X
 
 ,:
 
 UNIT. OP CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES
 
 LUDGATE HILL ON MAY 29, 1660.
 
 AN 
 
 OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 GATHERED FROM THE DAYBOOK OF MISTRESS 
 
 LOFEJOY YOUNG, KINSWOMAN BY MARRIAGE 
 
 OF THE LADY FANSHAfTE 
 
 BY- 
 BEATRICE MARSHALL 
 
 Author of 'The Siege of York,' 'Old Blackfriars,' etc. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 T. HAMILTON CRAWFORD, R.S.W. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 1903
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LUDGATE HILL ON MAY 29, 1660 - - Frontispiece 
 
 THE GRAY HOUSE - - 2O 
 
 REPAIRING THE CITY WALL - 90 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF THE ORGAN OF ST. OLAVE'S - - 172 
 
 LADY FANSHAWE - - 2O6 
 
 HAMPTON COURT IN THE DAYS OF CHARLES I. - 276 
 
 PRENTICES IN MOORFIELDS - 282 
 
 SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE A PRISONER AT CHARING CROSS M2 
 
 [ i 
 
 2131553
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ' Here's flowers for you ; 
 Hot lavender, mints, savory marjoram, 
 The marigold that goes to bed \vi' the sun, 
 And with him rises weeping.' 
 
 The Winter's Tale. 
 
 THE Gray House in Chancery Lane, with its quaint 
 gables, mullioned windows, and carved timbers, must 
 have been in its palmy days when the country was 
 so near its gates that cowslip-fields and hedgerows 
 of wild-rose and honeysuckle lay just behind the 
 houses on the north side of Holborn. It was in its 
 glory still in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 when those who dwelt beneath the roof of the old 
 house during the Civil Wars heard one midnight 
 the distant rumble of fiery Prince Rupert's cannon 
 in that hour of peril for the then Puritan capital 
 when King Charles came within an ace of marching 
 on London, where the rebellion against him had 
 been nurtured, and was only prevented therefrom by 
 
 [ v]
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 his own unhappy knack of letting golden chances 
 slip. 
 
 London grew and grew (for the growth and vast- 
 ness of London town have ever been the wonder and 
 dismay of each succeeding generation), the country 
 became farther and farther off, but the Gray House 
 survived in Chancery Lane to bear its contemporary, 
 the grand old gateway of Lincoln's Inn, company as 
 long as it was able. It survived the days of Queen 
 Anne. Coffee - house tattle was retailed in its 
 panelled chambers, beaux and belles in powder and 
 patches alighted from sedans at its door, and the 
 link-boys hitched their torches to rests on its 
 wrought-iron gate. But in the days of the earlier 
 Georges the stately exterior of the Gray House 
 began to show the ravages of decay. It had the 
 appearance of being slighted, if not altogether 
 deserted, by its owners, and wore a melancholy air 
 of consciousness that it took up too much room, 
 though long before this time its old-world garden 
 had been buried under narrow, cramped houses of 
 yellow brick. 
 
 At last its days were numbered, and the Gray 
 House was doomed to go the way that most London 
 buildings go sooner or later, even those that are 
 hallowed by the hand of time and touched by the 
 romance of the past.
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 When its doom was sealed, what remained of a once 
 fine collection of pictures, books, manuscripts, antique 
 gems, and intaglios, besides family records, were 
 removed from the old house in oak chests heavily 
 carved in relief and dating from the same period 
 as its architecture, and were brought to the Grange 
 at Kingston-on-Thames, where there was little room 
 to receive the treasures. The pictures were sold, all 
 but two charming portraits signed by the hand of 
 Sir Peter Lely, which were cleaned and hung in the 
 low-ceilinged drawing-room, beautifying and gracing 
 it exceedingly. The books that overflowed their 
 accommodation in the library lined the passages 
 and bedrooms, and were piled on the attic floors, 
 while the poor manuscripts and bundles of letters 
 were squeezed into their chests again and consigned 
 to a loft above the barn. 
 
 Years passed away, and there came a new mistress 
 to the Grange at Kingston, whose maiden name had 
 been Young. She soon grew to love the pair of 
 portraits which represented her ancestress, a certain 
 Mrs. Lovejoy Young, and her fair stepdaughter, 
 Mistress Laurel. As they smiled at her from the 
 canvas day after day, they seemed to become like 
 real and living friends. How enchanting was even 
 the very quaintness of their names, Lovejoy and 
 Laurel !
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 The lady of the Grange spent many hours alone 
 with her tambour-frame and harp, while her lord 
 was in his counting-house in the city ; but since the 
 pictures had come to beguile her solitude she never 
 felt lonely. She liked to wonder and weave herself 
 stories about them, to try and bridge the more than 
 two centuries that divided her from them she a 
 lady of the early nineteenth century, in short- 
 waisted sprigged muslin, sandal shoes, mittens, and 
 mob-cap, who is as far off to us to-day as the ladies 
 of Cavalier and Puritan days were to her. 
 
 Not often, thought she, had the artist who excelled 
 in painting those wanton beauties of the Restoration 
 whom she knew in the Lely room of Hampton Court, 
 with their rakish eyes and sensuous charms, chanced 
 on such a subject for his brush as this clear-eyed, 
 pure-featured Mrs. Lovejoy, whose light brown hair, 
 instead of hanging in the fashion of her day low 
 about her neck in studied disorder, was drawn back 
 from an intellectual brow, unfrizzed and dressed as 
 simply as an early Italian madonna's. Indeed, there 
 was something nun-like in the serene calm of this 
 lady's bearing, despite the richness of her blue and 
 ivory draperies with ruby and sapphire clasps, and 
 the rows of orient pearls on her slender neck. Had 
 she always looked so cool and tranquil and unruffled 
 in those most ruffling and disturbed times? Her
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 spinning-wheel was beside her and a table on which 
 lay a viol, an open music-book, and a bunch of 
 lavender-heads. Did she spin flax for the household 
 linen, whilst not far distant battles were being won 
 and lost, distil lavender-water, copy music, and play 
 on the viol ? Yet those eyes with their clear, almost 
 keen outlook, would not be slow to observe. What 
 sights had they seen in the old London where they 
 had first opened, and where they had closed for ever ? 
 What people, what changes ? If only the soft- 
 cornered, demurely smiling mouth would open and 
 talk to the lady of the Grange, and satisfy the 
 curiosity her presentment had awakened ! 
 
 But still more curious, perhaps, was the lady of 
 the Grange about the original of the other picture. 
 How charming it was, this figure of a girl painted 
 in the habit of a shepherdess, in the full bloom of 
 brilliant youth and beauty, with pet lamb and be- 
 ribboned crook, and in her hand a nosegay. Every 
 hue of the rainbow was in the picture, and nearly 
 every flower of summer gardens in the nosegay. 
 The artist seemed to have abandoned himself to 
 an unusual riot in colour when he painted the 
 fluttering ribbon-knots of pink and yellow, the green 
 bodice laced over an open chemisette of white, the 
 gay striped kirtle, and red stockings and shoes. 
 Above the dusky tree, against the trunk of which her
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 crook rested clouds raced across the blue sky, and 
 one could almost feel the breeze that had set her 
 skirts and streamers awhirl, and her wealth of hair 
 flying behind her. A fair shepherdess in truth, 
 though distinctly a counterfeit one a shepherdess 
 of the garden, like the flowers in her nosegay, not of 
 the countryside ; for had ever a genuine shepherdess, 
 who danced on the village sward with her swain, so 
 graceful and erect a carriage as this bright-eyed 
 maiden with her high-bred air ? 
 
 The portrait, so full of life and undimmed colour, 
 was carefully painted in all its details down to each 
 flower of the nosegay. Damask roses, sweet-williams, 
 London pride, streaked gillyflowers and carnations, 
 'queens of delight, and flowers whose bravery, variety, 
 and sweet smell joined together tyeth everyone's 
 affection to like and to have them ' ; heartsease and 
 marigolds that go to bed with the sun, bachelors' 
 buttons, and fair maids of France. All these sweet- 
 scented and sweet-named blossoms were in the nose- 
 gay, not thrown together haphazard, but placed in 
 their mystic order, intermingled with their due relief 
 of greenery, such as spikes of lad's love, marjoram, 
 and rue. 
 
 Sometimes the lady of the Grange had fancied 
 that the nosegay in the picture wafted a fragrance
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 over the room, but really it came through the open 
 French windows from the flower border outside. 
 
 One hot, drowsy afternoon, when even bees were 
 humming lazily, and the haymakers taking a nap 
 under the sunk fence between the garden and the 
 meadow, the lady of the Grange, in her low- 
 ceilinged drawing-room, dropped the skein she was 
 winding, and gave herself up to idleness. Her eyes 
 rested on the two fair women of the pictures, of 
 whose society she never tired, whose silent presence, 
 the longer they hung there, exercised a growing, 
 rather than diminishing, fascination over her. 
 
 ' I wish you could speak as well as smile,' said 
 she. ' You both had lovely voices, I am sure, 
 especially you, dear shepherdess. Your beautiful 
 mouth has music in its curves. Did you pick that 
 nosegay yourself from your London garden, and 
 arrange it so carefully two hundred years ago ? 
 You loved flowers, birds, trees, and sunshine, and all 
 beautiful things, I am certain of that. How many 
 hearts did you break ? Not more than you could 
 help, for your own was too warm and generous. 
 Your own true young heart who captured it ? 
 Was it triumphantly stormed, or taken by stealth 
 so softly that you scarcely believed it was gone ? 
 Against whose conquering breast did it come flutter-
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing at last ? I wish I knew. I should so like to 
 know.' 
 
 Her eyelids closed, and she passed into the 
 country of dreams. There it seemed perfectly 
 natural to meet Mrs. Lovejoy out of her frame, 
 trailing her azure and ivory raiment over the Elysian 
 fields of dreamland, and Mistress Laurel, too, with 
 her nosegay and curly pet lamb trotting at her 
 dainty red heels. The lady of the Grange had her 
 wish, and heard their voices low, sweet, and 
 dreamy, as if coming through a mist, they sounded 
 to her ears, though they themselves, she thought, 
 stood in the flesh close beside her. 
 
 ' You would fain be nearer acquainted with our 
 history ? Then you must search among the papers 
 in your loft,' said Mrs. Lovejoy Young. 
 
 ' Yes, my mother's journal and my own letters 
 must be there, lying in one of the carven chests,' 
 added Mistress Laurel. ' There you may find 
 answers, perhaps, to some of the questions you 
 asked just now, and other things of greater interest. 
 Mother was a better scribe than I was, or than most 
 women of our day. Methinks what she writ will 
 yet be worth anyone's reading.' 
 
 ' No, no !' protested the fair scribe. ' It is so old 
 now, and the ink faded. Even should you try, 
 you'll scarce be able to decipher it.'
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 ' Nay, for all its great age and faded ink, 'tis fresh 
 and sweet as this,' and Mistress Laurel held forth 
 her nosegay. 
 
 But as she did so, its bright flowers withered and 
 fell from her hand. One flower she still held, but 
 that had not been in the nosegay. In shape, in 
 colour, it was strange and unfamiliar to the lady of 
 the Grange. 
 
 ' They call it fritillary,' Mistress Laurel said. 
 
 Her voice died in a sob, and she was no longer the 
 brilliant shepherdess, but a sad, ghostlike figure, 
 growing grayer and grayer, and fainter and fainter, 
 till she and her companion vanished away. 
 
 The lady of the Grange awoke with a start of 
 relief, for there, above her, smiling as radiantly as 
 before, were the visions of her dream back again in 
 their frames, and the nosegay bloomed unfaded in 
 Mistress Laurel's hand. 
 
 In great excitement, and very wide awake now, 
 the lady of the Grange followed up the clue her 
 dream had given her. She ran out across the lawn 
 through the plantation to the barn, and climbed up 
 to the loft, catching her muslin gathers on nails by 
 the way, unheeding, in her eagerness to unbury 
 Mrs. Lovejoy's journal, and forgetful of her natural 
 terror of spiders and rats. She lifted the heavy lids
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the chests, which were too full to be locked, and 
 knelt on the hard, dusty floor to ransack them. 
 The lengthening sunlight of the hot summer's day, 
 lying aslant the loft in shimmering bars, illumined 
 pitilessly the old, mouldering yellow papers, with 
 their scrawls, and blots, and flourishes. In those 
 days, to our gain, people did not burn their letters, 
 and the uses of the waste-paper basket seem to have 
 been unknown. Here were bundles and bundles of 
 letters, stacks of old bills, deeds, rent-rolls, house- 
 hold accounts, and recipes in wild confusion. 
 
 The lady of the Grange rummaged long and 
 perseveringly in this chaos, and was at last rewarded. 
 She came on a book bound in vellum, discoloured 
 by age, and spotted by damp, with a tarnished 
 scutcheon on its cover. Attached to the book by a 
 ribbon were three packets, tied up separately, and 
 labelled : ' My husband's letters, writ to me before 
 and after marriage ;' ' Letters writ by my step- 
 daughter Laurel from Bristol and elsewhere ;' ' Sun- 
 dry letters from my brothers, and sisters, and 
 friends, chiefly from my husband's kinswoman and 
 my own dear friend, Sir Richard Fanshawe's lady.' 
 
 Here and there in the book were many blank 
 pages, but the written ones were closely filled 
 with a fine, exquisite, clear penmanship, very 
 characteristic of the young, madonna-like matron of
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 the picture. The lady of the Grange believed she 
 could have identified the handwriting at a glance as 
 Mrs. Lovejoy's, even if her sweet, quaint name had 
 not been etched on the fly-leaf beneath true-lovers' 
 knots. 
 
 ' It is of antiquarian value and human interest,' 
 said a gentleman of the Heralds' College who came 
 to dine one night at the Grange, and to whom his 
 hostess proudly displayed her precious find. ' Some- 
 thing might be made of it.' 
 
 ' And I intend to make something of it,' the lady 
 said 'a nosegay ! Oh, I shall be so busy when the 
 winter evenings come, gathering my nosegay.' 
 
 And when the winter evenings came, and the 
 damask curtains were drawn, and the firelight 
 danced on the two portraits in the low-ceilinged 
 drawing-room, the lady of the Grange neglected 
 her harp and tambour-frame, ' Clarissa Harlowe,' and 
 the last new Waverley. She sat at her escritoire, 
 pen in hand, with two tall wax candles on either 
 side of her bent little head, making extracts from 
 the old vellum-bound manuscript-book and the 
 packets of letters. But, though she loved her 
 task, she seems to have progressed but slowly with 
 it, and then to have come to a standstill altogether. 
 She bore children, and the changes and chances of 
 this mortal life brought her sickness and sorrow.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 So once more it was the fate of Mrs. Lovejoy's 
 journal to be put away and forgotten. 
 
 Years afterwards it fell to the lot of a much later 
 descendant to discover it for the second time, and 
 she it is who now ties the nosegay together, in its 
 present form.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 i 
 
 WRIT AT THE GRAY HOUSE, 
 CHANCERY LANE, 1642. 
 
 MY husband, Mr. Gabriel Young, brought me, his 
 second wife, hither a week ago after we were wed in 
 the Church of St. Olave, in Hart Street. At that 
 church my father, Master Aurelius Howard, Doctor 
 of Music, is organist. He is also a teacher of sing- 
 ing, and his method of training the voice is held in 
 great esteem, and brings him pupils to the high, 
 narrow house at the corner of Crutched Friars, 
 where I was born and lived all my life till I married, 
 which I never thought to do, but God ordained it 
 otherwise. 
 
 Sir Oracle (in playful fondness I sometimes call 
 my husband this, because in years and wisdom he is 
 so much greater than I am, and seems to me verily 
 an oracle) is scholarly in his tastes, and has a rare 
 
 i
 
 2 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 knowledge of books. He possesses hundreds, yet 
 doth go most days the round of the booksellers in 
 Paul's Churchyard in search of new treasures, for he 
 says a craving for Caxtons is not easily satisfied. 
 
 This morning as we paced together the walks of 
 Gray's Inn, the winter air being very bright and 
 clear, and every twig and blade of grass crystallized 
 by the frost so that 'twas like walking in fairyland, 
 Sir Oracle told me he had often in past days met 
 the great Lord Chancellor Bacon here, and showed 
 me the tree he had planted and the seat where he 
 had once seen him dictating to his secretaries. Then 
 Sir Oracle drew from the parcel he had carried from 
 the booksellers this fair manuscript book, vellum 
 bound, with his scutcheon in a lozenge of gold on 
 the cover, and etched within on the fly-leaf my name 
 beneath true-lovers' knots. He said he would have 
 me write in it, when I was so minded, of what I see 
 and hear and do in these times, which are so troubled 
 and eventful. 
 
 Methinks I shall be so minded often, if not every 
 day, and I was impatient to come in from Gray's Inn 
 Gardens at once and make a beginning. I cherished 
 a fancy long ago to keep a journal, but I never had 
 leisure to keep ought but accounts and copy music 
 in my father's house in Hart Street, where the burden 
 of domestic cares fell early on me, the eldest daughter,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 3 
 
 my mother having died at the birth of our little 
 Jack. 
 
 From the attic dormer of my old home, above the 
 housetops, is to be seen Tower Hill and the great 
 Tower Prison, rising like a square grim giant against 
 the sky, and a glimpse of the flowing Thames, with 
 its freight of ships and barges ; but from the lower 
 windows there is nothing to look at except the 
 crooked houses opposite, with their pointed gables 
 overhanging and shadowing the street. Here, as I 
 sit at an oaken writing-cabinet in the sunny oriel of 
 my closet in this new home, so fine and spacious 
 that I can scarce feel at home in it as yet, my eyes 
 may wander if I choose from the bowling-green and 
 walled pleasance below, where the big carved sundial 
 marks the flight of time, to the green fields, now frost- 
 spangled, of Lincoln's Inn, and beyond I can picture 
 the country road that doth lead from Holborn up to 
 the windmills and wild heights of Hampstead. 
 
 It is a vastly pleasant prospect, yet I turn my head 
 ofterier citywards, thinking of those I have left at the 
 corner house in Hart Street, and how they are faring 
 without me. 
 
 It was always my reward and great pride to hear 
 my father say that I was the mainstay of his house, 
 and had filled with tender care and vigilance the 
 place of mother to my motherless brothers and 
 
 i 2
 
 4 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 sisters. And when he used to sigh and ask what he 
 should do when the day came for me to desert the 
 nest for a nest of my own, I vowed a hundred times 
 such a day would never come ; indeed, I was well 
 content to be my father's right hand, and had no 
 dreams of a husband for myself, though when I 
 marked how fast Peg and Prue grew out of their 
 kirtles, methought the time might not be far off when 
 I should have to choose husbands for them. At the 
 same time, I remember that I soundly scolded Peg 
 for going with some other maids to a gipsy fortune- 
 teller at Bartholomew's Fair to try and learn her 
 destiny, which said she was to be wed to a flaxen- 
 haired gallant. Now Peg has taken my place at 
 home, and I hope she will keep up all her promises 
 to me, and be sensible, and give up curtseying to the 
 new moon through glass, counting all the white 
 mares she meets, and other like follies. Both she 
 and Prue play prettily on the virginals and harpsi- 
 chon, and the boys can take their part on the bass 
 and treble viols. It has been said in jest that 
 my father must have taught his little ones to play 
 some instrument ere they had learned to walk, their 
 youthful proficiency being greatly wondered at and 
 admired by gentlemen of the King's Chapel who 
 now and then have visited my father. 
 
 Mr. Will Lawes himself has supped with us in
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 5 
 
 Hart Street, and with him once came his friend from 
 Aldersgate, Mr. Milton, the poet, who said when little 
 Jane and Jack joined in his father's madrigal they 
 were like Raphael's angels, and their tuneful voices 
 gave forth sweeter music than any instrument made 
 by human hands. I, for my part, have ever loved, 
 above all things, the rich, swelling notes of the 
 organ, on which, so soon as I had the strength, my 
 father did teach me to play. Often I snatched a 
 half-hour to practise on the pair of organs in the 
 church, and the producing of those rolling waves of 
 harmonious sound rilled me with ecstasy. 
 
 'Tis thinking of the organ that brings me to the 
 story of my short wooing and the spring morning 
 when, 'twixt the counting of linen and pastry-making, 
 I found the time to run over to the church, taking 
 little Jane and Jack with me. Jack was my blower, 
 and Jane put her dolls on a tomb to bed, while I 
 overambitious, my father would have said plunged 
 into ,a mass of Palestrina's. Wrapped in the music, I 
 did not hear footsteps in the aisle till Jane came and 
 tugged my sleeve, and whispered, ' See, here cometh 
 your dear Anne Harrison* and a tall gentleman.' 
 
 I looked round, and saw the vision of bright 
 young girlhood that my eyes could but greet with 
 
 * Afterwards Lady Fanshawe. ED.
 
 6 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 pleasure, though I knew she would bid me at once 
 be done with Palestrina. She came towards us 
 beneath the gray arches of the pillars, with dancing 
 step and dancing eye, her light curls aquiver, 
 catching the stray sunbeams as she walked. The 
 summer before Anne had lost her mother, the 
 dearly-loved, gracious lady of our nearest neighbour 
 of quality, Sir John Harrison, who, with his family, 
 came from Hertfordshire every autumn to live the 
 winter months at the great house with the courtyard 
 and wrought-iron gates in Hart Street, which he 
 rented from the Lord Dingwall. Till then Mistress 
 Anne had been the gayest, wildest, sauciest romp 
 in the world, and she came to town full of tales of 
 her pranks and rides on bare-backed ponies in the 
 country, which only to hear excited the amazement, 
 and envy withal, of our London-bred Peg and Prue. 
 But after my Lady Harrison's death Anne had 
 changed and become more sedate, and assumed at 
 times an air so grave and sober for her years that 
 she seemed a more fit companion and confidante for 
 me than for Peg, who was more her age. She sought 
 my counsel often in the management of household 
 affairs, which, young as she was, she had taken on 
 her shoulders, as I had done when my mother died. 
 She would fain profit by my experience, she said, 
 and I gladly gave her advice, though methought
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 7 
 
 there was a vast difference in her circumstances and 
 mine ; for in her father's house was a great number 
 of servants, and no scarcity of money, whereas we 
 had but two serving-maids and a cook-boy, and 
 'twas a difficulty sometimes how to make two ends 
 meet. Especially anxious had I been in this respect 
 when it was necessary to equip my eldest brother, 
 Roger, for his voyage to Aleppo, he being bound 
 apprentice to a Turkey merchant. I was at my 
 wits' end how to get him all the needful holland 
 caps, handkerchiefs, and doublets, not to speak of 
 thread stirrups, stockings, gloves, and cloth socks. 
 And though Roger had complained that our house 
 was too small for the number of children and 
 musical instruments, and that he was often dis- 
 traught with too much music, he would not be 
 content to go abroad without a new guitar. But 
 this was given him by his godmother, the widow 
 Travers in Seething Lane, who doth profess an 
 abundance of affection for my father's children, 
 which they, suspecting 'tis for his sake rather than 
 for their own, do not return very warmly. 
 
 Peg may safely be trusted, methinks, to keep 
 Widow Travers at a distance. 
 
 Well, I must not wander, but will come back to 
 the morning when I looked round, with my ringers 
 still on the organ keys, and saw Anne Harrison
 
 8 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 tripping up the aisle of St. Olave's. She left the tall 
 gentleman far behind her, he having lingered to gaze 
 at the kneeling stone figures of the Bayning brothers 
 in their ruffs. 
 
 The best company I had ever met, mostly clergy- 
 men, had been at Sir John Harrison's, but this 
 gentleman was not a clergyman, and a stranger 
 to me. 
 
 ' 'Tis my cousin Young,' explained Anne in a 
 lowered voice, sweeping my hands from off the keys, 
 and holding them in hers. ' He was so ravished by 
 your sweet strains that I could not get him to budge 
 beyond the church. Since his lady died of con- 
 sumption in France he hath lived there mostly with 
 his two girls, but now has come to attend, with my 
 father, the trial of my Lord Strafford. He will 
 much glory in making your acquaintance, Lovejoy.' 
 Then, softening her voice still more, Anne added 
 mischievously : ' He is in sore want of a second wife, 
 for his daughters are becoming a handful, and you, 
 dear Lovejoy, are so demure and sweet a personage, 
 so skilled in housewifely arts, and in music withal, 
 that if only you were as old as you seem, and he 
 young, not only in name, it would be a suitable 
 match.' 
 
 ' Tut !' said I. ' Let us go without into the 
 churchyard if you would banter.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY g 
 
 At this moment Mr. Young came forward, so 
 Anne presented me to him as her very dear and 
 cherished friend, Mistress Lovejoy Howard, daughter 
 of that good musician Dr. Aurelius Howard, whose 
 scholar she was on the virginals. 
 
 Before I could respond to the stranger's civilities, 
 Jack, flushed and proud from his work at the 
 bellows, would insist on claiming the wage I had 
 promised him, which was marchpane and a manchet, 
 to be divided 'twixt himself and Jane beneath the 
 trees in the churchyard. With him dragging at 
 my skirts on one side, and Jane holding her face 
 in their folds on the other, in pretended shyness of 
 Mistress Anne's coaxings, we went out by the south 
 door into the April sunshine. Other children 
 playmates of my little brother and sister flocked 
 round the bench I sat down on, in the shade of the 
 budding branches, where the rooks were cawing. 
 Anne Harrison flitted over the sward, out through 
 the gateway with the skulls on it, and left her cousin 
 watching me as I distributed the dainties among the 
 little ones. 
 
 In the broad sunlight I noticed that his hair was 
 more silvered than my father's, and his brows lined 
 and thoughtful, but, beneath them, the kindly eyes 
 had something of youth in their hazel clearness. 
 His sad-coloured suit was very rich, relieved by
 
 io AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 velvet slashings and points of lace at the neck and 
 wrists. He had a violet lining to his cloak, and a 
 long feather curled downwards from his low-crowned 
 beaver. I was unconcerned at his standing there 
 while I fed the children with marchpane, and after- 
 wards, when they clamoured for it, told some silly 
 tales of dragon-slaying, hobgoblins, brave knights, and 
 bewitched princesses. Had it been Anne's sparkish 
 brother, Abraham Harrison, who stood and thus 
 listened to me, I warrant, though I had been long 
 acquainted with him, I should have been embarrassed 
 enough. But in this strange gentleman's presence I 
 felt an unusual ease and confidence, and 'twas as if 
 I must have met and known him somewhere before. 
 Not till later did I recall that a small picture of him 
 by Sir Anthony Van Dyck hung in a room at Balls, 
 in Hertfordshire, the Harrisons' country house, and 
 whilst I tarried there last summer to bear Anne 
 company for a few days in her sorrow, the painted 
 eyes had seemed to rest on me, no matter in what 
 part of the room I might be, with the same friendly, 
 penetrating look as did the original ones in St. Olave's 
 Churchyard. 
 
 He himself hath told me since that, with the sun 
 glinting on my hair through the boughs, with little 
 Jack in my lap leaning his gold, curly head against 
 my bosom, and Jane beside me, the other neighbours'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY IT 
 
 children on the grass at my feet, I reminded him of 
 some Madonna of Botticelli, and there and then he 
 did resolve, if possible, to woo me for his wife. 
 
 Before the spring was out, Master Young had sat 
 often in our narrow parlour, with its buff wainscot, 
 and listened attentively to many an intricate fancy 
 out of Queen Elizabeth's music-book, performed on 
 the harpsichon by Peg and Prue. He would join, 
 too, in catches and madrigals, for he is a musicianly 
 gentleman as well as a scholar. He spoke to me of 
 the two daughters being educated with their foster- 
 brother in France, whither their mother had been 
 taken for her health, and where she had died of 
 consumption ; and he said that the one could warble 
 like a skylark, having a voice of wondrous sweetness 
 and rare compass, while the other was voiceless, she 
 being born deaf and dumb. 
 
 ' How pitiful sad !' I said, lifting my eyes from the 
 pile of mending before me. ' What is her name ?' 
 
 ' She was christened Margaret,' said he, * but she 
 hath been called Silence since it became certain she 
 would never speak. Poor little Silence ! Hers is a 
 great and stormy spirit, which, when roused, some 
 say, is like an evil demon ; but her face is fair as any 
 angel's.' 
 
 He sighed, and I met his eyes with tears of sym-
 
 12 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 pathy in mine for his child's affliction ; then he drew 
 his chair nearer to me, for we were alone in the 
 room. The chicks were abed, the schoolboys at 
 their tasks, and Peg and Prue had run upstairs to 
 tend the row of flower-pots on the little wooden 
 balcony in the gable. Their laughter and prattle 
 came down to us through the open casement and 
 mingled with the tinkle of the virginals from the 
 study, where my father was busy with a pupil. 
 
 ' Both my rogues,' Master Young continued, ' need 
 a mother's firm and gentle guidance. None I know 
 could give it them so excellently well as you, though 
 you are but young in years. Sweet Mistress Love- 
 joy, will you be a mother to them and a precious 
 wife to me ?' 
 
 This was no lover to call forth blushing airs and 
 bashful coquetries. I felt myself quite calm, and 
 answered steadily : 
 
 ' I would, but I have vowed never to leave my 
 father ; indeed, sir, methinks they could ill spare me 
 here.' 
 
 ' Your father will let you cancel your vow, and has 
 already granted me leave to steal his jewel if she 
 consents to be stolen,' he said. 
 
 So my father knew, and 'twas his doing that Peg 
 and Prue had scampered to the top of the house, 
 that Tim did not come bouncing in to ask my help
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 13 
 
 with his Latin, and that Penelope, our old serving- 
 woman, had refrained from summoning me to ad- 
 minister to little Jack a rhubarb draught ere he laid 
 himself abed. 
 
 I did not give Master Young my answer till I had 
 talked with my father. That night I asked him if 
 'twas indeed true that he was ready to part with me, 
 after all. 
 
 ' Ready ? Nay, dear wench,' he said ; ' but I 
 would fain not think of myself and stand in your 
 way if you have a mind to accept the suit of this 
 courteous and Christian gentleman. He doth intend 
 to live in London, though he hath estates in the 
 country, so we shall not lose thee altogether, my 
 Lovejoy. Truly you have been my comfort and the 
 light of my eyes since your mother was taken from 
 me. But shall I doom thee for that, fair flower of 
 maidenhood, to wither on the virgin stem when an 
 honourable man would have thee for his wife and 
 a rich man withal ?' 
 
 I had not thought of myself in the light of a rich 
 man's wife, and it did now flash across my mind how 
 in such a position I could be of much benefit to 
 those I loved. Belike, I might help to start the 
 boys when 'twas time for them to finish their studies 
 at Paul's School. Peg and Prue should not have 
 cause to say any more they were ashamed to go into
 
 14 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 fine company, inasmuch as they had no pretty gowns 
 to hang on their backs ; my father should have new 
 Greek lace-bands, instead of wearing them darned 
 and darned till there was little of the lace to be 
 seen ; Jane should have a handsomer family of dolls 
 than she had ever boasted, and Jack look a royal boy 
 in little coats of brocade for Sundays and high 
 holydays. 
 
 But 'twas not for these things and his riches that 
 I promised to be the wife of Gabriel Young. Had 
 his fortune been ten times greater, he could not have 
 won me without first gaining my love and trust. 
 And, having done that, 'twould have been little odds 
 to me if he had been poor or as old as Methuselah, 
 as Anne Harrison said he was, in her jesting, lively 
 way. 
 
 When she heard of my betrothal, Anne came to 
 wish me joy, bringing with her a gift from her father 
 and herself. 'Twas a wondrous fair knob of gold 
 enamelled with tulips, set in a crust of small dia- 
 monds. The dear child hugged me, and said : 
 
 ' I have played the matchmaker all unawares, 
 Lovejoy. I spoke lightly that morning in the 
 church, and little dreamed it would come true. If 
 my cousin Young does not prove a good husband 
 and make you happy, I shall be ready to die of 
 remorse.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 15 
 
 She assumed so anxious a mien that I made haste 
 to assure her she need have no fear, for I was happy 
 enough, and looked forward to greater happiness still 
 in being the wife of her cousin Young. 
 
 Then we mounted together to the top of the house 
 and stood on our wooden balcony, for this was the 
 I2th of May, the day of tragedy when Lord Strafford 
 stepped from his prison in the Tower to lay his grave 
 and noble head upon the block in the presence of 
 vast multitudes of people. Rumours of a plot on 
 foot the evening before to compass his escape had 
 hurried on the fatal moment. During my quiet 
 courtship much had I heard of the impassioned 
 scenes of his trial from one who was a daily witness 
 of them in Westminster Hall. He had told us of 
 the long pleadings of the King's proud counsellor, of 
 his appeal to his judges on behalf of his young and 
 innocent children, and how at this point the voice of 
 the great statesman (said to have a heart as hard as 
 a flint by his enemies) was so choked with sobs he 
 could scarce proceed. 
 
 That day my father, for once, would have no sound 
 of music in our dwelling, and even Jane and Jack 
 forbore to shout and laugh at their games, being 
 sensible, young though they were, of that awful thing 
 that had happened so near us out yonder on Tower 
 Hill. We watched silently and sadly the great
 
 1 6 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 crowds disperse, blackening the streets and lanes of 
 the city in all directions. Men came by way of 
 Crutched Friars even into our quiet street, hustling 
 each other and whooping madly for joy, ' His head 
 is off! His head is off!' Little Jane looked up 
 inquiringly. 
 
 ' Why are they glad ?' she asked. ' They should 
 be sorry, not glad, forsooth, that the Lord Strafford's 
 head hath been cut off.' 
 
 ' Ay, they should be sorry, not glad,' said Anne, 
 with a flash of anger in her eyes. 'Had he been the 
 worst of men, and working the ruin of the kingdom, 
 as hath been said most falsely, they should not be 
 glad.' 
 
 But they were glad, for bells pealed forth from 
 towers and steeples, and at night the bonfires blazed 
 skywards along Cheapside and Fleet Street, as if it 
 were a merry festival. 
 
 In the country it may be possible, I have heard, 
 to live one's daily round too occupied with the tasks 
 of the hour to be interested in or even heed great 
 public events. 'Tis different in London, as I, a 
 Londoner born and bred, can testify. London is 
 the heart of things, and those who dwell therein 
 cannot help being strangely swayed by its throbs 
 and thrills of emotion. 
 
 Methinks, if ever there is a time when a woman
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 17 
 
 can be pardoned for being engrossed with herself, to 
 the exclusion of ought besides, 'tis on her bridal day, 
 for then she seems to herself and all her loved ones a 
 heroine for one day at least. Yet on the cold gray 
 morning in January that saw me wed, when I was 
 driving away with my bridegroom from my home in 
 Hart Street, I soon had occasion almost to forget I 
 was a bride, and the little drama I had figured in, in 
 coming sudden on something of that greater drama 
 which the King was playing with his Parliament. 
 
 Our coach had to hold up in the street in a string 
 of others, whilst the King came forth from the 
 Guildhall to get into his. His Majesty's errand 
 there had been fruitless, for he had come to seek his 
 flown birds those five Parliament gentlemen who 
 ten days before had left the House of Commons 
 when the King had gone thither to arrest them, and, 
 escaping through the Speaker's garden, had taken 
 boat for the city, where they now lay hid in 
 Coleman Street. My husband, alighting to salute 
 respectfully the King when he should pass, fell into 
 converse with an Alderman of his acquaintance, who 
 did say the Lord Mayor and Councillors had been so 
 uncivil as to refuse to snare for the King his flown 
 birds, and that His Majesty was in high choler 
 thereat. 
 
 2
 
 1 8 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Just then shouts, some loyal, but more angry and 
 mocking, from the citizens thronging the street, 
 made me forgetful of my cloth of silver gown, and 
 the tell-tale rice that Penelope and the cook-boy 
 had hurled at me rattling in its folds, and I sprang 
 on to the step of the coach to see the King. 
 
 No guards accompanied him, and he was almost 
 unattended. His brows were drawn into a deep 
 frown, and he walked with such little irritable steps 
 that he seemed near to run into his coach. 'Twas 
 in the lofty posture of his head alone that his kingly 
 dignity was perceptible. As he drove away, some of 
 the crowd ran after his coach, yelling, ' Privilege ! 
 privilege of Parliament !' and one, ruder and bolder 
 than the rest, dared to toss a paper in at the window, 
 with the cry, ' To your tents, O Israel !' 
 
 I recalled the picture I had seen on the mild day 
 in November but two months agone when King 
 Charles had come with his Queen to be feasted in 
 the City after his return from making peace with 
 the Scots. Flags and bunting had waved merrily 
 against the soft gray clouds ; the merchants had 
 hung their richest tapestries and embroidered stuffs 
 over the balconies, and every casement was decked 
 with garlands and smiling faces. I had been with 
 old Penelope a-marketing in Leadenhall, and to 
 purchase ribands for Jack's garter-knots at a draper's 

 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY ig 
 
 in Cheap, and from the doorway of his shop 'twas 
 our good fortune to see the procession go slowly by. 
 There were the Aldermen in their scarlet bravery, 
 gentlemen on horseback, clad in velvet coats, with 
 chains of gold, and in the midst their Majesties, 
 who rid in an open equipage. The King had not 
 frowned then, and the gay Queen, in a furred gown 
 of blue and white, with pearls shimmering among 
 her brown curls, had seemed to be laughing at two 
 of the Royal children seated opposite the Princess 
 of Orange, small, grave bride of tender years, full of 
 childish dignity, with her hands folded stiffly on her 
 lap ; and the little Princess Elizabeth, pale, and 
 clear-cut in features as an ivory image, fragile and 
 drooping like a snowdrop, yet most lovely and 
 gracious withal. 
 
 Only shouts of ' God save the King !' had rent 
 the air that day, and the lowering, resentful faces 
 that lined the streets now had been absent. 
 
 f Where are they hiding to-day, all the loyal folk ?' 
 I asked Sir Oracle, as our coach at last moved 
 forward ; ' and whence have all these disloyal ones 
 come from ?' 
 
 ' They are the same folk, sweetheart,' said he, 
 * and 'tis the same city of London. But the march 
 of events hath changed the aspect of it. There is 
 time in two months for the loyal to grow disloyal.' 
 
 2 2
 
 20 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' And so there is hope that the march of events 
 may make the disloyal loyal again very soon ?' I asked. 
 
 My Sir Oracle looked grave as he answered : 
 
 ' Nay, that will be a slower process, methinks, 
 and God alone knows what may happen ere the 
 pendulum swings back.' Then suddenly he smiled, 
 and exclaimed, ' See, little wife, this is Chancery 
 Lane, and we are at home.' 
 
 The next moment he had helped me to alight, and 
 the steward and servants came forth to bid us 
 welcome. As I passed beneath the portico of gray 
 stone into the panelled hall, and my husband's 
 forefathers and their ladies looked askance at me 
 over their steel cuirasses and starched ruffs, I 
 realized I was come to be mistress over near as big a 
 house and as many domestics as Anne Harrison, and 
 felt not a little mindful of my responsibilities. 
 
 I had seen the house before, but my husband would 
 fain have me go with him now unto all the rooms 
 again to show me with a boylike pleasure how the 
 chambers had been dressed up for me afresh with 
 fair hangings, mirrors, and tapestries. In the velvet- 
 room I must see the secret iron closet 'twixt the bed- 
 stead and the stairway ; in the orange chamber the 
 great chest that came from Nuremburg with figures 
 in relief, said to have been carved by the hand of 
 Peter Vischer ; here a cabinet of gems, there rare
 
 THE GKAV HOUSE.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 21 
 
 gravings of the ' Dance of Death ' these and a host 
 of other pieces that my husband has brought from 
 his travels in outlandish towns when he was bound 
 on foreign embassies. Longest did he linger show- 
 ing me his books, which he doth esteem his greatest 
 treasures ; and, lastly, he brought me here to my 
 own closet, with its carnation hangings of quilted 
 silk and little China carpets wrought with coloured 
 silks and gold thread, where I was glad to rest, for I 
 was weary from going up and down passages and 
 stairways. The women had unpacked my trunks 
 and put out a loose smock for me to take my ease 
 in, and I sat beside the hearth and held my hands 
 before the flames. 
 
 'Tis almost unnatural not to be interrupted long 
 ere this by Penelope coming in to announce some 
 catastrophe in the kitchen, or to say that Master 
 Jack is whipping his top with boys in the street, and 
 will I whip him, and Jane hath torn her clothes 
 again. I miss the little ones as sore still as the first 
 night I left them ; I miss the childish prayers they 
 said at my knee, their hugs as I tucked them in 
 their beds, the sound of their fresh young voices and 
 sturdy footsteps. This house seems strangely silent. 
 My husband has gone abroad to his bookseller's, and 
 I hear no sound of the servants, whose quarters are 
 on the other side of the courtyard.
 
 22 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 But there will soon be young life here too, for in 
 a few days, should wind and weather favour their 
 journey, my stepdaughters, Laurel and Silence, are 
 coming out of France by way of Dieppe with their 
 gentlewoman and their foster-brother Hugh L' Es- 
 trange. 
 
 That I may win their love and esteem and be unto 
 them a good and discreet stepmother is my most 
 earnest prayer. 
 
 Yet when I think of Silence and Gabriel's words 
 concerning her ' hers is a stormy spirit ; some say 
 when roused 'tis like an evil demon ' I can but 
 feel some fears.
 
 II 
 
 January 1 1, 1642. 
 
 THIS fine frosty morning I bore my husband com- 
 pany to Temple Stairs, whence he took barge for 
 Greenwich on his way to Deal to meet his children, 
 who are to land by the packet-boat. 
 
 'Twas only parting for a short time, but he took, 
 nevertheless, most tender leave of me, entrusting me 
 to the care of Juan, his Spanish foot-boy, who 
 attended us to the waterside. I stood at the head 
 of the stairs waving my hand as the barge drifted 
 off over the glittering water. The sun did shine as 
 brightly as on a June day, and I never remembered 
 to have seen so many barges, wherries, and sailing- 
 boats abroad on the river. 'Twas rumoured this was 
 to be a gala-day for the enemies of the King. 
 
 Unconsciously, 'tis true, it seems my lot to keep 
 pace with what Sir Oracle calls the march of events. 
 I was alive to the thrill of excitement in the air, and, 
 as on my wedding-day, near to forgetting myself in 
 
 [23]
 
 24 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 what was passing around me, for ere I had turned 
 from the stairs the sound of drums and trumpets fell 
 on my ear, and Juan said we had better tarry till the 
 train-bands had gone by. They came in martial 
 array rowing up the river, and acting as guards 
 to the five gentlemen of the Parliament who, till 
 to-day, had been in hiding in the City. These 
 gentlemen were now venturing forth very boldly to 
 Westminster, the King being gone from Whitehall 
 to Hampton Court. ' The cat's away, so the mice 
 will play,' I heard someone say. And then, as the 
 long boats glided by in which were the five members 
 and the Sheriffs of London, a great huzzah went 
 up from the bystanders for * King Pym ' and 
 Mr. Hampden. Mr. Pym's broad, fresh face wore a 
 smile of triumph, but Mr. Hampden's, methought, 
 was pale and sternly set I liked his looks the 
 better of the two. 
 
 Afterwards, leaving the waterside, with Juan 
 following close at my heels, I came to cross the 
 crowded Strand, and there some lads ran against 
 me, and I chanced to encounter my schoolboy 
 brother Timothy. 
 
 'Tim!' I exclaimed, 'Tim! have I caught you 
 playing the truant ?' 
 
 ' Why, sister Lovejoy,' he said, ' I vow I scarce 
 knew you in that red finery. You are quite the
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 25 
 
 brave lady, methinks, and may not go a-marketing 
 now unattended.' 
 
 He cast a quizzing glance at the Spanish foot- 
 boy. 
 
 * 'Tis all very well, Tim,' I said, * but I asked you 
 a question. Are you playing the truant ?' 
 
 I would fain have looked severely on him, but 
 could not for the life of me, so greatly joyed was I at 
 the unexpected sight of a home face. 
 
 ' The 'prentice boys have been given leave to 
 make holiday to-day, and so some of us Paul's boys 
 have taken it.' 
 
 ' But Will is not one of them, I'll warrant.' 
 
 ' Will is a bookworm, and heeds naught but what's 
 in his books, and there's a world of things going on 
 outside them. I rowed in a skiff with the train-bands 
 from Tower Wharf to Temple Stairs, and would fain 
 have gone all the way to Westminster, only I durst 
 not come late to dinner. There's herb-pie for 
 dinner to-day. I heard Peg order it.' Tim drew 
 a sigh, as if his soul had been much torn asunder 
 'twixt his love of liberty and liking for herb-pie. 
 ' Ay,' he went on, ' wouldn't I join the train-bands, 
 and help to fight King Pym's battles, if I were but 
 as old as our brother Roger !' 
 
 'You. are a disloyal little scapegrace,' said I, 'to 
 talk thus. Methinks 'twould please father better if
 
 26 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 you minded your books, like Will, instead of scour- 
 ing the town in the wake of the train-bands.' 
 
 Then I asked Tim how my father did and all at 
 home, and he said 'twould take them pleasantly by 
 surprise if I came to dinner, and saw for myself how 
 they did. 
 
 ' Prithee come,' he urged, ' and see how Peg apes 
 the mistress by being horrid strict.' 
 
 He put his hand in my arm, and pulled me along ; 
 so I, yearning to see home again as greatly as if 
 I had been away from it years instead of days, 
 bade Juan take word to Chancery Lane that I had 
 gone to dine at my father's. 
 
 ' I'll be your gallant escort,' said Tim. 
 
 But the next moment he left my side to slide on 
 one of the frozen rivulets. When he came back he 
 shook the pocket I wore hanging on my wrist, and 
 asked if the knotted silk purse Prue had made me 
 was therein, and if it were full of crowns. He was 
 in sore need of a certain new marble, he said, and 
 had not been treated to the bear-pit or a puppet 
 show for many a long day. 
 
 I could not buy Tim marbles, for not a shop or 
 booth in the City was open. The Cross in Cheap 
 was decked in holiday greenery, and streamers and 
 garlands floated over the signs in Lombard Street. 
 The 'prentices who had not gone to Westminster
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 27 
 
 were playing and scuffling in the gutter, or gathered 
 in the side-streets and courts to watch performances 
 of jugglers and tight-rope dancers, of whom there 
 seemed plenty about, making hay while the sun 
 shone. All the short-cuts Tim took were so familiar 
 to me I could have found my way through them 
 blindfolded. Yet familiar places appeared to me to 
 wear a strange face to-day. Did I see them with 
 different eyes because I was now no longer Lovejoy 
 Howard hurrying home to take my place at the head 
 of the dinner-table and to help the herb-pie, but 
 Mrs. Lovejoy Young, coming as a guest to her 
 father's house to see Peg in her old place ' aping the 
 mistress by being horrid strict,' as Tim wickedly 
 put it ? 
 
 When we came beneath the crooked gables of 
 Hart Street, the bells of St. Olave's sent forth a 
 merry peal. Twas as if the bell-ringing and flying 
 of flags were meant to welcome me, though I hated 
 the thought of sharing in any way the triumph of 
 the five Members who had that day so victoriously 
 gained their point against the King. 
 
 Methought the narrow house had grown narrower 
 as I entered it, and that there was scarce any room 
 to turn round in the hall ; but there was room, 
 nevertheless, for the whole household to flock there 
 to receive me boisterously, for Tim had run ahead
 
 28 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 and announced my arrival at the top of his lungs, so 
 that all Crutched Friars must have known I had 
 come. 
 
 Jack and Jane embraced my skirts, wild with joy 
 at seeing me, and my father led me to the table, and 
 I sat on his right hand in the chair of state, which 
 Mr. Milton and Dr. Child, and divers other honoured 
 musical guests, had occupied when they supped with 
 us in Hart Street. 
 
 ' Peg does very well,' my father said. He nodded 
 encouragingly towards the other end of the table, 
 where Peg sat flushing and frowning for fear her 
 dishes should not hold out. 
 
 ' Considering what a giddy pate she was wont to 
 be,' murmured Will the bookworm. 
 
 ' Peg hath whipped me once,' said Jack, ' because 
 I failed down and did bleed here.' He pointed to a 
 triangle of plaster that adorned his forehead. 
 
 ' Nay, 'twas not for that he got a whipping,' put 
 in Jane, ' but because he was naughty, and would 
 run off and play with rude boys outside Mistress 
 Travers' house.' 
 
 ' Thereby hangs a tale,' said Prue. ' 'Tis Baby 
 Jack that hath betrayed the citadel.' 
 
 ' Eh, Prue ! to whom and what citadel ?' asked my 
 father; but not till he had hurried away to the 
 church, where a pupil for the organ awaited him,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 29 
 
 did Prue explain that Jack had been brought home 
 bleeding by the widow, who had tended and plastered 
 his cut herself, and had come every day since to see 
 how the ' sweet cherub ' was, and to doctor him 
 with liquorice-water and other concoctions of her 
 own making. 
 
 ' In truth,' said Prue, ' she is now a tame cat in 
 the house.' 
 
 ' But 'tis not my fault, Lovejoy,' Peg did protest, 
 hot and ashamed that I should learn the widow had 
 gained so much ground under her regime. ' Yester 
 evening I would not ask her to supper though she 
 tarried on after Jack was abed.' 
 
 * Ay, she tarried on,' said Prue, ' even though I 
 drummed on at " The Carman's Whistle " till I 
 thought I should split her ears as well as the strings 
 of the harpsichon ; but she smiled through it and 
 marked time with her foot withal, though I kept no 
 time on purpose.' 
 
 ' She hath told father Jane should not learn to play 
 on the lute because it doth draw her figure awry,' 
 said Peg, ' but I hope he will not heed her. Why 
 should madam interfere in Jane's education ?' 
 
 ' Why, indeed,' echoed Prue ; and both looked at 
 me to abet them, as I had been wont to do when I 
 shared in their secretly cherished distaste and dread 
 of a possible stepmother.
 
 30 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 But now I am a stepmother myself, though I scarce 
 yet realize the position ; it somewhat alters my feel- 
 ings, and I wonder whether the home-coming Laurel 
 and Silence are thinking of me with a horror like 
 to Peg and Prue's for Mistress Travers. I was at 
 Hart Street till after sunset, and then returned to 
 Chancery Lane in a hackney coach that Will fetched, 
 since the citizens' enthusiasm waxing merrier towards 
 the evening over their five heroes made it unsafe to 
 go on foot. 
 
 The gable points and steeples of the City stood out 
 black against a sky of clear orange, in which flashed the 
 planet Mars. Here and there the unshuttered case- 
 ments cast ribands of light across the street, but the 
 Lord DingwalFs great house had darkened windows 
 and a deserted aspect, Sir John Harrison and his 
 daughter having taken up quarters for the winter 
 this year at Montague House in Bishopsgate, near to 
 the great fantastic carved mansion of that princely 
 merchant, Sir Paul Pindar, a revered friend of my 
 husband's. 'Tis said Sir Paul hath lent the King 
 vast sums of money only recently, and presented the 
 Queen with priceless jewels, there being no limit to 
 his riches, as there is none to his loyalty. 
 
 The air struck piercing cold as I stepped from the 
 hackney-coach, and it pleased me that it was in my 
 power to give alms freely to some half-naked beggars
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 31 
 
 who crouched shivering beneath the lanthorns at the 
 gateway. 'Tis a joy and a novelty to me to have 
 money to give away. Hitherto money, owing to my 
 dear father's scarcity thereof, hath ever been associated 
 in my mind with saving rather than with giving. 
 
 The rooms were all aglow with great wood fires. 
 Juan ran before me with a lighted torch up the 
 shining oak staircase, for I would fain look once 
 more into the chambers prepared for the travellers. 
 My own hands had helped to deck them, and Laurel 
 and Silence will have a bower fit for a queen. 
 
