Part 15 (1/2)

[6] This notion was held, and a curious book written on it by the successor of Dr. Jeremy Taylor in the see of Dromore.

[7] In particular, see Luke, chap. vi. ver. 29, 30.

CHAP. XVI.

The Commonwealth is sick of its own choice.

Shakspeare.

The aspect of Ribblesdale and the adjoining country, was completely changed, during the five years absence of the Beaumont family. The fields and villages, notwithstanding the two last years of comparative repose, bore mournful marks of the ravages of civil war; trade was still stopped and agriculture suspended. The people, disappointed in their hopes of freedom and prosperity by their new masters, longed for the restoration of their King, whose saint-like demeanour, during his long captivity, contradicted the calumnies which his enemies had propagated, and shewed him in his true light, alike conspicuous for his ability, his fort.i.tude, and his misfortunes. The reign of freedom had ended in military despotism; equality had created a tyrant; zeal had introduced fanaticism and hypocrisy, and discontent was every where so ripe, that the presence of a victorious army, and the vigilance of almost as numerous a host of spies and informers, could not prevent attempts being made (in almost every part of the kingdom) to liberate the King, and restore the old order of things. But where to find funds and leaders, was the chief difficulty. The heads of most n.o.ble families, distinguished for loyalty, were either slain, or exiled; their estates confiscated or wasted by the pressure of enormous fines, their residences burnt or pillaged, and their farms laid waste. The few who remained in England, watched and betrayed by their own servants, knew not how to act, or whom to trust, for every tie of obligation, as well as all sense of subordination and respect for superiors, were entirely annihilated.

In pa.s.sing Lathom-house, Dr. Beaumont pondered on that celebrated scene of determined female heroism. Though the n.o.ble pile bore many marks of the arduous conflict it had sustained, its walls (like the family to which it belonged) still displayed the unyielding superiority of aristocratic loyalty. But Waverly Hall was a complete ruin. A few of the meaner offices, and a part of the walls, marked where the residence stood, which once sheltered crafty selfishness. The park afforded a temporary asylum to a gang of gipseys, whose cattle grazed unmolested on the unclaimed demesne, once guarded even from the intrusion of admiring curiosity, by the secluding jealousy of a cold-hearted worldling, whose pride counteracted his ostentation, and whose timidity was even greater than his self-love.

Dr. Beaumont was himself the herald of his own return. His humble equipage attracted no attention. His first care being to lodge his family, he sought the house of Dame Humphreys. The streets of the village were silent and deserted. Neither the loom, the flail, nor the anvil were heard; not a child was to be seen at play; every thing looked as if this was a portion of that city where progressive action is suspended, and the sun hangs level over the ocean without power of sinking. Dr. Beaumont, however, found Dame Humphreys actively employed; and a superabundance of good cheer shewed that she was intent on purposes of hospitality. She welcomed the exiled Rector and his family with cordial transport; and a.s.sured him, though she had heard as many fine men since he left them as there were stars in the sky, she had never sat under any one by whom she had been so much edified.

The Beaumonts had many questions to ask, and no one was better endowed with the quality of free communication than this kind-hearted dame. She accounted for the silence of the village and her own extraordinary bustle, by stating that it was exercise-day; a meeting of ministers had been at the G.o.dly work for eight hours; and she doubted not, after so long buffeting Satan, they would come away main hungry. ”My poor Gaffer,” said she, ”always brings all he can to our house. They tell him a blessing comes upon all those who furnish a chamber for wayfaring prophets, and set on pottage for them; but for my part I see it not, and begin to wonder whether these are prophets or no. As for our Gaffer, he has left off drinking and quarrelling, to be sure, which Your Reverence had used to rate him for at times; but then he did look after the farm and the cattle, and saw things went right. But now he says, let the morrow take care for itself; so we have nothing but preaching, and praying, and pecking at other people, and telling of experiences and stumbling-blocks, and abusing those who don't hold all that we do; and all this while the ricks grow less and less every year. And then when any thing goes wrong in the house, they pop it into a sermon, not as Your Reverence did when you preached about the ten commandments, but a preachment of an hour about such frivolous things as set husbands a-scolding their wives for spoiling their dinner, or not mending their clothes; and our poor Gaffer is grown so cast down ever since Priggins told him he thought he was a reprobate, that he says it is a crying sin to look happy; so he keeps praying on till we have no time to practise.”

