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FOOTNOTES[36]Witness their Oubliettes, which the writer has seen, shaped like a bottle, the only opening the neck, wherein, when torture had done its worst and no more revelations were to be hoped of the criminal, he was dropped, to perish of his injuries in unseen agony, in cold, hunger, and filth. Witness, too, the recent discoveries at Baden Baden—the statue of the Virgin, which the victim was told to kiss, whereupon a concealed trap-door, on which he stood, fell, and dropped him upon wheels set with revolving knives. Such refinements appal the imagination, and constrain us to ask what manner of men invented such atrocities?[37]Unless the reader can comprehend the intense way in which obedience and loyalty to the King, right or wrong, swayed the people of England in that day, he cannot comprehend the history of Bloody Harry, and why he was permitted to work his will. The anarchy of the preceding century, when the Wars of the Roses had drenched the country in blood, and helped to foster the sentiment, and to make the throne the central pillar of the edifice, the supposed bulwark of the nation.[38]All things should first be tried, but an incurable woundMust with the sword be cut out, lest the sound part be affected.[39]In John Knox’s house at Edinburgh the writer examined a similar implement, as also at Sir Walter Scott’s house at Abbotsford.
[36]Witness their Oubliettes, which the writer has seen, shaped like a bottle, the only opening the neck, wherein, when torture had done its worst and no more revelations were to be hoped of the criminal, he was dropped, to perish of his injuries in unseen agony, in cold, hunger, and filth. Witness, too, the recent discoveries at Baden Baden—the statue of the Virgin, which the victim was told to kiss, whereupon a concealed trap-door, on which he stood, fell, and dropped him upon wheels set with revolving knives. Such refinements appal the imagination, and constrain us to ask what manner of men invented such atrocities?
[36]Witness their Oubliettes, which the writer has seen, shaped like a bottle, the only opening the neck, wherein, when torture had done its worst and no more revelations were to be hoped of the criminal, he was dropped, to perish of his injuries in unseen agony, in cold, hunger, and filth. Witness, too, the recent discoveries at Baden Baden—the statue of the Virgin, which the victim was told to kiss, whereupon a concealed trap-door, on which he stood, fell, and dropped him upon wheels set with revolving knives. Such refinements appal the imagination, and constrain us to ask what manner of men invented such atrocities?
[37]Unless the reader can comprehend the intense way in which obedience and loyalty to the King, right or wrong, swayed the people of England in that day, he cannot comprehend the history of Bloody Harry, and why he was permitted to work his will. The anarchy of the preceding century, when the Wars of the Roses had drenched the country in blood, and helped to foster the sentiment, and to make the throne the central pillar of the edifice, the supposed bulwark of the nation.
[37]Unless the reader can comprehend the intense way in which obedience and loyalty to the King, right or wrong, swayed the people of England in that day, he cannot comprehend the history of Bloody Harry, and why he was permitted to work his will. The anarchy of the preceding century, when the Wars of the Roses had drenched the country in blood, and helped to foster the sentiment, and to make the throne the central pillar of the edifice, the supposed bulwark of the nation.
[38]All things should first be tried, but an incurable woundMust with the sword be cut out, lest the sound part be affected.
[38]
All things should first be tried, but an incurable woundMust with the sword be cut out, lest the sound part be affected.
All things should first be tried, but an incurable woundMust with the sword be cut out, lest the sound part be affected.
All things should first be tried, but an incurable wound
Must with the sword be cut out, lest the sound part be affected.
[39]In John Knox’s house at Edinburgh the writer examined a similar implement, as also at Sir Walter Scott’s house at Abbotsford.
[39]In John Knox’s house at Edinburgh the writer examined a similar implement, as also at Sir Walter Scott’s house at Abbotsford.
“Art thou Sir John Redfyrne?” enquired a man, who by his dress appeared to be a parochial or parish priest, as that worthy knight left Rougemont.
“I am, what dost thou seek of me? I have little to do with cattle of thy breed.”
“An aged woman,” replied the priest, not noticing the taunt, “is dying in a suburb of the city, and cannot pass in peace till she hath seen thee.”
“What does it matter to me whether the old crone dies in peace or not?”
“Verily thou art a hard-hearted man, but wilt thou look upon this signet?—she had confidence in its power to bring thee to her bed-side.”
It was only his own crest upon a sapphire that he gazed upon, yet his heart gave a leap, and in spite of his self-command his blood flushed up, his face was crimson, and he evidently had to strive hard for mastery over himself.
“Sir priest,” he said, “I am not well, and am subject to spasms of the heart, which will account for my seeming discomposure; lead me to her, I recognise the token.”
