THE HAND A SYMBOL OF POWER.
In Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon we have the following remarks on the Hand as an emblem of strength and power. “The hand was used by the Jews, as a trophy or monument of victory, and placed on the top of a pillar. Thus Saul, after smiting the Amalekites, in the pride of his heart erected to or for himself (not for Jehovah) a hand, 1 Samuel xv. 12. And David smote Hadadezer, king of Zobah, when he was going to erect his hand or trophy, by the river Euphrates, 2 Sam. viii. 3, and 1 Chronicles, xviii. 3.—And this appears to be the most ancient use of these memorial hands; whence Absalom seems to have taken the hint of erecting one, merely to keep his name in remembrance, 2 Sam. xviii. 18, where it may be observed that this monument is expressly called not only a hand, but a pillar, which shews that the hand was wont to be put on a pillar.
“Neibuhr (Voyage in Arabia, tom. 2. p. 211. French edition) speaking of Ali’s mosque at Mesched Ali, says, that ‘at the top of the dome’ where one generally sees on the Turkish mosques a crescent, or only a pole, there is here a hand stretched out, to represent that of Ali.” And another writer informs us, that at the Alhambra, or red palace of the Moorish kings in Granada, “on the key-stone of the outward arch [of the present principal entrance] is sculptured the figure of an arm, the symbol of strength and dominion.”
“It may not be amiss to observe, that to this day in the East Indies the picture of a hand is the emblem of power or authority. Thus I am assured, says Parkhurst, by a gentleman of undoubted veracity, who resided many years on the coast of Coromandel, that when the Nabob of Arcot, who in his time was governor of five provinces, appeared on public occasions, several small flags, with each a hand painted upon them, and one of a large size with five hands, were solemnly carried before him.”
The hand was used as an ensign of royalty by the kings of France and England. In Sandford’s Genealogical History, there is the following note on the counter-seal of king Edward the third: “In the margin of this counter-seal, near the point of the king’s sword, is represented the hand of justice, being an ensign of royalty peculiar only to the kings of France, for though they in common with other princes carry in their right hand a sceptre of gold, yet in the other they bear the hand of justice, being a short rod, and having on the top of it a left hand, wide open, made of ivory, on account of the elephant being the only quadruped observable for his devotion, love of his governors, and for his equity. The left hand it is said, is preferred to the right for this purpose, because not being employed in working so many wicked actions as the right, it became more proper than the other to represent the symbol of justice. This hand is also placed in the counter-seals of his successors Richard the second, and Henry the fourth; king Henry the fifth omitted it in his seal, and conquering France both placed that crown on the head, and the French sceptre and hand of justice in the hands of his son, king Henry the sixth.”
Queen Elizabeth used the hand as one of her mint marks.
HENRIETTA MARIA,
QUEEN OF CHARLES THE FIRST.
“Our royal martyr,” says Dr. Kennet, “by taking a consort from the Bourbon family, did apparently bring over some evils and mischiefs that disturbed his whole reign. For within less than one year, the French servants of that queen grew so imperious and insolent, that the king was forced to discharge them, and to humble them by a return into their own country.”
“A very sad doom it was certainly to the French,” says L’Estrange in his annals of king Charles, “but as the animadversion was extremely severe, so their offences were in like degree heinous. The bishop of Mende, the queen’s almoner, stood charged for putting intolerable scorn upon, and making religion itself do penance, by enjoining her Majesty, under the notion of penance, to go barefoot, to spin, and to wait upon her family servants at their ordinary repasts, to walk on foot in the mire on a rainy morning, from Somerset House to St. James’s; her confessor, mean while, like Lucifer himself, riding by her in his coach; but, which is worst of all, to make a progress to Tyburn, there to present her devotions for the departed souls of the Papists, who had been executed at that place, on account of the Gunpowder Treason, and other enormous crimes. A most impious piaculary, whereof the king said acutely, that the action can have no greater invective than the relation. The other sex were accused of crimes of another nature, whereof Madam St. George was, as in dignity of office, so in guilt, the principal; culpable she was in many particulars, but her most notorious and unpardonable fault was, her being an accursed instrument of some unkindness between the king and queen. These incendiaries were cashiered, the queen, who formerly shewed so much waspish protervity, soon fell into a mode of loving compliance. But though this renvoy of her Majesty’s servants, imported domestic peace, yet was it attended with an ill aspect from France, though our king, studying to preserve fair correspondence with his brother, sent the Lord Carleton with instructions to represent a true account of the action, with all the motives to it; but his reception was very coarse, being never admitted to audience. Louis despatched Monsieur the Marshal de Bassompierre, as Extraordinary Ambassador to our king, to demand the restitution of the queen’s domesticks: which he at last obtained for most of them.”
