The heir of Sherborne; or, The attainder

Chapter I. The King's Ante-chamber

" What news — what news ? Hath the King revived, or hath he given up the ghost ? Hath he spoken of late? Hath he drunk of the potion, or taken sustenance ?" Such were some of the murmurs which broke the general hush — for stdlness it could not be called — pervading the quaint old Had of Theobalds, that palace in the precincts of which James I. took so much delight; where his sylvan sports were carried on, and where his last breath was drawn. It was a dud afternoon in March : already VOL. I. B the twdight dimmed the narrow-paned win dows, and confused the colouring of the various groups, gathered now here, now there, among whom ominous whispers were caught up by the loiterers, who creeping about, appeared to think by their stealthy movements, that the ear of royalty was not yet dulled by approaching disso lution ; or that the treason and expectation in the hearts of some, or the hatred to the favourite in the breasts of others, might be detected by him who on that day lay expiring in his chamber.

One youth, not much more than twenty years old, walked musingly alone; stopping once to remark to a companion how greatly the present gloom contrasted with past enjoyments. " It is scarcely a fortnight ago," he observed, " since we all enacted here the Masque of ' The Fortunate Isles :' you, in your bravery and French gallantry ; I, in my Spanish suit." He stopped, then added in a subdued tone, " And Mistress Throckmorton was Spanish, too." A moment's pensiveness softened the expression of the young man's face, but it brightened a moment afterwards. "Never shall I forget his Grace !" "What, my Lord Buckingham?" rejoined the other. " Yes ; for who else were worthy of comment ? My Lord Bristol, I grant you, is comely — " " Wed, wed, let him pass." " But his Grace ! how gady he stepped out in the galliard, ad in his last French suit !

Oh commend me to your French modes ! They add, forsooth, to a gadant's height, and make him fit to hand a lady to the dance, and to shake a foot with any man, be he prince or peer in the bad. And my Lord Duke in his surcoat and diamond spangles, his feathers ad bespangled with diamonds, and his hose — but who comes here?" " Master Beaumont," said an aged domestic, with a kingly crown — the crown of England — worked upon his sleeve, " his Grace, my Lord Duke, commands your attendance in the King's chamber." " Farewell, Devereux," said Beaumont, hastdy pressing his companion's hand : " and farewed to ad joy and jodity in this had for evermore," he thought to himself, " for by this I know the hom os death draweth on apace." He passed along a narrow dark corridor, and b ascended the stairs which led to the state apartments ; and there floated in his mind, as he went onwards, the disagreeable reflection, scarcely in the hurry of the moment defined, that the scene of much enjoyment was henceforth to be closed, and the tenement dismantled; and the wads which had rung to sounds of merriment were soon to be silent, or worse, to be hung with funeral emblems ; and the roof, to which the high-pitched chorus had ascended, to re-echo with such sounds no more.

And, indeed, it was probable that in the succeeding reign all would, for better or for worse, be changed. For the crowd whom Beaumont had left behind him in the had were an unworthy crew. Some few were men of quality, danglers in that pleasure-loving, lazy court ; or ancient holders of sinecure places ; or pensioners of foreign courts. Here might be observed a de feated and paid promoter of the Spanish treaty ; there, the well-remunerated tool of the crafty Richelieu. Honourable names were in those days attached to many who held the meanest of vocations — that of a paid spy ; ad there was corrupt, and — such was the general demoraliza tion — not even shamefaced. Whdst Beaumont proceeded to the King's apartment, many a sarcasm was levelled at the choice of an obscure boy — Buckingham's cousin, indeed — to attend in that crisis upon the dying King's last moments.

" A safe witness," whispered one. " A cringing knave," said another. " We shad see him knighted next," exclaimed a third, biting his lip with vexation. " Rely on it, the Duke wid rule the son as he has ruled the father," said a fourth. " And match him with the French Princess," observed an elderly courtier, who had long thriven upon gold distributed by Gondomar. Whdst they spoke, Master Beaumont stood within the ante-chamber adjoining that wherein James, since the preceding Christmas, had been stretched on a bed of sickness. He now lay expiring in all the odour of sanctity ; for he who broke the heart of Arabella Stuart, and mad dened her brain by long incarceration ; he who unjustly beheaded Raleigh, died wed ! The ante-chamber presented an aspect not dissimdar to that of the had. It was partiady darkened ; and the gloom of a raw evening was creeping over ad things.

