“England, it has been said, has been saved by its adventurers—that is to say, by the men who, careless whether their ways were like the ways of others,... have set their hearts on realising first in themselves and then in others, their ideal of that which is best and holiest. Such adventurers the noblest of the Puritans were. Many things existed not dreamed of in their theology, many things which they misconceived, or did not conceive at all; but they were brave and resolute, feeding their minds upon the Bread of Heaven, and determined within themselves to be servants of no man and of no human system.”—S. R. Gardiner.
Gabriel quitted Hereford the next day, carrying with him the lock of dark hair and the ribbon with the motto as the outward and visible symbols of his betrothal, and deep in his heart the spiritual presence of the mingled love of two souls. These, together with the vigorous and sincere Christianity which had been the result chiefly of his father’s, example and training, were the best equipments he could have had for his London life.
Yet, perhaps, had the Bishop of Hereford known how strangely trying the next two years were to be, he would not have imposed on his granddaughter’s lover a test so excessively severe. Never had the country passed through such a grave crisis.
It was towards the end of September that Gabriel arrived with his companions at Sir Robert Harley’s lodgings in Little Britain. Only a short time before, London had been given over to demonstrations of joy on hearing that the King’s army had been utterly routed by the Scots, for the English, who had always detested the Bishops’ War, felt that the cause of the invaders was the cause of the invaded, and were rejoiced to hear that Newcastle and the two northern provinces were in the hands of the Covenanters. Scotch and English alike were sternly resolved no longer to endure the intolerable misgovernment of Charles, and the people crowded to sign the petition to the King which complained of the grievances of the military charges, of ship-money, of the rapine caused by lawless troops, of the Archbishop’s innovations, the unbearable growth of monopolies, and, above all, of the unlawful government without a Parliament.
The city seethed with exasperated discontent, and the very day after the travellers arrived they found themselves in the heart of the struggle. It was Sunday, and they had gone to morning service at one of the City churches, where all had seemed tranquil enough. But at the time of giving out notices the Bishop’s Chancellor roused the congregation to fury by calling upon the churchwardens to take the oath to present offenders against the ecclesiastical law.
All the wrath which had been gathering through the long years of tyranny, all the hatred of Laud’s unwise revival of obsolete lawrs and punishments seemed to concentrate itself in the shouts of “No oath! no oath!” which burst from the congregation. Gabriel was startled, but the next moment all his sympathies were with the people, for an apparitor stood up angrily haranguing the objectors and most foolishly dubbing them “A company of Puritan dogs.” This was too much to be tamely endured; the people rose in wrath and hustled the apparitor, while the Sheriff, who had been called to restore order, had the good sense to do so by taking the obnoxious apparitor to gaol, the Chancellor making his escape in such haste that he left his hat behind him.
Gabriel, remembering how galling the prosecution of his own father had been, remembering, too, how Peter Waghorn’s old father lay dead at Bosbury, a victim of the same overbearing r茅gime, could not but rejoice in the people’s triumph. The only marvel was that they had so long endured the intolerable tyranny—a tyranny which, during the last eleven years, had driven twenty thousand English Puritans to seek a new home in America.
Meanwhile the King had found himself between the devil and the deep sea; Strafford’s infamous scheme of debasing the coinage had been checkmated by the firmness of the London merchants in the summer. It was impossible to raise money anymore after the illegal fashion of the past eleven years, and, hemmed in by his angry Scotch subjects in the north and his indignant English subjects in the south, Charles at length, in his speech to the great Council assembled in the hall of the Deanery at York, announced the issue of writs for a Parliament to meet on November the third.
Sir Robert Harley lost no time in establishing his son and Gabriel Harford in chambers at Lincoln’s Inn, then returned once more to Brampton to be again elected one of the Members for Herefordshire.
