JOHN INGLESANT

A Romance

by

John Henry Shorthouse

[Greek: Agapetoí, nûn tékna Theoû esmen, kaì
oúpo ephanerothe tí esómetha.]

VOL. I.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1881

Printed by R & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.

TO

RAWDON LEVETT, ESQ.

MY DEAR LEVETT,

I dedicate these volumes to you, that I may have an
opportunity of calling myself your friend.

J. HENRY SHORTHOUSE.

LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON,

May 1, 1881.

Memoirs of the Life

OF

MR. JOHN INGLESANT

SOMETIME SERVANT TO KING CHARLES I.

WITH

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING BY
THE JESUITS

AND

A PARTICULAR RELATION OF THE SECRET SERVICES
IN WHICH HE WAS ENGAGED

ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE LATE
IRISH REBELLION

WITH

SEVERAL OTHER REMARKABLE PASSAGES AND OCCURRENCES.

ALSO

A HISTORY OF HIS RELIGIOUS DOUBTS AND EXPERIENCES

AND OF THE MOLINISTS OR QUIETISTS IN ITALY
IN WHICH COUNTRY HE RESIDED FOR MANY YEARS

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF

THE ELECTION OF THE LATE POPE

AND

MANY OTHER EVENTS AND AFFAIRS.

JOHN INGLESANT.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

During my second year at Oxford I became acquainted with a Roman Catholic gentleman, the eldest son of a family long resident on the borders of Shropshire towards Wales. My friend, whose name was Fisher, invited me to his home, and early in my last long vacation I accepted his invitation. The picturesque country was seen to great advantage in the lovely summer weather. That part of Shropshire partakes somewhat of the mountain characteristics of Wales, combined with the more cultivated beauties of English rural scenery. The ranges of hills, some of which are lofty and precipitous, which intersect the country, form wide and fertile valleys which are watered by pleasant streams. The wide pastures are bordered by extensive plantations covering the more gradual ascents, and forming long lines along the level summits. We had some miles to drive even from the small station on the diminutive branch line of railway which had slowly conveyed us the last dozen miles or so of our journey. At last, just at the foot of one of the long straight hills, called Edges in that country, we came upon my friend's house, seen over a flat champaign of pasture land, surrounded by rows of lofty trees, and backed by fir and other wood, reaching to the summit of the hill behind it. It was an old and very picturesque house, jumbled together with the additions of many centuries, from the round tower-like staircase with an extinguisher turret, to a handsome addition of two or three years ago. Close by was the mutilated tower of a ruined priory, the chancel of which is used as the parish church. A handsome stone wing of one story, built in the early Gothic style, and not long completed, formed the entrance hall and dining-room, with a wide staircase at the back. The hall was profusely hung with old landscapes and family portraits. After a short introduction to my friend's family, we were soon assembled in the newly finished dining-room, with its stone walls and magnificent overhanging Gothic fireplace. The dinner party consisted of my friend's father and mother, his two sisters, and a Roman Catholic clergyman, the family chaplain and priest of a neighbouring chapel which Mr. Fisher had erected and endowed. The room was hung entirely with portraits, several of them being ecclesiastics in different religious costumes, contrasting, to my eyes, strangely with the gay cavaliers and the beautiful ladies of the Stuarts' Court, and the not less elaborately dressed portraits of the last century, and with those of my host and hostess in the costume of the Regency. I was struck with the portrait which happened to be opposite me, of a young man with a tonsured head, in what appeared to me to be a very simple monk's dress, and I asked the Priest, a beautiful and mild-looking old man, whom it was intended to represent.

"A singular story is attached to that portrait," he said, "which, it may surprise you to learn, is not that of a—a member of our communion. It is the portrait of a young Englishman named Inglesant, a servant of King Charles the First, who was very closely connected with the Roman Catholics of that day, especially abroad, and was employed in some secret negotiations between the King and the Catholic gentry; but the chief interest connected with his story consists in some very remarkable incidents which took place abroad, connected with the murderer of his only brother—incidents which exhibit this young man's character in a noble and attractive light. He is connected with Mr. Fisher's family solely through the relations of his brother's wife, but, singularly, he is buried not far from here, across the meadows. In the latter years of his life he purchased an estate in this neighbourhood, though it was not his native country, and founded an almshouse or rather hospital, for lunatics, in the chapel in which his tomb is still standing. That portrait, in which he appears in the dress of a novice," he continued, turning to the one before me, "was taken in Rome, when he was residing at the English college, where he certainly was received, as he appears to have been generally when abroad, into full communion with us. As a contrast to it, I will show you another in the drawing-room, by Vandyke, which, though it really was intended for his brother, yet may equally well represent himself, as, at that period, the two brothers are said to have been so exactly alike that they could not be known apart. On his tomb at Monk's Lydiard, as you may see if you incline to take the trouble to walk so far—and it is a pleasing walk—he is represented in his gown of bachelor of civil law, a degree which he received at Oxford during the civil war, and he is there also represented with tonsured head. I have often thought," continued the Priest, musingly, "of arranging a considerable collection of papers referring to this gentleman's story, which is at present in the library; or at least of writing out a plain statement of the facts; but it would be better done, perhaps, by a layman. I have the authority of these young ladies," he continued, with a smile, turning to the Miss Fishers, "that the story is a more entertaining and even exciting one than the sensational novels of the day, of which, I need not say, I am not a judge."

The young ladies confirmed this as far as their knowledge went; but they had heard only fragments of the story, and were urgent with the clergyman to set about the task. He, however, replied to their entreaties only by a shake of the head; and the ladies soon after left the room.

When we went into the drawing-room, I was eager to see the Vandyke, and was shown a magnificent picture at one end of the room, representing a singularly handsome young man, in a gorgeous satin court dress of the reign of Charles the First, whose long hair and profusion of lace and ornament would probably, in the work of another artist, have produced an unpleasing impression, but, softened by the peculiar genius of Vandyke, the picture possessed that combination of splendour and pathos which we are in the habit of associating only with his paintings. His satin shoes and silk stockings contrasted curiously with the grass on which the cavalier stood, and the sylvan scene around him; and still more so with his dogs and two horses, which were held at some little distance by a page. His face was high and noble, but on closely comparing it—as I did several times—with that of the Monk in the dining-room, I arrived at the conclusion that either the likeness between the brothers was exaggerated, or the expression of the survivor must have altered greatly in after years; for no difference in dress, great as was the contrast between the coarse serge of the novice and the satin of the cavalier, and between the close-cropped tonsured head and the flowing love locks, would account for the greater strength and resolve of the portrait in the dining-room, combined, strangely, as this expression was, with a slightly wild and abstracted look, indicating either religious enthusiasm, or perhaps unsettlement of the reason within; this latter expression being totally wanting in the face of the cavalier.

The next day was Sunday, and I opened my window on a lovely prospect of lawn and water, with the fir woods sweeping up the hill-sides beyond. Walking out in the avenue when I was dressed, I met the family returning from low mass at the chapel. I attended high mass with them at eleven o'clock. The Chapel was picturesquely built higher up in the wood than the house. It had a light and graceful interior, and the coverings of the altar were delicate and white. The exquisite plaintive music, the pale glimmer of the tapers in the morning sunlight, the soothing perfume of the incense, the sense of pathetic pleading and of mysterious awe, as if of the possibility of a Divine Presence, produced its effect on me, as it does, I imagine, on most educated Churchmen; but this effect failed in convincing me (then, as at other times) that there was more under that gorgeous ceremonial than may be found under the simpler Anglican ritual of the Blessed Sacrament. After church, my friend, who had some engagement with the Priest, accepted my assurance that I was fond of solitary walks; and I set off alone on my quest of the tomb of John Inglesant.

I followed a footpath which led direct from the ruined Church near the house, across the small park-like enclosure, into the flat meadows beyond. The shadows of the great trees lay on the grass, the wild roses and honeysuckle covered the hedges, a thousand butterflies fluttered over the fields. That Sunday stillness which is, possibly, but the echo of our own hearts, but which we fancy marks the day, especially in the country, soothed the sense. The service in the morning had not supplied the sacrament to me, but it had been far from being without the sense of worship; and the quiet country in the lovely summer weather, in connection with it, seemed to me then, as often, the nearest foretaste we can gain of what the blissful life will be. As I went on the distant murmur of Church bells came across the meadows, and following a footpath for a couple of miles, I came to the Hospital or Almshouse, standing amid rows of elms, and having a small village attached to it, built probably since its erection. The bells which I had heard, and which ceased a little before I reached the place, were in a curious turret or cupola attached to the Chapel, which formed one side of the court. The buildings were of red brick, faced with stone, in the latest style of the Stuart architecture. The door of the Chapel was wide open, and I entered and dropped into a seat just as the Psalms began. The room was fitted in a style exactly corresponding to the outside; a circular recess at the upper end took the place of chancel, lighted with three windows, which were filled with innumerable small panes of glass. The altar was richly draped; and on it, besides vases of flowers, were two massive candlesticks of an antique pattern, and an old painting, apparently of the Virgin and Child. The lower walls of the chancel and of the whole Chapel were panelled, and the whole had a flat ceiling of panelled oak, painted in the centre with a sun with rays. Partly in the chancel, and partly in the Chapel, the surpliced choir was accommodated in stalls or pews, and the organ and pulpit, in elaborate carved mahogany, completed the interior. There was a good congregation; and from this, and from many tablets on the walls, I gathered that the Chapel was used by the neighbourhood as probably being nearer than the Parish Churches. The soft afternoon light filled the place, gilding the old brass-work, and lighting up the dark carving and the sombre narrow pews. The music was of a very high class, deliciously sung, and I found afterwards that there was an endowment especially for the choir, and that the chaplains were required to be musical. The service bore comparison favourably with the morning's mass, and a short sermon followed. When all was over, and the people were gone out into the sunshine, I began to look for the tomb I had come to see, and the chaplain, having come out of the vestry, and seeming to expect it, I went up and spoke to him. I told him I had walked from Lydiard—my friend's house—to see the tomb of the founder, to which I had been directed by the Roman Catholic gentleman who resided there. He was well acquainted with Father Arnold, he told me, and took me at once to the tomb, which was in a recess by the altar, screened from view by the choir seats. There he lay, sure enough, just as the Priest had told me, carved from head to foot in alabaster, in his gown of bachelor of civil law, and his tonsured head. The sculptor had understood his work; the face was life-like, and the likeness to the portrait was quite perceptible. The inscription was curious—"sub marmore isto Johannes Inglesant, Peccator, usque ad judicium latet, expectans revelationem filiorum Dei."

I told the chaplain what Father Arnold had told me of this man's story, and of the materials that existed for writing it. He had heard of them too, and even examined them.

"The Priest will never write it," he said.

"Why do not you?" I asked.

He laughed. "I am a musician," he said, "not an author. You seem more interested in it than most people; you had better do it."

As I came back across the fields I pondered over this advice; and after dinner I asked the Priest the story. He told me the outline, and the next morning took me into the library, and showed me the papers.

The library at Lydiard is a very curious room below the level of the ground, and in the oldest part of the house. It adjoins the tower with the extinguisher turret, by which there is communication with the bed chambers, and with the leads and garrets at the top of the house. The room was large, and had several closets besides a smaller room beyond, which had no visible communication except into the library; but the Priest showed me a secret doorway and staircase, which, he said, descended into the cellars. Both these rooms and the closets were crammed with books, the accumulation of four hundred years—most of them first editions, and clean as when they came from the binder, but browned and mellowed with age. Early works of the German press, a Caxton, the scarce literature of the sixteenth century—all the books which had once been fashionable—Cornelius Agrippa, and Cardan, two or three editions of the Euphues, folios of Shakespeare and the dramatists, and choice editions of the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, down to our own day. Besides this general literature, there was a large collection of Roman Catholic works and pamphlets, many privately printed at home or published abroad; biographies of Seminary Priests who had suffered death in England, reports of trials, private instructions, and even volumes of private letters, for Lydiard had always been a secure hiding-place for the hunted priests, and more than one had died there, leaving all his papers in the library. No fitter place could exist in which to attempt the task I had already determined to undertake, and I obtained leave of the Priest, promising to make nothing public without his approval. I had the whole vacation before me; too idle and desultory to read for honours, I had always been fond of literature and the classics, and was safe for my degree, and I gave myself up unreservedly to my task. I have endeavoured, as Father Arnold said, to tell a plain story. I have no pretensions to dramatic talent, and I deprecate the reader's criticism. If I have caught anything of the religious and social tone of the seventeenth century, I am more than content.

GEOFFREY MONK, M.A.

CHAPTER I.

When Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was in the zenith of his power, and was engaged in completing the suppression of the smaller monasteries before commencing on the greater,—he had in his service a young gentleman named Richard Inglesant, the son of a knight, and descended from a knightly family, originally of Flanders, who had come into England with the Princess of Hainault. This young man was of an attractive person, a scholar, active and useful in many ways, and therefore a favourite with his master. One evening in the end of June 1537, he was sent for by Cromwell into the great gallery of his magnificent house in Throgmorton Street, where he found his master walking up and down in thought.

"You must be ready to depart at once, Richard," he said, "into Wiltshire. I have in this commission appointed you Visitor of the Priory of Westacre, six miles south of Malmsbury, on the way into Somerset, which they call the Priory in the Wood. The King's Grace is resolved on the suppression of this house, as a priory; but note very carefully what I tell you;—it will be for your guidance. Great interest has been made to his Grace's Highness on behalf of this house, both by many of the gentry dwelling thereabout, and also by the common people by the mouth of the Mayor of Malmsbury. They say the house is without any slander or evil fame; that it stands in a waste ground, very solitary, keeping such hospitality, that except with singular good management it could not be maintained though it had half as much land again as it has, such a number of the poor inhabitants nigh thereunto are daily relieved. The Prior is a right honest man, and well beloved of all the inhabitants therewith adjoining, having with him, in the house, eight religious persons, being priests of right good conversation, and living religiously. They spend their time in writing books with a very fair hand, in making garments for the poor people, in printing or graving. Now the prayer of these people is that the King's Highness shall translate this priory into a college, and so continue as many of the priests as the lands will maintain for the benefit of the neighbours; and the King is much inclined to do this. Now, on the other hand, this house has a proper lodging, where the Prior lay, with a fair garden and an orchard, very mete to be bestowed on some friend of mine, and some faithful servant of the King's Grace. There is no small number of acres ready sown with wheat, the tilthes ordered for barley; the house and grounds are well furnished with plate, stuff, corn, cattle; the woods well saved, and the hedgerows full of timber, as though the Prior had looked for no alteration of his house. I had set mine hand on this house for a friend of mine, but the King's Grace is determined upon this:—if the Prior will surrender the house in a discreet and frank manner, and will moreover, on Sunday next, which is the Feast of the most Precious Blood, after mass, to which all the neighbouring people shall have been called, in his sermon, make mention of the King's title of Supreme Head, and submit himself wholly, in all matters spiritual, to the King's Grace, under Christ, the house shall be continued as a college, and no man therein disturbed, and not so much as an ounce of plate taken, that they may pray God Almighty to preserve the King's Grace with his blessed pleasure. Now I send you on this mission because, if things go as I think they may, I mean this house for you; and there is so much clamour about this business that I will have no more hands in it than I can help. Take two or three of the men with you whom you can trust; but see you fail not in one jot in the course you take with the Prior, for should it come to the King's ears that you had deceived the Prior—and it surely would so come to his Grace—your head would not be your own for an hour, and I should doubt, even, of my own favour with the King."

Richard Inglesant was on horseback before daylight the next morning; and riding by easy stages, arrived at Malmsbury at last, and slept a night there, making inquiries about the way to Westacre. At Malmsbury, and at all the villages where he stopped, he heard nothing but what agreed with what Cromwell had told him; and what he heard seemed to make him loiter still more, for he slept at Malmsbury a second night, and then did not go forward to Westacre till noonday. In the middle of the summer afternoon he crossed the brow of the hilly common, and saw the roofs of the Priory beneath him surrounded by its woods. The country all about lay peaceful in the soft, mellow sunlight; wide slopes of wood, intermixed with shining water, and the quiet russet downs stretching beyond. Richard had sent on a man the day before to warn the Prior, who had been expecting his coming all day. The house stood with a little walled court in front of it, and a gate-house; and consisted of three buildings—a chapel, a large hall, and another building containing the Prior's parlour and other rooms on the ground floor, and a long gallery or dormitory above, out of which opened other chambers; the kitchens and stables were near the latter building, on the right side of the court. The Prior received Inglesant with deference, and took him over the house and gardens, pointing out the well-stocked fish-ponds and other conveniences, with no apparent wish of concealing anything. Richard was astonished at the number of books, not only in the book-room, but also in the Prior's own chamber; these latter the Prior seemed anxious he should not examine. As far as Richard could see, they were, many of them, chemical and magical books. He supped with the Prior in Hall, with the rest of the household, and retired with him to the parlour afterwards, where cakes and spiced wine were served to them, and they remained long together. Inglesant delivered his commission fairly to his host, dwelling, again and again, on every particular, while the Prior sat silent or made but short and inconclusive replies. At last Inglesant betook himself to rest in the guest-chamber, a room hung with arras, opening from the gallery where the monks slept, towards the west; one of his servants slept also in the dormitory near his door. The Prior's care had ordered a fire of wood on the great hearth that lighted up the carved bed and the hunting scene upon the walls. He lay long and could not sleep. All night long, at intervals, came the sound of chanting along the great hall and up the stairs into the dormitory, as the monks sung the service of matins, lauds, and prime. His mind was ill at ease. A scholar, and brought up from boyhood at the Court, he had little sympathy with the new doctrines, and held the simple and illiterate people who mostly followed them in small esteem. He was strongly influenced by that mysterious awe which the Romish system inspires in the most careless, even when it is not strong enough to influence their lives. The mission he had undertaken, and the probable destruction of this religious house, and the expulsion of its inmates for his benefit, frightened him, and threatened him with unknown penalties and terrors hereafter which he dared not face. He lay listlessly on his bed listening to the summer wind, and when at last he fell asleep, it was but a light fitful slumber, out of which he woke ever and anon to hear the distant chanting of the monks, and see by the flickering fire-light the great hounds coursing each other over the walls of his room.

In the morning he heard mass in the chapel, after which the Prior sent a message to explain his absence, informing him that he was gone to Malmsbury to consult with his friends there how he might best serve the King's Grace. All that morning Richard Inglesant sat in the hall receiving the evidence of all who came before him (of whom there was no lack)—of the neighbours, gentry, and country people. He evidently examined them with great care and acuteness, noting down every answer, in a fair clerkly hand, exactly as he received it, neither extenuating anything nor adding the least word. He also in the same report kept an exact account of how he passed his time while at Westacre. There appears—as Cromwell had said—not to have been the least breath of scandal against the Prior or any of the priests in the house. The only report at all injurious to the character of the Prior seems to have been an opinion—oftentimes hinted at by the witnesses—that he was addicted to the study of chemistry and magic; that, besides his occult books, he had in his closet in his chamber a complete chemical apparatus with which he practised alchemy, and was even said to be in possession of the Elixir of Life. These reports Inglesant does not appear to have paid much attention to, probably regarding them as not necessarily coming within the limits of his commission; and, indeed, there is evidence of his having acted with the most exact fairness throughout the investigation, more than once putting questions to the witness, evidently for the purpose of correcting misapprehensions which told against the Prior. After dinner he rode out to the downs to a gentleman who had courteously sent him word that he was coursing with greyhounds: he, however, was not absent from the Priory long, declining the gentleman's invitation to supper. After he had supped he spent the rest of the evening in his own chamber, reading what he calls "Ovidii Nasonis metamorphoseos libri moralizati," an edition of which, printed at Leipsic in 1510, he had found in the Prior's room.

The next forenoon he spent in the same manner as the last, the people flocking in voluntarily to give their evidence in favour of the house. A little after noon the Prior came back, travelling on foot and alone. As he came along he was thinking of the words of the gospel which promise great things to him who gives up houses and land for the Lord's sake.

When he reached the brow of the hill from which he could see the three red-tiled roofs of the Priory peeping out from among the trees, with the gardens and the green meadows, and the cattle seen here and there, he stood long to gaze. The air was soft and yet fresh, and the woods stretching up the rising-grounds about the Priory were wavering and shimmering all over with their myriad rustling leaves, instinct with life and beauty both to the ear and eye; a perpetual change from light to shadow, from the flight of the fleecy clouds, would have made the landscape dazzling but for the green on which the eye dwelt with a sense of rest to the wearied and excited brain. A gentle sound and murmur, as of happy and contented beings, made itself softly felt rather than heard, through the noontide air. "Omnes qui relinquunt patrem, domes, uxorem," said the Prior; but his eyes were so dim that he stumbled as he went on down the hill.

Richard Inglesant and he were some time alone together that evening. Whether the Prior prepared him at all for the course he had determined to pursue, does not appear, but certainly he did not, to any great extent.

The next day was Sunday, being the "Feast of the most Precious Blood"—a Sunday long remembered in that country side. The people, for a score of miles round, thronged to hear the Prior's sermon. The Mayor of Malmsbury was there; but the clergy of the Abbey, it was noticed, were not present. The little Chapel would not hold a tithe of the people—indeed, few more than the gentry and their ladies, who came in great numbers, were allowed admission. Richard Inglesant and the Sheriff had Fald-stools in front of the altar, where they remained kneeling the whole of mass. The doors and windows of the Chapel were opened, that the people outside might assist at the celebration. They stood as thick as they could be packed in the little courtyard, and up the sloping fields around the Priory, listening in silence to the music of the mass; and at the sound of the bell the whole multitude fell on their knees as one man, remaining so for several minutes. Mass being over, the Prior came in procession from the Chapel to where a small wooden pulpit had been set up just outside the gate-house, in front of which seats were placed for the Sheriff and Inglesant, and the chief gentry. The silence was greater than ever, when the Prior, who had changed the gorgeous vestments in which he had celebrated mass, and appeared only as a simple monk, ascended the pulpit and began to preach. The Prior was a great preacher; a small and quiet man enough to look at, when he entered the pulpit he was transfigured. His form grew dignified, his face lighted up with enthusiasm, and his voice, even in the open air, was full and clear, and possessed that magical property of reaching the hearts of all who heard him, now melted into tenderness, and now raised to firm resolve. He began with the text that had haunted his memory the day before, and the first part of his sermon was simply an earnest and eloquent exhortation to follow Christ in preference to anything beside on earth. Then, warming in his subject, he answered the question (speaking that magnificent English tongue that even now rings in the pages of Foxe), Where was Christ? and urging the people to follow Him as He manifested Himself in the Church, and especially in the sacrament of the altar. Then suddenly throwing aside all reserve, and with a rapidity of utterance and a torrent of eloquence that carried his hearers with him, he rushed into the question of the day, brought face to face the opposing powers of the State and Christ, hurled defiance at the former, and while not absolutely naming the King or his council, denounced his policy in the plainest words. Then, amid the swaying of the excited crowd, and a half stifled cry and murmur, he suddenly dropped his voice, pronounced the formal benediction, and shrank back, to all appearance, into the quiet, timid monk.

It is needless to describe the excitement and astonishment of the crowd. The Prior and his procession with difficulty returned to the chapel through the press. The Sheriff and Richard Inglesant, who with the other leading gentry had affected perfect unconsciousness that anything unusual was taking place, entered the hall of the Priory, and the Prior had a message sent into the sacristy that the King's commissioner desired to see him immediately in the parlour.

When the Prior entered, Inglesant was standing upon the hearth; he was pale, and his manner was excited and even fierce.

"You are a bold man, master Prior," he said almost before the other was in the room; "do you know that you have this day banished yourself and all your fellowship into the world without shelter and without help? Nay, I know not but the King's Grace may have you up to answer for this day with your life! Do you know this?"

The Prior looked him steadily in the face, but he was deadly pale, and his manner was humble and cowed.

"Yes, I know it," he said.

"Well," continued the other still more excitedly, "I call you to witness, master Prior, as I shall before the throne of God Almighty, that I have neither hand nor part in this day's work; that you have brought this evil upon yourself by your own deed and choice, by no want of warning and no suddenness on my part, but by your own madness alone."

"It is very true," said the Prior.

