Chapter XIX: The Tangled Web Unwoven (1)

In these our days of haste and hurry, steam and telegraph, when all men acknowledge that life seems far too short for what we seek to cram into it, it must not seem incorrect or "a violation of the unities," if we suddenly turn from Persia, and take another glance homeward at the most beautiful, yet, perhaps, most provincial, of all European capitals.

In Edinburgh the night was cold and gusty--the last of April--with occasional blasts of rain and hail. Mr. Gainswood was seated alone in his library; Dove was in the drawing-room, for father and daughter were now more apart than they were wont to be. With something of pleasure he heard her touching the piano. Poor Dove! Tortured and despairing, she had been more than once on the point of yielding to her father's matrimonial wishes, and she seldom thought of her music now. Seldom, indeed, she opened the piano, and even then she was running her pretty fingers over the keys in a wandering and purposeless way; at one time it was a waltz, at another a national melody that Gillian loved; then the lawyer would grind his teeth, as it always ended in "Wild Joanna."

"Poor girl!" he muttered; "she always looks so pale--curse that designing cousin! Her eyes have an expression so mournful and sad that often I feel inclined to take her in my arms and kiss her--but 'tisn't my way. She casts the mercies from her! How like a serpent's tooth it is----"

Then he paused, in doubt whether he was quoting Scripture or some profane writer, to do which beseemed not a man of his religious character.

Sunk back in softly stuffed easy chair, Mr. Gainswood abandoned himself to the luxury of thinking over the riches he had amassed from a very small and very sordid beginning. The lofty room was brilliantly lighted, and its interior contrasted pleasantly with the cold and stormy night without, where the tall trees with the old rookery were swaying in the occasional blasts. Sweeping curtains of rich maroon damask shrouded the windows, and from cornices of walnut-wood, gilded, bearing the Gainswood crest (some cognizance to heraldry unknown) fell on the rich carpet woven in the looms of Aubusson, in the department of Creuse--a carpet wherein the florid crimson roses, mellowed into the pink and yellow of other flowers.

It was a stately room, and everything around him betokened ease combined with splendour.

In the low, deep chair he sat before the fire, his slippered feet stretched out upon the fender of polished steel; and, while listening with dreamy pleasure to the wailing of the wind and the gusts of the storm that he was not exposed to, he thought over all he had amassed (without caring how); of an address he was to make at a religious meeting on the morrow; of cases pending before the Inner and Outer Houses; and then, as the notes of the piano came idly from the distant drawing-room, of Dove's rare beauty---a useless commodity as yet, unless she yielded to him and Campsie; and anon, by the chain of thought, a vision of a face came before him with painful distinctness--the face of the wanderer, him whom he had expelled and robbed of his inheritance--the face of Gillian as he had seen it last.

The war was over in Persia; a peace had been concluded so early as the 4th of March, unknown to Sir James Outram; and the 78th Highlanders, under Havelock, had gone to India, where new and terrible complications were arising. Mr. Gainswood knew all this from the public papers. Many rank and file had fallen in battle he knew; he had gloated over their numbers hopefully. Had Gillian escaped; and, if so, would he escape the greater perils that were to come?

A sour smile gathered in his ferret-eyes, and the bull-dog jaw assumed a set expression of defiance. It passed away, and the former smile of indolent ease and of bland hypocrisy spread over his coarse face, as he thought, and thought, and thought again, of how he "had flourished even as the green bay-tree," till a loud ring of the front door bell echoed through the stone staircase and corridors, after a wheeled vehicle had stopped at the pillared portico without.

Mr. Gainswood glanced inquiringly at his library clock. Who could his visitor be at such an unusual hour?

"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir," said the servant, ushering in a person whom Mr. Gainswood saw to be a stranger, who had come thus suddenly without the prelude of sending up his card. He was a tall, thin man, of haughty and aristocratic bearing and undoubtedly military aspect, bronzed and furrowed in face, with a densely thick moustache that mingled with his flowing and silvery beard. Many years had elapsed since Mr. Gainswood had seen Colonel Lamond, for he it was; he was closely shaven in those days, with hair of a ruddy brown, so he utterly failed to recognize him or even his voice now.

The Colonel threw open his Highland cloak, deposited his hat and leather gloves with something of emphasis on the table, grasped nervously a silver-mounted and heavy malacca cane, and, when asked to "be seated," took a chair, with a keen and scrutinising expression in his eyes that thoroughly roused Mr. Gainswood, who said:

"May I ask whom I have the honour to receive?"

"An extra aide-de-camp of General Sir James Outram," replied the other, wishing to preserve his incognito for some time.

"Your name?"

"That you will have in good time. We have met before."

"Perhaps; but I have no recollection----"

"All the better."

"Your business, sir?"

"Is with you."

"Well?" said Mr. Gainswood sharply, as he decidedly thought his client was a strange one, and felt restless under his keen, bright, steady, and contemptuous glance.

"I have a message to you from Colonel Lachlan Lamond."

"My _late_ brother-in-law!" exclaimed Mr. Gainswood, now thoroughly roused.

The Colonel smiled and twisted his heavy grey moustaches, as he saw that Gainswood's face became livid, and that already drops of clammy perspiration glittered about his temples; but he said:

"Poor old Lachlan! he was killed at Mora by the Bhoteas. Alas! in the midst of life we are in death!"

"He left a son in your care, Mr. Gainswood."

