Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Son Christopher - Part 6
SON CHRISTOPHER.
AN HISTORIETTE. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
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CHAPTER VIII. CONSPIRACY IN DISCONTENT.
If Christopher could not say to Joanna that he had no doubt of Monmouth’s prospects, much less could he say so to himself an hour later.
He was called into council, as soon as the doors were closed for the night: and he was surprised to perceive how transient had been Monmouth’s elation of spirit. By his mood to-night, he might have had the coldest reception in Taunton, instead of the warmest. He was testy; he was depressed; he was imprudent beyond measure in the manner in which he disclosed this state of mind. He had been misled, he said; he had been cruelly deceived; and he believed he should take his own course from that moment. After all the fine promises he had heard,—after the distinct pledges that the entire order of Whig noblemen and gentlemen would rush to join him, there was not a peer, nor a baronet, nor a squire., who did not shut his gates upon him, and offer his services to put him down.
He was interrupted,—actually interrupted,—by two of his councillors at once, who asked him what else he could expect so long as he gave the game into the enemy’s hands, by leaving James the undisputed title of King. To ask England to ally itself with him on any other ground than his being King was to ask England to be republican; and there was nothing that the nation so much dreaded.
“Ask Wade,” he replied, “and Battiscombe, and one or two more who think they know best, and they will tell you the exact contrary. But I am tired of contradictory counsels. I am tired of the whole business; and I think I shall throw it up. Yes, I do,” he said, in the mood of a spoiled child, and the more positive the more consternation his followers manifested. “I have been so deceived and misled that I feel myself released from all engagements, and free to please myself. I shall go back to Brussels; and it was not to please myself that I ever left it.”
A dead silence followed, which made Monmouth feel rather awkward and ashamed, till Christopher relieved him by saying,
“If I may speak my mind—”
“Yes, do, Battiscombe!” said Monmouth. “You have no long-conceived plot to take care of,—no trammels of old promises, no consistency to keep up. You are free to see things as they are. Let me therefore hear you speak your mind.”
Christopher smiled as he said his counsel would be simple and brief. He thought that all present,—and his Grace not least—were worn out with the fatigues and excitements of the day. Their judgments might well be clouded and perplexed, and any time spent in discourse worse than wasted. He advised sleep as a better counsellor than any or all of those present.
Nobody was sorry that a conversation so painful and embarrassing should be broken off; so, when the Duke rose to dismiss his council, every man of them was glad to retire.
“Could you have believed it?” Colonel Wade whispered to Christopher, as they went down-stairs.
“I could believe anything of some very brave men who cannot stand fatigue; or of quiet men, suddenly bewildered by hurry and excitement,” Christopher answered. “You are a loyal man: so am I: and loyalty means silence to-night.”
“To-night; and over to-morrow,” replied Colonel Wade. “To-morrow will, I think, decide many things.”
The morrow decided the main point. Monmouth publicly accepted the Golden Flag, which he had declared inadmissible into the procession the morning before,—with its glittering J. R. and the crown above. He was proclaimed in Taunton market-place under the title of James the Second: but the people did not like the name, and called him “King Monmouth” still. He appeared in the finest spirits while the town-crier read at every street-corner the announcement of the prices set on the heads of the usurper and his ministers, and while signing the proclamations dated “From our Camp at Taunton.” Before night he had declared the parliament an unlawful assembly, and had forbidden the people to pay taxes on any demand but his own. By playing at being King he recovered his temper and spirits.
“Battiscombe!” he cried, beckoning Christopher to him, and laying a hand on his shoulder. “You are the best adviser of them all. Your prescription was the right one last night. I can scarcely believe it now. I must have been half asleep.”
“It was a painful dream, your Majesty.”
“O! you bring your lips to pronounce my title at last!” observed Monmouth, smiling. “But I do not forget that I assured your father that a free parliament should decide upon my title. What of last night?”
“It was a painful dream, your Majesty;” and there was a marked emphasis on the word “painful:” “and dreams are fit only to be forgotten.”
“Forget it then, Battiscombe.”
And Christopher bowed low.
To Lord Grey he had another sort of private word to say.
