There is little doubt that it was at the instigation of Erasmus that the priestly party in Basle successfully urged the government authorities to drive Ulrich from the asylum he had temporarily found there. He quietly departed on issue of the command, and took his solitary and painful way to Muhlhausen, where a host of reformers warmly welcomed the tottering skeleton into which had shrunk the once well-knit man. Here his vigor cast aloft its last expiring light. Muhlhausen threw off the papal yoke, but the papist party was strong enough there to raise an insurrection; and rather than endanger the safety of the town, the persecuted scholar and soldier once more walked forth to find a shelter. He reached Zurich in safety. He went at once to the hearth of Zuinglius, who looked upon the terrible spectre in whom the eyes alone showed signs of life; and he could hardly believe that the pope cared for the person, or dreaded the intellect, of so ghostlike a champion as this.
Ulrich, excommunicated, outlawed and penniless, was in truth sinking fast. His hand had not strength to enfold the pommel of his sword. From his unconscious fingers dropped the pen.
“Who will defend me against my calumniators?” asked the yet willing but now incapable man.
“I will!” said the skilful physician, Otto Brunfels; and the cooper’s son stoutly protected the good name of Ulrich, after the latter was at peace in the grave.
The last hours of the worn-out struggler for civil and religious liberty, were passed at Ufnau, a small island in the Lake of Zurich. He had been with difficulty conveyed thither, in the faint hope that his health might profit by the change. There he slowly and resignedly died on the last day of August, 1523, and at the early age of thirty-eight.
A few dearly-loved books and some letters constituted all his property. He was interred on the island, but no monument has ever marked the spot where his wornout body was laid down to repose.
Through life, whether engaged with sword or pen, his absorbing desire was that his memory might be held dear by his survivors. He loved activity, abhorred luxury, adored liberty; and, for the sake of civil and religious freedom, he fought and sang with earnest alacrity. Lyre on arm, and sword in hand, he sang and summoned, until hosts gathered round him, and cheered the burthen of all he uttered. “The die is thrown! I’ve risked it for truth and freedom’s sake.” Against pope and kaiser, priest and soldier, he boldly cried, “Slay my frame you may, but my soul is beyond you!” He was the star that harbingered a bright dawn. His prevailing enemies drove him from his country; the grave which they would have denied him, he found in Switzerland, and “after life’s fitful fever,” the scholar-knight sleeps well in the island of the Zurich-Zee.
From the Zurich-Zee we will now retrace our steps, and consider the Sham Knights.
SHAM KNIGHTS.
Between Tooting and Wandsworth lies a village of some celebrity for its sham knights or mayors—the village of Garrat. The villagers, some century ago, possessed certain common rights which were threatened with invasion. They accordingly made choice of an advocate, from among themselves, to protect their privileges. They succeeded in their object, and as the selection had been originally made at the period of a general election, the inhabitants resolved to commemorate the circumstance by electing a mayor and knighting him at each period of election for a new parliament. The resolution was warmly approved by all the publicans in the vicinity, and the Garrat elections became popular festivities, if not of the highest order, at least of the jolliest sort.