"A profligate, who left me and went forth into the world--I know not where. Were you in the campaign against the Hill Tribe?"

"I was."

"Then what was, or is, your message to me?"

"It concerns the will which Colonel Lamond entrusted to your care--the will by which he bequeathed all he possessed to his son, whom failing, to your daughter."

"I never heard of any such document, and, if it existed, it will, no doubt, be recorded somewhere."

"It was not, so far as I know."

"Then there is no proof of its existence at all."

"Very probably," replied the Colonel, scornfully; "so we shall pass that, and come to the fortune left by the Colonel, out of which you brought up his son, as a species of half-drudge in your office, in total ignorance that such a thing existed."

"A fortune!"

"Thirty thousand pounds and more, transmitted to you from India as a portion of the money to re-purchase Avon-na-gillian."

"You have been dining or are dreaming, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Gainswood, growing pale, but attempting to bully nevertheless, as he started to his feet and approached a bell-handle.

"Sit down, sir, and listen to me, or, by Heaven, I shall stretch you beside that fender!" cried the Colonel, grasping his heavy cane and looking as if he meant to use it.

Mr. Gainswood re-seated himself and affected to listen, with the half-amused and incredulous smile of one who has a lunatic to humour, and lay back in his elbow-chair with the tips of his fingers placed together; but, with all this assumed exterior, there flashed upon his memory the old saying about giving even the tip of one's little finger to Satan.

"Do you mean to deny the existence of this money, as well as that of the will, or that you ever received it?" asked the Colonel, quietly.

"I do."

"Foul liar!"

"Calm yourself, my good sir--calm yourself. Your words, if heard, are actionable; but there is a power above that rules us all and guides us all," replied the lawyer, looking with an air of resignation upward to the crystal gaselier that glittered overhead; "you are labouring under some incomprehensible delusion. If the money, those many thousands, were ever transmitted to me, or anyone else, by my dear dead brother-in-law some vouchers of the fact must be somewhere."

"They are so."

"Indeed; where?"

"In the hands of my banker," replied the other, with a calm smile.

For nearly a minute the two men regarded each other in silence. The trembling lips and pallid cheeks of Gainswood had been the result of his naturally bullying temper, but now they came of craven, abject fear, for terror and alarm were curdling in his coward heart. The malice of the devil was in it, and in his ferret eyes, yet his plight and aspect were pitiable--most pitiable--and the Colonel, even with all his scorn, felt it to be so.

"There are shades of guilt, Mr. Gainswood," said he.

"Shades, sir," stammered the lawyer.

"Yes, sir; shades."

"The All-seeing Eye can pierce all shades----."

"The less we have of this from such a worm as you the better, sir," interrupted his visitor, rising; "there are people of your infamous stamp who think it less guilty to suppress evidence than to destroy it; but that you have done, suppressed or destroyed the will left with you, and other documents that concern the transmitted money; but the proof of that transmission my vouchers can affirm."

"And you, sir," exclaimed the lawyer, fairly brought to bay at last, "who are you?"

"Colonel Lachlan Lamond, of whose existence the Procurator-Fiscal shall convince you to-morrow morning," replied the other sternly, as he carefully drew on his gloves, and eyed with withering scorn the lawyer, who, like a hunted creature, uttered a moan, not of sorrow, but of mingled rage, hate, and baffled desire for defiance, as he covered his face with his trembling hands, and thought perhaps,--

"O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!"

Here was a turning of the tables with a vengeance. His shame and disgrace, his committal and trial as a felon were in the hands of Colonel Lamond, and judging by himself and his own nature, he felt certain that the injured father would be merciless. He could have no comfort in his religion, for religion had he none. Though ever on his lips, he had about as much of it in his heart as a Zulu Kaffir, or those Bhoteas, who, so unfortunately for him, had not made mince meat of his brother-in-law.

The Colonel had ended buttoning his gloves and highland cloak, and was about to assume his hat, when Mr. Gainswood, whose hands shook like aspen, leaves, stretched them forth deprecatingly, and said:

"Lachlan, for the sake of our dead wives, for the sake of Dove, do not, do not expose me!"

Something of sadness now mingled with the sour scorn that filled the eyes of the old soldier, who, after a pause, said:

"Faithless and false-trickster as you have been, thief as you would be, heartless and cruel though you proved to my poor boy, Gillian, for the memory of those you name, and for the sake of the cousins who have loved each other so well and tenderly, I shall forgive you; but never, while the breath of Heaven is in your nostrils, ask Lachlan Lamond to degrade himself by taking your hand in his!"

"And where is Gillian now?" asked Gideon Gainswood, after a pause.

"Within summons if you wish to see him."

And sooth to say, during all this exciting interview, Gillian, whom we had last seen lying, to all appearances done nigh unto death, on the deck of H.M.S. _Comet_, had been in the adjoining drawing-room, with Dove's head pillowed upon his breast, and his arms around her.

Gillian, she thought, looked certainly haggard, pale, and hairy, and there was an unwonted glitter in his eye that was born of the sufferings he had undergone, but it was blended with the brightness and triumph of his present joy.

Gillian alive, safe, and back home again! It required days to pass ere Dove--in blissful ignorance of the dark and intricate springs on which her fate had turned--would settle down into a calm and delicious state of happiness subsequent to the return of the loved one, so bitterly mourned as lost for ever, that their engagement was permitted, and all barriers, monetary and otherwise, were dissipated and removed.

