought. And, besides, 
 so many fitting things now occurred which I might 
 have said. Nothing occupies one like a conversation 
 in which one has failed to say what one ought to 
 have said. It haunts one like a melody of which 
 you cannot find the end. 
 
 It was evident, moreover, that. Aunt Dorothy took 
 the same view of Dr. Antony's age as Job. It made 
 Dr. Antony seem like some one quite new, to think 
 of this; new, and yet certainly not strange. 
 
 The next Christmas, the army being in winter- 
 quarters , my father spent with us , which made it a 
 holiday indeed. 
 
 In February 1645, he read us a letter which Dr. 
 Antony wrote to him , narrating what was going on 
 in London. At the beginning there was a consider- 
 able piece which he did not read to us. He said it 
 related to family matters, which he could speak of 
 hereafter, and contained greetings to us. Thus the 
 letter proceeded — it was dated January 21st, 
 1645: — 
 
 "Sir Thomas Fairfax is this day appointed by the 
 Commons' House general-iu-chief , iu lieu of Lord Essex ; 
 Skipton major-general; while the post of lieutenant-general 
 is left open. Most men deem that he who fills it will fill 
 mo7-e than it, as his name and fame now fill all men's mouths. 
 There have been fierce debates , whisperings, conspirings, 
 mysterious midnight meetings at Essex House; the aim of 
 The Draytons and the Bavenants, II. 10
 
 146 THE DRAYTOiiS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 the whole of these conspmngs, the bond of all these gather- 
 ings, being to ' remove out of the way General-Lieuteuaut 
 Cromwell, whom,' said the Scottish Commissioners, 'ye ken 
 very weel is no friend of ours.' This 'obstacle,' this 're- 
 mora,' this ' incendiaky,' as they called him (soaring high 
 into Latin in their vain endeavoui-s to find words lofty 
 enough to express the depth of their abhorrence), had hun- 
 dreds of grave English and Scottish Presbyterian divines, 
 soldiers, and lawyer?, been laboui-ing for months to remove 
 out of the way; yet nevertheless, on the 9th of December, 
 there he stood in the Commons' House, as immovable an 
 obstacle and ^remora' as ever, and about to prove himself 
 an 'Incendiary' indeed by kindling a flame which should 
 consume their eloquent Latin accusations and their author- 
 ity at once. 
 
 ''There was a long silence in the House. General 
 Cromwell broke it, speaking abruptly, and not in Latin. 
 
 "'It is now a time to speak,' he said, 'or for ever hold 
 the tongue. The important occasion now is no less than 
 to save a nation out of a bleeding , nay, almost dying con- 
 dition, which the long continuance of this war hath already 
 brought it into; so that without a more speedy, vigorous, 
 effectual prosecution of the war — casting off' all lingering 
 proceedings like those of soldiers of fortune beyond sea to 
 spin out a war — we shall make the kingdom weary of us, 
 and hate the name of a Parliament. 
 
 "'For what do the enemy say? Nay, what do many 
 that were friends at the beginning of the Parliament? 
 Even this, that the members of both Houses have got great 
 places and commands, and the sword into then- hands, and 
 what by interest in Parliament, what by power in the 
 army, will perpetually continue themselves in grandeur, 
 and not permit the war speedily to end, lest their own 
 power should determine with it. This that I sjjeak here 
 to om* own faces, is but what others do utter abroad behind
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 147 
 
 our backs. I am far from reflecting on any. I know the 
 wortli of tliose commanders. Members of both Houses 
 who are still in power; but if I may speak my conscience 
 without reflection on any, I do conceive if the army is not 
 put into another method, and the war more vigorously pro- 
 secuted, the people can bear the war no longer, and will 
 enforce you to a dishonom-able peace. 
 
 "'But this I would recommend to your prudence. Not 
 to insist upon any complaint or oversight of any com- 
 mander-in-chief upon any occasion whatsoever, for as I 
 must acknowledge myself guilty of oversights , so I know 
 they can rarely be avoided in military aftairs. Therefore, 
 waiving a strict inquiry into the issues of these things , let 
 us apply ourselves to the remedy, which is most necessaiy. 
 And I hojje we have such true English hearts, and zealous 
 affections towards the general weal of our mother-country, 
 as no members of either House will scruple to deny them- 
 selves and their own private interests for the public good, 
 nor account it to be a dishonour done to them, whatever 
 the Parliament shall resolve upon in this weighty matter.' 
 
 "Another member followed and said, — 
 
 "'Whatever be the cause, two summers are passed 
 over, but we are not saved. Our victories (the price of 
 blood invaluable) so gallantly gotten , and (which is more 
 pity) so graciously bestowed, seem to have been put into a 
 bag with holes; what we won one time, we lost another; 
 the treasure is exhausted, the country wasted, a summer's 
 victory has proved but a winter's story; the game, how- 
 ever, shut up with autumn, was to be played again the 
 next spring , as if the blood that had been shed were only 
 to manure the field of war for a more plentiful crop of con- 
 tention. Men's hearts have failed them with the observa- 
 tion of these things.' 
 
 "The cause General Cromwell deemed to be the multipli- 
 cation of commanders. The remedy, that members of both 
 
 10*
 
 14.8 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Houses should deny tliemselves the right to appoint tliem- 
 selves to posts of military command. The ' Self-Denying 
 Ordinance ' and the ' New Model ' of the army were pro- 
 posed, and soon passed the House of Commons. The Lords 
 debated and rejected it; but this day the Commons have 
 appointed Sir Thomas Fairfax commander-in-chief, super- 
 seding Lord Essex. And few doubt but they will carry it 
 through. 
 
 "Thus may, we trust, a few vigorous strokes bring 
 peace; and peace, order. 
 
 "But meanwhile, during these dark January days, an- 
 other conflict has ended ; on Tower Hill. 
 
 "The fallen archbishop, whose name was a teiTor for 
 so many years in every Puritan home in England, there, 
 on this 10th of January, laid down his life heroically and 
 calmly as a martyr-, which he sm-ely believed himself to be. 
 He read a prayer he had composed for the occasion. I 
 grieve to say, the scaffold was crowded, not with his friends. 
 He said he would have wished an empty scaffold , but if it 
 could not be so , God's will be done ; he was more wiUing 
 to go out of the world than any could be to send him. A 
 helpless, forsaken old man, heavily laden with bodily in- 
 firmities, four years a prisoner, uneasily dragged from trial 
 to trial, I never heard that his courage failed. I would 
 they had let him die in quiet. But Sir John Clotworthy, 
 over-zealous, as I think, asked him what text was most 
 comfortable to a man in his dejjartiu'e. ' Cupio dissolvi et 
 esse cum Chi-isto,' said the archbishop. 'That is a good 
 desire,' was the rejoinder; 'but there must be a founda- 
 tion for that desire, an assm-ance.' 'No man can express 
 it,' was the calm reply, 'it must be found within.' 'Yet it 
 is founded on a word, and that word should be known.' 
 'It is the knowledge of Jesus Christ,' said the archbishop, 
 ' and that alone ; ' and to finish the discussion, he turned to 
 the headsman, gave him some money, and said, 'Here,
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 149 
 
 honest friend, God forgive thee, and do thy office on me in 
 mercy ; ' and so , after a short prayer, his head was struck 
 off at one blow. The crowd dispersed , and the fatal hill 
 was left once more silent and deserted , with the scaffold 
 and the Tower facing each other, the Aveary prison of so 
 many, and the blood-stained key, which had for so many 
 unbarred its heavy gates, and also, we may trust, another 
 gate, from inside which oiu* whole earth seems but a prison 
 chamber. 
 
 "If we look at the world only as divided into jmr ties, 
 truly this death of his were worth to those who think with 
 him, more than many victories in Parliament or in the field. 
 But if we think of the One Kingdom , sm-ely we may re- 
 joice that one who, as it seems to us, eiTcd much in head 
 and heart, and did no little hurt, came right at last, and 
 took refuge with Him who receives us not as Archbishops, 
 or Presbyterians, or Independents, but as repentent, weary, 
 and heavy-laden men and women. 
 
 " Some few friends reverently buried him in Barking 
 Church to the words of the old burial-service , prohibited 
 by the Parliament a few days before. All houoiu- to 
 them." 
 
 Said Aunt Gretel, when my father had finished 
 reading this letter, — 
 
 "It is a great pity the martyrs should not all be 
 on the right side. It would make it so very much 
 easier to know which is the right." 
 
 "Martyrs on the wrong side!" exclaimed Aunt 
 Dorothy indignantly; "you might as well talk of 
 orthodox heretics." 
 
 But my father replied, —
 
 150 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "If obedience is better tbau sacrifice, tbeu obe- 
 dience is the best part of the sacrifice of martyrdom-, 
 and may we not trust that the Master may accept 
 the act of obedience even of some who misread the 
 word of command?" 
 
 The next day he left us for London, and we saw 
 him no more for many montlis. 
 
 On the 29th of January, Commissioners of the 
 Parliament and of the king met at Uxbridge to ne- 
 gotiate for peace. But they did not get on at all. 
 Dr. Stewart syllogistically defended the divine right 
 of Episcopacy, and Dr. Henderson the divine right 
 of the Presbyterial government. My Lord Hertford 
 and my Lord Pembroke would have passed this by, 
 to proceed to the particular points to be settled; but 
 the divines declined to be hurried, insisting on dis- 
 puting syllogistically "as became scholars." So, 
 after twenty days, Dr. Stewart and Dr. Henderson, 
 being each confirmed in the conviction of his own 
 orthodoxy, the Commissioners separated with no 
 further result. 
 
 One evening, indeed, it is said, the king had 
 consented to honourable terms; but in the night a 
 letter came from Montrose announcing Eoyalist vic- 
 tories, and in the morning His Majesty retracted the 
 concessions of the evening. 
 
 Meanwhile the two armies continued fighting;
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 151 
 
 not in two large bodies, but in scattered skirmishes, 
 sieges, surprises, all over the country, making well- 
 nigh every quiet home in England a sharer in the 
 misery and tumult of the war. 
 
 The moral difference between the forces of the 
 Parliament and the king became, it was said, more 
 obvious. It could scarce be otherwise. War must 
 make men firmer in virtues or more desperate in sin. 
 Men must get less and less human with years of 
 plundering, and indulgence in every selfish sinful 
 pleasure. No good woman durst venture near the 
 Royalist army, my father said, and vice and profane- 
 ness were scarcely punished; whereas in the Parlia- 
 ment camp, as in a well-ordered city, passage was 
 safe, and traffic free. It was the history of the 
 armies of the great Gustavus and that of Wallenstein 
 over again. 
 
 I think it would be blasphemy to deem such 
 differences can have no weight in a world where 
 God is King. 
 
 I wonder if it can be that, after all, it leads to 
 more good to fight out the great battles of right and 
 wrong in this way, than syllogistically, in Dr. 
 Stewart and Dr. Henderson's way. The logical battles 
 making good men fierce, and not hurting the bad at 
 all; the battles for life and death making good men 
 nobler, at all events, even if they make the bad men
 
 152 THE DRAYTONS A^TD THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 worse Making good men better seems the end of 
 so many things that God permits or orders in this 
 world. And as to making bad men worse, it seems 
 as if that could not be helped, because ererythin<j 
 does that until they change the direction they are 
 going in, which great troubles and dangers some- 
 times startle them to do. If this be so, the pain, and 
 misery, and death, would cease to be so perplexing. 
 Aunt Dorothy used' to say, a church without the rod 
 in her hand is a church without sinews. But a 
 church with a rod seems sometimes as blind and 
 severe in using it as the world. For which reason, 
 I suppose, the best periods of church history seem 
 often to be those in which the world holds the rod 
 instead of the church. And a war may sometimes 
 be as effectual an instrument of godly discipline as 
 a synod. 

 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 153 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 LETTICE DAVENANT's DIARY. 
 
 June 14tb, 1645 — Davenant Sall^ Three o'clock 
 in the morning. — We came home yesterday, and I 
 grudge to sleep away any of these first hours in the 
 old house. It is like travelling into some marvellous 
 foreign country, to rise at an unwonted hour in the 
 morning. The sky looks so much higher before the 
 roof of daylight has quite spread over it. For after 
 all, daylight is a roof shutting us in to our own 
 green sunny home of earth. And that is partly 
 what makes the night so awful. We stand roofless 
 at night, open to all the other worlds, with no walls 
 or bounds on any side. And at dawn something of 
 the boundlessness and awfulness are still left. With 
 a majestical slow pomp the morning sweeps the vale 
 of sunlight over star after star, falling in grand so- 
 lemn folds of purple and crimson as it touches the 
 edge of our world, until the great spaces of the 
 upper worlds are all shut out, and we are shut in with 
 our own kindly sun, and our own many -coloured 
 fleeting clouds, and our own green earth. 
 
 "Then the other aspect of the dawn begins. Her
 
 154 THE DRAYrONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 first steps and movements are all grand and silent. 
 But when the awful infinity beyond is shut out, and 
 we are left alone, face to face with her, she changes 
 altogether. 
 
 "The stars pass away in silence. But the day 
 awakes with all kinds of joyful sounds. The clouds 
 are transformed from solemn purple banners in some 
 great martial or sacred procession to royal or bridal 
 draperies. They garland the earth with roses, they 
 strew pearls and diamonds; they spread the path of 
 the new-crowned sun with cloth of gold. The whole 
 world, earth and sky, seems to blossom into colour, 
 like a flower from its sheath. Every leaf of the 
 limes outside my window, every spike of the horse- 
 chestnuts seems to awake with a flutter of joy. 
 
 "It seems as if infinity came back to us in a 
 new way. For the infinite spaces of night, we have 
 the infinite numbers of day. Instead of the heavy 
 masses of foliage waving an hour or two since, 
 dimly against the sky, there is a countless multitude 
 of leaves fluttering in and out of the sunlight, a 
 countless multitude of birds singing, chirping, twit- 
 tering, among the branches, a countless throng of 
 insects hovering, wheeling, darting in and out among 
 the leaves; there are the infinite varieties of colour 
 on every blade of grass, on every blossom, on every 
 insect's wing.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 155 
 
 "It is a wonderful joy to be here again. Every 
 creature seems to welcome me. I seem to long to 
 speak to every one of tliem, and just add a little 
 drop of happiness to the happiness of them all. I 
 want to take all of them, in some way, like little 
 children , to my heart and kiss them. 
 
 "Olive said that feeling was really the longing 
 to be folded to the Heart which is at the heart of 
 all; but nearer us than any other creature. 
 
 '"'''' He fell on Jus neck and hissed Mm.'' 
 
 "She thought it meant something like that. 
 
 "Leaning out of my window, looking down from 
 the slopes of the Wolds, as we do across the long 
 space of fens which stretches before us like a sea, I 
 see the gables of Netherby. 
 
 "Olive is there asleep. 
 
 "Olive, and Mistress Dorothy, and Mistress 
 Gretel. 
 
 "And here, my mother and I. 
 
 "Fathers and brothers all at the war. In sight, 
 yet how sadly out of reach! This terrible war that 
 seems as if it would never end. Things have not 
 been going on quite so prosperously with us lately; 
 although many strong places in the North are still 
 loyal ; and all the West is ours , and much of Wales. 
 A new vigour seems to have come into the rebel 
 councils. They say the soul of them all is this
 
 156 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVBNANTS: 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, that he and his friends have brought 
 in some new regulation, called by some of their un- 
 pleasant Parliament names. They call everything a 
 covenant or an ordinance, as if it were all out of 
 the Bible. They call this the Self-Denying Or- 
 dinance. The meaning of it seems to be, that they 
 are all to deny themselves to give Mr. Cromwell the 
 real command. At least, Harry thinks so. And he 
 looks gloomily on our affairs. He was at home be- 
 fore we came, to make the place ready for us. And 
 he only left yesterday morning to rejoin the king's 
 army, which is in Leicestershire. Not so very far 
 oflF. 
 
 "I wonder, if there were a battle, if we should 
 hear the sound of it! 
 
 "A few days since the troops stormed Leicester, 
 and sacked it. Harry would not tell us much about 
 it! He said it was too much after the fashion of 
 those dreadful German wars of religion, which Prince 
 Rupert has taught our men to imitate too well. 
 
 "Poor wretched city! We could not hear any- 
 thing of that. Groans and even helpless cries for 
 pity do not reach far. At least, not on earth. I 
 suppose nothing reaches heaven sooner. 
 
 "I wish that thought had not come into my head 
 about hearing the roar of a battle if there were one. 
 Since it came, I cannot help listening, through all
 
 A STORV OF THE CIVIL WARS. 157 
 
 the sweet cheerful country -souuds , the twitterings of 
 the swallows under the eaves, the soft cadences of 
 the thrushes, the stirring of the grasses, for something 
 in the distance! 
 
 "If we did hear anything, it would be very, very 
 far off, fainter than the fluttering of the leaves; like 
 the moan of distant thunder. 
 
 " In summer days there are often mysterious, far- 
 off sounds one cannot account for. And now I can 
 do nothing but listen for it. 
 
 "For almost the last thing Harry said when he 
 went away was, that there would be a battle, pro- 
 bably, before long, and if a battle, probably a great 
 battle. 
 
 "The forces are gathering and approaching each 
 other. 
 
 "He took leave of us gayly, my mother and me. 
 But ten minutes afterwards, he galloped back to the 
 place in the outer field where I was standing look- 
 ing after him (my mother having gone to be alone, 
 as she always does when Harry leaves us). His face 
 had lost all the gaiety, and he said, — 
 
 "'Lettice, if things were not to prosper with the 
 king, and the rebels were to attack this house, I 
 think it would be better not attempt to stand a siege. 
 The house extends too far to be defended, except 
 with a larger garrison than you could muster. And
 
 15S THE DRAYTOXS AMD THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 the country is against us. If it came to the very- 
 worst, 3Ir. Drayton is a generous enemy and a 
 gentleman, and would give you safe harbour for a 
 time. If all on their side or ours had been like the 
 Dray tons, there need have been no war. You may 
 tell them that I said so, if you like, if it ever comes 
 to that.' 
 
 '"Comes to v)hat^ Harry?' I said shuddering. 
 
 "He tried to smile. But then, his countenance 
 suddenly changing, he said, — 
 
 "' Lattice, we must think of all possibilities. 
 You are young, and my mother is used to lean on 
 others.' 
 
 '"Only on you^ Harry,' I said. 
 
 '"Yes,' he said hurriedly; 'too much perhaps. 
 But trust the Dray tons, Lettice. They will never 
 do anything unjust or ungenerous. If you ask 
 their advice, they will advise you for your good, 
 though it cut their own throats or broke then* own 
 hearts.' 
 
 "Then, after a moment's pause, he said, — 
 
 "'It is never any good to try to say out a fare- 
 well, Lettice. If one had years to say it in there 
 would always be something left unsaid. Partings 
 are always sudden, whether we are snatched from 
 each other as if by pirates in the dead of night, or 
 watch the lessening sail till it becomes a speck in
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAUS. 159 
 
 the horizon. The last step is always a plunge into 
 a gulf. But, Lettice,' he added, lowering his voice, 
 'death itself is not really a gulf, only to those on 
 this edge of it. Do not tell my mother I came 
 hack. If she asks you anything about it, tell her 
 I never went away with a lighter heart. For I see 
 less and less what the end will he, or what to wish 
 for, and I am content ^more and more to make the 
 day's march, and leave the conduct of the campaign 
 to God.' 
 
 "And he rode off, looking like a prince, and I 
 watched him till he disappeared behind the trees. 
 He looked back once again and waved his plumed 
 hat to me, and then galloped out of sight in a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 "I crept back by a side-door near the stable, 
 that my mother might not see me; and Cajsar, 
 Harry's dog, made a dismal whining, and crouched 
 and fawned on me, so that it went to my heart not 
 to be able to grant him what he asked for so plainly 
 in his poor dumb way, and set him free to follow 
 Harry. 
 
 '"''June 14, Ten 6'cloch at night. — Some men 
 who came from the North this evening, say there 
 has been fighting towards the north-west, somewhere 
 on the borders of Northamptonshire and Leicester- 
 shire. The roar of the guns began early in the day,
 
 160 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 and then there was sharp interrupted firing, which 
 went on till the afternoon, when it seemed gradually 
 to cease. 
 
 "All day it has been going on. All this quiet 
 summer day. My father there, perhaps, and Harry 
 certainly. And nothing to be heard until to-morrow. 
 
 "My mother will not seek rest to-night. 1 see 
 the lamp in her oratory-window. And far off, 
 across the fields, another light in the gable of old 
 Netherby, where Olive Drayton used to sleep. It 
 is some comfort to think we are watching together. 
 Olive is so good. And she will be sure to remem- 
 ber us. 
 
 ''''June 20. — We heard before the morrow. The 
 next morning, when the dawn began to break again, 
 a horseman galloped hastily up to the door. I was 
 in my mother's room; we Avere both dressed. We 
 had neither of us slept. I looked out. It was Roger 
 Drayton. My mother sat up on the bed, where I 
 had persuaded her to rest. 
 
 "'I will go down and ask,' I said. 
 
 "'We will go together, Lettice,' said she. 
 
 "Then came a cry from one of the maids. 
 
 '"Perhaps it is poor Margery,' I said. For Mar- 
 gery had come to stay with us since we returned. 
 It comforted us to keep together, all of us who had 
 kindred at the field.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 161 
 
 "My mother shook her head. 
 
 "She knelt down one moment, and drew me 
 down beside her, by the bedside, heart against heart, 
 and murmured, — 
 
 "'Thy will, not mine! Oh, help us to say it. 
 For His sake who said it first.' 
 
 "Then she rose, and with a firm step went down 
 into the hall with me. 
 
 "She held out her hand to Roger when she saw 
 him. 
 
 "His face spoke evil tidings only too plainly. 
 
 "'There has been a battle,' she said. 
 
 " 'At Naseby, Lady Lucy,' he replied. 
 
 "'Was the victory for the king or not?' she 
 asked-, unable to utter the question uppermost on her 
 heart and mine. 
 
 "'There was hard fighting on both sides,' he re- 
 plied. 'The king and Prince Rupert have gone 
 westward towards Wales.' 
 
 "I could hear that his voice trembled. 
 
 "'Then the king has lost,' she said. 'But it was 
 not to tell us this you came. Who is hurt?' 
 
 "He hesitated an instant. 
 
 "'It is Harry!' she exclaimed. 'You have come 
 to summon us to him. Is the wound severe? Is there 
 hope? Can we go to him at once?' 
 
 "There was a pause, and a dreadful irresponsive 
 
 The Dray tons and the Davcnants. II. 11
 
 162 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 silence between each of her questions. He answered 
 only the last, — 
 
 " ' He will be brought to you, Lady Lucy. They 
 are bringing him now.' 
 
 "At once the whole depth of her sorrow opened 
 beneath her. Not an instant too soon. For the words 
 had scarcely left Roger's lips when the heavy regular 
 tramp of men bearing a bitrden echoed through the 
 silence of the morning outside, and paused at the 
 porch. 
 
 "My mother took my hand, and led me forward. 
 
