A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Woodstock; or, The Cavalier

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> Woodstock; or, The Cavalier




The language which, in its literal sense, was applied to King David, and
typically referred to the coming of the Messiah, was, in the opinion of
the military orator, most properly to be interpreted of Oliver Cromwell,
the victorious general of the infant Commonwealth, which was never
destined to come of age. "Gird on thy sword!" exclaimed the preacher
emphatically; "and was not that a pretty bit of steel as ever dangled
from a corslet, or rung against a steel saddle? Ay, ye prick up your
ears now, ye cutlers of Woodstock, as if ye should know something of a
good fox broad sword--Did you forge it, I trow?--was the steel quenched
with water from Rosamond's well, or the blade blessed by the old
cuckoldy priest of Godstow? You would have us think, I warrant me, that
you wrought it and welded it, grinded and polished it, and all the while
it never came on a Woodstock stithy! You were all too busy making
whittles for the lazy crape-men of Oxford, bouncing priests, whose eyes
were so closed up with fat, that they could not see Destruction till she
had them by the throat. But I can tell you where the sword was forged,
and tempered, and welded, and grinded, and polished. When you were, as I
said before, making whittles for false priests, and daggers for
dissolute G--d d--n-me cavaliers, to cut the people of England's throats
with--it was forged at Long Marston Moor, where blows went faster than
ever rung hammer on anvil--and it was tempered at Naseby, in the best
blood of the cavaliers--and it was welded in Ireland against the walls
of Drogheda--and it was grinded on Scottish lives at Dunbar--and now of
late it was polished in Worcester, till it shines as bright as the sun
in the middle heaven, and there is no light in England that shall come
nigh unto it."

Here the military part of the congregation raised a hum of approbation,
which, being a sound like the "hear, hear," of the British House of
Commons, was calculated to heighten the enthusiasm of the orator, by
intimating the sympathy of the audience. "And then," resumed the
preacher, rising in energy as he found that his audience partook in
these feelings, "what saith the text?--Ride on prosperously--do not
stop--do not call a halt--do not quit the saddle--pursue the scattered
fliers--sound the trumpet--not a levant or a flourish, but a point of
war--sound, boot and saddle--to horse and away--a charge!--follow after
the young Man!--what part have we in him?--Slay, take, destroy, divide
the spoil! Blessed art thou, Oliver, on account of thine honour--thy
cause is clear, thy call is undoubted--never has defeat come near thy
leading-staff, nor disaster attended thy banner. Ride on, flower of
England's soldiers! ride on, chosen leader of God's champions! gird up
the loins of thy resolution, and be steadfast to the mark of thy high
calling."

Another deep and stern hum, echoed by the ancient embow'd arches of the
old chantry, gave him an opportunity of an instant's repose; when the
people of Woodstock heard him, and not without anxiety, turn the stream
of his oratory into another channel.

"But wherefore, ye people of Woodstock, do I say these things to you,
who claim no portion in our David, no interest in England's son of
Jesse?--You, who were fighting as well as your might could (and it was
not very formidable) for the late Man, under that old blood-thirsty
papist Sir Jacob Aston--are you not now plotting, or ready to plot, for
the restoring, as ye call it, of the young Man, the unclean son of the
slaughtered tyrant--the fugitive after whom the true hearts of England
are now following, that they may take and slay him?--'Why should your
rider turn his bridle our way?' say you in your hearts; 'we will none of
him; if we may help ourselves, we will rather turn us to wallow in the
mire of monarchy, with the sow that was washed but newly.' Come, men of
Woodstock, I will ask, and do you answer me. Hunger ye still after the
flesh-pots of the monks of Godstow? and ye will say, Nay;--but
wherefore, except that the pots are cracked and broken, and the fire is
extinguished wherewith thy oven used to boil? And again, I ask, drink ye
still of the well of fornications of the fair Rosamond?--ye will say,
Nay;--but wherefore?"--

Here the orator, ere he could answer the question in his own way, was
surprised by the following reply, very pithily pronounced by one of the
congregation:--"Because you, and the like of you, have left us no brandy
to mix with it."

All eyes turned to the audacious speaker, who stood beside one of the
thick sturdy Saxon pillars, which he himself somewhat resembled, being
short of stature, but very strongly made, a squat broad Little John sort
of figure, leaning on a quarterstaff, and wearing a jerkin, which,
though now sorely stained and discoloured, had once been of the Lincoln
green, and showed remnants of having been laced. There was an air of
careless, good humoured audacity about the fellow; and, though under
military restraint, there were some of the citizens who could not help
crying out,--"Well said, Joceline Joliffe!"

