CHAPTER XI
CHARLOTTE OF DERBY. A JOURNEY TO LONDON IN OLDEN DAYS. QUEEN OF HER HOME. LEARNED LADIES. “HIS REVERENCE.” LADY DERBY SPELLS LANCASHIRE. A DEMAND, AND A REFUSAL. DEFENCE, NOT DEFIANCE. “A NEST OF DELINQUENTS.” THE SERMON TEXT. ORDERS TO MARCH. DEMANDS AND TERMS. SURPRISES. WORTHY OF A PAINTER’S BRUSH. THE ASTUTE ECCLESIASTIC AND ROUNDHEAD FRIEND. MORE CONDITIONS. “LOOK TO YOUR OWN WAYS.” A DAY OF REST. NO SURRENDER
For more than half a score of years following the earliest years of her married life, records concerning Lady Strange are scanty. It is only a short time before she becomes Countess of Derby that she begins to live in history. Till then, she passed the ordinary existence of a highborn lady of her time—those ladies notably who affected home life more than Court life. Her provincial rearing at Thonars, coupled with her simple Huguenot education, no doubt conduced to this preference. Another reason which made a country lady of Charlotte de la Trémoille was probably the remoteness of Lathom from the capital. No doubt she occasionally appeared at Court; but a journey then from the North to London, for women at all events, called for serious consideration before its undertaking. The choice of locomotion lay between a pillion-ride on horseback, in fair weather or foul, as it might be, and a clumsy springless wooden coach occupying a good week upon the road, provided all went well, and that the huge wheels did not wedge themselves into the ruts or the mire of the King’s highway, or the Flanders mares did not stumble or cast a shoe five miles from a smithy. For such were some of the mishaps which befell travellers in the good old times, not to speak of the attacks of highwaymen. Just however, as the blessings of penny post have their shadows, conversely the lack of facilities for travelling had its brighter side. Gentlefolks were apt to be more quiet-minded in those days. The imperative necessity for constant “change” had not come to be recognised. If ladies were troubled with the migraine or the spleen, or ailments of the sort, they had to seek their remedies from the local apothecary, supposing he lived anywhere within hail; or, better, select some mint tea or tansy drink or other herbal concoction out of their own stillrooms; or, better than all, shake off the distemper in a goodly game of “Hoodman Blind,” or “Hunt-the-slipper.” The home of the good wife in any rank was her kingdom, and her daughters were reared in her own creed of domesticity, although it is a heresy to imagine that the women of those times were mere household drudges. Allowing for the scarcity of books, the average of educated matrons and maids stood high. A knowledge of the classics and of the dead languages can be by no means claimed as a monopoly by Girton and Newnham and kindred modern shrines of female erudition. Again and again in the abstracts and chronicles of the time we come upon references to Mistress this and Dame the other, who read and wrote both Greek and Latin, and could quote you a passage from Virgil, or explain you the form of elegiac verse, and above all found real enjoyment in such pursuits; yet, judging from their correspondence, there was little or no pedantry mixed up with their classical knowledge. Such Gorgons of learning as Margaret Duchess of Newcastle do not come into this or any category; they are simply warnings and terrible examples of the “weaker sex.”
There is small question that many of these gentlewomen were indebted for their attainments in classical literature to the chaplains, who continued to be regarded as indispensable part and parcel of the households of the nobility and wealthier gentlemen of the kingdom. Generally speaking, the post was almost a sinecure. The lay members of the Anglican Establishment were not unduly eager to take advantage of the privileges permitted by their spiritual mother, of making confession, or of seeking direction from their clergy; and when my lord’s chaplain had put in an appearance to read morning, and possibly also evening, prayers, and to give thanks at meal-times, he had done pretty well all that was required of him; and indeed was not unfrequently given to understand that his withdrawal from table when the sweets and cakes were placed upon it would not be hindered. His salary might not be princely, but his duties were certainly light; and to a studious-minded man, who did not set undue value on worldly considerations, the house chaplain might enjoy a comfortable learned leisure in the seldom-invaded library of his patron’s mansion. If sons and daughters were included in the domestic circle, he probably was called upon to complete his round of service by giving them instruction; but in those times of hawk and hound and bowling-greens and tennis, average youths were apt to throw learning to the dogs as soon as they dared, and it was the maidens who mostly profited by his instructions. Hence such women as “Sidney’s sister,” Lady Russel, the Countess of Pembroke—who erected a monument to her sometime tutor, Samuel Daniel, the poetic historian—and many more who could at once ply the needle exquisitely, understood brewing and baking and the mysteries of the still-room, and were well-informed “gentlewomen” in the most pronounced acceptance of the term. The style of the correspondence even of those who followed up their classical acquirements less closely, reveals unconsciously as it were, an intimacy with the ground-work, so that through quaintnesses and archaic expressions the educated mind shines distinctly; and beside those old letters and pieces of composition the scrawl of many a latter-day college and school miss who owns a smattering of half a dozen ologies, would make a sorry figure, with its misbegotten face.
