THE BREECHES BISHOP
In that age of gallantry, the reign of Charles the Second, it was customary when a gentleman drank a lady’s health to throw some part of his dress into the flames, in order to do her still greater honour. This was well enough for a lover, but the folly did not stop here, for his companions were obliged to follow him in this proof of his veneration by consuming a similar article, whatever it might be.
About the latter part of the seventeenth century, there was living at Aldersferry, in the Soke of Godsport in Hampshire, a worthy clergyman of the name of Barnabas Winthrop. The little living of St. Ascham’s—a perpetual curacy in the Archdeaconry of Winchester—supplied the moral and material needs of this amiable man; his granddaughter, Miss Joan Seabird, kept house for him; and never were cream and ripe fruit happier in contact than were these two playful and reasonable intellects in their relations of child and sage.
A hysteromaniac, however, is Fortune, who, charmed for a while with the simplicity of these her protégés, soon began to construe their contentment into self-sufficiency, and to devise some means to correct their supposed presumption on her favour, by putting it into the head of the artless divine how silence on questions which one felt called loudly for reform might be comfortable, but was shameful and an evasion of one’s duty. In short, Dr. Winthrop, entertaining original views on sanitation and the prevention of epidemics, was wickedly persuaded by her to expound them, and so to invite into his harmless Eden the snake which was to demoralize it. In one day he became a pamphleteer.
Now the Plague, in that year of 1682, was not so remote a memory but that people lived in a constant terror of its recrudescence. Pandects, treatises, expositions, containing diagnoses, palladiums and schemes of quarantine, all based on the most orthodox superstitions, did not cease to pour from the press, to the eternal confusion of an age which was yet far from realizing the pious schism of the aide-toi. What, then, as might be supposed, was the effect on it, when a clergyman of the Establishment was seen to enter the arena as a declared dissenter from the fata obstant of popular bigotry?
For a time Godsport, startled and scandalized, watched aloof the paper warfare; and it was not until after the appearance of the Doctor’s tract, “De omni re Scibili”—wherein he sought, boldly and definitely, and withal with a characteristic humour, to lay the responsibility for pestilence, not upon the Almighty’s shoulders, but, literally, at the doors of men, at their face-to-face proximity, and at “the Castynge of Noisome filth in their neare neighbourhood”—that it brought down its official hand with a weight and suddenness which shook St. Ascham’s to its roots. In brief, there was flung at the delinquent one morning his formal citation to the Sessions Court, there to answer upon certain charges of having “in divers Tracts, Opuscules and Levrets, sought insidiously to ingrafte the minds of his Majesty’s liege subjects with such impudent heresies as that it is in the power of man to limit the visitations of God—a very pestilent doctrine, and one arrogating to His servants the Almighty’s high and beneficent prerogatives; inasmuch as Plague and Fire and other His scourges, being sacriligeously wrested from His graspe, the world would waxe blown with overlife, till it crawled upon the face of the heavens like a gross putrid cheese.”
Under this bolt from the blue the liberal minds of grandsire and child sank amazed for the moment, only to rally to a consciousness of the necessity for immediate action.
“Up, wench!” cried the Doctor, “and saddle our Pinwire. I will go lay my case instanter before the Bishop.”
“Alas, dearest!” answered the weeping girl, “you forget; he is this long while bedridden.”
Her imagination, which had been wont secretly to fondle the idea of her grandfather’s enlightened piety rewarded with a bishopric, pictured it in a moment turned to his confusion, and himself, perhaps, through the misrepresentations of a blockhead Corporation, disgraced and beggared in his old age. But, though she knew the Churchman, she had not calculated the rousing effects of criticism on the author.
“Then,” roared he, “I will seek the fount itself of reason and justice. It was a good treatise, a well-argued treatise; and the King shall decide upon the practical merits of his own English.”
“The King!” she cried, clasping her hands.
“The King,” he answered. “Know you not that he moves daily between Southampton, where he lies, and Winchester, where he builds? We will go to Winchester. Nay, we, child; blubber not; for who knows but that, the shepherd being withdrawn, the wolves might think to practise on the lamb.”
He checked himself, and hung his head.
“The Lord pardon and justify me indignation,” he muttered. “I was a priest before an author.”
It was fine, but a loaded sky, when they set forth upon their journey of twenty or so miles, Joan riding pillion behind her grandfather on the sober red nag. After much cross work over villainous tracks, they were got at last into the Southampton turnpike, when they were joined by a single horseman, riding a handsome barb, who, with a very favourable face for Joan, pulled alongside of them, as they jogged on, and fell into easy talk.