"I must to horse," said Inglesant, scarcely heeding him, "and ride post to my lord. It is as much as my head is worth should any rumour of this day's business reach the King's Grace by any other tongue than mine. You will stay here under the Sheriff's guard; but I fear you will too soon hear what a tragedy this day's play has been for you! God have you in his keeping, Prior! for you have put yourself out of all hope of mercy from the King's Grace."

He might have said more, but an alarming noise made him hasten into the hall. The most lawless and poorest of the people—of whom numbers had mingled in the crowd in the hope of spoil, taking for granted that the house was dissolved—had made an attack upon the Chapel and the Prior's lodging, and it was some time before the Sheriff, assisted by Inglesant and the other gentlemen and their servants, all of whom were armed, could restore order. When this was done, and the peaceable people and women reassured, Inglesant's horses were brought out, and he mounted and rode off through the dispersing but still excited and lawless crowds, leaving the Priory to a strong guard of the Sheriff's men. As he rode up the hill—the people shrinking back to let him pass—he muttered, bitterly:

"A fine piece of work we have set our hands to, with all the rascal people of the country to aid. And why should not the Poverty get some of the droppings, when the Gentry cuts the purse?"

Travelling at a very different pace from that at which he had ridden from London, he reached the city the next night, and went at once to the Lord Cromwell, who, the next morning, took him to the King, to whom he gave a full account of what had occurred. Henry—who appears to have been induced to form his previous intention by the influence of a gentleman at Court who probably had his private expectations with regard to the future possession of the Priory—seems to have really cared little about the matter. He was, however, highly incensed at the Prior's sermon, and made no difficulty of immediately granting the Priory to Richard Inglesant. A pursuivant was sent down to bring the Prior up to London to be examined before the Council, but it does not appear that he ever was examined. Probably Inglesant exerted his influence with Cromwell in his behalf, for Cromwell examined him himself, and appears to have informed the King that he was harmless and mad. At any rate, he was set at liberty; and his troubles appear to have actually affected his reason, for he is said to have returned to the neighbourhood of Malmsbury, and to have wandered about the Priory at nights. The other inmates of the Priory had been dispersed, and the house taken possession of by Inglesant's servants; but he himself seems to have taken but little pleasure in his new possession, for it was more than a year before he visited it; and when he did so, events occurred which increased his dislike to the place.

It was late in October when his visit took place, and the weather was wild and stormy. He slept in the Prior's guest-chamber, which was in the same state as when he had occupied it before. The wind moaned in the trees, and swept over the roofs and among the chimneys of the old house. In the early part of the night he had a terrible dream, or what was rather partly a dream and partly a feverish sense of the objects around him. He thought he was lying in the bed in the room where he really was, and could not sleep; a fierce contention of the elements and of some powers more fearful than the elements seemed going on outside. The room became hateful to him, with its dark, hearse-like bed, and the strange figures on the tapestry, which seemed to his bewildered fancy to course each other over the walls with a rapidity and a fantastic motion which made his senses reel. He thought that, unable to remain where he was, he rose and went out into the old dormitory, now silent and deserted, from one end of which he could look into the courtyard, while from the other he could see a dark mass of woodland, and a lurid distant sky. On this side all was quiet; but the courtyard seemed astir. The moon shone with the brightness of day on the mouldering, ivy-grown walls, and on the round pebble stones between which the long grass was growing all over the court. The wind swept fiercely across it, and splashes of rain, every now and then, made streaks in the moonlight like fire; strange voices cried to him in an unknown language, and undistinguished forms seemed passing to and fro. The Chapel was all alight, and low and mournful music proceeded from it, as for the dead. Fascinated with terror, he left the gallery and descended into the court. An irresistible impulse led him to the Chapel, which was open, and he went in. As he did so, voices and strange forms seemed to rush forward to enter with him, and an overwhelming horror took possession of him. Inside, the Chapel was hung with black; cowled forms filled the stalls, and chanted, with hollow, shadowy voices, a dirge for the departed. A hooded and black form stood before the altar, celebrating the mass. The altar was alight with tapers, and torches were borne by sable attendants on either side of the choir. The ghostly forms that entered with him now thronged about him in the form and habit of living men. Voices called from without, and were answered from within the Chapel; rushing sounds filled the air as though the trees were being torn up, and the Chapel and house rocked. There was no coffin nor pall, nor any sign of mourning; and it seemed to Inglesant that he was present at the celebration of some obyte, or anniversary of the death of one long departed, over whom a wild and ghostly lamentation was made by beings no longer of the earth. An inexpressible dread and sorrow lay upon him—an overwhelming dread, as if the final Reckoning were near at hand, and all hope taken away—sorrow, as though all whom he had ever loved and known lay before him in death, with the solemn dirge and placebo said over them by the ghostly choir. The strain was too intense and painful to be borne, and with a cry, he awoke.

Utterly incapable of remaining where he was, he dressed, and went out into the gallery, and down into the courtyard. The court was lighted by the moonlight as brightly as in his dream for one moment, and then was totally dark from the passing clouds flitting over the moon. All was calm and still. A small door in the corner of the court near the Chapel was open, and, surprised at this, Inglesant crossed over and passed through it. It led into the graveyard of the Priory outside the Chapel, where the monks and some of the country people had been used to bury their dead. It was walled round, but the wall at the farther side was old and ruinous, and had partly fallen down. As Inglesant reached the postern door, the moon shone out brightly, and he saw, between himself and the ruined wall, a wasted and cowled figure slowly traversing the rows of graves. For a moment he felt a terror equal to that of his dream, but the next the thought of the Prior flashed upon his mind, and he crossed the graveyard and followed silently in the track of the figure. The ghostly form reached the opposite wall, and commenced, with some substance that shone like fire, to draw magic figures upon the stones of one of its most perfect parts. Placing himself in a position evidently indicated by these geometrical figures, he carefully observed the precise spot where his shadow was projected on the wall before him by the moonlight, and going to this spot, he carefully loosened and removed a stone. By this time Inglesant was close upon him, and saw him take from within the wall an antique glass or vial of a singular and occult shape. As he raised it, some slight motion the other made caused him to turn round, and at the sight of Inglesant he dropped the magic glass upon the stone he had removed, and shattered it to pieces. When he saw what had happened, the strange and weird creature threw his arms above his head, and with a piercing cry that rang again and again through the chill night air, fell backwards senseless, and lay in the pale moonlight white and still among the graves. Inglesant removed him into the house, and he was restored to sense, but scarcely to reason. He lived for more than five years, never leaving the Priory, where Inglesant directed that all his wants should be attended to, wandering about the gardens, and sometimes poring over his old books, which still remained upon his shelves. Inglesant never saw him again; but when he died the old man sent him his blessing, and was buried before the altar in the Chapel, where all the Priors of the house had lain before him; he on whom the evil days, which they perhaps had merited but had escaped, had fallen, and had crushed.

CHAPTER II.

Richard Inglesant never, till the last few years of his life, lived at Westacre, and visited it very seldom. He was a successful courtier; and at Cromwell's fall became a servant of the King. He married, and lived entirely at the Court. He was all his life a Catholic at heart, but conformed outwardly to the religion of the hour. He had one son, named after him, who was educated at Oxford, and intended for the bar, but his father left him so considerable a fortune that he was independent of any profession. That Richard Inglesant left no more than he did, shows that he adhered through life to the line of conduct we have seen him pursue at Westacre—conduct which probably satisfied his conscience as being rigidly exact and honest. On Henry's death he still retained one of his places about the Court; but on King Edward's death, being a partisan of Queen Mary's and a hearty conformer, he became a great favourite, and held a lucrative post. He visited Westacre more frequently, and built a stately range of buildings on one side of the court, where formerly the old stables and kitchen were, no doubt for his son's sake, enlarging the garden on that side to form a terrace in front of the new rooms. At Queen Mary's accession service was recommenced in the Prior's Chapel, which was repaired and fitted up afresh, and a regular priest appointed to serve it. Inglesant's name does not appear in the trials of the Protestants, a circumstance which makes it appear probable that he was true to the temporising policy of his youth, and kept his zeal under good control. When Elizabeth came to the throne, the service in the Chapel underwent some modification, King Edward's Service Book being used. The service then had been found so useful to the neighbours that the parish petitioned for its continuance, and it was legally settled as a chapelry. The priest conformed to the new order of things, and Richard Inglesant—who at that time resided constantly at Westacre—attended the service regularly. He remained a Catholic, but during the first seven years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, which were all he lived to see, the Catholics generally came to their parish churches until forbidden by the Pope's Bull. It remained, therefore, for his son, who was eighteen years of age at his father's death, to declare himself; and he conformed to the usage of the English Church. He resided entirely at Westacre, with an occasional visit to Court, keeping open-handed hospitality, and slightly embarrassing the estate, though, like his father, he had only one child. He was a favourer of the Papists, and once or twice was in trouble on that account; but being perfectly loyal, and a very popular man, he was rather a favourite with the Queen, who always noticed him when he came to Court, and was wont to say that "the dry crust Dick Inglesant gave a Papist should never choke him while she lived." He lived beyond the term of years usual in his family, and died in 1629, at the age of eighty-two, having been for the last twenty years of his life, since the death of the Queen, entirely under the guidance of his son, very much to his own advantage, as during those black years for the Papists, he would most probably have committed imprudences which might have been his ruin. His son, whose name was Eustace, was a shrewd lawyer and courtier. He was—much more than his father—a Papist at heart, but he conformed strictly to the English Church, and possessed considerable indirect influence at Court. He was thought much of by the Catholics, who regarded him as one of their most powerful friends. He married young, in 1593, but he had no children by his first wife, who died in 1610; and in 1620 he married again, a Catholic lady who was his ward. With this lady he came to reside at Westacre; but two years after, his wife died in giving birth to two boys; and, disgusted with the country, he left the two infants to their grandfather's care and returned to London, visiting Westacre, however, regularly at intervals; where, with a small number of servants, the old gentleman, totally forgetful of his old hospitality, and of his friends the Papists, spent his last days with the greatest delight, in anxiously watching over his little grandchildren. They were beautiful boys, so exactly alike that it was impossible to tell them apart, and from their earliest infancy so united in love to each other that they became a proverb in the neighbourhood. The eldest was named Eustace, after his father; but the youngest, at the entreaty of his young mother—uttered in her faint and dying voice, as the children lay before her during the few moments that were given her in mercy to look at them before her eyes were closed on these dearly purchased treasures and all other earthly things—was named John, after her brother, a Seminary priest of Douay, executed in England for saying mass, and refusing the oath of supremacy.

Little need be told of the infancy of these boys: traditions remain, as in other cases, of their likeness to each other, needing different coloured ribbons to distinguish them; and of the old man's anxious doting care over them. Many a pretty group, doubtless, they made, on warm summer afternoons, on the shady terrace; but the old grandfather died when they were seven years old, and slept with his father beneath the Chapel floor. After the funeral, Eustace Inglesant had intended taking both the children back with him to London, but he had discovered—or fancied he had discovered—that the youngest was sickly, and would be better for the country air; and therefore kept him at Westacre, when he returned to the city with his brother. The truth appears to be that he was a worldly, selfish man, and while fully conscious of the advantage of an heir, he was by no means desirous of giving himself more trouble than was necessary about either of his children. The old Priory, however, was, at this time, not a bad place to bring up a child in, though it had been neglected during the last ten or eleven years; though the woods were overgrown, and the oaks came up, in places, close to the house; though the Prior's fish-ponds had transformed themselves into a large pool or lake; though the garden was a tangled wilderness, and centaury, woodsorrel, and sour herbs covered the ground; though the old courtyard and the Chapel itself were mouldering and ruinous, yet the air of the rich vales in the north of Wiltshire is more healthy than that of the higher downs, which are often covered with fogs when the vales are clear, and the sky is bright and serene. It was remarked that people lived longer in the valleys than at places that would be supposed peculiarly healthy on the hills; that they sang better in the churches; and that books and rooms were not so damp and mouldy in the low situations as they were in those which stood very high, with no river or marsh near them. The fogs at times, indeed, came down into the valleys; and in the courtyard of the Priory dim forms had been seen flitting through the mist, in reality the shadows of the spectators thrown upon the mist itself, from the light of a lanthorn. Such sights as these in such a place, so haunted by the memories of the past, gave rise to many strange stories—to which young Inglesant listened with wonder, as he did, also, to others of the ignis fatuus, which, called by the people "Kit of the Candlestick," used, about Michaelmas, to be very common on the downs, and to wander down to the valleys across the low boggy grounds—stories of its leading travellers astray, and fascinating them. The boy grew up among such strange stories, and lived, indeed, in the old world that was gone for ever. His grandfather's dimly remembered anecdotes were again and again recalled by others, all of the same kind, which he heard every day. Stories of the rood in the Chapel, of the mass wafer with its mysterious awfulness and power, of the processions and midnight singing at the Priory. The country was full of the scattered spoil of the monasteries; old and precious manuscripts were used everywhere by the schoolboys for covering their books, and for the covers of music; and the glovers of Malmsbury wrapped their goods in them. In the churchyards the yew-trees stood thick and undecayed, scarcely grown again from the last lopping to supply bows for the archers of the King's army. The story was common of the Becket's path, along which he had been used to pass when curé priest at Winterbourn, and which could be seen through the deepest snow, or if ploughed up and sown with corn. Indeed the path itself could be seen within a pleasant ride across the downs from Westacre.

The boy's first instructor was the old curate of the Chapel, who taught him his Church Catechism and his latin grammar. This man appears to have been one of those ministers so despised by the Puritans as "mere grammar scholars," who knew better how to read a homily than to make a sermon; yet John Inglesant learnt of him more good lessons than he did, as he himself owned, afterwards from many popular sermons; and in his old age he acknowledged that he believed the only thing that had kept him back in after years, and under great temptations, from formally joining the communion of the Church of Rome, was some faint prejudice, some lingering dislike, grounded on the old man's teaching. Other teachers, of a different kind, the child had in plenty. The old servants who still remained in the house; the woodsmen and charcoal burners; the village girls whom the housekeeper hired from year to year at Malmsbury fair; the old housekeeper who had been his mother's maid, and whom the boy looked on as his mother, and who could coax him to her lap when he was quite a tall boy, by telling him stories of his mother; one or two falconers or huntsmen who lingered about the place, or watched the woods for game for the gentry around. When he was ten years old, in 1632, the curate of the Chapel died; and Mr. Inglesant did not at once replace him, for reasons which will appear presently. John led a broken scholastic life for a year, going to school when it was fine enough to make a pleasant walk attractive to ——, where the Vicar taught some boys their grammar and latin Terence in the Church itself; and where there was a tradition that the great antiquary, Master Camden, Clarencieux King of Arms, coming on his survey to examine the Church, found him, and spoke to him and his scholars. At the end of a year, however, his father coming into the country, arranged for him to go to school at Ashley, where he was to stay in the house with the Vicar, a famous schoolmaster in the west country. This gentleman, who was a delicate and little person, and had an easy and attractive way of teaching, was a Greek scholar and a Platonist, a Rosicrucian and a believer in alchemy and astrology. He found in little Inglesant an apt pupil, an apprehensive and inquisitive boy, mild of spirit, and very susceptible of fascination, strongly given to superstition and romance: of an inventive imagination though not a retentive memory; given to day dreaming, and,—what is more often found in children than some may think, though perhaps they could not name it,—metaphysical speculation. The Vicar taught his boys in the hall of his Vicarage—a large room with a porch, and armorial bearings in the stained glass in the windows. Out of this opened a closet or parlour where he kept his books, and in this he would sit after school was over, writing his learned treatises, most of which he would read to John Inglesant, some of them in latin. This, with his readings in Plato, assisted by his eager interest, gave John, as he grew older, a considerable acquaintance with both languages, so that he could read most books in either of them, and turn over the remnants of the old world learning that still remained in the Prior's Library, with that lazy facility which always gives a meaning, though often an incorrect one—not always a matter of regret to an imaginative reader, as adding a charm, and, where his own thought is happy, a beauty. Here he imbibed that mysterious Platonic philosophy, which—seen through the reflected rays of Christianity—becomes, as his master taught him, in some sort a foreshadowing of it, as the innocent and heroic life of Socrates, commended and admired by Christians as well as heathens, together with his august death, may be thought, in some measure, to have borne the image of Christ; and, indeed, not without some mystery of purpose, and preparation of men for Christianity, has been so magnified among men. Here, too, he eagerly drank in his master's Rosicrucian theories of spiritual existences; of the vital congruity and three several vehicles of the soul; the terrestrial, in which the soul should be so trained that she may stay as short a time as possible in the second or aerial, but proceed at once to the third, the etherial, or celestial; "that heavenly chariot, carrying us, in triumph, to the great happiness of the soul of man." Of the aerial genii, and souls separate, and of their converse with one another, and with mankind. Of their dress, beauty, and outward form; of their pleasures and entertainments, from the Divinest harmony of the higher orders, who, with voices perfectly imitating the passionate utterance of their devout minds, melt their souls into Divine Love, and lose themselves in joy in God; while all nature is transformed by them to a quintessence of crystalline beauty by the chemical power of the spirit of nature, acting on pure essences. Of the feastings and wild dances of the lower and deeply lapsed, in whom some sad and fantastic imitation of the higher orders is to be traced; and of those aerial wanderers to whom poetical philosophers or philosophical poets have given the rivers and springs—the mountains and groves; with the Dii Tutelares of cities and countries; and the Lares familiares, who love the warmth of families and the homely converse of men. These studies are but a part of the course of which occult chemistry and the lore of the stars form a part; and that mysterious Platonism which teaches that Pindar's story of the Argo is only a secret recipe for the philosopher's stone; and which pretends that at this distance of time the life of Priam can be read more surely in the stars than in history.

More than three years passed in these pursuits, when Inglesant,—now a tall, handsome, dreamy-looking boy of fourteen, was suddenly recalled to Westacre by his father, who had unexpectedly arrived from London. His master, who was very fond of him, gave him many words of learned advice; for he expected, as proved to be the case, that his school-days—at least as far as he was concerned,—were ended. He concluded with these words:—

"I have done my best to show you those hidden truths which the heathen divines knew as well as we; how much more, then, ought we to follow them, who have the light of Christ! Do not talk of these things, but keep them in your heart; hear what all men say, but follow no man: there is nothing in the world of any value but the Divine Light,—follow it. What it is no man can tell you; but I have told you many times, and you know very well it is not here nor there, as men shall tell you, for all men say they have it who are ignorant of its very nature. It will reveal itself when the time shall come. If you go to the Court, as I think you will, attach yourself wholly to the King and the Church party, the foundations of whose power are in the Divine will. I foresee dark clouds overhanging the Church, but let not these affright you; behind, the Divine Light shineth—the Light that shineth from the hill of God. I have taught you to clear your soul from the mists of carnal error, but I have never told you to act freely in this world: you are not placed here to reason (as the sectaries and precisians do), but to obey. Remember it is the very seal of a gentleman—to obey: remember the Divine words of Plato, in the Crito, when Socrates was about to suffer; how he refused, when urged, to break those laws under which he was falsely condemned. Let those words ring in your ears as they did in his; so that, like the worshippers of Cybele, who heard only the flutes, you shall hear nothing but the voice of God, speaking to you in that rank in which He has placed you, through those captains whom He has ordained to the command. Whenever—and in whatever place—the Divine Light shall appear to you, be assured it will never teach you anything contrary to this."

There was no horse sent for John, but he was obliged to ride in an uncomfortable manner before the serving man who was sent to fetch him; children, and especially younger sons, being treated as little better than servants, and they were indeed often tyrannised over by the latter. When he reached Westacre, he was told his father was in one of the rooms in the new wing of the house, and on entering, he found him in company with three other persons. One of these was the newly appointed curate of the Church, whom Johnny had never yet seen; the other was a fine, handsomely dressed man, with a lofty, high-bred look, and in the window was a beautiful boy of about John's own age, in the costly dress of a page. Inglesant knew that this must be his brother Eustace; and after humbly receiving his father's rather cold greeting, he hastened to embrace him, and he returned the greeting with warmth. But his father immediately presented him to the gentleman who stood by him; telling him that this gentleman would probably spend some time at Westacre, and that it was chiefly that he should attend him, that he had sent for him home; charging him, at the same time, to serve and obey him implicitly, as he would his father or the King.

"He is a mere country lad," he said, "very different from his brother, but he is young, and may be useful in after days."

The gentleman looked at Johnny kindly, with a peculiar expression which the boy had never before seen, penetrating and alluring at the same time.

"He is, as you say, Esquire, a country lad, and wants the fine clothes of my friend the page, nevertheless he is a gallant and gentle boy, and were he attired as finely, would not shame you, Mr. Inglesant, more than he does. And I warrant," he continued, "this one is good at his books."

And sitting down, he drew Johnny on his knee, and taking from his pocket a small book, he said: "Here, my friend, let us see how you can read in this."

It was the Phaedo of Plato, which Johnny knew nearly by heart, and he immediately began, with almost breathless rapidity, to construe with, here and there, considerable freedom, till the gentleman stopped him with a laugh. "Gently, gently, my friend. I saw you were a scholar, but not that you were a complete Platonist! I fear your master is one who looks more to the Divine sense than to the grammar! But never mind, you and I shall be much together, and as you are so fond of Plato, you shall read him with me. You shall go to your brother, who, if he cannot read 'In Phaedone,' can tell you many wonderful things of the Court and the city that no doubt you will hear very gladly;" and letting Johnny go, he turned to his father, saying, in an undertone, which, however, the boy heard; "The lad is apt, indeed! more so than any of us could have dreamt; no fitter soil, I could wager, we could have found in England!"

Johnny went to his brother, and they left the room together. The two boys,—as the two children had been,—were remarkably alike; the more so as this likeness of form and feature, which to a casual observer appeared exact, was consistent with a very remarkable difference of expression and manner—the difference being, as it were, contained in the likeness without destroying it. Their affection for each other, which continued through life, was something of the same nature, arising apparently from instinct and nature, apart from inclination. Their tastes and habits being altogether different, they pursued their several courses quite contentedly, without an effort to be more united, but once united, or once recalled to each other's presence or recollection even in the most accidental manner, they manifested a violent and overpowering attachment to each other. On the present occasion they wandered through the gardens and neighbourhood of the Priory; and as the strange gentleman had foretold, Johnny took the greatest interest in the conversation of his brother, whom, indeed, he both now and afterwards most unfeignedly admired, and to whose patronage he invariably submitted with perfect satisfaction. Eustace, who had lately been admitted one of the junior supernumerary pages to the King, talked incessantly of the King's state and presence chamber, of the yeomen of the guard, of the pageants and masques, and of banquets, triumphs, interviews, nuptials, tilts, and tournaments; the innumerable delights of the city; of the stage players, tumblers, fiddlers, inn-keepers, fencers, jugglers, dancers, mountebanks, bear-wardens; of sweet odours and perfumes, generous wines, the most gallant young men, the fairest ladies, the rarest beauties the world could afford, the costly and curious attire, exquisite music, all delights and pleasures which, to please the senses, could possibly be devised; galleries and terraces, rowing on the Thames, with music, on a pleasant evening, with the goodly palaces, and the birds singing on the banks.

All this Johnny listened to with admiration, and made little reply to his brother's disparaging remarks on the miserable life he had led in the country, or to his sage advice to endeavour, by some means, to come to London to the Court.

Johnny remembered his master's counsel, and was silent on his own pleasures and pursuits. His pleasant walks by the brook side, pleasant shade by the sweet silver streams, good air, and sweet smell of fine, fresh meadow flowers, his walks among orchards, gardens, green thickets, and such-like pleasant places, in some solitary groves between wood and water, meditating on some delightful and pleasant subject—he thought his brother would only ridicule these things. It is true the next day when they went to the Avon to see an otter hunted, Johnny occupied the foremost place for a time; he was known to the keepers, and to two or three gentlemen who were at the sport, and was familiar with the terms in tracing the mark of the otter, and following through all the craft of the hunting, tracing the marks in the soft and moist places to see which way the head of the chase was turned. He carried his otter spear as well as any of the company, while the hounds came trailing and chanting along by the river-side, venting every tree root, every osier bed and tuft of bulrushes, and sometimes taking to the water, and beating it like spaniels. But as soon as the otter, escaping from the spears, was killed by the dogs, or, having by its wonderful sagacity and craft avoided the dogs, was killed by the spears, Eustace assumed his superior place, coming forward to talk to the gentlemen, who were delighted with him, while Johnny fell back into the quiet, dreamy boy again.

