CHAPTER II
THE EVENING OF JUNE 30th, 1688
Before entering his sedan, Lord Sunderland gently bade the chairman carry him round the back ways; that strange quantity, the People, that every statesman must use, fear, and obey, was abroad, roused and dangerous to-night, and my lord's diplomacy moved delicately among high places but never came into the street to handle the crowd; he could lead, control, cajole kings and courtiers, deal with continents on paper, but he was powerless before the people, who hated him, and whom he did not trouble to understand; he was aristocrat of aristocrat.
He was now the most powerful man in the three kingdoms, and, next to Lord Jefferies, the most detested; he was the only considerable noble (the other converts, Dover and Salisbury, being mean men) who had sacrificed his religion to the bigotry of the King; many courtiers to whom all faiths were alike had rejected open apostasy, but my lord had calmly turned renegade and calmly accepted the scorn and comment cast upon his action; but he did not care to risk recognition by the People bent on celebrating a Protestant triumph.
A little before he had gone down to Westminster Hall to give that technical evidence against the bishops, without which they could not have been tried (for he was the only man who had seen Sancroft pass in to the King with the petition, and therefore the only man who could prove "publication in the county of Middlesex"), and it had taken some courage to face the storm that had greeted the King's witness.
My lord did not wish for another such reception, and as he proceeded down the quiet dark streets he looked continuously from the window of his chair in anticipation of some noisy band of Londoners who would challenge his appearance.
And that pale gentleman who peered out on to the bonfire-lit night had soon been dragged from the shadow of the satin-lined sedan and flung down into the gutter and trampled on and murdered, as was Archbishop Sharp by the Covenanters, had he been seen and recognized by some of the bands of youths and men who marched the streets with straw Popes and cardboard devils to cast to the flames.
My lord remarked that in every window, even of the poorest houses, seven candles burned, the tallest in the centre for the Archbishop, the other six for his colleagues; my lord remarked the rockets that leapt above the houses and broke in stars against the deep blue; my lord heard, even as he passed through the quietest alleys, the continuous murmur of the People rejoicing, as one may in a backwater hear the muffled but unsubdued voice of the sea.
When he reached his own great mansion and stepped from the chair, he saw that his house also was illuminated, as was every window in the great square.
He went upstairs to a little room at the back, panelled in walnut and finely furnished, where a lady sat alone.