John Inglesant; a romance

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a Eomance 'AyaTnjToi, vvv t£kvo. Qeou iaftev, Kal oforu? itpavep(*}$T] ri icrofieda. VOL. I. Hoimort MACMILLAN AND CO. Printed by R & R. Clark. Edinburgh. TO RA WDON LEVETT, Esq. MY DEAR LEVETT, I dedicate these volumes to you, that I may have an opportunity of calling myself your friend. J. HENRY SHORTHOUSE. LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTOJV, May I, 1SS1. A JEemoirB of tije Life OF MR. JOHN INGLESANT SOMETIME SERVANT TO KING CHARLES I. WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING BY THE JESUITS AND A PARTICULAR RELATION OF THE SECRET SERVICES IN WHICH HE WAS ENGAGED ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE LATE IRISH REBELLION WITH SEVERAL OTHER REMARKABLE PASSAGES AND OCCURRENCES. ALSO HISTORY OF HIS RELIGIOUS DOUBTS AND EXPERIENCES AND OF THE MOLINISTS OR QUIETISTS IN ITALY IN WHICH COUNTRY HE RESIDED FOR MANY YEARS WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE ELECTION OF THE LATE POPE AND MANY OTHER EVENTS AND AFFAIRS.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. DURING my second year at Oxford I became acquainted with a Roman Catholic gentleman, the eldest son of a family long resident on the borders of Shropshire towards Wales. My friend, whose name was Fisher, invited me to his home, and early in my last long vacation I accepted his invita tion. The picturesque country was seen to great advantage in the lovely summer weather. That part of Shropshire partakes somewhat of the mountain characteristics of Wales, combined with the more cultivated beauties of English rural scenery. The ranges of hills, some of which are lofty and precipitous, which intersect the country, form wide and fertile valleys which are watered by pleasant streams. The wide pastures are bordered by extensive plantations covering the more gradual ascents, and forming long lines along the level summits.

We had some miles to drive even from the small station on the diminutive branch line of railway which had slowly conveyed us the last dozen miles or so of our journey. At last, just at the foot of one of the long straight hills, called Edges in that country, we came upon my friend's house, seen over a flat champaign of pasture land, surrounded by rows of lofty trees, and backed by fir and other wood, reaching to the summit of the hill behind it. It was an old and very picturesque house, vol. I. b [introd. 2 jumbled together with the additions of many centuries, from the round tower-like staircase with an extinguisher turret, to a hand some addition of two or three years ago. Close by was the mutilated tower of a ruined priory, the chancel of which is used as the parish church. A handsome stone wing of one story, built in the early Gothic style, and not long completed, formed the entrance hall and dining-room, with a wide staircase at the back The hall was profusely hung with old landscapes and family portraits.

Chapter I. When

Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was in the zenith of his power, and was engaged in completing the suppression of the smaller monasteries before commencing on the greater, — he had in his service a young gentleman named Richard Inglesant, the son of a knight, and descended from a knightly family, originally of Flanders, who had come into England with the Princess of Hainault. This young man was of an attractive person, a scholar, active and useful in many ways, and therefore a favourite with his master. One evening in the end of June 1537, he was sent for by Cromwell into the great gallery of his magnificent house in Throgmorton Street, where he found his master walking up and down in thought. " You must be ready to depart at once, Richard," he said, " into Wiltshire. I have in this commission appointed you Visitor of the Priory of Westacre, six miles south of Malms bury, on the way into Somerset, which they call the Priory in the Wood The King's Grace is resolved on the suppression of this house, as a priory ; but note very carefully what I tell you ; — it will be for your guidance.

Great interest has been made to his Grace's Highness on behalf of this house, both by many of the gentry dwelling thereabout, and also by the com mon people by the mouth of the Mayor of Malmsbury. They say the house is without any slander or evil fame ; that it stands in a waste ground, very solitary, keeping such hospitality, that except with singular good management it could not [CHAP. I. JOHN INGLESANT; 10 be maintained though it had half as much land again as it has, such a number of the poor inhabitants nigh thereunto are daily relieved. The Prior is a right honest man, and well beloved of all the inhabitants therewith adjoining, having with him, in the house, eight religious persons, being priests of right good conversation, and living religiously. They spend their time in writing books with a very fair hand, in making garments for the poor people, in printing or graving.