“Have you considered where it will be best for the Lady Henrietta to land? My lord, you start as if the idea were new to you.”
Lord Grey admitted that it was.
“Why, now, what a taskmaster you are! Last night you were offended at my hinting about going to Brussels; and this morning you look no less averse to my bringing Brussels to me.”
Lord Grey conjured his Majesty to wait till he should have a sure throne, and parliament, and palace, before leading the sweetest lady in the world into deadly risks.
“You do not know her, my Lord,” was the reply. “She is as brave as she is sweet; and she will never forgive our defrauding her of the spectacle of my royal progress. I declare to you, I dread describing to her the events of this day,—so loyally will she mourn her absence from my triumph. If you wish to keep up my spirit through good and evil—if you wish me to be a king indeed, you must not hinder Lady Henrietta from joining me—you must assist her coming.”
“Impossible, your Majesty!” Lord Grey replied, in a tone which startled Monmouth; who resumed:
“I thought I was speaking to a safe man, my Lord. I would not have given such a confidence to Battiscombe, for instance, who is as virtuous, doubtless, as St. Anthony. But to your lordship, confessions like mine can be nothing new, or, I should have supposed, displeasing.”
“True, your Majesty. But it is not my opinion that is in question. It is certain that the Protestant part of the nation would not endure—”
“One pays very dear for one’s Protestantism.”
“And for the throne which belongs to it? Will your Majesty say so, even to me?”
“Yes, indeed! If I may not have Lady Henrietta, the crown is not worth the sacrifice.”
“Your Majesty shall have everything on our part, if you will provide but one thing on your own:—and that is, a little patience.”
“Heigho! then you think I may not yet send for Lady Henrietta?”
“I am certain of it,—certain of it, your Majesty.”
Those who were behind the curtain could not but speak to each other of the contrast between the open joy of the people in this rising, and the concealed pain of mind of the leaders.
“Did you hear that?” asked Colonel Wade of Battiscombe, the next day, while on the march to Bridgewater. “Did you hear what those women said of their King Monmouth?”
“Yes; they cannot see in him the blithe and pretty young gentleman who was here five years ago. Very wonderful, truly.”
“So you see you gain nothing by setting up your soft young prince as a rival king to yonder hardgrained, unscrupulous, cruel old papist usurper. Our only chance was, not in setting up a doll against the devil, but proclaiming that we had done with kings. See those people,—that row of them on top of the bank; they are shaking their heads, from one end of the row to the other. They say the sweet young king looks very pale—very sad. If they say he looks sulky, they are not far from the truth.”
“It is a pity that he shows his mood in his face so plainly.”
“Or that he does not tell the people what ails him.”
Battiscombe did not reply to this; and Colonel Wade divined the reason.
“O ho!” said he. “The young gentleman is pining for his lady-love, I suppose. Well! I could not advise that fact being made known among the people, unless it were certain that they had never heard of the little wife whom he has thrust out of sight.”
“Let us speak of something else,” said Battiscombe. “His Grace was over young when he was made a husband; and he has since felt himself more or less of an outcast. His real quality will appear when he is firm in his lofty seat. He will show a more steadfast countenance when he once gets to London.”
Meantime, the changes were disheartening and vexatious to his adherents. On the road, a messenger announced that preparations were made at the Duke of Beaufort’s, and at the Earl of Pembroke’s, to march a consolidated royal force down upon the insurgents, while Albemarle was already entering Taunton, rendering return impossible. Monmouth observed that nobody wanted to return to Taunton; but yet the gloom deepened on his countenance. He ordered his new guard to close round him, to give him a little respite from smiling at the people; but the people did not favour the guard, and inquired what his Majesty feared among the Somersetshire folk.
The fact was that Christopher dreaded Reuben, or some one who would take up Reuben’s task; and he had selected and brought together forty of the most spirited young men in the force to be Monmouth’s bodyguard. They did excellent service by their high spirits on this sunny June day,—jesting with the country people, and showing their real longing for a conflict with the Papists, and the slavish Protestants who upheld a Popish king. They had begun to inspirit Monmouth himself by the time he reached Bridgewater; and the welcome he found there caused an elation as manifest as his former depression. Many of the Taunton observances were gone through again; and when Monmouth saw his army, six thousand strong, encamped in the Castle Field, he was disposed to think himself invincible.
