Edwin Brothertoft/Part I Chapter I
Part I.
Chapter I.
The Cavaliers always ran when they saw Puritan Colonel Brothertoft and his troop of white horses coming.
They ran from the lost battle of Horncastle, in the days of the great rebellion, and the Colonel chased.
North and West he chased over the heaths and wolds of his native Lincolnshire. Every leap took him farther away from the peaked turrets of Brothertoft Manor-House, — his home, midway between the towers of Lincoln Cathedral and Boston on the Witham.
Late at night he rode wearily back to Horncastle. He first took care that those famous horses were fed a good feed, after their good fight and brave chase, and then laid himself down in his cloak to sleep beside Cromwell and Fairfax. Presently a youth on a white horse came galloping into the town, up to the quaint house where the Colonel quartered, and shouted for him. Brothertoft looked out at the window. By the faint light he recognized young Galsworthy, son of his richest tenant and trustiest follower.
“The King’s people have attacked the Manor-House,” cried the boy. “My lady is trying to hold it with the servants. I come for help.”
In a moment a score of men were mounted and dashing southward. Ten miles to go. They knew every foot of it. The twenty white horses galloped close, and took their leaps together steadily, — an heroic sight to be seen in that clear, frosty night of October!
The fire of dawn already glimmered in the east when they began to see another fire on the southern horizon. The Colonel’s heart told him whose towers were burning. They rode their best; but they had miles to go, and the red flames outran them.
Colonel Brothertoft said not a word. He spurred on, and close at his heels came the troop, with the fire shining on their corselets and gleaming in the eyes of their horses.
Safe! yes; the house might go, — for his dear wife was safe, and his dear son, his little namesake Edwin, was safe in her arms.
The brave lady too had beaten off the marauders. But fight fire as they would, they could rescue only one angle of the mansion. That “curious new brique fabrick, four square, with a turret at each corner, two good Courts, a fine Library, and most romantick Wildernesse; a pleasant noble seat, worthie to be noted by alle,” — so it is described in an Itinerary of 1620, — had been made to bear the penalty for its master’s faith to Freedom.
“There is no service without suffering,” he quietly said, as he stood with the fair Lucy, his wife, after sunrise, before the smoking ruins.
He looked west over the green uplands of his manor, and east over his broad acres of fenny land, billowy with rank grass, and all the beloved scene seemed strange and unlovely to him. Even the three beautiful towers of Lincoln Cathedral full in view, his old companions and monitors, now emphasized the devastation of his home.
He could not dally with regrets. There was still work for him and the Brothertoft horses to do. He must leave his wife well guarded, and gallop back.
So there was a parting and a group, — the fair wife, the devoted soldier, the white charger, and the child awakened to say good-bye, and scared at his father’s glinting corselet, — a group such as a painter loves.
The Colonel bore westward to cross the line of march of the Parliamentary army, and by and by, as he drew nearer the three towers of Lincoln, they began to talk to him by Great Tom, the bell.
From his youth up, the Great Tom of Lincoln, then in full swing and full roar, had aroused, warned, calmed, and comforted him, singing to him, along the west wind, pious chants, merry refrains, graceful madrigals, stirring lyrics, more than could be repeated, even “if all the geese in Lincoln’s fens Produced spontaneous well-made pens,” and every pen were a writer of poetry and music.
To-day Great Tom had but one verse to repeat,
- “Westward ho! A new home across the seas.”
This was its stern command to the Puritan Colonel, saddened by the harm and cruelty of war.
“Yes, my old oracle,” he replied, “if we fail, if we lose Liberty here, I will obey, and seek it in the New World.”
For a time it seemed that they had not failed. England became a Commonwealth. Brothertoft returned in peace to his dismantled home. Its ancient splendors could never be restored. Three fourths of the patriot’s estate were gone. He was too generous to require back from his party, in its success, what he had frankly given for the nation’s weal. He lived quietly and sparingly. His sole extravagance was, that, as a monument of bygone grandeur, he commissioned Sir Anthony Vandyck to paint him, his wife, his boy, and the white charger, as they stood grouped for the parting the morning of the fire.
So green ivy covered the ruins, and for years Great Tom of Lincoln never renewed its sentence of exile.
Time passed. Kingly Oliver died. There was no Protector blood in gentle Richard Cromwell. He could not wield the land. “Ho for cavaliers! hey for cavaliers!” In came the Merrie Monarch. Out Puritans, and in Nell Gwynn! Out crop-ears and in love-locks! Away sad colors! only frippery is the mode. To prison stout John Bunyan; to office slight Sam Pepys! To your blind study, John Milton, and indite Paradise Lost; to Whitehall, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and scribble your poem, “Nothing!” Yes; go Bigotry, your jackboots smell unsavory; enter Prelacy in fine linen and perfume! Procul! O procul! Libertas! for, alas! English knees bend to the King’s mistress, and English voices swear, “The King can do no wrong.” Boom sullenly, Great Tom of Lincoln, the dirge of Freedom!
Ring solemnly, Great Tom of Lincoln, to Colonel Brothertoft the stern command revived. Syllable again along the west wind the sentence of exile, —
- “Westward ho! A new home across the seas!”
Every day the nation cringed baser and baser. Every day the great bell, from its station high above all the land, shouted more vehemently to the lord of Brothertoft Manor to shake the dust from his feet, and withdraw himself from among a people grown utterly dastard. His young hopes were perished. His old associates were slain or silenced. He would go.
And just at this moment, when in 1665 all freedom was dead in England, Winthrop of Connecticut wrote to his friend at Brothertoft Manor: “We have conquered the Province of New Netherlands. The land is goodlie, and there is a great brave river running through the midst of it. Sell thy Manor, bring thy people, and come to us. We need thee, and the like of thee, in our new communities. We have brawn enow, and much godlinesse and singing of psalms; but gentlemen and gentlewomen be few among us.”
So farewell to England, debauched and disgraced! Great Tom of Lincoln tolled farewell, and the beautiful tower of St. Botolph’s at Boston saw the exiles out to sea.