 " 'He must not come home unwelcomed!' she 
 said. 
 
 "For an instant I feared she had not yet grasped 
 Roger's meaning. For this awful burden they were 
 bearing was not Harry, I knew too well. No wel- 
 comes would ever greet him more. But I had not 
 fathomed her sorrow nor her strength. 
 
 "She met the bearers at the door. They stood 
 with uncovered heads, having laid down what they 
 bore on the stone seat of the porch. They were 
 mostly old servants of the family. 
 
 "'My friends, I thank you,' she said. 'You 
 have done all you could. But not there. On the 
 place of honour. He was worthy.' 
 
 "And she motioned them to the dais at the head
 
 A STOllY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 163 
 
 of the hall, where the heads of our house are wont 
 to receive the homage of their retainers. 
 
 "Silently they bore him there, and laid their 
 sacred burden gently down. She thanked them again 
 for their good service. And then as silently they 
 withdrew. I saw many a rough hand lifted to brush 
 away the tears. But she did not weep. She stood 
 motionless, with clasped hands, beside the bier, and 
 murmured to herself again and again, in a low 
 voice, — 
 
 " 'He was worthy.' 
 
 "Then, turning with her own sweet, never-for- 
 gotten courtesy to Roger, she held out her hand to 
 him again, and said, — 
 
 "'You did kindly to come and tell us. He al- 
 ways honoured you.' 
 
 "He held her hand, and said rapidly, as if un- 
 certain of the firmness of his own voice, — 
 
 "'I was near him at the last, and he made me 
 promise to see you, or I could not have dared to 
 come.' 
 
 "She looked up with trembling, parted lips, 
 listening for more. 
 
 "'He made me promise to tell you he had little 
 pain and no fear,' Roger said in a low voice. 'And 
 he gave me this for you, and said, "Tell my mother 
 these words of hers have often helped me to believe, 
 
 11*
 
 164 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 tlirougli all these evil days, that God is living and 
 commanding still. But, more than all words, tell 
 her my faith in God has been kept unquenched by 
 the thought of herself T ' 
 
 "She took the packet from him. It was a little 
 book, with Scriptures and Prayers written in it by 
 her own hand, given to Harry when he was a boy. 
 On the crimson silk cover she had embroided for it 
 was one stain of a deeper crimson. As she opened 
 it, a little well-worn leaf dropped out, with a child's 
 prayer on it she had written for him when first he 
 went to school. 
 
 "When she saw it, the thought of the hero dy- 
 ing on the battle-field for the good cause vanished, 
 and in its place came the memory of the little hands 
 clasped on her knees in prayer, 
 
 " And withdrawing her hand from Roger, a sudden 
 quiver passed through all her frame, and throwing 
 her arms around me, she sobbed, — 
 
 "'My boy, my boy! Lettice, it is Harry we 
 have lost! It is our Harry!' 
 
 "When I looked up again Roger was at the 
 door. It seemed to me, from the glance he gave, 
 he was waiting to say something more. And I re- 
 solved, cost what it might, to hear it. We led my 
 mother into the nearest chamber, and then leaving 
 her with the maidens, I went back to the hall.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 165 
 
 "Koger was still waiting in the porch. 
 
 "He came forward when he saw me. 
 
 '"Did he say any anything more?' I asked, 
 
 "He hesitated an instant. 
 
 "'He said, "The Draytons and the Davenants 
 might have to combat one another in these evil times, 
 but that we should never distrust each other, and 
 that he never had distrusted one of us."' 
 
 "'He said so to me, the last thing before he left 
 us,' I said. 'And that was all?' 
 
 "'The battle swept on; I had to mount again,' 
 he said, 'and I could not leave my men.' 
 
 '"You saw him no more,' I said. 'You could 
 not even stay to watch his last breath!' 
 
 "The moment I had uttered them I felt there 
 was something like reproach in my words, and 1 
 would have recalled them if I could. 
 
 "'I saw him no more until the fighting was 
 over,' he said. 'Then I came back and found him; 
 and we brought him home. It was all we could do,' 
 he added; 'and it was little indeed.' 
 
 "'I am sure you did all you could, Roger,' I 
 said; for I feared I had wounded him. 'I should 
 always be sure you would do all you could for any 
 of us.' 
 
 '"Should you, indeed?' he said. 'God knows 
 I would.'
 
 166 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "And there was a tremor and a deptli of pleased 
 surprise in his tones that startled me, and I could 
 not look up. 
 
 "'Would to God I could do anything to comfort 
 Lady Lucy or you,' he said. 
 
 "'No one can comfort her, Roger,' I said; and 
 the tears I had been trying to keep back choked 
 my voice. 'Harry was everything to her. He was 
 everything to us all. No one will ever comfort her 
 more.' 
 
 "' FoM will comfort her, Lettice,' he said, with 
 that quiet commanding way he has sometimes. 'God 
 gives it you to do; and He will give you to do it.' 
 
 "And as he ceased speaking, and I went back 
 to my mother, I felt as if there were indeed a 
 strength through which I could do anything that had 
 to be done. 
 
 '"''July 1. — Sir Launcelot Trevor has come with 
 tidings of my father and my brothers. 
 
 "They are in the West, save the two younger, 
 who went across the Borders after the battle of 
 Marston Moor, and have joined Montrose in the 
 Scottish Highlands, deeming that the king's cause 
 will best rally there. 
 
 "The good cause is low; lower than ever before. 
 Soon after that fatal day at Naseby the town of 
 Bridgewater surrendered to General Fairfax.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL "WARS. 1G7 
 
 "Prince Rupert (with such courage as one miglit 
 expect, I think, from a chief of plunderers) thereon 
 counselled the king to make peace. But His Majesty, 
 never so majestic as in adversity, said, 'That al- 
 though, as a soldier and a statesman, he saw no 
 prospect but of ruin, yet, as a Christian, he knew 
 God would never forsake his cause, and suffer rebels 
 to jirosper; that he knew his obligations to be, both 
 in conscience and honour, neither to abandon God's 
 cause, to injure his successors, or forsake his friends. 
 Nevertheless, for himself (he said) he looked for no- 
 thing but to die with honour and a good conscience; 
 and to his friends he had little prospect to offer, but 
 to die in a good cause, or, what was worse, to live 
 as miserable in maintaining it as the violence of in- 
 sulting rebels could make them.' 
 
 "What promises, or royal orders, could bind 
 men, with any soul in them, to their sovereign as 
 words like these? Least of all those who, like us, 
 are bound to the cause by having given ujj our best 
 for it. Nothing, my mother says, makes a thing so 
 precious to us as what we suffer for it. Indeed, no- 
 thing now seems able to kindle her to anything like 
 life, save aught associated with that sacred cause for 
 which Harry died. 
 
 "Sir Launcelot saith, moreover, that the rebels 
 have been base enough to lay bare to the eyes of
 
 168 THE DRAl'TONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 the common people of London the private letters 
 from His Majesty to the queen, found in his cabinet 
 on the field at Naseby. And that these letters con- 
 tain things which have even lost the king some old 
 loyal friends. Sorry friendship, indeed, or loyalty, 
 to be moved by discoveries, made only through 
 treachery and breach of confidence, which no gentle- 
 man would practise to save his life. 
 
 "But there is one thing Sir Launcelot hinted to 
 me which I dare not breathe to my mother. He 
 said there was reason enough why Roger was near 
 Harry when he fell; for it was by the hand of one 
 of the Ironsides, beyond dovxbt, that he died. 
 
 "But never by Roger's hand! Or, if possibly 
 such a curse could have been suffered to fall on one 
 like Roger, it must have been unknown to him. Of 
 this I am as sure as of my life. 
 
 "Sir Launcelot said that Roger's hand was wont 
 to be a little too ready to be raised. Ungenerous to 
 him to say it, and yet too true. Slowly roused; but 
 once roused, blind to all results. 
 
 "How bitter his vain repentance would be if this 
 terrible thing were possible, and he once came to 
 know it! 
 
 "How bitter and how vain. 
 
 "But even if it were possible, and he never knew
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 169 
 
 it, but we knew it, what a gulf from henceforth for 
 ever between us and him! 
 
 "I cannot breathe this to my mother. And yet, 
 if Sir Launcelot's fears could have any ground, it 
 would seem a treachery, if ever Roger come to us 
 again, to let her touch in welcome the hand that 
 dealt that blow! 
 
 "I know not what to do. It is the first perplexity 
 I ever knew in which I could not fly to her for aid 
 and counsel. 
 
 "What a child I have been! 
 
 "What a child I am! 
 
 "Can it be possible that our Lord thought of 
 His disciples being perplexed and bewildered at all, 
 as I am, when, just before He went away. He called 
 them 'little children?' Can it be possible that He 
 meant, 'Come to Me, as little children to their mo- 
 ther; when you want wisdom, come to Me!'"
 
 170 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 The first trustworthy tidings we had of the battle 
 of Naseby were from Dr. Antony. I saw him com- 
 ing hastily across the fields from the direction of 
 Davenant Hall. 
 
 It was very early in the morning. The village 
 had been stirring through the previous afternoon with 
 uneasy rumours, and I had not slept. I was watching 
 the light in the window of Lady Lucy's oratory, and 
 thinking how she and Lettice had watched there to- 
 gether that terrible night so long ago, saying collects 
 for Roger, and how Lettice had hastened to us in 
 the morning, on her white palfrey, with the welcome 
 tidings that Sir Launcelot would recover. And now 
 how far we were from each other! What a sea be- 
 tween us! Two moats (the moonlight was shining 
 on ours just below me), draw-bridges, and fortifica- 
 tions. But deeper and stronger than all the moats 
 and walls in the world lay between us the memories 
 of those bitter years of war, and ever-widening mis-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 171 
 
 conception and division. Yet I felt sure Lettice 
 loved us still. 
 
 And as I was looking and thinking, I saw Dr. 
 Antony coming hastily down the road from the stile 
 which led across the fields to the Hall, where I had 
 parted from Harry Davenant that night when he 
 brought the tidings of Lord Strafford's execution, and 
 would not come in. 
 
 My first impulse was to rush down the stairs and 
 unbar the door. But many things held me back. A 
 presentiment that the news he brought might be 
 such as there was no need to fore- date by hurrying 
 to meet it; an uncomfortable recollection of Job 
 Forster's letter, and of that conversation in which I 
 had said nothing right. 
 
 I went, therefore, to summon Aunt Dorothy, as 
 head of the household. She had so many prepara- 
 tions to make, that Dr. Antony's hand was on the 
 great house-bell long before she was ready. Nothing 
 so slow she said as hurry, besides it being a proof 
 of the impatience of the flesh. She would even fold 
 up the clothes she took off, faithful to her maxim, 
 that we should always leave everything as if we 
 might never return to it. 
 
 The bell rang again. 
 
 I went to see if Aunt Gretel was more capable 
 of being hastened. She, dear soul, was sympathizing,
 
 172 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 excited, and agitated beyond my utmost desires, for 
 slie could lay her hands on nothing she wanted. So 
 that I had to return to Aunt Dorothy, who, by that 
 time, was ready ; and feeling how cold and trembling 
 my hand was as she took it to lead me down-stairs, 
 she laid her other on it with an unwonted demon- 
 stration of tenderness, and said, — 
 
 "Child, we can neither hasten the Lord's steps 
 nor make them linger. But He will do right." There 
 was strength in her words, but almost as much to 
 me in the tones, which were tremulous, and in the 
 cold touch of her hand, which showed that the blood 
 at her heart stood as still as mine. 
 
 We went down together in time to meet Dr. An- 
 tony just as he entered the Hall. 
 
 My father was wounded, not dangerously, only 
 so as to render him incapable of further service in 
 the field, at least at present. His right arm was 
 broken. Roger was coming home with him. 
 
 I wondered that Dr. Antony seemed so heavy at 
 heart, to bring tidings which made my heart leap 
 with thankfulness. What could be better than that 
 Roger was unhurt, and that my father had received 
 a slight wound just sufficient to keep him at home 
 with us. 
 
 Then it flashed on me in what direction I had 
 seen him coming. 
 
 1 
 
 1
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIIi WARS. 173 
 
 "Dr. Antony!" 1 said, "tliere is sorrow for the 
 Davenants!" And then he told us how Harry Da- 
 venant had fallen. 
 
 We had little time for bewailing him, for the 
 household had to be roused, and refreshment and a 
 bed prepared for my father. 
 
 I had scarce ever seen Roger so cast down as he 
 was about Harry Davenant's death. One of the 
 noblest gentlemen the king had on his side, he 
 thought, so pure, and true, and bravo. If all had 
 been like him there had been no war, and no need 
 for it. "And," said Roger, "I always looked for the 
 day to come when Harry Davenant would under- 
 stand us. For we were fighting for the same thing, 
 though on opposite sides — for England and her old 
 laws and liberties; for a righteous kingdom. And I 
 always thought one day he would see where it could 
 be found, and where it could oioty 
 
 Roger could not stay with us long. But before 
 he went, Harry Davenant was buried very quietly 
 in the old vault of the Davenants in Netherby 
 church. 
 
 It was at night, for the liturgy had been abolished 
 six months before, and was unlawful, and the vicar 
 risked something in suffering it to be read even by 
 Lady Lucy's chaplain, as it was. And we honoured 
 him and Placidia for the venture. Roger had asked
 
 174 THE DRAYTOi^S AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 to be one of the bearers. Aunt Gretel, Racliel 
 Forster, and I, waited for them in the church-porch. 
 Slowly through the silent summer-night came the 
 heavy tramp of the bearers, until they paused and 
 laid their burden down under the old Lych Gate. 
 Then, while they came up the churchyard, we crept 
 quietly back into the church, dark in all parts ex- 
 cept where the funeral torches lit up a little space 
 around the open vault, and threw strange flickering 
 shadows on the recumbent forms of the dead of 
 Harry Davenant's race , knight and dame, priest and 
 crusader, making them look as if they moved to 
 meet him; for none of the living men of his house 
 were there to bemoan him , although among them all 
 none had fallen more bravely. 
 
 Behind the bier followed four women closely 
 veiled. The first, by the height and movement, I 
 knew was his mother, and at her side, as the sacred 
 words were read, knelt Lettice. I think in times 
 of overwhelming joy or sorrow, when no words 
 could fathom the depths of the heart, when almost 
 every human voice would fall outside it altogether, 
 or jar rudely if it reached within, there is a wonder- 
 ful comfort in the calm of those ancient immutable 
 liturgies. They are a channel worn deep by the 
 joys and sorrows of ages. Their changelessness links 
 them with eternity, and seems thus to make room
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL, WARS. 175 
 
 for the sorrow which overflows the narrow measures 
 of thought and time. 
 
 "Delivered from the burden of the flesh," "are 
 in joy and liberty," "not to be sorry as men with- 
 out hope for them that sleep in Him, that when we 
 shall depart this life, we may rest in Him, as our 
 hope is, this our brother doth." How tranquilly the 
 simple words sank into the very depths of the 
 heart. 
 
 All the more precious and sacred, doubtless, for 
 the tender sanctity which ever invests a proscribed 
 religion. 
 
 Not that our Puritan faith is without its liturgies. 
 Older than England, and older tlian Christendom, 
 fused in the burning heart of the king of old, war- 
 rior, patriot, exile, conqueror, and penitent. But it 
 is a perilous thing to make services like those of the 
 Church of England, dear enough already to every 
 faithful heart who has used them from infancy, 
 dearer still by making them dangerous. I never 
 knew how I loved them till we lost them. 
 
 And as that night the sacred, simple, time- 
 honoured words fell like heavenly music among the 
 shadows of the dim old church, I felt as if the decree 
 which made them unlawful, and the grave of the 
 brother slain at Naseby, were slowly mining a gulf
 
 176 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 wliicli covilcl never be crossed between the Draytons 
 and the Davenants. 
 
 Alas, alas for truth! or at least for us who fain 
 would ever recognize and be loyal to her, when 
 she changes raiment with error; when the crown of 
 thorns is transferred to the brows of her enemies, 
 and the martyrs are on the wrong side. But such 
 transformations have not hitherto lasted long, and 
 meantime the crown of thorns may imprint its les- 
 sons on those who wear it, even by mistake. 
 
 There was no sound of loud weeping. But when, 
 for the last time, before the coffin was lowered out 
 of sight, Lady Lucy knelt once more to embrace it, 
 she did not rise until Lettice went gently to lift her 
 thence; and then it was found that she had fainted, 
 and had to be borne away. But for this, Lettice 
 would probably never have known we were there. 
 I went at Roger's bidding to see if I coiild render 
 any assistance. Then for a moment Lettice drew 
 aside the mantle which shrouded her face, and witli 
 suppressed sobs clasped my hands in hers, and mur- 
 mured, — 
 
 "Thank God, Olive. I hieio you would all feel 
 with us. Pray , Olive , for her and for me. We have 
 no one like him left." 
 
 Then she kissed me once, and hastened on after 
 the rest, as they silently went back through the
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 177 
 
 fields , bearing , instead of the corpse of the son , the 
 almost lifeless form of the mother. 
 
 The day after the funeral Roger left us to go 
 back to the army. I told him what Lettice had 
 said. And he seemed more hopeful than he had 
 been for a long time about her not misunderstanding 
 or forgetting us. 
 
 "We must never distrust her again, Olive," he 
 said. ^^She has trusted us all through." 
 
 It was strange that he should thus admonish me, 
 for it was only Roger who ever had distrusted her 
 caring still for us. But such little oblivions are the 
 common lot of sisters situated as I was. I was far 
 too satisfied with his conclusion to dispute as to the 
 way he reached it. 
 
 Yet for many weeks after he left we heard no- 
 thing from any of the Davenants. 
 
 Sir Launcelot Trevor came and stayed there 
 some days at the beginning of July; and again I 
 was tormented with fears that he had been poisoning 
 their hearts with some evil reports of us. And as I 
 sat watching by my father's bedside, many a time I 
 rejoiced that Roger was away, so that he could not 
 share my anxieties. 
 
 It so happened that most of the nursing fell on 
 me, to my great thankfulness. Aunt Dorothy's 
 sphere was governing every one outside, and Aunt 
 
 Tlie Draijtons and the Davenants. II, 12
 
 178 TUB DRAYXOXS AMD THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Gretel's more especially preparing food and cooling 
 drinks. Dr. Antony was pleased to say there was 
 something in my step which fitted a sick-room. Quiet 
 and quick, and not hasty. And in my voice, he 
 fancied, too; cheerful, he said, as a bird singing, 
 yet soft and low. 
 
 Be that as it might, my father naturally liked 
 best to have me about him; me and Rachel Forster, 
 in whose presence he found that repose she seemed 
 to breathe on every one around her. As if she had 
 invisible wings, which enfolded a warm, quiet space 
 around her, like a hen brooding over her chickens. 
 Rachel Forster, and Lady Lucy, of all the women 
 I ever knew, had most of this. And my father 
 felt it. 
 
 One day Rachel had a letter from Job, written 
 a few days after the battle of Naseby. He wrote, — 
 
 "We began marching at three o'clock in the morning 
 of the 14th of June. The day before, we, the Ironsides, 
 had come with General Cromwell from the eastern counties 
 to om* army. They had gathered after him like Abi-Ezer 
 after Gideon. The horse already there gave a mighty 
 shout for joy of his coming to them. By five we were at 
 Naseby, and saw the heads of the enemy coming over the 
 hill. Such a thing as they call a- hill in these parts. A 
 broad up and down moor. We fought it out in a fallow 
 field , a mile broad , near the top , from early morning till 
 afternoon. It began somewhat like the day at Marston 
 Moor. They came on first iip the hill. Prince Kupert
 
 A STORY OF TUB CIVIL WARS. 179 
 
 and the plunderers were on our left, charging swift and 
 steady, crying out, 'For God and Queen Mary.' 'God 
 oiu- strength,' cried we. They broke om- left; though 
 this we did not know till afterwards. Our right , that is 
 we, General Cromwell's horse, fell on their left, and drove 
 them back flying down the hill through the fui'ze-bushes 
 and rabbit-warrens. The main body, horse and foot, fought 
 hard, breaking and gathering again, like the sea at Lizard 
 at turn of tide. This raging back and forward lasted till 
 Prince Rupert's horse and ours came back from the chase. 
 
 " The difltereuce between keeping the Ten Command- 
 ments and breaking them tells in the long run. Plunder- 
 ing , firing villages , massacring innocents , shi-inks up the 
 courage of men, after a time. Prince Rupert's men could 
 charge to the end, like devils, but they could not rally like 
 oui's. Neither the prince's word nor the king's could bind 
 the men together again to stand a second shock, as Oliver's 
 word can rally the Ironsides. Tliis difference turned the 
 day. The difference between keeping the Ten Command- 
 ments (or setting the heart to keep them, as far as mortal 
 men can) and breaking them. The king rode about fear- 
 less as a lion to the last. ' One charge more and we re- 
 cover the day,' quoth he. But there was no power in his 
 word to rally them, and the sun was still high when he 
 and they fled headlong into Leicester, and we after them. 
 
 "But the Ten Commandments fought against them 
 there too. 'The stars in their courses fought against 
 Sisera.' There was no night's rest for the king in the 
 houses he had seen rifled and dishonom-ed but a few days 
 before , and never lifted up his voice to hinder it. And on 
 and on he had to fly, to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Wales, and 
 who knows where? The jjlunder of Leicester lay strewn 
 about the fallow field at Naseby , where we camped that 
 night, with six hundred of the plunderers, dead. Yet God 
 forbid I slander the dead. They fought like true men, 
 
 12*
 
 180 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 And brave young Master Harry Davenant -was among 
 them. Belike tlie true men fell; and the plunderers fled 
 away safe, as such vermin do. Until the Lord and the 
 Ten Commandments take them in hand and bring them to 
 account, whether in the body or out of the body. 
 
 "A himdred Irish Papist women were found hanging 
 about the battle-field , armed with long knives, and speak- 
 ing no Chi'istian tongue. Poor benighted savages! Very 
 strange to tliink such have husbands, and children, and 
 hearts, and souls. Yet belike so had the Canaanites. 
 These things are dark to me. I have wrestled sore there 
 about, but can get no light on them. 
 
