Beyond the Seas. Being the surprising adventures and ingenious opinions of Ralph Lord St. Keyne, told and set forth by his cousin, Humphrey St. Keyne

Chapter I

In the year of Our Lord one thousand six hundred and fifty-two (1652), only one year and four months after His Sacred Majesty King Charles, the Second of that name (my dread Sovereign and the best of Kings), had been crowned at Scone, and but eight months after the fatal fight at Worcester, disastrous to the King's cause, we — th^± is to say, my young kinsman and master and myself — reached the city of Genoa in our wanderings. After Worcester rout we had taken ship at Rye and run to Scheveningen in Holland. Thence, after long journeying through the Low Countries and Germany, we crossed the Tyrolean Alps into Tuscany, and passing across Italy to Genoa, embarked upon the Spanish trading galleon Esperanza, in English Tlie Hope (happy omen ! not altogether to be frustrated), bound for Barcelona in Spain, but with intention to touch at the Port of Palermo, in B ot Sicily, that fair and fertile island being then an appurtenance of the King of Spain.

It happened that on the 2nd day of May, at a little before seven o'clock in the morning, we lay becalmed some three sea leagues or thereabouts off the Sicilian coast; a light, south-easterly breeze having died away with the dawn, and the high lands on either side of the city of Palermo being now and again seen and unseen through the mists of early morning. I am thus particular, for it was in the idleness and leisure of this morning time that I formed the resolution to begin to set down in writing the true history of the adventures which had befallen my young kinsman (and former pupil in war and letters) and myself since the fight at Worcester. Not indeed opining that there had happened to us at this time any greater dangers or more moving and wonderful incidents, perils, and adventures than to perhaps some other worthy and loyal gentlemen in these melan choly times ; but that I did then wish, and do now still more urgently desire, to recount the circumstances of our fugitive and exiled life, in order that I may the more particularly set forth and blazon and expatiate upon the singular learning, gravity, courage, and wisdom, rebus in arduis, in trial and adversity, of the young gentleman, my companion in these misfor tunes, who was the head of our family, præsidium et duke decus, the guide and ornament of our house, now alas ! fallen from its pride and magnificence, of which I, a poor scholar and soldier-adventurer, am but an unhonoured member (and who must needs bear the bar sinister on my escutcheon), and, so to speak, allowed to name myself one of the family but on sufferance and by condescension.

So forming this aforesaid resolution, little did I reckon and forecast that this very day, then so newly dawned, would be the turning-point of our lives, and that henceforward my kinsman's fortune would be, though still varied and most strange, indeed to the point of marvellous and astounding, higher and greater than those of any Englishman of the times who has sought and counted upon the favour of the fickle goddess Fortune beyond the seas. Thus have I, as my shrewd and gentle reader has already perceived, got at a stroke in medias res, into the middle of my subject (a method which H. Flaccus commends to the teller of history in prose or verse) before I have so much as told my own name (which is no great matter) or my Lord's (which is), or what was the purpose of our taking ship for Spain from Genoa, or why we touched at the Sicilian port of Palermo, which was indeed, as the reader will have gathered, no business of ours, for we purposed not even to land there, but the ship's own and its masters.

Know then that upon the final defeat at all points of our forces in England and Scotland, and the triumph of the Sectaries at Worcester, there was no place in the land for us King's men who had fought and laboured for the true cause. We gentlemen of the army especially were hunted like hares and foxes, B and needed, and indeed did most cautiously and wakefully use, the subtlety and cunning of these beasts to fly from and elude the packs of our enemies ; for if captured we were mercilessly im prisoned, starved, maltreated ; the common sort shot without trial, by decimation, one man in ten, to fright the rest ; the leading men tried for disobeying the usurper, and many of them barbarously executed for that loyalty to their King and country, which in all nations and times has been acknowledged the chiefest virtue of a good citizen.

My young Lord's estates, we had but good enough cause to apprehend, would be shortly confiscated and seized by the usurper Cromwell, who then had gathered all government into his own hands, and was as absolute with our lives and estates as a very grand Sultan of the Turks. Notwithstanding the manifest peril in which he stood, my Lord was for making his way to his own house in Somersetshire as soon as the battle and the rout of our side that followed it were over. It was against my will that we rode thither, but, " It will be safe enough from the Roundheads," said he, " till the rumour reaches the Castle how the fight has gone against us, but we must ride faster than rumour, for I have my business to do there." And we rode hard, and by the second day in the morning had reached the gates of St. Keyne Castle.

