God's Playthings 4

God's Playthings 4

A curious commingling of motives, sordid and lovable, ambition, some

little love, some touch of self-sacrifice.… I felt compassion for King

Charles, who had had no deeper feeling in all his spoilt life than this

affection for what was not his.…

 

I put the wasting candles out and sat in the dark; I lifted the curtain

and saw the sun rise over Sedgemoor.

 

Six thousand men to fight against hopeless odds to-morrow for him they

deemed a King, the blood of Bourbon and Stewart, the heir of Tudor and

Plantagenet.…

 

And in my ears was the thick sobbing of a mere Englishman of a stock

that scarce boasted gentility, who could not face the end of his

masquerade nor fit the robe of greatness he had assumed.

 

* * * * *

 

So here is the secret revealed at length to the dumb and innocent

paper; God knoweth it is, as Lawrence Hyde saith, a great while ago;

for the rest, the world knows how the Duke rode out to Sedgemoor with

such a look in his face the very children knew he was marked for doom,

and how he fled, leaving his men to gain great honour after he had

forsaken them. Also how he was found in peasant’s dress, so changed

they did not know him till the George of diamonds flashed out on his

tattered garments as he fainted in his captor’s clutch. Lord Grey was

taken with him; they stayed at Ringwood two days and from there his

Grace wrote frantically to the King and to Lord Rochester.

 

It is very clear he meant to buy his life with his wretched secret,

though I think my lord Grey must have been ever urging him to die with

a decent carriage.

 

So they brought him to London and he was taken before his Majesty,

swordless and with his hands tied behind him.

 

What passed no man knoweth but James Stewart; he has spoken often

of it, and I know those to whom he has told of Monmouth’s ignoble

desperate pleadings for life at any cost, of his casting himself down

and imploring mercy.

 

Yet he must have been spurred by something in the demeanour of his

ancient enemy, for he never told his secret, and he left the presence

with anger and dignity, resolving, it must be, to cheat the King of

that last satisfaction. Yet afterwards he fell again into unmanly

misery that was the wonder of all, and then into a strange mood that

was neither the apathy of despair, or, as some said, an exalted

enthusiasm. I wondered then and now where his proofs were: not

found on him with the other poor trifles I had seen at Bridgewater

Castle–destroyed, perhaps. And so he died, hurried reluctant from life,

without either religion or repentance, sorry for the blood shed in the

West, firm in his love for Lady Harriet, indifferent to the clergyman

who cried out on the scaffold:

 

“God accept your imperfect repentance!”

 

He would not join in the prayer for the King; when they goaded him he

said “Amen” with a careless air.

 

Knowing as I do what bitter terror he felt, what ghastly anticipations

he had, what agony he had endured at the thought of the sheer moment of

death, with what shivering sickness he felt the axe, with what horror

he eyed the headsman, I cannot bear to write or think how they mangled

him.…

 

And so he died; he brought much misery on the innocent and he was maybe

a worthless man, yet I could weep for him even now. I am glad he did

not speak; Lord Grey has been ever silent and no one else knows.

 

* * * * *

 

Among all those who watched that fair-haired head held up it is strange

there is not one to think it showed little likeness to the dark-browed

Stewart Kings.…

 

Here the paper is endorsed in another hand:

 

“If this be truth then this was a thing ironical. The writer of this

rambling manuscript and the Earl of Tankerville, once Lord Grey, are

dead, and there be none that know save God who knows and judges.”

 

 

 

 

A BIOGRAPHY

 

THE EARL OF STRAFFORD

 

“Certainly never any man acted such a part, in such a theatre,

with more wisdom, constancy and eloquence, with greater

reason, judgment and temper, and with a better grace in all

his words and gestures, than this great and excellent person

did.”–_Whitelock on the trial of Strafford._

 

 

This was a man who in his own time was great and fell to dishonoured

death, leaving a brilliant memory, but one neither respected nor

praised; a King raised him, used him and forsook him, a people judged

him, condemned him, and put him to death. Great events followed; the

nation shook and changed. The King himself was swept away by that same

power to which he had in vain sacrificed his minister, a greater than

the King ruled England and men forgot the Earl of Strafford save to

execrate his policies.