"Jolly Joceline, call ye him?" proceeded the preacher, without showing
either confusion or displeasure at the interruption,--"I will make him
Joceline of the jail, if he interrupts me again. One of your
park-keepers, I warrant, that can never forget they have borne C. R.
upon their badges and bugle-horns, even as a dog bears his owner's name
on his collar--a pretty emblem for Christian men! But the brute beast
hath the better of him,--the brute weareth his own coat, and the caitiff
thrall wears his master's. I have seen such a wag make a rope's end wag
ere now.--Where was I?--Oh, rebuking you for your backslidings, men of
Woodstock.--Yes, then ye will say ye have renounced Popery, and ye have
renounced Prelacy, and then ye wipe your mouth like Pharisees, as ye
are; and who but you for purity of religion! But I tell you, ye are but
like Jehu the son of Nimshi, who broke down the house of Baal, yet
departed not from the sins of Jeroboam. Even so ye eat not fish on
Friday with the blinded Papists, nor minced-pies on the 25th day of
December, like the slothful Prelatists; but ye will gorge on sack-posset
each night in the year with your blind Presbyterian guide, and ye will
speak evil of dignities, and revile the Commonwealth; and ye will
glorify yourselves in your park of Woodstock, and say, 'Was it not
walled in first of any other in England, and that by Henry, son of
William called the Conqueror?' And ye have a princely Lodge therein, and
call the same a Royal Lodge; and ye have an oak which ye call the King's
Oak; and ye steal and eat the venison of the park, and ye say, 'This is
the king's venison, we will wash it down with a cup to the king's
health--better we eat it than those round-headed commonwealth knaves.'
But listen unto me and take warning. For these things come we to
controversy with you. And our name shall be a cannon-shot, before which
your Lodge, in the pleasantness whereof ye take pastime, shall be blown
into ruins; and we will be as a wedge to split asunder the King's Oak
into billets to heat a brown baker's oven; and we will dispark your
park, and slay your deer, and eat them ourselves, neither shall you have
any portion thereof, whether in neck or haunch. Ye shall not haft a
ten-penny knife with the horns thereof, neither shall ye cut a pair
of breeches out of the hide, for all ye be cutlers and glovers; and
ye shall have no comfort or support neither from the sequestered
traitor Henry Lee, who called himself Ranger of Woodstock, nor from
any on his behalf; for they are coming hither who shall be called
Mahershalal-hash-baz, because he maketh haste to the spoil."

Here ended the wild effusion, the latter part of which fell heavy on the
souls of the poor citizens of Woodstock, as tending to confirm a report
of an unpleasing nature which had been lately circulated. The
communication with London was indeed slow, and the news which it
transmitted were uncertain; no less uncertain were the times themselves,
and the rumours which were circulated, exaggerated by the hopes and
fears of so many various factions. But the general stream of report, so
far as Woodstock was concerned, had of late run uniformly in one
direction. Day after day they had been informed, that the fatal fiat of
Parliament had gone out, for selling the park of Woodstock, destroying
its lodge, disparking its forest, and erasing, as far as they could be
erased, all traces of its ancient fame. Many of the citizens were likely
to be sufferers on this occasion, as several of them enjoyed, either by
sufferance or right, various convenient privileges of pasturage, cutting
firewood, and the like, in the royal chase; and all the inhabitants of
the little borough were hurt to think, that the scenery of the place was
to be destroyed, its edifices ruined, and its honours rent away. This is
a patriotic sensation often found in such places, which ancient
distinctions and long-cherished recollections of former days, render so
different from towns of recent date. The natives of Woodstock felt it in
the fullest force. They had trembled at the anticipated calamity; but
now, when it was announced by the appearance of those dark, stern, and
at the same time omnipotent soldiers--now that they heard it proclaimed
by the mouth of one of their military preachers--they considered their
fate as inevitable. The causes of disagreement among themselves were for
the time forgotten, as the congregation, dismissed without psalmody or
benediction, went slowly and mournfully homeward, each to his own place
of abode.

* * * * *

CHAPTER THE SECOND.


Come forth, old man--Thy daughter's side
Is now the fitting place for thee:
When time hath quell'd the oak's bold pride,
The youthful tendril yet may hide
The ruins of the parent tree.