I questioned him not as to his business here, con cluding it was some matter of jewels, heirloom, or plate, or muniments, or of moneys, that he would secure against the spoiling of his estate ; but his business was to provide for the safety of his cousin and ward, the Lady Geraldine Scudamour, a child of but fifteen years, his sole near relative save myself (who am indeed, as I have hinted, no legitimate kinsman of his or hers) : this young lady's wardship having, upon his father's demise, so quick and strangely were matters jumbled in these jumbled times, devolved upon him, a youth, though grave beyond his years, of but twenty-three. The Lady Geraldine resided at St. Keyne Castle with a religious lady from the convent of the Ursulines at Poitiers, and when my Lord and I alighted from our horses, 'twas the child who greeted us.

" Geraldine ! " cried my Lord, after he had saluted her upon the cheek, " Geraldine, my dear," says he very gently but sadly, " the King's cause is lost." The child went very pale. " Lost ! " she called out, " then will they murder us all ? " " Nay," said his Lordship, " thou wilt be spared, and madame here. The lady came up at this moment, very much frightened. "But you, Ralph!" and the child clung to him weeping, " what will become of you ? " for the two had been in a manner playfellows together. " Our kinsman Humphrey and I," quoth he, looking at me confidently, " will pass easily through our enemies and embark for Spain. The king of that country lacks soldiers of fortune, and we intend to offer him our swords." " Then will I go with you too," cried out Lady Geraldine. " I will be your page, as Bellario was to Philaster in the play."

The French religious lady, catching something of the child's meaning, shook her head reprovingly. But the child cried to her kinsman to let her come too, and he for peace's sake humoured her fancy a while. " But," asked he, " how shall we manage, my dear, in war time, when fighting is on hand ? 'Tis then no place or time for young maidens." "Oh," said Lady Geraldine, "see how tall I am, and slim of my figure. I will so dress, as Bellario did or Imogen in the plays, that no man, or woman either, but shall say I am a man ; " and indeed the maiden was slim and tall and upright, being then, I think, a month or so past her fifteenth birthday, and quick and strong in her carriage, and rather wan of face, so that in man's dress she might easily have passed for one between boy and youth. My Lord laughed a little, and looking upon me, " What say you, cousin, to this ?

" quoth he. Now, I have never failed to inculcate upon my young Lord the evil ways and evil example of women, and put him in remembrance of all that the learning of both ancients and moderns has discovered and expounded in discommendation of women and their ways ; to wit, their vanity, and their lightness, and their leading of men's thoughts away from learning and gravity and wisdom into folly and levity. How that, in ancient times, the wisest nations — that is to say, the Greeks and Indians — saw right to include and seclude them in dwellings apart from men ; how the civilest people of the moderns have done the same, to wit, in Convents and Nunneries, and the cunningest and most advancing, and in war the most terrible of modern peoples, namely the Turks, have built their Harems and Seraglios {teste Busbecquid) for the utter obclusion ofthe weaker sex, to the inestimable peace, comfort, ease, and freedom of the rest of mankind.

I likewise did not fail to strengthen and support my argument with innumerable instances from the Chris tian Fathers, as Jerome, Cyprian, and Chrysostom ; from the philosophers, as Seneca ; from the satirist Juvenal ; and from the lighter poets, as Propertius, Martialis, and above all Ovidius Naso {vide his Ars Amor is, passim). But on this occasion courtesy and good manners forbade me to be too convincing, and I therefore forewent any response to my kinsman's invitation ; contenting myself with remarking that women's constitutions were too nice and delicate for the rough usages of a campaign or to look upon blood and wounds, and their bodies too weak to bear its fatigues, too weak even to sustain the mere weight of a soldier's arms ; nay, even to hold out a soldier's sword in their hands.

"Look, Humphrey," cried my girl cousin, "I am stronger than you think," and the child, going to the trophies of ancient armour that stood in the hall like armed knights all arow, snatched up a morion from one figure, took a great battle-axe from another, and fixing the first upon hei* head with a look between laughing and terrible, she raised the axe in both hands, pretending a swashing blow. " Now look to it, Humphrey," cried she, smiling on me, " for I will kill you dead for your hard words of women." But the weapon was too heavy for her puny strength and fell forward upon the paved floor. Her cousin laughed a little, overlooking the un reason of the child, then turning to the nun, " Madame," said he, " there is, I fear, no longer safety for you or my kinswoman in this castle's walls. In an hour you and she must ride forth towards Bristol.