Now the prayer of these people is that the King's Highness shall translate this priory into a college, and so continue as many of the priests as the lands will maintain for the benefit of the neighbours ; and the King is much inclined to do this. Now, on the other hand, this house has a proper lodging, where the Prior lay, with a fair garden and an orchard, very mete to be bestowed on some friend of mine, and some faithful servant of the King's Grace. There is no small number of acres ready sown with wheat, the tilthes ordered for barley ; the house and grounds are well furnished with plate, stuff, corn, cattle ; the woods well saved, and the hedgerows full of timber, as though the Prior had looked for no alteration of his house. I had set mine hand on this house for a friend of mine, but the King's Grace is determined upon this : — if the Prior will surrender the house in a discreet and frank manner, and will moreover, on Sunday next, which is the Feast of the most Precious Blood, after mass, to which all the neighbouring people shall have been called, in his sermon, make mention of the King's title of Supreme Head, and submit himself wholly, in all matters spiritual, to the King's Grace, under Christ, the house shall be continued as a college, and no man therein disturbed, and not so much as an ounce of plate taken, that they may pray God Almighty to preserve the King's Grace with his blessed pleasure.

Now I send you on this mission because, if things go as I think they may, I mean this house for you; and there is so much clamour about this business that I will have no more hands in it than I can help. Take two or three of the men with you whom you can trust ; but see you fail not in one jot in the course you take with the Prior, for should it come to the King's ears that you had deceived the Prior — and it surely would so come to his Grace — your head would not be your own for an hour, and I should doubt, even, of my own favour with the King." Richard Inglesant was on horseback before daylight the next morning ; and riding by easy stages, arrived at Malms bury at last, and slept a night there, making inquiries about the way to Westacre. At Malmsbury, and at all the villages where he stopped, he heard nothing but what agreed with what Cromwell had told him ; and what he heard seemed to make him loiter still more, for he slept at Malmsbury a second night, and then did not go forward to Westacre till noonday.

In the middle of the summer afternoon he crossed the brow of the hilly common, and saw the roofs of the Priory beneath him surrounded by its woods. The country all about lay peaceful in the soft, mellow sunlight ; wide slopes of wood, intermixed with shining water, and the quiet russet downs stretching beyond. Richard had sent on a man the day before to warn the Prior, who had been expecting his coming all day. The house stood with a little walled court in front of it, and a gate-house ; and consisted of three buildings — a chapel, a large hall, and another building containing the Prior's parlour and other rooms on the ground floor, and a long gallery or dormitory above, out of which opened other chambers ; the kitchens and stables were near the latter building, on the right side of the court.

The Prior received Inglesant with defer ence, and took him over the house and gardens, pointing out the well-stocked fish-ponds and other conveniences, with no apparent wish of concealing anything. Richard was astonished at the number of books, not only in the book-room, but also in the Prior's own chamber; these latter the Prior seemed [CHAP. I. 12 anxious he should not examine. As far as Richard could see, they were, many of them, chemical and magical books. He supped with the Prior in Hall, with the rest of the house hold, and retired with him to the parlour afterwards, where cakes and spiced wine were served to them, and they remained long together. Inglesant delivered his commission fairly to his host, dwelling, again and again, on every particular, while the Prior sat silent or made but short and inconclusive replies.

At last Inglesant betook himself to rest in the guest chamber, a room hung with arras, opening from the gallery where the monks slept, towards the west ; one of his servants slept also in the dormitory near his door. The Prior's care had ordered a fire of wood on the great hearth that lighted up the carved bed and the hunting scene upon the walls. He lay long and could not sleep. All night long, at intervals, came the sound of chanting along the great hall and up the stairs into the dormitory, as the monks sung the service of matins, lauds, and prime. His mind was ill at ease. A scholar, and brought up from boyhood at the Court, he had Httle sympathy with the new doctrines, and held the simple and illiterate people who mostly followed them in small esteem. He was strongly influenced by that mysterious awe which the Romish system inspires in the most careless, even when it is not strong enough to influence their lives.

The mission he had under taken, and the probable destruction of this religious house, and the expulsion] of its inmates for his benefit, frightened him, and threatened him with unknow*n penalties and terrors here after which he dared not face. He lay listlessly on his bed listening to the summer wind, and when at last he fell asleep, it was but a light fitful slumber, out of which he woke ever and anon to hear the distant chanting of the monks, and see by the flickering fire-light the great hounds coursing each other over the walls of his room. In the morning he heard mass in the chapel, after which the Prior sent a message to explain his absence, informing him that he was gone to Malmsbury to consult with his friends there how he might best serve the King's Grace. All that morning Richard Inglesant sat in the hall receiving the evidence of all who came before him (of whom there was no lack) — of the neighbours, gentry, and country people.