When the sermon was ended, the military orator wiped his brow; for,
notwithstanding the coolness of the weather, he was heated with the
vehemence of his speech and action. He then descended from the pulpit,
and spoke a word or two to the corporal who commanded the party of
soldiers, who, replying by a sober nod of intelligence, drew his men
together, and marched them in order to their quarters in the town.

The preacher himself, as if nothing extraordinary had happened, left the
church and sauntered through the streets of Woodstock, with the air of a
stranger who was viewing the town, without seeming to observe that he
was himself in his turn anxiously surveyed by the citizens, whose
furtive yet frequent glances seemed to regard him as something alike
suspected and dreadful, yet on no account to be provoked. He heeded them
not, but stalked on in the manner affected by the distinguished fanatics
of the day; a stiff solemn pace, a severe and at the same time a
contemplative look, like that of a man discomposed at the interruptions
which earthly objects forced upon him, obliging him by their intrusion
to withdraw his thoughts for an instant from celestial things. Innocent
pleasures of what kind soever they held in suspicion and contempt, and
innocent mirth they abominated. It was, however, a cast of mind that
formed men for great and manly actions, as it adopted principle, and
that of an unselfish character, for the ruling motive, instead of the
gratification of passion. Some of these men were indeed hypocrites,
using the cloak of religion only as a covering for their ambition; but
many really possessed the devotional character, and the severe
republican virtue, which others only affected. By far the greater number
hovered between these extremes, felt to a certain extent the power of
religion, and complied with the times in affecting a great deal.

The individual, whose pretensions to sanctity, written as they were upon
his brow and gait, have given rise to the above digression, reached at
length the extremity of the principal street, which terminates upon the
park of Woodstock. A battlemented portal of Gothic appearance defended
the entrance to the avenue. It was of mixed architecture, but on the
whole, though composed of the styles of the different ages when it had
received additions, had a striking and imposing effect. An immense gate,
composed of rails of hammered iron, with many a flourish and scroll,
displaying as its uppermost ornament the ill-fated cipher of C. R., was
now decayed, being partly wasted with rust, partly by violence.

The stranger paused, as if uncertain whether he should demand or assay
entrance. He looked through the grating down an avenue skirted by
majestic oaks, which led onward with a gentle curve, as if into the
depths of some ample and ancient forest. The wicket of the large iron
gate being left unwittingly open, the soldier was tempted to enter, yet
with some hesitation, as he that intrudes upon ground which he
conjectures may be prohibited--indeed his manner showed more reverence
for the scene than could have been expected from his condition and
character. He slackened his stately and consequential pace, and at
length stood still, and looked around him.

Not far from the gate, he saw rising from the trees one or two ancient
and venerable turrets, bearing each its own vane of rare device
glittering in the autumn sun. These indicated the ancient hunting seat,
or Lodge, as it was called, which had, since the time of Henry II., been
occasionally the residence of the English monarchs, when it pleased them
to visit the woods of Oxford, which then so abounded with game, that,
according to old Fuller, huntsmen and falconers were nowhere better
pleased. The situation which the Lodge occupied was a piece of flat
ground, now planted with sycamores, not far from the entrance to that
magnificent spot where the spectator first stops to gaze upon Blenheim,
to think of Marlborough's victories, and to applaud or criticise the
cumbrous magnificence of Vanburgh's style.

There, too, paused our military preacher, but with other thoughts, and
for other purpose, than to admire the scene around him. It was not long
afterwards when he beheld two persons, a male and a female, approaching
slowly, and so deeply engaged in their own conversation that they did
not raise their eyes to observe that there stood a stranger in the path
before them. The soldier took advantage of their state of abstraction,
and, desirous at once to watch their motions and avoid their
observation, he glided beneath one of the huge trees which skirted the
path, and whose boughs, sweeping the ground on every side, ensured him
against discovery, unless in case of an actual search.

In the meantime, the gentleman and lady continued to advance, directing
their course to a rustic seat, which still enjoyed the sunbeams, and was
placed adjacent to the tree where the stranger was concealed.

The man was elderly, yet seemed bent more by sorrow and infirmity than
by the weight of years. He wore a mourning cloak, over a dress of the
same melancholy colour, cut in that picturesque form which Vandyck has
rendered immortal. But although the dress was handsome, it was put on
with a carelessness which showed the mind of the wearer ill at ease. His
aged, yet still handsome countenance, had the same air of consequence
which distinguished his dress and his gait. A striking part of his
appearance was a long white beard, which descended far over the breast
of his slashed doublet, and looked singular from its contrast in colour
with his habit.