A profound sdence, broken only by faint, hoarse whispers, reigned there. At intervals the door of the royal chamber was half opened, and one of the grooms of the chamber came out to give an order or deliver a message to the few who were in attendance out side ; then — and sad and solemn was the sound — were heard the half-uttered accents of a northern tongue — the poor King's last efforts to speak. A group of gentlemen in black, dressed some what after the fashion of modern clergymen, but with round black silk caps on their heads, and comporting themselves with much dignity, sat around the fire. These were the King's physicians, whom it was curious to observe ; for they had been thrust out of the royal presence, partly by their own contumacy, partly by the assumed management of the Duke of Bucking ham, and his haughty mother.

The most important of these learned doctors was Sir Theodore Mayerne, an able and honest man ; never much liked by the King, on account of his partiality to the defunct Prince Henry, but nevertheless generady confided in by the Court. He sat in gloomy silence, his eyes fixed on the fire, his ear attentive to every sound that he could catch within the chamber, his counte nance half shaded from observation by a fair white ruffL'd hand ; yet, upon being appealed to by the younger and more vociferous members of his profession who sat beside him, he sometimes gave out his observations in safe and measured sentences. " Think ye not," asked Dr. Craig, another of the faculty, in a low tone, but with much heat and passion, " that since the very day that my Lord Duke did apply those plasters to his Majesty's wrists, his complaint hath exercised the more violence?

Say ye not so?" " Yet his Majesty," was the reply, " hath that very night slept well, and taken broths — nay more, he did with life and cheerfulness receive the Holy Sacrament ; and, certes, afterwards he did recover temper, strength, digestion ; so that great hopes of his amendment were then enter tained, not only upon desire, but upon the method of judicious observation." " Praised be God !" resumed Dr. Craig, with an attempted expression of humdiation, but an involuntary look of spite, " that we dis allowed of those drinks which my Lord Duke would administer." " Did his Majesty not say," interposed another of the faculty very mysteriously, "when, after his taking of that drink, raving, fainting, great droughts, and an intermitting pulse, fodowed thereupon ? It was that I had from Bucking ham."

" And hath not his Majesty at last, after the third time, refused it ?" whispered Dr. Craig. " Hush !" returned Sir Theodore Mayerne, " the door opens ; it hath closed again. Who is it that the Duke hath sent for ?" " 1 know not," was the answer. " Some one stood here a moment since, and is gone !" " Belike, there are here eaves-droppers," was the next remark ; and awed by this apprehension, the learned and offended group sank into a pro found silence. Night was drawing on ; the fire was low ; some dozed — for hke the attendants, the doctors had watched for many nights (but no one takes note of a doctor's watching) — others sat moody and expectant. The youth who had been summoned, mean time, had entered the chamber of death. His Majesty had not then lost the power of articulation. His sweded tongue did indeed cleave to the roof of his mouth, but his intedect THE ATTAINDER. was clear, and the master mind gave power and utterance to the weak member.

On one side of the bed stood the King's bishops and chaplains. Foremost of ad advanced a prelate, half priest, half layman — the Lord Keeper, Widiams, whose stately presence and supercdious expression betokened the man who alone, of ad King James's Court, could curb the pride of Buckingham, and humble, by some secret influence of love or hate, his arrogant, yet superstitious, Countess-Mother. The bishop, whose recent elevation to the woolsack had given infinite offence to the bar, surrendered into the hands of one of his chaplains, as Beaumont entered, a golden cup and patera, the sacred implements of the Holy Communion, of which King James had participated, and stood, his white hand appearing beneath his lawn sleeves glistening with diamonds, listening to the broken accents of his dying master's tongue.

