Shrewsbury: A Romance

"Well, I will give you five shillings for it, as gold, mind you; as gold, and not to pass. Are you content?"

"It is not mine," I said doubtfully.

"Take it or leave it!" he said, screwing up his eyes, and so plainly pleased with the bargain he was driving that I had no inkling of the kind heart that underlay that crabbed manner. "Take it or leave it, my man."

Thus pressed, and my mind retaining no real doubt of the knavery of the man who had entrusted the guinea to me, I handed it to my new friend, and received in return a crown. And this being my last disposition of money not my own, I think it a fit season to record that from that day to this I have been enabled by God's help and man's kindness to keep the eighth commandment; and earning honestly what I have spent have been poor, but never a beggar.

In gratitude for which, and both those good men being now dead, I here conjoin the names of Mr. Timothy Brome, of Fleet Street, newsmonger and author, whose sharp tongue and morose manners cloaked a hundred benefactions; and of Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my honoured patron, who never gave but his smile doubled the gift which his humanity dictated.

The reader will believe that punctually on the morrow I went with joy and thankfulness to my new master, whom I found up three pairs of stairs in a room barely furnished, but heaped in every part with piles of manuscripts and dogs-eared books, and all so covered with dust that type and script were alike illegible. He wore a dingy morning-gown and had laid aside his wig; but the air of importance with which he nodded to me and a sort of dignity that clothed him as he walked to and fro on the ink-stained floor mightily impressed me, and drove me to wonder what sort of trade was carried on here. He continued, for some minutes after I entered, to declaim one fine sentence after another, rolling the long words over his tongue with a great appearance of enjoyment: a process which he only interrupted to point me to a stool and desk, and cry with averted eyes-lest he should cut the thread of his thoughts-"Write!"

On my hesitating, "Write!" he repeated, in the tone of one commanding a thousand troopers. And then he spoke thus-and as he spoke I wrote: -

"This day His Gracious Majesty, whose health appears to be completely restored, went, accompanied by the French Ambassador and a brilliant company, to take the air in the Mall. Despatches from Holland say that the Duke of Monmouth has arrived at the Hague and has been well received. Letters from the West say that the city of Bristol having a well-founded confidence in the Royal Clemency has hastened to lay its Charter at His Majesty's feet. The 30th of the month began the Sessions at the Old Bailey, and held the first and second of this; where seventeen persons received sentence of death, nine to be burned in the hand, seven to be transported, and eleven ordered to be whipped. Yesterday, or this day, a commission was sealed appointing the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys-"

CHAPTER XI

In a word, my master was a writer of Newsletters, and in that capacity possessed of so excellent a style and so great a connection in the Western Counties that, as he was wont to boast, there was hardly a squire or rector from Bristol to Dawlish that did not owe what he knew of His Majesty's gout, or Mr. Dryden's last play, to his weekly epistles. The Popish Plot which had cost the lives of Lord Stafford and so many of his persuasion, no less than the Rye House Plot, which by placing the Whigs at the mercy of the Government had at once afforded those their revenge, and illustrated the ups and downs of court life, had given so sharp a stimulus to the appetite for news, that of late he had found himself unable to cope with it. In this unsettled condition, and meditating changes which should belittle Sir Roger and The London Mercury, and oust print from the field, he fell in with me; and where another man would have selected a bachelor whose cassock and scarf might commend him at Wills' or Childs', his eccentric kindness snatched me from the gutter, and set me on a tall stool, there to write all day for the delectation of country houses and mayors' parlours.

I remember that at first it seemed to me so easy a trick (this noting the news of the day in plain round hand) that I wondered they paid him to do it, more than another. But besides that I then had knowledge of one side of the business only, I mean the framing the news, but none of the manner in which it was collected at Garraway's and the Cockpit, the Sessions House, the Mall, and the Gallery at Whitehall. I presently learned that even of the share that fell to my lot I knew only as much as a dog that turns the spit knows of the roasting of meat. For when my employer, finding me docile and industrious-as I know I was, being thankful for such a haven, and crushed in spirit not only by the dangers through which I had passed, but also by my mistress's treachery-when I say, he left me one day to my devices, merely skimming through a copy and leaving me to multiply it, with, for sole guide, the list of places to which the letters were to go, as Bridgewater, Whig; Bath, Tory; Bridport, Tory; Taunton, Whig; Frome, Whig; Lyme, Whig, and so on, I came very far short of success. True, when he returned in the evening I had my packets ready and neatly prepared for the mail, which then ran to the West thrice a week and left next morning; and I had good hopes that he would send them untouched. But great was my dismay when he fell into a rage over the first he picked up, and asked me bluntly if I was quite a fool.