He evidently examined them with great care and acuteness, noting down every answer, in a fair clerkly hand, exactly as he re ceived it, neither extenuating anything nor adding the least word. He also in the same report kept an exact account of how he passed his time while at Westacre. There appears — as Cromwell had said — not to have been the least breath of scandal against the Prior or any of the priests in the house. The only report at all injurious to the character of the Prior seems to have been an opinion — oftentimes hinted at by the witnesses — that he was addicted to the study of chemistry and magic ; that, besides his occult books, he had in his closet in his chamber a complete chemical apparatus with which he practised alchemy, and was even said to be in possession of the Elixir of Life.

These reports Inglesant does not appear to have paid much attention to, probably regarding them as not necessarily coming within the limits of his commission ; and, indeed, there is evidence of his having acted with the most exact fairness throughout the investigation, more than once putting questions to the witness, evidently for the purpose of correcting misapprehensions which told against the Prior. After dinner he rode out to the downs to a gentlemaVi who had courteously sent him word that he was coursing with grey hounds : he, however, was not absent from the Priory long, declining the gentleman's invitation to supper. After he had supped he spent the rest of the evening in his own chamber, reading what he calls " Ovidii Nasonis metamorphoseos libri moralizati," an edition of which, printed at Leipsic in 1510, he had found in the Prior's room. ; [chap. I. 14 The next forenoon he spent in the same manner as the last, the people flocking in voluntarily to give their evidence in favour of the house.

A little after noon the Prior came back, travelling on foot and alone. As he came along he was thinking of the words of the gospel which promise great things to him who gives up houses and land for the Lord's sake. When he reached the brow of the hill from which he could see the three red-tiled roofs of the Priory peeping out from among the trees, with the gardens and the green meadows, and the cattle seen here and there, he stood long to gaze. The air was soft and yet fresh, and the woods stretching up the rising-grounds about the Priory were wavering and shim mering all over with their myriad rustling leaves, instinct with life and beauty both to the ear and eye ; a perpetual change from light to shadow, from the flight of the fleecy clouds, would have made the landscape dazzling but for the green on which the eye dwelt with a sense of rest to the wearied and excited brain.

A gentle sound and murmur, as of happy and contented beings, made itself softly felt rather than heard, through the noontide air. " Omnes qui relinquunt patrem, domos, uxorem," said the Prior; but his eyes were so dim that he stumbled as he went on down the hill. Richard Inglesant and he were some time alone together that evening. Whether the Prior prepared him at all for the course he had determined to pursue, does not appear, but certainly he did not, to any great extent. The next day w*as Sunday, being the " Feast of the most Precious Blood " — a Sunday long remembered in that country side. The people, for a score of miles round, thronged to hear the Prior's sermon. The Mayor of Malmsbury was there ; but the clergy of the Abbey, it was noticed, were not present. The little Chapel would not hold a tithe of the people — indeed, few more than the gentry and their ladies, who came in great numbers, were allowed admission.

Richard Inglesant and the Sheriff had Fald-stools in front ofthe altar, where they remained kneeling the whole of mass. The doors and windows of the Chapel were opened, that the people outside might assist at the celebration. They stood as thick as they could be packed in the little courtyard, and up the sloping fields around the Priory, listening in silence to the music of the mass ; and at the sound of the bell the whole multitude fell on their knees as one man, remaining so for several minutes. Mass being over, the Prior came in procession from the Chapel to where a small wooden pulpit had been set up just outside the gate house, in front of which seats were placed for the Sheriff and Inglesant, and the chief gentry. The silence was greater than ever, when the Prior, who had changed the gorgeous vest ments in which he had celebrated mass, and appeared only as a simple monk, ascended the pulpit and began to preach.

The Prior was a great preacher; a small and quiet man enough to look at, when he entered the pulpit he was trans figured. His form grew dignified, his face lighted up with enthusiasm, and his voice, even in the open air, was full and clear, and possessed that magical property of reaching the hearts of all who heard him, now melted into tenderness, and now raised to firm resolve. He began with the text that had haunted his memory the day before, and the first part of his sermon was simply an earnest and eloquent exhortation to follow Christ in preference to anything beside on earth. Then, warming in his subject, he answered the question (speaking that magnificent English tongue that even now rings in the pages of Foxe), Where was Christ? and urging the people to follow Him as He manifested Himself in the Church, and especially in the sacrament of the altar.