Isabel inquired how the children were able to command attention to such long services; and Dame Humphreys owned the change in this respect was wonderful. ”To be sure,” said she, ”they do sometimes fall sick; but there is a vast number of thriving little saints growing up among us, who can find out a legal preacher in a moment, and tell you if he is a fine man before he is out of breath the first time. There's my grand-daughter (Nancy we used to call her, but they have since given her some hard name I never can recollect), she is only nine years old, and is such a gifted creature that she has chosen her religion, and says she will be a Brownist, for there is no other way to be saved. But her sister Hephzebah has not had her call yet, and says till she has she is to give no account for what she does, and afterwards sin will not lie at her door. Your Reverence shakes your head; but you will now find a vast deal of learning in the parish, and hard words, and every body able to talk with you; but I say again, that what with spending their time in idleness, and slandering each other, and sighing and groaning they don't know for what, and making feasts for ministers, and night meetings, and praying against the King, and cursing the bishops, and pulling down the church--give me the old times again, and the old way of going to Heaven.”

Dr. Beaumont sighed at this strongly coloured, but artless picture of fanatical licence, and changed the subject by inquiring the fate of the Waverly family. Their history was indeed tragical. ”Poor Sir William,”

Dame Humphreys said, ”had turned, and trimmed, and cut in, and cut out, till n.o.body knew whether he was of any side at all, till, just as Prince Rupert raised the siege of Lathom House, when, thinking the King was sure to conquer, mid wanting to be made a Lord, he joined the Prince with a small troop of horse, intending (his neighbours thought) to gallop away before the battle began, for Sir William hated the sight of blood. But so it was; his time was come, and then there is no escaping, for Sir William was shot in his own quarters in a night-skirmish--and who did they think by?” Here she turned pale with horror, and the natural simplicity of her language seemed elevated by the emotions arising from the dreadful tale she had to relate.--”By his own son. O!

Your Honour, it is too true. A kinsman of mine saw the deed done, and the ground has looked blasted ever since. But young Sir Harry, as now ought to be, little thought it was his father when he called him a drunken old cavalier; for the poor old gentleman trembled so, he could not cry for quarter till his son had given him his death's wound; and he saw by the flash of the pistol who it was, and called to mind how he had made him serve in the Parliament army against his will. So he just groaned out, ”G.o.d is just, Harry,” and died. It was the most piteous sight; for the poor youth fell on the dead body, and groaned, and tore his hair, and beat himself in such a manner, till his soldiers bore him away; and what has become of him since that day no soul knows, for he has never come to claim the estate, nor to look after any thing; so Parliament seized it all, because Sir William died at last a Loyalist.

But n.o.body will buy it, for they cannot make a t.i.tle, as Sir Harry has not forfeited, and may be alive. Beside, people said the house was haunted, so it has never been tenanted; and whoever wants to build, fetches it away piece-meal; and the gypsies camp in the Park when they come from the neighbouring fairs, and all goes to ruin like the time-serving family who lived there.”

The awful reflections on retributive justice which the fate of this unprincipled man excited, were interrupted by the return of Humphreys, who ushered in some of his divines. The change which his wife described was visible in his horror-stricken countenance. He had been formerly a man of a sordid worldly disposition and hard unyielding temper, on whom the mild Christian persuasions of Dr. Beaumont had occasionally made good impressions, though these were as often blunted by the power of long indulged habits. But when such a man was roused from his stupor by the cauteries of Calvinism, despair was more likely to take possession of his mind than the pious energy and humble hopes which follow true repentance. Priggins indeed boasted of Humphreys as a convert, on the ground of his being restrained from the public commission of some faults in which he had formerly indulged; but if one evil spirit had been dispossessed, seven more wicked had taken up their abode in his heart.

He was terrified, not awakened; plunged in an abyss of desperation and misanthropy, not excited to a life acceptable to G.o.d or useful to man.

