No Quarter!
by Mayne Reid.
PROLOGUE.
There is no page in England"s history so bright, nor of which Englishmen have such reason to be proud, as that covering the period between 1640 and 1650. This glorious decade was ushered in by the election of the "Long Parliament," and I challenge the annals of all nations, ancient or modern, to show an a.s.sembly in which sat a greater number of statesmen and patriots. Brave as pure, fearless in the discharge of their difficult and dangerous duties, they faltered not in the performance of them--shrank not from impeaching a traitor to his country, and bringing his head to the block, even when it carried a crown. True to their consciences, as to their const.i.tuencies, they left England a heritage of honour that for long haloed her escutcheon, and even to this hour throws its covering screen over many a deed of shame.
"Be a King?"
"Am I not one?"
"In name--nothing more. Ah! were I a man and in your place?"
"What would you do?"
"Give your island churls a taste of kingship, as we know it in France.
My brother wouldn"t let his subjects so beard him. Oh, it"s abominable!"
"Ah, _chere_; for subjects your brother has a very different sort of people to deal with. In France they"re not yet come to clamouring for what they call their rights and liberties. Here in England they"ve got Magna Charta into their heads--to a craze."
"I"d have it out of their heads, or have their heads off. _Ciel_! I"d reign King as King should, or resign. No! not resign. Sooner than that I"d waste the country with fire and sword--make it a wilderness."
It was Henrietta, wife of Charles the First, who thus expressed herself to her husband. They were alone in the gardens of Whitehall Palace, sauntering side by side on a terrace overlooking the Thames, the afternoon being an unusually fine one. As they made a turn which brought Westminster Hall before their eyes, the angry fire in those of the Queen flashed up again, and she added--
"Anything but be dictated to by that _canaille_ of a Parliament!
Anything but let them go on as now?"
"How am I to hinder it, Henriette?" the King timidly interrogated.
"Dismiss--send them packing back to their const.i.tuencies, and let them prate away there as much as they please. Dissolve and do without them, as you"ve done before."
"That would be to do without the money we so much need. My subjects are determined to resist every tax levied under Privy Seal or otherwise. I can no longer raise loan or sell monopoly. Your own secretary, Sir John Wintour, has just been telling me how the people of Dean Forest have been hara.s.sing him about the grant we gave him of its timber and mines.
Impossible now to obtain the most insignificant supplies without their being sanctioned by this _cabal_ called Parliament."
"Then make the _cabal_ sanction them."
"But how, _chere_?"
"Have a score or two of them arrested--lodged in the Tower; and let Monsieur Tom Lunsford take care of them. He"ll soon cure them of their seditious inclinings."
"To do that were as much as my crown"s worth."
"If"t be worth no more, you may as well cease wearing it. Fling it into the Thames, or melt it down and sell it to the Ludgate Street goldsmiths for old metal. Shame of you, Charles! You talk of kingly rights, yet fail to exercise them--fear it?"
"My subjects talk of rights, too."
"Yes, and you encourage them--by your timidity. Ever on your knees begging this and begging that, when a true king would command.
Subjects, indeed! more like our masters. But I"d teach them obedience.
What would they be without a king? What were they born for but to administer to our wants and our pleasures?"
Words worthy of a Medici; the sentiments of a queen two centuries and a half ago. Yet not so very different from those entertained by most Royal personages at the present day and hour. But few of them who would not sit placidly upon their thrones, see subjects slain, and realms reduced to desolation, rather than resign crown or yield up one iota of what they are pleased to call their prerogative. How could it be otherwise? Environed by sycophantic flatterers, heads bowing, knees bending, tongues eternally bepraising; things in human shape giving them adoration as to G.o.d Himself--ay, greater than to G.o.d--how could it be otherwise? Not so strange that this proud, pampered woman, from her cradle accustomed to such slavish obedience, should verily believe it but her due.
"_Their_ rights?" she continued, with a satirical laugh. "An absurd notion they"ve got into their Saxon skulls. Ah! _mon mari_, were I you for a month--for a week--I"d have it out--stamp it out--I would."
And to give emphasis to her speech, she stamped her foot upon the ground.
