Chapter II Newbolt Manor
“Well, Ann, all I can say is, that, though I hate turn-coats, I am thankful my father has ranged himself on the right side at last. Others are doing like him. We know full well that one of Cromwell’s own daughters was against him. Fairfax and Falkland, those great and noble men, both fought for the liberties of England against their king. General Monk, who is bringing Charles home, was a republican; but times have changed. It needed a strong hand like Cromwell’s to govern England without hereditary right, only with might. Richard Cromwell, good fellow though he be, could not do it, and he knew it from the first. He has had enough of ruling, he told me so but the other day; he is only too thankful to retire into private life, farm his own land, and smoke his pipe in peace. So we need not feel any compunction over the fact that our father has given in his adhesion to the king at last, and now I shall be at liberty to follow the dictates of my heart. I was too young to fight for our martyred king, but I am of age now, and will at once enlist in his son’s service. Let us hope we may have our rightful king and our rightful liberties as well. I’m for King Charles! Hurrah!” And Reginald Newbolt took up his hat from the table beside him and tossed it gaily into the air.
His sister, Ann Newbolt, laughed at him as she echoed his “Hurrah!”
“I am glad of it,” she went on; “you cannot conceive how glad, Reginald! You can never know what pain and grief the murder of our king has been to me. I think my father felt it sorely, and yet he has always held that it was a necessity.”
“He had no hand in it,” cried Reginald sharply.
“Not directly,” answered Ann. “I believe he would not vote either for or against, which vexed our mother greatly.”
“It was a mistake,” said Reginald, his young face lighting up with a certain sternness. “A man ought to know his own mind: it should be either ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. My father would have had me enlist in Cromwell’s army, young as I was; but I would not, and, thank God, I did not! I can show clean hands and a loyal heart to Charles Stuart when he lands.”
“Will you go up to London with my father?” she said.
“No,” he answered, in the same stern voice. “I shall go alone, and lay my virgin sword at my king’s feet.”
His sister looked at him with intense love and pride. They were the only children of Colonel Newbolt, who had served the Republican cause throughout the Civil Wars so well that Cromwell had rewarded him with gifts of land and property which had belonged to old Royalist families, who had either disappeared in the struggle or been dispossessed. The most important of these was the Abbey de Lisle, a lovely estate in Westmorland, amidst the moors and fells, just bordering upon Yorkshire. The house had been an old monastery of great fame. Its chapel had been one of exquisite beauty a hundred years before, but under Thomas Cromwell’s ruthless hand, in the reign of Henry VIII, when monasteries and abbeys were sacked, it had been reduced to ruins, and so remained, unroofed, with the grass growing up the nave and through the aisles. Ivy clambered round the delicate pillars, and moss lay thick on the steps leading up to the broken altar.
It had been bestowed by Henry on the De Lisles, and with it, as was believed by many, a curse had been inherited, uttered by the last monk who passed out of the monastery grates. It ran thus: “The abbey and its lands shall go from the De Lisles, even as it came to them, by fire and sword”.
Now the prophecy had been fulfilled. Gilbert de Lisle, the last of his race, had fallen fighting for King Charles in the Battle of Worcester. He left no children—the race was extinct.
So Cromwell had bestowed the land and all that appertained thereto, the dower-house and the abbey itself, upon Colonel Newbolt, to be his and his heirs’ after him. Thither he had brought his wife and children, had spent a considerable sum of money in restoring the house, which had been injured during the war; but the chapel remained a ruin—even that was a concession—and many blamed him for not razing it to the ground. Cromwell’s soldiers had finished Henry VIII’s vandalism, mutilated the few remaining statues, and broken to pieces the stained-glass window over the altar.
In the country around it was whispered that at midnight there were shadows seen coming and going, ghosts of the dead monks, whose tombs had been desecrated, but whose bodies still rested in the crypt below the altar, awaiting the great judgment day.
Reginald and Ann Newbolt had been little more than children when they came to the Abbey, and the very atmosphere of the place seemed to seize upon their imaginations. They felt kindly towards the dead monks and towards the De Lisles, whose portraits hung in the long gallery which ran the length of the quadrangle. They became, to their father’s horror, Royalists. Reginald at fifteen refused to join the Parliamentary forces, though his father could have obtained for him a first-rate appointment. Had he been older, he would have gone straight over to the other side; but the final defeat of the king and his death prevented him from taking that step.
