Page images
PDF
EPUB

upon the king and his suite. The details | a fit of exasperation, had issued orders to of the incident are very copious; but we will give the leading outlines in as few words as possible.

The king and a large body of attendants were out on a hunting expedition, at a distance of several miles from Lucknow. For several days the weather had been remarkably fine, and his Majesty had been in excellent humor, enjoying the chase of wild animals. One day, however, their sport took the party across a region covered with a deposit of white impalpable sand, resembling powdered saltpetre, which rose about them in clouds of fine dust, and, getting into their eyes, nostrils, ears, and mouths, tormented them with pungent, stinging sensations. The annoyance was too much for the patience of his Majesty, who felt that he ought to have been shielded from such a pest, and he retired early that night to the private royal apartments of the encampment in any thing but a good temper. His native and European attendants shortly afterwards went also to their respective tents.

Scarcely had they composed themselves to sleep that night, when a terrific thunder-storm burst upon the camp, the lightning glaring around them with appalling vividness, and the rain descending in torrents upon the frail tents. The wind whistled and howled, too, like a chorus of disquieted demons, and threatened every moment to whirl the sheltering canvas into the air. By the aid of additional pins, and the bracing up of ropes, however, most of the flimsy structures were kept upon their legs. In the intervals of the thunder and the ragings of the wind, great commotion was audible in the camp; horses were neighing, camels were crying, elephants were blowing, women were shrieking, and men were wildly shouting. This continued for a considerable period. At length, during a slight lull in the storm, a messenger from the king arrived in haste to summon the captain of the guard to the royal presence. The other functionaries were for some time left in ignorance of the purport of this unseasonable order; and remembering the mood in which they had left their royal master, they revolved in their minds all kinds of dark and sinister conjectures. At length the captain returned, and explained the mystery. One of the royal tents, it appeared, had been blown down and its inmates flooded; and the king, in

return immediately to Lucknow. His chief wives and most of the military guard were to accompany him; but many of the attendants, both male and female, were left behind to the tender mercies of the neighboring villagers, who, it was well known, as soon as they heard of the king's flight, would fall upon and pillage the camp.

And so indeed it happened. For, while it was yet dark, swarms of fierce spoilers came down, and added their plunderings to the devastations of the storm. Only by the most vigilant watchfulness, and a display of courageous determination on the part of the residue of the royal party, was any property saved from the clutches of these invaders; and many a thrilling adventure and hair-breadth escape occurred during that eventful night. As it was, the plunder secured by the natives was very considerable. The fallen royal tent, with all its rich and costly furniture and ladies' attire, was ransacked and carried off, though defended by the nawab and a small band of soldiers, who slew some of the strangers. Even the very coat and pantaloons the king had taken off the previous evening were stolen.

When the report of these proceedings reached the ears of the king the next day, his anger was terrific, and he vowed summary vengeance upon the daring marauders who had put forth their defiling hands to touch the robes of their sovereign and his wives. About a dozen poor wretches, of a most ferocious and cut-throat aspect, were shortly afterwards brought in by the na wab, each one being strapped down to a charpoy, like a drunken man on a policestretcher in England; and all of them had cuts of swords or stabs of daggers about their persons, which were undressed and unattended to. These were said to have been the ringleaders or most active accomplices in the night-assault; and, without trial or examination, the fatal order was given that they should die. The summary sentence was at once executed, and the heads of the poor fellows, whether they happened to be innocent or guilty, were soon rolling on the ground. The wrath of the king was appeased by this sanguinary sacrifice.

Such is only a fair illustration of the very pleasant relations subsisting between the Oude sovereign and his subjects down to a very recent date. Surely those who

plead so chivalrously for the maintenance | pot, or by any means the worst that could of the native government in that province, be cited. However, as we before intican scarcely be aware that they are unin- mated, it is no duty of ours to pronounce tentionally favoring the perpetuation of a a decided opinion upon this moot question; state of things out of which spring such our object has been simply to narrate facts dreadful incidents as we have mentioned. for the guidance of the judgment of our Nor are these exceptional vagaries in the readers. May the right and the true public and private life of an oriental des- prevail!

From the Westminster Review.

