Robin Tremayne Part 48

"No, Madam," said Mr Ferris (who did not know that she was a Papist).

"They have all been burned or beheaded."

"Upon my word, but I am coming to think so!" cried she. "Shame upon every coward of them! Were there not enough to fill the first breach with a wall of men's bodies, rather than lose the fairest jewel of the Crown? Beshrew the recreants! but I had never come away from that breach alive! I would have died with Calais!"

"I am sorry you were not there, Madam," said he, "for the sake of Calais. For your own sake, 'tis well."

"I am sorry all over," answered she. "The Queen taketh it most heavily of all. She said to her ladies that when she should be dead, they should find 'Calais' graved upon her heart."

Hitherto the storm of persecution had not come inside the little walled circle of friends dear to the hearts of the Averys. It had raged around them, had broken fiercely upon men whom they reverenced and loved as afar off. But now it was to come within. One whose eyes had looked into theirs, whose lips had smiled on them, whose voice had bidden G.o.d bless them,--ay, upon whose knee the children had sat, and chattered to him in childish wise,--was summoned from the midst of them, to go up in the chariot of fire into the presence of the Lord.

Austin and Mr Underhill came together, both very pensive, on the night of the 6th of May.

"There is ill news with you, I fear," said John.

"There is ill news, and that right heavy," answered Mr Underhill.

"Roger Holland is taken."

"Where and how?" they asked.

"With six other, in a quiet close near Saint John's Wood, where they were met to read G.o.d's Word and pray together, this last May Day; and carried afore my Lord of London. He had better have tarried at his father's in Lancashire, whence he was but newly come."

"And Bessy?" said Isoult, compa.s.sionately.

"Roger left her and the child in Lancashire," said he; "where, if she will take mine avis.e.m.e.nt, she will remain."

Mr Holland was examined before Bishop Bonner, Lord Strange being present, with others of his Lancashire kinsmen. Austin reported that "he confessed Christ right n.o.bly, and kept up the Bishop in a corner by his wise and gentle learning--such as I had not thought had been in him:" and at last, after much discussion, the Bishop lost his patience (a commodity of which he never carried much to market), called Mr Holland a blasphemous heretic, and sentenced him to be burned.

Mr Holland replied, as the gaoler was about to remove him,--"My Lord, I beseech you, suffer me to speak two words."

"Nay!" cried he, "I will not hear thee: have him away!"

Lord Strange interfered, and begged that his cousin might be heard.

"Speak?" growled Bonner, "what hast thou to say?"

Mr Holland answered, "Even now I told you that your authority was from G.o.d, and by His sufferance; and now I tell you, G.o.d hath heard the prayer of His servants, which hath been poured forth with tears for His afflicted saints, whom you daily persecute, as now you do us. But this I dare be bold in G.o.d to say (by whose Spirit I am moved), that G.o.d will shorten your hand of cruelty, that for a time you shall not molest His Church. And this you shall in a short time well perceive, my dear brethren, to be most true. For after this day, in this place, there shall not be any by him put to the trial of fire and f.a.ggot."

The Bishop replied that "he should yet live to burn, yea, and he would burn, for all this prattling:" and so went his way, and Mr Holland was taken back to Newgate.

But the Bishop, like many another, laid his plans without reference to Him who sat above the water-floods. Roger Holland had an unction from the Holy One, and his prescience was true. The commandment was gone forth from the presence of the King--"Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further." After that once, by Bonner, and in Smithfield, there was never another "trial of fire and f.a.ggot."

Yet for that once, the Devil and Edmund Bonner had their way. Waiting for Roger Holland were the white robe and the martyr's palm; and with his name the muster-roll of soldiers slain in the great battle of England was closed in Heaven.

It is not entirely unedifying to note _why_ this man was martyred. So long as he pursued the profligate course on which he had embarked in early youth, Rome had not a word to say to him. Sin does not come under her cognisance, except to be m.u.f.fled up in absolution, and hidden from the eyes of the sinner--but not from the eyes of G.o.d. But the moment that Holland's course was altered, and he began to try so to walk as to please G.o.d, that moment he came under the ban of her who dares to stand up in the face of the world, and with unblushing effrontery to call herself the Church of G.o.d.

Very late on the 28th of June, Augustine Bernher brought the news of the last martyrdom. His face told, before he spoke, that he came to say something terrible. The first thoughts of those at the Lamb, as usual, flew to Robin and Mr Rose; but Austin quickly turned them into a different channel.

"I am come," he said, "from Roger Holland's martyrdom."

"Eh, Austin! is it over with Mr Holland?" cried Isoult.

"It is over with him, and he shall suffer no more pains of death for ever. He and the other six taken with him were burned to-day in Smithfield."

"And how went it with him?"

"When he was come to the stake," answered Austin, "he embraced it, and looking up unto Heaven, he saith:--'Lord, I most humbly thank Thy Majesty that Thou hast called me from the state of death unto the light of Thy heavenly Word, and now unto the fellowship of Thy saints, that I may sing and say, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord G.o.d of Hosts. And, Lord, into Thy hands I commit my spirit. Lord, bless these Thy people, and save them from idolatry.' And so, looking up unto Heaven, and praising G.o.d,--G.o.d stooped and took him."

"Alas, poor Bessy!" said Isoult, after a while.

"I must write unto her," said Austin. "I trust she is yet safe in Lancashire."

