Reginald Hastings; or, a tale of the troubles in 164-

Front matter

REGINALD HASTINGS; OR, A TALE OF THE TROUBLES IN 164—. EY ELIOT WARBURTON, AUTHOR OF " THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS," AND " MEMOIRS OF PRINCE RUPERT AND THE CAVALIERS." " Fight on, thou brave true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou lightest for, so far as it is true — no farther, yet precisely so far — is very sure of victory ; the falsehood of it alone will be abolished, as it ought to be." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1850. LONDON : Printed by Schulze & Co., 13, Poland Street. TO THE REV. WALTER HALLIDAY, OF GLENTHORNE, THIS WORK IS WITH CORDIAL ESTEEM INSCRIBED.

Introduction

. The last few years have been very fruitful in the discovery of old Manuscripts, especially of such as are "calculated to throw new light and interest on the important period of our CivU War. It has lately been my fortune to pass much time in the examina tion of this unprinted literature; and I feel a great interest, perhaps a prejudice, in favour of such unstudied compositions. The frank and manly, yet tender spirit that many of them breathe, the genuine feeling that they reveal, and the stirring incidents that they so naturally relate, attracted me. I was tempted, before laying them aside for graver studies, to endeavour to imitate them, or rather to present their meaning and information in a coUective and continuous form. How little justice I have rendered to their merit or to

INTRODUCTION.

. VI my own design, the sternest critic cannot point out more plainly than I myself am ready to admit. I still venture to hope, however, that I have left enough of their genuine spirit, unimpaired, to afford some interest. Without attempting to confound the Author and the Editor, I can honestly affirm that the latter has not put into the mouth of the former a single sentiment, and scarcely an adventure, that may not be found in the Manuscripts relating to the great Civil War. The Autobiographer (of whom I must hence forth speak in the second person), has spoken for himself truly, if no otherwise commend ably. One fault (or merit, as the case may be) of an Autobiography, is, that it necessarUy leaves its chief moral deductions to the Reader : the Biographer may make his per sonages a text for inculcating high and pure and noble principles, whether by the example or the warning of his hero : the Autobio grapher can, from the nature of his case, only furnish forth his own adventures and experience, for such deductions as tbe wisdom or the ingenuity of the Reader may distU from them. The same argument of course applies

INTRODUCTION.

. vii to fictitious autobiography. In both cases, the utility and success of the work must depend mainly on the Reader, as the prosperity of a jest in the ear of the hearer. To return to my Cavalier. His Memoirs, or Confessions as they should perhaps be called, appear to have been composed with a two fold object ; namely ; in the hope of illustrating the social life of the period of which he treats ; and of rendering more famUiar its leading characters : not only such heroic characters as inspire emulation, but also such as may deter from future evil, by showing of what base matter that evU was composed. Nevertheless the Cavalier's narrative in the main is simply the story of his own life, such as it was then, such as it might be now ; and if it possess no moral, we can only say that he lived in vain.

I do not fear that the antiquity of his ex perience wUl prove prejudical to his interest ; for the passions — as immortal as the spirit of which they are the features — are un changeable by time and almost by circumstances : nay, if anything, the religion and the chivalry, and the love and hatred of other days, affect us more, as they stand out

INTRODUCTION.

. in bolder reUef from the familiar circumstances of our own. It is unnecessary to observe, that the Autobiographer writes under a feigned name ; in the reign of Charles II. , in which his tale concludes, it was by no means satis factory to look back upon any public career in the preceding reign. Those, however, who are acquainted with the characters of the Wentworth, the Godolphin, and the Sunder land of that time, wUl easily find parallels for the characters and adventures of Reginald and Hugo Hastings. They will not bc sur prised to find Cavaliers sometimes conversing without oaths, and Puritans (as I hope) applying texts without profanity : the absence of such accustomed seasoning may teU against " dramatic relish," but will not be universaUy condemned. To apologize for other and greater faults would be endless and importunate; I prefer to trust my CavaUer and his Confessions, unde fended, to the Reader's generous indulgence. MARCH 20, 1850.