How differently passed the days now since she knew that he was safe and her own as before. Ah, how wearily they were wont to lag and drag in the dreadful past time, when at dawn and noon she only longed for night, though, when all were abed and asleep, she lay awake, with her heart aching, and her poor little head full of all manner of terrible imaginings, and knew that if she slept, she would, with daylight only come back to a dull sense of all-pervading sorrow.

As for my Lord Campsie, who had been to her a species of Frankenstein, she was relieved of his presence for ever, and with more ease than he was ever likely to be of his monetary embarrassments.

He has since espoused the fair one with the golden locks, thus combining the establishment at St. John's Wood with his own. He has, moreover, become a representative peer by the death of the old viscount, and being chronically "hard up," will have no objection to pocket the salary and figure yearly as H.M. Commissioner to the Kirk, if it will have him, "though it is a doocid bore, don't you know, and so demmed vulgaw." But then "the viscountess would have the upper ten dozen of Edinburgh and their women folk" at her receptions in the long gallery of the kings of Scotland, and there might be a little satisfaction in that.

A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES.

In the following pages I propose to give the brief history of a Prince of Wales who, had he lived long enough, might, by the brilliance of his talents and the tenor of his character, have changed the whole fate and annals of the British Isles after his own time, in so far, that Cromwell and the great civil war, the Scottish Covenant, the battles of Montrose and Claverhouse, the advents of William and Mary, of Anne, and even the accession of the House of Hanover, _would never have been heard of_.

At three in the morning of Tuesday, the 19th February, 1593, there was born in the Castle of Stirling, Henry, afterwards Prince of Wales, eldest son of James VI. of Scotland and I. of Great Britain, by his queen, Anne, daughter of Frederick II., and sister of the gallant sailor-king, Christian IV. of Denmark, in the fourth year of their marriage. A discharge of twelve great guns announced the event to the town; the king sent for the ministry, desiring that everywhere the people should be called together, to have public thanksgiving; and bale-fires were, as Calderwood records, set ablaze on all the great mountains; and Moyse adds in his memoirs, that so great was the joy of the nation, "that people in all parts appeared to be daft for mirth."

The baptism was deferred for six months, says Dr. Birch, the king having "thought proper to invite several foreign princes and states to send their ambassadors to be present at that solemnity"; but scarcely had that young prince--the future heir of all the British Isles--seen the light ere faction, the old curse of the Scottish nation, began to contemplate employing the unconscious infant for the promotion of its base designs. By the conspirators it was proposed to retain him in their hands as the means of strengthening their own party. To the honour of Lord Zouch, however, to whom the offer was made, he peremptorily declined all concurrence; so the despicable expedient, which had been so successful in past times of Scottish history, was abandoned. In the meantime Zouch, though strictly watched, busied himself, in conformity with his infamous secret instructions from Queen Elizabeth, to intrigue with all the Scottish nobility who were opposed to James's temporising policy, and embroil him with his people.

On the 27th of August the little prince was baptised in the Castle of Stirling, amid unusual magnificence. He was borne from his own room to the queen's chamber of presence, laid on a stately bed, in care of the Countess of Mar and other ladies of rank, who delivered him to Ludovic Stewart, Duke of Lennox, Admiral and Lord High Chamberlain of Scotland, who presented him to the foreign ambassadors. Among these was the representative of Elizabeth, the young Earl of Sussex, who was connected with her by ties of blood, and who came attended with a magnificent retinue, bearer of a letter from his royal mistress, congratulating the king on the auspicious event, and abounding in expressions of friendly feeling, in her own quaint manner; though at that very time she was intriguing for the destruction and death of Maitland, the Lords Home, Huntly, and others who were his most loyal nobles. There too were the ambassadors of the Duke of Brunswick, the States of Holland, the Duke of Mecklenburg, and other princes. "Behind the Earl of Sussex," says Dr. Birch, "stood the Lord Wharton and Sir Henry Bromley, Knight, no other Englishman being admitted into the chapel royal."

Thither the child was borne by Sussex, preceded by Lord Home bearing the ducal crown, Lord Livingstone the napkin, Lord Seaton the basin, and Lord Semple the laver. Above their heads was a great canopy, borne by the Lairds of Buccleuch, Cessford, Dudhope, and Traquair, while the prince's train was held up by the Lords Sinclair and Urquhart. Around was a guard of chosen young men of Edinburgh, richly dressed and armed; and the trumpets sounded as the king seated himself in a chair "adorned with the arms of France."

After a sermon "in the Scots tongue," by one of the king's chaplains, David Cunninghame, Bishop of Aberdeen, preached in Latin on the creed. The child was then baptised and knighted; the trumpets sounded, again the cannon thundered over the Valley of the Forth, while the Lyon King and his heralds from the gates and battlements proclaimed the now-forgotten prince, by the name of "Frederick Henry, Henry Frederick, by the grace of God Knight and Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Earl of Carrick, Duke of Rothesay, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland" (Calderwood). Gifts were then presented to the infant. Among these were a cupboard of plate worth £3,000 from Elizabeth; two massive gold chains from the King of Denmark; a table enriched with diamonds from the Duke of Mecklenburg; two gold cups from the States of Holland, worth 12,400 crowns, each weighing 400 ounces, and in one were 5,000 florins, the first of the prince's annual donations from the conservator of Scottish privileges at Campvere in Zealand.