This is the case with the letters of the Countess of Derby. In her there was not the slightest trace of précieuse taint; her mode of expression is as clear as it is elegant and eloquent. To be sure, after twenty years’ residence in England, we find her spelling Lancashire Lenguicher, for which she deserves no quarter; but this appalling exception only proves the rule of her graceful diction.
That Charlotte de la Trémoille however, while possessing such command of her pen, was preeminently a woman of ready wit and of prompt action, the great crisis in her stormy life amply testified. Lord Derby had scarcely set foot in the Isle of Man when a message reached the Countess at Lathom House from Lord Holland, the Parliamentary governor of Manchester, requiring her to accede to the conditions which he offered her, or to surrender Lathom House. Her reply was given without loss of time. It did not become her, she said, to give up her house, nor to purchase repose at the price of honour. That was the answer which Lord Holland’s deputy took back. The Countess, nevertheless, was conscious of her weakness. The supply of provisions and of ammunition within the walls of the house was utterly inadequate for withstanding a siege. More than all, it was not sufficiently garrisoned. Lady Derby therefore, offered no defiance; she sought only leave to defend herself and her household, by retaining a company of her own men of the Royalist party for protection against the molestation of the Parliamentary soldiery; but leaving the estate and the surrounding park at their mercy. Consent to this request was grudgingly accorded. “Thus she remained through eight months, a prisoner in her own domain,” says her biographer, “rarely leaving the house for fear of meeting some affront, deprived of her revenues, blamed alike by friends and foes; by these, for not having defended possessions and liberty; by those, for not yielding up the house as she had the surrounding estate; but she waited with patience for the moment when she might openly resist, working unceasingly and secretly at collecting provisions and ammunition; one by one getting in the men and barrels of powder under cover of the night, repressing the zeal of her garrison, which burned to revenge the insults she daily received, and in all ways silently preparing for the siege which she anticipated. A noble patience which, in such a high heart as Lady Derby’s, called for more courage than even that which she exercised in the midst of the fray itself; the courage of a woman and of a general, which knew how to endure all, while waiting to see how to dare all.” So the still waters ran deep, so under the white ash the fiery coal smouldered and glowed, and despite the keen vigilance of the Parliamentary Colonel Rigby, who was in command of the troops stationed in the neighbourhood, the Countess succeeded in mustering a garrison of three hundred men within those old towered and moated walls, and sufficient provision to sustain it under a lengthy siege. Ammunition was less plentiful, and would have to be husbanded; but throughout defence, not defiance, was the watchword.
The Countess took the command-in-chief; but her want of military experience was supplied by Captain Farmer, a Scottish gentleman, whom she nominated major at the head of six lieutenants chosen from among the neighbouring gentlemen who came to offer their services.
Of all these preparations the rebel party had not the vaguest conception. Matters might have continued for some time longer in this condition, had it not been for a sudden small encounter which took place between the soldiers of the opposing sides. Colonel Rigby then resolved to annihilate this “nest of delinquents” without further delay; and orders were given to march. Whither, the majority of the men were far from being certain. The attachment of the Northerners of Derby, Cheshire, and Lancashire was very strong for the ancient race of Stanley. To go against an Earl of Derby was hardly less than actual laying of rough hands on their anointed King, and to that pass only the fiercest malignants had as yet desired; thus for a while the soldiers were permitted to suppose that they were bound for Westmoreland. On Sunday however, when a halt was made at Wigan, and a large contingent of the soldiers attended service in the church, the preacher took for his text the 14th verse of the 50th chapter of Jeremiah: “Put yourselves in array against Babylon round about; all ye that bend the bow, shoot at her, spare no arrows; for she hath aimed against the Lord.”
Then in the course of the sermon which followed, the preacher compared the Countess of Derby to the great city of Babylon; and finally this messenger of the Gospel of Peace announced that he reserved the verse which followed—“Shout against her round about; she hath given her hand; her foundations are fallen, her walls are thrown down”—for the text of the sermon which was to celebrate the victory over Lathom.
The next day all lingering doubts came to an end; for the order to halt was given within two miles of Lathom House, and on the 28th February Captain Markland arrived to demand an audience of the Countess. He brought with him a letter from Sir Thomas Fairfax, and a Parliamentary decree promising pardon to the Earl of Derby if he would make his submission. Sir Thomas, promising to abide faithfully by his part of the contract, further required the Countess to deliver Lathom House into his hands. The letter was couched in courteous terms. The Countess responded in the same spirit of outward calmness and moderation. She expressed herself greatly astonished at being called upon to render up her husband’s house, without her having given the Parliament any offence; but that, in a matter of such importance, and one which at the same time touched on her religion and this present life, concerning moreover her Sovereign, her husband and lord, and all her posterity, she asked a week for reflection, to settle her doubt of conscience, and to take counsel on the questions of right and of honour which it involved.
