Knights and their days

Of all the adventurers of the seventeenth century, I do not know any who so well illustrate the objects I have in view, as the two above-named gentlemen. The first commenced life as a page; the second was an esquire by condition, and a man-at-arms. Master Faux, for attempting murder, suffered death; and Richard Carr, although he was convicted of murder, was suffered to live on, and was not even degraded from knighthood.

When the Sixth James of Scotland reigned, a poor king in a poor country, there was among his retinue a graceful boy—a scion of the ancient house of Fernyhurst, poor in purse, and proud in name. At the court of the extravagant yet needy Scottish king, there was but scant living even for a saucy page; and Richard Carr of Fernyhurst turned his back on Mid Lothian, and in foreign travel forgot his northern home.

James, in his turn, directed his face toward the English border; and subsequently, in the vanities of Whitehall, the hunting at Theobald’s, the vicious pleasure of Greenwich, and the roysterings at Royston, he forgot the graceful lad who had ministered to him at Holyrood, St. Andrews, and Dunbar.

When this James I. of England had grown nearly tired of his old favorite and minister, Salisbury, for want of better employment he ordered a tilting match, and the order was obeyed with alacrity. In this match Lord Hay resolved to introduce to the King’s notice a youth who enjoyed his lordship’s especial patronage. Accordingly, when the monarch was seated in his tribune, and the brazen throats of the trumpets had bidden the rough sport to begin, the young squire of Lord Hay, a handsome youth of twenty, straight of limb, fair of favor, strong-shouldered, smooth-faced, and with a modesty that enhanced his beauty, rode up on a fiery steed, to lay his master’s shield and lance at the feet of the monarch. The action of the apprentice warrior was so full of grace, his steed so full of fire, and both so eminently beautiful, that James was lost in admiration. But suddenly, as the youth bent forward to present his master’s device, his spur pricked the flank of his charger, and the latter, with a bound and a plunge, threw his rider out of the saddle, and flung young Carr of Fernyhurst, at the feet of his ex-master, the King. The latter recognised his old page, and made amends for the broken leg got in the fall, by nursing the lad, and making him Viscount Rochester, as soon as he was well. James created him knight of the Garter, and taught him grammar. Rochester gave lessons to the King in foreign history. The ill-favored King walked about the court with his arms round the neck of the well-favored knight. He was for ever either gazing at him or kissing him; trussing his points, settling his curls, or smoothing his hose. When Rochester was out of the King’s sight James was mindful of him, and confiscated the estates of honest men in order to enrich his own new favorite. He took Sherborne from the widow and children of Raleigh, with the cold-blooded remark to the kneeling lady, “I maun have it for Carr!”

Rochester was a knight who ruled the King, but there was another knight who ruled Rochester. This was the well-born, hot-headed, able and vicious Sir Thomas Overbury. Overbury polished and polluted the mind of Rochester; read all documents which passed through the hands of the latter, preparatory to reaching those of the King, and not only penned Rochester’s own despatches, but composed his love-letters for him. How pointedly Sir Thomas could write may be seen in his “Characters;” and as a poet, the knight was of no indifferent reputation in his day.

Rochester, Sir Thomas, and the King, were at the very height of their too-warm friendship, when James gave Frances Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, in marriage to young Devereux, Earl of Essex. The bride was just in her teens. The bridegroom was a day older. The Bishop of Bath and Wells blessed them in the presence of the King, and Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones constructed a masque in honor of the occasion. When the curtain fell, bride and bridegroom went their separate ways; the first to her mother; the second to school. Four years elapsed ere they again met; and then Frances, who had been ill-trained by her mother, seduced by Prince Henry, and wooed by Rochester, looked upon Essex with infinite scorn. Essex turned from her with disgust.

Rochester then resolved to marry Frances, and Frances employed the poisoner of Paternoster-row, Mrs. Turner, and a certain Dr. Forman, to prepare philters that should make more ardent the flame of the lover, and excite increased aversion in the breast of the husband. Overbury, with intense energy, opposed the idea of the guilty pair, that a divorce from Essex was likely to be procured. He even spoke of the infamy of the lady, to her lover. Frances, thereupon, offered a thousand pounds to a needy knight, Sir John Ward, to slay Overbury in a duel. Sir John declined the offer. A more successful method was adopted. Sir Thomas Overbury was appointed embassador to Russia, and on his refusing to accept the sentence of banishment, he was clapped into the tower as guilty of contempt toward the king. In that prison, the literary knight was duly despatched by slow poison. The guilt was brought home less to Rochester than to Frances, but the King himself appears to have been very well content at the issue.