The two brothers were left together for several days, their father, with the strange gentleman—whose name Eustace told Johnny was Hall—having departed on horseback, on a visit to a gentleman in Gloucestershire. Eustace observed great caution in speaking of Mr. Hall, telling Johnny he would know all about him soon from himself. The boys passed the time happily enough. Johnny's affection for his brother increased every day, and withstood not only Eustace's patronage, but—what must have been much more hard to bear—the different way in which the servants treated the two boys. Eustace, who, though only a few minutes older than his brother, was the heir, was treated with great deference and respect; which might possibly also be owing to his being a stranger and to his Court breeding. Johnny, on the contrary, though he was quite as tall as his brother, they treated like a child: the housekeeper took him up to bed when it pleased her; the old butler would have caned him without hesitation had he thought he deserved it; and the maids alternately petted and scolded him, the first of which was more disagreeable to him than the last. The hard condition of children, and especially of younger brothers, is a common theme of the writers of the period, and Johnny's experience was not different from that of others. His disposition, however, was not injured by it, though it may have made him still fonder of retirement and of day-dreaming than he would have been. This hard discipline made him resolve to be silent on those wonderful secrets and the learning that his master had taught him, and to meditate increasingly upon them in his heart. He delighted more and more in wandering by the river-side, building castles in the air, and acting an infinite variety of parts. When his brother left him, this became still more delightful to him, and but for other influences he might have gone on in this fascinating habit till he realised Burton's terrible description, and from finding these contemplations and fantastical conceits so delightful at first, might have become the slave of vain and unreal fancies, which may be as terrible and dismal as pleasing and delightful.

After about a fortnight's absence, Mr. Inglesant and Mr. Hall returned from their visit, or visits, for they appeared to have stayed at several places; and the next day Eustace and his father departed for London. His father displayed more affection than usual on leaving Johnny behind him, assuring him of his love, and that if he heard a good account of him from Mr. Hall, he should come up to London and see the Court. Eustace's grief at losing his brother again was much lessened by his joy at returning to his congenial life in London; but Johnny watched him from the old gatehouse in front of the Priory with a sad heart.

While he is standing looking after his father and brother, as they ride up the hill by the same path which the Prior came down that fine summer morning long years before, we will take a moment's time to explain certain events of which he was perfectly ignorant, but which were about to close about him and involve him in a labyrinth from which he may have been said never to have issued during his life. We call ourselves free agents;—was this slight, delicate boy a free agent, with a mind and spirit so susceptible, that the least breath affected them: around whom the throng of national contention was about to close; on whom the intrigue of a great religious party was about to seize, involving him in a whirlpool and rapid current of party strife and religious rancour? Must not the utmost that can be hoped,—that can be even rationally wished for—be, that by the blessing of the Divine guidance, he may be able to direct his path a little towards the Light?

The laws oppressing the Roman Catholics, which had been stringently enforced during the greater part of James's reign, had been considerably relaxed when he was negotiating with the Spaniards for the marriage of his son, and again on King Charles's marriage with Henrietta Maria of France. From that time greater and greater leniency was shown them, not only by the exertion of Catholic influence at Court, but also through Puritan jealousy; the juries refusing to punish Popish recusants, because Puritan separatists were included in the lists. Spasmodic exertions of severity were made from time to time by the King and the Church party; but, on the whole, the Papists enjoyed more and more liberty, especially between 1630 and 1640. Advantage was taken by the party of this freedom to the fullest extent; money was amassed abroad, an army of missionary priests poured into England, agents were sent from the Pope, and every effort made in every part of England to gain converts, and confirm uncertain members. Many Papists who had conformed to the authority of the English Church beginning to entertain hopes of the ultimate success of the old religion, fell away and became recusants—that is, ceased to attend their Parish Church. Mr. Inglesant, who—through all his life—had watched the progress of affairs with a careful and far-reaching penetration, had, from the first, been in communication with chiefs of the popish party; but he was far too important a friend where he was to allow of any change in his behaviour, and he still rigidly conformed to the Established Church. The Roman Catholics were divided into two parties, holding two opinions, which, under different aspects, actuate all religious parties at the present day. The one viewed the English Church and its leader Archbishop Laud with hatred, regarding him, and doubtless with great truth, as their most formidable opponent, as occupying a place in the country and in the allegiance of the majority of Englishmen which otherwise could only have been filled by the older Church: the other looking more at the resemblances between the two Churches, held the opinion that little was needed to bring the Established Church into communion and submission to the Papal See, and by that means, at once, and without trouble, restore the papal authority in England. The efforts of this party were of a more political nature than those of the other; they endeavoured to win over Archbishop Laud to a conference, and a Cardinal's hat was offered to him more than once. To this party Mr. Inglesant belonged. Occupying a neutral position himself, and possessed of the confidence of members of both Churches, he was peculiarly fitted for such negotiations, and was in constant communication with those Churchmen, very numerous at Court, and among the clergy and the country gentry, who were favourably disposed to the Papists, though at the same time sincere members of their own Church. The value of emissaries possessing in this way the confidence of Church people and Papists alike was so obvious, that Mr. Inglesant and his friends did all they could to add to their number, especially as they were not very easy to procure, great jealousy existing, among nearly all Church people, of any foreign or armed interference in England on the part of the Romanists, who were always suspected of such intentions. Mr. Inglesant, therefore, whom nothing escaped, had marked out his younger son's temperament as one peculiarly fitted to be trained for such a purpose, and had communicated this idea to his intimate associate among the Papists, Father Sancta Clara, as he was called, of an English family named St Clare, a Jesuit missionary priest who travelled in England under the name of Mr. Hall. The latter was a man of great influence, unbounded devotion to his order, and unflinching courage; a profound scholar, and, according to the knowledge of that day, a man of science, trained, indeed, in every variety of human learning, and taking advantage of every scrap of knowledge and information for the advancement of his purpose. Of elegant and fascinating manners, and accustomed to courtly life abroad, he was, perhaps, the most influential agent among the thousand mission priests at that time scattered through England. His time, of course, was fully taken up with his difficult embassy, but he was interested in the account Inglesant gave of his son; and the idea of training him to such usefulness in three or four years' time, when their plans might be expected to be ripe, commended itself exceedingly to his peculiar genius and habit of mind. He was at this time Superior over part of the south-west of England, and was much engaged among the gentry in those parts—a position of peculiar difficulty, as the people of the greater part of that district were strongly Puritan, and the gentry hostile to Rome. So secluded and convenient a position as Westacre Priory was exactly adapted to aid him in his mission, and he resolved to take up his quarters there, from whence he could, with great hopes of escaping observation, continue his work in the adjoining country. Mr. Inglesant, with an eye to such a contingency, had purposely omitted to appoint a chaplain at the Priory for some time, and now nominated a Mr. ——, a graduate of Oxford, a man who was "ex animo" a Papist, and who only waited a suitable time to declare himself one. The number of such men was very great, and they were kept in the English Church only by the High Church doctrines and ceremonies introduced by Archbishop Laud; affording one out of numberless parallels between that age and the present. It is perhaps not necessary to say more in this place to explain the presence of Mr. Hall (otherwise Father Sancta Clara) at Westacre, nor the future that lay before Johnny Inglesant as he stood by the gatehouse of the old Priory looking after his father and Eustace as they rode up the hill.

CHAPTER III.

Father Sancta Clara was obliged to remain quiet at Westacre for some time, and devoted himself entirely to gaining an influence over Johnny. Of course in this he was entirely successful. There was a good library, for that day, at the Priory; the Prior's old books were still on the shelves, and Richard Inglesant, who we have seen was a scholar, added largely to them, bringing all his books into the country when he came to live at Westacre. The difference between Johnny's former master and this present one was that between a theorist and dreamer and a statesman and man of the world and critical student of human nature. The Father made Johnny read with him every day, and by his wealth of learning and acquaintance with men and foreign countries, made the reading interesting in the highest degree. In this way he read the classics, making them not dead school books, but the most human utterances that living men ever spoke; and while from these he drew illustrations of human life when reading Plato—which he did every day—he led his pupil to perceive, as he did more fully when he grew older, that wonderful insight into the spiritual life and spiritual distinctions which even Christianity has failed to surpass. He led him, step by step, through that noble resolve by which Socrates—at frightful odds, and with all ordinary experience against him—maintains the advantage to be derived from truth; he pointed out to him the three different elements to be found in Plato: the Socratic or negative argument, simply overthrowing received opinion; the pseudo-scientific, to which Plato was liable from the condition of knowledge in his day; and, finally, the exalted flight of the transcendental reason, which, leaving alike the scepticism of the negative argument and the dreams of false science, flies aloft into the pure ether of the heavenly life. He read to him Aristophanes, pointing out in him the opposing powers which were at work in the Hellenic life as in the life of every civilised age. He did not conceal from him the amount of right there is on the popular side of plain common sense, nor the soundness of that fear which hesitates to overthrow the popular forms of truth, time-honoured and revealed, which have become in the eyes of the majority, however imperfect they may really be, the truth itself. Nor did he fail to show him the unsuitability of the Socratic argument to the masses of the people, who will stop at the negative part, and fail of the ethereal flight beyond; and he showed him how it might be possible, and even the best thing for mankind, that Socrates should die, though Socrates at that moment was the noblest of mankind: as, afterwards, though for a different reason, it was expedient that a nobler than Socrates should die for the people,—nobler, that is, in that he did what Socrates failed in doing, and carried the lowest of the people with him to the ethereal gates. And in this entering into sympathy with the struggle of humanity, he prepared his pupil to receive in after years (for it is a lesson that cannot be fully learned until middle life is approached) that kindly love of humanity; that sympathy with its smallest interests; that toleration of its errors, and of its conflicting opinions; that interest in local and familiar affairs, in which the highest culture is at one with the unlearned rustic mind.

The boy drank in all this with the greatest aptitude, and would have listened all day, but his tutor insisted on his taking his full amount of exercise, and himself commanded his admiration as much by skill in the sports of the field as by learning. He made no effort to draw his mind away from the English Church, farther than by giving him a crucifix and rosary, and teaching him the use of them, and pointing out the beauties of the Roman use; he even took pains to prevent his becoming attached to Popery, telling him that his father would not wish him to leave the Church of England; and though that Church was at present in schism, it would probably soon be reunited, and that meanwhile the difference was unimportant and slight. He knew, indeed, that from the excitable and enthusiastic nature of his pupil, if he once became attached strongly to Roman theology, all his use as a mediator between the two parties would at once be lost; and he therefore contented himself with securing his own influence over Johnny; which he accomplished to the most unlimited extent.

After certain preparations had been made, and some needful precautions taken, a great change took place in the life at Westacre Priory. Strangers were constantly arriving, stayed a few hours, and departed, mostly coming in the night, and leaving, also, after sunset. Several, however, remained a longer time, and took great pains to conceal themselves. They all had long interviews with the Father. Services were also performed in the Chapel, frequently in Latin. It was death to say mass in England, except in the Queen's Chapels at St. James's, at Somerset House, and at Woodstock, nevertheless mass was said in all parts of England, and it was said at Westacre. One night, after Johnny had been asleep for some hours, he was awakened by Father St. Clare, who told him to dress himself and come with him, and, at the same time, charged him never to tell any one what he might be about to see—an injunction which the boy would have died rather than disobey. The long streaks of the summer dawn stretched across the sky before them as they crossed the courtyard towards the Chapel, and the roofs stood out sharp and distinct in the dim, chill air. The Chapel was lighted, and on the white cloth of the altar were tapers and flowers. Half awake in the sweet fresh morning air, Johnny knelt on the cold flag stones of the Chapel and saw the mass. Strangers who had come to the Priory on purpose were present, and some gentlemen of the neighbourhood whom Johnny knew. It is strange that the Jesuit should have placed so much trust in the prudence and fidelity of a boy; but he probably knew his pupil, and certainly had no cause to repent. This was not the only time mass was said; for one winter night—or rather morning—an old peasant known in the neighbourhood as Father Wade had been to Marlborough wake, and being benighted, bethought himself of asking a lodging at the Priory, and approached it by a pathway from the east, which, crossing the meadows beyond the Chapel, came round to the gatehouse at the front. He, however, never reached the gate, and being found at home the next day, and questioned as to where he passed the night, he was at first evasive in his replies, but on being pressed, told a mysterious story of strange lights and shapes of men he had seen about the Priory; and approaching—he said—fearfully along the path, there, sure enough! were the old monks passing up in procession from the graveyard through the wall into the Chapel, as through a door; and he heard the long-remembered chanting of the mass, and saw the tapers shining through the east window, as he had seen them when a little boy.

This manner of life went on for about a year, at the end of which time Father St. Clare's absences became more frequent, and Johnny was left much alone. The Father's mission in the west of England was not prospering, for the very simple reason that he was too good for the work. As far as the duties of a Superior went, everything was satisfactory. The country was mapped out in districts, and emissaries were appointed to each; but for the peculiar mission of Father St. Clare—that of personal influence—there was no scope. It was the habit of the Jesuits, by the charms of their conversation and learning, by their philosophical theories, and in some cases by their original systems of science, to gain the confidence and intimacy of the highest both in station and intellect. And for this seed to spring up, there must be first a suitable soil for it to be sown in, and this soil was particularly scarce in Wiltshire. All the refinement and learning of Father St. Clare was thrown away upon the country squires; any boon companion would have influenced them quite as well. Becoming conscious of this, the Jesuit rode frequently to London, where work which required the highest skill and talent was going on; and in his absence Johnny was left very much to his own devices. During one of these absences a priest who had remained concealed several days at the Priory, and who had taken a fancy to the boy, gave him at parting, a little book, telling him to read it carefully, and it would be of use to him through life. It was entitled, "The Flaming Heart, or the Life of St. Theresa," of which a later edition, printed in 1642, was dedicated to Henrietta Maria. It opened a new world of thought to Johnny, who was now sixteen years of age, and he read it many times from beginning to end. A great deal of it was so strange to Inglesant, that he was repelled by it. The exaggeration of the duty of self-denial, the grotesque humility, the self-denunciation for the most trifling faults,—most of the details indeed appeared to him either absurd or untrue; but, running through all the book, the great doctrine of Divine Illumination fascinated him. The sublime but mysterious way of devotion pointed out in it, while quite different from anything he had previously heard of, was still sufficiently in accordance with the romantic habit of his mind, and with the mystic philosophy in which his old master had trained him, to cause him to follow it with an eager sympathy. The natural and inspired writings of the great mystics, indeed, breathe a celestial purity, entirely distinct from those of their inferior disciples, who brought down their spiritual system to earth and earthly purposes. The rest from individual effort, the calm after long striving, the secret joy in God, the acquiescing in His will, in which the true elevation of devotion lies, and which is not the effect of lively imaginations or of fruitful inventions—of these, all men are not capable, but all may reach the silent and humble adoration of God which arises out of a pure and quiet mind, just as when a man enters into an entire friendship with another; then the single thought of his friend affects him more tenderly than all that variety of reflections which may arise in his mind where this union is not felt. This inward calm and quiet in which men may in silence form acts of faith and feel those inward motions and directions which, as this book taught, follow all those who rise up to this elevation, and which lead them onward through the devious paths of this life,—what must this be but the Divine Light of which his old master had so often told him he was ignorant, but whose certain coming he had led him constantly to expect? Enticed by such thoughts as these, he passed the days, hardly knowing what he did; and wandered in this perplexed labyrinth without a guide. Without a guide! but this book of his told him of a guide—a spiritual guide!—nay, even recommended obedience and entire submission to this director; and dissuaded from self-confidence. Where, then, was this guide, to whom, in the midst of such spiritual light and life, and after such ecstatic visions, he should turn? The book said it was the priest—any priest would do—but still it was the priest. This seemed to John Inglesant, whose perceptions the Jesuit had sharpened, but whose unrestrained romance he had not crushed, to be very different from that Divine Light of which his master spoke, from that transcendental voice of the Platonic Reason speaking in the silence of the soul; nay, it seemed to him to be a fall even from the teaching of the book itself. Meditating on these things, Johnny thought he would visit his old master, to see what he had to say about this new doctrine.

It was a fine summer morning when he made the visit; he had a horse of his own now, and a servant if he chose, but he preferred to-day to go alone. He found Mr. —— had discontinued his school, and was entirely buried in his books; only reading morning and evening prayers, and a homily, or one of his old sermons in the Church on Sundays. He never left his study on other days, except for a turn in his little garden. His house was by the wayside, with a small paved court before the hall; and by the side of this court, the garden, into which the window of the study, in a gabled wing adjoining the hall, looked towards the road. He was pleased to see Inglesant, though he very dimly remembered him, and questioned him of his studies. Johnny read him some Plato with the Jesuit's comments, of which the old gentleman took notes eagerly, and afterwards incorporated them in his book. The book he was writing was upon Talismanic figures, but he was not particular what he put into it; anything of an occult and romantic character being welcome, and introduced with not a little ingenuity. He had no sense nor understanding of anything else in the world but such subjects and his books; and being exceedingly infirm, he could scarcely lift some of the larger folios which lay heaped about him within reach. He blessed God that his eyesight was so good, and that he could still read Greek—the contracted Greek type of that day. After some conversation, Inglesant opened his mind to him, told him what he had been reading, and asked his opinion. The old scholar pricked up his ears, and set to work with great delight, taking notes all the time; and Johnny found, years afterwards, when he happened to read his book in London, that all he told him was introduced into it.

"I find nothing, my dear pupil," he said, "in the Christian Church, very old, concerning this doctrine—for that author who goes by the name of Dionysius the Areopagite is of far later date—but I will discover to you some mysteries concerning it, which, so far as I know, have never been brought to light by any man. I find the germ of this doctrine in those fragments of metaphysics which go under Theophrastus, his name; who was a disciple of Aristotle, and succeeded him in his school; and was an excellent philosopher, certainly, by the works by him which remain to this day. Here he says that the understanding joined to the body, can do nothing without the senses, which help it as far as they can to distinguish sensible things from their first causes, but that all knowledge and contemplation of the first causes must be by very touching and feeling of the mind and soul; which knowledge, thus gained, is not liable to error. Synesius, a man well known amongst scholars, being vexed that this new divinity began in his day to be in request amongst Christians; and some illiterate monks and others taking advantage of it to magnify ignorance, to bring themselves into repute—Synesius, I say, wrote that exquisite treatise, which he inscribed 'Dio,' to prove the necessity of human learning and philosophy to all who will contemplate high things with sobriety and good success. 'God forbid,' he says, 'that we should think that if God dwell in us, He should dwell in any other part of us than that which is rational, which is His own proper temple.'

"Now whether the writings of some ancient and later Platonists, Greeks and Arabs, Heathens and Mahometans be a sufficient ground and warrant for them that profess to ascribe more to the Scriptures, by which sobriety of sense is so much commended unto us, than to the opinions of heathen philosophers, I leave you to consider."

Then Inglesant left him, for he seemed more desirous to put ideas into his book than to impart them, and rode home across the downs. As he went, he overtook a gentleman riding an easy-going palfrey, whom he found to be one whom he knew; one, indeed, of those who had attended the early morning mass in the Chapel. This gentleman, who was one of those called Church Papists, that is, Papists who saved themselves from the charge of recusancy by sometimes attending their Parish Church, knowing Johnny, and placing faith in him, began at once to relate his troubles. He dwelt sadly on the fines he had to pay, and his difficulties in avoiding the communion at Easter; but his greatest troubles were caused by his wife, who was much more zealous than he was, and refused to go to Church once a month to keep off the Church-wardens. Her religion, indeed, was so costly to him, that he had rather have had a city lady with her extravagant dress. He was very particular in inquiring after Father St. Clare, and whether Inglesant knew of anything he was engaged in; but John could give him no information, not knowing anything of the Jesuit's plans. They were hard times, he said, for a good quiet subject who wished to live at peace with his King and with his clergyman; but what with the fear of the apparitor on one hand, and of his wife and her advisers among the Catholics on the other—he had a hard time of it. He was a cheerful man naturally, however, and leaving this discourse, which he thought would tire his companion, he entertained him for some time with the news of the country, of which he gathered great abundance in his rides. Among other things, he told him of a clergyman at a parish not far off, who, he said, must be a Catholic in his heart, for his piety was so great and his punctuality in reading common prayer, morning and evening in the Church alone in his surplice so regular, that—so the common report ran—he had brought down an angel from heaven, who appeared to him in the Church one evening, in the glow of the setting sun, and told him many wonderful and heavenly things. When the gentleman had related this, they came to the point where their roads parted, and he invited Johnny—for he was very courteous—to come on to his house, and sup with him. To this Inglesant consented, visits being a rare pleasure to him, and they rode together to the gentleman's house, which stood on the edge of the downs, with a courtyard and gatehouse before it, and at the back a fair hall and parlour, having a wide prospect over the valley and the distant view. Johnny was courteously received by the popish lady and her sister, who was devout and very pretty. The supper would have been very plain—the day being a fast—but the gentleman insisted on waiting while a rabbit was cooked for his friend; and when it came, he partook of it himself, in spite of his wife's remonstrances—out of courtesy to his guest, he said, and also to enable him to get over his next fine, which, he said, it ought to do. The ladies asked John Inglesant many questions about the Father, and what took place at the Priory; also about his brother the Page. This made him leave early, for though he knew nothing of any plots or treason, he was constantly afraid of saying something he ought not to do; nothing was said, however, about the morning mass, which was too serious a matter to be lightly spoken of.

As he rode away through the soft evening light, he thought so much of the story the gentleman had told him, that he made up his mind to ride to the village and see the clergyman whose goodness was so manifest and so rewarded. He, surely—if no one else could—would show him the true path of Devotion.

Two or three days afterwards he took the ride, and arrived at the small old Church at a very opportune moment, for the clergyman in his surplice was just going into it to read the evening prayers. Inglesant attended devoutly, being the only person present; for the sexton's wife, who rang the bell, did not consider that her duty extended farther. Prayers being over, the parson invited Johnny to supper—a much better one than he had had at the Papist's—and Inglesant stated his difficulties to him, and asked his advice. The Parson showed him several small books which he had written; one on bowing and taking off the hat at the name of Jesus; another on the cross in baptism, and kneeling at the communion; a third on turning to the east, which last appeared to be mostly quotations and enlargements from Dr. Donne; a fourth on the use of the surplice. He repudiated being popishly inclined; having disproved, he said, that any of these practices were popish, in all his books, all of which, as far as Johnny could see, displayed considerable ingenuity; and while he inserted many trivial and weak passages, he seemed to have been well read in the Fathers and other old authors, and to have been a loyal, honest, and zealous advocate, according to his capacity, of the Church of England. He evidently looked on forms and ceremonies with the greatest reverence, and was totally incapable of telling his visitor anything of that mystical life he was so anxious to realise. Johnny inquired about the angel, but his host, while not appearing displeased at the reports being spread abroad, professed to deny all knowledge of it, but in such a way as to make Inglesant think he would like to have acknowledged it, had he dared. He rode away disappointed, and began to think he must consult Father St. Clare; which, for some reason or other he had felt a disinclination to do.

While he was in this perplexity, he bethought himself of his first schoolmaster, the man who taught in the Church where Camden visited him. He had forgotten all about this man, except that he was of a mild and kind nature; but he was so anxious for direction that he went to him at once. This man had been very poor, and brought up a large family, all of whom, however, he had put forward in life, some at the University and the Church, and some among the clothiers and glove-makers at Malmsbury and the other towns of Wiltshire. Johnny found him living alone—for his wife was dead—in a small cottage no better than a countryman's, with a few books, which with his garden were all the wealth he possessed. He was a great herbalist, and famous in the country for his cures and for his sermons, though no two people could agree why they admired the latter; all uniting in considering him a simple and rather poor preacher. This Inglesant learnt from a countryman who walked at his horse's side as he came near the village; but when he found the old gentleman sitting on a bench before his study window, and he rose and met his look, Inglesant saw at once—thanks to the cultivation of his perception by the Jesuit's teaching—what it was that gained him the people's love. He had large and melting eyes that looked straight into the hearts of those who met him, as though eager to help them and do them good. He received Johnny with great kindness, though he had quite forgotten him, and did not even remember when he told him who he was. But when Inglesant, who found it very easy to speak to him of what had brought him there, told him of his difficulties, he listened with the greatest interest and sympathy. When he had finished speaking, he remained some minutes silent, looking across the garden where the hot mid-day air was playing above the flowers.