Isoult did not forget her before G.o.d that night. It was easy for the ma.s.s of the Gospellers to think of Mr Holland as he now was, at Home, in the safe rest of the Father's house, and to praise G.o.d for him. But his Bessy was not likely to do so as yet. When the night is very dark, we cannot always lift our heads to see how fair the light shines on the further side of the Jordan; and to us who are in the thickness of the darkness, it is at times no lighter for that knowledge. And the night was very dark now.

And yet some tell us--ay, some of us, Englishmen whose fathers pa.s.sed through these dreadful scenes, leaving to their sons such awful memories,--they tell us it were better to leave those memories sleeping.

"Why rake up such disagreeable reminiscences? They belong to past ages. Rome is different now, just as society is different. Is this charity, peace, forbearance?"

I reply, it _is_ charity, and of the highest type. When a man sees his friend in the grasp of a tiger, he does not drop his levelled gun on the plea of charity _to the tiger_. And Rome is not different. She only looks so, because the wisdom of our fathers circ.u.mscribed her opportunities, just as the tiger looks harmless in a cage in the Zoological Gardens. Shall we therefore open the cage door?

And we, who are bent on pulling down as fast as we can those bars which our fathers forged in tears and blood,--let us be a little more consistent. Let us take away the locks from our doors, because for ten years there has been no attempt at burglary in that street. Let us pull down the hurdles which surround our sheep-pens, because for some time no lamb has been lost from that particular flock. We are not such fools as to do these things. Men's bodies, and still more men's property, are safely protected among us. But how is it about men's souls? How will it be when the rulers of England shall stand at the Bar whence there is no appeal, and hear from the great Judge the awful requirement,--"Where is thy flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?" Shall we hear about "want of power"--which generally means want of will--about "the voice of the nation," and "the spirit of the age," and "respect to the opinions of others," and the numberless little fictions with which men wile their souls to sleep, here and now? Will the Bishop who swore before G.o.d to "drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to His Word," offer to the Judge then those convenient excuses with which he salves over his conscience now? Will the statesman who followed the mult.i.tude to do evil, instead of leading them to do good, urge in His presence who seeth in secret the plat.i.tudes about majorities and the national will which he finds satisfactory now? There is a very solemn pa.s.sage in G.o.d's neglected and despised Word, concerning him who knew his Lord's will, and did it not.

Another Easter pa.s.sed away, and left them safe. The summer was a season, not so much of suffering, as of fear and waiting. They were tarrying the Lord's leisure. A few months later, Isoult Avery wrote in her diary--

"My birthday, and I am now forty-five years of age. It is not unmeet that I should tarry a while at the milestones, and look back on the way by which the Lord hath led me. This last year hath been very woeful and weary. What shall the next be?

"O Lord, Thou knowest. All the way is of Thine ordering, all guided by wisdom that never erreth, by love that never waxeth faint. I will trust Thy wisdom to devise, and Thy love to effect. Father in Heaven! let me not faint under Thy correction, neither let me despise Thy chastening.

Be merciful unto me, O Lord, be merciful unto me! And Thou (not I) knowest best how and when I need Thy mercy. Hear (and if need be, forgive) the cry which echoes in mine heart for ever--'If it be possible,' give us back our darling!"

The great Emperor Charles the Fifth died on the 21st of September in this year, in the monastery of San Yuste, whither he went to "make his salvation" in his old age.

"I trust," said Isoult, when she heard it, "that he repented him, among other sins, of his ill-using of his mother. There shall doubtless be many ma.s.ses for him here."

"_Il faut beaucoup prier_!" said Marguerite Rose, drily.

The end was at hand now. The eventful November of 1558 had set in.

Philippa told Isoult that the Queen suffered fearfully. She sat many days on the floor of her chamber, her knees higher than her head. The pain in her head was dreadful; and people began to say that she, who was originally accounted merciful, had been merciful all through, for that others had given orders for the burnings, and she, even in sceptring the Acts, had scarcely known what she did. The last time that she went to the House of Lords, she was too ill to walk, but was borne by her gentlemen in waiting to the throne. James Ba.s.set told his sister, that "he counted all burned or beheaded in the Queen's reign had not suffered so much, body nor soul, as she."

James Ba.s.set, who had been ailing for some time, grew worse on the 16th, when the Queen and the Cardinal were both so ill, that it was thought doubtful which of them would die the sooner. All matters of state, and many of business, were held as it were in the air, waiting the Queen's death. Many of the Council had already set forth for Hatfield. "That should not like me," said Isoult, "were I either the dying sister or the living." And she who lay in that palace of White Hall must have known (if she were not beyond knowing anything) that round her grave would be no mourners--that she had done little to cause England to weep for her, and much to cause rejoicing that she could harm England no more. Did she know that men without were naming the day Hope Wednesday, because every hour they expected news of her end?

"G.o.d save Queen Elizabeth! Long live the Queen! Yea, may the Queen live for ever!"

These were the first sounds which Isoult heard when she was awoke from sleep on the Friday morning. Indeed, there was far too much tumult for sleep. Great crowds of men were pouring through Aldgate; and as she looked from the window she saw men kissing, and embracing, and weeping, and laughing, and shouting, all at once, and all together. And but one was the burden of all--"The Queen is dead! The Lady Elizabeth is Queen!

G.o.d save Queen Elizabeth!"

"Hurrah!" said Mr Ferris, an hour later, flinging up his cap to the ceiling as he came in. "Hurrah! now is come the Golden Age again! We may breathe now. Long life to the Queen of the Gospellers!"

"I thought she were rather the Queen of the Lutherans," suggested John.

"All one," answered he. "Lutherans burn not Gospellers, nor clap them into prison neither. What have Gospellers to fear from Queen Anne's daughter?"