“The taking away of life,” rejoined the miller, “Charles seems to consider as his kingly prerogative.”
“His turn will come at last, Republicans say it shall, Death says it will. And what is a King? The meanest beggar. The poor man may only have one morsel of bread,—the king demands the half of it, and he is not frightened, for all his pride, and by his thoughts of dirt and scab to eat it. He,—a great man! Go to the treasury, and there you will see the widow’s mite, and the starving man’s alms! and Charles puts forth his white hand and takes them!”
“Yea, truly,” said Hans, “I am more independent in my cottage, than Charles in his palace. I earn my bread by labour, but he just puts on a few robes which we have all patched up with our own rags, blows a whistle which we have bought for him, and plays with a toy which he calls a sceptre, and for all this he receives his million.”
“Nay, good friend, you scorn a king too much. A king can work, and deserve all his salary, by ruling well, and peaceably. But as for Charles, he has taken the sword against that country, which he solemnly swore to protect. He sets his royal head up against all the sage senators of the nation. One man laughs at a Parliament! If his father deserved the name of Solomon,—Charles has much more justly earned that of Rehoboam: for under him all the tribes of Israel have revolted. He has bound on the nation, grevious burdens, which cannot be borne, and which he himself could not move, even with his little finger. And as for my poor Lord Strange—of the Derby race—why he’s a black hearted Papist. Were Cromwell to sweep down upon him, the vain nobleman would gladly hie away to the Isle-of-man. I wish no evil to him, but merely pray ‘the Lord rebuke him!’ would that the Eagle which brought a child to the family, were again to descend and take this child wheresoever he lists!”
They walked on together. As they entered Lancaster, they were struck at the unusual stillness and quiet of the streets. There were no games and sports. The doors were shut, and no longer were children sitting on the thresholds. The town seemed deserted, until they came to the church gates, where crowds had assembled, all in earnest conversation. The venerable structure arising to the morning rays from the green hill, near to the castle, seemed like an angel pleading against the uses and employments of the other. They are both, evidently, of the same high antiquity, and standing, also, upon romantic elevations, it might be imagined that they had been founded to oppose each other. The parson, in one of his just similies, had called the mount of the castle—Sinai, of which the flashes and reports of the cannon were thunders and lightnings; whilst he designated the mount of the church—Zion—where his own notes were the still small whisperings of mercy, to listen unto which the assembled tribes came up.
The crowds were gazing intently upon the castle, where the sentinels had been doubled. A few were gay, and vapoured out jests against the enemy, in the cavalier style of affected blasphemy and dissipation.
“So,” said one whose hat was shaped in the fashion of one of the turrets of the castle, high and tapering, but foppishly off the true perpendicular, and who was lord of a neighbouring mansion, “those cannons peer out from the loopholes in front like the piercing eyes of a buxom damsel at the window, ogling and smiling. They’ll riddle the breeches of the enemy. The governor assured me, yesterday, that as the roundheads are so fond of Scripture, whenever they come, he shall put a whole Bible in the mouth of the cannon, thus to quiet them in the name of the Lord, and give them holy promise, precept, and threat, line upon line, all at once. They shall be left to digest them at their leisure.”
“Good, good, ha, ha,” replied a neighbour cavalier, “but then it will scarcely be the Book of Life, you know.”
“Nay,” was the rejoinder, “you are out there. Come, let us reason together. The Bible is the sword of the Spirit, it can kill, especially if it were bound in a lead case, and thrown with fury. It is the savour of death unto death, as they themselves would say. Savour! aye there will be a pretty strong savour of powder on its pages! Nol himself, although he had three warts at the end of his nose, instead of one at the side, would smell it!”
“Could not the Royal Book of Sports,” slily said Sir Robert with a smile of scorn on his aged features, “of which his present Majesty has printed a new edition, be substituted in its place?”