History tells us that the pageants which succeeded this ceremony were of the most costly and gorgeous description, "and much ingenuity was expended by Mr. Fowler, Master of the Revels, as well as by the king himself, in planning masks, shows, and triumphs, together with curious and mysterious devices suited to the tastes of that age." Soon after, the prince was committed to the care of John, Earl of Mar, Governor of the Castle of Stirling and Chamberlain of Monteith, &c.; and he was assisted in his charge by his mother, Annabella, Countess Dowager of Mar, a daughter of the Lord Tullybardine.

For these two guardians the little prince, as boyhood crept on, showed such affection that the queen became jealous of them, and endeavoured to remove him into her own custody; but James wrote to the earl, desiring him upon no account to give up the prince to his mother; yet the charge of the old countess ended when, in his sixth year, Adam Newton, a gentleman "learned in languages," was made his tutor. Many attendants of rank were appointed; but chief of all these was still the Earl of Mar. It was at this time, in 1599, that the pedantic James composed for his use in Greek "His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest son, Henry the Prince." In the preface thereto were some passages that puzzled many; for by his bitterness against the Puritans he gave grounds for doubting his Protestantism, and in others he seemed to cherish some vindictiveness against England, though the heir to its throne.

In 1600, when in his seventh year, the prince wrote in his own hand a letter to the States-General, expressing gratitude to and regard for them. This letter, which most probably was dictated by the "Scottish Solomon," was taken to Holland by Sir David Murray. In the year following the prince began to take great pleasure in all manly exercises--in learning to ride, sing, dance, leap, to shoot with the bow and to toss the pike; and in most of these things he became a great proficient, under the care of Sir Richard Preston (of Craigmillar), Constable of Dingwall, and afterwards Earl of Desmond in Ireland. Of his progress in learning we have a proof in the recorded fact that he wrote a letter on his ninth birthday to his father, in which he mentions that "he had begun two years before to write to his Majesty, in order to make him a judge of the proficiency he had made in his studies; and that since his (James's) departure he had read over Terence's _Hecyra_, the third book of Phædrus's _Fables_, and two books of Cicero's _Select Epistles_."

On the death of Elizabeth, at Richmond, in 1603, James succeeded peacefully to the English throne, and soon after took with him to London his heir, still in the custody of the Earl of Mar; but the latter had, for a time, to return to Scotland, where Queen Anne was demanding from his custody her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth (afterwards Queen of Bohemia), and her son, Prince Charles (afterwards Charles I.); but the earl urged again the express commands of the king on the subject, and it is said that the queen never forgave him. Mar resumed his care of the prince, who, together with the earl, when the feast of St. George was celebrated at Windsor, on the 2nd of July, 1603, received the Order of the Garter; and young Henry, now for the first time saluted as Prince of Wales, "was highly commended by the Earl of Nottingham, in the hearing of Edward Howes, our English chronicler of that age, for his quick witty answers, princely carriage, and reverend obeisance to the altar" (Dr. Birch).

Branishill, in Hampshire, was built as a residence for him. He was the _first_ Prince of Wales who ever wore the _triple_ plume, and all the traditions which assign it to the Black Prince and John of Bohemia are totally unsupported by history. The latter at Cressy wore an eagle's pinion in his helmet, and the seal of the former in 1370 shows him wearing a _single_ feather.

On New-year's-day, 1604, when in his eleventh year, he sent to his father a short poem in Latin hexameters, as his first offering of that kind. In the same year the prince, having already evinced a great love for naval affairs, had a vessel specially built for his amusement and instruction at Limehouse; and on the 14th of March it was brought to anchor off the king's lodging in the Tower, where the prince came and showed the lord high admiral and other nobles, with much boyish delight, how he could handle this craft, which was gaily furnished with ensigns and pendants. Anon we are told that it was brought to anchor off Whitehall Stairs, when the prince again went on board with the admiral, the Earl of Worcester, and other persons of rank. The anchor was then weighed, and under her foresail and topsail she dropped down the river to Paul's Wharf, where, with a great bowl of wine, the prince baptised her by the name of the Disdain.

The prince evinced a great love of arms, and was never weary of handling the pike; and in Drayton's _Polyolbion_ we have a portrait of him when about his seventeenth year thus engaged, and the drawing depicts him as handsome in figure, regularly featured, with his hair starting in spouts from an open forehead. He is dressed in rich half-armour, with gauntlets, trunk hose, and the Garter on his left leg. Already men of learning had begun to court him as their patron, and he maintained a correspondence with such as were most eminent for their talent; and he gave such promise of future greatness that foreign princes solicited his friendship, and in a letter which the French ambassador sent home he remarked to the king his master, "that it would be a serious omission in policy to neglect a prince who promised such great things. None of his pleasures savour the least of childish pursuits. He is a particular lover of horses and what belongs to them; but he is not fond of hunting, and when he goes to it, it is rather for the pleasure of galloping than for that which the dogs afford him. He plays willingly enough at tennis, and at another Scots diversion very like mall [golf?], but always with persons older than himself, as if he despised those of his own age. He studies two hours a day, and employs the rest of his time in tossing the pike, or leaping, throwing the bar, shooting with the bow, vaulting, or some other exercise of that kind, for he is never idle. He shows himself likewise very amicable to his dependents, and supports their interests against all persons whatsoever, and pushes what he undertakes for them with such zeal as procures success; and by exerting his whole strength to compass what he desires, is already feared by those who have the management of affairs."