The priest led on, and Sir John followed. Traversing Fore Street they approached the West Gate, which opened upon the bridge over the Exe. But here the priest turned to the left down a steep descent, into the purlieus of St. Mary of the Steppes.[40]
The district was crowded then, as now, by the habitations of the lower classes, and was probably even more unsavoury than it is at present, for there was no drainage save that effected by the showers, which flushed the gutters.
Such a shower had even now fallen when the priest entered a court between ricketty houses, once of some pretensions, but now tottering in ruin; it was crowded with squalid children, stopping up the gutters as they carried down the filth and refuse, and sailing little boats, or making mud pies.
Amidst rags and wretchedness, the worthy guide led on; he was amidst his own flock; they were not a decent set, but they all respected him, and perhaps without his protection, the gay gentleman would not have gone on his way so unmolested.
“Where art thou taking me to? I knew not such dens existed,” said the knight.
“There are many worse; known perhaps only to the physician and the priest, now that ye have suppressed the sisterhoods; least of all to the constables, who dare not come hither save in troops; here the plague lies hidden in the winter, to burst out again each summer; here want, crime, disease, and vice fester together; here the fruit for the gallows is nourished; these be the orchards of the Father of Evil, where he grows of his own will many such apples as tempted Eve.”
“And isshehere?” He did not mean Eve.
“Even so.”
“What brought her so low? she has long hidden from me.”
“A guilty secret, perchance.”
Sir John asked no more, and they entered the gateway of a house at the end of the court, which had once been a fair dwelling, but now the door hung by one hinge, and the windows were battered out. They entered the hall; tattered hangings drooped in fragments from the walls, beetles and spiders had their home amidst the rotten wainscotting, woodlice swarmed in the bannisters of the ancient staircase, the balustrade was partly broken away, the stairs were rotten.
“And isshehere?” said Sir John again.
“Even so,” was the reply; “tread carefully, the staircase will bear thee in places only.”
The ceiling, which had been moulded in patterns, had fallen away, and hideous joists and beams were disclosed as they ascended.
Then they heard a faint moan of pain, and a voice said, “Dying, dying, left all alone to die; Mother of Mercy, aid a sinful child of Eve.”
“Peace, daughter, I bring him thou seekest.”
The being whom he called “daughter” was an aged crone who had seen some seventy summers, and was now fast dying of decay; pains in all her joints, weakness in all her senses, toothless, wrinkled, blear-eyed, yet with the remains of a beauty long past, in the high outlines of her features.
Sir John gazed upon her.
“Art thou Madge of Luckland?” he said.
“Thou knowest me by the signet; it has more power to convince thee than this face; go, good Father Christopher, go,” she said to the priest, “and when I have said that which must be said to this good knight, ha! ha! I will finish my shrift to thee.”
“Shall I bid any of the neighbours come to thee when he is gone?”
“He will summon them; I would not be long alone in this haunted house; there be ghosts I tell thee; there be awful figures with faces that witherthe eyeballs and blanch the hair, which troop about these halls of the forgotten dead; but it is daylight now, and I fear them not.”
“Madge,” said the priest, “thou wilt soon be as one of those ghosts thyself: thy poor tabernacle of clay is falling fast into ruins like a child’s house of cards, which a touch overturns; soon they will carry thee to the charnel house, and direly will thy poor soul burn in its purgatory, or haunt, if permitted, these scenes of forgotten crime, unless thou dost repent and make atonement.”
“Father, Iwill; am I not on the point of doing so? go, leave me with this good knight: why, he was once my foster son.”
“And has he left thee towant, like this? My son, God deal with thee as thou dost deal justly by her; she has little time yet wherein thou mayst make amends for the past to one, who, if she speaks truth, suckled thee at her breast.”
The priest departed, and Sir John sank into a crazy chair by the couch of the old woman.
A faded coverlet was upon it, whereon was wrought the history of Cain and Abel; there were four posts supporting a canopy, but one post drooped, and the whole threatened to come down together.
“Speak, mother, why hast thou sent for me at last? or why didst thou not send before?”
“I would not have sent for thee now, but if I did not, a damning crime would stain thy soul and mine;mine, because I alone can reveal to thee its nature;thine, because thy sin led the way to it.”
“Mysin, woman! gain is righteousness, loss is sin, I know no other description for either: I believe not as priestlings prate, nor didst thou once, although, like other unbelievers, we held our tongue for fear of Mother Church with her discipline of fire and faggot, for if we had said that we believed not in hell hereafter, she would have created one for us here.”
“Enough, hadst thou seen what I have seen, thou wouldst know there is a God and a terrible one, and that the worst flames Churchmen kindle here for heretics are no more in comparison with those which await the unforgiven sinner, than painted flames compare with those which wither up the unbeliever or witch in Smithfield.”