 

But they who come home crowned with laurel from the wars the popular

heroes of an hour are not always the only saviours of their country,

and they who flatter the people do not always serve them best. History

is a hard, often an unreflective, judge; her verdict, dictated by the

passion of a moment, lasts too often for centuries.

 

Judging a man by his inner spirit, his desires, the use he makes of

great abilities, pitying a man for his misfortunes, his bitter death,

those English born may well give a little gratitude to this Englishman

who had ever England in his heart.

 

Thomas Wentworth was of an ancient and noble family of Yorkshire,

powerful by intellect, Puritan by tradition, strong by courage and

self-belief, above all things deeply desirous of rendering that service

to his country which is the way that most readily appeals to a man of

an active complexion of satisfying that almost unconscious yearning for

glory that is the sign of a great spirit. Mere personal ambition is a

proof of either meanness or madness, and the self-seeking of either

insanity or vanity has never attained any but a brittle fame and a

hollow achievement; if a man is to even contemplate the performance of

mighty deeds, he must have some mightiness within him.

 

Strong enthusiasm, unless it be of the headlong useless kind, is ever

joined to that tincture of melancholy which comes from viewing the

contrasting apathy of the rest of mankind, and for the first years of

his opening understanding Thomas Wentworth was silent, reserved in

matters political, given to reflect and observe more than to speak or

act.

 

He had the usual education of a gentleman, studied at Cambridge,

travelled in Europe, became Sir Thomas and member for Yorkshire before

he was twenty-one.

 

It was the beginning of the power of parliaments, the beginning of that

temper in the people which was to later furnish the extraordinary

spectacle of a nation ruling its own kings and retaining a monarchy

as a mere ornament to that independence which displayed undisguised

is likely to be too stern an object to please a people full of levity

and love of show. This party was represented by the Opposition that

had galled and restricted the first Charles since his accession; he,

however, rather disliked than feared them, and did not doubt that his

authority would quell their republican principles.

 

With these men, among whom was John Pym and afterwards a nobler

patriot, John Hampden, Sir Thomas took his seat; he went not into

extremes against the court, but conducted himself moderately; he

became _Custos Rotulorum_ for the West Riding; presently the king was

advised to make him Sheriff of York that he might be disqualified as a

Parliamentary candidate; next he was imprisoned for refusing to pay a

forced loan imposed by Charles; it seemed that he was committed beyond

withdrawal to the Opposition, daily more daring; and that he was to be

one of that band of men, firm willed and single minded, who discovered

in an absolute monarchy a menace to the general good; but Wentworth

did not see with them; tradition was strong in him, his imagination

glorified loyalty; he saw in the king an instrument for procuring

the greatness of the people; he saw a crisis approaching, a struggle

drawing nearer, he chose his side, knowing perhaps that it was bound

to lose, but seeing at least a chance for his own dormant abilities

to strengthen and exalt a weakening institution. In 1628 the Duke of

Buckingham was stabbed to the heart by one of those Puritans who were

resolved that all pertaining to Kingship was fatal to their country’s

peace, and in that year Thomas Wentworth took the place of the murdered

favourite and became, with Laud of Canterbury, chief adviser to the

King.

 

It was supposed by his former friends that he had covered himself with

immortal infamy by his desertion of the popular party for that of the

court, and their censure has been often echoed, it being assumed that

because the cause he espoused was unsuccessful he wasted his genius in

serving it; but in 1628 Sir Thomas may have hoped to make England as

great as did Cromwell afterwards, and there was no prophet to tell him

his judgment was deceived.

 

A personal friendship rose between him and the stately, formal King

with whose traits he had much in common. Charles, grateful to the

genius that took the place of Buckingham’s careless talents, created

him in one year baron, viscount, and Lord President of the Council of

the North.

 

The Puritan party viewed his rise with peculiar hatred; so hard is it

for even just men to stifle the claims of party and see any good in

that cause which is not their own.

 

“You have left us,” said John Pym, “but we will not leave you while your head is on your shoulders.”