Chapter I

These walls do not a prisone make: Nor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take This for a hermitage. LOVELACE. I am a prisoner, closely guarded and con fined, suddenly secluded from the most stirring strife that ever kindled in the heart of a great people. Tliree days ago I was free, and fighting with aU the energy of mingled hope and des peration ; now faint in frame and spirit, I am hidden away in a dungeon's obscurity, con demned perhaps for years to silent and helpless inactivity. For the first few days of my captivity I VOL. I. B scarcely found it irksome ; the scenes of thrUling and ceaseless interest I had so long hved in, seemed to be re-enacted in imagination ; I chewed the cud of a glutted memory, and was unconscious of any void in its supply! At length returning hunger of action seized me, my wounds had ceased to torture, my blood had supphed its loss, and bounded in my veins once more.

I sprang from my paUet and gazed eagerly upon the rising sun : he soon passed beyond the narrow rift of daylight visible between my barred window and the battlements : that httle ghmpse of the infinite sky only served to render my confinement more dismal, from its contrast with my tomb-like ceU. The first sense of imprisonment is appaUing, and scarcely to be imagined by those to whom freedom seems as natural as life itself. The mass of iron and stone that surrounds you strikes cold upon the eye ; the solemn sUence of the crowded, but sternly-guarded prison, oppresses the ear, and a sense of utter helplessness weighs down the heart. * * * The first day of restored consciousness appeared to me to contain an age of suffering and painful thought. I vainly strove to fix my attention on some actual object ; my eyes soon lost sight of it, and strayed away to gaze on those imaginary scenes that recalled my uselessness — my misery of inaction.

The thought of escape naturaUy seized me, but it was only for a moment ; the little ceU in which I was confined had set aU the inspirations of courage and despair at defiance for six centuries. It had been a dungeon since the time of the Conqueror, and was about eighteen feet square ; the waUs composed of huge stones, cemented by tough old mortar that was harder stUl. The only window con sisted of four dim panes, deeply set in a massive waU, with iron bars, whose deep, dark rust proved their long sendee and trustworthiness ; this window opened upon a narrow battlemented terrace, patroUed by a sentinel, whose shadow alone was perceptible as it approached and retired, ghost-like ;— his bodUy presence, enemy as he was, would have been a rehef to me. Gradually my very soul seemed to share in B the narrowness of my ceU, and to shrink within its hmits : my senses, concentrated on such few objects, became more observant of those few, which dUated in the same proportion.

I graduaUy detected faint sounds and sights in the apparent blank and sUence that sur rounded me ; I could hear the rustle of the sentry's weather-beaten doublet, and the trad of his pike along the leads of the castle. Once or twice, too, I thought I heard something stirring under the stony floor, but that must be imagination. I approach the window to catch a breath of fresh air through a broken pane, and I perceive some scratches on the glass that appear to me hke letters. They have been cut with a keen diamond, but if they have any meaning it is undecipherable, and yet — I had written thus far when the gaoler entered with my dinner, and at once changed the current of my thoughts. Nothing breaks into the reveries of a young fasting man like the smeU of food; and it was not only the savoury fumes of a venison steak, but the presence of a feUow-creature, that turned my thoughts into a more cheerful channel The turnkey was a short, stout, bow-legged varlet, with broad stooping shoulders, and a neck that might puzzle the hangman to discover, through the tangles of his lank red hair and grizzly beard.