James united with Rochester and the lady to procure a divorce between the latter and Essex. The King was bribed by a sum of £25,000. Essex himself did not appear. Every ecclesiastical judge was recompensed who pronounced for the divorce—carried by seven against five, and even the son of one of them was knighted. This was the heir of Dr. Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, and he was ever afterward known by the name of Sir Nullity Bilson.

Sir Nullity danced at the wedding of the famous or infamous pair; and never was wedding more splendid. King, peers, and illustrious commoners graced it with their presence. The diocesan of Bath and Wells pronounced the benediction. The Dean of St. Paul’s wrote for the occasion an epithalamic eclogue. The Dean of Westminster supplied the sermon. The great Bacon composed, in honor of the event, the “Masque of Flowers;” and the City made itself bankrupt by the extravagant splendor of its fêtes. One gentleman horsed the bride’s carriage, a bishop’s lady made the bride’s cake, and one humorous sycophant offered the married pair the equivocal gift of a gold warming-pan.

The King, not to be behindhand in distributing honors, conferred one which cost him nothing. He created Rochester Earl of Somerset.

Two years after this joyous wedding, the gentleman who had made a present to the bride, of four horses to draw her in a gilded chariot to the nuptial altar, had become a knight and secretary of state. Sir Richard (or, as some call him, Sir Robert) Winwood was a worshipper of the now rising favorite, Villiers; and none knew better than this newly-made knight that the King was utterly weary of his old favorite, Somerset.

Winwood waited on the King and informed him that a garrulous young apothecary at Flushing, who had studied the use of drugs under Dr. Franklin of London, was making that melancholy town quite lively, by his stories of the abuses of drugs, and the method in which they had been employed by Lord and Lady Somerset, Mrs. Turner (a pretty woman, who invented yellow starched ruffs) and their accomplices, in bringing about the death of Overbury. The food conveyed to the latter was poisoned by Frances and her lover, outside the tower, and was administered to the imprisoned knight by officials within the walls, who were bribed for the purpose.

There is inextricable confusion in the details of the extraordinary trial which ensued. It is impossible to read them without the conviction that some one higher in rank than the Somersets was interested, if not actually concerned, in the death of Overbury. The smaller personages were hanged, and Mrs. Turner put yellow ruffs out of fashion by wearing them at the gallows.

Lady Somerset pleaded guilty, evidently under the influence of a promise of pardon, if she did so, and of fear lest Bacon’s already prepared speech, had she pleaded not guilty, might send her to an ignominious death. She was confined in the Tower, and she implored with frantic energy, that she might not be shut up in the room which had been occupied by Overbury.

Somerset appeared before his judges in a solemn suit, and wearing the insignia of the Garter. He pleaded not guilty, but despite insufficiency of legal evidence he was convicted, and formally condemned to be hanged, like any common malefactor. But the ex-page won his life by his taciturnity. Had he, in his defence, or afterward, revealed anything that could have displeased or disturbed the King, his life would have paid the forfeit. As it was, the King at once ordered that the Earl’s heraldic arms as knight of the Garter should not be taken down. For the short period of the imprisonment of the guilty pair, both guilty of many crimes, although in the matter of Overbury there is some doubt as to the extent of the Earl’s complicity, they separately enjoyed the “Liberty of the Tower.” The fallen favorite was wont to pace the melancholy ramparts with the George and collar round his neck and the Garter of knighthood below his knee. He was often seen in grave converse with the Earl of Northumberland. Sometimes, the guilty wife of Somerset, impelled by curiosity or affection, would venture to gaze at him for a minute or two from her lattice, and then, if the Earl saw her, he would turn, gravely salute her, and straightway pass on in silence.

When liberated from the Tower, the knight of the Garter, convicted of murder, and his wife, confessedly guilty, went forth together under protection of a royal pardon. Down to the time of the death of Lady Somerset, in 1632, the wretched pair are said never to have opened their lips but to express, each hatred and execration of the other. The earl lived on till 1645—long enough to see the first husband of his wife carry his banner triumphantly against the son of James, at Edgehill. The two husbands of one wife died within a few months of each other.

Such was the career of one who began life as a page. Let us contrast therewith the early career of one whose name is still more familiar to the general reader.

