University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

Milton.

Shakspeare.

A small fire blazed on the hearth of the study and
mingled its light with that of a silver cresset, which
hung from the ceiling above a table furnished with
writing materials and strewed over with papers.
Here the Proprietary sat intent upon the perusal of
the pacquet. Its contents disquieted him; and with
increasing solicitude he again and again read over
the letters.

At length the secretary was summoned into his
presence. “Albert,” he said, “the council must be
called together to-morrow at noon. The messengers
should be despatched to-night; they have a dark road
and far to ride. Let them be ready with the least
delay.”

The secretary bowed and went forth to execute
his order.

The letters brought the Proprietary a fresh importation
of troubles. That which most disturbed him
was from the Board of Trade and Plantations, and
spoke authoritatively of the growing displeasure of
the ministry at the exclusiveness, as it was termed,
of the Proprietary's favours, in the administration of
his government, to the Catholic inhabitants of the
province; it hinted at the popular and probably well-founded
discontent—to use its own phrase—of his
Majesty's Protestant subjects against the too liberal
indulgence shown to the Papists; repeated stale
charges and exploded calumnies against the Proprietary,
with an earnestness that showed how sedulously
his enemies had taken advantage of the disfavour
into which the Church of Rome and its advocates
had fallen since the Restoration; and concluded with
a peremptory intimation of the royal pleasure that all
the offices of the province should be immediately
transferred into the hands of the Church of England
party.

This was a blow at Lord Baltimore which scarcely
took him by surprise. His late visit to England had
convinced him that not all the personal partiality of
the monarch for his family—and this was rendered
conspicuous in more than one act of favour at a time
when the Catholic lords were brought under the ban
of popular odium—would be able finally to shelter
the province from that religious proscription which
already was rife in the mother land. He was not,
therefore, altogether unprepared to expect this assault.
The mandate was specially harsh in reference

to the Proprietary, first because it was untrue
that he had ever recognised the difference of religious
opinion in his appointments, but on the contrary
had conferred office indiscriminately in strict and
faithful accordance with the fundamental principle
of toleration upon which his government was founded;
and secondly, because it would bear with pointed
injustice upon some of his nearest and most devoted
friends—his uncle the chancellor, the whole of his
council, and, above all others in whose welfare he
took an interest, upon the collector of the port of St.
Mary's, Anthony Warden, an old inhabitant of the
province, endeared to the Proprietary—and indeed
to all his fellow-burgesses—by long friendship and
tried fidelity. What rendered it the more grating to
the feelings of the Proprietary in this instance, was
that the collectorship had already been singled out as
a prize to be played for by that faction which had
created the late disturbances in the province. It was
known that Coode had set his eyes upon this lure, and
gloated upon it with the gaze of a serpent. The
emoluments of the post were something considerable,
and its importance was increased by the influence it
was supposed to confer on the incumbent, as a person
of weight and consequence in the town.

The first expression of irritation which the persual
of the pacquet brought to the lips of the Proprietary
had a reference to the collector. “They would have
me,” he said, as he rose and strode through the
apartment, “discard from my service, the very approved
friends with whom in my severest toils, in this

wilderness, I have for so many years buffeted side
by side, and to whom I am most indebted for support
and encouragement amidst the thousand disasters
of my enterprise. They would have me turn
adrift, without a moment's warning, and even with
circumstances of disgrace, that tried pattern of honesty,
old Anthony Warden. Virtue, in her best estate,
hath but a step-daughter's portion in the division of
this world's goods, and often goes begging, when
varnished knavery carries a high head and proud
heart, and lords it like a very king. By the blessed
light! old Anthony shall not budge on my motion.
Am I to be schooled in my duty by rapacious malcontents,
and to be driven to put away my trustiest
friends, to make room for such thirsty leeches and
coarse rufflers as John Coode? The argument is,
that here, in what my father would have made a
peaceful, contented land, planted by him and the
brothers of his faith,—with the kindest, best and most
endeared supporters of that faith by my side—worthy
men, earnest and zealous to do their duty—they
and their children true to every christian precept—
men who have won a home by valour and patient,
wise endurance—they must all be disfranchised, as
not trustworthy even for the meanest office, and give
their places to brawlers, vapouring bullies and factious
stirrers-up of discord—and that too in the name
of religion! Oh, this viper of intolerance, how hath
it crept in and defiled the garden! One would have
thought this world were wide enough to give the
baser passions elbow room, without rendering our
little secluded nook a theatre for the struggle. Come
what may, Anthony Warden shall not lack the collectorship
whilst a shred of my prerogative remains
untorn!”

