THE NEWBURYS: THEIR OPINIONS AND FORTUNES. A GLIMPSE OF BAPTISTS IN ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. CHAPTER XII.-'PRENTICES, TO THE RESCUE! OHO! To the rescue! to the rescue!' shouted a stout youth, waving a thick stick around his head. It was a well-known cry. London citizens had heard it many times, laughed at it, trembled at it, and done their best to stop it. Constables had bullied and beaten, magistrates had fined and imprisoned, but to very little purpose. Where real injustice exists it is of no use punishing those who complain of it, if the evil be not itself removed. Human nature is like the horse in the proverb-one may lead it, but a thousand cannot force it to do what it will not, especially where its intuitive ideas of what is right and just are openly withstood or secretly violated. And so the old cry was raised, and was answered. It sounded along the streets like a bugle blast. It fluttered many a heart with emotion, and moved many a hand with menacing. It entered shopdoors unbidden, and wormed itself into the recesses of dingy workrooms, and down went goods and tools, and out rushed the youths who worked, who waited, who wrote, and who had made themselves a power for the right in times when few recognized such a thing, and master, and customer, were left to think what they might, and do what they pleased. A fellow-apprentice is in danger, and who could resist that? See! there is the familiar short blue coat, and the round hat and closely-cut hair, that had given to Puritanism its memorable nickname, from the Queen Henrietta once seeing one Charles Barnardiston amongst a group of them and exclaiming, 'See, what a handsome young roundhead is there!' A youth is being pilloried in whom they recognize the well-known form and countenance of one who has often been their leader and inspirer. The constable is putting his arms through the holes of the machine, and will soon have him securely fastened. There is no time to be lost. A rush, a swaying to and fro of human forms, a clamour of voices, a rattle of sticks and stones, and the constable is at the mercy of the crowd. The youth is released, and escorted in one direction by a batch of his fellows, whilst the constable is borne in another by a similar extemporaneous guard. He now tells his tale. He had been going on an errand, when he saw some persons taking a woman and her boy to prison for going to a little chapel where a prayer-meeting had been held, and he and others had cried shame upon them for their rough treatment of the poor woman who could not walk fast enough for the officer in charge, and was being pulled along by her gown. 'Leave the poor woman alone!' he cried out at last. Let her walk her own pace. I wonder ye're not ashamed to pull her on like a beast in that way; and call yourself men, and make as though ye'd teach poor people to be better than they are! Ye're a fine set a fellows, all of ye-half a Dutchman would swallow you up before you could cry "Quarter.' Perhaps the young man had insulted them; at any rate they thought so, and very speedily came to that conclusion, for he was soon seized, carried before my Lord Mayor, and condemned to a two hours' residence in the pillory for insolence and obstructing the process of the law. Lathwell met the crowd, escorting the captured youth, as he treaded his way home from the prison. His head was downcast and his heart was heavy: he was murmuring to himself, 'It cannot, cannot be ! 'Why do they make this tumult?' he asked himself as they confronted Ephraim Pardoe's inward struggles. him. Why do they stare at me so? Have I not done what I could? Men are blind, and still prate that they see. Ah, they are mirthful. Youth is strange in its follies, and never will be wise. Let me pass, boys; let me pass.' And he struggled through them as well as he could. 'Lathwell looks glum,' said the youth in the centre to his fellows. "That fellow has been in another escapade,' said Lathwell, turning round when his name was mentioned and recognizing the speaker. I would to God he would not be so phanatick!' And very soon both parties reached their homes; Lathwell the gloomy little house in the narrow lane, and Ephraim Pardoe, for he it was, his master's shop in the centre of a bustling thoroughfare. The young man who had aided Maggie in her first endeavour to see her husband after his imprisonment, had not forgotten the lesson of that morning, save to learn from it a little more discretion. He had passed through a crisis. He had been lost in the dim border-lands where Faith and Doubt meet and overlap. They were great and solemn facts before him, like pillars and pyramids in a glare of sunshine and sand; why should he not face them boldly, read them well? There were strange doings and dealings about him; why should he not test them? There was a King, a Court, and a Church; why should they not be able to tell him why in God's name they claimed to be in existence at all? Above all, there were glimmerings of a great man, who in the dim light and feverish crush of contemporaneous events, still seemed a hero and something more; why should he not revere him, catch the same spirit, and speak swift strong words in the midst of the fooleries of a generation of fripperied fops and flirts ? And if they could give him no answers, yield him no truth, there was this vast universe, this scheme of life we call society, a mocking and terrible Lie! 329 But he meant to be answered, and went the right way to work. He did not lay his questionings, as one would a ghost, with bell, book, and candle. He did not say to himself, or his friends, Save me from my own black and superstitious fancies. Nor did he say, I must mind facts, sequences, resemblances, and leave causes and essences alone,-believe what I find easiest to believe, and vigorously doubt all the rest. No. These are nineteenth century prescriptions for the noblest mental inquietude, and were not to hand