The Duke de Sully tells us in his memoirs that the young prince naturally hated Spain and favoured France, though there seems to have been some strange proposal on foot for having him educated finally in the former country. He also tells us that it was a favourite project of Henri IV to marry his eldest daughter to the prince, to whom he sent "a golden lance and helmet, enriched with diamonds, together with a fencing-master and vaulter" (_Memoirs_, vol. iii.). With all these gifts of mind and person we are told that he was less a favourite with the queen than her second son, Charles, Duke of York and Albany. The company of Merchant Taylors having requested the king to become a member of their guild, he replied that he "was already free of another company," referring to the similar corporation in Edinburgh; but added that his son the prince would avail himself of the honour, and that he would be present at the ceremony. So the king came, and "with his highness was entertained with vocal and instrumental musick--the musick of twelve lutes equally divided, and placed by six and six in a window of the hall; and in the area between them was a gallant ship triumphant, in which were three men dressed like sailors, eminent for their voice and skill, who were accompanied by the lutists."

In vol. i. Coke relates an anecdote which he heard from his father, who about the time was of the prince's age. Being out hunting, a butcher's dog chanced to kill the stag, and thus spoil the sport. As Henry did not resent this, the courtiers, to incense him against the butcher, said, that "if the king his father had been served thus, he would have sworn so that no man could have endured it." "Away," replied the gentle prince; "all the pleasure in the world is not worth one oath!"

In 1612 the cowardly and contemptible Elector Palatine came to London to marry the Princess Elizabeth, whom the scarcely less pitiful James had named after the woman who destroyed his unhappy mother. He was received in London with profound respect, and the court was fully occupied by brilliant entertainments, masques, and joyous diversions in honour of the royal nuptials; but amid them a mortal illness seized upon the promising young prince, who, not conceiving it dangerous, continued to appear in public with the elector till he was unable to leave his bed, on the 27th of October; and he died, between seven and eight o'clock P.M., on the 6th of November. He expired at St. James's Palace, and in the arms of the Earl of Mar.

Of what disease he died none now can say; but, as usual in those days, ugly whispers were abroad.

"He was," says Rapin, combining the encomiums of Wilson, Coke, and Osburn, "the most accomplished prince that ever was--I will not say in all England, but in all Europe. He was sober, chaste, temperate, religious, full of honour and probity. He was never heard to swear, though the example of his father and of the whole court might have been apt to corrupt him in that respect. He took great delight in the conversation of men of honour, and those who were not reckoned as such, were looked upon with a very ill eye at his court. He had naturally a greatness of mind, with noble and generous thoughts, and as much displeased with trifles as his father was fond of them. He frequently said if ever he mounted the throne his first care should be to try and reconcile the Puritans to the Church of England. As this could not be done without concessions on each side, and as such a condescension was directly contrary to the temper of the court and clergy, he was suspected to countenance Puritanism. He was naturally gentle and affable; but, however, in his carriage had a noble stateliness, without affectation. He showed a warlike genius in his passionate fondness for all martial exercises. In short, to say all in a word, though he was only eighteen when he died, no historian has ever taxed him with any vice."

Another annalist tells us that "neither the illusions of passion nor of rank had ever seduced him into any irregular pleasures; business and ambition alone engaged his heart and occupied his mind. Had he lived to come to the throne he might probably have promoted the glory more than the happiness of his people, his disposition being strongly turned to war" (Russell).

Regarding this spirit, Coke tells us that on a French ambassador coming one day to take leave of the prince he "found him tossing a pike"; and on asking "what service he would commend him to the king his master," "Tell him _what I am doing_," was the significant reply.

The weak king his father, on finding that Henry's court at St. James's was more frequented than his own, is said to have exhibited some jealousy on the subject, and was one day heard to ask "if his son would bury him."

The disease of which he died puzzled his physicians so much that the usual vulgar rumour, as I have said, went abroad that he had been poisoned, and Burnet tells us that, without the slightest proof, many actually accused Viscount Rochester of the crime; and thus a post-mortem examination took place, in presence of many physicians and surgeons, who declared on oath that they were unable to detect the slightest symptoms of poison. Howes says that he died of a malignant fever, which in that year "carried away a great many people of all sorts and ages." Balfour calls it "a malignant purpuer fever."

It is somewhat remarkable that the king forbade all court mourning, unless it can be explained that he was loth to cast a gloom over his daughter's recent marriage; but the funeral, which took place in Westminster Abbey on the 7th of December, was a stately one, and cost £2000 of the money of that time (Howes).

Sir Robert Douglas states that, after the prince's death, the faithful old Earl of Mar returned home, and, after being Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, died at a green old age in 1634.

With regard to the well-known plume, perhaps he adopted three feathers to signify the three kingdoms to which he was heir, or because three feathers are the badge of a chief in Scotland; but, whatever the cause, Henry Stuart, Prince of Wales, was the first who gave that crest to the Principality.

The "Scots Magazine" for 1809, contains a copy of the doggrel epitaph--perhaps penned by the pedantic king his father--which was carved upon his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Many of his letters are inserted in Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature;" and his magnificent suit of armour is still preserved in the Tower of London.

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE
DUCHESS OF KINGSTON.

In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of George III. no _cause célèbre_ made greater excitement than the trial of this person, whose appearance at the bar of the House of Lords, on a charge of felony, was long remembered in London.