In this strain of feeling the Proprietary continued
to chafe his spirit, until the necessity of preparing the
letters which were to urge the attendance of his
council, drew him from his fretful reverie into a
calmer tone of mind.

In the servants' hall there was an unusual stir occasioned
by the preparations which were in train for
the outriding of the messengers whom the secretary
had put in requisition for the service of the night.
The first of these was Derrick Brown, a man of
stout mould though somewhat advanced in years.
He held in the establishment what might be termed
the double post of master of the mews and keeper of
the fox hounds, being principal falconer and huntsman
of the household. The second was a short,
plump little fellow, bearing the name of John Alward,
who was one of the grooms of the stable. These
two, now ready booted, belted and spurred, were
seated on a bench, discussing a luncheon, with the
supplement of a large jack or tankard of brown bastard.
Several of the other domestics loitered in the
hall, throwing in occasionally a word of advice to
the riders, or giving them unsolicited aid in the carnal
occupation of bodily reinforcement to which they
were devoting themselves with the lusty vigour of
practised trenchermen. Leaning against the jamb
of the ample fireplace, immediately below a lamp

which tipped the prominent points of his grave visage
with a sharp light, stood an old Indian, of massive
figure and swarthy hue, named Pamesack, or, as he
was called in the English translation of the Indian
word, The Knife. This personage had been, for
some years past, at intervals, a privileged inmate of
the Proprietary's family, and was now, though consigned
to a portion of the duties of the evening,
apparently an unconcerned spectator of the scene
around him. He smoked his pipe in silence, or if he
spoke, it was seldom more than in the short monosyllable,
characteristic of the incommunicative habits
of his tribe.

“When I saw Dick Pagan, the James Town courier,
coming into town this evening with his leather
pouch slung across his shoulder,” said the elder of
the riders, “I guessed as much as that there would
be matter for the council. News from that quarter
now-a-days is apt to bring business for their worships.
I warrant you the brother of Master Fendall
hath been contriving an outcome in Virginia. I heard
John Rye, the miller of St. Clements, say last Sunday
afternoon, that Samuel Fendall had forty mounted
men ready in the forest to do his bidding with broadsword
and carbine. And he would have done it too,
if my Lord had not laid him by the heels at unawares.
He hath a savage spite against my Lord and the
chancellor both.”

“But knew ye ever the like before,” said John Alward,
“that his lordship should be in such haste to
see their worships, he must needs have us tramping

over the country at midnight? By the virtue of
my belt, there must be a hot flavour in the news! It
was a post haste letter.”

“Tush, copperface! What have you to do with
the flavour of the news? The virtue of thy belt, indeed!
Precious little virtue is there within its compass,
ha, ha! You have little to complain of, John
Alward, for a midnight tramp. It is scant twelve
miles from this to Mattapany, and thine errand is
done. Thou mayst be snoozing on a good truss of
hay in Master Sewall's stable before midnight, if you
make speed. Think of my ride all the way to Notley
Hall,—and round about by the head of the river too
—for I doubt if I have any chance to get a cast over
the ferry to-night. Simon the boat-keeper is not
often sober at this hour: and if he was, a crustier
churl—the devil warm his pillow!—does n't live
'twixt this and the old world. He gets out of his
sleep for no man.”

“But it is a dark road mine,” replied the groom.
“A plague upon it! I have no stomach for this bush
and brier work, when a man can see the limb of a
tree no more than a cobweb.”

“A dark road!” exclaimed the master of the kennels,
laughing. “A dark road, John! It is a long
time, I trow, since there has been a dark road for
thy night rides, with that nose shining like a lighted
link a half score paces around thee. It was somewhat
deadened last September, I allow, when you
had the marsh ague, and the doctor fed you for a
week on gruel—but it hath waxed lately as bright as

ever. I wish I could buckle it to my head-strap until
to-morrow morning.”

