THE Draytons and the Davenants

A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS.

By the Author of "CHRONICLES OF THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY," ETC., ETC.

New York: M. W. DODD, 506 BROADWAY. 1869.

CARD FROM THE AUTHOR.

"The Author of the 'Schonberg-Cotta Family' wishes it to be generally known among the readers of her books in America, that the American Editions issued by Mr. M. W. Dodd, of New York, alone have the Author's sanction."

NOTICE.

This Volume will be followed next year by a supplementary Volume covering the period of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, and embracing incidents connected with the Early History of this country.

Works by the same Author.

Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family.

The Early Dawn.

Diary of Kitty Trevylyan.

Winifred Bertram.

The Draytons And The Davenants.

On Both Sides Of The Sea.

Each of the above belongs to the "Cotta Family Series," and are uniform in size and binding.

Poems—"The Women of the Gospels," etc. With other Poems not before published. 1 Vol. 16mo.

Mary, The Handmaid Of The Lord. One Vol. 16mo.

The Song Without Words. Dedicated to Children. Square 16mo

PUBLISHED BY M. W. DODD,

By arrangement with the Author.

Contents

Introductory Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII. Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. Chapter XII.

THE Draytons and the Davenants

INTRODUCTORY.

Yesterday at noon, when the house and all the land were still, and the men, with the lads and lasses, were away at the harvesting, and I sat alone, with barred doors, for fear of the Indians (who have of late shown themselves unfriendly), I chanced to look up from my spinning-wheel through the open window, across the creek on which our house stands. And something, I scarce know what, carried me back through the years and across the seas to the old house on the borders of the Fen Country, in the days of my childhood. It may have been the quiet rustling of the sleepy air in the long grasses by the water-side that wafted my spirit back to where the English winds sigh and sough among the reeds on the borders of the fens; it may have been the shining of the smooth water, furrowed by the track of the water-fowl, that set my memory down beside the broad Mere, whose gleam we could see from my chamber window. It may have been the smell of this year's hay, which came in in sweet, soft gusts through the lattice, that floated me up to the top of the tiny haystack, made

of the waste grass in the orchard at old Netherby Manor, at the foot of which Roger, my brother, used to stand while I turned up the hay, assisted by our Cousin Placidia (when she was condescending), and by our Aunt Gretel, my mother's sister, whenever we had need of her. Most probably it was the hay. For, as the excellent Mr. Bunyan has illustriously set forth in his work on the Holy War, the soul hath five gates through which she holdeth parlance with the outer world. And correspondent with these outer gates from the sensible world in space, meseemeth, are as many inner gates into the inner, invisible world of thought and time; which inner gates open simultaneously with the outer, by the same spring. But of all the mystic springs which unlock the wondrous inward world, none act with such swift, secret magic as those of the Gate of Odors. There stealeth in unobserved some delicate perfume of familiar field flower or garden herb, and straightway, or ere she is aware, the soul is afar off in the world of the past, gathering posies among the fields of childhood, or culling herbs in

the old corner of the old garden, to be laid, by hands long since cold, in familiar chambers long since tenanted by other owners.

Wherefore, I deem, it was the new, sweet smell of our New England hay which more than anything carried me back to the old house in Old England, and the days so long gone by.

With my heart in far-off days, I continued my spinning, as women are wont, the hand moving the more swiftly for the speed wherewith the thoughts travel, until my thoughts and my work came to a pause together by the flax on my distaff being exhausted. I went to an upper chamber for a fresh stock, and while there my eye lighted on an old chest, in the depths whereof lay many little volumes of an old journal written by my hand through a series of buried years.