A ROMANCE O F HISTORY

VERITABLE;

OR, THE BOSCOBEL TRACTS-ESCAPE OF CHARLES II.*

THERE is, perhaps, no country where, in so small a space as in England, so much romance, so many relics of the past, are crowded together. All have their own tale of peculiar interest to Englishmen. Insulated by the sea, which has not always been a "sparkling marriage-ring" of land with land, but has rather divorced us from our neighbors, we have fought out our quarrels on our own soil. Our history is written on our land. Abbeys, and cathedrals, and parish-churches, where lie our fathers sleeping still and cold as their own images of brass and stone; moated granges, now guarded only by the tall poplar-trees; old gray manorhouses, dropped down, as it were, amidst our hills, with their secret chambers, where our forefathers were concealed in times of

*Boscobel; or, the compleat History of his Sacred Majestie's most miraculous preservation after the Battle of Worcester, 3 Sept., 1651.

Boscobel; or, the compleat History of the most miraculous preservation of King Charles II. after the Battle of Worcester, September the 3d, 1651. To which is added the King's concealment at Trent. Published by Mrs. Anne Wyndham.

The Boscobel Tracts relating to the escape of Charles the Second after the Battle of Worcester, and his subsequent Adventures. Edited by J. Hughes, Esq., M.A. Second Edition. William Blackwood and Sons. Edinburgh and London. Woodstock; or, the Cavalier. Sixteen Hundred and Fifty-one. "Waverley."

1857.

A Tale of the year By the Author of

distress; old battle-fields, over which now the vacant plowman, driving team, is at times startled when he turns up with his plow some broken sword and some bleached arm which once wielded it in the full strength of manhood-all speak to us with no indistinct voices. The spirit that built these abbeys, the spirit that fought upon these battle-fields, may have passed away, and there is little hope of recalling it by a mere antiquarian study of these remains

yet with what feelings of true reverence we may possess let us still cherish them. Dinted gateway and broken rampart still silently speak of the past; whilst local tradition, with less truth, perhaps, but more noisily, tells its own tale. We should like to have these old traditions preserved, and see how far they would tally with what is already known. Much, no doubt, would be valuable, and the future historian could use it as Lord Macaulay has done the Somersetshire traditions with reference to the battle of Sedgemoor.

of

These reflections are forced upon us as we take up the new edition of the "Boscobel Tracts.". By our side lies a copy the early edition of 1662, which has always remained in one of the very houses in which King Charles was concealed. We hardly like to venture on comparisons. Curious is the old, tattered copy, bethumbed by many a cavalier, and

author of 'Boscobel,' for in a letter (of his) to my father, I have seen the following sense expressed-The other day, being on a visit to Lord Oxford, I met with a tract entitled ' Bos seeing me eager to peruse it, saying I was cobel.' My lord expressed great surprise on deemed the author. How the world comes to be so kind to give it to me, I know not; but whatever merit it may have, for I had not time to examine it, I do not chuse to usurp it; I scorn to take the fame of another's production. So if the same opinion prevails amongst my will contradict it; for I do not so much as know friends in your part of the world, I desire you the author of that piece.'

[ocr errors]

peeped into by the curious villagers, with its quaint woodcuts, its map of the city of Worcester, which would certainly confuse the most enlightened visitor; and its representation of Boscobel wood, in which if the King and Colonel Carlis had not been better concealed than the loyal, draughtsman here represents them, they would assuredly have been soon captured. If we have a greater affection for the old, we must own that the new edition is far better suited for general use. Its editor, Mr. Hughes, has done some service by bringing together most of the documents that bear upon the subject; we wish, Nothing can be more decisive than however, he had reprinted one or two this; yet Mr. Hughes has passed the more, especially the rare tract of "White question of authorship over in silence. Ladies." He has, too, given us descrip. We can add nothing to unravel the tions from personal observation of some matter. Whoever the old author of of the places where the King stopped. these tracts may be, he was a staunch Much more he might have done; "the Royalist, who, in his excess of loyalty, loyal city of Worcester" would alone compares Charles II. with King David, have furnished him with much material and calls the Protector such hard names which he has neglected. We think, too, as "arch rebel," "bloody usurper," and he might have given us some of the tradi- lastly, as most sarcastic of all, "the chief tions which still linger in so many parts of mufti." Nothing to our author is of any England on the subject. He has, though account, unless it is clothed in robes of apparently unconscious that there were state. The divine right of kings is a great doubts on the matter, given the belief and a reality in his mind, but the authorship of the "Boscobel Tracts" to rights of the quarrel between the Houses Blount, without any comment. Had he and the King he could not understand. looked in so common a book as Nash's Personal feelings, interest, affections, and "Worcestershire," he would have found what not, dimmed his eyes to the truth; the fact strongly disputed. we stand on the eminence of many years, and can look calmly down upon the past. "These prodigious rebels," "these bloodhounds," "this skim and filth of the earth," as he calls Cromwell's soldiers, turn out in these later days something very different.