A certain stamp of men seems to be produced by nature to fiU certain situ ations, and this man had evidently found his destined place ; his smaU malevolent eyes appeared just adapted to scrutinize a dungeon, and to examine fetters ; his mouth was fuU of bitterness, and there was room for a good deal of it within his huge jaws and wolfish teeth ; a greyish sandy beard bristled on his pointed chin, and reached half way up his face. Yet was his presence heartUy welcome to me, independently of his savoury mission ; he was the only feUow-creature I was destined to see for many a day, and I would have liked him if I could. He laid a coarse white napkin on the window recess, and I observed him adding the different accessories of my meal with interest, but in sUence. At length, he reluctantly crowned his labours by placing a flask of wine near the pewter dish, and then expressed by an impatient gesture, that he was waiting to remove the remnants of my dinner.

" You've wine from the governor's own ceUar to-day," said he, as I proceeded to act upon his imphed suggestion ; " it's good Rhenish, and fitter for honest men than for the hke of ye, rantipoling Cavaliers, limbs of Satan, as ye are. It's httle of such comfort I thought thou'dst be wanting in this world, when thou wast brought in here, stiff and bloody, some days syne ; I thought our musketeers had been saved a job." I was too weU pleased to hear the sound of the human voice to be critical as to its purport, and I applied myself to my flask and platter with a soldier's appetite, whUe my attendant continued in almost inarticulate growls to vent his spleen. " Ay, swiU away ! Never have we a swaggering and half starved Cavalier, but has the thirst of Dives, as if he was aheady in a place of torment."

"Here, my friend," said I, "you seem to want a drop to cool your own tongue, and when you've done so, please to teU me for what, or to whom, I am indebted for this good fare." The turnkey emptied the horn of wine without ceremony, and rephed that it was by the Governor's orders that I was so indulged ; " but," added he, " doant thou be set up for that matter; for the man, Aubrey, that lay in that bed before you was cockered up in the same manner, and four days ago he was led out and shot hke a dog — yea, with the good liquor yet in his mouth, and wasted. But I've no business to be here talking to a wine-bibbing son of Behal, as thou art. There be pens and ink, and paper, and candles, and profane books, and I must e'en wait on thee before sunset with more meat, and receive thy orders." So saying, he coUected his cups and platters and departed, leaving me with a plentiful supply of the important matters he had named.

Provided with these great and responsible instruments, my mind became more restless than ever ; small physical privations occupy the attention far more than we care to admit into rivalry with sentimental sorrow, and when I found myself with a weU-satisfied appetite, I felt more than ever the necessity of some occupation to divert sad thoughts. There lay the best implements for solitary labour, if I could use them aright — pen and paper — yea, the very means of immortality ! I thought of the great and gaUant Raleigh, of GalUeo, of Tasso, of our own Lovelace, and felt how glorious a matter imprisonment might be made. " But not for me," I mournfuUy thought, as I paced up and down my narrow ceU ; " science, phUosophy, or poetry, may weU glorify the bondage of those whom they inspire ; but from a rough, idle, soldier hke myself, whose head and heart are fuU of aU that he has undergone — that he is stUl undergoing — what material can be obtained to enlighten, or even amuse the world.

" Nevertheless," I resumed (still keeping my eyes fixed on the momentous pen, which at length I grasped more nervously than when I first drew my maiden sword for war) " what I have undergone, thousands of my countrymen have, at least, in part, experienced ; and thousands to come wUl wish to know what an Enghshman has felt and done in times hke these ; what errors he has fallen into, and by what actions he has endeavoured to redeem those errors. Again, a doubt came over me, and I laid down that tempting pen. To whom am I about to unveil the secrets of my heart — the secrets of my friends ? Who wUl be the readers and the critics of what I am about to record? WUl even those who have known me find interest in the re-awakened memories of scenes that we have shared ? WUl those, to whom the writer is but a name, bestow their sympathies upon my joys and sorrows, for the sake of joys and sorrows of their own which my narration may recal ?

