CHAPTER XV

BEARING THE BURDEN ALONE. THE PARLIAMENTARIANS DEMAND THE ISLE OF MAN. LADY DERBY A PRISONER. CAST ON CROMWELL’S MERCY. FAIR-HAIRED WILLIAM AND HIS FATE. THE TIDE TURNS. “I MUST DEPART.” THE KING HAS HIS OWN AGAIN. MARRIAGE, AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE. PEACEFUL TIMES AT KNOWSLEY. “SWIFT TO ITS CLOSE EBBS OUT LIFE’S LITTLE DAY.” COURT FAIRNESS. THE LAST LETTER. AN HONOURED MEMORY

With the death of the Earl perished the happiest and noblest part of Charlotte of Derby. For all its storms, their married life had been a true union. The alliance, which originally could not have been more than one of consent on the part of a marriageable young man and woman, had developed into a gracious, healthy life which sorrow and death itself had no power to destroy. The bud of the mariage de convenance had proved a more glorious flower than many a passionate love-match has culminated in. But now the noble heart of James Stanley beat no more with its patriotic devotion, and henceforth Lady Derby had to bear the burden of the endless contest alone. That for good or for evil, life in its fullest sense was over for her, she tells her friend of years, the Duchess de la Trémoille, in a letter dated 25th March of 1652. The Duchess’s letters to her are, she says, so full of sympathy and kindness, that if her sorrows could be consoled, Madame de la Trémoille would console them. “But alas! dear sister, I am no longer able to complain or to weep, since all my happiness is in the grave; and I am astonished at myself that I have been able to endure all my misfortunes, and be still in the world; but that has been the will of God, who has helped me so powerfully, that I do not know myself in having survived all my miseries. The last letters of that glorious martyr give me proof of his affection being beyond all that I deserved to hope; and his dying commands bid me live, and take care of his children....”

The body of the Earl of Derby had already been laid by Lord Strange and Mr Bagalay to its rest in the tomb of his ancestors at Ormskirk before Lady Derby knew that the blow had really fallen; and it is doubtful whether the first intelligence of it reached her by the mouth of friend or foe. When the Earl was executed, the Countess was busy fortifying the Castle of Rushen, to defend the last possession left them of all their broad territories.

Castle Rushen contained the insignia of the Stanley sovereignty over the Isle of Man—the leaden crown.

When Captain Young landed from the President frigate, and, presenting himself before her, commanded her to render up the island in the name of Parliament, she refused, saying, as she had ever done, that she waited her husband’s orders.

The Earl was dead.

Even after that, knowing the worst, she still refused. She held the island now for her King. Then treachery came to the help of the enemy. William Christian, the Receiver-General of the Earl, won over the garrison, and surrendered the island to the Parliamentarian fleet, which completely surrounded the coasts.

These Christians had long occupied high positions under the rulers of Man, being deemsters and controllers of special departments of public government. But already more than once the Earl had had good grounds for displeasure and mistrust against them. He had some time before deprived Edward Christian of authority in favour of one Captain Greenhaigh; (though he had not withdrawn his countenance from the family of Christian), who, in the meantime, had died. When Lord Derby left Man to go to the assistance of Charles II. he confided the forces of the island to William Christian, this unfaithful Edward’s son. Never was confidence more misplaced. William Christian allowed himself to be corrupted; he admitted the Parliamentary troops into the island at dead of night, and daybreak found Lady Derby and her children prisoners in Castle Rushen. For two months she was detained prisoner in the island; then they let her go free, in a forlorn quest of justice from Cromwell. “She who had brought to this country fifty thousand pounds sterling had not so much as a morsel of bread to eat, and was indebted for all to her friends, almost as unfortunate as herself.”

This William Christian is a great hero with Manxmen. Iliam Dhône, or “Fair-haired William,” is the subject of a long and doleful ballad, which is still popular in the island. Eleven years later, when the King had his own again, and the murdered Earl’s son Edward was once more the Lord of Man, a day of retribution came to William Dhône. He was tried for that day’s work of giving up the Isle of Man to the Parliamentarians, and shot for a traitor on Hango Hill. The young Earl met with great blame for his part in this act. There were extenuating circumstances for William Christian’s actions. The trial was a mock proceeding. A tale goes that a pardon was sent him on the day before the one fixed for his execution, and that it was laid hands on, and intercepted by an enemy, being afterwards found in the foot of an old woman’s stocking.

“Protect,”

runs the ballad,

“every mortal from enmity foul,

For thy fate, William Dhône, sickens our soul.”

Audi alteram bartem. The Christians and those they represented of the Manx people had had grievances against certain high-handed doings of the late Earl, but, the tale all told, sympathy for fair-haired William’s fate is not easy to muster; and if it be true that the Countess of Derby had a share in hastening his end, it is not necessary to be blind to the fact that she would, if she could have compassed it, have visited similar lynch-law justice on those “court-martial” judges who condemned her husband to the block. In her virtues and in her failings—sins, if so they were—there was nothing small about Charlotte of Derby when great crises hung over her.