I stammered some answer, and asked in confusion what was the matter.

"Everything," he said. "Here, let me see! Why, you dolt and dunderhead, you have sent letters in identical terms to Frome and Bridport."

"Yes," I said faintly.

"But the one is Whig and the other is Tory!" he cried.

"But the news, sir," I made bold to answer, "is the same."

"Is it?" he cried in fine contempt. "Why you are a natural! I thought you had learned something by this time. Here, where is the Frome letter? '"The London Gazette" announces that His Majesty has been graciously pleased to reward my Lord Rochester's services at the Treasury Board by raising him to the dignity of Lord President of the Council, an elevation which renders necessary his resignation of his seat at the Board.' Tut-tut! That is the Court tone. Here, out with it, and write: -

"'The Earl of Rochester's removal from the Treasury Board to the Presidency of the Council, which is announced in "The Gazette," is very well understood. His lordship made what resistance he could, but the facts Were plain, and the King could do no otherwise. Rumour has it that the sum lost to the country in the manner already hinted exceeds fifty thousand guineas.'

"There, what comes next? 'Letters from the Continent have it that strong recommendations have been made to the Court at the Hague to dismiss the D- of M-, and it is confidently expected that the next packet will bring the news of his departure.' Pooh, out with it. Write this: -

"'The D- of M- is still at the Hague, where he is being sumptuously entertained. Much is made of His Majesty's anger, but the D- is well supplied with money from an unknown source, which some take to be significant. At a ball given by their Highnesses on the eleventh, he danced an English country dance with the Lady Mary, wherein his grace and skill won all hearts.'

"That is better. And now what next? 'This day an Ambassador from the King of Siam in the East Indies waited on His Majesty with great marks of respect.' Umph! Well leave it, but add, 'Ah, si sic propius.'

"And then, 'There are rumours that His Majesty intends to call a parliament shortly, in which plan he is hindered only by the state of his gout.'

"Out with that and write this: – 'In the city is much murmuring that a parliament is not called. Though His Majesty has not played lately at tennis, he showed himself yesterday in Hyde Park, so that some who maintain his health to be the cause deserve no weight. In his company were His Highness the Duke of York and the French Ambassador.'

"There, you fool," my master continued, flinging two-thirds of the packets back to me. "You will have to amend these, and another time you will know better."

Which showed me that I had still something to learn; and that as there are tricks in all trades, so Mr. Timothy Brome, the writer, did not enjoy without reason the reputation of the most popular newsvendor in London. But as I addressed myself to the business with zeal, I presently began to acquire a mastery over his methods; and my knowledge of public affairs growing with each day's work, as in such an employment it could not fail to grow, I was able before very long to take the composition of the letters in a great measure off his hands; leaving him free to walk Change Alley and the coffee-houses, where his snuff-coloured suit and snappish wit were as well known as his secret charity was little suspected.

In private, indeed, he was of so honest a disposition, his faults of temper notwithstanding, as to cause me at first some surprise; since I fancied an incompatibility between this and the laxity of his public views; which he carried so far that he was not only a political skeptic himself, but held all others to be the same; maintaining that the best public men were only of this or that colour because it suited their pockets or ambitions, and that, of all, he respected most Lord Halifax and his party, who at least trimmed openly, and never cried loudly for either extreme.