The young lady, by whom this venerable gentleman seemed to be in some
degree supported as they walked arm in arm, was a slight and sylphlike
form, with a person so delicately made, and so beautiful in countenance,
that it seemed the earth on which she walked was too grossly massive a
support for a creature so aerial. But mortal beauty must share human
sorrows. The eyes of the beautiful being showed tokens of tears; her
colour was heightened as she listened to her aged companion; and it was
plain, from his melancholy yet displeased look, that the conversation
was as distressing to himself as to her. When they sate down on the
bench we have mentioned, the gentleman's discourse could be distinctly
overheard by the eavesdropping soldier, but the answers of the young
lady reached his ear rather less distinctly.

"It is not to be endured!" said the old man, passionately; "it would
stir up a paralytic wretch to start up a soldier. My people have been
thinned, I grant you, or have fallen off from me in these times--I owe
them no grudge for it, poor knaves; what should they do waiting on me
when the pantry has no bread and the buttery no ale? But we have still
about us some rugged foresters of the old Woodstock breed--old as myself
most of them--what of that? old wood seldom warps in the wetting;--I
will hold out the old house, and it will not be the first time that I
have held it against ten times the strength that we hear of now."

"Alas! my dear father!"--said the young lady, in a tone which seemed to
intimate his proposal of defence to be altogether desperate.

"And why, alas?" said the gentleman, angrily; "is it because I shut my
door against a score or two of these blood-thirsty hypocrites?"

"But their masters can as easily send a regiment or an army, if they
will," replied the lady; "and what good would your present defence do,
excepting to exasperate them to your utter destruction?"

"Be it so, Alice," replied her father; "I have lived my time, and beyond
it. I have outlived the kindest and most princelike of masters. What do
I do on the earth since the dismal thirtieth of January? The parricide
of that day was a signal to all true servants of Charles Stewart to
avenge his death, or die as soon after as they could find a worthy
opportunity."

"Do not speak thus, sir," said Alice Lee; "it does not become your
gravity and your worth to throw away that life which may yet be of
service to your king and country,--it will not and cannot always be
thus. England will not long endure the rulers which these bad times have
assigned her. In the meanwhile--[here a few words escaped the listener's
ears]--and beware of that impatience, which makes bad worse."

"Worse?" exclaimed the impatient old man, "_What_ can be worse? Is it
not at the worst already? Will not these people expel us from the only
shelter we have left--dilapidate what remains of royal property under my
charge--make the palace of princes into a den of thieves, and then wipe
their mouths and thank God, as if they had done an alms-deed?"

"Still," said his daughter, "there is hope behind, and I trust the King
is ere this out of their reach--We have reason to think well of my
brother Albert's safety."

"Ay, Albert! there again," said the old man, in a tone of reproach; "had
it not been for thy entreaties I had gone to Worcester myself; but I
must needs lie here like a worthless hound when the hunt is up, when who
knows what service I might have shown? An old man's head is sometimes
useful when his arm is but little worth. But you and Albert were so
desirous that he should go alone--and now, who can say what has become
of him?"

"Nay, nay, father," said Alice, "we have good hope that Albert escaped
from that fatal day; young Abney saw him a mile from the field."

"Young Abney lied, I believe," said the father, in the same humour of
contradiction--"Young Abney's tongue seems quicker than his hands, but
far slower than his horse's heels when he leaves the roundheads behind
him. I would rather Albert's dead body were laid between Charles and
Cromwell, than hear he fled as early as young Abney."

"My dearest father," said the young lady, weeping as she spoke, "what
can I say to comfort you?"

"Comfort me, say'st thou, girl? I am sick of comfort--an honourable
death, with the ruins of Woodstock for my monument, were the only
comfort to old Henry Lee. Yes, by the memory of my fathers! I will make
good the Lodge against these rebellious robbers."

"Yet be ruled, dearest father," said the maiden, "and submit to that
which we cannot gainsay. My uncle Everard"--

Here the old man caught at her unfinished words. "Thy uncle Everard,
wench!--Well, get on.--What of thy precious and loving uncle Everard?"

"Nothing, sir," she said, "if the subject displeases you."

"Displeases me?" he replied, "why should it displease me? or if it did,
why shouldst thou, or any one, affect to care about it? What is it that
hath happened of late years--what is it can be thought to happen that
astrologer can guess at, which can give pleasure to us?"

"Fate," she replied, "may have in store the joyful restoration of our
banished Prince."

"Too late for my time, Alice," said the knight; "if there be such a
white page in the heavenly book, it will not be turned until long after
my day.--But I see thou wouldst escape me.--In a word, what of thy uncle
Everard?"

