Westward Ho! ... With illustrations by C. E. Brock

Front matter

WESTWARD HO! "DUX FŒMINA FACTI. " Motto of the Armada Medals, ijSS. "Call me jackanapes again, and I break yours, sir." — Chap. i. p. C. WESTWARD HO! OR THE VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES OF Mt £mpas 3Utgf), l&nisrtt, OF BURROUGH, IN THE COUNTY OF DEVON, IN THE REIGN OF HER MOST GLORIOUS MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH RENDERED INTO MODERN ENGLISH BY CHARLES KINGSLEY ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES E. BROCK fLonlion MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY I896 All rights reserved TO (JTljr 3&ajat Sir Samrs Brookr, &.<£._& AND fficorge Augustus Sclfop, 3BJ9. BISHOP OF NEW ZEALAND THIS BOOK IS DEDICA TED BY ONE WHO (UNKNOWN TO THEM) HAS NO OTHER METHOD OF EX PRESSING HIS ADMIRATION AND REVERENCE FOR THEIR CHARACTERS. THAT TYPE OF ENGLISH VIRTUE, AT ONCE MANFUL AND GODLY, PRACTICAL AND ENTHUSIASTIC, PRUDENT AND SELF-SACRIFICING, WHICH HE HAS TRIED TO DEPICT IN THESE PAGES, THEY HAVE EXHIBITED IN A FORM EVEN PURER AND MORE HEROIC THAN THAT IN WHICH HE HAS DREST IT, AND THAN THAT IN WHICH IT WAS EXHIBITED BY THE WORTHIES WHOM ELIZABETH, WITHOUT DISTINC TION OF RANK OR AGE, GATHERED ROUND HER IN THE EVER GLORIOUS WARS OF HER GREAT REIGN.

C. K. February i-^JS. ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE " Call me jackanapes again, and I break yours, sir " Frontispiece "There! Do you see it? The bird !— the bird with the white breast ! " 14 That slate descended on the bald coxcomb of Sir Vindex Brimblecombe 28 She took the wreath of fragrant gale from her own head, and . . . placed it on the head of Amyas .... 37 ' ' I am King Neptune bold " . .' 44 " Trying to get aloft on the wrong side " 57 Knelt down humbly in the wet grass ..... 60 "Tell me, now here — this moment — before we part — if I may love you !"......... 74 " Well, my dear young lady, and what is it I can do for ye ? " . 79 "Stop! stay!" almost screamed Frank ; " it is Eustace ! " . 101 "You have two Jesuits here, sir! and here is the Queen's warrant for apprehending them " 109 Out of the sternsheets arose . . . the portly figure of Lucy Passmore 115 "Soul alive !

" cried Amyas, catching him by the hand ; "and are you he?" 127 "Sang us all to sleep with very sweet music " . . . . 146 Dragging out by the head Mr. John Brimblecombe . .166 "Give me a buckler, and have at any of you ! " . . . 171 Up sprang Amyas . . . and with a single buffet felled him to the earth 197 Down went the hapless hackney on his tail .... ILLUSTRATIONS. X PAGE He had seen . . . more than one Bideford burgher, redolent of onions, profane in that way the velvet cheek of Rose Salterne 215 There she sat upon a stone, tearing her black dishevelled hair . 222 " Why pain your gentle ears with details of slaughter " . . 241 " It is enough, gentlemen " 255 Yes, here he was, with such a countenance, half foolish, half venomous 271 Yeo, his back against the stable -door, was holding his own manfully with sword and buckler against a dozen men . 275 " Look there !

Chapter II. How Amyas Came Home The First Time

' ' Si taceant homines, facient te sidera notum, Sol nescit comitis immemor esse sui." Old Epigram on Drake. Five years are past and gone. It is nine of the clock on a still, bright November morning ; but the bells of Bideford church are still ringing for the daily service two hours after the usual time ; and instead of going soberly according to wont, cannot help breaking forth every five minutes into a jocund peal, and tumbling head over heels in ecstasies of joy. Bideford streets are a very flower-garden of all the colours, swarming with sea men and burghers, and burghers' wives and daughters, all in their holiday attire. Garlands are hung across the streets, and tapestries from every window. The ships in the pool are dressed in all their flags, and give tumultuous vent to their feelings by peals of ordnance of every size.

