Volume I Part 13 (1/2)
Meanwhile the hapless queen--queen of the greatest realm in Europe, arrayed in disguised habiliments, stood trembling under the shelter of the ruined walls of a church, s.h.i.+vering in the blast, and dripping with rain, wistfully listening to every sound, and piteously raising her eyes to heaven. Oh, what a fearful lesson was here! a few days ago she might have proclaimed to all the world--”This is my throne, let kings come bow to it!” And this awful night she might envy the poorest cottier in her dominions. However, after long suspense, suffering, and delay, the count returned, having procured a carriage; and he lost no time in placing the trembling queen and s.h.i.+vering infant in the vehicle.
Without any accident whatever the royal fugitives reached Gravesend in perfect safety. Here, trembling with fear, and nearly overpowered by sorrow, the queen alighted on the quay, where the boat, (which was an open one,) belonging to the brig destined for Calais, awaited their coming. The count, without a moment's delay, placed the queen and prince in the boat, and flinging around them the boatman's cloak, he sat down by them, and bade him to row on. He told the boatman that the persons he bore away were his wife and child; and thus no suspicions were awakened in the mind of the boatman of the great personages he thus bore off amid the shades of night.
”Sail on, sail on, thou fearless bark, Wherever blows the welcome wind; It cannot lead to scenes more dark, More sad, than those we leave behind!”
By the morning tide they had reached, without molestation, a small brig destined for France. To the captain the count also pretended that the queen and prince were his own wife and child; he bargained for the voyage, and the contract was agreed to. But the vessel was no sooner under weigh, when how great their surprise, and how proportionate must have been their apprehensions and alarm, while they beheld the whole of the English fleet stationed at the mouth of the Thames, to examine all vessels, and prevent their escape. But fortunately the vessel was so small that, being unsuspected, she was permitted with impunity to pa.s.s the admiral of the fleet, in no wise suspecting that her hull contained such very distinguished personages on board, so no examination took place. The vessel sailed on unmolested; and that very night the Count de Lauzun had the happiness of safely landing the royal sufferers on the pier of Calais. From thence they proceeded to Versailles, where her Majesty and infant prince were received by Louis the Fourteenth with great marks of affection and of the highest respect, which afforded some consolation to the queen under her melancholy reverse of fortune.
Meanwhile King James suffered great and intense anxiety concerning the fate of his unhappy queen and infant prince.
His Majesty now fully determined to follow the queen, and waited but one day to execute his design.[32] The following night, in a plain suit, and a bob-wig, he took water at Whitehall,[33] accompanied only by Sir Edward Hales, Mr. Sheldon, and Abbadie, a Frenchman, and a page of the back-stairs, without acquainting any other person with his intentions.
All writs sent out for the electing of parliament he ordered to be burnt; and when he took water he threw the great seal of England into the Thames, (which was some time afterwards taken up by a fisherman in his net,) that nothing might be legally done in his absence. ”If,”
continued Rapin, ”this may not be called a real desertion of his kingdom, it will be difficult to give a name to such proceedings!”[34]
[32] Rapin's History of England, vol. II. p. 781.
[33] Ibid. p. 782.
[34] Ibid. p. 783.
However, the king did not succeed in this attempt to escape, inasmuch as he was arrested at Feversham, and abused and insulted by the rabble; he lost a number of valuables, and gave up to the mob about between three and four hundred pounds in specie. Here he was protected by the Dutch guards of the Prince of Orange, and chose to retire to Rochester; where, in the s.p.a.ce of about ten days from the time he had attempted his first escape, he now resolved upon trying a second. About three o'clock in a dark winter's morning he privately withdrew, taking with him only the Duke of Berwick, (his natural son,) Mr. Sheldon, and Abbadie, the page; and went on horseback to a place near the river, where he embarked in a small frigate, which landed him safely at Ambleteuse, in France; from whence he repaired to the court of Louis the Fourteenth, where with much satisfaction he rejoined his queen and infant prince. ”This abdication,”
emphatically observes Rapin, ”paved the prince's way to the throne!”[35]
[35] Rapin's History of England, vol. II. p. 783.
Upon the departure of King James from the sh.o.r.es of England, an _interregnum_ occurred of such a nature as was. .h.i.therto unknown in England. It was not caused by the death, but by the flight of the sovereign. Hence this incongruity took place, that the nation was without a king, nay, even without the representative of one, that would take the charge of the government! Yet still, strange to say, there was a king!--albeit a fugitive; who, although he had fled, and abandoned his throne, yet still pretended to retain his rights!
How short and limited is the narrow s.p.a.ce between popular adoration and popular disgrace! To-day a king, an emperor, a demi-G.o.d--To-morrow a fugitive, an outcast from his realm, unregarded and forgotten! for ever blotted from the page of kings, his fate or banishment or the scaffold!
Who can then rely upon the popular breath, wayward, fickle, and uncertain as the wave or wind? Oh! then, let the true patriot, _if_ such is to be found upon earth, think on this; and, divested and purified from the dross of poor mortality, reflect upon all this; aye, and let him then, firmly armed in integrity, despise equally alike public censure or public praise!
From this melancholy digression upon fallen greatness on English ground, we shall reconduct the reader once more to the sh.o.r.es of Erin, and again return to the family of Tyrconnel in the succeeding chapter.
CHAPTER XI.
----------O, behold How pomp is followed! mine will now be your's; And should we s.h.i.+ft estates, your's would be mine!
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
We now bring back the reader to the realm of Ireland, which was doomed shortly to be the scene of anarchy and civil war, where disastrous tidings of awful import, posting incessantly onward, hourly arrived, rapidly heralded by rumour's thousand tongues, to afflict the loyal and disconcert the brave.
An official despatch soon followed, which communicated and confirmed to Tyrconnel the sad and dismal event of the flight of his royal master to France, which truly gave him deep and sincere affliction. This voluntary abdication of his throne upon the part of King James II. gave Tyrconnel sorrowful concern for the present, and a sad and mournful foreboding of the future! ”Oh, had my royal master only stood his ground,” said the duke, ”and have firmly held his throne, who would, who could have dared to hurl him from it? No; even with all his political miscalculations, nevertheless his enemies could not have succeeded. The Prince of Orange would still have found it a difficult, perhaps an impossible task, to have ousted his truly royal, accomplished, and brave father-in-law, from his lawful throne; for brave and valiant was the king, and I doubt not but still brave he is. And there was a time, be it not forgotten, while he was Duke of York and Lord High Admiral of England, when n.o.bly he fought beneath the British banner, and gloriously led on his fleet to victory!”
The d.u.c.h.ess of Tyrconnel, whose powerful mind and firm nerves were ”albeit unused to the melting mood,” yet when her Grace heard the mournful recital of the sufferings and voluntary exile of her afflicted queen; she then indeed was deeply affected, and
”Dropt tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum.”
The d.u.c.h.ess was a wife--moreover a mother, and she knew how to pity and compa.s.sionate the unfortunate, from the palace of kings down to the cottage of the poor. And equally distressed was our lovely heroine, whose generous bosom ever beat, and felt, and a.s.sisted the afflicted.
Some months had now elapsed, when one morning, while the duke was at breakfast with his family, a despatch for his Grace, and in the hand-writing of King James, arrived. The despatch intimated that His Majesty was then on his way to Ireland, and summoning the immediate attendance of Tyrconnel at Kinsale, where the king proposed to land. The despatch was brought over in a fast-sailing French corvette, called ”_l'Eclair_,” which had been detached from the French fleet which was to escort King James to Kinsale, expressly upon this mission. And his Grace, in obedience to the royal mandate, instantly set off by land for the town of Kinsale.