CHAPTER XIII
AT CASTLE RUSHEN. AN HONOURABLE SURRENDER. THE MAUDLIN WELL. CORRESPONDENCE RECOMMENCES. DISAPPEARANCE OF LORD STRANGE. A PRICE ON LORD DERBY’S HEAD. HOLMBY HOUSE. MISS ORPE AGAIN. A LAWSUIT. DIVISIONS AMONG THE PARLIAMENTARIANS. A LULL IN THE STORM. A NOBLE AUTHOR. AT KNOWSLEY. THE SUBSTANCE AND THE SHADOW. THE SECTARIES. “A GOOD EXCHANGE”
On the conclusion of the siege of Lathom House, the Countess of Derby went with her children to the Isle of Man. This appears to have been done by the advice of Prince Rupert, who well knew, not only the animosity of the Parliamentarians against the Earl, and therefore against his family, but also the jealousy entertained against him by the King’s party.
In the old castles of Rushen and of Peel, Lady Derby spent the ensuing years of King Charles Ist’s stormy reign, for the most part in peace, compared with the turmoil and anxiety of the previous months.
As for the brave old mansion, it remained for some time in the charge of the garrison left in it. Finally, by the desire of the King, whose fortunes were now too low to come to its assistance when again it was attacked by the Roundheads, it yielded, but with honours for all it contained, and the garrison marched forth with their arms and baggage. Neither were they called upon to take the oath to Parliament.
Whether it would even have yielded when it did is more than questionable, had it not been for an Irish soldier, “the one traitor the garrison contained, who swam the moat and informed the enemy of the deplorable condition of the besieged—at the end of their food and ammunition.” The matter was now easy to compass—brute strength against weakness. The doors were burst open, the house sacked, its towers thrown down, and its walls levelled with the ground. Three little pieces of the battlements alone remained to tell of the long, brave defence it had made. Cromwell’s sequestrators sold its doors, its floors, and all else of it, and the receipts of sale are still to be found in the Ormskirk parish records.[[19]] Finally, the peasants of West Derby were invited to take away the stones and timbers without any charge.[[20]]
[19]. Seacome.
[20]. Heywood.
“Nothing remained of the old place,” says a later chronicler, “along whose banks knights and ladies have a thousand times made resort, harking to stories as varied as those of Boccaccio. The Maudlin Well, where the pilgrim and the lazar devoutly cooled their parched lips—the brewing-house—the training round—all now are changed, and a modern mansion and a new possessor fill their places.”
The new mansion which a later Earl raised upon the honoured ashes of the old is a splendid house; but with it our story has not to do. The noble presence of Charlotte de la Trémoille never graced its Ionic colonnades and spacious chambers; and it is to her once more that we will turn, in her old feudal stronghold in the Kingdom of Man.
Yet one more word, before biding adieu to Lathom, as to the Maudlin Well mentioned. A question arises which suggests itself for antiquarian solving. In later times a “Lathom Spaw” came into some repute in that neighbourhood. Was this “Spaw” the old Maudlin Well of the Stanleys’ famous home?
For the first time after several years, Charlotte de la Trémoille’s correspondence recommences. Probably from time to time, during the siege of Lathom, and the first year or two of her sojourn in the Isle of Man, she wrote to her relatives in France, but these letters have been lost or stolen. It is only in the month of August 1646 that she writes from the Isle of Man in no small anxiety. Her eldest son, Lord Strange, had secretly left the island to go, no one knew whither. “We are told that he is in Ireland,” she writes to her sister-in-law, “but the letters he left behind with us say that he was going to you.” She adds that if this be the case, and the Duchess receives him graciously, forgiveness from both parents for his escapade will not be long withheld from him.
Lord Strange had, in fact, made his way to Paris, where the Duchess de la Trémoille, his aunt, had received him kindly, and treated him with maternal solicitude. On learning this gratifying intelligence, it is Lord Derby who writes to thank Madame de la Trémoille in terms of almost enthusiastic courtesy for her obligations. “No service which I could humbly render you, madame, would be too difficult for me,” he writes, “so that I might prove to you with what devotion I am, madame, your very humble and very obedient brother and servant, Derby.”
The Earl was probably glad that the youthful heir of his home was out of the country; for the Royalist cause was growing desperate. It was death now to anyone who should have to do with the King. The Parliament sent proposing an amnesty. Its terms were: his acceptance of the Scottish Covenant, the abolition of the Anglican Church, and the entire relinquishment of power into the hands of Parliament. Thirty-six persons were excluded from this amnesty, and a price set upon the heads of seven of them. Third on the list, after Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, stood the name of Lord Derby; and in the next letter of the Countess she speaks of a proposed journey to London to intercede for the Earl, “after a journey from the Isle of Man, which lasted forty-eight hours, upon a dangerous sea, in a wretched boat; but if God blesses my efforts, as I have prayed Him to do, I can bear anything.”