These past, she was just again the ordinary grande dame of her time. The daily round and common task of existence pleased her well enough. Henceforth the remaining years of her life were devoted to two primary ends—the placing in life of her children, and the recovery of her money and lawful possessions. For this last, her fortunes ran side by side with those of the exiled King and of many another devoted Royalist family; but they were at their lowest ebb on the days succeeding Worcester fight. Steady, but so gradual as to be for long imperceptible, was the inflow of the tide; and only the passing years really marked the turn of national affairs.

Parliamentary differences, jealousies of political parties, sectarian bitterness, which it pleased them to call religious opinion, were all seething to the great issue. The powerful mind of Cromwell was not for ever to be proof against myriad influences. If he desired the Crown, he dared not accept it: as he dared not do many things which appealed to his own inclinations.

Having abolished the Anglican Church, he would have reinstated it. Anything was better than the wild fanaticism that was overrunning the land—Anabaptists, Quakers, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy Men, et hoc genus omne, who, all claiming the one divine spirit, seemed animated by a million devils of hatred, pride, and malice. Haunted by memories, saddened by domestic sorrows and bereavements, grown fearful of the pitfalls for his own death lying in his path, the existence of the Lord Protector was one he must have been well willing to break with. Colonel Titus promulgating his views of “Killing no Murder” in his tract; Ralph Syndercombe plotting his bloody deed in the little Shepherd’s Bush cottage; and how many more biding their time? But it was not so the end came to Oliver Cromwell.

When he had prayed for peace—the much-needed peace—for the people and for himself, “Lord, pardon them all,” he went on, “and whatever Thou mayst do with me, grant them Thy mercy, and me also. Give them peace.” The dawn of 3rd September broke—the anniversaries of Dunbar and of Worcester, Cromwell’s “lucky day.” Parched with the thirst of his aguish fever, they put a cup of drink to his lips. “I will neither drink nor sleep,” he said. “I am thinking only of making haste. I must depart.” And so he died.

And so when Richard Cromwell had just tasted of the cup of dignities his father had left him, and but too gladly set it down again, and retired to his quiet country home in the lanes of Cheshunt, Charles II. was brought in triumph to Whitehall.

That home-coming is a tale told too often to tell again here—even though Lady Derby has much to say about it in her graphic correspondence. Many details of how gracious his Majesty was to her, how handsome but for this or that his Queen would be, are mixed up with those of her children’s marriages. When those sons and daughters reached marriageable years, the worst of the Royalist troubles were past. There was no difficulty in their making suitable alliances. Amelia was married to the Earl of Athole. Catherine, less happy in her union, became Marchioness of Dorchester. Mary, “dear Mall,” became Lady Strafford. Two of her sons died while still children.

Of absorbing interest to herself—as indeed they all might well be—the incidents of Court life, and the doings of her children and friends, drag somewhat heavily for us, like the more commonplace though dazzling groupings in some stirring drama whose curtain is about to fall.

Her own little day of life was nearing its setting. She died at a fitting time. The son was not the father. The rebound from Puritanism and religious hypocrisy o’erleaped itself. The licence of Court life soon came to be a scandal and a grief to many of Charles II.’s most loyal servants, as assuredly it might have made the stately martyred King turn in his grave. To the Mistress Nellys and my Lady Castlemaynes nothing was sacred; and when these frail “beauties” had contrived to humble their Queen in her own presence-chamber, or to secure a Clarendon’s downfall, they were well pleased with their day’s work.

With some prescience of this, the Countess of Derby, no longer compelled to remain in London, spent much of her time at Knowsley. Chancellor Clarendon, who had been negotiating arrangements for the restitution of her pension, had left England in disgust at the indifference of the Court and the ingratitude of the King, who was prone to make a hand-clasp and a “God bless you, my old friend,” do duty for more substantial repayments to impoverished Royalists.

On 6th February 1663 the Countess was ill, and writes thus:—

“If the winter is as bitter where you are as it is here, it is a miracle to think your health has improved. Mine has been very indifferent for more than a month; but God has preserved it for me. I pray Him to enable me to use it to better account than I have done in the past, and it is that which impels me to hasten to tell you that it has pleased his Royal Highness to give to your nephew Stanley the post of first and sole gentleman of the bedchamber, which is a very desirable one, and, what is of more importance, that it is the voluntary act of his Highness, to whom, and to the Duchess, he owes all the obligation. His youngest brother has a cornetcy in the King’s Guards. His Majesty has done him the honour to tell him that this is only a commencement. Therefore I have hope.... All that I have to add is that I pray God to give you many long and happy years, with all the content you can desire. Permit me to say also as much to my brother.”

Here the Countess of Derby lays down her pen for ever. On the 31st March 1664 she died.

The chaplain of Knowsley, after inscribing her name in his death register, wrote after it: “Post funera virtus”; and her memory and her works will live on in the hearts of the English people.

This noble friend, true wife and mother, loyal subject, Charlotte de la Trémoille, was the embodiment of all the significance of the motto of her house,

“Je maintiendrai.”

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