It was the turn of the tide, and during October, before the Parliament met, the impatience of the people was no longer to be restrained. The High Commission Court, where so many cruel sentences had been passed, was invaded on the 22nd by an angry mob; sentence was about to be pronounced on a separatist, but the proceedings were not allowed to be carried on, the angry populace seized the books, broke down the benches and flung the furniture out of doors. It was all in vain that Laud called on the Court of Star Chamber to punish these disturbers; his influence over the Court had been utterly swept away by the passion of an outraged people.
It was not until November that Gabriel rode down to the house at Notting-hill, where old Madam Harford lived, for on his arrival in London she had been taking the waters at Tunbridge. In some trepidation he drew rein before the doorway of a square red-brick mansion standing on the crest of the hill, and was ushered into a very pleasant room where the lady of the house sat, not at her spinning-wheel or her embroidery-frame, but at a well-contrived reading-desk, poring over a great folio.
There was no doubt that report had spoken rightly in terming old Madam Harford “a very formidable personage.” Her greeting was kind, but curiously silent, and there followed a pause while she scrutinised her visitor very closely, as though to take his measure before committing herself.
“You have your father’s features,” she said at length, making room for her grandson on a carved oak settle beside her. “What news do you bring from Hereford?”
Gabriel was glad enough to talk on this subject, and they naturally spoke, too, of Bosbury, and of his ride there in September. Then the case of Peter Waghorn’s father was mentioned.
“I remember the name in old times,” said Madam Harford, her face lighting up. “There was a skilled carver in wood who lived nigh to the church, and he had a very clever son who went to college and took holy orders.”
“That must be the very man,” said Gabriel. “One of Dr. Laud’s victims.”
“The Archbishop will soon be called to his account,” said Madam Harford, her shrewd, wrinkled face expressing no vindictiveness, but a quiet, strong conviction. “My Lord Strafford’s high-handed and tyrannical doings have brought him very justly to a prison and, if I mistake not, Dr. Laud also will be impeached.”
“Sir Robert Harley says that Mr. Pym has damning evidence against Lord Strafford which will startle all men at the trial,” said Gabriel.
“Truly it must have been a strange scene in the House of Lords, when one so haughty and powerful as the Earl was called on to kneel while the order was read which sequestered him from his place in the House, and gave him into custody,” said the old lady, musingly. “They tell me that the Lords hated his system of government even more than the Commons.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of a visitor, the servant announcing Sir John Coke. Gabriel looked with great interest at the old white-haired man who entered, for was he not great uncle to Hilary?
“I bring you a startling piece of news, ma’am,” said Sir John, sinking down into the elbow chair which Gabriel had placed for him. “We have fresh evidence of the great Popish plot, for to-day, when Mr. Heywood, a justice of the peace, was crossing Westminster Hall, a man rushed at him and tried, with a knife, to stab him to the heart. He was known to have a list of Papists marked out for removal from the neighbourhood of the Court and of the Houses.”
Now, in the existence of this great Popish plot the whole country firmly believed, and the attempted assassination of Mr. Heywood was quite enough to rouse the people to anger and to something very like panic. Pym and Hampden, who two years later were fighting against the King, and Falkland and Capel, who afterwards fought for him, were at one on this point. The truth probably was that the great bulk of the English Papists were only anxious to live in peace, but for some time a small number of them had made the Queen’s rooms at Whitehall a nest of intrigue. Sir John Coke had known this well enough when he had been Secretary of State, and Gabriel listened now with interest to what he was telling his old friend. It was, indeed, what he told all the world, and possibly his annoyance at having been dismissed from office on the score of his age, made him a little more ready to reveal what he knew to the Queen’s discredit.
“Count Rossetti, the new Papal agent at Court,” explained Sir John, “was full of fears last winter that the Short Parliament would demand his dismissal. The Queen therefore obtained a promise from the King that if objections were made he would say that her marriage-treaty secured her the right to hold correspondence with Rome. Now this, ma’am, was a lie; the marriage-treaty, as the King and Queen knew well enough, contained nothing of the sort. Never was there a sadder day for England than that which brought to her shores a French princess of the Popish religion to be the wife of a Protestant prince. All our worst troubles have come out of this luckless marriage. ’Tis very well known that the Queen hath begged the Pope to send men and to advance money to aid the King in governing the people against their wishes.”