The sight of Dr. Beaumont recalled to his mind many acts of fraud and injustice which he had formerly committed against him; but the long exercises, as they were called, to which he had been listening, had not ill.u.s.trated the universal promise of mercy to penitent sinners; they held out no encouragement to co-operate with the divine call to newness of life which the gospel gives to all mankind; they gave no explanation of reformation and rest.i.tution as necessary parts of repentance. Much to their own ease, and with daring disregard of all the plain and practical parts of Scripture, the preachers successively employed themselves in expounding what they called dark texts, on which they built their favourite system; impious in theory and destructive in practice. They spoke of election and reprobation as positive, irreversible decrees of G.o.d, no ways resulting from the conduct of man, whom they stated to be a mere inefficient vessel filled with grace and destined to glory, or heaped full of pollution and devoted to eternal destruction, according to the arbitrary will of the Framer, without any liberty of choice in himself, or any power of expediting his own faith or final justification. They spoke of the saving call as discernibly supernatural, preceded by bodily as well as mental torture, and instantaneously followed by a perceptible a.s.surance that they could never more sin, that the righteousness of their Redeemer was imputed to them, and that, as his merits were all-sufficient, nothing was required of them but the supineness of pa.s.sive faith. This routine of doctrines, varied according to the different tempers and phraseology of the preachers, and rendered yet more obscure by bold metaphors and strained allusions, was what poor Humphreys incessantly listened to, fancying he was thus taking care of his soul, and vainly hoping he would gather some instructions which would a.s.suage his secret horrors. He was miserable when not employed in this manner; yet, as no start of enthusiasm ever told him that the saving call had taken place even in the congregations which he mistook for the courts of the Lord, he rather hoped for, than found relief from his tortures. Pale and haggard in his looks, morose and sullen in his manners, restless and dissatisfied, he revived the disputations of the conventicle at the table, calling on Dr. Beaumont to tell what he thought of some points of doctrine on which his ministers could not agree. The Doctor attempted to speak, but his voice was soon drowned by the Stentorian lungs and tautological verbiage of his opponent. Only one sentence that he uttered was distinctly heard, which was a quotation from the pious Hammond, that ”exemplary virtue must restore the church.” A general cry was raised against this sentiment.

One repeated a text from St. Paul, supposed to a.s.sert the inefficacy of works; another observed, it was presumptuous to dictate to Providence.

Some called him a formalist; others a Pharisee; while a third party, yet more metaphysical, denied that men, strictly speaking, had any power to act at all. Priggins at last rose, and, with many plausible pretences of charity, proposed that they should all pray for their offending brother, which was done in the anathematizing style which, in those days, was called intercession: ”Lord, open the eyes of this reprobate sinner.

Pluck him as a burning brand out of the furnace of thy wrath. Make him see that he is a vessel filled with spiritual pride, hypocrisy, and barren legality. Punish him for the saving of his soul till he repents of his unG.o.dly enmity to us thy chosen favourites, whom thou hast raised to the work of conversion, and penned in thy fold to eternal life,” &c.

Dr. Beaumont and his family withdrew, in compa.s.sionate silence, from this profane perversion of devotion, which discovered the same spirit of intolerance and persecution that characterized the darkest periods of Popery. A project had been formed by Isabel, to which the rest of the family readily a.s.sented. This was to take up their abode for the present in the untenanted ruins of Waverly-hall, and endeavour to prevent its further dilapidation. With the a.s.sistance of Williams, she re-inclosed the garden, and put a few of the outer tenements into that state of comfort which cleanliness supplies. Dame Humphreys conscientiously restored all the moveables she held in trust to furnish their apartments; and, as Dr. Beaumont brought with him a protection from the government, neither Morgan nor Priggins could prevent him from residing in the parish as long as he conducted himself in an inoffensive manner.

As to Davis, since his induction into the Rectory, he had gradually carnalized (to use one of his own favourite expressions); and, being grown sleek and contented, he preferred reposing in his arm-chair to storming in the pulpit, congratulating himself with having reformed the church, which he effected by removing every ornament as superst.i.tious, stripping public wors.h.i.+p of every decency, publicly burning the Common Prayer books, and denying the sacraments to all who were not Covenanters. Having done all this, he thought it time to rest from his labours, and devoted his days to those gross indulgences of appet.i.te which are not unfrequently the solaces of men who consider the enjoyments of mental taste as criminal, permitting his neglected flock to be collected by Priggins, or any other hungry itinerant who was training himself as a theological tyro, previous to his being settled in an inc.u.mbency.

Among these tents of Kedar, Dr. Beaumont fixed his habitation with a soul thirsting for peace, and a mind disposed to subdue his opponents by those invincible weapons, a meek and quiet spirit, and a holy, inoffensive, and useful life. His narrow finances, derived chiefly from a precarious fund, allowed not the practice of that liberality which is the surest means of attracting a crowd of panegyrists; and his scanty means were still further taxed by what he esteemed the duty of sending a.s.sistance to many gallant royalists at this time in arms for the imprisoned King; in particular to those, who, with the brave, repentant Morrice, surprised Pontefract Castle, and made from thence those courageous sallies and predatory incursions which gave employment to the Parliamentary troops in that quarter, and prevented them from uniting to overwhelm the succours which Sir Marmaduke Langdale was conducting to join Duke Hamilton and the Scotch Loyalists. But, however limited its means, a good heart will ever discover some way of shewing its benevolence. Charity was now a scanty rill, not an ample stream; but its source was fed by a regular supply, and where it ran it fertilized.

