For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

CHAPTER VIII

On the morrow, as I walked in the orchard after dinner with Frank Drake and Harry, for the rest were gone, I took occasion to inquire what they thought of piracy; for our adventure, and especially my own part in it, weighed no less heavily on my mind for my night's rest.

'That was a shrewd thrust of yours, Mr. Festing,' said Drake, as our talk turned, naturally enough, on our adventure. 'But for you we might have had ugly work. I give you good thanks for it, and all the honour; ay, and if I had my way you should have the lion's share of the booty too.'

'Have my thanks, Mr. Drake,' said I, 'for your good words. Yet think me not churlish if I say they might be better bestowed. As for the thrust, it was none, for the Don spitted himself; as for the honour, let us talk of that when there is any in such work; and as for the booty, I will have none of it.'

'Your reasons, Mr. Festing, your reasons?' said Drake good-humouredly.

'For the honour,' answered I, 'it is a thing which I hold pirates have little part in; for the booty, I care not to share with water-thieves.'

He turned sharp on me then and stopped in his walk with a flush in his face, looking hard at me with that strange, honest, searching look of his. I was ready to bite my tongue out; for I saw in a moment that my hot words had seared the unsullied spirit of a man whom nothing would bend to an act which he thought base, a man in all ways nobler than myself. God knows, I thought him wrong, and thought he led Harry wrong, but now I would have given half I had to have chosen kindlier words to say my say.

'You use hard words, and wrong ones too, Mr. Festing, saving your scholarship,' said Drake at last, proud as a Spaniard. 'I am no water-thief or pirate either. I shall tell you what a pirate is, not to speak more of water-thieves, which is a hard word that breaks no more bones than another. By the most ancient customs of the sea, sir, whereof be it your excuse that you are ignorant, a pirate is one who, without license from his prince or his prince's officers, in time of peace or truce doth spoil or rob those which have peace or truce with him.'

'Then how shall you justify yourself,' I asked, too cowardly to yield to him, 'seeing we have peace with Spain?'

'Nay, but I say,' he answered, 'we have no peace with Spain, or truce either. Is it peace when they lay embargos on our ships, throw our mariners into prison, and burn and torture them in their streets? Is it peace when they shut our trade from their ports, and succour and defend our deadliest enemies?'

'That was well, perhaps, months ago,' said I, though it wanted all my courage to answer him, such force was in his eyes and voice, 'but now truce is made, and prisoners are released, the embargo lifted, and King Philip's ambassador received at Court.'

'And how call you that truce?' he asked. 'They brand us heretics and Lutheran dogs, with whom they say openly no faith is to be kept; no mariner is safe from their rake-hell Inquisition in any port of Spain; they send a spy, whom they call ambassador, to search out the weakness and plot with the traitors of the land and practise on our poor young Queen, that they may bring on us again the curse of Rome, as they did in Mary's time. Call you that truce? Call it rather war, and worse than war, for it is dastards' warfare? Philip may cry truce to Bess, and Bess to Philip, but between the people of Spain and England there is, nor shall be, neither peace nor truce till one of us is crushed.'

'Yet if all were as you say,' I persisted, more faintly now, for there was that in the man which no one could withstand when he was moved thus, 'if there be neither peace nor truce, you have no license from the Queen. Nor even her goodwill, since you must know what urgent orders she has issued against adventurers like yourself.'

'I know well enough,' he answered. 'For some reasons of state she has done this. Yet wait till you see the orders carried out, wait till you see such an adventurer punished, before you say I have not her license. Did you not see how the Minion, sailing under her own royal flag, passed us by when we were at the work; and was it not one of her Justices in constant communication with the Council who fitted me out? Is not that license enough?'

'Nay, then you accuse the Queen's grace of bad faith to the Spaniard, and you are willing to abet her in her deceit.'

'Faith to those that keep faith, say I. To every Spaniard, and not the least the Spanish ambassador, Don Guzman de Silva, she is a heretic with whom to break faith is the path to heaven. To such must a man give fair words, as the poor Queen does, till she grow great enough to strike them straight on the mouth, as, under God, by our help she shall. And were all I have said too little excuse for what we do, I have even a higher and greater license than all; for, as dad says, and all pious men beside, I have God's own commission to prey on Antichrist and him who stands his champion, till the filthy breath of the beast shall cease to poison the earth. The Spaniard goes about to lead away the people after false gods and idolatry and superstition. Such men by the Word of God are worthy of death. Here in my Bible I hold license from the Great King to seek out and spoil and destroy His enemies. Shall I hold my hand so long as He shall prosper His servant? How are we to call that piracy and thieving which God has so clearly commanded?'