The old man’s words lingered long in Gabriel’s mind; he began to understand something of the gravity of the situation, and scarcely a week passed without bringing fresh evidence that the country was in the gravest peril.
It was inevitable that with all the ardour of youth he should side with the Parliament which was reforming bit by bit the evils of the past.
To stand in a crowded London street and to hear the shouts of joy as Burton was brought back from prison, to look on the haggard face so cruelly mutilated, and to know that this awful punishment had been incurred because the man had spoken and written against turning communion-tables into altars, against bowing to them, against crucifixes, and against putting down afternoon services on Sunday—this was indeed an object-lesson which would last a lifetime. While the wrath kindled by the piteous condition of Dr. Leighton, another of Laud’s victims, who had been so barbarously treated in prison that when brought forth he could neither walk, see, nor hear, filled his heart with that intolerable resentment of cruelty and oppression which made many in those days feel no sacrifice to be too great if it did but stop such doings.
There has always been in Englishmen a vigorous and healthy hatred.= of clerical domination, and it was this which united men of widely differing views in their attack on Laud’s system and on the new canons which Convocation had issued when it had continued sitting after the dissolution of the Short Parliament. These were now declared to be illegal, and on December 18 Archbishop Laud was impeached of high treason, and committed to custody by the House of Lords. Not a voice was raised on his behalf; so cordially was he detested that, in spite of his many virtues and his sincere love of the Church, men rightly felt that he was “the root and ground of all their miseries,” and that his rigid, unsympathetic rule, his preferment of such men as Strafford and Windebank, and of many tyrannical Bishops—the hated Bishop Wren among them; above all, his merciless determination to crush Puritanism and to make Parliamentary government impossible, constituted grave dangers to the country. Was the entire teaching power of England to be left in such hands? Was Laud to have the training of all those to whom each Sunday the people were compelled to listen? The idea was not to be borne.
At Sir Robert Harley’s rooms in Little Britain Gabriel naturally heard much of what was passing during those two eventful years. In May London was stirred into the wildest excitement by the discovery of the Army plot, and although the full details were not generally published, it was known to all that the scheme concocted by the Queen and her evil counsellors, and certainly in the knowledge of the King, had been to bring in French troops from the south, to which end the Queen was about to go to Portsmouth. Meanwhile the English army was to join with the Papists against London and Parliament, and the Irish army was to attack the Scots. Gabriel learnt from Sir Robert that the plot had been revealed by Goring, Governor of Portsmouth, and also by a merchant who had received news of the intended attack on the city and the Tower of London from an acquaintance at Paris.
The discovery of the King’s intrigues and the absolute hatred of the Queen which now prevailed, robbed Strafford of his last hope of escape: Charles knew that to refuse to sign the Earl’s death-warrant would be to expose his wife to the gravest peril; the choice was a most cruel strain upon him, and at length, worn out with agony of mind, he stifled his conscience, and to screen his wife, sacrificed his friend.
The next triumph of the Parliament was the abolition in July of the hated Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission. But, on the question of religion, signs of disunion in the Parliamentary ranks began to be evident. Bishops were then the nominees of the King, and those who wished to retain them were tending to become supporters of the independent authority of the monarch, while the opposite party, who feared to retain the bishops in the Church lest they should prove hostile to Parliamentary government, were gradually becoming, not without good reason, more and more distrustful of Charles.
All through this eventful time Gabriel had heard but little of Hilary. In each letter which he received from home she was allowed to send him some message; but it was an understood thing that the lovers should not correspond, and, somehow, ere long, the messages grew formal and unsatisfactory. More cheering than these occasional words from afar was the great kindness of the Bishop of Hereford, who often invited Gabriel to visit him at his London residence.
