When a boy grew older he ceased to be a page, and became an esquire. Nowadays everyone puts esq., meaning esquire, on letters in an address, but at that time a man had really to be an esquire before he could be called so. He served some knight and rode with him to the wars, or attended him at home. While he had still been a page he had waited on the ladies and played to them on the harp, or read to them while they embroidered; but when he became esquire he very seldom saw the ladies, and was taught to consider them almost as far above him as angels. For the next few years he had a great deal to do. He had to dress and undress his master as if he had been a servant. He had to look after his master's horse, and when there was any fighting he had to carry a shield and ride beside his master, ready to die for him if necessary.

Among the games he played indoors were chess and draughts, both of which people still play. One knight had perhaps many squires, and they were all supposed to love him very much, and to be perfectly obedient to him. The young squires had games among themselves, and the squires of two different knights had little contests, each trying to beat the others. The squires were able to run and jump straight on to a horse even when they were covered all over with heavy armour. They danced and turned somersaults, and performed many other exercises to make them strong and agile. Even princes had to be squires before they could be knights, and, if you remember, when Edward the Black Prince was fighting the French at Crecy, he was not then a knight, but was made a knight because he had been so brave on that occasion. He took King John of France prisoner, and brought him to London to a great castle called the Savoy; and when he had brought him there he did not treat him as a prisoner at all, but himself took the part of a humble squire, and waited on the French King while he had supper. Very few princes would have done that; they would rather have gloried in showing their superiority to their captive. The palace of the Savoy was in London, further down the river than Westminster. It is all gone now except the chapel, where people still go to church on Sundays.

Down beside this part of the river now runs a street with houses and shops on each side, and it is called the Strand. I wonder if you have ever heard of the strand at the seaside? It is an old word, meaning the beach beside water, and the Strand in London reminds us of the time when there was no embankment, but the houses were right on the edge of the water. Great palaces most of them were, where all the haughty nobles with their following of squires lived. They have all gone now, these great palaces, but one gate remains, a very handsome stone gate with steps, and this was the gate of a great palace belonging to the Duke of Buckingham, and here boats could come up so that the Duke could step into one from his stairs at the water gate; but when the embankment was made the river was hemmed in, and could not come so far up, and now the gate stands back a long way from the river in the middle of a green garden. The people used the river a great deal then, going by water as we go by land, and the water was covered with gaily-coloured barges and boats.

After being a squire, the next thing was to be a knight. It was not every man who could be a knight. A man must have done some brave deed, or shown himself very faithful, or be the son of a powerful noble, or something of that kind; but when it was decided that a young man might be made a knight, he had to watch his armour alone all night in a church, and pray to be made worthy, and then in the morning he vowed always to help the weak and avenge them, and never to draw back or be afraid, and never to use his sword except for the right. Then the King received him, and he knelt down, and the King gave him a light blow on the shoulder with the flat side of the sword, and this made him a knight and gave him the right to use the title 'Sir' before his name.

The knights used to have games that you and I would think were more like real fighting than play. They put on armour and mounted their horses, and then met to try to knock one another off. These fights were called tournaments, and all the ladies came to watch them as nowadays they go to watch men play at polo or cricket. The chief place in London for tournaments was a place we have been to already, called Smithfield. That is where the meat market is now, and it is still a wide, open square. A great many things happened at Smithfield, and we shall hear of it again before this book is finished.

On the day of a grand tournament everything was made ready very early. There were high wooden seats arranged all round, covered with scarlet or purple cloth, and there were special seats like thrones for the King and Queen; and people came flocking up as if to a fair, dressed in crimson and gold and blue and green, with clothes made of velvet and silk, much brighter than anything we have now, and the men were quite as gay as the ladies. Before the time for the tournament, the knights who were going to take part in it would ride up on their prancing horses; some came from the Tower of London, and there is a street not far from St. Paul's Cathedral still called Knightrider Street, because the knights used to come riding up there to the tournaments at Smithfield.

Cannot you imagine how a young knight's heart would beat when he first took part in a tournament? Perhaps he was just one-and-twenty, and still only a boy in heart, and when he rode into that great open space everyone cheered him, and he saw the ladies rising, sitting on tiers of seats that rose higher and higher, making a beautiful mass of colour, like a bed of flowers; and there was one there who he knew would see him, a girl only seventeen, very sweet and fair and shy, who was among the Queen's maids-of-honour, and the young knight could not see her just then for the crowds of other people there. But he knew that she would be watching, and that he was to fight for her. For the glove he wore fixed on to his helmet was hers: she had given it to him the day before; no one else knew it was hers. But if he fell off his horse and rolled in the mud, that glove would be rolled in the mud too, and then he would be so much ashamed he would never dare to look her in the face again.

So he plucked up his courage, and looked round as if he were not at all nervous, and he saw the man he had to fight come riding toward him, a big strong man on a great black horse. The two knights held up their long lances to salute the King and Queen and ladies, and bowed to each other. A trumpet sounded, and the two horses rushed toward one another, the lances came against the strong armour with a crash, and the young knight felt a wrench, for his horse was thrown back on its haunches; but it recovered itself and dashed on, passing the other knight, until he wheeled it round and came to meet his opponent again. This time, just as they were going to meet, the horse of the older knight swerved, and his lance, striking crossways, broke in two, and the young knight could easily then have knocked him off his horse. But it was considered disgraceful to strike an unarmed man, so he lowered his lance and rode past without touching him, and all the people cheered. There was one more meeting to be faced, only one, and if he could manage to distinguish himself then, that fair girl would be proud of him, and perhaps smile sweetly when he met her again, and allow him to kiss her hand. The thought so fired the young knight that when his opponent had obtained a new lance and was awaiting him, he came on with such a pace and such a rush that he carried the other man clean out of his saddle, and laid him full length on the ground, where he lay helpless in his heavy armour until his squires ran across the field and raised him up. Then all the people shouted wildly, and the young knight rode modestly off the field feeling very happy.

