Yet what was this Charles, warm-hearted and generous, or proud, dictatorial, and utterly unreasonable, holding the divine right of kings so far above the rights of his people that they were forced to lay low his head? Which view is the correct one?—for with him, as with all others of history, there seems a doubt. In fact doubts are being cast upon the pages of history from all sides to-day. Writers make Lucretia and Cæsar Borgia far different from the scribes of a century ago, and possessed of no desire to assist people to a better world. She, for instance, is now held to have been a model wife and loving mother. Also we read that Richard of England was not deformed, either in person or character, but because of the very doubtful legitimacy of the sons of Edward IV. was the real heir to the crown, and so summoned by Parliament,—that he did not murder or have murdered Henry VI., the Duke of Clarence, or the Princes, and that the latter lived at his court many years—in fact that he was no such character as we have been raised to believe; and, more marvellous to relate, that the real villain of that period was Henry VII. of blessed memory,—that he and he alone imported historians from Italy who at the royal bidding wrote history as it has been read for so many centuries, that he was the murderer of both King and Princes and of the Duke of Clarence. Surely we shall shortly have the Jew of Venice made a generous character, possessing deep love for all Christians, whilst the eighth Henry will repose in a glorious effulgency as a model husband as Froude would have us believe. But they are all of the so very long ago that they appear to us like figures in a painted window, brilliant or sombre, as the sunshine or shadows of history illumine or cast them into shade, and it is only when we see such a thing as this glove of Charles or a half-worn shoe of the Scottish Queen that they walk out upon us and take their places as real men and women.
And so one feels near the presence of that unfortunate Stuart King, as these belongings of his lie spread out before us. What a small man he was! These things might be worn by a boy of fifteen,—a delicate boy of slight frame. They are of great value as such things go, which reminds one that the world holds much of great value of its dead kings and queens. It is estimated that the relics of Mary Stuart collected together at the tercentenary in Peterborough in 1887 amounted in value to sixty thousand pounds sterling, three hundred thousand dollars of our money, and yet she was often forced to write imploring letters to her "brother of France" for her revenues from her fair duchy of Touraine, in order that she might keep out the cold in her English prisons, and whilst she was the guest of her "good sister Elizabeth."
Did her grandson wear these silks and velvets during those sad days at St. James's Palace? He would almost require the attendance of a body servant to carry that watch and surely no man who appeared in such ruffles and high-heeled fancy shoes to-day could induce an army to fight for him, be he the anointed of God or not,—but then, that clothes do not make the man was certainly proven in his case, when "a man was a man for a' that," the Puritans to the contrary notwithstanding. I doubt if he thought much of his fuss and feathers or paid as much attention to them as said Puritans did to their sober browns, or some rulers of the Europe of to-day do to their gaudy plumage. If Charles was vain, it was with a vanity we can pardon, and far different from that which floods the world with a string of portraits in different uniforms and poses—but it is late and even the shades of royalty cannot keep us awake longer; still as we take our candles and move upwards through the shadowy hallway I seem to hear the stealthy fall of following footsteps and turn suddenly, wondering—wondering.
Photo by W. Leonard
Bannow House