Somewhat apart from the bed, and in the gloom of the chamber, Prince Charles leaned weeping on the shoulders of Buckingham. His sighs were the only true indications of sorrow that broke upon the ear. His face, made samdiar to posterity by the pencd of Vandyck, B THE ATTAINDER. was hidden from sight; but the graceful and youthful form, then in all the freshness of an untroubled and joyful manhood, was known at once. Beaumont bent low before it. " Beaumont," whispered the Duke of Buck ingham, "tarry here. His Majesty's departure is nigh at hand. Be ready, when the agony is past — be ready, then, to do what ye are bidden." The proud head which was bowed for a moment, to breathe into the ear of his kins man these words, was upraised again. It towered in every expression that imparts a notion of majesty and intedectual power, as also in height, above that of his future sove reign.

Neither the racket and dissipation of a Court hfe, nor the scorching suns of Spain ; nor yet its more destructive intrigues and en joyments ; nor his multifarious affairs as Lord High Admiral ; nor his private embarrassments, proceeding from his boundless ostentation and extravagance; nor that consciousness of being the man most hated in England, which had, at one time curious chroniclers say, well-nigh maddened his brain — not all these circumstances of a brilliant, restless, ambitious life had dimmed in one iota the matchless beauty of Buckingham. His far-famed smile, the care less merriment of his ordinary demeanour, were indeed for the hour — but only for the hour — suppressed. He stood there, in the majesty of that superb English beauty which appertained of old to the poor, but time-honoured family of Vdliers.

No critic — and there were hosts who envied him nature's gifts — could scarcely detect in that faultless face and form one defect. Care had not planted a wrinkle on his clear high brow : his exquisite complexion, his fine and delicate features, were never surpassed even by younger and less harassed rivals. Some said that his dark and marked eyebrows were over pendulous ; but the deep, searching eyes that gleamed beneath them disproved the cavil. Never was his figure more noble than at that period of his career : he was in a costly des habille ; but the " dainty leg and foot," which even the great Lord Clarendon has not scrupled to commemorate, were displayed in silken hose. His voice, as he murmured phrases of en dearment and consolation to the Prince, or gave orders to Beaumont, struck pleasantly on the ear, and harmonized with the general perfections of the man.

" Godson," he whispered to Beaumont, " see that yon doctor from Essex have the potion ready, that my Lady-Mother purposeth again to administer to his Majesty." But the Prelate, Lord Keeper Williams, turned hastily round ; and there was a decision in his air and manner, as he said : " Human aid, my Lord Duke, can now avail his Majesty nought: 'twere best," he whis pered hurriedly, " that thou give no further food for slanderous tongues." " Be it even as you wid, my Lord Keeper," replied the Duke, loudly and fearlessly : " my mother hath some skill in pharmacy, 1 reckon ; but since the wicked, envious world — " he checked himself, and gazed steadfastly upon the King. The familiar tones of the once-loved voice were now dulled ; the world, with all its attrac tions, its temptations, its sufferings, was fast waning away.

At this moment, the Lord Keeper extended his hand, and commanded silence. Then the clear tones of the Prelate's voice were heard, in solemn testimony of the faith of the dying monarch. " Bear witness, O ye who are here present !" — such was the exhortation — " of his most Sacred Majesty's true and lively piety." The courtiers, the attendants, codected around the state bed, and the Lord Keeper opening the curtains, disclosed to their view a shriveded, aged face, on which the damps of death were stealing. " Being asked," proceeded Williams, " before 1 administered these sacred elements, whether he was prepared in point of faith and charity for so great a devotion, his Majesty hath an swered that he was — " A faint voice assented, in Latin, from the deep recesses of the spacious bed : James, even in the grasp of death, was the pedagogue stdl.