"You have been speaking," he said at length, "of very high and wonderful things, into which, it would seem, even the angels dare not look; for we are, as would appear, taught in Scripture that it is in man's history that they see the workings of Divine Glory. And indeed, worthy Mr. Inglesant, when you have lived to the limit of my many years, you will not stumble at this; nor think this life a low and poor place in which to seek the Divine Master walking to and fro. These high matters of which you speak, and this heavenly life, is not to be disbelieved, only it seems to me—more and more—that the soul or spirit of every man in passing through life among familiar things is among supernatural things always, and many things seem to me miraculous, which men think nothing of, such as memory, by which we live again in place and time—and of which, if I remember rightly, for I am a very poor scholar, you doubtless know, St. Augustine says many pertinent things—and the love of one another, by which we are led out of ourselves, and made to act against our own nature by that of another, or, rather, by a higher nature than that of any of us; and a thousand fancies and feelings which have no adequate cause among outward things. Here, in this book which I was reading when you so kindly came to see me, are withered flowers, which I have gathered in my rambles, and keep as friends and companions of pleasant places, streams and meadows, and of some who have been with me, and now are not. There is one, this single yellow flower—it is a tormentilla, which is good against the plague—what is it, that, as I hold it, makes me think of it as I do? Faded flowers have something, to me, miraculous and supernatural about them; though, in fact, it is nothing wonderful that the texture of a flower being dried survives. It is not in the flower, but in our immortal spirit that the miracle is. All these delightful thoughts that come into my mind when I look at this flower—thoughts, and fancies, and memories—what are they but the result of the alchemy of the immortal spirit, which takes all the pleasant, fragile things of life, and transmutes them into immortality in our own nature! And if the poor spirit and intellect of man can do this, how much more may the supreme creative intellect mould and form all things, and bring the presence of the supernatural face to face with us in our daily walk! Earth becomes to us, if we thus think, nothing but the garden of the Lord, and every fellow-being we meet and see in it, a beautiful and invited guest; and, as I think I remember, many of the heathen poets, after their manner, have said very fine things about this; that we should rise cheerfully from this life, as a grateful guest rises from an abundant feast; and though doubtless they were very dark and mistaken, yet I confess they always seemed to me to have something of a close and entire fellowship with the wants of men, which I think the Saviour would have approved. If you, sir, can receive this mystery, and go through the honourable path of life which lies before you, looking upon yourself as an immortal spirit walking among supernatural things—for the natural things of this life would be nothing were they not moved and animated by the efficacy of that which is above nature—I think you may find this doctrine a light which will guide your feet in dark places; and it would seem, unless I am mistaken, that this habit of mind is very likely to lead to the blessedness of the Beatific Vision of God, on the quest of which you have happily entered so young: for surely it should lead to that state to which this vision is promised—the state of those who are Pure in Heart. For if it be true, that the reason we see not God is the grossness of this tabernacle wherein the soul is encased, then the more and the oftener we recognise the supernatural in our ordinary life, and not only expect and find it in those rare and short moments of devotion and prayer, the more, surely, the rays of the Divine Light will shine through the dark glass of this outward form of life, and the more our own spirit will be enlightened and purified by it, until we come to that likeness to the Divine Nature, and that purity of heart to which a share of the Beatific Vision is promised, and which, as some teach, can be attained by being abstract from the body and the bodily life. As we see every day that the supernatural in some men gives a particular brightness of air to the countenance, and makes the face to shine with an inimitable lustre, and if it be true that in the life to come we shall have to see through a body and a glass however transparent, we may well practise our eyes by making this life spiritual, as we shall have also to strive to do in that to which we go. My predecessor in this living, doubtless a very worthy man (for I knew him not), has left it recorded on his tombstone—as I will show you if you will come into the Church—that he was 'full of cares and full of years, of neither weary, but full of hope and of heaven.' I should desire that it may be faithfully recorded of me that I was the same!"

John went with him into the Church, and read the old vicar's epitaph, and several more—for he was very much taken with the old gentleman's talk, and indeed stayed with him the whole day: his host adding a dish of eggs and a glass of small beer to his daily very frugal meal. Johnny invited him to come to the Priory, and so left him, more pleased and satisfied with this than with any of his other visits. As he rode back through the darkening valley, and through the oak wood before the Priory gate, he little thought that not only should he not see the old Parson again, but that his quiet contemplative life was come to an end, and his speculations would now be chased away by a life of action; and for the future the decision, often to be made at once, as to what he ought to do, would appear of more consequence than that other decision, which had seemed to him, sometimes, the only important one, as to what it was right to think.

When he reached the Priory, he found the Jesuit had returned, and when at supper he inquired of Johnny if his ride had been a pleasant one, as the servant had told him he had been out since the morning, Johnny began at once, and told him all that had been passing in his mind since the priest had given him the book, and of all the directors he had sought for his guidance. Father St. Clare listened (though it may be doubted whether the recital was altogether agreeable to him) with great attention, and seemed pleased and amused at the boy's descriptions, which showed his pupil's fine perception of character.

"You have taken a wise course," he said, "which has led you to see much of the workings of the minds of men: this is the most useful study you can follow, and the most harmless to yourself, if you keep your own counsel, and gain knowledge without imparting it. I am glad you have told me all this, because it shows me I have not been deceived in you, but that the time is fully ripe for you to play the part your father and I have destined for you, and to play it—to great extent—alone. The day after to-morrow we shall go up to London; on the way, I will open to you the position of parties, the crisis of affairs—a position and a crisis such as never was before in this or any other country! You are very young, but you are years older in mind than most of your age, and your youth renders you all the more fit for the work I have for you to do. I trust you without reserve; I shall commit to your keeping secrets which would, if revealed, bring the highest heads in England, not to speak of my own, to the block. I have no fear of you."

Inglesant listened breathlessly and with open eyes to this address. It made his heart beat high with delight and excitement. Death—nay, the bitterest torture—would be nothing to him, if only he could win this man's approval, and be not only true but successful in his trust. His entire devotion to the Jesuit cannot be looked upon as anything wonderful, for the whole mental power of the latter, directed by the nicest art—a power and an art at that time not surpassed in Europe—had been directed to this end upon the boy's susceptible nature, and the result could not be doubtful.

The Jesuit might well say that the crisis was imminent, and the position of affairs peculiar. Plotters were at work in all directions, and for different ends; but the schemes of all miscarried, and the expectations of all proved to be miscalculations: those of the Roman Catholics—with whom St. Clare was associated—more than all. Their expectations were at the highest pitch. The Court influence was with them to a large extent. The Church of England was at its highest summit of glory and power, and its standing-point was almost their own. Laud was partly gained. He had refused a cardinal's hat; but in such a way that the offer was immediately renewed, and remained open. It seemed, indeed, as though little more remained to do, when this goodly edifice began to crumble, slowly, indeed, but surely, and with accelerating speed. A new power appeared in the country; hostile, indeed, to Catholicism, but, what was much worse, also slightly contemptuous of it, directing its full force against the Church and the Crown. The Church collapsed with wonderful suddenness; and the Crown was compelled to seek its own preservation, extending what little aid it might be able to render to the Church; neither had the least power or time to give to the assistance of their former allies. All this had not happened when the Jesuit and Johnny rode up to London, but it was foreshadowed clearly in the immediate future.

CHAPTER IV.

Father St. Clare and Johnny set out the next day, accompanied by two servants on horseback. The road was quite new to Inglesant after they left Malmsbury; and he was greatly delighted and amused with all he saw. The fair landscapes, the prospects of goodly cities with the towers and spires of their Churches rising into the clear smokeless air; the stately houses and gardens, the life of the country villages, the fairs and markets, strolling players, the morris dancing, the drinking and smoking parties, the conjurors and mountebanks, peasants quarrelling "together by the ears," and buying and selling; wandering beggars, and half-witted people called "Tom o' Bedlams" who were a recognised order of mendicants—everything amused and delighted him, especially with his companion's witty and penetrating comments upon all they met with.

At Windsor they walked on the terrace, from which Johnny saw the view, which was then considered only second to that of Greenwich, of the river and many pleasant hills and valleys, villages and fair houses, far and near. As they rode along, at every suitable opportunity, and at night after supper at the inns, the Jesuit explained to Johnny the position of public affairs. He told him that though the power of the King and the Archbishop was apparently at its greatest height, as the trial and condemnation of Laud's traducers, Prynne, Baswick, and Burton had just been decided, and the trial of Hampden for refusal to pay ship-money was about to commence, yet nevertheless, the impossibility of governing without a Parliament was becoming so evident, and the violent and aggressive temper of the people was so marked, that he, and those like him, who possessed the best information of what was passing throughout all classes, and among all parties, however secret, considered that changes of a very remarkable character were imminent. The temper of the people, he said, was the more remarkable, because in the one case, libellers like Prynne would have been put to death without mercy in either of the preceding reigns, and no notice taken by the people; and the tax, called ship's money, was so light and so fairly levied, as to be scarcely felt. The Archbishop, he said, was determined to force the service book upon the Scots; a most unwise and perilous proceeding at the present moment, and he was informed by the emissary priests then in the north of England and Scotland, that the resistance to it would be determined, and that the Scottish malcontents were supported by the Puritan party in the English Parliament. Under these circumstances, he explained to Johnny, that a change had taken place in the policy of some of the Roman Catholic party, who had formerly acted with Mr. Inglesant and Father St. Clare, and they had arrived at the conclusion that the Church of England was no longer worth the pains of humouring and conciliating. The Queen had been advised to attempt the perversion of the Parliamentary leaders, and several of the Catholic plotters had undertaken a similar enterprise. Father St. Clare told Johnny candidly, that he neither sympathised entirely with these views nor altogether with those of the party to which he had hitherto belonged. On the one hand, he had arrived at the conclusion that Laud was a true servant of the Church of England, and would never consent to submission to Rome, except on terms which could not be granted, but on the other, he had so long regarded the Church as the natural ally of Rome, and the uselessness of attempting to win over the Puritans was so apparent, that he had not entered warmly into these new schemes. He, however, was inclined to think that were a change to take place, and the Puritan party to gain the supreme power in the State, the re-action among the upper classes would be so great, that the Romish faith would gain numberless converts. He finally pressed upon Johnny the necessity of great prudence, telling him that he should be immediately placed about the person of the Queen as one of her pages; and, as soon as possible, transferred to the King's service in as high a post as the influence to be exerted could command, in order that he should possess as much influence as possible: that in the meantime his business would be simply to become acquainted with as many of all parties as he possibly could, and to gain their confidence, opportunities for doing which should be given him both in the assemblies he would meet at his father's house, and in other company into which he should be introduced. He warned him against crediting anything he heard, unless assured of its truth by himself—the most exaggerated reports upon every subject, he said, prevailing in the Court and city. The conversions to Romanism, he told him, though numerous, were nothing like so many as were reported, as might be supposed when the reputed ones included such men as Mr. Endymion Porter, the most faithful servant of the King and a firm Church of England man, though, like many others, entertaining very friendly opinions of the Papists.

Conversing in this way, they entered London one afternoon at the beginning of August 1637. Johnny, as may be supposed, was all eyes as they entered London, which they did by Kensington and St. James's Park. The beautiful buildings at Kensington, and the throng of gentry and carriages in the park astonished him beyond measure. As they passed through the park many persons recognised Father St. Clare, but they passed on without stopping, through the gateway by the side of the beautiful banqueting-house into the narrow street that led by Charing Cross and the Strand. The crowds were now of a different kind to those they had passed in the park. They passed several groups assembled round quack doctors and itinerant speakers, one of whom was relating how the congregation of a Parish Church the Sunday before had been alarmed by an insurrection of armed Papists—stories of this kind being then a common invention to excite and stir up the people. At one of these groups they were startled by hearing a man who was selling books, announce the name as "Jesus' Worship Confuted;" as the thing was new to the Jesuit, he stopped and ordered one of his men to dismount and bring him one, when it was found to be a tract against ceremonies, and especially against bowing at the name of Jesus. They resumed their passage down the Strand, Father St. Clare remarking on the strange ideas a stranger would attach to the state of religion in England if he listened only to the opposing cries. All down the Strand the Jesuit pointed out the beautiful houses of the nobility, and the glimpses of the river between them. They stopped at last at Somerset House, then a large rambling series of buildings extending round several courts with gardens and walks on the river banks, and a handsome water-gate leading to the river. They went to the lodgings of Father Cory, the Queen's confessor, who was at home, and received them hospitably. Johnny was so taken up with all the astonishing sights around him, especially with the wonderful view up and down the river, with the innumerable boats and barges, the palaces and gardens, and churches and steeples on the banks, that it was a day or two before he could talk or think calmly of anything. The next morning the Jesuit took him to his father's house on the north side of the Strand, where he saw both his father and brother, it not being the latter's turn in waiting at the Court. Mr. Inglesant was not more affectionate to his son than usual; he appeared anxious and worn, but he told him he was pleased at his arrival, that he must obey Father St. Clare in all things, and that he would become a useful and successful man. Father St. Clare had sent for a Court tailor, and ordered a proper dress and accoutrements for Johnny, who was astonished at his own appearance when attired in lace and satin, and his long hair combed and dressed. The Jesuit regarded him with satisfaction, and told him they were going at once to the Queen. Mr. Inglesant's coach was sent for them, and was waiting in one of the courts; and entering, they were driven through London to Whitehall.

It was the third of August, and the Archbishop was marrying the Duke of Lennox to the Lady Mary Villiers, the daughter of the great Duke of Buckingham, in his Chapel at Lambeth. The King was expected to go to Lambeth to be present at the ceremony, but this was of no consequence to the Jesuit, who wished to introduce his protégé to the Queen alone. When they reached Whitehall, however, they found that both their Majesties had gone to the wedding, and the day being very rainy, news had been sent from Lambeth immediately after the ceremony that the Queen was returning, and she was then on the water. The Jesuit and Johnny left their carriage and went down to the water-gate. The Jesuit was evidently well known at the Court, and way was made for him everywhere. At that time the greatest laxity was allowed to the Catholics, and other priests besides the Queen's confessors were tolerated openly in London. As they reached the water-gate, the rain had ceased for a time, and a gleam of sunlight shone upon the river, and rested on the Queen's barge as it approached. Johnny's heart beat with excitement, as it reached the steps amid a flourish of trumpets, and the guard presented arms. The Queen, splendidly dressed, came from under the awning and up the steps, accompanied by her gentlemen and the ladies of her Court. Johnny never forgot the sight to his dying day, and it was doubtless one to be long remembered by those who saw it for the first time. When the Queen was near the top of the stairs and saw St. Clare, she stopped, and extending her hand she welcomed him to the Court. She seemed to remember something, and spoke to him rapidly in French, to which he replied with the utmost deference, in the same language. Then falling back, he indicated Johnny to the Queen, saying—"This is young John Inglesant, your Majesty, of whom I spoke to your Grace concerning the business you wot of."

The Queen looked kindly at the boy, who indeed was handsome enough to incline any woman in his favour.

"They are a handsome race," she said, still speaking French; "this one, I think, still more so than his brother."

"This is a refined spirit, your Majesty," said the Jesuit, in a low voice, "of whom I hope great things, if your Majesty will aid."

"You wish to be one of my servants, my pretty boy," said the Queen, extending her hand to Johnny, who kissed it on one knee; "Father Hall will tell you what to do."

And she passed on, followed by her train, who looked at St. Clare and the boy with curiosity, several nodding and speaking to the Jesuit as they proceeded.

Johnny was duly entered the next day as one of the supernumerary pages without salary, and entered upon his duties at once, which consisted simply of waiting in anterooms and following the Queen at a distance in her walks. This life, however, was beyond measure interesting to Johnny: the beautiful rooms and galleries in the palace, with their wonderful contents were an inexhaustible source of delight to him; especially the King's collection of paintings which was kept in a single apartment, and was admired over Europe. Father Hall took him also to many gentlemen's virtuoso collections of paintings and curiosities, where his intelligence and delight attracted the interest and kindness of all his hosts. Father St. Clare also gave him from time to time, small editions of the classics and other books which he could keep in his pocket, and read in the anterooms and galleries when he was in waiting. He would have been astonished, if the Jesuit had not told him it would be so, at the number of persons of all ranks and opinions in the Court who spoke to him and endeavoured to make his acquaintance, that they might remember him at a future time, evidently at the request of the priest.

Shortly after he came to London he was present at the Chapel Royal, at Whitehall, when the King took the sacrament and presented the gold pieces coined especially for this purpose. The sight impressed Johnny very much. The beautiful Chapel, the high altar on which candles were burning, the Bishops and the Dean of the Chapel in their copes, the brilliant crowd of courtiers, the King—devout and stately—alone before the altar, the exquisite music, and the singing of the King's choir, which was not surpassed in Rome itself. As the sunlight from the stained windows fell on this wonderful scene, it is not surprising that young Inglesant was affected by it, nor that this young spirit looking out for the first time on the world and its surprising scenes, and pageants, and symbols, realised the truth of what the old Parson had told him, and converted all these sights into spiritual visions; this one in particular, which led back his thoughts, as it was meant, to the three kings of old, who knelt and offered gifts before the mysterious Child.

Johnny saw his brother frequently, as the latter had grown out of his page-hood, and held another post about the Court, which gave him much leisure. The two young courtiers were at this time more alike than ever, and were much admired at Court as a pair. At one of the Queen's Masques, about this time, they acted parts somewhat similar to the brothers in Comus, but requiring greater resemblance, as in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, and both their acting and appearance was applauded by the King himself, who began to take notice of Johnny. Mr. Inglesant, the elder, had never been a favourite with the King, who was aware of his leaning to Popery, and indeed, at this time, both he and his friend the Jesuit were very much discouraged at the aspect of affairs. The position of the Papists had never been so good as at present, but this very circumstance was the ruin of their party. All restraints and reproaches of former times seemed forgotten; a public agent from Rome resided openly at the Court, and was magnificently fêted and caressed; the priests, though to avow popish orders was by law punishable with death, went about and preached openly without fear; and it was related as a sign of the times, that a Jesuit at Paris who was coming into England, coolly called on the English ambassador there, who knew his profession, offering his services in London, as though there were no penal law to condemn him the moment he landed! High Mass at Somerset House was attended at noon-day by great numbers of the Papists, who returned together from it through the streets as openly as the congregation of the Savoy, and the neighbouring churches. Their priests succeeded in converting several ladies of some of the greatest families, thereby provoking the anger of their relations, and causing them to long for their suppression. They held large political conferences openly, and ostentatiously subscribed a large sum of money to assist the King against the Scots. Clarendon, indeed, says that they acted as though they had been suborned by these latter to root out their own religion.

It would seem, indeed, that the English mind is not habituated to plotting, and that the majority of any party are not equal to a sustained and concealed effort. The Jesuit, Mr. Inglesant, and the other astute members of their party perceived with sorrow the course things were taking without being able to remedy it. The former desisted from all active efforts, contenting himself with assisting the Queen in her attempts to win over members of the Parliament to her interest, and in opposing and counteracting the intrigues of a small and fanatical section of the Papists who were attempting a wild and insane plot against the King and the Archbishop, which was said to extend to even the attempting their death. As neither of these occupations was very arduous, he had little need of Johnny's assistance, and left him very much to himself. Inglesant, therefore, continued the cultivation of his acquaintance with both parties pretty much in his own way. He had several friends whose society he much valued among the Papists, and he frequently attended mass when not obliged to by his attendance upon the Queen; but he was rather more inclined to attach himself to the members of the Laudian and High Church party, who presented many qualities which interested and attracted him. He read with delight the books of this party, Dr. Donne's and Herbert's Poems, and the writings of Andrews and Bishop Cosin's Devotions, which last was much disliked by the Puritans, and, indeed, the course he took could not have been more in accordance with the Jesuit's plan of preparing him for future service, should the time ever arrive when such usefulness should be required. In his mind he was still devoted, though in a halting and imperfect manner, to that pursuit of the spiritual life and purity which had attracted him when so young, and he lost no opportunity of consulting any on these mysterious subjects who he thought would sympathise with his ideas. In this he had no assistance from his brother, who was devoted to the pursuit of pleasure—of worldly pleasure, it is true, in its most refined aspect—but still of such pleasures as are entirely apart from those of the soul.

One of his friends had presented Inglesant with a little book, "Divine Considerations of those things most profitable in our Christian profession," written in Spanish by John Valdesso, a Papist, and translated by a gentleman of whom Johnny heard a great deal, and was exceedingly interested in what he heard. In this book the author says several very high and beautiful things concerning the Spiritual life, and of the gradual illumination of the Divine Light shed upon the mind, as the sun breaks by degrees upon the eyes of a traveller in the dark. But though Johnny was attracted to the book itself, he was principally interested in it by what he heard of the translator. This was Mr. Nicholas Ferrar, who had founded a religious house at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, or, as it was called in the world, the "Protestant Nunnery," in which he lived with his mother and several nephews and nieces, in the practice of good works and the worship of God. Extraordinary attention had been attracted to this establishment by the accounts of the strange and holy life of its inmates; and still more by the notice which the King had condescended to take of it, not only visiting it on his journey to Scotland, in 1633, but also requesting and accepting presents of devotional books, which it was part of the occupation of the family to prepare.

The accounts of this religious house, and of the family within it, so excited Johnny's imagination that he became exceedingly desirous to see it, especially as it was said that Mr. Ferrar was very infirm, and was not expected to survive very long.

It was late in the autumn when he made this visit, about two months before Mr. Ferrar's death. The rich autumn foliage was lighted by the low sun as he rode through the woods and meadows, and across the sluggish streams of Bedford and Huntingdon. He slept at a village a few miles south of Little Gidding, and reached that place early in the day. It was a solitary, wooded place, with a large manor house, and a little Church close by. It had been for some time depopulated, and there were no cottages nor houses near. The manor house and Church had been restored to perfect order by Mr. Ferrar, and Inglesant reached it through a grove of trees planted in walks, with latticed paths and gardens on both sides. A brook crossed the road at the foot of the gentle ascent on which the house was built. He asked to see Mr. Ferrar, and was shown by a man-servant into a fair spacious parlour, where Mr. Ferrar presently came to him. Inglesant was disappointed at his appearance, which was plain and not striking in any way, but his speech was able and attractive. Johnny apologised for his bold visit, telling him how much taken he had been by his book, and by what he had heard of him and his family; and that what he had heard did not interest him merely out of curiosity, as he feared it might have done many, but out of sincere desire to learn something of the holy life which doubtless that family led. To this Mr. Ferrar replied that he was thankful to see any one who came in such a spirit, and that several, not only of his own friends, as Mr. Crashaw the poet, but many young students from the University at Cambridge came to see him in a like spirit, to the benefit, he hoped, of both themselves and of him. He said with great humility, that although on the one hand very much evil had been spoken of him which was not true, he had no doubt that, on the other, many things had been said about their holiness and the good that they did which went far beyond the truth. For his own part, he said he had adopted that manner of life through having long seen enough of the manners and vanities of the world; and holding them in low esteem, was resolved to spend the best of his life in mortifications and devotion, in charity, and in constant preparation for death. That his mother, his elder brother, his sisters, his nephews and nieces, being content to lead this mortified life, they spent their time in acts of devotion and by doing such good works as were within their power, such as keeping a school for the children of the next parishes, for teaching of whom he provided three masters who lived constantly in the house. That for ten years they had lived this harmless life, under the care of his mother, who had trained her daughters and grand-daughters to every good work; but two years ago they had lost her by death, and as his health was very feeble he did not expect long to be separated from her, but looked forward to his departure with joy, being afraid of the evil times he saw approaching.

When he had said this, he led Inglesant into a large handsome room upstairs, where he introduced him to his sister, Mrs. Collet, and her daughters, who were engaged in making those curious books of Scripture Harmonies which had so pleased King Charles. These seven young ladies, who formed the junior part of the Society of the house, and were called by the names of the chief virtues, the Patient, the Cheerful, the Affectionate, the Submiss, the Obedient, the Moderate, the Charitable, were engaged at that moment in cutting out passages from two Testaments, which they pasted together so neatly as to seem one book, and in such a manner as to enable the reader to follow the narrative in all its particulars from beginning to end without a break, and also to see which of the sacred authors had contributed any particular part.