It may be that the former are grown too old, or cold, or changed, and that the latter will be too httle touched by the strangeness of my story to lend to it a wUling ear. Nevertheless, I long to unburden my memory of its load as the sick in soul to a confessor, or the UI in health to a physician. Written by my own hand, my biography shaU relate only to the dead ; before any stranger shaU read these lines, their author wiU be unconscious of the blessing of his sympathy, or the insult of his sneer. For this reason, I can, — yea, and wiU write to the world as freely, as fully, and as truly, as if I were pouring my confessions in the friendliest ear. With these thoughts, I once more grasped my pen, and vehemently and hastUy wrote down the above — the first words that presented themselves ; fearing, if I paused to reconsider them, that such a commencement would shame me from continuance.

As a young bird prepares for flight, I fluttered through these sentences, and then determined to trust myself for good or UI upon a longer flight ; yea, even if my grey goose-quUl should prove but an Icarian wing. Here, then, is the history of my young life as far as it has gone ; it may prove to be but a fragment and a brief one. I am the eldest son of Reginald, Lord Hastings of Beaumanoir. His ancestors had shared in the dangers and rewards of the Norman Conquest, and for centuries since, had rendered good and knightly sendee for the lands bestowed by the Conqueror. If, at any time, their title deeds had faded, the loss might have been supphed from their country's history, with which theh names were interwoven. In the wars of Ireland, of the Holy Land, of France, and of the Roses, their blood had been pro fusely shed, and the present unhappy times found my father still ready to stand or faU by the banner of his King.

Yet his was no blind, unreasoning obedience, that abandoned the right of private judgment. In his youth, he had been persecuted by King James for espousing the cause of Raleigh ; in his age he had faUen under the displeasure of King Charles for a quarrel with Buckingham, and resistance to that Duke's successors in the ministry. It was only the danger of the Crown that brought him to its assistance, and re-awakened, as it were, a grateful memory, that he and his fathers owed to it their cherished home and theh broad lands. In his chivalrous code of honour, the lapse of time had not weakened the obhgation ; he stiU enjoyed the reward of his ancestors' loyalty, and he conceived that he still owed feudal and loyal gratitude for that posses sion. This fidelity of my father's to the King was imitated by that of our tenants to himself.

They had, for the most part, descended from the tenants of our forefathers, through hnes as ancient as their own. Though leases were unknown to our rent-roUs, the same names were to be found in each farm-house through successive centuries : our people had changed from Saxon serfs to British yeomen, without ever having changed their fealty to our house. In the village, indeed, it was whispered, that the newly-popular principles had gained some ground, but many of the inhabitants there were strangers ; trade and its votaries being far more liable to change and innovation than agriculture, to which they are for the most part opposed in principle if not in interest. This village stood upon the sea-shore, about half-a-mile from The Manor, as our old house was familiarly called. Our park gates opened on a large bowling green which stood in the very heart of the little town.

A taU May-pole occupied its centre, surrounded by some forty or fifty houses and cottages, each with its gaUy-painted sign-board ; or little garden and treUised arbour, if it appro priated to no public calling. For the Manor itself, it was a house of great extent and very varied architecture. OriginaUy a hunting-lodge of Earl Godwins, it stood on a gentle eminence in an extensive Chase, or forest, weU opened into glades and meadows. The Saxon palace had been fortified with Norman towers, and surrounded by a graff, or moat, in the reign of Rufus. A royal visit from Queen Elizabeth had superinduced the addition of a banqueting-haU with other apartments ; and my grandfather, in the reign of King James, had yet further added to the confusion of all archi tectural rule, by an endeavour to blend the various discrepancies of his house into one uniform style.

The pride of this quaint, but venerable man sion was the entrance hall, some eighty feet in length, and in height, up to the cedar rafters, perhaps half as much. The caned oak with which it was paneUed was invisible to my young eyes, though I might have seen it naked enough afterwards : in the days of peace it was covered over with armour, and weapons of every age, from that of Alfred downwards. Its arrangement was very perfect as to time; for each helmet, morion, hauberk, or haquetin, hung upon the spot where its last wearer had placed it. This armoury was my father's pride ; my brother and I learnt the history of our country, and of our ancestors, from the battered shields of Hastings, Acre, Flodden- Field, Cressy, Poic tiers, and Agincourt, as from so many medals. — Alas ! for the day that scattered those trophies widely over England !