Constantia roused her mind from the apathy of grief to obey and support her father. She found she could instruct the ignorant; and though no longer able to furnish materials for clothing the naked, she could cut out garments and sew them for those who were too ill-informed to be expert in female housewifery. Isabel and she gathered herbs; Mrs.

Mellicent superintended their distillation, and again consulted ”The Family Physician,” in forming ointments and compounding cordials; Dr.

Beaumont went from house to house, trying to conciliate his paris.h.i.+oners, and to recall their wanderings, in nothing changed but the paleness of his countenance and the homeliness of his attire, still reproving with mild authority, and instructing with affectionate solicitude; while his appearance spoke a heart yearning over the sorrows and sins of the kingdom, and habits necessarily restricted to that bare sufficiency which just supports life. The manners of the young ladies were equally mild, uncomplaining, and respectable; the only difference was, that Constantia was pensive and dejected, Isabel active and cheerful in adversity. The former seemed to move in a joyless routine of duty; but Isabel was so animated that only the most minute observer could tell that she was not perfectly happy, and hence she gained the character of having an unfeeling heart.

The affectionate respect which the villagers had long felt for their old pastor soon began to revive. Man naturally looks on the unfortunate with pity. The Beaumonts no longer excited envy, which (such is our p.r.o.neness to offend) is often the subst.i.tute for grat.i.tude. Dr. Beaumont was now their superior only in goodness and wisdom; a superiority more easily endured than that created by affluence or a larger share of temporal indulgencies. Many too began to be weary of the tautology and confusion of their arbitrary services, which, depending upon the humour, or (as they proudly called it) the inspiration of their minister, often wearied instead of gratifying the curiosity of the hearers. They recollected the Liturgy of the Church of England with somewhat of the feeling we entertain for a dead friend, remembering all his excellences, forgetting his imperfections, and lamenting that in his lifetime we were often inclined captiously to condemn his whole conduct. By returning to that church from which they had been led, by what they now saw was the spirit of delusion, they exercised the freedom of choice which was so dear to their proud feelings; and it soon became the request of many of the paris.h.i.+oners, that Dr. Beaumont would read to them the church service, and expound the Scripture in the manner prescribed by her articles. To read the Liturgy was now become a statutable offence; but Dr. Beaumont adopted, as an expedient, what was then resorted to by many divines[1]

well versed in difficult cases of conscience--changing the expressions, but preserving a meaning as closely allied to the old wors.h.i.+p as the times would admit. Yet even this transposed and disguised form was too opposite to the doctrines, and, (may it not be said?) too superior to the productions of the new teachers to be permitted with impunity. Hence Dr. Beaumont found it necessary, for his own safety, to collect his little flock on a Sunday evening, in an unfrequented valley surrounded by hills, on one of which a centinel was placed to prevent their being surprised in this interdicted wors.h.i.+p; and thus this church, literally exiled and driven into the wilderness, performed the Christian sacrifice of prayer and praise.

The storm of war, however, soon interrupted their devotion; and, rolling fearfully from the North, came close to the dwelling where the pious pastor endeavoured to drink the waters of affliction in privacy. The Duke of Hamilton had now collected an army, from whose efforts to wipe off the shame of their countrymen the Covenanters, in delivering up the King to his merciless enemies, a glorious result was expected. With this hope they entered England by way of Carlisle; and, preceded by the English forces, led by Sir Marmaduke Langdale, they marched into Lancas.h.i.+re full of zeal and confidence, but negligent of that discipline, and inattentive to those military expedients by which alone (considering the enemy with whom they had to contend) the least shadow of success could be acquired. In vigilance, activity, and prompt decision, Cromwell was the very prototype of that man who has changed the aspect of the present times. Various armies were collected with almost magical celerity, and provided with every necessary for their own comfort and the annoyance of the foe; and scarcely had the Loyalists in the west, north, and east brought their raw recruits into the field, before a well-appointed body of veterans was arrayed against them, ready to cut off their resources, and give them battle. Cromwell himself took the command of the northern division; and without delaying his grand design, by stopping to subdue Pontefract Castle, as his more timid counsellors advised, he marched immediately to attack the Scotch army, though with inferior numbers, and put them to the rout, after having first defeated their English allies. Both the generals were taken prisoners. Sir Marmaduke afterwards escaped; but the Duke suffered on the scaffold shortly after the Royal Martyr whom, with late repentance, he vainly attempted to save.

The scene of this contest was so near Ribblesdale that the engagement was plainly seen from the hills I have just spoken of, where Dr.