[ocr errors]

"The story of the King's escape, after the battle of Worcester, is given in a book entitled

Boscobel;' the first part contains the history of this event to his leaving White Ladies and Boscobel; the second, his adventures in the west of England: who was the author is not known, certainly not Mr. Blount. . .. .. Many have supposed that 'Boscobel' was written by Thomas Blount, Esq., born at Bordesley, in Worcestershire, son of Miles Blount, of Orleton, in Herefordshire, fifth son of Roger Blount, of Monkland, in the same county, who died 1679, aged sixty-one; married Anne, daughter of Edmund Church, of Maldon, in Essex, Esq.; he was a very industrious antiquary, and made large collections for the history of Herefordshire. In a MS. I have seen, he denies that he was the author of 'Boscobel; and says the first time he ever saw the book was at Lord

Oxford's, at Brampton Bryan, as will appear by

the following letter.'

Nash proceeds to quote a letter which he received from Blount's grandson, in which the following occurs:

"My grandfather's name was Thomas Blount; he died at Orleton. I dare say he was not the

Our author very likely could see nothing in plain Cromwell, "with his linen not very clean, a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar," as Sir Philip Warwick describes him, but perceived every virtue breathing from robes of state and gold crowns. Because Cromwell did not come like some stage king, with stage bodyguards, and stage tinsel, and stage wardrobes, men will not allow that he was a king.

railways, a nobleman and his lady, with Many years ago, before the days of their infant child, were traveling in the depth of winter across Salisbury Plain. A snow-storm overtook them; their child

*Supplement to the second edition of Nash's "Worcestershire," 1799, p. 90.

became ill from the cold, and they were | Look for a moment at Cromwell's governforced to take refuge in a lone shepherd's ment: England basking in the sunshine hut. The wild shepherd and his wife of peace, though ruled, it might be, with gathered round the child in awe and si-a scepter of iron; Ireland enjoying the lence. The nurse began undressing it by novelty of quietness; our navies riding the warm cottage fire. Silken frock and head-dress did the baby wear. One rich baby-dress came off to reveal another more beautiful. Still the shepherd and his wife looked on with awe. At last the process of undressing was completed, and the now naked baby was being warmed by the fire. Then was it, when all these wrappings and outer husks were peeled off, that the shepherd and his wife broke silence, exclaiming: "Why, it's just like one of ours!" What if all the world, like the shepherd and his wife, could see that ordinary kings and queens, when their state robes are off, " are just like one of us." Perhaps they would then discern that the real king with his state robes on or off is something very dif. ferent.

triumphant from sea to sea, and the English name feared by every despot, and Englishmen at home reverencing God, striving to walk uprightly before him, according to the best light they had. And then look a few years after at this England, plundered by noble bastards; the court itself nothing but a harem, without the decency of eastern manners; our exchequer bankrupt; our ships rotting in our rotting dockyards, and England fawning like a beaten hound to a foreign potentate: and the general question, we should think, would be easily answered by most men. But, descending into particulars, we should find much to blame in the Puritan, and not a little to love and admire in the Cavalier. The Puritans, in their crusade against sin, were noble soldiers, whose pay was not in this world's coin. Great and glorious were they in that they saw that life was no paltry farce, played upon a poor stage, with clap-trap shows, and a little paint, and a few oillamps, but a deep, mysterious, never-ending tragedy: for this is true transcendentalism, true idealism, by whatever name it may be called. But they erred lamentably when they thought to dragoon men into virtue, to banish crime by edicts, imagining because vice was no longer apparent that it did not exist. De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio may, perhaps, hold good in law, but is not true of morals. Such a view nourished hypocrisy and a thousand evils. We can not enforce the seventh_commandment, and the other sins that the seventh commandment implies, by physical force, by driving vice into holes and corners. morality seems to be a plant that grows ranker and stronger covered up in darkness, and there bears its most deadly fruit, and its subtlest poison. The Puritan theory of this world was no complete one. Their answer was not the whole answer to this problem of life, and therefore could not last. Their dearest defenders seem to feel this. Life is a tragedy, but it is as We can not here, at any length, well one of Shakspeare's tragedies, where discuss the further question of the differ- mirth, too, plays a part-a secondary part ent governments of the Puritan and the-but still plays. Though a man's sorrow Cavalier. The whole matter is answered is in proportion to a man's capacity for by the fruits the two systems produced. | feeling and experiencing the mysterious

