The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel Jack

by Daniel Defoe

But this was too much for her the other way, and now she was so far overcome with my yielding to her that, had she not got vent to her passion by the most vehement crying, she must have died in my arms; and I was forced to let her go and set her down in a chair, where she cried for a quarter of an hour before she could speak a word.

When she was come to herself enough to talk again, I told her we must consider of a method how to bring this to pass, and that it must not be done by publishing there that she was my wife before, for that would expose us both, but that I would openly marry her again. This she agreed was very rational, and accordingly, about two months after, we were married again, and no man in the world ever enjoyed a better wife or lived more happy than we both did for several years after.

And now I began to think my fortunes were settled for this world, and I had nothing before me but to finish a life of infinite variety, such as mine had been, with a comfortable retreat, being both made wiser by our sufferings and difficulties, and able to judge for ourselves what kind of life would be best adapted to our present circumstances, and in what station we might look upon ourselves to be most completely happy.

But man is a short-sighted creature at best, and in nothing more than in that of fixing his own felicity, or, as we may say, choosing for himself. One would have thought, and so my wife often suggested to me, that the state of life that I was now in was as perfectly calculated to make a man completely happy as any private station in the world could be. We had an estate more than sufficient, and daily increasing, for the supporting any state or figure that in that place we could propose to ourselves or even desire to live in; we had everything that was pleasant and agreeable, without the least mortification in any circumstances of it; every sweet thing, and nothing to embitter it; every good, and no mixture of evil with it; nor any gap open where we could have the least apprehensions of any evil breaking out upon us. Nor indeed was it easy for either of us, in our phlegmatic, melancholy notions, to have the least imagination how anything disastrous could happen to us in the common course of things, unless something should befall us out of the ordinary way of Providence, or of its acting in the world.

But, an unseen mine blew up all this apparent tranquillity at once; and though it did not remove my affairs there from me, yet it effectually removed me from them and sent me a-wandering into the world again—a condition full of hazards, and always attended with circumstances dangerous to mankind, while he is left to choose his own fortunes and be guided by his own short-sighted measures.

I must now return to a circumstance of my history which had been past for some time, and which relates to my conduct while I was last in England.

I mentioned how my faithful wife Moggy, with her tears and her entreaties, had prevailed with me not to play the madman and openly join in the rebellion with the late Lord Derwentwater and his party when they entered Lancashire, and thereby, as I may say, saved my life. But my curiosity prevailed so much at last that I gave her the slip when they came to Preston, and at least thought I would go and look at them, and see what they were likely to come to.

My former wife’s importunities, as above, had indeed prevailed upon me from publicly embarking in that enterprise and joining openly with them in arms; and by this, as I have observed, she saved my life to be sure, because I had then publicly espoused the rebellion, and had been known to have been among them, which might have been as fatal to me afterwards, though I had not been taken in the action, as if I had.

But when they advanced and came nearer to us to Preston, and there appeared a greater spirit among the people in their favour, my old doctor, whom I mentioned before, who was a Romish priest, and had married us, inspired me with new zeal, and gave me no rest till he obliged me, with only a good horse and arms, to join them the day before they entered Preston, he himself venturing in the same posture with me.

I was not so public here as to be very well known, at least by any one that had knowledge of me in the country where I lived; and this was indeed my safety afterwards, as you will soon hear. But yet I was known too among the men, especially among the Scots, with some of whom I had been acquainted in foreign service. With these I was particularly conversant, and, passing for a French officer, I talked to them of making a select detachment to defend the pass between Preston and the river and bridge, upon maintaining which, as I insisted, depended the safety of the whole party.