 The finest wrought linen sheets, sweet with the 
 perfume of orris that I found in a press in the attic, 
 lie on the two beds and the softest down pillows. 
 The blue and silver bed-curtains draw close round 
 the testers, keeping out draughts ; and the hangings 
 on the walls are of tapestry, all in blue and white, 
 telling the story of Perseus and Andromeda. Then 
 the window seats are softly cushioned with blue 
 damask, and in each recess there is a small shelf for 
 books. A closet at one end hath ewers of blue china 
 and a mirror in it, and at the other, down two steps 
 is a roomy frippery for hanging clothes. 
 
 Not all the bed-chambers in Hart Street put 
 together would make this one, and methinks Peg 
 and Prue would gasp with amazement at it. 
 
 The boy Hugh PEstrange will occupy one of our
 
 32 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 guest-chambers till he goes to be apprenticed to a 
 famous dialler and horologist in Goldsmith's Row, 
 for such Gabriel saith is his bent. 
 
 January 13. 
 
 I writ on so late the night before last that the 
 midnight hour boomed from the steeples ere I laid 
 down my quill. A day-book, methinks, is the thief 
 of beauty sleep. 
 
 Yesterday Anne Harrison came, her brother 
 William leaving her with me whilst he went on to 
 the Commons' House, in which he has a seat. I 
 brought her to see the carnation closet, and looking 
 about, she was not slow to spy out my day-book. 
 
 ' I declare,' she said, ' I, too, will keep a journal 
 such as this. But my penmanship is vastly inferior 
 to yours, which comes near to rivalling my father's, 
 and that is the prettiest that ever I saw.' 
 
 ' Nay ; here 'tis but scribbling, not penmanship," I 
 answered. ' These pages are meant only for my own 
 eyes, and maybe for Gabriel's, should he care to read 
 what I've writ.' 
 
 ' Your children and children's children will devour 
 it,' said Anne, ' and find it of greater interest than 
 any romance they ever read. Well, methinks I will 
 defer beginning my journal till such time as I am 
 wed, for then my adventures are to begin ; at least,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 33 
 
 so saith the prophetess, Lady Eleanor Davies ; you 
 know, though she be held for mad, and has suffered 
 imprisonment, she long ago foretold truly these 
 troubles that are now besetting the King.' 
 
 ' And has Lady Eleanor foretold with whom you 
 are to wed ?' I asked. 
 
 Anne laughed and shook her sunny curls. 
 
 * So much hath not been revealed,' said she. ' He 
 is still hid far off among the shadows of the future. 
 When he does come forth into the light, be sure he'll 
 prove some Apollo or fairy Prince.' 
 
 Then she jumped down from the high window-seat 
 where she had perched herself, and said her god- 
 mother, Lady Wolstenholm, and other company 
 were expected to sup with them that day, and she 
 must hurry home to prepare for their entertainment. 
 
 She threw her arms about my neck on taking 
 leave, and, kissing me many times, vowed I was her 
 dearest friend, doubly dear, if possible, now I was 
 wife of her cousin Young. But she added, pouting : 
 
 ' Tis a pity there are so many years betwixt you 
 and him. He was no youth when he married first, 
 now he must be past fifty. 'Tis a pity.' 
 
 1 No, 'tis not a pity,' I said with some heat. ' I 
 think naught of the difference in years. Gabriel is 
 not a day too old for my liking. His age seems for 
 me proper and fitting.' 
 
 3
 
 34 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' Fitting ! You say that because you have been ever 
 forced to wear an old head on your young shoulders, 
 and never been free from cares. I have admired you 
 always for being so placid and calm through it all, 
 but I fain would have seen my beautiful Lovejoy 
 merry and jocund and free from care, as people of 
 her age should be, for one sweet period of her life ; 
 but no sooner have brothers and sisters cease to hang 
 to her skirts than she is to be plagued out of her wits 
 by stepchildren.' 
 
 ' Play not the part of Cassandra like the Lady 
 Eleanor Davies,' I said. 
 
 For answer Anne's laughter rippled forth merrily. 
 
 By this time I stood on the doorstep, and she in 
 the open air. It had begun to snow, and the light 
 feathery flakes fell on her little fur cap and bright 
 hair. Certain it is there was nothing Cassandra-like 
 about the face Anne turned back over her shoulder 
 at me as she ran to join her waiting-woman and 
 brother's man at the gate-house. The blue eyes 
 were full of sparkle, the red lips wreathed in 
 smiles. 
 
 Sir John Harrison may well call Anne his sunbeam. 
 She is all gaiety, brightness, and quickness, lithe and 
 supple in her motions as a young kitten. Methinks 
 she should have been christened by my name; 
 'twould suit her better than her own. Tis impossible
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 35 
 
 not to love joyous Anne Harrison, and to be glad to 
 be beloved by her. 
 
 January 14. 
 
 I have no difficulty in realizing that I am a step- 
 mother now, and methinks I never shall again forget 
 it. They are here, my step-children, Laurel and 
 Silence. Their arrival was preceded by a great cart- 
 load of their baggage, and there is yet more to come. 
 They were so attached to their home in Blois that it 
 would seem they have tried to bring as much of their 
 surroundings as possible with them. Their French 
 cook and a serving-woman in peasant's cap and 
 wooden shoes, have come with them, not to speak 
 of two dogs, a tame squirrel, and a parrot, and 
 divers fruit-trees and shrubs. 
 
 Already I foresee storms ahead 'twixt Alphonse and 
 Marie and our English servants. 
 
 It was snowing heavily when the travellers arrived 
 at Arundel stairs, and when Gabriel brought them 
 into the hall with Hugh TEstrange and their gentle- 
 woman, Miriam Fisher, I could scarce discern their 
 faces, for they were so bundled up in furs and wraps. 
 
 ' Doff your hood and cloak, Laurel,' Gabriel said ; 
 ' this is your mother, whom I would have you and 
 Silence obey and honour.' 
 
 ' And who would have you both love her,' said I, 
 holding out my arms. 
 
 32
 
 3 6 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 But my invitation to embrace them was not 
 accepted by either. Laurel, when she had tossed off 
 her hood and shaken herself free of her heavy shawls 
 and cloak, made me a pretty curtsey, and said : ' I 
 hope you are well, madame.' She hath a rare grace 
 and a rich brown beauty. Not only her eyes and 
 hair are brown but her smooth skin, which deepens 
 to a clear red in her cheeks and lips. 
 
 Silence did not move, but stood with her wide- 
 open, deep gray eyes fixed on me, half questioningly, 
 half mistrustfully. Silence is pale with a strange 
 transparent pallor. Her mouth looks made for 
 laughter, 'tis so finely curved and hath dimples at 
 the corners, but I have not seen her smile yet except 
 when Hugh put the tame squirrel on her shoulder. 
 
 I have had time to notice that Silence follows 
 Hugh about like a dog, and that Laurel casts a 
 lovingly protecting eye on both of them. Poor 
 Hugh is low of stature for his years, and hath a 
 somewhat misshapen body, but his head is finely 
 formed and covered with crisp curls of the flaming hue 
 that Venetian ladies dye their tresses, Gabriel says. 
 
 The three were refreshing themselves after their 
 journey with hot spiced sack and sweet cakes in the 
 library, when Hugh's eyes, wandering to the window, 
 fell on the sundial that stands in the pleasance. 
 With sudden alertness he unfastened the window
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 37 
 
 that gives on an outside stair of stone and ran out 
 bareheaded, and began to brush the snow away to 
 examine the carving and inscription on the dial. 
 Silence would have run after him, but was held back 
 by the gentlewoman. She struggled violently, and 
 would have gotten loose had not Laurel interposed 
 and made her understand with a succession of quick 
 and eloquent signs that she was too thinly clad to 
 plunge out in the snow. 
 
 * Come back, Hugh,' Laurel called from the 
 balustrade ; ' you will catch a rheum, and Silence 
 wants you.' 
 
 He obeyed on the instant, coming and sitting 
 down again on the high-backed chair by the window. 
 Silence nestled beside him, and he drew from his 
 pouch a small pocket dial and seemed to explain to 
 her by signs that there was some resemblance 'twixt 
 it and the dial without on the pleasance. 
 
 ' Such toys are her delight,' said the gentlewoman 
 Miriam Fisher ; ' they and her sampler keep her quiet 
 when naught else will. 'Tis a mercy her restlessness 
 is stilled sometimes, or she'd wear us to fiddle-strings.' 
 
 ' 'Tis Hugh keeps her quiet, not toys, as you call 
 'em,' Laurel said. ' She loves to be in his company. 
 If my father sends Hugh away, stepmother, methinks 
 Silence will fret fret herself to death. She was nigh 
 to breaking her heart when Hugh went from Blois
 
 38 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 to study at Richelieu. 'Twas useless for Monsieur 
 Pierre to write " Console-toi " on her little tablets ; 
 she would not be consoled till Hugh returned.' 
 
 ' Who is Monsieur Pierre ?' I asked. 
 
 Laurel raised her eyebrows as if astonished that 
 the fame of Monsieur Pierre had not reached my 
 ears. 
 
 ' Everyone in Blois knows Monsieur Pierre,' 
 answered she. ' The great master jeweller and 
 clock-maker whose workshop was opposite us. Hugh 
 and Silence have spent many hours chez Monsieur 
 Pierre, watching him and his braves gar$ons ply 
 their tools. 'Twas Monsieur Pierre who told 
 Monsieur le Cure" that Hugh ought not to waste 
 time in learning fine gentlemanly accomplishments 
 at the Academy Richelieu when he was clearly born 
 to make clocks and carve dials.' 
 
 Hugh's reserve had not broken down so quickly 
 as Laurel's, and I had scarce heard him speak till 
 now, when he looked up and said with a smile : 
 
 ' " Methinks it were a happy life 
 
 To carve out dials quaintly point by point." ' 
 
 Gabriel heard him as he drew aside the arras that 
 divides his study from the library and came in. 
 
 ' Pleased am I, my boy, to hear you quote thus 
 glibly great Master Will Shakespeare,' my husband 
 said.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 39 
 
 Hugh's colour rose, and Laurel broke forth again : 
 
 ' He knows them near by heart Master Shake- 
 speare's history plays and hath read them to me 
 over and over again, as he hath done " The Faerie 
 Queen " and Petrarch's " Sonnets." ' 
 
 Laurel, 'tis plain, takes no small pride in her foster- 
 brother. 
 
 At the proposal of bed Silence engaged in another 
 battle-royal with her gentlewoman. With extra- 
 ordinary swift and expressive actions she would show 
 that she was not a-weary or ready for rest, though 
 her drooping lids belied her. She clung to Hugh, 
 appealing to him in dumb-show to side with her 
 against Miriam. Once more 'twas Laurel who inter- 
 posed and made peace. 'Tis wonderful to see how 
 she calms Silence in her sudden gusts of passion. 
 In a few minutes Silence went to bed like a lamb. 
 When later I came softly on tiptoe into their bed- 
 chamber to see if they slept, I found them yet awake, 
 with a light still burning, and both their faces wet 
 with' tears. 
 
 Laurel, ashamed that I should see she had been 
 crying, had turned her head away. As I bent over 
 her she said, feigning to be cheerful : 
 
 ' Bonne nuit, madame.' 
 
 ' I would liefer you called me mother not that,' 
 said I.
 
 40 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' Mother ! Nay, I cannot. You are not my 
 mother,' she answered. ' My mother lies far away 
 under the palm-trees in the little churchyard on the 
 shores of the blue Mediterranean. Father took us from 
 Blois once on my birthday to see her grave at Nice, 
 and the white house where she died. The rose- 
 bushes were in bloom, though 'twas winter, and the 
 garden fair with pansies and violets. But there's no 
 garden I like so well as ours at Blois. Dear Blois ! I 
 love it ; but most of all at grape-picking time. Shall 
 we ever go a grape-picking again, I wonder?' she 
 sighed, and continued : ' Coming hither to England, 
 as we passed through France, we saw many finer 
 towns. Tours, par exemple, where Hugh bought the 
 silkworms, and Orleans, where he showed us Jeanne 
 d'Arc standing on the bridge, carved out of stone, in 
 armour and spurs and flowing hair. Shame on us 
 English for suffering the brave maid to be burned as 
 a witch ! And Paris, of course, is the fairest city of 
 all ; but Blois Blois is dearest. Nowhere is the air 
 so pure or people kinder-hearted. Ay, I love the 
 steep little streets of Blois, and the goldsmiths' shops ; 
 the lime-trees and vineyards, and the great forest 
 whence the wolves come down at times into the 
 town and carry off the children.' 
 
 ' That sounds like a fairy tale,' said I. 
 
 ' But 'tis true. Has not father told you ? When
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 41 
 
 Silence was a little girl she ran out alone one winter's 
 day at dusk, towards the forest, and when she turned 
 to come back a wolf was pattering behind her down 
 the street. They called to her from the windows to 
 come into safety, not knowing that Silence could not 
 hear. She walked on with her eyes looking straight 
 before her, as she often does, into space, as if she 
 were walking in a dream, and the wolf was gaining 
 on her every second. 'Twas Hugh who saved her. 
 He was at Monsieur Pierre's, and he caught up 
 Monsieur Pierre's pair of loaded pistols, and, leaping 
 into the street, he snatched up Silence with one hand, 
 and then with the other he shot the wolf dead. Was 
 not that a brave deed ? Hugh is not strong and big, 
 and was but ten then, for 'tis six years ago. To think 
 my father has not told you Hugh did this thing.' 
 
 Laurel's tears had dried on her cheek, and her 
 voice, which, even in speaking, is full of music, 
 trembled with excitement. 
 
 ' Your father has had so much to tell me about his 
 two daughters that he has scarce had time to speak 
 of Hugh,' I said jestingly, as I kissed Laurel and 
 stepped beside the other bed. Silence was lying 
 quite still, her great eyes gazing wistfully, but unsee- 
 ingly, through the bed-curtains at the wall opposite, 
 where the figure of Andromeda on her rock stood out 
 from the tapestry in the dim light.
 
 42 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' Truly,' thought I, ' she hath the face of an angel.' 
 
 But when I stooped to kiss it, the angel face was 
 whisked sharply away from me and buried in the 
 pillows. 
 
 ' She would fain have Marie to tuck her in. Silence 
 will never sleep without. Prithee, madame, let Marie 
 come to her,' pleaded Laurel. 
 
 They had come home and were in their father's 
 house, yet they were homesick homesick for Blois. 
 Naught would content them but to have old Marie 
 in her tall white cap, because she was to them a 
 piece of their life at Blois, to mutter her beads beside 
 their beds ; then at last they fell asleep.
 
 Ill 
 
 Candlemas, 1642. 
 
 TO-DAY, for the first time since I married, there have 
 been guests at my husband's table men of learning 
 and wit, in whose choice conversation he much 
 delighteth. Among the company were Mr. Hobbes, 
 Mr. John Selden, Mr. Edmund Waller, and our 
 poet neighbour, Mr. Cowley. 
 
 What with preparing for their entertainment and 
 settling disputes 'twixt Alphonse and our English 
 cook, I have had no time to write in this book. 
 Then masters have had to be found to continue 
 Silence's lessons in penmanship and drawing, and 
 Laurel's in music and dancing. Gabriel hath 
 entrusted to my dear father the training of Laurel's 
 voice, which he finds of wondrous depth, and fresh 
 and pure to admiration. She sings, methinks, like 
 the lark on a summer morn as it wheels into the 
 blue sky out of simple joyousness of heart ; and yet 
 there is something pathetical in it withal, that can 
 bring tears to the eyes of her listeners. 
 
 [43]
 
 44 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Hugh 1' Estrange did not tarry long under our roof. 
 He is gone to diet at Master Jaspar Haynes's, the 
 dialler and mathematician, who hath his shop on the 
 southern side of Cheap, and enjoys a great fame. 
 Master Haynes hath some kinship with the family 
 of Hugh's mother. 'Twas best, Gabriel said, that 
 Hugh should lose no time in going to take up the 
 trade (art Hugh doth call it) of his choice. The 
 matter had been settled twixt Gabriel and Master 
 Haynes before Hugh came out of France. 
 
 I have only lately learnt how 'twas Hugh came to 
 be bred up with Laurel and Silence as their brother. 
 His mother and theirs were playmates as children, 
 and a very loving friendship had existed betwixt them 
 as maidens. Hugh's mother, when she ran away 
 to marry a handsome Papist with a foreign name, 
 at about the same time as her friend was married to 
 Gabriel, incurred the bitter anger of her bigoted 
 Puritan parents, and they vowed they had cast her 
 off and would never see her again. 
 
 There were other things besides a difference in faith 
 to take exception to in Mr. 1'Estrange. He appears 
 to have been profligate and a gamester, and, journey- 
 ing with his young wife to Italy, he soon wearied of 
 her, and had deserted her before she was brought to 
 bed with Hugh in the house of an apothecary in 
 Genoa, where, by God's mercy, Gabriel and his first
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 45 
 
 lady, on their travels, chanced to find her in a most 
 rueful plight. She, poor thing ! ere she died in 
 childbirth, did most earnestly petition the sweet friend 
 of her girlhood to take the sickly boy and nurture 
 him for her sake, as her own flesh and blood. This 
 was done, and with such tenderness that when her 
 own children were born it seemed as if she had not 
 more love to lavish on them than she had for the 
 little orphan of her girl friend. Gabriel writ several 
 times to the parents of Mrs. 1'Estrange, but 'twas 
 always the same answer they gave : that, inasmuch as 
 they had not countenanced their daughter's marriage, 
 they did decline to countenance the fruit thereof. 
 
 So Gabriel has stood in the place of a father to 
 Hugh, having borne the cost of his education, and 
 now that of his apprenticeship to Master Haynes. 
 
 The day Gabriel took him thither Laurel and I 
 bore them company ; but Silence was in too great a 
 passion of grief to come forth into the streets. So 
 we left her behind. I have no mastery as yet of the 
 signs by which the others communicate with her, 
 and perforce tried to comfort her by writing on the 
 little tablets she wears at her girdle that Hugh was 
 not going far away, and would spend many of his 
 Sundays and holidays with his foster-sisters. But 
 my efforts were as vain as Monsieur Pierre's 
 ' Console-toi,' had proved on the occasion of another
 
 46 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 parting. Silence tore what I had writ from her 
 tablets, crumpled it disdainfully in her little hand, 
 and tossed it on the logs. Then she ran wildly to 
 the door and cast herself against it as if she would fain 
 bar it with her person against Hugh's exit. With 
 the utmost gentleness he removed Silence out of his 
 way, and she then lay face downwards on the floor, 
 and her frame was shook with violent sobs. Hugh 
 knelt down, kissed the back of her neck, that showed 
 beneath her hair, and taking from his pouch the 
 small portable dial, which was his proudest possession, 
 laid it beside her on the floor. 
 
 ' There now,' said Mrs. Miriam, ' methinks that is 
 too precious a gift for one to give who is not going 
 across seas, but only across a few streets.' 
 
 ' 'Tis best to leave her with Marie to cry herself 
 out,' said Laurel; and she and I followed Hugh to 
 the hall where Gabriel awaited us. 
 
 Master Haynes hath one of those richly carved 
 and gilded house-fronts like the goldsmiths', which 
 are the admiration of strangers, though dwellers in 
 London town heed them less, being so accustomed 
 to the sight of their beauty. 
 
 The sign over his door is a dial face, painted to 
 the shape of a tortoise, very handsomely and in- 
 geniously. 
 
 The house hath stood there so long as the cross
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 47 
 
 itself, erected by the first King Edward in memory 
 of his fair and sainted Queen. What pomps and 
 processions, what tragedies and comedies, have been 
 witnessed from the lattices of Master Haynes's house 
 'twould be writing a history-book to relate. 
 
 'Tis the ancientest haunts methinks that never 
 grow familiar, because they do bring the far-off, un- 
 familiar past before our eyes so vividly that for the 
 moment 'tis the present which becomes pale and 
 shadowy. Not of the burning discontents and dis- 
 sensions of the hour did my husband converse to 
 Hugh as we took the way by Fleet Street to Ludgate 
 and Cheapside, but of Dick Whittington, Jane Shore, 
 and of the Saracen Princess who came over sea and 
 land in search of her lover, Gilbert Becket, and called 
 his name through the streets of London, that being 
 the only word of his language she knew. 
 
 Gabriel is a great lover of the quaint itinerary of 
 old Mr. Stow. 
 
 We were received by Master Haynes in the front 
 of his shop, where portable dials and watches of all 
 shapes and sizes were displayed. They were of silver, 
 of brass, of wrought ivory and enamel. Some were 
 made to stand, others to lie down and fold up. The 
 workmanship of most was wondrous fine, and Hugh 
 so ravished thereat he scarce seemed to attend to 
 what Gabriel said as he presented him to his master.
 
 48 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 The dialler wore a wide loose gown of russet cloth 
 and a cap of red velvet. He has eyes magnified by 
 big spectacles, piercing and keen as a hawk's, but 
 the rest of his features are small and shrunken. He 
 wears a little beard on his under lip, and his scant 
 hair straggles as far as his round shoulders. He is 
 a widower, and hath but one child alive, a daughter, 
 to fall in love with whom, saith he, the pupils and 
 apprentices regard as part of their duties. 
 
 ' But they cannot all have her,' he said with a 
 twinkle, ' and she will have none of 'em.' 
 
 He eyed Hugh's tawny curls, and then remarked 
 that he was no strict enforcer of the sumptuary laws 
 for 'prentices. If he were, Hugh would have to be 
 shorn of his glory and don a fustian jerkin instead of 
 a silken doublet. 
 
 ' But for workadays we'll cover up fine clothes 
 with that kind of garment,' said he, indicating the 
 row of youths who sat busied with their little tools 
 and implements in the great studio behind the shop, 
 clad from neck to heels in calico smocks. 
 
 Beyond we caught a vista of the yard, where the 
 elm-trees must make a pleasant shade in summer. 
 In the open shed stood divers fair sundials on 
 gleaming marble pedestals and pillars, ready to be 
 transported to all parts for the adornment of noble- 
 men's gardens.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 49 
 
 We went upstairs to the parlour which lies over 
 the shop and the studio, and hath three deep em- 
 brasured windows with diamond-paned lattices pro- 
 jecting on the street and commanding a view of the 
 whole length of Cheap. Here Hugh is to enjoy the 
 privilege of taking his meals at his master's board. 
 The ceiling has a dial painted on it in red and azure 
 with the signs of the Zodiac ; these, too, are carved 
 on the wainscot, together with many mottoes for 
 dials, mostly scriptural. A table in the alcove was 
 littered with maps and mathematical instruments, 
 and over it hangs a copy of the portrait, done by the 
 hand of Hans Holbein, of that great forerunner of 
 Master Haynes, the German dial and clock-maker, 
 Nicholas Kratzer, who was so greatly honoured in 
 this country in King Hal's reign that a degree was 
 conferred on him at Oxford. 
 
 Mistress Margaret Haynes was summoned by her 
 father to make our acquaintance. Though she hath 
 the advantage of Laurel in years, she looked small 
 beside her. Her manner at first was somewhat prim 
 and shy, but her complexion is like May blossoms : 
 her eyes blue, and her hair, as much of it as I could 
 see beneath her white cap, is fair, and grows in soft 
 waves. She was dressed in gray, with that simplicity 
 which only the extreme Puritans affect. It is scarcely 
 seen at all among the wives and daughters of London 
 
 4
 
 50 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 citizens. Yet there is no denying a plain gray kirtle 
 and a muslin crossover, when 'tis of such dainty 
 purity as Mistress Margaret's, is very becoming. 
 
 ' These are disordered times, and 'tis difficult to 
 keep the young men in harness,' said Master Haynes, 
 looking from one of the windows. ' See, this is what 
 happens now every day.' 
 
 A detachment of the train-bands were marching 
 past to their drill-ground in Artillery Fields, and 
 from the doorways opposite poured 'prentices by the 
 score, calling huzzahs and waving their square caps, 
 some tearing after the soldiers. 
 
 ' If it comes to war, and the stars predict it, 
 methinks I shall have to shut up shop and let the 
 boys go a-soldiering ; for the most diligent craftsmen 
 become game as fighting-cocks when the air is full 
 of trumpeting and bugle calls.' 
 
 ' But Hugh won't go if 'tis to fight against the 
 King,' exclaimed Laurel, casting on Hugh that look 
 of nigh maternal protection which is so curious in a 
 maid of her years. 
 
 Mistress Margaret, forgetting her shyness, accepted 
 Laurel's words as a challenge. 
 
 ' It will be the duty of all Londoners to defend 
 their city,' said she, ' even against the King, if the 
 King be so misguided as to make war on his 
 subjects.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 51 
 
 'Twas evident Mistress Margaret Haynes had 
 breathed in the disaffected atmosphere around her, 
 and she was better primed for argument than Laurel, 
 fresh from Blois, whose loyalty was newborn. Me- 
 thought it had been roused to life on the spot by 
 Mistress Margaret's Puritan garb and opposition. 
 
 The two looked at each other with some defiance. 
 Hugh, meanwhile, had moved away, and was ex- 
 amining a device on paper for a dial at the end of 
 the room. 
 
 He called Laurel to look at it. 
 
 ' See, Laurel,' he said, 'this motto is from the song 
 of Ronsard that you sing with so much sweetness.' 
 
 Laurel sang the words softly over his shoulder : 
 
 ' Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, madame, 
 He*las, le temps, non, mais nous en aliens.' 
 
 'Ay, Hugh,' she added, 'you will never forget that 
 life is brief and that death must come, living sur- 
 rounded by mottoes which, whether they be in Latin, 
 English, or French, all harp on the same theme.' 
 
 ' Your daughter hath a voice, sir, that one would 
 fain hear more of,' Master Haynes said to Gabriel. 
 
 As an invitation to Laurel to sing he opened a pair 
 of virginals, the cover of which was most rarely carved 
 and inlet with miniatures of Dutch landscapes. 
 
 ' I cannot attune my voice as yet to the virginals 
 
 42
 
 52 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 and harpsichon, though Mr. Howard will teach me to 
 do it in time,' said Laurel. 
 
 ' But she sings to the lute. You should hear her 
 sing to the lute, master!' Hugh exclaimed eagerly, 
 his pride of Laurel's singing conquering his awe of 
 the great dialler. 
 
 'Fetch thy lute,' Master Haynes said to his 
 daughter. ' Thou givest it so little use methinks 
 it will rust.' 
 
 ' 'Tis only profane ditties, not songs of praise, that 
 need to be accompanied by the lute,' Mistress 
 Margaret said, as she went to do her father's bidding. 
 
 Laurel gave her courteous thanks when she brought 
 the lute, and asked what she should sing. 
 
 ' Anything that pleaseth you will please our ears,' 
 Master Haynes said politely. 
 
 The clear full notes of penetrating sweetness and 
 passion rilled the room, and 'twas the Scottish 
 Queen's chanson of farewell to the country of her 
 gay and happy youth that Laurel sang. 
 
 ' Adieu, plaisant pays de France, 
 O ma patrie la plus cherie, 
 Qui a nourri ma jeune enfance. 
 Adieu, France adieu, mes beaux jours. 
 
 ' La nef qui dejoint nos amours 
 N'a cy de moi que la moiti^ ; 
 Une partie te reste, elle est tienne ; 
 Je la fie a ton amitid 
 Pour que de 1'autre elle te souvienne.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 53 
 
 Methought in these words of sweet sadness Laurel 
 did take her farewell of Hugh and their old life of 
 comradeship together at Blois. His eyes were fixed 
 on her till the song was over, and in them there was 
 something I had not seen there when he bent over 
 Silence and gave her his cherished little pocket dial 
 as she lay on the floor, breaking her heart at his 
 going. 
 
 After we had seen Hugh's small chamber, we took 
 our leave of Master Haynes and his daughter. On 
 the way home a party of horsemen, wearing a green 
 livery, clattered past us, and Gabriel said they were 
 the men of Bucks going to Westminster to play 
 guard to Mr. Hampden. 
 
 ' And the King ? Why does the King not come 
 back to Whitehall ? Shall I never see the King ?' 
 asked Laurel. 
 
 ' His Majesty is out of conceit with the citizens of 
 London,' her father made answer, ' and doth show 
 his displeasure by keeping the light of his countenance 
 turned from them.' 
 
 Laurel's interest in public affairs having been 
 aroused by her recent short encounter with Mistress 
 Margaret Haynes, she asked many questions ; and 
 Gabriel related the present unhappy relations in 
 which the King stood to his Parliament, and how the 
 state of things had arisen. He told the story of the
 
 54 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Star Chamber and Ship-money clearly and fairly 
 withal, not laying the blame at one door more than 
 another, for my Sir Oracle can look at a question 
 from more than one point of view, and sees the rights 
 and faults of both sides. That is why he takes but a 
 passive share in these burning controversies that rage 
 so bitterly, and is no more likely to send his plate to 
 be put in the King's melting-pot than he is to help 
 fill the coffers of the Parliament. 
 
 Thus Gabriel can entertain at his board men of 
 divers and opposing opinions and hold the just 
 balance 'twixt them, as hath been the case to-day. 
 There was Mr. Hobbes the philosopher, with his red 
 whiskers and keen hazel eyes, on the eve of departure 
 for France, whither he is going to escape being clapped 
 into the Tower for holding that the King's sovereignty, 
 being born with him, is not to be dissociated from 
 his person, so that 'tis lawful for him to act as he 
 will, whether his acts be constitutional or the reverse. 
 Next to him was sitting Mr. Selden, who thinks 
 exactly the opposite, and is an enemy of the Bishops. 
 Yet their conversation was amicable, even when the 
 two gentlemen fell to talking of the Bill for excluding 
 Bishops from Parliament. Consent to this had been 
 wrung from the King by the tearful entreaties of the 
 Queen, whose journey into Holland, it was threatened, 
 should be prevented if the Bill were not passed.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 55 
 
 Mr. Selden is tall and lanky, with a long neck and 
 a long nose, which hath a twist at the tip. His 
 tongue is so sharp it seems near to flay the skin of 
 those who hear him talk, but his sayings are full of 
 pith and wisdom. Infinitely more pleasing is Mr. 
 Edmund Waller's manner of converse. 'Tis fluent 
 and vivacious and full of charm. Mr. Waller first 
 sat in Parliament when he was eighteen, and spent 
 his early youth at King James's Court. He has 
 married two wives, and he wooed in vain the fair 
 lady Dorothea Sidney, whom, under the name of 
 Sacharissa, he hath eternalized in his smooth and 
 polished verse. He is nearly related to Mr. Hampden, 
 and passes as an adherent of the Parliament, though 
 methinks, from words he let fall this evening, he 
 bears no ill will towards His Majesty, and only lately 
 he hath made a great speech pleading that Epis- 
 copacy should be reformed, not abolished. Mr. 
 Waller delighted the company by recounting a merry 
 story of King James. 
 
 'Talking of Bishops,' said he, 'I once overheard 
 his late Majesty, when the Bishops of Winchester and 
 Durham were standing behind his chair, ask : " My 
 lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want 
 it without all this formality of Parliament ?" 
 
 ' Dr. Neale, the Bishop of Durham, readily an- 
 swered :
 
 $6 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' " Sir, why should you not ? You are the very 
 breath of our nostrils." 
 
 ' Whereupon the King turned and said to the Bishop 
 of Winchester : 
 
 ' " Well, my lord, what say you ?" 
 
 '"Sir," replied the Bishop, "I have no skill to 
 judge of Parliamentary cases." 
 
 ' The King answered : 
 
 * " No put-offs, my lord; I'll have an answer." 
 
 ' " Then, sir," said the Bishop of Winchester, " I 
 think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's 
 money, for he offers it." 
 
 ' Now, who would have thought a Bishop capable 
 of so brilliant a thrust ?' remarked Mr. Selden. 
 
 Sitting here in the quiet privacy of the carnation 
 closet, I would fain set down some of Mr. Selden's 
 thrusts, Mr. Hobbes' parries, and Mr. Waller's 
 flashes of wit ; but, perchance because I am drowsy, 
 I can recall only the impression, not the words. I 
 have said nought of Mr. Abraham Cowley, who was 
 of the company. He did not shine in it, for though 
 he writes finer poetry than Mr. Waller, he is a poor 
 talker and stumbles in his speech. 
 
 Gabriel has put his head in at the door to say he 
 would never have given me a day-book if he had 
 guessed it would keep me up so late. Without in
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 57 
 
 the Lane, among the cries of Candlemas roysterers, 
 I hear the voice of the bellman calling, ' A fine star- 
 light night,' and as I am nodding over this page and 
 the quill slipping from my fingers, methinks I had 
 better stop. 
 
 March. 
 
 I wonder if I shall ever find the key to Silence's 
 heart ? Her dumbness doth surround her with such 
 seemingly impenetrable barriers of mystery and 
 reserve. Laurel addresses me now, not as step- 
 mother or madame, but calls me mother. 'Tis only 
 in her stout defence of Silence that she sometimes 
 opposes my authority. She is an affectionate, win- 
 some maid, somewhat of a chatterbox, though I have 
 noticed she often puts a check on her tongue in 
 Silence's presence. Laurel's lips are moulded with 
 so clean a beauty that Silence can read them as she 
 can Hugh's, and it irritates her when they move too 
 fast. 
 
 Laurel will cease playing on any instrument of 
 music directly Silence comes into the room. She 
 has begged that when my father comes to instruct 
 her Silence may be kept at her sampler upstairs. 
 
 ' She can tolerate to see me sing or dance,' said 
 Laurel, ' but for music she hath an abhorrence. 'Tis 
 strange, as she cannot hear it. At Blois, when the 
 fiddlers and pipers played at the grape-picking feasts,
 
 58 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 she would not tarry in the vineyard. And Hugh 
 never dared play on his violin before her except 
 once. Then she could so ill bear it that, with her 
 teeth set and eyes aflame, she leapt on Hugh and 
 tried to wrench the violin out of his hands. He 
 held it high above him out of her reach, but she 
 caught the bow, and her anger gave her strength to 
 break it in two. Methinks she was jealous jealous 
 that Hugh should rest his chin so lovingly on what 
 to her was naught but a piece of wood, and look so 
 blissful at dragging sweet sounds from it. Yes,' 
 added Laurel, ' I can understand how she feels, my 
 poor Silence ! Is she not fair, mother, and is not 
 her broidering a marvel ?' 
 
 In truth it is, and Silence works miracles with her 
 needle. Her restless limbs are still, her fair face 
 intent, when she sits at her frame with the gay- 
 coloured crewels and gold and silver threads around 
 her. Her samplers are pictures into which are 
 wrought stories and fancies and beasts and birds out 
 of Silence's head. There are no stitches in needle- 
 work that I can teach her, for she knows them all. 
 But in the stillroom she has much to learn, this 
 branch of my stepdaughters' education having, 
 methinks, been neglected at Blois. They are both 
 ignorant of herbs, and have never been taught to 
 make caudles and syrups or to conserve and candy.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 59 
 
 Their gentlewoman, Miriam Fisher, saith that 
 Alphonse is to blame for this. Alphonse was wont 
 to rule the menage like a despot, and would not 
 brook any encroachment on his own sacred domain. 
 Now he would hold a like sway here, and doth refuse 
 to impart any of his culinary secrets to the English 
 cook, who, on her side, affects to disdain them. 
 Alphonse says there cannot be two chefs in an 
 establishment, and has inquired whether he is to be 
 the chef vrai or the chef nominal; if but the chef 
 nominal, well, then 'twere easy to go to be chef in the 
 palace of a milord on the Thames, only the young 
 demoiselles can eat no potage but that prepared by 
 his hands, the hands of Alphonse. So what shall 
 be done ? 
 
 ' We must not suffer Alphonse to cause trouble in 
 the household,' said my husband when I repeated 
 this. ' 'Tis simple enough to send him back to 
 Blois.' 
 
 ' No, no, father, do not send Alphonse back,' 
 implored Laurel. ' Only conceive how Silence would 
 miss Alphonse's gateaux de fete /' 
 
 ' That is talking like a foolish child, Laurel. 'Tis 
 for your mother to decide whether Alphonse goes or 
 stays.' 
 
 ' If you send Alphonse away,' said Laurel, turning 
 to me, ' Silence will hate you.'
 
 60 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 This was the time, thought I, to show 'twas not 
 by humouring all Silence's whimsies that I desired 
 to win her affection, so I said : 
 
 ' Nevertheless, Alphonse will go if he persists in 
 not living in charity and goodwill with our English 
 servants.' 
 
 ' Silence will hate you,' Laurel repeated in a low 
 tone that did not reach her father's ears, but only 
 mine, as she left the room. 
 
 Afterwards, when Laurel and Silence were come 
 back from taking the air with their gentlewoman in 
 the fields of Lincoln's Inn, I saw from my windows 
 Laurel cross the courtyard to the servants' lodgings, 
 and hold a conference with Alphonse. She urged 
 him, I did not doubt, to be less overbearing and 
 quarrelsome in future. Many shrugs, gesticulations, 
 and at last bows and smiles, seemed to satisfy her 
 that she had gained her point. 
 
 And the gateau de fete which Alphonse did design 
 to honour Hugh, when he came hither last Sunday 
 for the first time since we left him at the dialler's, 
 was so wondrously ingenious that Alphonse was said 
 to have surpassed himself, and in this performance 
 to have called forth ungrudging applause from his 
 rival in the kitchen. 'Twas in the shape of a tortoise, 
 to imitate the sign over Master Haynes's door, and 
 the shell was made of frosted rose-leaves and violet
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 61 
 
 petals, and bien-venu was writ in letters of gilded 
 hazel-nuts round the creature's neck. 
 
 Hugh sat again in the library with his foster- 
 sisters as on the evening of their arrival, the spaniels 
 playing at their feet, the parrot perching first on one 
 and then on another, and Bo-bo the squirrel scurry- 
 ing round on the top of the bookshelves. 
 
 Yet the picture was not the same, for Hugh's 
 flaming curls, that then had set aglow the sombre 
 background of dark oak wainscot and ancient vellum 
 bindings, were gone. He had chosen to get his 
 head cropped like the majority of Master Haynes's 
 apprentices, and no longer wears the short rapier 
 with jewelled hilt at his girdle. 
 
 Silence's joy at his coming gave place for a 
 moment to sharp distress as she marked the change, 
 and Laurel said : 
 
 ' 'Tis the prim Puritan miss, belike, who made 
 you cut your hair ?' 
 
 ' Nay,' Hugh answered ; ' 'tis the fashion for 
 'prentices.' 
 
 ' And 'tis the fashion for 'prentices to fall in love 
 with Mistress Prunes and Prisms. Are you follow- 
 ing that fashion too ?' 
 
 ' Mistress Margaret Haynes is good and fair. We 
 will not speak of her by nicknames.' 
 
 ' Maybe 'tis profane to speak of her at all, as 'tis
 
 62 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 profane to sing ditties to the lute. Was she not 
 mightily shocked at what I sang ?' 
 
 Hugh gave no answer, and Laurel laughed merrily 
 over her own jest at the expense of Mistress Margaret. 
 There is a look of sadness sometimes in Hugh's red- 
 brown eyes. He knows his mother's grievous story, 
 and doth cherish in his heart a deep resentment 
 against the father he has never seen, but who still 
 lives under another name, Gabriel believes. Indeed, 
 'tis likely enough the name he bestowed on his poor 
 little bride was not his own, for 'tis affirmed by her 
 relatives that he has from time to time assumed dis- 
 guises and played divers parts. Another cause of 
 Hugh's occasional melancholy is his consciousness 
 of the defects of his person. But who thinks of the 
 little crookedness in his back, and that one shoulder 
 is not even with the other, when looking at his face ? 
 In Hugh's face is a power which atones for any 
 weakness of figure. A world of strength lies alone 
 in the firm chin and clear-cut lips, and a strange 
 light shines out through his eyes when he is moved 
 to an outburst of talking, he being as a rule a lad of 
 few words. 
 
 If he would not speak of Mistress Margaret he had 
 much to say of his wonderful master, and related 
 with pride that he had been admitted to his sanctum 
 at the top of the house, a privilege scarcely ever
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 63 
 
 granted to the younger apprentices. Here Master 
 Haynes casts horoscopes, and he has shown Hugh 
 a comet through the giant telescope from a platform 
 on the leads. This comet portends, Master Haynes 
 said, a bloody and desolating war, which will tear 
 the kingdom in twain, and will in the end be the 
 undoing of His Majesty. 
 
 The King hath now resolved to make his capital 
 in York, and from thence refuses all the Parlia- 
 ment's petitions to come to them again, saying 
 that he would be but the shadow of a King if he 
 yielded the command of the militia to the Parliament. 
 
 So preparations for war go on apace, and the City 
 is becoming a camp. The King may well call London 
 ' the nursery of the rebellion,' though Sir Oracle 
 saith there are many wealthy citizens and Aldermen, 
 such as Sir Paul Pindar and Sir Nicholas Crisp, 
 who will gladly beggar themselves in sending secret 
 supplies to the King. Most of those who are friendly 
 to the King in the Parliament have gone to York ; 
 those who remain run the risk every day of arrest 
 and imprisonment. Sir Richard Gurney, our good 
 and gallant Lord Mayor, has been deprived of his 
 office and sent to the Tower, being suspected of 
 sympathizing with the Court, and in his stead they 
 have elected one, Mr. Pennington, a Puritan, out 
 and out for the Parliament.
 
 64 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 The order for a great sundial for the King's garden 
 in Whitehall, Hugh told us, was being held in 
 abeyance by his master, although a most elaborate 
 and magnificent design had been drawn out for it. 
 'Twas thought possible that in the present disturbed 
 and uncertain state of affairs the work might, belike, 
 neither be erected nor paid for, so 'twas deemed 
 safer not to embark on the task of executing it. 
 
 'The King has had ever a great fancy for dials,' 
 said Hugh. ' Once when he visited the City he 
 came privately to Master Haynes, the 'prentices 
 say, and made choice of a small gold pocket dial to 
 wear on his person.' 
 
 ' Oh, lucky Mistress Margaret !' exclaimed Laurel. 
 ' The King came into her father's shop, you say ? 
 She will have seen him face to face, and maybe 
 conversed with him ? Ay, I envy your Mistress 
 Margaret, Hugh. Not that she will hold herself 
 enviable, I warrant, with her talk of defending the 
 City against the King against the King, forsooth !' 
 
 ' Kings are all very well,' Hugh answered ; ' but 
 rights and liberties are precious things, and even 
 kings must be taught not to tamper therewith.' 
 
 Thus quickly has Hugh picked up the political 
 jargon of the day, and caught the views that prevail 
 mostly now among his fellow - 'prentices and the 
 citizens of London. 

 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 65 
 
 Laurel, on the other hand, grows daily a more 
 zealous King's woman, with little, 'tis true, to feed 
 her zeal in a London which King and Court have 
 deserted. 
 
 Her father sets her the example of moderation, at 
 which, methinks, she is not a little provoked, and 
 beneath his roof men who are on both sides, or on 
 neither, meet on neutral ground. 

 
 IV 
 
 June 25, 1642. 
 
 GABRIEL has a property consisting of cherry-gardens 
 and a small farm near Hampstead Mills, and we took 
 coach thither to-day for a midsummer frolic. 
 
 First we went to Hart Street to add Peg and Prue 
 and little Jane and Jack to our party. On our way 
 through the City we beheld a remarkable spectacle. 
 Surging towards the Guildhall was a great throng of 
 womenfolk, of all ranks and all ages. Dames and 
 daughters of wealthy merchants, bejewelled and 
 beribboned, cheek by jowl with Holborn water- 
 carriers and hucksters' wives. The rich were followed 
 by servants bearing gold and silver plate, handsome 
 goblets and flagons, and most of the humbler women, 
 down to the poorest, held some small treasured 
 possession in their aprons. One or two, as they 
 joined in the procession, took the silver bodkins from 
 their hair, and the wedding-rings from their fingers, 
 and declared that 'twas all they had, but they would 
 
 [66]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 67 
 
 give it readily. This was part of the response in 
 the City to the Parliament's order that ' troops and 
 money should be raised there to meet the King's 
 active preparations for war ' this train of women, 
 wending their way with trinkets and toys, through 
 the bright sunlit streets beneath the deep blue of the 
 June sky. 
 
 Here and there I recognised a face I had known 
 from childhood : a citizen's wife, whose sons and 
 daughters my father had taught the viol and lute ; 
 the wife of the sexton of St. Olave's ; the mother of 
 one of the numerous cook-boys, who had succeeded 
 each other so rapidly in our home in Hart Street. 
 But I must confess 'twas no little surprise to see in 
 this patriotic crowd Mistress Travers, the widow of 
 Seething Lane, my brother Roger's godmother. 
 
 She minced along in her best furbelows and 
 flounces, holding a mighty fine jewel-box before 
 her, and was followed by a rosy-cheeked serving- 
 maid. 
 
 ' We have had naught of madam's company lately, 
 thank goodness,' said Peg when I told her. ' Me- 
 thinks at last she hath abandoned her quest as vain, 
 and sees that none of her blandishments and wiles 
 will ever win us.' 
 
 ' She has not .been near the house,' Prue explained, 
 ' since the night she took upon herself to put Jack to 
 
 52
 
 68 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 bed, hoping to get into Penelope's good books by 
 saving her the trouble.' 
 
 ' And I wouldn't let her hear me say my prayers,' 
 Jack broke in ; ' and when she asked why I 
 wouldn't, I said 'twas because I was going to pray 
 that she shouldn't invite herself to sup with us any 
 more, and make Peg cross.' 
 
 'Well done, Jack!' laughed Prue. '"Sweetest 
 cherub " betrayed the citadel, 'tis true, but we must 
 give him the credit of having cleared it withal.' 
 
 ' I would fain not hear of Jack's discourtesies to 
 any lady in his father's house/ said I, a reproof which 
 made Jack crimson, and say : 
 
 ' Peg didn't scold me for't.' 
 
 Now 'twas Peg's turn to blush, but the irre- 
 pressible Prue went on : 
 
 ' That jewel-box, Lovejoy, which you saw madam 
 carrying just now to the Guildhall, with all the 
 sacrificial airs of a Roman matron, I'll warrant 
 don't I know that jewel-box ? 'tis lined with 
 quilted blue satin and scented with musk. She hath 
 opened it before me, to dazzle my eyes with its 
 contents, and tried to tempt me to accept a gift 
 therefrom. I might have had a cross set with 
 emeralds, a chain of fine gold, or a pearl ring with a 
 posy. " Now, you pretty puss, choose which you 
 like," said she. Belike if she had not called me puss
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 69 
 
 I might have yielded ; but that gave me a nausea. 
 'Tis she who purrs, methinks. I thanked her, and 
 said my father would not permit us to accept 
 presents. " Not from strangers or gallants, I 
 perfectly understand," said she ; " but from me, so 
 old and tried a friend." And she put her head on 
 one side, simpering, and stroked my cheek, and then 
 I was as firm as adamant.' 
 
 ' And if you had not been, the Parliament would 
 now be the poorer by one emerald cross, perchance,' 
 said Peg. 
 
 Amidst this chatter Laurel sat silent beside me, for 
 she still bears herself with some reserve towards my 
 sisters. Gabriel rid behind the coach, and Silence 
 and Mistress Miriam were each on a pillion. Jack sat 
 betwixt Peg and Prue in the coach, and Jane was 
 without on the box, to her infinite enjoyment. We 
 passed fair gardens that the merchants rent at some 
 distance from the City, away from their houses. So 
 far as their fruit-gardens I have often come on 
 summer evenings, ever since I can remember my 
 father's friends among the Aldermen inviting us to 
 feast on their strawberries, and to disport ourselves 
 in their shady walks under the fruit-trees. I have 
 seen many times the citizens' pretty daughters, attired 
 like mock shepherdesses, coquetting here with their 
 fathers' 'prentices, or with their rivals and sworn foes,
 
 70 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 the gentlemen of the Inns of Court, who do not dis- 
 dain to woo the merchants' money-bags. To-day not 
 the flutter of a petticoat was to be seen among the 
 strawberry-beds, the fair ones being too busily en- 
 gaged, I suppose, in swimming with the popular tide 
 in the City to come forth and play at rural pastimes. 
 
 Further than the gardens I had scarce ever been ; 
 but now we left them far behind us, and climbed a 
 steep ascent 'twixt hayfields and honeysuckle hedges. 
 Then our road was flanked with stately elms, and at 
 every turn of it we looked down on green glades and 
 pastures gilded with buttercups, and here and there 
 a silver mirror of water, shining out from its frame- 
 work of sedge and rushes and forget-me-nots. The 
 prospect widened and widened as we reached the 
 crest of the hill, and we alighted by the windmills 
 on a wild, open heath. To the west one seems, as it 
 were, to look over the heads of vast woods, that 
 stretch away in waves to blue hills that rise ridge 
 upon ridge till they melt in the sky. 'Twas so clear 
 to-day that we could see the Castle of Windsor em- 
 bowered in its forest ; whilst on the other side, to the 
 east, London, with its steeples and towers and 
 bastions, lay unfolded at our feet, like a parti- 
 coloured map. 
 
 As we stood gazing on the goodly view, a breeze, 
 such as I have never felt the like for sweetness and
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 71 
 
 freshness on a hot summer day, did sport with our 
 kirtles and ribands and ruffle our tresses. It sent 
 Jack's cap from his head, dancing along the uneven 
 ground, and he and Jane pursued it, fluttering 
 among the broom-bushes like a pair of butterflies. 
 
 ' Methinks this is the hill, sister Lovejoy,' said 
 Jack, as he came back out of breath from the chase 
 of his cap, 'where Sir Richard Whittington sat 
 looking down on London with his cat, and heard 
 the bells.' 
 
 ' Let us play at a game of oranges and lemons,' 
 cried Jane at the mention of bells. 
 
 'Nay; methought cherry -bob was to be the 
 favoured game to-day, "said Gabriel. 
 
 ' But where are the cherries ?' the children asked. 
 
 ' Come with me and I will show you,' Gabriel said. 
 
 We followed him down a rough path into a dell 
 on the heathside, and here were the cherry orchards, 
 backing the low -gabled wooden farmhouse, with a 
 paved yard full of cocks and hens and geese. 
 
 The farmer's wife came out, curtseying and 
 smiling, to greet us, and ushered us into her cool, 
 low parlour, with flagged floor and green lattices, 
 where she set before us new-pressed curds, cream 
 fresh from the bowl, butter fragrant from the churn, 
 brown bread and honey, and a pitcher of wine made 
 of her own meadow cowslips. After enjoying this
 
 72 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 dainty cheer we went out into the orchards, and 
 a veritable canopy of red, black and white-heart 
 cherries hung above us. The farm servants brought 
 ladders, and we fell to plucking the cherries, 
 and the children did feast on them. Silence, me- 
 thought, looked happier and more content than she 
 was generally wont to do out of Hugh's company. 
 Laurel said 'twas because the great woods that 
 girdled Hampstead reminded her of the forest at 
 Blois. Silence had been grave when we had took 
 boat one day to see the lions and white bears at the 
 Tower, and she had not smiled when some mummers 
 came and played their antics before our windows in 
 Chancery Lane at Whitsuntide; but now she was 
 actually laughing as she swung herself on the branch 
 of a cherry-tree and tossed down bunches of the 
 fruit into a hamper, in which little Jack sat and tried 
 to catch the cherries in his mouth as they fell. This 
 rare laughter of Silence's has a curious gurgling 
 sound that is nigh uncanny, but it doth add to the 
 beauty of her fair face, inasmuch as it sets all its 
 wondrous soft curves and dimples in play and lights 
 up her great melancholy eyes. 
 
 The task of mounting guard over her sister that 
 Laurel doth so lovingly impose upon herself, even 
 though her gentlewoman be present, may make me 
 less watchful of her perhaps than I should be other-
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 73 
 
 wise. Anyhow, to-day I had not noticed her slip 
 down from the tree and wander away by herself, 
 when Gabriel took me to see his dappled cows in a 
 neighbouring meadow. 
 
 ' Hearken ! what is that?' I exclaimed; for, coming 
 from some distance, a terrifying sound pierced the 
 summer air and silenced the merry young voices in 
 the orchard. 'Twas a sound rarer and even more 
 uncanny than Silence's laugh, Silence's cry. 
 