A pretty foot it was, and still a handsome woman she, this daughter of the Medicis, notwithstanding her being now somewhat _pa.s.se_. Ambitious as Catherine herself--"that mother of a race of kings"--intriguing, notoriously dissolute, not the less did Charles love her. Perhaps the more, for the cuckoo"s cry is a wonderful incentive to pa.s.sion, as to jealousy. He doted upon her with foolish fondness--would have done anything she commanded, even murder. And to more than this was she now instigating him; for it was to stifle, trample out the liberties of a nation, no matter at what cost in life or blood.
Wicked as were her counsels, he would have followed them and willingly, could he have seen his way clear to success. Men still talk of his kindly nature--in face of the fact, proved by irresistible evidence, that he rejoiced at the ma.s.sacre of the Protestants in Ireland, to say naught of many other instances of inhumanity brought home to this so-called "Martyr King." He may not have been--was not--either a Nero or a Theebaw; and with his favourites and familiars no doubt behaved amicably enough; at the same time readily sacrificing them when danger threatened himself. To his wife his fidelity and devotion were such as to have earned for him the epithet "uxorious," a t.i.tle which can be more readily conceded. But in his affection for her--whether upheld by respect or not--there was a spice of fear. He knew all about the scandals relating to her mother, Marie of France, with Richelieu, and his own and father"s favourite, the a.s.sa.s.sinated Buckingham, now sleeping in his grave. Charles more than suspected, as did all the world besides, that this same Queen-mother had sent her husband--king as himself--to an untimely tomb by a "cup of cold poison." And oft as the dark Italian eyes of her daughter flashed upon him in anger, he felt secret fear she might some day serve him as had her mother the ill-fated monarch of France. She was of a race and a land whence such danger might be reasonably expected and dreaded. Lucrezia Borgia and Tophana were not the only great female poisoners Italy has produced.
"If you"ve no care for yourself, then," she went on with untiring persistence, "think of our children. Think of him," and she nodded towards a gaudily-dressed stripling of some ten or twelve, seen coming towards them. It was he who, twenty years after, under the seemingly innocent soubriquet of "Merry Monarch," made sadness in many a family circle, smouching England"s escutcheon all over with shame, scarce equalled in the annals of France.
"_Pauvre enfant_!" she exclaimed, as he came up, pa.s.sing her jewelled fingers through the curls of his hair; "your father would leave you bereft of your birthright; some day to be a king with a worthless crown."
The "pauvre enfant," a sly young wretch, smiled in return for her caresses, looking dark at his father. Young as he was, he knew what was meant, and took sides with his mother. She had already well indoctrinated him with the ideas of Divine Right, as understood by a Medici.
"_Peste_!" exclaimed the King, looking vexed, possibly at the allusion to a successor; "were I to follow your counsels, Madam, it might result in my leaving him no crown at all."
"Then leave him none!" she said in quick return, and with an air of jaunty indifference. "Perhaps better so. I, his mother, would rather see him a peasant than prince, with such a future as you are laying out for him."
"Sire, the Earl of Strafford craves audience of your Majesty."
This was said by a youth in the official costume of the Court, who had approached from the Palace, and stood with head bent before the King.
A remarkably handsome young fellow he was, and the Queen, as she turned her eyes on him, seemed to recover sweetness of temper.
"I suppose my company will be _de trop_ now," she said. Then facing towards the youth, and bestowing upon him one of her syren smiles--slyly though--she added, "Here, Eustace; bring this to my boudoir," and she handed him a large book, a _portfeuille_ of pictures, she had been all the while carrying.
Whether the King caught sight of that smile, and read something wrong in it, or not, he certainly seemed irritated, hastily interposing--
"No, Henriette, I"d rather have you stay."
"_Con tout plaisir_." A slight cloud upon her brow told the contrary.
"Charles, too?"
"No; he can go. Yes, Trevor. Conduct the Lord Strafford hither."
Eustace Trevor, as the handsome youth was called, bowing, turned and went off, the Prince with him. Then said the King--
"I wish you to hear what Strafford has to say on the subject we"ve been talking of."
"Just what I wish myself," she rejoined, resuming her air of _braverie_.
"If you won"t listen to me, a weak woman, perhaps you will to him, a man--_one of courage_."
Charles writhed under her speech, the last words of it. Even without the emphasis on them, they were more than an insinuation that he himself lacked that quality men are so proud of, and women so much admire.