Every stable is crammed with horses ; and Sir Richard Grenvil's house is like a very tavern, with eating and chinking, and unsaddling, and running to and fro of grooms and serving-men. Along the little churchyard, packed full with women, streams all the gentle blood of North Devon, — tall and stately men, and fair ladies, worthy of the days when the gentry of England were by due right the leaders of the people, by personal prowess and beauty, as well as by intellect and education. And first, there is my lady Countess of Bath, whom Sir Richard Grenvil is escorting, cap in hand (for her good Earl Bourehier is in London with the queen) ; and there are Bassets from beautiful Umberleigh, and Carys from more beautiful Clovelly, and Fortescues of Wear, and Fortescues of Buckland, aud Fortescues from all quarters, and Coles from Slade, and Stukelys from Affton, and St. Legers from Annery, and Coffins from Portledge, and even Coplestones from Eggesford, thirty miles away : and last, but not least (for almost all stop to give them place), Sir John Chichester of Ralegh, followed in single file, after the good old patriarchal fashion, by his eight daughters, and three of his CHAP. II.]

THE FIRST TIME. 19 five famous sons (one, to avenge his murdered brother, is fighting valiantly in Ireland, hereafter to rule there wisely also, as Lord Deputy and Baron of Belfast) ; and he meets at the gate his cousin of Arlington, and behind him a train of four daughters and nineteen sons, the last of whom has not yet passed the Town-hall, while the first is at the Lychgate, who, laughing, make way for the elder though shorter branch of that most fruitful tree ; and so on into the church, where all are placed according to their degrees, or at least as near as may be, not without a few sour looks, and shovings, and whisperings, from one high-born matron and another ; till the churchwardens and sidesmen, who never had before so goodly a company to arrange, have bustled themselves hot, and red, and frantic, and end by imploring abjectly the help of the great Sir Richard himself to tell them who everybody is, and which is the elder branch, and which is the younger, and who carries eight quarterings in their arms, and who only four, and so prevent their setting at deadly feud half the fine ladies of North Devon ; for the old men are all safe packed away in the cor poration pews, and the young ones care only to get a place whence they may eye the ladies.

And at last there is a silence, and a looking toward the door, and then distant music, flutes and hautboys, drums and trumpets, which come braying, and screaming, and thundering merrily up to the very church doors, and then cease ; and the churchwardens and sidesmen bustle down to the entrance, rods in hand, and there is a general whisper and rustle, not without glad tears and blessings from many a woman, and from some men also, as the wonder of the day enters, and the rector begins, not the morning service, but the good old thanksgiving after a victory at sea. And what is it which has thus sent old Bideford wild with that "goodly joy and pious mirth," of which we now only retain traditions in our translation of the Psalms ? Why are all eyes fixed, with greedy admiration, on those four weather beaten mariners, decked out with knots and ribbons by loving hands ; and yet more on that gigantic figure who walks before them, a beardless boy, and yet with the frame and stature of a Hercules, towering, like Saul of old, a head and shoulders above all the congregation, with his golden locks flowing down over his shoulders ?

And why, as the five go instinctively up to the altar, aud there fall on their knees before the rails, are all eyes turned to the pew where Mrs. Leigh of Burrough has hid her face between her hands, and her hood rustles and shakes to her joyful sobs ? Because there was fellow-feeling of old in merry England, in county and in town ; and these are Devon men, and men of Bideford, whose names are Amyas Leigh of Burrough, John Staveley, Michael Heard, and Jonas Marshall of Bideford, and Thomas Braund of Clovelly : and they, the first of all English mariners, have sailed round the world with Francis Drake, and are come hither to give God thanks. It is a long story. To explain how it happened we must go back for a page or two, almost to the point from whence we started in the last chapter. For somewhat more than a twelvemonth after Mr. Oxen ham's departure, young Amyas had gone on quietly enough, according to promise, with the exception of certain occasional outbursts of fierceness common to all young male animals, and especially to boys of any strength of character.