“I came not here to hear a sermon, Madge; what further crime hast thou to warn me against? I would not commituselessones.”
“Dost thou remember when thy brother’s widow bare a poor babe, who never saw its father’s face?”
“I do, as thou knowest, too well; it was a great disappointment to me.”
“And while the mother slept in insensibility,thou didst bid me stifle the child, and say it was still-born, because thou wast as thy brother’s heir in possession of the property?”
“Why repeat this idle tale, it is all over and gone? Art thou alone? art thou sure there is none here?”
“Sure, yes, quite sure; none at least clothed in flesh and blood like ourselves, but how many unseen beings hover around us I know not.”
Sir John could not help trembling, there was such a ghastly realism in her words, and the fast decaying light made him long to leave the place.
“Well, thou didst it for love of thy foster son, and thou hast been fool enough to confess it to this meddling priest?”
“Not yet, I waited to see thee first, and tell thee what Ireallydid.”
“Reallydid? didst thou not murder the babe?”
“Nay, I substituted a beggar’s dead brat from a gipsy camp, hard by, for thy brother’s heir, and showed thee its body, and thou didst blanch, but yet nerve thy coward soul to say ‘well done;’ meanwhile I hid the young heir, and when thou wert gone to court I restored the babe to the mother, bidding her flee the castle with it ere thou didst return.”
“Can this be true? How wilt thou prove it now?”
“Listen; a month later, when the poor dame was well again, came a letter to bid us prepare for that return; I did not dare to let thee find the child alive, and bade the mother flee. It was the third day after Christmas, the Holy Innocents’ day: to whose intercession she commended her babe.”
“And she fled?”
“All alone she sought the sanctuary of S. Joseph at Glastonbury; there she purposed to remain, dreading thy power, until she could appeal to justice, for all in the castle, like me, were thy minions; she fled: a wild night of wind and snow followed, and she died on the road.”
“With the child?” said Sir John.
“No, I learned all aboutitsfate. The child was rescued by a yeoman named Hodge, and nurtured by the good Abbot of Glastonbury, and if the priest, Christopher, tells me truth, thou art about to compass his death now. Oh repent, Sir John, repent while there is yet time, for the sake of thy soul and mine; for I have sinfully concealed this secret, dreading thy anger, thine, my foster son, and I have hidden it from thee: yet my hands are pure from blood, although my guilty complicity exposed the mother to death in the snow, and the babe to the chances of the night; although I have aided thee to grasp an inheritance which is not thine, and which isdragging thee and me alike into hell: repent at once, and my poor soul may depart in peace;savethe boy, thy nephew.”
“Art thou sure none can overhear us? Art thou alone in this house?”
“Alone with the dead.”
“And that thou hast confessed the truth to none?”
“Not as yet.”
“And never shall. Die then the death thou didst spare the brat.”
Hard by stood a ewer filled with water, and over it a towel; he dipped this towel in the water, and suddenly clapped it upon her mouth, then he thrust a pillow upon her face, towel and all, and threw himself upon it, keeping it down until the poor suffering body ceased to throb, when he removed the pillow, and composed the features as well as he could, smoothed the coverlet, and left the room.
It was growing dark.
A shudder passed over him all at once, as he descended the stairs.
At the foot of the stairs stood revealed to his sight—or to his guilty imagination—a misty form surmounted by a face which expressed such unutterable anguish, that even the iron nerves of the murderer threatened to give way.
He made a violent effort, composed himself,and rushedthroughthe apparition; he gained the outer air, and felt a dead faint gain upon him, he sank upon the step, and knew nought till he was aroused by a voice.
“How is the old girl upstairs?”
“She passed away in a fit whilst I was with her.”
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FOOTNOTES[40]As I write an ancient map of Exeter is before me confirming this description.
[40]As I write an ancient map of Exeter is before me confirming this description.
[40]As I write an ancient map of Exeter is before me confirming this description.
It is necessary, for the fuller elucidation of our veracious narrative, that the reader should here be made acquainted with the earlier history of the Redfyrne family.
About twenty miles, or a little more, to the south-east of Glastonbury, over the Dorsetshire border, and not far from Sturminster, stood, three centuries ago, an old and mouldering castle, built in the days of the Barons’ wars.
It was surrounded by a wide moat, fed from the river Stour, which rolled its deep and sluggish flood in mazy windings through the ancient park, which, rich with hoary oak and mossy beech, surrounded the castle.