 "Two days after the battle, a young gentleman, a 
 preacher, aged some thirty years, came amongst the army. 
 His name was Richard Baxter, a puny feeble body, marked 
 with small-pox , and bowed and worn at thirty like an old 
 man. Yet had the puny body good quality of courage in 
 it. Coui-age of the soul, burning out of his dark eyes. 
 Courage, surely, he had, of his kind! For he came amongst 
 oiu- men , flushed and strong from the victorious fight, and 
 exhorted and rebuked us as if we had been a pack of 
 school-boys. Called us — the Ironsides, with Whalley's 
 and Rue's regiments of horse — 'hot-headed, self-conceited 
 sectaries.' Anabaptists, Antinomians, and what not; us 
 who had been fighting the Lord's battles for him , and the 
 like of him, these two years! Took om- camp jokes ill, 
 about 'Scotch dry -vines,' 'Dissembling men at West- 
 minster,' and ^rzes/byters.' Called us profane ; us who had 
 paid twelvepence fine for one careless oath ever since we 
 came together. Called us disloyal; as if subjects could 
 obey the king whilst making war on him; or could make 
 war on him without the risk of killing him; or would make 
 war on him without the steadfast purpose to conquer him 
 and hinder him, in one way or another, fi-om ever wronging 
 and oppressing them again. Argued with us, dividing his
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 181 
 
 discourse iuto as many heads as Leviatlian, and Tusiug 
 words from every heathen tongue under the sun. If we 
 had the best of it, called us levellers and fire-brauds. If 
 we were silent under his hood of talk , thought we were 
 beaten, as if to have the best in talk were to win the day! 
 As if an Englishman was to change his mind , because he 
 could not, all in a moment, see his way out of JVli". Baxter's 
 Presbyterial puzzles! Scarcely grateful, 1 think, seeing 
 our men had once asked him to be their chaplain. Some 
 of us reminded him of it , and he said he was soi-iy he had 
 refused, or we should not have come to what we are. Aiid 
 he rebuked us sore , and called us out of our names in a 
 gentlemanly way, in Latin and Greek, as if ,we had been 
 plunderers and malignants; us of General Cromwell's own 
 regiment! Of his courage there can after this, I think, be 
 no doubt. Nor, forsooth, of our patience. And he hath 
 gone back to Coventry and spoken slanders of the 'sad 
 state ' of the army ! 
 
 "Sad state of the army indeed, where every morsel we 
 put into our mouths is paid for, through which any modest 
 Avench , if she were as fair as Sarah , can walk , if she had 
 need, as safe as past her father's door. An arniy which 
 had just won Naseby by the strength of the Lord and the 
 Ten Commandments — where not an oath is heard — 
 where psahns and prayers rise night and morning as from 
 the old Temple — and where a young gentleman like Mr. 
 Richard Baxter could come and go , and call the soldiers 
 what ill names he chose, without hm-t. For a godly young 
 gentleman we all hold him to be, and a scholar, and honour 
 him in om- souls as such , and for the chastening hand of 
 the Lord on the poor, suffering, puny, brave body of him. 
 In proof whereof, Whalley's regiment have given him a 
 call to be their chaplain, the which he seems like to accept. 
 Although in some ways he, and the like of him, are a 
 sorer puzzle to me, and cost me more wrestlings than even 
 the Irish Papist women with their knives."
 
 182 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Wherever General Cromwell was throughout that 
 summer, there continued to be a series of successes. 
 Job's letters and Roger's were records of castles 
 stormed or surrendered, sieges raised, and troops 
 dispersed, from Salisbury to Bovey Tracey in Devon- 
 shire. 
 
 On the 4th of August, Eoger wrote of the dis- 
 persing of the poor mistaken Clubmen; a new force 
 of peasants who had gathered to the number of two 
 thousand on Hambledon Hill, in Surrey. Blind, as 
 my father says peasant armies mostly are. Aunt 
 Gretel turned pale when she heard of them, and 
 talked of dreadful peasant wars in Dr. Luther's time 
 in Saxony, Dr. Luther dearly loving and fighting 
 (in his way, though not in theirs) for the peasants, 
 but not being able to make them understand him, 
 like Oliver Cromwell now. 
 
 These poor fellows had gathered, like brave 
 men, in the West, to defend their homes from Lord 
 Goring's bands — "the child-eaters," as some called 
 them, the most lawless and merciless among the 
 Cavalier troops, surpassing even Prince Eupert's, 
 whom one of their own called afterwards, "terrible 
 in plunder, and resolute in running away." 
 
 " If ye offer to plunder or take our cattle , 
 Be you assured we'll give you battle ;" 
 
 was the Clubmen's motto. A good one enough. But
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 183 
 
 in time they became hopelessly involved in political 
 plots, of which they understood nothing; demanded 
 to garrison the coast towns; picked out and killed 
 peaceable Posts; fired on messengers of peace sent 
 by General Cromwell, who had much pity for them; 
 and finally, had to be fallen upon and beaten from 
 the field. "I believe," the General wrote to Sir 
 Thomas Fairfax, "not twelve of them were killed, 
 but very many were cut, and three hundred taken 
 — poor silly creatures, whom if you please to let 
 me send home, they promise to be very dutiful in 
 time to come, and will be hanged before they come 
 out again." So men and leaders were taken, and 
 the army dispersed, and came not out again; and 
 the land all around had quiet. 
 
 But, as Job Forster said, it was the Ten Com- 
 mandments that fought best for us. 
 
 The king's cabinet at Naseby, with all the false 
 and traitorous letters found therein in his hand- 
 writing, did more to undermine his power than a 
 hundred battles. For in it was shown how, while 
 solemnly promising to make no treaties with Papists, 
 and speaking words of peace at Uxbridge, he was 
 negotiating for six thousand Papist soldiers from Ire- 
 land, and for more than ten thousand from across 
 the seas; that he had only agreed to call the Parlia- 
 ment Parliament in the Treaty with them, "in the
 
 184 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 sense that it was not the same to call them so,* and 
 to acknowledge them so to be." He spoke, more- 
 over, of the gentlemen who gathered around him 
 loyally at Oxford, as the "mongrel Parliament." So 
 that many of his old friends were sorely aggrieved, 
 and many neutrals began to see that, call men by 
 what titles you will, there can be no loyalty where 
 there is no truth. 
 
 In the North affairs went not so prosperously, 
 though there, too, reckless ravaging wrought its own 
 terrible cure in time. For six weeks Monti'ose, with 
 his Irish and Highlanders, and some English adven- 
 turers, laid Argyleshire waste, killing every man 
 who could bear arms, plundering and burning every 
 cottage. It was not like the war in England, save 
 where Prince Rupert and Lord Goring brought the 
 savage customs of foreign warfare in on us. It was 
 a war of clans, bent on extirpating each other like 
 so many wild beasts, and of mountain-robbers set on 
 carrying away as much spoil as they could from the 
 Lowland cities, and on inflicting as much misery as 
 they could by the way to inspire a profitable terror 
 for the future. Perth was sacked by them, and 
 Aberdeen, and Dundee. 
 
 At Kilsyth, near Stirling, Montrose and his men 
 killed ten times as many of the Covenanted army, 
 against which they fought, as fell of the Cavaliers
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 185 
 
 at Naseby. Six hundred lay slaiu at Naseby; at 
 Kilsyth, six thousand. 
 
 And the king, meanwhile, speaking of this robber- 
 chief as the great restorer of his kingdom and sup- 
 port of his throne, with never an entreaty to spare 
 his countrymen and subjects! 
 
 Can any wonder that the sheep he commissioned 
 so many hirelings to fleece, robbers to plunder, and 
 wolves to slay, would not follow him? 
 
 In person, indeed, throughout that summer of 
 1645, His Majesty was pursuing a kind of warfare 
 too similar to that of Wallenstein or Montrose. It 
 was in the August of this year, scarce two months 
 after the victory at Naseby, that the war surged up 
 nearer us at Netherby than at any other time. 
 
 The king had fled from Naseby to Ragland 
 Castle, the seat of the Marquis of Worcester (an in- 
 genious gentleman who spent his living in seeking 
 out many inventions). There he held his Court for 
 many weeks, entertained with princely state in the 
 halls of the grand old castle, and hunting deer gayly 
 through the forests on the banks of the Wye; gayly as if 
 his subjects were not themselves in his quarrel hunting 
 each other to death in every corner of his kingdom. 
 
 Whilst there, tidings came to him of the suc- 
 cesses of Montrose, and he endeavoured to go north- 
 ward to join him in Scotland. From Doncaster,
 
 186 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVi^NANrS: 
 
 however, he fell back on Newark, turned from his 
 purpose by the Covenanted army of Sir David Leslie, 
 which threatened him from the north. And then he 
 turned his steps to us, to the Fens and the As- 
 sociated Counties, which General Cromwell's care, 
 and their own fidelity to the Parliament, had kept 
 hitherto high and dry out of reach of the war, save 
 for some few stray foraging parties. During that 
 August of 1645 we learned, however, at His Ma- 
 jesty's hands, the meaning of civil war. The eastern 
 counties lay exposed to attack, having sent their 
 tried men westward with Cromwell and Fairfax; so 
 that we had nothing but our own more recent foot- 
 levies to defend us. 
 
 The king dashed from Stamford through Hunting- 
 donshire and Cambridgeshire , ravaging the whole 
 country as he passed, and detaching flying squadrons 
 to plunder Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, as far as 
 St. Albans. Several times he threatened Cambridge. 
 
 On the 24th of August he took Huntingdon by 
 assault, and four days afterwai'ds, by the 28th, was 
 safe again within the lines of Oxford, with large store 
 of booty seized from the very cradle and stronghold 
 of the Parliamentary array. 
 
 No doubt the Cavaliers had fine triumphing and 
 merry-making over the spoils at Oxford. But to us, 
 around whom lay the empty granaries and roofless
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 187 
 
 homesteads, and the wrecked and burned villages 
 from which these spoils came, the lesson was not one 
 of submission or of terror, but of resistance more 
 resolute than ever. Prince Rupert had been teaching 
 this lesson for three years in every corner of the 
 realm. His Majesty taught it us in person. Resist- 
 ance not desperate but hopeful; for we could not 
 but deem that a king who would indiscriminately 
 ravage whole counties of his kingdom, must look 
 on it as an alien territory already lost to his crown. 
 
 Many sins, no doubt, may be laid to the charge 
 of the Parliament and its army. But of two sins, 
 too common in civil strife, they were never guilty 
 — indiscriminate plunder and secret assassination. 
 The ruins and desecrations the Commonwealth soldiers 
 wrought in churches and cathedrals, will tell their 
 tale against us to many a generation to come. The 
 ruins Prince Rupert's troopers wrought were in poor 
 men's homes, long since repaired. The desecrations 
 they wrought were also in homes ; ruins and desecra- 
 tions of temples not made with hands, and never to 
 be repaired, but recorded on sacred inviolable tables, 
 more durable than any stone, though not to be read 
 on earth, at least not yet. 
 
 The village of Netherby lay just beyond the 
 edge of the royal devastations. But the cattle all 
 around us were seized, with all the corn that was
 
 188 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANXS: 
 
 reaped. And at night tlie sky was all aglow with 
 the flames of burning cottages, and corn and hay- 
 stacks. Our own barns were untouched; but my 
 father gave orders at once to begin husbanding our 
 stores by limiting our daily food, looking on what 
 was spared to us as the granary of the whole de- 
 stitute neighbourhood through the coming winter, and 
 as the seed-store for the following spring. Our sheds 
 and out-houses meantime were fitted up for those who 
 had been driven from their homes. Every cottage 
 in Netherby gave shelter to some homeless neighbour. 
 Kachel Forster's became an orphan-house. Yet it 
 was the private lesson which was taught our own 
 family through this foray of His Majesty's, that is 
 engraven most deeply in my memory. 
 
 Throughout the summer , Cousin Placidia had 
 been more than ever a subject of irritation and dis- 
 tress to Aunt Dorothy. The successes of Montrose 
 in Scotland, followed by the plunderings of the king's 
 troops in our own counties, had once more caused her 
 to feel much "exercised" as to which was the right 
 side. In February, after the execution of Archbishop 
 Laud, Mr. Nicholls had obediently substituted the 
 Directory of Worship for the Common Prayer, sorely 
 trying thereby Aunt Dorothy's predilections for un- 
 written, or rather unprinted, prayers; Mr. Nicholls' 
 supplications not having, in her opinion, either
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 189 
 
 unction or fire, being in fact, she said, like the 
 Liturgy cut up into small pieces , with the bone 
 taken out. Her only comfort was in the trust that 
 sifting days were at hand. (The Triers had not yet 
 been appointed. But what vexed Aunt Dorothy's 
 soul even more than these ecclesiastical "trimmings," 
 was what she regarded as the gradual eating up of 
 Placidia's heart by the rust of hoarded wealth. Pla- 
 cidia had at that time an additional reason to justify 
 herself for any amount of straitening and sparing, in 
 the expectation of the birth of her first child. This 
 prospect opened a new field for her economies, and 
 for Aunt Dorothy's anxieties. Even the general de- 
 vastations of the country, which opened every door 
 and every heart wide to the sufferers, only effected 
 the narrowest possible opening in Placidia's stores. 
 Her health, she said, obviously prevented her receiv- 
 ing any strangers into the house; and it was little 
 indeed that a. poor parson, with a family to provide 
 for, nothing but income to depend on, and the cer- 
 tainty of receiving scarcely any tithes the next sea- 
 son, could have to spare. Such as she had, said She, 
 she gave willingly. There was a stack of hay but 
 slightly damaged by getting heated. And there was 
 some preserved meat, a little strong perhaps from 
 keeping, but quite wholesome and palatable with a 
 little extra salt. These she most gladly bestowed.
 
 190 THE DnAYTONS AND THE DAVLKANTS: 
 
 Aunt Dorotliy was in despair, and made one last 
 solemn appeal. 
 
 "Placidia," slie said, "a child will shut up your 
 heart and be a cixrse to you, if you let it shut your 
 doors against the poor; until at last who knows what 
 door may be shut on you?" 
 
 But Placidia was impregnable. 
 
 "Aunt Dorothy," she said, with mild impertur- 
 bability, "everything maybe made either a curse or a 
 blessing. But to those who are in the covenant every- 
 thing is a blessing." 
 
 "Sister Gretel," said Aunt Dorothy afterwards, 
 "I see no way of escape for her. The mercies of 
 God's providence and the doctrines of His grace 
 freeze on that poor woman's heart, until the ice is so 
 thick that the sunshine itself can do nothing but just 
 thaw the surface , and make the next day's ice 
 smoother and harder." 
 
 A.unt Gretel looked up. 
 
 "Never give up hope, sister," said she. "Our 
 good God has more weapons than we wot of, and 
 more means of grace than are counted in any of our 
 Catechisms and Confessions. Sometimes He can 
 warm the coldest heart with a little bit of warmth 
 from a new human love, until all the ice melts away 
 from within. And the touch of a little child's hand 
 has opened many a door, where the Master has after-
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 191 
 
 wards come in, and sat down and supped. Wlien 
 the Saviour wanted to teach tlie Pharisees, He set 
 in the midst of them a little child." 
 
 Aunt Dorothy shook her head. 
 
 " Children have dragged many a godly man back 
 again to Egypt," said she. "Many a rope which 
 binds good men tight to the car of Mammon is twisted 
 by very little hands." 
 
 And the proposition being unanswerable, the dis- 
 cussion ended. 
 
 A few nights afterwards we were roused by a 
 suspicious glare in the direction of the Parsonage. 
 The next morning early we went to see if anything 
 had happened there. 
 
 As we passed through the 'illage we heard the 
 news quickly enough. 
 
 Just after dusk, on the evening before, a party 
 of Royalist troopers had appeared at the Parsonage 
 gates. The house stood alone, at some little dis- 
 tance from the village, at the end of the glebe-fields. 
 The captain of the little troop said they were on 
 their way to join His Majesty at Oxford; but seeing 
 a light, they were tempted to seek the hospitality of 
 Mistress Nicholls, of which they had heard in the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Poor Placidia's protestations of poverty were of 
 little avail with such guests. They politely assured
 
 192 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 her tliey were used to rougli fare, and would them- 
 selves render any assistance she required towards 
 preparing the feast. Whereupon they put up their 
 horses in the stables, supplied them liberally with 
 corn from the granaries, seized the fattest of the 
 poultry, and strung them in a tempting row before 
 the kitchen fire, which they piled into huge dimen- 
 sions with any wooden articles that came first to 
 hand, chairs and chests included; the |contents of 
 these chests being meanwhile skilfully rifled, and all 
 that was most valuable in them of plate, linen, or 
 silk, set apart in a heap "for the king's service." 
 
 The supper being prepared, they insisted on their 
 host drinking His Majesty's health in the choicest 
 wine in his cellar. The captain had been informed, 
 he said, that Mr. Nicholls had been induced (re- 
 luctantly, of course, as he perceived, from his fervent 
 protestations of loyalty) to disuse the Liturgy, and 
 even to contribute of his substance to the rebel 
 cause. He felt glad, therefore, to be able to give 
 him this opportunity of proving his unjustly suspected 
 fidelity, and of contributing, at the same time, of his 
 substance to His Majesty's service, by means of the 
 portion of his goods which they would the next day 
 convey to His Majesty's head-quarters in the loyal 
 city of Oxford, and thus save it from being misap- 
 plied, in this disafi'ected country, in a way which
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAUS. 193 
 
 Mr. Nicliolls' loyal heart must abhor. This we 
 heard from one of the frightened serving-wenches, 
 who had escaped towards morning, and spread the 
 news through the village. 
 
 As the night passed on, they grew riotous, and 
 were with difficulty roused from their orftouse by the 
 captain, to see about getting their plunder together 
 before dawn. They poured on the ground what wine 
 they could not drink, set fire (whether by accident 
 or on purpose was not known) to the large corn- 
 stack whilst hunting about the sheds and stables 
 for cattle and horses; till finally the inmates were 
 thankful to get them away early in the morning, 
 although they took with them all the beasts they 
 could drive and all the booty they could carry. 
 
 The sympathy in the village was not deep; and 
 Aunt Dorothy and I went on in silence to the 
 Parsonage, to give what help and comfort we could. 
 Neither Aunt Dorothy nor I spoke a word as we 
 hastened up the rising ground towards the house. 
 
 The homely ruins of the farm-yard moved me 
 more than many a stately ruin. The remains of the 
 corn-stack, the flames of which had alarmed us in 
 the night, stood there black and charred; the stables 
 were empty, and the cattle-sheds; the house-dog was 
 hanged to the door of one of them; the yard was 
 strewn with trampled corn, which the sparrows and 
 
 The Drmjtons and the Daveuants. II. 13
 
 194 THK DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 starlings, in the absence of the privileged poultry, 
 were making bold to pick up; and the silence of the 
 deserted court was made more dismal by the oc- 
 casional restless lowing of a calf, which was roaming 
 from one empty shed to another in search of its 
 mother. ^ 
 
 We went into the house. The kitchen was full 
 of the serving-wenches, and of some of the more 
 curious and idle in the village, who were condoling 
 with each other, by making the worst of the disaster. 
 The hearth was black with the cinders of the 
 enormous fire of the night before, and the floor was 
 strewn with" broken pieces of the chairs and chests 
 which had helped to kindle it, and with fragments 
 of the feast. In a corner of the settle by the cold 
 hearth sat Placidia, as if she were stupified, with 
 her hands clasped and her eyes fixed upon them. 
 
 When she saw Aunt Dorothy, she turned away, 
 and said, — 
 
 "Don't reproach me, Aunt Dorothy; I can't 
 bear it." 
 
 "Didst thou think I came for that?" said Aunt 
 Dorothy. "But belike I deserve it of thee." 
 
 And with a voice a little sharpened by the feel- 
 ing she strove to repress. Aunt Dorothy sent the 
 curious neighbours to the right-about, and disposed 
 of the two serving-wenches, by telling them the very
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 195 
 
 fowls of the air were setting such lazy sluts as they 
 were an example, and despatching them to gather 
 up the scattered corn in the yard. Then she came 
 again to Placidia, and taking her clasped hands in 
 hers, said, — 
 
 "I've learnt many things, child, this last hour. 
 I judged thee a Pharisee, and belike I've been a 
 worse one myself. I've sat on the judgment-seat 
 this many a day on thee. But I'm off it now. And 
 may the Lord grant me grace never to climb up 
 there again. I've wished for some heavy rod to fall 
 and teach thee. And now it's come, it can't smite 
 thee heavier than it does me. Forgive me, child, 
 and let us both begin again." 
 
 Placidia looked up, and meeting the honest 
 eyes fixed on her, not in scorn but in entreaty, she 
 sobbed, — 
 
 "I shall never have heart to begin again. Aunt 
 Dorothy." 
 
 "To begin what again?" said Aunt Dorothy. 
 
 "Saving and contriving to make up all the things 
 I have lost," replied Placidia. "I've been years 
 heaping it together, and it's all gone in a night!" 
 
 Aunt Dorothy looked sorely puzzled, between 
 her desire to be charitable and her horror of Pla- 
 cidia's misreading of the meaning of the dispensation. 
 
 "Begin tliat again, my dear!" she said at last. 
 
 13*
 
 196 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "Nay; thou must never begin that again. It will 
 never do to fly in the face of Providence like 
 that." 
 
 Placidia uncovered her face, but as her eyes 
 rested on the desolation around her, she covered 
 them ^gain, and sobbed, — 
 
 "Just when there was to be one to save it all 
 for, and make it worth while to deny oneself." 
 
 "Nay," said Aunt Dorothy; "that's the mercy. 
 That's precisely the mercy. The Lord will not let 
 the child be a curse to thee. He will have it a 
 blessing; so He says to thee as plain as can be, 'I 
 give thee a treasure, not to make thee save and stint 
 and grudge, but to teach thee to love and serve and 
 give; not to make thee poor, but to make thee rich.' 
 And He will go on teaching thee till thou openest 
 thy heart and listenest, and thy burden falls off, and 
 thy heart leaps up, and thou shalt be free. I know 
 it by the way my heart is lightened now He has 
 smitten me down for my sitting in judgment on thee. 
 Not that I am safe never to climb to that seat again. 
 One is there before one knows, and the black-cap on 
 in a moment. Some one is always near, I trow, to 
 help us up." 
 
 And turning from Placidia, she proceeded to a 
 quiet survey of the ruins, which, under her brisk
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAI!S. 197 
 
 and discriminating hands, with such help as I could 
 give, soon began to show some signs of order. 
 
 The fire was lighted; the calf despatched to 
 Netherhy to be fed ; sundry fragments of chairs and 
 chests to the village carpenter, to be mended; the 
 broken meat put into two baskets. 
 
 "This is for the household," said Aunt Dorothy, 
 "and that for the fatherless children at Rachel 
 Forster's. One of the maids can take it at once, 
 Placidia, when she leads away the calf." 
 
 Placidia was at length quite roused from her 
 stupor. She looked at Aunt Dorothy as if she 
 thought she were in league with the plunderers. 
 
 "Me send meat to Eachel Forster's orphans!" 
 she said faintly; "a poor plundered woman like 
 me!" 
 
 "Better begin at once, my dear," said Aunt 
 Dorothy quietly; "the fatherless are God's little 
 ones. Better give the treasure to them. You see 
 our bags have holes in them." 
 
 At that moment Mr. Nicholls returned. Placidia 
 appealed to him for his usual confirmation of her 
 opinions. 
 
 "Dear heart," he said ruefully, "belike Mistress 
 Dorothy is right. It's of no use fighting against 
 God. Who knoweth if he will return and repent, 
 and leave a blessing behind him?"
 