Toward the middle of the sixteenth century there was established at York a respectable and influential Protestant family of the name of Fawkes. Some of the members were in the legal profession, others were merchants. One was registrar and advocate of the Consistory Court of the cathedral church of York. Another was notary and proctor. A third is spoken of as a merchant-stapler. All were well to-do; but not one of them dreamed that the name of Fawkes was to be in the least degree famous.

The Christian name of the ecclesiastical lawyer was Edward. He was the third son of William and Ellen Fawkes, and was the favorite child of his mother. She bequeathed trinkets, small sums, and odd bits of furniture to her other children, but to Edward she left her wedding suit, and the residue of her estate. Edward Fawkes was married when his mother made her will. While the document was preparing, his wife Edith held in her arms an infant boy. To this boy she left her “best whistle, and one old angel of gold.”

The will itself is a curious document. It is devotional, according to the good custom of the days in which it was made. The worthy old testator made some singular bequests; to her son Thomas, amid a miscellaneous lot, she specifies, “my second petticoat, my worsted gowne, gardit with velvet, and a damask kirtle.” The “best kirtle and best petticoat” are bequeathed to her daughter-in-law Edith Fawkes. Among the legatees is a certain John (who surely must have been a Joan) Sheerecrofte, to whom, says Mistress Fawkes, “I leave my petticoat fringed about, my woorse grogram kirtle, one of my lynn smockes, and a damask upper bodie.” The sex, however, of the legatee is not to be doubted, for another gentleman in Mrs. Fawkes’s will comes in for one of her bonnets!

The amount of linen bequeathed, speaks well for the lady’s housewifery; while the hats, kirtles, and rings, lead us to fear that the wife of Master Edward Fawkes must have occasionally startled her husband with the amount of little accounts presented to him by importunate dressmakers, milliners, and jewellers. Such, however, was the will of a lady of York three centuries ago, and the child in arms who was to have the silver whistle and a gold angel was none other than our old acquaintance, known to us as Guy Faux.

Guy was christened on the sixteenth of April, 1570, in the still existing church of St. Michael le Belfry; and when the gossips and sponsors met round the hospitable table of the paternal lawyer to celebrate the christening of his son, the health of Master Guy followed hard upon that of her gracious highness the queen.

Master Guy had the misfortune to lose his father in his ninth year. “He left me but small living,” said Guy, many years afterward, “and I spent it.” After his sire’s decease, Guy was for some years a pupil at the free foundation grammar-school in “the Horse Fayre,” adjacent to York. There he accomplished his humanities under the Reverend Edward Pulleyne. Among his schoolfellows were Bishop Morton, subsequently Bishop of Durham, and a quiet little boy, named Cheke, who came to be a knight and baronet, and who, very probably went, in after-days, to see his old comrade in the hands of the hangman.

Some seventeen miles from York stands the pleasant town of Knaresborough, and not far from Knaresborough is the village of Scotten. When Guy was yet a boy, there lived in this village a very gay, seductive wooer, named Dennis Baynbridge. This wooer was wont to visit the widowed Edith, and the result of his visits was that the widowed Edith rather hastily put away her weeds, assumed a bridal attire, married the irresistible Dennis, and, with her two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, and her only son Guy, accompanied her new husband to his residence at Scotten.

Baynbridge was a Roman Catholic, as also were the Pullens, Percies, Winters, Wrights, and others who lived in Scotten or its neighborhood, and whose names figure in the story of the Gunpowder Plot.

At Scotten, then, and probably soon after his mother’s marriage, in 1582, Guy, it may be safely said, left the faith in which he had been baptized, for that of the Romish Church. Had he declined to adopt the creed of his step-sire, he perhaps would have been allowed but few opportunities of angling in the Nidd, rabbiting by Bilton Banks, nutting in Goldsborough Wood, or of passing idle holydays on Grimbald Craig.

On the wedding-day of Edith Fawkes and Dennis Baynbridge, the paternal uncle of Guy made his will. He exhibited his sense of the step taken by the lady, by omitting her name from the will, and by bequeathing the bulk of his property to the two sisters of Guy. To Guy himself, Uncle Thomas left only “a gold ring,” and a “bed and one pair of sheets, with the appurtenances.”

When Guy became of age, he found himself in possession of his patrimony—some land and a farm-house. The latter, with two or three acres of land, he let to a tailor, named Lumley, for the term of twenty-one years, at the annual rent of forty-two shillings. The remainder he sold at once for a trifle less than thirty pounds. Shortly after, he made over to a purchaser all that was left of his property. He bethought himself for a while as to what course he should take, and finally he chose the profession of arms, and went out to Spain, to break crowns and to win spurs.