A part of the massive buildings had been adapted to the ideas of the sixteenth century, and fashioned so as to form a convenient dwelling for the family, while the Keep and other portions were left to decay. It formed a picturesque group, the modern dwelling, with its airy windows andopen aspect, contrasting the venerable towers, which suggested dungeons, as deep as the walls were high; wherein the captives of past generations once wept, and “appealed from tyranny to God.”
Here, in the early days of “Bluff King Hal,” dwelt the good knight Sir Geoffrey Redfyrne, with his lady and their four children.
The eldest boy, Geoffrey, was the darling of his father’s heart, frank and generous, full of chivalrous courage, affectionate, and gifted with the power of winning affection. The younger boy, John, differed greatly—he was morose and selfish in disposition, vindictive and passionate; his only good quality the courage which was hereditary in his family.
As a natural consequence, the father’s preference for Geoffrey was almost too manifest, for it increased the secret hatred the younger brother, younger by a year only, bore to his elder, whom he continually crossed in a variety of ways—maiming his pet animals, leading him into scrapes and then betraying him, yet cunningly keeping his hand concealed when he was able.
They had of course many quarrels, but the elder was always as ready to forgive, as the younger to resent.
Of the sisters we shall not speak, further thanto say that they were often peace-makers between their brothers, and that John was many a time forgiven at their intercession.
It was on the whole a happy family, and had the parents lived, the faults of the younger son might, under their judicious training, have been corrected. But into this unfortunate household came a deadly visitor—the plague.
It was conveyed into the village by a bale of cloth, consigned to a tailor, from abroad—the tailor’s family sickened, and all died; then those who out of Christian charity had attended them to render good offices in their last distress, sickened also, and infected their own households; from house to house the dreadful malady spread; the parish priest died, the physicians (leeches they called them) died; and, at last, the awful scourge reached the hall—for Sir Geoffrey could not keep away from his sick tenantry.
Death knocks with equal foot at the palaces of kings and the huts of the poor, the plague was no respecter of persons; the good and charitable knight carried the infection home, and ere three days had passed both he and his faithful wife were gone; she watched by him and nursed him till he died, and then falling sick at once, followed him to a better world.
Geoffrey and the two daughters were taken ill next; the boy recovered, the sisters died; the onlymember of the family who escaped altogether was John, owing perhaps to some physical peculiarity in his constitution, which enabled him to withstand the infection.
Not far from the castle, down the stream, stood Luckland Mill; a father, mother, six children, and an aged grandam, all lived there; but death came, and all died. The water splashed and foamed down the mill-course, the merry wheel ran on, while there were eight corpses in that house which none dared to bury. But the difficulty was solved,—the mill having ground out its corn, ran on, and as there was no one to stop it, caught fire at last from friction of the machinery, and was burnt to the ground, so the dead were “cremated” not buried.
We saideightbodies, for one child, the eldest daughter, named Madge, escaped the fate of her family, being on a visit to some distant relations, when the plague broke out.[41]
At length the pestilence abated, and the sorrow-stricken survivors, but a third of the former population, might estimate their losses, and gaze upon the vacant chairs in their dwellings, wishing often,in the desolation of their hearts, that they had been taken too.
A distant relation became guardian to the two boys at the castle; both of whom were sent to Glastonbury for their education, where John was always in trouble, and Geoffrey in favour.
Richard Whiting was then one of the younger brethren, and one of the tutors of the boys, and it befel more than once that John fell under his just correction, and tasted the rod, an infliction he never forgave. It is needless to say that Geoffrey was a general favourite.
They left school in due time, and arrived at manhood. Geoffrey made one campaign in the French wars, which had a singular result: he was taken captive, and captivated the daughter of his captor; so that on the conclusion of peace, she returned with him to England as Lady Redfyrne.
John remained at home to attend to the estate in his brother’s absence—he did not care for the military life, being too idle; and he was fast sinking into the bachelor brother, who keeps the accounts, looks after the hounds, and makes himself useful in a hundred odd ways, but who feels his own position less comfortable as time moves on and a young family arises, not his own, superseding him.
But all the time, his darker disposition was only suppressed; it was his intention to be lordof the manor, if by any means (and he was not scrupulous as to what means) he might grasp his brother’s inheritance; a younger brother’s portion he despised or gambled away.
“Sui profusus, alieni appietens,”[42]as Sallust wrote of Catiline.
The occasion came; just before his wife’s confinement, poor Geoffrey, to the grief of all who knew him, died after a brief illness. He came home from hunting, wet through, and confiding in the strength of his constitution, omitted, as he often had before, to change his garments; he caught a severe cold, pleurisy set in, and, for the want of such remedies as in the hands of modern science might have saved him, he died.
