Shrewsbury: A Romance Page 2

  CHAPTER I

  That the untimely death at the age of fifty-eight of that greatprince, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my most noble and generouspatron, has afflicted me with a sorrow which I may truly call _acerbuset ingens_, is nothing to the world; which from one in my situationcould expect no other, and, on the briefest relation of the benefits Ihad at his hands, might look for more. Were this all, therefore, or mytask confined to such a relation, I should supererogate indeed inmaking this appearance. But I am informed that my lord Duke's deathhas revived in certain quarters those rumours to his prejudice whichwere so industriously put about at the time of his first retirement;and which, refuted as they were at the moment by the expressdeclaration of his Sovereign, and at leisure by his own behaviour, aswell as by the support which at two great crises he gave to theProtestant succession, formed always a proof of the malice, as now ofthe persistence, of his enemies.

  Still, such as they are, and though, not these circumstances only, buta thousand others have time after time exposed them, I am instructedthat they are again afloat; and find favour in circles where to thinkill of public men is held the first test of experience. And this beingthe case, and my affection for my lord such as is natural, I perceivea clear duty. I do not indeed suppose that anyone can at this time ofday effect that which the sense of all good men failed to effect whilehe lived--I mean the final killing of those rumours; nor is a plaintale likely to persuade those, with whom idle reports, constantlyfurbished up, of letters seen in France, weigh more than a consistentlife. But my lord's case is now, as I take it, removed to the AppealCourt of Posterity; which nevertheless, a lie constantly iterated maymislead. To provide somewhat to correct this, and wherefrom futurehistorians may draw, I who knew him well, and was in his confidenceand in a manner in his employment at the time of Sir John Fenwick'scase--of which these calumnies were always compact--propose to setdown my evidence here; shrinking from no fulness, at times evenventuring on prolixity, and always remembering a saying of LordSomers', that often the most material part of testimony is that onwhich the witness values himself least. To adventure on this fulness,which in the case of many, and perhaps the bulk of writers, mightissue in the surfeit of their readers, I feel myself emboldened by thepossession of a brief and concise manner of writing; which, acquiredin the first place in the circumstances presently to appear, was laterimproved by constant practice in the composition of my lord's papers.

  And here some will expect me to proceed at once to the events of theyear 1696, in which Sir John suffered, or at least 1695. But softly,and a little if you please _ab ovo_; still the particulars whichenabled my lord's enemies to place a sinister interpretation on hisconduct in those years had somewhat, and, alas, too much, to do withme. Therefore, before I can clear the matter up from every point ofview, I am first to say who I am, and how I came to fall in the way ofthat great man and gain his approbation; with other preliminarymatters, relating to myself, whereof some do not please at thisdistance, and yet must be set down, if with a wry face.

  Of which, I am glad to say, that the worst--with one exception---comesfirst, or at least early. And with that, to proceed; premising alwaysthat, as in all that follows I am no one, and the tale is my lord's, Ishall deal very succinctly with my own concerns and chancings, andwhere I must state them for clearness of narration, will do so_currente calamo_ (as the ancients were wont to say) and so forthwithto those more important matters with which my readers desire to bemade acquainted.

  Suffice it, then, that I was born near Bishop's Stortford on theborders of Hertfordshire, in that year so truly called the AnnusMirabilis, 1666; my father, a small yeoman, my mother of no betterstock, she being the daughter of a poor parson in that neighbourhood.In such a station she was not likely to boast much learning, yet shecould read, and having served two years in a great man's still-room,had acquired notions of gentility that went as ill with her station asthey were little calculated to increase her contentment. Our house laynot far from the high road between Ware and Bishop's Stortford, whichfurnished us with frequent opportunities of viewing the King andCourt, who were in the habit of passing that way two or three times inthe year to Newmarket to see the horse-races. On these occasions wecrowded with our neighbours to the side of the road, and gaped on thepageant, which lacked no show of ladies, both masked and unmasked, andgentlemen in all kinds of fripperies, and mettlesome horses that hitthe taste of some among us better than either. On these excursions mymother was ever the foremost and the most ready; yet it was not longbefore I learned to beware of her hand for days after, and expect nonebut gloomy looks and fretful answers; while my father dared no morespell duty for as much as a week, than refuse the King's taxes.

