Thou art locked in this heart of mine;
Whereof is lost the little key:
So there, forever, thou must be!”
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH
AT THE WORST
In the first joy of their return home, Squire Atheling and his son had not chosen to alarm the women of the family; yet the condition of the country was such as filled with terror every thoughtful mind. The passionate emotion evoked by the second rejection of the Reform Bill did not abate. Tumultuous meetings were held in every town and village as the news reached them; houses were draped in black; shops were closed; and the bells of the churches tolled backward. In London the populace was quite uncontrollable. Vast crowds filled the streets, cheering the Reform leaders, and denouncing with furious execrations the members of either House who had opposed the Bill. The Duke of Newcastle, the Marquis of Londonderry, and many other peers were not saved from the anger of the people without struggle and danger. Nottingham Castle, the seat of the Duke of Newcastle, was burnt to the ground; and Belvoir Castle, the seat of the Duke of Rutland, was barely saved. Bristol saw a series of riots, and during them suffered greatly from fire, and the Bishop’s palace was reduced to ashes.
Everywhere the popular fury settled with special bitterness and hatred upon the bishops; because, as teachers of the doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth, the “common people” expected sympathy from them. A cry arose, from one end of England to the other, for their expulsion from the Upper Chamber; and proposals even for the abolition of the House of Lords were constant and very popular. For such extreme measures no speaker was so eloquent and so powerful as Mr. O’Connell. In addressing a great meeting at Charing Cross one day, he pointed in the direction of Whitehall Palace, and reminded his hearers that, “A King had lost his head there. Why,” he asked, “did this doom come on him? It was,” he cried, “because he refused to listen to his Commons and his people, and obeyed the dictation of a foreign wife.” And this allusion to the Queen’s bad influence over William the Fourth was taken up by the crowd with vehement cheering.
While Bristol was burning, the cholera appeared in England; and its terrors, new and awful and apparently beyond human help or skill, added the last element of supernatural fear to the excited and hopeless people. It is hard to realise at this day, and with our knowledge of the disease, the frantic and abject despair which seized all classes. The churches were kept open, supplications ascended night and day from the altars; and on the sixth of November, at one hour, from every place of worship in England, hundreds of thousands knelt to utter aloud a form of prayer which was constantly broken by sobs of anguish:–
“Lord, have pity on thy people! Withdraw thy heavy hand from those who are suffering under thy judgments; and turn away from us that grievous calamity against which our only security is Thy Compassion.”
In the presence of this scourge, Mrs. Atheling found it impossible to persuade the Squire to let his family go up with him and Edgar to London. About the cholera, the Squire had the common fatalistic ideas.