 I saw Laurel spring up directly she heard it, and, 
 fleet-footed as any hare, run up the slope towards 
 the rough roadway across the heath whence we 
 had descended to the farm. Gabriel and Mistress 
 Miriam and I followed in the same direction ; but 
 by the time we had gained the road Laurel had 
 vanished, and we hesitated whether to turn to the 
 right or the left. 
 
 ' If 'tis the horse-racing you want to see,' said 
 one of a group of clowns on the road, ' yonder is the 
 path.' 
 
 We moved to the spot that he indicated with a 
 jerk of his head, and on a level sward, at the foot of 
 a declivity, we looked down on a scene of mid- 
 summer madness. 
 
 A concourse of fine ladies and gentlemen, some 
 mounted on spirited horses, others on foot, attired 
 a la campagne, besides a swarm of rustics of both
 
 74 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 sexes, were gathered together to watch horses 
 tearing round an open space. From the outskirts 
 of this medley of fantastically habited humankind 
 Laurel emerged, Silence clinging to her arm, appear- 
 ing greatly affrighted. With them came a gallant 
 protector, whom I recognised at once as that very 
 pink of virtuous chivalry and manly beauty, Richard 
 Lovelace, the Cavalier poet. My husband had once 
 pointed him out to me in Hyde Park as he walked 
 there with other poets and wits, such as Andrew 
 Marvel and Sir John Suckling to boot. Since then 
 he had been imprisoned in the Gate-house at West- 
 minster, where he writ the lines, 
 
 ' Stone bars do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron walls a cage,' 
 
 and had been only let loose on a promise to the Parlia- 
 ment that he would fight the rebels in Ireland. 
 Whether he had failed to keep this promise, or was 
 but taking the sight of a race on the way to its 
 performance, I know not. 
 
 ' Father,' said Laurel quickly, as they came up to 
 us ' father, thank this gentleman for rescuing Silence 
 from insult. If he had not interfered think what 
 would have happened : those churlish wretches there 
 would have dared ay, dared to kiss her !' 
 
 Disgust and indignation blazed from Laurel's 
 brown eyes. Then, as she turned them on the
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 75 
 
 beautiful and gallant person at her side, they softened, 
 and she repeated : 
 
 ' Thank this gentleman, father. Go down on your 
 knees and thank him.' 
 
 ' No, no, sir,' said Captain Lovelace. ' Indeed, 
 I have received more sweet thanks than I am 
 deserving of already. Is it not sufficient reward in 
 itself to be given the chance of rendering a service to 
 fair maidens in distress ? I am heartily ashamed to 
 think that those who molested your daughter, sir, 
 were not clownish ruffians, but so-called gentlemen 
 of quality. Their only poor excuse is that they have 
 quaffed too deeply of the " Spaniards' " nut-brown 
 ale.' 
 
 'At least, if I may not thank you,' answered 
 Gabriel, ' let me hope that I may have the honour 
 of receiving you some day at my house in Chancery 
 Lane, the Gray House over against the gateway of 
 Lincoln's Inn.' 
 
 ' Then you are Mr. Young, the collector of rare 
 books !' exclaimed the poet. ' Verily it will be a 
 pleasure to share your hospitality with many illustrious 
 friends of mine who I know have been privileged to 
 enjoy it often. And now that I have consigned my 
 pretty charges to their proper guardians, with your 
 permission I will take my leave.' 
 
 With his" hat in his hand, and the late afternoon
 
 76 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 sunlight shining on his fair hair, he bowed and 
 smiled to each of us in turn. And what a smile and 
 what a bow were his unrivalled in courtly charm 
 and grace ! No wonder Peg and Prue, who now 
 had come with Mistress Miriam from the orchard to 
 learn what was the matter, were fairly dazzled by 
 one of whom it hath been said all women admire 
 and adore him, but who remains, nevertheless, 
 modest and unspoilt, and ever constant to a hope- 
 less passion. 
 
 As he withdrew, a little posy of field-flowers, tied 
 by a ribbon, fell unnoticed by him from the jewelled 
 clasp of his satin doublet ; it was a badge of the 
 rustic pastime in which he was taking a part. It 
 dropped close to Laurel's feet, and she picked 
 it up and placed it within the folds of her lace 
 kerchief. 
 
 Driving home, I gathered from Laurel more 
 exactly what had happened to Silence. It seemed 
 she had started, unseen by the others, with the 
 idea of exploring the woods on her own account, 
 and must have been alarmed when she had found 
 herself coming on a crowd. 'Twas not unnatural 
 that she should have attracted the observation of 
 some of the gay, half-tipsy gallants hanging about 
 the scene of the chariot-race so fair a maid as 
 Silence, walking alone, her eyes shining like great
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 77 
 
 stars out of a face near as white as her dimity kirtle, 
 her thick hair waving round her head like a halo. 
 One man took his oath that here was a wingless 
 angel descended from heaven ; a second said he 
 would not lay a wager on it till he had heard her 
 speak, and came forward and addressed her with 
 impudent assurance. 
 
 Silence making no reply, convinced the first that 
 he was right. She was truly an angel and did not 
 understand the language of earth, said he. 
 
 ' Let us see if she doth understand the language of 
 kisses,' said a third, and would have boldly suited 
 the action to the word, when Silence gave that long- 
 drawn, ear-piercing scream, and Richard Lovelace 
 had bounded forward, with his hand on the hilt of 
 his sword, and cowed Silence's persecutors. 
 
 * They had skulked off by the time I got to her,' 
 said Laurel. 
 
 ' And, for aught we know, a duel may come of it 
 yet,,' said Prue. 
 
 ' Don't talk of such dreadful things !' cried Peg. 
 ' A duel ! It makes me sick to think of it. His 
 loveliness run through by a sword-thrust !' Then 
 foolish Peg leant forward, and said to Laurel in a 
 pleading tone : ' Could you spare just one flower out 
 of that dear nosegay for me ?' 
 
 Laurel straightened herself proudly, and, unfasten-
 
 78 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ing the flowers from her bosom, tossed them into 
 Peg's lap. 
 
 ' I can well spare all,' she said, with her lip 
 a-curl. 
 
 It hurt her to know that her action in picking 
 up and cherishing the faded flowers had been 
 observed. 
 
 Now, Peg and Prue are different. They were not 
 ashamed to divide the posy betwixt them, and to 
 wrangle openly as to who should have the riband. 
 
 ' You have that big poppy, so 'tis but fair I should 
 have the riband.' 
 
 ' Tut ! I am the elder, so it falls to me by right.' 
 
 My severe and disapproving looks failed to quiet 
 them as of old ; and I was glad that Laurel appeared 
 to be indifferent to their converse, and kept her eyes 
 fixed on the landscape without. 
 
 'Twas as if we were descending into some en- 
 chanted vale, and great London were a city of 
 dreams. The dun-coloured bricks of the Tower, the 
 white pinnacles of Paul's, and the gray stones of 
 Westminster, were now alike of molten gold in the 
 rays of the setting sun. Beyond the winding river, 
 and the theatres and bear-pits of Southwark, was a 
 misty violet line of hills, like those we were leaving 
 behind us. 
 
 And at this minute, whilst I write, from all the
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 79 
 
 heights are leaping tongues of flame from the 
 midsummer fires. I have drawn back the curtains 
 of the oriel in my carnation closet, and can see their 
 glare reddening the cloudless, starless sky above 
 Highgate and Hampstead Mills. 
 
 July 4. 
 
 Sir Oracle came home from his bookseller's in 
 Paul's Churchyard this forenoon with a new folio 
 that he deems priceless, and the news that the 
 Commons have appointed my Lord Essex General 
 of their army. Mr. Hampden and Mr. Holies have 
 been made colonels in foot regiments, and one 
 Cromwell a colonel of their horse. London is agog 
 with excitement, and the people are decorated with 
 streamers of orange, Lord Essex's colour. 
 
 The shopkeepers, instead of crying ' What d'ye 
 lack ?' at their doors, are polishing muskets and 
 pikes, and have, for the most part, shut up their 
 shops. The only business that hath any interest for 
 them now is the business of war ! 
 
 Hugh says that Master Haynes has promised to 
 take back, when their services are no longer required, 
 those of his prentices who have enrolled under 
 Major-General Skippon. 
 
 ' Yet he would be loth to part with all, methinks,' 
 said Hugh, ' for he offers to give a prize to any
 
 8o AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 apprentice who is able in his private hours to design 
 and carry out some original and fantastic device for 
 a dial.' 
 
 ' And is the prize to be his daughter, Mistress 
 Margaret ?' asked Laurel, in that roguish manner 
 she doth now adopt towards her foster-brother. 
 
 ' He did not say 'twould be a human prize,' Hugh 
 replied, without smiling. 
 
 He crossed the room to the window where Silence 
 sat broidering on her sampler, wrapt in her silent 
 world of pictures. 
 
 She is at times oblivious of even Hugh's beloved 
 presence, so engrossed does she become in her work, 
 and she had only laid down her needle for a moment 
 to greet him when he came in unexpectedly just 
 now. 
 
 The youth, methinks, is much torn 'twixt his 
 devotion to his craft and the contagion for soldiering 
 that hath spread among his confreres and through- 
 out London. For, despite his crooked shoulders, 
 he is not lacking in a boy's fine courage and spirit, 
 as hath been long ago proven. 
 
 Then Laurel related to him the story of Silence's 
 adventure at Hampstead Mills. He clenched his 
 fists, and there was a fierce glow in his red-brown 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Would I had been there to defend her,' said he,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 81 
 
 * and to serve those rascally villains as I served the 
 wolf at Blois !' 
 
 ' Ah ! but she had a defender,' Laurel said ' a true 
 Red Cross Knight methinks, and most gallant ; so 
 tall, and fair, and perfect in face and form and in 
 soul too, 111 warrant.' 
 
 Hugh winced as if he had been struck, and 
 Laurel, quick to see the effect of her careless words, 
 was on the instant full of repentance. She ran to 
 him, and, laying her hand caressingly in his, added 
 eagerly : 
 
 ' But not so brave as one I wot of not near so 
 brave ; for that were impossible, Red Cross Knight 
 or no. Come, Hugh ! Come and read to me 
 beneath the trees, as you were wont to do at Blois. 
 See, here is " Aucassin and Nicolette." She drew a 
 tiny duodecimo of Elzevir print, tied with lilac 
 strings, from her apron pocket. ' If we go and sit 
 on that bench near the window, where Silence 
 can see us should she look up, she will not 
 mind.' 
 
 So the two went out into the sunshine, and seated 
 themselves on the bench, and both pairs of brown 
 eyes were bent on the same small page. The July 
 zephyrs gently stirred the branches above their 
 heads, and set the leaves a-rustling, and their 
 shadows danced and quivered on the paved path at 
 
 6
 
 82 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 their feet, where the drowsy spaniels lay rolled up 
 like balls of silk. 
 
 'Twas a blissful hour for Hugh, I doubt not, 
 Laurel, by her sweetness, having soon healed, 
 apparently, the wound she had inflicted. After he 
 had read some time, 'twas Laurel's turn to sing, and 
 her clear, rich-toned voice awoke the echoes of 
 Chancery Lane, as she did trill forth that wailing, 
 piteous ballad of the North that she is always 
 singing, so that, methinks, I know it by heart, and 
 can write it here from memory : 
 
 ' My love he built me a bonny bower, 
 And clad it all with lily flower ; 
 A braver bower ye ne'er did see 
 Than my true love he built for me. 
 
 1 They slew my knight to me sae dear 
 They slew my knight and pained me gear ; 
 My servants all for life did flee, 
 And left me in extremitie. 
 
 ' I sewed his sheet, making my mane, 
 I watched the corpse myself alane ; 
 I watched his body night and day, 
 No living creature came that way. 
 
 ' I took his body on my back, 
 And while I went, and while I sat, 
 I digged a grave and laid him in, 
 And happed him with the sod sae green. 
 
 ' But think na ye my heart was sair 
 When I laid the mould upon his hair ; 
 Oh, think na ye my heart was wae 
 When I turned about away to gae.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 83 
 
 The last notes of Laurel's song were still trembling 
 on the air when, looking forth from my coign of 
 vantage, the window of the library, I observed the 
 handsome face of a red-haired man of middle age, 
 pale and worn, and, methought, full of traces of ill 
 living, raised above the wall of the neighbouring 
 garden to ours. The man had been attracted, I 
 suppose, to survey thus rudely other people's 
 domains by Laurel's voice. He disappeared on the 
 opening of the postern in the covered wall opposite, 
 through which Gabriel came from the street in 
 company of two gentlemen, and I have thought no 
 more of that face looking over the wall till now. 
 
 One of the gentlemen with Gabriel was no other 
 than Captain Lovelace. As they drew near the 
 bench, Laurel sprang up, and Hugh must needs do 
 likewise. Poor boy ! Never, thought I, would he 
 have felt more keenly alive to his own undersized 
 and uneven growth than at the moment when cruel 
 chance threw him into such close proximity with 
 that ' perfect form ' of which Laurel had spoken so 
 admiringly. 
 
 The incarnation of elegance and strength and 
 unaffected grace was Captain Lovelace as he stood 
 there and doffed his hat, with its roseate plumes, the 
 blue of his silver-laced coat reflected in his frank and 
 smiling eyes. 
 
 62
 
 84 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 The music of his speech came to my ears through 
 the open lattice, but at that distance I could not dis- 
 tinguish his words. I held my breath to see how Hugh 
 would carry himself. He hung his head (which he 
 need not have done, methought, for it hath a rare 
 dignity and character of its own, even though it be 
 shorn of its ruddy glory), and, murmuring some 
 civility, he turned to examine a shrub in the border. 
 
 'Twas one of the rosemary bushes my step- 
 children had transplanted from Blois. In the air of 
 Chancery Lane it refuses to thrive, and there, amid 
 the sturdy lilac bushes and tall sunflowers, it doth 
 languish stunted and leafless. 
 
 Silence, aweary of her cramped position at last, 
 stood up, stretched herself, scattering her silks and 
 crewels about the floor for Miriam Fisher to pick 
 up and put away, and rushed like a whirlwind to the 
 garden. 
 
 The splendid figure in blue and silver was not the 
 magnet which drew her thither, for, without seeming 
 to recognise her recent benefactor, she passed him 
 by, and went, straight as an arrow from a bow, to 
 Hugh's side. Her great eyes for a moment search- 
 ingly swept his face, then, as if discerning some 
 need of comfort there, she threw her arm about 
 Hugh's neck, and bent her head, with his, over the 
 dying shrub.
 
 V 
 
 August 31, 1642. 
 
 WE dwellers in London town, which the Parliament 
 doth boast is the 'very heart and soul of their cause,' 
 have been so accustomed to warlike preparations, 
 the sound of martial music, and the sight of men at 
 drill in every open space around the city, that the 
 King's declaration of war comes scarce as a shock, 
 but rather as something long expected. 
 
 His Majesty planted the Royal Standard on a hill 
 near Nottingham more than a week agone, and 
 Lord Essex is preparing to set out with his troops 
 for Northampton. The news of a battle being fought 
 may now come any day. 
 
 ' And father sits quietly there with his musty tomes 
 and papers, as if the battles fought by Greeks and 
 Trojans thousands of years ago were of more 
 import to him,' Laurel said this morning. ' If I 
 were a man, even an old man, methinks I would 
 be up and doing for the King.' 
 
 [85 J
 
 86 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' Not if it were against your conscience,' I said. 
 
 ' Conscience ! If conscience, forsooth, means 
 seeing the righteousness of both sides, I have none. 
 Both sides cannot be right, say I.' 
 
 Laurel is but a child to hold such strong convic- 
 tions. I scarce know how she has gotten them, 
 unless it be through drawing her own conclusions 
 from the arguments she has listened to at her 
 father's table. 
 
 Gabriel takes so great a pride in Laurel's singing 
 and dancing that to hear her sing a roundel, or to 
 watch her dance a slow and stately pavan or a lively 
 galliard, is often a part of the entertainment which 
 he provides for his guests. 
 
 If she were inclined to vanity, methinks 'twould 
 not be wise to bring her forward thus ; but Laurel is 
 not vain, and has no eyes as yet for her own young 
 charms. She is proud of Silence's curious moon- 
 light beauty, and declares that none of the fine 
 ladies she hath seen at the playhouse, or at the 
 private masque to which we were bidden a short 
 time since in Spring Garden, are worthy to hold a 
 candle to Silence for fairness. But then she has not 
 seen the Court belles, most of whom are now with 
 the Queen at Oxford. Lady Carlisle tarries yet in 
 London, intriguing, 'tis said, in the Parliament's 
 cause. Once so famed for her friendship with the
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 87 
 
 great Lord Strafford, she long ago transferred it to 
 Mr. Pym. She hath lost much of her beauteous 
 looks of late, Mr. Waller says, and he no longer 
 feels inspired to write odes to her. 
 
 When they came from Blois, Silence's and Laurel's 
 wardrobe was but scantily furnished, and Gabriel 
 said he wished it replenished with all the bravery 
 befitting their position. Neither seemed to be the 
 least sick for new clothes, as Peg and Prue often are, 
 and 'twas difficult to get Laurel to take any interest 
 in the choice of brocades and velvets and the match- 
 ing of riband knots and laces. She scarce glanced 
 at herself in the mirror when arrayed for Spring 
 Garden in her new purple paduasoy suit, with deep 
 Flemish point collar and a waistcoat of aurora satin 
 wrought with acorns in gold thread, in which she 
 looks very fine and pretty. A string of rare pearls 
 that Gabriel gave her she will not wear, vowing she 
 is too brown for pearls. 
 
 ' I am for all the world as brown as the gipsies,' 
 said she one day in the still-room, when I was teach- 
 ing her to distil rose-leaves for rose-water. ' Have 
 you no recipe, mother, for an unguent or wash that 
 will make me pink and white like Mistress Margaret 
 Haynes ?' 
 
 Her brownness is a distress to her when she gives 
 any thought to her appearance at all, but methinks
 
 88 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 'twill not be long ere Laurel learns that a nut-brown 
 maid may be every whit as much admired as a pink 
 and white one. 
 
 Already Gabriel has had letters from acquaintances 
 among the country gentry craving leave to bring 
 their sons to call, with a view to treating for Laurel's 
 hand. For it hath got wind that Gabriel's daughters 
 are something of heiresses, and marrying and giving 
 in marriage goes on merrily even in these disturbed 
 and uncertain times. Sir Oracle says he would 
 liefer that Silence remain ever unwed, but that he 
 will marry Laurel at a fitting age to a fitting suitor. 
 Laurel, belike, will have some say in the matter, and 
 a mind of her own as to who be a fitting suitor, for 
 'tis certain she is unlike other maidens. 
 
 September 2. 
 
 Yesterday morning we went to welcome to town 
 my husband's kinsman, Sir John Harrison, on his 
 return from Balls, in Hertfordshire, with his daughters 
 Anne and Margaret to their winter quarters in 
 Bishopsgate. We found that they had gone forth to 
 visit my Lady Wolstenholme in Crutched Friars, so 
 Gabriel left me to go home with the servant whilst 
 he called on Sir Paul Pindar in that wondrous 
 carven house whose gables jut far over the street 
 close by the Harrisons' present lodgings.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 89 
 
 A great commotion reigned in the streets, for, 
 besides the ballad-mongers bawling their ballads as 
 usual and the fruit-sellers their wares, and bear- 
 wards, jugglers, and mountebanks adding to the din, 
 there came from the summit of the city walls the 
 sound of mallets and chisels. An army of masons 
 are at work there daily in obedience to the orders of 
 Puritan Lord Mayor Pennington, who has decreed 
 that the ancient gray bastions shall be made stronger. 
 Mighty and impregnable those bastions seemed to 
 me when, as a child, I went to gather groundsel 
 for my canaries, and little ferns and stone-crop from 
 their niches by Cripplegate. I felt proud to live 
 within so safe a girdle ; and strong enough had they 
 been, in truth, to guard London against her enemies 
 in the time of Norman, Plantagenet, and Tudor 
 monarchs. But now that London doth hold the 
 King, Charles Stuart to be her enemy, the poor city 
 wall, despite its stout service in the past, must be 
 strengthened withal to check His Majesty's advance 
 on his own capital. 
 
 Passing by palatial Crosby Hall, the background 
 of Master Shakespeare's history of ' Richard III.,' I 
 must needs fall to thinking of other times than these, 
 despite the bustle around : of Sir Thomas More, one 
 of the favourites of our history-book, who lived under 
 the grand roof of Crosby Hall for three years, when
 
 90 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 he sold it to ' his entire dear friend ' Antonio Bon- 
 vici, a merchant of Lucca, to whom he writ from the 
 Tower a letter in charcoal the night before his head 
 rolled from the block ; and of that richest and most 
 magnificent Mayor, Sir John Spencer, holding high 
 revel within its walls, for Queen Bess and so noble 
 a company of courtiers and merchant-adventurers 
 as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund 
 Spenser, and Drake and Hawkins. I pictured the 
 virgin Queen, with hook-nose and brick-coloured 
 hair, like her horrible wax effigy that I have seen 
 in Westminster Abbey, in her wide jewel-studded 
 farthingale and monstrous ruff, and red heels to her 
 shoes, being received with ceremony and marshalled 
 through the lofty Gothic doorway, showing her black 
 teeth in coquettish smiles at the stream of compli- 
 ments and flattery that had ever to be kept flowing 
 to pleasure her vanity, lest the smiles should turn 
 to scowls. 'Twas hard, methought, for poets like 
 Spenser and Sidney to have been bound to waste 
 their muse in singing so perpetually the praises and 
 non-existent charms of their great Gloriana. 
 
 My wandering thoughts were recalled abruptly to 
 the present by being hailed by a youth who came up 
 to me with a brisk and easy-going Cavalier air. I 
 could scarce believe my eyes, for 'twas my brother 
 Roger, whom I thought to be far away beneath
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 91 
 
 Eastern skies bargaining for silks for his master with 
 turbaned Turks and Arabs. Had he been recalled 
 by the merchant, his apprenticeship to whom had 
 cost my father a sum scraped together with diffi- 
 culty ? If so, why had he writ no word to warn 
 them in Hart Street of his coming ? I was for a 
 moment speechless with surprise and misgiving. 
 
 ' Well, you do not seem rejoiced to see me, my 
 Lovejoy,' said he. ' No cry of joy at thus happening 
 on your devoted and affectionate brother all un- 
 awares. But I am used by this time to frosty wel- 
 comes. My father hath not exactly fallen on my 
 neck ; I disturbed him, I fear, in the composition 
 of a motet, and Peg declined to kill the fatted calf. 
 Prue scarce paused to greet me in her wrestles 
 with that intricate fantasy of Dr. John Bull's with 
 thirty variations that she was at when I went away, 
 and the rest all did look at me as if they would 
 ask, What's brought you hither?' 
 
 ' A natural question enough, Roger,' I said, ' how- 
 ever glad one may be to see you.' 
 
 ' You think so ? Come, then, dismiss the servant, 
 and I will be your escort, and gratify your curiosity in 
 St. Helen's Churchyard. We cannot stand a-talking 
 here in the open street, being jostled and rubbed by 
 the passers-by.' 
 
 As he said this two 'prentice boys jogged Roger's
 
 92 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 elbow as they went past, glancing with suspicious 
 contempt at the gold lace on his slashed sleeve. I 
 thought with a pang of Roger's outfit the holland 
 nightcaps and shirts which I and Penelope had near 
 worked our fingers to the bone over. He could never 
 have worn half of them out, and had perhaps sold 
 them to purchase the suit of fine clothes he 
 had on. 
 
 I went with Roger beneath the low gateway of 
 corbelled timber that leads out of the busy hum of 
 Bishopsgate into the shady calm of Great St. Helen's. 
 We sat down under the wide-spreading trees in the 
 peaceful old graveyard, where lie bones of many 
 famous Londoners. 
 
 ' How delicious cool 'tis here after the tropical 
 countries that I've been in,' said Roger with a con- 
 tented whistle. ' Nay, Lovejoy ; the truth is, I am 
 not cut out for trading in silken stuffs under skies 
 of brass, nor for trading at all, for that matter, so I 
 have given up the whole business.' 
 
 ' You might have thought whether or no you were 
 cut out for trade ere you put father to so heavy an 
 expense,' I answered. ' 'Tis very ill conduct, me- 
 thinks, to give up your apprenticeship so of a sudden 
 without consulting anyone.' 
 
 ' I hardly knew on leaving Paul's what I had a 
 mind for. But now that there's war in the country,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 93 
 
 and you have made a rich match, I have a strong 
 mind to be a soldier. Will you ask your husband to 
 use his influence to obtain for me a captaincy in a 
 Royalist regiment ?' 
 
 I was fairly taken breathless by Roger's cool 
 effrontery. He was ever a saucy and troublesome 
 boy, and a care to my father, whom I have heard say 
 that, though Roger was older than me, he could go 
 away and trust his eldest daughter with his house 
 and family, but his eldest son he could scarce trust 
 out of his sight. But 'twas supposed Roger had 
 mended his ways and grown steady when he was 
 bound apprentice to a mercer under the Exchange, 
 and he went abroad full of fine promises. Yet here 
 he is back again, like a bad penny, his air more 
 boastful and full of swagger than of old ; and he dares 
 to claim favours from Gabriel through me as if by 
 right. 
 
 ' I am sorry that I cannot crave my husband's 
 charity on your behalf,' I answered. ' He hath 
 promised already to bear the expense of Will's 
 studies at Oxford when he's finished his schooling, 
 and he knows Will to be deserving, so that his 
 kindness is likely to be well repaid.' 
 
 * So you would rather your husband's money made 
 a pedant of Will than an officer of me ? Welladay, 
 if you won't intercede for me, I must fall back on
 
 94 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 my godmother, the Widow Travers,' said Roger, 
 and again he whistled jauntily. 
 
 ' Methinks you will go to the wrong quarter if you 
 apply to Dame Travers for a captaincy of Cavalier 
 horse. She shares the populace's passion, 'twould 
 seem, for the Parliament's cause, and has been 
 laying her jewels and money-bags on the floor of 
 the Guildhall.' 
 
 ' Is that the way the wind blows ? I thank you 
 for telling me, Lovejoy. I cannot afford to dis- 
 agree with my godmother, and so, maybe, shall 
 find it more discreet to fight, after all, for the 
 other side ; but to fight for one or t'other I am 
 determined.' 
 
 I thought he spoke in this flippant and un- 
 principled tone to shock me, and so, making no 
 reply to his last speech, I rose, and said 'twas time 
 for me to be on the homeward way, and if he would 
 come to dine at my house he was welcome. He 
 answered that he had appointed to dine at an 
 ordinary with an acquaintance, but would first see 
 me to my door. 
 
 At the top of Chancery Lane, Laurel and Silence, 
 going home from an airing with their gentlewoman, 
 followed by Juan, the Spanish footboy, crossed the 
 street in front of us. 
 
 ' Those are my daughters,' said I.
 
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 95 
 
 ' A pretty pair, like a York and Lancaster rose,' 
 Roger said. ' Methinks 'tis the pale rose pleases me 
 most. Is it she who is deaf and dumb ? Yes ? 
 Well, I am not so sure that 'tisn't a blessing in 
 the guise of an affliction. She can never scold her 
 husband, or sing out of tune, and she seems to 
 listen with her eyes, that gives 'em a mighty pretty 
 look.' 
 
 Roger would have it that he regretted his appoint- 
 ment at the ordinary, which would delay his being 
 presented to his fair step-nieces, as he chooses to 
 dub them. He hoped 'twas only a pleasure deferred 
 till the morrow, as, with blithe insouciance, he 
 doffed his cap and took leave of me, bearing, it 
 would seem, no grudge for my sisterly plainness of 
 speech. 
 
 I turned my head for a moment before going in, 
 to watch him step airily down the street, and I 
 marvelled much at his self-assurance, and thought of 
 what a fresh source of anxiety his unexpected 
 reappearance in the family would be to my father. 
 Then my eye fell on a face, regular of feature, 
 cadaverous of hue, framed in red hair, that came out 
 into the September sunlight from the dark shadows 
 cast by the great gateway of Lincoln's Inn. 'Twas 
 the face which had looked over the wall the day 
 Laurel had sung to Hugh in the garden.
 
 96 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 November 7. 
 
 The expected great battle was fought at Edgehill, 
 in Warwickshire, on October 24. Both sides have 
 taken the honour of victory to themselves, but of 
 5,000 slain most fell on the King's side. 
 
 After the fight, the King marched to Oxford, 
 where he intends to quarter for the winter ; and his 
 General of the Horse, Prince Rupert, is making 
 such bold excursions therefrom, and sallies so far 
 out, that the City of London is in a panic, and the 
 Lord General Essex, instead of following the King, 
 has come back to Westminster, quartering his forces 
 in the villages around. 
 
 My brother Roger's war fever was so inflamed 
 when 'twas known for certain a battle was to be 
 fought that he did go off and enlist precipitately in 
 the King's army, forgetful of that prudent regard for 
 his godmother's sympathies which he spoke of to me. 
 He hath writ since to Hart Street an account of the 
 fray, and his share in it very glorious, according to 
 his own account. And now he is a full-blown hero 
 in Peg and Prue's eyes, and, belike, in Laurel's too. 
 But I cannot easily forget his breach of contract with 
 his master, and the heavy trial it has been to my father, 
 who, only through personal friendship with the 
 merchant, has prevailed on him not to let the law 
 punish Roger for breaking his indentures. Out of
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 97 
 
 consideration and regard for my father, this mer- 
 chant will even allow Tim to take up Roger's 
 apprenticeship when he leaves school next year. 
 
 At present Tim spends most of his time out of 
 school hours toiling, with an orange cockade in his 
 hat, on the new earthworks, that grow and grow, 
 and are designed to encircle Westminster and the 
 suburbs as far as Shoreditch on the north and 
 St. George's Fields on the south. East and west 
 the fortifications are to stretch from Hyde Park to 
 Mile End and the Lea. 
 
 Mr. Waller, who comes often to smoke a pipe ot 
 tobacco with Gabriel, told us of the great honour he 
 had seen paid by both Houses to-day to Lord Essex, 
 who, in reward for his 'pains and valour,' was 
 presented with 5,000. Though still holding his 
 seat in the rebellious House of Commons, Mr. Waller 
 is suffered to speak of its proceedings with great 
 sharpness and freedom. 
 
 ' In spite of all the clanking of steel and building 
 of forts/ said he, ' the City is shaking in its shoes, 
 and the Parliament meditate sending a commission 
 to treat with His Majesty for peace. I, for one, 
 would be their willing servant on such an errand.' 
 
 Laurel, who held her lute in her lap, for she had 
 not long before been singing ' Go, Lovely Rose,' to the 
 author's delighted satisfaction, looked up, and said : 
 
 7
 
 98 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' Why do you hold with the Parliament, sir, when 
 at heart you love the King ?' 
 
 Methought Mr. Waller gave a slight start, and 
 he elevated his fine eyebrows till they near touched 
 the frizzed light-brown hair that crowns his high 
 forehead, and falls on either side of his oval, olive- 
 skinned face. 
 
 ' Dear young lady, are you a reader of hearts as 
 well as a nightingale ?' he said. Then added : 
 ' Tis possible to love the King, and yet not to be 
 blind to his faults, and the evil they have done the 
 kingdom.' 
 
 ' But the King can do no wrong P Laurel made 
 retort, with heightened colour. 
 
 ' So Mistress Laurel has imbibed the doctrines of 
 Mr. Hobbes,' laughed the poet to Gabriel. 
 
 ' She expresses herself overboldly, I fear,' her 
 father said. 
 
 ' Nay. To misquote Master Shakespeare, she 
 does but talk as familiarly of politics as most maids 
 of thirteen do of puppy-dogs.' 
 
 ' And, if it please you, I am fourteen,' said Laurel. 
 
 ' A great age, certainly,' Mr. Waller replied, 
 ' though I should have thought you more.' 
 
 And, indeed, Laurel has the stature and carriage 
 of an older maiden, if in some ways she is younger 
 than her years.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 99 
 
 When Mr. Waller invited her to sing another of 
 his Sacharissa lyrics, and said, with polished courtesy, 
 that to be sung by her did add another laurel to his 
 poor bays, she accepted the compliment with the 
 unblushing innocence of a child. 
 
 November 9. 
 
 Days are now set apart, by order of those in 
 power, for prayer and fasting, and this day being so 
 observed, and no shops opened on that account, 
 Gabriel and I went, at noon, to Cheapside, and 
 begged Master Haynes's leave to bring Hugh home 
 with us to stay till nightfall. 
 
 A servant admitted us, and led us through the 
 deserted shop upstairs to the spacious parlour, and 
 in a few minutes Master Haynes came down from 
 his private laboratory at the top of the house. His 
 spectacles were pushed back on his forehead, and 
 his eyes shone piercingly from his wan face. The 
 straggling hair beneath his scarlet skull-cap was 
 more dishevelled than ever. He looked as if he had 
 spent the night in sleepless communing with the 
 stars. 
 
 ' He is not here,' Master Haynes said. ' Your 
 foster-son is gone forth with the rest and my 
 daughter to where all the world and his wife are 
 flocking to-day to hear stirring words. You will 
 
 72
 
 ioo AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 find him at the Guildhall.' Then, as we turned to 
 go, he added : ' I can speak well of him. The lad 
 teems with inventiveness, but he curbs his ingenuity 
 in order to ground himself in the rudiments of his 
 craft. That is the secret of all sure climbing, and 
 'tis not too early to prophesy, perhaps, that your 
 foster-son will climb high in the dialler's art. His 
 maternal relations, with whom I have a distant 
 kinship, will one day, methinks, have reason to 
 claim him with pride." 
 
 Gabriel said, when we were in the street again, 
 that 'twas pleasant to hear so good an account of 
 Hugh from Master Haynes. Yet I have a fancy 
 that 'tis an effort to him to take a fatherly interest in 
 Hugh, although he has so generously performed a 
 father's duties towards him. Why I cannot tell, for 
 Hugh is all a grateful and respectful son should be. 
 
 What a scene it was we saw as we came near the 
 Guildhall ! In the face of such scenes all thoughts 
 of peace seem idle, despite the King having declared 
 he is grieved for his people's sufferings, and having 
 consented to receive the Parliament's propositions. 
 
 In the gray, chill November mist that had crept 
 up from the river, and hung like a veil over 
 pinnacle and buttress, a tall, gaunt figure stood on 
 the steps of the Guildhall, speaking impassioned 
 words to a crowd of eager listeners. 'Twas Lord
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 101 
 
 Brooke, a General of the Parliamentary forces, who 
 had fought at Edgehill, the most rigid of Puritans, 
 for all his noble lineage, and unbending of the King's 
 foes. He was clad from head to foot in purple, with 
 a burnished breastplate of silver. Far as my 
 sympathies were from him, I could but feel, despite 
 myself, a thrill at what he spake : 
 
 ' Citizens of London, you must not think to fight 
 in the sighs of your wives and children. Therefore, 
 when you hear the drums beat, say not, I beseech 
 you, " I am not of the trained band," nor this, nor 
 that, nor the other, but doubt not to go out to the 
 work, and this shall be the day of your deliverance. 
 What is it we fight for ? It is for our religion, and 
 for our God, and for our liberty, and all. And what 
 is it they fight for ? For their lusts, for their wills, 
 and for their tyranny; to make us slaves, and to 
 overthrow all. Gentlemen, methinks I see your 
 courage in your faces. . . .' 
 
 Deeply stirred, some in the breathless, listening 
 throng spoke forth, nigh sobbing : 
 
 ' Ay, we have the courage and the resolution. 
 We'll go out to-morrow.' 
 
 The General ceased, and as the people began to 
 disperse, I saw Hugh standing, his red head bared, 
 with Mistress Margaret, in a sober dove-coloured 
 cloak and hood, beside him.
 
 102 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 I went to him, and said that his master would 
 give him leave to come with us to the Gray House 
 and spend the day with Laurel and Silence. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, then answered : 
 
 ' It will greatly pleasure me to come, but first I 
 must see Mistress Margaret safely home.' 
 
 The pink cheeks under the dove-coloured hood 
 grew pinker. 
 
 ' Do not come, Hugh 1'Estrange,' the Puritan 
 maiden said. ' I need no escort for so small a 
 distance.' 
 
 But when she made as if she would trip off alone, 
 Hugh followed her. 
 
 It struck me then that Hugh is highly favoured by 
 Master Haynes to be the one chosen out of his large 
 number of prentices to act as his daughter's escort, 
 or is it that Mistress Margaret herself doth prefer 
 Hugh to any of her old admirers ? 
 
 November 30. 
 
 Whilst peace was still being talked of, the King's 
 artillery fell on the Parliament's forces at Brentford, 
 and again there was a great and bloody fight, and, 
 as at Edgehill, both sides reported themselves 
 conquerors. The thunder of the cannon awoke us 
 from our sleep, and we realized how near us were 
 drawing the perils of war.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 103 
 
 Excitement grew all over London, the citizens 
 being enraged afresh against the King for trying 
 thus to enter the capital at the sword's point, as 
 they said, under the cloak of peaceful professions. 
 
 The whole night through after that fight at 
 Brentford drums were beating and forces mustering, 
 and on Sunday morning, being November 14, rein- 
 forcements poured forth to the strength of 24,000 
 men, and were reviewed on Turnham Green. But 
 Lord Essex was too cautious to risk another battle, 
 otherwise, 'tis said, the King might have been 
 caught in a net and routed, instead of being allowed 
 to get back, scot-free, to loyal Oxford. 
 
 My father, who was here this morning to give 
 Laurel her lesson on the harpsichon, told us that 
 when London was a-trembling for fear of the King's 
 invasion, Mr. Milton affixed outside the door of his 
 lodgings in Aldersgate Street a sonnet claiming from 
 the invaders the reverence shown to the city of 
 Euripides, and by Alexander the Great to the poet 
 of Thebes. 
 
 ' It happened,' said my father, ' that some foreign 
 travellers were admiring the tombs in St. Olave's, and, 
 as I came from the organs, one asked me to direct 
 them to the present dwelling of Mr. Milton, the famous 
 scholar, and author of " Penseroso " and " Lycidas." 
 They had already seen, they said, the house at the
 
 104 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 sign of the Spread Eagle, in Bread Street, where he 
 was born. As I was going that way, I offered to 
 show them the house, and there was the sonnet, 
 nailed to the door, in Mr. Milton's own handwriting. 
 The foreign gentlemen said it well repaid their 
 journey out of Italy to read it.' 
 
 My father has writ down the lines for me to copy 
 in my day-book : 
 
 ' Captain or colonel or knight in arms, 
 Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize ; 
 If deed of honour did thee ever please, 
 Guard them, and him within protect from harms ; 
 He can requite thee, for he knows the charms 
 That call fame on such gentle acts as these, 
 And he can spread thy name o'er land and seas, 
 Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. 
 Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower ; 
 The great Emathian conqueror did spare 
 The House of Pindarus, when temple and tower 
 Went to the ground, and the repeated air 
 Of sad Electra's poet had the power 
 To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.' 
 
 December 18. 
 
 We were invited this evening, at Sir John Harrison's 
 house in Bishopsgate, to a party of music, which was 
 interrupted by the arrest of our good host. Mr. 
 William Lawes was present, and my father, with the 
 boys Will and Tim, who had been bidden to bring 
 their viols. After supper the concert had opened
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 105 
 
 with a piece of Dr. John Bull's for five viols and 
 organ. Then had come canzonets for three voices 
 and soft Italian madrigals. 
 
 The dark oak chamber we were gathered together 
 in was lighted with flambeaux at the corners and a 
 chandelier of waxen tapers in the centre. Looking 
 from the windows, it seemed almost as if one could 
 step into the richly-furnished interior of Sir Paul 
 Pindar's house opposite, every room of which was 
 likewise lit up. Music-books and instruments were 
 littered about the room in which we sat, and a sweet 
 air of Luca Marenzio's, which Mr. Lawes said the 
 Muses themselves might not have been ashamed to 
 compose, yet lingered in the beams, when a servant ap- 
 peared in the doorway. Ere he could deliver himself 
 of what he would say, some men, armed and with 
 their hats still on their heads, rudely pushed by the 
 servant and came and laid hands on Sir John Harrison. 
 
 ' No need to announce us,' said one ; ' we are 
 servants of the Parliament.' 
 
 'And I am a member of the Parliament,' said Sir 
 John. 
 
 ' Ay, a member who absents himself from all its 
 councils, and so one who 'tis deemed may as well 
 sit in it across seas in company with others of his 
 quality who are suspected of brewing mischief at 
 home.'
 
 106 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Both his daughters repeated with a cry of horror, 
 ' Across seas !' and then ran to their father. 
 
 ' Yes ; take your farewell of him, for it's many a 
 long day, perchance, before you will see him again,' 
 said the Parliament's officer brutally. 
 
 Sir John is of a great height, and Anne so small 
 and fairylike. He looked a giant as he took her in 
 his arms and soothed her fears. 
 
 ' We shall not be parted for long, dear sweetheart,' 
 he said in French, lowering his voice. ' Take care of 
 Meg, and our cousin Young and his wife will take 
 care of you both.' Then, turning to his guests, he 
 asked their pardon for being thus obliged to speed 
 their departure. ' I must accompany these gentle- 
 men, it seems,' he said, ' though Heaven knows what 
 they want with me.' 
 
 ' We want those papers of the Revenue you have 
 in your possession. 'Tis the Parliament's order that 
 
 - 
 
 you give them up.' 
 
 ' 'Tis no use searching for them here. They must 
 be fetched from another place,' Sir John said ; and I 
 noticed he looked more hopeful at mention of the 
 papers. 
 
 He bade us all good-night and God-speed, and 
 entrusted his girls to Gabriel and me. We brought 
 them hither in our coach, to tarry with us till they 
 have news from their father. Margaret, the younger,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 107 
 
 was so affrighted for him that she wept and wailed 
 all the way, but Anne quickly regained her spirits, 
 and declares she has every confidence in her father 
 getting loose. 
 
 Christmastide^ 1642. 
 
 Anne Harrison and her sister are still with us. 
 Laurel so worships Anne that she hopes she may stay 
 for ever, but Silence is as indifferent to her as she 
 is to other people, with the exception of Hugh 
 1'Estrange. 
 
 We went to morning prayers in great St. Paul's, 
 and heard the Christmas anthem composed by 
 Dr. Child. How the voices of the choir soared into 
 the vaulted roof, and the rich, swelling organ-notes 
 rolled through the vast building! 'Tis the organ 
 that draws the soul upwards in praise of the Most 
 High as no other instrument could ever do, methinks; 
 and I thrill and vibrate to its mighty waves of sound, 
 though since I was married I have scarce touched 
 the organ myself, Gabriel thinking I now lack the 
 strength to play on it. 
 
 We came down the long aisle of the nave after 
 the service, where, as usual, assembled to lounge, 
 promenade, and gossip, were a motley crew, when 
 Anne Harrison suddenly caught my arm and ex- 
 claimed :
 
 io8 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 1 See, there is my father, alone and free !' 
 
 Sir John came up to us and, leading the way to a 
 secluded spot in the cloisters, he told us that on 
 pretext of fetching the papers his captors had de- 
 manded, he had evaded them. He was now resolved 
 to start forthwith for Oxford, and would, when safely 
 there, have his daughters follow him thither. 
 
 ' But why may we not bear you company now ?' 
 asked Anne. 
 
 ' Because I would fain provide accommodation for 
 you first. Oxford is full to overflowing, and I know 
 not if I can find a place to lay my head when I get 
 there.' 
 
 He then bade us a hurried farewell, for, said he, 
 every moment he lingered increased the danger of 
 his being recaptured. Anne was content to come 
 home with us again and take part in our Christmas- 
 tide revels, and she does enliven us all with her 
 bright company and merry quips. 
 
 February, 1643. 
 
 Last week a messenger came from Oxford, bearing 
 a letter for Anne from her father. In it he said that 
 he had now found some rooms above a baker's shop, 
 and would fain have his daughters come to him in 
 these humble quarters at once. So our guests began 
 to prepare for an instant departure. The house in
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 109 
 
 Bishopsgate Street had been shamefully plundered, 
 and a Puritan guard was still installed there. These 
 two fair girls, who had never known what 'twas to 
 lack every possible comfort and luxury in their town 
 and country homes, were now without money and 
 clothes, except those they had on their backs. 
 
 Anne would not let me give them more than a few 
 necessary garments, which she thrust herself into a 
 cloak-bag, in great haste and impatience to obey her 
 father's summons. 
 
 ' Who will be there to see the creases,' said she, 
 ' in the baker's shop ? And, belike, we may have to 
 exchange the baker's shop for a tent before long, 
 and then fine clothes would certainly be out of 
 place.' 
 
 They rid away in the early freshness of the soft, 
 mild day, with but a single servant behind them, 
 bearing their cloak-bags, and methought Anne had 
 never looked more radiant. 
 
 Laurel ran out after them across the courtyard, 
 waving her handkerchief and calling ' Bon voyage !' 
 as she watched them out of sight. Then she came 
 back slowly, and said, with a great pathetical sigh : 
 
 ' Ay, how fain would I be going too !' 
 
 ' To face hardships and, maybe, misadventure ?' I 
 said. 
 
 ' Hardships and misadventure in the King's service
 
 i io AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 in loyal Oxford, methinks, were far more to my 
 liking than ease and no adventure in great disloyal 
 London. I hate the Puritans, with their psalms 
 and their earthworks. I wonder how any who are 
 not against the King can bear to abide in London. 
 And, mother,' she went on, ' I do so much love my 
 sweet cousin Mistress Anne. I feel I would gladly 
 follow her to the end of the earth, or do anything 
 for her sake ay, be her slave.' 
 
 ' Instead of Silence's slave,' I could not refrain 
 from saying, though, to be sure, 'twas an unwise 
 remark, with Silence standing by, her great eyes 
 fixed searchingly on our lips. 
 
 A flush of wrath dyed the pure pallor of her cheek. 
 In a volley of signs she poured forth passionate 
 reproaches. Then she scribbled wildly on her 
 tablets. Did Laurel, too, now love someone better 
 than her ? Was she to lose Laurel as she had lost 
 Hugh ? Would Laurel ever dare to go away from 
 her ? If so, Silence would be too miserable to live. 
 Silence would certainly die.' 
 
 And Laurel, full of repentant concern, threw her 
 arms round her sister, caressing and reassuring her 
 with a thousand endearing words. Silence came 
 before everyone else in the world, she vowed, and 
 never would Laurel go anywhere without her, unless 
 Silence wished.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY in 
 
 I had it not in my heart to warn Laurel that 'twas 
 rash to make such vows, or to tell her that I 
 believed a separation at some time would be whole- 
 some for these two sisters, who are so closely 
 bound to one another by the tie of poor Silence's 
 affliction.
 
 
 VI 
 
 August 10, 1643. 
 
 'Tis not because the spring and summer have been 
 barren of events to record that I have been so long 
 idle with my pen. The chief cause thereof has been 
 the birth of my little Olave, who first saw the light in 
 June in the green velvet lying-in chamber that over- 
 looks the courtyard. For some weeks afterwards I 
 was near sick to death from weakness and fever, but 
 now I am on the mending hand, and able to be 
 busied with my usual occupations in the preserving- 
 room and the spicery and at my spinning-wheel. 
 
 'Twas my fancy that the baby-boy should be 
 christened after the Viking saint whose name has 
 been so familiar to me from early childhood, since I 
 first heard the strains of the organ, and learned to 
 worship God at my mother's side in the church in 
 Hart Street. He is a lusty little fellow, my babe 
 Olave, not unlike his uncle Jack, with the bluest of 
 eyes and the yellowest of hair so much as he has of 
 [ 112 ]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 113 
 
 hair and so his name doth suit him well enough. I 
 have left him now crowing in his deep-rockered oak 
 cradle upstairs, with his nurse, old Marie, singing a 
 French hushabye at the head, and Silence at the 
 foot gazing on him with rapture. For Silence holds 
 Olave in even greater dearness than she does the 
 spaniels, the birds, and the squirrel, and all dumb 
 and helpless creatures. Since Olave came methinks 
 Silence shows signs of being more disposed to love 
 me, or, at any rate, to accept my love, for which I am 
 thankful. She has been much engaged of late in 
 broidering in secrecy some device or other, which 
 Laurel says is to be a surprise for me when 'tis 
 finished. 
 
 And now I am once more here in the carnation 
 closet at my oaken desk in the oriel, and see that I 
 have not writ aught in this book since the day Anne 
 Harrison and her sister left us for Oxford. It seems 
 a long time ago, and we have had no more news of 
 Anne, after a letter she penned me in March saying 
 that after living in as much comfort as they had 
 always done 'twas strange to find themselves as poor 
 as Job, sojourning in a garret at a baker's house in a 
 back-street. ' But 'tis the lot of many others of 
 quality here besides ourselves,' she did add. 'And I 
 must needs say that most bear being packed together 
 in poor quarters, and seeing perpetually the sad 
 
 8
 
 114 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 spectacle of sickness, plague, and other evils of war, 
 with a martyr-like cheerfulness.' 
 
 ' And I, too, would bear such discomforts cheer- 
 fully for the King,' Laurel said, when I read her the 
 letter. 
 
 But Laurel's life has not been without some of the 
 excitements of these stirring times, as I will relate. 
 In April so many cries on both sides were heard 
 again for peace that negotiations had been opened, 
 only to break down as the last had done, the King 
 refusing indignantly to abolish Episcopacy, and to 
 give up to the Parliament his darling right of com- 
 manding the militia. 
 
 Whilst men were talking of peace, Mr. Waller 
 came more frequently than usual to the Gray House, 
 sometimes in company with his brother-in-law, one 
 Mr. Tomkins, Clerk of the Queen's Council, who 
 had a numerous acquaintance and great influence in 
 the City, and who I have heard say at our table 
 that he knew many were opposed to the violent 
 measures of the Parliament and favoured the King 
 at heart, though fear concealed their loyalty. 
 
 'Twas a few days after the negotiations for peace 
 had been broken off that these two gentlemen came 
 into Gabriel's study when he was out, which is 
 divided only by the arras from the library, where 
 Laurel and Hugh 1'Estrange were playing at chess.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 115 
 
 While waiting for the return of their host, they began 
 to discuss very freely a plot they had on foot to 
 seize the leaders of the Parliament, take possession 
 of the military defences, and let the Royal forces 
 into London. 
 
 Laurel listened, she told me afterwards, too extra- 
 ordinarily fascinated to stir for a few moments ; then 
 Hugh took her queen and said, ' Check.' The little 
 word fell on a pause in the conversation, and, being 
 heard behind the arras, brought Mr. Waller and 
 Mr. Tomkins instantly into the room, wearing white, 
 scared faces. 
 
 Laurel turned from the chess-board and faced 
 Mr. Waller. I know how she looked, methinks, 
 though I was not there to see. Her stately little 
 head held high on its brown stem of a neck, her 
 lustrous eyes full of understanding. 
 
 ' We have heard what was not intended for our 
 ears belike,' said she boldly. 
 
 ' Yes ; through our incautiousness you have been 
 made participator in a great secret,' Mr. Waller 
 answered, his eyes falling to the rosette on his shoe. 
 ' But you are a young lady of honour, a King's 
 woman, though the daughter of a neutral. Is it not 
 so ? You are to be trusted not to make known to 
 any living soul what thus by accident hath come 
 to your knowledge ?' 
 
 82
 
 n6 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' In sooth you may trust me, sir,' was Laurel's 
 reply. ' I will not breathe a word of it. I would 
 liefer bite my tongue in two than use it to injure 
 the King.' 
 
 Mr. Waller then raised his eyes in relief and 
 admiration. 
 
 ' Brava ! that is well spoken,' said he. * I see we 
 may count on a new ally.' 
 
 ' But 'tis necessary/ said Mr. Waller's confederate, 
 ' to gain the same assurances from this young man.' 
 