We are now coming to that portion of our narrative already revealed by Madge of Luckland, for that aged crone was indeed the survivor of the family at the mill.
After his brother’s death, Sir John claimed the estate, as of right, and imagined himself the lawful lord of the manor, when he was informed that, as he had already dreaded, there were hopes of a direct heir.
For a brief time he wrestled with the devil; hard as he was he could not forget the pleading tone of his dying brother,—
“John, dear John, take care of Catharine, and should there be a boy, be a father to him for my sake; when we meet again in another world, thou shalt tell me thou hast discharged the trust: God deal with thee, as thou dealest with her.”
When it became certain that the widow was near her confinement, Sir John had an interview with Madge of Luckland, over whom he had acquired an evil influence: the reader is aware how he used it, and what crime he urged her to commit. But unfortunately for his fell purpose, Madge, in her capacity of nurse, had conceived a strong affection for the sweet helpless lady, with her broken English, and pretty ways. In short, she was true to her better nature, and false to her patron.
After Sir John had gazed for one brief moment at the dead babe, whose identity he doubted not, he departed from the castle on urgent business; the deed was done, and he was glad to go, for he trembled while he repented not.
He was absent a whole month, during which he was busily engaged in pushing his fortune at court, where he had been previously presented: it was at this period he made the acquaintance of Thomas Cromwell, then Secretary to Wolsey.
At length the time arrived for his return for the first time as lord of the manor, and an avantcourier arrived at Castle Redfyrne to announce his approaching arrival.
It was then that Madge, fearful of the consequences, should she be unable to conceal the existence of the babe,—who was meanwhile nursed by a gipsy mother,—advised Catharine Redfyrne to fly to the shrine of S. Joseph at Glastonbury, assuring her that the good old Abbot would recollect her husband and protect his child.
It was arranged that she should leave the castle in the darkest hour, before the dawn of the winter’s day; for the new servants were devoted to their lord’s interests, and might not allow her to depart. Madge enquired whether the lady could ride, as she would undertake herself to procure a steed.
Catharine asserted that she was a good horse-woman, and had no fear of the journey; also that she knew the country, having been to Glastonbury with her lord. The weather was frosty, and there was no sign of any change for the worse; the weather prophets, as upon a later occasion,[43]gave no intimation of an approaching storm.
Before dawn on Holy Innocents’ Day, Madge awoke the young widow; together they left thecastle while the whole household was asleep. They crossed the star-lit park to the Luckland Mill, now rebuilt, where Madge had procured the horse. They found it awaiting them, and the gipsy was there, by appointment, with the babe. One other person alone was in the secret, the miller.
They parted with many tears, and never met in this world again. Poor Madge, her life had been stained by sin; let this act of Christian charity plead her forgiveness.
On her way back to the castle, Madge was struck by the wondrous but ominous beauty of the dawn, first a streak of pale blue, which then seemed upheaved by sheets of crimson fire; the eye was almost dazzled by the brilliancy of the deepening blaze, as if the eastern heavens were in conflagration.
“A red sky at night is the shepherds’ delight, but a red sky in the morning is the shepherds’ warning,” muttered Madge, fearing there would be bad weather.
It was one of those lovely winter days when the blue sky and fleecy clouds and the brilliant atmosphere are more delightful than in summer, but towards evening the wind set in steadily from the east, the heavens assumed a dull leaden hue, and just before sunset, down came the first flakes of snow.
Thicker flakes! thicker! thicker! the night darker; the snow deeper, each hour.
The reader knows the rest, if he has read the prologue to our tale. The horse must have refused to proceed, nor was he ever found, he must have perished in the snow; but the miller did not dare to make enquiries for fear of exciting suspicion. It was lucky that the same snow procured a brief respite for Madge, for Sir John could not get home for more than a week, and when he came was met by the intelligence that the mother had fled, as it was supposed, in a fit of mental derangement, caused by grief over the loss of her infant; and that she had perished, as they thought, in the snow.
But how she had perished, and where, was never known to Sir John; Madge persuaded him that she had strayed into the river, but no body was ever found when the thaw, after some weeks of intense frost, permitted a search; the miller kept his secret, and Sir John was content to leave the matter in mystery, and to reap the benefit.
But he never afterwards liked the presence of Madge, his supposed confederate, and he sent her from the neighbourhood, so that he lost sight of her for twenty years.
How they met at last the reader has learned.
Sir John, hardened as he was, could not for a time shake off the remembrance of his brother’slast words; often in sleep that brother seemed to stand by him. “I bade thee guard my poor wife and child, how hast thou kept thy trust?” He remembered the mournful way in which Geoffrey, when they were little children, had reproached him for the death of a pet which he had maliciously caused, and the boy and man were mingled in his dreams.