“It was this match,” adds Dr. Kennet, “that began to corrupt our nation with French modes and vanities; which gave occasion to Mr. Prynne to write that severe invective, called Histriomastix, against stage plays; to betray our councils to the French court; to weaken the poor Protestants in France, by rendering ineffectual the relief of Rochelle; nay, and to lessen our own trade and navigation. These ill effects, beyond the king’s intention, raised such a jealousy, and spread such a damp upon the English subjects, that it was unhappily turned into one of the unjust occasions of civil war, which indeed began more out of hatred to that party, than out of any disaffection to the king. The people thought themselves too much under French counsels, and a French ministry, or else, they could never have been drawn aside into that great rebellion. This interest when suspected to prevail, brought the king into urgent difficulties; and in the midst of them the aid and assistance, which that interest offered him, did but the more effectually weaken him. On this side the water the French services betrayed him; and on the other side, the French policies were at work to betray him.”
And, indeed, as queen Henrietta had a mighty, if not a supreme sway over King Charles’s councils, so did her mother, Mary de Medicis, who came over by her invitation, administer great cause of jealousy to this nation. “The people,” says L’Estrange, “were generally malecontent at her coming, and wished her farther off. For they did not like her train and followers, which had often been observed to be the sword of pestilence, so that she was beheld as some meteor of evil signification. Nor was one of these calamities thought more the effect of her fortune than inclination; for her restless and unconstant spirit was prone to embroil all wheresoever she came. And besides, as queen Henrietta was extraordinary active in raising money among the Roman Catholics of this kingdom, to enable King Charles to make war against his subjects of Scotland, so was she extreme busy in fomenting the unhappy differences between his Majesty and his English Parliament.”
Sir John Reresby, in his Memoirs, asserts that queen Henrietta Maria was married after the king’s death to Lord St. Alban’s. “The abbess of an English college in Paris, whither the queen used to retire, would tell me,” says Sir John, “that Lord Jermyn, since St. Alban’s, had the queen greatly in awe of him, and indeed it was obvious that he had great interest with her concerns; but that he was married to her, or had children by her, as some have reported, I did not then believe, though the thing was certainly so.”
Madame Baviere, in her letters, says, “Charles the First’s widow made a clandestine marriage, with her Chevalier d’ Honneur, Lord St. Alban’s, who treated her extremely ill, so that whilst she had not a faggot to warm herself, he had in his apartment a good fire, and a sumptuous table. He never gave the queen a kind word, and when she spoke to him, he used to say, Que me veut cette femme?”
To what a miserable state the queen was reduced may be seen in the following extract from De Retz’s Memoirs, (vol. 1. p. 261.) “Four or five days before the king removed from Paris, I went to visit the queen of England, whom I found in her daughter’s chamber, who hath been since Duchess of Orleans. At my coming in she said, ‘You see I am come to keep Henrietta company. The poor child could not rise to-day for want of a fire.’ The truth is, that the cardinal for six months together had not ordered her any money towards her pension; that no trades-people would trust her for any thing; and that there was not at her lodgings in the Louvre one single billet. You will do me the justice to suppose that the princess of England did not keep her bed the next day for want of a faggot; but it was not this which the Princess of Conde meant in her letter. What she spoke about was, that some days after my visiting the queen of England, I remembered the condition I had found her in, and had strongly represented the shame of abandoning her in that manner, which caused the Parliament to send 40,000 livres to her Majesty. Posterity will hardly believe that a Princess of England, grand-daughter of Henry the Great, hath wanted a faggot in the month of January, to get out of bed in the Louvre, and in the eyes of a French court. We read in histories, with horror, of baseness less monstrous than this; and the little concern I have met with about it in most people’s minds, has obliged me to make, I believe, a thousand times this reflection—that examples of times past move men beyond comparison more than those of their own times. We accustom ourselves to what we see; and I have sometimes told you, that I doubted whether Caligula’s horse being made a consul would have surprized us so much as we imagine.”