 198 THE DUAYTONS AND THE DAVEKAKTS: 
 
 "Xaj, Master Nicliolls," said Aunt Dorothy, '"''not 
 that way. It's of no use trying to escape in that 
 way. You must let go altogether first, or the Al- 
 mighty will never take hold of you. It's hoping for 
 nothing again. If thou and Placidia will send this 
 to the orphans, you must send it because it has been 
 given to you, and because they want it more than 
 you do. Because thou wast an orphan, Placidia," 
 she added tenderly, and He has not failed to care 
 for thee. Take heed how ye slight His staff or His 
 rod. Both have been used plainly enough for thee. 
 I will divide the stuff," she concluded, "and you 
 must settle what to do with it yourselves, after- 
 wards." 
 
 And insisting on Placidia's resting up-stairs 
 while she subjected the contents of the chests strewn 
 about her chamber-floor to the same process of divi- 
 sion, she left the house before dusk restored to some- 
 thing like order, with two significant heaps of cloth- 
 ing in the bedchamber, and two significant baskets 
 of provisions in the kitchen, to speak what parables 
 they might during the night to the consciences of 
 Placidia and Mr. Nicholls. 
 
 But before the morning other teachers had been 
 there. Death and Anguish (those merciful curses 
 sent to keep the world, wliich had ceased to be Eden, 
 from becoming a sensual Elysium, idle, selfish, and
 
 A STOllI OF THE CIVIL V/ARS. 199 
 
 purposeless) visited the liouse tliat night. Another 
 life was ushered into the world under the shadow of 
 Death itself. In the morning Placidia lay feebly 
 rejoicing in the infant life for which her own had 
 been so nearly sacrificed. Rejoicing in a gift which 
 had cost her so much, and which was to cost her so 
 much more of patient sacrifice, and toil, and watch- 
 ing, sacrifice and toil for which no one would espe- 
 cially commend her, and for which she would not 
 commend herself; rejoicing as she had never rejoiced 
 in any possession before. Not by any supernatural 
 effort of virtue, but by the simple natural fountain 
 of motherly love which had been opened in her 
 heart. 
 
 One of the first things she said was to Rachel, 
 who was watching with her through the next night. 
 Very softly, as Rachel sat by her bed-side with the 
 baby on her knee, Placidia said, — 
 
 "Strange such a gift shovild have been given to 
 me and not to thee!" 
 
 "And," said Rachel (when she told me of it), "I 
 could not answer her all in a moment-, for there are 
 seas stronger and deeper than those outside our 
 dykes around our hearts. And it's not safe, even in 
 the quietest weather, opening the least cranny to let 
 in those tides. So I said nothing. And in a few 
 moments Mistress Nicholls spoke again, 'For thou
 
 200 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 art good and worthy, Eacliel,' said she, 'and it would 
 be no great wonder if the Lord gave thee the best 
 He has to give.' 
 
 "Then I understood what she meant, and my 
 heart was as glad as if the child had been given to 
 me. For I thought there was a spirit new-born to 
 God as a little child, meek and lowly. The Lord 
 had led her along the hardest step on the way to 
 Himself, the first step down. She said no more. I 
 smoothed her pillows, laid the babe beside her, and 
 she and it fell asleep. But I sat still and cried 
 quietly for joy. And the next morning, when the 
 dawn broke in on the chamber, Mistress Nicholls 
 looked up and saw those two heaps Mistress Dorothy 
 had set apart, and she looked down on the babe, 
 and murmured as if to herself, — 
 
 "'Poor motherless little ones! God has given me 
 thee and spared me to thee. The poor motherless 
 babes shall have the things.' 
 
 "And then," pursued Rachel, "I turned away 
 and cried again to myself, half for gladness and half 
 for trouble. For I thought, sure the Lord's a-going 
 to take her, poor lamb, if she's so changed as 
 that." 
 
 But Aunt Dorothy, when Rachel nan-ated this, 
 althoixgh she wiped her eyes sympathetically, at the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL, WARS. 201 
 
 same time gave her head a consolatory shake and 
 said, — 
 
 "Never fear, neighbour, never fear; not yet. 
 Depend on it, the old i]nemy will have a fight for 
 it yet. Depend on it, there's a good deal of work 
 to be done for her in this world yet, before she's too 
 good to be left in it."
 
 202 THE DKAYrONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 XXX. 
 
 LEITICE DAVENANt's DIARY. 
 
 " Davexant Hall, Twelfth Night, 1 645-6. — Only 
 four years since that merry sixteentli birthday of 
 mine, when all the village were gathered in the hall, 
 and Olive and I gave the garments to the village 
 maidens of my own age, and in the evening Koger 
 stayed to help to kindle the twelve bonfires. 
 
 "And now we are walled and moated out from 
 the village and from the Manor as we were in the 
 old days of the Norman Conquest, when the 
 Davenants first took possession of these lands, and 
 built the old ruined keep, where the gateway is 
 (whence they afterwards removed to this abbey), to 
 overawe the Saxon village, where the Draytons even 
 then lived in the old Manor. I wonder if there is 
 anything left of the old contentions in Saxon and 
 Norman blood now. The rebel army is so much 
 composed, they say, both of officers and men, of the 
 stout old Saxon yeomanry, and the traders in the 
 towns; whilst ours is officered from the old baronial 
 castles, by gentlemen with the old Norman historical
 
 A STOUV OF THE CIVIL WARS. 203 
 
 names. How many of the higher gentry and no- 
 bility are loyal has been proved these last six 
 months, since fatal Naseby, by the sieges (and, alas! 
 by the stormings and surrenders) of at least a score 
 of old castles and mansions, from Bristol, surrendered 
 on the 11th of September by Prince Rupert, toBovey 
 Tracey in the faithful West. Thank Heaven, they 
 gave Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax much 
 trouble. Basing Hall especially. In future days, 
 when the king shall enjoy his own again (as he 
 surely will), I hold such a blackened ruin will be a 
 choicer possession to a gentleman's family than a 
 palace furnished regally. The rebels called Basing 
 House Basting^ for the mischief it did them. And 
 our men called it Loyalty. 
 
 "Roger Drayton hath shared, no doubt, in many 
 of these sieges. So stern in his delusion of duty, I 
 suppose, if this brewer of Huntingdon commanded 
 him, he would not scruple to plant his rebel guns 
 against us. 'Thine eye shall not spare,' they say, in 
 their hateful cant. Sir Launcelot says they have 
 been chasing His Sacred Majesty from plfece to place 
 like a hunted stag; that Mr. Cromwell, whom Roger 
 loves above king and friend, never sets on any great 
 enterprise without having a HexV to lean on! That 
 before storming Basing Hall, he passed the night in 
 prayer! and that the text he especially 'rested on'
 
 204 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 for tliat achievement was Psalm cxviii. 8 : ' They that 
 make them are like unto them, so is every one that 
 trusteth in them!'' as if we Royalists were Canaanites, 
 idolaters, Papists, I know not what. Fancy burning 
 down a corn-stack to a psalm-tiine, or setting out on 
 a burglary to a text. And what is it better, to burn 
 down loyal gentlemen's houses about their ears, 
 from one end of England to another? It is all Con- 
 science; this dreadful Moloch of Conscience! It was 
 the one weak point of the Draytons always. 
 
 "Sir Launcelot Trevor came here a week since 
 to see if anything can be done to strengthen the 
 fortifications. My father was in Bristol when it was 
 stormed, and has followed the king ever since; two 
 of my brothers are in Ireland, seeing what can be 
 done there ; two fled beyond the seas after the defeat 
 of the gallant Marquis of Montrose last September 
 at Philipshaugh , near Selkirk; and two lie on that 
 fatal Eowton Heath, where on September the 23rd 
 the king's last army, worth the name, was broken 
 and lost. 
 
 "We haVe made sacrifices enough to endear the 
 royal cause to us. I suppose this old house will be 
 the next. For Harry said it would never stand a 
 siege. But oh, if I could only be sure Sir Launce- 
 lot is mistaken in what he says about Roger giving 
 Harry his death-blow, much of the rest would seem
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAr.S. 205 
 
 light. I have never yet told my mother of this fear. 
 Sometimes when I think how Koger looked and 
 spoke that morning, I feel sure it cannot be true. 
 But he always said it was so wrong to believe 
 things because 1 wished them true. And now the 
 more I long to believe this false, the less I seem 
 able. 
 
 "Only four years since that merry sixteenth 
 birthday, when I was a child! And then that happy 
 summer afterwards, when the world seemed to grow 
 so beautiful and great, and it seemed as if we were 
 to do such glorious things in it. 
 
 "First the birthdays seem like triumphal columns, 
 trophies of a conquered year. Then like milestones, 
 marking rather sadly the way we have come. But 
 now I think they look like grave-stones, so much is 
 buried for ever beneath this terrible year that has 
 gone. Not lives only, but love, and trust, and 
 hope. 
 
 "I said so to my mother to-night, as I wished 
 her good-night. It was selfish. For I ought to com- 
 fort her. But she comforted me. She said, 'The 
 birthdays will look like milestones again, by-and-by, 
 sweet heart. They will be marked on the other 
 side, "so much nearer home," and perhaps at last 
 like trophies again, marking the conquered years.'
 
 206 THE DRATTOXS AXD THE DAVEXA^TTS: 
 
 "On Tvliicli I broke dowu altogetlier, and 
 said, — 
 
 '"Oh, mother, don't speak like that, don't say 
 yoxi look on them like that. Think of me at the be- 
 ginning of the journey, so near the beginning.' 
 
 '"I do, Lettice,' said she. 'I pray to live, fur 
 thy sake, every day.' 
 
 "For my sake; — only for my sake! For her 
 own she longs to go. And that is saddest of all 
 to me. 
 
 "For, except on days like these, when I think 
 and look back, I am not always so very wretched. 
 It is very strange, after all that has happened. But I 
 am sometimes, rather often, a little bit happy. There 
 is so much that is cheerful and beautiful in the 
 world, I cannot help enjoying it. And pleasant 
 things might happen yet. 
 
 "I did love Harry, dearly; nearly better than 
 any one. I do. But to my mother, losing him 
 seems just the one sorrow which puts her on the 
 other side of all earthly joys and sorrows, with a 
 great gulf between, so that she looks on them from 
 afar ofF, like an angel. 
 
 "I suppose there is just this one tlnnrj the loss of 
 which would be the darkening of the whole world to 
 most of us, making it night instead of day. Other 
 people leave that sepulchre behind. It is grown
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 207 
 
 over, and in years it becomes a little sacred grass- 
 grown mound, or a stately memorial to the life 
 ended there. But to owe, it has made the whole 
 earth a sepulchre, at which she stands without, weep- 
 ing, and looking vainly in. 
 
 " TJiere is only one Voice which can quiet the 
 heart there! 
 
 " The day after. — Sir Launcelot and I had high 
 words to-day. We were looking from the terrace to- 
 wards Netherby, and I said something about old 
 times; and he rejoined that the Draytons would pro- 
 bably soon resume the lands they had lost in the 
 old times before the Conquest. 
 
 "I fired up, and said not one of the Draytons 
 would ever touch anything that did not belong to 
 them. ^They were not of Prince Rupert's plunderers,' 
 I said. 
 
 '"No doubt,' said he, 'they hold by a better 
 right than the sword.' And with nasal solemnity, 
 clasping his hands, he added, 'Voted, it is written 
 the saints shall possess the land ; voted — we are the 
 saints.' 
 
 "'Sir Launcelot,' I said, 'you know I hate to 
 hear old friends spoken of like that.' 
 
 "(When I had written bitter things myself of 
 them but yesterday! But it always angers me when 
 people are unfair.)
 
 208 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "Here lie clianged his tone, and spoke seriously 
 enougli. Too seriously, indeed, by far. He said 
 something about my opinion being more to him than 
 anything in the world. And when I went back into 
 the garden-parlour, not desiring such discourse, he 
 was on his knees at my feet, before I could raise 
 him, pouring out, I know not what passionate pro- 
 testations, and saying that I could save him, and 
 reclaim him, and make him all he longed to be, and 
 was not. And that if I rejected him, there was not 
 another power in earth or heaven that could keep 
 him from plunging into perdition; which perplexed 
 and grieved me much. For I do not love him. Of 
 that I am sure. But it is terrible to think of being 
 the only barrier between any human soul and 
 destruction. And I am half afraid to tell my mother, 
 for fear she should counsel me to take Sir Launce- 
 lot's conversion on me. Because she thinks every- 
 thing of no weight compared with religion. But I 
 cannot think it would be a duty to marry a person 
 only for the same reason you might become his god- 
 mother. Besides, if I did not love, Avhat real power 
 should I have to save? 
 
 "^^ night {later). — I have told my mother, and 
 she says that the last consideration makes it quite 
 clear. I could have no power for good, unless I loved. 
 And I do not love Sir Launcelot; and I neverjeouhl.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 209 
 
 "At tlie same time, wlien I opened my heart to 
 her about this, I ventured at last to tell her what 
 Sir Launcelot had thought about Harry and Roger 
 Drayton. I wish I had told her weeks ago. 
 
 "For she does not believe it. She says Eoger 
 woiild never have come and told us had it been so. 
 She has not the slightest fear it can be true. It has 
 lightened my heart wonderfully. Roger is not quite 
 just in saying I can believe in anything I wish. 
 
 '''"March, — A biting March for the good cause. 
 On the 14th, brave Sir Ralph Hopton surrendered 
 in Cornwall. On the 22nd, brave old Sir Jacob 
 Astley (he who made the prayer before Edgehill 
 fight, 'Lord, if I forget thee this day, do not thou 
 forget me') was beaten at Stow in Gloucestershire, 
 as he was bringing a small force he had gathered 
 with much pains, to succour the king at Oxford. 
 ' You have now done your work and may go to play,' 
 he said to the rebels who captured him, 'unless you 
 fall out among yourselves.' Gallant sententious old 
 veteran that he is! 
 
 '•''May. — His Majesty has taken refuge with the 
 Scottish army at Newark. 
 
 "We marvel he should have trusted his sacred 
 person with Covenanted Presbyterians. But in good 
 sooth he may well be weary of wandering, and may 
 
 The Drai/tons and the Davenants. II. 14
 
 210 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 look for some pity yet in his own fellow-countrymen. 
 Not that they showed much to the sweet fair lady 
 his father's mother. 
 
 "We hear it was but unwillingly he went to 
 them at night, between two and three o'clock in the 
 morning, on the 27th of April. A few days since 
 he left the shelter of Oxford, faithful to him so long, 
 riding, disguised as a servant, behind his faithful 
 attendant Mr. Ashburnham. Once he was asked by 
 a stranger on the road if his master were a noble- 
 man. 'No,' quoth the king, 'my master is one of 
 the Lower House,' a sad truth, forsooth, though 
 spoken in parable. It is believed amongst us that 
 he would fain have reached the eastern coast, thence 
 to take ship for Scotland, to join Montrose and 
 the true Scots with him. For his flight was un- 
 certain, and changed direction more than once — to 
 Henley-on-Thames, Slough, Uxbridge, then to the 
 top of Harrow Hill, across the country to St. Albans, 
 where the clattering hoofs of a farmer behind them 
 gave false alarm of pursuit; thence by the hoiises of 
 many faithful gentlemen who knew and loved him, 
 but respected his disguise, and made as though they 
 knew him not; to Downham in Norfolk; to South- 
 well; and thence, beguiled by promises, some say 
 — others declare — throwing himself of his own 
 free will, like a prince, on the ancient Scottish
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL ^YARS. 211 
 
 loyalty, he rode to Newark into the midst of the 
 Earl of Leven's army. 
 
 ^^ August 1646. — The civil war, they give out 
 now, is over. Every garrison and castle in the king- 
 dom have surrendered. In June loyal Oxford; and 
 now, last and most loyal of all, on the 19th of 
 August, Eagland Castle, with the noble old Marquis 
 of Worcester, who hath ruined himself past all remedy 
 in the king's service, and in this world will scarce 
 now find his reward. 
 
 "In June Prince Eupert rode through the land, 
 and embarked at Dover. Well for the good cause 
 if he had never come. His marauding ways gave 
 quite another complexion to the war from what it 
 might have had without him. His rashness, Harry 
 thought, lost us many a field. His lawlessness in- 
 fected our army. The king could not forgive him 
 his surrender of Bristol a few days after he was led 
 to believe it could be held for months. But in this 
 some think, perchance, he is less to blame than else- 
 where. Cromwell and the Ironsides were there, and 
 stormed the city, for it seems as if Cromwell could 
 never be baffled. 
 
 "With Prince Eupert went three hundred loyal 
 gentlemen; some despairing of the cause at home; 
 others, and with them my father, on missions to seek 
 aid from foreign courts.
 
 212 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 ''''February 1647. — The Scottisli army has yielded 
 him up — ('Bought and sold,' His Majesty said; 
 others say the two hundred thousand pounds the Scotch 
 received was for the expenses of the war) — into the 
 hands of the English Presbyterians at Newcastle. 
 
 ''''March. — We have seen the king once more. 
 My mother has heard for certain the true cause why 
 ,the king was given up by the Scotch to his enemies. 
 He would not sign their blood-stained covenant. He 
 would not sacrifice the church of these kingdoms, 
 with her bishops and her sacred liturgy, though 
 nobles, loyal men and true, nay, the queen herself, 
 by letter entreated him. My mother saith he is now 
 in most literal truth a martyr, suffering for the spot- 
 less bride, our dear mother the Church of England, 
 and for the triTth. We heard he was to arrive at 
 Holmby House in Northamptonshire; and, weak as 
 my mother is, nothing would content her but to be 
 borne thither in a litter to pay him her homage. I 
 would not have missed it for the world. Numbers 
 of gentlemen and gentlewomen were there to wel- 
 come him, with tears and prayers and hearty accla- 
 mations. It did our hearts good to hear the hearty 
 cheers and shouts, and, I trust, cheered his also. 
 The rebel troopers were Englishmen enough to offer 
 no hindrance. And we had the joy of gazing once 
 more on that kingly, pathetic countenance. He is
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 213 
 
 serene and cheerful, as a true martyr should be, my 
 mother says, accepting his cross and rejoicing in it; 
 not morose and of a sad countenance as those who 
 feign to be persecuted for conscience' sake. He 
 scorns no blameless pleasure which can solace the 
 weary hours of captivity, riding miles sometimes to 
 a good bowling-green to play at bowls, and beguil- 
 ing the evenings with chess or converse on art with 
 Mr. Harrington or Mr. Herbert. 
 
 "He will not suffer a Presbyterian chaplain to 
 say grace at his table, and his hard-hearted jailers 
 will allow no other. 
 
 "Thank Heaven, the common people are true to 
 him still. As they took him from Newcastle to 
 Holmby House, the simple peasants flocked round to 
 see him and bless him, and to feel the healing touch 
 of his sacred hand for ' the king's evil.' Sir Harry 
 Marten, a rebel and a republican, made a profane 
 jest thereon, and said, 'The touch of the great seal 
 would do them as much good.' But no one relished 
 the scun-il jest. And the blessings and prayers of 
 the poor followed the king everywhere. Yes; it is 
 the common people and the nobles that honour true 
 greatness. The Scribes and Pharisees, I am per- 
 suaded, sprang from -the middle station; yeomen, 
 craftsmen, chapmen. 'Tithing mint while devouring 
 widows' houses.' Precisely like those creeping, base,
 
 214 THE DRAYXONS AND THE DAVENAJ^TS : 
 
 unpunisliable middle-station sins. The troubles of 
 this middle state are wretched, low, carking money- 
 troubles. The sorrows of the high and low are na- 
 tural ennobling sorrows; bereavement, pain, and death. 
 It is the sordid middle order that envies the great. 
 The common people reverence them when on high 
 places, and generously pity them when brought low. 
 My mother says, belike the sorrows of their king 
 shall yet move the honest heart of the nation to a 
 reverent pity, and thus back to loyalty; and so, as 
 so often in great conflicts, more be won through suf- 
 fering than through success. 
 
 '''' April 1647. — We are to pay our last penalty. 
 Our old Hall is declared to be a perilous nest of 
 traitors and cradle of insurrection. A rebel garrison 
 is to be qviartered on us. 
 
 "Our expedition to Holmby has led to two re- 
 sults; it offended some of the people in authority 
 among the rebels, and thereby caused them to take 
 possession of the Hall; and it so taxed my mother's 
 wasted strength that she is unfit for any journey, so 
 that we must even stay and suffer the presence of 
 these insolent and rebellious men in our home. 
 
 ^'' April., Davenant Hall. — Mr. Drayton hath been 
 here to-day. He looked pale and thin from the long 
 imprisonment he hath suffered, and he hath lost his 
 right arm — a sore loss to him who ever took such
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 215 
 
 pleasure in his geometrical instruments, and played 
 the violi-di-gambo so masterly. 
 
 "He gave a slight start when he saw my mother, 
 and there was a kind of anxious compassionate re- 
 verence in his manner towards her which makes me 
 uneasy. I fear he deems her sorely changed, and 
 ofttimes I have feared the same. But then this 
 mourning garb which she will never more lay aside, 
 and her dear gray hair, which I love, put back like 
 an Italian Madonna from her forehead, in itself makes 
 a difference. Although I think her eyes never looked 
 so soft and beautiful as now. The golden hair of 
 youth, and all its brilliant colour, seems to me scarcely 
 so fair as this silver hair of hers, with the oft pale 
 hues on her cheeks. 
 
 "Mr. Drayton asked us to take asylum at Netherby 
 Hall till such time as we join my father elsewhere. 
 My mother knows what Harry thought, and seems 
 not averse to accept his hospitality. I certainly had 
 not thought to enter old Netherby again in such 
 guise as this."
 
 216 THE DliAYXOXS AA'D THE DAVENA^'TS ; 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 olive's recollecxioxs. 
 
 The old house seemed to gain a kind of sacred- 
 ness when it became the refvige of that dear bereaved 
 lady and sweet Lettice. Lady Lucy was much 
 changed. Her voice, always soft, was low as the soft 
 notes in a hymn; her step, always light, was slower 
 and feebler; her hair, though still abundant, had 
 changed from luxuriant auburn to a soft silver; her 
 cheeks were worn into a difierent curve, though still, 
 I thought, as beautiful; and the colour in them was 
 paler. Everything in her seemed to have changed 
 from sunset to moonlight. Her voice and her very 
 thoughts seemed to come from afar, from some region 
 we could not tread, like music borne over still waters. 
 It was as if she had crossed a river which severed 
 her far from us, which she would never more recross, 
 but only wait till the call came to mount the dim 
 heights on the other side. Xot that she was in any 
 way sad, or uninterested, or abstracted; only she did 
 not seem to belong to us any more. 
 
 I wondered if Lettice saw this as I did. And
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 217 
 
 many a time the tears came to my eyes as I looked 
 at those two and thought how strong were the cords 
 of love which bound them, and how feeble the thread 
 of life. 
 
 Aunt Dorothy welcomed Lady Lucy with as true 
 a tenderness as any one. The silvery hair in place 
 of those heart -breakers (silvered so suddenly by 
 sorrow), softened her in more ways than one. One 
 thing, however, tried her sorely. And I much dreaded 
 the explosion it might lead to, if Aunt Dorothy's 
 conscience once got the upper hand of her hospi- 
 tality. 
 