Then all at once came back to me Mr. Cartwright's words, and how he spoke of these rovers as doing the Lord's work and being prospered by Him. I do not think it was that which overcame me, but rather Frank Drake's presence. The recalling of my master's words was but an excuse to myself for yielding.

'Mr. Drake, you have prevailed,' said I. 'I crave your pardon; you are a better man than I, and a truer servant both to God and the Queen. Give me your pardon for my words; they were uncourteous and unjust. Forget that they were spoken, and let my memory of them be my punishment.'

'Nay, it is you, sir,' said he, holding out his hand, 'it is you that have prevailed. I took you for a distempered, fastidious scholar, and now I know you for a true man. I desire your better acquaintance, Mr. Festing, and nothing better than that we may one day adventure together. At any rate, I trust that if you have a mind to it at any time, you will know where to look for a captain.'

'Ah,' said Harry, 'Jasper is more for stay-at-home book voyages than for a dainty feast of dry haberdine and "poor John" at sea; for I think,' the foolish lad added, 'he knows every cosmography book that was ever wrote.'

'Say you so?' cried Drake. 'Then I pray you lay in a victualling of apples, and we three will aboard the arbour and make a dry voyage together.'

So we did, and talked over Drake's map till sunset, of half-known worlds and unfurrowed seas, and all the wonders with which the learning of the ancients and the fancies of the moderns had peopled them.

I cannot say that from that moment I became Frank Drake's friend, for he was ever as slow in making a friendship as he was in parting with one. Yet before he sailed again I may boast we began to be to one another what we continued till his death.

For in those days which followed we were always together, seeing that Harry had almost every day to ride forth with his father to bid farewell to some neighbour.

I had been much astonished at the learning Drake displayed in his first talk with me, and marvelled where a mariner could have gathered so great a store of knowledge. He had gladly assented when I bade him to Longdene, that we might study together the cosmography books that were in my library.

Day by day we pored together over their crabbed latinity, which I expounded for his better understanding, while he, as I could see by his shrewd questions and ruthless commentation, sucked the old pedants dry as herrings.

Ah! sweet bulky tomes, how dear is the sight of you to my declining years, since that renowned navigator deigned to ask wisdom of you! Well may you stand so proudly in your ranks, mounting guard, as it were, over yonder table whereon he read in you. Best beloved to me you are of all my books, yea, though I have around me the choicest flowers of wit and scholarship, which in these latter years have blossomed so bounteously under the glorious rays of our most royal sun.

Yes, you I love best; as much for the memory of my dear friend, which you enshrine, as for some mighty power that seems to lie still behind your great leather covers. Who knows how much you told him that listened to your voice with such a wise discernment? Who knows how much of fame he owed to what you whispered in his ear, unheard by me? Ay, and who can even tell how many of these new dainty fruits our sun would have had power to ripen, if he, untaught by you, had not first so deeply stirred and tilled our fallow English wit with his heroic and inspiring deeds?

How large and fair a place those weeks hold in my memory! Had their sands run out less quickly, how great a sorrow I might have been spared! For I cannot doubt that had I spent a very little longer time with Frank Drake, he would have made of me, there and then, a sailor like himself, and I should never have gone back to Cambridge.

But the hours of our studies were numbered, and the day came at last when Harry must pass over to France in Drake's bark.

It was a parting of double sadness; for not only was I to lose my two friends, but one of them, he that I accounted my brother, was going to a far country, where I feared I should lose him, both body and soul.

For Harry, like most other young gentlemen in his case, had determined to pass into Italy—a country of which all our party had a most wholesome horror, not only as the very home and fount of papistry, but also because we held it no better than a foul Circean garden, full of all manner of enticements to pleasure and wantonness.

The proverb, by which the Italians themselves would make of every Italianate Englishman a fiend incarnate, was ever on our lips. I knew how hardly a man of Harry's kidney could escape unsullied, seeing how little love he had for learning, in pursuit of which it was pretended he should travel to Padua and elsewhere, and which alone could save a man from the Italian taint.

I perceived with great pain that since his return from Berwick Harry read nothing but the Morte d'Arthur, and such like wanton books of chivalry, wherein, as it seemed to me, those were accounted the noblest knights who slew most men for mere valour's sake, without any quarrel, and lived the most wanton lives.