Inglesant told the ladies what fame reported of the nuns of Gidding, of two watching and praying all night, of their canonical hours, of their crosses on the outside and inside of their Chapel, of an altar there richly decked with plate, tapestry, and tapers, of their adoration and genuflexions at their entering. He told Mr. Ferrar that his object in visiting him was chiefly to know his opinion of the Papists and their religion, as, having been bred among them himself, and being very nearly one of them, he was anxious to know the opinions of one who was said to hold many of their doctrines without joining them or approving them. Mr. Ferrar appeared at first shy of speaking, but being apparently convinced of the young man's sincerity, and that he was not an enemy in disguise, he conversed very freely with him for some time, speaking much of the love of God, and of the vanity of worldly things; of his dear friend Mr. George Herbert, and of his saintly life; of the confused and troublesome life he had formerly led, and of the great peace and satisfaction which he had found since he had left the world and betaken himself to that retired and religious life. That, as regards the Papists, his translating Valdessa's book was a proof that he knew that among them, as among all people, there were many true worshippers of Jesus, being drawn by the blessed Sacrament to follow Him in the spiritual and divine life, and that there were many things in that book similar to the mystical religion of which Inglesant spoke, which his dear friend Mr. George Herbert had disapproved, as exalting the inward spiritual life above the foundation of holy Scripture: that it was not for him, who was only a deacon in the Church, to pronounce any opinion on so difficult a point, and that he had printed all Mr. Herbert's notes in his book, without comment of his own: that though he was thus unwilling to give his own judgment, he certainly believed that this inward spiritual life was open to all men, and recommended Inglesant to continue his endeavours after it, seeking it chiefly in the holy Sacrament accompanied with mortification and confession.

While they were thus talking, the hour of evening prayer arrived, and Mr. Ferrar invited Johnny to accompany him to the Church; which he gladly did, being very much attracted by the evident holiness which pervaded Mr. Ferrar's talk and manner. The family proceeded to Church in procession, Mr. Ferrar and Inglesant walking first. The Church was kept in great order, the altar being placed upon a raised platform at the east end, and covered with tapestry stretching over the floor all round it, and adorned with plate and tapers. Mr. Ferrar bowed with great reverence several times on approaching the altar, and directed Inglesant to sit in a stalled seat opposite the reading pew, from which he said the evening prayer. The men of the family knelt on the raised step before the altar, the ladies and servants sitting in the body of the Church. The Church was very sweet, being decked with flowers and herbs; and the soft autumn light rested over it. From the seat where Inglesant knelt, he could see the faces of the girls as they bent over their books at prayers. They were all in black, except one, who wore a friar's grey gown; this was the one who was called the Patient, as Inglesant had been told in the house, and the singularity of her dress attracted his eye towards her during the prayers. The whole scene, strange and romantic as it appeared to him, the devout and serious manner of the worshippers—very different from much that was common in churches at that day—and the abstracted and devout look upon the faces of the girls, struck his fancy, so liable to such influences, and so long trained to welcome them; and he could not keep his eyes from this one face from which the grey hood was partly thrown back. It was a passive face, with well-cut delicate features, and large and quiet eyes.

Prayers being over, the ladies saluted Inglesant from a distance, and left the Church with the rest, in the same order as they had come, leaving Mr. Ferrar and Johnny alone. They remained some time discoursing on worship and Church ceremonies, and then returned to the house. It was now late, and Mr. Ferrar, who was evidently much pleased with his guest, invited him to stay the night, and even extended his hospitality by asking him to stay over the next, which was Saturday, and the Sunday, upon which, as it was the first Sunday in the month, the holy Sacrament would be administered, and several of Mr. Ferrar's friends from Cambridge would come over and partake of it, and to pass the night and day in prayer and acts of devotion. To this proposition Inglesant gladly consented, the whole proceeding appearing to him full of interest and attraction. Soon after they returned to the house supper was served, all the family sitting down together at a long table in the hall. During supper some portion of the book of the Martyrs was read aloud. Afterwards two hours were permitted for diversion, during which all were allowed to do as they pleased.

The young ladies having found out that Inglesant was a Queen's page, were very curious to hear of the Court and royal family from him, which innocent request Mr. Ferrar encouraged, and joined in himself. One reason of the success with which his mother and he had ruled this household appears to have been his skill in interesting and attracting all its inmates by the variety and pleasant character of their occupations. He was also much interested himself in what Johnny told him, for in this secluded family, themselves accustomed to prudence, Inglesant felt he might safely speak of many things upon which he was generally silent; and after prayers, when the family were retired to their several rooms, Mr. Ferrar remained with him some time, while Johnny related to him the aspect of religious parties at the moment, and particularly all that he could tell, without violating confidence, of the Papists and of his friend the Jesuit.

The next morning they rose at four, though two of the family had been at prayer all night, and did not go to rest till the others rose. They went into the oratory in the house itself to prayers, for they kept six times of prayer during the day. At six they said the psalms of the hour, for every hour had its appropriate psalms, and at half-past six went to Church for matins. When they returned at seven o'clock they said the psalms of the hour, sang a short hymn, and went to breakfast. After breakfast, when the younger members of the family were at their studies, Mr. Ferrar took Inglesant to the school, where all the children in the neighbourhood were permitted to come. At eleven they went to dinner, and after dinner there was no settled occupation till one, every one being allowed to amuse himself as he chose. The young ladies had been trained not only to superintend the house, but to wait on any sick persons in the neighbourhood who came to the house at certain times for assistance, and to dress the wounds of those who were hurt, in order to give them readiness and skill in this employment, and to habituate them to the virtues of humility and tenderness of heart. A large room was set apart for this purpose, where Mr. Ferrar had instructed them in the necessary skill, having been himself Physic Fellow at Clare Hall, in Cambridge, and under the celebrated Professors at Padua, in Italy. This room Inglesant requested to see, thinking that he should in this way also see something of and be able to speak to the young ladies whose acquaintance he had hitherto not had much opportunity of cultivating. Mr. Ferrar told his nephew to show it him—young Nicholas Ferrar, a young man of extraordinary skill in languages, who was afterwards introduced to the King and Prince Charles, some time before his early death. When they entered the room Inglesant was delighted to find that the only member of the family there was the young lady in the Grey Friar's habit, whose face had attracted him so much in Church. She was listening to the long tiresome tale of an old woman, following the example of George Herbert, who thought on a similar occasion, that "it was some relief to a poor body to be heard with patience."

Johnny, who in spite of his Jesuitical and Court training was naturally modest, and whose sense of religion made him perfectly well-bred, accosted the young lady very seriously, and expressed his gratitude at having been permitted to stay and see so many excellent and improving things as that family had to show. The liking which the head of the house had evidently taken for Inglesant disposed the younger members in his favour, and the young lady answered him simply and unaffectedly, but with manifest pleasure.

Inglesant inquired concerning the assumed names of the sisters and how they sustained their respective qualities, and what exercises suited to these qualities they had to perform. She replied that they had exercises, or discourses, which they performed at the great festivals of the year, Christmas and Easter; and which were composed with reference to their several qualities. All of these, except her own, were enlivened by hymns and odes composed by Mr. Ferrar, and set to music by the music master of the family, who accompanied the voices with the viol or the lute. But her own, she said, had never any music or poetry connected with it; it was always of a very serious turn, and much longer than any other, and had not any historical anecdote or fable interwoven with it, the contrivance being to exercise that virtue to which she was devoted. Inglesant asked her with pity if this was not very hard treatment, and she only replied, with a smile, that she had the enjoyment of all the lively performances of the others. He asked her whether they looked forward to passing all their lives in this manner, or whether they allowed the possibility of any change, and if she had entirely lost her own name in her assumed one, or whether he might presume to ask it, that he might have wherewithal to remember her by, as he surely should as long as he had life. She said her name was Mary Collet; and that as to his former question, two of her sisters had had, at one time, a great desire to become veiled virgins, to take upon them a vow of perpetual chastity, with the solemnity of a Bishop's blessing and ratification, but on going to Bishop Williams he had discouraged, and at last, dissuaded them from it.

Inglesant and the young lady remained talking in this way for some time, young Nicholas Ferrar having left them; but at last she excused herself from staying any longer, and he was obliged to let her go. He ventured to say that he hoped they would remember him, that he was utterly ignorant of the future that lay before him, but that whatever fate awaited him, he should never forget the "Nuns of Gidding" and their religious life. She replied that they would certainly remember him, as they did all their acquaintance, in their daily prayer, especially as she had seldom seen her uncle so pleased with a stranger as he had been with him. With these compliments they parted, and Inglesant returned to the drawing-room, where more visitors had arrived.

In the afternoon there came from Cambridge Mr. Crashaw the poet, of Peterhouse, who afterwards went over to the Papists and died Canon of Loretto, and several gentlemen, undergraduates of Cambridge, to spend the Sunday at Gidding, being the first Sunday of the month. Mr. Crashaw, when Inglesant was introduced to him as one of the Queen's pages, finding that he was acquainted with many Roman Catholics, was very friendly and conversed with him apart. He said he conceived a great admiration for the devout lives of the Catholic saints, and of the government and discipline of the Catholic Church, and that he feared that the English Church had not sufficient authority to resist the spread of Presbyterianism, in which case he saw no safety except in returning to the communion of Rome. Walking up and down the garden paths, after evening prayers in Church, he spoke a great deal on this subject, and on the beauty of a retired religious life, saying that here at Little Gidding and at Little St. Marie's Church, near to Peterhouse, he had passed the most blissful moments of his life, watching at midnight in prayer and meditation.

That night Mr. Crashaw, Inglesant, and one or two others remained in the Church from nine till twelve, during which time they said over the whole Book of Psalms in the way of antiphony, one repeating one verse and the rest the other. The time of their watch being ended they returned to the house, went to Mr. Ferrar's door and bade him good-morrow, leaving a lighted candle for him. They then went to bed, but Mr. Ferrar arose according to the passage of Scripture "at midnight I will arise and give thanks," and went into the Church, where he betook himself to religious meditation.

Early on the Sunday morning the family were astir and said prayers in the oratory. After breakfast many people from the country around and more than a hundred children came in. These children were called the Psalm children, and were regularly trained to repeat the Psalter, and the best voices among them to assist in the service on Sundays. They came in every Sunday, and according to the proficiency of each were presented with a small piece of money, and the whole number entertained with a dinner after Church. The Church was crowded at the morning service before the Sacrament. The service was beautifully sung, the whole family taking the greatest delight in Church music, and many of the gentlemen from Cambridge being amateurs. The Sacrament was administered with the greatest devotion and solemnity. Impressed as he had been with the occupation of the preceding day and night, and his mind excited with watching and want of sleep and with the exquisite strains of the music, the effect upon Inglesant's imaginative nature was excessive. Above the altar, which was profusely bedecked with flowers, the antique glass of the East window, which had been carefully repaired, contained a figure of the Saviour of an early and severe type. The form was gracious and yet commanding, having a brilliant halo round the head, and being clothed in a long and apparently seamless coat; the two fore-fingers of the right hand were held up to bless. Kneeling upon the half-pace, as he received the sacred bread and tasted the holy wine, this gracious figure entered into Inglesant's soul, and stillness and peace unspeakable, and life, and light, and sweetness, filled his mind. He was lost in a sense of rapture, and earth and all that surrounded him faded away. When he returned a little to himself, kneeling in his seat in the Church, he thought that at no period of his life, however extended, should he ever forget that morning or lose the sense and feeling of that touching scene, of that gracious figure over the altar, of the bowed and kneeling figures, of the misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind. Heaven itself seemed to have opened to him and one fairer than the fairest of the angelic hosts to have come down to earth.

After the service, the family and all the visitors returned to the mansion house in the order in which they had come, and the Psalm children were entertained with a dinner in the great hall; all the family and visitors came in to see them served, and Mrs. Collet, as her mother had always done, placed the first dish on the table herself to give an example of humility. Grace having been said, the bell rang for the dinner of the family, who, together with the visitors, repaired to the great dining-room, and stood in order round the table. While the dinner was being served they sang a hymn to the organ at the upper end of the room. Then grace was said by the Priest who had celebrated the communion, and they sat down. All the servants who had received the Sacrament that day sat at table with the rest. During dinner one of the young people whose turn it was, read a chapter from the Bible, and when that was finished conversation was allowed; Mr. Ferrar and some of the other gentlemen endeavouring to make it of a character suitable to the day, and to the service they had just taken part in. After dinner they went to Church again for evening prayer; between which service and supper Inglesant had some talk with Mr. Ferrar concerning the Papists and Mr. Crashaw's opinion of them.

"I ought to be a fit person to advise you," said Mr. Ferrar with a melancholy smile, "for I am myself, as it were, crushed between the upper and nether millstone of contrary reports, for I suffer equal obloquy—and no martyrdom is worse than that of continual obloquy—both for being a Papist and a Puritan. You will suppose there must be some strong reason why I, who value so many things among the Papists so much, have not joined them myself. I should probably have escaped much violent invective if I had done so. You are very young, and are placed where you can see and judge of both parties. You possess sufficient insight to try the spirits whether they be of God. Be not hasty to decide, and before you decide to join the Romish communion, make a tour abroad, and if you can, go to Rome itself. When I was in Italy and Spain, I made all the inquiries and researches I could. I bought many scarce and valuable books in the languages of those countries, in collecting which I had a principal eye to those which treated on the subjects of spiritual life, devotion, and religious retirement, but the result of all was that I am now, and I shall die, as I believe and hope shortly, in the Communion of the English Church. This day, as I believe, the blessed Sacrament has been in the Church before our eyes, and what can you or I desire more?"

The next morning before Inglesant left, Mr. Ferrar showed him his foreign collections, his great treasure of rarities and of prints of the best masters of that time, mostly relative to historical passages of the Old and New Testaments. Inglesant dined with the family, of whom he took leave with a full heart, saluting the ladies with the pleasant familiarity which the manners of the time permitted. Mr. Ferrar went with him to the borders of the parish, and gave him his blessing. They never saw each other again, for two months afterwards Nicholas Ferrar was in his grave.

CHAPTER V.

The next year of Inglesant's life contained several incidents which had very important results. The first of these was the illness and death of his father, which occurred shortly after Johnny's return to London. His end was doubtless hastened by the perplexity and disappointment of many of his political projects, for his life in many respects was a failure. Though a rich man he had spent large sums in his political intrigues, and the property he left was not large. His lands and all his money he left to his eldest son, but he left Johnny some houses in the city, which Inglesant was advised to sell. He therefore disposed of them to a Parliament man, and deposited the money with a goldsmith to be ready in case of need. The possession of this money made him an important person, and he was advised to purchase a place about the Court, which, with his interest with the Queen's advisers, would secure his success in life. He endeavoured to act on this advice, but it was some time before he was successful.

After his return to London Inglesant saw Mr. Crashaw two or three times, when that gentleman was in London, and his conversation led him to think more of the Roman Catholics than he had hitherto done, and inclined him more and more to join them. Nothing would have recommended him so much to the Queen as such a step, and his feelings and sympathies all led him the same way. He was exceedingly disgusted with the conduct and conversation of the Puritans, and the extreme lengths to which it was evident they were endeavouring to drive the people. Most of his friends, even those who were themselves sound Churchmen, looked favourably on the Papists, and it was thought the height of ill breeding to speak against them at Court. It is probable, therefore, that Inglesant would have joined them openly but for two very opposite causes. The one was his remembrance of the Sacrament at Little Gidding, the other was the influence of his friend the Jesuit. The first of these prevented that craving after the sacrifice of the Mass, which doubtless is the strongest of all the motives which lead men to Rome; the other was exerted several ways.

It was one of the political maxims of this man that he never, if possible, allowed anything he had gained or any mode of influence he had acquired to be lost or neglected, even though circumstances had rendered it useless for the particular purpose for which he had at first intended it. In the present case he had no intention of permitting all the care and pains he had been at in Inglesant's education to be thrown away. It is true the exact use to which he had intended to devote the talents he had thus trained no longer existed, but this did not prevent his appreciating the exquisite fitness of the instrument he had prepared for such or similar use. Circumstances had occurred which in his far-seeing policy made the Church of England scarcely worth gaining to the Catholic side, but in proportion as the Church might cease to be one of the great powers in the country, the Papists would step into its place: and in the confused political struggles which he foresaw, the Jesuit anticipated ample occupation for the peculiar properties of his pupil. In the event of a struggle, the termination of which none could foresee, a qualified agent would be required as much between the Papists and the popular leaders as between the Catholics and the Royal and Church Party. Acting on these principles, therefore, the Jesuit was far from losing sight of Inglesant, or even neglecting him. So far indeed was he from doing so, that he was acquainted with most that passed through his mind, and was well aware of his increased attraction towards the Church to which he himself belonged. Now for Inglesant to have become actively and enthusiastically a Papist would at once have defeated all his plans for him, and rendered him useless for the peculiar needs for which he had been prepared. He would doubtless have gone abroad, and even if he had not remained buried in some college on the Continent, he would have returned merely as one of those mission priests (for doubtless he would have taken orders) of whom the Jesuit had already more than he required. It was even not desirable that he should associate exclusively with Papists. He was already sufficiently known and his position understood among them for the purposes of any future mission on which he might be engaged; and it would be more to the purpose for him to extend his acquaintance among Church of England people, and gain their confidence. To this end the Jesuit thought proper to remove him from the immediate attendance on the Queen, where he saw few except Papists, and to assist in his endeavours to purchase a place about the King's person. In this he was successful, and about the end of 1639 Inglesant purchased the place of one of the Esquires of the Body who relinquished his place on account of ill health. This post, which followed immediately after that of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, was looked upon as a very important and influential one, and cost Inglesant a large sum of money before he obtained it. He was, as we have seen, rather a favourite with the King, who had noticed him more than once, and he began to be regarded as a rising courtier whose friendship it would be well to keep.

When the Jesuit had seen him settled in his new post, he put in motion another and still more powerful engine which he had prepared for preventing his pupil from joining the Romish Church. He had himself inculcated as much as possible a broad and philosophical method of thought upon his pupil, but he was necessarily confined and obstructed in this direction by his own position and supposed orthodoxy, and he was therefore anxious to infuse into Inglesant's mind a larger element of rational inquiry than in his sacred character it was possible for him to accomplish without shocking his pupil's moral sense. If I have not failed altogether in representing that pupil's character, it will have been noticed that it was one of those which combine activity of thought with great faculty of reverence and of submission to those powers to which its fancy and taste are subordinated. These natures are enthusiastic, though generally not supposed to be so, and though little sign of it appears in their outward conduct; for the objects of their enthusiasm being generally different from those which attract most men, they are conscious that they have little sympathy to expect in their pursuit of them, and this gives their enthusiasm a reserved and cautious demeanour. They are not, however, blindly enthusiastic, but are never satisfied till they have found some theory by which they are able to reconcile in their own minds the widest results to which their activity of thought has led them, with the submission and service which it is their delight and choice to pay to such outward systems and authorities as have pleased and attracted their taste. This theory consists generally in some, at times half-formed, conception of the imperfect dispensation in which men live, which makes obedience to authority, with which the most exalted reason cannot entirely sympathise, becoming and even necessary. This feeling more than anything else, gives to persons of this nature a demeanour quite different from that of the ordinary religious or political enthusiast, a demeanour seemingly cold and indifferent, though courteous and even to some extent sympathetic, and which causes the true fanatic to esteem them as little better than the mere man of the world, or the minion of courtly power. The enthusiastic part of his character had been fully cultivated in Inglesant, the reasoning and philosophic part had been wakened and trained to some extent by his readings in Plato under the direction of the Jesuit; it remained now to be still more developed, whether to the ultimate improvement of his character it would be hard to say.

The Jesuit took him one day into the city to Devonshire House, where, inquiring for Mr. Hobbes, they were shown into a large handsome room full of books, where a gentleman was sitting whose appearance struck Inglesant very much. He was tall and very erect, with a square mallet-shaped head and ample forehead. He wore a small red moustache, that curled upward, and a small tuft of hair upon his chin. His eyes were hazel and full of life and spirit, and when he spoke they shone with lively light; when he was witty and laughed the lids closed over them so that they could scarcely be seen, but when he was serious and in earnest they expanded to their full orb, and penetrated, as it seemed, to the farthest limit of thought. He was dressed in a coat of black velvet lined with fur, and wore long boots of Spanish leather laced with ribbon. When the first compliments were over, the Jesuit introduced Inglesant to him as a young gentleman of promise, who would derive great benefit from his acquaintance, and whose friendship he hoped might not prove unacceptable to Mr. Hobbes.

Inglesant came often to Mr. Hobbes, whose conversation delighted him. It frequently referred to the occurrences of the day, in which Mr. Hobbes sided with the Government, having a great regard for the King personally, as had Harrington afterwards, and most of the philosophers—all their sympathies and theories being on the side of law and strong government; but their discourse frequently went beyond this, and embraced those questions of human existence which interest thinking men. He soon found out Inglesant's tendency towards Catholicism, and strongly dissuaded him from it.

"Your idea of the Catholic system," he said, "is a dream, and has no real existence among the Papists. Your ideal is an exalted Platonic manifestation of the divine existence diffused among men: the reality is a system of mean trivial details, wearisome and disgusting to such men as you are. Instead of the perfect communion with the Divine Light, such as you seek, you will have before you and above you nothing but the narrow conceptions of some ignorant priest to whom you must submit your intellect. What freedom of thought or existence will remain to you when you have fully accepted the article of transubstantiation, and truly believe that the priest is able of a piece of bread to make absolutely and unconditionally our Saviour's body, and thereby at the hour of death to save your soul? Will it not have an effect upon you to make you think him a god, and to stand in awe of him as of God Himself if He were visibly present?"

"I suppose it would," said Inglesant.

"One of our divines of the English Church, writing much above their wont—for they are much stronger in their lives than in their writings—puts this very plainly in the matter of the judgment of the priest in confession. 'Yet this extorted confession on Pain of Damnation is not the stripping a man to his naked body, but the stripping him of his body, that they may see his naked heart, and so, by the force of this superstition, break into those secrets which it is the only due privilege of Almighty God to be acquainted with, who is the only rightful Searcher of hearts.' These men may well pretend to be followers of Aristotle, who reason only from the names of things, according to the scale of the Categories; but of those of the better sort, as you and I take ourselves to be, who follow Plato, and found our doctrine on the conceptions and ideas of things, we must ever submit to be called heretics by them as a reproach, though we, doubtless, and not they, are the true sacramentalists, that is, the seekers for the hidden and the divine truth. It is for this reason that I take the Sacrament in the English Church, which I call in England the Holy Church, and believe that its statutes are the true Christian Faith."

"There seems to me," he went on after a pause, "something frightfully grotesque about the Romish Church as a reality. Showing us on the one side a mass of fooleries and ridiculous conceits and practices, at which, but for the use of them, all men must needs stand amazed; such rabble of impossible relics,—the hay that was in the manger, and more than one tail of the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem, besides hundreds which for common decency no man in any other case would so much as name. To look on these, I say, on one side, and on the other to see those frightful and intolerable cruelties, so detestable that they cannot be named, by which thousands have been tormented by this holy and pure Church, has something about it so grotesque and fantastic that it seems to me sometimes more like some masque or dance of satyrs or devils than the followers of our Saviour Christ."

"All this," said Inglesant, "I partly believe, yet I imagine that something may be said upon the other side of the argument, and I should suppose that there is not one of these doctrines and practices but what has some shadow of truth in it, and sprang at first from the wellspring of truth."

"Doubtless," said the philosopher, "there is nothing but has had its origin in some conception of the truth, but are we 'for this cause,' as that same divine says, 'also to forsake the Truth itself, and devotionally prostrate ourselves to every evanescent and far-cast show of Him—shadows of shadows—in infinite myriads of degenerations from Him?' Surely not."

"What is truth?" said Inglesant; "who shall show us any good?"

"Truth," said the philosopher, "is that which we have been taught, that which the civil government under which we live instructs us in and directs us to believe. Our Saviour Christ came as the Messiah to establish His kingdom on earth, and after Him the Apostles and Christian Princes and Commonwealths have handed down His truth to us. This is our only safe method of belief."

