Lord Derby delayed only long enough to return to Lathom, where he mustered all the men, and got together all the money and ammunition possible “to defend and protect my wife and children against the insolence of the enemy.” Then he embarked for the Isle of Man.
“I left my house and my children,” the Earl concluded, “and all my affairs in England in charge of my wife, a person of virtue and of honour, worthy of her high birth and rank, who thus found herself alone, a stranger in the land, and (so it was thought) destitute of friends, provisions, or arms for defence. It was imagined that Lathom House would be an easy conquest, and a commission from Parliament was procured to subdue it by treaty or by force.”
CHAPTER XI
CHARLOTTE OF DERBY. A JOURNEY TO LONDON IN OLDEN DAYS. QUEEN OF HER HOME. LEARNED LADIES. “HIS REVERENCE.” LADY DERBY SPELLS LANCASHIRE. A DEMAND, AND A REFUSAL. DEFENCE, NOT DEFIANCE. “A NEST OF DELINQUENTS.” THE SERMON TEXT. ORDERS TO MARCH. DEMANDS AND TERMS. SURPRISES. WORTHY OF A PAINTER’S BRUSH. THE ASTUTE ECCLESIASTIC AND ROUNDHEAD FRIEND. MORE CONDITIONS. “LOOK TO YOUR OWN WAYS.” A DAY OF REST. NO SURRENDER
For more than half a score of years following the earliest years of her married life, records concerning Lady Strange are scanty. It is only a short time before she becomes Countess of Derby that she begins to live in history. Till then, she passed the ordinary existence of a highborn lady of her time—those ladies notably who affected home life more than Court life. Her provincial rearing at Thonars, coupled with her simple Huguenot education, no doubt conduced to this preference. Another reason which made a country lady of Charlotte de la Trémoille was probably the remoteness of Lathom from the capital. No doubt she occasionally appeared at Court; but a journey then from the North to London, for women at all events, called for serious consideration before its undertaking. The choice of locomotion lay between a pillion-ride on horseback, in fair weather or foul, as it might be, and a clumsy springless wooden coach occupying a good week upon the road, provided all went well, and that the huge wheels did not wedge themselves into the ruts or the mire of the King’s highway, or the Flanders mares did not stumble or cast a shoe five miles from a smithy. For such were some of the mishaps which befell travellers in the good old times, not to speak of the attacks of highwaymen. Just however, as the blessings of penny post have their shadows, conversely the lack of facilities for travelling had its brighter side. Gentlefolks were apt to be more quiet-minded in those days. The imperative necessity for constant “change” had not come to be recognised. If ladies were troubled with the migraine or the spleen, or ailments of the sort, they had to seek their remedies from the local apothecary, supposing he lived anywhere within hail; or, better, select some mint tea or tansy drink or other herbal concoction out of their own stillrooms; or, better than all, shake off the distemper in a goodly game of “Hoodman Blind,” or “Hunt-the-slipper.” The home of the good wife in any rank was her kingdom, and her daughters were reared in her own creed of domesticity, although it is a heresy to imagine that the women of those times were mere household drudges. Allowing for the scarcity of books, the average of educated matrons and maids stood high. A knowledge of the classics and of the dead languages can be by no means claimed as a monopoly by Girton and Newnham and kindred modern shrines of female erudition. Again and again in the abstracts and chronicles of the time we come upon references to Mistress this and Dame the other, who read and wrote both Greek and Latin, and could quote you a passage from Virgil, or explain you the form of elegiac verse, and above all found real enjoyment in such pursuits; yet, judging from their correspondence, there was little or no pedantry mixed up with their classical knowledge. Such Gorgons of learning as Margaret Duchess of Newcastle do not come into this or any category; they are simply warnings and terrible examples of the “weaker sex.”