If you saw Smithfield now you would not think such things could ever have happened there, for it is so bare and dull, and it was then so magnificent.

Besides the tournaments, the people of London had many other shows. When Queen Elizabeth was crowned there was a wonderful procession. We all heard a great deal about the coronation of King George V. Well, it is rather interesting to think that about three and a half centuries before, Queen Elizabeth, when crowned, had a grand ceremony, and afterwards made a tour round the city, as the King of England always does to this day after the ceremony has taken place. We have accounts of Elizabeth's procession that tells us exactly what it was like. The Queen went very slowly and stopped very often, and whenever she stopped a child came forward and recited dull verses to her. It must have taken a long time and been rather tiresome. But there were all sorts of beautiful things to look at in the meantime. In one place there was a high wooden scaffolding built up, and on it figures of Henry VII. and his Queen Elizabeth, who was the grandmother of the real Queen Elizabeth. You remember how Henry VII. married her because she was the sister of Edward V., and so the York and Lancaster sides were joined in one? Well, to show this there sprouted out of the hands of these two wax figures great boughs of roses, red and white mixed together, as a sign that the red and white roses of York and Lancaster were joined. At one place a child came forth and handed Elizabeth a copy of the Bible in English, the first copy that the English people had ever had in their own language; for, you know, the Bible was not written first in English, but in Hebrew and Greek, and up to this time no one had translated it into English. And everywhere children came out of odd places and said curious verses. I have heard one story, though I do not know if it is true, that a little child had been covered all over with gold paint, and was to be let down in a swing to greet the Queen as she passed underneath; and when the time came, and the little gilt child was lowered, it was found to be quite dead, stifled by the gold paint.

That was a sad thing, and I did not want this chapter to be sad, because history is too full of sad things, and tournaments and games ought to be gay.



CHAPTER XIII

SIR THOMAS MORE

Sir Thomas More belongs entirely to London, because he was born there, he lived there, and he died there, so that his story cannot be missed out. But it is a story that is in some ways rather difficult to understand. When Sir Thomas was a little boy he was not Sir Thomas at all, but probably just Tom. He was born in a street called Milk Street, a name not difficult to remember. It is close by St. Paul's Cathedral, and now is a little narrow street full of warehouses, where merchants keep their goods. When Tom was fifteen he was sent, according to the custom of the times, to be a page. And the household to which he went was a very great one indeed, nothing less than that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose palace was not far from Westminster, on the other side of the river. At this time Henry VII. was king, and England was resting in peace after the long Wars of the Roses. Thomas waited at table like other pages, and learnt many things, such as riding and tilting, as well as Latin and Greek; but though he was a very bright, sweet-tempered boy, he was always more inclined to learning than to sport, and when he grew a little older it was thought a pity he should not learn more, so he was sent to Oxford University. When he had finished his time at Oxford he came back to London, and became a barrister, and very soon after he began to think about marrying.

He knew at that time three girls, sisters, and he liked the second one very much; but then it was considered rather a disgrace if a younger sister were married before an elder one. And someone told him that the eldest sister liked him very much, so what did he do but propose to the eldest and marry her. She seems to have been a nice girl, and for six years they lived very happily together; and then she died, leaving him with four children—three little daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Cicely, and one son, John.

More felt that he could not leave his little ones motherless when they were so young, and so he determined to marry again, and this time he was not so fortunate, for he chose a rather plain, cross woman, many years older than himself, who was a widow. He thought perhaps she would be a careful manager, but the choice was unfortunate for him.

King Henry VII. was now dead, and his son, the Henry VIII. who married six wives one after the other, was on the throne. He was very fond of More, and often had him at the Court at Westminster, and gave him all sorts of honours and dignities, and finally made him a knight, so that he was Sir Thomas, and his cross wife could call herself Lady Alice More, a title that pleased her very much.

More had never liked the life of a city, and now that he was richer, owing to the King's kindness, he removed to a place that was then a village three miles from London called Chelsea. It seems odd to think of Chelsea ever being a village by itself, for it is now all a part of London. The houses have crept on and on, and covered up all the space between until Chelsea is right in London.

It is still a very pretty place beside the river, with shady trees and beautiful houses, and in More's time it must have been charming. He had a large house with a garden stretching right down to the side of the water, and from this he could step into his barge and go down to Westminster to see the King.

His little girls grew up here, and spent a happy childhood. They all, especially the eldest, adored their father. More himself was a very loving father, but he never spoilt his children, and always took care that they learnt their lessons. He used to say: 'Children, virtue and learning are the meat, and play but the sauce.' When any of them grumbled at little hardships, he used to say: 'We must not look to go to heaven on feather beds.' He was very fond of all of the children, but he loved the best his eldest daughter Margaret, Meg as he called her, and every day as Meg grew older she and her father were more and more to each other. Meg was clever, too; when still only a girl she could write letters in Latin and read many very difficult books.

The home life was rather different from that which we know now. There were some pages in the household, boys of good family, who came to learn from More as he had learnt from the Archbishop. One of these, William Roper, was a very nice fellow, and he afterwards married Margaret. Then there was the Fool. It seems to us now such an odd idea to have a man paid to make jokes, but in those days it was the fashion. Some man who had a gift for saying funny things used to live in the household of a great nobleman and be as amusing as he could, and for this he received payment. More's fool was often rather impertinent, and at one time when there was a big dinner, and one of the guests happened to have a particularly large nose, the fool said out loud: 'What a terrible nose that gentleman has got!' So all the family pretended not to hear, and were rather uncomfortable, and when the fool saw that, he said: 'How I lied when I said that gentleman's nose was monstrous; now I come to look at it I really think it's rather a small nose!' Well, of course, no one could help laughing after that, and they all went off into peals of merriment, even the poor gentleman himself.

