University of Virginia Library

Charlotte de la Tremouille,
COUNTESS OF DERBY.
1651.

The Countess of Derby may well be pronounced one of the
noblest, greatest, and most heroical women that England or the
world ever has produced. I write England advisedly; for, although
she was a Frenchwoman by birth, and that of the very
highest rank short of royalty, being a daughter of the princely
house of La Tremouille—it was still in England that all her
great exploits were performed—all her extraordinary qualities
displayed; and as she was married in very early youth to the
gallant and noble Derby, nearly, indeed, at the same period
when his royal master, Charles I., espoused the beautiful daughter
of the last hero-king of France, Henry, the Bearnois of
Navarre, it is not unnatural to conclude that it was in her
adopted, rather than her native country, that she learned those
lessons of strong persistency, cool endurance, and patient fortitude,
which would appear in all ages to have been characteristic
rather of the English than of the French temper, which is
generally held to be conspicuous for impulsive gallantry and
offensive valor, rather than for perseverance under the pressure
of evil or iron sufferance of inevitable calamity.

Still, heroism is of no age or country—although there may

be peculiar shades or hues which appear to belong to the attributes,
and to constitute, as it were, almost general traits of national
character. Even in this view, however, there are discrepancies
to be noted by the wise observer, which quickly show
the injudiciousness of those who, from general traits, would
seek to establish absolute principles, or to constitute individual
actions the basis of invariable laws.

Thus, in spite of the generally prevailing notion that the
French, however admirable at attack, are greatly inferior in the
defence of fortified places, the most wonderful instance of endurance,
under horrors of famine, pestilence, and exhaustion
almost unparalleled, recorded in modern history, is the protracted
resistance of Massena within the walls of Genoa, against
the combined armies of Austria and fleets of England, by which,
in point of fact, he neutralized all the successes of the victors,
and converted defeat into triumph, by holding out until the
French columns had already crossed the Alps, and thus making
possible the almost miraculous campaign of Marengo.

Again, it was Charlotte de la Tremouille, who, with unparalleled
feminine heroism, defended Latham House long after hope had
been extinct in the hearts of the bravest of its masculine defenders,
while her Lord was fighting afar off for his church
and his king—who, a second time, after the noble head of Derby
had fallen on the gory scaffold, last token of his adherence to
that holy cause which he could uphold no longer, defended the
Peel Castle in her hereditary realm of Man, fighting for the
rights of her son and the hereditary dignities of his race, long
after the weak unworthy monarch, Charles II., had departed a
fugitive from his kingdom—and who so earned the noble praise
of being the last person in all the territories, provinces, dependencies
of Great Britain, who laid down arms which she had
taken up for the rights, and which she resigned only—as the

sovereign of a mere mimic realm almost within gunshot of the
shores of England—after Virginia, the Bermudas, Antigua, and
Barbadoes had submitted to the parliament; after the sister
islands of the Channel, Scilly and Guernsey, had surrendered; and
the narrow seas were swept far and nigh, cutting off all supplies,
and prohibiting all egress or ingress to her island fortalice, by
the unrivalled fleets of Blake.

Equally heroical with that heroine of all time, the Maid of
Arc, her heroism was yet of a character entirely different and
distinct. The character of the latter was essentially French—
French of all ages, though modified assuredly by the peculiar
influences of her own era; deeply imbued with romance, full
of impulsive fire, burning with generous ardor, deeply imbued
with the sensibility to the call of glory, kindled at a word to
the wildest enthusiasm, not unresponsive to the breath of superstitious
fatalism; yet despondent when held inactive, and recovering
her high courage and unflinching heroism only when
actually called upon to do or to suffer.