A year or two before our story opens the young man had gone abroad, had visited King Charles in Holland, and sworn allegiance to him. This was unknown to his father, and upon his return he had contented himself with following the natural course of events, fully persuaded in his own mind that when Cromwell should cease to rule England, the English nation would recall their rightful monarch.
His was not an isolated case. There were many young men—ay, old men too—in England in whom Charles’s death killed republicanism and awoke once more the smouldering embers of loyalty.
As for Ann, she had not hidden her feelings any more than Lady Fairfax had done; she worshipped the martyred king. Their mother was a Puritan, of an old Puritan family, and the defection of her children was a source of infinite trouble to her. She ruled her house with Puritanical strictness. Morning and evening the whole family assembled for the reading of the Bible and for prayers. She herself dressed in the plainest attire, without furbelows or jewels of any kind. Her maids and the men who served in the house were clothed after the same fashion. Ann at one time sought to array herself something after the mode of the French court, with laces and ribbons, and with her hair curled; but her mother would not have it, and more than once she was sent to her chamber to dress herself decently; and so wisely Ann yielded to her mother, and wore the plain muslins and sober colours which marked a Puritan girl.
With her son Mistress Newbolt never discussed matters, for she knew that he would not yield to her one inch. He had told her once and for all, when he was quite a lad, that he was a king’s man, and that he would never draw his sword in any other cause. He was her own son, as steadfast as she was, in holding fast by what he considered to be right. At the present moment she was deeply grieved at her husband’s action in furthering the accession of Charles II.
It was of no use for Colonel Newbolt to reason with his wife, to show her that the kingdom could not be governed by such men as Richard Cromwell, and who else was there to govern it? The nation at large called for their sovereign, for their old race of kings; and he, Colonel Newbolt, hoped and believed that the new king had learnt wisdom in exile, and would govern with equity and justice. He said as much to his wife, but Mistress Newbolt laughed scoffingly. “Did you ever know a Stuart govern wisely?” she asked. “That man, Charles Stuart, will surely bring his mother back again and lodge her in Somerset House with her French people and her priests, where so lately the Lord Protector hath lain in state. Ay, the tide has turned, and you with it; but as for me, I stand by the good cause, as befits the daughter of one who fell at Dunbar.”
So there was a sharp division in the house. Mistress Newbolt spoke little, but they sometimes heard her singing slowly and fervently in her own room to the old tune sung before the victory at Dunbar:
“O Lord our God, arise and let
Thine en’mies scattered be;
And let all them that do Thee hate
Before Thy presence flee”.
Hearing her one day as they stood together at the window in the picture gallery, Ann said to her brother:
“If only she does not persuade our father to change his mind again!”
“She will not do that; my father’s mind is fixed for once,” answered Reginald. “He said only the other day, ‘The great Lord Protector is dead; there is none to take his place; we can but trust the future to God. It were foolish for me to set my face against the new order of things. I should neither make nor mend, and I should probably lose all I have gained—my lands and my money’.”
Ann bent her head. “Yes, that holds him,” she said. “He loves this place; he would not part with it on any consideration.”
“But suppose the rightful heir should turn up?” said Reginald.
“There is no rightful heir,” answered Ann; “the last man died at Worcester, childless.”
“Was he married?” asked Reginald.
“Oh, yes!” said Ann; “there is an old woman down the village who knew him, and saw his young bride when he brought her home to this very house, a lovely girl, she said, too tender to weather the storms of these rough times; so when her husband died, she, broken-hearted, died also.”
“And we have stepped into their place,” said Reginald; “at least, there is no one to reproach us with it. No one seems to have any claim except perhaps some distant cousins of the late De Lisles I once heard of.”
“Have you ever tried to find out aught concerning these De Lisles?” asked Ann.
“Yes I have,” answered Reginald, “for I have always had a sort of feeling against ousting people out of their rights.”
“Ah, well! it would make no difference,” said Ann, “for my father told me that the deeds which gave us this estate were well and securely made out to him and to his heirs for ever.”
“For ever!” repeated Reginald, with a light laugh; “as if there could be a for ever in this world.” And he turned on his heel and went his way across the quadrangle beneath the great porch, where Ann lost sight of him.