Truth to tell, politics were not in the Bishop’s line; his thoughts were far more with his work on the Epistle to the Colossians than with his work in the House of Lords; and when one day late in December he invited Gabriel to dine with him, their talk never once turned on the topics which absorbed the rest of the nation.
Gabriel had now spent his second Christmas in London, and was eagerly looking forward to his return home in the following September. It was a keen delight to him to listen to Bishop Coke’s description of his recent visit to Hereford, and the kindly old prelate spoke at some length about his granddaughter.
“She cheered us all with her sweet voice on Christmas night,” he remarked as he rose from the table and led his guest into the library; “and better than all her other songs was a carol which she told me you had taught her as a child.”
“That must have been the Bosbury carol which I learnt from my father,” said Gabriel. And back into his mind there flashed a vision of the past—a snow-effigy of Sir John Eliot lying in the old garden, and a perception that had come to him that the words, “All for to make us free,” were perhaps the best words that could be said of any man.
The Bishop at that moment caught sight of his manuscript, and, to Gabriel’s disappointment, said no more about Hilary. “My commentary on the Colossians is complete,” he remarked, turning over the leaves with a loving touch. “This afternoon I place it in the printer’s hands.”
Gabriel was saved a reply, for the door was opened, and the servant announced Lord Digby. Withdrawing a little into the oriel window, he watched the entrance of a fine-looking man, with eager eyes and impetuous manner. In his hand he carried a parchment roll, and Gabriel, knowing that he was generally considered to be the King’s evil genius and most rash counsellor, wondered on what errand he could have come. A greater contrast than this young, hot-headed nobleman and the gentle, dreamy-eyed Bishop could not be conceived—they might have stood for ideal representatives of the worldly and the heavenly mind.
“I will not detain you a minute, my lord,” said Digby, declining a chair. “I am in the greatest haste and only came to beg you to set your signature to this Protestation. They tell me you are but to-day returned from Hereford, and doubtless you have not heard what has passed. The mob at Westminster saw fit to shout ‘No Bishops!’ and the Archbishop of York, clutching at a ’prentice to silence him, was set upon by the crowd and hustled on his way to the House. Luckily Colonel Lunsford and some of his men drove back the dogs when they passed into Westminster Hall, and a free fight followed, when many of the rogues were wounded. ’Tis no longer safe for the Bishops to venture to the House—this parchment is a protest against such conduct, and I am sure you will gladly aid us by lending your name.”
Gabriel wondered what intrigue lay beneath this apparently simple request. That the matter was of considerable importance in Digby’s eyes he felt convinced, for his expression as he looked at the saintly old Bishop was at once anxious and wily.
“Do not trouble, my lord, to read the document through,” urged Digby; “’tis a mere recital of the wrong under which the Bishops are suffering through this ill-conduct of the mob. I am sure you will agree that such an insult is not to be tamely endured.”
“I see that Bishop Hall has signed,” said the old prelate; “I have a deep respect for Bishop Hall.”
And after a little more talk on Digby’s part the Protestation was signed and the noble lord bowed himself out.
He had only just gone when the servant came to say that the Bishop’s coach was waiting, and Gabriel hastened to make his farewell.
“Nay,” said the Bishop, “I have yet much to tell you as to Hereford matters. If you will come with me we can speak of them as I drive down to the City.”
The precious manuscript was to be conveyed to the printers, and Gabriel was much afraid that the Bishop would be too much occupied with it to talk of his granddaughter. However, in the course of the drive he heard many little details which the home letters had failed to give him, and as he parted with the kindly old man he felt more than ever drawn to him. His dismay was, therefore, all the greater when, happening to be with Ned Harley in Sir Robert’s room late the next day, he heard that the Protestation which Bishop Coke had signed inadvertently was very far from being the simple matter that Digby had represented it to be.
“It seems,” explained Sir Robert, “that Archbishop Williams took it to the King at Whitehall last night, that his Majesty without reading it handed it to Nicholas, who gave it to the Lord Keeper to place before the House of Lords. Doubtless his Majesty knew beforehand what it contained.”