Should he ever have to bear the reproach in another world!
He shook the thought off—parried it with the shield of unbelief.
How like the poor ostrich, who hides his head in the sand, and thinks, because it cannot see its pursuers, it is itself unseen!
But still he frequented Church, went regularly each Sunday to Mass, and each year to Confession; indeed it would have been dangerous to do otherwise, or to confess his unbelief, as he avowed to Madge on her death-bed.
By-and-bye Cromwell began to organize that terrible system of espionage, which filled the scaffolds with victims. Dorset was unrepresented in the prying brotherhood; he thought of his old friend, Sir John, in whom he had discovered a kindred spirit when both served Wolsey, and offered him the post. Sir John eagerly accepted the confidence, and began at once to exercise his office, to watch his neighbours, to entrap them inunguarded conversations, and so to denounce them if he found the opportunity, and all the time he was unsuspected, or even Cromwell could hardly have saved him from the just fury of his countrymen.
And in this capacity he had no small share in the tragedy at Glastonbury; he hated the Abbot as we have seen, and willingly employed all his craft in bringing his old tutor to the gibbet and quartering block, and when the victim suffered he was there, on the Tor Hill, and revelled in the ghastly butchery of the man who had once striven to check his opening vices.
When the fall of his patron, Cromwell, took place, Sir John was for the time in imminent danger, but he extricated himself by a master stroke: he attended in his place, as knight of the shire, and voted for cutting off his friend’s head without a trial, by process of Bill of Attainder; thus by this skilful trimming of his sails he escaped the storm; but the idea was not original, Archbishop Cranmer did the same.[44]
He had for a near neighbour Squire Grabber,and had often admired the evil qualities of young Nicholas, from whom, in the exercise of his vocation, he had gained many valuable pieces of information, which he had duly conveyed to Cromwell.
When the Martyrdom on the Tor Hill was accomplished, and the Abbey suppressed, Sir John proposed to his neighbour to let young Nick begin the business of life (as was then customary even amongst the sons of gentlefolk) as his page, not, be it understood, in any menial sense of the word.
The squire consented, and the reader knows the consequences, so far as we have yet had space to unfold them.
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FOOTNOTES[41]These details were gathered from some melancholy pages in an old parish register, which the writer once perused, when staying in the neighbourhood. Under this terrible visitation the proportion of deaths was sometimes far larger than that given in the text.[42]Craving another’s, wasteful of his own.[43]The great snow storm of January, 1881, was entirely “unforecasted,” if the writer remembers aright.[44]The process of Bill of Attainder was invented by Cromwell himself, and he was, by a wondrous nemesis the first to fall by it. Cranmer voted on the second and third readings for the death of his friend—his presence is noted in the journal of the house, and the Bill was carried “nemine discrepante.”
[41]These details were gathered from some melancholy pages in an old parish register, which the writer once perused, when staying in the neighbourhood. Under this terrible visitation the proportion of deaths was sometimes far larger than that given in the text.
[41]These details were gathered from some melancholy pages in an old parish register, which the writer once perused, when staying in the neighbourhood. Under this terrible visitation the proportion of deaths was sometimes far larger than that given in the text.
[42]Craving another’s, wasteful of his own.
[42]Craving another’s, wasteful of his own.
[43]The great snow storm of January, 1881, was entirely “unforecasted,” if the writer remembers aright.
[43]The great snow storm of January, 1881, was entirely “unforecasted,” if the writer remembers aright.
[44]The process of Bill of Attainder was invented by Cromwell himself, and he was, by a wondrous nemesis the first to fall by it. Cranmer voted on the second and third readings for the death of his friend—his presence is noted in the journal of the house, and the Bill was carried “nemine discrepante.”
[44]The process of Bill of Attainder was invented by Cromwell himself, and he was, by a wondrous nemesis the first to fall by it. Cranmer voted on the second and third readings for the death of his friend—his presence is noted in the journal of the house, and the Bill was carried “nemine discrepante.”
The dusky shades of night fell upon the ancient Castle of Rougemont, the feudal pile of the proud Norman, and deepened the gloom of its dungeons; and in particular of that one, wherein poor Cuthbert was pining in silence and solitude.
For his spirit seemed broken; those three days of absolute silence, followed by the torture, the anticipation of further suffering in that dismal chamber underground, and of the shame of a traitor’s death beyond; all these combined to crush his soul in the dust; poor youth, bred up by kind and loving hearts; spared hardships and sorrow for so many bright years, how had the scene changed before him!