In the early mornings when the air was fresh and sweet, and in summer the garden full of roses, More would wander round with his dear Meg, and perhaps the other children would come, too, to look at all the pets. They kept a number of strange animals; there were rabbits, a monkey, a fox, a ferret, a weasel, and many others, and the children themselves kept the cages clean, and were taught to be kind to them. Lady More did not care for these things, she liked better to dress herself very smartly and lace herself very tight; and when her husband laughed at her, she said, 'Tilly, vally, Sir Thomas! tilly, vally!' just as we should say, 'Tut, tut!'

She once found a stray dog, however, to which she took a great fancy, and she petted it and fed it; but after a few days a beggar-girl walking in the street, who met her with the dog, suddenly cried out that it was hers, and the dog knew her, and rushed and danced round her and licked her hands. Lady More was very angry, and said it was her dog, and ordered her footman to pick it up and carry it back home. The beggar-girl followed them all the way, crying; but when she arrived at the house the door was shut, and she was left outside. When Sir Thomas came home that evening in his barge, as he stepped out on the land he saw a poor little dirty girl with her face all stained with tears. He was always kind, so he stopped and asked her what was the matter, and she told him all her story about having lost her dog. Now, Sir Thomas was at that time the head of all the judges in England, having been made Lord Chancellor, and he was a very just man, so he would never let his wife take what did not belong to her. He went, therefore, into his own great hall and sent for Lady More; then he asked her to stand at the top end of the hall, and placed the little dirty girl down at the lower end. Then he ordered a footman to bring in the dog and hold it in the middle between the two, and he said that the dog should decide for itself; it must know its own mistress. And when he gave the word the man must let it go, and both the women who claimed to be its mistress must call it, and whichever it chose to go to should keep it.

So he gave the word, and Lady More cried out all the soft things she could think of; but the little girl just said the one word, the dog's name, and the dog bounded toward her in a moment, for it loved her, and did not care for Lady More. So Sir Thomas said that settled it; the dog clearly belonged to the little girl and not to his wife. Lady More then offered the girl much money if she would sell the dog, and as she was very poor she did sell it at last, and left it behind with its new mistress.

There were always a great many people coming and going in More's house, and the table was always laden with good things, and much money was spent; but Sir Thomas himself did not care about eating and drinking, and liked best to have only vegetables and fruit and brown bread, and perhaps a little salt beef, which was much eaten in England then.

Every day he said good-bye to his little girls, and told them to be good at their lessons, and then he went off in his barge up the river to the Court.

The two elder girls, Meg and Elizabeth, learned very difficult things; but Cicely and little John were not so clever. John seems to have been rather a stupid boy. It is said that the first Mrs. More wanted a boy very much, and when he came and grew a little, and they found he would never be very clever, More said: 'Thou hast wanted a boy, and now thou wilt have one that will be a boy all his life.'

In the evenings, when the barge came sweeping up the river, no doubt the girls watched for it, and ran to greet their father, and then they would all go in together to the house. Perhaps he had brought with him some clever and learned men who were his friends from London, or a young Dutch painter called Holbein, who was hardly at all known then, but is now counted among the greatest painters in the world.

Sometimes, later in the evening, there would be seen a very grand barge indeed, with scarlet and cloth of gold, sweeping up to the landing-place; and then someone would call out 'The King!' and presently King Henry VIII. himself would step out and come up to see his Chancellor, and would walk up and down the garden with his arm round More's neck. He was very fond of More, and asked his advice about all sorts of things. More wanted to show him young Holbein's paintings, so he had his hall hung with many of them, and one day, when the King came in unexpectedly, he took him in there to show them to him. Henry was so delighted with them that he ordered Holbein to paint a picture of himself and others of many of his courtiers, and Holbein was well paid, and made a large fortune.

One day, when the King had been very gracious, and had left Chelsea to go back to Westminster, young Roper said to More how lucky he was to be such a favourite with the King; but More knew what a tyrant Henry was, and how dangerous it was to have anything to do with him, and he answered at once he had no cause to be proud, for if his head would win the King a castle in France it would go. He was quite right; for his head went afterwards for a much less thing than that.

When More was still in the height of his power his daughter Margaret married William Roper. But More could not bear to part with Meg, and the house was large, so he said the young married couple should go on living with him and his wife just the same as before.

More built a chapel on to Chelsea old church—a chapel which is there now, and you may see it—and in it there is a large monument to his memory. Of his great house and garden all is gone except a bit of red-brick wall, which is said to have been the wall of the garden.

Now, just about this time Henry had grown tired of his wife, Catherine of Arragon, and wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, so he thought he would divorce Catherine. But even a king can't get rid of his wives whenever he likes; so he asked all his lords and nobles to say that he was quite right, and that Catherine ought to be divorced, and that he ought never to have married her, because long years before she had been married to his brother, who had died. A great many of the nobles would have said anything Henry wanted, but More was braver than that; he said plainly that it would not be right for Henry to do this thing. So the King was very angry, and More found it impossible to continue to be Lord Chancellor; so he gave up his office, even though it meant that he would have to change all his way of living and be a poor man again. Lady More used to go to service in Chelsea church, and More sat in another part of the same church, and on Sundays she used to wait to hear that her husband was outside before she got up to go, and in order to let her know this a footman used to come and open the pew-door for her, and say: 'Madam, the Chancellor has gone.'