But as his actions in other matters bettered his professions, so I presently found that in this too he belied himself; which was made clear when he came to the test. For the death of King Charles the Second occurring soon after I came to serve him-so soon that I still winced when my former life was probed, and hated a woman and trembled at sight of a constable, and wondered if this were really I, who went to and fro daily from my garret in Bride Lane to St. Dunstan's-the death, I say, of the King occurring just at that time, we were speedily overwhelmed by a rush of events so momentous and following so quickly one on another that they threw the old see-saw of Court and Country off its balance; and upset with it the minds of many who had hitherto clung firmly to a party. For the King had been scarcely laid very quietly-some thought, meanly-in his grave and the Duke of York been proclaimed by the title of James the Second, when those who had fled the country in the last reign, either after the Rye House Plot, or later with Monmouth, returned and kindled two great insurrections, that of the Marquess of Argyle in the north, and that of the Duke of Monmouth in the west. Occurring almost simultaneously, it was wonderful to see how, in spite of the cry of a Popish King, and the Protestant religion in danger, which the rebels everywhere raised, these outbreaks rallied all prudent folk to the King; whose popularity never, before or afterwards, stood so high as on the day of the battle of Sedgmoor.

And doubtless he might have retained the confidence and affection of his people, and by these means attained to the utmost of his legitimate wishes-I mean the relief of the papists from penal clauses if not from civil disabilities-had he gone about it discreetly, and with the moderation which so delicate a matter required. But in the outset the severity with which the western rebels were punished, both by the military after the rout and by the Lord Chief Justice at the Assizes which followed, gave check to his popularity; and thenceforth for three years all went one way. The Test Acts, abrogated at the first in a case here and there (yet ominously in such, in particular, as favoured the admission of papists to the army), were presently nullified, with other acts of a like character, by a general declaration of indulgence; and that, to the disgust of the clergy, to be read in the churches. To this main assault on the passive obedience which the Church had so often preached, and to which it still fondly clung, were added innumerable meaner attacks perhaps more humiliating; as the expulsion of the Protestant Fellows from Magdalene College, the conversion of University College into a Romish Seminary, and the dismissal of my Lords Rochester and Clarendon, the King's brothers-in-law, from all their places because-as was everywhere rumoured-they would not resign the creed in which they had been born.

It were long to recount all the other errors into which the King fell; but I may lay stress on the dissolution of a most loyal Parliament, because it would not legalise his measures; on the open and shameless attempt to pack its successor, on the corruption of the Judges, and on the trial of the seven bishops for sedition. It were shorter and equally to the point to say that an administration conducted for three years on these lines, sufficed not only to sap the patient loyalty of the nation, but to rouse from its rest the political conscience of my employer. Mr. Brome, after much muttering and many snappish corrections and alterations, all tending (as I soon perceived) to Whiggery, resigned, on the day the Fellows of Magdalene were expelled, his time-honoured system of duplicity; and thenceforward, until the end, issued the same letter to Tory squire and Whig borough alike.

What was more remarkable, and, had the King known, it might have served his obstinate Majesty for a warning, we lost no patrons by the step; but rather increased our readers; the whole nation by this time being of one mind. When the end came therefore, and in answer to the famous Invitation signed by the Seven, the Deliverer, as the Whig party still love to call him, landed at Torbay, and with scarcely a blow, and no life lost, entered London, there were few among those who ruffled it in his train, as he rode to St. James's, who had done as much to bring him to his throne as my master; though he, good honest man, wore neither spurs nor sword, and stood humbly a-foot in the mouth of an alley to see the show go by.

CHAPTER XII

I suppose that there never was an abrupt change in the government of a nation more quietly, successfully, and bloodlessly carried through than our great Revolution. But it is the way of the pendulum to swing back; and it was not long before those who had been most deeply concerned in the event began to reflect and compare, nor, as they had before them the example of the Civil War and the subsequent restoration besides, and were persons bred for the most part in an atmosphere of Divine Right and passive obedience (whether they had imbibed those doctrines or not), was it wonderful if a proportion of them began to repent at leisure what they had done in haste. The late King's harsh and implacable temper, and the severity with which he had suppressed one rising, were not calculated to reassure men when they began to doubt. The possibility of his return hung like a thick cloud over the more timid; while the favours which the new King showered on his Dutchmen, the degradation of the coin and of trade, and the many disasters that attended the first years of the new government were sufficient to shake the confidence and chill the hearts even of the stoutest and most patriotic.