And again, he could not help feeling some little doubt concerning the cause for which he bore all this suffering; his faith in it had been the transplanted faith of others; he knew that the majority of his countrymen held with the King, while theywere yet staunch Catholics in every other point; papal supremacy had never been a matter of faith with the bulk of the English people, and might not the majority be right after all? in which case he was madly throwing away all the joys of his opening manhood, for a cause which had not the approbation of heaven.
Against these thoughts fought the remembrance of the last Abbot of Glastonbury, and the present strong feeling of allegiance, which he felt to his protector, Sir Walter Trevannion; but there was a struggle, which he felt ashamed to acknowledge even to himself.
Sometimes the sounds of the revelry of the youth of the city, engaged in their sports, found their way in through the grated window, and mocked the poor heart-sick captive; he strove to find refuge in prayer, but prayer fled him, his mind wandered. “No, I cannot pray,” he said, “the very saints forsake me now.”
Who knows what might have been the consequence of those hours of pain and loneliness, had they been prolonged? but suddenly the door opened.
Cuthbert scarcely looked up, thinking it was but the gaoler bringing him food, when he heard a voice, a well-known one.
“My son, my dear son.”
It was Father Ambrose, alias Sir Walter, andCuthbert jumped up, and threw himself into his arms with a self-abandonment which shewed how far his feelings had been strained by their separation.
“My father, my more than father,” he cried.
“We are to be together till the end,” said Sir Walter, after a few moments of silence, during which they had grasped each other’s hands.
“To whom do we owe this mercy; to the governor? he seemed to feel for us.”
“No, he could not have ventured to oppose Sir John Redfyrne, who was armed with the authority of the Privy Council.”
Cuthbert flushed up at the sound of the hated name.
“Hehas no hand in this indulgence.”
“Indeed he has, my dear son, whatever his motives may be; he may repent of his ingratitude.”
Cuthbert shook his head.
“Let us not think of him; he comes between us and our God, if we would be forgiven we must needs forgive; God has forgiven us the ten thousand talents for His dear Son’s sake, shall we not forgive the hundred pence?”
“My father, I am so glad, so glad you are here, my faith was failing me.”
“In what?”
“In the justice of our cause; why do we standalmost alone, against the great majority of our countrymen?”
“Would’st thou have been with the majority or minority at the Flood? at Sodom? in guilty Jerusalem? Dear boy, majorities are nothing; indeed too often they but mark the broad way which leadeth to destruction; nor have they even themajorityon their side, miserable as the support drawn from thence would be; for England stands alone amongst the Christian commonwealths in her present schism.[45]
“Then, again, my dear boy, remember the words of your beloved benefactor, when he stood before his judges at Wells; and again in that hour when he parted from you with words of blessing, in the gatehouse chamber at Glastonbury; methinks it would pain his blessed spirit, even in Paradise, to hear that his adopted son, whom he loved so well, doubted.”
The good father was using the very best means which could be used to keep hisprotegéfirm in the path, which he believed the only road to heaven; argument might have failed to convince where faith was shaken, but the love of one who had died so nobly and patiently for the impugned tenet, carrying his mute appeal to the judgmentseat on high, lit again the expiring embers of faith—“I will be true to him till death,” he said; “ashedied so will I die; and will stake soul and body on the creed which trained so noble a martyr, ‘sit anima mea cum illo.’”
“Methinks,” said the good Prior, “I see him looking down upon thee now; see through these thick walls, and this murky autumnal sky, to the heaven beyond where he sits waiting, near the gate, for his adopted son, whom he committed to my care! Well! when I see him, I shall say ‘Behold father, here am I, and the lad whom thou gavest me.’”
Cuthbert wept upon the shoulder of the good Prior.
“He shall not be deceived in me; I will tread the path he trod.”
“By God’s grace, which alone can strengthen us weak ones; and what is the worst we have to bear—the gibbet and quartering block? Well, they cannot protract it more than half-an-hour; half-an-hour! why had it begun when I entered this cell, it had been over now, and we safe on the other side.”
“Would it had.”
“Yes, and then heaven had already been revealed to our enraptured sight, our eyes would have seen the King in His beauty and the land which is very far off.”
“Where is that land, that glory land?”
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear drunk in its sweet songs of joy; words cannot picture it, nor can the heart of man conceive its bliss, but it lies beyond the gibbet and quartering block, my son; let them do their worst, they know not what they do, and we will pray for them till the last, yes and for King Harry too; God turn his heart, and shew him his sin, and all will be well in dear old England again.”
But the reader is doubtless eager to learn what had taken place to frustrate, as it would seem at first sight, the plans of Sir John Redfyrne.
Perhaps they had not beenfrustrated, but changed.