There is a story told that on the Sunday after More had given up being Chancellor he had not spoken to his wife about it, for he knew she would be very angry, and he always loved a joke; so he himself walked up the aisle and held open the pew-door, and said: 'Madam, the Chancellor has gone.' At first Lady More could not understand him, but when she did, and knew that he was no longer Chancellor, she was very angry indeed.

Now, More said they must send away some of their servants and live very plainly, and Margaret and her husband went into a little house near; and so badly off were the Mores that they could not afford fires, and when the weather grew colder, More and his wife and children used to gather together in one room and burn a great bundle of fern just to make a big blaze and send them warm to bed. But through it all More was quite happy. He had never wanted to be a great man: he preferred to live simply with those he loved; but he was not long to be allowed to do even that.

Henry devised a plan by which he could put More in prison. He drew up a long paper saying that the King was the head of the Church, and that whatever he did was right, and that if he chose to divorce his wife he could do it, because the power was in his own hands; and then he summoned all the bishops and More to sign this.

Sir Thomas More knew quite well what this meant, that it was only a plan to get hold of him, for he could not sign what he did not think. It was on a spring morning that he left his house to go down to Lambeth Palace, where the paper was lying ready to be signed, and he knew quite well that it was very likely he should never come back; and he was quite right: he never did come back. He said good-bye to his children and stepped into his barge. When he got to Lambeth he found that all the men there assembled had signed except one called Bishop Fisher. Now, Fisher and More were Roman Catholics; that is to say, that they still believed in the power of the Pope—and they could not sign the paper without signing what they thought a lie. They had been taught this, and so they believed it, and they acted bravely according to their own consciences. More was given five days to think it over, but he did not go back to Chelsea, and at the end of five days he was taken to the Tower with old Bishop Fisher.

When he landed at the Traitor's Gate, of which you shall hear more presently, the porter asked him for his outside clothes, according to a very bad custom of the time, which allowed the porters to rob the prisoners thus. More gave him his cap, but the man was not content with that, and he had to give his outside coat as well.

It was just the beginning of the summer when the two men went to the Tower, and they were put in separate cells. At first they were not treated badly, and were allowed pens and paper to write letters; but afterwards these were taken from them, and More had to write his letters with a coal. However, he had one great consolation—his daughter was sometimes allowed to come to see him. Perhaps the King thought that she would persuade him to give in and sign the paper so that he might go back home.

When the summer had passed and the weather grew colder, More and Fisher both suffered from the cold, but especially poor old Bishop Fisher, whose clothes were in rags. And it was not until a whole year after they had been sent to the Tower that they were brought up to be tried. More was taken on foot through the streets to Westminster, a very long way—more than three miles. He was dressed in common clothes and surrounded by a guard. Then he was tried at Westminster, and accused of treason in not acknowledging the King's authority, but the real reason was that he would not say the King was right in marrying Anne Boleyn.

He was condemned to death. There was a custom in those days that when a man was condemned to death the executioner walked out of the judgment-hall before the prisoner with the sharp edge of the axe turned backwards towards him.

More had been tried in Westminster Hall, of which you have heard already, and inside there it was very dark; but when he came out into the bright sunshine he was quite dazzled for the moment and could not see. But there was someone else who saw—someone who had been waiting in the crowd in terrible anxiety, and when he saw that axe turned with the sharp edge toward More he knew it meant death; and he gave a great shriek, and thrust himself through the guards and flung himself at More's feet. This was his son-in-law, William Roper, Margaret's husband.

More was allowed to go back to the Tower by boat, and a sorrowful voyage it must have been, not for himself, but for thinking of all those dear ones he must leave.

When he arrived at the Tower he saw standing on the quay two figures—his son John, then a man of twenty-five, and a tall, slight woman in deepest black, his dear Meg. Even the soldiers made way for her as she flung her arms round her father's neck and cried out of her breaking heart, 'My father! oh, my father!'—a cry which so touched some of those rough guards that they turned aside to hide the tears in their own eyes. More tried to comfort her, and presently gently drew himself away. He felt it was almost too much for him; but as she turned away she could not bear to let him go, and once more threw her arms round him with that pitiful cry, and only gave way when at last she sank fainting on the ground.

More then went on and left her so, and when she came to herself she knew it was all over, and that she had no more hope. Six days later, at nine o'clock in the morning, More was led out to suffer beheading, as Bishop Fisher had already suffered. When he had first gone to the Tower he had been a man of middle age with a brown beard and brown hair; now after a year of confinement and anxiety his hair was quite gray. When he was told to make ready for his execution, he put on a silk robe, which when the gaoler saw he asked him to change for a common woollen one. More asked why, and was told that the clothes he was killed in became the property of the executioner, and the clothes he left behind in the Tower were taken by his gaolers, and that this gaoler thought the silk robe too good for the executioner. So More quietly changed to a commoner dress, for it mattered little to him. When he reached the scaffold, he found he was too feeble to climb up the steps without help, and he asked one of the men to give him an arm, adding: 'I pray you see me safe up; as for my coming down, I may shift for myself.' The executioner asked his forgiveness, which was granted; and then More knelt before the block, and carefully put his beard aside, saying: 'That at least has committed no treason.' Then with one stroke his head was cut off. His body was buried near the chapel in the Tower; but, according to the custom of that time, his head was stuck up on London Bridge.



