It was steps like these that so roused the scorn and ire of Lord Vere. Had the new monarch been true and upright in his dealings; had he thrown off the fatal yoke of France, and trusted himself to his loyal people as the House of Tudor (with all their faults) had ever been able to do, I think that even the gentle pleadings of Mistress Mary would scarce have served to turn him back from that loyalty to the crown which was his as by natural inheritance. But this crooked statecraft and treacherous dealing roused all the generous indignation and scorn within him which the young are wont to feel when brought face to face with what is base and false. His father and the elder men might shrug their shoulders, and say that these things had to be; that it was part of the essence of kingcraft; that it was useless to hope for better. But the Viscount could not take this view of the matter. Perhaps he had imbibed more of the opinions and feeling of the towns-folk than he well knew at the time. At any rate, as the days flew by, and we heard more and more of the methods of the new King, a dark frown would often rest upon his brow, and he would say with scornful vehemence, "It is shame that such a man should call himself England's King!"
The dissenters of Taunton—and they were very many—were thrown into great commotion and wrath at the news of the treatment received at the hands of Lord Chief-Justice Jeffreys by that great and good man Richard Baxter, who was brought before him to answer for some rash words spoken in the indignation aroused by the harsh treatment given him for no other offence than declining to use the Book of Common Prayer in public worship. We had just before heard with horror of the inhuman punishment inflicted by the same judge upon Oates and Dangerfield. Not that we felt sympathy with the vile informers who had brought so many innocent persons to the block, but that the ribaldry and cruelty of the judge filled men with horror; and the more so because we knew that this same judge was likely to come again to the West Country for the autumn assizes, and that should any luckless dissenter be brought before him here, he might make up his mind to look for neither justice nor mercy from such a judge. The account of the insults and brutal language to which this aged divine and his friends and advocates were subjected by Lord Jeffreys made the blood boil in the veins of those who read and those who heard. No jury save one chosen by the miserable Sheriffs of London, mere tools in the hand of the government, would have dared to return a verdict of guilty. And when it was known that Jeffreys would have had the good old man whipped at the cart's tail through London, had it not been that for once he was overborne by his brethren on the bench, a sense of horror and loathing arose in the minds of honest and merciful men, not only against the wicked Judge himself, but against the King who could smile approval on such a debauched servant, and actually associate him with Lord Guildford, the Keeper of the Seals, with the evident intention of promoting him still higher if he continued to go about his work in the same way.
The elections and the coronation all added to the dismay of the Protestant party. It was asserted that the King had so greatly shortened the service that it was most meagre and insufficient, and that this was plainly due to his Popish reluctance to take part in any function of the church he had sworn to uphold and revere. His parsimony was bitterly and scornfully commented upon; for the same spirit of greed which had made him refuse the usual splendid obsequies to the late King (so that men spoke of King Charles as having received "the burial of an ass"), caused him to do away with much of the pageantry of his own coronation, and greatly was this resented by the people, who were by no means too friendly towards him from the beginning.
We of Taunton heard these stories with a species of sombre joy. There was more afoot in the city just now than I knew at the time. My uncle kept me busily employed reading and telling the news. I still continued to take the news-letter into Miss Blake's house and read it to the ladies there. I was often sent errands hither and thither into the country, and kept more busy than I had ever been before; and though I was dimly aware that much was seething below the surface in the hearts of our towns-folk, I was not at all certain whither it was tending.
The elections to which I have alluded took place in May, and the returns were most wonderfully against our wishes, and in favour of the Tory and Court party. The King was said to have got just that sort of packed Parliament which he desired, and would in all probability keep it all through his reign. This was a heavy blow to some amongst us, who had hoped that the leaven working through the land would have acted differently. But at least if disappointed, we knew now what to expect. Such a Parliament as ours would be little better than a tool in the hand of a tyrant monarch. Some small protection it might be against the encroachments of arbitrary power, but so small that it was better to hope nothing from it.
I must not close this chapter (which I fear has been but a dull one; only these things have to be made something clear, or what follows cannot well be understood) without some mention of a piece of work going on within the walls of Miss Blake's establishment, which was destined to bring Taunton almost as much fame as anything that happened within its environs during the stirring days to come.
I had noted that immediately upon the death of the King, whenever I had gone to read to the ladies in the parlour, they were deeply engrossed upon some large pieces of silken embroidery work, something different from anything I had seen in their hands before.
Mistress Mary's was on a large and more gorgeous scale than those of the others, and it was always the same; whilst Miss Blake's and Mrs. Musgrave's varied continually, as they seemed to be putting in the outlines of a pattern which other hands would fill up.
But Mistress Mary's steadily grew and grew, and although always carefully covered up, yet revealed much gold and crimson raised work, and altogether began to have such a wonderfully gorgeous effect that I could not keep my eyes from straying to it again and again as I sat and talked. Busy as she was, I saw that she noted these glances, and one day just before I was about to leave she gave me one of her rare sweet smiles, and said,—
"Come, Dicon, thou needst not eat thine heart out in curiosity. I have good reason to know that thou art to be trusted. I will show thee my work." A flush mantled her face as she unpinned and unfolded it, and she added, with a sudden light in her eyes, "It is a banner for my Lord of Monmouth, when kind Providence sends him hither as our deliverer."