  Nevertheless, and whatever she was as a wife--and it is true she couldding my father's ears, and, for as handsome as she was, there weretimes when he would have been happier with a plainer woman--I am farfrom saying that she was a bad mother. Indeed, she was a kind, iffickle, and passionate one, wiser at large and in intention than inpractice and in small matters. Yet if for one thing only, and puttingaside natural affection--in which I trust I am not deficient--shedeserved to be named by me with undying gratitude. For having learnedto read, but never to write, beyond, that is, the trifle of her maidenname, she valued scholarship both by that she had, and that she hadnot; and in the year after I was breeched, prevailed on my father who,for his part, good man, never advanced beyond the Neck Verse, to bindme to the ancient Grammar School at Bishop's Stortford, then kept by aMr. G----.

  I believe that there were some who thought this as much beyond ourpretensions, as our small farm fell below the homestead of a man ofsubstance; and for certain, the first lesson I learned at that schoolwas to behave myself lowly and reverently to all my betters, beingtrounced on arrival by three squires' sons, and afterwards, in dueorder and gradation, by all who had or affected gentility. To balancethis I found that I had the advantage of my master's favour, and thatfor no greater a thing than the tinge of my father's opinions. Forwhereas the commonalty in that country, as in all the easterncounties, had been for the Parliament in the late troubles, and stillloved a patriot, my father was a King's man; which placed him high inMr. G----'s estimation, who had been displaced by the Rump and hatedall of that side, and not for the loss of his place only, but, and ina far greater degree, for a thing which befell him later, after he hadwithdrawn to Oxford. For being of St. John's College, and seeing allthat rich and loyal foundation at stake, he entered himself in a bodyof horse which was raised among the younger collegians and servants;and probably if he had been so lucky as to lose an eye or an arm inthe field of honour, he would have forgiven Oliver all, and not theKing's sufferings only, but his own. But in place of that it was hisill-chance to be one of a troop that, marching at night by the rivernear Wallingford, took fright at nothing and galloped to Abingdonwithout drawing rein; for which reason, and because an example wasneeded, they were disbanded. True, I never heard that the fault onthat occasion lay with our master, nor that he was a man of lesscourage than his neighbours; but he took the matter peculiarly toheart, and never forgave the Roundheads the slur they had unwittinglycast on his honour; on the contrary, and in the event, he regularlycelebrated the thirtieth of January by flogging the six boys who stoodlowest in each form, and afterwards reading the service of the dayover their smarting tails. By some, indeed, it was alleged that theveriest dunces, if of loyal stock, might look to escape on theseoccasions; but I treat this as a calumny.

  That the good man did in truth love and favour loyalty, however, andthis without sparing the rod in season, I am myself a bright andexcellent example. For though I never attained to the outward flowerof scholarship by proceeding to the learned degree of arts at eitherof the Universities, I gained the root and kernel of the matter atBishop's Stortford, being able at the age of fourteen to write a finehand, and read Eutropius, and Caesar, and teach the horn-book andChrist-Cross to younger boys. These attainments, and the taste forpolite learni
ng, which, as these pages will testify, I have neverceased to cultivate, I owe rather to the predilection which he had forme than to my own gifts; which, indeed, though doubtless I was alwaysa boy of parts, I do not remember to have been great at the first._Sub ferula_, however, and with encouragement, I so far advanced thathe presently began to consider the promoting me to the place of usher,with a cane _in commendam_; and, doubtless, he would have done it butfor a fit that took him at the first news of the Rye House Plot, andthe danger his Sacred Majesty had run thereby--which a friendimprudently brought to him when he was merry after dinner--and whichcaused an illness that at one and the same time carried him off, anddeprived me of the best of pedagogues.

  After that, and learning that his successor had a son whom he proposedto promote to the place I desired, I returned to the school no more,but began to live at home; at first with pleasure, but after no longinterval with growing chagrin and tedium. Our house possessed none ofthe comforts that are necessary to idleness, and therefore when theeast wind drove me indoors from swinging on the gate, or sulking inthe stack-yard, I found it neither welcome nor occupation. My youngerbrother had seized on the place of assistant to my father, and havinggot thews and experience _ambulando_, found fresh ground every day formaking mock of my uselessness. Did I milk, the cows kicked over thebucket, while I thought of other things; did I plough, my furrows rancrooked; when I thrashed, the flail soon wearied my arms. In theresult, therefore, the respect with which my father had at firstregarded my learning, wore off, and he grew to hate the sight of mewhether I hung over the fire or loafed in the doorway, my sleeves tooshort for my chapped arms, and my breeches barely to my knees. Thoughmy mother still believed in me, and occasionally, when she was in anill-humour with my father, made me read to her, her support scarcelybalanced the neighbours' sneers. Nor when I chanced to displeaseher--which, to do her justice, was not often, for I was herfavourite--was she above joining in the general cry, and asking me,while she cuffed me, whether I thought the cherries fell into themouth, and meant to spend all my life with my hands in my pockets.