That same evening he had informed the governor that he had received a messenger from court to inform him, that the secret chamber was already discovered, and that there was therefore no further occasion, either to put Cuthbert to the torture again, or delay the execution. “Let the criminals have the consolation of each other’s society to-night, and die to-morrow,” he added.
Much surprised, the governor pleaded hard for time to lay the whole case again before the Crown, and to implore mercy for the prisoners, whose execution he said “would shock all Devon.”
But Sir John was armed with full authority from the Crown, and hinting to the governor, that the King would not be best pleased to hear of his backwardness in the royal cause, and his love for traitors, so frightened that worthy functionary on his own account, that no further opposition was made, and orders were given to erect the scaffold.
Meanwhile every indulgence was given to the prisoners, whose fate many pitied—even in that stony-hearted gaol, the Castle of Rougemont. A priest was admitted to their cells, that very priest who had so nearly stumbled upon the secret of Cuthbert’s birth, and early in the morning he provided all that was necessary for the celebration of Mass, whereat Father Ambrose, for the last time as he supposed, with tears of devotion, officiated; and the three received the Holy Communion together.
Fortified by this heavenly food, they scarcely noticed the heavy boom of the cathedral bell, which told the city and the country around that two souls were about to be forcibly divorced from their bodies, and sent to appear before the judgment seat on High.
Boom! boom! The deep solemn sound penetrated each court and alley of the ancient city, and struck awe to the hearts even of the most hardened; boom! boom! the swelling tonesstartled the boatmen on the Exe, awoke the echoes of the hills around the fair city of the west, nay reached the rich purple moorland, and startled the children who played amongst the heather or gathered whortle-berries.
And beneath the two grand old towers in front of the great west door of the historical fane, was erected that disgrace to the civilization of our forefathers, the scaffold with its gibbet and quartering block, its hideous butchering apparatus, in the very cathedral yard.
What a multitude had now assembled! men, women, boys, girls; the noble and the simple, the burgher and the vagrant; there were many stalwart country men too from Dartmoor, each wearing a sprig of heather in his hat, that his companions might recognise him.
“Here they come!”
The bell booms out faster and faster, the multitude stretch their necks to gaze and catch the first glimpse of the sufferers. Oh, what a strange, morbid interest clings to those about to die; the very fact that that body framed by God as His noblest work, and sanctified by being limb for limb the same as the Incarnate Son took as His own, the very fact that that body is to be so ruthlessly desecrated, causes this awful excitement, this panting, breathless interest, in the poor victims.
Forward they come, between two lines of halberdiers; how calm and resigned they look as they approach the scaffold. The litany of the dying with its perpetual response—Ora pro eis(pray for them)—addressed in turn to each saint and angel of the calendar, is now audible. The multitude catch up the strain and join in the response; now it isMiserere Domine, now againOra pro eis; but it is no longer one feeble voice, but the breath of a multitude which bears the sweet sad refrain to heaven.
They are close to the fatal spot, and first the youth, then the old man ascends the steps, clad in white, for such was their choice, in testimony of their innocence of all crime before men. The fair attractive face of the younger sufferer, so sad, yet resigned, that it seems of itself a petition for pity, the reverend face of the senior, like to that of some holy patriarch or prophet, so soon too to be dabbled in blood and stuck up on rusty nails over the Guild hall in the High Street; truly this is piteous, and the gentler portion of the spectators can hardly forbear weeping as they still cryMiserereorOra pro eis, while thecannibalswho are there smack their lips at the dainty sight prepared for them.
They are on the scaffold, and the bell still booms as it shall boom until the victims swing between heaven and earth—a mockery of Godand man. The priest of S. Mary Steppes has given his parting Benediction. The younger, to whom is given the privilege of dying first, has already meekly turned to the executioner—a brute with a masked face, clad in light leather, with two similarly dressed assistants, when——
A tremendous shout—
“Dartmoor to the rescue!”
And the whole body of men with the sprigs of heather in their hats, clear all the incumbrances, carrying off their feet the few halberdiers at a rush, and are on the scaffold: they kick the executioners off their own boards, upset the governor and the sheriff, but do not hurt them, cut the prisoners’ bonds, pass them from hand to hand, and before anyone can prevent, they, the two, are lost to sight in the vast and sympathizing crowd.
Then the multitude spy Sir John Redfyrne sitting upon a horse in the cathedral yard, ready to start to town when all is over; the story of his ingratitude is known, and they manifest a playful desire to duck him in the Exe; and it is only with the greatest difficulty that setting spurs to his steed, and riding over one unlucky old dame in his path, he escapes their pressing attentions, and rides away with the cry ringing in his ears, the unwelcome cry, “Dartmoor to the rescue!” “Saved, saved!”