 He glanced uneasily at Hugh's cropped head and 
 prentice's jerkin. 
 
 ' I can answer for his honour as well as my own,' 
 Laurel made haste to say. 
 
 ' Yet, to make assurance doubly sure, we would fain 
 hear him answer for himself,' persisted Mr. Tomkins. 
 
 Hugh sat fingering the chess-men, and did not 
 speak. Then Mr. Waller bent over Hugh with 
 something of a threat in his insinuating manner. 
 
 ' Swear it !' he muttered 'twixt his teeth. ' We 
 cannot be content till you take your oath on't.' 
 
 Still Hugh said nothing. 
 
 'To please me, Hugh,' Laurel urged 'to please 
 me, you will surely satisfy these gentlemen and 
 take your oath on't.' 
 
 Hugh jumped to his feet. 
 
 'No, I will not!' said he resolutely. 'I will not
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 117 
 
 take my oath on't ! I will not be forced against my 
 will to conspire in this plot, which, if hatched, may, 
 for all I know, be the cause of slaughter and blood- 
 shed and lamentation throughout the length and 
 breadth of London.' 
 
 Just then Gabriel's step was heard coming to the 
 study. 
 
 Laurel's eyes must have blazed with anger as she 
 cried : 
 
 'Then, Hugh, I will never, never play chess with 
 you again !' 
 
 When she told me the story, much as I have writ it 
 here, after the ill-starred plot had been discovered, 
 Mr. Waller imprisoned and Mr. Tomkins hung at 
 his front-door, Laurel explained that she had meant 
 a great deal that there was not time to say by these 
 words, ' I will never play chess with you again,' and 
 that Hugh knew it. She meant that there would be 
 no more reading and singing beneath the rustling 
 trees, no more confidences permitted about the 
 original dial Hugh had designed and was construct- 
 ing in his private hours in fact, that the old sisterly 
 comradeship of Blois days was over. And Hugh, I 
 think, accepted his dismissal from Laurel, though 
 Silence's unchanged devotion and his respect for 
 Gabriel still brought him afterwards on holy days to 
 the Gray House.
 
 u8 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 'Twas on the last day of May that the plot came 
 out how, and through whom, no one seemed to 
 know. The gentlemen of the Parliament were in 
 St. Margaret's, at Westminster, listening attentively 
 to a sermon, for 'twas one of their solemn fasts, 
 when a messenger entered the church, and brought 
 the news to Mr. Pym, who whispered it to those 
 sitting near him, causing great consternation among 
 the rest of the congregation. Immediately guards 
 were sent to apprehend Mr. Waller and his brother- 
 in-law. 
 
 The said Mr. Waller was so confounded with fear 
 that he made a most complete confession of the 
 whole affair, telling all he knew of himself and all 
 he suspected of others. He made no concealment 
 of names accused the Earl of Portland and Lord 
 Conway of co-operating in the transaction, and said 
 the Earl of Northumberland, too, was in favour of 
 any attempt against the Parliament, and of recon- 
 ciliation with the King. He mentioned the ladies to 
 whom, on the credit of his wit and reputation, he 
 had been admitted, and how they had encouraged 
 him to oppose the proceedings of the Houses. 
 Altogether, the courtly orator and poet played a 
 coward's part, and so did his fellow-conspirator, 
 Mr. Tomkins, who, when seized, revealed another 
 plot that Sir Nicholas Crisp had been brewing side
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 119 
 
 by side with his own, which was to raise a regiment 
 for the King within the City. For that purpose the 
 King had sent the Royalist merchant a commission 
 of array from Oxford by the Lady Aubigny, who 
 delivered it up to Mr. Tomkins on receiving from 
 him the appointed token. He had buried it in his 
 garden, and now, on his arrest, ordered it to be dug 
 up. He and another of the conspirators were 
 sentenced to be hung, but Mr. Waller, the most 
 guilty, affected such sorrow and remorse of con- 
 science that his trial was postponed out of Christian 
 compassion. 
 
 After an interval, made use of by him in further 
 confession, submission, lamentation, flattery, and sup- 
 plication, he was expelled the House, fined, and sent 
 to prison for a year. When this was known, Sir Oracle 
 said he feared that Mr. Waller had bought his life 
 by dissimulation, and Laurel had not a word to say 
 in defence of one on whose heroical daring on 
 behalf of the King she had built great expectations, 
 doomed to disappointment. 
 
 Laurel has given up singing ' Go, Lovely Rose.' 
 During June and July the war has raged all over 
 the country, and from every quarter news comes of 
 success for the King's party of battles won and 
 towns taken. London is mightily dispirited thereat, 
 and some blame the defensive generalship of Lord
 
 120 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Essex, and would have had him replaced by Colonel 
 Hampden, whose regiment of green-coats hath done 
 the Parliament Stirling service. But on June 25 
 Colonel Hampden died of a wound gotten in a 
 skirmish with Prince Rupert at Chalgrove Field, in 
 his own county of Bucks. They say the last words 
 he spake were, ' God save my bleeding country.' I 
 shall never forget his face as I saw it in the boat 
 that January day the day of his bloodless victory 
 at the beginning of these troubles. I cannot but 
 hold, with Gabriel, that the citizens have cause to 
 mourn the loss of a leader so great and just as was 
 Colonel Hampden, though an enemy of the King. 
 
 The surrender of Bristol to Prince Rupert has 
 brought up the question of peace again, and the 
 Commons have been debating fiercely proposals for 
 peace made by the Lords. One day the Mayor and 
 his Aldermen come to Westminster with a great 
 rabble behind them and petition against peace ; the 
 next, women to the number of several hundreds 
 come, with white ribands in their hats, and clamour 
 at the Commons House in favour of peace. 
 
 At noon yesterday 5,000 women (some men in 
 women's garb, 'tis said) were gathered there, raving 
 about the doors : ' Peace ! let us have peace ! Give 
 us the traitors who are against peace ! Give us that 
 dog Pym !'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 121 
 
 On our way to dine with an acquaintance in Petty 
 France, my husband and I were spectators of such 
 a scene of riot and terror as I had never before 
 witnessed. As this struggling mob of excited viragoes 
 refused to disperse, the Parliament's guards did fire 
 on them, and it happened, just as our coach held up, 
 because impeded by the crowd, a ballad-singer, 
 waving a white silk flag in her brawny hand, was 
 struck by a ball, and fell dead in the midst of the 
 wild song with which she had been inciting her com- 
 panions. Many got their faces and hands slashed by 
 the troop of cavalry that finally scattered the throng, 
 leaving eight wounded or dead on the ground. 
 
 Such proceedings as these are not likely to 
 forward the cause of peace, Gabriel says. I was 
 near to fainting for fright at the sight of those fierce 
 peace-makers flying from under the horses' feet, 
 and when our destination was reached could scarce 
 recover enough to partake of the cheer our friends 
 offered us. 
 
 At table the talk was mostly of the low ebb the 
 Parliament's fortunes are now reached, of Lord 
 Essex's broken ranks, which are so thinned and 
 wasted by disease, and of the King's proposed 
 march on London, in the flush of his triumphs, with 
 his own army and the army of the North, under 
 Lord Newcastle.
 
 122 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 This rumoured march is sending Londoners forth 
 to work on the earthworks and forts for twelve 
 miles round London with renewed vigour. They go 
 daily in a body of thousands, with colours flying and 
 drums beating tailors, watchmen, shoemakers, and 
 oyster-women to dig at their appointed place of 
 labour, and one cannot but feel they are mightily 
 inspired by the extremity of a newly-threatened 
 danger. 
 
 August 15. 
 
 We were treated to-day in the Spring Garden at 
 Knightsbridge by my old Lady Armytage, who is 
 set on winning Gabriel's consent to a match 'twixt 
 Laurel and one of the two clownish youths who are 
 her grandsons. 
 
 'Twas pleasant, on this fair summer day, to 
 saunter about the green glades and lawns beneath 
 the shade of umbrageous limes, whose perfume was 
 beyond description sweet. The sky was deepest 
 blue, with shining white clouds heaped upon it like 
 mountain-ranges, and the warm wind made music 
 in the tree-tops. 
 
 Laurel was not troubled long by her clownish 
 suitor, for, after some awkward bowings and scrapings 
 and clumsy flatteries, prompted by his lady grand- 
 mother, naught not even Laurel's bright eyes
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 123 
 
 could keep him from the bowling-green, where 
 gallants bowled and betted, watched eagerly by 
 some of the ladies in the company. 
 
 The desertion of her cavalier seemed rather to 
 delight than to distress Laurel, and she and Silence, 
 with their arms entwined, forgetting their company 
 demeanours, ran, like a pair of boys, to the edge of 
 the lake, where they fed the swans and waterfowl 
 with little sweet cakes they had taken from a table 
 spread with silver and dainties under the trees. 
 
 Admiring glances from both sexes followed the 
 unconscious and graceful motions of my step- 
 daughters, and I needs must feel proud of my 
 relationship to them. 
 
 Lady Eleanor Davies, in a scarlet petticoat and 
 yellow-plumed hat, who was among Lady Armytage's 
 guests, rolled her wild black orbs in their sunken 
 sockets, and asked me searching questions about 
 Silence, which my somewhat short answers did not 
 discourage. 
 
 Had not the power of seeing the unseen which 
 those wondrous gray eyes, without a doubt, possessed 
 been exercised? She would dearly love to try an 
 experiment to demonstrate this rare maid's gift of 
 sight. Would we permit it ? 
 
 ' You may have heard,' said the Lady Eleanor, 
 ' of that marvel of a deaf boy that the justices of he
 
 124 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 peace would not allow me to harbour beneath my 
 roof, calling him witch and vagrant by reason of his 
 gift of prophecy. He could manifest easily what 
 was contained in sealed letters or enclosed in secret 
 cabinets, and tell the exact number of pence or 
 peppercorns in a bag or box before 'twas opened. 
 So 'tis sometimes made amends to those who are 
 short of a sense by being endowed with extra keen- 
 ness in another.' 
 
 'I have only remarked,' I answered, 'that Silence 
 hath perhaps a quicker and more sensitive eye than 
 most for beauty of shapes and colour, which she 
 shows in her needlework and broidery. But there 
 is naught of the supernatural in that.' 
 
 ' And you would fain have nothing that smacks of 
 the supernatural cultivated, madam. Whereas I 
 hold, on the contrary, that a supernatural gift should 
 no more be neglected than a gift for painting, music, 
 or dancing.' 
 
 She spoke this with so vehement an emphasis, 
 and leaned her dark haggard face under the weirdly- 
 nodding yellow plumes so close to mine, that I felt 
 relieved when a third person came towards us and 
 interrupted our tete-a-tete. Yet I was none the less 
 interested to have met and talked with this amazing 
 woman, of whom I had often heard strange tales. 
 'Tis said that her gloomy prophecies do now so
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 125 
 
 plague the Queen that she will not have her about 
 the Court at Oxford. Two years after her marriage 
 with King Charles the Lady Eleanor waiting on 
 her Majesty coming from Mass, the Queen, then in 
 the heyday of her youth and happiness, asked the 
 prophetess how long 'twould last, her being happy. 
 The reply was sixteen years, and, this having proved 
 pretty true belike, the Queen, who is hopeful and 
 ever prone to look on the bright side, fears to know 
 more of the lady's forecasts. 
 
 When 'twas become generally known in the 
 company that Lady Eleanor Davies was present, 
 many ladies and gallants flocked about her, begging 
 to have their fortunes told. I was sorry that whilst 
 this folly was going on Laurel and Silence came 
 back from the lake, for the sight of the latter ap- 
 proaching distracted Lady Eleanor from her fortune- 
 telling. She broke off abruptly in the fluent formulas 
 with which 'tis her habit to gratify the vulgar 
 curi.osity of ladies and gentlemen concerning their 
 future, and laid her hands on Silence's shoulders, 
 looking straight into her face with great solemnity. 
 Her eyes rolled and the yellow plumes nodded 
 terrifically, as, after contemplating Silence for some 
 moments thus, she declared : 
 
 ' One day by a miracle this fair child's tongue will 
 be loosed and her ears unstopped.'
 
 126 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Silence had turned her head aside ; for there are 
 lips she will make no effort to read, and methought 
 the wide gaps 'twixt Lady Eleanor's discoloured teeth 
 revolted her fastidious eye. She was restive as a 
 spirited pony, and tried to wriggle free of the clutch 
 of the prophetess's shrivelled and much-bejewelled 
 hands, that held her shoulders in a vice. 
 
 But Laurel has no such squeamishness. Her face 
 illumined with joy at the words Lady Eleanor had 
 spoken. She lifted the hem of the flaunting scarlet 
 petticoat to her lips. 
 
 ' Oh, my lady,' said she in melting tones, ' what 
 dear news is this you give us ! What dear news ! 
 Only, my lady, tell us, I pray, when and how the 
 miracle will be performed.' 
 
 ' The manner of it I know not, but the time 
 will be when the unparalleled troubles that now rend 
 the kingdom asunder are drawing to their close, and 
 the happy restoration of peace within sight.' 
 
 ' Oh, may that time not be far off, then !' Laurel 
 said with fervour. 
 
 There had been a diversion to the bowling-alley, 
 where Sir John Suckling, who writ ' The Session of 
 Poets,' and also is reputed to be the most daring 
 bowler and gamester of his time, had come on the 
 scene. The rumour that he was to be seen bowling 
 had drawn attention from the picturesque group
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 127 
 
 which the prophetess, with Laurel and Silence, 
 made beneath the tent-like boughs of a wide-spread- 
 ing ash. 
 
 'Twas well, thought I, that Silence had under- 
 stood nothing of the talked-of miracle, and I told 
 Laurel 'twere better to let her remain in ignorance, 
 for fear her hopes might be raised to expect some- 
 thing that would never come to pass. 
 
 At this Lady Eleanor took pet ; she cast a wither- 
 ing glance at me. ' You have broke the spell,' she 
 muttered, and released Silence from her grasp, then 
 swept away without another word. 
 
 We, too, now took the path to the bowling-alley 
 in search of Gabriel, and beheld the magnet that had 
 drawn nearly the whole company thither. Not tall 
 of stature, but elegantly made, his nose red and his 
 beard curled upwards, in glorious apparel, Sir John 
 Suckling's laughter echoed through the alley as his 
 bowl drove another from the jack. He had lost a 
 thousand pounds since he entered Spring Garden 
 that afternoon, but for all that was in uproarious 
 spirits, for he thinks, they say, that to be splendid and 
 merry is the best method of courting good fortune. 
 
 Two young ladies, weeping distressfully, stood on 
 the edge of the bowling-green, and Gabriel told me 
 they were Sir John's sisters, who had come here 
 uninvited by Lady Armytage, driven by fear that
 
 128 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 their brother would lose all their portions. 'Twas 
 piteous to see them, but their tears were little heeded 
 by the gay and fashionable onlookers. 
 
 In marked contrast to Sir John Suckling's rubicund 
 countenance was the face of the bowler who stood 
 next him. 'Twas of livid hue, near to resembling 
 that of a dead man, though the eyes were alive and 
 restless. Almost directly I remembered having seen 
 this face before ; indeed, it doth haunt my memory 
 whenever my eye falls on that part of the garden-wall 
 at the Gray House where I first saw it. 
 
 'Who is it, he who is now casting his bowl?' I 
 asked of my husband. 
 
 ' He is known to me by sight, but not by name. 
 Methinks he has sometimes had a lodging in the 
 neighbouring house to ours in Chancery Lane.' 
 Then Gabriel added: 'The gentleman bears some 
 likeness to Hugh 1'Estrange.' 
 
 ' Father !' exclaimed Laurel, ' Hugh at least has 
 no evil look. 'Tis because this man has red hair 
 that you see a resemblance in him to Hugh.' 
 
 Laurel's voice, clear as a bell, seemed to reach the 
 ear of the person in question, for in the midst of his 
 occupation he turned round suddenly and regarded 
 her with an earnest scrutiny. 
 
 ' Silence is aweary of this assembly,' said Laurel, 
 ' and would fain be driving homewards.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 129 
 
 I, too, was beginning to tire of the match at bowls, 
 and to feel myself out of tune with the spectators of 
 it and their light chatter and laughter, so Gabriel 
 sent a servant to call our coach. 
 
 All was peace and beauty as we drove through fair 
 Hyde Park in the golden rays of the setting sun. 
 The sound of wheels scarce disturbed the pheasants 
 from their leisurely struts abroad, and a herd of 
 white-spotted fawns did not wheel round till we 
 came quite close to them. The coo of the wood- 
 pigeon and the throstle's evening song filled the air 
 with sweet melody. Leaving the park behind, we 
 came to pass that great mound which is being thrown 
 up at this point in the line of new fortifications, and 
 here were toilers busy throwing up the earth, though 
 'twas past sunset. Despite the news that the King 
 has deferred his march on London because Lord 
 Newcastle could not come from the North to join 
 him, and has gone instead to besiege in his royal 
 person the ' godly ' little city of Gloucester, the only 
 stronghold left to the Parliament in the West, the 
 people of London are determined to complete their 
 defences, and have not abated a jot of their en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
 How different was the strained and eager attitude 
 of these figures outlined above us against the rosy 
 sky from that of the pleasure-seeking folk at loll in 
 
 9
 
 130 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Spring Garden ; and those who laboured were not 
 all of the rough working classes, for side by side 
 with tailors and oyster-wenches, knights and gently- 
 bred ladies, with their lace ruffles turned up, and 
 white hands bare of rings, wielded the spade and 
 mattock, and gloried to work by the sweat of their 
 brow in such a cause. 
 
 At the foot of the mound a pair were resting a 
 youth and a girl who had, judging from their spent 
 looks, borne their full share of the heat and burden 
 of the August day. The girl's spade lay on the 
 ground, as she let down her gray skirt and smoothed 
 back the locks of soft, fair hair that had strayed out 
 from her muslin cap over her hot face. 
 
 ' See, there are Hugh and Mistress Margaret 
 Haynes,' said Laurel. 
 
 But Silence had seen Hugh first, and was leaning 
 over the coach door, making signs and calling him 
 with her eyes. 
 
 Hugh did not obey the call, for the simple reason, 
 methought, that he was unaware of it. His whole 
 attention was riveted on his companion, whom he 
 was trying to persuade to refresh herself with milk 
 from a pewter vessel that he held towards her, 
 whilst she appeared to be too engaged with the 
 refractory locks to think of slaking tier thirst. 
 
 The coach drove onwards, and Silence sank down
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 131 
 
 in her seat at Laurel's side, her supple ringers 
 twitching at a fold in her kirtle, her eyes brimful of 
 disappointment. 
 
 Hitherto Silence has accepted the existence of a 
 Mistress Margaret with the utmost composure and 
 indifference, for truly on the Sundays and holidays 
 that Hugh comes to us there might be no such 
 person as Mistress Margaret. He never so much as 
 mentions her name, unless 'tis in reply to Laurel's 
 mocking question respecting her. To Silence he is 
 always the same Hugh the heroical Hugh who 
 saved her from the jaws of the wolf; the patient 
 Hugh who suffered her to follow him to Monsieur 
 Pierre's the goldsmith, to the fairs at Blois, and to 
 the forest, and on all his boyish excursions ; the 
 kind Hugh who gave her his pocket-dial, and kissed 
 the back of her neck when he went away to Master 
 Haynes, at the sign of the Tortoise, in Cheapside. 
 
 But Laurel has been scornfully jealous of Mistress 
 Margaret from the first moment she saw her. Yet 
 'tis a singular kind of jealousy, being not for herself, 
 methinks, so much as for Silence. 
 
 ' Did he really not see, or did he feign not to see ?' 
 Laurel asked indignantly, taking one of Silence's 
 hands in hers, and stroking it as if it were some 
 ruffled, fluttering bird. 
 
 ' Tis not like Hugh to feign aught,' said I. ' If it 
 
 92
 
 I 3 2 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 were, he would have feigned that day to Mr. Waller 
 that he would hold his tongue.' 
 
 ' I have never forgiven him for it,' Laurel said, 
 and her young face flushed, and was sternly set ; 
 ' though I will say this much, that I don't believe 
 'twas through Hugh's tattle that the plot got out.' 
 
 ' There can be no question about it. The affair 
 was so feebly and incautiously contrived that 
 'twas known in a dozen hostile quarters at least,' 
 Gabriel said with decision. 
 
 Laurel said no more, and fell again to the comfort- 
 ing of Silence, which was hardly accomplished by 
 the time we reached the Gray House. 
 
 The clouds only cleared from Silence's brow when 
 she was in the nursery with old Marie, and laughing, 
 wakeful King Olave in her lap, she playing with his 
 pink toes in dumb-show : 
 
 ' This little pig went to market ; 
 This little pig stayed at home.' 
 
 Then her rare smiles broke forth, and Silence looked 
 happy. 
 
 August 25. 
 
 I can scarce believe that but a few days ago I 
 writ of Silence looking happy, for now her aspect 
 is most woeful. Not Bobbo the squirrel, using 
 his bushy tail as a sail wherewith to swim across
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 133 
 
 Olave's bath ; not Olave dashing his fists at Marie's 
 dangling rosary ; nor, indeed, any pranks of squirrel 
 or baby, can now set the curves round Silence's lips 
 a-dimpling. She will be left alone with that piece 
 of embroidery she is at work on in secret, and even 
 Laurel dare not offer her consolation. Silence is 
 inconsolable because Hugh has gone further away 
 from her than Cheapside. 
 
 Yesterday, with the consent of his master, Hugh 
 marched forth in the ranks of one of the four regiments 
 of train-bands that have volunteered to follow the 
 army of my Lord Essex to the relief of Gloucester. 
 
 We were in ignorance of his resolution, and he 
 took no direct farewell of us. But last evening 
 Mistress Margaret Haynes, attended by one of her 
 father's men, came hither, and asked if she might 
 speak with me or with Mistress Laurel Young. 
 
 I received her in the withdrawing room through 
 the hall, and begged her to sit down. 
 
 She seated herself primly on the edge of a stool, 
 with her hands clasped in front of her. The great 
 heat had, methought, faded the roses in her cheeks, 
 for she was near as pale as the jasmine stars peeping 
 round the casement, and filling the room with their 
 evening fragrance. The snowy kerchief crossed so 
 neatly on her dove-gray gown was no whiter than 
 the neck above it, and all truant tresses to-day were
 
 134 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 invisible under the tight little cap she wore of black 
 silk. 
 
 She related demurely how the finger of the Lord 
 had directed Hugh to be up and doing in His service. 
 The tale of the little Puritan city holding out 
 bravely with small stores and ammunition, and a 
 garrison of but 1,500 men, in order that the dis- 
 heartened Parliamentarians might have a breathing- 
 space wherein to recruit their damaged ranks, had 
 stirred Hugh to the quick, as it had done hundreds 
 of other youths of his position, and he, too, had been 
 of a sudden inspired to take up arms, and to go 
 forth this time with the rest. 
 
 ' He had no leisure, and maybe no heart, to say 
 his farewells to you,' Mistress Margaret said ; ' but 
 he bade me see that this letter was delivered into 
 the hands of his foster-sister, Mistress Laurel, and 
 so I have brought it myself.' 
 
 She drew a cover from her pouch, addressed to 
 Laurel in Hugh's handwriting. 
 
 I sent a servant to summon Laurel, and in a few 
 minutes she entered the room, with a careless, 
 sauntering step, looking tall and goodly in her rich 
 long dress of green and primrose brocade, with 
 velvet slashings, and a fine chain of gold round her 
 well-shaped throat, on either side of which her nut- 
 brown hair hung from a coral comb in dense curls.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 135 
 
 Her lute was under her arm, the parrot perched on 
 her wrist, and the spaniels sporting with the edge of 
 her skirts. 
 
 Laurel curtseyed with mock profundity to the 
 Puritan maid, and inquired how she did ; but when 
 I said, ' Mistress Margaret has a letter for you from 
 Hugh F Estrange, who left London yesterday with the 
 train-bands,' she quickly dropped her air of non- 
 chalance, and exclaimed vehemently, as she took the 
 missive from the girl's hand without looking at it : 
 
 ' 'Tis you who have done this ! 'Tis your work ! 
 I have feared from the first that you would do it 
 make a rebel of Hugh, and send him forth to draw 
 sword against the King against the King !' 
 
 Aflame with wrath, she towered over the little 
 seated figure in sober gray. 
 
 But it did not quail before her. Instead, an 
 answering fire leapt up in Mistress Margaret's serene 
 blue eyes. 
 
 ' 'Tis not mine, but the work of Him who is above 
 all earthly Kings. Hugh hath but listened to a call 
 from the great Lord of Hosts and of battles. 'Tis 
 for Him and His glory that those brave men at 
 Gloucester will rather starve than yield their city to 
 the enemy, who makes a mock of their plain garb 
 and close-cropped hair and Scripture phrases. Yet, 
 scorned or no, 'tis they whom the Lord has chosen
 
 136 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 to be His instrument in turning the tide. The 
 disposition of the stars, my father says, doth show 
 that ere long the fortunes of war will favour the 
 Lord's cause.' 
 
 Such a speech from quiet Mistress Margaret 
 Haynes was indeed astonishing. She had risen to 
 her feet as she poured it forth, and the last lingering 
 rays of the setting sun, as they found their way into 
 the dusky room, fell on her fair upturned face, so 
 that it semed to shine, and was near awesome to 
 look on. 
 
 ' 'Tis all cant cant !' cried Laurel ; and the parrot, 
 mightily pleased with a new word so easily mastered, 
 repeated after her, ' Cant ! cant ! cant !' 
 
 ' 'Tis of Silence I am thinking,' Laurel went on, 
 with tears in her voice. ' For myself I care not 
 whether Hugh fights for the rebels, or what he may 
 choose to do. But Silence ! Oh, mother, how shall 
 we break it to Silence ? She has been counting the 
 hours till next Sunday when Hugh was to come, 
 and he had promised to bring along with him his 
 invention for a dial to show her, and she was so 
 proud at the thought of being allowed to see it. 
 And now he will not come on Sunday may never 
 come again, withal. And Silence, what will she do 
 without him ? Alack, my poor Silence !' 
 
 ' Poor Silence !' echoed the parrot ' poor Silence !'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 137 
 
 I bade Laurel take the parrot out of the room, for 
 I would not have her emotions make her forgetful of 
 the courtesies due to our visitor. 
 
 She was glad to escape, for the tears had ascended, 
 methought, by this time from her voice to her eyes, 
 and she did not return till after Mistress Margaret 
 had taken her departure. Then she came back with 
 dry eyes, softly twanging her lute, and singing in 
 snatches, that were half sobs, Mr. Byrd's ' I saw my 
 Lady weeping.' 
 
 Michaelmas Day. 
 
 Laurel has not confided to me what Hugh's letter 
 contained, but Hugh has writ twice since to 
 Gabriel : first, from the camp on Prestbury Hill, 
 nigh Gloucester, whence he and his comrades saw 
 the Royal forces withdraw from their trenches, fire 
 their huts, and leave the city to its timely succour, 
 for the garrison had but three barrels of gunpowder 
 left ; secondly, after the Battle of Newbury, where, 
 on September 14, Lord Essex, finding the road to 
 London barred, drew up his men in fighting array. 
 From Hugh's letter, and from the London news- 
 sheets, we have learned what a hard-fought day 
 that was. 
 
 ' They so despised us, the train-bands,' Hugh 
 wrote, ' that many of their officers flung off their
 
 138 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 doublets in bravado, and did lead their men on in 
 their shirts, saying armour was not needed to deal 
 with base-born apprentices scarce worth the trouble 
 of righting. Later, methinks, they sang to a 
 different tune.' 
 
 ' The train-bands of the City of London,' said the 
 news-sheet, 'endured the chiefest heat of the fray, 
 for, being now on the brow of the hill, they lay not 
 only open to the horse, but to the cannon of the 
 enemy. Yet they stood undaunted, and conquerors 
 against all, and, like a grove of pines in a day of 
 wind and tempest, they only moved their heads, but 
 kept their footing sure.' 
 
 And in a packet sent to Hart Street my brother 
 Roger tells of how, in this combat, the dreamer, 
 Lord Falkland, lost, or rather gave, his life, for 'tis 
 said he had long set no value on't, his heart not 
 being in the cause for which he had felt bound in 
 honour to fight. He was weary of his country's 
 misery, he was heard to say on that fatal morning, 
 and believed he should be out of it before night. 
 And so he charged more gallantly than advisedly 
 through a gap in the hedge, on t'other side of which 
 the enemy were keeping up a hot fire, and he and 
 his horse fell in the instant dead together. 
 
 Lord Falkland had been Secretary to the King 
 since the fight at Edgehill, and 'twas through his
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 139 
 
 advice that His Majesty sat down before Gloucester, 
 which proved so great an error. 
 
 His lordship's body was stripped, trod upon, and 
 mangled, Roger says, and could only be recognised 
 by a mole on the neck. How grievous and tragical 
 are these details of war, and when they concern 
 one we have known and spoken with, they come 
 home to us the more distressfully. I can see now 
 Lord Falkland's dark head, so nobly set on the 
 small, somewhat weakly figure, as it looked when 
 my husband and I dined at Mr. Selden's in White- 
 friars, and I have the sound of his slow incisive 
 speech in my ears, as he engaged with so much 
 admirable wit and judgment in the conversation. 
 And to-day that melancholy head lies beneath the sod 
 on the Wiltshire Downs, and the voice is still for ever. 
 
 Yet all the painful tidings that come to us in 
 London from the scene of bloodshed and violence 
 do not make the little affairs of our daily life a whit 
 of less importance. 
 
 Olave has cut his first tooth, and 'tis amazing how 
 the household both here and in Hart Street hath 
 much rejoiced and wondered over the upgrowth of 
 a tiny pearl in the rosebud of his mouth. 'Tis a 
 common enough miracle, truly, of Nature's working, 
 yet methinks it might never have happened before 
 from the fuss we have made of it. This morning I
 
 140 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 was summoned betimes to settle a hot disputation 
 'twixt chef Alphonse and his rival in the kitchen, as 
 to whether 'the goose of Michaelmas' should be 
 served up with bay-leaves or in sage, and as last year 
 I cast my decision for sage, this year, in fairness, I 
 did grant Alphonse his bays. 
 
 The season for herb-pulling and preserving of 
 fruits and rose-leaves is over, but the supervision of 
 nut-pickling and distilling essences keeps me busy. 
 Laurel, since I taught her, has become an apt pupil 
 in these matters, and shows a special skill and 
 cunning for preparing herb-infusions and decoctions 
 of all sorts in the tin vessels of divers shapes and 
 sizes, with and without spouts, ranged for that pur- 
 pose on the storeroom shelves. Laurel diligently 
 studies the recipe-books, and doth experiment with 
 beautifying washes and pastes, being still ambitious 
 of exchanging the golden-brown tint of her skin for a 
 more ordinary pink and white. I am glad her efforts 
 fail to bring about the transformation when I see her 
 come in, as at this minute, all aglow from gathering 
 posies for the beau-pots, with her cherry hood falling 
 from her brown hair, her silken apron filled with 
 clove-carnations, bachelor's buttons, and other linger- 
 ing summer glories of the garden ; she is verily a 
 picture of rare, rich colour, and no eye that rests on 't 
 could wish it paled.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 141 
 
 ' Mother, the swallows are going,' says she, on her 
 knees by my dragon beau-pots. ' They are drawn 
 up in black lines along the eaves and above the stone- 
 work of Lincoln Inn's Gateway, ready to start. I 
 bade them carry my loving remembrance to Blois if 
 they go that way. But how can even swallows think 
 of winter to-day ?' 
 
 How indeed ! The sunlight lies warmly aslant 
 the fields, and sets the fanes on the City roofs and 
 towers glistening like the dewdrops on the grass. 
 Not a leaf has dropped from the dark foliage of the 
 trees. Yet in another month we shall have taken 
 the green boughs from the chimneys to make room 
 for the dancing flames.
 
 VII 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 April ', 1644. 
 
 FOR the first time since I possessed it my day-book 
 has accompanied me on a journey, and I have opened 
 it in this low-roofed, panelled chamber of Trinity 
 College, Oxon, where we tarry, having brought my 
 brother Will hither. He left Paul's School at Easter, 
 being deemed by his masters ripe for the University ; 
 and his Latin verse and love of Plato and of books 
 and learning in general having ever drawn the affec- 
 tions of Gabriel to Will more than to the rest of my 
 brothers and sisters, he proposed placing him at 
 his own expense under the famous old Dr. Kettle, 
 president of Trinity College, which was my husband's 
 own college in his youth. 
 
 This kindness has greatly relieved my father. His 
 
 music pupils falling away in these troubled times, he 
 
 is more hard put to it than ever to bring up his 
 
 family with decent advantages, and could of a cer- 
 
 [ 142]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 143 
 
 tainty not have afforded out of his small means to 
 send Will to Oxford. 
 
 Laurel is with us, Silence being content to let her 
 sister out of her sight for once, and to stay behind 
 at the Gray House with baby Olave, Marie, and Mrs. 
 Miriam. Silence is happier in London, because Hugh 
 came back to it in the autumn with Lord Essex, 
 and whether he be for Roundheads or Cavaliers, 'tis 
 all the same to Silence so long as he is Hugh. 
 
 We lay a night at Kingston, the home of some 
 maternal kinswomen of Gabriel's, whither we went 
 by water, and took horse from Kingston to Oxford 
 early on a fair April morning. 
 
 At one of the inns by the road on the other side of 
 Windsor, where we stopped for baiting of the horses, 
 we met coming from the inn parlour a young lady 
 with dark eyes and hair, very daintily clad in a 
 silver-laced riding-dress, a long feather sweeping from 
 the brim of her wide gray hat. 
 
 ' How beautiful !' murmured Laurel as she passed, 
 ever ready to admire beauty when she sees it, in 
 either man or woman. 
 
 ' 'Tis Mrs. John Milton I know 'tis she !' ex- 
 claimed Will, in some excitement at his knowledge. 
 ' I have seen her when I went to borrow a Terence 
 from Edward Phillips, Mr. Milton's nephew, at their 
 lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard.'
 
 144 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 'And what is Mrs. Milton doing at a roadside 
 inn, I wonder, apparently unprotected ?' Gabriel said, 
 but had scarcely spoken the words before the lady 
 re-entered the parlour and took up a position in the 
 window, where she stood drawing her gloves on and 
 off, and twirling her riding-whip with nervous im- 
 patience; and at length, as if moved by a sudden 
 impulse, she came to the table where some refresh- 
 ment had been set before us, and exclaimed in a 
 tuneful voice : 
 
 ' Sir, madam, pardon my freedom in throwing 
 myself on your courtesy and compassion. I am 
 bound for my mother's, Mistress Powell's, house, 
 near the camp without Oxford, but have reasons to 
 mistrust my hired escort. May I, therefore, if you 
 are travelling in the same direction, crave your 
 company by the way ?' 
 
 Thus we took under our wing Mr. Milton's run- 
 away wife, for with great frankness she chattered to 
 us of what she was pleased to call her ' ill-matched 
 union ' with the poet, as we rid along together 'twixt 
 the hawthorn hedges and meadows, silvered o'er 
 with ladysmocks. In her Oxfordshire home at 
 Shotover, said she, they had been a lively party. 
 Cavaliers came and went, and she had been used to 
 dancing and all kinds of merriments. The change 
 to the studious Puritan household, in narrow
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 145 
 
 lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, where no one 
 visited her, gave her the mopes, and, as for the 
 ringing of the church bells, and the cries of her 
 husband's pupils when they were whipped, 'twas 
 enough, she vowed, to drive her crazed. 
 
 'If I had suffered such a life much longer, I 
 should have ended in Bedlam,' she said. ' I prayed 
 humbly for leave to visit my relations, but 'twas 
 not granted ; so, you see, I have taken French 
 leave.' 
 
 Methought she talked too lightly of so grave a 
 step, and I told her so ; but she did not take it ill, 
 only laughed and chattered the more. 
 
 When we neared Oxford, and its gray spires and 
 towers rose before us out of the green, flat country 
 against the clear, pearly sky of late afternoon, 
 Mrs. Milton hailed a friend in a young officer riding 
 slowly up to the cross-roads at the head of a troop 
 of horse, which, from the dust and flecks of blood 
 on the rider's clothes, appeared to have been lately 
 engaged in a skirmish. 
 
 ' Captain Gardiner !' cried the lady ; ' 'tis really 
 you ! Then I need not bring my new friends out of 
 their way to see me safely to Forest Hill.' 
 
 ' I and my troopers are at your service, madam,' 
 answered the young officer, bowing gracefully over 
 his saddle. ' I am bound myself for Mistress 
 
 TO
 
 146 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Powell's, where 'tis my excellent good fortune to be 
 quartered this night.' 
 
 So our fellow-traveller parted from us, with many 
 pretty words of thanks for the protection our 
 companionship had afforded her. She galloped 
 gaily away with the Cavalier officer, his love-locks 
 floating on the air beside her dark curls and plume. 
 Before they disappeared in a bend of the road, she 
 turned and waved to us with her whip. 
 
 How had Mr. Milton come to woo so volatile a 
 creature, thought I. Though 'tis easy to understand 
 the eye of the poet who writ such beauties as 
 ' II Penseroso ' and ' Lycidas ' being charmed by her 
 loveliness and elegance, one can but wonder how 
 the grave writer of Puritan tracts on Church govern- 
 ment and other serious matters, the stern task- 
 master who doth whip his nephews into learning 
 their Greek, could suppose that any happiness was 
 to come of wedding with a butterfly, and pinning it 
 down in a cramped lodging. 
 
 Oxford is full to overflowing with all sorts and 
 conditions of men. 'Tis a pleasure to my husband 
 to show us the ancient colleges and halls, whose 
 gorgeous services of plate have nearly all been 
 melted down to meet the King's necessities. There 
 are numberless fine pictures and painted glass 
 windows to be seen in the chapels, and music to be
 
 ^A T OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 147 
 
 heard that is a joy to the ear and an exaltation to 
 the soul. The science of music is held in high 
 esteem here, and the most antique kind is zealously 
 studied and performed. Sir Oracle is acquainted 
 with the leading men of learning and science, and 
 has much to do during our short stay in going from 
 college to college to visit them. Many resemble him 
 in being too moderate to attach themselves violently 
 to one party or the other, and hover 'twixt the two. 
 They discourse on Socinianism, Erastianism, Meta- 
 physics, and Alchemy, as if war were not, as it needs 
 must be, the absorbing interest of the hour. 
 
 The presence of the Court and the garrison give 
 this seat of learning a curiously unwonted aspect, 
 Gabriel says. Soldiers swarm in the streets, and 
 are billeted over the college gates. The beautiful 
 gardens and groves are filled with ladies and 
 courtiers in these fair spring days. The Grove of 
 Trinity, dubbed Daphne by the wits, is specially 
 favoured, whereat the president, Dr. Kettle, is not 
 best pleased. There, last summer, the Lady Isabella 
 Thynne, brightest star of the Court, would stroll, 
 habited in a scanty, fantastic garb, said to be cut 
 after the pattern of that worn by the angels. Per- 
 fumes and strains of soft music accompanied her, 
 supplied by her page and singing-boy, who played 
 the theorbo before her. Anne Harrison, now lodged 
 
 10 2
 
 148 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 with her sister and father in this college instead of 
 over the baker's, seems to have been much in the 
 Lady Isabella's society, and has a great deal to tell 
 me of the escapades she has led her into. ' A merry 
 heart goes all the way,' and despite poverty and the 
 sad sights and events of war, one affecting her so 
 nearly as the death of her brother, William Harrison, 
 who was killed by a fall from his horse in a skirmish 
 at the end of last year, Anne has kept a merry heart, 
 or, as she expresses it, been merry on the top 
 of cares. Anne is to be married in May to Mr. 
 Richard Fanshawe, a gentleman of distant kinship 
 with her mother's family, whom she had not met 
 till she came to Oxford. Mr. Fanshawe has been 
 sworn Secretary of War to the Prince of Wales, and, 
 like Anne's father, is ready for any risk or sacrifice in 
 the King's service. 
 
 I have not seen Mr. Fanshawe yet, but Anne 
 recounted his virtues and perfections to me this 
 morning as she sat in her old favourite attitude on 
 the floor, with her bright head leaning against my 
 lap, whilst Gabriel and Laurel were gone with Will 
 to hear the psalms sung in the chapel. 
 
 ' So the fairy prince, or Apollo which is it ? hath 
 revealed himself,' said I, remembering Anne's words 
 when she had discovered my day-book, and vowed 
 she would keep a journal, too, and then, on second
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 149 
 
 thoughts, had said she would wait till she was 
 wed. 
 
 ' He is not exactly one or t'other,' she answered, 
 ' but better than either, and his match is not to be 
 found. I will prepare you for the sight of him, so 
 listen : He is of the highest height of men, strong, 
 and of the best proportion, his skin exceeding fair, 
 his hair brown and very curling, but not long ; and 
 methinks in this respect he must please our crusty 
 Dr. Kettle, who doth so hate long hair and periwigs 
 that he hides scissors in his muff, wherewith to shear 
 the scholars in his house. So tell your Will to look 
 to his love-locks, if he has any, or the doctor will 
 certainly snip them. I go in mighty dread of that 
 venerable personage, since my Lady Isabella, for a 
 frolic, induced me to call on him once in her 
 company to play off a trick on his worthiness. But 
 I forgot what the trick was when, in the terrible 
 voice and manner that he uses to scold the idle 
 young boys of his college, he addressed himself to 
 me, saying he had bred up my father here, and knew 
 my grandfather, and held me for a gentlewoman, 
 and "would I be gone?" I shook in my shoes, I 
 must confess.' 
 
 ' But 'twas of your future husband you were 
 talking, not of the president,' I reminded her ; and 
 she went on to say that she was indeed proud and
 
 ISO AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 happy to be Dick Fanshawe's choice, and what more 
 did I want to know than that he was the most 
 desirable gentleman in the world ? 
 
 ' We may truly be called merchant adventurers,' 
 she did add, ' for the stock we are to set up our 
 trading with will not amount to 20 betwixt us, 
 my promised portion and Dick's fortune being both 
 in expectation. But so long as he can buy pen, ink, 
 and paper, what does it matter ? To be poor is the 
 fashion. 
 
 ' " We do not suffer here alone ; 
 
 Though we are beggared, so's the King. 
 'Tis sin to have wealth when he has none : 
 Since poverty's a royal thing." 
 
 Hark ! I hear the president's step, surely. One can 
 always know he's coming, for he drags one foot 
 with a scraping noise. Young Mr. Egerton mimics 
 it to the life. Nay, where can I hide myself from his 
 awesome presence ?' 
 
 But Anne showed no disposition to hide herself 
 when the doctor, returning from chapel, came in 
 with Laurel and Gabriel. Instead, she drew herself 
 erect, looking dazzling fair in the mourning she still 
 wears for her brother, her small hands toying with a 
 branch of almond blossom she had plucked from the 
 Grove. The ruddy doctor, gigantic and imposing in 
 his surplice and hood, gave her a sharp look over his
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 151 
 
 spectacles, then smiled on her benignly, as much as 
 to say he had taught her a lesson once and had no 
 wish to repeat it. 
 
 Anne soon made an excuse to carry Laurel off to 
 the apartments allotted to her and her sister Margaret 
 in another wing of the college. 
 
 Dr. Kettle then began to report to us favourably 
 on Will's Greek, and of his singing of the Gospel for 
 the day in the Hall. 
 
 ' He promises well,' Dr. Kettle said in his squeak- 
 ing voice, which is so comically out of proportion to 
 the bulk of his form. ' Let us hope he won't cast off 
 his gown and run away with the soldiers to the next 
 battle. These civil wars are proving the devastation 
 of scholarship. They will shorten my life, I trow, 
 which you will believe when I tell you that a rude 
 foot-soldier marched impudently to my desk when I 
 was giving my rhetoric lecture the other day and 
 broke my hour-glass. What are we coming to ? 
 what are we coming to ?' 
 
 Gabriel told me when he was gone that the good 
 doctor carried his hour-glass wherever he went into 
 the pulpit and the lecture-room, and even on the 
 back of his bay gelding, when he rid behind his man 
 to his parsonage at Garstington and had threatened 
 the youths once that if they did not do their exercises 
 better he would bring an hour-glass two hours long.
 
 152 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, OXON, 
 
 May Day. 
 
 The Maypoles have not been cut down here as in 
 Puritan London, and the revels began betimes in 
 front of the Mitre tavern this morning. The May 
 Queen was crowned in Christ Church meadows, and 
 carried in a procession of hawthorn-decked maidens 
 and swains to the sound of flute and tabor the round 
 of the colleges. 
 
 In the afternoon the real Queen went in state to a 
 performance by the King's players of Captain Love- 
 lace's ' Scholar ' at Gloucester Hall, which comedy 
 has not been seen since the King's visit to Oxford in 
 1636, when the poet, then a student of Gloucester 
 Hall, was made a Master of Arts. 
 
 To the play we were cavaliered by my brother 
 Roger, who is quartered over the gate at Merton. 
 After Edgehill fight, to which he went on foot, 
 Roger managed to equip himself with armour, a 
 horse and servants, and to get his commission as a 
 lieutenant of dragoons. But he would have me 
 believe that his distinguished gallantry in the last 
 action he engaged in deserves a captaincy, and he 
 wants me to prevail with Gabriel to lend him a sum 
 of money, which makes me fear he may be run into 
 debt. 
 
 Roger seems to know, and be known to, divers
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 153 
 
 people in Oxford, and pointed out several notabilities 
 to me and Laurel to-day in the great crowd that 
 thronged Magdalen Walk after the play. He, too, 
 like Anne Harrison, talks of the gay doings here of 
 last summer the King's summer of successes in the 
 war : of the interludes and masques played by ladies 
 and gentlemen of the Court in the college gardens ; 
 of parties taking boat on the sunny river to Fair 
 Rosamond's Bower ; of nights given up to dancing, 
 music, and song ; and of those gallants who, taking 
 part in the festivities and revelry one day, might 
 the next be lying dead in some blood-stained grassy 
 lane or dell, slain in beating up the enemy without 
 the town. 
 
 ' Tis a pity you didn't bring Will to college then,' 
 said Roger, ' for things were livelier than they are 
 now. The King has taken alarm at the news that 
 Lord Essex has recruited his army and designs to 
 swoop down on Oxford one of these fine days and 
 capture His Majesty's person. The Queen is with 
 child again, and has lost her sprightliness, and talks 
 of going to Exeter. Didst notice she scarce smiled 
 once through the comedy ? Here are Prince Rupert 
 and Prince Maurice, a pair of giants, and mightily 
 devoted brothers they are. The Prince hath lost 
 favour with the Queen, despite his most heroic relief 
 of Newark in March, and hath enemies plotting
 
 154 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 against him at Court. Do you know why 'tis 
 sparkish to wear a lace cravat ? Because His High- 
 ness, a-horseback in the early morning, once found 
 the air chilly, and tied his lace handkerchief about 
 his throat, and, it being becoming, all the mimics 
 did likewise. Among the Prince's detractors is not 
 to be counted gallant Governor Legge, coming 
 hither. He doth worship the ground the Prince 
 treads on. I was serving under Colonel Will Legge 
 t'other day when he charged the Puritans on the 
 bridge at Thame and beat them off it three times, 
 the third time for good. See, yonder comes the 
 author of the play, Captain Lovelace. Why, 
 Mistress Laurel, you are outblushing the deepest 
 damask rose as ever I saw !' 
 
 'Twas true that Laurel changed colour as Captain 
 Lovelace, whom we had not seen again in London 
 since the summer in which we made his acquaint- 
 ance, passed, doffing his hat with a sweet, grave 
 smile of recognition. 
 
 But Roger's remarking on her blushes in so out- 
 spoken and familiar a fashion changed the look of 
 amusement with which Laurel had been listening to 
 his gossip into an angry frown. Yet by the evening 
 she had forgiven Roger enough to engage with him 
 in a prank, which, if I had known aught of it, I 
 should of a certainty not have countenanced.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 155 
 
 Gabriel had come back to our college chambers 
 from a blissful afternoon passed amidst the manu- 
 scripts in the Bodleian Library, accompanied by 
 Mr. Fanshawe, who is as great a devotee of poetry 
 and the Muses as my husband. Mr. Fanshawe had 
 with him the little copy of Sir John Denham's 
 ' Cooper's Hill,' which had been published in Oxford 
 soon after the Battle of Edgehill, printed on curious 
 brown paper, as there was no other to be had. 
 Gabriel and Mr. Fanshawe read aloud from it in 
 turns, and I listened, unconcerned at Laurel's absence, 
 as I had entrusted her to Roger's care, to show her 
 the buildings of Oxford by moonlight, the May night 
 being so fair and radiant. Now, it chanced, as Laurel 
 told me later, that she and Roger, starting on their 
 promenade, did encounter an old beggar minstrel, 
 very decrepit and ragged, playing on some four- 
 stringed instrument so feebly that few heeded him or 
 threw him a coin. ' I with my guitar, and you with 
 your voice,' said Roger, seeing the gaze of pity 
 Laurel cast on him, ' could quickly fill that old man's 
 hat with money ;' and he forthwith proposed that 
 they two should disguise themselves in humble habits 
 and lead the old man betwixt them, to make music 
 boldly on the quadrangle at Christ Church before 
 their Majesties' windows. 
 
 Laurel, methinks, was ready enough for the freak,
 
 156 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 and let herself be enveloped by a peddling woman of 
 Roger's acquaintance in a wide hooded cloak, green 
 from shabbiness, and a rustic cotton bonnet, that 
 shaded her face from inquisitive inquiry. Roger, 
 with the aid of another voluminous cloak, a slouch 
 hat drawn over his eyes, and a few deft applica- 
 tions of burnt cork and paint-brush to his face 
 and hands, had succeeded in looking as much the 
 strolling musician as their ancient companion. 
 
 We have Roger's word for it that Laurel sang as 
 she had never sung before. Secure in her disguise, 
 she felt no shyness at bringing even the King from 
 the card-table to the open window, and hearing the 
 Queen's exclamations in French of wonder and 
 delight. 
 
 How were it possible, Her Majesty had asked, for 
 one singing in the streets, and so exposed to all 
 weathers, to retain such adorable freshness of voice, 
 such exquisitely clear and bell-like notes ? 
 
 ' Perchance she is new to her work,' someone had 
 hazarded. 
 
 ' But not new to her art,' said another ; ' the 
 mastery of the voice is more wondrous than the 
 voice itself.' 
 
 ' The spirit of the Maytime was in't when she sang 
 that gay roundel, and the pathos of tragedy in the 
 ballad of long ago.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 157 
 
 ' Singing of this kind is too good for village fairs 
 and country weddings. Tis worthy to be heard at 
 Courts.' 
 
 ' So pure an accent in French as hers, believe me, 
 was never heard at an English fair,' the Queen had 
 declared when Laurel had trilled forth : 
 
 ' Le temps s'en va ; le temps s'en va, madame. 
 Hdlas, le temps non, mais nous en aliens.' 
 
 And not compliments alone were rained upon the 
 wandering musicians, but a shower of silver pieces, 
 the courtiers flinging all their winnings of the evening 
 at cards from the windows. But Captain Lovelace 
 must have been losing, not winning, for after the 
 others had thrown their coins, he had but tossed a 
 flower at Laurel's feet. 
 
 ' And the flower,' explained Roger, relating his share 
 of the tale, ' is the only wage our lady nightingale 
 accepted for her song. The rest was poured into 
 the aged minstrel's hat a fortune for him indeed.' 
 
 'The old minstrel was grateful, I trust,' said I. 
 
 Roger would have said ' Yes,' and ended there ; 
 but Laurel, always frank and open as the day, had 
 more to tell. 
 