" His Majesty," resumed the Keeper, in a still louder voice, " being desired to declare his faith, hath repeated one by one the articles of our Church, and hath declared that whatsoever he hath writ of this faith in his life, he is ready to seal with his death." A deep sdence followed these words : it was broken by Prince Charles's coming forward to the head of the bed, and looking earnestly and sorrowfudy upon his expiring parent. It was a pitiful sight: the poor distorted visage had been upraised upon a gorgeous pillow by the attendants; the almost sightless eyes were opened for an instant; the swoden tongue articulated some accents, from which all re ceded, with a sort of horror at the effort. But the part which James still had to per form in life was yet to be completed. Again the voice of the Lord Keeper resounded in the chamber.

" Being questioned," he said, " in point of charity, his Majesty hath well answered ; being told" — and the Lord Keeper looked around him as he spoke, and with much emphasis — " that all men that be in orders in the Church of England do chadenge power as inherent in themselves to pronounce absolution, he hath declared, that he, a miserable sinner, doth acknowledge that power." " My dear father !" exclaimed Prince Charles, kneeling down, and kissing the wasted hand which lay motionless on the coverlid. It is already cold," said Buckingham, touching it slightly, as Charles arose from his knees. " It is — it is," replied the Prince. " And now, Buckingham," he muttered, " farewell to my youth — farewed to the careless, happy heart." But the solemn forewarnings of the last change were now manifest : the hands of the dying man grasped the bed-clothes — the death rattle in the throat was perceptible ; nevertheless, saintly flattery must needs glorify the poor worm, even if it could not smooth his dreary passage to the grave.

" I, therefore," pursued the Lord Keeper, with the pride of ad the hierarchy inflating his manner, whilst aiming at the meekness of an apostle (but nature would not), " 1 have pro nounced absolution ; and since then hath his Sacred Majesty received the Holy Sacrament, with that zeal and devotion as if he had not been a frail man, but a cherub clothed in vile flesh and blood !" He paused, for the panegyric could no longer soothe the dull, cold ear of him for whom it was framed. The last bonds to earth were nearly cut asunder. The grooms of the chamber — for the learned doctors, offended by the administration of nostrums, were stid in the ante-chambers — upraised the monarch's head, that the spirit might pass away easily, until it was almost upright — a ghastly sight, for long disease had done its usual work.

At this instant, a female figure, shrouded in a deep mantle and hood, entered the chamber un bidden. It was the Countess of Buckingham, the mother of the favourite. And as she stood in the gloom, the haughty air of the upstart Mary Beaumont, even at that hour, irritated some who were present. But death sat on the King's brow. Then ad the Court knelt down, and prayers for the benefit of the flitting soul were multi plied ; and Buckingham whispered to Beau mont to call in sundry great lords who had been waiting for hours to witness the departure of the spirit from the wasted body. Then amid the gaspings and agonies of that last hour was heard the voice of the Lord Keeper : " Mecum eris in Paradiso." The King comprehended, for he made a faint sign. All voices were loudly uplifted in prayer — that prayer which the offices of our Church enjoin at the hour of dissolution ; and whdst his son supported his head on one side, and Buckingham on the other, and the arch bishop, bishops and chaplains knelt on one side of the bed, and the ministers of state on the other, James Stuart expired.

Chapter II. The Death Chamber

It was almost midnight when Buckingham, having long been closeted with the young King, returned to the chamber of death. The grooms of the chamber watched there. The royal corpse, not then arrayed in that parapher nalia which denotes lying in state, lay in obscurity — a withered, changed, ignoble thing ; whdst the surgeons, in an adjoining chamber, prepared to do their work, and to embalm the shattered form. Putting aside, not ungraciously, one of the grooms, Buckingham stood by the bed. He gazed upon the face which had beamed upon him with untiring favour, and a sharp pang of self-accusation came across him, for he could not sorrow. Awe-struck, but not heart-struck, his reflection was : " What next ? On that life hung all my fortunes — ad that was stable in my existence. Beset with enemies, as I am, he cherished me.

