The Garden of God.
I’m kneeling at the threshold, aweary, faint, and sore;
I’m waiting for the dawning, for the opening of the door;
I’m waiting till the Master shall bid me rise and come
To the glory of His presence, the gladness of His home.
A weary path I’ve travelled, mid darkness, storm, and strife,
Bearing many a burden, contending for my life;
But now the morn is breaking,—my toil will soon be o’er;
I’m kneeling at the threshold, my hand is at the door.
O Lord, I wait Thy pleasure! Thy time and way are best:
But I’m wasted, worn, and weary:—my Father, bid me rest!
Dr Alexander.
The full glory of summer had come at last. Over Southampton Water broke a cloudless August day. The musical cries of the sailors who were at work on the Saint Mary, the James, and the Catherine, in the offing—preparing for the King’s voyage to France—came pleasantly from the distance. From the country farms, girls with baskets poised on their heads, filled with market produce, came into the crowded sea-port town, where the whole Court awaited a fair wind. There was no wind from any quarter that day. Earth and sea and sky presented a dead calm: and the only place which was not calm was the heart of fallen man. For a few steps from the busy gates and the crowded market is Southampton Green, and there, draped in mourning, stands the scaffold, and beside it the state headsman.
All the Court are gathered here. It is a break in the monotony of existence—the tiresome dead level of waiting for the wind to change.
The first victim is brought out. Trembling and timidly he comes—Henry Le Scrope of Upsal, the luckless husband of the Duchess Dowager of York, Treasurer of the Household, only a few days since in the highest favour. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced in twenty-four hours, just a week before. No voice pleads for poor Scrope,—a simple, single-minded man, who never made an enemy till now. He dies to-day—“on suspicion of being suspected” of high treason.
The block and the axe are wiped clean of Scrope’s blood, and the headsman stands waiting for the Sheriff to bring the second victim.
He comes forward calmly, with quiet dignity; a stately, fair-haired man,—ready to die, because ready to meet God. And we know the face of Richard of Conisborough, the finest and purest character of the royal line, the fairest bud of the White Rose. He has little wish to live longer. Life was stripped of its flowers for him four years ago, when he heard the earth cast on the coffin of his pale desert flower. She is in Heaven; and Christ is in Heaven; and Heaven is better than earth. So what matter, though the passage be low and dark which leads up to the gate of the Garden of God? Yet this is no easy nor honourable death to die. No easy death to a man of high sense of chivalrous honour; no light burden, thus to be led forth before the multitude, to a death of shame,—on his part undeserved. Perhaps men will know some day how little he deserved it. At any rate, God knows. And whatever shameful end be decreed for the servant, it can never surpass that of the Master. The utmost that any child of God can suffer for Christ, can never equal what Christ has suffered for him.
And so, calm in mien, willing in heart, Richard of Conisborough went through the dark passage, to the Garden of God. But if ever a judicial murder were committed in this world, it was done that day on Southampton Green, when the blood of the Lollard Prince dyed the dust of the scaffold.
The accusation brought against the victims was high treason. The indictment bore falsehood on its face by going too far. It asserted, not only that they had conspired to raise March to the throne—which might perhaps have been believed; but also that they had plotted the assassination of King Henry—which no one who knew them could believe; that March, taken into their counsels, had asked for an hour to consider the matter, and had then gone straight to the King and revealed the plot—which no one who knew March could believe. The whole accusation was a tissue of improbabilities and inconsistencies. No evidence was offered; the conclusion was foregone from the beginning. So they died on Southampton Green.
Perhaps Henry’s heart failed him at the last moment. For some reason, Richard of Conisborough was spared the last and worst ignominy of a traitor’s death—the exposure of the severed head on some city gate. Henry allowed his remains to receive quiet and honourable burial.