Part 12 (1/2)
”Then pray you, let Lysken Barnevelt go!” said Jack soberly. ”I warrant you she'll stand fire, and never so much as ruffle her hair.”
”Well, I heard say Dame Mary Cholmondeley of Vale Royal, that an' the men beat not back the Spaniards, the women should fight them with their bodkins; wherewith Her Highness was so well pleased that she dubbed the dame a knight then and there. My wife saith, an' it come to that, she will be colonel of a company of archers of Lancas.h.i.+re. We will have Mistress Barnevelt a lieutenant in her company.”
”My sister Margaret would make a good lieutenant, my Lord,” suggested Jack. ”We'll send Aunt Rachel to the front, with a major's commission, and Clare shall be her adjutant. As for Blanche, she may stand behind the baggage and screech. She is good for nought else, but she'll do that right well.”
”For shame, lad!” said Sir Thomas, laughing.
”I heard her yesterday, Sir,--the occasion, a spider but half the size of a pin head.”
”What place hast thou for me?” inquired Lady Enville, delicately applying a scented handkerchief to her fastidious hose.
”My dear Madam!” said Jack, bowing low, ”you shall be the trumpeter sent to give challenge unto the Spanish commandant. If he strike not his colours in hot haste upon sight of you, then is he no gentleman.”
Lady Enville sat fanning herself in smiling complacency, No flattery could be too transparent to please her.
”I pray your Lords.h.i.+p, is any news come touching Sir Richard Grenville, and the plantation which he strave to make in the Queen's Highness'
country of Virginia?” asked Sir Thomas.
Barbara listened again with interest. Sir Richard Grenville was a Devons.h.i.+re knight, and a kinsman of Sir Arthur Ba.s.set.
”Ay,--Roanoke, he called it, after the Indian name. Why, it did well but for a time, and then went to wrack. But I do hear that he purposeth for to go forth yet again, trusting this time to speed better.”
”What good in making plantations in Virginia?” demanded Jack, loftily.
”A wild waste, undwelt in save by savages, and many weeks' voyage from this country,--what gentleman would ever go to dwell there?”
”May-be,” said Lord Strange thoughtfully, ”when the husbandmen that shall go first have made it somewhat less rough, gentlemen may be found to go and dwell there.”
”Why, Jack, lad! This country is not all the world,” observed his father.
”'Tis all of it worth anything, Sir,” returned insular Jack.
”Thy broom sweepeth clean, Jack,” responded Lord Strange. ”What, is nought worth in France, nor in Holland,--let be the Emperor's dominions, and Spain, and Italy?”
”They be all foreigners, my Lord. And what better are foreigners than savages? They be all Papists, to boot.”
”Not in Almayne, Jack,--nor in Holland.”
”Well, they speak no English,” said prejudiced Jack.
”That is a woeful lack,” gravely replied Lord Strange. ”Specially when you do consider that English was the tongue that Noah spake afore the flood, and the confusion of tongues at Babel.”
Jack knew just enough to have a dim perception that Lord Strange was laughing at him. He got out of the difficulty by turning the conversation.
”Well, thus much say I: let the King of Spain come when he will, and where, at every point of the coast there shall be an Englishman awaiting--and we will drive him home thrice faster than he came at the first.”
Note 1. He was fined 10,000 pounds for contempt of court. What his real offences were remains doubtful, beyond the fact that he was a Papist, and had married against the will of the Queen.
Note 2. The state of the gaols at this time, and for long afterwards, until John Howard effected his reformation of them, was simply horrible.
The Black a.s.size at Exeter was by no means the only instance of its land.