ROMANCE IN HISTORY.
HOW CICELY DANCED BEFORE THE KING.
BY THOMAS ARCHER.
The old manor-house of Sir Christopher Burroughs of Stolham, Norfolk, lay shining in the last rays of the setting sun, on the eve of May Day 1646. The long range of windows along the front of the building between the two buttresses flashed with crimson and gold; for the house faced the south-west, and the brilliant light that shone from the rim of the blood-red cloud behind which the sun was sinking, glowed deep on the diamond panes. But the house was lighted within as well as without. In the large low-ceilinged dining-hall wax candles burned in great silver sconces, and the cloth was laid for supper. In the upper room the gleams that came through the spaces between the heavy curtains showed that there was company there. If any one had gone close to the porch and listened, he could have heard the sound of voices talking loudly, and now and then a laugh, or could have seen the shadows of servants passing to and fro in the buttery just within the great hall; nay, any one going round the corner of the house where there was an angle of the wall of the garden, could have heard from an upper window the sound of a lute playing a slow and stately measure, and if his ears had been very sharp indeed, he would have detected the light footfalls of dancers on the polished oaken floor.
It was an exciting time; for King Charles I and his cavaliers and the army that they commanded had been beaten by Oliver Cromwell and the soldiers of the Parliament at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, and the King had lost all his baggage and his letters and papers. After this Charles had been from place to place with his army, till he reached Oxford, where his council was staying, and from this town he thought he should be able either to get to London or to go northward and join the Scotch army.
But news had just come to Sir Christopher Burroughs that Cromwell and his general, Fairfax, had marched to Newbury, only a mile from Oxford; and though the worthy knight of Stolham was not fighting for the King any more than most of his neighbours in Norfolk were, he was more on the side of the Royal cause than on that of the Parliament; so that the report of the King's danger gave him a good deal of anxiety, and he and his friends and their ladies were talking about it as they waited for the butler to come and tell them that supper was ready. The troubles of the times did not always prevent people from eating and drinking and having merry-makings. The people around Stolham did not care enough for the Royal cause to give up all pleasures; and some of them—friends of Sir Christopher too—were more inclined to side with the Parliament and the Puritan generals, though at present they said very little about it; and Sir Christopher presently called out,—
"Well, we met not to talk of politics or of the King's affairs; so let us to supper, though I cannot but say that I would fain see the ceasing of this strife, and the King with his own again."
"Yes, with his own; but not with that which belongs to his subjects," said a farmer, who had been fined for not paying the taxes which the King had ordered to be forced upon the people without the consent of Parliament.
"Come, come," said Dame Burroughs, laughing and taking the farmer's arm, "we women hear enough of such talk every day in the week; but to-morrow will be May Day, and there will be open house to our friends, and for the lads and lasses, dancing at the May-pole, and a supper in the barn. Let us keep English hearts within us even in these dark times, and make merry as we can."