 The Lady Lucy always had in her oratory at 
 home a little erection resembling an altar, dressed in 
 w^hite, with sacred books on it; the Holy Scriptures, 
 A Kempis, Herbert, and others, and above them a 
 copy of a picture by Master Albert Diirer, figuring 
 our Lord on the cross, the suffering thorn-crowned 
 form gleaming pale and awful out of the terrible 
 noonday darkness. Before this solemn picture stood 
 two golden candlesticks, which at night the waiting 
 gentlewomen were wont to light. I shall never forget 
 Aunt Dorothy's expression of dismay and distress 
 when she first saw this erection, one evening soon 
 after Lady Lucy's arrival. She mastered herself so 
 far as to say nothing to Lady Lucy then, beyond the 
 good wishes for the night, and directions as to some
 
 218 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 possets which she had come to administer. But the 
 solemn change that came over her voice and face she 
 could not conceal. And afterwards she solemnly 
 summoned us into my father's private room to make 
 known her discovery. 
 
 "An idol, brother!" she concluded; "an abomina- 
 tion! At this moment, probably, idol-worship going 
 on tinder this roof, drawing down on us all the 
 lightnings of heaven!" 
 
 "I should not use such a thing as a help to devo- 
 tion myself, sister Dorothy," said my father; "but 
 what would you have me do?" 
 
 "Help to devotion!" she exclaimed; "'Thou 
 shalt not make any graven image, nor the likeness 
 of any thing.' Sweep them away with the besom of 
 destruction, and cast the idols to the moles and to 
 the bats." 
 
 "Sister Dorothy," he said, "you would not have 
 me take a hammer, and axe, and cords, and drag 
 this piece of painted work from the Lady Lucy's 
 chamber before her eyes." 
 
 "Thine eye shall not spare," she replied so- 
 lemnly. 
 
 "But in the first place I must know that it is an 
 idol to Lady Lucy," he said, "and that she does bow 
 down to it." 
 
 "Subtle distinctions, brother; traffickings with
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 219 
 
 the enemy. Heaven grant they prove not our ruin, 
 as of Jehoshaphat before us." 
 
 For Aunt Dorothy, although she had forsaken 
 the judgment-seat for private offences, would still 
 have deemed it impiety to abandon it in cases of 
 heresy. 
 
 "Sister Dorothy," interposed Aunt Gretel, "in 
 my country good men and women do use such things 
 in their private devotions and in the churches, and 
 yet do not become idolaters thereby." 
 
 "Belike they do, sister Gretel," rejoined Aunt 
 Dorothy dryly. "The hand that would have pulled 
 down the Epistle of St. James might well leave some 
 idols standing. An owl sees better than a blind 
 man. But it is no guide to those whose eyes are 
 used to day." 
 
 This profane comparison of Dr. Luther to an 
 owl dismayed Aunt Gretel, so as to throw her en- 
 tirely out of the conflict, which finished with an 
 ordinance from my father that liberty of conscience 
 should be the order of his household ; and a protest 
 from Aunt Dorothy that, be the consequences what 
 they might, she would not suffer any immortal soul 
 within her reach to go the broad road to ruin with- 
 out warning. 
 
 This threat kept us in anxious anticipation. We 
 took the greatest care not to leave the combatants
 
 220 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 alone; one so determined and the other so uncon- 
 scious of danger. 
 
 At last, however, the fatal moment arrived. 
 
 It was early in April, a fortnight after Lady Lucy 
 and Lettice took shelter under our roof. 
 
 Dr. Antony had arrived from London with tidings 
 which made us all very uneasy. 
 
 The Presbyterian majority in the House of Com- 
 mons, believing the civil war ended, were very eager 
 to disband the army which had ended it, which, 
 being mostly composed of Independents, they dreaded 
 even more than the king. 
 
 In February they had voted that no officer under 
 Sir Thomas Fairfax should hold any rank higher 
 than a colonel, intending thereby to displace Oliver 
 Cromwell, Ireton, Ludlow, Blake, Skippon, and 
 Algernon Sydney, and, in short, every commander 
 whom the army most trusted, and under whom their 
 victories had been gained. 
 
 They were to be disbanded, moreover, without 
 receiving their pay, now due for more than half a 
 year. It was also proposed that such of the soldiers 
 as were still kept together should be sent to Ireland 
 to settle matters there, under new Presbyterian 
 commanders instead of those whom they knew and 
 trusted. 
 
 The indignation in the army was deep. But it
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 221 
 
 was as much under the restraint of law, and was 
 expressed in as orderly a way, as if the army had 
 been a court of justice. The regiments met, deli- 
 berated, remonstrated, and drew up a petition; de- 
 manded arrears of pay, and refused to go to Ireland 
 save under commanders they knew. "For the desire 
 of our arrears," they said, "necessity, especially of 
 our soldiers, enforced us thereunto. We left our 
 estates, and many of us our trade and callings to 
 others, and forsook the contentments of a quiet life, 
 not fearing nor regarding the difficulties of war for 
 your sakes; after which we hoped that the desires of 
 our hardly-earned wages would have been no un- 
 welcome request, nor argued us guilty of the least 
 discontent or intention of miitiny." 
 
 No one, my father said, could deny the truth of 
 tliis. The Parliament army had not eked out with 
 indiscriminate plunder their arrears of pay. 
 
 On the .3d of April three soldiers — Adjutators 
 (or Agitators, as some called them) — had been sent 
 with a respectful but determined message to the House 
 of Commons. General Cromwell (attending in his 
 place in the House in spite of the plots there had 
 been during the past weeks, as he knew, to commit 
 him to the Tower) rose and spoke at length of the 
 danger of driving the army to extremities. 
 
 And now Dr. Antony came with the tidings that
 
 222 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 General Cromwell was at Saffron Walden, bearing to 
 the army the promise of indemnity and arrears. He 
 brought also a brief letter from Roger, saying that 
 now all was sure to go right. 
 
 This news drew us all together, and it was not 
 until she had been absent some time that it was dis- 
 'covered that Aunt Dorothy had left us. 
 
 Aunt Gretel was the first to perceive her depar- 
 ture and to suspect its cause. At once she repaired 
 to Lady Lucy's chamber, whence, in a minute or 
 two, she returned, and touching me lightly on the 
 shoulder, she said in a solemn whisper, — 
 
 "Olive, it must be stopped; the Lady Lucy is 
 looking like a ghost, and Mistress Lettice like a 
 damask rose, and your Aunt Dorothy is talking 
 Latin." 
 
 This was Aunt Gretel's formula for controversial 
 language. She said English was composed of two 
 elements — the German she could understand; we 
 used it, she said, when we were speaking of things 
 near our hearts, of matters of business, or of affec- 
 tion , or of religion , in a peaceable and kindly 
 manner. But the Latin was beyond her. There 
 were long words ending in ation, atical, or arian^ 
 which always came on the field when there was 
 about to be a battle. And then she always with- 
 drew. In this martial array Aunt Dorothy's thoughts
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 223 
 
 were now being clothed. And Aunt Gretel thought 
 I had better summon my father to interrupt the 
 debate. 
 
 I went at once and indicated to him the danger. 
 He looked half angry half amused. 
 
 "Dr. Antony," he said, "your medical attend- 
 ance is required up-stairs. My sister has recommenced 
 the civil war." 
 
 I flew up to announce the coming of the gentle- 
 men. 
 
 At the moment when I entered the room the 
 controversy had reached a climax. Lady Lucy was 
 sitting very pale and upright, on a high-backed 
 chair, with tears in her eyes, saying in a faint 
 voice, — 
 
 "Mistress Dorothy, I am not a Papist, and hope 
 never to be." 
 
 Lettice, behind the chair, with her arm round 
 her mother, and her hand on her shoulder, stood 
 like a champion, with quivering lips and burning 
 cheeks, and declared that "there were worse heretics 
 than the Papists, and worse tyrants than the Inqui- 
 sition." Whilst Aunt Dorothy, as pale as Lady 
 Lucy, and with lips quivering as much as Lettice's, 
 faced them with the consciousness of being herself 
 a witness or a martyr for the truth struggling 
 Avithin her against the sense that she was regarded
 
 224 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 by others in tlie light of an inquisitor and tormentor 
 of martyrs. 
 
 "An't please you, Lady Lucy," I said, "my 
 father thought Dr. Antony, who is down-stairs, might 
 recommend you some healing draught. He has won- 
 derful reci^ies for coughs." 
 
 And before a reply could be given, my father 
 and Dr. Antony were at the door, and Aunt Dorothy 
 was arrested in her testimony, without the possibility 
 of uttering a last word. 
 
 Dr. Antony seemed to comprehend the position 
 at a glance. With a quiet courtesy which intro- 
 duced him at once, and gave him the command of 
 the field, he went up to Lady Lucy, and, feeling 
 her pulse, observed that it was slightly feverish and 
 uneven, ordered the windows to be opened, and 
 recommended that as much air as possible should be 
 obtained, by means of all but Mistress Lettice leav- 
 ing the room. He had little doubt, then, that some 
 cooling medicines, which he had at hand, would do 
 the rest. As I was going, Lettice entreated me to 
 stay, which I was ready to do. 
 
 And ere long we were all three quietly gathered 
 around Lady Lucy's chair, Lettice on a cushion at 
 her feet (where she best loved to be), I on the 
 window-seat near, and Dr. Antony leaning on the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 225 
 
 back of her cliair. Slie was discoursing to liim in 
 French, which she spoke with a marvellously natural 
 accent, and which I had never heard him speak 
 before. I know not why, it seemed as if the lan- 
 guage threw a new vivacity and fire into his coun- 
 tenance, and I felt very ignorant and humbled not 
 to be able to join. But this feeling did not last 
 long. Lady Lucy had a way of divining what 
 passed in the mind, and she called me near, and 
 made me sit on a little chair beside her, and drew 
 my hand into hers, and encouraged me to say such 
 words as I knew, and praised my accent, and said 
 it had just (that pretty English lisp in it that some of 
 the compatriots of poor Queen Henrietta Maria had 
 thought charming. 
 
 She made Dr. Antony tell us moving histories, 
 still in French, of his ancestors, their daring deeds 
 and hairbreadth 'scapes. So an hour passed, and 
 we were all friends, bound together by the easy charm 
 of her sweet gracious manner, and had forgotten the 
 storm and everything else, when we were summoned 
 to supper. 
 
 Giving him her hand as she took leave of him, 
 she said Avith a smile, "I pray you to re-assure 
 Mistress Dorothy as to my orthodoxy, and make her 
 believe my sympathies are on the right side with 
 the sufferers of St. Bartholomew's Day. And Olive, 
 
 The Draytons and the Davenants. 11. lo
 
 226 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 little champion," said she, drawing my forehead 
 down to her for a kiss, and stroking my cheek, 
 "never think it necessary again to interpose in a 
 battle between your aunt and your mother's friend. 
 I honour her from my heart for her fidelity to con- 
 science. And if she is more anxious than necessary 
 about my faith — we should surely bear one 
 another no grudge for that. I know it cost her 
 more than it cost me for her to exhort me as she 
 did. And I am not sure," she added, smiling, "if 
 after all she does not love me better than any of 
 you." 
 
 "Mistress Olive," said Dr. Antony, as we sat 
 that evening in the dusk, by the window of my 
 father's room, while he wrote, "I would that 
 Christian women understood the beautiful work they 
 might do if they would take their true part in the 
 church." 
 
 "What would that be?" I said, thinking, after the 
 experience of to-day, it might probably be the part 
 of the mute. 
 
 "To see that Morals and Theology, Charity and 
 Truth, are never divorced," he replied. "To win 
 us back to the Beatitudes when we are straying into 
 the curses. To lead us back to Persons when we 
 are groping into abstractions. For books full of 
 dogma — Orthodox, Arminian, Supra-lapsarian , or
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 227 
 
 otherwise — to give us a liome, a living world, full 
 of the- Father, the Son, and the Comforter, of angels 
 and brothers. To see that we never petrify the 
 thought of the Living God into a metaphysical for- 
 mula, still less into a numerical term. Never to let 
 us forget that the great purpose of redemption is to 
 bring us to God; that the great purpose of the 
 church is to make us good. "When we have clipped, 
 and stretched, and stiffened the living Truth into 
 the narrow immutability of our theological or philo- 
 sophical definitions, to breathe it back again into 
 the unfathomable simplicity of the wisdom that 
 brings heavenly awe over the faces of little children, 
 and heavenly peace into the eyes of dying men. To 
 keep the windows open through our definitions into 
 God's infinity. To translate our ingenious, definite, 
 unchangeable scholastic terms into the simple, infi- 
 nite, ever-changing — because ever-living — words 
 of daily and eternal life; so that holiness shall 
 never come to mean a stern or mystic quality quite 
 different from goodness; or righteousness, a mere 
 legal qualification quite different from justice; or 
 humility, a svipernatural attainment quite different 
 from being humble; or charity, something very far 
 from simply being gentle, and generous, and self- 
 denying, and forbearing; and 'brethren' an eccle- 
 siastical noun of multitude totally unconnected with 
 
 15*
 
 228 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 'brother.' Wlieu women rise to tlieir work in the 
 church, it seems to me the church will soon rise to 
 her true work in the world." 
 
 "You speak with fervour," said my father, rising 
 from the table, and smiling as he laid his hand on 
 Dr. Antony's shoulder; "the womanhood you picture 
 is something loftier than that of Eve." 
 
 "Mary's Ave has gone far to transfigure the 
 name of Eve, as an ancient hymn hath it," he re- 
 plied. "Ecce ancilla Domini, shall echo deeper and 
 further, and be remembered longer, than 'The ser- 
 pent tempted me, and I did eat.' But," he added, 
 "we have a better type than Mary for woman as 
 well as man, in Him who came not to be ministered 
 unto but to minister. I was chiefly thinking of the 
 gifts most common, it seems to me, to women, and 
 least to controversialists; I mean', imagination and 
 common sense. Imagination, which penetrates from 
 signs to things signified; which pierces, for instance, 
 into the depth and meaning of such words as 
 'eternity' and 'accursed;' — which also penetrates 
 behind the adjectives Calvinistic or Arminian, to the 
 substantive men and women whose theology they 
 define. And common sense, which, when a con- 
 clusion contradicts our inborn instincts as to right 
 and wrong, refuses to receive it, although the path
 
 A STOUY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 229 
 
 to it be smootliecl and hedged by logic without a 
 flaw." 
 
 "In other words," said my father, "you would 
 say that, with women the heart corrects the errors 
 of the head oftener than we suffer it to do so with 
 us. We must remember, however, that the heart 
 also is not infallible, and that the same qualities 
 which can make women the best saints make them 
 the worst controversialists. Theology and morals 
 being in their hearts thus closely intertwined, they 
 fight against a mistake as if it were a sin. They 
 quicken abstractions, and even rites and ceremonies, 
 into personal life, and are apt to defend them with 
 a blind and passionate vehemence as they would the 
 character of a husband or a son." 
 
 "Best gifts abused must ever be worst curses," 
 said Dr. Antony. 
 
 And I ventured to say, — 
 
 "Is it not just the lowliness of our lot that makes 
 it high? Can we help our voices becoming shrill, if 
 we will have them loud?" 
 
 " Tune thine then, sweet heart, where first I learnt 
 how sweet it was," said my father, stroking my cheek. 
 "By sick-beds, or by children's cradles, or in the 
 house of mourning, or wherever good words are needed 
 only to be heard by the one to whom they are spoken,
 
 230 THE DRATTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 — there women's voices are attuned to their truest 
 tones." 
 
 The next morning I had that walk in the orchard 
 with Dr. Antony, when he told me the secret which 
 my father would persist in declaring (most unwar- 
 rantably, I think) lay at the root of his high ex- 
 pectations as to the futm-e work and destinies of 
 women. 
 
 And when, a few hours afterwards, after I had 
 been alone a while, and we had knelt together and 
 received my father's blessing, and I began to under- 
 stand my happiness a little, and went and said 
 something about it to Lady Lucy, and especially 
 how strange it was, that Dr. Antony said he had 
 thought of it so long, whilst I had not been dream- 
 ing of it, she kissed my forehead, and said with a 
 smile, — 
 
 "Very strange, my unsuspecting little Puritan. 
 For it crossed my thoughts the first hour I saw you 
 together, and that was yesterday evening. Ah, Olive," 
 she added, very tenderly, in a faltering voice, "I 
 had fond thoughts once that it might have been 
 otherwise. If my Harry had lived, and this poor 
 distracted realm had returned to her allegiance, I had 
 thought perchance some day to have the right to 
 call thee by the tenderest name. But God hath not
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 231 
 
 willed it so. And I try hard tliat his will may be 
 mine. He hatli given thee the great gift of a good 
 man's heart. And I have no fear but that thou wilt 
 keep it."
 
 232 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 xxxn. 
 
 LETTICE DA YEN ant's DIARY. 
 
 "Netherby, May 1647. — They have given us 
 the best upper chambers in the house, one for a 
 withdrawing-chamber, the other for my mother's and 
 my sleeping-chamber. This last has a broad em- 
 bayed window commanding the orchard, at the bot- 
 tom of which is the pond where the water-lilies grow 
 that Roger gathered for me on that night when Dr. 
 Taylor and JVli*. Milton discoursed together on the 
 terrace (and their speech was like rich music) about 
 liberty of thinking and speaking. 
 
 England has been echoing with another kind of 
 music all these years since, on the same theme; but 
 it seems as if we had drawn but little nearer a con- 
 clusion. The Presbyterians now at the head of affairs 
 seem as convinced of the sin of allowing any one 
 else to think or speak fi-eely as the poor martyred 
 Archbishop was. They are for the Covenant (mean- 
 ing Presbytery), King, and Parliament; the Covenant 
 first. We for the King, without Covenant and with 
 Bishops. But the Presbyterians are against con-
 
 A STORY OF THK CIVIL WARS. 233 
 
 venticles and all sectaries (except themselves); and 
 herein, so far, we and they agree; in which agree- 
 ment, some think, may yet lie a hope for the good 
 cause. If we could make a compromise, order might, 
 it is thought, be speedily restored. But this seems 
 very hard. They would have to sacrifice the Cov- 
 enant, which seems as dear to them as the Bible ; we, 
 the Church by law established — the sacred chain, 
 my mother says, which binds us to the Catholic Church 
 of all the past; and this the king will die, she 
 thinks, rather than do. The only chance, therefore, 
 of accord between us seems to be, if the Presbyterians 
 ever reach the point of hating or fearing the In- 
 dependents more than they love the Covenant. In 
 that case, some think the king and the Presbyterians, 
 Scotch and English, might unite and overpower the 
 Independents; and — what then? 
 
 "I cannot at all imagine. Because, when the 
 common enemy is gone, Episcopacy and the Covenant 
 still remain, alone, confronting each other. Sir Lauuce- 
 lot said the king thinks he has a very plain 'game' 
 to play. 'He must persuade one of his enemies to 
 extirpate the other, and then come in easily and put 
 the weakened victor under his feet.' This he has 
 in letters declared to be his intention. I trust the 
 royal letters have been misread. For such a 'game' 
 seems to me very far from paternal or kingly; and.
 
 234 TUB DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 except on far better testimony, I will not credit it. 
 But for me there is an especial grief in all these 
 matters. Olive, who takes her politics from Roger, 
 seems to hononr most the Independents, who con- 
 stitute the strength of the army, and General Crom- 
 well, who is their idol; so that whatever cause 
 triumphs, nothing is likely to bring peace between 
 the Davenants and the Draytons. 
 
 "At present, however, our peace in this house is 
 much increased, my mother and Mistress Dorothy 
 having concluded a treaty on the ground of their 
 common loyalty to His Majesty, and their common 
 abhorrence of 'sectaries.' 
 
 "Moreover, Mistress Dorothy is marvellous gentle 
 and kind to us. Having delivered her conscience, 
 she treats my mother with a tender consideration 
 and deference that go to my heart. Although some- 
 times I think it is only from such pity as a bene- 
 volent jailer would feel for sentenced criminals. 
 They have been condemned; justice is sure to be 
 satisfied ; and therefore, meantime, mercy may safely 
 satisfy herself by keeping them fed and warmed. 
 
 "She says little; but she watches my mother's 
 tastes, and supplies her with unexpected delicacies 
 in a way which binds my whole heart to her. 
 
 "I scarce know why; but I always drew to her. 
 She is so downright and true, and like a man;
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 235 
 
 manly, as a man may be womanly. She is the most 
 like Roger in some ways of any of them; only he, 
 being really a man and a soldier, is gentler. And 
 when she loves you, it seems to be in spite of her- 
 self, which makes it all the sweeter. For she does 
 love me. I am sure of it, by the way she watches 
 and exhorts, and contradicts me. Especially, since 
 I read her those sermons that afternoon when we 
 were waiting for Olive and Roger. I asked Olive, 
 and she told me Mistress Dorothy said, that after- 
 noon, she thought I had gracious dispositions. That 
 meant, I know, that she liked me. She wanted to 
 excuse herself for liking so worldly and Babylonish 
 a damsel, as she believed me to be. And, therefore, 
 she hath invested me in her thoughts with 'gracious 
 dispositions,' and believes herself commissioned to 
 bring me out of Babylon, and to be a 'means of 
 grace' to me; which, I am sure, I am willing she 
 shoixld be. For my heart is too light and careless, 
 I know well; except on one or two points. And, 
 meantime, I flatter myself I may be an 'ordinance 
 and means of grace' in some little measure to her, 
 little as she might acknowledge it. It does good 
 people so much good to love (really love, I mean, 
 not take in hand merely, like patients) people who 
 are not as good as themselves. It sets them planning 
 and praying for others; it takes them from looking
 
 236 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 within for signs, and forward for rewards, by filling 
 the heart with love, which is the most gracious sign, 
 and the most glorious reward in itself. 
 
 "Sweet mother mine, we all have been great 
 means of grace to her in that way ! 
 
 "Think what she may, she would not have been 
 a gi-eater saint at Little Gidding, although she had 
 chanted the Psalter through three hundred and sixty- 
 five times in the year. 
 
 "I think she and Mistress Dorothy help each 
 other. They make me think of the two groups of 
 graces in the Bible. St. Paul's, — '■Love, joy, peace, 
 long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tem- 
 perance.'' I picture these as sweet maidenly or ma- 
 tronly forms, white-robed, radiant, with low sweet 
 voices. They represent my mother and the holy 
 people of Mr. Herbert's school. Then there are 
 St. Peter's, — ''Faith, virtue, Tcnowledge, temperance, 
 patience, godliness, brotherly-hindness , charity.'' These 
 rise before me like a company of knights in armour, 
 valiant, true, and pure. In the kind of plain, manly 
 armour of the Ironsides, as Roger looked in it that 
 morning at Oxford, when he turned back and waved 
 farewell to me in the court of the College. And 
 these represent Mistress Dorothy and the nobler 
 Puritans. They are the same, no doubt, essentially; 
 love and charity, the mother of one group, the king
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL VfARS. 237 
 
 and crown of the otlaer. Yet tbey seem to me to 
 represent two diverse orders of ]oiety — tlie manly 
 and the womanly. Together, side by side, in mutual 
 aid and service, not front to front in battle, what a 
 church and what a world they might make! 
 