Fancy the horror of his loving daughter Meg when she heard this! What could she do? She could not suffer it to stay there, so she bribed two men and took a boat, and, going down the river, stole her own father's head, and, wrapping it in a cloth, returned with her gruesome burden to Chelsea, where she is said to have buried it in the church. Can you picture anything more awful than the task of this brave woman?

Another of More's daughters was married, too, and she and Meg were both happy mothers with families of their own; but we may be quite sure that so long as they lived they never forgot their dear father.



CHAPTER XIV

LADY JANE GREY

There once lived a girl who was called Queen of England for twenty days, but who was never crowned; who lived a good and innocent life, yet was beheaded when she was only sixteen. This was Lady Jane Grey. She was a cousin of young King Edward VI., who succeeded his father Henry VIII. when he was a little boy of nine. At that time England had lately established the Protestant religion, the Church of England as we have it now, and all Roman Catholics had been forced to become Protestants or to leave the churches to those who were. Edward was a delicate little boy, and he had only reigned five years when he caught measles. He never seemed to recover from them; he had a cold afterwards, which settled on his chest, and it soon began to be whispered that the boy-king must die. At this there was much talking among the great nobles who were Protestants, for they knew that the next heir to the throne was Edward's elder sister Mary, a woman of thirty-eight, a strong Roman Catholic; and they feared that if Queen Mary sat on the throne all the Roman Catholics would be restored to their places, and the Protestants would be persecuted and perhaps murdered, all of which afterwards really did happen. Mary had a younger sister Elizabeth, who was only twenty, and she was a Protestant; and if the nobles could have put her on the throne instead of Mary, all would have been well with England. But that they could not do, for to set aside an older sister for a younger one would have been impossible. So they looked around for someone else, and fixed on little Lady Jane Grey.

Lady Jane was one of the three daughters of a nobleman called the Duke of Suffolk; she was the eldest, and through her mother she was a cousin of King Edward's, and of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, too. If Edward had had no sisters, Lady Jane would have been Queen after him. The nobles had wanted her to marry Edward, who was just her own age; but the boy had been too ill to think of marrying, and now he was going to die, and it was too late to make any arrangement of that sort. His guardian, the Duke of Northumberland, was a powerful and ambitious man, and he planned a scheme by which he would be still more powerful. He persuaded Edward that Lady Jane must reign after him, for if she did not England would suffer; and Edward, who loved the Protestant religion, consented. He made a will saying that Lady Jane was to be Queen instead of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth. Of course, he had no right to do this, for a king cannot say who is to reign after him; the throne must go to the next heir. But Northumberland thought if he and all the nobles declared Lady Jane Queen, they could force the people of England to acknowledge her. Then the clever Northumberland went further; he got Edward to consent to the marriage of Lady Jane to Northumberland's only son, young Lord Guildford Dudley. Dudley was then a boy of seventeen, and Lady Jane only fifteen, but that was quite old enough for marriage in those days.

Lady Jane had lived very quietly up to this time; she was a gentle little girl who loved her books, and never thought of thrones and kings and queens. When she was quite young she could speak French and Italian, wrote Latin, and understood Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic. This was the more wonderful because in those days ladies were not supposed to know very much; if they could do beautiful tapestry work and ride and sing a little, it was considered quite enough. There is a story told of Lady Jane that one day when a very clever man named Roger Ascham came to stay with her father, he found her sitting in a window-seat reading a book. Outside stretched the beautiful park, with its green grass and great shady trees, and the voices of the visitors and the other little girls who were amusing themselves came in at the window; but Lady Jane sat curled up, as many little girls do nowadays, reading diligently, and never taking any notice of the bright world outside. And the book she was reading was the work of an ancient Greek philosopher called Plato, who wrote very interesting books, but ones that are hard even for grown-up people to understand. It must have made a pretty picture, that little pale girl bending over her book; and if anyone had said that in one short year she would be married, have been called Queen of England, and have been beheaded, it would not have been believed.

Roger Ascham stopped and asked her why she read instead of playing, and she told him she loved books, and they gave her much more pleasure than the things in which people usually tried to find pleasure. Then he wanted to know how she had managed to learn so much, and she answered:

'Sir, God hath blessed me with sharp and severe parents and a gentle schoolmaster; for when I am in the presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even as perfectly as the world was made, or else I am so sharply taunted and cruelly threatened—yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and so cruelly disordered, that I think myself in hell until the time come that I go to Mr. Aylmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time as nothing that I am with him; and thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and very troubles to me.'

That is not quite the way a little girl would speak now, I think.

When Jane had been younger she had seen a good deal of her cousin Elizabeth, who was about five years older, and they had been in the same house together; and, of course, if she had ever thought about it at all, she knew that first Mary, and after her Elizabeth, had the right to be Queen when Edward died. Before Edward died, however, Jane was told suddenly that she must marry young Guildford Dudley. He was a handsome boy and very gentle, and Jane seems to have loved him very dearly; so she made no objection, and the marriage took place in a great hurry. And at the same time her younger sister Katharine was also married to Lord Herbert, the son of the Earl of Pembroke, so the quiet life in the beautiful home in Leicestershire came to an end.

Lady Jane knew, of course, that her cousin Edward was ill, and it must have grieved her very much; for she was fond of him, and being just the same age, they had learnt the same lessons together. But when Edward died she was not told of it until she received a message from her father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, to go to his great house, called Sion House, on the Thames, not far from London. She went, never thinking what was going to happen or why she was wanted; and when she was there Northumberland himself and her own father, the Duke of Suffolk, and some other lords came into the room, and, kneeling before her, told her that her young cousin Edward was dead, and that she must succeed him as Queen of England. Poor Lady Jane was so shocked and startled that she fainted away. When she came round again they told her she must be obedient and do as they told her. She pleaded with them, and said Mary must be Queen, and that for herself she was so young—only sixteen; and she did not care to be Queen, but only wanted to live a quiet life with her husband, Lord Dudley. But they argued with her, and told her she was a coward; that it was for the good of England, and that if she refused she would be wicked; and at last she consented. Then all her life was changed.