“Dost ride to overtake a bishopric, master clergyman,” says he, “that you carry with you such a sweet bribe for preferment?”
Joan looked up, softly panting. Could he somehow have got wind already of their mission, and have taken them by the way to forestall it? But her eyes fell again before the besieging gaze of the cavalier.
He was a swart man of fifty or so, with a rather sooty expression, and his under-lip stuck out. His eyes, bagging a little in the lower lids, smouldered half-shut, between lust and weariness, under the blackest brows; and, for the rest, he was dressed as black as the devil, with a sparkle of diamonds here and there in his bosom. Joan looked down breathless.
“I seek no preferment, sir, but a reasonable justice,” said the curate; and, in a little, between this and that, had ingenuously, though with a certain twinkling eye for the humour of it all, confessed his whole case to the stranger. But Joan uttered not a word.
The cavalier laughed, then frowned mightily for a while. “We will indict these petty rogues of office on a quo warranto,” he growled. “What! does not ‘cleanness of body proceed from a due reverence of God’? Go on, sir, and I will promise you the King’s consideration.”
Then he forgot his indignation, leering at the girl again.
“And what is your business with Charles, pretty flower?” said he.
But, before she could answer, whish! went Pinwires’s girth out of its buckle, and parson and girl tumbled into the road.
The cavalier laughed out, and, while the Doctor was ruefully readjusting his straps, offered his hand to the girl.
“Come, sweetheart,” said he. “Since we go a common road, shalt mount behind me, and equal the odds between your jade and my greater beast.”
Joan appealed in silence to her grandfather.
“Verily, sir,” he said nodding and smiling, “it would be a gracious and kindly act.”
In a moment she was mounted, with her white arms belted about the stranger’s waist; the next, he had put quick spurs to his horse, and was away with a rush and clatter.
For an instant the Doctor failed to realize the nature of the abduction; and then of a sudden he was dancing and bawling in a sheer frenzy.
“Dog! Ravisher! Halt! Stop him! Detain him!”
He saw the flight disappear round a bend in the road. It was minutes before his shaking hands could negotiate strap and buckle, and enable him to follow in pursuit. But he carried no spurs, and Pinwire, already over-ridden, floundered in his steps. Distraught, dumbfounded, the old man was crying to himself, when he came upon Joan sitting by the roadside. He tumbled off, she jumped up, and they fell upon one another’s neck.
“O, a fine King, forsooth!” she cried, sobbing and fondling him. “O, a fine King!”
“Who? What?” said he.
“Why, it was the King himself!”
“The King!”
“The King.”
“How?” he gasped. “You have never seen him?”
“Trust a woman,” quoth she.
“A woman!” he cried. “You are but half a one yet.”
“It was the King, nevertheless.”
“Joan, let us turn back.”
“He had a wooing voice, grandfather.”
“Retro Satanas! How did you give him the slip?”
“We were stayed by a cow, the dear thing, and like an eel I slid off.”
“Dear Joan!”
“He commanded me to mount again, laughing all the while, and vowing he’d carry me back to you. But I held away, and he said such things of my beauty.”
“That proves him false.”
“Does it? But of course it does, since you say so. And while he was a-wheedling in that voice, I just whipt this from my hair on a thought, and gave his beast a vicious peck with it.”
She showed a silver pin like a skewer.
“Admirable!” exclaimed her grandfather.
“It was putting fire to powder,” she said. “It just gave a bound and was gone. If its rider pulls up this side of Christmas, I’ll give him——”
“What, woman?”
“Lud! I’ve come of age, in a minute. And it’s beginning to pour, grandfather; and where are we?”
He looked about him in the dolefullest way.
“If I knew!” he sighed. “We must e’en seek the shelter of an inn till this storm is by, and then return home. Better any bankruptcy than that of honour, Joan.”
They remounted and jogged on in the rain, which by now was falling heavily. The tired little horse, feeling the weight of his own soaked head, began to hang it and cough. Presently they dismounted at a wayside byre, and, eating the simple luncheon which their providence had provided, dwelt on a little in hopes of the weather clearing. But it grew steadily worse.
“I have lost my bearings,” said the clergyman in a sudden amazement. “We must push on.”