"Nay, sir," said Alice, "God knows I would rather be silent for ever,
than speak what might, as you would take it, add to your present
distemperature."

"Distemperature!" said her father; "Oh, thou art a sweet lipped
physician, and wouldst, I warrant me, drop nought but sweet balm, and
honey, and oil, on my distemperature--if that is the phrase for an old
man's ailment, when he is wellnigh heart-broken.--Once more, what of thy
uncle Everard?"

His last words were uttered in a high and peevish tone of voice; and
Alice Lee answered her father in a trembling and submissive tone.

"I only meant to say, sir, that I am well assured that my uncle Everard,
when we quit this place"--

"That is to say, when we are kicked out of it by crop-eared canting
villains like himself.--But on with thy bountiful uncle--what will he
do?--will he give us the remains of his worshipful and economical
housekeeping, the fragments of a thrice-sacked capon twice a-week, and a
plentiful fast on the other five days?--Will he give us beds beside his
half-starved nags, and put them under a short allowance of straw, that
his sister's husband--that I should have called my deceased angel by
such a name!--and his sister's daughter, may not sleep on the stones? Or
will he send us a noble each, with a warning to make it last, for he had
never known the ready-penny so hard to come by? Or what else will your
uncle Everard do for us? Get us a furlough to beg? Why, I can do that
without him."

"You misconstrue him much," answered Alice, with more spirit than she
had hitherto displayed; "and would you but question your own heart, you
would acknowledge--I speak with reverence--that your tongue utters what
your better judgment would disown. My uncle Everard is neither a miser
nor a hypocrite--neither so fond of the goods of this world that he
would not supply our distresses amply, nor so wedded to fanatical
opinions as to exclude charity for other sects beside his own."

"Ay, ay, the Church of England is a _sect_ with him, I doubt not, and
perhaps with thee too, Alice," said the knight. "What is a Muggletonian,
or a Ranter, or a Brownist, but a sectary? and thy phrase places them
all, with Jack Presbyter himself, on the same footing with our learned
prelates and religious clergy! Such is the cant of the day thou livest
in, and why shouldst thou not talk like one of the wise virgins and
psalm-singing sisters, since, though thou hast a profane old cavalier
for a father, thou art own niece to pious uncle Everard?"

"If you speak thus, my dear father," said Alice, "what can I answer you?
Hear me but one patient word, and I shall have discharged my uncle
Everard's commission."

"Oh, it is a commission, then? Surely, I suspected so much from the
beginning--nay, have some sharp guess touching the ambassador also.--
Come, madam, the mediator, do your errand, and you shall have no reason
to complain of my patience."

"Then, sir," replied his daughter, "my uncle Everard desires you would
be courteous to the commissioners, who come here to sequestrate the
parks and the property; or, at least, heedfully to abstain from giving
them obstacle or opposition: it can, he says, do no good, even on your
own principles, and it will give a pretext for proceeding against you as
one in the worst degree of malignity, which he thinks may otherwise be
prevented. Nay, he has good hope, that if you follow his counsel, the
committee may, through the interest he possesses, be inclined to remove
the sequestration of your estate on a moderate line. Thus says my uncle;
and having communicated his advice, I have no occasion to urge your
patience with farther argument."

"It is well thou dost not, Alice," answered Sir Henry Lee, in a tone of
suppressed anger; "for, by the blessed Rood, thou hast well nigh led me
into the heresy of thinking thee no daughter of mine.--Ah! my beloved
companion, who art now far from the sorrows and cares of this weary
world, couldst thou have thought that the daughter thou didst clasp to
thy bosom, would, like the wicked wife of Job, become a temptress to her
father in the hour of affliction, and recommend to him to make his
conscience truckle to his interest, and to beg back at the bloody hands
of his master's and perhaps his son's murderers, a wretched remnant of
the royal property he has been robbed of!--Why, wench, if I must beg,
think'st thou I will sue to those who have made me a mendicant? No. I
will never show my grey beard, worn in sorrow for my sovereign's death,
to move the compassion of some proud sequestrator, who perhaps was one
of the parricides. No. If Henry Lee must sue for food, it shall be of
some sound loyalist like himself, who, having but half a loaf remaining,
will not nevertheless refuse to share it with him. For his daughter, she
may wander her own way, which leads her to a refuge with her wealthy
roundhead kinsfolk; but let her no more call him father, whose honest
indigence she has refused to share!"

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.