As I have said before, people used the river then a great deal more than they do now, and all persons of importance had state barges with rowers to row them up and down the water. Some of these barges were very magnificent, with scarlet cloth and gold fringe, and looked like gorgeous birds floating on the water. A beautiful barge was waiting for Lady Jane in front of Sion House, and she stepped into it, and was rowed down the river through London to the Tower.

Now up to this time this story has not had much to do with London, but after this all the rest of it happened in London. When Lady Jane entered the Tower the man who was then Lord Treasurer of England came to her, and, kneeling down, offered her the crown of England. And afterwards Northumberland and his party lost no time, but sent men all round London to cry out that Lady Jane Grey was now Queen of England.

Meantime, Mary had been in the country. She had only just heard of her brother's death, when she heard, too, of what Northumberland had done. Now, she did not resemble her poor little cousin; she was not only very much older, but of a very stern disposition—not at all likely to sit down quietly and let another take her crown. So she made people go over all the countryside where she was and say that she was Queen, and that men might come and fight for her. Now many people felt that even if Mary were hard and cruel, still, it was fair that she should be Queen; so many nobles and gentlemen came to her, and she presently had a large army. When the story of the two Queens was heard, nearly everyone in England felt that Mary was right, and Northumberland began to think he had a harder fight before him than he had expected.

Even the people in London began to riot and say that Mary was Queen, and when one of the nobles on her side went to St. Paul's Cathedral, and there, standing beside a cross called St. Paul's Cross, where proclamations were made, cried out Mary was Queen, all the people shouted for joy. Bonfires were lit in the streets, and everywhere was feasting and rejoicing, and no one seemed to care about Lady Jane in the Tower.

So Northumberland saw how foolish he had been, and he hastened to send Jane back to Sion House; but he stayed in London himself, and cried out like the rest that Mary was Queen. For only three weeks Jane had been Queen, and all that time she had stayed in the gloomy Tower wishing she were back in her country home.

Then Mary rode in state into London, and went straight to the Tower. Her first care was to have Edward's funeral celebrated—for he had not yet been buried—and then she began to think about her enemies. Northumberland, of course, was her prisoner, together with some other nobles, and Northumberland and two others were condemned to death. So a very short time after he had brought his son's wife to the Tower as a queen the Duke of Northumberland had his head cut off at the same Tower. Lady Jane and her husband were brought to the Tower as prisoners also, but were allowed to walk in the gardens, and were well treated; for at this time Mary seemed to think that they were not to blame, having been a mere boy and girl made to do wrong by their fathers, which was true. Perhaps they would have stayed in captivity for many years but for the foolish friends, who, by trying to help them, made their fate much worse. For after Mary had been Queen a short time she was hated. Her stern manners and her hard face made people fear her, and shortly after she was crowned people began to rise in different parts of England and say that Lady Jane ought to be Queen instead. And for some time Mary had to send troops to fight against the rebels, as those who rose in favour of Jane were called. At last one day an alarm was given that a man named Sir Thomas Wyatt had collected a large army, and was actually advancing on London. Mary was at that time staying at Whitehall Palace, and news came that Wyatt and all his men were going to attack the palace and carry her off. They really did come, too, and the army spread all over St. James's Park and all round the old palace—everywhere were soldiers. At that time there was a great gateway, called the Holbein Gate, that stood across Whitehall, and in this Queen Mary stayed and watched the fighting. With all her faults she was very brave, and when she saw her own guards driven in and dispersed, she showed no sign of fear. Then a gentleman rushed up to her, and, falling on his knees, said, 'All is lost,' and begged her to get into a barge on the river and fly to the Tower, where she would be safer; but Mary refused to go, and said all was not lost, and by her bravery and her words she so inspirited the men that they fought again, and succeeded in beating off Wyatt's men. So Wyatt went on toward the city, and all the way he had to fight, and at last he was taken prisoner on Ludgate Hill, which is not far from St. Paul's Cathedral.

Then Mary knew that she was safe again; but she must have passed a sleepless night and thought a great deal, for she at last made up her mind she would order Lady Jane Grey and her husband to be beheaded, for so long as they lived other men would rise, as Wyatt had done, and try to make Jane Queen.

It was a dreadful thing to do, but we must remember that in those days executions were not thought so much of as they would be now. In these days anyone would be horrified to hear that a man's or woman's head was to be cut off, and even the very worst murderers are only hanged; but in Mary's day a great many people were beheaded every year. So in the morning, when Mary rode down to the city to thank her nobles and knights for fighting so bravely and defending her, she knew that before the day was ended she would have signed the death-warrant of Lady Jane. When she came to Temple Bar she stopped. Now, Temple Bar was a great gateway that stood in the Strand, just where the City of London begins, and on it there were ugly iron spikes; and sometimes the heads of those who had been executed were stuck on these spikes, and stayed there until they rotted away. All the people passing along the street could look up and see the heads, and sometimes, when the wind was high, a ghastly head came tumbling down into the street. We cannot think of such things without horror; but in those days people were accustomed to them, and did not mind them very much. When Mary came to Temple Bar she asked for ink and paper, and wrote there the order for young Lady Jane and her husband to be beheaded.