I pray you to prepare yourself and the Lady Gerald ine ; and do you, madame, cloak your religious habit with a riding dress, for no doubt the road will be infested with Sectaries. You will travel to Bristol, where I have provided a gentleman of my friends to meet you, and a house for your due lodging. So soon as things have quieted down, a passage will be taken for you both to Havre-de-Grace, where I have provided friends to receive you, and whence you will be carried by ship to The Groyne in Galicia of Spain near which is the great Benedictine Nunnery of St. Scholastica, of which our aunt Lady Priscilla Scuda mour is Abbess, and where my cousin will continue her education ; and I desire that you accompany her and still have immediate charge over her person." We did not attend the ladies on their journey, which they made in company with several of the trustier of Lord St. Keyne's servants, but after staying a while for some necessary correspondence and having set his affairs hastily in order, my Lord and I rode fast in their track, for though we feared to be seen in their company, justly deeming that our cavalier dress, arms, and appearance might provoke molestation to them, we hung on their traces for two days, unknown to them, that we might make sure that no hurt befell them, and ready, if aught happened amiss, for a bold stroke of help or rescue.

But nothing took place worthy of note, for the country side was not yet aroused nor the Sectaries drunken (as they afterwards were) with the news of their great victory, of which indeed only unconfirmed rumours were as yet flying along the roads, insomuch that men were still doubtful on which side to incline. Note likewise, that about the environs of Bristol and along the main road from London in the east and this, the greatest and richest city of the west, were to be found as many King's men as Roundheads, and as we rode by many spoke out their minds, to the effect that they had it in their hearts to wish good luck to us and to the King (perceiving clearly enough to which party we belonged). Seeing how matters went, my Lord spoke openly to some along the road who had served on our side and who knew him by sight or rumour, saying, " Friends, the King's cause is ended for the time, and they who love it and me will serve both by taking arms abroad where I intend, namely with the King of Spain."

This was bold speaking, and I feared for the speaker that it might get bruited in a wrong quarter, but its very boldness won it good acceptance with the honest yeomen and farmers' sons with whom my kinsman spoke, and many were minded at once to bring their swords, their horses, and themselves into a com pany to serve him ; but, " Weigh the matter well," said he, " and in a day or two I will return along this road, when as many of you as will can join our troop," and to some he appointed one place of meeting and to others another, as the case might be, upon the road. Sure enough, when we had got as far as the gates of Bristol, where we knew our ladies and their servants to be in safety, and had turned back, we met several of these said farmers and yeomen, all good fellows, and stout and valiant men, a-horse back, armed some better, some worse, one with sword and pistols, another with a pike, or a musquetoon, ready to side with my kinsman and myself.

For they were all loyal men disappointed with the issues of things, hating the tyranny of the Fanatics and not yet (by a good deal) sick of fighting for their King and for their liberties. We rode on, making south, with design to embark at Poole in Dorset, always riding forward very quickly and cautiously, increasing in numbers as we went along, and avoiding the towns where troops were posted. At this time, however, the Parliamentary forces were mostly gathered in the west (with the arch usurper Cromwell) or in the northerly parts of England, and we found the town garrisons weak and the country side more bare of troops than we had either expected or hoped. We employed a circuit to avoid Bath, where was a strong troop of horse, and made pretty straight through Devizes towards Salis bury, wherein was a strongish garrison too, but mostly foot, militia men, as we had heard, and, as indeed proved to be the case, for there were barely three score horse soldiers in the city.

Now by this time we feared no such force, for our own troop numbered nearly a hundred men, so many had fallen in on our passage through Somerset and Wiltshire, and, though our business was for the present rather flying than fighting, we were not like to run from equal or nearly equal numbers of the enemy upon a direct challenge given. We had hopes, so fast had we ridden, that no news of us had gone on before, but as fast as we had come it appeared that treason had travelled still faster, which happened in this wise, that as we passed through Pottern, a small township a little north of Market Lavington in Wiltshire, and lodging that night in the hay-barn of an honest gentleman and a Royalist, some three miles beyond the town, when the troop was in motion at dawn next day, three fellows on good horses overtook us.

I was riding with my Lord at the head of the men and doubtless seeing me to be the graver looking of the two, my hair grizzled, and my face somewhat fur rowed and careworn (though less with years than with trouble and long service) and my Lord having a very young face and at the moment turning his head to laugh and jest with the men, as was ever his wont to do on the march, the newcomers mistook me for the chief in command and accosted me : " We would crave to join your honour's troop," said their spokes man, very civilly, " and fare with you, being loyal King's men, as we perceive you to be." I will note here that at this period the Puritans and Sectaries had mostly ceased to wear their hair long, and they dressed in very sober clothes, while we, their enemies, went to a contrary extreme both in hair and dress.