"But should we believe nothing of Christianity," said Inglesant, "unless the civil government had taught it us?"

"How can you believe anything," said Hobbes, "unless you have first been taught it? and in a Christian Commonwealth the civil government is the vicar of Christ. I know the Jesuits," said Hobbes, "and they me; when I was in France, some of them came to trouble me about something I had said. I quieted them by promising to write a book upon them if they did not let me be: what they seek is influence over the minds of men; to gain this they will allow every vice of which man is capable. I could prove it from their books. It is not for me, whom you scarcely know, to say anything against a friend whom you have known so long; but, as I understand you, your friend does not advise you to become a Papist. I do not suppose, though possibly you may do so, that he has no other object in view than your welfare. He has doubtless far-reaching reasons of which we know nothing; nevertheless, be not distrustful of him, but in this especially follow his advice. Shakespeare, the play-writer, says 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends,' or, I should say, the ends that others work out for us, to His higher purpose. Let us have faith in this beneficent Artist, and let Him accomplish His will on us."

"But this," said Inglesant, "is very different from what my reading and experience in mystical religion has taught me. Is there then no medium between the Divine Life and ourselves than that of the civil government? This would seem to me most repulsive and contrary to experience."

"If you pretend to a direct revelation," said Hobbes with a smile, "I have nothing to allege against it, but, to the rest of us, Christian sovereigns are the supreme pastors and the only persons we now hear speak from God. But because God giveth faith by means of teachers, therefore I call hearing the immediate cause of faith. In a school where many are taught, some profit, others profit not; the cause of learning in them that profit is the Master, yet it cannot be thence inferred that learning is not the gift of God. All good things proceed from God, yet cannot all that have them say that they are inspired, for that implies a gift supernatural and the immediate hand of God, which he that pretends to, pretends to be a prophet."

"I am loth to believe what you say," said Inglesant; "I am no prophet, yet I would willingly believe that God is speaking to me with an immediate voice, nay, more, that I may enter into the very life that God is leading, and partake of His nature. Also, what you now say seems to me to contradict what you said before, that we should endeavour to found our doctrine on the conceptions and ideas of things, which I take to mean a following after divine truth: nor do I see why you take the sacrament, as you say you do, except you expect some immediate communication from God in it."

The philosopher smiled. "One may see you have been taught in the Jesuits' college," he said, "and are a forward pupil and a close reasoner. But what I have said concerning faith coming by hearing need not prevent that afterwards God may convey other gifts to men by other means. Yet I confess I am not a proficient in this divine knowledge or life of which you speak; nor do I follow your master Plato very far into the same conclusions which many profess to find in him. One disputant grounds his knowledge upon the infallibility of the Church, and the other on the testimony of the private spirit. The first we need not discuss, but how do you know that your private spirit, that this divine life within you, is any other than a belief grounded on the authority and arguments of your teachers?"

Inglesant made no reply, which the philosopher perceiving, began to talk of something else, and the other soon after took his leave. Hobbes's doctrine was new to him, as it was to every one in that day, indeed, the particular form it took was peculiar to Hobbes, and perished with him; but the underlying materialism which in some form or other has presented itself to the thinkers of every age, and which now for the first time came before Inglesant's mind, was not without its effect. "How do I know indeed," he said, "that this divine life within me is anything but an opinion formed by what I have heard and read? How do I know that there is any such thing as a divine life at all?"

Such thoughts as these, if they produced no other effect, yet gradually lessened that eagerness in his mind towards divine things which had been so strong since his visit to Little Gidding, and quite satisfied him to defer at any rate any thoughts of joining the Church of Rome. But his thoughts were turned into other channels by the events which were occurring in the political world, and which began now to assume a very exciting character.

CHAPTER VI.

On the 20th of August 1640 the King set out for York on his way to Scotland, in some haste, and Inglesant accompanied or rather preceded him, his duty being to provide apartments for the King. The King advanced no farther than North Allerton, Lord Strafford being at Darlington, and a large part of the army at Newburn-upon-Tyne, from whence they retreated before the Scots almost without fighting. It was at this time that Inglesant began to see more of the real state of affairs among the leaders of the royal party, and became aware of the real weakness of their position. He appears to have formed the opinion that Lord Strafford, in spite of his great qualities, had failed altogether in establishing himself on a firm and lasting footing of power, and was deficient in those qualities of a statesman that ensure success, and incapable of realising the necessities of the times. His army, on which he relied, was disorganised, and totally without devotion or enthusiasm. It melted away before the Scots, or fraternised with them, and the trained bands and gentry who came in to the King's standard and to the Earl, prefaced all their offers of service with petitions for the redress of grievances and the calling together a Parliament. Inglesant had already formed the opinion that the Archbishop, who was now left at the head of affairs in London with the Privy Council, and was vainly endeavouring to prevent the citizens from sending up monster petitions to the King, was even more at variance with the inevitable course of events, and more powerless to withstand them than the Earl; and he appears to have written to his friend the Jesuit, for his guidance, careful explanations of his own views on these subjects. Father Hall, however, was not a man hastily to change his course. He had belonged from the beginning to that section of the popish party whose policy had been to support the High Church party rather than to oppose it, and this policy was strengthened now that the royal power itself began to be attacked. Whatever others of the popish party might think, those with whom the Jesuit acted, and the party at Rome which directed their conduct, were undeviating supporters of the King, and were convinced that all advantage which the Papists might in future achieve was dependent upon him. It is not apparent what action the Jesuit was taking at this moment, probably he was contented to watch the course of events; but this much is certain, that his efforts to induce Churchmen to work with him were increased rather than diminished.

While the King was at York, the Marquis of Montrose, who was in the Covenanters' army, carried on a correspondence with him, and copies of his letters were believed to be stolen from the King's pockets at night by one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, and sent to the leader of the Scots' army. Montrose retired into Scotland, and as the King was desirous of continuing a correspondence which promised so much, he decided upon sending a special messenger to the Marquis. Inglesant was fixed upon for this mission, as being known by the Royalists as a confidential agent of the Court, but at the same time almost entirely unknown to the opposite party. He found Montrose at Edinburgh, at a time when the Marquis was endeavouring to form a party among the nobility of Scotland, in opposition to the Covenant. Inglesant was probably little more in this negotiation than an accredited letter-carrier; but a circumstance occurred in connection with his stay in Scotland which is not without interest with reference to his future character. Among the gentlemen with whom Montrose was in connection were some of the Highland chiefs, and to one of these the Marquis sent Inglesant as a safe agent, being perfectly unknown in Scotland. This gentleman, understanding that the messenger of Montrose was coming to meet him, travelled down from the Highlands with a great retinue of servants, and sent on one of his gentlemen, with a few attendants, to meet the young Englishman on the borders of Perthshire. Inglesant had ridden from Stirling, and the night being stormy and dark, he had stopped at a gentleman's house in a lonely situation at the foot of the Badenoch Hills. Here, late in the evening, his entertainers met him, and they passed the night in company. After supper, as they were sitting in front of the fire with the master of the house and several more, the conversation turned upon the faculty of second sight, and the numberless instances of its certainty with which the Highland gentlemen were acquainted. While they were thus discoursing, the attention of the gentleman who had come to meet Inglesant was attracted by an old Highlander who sat in the large chimney, and he inquired whether he saw anything unusual in the Englishman, that made him regard him with such attention. He said no, he saw nothing: in him fatal or remarkable more than this, that he was much mistaken if that young man was not a seer himself, or, at any rate, would be able before many months were over to see apparitions and spirits. Inglesant thought little of this at the time, but he remembered it afterwards when an event occurred on his return to London which recalled it to his recollection.

The treaty having been settled with the Scots, and the writs issued for a new Parliament, the King returned to London.

One day in September, Inglesant received a visit from one of the servants of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who brought a message from Laud expressing a wish to see Mr. Inglesant at his dinner at Lambeth Palace on any day that would suit his convenience. He went the next day by water at the proper hour, and was ushered into the great hall of the palace, where dinner was laid, and many gentlemen and clergymen standing about in the windows and round the tables, waiting the Archbishop. Inglesant's entrance was remarked at once, his dress and appearance rendering him conspicuous, and his person being well known, and occasioned some surprise; for the Archbishop had not been latterly on friendly terms with the Queen, whom he had opposed on some questions relating to Papists, to whose party, even since his being in the King's household, Inglesant was considered to belong. The servants had evidently received orders concerning him, for he was placed very high at table and waited upon with great attention. On the Archbishop's entrance he noticed Inglesant particularly, and expressed his pleasure at seeing him there. The conversation at dinner turned entirely on the Scotch rebellion, and the failure of the Earl of Strafford to repress it; and on the King's return to London, which had not long taken place. Several gentlemen present had been with the army, and spoke of the insubordination among the officers, especially such as had been Parliament men. The elections for the new Parliament were expected shortly to take place, and many of the officers were deserting from the army, and coming up to London and other places to secure their return. The utmost dissatisfaction and insubordination prevailed over the whole country, for Laud and Strafford, after exciting the animosity of the people, had proved themselves weak, and the people began to despise as well as hate them—not perceiving that this probably proved that they were not the finished tyrants they were supposed to be. Strafford's army, raised by himself, having proved powerless against the Scots and insubordinate against its master, the popular party was encouraged to attack him, whom they hated as much as ever, though they began to fear him less. The violent excitement of the popular party against the High Churchmen and against ceremonies was also a subject of conversation. The wildest rumours were prevalent as to the probable conduct of the new Parliament, but all agreed that the Lord Lieutenant and the Archbishop, and probably the Lord Keeper, would be impeached. After dinner the Archbishop rose from table, and retired into one of the windows at the upper end of the hall, overlooking the river, requesting Inglesant, to whom he pointed out the beauties of the view, to follow him. Having done this, he said a few words to him in a low voice, explaining his regret at the difference which had arisen between himself and the Queen, whose most faithful servant he protested he had ever been, and whom he was most desirous to please. He then went on to say that he both could and intended to inform Her Majesty of this through other channels than Mr. Inglesant, though he bespoke his good offices therein; but he wished principally to speak to him of another matter, which would require privacy to explain fully to him; but thus far he would say, that although he had always been a true servant of the Church of England, and had never entertained any thoughts inconsistent with such fidelity, yet he believed the Roman Catholics were aware that he had always behaved with great toleration to them, and had always entertained a great respect for their religion, refusing to allow it to be abused or described as Antichrist in the English pulpits; that it was notorious that he had excited the enmity of the popular party by this conduct; and that whatever he might suffer under the new Parliament would be in consequence of it. He was aware that Mr. Inglesant was in the confidence of that party, and especially the particular friend of Father Hall, the leader of the most powerful section of it; and he entreated his services to bring the Jesuit and himself to some understanding and concerted action, whereby, at least, they might ward off some of the blows that would be aimed at them. The Archbishop said that many of the wisest politicians considered that the two parties who would divide the stage between them would be the popular party and the Papists; and if this were really the case (though he himself thought that the loyal Church party would prove stronger than was thought), it was evident that Mr. Inglesant's friend would be well able to return any kindness that the Archbishop had shown the Romanists.

Inglesant went to the Jesuit as soon as possible, and related his interview with the Archbishop. Father Hall listened to it with great interest.

"He has been like a true ecclesiastic," he said, "blind to facts while he was in the course of his power, astonished and confounded when the natural results arrive. Nevertheless, I fancy he will make a good fight, or at least a good ending. The people know not what they want, and might have been led easily, but it is too late. What was the real amount of tyranny and persecution the people suffered? The Church officers were blamed on the one hand for not putting the laws in force against the Papists, and on the other, for putting them in force against the Puritans. However, he has a right view of the power of the Church party, in which I join him. We shall see the good fight they will make for the King yet. The gentry and chivalry of England are rather rusty for want of use, but we shall see the metal they are made of before long. However, the Catholics will be ready first, are ready in fact now, and I have great hopes of the use that we shall make of these opportunities. I am much mistaken if such a chance as we shall have before many months are over will not be greater than we have had for a century. I shall count on you. We have been long delayed, and you must have thought all our pains would come to nothing; but we must have long patience if we enter on the road of politics.

"You are now," said the Jesuit, "embracing the cause full of enthusiasm and zeal, and this is very well; how else could we run out the race, unless we began with some little fire? But this will not last, and unless you are warned, you may be offended and fall away. When you have lived longer in this world and outlived the enthusiastic and pleasing illusions of youth, you will find your love and pity for the race increase tenfold, your admiration and attachment to any particular party or opinion fall away altogether. You will not find the royal cause perfect any more than any other, nor those embarked in it free from mean and sordid motives, though you think now that all of them act from the noblest. This is the most important lesson that a man can learn—that all men are really alike; that all creeds and opinions are nothing but the mere result of chance and temperament; that no party is on the whole better than another; that no creed does more than shadow imperfectly forth some one side of truth; and it is only when you begin to see this that you can feel that pity for mankind, that sympathy with its disappointments and follies, and its natural human hopes, which have such a little time of growth, and such a sure season of decay.

"I have seen nothing more pathetic than touches in the life of some of these Puritans—men who have, as they thought in obedience to the will of the Deity, denied themselves pleasure—human pleasure—through their lives, and now and then some old song, some pleasant natural tale of love flashes across their path, and the true human instinct of the sons of Adam lights up within them.

"Nothing but the Infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of human life.

"As you know, we have many parties in our Church, nay, in our own order: different members may be sent on opposing missions; but it is no matter, they are all alike. Hereafter it will be of little importance which of these new names, Cavalier or Roundhead, you are called by, whether you turn Papist or Puritan, Jesuit or Jansenist, but it will matter very much whether you acted as became a man, and did not flinch ignobly at the moment of trial. Choose your part from the instinct of your order, from your birth, or from habit or what not; but having chosen it, follow it to the end. Stand by your party or your order, and especially in the hour of trial or danger be sure you never falter; for, be certain of this, that no misery can be equal to that which a man feels who is conscious that he has proved unequal to his part, who has deserted the post his captain set him, and who, when men said 'such and such a one is there on guard, there is no need to take further heed,' has left his watch or quailed before the foeman, to the loss, perhaps the total ruin, of the cause he had made his choice. I pray God that such misery as this may never be yours."

The elections being over, London became very full. The new members hastened up. The nobility and country gentry came crowding in, and all the new houses in the Strand and Charing Cross were occupied, and a throng of young Cavaliers filled the courts and precincts of the palace. As soon as the King arrived, Inglesant went into waiting in his new post, in which great responsibility in the keeping of the royal household, especially at night, devolved upon him. His post came immediately after that of the gentlemen of the privy chamber, with whom the immediate attendance on the person of the King stopped, but the charge of the King's rooms brought him continually into the royal presence.

As soon as the Parliament met, the impeachment of Strafford began; and as it proceeded, the excitement grew more and more intense. It was not safe for the courtiers to go into the city, except in numbers together, and a court of guard was kept by the Cavaliers before Whitehall towards Charing Cross.

One day Inglesant received a letter from the Jesuit, whom he seldom saw, as follows:—

"Jack, tell your friend, the Archbishop, that Lambeth House will be attacked two nights from this, by a rabble of the populace. The Parliament leaders will not be seen in this, but they can be felt. Burn this, but let the Archbishop know the hand from which it comes."

On receiving this warning the Archbishop fortified his house, and crossed the water to his chamber in Whitehall, where he slept that night and two others following. His house was attacked by a mob of five hundred men; one of them was wounded and afterwards executed; not much damage was done.

History can furnish few events so startling and remarkable as the trial and death of Lord Strafford—events which, the more they are studied, the more wonderful they appear. It is not easy to find words to express the miserable weakness and want of statesmanship which led to, and made possible, such an event; and one is almost equally surprised at the comparatively few traces of the sensation and consternation that such an event must have produced. I am not speaking of the justice or the injustice of the sentence, nor of the crime or innocence of the accused,—I speak only of a great minister and servant of the Crown, in whose policy and support the whole of the royal power, the whole strength of the national establishment, was involved and pledged. That such a man, by the simple clamour of popular opinion, should have been arrested, tried, and executed in a few days, with no effort but the most degrading and puny one made on his behalf by his royal master and friend, certainly must have produced a terror and excitement, one would think, unequalled in history. That the King never recovered from it is not surprising; one would have thought he would never have held up his head again. That the royal party was amazed and confounded is not wonderful; one would have thought it would have been impossible ever to have formed a royal party afterwards. What considerations were powerful enough in the King's mind to induce him to consent to an act of such wretched folly and meanness we shall never know.

It was two nights after the execution. The guard was set at Whitehall and the "all night" served up. The word for the night was given, and the whole palace was considered as under the sole command of Inglesant, as the esquire in waiting. He had been round to the several gates, and seen that the courts and anterooms were quiet and clear of idlers, and then came up into the anteroom outside the privy chamber, and sat down alone before the fire. In the room beyond him were two gentlemen of the privy chamber, who slept in small beds drawn across the door opening into the royal bedchamber beyond. The King was in his room, in bed, but not asleep; Lord Abergavenny, the gentleman of the bedchamber in waiting, was reading Shakespeare to him before he slept. Inglesant took out a little volume of the classics, of the series printed in Holland, which it was the custom of the gentlemen of the Court, and those attached to great nobles, to carry with them to read in antechambers while in waiting. The night was perfectly still, and the whole palace wrapped in a profound quiet that was almost oppressive to one who happened to be awake. Inglesant could not read; the event that had just occurred, the popular tumults, the shock of feeling which the royal party had sustained, the fear and uncertainty of the future, filled his thoughts. The responsibility of his post sat on him to-night like a nightmare, and with very unusual force; a sense of approaching terror in the midst of the intense silence fascinated him and became almost insupportable. His fancy filled his mind with images of some possible oversight and of some unseen danger which might be lurking even then in the precincts of the vast rambling palace. Gradually, however, all these images became confused and the sense of terror dulled, and he was on the point of falling asleep when he was startled by the ringing sound of arms and the challenge of the yeoman of the guard, on the landing outside the door. The next instant a voice, calm and haughty, which sent a tremor through every nerve, gave back the word "Christ." Inglesant started up and grasped the back of his chair in terror.

Gracious Heaven! who was this that knew the word? In another moment the hangings across the door were drawn sharply back, and with a quick step, as one who went straight to where he was expected and had a right to be, the intruder entered the antechamber. It wore the form and appearance of Strafford—it was Strafford—in dress, and mien, and step. Taking no heed of Inglesant, crouched back in terror against the carved chimney-piece, the apparition crossed the room with a quick step, drew the hangings that screened the door of the privy chamber, and disappeared. Inglesant recovered in a moment, sprang across the room, and followed the figure through the door. He saw nothing; but the two gentlemen raised themselves from their couches, startled by his sudden appearance and white, scared look, and said, "What is it, Mr. Esquire?"

Before Inglesant, who stood with eyes and mouth open, the picture of terror, could recover himself, the curtain of the bed-chamber was drawn hastily back, and the Lord Abergavenny suddenly appeared, saying in a hurried, startled voice:—

"Send for Mayern; send for Dr. Mayern, the King is taken very ill!"

Inglesant, who by this time was recovered sufficiently to act, seized the opportunity to escape, and, hurrying through the antechamber and down the staircase to the guard-room, he found one of the pages, and despatched him for the Court physician. He then returned to the guard at the top of the staircase.

"Has any one passed?" he asked.

"No," the man said; "he had seen no one."

"Did you challenge no one a moment ago?"

The man looked scared, but finally acknowledged what he feared at first to confess, lest it should be thought he had been sleeping at his post, that he had become suddenly conscious of, as it seemed to him, some presence in the room, and found himself the next moment, to his confusion, challenging the empty space.

Failing to make anything of the man, Inglesant returned to the privy chamber, where Lord Abergavenny was relating what had occurred.

"I was reading to the King," he repeated, "and His Majesty was very still, and I began to think he was falling asleep, when he suddenly started upright in bed, grasped the book on my knee with one hand, and with the other pointed across the chamber to some object upon which his gaze was fixed with a wild and horror-stricken look, while he faintly tried to cry out. In a second the terror of the sight, whatever it was, overcame him, and he fell back on the bed with a sharp cry."

"Mr. Inglesant saw something," said both the gentlemen at once; "he came in here as you gave the alarm."

"I saw nothing," said Inglesant; "whatever frightened me I must tell the King."

Dr. Mayern, who lodged in the palace, soon arrived; and as the King was sensible when he came, he merely prescribed some soothing drink, and soon left. The moment he was gone the King called Abergavenny into the room alone to him, and questioned him as to what had occurred. Abergavenny told him all he knew, adding that the esquire in waiting, Mr. Inglesant, was believed to have seen something by the gentlemen of the privy chamber, whom he had aroused. Inglesant was sent for, and found the King and Abergavenny alone. He declined to speak before the latter, until the King positively commanded him to do so. Deadly pale, with his eyes on the ground, and speaking with the greatest difficulty, he then told his story; of the deep silence, his restlessness, the sentry's challenge, and the apparition that appeared. Here he stopped.

"And this figure," said Abergavenny in a startled whisper, "did you know who it was?"

"Yes, I knew him," said the young man; "would to God I had not."

"Who was it?"

Paler, if possible, than before, and with a violent effort, Inglesant forced himself to look at the King.

A contortion of pain, short but terrible to see, passed over the King's face, but he rose from the chair in which he sat (for he had risen from the bed and even dressed himself) and, with that commanding dignity which none ever assumed better than he, he said,—

"Who was it? Mr. Esquire."

"My Lord Stafford."

Abergavenny stepped back several paces, and covered his face with his hands. No one spoke. Inglesant dared not stir, but remained opposite to the King, trembling in every limb, and his eyes upon the ground like a culprit. The King continued to stand with his commanding air, but stiff and rigid as a statue; it seemed as though he had strength to command his outward demeanour, but no power besides.

The silence grew terrible. At last the King was able to make a slight motion with his hand. Inglesant seized the opportunity, and, bowing to the ground, retired backward to the door. As he closed the door the King turned towards Abergavenny, but the room was empty. The King was left alone.

CHAPTER VII.

In the beginning of 1642 the King left Whitehall finally, and retired with the Queen to Hampton Court, from which he went to the south to see Her Majesty embark, and without returning to London proceeded to the north. Very few attendants accompanied him, and Inglesant was left at liberty to go where he pleased. His brother was in France, and he was at the moment ignorant where the Jesuit was. Several motives led him to go to Gidding, where he felt sure of a welcome, though Mr. Ferrar was dead, and he accordingly rode there in the end of March. Mr. Nicholas Ferrar jun. had been dead nearly a year, having not long survived his uncle, and the household was governed by Mr. John Ferrar, Mr. Nicholas Ferrar's brother. Their usual quiet and holy life seemed quieter and more holy; a placid melancholy and a sort of contented sorrow seemed to fill the place, which was not disturbed even by those expectations of approaching trouble and danger which all felt. They received Inglesant with kindness and even affection, and begged him to remain as long as he pleased. Mary Collet, who, secretly he acknowledged to himself, was the principal reason of his coming down, met him frankly, and seemed more attractive and beautiful than before. He felt awed and quieted in her presence, yet nothing was so delightful to him as to be in the room or garden with her, and hear her speak. He endeavoured to assist her in her work of attending to the poor and sick, and in tending the garden, and became like a brother to her, without saying or desiring to say one word of gallantry or of love. The Puritans of the neighbouring towns, who had always disliked the Ferrars, came more frequently into their neighbourhood, and endeavoured to set the country people against them, and even to stir them up to acts of violence; but the Ferrars remarked that these annoyances were lessened by the efforts of a Puritan gentleman, who was possessed of considerable property in Peterborough, and who had latterly taken advantage of several excuses to come to Little Gidding.