Lady Jane was in the Tower when the news was brought to her. She had now been a prisoner six months, and perhaps sometimes she had thought she might die as her father-in-law had died; so when the priest Queen Mary sent came to tell her the news, she received it quite calmly and without a shudder. But when he tried to make her turn Roman Catholic, she told him she should never do that. The priest hurried back to Queen Mary, and said if the execution could be put off three days he might make Lady Jane a Roman Catholic, so Queen Mary consented to delay a little. But when Jane was told that she was to live a little longer, she was sorry, for it was worse to wait than to be killed at once. During those three days she must sometimes have shuddered to think that not only must she die, but her young husband, so full of life and strength, must die too; yet she never gave way before people or seemed afraid. She was asked if she would see Guildford to say good-bye; but she said it was better not, for the parting might be too heartrending, and make them both break down. He was to die first, and when the morning came, very early the guards led him past Lady Jane's window on his way to death. Then indeed she must have felt that the bitterness of death was past. She had written a long letter to Queen Mary explaining how everything had happened, and that it was never her wish to be a queen; and she had written another to her father, knowing that he must be very sad, feeling it was all his fault that she had been led into this sad position; and another to her younger sister Katharine to say good-bye. And now all was done, and soon her husband would be dead, and what had she left to live for?

The execution of Guildford did not take long. Presently a low rumble of cart-wheels over the stones told Lady Jane that they were bringing back his dead body, and then she knew her turn must come.

One can imagine the horror with which she heard the door open and saw Sir John Brydges, the man who was to lead her out, standing and waiting. But she was very brave; she neither fainted nor screamed, but rose up, and, taking his hand, walked with him to the scaffold. When she arrived at the place of execution she made a little speech, saying that she ought never to have allowed anyone to persuade her to be queen; but that she was young—she had not known what was right. And then, without any show of fear, she laid her head on the block, and it was cut off at one blow.

So died the poor girl at only sixteen—a girl who loved her books, and would have lived a quiet life if it had not been for the ambitious plans of her own father and her father-in-law.



CHAPTER XV

GUNPOWDER PLOT

There is no need to tell anyone who lives in the country what happens on the fifth of November, for they are sure to know well. The beautiful fireworks, with their streams of coloured fire; the crackling of the squibs; the gorgeous catherine-wheels and the coloured Roman candles; the great rockets that shoot up into the air with a swish, leaving behind them a long tail of golden fire, and then burst into showers of stars—all these may be seen on the fifth of November; and if you are really lucky children, there will follow the great bonfire, with barrels of tar poured over it to make the flames roar upward. They lick the bare sticks put ready for them, and climb over the logs until they reach the figure of Guy Fawkes himself, a stuffed figure like a scarecrow, which stands at the highest point. The flames crackle gaily; the heat is in contrast with the fresh air of the November evening; all the people standing by look strange and unlike themselves with that weird glow on their faces. Then Guy's hands curl up, an arm wavers, and he topples headlong into the glowing flames, to be burnt up altogether. Guy is only made of straw, so we need not be sorry for him; but it is a curious custom, and we have to go to history to find out what it means. That there was a real man, a Guy Fawkes, who lived in James I.'s reign, you know perhaps. This Guy was at first a Protestant, and as a little boy used to go to church with his mother; but as he grew older he became a Roman Catholic. Now, at that time in England there were many very hard and unjust laws against the Roman Catholics, not allowing them to hold offices in the State, and preventing them from doing many things that Protestants might do. People are wiser now, and realize that a man may be a good man and a good servant of the country whatever his religion so long as he is in earnest, but in those days it was not so. Well, a certain number of lords and gentlemen who were Roman Catholics tried to get these laws altered; but they could not, and so they were very angry and bitter against the King and his Ministers, and joined together to make a plot to be revenged on them. Guy Fawkes was one of the men in this plot, and it may have been he who suggested the dreadful idea that was at last decided upon. However that may be, at first nothing was done, but the conspirators used to meet together in secret to talk things over. They dare not meet openly, for if so many Catholic gentlemen had been discovered together, the King and his Ministers would have suspected something wrong. In one great house in the country belonging to a young man called Sir Everard Digby, they met in a secret room, with a floor that moved, so that if ever the King's officers came suddenly to surprise them there, they could all escape by means of the floor, which slipped up and let them out, whence they could go from the house by means of a secret passage. Digby was quite young, little more than a boy, and he had just married a young and beautiful girl, when he became entangled in the detestable Gunpowder Plot.

The plot, when it finally took form, was that the conspirators should hire a house near to the Houses of Parliament and dig an underground tunnel, which should reach right beneath the part of the House where the King would be when the Houses of Parliament were opened the next time; that they should then put gunpowder there, and blow up the whole building, killing the King and many of the great Ministers. While everyone was thrown into terror and confusion by this, the other conspirators were to seize one of the young princes, the King's sons, and carry him off; then, when everything was thus in the hands of the Catholics, they expected to be able to make their own terms, and get the laws against Catholics repealed by the nation.