 "But the great event in the house now is the 
 betrothal of Olive and Dr. Antony, which took place 
 on the very morning after Mistress Dorothy's grand 
 remonstrance. 
 
 "Dr. Antony left a day or two afterwards. And 
 ever since we have been as busy as possible pre- 
 paring for the wedding, which is to be in July. Not 
 a long betrothal-time. But they needed not further 
 time to try each other. 
 
 "It is very pleasant to all of us to be occupied 
 for her, who is so little wont to be occupied with 
 herself. She seems in a little tumult of happiness, 
 as far as any Puritan soul can be in a tumult. 
 
 "Many of these Puritan ways seem to me wondrous 
 innocent and sweet. 
 
 "They have their solemnities, I see, and their 
 ritual, and ceremonial-, and their symbolism and 
 sacred art, moreover, say what Mistress Dorothy may 
 to the contrary. 
 
 "Tender sacred family rites and solemnities. 
 They have, indeed, no chapel or chaplain. But the 
 family seems a little church ; the father is the priest.
 
 238 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Not without sacred beauty tliis order, nor without 
 sanction either from the fathers of the Church (fathers 
 older than Archbishop Laud) — the fathers Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob. 
 
 "For instance, when Olive and Dr. Antony were 
 betrothed, Mr. Drayton led them into his room, and 
 laid his hands on them, and blessed them. And that 
 was the seal of their betrothal. Every Sunday morn- 
 ing, Olive tells me, when she and Roger were chil- 
 dren, after family prayers, they used to kneel thus 
 for their father's blessing. Sacred touches, holy as 
 coronation sacring oil, I think, to bear about the 
 memory of through life. But then there is this to 
 be remembered. When the consecrating touch is 
 from hands which work with us in daily life, they 
 need to be very pure. No pomp of place, and no 
 mist of distance glorifies the miuistrant. He had 
 need, indeed, to be all glorious within. 
 
 "Family solemnities must be very true to be at 
 all fair. I can fancy Puritan hypocrisy, or a mere 
 formal Puritanism, the driest and most hideous thing 
 in the world. 
 
 "Then, as to symbols and sacred art. What 
 else are these Scripture texts, carved over door- 
 ways , graven on chimney-stones , emblazoned on 
 walls? 'They are not graven images,' saith Mistress 
 Dorothy. But what are words but images within
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 239 
 
 the soul; or images, rightly used, but children's 
 words? Not that even as to actual 'holy pictures' 
 and 'images' they are quite destitute. What else 
 are the paintings from Scripture on the Dutch tiles 
 in Mr. Drayton's room, where Olive and Roger 
 learned from Mistress Gretel's lips their earliest Bible 
 lore? It is true, they are chiefly from the Old Testa- 
 ment. But Adam and Eve delving, the serpent 
 darting out his forked tongue from the tree, Noah 
 and the animals walking out of the ark, are as 
 much pictures as St. Peter fishing, or the blessed 
 Virgin and the Babe, on church windows. What 
 difference, then, except that the Puritan pictures are 
 on tiles at home instead of on glass at church? 
 'They are for instruction, and not for idolatry,' saith 
 Mistress Dorothy. But did not the monks in old 
 times paint their pictures also for instruction, and 
 not for idolatry? 'Centuries of abuse make the 
 most innocent things perilous,' saith Mistress Dorothy. 
 'When the brazen serpent had become an idol, 
 Jehoshaphat called it a piece of brass, and broke it 
 in pieces.' I can see something in that. The 
 sacrilege in such a case is the idolatry, not the de- 
 struction of the idol. But alas, if we set ourselves 
 to destroy all things that have been, or can be made 
 into idols, where are we to stop ? Some people made 
 idols of the very stones of their houses, without any
 
 240 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 scriptures thereon; or of tlieir firesides, without the 
 sacred pictures. 
 
 "There are two things, however, which fill me 
 with reverence in these Puritan ways. First, this 
 sweet and sacred family piety. Second (or rather 
 first, for it is at the root of all), the profound con- 
 viction that every man, woman, and child, in every 
 word and work, has to do directly with God; that 
 the Creator, by virtue of being divine, is nearer us 
 than all creatures; that to Him each one is imme- 
 diately responsible, and that, therefore, on His word 
 only can it be safe for each one to believe or do 
 anything. Such conviction gives a power which 
 ceases to be marvellous only when you think of its 
 source. But alas, alas! what if this divine word be 
 misunderstood. 
 
 '•'•J'uhj. — Eoger Drayton has come, on a few 
 days' leave, to be present at his sister's wedding. 
 
 "He hath brought the strange news that the king 
 is in the keeping of the army. We scarcely know 
 whether to mourn or rejoice. It came about on this 
 wise , as Roger told my mother and me : — 
 
 "It was reported in the army that the Presby- 
 terian party in the Parliament designed to remove 
 the king from Holmby, where he was, to Oatlands, 
 near London, there to make a separate treaty, in
 
 A SXOllV OF THE CIVIL WARS. 241 
 
 which the soldiers were not to be consulted or con- 
 sidered. 
 
 "On the 4tli of June, therefore, Cornet Joyce, 
 without commission, it seems, from any one, but 
 simply as knowing that it would be agreeable to the 
 army, and to prevent this design of a separate Pres- 
 byterian treaty, went, with some seven or eight hun- 
 dred men, to Holmby House, where His Majesty 
 had remained since we saw him in April. 
 
 "The Commissioners of the Parliament, who were 
 His Majesty's jailers, were very indignant at this 
 interference of Cornet Joyce, and commanded the 
 gates to be closed, and preparations to be made to 
 resist an assault. Their own soldiers, on the con- 
 trary, were of the same mind with the army and the 
 cornet, and threw open the gates at once to their 
 comrades. Nor was the king himself, it seems, un- 
 willing. When Cornet Joyce made his way to the 
 royal presence, the king spoke to him with much 
 graciousness. He asked the cornet if he would pro- 
 mise to do him no hurt, and to force him to nothing 
 against his conscience. Cornet Joyce declared he 
 had no ill intention in any way, the soldiers only 
 wanted to prevent His Majesty being placed at the 
 head of another army, and that he would be most 
 unwilling to force any man against his conscience, 
 much less His Majesty. The king, therefore, agreed 
 
 The Dvaytons and the Davenants. il, 16
 
 242 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 to accompany Mm the next day, this happening at 
 night. 
 
 "The next morning, at six o'clock, His Majesty 
 condescended to meet the soldiers. 
 
 "He again demanded to know the cornet's author- 
 ity, and if he had no writing from the general, Sir 
 Thomas Fairfax. 
 
 "'I pray you, Mr. Joyce,' he said, 'deal in- 
 genuously with me, and tell me what commission 
 you have.' 
 
 " Said Joyce, — 
 
 "'Here is my commission.' 
 
 "'Where?' asked the king. 
 
 "'Behind me,' said the cornet, pointing to his 
 troopers; 'and I hope that will satisfy your Majesty.' 
 
 "The king smiled. 
 
 "'It is as fair a commission,' he said, 'and as 
 well written as I have ever seen in my life; a com- 
 pany of as handsome and proper gentlemen as I 
 have seen a great while. But what if I should yet 
 refuse to go with you? I hope you would not force 
 me! I am your king. You ought not to lay violent 
 hands on your king. I acknowledge none to be 
 above me but God.' 
 
 "Cornet Joyce assured His Majesty he meant 
 him no harm; and at length the king went with the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 243 
 
 soldiers as they desired, they suflering liim to choose 
 between two or three places the one he liked best. 
 
 "So, by easy stages, they conducted him to 
 Childerley, near Newmarket. And it is said the 
 king was the merriest of the company. Heaven send 
 it to be a good augury! 
 
 "Eoger said, moreover, that His Majesty con- 
 tinues to be of good cheer, and the army to be 
 friendly disposed towards him. They have hope yet 
 that Sir Thomas Fairfax, General Cromwell, and 
 Ireton, may make some arrangement to which His 
 Majesty may honourably accede. 
 
 "And, meantime, they allow him not only the 
 attendance of his faithful servants, but his own chap- 
 lains to perform the services of the church, which 
 the Presbyterians refused him at Holmby. English- 
 men, especially the common people, and most of all, 
 I think, English soldiers, have honest hearts after 
 all; safer to trust to than those of men armed cap-a- 
 pie in covenants and confessions. Surely the king 
 will yet win the hearts of the army, and all will yet 
 go right. 
 
 "Roger, meanwhile, is as stately in his courtesy 
 to me as a Spanish hidalgo, listening and assenting 
 to all I say in a way I detest. For it means that 
 he feels our differences too deep to venture on. 
 
 "t7w7y 2nd. — Roger has begun to contradict 
 
 16*
 
 244 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVBNANTS: 
 
 and controvert me again deliglitfully. This morning 
 we bad our first serious battle. 
 
 "Yesterday I said sometbiug about abhorring all 
 middle states of things. It was in reference to the 
 poor peasants flocking around the king. I said 
 there was no poetry in mid- way things, or times, or 
 states; in mid-day, mid-summer, middle-life, or the 
 middle-station in the state. 
 
 "He took this up earnestly, after his manner, 
 and went into a serious argument to prove me 
 wrong. It was but a weakling and half- fledged 
 poesy, quoth he, which must needs go to dewdrops, 
 and rosy clouds, and primroses, and violets, for its 
 smiles and decorations, and could see no glory and 
 beauty in summer or in noon. Summer with its 
 golden ripening harvests, and all its depths of boun- 
 tiful life in woods and fields; noon- tide with its pa- 
 tient toil or its rapturous hush of rest; manhood and 
 womanhood with their dower of noble work and of 
 strength to do it. He could not abide (he said), to 
 hear the springtide spoken pulingly of as if it faded 
 instead of ripened into summer, or youth as if it set 
 instead of dawned into manhood. And as to the 
 middle station in a nation, its yeomanry and traders, 
 nations must have their heads to think and their 
 hands to work; but the middle order was the nation's 
 heart. If that was sound, the nation was sound, if that
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 245 
 
 was corrupt and base, the nation's heart was rotten at 
 the core. Which (ended he) he thought these last 
 years, with all their miseries, had proved that the heart 
 of England was not. 
 
 "Roger Drayton has a strange way of his own 
 in discourse, of putting aside all the light skirmish- 
 ing forces, and closing with the very kernel and 
 core of the people he has to do with. The way of 
 the Ironsides, I suppose. I have been used to little 
 but skirmishing in discourse among the younger 
 Cavaliers; light jesting talk, whether the heart or 
 the subject be grave or gay, even serious feelings 
 being hidden, for the most part, under a mask of 
 levity. But Roger seldom, perhaps never exactly 
 jests. His mirth, like a child's laughter, is from the 
 heart, as much as his gravity. He will know and 
 have you know what you really honour, or love, or 
 want, or dread. 
 
 "So it happened that to-day on the terrace we 
 came on the very subject I had intended always to 
 avoid, General Cromwell. 
 
 "I chanced to allude in passing to some of the 
 reports I had heard against the General, some care- 
 less words about his praying and preaching with his 
 men. 
 
 "I had no notion until then how Roger reveres
 
 246 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 this man; like a son his father, or a loyal subject 
 his sovereign. 
 
 "He said, quietly, but with that repressed passion 
 which often makes his words so strong, that no man 
 who had ever knelt at General Cromwell's prayers 
 would jest at his praying, any more than any man 
 who had ever encountered him in battle would jest 
 at his fighting. That his word could inspire his 
 men to charge like a word from heaven, and could 
 rally them like a re-inforcement. That after the 
 battle his strong utterance of Christian hope and 
 faith could hearten men to die, as it had heartened 
 them to fight; that after siich a battle as Marston 
 Moor, while directing the siege- works outside York, 
 he could find time to go down into the depths of his 
 own past sorrows to draw thence living waters of 
 comfort for a friend (Mr. Walton) whose son had 
 been slain, writing him a letter of consolation (which 
 Roger had seen) containing indeed words deep 
 enough 'to drink up the father's sorrow.' 
 
 "Then Roger spoke of the unflinching justice, 
 which was only the other side of this same sympa- 
 thy and care; how General Cromwell had two of his 
 men hanged for plunderiiig prisoners at Winchester, 
 and sent others accused of the same oflFence to be 
 judged by the royal garrison at Oxford, whence the
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 247 
 
 governor sent tliem back with a generous acknow- 
 ledgment. 
 
 "'It is loyalty you feel towards General Crom- 
 well,' I said; 'such a disinterested, ennobling, self- 
 sacrificing passion as our Harry felt for the king.' 
 
 "He paused a moment, — 
 
 "'If God sends us a judge and a deliverer what 
 else can we feel for him?' he said at length-, 'I be- 
 lieve General Cromwell is the defender of the law, 
 and will be the deliverer of the nation; and, if he will 
 suffer it,' he added in a lower voice, 'of the king.' 
 
 "'Is it then indeed true,' I asked, 'as you once 
 told us, that General Cromwell and the army are 
 courteous to His Majesty, and anxious to make good 
 terms with him? Can it be possible that there may 
 yet be an honourable peace?' 'I believe,' he replied, 
 'that all things else are possible, if only it is pos- 
 sible for the king to be true. But if a plighted 
 word, king's or peasant's, is worth nothing, what 
 other bond remains between man and man? Forgive 
 my rough speech. I know your loyalty is a sacred 
 thing to you. If the king will deal truly, I believe 
 General Cromwell will make him such a king as he 
 never was before. But who can twist ropes of sand? 
 One who is untrue seems to me not to be a real 
 substance at all, not even a shadow of a substance, 
 but simply a dream or phantasm, simply nothing.''
 
 218 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAVENAKXS: 
 
 "I felt myself flusLi. We have sacrificed too 
 mucli for His Majesty, not to believe in him. Yet I 
 fear he has other thoughts as to the double-dealing 
 to be permitted in diplomacy than Harry had, or 
 many gentlemen who serve him. 
 
 "I could only answer Roger by saying, — 
 
 "'Adversity makes a king sacred, if nothing else 
 can. If the king's cause were once more to prosper, 
 we might debate such things as these. But not now, 
 Roger. I dare not now.' 
 
 "He looked as if words were on his lips he could 
 scarcely, with all his reserve and courtesy, hold 
 back. But he turned away, and calling Lion from 
 the pond where he was chasing some wild-fowl, we 
 went into the house. 
 
 ''''July Ath. — Dr. Antony has come for the wed- 
 ding. He brought us a moving account of the two 
 days spent by the royal children. James the Duke 
 of York, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Princess 
 Elizabeth, with His Majesty, at Caversham, near 
 Reading. The Independent officers of the army per- 
 mitted it. And they say General Cromwell himself, 
 having sons and daughters of his own, shed tears to 
 see the affection of the king, and the innocent play- 
 fulness of the children, knowing so little of the 
 dangers around them. 
 
 ^^Juli/ 6th. — Olive looked wondrous fair as a
 
 A STOr.y OF THE CIVIL WARS. 249 
 
 bride, in her plain spotless dress, without an orna- 
 ment; partly from Puritanical plainness, and partly 
 because the family jewels went long since, with the 
 thimbles and bodkins of the London dames, into the 
 treasury at the Guildhall. So grave and serene, and 
 pure and young, with her fair pale face, her smooth 
 white brow and soft true eyes. 
 
 "She was married in the church, with some frag- 
 ments of the old marriage-service, the whole being 
 forbidden. 
 
 "It was sweet afterwards to see her kneel while 
 my mother kissed her forehead, and placed a string 
 of large pearls round her neck, with a jewel. 
 
 "They had always a singular love for each other, 
 Olive and my mother. The bride and bridegroom 
 rode away together after noon towards their London 
 home. 
 
 ''''July Gfh. — This morning I rose early and went 
 down to the pond in the orchard, and being led back 
 by the sight of it to the thought of Olive and old 
 times, strayed on towards the Lady Well, where first 
 we met. 
 
 "By the way I passed old Gammer Grindle's cot- 
 tage, and finding the door open, early as it was, 
 went in to tell her about the bride. 
 
 "And there I saw Cicely and the child again; 
 and heard her terrible story of wrong and sorrow.
 
 250 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 "It made me very sad, and as I went on towards 
 the well, it set me thinking of many things. 
 
 "Why did Olive never tell me? But then I 
 thought how I had more than once wilfully refused 
 to believe evil of Sir Launcelot, choosing to believe 
 what I liked. And a cold shudder came over me as 
 I sat by the Lady Well, to think how near danger 
 I had been, and how terrible it would have been if 
 I had cared for him (not indeed that I ever could). 
 I meditated also whether it was not yet possible to 
 get right done to Cicely. And I resolved as far as 
 I could for the future never to believe anything be- 
 cause I wished, but because it was true; that is, to 
 try not to wish beforehand that things were true or 
 not, but to search out honestly if they are. And I 
 was standing looking into the well, sunk deep in 
 these thoughts, wondering if any one ever really did 
 quite do this, when I heard a footstep, and looking 
 up, I saw Roger Drayton. 
 
 "And then he told me of his love. 
 
 "I cannot say I had never thought of it before. 
 I had sometimes even thought it might one day come 
 to something like this; and had even imagined, 
 now and then, what I should say in reply, or per- 
 haps, not so much what, as how I would say it — 
 how I would say many wise things to him and man- 
 age it so that in some way all the difficulties about
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 251 
 
 the civil wars would vanish, he would see he had 
 made some mistakes, and I would acknowledge can- 
 didly that our side had not been blameless, and then 
 I might admit, that perhaps one day he might speak 
 to me again of the other subject. At least I know 
 these dreams of mine always ended in my being left 
 in perfect certainty that Roger would one day join 
 in the good cause, and Roger perhaps in a very little 
 uncertainty as to the rest. 
 
 "But everything went quite the other way. Roger 
 was so much in earnest about what he had to say, 
 that what I had to say about politics unfortunately 
 went entirely out of my head. Roger has left me with 
 anything but a certainty or probability of his ever 
 becoming a Cavalier as things are at present. And 
 I have left him in no uncertainty at all about the 
 rest. 
 
 "I am afraid it was a golden opportunity lost. 
 But how could I help it? When he showed all his 
 heart to me, how could I help his seeing mine? And 
 since I am sure there is no one in the world to be 
 compared with Roger, how could I help his seeing 
 that I feel and think so? Besides, there is something 
 base, after all, in such conditions. It might have 
 been trifling with his conscience. And that would 
 have been almost a crime.
 
 252 THR DRAYrONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 "Wherefore I am sure I could not have done 
 otherwise; and I think I have done right. 
 
 "Yet we made no promises. 
 
 "We know we love each other. That is all. 
 And I know he has loved me ever since he can re- 
 member. And I know that with such a heart as his, 
 once is for ever. 
 
 "And I know that now, if it were possible that 
 the whole world could come between us — a world 
 of oceans and continents — a world of war and 
 calumnies — • it would always be outside, it would 
 never come between our hearts. 
 
 "My mother thinks so too. I feel now, for the 
 first time, in some ways what it is to have a mother s 
 heart to rest on. Although, through all her tender 
 silence, I feel she sees more difficulties in the way 
 than I do. 
 
 ''''July 10th. — A world of oceans and continents 
 no separation! How boldly I wrote! Roger is gone 
 back to the army; gone not half an hour, barely a 
 mile away, scarcely out of sight. If I listen, I fancy 
 I can almost hear his horse-hoofs in the distance. 
 And it seems as if that mile were a world of oceans 
 and continents, as if these moments since he left were 
 the beginning of an eternity, altogether beyond the 
 poor counted minutes, and hours, and days of time. 
 But a minute since, his hand in mine; and what may
 
 A STOIIV OF THE CIVIL WARS. 253 
 
 liappen before I see liim again! How do I know if 
 I shall ever see liim again. In love such as ours, 
 ever and never so terribly entertwine! 
 
 "Unbelieving that I am! Now I shall have to 
 learn if I understand really anything of what it is 
 to trust God and to pray. 
 
 "Prayer and trust must be as deep as this love^ 
 or they are nothing. 
 
 "They must be deeper , or they are no support."
 
 254 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 XXXIU. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 We began our Lome in London in troublous 
 times. 
 
 - As we came near our bouse, wbicb was not far 
 from the river and from Wbiteball, we saw some- 
 thing which moved me not a little, a coach being 
 drawn to St. James's Palace guarded by Parliament 
 soldiers. A few people turned and gazed as it 
 passed; and two children were looking out of the 
 window. These were the royal children being taken 
 back to St. James's Palace after their two days with 
 the king at Caversham. There was something very 
 mournful in beholding these young creatures, born 
 to be children of the nation as well as of the king, 
 taken to their royal home as to a prison, dwelling 
 in their own land as exiles, their mother a fugitive 
 in France, their father a captive among his own 
 people. 
 
 There is a terrible strength in the pathetic ma- 
 jesty which enshrines a fallen king; a well-nigh ir- 
 resistible power in the crown which has become a
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIi. WARS. 255 
 
 crown of tliorns. A captive monarch is a more 
 perilous foe than a victorious army, to the subjects 
 who hokl him captive. How often during those sad 
 years, 1647 and 1648, I had to go over all the 
 causes of the civil war again and again — Eliot 
 slowly murdered in his unlawful and unwholesome 
 prison; the silenced Parliaments; the tortured Puri- 
 tans; the imprisoned patriots. How often I had to 
 recall all its course; — Prince Rupert's plundering; 
 the king's repeated duplicity, slowly wearing out the 
 nation's lingering trust in him, and baffling all at- 
 tempts at negotiation. I had to repeat these things 
 to myself, by an effort of will, again and again, in 
 order to keep true to our principles at all. 
 
 And the conflict with this rebound of instinctive 
 loyalty, which went on in my heart secretly, was 
 going on in the city openly at the time when we 
 took up our abode there, indeed throughout the 
 nation. 
 
 So strong and general, indeed, was this rebound 
 of loyalty, that in that August 1647, which was our 
 honeymoon, it seemed as if the whole city of Lon- 
 don — at the beginning of the war the Parliament's 
 very strength and stay — was panting to return to 
 its allegiance, led by the Presbyterian majority in 
 the House of Commons. The conflict seemed alto- 
 gether to have shifted its ground. The enemy dreaded
 
 256 THE JjRAYXOKS AMD THE DAVEKANTS : 
 
 by tlie city was not the king, but the army which 
 its own liberal contributions and persevering courage 
 had done so much to create. Like the German 
 magician, Dr. Faustus, of whom Aunt Gretel used 
 to tell us , the city crouched trembling before the 
 untamable spirit it had evoked, as from moment to 
 moment it grew into more terrible stature and 
 strength. 
 
 Sunday the 1st August 1647 — my first Sunday 
 in London — was a memorable day to me. 
 
 Through all the hush of the Puritan Sabbath 
 there was a deep hum of unrest throughout the city, 
 a ceaseless stir of men walking in silent haste hither 
 and thither, or gathering for eager debate at the 
 comers of streets, in the squares, or in any public 
 place. It was a notable contrast to the cheerful 
 stir of animal life, with the deep under-stilluess of 
 Netherby. 
 