So bad was the aspect of things that it was rumoured that King William would abdicate; and this aggravating the general uncertainty, many in high places spent their days in a dreadful looking forward to judgment; nor ever, I believe, slept without dreaming of Tower Hill, the axe, and the sawdust. The result that was natural followed. While many hastened to make a secret peace with St. Germain's, others, either as a matter of conscience or because they felt that they had offended too deeply, remained constant; but perceiving treachery in the air, and being in daily fear of invasion, breathed nothing but threats and slaughter against the seceders. This begot a period of plots and counter-plots, of perjury and intrigue, of denunciations and accusations real and feigned, such as I believe no other country has ever known; the Jacobites considering a restoration certain, and the time only doubtful; while the Whigs in their hearts were inclined to agree with them and feared the worst.

During seven such years I lived and worked with Mr. Brome; who, partly, I think, because he had come late to his political bearings, and partly because the Tories and Jacobites had a newswriter in the notorious Mr. Dyer-to whose letters Mr. Dryden, it was said, would sometimes contribute-remained steadfast in his Whig opinions; and did no little in the country parts to lessen the stir which the Nonjurors' complaints created. I saw much of him and little of others; and being honestly busy and honourably employed-not that my style made any noise in the coffee-houses, which was scarcely to be expected, since it passed for Mr. Brome's-I began to regard my life before I came to London as an ugly dream. Yet it had left me with two proclivities which are not common at the age which I had then reached; the one a love of solitude and a retired life, which, a matter of necessity at first, grew by-and-by into a habit; the other an averseness for women that amounted almost to a fear of them. Mr. Brome, who was a confirmed bachelor, did nothing to alter my views on either point, or to reconcile me to the world; and as my life was passed between my attic in Bride Lane and his apartment in Fleet Street, where he had a tolerable library, few were better acquainted with public affairs or had less experience of private, than I; or knew more intimately the order of the signs and the aspect of the houses between the Fleet Prison and St. Dunstan's Church.

Partly out of fear, and partly out of a desire to be done with my former life, I made myself known to no one in Hertfordshire; but, some five years after my arrival in London, having a sudden craving to see my mother, I walked down one Sunday to Epping. There making cautious enquiries of the Bishop Stortford carrier, I heard of her death, and on the return journey burst once into a great fit of weeping at the thought of some kind word or other she had spoken to me on a remembered occasion. But with this tribute to nature I dismissed my family, and even that good friend from my mind; going back to my lodging with a contentment which this glimpse of my former life wondrously augmented.

Of Mr. D- or of the wicked woman who had deceived me I was not likely to hear; but there was one, and he the only stranger who ante Londinium had shown me kindness, whose name my pen was frequently called on to transcribe, and whose fame was even in those days in all men's mouths. With a thrill of pleasure I heard that my Lord Shrewsbury had been one of the seven who signed the famous invitation: then that the King had named him one of the two Secretaries of State; and again after two years, during which his doings filled more and more of the public ear-so that he stood for the government-that he had suddenly and mysteriously resigned all his offices and retired into the country. Later still, in the same year, in the sad days which followed the defeat of Beachy Head, when a French fleet sailed the Channel, and in the King's absence, the most confident quailed, I heard that he had ridden post to Kensington to place his sword and purse at the Queen's feet; and, later still, 1694, when three years of silence had obscured his memory, I heard with pleasure, and the world with surprise, that he had accepted his old office, and stood higher than ever in the King's favour.

The next year Queen Mary died. This, as it left only the King's life between the Jacobites and a Restoration, increased as well their activity as the precautions of the government; whose most difficult task lay in sifting the wheat from the chaff and discerning between the fictions of a crowd of false witnesses (who thronged the Secretary's office and lived by this new trade) and the genuine disclosures of their own spies and informers. In the precarious position in which the government stood, ministers dared neglect nothing, nor even stand on scruples. In moments of alarm, therefore, it was no uncommon thing to close the gates and prosecute a house to house search for Jacobites; the most notorious being seized and the addresses of the less dangerous taken. One of these searches which surprised the city in the month of December, '95, had for me results so important that I may make it the beginning of a consecutive narrative.

I happened to be sitting in my attic that evening over a little coal fire, putting into shape some Whig reflections on the Coinage Bill; our newsletter tending more and more to take the form of a pamphlet. A frugal supper, long postponed, stood at my elbow, and the first I knew of the search that was afoot, a man without warning opened my door, which was on the latch, and thrust in his head.