These fellows, however, were betwixt and between, distinguishable in look or dress neither one way nor the other. "Address yourselves, sir," said I, "to this gentle man " (purposely not naming him), " for I am but the lieutenant of this troop, and His Worship is in command." On this my Lord questioned them a little, and they answering readily enough, he bade them fall in with the men. "And do you," said his Lordship to me in French (for he spake all the tongues), " disperse them separately among our men, for I rather misdoubt their honesty." This was wisely devised, for the men were, as it afterwards turned out, nothing less than vile Parlia mentarians come on purpose to spy upon us. The next morning we had come to the edge of a huge plain that lies north of Salisbury, and advancing a little way into it where there were neither woods nor hedges to incommode us, nor a hill within many miles round, and we were safe from observation and surprise, we deployed the troop and performed some necessary drill and preparation for battle, having as yet hardly had time in our hasty march to do more than appoint two lieutenants, four cornets, and sundry under officers.

This manœuvring and drill was over at a little past noon, and when we got into marching line again and struck across the plain or common, one Cornet Brown, a Somersetshire man well known to me, he having fought by my side many years ago in the Low Countries, came up to me as if upon necessary business of the march. " Captain St. Keyne," says he under his breath, "these three new recruits are, an' it please you, no true men at all ; they are soldiers sure enough, but they have never fought on our side." I asked him how he knew that. " They are drilled soldiers, sir, I can see, because they turn, and back, and keep their horses in line, and draw their swords, and make the cuts, and follow the word, like well-trained men, but when I have questioned them as to the war and with whom they have served, they give no straight answers, and their talk is too sober for men of our side.

If there were ever a . . . tree on this . . . common," said the cornet, looking about him, and swearing a couple of hearty oaths into the sentence (which I need not record), "it would be well to string up the three rogues as a warning to any others who may be following on our track." "By the laws of war, Cornet," said I, "we should be justified on this testimony of yours alone, and I will report the matter to our commander." Note, that the mark of a Roundhead fanatic was a demure habit of speech and a superstitious sobriety and softness in the use of words, as of conscience smitten men fearing to awaken the wrath of Heaven upon their hypocrisy, while our poor fellows were all innocently free and bold of utterance, and very outspoken. I laid the matter immediately before his Lordship. "I imagined it might be so," said he, "and I conceive we should wisely alter our course, lest these fellows have either prepared the garrison at Salisbury to oppose our way, or are but in the van of others following on our track from the west."

Chapter II

We marched still onward till past sunset, when coming to a shepherd's hut or croft on the plain, my kinsman called a halt, and ordering the troop into a half circle round about him, commanded the three recruits to advance, then bidding them dismount and causing them to be disarmed, he spoke as follows to the ranks of his troopers : " Comrades ! we have here three men in our midst who are traitors to our cause and to us, and who must know themselves by every law of God and man to be worthy of death. They have plotted our undoing, and if we do not put them to immediate death, it is rather lack of time to give them a soldier's trial and such justice as comports even with haste and exigency of war, rather, I say, this haste that we are in than any foolish and futile desire to show them mercy. Therefore I order that as their lives might justly be forfeited to us, so their arms and horses be taken from them in the name and for the service of our rightful King, and that they be bound and cast into this hut, the door made fast, and a guard set."

He then turned to me. " Cap tain St. Keyne," said he, " I desire that you see to the due execution of this order. We encamp here for the night," said he to the men, "and when the bugles sound the reveille to-morrow morning we will up-saddle quickly and away." Thus did we, picketing our horses and eating and sleeping in their midst, with a strong patrol to watch and guard over our prisoners ; and in the night, about two hours before dawn, while it was still very dark, the bugles sounded, and we saddled up and rode away, but examining into our gaol house, namely, the little hut, we found one of our birds flown ; how, we never knew, but probably by the help and confederacy ofthe others. He had got out and off in the darkness, and, what was more amiss, had stolen away upon one of the troop horses and ridden we knew not whither, though we guessed to Salisbury; but this mattered little to us, as we had already determined to leave that city well alone, and trend to the south, and pass eastward, and then to the south again to some Kentish port, my Lord having already got news by the road that the road to Poole was blocked by its garrison under Colonel Prideaux, who held there some 2,000 militia men.

Therefore my Lord decided to make eastward almost to Middlesex, where we had intelli gence that Major-General Skippon, commanding the militia regiments of London, had sent out parties of horse to hold the lanes and roads in hopes to pick up returning stragglers from Worcester rout ; thence we proposed to pass suddenly due south by roads leading to small ungarrisoned or but weakly garrisoned towns, reach one ofthe Cinque Ports in Kent or Sussex, now certainly abandoned by the usurping troops, and there take ship for Spain. This, then, was the plan of our march, but it had like to have been frustrated by the escape of our prisoner, for certainly he or some other spy had alarmed the garrison of Salisbury ; and the horsemen therein, to the number of some seventy, had sallied forth to meet us, and were then nearer to us than we had any notion of, for as one of them who fell into our hands afterwards informed us, their scouts viewed us that morning from a wooded hill-top to the north of Salisbury city.