About four o’clock, being seven miles or so short of Winchester, they came down upon a little stream which bubbled across the road. The groaning horse splashed into it and stood still. Dr. Winthrop, wakened by the pause from a brown reverie, whipped his right leg over the beast’s withers, landed, slipped on a stone, and sat down in two feet of water. Uttering a startled ejaculation, he scrambled up, a sop to the very waist of his homespun breeches. Their points—old disused laces, fragrant from Joan’s bodice—clung weeping to his calves. He waded out, cherishing above water-mark the sodden skirts of his coat, his best, of ‘Colchester bayze.’ The horse, sensibly lightened, followed.
“O, O!” cried Joan. “Wasn’t you sopped enough already, but you must fill your pockets with water?”
“Joan!” he cried disconcerted. “I am drowned!”
Luckily, in that pass, looking up the slope of the hill, they espied near the top a toll-booth, and, beyond, the first houses of a village. Making a little glad haste, they were soon at the bar.
The woman who came to take their money looked hard at the tired girl. She was of a sober cast, and her close-fitting coif showed her of the non-conforming order.
“For Winchester, master?” said she.
“Nay,” answered the clergyman; “for the first hostelry. We are beat, dame.”
“The first and the last is ‘The Five Alls,’ ” said she. “But I wouldn’t carry the maiden there, by your leave. There be great and wild company in the house, that recks nothing of anything in its cups. Canst hear ’em, if thou wilt.” And, indeed, with her words, a muffled roar of merriment reached them from the inn a little beyond.
“One riding for Winchester, and the rest from,” she said, “they met here, and here have forgathered roistering this hour. Dare them so you dare. I have spoken.”
“Nunc Deus avertat!” cried the desperate minister. “The Fates fight against us. At all costs we must go by.”
“Nay,” said the good woman; “but, an you will, seek you your own shelter there, and leave this poor lamb with me. I have two already by the fire—decent ladies and proper, and no quarry for licence. I know the company; ’twill be moving soon; and then canst come and claim thine own.”
He accepted gladly, and, leaving Joan in her charge, rode on to the inn, where, dismounting, he betook himself to the stable, which was full of horses, and, after, to the kitchen.
The landlord, cooking a pan of rashers alone over a great fire, turned his head, focussed the new-comer with one red eye, and asked his business.
“A seat by the hearth, a clothes-rack for my breeches, a rug for my loins while they dry, and a mug of ale with a sop in it,” answered the traveller, with a smile for his own waggish epitome. And then he related of his mishap.
The landlord grunted, returned to his task, blew on an ignited rasher, presently took the skillet off the coals, forked the fizzing mess into a dish, and disappeared with it. All the while an ineffable racket thundered on the floor above.
“Peradventure they will respect my cloth,” thought the clergyman. “The Lord fend me! I am among the Philistines.”
The landlord returned in a moment with a horn of ale in one hand, and a rug in the other, which he threw down.
“Dod, man!” he cried; “peel, peel! This is the country of continence! Hast no reason to fear for thy modesty.” And he went out between chuckling and grumbling.
Very decently the curate doffed his small-clothes, hung them over a trestle before the fire, wrapped and knotted the rug about his loins, and sat down vastly content to his sup. In ten minutes—what with weariness, warmth, and stingo—he was asleep.
He woke with a little shriek, and staggered to his feet. Something had pricked him—the point of a rapier. The flushed, grinning face of the man who had wielded it stood away from him. The kitchen was full of rich company, which broke suddenly into a babble of merriment at the sight of his astounded visage. In the midst, a swart gentleman, who had been lolling at a table, advanced, and taking him by the shoulders, swung him gently to and fro till his eyes goggled.
“Well followed, parson!” said he, chuckling, and lurching a little in his speech. “What! is the cuif not to be spoiled of his bishopric because of a saucy baggage?”
He laughed, checked himself suddenly, and, still holding on, assumed a majestic air, with his wig a little on one side, and said with great dignity: “But, before I grant termsir, you shall bring the slut to canvass of herself what termsir. Godsmylife! to hold her King at a bodkin’s point! It merits no pardon, I say, unless the merit of the pardon of the termsir—no, the pardon of the merit of the termsir. Therefore I say, whither hast brought her, I say? Out with it, man!”
The clergyman, recognizing Joan’s abductor, and listening amazed, sprang back at the end with a face of horror, almost upsetting His Majesty, who, barely recovering himself, stood shaking his head with a glassy smile.
“Ifhicakins!” said he: “I woss a’most down!”
“Avaunt, ravisher!” roared the Doctor.
