The Children of Westminster Abbey Part 11

who came down from London for the day in their coaches to visit the little army, and returned to town again, "to provide what was still wanting and resolved to be with him soon again."

[Ill.u.s.tration: LORD FRANCIS VILLIERS.]

Is it not a pitiable story? Want of plan, of management, of forethought, of seriousness. The whole thing arranged like a play upon the stage. The fair ladies, and the gallant cavaliers in their curly wigs and deep Vand.y.k.e collars, driving down on the hot summer day to visit their friends, and laugh and talk over the great victory that without doubt they would win--the victory that would restore the king to his throne, and drive the Parliamentarians into the sea. And beautiful young Francis Villiers, in the heyday of his youth and strength--his debts all paid two days before[87]--longing for a chance to strike a blow for the king who had been a father to him.

How the grim puritan soldiers must have laughed at such a set of amateurs in the art of War. They were not far-off--those grave fighting men.

The chief officer with Lord Holland's band was one Dalbeer, a Dutch malcontent. He seems to have been as incompetent as the rest of the little army; for he kept no watch at night round the camp.

Early on the morning of July 7, the Parliamentary Colonel Rich, "eminent for praying but of no fame for fighting," surprised the town with a troop of horse. There was a general scrimmage. No one was ready to receive them. Lord Holland and a number of his followers made the best of their way out of the town, never offering to charge the enemy. Most of the footsoldiers and some of the officers "made shift to conceal themselves until they found means to retire to their close mansions in London."[88]

But Francis Villiers alone seems to have made a stand. At the head of his troop, his horse having been killed under him, he

got to an oak-tree in the highway about two miles from Kingston, where he stood with his back against it, defending himself, scorning to ask quarter, and they barbarously refusing to give it; till with nine wounds in his beautiful face and body, he was slain.[89]

So died Francis Villiers, in the twentieth year of his age--"This n.o.ble, valiant and beautiful youth," says Fairfax. "A youth of rare beauty and comeliness," says Clarendon. And so ended the unhappy fight of Kingston. Dalbeer defended himself till he was killed. Lord Holland with a hundred horse, wandered away and was caught at an inn at St.

Neot's in Hertfordshire and thence sent prisoner to Windsor, of which place he had but lately been constable. The Duke of Buckingham reached London, and hid until he could escape to Holland "where the prince was; who received him with great grace and kindness."[90] And in six months the king for whom young Francis had died, was led out to execution at Whitehall.

Lord Francis' body was brought by water from Kingston up the Thames to York House in the Strand; and was then embalmed and laid in his father's vault in Henry the Seventh's Chapel.

The late duke's magnificent monument, and the position in which it was placed, gave rise to much comment at the time. No monument had been erected to King James. And when Charles the First sent for Lord Weston "to contrive the work of the tomb" for his favorite, Lord Weston, putting into words the opinion of the greater part of England "told his Majesty that not only our nation, but others, would talk of it, if he should make the duke a tomb, and not his father."[91]

The tomb, however, was made. Henry the Seventh's Chapel for the first time was opened to a person not of royal lineage. And by the irony of fate, this burial of a royal favorite paved the way for the interments of many others in the next thirty years who were not of royal blood, and were bitterly opposed to kings and all that pertained to them, save power.

Two years after Francis Villiers was killed at Kingston, Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, was buried in a vault at the extreme east of Henry the Seventh's Chapel. Then came Blake, the first of England's naval heroes--Colonel Mackworth, one of Cromwell's Council--Sir William Constable, one of the regicides--Worsley, Oliver's "great and rising favorite." And Bradshaw, Lord President of the High Court of Justice, was laid "in a superb tomb among the kings."

Ten years after Francis Villiers' death, Cromwell's favorite daughter--the sweet Elizabeth Claypole--was buried in a vault close to the entrance of the Villiers Chapel. She was the "Betty" of Cromwell's earlier letters, "who belongs to the sect of the seekers rather than the finders. Happy are they who find--most happy are they who seek."[92]

The great Protector never held up his head after the death of this lovable woman; and within a month of his daughter's funeral "his most serene and renowned highness, Oliver, Lord Protector, was taken to his rest"[93] in the same Chapel in which we have spent so much time of late.

If we needed any fresh proof that the great Abbey of Westminster is a sign and symbol of reconciliation, here is one. Within its walls Kings and Covenanters, Puritan women, and gallant young Cavalier n.o.bles who fought against those women's husbands and fathers, lie side by side. The feuds, the hatreds, the heart-burnings, the differences, political and religious, are all forgotten; and nothing is left but the common brotherhood of man with man, in the still peaceful atmosphere of the Abbey Church of St. Peter.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Stanley. "Memorials of Westminster." p. 237.