Elizabeth Chudleigh was the daughter of a colonel in the army, representative of an ancient Devonshire family, a member of which fought valiantly at the defeat of the Armada. He died when Elizabeth was very young, and the care of her education devolved upon her mother, who had little more than her pension as an officer's widow, to add to which she opened a fashionable boarding-house in London, whither she would seem to have come, according to the statement of the Attorney-General, in the year 1740, when her daughter was in the bloom of her beauty, "distinguished for a brilliancy of repartee, and for other qualities highly recommendatory, because extremely pleasing." George II. was then residing at Leicester House, and his son Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (who died in 1751), had, of course, an establishment of his own elsewhere. To his princess, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Miss Chudleigh was presented by the famous Mr. Pulteney, who obtained for her, in her eighteenth year, the post of one of her maids-of-honour.

Having secured for her this elevated position, Mr. Pulteney endeavoured to cultivate her understanding, suggested to her a course of reading, and they frequently corresponded on various subjects; but we are told that "the extreme vivacity of her nature" precluded her from acquiring much. Her personal attractions won her many admirers at court, among others, John Duke of Hamilton, who afterwards married Miss Gunning. Indeed they were formally engaged, and their marriage was to take place after his grace, like all men of fashion in those days, had made "the grand tour;" but during his absence distrust ensued between them, and in the interim, at the house of an aunt, whose name was Hanmer, at Laneston, in Hampshire, the Honourable John Augustus Harvey, then a lieutenant in the navy, was introduced to Miss Chudleigh, and fell deeply in love with her. To favour his views, her aunt strangely and treacherously contrived to intercept all the letters of the Duke of Hamilton. His supposed silence roused the indignation of Elizabeth; her pride was easily worked upon, and the attentions of a handsome and winning lover at such a crisis were almost sure to meet with success. Piqued beyond endurance by what she deemed the insulting silence of her betrothed, she agreed to accept the hand of Mr. Harvey, and they were privately married by Mr. Amus, the rector, on the 4th August, 1744, in a private chapel at Laneston, adjoining the mansion of Mr. Merril; and the only surviving witness of _four_, when the subsequent trial ensued, was an old female servant of the family, named Anne Craddock.

The reason given for a _private marriage_ was, as stated by the Attorney-General on that occasion, "that both their situations in life rendered a public marriage very impracticable, as he on one side depended on his friends for his future prospects, and she, on her remaining a single woman, derived her chief rank and support; that such being the situation of the parties, they agreed to marry privately, without the knowledge or consent of their friends." They soon after came to London, and lived privately in Conduit Street, Hanover Square, but in a state of great unhappiness, owing to the dissipated conduct of Harvey, for six months, till he joined his ship in the East Indian Seas, under Sir John Danvers. Her position was now a very painful and anomalous one--Miss Chudleigh and a maid-of-honour in public, Mrs. Harvey and a wife in private! She was still an attractive centre in the higher circles, and the Princess of Wales was still her most particular friend; but she had many more; and few women in London in those days made more conquests. The fame of them reached Harvey, now a captain; and when he returned, at the end of a year and a half, he insisted that she should live with him again; though so great was her aversion of him, that she had resolved never to subject herself to his cruelties again.

However, she would seem to have been prevailed upon, under terror of his threats, to join him again at their house in Conduit Street. One account says that she was lured thither, and had the doors locked upon her, to secure her detention. The result of this union was a boy. "Cæsar Hawkins became the professional confidant on this occasion, and Miss Chudleigh (as the world knew her) removed to Chelsea for change of air, but returned to Leicester House perfectly recovered from her indisposition. The infant soon sank into the arms of death, leaving only the tale of his existence to be related," and his father joined his ship in the Mediterranean.

The year 1748 saw Miss Chudleigh the belle of Tunbridge Wells; and she figures in an old engraving of the period, with the burly Johnson, Cibber, simpering beau Nash, Mr. Pitt (Earl of Chatham), Mr. Whiston, Richardson, and others about her--they in all the glory of bag-wig and sword, high-heeled shoes, and point ruffles. In Richardson's letter to Miss Westcomb he speaks of her as "the triumphant toast," lively, sweetly tempered, and gay. "She moved not without crowds after her; she smiled at every one; every one smiled when they heard she was on the walk. She played, she lost, she won, all with equal good-humour. But, alas! she went off before she was wont to go off, and then the fellows' hearts were almost broken for a new beauty."