Charles stiffened with a jerk, stared, wheeled cautiously, and tiptoed elaborately from the room. His suite, staggering at the balance, followed with enormous solemnity; and the Doctor, still pointing denunciatory, was left alone.
At the end of a minute, after much whispering outside, a young cavalier re-entered, and approached him with a threatening visage, as if up the slope of a deck.
“His Maj’ty, sir,” said he, “demands to know if you know who the devil you was a-bawling—hic—at?”
“To my sorrow, though late, I do, sir,” answered the Doctor in a grievous voice.
“O!” said the cavalier, and tacked from the room. He returned again in a second, to poke the clergyman with his finger, and suggest to him confidentially, “Betteric la’ than never—hic!” which having uttered, he took himself off, after a vain attempt to open the door from its hinge side. In two minutes he was back again.
“His Maj’ty wan’s know where hast hidden Mrs. Seabird. Nowhere in house, says landlord. Ver’ well—where then?”
“Tell the King, where he shall reach her only over my body.”
The cavalier vanished, and reappeared.
“His Maj’ty doesn’t wan’ tread on your body. On contrary, wan’s raise you up. Wan’s hear story all over again from lady’s lips.”
“I am His Majesty’s truthful minister. There is nothing to add to what I have already reported to him.”
The cavalier withdrew, smacking his thigh profoundly. Sooner than usual he returned.
“His Maj’ty s’prised at you. Says if you won’t tell him where’ve laid her by, he’ll beat up every house within miles-’n’-miles.”
“No!” said the simple clergyman, in a sudden emotion.
“Yes,” said the gentleman, not too drunk to note his advantage. “For miles-’n’-miles. His Maj’ty ver’ s’prised her behaviour to him. Wan’s lil word with her. Tell at once where she is, or worse for you.”
The clergyman looked about him like one at bay. His glance lighted on the trestle before the fire, fixed itself there, and kindled.
“The Lord justify the ways of His servant!” he muttered; and drew himself up.
“Tell His Majesty,” he said in a strong voice, “that, so be he will honour a toast I shall call, the way he seeks shall be made clear to him.”
The other gave a great chuckle, which was loudly echoed from the passage.
“Why, thish is the right humour,” he said, and retired.
Within a few moments the whole company re-entered, tittering and jogging one another, and spilling wine from the beakers they carried.
The King called a silence.
“Sir,” said the clergyman, advancing a little, “I pray your Majesty to convince me, by proof, of a reputed custom with our gallants, which is that, being to drink a lady’s health, the one that calleth shall cast into the flames some article of his attire, there to be consumed to her honour, and so shall demand of his company, by toasters’ law, that they do likewise.”
“Dod!” said the King, chuckling; “woss he speiring at? Drink man! drink and sacrifice, and I give my royal word that all shall follow suit, though it be with the wigs from our heads.”
The Doctor lifted his horn of ale and drained it.
“I toast Joan!” he cried.
“Joan!” they all shouted, laughing and hiccuping, and, having drunk, threw down their beakers helter-skelter.
The clergyman took one swift step forward; snatched up his small-clothes from the trestle; displayed them a moment; thrust them deep into the blazing coals, and, facing about, disrugged himself, and stood in his shirttails.
“I claim your Majesty’s word, and breeches,” said he.
A silence of absolute stupefaction befell; and then in an instant the kitchen broke into one howl of laughter.
In the midst, Charles walked stately to the table, sat down, and thrust out his legs.
“Parson,” said he, “if you had but claimed my hair. The honours lie with you, sir; take ’em.”
He would have none but the Doctor handle him; and, when his ineffable smalls were burning, he rose up in his royal shift, and ruthlessly commandeering every other pair in the room, stood, the speechless captain of as shameful and defenceless a crew of buccaneers as ever lowered its flag to honesty.
Then the Doctor resumed his rug.
“Sir,” said he, trembling, “I now fulfil my bond. My granddaughter is sheltering, with other modest ladies, in the pike-house hard by.”
But the King swore—by divine right—a pretty oath or two, while the chill of his understandings helped to sober him.
“By my cold wit you have won! and there may she remain for me. And now, decent man,” he cried, “I do call my company to witness how you have made yourself to be more honoured in the breach than the observance; and since you go wanting a frock, a bishop’s you shall have.”
And with that he snatched the rug, and, skipping under it, sat on the table, grinning over the quenching of his amazed fire-eaters.
And this, if you will believe deponent, is the true, if unauthorized, version of Dr. Winthrop’s election, and of the confounding of Godsport on a writ of quo warranto.