 ' Beneath the lanthorns of All Souls' Gateway,' 
 she said, ' he was parting from us, calling down 
 blessings on our heads in the same quavering voice
 
 158 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 with which he had first addressed us, when a passer- 
 by, looking hard at him, drew near and rudely 
 twitched his hair and beard, and hissed in his ear, 
 "Jesuit dog, sneaking agent of the Papists, what 
 game are you playing at in this guise ?" then 
 walked on. The minstrel's hair was a wig, his beard 
 false. He quickly arranged both again ; but, mother, 
 I had seen by the light of the lanthorns that the 
 colour of his own hair was red, and the mouth 
 beneath the false beard was that of the man we saw 
 playing a match at bowls with Sir John Suckling in 
 Spring Garden. He made no further pretence of 
 being the old musician, but dropped the role at once, 
 and said in his natural voice : " Do not be disgusted 
 to find your charity hath been misplaced. I assure 
 you that you have done a greater service than you 
 thought for, for, instead of succouring an old buffoon 
 in want, you have served the King." 
 
 ' And if 'tis true,' Laurel went on, with kindling eyes 
 'if I have, maybe, really done the King some uncon- 
 scious service in this manner, as the Lady d'Aubigny 
 did when she took the King's commission of array to 
 London without knowing what 'twas, then I repent 
 nothing of the evening's masquerade. I would act it 
 all over again, even at the risk of incurring yours and 
 my father's displeasure. To serve the King ! How 
 glorious to serve the King ! ' she repeated, fastening
 
 159 
 
 in her bosom Captain Lovelace's flower, which was a 
 fritillary, a fair water-blossom, such as grows along 
 the banks of the river here in May and June. 
 
 ' Oh, you should have been there and seen the 
 King to-night ! 'Twas like a dream to stand singing 
 beneath the starry sky with the shadows of turrets 
 and pinnacles lying on the sward, all silver in the 
 moonbeams. And the King, the King stepped 
 through the window on to the flags to listen, with 
 the brightness of a hundred tapers behind him 
 shining on jewels and rich colours. But he was in 
 white, all white except the blue riband of his George, 
 and his face was like ivory, and looked very sad, even 
 when he smiled. Ay, I wish you had been there, 
 mother.' 
 
 ' Yes, Lovejoy, you should have been there to 
 hear the piercing anguish Laurel put into the refrain, 
 " But think not ye my heart was sair "; and to see 
 the effect it wrought on the ladies and gentlemen of 
 the . Court,' Roger said, his jaunty air and self- 
 assurance being in no wise abated by mine and 
 Gabriel's strongly expressed disapproval of his 
 escapade with Laurel. I have wondered whether 
 Roger was in the secret of the minstrel's disguise, 
 and whether he knew of the red hair beneath the 
 gray wig ; if so, his conduct would be all the more 
 blameworthy, methinks.
 
 160 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 May 1 8. 
 
 We have stayed longer in Oxford than we first 
 intended, to be present at Anne Harrison's wedding, 
 which took place this forenoon in the little country 
 church at Wolvercott, two miles away. 'Twas Anne's 
 express desire that her cousin Young and I, the old 
 and true friend of her girlhood, should see her wed, 
 and Laurel, too, of whom she is very fond. Sir 
 John Harrison sent out no favours, wishing his 
 daughter's wedding in these times to be a quiet 
 one, and the only guests beside ourselves in the 
 church were Sir Edward Hyde and the King's 
 Attorney, Sir Geoffrey Palmer. 
 
 Anne should be a lucky bride, for the golden sun- 
 beams seemed to delight to dance on her as she 
 stood at the altar in her pearl-embroidered bridal 
 kirtle and overdress of lavender taffeta, the gems 
 shining in her hair. Her tall father gave her to her 
 still taller husband, and she was married with her 
 mother's wedding-ring. 
 
 The laylocks were in bloom in the village gardens, 
 the orchards white with snowy blossom, and the 
 young lambs frisking in the fields. Yet even in this 
 scene of idyllic peacefulness we could not long forget 
 the alarums of war, for the bridal party, coming from 
 the church, had to wait to let a company of foot
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 161 
 
 march by. We watched them over the churchyard 
 wall, and the captain of the company, being ac- 
 quainted with Sir John Harrison, ordered a volley to 
 be fired in compliment to the bride. It happened 
 that one of the muskets was loaded, and a brace of 
 bullets passed two inches above her head and buried 
 themselves in the cedar under whose shade Anne 
 was standing to look at the soldiers. The happy 
 smile died on her lips in that moment of averted 
 danger, and I think we all echoed very fervently in 
 our hearts the ' Thank God !' of her husband at so 
 narrow and merciful an escape. 
 
 This is the last time I shall write my journal in 
 Oxford. There is great uneasiness in the town, and 
 some people fear Lord Essex and Sir William Waller 
 may carry out their design of marching from London 
 to invest it. The Queen has fled to Exeter, and dis- 
 content and jealousy prevail. The Protestant friends 
 of the King are suspicious of the number of Papists 
 that he suffers to hang about here, and money is 
 scarce, and means of raising it scarcer. 
 
 Welladay! At dawn to-morrow we shall have 
 said our farewells to these spires and towers and 
 gardens, and be on the road to Windsor. May God 
 prosper our journey, and bring me safely home to my 
 little Olave, whom my arms ache to hold again. 
 
 ii
 
 VIII 
 
 CHANCERY LANE, 
 January, 1645. 
 
 ANOTHER summer and autumn have passed, and the 
 country is still at war. The great battle of Marston 
 Moor, in Yorkshire, was fought in July, and proved 
 unexpectedly a victory for the rebel armies of English 
 and Scots ; but in Cornwall, where both my brother 
 Roger and Hugh L' Estrange were engaged on 
 different sites, Lord Essex was badly beat. The 
 King builds great hopes on the Queen, who is in 
 France, sending him foreign aid, and on help from 
 the Marquis of Montrose and his Highlanders ; he 
 would also suffer to be sent troops from Ireland over 
 here to fight for him a step the very contemplation 
 of which some who are most loyal and devoted to 
 his service do strongly disapprove. 
 
 Since Mr. Pym died and was buried with great 
 honour in Westminster Abbey, bitter dissensions 
 have arisen in the enemy's camp 'twixt the Pres- 
 byterians and the Independents. To the last-named 
 [ 162]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 163 
 
 faction belongs the firebrand General Oliver Crom- 
 well, who, Sir Oracle says, is a tower of strength in 
 the ranks of the King's foes, and has been heard to 
 say that if he met His Majesty in combat he would 
 as soon shoot a pistol in his face as in another's. 
 
 Tis maybe because the winter days are short and 
 the evenings long that mine is becoming a winter 
 more than a summer journal. This is the fourth 
 January that I have writ in it, and 'tis four years 
 since I married and left my old home in Hart Street. 
 If I have not filled some of these blank pages with 
 the ups and downs of the family life there under 
 Peg's management, 'tis because the record would 
 have been too trivial belike. Peg's reign will soon 
 be over, for she is bent on making a match with a 
 young apothecary in Aldersgate, who has long wooed 
 her, and whom she hath always intended to fall back 
 on, she candidly confesses, if the flaxen - haired 
 gallant foretold for her long ago at Bartholomew 
 Fair did not make his appearance in reasonable time. 
 'Twas with some reluctance that Peg renounced her 
 romantic dreams and arrived at her present prosaic 
 conclusion that portionless maids like Prue and her- 
 self cannot be choosers, because, as a rule, they have 
 no choice, and if they would fain be wed must take 
 what they can get. 
 
 ' Even you, Lovejoy, pink of perfection that you 
 
 II 2
 
 164 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 were, had but one suitor whom we ever knew of, and 
 he was your husband. That he was a gentleman of 
 position and fortune to boot was a piece of luck ; 'tis 
 not likely 'twill be repeated in our case. 'Tis the 
 Laurels of this life who can afford to say first they 
 will and then they won't to a score or more of 
 lovers.' 
 
 Peg sighed as she delivered herself of this worldly 
 wisdom, and then proceeded to dust with vehemence 
 the harpsichon and the piles of music-books that 
 have increased in number and raggedness in the buff 
 wainscotted parlour since my day. 
 
 I was seated by the hearth in my old place watch- 
 ing Jane and Jack at play with their nephew, my 
 little Viking, Olave. I had brought him to spend 
 the day with his uncle and aunt, who are mightily 
 proud of Olave, and never weary of amusing him. 
 They were building castles of toy-bricks on the floor, 
 which 'twas Olave's joy to demolish so soon as the 
 last stone was put on. He revelled in the ruin 
 wrought by his fat hands, and Jane and Jack joined 
 in his ecstasies of mirth when the tall towers shook 
 to their carpet foundations and toppled over with a 
 crash. 
 
 My father, coming in with a sheet of music for Prue 
 to copy, hurried and preoccupied as usual, his dear 
 face pale and careworn, heard Olave shout with glee :
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 165 
 
 ' I knocked it down ! I knocked it down ! 
 Huzzah !' 
 
 ' The Puritan vandals would find the little man 
 after their own hearts,' said he. ' 'Tis their brag 
 and boast that they knock things down. Since they 
 began by chipping in pieces the St. Paul's and Cheap 
 Crosses, their work of defacement and destruction 
 hath been going apace merrily. 'Tis a marvel that 
 we have escaped so long, but methinks our hour must 
 be near now. A new impetus hath been given to the 
 pillaging and sacking of churches by the Parliament's 
 last formal abolition of the liturgy yesterday, and 
 the establishing of a new form of plain worship with- 
 out music by the so-called divines at Westminster. 
 There will soon not be an organ left undestroyed in 
 London, and my vocation will be gone.' 
 
 That his augury would, on the instant, be shown 
 to be well founded, my father could not have known, 
 but so it was. The words were scarce out of his 
 mouth before a violent rapping on the street-door 
 was followed by the rude entry of some armed 
 persons, who demanded to see the organist of 
 St. Olave's. They pushed by Penelope, and came 
 in upon us in the parlour. On my father inquiring 
 their business, one answered : 
 
 ' We are officers of the law, and the law now 
 ordains that yonder steeple-house shall be cleared of
 
 1 66 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 idols and mummery. The psalms shall be sung 
 without the grunts and groans of the organ-pipes. 
 If you are, as we believe, one of the retainers of the 
 Church whose function it has been to assist at such 
 profane vanities, we advise you to find some employ- 
 ment less offensive to the Lord. My men have a 
 warrant to cut your braying instrument in ribbons 
 ere night.' 
 
 ' Sirs !' said my poor father in anguish at the 
 sentence passed on the organ so beloved by him, and 
 of which he was as tender and solicitous as of a 
 creature of flesh and blood, ' yours is an odd manner 
 of advancing religion. At what time may we expect 
 this outrage on a sacred place to be committed ?' 
 
 ' So soon as the neighbouring edifice of All Hallows 
 has been cleared of idolatrous images. You come 
 next on the list,' was the answer. ' All your choral 
 books are to be burnt, so collect them if you like, 
 and save us the trouble.' 
 
 The man's eye was caught by the title of the music 
 that lay open on the harpsichon. He laid rough 
 hands on it, and read aloud in a sneering, nasal 
 twang : 
 
 ' Psalms, Songs, and Sonnets of Sadness and Piety 
 made into Music of Five Parts by William Byrd, one 
 of the gents of the Queen Majesty's Honourable 
 Chapel.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 167 
 
 In his ignorance the man did not know that 
 Dr. Byrd lived in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and 
 thought the Queen was her present Majesty, whom 
 he proceeded to denounce in unmeasured language, 
 working himself up into a frenzy ; so that he tore 
 page after page from the music-book, and ended by 
 trampling on the cover as he left the room with his 
 companions. 
 
 Little Olave, much affrighted by the intruders' 
 angry voices and scowling faces, had flown into my 
 lap aweeping, whilst Jane and Jack clenched their 
 fists as with a desire to pummel them well. Peg 
 and Prue, old Penelope, and the cook-maid drew 
 round my father in tearful distress, and even Tim, 
 who hath entered on his apprenticeship this Christ- 
 mas, was indignant, and vowed he would borrow a 
 musket and station himself at the church door. 
 
 ' Come, children,' said my father, ' we will all go 
 across to the church. By this time the choristers 
 will be there to practise the anthem ; and so let us 
 take a last reverent farewell of the friend that from 
 your tender infancy hath helped you all to praise 
 your Creator in the most noble services of song and 
 harmony appointed by the Church.' 
 
 I rose at once with Olave in my arms, and walked 
 beside my father bareheaded from the house into the 
 bleak outer air, the others following us. A bitter
 
 i68 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 blast swept from the river along Crutched Friars, 
 and met our faces as we took the paved path through 
 the churchyard beneath the leafless trees. 
 
 Along this path how often as a tiny child I skipped 
 at my father's side on weekdays, ever delighting to 
 be with him when he went to the organ ; and on 
 Sundays I came demurely, holding my mother's 
 hand, and afterwards when she died 'twas my turn 
 to lead the younger ones to church and to teach 
 them their Prayer-Book, and to behave themselves 
 with reverence. 
 
 St. Olave's is for me sanctified by a thousand 
 memories, besides those of my first meeting with 
 my husband and my bridal, and to me and my 
 brothers and sisters it must always be the church 
 of all churches. Each of us has grown up to love 
 with a sense of personal possession the brasses, 
 tablets, and marble tombs with their carved canopies 
 and Corinthian pillars. Other churches, such as 
 Great St. Helen's, may have finer, but these are 
 dearest to us because the first we knew. 
 
 Sunday after Sunday have I watched the sunlight 
 coming through the rich colours of the stained-glass 
 windows play on the two stone figures of the worthy 
 aldermen Andrew and Paul Bayning, kneeling there 
 so dignified and composed in their ruffs and chains. 
 And when 'twas hot and the sermon long, to keep
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 169 
 
 my drowsy lids from falling I have oft spelt out to 
 myself and puzzled over the quaint words on John 
 Orgone the woollen-draper's brass : 
 
 'As I was, so be ye ; 
 As I am you shall be ; 
 That I gave, that I have ; 
 That I spent, that I had. 
 Thus I end all my cost ; 
 That I have, that I lost.' 
 
 All of us in our childhood had our own chosen 
 favourite among the monuments. Jane and Jack 
 have followed my example, and love most the 
 brothers Bayning. Peg and Prue's special fondness 
 was for Sir James Deane, on his knees above the 
 vestry door with his heraldic bearings and his three 
 wives ; the two who died before him holding skulls 
 in their hands, the poor babes that had not outlived 
 their chrisom robes lying swaddled at their feet. 
 The Florentine gentleman sculptured in alabaster, 
 beneath a fair canopy in a kneeling attitude with 
 folded hands, is the best-beloved of Will and Tim. 
 
 Anne Harrison used to say she preferred her name- 
 sake, the Dame Anne Radcliffe, with her wimple 
 and long robes, praying so calmfully in profile at a 
 desk in a niche on the south side of the altar. 
 
 I thought of Anne to-day as we passed into the 
 church on the sad errand of listening to the doomed 
 organ for the last time, of how regularly on Sundays
 
 i?o AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 and holy-days through the winter months she had 
 come with that sweet pious lady, her mother, to the 
 Lord Dingwall's pew, and taken part in the services 
 with a seriousness of which one could scarce have 
 thought so restless and merry a maid capable. In 
 St. Olave's, too, worshipped her godmothers, the 
 Lady Alston and the Lady Wolstenholm, who came 
 to church in much magnificence, their blackamoors 
 bearing their essence bottles and Prayer-Books with 
 jewelled clasps. And when the congregation poured 
 out into the graveyard Anne always bounded up to 
 tell me all that had happened since I saw her, which 
 may have been but the day before, and stoop to kiss 
 Jane and Jack. Now no one has to stoop far to kiss 
 Jack, he is so grown, and he thinks himself too big a 
 man to be kissed at all. But he hath still a cherubic 
 look in his white surplice as he sings in the choir. 
 Did I say ' sings ' ? There is no choir now, and 
 strange that I should forget and speak in the present 
 instead of the past tense, after the events of this day. 
 On entering the church we found that our Vicar 
 had gathered the choristers together, and prepared 
 them for what was coming. He, too, has fallen on 
 evil days, for he hath been ejected from his cure, and 
 some fanatical, sectarian Brownist or Anabaptist (I 
 know not one from t'other) licensed instead to lecture 
 from his pulpit. With us for congregation the Vicar,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY iji 
 
 surpliced and hooded, read the prayers, and then my 
 father struck up the anthem, and Dr. John Bull's 
 mellow harmonies pealed forth and flooded the 
 aisles, and echoed in the arches of the timbered 
 roof. It may have been fancy, but never before 
 had the organ seemed to stir the soul and touch 
 the heart as now, never had the silvery voices of 
 the boys sounded purer and more divine. 
 
 The Amen had hardly died away when the band 
 of destroyers burst into the choir from the vestry 
 door. My father's hand still lingered on the organ 
 keys, and he bowed his head over them without 
 moving from his stool. But 'twas the work of a 
 moment for the leader of the desecrating party, a 
 tall fellow who had the appearance of being a black- 
 smith, with a heavy jaw and mighty length and 
 strength of arm, to take my father by the shoulders 
 and push him out of his way. Then they fell on the 
 organ furiously, battering its pipes with crowbars and 
 ripping the bellows with their swords. They laughed 
 that frightful, mirthless, Puritanical laugh which 
 methinks is the only merriment their creed permits, 
 at our beloved organ's expiring groans that so wrung 
 our hearts that we cried for it as bitterly as for a 
 human creature in agony. The massacre was soon 
 accomplished, and they next went to ransack the 
 vestry for choral books, and despoiled the choir-desks.
 
 172 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 But when they thought by way of finishing to use 
 their hammers on the tombs, they met with oppo- 
 sition. Up leaped Jack and Jane, their eyes ablaze, 
 one brandishing a broom and the other a poker, and 
 mounted guard in front of the figures of the brothers 
 Bayning; and in the chancel the choristers had 
 likewise armed themselves with the same sort of 
 weapons, and stood on the defensive before the altar 
 and Lady Anne Radcliffe. 
 
 Whether 'twas the sharp blows from broomsticks 
 gotten in their faces when they approached the tombs, 
 I cannot say, but the Puritans agreed that there was 
 other work on hand in the way of organ-wrecking 
 that was more urgent than chipping the noses from 
 St. Olave's idolatrous images, as they were pleased to 
 express it, and so they withdrew with their hammers 
 and chisels, leaving us to bemoan the ruin they left 
 behind them. 
 
 'Wicked, naughty men!' whispered little Olave, 
 who had watched the scene of vandalism with big, 
 wondering blue eyes. ' Naughty men to talk and 
 fight in church !' 
 
 I thank God that my boy is too young to carry 
 the memory of what he has seen to-day into man- 
 hood. My father, whose footstep had been brave 
 and firm when we had come across to the church, 
 tottered as we went out again into the chill dusk
 
 DESTRUCTION OF THE ORGAN OF ST. OLAVE'S.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 173 
 
 of the winter's afternoon, and he took my arm for 
 support. 
 
 I gave Olave over to his aunts and led my poor 
 crushed father to his study, where, after bidding 
 Penelope bring him a hot herb posset, I devoted 
 myself as best I could to his consolation. 
 
 ' What is to be done, child ?' said he. ' What new 
 trade can I learn at my age now that music is taken 
 from me?' 
 
 'There are the pupils,' said I. 
 
 'The pupils have fallen away. I can boast but 
 two for the coming year, and one was for the organ. 
 Nay, I cannot make a living out of a single pupil. 
 'Tis well thou art comfortably established with so 
 liberal and honest a gentleman for your husband ; 
 and Peg has her apothecary: the sooner they wed the 
 better. Would that I could foresee as good a pro- 
 vision for Prue.' 
 
 ' But, father,' I exclaimed, ' you need that Prue 
 should stay to take care of you. Jane is too young. 
 I will consult Gabriel. Gabriel will help you, father, 
 belike to some post at Oxford, for Oxford is the 
 refuge of musicians now, as 'tis of Royalists.' 
 
 ' You must take care, child, not to burden thy 
 husband's shoulders too heavily with our troubles. 
 Remember, when he married thee he did not marry 
 all.'
 
 174 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 He smiled faintly, and then sank wearily back in 
 his chair. 
 
 I noticed that his black taffeta coat was dusty, and 
 the lace bands were ragged ; not from age, for I had 
 given him new ones but a short time since, but 
 from want of careful mending and washing. Peg 
 methought was to blame for this and the neglect of 
 other small duties which contribute to keep up the 
 appearances and comfort of a household ; maybe the 
 prospect of having a house of her own has of late put 
 these things out of Peg's head. 'Twas sad to leave 
 my father in so deep a dejection of spirits, and I 
 promised them I would return to Hart Street to- 
 morrow early, to see how he fared. 
 
 As I rid back to Chancery Lane with Olave in 
 the hackney-coach which Juan called for me, the 
 news was being cried abroad in the streets that the 
 Archbishop, who hath languished a prisoner these 
 four years in the Tower, was to suffer death on the 
 morrow. During his lengthy trial, which began in 
 the autumn, the old man has been dragged forth 
 from his cell daily to Westminster, and hath argued 
 in his own defence with unflagging courage. But on 
 January 3 the Lords passed the Bill of Attainder 
 against him, and he began to prepare for death. His 
 petition to be beheaded instead of hung has been 
 granted. He will have thus lived just long enough
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 175 
 
 to know of the abandoning of the Book of Liturgy 
 by law, the liturgy that at the beginning of these 
 troubles he would fain have thrust upon the Scots. 
 
 January 10. 
 
 This morning, on coming to Hart Street with 
 Laurel, early as 'twas, a visitor had been admitted 
 before us. 
 
 ' Mistress Travers is in the study with father 
 making her condolences,' Peg announced with much 
 calmness, considering what a bugbear the very name 
 of the widow had once been. 
 
 "Tis such months, nay, years since she hath 
 darkened our doors,' explained Prue. ' Her appear- 
 ance took us quite unawares, and all our old weapons 
 of defence were rusty. She walked in, and there she 
 is purring and cooing, as if there had never been the 
 least estrangement 'twixt us.' 
 
 ' 'Tis well Jack was gone to school, or she would 
 have kissed him for certain as she was wont to do,' 
 said Jane, ' and wouldn't he have been angry !' 
 
 At this moment Mistress Travers rustled forth 
 from the study into the parlour, took me in her ample 
 embrace, which astonished me not a little, as I have 
 never invited her to Chancery Lane, and heaped 
 flatteries on my stepdaughter, declaring that she 
 had not known her to possess such striking beauty.
 
 176 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' I fear your poor dear father feels sorely the pro- 
 ceedings of yesterday,' she went on. ' 'Tis unfortu- 
 nate that such doings should be deemed necessary. I 
 have been telling him that my chamber-organ is at 
 his disposal for his lessons if he wills. I cannot see, 
 for my part, how music interferes with patriotism 
 and the cause of public liberty, which from tradition 
 I uphold as is but natural, my great-grandfather 
 having been Lord Mayor. Mr. Milton, in his plea 
 for unlicensed printing and I suppose you have all 
 read it has something to say about music, which 
 shows he sees no sinfulness in singing and the 
 playing of instruments, for does he not speak of 
 the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in 
 chambers ?' 
 
 She has a way of putting her head inquiringly 
 from side to side as she talks, which makes one think 
 of a sparrow twittering. As for her great-grandfather, 
 who was once Lord Mayor of London, Mistress 
 Travers was ever prone to bring him into her con- 
 verse by hook or by crook, though of old 'twas not 
 in connection with such high-sounding phrases as 
 patriotism and the cause of public liberty. 
 
 ' Mr. Milton, to whom 'twould seem you pin your 
 faith, madam,' said I, * must indeed find it difficult 
 to countenance the scenes of desecration going on at 
 present in the churches, authorized by the party for
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 177 
 
 whom he wields his pen, unless he hath forgot that 
 he ever writ : 
 
 ' " There let the pealing organ blow 
 To the full-voiced quire below, 
 In service high, and anthems clear, 
 As may with sweetness, through my ear, 
 Dissolve me into ecstasies." ' 
 
 ' How sweetly you quote those lines!' said Mistress 
 Travers, with her eternal smile of sugar. ' Dear 
 Mrs. Lovejoy, if we cannot think alike, at least we 
 need not quarrel.' 
 
 ' I hope, madam, I have shown no disposition to 
 be quarrelsome,' I answered with stiffness; yet feeling 
 somehow that the widow had gained ground to-day, 
 which she would not readily let slip from beneath 
 her feet. 
 
 She even had the daring to chuck Prue under the 
 chin, and inquire archly when she intended to follow 
 Peg's example. Prue flushed angrily, and said she 
 did not understand her meaning, but Peg looked 
 pleased on madam continuing that she knew her 
 lover, Master Bagshaw, by repute. 
 
 ' I hear that he is very free from that fashionable 
 vice of being a good fellow,' she said. ' Doubtless 
 richer are to be had, but a civiller, soberer man 
 hardly to be found.' 
 
 ' If nothing more is to be said in his favour than 
 
 12
 
 178 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 that,' Prue said, with a toss of her head, ' I am 
 not envious to stand in Peg's shoes. To my taste 
 civility and sobriety are but commonplace virtues.' 
 
 ' Prue, Prue ! I see you are the same pert little 
 mischief as ever,' Mistress Travers made answer, 
 determined not to take pet at anything to-day. Then 
 she remarked on Jane's rapid growth, and added in a 
 whisper quite loud enough for Jane to hear, ' And she 
 promises to be the handsomest of a handsome family.' 
 ' I hate flattery,' Jane said, and twitched herself 
 away from the widow's caressing hand. 
 
 ' Welladay ! I must be flying home,' said the 
 portly lady, rising at length from the settle by the 
 hearth. ' I will send a servant over with a bottle of 
 old Canary wine for your dear father's heartening and 
 comfort. 'Twas bottled during the mayoralty of my 
 great-grandfather, so I need not say 'tis of the best.' 
 ' Was her great-grandfather Lord Mayor before 
 Sir Richard Whittington, or after, I wonder?' Prue 
 said, when she was really gone. 
 
 ' Prue, Prue ! I see you are the same pert little 
 mischief as ever!' cried Jane, shaking her finger at 
 Prue, and mimicking to the life Mistress Travers' 
 soft voice and wheedling air. 
 
 At this point my father came in, his mien very sad 
 and grave. Laurel ran to him, and, taking his 
 hand, exclaimed :
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 179 
 
 ' Dear master, I know not how to express my grief 
 for you, and indignation at the work of those sancti- 
 monious villains. Oh, that they could be punished 
 as they deserve !' 
 
 ' Ah, sweet Mistress Laurel, they can wreck organs, 
 but they are powerless to lay rude hands on that 
 choicest instrument of God's making, the human 
 voice ; so they cannot deprive me of the guardianship 
 of yours.' 
 
 ' But what can my voice be to you compared 
 with the mighty grandeur and majesty of the 
 organ's? It requires no stops and pedals; you 
 cannot play on't. And you have taught me so 
 well to control it, though methinks I require many 
 more lessons.' 
 
 ' Rather should you say, that you have learned 
 so well you need no more instruction. 'Tis true 
 enow I have no more to teach you, yet that doth 
 not take from my delight in hearing you sing.' Still 
 holding Laurel's hand, my fath'er turned to us. * I 
 trust,' said he, * you all showed good Mistress Travers 
 courteous civility. Whatever her faults may be, she 
 means well, and 'twas kind of her to come to us in 
 the time of perplexity and trouble.' Then, glancing 
 at the timepiece on the chimney, my father added : 
 ' 'Tis twelve of the clock. The hour my Lord Arch- 
 bishop pays the penalty at the block of his loyalty 
 
 12 2
 
 i8o AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 to Church and King. Come, let us ascend to the 
 wooden gallery and look out towards Tower Hill.' 
 
 As near five years before we had gone to stand there 
 in the May sunshine to see the vast crowd flocking from 
 the execution of Lord Strafford, so now we stood in 
 the bleak winter air beneath a leaden sky on the 
 little balcony at the top of the house, and beheld a 
 yet vaster crowd surging like a sea around the little 
 island of the scaffold, that we could just discern. 
 Every street near and every window casement was 
 black with people. Silently we gazed, well able to 
 picture, though we were too far off to see, how the 
 short stout figure of Archbishop Laud faced that 
 mob tumbling and jostling so close on his feet that, 
 as we were afterwards told, they hardly gave him 
 space enough whereon to kneel to say his last 
 prayers. The street below was so quiet and deserted 
 that no noise came 'twixt us and the murmuring 
 roar sent up by the people, which told the axe had 
 fallen. Slowly the crowds began moving in all direc- 
 tions like long lines of ants, and my father, with a 
 sob and his hands before his face, went back into 
 
 the house. 
 
 February. 
 
 Hugh 1'Estrange was with us on Sunday, and 
 Silence deserted Olave and the nursery. Hugh's 
 train-band belonging to the ' Yellow Regiment ' is
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 181 
 
 to serve still in the remodelled army of the Inde- 
 pendents under Major - General Skippon, who is 
 second in command to the new Commander-in- 
 Chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, now at Windsor. Such 
 strenuous preparations for carrying on the war 
 make the Presbyterians' negotiations for peace with 
 the King at Uxbridge a mere farce, but the farce 
 begun in November still drags on. 
 
 Nothing could be in greater contrast to my brother 
 Roger's loquacity with regard to his own and others 
 deeds of daring and hairbreadth escapes than Hugh's 
 reserve. Of his own freewill he speaks not at all of 
 the service he has seen in the Parliamentary ranks, 
 and he answers every question as briefly as possible. 
 Yet methinks a new light burns in his eyes, the light 
 of a repressed enthusiasm, and the lines of his well- 
 cut lips and chin have become more resolutely set. 
 
 The piece of work on which Silence plied her 
 needle for so many months in secret was her gift to 
 me at Christmastide. When Hugh saw it for the 
 first time his admiring wonder and pleasure were as 
 great as mine. Of industry alone 'twas a miracle, 
 and what phantasy, what rare colours, and divers 
 stitches are wrought into the picture, which verily 
 would not pale in glory if hung beside the choicest 
 work of the tapestry makers at Mortlake. 
 
 The story that Silence hath thus illustrated with
 
 i82 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 her needle is the legend of St. Olave's, which I 
 related to Laurel soon after they came from Blois, 
 when I took her first to Hart Street. Laurel writ it 
 for Silence on her tablets ; but even Laurel never 
 guessed how deeply Silence was impressed by the 
 old story till she revealed her masterpiece to our 
 astonished eyes. 
 
 In fair worked letters of antique shape beneath 
 each division of the picture the text is given, and 
 tells how ' there was once in Valois, in France, a 
 cripple so infirm that he went on knees and knuckles, 
 and one day the cripple fell asleep by the roadside 
 and dreamed that a man of worshipful mien came to 
 him, and said : " Go to Olaf s Church in London, 
 and there you will be cured." On waking he set off 
 in quest of Olaf's Church. Coming to London 
 Bridge, he asked the citizens where the church 
 was. And they answered, there were many more 
 St. Olafs Churches than they could tell. Then 
 a man asked the cripple where he was going, and 
 when he said he would fare to Olafs Church, they 
 fared together over the bridge and along the street 
 that led to that church. And at the gate of the 
 church the other strode over the threshold and 
 vanished, but the cripple rolled himself over and 
 over, and rose up whole.' 
 
 In the first part of Silence's picture, which is
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 183 
 
 something in the form of a triptych, the figure of the 
 cripple is shown asleep, with the Stranger standing 
 over him, a halo, scarce visible, wrought in finest 
 gold thread round His head, and behind are houses 
 with green shutters and red roofs, for all the world 
 like the houses of Blois, Laurel says. In the second 
 scene, he is faring, ' on knees and knuckles,' across 
 London Bridge, over the winding Thames, with the 
 same faintly-haloed Stranger beside him. And, in 
 the third, he is standing upright in the porch of 
 St. Olave's, with a gladsome look on his face, and 
 his thin hands raised in thankfulness. 
 
 Often was I used to tell this miraculous tale to 
 Jane and Jack in the shade of the elms in summer 
 and by the fireside in winter but it did not appeal 
 to them, sound in their limbs and senses, as it has 
 since done to poor mute Silence, who in her child- 
 hood's prayers, her gentlewoman hath told me, ever 
 prayed that speech and hearing might be given to 
 her by some miracle from heaven, and that Hugh's 
 shoulders might be made even. Sturdy Jack and 
 Jane loved much better to hear of Olave the Viking 
 than Olave the Saint, their favourite being the story 
 of how Olave destroyed the bridge his enemies had 
 built over the Thames. 
 
 Silence's needlework picture, framed in carven
 
 1 84 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ebony and gold, hangs in my carnation closet, 
 whither Hugh came to look at it. He said that he 
 had never been here before, and of a sudden my 
 conscience smote me at the thought of how little I 
 seem to have won Hugh's confidence in the years I 
 have known him. Had I, belike, in my anxiety to 
 banish all constraint 'twixt myself and my husband's 
 own children, been neglectful of his foster-son ? 
 
 I begged him now to sit down, and asked him 
 about Master Haynes and his horoscopes, and his 
 own pursuits, so interrupted by the wars, and* 
 whilst he talked of these things easily, I fain would 
 have read his heart. 
 
 Once more he got up and examined the details of 
 Silence's handiwork. He laughed at the bushy little 
 dog she had introduced standing on its hind legs in 
 the foreign street, as if to mock at the poor cripple 
 who went on all fours. Then, with a sigh, he said : 
 
 ' 'Twas begun at the same time as I did begin to 
 construct my dial ; but Silence has brought her 
 work to completion, whereas mine remains but a 
 beginning still.' 
 
 * That is because you went a-soldiering,' said I. 
 * When there's peace you will have time to work at 
 it again. How rejoiced Silence will be to see your 
 dial finished !' 
 
 ' I fear it may displease her,' he answered. ' You
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 185 
 
 see, 'tis to be dial and clock combined. 'Twill tell 
 what time 'tis at Great Cairo and Jerusalem, and I 
 have conceived a plan of mechanism by which it 
 shall strike the hours and play an air of music 
 withal. Silence will not approve of that, for she so 
 dislikes music. But to leave it out would be to 
 sacrifice the most cherished part of the design. 
 Dearly as I love my foster-sister, I could not make 
 the sacrifice for her sake.' 
 
 ' Wondrous strong is the love Silence hath for 
 you,' I said. ' Methinks few brothers are so loved 
 by their sisters.' 
 
 ' God bless her for it ! Were she verily my sister, 
 I could not feel more tenderly towards her. But,' 
 he added, ' there is another kind of love.' 
 
 ' And do you know aught of that ?' I asked him. 
 
 ' Yes,' said he. 
 
 His honest red-brown eyes looked straight into 
 mine, as if he would fain invite me to guess his 
 secret. 
 
 ' Mistress Margaret ?' 
 
 The words leapt to my lips ere I could withhold 
 them. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 ' Mistress Margaret Haynes is my spiritual sister. 
 'Tis she who hath turned my thoughts to things 
 higher than this earth, and shown me the beauty of
 
 186 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 holiness. I must ever reverence her for that and 
 for her own sweet piety. To love her is the same as 
 loving God's saints.' 
 
 'Twas Laurel, then, thought I Laurel, whom he 
 had not mentioned when he talked of Silence as his 
 foster-sister ; Laurel, whose demeanour towards him 
 had become so proud and distant 'twas she whom 
 he loved with that ' other kind of love ' which is 
 stronger than the love brothers bear for their sisters. 
 ' You know, but you will not betray me, dear madam. 
 'Tis unalterable and undying, but must never be 
 spoken of. What right have I to speak of it ? I, 
 cast off by the author of my being ere I saw the 
 light ; I who have won no name or fame for myself, 
 a prentice not yet master of my calling. No, it 
 must be buried, locked away in my breast always for 
 these reasons alone, even if she who was wont to be 
 so kind a comrade had not come near to hating me 
 since conscience and duty prompted me to draw 
 swords in the cause of faith and freedom.' 
 
 He hid his face in his hands, and a great wave of 
 bitterness seemed to sweep over his young soul. 
 
 I was much moved by this outpouring from one 
 who had conversed with me hitherto scarce in 
 anything more than monosyllables. I laid my hand 
 soothingly on his close-clipped curls. 
 
 ' Dear Hugh, take this comfort to yourself,' I
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 187 
 
 said. ' Laurel's sisterly affection for you has but 
 passed behind a cloud. Be sure that when the 
 clouds roll away it will shine forth again. Dost 
 think Laurel ever forgets that your brave deed saved 
 her sister's life the sister she so dotes upon ?' 
 
 ' Never was such unselfish sister's love as hers,' 
 said he, looking up. ' Ay, madam, there is no need 
 to tell me that she is noble-hearted and generous ; 
 well do I know it.' 
 
 ' See,' I said, looking out from the oriel ; ' they 
 are down there on the grass plot at play with little 
 Olave.' 
 
 He came and stood beside me, and we watched 
 together the gambols going on below. The ground 
 was thick with feathery snow, which, as on the day 
 of Hugh's and my stepchildren's arrival from Blois, 
 outlined the gargoyles of the old gray-stone wall and 
 lay on the sundial, hiding its motto, ' I mark only y e 
 Golden Hours.' My rosy little Viking, wrapped to 
 the ears in fur, was snowballing his half-sister and 
 being snowballed by aged Marie, whose tall starched 
 white cap looked less white in contrast with the 
 snow, and her face above its blue cotton kerchief as 
 yellow as a marigold. 
 
 4 The garden seems a-bloom with roses,' said 
 Hugh ; ' and methinks roses that bloom in the snow 
 are fairer than any.'
 
 i83 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Even Silence's pale cheeks in the cold air wore a 
 soft pink, and Laurel's glowed scarlet as the plume 
 aflame in her velvet cap, or the berries on the holly- 
 bush, which she ducked behind in feigned terror of 
 Olave's assault. Her laughing face came forth from 
 its prickly shield, however, just in time to meet the 
 half-melted snowball that burst down her neck, and 
 made her, with a little scream, take up the skirt of 
 her brown-furred gown and race, for fear of being hit 
 again, to another shelter. 
 
 Silence was the first to discover who was a 
 spectator of their games. With her eyes she had 
 searched the downstair casements many times, 
 wondering probably where Hugh was, and why he 
 had not followed them into the garden. When she 
 saw him standing in the oriel, the pink colour that 
 became her so well deepened in her face, which lit 
 up with one of those rare smiles she keeps for the 
 most part for Hugh. Seeing it, Laurel looked up, 
 too, and the sight that had brought a smile to 
 Silence's grave lips worked an opposite effect on 
 hers, for the even white teeth that had been flashing 
 'twixt them in merry laughter disappeared behind 
 the curves of an almost sternly closed mouth. Olave, 
 methought, was mindful of the change in his tall 
 playmate's aspect, for suddenly his dimpled hand 
 dropped the new snowball he had with much labour
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 189 
 
 clutched together, and he paused in his joyous 
 halloos. 
 
 ' She is beckoning to you,' said I. ' She would 
 fain have you join in their frolics.' 
 
 ' She ?' Hugh repeated ; then added quickly : 
 ' Pardon, you mean it is Silence who beckons.' 
 
 And after that what further doubt could there be, 
 even if the conversation 'twixt Hugh and me which 
 I have related had not taken place ? What doubt 
 now who for Hugh was the one unexpressive she, 
 as Master Shakespeare has it ? 
 
 Our Lady Day, 1645. 
 
 This is dear Anne Fanshawe's birthday, a festival 
 which of old was wont to be observed with all sorts 
 of gaieties in Hart Street, but to-day, methinks, she 
 will keep it with tears at Oxford. Poor Anne, we 
 have lately heard from Sir John Harrison, has had 
 the sorrow of losing her firstborn, a weakling from 
 the hour of its birth. And she herself is so little 
 recovered from her illness that her husband was 
 forced to leave her behind him on going last month 
 to Bristol with His Highness the Prince of Wales in 
 his office of Secretary to the Council of War. They 
 were both very cast down at this their first separa- 
 tion, as I can well believe. 
 
 Sir John, knowing of Laurel's admiring worship
 
 igo AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 of Anne, proposed when he writ to Gabriel that she 
 shall come to be of his daughter's household for a 
 time, and attend her to Bristol when Anne receives 
 her summons from Mr. Fanshawe to travel thither. 
 
 Laurel, though she would dearly love to go, and 
 has our consent, cannot yet make up her mind to 
 quit Silence for so long. Silence, on her side, has 
 heard of the proposal with equanimity, and hath 
 even begged Laurel to do as she pleases. 
 
 The presence in the house of the small being, who 
 is more helpless by reason of his babyhood than 
 she is from affliction, has indeed made Silence less 
 exigent ; yet now that Olave can use his tongue 
 and doth chatter and sing unceasingly, he is not 
 quite the delightsome object he was to Silence, 
 methinks, when he lay inarticulate in his deep 
 rockered cradle wrapped in the mysteries of his own 
 dumb world. 
 
 March 27. 
 
 This morning came a letter for me from my brother 
 Roger out of Oxford. 'Twas brought, I was told, 
 by the hand of a person of somewhat shabby, though 
 gentlemanly, appearance. I commanded the servant 
 to set cheer before him in the ante-chamber 'twixt 
 the hall and the withdrawing-room whilst I perused 
 the letter. I brought it here to my closet, and it 
 took me some time to read, being a long and
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY igi 
 
 rambling epistle, for my brother Roger is as fluent 
 with his pen as his tongue, especially when he would 
 petition me to ask favours for him from Gabriel. 
 
 ' GOOD SISTER (Roger ever begins " Good Sister," 
 even when 'tis his intention before he ends to re- 
 proach me with being a bad one), I write this from 
 the cockloft over Merton Gate, and trust that it 
 will find you, as usual, flourishing like a green bay- 
 tree. Please take not offence at the comparison 
 drawn from the psalmist, for none is meant. My 
 own condition is very far from flourishing, I do 
 assure you. I can hear you say that I have only 
 myself to thank for't. Well, let me confess that 'tis 
 so and throw myself on your mercy. I have fallen 
 into the error of dicing with my fellows-in-arms, and 
 have staked higher than I should have done belike. 
 Be that as it may, Fortune hath chosen to frown 
 on me and I have lost heavily, and I am in sore 
 straits for such bare necessaries as a new doublet, 
 shirts, and handkerchiefs, not to speak of accoutre- 
 ments for the spring campaigning. Tis no use to 
 apply at home for help in these matters, as I hear to 
 what sad poverty they are reduced there by the 
 Puritan marauders, so that my father is thinking of 
 a post in Oxon, if such is to be obtained, which I 
 doubt, as crowds of well - known organists and
 
 i 9 2 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 teachers of music are flocking hither, though there 
 is perchance more likelihood of a musician getting a 
 living here than in your nowsongless, Puritan London. 
 Tis a thousand pities he did not take my godmother 
 the widow when she was to be had for the asking, 
 and I warrant that those who put spokes in that 
 wheel are mightily repentant at present. But what 
 avails it to bemoan lost opportunities ? I pray you, 
 Lovejoy, to take some pity on the unfortunate 
 brother who addresses these lines to you, and 
 believe that he would fain not trouble you if he 
 weren't driven thereto by his distressful circum- 
 stances. I swear never to play for a piece again or 
 so much as to look at a card or a dice-box if you will 
 move your excellent husband to compassionate me 
 and to send me the pittance that he will not miss 
 from his abundance, but which is all I need to put 
 me on my legs again and to enable me to walk 
 straight for the future. 
 
 ' Should you turn a deaf ear to me in my extremity 
 and harden your own and your husband's heart 
 against me, then all I can say is that you are not 
 the sister I held you for. 
 
 ' He who carries this letter for me is one Mr. Taller, 
 whom I would fain commend to the notice of your 
 worthy husband, for the sake of his taste in antiqui- 
 ties, and because he hath for sale certain manuscripts
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 193 
 
 of great rarity and value. Think not that it advan- 
 tages me an iota whether he finds a patron in Mr. 
 Young. He is but a chance acquaintance who would 
 seem to be in the same plight with regard to moneys 
 as myself, and for whom in consequence I have 
 something of a fellow-feeling. 
 
 ' 'Twill pleasure you to hear that Will holds to his 
 books, despite all the distractions of drilling and 
 marshalling of troops in the quadrangles, and the 
 talk again of Oxford being invested. The sooner 
 we meet this new army of the enemy gotten together 
 after Noll Cromwell's pattern, the better, say I. 
 They are armed with Bibles as well as swords, 'tis 
 said, and each man is a prophet David in his own 
 eyes. His Majesty did well to reject the terms of 
 peace at Uxbridge, which would have made him but 
 a " King of Straw," as the Marquis of Montrose has 
 put it. The Marquis vows to come from Scotland to 
 the King's aid at the head of a gallant army ere the 
 summer is out, so what with them and the Irish, the 
 King is in good hopes. My dutiful respects to my 
 worthy brother-in-law and my most fair stepnieces. 
 When is Mistress Laurel going to make some man 
 the most fortunate in the world ? Methinks if she 
 dallies much longer I may venture a hazard in that 
 quarter myself, though of course not without your 
 good leave, which I am sensible you will never give 
 
 13
 
 I 9 4 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 to one you hold in so low esteem, who nevertheless is 
 humbly and contritely, 
 
 ' Your brother, 
 
 ' ROGER HOWARD.' 
 
 I wonder why I have copied this letter here, unless 
 'tis because as a memorial of sheer effrontery it 
 deserves not to perish. I felt something like shame 
 when I took it to Gabriel to read, for without mur- 
 muring he has most generously helped Roger out of 
 scrapes before this one, and never reproached him 
 for not keeping to his promises of amendments. 
 And even now he has not lost patience, though the 
 impudent reference to Laurel at the end of this letter 
 might well justify him in declining to give Roger 
 any further help. 
 
 Gabriel told me to see about the shirts and 
 doublets, and has, I know, already sent the moneys to 
 Oxford. Unspeakable indeed is his goodness to me 
 and mine. 
 
 April. 
 
 Mr. Taller, the bearer of Roger's letter, has waited 
 on Gabriel again, bringing from his lodgings over 
 against St. Dunstan's in Fleet Street a manuscript 
 copy of the history of Josephus, together with some 
 rare Aldines, which he says that he picked up at 
 Venice and Antwerp when he was secretary to some
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 195 
 
 nobleman. I think it was Lord Arundell. He has 
 travelled far and wide, and has been in most of the 
 foreign towns that my husband knows so well. He 
 converses easily on divers topics, though in a quiet, 
 modest manner, and Sir Oracle thinks so well of him 
 that he talks of giving him employment in his 
 library. I, for my part, mislike a habit he has of 
 always keeping his eyes downcast, and once I have 
 caught myself wondering why his hair was not red 
 instead of black peppered with gray. 
 
 On St. George's Day Hugh came fora few minutes 
 to take his farewells of us, the war having been 
 renewed with great heat and courage, and the Yellow 
 Regiment which he is in being ordered by General 
 Fairfax to march immediately with others to the relief 
 of Taunton, in the west. At the time Mr. Taller was 
 in the library bending over a catalogue, in which he 
 had discovered inaccuracies and advised alterations. 
 He was at the far end of the room, apparently en- 
 grossed in the catalogue on his knee, and his presence 
 seemed scarcely noticed by my stepdaughters and their 
 foster-brother. At any rate, it did not hinder Silence 
 from throwing her arms round Hugh and holding 
 him in one of those detaining passionate embraces 
 which methinks of late somewhat embarrass him. 
 Laurel had only given him her hand, which he had 
 let go reluctantly, waiting in vain for the sisterly 
 
 132
 
 196 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 kiss which she had been wont to bestow on him at 
 former partings. The parrot was on her shoulder, 
 rubbing its beak against her cheek, and its oft- 
 repeated ' Good-byes ' near drowned ours. 
 
 Hugh had turned to go, and his hand was on the 
 latch of the door, when the figure at the other end 
 of the room came hastily forward, as if moved by 
 an uncontrollable impulse. 
 
 ' There is no need to offer you advice, or to warn 
 you before temptations, young man,' said Mr. Taller 
 in a mocking voice, that differed oddly from his 
 customary subdued, almost timid way of speaking. 
 ' You are going to a camp of psalm-singing saints, 
 where innocent amusements, as well as swearing, 
 drunkenness, chambering, and wantoning, are strictly 
 forbid, and men read their Bibles instead of playing 
 at cards and dice.' 
 
 Hugh looked surprised at a stranger addressing 
 him thus. 
 
 ' You speak truly,' he replied ; ' such occupations 
 as you name are confined chiefly to those whose 
 powder and steel I go forth to meet.' 
 
 ' Snares and pitfalls, I presume, are not set for the 
 godly.' Then, recollecting himself suddenly, Mr. 
 Taller seemed anxious to withdraw his sneers. 
 ' Excuse me,' said he, in his old softer and more 
 pleasant voice, ' I would but wish you god-speed on
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 197 
 
 your errand of danger in a mistaken cause, for you 
 remind me of one for whom I once had a fond- 
 ness.' 
 
 ' I thank you, sir,' Hugh said, his steadfast eyes 
 still fixed on the gentleman's countenance in cold 
 astonishment. He did not take the hand offered 
 him, and without another farewell glance at Laurel, 
 who had sent the parrot away and was comforting 
 Silence in her grief at his departure, Hugh went from 
 the room. 
 
 Methought Mr. Taller took his leave the instant 
 after with an idea of overtaking Hugh at the gate, 
 but if this were his intention, he was disappointed. 
 Hugh never leaves the Gray House without saying 
 good-bye to his old Blois friends, Alphonse and 
 Marie, and Mr. Taller must have been half-way down 
 Chancery Lane ere Hugh entered it. 
 
 It was a real April day of sunshine and cloud, with 
 a silver shower falling now and again. Of her own 
 accord Silence roused herself from her despon- 
 dency, and instead of fretting for Hugh, went with 
 Miriam Fisher, little Olave, and me into Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields to make a long-promised daisy-chain. 
 My tiny boy begins to understand his favourite silent 
 playmate, and verily, I believe, puts a check on his 
 prattling baby tongue to please her. A sweet picture 
 they were together. Silence sitting on a stile, the
 
 IQ8 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 fitful sunshine coming and going on her halo of hair, 
 above her the April sky, with its tumbled masses of 
 purple-tinged clouds, and all round at her feet a 
 silver and gold carpet of daisies and buttercups. 
 She held out her green taffetas apron for the daisies, 
 which Olave plucked with his chubby hands and 
 brought to her gravely, looking up into her face each 
 time as if their business was of great importance. 
 Before the daisy-chain was well begun I left them 
 with Miriam, having promised to meet my sister Peg 
 at the Exchange, as she is to be wed in May, and 
 would fain purchase a stock of bravery at the mercers 
 and furriers, who display their silks and brocaded 
 stuffs in the little shops they have beneath the 
 Exchange. 
 
 The Puritan opinions of its citizens have wrought 
 a marked change in the outward aspect of London. 
 'Tis not only that grass has grown up 'twixt the 
 stones of Whitehall, and the King's pictures and 
 curiosities there are inches thick with cobwebs and 
 dust; the noblemen's fine houses on the Thames 
 bank for the most part empty, and their pleasure- 
 barges moored at anchor from month's end to month's 
 end; but you may go on foot from Holborn to 
 Lombard Street and scarce meet one person that is 
 not plainly clad and of a serious countenance. A 
 cavalier in all the graceful glories of sweeping plumes,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 199 
 
 lovelocks, riband knots, fine lace, and sparkling gems 
 is so rare a sight now abroad in the heart of the city, 
 that he is like as not to be hooted and rabbled. 
 The conjurers and mountebanks, and owners of 
 puppet-shows and dancing bears are little seen in 
 the London streets, and methinks these times have 
 ruined them as they have the church organists and 
 organ-builders. 
 
 My father cannot yet bring himself to the uproot- 
 ing which going to seek a post at Oxford would 
 entail, and clings on to the old home in Hart Street. 
 He has sold a precious inlaid ivory lute and an 
 Italian viol, which he greatly valued because it 
 belonged once to the late Mr. Orlando Gibbons, and 
 I nearly always find him, when I come to Hart 
 Street now, sorting his vast accumulation of music, 
 either in manuscript or bound in volumes, in search 
 of something saleable. But, as he says, those who 
 would buy such things cannot, being too low in 
 their fortunes to do so, and those who could will 
 not, having discovered music to be sinful. 
 
