The Loyalists Part 24

Happily for the exiles, Jobson was equally deficient in finesse and secrecy. The first question he put to Isabel respecting the place of their retreat, discovered that he had a mysterious reason for wis.h.i.+ng to be informed, and she soon drew from him that the benevolent unknown was a tall, solemn gentleman, who turned up the whites of his eyes, and was dressed like a round-head, though a stanch Loyalist in his heart. This description, so applicable to Monthault, excited her liveliest terrors.

It was impossible to convince Jobson, that a man who talked so kindly could have any insidious design; and thinking it best not to combat this delusion, she thought it expedient to misdirect the wily traitor, and observed, that the inhabitants of the mountainous parts of c.u.mberland, where she and her father had so long lived, were well affected to the King, and disposed to shelter and protect her brother. From the manner in which Jobson communicated this intelligence, Monthault was convinced that Isabel had penetrated into his designs; and he resolved to suspend his machinations till he could extort, by terror, what intrigue had failed to procure.

When Isabel communicated this intelligence to her friends, their apprehensions of some fatal snare which might blast all their hopes, determined them to send the faithful and discreet Williams to the exiles, advising them of Cromwell's designs to get them into his power, and entreating them immediately to quit their present abode. But whither to point for a safe retreat was the difficulty, since at that time this extraordinary man seemed to extend the scorpion fangs of his tyranny over the continent, as well as the British dominions. He had, at every court, not only an accredited minister, but a subordinate host of spies liberally paid, who gave him an account of every stranger of distinction that sought a refuge from his cruelty, and contrived also, by false accusations or threats to the affrighted sovereigns, to have the victims he had marked for destruction delivered into his power. Cromwell had formerly made a close league with the Queen of Sweden, between whose successor and his neighbour the King of Denmark, a furious contest had commenced. As all hope of serving his native Prince was for the present suspended, Neville advised his son to draw his sword for the royal Dane, and Williams was charged with many affectionate remembrances. "Tell my son," said he, "never to disgrace the name, to which, at hazard of my life, I have proved his t.i.tle." Constance whispered a tender a.s.surance that the tidings of his preservation had reconciled her to life. "Yet tell my Eustace," said she, "that though time and sorrow have so changed the face he used to admire, that he would now hardly know his Constance, they have improved the heart, which neither calumny, nor suspence, nor despair, could alienate from its only love." Isabel, too, had a brief encouraging remembrance for her lover: "Tell my De Vallance," said she, "I live for him and for happier times. Bid him remember me in the hour of peril and the moment of temptation; a.s.sure him I count the years of our separation, and endure my present sorrows in the confidence that they will serve for sweet discourses in the time to come." The message of Dr. Beaumont was pious and prudential.--He rejoiced that an opportunity was afforded them of serving a Protestant King, and he advised them, if their successful services allowed them an honourable establishment in Denmark, to withdraw their views, though not their love or their prayers, from England.

Charged with these endearing recollections Williams departed, but on his arrival at Jersey found the fugitives had long left the island. Their protectress was dead, and her husband had removed to the South of France. Dr. Lloyd was well remembered for his medical skill, and his pupils for their correct manners and exemplary friends.h.i.+p. A lady, daughter of one of the first people in St. Helier, had formed a strong attachment to one of the gentlemen, and as she left the island about the time they did, it was supposed a marriage had been solemnized. Williams durst not be very minute in his inquiries; he gathered however that the place of their retreat could not be discovered, though the friends of the lady had taken every measure to regain her.

This intelligence greatly increased the dejection of Constantia, and almost clouded the sanguine mind of Isabel. "Has mutability," she would often say, "entirely usurped the earth? No. Inanimate nature is not changed; the sun-beams steal through these grated windows at the same hour this year as they did last. Summer and winter, day and night, return at stated periods; the animal organs present the same objects, and excite the usual sensations; nor are my moral feelings altered; truth and honour continue to delight me; vice and falsehood are as odious to my soul as if good men still triumphed, and guilt held its alliance with infamy. Yet are not subjects transformed into traitors and rebels; lovers forsworn; do not Christians renounce their baptism and abjure their faith; and is not friends.h.i.+p become a cloak to conceal the informer and a.s.sa.s.sin? Whom shall we acquit of inconstancy, if either Eustace or De Vallance are false? How shall we depicture fidelity and honour if they dwell not in the open front of heroic candour, or the mild suavity of undeviating rect.i.tude? Away!--the report of Williams is a gossip's tale, forged to explain a mystery of their own forming.