In Spain, he fell into evil company and evil manners. He saw enough of hard fighting, and indulged, more than enough, in hard drinking. He was wild, almost savage of temper, and he never rose to a command which gave him any chance of gaining admission on the roll of chivalry. There was a knight, however, named Catesby, who was a comrade of Guy, and the latter clung to him as a means whereby to become as great as that to which he clung.

Guy bore himself gallantly in Spain; and, subsequently, in Flanders, he fought with such distinguished valor, that when Catesby and his associates in England were considering where they might find the particular champion whom they needed for their particular purpose in the Gunpowder Plot, the thought of the reckless soldier flashed across the mind of Catesby, and Guy was at once looked after as the “very properest man” for a very improper service.

The messenger who was despatched to Flanders to sound Guy, found the latter eager to undertake the perilous mission of destroying king and parliament, and thereby helping Rome to lord it again in England. The English soldier in Flanders came over to London, put up at an inn, which occupied a site not very distant from that of the once well-known “Angel” in St. Clement’s Danes, and made a gay figure in the open Strand, till he was prepared to consummate a work which he thought would help himself to greatness.

Into the matter of the plot I will not enter. It must be observed, however, that knight never went more coolly to look death in the face than Guy went to blow up the Protestant king and the parliament. At the same time it must be added, that Guy had not the slightest intention of hoisting himself with his own petard. He ran a very great risk, it is true, and he did it fearlessly; but the fact that both a carriage and a boat were in waiting to facilitate his escape, shows that self-sacrifice was not the object of the son of the York proctor. His great ambition was to rank among knights and nobles. He took but an ill-method to arrive at such an object; but his reverence for nobility was seen even when he was very near to his violent end. If he was ever a hero, it was when certain death by process of law was before him. But even then it was his boast and solace, that throughout the affair there was not a man employed, even to handle a spade, in furtherance of the end in view, who was not a gentleman. Guy died under the perfect conviction that he had done nothing derogatory to his quality!

Considering how dramatic are the respective stories of the page and squire, briefly noticed above, it is remarkable that so little use has been made of them by dramatists. Savage is the only one who has dramatized the story of the two knights, Somerset and Overbury. In this tragedy bearing the latter knight’s name, and produced at the Haymarket, in June, 1723, he himself played the hero, Sir Thomas. His attempt to be an actor, and thus gain an honest livelihood by his industry, was the only act of his life of which Savage was ever ashamed. In this piece the only guilty persons are the countess and her uncle, the Earl of Northampton. This is in accordance with the once-prevailing idea that Northampton planned the murder of Sir Thomas, in his residence, which occupied the site of the present Northumberland house. The play was not successful, and the same may be said of it when revived, with alterations, at Covent Garden, in 1777. Sheridan, the actor, furnished the prologue. In this production he expressed his belief that the public generally felt little interest in the fate of knights and kings. The reason he assigns is hardly logical.

Guy Faux, who, when in Spain, was the ’squire of the higher-born Catesby, has inspired but few dramatic writers. I only know of two. In Mrs. Crouch’s memoirs, notice is made of an afterpiece, brought out on the 5th of November, 1793, at the Haymarket. A far more creditable attempt to dramatize the story of Guy Fawkes was made with great success at the Coburg (Victoria) theatre, in September, 1822. This piece still keeps possession of the minor stage, and deservedly; but it has never been played with such effect as by its first “cast.” O. Smith was the Guy, and since he had played the famous Obi, so well as to cause Charles Kemble’s impersonation at the Haymarket to be forgotten, he had never been fitted with a character which suited him so admirably. It was one of the most truthful personations which the stage had ever seen. Indeed the piece was played by such a troop of actors as can not now be found in theatres of more pretensions than the transpontine houses. The chivalric Huntley, very like the chivalric Leigh Murray, in more respects than one, enacted Tresham with a rare ability, and judicious Chapman played Catesby with a good taste, which is not to be found now in the same locality. Dashing Stanley was the Monteagle, and graceful Howell the Percy, Beverly and Sloman gave rough portraits of the king and the facetious knight, Sir Tristam Collywobble—coarse but effective. Smith, however, was the soul of the piece, and Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley, might have witnessed the representation, and have been proud of his descent from the dignified hero that O. Smith made of his ancestor.

I have given samples of knights of various qualities, but I have yet to mention the scholar and poet knights. There are many personages who would serve to illustrate the knight so qualified, but I know of none so suitable as Ulrich Von Hutten.