 Poor Peg would be as badly off for linen and 
 clothes to start her married life as she is for dower, 
 if I were not able to help her. 'Twas my delight to 
 come to the rescue, so I must confess to feeling a 
 little vexed at Peg pouting and taking my advice so 
 ill when I said in the position she was going to fill
 
 200 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 such a number of brocaded kirtles, rich taffetas 
 cloaks, and gowns, and gewgaws as she hankered 
 after would scarce be necessary. 
 
 ' You wish to be the only fine lady of the family, I 
 see,' said she. ' My husband will not be a beggar, 
 although not so rich as yours.' 
 
 ' You are fond of harping on my husband's riches,' 
 I retorted, ' but I never hear you mention the 
 generous uses to which he puts them.' 
 
 ' And I have profited, you would fain say, by his 
 generosity, and so I am ungrateful.' 
 
 ' Nay, I had no desire to say more on the subject, 
 but, if the cap fits, pray wear it.' 
 
 These heated words were passing 'twixt Peg and 
 me when Tim dashed out on us from the shop of his 
 Turkey merchant in much excitement, to say his 
 master's madam and her daughters had seen us from 
 the bay upstairs, and would be pleased if we came in 
 and did them the honour of partaking of their 
 cowslip wine and hardbake. 
 
 ' You should come,' said Tim, ' if only to see what 
 silk, and satins, and gold chains they wear, and they 
 have so many rings there isn't room for all on their 
 fingers, so they stick them on their thumbs as well. 
 Why, even you, Lovejoy, aren't half so fine as the)*, 
 and, as for Peg, she's shabby compared with 'em.' 
 
 Peg's cup of mortification was now full.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 201 
 
 ' I don't want their cowslip wine, or to gape on 
 their chains and rings,' said she. ' You may tell 
 them, with my respects, if you like, that gentle birth 
 is better than gaudy clothes, as money cannot 
 buy it.' 
 
 ' And they might well doubt the possession of 
 gentle birth by the sender of so ungentle a message,' 
 said Tim. 
 
 ' Dear Tim, Peg is weary from her shopping. 
 Give your master's wife our most polite thanks, 
 and express to her our regret that we cannot tarry 
 to-day.' 
 
 On the way home, when I saw Peg biting her lip 
 to keep back her tears, I repented of my sharpness, 
 and said : 
 
 ' You shall have that second suit of flowered 
 paduasoy you have set your heart on, Peg. I did 
 not begrudge it you. 'Twas only that I thought 
 there were other useful things you yet lacked that 
 should be considered first ; but belike I was wrong.' 
 
 At this, as we were on the doorstep, Peg's pride 
 broke down, and, no longer restraining her tears, she 
 fell a-weeping on my breast, vowed she had been a 
 ' hateful wench,' and begged me to forgive her rude 
 speeches. 
 
 In the narrow parlour, Prue and Jane would fain 
 know why Peg, of them all, should be crying Peg,
 
 202 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 who in less than a month would be installed in the 
 little home in Aldersgate, with everything fresh, and 
 new, and pretty, and a serving-woman of her own to 
 dress her hair, instead of sharing with them the 
 offices of old Penelope, who had so many other 
 things to do, and whose strong point is not hair- 
 dressing. 
 
 'And, above all, you will escape the inevitable,' 
 said Prue, ' for I begin to see 'tis inevitable.' 
 
 'What?' I asked. 
 
 ' The widow,' answered Prue. 
 
 And methought she had made up her mind to 
 accept the inevitable with a philosophic complacence 
 very different from her old antagonism. 
 
 But not so Jane. 
 
 ' I would liefer go to a boarding-school than live 
 with such a pestilential stepmother,' she declared 
 vehemently. ' Will not you and Gabriel send me to 
 that famous place for young gentlewomen across the 
 Thames where they are taught all the arts ?' 
 
 ' A school might certainly teach you to use 
 prettier language,' said I, ' but you could not abide 
 there always.' 
 
 ' No, but afterwards I would go as waiting- maid 
 to some sweet, fair lady of quality Mrs. Anne 
 Fanshawe, belike. If you were to ask her, Lovejoy, 
 she would take me.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 203 
 
 I could only smile at Jane, who was yet in 
 pinafores, and wore her golden locks unbound, thus 
 gravely planning her future, though, true enough, 
 there are maids of as tender years as she who have 
 plighted their troth, and even been wed. The little 
 Princess of Orange, the King's eldest daughter, for 
 instance, has been married these five years, longer 
 than I have, and is still but a child. 
 
 'Twas on coming back to the Gray House that 
 Laurel met me, and told me that, if I would spare 
 her, she would go to Oxford, for the pleasure of 
 being with Anne Fanshawe was one she knew not 
 longer how to deny herself. 
 
 ' You cannot resist another Maytime in Oxford ?' 
 said I. 
 
 ' But it will not be like the last,' she answered, 
 and I saw a look of wistfulness in Laurel's eyes.
 
 IX 
 
 LAUREL'S LETTERS* 
 
 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXON, 
 May, 1645. 
 
 SWEET MOTHER, 
 
 I would have writ from Kingston, but we 
 lay at the Grange but one night, and my father 
 will have returned to you by now, and will tell you 
 how it fared with me that far. 
 
 The next morning was fair and bright, and I was 
 up betimes and on the road with my companions. 
 'Twas the same we took last spring when we came 
 with Will. This time we fell in with no beauteous 
 runaway Mrs. Milton outside Windsor, and I would 
 there had been anything half so pretty to look upon 
 in the inn parlour where we rested. 'Twas full of a 
 parcel of Puritan folk, as grim and forbidding of men 
 as any to be seen in London. We met with divers 
 
 * The letters inserted here in the journal of Mistress Love- 
 joy Young were written to her from Oxford and Bristol by her 
 stepdaughter, who at this time was staying with her kins- 
 woman, Mrs. Fanshawe EDITOR. 
 
 [ 204 ]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 205 
 
 parties of troopers by the way, and in one of the 
 villages we passed through we heard shots fired ; for 
 there had been an affray 'twixt some of the Parlia- 
 ment's garrison at Aylesbury, who were roving the 
 country, and some of the King's from Wallingford ; 
 and I believe 'twas that gallant acquaintance of Mrs. 
 Milton's, young Captain Gardiner, brother of Sir 
 Thomas Gardiner, who was giving the rebels chase. 
 We were just in time to see them flying over a turnip- 
 field. But we came on a finer martial spectacle than 
 this ere we rid into Oxford. Whilst the sentinel 
 examined our pass we were obliged to back our horses 
 to let the King's foot-guards in blue, under command 
 of Lord Bernard Stuart, and a troop of his cavalry, 
 go by, setting forth, with drums and music, for the 
 march to Chester, in which direction His Majesty 
 was to follow them on the morrow, to meet Prince 
 Rupert. The King was at service in Trinity College 
 Chapel in the morning, ere he started out, and I, to 
 my infinite contentment, being there with Margaret 
 Harrison, looked on his kingly face again. It wore 
 a cheerfuller expression, and was not so pale, me- 
 thought, as when I beheld it in the moonlight on 
 Christ Church quad a year agone. The King joined 
 in the chanting of the psalms, and a diamond on one 
 of his fingers flashed in the sunlight as he moved his 
 hand in time to the anthem.
 
 206 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Pray God that what His Majesty goes forth to 
 adventure this time may succeed ! 
 
 There is as fine singing in the chapels here as ever, 
 and 'tis good to hear it and church bells once more. 
 The sound of the organ, when first I heard it again, 
 brought tears to my eyes for thinking of poor Master 
 Howard, who has been so cruelly robbed of his. 
 
 Your brother Roger's troop is now gone out of 
 garrison with the King, but I saw him at the Fleur 
 de Luce when I alighted there at the end of my 
 journey. He did inquire rather anxiously how we 
 liked his Mr. Taller, at which I laughed, and answered 
 that I believed my father approved his learning, but, 
 so far as I was concerned, he had made scarce any 
 impression on me, appearing so colourless a person ; 
 but I must admit I forgot when I said it how he had 
 spoken to Hugh, and for a moment shown himself 
 in another character. 
 
 I know not how I come to have writ all this with- 
 out telling you that which you must thirst to know 
 news of dear Mistress Anne Fanshawe. She 
 received me with all her usual warmth and kindness, 
 as did her father. Her illness hath wrought such a 
 change in her looks that at first I vow I should scarce 
 have known her to be the same creature as we saw 
 wed last May. But something has happened since 
 I came that has brought back the old colour to her
 
 LADY FANSHAUK. 
 
 From e.'tf Engraving bv Htsnt-er.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 207 
 
 cheeks and lips, and I verily believe she will soon be 
 herself again if she continues to mend at the pace she 
 hath done these two days. 'Twas on Sunday, the 
 first day Mistress Anne Fanshawe came out of her 
 chamber to go to church, and after service she was 
 holding my arm on one side and her sister Margaret's 
 on the other, being yet too weak to go alone, when a 
 gentleman came forward to meet us with a packet in 
 his hand, which he gave to Mistress Fanshawe, saying 
 it contained fifty pieces of gold and a letter from her 
 husband. Her joy may be conceived, and she was 
 nearly overcome as she, that instant, read the letter, 
 telling her to come to Bristol on Thursday in next 
 week, when men and horses and all accommodation 
 for the journey would be sent her. 
 
 ' Come, let us go and sit in the air, on the mount 
 in St. John's College Garden,' said she, 'for I am 
 now too happy to go within doors, and will fain drink 
 in strength as fast as I can for Thursday.' 
 
 So we took her to a seat beneath a spreading ash, 
 and here her father and all of her household came to 
 her, and she imparted her glad tidings to them, 
 laughing and weeping together, and everyone rejoiced 
 with her. She has since bid me tune my lute and 
 sing the merriest songs I know. She likes to have 
 me with her, and is so good as to take delight withal 
 in my singing ; but yesterday she drove me and
 
 208 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Margaret from her side to go a-pleasurmg without 
 her, with Will and some others, in rowing-boats on 
 the river. The water sparkled like silver and the 
 sky was cloudless blue, and from end to end the 
 meadows were enamelled with flowers. The boats 
 were moored, and we plucked the fritillaries that start 
 up like lilac spear-heads among the sedges and bull- 
 rushes by the waterside. 'Tis a fair Maytime, and 
 Oxford is a fair city, but methinks Bristol will seem 
 fairer to Mistress Fanshawe's eyes. When next I 
 write 'twill be from there if all go well. . . . 
 
 I am, with a thousand messages of love to my 
 sister and my dear respects to you and my father, 
 your daughter 
 
 LAUREL. 
 
 For MISTRESS YOUNG, 
 at the Gray House in London, 
 
 by the Gateway of Lincoln's Inn, 
 Chancery Lane. 
 
 MR. FANSHAWE'S LODGINGS, 
 
 NEAR THE CASTLE, BRISTOL, 
 May 25, 1648. 
 
 SWEET MOTHER AND HONOURED FATHER, 
 
 As I foretold in my last, my second letter 
 is writ from this hilly, gray old town, that stands on 
 a brown river, the like of which I never saw for 
 muddiness.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 209 
 
 I must tell you that we arrived here without mis- 
 adventure. We set out from Oxford at nightfall, it 
 being deemed safer to travel by night, as the enemy 
 were quartered by the way. We were a merry party, 
 taking our tune from Mistress Fanshawe, who was 
 in the gayest of spirits. 'Twas enchanting to ride 
 mile on mile under the May moon, and then to see it 
 fade out of the sky and the stars die one by one, 
 leaving the floor of heaven ready for the rosy pageant 
 of the dawn. For twelve miles of the way a troop of 
 horse rid with us, sent courteously from the garrison 
 by Sir Marmaduke Rawdon to accompany Mistress 
 Fanshawe till dangers of being surprised by the 
 enemy were past. 
 
 This is a fair lodging, in a steep street, whence the 
 shipping on the brown river is to be seen, and some 
 frowning gray rocks that overhang it, covered with 
 wild gilliflowers. You should have seen how joyfully 
 Mistress Anne flew into her husband's arms when he 
 came in from the council some hours after our arrival. 
 I, being in her apartments, did witness the meeting 
 betwixt them, and saw him put into her hands a 
 hundred pieces of gold, saying, ' I know thou that 
 keeps my heart so well wilt keep my fortune, which 
 from this time I will ever put into thy hands, as God 
 shall bless its increase.' 
 
 At night Mistress Fanshawe called me to soothe 
 
 14
 
 
 
 2io AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 her with a song, and I found her clad in a white 
 wrapping-robe, and truly her eyes were as sparkling, 
 and her cheeks as pink, and her air as vivacious as 
 when she was a maid. 
 
 ' I feel now as if all my troubles were over,' said 
 she. ' Indeed, I am as happy as any queen. And 
 what queen could have a more glorious crown than I 
 have in my husband ? You, Laurel, think this 
 exaggerated talk. Nay ; but wait till some man as 
 wise and good is your husband, then you will under- 
 stand what 'tis to have his soul dote on you.' 
 
 I replied that I could well understand her feelings 
 without waiting for a husband, and if I waited for a 
 good and wise one, methought I should wait for ever 
 and a day, as among those who come a-wooing to 
 my father's house, in obedience to their parents' or 
 guardians' wishes rather than to the dictates of their 
 own hearts, none seemed to be distinguished for 
 wisdom ; and as for goodness, the good were generally 
 too simple and clownish to please me. Dear Mistress 
 Fanshawe looked quite grave at this just as I have 
 seen you look, mother, when I have said the like to 
 you ; but 'tis true, nevertheless. Wise and good 
 men do not grow on every bush. Mr. Fanshawe, 
 I admit, is both, and handsome and charming to 
 boot. 
 
 The lords of the Council have their ladies with
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 211 
 
 them here, and they come in and out to Mistress 
 Fanshawe very frequently and intimately, as do my 
 Lady Rivers, my Lady Aubigny, and the Lady 
 Isabella Thynne, who is exquisitely fair to look upon. 
 Knowing Mr. Waller's lines to her playing on the lute, 
 I was shy last night to touch mine before her. But 
 her ladyship was graciously pleased to compliment 
 my singing. Only once had she heard anything like 
 it, declared she, and that was last spring, before the 
 Queen left Oxford, when some strolling musicians, 
 one of whom was a womam in a rusty, patched cloak, 
 came and performed before the Court in Christ 
 Church quadrangle, and reaped a rich harvest, because 
 of the ' rare melting sweetness ' of the woman's voice. 
 I think I must have blushed, for her ladyship fixed 
 her beautiful eyes on my face searchingly, it seemed 
 to me, as she added : ' There were those in the 
 company ready to take their oath on't that the 
 rusty cloak was a disguise, and the woman with the 
 pure, true notes no vagrant. Richard Lovelace, the 
 soldier poet, said he recognised the voice as one that 
 he had heard in very different surroundings, and 
 aroused some curiosity by throwing the songstress 
 a flower instead of money.' This time I am sure that 
 I blushed, and I made an excuse to go from the room 
 to fetch a music-book. When I came back 'twas a 
 relief to find the Lady Isabella's attention taken up 
 
 14 2
 
 212 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 in showing the rest of the company the steps of a 
 dance she calls the Almain. 
 
 For my Lady Rivers Mistress Fanshawe entertains 
 a great affection and reverence, for she is a brave 
 woman, who has suffered many thousand pounds loss 
 for the King. 'Tis in her coach that we have been 
 to take the air on a wild country place near here 
 called the Downs, whence one looks across wooded 
 slopes to the Channel sea beyond. 
 
 'Twas driving back to-day that I heard my Lady 
 Rivers banter Mistress Fanshawe on keeping state 
 secrets so well. 
 
 ' What state secrets ?' asked Mistress Fanshawe, 
 opening her blue eyes very wide and innocently. 
 ' Forsooth, I know none.' 
 
 ' Is it possible with a husband who holds so im- 
 portant a political position ? Why, my dear, you 
 disregard rare opportunities of becoming acquainted 
 with state affairs. You should prevail with Mr. 
 Fanshawe to impart to you the contents of the 
 packets and missives that pass constantly through 
 his hands. You might in this way wield an influence 
 equal to my Lady Aubigny and divers others I could 
 name.' 
 
 ' But they have older and steadier heads on their 
 shoulders than I have,' Cousin Anne made answer. 
 
 ' They began when they were as young and ignorant
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 213 
 
 as you are to interest themselves in politics,' my Lady 
 Rivers persisted. 
 
 ' How shall I make a beginning ?' Mistress Fan- 
 shawe inquired. 
 
 Lady Rivers said it was very simple. She knew 
 for certain that a post had come in the night from 
 the Queen in Paris, and if she asked her husband 
 privately he would be sure to tell her what he found 
 in the packet, and then Mistress Fanshawe might 
 impart the news to her, for she would be extremely 
 glad to hear what were the Queen's latest commands 
 to the King concerning his affairs. 'Twas not my 
 place to put in a word, was it, mother ? but methought 
 my Lady Rivers' advice was given more for her own 
 advantage than for Mistress Fanshawe's. 
 
 When her husband came in from the Council later 
 with his hands full of papers, I saw Cousin Anne 
 Fanshawe eye them, and she followed him into his 
 study. They had not been long together before she 
 came forth alone, with a vexed and disappointed air. 
 At supper she would not eat, and scarcely spoke at 
 all, though Mr. Fanshawe sat beside her, and drank 
 to her often as is his custom and made discourse 
 with me and the rest of the company at table in his 
 pleasant, courteous fashion. The cloud yet rests on 
 her, eclipsing her sweet gaiety, and you, dear mother, 
 will burn to know the cause of her sadness ; but I
 
 2i 4 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 must close this letter without telling you, for I have 
 not wholly discovered it myself, though I have my 
 
 suspicions thereof. 
 
 Your LAUREL. 
 
 BRISTOL, 
 
 June 5. 
 DEAR MOTHER, 
 
 I know naught that I can write concerning 
 dear Cousin Anne Fanshawe will weary you, as you 
 value so highly her loving friendship. Well, then, it 
 will pleasure you to learn that the cloud has cleared, 
 and her happy smiles beam forth again, like the 
 sunshine after a shower. I feel proud that I have 
 had the whole story from her own lips. She told me 
 everything whilst I was winding some skeins of silk 
 for her in her closet yesterday. 
 
 ' 'Tis for me to sing to-day,' said she, ' out of sheer 
 light-heartedness. I am like a child that hath been 
 kissed and forgiven for its naughtiness, though truly 
 my conduct now seems to me more vile than any 
 naughty child's, and I blush to think of it. After 
 what my Lady Rivers said I was fool enough to 
 imagine that inquiring into public affairs being a 
 fashionable thing I might try it, and so become 
 more thought of and beloved by my husband than I 
 was as if that were possible. So I followed him into 
 his study, and when he turned in surprise and asked,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 215 
 
 " What wouldst thou have, my life ?" I replied that 
 I heard the Prince had received a packet from the 
 Queen, and I guessed it was that in his hands, and I 
 desired to know what was in it. He said : " My love, 
 I will come to thee as soon as I can ; pray thee go, 
 for I am very busy." Just before supper I revived 
 my suit. He kissed me and talked of other things, 
 and that was why I did not eat or speak at table, as 
 you must have noticed. Going to bed I asked again, 
 but he stopped my mouth with kisses, and I went to 
 bed to cry, not to sleep. In the morning, when he 
 was called to rise early as usual, he began to discourse 
 with me first ; but I made no reply, so he rose, drew 
 the curtains softly, and went to Court. On his coming 
 home to dinner I ran to him and took his hand and 
 said, "Thou dost not care to see me troubled?" to 
 which he, taking me in his arms, answered : " My 
 dearest soul, nothing upon earth can afflict me like 
 that, and when you asked me of my business it was 
 wholly out of my power to satisfy thee, for my life 
 and fortune shall be thine and every thought of my 
 heart in which the trust I am in may not be revealed, 
 but my honour is my own, which I cannot preserve 
 if I communicate the Prince's affairs ; and, pray thee, 
 with this rest satisfied." And after such forbearance 
 and reason I was so ashamed of my folly that I have 
 resolved never till the day of my death to pry again
 
 2i6 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 into any of his business, except what he communicates 
 to me of his own freewill. And there, Laurel,' added 
 she, laughing, ' is a lesson for you, child, to profit by 
 when you have gotten your wise and good husband.' 
 
 But I would not promise her to profit by it, for, 
 methinks, single or wed, if I had the chance, I would 
 not hesitate to learn state secrets if by so doing I 
 could be of any service to the King's cause. Not that 
 there is any necessity for Mistress Fanshawe to 
 interfere ; her husband being so stout and faithful a 
 servant of His Majesty, she may safely be easy in her 
 mind and leave all to him. 
 
 The night the news came here that the King had 
 taken Leicester we sang merry ditties and danced 
 galliards far into the night. But one swallow does not 
 make a summer, and 'tis said that the fortune of the 
 Royalists in the West is ebbing day by day, through 
 the quarrels and jealousy amongst the Generals and 
 officers and the plundering of the soldiers. The 
 Prince's presence here has made matters worse instead 
 of better, as was expected. Sir Edward Hyde and 
 Lord Colpepper speak with disgust of the ' knavish ' 
 Generals Goring and Grenville and their ' beggarly 
 troops.' 
 
 In these hot days the air of Bristol is near to stifle 
 one, and the waters of the Avon very foul. In the 
 poorer streets the plague is beginning to rage apace.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 217 
 
 'Tis likely that the Prince and his retinue will move 
 before long to Barnstaple. We scarce ever catch 
 sight of the Prince, except in church, for 'tis not the 
 mode for women to associate with a Court composed 
 of men, even when their husbands are of it, Mistress 
 Fanshawe says. The Prince hath so serious an air 
 for fourteen and no wonder. Cousin Anne bids me 
 give you her tenderest remembrances. She questions 
 me often about you and the bonny Viking, and shows 
 a lively interest in all I tell her of Silence and her 
 wondrous needlework pictures, especially that of the 
 miracle of St. Olave. 
 
 Your affectionate daughter, 
 
 LAUREL. 
 
 AT MR. PALMER'S, BARNSTAPLE, 
 July . 
 
 MOTHER, 
 
 'Tis scarce worth while to write to you this 
 post, as 'tis possible I may arrive soon after my letter. 
 My Lady Capel hath obtained a pass from the Earl 
 of Essex, and travels hence to London in a few days 
 with her daughter, and I am resolved to be of her 
 party, as she is kind enough to offer me her escort. 
 "What you tell me in your last letter about Silence 
 keeping her chamber disquiets me on her account, 
 so that I cannot be happy in my mind to tarry 
 longer away from her. 'Tis more like to be
 
 2i8 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 that she is pining for Hugh 1'Estrange than suffering 
 from a spleen. Methinks she would have taken the 
 herb-posset from my hand if I had been there, and 
 not flirted it over the coverlid. 
 
 You say that naught has been heard of Hugh since 
 Naseby, either by Master Haynes or my father, though 
 his regiment, with Major Skippon, is returned. Such 
 uncertainty alone is enough to make Silence sick. 
 
 Perchance Hugh was taken a prisoner in the earlier 
 part of the fight, which went in the King's favour, and 
 so will certainly be released or exchanged, he being on 
 the victorious side, alack. I say alack, not for Hugh's 
 chance of 'scaping, but for the grievous routing and 
 scattering of the King's forces on Naseby Field. The 
 details of that great calamity are so heart-breaking 
 I can scarce bear to hear them talked of. In the 
 discourse at table last night 'twas said by Mr. Fan- 
 shawe that the King's cabinet of confidential letters 
 that was taken to London with the rest of the booty 
 and the five thousand prisoners is to be opened 
 publicly in the Guildhall, and its contents read aloud 
 for all the world and his wife to hearken to. This 
 seems to me the worst misfortune that has befallen 
 His Majesty hitherto. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Fanshawe have been most handsomely 
 entertained here, and had every honour paid them by 
 the Governor of Barnstaple. 'Tis a fine town, with
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 219 
 
 clean streets and a fresh air from the sea, which is 
 not many miles away. Thither we rid one day in 
 coaches, and partook of an al-fresco collation spread 
 for us on the shore among the sand-banks. These 
 people of Devon make a cream so thick and rich that 
 instead of trickling it stands in lumps. 'Tis most 
 excellent eat with pies and fruit ; and their capons 
 and fowls seem plumper and sweeter than those to 
 be got in or near London. But my mistress will 
 have 'tis not so, that 'tis the salt in the air which 
 makes us so hungry that it gives us a relish for every- 
 thing we eat here. Simply ' mistress ' I am now to 
 call her, for ' Mistress Fanshawe ' seems too formal 
 and ' Cousin Anne' too familiar, and I love to be her 
 servant. Yet 'tis not much service I have done her : 
 singing songs, winding skeins, playing at shuttlecock, 
 scarce come under that head. My dear mistress says 
 that at such times as they shall have occasion to 
 come to London she will summon me again to her 
 service, with yours and my father's permission. ' If 
 it be still theirs to ask,' she did add roguishly, ' and 
 they have not by then given you into the keeping of 
 that good and wise husband.' Then to tease me she 
 ran through the names, fortunes, and commendations 
 of the most personable Cavaliers that she considers 
 have shown me attention here and in Bristol, and said 
 if I liked she would take a leaf out of my Lady
 
 220 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Eleanor Davies' book and tell me by the cards which 
 of them would fall to my lot. But 'tis her converse 
 in graver moods that is most pleasing and flattering 
 to me, because she is then every whit as free and 
 confidential. 
 
 Mr. Fanshawe grows in the Prince's favour, at 
 which Sir Edward Hyde is not best pleased. Despite 
 all his engagements in the Prince's business, Mr. 
 Fanshawe has found time to put the finishing touches 
 to his translation of the Italian ' Pastor Fido,' which 
 he begun at Oxford. He bid me tell my father this, 
 for, said he, ' I know his love for poets and poetry 
 equals my own.' 
 
 I need not have writ of all these trifles when I 
 shall soon have the opportunity of communicating 
 them and a hundred more to you by word of mouth. 
 Till then, adieu. 
 
 Your loving daughter, 
 
 LAUREL. 
 
 For MISTRESS YOUNG, 
 at the Gray House in Chancery Lane, 
 London. 
 
 July SI- 
 DEAR MOTHER, 
 
 Little did I think when last I writ out of 
 Barnstaple that I should not have reached home by 
 now, or that I should have occasion to despatch you
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 221 
 
 another letter, and from this village hostel. My 
 Lady Capel has promised to explain how she came 
 to leave me, with great reluctancy, behind here at 
 the Blue Boar, and you will set her ladyship's 
 mind at rest, which, methinks, has been unduly 
 exercised as to whether Hugh 1' Estrange, who lies 
 here deadly sick of wounds and fever, is my foster- 
 brother or not. Even were he no brother, but a 
 mere acquaintance, I should scarce have been 
 human had I passed by on the other side, as her 
 ladyship fain would have had me, when Providence, 
 or the hazards of war whichever you like to call it 
 thus brought him in my path, with wounds very 
 noisome from being untended, lying on straw in the 
 sorriest condition conceivable. 'Twas indeed by 
 chance that we came to the Blue Boar at all, for had 
 my Lady Capel's horse not cast a shoe we should 
 assuredly not have stopped at the inn whilst it was 
 taken to be shod at the blacksmith's in the village 
 street. The house and yard being full of Parliament 
 troopers who, despite their godliness, seemed to 
 be drinking as deeply of the landlady's ale as any 
 Cavaliers could have done we went out to rest in 
 an arbour in the garden. 
 
 But, as we drew near it, groans and delirious 
 babblings fell on our ear, and the landlady came 
 running from the yard. ' Ladies, don't go in there !'
 
 222 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 cried she. ' 'Tis a wounded musqueteer no sight 
 for pretty ladies' eyes.' My Lady Capel and her 
 women turned about, but I felt an impulse to go 
 on to see what the cause was of such distressful 
 sounds. So I went boldly in, and there lay 
 Hugh on the floor of the arbour, his clothes blood- 
 stained, his hair matted, his face and eyes aflame 
 with fever. 'Twas a grievous sight, mother. I 
 should scarce have recognised him, he being the last 
 person I expected to see; but, unconscious though 
 he was, he called my name thrice. All his strength 
 seemed in his voice, for he was too weak to brush 
 the flies from his forehead. A man-servant of 
 Lady Capel's did, at my request, rip off Hugh's 
 doublet, and together we washed and dressed the 
 wounds on his arm and chest, I tearing up my hand- 
 kerchief and fine lawn chemisette for the purpose. 
 
 Ay, glad am I that, thanks to your teaching, I 
 am not squeamish, and understand the bandaging of 
 sores, and how to concoct balsams of herbs and 
 plaisters. Such knowledge has proved useful, and 
 hath served Hugh in good stead. He is eased of 
 much of his pain, though still too fevered to know 
 who his leech and nurse may be. I had hardly gotten 
 well to my work when an urgent summons came 
 from my Lady Capel to say her party must get to 
 horse without more delay, and would I be pleased
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 223 
 
 not to keep them waiting. I sent back a message 
 that they must go without me. This brought my 
 lady herself to the door of the arbour in great 
 dudgeon. She was answerable, both to Mrs. Fan- 
 shawe and my parents, she declared, for my safe 
 passage to London, and how was I to get there 
 without the aid of her pass ? I had better come at 
 once. 
 
 ' Would you, my lady,' asked I, ' leave your 
 brother if you had chanced to find him in so 
 desperate and bleeding a plight as this ?' 
 
 ' Brother ?' she exclaimed. ' I see no trace of a 
 family resemblance betwixt you. And how comes 
 your brother to be here, alone and uncared for ? And 
 why do none in yonder hot-bed of Roundheads 
 concern themselves about him, as he wears their 
 colours?' 
 
 That I could not say, for 'twas not till some time 
 after my Lady Capel had abandoned her attempts 
 to turn me from my resolution, and she and her 
 cavalcade had clattered off, leaving me one servant 
 for protection, that I learned from the landlady how 
 Hugh came to be here. His presence had no con- 
 nection with that of the Parliamentarian troopers, 
 who had arrived but the night before, and were 
 leaving at noon to follow General Fairfax into 
 Somerset. The hostel had been crowded with
 
 224 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Cavaliers, mostly fugitives from Naseby Field, when 
 Hugh had been brought in swooning by a gentleman 
 wearing a perruque and short red cloak, armed with 
 a long rapier and pistols, whom the landlady took 
 for a ' soldier of fortune.' There being hardly stand- 
 ing room in the house, and the weather extreme 
 hot, he had laid his fainting companion in the 
 arbour, and afterwards had sat up all night dicing in 
 turns with half a dozen others. At cockcrow he had 
 counted his winnings and rid away, saying he had 
 important business in London. 
 
 The landlady's excuse for having paid such scant 
 attention to Hugh's needs is that the inroads of first 
 one army and then of the other had near driven her 
 out of her wits. 
 
 ' There's not a pin to choose betwixt them,' she 
 said. ' If the Cavaliers are the worst for drinking 
 and gaming, 'tis the Roundheads who eat one out of 
 house and home, and split one's ears with their 
 psalm-singing. They have not left a fowl in the 
 roost. Were I a wife and a mother, instead of a 
 poor, lone, childless widow, I'd hound on my 
 husband and sons to rise against both of 'em and 
 join the clubmen.' 
 
 'Tis quiet enough here now, since the Roundheads 
 went, but the poor woman says 'tis only a lull in the 
 storm. I am despatching this post-haste by Lady
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 225 
 
 Capel's man, and pray that a litter and an escort 
 may be sent hither to be in readiness for Hugh's 
 removal. Tell Silence Hugh shall not die if I can 
 help it. 
 
 Your affectionate daughter, 
 
 LAUREL.
 
 THE CARNATION CLOSET, 
 AT THE GRAY HOUSE, 
 
 February, 1646. 
 
 ONCE I writ in this book of news coming to London 
 from every quarter of success for the King's cause : 
 of battles won and towns taken by the King's 
 Generals ; now 'tis all the other way. ' The whirli- 
 gig of time,' as Sir Oracle says, ' has brought in its 
 revenges.' After vanquishing the Royalists at Naseby, 
 the Generals Fairfax and Cromwell have, by long 
 marches and swift blows, achieved one victory after 
 another, taking strong towns and forts without 
 number, till all the West and nearly the whole 
 country is being reduced to the obedience of the 
 Parliament. 
 
 Through this sharp and bitter winter the new 
 army has not rested. I have heard people say here 
 in London, where its triumphs over a gallant and 
 potent enemy cause great rejoicing, that Almighty 
 God has exercised a miraculous providence over the 
 
 [226]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 227 
 
 camp, in which no vices, wantonness, oaths, or pro- 
 fane words go unpunished. 
 
 Be that as it may, there cannot exist any doubt of 
 the low ebb the royal fortunes have now reached. 
 Prince Rupert has thrown up the game since he lost 
 Bristol for the King, and is gone out of England with 
 his brother. 
 
 His Majesty, 'tis said, still clings to the hope that 
 the intrigues and secret treaties he authorized his 
 devoted Catholic servant, Lord Glamorgan, to enter 
 into with the Irish rebels may yet bear fruit, and at 
 least save Chester. This looked-for aid hath failed 
 him hitherto, as has that of the Queen's promised 
 Lorrainers. 
 
 When the King's cabinet of letters, taken at 
 Naseby, was opened at the Guildhall, and passages 
 therefrom read to the citizens, all London rang with 
 indignation at the duplicity this correspondence with 
 Lord Ormond and with his Queen was supposed to 
 reveal. 
 
 Many good men, my husband among them, thought 
 it matter for regret that the King's actions agreed so 
 ill with his words, and that while he had professed 
 the preservation of the Protestant religion was dear 
 to his heart, he had been promising favours to the 
 Roman Catholics in Ireland, and that the laws made 
 to punish them when they had risen and murdered 
 
 152
 
 228 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 the Protestants in cold blood after Lord Stratford's 
 death should not any longer be enforced against 
 them if they sent 20,000 men to assist him in 
 England. 
 
 He had said that he abhorred the idea of bringing 
 foreign soldiers into the kingdom, and yet had 
 solicited, through his Queen, the Duke of Lorraine 
 for help. The citizens and the Parliament expressed 
 themselves sorely displeased at the King being so 
 much ruled by the will of his wife ; for these letters 
 showed that he did everything by her prescript, and 
 that she dictated to him in matters concerning peace 
 and war, Church and Parliament. The King is 
 mightily unfortunate in that all his plots are sooner 
 or later brought to light. For hardly had the excite- 
 ment in London caused by the making public of the 
 Naseby letters somewhat subsided than more papers 
 and a duplicate of his secret warrant to Lord 
 Glamorgan were taken in October at the Battle of 
 Sligo, from the coach of the slain Archbishop of 
 Tuam. 
 
 At that time Hugh 1' Estrange was lying 'twixt life 
 and death in this house ; the dangerous wound at the 
 back of his head, which the chirurgeon thought to be 
 of later date than those on his chest and arm, gotten 
 by bullets at Naseby, causing his fever to break out 
 anew and run high for many weeks. His recovery
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 229 
 
 was slow, and at times despaired of, and even now 
 his right hand is maimed through the injury to his 
 arm, and he is still disabled for either soldiering or 
 dialling, though he has returned to Master Haynes. 
 
 In his sickness Laurel has been a tender nurse 
 to him here, as she was his nurse and leech withal 
 at the wayside hostel, where 'twas she chanced to 
 hap on Hugh in woeful plight on her road from 
 Barnstable in company with my Lady Capel. 
 
 Laurel seemed, when she brought Hugh home, to 
 have forgot that there was ever any estrangement 
 betwixt them, and all her proud little airs towards 
 him. He might have been battered and banged in 
 the Royalist cause instead of against it so over- 
 whelmed was she with pity and concernment for him 
 in his helplessness and pain. 
 
 Laurel would not resign her care of Hugh to me 
 or anyone, and 'twas she who gave orders that he 
 should be laid in the green-velvet room instead of 
 taken upstairs to the smaller guest-chamber, which 
 has been called in the house Hugh's chamber since 
 he occupied it when they came from Blois. 
 
 After Naseby fight, when weeks went by and no 
 tidings had come of Hugh, though we sent daily for 
 them to Master Haynes in Cheapside, poor Silence 
 fell into a lethargy of misery. She would not rise, 
 and only with difficulty could be prevailed on to
 
 230 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 touch food. Olave lost his favourite playmate, and 
 all his baby wiles failed to charm a smile from 
 Silence's pale, sad lips. She declared repeatedly on 
 her tablets that in a dream she had seen Hugh being 
 done to death, not in battle, but in some private, 
 lonely place. So when at last he was brought to the 
 Gray House, half dead, Silence rose and came out of 
 her chamber, near to rejoicing because he was not 
 wholly dead, as she had so feared. But she soon 
 relapsed into grief again, for she could not tolerate 
 the sight of his pain ; and whilst Laurel watched by 
 him and laid salves on his hurts, Silence lay crouched 
 up outside the door like a faithful dog, not daring to 
 enter, but listening with her great, wistful eyes. 
 
 Hugh was unlike himself in fever in that he was 
 exceeding talkative. In his delirious wanderings he 
 told us more of the fatal fray among the ditches and 
 blackthorn hedges of Naseby plain than we should 
 ever have learned from him had he been conscious. 
 At his bedside we heard how the Puritan watchword 
 ' God for us !' rang through the summer air ; how at 
 first it seemed as if Prince Rupert's dashing charge 
 would sweep all before it and carry the day, Ireton 
 being taken prisoner, and the lion-hearted Skippon, 
 idol of the Londoners, of the ' Yellow Regiment,' fall- 
 ing wounded in their midst ; how Fairfax's helmet 
 had been beaten off, and he had fought bareheaded
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 231 
 
 in a rain of bullets, his high stature, floating black 
 curls, and short red cloak giving him so strong a 
 likeness to Prince Rupert that one of the Prince's 
 own men once actually addressed him for His High- 
 ness; how Cromwell's Ironsides did their deadly 
 work, and the King, giving a courageous command 
 for a last rally, had his bridle pulled, which turned 
 his horse, and on the instant caused the whole of his 
 shattered army to turn likewise and fly in wildest 
 disorder. This outline of what had happened at 
 Naseby we pieced together from Hugh's fevered 
 gabbling, with the help of facts we knew before from 
 the news-sheets. But the pieces for the puzzle of 
 Hugh's adventure during the time 'twixt the battle 
 and his coming to the hostel where Laurel found 
 him were more complicated. He did rave much 
 about a letter in cipher the ' Queen's letter ' he called 
 it. It had been in his possession and been stolen 
 from him, that was clear ; but how had he come by 
 it, and how lost it ? It seemed as if after the battle 
 he may have regained his consciousness, lying in the 
 moonlight among the dead and dying somewhere 
 near the spot where the routed Cavaliers' baggage 
 train had stood, and had stretched out his hand to 
 grasp something white a paper on which the moon 
 shone. Maybe in the mlee and rush it had been 
 shaken from that captured cabinet of the King's
 
 2 3 2 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 over which so much ado has been made or even 
 fallen from His Majesty's saddle. Over and over 
 again in his delirium Hugh would try to stretch out 
 his wounded arm and seize some imaginary object. 
 Next he would be feeling for it beneath his jerkin ; 
 then there would be a terrible struggle with a foe of 
 air, and the letter was gone. But Hugh was not 
 always in the wars as he wandered. Sometimes he 
 was back on his bench at Master Haynes's ' carving 
 out dials point by point,' or in sober converse with 
 Mistress Margaret in the spacious parlour upstairs. 
 He looked through the great telescope on the leads 
 at the planet Venus, invoking it as ' brightest and 
 fairest Queen of the heavens, unrivalled among stars, 
 as my love is among maids.' And then he was in the 
 old Blois garden, calling on his ' love ' with so much 
 passionate pleading that Laurel turned to me sigh- 
 ingly and whispered : 
 
 ' Would that Silence's ears could be unstopped for 
 five minutes, that she might hear him !' 
 
 ' Silence is not his love,' said I. 
 
 ' Tut ! I will never believe 'tis Mistress Margaret,' 
 she made retort. 
 
 ' No, 'tis not Mistress Margaret.' 
 
 And, as if to confirm me, Hugh burst forth again : 
 
 ' My love ! Her name is Laurel. But laurels 
 such laurels as my love are not for me to win.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 233 
 
 They crown gallant poets with beautiful souls in 
 beautiful bodies, not misshapen prentices.' 
 
 Laurel dropped on her knees, and bowed her nut- 
 brown head over the feverish left hand, clasped in 
 her cool fingers. Methought she knew now, if she 
 had not known before, who was poor Hugh's love. 
 
 When Hugh crept back from the gates of death 
 to health, Laurel would fain have questioned him 
 about the letter that we had heard so much of whilst 
 he lay sick, but our chirurgeon, Dr. Bathurst, forbad 
 it, saying Hugh's overwrought brain had best be 
 allowed to rest, and unless he spake of the events 
 that brought him to so pitiful a condition, 'twas not 
 for us to revive his memory of them. Laurel would 
 not for the world forfeit Dr. Bathurst's good opinion 
 of her skill as a sick-nurse, so she has been content 
 to divert Hugh in his convalescence by reading or 
 singing to him, and has broken the vow she once 
 made never to play chess with him again. 
 
 Since the eve of Naseby, when he abruptly 
 disappeared, we had heard and seen nothing of 
 Mr. Taller, whom Gabriel commissioned to draw 
 up a new catalogue of his books and manuscripts, 
 till the forenoon last month that I walked with my 
 husband to Mr. Husband's, the bookseller and 
 printer to the Commons, whose shop is at the
 
 234 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Golden Dragon, in Fleet Street, near the Inner 
 Temple. It happened to be the day on which, by 
 order of the Parliament, Mr. Husband had printed 
 and published His Majesty's secret papers, taken at 
 Sligo three months agone. Their contents having 
 been kept private for so long had raised curiosity 
 regarding them to the highest pitch, and crowds 
 were pressing round the shop, eager to obtain a 
 copy of the pamphlet published under the title 
 of ' The Irish Cabinet ; or, His Majesty's Secret 
 Transactions for Establishing the Papal Clergy in 
 Ireland. With other Matters of High Consequence 
 taken in the Carriage of the Archbishop at Tuam, 
 who was slain in the Late Fight at Sligo in that 
 Kingdom.' 
 
 On a table in front of the shop were piles of the 
 pamphlet fresh from the press, rapidly diminishing, 
 however, as the purchasers carried them off, many 
 reading passages to themselves or aloud as they went 
 along the street, with great groans and execrations. 
 In this crowd I saw Mr. Taller, in his shabby black 
 cloak, walking away, as if in a hurry, with the book 
 under his arm, and his eyes cast down. The 
 excitement about the King's papers was so intense 
 that no one talked of aught else, and Gabriel had to 
 abandon the purpose of his errand to the Golden 
 Dragon, which concerned something as remote from
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 235 
 
 the burning question of the hour as the illuminated 
 manuscript of an old French romance, ' The 
 Romaunt of the Rose.' 
 
 In the afternoon of the same day Gabriel took 
 barge for Kingston, he being summoned to the 
 death-bed of one of his kinsfolk there, and hence it 
 came to pass that, on the next day, I was without 
 my Sir Oracle's counsel and support in an extra- 
 ordinary situation. 
 
 We were assembled in the nursery, where Hugh 
 had been practising his left hand in the fashioning 
 and painting of a reflective dial, now nearly finished, 
 on the ceiling. My little Viking watched him, 
 earnest and enthralled, whilst Silence took delight 
 in handing to him his compass and other implements 
 in the order he wanted to use them. A piece of 
 looking-glass was fixed horizontally in one of the 
 southern windows, reflecting the rays of the pale 
 January sun upon the hour-lines. Old Marie, in 
 blue stuff gown, white cap, and sabots, sat by the 
 wide hearth, with Olave's playthings scattered, where 
 he had left them, at her feet, and his horn-book in 
 her lap. The ruddy glow from the blazing logs put 
 to shame the faint, wintry sunlight, and flickered 
 and danced on the old face, with its thousands of 
 wrinkles, on the young figures grouped beneath the 
 dial, and on the shining dark-oak beams and the
 
 236 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 needlework pictures wrought for Olave by Silence's 
 skilled, untiring fingers. 
 
 Laurel, who stood near the window, with her eyes 
 bent on the piece of looking-glass, exclaimed of a 
 sudden : 
 
 ' There's a face in the glass nay, but now it hath 
 vanished again !' 
 
 I went quickly and pushed open a lattice, and 
 beheld a man standing on the outside stone stairway 
 below. 
 
 ' Who goes there ?' I called out. 
 
 ' One who craves your pardon and mercy, madam, 
 and permission to take refuge beneath your roof.' 
 
 The voice was Mr. Taller's, but 'twas no Mr. 
 Taller who, without waiting for the permission he 
 craved, immediately passed into the house, and, 
 with swift steps, ascended and broke in on us 
 breathlessly. 
 
 I recognised the face of deathly hue, the fine-cut 
 features their beauty marred by the lines evil living 
 had left on them the abundant locks of tawny red, 
 and the lowering brows. 
 
 He stood there, unmasked and undisguised, in 
 sparkish but tawdry clothes, the gold lace on his 
 coat tarnished, his riband knots soiled, his boots so 
 very high and deeply turned down that his legs must 
 needs straggle apart. There was a hunted look in
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 237 
 
 his eyes, which roved restlessly from Laurel to me, 
 and then again to Laurel, oblivious, apparently, of 
 the others' presence in the room. 
 
 ' I am tracked run to earth,' said he. ' At this 
 moment they are searching for me in the next house, 
 where I have lodged, and the rabble is at the door, 
 thirsting for my blood. You know what a London 
 rabble is ! 'Tis the publishing of these Irish papers 
 that hath incensed them to madness. Fools ! 
 what understanding have they of the matter ? 
 Where is the infamy of a Sovereign granting his 
 Irish subjects the liberty to exercise the religion of 
 their forefathers the religion they would die for a 
 hundred times over, which for them is the only 
 religion ? I will be open with you now, for naught 
 is to be gained by being otherwise. I was an agent 
 of the late Archbishop of Tuam and of Lord 
 Glamorgan. I have moved heaven and earth, and 
 gone through fire and water, to serve the Catholic 
 Church and to save the King. At this extremity 
 only the Irish can save him. I have carried letters 
 from the Queen in France to the King, and from the 
 King to the Nuncio and Lord Glamorgan, and from 
 Lord Glamorgan to the Lord-Lieutenant. In all my 
 comings and goings I ever found London the safest 
 haven wherein to lie at anchor till to-day, when 
 'tis like to prove a death-trap. Through the circu-
 
 238 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 lating of this cursed pamphlet, I, Dominico Spinola, 
 am discovered and undone, and driven to throw my- 
 self on the pity of you gentlewomen to save my life !' 
 
 'Twas surprising that he could speak so much and 
 so composedly with an outraged mob almost on his 
 heels. He betrayed his fear only in his eyes, which 
 turned constantly, like those of a hunted animal, 
 in the direction of the door. 
 
 ' The name, sir, you call yourself by,' said I, ' is 
 not the name under which you have sought hospitality 
 in this house before.' 
 
 ' No, that is true,' he answered coolly ; ' the 
 service I am engaged in requires more names than 
 one, and more faces.' He listened, and then went 
 on : ' Hark ! I hear the roar of the mob in the street. 
 They are yelling "Jesuit," of course. In their 
 ignorance they have no conception of the true mean- 
 ing of the word, or of what a Jesuit is. To them 'tis 
 like a red rag to the bull, and stands for everything 
 that is iniquitous and villainous. I am no Jesuit in 
 the right or the wrong sense, but I shall be torn limb 
 from limb for a Jesuit by these infuriated people if 
 you do not hide me, madam. They could not wait 
 for their prey to be imprisoned and sentenced to the 
 gallows in their present temper, but assuredly would 
 execute justice on me themselves. The constable 
 who seeks me in the next house would be powerless
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 239 
 
 to keep me from their clutches. I do not flatter 
 myself that my escape from the back was not 
 witnessed by someone. Unless I am hid till the 
 search is abandoned I must be taken, drawn and 
 quartered.' 
 
 In every word he uttered he appealed more to 
 Laurel than to me, and at last he turned to her and 
 said : 
 
 'You remember the aged minstrel at Oxford on 
 whom you took compassion : here stands one far 
 more in need of it. Hide me, for God's sake !' 
 
 ' Mother,' Laurel said, ' this gentleman says he has 
 been through fire and water to save the King. Let 
 us save him. There is the secret closet behind the 
 bed-head in the velvet room. I will take him thither.' 
 
 All this had passed much more quickly than I can 
 write it, and only at that moment did I look at 
 Hugh and note the change which had come over 
 him. He had completely lost his serenity, and was 
 leaning against the platform on which he had stood 
 to put the finishing touches to his dial. His teeth 
 were fiercely set, his fingers clenched, and his eyes 
 darting fire. The agonized expression which his 
 countenance had worn in his fever was there again. 
 Silence put her hand through his uninjured arm, and 
 her head was close to his as she gazed at him 
 anxiously.
 
 240 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Olave had scurried back to old Marie's lap, 
 extremely fearful of the strange intruder on the peace 
 of his nursery kingdom. 
 
 ' Mother, there is not a moment to be lost,' Laurel 
 cried. ' You know how the closet opens, for you 
 have told me that father showed you on your wedding- 
 day. Come, let us take the gentleman to the velvet 
 room.' 
 
 I hesitated still. 
 
 ' I am not sure,' I said, ' that your father- will 
 approve of our harbouring a recusant whilst he is 
 away.' 
 
 ' Far less would he approve that a man should be 
 dragged from his house to perish at the hands of an 
 angry mob,' she answered with impatience. 
 
 ' Show me the hiding-place, I beseech and pray 
 you, madam,' the hunted agent exclaimed, casting 
 more of those furtive and listening glances at the 
 door behind him. ' Tis true there is no time to be 
 lost.' 
 
 Then 'twas that Hugh leapt forward suddenly and 
 spoke in a voice of passion, which he could scarce 
 control : 
 
 ' He is my enemy, this man, though I never met 
 him face to face in the field. He took advantage of 
 my weakness from wounds, gotten in honourable 
 warfare, and after cozening and tricking me, he struck 

 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 241 
 
 me down from behind and robbed me of a paper 
 which of my own free will I would have yielded up to 
 none but our Generalissimo. When I was sick unto 
 death he deserted me, left me to die like a dog by the 
 way. He has told you that he is a Papal agent, and 
 has made a brag of the service he's rendered to the 
 King ; but he has forgot to give you his whole 
 character, and did not say that he was a spy and 
 gamester withal, who doth rook his friends at cards 
 and dice. I say, then, don't hide and shield him 
 
 from the law ; let ' 
 
 ' Hold, young man !' broke in the other ; ' for if I 
 am all you say, I am yet something more your 
 father !' 
 
 Hugh staggered back as if under a blow. He 
 covered his face with his hands and sank on to a 
 settle. 
 
 ' Would, then, that I had never been born !' he 
 groaned, the fierce storm of wrath and defiance that 
 had so shaken him giving place to an outburst of 
 grief piteous to behold. The pent-up grief of his 
 young lifetime, methought, for the cruel sufferings 
 at the hands of this man, of the forsaken, gentle 
 little mother, who had not lived to nurture him up. 
 
 Father and son ! Could it be ? Nay ; could it 
 not be ? So alike and yet so different were those 
 two ashen faces that had confronted each other in 
 
 16
 
 242 AN OLD LONDVN NOSEGAY 
 
 anger. The curious tawny tint and the waviness of 
 the hair Hugh's had grown again in his fever the 
 set of the eyebrows, even to the peculiarity of one 
 being slightly thicker than the other ; the pose of the 
 head all these were alike. But how unlike the 
 expression of the eyes, the shape of the chin, and 
 curve of the lips ! 
 
