Historical Tales Volume Iv Part 21

The people were now permitted to applaud to their hearts' desire, as no further pretence of a secret existed. Glad acclamations attended the progress of the royal cortege. The people shouted with joy, and all, high and low, sang a song composed for the occasion by Lope de Vega, the famous dramatist, which told how Charles had come, under the guidance of love, to the Spanish sky to see his star Maria.

"Carlos Estuardo soy Que, siendo amor mi guia, Al cielo d'Espana voy Por ver mi estrella Maria."

The palace was decorated with all its ancient splendor, the streets everywhere showed signs of the public joy, and, as a special mark of royal clemency, all prisoners, except those held for heinous crimes, were set at liberty, among them numerous English galley-slaves, who had been captured in pirate vessels preying upon Spanish commerce.

Yet all this merrymaking and clemency, and all the negotiations which proceeded in the precincts of the palace, did not expedite the question at issue. Charles had no thought of becoming a Catholic. Philip had little thought of permitting a marriage under any other conditions. The infanta hated the idea of the sacrifice, as she considered it. The authorities at Rome refused the dispensation. The wheels of the whole business seemed firmly blocked.

Meanwhile, Charles had seen the infanta again, somewhat more closely than in a pa.s.sing glance from a carriage, and though no words had pa.s.sed between them, her charms of face strongly attracted his susceptible heart. He was convinced that he deeply loved her, and he ardently pressed for a closer interview. This Spanish etiquette hindered, and it was not until April 7, Easter Day, that a personal interview was granted the ardent lover. On that day the king, accompanied by a train of grandees, led the English prince to the apartments of the queen, who sat in state, with the infanta by her side.

Greeting the queen with proper respect, Charles turned to address the lady of his love. A few ceremonial words had been set down for him to utter, but his English heart broke the bonds of Spanish etiquette, and, forgetting everything but his pa.s.sion, he began to address the princess in ardent words of his own choice. He had not gone far before there was a sensation. The persons present began to whisper. The queen looked with angry eyes on the presuming lover. The infanta was evidently annoyed.

Charles hesitated and stopped short. Something seemed to have gone wrong. The infanta answered his eager words with a few cold, common-place sentences; a sense of constraint and uneasiness appeared to haunt the apartment; the interview was at an end. English ideas of love-making had proved much too unconventional for a Spanish court.

From that day forward the affair dragged on with infinite deliberation, the pa.s.sion of the prince growing stronger, the aversion of the infanta seemingly increasing, the purpose of the Spanish court to mould the ardent lover to its own ends appearing more decided.

While Charles showed his native disposition by prevarication, Buckingham showed his by an impatience that soon led to anger and insolence. The wearisome slowness of the negotiations ill suited his hasty and arbitrary temper, he quarrelled with members of the State Council, and, in an interview between the prince and the friars, he grew so incensed at the demands made that, in disregard of all the decencies of etiquette, he sprang from his seat, expressed his contempt for the ecclesiastics by insulting gestures, and ended by flinging his hat on the ground and stamping on it. That conference came to a sudden end.

As the stay of the prince in Madrid now seemed likely to be protracted, attendants were sent him from England that he might keep up, some show of state. But the Spanish court did not want them, and contrived to make their stay so unpleasant and their accommodations so poor, that Charles soon packed the most of them off home again.

"I am glad to get away," said one of these, James Eliot by name, to the prince; "and hope that your Highness will soon leave this pestiferous Spain. It is a dangerous place to alter a man and turn him. I myself in a short time have perceived my own weakness, and am almost turned."

"What motive had you?" asked Charles. "What have you seen that should turn you?"

"Marry," replied Eliot, "when I was in England, I turned the whole Bible over to find Purgatory, and because I could not find it there I believed there was none. But now that I have come to Spain, I have found it here, and that your Highness is in it; whence that you may be released, we, your Highness's servants, who are going to Paradise, will offer unto G.o.d our utmost devotions."

A purgatory it was,--a purgatory lightened for Charles by love, he playing the role a.s.signed by Dante to Paolo, though the infanta was little inclined to imitate Francesca da Rimini. Buckingham fumed and fretted, was insolent to the Spanish ministers, and sought as earnestly to get Charles out of Madrid as he had done to get him there, and less successfully. But the love-stricken prince had become impracticable. His fancy deepened as the days pa.s.sed by. Such was the ardor of his pa.s.sion, that on one day in May he broke headlong through the rigid wall of Spanish etiquette, by leaping into the garden in which the lady of his love was walking, and addressing her in words of pa.s.sion. The startled girl shrieked and fled, and Charles was with difficulty hindered from following her.