“What did it contain, sir?” asked Gabriel, curiously.
“It protested that all laws, orders, votes and so forth made in the absence of the Bishops were null and void. Clearly it was got up by my Lord Digby, who was in high ill-humour because a day or two since he had been worsted in his effort to obtain the assent of the Lords to a declaration that Parliament was no longer free. It would have suited him very well that this vote should be treated as null and void. The unfortunate Bishops will pay dearly for their protest.”
“Why, sir, what has been done to them?” asked Gabriel, with some anxiety in his tone.
“The Lords at once acquainted the Lower House that the Protestation entrenched on the fundamental privileges and being of Parliament, and Mr. Pym told them that a scheme for seizing the Parliamentary leaders was on foot; he then moved that the Bishops who had signed the Protestation should be impeached of treason for having tried to subvert the very being of Parliament. I believe that they are all by now in the Tower.”
Gabriel, having mixed of late with men of every shade of opinion, had learnt to hold his tongue. He said not a word as to having been present when Digby visited Bishop Coke. But the next day he hurried off to the Tower, where he found the Bishop of Hereford in sore distress.
“You well know that I had no treasonable intention in signing,” said the old man. “I merely wished for order in Palace Yard, and that we might be able to go to and from our duties in Parliament unmolested. Well,’tis after all my own fault. I ought to have read the document through instead of yielding to my Lord Digby’s haste. Truth to tell, my thoughts were more with my manuscript—and now what will become of it?”
“My lord, if you will trust me as a messenger, I would bear your wishes to the printers, who saw me of late with your lordship,” said Gabriel.
And thus it came to pass that the proofs of the Commentary on the Colossians went to and from the Tower in the charge of Dr. Harford’s son, and that the Bishop’s tedious weeks of imprisonment were cheered by the work he loved.
It happened one day early in January that Gabriel, crossing Tower-green with the second batch of proofs, caught sight of no less a person than Archbishop Laud himself. He was standing in converse with a friend, and laughing very heartily over a caricature which the other held. Gabriel saw at a glance that it was a picture which represented Archbishop Williams as a decoy duck leading his eleven brethren into prison. On his return from Bishop Coke’s room he saw that Dr. Laud had parted with his friend, and was pacing the green alone with bent head and an air of great dejection. Remembering the pomp of his entry into Hereford years ago, Gabriel could not help feeling great pity for the captive; what a contrast did he now present! Feeble, bent and sad, he seemed another being from the haughty overbearing prelate who had roused his wrath as a child by that harsh rebuke to his father. Even the bitter enmity between the two Archbishops which had scandalised people, was now a thing of the past, though, perhaps, there had been a little malice in Dr. Laud’s laughter over the caricature representing Dr. Williams’s mischance. The Archbishop had turned and was pacing slowly back again, when his leg suddenly gave way beneath him, and he fell to the ground. Gabriel ran forward and helped the old man to rise.
“I thank you, sir,” said Laud, feebly, giving him a long look out of his inscrutable eyes. “They have taken all my attendants from me save one, and my strength is failing.”
A warder approached them, and, again thanking Gabriel, the Archbishop bade the man take him back to his room in the Bloody Tower.
But, nevertheless, though it was impossible not to feel compassion for the forlorn plight of one who a short time before had enforced his will on the whole country, there rang in Gabriel’s ears the words that had been spoken to him in Bos-bury churchyard, and he could not but think of the far worse plight of Waghorn’s father in Bridewell, heavily ironed, and chained for months to a post in a foul, damp dungeon.
His thoughts were grave enough as he was rowed up the river that cold afternoon, and the recollection of the startling news he had heard on the previous day as to the King’s impeachment of the Parliamentary leaders, and his illegal demand for their arrest, filled him with uneasiness; it seemed to him that they were all living on the brink of a volcano.