  To make a long story short, at the end of twelve months, whereof everyday of the last ten increased my hatred of our home surroundings, thedull strip of common before the door, the duck-pond, the grey horizon,and the twin ash-trees on which I had cut my name so often, I heardthrough a neighbour that an usher was required in a school at Ware.This was enough for me; while, of my family, who saw me leave withgreater relief on their own account than hope on mine, only my motherfelt or affected regret. With ten shillings in my pocket, her partinggift, and my scanty library of three volumes packed among my clotheson my back, I plodded the twelve miles to Ware, satisfied the learnedMr. D---- that I had had the small-pox, would sleep three in a bed,and knew more than he did; and the same day was duly engaged to teachin his classical seminary, in return for my board, lodging, washing,and nine guineas a year.

  He had trailed a pike in the wars, and was an ignorant, but neither acruel, nor, save in the pretence of knowledge, a dishonest man; itmight be supposed, therefore, that, after the taste of idleness anddependence I had had, I should here find myself tolerably placed, andin the fair way of promotion. But I presently found that I had merelyexchanged a desert for a prison, wherein I had not only theshepherding of the boys to do, both by night and day, which in a shorttime grew inconceivably irksome, so that I had to choose whether Iwould be tyrant or slave; but also the main weight of teaching, andthere no choice at all but to be a drudge. And this without anyalleviation from week's end to week's end, either at meals or at anyother time! for my employer's wife had high notions, and must keep aseparate house, though next door, and with communications; sittingdown with us only on Sundays, and then at dinner, when woe betide theboy who gobbled his food or choked over the pudding-balls. Havingsatisfied herself on my first coming that my father was neither of theQuorum nor of Justice's kin, and, in fact, a mere rustic nobody, shehad no more to say to me, but when she was not scolding her husband,addressed herself solely to one of the boys, who by virtue of an unclewho was a Canon, had his seat beside her. Insensibly, her husband, whoat first, with an eye to my knowledge and his own deficiencies, hadbeen more civil to me, took the same tone; and not only that, but,finding that I was to be trusted, he came less and less into school,until at last he would only appear for a few minutes in the day, andto carve when we had meat, and to see the lights extinguished atnight. This without any added value for me; so that the better Iserved him--and for a year I managed his school for him--the less hefavoured me, and at last thought a nod all the converse he owed me inthe day.

  Consigned to this solitary life by those above me, it was not likelythat I should find compensation in the society of lads to whom I stoodin an odious light, and of whom the oldest was no more than fourteen.For what was our life? Such hours as we did not spend in the drudgeryof school, or in our beds, we passed in a yard on the dank side of thehouse, a grassless place, muddy in winter and dusty in summer,overshadowed by one skeleton tree; and wherein, since all violentgames and sports were forbidden by the good lady's scruples (whobelonged to the fanatical party) as savouring of Popery, we hadperforce to occupy ourselves with bickerings and complaints andchildish plays. Abutting on the garden of her house, this yardpresented on its one open side a near prospect of water-butts, anddrying clothes, so that to this day I profess that I hold it ingreater horror than any other place or thing at that school.

  It is true we walked out in the country at rare intervals; but asthree sides of the town were forbidden to us by a great man, whoseproperty lay in that quarter, and who feared for his game, ourexcursions were always along one road, which afforded neither changenor variety. Moreover, I had a particular reason for liking theseexcursions as little as possible, which was that they exposed me tofrequent meetings with gay young sparks of my own age, whose scornfullooks as they rode by, with the contemptuous names they called afterme, asking who dressed the boys' hair and the like, I found itdifficult to support--even with the aid of those reflections on thedignity of learning and the Latin tongue which I had imbibed from mylate master.

  Be it remembered (in palliation of that which I shall presently tell)that at this time I was only eighteen, an age at which the passionsand ambitions awake, and that this was my life. At a time when youthdemands change and excitement and the fringe of ornament, my days andweeks went by in a plain round, as barren of wholesome interests as itwas unadorned by any kindly aid or companionship. To rise, to teach,to use the cane, to move always in a dull atmosphere of routine; fordiversion to pace the yard I have described, always with shrillquarrellings in my ears--these with the weekly walk made up my life atWare, and must form my excuse. How the one came to an abrupt end, howI came to have sore need of the other, it is now my business to tell;but of these in the next chapter; wherein also I propose to show,without any moralities, another thing that shall prove them to thepurpose, namely, how these early experiences, which I have thus curtlydescribed, led me _per viam dolorosam_ to my late lord, and mingled myfortunes with his, under circumstances not unworthy of examination bythose who take mankind for their study.