His scholar ship, indeed, progressed no better than before ; but his home education went on healthily enough ; and he was fast becoming, young as he was, a right good archer, and rider, and swords man (after the old school of buckler practice), when his father, having gone down on business to the Exeter Assizes, caught (as was too common in those days) the gaol-fever from the prisoners; sickened in the very court; and died within a week. And now Mrs. Leigh was left to God and her own soul, with this young lion-cub in leash, to tame and train for this life and the life to come. She had loved her husband fervently and holily. He had been often peevish, often melancholy ; for he was a disappointed man, with an estate impoverished by his father's folly, and his own youthful ambition, which had led him up to Court, and made him waste his heart and his purse in following a vain shadow.

He was one of those men, more over, who possess almost every gift except the gift of the power to use them ; and though a scholar, a courtier, and a soldier, he had found himself, when he was past forty, without settled employment or aim in life, by reason of a certain shyness, pride, or delicate honour (call it which you will), which had always kept him from playing a winning game in that very world after whose prizes he hankered to the last, and on which he revenged himself by continual grumbling. At last, by his good luck, he met with a fair young Miss Foljambe, of Derbyshire, then about Queen Elizabeth's Court, who was as tired as he of the sins of the world, though she had seen less of them ; and the two contrived to please each other so well, that though the queen CHAr. II. 3 THE FIRST TIME. 21 grumbled a little, as usual, at the lady for marrying, and at the gentleman for adoring any one but her royal self, they got leave to vanish from the little Babylon at Whitehall, and settle in peace at Burrough.

In her he found a treasure, and he knew what he had found. Mrs. Leigh was, and had been from her youth, one of those noble old English churchwomen, without superstition, and with out severity, who are among the fairest features of that heroic time. There was a certain melancholy about her, nevertheless ; for the recollections of her childhood carried her back to times when it was an awful thing to be a Protestant. She could remember among them, five-and-twenty years ago, the burning of poor blind Joan Waste at Derby, and of Mistress Joyce Lewis, too, like herself, a lady born ; and sometimes even now, in her nightly dreams, rang in her ears her mother's bitter cries to God, either to spare her that fiery torment, or to give her strength to bear it, as she whom she loved had borne it before her.

For her mother, who was of a good family in Yorkshire, had been one of Queen Catherine's bedchamber women, and the bosom friend and disciple of Anne Askew. And she had sat in Smithfield, with blood curdled by horror, to see the hap less Court beauty, a month before the paragon of Henry's Court, carried in a chair (so crippled was she by the rack) to her fiery doom at the stake, beside her fellow -courtier, Mr. Lascelles, while the very heavens seemed to the shuddering mob around to speak their wrath and grief in solemn thunder peals, and heavy drops which hissed upon the crackling pile. Therefore a sadness hung upon her all her life, and deepened in the days of Queen Mary, when, as a notorious Protestant and heretic she had had to hide for her life among the hills and caverns of the Peak, and was only saved by the love which her husband's tenants bore her, and by his bold declaration that, good Catholic as he was, he would run through the body any constable, justice, or priest, yea, bishop or cardinal, who dared to serve the Queen's warrant upon his wife.

So she escaped : but, as I said, a sadness hung upon her all her life ; and the skirt of that dark mantle fell upon the young girl who had been the partner of her wanderings and hidings among the lonely hills ; and who, after she was married, gave herself utterly up to God. And yet in giving herself to God, Mrs. Leigh gave herself to her husband, her children, arid the poor of Northam town, and was none the less welcome to the Grenviles, and Fortescues, and Chichesters, and all the gentle families round, who honoured her husband's talents, and enjoyed his wit. She accustomed herself to austerities, which often called forth the kindly rebukes of her husband; and yet she did so without one superstitious thought of appeasing the fancied wrath of God, or of giving Him pleasure (base thought) by any pain of hers ; for her spirit had been trained in the freest and loftiest doctrines of Luther's school; and that little mystic "Alt-Deutsch Theologie" (to which the great Reformer said that he owed more than to any book, save the Bible, and St. Augustine) was her counsellor and comforter by day and night.