An irresistible attraction drew me to them; and as I knelt before the old chest, and turned over these yellow leaves, in some cases, eaten with worms, and read the writing—the earlier portions of it in large, laborious, childish characters, as if each letter were a solemn symbol of weighty import—the later scrawled hastily in the snatched intervals of a busy and tangled life—I seemed to be looking through a series of stained windows into the halls of an ancient palace. On the windows were the familiar portraits of a little eager girl, and a young maiden familiar to me, yet strange. But the paintings were also window-panes; and, after the first glance, the painted panes seemed to vanish, and I saw only the palace chambers on which they looked. Not empty chambers, or shadowy, or silent, but solid, and fresh, and vivid, and full of the stir of much life; so that, when I laid down those old pages, and looked out through the declining light over these new shores, across this new sea, towards the far-off England which still lives beyond, it seemed for a

moment as if the sun setting behind the wide western woods, the strip of golden corn-fields, the reapers returning slowly over the hill, the Indian burial-mounds beside the creek, the trim new house, my old quiet self, were the shadows, and that Old World, in which my spirit had been sojourning, still the living and the real.

Neighbor Hartop's cheery voice roused me out of my dream, and I hurried down to open the door, and to set out the harvest supper.

But as I look at the old crumpled papers again to-day, the past lives again once more before me, and I will not let it die.

There is an hour in the day when the sun has set, and all the dazzle of day is gone, and the dusk of night has not set in, when I think the world looks larger and clearer than at any other time. The sky seems higher and more heavenly than at other hours; and yet the earth, tinted here and there on its high places with heavenly color, seems more to belong to heaven. The little landscape within our horizon becomes more manifestly a portion of a wider world. And is there not such an hour in life? Before it passes let me use the light, and fix in my mind the scenes which will so soon vanish into dreams and silence.

The first entry in those old journals of mine is:

"The twenty-eighth day of March, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty-seven.—On this day, twelve years since, King Charles was proclaimed King at Whitehall Gate, and in Cheapside; the while the rain fell in heavy showers. My father heard the herald; and my Aunt Dorothy well remembers the rain, because it spoiled a slashed satin doublet of my father's (the last he ever bought, having since then been habited more soberly); also because many of the people said the weather was of evil promise for the new reign. But father saith that is a superstitious notion, unworthy of Christian people.

"Also my father was present at the king's coronation, on the 5th of February in the following year. Our French Queen would not enter the Abbey on account of her Popish faith. When the king was presented bareheaded to the people, all were silent, none crying God save the King, until the Earl of Arundel bade them; which my father saith was a worse omen than if the clouds poured down rivers."

These in large characters, each letter formed with conscientious pains.

The second entry is diverse from the first. It runs thus:

"April the tenth.—The brindled cow hath died, leaving an orphan calf. Aunt Gretel saith I may bring up the calf for my own, with the help of Tib the dairy-woman."

The diversity between these entries recalls many things to me. On the day before the first entry, father brought to Roger my brother, my Cousin Placidia, and me, three small books stitched neatly together, and told us these were for us to use to note down any remarkable events therein. "For," said he, "we live in strange and notable times, and you children may see things before you are grown, yea, and perchance do or suffer such things as history is made of."

The stipulation was, that we were each to write independently, and not to borrow from the other; which was a hard covenant for me, who seldom then meditated or did anything without the co-operation or sanction of Roger.

After much solitary pondering, therefore, I arrived at the conclusion that history especially concerns kings and queens, and lesser people only as connected with them. That is, when there are kings and queens. In the old Greek history I remembered there were heroes who were not kings, but I supposed they did instead. But the English history was all made up of what happened to the kings. One was shot while hunting; another was murdered at Berkeley Castle; the little princes were smothered in the Tower. King Edward III. gained a great victory at Creçy in France; King Henry V. gained another at Agincourt. Of course other people were concerned in these things. Sir Walter Tyrrel shot the arrow by accident that killed King William, and some wicked people must have murdered King Edward and the little princes on purpose. And, of course, there were armies who helped King Edward and King Henry to gain their victories; but none of these people would have been in history, I thought, except as connected with the kings. At the same time I thought it was

of no use to relate things which no one belonging to me had had anything to do with, because any one else could have done that without my taking the trouble to write a note-book at all. Therefore it seemed to me that my father, and even my father's slashed satin doublet, fairly became historical by having been present at the King's proclamation, and Aunt Dorothy by having commented thereon.