As for the relative situations of the king (Charles II.) and Lord Jermyn, (afterwards St. Alban’s) Lord Clarendon (Hist. of the Rebellion, vol. 3. p. 2) says that the “Marquis of Ormond was compelled to put himself in prison, with other gentlemen, at a pistole a week for his diet, and to walk the streets a-foot, which was no honourable custom in Paris, whilst the Lord Jermyn kept an excellent table for those who courted him, and had a coach of his own, and all other accommodations incident to the most full fortune; and if the king had the most urgent occasion for the use but of twenty pistoles, as sometimes he had, he could not find credit to borrow it, which he often had experiment of.”
The Lord St. Alban’s above mentioned was Henry Jermyn, second son of Thomas Jermyn, of Rushbrooke, near Bury St. Edmund’s, in Suffolk. In 1644 he was created Lord Jermyn, with limitation of the honour to the heirs male of his elder brother Thomas. In 1660 he was further advanced to the dignity of Earl of St. Alban’s, and Baron of St. Edmund’s Bury, but on his death in 1683, the earldom became extinct. The barony of Jermyn devolved on Thomas (son of his elder brother Thomas) who became second Lord Jermyn: he died unmarried in 1703.—Lord St. Alban’s was master of the horse to Queen Henrietta Maria, and one of the privy council to Charles the second. In July 1660 he was sent ambassador to the court of France, and in 1671 was made Lord Chamberlain of his majesty’s household.—“He was a man of no great genius,” says Grammont, “he raised himself a considerable fortune from nothing, and by losing at play, and keeping a great table, made it appear greater than it was.” “It is well known what a table the good man kept at Paris, while the king his master was starving at Brussels, and the queen dowager his mistress, lived not over well in France.”
This earl lived in London at Jermyn house, which stood at the head of St. Alban’s-street, Pallmall, which street and Jermyn-street had their names from him.
LAST MOMENTS OF PHILIP MELANCTHON.[[34]]
The nineteenth of April, 1560, was the last day of the mortal existence of this great reformer and pious christian. After the usual medical inquiries of the morning, he adverted to the calamitous state of the church of Christ, but intimated his hope that the genuine doctrine of the gospel would ultimately prevail, exclaiming, “If God be for us who can be against us.” After this he presented fervent supplications to heaven for the welfare of the church, and in the intervals of sleep conversed principally upon this subject with several of his visiting friends.
Soon after eight in the morning awaking from a tranquil sleep, he distinctly, though with a feeble voice, repeated a form of prayer which he had written for his own daily use. An interval of repose having elapsed after repeating this prayer, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and turning to his son-in-law, he said, “I have been in the power of death, but the Lord has graciously delivered me.” This was supposed to refer to some deep conflicts of mind, as he repeated the expression to others. When one of the persons who visited him said, “There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,” he soon added, “Christ is made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” “Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord.”
The coldness of death was now creeping over him, but his mental faculties continued unimpaired to the very last breath of mortal existence. Having expressed a wish to hear some passages from the Old and New Testaments, his ministerial attendants read the 24th, 25th and 26th Psalms: the 53d chapter of Isaiah; the 7th chapter of John, the 5th of the Romans, and many other passages. The saying of John respecting the son of God, he said was perpetually in his mind, “the world knew him not ... but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”
Upon being asked by his son-in-law if he would have any thing else, he replied in these emphatic Words, “NOTHING ELSE—BUT HEAVEN!” and requested that he might not be any further interrupted. Soon afterwards he made a similar request, begging those around him, who were endeavouring with officious kindness to adjust his clothes, “not to disturb his delightful repose.” After some time his friends united with the Minister present in solemn prayer, and several passages of scripture, in which he was known always to have expressed peculiar pleasure were read, such as “Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me.”—“In my Father’s house are many mansions.”—“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me;” particularly the fifth chapter of Romans, and the triumphant close of the eighth chapter, commencing “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Many other parts of scripture were recited, and the last word he uttered was the German particle of affirmation, Ia, in reply to one of his friends, who had inquired if he understood him while reading. The last motion which his friends who surrounded him to the number of at least twenty, could discern, was a slight motion of the countenance which was peculiar to him when deeply affected with religious joy!—“Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace!”
At length, “in the midst of solemn vows and supplications,” at a quarter before seven, in the evening, at the age of sixty-three, he gently breathed his last. No distractions of mind, no foreboding terrors of conscience agitated this attractive scene. His chamber was “privileged beyond the common walks of virtuous life—quite in the verge of heaven”—and he expired, like a wave scarcely undulating to the evening zephyr of an unclouded summer sky. It was a “DEPARTURE”—a “SLEEP”—“the earthly house of this tabernacle was dissolved.”