One of the first men he saw in the morning was Edward Wood, whom he had helped on his way from Oxford. This young man had been much more fortunate than Inglesant, for he had come on foot without arms, and he had succeeded in getting a good horse and accoutrements.
"You are much more lucky than I am," said Inglesant; "I have lost my horses and servants and all my arms, and am beaten and wounded, as you see, till I can scarcely stand, while you seem to have made your fortune."
"I shall certainly get a commission," said the young man, who was only eighteen, and certainly was very much pleased with himself; "but never mind, Mr. Inglesant," he continued patronizingly, "it is your first battle, as it is mine, and you have no doubt learnt much from it that will be useful to you."
It had been one of the principal parts of Inglesant's training to avoid assumption himself, and to be amused with it in others, so he took his patronage meekly, and wished him success on his return, to Oxford, where he really was made an officer in the King's service soon after.
Soon after he was gone Inglesant found his brother, and with him his own servants, with an additional horse they had managed to secure, with which he replaced the one he had lost; and the next morning he rode with the Palsgrave into Keinton, where they surprised the rear of the Parliamentary army, and took much spoil of the arms and ammunition, and many wounded officers and other prisoners; but his wound being very painful, and being sick and weary of the sight of fighting, and especially of plundering, he left the Prince in Keinton and returned to Oxford, where he was very glad to get back to his pleasant rooms in Wadham. After the King had wasted his time in taking Banbury and Broughton Castle, he marched to Oxford with his army, where he was received with demonstrations of joy, and stayed some days.
After the King had rested a short time at Oxford, he proceeded to march to London; but Inglesant did not accompany him. The blows he had received about the head, together with his wound and the excitement he had gone through, brought on a fever which kept him in his rooms for some time. The Jesuit stayed with him as long as he could, but many other of Inglesant's friends at Oxford showed him great kindness. When he recovered he found himself, to his great surprise, something of a hero. Though, as we have seen, few men could have done less at Edgehill than Inglesant did, or have had less influence on the event of the day, yet, as he had been in the charge of the Prince's horse, and also in the rout of the foot guards, and had been wounded in both, and above all was, especially with the ladies, something of a favourite, of whom no one objected to say a good word, he gained a decided reputation as a soldier. It was indeed reported and believed at Little Gidding that he had performed prodigies of valour, had saved the King's life several times, and retrieved the fortunes of the day when they were desperate. In some respects this reputation was decidedly inconvenient to him; he was looked upon as a likely man to be in all foraging parties and in expeditions of observation sent out to trace the marchings and countermarchings of the enemy. Now, as he was pledged to the Jesuit not to expose himself to unnecessary danger, these expeditions were very troublesome to him, besides taking him away from the studies to which he was anxious to apply himself, and from the company of the leaders of both the Churchmen and Papists, to obtain the acquaintance and confidence of whom he still applied himself, both from inclination and in accordance with the Jesuit's wish. It is true, however, that in these expeditions about the country he formed several friendships of this kind, which might afterwards be useful.
CHAPTER IX.
The King returned to Oxford in December, and the Court was established at Christ Church College. There has perhaps never existed so curious a spectacle as Oxford presented during the residence of the King at the time of the civil war. A city unique in itself became the resort of a Court under unique circumstances, and of an innumerable throng of people of every rank, disposition, and taste, under circumstances the most extraordinary and romantic. The ancient colleges and halls were thronged with ladies and courtiers; noblemen lodged in small attics over baker's shops in the streets; soldiers were quartered in the college gates and in the kitchens; yet, with all this confusion, there was maintained both something of a courtly pomp, and something of a learned and religious society. The King dined and supped in public, and walked in state in Christ Church meadow and Merton Gardens and the Grove of Trinity, which the wits called Daphne. A Parliament sat from day to day; service was sung daily in all the Chapels; books both of learning and poetry were printed in the city; and the distinctions which the colleges had to offer were conferred with pomp on the royal followers, as almost the only rewards the King had to bestow. Men of every opinion flocked to Oxford, and many foreigners came to visit the King. There existed in the country a large and highly intelligent body of moderate men, who hovered between the two parties, and numbers of these were constantly in Oxford,—Harrington, the philosopher, the King's friend, Hobbes, Lord Falkland, Lord Paget, the Lord Keeper, and many others.
Mixed up with these grave and studious persons, gay courtiers and gayer ladies jostled old and severe divines and college heads, and crusty tutors used the sarcasms they had been wont to hurl at their pupils to reprove ladies whose conduct appeared to them at least far from decorous. Christmas interludes were enacted in Hall, and Shakespeare's plays performed by the King's players, assisted by amateur performers; and it would have been difficult to say whether the play was performed before the curtain or behind it, or whether the actors left their parts behind them when the performance was over, or then in fact resumed them. The groves and walks of the colleges, and especially Christ Church meadow and the Grove at Trinity, were the resort of this gay and brilliant throng; the woods were vocal with song and music, and love and gallantry sported themselves along the pleasant river banks. The poets and wits vied with each other in classic conceits and parodies, wherein the events of the day and every individual incident were pourtrayed and satirized. Wit, learning, and religion joined hand in hand as in some grotesque and brilliant masque. The most admired poets and players and the most profound mathematicians became "Romancists" and monks, and exhausted all their wit and poetry and learning in furthering their divine mission, and finally, as the last scenes of this strange drama came on, fell fighting on some hardly-contested grassy slope, and were buried on the spot, or in the next village churchyard, in the dress in which they played Philaster, or the Court garb in which they wooed their mistress, or the doctor's gown in which they preached before the King, or read Greek in the schools.
This gaiety was much increased the next year, when the Queen came to Oxford, and the last happy days of the ill-fated monarch glided by. It was really no inapt hyberbole of the classic wits which compared this motley scene to the marriage of Jupiter and Juno of old, when all the Gods were invited to the feast, and many noble personages besides, but to which also came a motley company of mummers, maskers, fantastic phantoms, whifflers, thieves, rufflers, gulls, wizards, and monsters, and among the rest Crysalus, a Persian Prince, bravely attended, clad in rich and gay attire, and of majestic presence, but otherwise an ass; whom the Gods at first, seeing him enter in such pomp, rose and saluted, taking him for one worthy of honour and high place; and whom Jupiter, perceiving what he was, turned with his retinue into butterflies, who continued in pied coats roving about among the Gods and the wiser sort of men. Something of this kind here happened, when wisdom and folly, vice and piety, learning and gaiety, terribly earnest even to death and light frivolity, jostled each other in the stately precincts of Parnassus and Olympus.