[81] Clarendon. Vol. I. p. 16.

[82] "Short History of English People." Green, p. 488.

[83] "Life of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham." Bryan Fairfax.

[84] Fairfax.

[85] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 102.

[86] Ibid. Vol. XI. p. 102.

[87] When he left London he ordered his steward, Mr. John May, to bring him a list of his debts, and he so charged his estate with them, that the Parliament, who seized on the estate, payed the debt.--FAIRFAX.

[88] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 104.

[89] Fairfax.

[90] Clarendon. Vol. XI. p. 105.

[91] "Court and Times of Charles the First." Vol. I. p. 391.

[92] Carlyle's Cromwell. Vol. I. p. 295.

[93] Commonwealth Mercury. Sep. 2-9, 1658.

CHAPTER XI.

ANNE, AND HENRY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

In 1637 a little daughter was born to King Charles the First, at St.

James's Palace. Archbishop Laud christened her privately twelve days later; and she was named after her aunt, Anne of Austria, Queen of France.

There were great rejoicings at the baby's birth. The University of Cambridge alone produced more than one hundred and thirty odes, in which she and her sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, were compared to Juno, Minerva, Venus, the Fates, the Graces, the Elder Muses, and many other cla.s.sic celebrities. In the face of all these protestations of loyal affection no one would imagine that within six years Princess Anne's father would be fighting with his own subjects for his throne and his liberty, and that two of his children would be in the hands of his enemies.

But little Anne was spared these sad experiences. Very soon after her birth she was a.s.signed her place in the royal nursery at Richmond, with her regular suite of attendants, ten in number. From her earliest infancy she was extremely delicate. "A constant feverish cough showed a tendency to disease of the lungs;" and before she was four years old she died of consumption. The short account of her death is most touching:

Being minded by those about her to call upon G.o.d even when the pangs of death were upon her; "I am not able," saith she, "to say my long prayer" (meaning the Lord's Prayer), "but I will say my short one: _Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, lest I sleep the sleep of death._" This done the little lamb gave up the ghost.[94]

She was buried in the tomb of her great-grandmother, the beautiful Mary, Queen of Scots, in the South Aisle of Henry the Seventh's Chapel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Effigies of the Lady Anna, who was borne ye 17th of March 1636, buried ye 30th of ye same month in the yeare of our Lord G.o.d--1637]

The curious and very rare engraving, which we are fortunately able to reproduce, was published a few months after her death. The little creature, in a close-fitting skull-cap covering her head and fastened under her chin, stands grasping a rose in her little hand, with a thoughtful expression on her baby face. Based on the spelling of the name of the little princess we find the following quaint verse:

Anna is like a circle's endless frame, For read it forward, backward, 'tis the same.

Eternity is circular and round, And Anna hath eternal glory found.[95]

In the same year, 1640, that little Anna found "eternal glory," her brother Henry was born at Oatlands Park in Surrey.

There is a strong resemblance between this young prince, and his uncle Henry, Prince of Wales, with whom we are so well acquainted. Both were grave and studious beyond their years. Both were diligent and active in whatever work came in their way to do. Both were strong Protestants.

Both cared for the society and friendship of older and wiser men, rather than that of the gay, frivolous young courtiers of their own age. In face and form they must have been somewhat alike; but the circ.u.mstances of their lives were different.

Nothing could outwardly have been more happy and successful than the life of Henry, Prince of Wales, the son of a poor Scotch king, raised suddenly to the position of heir to the most prosperous kingdom in Europe. Henry, Duke of Gloucester, on the contrary, was destined to take his share from his earliest childhood in the disasters of his family.

Before he was two years old his troubles began. While his father, as an old royalist writer expresses it, "was hunted from place to place like a partridge upon the mountains," his mother was over in Holland, where she gathered together an army with the proceeds of the crown jewels which she sold or p.a.w.ned. She landed in England in 1643, fought several battles on her own account, and joined the king in Warwickshire on July 13, sleeping the night before in Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon, which then belonged to the poet's daughter, Mrs.

Hall.

Henry of Oatlands, as the little Duke of Gloucester was called from his birthplace, was left meanwhile by his parents at St. James's Palace, with his sister Elizabeth. The Parliament on the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, secured complete possession of London, and the two children remained in their hands in a sort of honorable captivity.