She further speaks hopefully of obtaining her husband’s pardon. “The Lords,” she writes, “will, I think, easily grant it.” From the Commons she looks for more obduracy. “But God will give me wisdom and prudence. The King continues to refuse to do what Parliament desires, and declines to listen to the preaching of its ministers.” There are natures which can meet martyrdom; but flinch at slow torture, and spiritual discourses in those days were nothing if they did not stretch to a good hour at the least. The sword of the Spirit was a long one. On the 25th March the King had been sold by the Scotch to the Parliament. He was now at Holmby House in Northamptonshire, only to go thence upon the road which terminated on the scaffold of Whitehall.
In addition to all these grave cares Lady Derby was burdened with the settlement of her brother’s affairs. He had recently died, and his title and estates were claimed by Miss Orpe, who asserted that she had been privately married to him. Lady Derby complains bitterly of the part which the Queen took in this matter. She openly gave countenance to Miss Orpe’s pretensions. Notwithstanding, Lady Derby and the Duke de la Trémoille gained their suit; and his estate was shared between them.
From this time it was that the opponents of the King became divided against themselves. The Independents and the Presbyterians had little in common sympathy. The Independents formed the majority in the army, and the Presbyterians, jealous of their power, were now anxious to disband the army. In this difference the Independents, gaining the day, formed a military Parliament, and took possession of the King; but the hope that this raised in the minds of the Royalists, and among them the hopes of the Earl and Countess of Derby, was doomed to be disappointed. The King in the hands of the Independents was merely a puppet to play off against the Presbyterians.
The Earl of Derby was all this time being treated with comparative leniency, considering that his loyalty to his party amounted to a passion which no terrors or threats could ever quench. Total inaction was imposed upon him; and policy prompted him to compliance. “Reculer pour mieux sauter” was the watchword now for the ardent-spirited Earl. To attempt to do anything for his royal master’s defence at this time was but to hurry him the faster to his doom; though there was a gleam of hope in the treatment which the King was now receiving. During some months which he spent at Hampton Court, the semblance of kingly state and of loyal respect surrounded him. It was the calm and deceptive tranquillity which precedes the tempest. Like the old trève de Dieu of mediæval days—the oasis which travellers come upon in the desert, and perforce must leave again—those few little months at Hampton Court, with his children once more about him, must have been very blessed to the King. Despite the gloom on all sides of the horizon, sunshine was overhead, sweetness was in the air.
Lord Derby during his enforced inactivity took up his pen, and began his “History and Antiquities of the Isle of Man.” He wrote it for the instruction of his son, and its title in extenso explains his intentions in writing it. “With an account of his own proceedings, and losses in the Civil War; interspersed with sundry advises to his son.”
The advice is excellent. After some details concerning the early history of the island, its noble chronicler writes: “Sir John Stanley, who was the first of our family to possess it, took out in letters-patent the name of the King of Man. His successors did the same until the time of Thomas, second Earl of Derby, who, for good and wise reasons, decided to relinquish this title.
“I know no subject who owns a dominion as important as this,” and then the Earl adds that, lest it may be found to be too important, his son will do well to observe this rule, which will enable him to keep the kingdom uncontested: “Fear God, and honour the King.”
Further on, the Earl takes blame to himself for not having seen how he might have added to the prosperity of the Manx folks by turning the island to more profitable account, “for he who is not careful of what he has, is not worthy to possess it.” He advises that manufactories and more trade be established in Man. “Then the sea will be covered with ships, and the land with inhabitants, to the great advantage of the whole country.” He further gives excellent advice as to the selection of a bishop for the island. He must be one, he says, who is a pious and worthy person, seeing that the clergy do their duty, and therefore one who must reside in the island, and have no benefice elsewhere. Further, the Earl would have a university, which, from the great natural advantages of the island, might be maintained at moderate cost and be serviceable to many, “finishing by putting something into the purse of its suzerain lord. But of this I will talk with you more, if it please God that I see you again, and have a quiet mind.”
He adds more good counsel for personal conduct, and for the general business of life. This work was never finished, as the Earl intended it, but is published as he left it in Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa.[[21]]
[21]. Vol. ii. lib. ii.