Inglesant saw this gentleman once or twice, and became rather attracted towards him in a strange way. He appeared to him to be a man in whom a perpetual struggle was going on between his real nature and the system of religion which he had adopted, but in whom the original nature had been subdued and nearly extinguished, until some event, apparently of recent occurrence, had renewed this conflict, and excited the conquered human nature once more to rebellion. This alone would have afforded sufficient interest and attraction to a man of Inglesant's temperament; but this interest was increased tenfold when he perceived, as he did very soon, that this disturbing event and the reason which brought Mr. Thorne to Gidding, were in fact one and the same, the same indeed which brought himself there—attraction to Mary Collet. The peaceful half-religious devotion with which he regarded his friend prevented him from being incited to any feeling of jealousy by this discovery, and indeed would have made the idea of such a sentiment and opposition almost ridiculous. He treated Mr. Thorne, when they met at table or elsewhere, with the most marked courtesy—a courtesy which the other very imperfectly returned; at first ignoring Inglesant altogether, and when this was no longer possible, taking every opportunity to reprove and lecture him in the way the Puritans took upon them to do, all of which Inglesant bore good-humouredly. Things had gone on this way for several weeks, and Mr. Thorne's visits had grown less frequent, when one summer afternoon he rode over, and after seeing Mr. John Ferrar, came to seek Mary Collet. He found her and Inglesant alone in one of the small reading parlours looking on the garden. Inglesant had been reading aloud in Mr. Crashaw's poems; but on the other's entering the room, he rose and stood behind Mary Collet's chair, his hand resting on the high back. His attitude probably annoyed Mr. Thorne, whose manner was more severe and stern than usual. He made the lady a formal greeting, and took slight heed of Inglesant, who wished him Good-day.

"The days are far from good, sir," he said severely, "and the night of the soul is dark; nevertheless, there is a path open to the saints of God, which will lead to a brighter time."

He looked hard at Mary Collet as he spoke.

"I should hope, sir," said Inglesant, with a conciliatory smile, "that you and I may one day stand together in a brighter dawn."

The other's face slightly softened, for indeed the indescribable charm of Inglesant's manner few could resist, but he hardened himself instantly, and replied,—

"It is a fond hope, sir. How can two walk together unless they are agreed? What fellowship is there between the saints (however unworthy) and the followers of the pleasures of this world? And how may you, on whom the Prince of this world has bestowed every brilliant gift and power, stand at the resurrection amongst the poor and despised saints of God?"

Mary Collet moved slightly, and put her hand back upon the chair elbow, so that it partly and slightly touched Inglesant's hand, at which movement, a spasm, as of pain, passed over Mr. Thorne's features, and he drew himself up more sternly than before.

"But I am idling my time vainly and sinfully here," he said, "in chambering and wantonness, when I should be buckling on my armour. Mistress Collet, I came here to wish you farewell. I am going to London in the good cause, and I shall in all human probability never see you more. I intreat you to listen to the bridegroom's voice, and from my heart I wish you God-speed."

As she rose, he pressed her hand lightly, and raised his eyes to heaven, as the Puritans were ridiculed for doing; then he bowed stiffly to Inglesant, and was gone.

Inglesant followed him to the courtyard, where his horses were standing, but he took no further notice of him, and rode off through the gate. Johnny stood looking after him down the alley, between the latticed walks of the garden. At last he stopped and looked back. When he saw Inglesant still there, he seemed to hesitate, but finally dismounted and led his horse back. Inglesant hastened to meet him, with his plumed hat in his hand.

"Mr. Inglesant," said the Puritan, speaking slowly and with evident hesitation, "I am going to say something which will probably make you regard with increased contempt not only myself, which you may well do, but the religion which I profess to serve, but which I betray, in which last you will commit a fatal sin. But before I say it, I beg of you, if a few moments ago I said anything that was unnecessarily severe and more than my Master would warrant, that you will forgive it. Woe be to us if we falter in the truth, and speak pleasant things when we should set our face as a flint; nevertheless, there is no need for us to go beyond the letter of the Spirit, and I almost feel that the Lord has disowned my speech, seeing that so soon after I fear I myself am fallen from Grace."

He stopped, and Inglesant wondered what this long preamble might mean.

He assured him that he bore no ill-feeling, but very much the contrary; but the Puritan scarcely allowed him to finish before he began again to speak, with still greater difficulty and hesitation.

"I came here to-day, sir, with the intention, at which I have arrived not without long wrestling in prayer, of proposing in the Lord's name a treaty of marriage with Mrs. Mary Collet. In this I have sought direction, as I say, for a long time before addressing her. At length, yesterday, sitting all alone, I felt a word sweetly arise in me as if I heard a voice, which said, 'Go and prevail!' and faith springing in my heart with the word, I immediately arose and went, nothing doubting. But when I came into her presence, and found her with you, upon whom I have ofttimes apprehended that her affections were fixed; when I thought of the disadvantage at which doubtless, in the world's eye at least, I should be thought to stand with regard to you; when I considered her breeding and education in every sort of prelatical and papistical superstition—which latter has all through been a great stumbling-block to me, and to some others of the godly to whom I have opened this matter;—when I thought of these things, I, wretched man that I am! I mistrusted the Lord's power. I was deaf to the voice that spoke within me, and I left my message unsaid. What my sin is in this cannot be told. It may be that I have frustrated the Lord's will and purpose with regard to her, not only as regards calling her out of that empty show and profession in which she is, but, which doubtless will seem of more force to you, of providing her with some refuge from the storm which assuredly is not far from this household. I have already, if you will believe me, done something in warding off the first advances of that storm, and think I do not deceive myself that I have power sufficient to continue to do so. I entreat you, Mr. Inglesant, to think of this, if you have not yet done so, for her sake, and not for mine." He spoke these last words in a different manner, and with an altered voice, as though they were not part of what he had originally intended to say, but had been forced from him by the spectacle his mind presented of danger to her whom it was evident he unselfishly loved. "I am not so ignorant in the world's ways," he went on, "as not to know how absurd such an appeal to you must seem; probably it will afford amusement to your friends in after days. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain myself. I am distracted between two opinions, and as I rode away it came into my mind, that I might after all be flying away from a shadow, and that there might be no such relation between you as that which I have supposed—no other than that of a free and fair friendship; in which case I entreat you, Mr. Inglesant, though I confess I have no right nor claim upon you even for the commonest courtesy, to let me know it."

Inglesant had listened to this singular confession at first with surprise, but as the man went on, he became profoundly touched. There was something extremely pathetic in the sight of the human nature in this man struggling within him beneath the force of his Puritanism, the one now urging him to conciliate, and the next moment the old habit breaking out in insult and denunciation; the one opening to him glimpses of human happiness which the other immediately closed. And what he said was doubtless very true, and pointed plainly to Inglesant what men would say was his duty. What ground had he to oppose himself to this man—he, with scarcely any formed purpose of his own? If the lofty Strafford had fallen, and the Archbishop had proved powerless to protect himself, how was he to protect any who might trust to him? Even if he had thought nothing of this, it would have been impossible to have been angry with the distracted man before him, untrained to conceal his thoughts, nay, taught by his religion that self-restraint or concealment is a sin, and that to keep back a word or a thought is a frustration of the will of God—a training that would lay him open at every point before the polished pupil of the Jesuit and the Court.

These reflections gave to his ordinary courtesy an additional charm, which plainly commanded the confidence of his rival, and he said,—

"What do you wish me to do, Mr. Thorne? I am willing to leave everything to Mrs. Collet's decision."

"I will take nothing on myself again," said the other; "I will leave everything in the Lord's hands. If it is His will that we be brought together, we shall be so brought. I will not stay now—indeed I am in no fit state of mind—but in a few days I will come again, and whatever the Lord shall do in the meanwhile, His will be done."

The inconsistency of this last resolution with the denunciation of the Ferrar family, and especially of Inglesant, which he had before expressed, struck Inglesant as so extraordinary that he began to doubt the sanity of his companion; but finding that Mr. Thorne was determined to go, he parted from him with mutual courtesy, and returned at once into the house.

As he entered the room where Mary Collet was still sitting alone, she looked up with a smile, and was about to speak, no doubt to palliate the rudeness of their guest; but seeing from his manner that something extraordinary had occurred, she stopped, and Inglesant, who had resolved to tell her all that the Puritan had said, began at once and related simply, and, as closely as he could, word for word, what had happened. As he went on, the sympathy which the strange conflict he had witnessed in the other's breast had excited in his own, and the feeling he had of the truth of the other's power to protect, inspired his manner so that he spoke well and eloquently of his rival's nature, and of the advantages that alliance with him would bestow; but honest as his purpose was, no course more fatal to his rival's chance could probably have been taken, while at the same time he seriously, if he had any cause himself, jeopardised that also.

Mary Collet listened with ever-increasing surprise, and the light in her eyes died away to coldness as she continued to look at Inglesant. Her calm look suffered no other change; but that acute perception which Inglesant's training had given him—perception which the purest love does not always give—showed him what was passing in his friend's mind: he stopped suddenly in his pleading, and knew that he had said too much not to say more. He sank on the ground before the chair, and rested his hands upon the carved elbow, with his face, to which excitement gave increased beauty, raised to Mary Collet's eyes.

"It is all true, Mary," he said. It was the first time he had called her by her name, and it sounded so sweetly that he said it again. "It is all true, Mary; I might have spoken to you of another, would many times have spoken, if all this had not been true. As he said to me, dark days are coming on, the State is shaken to its base, the highest in the realm are disgraced and ruined, and even harried to death; what will happen the wisest heads cannot think; the King is a fugitive; I am all but penniless, should be homeless but for you. This even is not all; if it had been I might have spoken, but there is more which must be told. I am not my own. I am but the agent of a mighty will, of a system which commands unhesitating obedience—obedience which is part of my very being. I cannot even form the thought of violating it. This is why, often, when I tried to speak, my tongue refused its office, my conscience roused itself to keep me still. But if, happily for me, I have been wrong; if, even for me, the gates of heaven may still open,—the gates that I have thought were inexorably closed,—I dare not face the radiance that even now issues through the opening space. Mary, you know me better than I know myself; I am ignorant and sinful and worldly; you are holy as a saint of God. Do with me what you will, if there is anything in me worthy of you, take me and make it more worthy; if not, let me go: either way I am yours—my life belongs to you—neither life nor death is anything to me except as it may advantage you."

The light shone full on Mary Collet's face, looking down on him as he spoke. The odour of the garden flowers filled the room. The stillness of the late afternoon was unbroken, save by the murmur of insect life. Her eyes—those wonderful eyes that had first attracted him in the Church—grew larger and more soft as they looked down on him with a love and tenderness which he had never seen before, and saw only once again. For some seconds she did not—perhaps could not—speak, for the great lustrous eyes were moist with tears. He would have lain there for ever with no thought but of those kindly eyes. At last she spoke, and her voice was tender, but low and calm; "Johnny,"—it was the first time she had called him so, and she said it twice,—"Johnny, you were right, I know you better than you know yourself. Your first instinct was right; but it was not your poverty, nor the distraction of the time, nor yet this mysterious fate that governs you, which kept you silent; poverty and the troubles of the times we might have suffered together; this mysterious fate we might have borne together, or have broken through. No," she continued with a radiant smile, "cavalier and courtier as you are, you also, in spite of Mr. Thorne, have heard a voice behind you saying, 'This is the way, walk in it.' That way, Johnny, you will never leave for me. As this voice told you, this is not a time for us to spend our moments like two lovers in a play; we have both of us other work to do, work laid out for us, from which we may not shrink; a path to walk in where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. As for me, if I can follow in any degree in the holy path my uncle walked in, growing more into the life of Jesus as he grew into it, it is enough for me; as for you, you will go on through the dark days that are at hand, as your way shall lead you, and as the divine voice shall call; and when I hear your name, as I shall hear it, Johnny, following as the divine call shall lead, you may be sure that my heart will beat delightedly at the name of a very noble gentleman who loves me, and whom—I love."

The evening sun that lighted all the place went down suddenly behind the hedges of the garden, and the room grew dark.

CHAPTER VIII.

The manner of life at Gidding went on after this without the least alteration, and Inglesant's position in the family remained the same. Two or three days after, Mr. Thorne returned, and had an interview with Mary Collet alone. She told him she had not thought of marriage with any one, but had dedicated her life to other work. He attempted a flowing discourse upon the evils of celibacy, and managed to destroy by his manner much of the kindly feeling which Mary had conceived for him. He met John Ferrar and Inglesant coming from the Church, and Inglesant tried to exchange some kindly words with him; but he avoided conversation with him, and soon left. Inglesant passed most of his time (for he was not quite so much with Mary Collet as before) in reading, especially in Greek, and in assisting some of the family in preparing that great book, which was afterwards presented to Prince Charles. The influence of Mr. Hobbes's conversation wore off in the peaceful religious talk and way of life of this family. It was here that he had first obtained glimpses of what the divine life might be, and it was here alone that he felt any power of approach to it in his own heart. His love for Mary Collet, which was increased tenfold by the acknowledgment she had made to him, and which grew more and more every day that he spent at Gidding, associated as it was with all the teachings and incidents of these quiet holy days, made this life of devotion more delightful than can be told, and, indeed, made that life more like to heaven than any other that Inglesant ever lived. As he knelt in Church during the calm hours of prayer, and now and again looked up into Mary Collet's face from where he knelt, he often felt as though he had found the Beatific Vision already, and need seek no more, so closely was her beauty connected with all that was pure and holy in his heart. In these happy days all pride and trouble seemed to have left him, and he felt free in heart from all self-will and sin. It was a dream and unreal, doubtless; but it was allowed him not altogether without design, perhaps, in the divine counsel, and it could not be without fruit in his spiritual life.

The long summer days that passed so quietly at Gidding were days of disturbance all over England, the King's friends and those of the Parliament endeavouring to secure the counties for one or other of the contending parties. Nearly the whole of the eastern counties were so strong for the Parliament that the King's friends had little chance, and those gentlemen who attempted to raise men or provide arms for the King were crushed in the beginning. But Huntingdonshire was more loyal, and considerable preparation had been made by several gentlemen, among others Sir Capel Beedel and Richard Stone, the High Sheriff, to repair to the King's quarters when the standard should be set up. Inglesant was waiting to hear from his brother, who had returned from France, and was in Wiltshire with the Lord Pembroke, who had set in force the commission of array in that county. Inglesant would have joined him but for the close neighbourhood of the King, who might be expected in those parts every day. Accordingly, one afternoon, the King, accompanied by the Prince, afterwards Charles the Second, and the Duke of Lennox, and by Prince Rupert, whom some called the Palsgrave after his father, came to Huntingdon. Inglesant rode into Huntingdon that evening, and found the King playing at cards with the Palsgrave. The King received him graciously, and spoke to him privately of Father St. Clare, who had latterly, he said, been very active among the Catholics of Shropshire and Staffordshire, from whom he soon expected to receive large sums of money. He said the Jesuit had told him where Inglesant was, and that he intended on the next day to come by Little Gidding on his way, and should spend some hours there, as he was very desirous again to see a place which had so pleased him, and of whose inmates he had formed so high an opinion from what he had seen of them. Inglesant slept that night in Huntingdon, but very early on the fine summer morning he rode out to Little Gidding to warn the family of the honour that was intended them. Accordingly, about noon, they saw from the windows of the house the royal party approaching at the bottom of the hill. The whole family went out to meet them to the boundary of the lordship at a little bridge that spans the brook.

When the King approached foremost of all, they went to meet him, and kneeling down, prayed God to bless and preserve His Majesty, and keep him safe from his enemy's malice. The King rode up the hill at a foot pace, and alighted at the Chapel, which he examined carefully, and was then shown over the whole house, being particularly pleased with the almshouses, for whose inmates he left five pieces of gold, saying it was all he had. He had won them from the Palsgrave the night before at cards.

When he was come into the house, the great book that was being prepared for the Prince was brought him, and he spent some time in examining it and admiring the prints of which it was full, pointing out to the Palsgrave, who appeared to understand such things, the different style of each engraver. When he had sufficiently admired the book and walked about the house, admiring the pleasant situation upon a little hill, the sun beginning to go down, the horses were brought to the door, and the King and the rest mounted. The whole family, men and women, knelt down as the King mounted, and prayed God to bless and defend him from his enemies, and give him a long and happy reign. "Ah!" said the King, raising his hat, "pray for my safe and speedy return again," and so rode away, not knowing that he should return there again once more, in the very dead of night, a fugitive, and almost alone.

* * * * *

When John Inglesant had said to Mary Collet that he was almost penniless, he had used rather a strong hyperbole, for at that time the sum of money his father had left him was almost untouched. Upon leaving London, he had managed to get it transferred from the goldsmith with whom he had deposited it to another at Oxford, by a bill of exchange on the latter, as was the custom in transmitting sums of money in those days. This bill being now due, Inglesant decided on going to Oxford to secure possession of the money. He lodged at first at Mr. Martin Lippiard's, a famous apothecary; but after a few days he entered himself at Wadham College, where he got rooms which were of great use to him afterwards, when the Court came to Oxford.

No place could have been found which offered more to interest and delight a man of Inglesant's temperament than Oxford did at this time. It was still at the height of that prosperity which it had enjoyed under the King and Laud for so many years, but which was soon to be so sadly overcast. The colleges were full of men versed and intelligent in all branches of learning and science, as they were then taught. The halls and chapels were full of pictures and of rich plate soon to be melted down; the gardens and groves were in beautiful order, and the bowling greens well kept. The utmost loyalty to Church and State existed. Many old customs of the Papists' times, soon to be discontinued, still survived. One of the scholars sang the Gospel for the day in Hall at the latter end of dinner. The musical services in the Chapels on Sundays, Holy Days, and Holy Day Eves, were much admired, and the subject of great care. Music was studied deeply as a science, antiquity and every foreign country being ransacked for good music, and every gentleman pretending to some knowledge of it. The High Church party, which reigned supreme, were on excellent terms with the Papists, and indeed they were so much alike that they mixed together without restraint. No people in England were more loyal, orthodox, and observant of the ceremonies of the Church of England than the scholars and generality of the inhabitants.

Every kind of curious knowledge was eagerly pursued; many of the Fellows' rooms were curious museums of antiquities and relics, and scarce books and manuscripts. Alchemy and astrology were openly practised, and more than one Fellow had the reputation of being able to raise Spirits. The niceties of algebra and the depths of metaphysics were inquired into and conversed upon with eagerness, and strange inquiries upon religion welcomed. Dr. Cressy, of Merton, was the first who read Socinus's books in England, and is said to have converted Lord Falkland, who saw them in his rooms. A violent controversy was going on among the physicians, and new schools had risen up who practised in chemical remedies instead of the old-fashioned vegetable medicines.

The members of the University had put themselves into array and a posture of defence, for as yet there was no garrison at Oxford, and divers parties of soldiers were passing through the country, sent by the Parliament to secure Banbury and Warwick. The deputy Vice-Chancellor called before him in the public schools every one who had arms, and the recruits were trained in the quadrangles of the colleges and other places. Matters being in this state, late in October, in the middle of the week, news reached Oxford that the King had left Shrewsbury with his army, and was marching through Warwickshire on his way to London. The Parliamentary army was following from Worcester, and, as was thought, the two armies would soon engage. Numbers of volunteers immediately started to meet the King's army; many of the undergraduates stealing out of Oxford secretly, and setting forth on foot. Inglesant joined himself to a company of gentlemen who had horses, and who, with their servants, made quite a troop.

Some way out of Oxford he overtook a young undergraduate, the elder brother of Anthony Wood, afterwards the famous antiquary (who had stolen out of Oxford as above), and made one of his servants take him up behind him. They went by Woodstock and Chipping Norton, and slept the Friday night at Shipston-upon-Stour, and early the next morning obtained news of the royal army, which arrived under the Wormleighton Hills in the evening of Saturday. The King lodged that night at Sir William Chauncy's, at Ratoll Bridge, some distance from the army, where Inglesant went late in the evening. These quiet woodland places, some of the most secluded in England, both then and now—so much so, that it was said in those days that wolves even were found there—were disturbed by unwonted bustle these dark October nights, parties marching and counter-marching, recruits and provisions arriving. It was not known where Lord Essex's army was, but after it was dark it was discovered by the Prince of Wales's regiment, which had been quartered in two or three villages under Wormleighton Hills. The whole regiment was drawn out into the fields, and remained there all night, provisions being brought to them from the villages, and news was sent to the King and Prince Rupert.

At Sir William Chauncy's Inglesant found the Jesuit and some other Catholic gentlemen whom he knew; for the number of Papists in the royal army was very great. Father Hall was dissatisfied at seeing Inglesant, and tried hard to persuade him to keep out of the battle, saying he had different and more useful work for him to do; but Inglesant would not consent, though he agreed not to expose himself unnecessarily. The Jesuit told him that his brother was with the Prince's regiment, but counselled him not to join him, but stay in the King's bodyguard, which his place at Court might well account for his doing. He enlarged so much upon the coming danger, that Inglesant, who had never seen a battle, became quite timid, and was glad when the Jesuit was sent for to the King. Inglesant slept in a farm house, not far from Sir William's, with several other gentlemen,—for those were fortunate who had half a bed,—and on the morning rode with the King's pensioners to the top of Edgehill. The Church bells were ringing for morning service as they rode along. The King was that day in a black velvet coat lined with ermine, and a steel cap, covered with velvet. He rode to every brigade of horse and to all the tertias of foot, and spoke to them with great courage and cheerfulness, to which the army responded with loud huzzahs. An intense feeling of excitement prevailed as this battle—the first fought in England for more than a century—was joined. Numbers of country people crowded the heights, and the army was full of volunteers who had only just joined, and had no idea of war. The King was persuaded with difficulty to remain on a rising-ground at some little distance, with his guard of pensioners on horseback; but Inglesant did not remain with him, but joined his brother in the Prince's regiment under the Palsgrave, and rode in the charge against the enemy's horse, whom the Prince completely routed and chased off the field. Inglesant, however, did not share in the glory of this victory, for his horse was killed under him at the first shock of the encounter, and he went down with him, and received more than one kick from the horses' hoofs as they passed over him, rendering him for some time senseless. On recovering himself he managed to get on his feet, and crossed the field to the royal foot, but unfortunately joined the foot guards at the moment they were attacked and routed by the Parliamentary horse and foot. The Earl of Lindsay and his son were taken prisoners, and the royal Standard was taken. At this moment the King was in great danger, being with fewer than a hundred horse within half a musket shot of the enemy. The two regiments of his reserve, however, came up, and Charles was desirous of charging the enemy himself. Inglesant remained with the broken regiment of the guard who retreated up the road over the hill, along which the enemy's horse advanced, but, the early October evening setting in, the enemy desisted and fell back upon their reserves. It was a hard frost that night, and very cold. The King's army marched up the hills which they had come down so gallantly in the morning. Inglesant remained with the broken foot guards and the rest of the foot, which were confusedly mixed together, all night. The men made fires all along the hill top to warm themselves, and gathered round them in strange and motley groups. Many of the foot were very badly armed, the Welshmen, especially, having only pitchforks and many only clubs; but Prince Rupert the next day made a descent upon Keinton, and carried off several waggon loads of arms, which were very useful. The officers and men were mixed up together round the fires without distinction. As Inglesant was standing by one of them stiff and stunned with the blows he had received, and weak from a sabre cut he had received on the arm, he heard some one who had come up to the fire inquiring for him by name. It was the Jesuit, who had given him up for dead, as he had met his brother who had returned with Prince Rupert when he rejoined the King, and had learnt from him that Inglesant had fallen in the first charge. He told him that Eustace had gone down into the plain to endeavour to find him, which surprised and touched Inglesant very much, as he suspected his brother of caring very little for him. Father St. Clare stayed with Inglesant at the fire all night, for the latter was too stiff to move, and made himself quite at home with the soldiers, as he could with people of every sort, telling them stories and encouraging them with hopes of high pay and rewards when the King had once marched to London and turned out the Parliament. Inglesant dozed off to sleep and woke up again several times during this strange night, with a confused consciousness of the flaring fire lighting up the wild figures, and the Jesuit still talking and still unwearied all through the night.

One of the first men he saw in the morning was Edward Wood, whom he had helped on his way from Oxford. This young man had been much more fortunate than Inglesant, for he had come on foot without arms, and he had succeeded in getting a good horse and accoutrements.

"You are much more lucky than I am," said Inglesant; "I have lost my horses and servants and all my arms, and am beaten and wounded, as you see, till I can scarcely stand, while you seem to have made your fortune."

"I shall certainly get a commission," said the young man, who was only eighteen, and certainly was very much pleased with himself; "but never mind, Mr. Inglesant," he continued patronizingly, "it is your first battle, as it is mine, and you have no doubt learnt much from it that will be useful to you."

It had been one of the principal parts of Inglesant's training to avoid assumption himself, and to be amused with it in others, so he took his patronage meekly, and wished him success on his return, to Oxford, where he really was made an officer in the King's service soon after.