Constance, I shall live to arrange your jewels and fold your robe, when you walk at the coronation as Countess of Bellingham, and you shall be sponsor to my little Arthur. At least I will cherish these day-dreams, till I know Cromwell has done a disinterested generous action; I will then resign you to Monthault, and employ myself in clear-starching and crimping bands for the conventicle."

Thus rallying her own spirits, and endeavouring to animate the hopes of others, Isabel contrived to lighten the burden of voluntary captivity, as she had used to alleviate the hards.h.i.+ps of poverty. Her mind, equally firm and innocent, feared nothing but the reproaches of her conscience and the despair of her father. Happy in the resources of an active disposition, she soon convinced Constantia that even confinement does not proscribe utility. While Dr. Beaumont administered to the spiritual wants of his fellow-prisoners, Isabel contrived to promote their comforts, often with the labours of her hand, always by the un-failing cordial of her hilarity, and sometimes with her slender purse, cheerfully abridging her own wants to supply the need of others. Nor was she wholly disinterested in this conduct; she found it the best method of diverting anxiety and suppressing doubt; of resisting that misanthropy which a long continuance of adversity is apt to engender in the tenderest hearts; and of preserving those social feelings of general good-will, which, to austere dispositions, render even prosperity distasteful.

[1] Many of these circ.u.mstances are copied from the death of Cromwell.

CHAP. XXV.

"See Cromwell d.a.m.n'd to everlasting fame."

Pope.

It was at this period that Cromwell underwent that memorable struggle between his ambition and his fears, which ultimately preserved the monarchy of England in the line of legitimate descent. He tampered with all parties, and found none hearty in his cause: the best-disposed to his interests were only pa.s.sive; but his enemies were implacable. The popularity of a pamphlet recommending his a.s.sa.s.sination upon principle, and declaring that the perpetrator of the deed would deserve the favour of G.o.d and man, destroyed every vestige of his comfort. "He read it, and was never seen to smile more." With late repentance for his vanity, which prompted him to excite such furious opposition, he pushed from him the crown he had courted, when offered by his creatures; but he did it with an affectation of disdain and self-command, that ill accorded with his former intrigues to obtain it. All his anxiety was now directed to the preservation of his joyless life. He had long worn light armour under his clothes, and carried pistols in his pockets. He seldom lay twice in the same chamber, or informed any one which apartment he meant to select. He travelled with extreme rapidity, attended by numerous guards, and never returned by the way he went. Yet no sooner was one conspiracy detected, than another was formed; the fanatics were irreconcileable, and the most worthy and eminent among the dissenters determined on his overthrow. His old military comrades, Fairfax and Waller, were bent to destroy him. His treasury was drained by the rapacity of his numerous spies; and as fines and exactions had been strained to the utmost, he had no means of replenis.h.i.+ng it but by a recourse to measures similar to those which had overthrown the monarchy; for his fanatical puppet-shows had brought the name of Parliament into contempt, and he durst not appeal to the free voice of the nation. I have already mentioned the disunion of his family, and the desertion of his kindred and near alliances. Such were the acc.u.mulated miseries, such the soul-harrowing and unremitting sufferings, of this man, whom Europe considered as the favourite of fortune, and whose extraordinary success has been urged as a plea against the divine government, and a proof that the kingdoms of this world are left to the disposal of Satan. Penetrate the recesses of the tyrant's palace, and it will be seen that enormous offences, after they have outstripped the power of human punishment, visit, on the oppressor, their own atrocity, and revenge the wrongs of a bleeding world by torments more insupportable than any which cruelty can inflict on others.