It was but natural that the old writer of these tracts should feel some personal bitterness against his political enemies. They were regicides-the worst term that could be then applied to living men. We do not care in this matter to defend the Puritans by precedents or references to other rebellions. Great men, as these were, want no such apologies for their deeds; fools only require precedents. These Roundheads saw that the doctrine of non-resistance meant nothing else than the indulgence and encouragement of one individual's license and crime; they saw through the fiction that the king can do no wrong, and saw also that he is accountable, like any other man, for his faults, and fully, like any other man, deserves the penalty due to them; they felt, too, that it was far better that one guilty man should suffer a speedy death, than that thousands of their innocent countrymen should suffer prolonged tortures, and that England should groan, forever it might be, under cruel and unjust laws. Theirs was true patriotism, which loves its country better than its king; and they committed their deed, not in a corner, but in the broad daylight, before all England and all men.

Im

wonders of the world and of his own soul, and its intensity is measured by his own nobleness and greatness, yet we know also that there is a spirit of gladness thrown like a calm, gentle light over all great minds, beautifully shining on the darkness and the deep cloud; that there is in these, too, above all others, a soul of cheerfulness, gladly accepting life, and whatever troubles life may bring, with the gentle, happy spirit of a child. Nature herself is ever joyful, and, in spite of the Puri tans, she still kept on her way the same, the glad sunshine ever renewing itself though checkered, it might be, with the shadows of the clouds; the green grass springing up so fresh and bright, that it makes the heart joyful to look at it; the birds still singing their old tunes in the deep green-woods, whether the Puritan would listen or not. The Puritan allowed no play to those faculties of men, which, properly developed, constitute so much of the enjoyment of life. A black mask fell over every thing. No sunny smiles with him that warm the heart-no songs that cheer the laborer, heavy with the business of the day, until-surely enough to make the very angels weep, men almost believed a mother's kiss on the lips of her child to be a crime.

Such men as Cromwell and John Milton are not, of course, to be included in our censure. The one, it is said, preserved for the nation the cartoons of Raphael and Andrea Montegna's "Triumph," was fond of music, even encouraged the theaters, and gathered the poets to his court: the author of "Comus" and "L'Allegro," though a Puritan, was not of them; and we could have told from his works how deeply he loved the drama, had he not left his noble tribute to Shakspeare. Such traits as these show us not merely how great these two Republicans were, but how good also. Assuredly, they had little sympathy with such men as Prynne and Stephen Gosson, who, in their fanaticism, denounced both poet and sculptor, as well as player.

But let us return to our author, and, before proceeding, do him the justice of acknowledging his extreme accuracy in all matters of fact. These words of his in the address to the reader may be read with advantage by most historians:

"I am so far from that foul crime of publishing what's false, that I can safely say, I know

not one line unauthentick; such has been my care to be sure of the truth, that I have diligently collected the particulars from most of selves in this scene of miracles. To every intheir mouths, who were the very actors themdividual person, as far as my industry could arrive to know, I have given the due of his merit; be it for valor, fidelity, or whatsoever other quality that any way had the honor to relate to his Majesty's service. . . . . And though the whole complex may want elegance and politeness of style.. yet it can not want truth, the chief ingredient for such undertakings."

We willingly corroborate this, and readily forgive the writer his creeds and theories for his ardent desire for accuracy, which makes his history in this respect contrast favorably with Clarendon's account of the same matter.

Of all romantic tales in English history, this of King Charles's flight is, perhaps, the most so. His hair-breadth escapes,

his sufferings, his disguises, the incidents that befell him, all contribute to throw a rather fictitious light over his character, as well as to heighten the coloring and interest of the story. The Charles of 1651, however, was a very different man from the one we generally know as Charles. He was then in the prime of youth; his features, though irregular and swarthy, lit up by his expressive eyes, were not yet marked with sensualism; his manners were winning, and free from that overdone courtier-like air which he picked up abroad in after-years; his gallantry and wit took captive every maiden's heart; whilst his warm and open disposition, which had not yet budded into open libertinism, was acceptable to the freest of the Cavaliers, whilst it did not displease the more severe. He possessed then, too, a certain firmness of mind, and a spirit of self-denial, which all, however, melted away during his residence in foreign courts. In addition to this, he was one of the best walkers and tennis-players in England, and was as courageous as he was skillful in the use of his sword-qualities which are always respected by Englishmen. He came forward as the avenger of the murdered King, when the reaction of feeling had just set in, and his cause alone with some constituted him a hero. He seemed just then to have possessed the bravery and valor of his grandfather, Henry of France, joined with the better parts of his father; and his trials and sufferings, as they often do, brought out the

« PreviousContinue »