Alas ! for the gaUant yeomen friends, who left that harness only with theh hves, on EdgehUl, Newbury, and Chalgrove Field ! At the upper end of the old haU was a dais, on which a table stood crosswise under a huge painted window, which I fear had been sacrUegiously obtained in bluff King Harry's time. WeU I remember the awe with w7hich I used to look upon my father, as he sat en throned at that table on the King's birthday, with his neighbours assembled round him, and his farmers seated at the long tables that ran from end to end of the great haU. Opposite the doorway yawned a huge fire-place, over arched by a high mantel-piece, elaborately carved and surmounted by a gaUery, in which my mother and her fair guests used to appear on occasions of high solemnity, when the haU below was fiUed with retainers that would have died to serve her.

The rest of the old house within, was Uke most others of its kind : a labyrinth of galleries and staircases, and almost forgotten rooms, with which none but the oldest servants professed acquaintance. Without, behind the house, was a large court-yard, with stables for a troop of horse, and a smithy, stUl caUed the armourer's forge. There, also, were barns and granaries, and aU the appurtenances of a country-house, that boasted to want nothing beyond its own power to supply. There were gardens too, and fish-ponds surmounted by a heronry, and aU the various excrescences supposed necessary or comfortable, that gather round old family places, where each son presents, with pious and hereditaiy care, the things that his dead father cared for. There is a venerableness and mystery attached to old ancestral houses such as these, that power fully impresses the imagination.

The various human experiences that those grey waUs have sheltered; the bright faces that have looked out through those narrow windows ; the grim sentries that have patroUed those battlemented towers ; the voices of joy and mourning, of anger, of comfort, of desolation, of despair, that have sounded through those halls ; the bridal trains and funeral processions that have passed through those wide doors ; the startling news, now almost forgotten history, that was told round those large fire-places ; the venerable forms that have reposed in that old arm-chair, the merry chUdren that have been hushed to sleep in that old-fashioned cradle ; aU, within and without, may now be whoUy changed, yet each has left its character impressed upon the ancient home of an ancient race. AU this is altered now, they teU me.

It is many a day since I have seen my birth-place ; besieging artUlery and ruthless pillage since then have done their utmost to obliterate aU marks of what that home was once. I am thankful that I have been spared that sight, and that I can still picture to myself the old Manor in aU its hospitable pride, when passers-by would exclaim as they pointed to it : " There hves an Enghsh gentleman of the good old time !" Such, indeed, was my father. He stood among the first of that almost unnoticed class of country gentlemen, who form the principal strength and real power of the state. I mean unnoticed in public life only, for in the wide circle of his own neighbourhood, he possessed an honoured name and moral influence that kings might envy. To him, as a common centre, converged all the petitions, applications, and appeals of the sur rounding country ; to his justice, his counsel, or his generosity — the wronged, the embarrassed, and the poor, with confidence appealed; and by his opinions, ever frankly and fearlessly ex pressed, the public opinion of his neighbour hood was influenced, if not wholly formed.

He possessed not only the confidence, but the love of aU his neighbours. There was something genial and generous in his manner that seemed infectious, — the cold and cautious warmed be neath its influence, the timid were encouraged, and the poor felt the presence of a friend. VOL. I. c Though he had been in his time a courtier, a soldier, and a traveller, yet my father was passionately fond of the country — its labours, its sports, and all the various interests that it yields to those who cultivate them. He had married the daughter of a noble courtier, but her tastes had become so merged in his, that neither of them ever sent a thought in search of pleasure or amusement beyond the limits of their happy home. I must not, in speaking of that home, pass on without a tribute to the character of my mother, who rendered it a cherished sanctuary.