Then suddenly throwing aside all reserve, and with a rapidity of utterance and a torrent of eloquence that carried his hearers with him, he rushed into the question of the day, brought face to face the opposing powers of the State and Christ, [CHAP- ■*■ 16 hurled defiance at the former, and while not absolutely naming the King or his council, denounced his policy in the plainest words. Then, amid the swaying of the excited crowd, and a half stifled cry and murmur, he suddenly dropped his voice, pronounced the formal benediction, and shrank back, to all appearance, into the quiet, timid monk It is needless to describe the excitement and astonishment of the crowd. The Prior and his procession with difficulty returned to the chapel through the press. The Sheriff and Richard Inglesant, who with the other leading gentry had affected perfect unconsciousness that anything unusual was taking place, entered the hall of the Priory, and the Prior had a message sent into the sacristy that the King's commissioner desired to see him immediately in the parlour.

When the Prior entered, Inglesant was standing upon the hearth ; he was pale, and his manner was excited and even fierce. " You are a bold man, master Prior," he said almost before the other was in the room ; " do you know that you have this day banished yourself and all your fellowship into the world without shelter and without help ? Nay, I know not but the King's Grace may have you up to answer for this day with your life ! Do you know this?" The Prior looked him steadily in the face, but he was deadly pale, and his manner was humble and cowed. " Yes, I know it," he said. " Well," continued the other still more excitedly, " I call you to witness, master Prior, as I shall before the throne of God Almighty, that I have neither hand nor part in this day's work ; that you have brought this evil upon yourself by your own deed and choice, by no want of warning and no sudden ness on my part, but by your own madness alone" " It is very true," said the Prior.

" I must to horse," said Inglesant, scarcely heeding him, " and ride post to my lord. It is as much as my head is worth should any rumour of this day's business reach the King's Grace by any other tongue than mine. You will stay here under the Sheriff's guard ; but I fear you will too soon hear what a tragedy this day's play has been for you ! God have you in his keeping, Prior ! for you have put yourself out of all hope of mercy from the King's Grace." He might have said more, but an alarming noise made him hasten into the hall. The most lawless and poorest of the people — of whom numbers had mingled in the crowd in the hope of spoil, taking for granted that the house was dis solved — had made an attack upon the Chapel and the Prior's lodging, and it was some time before the Sheriff, assisted by Inglesant and the other gentlemen and their servants, all of whom were armed, could restore order.

When this was done, and the peaceable people and women reassured, Inglesant's horses were brought out, and he mounted and rode off through the dispersing but still excited and lawless crowds, leaving the Priory to a strong guard of the Sheriffs men. As he rode up the hill — the people shrinking back to let him pass — he muttered, bitterly : " A fine piece of work we have set our hands to, with all the rascal people of the country to aid. And why should not the Poverty get some of the droppings, when the Gentry cuts the purse ? " Travelling at a very different pace from that at which he had ridden from London, he reached the city the next night, and went at once to the Lord Cromwell, who, the next morning, took him to the King, to whom he gave a full account of what had occurred. Henry — who appears to have been induced to form his previous intention by the influence of a gentleman at Court who probably had his private expectations with regard to the future possession of the Priory — seems to have really cared little about the matter.

He was, however, vol. 1. c ; [chap. I. 18 highly incensed at the Prior's sermon, and made no difficulty of immediately granting the Priory to Richard Inglesant. A pursuivant was sent down to bring the Prior up to London to be examined before the Council, but it does not appear that he ever was examined. Probably Inglesant exerted his in fluence with Cromwell in his behalf, for Cromwell examined him himself, and appears to have informed the King that he was harmless and mad. At any rate, he was set at liberty ; and his troubles appear to have actually affected his reason, for he is said to have returned to the neighbourhood of Malmsbury, and to have wandered about the Priory at nights. The other inmates of the Priory had been dispersed, and the house taken possession of by Inglesant's servants ; but he himself seems to have taken but little pleasure in his new possession, for it was more than a year before he visited it ; and when he did so, events occurred which increased his dislike to the place.

It was late in October when his visit took place, and the weather was wild and stormy. He slept in the Prior's guest chamber, which was in the same state as when he had occupied it before. The wind moaned in the trees, and swept over the roofs and among the chimneys of the old house. In the early part of the night he had a terrible dream, or what was rather partly a dream and partly a feverish sense of the objects around him. He thought he was lying in the bed in the room where he really was, and could not sleep ; a fierce contention of the elements and of some powers more fearful than the elements seemed going on outside. The room became hateful to him, with its dark, hearse-like bed, and the strange figures on the tapestry, which seemed to his bewildered fancy to course each other over the walls with a rapidity and a fantastic motion which made his senses reel.