for a young religious and political thinker in the seventeenth, especially one who remembered the civil war, the rule of Cromwell, the lawgiver, and was now encompassed with the mad whirls of a fevered and insane licentiousness. He had to meet them, face them, fight them, wrestle and reason with them, until his brain reeled, and all things spun around him in a ring of smoke and flame. He questioned and cross-questioned, until even his master saw matters as he had never seen them before. And yet old beliefs do not crack away from the mind without some sharp internal struggles, and his master was not for some little time inclined to throw off his old principles, and with them a certain peace of mind. The question was not so much, Which is the Truth ? as, What shall I do without what I have so long deemed to be the truth? It was a stage in opinion which too many never pass beyond. The youth saw a present fact, and reasoned out from that; and the man beheld a past faith, and reasoned out from what was once a partial truth but was no longer even that. Both had their bewilderments. To throw off long cherished principles was hard enough; to think what was deemed heresy, or be serious where most men where wanton and light, was harder still; but to dare to act out or live out one's thought was hardest of all. And yet no man can conceal his strongest convictions for long; and there is a marvellous wisdom | when used by a friend, caught in in this subtle law of our conscious-passing a stranger, or tripped from ness. A casual remark in conversa- our own tongue in careless speech. tion will betray them, the absence Had not that same Mr. Lathwell, of remark will hint at them, a man's that he had met the other day, once most automatic actions will whisper casually let drop the name of a man of them, the play of his eyes unveil which was very much like the one them, the tones of his voice telegraph especially referred to in the letter? them, and when he least expects it, He would seek him at any rate and either as being on his guard or off endeavour to solve the riddle, or it, lo, they flash out with swift prove the whole thing a hoax. His brightness, although he may be un- master advised him by all means, conscious of it until he hears the and he went. rattle and rumble that succeed. How, then, was this youth to do, a wayward apprentice, with firm convictions, a tender conscience, a strong sense of duty, and an unregulated will? And how was his master to do, a respectable London mercer, and a member of its famous Corporation ? Do? It will be guessed how the latter must have done to have still retained his scapegrace charge, and we shall see further by and by; for the present, our concern is with his black-haired, dark-eyed, and wiry apprentice. Some few mornings subsequent to the rescue, there came to Ephraim a curious-looking document, covered with strange names and signs, in themselves a history of a long and round-about process of transmission. It made the youth tremble. He looked at it, turned it over again and again, like a dog does a bone, and at last tore it open impetuously, and carried it off to a quiet corner. There was light, it was true, but he read the whole of its contents with out being much wiser. He read it over again, and yet there was much mystery in it. Can dead men indite letters Certainly not, he said to himself, in happy innocence of the pretentious mahogany- inhabiting spirits of a later age. It was a full week's thought for him, and he knew the letter word for word long before he could understand it. At length he saw a chink, and it seemed but a chink, It was merely one of those faint gleams into something we once knew, saw, or heard, which certain words or turns of speech sometimes give us unawares 'Mr. Lathwell-do you remember mentioning to me the name of a man, when you had business at master's once, which sounded something like Newbury?' he asked all in a breath. Zachariah put up his spectacles, looked quietly at him, and then replied. 'No; I don't remember; but I know a man of that name very well. In fact, he's a very intimate friend.' He was going to add more, but the youth put in hastily;—' A friend of yours! Well, I never. Where does he live? Stop-what's his christian name?' Lathwell hesitated. What did he want to know for? Did he know about his failure with the Bond then? And was he worming something out for a covert purpose? O this strange family-why had he known it? Why was his fate bound up with it in this way? Was there no release from an inexorable doom? He writhed again, and he longed to gasp out, O God, have mercy on me!' 'Sit-down-' he managed to say, faintly, after a pause. What do you want with me, Sir?' 'Have'nt I told you? But you look ill, Sir,-shall I call for assistance ?' 'Oh, no,—it's all over now. I'm better, thank you. You call for the conveyance-deed. I'm sorry it's not finished; but my partner, Mr. Newbury, is away, and my hands are very full. Will you call again to-morrow ?' The youth saw more light, yet dimly. He remembered meeting Giles explains the Letter. Mr. Lathwell, as detailed, and noticing his sad looks, and felt sure he was labouring under some heavy affliction or mental hallucination. But-ah, he had almost forgotten it. It was the very name he had heard Lathwell mention! Newbury -that was it. 'You have been ill, Sir. I hope it's nothing serious. But I want to see your partner. When will he be at home?' Lathwell did not like this crossexamination, and yet there was no help for it-the youth would be answered. 