The second entry was caused by an entirely different theory of history, having its origin in a talk with Roger. Roger said that we never can tell what things are historical until afterwards, and that therefore the only way was to note down what honestly interests us. If these things prove afterwards to be things which interest the world, our story of them becomes part of the world's story, and, as such, history to the people who care for us. But to note down feeble echoes of far-off great events, in which we think we ought to be interested, is no human speech at all, Roger thought, but mere monkey's imitative chattering. Every one, Roger thinks, sees everything just a little differently from any one else, and therefore if every one would describe truly the little bit they do see, in that way, by degrees, we might have a perfect picture. But to copy what others have seen is simply to depart with every fresh copy a little further from the original. If, for instance, said he, the nurse of Julius Cæsar had told us nursery stories of what Julius

Cæsar did when he was a little boy, it would have been history; but the opinions of Julius Cæsar's nurse on the politics of the Roman republic would probably not have been history at all, but idle tattle.

With respect to kings and queens being the only true subjects for history, also, Roger was very scornful. He had lately been paying a visit to Mr. John Hampden, Mr. Oliver Cromwell, and others of my father's friends, and he had returned full of indignation against the tyranny of the court and the prelates. The nation, he said wise men thought, was not made for the king, but the king for the nation. And, to say nothing of the Greek history, the Bible history was certainly not filled up with kings and queens, but with shepherds, herdsmen, preachers, and soldiers; or if with kings, with kings who had been shepherds and soldiers, and who were saints and heroes as well as kings.

All which reasoning decided me to make my next entry concerning the calf of the brindled cow, which at that time was the subject in the world which honestly interested me the most. If my father, or Roger, or Cousin Placidia, or Aunt Gretel, ever became historical personages (and, as Roger said, who could tell?), then anecdotes concerning the calf of the cow which my father owned and Aunt Gretel cherished, and which Cousin Placidia thought it childish to care so much about, might become, in a secondary sense, historical also. At all events, I resolved I would not be like Julius Cæsar's nurse, babbling of politics.

The next entry was:

"August 4, 1637.—Dr. Antony has spent the evening with us, and is to remain some days, at father's entreaty, to recruit his strength; Aunt Dorothy having knowledge of medicinal herbs, and Aunt Gretel of savory dishes, which may be of use to him. He hath narrowly escaped the jail-sickness, having of late visited many afflicted good people in the prisons through the country, as is his custom. 'Sick and in prison,' Dr. Antony saith, 'and ye visited me,' is plain enough to read by the dimmest light, whatever else is hard to understand. He told us of two strange things which happened lately. At least they seem very strange to me.

"In the Palace Yard at Westminster, on the 30th of last June (while Roger and I were making hay in the pleasant sunshine of the orchard), Dr. Antony saw three gentlemen stand in the pillory. The pillory is a wooden frame set up on a platform, where wicked people are fastened helplessly like savage dogs, with their heads and hands coming through holes, to make them look ridiculous, that people may mock and jeer at them. But father and Dr. Anthony did not think these gentlemen wicked, only at worst a little hasty in speech. And the people did not think them ridiculous; they did not mock and jeer at them, but kept very still, or wept. Their names were Mr. Prynne, a gentleman at the bar, Dr. John Bastwick, a physician; and Mr. Burton, a clergyman of a parish in London. There they stood many hours while the hangman came to each of them in turn and sawed off their ears with a rough knife, and then burnt in two cruel letters on their cheeks, S.L., for seditious libeler. Dr. Anthony did not say the three gentlemen made one cry or complaint, but bore themselves like brave men. But the