Widely different was the noble Charlotte de la Tremouille;
for of her it might have been said, as was said of the greatest
man of the present day, that duty was everything and glory
nothing, except endorsed as it arose incidentally from the consequence
of duty done. Not in the slightest degree touched
by romance as to her own secret nature, although the history
of her career is in itself the wildest of romances; scarcely, if
at all, influenced by impulses; a person of slender imagination
and few sensibilities; superior to all superstitions; superior also
to all reverses of fortune, she was greater by far in suffering
than in living: and it was rather by supporting with unmoved
constancy what her enemies did unto her, than by doing unto
them what they might not have half so hardly supported, that
she earned her undying fame and spotless reputation.

It is said, that in her younger days she was remarkable for
delicate and extraordinary beauty; if it were so, anxiety and
a life harder, and exposed to vicissitudes more man-like, than
are wont to break the calm tenor of female ways, early destroyed
all its vestiges; for in the magnificent painting of Vandyke,
which still exists, as do those of most others of the celebrated
ladies of her day, she is represented as a stout and somewhat
coarse-featured matron, of middle age, richly attired, but
possessing none of that refined and gentle haughtiness—if I
may so express myself—which we somehow or other expect to
see in the carriage and lineaments of those who, themselves
great, have mingled much in the society of the great, and yet
more, who have themselves been the doers of great actions.

There is none of this haughtiness, or dignity, then, call it
which you will, in the air or features of Charlotte de la Tremouille;
nor is there any marked impress on her brow and lip
either of deep thought and high intellect, or of brilliancy, daring,
and courage almost superhuman. On the contrary, she
has the air of a genuine country matron of high class, in her
own age—something, one would think, of a Lady Bountiful;
apt at distilling simples and dispensing medicines to the ailing,
good things to the hungry of her tenantry and neighbors;
yet this was she, who for two successive kings of England did
more, held more, suffered more, and lost more than any other
woman who ever drew the breath of life; who, after the death
of one monarch on the scaffold, and the despairing exile of another,
for whom her noble lord had died devoted, endured the
utmost of persecution from the cruel and victorious parliament—
who, after the restoration of that monarch's worthless son, endured
yet more from his base ingratitude than she had done
from the rancor of his enemies, herself coming nigh to perishing
on the same scaffold which had drunk her husband's gore,

charged by the perjured monster Oates with participation in
that popish plot, which never had an existence without, the
brain of that most mean and odious of all murderers.

Early in the war of the commonwealth and the king, that
war through the furnance and fierce ordeal of which, through so
much misery to the kings, the nobles, and the people of England,
was wrought out at last the wonderful edifice of her present
constitution, with all its inestimable blessings—that constitution,
which alone possessing the power of self-modification,
can be progressive without being iconoclastic or destructive, can
undergo change without fear of revolution, and therefore bids
fair to be coeval with the chalk cliffs which wall its empire:
early in that war, or rather, I should say, at its very commencement,
the Earl of Derby had taken arms for his sovereign, believing
it wiser to trust to the king, whose prerogatives were
already strictly limited, whose leaning towards absolutism might
be supposed to be, in a great measure, checked, and to whose
encroachments all constitutional means of resistance existed, in
full force, or rather reinforced and greatly strengthened by the
passage of the bill of rights, and the adoption of the general
remonstrance—than to submit to the self-constituted authority
of the parliament, now evidently bent on wresting everything
beyond the bare name of regal power from the almost helpless
monarch, whose proceedings had no limit save their own
consciences and their own will; and whose violence and outrage,
the kingly power once gone, and the ministers of the law
merely their own creatures, there was no means in the kingdom
constituted for disputing legally or resisting forcibly.