 On the Friday before, the House of Commons 
 had been invaded; not, as once in the beginning of 
 the strife, by the king, trampling on "Privilege" in 
 quest of five "traitors," but by a crowd of 'prentices 
 with hats on, clamouring for the King against the 
 Army. 
 
 Then the two Speakers of the Lords and Commons 
 had fled to the army, with the mace, and with all 
 the Independent members.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 257 
 
 The eleven banished Presbyterian members had 
 returned; among them Denzil Hollis (one of the 
 king's "five traitors" who had afterwards withstood 
 the royal forces so gallantly at Brentford) and Sir 
 John Clotworthy, whose zeal had pursued Arch- 
 bishop Laud with theological questions even on the 
 scaffold. 
 
 Recruitings, gatherings of men and arms, and 
 drillings and gun-practice, had been going on in all 
 quarters of the city on the Saturday. 
 
 On Monday these were renewed with the earliest 
 light of the summer morning. Drums beating, trum- 
 pets calling, 'prentices hurrahing on all sides, "No 
 peace with Sectaries." The London militia, "one 
 and all," against the factious army, then believed 
 to be couching tranquilly near Bedford. 
 
 But on Tuesday the army rose from its lair, 
 and advanced to Hounslow. Then all Southwark 
 came pouring in terrified throngs across London 
 Bridge, demanding peace with the army, and de- 
 claring they would not fight. The Presbyterian 
 General Poyntz was indignant, and there was tumult 
 and bloodshed in the streets. 
 
 Closer and closer that defied but dreaded monster 
 of an army came, every step forward, and every 
 halt watched with fluctuations of hope and fear in 
 the city. The army, meanwhile, strong in the pre- 
 
 The Draytons and the Davenants. II. 1 •
 
 258 THE DRAYIOKS AND THE DAYENANTS: 
 
 sence of the king, tlie speakers, tlie mace, and 
 Oliver Cromwell, looked on itself as not only re- 
 presenting, but leing all the three powers of the state 
 combined — inspired, moreover, by an invisible 
 power stronger than all states; and so it advanced, 
 majestically free from hurry or disorder. Not a 
 provision-cart or pack-horse was stopped on its way 
 into the city. And on Friday, August the 9th, 
 the army appeared in the city, marching three deep 
 through Hyde Park with boughs of laurel in their 
 hats, through Westminster , along the Strand, through 
 the City, to the Tower. In a day or two they 
 were quietly established in the villages around, the 
 head-quarters being at Putney. The king was lodged 
 the while at Hampton Court. 
 
 Not an act of vengeance nor of disorder, as far 
 as I know, disgraced their triumph. Not that this 
 was any matter of wonder to us. Our wonder was, 
 that sober and godly citizens should wonder at the 
 soberness and godliness of the army, every regiment 
 of which was a worshipping congregation, and the 
 soul of it Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 Job Forster was sorely vexed at the evil reports 
 spread concerning the soldiers. We saw him often 
 during that autumn. 
 
 "Have they forgotten," he said, "that we have 
 won Marston Moor and Naseby for them? that we
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS, 259 
 
 have been marching through the land all these years, 
 and not left a godly homestead nor a family the 
 worse for us throughout the length and breadth of 
 the country. A man might think it was we who 
 sacked Leicester and plundered and burnt villages 
 and farms far and wide. They should have heard 
 the prayers our poor men poured forth by the camp- 
 fires on the battle-fields where we shed our blood 
 for the country. Sitch prayers as might wellnigh 
 lift the roofs from their cold vaults of churches, and 
 belike the great stone also from their hearts. Men 
 creeping easily among streets, praying safely as 
 long as they like behind walls, and sleeping every 
 night on feather-beds, might be the better for a good 
 stretch now and then in one of our Cromwell's 
 marches, and a hard bed on the moors, and a good 
 sight right up into the sky, beyond the roofs, and 
 the clouds, and the stars, and the covenants and the 
 confessions." 
 
 Roger also chafed much at the citizens, but most 
 . of all at their misunderstanding of General Cromwell. 
 All that autumn, said Roger, the General, with 
 Ireton, Vane, and Harry Marten, and other faithful 
 men, were labouring hard to establish peace on a 
 lasting foundation; as the Proposals of the Army 
 proved. They would have provided that His Majesty's 
 person, the queen, and the royal issue should be 
 
 17*
 
 260 THE DRAYTOSS AND THE DAVBNANTS: 
 
 restored to lionoui' and all personal riglits-, that the 
 royal authority over the militia should be subject to 
 the advice of Parliament for ten years; that all 
 civil penalties for ecclesiastical offences (for instance, 
 whether for using or disusing the Common Prayer) 
 should be removed; that some old decayed boroughs 
 should be disfranchised, some new rising towns be 
 represented, and the representation, generally, be 
 made more equal; that Parliament should last two 
 years, not to be dissolved except by their own con- 
 sent, unless they had sat one hundi-ed and twenty 
 days; that grand jurymen should be chosen in some 
 impartial way, and not at the discretion of the sheriff. 
 But no man would have it so. The Levellers in the 
 army clamoured for justice on the "Chief Delin- 
 quent," and declared that General Cromwell had 
 betrayed them to the king. In fact, there was a 
 mutiny so wide-spread and determined, that Crom- 
 well himself barely succeeded in quelling it. The 
 Presbyterians would not give up the right to enforce 
 the Covenant. The king carried on negotiations at 
 the same time with General Cromwell, with the 
 Presbyterians, and with the Irish Papists; intending, 
 as was shown, alas! too surely, from intercepted 
 letters, to be true to none, except, perchance, the 
 last. 
 
 On November the 12th, early in the morning.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 2G1 
 
 the news flashed through the city, cried from street 
 to street, that the king had fled from Hampton 
 Court; and Eoger, who was with us that morning, 
 said, — 
 
 "Once more General Cromwell would have saved 
 the king and the country. But the king will not 
 be saved. Now he must turn wholly to the country." 
 
 "But what," replied my husband, "if the country 
 also refuses to be saved by General Cromwell?" 
 
 "Then for a New England across the seas," said 
 Roger. "But we are not come to that yet." 
 
 For even after the king's flight, Roger clung to 
 the hope of reconciliation, his hopes nourished by 
 secret fountains flowing from the icebergs of his 
 fears. For with the bond which bound people and 
 king might be snapped for ever the bond, not indeed 
 of love, but of hope, between him and Lettice. 
 
 Still throughout that dreary winter negotiations 
 went on between the Parliament and His Majesty at 
 the Castle of Carisbrook. More and more hopeless, 
 as more and more men became mournfully convinced 
 of the king's untruth. Until, in April 1648, when, 
 from the upper windows of our house, I could see 
 on one side the trees bursting into leaf in St. James's 
 Park, and on the other the river gleaming with a 
 thousand tints of green and gold, as it reflected the 
 wooded gardens of the palaces and mansions from
 
 262 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Westminster to the Temple; when the fleets of swans 
 began to pass by on their way to build their nests 
 in the reedy islets by Richmond or Kew, the news 
 came from all quarters that, amidst all this sweet 
 stir of natural life, the country was stirring with 
 fatal insurrections from Kent to the Scottish Borders. 
 
 The first outburst was in London itself. 
 
 A few 'prentices were playing at bowls on Sun- 
 day, April 9th, in Moor fields, during church time. 
 The trainbands tried to disperse them. They fought, 
 were checked and broken, but quickly rallied to the 
 old cry of " Clubs." All through that night we heard 
 the tumult surging up and down through the city. 
 The watermen, a powerful body of men, joined 
 them. The cry was, "For God and King Charles." 
 And not till the Ironsides charged on them from 
 Westminster was the riot quelled. 
 
 Then came tidings that Chepstow and Pembroke 
 were taken by the Royalists, and that a Scottish army 
 of forty thousand was coming across the Borders to 
 undo all that had been done, and to restore the king. 
 
 About that time Roger came into the chamber 
 where I was busied with confections, and unlacing 
 and laying aside his helmet, he sat down in silence. 
 
 His face was fixed and very pale. 
 
 "No ill tidings?" I said. 
 
 "I ought not to think so," he replied.
 
 A STOKY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 263 
 
 And then be told me of a solemn prayer-meeting, 
 held throughout the day before at Windsor Castle 
 by the army leaders. How some of them, being 
 sore perplexed "that what they had judged to do 
 for the good of these poor nations had not been 
 accepted by them, were minded to lay down arms, 
 disband, and return each to his home, there to suffer 
 after the example of Him who, having done what 
 He could to save His people, sealed His life by 
 suffering." But others were differently minded, and, 
 "striving to trace back the causes of their present 
 divisions and weakness," they came at last to what 
 they believed the root, "those cursed carnal con- 
 ferences which their own conceited wisdom had 
 prompted them to the year before with the king's 
 party." 
 
 Then Major Goffe solemnly rehearsed from the 
 Scripture the words, "Turn you at my reproof, and 
 I will pour out my Spirit unto you;" and thereupon 
 "their sin and their duty was set unanimously with 
 weight on each heart, so that none was able to speak 
 a word to each other for bitter weeping, at the sense 
 and shame of their sins and their base fear of men." 
 "Cromwell, Ireton , and his Ironsides weeping bit- 
 terly! It was a thing not to forget," said Roger, 
 pausing, 
 
 "Then, Roger," said I, trembling, "if this was
 
 264 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 the sin they wept for, what is the duty they see be- 
 fore them?" 
 
 Roger bowed his forehead on his hands as they 
 rested on the table before him, and his reply came 
 muffled and slow. 
 
 "'To call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to 
 an account for that blood he hath shed and mis- 
 chief he hath done to his utmost against the Lord's 
 cause and people in these poor nations.' This is 
 what they deem their duty," he said. 
 
 "Call the king to an account, Roger!" I said; 
 "the king!" 
 
 I could scarce speak the word for horror. 
 
 "Kings have to be called to account," he said. 
 
 "Yes, in heaven," I said. "But on earth, Roger, 
 on earth never!" 
 
 "Herod was called to account on earth, Olive," 
 said he. 
 
 "True, but it was by God, Roger," I said. "Not 
 by man! never by man!" 
 
 "By the law, Olive," he said; "by God's law, 
 which is above all men." 
 
 "But what men can ever have right to execute 
 the law on a king?" I said; "on their own king?" 
 
 "Woe to the men who have to do it," said 
 Roger; "but bitterer woe to the man who does not 
 the work God sets him to do, whatever woe it
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 265 
 
 brings in the doing. Olive," he added mournfully, 
 "who gave sanction to Laud and Strafford's tyran- 
 nies, and to Prince Rupert's plunderings ? " 
 
 I could only weep. 
 
 "Oh, Roger," I said, "let the thunderbolt, or the 
 pestilence, or any of God's terrible angels do this 
 work in His time. They are strong and swift 
 enough. It is not for men." 
 
 He made no reply. 
 
 "What lies between this terrible resolve and its 
 execution?" I asked at length. 
 
 " Chepstow and Pembroke to be besieged and 
 taken; Wales to be reconquered; the Scottish army 
 of forty thousand to be driven back over the Bor- 
 ders," he replied. 
 
 "Then there is a hope of escape for the king 
 
 yet." 
 
 "There is an interval, Olive," he replied. "These 
 things must take time. But they must be done. In 
 a few days General Cromwell is to lead us forth to 
 do them. The order is given for the army to march 
 for Wales." 
 
 I did not venture to mention Lettice's name to 
 him. We both knew too well what a gulf this 
 terrible resolve, if ever it came to action, must 
 create between us. But before he left he said, — 
 
 "Olive, I do not think it is cowardice not to say
 
 266 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 anything of this to Lettice yet. Her mother, she 
 writes to-day, is failing so sadly. And there are so 
 many chances in battle. If I fall, I need not leave 
 on her memory of me what would so embitter sor- 
 row to her." 
 
 "And the king might escape," I thought. His 
 Majesty had all but succeeded in getting through the 
 bars of his chamber-window not a mouth before. But 
 I did not utter this to Roger. 
 
 On the next day, the 3rd of May, the army 
 marched forth, and with it Roger and Job Forster. 
 And my husband went with them on his work of 
 mercy. 
 
 So that this summer of 1648 was a very anxious 
 and solitary one for me. I longed much to see my 
 father, but he was occupied in quelling insurrection 
 in the north. And the city was so unquiet, I 
 thought it selfish to send for either of my aunts. 
 
 Not that I was without friends. Now and then 
 it fortified me greatly to have a glimpse of IVIr. John 
 Milton in his small house in Holborn, with the 
 garden behind opening towards Lincoln's Inn Fields; 
 to hear his strong words 'of determination and hope 
 for the English people; and, perchance, to catch 
 some strains from his organ. 
 
 But my chief solaces were: first, the morning 
 exercises, between six and eight of the clock, at St.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 267 
 
 Margaret's Cliurcli near the Abbey, where there was 
 daily prayer and praise and reading of God's word, 
 with comments to press it home to the heart, from 
 divers excellent and godly ministers. And next, a 
 friendship I had made with good Mr. John Henry, 
 a Welsh gentleman who kept the royal garden and 
 orchard at Whitehall, and lived in a pleasant house 
 close on Whitehall Stairs. His wife had died scarce 
 three years before, of a consumption, and it was 
 edifying to hear him and his daughters speak of her 
 virtue and piety, how she had looked well to the 
 ways of her household, had prayed daily with them, 
 catechized her children, and devoted her only son 
 Philip to the work of the ministry in his infancy, 
 and how a little before she died she had said, "My 
 head is in heaven, my heart is in heaven: it is but 
 one step more and I shall be there too." 
 
 This friendship solaced me for many causes; 
 primarily for three: in that Mr. Henry was a godly 
 gentleman; in that he lived in a garden by fair 
 water, which reminded me of Netherby; and in that 
 he was a Royalist. For it did my heart good to 
 hear some good words s|)oken for the captive king, 
 poor gentleman; and I have been wont ever to gain 
 benefit from good men who differ from us on party 
 points. With such we leave the party discords, 
 and fly to the common harmonies which are deeper.
 
 268 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 Many a delightsome hour have I spent in Mr. 
 Henry's house in the orchard by the river, watching 
 the boats and gay barges, and the fishers and the 
 white fleets of swans, and the flow of the broad river, 
 sweeping by, always like a poem of human life set 
 to a stately organ music; plying my needle the 
 while beside the young daughters of the house, with 
 cheerful converse. But most of all I loved to 
 hearken to their father's discourse concerning the 
 king and the court in the days gone by. How the 
 young princes used to play with his Philip, and gave 
 him gifts, and had wondrous courtesy for him; and 
 how Archbishop Laud took a particular kindness 
 for him when he was a child, because he would be 
 very officious to attend to the water-gate (which was 
 part of his father's charge), and to let the archbishop 
 through when he came late from council, to cross 
 the water to Lambeth; and how afterwards the lad 
 Philip had been taken to see the fallen archbishop 
 in the Tower, and he had given him some "new 
 money." 
 
 It was strange to think how the great River of 
 Time had borne all that stately company away — 
 King, Court, Archbishops, Councils — like some 
 fleeting pomp of gay barges, beneath the windows 
 or like the masques and pageants they had delighted 
 in, of which Mr. Henry told me. It was good, too.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAKS. 269 
 
 to have sucli touches of simple kindness, as remem- 
 bering a child's taste for bright new money, woven 
 into the dark picture we Puritans had among us of 
 the persecutor of our brethren. It is good for the 
 persecuted to feel, by some human touch, that their 
 persecutors are human; good while the persecuted 
 suffer; good beyond price if ever they come to rule 
 and judge. 
 
 Sometimes, moreover, Mr. Philip, the son, came 
 home from Christchurch, Oxford, where he was a 
 student, and his discourse was wondrous sacred and 
 pleasant for so young a gentleman. One thing I 
 remember he said which was a special solace to me. 
 He would blame those who laid so much stress on 
 every one knowing the exact time of their conver- 
 sion. "Who can so soon be aware of the daybreak," 
 quoth he, "or of the springing up of the seed sown? 
 The blind man in the Gospels is our example. This 
 and that concerning the recovering of his sight he 
 knew not: 'But this one thing I know, that whereas 
 I was blind, now I see.' " Which words have often 
 returned to my comfort; in that, instead of sending 
 me back into my past life, or down into my heart to 
 look for tokens of grace, they set me looking up to 
 my Lord to see His gracious countenance; and in 
 looking I am lightened, be it for the first time, or 
 the thousand and first.
 
 270 THE DRAYIOiXS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 Meantime the great Tide of Time was sweeping 
 on, bearing on its breast to the sea royal fleets, and 
 little skiffs such as mine. 
 
 In July the sailors of the fleet suddenly declared 
 for the 'king, landed the Parliament admiral, and 
 crossing the Channel, took on board the Prince of 
 Wales, acknowledging him as their commander. 
 
 At this news my heart beat as high with hope 
 as the fiercest Eoyalist's. The Prince of Wales with 
 a fleet in the Downs! the king his father in prison 
 close to the shore at Carisbrook! what could hinder 
 a rescue? But no rescue was attempted. Weeks 
 passed on — the opportunity was lost; the fleet was 
 won back to the Parliament, and the king remained 
 at Carisbrook. I have never heard any attempt 
 to explain why the prince neglected this chance 
 of saving the king. It made my heart ache to 
 think of the captive sovereign watching all those 
 weeks for rescue (for he sent to entreat it might be 
 attempted) — listening for the sound of friendly 
 guns, and the aj)pearance of a band of loyal seamen, 
 all in vain. 
 
 For all this time his doom was coiling closer and 
 closer round him. 
 
 Pembroke and Chepstow were retaken. General 
 Cromwell wrote from Nottingham for shoes for his 
 "poor tired soldiers," wearied with a hundred and
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 271 
 
 fifty miles hasty marching across the wild country 
 of Wales towards the north. In August came the 
 tidings of the total defeat of the Scottish army at 
 Preston. 
 
 I had just received the news of this in a letter 
 from my husband, and was sitting alone in my 
 chamber, tossed hither and thither in mind, as was 
 my wont during those anxious months, scarce know- 
 ing at any news whether to rejoice or to mourn, in 
 that every victory of the army seemed but to bring 
 a step nearer the fulfilment of that dreadful pur- 
 pose of calling the king to account. By way of 
 quieting these uneasy thoughts, I rose to go to good 
 Mr. Henry's, when a little stir at the door aroused 
 me, and in another minute I was clasped to Aunt 
 Gretel's heart, and sobbing out my gladness at see- 
 ing her. 
 
 "Hush, sweet heart, hush," said she; "that is the 
 worst of surprises. I meant to save thee suspense, 
 and to make as little disturbance as possible." 
 
 "I wanted thee so sorely," said I. "It is not 
 thy coming that has so moved me; it was the trying 
 to do without thee. 
 
 In half an hour she had unpacked her small 
 bu.ndle, and established herself in the guest-chamber, 
 with everything belonging to her as quietly in its 
 place as if it had never known another. Her pre-
 
 272 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 sence brought an unspeakable quiet witli it. The 
 solitary bouse became home again. And in another 
 fortnight we were rejoicing together over my first- 
 born, our little Magdalene; the fountain of delight 
 opened for us in the desert of those dreary times. 
 
 And in September my husband returned to me. 
 
 Preston was the last battle of that campaign 
 worthy the name. The Scottish Royalist army was 
 broken up, and General Cromwell was welcomed in 
 Edinburgh, and by the Covenanters everywhere, as 
 the deliverer of the land. 
 
 Throughout September the king was holding con- 
 ferences at Newport with the Commissioners of the 
 Parliament. All bore witness to the ability and 
 readiness with which he spoke. His hair had turned 
 gray, his face was furrowed with deep lines of care; 
 but all the old majesty was in his port, they said, 
 and even those who had known him before were 
 surprised at his learning and wit. 
 
 But, alas, it was mere speech. The king wrote 
 to his friends excusing himself for making conces- 
 sions, by the assurance that he merely did it in order 
 to facilitate his escape. 
 
 And more than that, all the actors in that drama, 
 sincere or not, were rapidly fading into mere per- 
 formers in a pageant. The decisive conferences were
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 273 
 
 held, tlie true work was done, the doom was fixed 
 elsewhere. 
 
 By the middle of November the army, victorious 
 from Wales and Scotland, and mindful of the prayer- 
 meeting at Windsor, was again at St. Albans, calling 
 for justice on the Chief Delinquent. 
 
 On the 29th of November the king was removed 
 from Carisbrook to Hurst Castle, a dreary fort at the 
 end of a tongue of land opposite the Isle of Wight, 
 its walls washed by the sea. 
 
 On December 2nd the quiet of Mr. Henry's 
 house and of the royal orchard was broken by the 
 arrival of a portion of the Parliament army at White- 
 hall, trampling down with heavy armed tread the 
 grass which had grown in the deserted palace- court. 
 
 On Sunday there was much preaching in many 
 quarters, of a kind little likely to calm the storm. 
 In the churches the Presbyterian preachers declaimed 
 fervently against the atrocity and iniquity of seizing 
 the person of the king. In the parks Independent 
 soldiers preached on the equality of all before the 
 law of God. "Tophet is ordained of old," one of 
 them took for his text. "For the king it is pre- 
 pared." A notable example, my husband said, of 
 that random reading of the Sacred Scriptures which 
 turns them into a lottery of texts to conjure with, 
 like a witch's charms. 
 
 The Draytoits and the Davenaitts. II. 18
 
 274 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAVEKANTS : 
 
 In the Parliament my old hero Mr. Prynne, with 
 his cropped ears and his branded forehead, stood up 
 and boldly pleaded for the king, never braver, I 
 thought, than then. 
 
 On the 5th of December came another invasion 
 of the Parliament House, Colonel Pride and his sol- 
 diers turning all the Presbyterian and Royalist mem- 
 bers back from the doors. "Pride's Purge." 
 
 It was a sorely perplexed time. Had the very 
 act of despotism which first roused the nation to the 
 point of civil war, now to be repeated in the name 
 of liberty for the ruin of the king? 
 
 What are we fighting for? I asked myself. The 
 battle-cries, as well as the position of the armies, 
 had so strangely changed. For the king and Parlia- 
 ment? The king was in prison. The Parliament 
 was reduced to fifty members. — For the nation? 
 The nation was half in insurrection. — For liberty? 
 No party seemed to allow it to any other. 
 
 Roger and the Ironsides alone seemed clear as to 
 the answer. "We are fighting — not under six hun- 
 dred members of Parliament, nor under fifty, but 
 under One Leader and Judge, raised up for us by 
 God; under General Cromwell," he said. "And he 
 is fighting for the country, to save it and make it 
 free, and righteous, and glorious in spite of itself. 
 When he has done it, it will be acknowledged. Till
 
 A STORY or THE CIVIL WARS. 275 
 
 then he must be content to be misjudged; and we 
 must be content that he should be, as the heroes 
 have been too often, and the saints nearly always, 
 until their work, perhaps until their life, is done." 
 