It was about this time that, after a long residence abroad, the Duke of Hamilton, who still loved her passionately, had an interview with her, and then the whole Hanmer conspiracy was brought to light, when too late. He again offered her his hand, but knew not why she dared not accept it, and she was compelled to prohibit his visits; thus, four years after, he married Miss Gunning, of Castle Coote. She also refused to marry the Duke of Argyle (who espoused the latter lady in her widowhood, in 1759) and several others. The world of fashion was astonished, and her mother, who was kept in ignorance of her secret marriage, reprehended what she deemed her folly in no measured terms. To be rid of all this she left England, and went to Dresden and Berlin; and her late position in our royal household secured her the attention of the pedantic King of Prussia, who corresponded with her. On her return, we are told that she "ran the course of pleasure, enlivened the court circles, and each year became more ingratiated with the mistress she served; led fashions, played whist with Lord Chesterfield, and revelled with Lady Harrington and Miss Ashe." So passed the days; but with night came reflection, and too often the debauched Harvey, like an evil spirit crossing the path of her whose life he had, to a great measure, blasted. Unable to claim her, in dread of the resentful nature of his father the earl, he nevertheless was exasperated to see her so admired and so immersed in gaiety; and times there were that, in fits of rage, he threatened to disclose the whole affair to the Princess of Wales. In this, however, she would seem to have anticipated him. Her royal mistress heard and pitied her, and continued her friend to the hour of her death. So plans were proposed to rid her of Harvey. One was a divorce, on the plea of his immoral habits; but this she shrank from, as involving many disclosures; the other--a most unwise measure--was to destroy the proofs of their marriage. The clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Amus, who officiated at that ceremony, and many of the witnesses, were dead. She visited the obscure little church at Laneston, where the register-book chanced to be in careless hands. A small sum procured an inspection of it, as if from curiosity, and while the custodian was beguiled with some amusing story, she contrived to "tear out," says a print of the day, "to erase," says the Attorney-General, "every memorial of her marriage with Mr. Harvey." Thus, in her rashness or ignorance, passion or hate, believing she was now free, she bade Harvey defiance; and, as it chanced that about this time he had unaccountably and totally ceased to care for her, he gave her no further inquietude, and ceased, as he was wont, to haunt every rout, ridotto, or ball at which he was likely to find her.

And now her better angel influenced with love for her the heart of a man whom an old magazine styles "the exemplar of amiability." This was Evelyn Pierrepoint, Duke of Kingston, K.G., and Master of the Staghounds north of the Trent, who raised a regiment of horse to act against the Highlanders in 1745, and, when a lieutenant-general, carried St. Edward's staff at the coronation of George III. in 1761.

At this time it appeared that very soon Captain Harvey would succeed to the earldom of Bristol, his grandfather having died in 1751, and his elder brother, who succeeded to the peerage, being unmarried and unlikely to marry. Much as she disliked her husband, rank and fortune were too tempting to Miss Chudleigh, and a very short period before Harvey succeeded to these, she contrived once more to visit Laneston, to procure a re-insertion of her marriage. To achieve this she employed artifice, all the charms of which she was mistress, and spent money with a liberal hand. The officiating clerk, little supposing that his caligraphy would be tested by the legal and critical acumen of the House of Lords, "doctored" the register to her wishes; and from Mr. Merril's house she returned to London, rejoicing that she had now two noble strings to her bow. We are told, "she did, it is true, succeed, but it was laying the groundwork of that very evidence which, in conjunction with oral testimony, operated afterwards to her conviction and disgrace. Here was cunning enveloping the possessor in a net of her own fabricating; and no wonder, when her hour of degradation arrived, that she fell unpitied; but re-married by her own stratagem, the participation of ducal honours became legally impossible."

Ignorant of all this secret plotting, the Duke of Kingston, who had been born in 1705, and was now not much past the prime of life, became the most ardent of her lovers; yet, with the Bristol marriage hanging over her, how was she to accept him? and while loving him she still hoped to die Countess of Bristol. But Harvey's brother, the second earl, lived longer than she anticipated, and she conducted her intrigue--for, after all her brilliant offers, to an intrigue she descended at last--with such care and decorum "that," as a writer says of it, "although their intimacy was a moral, it was not an evidenced, certainty." At last he who was really her husband became third Earl of Bristol in 1775; but five years before this, on the 8th of March, 1769, Elizabeth Chudleigh had been publicly espoused by the Duke of Kingston.

Lord Bristol, ignorant of how the register had been tampered with, and having fallen in love with a new flame, "the civilians were consulted on the matter, a jactitation suit was instituted; _the evidence_ which could prove the marriage _was kept back_." He failed to substantiate the marriage that he might procure a divorce; and raised now to the pinnacle of her fate, the (so-called) duchess defied him, and paraded her new honours for some years in perfect safety till the death of the duke by a stroke of palsy at Bath, on the 23rd September, 1773; and he was "interred with a magnificence becoming his dignity in the family vault at Holme-Pierrepoint in Nottinghamshire" (_Ann. Reg._). It is now the property of Earl Manvers, for Duke Evelyn was the last of his line. His will now produced a fatal storm. It excluded from any benefit an elder nephew and preferred a younger, thus giving rise to a public prosecution of the duchess, which ended in her exile and the beggary of the nephew. Two wills would seem to have been drawn, but only one signed--that by which "the duke bequeathed the income of his estates to his relict during her life, expressly under the condition of her continuing in a state of _widowhood_"; but as this did not suit her ulterior views, she strove in vain, with Mr. Field of the Temple, to have another signed, that was more to her taste.

The moment the vault at Holme-Pierrepoint was closed the duchess sailed for Rome, where Ganganelli, a Pope who bestowed always great attention upon the English, treated her with marked favour and honour. She now built a magnificent yacht--then a most uncommon appendage to an English household--and giving the command of it to Mr. Harding, a lieutenant of the navy, cruised about the Mediterranean, all ignorant that a storm was gathering against her in England, and that a Nemesis was hovering over her in the person of old Anne Craddock, or that a motion was being moved in the Consistory Court of London against "Elizabeth Countess of Bristol, calling herself Duchess of Kingston."