Distrusting even his most faithful informers, and jealous of his own creatures, Cromwell always endeavoured to see every thing with his own eyes. A little before his unlamented death, two strangers visited the prison where Neville and Dr. Beaumont were confined. One of them avowed himself to be the Lord Whitlock, the other pa.s.sed as his secretary. They were both masked, and wore long cloaks to conceal their persons. The secretary was furnished with writing materials; he placed himself at a table, and affected only to take minutes of the conversation.

Whitlock began with upbraiding the national ingrat.i.tude, and acknowledging its general indisposition to the Protector's vigorous and successful administration. He insisted that His Highness wished to conciliate all parties by a mild and impartial government, though the ample means with which he was furnished, the tried fidelity of the army, and the respect he was held in by foreign Potentates, prevented him from needing the friends.h.i.+p of any. But being now past the meridian of life, he was desirous of leaving the nation whom he had rendered great and prosperous, in the possession of internal tranquillity. Though irreconcileable from principle, he regarded the royalists as the most respectable of his opponents, and "he had ever resisted the advice of the fanatics, to cut them off by a general ma.s.sacre." Whitlock then expressed his hope, that the prisoners condemned the newly-broached opinion that a.s.sa.s.sination was allowable, and were disposed to be quiet, if not contented, under the present government, which would reward such submission by relaxing the penal statutes now in force against them. Dr.

Beaumont spoke first, and declared that a.s.sa.s.sination was forbidden by the general tenor of Scripture. The particular instances now so much dwelt on, of Jael's killing Sisera, or Judith's Holofernes, could not be urged in vindication of similar attempts. Both acts were committed previous to the Christian dispensation, which prescribes submissive patience under injuries, and overcoming evil with good. Those deeds were performed under a Divine impetus, and though, by their performance, the will of G.o.d was fulfilled, it is not clear that the perpetrators were justified in His sight, any more than was Hazael, when (as had been divinely predicted) he acted as the chastiser of offending Israel.

Neville then took up the argument. He retorted on Whitlock the expressions used by St. John to procure the condemnation of Lord Strafford, and asked how they had the effrontery to object to that rule when employed against themselves. "You have cut off our n.o.bles, our prelates, and our King," said he, "by that formal and public a.s.sa.s.sination, an illegal trial; but we alike abjure your principles and practice. If I hunt a usurper and tyrant to death, it shall be by honourable means. If his character deserves no respect, I know what is due to my own. I hold no tenets in common with regicides. Man cannot commit a crime that can so far deface the image of his Maker impressed upon him as to reduce him to the level of a beast of prey. Would that this unnerved arm had strength, and that this sinking frame were again erect with youthful vigour, then, if the awakened feelings of the nation allowed me opportunity to meet, in the field of battle, the brave, great, wicked man you serve, I would single him out from every opponent; but were he unarmed, and in my power, I would give him a sword before I a.s.sailed him."

Whitlock walked to the table; but it was evident that he received, rather than gave, directions. The soul-searching eye of Cromwell peered through his visor, and turned alternately on Neville and Beaumont.

Though a stranger to the feelings of magnanimity, he honoured its expressions. He walked towards the captives, removed the shade from his sickly, care-worn features, and asked how he could make them his friends.

Neville shrunk aghast, petrified at the aspect of his Sovereign's murderer. The feelings of a father repressed his maledictions, while he gazed on him with stern silence as he would on a portentous meteor. Dr.

Beaumont sooner recollected himself. Bowing to Cromwell as to one of those powers that are ordained by G.o.d, he answered that forgiveness and obedience were duties; but that the feelings of friends.h.i.+p were a voluntary engagement, and arose from very different motives.

"Your frankness," replied Cromwell, "proves that you well understand my plain nature and abhorrence of flattery, and my condescension in visiting you shows I take you to be open, fair enemies, not likely to engage in conspiracies, or desirous of renewing the times of confusion.

But I would ask, What hope have you left, or what portion, even in its best days, did your thriftless loyalty acquire you? Eusebius Beaumont it found an obscure rector, and so it left you; for you could only boast simplicity of life and doctrine; but court-chaplains, drivellers in learning, and lewd knaves in manners, were rewarded with stalls and mitres. You, Allan Neville, were stripped of your patrimony, and slandered in your reputation, by the injustice of the King for whom you bled."

