University of Virginia Library

1. I.

The Cavaliers always ran when they saw Puritan
Colonel Brothertoft and his troop of white
horses coming.

They ran from the lost battle of Horncastle, in
the days of the great rebellion, and the Colonel
chased.

North and West he chased over the heaths
and wolds of his native Lincolnshire. Every
leap took him farther away from the peaked
turrets of Brothertoft Manor-House, — his home,
midway between the towers of Lincoln Cathedral
and Boston on the Witham.

Late at night he rode wearily back to Horncastle.
He first took care that those famous
horses were fed a good feed, after their good
fight and brave chase, and then laid himself
down in his cloak to sleep beside Cromwell and
Fairfax.

Presently a youth on a white horse came galloping

into the town, up to the quaint house where
the Colonel quartered, and shouted for him.
Brothertoft looked out at the window. By the
faint light he recognized young Galsworthy, son
of his richest tenant and trustiest follower.

“The King's people have attacked the Manor-House,”
cried the boy. “My lady is trying to
hold it with the servants. I come for help.”

In a moment a score of men were mounted
and dashing southward. Ten miles to go. They
knew every foot of it. The twenty white horses
galloped close, and took their leaps together
steadily, — an heroic sight to be seen in that
clear, frosty night of October!

The fire of dawn already glimmered in the
east when they began to see another fire on the
southern horizon. The Colonel's heart told him
whose towers were burning. They rode their
best; but they had miles to go, and the red
flames outran them.

Colonel Brothertoft said not a word. He
spurred on, and close at his heels came the
troop, with the fire shining on their corselets and
gleaming in the eyes of their horses.

Safe! yes; the house might go, — for his dear
wife was safe, and his dear son, his little namesake
Edwin, was safe in her arms.

The brave lady too had beaten off the marauders.
But fight fire as they would, they could

rescue only one angle of the mansion. That
“curious new brique fabrick, four square, with
a turret at each corner, two good Courts, a fine
Library, and most romantick Wildernesse; a
pleasant noble seat, worthie to be noted by alle,”
— so it is described in an Itinerary of 1620, —
had been made to bear the penalty for its master's
faith to Freedom.

“There is no service without suffering,” he
quietly said, as he stood with the fair Lucy, his
wife, after sunrise, before the smoking ruins.

He looked west over the green uplands of his
manor, and east over his broad acres of fenny
land, billowy with rank grass, and all the beloved
scene seemed strange and unlovely to him.

Even the three beautiful towers of Lincoln
Cathedral full in view, his old companions and
monitors, now emphasized the devastation of his
home.

He could not dally with regrets. There was
still work for him and the Brothertoft horses to
do. He must leave his wife well guarded, and
gallop back.

So there was a parting and a group, — the fair
wife, the devoted soldier, the white charger, and
the child awakened to say good-bye, and scared
at his father's glinting corselet, — a group such
as a painter loves.

The Colonel bore westward to cross the line

of march of the Parliamentary army, and by and
by, as he drew nearer the three towers of Lincoln,
they began to talk to him by Great Tom,
the bell.

From his youth up, the Great Tom of Lincoln,
then in full swing and full roar, had aroused,
warned, calmed, and comforted him, singing to
him, along the west wind, pious chants, merry
refrains, graceful madrigals, stirring lyrics, more
than could be repeated, even “if all the geese
in Lincoln's fens Produced spontaneous well-made
pens,” and every pen were a writer of
poetry and music.

To-day Great Tom had but one verse to repeat,

This was its stern command to the Puritan
Colonel, saddened by the harm and cruelty of
war.

“Yes, my old oracle,” he replied, “if we fail,
if we lose Liberty here, I will obey, and seek
it in the New World.”

For a time it seemed that they had not failed.
England became a Commonwealth. Brothertoft
returned in peace to his dismantled home. Its
ancient splendors could never be restored. Three
fourths of the patriot's estate were gone. He
was too generous to require back from his party,
in its success, what he had frankly given for the

nation's weal. He lived quietly and sparingly.
His sole extravagance was, that, as a monument
of bygone grandeur, he commissioned Sir Anthony
Vandyck to paint him, his wife, his boy,
and the white charger, as they stood grouped for
the parting the morning of the fire.

So green ivy covered the ruins, and for years
Great Tom of Lincoln never renewed its sentence
of exile.

Time passed. Kingly Oliver died. There was
no Protector blood in gentle Richard Cromwell.
He could not wield the land. “Ho for cavaliers!
hey for cavaliers!” In came the Merrie
Monarch. Out Puritans, and in Nell Gwynn!
Out crop-ears and in love-locks! Away sad
colors! only frippery is the mode. To prison
stout John Bunyan; to office slight Sam Pepys!
To your blind study, John Milton, and indite
Paradise Lost; to Whitehall, John Wilmot, Earl
of Rochester, and scribble your poem, “Nothing!”
Yes; go Bigotry, your jackboots smell
unsavory; enter Prelacy in fine linen and perfume!
Procul, O procul, Libertas! for, alas!
English knees bend to the King's mistress, and
English voices swear, “The King can do no
wrong.” Boom sullenly, Great Tom of Lincoln,
the dirge of Freedom!

Ring solemnly, Great Tom of Lincoln, to
Colonel Brothertoft the stern command revived.

Syllable again along the west wind the sentence
of exile, —

Every day the nation cringed baser and baser.
Every day the great bell, from its station high
above all the land, shouted more vehemently
to the lord of Brothertoft Manor to shake the
dust from his feet, and withdraw himself from
among a people grown utterly dastard. His
young hopes were perished. His old associates
were slain or silenced. He would go.

And just at this moment, when in 1665 all
freedom was dead in England, Winthrop of
Connecticut wrote to his friend at Brothertoft
Manor: “We have conquered the Province of
New Netherlands. The land is goodlie, and
there is a great brave river running through
the midst of it. Sell thy Manor, bring thy
people, and come to us. We need thee, and
the like of thee, in our new communities. We
have brawn enow, and much godlinesse and
singing of psalms; but gentlemen and gentlewomen
be few among us.”

So farewell to England, debauched and disgraced!

Great Tom of Lincoln tolled farewell, and the
beautiful tower of St. Botolph's at Boston saw
the exiles out to sea.