Only one end could come of all this. Spain and the pope had the game in their own hands. Charles had fairly given himself over to them, and his ardent pa.s.sion for the lady weakened all his powers of resistance. King James was a slave to his son, and incapable of refusing him anything.

The end of it all was that the English king agreed that all persecution of Catholics in England should come to an end, without a thought as to what the parliament might say to this hasty promise, and Charles signed papers a.s.senting to all the Spanish demands, excepting that he should himself become a Catholic.

The year wore wearily on till August was reached. England and her king were by this time wildly anxious that the prince should return. Yet he hung on with the pitiful indecision that marked his whole life, and it is not unlikely that the incident which induced him to leave Spain at last was a wager with Bristol, who offered to risk a ring worth one thousand pounds that the prince would spend his Christmas in Madrid.

It was at length decided that he should return, the 2d of September being the day fixed upon for his departure. He and the king enjoyed a last hunt together, lunched under the shadows of the trees, and bade each other a seemingly loving farewell. Buckingham's good-by was of a different character. It took the shape of a violent quarrel with Olivares, the Spanish minister of state. And home again set out the brace of knights-errant, not now in the simple fashion of Tom and John Smith, but with much of the processional display of a royal cortege.

Then it was a gay ride of two ardent youths across France and Spain, one filled with thoughts of love, the other with the spirit of adventure.

Now it was a stately, almost a regal, movement, with anger as its source, disappointment as its companion. Charles had fairly sold himself to Philip, and yet was returning home without his bride. Buckingham, the n.o.bler nature of the two, had by his petulance and arrogance kept himself in hot water with the Spanish court. Altogether, the adventure had not been a success.

The bride was to follow the prince to England in the spring. But the farther he got from Madrid the less Charles felt that he wanted her. His love, which had grown as he came, diminished as he went. It had then spread over his fancy like leaves on a tree in spring; now it fell from him like leaves from an October tree. It had been largely made up, at the best, of fancy and vanity, and blown to a white heat by the obstacles which had been thrown in his way. It cooled with every mile that took him from Madrid.

To the port of Santander moved the princely train. As it entered that town, the bells were rung and cannon fired in welcoming peals. A fleet lay there, sent to convey him home, one of the ships having a gorgeously-decorated cabin for the infanta,--who was not there to occupy it.

Late in the day as it was, Charles was so eager to leave the detested soil of Spain, that he put off in a boat after nightfall for the fleet.

It was a movement not without its peril. The wind blew, the tide was strong, the rowers proved helpless against its force, and the boat with its precious freight would have been carried out to sea had not one of the sailors managed to seize a rope that hung by the side of a ship which they were being rapidly swept past. In a few minutes more the English prince was on an English deck.

For some days the wind kept the fleet at Santander. All was cordiality and festivity between English and Spaniards. Charles concealed his change of heart. Buckingham repressed his insolence. On the 18th of September the fleet weighed anchor and left the coast of Spain. On the 5th of October Prince Charles landed at Portsmouth, his romantic escapade happily at an end.

He hurried to London with all speed. But rapidly as he went, the news of his coming had spread before him. He came without a Spanish bride.

The people, who despised the whole business and feared its results, were wild with delight. When Charles landed from the barge in which he had crossed the Thames, he found the streets thronged with applauding people, he heard the bells on every side merrily ringing, he heard the enthusiastic people shouting, "Long live the Prince of Wales!" All London was wild with delight. Their wandering prince had been lost and was found again.

The day was turned into a holiday. Tables loaded with food and wine were placed in the streets by wealthy citizens, that all who wished might partake. Prisoners for debt were set at liberty, their debts being paid by persons unknown to them. A cart-load of felons on its way to the gallows at Tyburn was turned back, it happening to cross the prince's path, and its inmates gained an unlooked-for respite. When night fell the town blazed out in illumination, candles being set in every window, while bonfires blazed in the streets. In the short distance between St.

Paul's and London Bridge flamed more than a hundred piles. Carts laden with wood were seized by the populace, the horses taken out and the torch applied, cart and load together adding their tribute of flame.

Never had so sudden and spontaneous an ebullition of joy broken out in London streets. The return of the prince was a strikingly different affair from that mad ride in disguise a few months before, which spread suspicion at every step, and filled England with rage when the story became known.