In September of 1647 Parliament at last definitely made allowance for the maintenance of the Earl’s children. It was one-fifth of his revenue, the same as they meted to the rest of the “delinquents.” The allowance was made upon Knowsley, and thither two of the Earl’s three daughters, Catherine and Mary, were at once sent. Lord Fairfax issued orders that Major Jackson, who had established himself with his family in the mansion, should clear out, and the guardians were further enjoined to see “that the said Major Jackson” did no damage to house or park before he went. Lady Derby writes from London, 14th March 1648: “I am advised to go to Lancashire, and live there on the little which has been allowed to my children; for I receive nothing; and I hope that I may be able to make it go further if I am on the spot. One must live economically, and make the best of what one has.”
There seems to have been no false sentiment about Lady Derby’s nature. And if the theories of Lavater are in any way correct, it is easiest to recall her living personality through the portrait of Vandyke, who, mighty portrayer that he was, gives Charlotte de la Trémoille on his canvas the frank and happy face of a good wife and a good mother, if not as specially beautiful or striking, as Scott has depicted the widowed Countess of Derby and “Queen in Man” in his Peveril of the Peak. Scott claims his rights as a romancer to give us the famous Countess of Derby as it suited his great novel to depict her. The Wizard has indeed drawn a curiously different personality from the real wife of James Stanley. On the other hand, her wifehood was almost past before Julian Peveril of the Peak was born. It is the woman advancing in years, with the memory of dead joys and loves and countless bitter wrongs heavy upon her, whom Scott characterises. When Charles II. was king, Charlotte de la Trémoille must have been greatly changed; but it is in having changed her creed that Scott misses the strong individuality in which he might have clothed her, without overleaping fact by a hair’s-breadth. No one comprehended better than he the play of light and shadow upon every act and word of man, woman, or even child, which is cast by religious conviction or the lack of it. Scott, while apologising for the dereliction, has transformed the born Huguenot, the staunch Anglican of twoscore years’ profession, into an ardent, even fanatical Roman Catholic. How completely she stood between the Scylla and Charybdis of Rome and the Sectaries, the extract from the following letter illustrates with striking emphasis:—
“For my husband and myself, in the matter of religion, it is, thank God, so deeply graven in our hearts, that nothing by His grace can take it from us; and if Parliament really held the interests of religion and the glory of God, which you think they entertain, they would not have the cruelty and injustice which signalise all their actions. And for religion, they have misled the people of this nation, until now they see their error, and groan under the burden of tyranny. Those even, who are most attached to their party, deplore their own misery and ours, and would find it difficult to tell you what their belief is, there being as many religions as there are families. The Test is publicly maintained; books are printed denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. Those who do this are not punished for it. God’s commandments are scorned—even the Creed itself. Sunday worship is neglected, and not constrained to be celebrated anywhere. The sacraments are administered according to each person’s fancy; the ministry is neglected. Anyone who considers himself capable of preaching, may do so without any licence or examination; even women may do it. Baptism is neglected, and not given to children; and there are other things still worse, which make those who have any religion left in them shudder to see such abuses.
“For our ill-wishers, we have them, but not more than the Lords in Parliament have them, it being the desire of the Commons to have no Lords, but to make all equal. That is understood by the Lords, but not the remedy for it. If you could hear the prevailing discontent, you would hardly be able to credit it. I speak of those who have ventured all for Parliament, and are enemies of the King’s party. This has reached such a point, that if the Scotch come, as we are led to think they may, there are not many who would not join them. This has of late led to changing all the leaders who were most affected to Parliament; replacing them by men who only regard their own faction; and though it was decreed in Parliament that if the army did not approve of this, it was to be changed, one day undoes what the other has done.
“This is not credible, excepting to those who see it all; and while I was away, they had a difficulty in persuading me that it was true. If I had the honour of seeing you, and speaking with you for a little while, I know you would soon be convinced of the truth, and would regret to see the Protestant religion suffering, and the Papists turning it to their advantage.”
National affairs were now in a state of hopeless entanglement—Presbyterian against Independent, and both against the King and all who had held by him through fortune good and ill. There could be no quarter for the Royalists. “There is no doubt,” writes the Countess in March of 1648, “that affairs will settle themselves.”
She wrote prophetically when she added:
“There is such discontent prevailing, that those who are in authority say—in confidence—that things cannot remain long without a change.”
On the next 30th January King Charles I. made his “good exchange” upon the scaffold at Whitehall; penalties of high treason were declared against all who acknowledged Charles Stuart as king; the House of Peers was abolished; and Cromwell was at the head of public affairs.