Neville started from his indignant reverie. "Were you," said he, "invested with tenfold terrors, I would not hear this aspersion cast upon my Sovereign's memory. Injustice consists in knowing what is wrong, and persisting in doing it. My King was misled, deceived, like myself, by the viper we both cherished; even by one of those recreants to whom you owe your exaltation. With double perfidy, you overthrew the King by attributing to him the crimes of his favourites, and then converted them into state-engines, first to elevate you to greatness, and afterwards to convey away the offscourings of the dignity you had soiled. My King was open to conviction. He knew the fidelity of his soldier, and purposed to make him ample reparation."

"I have the power," returned Cromwell, "to accomplish those purposes."

"Impossible!" was Neville's reply; "my lands were alienated by a King of England, and by his lawful successor only can they be restored."

"Are you," returned the Usurper, "aware that you are the only man in Europe who dares question my power. I visited you with friendly dispositions, and you receive me with insults."

"When, veiling your dignity with disguises," answered Neville; "you borrow the occupation of your myrmidons, and steal on the privacies of those you oppress, can you wonder to hear their imprecations sound in unison with the clanking of their fetters?"

"I have a will," replied Cromwell, "as stubborn as yours. We will try for the mastery. What hinders me from laying that head of yours on the block?"

"--The insufferable goadings of your afflicted conscience, perpetually whispering that you have shed too much blood already.--Every wrinkle which care has imprinted on your brow, every tremulous infirmity which constant watchfulness has introduced into your frame, acting as mementos that the day of account cannot be far distant.--The iron you wear on your bosom, that by its stern pressure tells you what you deserve.--The public clamour, which will not now permit you to immolate the confined victims whom your own lips have p.r.o.nounced innocent of recent provocations, and against whom you dare not revive the charge of acknowledged resistance, which, by long impunity, you seem to have pardoned. All these reasons are pledges for our safety. You cannot further tempt the sufferance of Englishmen. Your declining health makes you fear to add to the long indictment which your crimes have prepared against you.

The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds, Upon Death's purple altar now, See where the victor-victim bleeds: All heads must come to the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust."[1]

As Neville uttered this bold appeal to the feelings of an alarmed and conscious villain, a cold s.h.i.+vering ran through the Protector's frame, and his eye expressed a vain supplication, that it were possible to exchange his garlands and his glories for those ever-fragrant actions which blossom on the grave of the just. He strove to rally his air of moody dignity, to recover the austere deliberate tone of his expressions; but his manner was embarra.s.sed, and his voice inarticulate.

A groan, such as only tortured guilt can utter, partially relieved his swollen bosom. "Neville," said he, "I will not expect you to be my friend; but will you cease to be my enemy?"

"Miserable victim of ambition," said Neville to himself; "how much happier is my lot than thine!" Cromwell persisted in asking if there was any favour he would receive at his hand. Neville paused, and answered, "Yes; liberty."

"And what pledge," said Cromwell, "can you give me that you will not use freedom to my prejudice?"

"My own honour," returned Neville, "which will never allow me to use the instrument you put in my hand to destroy you."

"No equivocation!" said Whitlock; "in receiving freedom from His Highness you acknowledge his authority."

"No," returned Neville, "I simply own he has a power to confine me. The question of right is undetermined. If a Usurper restores me to the free use of light and air, I need not examine his t.i.tle before I resume the enjoyment of those common blessings."

Cromwell addressed Dr. Beaumont: "You belong to a church whose doctrine is pa.s.sive obedience. You are not bewildered by this madman's chimeras, but can prudently estimate the value of our free grace and promised favour."

"My religion," replied the Doctor, "teaches me to submit to the dispensations of Providence; but it will not allow me to divide the spoil with those who have grown mighty on the ruins of my friends."

"Are there no points," again inquired Cromwell, "in which we may agree to join our common wishes? What if I beseech the Lord to give you the spirit of wisdom?"

"May he afford you that of consolation," was the emphatical wish of Dr.