Soon after he was gone Inglesant found his brother, and with him his own servants, with an additional horse they had managed to secure, with which he replaced the one he had lost; and the next morning he rode with the Palsgrave into Keinton, where they surprised the rear of the Parliamentary army, and took much spoil of the arms and ammunition, and many wounded officers and other prisoners; but his wound being very painful, and being sick and weary of the sight of fighting, and especially of plundering, he left the Prince in Keinton and returned to Oxford, where he was very glad to get back to his pleasant rooms in Wadham. After the King had wasted his time in taking Banbury and Broughton Castle, he marched to Oxford with his army, where he was received with demonstrations of joy, and stayed some days.

After the King had rested a short time at Oxford, he proceeded to march to London; but Inglesant did not accompany him. The blows he had received about the head, together with his wound and the excitement he had gone through, brought on a fever which kept him in his rooms for some time. The Jesuit stayed with him as long as he could, but many other of Inglesant's friends at Oxford showed him great kindness. When he recovered he found himself, to his great surprise, something of a hero. Though, as we have seen, few men could have done less at Edgehill than Inglesant did, or have had less influence on the event of the day, yet, as he had been in the charge of the Prince's horse, and also in the rout of the foot guards, and had been wounded in both, and above all was, especially with the ladies, something of a favourite, of whom no one objected to say a good word, he gained a decided reputation as a soldier. It was indeed reported and believed at Little Gidding that he had performed prodigies of valour, had saved the King's life several times, and retrieved the fortunes of the day when they were desperate. In some respects this reputation was decidedly inconvenient to him; he was looked upon as a likely man to be in all foraging parties and in expeditions of observation sent out to trace the marchings and countermarchings of the enemy. Now, as he was pledged to the Jesuit not to expose himself to unnecessary danger, these expeditions were very troublesome to him, besides taking him away from the studies to which he was anxious to apply himself, and from the company of the leaders of both the Churchmen and Papists, to obtain the acquaintance and confidence of whom he still applied himself, both from inclination and in accordance with the Jesuit's wish. It is true, however, that in these expeditions about the country he formed several friendships of this kind, which might afterwards be useful.

CHAPTER IX.

The King returned to Oxford in December, and the Court was established at Christ Church College. There has perhaps never existed so curious a spectacle as Oxford presented during the residence of the King at the time of the civil war. A city unique in itself became the resort of a Court under unique circumstances, and of an innumerable throng of people of every rank, disposition, and taste, under circumstances the most extraordinary and romantic. The ancient colleges and halls were thronged with ladies and courtiers; noblemen lodged in small attics over baker's shops in the streets; soldiers were quartered in the college gates and in the kitchens; yet, with all this confusion, there was maintained both something of a courtly pomp, and something of a learned and religious society. The King dined and supped in public, and walked in state in Christ Church meadow and Merton Gardens and the Grove of Trinity, which the wits called Daphne. A Parliament sat from day to day; service was sung daily in all the Chapels; books both of learning and poetry were printed in the city; and the distinctions which the colleges had to offer were conferred with pomp on the royal followers, as almost the only rewards the King had to bestow. Men of every opinion flocked to Oxford, and many foreigners came to visit the King. There existed in the country a large and highly intelligent body of moderate men, who hovered between the two parties, and numbers of these were constantly in Oxford,—Harrington, the philosopher, the King's friend, Hobbes, Lord Falkland, Lord Paget, the Lord Keeper, and many others.

Mixed up with these grave and studious persons, gay courtiers and gayer ladies jostled old and severe divines and college heads, and crusty tutors used the sarcasms they had been wont to hurl at their pupils to reprove ladies whose conduct appeared to them at least far from decorous. Christmas interludes were enacted in Hall, and Shakespeare's plays performed by the King's players, assisted by amateur performers; and it would have been difficult to say whether the play was performed before the curtain or behind it, or whether the actors left their parts behind them when the performance was over, or then in fact resumed them. The groves and walks of the colleges, and especially Christ Church meadow and the Grove at Trinity, were the resort of this gay and brilliant throng; the woods were vocal with song and music, and love and gallantry sported themselves along the pleasant river banks. The poets and wits vied with each other in classic conceits and parodies, wherein the events of the day and every individual incident were pourtrayed and satirized. Wit, learning, and religion joined hand in hand as in some grotesque and brilliant masque. The most admired poets and players and the most profound mathematicians became "Romancists" and monks, and exhausted all their wit and poetry and learning in furthering their divine mission, and finally, as the last scenes of this strange drama came on, fell fighting on some hardly-contested grassy slope, and were buried on the spot, or in the next village churchyard, in the dress in which they played Philaster, or the Court garb in which they wooed their mistress, or the doctor's gown in which they preached before the King, or read Greek in the schools.

This gaiety was much increased the next year, when the Queen came to Oxford, and the last happy days of the ill-fated monarch glided by. It was really no inapt hyberbole of the classic wits which compared this motley scene to the marriage of Jupiter and Juno of old, when all the Gods were invited to the feast, and many noble personages besides, but to which also came a motley company of mummers, maskers, fantastic phantoms, whifflers, thieves, rufflers, gulls, wizards, and monsters, and among the rest Crysalus, a Persian Prince, bravely attended, clad in rich and gay attire, and of majestic presence, but otherwise an ass; whom the Gods at first, seeing him enter in such pomp, rose and saluted, taking him for one worthy of honour and high place; and whom Jupiter, perceiving what he was, turned with his retinue into butterflies, who continued in pied coats roving about among the Gods and the wiser sort of men. Something of this kind here happened, when wisdom and folly, vice and piety, learning and gaiety, terribly earnest even to death and light frivolity, jostled each other in the stately precincts of Parnassus and Olympus.

With every variety and shade of this strange life Inglesant had some acquaintance; the philosophers knew him, the Papists confided in him; Cave, the writer of news-letters for the Papists, sought him for information; the Church party, who knew his connection with the Archbishop, and the services he had rendered him, sought his company; the ladies made use of his handsome person and talents for acting, as they did also that of his brother. He had the entrée to the King at all times, and was supposed to be a favourite with Charles, though in reality the King's feelings towards him were of a mixed nature. No man certainly was better known at Oxford, and no man certainly knew more of what was going on in England than Inglesant did.

Among the chief beauties of the Court the Lady Isabella Thynne was the most conspicuous and the most enterprizing: the poet Waller sang her praise, music was played before her as she walked, and she affected the garb and manner of an angel. She was most beautiful, courteous, and charitable; but she allowed her gaiety and love of intrigue to lead her into very equivocal positions. She was intimately acquainted with Eustace Inglesant, who was one of her devoted servants, and assisted her in many of her gaieties and gallant festivals and sports; but she was shy of Johnny, and told Eustace that his brother was too much of a monk for her taste. She had a bevy of ladies, who were her intimate friends, and were generally with her, some of whom she did not improve by her friendship.

There was in Oxford a gentleman, a Mr. Richard Fentham, who was afterwards knighted, a member of the Prince's council, and a person of great trust with the King. This gentleman had been at school with Eustace Inglesant at that famous schoolmaster's, Mr. Farnabie, in Cripplegate Parish in London,—a school at one time frequented by more than three hundred young noblemen and gentlemen, for whose accommodation he had handsome houses and large gardens. One day Fentham took Eustace Inglesant to call on two young ladies, the daughters of Sir John Harris, who had lately come to Oxford to join their father, who had suffered heavy losses in the royal cause, and had been made a baronet. They found these two young ladies, to the eldest of whom Fentham was engaged, in a baker's house in an obscure street, ill-furnished and mean-looking. They were both, especially the eldest, extremely beautiful, and had been brought up in a way equal to any gentlemen's daughters in England, so that the gentlemen could not help condoling with them on this lamentable change of fortune, to which they were reduced by their father's devotion to the royal cause. The eldest young lady, Ann, a spirited, lively girl, confessed it was "a great change from a large well-furnished house to a very bad bed in a garret, and from a plentiful table to one dish of meat—and that not the best ordered,—with no money, for they were as poor as Job, and had no clothes," she said, "but what a man or two had brought in the cloak bags." Eustace Inglesant pursued the acquaintance thus begun; and both he and his brother were at Wolvercot Church some time afterwards, when Richard Fentham and Mistress Ann were married in the presence of Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards the Lord Chancellor, and Geoffry Palmer, the King's attorney. Lady Fentham was much admired and sought after, and became one of Lady Isabella's intimate friends. She was a lively, active girl, and fond of all kinds of stirring exercise and excitement, and was peculiarly liable to be led into scrapes in such society. Besides Lady Isabella, she was also exposed to other temptations from political ladies, who endeavoured to persuade her that a woman of her talent and energy should take some active part in public affairs, and get her husband to trust to her the secrets of the Prince's Council. They succeeded so far as to cause her to press her husband on this matter, and to cause some unpleasant feeling on her part, which, but for his kind and forgiving conduct, might have led to a serious breach. This danger passed over, but those springing from the acquaintance with Lady Isabella were much more serious. Sir Richard was much away at Bristol with the Prince, and during his absence Lady Isabella promoted an intimacy between Lord H——, afterwards the Duke of P——, and her young friend. In this she was assisted by Eustace Inglesant, who appeared to be actuated by some very strange personal motive, which Johnny, who saw a great deal of what was going on, could not penetrate.

Matters were in this state when one day Shakespeare's play of "The Comedy of Errors," or an adaptation of it, was given by the gentlemen of the Court, assisted by the King's players, in the Hall at Christ Church. The parts of the brothers Antipholus were taken by the two Inglesants, who were still said to be so exactly alike that mistakes were continually being made between them. The play was over early, and the brilliant company streamed out into the long walk at Christ Church, which was already occupied by a motley throng. The players mingled with the crowd, and solicited compliments on their several performances. The long avenue presented a singular and lively scene—ladies, courtiers, soldiers in buff coats, clergymen in their gowns and bands, doctors of law and medicine in their hoods, heads of houses, beggars, mountebanks, jugglers and musicians, popish priests, college servants, country gentlemen, Parliament men, and townspeople, all confusedly intermixed; with the afternoon sun shining across the broad meadow, under the rustling leaves, and lighting up the windows of the Colleges and the windings of the placid river beyond.

John Inglesant, in the modern Court dress in which, according to the fashion of the day, he had played Antipholus of Ephesus, was speaking to Lord Falkland, who had not been at the play, but who, grave and melancholy, with his dress neglected and in disorder, was speaking of the death of Hampden, which had just occurred, when a page spoke to Inglesant, telling him that Lady Isabella desired his presence instantly. Rather surprised, Inglesant followed him to where the lady was walking, a little apart from the crowd, in a path across the meadows leading from the main walk. She smiled as Inglesant came up.

"I see, Mr. Esquire Inglesant," she said, "that the play is not over. It was your brother I sent for, whom this stupid boy seemingly has sought in Ephesus and not in England."

"I am happy for once to have supplanted my brother, madam," said Johnny, adapting from his part. "I have run hither to your grace, whom only to see now gives me ample satisfaction for these deep shames and great indignities."

"I am afraid of you, Mr. Inglesant," said the lady; "you have so high a reputation with grave and religious people, and yet you are a better cavalier than your brother, when you condescend that way. That is how you please the Nuns of Gidding so well."

"Spare the poor Nuns of Gidding your raillery, madam," said Inglesant; "surely Venus Aphrodite is not jealous of the gentle dove."

"I will not talk with you, Mr. Inglesant," said the lady pettishly; "find your brother, I beseech you; his wit is duller than yours, but it is more to my taste."

Inglesant went to seek his brother, but before he found him his attention was arrested from behind, and turning round he found his scarf held by Lord H——, who said at once, "Is the day fixed, and the place? have you seen the lady?"

"My lord," said Inglesant, "the play really is over, though no one will believe it. 'I think you all have drunk of Circe's Cup.' I am afraid as many mishaps wait me here as at Ephesus."

Lord H—— saw his mistake. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I took you for your brother, who has some business of mine in hand. I wish you good day."

"I must get to the bottom of the mischief that is brewing," said Inglesant; "there is some mystery which I cannot fathom. The lady no doubt is pretty Lady Fentham, but Eustace surely can never mean to betray his friend in so foul a way as this."

That evening he sought his brother, and telling him all he had noticed, and what he had overheard, he begged him to tell him the plain facts of what was going on, lest he might add to the confusion in his ignorance. Eustace hesitated a little, but at last he told him all.

"There is no real harm intended, except by Lord H——," he said; "Lady Isabella simply wants to make mischief and confusion all around her. She has persuaded Ann Fentham to encourage Lord H—— a little, to lead him into a snare in which he is to be exposed to ridicule. There is a lady in Oxford, whom you no doubt know, Lady Cardiff, whom, if you know her, you know to be one of the most fantastic women now living, to bring whom into connection with Lord H—— Mrs. Fentham has conceived would be great sport; now, to tell you a secret, this lady, who entered into this affair merely for excitement and sport, is gradually becoming attached to me. I intend to marry her with Lady Isabella's help. She has an immense fortune and large parks and houses, and has connections on both sides in this war, so that her property is safe whatever befalls. This is a profound secret between me and the Lady Isabella, who is under obligations to me. Mrs. Fentham knows nothing of it, and is occupied solely with bringing Lord H—— and Lady Cardiff together. The ladies are going down to Newnham to-morrow. I meet them there, and Lord H—— is to be allowed to come. I intend to press my suit to Lady Cardiff, and certainly by this I shall spoil Lady Fentham's plot; but this is all the harm I intend. What will happen besides I really cannot say, but nothing beyond a little honest gallantry, doubtless."

"But is not such sport very dangerous?" said John. "Suppose this intimacy came to Richard Fentham's ears, what would he say to it? You told me there had already been some mischief made by some of the women between them."

"If he hears of it," said Eustace, carelessly, "it can be explained to him easily enough; he is no fool, and is not the man to misunderstand an innocent joke."

Inglesant was not satisfied, but he had nothing more to say, and changed the subject by inquiring about Lady Cardiff, of whom he knew little.

This lady was a peeress in her own right, having inherited the title and estates from her father. She had been carefully educated, and was learned in many languages. She had acted all her life from principles laid down by herself, and different from those which governed the actions of other people. She had bad health, suffering excruciating pain at frequent intervals from headache, which it is supposed unsettled her reason. At her principal seat, Oulton, in Dorsetshire, she collected around her celebrities and uncommon persons, "Excentrics" as they were called, principally great physicians and quacks, and religious persons and mystic theologians. Van Helmont, the great alchemist, spent much time there, attempting to cure her disorder or allay her sufferings, and Dr. Henry More of Cambridge condescended to reside some time at Oulton. It was a great freestone house, surrounded by gardens, and by a park or rather chase of great extent, enclosing large pieces of water, and surrounded by wooded and uncultivated country for many miles. At the time at which we are arrived, however, her health was better than it afterwards became, and she was chiefly ambitious of occupying an important position in politics, and of seeing every species of life. She was connected with some of the principal persons on both sides in the civil contention, and passed much time both in London and in Oxford. In both these places, but especially in the royal quarters, where greater license was possible, she endeavoured to be included in anything of an exciting and entertaining character that was going on. Whatever it was, it afforded her an insight into human nature and the manners of the world. Such a character does not seem a likely one to be willing to submit to the restraints of the married life, and indeed Lady Cardiff had hitherto rejected the most tempting offers, and, as she had attained the mature age of thirty-two, most people imagined that she would not at that time of life exchange her condition. It appeared, however, that her fate had at last met her in the handsome person of Eustace Inglesant, and the secret which Eustace had told his brother was already beginning to be whispered in Oxford, and opinions were divided as to whether the boldness of the young man or his good fortune were the most to be admired.

When Inglesant left his brother and walked under the starry sky to his lodgings at Wadham, his mind was ill at ease. He had taken a great interest in Lady Fentham and her husband; indeed, his feelings towards the former were those of an attached friend, attracted by her lively innocence and good nature. He was, as the reader will remember, still very young, being only in his twenty-second year. He was sincerely and vitally religious, though his religion might appear to be kept in subordination to his taste, and he had formed for himself, from various sources, an ideal of purity, which in his mind connected earth to heaven, and which, at this period of his life at any rate, he may have been said faultlessly to have carried out. The circumstances of his youth and early training, which we have endeavoured to trace, acting upon a constitution in which the mental power dominated, rendered self-restraint natural to him, or rather rendered self-restraint needless. It was one of the glories of that age that it produced such men as he was, and that not a few; men who combined qualities such as, perhaps, no after age ever saw united; men like George Herbert, Nicholas Ferrar, Falkland, the unusual combination of the courtier and the monk. Yet these men were naturally in the minority, and even while moulding their age, were still regarded by their age with wonder and a certain kind of awe. It is not meant that John Inglesant was altogether a good specimen of this high class of men, for he was more of a courtier than he was of a saint. He was a sincere believer in a holy life, and strongly desirous of pursuing it; he endeavoured conscientiously to listen for the utterances of the Divine Voice; and provided that Voice pointed out the path which his tastes and training had prepared him to expect, he would follow it even at a sacrifice to himself; but he was not capable of a sacrifice of his tastes or of his training. On the other hand, as a courtier and man of the world, he was profoundly tolerant of error and even of vice (provided the latter did not entail suffering on any innocent victim), looking upon it as a natural incident in human affairs. This quality had its good side, in making him equally tolerant of religious differences, so that, as has been seen, it was not difficult to him to recognize the Divine prompting in a Puritan and an opponent. He was acutely sensitive to ridicule, and would as soon have thought of going to Court in an improper dress as of speaking of religion in a mixed company, or of offering any advice or reproof to any one. In the case which was now disturbing his mind, his chief fear was of making himself ridiculous by interfering where no interference was necessary.

He passed a restless night, and the next morning went to Trinity Chapel, then much frequented for the high style of the music. He was scarcely here before Lady Isabella and young Lady Fentham, who lodged in that college, came in, as was their habit, dressed to resemble angels in loose and very inadequate attire. At another time he might not have thought much of it, but, his suspicions being aroused, he could not help, courtier as he was, contrasting the boldness of this behaviour with the chaste and holy life of the ladies at Little Gidding; and it made him still more restless and uncertain what to do. He avoided the ladies after Chapel, and returned to his own rooms quite uncertain how to act. It came at last into his mind to inquire of the Secretary Falkland whether Sir Richard Fentham was expected shortly in Oxford, as his journeys were very irregular, and generally kept a profound secret. He went to Lord Falkland and asked the question, telling him that he did so from private reasons unconnected with the State. Falkland declined at first to answer him; but on Inglesant's taking him a little more into his confidence, he confided to him, as a great secret, that Sir Richard was expected that very night, and further, that he would pass through Newnham in the afternoon, where he would meet a messenger with despatches. Upon learning this startling piece of news, Inglesant hastened to his brother's rooms, but found he was too late, Eustace having been gone more than two hours, and as he started considerably after the ladies' coach, there could be no doubt but that the party was already at Newnham. Inglesant went to the stables where his horses were kept, and having found one of his servants, he ordered his own horse to be saddled, as he was going to ride alone. While it was being prepared he attempted to form some plan upon which to act when he arrived at Newnham, but his ingenuity completely failed him. Merely to walk into a room where some ladies and gentlemen were at dinner, to which he was not invited, and inform one of the ladies that her husband was in the neighbourhood, appeared an action so absurd that he discarded the intention at once. When his horse was brought out and he mounted and rode out of Oxford towards the south, telling his servant he should be back at night, he probably did not know why he went. He rode quickly, and arrived in about an hour. The Plough at Newnham (it has long disappeared) stood upon the banks of the river, in a picturesque and retired situation, and was much frequented by parties of pleasure from Oxford. The gardens and bowling-greens lay upon the river bank, and the paths extended from them through the fields both up and down the river. It was apparent to Inglesant that a distinguished party was in the house, from the servants loitering about the doors, and coming in and out. More than one of these he recognized as belonging to Lord H——. The absurdity of suspecting any mischief from so public a rendezvous struck Inglesant as so great, that he was on the point of passing the house. He however alighted and inquired of one of the men whether any of his brother's servants were about. The man, who knew him, replied that Mr. Eustace Inglesant had dined there with his lordship and the ladies, but was then, he believed, either in the garden or the fields with Lady Cardiff; he had brought no servants with him. Having got thus into conversation with the man, Inglesant ventured to inquire, with as careless a manner as he could assume, if Lady Isabella were there.

Lady Isabella, the man said, had dined there, but after dinner had gone on a little farther in her coach, and attended by her servants, he believed to make some call in the neighbourhood.

Then Inglesant knew that he had done right to come.

"I have a message to Lady Ann Fentham," he said to the man, "but not being of the party, I would rather have sent it through my brother. As I suppose it is useless to attempt to find him, I shall be glad if you will tell me in which room the lady is, for I suppose his lordship is with her."

"His lordship left orders that he was not to be disturbed," said the man insolently; "you had better try and find your brother."

"Nevertheless, I must give her my message," said Inglesant quietly; "therefore, pray show me upstairs."

"I don't know the room," said the man still more rudely, "and you cannot go upstairs; his lordship has engaged the house."

During the conversation the other men had gathered round, and it seemed to Inglesant that his lordship must have brought all his servants with him, for the house appeared full of them. None of the ordinary servants of the place were to be seen.

Inglesant had no arms but his riding sword, and even if he had had, the use of them would have been absurd.

"You know who I am," he said, looking the man steadily in the face, "one of the King's gentlemen whom they call the Queen's favourite page. I bring a message to Lady Fentham from her husband, the Secretary to the Prince's council; do you think your lord will wish you to stop me?"

As he spoke he made a step forward as though to enter, and the man, evidently in doubt, stepped slightly on one side, making it possible to enter the house. The rest took this movement to imply surrender, and one of the youngest, probably to gain favour, said, "The lady is in the room opposite the stairs, sir." Inglesant walked up the low oak staircase to the door, the men crowding together in silence at the bottom of the stairs.

Inglesant tried the latch of the door, though he did not intend to go in without knocking.

The door was fastened, and he knocked.

For a moment there was silence, and then a voice said, angrily, "Who is there?"

"A message from Sir Richard Fentham," said Inglesant.

There was another and a longer pause, and then the same voice said,—

"Is Sir Richard without?"

"No," replied Inglesant; "but he may be here any moment; he is on the road."

The door was immediately opened by his lordship, and Inglesant walked in.

The moment he did, Lady Fentham, who was in the further part of the room, started up from the seat in which she was lying, and throwing herself on Johnny's shoulder said,—

"Help me, Mr. Inglesant, I have been cruelly deceived."

Inglesant took no notice of her, but turning to Lord H—— he said with marked politeness,—

"I have to beg your lordship's pardon for intruding upon your company, but I am charged to let Lady Fentham know that Sir Richard is expected in Oxford to-night, and may pass this house at any time, probably in a few minutes. I thought Lady Fentham would wish to know this so much that I ventured to knock, though your servants told me you wished to be private."

His words were so chosen and his manner so faultless and devoid of suspicion, that Lord H—— could find nothing in either to quarrel with, though he was plainly in a violent passion, and with difficulty controlled himself. It had also the effect of calming Lady Fentham, who remained silent; indeed, she appeared too agitated to speak. It was an awkward pause, but less so to Inglesant than to the other two.

"I wished," he continued, still speaking to Lord H——, "to have sent my message by my brother, but I find he is walking in the fields, and Lady Isabella appears to have gone in her carriage to make a call in the neighbourhood. I presume she will call for you, Lady Fentham, on her way back."

Lady Fentham made a movement of anger, and Lord H—— roused himself at last to say,—

"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Inglesant, for the great trouble you have taken. I assure you I shall not forget it. Lady Fentham, as Sir Richard will so soon be here"—he stopped suddenly as an idea struck him, and looking full at Inglesant, said slowly and with marked emphasis, "Supposing Mr. Inglesant to"—to have spoken the truth he would have said, but Johnny's perfectly courteous attitude of calm politeness, the utter absence of any tangible ground of offence, and his own instincts as a gentleman, checked him, and he continued,—"has not been misinformed, you will not need my protection any further. I will leave you with Mr. Inglesant; probably Lady Cardiff will be back before long."

He took his leave with equal courtesy both to the lady and Inglesant, and went down to his men.

Ann Fentham sank into her chair, and began to sob bitterly, saying,—