She was of so exceUent a nature that I have always respected woman for her sake, whatever my after experience of women may have been. For her sake, I have always met with scorn the fashion able sneers against married life, and been able to believe that it was in mercy God gave the first man a wife, notwithstanding the result. Yes, blessed be she — whether of Eden, or of this poor penal earth — who fulfils her mission to her husband ! who soothes his sorrows, extenuates his fadings, brightens his bright hours, and irra diates his darkness ! No jealous vanity, no morbid pride ever stains the pure motives of her ministry ; — her noble and self-sacrificing thought and thoughtfulness is ever of him whom God hath given her — of what wUl wound, of what wUl soothe, of what wUl comfort him — the father of her children, the sharer of her destiny.

Happy, thrice happy, through aU his mortal misery is he who can fold such a woman to his grateful heart. Her gentleness subdues, her meekness softens him ; her patient endurance conquers more than the stormiest eloquence : her presence can enable her husband to cherish life, and yet to smUe upon the death that spares him the anguish of outliving her. So thought my father, justly ; but his wife was not destined to survive him. She had long been dehcate, though her Ulness wore that beautiful and delusive beauty, that so often in our climate only decks the victim for the tomb. But her sphits rose with her decay, and she was happy — happy in her stainless conscience, happy in aU around her, and most of all, happy in her merry httle chUd of some two years old, who was her almost constant companion.

If I thus linger on my native threshold, I C may be excused, for my after-life presents far different events. From the recoUection of these last, I often seek refuge in chUdish memories ; they are always welcome. I am still happy in that home I have described, though for me it now exists only in imagination.

Chapter II

Sweet in manner, fair in favour. Mild in temper, fierce in fight, Warrior nobler, gentler, braver, Never shall behold the light. ANON. My second brother, Hugo, was scarcely seventeen when my story commences. In spite of aU theh efforts to conceal it, he was the favourite of both our parents. I never grudged — I scarcely envied him that priceless dis tinction. Nor could I wonder at it ; he was so gentle and generous, so brave, and good, and true. I was too proud of his genius and ac quirements to feel jealous of the comparative shade in which they placed me. There was a strong contrast between us too, which served to destroy any thought of rivalry. We were both impetuous, but Hugo was more yielding and somewhat fickle in his pursuits; I was more thoughtful and determined, and generaUy took up a common object where he had left it off.

He was imaginative and fond of poetry ; I was but httle of a book-man. His spirits were inexhaustible, and there was a note of exultation in his joyous laughter that thriUed like a trumpet in my ear : yet his tears were almost as ready as his smUes, and his large bright eyes would fill, not only at the recital of any tale of sorrow, but of any noble trait of character, or gaUant action. Even the higher sources of pleasure, all exquisite sensations of mental enjoyment, pro duced the same effect on his finely-sensitive organization. Nevertheless, he was no whining sentimentalist, or vain, pensive dreamer. His instinct was to be ever in advance of aU his comrades, whether as a student, a sportsman, or a soldier ; yet his nobler nature shrank from every triumph that his genius or his daring won at the expense of others, and his self sacrifice in abandoning his weU-won prizes often passed for indifference or inconsistency.

I weU remember when he was about to leave school, the eagerness with which he looked forward to the first place and prize in the concluding examination. I had then been entered at the University, and was admitted to occupy the strangers' bench together with my father and others who were interested. I think I see Hugo before me now, almost motionless at his absorbing task ; so calm, indeed, that but for the perspiration that sometimes glistened on his broad white forehead, a looker-on might have supposed his mind to be as passive as his frame. In quick succession he mastered aU his trials, and towards the close of the examination but one competitor remained ; a boy of patient and untiring industry, the son of our village curate. The prize of the day had been a life-long object of ambition to him and to a father who had been his only tutor ; for many a year the poor churchman had toUed to qualify his child for an honour that secured to him not only distinction but independence.