And now, at little past forty, she was left a widow : lovely still in face and figure ; and still more lovely from the divine calm which brooded, like the dove of peace and the Holy Spirit of God (which indeed it was), over every look, and word, and gesture ; a sweetness which had been ripened by storm, as well as by sunshine ; which this world had not given, and could not take away. No wonder that Sir Richard and Lady Gren vile loved her ; no wonder that her children worshipped her ; no wonder that the young Amyas, when the first burst of grief was over, and he knew again where he stood, felt that a new life had begun for him ; that his mother was no more to think and act for him only, but that he must think and act for his mother. And so it was, that on the very day after his father's funeral, when school-hours were over, instead of coming straight home, he walked boldly into Sir Richard Grenvile's house, and asked to see his godfather.

" You must be my father now, sir," said he firmly. And Sir Richard looked at the boy's broad strong face, and swore a great and holy oath, like Glasgerion's, " by oak, and ash, and thorn," that he would be a father to him, and a brother to his mother, for Christ's sake. And Lady Grenvile took the boy by the hand, and walked home with him to Bur rough ; and there the two fair women fell on each other's necks, and wept together ; the one for the loss which had been, the other, as by a prophetic instinct, for the like loss which was to come to her also. For the sweet St. Leger knew well that her husband's fiery spirit would never leave his body on a peaceful bed; but that death (as he prayed almost nightly that it might) would find him sword in hand, upon the field of duty and of fame. And there those two vowed everlasting sisterhood, and kept their vow ; and after that all things went on at Burrough as before ; and Amyas rode, and CHAP. H.] THE FIRST TIME. 23 shot, and boxed, and wandered on the quay at Sir Richard's side ; for Mrs. Leigh was too wise a woman to alter one tittle of the training which her husband had thought best for his younger boy.

It was enough that her elder son had of his own accord taken to that form of life in which she in her secret heart would fain have moulded both her children. For Frank, God's wedding gift to that pure love of hers, had won himself honour at home and abroad ; first at the school at Bideford ; then at Exeter College, where he had become a friend of Sir Philip Sidney's, and many another young man of rank and pro mise; and next, in the summer of 1572, on his way to the University of Heidelberg, he had gone to Paris, with (luckily for him) letters of recommendation to Walsingham, at the English Embassy : by which letters he not only fell in a second time with Philip Sidney, but saved his own life (as Sidney did his) in the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day. At Heidel berg he had stayed two years, winning fresh honour from all who knew him, and resisting all Sidney's entreaties to follow him into Italy.

For, scorning to be a burden to his parents, he had become at Heidelberg tutor to two young German princes, whom, after living with them at their father's house for a year or more, he at last, to his own great delight, took with him down to Padua, " to perfect them," as he wrote home, " according to his insufficiency, in all princely studies." Sidney was now returned to England ; but Frank found friends enough without him, such letters of recommendation and diplomas did he carry from I know not how many princes, magnifieoes, and learned doctors, who had fallen in love with the learning, modesty, and virtue of the fair young Englishman. And ere Frank returned to Germany he had satiated his soul with all the wonders of that wondrous land.

He had talked over the art of sonneteering with Tasso, the art of history with Sarpi ; he had listened, between awe and incredulity, to the daring theories of Galileo ; he had taken his pupils to Venice, that their portraits might be painted by Paul Veronese ; he had seen the palaces of Palladio, and the Merchant Princes on the Rialto, and the Argosies of Ragusa, and all the wonders of that meeting-point of east and west ; he had watched Tintor etto's mighty hand " hurling tempestuous glories o'er the scene ;" and even, by dint of private intercession in high places, had been admitted to that sacred room where, with long silver beard and undimmed eye, amid a pantheon of his own creations, the ancient Titian, patriarch of art, still lingered upon earth, and told old tales of the Bellinis, and Raffaelle, and Michael Angelo, and the building of St. Peter's, and the fire at Venice, and the Sack of Rome, and of kings and warriors, statesmen and poets, long since gone to their account, and showed the sacred brush which Francis the First had stooped to pick up for him.