Steadfastly, gallantly, he had fought to the last—nor less
nobly had his countess contended, as all men know, for the defence
of Latham house is history—and there are few to whom
its details are not facts, as it were, of every-day allusion. How

she held out alone, with her lord afar, not fighting unwomanly
with the sword, not donning the attire or buckling on the armor
of a man—for heroine as she was, she saw the indelicacy and
inutility alike of such procedure—but aiding, assisting, comforting,
inspiriting all, by the unmoved composure of her
noble face, by the unvarying and placid smile with which
she received all evil tidings; with which she endured all
personal inconveniences and sufferings—including towards the
end the want of common necessaries, of bread and water
to support human life. Limiting her own table to the quantity
and quality allotted to the meanest sentinel; braving the hottest
fire of the assailants to carry refreshments to the weary, assistance
to the wounded, of the combatants; nay! as defender
after defender fell slain outright or sorely wounded at his appointed
station, carrying arms and ammunition, clad in her full
magnificence of court attire, to any member, as they failed him,
of that weak, yet invincible garrison; and in that last assault,
when the ladders were reared against every bartizan and buttress,
when the volleying death-shots raked every embrasure
and window, when the clash and clang of broadswords on cuirass
and helmet were mingled with the roar of the culverins,
the sharp rattle of the musketry, and savage shouts and execrations
of her combatants, standing with her maidens side by side
with their defenders, and loading musquetoon and harquebuss
as fast as they might fire them, until all was ended.

Vainly, however, fought the earl in the field, vainly the
countess in her guarded fortalice—for the good cause might
not prevail, until England should have supped deeper yet of
horrors, and her king should have bowed down that “grey discrowned
head,” erewhile so fair and noble, to the base felon's
block. If Charles lost kingdom, crown, and life, Derby and
his young wife lost all they had in England, princely estates,

high rank, wealth almost royal, title most exalted—all was
gone save the feudal royalty of the little Isle of Man; save the
lives which both had risked so freely, one scarce had thought
they valued them.

And even these they held, not as their own possessions, but
as things to be devoted to the cause, to be cast self-sacrificed to
the winds of heaven, to soon as the service of the king should
desire it.

So for the time all was over. Hopton, the king's best leader
in the west, was defeated, and his army utterly dispersed at
Torrington by Fairfax. Montrose was hors du combat, deprived
of all his men by the decisive route of Philiphaugh; and Astley
—gallant Astley—who, before the first encounter of the cavaliers
and roundheads at Edgehill, knelt at the head of his lines, and
prayed this short prayer memorable through all time: “O Lord,
Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee,
do not Thou forget me!” and then springing to his charger
cried, “March on, boys!” and led a charge so fiery and so well
sustained, that it won the day. That same Lord Astley, defeated
at Stowe by Morgan, with superior forces, and himself
taken prisoner, said to the parliamentarians:—“You have done
your work, and may now go to play, unless you choose to fall
out among yourselves!”

And in truth their work was done—and their cruel play was
about to commence, which had for stakes the fortunes of a
country, and the life of a king.

In the short insurrection which broke out, when the tidings
were proclaimed, how that the parliament had determined to
try the king by a high court of justice, and to bring him, whom
they dared not murder, to the block, Derby bore no part. Ill-planned,
uncombined, irregular, it had neither concert nor the
chances of success—it could be fatal only to its projectors, and

fatal to them it was—for after it was shed on the scaffold the
first blood that flowed during the war, save by sword, flagrante
bello, when sword was met by sword, the blood of Lisle and
Lucas and Lord Capel shamefully slaughtered—Cromwell's first
deed of cruelty and shame—in spite of capitulation after Colchester.

So far from that insurrection deferring, or tending to prevent,
it accelerated only the murder of the king, by harassing the apprehensions,
without alarming the fears of the parliamentarians.
But, as I have said, in it Derby bore no part; it was too suddenly
concerted to permit him to be present, even if his military
sagacity and clear political foresight would have permitted
him to join so rash a rising.

But he was in no condition to have done so in any event, for
so soon as he saw that for the present all was lost, he made good
his retreat, rather than his escape, with his countess, her son,
and the trustiest of his adherents, to the strong walls and
castles of his island kingdom, which he put in order at once to
make the most vigorous defence of his own rights, and to wage
war for his own crown of Man, and for that of his brother king
of England.[1]

Ireton, meanwhile, who commanded in the north for the
parliament, and had a strong force afoot in Lancashire, sent
him a trumpet, with a summons to surrender on good conditions,
to whom the earl returned this answer of high and
stern defiance.