He had come forth from the banquet in the castle, to see and be seen; and loud were the acclamations. As he paced the grass at the upper end of the field, while the setting sun cast long shadows from the trees, he declared that this had been the most encouraging day yet. If there was as yet no victory, it was because the enemy dared not meet him. If there was no store of arms here as at Taunton, there were scythes coming in from all the country round; and pikes could always be had where there was a forge and a true-hearted blacksmith. As for numbers, if he could have kept all the hundreds who had been sent away to-day for want of arms, he need not flinch from all the Usurper’s forces united. While he was talking in this way, and his councillors were internally fretting at his bragging strain, his course of thought was effectually changed by the announcement that a messenger,—a gentleman from abroad,—desired an audience. His changing colour did him harm with many whose eyes were upon him. They supposed him afraid of evil tidings; whereas Lord Grey understood that it was the expectation of news from Lady Henrietta which made him red and pale.
“Rid me of these people,” he whispered to Lord Grey. “Let no gentleman remain but yourself; and bring the messenger here.”
“Here! Can your Majesty mean in this open place?”
“Even as I once received you, my Lord, on the open grass, and for the same reason,—that we are secure in such places from being overheard.”
It was necessary to obey; but care was taken to see the messenger before he was permitted to approach Monmouth. There was no fear. It was Emmanuel Florien; and, as it was this old comrade, Lord Grey himself retired out of earshot. When he next approached, Monmouth’s spirits had fled. Lady Henrietta had not arrived, and was not coming just yet, for she had grave news to send. The Prince and Princess of Orange were wrathful beyond measure. This was a matter of course: but they were preparing to forward Dutch regiments,—as many as the King, their father, should desire. Further, they were certainly in no great alarm for the succession of the Princess; for they had offers of fidelity from every leading Whig in England.
“We will make them change their minds,” Lord Grey observed, gaily. “These demonstrations are a matter of course in all wars of succession.”
“True, my Lord,” observed Florien. “But the peculiarity here is, that when his Majesty has conquered the succession for himself, there will remain another war to be fought,—to defend it from the Prince of Orange.”
“All this is nothing new, Florien. Is it possible that Lady Henrietta can have sent you to us to tell us what was equally true before we embarked at first?”
“Not solely for this. I bring some money; and burning words to fire any spirits that may need warming. See,” he continued, in a low voice, glancing towards Monmouth, who was now reading, apart, a letter which flushed his face for the moment; “there are some of those words in that letter, doubtless.”
“And addressed to one who needs them,” said Lord Grey, sighing. “If it were possible,—but it must not be thought of,—if it were possible to have that lady here, her presence would do more for the cause than that of many Whig nobles.”
“She will not come till the road to London is open, and strewn with flowers,” Florien declared. “But the main advice I bring is to establish a communication with Scotland, and to compass some union of counsels, if not of forces.”
Lord Grey’s countenance grew as black as night.
“Have you spoken of Scotland to his Grace?” he said.
“Not yet. Probably she has opened the subject in her letter, and I am to continue it.”
“Speak no word on it till it cannot be evaded,” said Lord Grey with emphasis. “What! you must discharge your commission? But if your orders are superseded by higher? You are trustworthy, Florien; and it is needful that you should know what is known only to three persons in this camp besides myself.—All is over in Scotland. His Grace must not hear of this, except from the enemy. If he does,—”
“All over in Scotland!” repeated Florien, thunderstruck.
“All utterly lost! The cause, and every man engaged in it.”
“But why—?”
They looked towards Monmouth: but he was only turning the sheets over, in order to begin the letter again.
“But why conceal news so essential?”
“Because it has been hard enough to prevent his deserting us and these poor people, as it is. If he dreamed of the utter extinction of his cause in the North, nothing would detain him. He would be in Lady Henrietta’s arms by this day week, and would have no thought, no sensibility to spare for the wretches whose heads and quarters would be called for, to set up over every park gate in England.”