bravest of all, I think, was Mrs. Bastwick, the doctor's wife. She stayed on the scaffold, and bore to see all her husband's pain without a word or moan, lest she should make him flinch, and then received his ears in her lap, and kissed his poor wounded face before all the people. Sweet, brave heart! I would fain have her home amongst us here, and kiss her faithful hands like a queen's, and lay my head on her brave heart, as if it were my mother's! The sufferers made no moan; but the people broke their pitiful silence once with an angry shout, and many times with low, hushed groans, as if the pain and shame were theirs (Dr. Anthony said), and they would remember it. And Mr. Prynne, when the irons were burning his face, said to the executioner, 'Cut me, tear me, I fear not thee; I fear the fire of hell.' Mr. Burton spoke to the people of God and his truth, and how it was worth while to suffer rather than give up that. And at last he nearly fainted, but when he was borne away into a house near, he said, with good cheer, 'It is too hot to last.' (He

meant the persecution.) But the three gentlemen are now shut up in three prisons—in Launceston, Lancaster, and Caernarvon. And father and Dr. Antony say it is Archbishop Laud who ordered it all to be done. But could not the king have stopped it if he liked?

"But will Roger and I ever turn over the hay again in the pleasant June sunshine, without thinking how it burned down on those poor, maimed and wounded gentlemen? And one day I do hope I may see brave Mistress Bastwick and tell her how I love and honor her, and how the thought of her will help me to be brave and patient more than a hundred sermons.

"Dr. Antony's other story was of one Jenny or Janet Geddes, not a gentlewoman, for she kept an apple stall in Edinburgh streets, and, moreover, does not appear to have used good language at all. The Scotch, it seems, do not like bishops, and, indeed, will not have bishops. But Archbishop Laud and the king will make them. On Sunday, the 23d of last July, a month since, one of Archbishop Laud's bishops began the collect for the day in St. Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh. Jenny Geddes had brought her folding stool (on which she sat by her apple stall, I suppose) into the church, and when the bishop came out in his robes (which Archbishop Laud likes of many colors, while the Scotch, it seems, will have nothing but black), she took up her stool and flung it at the bishop's head, calling the service, the mass and the bishop a thief, and wishing him very ill wishes in a curious Scottish dialect, which, I suppose, I do not quite understand; for it sounded like swearing, and if Jenny Geddes was a good woman (although not a gentlewoman) she would scarcely, I should

think, swear, at least not in church. Whether the bishop was hurt or not, no one seems to know or care. I suppose the stool did not reach his head. But it stopped the service. For all the people rose in great fury, not against Jenny Geddes, but against the bishop, and the archbishop, and the prayer-book, and against all bishops and all prayers in books, not in Edinburgh only, but throughout the land. Which shows, father said, that a great deal of angry talk had been going on beforehand in the streets around Jenny Geddes' apple stall. There must always be some angry person, father said, to throw the folding stool, but no one heeds the angry person unless there is something to be angry about."

A very long entry, which lost me many hours and many pages.

And about the passages in my own history which it led to, not a word. Indeed, throughout these journals I notice that it is more what they recall than what they say which brings back the past to me. I wonder if it is not thus with most diaries. For to keep to Roger's rule of writing the things which really interest us at the time seems to me scarcely possible; because at the time we scarcely know what things are most deeply interesting us, and if we do, they are the very things we cannot write about. Underneath the things we see and think and speak about are the great, dim, silent places out of which we ourselves are growing into being, and where God is at work. The things we are beginning to see we can not see, the things we are feeling without knowing what we feel, the dim, struggling thoughts we cannot utter or even think. Without form and void is the state of a world being created. When the world is created, the creation is a history, and can be written. While it is being created, it is chaos, and from without can only be described as without form and void—from within,

in the chaos, not at all. The Creator only understands chaos, and knows the chaos before the new creation from the mere waste and ruin of the old.

To understand the past is only partly possible for the wisest men.

To understand the present is only possible to God.

Because to understand the present would be to foresee the future. To see through the chaos would be to foresee the new creation.

Wherefore it seems to me all diaries are of value not as records, but as suggestions. And all self-examination resolves itself at last into prayer, saying, "What I see not, teach Thou me."

"Search me and try me, and see Thou, and lead Thou me."

The passages in my history that this story of Dr. Antony led to, arise before me as clearly as if they happened yesterday, although in the Journal not a hint of them is given.