There is small question that many of these gentlewomen were indebted for their attainments in classical literature to the chaplains, who continued to be regarded as indispensable part and parcel of the households of the nobility and wealthier gentlemen of the kingdom. Generally speaking, the post was almost a sinecure. The lay members of the Anglican Establishment were not unduly eager to take advantage of the privileges permitted by their spiritual mother, of making confession, or of seeking direction from their clergy; and when my lord’s chaplain had put in an appearance to read morning, and possibly also evening, prayers, and to give thanks at meal-times, he had done pretty well all that was required of him; and indeed was not unfrequently given to understand that his withdrawal from table when the sweets and cakes were placed upon it would not be hindered. His salary might not be princely, but his duties were certainly light; and to a studious-minded man, who did not set undue value on worldly considerations, the house chaplain might enjoy a comfortable learned leisure in the seldom-invaded library of his patron’s mansion. If sons and daughters were included in the domestic circle, he probably was called upon to complete his round of service by giving them instruction; but in those times of hawk and hound and bowling-greens and tennis, average youths were apt to throw learning to the dogs as soon as they dared, and it was the maidens who mostly profited by his instructions. Hence such women as “Sidney’s sister,” Lady Russel, the Countess of Pembroke—who erected a monument to her sometime tutor, Samuel Daniel, the poetic historian—and many more who could at once ply the needle exquisitely, understood brewing and baking and the mysteries of the still-room, and were well-informed “gentlewomen” in the most pronounced acceptance of the term. The style of the correspondence even of those who followed up their classical acquirements less closely, reveals unconsciously as it were, an intimacy with the ground-work, so that through quaintnesses and archaic expressions the educated mind shines distinctly; and beside those old letters and pieces of composition the scrawl of many a latter-day college and school miss who owns a smattering of half a dozen ologies, would make a sorry figure, with its misbegotten face.
This is the case with the letters of the Countess of Derby. In her there was not the slightest trace of précieuse taint; her mode of expression is as clear as it is elegant and eloquent. To be sure, after twenty years’ residence in England, we find her spelling Lancashire Lenguicher, for which she deserves no quarter; but this appalling exception only proves the rule of her graceful diction.
That Charlotte de la Trémoille however, while possessing such command of her pen, was preeminently a woman of ready wit and of prompt action, the great crisis in her stormy life amply testified. Lord Derby had scarcely set foot in the Isle of Man when a message reached the Countess at Lathom House from Lord Holland, the Parliamentary governor of Manchester, requiring her to accede to the conditions which he offered her, or to surrender Lathom House. Her reply was given without loss of time. It did not become her, she said, to give up her house, nor to purchase repose at the price of honour. That was the answer which Lord Holland’s deputy took back. The Countess, nevertheless, was conscious of her weakness. The supply of provisions and of ammunition within the walls of the house was utterly inadequate for withstanding a siege. More than all, it was not sufficiently garrisoned. Lady Derby therefore, offered no defiance; she sought only leave to defend herself and her household, by retaining a company of her own men of the Royalist party for protection against the molestation of the Parliamentary soldiery; but leaving the estate and the surrounding park at their mercy. Consent to this request was grudgingly accorded. “Thus she remained through eight months, a prisoner in her own domain,” says her biographer, “rarely leaving the house for fear of meeting some affront, deprived of her revenues, blamed alike by friends and foes; by these, for not having defended possessions and liberty; by those, for not yielding up the house as she had the surrounding estate; but she waited with patience for the moment when she might openly resist, working unceasingly and secretly at collecting provisions and ammunition; one by one getting in the men and barrels of powder under cover of the night, repressing the zeal of her garrison, which burned to revenge the insults she daily received, and in all ways silently preparing for the siege which she anticipated. A noble patience which, in such a high heart as Lady Derby’s, called for more courage than even that which she exercised in the midst of the fray itself; the courage of a woman and of a general, which knew how to endure all, while waiting to see how to dare all.” So the still waters ran deep, so under the white ash the fiery coal smouldered and glowed, and despite the keen vigilance of the Parliamentary Colonel Rigby, who was in command of the troops stationed in the neighbourhood, the Countess succeeded in mustering a garrison of three hundred men within those old towered and moated walls, and sufficient provision to sustain it under a lengthy siege. Ammunition was less plentiful, and would have to be husbanded; but throughout defence, not defiance, was the watchword.
The Countess took the command-in-chief; but her want of military experience was supplied by Captain Farmer, a Scottish gentleman, whom she nominated major at the head of six lieutenants chosen from among the neighbouring gentlemen who came to offer their services.