Here they espied us passing along the road making eastward, some mile and a half or two miles below them ; but seeing that we outnumbered them and marched in very regular order, they thought it more discreet to let us go upon our way than to hinder us. So, descending the opposite side of the hill into the Winchester road, which runs in that valley from Salisbury in a pretty straight line, they marched in all haste to the former city (which would have lain on our road too had we not gone about to the north to avoid it), and there being reinforced by some fifty or sixty sabres of the garrison, they retreated before us towards London, feeling us, as our soldiers have it, with their scouts and outposts, but never letting their main body be seen by us till we had got off the open down country hereabouts, into the woods and waste land of Surrey, about Leith Hill and Dorking ; nor, indeed, did we see the'm then, c for a time, nor should have known of their being there, but for an odd and happy occurrence.

We held our march along the Downs, and, in the main, on high land, for there is a very long ridge of hill before you reach Guildford town, lying east and west, on which is good travelling, and whence a good view is to be had on either side and a long way ahead. Here, then, we marched boldly onward, being assured of no ambushes, but so soon as we viewed Leith Hill, a tall, well-wooded eminence, rising abruptly to a goodish height, some thirty miles from London, we struck to the south to touch its foot, not unwilling to lose ourselves among the woodlands in these parts from the observation of the forces of the Fanatics under Skippon, which, as I have said, we guessed were waiting and watching for such as ourselves in the neighbourhood of London. Had it not been, as I have said above, for a most fortunate occurrence at this aforesaid hill, we had run right upon an ambush, cunningly laid for us by our enemies from Salisbury and Winchester.

We had, as I have said, entered the forest, which lies pretty thick here, but interspersed with open glades, when we perceived a gentleman on a fine stone horse galloping hastily to us down the hill and along one of these said glades. " Hold ! " cried he, raising his hand, and without waiting to bestow on us more ceremonious address, " hold, gentlemen, and proceed no further, or you are dead men ! " This person being questioned of us, for at first we were inclined to suspect such hasty and officious intervention in our business, named himself to be surrogate and estate bailiff to one Squire Evelyn of Wootton, a well-known King's man, upon whose lands we then it seems were riding. The squire, he told us, was living abroad away from the troubles, and Mr. Legge, his surrogate, knew that in warning us of our. imminent danger he did but what his master would wish him to do.

"And what," demanded my Lord, "is this danger ? " Mr. Legge informed us that a troop of well-mounted horse soldiers, 145 in number, for he had counted them as they defiled below him, had entered the woods some six miles to the south, and were posted on either side of a wooded valley through which we needs must presently pass. Though concealed by the trees, these were not set so thick but that he had looked down upon and espied them from the neigh bouring Hill of Leith. We called a halt, and sending scouts on foot up the hill, which is a very rugged and steep one, could spy down upon the armed men lying in ambush a league or more along the road we were about to follow. When it was made plain to us how things stood, my Lord called us about him and said : " Gentlemen, your enemies and the King's have set a trap for us, not content with the chances of an open fight, though they outnumber us by over two score, C and are lurking yonder to fall upon us unawares.

Now," said he, smiling a little upon the stout fellows around him, " I have it in my heart not altogether to baulk them. What say you, gentlemen ? " The men sent up a cheer, and crying out that they were ready to follow their leader at anytime and any whither, gathered up their bridle reins, and some loosened their swords in scabbard or dropped fresh firing in their carbine locks, looking up to my kinsman for the word to ride up and engage the enemy. " Softly ! gentlemen," said he, " my leading shall not be direct into the ambush set for you. This honest friend here tells me of a path that keeps to the shoulder of the hill and leaves the enemy to the right. I will take you along it, and thither shall the Sectaries follow us and, if they choose, engage us on more equal terms." Herein, I conceive, my Lord most prudently resolved, though there seems at first sight some slight flavour of rashness in the project, for though as I have said we were but poor fugitives from the rage of the Fanatics, yet often in warfare in medio tutissimus ibis (to give a new interpretation to the maxim), it is at times politic to escape by going into the very midst of our enemies, and certain it is that if we had not then and there engaged with this force they would have hung upon our steps ever afterwards, hampered and hindered us of our purpose, and prevented us in our escape.