And (licence forbidden to Sidney by his friend Languet) he had been to Rome, and seen (much to the scandal of good Protestants at home) that " right good fellow," as Sidney calls him, who had not yet eaten himself to death, the Pope for the time being. And he had seen the frescoes of the Vatican, and heard Palestrina preside as chapel-master over the performance of his own music beneath the dome of St. Peter's, and fallen half in love with those luscious strains, till he was awakened from his dream by the recollection that beneath that same dome had gone up thanksgivings to the God of heaven for those blood-stained streets, and shrieking women, and heaps of insulted corpses, which he had beheld in Paris on the night of St. Bartholomew. At last, a few months before his father died, he had taken back his pupils to their home in Germany, from whence he was dismissed, as he wrote, with rich gifts ; and then Mrs. Leigh's heart beat high, at the thought that the wanderer would return : but, alas ! within a month after his father's death, came a long letter from Frank, describing the Alps, and the valleys of the Waldenses (with whose Barbes he had had much talk about the late horrible persecutions), and setting forth how at Padua he had made the acquaintance of that illustrious scholar and light of the age, Stephanus Parmenius (commonly called from his native place, Budæus), who had visited Geneva with him, and heard the disputations of their most learned doctors, which both he and Budæus disliked for their hard judgments both of God and man, as much as they admired them for their subtlety, being themselves, as became Italian students, Platonists of the school of Ficinus and Picus Mirandolensis.

So wrote Master Frank, in a long sententious letter, full of Latin quotations : but the letter never reached the eyes of him for whose delight it had been penned : and the widow had to weep over it alone, and to weep more bitterly than ever at the conclusion, in which, with many excuses, Frank said that he had, at the special entreaty of the said Budæus, set out with him down the Danube stream to Buda, that he might, before finishing his travels, make experience of that learning for which the Hungarians were famous throughout Europe. And after that, though he wrote CHAP, il] THE FIRST TIME. 25 again and again to the father whom he fancied living, no letter in return reached him from home for nearly two years ; till, fear ing some mishap, he hurried back to England, to find his mother a widow, and his brother Amyas gone to the South Seas with Captain Drake of Plymouth.

And yet, even then, after years of absence, he was not allowed to remain at home. For Sir Richard, to whom idleness was a thing horrible and unrighteous, would have him up and doing again before six months were over, and sent him off to Court to Lord Hunsdon. There, being as delicately beautiful as his brother was huge and strong, he had speedily, by Carew's interest and that of Sidney and his Uncle Leicester, found entrance into some office in the Queen's household ; and he was now basking in the full sunshine of Court favour, and fair ladies' eyes, and all the chivalries and euphuisms of Gloriana's fairy-land, and the fast friendship of that bright meteor Sidney, who had returned with honour in 1577, from the delicate mission on behalf of the German and Belgian Protestants, on which he had been sent to the Court of Vienna, under colour of condoling with the new Emperor Rodolph on his father's death.

Frank found him when he himself came to Court in 1579 as lovely and loving as ever ; and, at the early age of twenty-five, acknow ledged as one of the most remarkable men of Europe, the patron of all men of letters, the counsellor of warriors and statesmen, and the confidant and advocate of William of Orange, Languet, Plessis du Mornay, and all the Protestant leaders on the Con tinent ; and found, moreover, that the son of the poor Devon squire was as welcome as ever to the friendship of nature's and fortune's most favoured, yet most unspoilt, minion. Poor Mrs. Leigh, as one who had long since learned to have no self, and to live not only for her children, but in them, sub mitted without a murmur, and only said, smiling, to her stern friend — " You took away my mastiff-pup, and now you must needs have my fair greyhound also."