He thought that, unable to remain where he was, he rose and went out into the old dormitory, now silent and deserted, from one end of which he could look into the courtyard, while from the other he could see a dark mass of woodland, and a lurid distant sky. On this side all was quiet ; but the courtyard seemed astir. The moon shone with the brightness of day on the mouldering, ivy-grown walls, and on the round pebble stones between which the long grass was growing all over the court. The wind swept fiercely across it, and splashes of rain, every now and then, made streaks in the moonlight like fire; strange voices cried to him in an unknown language, and undistinguished forms seemed passing to and fro. The Chapel was all alight, and low and mournful music proceeded from it, as for the dead.

Fascinated with terror, he left the gallery and descended into the court. An irresistible impulse led him to the Chapel, which was open, and he went in. As he did so, voices and strange forms seemed to rush forward to enter with him, and an overwhelming horror took possession of him. Inside, the Chapel was hung with black; cowled forms filled the stalls, and chanted, with hollow, shadowy voices, a dirge for the departed. A hooded and black form stood before the altar, celebrating the mass. The altar was alight with tapers, and torches were borne by sable attendants on either side of the choir. The ghostly forms that entered with him now thronged about him in the form and habit of living men. Voices called from without, and were answered from within the Chapel; rushing sounds filled the air as though the trees were being torn up, and the Chapel and house rocked.

There was no coffin nor pall, nor any sign of. mourning ; and it seemed to Inglesant that he was present at the celebration of some obyte, or anniversary of the death of one long departed, over whom a wild and ghostly lamentation was made by beings no longer of the earth. An inexpressible dread and sorrow lay upon him — an overwhelming dread, as if the final Reckoning were near at hand, and all hope taken away — sorrow, as though all whom he had ever loved and ; [chap. I. 20 known lay before him in death, with the solemn dirge and placebo said over them by the ghostly choir. The strain was too intense and painful to be bome, and with a cry, he awoke. Utterly incapable of remaining where he was, he dressed, and went out into the gallery, and down into the courtyard. The court was lighted by the moonlight as brightly as in his dream for one moment, and then was totally dark from the passing clouds flitting over the moon.

All was calm and still. A small door in the corner of the court near the Chapel was open, and, surprised at this, Inglesant crossed over and passed through it It led into the graveyard of the Priory outside the Chapel, where the monks and some of the country people had been used to bury their dead. It was walled round, but the wall at the farther side was old and ruinous, and had partly fallen down. As Inglesant reached the postern door, the moon shone out brightly, and he saw, between himself and the ruined wall, a wasted and cowled figure slowly traversing the rows of graves. For a moment he felt a terror equal to that of his dream, but the next the thought of the Prior flashed upon his mind, and he crossed the graveyard and followed silently in the track of the figure. The ghostly form reached the opposite wall, and commenced, with some substance that shone like fire, to draw magic figures upon the stones of one of its most perfect parts.

Placing himself in a position evidently indicated by these geometrical figures, he carefully observed the precise spot where his shadow was projected on the wall before him by the moonlight, and going to this spot, he carefully loosened and removed a stone. By this time Inglesant was close upon him, and saw him take from within the wall an antique glass or vial of a singular and occult shape. As he raised it, some slight motion the other made caused him to turn round, and at the sight of Inglesant he dropped the magic glass upon the stone he had removed, and shattered it to pieces. When he saw what had happened, the strange and weird creature threw his arms above his head, and with a piercing cry that rang again and again through the chill night air, fell backwards senseless, and lay in the pale moonlight white and still among the graves.

Inglesant removed him into the house, and he was restored to sense, but scarcely to reason. He lived for more than five years, never leaving the Priory, where Inglesant directed that all his wants should be attended to, wandering about the gardens, and sometimes por ing over his old books, which still remained upon his shelves. Inglesant never saw him again ; but when he died the old man sent him his blessing, and was buried before the altar in the Chapel, where all the Priors of the house had lain before him ; he on whom the evil days, which they perhaps had merited but had escaped, had fallen, and had crushed. [CHAP. II. JOHN INGLESANT ; 22

Chapter II. Richard Inglesant

never, till the last few years of his life, lived at Westacre, and visited it very seldom. He was a successful courtier ; and at Cromwell's fall became a servant of the King. He married, and lived entirely at the Court. He was all his life a Catholic at heart, but conformed outwardly to the religion of the hour. He had one son, named after him, who was educated at Oxford, and intended for the bar, but his father left him so considerable a fortune that he was independent of any profession. That Richard Inglesant left no more than he did, shows that he adhered through life to the line of conduct we have seen him pursue at Westacre — conduct which probably satisfied his conscience as being rigidly exact and honest On Henry's death he still retained one of his places about the Court; but on King Edward's death, being a partisan of Queen Mary's and a hearty conformer, he became a great favourite, and held a lucrative post.