We have told the story of the prince's adventure; a few words will tell the end of his love-affair. As for Buckingham, he had left England as a marquis, he came back with the t.i.tle of duke. King James had thus rewarded him for abetting the folly of his son. The Spanish marriage never took place. Charles's love had been lost in his journey home. He brought scarce a shred of it back to London. The temper of the English people in regard to the concessions to the Catholics was too outspokenly hostile to be trifled with. Obstacles arose in the way of the marriage.

It was postponed. Difficulties appeared on both sides of the water.

Before the year ended all hopes of it were over, and the negotiations at an end. Prince Charles finally took for wife that Princess Henrietta Maria of France whom he and Buckingham had first seen dancing in a royal masque, during their holiday visit in disguise to Paris. The romance of his life was over. The reality was soon to begin.

_THE TAKING OF PONTEFRACT CASTLE._

On the top of a lofty hill, with a broad outlook over the counties of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire, stood Pontefract Castle, a strong work belonging to the English crown, but now in the hands of Cromwell's men, and garrisoned by soldiers of the Parliamentary army.

The war, indeed, was at an end, King Charles in prison, and Cromwell lord of the realm, so that further resistance seemed useless.

But now came a rising in Scotland in favor of the king, and many of the royalists took heart again, hoping that, while Cromwell was busy with the Scotch, there would be risings elsewhere. In their view the war was once more afoot, and it would be a notable deed to take Pontefract Castle from its Puritan garrison and hold it for the king. Such were the inciting causes to the events of which we have now to speak.

There was a Colonel Morrice, who, as a very young man, had been an officer in the king's army. He afterwards joined the army of the Parliament, where he made friends and did some bold service. Later on, the strict discipline of Cromwell's army offended this versatile gentleman, and he threw up his commission and retired to his estates, where he enjoyed life with much of the Cavalier freedom.

Among his most intimate friends was the Parliamentary governor of Pontefract Castle, who enjoyed his society so greatly that he would often have him at the castle for a week at a time, they sleeping together like brothers. The confiding governor had no suspicion of the treasonable disposition of his bed-fellow, and, though warned against him, would not listen to complaint.

Morrice was familiar with the project to surprise the fortress, at the head of which was Sir Marmaduke Langdale, an old officer of the king. To one of the conspirators he said,--

"Do not trouble yourself about this matter. I will surprise the castle for you, whenever you think the time ripe for it."

This gentleman thereupon advised the conspirators to wait, and to trust him to find means to enter the stronghold. As they had much confidence in him, they agreed to his request, without questioning him too closely for the grounds of his a.s.surance. Meanwhile, Morrice went to work.

"I should counsel you to take great care that you have none but faithful men in the garrison," he said to the governor. "I have reason to suspect that there are men in this neighborhood who have designs upon the castle; among them some of your frequent visitors."

He gave him a list of names, some of them really conspirators, others sound friends of the Parliament.

"You need hardly be troubled about these fellows, however," he said. "I have a friend in their counsel, and am sure to be kept posted as to their plans. And for that matter I can, in short notice, bring you forty or fifty safe men to strengthen your garrison, should occasion arise."

He made himself also familiar with the soldiers of the garrison, playing and drinking with them; and when sleeping there would often rise at night and visit the guards, sometimes inducing the governor, by misrepresentations, to dismiss a faithful man, and replace him by one in his own confidence.

So the affair went on, Morrice laying his plans with much skill and caution. As it proved, however, the conspirators became impatient to execute the affair before it was fully ripe. Scotland was in arms; there were alarms elsewhere in the kingdom; Cromwell was likely to have enough to occupy him; delay seemed needless. They told the gentleman who had asked them to wait that he must act at once. He in his turn advised Morrice, who lost no time in completing his plans.

On a certain night fixed by him the surprise-party were to be ready with ladders, which they must erect in two places against the wall. Morrice would see that safe sentinels were posted at these points. At a signal agreed upon they were to mount the ladders and break into the castle.

The night came. Morrice was in the castle, where he shared the governor's bed. At the hour arranged he rose and sought the walls. He was just in time to prevent the failure of the enterprise. Unknown to him, one of the sentinels had been changed. Those without gave the signal. One of the sentinels answered it. The surprise-party ran forward with both ladders.

Morrice, a moment afterwards, heard a cry of alarm from the other sentinel, and hasting forward found him running back to call the guard.

He looked at him. It was the wrong man! There had been some mistake.

"What is amiss?" he asked.

"There are men under the wall," replied the soldier. "Some villainy is afoot."

"Oh, come, that cannot be."