“If he did find a lost heir,” said Ann, “he is capable of throwing up his inheritance, at least if he were the master, which he is not.”
As Reginald swung down the broad avenue of lime-trees, he saw his father coming towards him. It vexed him, for they had but little in common.
Colonel Newbolt was a man who had risen from the people. He had displayed considerable military talents, which Cromwell had been quick to recognize and to make use of; so he had pushed John Newbolt, stirring up his ambition and throwing titbits to him as one does to a hungry dog, and Newbolt had responded. He was not a man likely to go back, or to suffer himself to be defrauded of what he had gained honestly, as he considered, therefore he now persuaded himself that the change in his political opinions was both desirable and lawful. His position had been, according to his lights, honestly won, both in the field and in Parliament, where he had taken his seat. It was but natural that he should desire to retain his place and wealth, and hand them down to his son.
He was glad that circumstances had enabled him to join hands with Reginald, and, as is often the case, his new loyalty was somewhat exaggerated, almost to bravado.
“Well, Reggie, will you be ready to ride to-morrow?” he asked boisterously, as he came up towards him.
“Where to?” asked the youth.
“Why, to London, of course, man! We must not be laggards. I would not miss the king’s entrance into the city for a hundred pounds.”
“I had not thought of going so soon,” said Reginald; “but if you desire it, I will accompany you.”
“I do desire it,” said his father; “we will go together.”
“As far as London,” said Reginald; “but as for presenting myself with you before the king, I cannot do that; I have no place at court.”
“Tush, tush, man!” said his father, “we will soon find you one.”
“Thanks! but I am in no hurry,” said Reginald; “nevertheless I will ride with you. I should like to see the pageant, and shout ‘Long live the king!’”
A cloud had gathered on the colonel’s brow. He perceived only too clearly that his son was unwilling to appear at court under his auspices, and he did not dare to press the matter, because, though Reginald was always respectful and in a general way obedient, the father was afraid of him. He knew it was a case of “so far and no farther”.
“When are you thinking of starting?” asked Reginald.
“Not later than to-morrow early,” said the colonel, “so see you are ready. You had better take two men for your own service, and I will take two for myself. Look to their clothes, their horses’ harness, and their appointments altogether. I would not be behind my fellows.”
“Am I to go as a Cavalier or as a Roundhead?” said his son.
“Roundhead!” answered his father furiously. “Who talks of Roundheads? Are we not all Cavaliers? Why, if you play your cards well, you may yet be Sir Reginald Newbolt.”
“Nay,” said Reginald, “there are many better men than we are, Father, who have won knighthood fighting for the king; they must come first, we after, if at all.”
“Nonsense!” said his father; “if our new king picks and chooses like that, he will make a great mistake. Why, who are bringing him back? Not Royalists, but Cromwell’s men. Let him remember that!”
Reginald shrugged his shoulders. “At least I should not put myself to the fore, if I were you, Father.”
“You are a fool, Reginald. If I hold back I shall seem half-hearted, and that would never do. I shall ride and meet the king on his way to London, and join his escort. Will you come with me or not?”
“As far as London we will ride together,” said Reginald, “but then we will part company. You are an old soldier; I am not yet sworn in.”
His father looked at him askance. “Do you doubt me, Reginald?”
“Not for one moment,” answered his son; “but in this matter I desire to stand alone. We can never tell, Father; I have a clean record, which may be of use to you.”
The colonel laughed. “I don’t think I run much danger. Why, there is scarce a man who is welcoming Charles to London who has not fought with the Parliamentarians. He would have to take a scythe if he were to sweep off the heads of all those who have fought against him. And there is the Treaty of Breda to protect us.”
“You forget the clause,” said Reginald.
“Tut, tut!” answered the colonel. “De Vere and a few others will be arrested; the rest will get off.”
“Possibly,” said Reginald, “but I doubt it.”
At that moment the supper-bell rang out from the belfry, and father and son went together into the great hall, which had been the refectory of the monks. It was a beautiful place, with carved oak panelling and fretted roof; but Ann noticed as she sat beside her father that he was somewhat querulous that night, and drank deeper than was his wont.
“Has anything happened?” she asked Reginald after supper, looking at her father.
“Nothing that I am aware of,” answered Reginald. “Good-night, little one!” And so they parted.
Father and son rode forth together the following morning on their way to London.