Can I count one hour upon my honours — my employments — even my life?" He laid his hand upon his heart for an instant — it throbbed with unusual emotion. " If I fad" — thus went on his reverie — " Europe wdl marvel. Her, I shad behold no more. Not as an exde, proud heart of mine, will I lay myself at her feet." He pondered for a moment or two ; then arousing himself, asked of the attendants near, wherefore more of them watched not in that chamber? — were there the appointed comple ment of lights ? — and when the kingly crown should be placed on the bed ?" He was answered, that there was much yet to be done : corruption was " to put on incor ruption;" the worn shed was to be redressed and restored by chemical arts ; " and then," added the voice which addressed him, " the true cause of his late Majesty's decease may be testified."

Buckingham started. He knew he was suspected, but his conscience was clear on that point. His proud head, abased as it had been, was again upreared in defiance. He checked a momentary ebullition, and said : " Well, see that ad be performed, and honourably done. I go to London to attend the councd," he added haughtily, as if implying that his favour at Court was not then to end. The attendants fed back respectfudy, and again Buckingham gazed upon the cold form before him. Some tenderer sentiments softened the look which he threw upon those ungainly and wasted features ; pleasant scenes, when hope was high, were recaded by a something calmer and kindlier than when living. Antici pations of joy, such as Buckingham's career was unlikely to realize, were renewed only to be answered at that moment by a bitter feehng that all had been hollow — ad was transient.

" Would I had never seen him !" was the favoured courtier's inmost reflections. " Would that he had left me to honourable service, or to feed sheep ! I was safe then : poor, indeed — but unsuspected." The bitter thought was transient; and the elastic nature of the ill-fated favourite prompted brighter hopes, in which dreams of ambition and mad, unhallowed hopes were strangely in termingled. He started from his reverie to find that he was watched — that ad eyes within the chamber of death were fixed upon him. He drew the bed-curtains to with a vehement grasp, and rushed out into the ante-chamber As he quitted the King's chamber, an aged servant thus spoke aloud : " It is all very well for you, my Lord Duke, who are certain of the royal favour, to ad minister deleterious drinks to his late Majesty ; but to us who have no hopes of place or pension, it is our undoing."

" Curses on your insolence !" exclaimed the Duke ; and thrusting the man on one side, he accompanied that action with another — he spurned the accuser with his foot. The servant fell against the wad : the Duke passed on. The grooms of the chamber standing around were mute. The aged man, breathless for an instant with passion, became calm ; but there was a deadly meaning in that sudden calm, there was a dire augury in the whispers which none distinctly heard. "This, by to-morrow's messenger, to my kinsman." Having muttered those words he braced himself up, looked not to the right nor to the left, but walking steaddy down stairs, planted himself at his accustomed station in the corridor, mute and staid as usual, as if his feelings as a man were palsied, and his vocation as a sen*ant, the mechanical part of him, remained alone in force.

Buckingham passed on. All bowed as he walked by, and bowed low ; but he regarded them not. Before he had gained the hall the frown upon his brow was smoothed, for his nature was not a vindictive one : he looked back once wistfully, and stopped. " Beaumont," he said to the young groom of the chamber who fodowed him, " give that fedow a gold piece. He speaks but what he hears, poor old churl !" Beaumont ran back, but returned with a gold piece in his hand. " May it please your Grace — " " Thou canst not find him ? Well — another time." The Duke walked on ; but he paused, in a few minutes, to say to his attendant : " See that thou forget it not : although he hath well merited such chastisement as I gave him, and more." " He hath wed merited it," exclaimed the young man, colouring vividly ; " and, but that he is old—" " Thou wouldst have cudgeded him ?"

The Duke stopped, and looked kindly on the beaming face of the handsome youth — his own kinsman — who applied at that moment the soothing balm which the sympathy of the humblest brings to the loftiest, when suspected, insulted, or betrayed. The countenance on which that dark, bright eye rested was fud of honesty and earnestness — that honesty, that earnestness, which are rarely to be found after the dawn of manhood. It was also a face dis tinguished, not so much by the perfection of its features, as by its general symmetry. A high clear brow, dark and glistening eyes, a rich brunette complexion, and a mouth fud of sweet ness in its expression when closed, but prone to ready laughter, established the claims of young Beaumont to hereditary beauty, for he was nearly related to the Duke's mother ; and united to these advantages were those of an intuitive good-breeding, and a manly and courageous aspect.