I spoke long and earnestly to him on this, praying him rather to travel in Germany, and countries given up to God's true religion. He listened patiently, as he always did to my preaching, though I think he must have laughed in his sleeve, knowing how true and pure his heart was beside mine. Yet I could not turn him from his purpose, and had to bid him farewell with a sinking heart, which he tried to comfort by promising that for my sake, if for none other, he would come back unchanged.

After Harry's departure Sir Fulke was so lonely that he prayed me stay with him, for a little space. And this I was glad enough to do, till letters came to me from Mr. Cartwright, wherein he told me of the growing heats of the controversies at Cambridge concerning conformity, and urged me to return to the standard, which thing I did in the beginning of the year of grace 1565.

It is in no way my desire to overstrain patience by speaking of these matters, whereof so many have written at so great length, and better than I; nor do I wish to speak much of my life, save in so far as it was wrapped in those of my two dear friends who were now beyond the seas, Frank Drake, on his return from France, having sailed under Captain Lovell on his disastrous voyage to the Indies.

Suffice it to say that I remained at Trinity, working diligently, under Mr. Cartwright's guidance, to perfect myself in all manner of scholarship, that I might render myself well practised in the use of the most lethal weapons which he could forge for me in regard to the then present controversies.

Every day they and I grew more heated. Conformity was openly condemned in Trinity, till at last Mr. Cartwright persuaded the whole college, save three, to cast off the garb of Antichrist, and appear in chapel without surplices.

It was a day of great rejoicing in my college, for we, setting far too high our importance, as is the wont of scholars in places where they are gathered together, deemed we had accomplished little less than a second Reformation. Yet all it brought about was so sound a rating from the Chancellor, in which he was pleased to call us 'bragging, brainless heads,' with other pretty conceits, that many were glad to disclaim their part in the matter and blame Mr. Cartwright; so that, fearing the further displeasure of Mr. Secretary, and urged thereto by his friends, my master left Cambridge and went abroad, whither I would gladly have followed him, but he would not have it so.

'It were better,' he said, 'that you should abide here and take your degrees; and, moreover, I desire to leave behind me in the University some true and understanding friend, who will keep me informed of all that passes here.'

Being very glad to take upon myself so honourable an office I did as he wished, and Mr. Cartwright's encouragement to scholarship being thus withdrawn, my studies became almost entirely turned to theology, or rather to that unseemly scramble for scraps of divinity which passed for it in those days.

I was even appointed for a time to read the divinity lecture, as a gentleman reader without stipendium, and thus becoming always more fanatical, and being well known as being in Mr. Cartwright's confidence, I grew to be a marked man in Trinity, and in due course was elected fellow, to my great content, though I had no intention of taking orders, being a violent opponent of conformity.

Those were great days for us in Trinity, for we had, what men love best, a perfect content in the sense of our own bigness, at least whenever our ears were not tingling with a rating from my Lord Burleigh, our chancellor. We went on our ways like prophets, blindly swelling out our littleness with the vain wind of our own babbling, till we seemed to ourselves to tower like a giant at the head of Reformation.

If any had told us then that Frank Drake, or even my Lord of Bedford, was doing more for the cause with his little finger than all our heads together, we should have laughed him to scorn. Yet now it is not clear to me that such a speech would not have had some show of reason.

In the year 1567 Dr. Beaumont died, to my great sorrow, and we had set over us in his place Dr. Whitgift, Master of Pembroke Hall and Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. He was a man from whom we hoped much, seeing that to a good disposition towards the Puritan party, a hatred of vestments, and very sound Calvinistic doctrine, he added a greater force of scholarship and eloquence than Dr. Beaumont ever had, and moreover was a better courtier.

Indeed, I think Trinity could have had no better Master in those days. For although he seemed then to my hot head but lukewarm in the cause, yet now I can see how high he raised my college during the ten years of his mastership, which thing he achieved by a nice handling of his authority between the parties, whereby the turbulent spirits were pruned to a less rank growth, and the timid digged about and fostered to the plentiful production of sweet and peaceful fruit.

Such is the man as I see him now. Then it was different, for my hard zeal was always distasteful to him, and we were but sorry friends. So little indeed to my taste was the new spirit in the college, that on his constantly urging me to conform and take orders, I resigned my fellowship in fear of being deprived of it, as Mr. Cartwright was afterwards, and retired to Longdene.