Anne Craddock, being in reduced circumstances, had applied for pecuniary relief to Mr. Field of the Temple, urging her distress and the absence of the duchess, on whose purse she had a just claim as the witness of her first marriage. Lawyer-like, he turned a deaf ear to her, and the old woman, exposed to penury, gave herself up to the task of vengeance and ruin. To the elder nephew of the late duke, she gave all the information in her power, and he, assisted by legal friends, had a bill of indictment for bigamy preferred against the duchess, whom Mr. Field advised at once to return to Britain lest she should be outlawed. The fashionable circles were filled with astonishment by this sudden _exposé_. If there were fraud or collusion, the Earl of Bristol must have acquiesced in both! Evidence in support of the first marriage was fully gone into, and it then came forth that if there was turpitude in the destruction of the register of a marriage with him, there was something extremely covetous in the attempt to restore it; and the latter act a woman named Judith Philips proved beyond a doubt, and the birth of the child was proved by Mr. Cæsar Hawkins.

The opponents of the duchess took every means to prevent her return to England. With Mr. Jenkins, a banker in Rome, she had placed securities for such sums as she might require; but when she requested money to enable her to return home, he so sedulously avoided her, that she at last lost all patience--fearing the sentence of outlawry--and swore that Jenkins was in the interest of her enemies; so, armed with a brace of pistols, she repaired to his house. The usual answer was given her, that he was not at home.

"Here shall I remain a week, a month--yea, a year, till he returns!" was her resolute rejoinder; and finding her inflexible, the banker at last appeared, and a stormy interview ensued. She demanded her money. He attempted to prevaricate; but the production of her pistols ended that. Her cheques were cashed, and she instantly set out on her return by way of the Alps. Excitement and anxiety--shame perhaps at the sudden and terrible exposure about to be made--brought on a fever, and caused an abscess in her side, compelling her to travel in a litter instead of a carriage to Calais; thus after a painful and tedious journey, which in her ignorance of law she feared would end in a London prison, yet resolutely she travelled home, and was joined by Colonel West, brother of John Earl of Delaware, and by the famous Earl of Mansfield, who, from the post of Lord Chief Justice, had been raised to the House of Lords. After her arrival at Kingston House, he soothed her apprehensions, and her natural spirits rose on finding that she had friends of such zeal and ability.

The Dukes of Ancaster, Portland, and Newcastle, Lord Mountstuart, and others, became her warm adherents; and from the moment that recognisances for the appearance of the duchess were entered into, public excitement rose to fever heat, but pending the trial, she suddenly found a new and rather unexpected enemy in the person of Samuel Foote, the famous player. This gentleman was perfectly intimate with the leading features of the duchess's life, and some of the more private matters thereof he obtained from a Miss Penrose. All these he wove up in a piece called _A Trip to Calais_, in which the character of the duchess was humorously and admirably, but disadvantageously, drawn. For its suppression, and before it could appear at the Haymarket, he was mean enough to expect a handsome sum from her, and he had the effrontery, when visiting her, to read at her request those scenes in which she figured as "My Lady Kitty Crocodile." She started up, inflamed with passion.

"Mr. Foote," she exclaimed; "what a wretch you make me!"

"This is not designed for your grace--it is not you," he urged, but in vain.

A long and angry correspondence (which will be found in the "Westminster Magazine" of 1776) ensued between them; and for the suppression of the farce Foote would seem to have demanded £2,000. She proffered him a cheque on Drummond for £1,600. The time for her was most critical, and she felt acutely that, at this crisis of her affair, with a trial impending before the Upper House, the production of this farce might destroy her. Foote held out for the original sum, but was baffled, as he deserved to be, in the end, as the Lord Chamberlain would not permit the _Trip to Calais_ to be acted.

At last the day of trial came inexorably, and on the 15th of April, 1776, she was arraigned at the bar in Westminster Hall, and charged with bigamy and felony. The commission to try her was read. The judges were in their robes, the masters in Chancery in their gowns. The Lord High Steward asked their lordships if it was their pleasure that the judges should be covered; and on an answer being given in the affirmative, the sergeant-at-arms called aloud,

"Elizabeth Duchess of Kingston, come forth and save yourself and your bail, or forfeit your recognisance."

On this the duchess, attended by Mr. Egerton of the Bridgewater family, Mrs. Barrington, widow of the general of that name, Drs. Isaac Schomberg and Warren, entered the court, preceded by the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod, and was desired to seat herself. We are told that she "was dressed in a black polonaise, with a black gauze cap". She seemed cheerful and composed after the first shock. While she was reading the paper delivered in to the lords, she appeared to be strongly agitated and very sensibly affected. The business of her alleged crimes was then fully gone into; many witnesses were examined; and the trial, which excited the whole country, lasted five days. Anne Craddock's evidence, that of Judith Philips, and others, was fatally conclusive; and after the court adjourned to the chamber of parliament, Lord Mansfield asked each peer in succession whether the prisoner was or was not guilty; and all in succession replied, "Guilty, upon my honour," save the Duke of Newcastle, who added, "_erroneously_, but not intentionally."

On this being announced to her, she claimed "the benefit of the peerage applicable to the statute." She was then discharged on paying her fees; but on learning that, as Countess of Bristol, the prosecutors were preparing a writ of _ne exeat regno_, to prevent her quitting England and to deprive her of her property, she resolved to give them "the slip." She ordered her carriage to be driven about the public thoroughfares, and invited a select party to dine at Kingston; and while they were assembling she was travelling in all haste to Dover, where Harding, the captain of her yacht, met her, and in an open boat conveyed her safely to Calais.