Florien did not believe this at the moment, and he looked at his old fellow-conspirator as if searching the countenance of a traitor: but before midnight he could have told a worse tale than Grey had told to him.
“What is to be done? What can be done with such a candidate for the Protestant crown?”
Battiscombe was called in; for he knew the worst.
“What we want,—what is especially wanting to his Majesty,” said he, “is some military success. A victory, however small, would work wonders, or would be a signal to give up.—You smile at the notion of a military success, my Lord Grey: but I do not despair of it,—even though lawyers and merchants lead rustics and tradesmen against soldiers. Nor do I despair of hearing the people glorify their King Monmouth as the finest leader and stoutest soldier they have seen since the Commonwealth.”
“All things are possible,” answered Lord Grey, with a shrug.
“Except that we should waver now,” said Christopher.
“Oh certainly, Mr. Battiscombe. There can be no doubt about that.”
It was not many hours before Christopher’s words were made good. On meeting the royal forces under Lord Feversham, every one saw that the moment for fighting had arrived; and Monmouth was foremost in the attack. It seemed to rouse his spirit that the van of the royal force was commanded by another son of his father.
“It is Grafton,” he observed to his staff. “We must give him a lesson on the succession, and spare his life, that he may go and tell the Usurper what the real King is like.”
And amidst the enthusiasm of his own leaders, and of the troops they led, he rushed to one end of his line, and then to the other, as the five hundred of the Duke of Grafton’s force advanced, rendering one point after another the hardest to hold, and always finding Monmouth there. He harassed them in flank, on the road where they could not change their disposition; and when at length they retreated, they found him on their rear. They left a fifth of their numbers behind them; and their report did not encourage their General to any renewal of the fight. It was soon noised over London that Monmouth was not a Pretender to be derided; that Albemarle had been over-confident in reporting from Taunton of the proclamations he found there being as amusing as a bellman’s rhymes; and not a few citizens changed their opinion at once about the Pretender’s legitimacy, after this first actual fight. It could be no baseborn child of Lucy Walters who had shown himself so princely in his first passage of arms with the Usurper:—it must be the true son of a king who showed his right in such a way as this.
Greater still was the benefit down in Somersetshire. If they could have been armed, the whole population would have followed Monmouth. It was scarcely possible to resist the influence of such acclaims as arose wherever the little army appeared. The young men, seeing what one small success had done, expected that a larger would open to them the road to London. Battiscombe would, but for M. Florien, have been carried away like the rest, in spite of his experience of the horses and men he had to manage,—in spite of his vexation at the ravage of Glastonbury which he loved so well, and of Wells Cathedral, which he could not lend a hand to dismantle, as John Hickes expected of him. Florien told his old pupil, now a foremost champion of Protestant kingship in England, more than he communicated to any one else in the army. He told of the fierce ambition of Lady Henrietta, and of its effect in sending Monmouth to England, believing himself inspired by her heroic, as by his own passionate love. He told of the utter hopelessness of the Scotch expedition from the outset; and of the unexpected, but not unreasonable decision of the Protestant party generally to await King James’s death, and a natural Protestant succession; and of the complete and fatal alienation of the Prince and Princess of Orange from the cousin whom they had humoured and spoiled through compassion from his birth. One hope M. Florien still saw. The Dutch soldiers were fond of Monmouth. There was a chance that they might come over to him, if brought up to fight him: but then, they would be kept out of sight for that very reason,—employed in the north or east while Monmouth was in the west.
Christopher saw something more to hope than this. A great battle would mend or mar all.
“However it may issue,” he said, “we must go on as we have begun. Whether you and I find ourselves King’s ministers in a few weeks, with priests and bishops under our feet, and our religion saved; or whether we have the other fate before us—” He laughed as he remarked on the customary reluctance to designate that other fate, and said outright—“whether we are dragged to prison, and to the bar, to hear insults which sorely try the natural man, and to the scaffold to be cut to pieces by malice in cold blood, and denied Christian burial,—whichever of these is before us, we have the same thing to do now,—to devote ourselves to our own Protestant King, and the cause for which we invited and proclaimed him.”