" Would you have your fair greyhound, dear lady, grow up a tall and true Cotswold dog, that can pull down a stack of ten, or one of those smooth-skinned poppets which the Florence ladies lead about with a ring of bells round its neck, and a flannel farthingale over its loins ? " Mrs. Leigh submitted ; and was rewarded after a few months by a letter, sent through Sir Richard, from none other than Gloriana herself, in which she thanked her for " the loan of that most delicate and flawless crystal, the soul of her HOW AMYAS CAME HOME [CHAP. IL excellent son," with more praises of him than I have room to insert, and finished by exalting the poor mother above the famed Cornelia ; " for those sons, whom she called her jewels, she only showed, yet kept them to herself: but you, madam, having two as precious, I doubt not, as were ever that Roman dame's, have, beyond her courage, lent them both to your coun try and to your queen, who therein holds herself indebted to you for that which, if God give her grace, she will repay as becomes both her and you."

Which epistle the sweet mother bedewed with holy tears, and laid by in the cedar-box which held her household gods, by the side of Frank's innumerable diplomas and letters of recommendation, the Latin whereof she was always spelling over (although she understood not a word of it), in hopes of finding, here and there, that precious excellentissimus Noster Franciscus Leighius Anglus, which was all in all to the mother's heart. But why did Amyas go to the South Seas ? Amyas went to the South Seas for two causes, each of which has, before now, sent many a lad to far worse places : first, because of an old schoolmaster ; secondly, because of a young beauty. I will take them in order and explain. Vindex Brimblecombe, whilom servitor of Exeter College, Oxford (commonly called Sir Vindex, after the fashion of the times), was, in those days, master of the grammar-school of Bideford.

He was, at root, a godly and kind-hearted pedant enough ; but, like most schoolmasters in the old flogging days, had his heart pretty well hardened by long, baneful licence to inflict pain at will on those weaker than himself; a power healthful enough for the victim (for, doubtless, flogging is the best of all punishments, being not only the shortest, but also a mere bodily and animal, and not, like most of our new-fangled " humane " punishmeuts, a spiritual and fiendish torture), but for the executioner pretty certain to eradicate, from all but the noblest spirits, every trace of chivalry and tenderness for the weak, as well, often, as all self-control and command of temper. Be that as it may, old Sir Vindex had heart enough to feel that it was now his duty to take especial care of the fatherless boy to whom he tried to teach his qui, quæ, quod : but the only outcome of that new sense of responsibility was a rapid increase in the number of floggings, which rose from about two a week to one per diem, not without consequences to the pedagogue himself.

For all this while, Amyas had never for a moment lost sight CHAP. II.] THE FIRST TIME. of his darling desire for a sea-life; and when he could not wander on the quay and stare at the shipping, or go down to the pebble-ridge at Northam, and there sit, devouring, with hungry eyes, the great expanse of ocean, which seemed to woo him outward into boundless space, he used to console himself, in school-hours, by drawing ships and imaginary charts upon his slate, instead of minding his " humanities." Now it befell, upon an afternoon, that he was very busy at a map, or bird's-eye view of au island, whereon was a great castle, and at the gate thereof a dragon, terrible to see ; while, in the foreground came that which was meant for a gallant ship, with a great flag aloft, but which, by reason of the forest of lances with which it was crowded, looked much more like a porcupine carrying a sign-post ; and, at the roots of those lances, many little round o's, whereby were signified the heads of Amyas and his schoolfellows, who were about to slay that dragon, and rescue the beautiful princess who dwelt in that enchanted tower.

To behold which marvel of art, all the other boys at the same desk must needs club their heads together, and with the more security, because Sir Vindex, as was his custom after dinner, was lying back in his chair, and slept the sleep of the just. But when Amyas, by special instigation of the evil spirit who haunts successful artists, proceeded further to introduce, heedless of perspective, a rock, on which stood the lively por traiture of Sir Vindex — nose, spectacles, gown, and all ; and in his hand a brandished rod, while out of his mouth a label shrieked after the runaways, " You come back ! " while a similar label replied from the gallant bark, "Good-bye, master!" the shoving and tittering rose to such a pitch, that Cerberus awoke, and demanded sternly what the noise was about. To which, of course, there was no answer.