Bidding the boatman set him down at the Parliament stairs, he sprang ashore, and was just paying his fare, when he chanced to notice two gentlemen getting into the next boat. He recognised them at once as Hazlerigg and Holies; as he mounted the steps he had to stand aside to make room for two more gentlemen who seemed in haste to join them; the first was Mr. Pym, with his usual air of strength tempered with bonhomie, and close behind him came Mr. John Hampden, his fine genial face no longer cheerful as it was wont to be, but sad and stern, with the expression of one who is steadily confronting some grievous national danger.
Gabriel took off his hat and bowed low; he had met the Member for Buckinghamshire more than once at Sir Robert Harley’s.
“This is a dark day for England, Mr. Harford,” said Hampden, returning the young man’s salute. “But God reigns—with His help we will take no step backward.”
The boat was pushed off, and Gabriel saw that the four Members were being rowed in the direction of the city.
Hurrying up the steps, he walked towards the Houses of Parliament, and as he approached Westminster Hall, it was very clear that most unusual work was on hand. Fighting his way through the crowd he gained the doorway, gathering as he did so that the King was close by, coming, men said, to arrest the Parliamentary leaders. The notion seemed too wild to be believed; yet it was, alas! true.
Just as the clocks struck three the King’s coach, surrounded by some three or four hundred armed men, drove up to Westminster Hall; the guard filed into the great building, while the King, alighting, wrapped his fur-lined cloak about him, for the bitter January wind blew gustily, as though it would have protested against his entrance. Gabriel was swept by the throng inside the Hall, but he could see well enough, and watched intently as the King strode rapidly through the armed ranks, towards the entrance which led to the House of Commons; here he turned and bade his retinue wait outside, then once more moved forward to enter that door which no English King had ever passed.
Apparently his command to the retinue to wait without only applied to a certain number, for Gabriel observed that some eighty of them flung off their cloaks and left them in the hall, then, with their sword arms free and provided also with pistols, they passed on into the lobby. Gabriel noticed that the first to pass in after the King was Captain David Hide, the husband of one of the Coningsbys of Herefordshire, a notorious scoundrel, with a savage and uncontrollable temper; he was one of the officers who had drawn their swords on the people a few days before, and was said to be the inventor of the opprobrious term of “Roundhead,” which during the last week had come into vogue as applied to supporters of the Parliament.
Then followed a long time of waiting, which chafed the King’s followers sorely.
“I warrant you,” said one standing within earshot of Gabriel, and cocking his pistol as he spoke, “I am a good marksman, I will hit sure.”
The lad’s blood grew hot. What would happen when the King found the Members he sought absent? That he had contemplated using force if the House refused to give them up was evident. What would happen now?
As he mused a thrill of expectation passed through the waiting people; the King appeared in the doorway—his brow was dark, it was plain to all that he had been baffled, and the disgust of his retinue would have amused Gabriel had not his heart burnt within him at the thought of the grievous wrong that had been intended. He learnt afterwards that Mr. Strode, the fifth Member, had refused to quit the House, and had only been forcibly dragged out by a friend a moment before the entrance of the King.
For days after the whole of London rang with the angry cry, “Privileges of Parliament!” It was in vain that the King ordered Gurney, the Lord Mayor, to proclaim Lord Mandeville and the five Members of the House of Commons as traitors. Gurney, loyal man as he was, sturdily replied that the proclamation was against the law, and the King, thus hopelessly beaten, could only save the Queen from the consequences of her rash intrigues by hastily quitting Whitehall, and making preparations for her departure from England.
It was not until May that the imprisoned prelates were released, but when the King had consented to the Bishops’ Exclusion Bill, and there was no longer anything to dread from their political interference, they were allowed to quit the Tower. Bishop Coke had indeed received a special permit to go to his wife during her illness, and early in June he returned to Hereford, never again to visit London.
Hilary, who not unnaturally laid the blame of her grandfather’s imprisonment on the Parliamentary leaders, and hated them accordingly, was entranced to hear the Bishop’s warm words of appreciation as to Gabriel Harford, nor did it once occur to her that her lover had learnt to look on almost every disputed subject from a point of view exactly opposite to her own.