 Father and son ! and betwixt them a bitter enmity 
 sprung up ere the relationship was known to the son, 
 and not to be quenched the instant 'twas revealed. 
 
 The absorbing thought that a life was in peril, a 
 life she might help to save, belike deadened the shock 
 of this revelation to Laurel. I could scarce believe 
 that she had heard or understood it when she went 
 running to the green-velvet chamber, and, flying 
 back in a twinkling, exclaimed : 
 
 ' Mother, mother ! come at once and open the 
 closet. Prithee, come ! I have looked from the 
 window into the Lane, and the officers are come 
 forth from the next house. The mob is surging 
 round them, and clamours and roars for its victim. 
 Any moment they may be coming this way.' 
 
 And again she turned to go, motioning me and 
 Hugh's father to follow her. Ere he left the nursery 
 he looked back at his son. 
 
 ' He to whom I gave life is mighty desirous I 
 should lose it. Filial gratitude !' he sneered.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 243 
 
 Hugh made no rejoinder, and kept his head 
 bowed in his hand. Silence was on her knees 
 beside him, sobbing and pressing her cheek against 
 his shoulder. Her wondrous dumb devotion would 
 fain make amends to him for that love of parents he 
 had never known. 
 
 ' Begone, wicked man, ugly man !' cried little 
 Olave, seating himself erect on Marie's lap. ' You've 
 made Hugh cry, and Silence cry, and Olave cry. 
 Fie ! begone !' and he burst out a-weeping, swept by 
 the emotions of his elders, beyond the comprehen- 
 sion, but not the sympathy, of his baby soul. 
 
 ' Ne pleure pas, ne pleure pas, mon ange,' 
 crooned Marie. ' Maman shall lock up mechant 
 monsieur in a cupboard dark.' 
 
 ' Even the lips of babes and hags curse me,' he 
 said, with a scoffing smile. ' Now, then, madam, to 
 the " cupboard dark." ' 
 
 'I felt an unwillingness still, nigh to disgust, at 
 hiding the man, till I looked down from the window 
 where Laurel was stationed, in the velvet room, 
 and then I realized, as I had not done before, the 
 danger and horror of his position. I saw the crowd 
 gathered in front of the next house, swaying to and 
 fro, waving cudgels, and hurling stones at the 
 windows, even threatening the constables, who they 
 thought had let the object of their hate and 
 
 16 2
 
 244 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 indignation escape. Terrible indeed to be so hated 
 to have excited that mad fury which, 'tis said, can 
 transform ordinary peaceable beings into wild beasts. 
 Their yells, howls, and execrations filled the air, and 
 as I looked down on the sea of agitated heads, and 
 caught sight of women's faces, scowling and brutal 
 as those of the men, I wondered how 'twas that in 
 more ordinary times one never met with .such faces 
 in the streets of London. Only in tumults like this, or 
 at an execution on Tower Hill, did they come to the 
 surface. Where had they lain hid every day ? or was 
 it indeed true that the everyday aspect of these 
 shouting, leaping fiends was placid and indifferent ? 
 The constables, who were armed, stood above the 
 crowd, on the steps of the portico, seeming engaged 
 in a consultation as to whether 'twere advisable to 
 search the Gray House. Then they moved, and the 
 whole mob, facing about, moved too, and 'twas in 
 our direction. 
 
 I ran and knelt down, my fingers feeling for the 
 spring that opened the secret door behind the head 
 of the bed the bed whereon Hugh had tossed night 
 after night, and fought again at Naseby in his 
 delirium, and struggled with the mysterious foe we 
 now knew to have been his father the man who 
 cowered by me like a hunted fox watchirfg to dart 
 into its hole.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 245 
 
 Since Gabriel had shown me, when he brought 
 me home on my bridal day, the trick by which the 
 invisible door in the panels opened, I had not tried 
 it, and so at this emergency I fumbled for the spring 
 in vain. I couldn't light on it. 
 
 ' Mother, make haste !' Laurel called from her 
 post. ' The steward has let the constables pass the 
 gatehouse. Why are you so slow?' 
 
 ' I have forgot how to open the closet,' I said. 
 
 She gave a cry of dismay, and the man, in his 
 desperation and abject fear, which he could no longer 
 conceal by bravado, pushed me roughly aside, and, 
 going on his knees, fumbled himself for the spring. 
 
 Above the chorus of inarticulate howls the mob 
 kept up without the gatehouse distinct detached 
 cries reached our ears, and a voice of higher pitch 
 than the rest shouting : ' Bring him forth, the 
 Papist agent of the Pope, the traitor who would have 
 the King bribe the Irish monsters and murderers ! 
 Bring him forth ! Likely 'tis he lies in this house 
 the house of one who is a malignant for certain, or 
 why has he foreign Papists amongst his servants ?' 
 
 A new fear on behalf of Juan and Alphonse 
 flashed through me. What if they should show 
 themselves, and be seized by these infuriated bigots, 
 who held my husband to be a malignant because he 
 employed them !
 
 246 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 The cause of their rage and excitement was now 
 hammering and beating the panels with his fists, 
 murmuring oaths, and vowing that he believed I 
 had tricked and deceived him, and that there was no 
 secret door in the wall. 
 
 Laurel, meanwhile, to gain time, went out to 
 parley with the constables. I, taking her place at 
 the window, saw her advance into the courtyard to 
 meet them. As I write this, the picture comes 
 before my eyes of her standing fearlessly on the 
 flagstones, in full view of the angry people at our 
 gates. She was perfectly at her ease and collected, 
 at which I marvelled, for within the house she had 
 been flitting hither and thither in wild agitation. 
 With a stately grace she stood there, showing the 
 beautiful curve of her wrist and arm, bare to the 
 elbow beneath the lace of her sleeve. As she held 
 back the long, straight folds of her dark satin gown, 
 the chill wind played with her hair, and stirred the 
 edges of the point-lace on her shoulders. Not 
 brighter than her flashing eyes were the precious 
 stones in the clasp of her stomacher. Her young 
 beauty, her commanding carriage, the clear, pene- 
 trating sweetness of her tones, as she spoke to the 
 officers of the law, seemed to produce a lull in the 
 clamour of the crowd. They ceased hooting, to 
 gape and listen.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 247 
 
 * The person whom you say that you have a 
 warrant to arrest,' said she, quite coolly, ' was in 
 this house, but has now left it. It will only waste 
 your time to search for him.' 
 
 * You must inform us when and how he left it.' 
 
 ' Nay, that I cannot, as I do not know. Maybe he 
 has taken refuge in Fulford's Rents, in Holborn, 
 where debtors and criminals are said to be safe.' 
 
 ' He would have been seen crossing the street.' 
 
 ' Belike he knew of some private passage thither.' 
 
 ' Under the ground ?' 
 
 * 'Tis probable enough,' Laurel answered, un- 
 daunted. 
 
 ' Fulford's Rents!' passed from lip to lip through 
 the crowd. The narrow court, closed by a gate at 
 one end, is as notorious a sanctuary of debtors, 
 thieves, and all who would fain escape the eye of 
 justice as are Whitefriars and the Savoy ; but 
 whether it would be equally safe from the law of the 
 mob is another question. 
 
 1 Why should you suspect us of hiding this man ?' 
 Laurel continued. ' My father, who is absent, is no 
 malignant, as you call it. The man is as hateful to 
 me as to yonder mob but for other reasons, 'tis true. 
 I hate him because he misused and deserted his wife, 
 and hath cruelly injured his only child. I hate him 
 for his base cheating and lies. But you, on account
 
 248 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 of these things, would not touch him. His sin in 
 yours and those maddened people's eyes is his 
 religion.' 
 
 My heart was in my throat as I leaned anxiously 
 over the casement and heard her speak thus. Surely, 
 I thought, such a speech as her last would excite the 
 suspicion she had begun by allaying, and every 
 moment I expected to see the constables pass her 
 and force their entry. She herself told me afterwards 
 she had never any hope that she could deter them 
 from their purpose, and had only talked to detain 
 them so long as 'twere possible, trusting that it would 
 give time for the fugitive to hap on the spring of the 
 secret door which I had failed to find. 
 
 Laurel's surprise, then, was as great as mine when 
 suddenly, with a roar of ' to Fulford's Rents,' the 
 crowd, like a pack of hounds, turned tail towards 
 Holborn, this time giving the constables the lead 
 instead of taking it from them. 
 
 Would they come back ? For some minutes 
 Laurel still stood in her proud attitude on the flag- 
 stones, as if she half expected they would. 
 
 ' Your peril is averted for the present, sir,' I said, 
 turning from the window; 'your pursuers are gone.' 
 
 But I spoke to the green velvet hangings. There 
 was no figure grovelling 'twixt the bed-head and 
 the panels ; the room was empty. Whilst I had
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 249 
 
 been looking out, straining my ears to catch Laurel's 
 words, the spring must have been touched by hazard, 
 the door have sprung back and closed again on 
 Mr. 1'Estrange. 
 
 That night Hugh made his bundle, and left us for 
 Master Haynes'. He had never gone from the Gray 
 House with so white and anguish-stricken a face, 
 and 'twas enough to make other hearts than Silence's 
 bleed to look on't. He took his usual respectful 
 farewell of me, and, though he did not say so, I 
 understood that the roof of his benefactor could not 
 shelter him and his father withal at the same time. 
 
 How many hours it sheltered Mr. 1' Estrange is 
 not known. We knocked several times on the panels 
 behind the bed and no answer came. At nightfall, 
 as still neither I nor Laurel could discover how to 
 open the secret door, we knocked again, and placed 
 meat, bread, and wine there. 
 
 On the morrow when Gabriel came home he opened 
 the closet, but there was no one in it, and Mr. 
 1' Estrange had evidently found his way out by the 
 staircase that leads from it into an underground 
 passage skirting the garden wall. 
 
 He had left a piece of burnt cork and a letter on 
 the little table beneath the hanging lamp in the 
 closet. Writing materials must have been concealed
 
 250 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 about his person, otherwise the letter could not have 
 been writ, although 'twas only the address, 'tis true, 
 that was in his handwriting but the address was 
 long. 
 
 ' For that intrepid, fair King's woman, Mistress 
 Laurel Young, who this day, realizing that a fellow- 
 Royalist stood in danger of a vile death at the hands 
 of a fanatical mob, did nobly exert herself to save 
 him, I do leave behind the missives herein enclosed 
 to acquaint .her with a danger that threatened herself, 
 but threatens her no longer, in that I who would 
 have been the chief instrument therein, should I now 
 succeed in making my escape by the river, withdraw 
 beyond seas to serve again in the army of the Catholic 
 Duke of Lorraine.' 
 
 The enclosures, to my shame and grief, were in 
 the hand of my brother Roger. They gave the clue 
 to his true connection with the so-called Mr. Taller, 
 to whom he had lost large sums of money at cards 
 and betting at bowls. To pay these debts he was, 
 by Mr. Taller's aid, to carry off an heiress by force 
 and stealth, and the heiress was to be none other 
 than Laurel, whom, if he could not win by fair 
 means, he was determined to get by foul. And as 
 if this enormity were not enough, these letters of 
 Roger's contained evidence of another design on the 
 part of his confederate, who, having satisfied himself
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 251 
 
 that Hugh was the son he had abandoned even before 
 his birth, and having observed Silence's passionate 
 attachment to her foster-brother, would have plotted 
 to decoy both of them into the Fleet, where, perforce, 
 he had at times to take up his abode, and there get 
 them tied in wedlock by some chaplain, according 
 to a custom of the place. 
 
 Thus had he schemed to profit eventually by the 
 fortunes of both Gabriel's daughters, and would not 
 have scrupled outrageously to wrong one he knew to 
 have stood in the place of a father to his own son. 
 
 I should be too shamed to write of my brother's 
 share in these perfidious plottings and underhand 
 dealings, now come to light, anywhere but in the 
 pages of this dear book, which ever seems to invite 
 my confidence when once I open it again after long 
 months of neglect. 
 
 In his goodness, my husband, to soothe my sharp 
 distress, tried to find excuses for Roger, though it 
 was indeed difficult. 'Twas clear, he said, Roger 
 had but writ of this audacious project, and had taken 
 no steps to bring it to pass, for all the while he had 
 been doing his duty as a soldier, and had fought 
 bravely in the King's last stand at Naseby. Evil 
 company had been Roger's bane, and doubtless he 
 had been led on by the spy and gamester, into whose 
 power he had fallen through losing money to him at
 
 252 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 cards, to talk bigly of a plan which the obligations 
 of honour and affection would have prevented his 
 putting into execution, even if it had been possible. 
 
 ' Honour and affection !' I exclaimed bitterly ; ' I 
 fear he has neither, but hath lost both at cards, like 
 his money.' 
 
 But Mr. 1'Estrange's conduct Gabriel found no 
 palliation for. Never have I seen him so deeply 
 stirred to wrathful indignation as he was on learning 
 what had passed in his absence, and that Mr. Taller 
 had duped him, and proved one and the same person 
 as Hugh's father. 
 
 ' And base scoundrels of this type still flourish 
 darkly in the pay and service of the King's party,' he 
 said, ' whilst the flower of England's chivalry, which 
 graced the ranks of his army at the outset, has all 
 been swept away.' 
 
 'Not all, not all!' Laurel cried. 'Thank God, I 
 know of one nay, of many, for that matter who 
 have yet noble lives to risk above board and in the 
 daylight for their King.' 
 
 When Laurel took her lute (for the first time since 
 that, to us, eventful January day on which Hugh 
 had departed so suddenly and sadly) and sat on the 
 settle to tune it in the ruddy glow of the blazing 
 hearth, methought she had in her memory only ' one,'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 253 
 
 not ' many,' who had yet a noble life to lay down ; 
 for the lines she sang, with an unwonted dewiness in 
 her brown eyes and a vibrating sweet pathos in her 
 voice, were these, writ by Colonel Lovelace : 
 
 ' Though seas and lands betwixt us both, 
 
 Our faith and troth, 
 Like separated souls, 
 All time and space controls ; 
 Above the highest sphere we meet, 
 Unseen, unknown, we greet as angels greet. 
 
 ' So then we do anticipate 
 
 Our after fate, 
 And are alive, in the skies, 
 If thus our lips and eyes 
 Can speak like spirits unconfined, 
 In heaven, their earthly bodies left behind.'
 
 XI 
 
 CHANCERY LANE, 
 
 July 30, 1647. 
 
 I WAS in the still-room this morning, helping my 
 women to make a cordial of briar-rose leaves, when 
 I saw Laurel coming over the daisied grass ot 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields in the golden sunshine. She 
 came so quickly that Mr. Fanshawe's negro man, 
 who was her attendant, could scarce keep pace with 
 her. 
 
 The Fanshawes are lodged at present in Portugal 
 Row. At the end of the war, when Royalists 
 poured into London to compound for their estates 
 with a committee of the Parliament sitting for that 
 purpose in Goldsmiths' Hall, to our unspeakable 
 delight my husband's dear kinswoman did journey 
 hither from Caen in France, to compound for part 
 of her fortune, and succeeded in getting a pass for 
 Mr. Fanshawe from Colonel Copley, a Parliament 
 man. We have enjoyed much of their society 
 through the winter and spring, though when Mr. 
 [254]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 255 
 
 Fanshawe joined Anne, to raise money for returning 
 to His Highness the Prince, 'twas necessary for him 
 to live very privately, as he does still, for fear of 
 being imprisoned for his loyalty. 
 
 Laurel has been waiting almost daily on her sweet 
 mistress, as she likes to call Anne, and when I saw 
 her speeding over the fields so early to-day I 
 guessed what news she was bringing. 
 
 But, of course, Laurel asked me to guess what the 
 news was when she came in laughing, and tossed off 
 the little mask she had worn to protect her face 
 from the sun's glare. For answer, I inquired 
 whether 'twas a boy or a girl. 
 
 ' Why, mother,' she exclaimed, ' how did you 
 know it was either ? Well, 'tis a boy, to take the 
 place of the little first-born son who was buried at 
 Oxford ere he was out of his chrisom robe ; and my 
 mistress is overjoyed that her little Nan hath a 
 brother, and wishes she were here to see him, 
 instead of in Jersey, at nurse with my Lady Carteret. 
 He is to be christened Henry, and my father and 
 you are to be gossips, if you will be so pleased, 
 which I warrant you will. They say that the babe 
 hath his mother's eyes, his father's nose, and his 
 grandfather's chin, and is the image of his uncle. 
 But 'tis ridiculous to say new-born infants resemble 
 anyone except each other in truth, they are all
 
 256 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 alike, and I could not have told this one from Olave, 
 or Olave from your sister Peg's boy, at the age of 
 twenty-four hours.' She took up a handful of the 
 rose-leaves which lay in crimson heaps around me, 
 and crumpled them in her palm. ' I would fain give 
 a helping hand to-day at the rose-stillery,' said she, 
 ' but may not tarry after I have seen Silence. They 
 expect me back at Portugal Row by noon.' 
 
 ' 'Tis unfortunate you cannot stay to dinner,' I 
 said, 'for your father has invited two guests, who, 
 methinks, come expressly to see you.' 
 
 Laurel knew what I meant. She threw down the 
 rose-petals, and took up a bud, which she began to 
 pluck to pieces impatiently. Some of the crowd of 
 delinquents so called by the rebels who flock to 
 London just now to compound for their estates are 
 improving the occasion by heiress-hunting. 
 
 * Is it the widower- knight, Sir Pompey Staines, 
 who would endow me with four strapping step- 
 daughters even a worse fate than yours, sweet 
 mother ?' she inquired ; ' or the obedient young 
 esquire who makes a leg, and woos at his father's 
 bidding ? or that woeful pedant who turns his 
 compliments in Latin ? Or, maybe, 'tis that clownish 
 personage with the gait of a plough-boy, for all his 
 long pedigree ; or that spark Sir Guy, whose love- 
 locks are sticky with strong perfume ; or Nay, 

 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 257 
 
 why run through the whole galaxy ? "Tis all the 
 same, whether it be all or none of these. I am sick 
 of being inspected as if I were a piece of china or a 
 picture on view. Once I scarce knew whether I 
 had a mind to be wed or no. But now 'tis different. 
 I am confident that I never wish to wed with any. 
 So 'tis useless for my father to consider these 
 people's proposals to treat for me. Why must 
 parents be so anxious to dispose of their daughters, 
 I wonder ?' 
 
 ' They are not anxious to be rid of them,' I made 
 answer ; ' but the more they prize them, the more 
 they would fain confide them to the care and 
 protection of suitable husbands, for 'tis natural 
 for every woman, whether of high or low degree, 
 to marry, unless there be some special reason 
 against it.' 
 
 ' Then I give thee leave, mother to publish that 
 there is a special reason against it in my case,' 
 Laurel declared, laughing, yet, I believe, meaning, 
 withal, what she said. ' I pray you do it if it will 
 spare me the addresses of these gentlemen, old and 
 young, who pester my father with the inventory of 
 their sequestered lands and moneys, and by a list of 
 their ancestors, their good looks, and virtues at the 
 same time. I have been so barely civil to them of 
 late methinks they must have doubts as to whether, 
 
 17
 
 258 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 after all, I should grace their board or do them any 
 credit as their lady.' 
 
 So saying, she raised her long skirts and danced 
 down the passages, singing a catch as she went ; 
 and soon she held Silence in her arms, caressing her, 
 as she is wont to do after a separation, and croon- 
 ing those soft endearments which Silence under- 
 stands so well Irom the motions of her sister's lips. 
 
 Laurel, despite her childlike candour and out- 
 spokenness at times, does not wear her heart on her 
 sleeve for daws to peck at. 'Tis still, in part, a 
 riddle to me, that warm young heart, though 
 methought I came a little nearer to solving it 
 to-day than heretofore, when I stood watching 
 Laurel step forth into the dazzling sunshine again, 
 w T ith her ebony attendant, to return to Portugal 
 Row. She had not affixed the mask, but carried it 
 in her hand, and I saw her face change as a figure, 
 the most gallant and handsome in London (for, 
 wherever it may be, 'tis always the most gallant and 
 handsome), crossed the sunny street. 
 
 'Twas Colonel Lovelace, who had left England to 
 fight in the French wars on the surrender of Oxford 
 last summer, when disaster everywhere befell the 
 shattered remnant of the King's armies and drove 
 them from the field. He had but recently come 
 back to London, and was meditating, I doubt not,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 259 
 
 how he might once more draw his sword from the 
 scabbard in some daring service for his King, now a 
 prisoner of the Parliament at Holmby House. 
 
 He was attired, according to his wont, in all the 
 gauds of an extreme fashionable Cavalier, which he 
 wears with so extraordinary a grace that he never doth 
 look gaudy. Gay-coloured plumes, lace, velvet, and 
 satin, jewelled buttons, richly- embroidered scarf and 
 flaunting sash, on him tone into an unstudied harmony 
 subordinate to the charm and beauty of his person. 
 Methinks 'tis Colonel Lovelace becomes his fine 
 clothes rather than that they become him. 
 
 Only few words has Laurel ever exchanged with the 
 soldier-poet. Their meetings have been rare and brief 
 since the first chance encounter long ago on Hamp- 
 stead heights. Is it, perchance, because the memory 
 of them is so fondly cherished that Laurel said to-day 
 there was a ' special reason ' for her distaste to the 
 thought of wedding any of the admirers who would 
 fain treat for her ? Her proud nature would disdain 
 to confess it, I know. She respects as something 
 sacred the poet's faithful passion for the unknown 
 Lucasta of his lyrics, and would not dream, even 
 were it possible, of shaking that most wondrous 
 fidelity. 'Tis like her to rest content with adoring 
 in the inner sanctuary of her secret soul a far-off 
 hero, whom she has set on a pedestal therein, not 
 
 17 2
 
 260 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 hoping, nor, belike, even desiring, that he should 
 descend from his pedestal and come nearer to mingle 
 with the ordinary traffic of her everyday life. 
 
 Yet how could he so well accustomed to read 
 adoration for his person behind women's coquettish 
 airs and graces and languishing vapours how could 
 he mistake the language of those candid brown eyes, 
 shining so softly as they met his gaze ? A maiden's 
 reserve cannot extend to her eyes, for they are the 
 windows through which her heart peeps out, whether 
 she will or no, at certain unguarded moments. Such 
 a moment was it this morning when Laurel responded 
 to Colonel Lovelace's greeting by the gateway. Not 
 a line of her erect, stately bearing relaxed ; her head, 
 held high, did not droop ; but her eyes shall I ever 
 forget the look in her eyes ? I felt guilty that I had 
 seen it. I feel guilty now whilst I write of it. Stead- 
 fast indeed must be the flame that can be thus kept 
 burning by such scant fuel as an occasional smile and 
 greeting. 
 
 August 8. 
 
 Although there is peace, men feel little security of 
 its being lasting. Distractions still continue, the 
 conquerors being so sorely divided among themselves. 
 The army refused to be disbanded in June, and defies 
 the Parliament ; and even the army itself is torn by 
 factions, the party called Levellers having done their
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 261 
 
 best to stir up a mutiny within it. He will have to 
 be a bold and wary man, my Sir Oracle says, who 
 attempts a settlement 'twixt all these divers and con- 
 tending forces. 
 
 Tis difficult even for those living in the heart of 
 the turmoil to follow and understand the fluctuations 
 of London's varying moods. It seems but a short 
 time ago that the citizens shouted with one voice for 
 liberty, and poured out their money and treasure to 
 support the Parliament and defend the city, and sent 
 forth its youths by thousands to give their blood for 
 the cause, the triumph of which they held to be so 
 vital for the country's welfare. Yet now that it has 
 triumphed seething currents of restlessness and 
 jealous discontent are at work, pulling men this way 
 and that. The other day, when shops were closed 
 and drums beating along the streets, and the Militia 
 were called out again, 'twas not to acclaim the great 
 army that had so completely vanquished the Royalists 
 and gained the day, but to oppose its entry with 
 anger and defiance. There was a conspiracy hatched 
 in private by the citizens and prentices to turn and 
 rend their own powerful creation. But when the 
 army approached and, perforce, threatened London 
 the London that had sent it forth with blessings and 
 tears of enthusiasm active hostility died and gave 
 place to sullen acquiescence.
 
 262 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 The potent, conquering army, that had now 'added 
 a bloodless victory over its friends to the many 
 sanguinary ones it had scored over its foes, marched 
 from the westward through London to the Tower, 
 and Gabriel and I looked down on its serried ranks 
 from Master Haynes' latticed bays in Cheapside ; for 
 it chanced that the dialler had invited us thither 
 at that very hour to hold a colloquy about Hugh 
 1' Estrange. 
 
 If I could not help being stirred at the sight of 
 these regiments of foot and horse filing by, what 
 must Hugh have felt, who had marched with them 
 through winter rains and snow and summer heat, 
 and fought and bivouacked with them on many a 
 blood-stained field ? He stood below on the flags 
 with the other prentices, saluting the Generals with 
 his maimed hand as they passed, his eyes agleam, 
 though he did not huzza and shout with the rest of 
 the spectators. 
 
 No Cavalier ever sat his horse more gracefully than 
 the Lord General Fairfax, or wore his armour with 
 more perfect ease. He glanced up as he passed, and I 
 saw how the beauty of his delicate dark face had been 
 marred by sword slashes. Very different, thought I, 
 was his great comrade in arms, General Cromwell, 
 riding at the head of his Ironsides, with his slouching 
 shoulders, mud-coloured hair, and uncomely features.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 263 
 
 Yet I looked at him with awe, for Master Haynes, peer- 
 ing through his large spectacles over my shoulder, said : 
 
 ' There goes the man of greatest power and force 
 in the kingdom at this hour. He holds the destiny 
 of King and people in his hands.' 
 
 The destiny of the King ! Alack ! who can say 
 what that may prove to be, when His Majesty is a 
 prisoner of the army which hath to-day trampled 
 down all opposition and ground London beneath its 
 iron heel the army to which the King himself paid 
 an involuntary compliment when Cornet Joyce's 
 troop went to Holmby House to seize him. 
 
 ' What commission have I ?' said the Cornet. 
 ' This ' and he pointed to the doughty mounted 
 soldiers drawn up behind him. 
 
 ' As fair a commission,' replied the King, ' as ever 
 I saw. Such a company of proper, handsome men 
 as I Rave not seen a great while.' 
 
 A true enough description, methinks, of the horse- 
 men we watched curvetting along Cheapside this 
 forenoon. Those sons of Anak, bronzed, straight, 
 and muscular, hardened and seasoned by skilled 
 warfare as the chargers they rid on, worthy to be 
 compared with the hardy legions that were the glory 
 of old Rome, Gabriel said. And when the last were 
 out of sight, and the fierce beams of the sun beat on 
 the empty street, turning the dust raised by the
 
 264 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 horses' hoofs to clouds of brass, Hugh still stood 
 gazing wistfully at the turn where they had dis- 
 appeared, his fellow prentices having run back again 
 into the workshop. 
 
 Master Haynes is a strange mixture of superstition 
 and shrewdness. After he had talked at length of 
 the mock suns which had made their appearance in 
 the King's horoscope since 1644, and what these 
 augured, he struck into the subject of Hugh's future. 
 
 It seems that, among all his workers, Hugh has 
 the highest principle of honour, the clearest mathe- 
 matical head, the most fertile invention, and these 
 are the qualities Master Haynes would wish him who 
 succeeds him one day in his business to possess. 
 
 ' With his guardian's sanction,' said he, ' I am 
 willing to betroth him to my daughter. Ere he 
 went to the wars, to excite peaceful emulation 
 amongst the lads, I offered a prize for the most 
 ingenious mathematical toy, dial, clock, compass, 
 or suchlike, to be designed and fashioned in their 
 private hours. He, despite a wounded arm and 
 injured hand, has constructed something that I hold 
 to be a wonder of skill and ingenuity. 'Tis not only 
 clock and dial combined, but musical instrument as 
 well. Most unquestionably he, and he alone, is 
 deserving of the prize, and I shall have rare pleasure 
 in awarding him, in due time, his guerdon, my
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 265 
 
 pretty, pious daughter that is to say, not without 
 your consents, dear sir and madam.' 
 
 I remembered how, when Hugh had first made 
 mention to us of the prize offered by Master Haynes, 
 Laurel had asked jestingly if it were to be Mistress 
 Margaret. Little had she thought there was aught 
 prophetic in her jest. 
 
 'Twas but a formality for Master Haynes to say 
 he wanted my consent. If Gabriel's was forth- 
 coming, it would matter little whether or no I gave 
 mine. Yet surely I was acquainted with a reason 
 why the plan Master Haynes unfolded so graciously 
 could not be for Hugh's happiness. 
 
 There was no doubt in Master Haynes' mind that 
 his proposition would be received with favour. He 
 went on to say that he had laid it before Hugh's 
 kinsfolk on his mother's side, who were ready to 
 forget and forgive at last the marriage which had 
 bee,n so distasteful to them, and to take Hugh to 
 their bosom if he became affianced to Mistress 
 Margaret Haynes. 
 
 On hearing this, Gabriel, seeming much relieved 
 and overjoyed, at once expressed his warm approval, 
 and thanked the dialler for having proved so ex- 
 cellent a friend as well as master to his foster-son. 
 
 Then I felt I must speak. 
 
 ' You will not decide this,' said I, ' without being
 
 266 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 certain that they love each other well enough 
 to wed?' 
 
 ' No one could see them together and not take 
 them for sweethearts,' Gabriel answered. 
 
 Only twice had he seen Hugh in Mistress 
 Margaret's company : first, on the day at the 
 beginning of the war when they had stood side by 
 side in the crowd gathered in front of the Guildhall 
 to listen to the Puritan Lord Brooke's fervid 
 eloquence ; and a second time on that summer 
 evening when we had chanced to come on them 
 after their toiling at the fortifications. In such 
 moments of high enthusiasm and urgency those who 
 were of a like mind were drawn so closely to one 
 another by the bond of their patriotic inclinations 
 that they might easily be mistaken for lovers when 
 they were nothing of the kind. 
 
 I knew not how to explain this, so I said, 
 speaking somewhat bluntly in my eagerness : 
 
 ' Hugh respects and admires Mistress Margaret 
 and well he may ! But his affections are, or were, 
 set on another.' 
 
 For the first time since I married him my 
 husband turned on me a stern and nigh angry look. 
 
 ' Another ? Whom can you mean ?' 
 
 ' Your daughter Laurel,' I answered. 
 
 'Twas bold to say it, for Laurel's price to Gabriel
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 267 
 
 is above rubies, and though he is anxious she should 
 be happily wed and settled, especially since my 
 brother Roger's scandalous schemings came to light, 
 he deems none who have entered the lists worthy to 
 win her. 
 
 ' I have too good an opinion of the youth's 
 modesty and gratitude,' said he, 'to credit that he 
 would repay me for having bred him up as the 
 brother of my children by presuming to think of 
 either as aught but his foster-sister.' 
 
 Nor had my words shaken Master Haynes in his 
 belief that Hugh, like every other young man who 
 came under his roof, must prefer pretty Mistress 
 Margaret to all other maidens. 
 
 ' See, we may take this as a proof,' said he, 
 drawing a sheet of paper from a portfolio. ' Hereon 
 are two mottoes. One is the favourite of Mistress 
 Laurel, and in her handwriting. The other is writ 
 by -my daughter, and is from the Scriptures. 'Twixt 
 the two Master Hugh's choice wavered, but which 
 do you think stands at last graven on his ingenious 
 piece of work ? Not " Le temps s'en va, le temps 
 s'en va. H6las; le temps, non, mais nous en aliens," 
 madam, but " The darkness and the light are both 
 alike to Thee." ' 
 
 Whether 'twas proof or not, I said no more, for I 
 could not betray Hugh's confidence, and it may be
 
 268 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 that Hugh, after all, has learnt the expediency of 
 following the old London fashion, common enough, 
 which is that the most skilled and trusty apprentice 
 should woo his master's daughter, and succeed him 
 at his death. Yet, methinks, I would rather he had 
 been faithful, even in vain, than prudent. 
 
 Laurel is like to resent the betrothal should it 
 come to pass, of Hugh and Mistress Margaret, I 
 fear, for Silence's sake. Only the other day she said 
 playfully that when Hugh and Silence were wed she 
 should like them to live in the little house in 
 Holborn, next to the one Mr. Milton has lately 
 come to from the Barbican with his fair wife, with 
 whom he has long since become reconciled. 
 
 October 2. 
 
 On August 24 the King was brought, a prisoner 
 of the army, to his fair palace of Hampton Court, 
 where, in his father's time, he took part in so many 
 splendid pageants and state entertainments, and 
 where, later in his own reign, he hath passed days 
 of happy, innocent diversion with his Queen and 
 children. 
 
 His Majesty's manner of life has been freer and 
 pleasanter here than when he was in the hands of 
 the Scots, and afterwards of the Parliament. He is 
 now more of a guarded and attended Prince than a
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 269 
 
 conquered and purchased captive. The chiefs of 
 the army show him courteous respect, and have 
 permitted his intimate and faithful followers, Lord 
 Ashburnham and Sir John Berkeley, to return from 
 beyond seas to be about his person. He enjoys 
 what was denied him at Holmby House the con- 
 solation of his own spiritual advisers, instead of 
 being preached at by Roundhead ranters, and his 
 children, the sweet Princess Elizabeth, and the 
 young Dukes of York and Gloucester, come from 
 Syon House to visit him. 
 
 The King dines publicly in state, and any gentle- 
 men who wish are admitted afterwards to kiss his 
 hand in the Presence Chamber. All his old servants 
 and Cavaliers who served him in the wars have free 
 access to His Majesty, and Mr. Fanshawe has been 
 much with him, Anne having borne her husband 
 company twice to pay her respects to the King, she 
 being daughter and wife of two of His Majesty's 
 most loyal and devoted servants. 
 
 'Tis little to be wondered at that those who have 
 ever been attached to the King's service should take 
 advantage of this opportunity of flocking to Hampton 
 Court ; but what seems strange is that the river 
 should be crowded daily with barges and wherries 
 bearing freights of the citizens thither. Belike this 
 marks the slow turning of the tide, the beginning of
 
 270 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 the reaction, which my Sir Oracle foretold on our 
 wedding-day, when the city streets were lined with 
 lowering faces, and no one smiled or called ' Huzza !' 
 as the King came forth from the Guildhall to his 
 coach. That was the King's last appearance in the 
 City, and as I look back to that day across the 
 years of my married life, extraordinary seem the 
 public changes and events that have been crowded 
 into them, and there pass before me like a procession 
 the divers men of mark, and the young lives of 
 promise that within that time have either ended in 
 their beds, from natural distempers, or met a violent 
 and bloody end on the scaffold and the battlefield. 
 
 A fortnight or more ago we took Olave to see the 
 harvest carried in the meadows round the Grange at 
 Kingston, and then heard much of how the Royal 
 prisoner passes his time. He plays tennis and 
 hunts, and our kinswoman at the Grange has met 
 His Majesty in the park, reading as he walked to 
 the gentleman attending him, from some theological 
 book. One day lately he rid as far as the Grange, 
 and drew rein and dismounted to watch a while the 
 harvesters at their toil. But he had soon looked 
 beyond them, over the waving gold of the corn, to 
 the blue line of Surrey hills, with pensive, melan- 
 choly eyes. 
 
 ' Would that he'd come again to-day,' Laurel had
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 271 
 
 said, ' to see the wenches and lads at their harvest 
 junketings. Our little Viking should go on his knees 
 and pay him homage/ 
 
 But the King did not come, and Laurel must needs 
 be satisfied with having the spot pointed out where 
 the King had rested. She went to it, leading Olave 
 by the hand, and told him that this was the ground 
 his King had stood on, and those the fields and hills 
 his eyes had contemplated but a few days ago. 
 
 Olave gazed solemnly, first at the ground, then at 
 the distant blue hills, melting into the deeper blue of 
 the sky, and lastly into Laurel's face. Then the bag- 
 pipes struck up in the barn, and his gravity gave 
 way. The weird strains of the bagpipe were new to 
 his ears, my little son having lived his short life alto- 
 gether under the Puritan regime, which has banished 
 musicians, puppet-shows, and mountebanks from the 
 London streets, and has made it a penal offence to 
 sing, dance, or even laugh in them. He began a- 
 capering and clapping of his hands, and shouted 
 ' God save the King !' so lustily that I looked round 
 in alarm lest any of the guards from the army's head- 
 quarters at Putney should be patrolling the lanes and 
 hear him. 
 
 Before going back to London, we took barge and 
 drifted up the river till the lights beneath the silver 
 globe of the full moon twinkled at us from the long
 
 272 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 front of Cardinal Wolsey's palace. We saw figures 
 pass and repass the windows, and heard the neighing 
 and champing of war-horses in the paved stable-yard. 
 
 ' To-night the King is entertaining his captors, 
 the Generals Cromwell, Ireton, and Whalley, with 
 their wives,' Gabriel said. ' His Majesty is, I'll 
 warrant, all graciousness to homely Mistress Crom- 
 well, who 'twas his express desire should be pre- 
 sented to him. The austere Roundhead soldiery, 
 'tis said, is thawing fast in the sunshine of royal 
 smiles.' 
 
 ' Methinks General Cromwell is only hiding some 
 dark design,' Laurel said, ' beneath this seeming 
 friendliness and consideration towards the King.' 
 
 ' And others think that the King is not sincere in 
 his ready acceptance thereof,' my husband answered : 
 ' that he would play one party off against the other, 
 for 'tis on the widening of the breach 'twixt Presby- 
 terians and Independents that he now builds high 
 hopes of regaining his crown.' 
 
 ' The King still wears his crown by right Divine. 
 The rebels, whatever they choose to call themselves, 
 Puritans, Independents, Republicans, or Levellers, 
 cannot give him back what they haven't the power 
 to take away,' Laurel said hotly, as strong in her 
 faith in the Divine right of monarchs as the King 
 himself.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 273 
 
 Olave's head was pillowed on my lap, and I had 
 thought he slept, but now he opened his drowsy 
 blue eyes, and again looking at Laurel, he exclaimed : 
 ' God save the King !' 
 
 This evening our dear cousins and friends the 
 Fanshawes came from Portugal Row to sup with us. 
 They start to-morrow for Portsmouth to take ship 
 for France. 
 
 Whilst Sir Oracle and Mr. Fanshawe were in the 
 study comparing their translations of an Ode of 
 Horace, which they both deem to be untranslatable, 
 yet cannot forbear to attempt, Anne came upstairs 
 with me to my carnation closet. She took up this 
 book, which lay, in company with Master Crashaw's 
 and Master Vaughan's Poems and holy Bishop 
 Andrewes' ' Devotions,' on the bureau, and turning 
 over the blank pages she counted them, and chid me 
 for writing in my journal with so little regularity. 
 
 ' 'Tis gradually becoming an annual rather than a 
 journal,' she said. 
 
 ' But I have had no travels and adventures such as 
 yours when you were plundered and near cast away 
 on the islands of Scilly,' said I. ' We stay-at-homes 
 lead less romantic lives. Would you have me write of 
 each time I go out to pull herbs, or to the Exchange 
 to choose a riband, or keep count of every brew of 
 herb tea, cowslip wine, and rose cordial, and of all 
 
 18
 
 274 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 the pickled cloves and flummery caudles the still-room 
 maids make or mar ? I never meant my journal to 
 be a book of recipes and prosy household matters.' 
 
 ' Neither can you have meant it to be a family 
 chronicle,' she replied, ' else you certainly would 
 have recorded on some of these blank pages, under 
 1645 and 1646, your father, dear Master Howard's 
 marriage with Mistress Travers, and pretty Prue's.' 
 
 At the time they happened both these events had 
 caused me some pain, though 'twas nothing compared 
 with my distress at the disclosure of Roger's perfidy. 
 Now I can but admit that my father's second 
 marriage has been for the best. His wife's fortune, 
 if not large, is comfortable, and her influence with 
 the Aldermen and City folks has helped to procure 
 my father a post as teacher of singing at Gresham 
 College. Madam has not conquered, 'tis true, Jane's 
 obstinate aversion to a stepmother, and Prue declares 
 'tis because home was so different and she was no 
 longer wanted there that she made her runaway match 
 with a nigh penniless pupil, who long ago fell in love 
 with Prue's performance of Dr. Bull's famous fantasy 
 for the harpsicon, with thirty variations so intricate 
 that even Prue's skilled little fingers could never 
 master more than twenty-four of them. Having in- 
 curred her stepmother's high displeasure by such a 
 foolish marriage, Prue and her husband found them-
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 275 
 
 selves soon afterwards in debt and in the Fleet, 
 and, methinks, had Gabriel not been willing and 
 able to help them out, they would be there at this 
 moment. 
 
 Anne, fearing she had offended me by referring to 
 unpleasant subjects, put my day-book back again in 
 its place by Master Vaughan, and then drew me 
 down beside her on the hearth, holding my hands 
 affectionately in hers. 
 
 ' Dear Lovejoy, I understand,' said she. ' 'Tis not 
 tittle-tattle, but of history and fine things you would 
 fain write in your book when the spirit moves you, 
 and if the spirit doesn't move you, you would rather 
 leave it alone. Dick is the same. He can only 
 write fluently when he is inspired withal. Do you 
 know the King has read his " Pastor Fido," and 
 thinks Sir John Denham's prefatory lines of praise 
 richly deserved ? We took our farewells of His 
 Majesty yesterday at Hampton Court. Let me tell 
 you about that most pathetical scene, and I am sure 
 you will be moved to write it ere you lay yourself 
 abed. I, for my part, shall wait to write the story 
 of my life till I am an old woman, and then, belike, 
 I shall ask the loan of your day-book, Lovejoy, to 
 freshen my memory, though, methinks, much is 
 already engraven thereon so clearly that it can 
 never fade.' 
 
 18 2
 
 276 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 An old woman ! Could she ever grow old, this 
 winsome, fair creature, to whose lively, girlish spirits 
 wifehood and maternity had but added a new and 
 softening charm ? 
 
 ' The King is more strictly guarded than he has 
 been,' she continued, ' His Majesty having seen fit to 
 withdraw his parole to the Generals. We were with 
 him near an hour in the room called Paradise, and he 
 talked much to us of his concerns, and was pleased 
 to give my husband credentials for Spain, with 
 private instructions. When it came to parting, 
 I could not refrain from weeping, as he saluted me. 
 I prayed to God to preserve his Majesty with long 
 life and happy years. He stroked me on the cheek, 
 and said : " Child, if God pleaseth, it shall be so ; but 
 both you and I must submit to God's will, and you 
 know in what hands I am." Then he turned to my 
 husband, and said : " Be sure, Dick, to tell my son all 
 that I have said, and deliver those letters to my wife 
 Pray God bless her ! I hope I shall do well." And, 
 taking Dick in his arms, he did add : " Thou hast 
 ever been an honest man, and I hope God will bless 
 thee, and make thee a happy servant to my son, 
 whom I have charged in my letter to continue his 
 love and trust to you." '' 
 
 The tears which had been gathering fast in her 
 round, childlike eyes rained down, and her voice
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 277 
 
 was choked. I have many visions of my dear girl- 
 hood's friend limned on my mind since the earliest, 
 when I saw her for the first time, a restless, small elf 
 of a maid, taking her lesson from my father on the 
 virginals in Hart Street. But should we never 
 meet again, I shall see her oftenest, methinks, as she 
 looked to-night, sitting beside me in the firelight, 
 recounting, with streaming eyes, how she and her 
 husband had taken their farewells of the King, and 
 how he had promised that if ever he were ' restored 
 to his dignity ' he would ' bountifully reward them 
 both for their service and sufferings.' 
 
 After a silence only broken by the soft moaning 
 of the October wind in the chimney, Anne said : 
 
 ' But Laurel could have told you all this when she 
 comes back to you to-morrow. I let her attend me 
 into the King's presence yesterday on her earnestly 
 petitioning it. Beautiful, loyal Laurel ! I shall 
 miss my nightingale, and will not pretend that your 
 sharp-witted Jane can fill her place, glad as I am to 
 have her, dear little soul !' 
 
 Jane, to her great joy, hath gained her ambition, 
 and is to escape from her stepmother's government 
 and serve for a time Mistress Fanshawe. She is to 
 go with them to Paris, as young waiting-gentle- 
 woman, a post Laurel has filled for love during her 
 mistress's sojourn in London.
 
 278 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 November 12. 
 
 All the town is talking of the King's flight at dusk 
 last night from Hampton Court. He was thought 
 to be writing letters in his bedchamber, but when 
 his keeper, General Whalley, went in, he found it 
 empty. The King had left his cloak on the floor, 
 and, with Colonel Legge, was gone by private 
 passage to the riverside. They crossed, and, taking 
 horse, rid away in the storm and darkness toward 
 Oatlands. 
 
 In Mr. Peter Lely's studio at his new house in 
 Covent Garden we have seen to-day the portrait for 
 which His Majesty lately sat whilst he was at 
 Hampton Court. Even the hand of his own dear 
 painter, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, can never have 
 portrayed the King's features with a more incom- 
 parable skill. 'Tis wondrous fine, full of a most 
 noble dignity and repose. The natural melancholy 
 of his countenance has deepened as well it may, 
 after all the tossings, tumults, and reverses of these 
 distressful years. Not a King of pomp and state, 
 but a King of sorrows, is the King of Mr. Lely's 
 portrait. In it he wears a Spanish hat and a long, 
 heavy cloak maybe the very same that, before his 
 flight, he left on the floor of his bedchamber as a 
 legacy to his captors. 
 
 The artist told us that his friend, Colonel Love-
 
 .4 W OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 279 
 
 lace, had this very morning stood before the picture 
 of his King for a long time entranced, and then taken 
 pen and paper and composed some lines on it. 
 
 ' And, to my taste, our fair poet has never writ 
 aught so good,' Mr. Lely said. 
 
 ' There was another portrait here a short time 
 ago,' he added, smiling at Laurel, ' which, though 
 very different, seemed equally to enchain his fancy. 
 'Twas of a certain comely young shepherdess, 
 holding a nosegay. You are likely to know better 
 than I if she, too, inspired his Muse.' 
 
 Without looking to see, I was sure Laurel lifted 
 her muff to hide the glowing blush which mantles in 
 her cheek at the mention of only one name.
 
 XII 
 
 THE GRANGE, 
 
 KINGSTON-ON-THAMES, 
 
 July, 1648. 
 
 I BROUGHT Silence here, where we have lain since 
 June, in hope that the pure country air and breezes 
 from the river would revive her. But the hope has 
 proved vain. Silence is fading away, and too weak 
 to rise from the little white bed, where she lies all 
 day with her great starlike eyes gazing out through 
 the open casement at the swaying tree-tops and the 
 pale-blue hills. 
 
 Laurel and I and old Miriam Fisher keep watch 
 by her in turns, though 'tis difficult to tear Laurel 
 from her darling, even to take an airing in the garden. 
 
 This profound lethargy came on Silence in April, 
 after a terrible excitement, one of her old frenzies of 
 passionate jealousy. 'Twas Master Haynes who was 
 the unwitting cause of it when he sent an invitation 
 to Gabriel and me to bring Hugh's foster-sisters to 
 a feast at his house. Silence was charmed to go, 
 [280]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 281 
 
 because the festivity was to be in honour of Hugh's 
 invention, and his wonderful dial clock was to be 
 exhibited to the guests. She was in joyous anticipa- 
 tion of seeing Hugh step out from the ranks of his 
 fellow-apprentices, the hero of the day, to receive his 
 prize, having no suspicion, as I had, of what that 
 prize might be. 
 
 But 'twas not till we came into the parlour at the 
 sign of the Tortoise that it dawned on me Master 
 Haynes had intended to surprise everybody by making 
 this the occasion of his daughter's betrothal to Hugh 
 1'Estrange. 
 
 Soft lights shone from sconces on the brown panels, 
 fresh spring flowers and green boughs decked the 
 chimney, and the big round table was spread with 
 snowy napery, a Dutch porcelain service, cut-glass 
 rummers, and pewter dishes, on which were many 
 substantial meats and dainty confections. The guests 
 assembled before we arrived were triumphantly pre- 
 sented to us by our host as Hugh's maternal grand- 
 parents, uncles, and aunts. For the most part they 
 were severe, stiff-mannered persons, who had only 
 formal, graceless words of thanks to give Gabriel for 
 having bred up Hugh with his own children, they 
 clearly preferring to regard their kinsman, Master 
 Haynes, as his chief benefactor. 
 
 Being bigoted Republicans, they were much 

 
 282 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 incensed at having had their coach surrounded as they 
 drove from the country into London, by a body of the 
 City Militia, who shouted at them to drink the King's 
 health ; for in April all London's latent loyalty was 
 near to being roused anew by the vote which the 
 Parliament had passed against making any further 
 attempts to treat with the King. The Sunday before 
 that evening at Master Haynes's some prentices 
 who had been playing at bowls in Moorfields drove 
 off the soldiers who tried to stop their game, pursued 
 them through Moorgate, and then marched through 
 the City, raising the cry of ' God and King Charles !' 
 Thousands of sympathizers joined them on the way, 
 among them my brother Tim. Sir Oracle says the 
 changes in Tim's politics show pretty accurately 
 which way the wind is blowing in London town. 
 
 Master Haynes's Puritan guests could talk of little 
 else but this outrage of being asked to drink the 
 King's health in the public street, till the dishes were 
 cleared and their host invited them to drink in 
 Rhenish wine the health of his daughter Margaret 
 and of their young kinsman Hugh 1'Estrange. 
 
 I remarked that Mistress Margaret, who was doing 
 the honours of her father's table in her demure and 
 modest fashion, started and turned rosy red at hers 
 and Hugh's name being thus coupled together. Hugh 
 was not present, but his wondrous ingenious piece
 
 -
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 283 
 
 of work was being passed round the table for critical 
 admiration. It had not come to Silence's turn to 
 examine it, but she was watching intently the faces 
 around her to read their opinion. She noticed that 
 everyone who took the dial in his hand bent over it in 
 a listening attitude with exclamations of delight and 
 astonishment, and so she learned for the first time 
 that Hugh's invention produced some kind of music 
 music for which, though no Puritan, she felt a strange, 
 jealous hatred, because she could not hear it. The 
 colour flamed up in her pale, transparent cheek, her 
 eyes dilated, and she clenched her hands. 
 
 The old dialler, beaming benignantly through his 
 spectacles, called his daughter to come and stand 
 beside his high-backed, carven chair. Mistress 
 Margaret obeyed with downcast lashes and a 
 hesitating step, whilst her father commanded a 
 servant to summon Master 1' Estrange from the 
 workshop. 
 
 Hugh, as he entered the room, bowed to the whole 
 company, but methought his eyes leapt instantly to 
 Laurel, as if he saw no one but her. It happened 
 that at that moment the dial had been handed to 
 Laurel, and her head was bent over it, her red lips 
 parted in wonder at its minute and ingenious work- 
 manship. 
 
 ' Come forward, Hugh 1'Estrange,' Master Haynes
 
 284 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGA Y 
 
 said ; ' you have long known that 'tis a mathematical 
 toy of your fashioning which hath gained the prize, 
 but I have refrained from awarding it till a ripe and 
 favourable opportunity offered itself. I hold this to 
 be such an opportunity, inasmuch as your mother's 
 kindred have assembled here at my table to assure 
 you that the past is forgot, and that bygones shall 
 be bygones. In their presence, and in that of the 
 scholarly and generous gentleman, your guardian, 
 who bound you apprentice to me, and who has 
 honoured me by sitting at my board to-day with his 
 lady and fair daughters, I do bestow on you my 
 daughter's hand.' 
 
 The little figure in dove-colour beside his chair 
 shrank away, and Hugh did not advance. 
 
 * Tut, tut !' exclaimed Master Haynes ; ' why so 
 shy ? Is the hand that is recovered enough of its 
 hurts to do such clever work not able to grasp these 
 small white fingers ?' 
 