The Countess thus replied for the purpose of gaining a little longer time. Each day was showing more and more a splendid promise of the courage and fidelity of her garrison; but they needed more experience and instruction from their skilful leaders. Sir Thomas Fairfax refused the concession thus demanded, and sent her a summons to repair at once in her coach to New Park, a house belonging to the Earl not far from Lathom, for the purpose of an interview with him there, in order to discuss the whole affair at length.
The pride of the highborn lady now rose beside the courage of the heroic woman. “Say to Sir Thomas Fairfax,” was her answer to this message, “that notwithstanding my present condition, I remember my lord’s honour as I remember my birth, and that it appears to me more fitting that he should come to me than that I should go to him.” After two days spent in messages and replies, the general demanded a free and safe entry into Lathom House for two of his colonels, and the Countess promised to let them come and depart again in safety.
In due course the two colonels arrived. The sight which met their gaze as they neared Lathom House must have caused them some astonishment. The old house bristled with arms. The Parliamentarian assumption that an easy victory was about to be obtained over a houseful of women, children, a few men-at-arms and old servants, was dispersed to the four winds by the sight of these towers and walls manned with soldiers, and the batteries and ordnance facing at all points. Whether the Countess desired to inspire the ambassadors with respect and awe, or whether she feared a sudden attack, she was there to meet the Parliamentarian deputies in formidable battle array. They were conducted to the mistress of the mansion between lines of armed men drawn up on each side, from the gates of the outer court to her presence in the Great Hall, each company ranged under its lieutenant. At the upper end of the hall, her two little daughters at each side, and her women round her, stood the Countess. With a majestic air she bade the officers be seated, and waited to hear them unfold what their general, Sir Thomas Fairfax, had to propose.
The brush of the painter who should succeed in depicting that scene would have to be skilful indeed. Words might bring to the mind’s eye the ancient hall, bright with the hues of the women’s attire, the cuirassed buff coats tied with their fringed silken scarves, the gleaming arms of the Royalist soldiery—and in their midst the plainly clad Parliamentarian officers in their linen bands, close-cropped hair, and the tight-fitting head-gear which has earned the enemies of Charles I. their eternal sobriquet of Roundhead. All this and much similar detail of that scene in the old presence chamber of Lathom House rises to the imagination like a brilliant and stately dream of pageantry; but it would be another matter to picture faithfully the repression of varying and contrasting mental agitation working in that assemblage—the courage and the dauntless bearing of the stately lady, the inquiring gaze of her young daughters, the eager, attent gaze of her women amid the rugged and resolute soldiers of their own side, and the endeavours of the emissaries to maintain an unruffled and undiscomfited aspect in the face of the surprise they were experiencing. Their astonishment could only have been of a very complete kind, and the Countess owed no small debt of gratitude at this crisis and later on, to her chaplain, the Rev. Mr Rutter. “All is fair in love and war,” says the old adage, and this faithful and astute ecclesiastic contrived to hoodwink an officer of the Parliamentarians who was among the besiegers. This person was an old friend of Mr Rutter’s from early childhood, and the clergyman had given him to understand that Lathom House was in no way prepared for sustaining a prolonged siege. Possibly at the time Mr Rutter confided to his gossip this particular bit of information it was true to the letter, but “tempora mutantur,” and during those stirring days at Lathom the times changed very quickly indeed.
The conditions brought by the emissaries of Sir Thomas Fairfax were as follows:—
“1st. All the arms and ammunition at Lathom should be delivered over to Sir Thomas Fairfax.
“2nd. The Countess of Derby and all living in Lathom House should be at liberty to retire with their belongings to Chester or to any other town occupied by the enemy. If they thought proper to submit to Parliament, they might retire to their own homes.
“3rdly. The Countess, with all her servants, could reside at Knowsley House, and maintain there twenty men-at-arms for her defence, or she would be permitted to rejoin her husband in the Isle of Man.
“4thly. For the present, and until Parliament should further inquire into the matter, the Countess should receive for her maintenance the revenues of the estates and land of the Earl, her husband, in the hundred of Derby; and Parliament would be called upon to preserve this revenue to her.”
The Countess rejected these proposals. She found them neither honourable nor certain. “Since Parliament has not given its pronouncement on these points, you are not in a position to carry out your own propositions, gentlemen,” she said, with a lofty sarcasm. “It would be more prudent for you first to ascertain its good pleasure. As to myself, my good gentlemen,” she added, “I will not embarrass you by petitioning for me. I should regard it as a far greater favour if you will leave me in my humble condition.”
