CHAPTER X
NO REST. THE QUEEN’S JOURNEY TO HOLLAND. A FRIEND IN NEED. “MASTER, GO ON, AND I WILL FOLLOW THEE.” THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER ASTIR. THROUGH GOOD REPORT AND ILL. AN INDIGNANT REFUSAL. BACK AT LATHOM. A BOISTEROUS FRIEND
More than once in the early days of the civil war which had now fairly broken out in the country, the King seemed to miss that tide in his affairs which, if taken at the flood, promised to lead on to an issue very different from that one which he did ultimately reach. After the battle of Edgehill, though the Royalists suffered many reverses, their star was undoubtedly in the ascendant. There were several reasons for this, chief among them possibly, that the country at heart had not the desire to fight, father against son, brother against brother. Differences of political and religious creed might be sharply defined, but for such trials by ordeal of bloodshed a large majority of men on either side was not willing. General sympathy consequently belonged to the Royalists, who were regarded as on the defensive. In a sense the Royalists were the popular party. They had rallied round their King in his hour of need, and sentiment was with them, as it is still, and as it is likely to remain till the end of time—or at least until that day when the name of king is wiped out from speech. Reason and prudence and much more that is desirable might weigh heavily in the Parliamentary balance, but chivalry and brightness of spirit and loyal daring had their fascinations. The sombre Puritan belief was setting in more and more darkly over the land, and the youthful English nobility and yeomanry had no mind for it. By education and rearing, they revolted against its limitations. They were not, on this account, all such reckless, daredevil, licentious fighters, any more than the men of the opposite party were all prick-eared, pragmatical pretenders to holiness; but that the strength of the Royalists lay in an element which the Parliamentarians did not possess, Cromwell, now rapidly coming to the front, was not slow to recognise. Discussing this question one day with Hampden, the astute lieutenant who was to eclipse the lustre of all the members of his party, replied to Hampden’s speculative remarks upon the weakness of their own cavalry men, and the strength of the King’s—“What can your expect? Our cavaliers are old menials or pot-house lads; theirs are sons of gentlemen, younger members of families of high rank. We ought to have men animated by a spirit which is able to make them go as far as gentlemen may go; otherwise I am certain that you will always be beaten.”
“That is true,” said Hampden. “But what can be done?”
“I can do something,” replied Cromwell. “I will bring up men who have the fear of God before their eyes, and who will put some conscience into what they do. I will answer for it that they will not be beaten.” Then he went to work and beat up recruits from among the tenantry of the Eastern counties—men who engaged in the contest for conscience sake, fiery fanatics, who spent in prayer the time they did not give to fighting. Thus came into the world Cromwell’s Ironsides.
Another very material encouragement was experienced by the Royalists in the return of the Queen with a convoy of troops and ammunition. Burlington, where she landed, was bombarded, and the bullets fell into the room she occupied. She was forced to take flight into the open country, where she remained hidden under a bank. Lord Newcastle came to her rescue, and conducted her to York, where the Roman Catholics of the North rallied in great strength about her. She now sought to negotiate terms with several of the Parliamentarian leaders, who were already tiring of their cause; but the King’s final conditions, upon which he consented to an arrangement, gave such offence to Parliament, that the deputies were recalled by a message so peremptory that they had not time to wait for their coaches, and started back to London on horseback. In the meantime, the Earl of Derby had been successfully fighting for the Royal cause in the North. He took Lancaster and Preston from the Parliamentarians. There is little doubt that he would have followed up these triumphs by the subjection of Manchester, though it held out with great determination; but again he was thwarted by demands for his men to be drafted elsewhere.
Despite the rudeness and insults of this course, the Earl strove to endure them in an unmurmuring spirit. He was forced to see, without contesting, an attack on the little town of Wigan, which he had garrisoned under the Scotch General Blair. The town was taken and pillaged. The sacramental vessels were even stolen from the church, and, in accordance with the fanatical spirit of the time, which was beginning to know no bounds, one of the Puritan bigots hung them round his neck as idolatrous trophies. When his people and soldiers vented their indignation at the treatment to which their beloved and honoured chief was subjected by the Court, and at the hands of the master whom he was striving with all his might, and at such sacrifices, to serve, he quoted the noble passage from Tacitus: “Pravis dictio factisque ex posteritate et fama metus.”[[11]]
[11]. “It belongs to fame and posterity to strike bad actions and bad words with fear.”
Nothing now remained for the Earl to do under such an enforced inactivity but to return to Lathom House, in order to superintend the work begun there of fortifying and victualling it, to ensure the safety of his wife and children, who resided in it during his long absences.
The loyal, single-minded Earl was not likely to be a favourite with the ruck of the Court party. For the butterfly courtiers he was too austere, and for the place-seekers too honest, for them to be desirous of his presence near the King, who was at Oxford, or the Queen, who was at York. The uttermost confines of the kingdom were not too far to banish him, in the opinion of many; and accordingly, under sufficiently specious pretexts, thither he was sent, although the Parliamentarians were rapidly gaining ground in the North; but, as the Earl writes in his memoirs—“The old saying is verified, ‘Misfortunes never come single-handed.’”
“I received,” he goes on to say, writing to his son, Lord Strange, “letters from the Isle of Man, indicating threatenings of a great revolt.” Many there, following the example of England, began to murmur against the Government—thanks to a few malicious and seditious spirits. They had learned the same lesson as the Londoners, coming tumultuously to Court to demand new laws, and modification of old ones; saying that they would have no bishops, and would not pay tithes to the clergy. They despised authority, and set free several persons whom the Government had arrested for their insolence. “I had also learned,” he continues, “that an armed ship which I kept there for the defence of the island had been seized by the Parliament ships—which turned out to be true. His Majesty, therefore, had those about him, such as Lord Goring, Lord Digby, Lord Jermyn, Sir Edward Dering and several others, who advised me to repair immediately to the island, in order to prevent mischief in time to be of service to his Majesty, and for the preservation of my heritage.”
But in this again the Earl might have coupled with his quoted axiom of the arrival of evils in battalions, the fable of the old man and the ass; for while he pleased the King and his lords, his enemies set his departure to the Isle of Man to a desire to be out of the general struggle. The Earl treats these calumnies with the contempt they merited. It suffices that his son knows and understands him. “As to the others,” he writes, “it matters little to me whether they understand or not.”
Lord Derby delayed only long enough to return to Lathom, where he mustered all the men, and got together all the money and ammunition possible “to defend and protect my wife and children against the insolence of the enemy.” Then he embarked for the Isle of Man.
“I left my house and my children,” the Earl concluded, “and all my affairs in England in charge of my wife, a person of virtue and of honour, worthy of her high birth and rank, who thus found herself alone, a stranger in the land, and (so it was thought) destitute of friends, provisions, or arms for defence. It was imagined that Lathom House would be an easy conquest, and a commission from Parliament was procured to subdue it by treaty or by force.”