 Hugh appeared like one stunned or in a dream. 
 In truth, 'twas a moment for him that required 
 courage a higher courage, maybe, than it had 
 needed to stand amidst the cannon's roar and the 
 clash of steel on Newbury plain, or to rush into the 
 thick of Naseby's bloody fight. 
 
 How could he refuse this supreme favour from his 
 revered master ? How seem to act so churlishly to
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 285 
 
 the pretty Puritan maiden as to decline to take her 
 hand ? Yet how could he accept, I asked myself, in 
 the sight of one he loved and of another who loved 
 him ? 
 
 Master Haynes, for all his shrewdness, methought 
 had been blind, and in not preparing them before- 
 hand had placed the two he would have brought 
 together in a cruel situation. To poor Silence, what 
 she saw was agony, and her wild, passionate soul, 
 that had for long crouched submissively behind the 
 barriers of her dumbness, now rose, of a sudden, in 
 hot and uncontrollable rebellion. Unfortunately, 
 Laurel had passed the dial to Silence across the 
 table, and she was holding it in her lap just as 
 Master Haynes drew shrinking Mistress Margaret 
 from behind his chair, and gave her a playful push 
 towards Hugh. Silence, shaken in every limb by 
 the violence of her speechless emotions, crushed 
 Hugh's handicraft in both her hands, hurled it from 
 her with her whole strength, and then fled from the 
 room, Laurel, in dismay, following her. The dial 
 struck the wall a few inches above Mistress Mar- 
 garet's head, and the delicate mechanism of its 
 interior fell shattered on the corner of the hearth- 
 stone. 
 
 It all happened in a flash, and the consternation 
 and bewilderment of the company were so great that
 
 286 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 one and all rose to their feet, while Gabriel gave 
 the best explanation he could of his poor child's 
 infirmity, saying it made her liable at times to 
 inexplicable outbursts of passion. The scene comes 
 before me now as I write the horrified faces of the 
 Puritan guests ; Master Haynes in his flowing gown 
 and scarlet skull-cap, the sly twinkle gone entirely 
 from his eyes ; Hugh looking ruefully at his wrecked 
 masterpiece ; Mistress Margaret, despite her narrow 
 escape, no longer shrinking and timid, but standing, 
 brave and erect, in the middle of the room, casting 
 the oil of her sweet-toned speech on the troubled 
 waters. 
 
 ' You were in error, sir,' she said to her father, 
 'to think that Hugh 1'Estrange and I could wed 
 withone another. We are friends in the Lord, 
 and could be nothing dearer, even if her voice 
 trembled ' if Hugh did not love his foster-sister.' 
 
 ' Which of them ?' inquired Master Haynes. 
 ' Methinks, if 'tis Mistress Silence, he hath caught 
 a Tartar.' 
 
 No wonder that in his irritation and disappoint- 
 ment Master Haynes was somewhat forgetful of his 
 courtesies ! 
 
 At last Hugh spoke. 
 
 ' I am most sensible of your bounteous goodness, 
 master,' said he, ' but I am undeserving of it, and
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 287 
 
 quite unworthy of the fair prize, and, even had I 
 been worthy to receive it, I should have forfeited it 
 now that the work which won it is destroyed.' 
 
 Hugh's new-found relations then began to express 
 their chagrin at the turn the affair had taken, and 
 their host to apologize for what he had designed to 
 be a betrothal feast turning out so sorry a fiasco. 
 
 'Twas from that night Silence languished. Her 
 anger had soon burnt out, leaving but the ashes of a 
 bitter regret for what she had done. On the next 
 morning she writ a note to Hugh, beseeching his 
 forgiveness, and Laurel went herself to deliver it 
 into his hands ; but Hugh was gone, and neither 
 Mistress Margaret nor her father knew where. One 
 of the prentices, however, gave the information that 
 he had gone to enlist once more in his old regiment, 
 the war having then broke out afresh. It is nearly 
 quenched again now, the Cavalier standards having 
 been unfurled and their drooping spirits raised, 
 mostly for naught. 
 
 Colonel Lovelace, who headed the rising in his 
 native county of Kent, was taken prisoner, and is 
 confined, with his brother, at Petre House, in 
 Aldersgate, close to where my sister, Peg Bagshaw, 
 lives. General Fairfax is besieging Colchester, and 
 only a few days ago there was fierce fighting not far 
 from this peaceful spot. The Lord Francis Villiers,
 
 288 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 that incomparably gallant and beautiful boy, being 
 overcome by the rebels, would ask no quarter, and, 
 facing them, with his back against a tree on 
 Kingston highway, received ten mortal wounds. 
 So the Angel of Death is still busy in our distracted 
 country, though since I first writ in these pages it 
 hath never drawn so near to me and mine as now, 
 when my husband's sweet child lies slowly a-dying. 
 
 Laurel cannot believe it. She thinks, if only she 
 could find out where Hugh is, and bring him to 
 Silence to forgive her for the mischief she wrought 
 that April evening, her loved one would recover. 
 I do not tell her that I know better, and that 'tis 
 easier to break hearts than to mend them. 
 
 August 13. 
 
 At sunset yesterday, when all the sky was aglow 
 with a golden glory, and the sweet scents of evening 
 coming through the casement, Silence died. A 
 minute before she had raised herself in the little 
 bed. Her lips moved as if she would have spoken, 
 and she seemed to be listening. Laurel verily 
 believes that in death Lady Eleanor's prophecy was 
 fulfilled : that Silence's ears were ' unstopped and 
 her tongue loosed.' 
 
 ' She can hear music now, and loves it,' said 
 Laurel, ' and is speaking and singing with the angels.'
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 289 
 
 'Tis some comfort to Laurel in her sore grief to 
 think this, as it is to feel that Silence saw Hugh 
 before she died. 
 
 'Twas a week ago that Laurel met Hugh by a 
 strange accident, with some others of his brigade, at 
 ease in the lane on which the Grange gates open. 
 In his musqueteer dress, splashed with the mud 
 of the highway, he came into the little white 
 chamber, with the window looking out on the garden 
 and the woodlands, wherein Silence lay, and dropped 
 on his knees beside the bed. Too spent, for she had 
 just been let blood, to converse in the old signs, she 
 could only fix her eyes on his face ; and when she 
 had satisfied herself that he had forgiven her, or 
 perhaps had never been angry with her at all, tears 
 of joy rolled down her wasted cheeks. She put out 
 her hand, and stroked caressingly the bowed tawny 
 head of this foster-brother, the hero of her tender 
 childhood, the one love of her silent, inscrutable 
 maidenhood. Then, with her other hand, she 
 drew Laurel's face down to rest by hers on the 
 pillow. 
 
 ' Console each other when I am gone,' her eyes 
 seemed to say. 
 
 I looked out on the sunny landscape, and watched 
 the purple shadows come and go on the rippling 
 cornfields beyond the fence. A pair of wood-pigeons 
 
 19
 
 290 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 were cooing in a fir-tree near the window, and made 
 the only sounds that broke the stillness. 
 
 My thoughts went back to the snowy January day 
 on which these three, with their dogs, squirrel, and 
 parrot, had arrived at the Gray House from Blois. 
 Somehow, instead of the greensward of the Grange, 
 I saw the snow-covered grass plot at home a red- 
 haired boy leaning over the sundial, and an active, 
 swift, darting little figure being restrained from 
 flying to him. I heard Laurel's clear young voice 
 command, ' Come back, Hugh ! Silence wants you. 
 Silence wants you.' Methinks that hath been the 
 cry of Laurel's soul always. But now Silence's 
 heart's desire is stilled. She wants Hugh no longer, 
 for she lies in her last tranquil sleep at rest she 
 who once was so full of restless, eager life, as if she 
 had been compelled to find vent in movement for all 
 that her speechlessness withheld. 
 
 The chamber is sweet with the fairest flowers and 
 herbs of late summer, which Laurel has heaped 
 around her beloved dead. A white rose is clasped 
 in her marble hands. The border skirting the terrace 
 without is crimson with love-lies-bleeding. Within 
 love lies dead, white, pure, and peaceful. 
 
 This morning Hugh came again, and looked at 
 Silence in her dead beauty. 'Twas but for a few
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 291 
 
 minutes he tarried, for at ten of the clock he was to 
 fall in with some of the Yellow Regiment at Putney 
 to march to the trenches before Colchester. My 
 husband was too plunged in grief for the loss of his 
 fair daughter to speak with Hugh, but Laurel and I 
 walked with him to the gates. Laurel's was a tear- 
 less sorrow, and 'twas more distressing than if she 
 had wept and wailed. 
 
 She had not said a word to Hugh till he took her 
 hand, and murmured a husky good-bye. Then she 
 broke forth in bitter speech : 
 
 * Now, Hugh, you may go and pledge your troth 
 with Mistress Margaret. There is no longer a reason 
 why I should not give you both my blessing and 
 come to your wedding. I was all but saying "dance 
 at it," but I warrant there is nought that's so sinful 
 as dancing permitted at Puritan marriage-feasts. I 
 wish you joy, Hugh, with all my heart.' 
 
 Her words roused some emotion in Hugh that his 
 customary self-restraint was powerless to master. It 
 seemed as if he was so stung to the quick that, 
 though he fain would hold his tongue, he could not. 
 
 ' Why talk of weddings now, and to me ?' he 
 asked. ' Even if I had a mind, as some have, to 
 plight troth for convenience with one when they love 
 another, 'twere not possible in my case. My ap- 
 prenticeship is at an end : I return no more to 
 
 19 2
 
 292 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 Master Haynes ; and when this second war is over 
 I start on my travels, and one day, maybe, shall 
 settle and ply my trade at Blois. But first I would 
 meet with my enemy again. He whom I stood 
 weakly by and saw saved from a just retribution 
 because it was you who saved him. Something 
 has grown up in my heart like a hideous gourd, 
 choking by degrees all high spiritual striving and 
 nobler feelings. Methinks the devil must have 
 planted the seed there, and God has forsaken me. I 
 have prayed, but the only prayer that passes my lips 
 is for revenge, that I may not let another chance 
 slip, that my enemy may once more be delivered into 
 my hands.' 
 
 Laurel looked at him with strained, horrified eyes. 
 
 4 Have you forgot, Hugh,' she cried ' forgot that 
 your enemy is your father ?' 
 
 ' Nay, 'tis because he is my father that he is doubly 
 my enemy. Can I love and honour the father who 
 made my mother suffer ere I breathed ? 'Twas his 
 cruelty robbed me of my mother. For that, without 
 knowing him, I think I have hated him all my 
 life.' 
 
 'Twas terrible to see how his wrath transformed 
 him. One would hardly have known him for the 
 same youth who, but half an hour ago, had entered 
 the presence of the dead, with reverent steps and
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 293 
 
 head humbly bent, as if he came into the Holy of 
 Holies. 
 
 ' But you were not without a mother's love. Our 
 mother nurtured you as her own, and we we loved 
 you.' 
 
 The bitter note in Laurel's voice had melted now 
 into infinite tenderness, and at sound of it the fierce 
 glitter died from Hugh's red-brown eyes. 
 
 ' Forgive me ! My boyhood was blessed indeed ; 
 the ties of blood could not be dearer and sweeter 
 than those that bound me to my foster-sisters. I am 
 not such a monster of ingratitude as to forget them, 
 except when this ' he put his hand to the back of 
 his head on the place where he had been wounded 
 in the strange affray with the man who had proved 
 to be his father ' when this drives all recollections 
 but one from my mind, and maddens my brain. It 
 hath changed me. 'Tis because of it that I have 
 shunned lately those I most loved. In sooth, it 
 has made me thoughtless, or I should have told 
 her ' reverently he raised his eyes in the direction 
 of the little casement ' surely I should have told 
 her I minded not the breaking of that toy. 'Tis well 
 you should know the worst of me how evil I've 
 grown to be. And now, farewell.' 
 
 He stooped, kissing first mine and then Laurel's 
 hand. The next moment he was gone.
 
 294 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' Oh, why did I speak those taunting words, 
 mother ? Why was I so wroth ? I would fain call 
 him back now 'tis too late. To let him go away 
 thus will but harden his heart the more against his 
 enemy his father. Tis dreadful to think on't. He 
 cannot be wicked Hugh ! He was always good to 
 Silence, and patient with her. If he broke her heart, 
 he did not mean to do it. Ay, I would fain call him 
 back. She loved him so she loved him so !' 
 
 And Laurel laid her proud head, like a broken 
 flower, on my shoulder, and burst out a-weeping. I 
 was relieved to see her tears come at last, but 
 methought she wept more for Hugh than for Silence 
 Silence, whom she deems happy listening to the 
 music of the angels. Laurel vows she will try not to 
 mourn too much for Silence. 
 
 AT THE GRAY HOUSE, 
 CHANCERY LANE, 
 
 September, 1648. 
 
 The rains being so heavy, and the country dreary, 
 we took leave of our Kingston kinsfolk and returned 
 home soon after Silence was buried beneath the 
 shadow of the yews in the quiet churchyard. Gabriel 
 hath designed a little cross of fair white stone to 
 mark her grave. Methinks my husband looks many 
 years older since this loss has so saddened him. He 
 speaks of it little, and has gone back to his dear
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 295 
 
 books, and is as much occupied as heretofore in 
 writing, translating, and visiting the booksellers on 
 London Bridge, Paul's Churchyard, and elsewhere. 
 Be the weather foul or fine, he will go forth daily 
 a-book-hunting, even if it be only as far as the turn- 
 stile in Holborn. Yet he may do this and never for- 
 get for one minute the sweet child he left under the 
 sward at Kingston. 
 
 'Twas a sad home-coming without Silence, and 
 great was my little Viking's grief when we made him 
 understand that the mute playmate, whom he held 
 in such fondness, would never make him any more 
 story-pictures with her needle or romp with him 
 again. He doth check himself with difficulty in his 
 quaint infant prayers, where he was wont to ask God 
 to bless Silence. ' I forgot,' says he, ' Silence is with 
 God now, and He will keep her and not let her come 
 back to Olave and Marie any more.' And then he 
 goes on with his prayer as usual. 
 
 How odd it sounded that night we came home to 
 hear cried in the streets news from the North of 
 General Cromwell's vanquishing and slaughtering of 
 the Scots, when 'twas these very Scots who were 
 his stout allies at the great victory of Marston Moor 
 four years agone. And now this second war, which 
 hath been ill-starred for the Royalists from the first, 
 is over ; for at the end of the last month the
 
 296 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 besieged in Colchester, reduced to sore extremities, 
 having long lived on horseflesh, yielded themselves 
 to the conquerors, and the two brave officers who had 
 defended the town with such valour, Sir Charles 
 Lucas and Sir George Lisle, were shot to death on 
 the walls by order of General Ireton. 
 
 The King is in the Isle of Wight, a prisoner at 
 Carisbrook Castle, where the Governor, Colonel 
 Hammond, serves the Parliament rather than the 
 army, and again commissioners have gone hence to 
 enter into treaty with His Majesty at Newport ; but 
 'twill end in smoke, as all other negotiations have 
 done. 
 
 Some are even daring to petition that the King 
 shall be brought to trial for the great bloodshed and 
 calamity 'tis said his tyranny have caused the 
 nation. 
 
 I think not any of my brother Roger's escapades 
 hath angered and disgusted me more than his turning 
 his coat as he hath done ; for he is now in the 
 service and pay of those very men he fought against 
 in the field. None the less is he in high favour with 
 his stepmother in Hart Street, and she doth lavish 
 on him indulgences and endearments when he is 
 there that he but ill deserves. Naught of his bold 
 and wicked scheme to carry off Laurel by force is 
 known in Hart Street ; for when it came out,
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 297 
 
 Gabriel desired that my father should not be told, 
 as it would but add to his cares and sorrows and 
 serve no purpose. 
 
 'Tis likely enow they thought me stiff and cold, 
 when, dining there yesterday, I found Roger of the 
 party. But he was not in any way abashed at seeing 
 me, and discoursed with his old bravado on all the 
 current topics, and airily explained his change of 
 views. 
 
 Madam and he bandied compliments, and it 
 provoked me much to hear them. Her godson, 
 quoth she, had been her first love in the family, and 
 never had there been a prettier countenance or a 
 sweeter curly pate than his at three years old. 
 Not Will or Tim or even Jack had been fit to hold 
 a candle to him at that age. 
 
 ' And now, alack ! of the whole bunch none is so 
 unhandsome, inside and out, as I am. Ask sister 
 Lovejoy.' He laughed across at me with bold, 
 unflinching eyes. 
 
 * And how fond you were in those days of ginger 
 tangies gilded with kissing comfits!' went on madam 
 with inconsequence. ' Dost remember stealing two 
 from my blue delf jar ? Nay, but you were nine 
 years, and old enough to know better, when you ate 
 too freely at my table of a jumbal of apricots, and 
 had to be dosed for it afterwards.'
 
 298 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 ' I recollect well how delicious 'twas. Would such 
 jumbals were made nowadays !' Roger said. 
 
 ' Well, look inside that chafing-dish, and you'll 
 see they are ' 
 
 So they went on thus foolishly trifling, my father 
 paying no heed, but scoring down an air that had 
 occurred to him on a piece of music-paper beside his 
 plate. If they both belong to the serious party from 
 ' conscience sake,' as they say, one would not judge 
 it so from their light converse. 
 
 And the outer aspect of my old home is so changed 
 under the reign of my father's second wife. Me- 
 thinks he might as well have moved to her house in 
 Seething Lane as let her so transform the familiar, 
 simple chambers. The buff wainscot is hid by hang- 
 ings far too rich and heavy for the size of the parlour 
 traps for dust, Penelope grumbles and all the 
 dear old music-books have been banished to make 
 way for ivory figures, Chinese puzzles, and sandal- 
 wood workboxes and the like. The pompous presence 
 of madam's great-grandfather, who was Lord Mayor, 
 doth fill the dining-room to oppression, his picture 
 over the chimney being the biggest that ever I saw. 
 
 'Tis no wonder that poor Jane is sorely vexed at 
 the thought of quitting our dear Mistress Anne Fan- 
 shawe to come to this altered home again, where she 
 will not find her Jack, who is gone to serve as a page
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 299 
 
 in my Lord Ormond's household. When the time 
 conies for Laurel to take her place with Mistress 
 Anne as she doth hope to do next year I will ask 
 Gabriel to let me have Jane at the Gray House to 
 
 teach Olave his book. 
 
 December 29, 1648. 
 
 What a Yuletide this hath been ! Not all through 
 these years of civil strife and Puritan rule has, me- 
 thinks, the festival been so shorn of every outward 
 sign of jollity amd merry-making, so shadowed and 
 weighted by the gloom of what has been and is yet 
 to come. The King has been brought near us again, 
 and is at his royal castle of Windsor. God only 
 knows what the next move will be ! The vast masses 
 of soldiers in and about London give it the look of 
 being besieged from within and without. They are 
 quartered on the citizens, and that same Colonel 
 Pride, whose boast 'tis that he hath purged the Par- 
 liament by turning out all its members who are not 
 extreme Republicans, has cleared Southwark of 
 play-houses and closed the bear-pits. If 'twere for 
 the bears' sake, I should be glad, for I have always 
 abhorred that cruel pastime of bear-baiting. 
 
 On Christmas Eve we were bid to the christening 
 of my sister Bagshaw's third babe. Peg is mighty 
 proud of having so far outstripped me in this respect. 
 No chiming of sweet bells on the frosty air, no
 
 300 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 laughter and merriment from lads and lasses wreathed 
 with greenery and mistletoe, did greet us as we came 
 down from High Holborn and passed within the city 
 wall. The fair Gothic spires and turrets stood dumb 
 against the misty sky ; the only sounds in the streets 
 they soared above were the clank of spurs and sword, 
 the groaning forth of some unmelodious psalm. In 
 the doorways, in the windows, everywhere, were 
 those grim, stern faces of the sectarian soldiery. 
 They looked down on us full of threat, methought, 
 from the lancets and battlements of ancient Alder- 
 gate, as we turned into the stately street, with its 
 garden houses standing alone, where Gabriel hath 
 often said he could dream he were in some town of 
 Italy again. 
 
 The interior of Peg's home, seemed bright and 
 jocund, all decked with evergreen and sprigs of holly, 
 after the gloom of the streets. Most of the fonts in 
 the city churches are being used by the troopers as 
 troughs for their horses, so we christened Peg's new 
 babe in the parlour that is lined with shelves holding 
 apothecary's vials and jars, containing Venice treacle, 
 electuaries and divers other decoctions, and where 
 hang two great charts of the circulation of the blood. 
 We drank to the baby and its beaming parents in 
 my stepmother's ancestral canary sack, a flagon of 
 which had preceded hers and my father's arrival.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 301 
 
 Madam, when she sailed into the company with a 
 majestic air of importance, disdained to recognise 
 Prue, who had come without her husband, and, 
 indeed, looked very sad and different from the old 
 sprightly, pretty Prue, in a gown of some coarse, 
 cheap stuff. Poor Prue is repenting at leisure, I 
 fear, the marriage she was in such haste to make, 
 and said with a sigh, when she took Peg's eldest boy, 
 who has just been breeched, on her knee, 'twas 
 well she had no children. 
 
 When the ceremony was over, Master Bagshaw 
 opened his case of viols, and my father started the 
 music. After some fugues had been played, we 
 gathered round the Yuletide log and sang little short 
 songs, called canzonets, for three voices, and fal-lals 
 for five voices, and such old ballads as 'All in a 
 Garden Green ' and ' Lord Willoughby's Welcome 
 Home.' 
 
 In, a pause 'twixt the songs Peg pushed open a 
 lattice in the window that doth open also like a door 
 on to the pot-herb garden which they have at the 
 back of the small house. The parlour was over- 
 heated, she said, being narrow space for so many 
 guests. 
 
 'And 'tis at this hour the prisoners,' added she, 
 'come forth from Petre House next door for their 
 short exercise in the pleasaunce. 'Twill liven them,
 
 302 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 perchance, if the strains of our music reach their 
 ears. Colonel Richard Lovelace, most of all, would 
 fain hear it. He was brought thither on my Lord 
 Holland's defeat, and 'tis said he and his brother 
 have lost all their moneys and property, and have 
 come to utter ruin in serving the King. In truth, 
 he doth look sore cast down and wretched he who 
 once was so gay and comely a Cavalier.' 
 
 ' His captivity is not so drear as some/ her husband 
 said. ' He is allowed the use of writing materials, 
 and passes the time in collecting for a volume the 
 numerous lyrics he hath writ to Lucasta.' 
 
 * She who did not wait to hear a report confirmed 
 that he was slain in the war with the Scots ere she 
 hastened to wed with another ! A fig for his Lucasta !' 
 Prue explained, with something of her old pert spirit. 
 ' Methinks her constancy was so short-lived as to be 
 unworthy of his, which is deathless.' 
 
 I recalled how Peg and Prue when they were 
 maids had quarrelled over the little posy which 
 Colonel Lovelace had let fall on Hampstead Common, 
 and how scornfully Laurel had tossed it to them. 
 But now Laurel, who had taken her lute to sing, was 
 leaning forward, hearkening attentively to every word 
 being said about the prisoner next door, with that 
 curious softness that only his name can bring to her 
 beautiful eyes.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 303 
 
 Then she rose in her queenly grace, holding her 
 lute in one hand, and lifting her heavy black skirts 
 with the other. 
 
 ' I am faint,' she murmured ; ' if the company will 
 excuse my song, I will go into the air.' 
 
 She walked swiftly to the window, and, unfastening 
 it, passed into the wintry gloaming. 
 
 Since Silence died my husband hath been dis- 
 posed more than ever to humour any vagary of 
 Laurel's. 
 
 ' Follow her, dear heart,' he whispered, ' and see 
 that she takes no hurt.' 
 
 I threw a cloak about me, and, with another for 
 Laurel, went after her down the narrow pathway 
 'twixt the patches of herbs. 'Twas as if a magnet 
 had drawn her to the end of the garden, where, from 
 a mound raised slightly above the wall, 'twas possible 
 to overlook the paved pleasaunce of Petre House on 
 the other side. As I came up with her and put the 
 wrap on her shoulders, Laurel struck her lute very 
 softly, and began to sing wellnigh under her breath. 
 'Twas but one verse she sang of that ancient ballad 
 of the North, but it had its effect. As the sweet low 
 notes died, Colonel Lovelace, standing below in the 
 shadow of the wall which was high on his side, lifted 
 his face. Alack ! how changed that face since we 
 saw it last pale and haggard, its brilliance faded, its
 
 304 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 expression of debonair youth gone. Years of sorrow 
 and affliction may pass over some without blanching 
 a hair of their heads or changing a line of their 
 features. With others a week, or even a night, of 
 grievous calamity is sufficient to age and stamp 
 despair on the countenance. 
 
 ' Can I believe my ears ? Have I really heard on 
 this chill, clouded winter eve the nightingale that my 
 memory doth associate with a joyous Maytime in 
 Oxon?' 'Twas the same courteous, musical voice, 
 but with a ring of hopelessness in it withal. ' Sweet 
 lady,' it continued, ' I pray you give me news of 
 the King, for naught of it is permitted to reach 
 us here.' 
 
 'The King! Ay, 'tis not well with the King,' 
 answered Laurel ; ' his Majesty is in dire peril. 
 Hundreds in this great London there are who would 
 fain cry, " God save him !" but Cromwell's soldiers 
 swarm in every street, lane, and alley, ready to thrust 
 the words back in their throats at sword-point. The 
 Mayor the people chose this time was loyal, but the 
 army hath sent him to the Tower. And they dare to 
 speak of bringing the King to trial.' 
 
 'They will judge their King? Then he is lost. 
 Ay, and I doomed to loiter here inactive. Why was 
 it not my happy fate to die for him, as others of his 
 servants ? Why was this broken heart not the target
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 305 
 
 for deadly bullets or thrust by sword ? Why, oh, why, 
 am I let live to be of no service to my King ?' 
 
 Laurel bent far over the wall. 
 
 ' Escape,' she urged ' escape, Colonel Lovelace. 
 The King hath need of his friends. They might yet 
 do something, methinks. One such friend as you is 
 a host in himself. No one is watching you at this 
 moment. Surely this wall is not difficult to scale. I 
 would give you my cloak, and through my sister's 
 house yonder you could get free free to do your 
 King glorious service again at the eleventh hour. 
 Do not hesitate ; no one is looking. The wall is easy 
 to scale ; now is the moment. But you do not move. 
 Colonel Lovelace, you do not move.' 
 
 She spoke in rapid, breathless, eager tones, for- 
 getful of me beside her, and all else except her mad 
 desire to set the captive free. He only smiled sadly 
 in response, and shook his head. The next moment 
 the guards had come forward and seized him by the 
 shoulder. 
 
 ' You have done your malignant friend a doubtful 
 kindness, fair temptress,' said the captain of the 
 guard. ' For this he will but lose the liberty he has 
 enjoyed here hitherto, and be more closely confined.' 
 
 And Laurel, with a cry of distress, swayed back- 
 wards from the wall and fell swooning into my 
 arms. 
 
 20
 
 306 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 February 7. 
 
 Since I last writ anything here a great and awful 
 tragedy has been enacted that has filled all London 
 nay, I should say the whole world with horror and 
 indignation. On January 20 the King's mock trial 
 began in Westminster ; for how could that be called 
 a genuine trial in which the judges had no legal 
 authority, but were, for the most part, brewers, 
 butchers, and the like, and who had condemned His 
 Majesty, and found him steeped in guilt before the 
 proceedings began ? The most illustrious of the 
 King's foes, General Fairfax, held himself sternly 
 aloof from the court, which his lady attended to 
 make an heroic protest, to her lasting honour. 
 
 The grim Tower prison, so near us in Hart Street, 
 with its executions, its languishing captives, its 
 history of heart-broken sighs and tears and tragic 
 woe, shadowed and awed our happy childhood, but 
 naught that happened there was ever half so iniqui- 
 tous and terrible as this : a King stepping from a 
 window in his own palace, the scene of his past 
 pomp and domestic peace, the palace that 'twas his 
 delight to beautify with the masterpieces of art 
 stepping on to the scaffold to be murdered in the 
 eyes of his subjects by masked ruffians. My Sir 
 Oracle says they who have suffered this horrid act to 
 be done, and have hurried the King to his end, are
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 307 
 
 guilty not only of a crime, but of a profound political 
 error. For now the King's wrong-doing, his weak 
 rulership and insincere dealings, will be forgot, the 
 noble and lofty manner in which he met his dreadful 
 death atoning for all. 'Tis not as a tyrant, but as a 
 martyr, that his memory will live on fresh and green 
 in the hearts of his people. 
 
 But I cannot write more of it, the murder of the 
 King, and Laurel cannot speak of it. She hath 
 deepened the mourning weeds she wears for Silence, 
 and her face is most sorrowful. Last night, through 
 the thick and fast-falling snow, a few faithful servants 
 bore their dead King to Windsor, and buried him 
 there in the Chapel of St. George. 
 
 20 2
 
 XIII 
 
 CHANCERY LANE, 1651. 
 
 IT seems 'tis often the sight of my husband's kins- 
 woman, my own dear friend Anne Fanshawe (her Dick 
 hath been made a baronet by his master, and she is 
 now ' my lady '), that is the cause of my taking forth 
 this book again after a long period of neglect, to 
 write in it once more. 
 
 How marvellously chequered and full of hazards by 
 land and sea her life hath been, and mine in com- 
 parison doth appear but a humdrum round of homely 
 duties. Each time we meet after a separation I could 
 fill, not one, but several books, methinks, with the 
 wondrous tales she tells me of escapes from ship- 
 wrecks, pirates, and robbers, of the adventures and 
 great people she has met with in foreign towns, of 
 ghosts and apparitions, of hardships and sickness. 
 
 When Sir Richard was sent for to Scotland out of 
 
 France to wait on his young Majesty Charles Stuart 
 
 as his secretary, his lady came hither with her 
 
 children to a lodging in London, where she stayed 
 
 [308]
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 309 
 
 seven months, during which time I saw her nearly 
 every day, and Laurel was with her altogether. She 
 was much distraught, letters from her husband being 
 few and far between ; and this anxiety for his safety 
 and the King's, and the pain she was in, prevented 
 her from going out to take the air more than seven 
 times in these seven months. But one bright day in 
 June another little daughter was born to her, to be 
 her solace in these anxious hours, and soon she was 
 able to travel to Ware Park, the goodly seat of the 
 Fanshawes, in Hertfordshire. 
 
 There the news was brought to her of the Battle 
 of Worcester being fought on September 3, Oliver 
 Cromwell winning the day, as a year before, on the 
 same date, he had won it at Dunbar and scattered 
 the Covenanters. The King was missing, and 
 naught heard of Sir Richard Fanshawe being dead 
 or alive for three days. Laurel writ that her dear 
 lady neither slept nor eat, and trembled at every 
 sound she heard, till the news-book came at last with 
 Sir Richard's name among the prisoners. At once 
 she set out for London with Laurel and her eldest 
 little girl Nan, whom she calls the ' companion of 
 her travels and troubles.' Her purpose was to leave 
 Nan with us, and then to go and find out where Sir 
 Richard was. 
 
 I took Olave and Jane, attended by Juan. We set
 
 3io AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 out betimes to see them alight from the Ware coach 
 at the Vine in Bishopsgate. 'Twas a crisp autumn 
 morning, and the golden sunlight shone on the roofs 
 and steeples of the City, the sky above being blue and 
 cloudless. I mark the weather because 'twas soon 
 after that those rains and storms began that scarce 
 ceased at all for many weeks. 
 
 We had hardly got nearer the Vine than St. Ethel- 
 burga's when Laurel spied us, and came running to 
 us in much excitement. 
 
 ' My dear lady has had a message by the way,' she 
 exclaimed, ' and 'tis from Sir Richard. He bids her 
 take a room at Charing Cross, for he will be brought 
 by there to-day, and his keeper will let him rest as a 
 great favour at dinner-time in my lady's company, so 
 she has bestirred herself to go thither forthwith to 
 engage a room and order a dinner. She wishes us to 
 follow, and we shall find her father and many other 
 friends there.' 
 
 We turned about and took coach for Charing 
 Cross, and, coming near it, I saw my dear friend 
 holding her little Nan by the hand, standing on the 
 steps of an ordinary opposite the Cross. She 
 beckoned to us, and bid us come into the private 
 room she had taken that looked on the street. The 
 table was already spread with cold meats and neats' 
 tongues and Rhenish wine.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 311 
 
 ' Prompt as ever to obey instructions,' I said, as I 
 embraced her. 
 
 ' How could I be other than prompt,' replied she 
 with shining eyes, ' when 'tis such a joy to have 
 instructions to obey ?' 
 
 Then Sir John Harrison and Margaret came, and 
 others of their intimate acquaintance, and at eleven 
 of the clock we all went to the windows, for word 
 came the prisoners were being brought up. Hun- 
 dreds there were of them, both English and Scotch, 
 footsore and weary from the march, and what rags 
 yet clung to them stained with blood and thick with 
 dust. 
 
 A well-known, clear-toned, jovial voice sounded in 
 our ears : 
 
 * Pray let us lose no time, for I know not how 
 much I have to spare. This is the chance of war. 
 Nothing venture, nothing have, so let us sit down 
 and be merry whilst we may.' 
 
 And Sir Richard's tall figure stood in our midst. 
 He greeted each one of us cheerfully, kissed his wife, 
 and tossed Nan to his shoulder. A most chivalrous, 
 gallant gentleman he looked, despite the hardships 
 he had suffered ; and how light he made of them to 
 dry Anne's tears, which, said he, were the only 
 things on earth could move him ! 
 
 He sat down at the table, with his Nan nestling to
 
 312 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 his side, and his wife smiling at him through her 
 tears, and hanging on his lips as he told us some- 
 thing of his adventures. 
 
 His captain had been very kind to him, Sir 
 Richard said, and people had offered him money on 
 the march, and brought him good things to eat. 
 Lady Denham, of Borstall House, would have given 
 him all the money in her purse, but he craved of her 
 instead a shirt or two and some handkerchiefs. 
 She had fetched him, then, two smocks of her own, 
 and some handkerchiefs, saying she was ashamed to 
 give him her own ; but having none of her sons at 
 home, she desired him to wear them. 
 
 So the precious time, all too short, passed, until 
 the order came that Sir Richard was to be carried to 
 Whitehall to his prison on the bowling-green. 
 
 Tenderly he withdrew himself from the clinging 
 arms of his wife and child, and as he took leave of 
 me he was pleased to say, with a cheery smile : 
 
 ' I shall be easy in my mind about my dear wife, 
 knowing she is to be lodged with you, for the present, 
 in Chancery Lane. At her cousin Young's she is 
 always in good keeping.' 
 
 This was six weeks agone, and still Sir Richard is 
 pent up in that one small, close room on the bowling- 
 green at Whitehall, not allowed to breathe the air or 
 to hold speech with any ; and into sad ill-health hath
 
 at 
 
 a
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 313 
 
 he fallen, from exposure to cold and the long, hard 
 marches of that last ill-starred rally for the Stuarts. 
 
 ' Love laughs at locksmiths,' and Sir Richard's 
 loving, brave wife hath found a way of holding speech 
 with him, however much the powers forbid it. When 
 four of the clock booms from the steeples in these chill, 
 damp mornings of the wettest autumn that ever I 
 knew, constantly is her footstep heard descending the 
 stair, and she goes forth with a dark lantern in her 
 hand. All alone and on foot she speeds along the 
 sleeping Strand, and, coming to Whitehall, doth 
 enter the bowling-green from King Street. Once 
 there, she steals beneath his window, and softly calls 
 to him, and he, putting out his head at the sound of 
 the dear voice, they talk together. 
 
 'Twas but this morning, when the rain beat 
 fiercely against the lattices, that I heard her go. I 
 rose early, and went to write beside the big hearth 
 in the hall to await her return. 
 
 She came in a-laughing. 
 
 'The mermaid's come back, Lovejoy !' said she. 
 ' I vow I am so wet the raindrops have gone in at 
 my neck and out at my heels !' 
 
 I went with her to her chamber to help her to 
 put on dry raiment. 
 
 ' I have often rid for miles and miles in such rain 
 as this in the days that I was a hoyting girl. You
 
 314 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 remember those days?' she asked. 'Well, methinks 
 'tis what remains of the hoyting girl spirit in me 
 carries me through.' 
 
 ' Through dangers of plunderings, ship-wreckings, 
 the plague, naked swords, and drownings,' said I, 
 referring to some of her experiences abroad and in 
 Ireland. 
 
 ' Yes,' she said, ' I was the hoyting girl again 
 when, sailing for Spain, I borrowed the cabin boy's 
 blue thrum cap and tarred coat for half a crown, 
 and crept up to the deck to stand beside my 
 husband, who thought I was locked up in the cabin, 
 the captain having ordered no woman to show 
 herself, because our ship was threatened by a 
 Turkish galley, and, had they seen women, the 
 Turks would have boarded us and made us all 
 slaves ! With him I am ever fearless. 'Tis parting 
 and separation from him that makes a coward 
 of me.' 
 
 And then she left off wringing the damp out of her 
 hair, and suddenly all the fatigues of her early 
 expedition to Whitehall through the rain seemed 
 to overcome her. Her voice grew weary, her face 
 white and wan, and I besought her to repose herself 
 till evening. 
 
 But long ere that she was come forth from her 
 chamber, sprightly and gay once more. She joined
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 315 
 
 in a romp with her little Nan and my Olave, who 
 says when he is grown a man he shall like well to 
 marry Nan. Later, at fall of dusk, she sat in the 
 gloaming light, with her two adoring handmaidens, 
 Laurel and Jane, at her feet, and did enthral and 
 thrill them with that wondrous weird tale of the 
 woman with red hair and ghastly complexion whom 
 she had woke up in the night to see in the moon- 
 light leaning in at the window casement, and heard 
 call thrice for a horse ; which happened when she 
 and Sir Richard lay at the Lady Honor O'Brien's, 
 in Ireland. I had heard her relate it before, but 
 methinks I could hear it many times as she tells it 
 and never fail to shudder thereat. 
 
 November 30. 
 
 Great hath been our joy at the Gray House these 
 last few days, for our dear kinswoman, Lady Fan- 
 shawe's, unwearying efforts in addressing the Lord 
 Protector on her husband's behalf have been crowned 
 with success at last, and he has been released on bail. 
 Dr. Bathurst, who is physician to Cromwell as well 
 as to us and the Fanshawe family, gave him a certifi- 
 cate that he would come near to die of the scurvy if 
 he lay much longer in the close little prison at 
 Whitehall. 
 
 He is lodged with us till such time as he journeys
 
 316 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 to the Bath for his scorbutic. 'Twas a touching 
 sight to see his wife and little daughter's delight at 
 greeting him. Nan went nigh wild. Methinks no 
 man was ever so well loved by his relatives and 
 friends as is this most kind and gallant gentleman. 
 Troops of them come daily to visit him here, and to 
 congratulate him on having gotten loose. Alphonse 
 hath killed the fatted calf, and more company have 
 dined and supped with us than ever heretofore. 
 The discourse is very lively, and much of books and 
 authors. 
 
 Mr. John Evelyn, a cousin of Sir Richard's, has 
 come out of Paris recently. During the wars he 
 travelled over Europe, and he hath a great interest 
 for all that concerns art and music, and rare manu- 
 scripts and intaglios such as Gabriel collects. He 
 talked of his translation of Lucretius, and Sir 
 Richard said so long as he has leisure, for the present 
 he will employ it in turning into Latin verse 
 Fletcher's ' Faithful Shepherdess,' to make known in 
 other countries that pearl of pastorals, as he called it.
 
 XIV 
 
 Tuesday, May 29, 1660. 
 
 COMING in this day from witnessing such rejoicings 
 as belike have never before been in London town, 
 I was so stirred that I methought me of my old 
 journal, and took it forth from the chest where it has 
 lain now for years most of those years, indeed, 
 during which we lived under a Protectorate and the 
 rule of a usurper. 
 
 As I turned over the pages to see if there was yet 
 some space left whereon to write, they seemed as a 
 tale that is told. But though the ' march of events ' 
 that. I set out to record in this book soon after my 
 marriage has gone on bringing changes till it hath 
 wrought to-day the most wondrous change of all, 
 methinks my own life has little altered. 
 
 I still dwell in this fair home, happy in the un- 
 changing affection and goodness of my husband ; and 
 if God has blessed me with but one child, he is a 
 jewel beyond price, grown in beauty and wisdom as 
 he hath in stature, and I have been spared the pain 
 [3i7]
 
 3i8 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 of bearing sweet babes but to lose them, which sorrow 
 hath befallen my sisters and my brothers' wives, and 
 many times my dear Lady Fanshawe. 
 
 My Sir Oracle's hair is white as snow, but his 
 eyes have ever the keen young look in them. As we 
 stood by our dear lady to-day in the Strand, where 
 her niece Fanshawe lies, to see the King's splendid 
 entry with his brothers, the Dukes of York and 
 Gloucester, she declared that I yet might be taken 
 for my husband's daughter and Laurel's younger 
 sister. Sister maybe, but younger sister I would not 
 allow, though 'tis true time hath given my poor 
 Laurel the air of carrying about with her some 
 hidden trouble which hath robbed her brown beauty 
 of its youthful roundness and brilliance. Yet, for 
 all that, her face is none the less lovely for being 
 thoughtful, and to me it hath a charm now that it 
 did not possess in her merry youth. People wonder 
 much that Laurel is still a maid. 
 
 The seven years that Sir Richard and Lady Fan- 
 shawe were in England, being all that time under 
 constraint more or less from the regicides, we had 
 them often with us here in Chancery Lane. But they 
 preferred the country to the town ; and Laurel was 
 with them and their three children at Tankersley 
 Park, a seat of my Lord Strafford's in Yorkshire, 
 where they planted fruit-trees, and Sir Richard trans-
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 319 
 
 lated the ' Lusiade ' of De Camoens. 'Twas there 
 they lost their dearly-beloved ten-year-old daughter 
 Nan, who was so tall and witty for her years the dear 
 companion of her mother's travels and sorrows, as 
 she often said. She died of the small-pox ; and there 
 is another little Nan now, but methinks she can 
 never quite take the place of the first in her mother's 
 heart. 
 
 After the death of the Lord Protector Cromwell, 
 which happened appropriately enow on a stormy 
 September night, when so fierce a tempest raged 
 that oaks and elms were uprooted and houses blown 
 down, Sir Richard applied for release from his bail, 
 and under pretence of becoming tutor to a young 
 nobleman on his travels, he was allowed to leave 
 England. The exiled King appointed him Master 
 of the Requests and Latin Secretary. He sent for 
 his lady to bring the children to Paris for their 
 education last summer, but her cousin, Henry 
 Neville, one of the High Court of Justice, refused to 
 grant her a passport. 
 
 This refusal, however, did not daunt my courageous 
 friend's spirit. Ready to sail by the next tide, she 
 hastened to Wallingford House, the office where they 
 gave passes. Clad in a plain habit and assuming 
 a very humble mien and vulgar mode of speech, she 
 did desire to be given a pass for Paris to go to her
 
 320 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 husband. ' Woman, what is your husband and your 
 name ?' she was asked, and replied with many cour- 
 tesies : ' He is a young merchant, and my name is 
 Anne Harrison.' She was told 'twould cost her a 
 crown. ' A great sum for me to pay, truly, but pray 
 put down a man, my maid, and three children,' she 
 answered. And the fellow gave her the pass filled 
 in as she wished, assuring her that a malignant 
 would gladly have paid him five pounds for it. How 
 radiant with triumph she looked, her fair curls 
 escaped from her hood, as she came to me here in 
 the carnation closet waving the pass high up in the 
 air, and exclaiming : ' I was in despair, but I prayed, 
 and God put this into my head ! A pen, Lovejoy 
 a pen !' I handed her my quill, and with deft strokes 
 she made the great H of Harrison into ff, and the 
 rr's an , and the i an s, and the s an h, and the o 
 an a, and the n a w. She then hired a barge, and 
 we all went to the Stairs with her to wish her and 
 her little family God-speed. Afterwards she wrote 
 that at Dover the searchers had demanded her pass, 
 and, after scanning it, had said : ' Madam, you may go 
 where you please.' But one added : ' I little thought 
 they would give a pass to so great a malignant, 
 especially in so troublesome a time.' And so she 
 got safely to Calais. 
 
 Wonderful are Anne's nimble wits and resource-
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 321 
 
 fulness in emergency, and her buoyancy withal, so that 
 one who saw her bright face beaming from its festal 
 bravery in that gala crowd for the first time this 
 morning might well think she had known naught of 
 griefs and trials and separations from the gallant 
 statesman and scholar, her adored husband, who 
 hath come home with the King to enjoy high 
 honours and His Majesty's favour, of which none, 
 truly, is more deserving than he. The devoted pair, 
 pray God, may now never be parted more. 
 
 She, being our ever true kinswoman and friend, 
 although she only arrived in London on Sunday 
 night at a house in the Savoy, did hurry immediately 
 to the Gray House to tell me of their wondrous 
 voyage. I cannot refrain from repeating her 
 description, so vivid, so joyous 'twas so full of the 
 new hopes that have been born in our long distracted 
 country. 
 
 ' Who can express the joy and gallantry of that 
 voyage ?' said she. ' To see so many great ships, the 
 best in the world ; to hear the trumpets and all other 
 music ; to see near a hundred brave vessels sail before 
 the wind with vast cloths and streamers, the neatness 
 and cleanness of the decks, the strength and jollity of 
 the mariners, the gallantry of the commanders, the 
 vast plenty of all sorts of provisions ; but, above all, 
 the glorious majesties of the King and his two 
 
 21
 
 322 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 brothers, were so beyond man's expectation and 
 expression. The sea was calm, the moon shone at 
 full, and the sun suffered not a cloud to hinder his 
 prospect of the best sight, by whose light and the 
 merciful bounty of God the King was set safely on 
 shore ; and so great were the acclamations and 
 numbers of people that it reached like one street 
 from Dover to Whitehall/ 
 
 Her words, perforce, made me see it all with her 
 eyes as plain as I saw with my own, standing beside 
 her, to-day's great spectacle. Twenty thousand 
 horse and foot brandishing their swords and shouting 
 with joy; the flower-strewed streets hung with 
 tapestry ; fountains running with wine ; the Mayor 
 and Aldermen and all their company in their liveries 
 and chains of gold ; the lords and nobles dazzling in 
 cloth of gold, silver, and velvet ; the windows and 
 balconies crowded with fair women, laughing down 
 on the black-haired King, with his beetle-brows and 
 gracious smiles, his jewels and gold lace aflash in the 
 May sunlight. The King who hath passed his youth 
 on battlefields, in wanderings and exile, happily 
 restored to the throne, without one drop of bloodshed, 
 by the same rebel army that brought his father of 
 blessed memory to the block. What a mightily mar- 
 vellous thing 'tis to reflect on ! It makes one feel to 
 be living in a romance, methinks, rather than in real
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 323 
 
 life. As on my bridal day, looking on the sullen 
 faces that lined the streets, I had asked my husband 
 where all the loyal folk were hiding, so to-day I 
 might have inquired where the disloyalists were, for 
 not one was to be seen in all those happy, shouting 
 multitudes. In troth, this is the swinging back of 
 the pendulum at last, that my Sir Oracle prophesied 
 near seventeen years ago. General Monk, who 
 expelled the ' Rump ' at Candlemas, and made way 
 for the Free Parliament that voted His Majesty's 
 restoration, hath been but the accidental instrument 
 in the hand of God. 
 
 I had writ so far when I laid down my quill, for 
 Laurel came softly in, and, kneeling by me, said : 
 
 ' Mother, read this.' 
 
 She laid a missive on my lap in the handwriting of 
 Mistress Margaret now Mistress Halkett, she having 
 wed, some years back, an Anabaptist preacher of that 
 name. 
 
 ' MISTRESS LAUREL, 
 
 ' Fain would I double your gladness on this, for 
 you, auspicious day. Hugh 1' Estrange is again in 
 London. He sought me out, and I have had long 
 converse with him. His great love for yourself, 
 Mistress Laurel, is undying. Long ago " his enemy 
 
 21 2
 
 324 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 was delivered into his hands "; but the Lord softened 
 his heart, and in the Hopital de Charite' in Paris, 
 where he lay destitute and at the point of death, 
 Hugh was reconciled with his father and closed his 
 eyes. Thus the Lord saw fit to dispel that sore 
 weight of dark thoughts of vengeance that had so 
 burdened and embittered his soul, setting up a barrier 
 'twixt him and you. 
 
 ' He knows not that I write this to you, but, perforce, 
 I must do it. He would never approach you un- 
 invited, being so exceeding modest, notwithstanding 
 that the dials he hath designed and set up abroad, 
 especially one in the garden of a Duke in Italy, have 
 brought him great renown. And 'tis likely my 
 father will have the dial on order for the privy 
 garden at Whitehall fashioned after his old prentice's 
 designing. 
 
 ' Pardon my boldness, Mistress Laurel, in thus 
 advising you of Hugh's return, because it may be for 
 but a short while that he tarries here, and if he came 
 and went and you saw him not, methinks you would 
 
 be sorry. 
 
 ' MARGARET HALKETT.' 
 
 Whilst I read these lines Laurel's eyes rested on 
 the ' Miracle of St. Olave,' which Silence had wrought 
 so ingeniously, with myriad strands of glowing silk 
 and threads of gold.
 
 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 325 
 
 ' Not for her sake now, mother,' said she, * but for 
 my own. I am glad, so glad, that Hugh has come 
 back.' 
 
 The reflection from the bonfires blazing along the 
 streets and from the heights around was on her face 
 as she lifted it to mine, and gave a ruddy tinge to 
 the nut-brown hair. In her eyes was that old look 
 of melting tenderness, which long ago was wont only 
 to visit them at sight or mention of him who had 
 been so shining and chivalrous a figure, endowed with 
 such rare gifts of mind and body, him who was be- 
 loved by men and women alike, the Sir Philip Sidney 
 of his time. Yet no glorious, gallant end was his. 
 Broken in health and fortunes, scorning to live on 
 the charity of his friends, but unable to live without 
 it, he shunned their company, and gradually sank 
 into penury and despair. In some shabby haunt of 
 thieves, debtors, and mendicants the loyal soldier-poet, 
 the admired author of ' Lucasta,' breathed his last, 
 little more than a year before this happy restoration 
 of His Majesty Charles II., for whose father he did 
 suffer all manner of reverses, except that, belike, he 
 most coveted death on the field. 
 
 ' Nought is there under heaven's wide hollowness 
 That moves more dear compassion of mind 
 Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness.' 
 
 Well might these words .of Master Spenser have
 
 326 AN OLD LONDON NOSEGAY 
 
 come into my mind that day when in the street I 
 was about to offer alms to one I took to be a beggar, 
 and on looking nearer, to my pitiful dismay, I re- 
 cognised in the gaunt features and wasted form the 
 Cavalier of once surpassing grace, Richard Love- 
 lace. 
 
 The softness in Laurel's eyes was not for him to- 
 night. Methinks the bright image so long imprinted 
 on it hath for ever faded from her heart, and it 
 yearns alone for her foster-brother. 
 
 THE END 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUJLL-KORD
 
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 unobtrusively illuminative of a brave, good fight, that it is a distinctly 
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 Vanity Fair. 
 
 LONDON: SEELEY & CO., LTD., 38 GREAT RUSSELL ST.
 
 ' Mrs. Marshall's imaginative pictures of the England of other days 
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 Stories by Mrs. Marshall 
 
 UNDER THE DOME OF ST. PAUL'S. A Story of 
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 THE MASTER OF THE MUSICIANS. A Story of 
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 KENSINGTON PALACE : IN THE DAYS OF QUEEN 
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 PENSHURST CASTLE: IN THE TIME OF SIR 
 
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 IN THE SERVICE OF RACHEL, LADY RUSSELL. 
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 IN FOUR REIGNS. The Recollections of ALTHEA 
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 IN THE EAST COUNTRY WITH SIR THOMAS 
 
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