The Broken Font: A Story of the Civil War, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Moyle Sherer

The cloisters and the groves on the banks of the Isis were no longer the solemn and silent haunts of peaceful, meditative scholars,—they now echoed to the harsh beating of drums; and the young students, instead of pacing slowly in their black academic habits, were dressed in the garb of soldiers, with blue scarfs suspended across their bodies from the shoulder, and with pikes in their hands. At a convocation held in July the University had, with one consent, voted his Majesty all the public money which they had in hand; and, besides this, several of the colleges, as well as private persons, sent in their plate and their ready money also. This act of the convocation, however, was immediately pronounced null and void by Parliament; and any such actions were forbidden for the future. This proclamation pronounced those criminal who had been concerned in advising this diversion of the treasures of their colleges, and commanded each society to secure its own. It also ordered that the Dean of Christ-church, the President of Magdalen, and the Provost of Queen’s, who had been most active in this matter, should be seized and brought to the bar of the House to answer for their conduct. But this could not be accomplished, because the High Sheriff and the Mayor of Oxford, acting upon the commission of array, had called out the train bands of the city, and the scholars had taken arms. To support this show of resistance, Sir John Biron marched to Oxford, and took possession of it for the King. Sir John had with him about five hundred horse; and thus he secured the contributions for the King’s service, and was enabled, though compelled soon afterwards to retire from the city, to carry a considerable portion of it safe to the royal quarters. It was during the period that Oxford was thus held for the King that Sir Oliver and his family came there to reside. They were visited by several of the stanch Royalists and their ladies: these visitors consisted for the most part of the troubled and alarmed clergy, who were connected by office with the University. To some of their wives it was a delight to have a new family into whose ears they might pour all the bitter scandals against the Nonconformists, and others of the Parliament party, which they eagerly collected and minutely detailed. Nor was there any deficiency in spirit; for some of them went so far as to declare that, happen what might, nothing should make them stir from their own houses; that their husbands might run away if they pleased; but no canting Roundheads should ever eject them from their own arm chairs; and generally concluded by observing, that if their husbands were not such a poor set of creatures, they would drive the odious Lord Say out of the county; and that, as it was, there was no chance whatever of his getting into the city. Then they reckoned upon their fingers,—the five hundred men of Sir John Biron, and the four hundred pikes of the train bands, and the two hundred scholars with pikes, and the fifty doctors and masters of arts that had horses and pistols, and spirit to use them. Mrs. Veal, the lady of a doctor of Christ-church, was the most eloquent in these invectives, and the most exact in these calculations; and, to her honour be it spoken, she kept her word; and when the day of trial came, and Oxford was abandoned to the Parliamentarians, she would not accompany her husband, but remained obstinately fixed in her own arm-chair, and most successfully defended her house with a scolding tongue.

Amid all these bitter and uncongenial elements Katharine Heywood was perplexed and troubled, and found little rest for her spirit, save that which passeth man’s understanding, and that which she found in the affectionate friendship of Jane Lambert. Nothing more cruelly jarred her feelings than the language in which, by common consent, almost all around her seemed to talk of the Parliamentarians. Her own loyalty was firm and pure, but it was of an exalted character; and under no circumstances could it have stooped to so low a hatred of the persons, or to so mean an opinion of the motives, of the King’s enemies, as that generally entertained and daily expressed before her. She did every thing which it was in the power of a daughter to do for the comfort and tranquillity of her father, but her efforts were not very successful.

As soon as it became known that the Lord Say was advancing upon Oxford with superior forces, and that Sir John Biron was about to retire upon Worcester, nothing would pacify Sir Oliver but an endeavour to accompany that movement. However, the means of conveyance were not to be obtained for money, and he was compelled to remain where he was.

On the morning of the 14th of September the greatest possible consternation prevailed in the city; and early in the forenoon a strong body of horse, headed by the Lord Say, marched into the University. His first act was to cause all the colleges to be strictly searched for plate and arms, and to secure whatever plate had not been hidden, or despatched under escort of Sir John Biron. He also broke into their treasuries, but found little in them, save in that of Christ-church, where, after a day’s labour, and breaking through a plastered wall to an iron chest, he discovered in the bottom thereof a groat and a halter;—a pleasant surprize for a man of his morose temper, and provided for him by the wit of the doctor’s lady who has been mentioned above.

It was not till late in the evening of the 14th that Sir Oliver and his daughter got any distinct information of what was passing. Their street was retired; not a soldier entered it; nor a sound, save that of trumpets from the market-place, reached their anxious ears. The worthy knight forbade Katharine and Jane to leave the house, and old Philip the butler was not at all inclined to volunteer any inquiries. But the Flemish painter had been absent from a very early hour; on which account Sir Oliver charitably pronounced him a Dutch Presbyterian rascal, who had been acting as a spy for the Roundheads. It was in vain that Katharine observed that he was an artist employed by a college upon its chapel windows: the knight pronounced him a foreign scoundrel, gone to join in the plunder. Towards evening the painter returned, and came to their apartment, to tell them in his broken stammering language, with tears in his eyes, that a fine young officer, who spoke Dutch, had saved all his painted glass from being broken, and had put a safeguard at all the chapels.

The officer of whom the painter related this was no other than Francis Heywood. The throb of Katharine’s heart told her so at the instant, but it was confirmed to her afterwards.

It was the habit of Katharine and Jane to walk daily in the afternoon in the fair meadows on the banks of the river to which they had quick and easy access, from the retired quarter in which they dwelt, without passing through any of the more public streets of the town.

Their friendship had strengthened under all the adverse and anxious circumstances of the times; and the piety of Jane had become so deepened by her constant intercourse with Katharine that their spirits held communion together in these walks, whether they conversed or were silent.

The arrival of the Parliamentarians put a stop to these rambles for the first few days after they took possession of the city; but, by the strictness of their discipline and the quietness of their behaviour towards the citizens of the place, confidence was soon restored, and the people went about the streets and ventured into the neighbouring fields as usual.

It was on a fine glowing afternoon, about a week after the entrance of Lord Say’s horsemen, that Katharine and Jane went forth together to their favourite meadow. The sun had such power, that, instead of keeping the open and more public path, they confined themselves to a short and shady promenade beneath a few stately trees on the margin of the river. No one chanced to be in the meadow but themselves: the glorious hues of autumn were already beginning to tinge the tops of trees, and the hedge rows were blushing with bird fruit. In the distance, too, on the low hills, the naked and yellow stubble of the corn fields told that the harvest was ended, and the season of the last fruits was come. The friends were carrying forward their hopes and fears as to the future, and were comforting themselves with the vain hope that, even yet, before the fall of the leaf, some change for the better might come.