The two colonels did not press their points. They were in no mood for doing so. Colonel Rigby burned to wipe off the score of some insult which he fancied he had once received from the Earl, and both the deputies saw from the first strong determination in the eyes of the Countess. All the same, they did not care to allow themselves to be conquered by a woman, and both sought to represent to her the error of her ways, and to reproach her with the evils visited on the country by her party, and by her own friends and adherents. “I know,” gravely replied the Countess, “how to take heed to my ways, and to those of my people. You will do well to do as much for your ministers and your religious helpers, who go about sowing discord and trouble in families, and whose ill-conditioned tongues do not even always spare the sacred person of his Majesty.”
Henry Martin had said to Parliament, “It is certain that the ruin of one family is better than that of many families,” and when he was asked of whom he spoke, he replied without hesitation, “Of the King, and of his children.”
The lieutenants of Fairfax, “the two solemn personages,” disappointed, baffled, and brow-beaten, were forced to go back, with what comfort they might, to the camp of the Parliamentarians.
Sunday was a day of rest for the besiegers, as for the besieged. While they were being preached against in the camp of Fairfax, probably with equal sincerity the Countess of Derby assisted with her children, and the greater part of her garrison, at divine service in the chapel of her mansion, where four times a day during the siege she caused prayers to be read by her chaplain, always herself attending, and gathering fresh strength for her heavy task at the feet of Him who has willed Himself to be called The Lord of Battles.[[12]]
[12]. De Witt.
On Monday Colonel Rigby again arrived at Lathom, to receive and to carry back to his general the proposed conditions of Lady Derby. There were four in the articles of their summing-up, and ran thus:—
“I demand to remain another month in peace at Lathom. The duties confided to me here are of a double nature. I owe my fidelity and my loyalty to my husband; my allegiance and my service to my Sovereign. Since I have not obtained their consent, I cannot render up this house without manifestly wanting in my duty towards both. If they consent, I will peaceably yield up this house, asking only a free egress for myself and my children, with my friends, my soldiers, my retainers, my belongings, my ammunition, and my artillery, in order to go to the Isle of Man. I shall maintain a garrison in my house for my defence.
“2ndly. I promise, during my residence in this county, and when I shall be in the Isle of Man, that my arms shall not be employed against Parliament.
“3rdly. While I remain in this county, no Parliamentarian soldier must be quartered in the lordship of Lathom. After my departure no garrison is to be put into Lathom, nor at Knowsley House.
“4thly. None of my tenants, neighbours, or friends, now in the house with me, shall be molested, nor suffer in their person or their property, after my departure, for having come to my aid.”
Fairfax was not deceived by these conditions. He read between the lines of clause 2, and knew perfectly well that his Parliament and Lady Derby’s Parliament were very different things. His Parliament might be what it might, and at Westminster; the Countess’s was composed as heretofore, of three estates, King, Lords, and Commons, then assembled at Oxford; and his counter-propositions went back for the last time to the Lady of Lathom. She would be permitted all the time she wished, with liberty to transport her arms and possessions to the Isle of Man, with exception of the cannon, which must remain for defending the place. Further, to-morrow morning Lady Derby would have disbanded all her soldiers excepting her own servants, and she would receive a Parliamentarian officer and forty Parliamentarian soldiers to serve her as guards.
“I refuse utterly,” said Lady Derby to the messenger, this time a fresh man, one Morgan, a Welshman, “a little man, short and peremptory, who met with a great staidness to cool his heat, and he had the honour to carry back this last answer; for her ladyship could screw them to no more delays.”
“Though a woman, and a foreigner, far from my friends, and despoiled of my property, I am prepared to endure all your utmost violence, trusting in God, both for protection and deliverance.”
All temporising being at an end, the Parliamentarians, in a council of war, decided to open the siege. Some were for attempting the place by assault, and bringing the matter to rapid conclusion; but perhaps the sight beheld by those two colonels within the walls of Lathom deterred the general from this course, and led him to adopt festina lente for his watchword. Here the tactics of the Rev. Mr Rutter served the Royalists to good purpose. The worthy parson’s Parliamentarian crony now came forward advising for the siege, and assigning his good and sufficient reason therefor. He had, he said, been in conversation with his old friend the chaplain of Lathom House, and that veracious clergyman had allowed him clearly to understand that the supplies within the house were very small, and not sufficient to feed the garrison for a fortnight. Upon this valuable and authoritative information the siege was determined on; and the enemy began to dig trenches, to aid in which work the people of the neighbouring villages were compelled to give their services.