 I lay awake much during those nights of De- 
 cember. My little Magdalene was often restless, 
 and I used to listen to the flow of the river through 
 the silence of the sleeping city, and think how the 
 sea was washing the walls of the king's desolate 
 prison; praying for him, and for General Cromwell, 
 and for all, and thanking God that my lot was that 
 of submitting, instead of that of deciding, in these 
 terrible times. 
 
 But a yet deeper sorrow was advancing slowly 
 on us all. On the 10th of December came an im- 
 ploring letter from Lettice, saying that her mother 
 had failed sadly during the last week , that she and 
 her mother longed for Dr. Antony, and her mother 
 even more for me and the babe. 
 
 The next day we were on the road to Netherby, 
 Aunt Gretel, my husband, the babe, and I. 
 
 It was late in the evening of the second day 
 when we reached the dear old house. 
 
 We were met with a hush, which fell on me like 
 a chill. The Lady Lucy had fallen into one of 
 those quiet sleeps which of late had become so rare 
 
 18*
 
 27 G THE DEAVTONS AND THE DAVENANTS. 
 
 with her, and the whole household was quieted so 
 as not to disturb her. 
 
 The subdued tone into which everything falls in 
 a house in which there has been long sickness, and 
 where everything has been ordered with reference to 
 one sufferer, fell heavily on us, coming in from the 
 fresh autumn air with voices attuned to the bracing 
 winds, and hearts eager with expectations of wel- 
 come. It was like being ushered into a church 
 hushed for some mournful ceremony ; and we stepped 
 noiselessly, and spoke under our breath, until an 
 unsubdued wail from the only creature of the com- 
 pany unable to understand the change — the baby 
 waking suddenly from sleep — broke the dreary 
 spell of stillness. 
 
 The Lady Lucy heard the little one's cry, and 
 sent to crave a glimpse of us all that night. 
 
 In her chamber only, throughout the house, that 
 anxious hush was absent. She spoke in her natural 
 voice, though now lower than even its usual sweet 
 low tones, from weakness. She had a bright wel- 
 coming word for each; and while gratefully taking 
 my husband's counsel, declared that baby would be 
 her head-physician. The very touch of the soft little 
 fingers, and the sound of her little cooings and crow- 
 ings, had healing in them, she said. 
 
 She looked less changed than I had expected.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 277 
 
 But my husband shook his head and would give 
 little promise. Lettice seemed to me more altered 
 than her mother. Her eyes had ii steady, deep, 
 watchful look in them, very unlike their wonted 
 changeful brilliancy. She said nothing beyond a 
 few words of welcome to me that night. But the 
 next morning, the first moment we were alone to- 
 gether, she took my hands, and pressing them to her 
 heart, she said, — 
 
 "Tell me, Olive; I have been afraid to ask any 
 one else, but I must know. What do they mean by 
 Petitions from the army for justice on the Idmj?'''' 
 
 I was so startled by her sudden appeal, I could 
 not meet her eyes nor think what to say. I could 
 only murmur something about there having been so 
 many Petitions, Remonstrances, and Declarations, 
 which had ended in mere talking. 
 
 "True," said she, "but the army are like no 
 other party in the state. They do not end with 
 talking. They know what they want, and mean 
 what they say, and do what they mean. What do 
 they mean by Petitions against the Chief Delin- 
 quent?" 
 
 "Many do think, Lettice," I said, "that the 
 king himself, and not only his counsellors, began all 
 the evil." 
 
 "I know," she replied. "But they have^had
 
 278 THE DRAYl'ONS AND THE DAVKKANTS I 
 
 justice enougli on the king, I should think, to satisfy- 
 any one. They have deprived him of all power, 
 separated him from the queen and the royal children, 
 and all who love him, and shut him vip behind iron 
 bars. And now, they petition for ''justice'' on him. 
 What would they do to him worse, Olive? What 
 can he suffer more? What has the king left but 
 life?" 
 
 I could not answer her. 
 
 "To touch that^ Olive," she continued, looking 
 steadily into my eyes, and compelling me by the very 
 intensity of her gaze to meet them, "to touch that 
 would be crime, the worst of crimes. It would regi- 
 cide, parricide. 
 
 "But how could it ever be, Olive?" she went on. 
 "They have assassinated kings, I know, before now. 
 But that a king should be brought to justice (as they 
 call it) like a common criminal! Since the world 
 was, such a thing was never known. It can never 
 be, Olive," she added in a trembling voice. "I have 
 heard the king dreads assassination. Do you? Could 
 his enemies descend to that depth?" 
 
 "Never, Lettice," I replied; "never." And in 
 saying thus I could meet her eyes frankly and fear- 
 lessly. 
 
 Her face lighted up.
 
 A STORY OF 'JHK CIVIL WAKS. 279 
 
 "Never; no, I believe not. Then there cjin 
 surely be little fear. There is no tribunal which can 
 judge the king. No bar for him to stand arraigned 
 before but the judgment-seat of God. A king was 
 never condemned and put to death deliberately and 
 solemnly in the face of his own people, ami of all 
 the nations. Never since the world was. And it never 
 could be. From assassination you are sure he is 
 safe? Be honest with me, Olive. There are base 
 men in all parties. You are sure?'''' 
 
 "As sure as of my life," I said; "as sure as of 
 my father's word, or Roger's." 
 
 "Then there can be no reason to fear," she said. 
 "I will cast away this avt'ful dread. Oh, Olive," 
 she exclaimed, bursting into tears, "you have brought 
 me new life. Do you know that sometimes during 
 these last few days, since I heard of those Petitions, 
 I have almost prayed that if such a fearful crime and 
 curse could be hanging over England, my mother 
 might be taken to God first, and learn about it first 
 there ^ where we shall understand it all. But you 
 have comforted me, Olive. I need make no such 
 prayers. What I have so dreaded can never be." 
 
 I felt almost guilty of falsehood in letting her 
 thus take comfort. Yet, if my husband's fears about 
 Lady Lucy were well founded , there was little
 
 280 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 need for sucli a prayer. And to Time I might surely 
 leave it to unveil tlie horrors that after all might be 
 averted.
 
 A STOilY OF THE CIVIL, WAKS. 281 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 olive's recollections. 
 
 But no intervention from above or from below 
 came to avert tlie steady unfolding of tlie great tra- 
 gedy on which the nation's eyes were fixed. 
 
 The king went on to his doom, as the doomed in 
 some terrible old tragedy of destiny, tremblingly 
 watchful for the storm to break from the side whence 
 there was no danger, but all the time advancing with 
 blind fearlessness to confront the lightnings which 
 were to smite him. 
 
 In the solitary sea-washed walls of Hurst Castle 
 ho listened for the stealthy tread of the assassin. 
 And when at midnight, on the 1 7th of December, the 
 creak of the drawbridge was heard between the dash 
 of the waves, and then the tramp of armed horsemen 
 echoing beneath the castle-gate, he rose and spent an 
 hour alone in prayer. Colonel Harrison, who com- 
 manded these men, had been named to him as one 
 likely to be employed to assassinate him. "I trust 
 in God who is my helper," said the king to his faith- 
 ful servant, Herbert; "but I would not be surprised
 
 282 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 This is a fit place for such a purpose-," and he was 
 moved to tears; no unmanly tears, and no ground- 
 less fears. He was not the first of his unhappy race who 
 had been the victim of treacherous midnight murders. 
 But when on the morrow he recognized in Colonel 
 Harrison's honest countenance and frank converse one 
 incapable of such baseness, his spirits rose, and he 
 rode away almost gayly with his escort of gallant 
 and well-mounted men , courteous enough in their 
 demeanour to him. In the daylight, and in the royal 
 halls of Windsor, where they lodged him, he felt 
 strong again in the sacredness of the king's person, 
 and alas! he fancied himself strong also in those false 
 schemes of policy which, and which only, had divested 
 his royal person of its sacredness in the hearts of his 
 people. "He had yet three games to play," hew^rote, 
 "the least of which gave him hope of regaining 
 all." 
 
 At "Windsor also he is said to have met the cap- 
 tive Duke Hamilton, who threw himself at His Ma- 
 jesty's feet, and, touched no doubt to deepest rever- 
 ence at the sight of that gray and discrowned head, 
 exclaimed, "J^ty dear master!" "A dear master in- 
 deed to thee," the king replied. 
 
 On the 5tli of January he gave orders for sowing 
 melon- seed at Wimbledon; and dwelt hopefully on 
 what Lord Ormond was doine: for him in Ireland.
 
 A STOIiY OF THE CiVIL, WARS. 283 
 
 He made a jest of the threat of bringing liim to a 
 public trial. Kings Lad been killed in battle- 
 treacherously put to agonizing deaths in dungeons 
 whose walls tell no tales, and let no cries of anguish 
 through ; secretly stabbed at midnight. But these 
 rebels, it seemed plain, were not foes of that stamp. 
 Even the example three of his Cavaliers had lately 
 given them, in treacherously assassinating Rains- 
 borough, one of Cromwell's bravest officers, at Don- 
 caster , had kindled in the most fanatical of the 
 Soundheads no emulation, but simply a burning in- 
 dignation and contempt. Save the sword of battle, 
 or the dagger of the murderer, no weapon was known 
 M'herewith to kill a king. The Roundheads did not 
 number assassination among their "instruments of 
 justice." The war was over. What, then, was there 
 for His Majesty to fear? 
 
 Strafford, indeed, had been almost as confident 
 up to the last. And neither gray hairs nor conse- 
 cration had saved the archbishop's head from the 
 scaffold. But between an anointed king and the 
 loftiest of his subjects, the distinction was not, ac- 
 cording to the royal and royalist creed, one of de- 
 gree but of nature. 
 
 Moreover, all the courts of Europe surely would 
 rise and interfere ere a king should be tried before
 
 284 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: 
 
 a tribunal of his lieges, of creatures who held honour 
 and life by his breath. 
 
 Nor only earthly courts. Would the One Tri- 
 bunal before which a sovereign alone could be sum- 
 moned, suffer such an infringement of its rights? 
 
 So the king went on jesting at the thought of 
 his subjects bringing him to trial, playing his "three 
 games," and peacefully sowing seeds for more harvests 
 than one. 
 
 And meanwhile Cromwell came back, slowly 
 advancing from Scotland to London; Petitions for 
 justice on the Chief Delinquent lay on the table of 
 the House of Commons not unheeded; on the 6th of 
 January, Colonel Pride, with his soldiers, guarded 
 the door of the House of Commons, and sent thence 
 every member who was disposed still to prolong 
 treaties with the king; in the afternoon of that same 
 Gth of January, General Cromwell was thanked by 
 the "purged" house, or Rump, of fifty members, for 
 his services , and the High Court of Justice was in- 
 stituted for the trial of "Charles Stuart, for traitor- 
 ously and tyrannically seeking to overthrow the 
 rights and liberties of the people." And on the 
 1 9th of January, not three weeks after he had been 
 tranquilly planning at Westminster for his summer 
 garden crops, and sowing seed for other harvests in 
 Ireland, the king was sitting in Westminster Hall
 
 A STORY OF THK CIVIL WAKS. 285 
 
 arraigned before this Court as a "tyrant, traitor, and 
 murderer." 
 
 And still, not only were tlie heavens unmoved, 
 but not a word of remonstrance or of generous plead- 
 ing had come from one crowned head in Europe. 
 
 But meantime, over our little world at Netherby 
 that awful Presence was hovering to which all the 
 outward terrors that may, or may not, svirround it 
 — the midnight dagger, the headsman's axe, the 
 crowds of eager gazers around the scaffold — are 
 but as the trappings of the warrior to his sword, or 
 the glitter of the axe to its edge. Death was silently 
 wearing away the little remaining strength of Lady 
 Lucy Davenant. 
 
 There was one amongst us nearer the beginning 
 of the new life than any of us knew, so near that 
 the roar of the political tempest around us was 
 hushed ere it reached her chamber; and she lay on 
 the threshold of the other world almost as unconscious 
 of the storms of this, as our little infant Magdalene, 
 whose cradle she used to delight to have beside her. 
 The tender saintly halo which had encircled her in 
 my childish imagination came back on her death- 
 bed. Not, I am sure, because either was a delusion, 
 but because love and true imagination ever penetrate 
 through delusions and disguises to the real inner 
 beauty which death again unveils.
 
 286 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS I 
 
 I can remember, as if it were yesterday, the dim 
 tender smile with wbicli she used to watch the babe 
 asleep beside her. 
 
 Once she said to me, — 
 
 "There seems to me something strangely alike, 
 Olive, in that darling's place and mine, though to 
 all outward seeming so different. I lie and look at 
 her and think of the angels in the Percy Shrine at 
 the Minster at Beverley, how they bear in their 
 arms to Jesus a little helpless new-born soul, and 
 He stretches out His hands to take it to His bosom 
 — a soul new-born from death, to the deathless life 
 with Him. 
 
 "Sometimes it seems like that, Olive, the change 
 to come for me; so gi-eat and perfect. Sometimes 
 so easy and simple; more like laying aside gai'ments 
 we have worn through the night, bathing in the 
 water of life, and stepping — refreshed and strong, 
 and 'clothed in raiment clean and white' — into the 
 next chamber, to meet Him who awaits us there. 
 So little the change; for we have in us the treasure 
 we shall bear with us. The new eternal life is in 
 our Lord, and not in any state or time; and since 
 we have Him with us, both here and there, it seems 
 only like stepping a little further into the Father's 
 house, from the threshold to the inner chambers, and 
 hearing Him nearer and seeing Him more clearly.
 
 A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS. 287 
 
 Tell Lettice I bad these comforting thoughts, Olive," 
 she would say, "I cannot speak to her, she is too 
 much moved; and she wants me to say I long to 
 stay on earth, and I cannot, Olive. I cannot feel at 
 home any more here since Harry is gone. And I 
 am so weak and sinful, I may do harm as well as 
 good by staying longer, even to Lettice, poor tender 
 child. The world, at least the world here in Eng- 
 land, is very dark to me. And sometimes I think 
 it will all soon end, not this war only, but all wars, 
 and the Kingdom come for which the Church has 
 prayed so long, and the Glorious Epiphany." 
 
 One thing I remarked with Lady Lucy, as with 
 others whom since I have watched passing from this 
 world of shadows into the world of real things. The 
 lesser beliefs which separate Christians seemed for- 
 gotten, fallen far back into the distance and the 
 sliade, in the presence of the great truths which are 
 our life — which are Christianity. The spontane- 
 ous utterances of such Christian deathbeds as I have 
 watched have had little of party-beliefs, and of 
 party-politics nothing. As Lady Lucy herself once 
 said, — 
 
 "Oh, if all could only see Him as He is! We 
 are divided because we are fragments; the whole race 
 is fallen and broken into fragments. But in Him, 
 in Christ, all the broken fragments are one again,
 
 288 THE DKAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 and live. Truth is no fair ideal vision : it is 
 Christ." 
 
 And again she would speak of His death with 
 infinite comfort. "He died really, as really as I 
 must," she said; "the flesh failed, the heart failed, 
 but He overcame. He offered Himself up without 
 spot to God, and me, sin-stained as I am, in Him 
 — Son, Redeemer, Lord. The Father was in Him, 
 reconciling the world to Himself. And we are in 
 Him, reconciled for ever and ever." 
 
 Now and then she would ask if we had heard 
 news of the king. And we gave her such general 
 and vague accounts as we dared, deeming it un- 
 meet to distress her with perplexities which would 
 so soon be unperplexed to her. And this was easy, 
 her attention being seldom now fixed long on any 
 subject. 
 
 On the 6th of January Roger came on his way 
 to London from the North, on the old Christmas 
 day, which Lady Lucy had continued to keep. 
 
 In the morning Lettice had read her the gospel 
 for the day. 
 
 In the afternoon when she saw Roger, connecting 
 him with the army and the king, she asked at once 
 for His Majesty. 
 
 "The king is at Windsor," Roger said.
 
 A STORY OP THE CIVIL WARS. 289 
 
 "At liome!" she said with a smile; "at home 
 again for the Christmas. That is well." 
 
 Roger made no reply, and to the relief of all, 
 her mind passed contentedly from the subject. She 
 took Lettice's hand and Roger's in hers, pressed them 
 to her lips, and murmured, "My God, I thank Thee." 
 And then, as a faintness came over her, we all 
 withdrew but Lettice. 
 
 Roger and I lingered alone in the ante-room. 
 He was waiting to bid Lettice farewell. "When she 
 came out of her mother's chamber, she sat down 
 on the window seat, her eyes cast down, her trembling 
 mute lips almost as white as her cheeks. 
 
 Roger went towards her, and stood before her; 
 but she made no movement, and did not even lift 
 her eyelids, heavy and swollen as they were with 
 much weeping. 
 
 "Lettice," he said, "let me say one word before 
 I go. Let me say one word to comfort you in this 
 sorrow; for is not your sorrow mine?" 
 
 "Of what avail?" she said. "You are taking 
 the king to London to die. The greatest crime and 
 curse is about to fall on the nation, and you will 
 go and share and sanction it, and make it your 
 own. No word of mine will move you. How can 
 word of yours comfort me? You will, if you are 
 commanded by him you have chosen for your priest 
 
 ' The Braijtons anci ihe Davenants. 11. ■!■"
 
 290 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS : 
 
 and king, keep guard by the scaffold wliile the king 
 is murdered. Did not you tell me so two hours 
 since? Did not I entreat and implore, and tell you 
 you were digging a gulf, not only between me and 
 you, but between you and heaven?" 
 
 He stood motionless, except for the quivering of 
 his lips. "And did I not tell you, that, as a soldier, 
 I could do no otherwise unless I deserted my chief; 
 nor as a patriot unless I deserted my country. It is 
 the king who has betrayed us, Lettice; who has 
 refused to let us save him and trust him. The 
 hand that could have stopped all the oppression and 
 injustice at the source, from the beginning, and did 
 not, must be the guiltiest hand of all. It is false- 
 hood that is leading the king to this end, not the 
 country, nor the Parliament, nor General Crom- 
 well." 
 
 Then she looked up, — 
 
 "Do not try to persuade me, Roger," she said, 
 "God knows I am too willing to be persuaded. I 
 cannot reason about it any more than about loving 
 my mother or obeying my father. But what you 
 will persist to do is crime. I dare not listen to you. 
 I am untrue," she added, bursting at length into 
 passionate tears; "I have been a traitor, to let my 
 mother be deceived — to let her thank God for what 
 can never be!"
 
 A STORY OF THH CIVIL WARS. 291 
 
 "Lettice,"lie said, in a tone of aiiguisli, "if you 
 reproach yourself, if you call yourself a traitor, wliat 
 am I?" 
 
 "You are as true as the gospel, Eoger," she said, 
 her sobs subsiding into quiet weeping; "as true as 
 heaven itself. You would never have done what I 
 did. You would break your own heart and every 
 one's rather than utter or act one falsehood, or ne- 
 glect one thing you believe to be duty. That is what 
 makes it so terrible." 
 
 His voice trembled as he replied, — 
 
 "You tru.st me, and yet you think me capable 
 of a terrible crime." 
 
 "I know that to lay sacrilegious hands on the 
 king is an unspeakable crime," said she; "but to 
 trust you is no choice of mine. I cannot tear the 
 trust of my heart from you if I would, Eoger, and 
 God knows I would not if I could." 
 
 A light of almost triumphant joy passed over his 
 face, as, standing erect before her, with folded arms, 
 he looked on her downcast face, — 
 
 " Then the time must come when a delusion that 
 cannot separate us in heart can no longer separate 
 us in life," he said, in tones scarcely audible. "Your 
 mother said the truth, Lettice, when she joined our 
 hands. Such words from her lips, at such a time, 
 are surely prophecy." 
 
 19*
 
 292 THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS: , 
 
 Lettice sliook lier head. 
 
 "My mother saw beyond this world," she said 
 mournfully; "where there are no delusions, and no 
 divisions, and no partings." 
 
 He bent before her for an instant, and pressed 
 her hand to his lips. And so they parted. 
 
 That night Lettice and I watched together by 
 Lady Lucy's bedside. And all things that could 
 distract and divide seemed for the time to be dis- 
 solved in the peace of her presence. 
 
 She revived once or twice and spoke, although 
 it seemed more in rapt soliloquy than to any mortal 
 ear. 
 
 "Everything grows clear to me," she said once; 
 "everything I cared most to see. The divisions and 
 perplexities which bewilder us here are only the 
 colours the light puts on when it steps on earth. Ou 
 earth it is scarlet and purple and bordered work; in 
 heaven it is fine linen, clean and white, clean and 
 white." 
 
 Often she murmured in clear rapid tones, very 
 awful in the silence of the sick-chamber at night, 
 the words, — 
 
 "The king, the king!" 
 
 Lettice and I feared to go to her to ask what 
 she meant, dreading some question we dared not
 
 A STOUY OF THE ClVIfi WARS. 293 
 
 answer. We tliouglit belike lier mind was wander- 
 ing, as slie did not seem to be appealing to us or 
 looking for an answer. 
 
 But at length the words came more distinctly, 
 though broken and low, and then we knew what 
 they meant, — 
 
 "The King! King of kings! Faithful and true. 
 Mine eyes shall see the King in His beauty. He 
 shall deliver the needy when he crieth, King of the 
 poor, King of the nations, King of kings. Faithful 
 and true. I am passing beyond the shadows. I be- 
 gin to see the lights which cast them. Beyond the 
 storms — I see the angels of the winds. Beyond 
 the thunders — they are music, from above. Be- 
 yond the clouds — they are the golden streets, from 
 above. Mine eyes shall see the King, as He is, as 
 He is; no change in Thee, but a change in me. In 
 Thy beauty, as Thou art." 
 
 All the following day the things of earth were 
 growing dim to her, but to the last her courtesy 
 seemed to survive her strength. No little service 
 was unacknowledged; even when the voice was in- 
 audible, the parched lips moved in thanks or in 
 prayer. 
 
 And on the early morning of the 21st of January 
 she passed away from us, her hand in Lettice's, her
 
 294 THE DRAYIONS AND THE DAVENANTS. 
 
 eyes deep with the awful joy of some sight we couki 
 not see. 
 
 On the evening of that very day came the tid- 
 ings that the king had been brouglit, on the 19th of 
 January, as a criminal before the High Court of 
 Justice in Westminster Hall, to be tried for his life 
 as principal author of the calamities of the nation. 
 
 When Lettice heard it, the first burst of tears 
 came, breaking the stupor of her sorrow, as she 
 sobbed on my shoulder, "Thank God, she is safe, 
 beyond the storms of this terrible distracted world. 
 She is gone where she will never more be perplexed 
 what to believe or what to do." 
 
 "She is gone," said my father, tenderly taking 
 one of her hands in bis, "where loyalty and love of 
 country, and liberty and law, are never at variance; 
 where the noblest feelings and the noblest hearts are 
 never ranged against each other. And we hope to 
 follow her thither." 
 
 "But oh," sobbed Lettice, "this terrible space 
 between!" 
 
 "Look up, and press forward, my child," he re- 
 plied, "and the way will become clear. Step by 
 step, day by day; the space between is the way 
 thither." 
 
 THE END.
 
 
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