A burst of laughter, at this sally, which rang
through the hall, testified the effect of the falconer's
wit and brought the groom to his feet.

“'S blood, you grinning fools!” he ejaculated,
“have n't you heard Derrick's joke a thousand times
before, that you must toss up your scurvy ha-haws
at it, as if it was new! He stole it—as the whole
hundred knows—from the fat captain, old Dauntrees
in the fort there; who would have got it back upon
hue and cry, if it had been his own;—but the truth
is, the Captain filched it from a play-book, as the surveyor
told him in my hearing at Garret Weasel's,
where the Captain must needs have it for a laughing
matter.”

“It is a joke that burns fresh every night,” replied
Derrick; “a thing to make light of. So, up with the
bottom of the pot, boy, and feed it with mother's
milk: it will stand thee in stead to-night. Well done,
John Alward! I can commend thee for taking a jest
as well as another.”

“Master Derrick,” said the other, “this is not the
way to do his Lordship's bidding: if we must go, we
should be jogging now. I would I had thy ride to
take, instead of my own,—short as you think it.”

“Ha, say you that! By the rochet, John, you
shall have it, an it please Master Secretary! But
upon one condition.”

“Upon what condition?”

“That you tell me honestly why you would choose

to ride twenty miles to Notley rather than twelve to
Mattapany.”

“Good Derrick,” answered the groom, “it is but
as a matter of horsemanship. You have a broader
road, and mine is a path much beset with brushwood.
I like not the peril of being unhorsed?”

“There is a lie in thy face, John Alward;—the
Mattapany road is the broadest and best of the two
—is it not so, Pamesack?”

“It is the first that was opened by the white man,”
replied the Indian; “and more people pass upon it
than the other.”

“John,” said the falconer, “you are a coward. I
will not put you to the inventing another lie, but will
wager I can tell you at one guess why you would
change with me.”

“Out with it, Master Derrick!” exclaimed the bystanders.

“Oh, out with it!” repeated John Alward; “I heed
not thy gibes.”

“You fear the cross road,” said the falconer; “you
will not pass the fisherman's grave.”

“In troth, masters—I must needs own,” replied the
groom, “that I have qualms. I never was ashamed
to tell the truth, and confess that I am so much of a
sinner as to feel an honest fear of the devil and
his doings. I have known a horse to start and a
rider to be flung at the cross road before now:—
there are times in the night when both horse and
rider may see what it turns one's blood into ice to
look at. Nay, I am in earnest, masters:—I jest not.”

“Thou hast honestly confessed, like a brave man,
that thou art a coward, John Alward; and so it shall
be a bargain between us. I will take your message.
I fear not Paul Kelpy—he has been down with that
stake through his body, ever too fast to walk abroad.”

“There's my hand to it,” said the groom, “and
thanks to boot. I am no coward, Derrick,—but have
an infirmity which will not endure to look by night
in the lonesome woods, upon a spirit which walks
with a great shaft through it. Willy of the Flats
saw it, in that fashion, as he went home from the
Viewer's feast on the eve of St. Agnes.”

“Willy had seen too much of the Viewer's hollands
that night,” said Derrick; “and they are spirits worth
a dozen Paul Kelpys, even if the whole dozen were
trussed upon the same stake, like herrings hung up
to smoke. In spite of the fisherman and his bolt, I
warrant you I pass unchallenged betwixt this and
Mattapany.”

The secretary, soon after this, entered the hall and
confirmed the arrangements which had just been
made. He accordingly delivered the letters intended
for Colonel Talbot and Nicholas Sewall to the falconer,
and that for Mr. Notley, the late lieutenant
general of the province, to John Alward. To the
Indian was committed the duty of bearing the missions
to such members of the council as resided either
in the town or within a few miles of it. Holding it
matter of indifference whether he despatched this
duty by night or by day, the Knife took it in hand

at once, and set forth, on foot, with a letter for
Colonel Digges, who lived about five miles off, at
the same time that the other two couriers mounted
their horses for their lonesome journeys through the
forest.