There could be no shadow of doubt about it. There lay Matthew Makepeace before him, and the old man was drowsily stirring his limbs as the light broadened into day. And young Dacre, in a doctor’s gown, was looking down upon him, tortured with horrible thoughts. One thing was certain. He could never pass himself off as Marmaduke. Conscience, gratitude, affection forbade it. Besides, the thing was impossible. He, the torpid pedant, could never play the part of the young and chivalrous heir of the Dacres: and there would be Marmaduke to convict the imposture. Before his pupil woke, before the discovery was made, he must disappear from Cambridge. Quietly and in haste he took down his pupil’s clothes from the closet where they hung, and exchanged for them his doctor’s robes. Then he descended his stairs and stepped out into the cool shadows of the August morning. The porter was just opening the gate. He nodded familiarly to young Dacre as he passed. That was the last which any soul in Jesus College saw of Matthew Makepeace.
Unless, indeed, it were that same Matthew Makepeace who, with the homing instinct of a dying animal, crept back to Cambridge in poverty and wretchedness, and died in widow Pearson’s house in 1654. In any case the flagstone in the chapel transept told a lie: it was Marmaduke Dacre that lay beneath it.
One thing further I have to mention. When I first took down the Speculum from its shelf in the college library I found it in the same virgin condition in which it had lain on the table of Matthew Makepeace on that fatal afternoon in August, 1604. No living soul had disturbed its repose for over 300 years. It was evidently the same copy: perhaps no other was ever issued. As I turned its pages a scrap of paper fluttered to the floor. It had been torn from the bottom corner of pages 273-4. On it was written in minute Greek letters an inscription which I translate:
“Demetrius Commagenus. All things are possible to him who knows and wills with earnestness.”
Thankfull Thomas
A passage in the lately edited Diary of George Evans, 1649-1658, has called my attention to a singular and, I believe, unrecorded episode in the history of Jesus College.
With Mr. Evans himself the story is not concerned. It is sufficient to say that he was appointed to a fellowship at Jesus in 1650 by the Committee for Reforming the Universities, in place of an expelled Presbyterian. He was, as his name suggests, a Welshman, of the county of Radnor, and, of course, an Independent. He vacated his fellowship, on his marriage, in 1654, and retired to the living of Marston Monceux, co. Salop. He held the incumbency until his death, in 1672, having conformed at the Restoration.
The portion of his diary which has awaked my interest relates to the date June 11, 1652. For its explanation it is necessary to state that ten years previously, just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the College had taken a quantity of its plate from the Treasury and delivered it to a certain Mr. John Poley, by him to be conveyed to His Majesty, who was then at Nottingham. As the whole society was under menace of expulsion before the end of 1642, they took the precaution, before quitting the College, of concealing the rest of the plate, as well as the chapel organ. This organ had been introduced in 1634 by the Master, Richard Sterne, who was Archbishop Laud’s chaplain, and had actively promoted his plans for the re-organisation of church ritual in the University. It was a small chamber instrument, easily transportable. When the new society, consisting of Presbyterians introduced by the Earl of Manchester, entered the College in January, 1643, they noted in the Treasury Book that they could only discover three pieces of plate. Entries in the Bursar’s Book in the year 1652 record that the rest of the plate was discovered in that year, and at a rather later date the organ was brought to light.
Some further notes respecting the Chapel in Commonwealth days will serve to explain certain points in the history which I have been able to unravel. The older of the two existing bells in the tower was cast by Christopher Gray in 1659. It took the place of another which was of pre-Reformation date and had probably served the Nunnery of Saint Radegund. This was a heavy tenor bell, and had apparently belonged to a set of four, named after the evangelists. It bore the emblem of Saint Mark, a lion, and the inscription in ancient lettering—