Scarce had these stirring and memorable lines flowed from
the pen of the brave and noble cavalier, before he was again
called to prove in the field that indomitable loyalty, for which
his race was so nobly conspicuous.

The Second Charles, proclaimed by his Scottish subjects, who
had revolted against the grim intolerance and fanaticism of the
independents, had remained well nigh two years in their camp,
rather indeed a prisoner than a king, but had still, in spite of
the fatal defeat at Dunbar, maintained his position as monarch,
and kept up his own hopes and those of his well-wishers, of one
day recovering his English crown. And now, at length, had
the day arrived. Profiting by a false movement of Cromwell,
who, being pressed for supplies, was compelled to leave the way
into England open to the Scots, he rushed down, high of hope,
into the centre of his native realm, trusting to rally on himself
all the stout cavaliers of the northern and the midland counties,

and by a daring stroke to master the metropolis before Oliver
could retrace his steps, or come up with his rear.

But little knew he of the giant with whom he had to do.

Rapidly he marched southward, but tardily and feebly came
in the levies of the cavaliers. Defeat and death had thinned
their numbers, had tamed their high, hot blood, had rendered
them, although brave as ever, hopeless and averse to further
struggles. Sequestrations and confiscations had narrowed their
resources; their plate, their silver candlesticks and posset dishes,
had been melted down in the late king's service; their trusty
war-horses were dead or aged; their gallant sons were dead on
the field or on the scaffold; their brave tenants were decimated,
and the survivors given to other masters. Never have men so
fought, so bled, so suffered for any cause or king, as have the
cavaliers of England for that most lamentable and disastrous
house of Stuart—never have men met with such ingratitude.

Levies and men came in slowly—but at the first trumpet call,
the foot of Derby was in the stirrup, the blue scarf of the king
upon his breast, the king's black feather in his hat— he left his
castle to the keeping of his noble wife, and as he kissed her
proud fair brow at parting—“It may be,” he said, “that we
shall meet no more on earth, but we shall meet in heaven!
Mourn not for me, therefore, Charlotte, if I fall, but be strong
and brave in duty.”

And she replied, “Do but your duty, and I will not mourn,
save in the secret heart; and when you are saint in heaven,
look you down on us, and see if I do not mine.”

His race was soon run, and his days numbered. His small
detachment cut off and overpowered at Wigan Lane, he still
made good his way to Worcester, and fought there the last
desperate fight for Charles; nor when that day was lost, stern
Cromwell's crowning mercy, did he desert his king, but saw him

placed in safety, before he thought, too late, of his own preservation.

A skirmish, a prisoner—a court-martial, a convicted culprit
—a block and a martyr—that was the last of Derby.

She heard, but wept not, nor despaired, but did her duty,
mourning in the secresy of her heart only.

Until not one English flag, save of the commonwealth alone,
was flying, she held out her island fortalice, and so stern had
been her defence, so great was their fear of her desperation, that
the parliament, on the surrender of her strongholds and her
submission to their usurping government, permitted her to retain
her estates, and enjoy their revenues, and she dwelt there,
educating her orphan son, as such a mother only can educate
a man; adored by her islanders, respected by Englishmen in
general, and unmolested, if unreverenced, by the parliamentarian
chiefs, until the restoration of King Charles II. renewed
her persecutions, and perhaps brought her nearer to the block
than the worst enmity of his enemies.

She escaped all the perils of the pretended plot; bore all her
sufferings to the last, as she had borne the first; returned to
her island home, not the least instance of the ingratitude of
kings, lived in perpetual weeds for her lost lord—and died a
good wife, a good mother, a good mistress, a good subject—truly
a heroine of all time, and conspicuous on the page of history, as
the last lady that has levied war, or that shall levy war again
for ever within the kingdom of Great Britain.