Beaumont. Neville waved his hand in silence. "Oh! my friend," said he, as soon as the Protector and Whitlock had retired, "I have suffered more than the rack. I have seen the fiend-like face which looked, without compunction, on the sufferings of the Royal Martyr, and I felt too weak to revenge his wrongs. Have I not gone too far in saying I would accept of freedom from his hands?"

"Vengeance for such a crime," replied Dr. Beaumont, "is too vast and comprehensive to be entrusted to mortal agency. Let us leave it to Him who claims it as his own prerogative. Murder, perfidy, and treason, will be remembered when the avenging angel shall visit the sins of man."

Cromwell returned from his insidious visit, disappointed and dejected.

He had failed of the end which he proposed to himself by his condescension. A reconciliation with two such distinguished Loyalists, founded on the mutual benefits of submission and rest.i.tution, would have strengthened his government; but he found abstinence from treacherous hostility was all that his blandishments could obtain, and this he would owe rather to their own principles of honour and religion than to his threats or his promises. Though stung to the heart by the bold taunts of Neville, he could not punish him. The very aspect and figure of the two venerable sufferers were so fitted to excite sympathy and indignation, that he durst not expose them on a scaffold, nor could he privately cut them off. The fate of Syndercome, a daring Anabaptist, who had several times attempted his life, and, on his trial, persevered in expressing his determination, if possible, to kill him, alike deterred Cromwell from bringing his private enemies to the bar of a court of justice, or resorting to private measures of revenge. He had with difficulty procured this man's condemnation; but the night previous to his intended execution he escaped, by suicide, the Protector's power; and so prejudiced were the populace against their Ruler, that they accused him of having poisoned the victim he feared to bring to a public death. If the prosecution of a notorious and avowed ruffian brought him into this dilemma, what odium would the death of two respectable and aged Loyalists excite, especially as their story was become public, and the wrongs of Neville, and the generous friends.h.i.+p of Beaumont, had awakened a powerful sympathy. Yet his narrow soul could not accede to the generous alternative of giving them freedom. Pretending that the state had a claim to the Bellingham-property, he prevented Monthault from taking any measures to establish the will of the guilty Countess, and contented himself with keeping the lawful claimant in prison, hoping that confinement would accelerate the decays of nature, and thus give a safe quietus to his own fears.

But ere that event happened the Usurper was called to the dreadful tribunal for which few among the descendants of Adam were apparently less prepared. His restless, intriguing ambition; the dissimulation and hypocrisy by which he rose to supreme power; the ability with which he wielded it; his splendid wretchedness; the terror he excited and felt; his cruelty and fanaticism, his determined spirit, and occasionally timid vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints.

O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's "Muse of fire," embody the events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to supreme power and consummate misery!

Nor does the death-bed of Cromwell afford a less useful warning to the pen of instruction, when she aims at distinguis.h.i.+ng true piety from hypocrisy or fanaticism. It is still doubtful under which of those counterfeits of religion we must rank this great but wicked man. Yet, whether he deceived his own soul, or attempted to deceive others; whether he really believed himself an elected instrument of Providence; or, having long worn devotion as the mask of ambition, retained it to the last,--his almost unexampled crimes (so plainly forbidden by that scripture he had ever on his lips), and the security and confidence of his last moments, furnish stronger arguments than a thousand volumes of controversy, to prove the fallacy and danger of those speculative notions which he patronized, propagated, and exemplified.

[1] The Usurper's terrors at hearing this fine song of s.h.i.+rley's is an historical fact. Some of the speeches attributed to him in this interview, he really used to persons he had confined, and wished to win over. In the close of his life he grew timid; and, conscious of being hated, bore insults calmly. Bishop Wren rejected his offered favours in as strong language as that attributed to Neville.

CHAP. XXVI.

A good man should not be very willing, when his Lord comes, to be found beating his fellow-servants; and all controversy, as it is usually managed, is little better. A good man would be loth to be taken out of the world reeking hot from a sharp contention with a perverse adversary; and not a little out of countenance to find himself, in this temper, translated into the calm and peaceable regions of the blessed, where nothing but perfect charity and good-will reign for ever.