The eyes of the favourite kinsman — for such he was — met those of .the Duke. The glance, whatever it spoke, pleased ; for the hand of the proud Buckingham was placed for an instant on the shoulder of the youth, and then withdrawn with a half sigh, perhaps from envy, perhaps from weariness, perhaps from fear of coming changes, perhaps from those undefined pre sentiments which at that moment came afresh into tbe Duke's mind, and accompanied him, as the world said, wherever he went during the last years of his life. He paused at the private door, for he had avoided the great Had of Theobalds, and looked wistfully around on the park : a massive avenue of trees, a straight canal intersecting it, a garden cut into stiff sections on the one side, a skittle ground on the other, of the immediate pre cincts of the old and kingly pile.

These were the objects which met the Duke's gaze ; yet the air blew pleasantly upon a face heated by contending emotions, and refreshed a form long immured in the sick chamber of the departed King. A coach and six horses, the leaders of which were ridden, the others driven by a coachman with a ducal coronet on his sleeve, awaited at this entrance. Two horsemen preceded this stately equipage, half covered as it was with 'scutcheons and coronets, and had horns by their sides ; two rode at either side of the coach, to let my Lord Duke in and out, and two fodowed with unsighted flambeaus ; and, in this fashion, the Duke seated on the one side, and his kinsman on the other, they pro ceeded to New Had, one of the proud Buck ingham's many seats, where his famdy and household were then residing. As they drove through the vdlages, then scantdy diversifying the wayside, many an eye gazed after them, many a lip pronounced the name of Buckingham ; but the looks were those of distrust and hatred, and " none did say, God bless him !"

For the poor of Eng land hate ever the upstart; and such, by the vulgar, was Vdliers esteemed. As the coach drove on, and a bright morn ing succeeded the troublous day which had witnessed the death of James I., a deep sleep VOL. I. C refreshed the spirits of the Duke; but his groom of the chamber watched. They passed through those shady lanes and pleasant vd lages which are peculiar to England — remembered by the exde in foreign lands with a sigh — and as Beaumont looked out upon them, noting, as he went along, many a church, his thoughts naturally fed upon the future, and revolved the past. His life, for the last two years, had been a dream. His birth was obscure : the son of a poor clergyman in Leicestershire, on whom Sir George Vdliers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, had bestowed a smad living, in order to raise from the dust a cousin of his Lady's ; George Vdliers Beaumont — for so was he named — had been reared in the midst of poverty and privation, his very existence being forgotten by the illustrious relation after whose father he was named.

Amid the struggles of a large family, in a poor parsonage-house, had young Beaumont's character been formed. His parents were, however, beings of no common stamp; and the ingenuous and kindly nature of their eldestborn flourished in the gentle circle of his poor home. Home-bred — for his father could not afford to send him to school — he became the patron of the numerous younger sisters and brothers, whom successive years brought to gambol in the parsonage-garden. Strong in health, he half supported the physical wants of his family by his skid as a sportsman ; ready and energetic in many things, indolent in some, he made a rapid progress, under his father's tuition, in classical attainments. His character appeared to promise everything : he was the darling of the vidage, the friend of his parents, the beloved protector of his sisters.

He had but one fading — but one passage of his early life saddened, if it disgraced not, his later career : but let it pass. One day when, in the height of his unex ampled fortunes, the Duke of Buckingham sat as Chancedor of the University of Cambridge in the Senate House, there was pointed out to him a youth who had just taken his degree, as a student of the highest pretensions, although only a sizar. The great man, who, not understand ing one word of Latin, ruled over that seat of c learning, glanced for an instant at a blushing, handsome, manly boy — for at that time degrees were often taken at the age of eighteen — and remarked, with a smde, that the black gown covered a poor garment ; and took from his pocket some gold pieces to give through one of the bededs " privately to the lad." To his surprise, the youth returned them ; and craved, instead of largess, the privilege of kissing his Grace's hand.