I had the full consent of my master for this. He had recently returned to Cambridge, and found himself the man of greatest weight in the University, and like to be elected Vice-Chancellor had he been in priest's orders.

'It will be better in many ways,' said he, when I asked him his advice, 'that you should return to your estate; your influence will be more useful there. In Cambridge we have an abundance of labourers. It is men like yourself that we now require throughout the country. The cause needs urgently the support of the gentry, who for the most part are papist or half-reformed. Since Mr. Drake has got the vicarage of Upchurch you will have a stalwart fellow-worker. Go then, and do your best till the time is ripe for our great blow. I do not mean in any way to attack our present detestable and superstitious manner of church government until I am made Professor of Divinity, and can speak with all the authority of our great University. Meanwhile in your private study you can help me in my labour of grinding the weapons, that they may be sharp and ready in my hands when the hour is come.'

Though feeling not a little sad at leaving my dear college, perhaps never to return, I could not but rejoice when I reached home that I had taken Mr. Cartwright's advice; for I found my good old guardian most grievously sick.

He seemed very glad to see me, but yet I could fancy his manner was not so frank as of yore. It pained me not a little, for I could see by his pinched face that he was near to death's door. Nor could I understand why he should be so different, till after I had talked with him for some time, particularly of his spiritual state, we were interrupted by some one entering the room unbidden.

I started to my feet when I saw at the door a young gentleman whom I had known at Cambridge. He had been a scholar of King's, and was one of those who took little trouble to disguise their love of papistry. He was dressed now in a cassock, and wore a small skull-cap to hide his tonsure.

We saluted each other very stiffly, while Sir Fulke looked from one to the other in a frightened way, as though he expected us to fly at each other's throats.

'Which of us shall remain, Sir Fulke,' said I, 'since there is no room for both?'

'Both, lad, both,' cried Sir Fulke.

'Nay,' said the Catholic gentleman, 'you must choose between us. If you would have me do my office let this gentleman depart. I cannot defile the mass by celebrating it in the presence of a heretic.'

He said this in so soft and polished a manner that, though I felt my face flush, I would not let him have the advantage, but replied with my utmost politeness, speaking as though I had not heard him.

'It were better I should go, Sir Fulke,' I said; 'I cannot stay and stand by while a servant of Antichrist sullies your soul with superstition and idolatry even as it is knocking for entry at God's door.'

It was the priest's turn to look angry then, but he only bowed to me again and was silent.

'Tush, lads,' broke in Sir Fulke, 'there is no need for squabbling over me. What matter, Jasper, if I have a bit of a mass in memory of the old days? I have been an arrant sinner too, and would ease myself of a load of sin with just a piece of confession. I have robbed the Church grievously, curse that mad knave Drake that led me to it, and been a great swearer, Heaven help me; ay, and you help me too, Jasper, since you know better prayers against swearing than the priests. You shall come and pray with me after he has done, lad, and then God will know it was my wish to make peace with Him and all men before I died. Come, lad, will you not? I have no son but you to smooth my pillow, since Harry is beyond the sea. Go now, and come again. You would not grudge me a bit of a mass like my fathers to die upon. May be they would be ashamed of me when I went to do homage with them up there, if I came amongst them unshriven and unhouselled.'

'Surely, sir,' I said, much melted at the old knight's words, 'you would depart in surer hope of Paradise if you please God in your death rather than your ancestors.'

'That is right, lad,' said the dying man, 'and so I will. You shall come and help me. But there would be no joy in Paradise if my ancestors and the old gentry turned their backs upon me, and I had to go with the new men. Save your father, there never was one of them I could abide; and Mr. Carter says Nick will not be there.'

I looked at Mr. Carter, as Sir Fulke called him, though I knew it was not his name. He bowed again to me politely, and I repressed the angry burst that I had ready for him, being unwilling to cause Sir Fulke any further pain.

'Sir Fulke,' said I, 'it was your good will to let my father be buried as he would. I have not forgotten that, and for your sake will this day forget my plain duty both to God and myself.'

With that I left the room, and waited below in the hall till I was called up again. I found Sir Fulke at the mercy of God, and senseless. The Catholic gentleman was gone. So I knelt by the old knight's bed, and prayed long and earnestly to God that his opinions might be forgiven him, seeing they sprang of ignorance rather than perversity, though I had then, it must be said, little hope my prayers would be heard; and even as I prayed my guardian passed peacefully away.