Naturally I rose in alarm; and we stared at one another by the light of my one candle. Only the intruder's head and shoulders were in the room, but I could see that he wore bands and a cassock, and a great bird's nest wig, which overhung a beak-like nose and bright eyes.

"Sir," said he after a moment's pause, during which the eyes leaving me glittered to every part of the room, "I see you are alone, and have a very handy curtain there."

I gasped, but to so strange an exordium had nothing to say. The stranger nodded at that as if satisfied, and slowly edging his body into the room, disclosed to my sight the tallest and most uncouth figure imaginable. A long face ending in a tapering chin added much to the grotesque ugliness of his aspect; in spite of which his features wore a smirk of importance, and though he breathed quickly, like a man pressed and in haste, it was impossible not to see that he was master of himself.

And of me; for when I went to ask his meaning, he shot out his great under-lip at me, and showed me the long barrel of a horse pistol that he carried under his cassock. I recoiled.

"Good sir," he said, with an ugly grin, "'tis an argument I thought would have weight with you. To be short, I have to ask your hospitality. There is a search for Jacobites; at any moment the messengers may be here. I live opposite to you and am a Nonjuring clergyman liable to suspicion; you are a friend to Mr. Timothy Brome, who is known to stand well with the government. I propose therefore to hide behind the curtain of your bed. Your room will not be searched, nor shall I be found if you play your part. If you fail to play it-then I shall be taken; but you, my dear friend, will not see it."

He said the last words with another of his hideous grins, and tapped the barrel of his pistol with so much meaning that I felt the blood leave my cheeks. He took this for a proof of his prowess; and nodding, as well content, he stood a moment in the middle of the floor, and listened with the tail of his eye on me.

He had no reason to watch me, however, for I was unarmed and cowed; nor had we stood many seconds before a noise of voices and weapons with the trampling of feet broke out on the stairs, and at once confirmed his story and proved the urgency of his need. Apparently he was aware of the course things would take and that the constables and messengers would first search the lower floors; for instead of betaking himself forthwith to his place of hiding-as seemed natural-he looked cunningly round the chamber, and bade me sit down to my papers. "Do you say at once that you are Mr. Brome's writer," he continued with an oath, "and mark me well, my man. Betray me by a word or sign, and I strew your brains on the floor!"

After that threat, and though he went then, and hid his hateful face-which already filled me with fear and repugnance beyond words-behind the curtain, where between bed and wall, there was a slender space, I had much ado to keep my seat and my self-control. In the silence which filled the room I could hear his breathing; and I felt sure that the searchers must hear it also when they entered. Assured that the Sancrofts and Kens, and the honest but misguided folk who followed them, did not carry pistols, I gave no credit to his statement that he was a Nonjuring parson; but deemed him some desperate highwayman or plotter, whose presence in my room, should he be discovered and should I by good luck escape his malice, would land me at the best in Bridewell or the Marshalsea. By-and-by the candle-wick grew long, and terrified at the prospect of being left in the dark with him, I went to snuff it. With a savage word he whispered me to let it be; after which I had no choice but to sit in fear and semi-darkness, listening to the banging of doors below, and the alternate rising and falling of voices, as the search party entered or issued from the successive rooms.

In my chamber with its four whitewashed walls and few sticks of furniture there was only one place where a man could stand and be unseen; and that was behind the curtain. There, I thought, the most heedless messenger must search; and as I listened to the steps ascending the last flight I was in an agony. I foresaw the moment when the constable would carelessly and perfunctorily draw the curtain-and then the flash, the report, the cry, the mad struggle up and down the room, which would follow.

So strong was this impression, that though I had been waiting minutes when the summons came and a hand struck my door, I could not at once find voice to speak. The latch was up, and the door half open when I cried "Enter!" and rose.

In the doorway appeared three or four faces, a couple of lanthorns, held high, and a gleam of pike-heads. "Richard Price, servant to Mr. Brome, the newswriter," cried one of the visitors, reading in a sonorous voice from a paper.

"Well affected," answered a second-evidently the person in command. "Brome is a good man. I know him. No one hidden here?"