'I really don't know. IndeedI'm sorry to say, Sir, that he's now in prison for his religion.' The same, the same, I'm sure of it,' burst out the youth, as a stream of new light began to play over him. Where is he? I want to see him.' Again Lathwell was muffled round with the fog of his own creation. Was he, then, going to liberate him, and do what he himself could not? He dared not ask, and yet he longed to know. He felt lost, crushed, encompassed. Where will it all end? he thought, and then there danced into his heart, with all the wiles of an Herodias begging for the head of an apostle, that old whisper of evil, Curse God, and die!' But he stifled it. Excuse my strangeness, Sir. You revive unpleasant thoughts, and they unnerve me. If you want Mr. Newbury, he's in Newgate, Sir: and as his wife always takes his food every morning about a quarterpast eight, you can easily find her and get in with her. She's a lighthaired, blue-eyed, cheerful-looking person.' It was now the youth's turn to be staggered. Here was indeed wonder upon wonder. Could it be the woman he had helped to get inside the outer-gate that bright September morning? It was, it must be so. What a sweep had he made since he touched that point of his life, and now he was coming fast back to it again. He had often wondered 331 Yes, it was all true. There was Maggie at the door, the same, the very same, only that her countenance was tinged with the holy smiling sadness of a great grief keenly felt, continuously endured, yet graciously subdued. He entered with her, unchallenged. The youth knew the warder, but the warder knew not the youth. How could he? Much thought had made him older, soberer, manlier. The very dint of his stone remained on the door, and yet what changes had not the little scene of which it was a part wrought in the very elements of his being. The youth! Nay the man! It was he who entered. There was mutual questioning and mutual revelation. The puzzling document was made plain, and he who thought he had lost a brother, found a friend, and he who thought he had lost a friend, found a brother. The letter was a very simple affair after all. It was not addressed to Ephraim himself, but to his parents, who were now both dead, and had been forwarded to him by his sister, who was living with a maiden aunt in Cumberland, and thought Ephraim might know the persons to whom it referred. And what made it still stranger, was the fact that all his relatives had long ago given up his brother as slain in one of the engagements of the Civil War. The letter was as follows: very dear but very dim Thoughts to me. Before long I shall leave these Dutchmen with whom I am now settled, and perchance find my way to my Native Land, although I fear many of my Friends will be lost to me for ever in this World. I hope you are well and happy, if spared the terrible Years you will have seen since I left you, and that sister Fanny is now grown a womanly help to you, and brother Ephraim a bold brave man. Do not think I have forgotten you: there are some things I would have forgotten, but I cannot, of which you know nothing. In many an encounter with the Red Men these hauntings have made me desperate, but Death would not come to me, and I have lived long enough now not to wish for such an Event untilBut I spare you my grief. If you know anything of the Newburys, of Carlton, and will remember me to them, I shall be obliged. There is one of them especially, my true best Friend, named Giles, living in London, that I should much desire to have communication with. Farewell. From your humble son in exile. CHAPTER XIII.-THE PESTILENCE THAT WALKETH IN DARKNESS. THE king had had his chimney or hearth decreed him by Parliament, whereby he and his successors were entitled to two shillings for every fire-hearth in the kingdom, and realized some £256,000 a year, collecting it by their own officers, until its repeal by William III. The clergy had voluntarily resigned unto him their right of taxing themselves in Convocation, and have ever since been taxed in common with the people of the land. Phanaticks, Sectaries, and Nonconformists,' were awed and dispersed by various crushing enactments, thrown out of their offices in all councils and corporations, and the walls of such towns as Leicester, Northampton, Coventry, &c., which had distinguished themselves in the War, were razed to the ground. War with Holland was imminent, but no one was frightened by it. Peace and enjoyment were at home. Traders and nobles began to move westward, and the melancholy bittern was driven away from the Strand. The theatres were open and crowded; beauty and nobility ogled in the boxes, plauded in the pit, and gossiped in the tiring-room. Dryden's Indian Emperor, had reached an immense popularity, and Pepys writes, that 'the streete was full of coaches at the new play.' The first volume of Hudibras had tickled the whimsical fancies of the day; Dorset had introduced it, the court had laughed at it, the king had quoted it, everybody had read it. Isaac Barrow had opened his career at Cambridge; Samuel Pepys had begun to chronicle his pleasant small-talk and choice morsels of history; John Evelyn was in Italy, looking up antiquities and noting them in his Diary; and John Milton, blind, neglected, and alone, was approaching the close of his immortal poem, the dream of a Puritan who had fallen asleep over the first pages of his Bible,' as Lamartine calls it. And what, meanwhile, were the fortunes of the Newburys? Elijah held on at Carlton, pitied, abused, fined, threatened, yet unconquered, keeping the old home together, and tilling the old acres. Deborah, his mother, had gradually grown away from the present and nursed the holy memories of the past, gilding them with the radiances that are born of the heart and whisper of heaven. Keturah was loving, thoughtful, patient, and yet wistful, doing her duties cheerfully, yet haunting by-paths trodden by the feet of a lost one that she knew not until now how much she loved, and now and then sending out her little dovelike thoughts to see if there were green hopes for her, and a quiet resting-place in the weariness of life. Old Midge stuck to his preaching, and founded little communities of worshippers, baptizing them at midnight in ponds, rivers, and pools, unseen by even the lidless eyes of a persecuting magistracy. |