All this sounded very grand, but it was very difficult to do. It is wonderful that the conspirators managed to do so much as they did. They actually took a room near the Houses of Parliament, and began to dig their underground passage. But they found this a much more difficult job than they had anticipated, for every bit of the soil they dug out had to be carried away in baskets secretly by night; for people would naturally have noticed it if they had seen it, and begun to ask what was being done. But just when they had discovered how hard the work was going to be, they heard that a cellar right under the Houses of Parliament was to be let. Here was a chance! They took it at once, and gave up digging out their tunnel. Guy Fawkes was appointed to see that the scheme was carried out, and his was the dangerous part. He had to buy barrels of gunpowder singly and at different times, and see that they were carried into his cellar without anyone seeing them. Then he bought a great deal of wood in faggots and stacked it over the barrels of gunpowder, so that if anyone did come into that cellar, he would never suspect it was anything but an ordinary cellar for storing wood. The meeting of Parliament was to take place in October, and by August all was ready; then the meeting of Parliament was delayed, and the conspirators heard it was not to be until the fifth of November. The time now drew very near. Then it occurred to some of the conspirators that perhaps some of their own friends who were members of Parliament would be blown up with the rest, and they grew uneasy. Each one wanted to warn his own friend not to go to Parliament that day, but no one knew how to do it for fear of betraying the plot. At last, however, one of the conspirators, who was a brother-in-law of Lord Mounteagle's, sent Lord Mounteagle a letter, saying that he had better not go to Parliament on the day of opening, for the Parliament was to receive 'a terrible blow, and yet shall not see who hurts them.' Lord Mounteagle was naturally distressed to receive such a letter, without any sign who had sent it, and he took it to the King. James was a clever man in some ways, and he saw at once that a terrible blow, yet not seen, must mean something to do with gunpowder; so he had the cellars under the Houses of Parliament searched, and discovered the barrels of gunpowder. Now Guy Fawkes knew nothing of this, but came the night before the fifth to be in time to do his dreadful deed. He was a brave man, though a wicked one, caring little what evil he was doing. He had arranged a train of gunpowder running along the floor to what is called a slow match—that is to say, a long match that burns for perhaps five or ten minutes, so that the person who lights it has time to get away before the explosion occurs—and then he waited until the time when all the members of Parliament and the King should be there before setting a light to it. Cannot you picture Guy Fawkes alone in that gloomy cellar that night? He did not know that the plot was discovered; he thought that everything had been kept very secret, and that to-morrow he would set a light to that match and hurry away, and before he had got very far he would hear a sound that would seem to tear the very sky, and with a crash the Houses of Parliament would reel and fall, burying in their ruins hundreds of men and the King of England. These were not the same Houses of Parliament that stand now, but were burnt down many years after.

In the dark shadows Guy waited; perhaps a mouse ran across the floor, and made him start. And then there was a sound of footsteps at the door, a whispering and a creaking of boots, and before he had time to do anything he found himself surrounded by soldiers, and knew that all was over; that the least he could hope for was death, which he had richly deserved, for he had intended to murder hundreds of men who had never wronged him.

All the implements for his terrible scheme were found upon him—the slow match and the lights, and when the faggots were thrown aside there were the barrels of gunpowder. If the people could have got at Guy Fawkes, he would have been torn in pieces; but he was kept from them by the soldiers, and hurried off to the Tower. So all the people could do was to make a false Guy Fawkes stuffed with straw and burn him on a bonfire, and that is the origin of our fifth of November.

Guy Fawkes was not put to death at once, as you will hear in the account of the Tower; he was tortured on the rack to make him give up the names of those who had been in the conspiracy with him. Again and again he refused, but at last the awful suffering weakened him so that he hardly knew what he was doing; and when the torturers told him some of his comrades had been taken, which was not true, he believed them, and moaned out the names of two or three of his fellow-conspirators. Among them was poor young Sir Everard Digby, who, when he heard that all was lost, mounted his horse and tried to get away to the sea to go across to the Continent; but he was taken, and with many of the others, including Guy Fawkes himself, was hanged.

This, then, was the famous Gunpowder Plot which we celebrate on the fifth of November.



CHAPTER XVI

CHARLES I

The story of Charles I. is one of the most dreadful in English history. It seems impossible to believe that so many of the English people could stand calmly round and watch their King executed like a common criminal without raising a finger to save him.

We have met Charles once before in this book, if you remember, when he walked across Spring Gardens on his way to be murdered. He was born in Scotland, and he had an elder brother, Prince Henry, so that it was thought at first that Charles would not be King. But Prince Henry died when Charles was only twelve, and so Charles became Prince of Wales and heir to the throne.

By this time the Kings of England lived, when in London, not in Westminster Palace, but in another palace called Whitehall. When Henry VIII. was King, the old palace of Westminster, of which you have heard so much in the story of Edward V., had fallen into ruins, so Henry looked about for another. Quite close to Westminster Palace there was a great house called York House, which belonged to the Archbishops of York, and which they used when they came to London. Henry arranged that he should have this for a new palace, so he moved there. It was not just one great building as we picture palaces in these days, but a number of smaller ones—courts and long ranges of houses—and in it lived all the people connected with the Court, as they had done at Westminster Palace. It was a little town in itself. There were no trains then, and when the King went from one of his palaces to another everything had to be taken in carts. We are told that three hundred carts went from Whitehall to Greenwich Palace at one time laden with linen cloths for the tables, wine, and gold and silver plate, and dresses and kitchen things, pots and pans, and other things. In that time people had tapestry hanging on the walls instead of our paper and paint. They had rough trestle-tables, which were only boards, and were put up and taken down again when they were not wanted. The floors were strewn with green leaves and scented plants, which had to be put there freshly every day. It was all so different from our own time that we can hardly imagine it.

James I. was the father of Charles, and he gave many splendid entertainments at this palace, in which, no doubt, Prince Charles took part. There were dinners and dances, and other things not so harmless; for instance, it was supposed to be great sport to see two poor cocks fight until they tore each other almost to pieces, and people used to bet on one cock or the other. There were also fights between bears and greyhounds; and a wretched bull was tied to a stake and a number of savage dogs let loose on him, and the more the bull threw his head this way and that, and stuck his great horns into the dogs, and the more the dogs seized him at the back, where he could not defend himself, and tore his flesh with their teeth, the more the people laughed and applauded. Even ladies watched these sports. Prince Charles was never a strong boy, and always rather quiet and thoughtful, and he cannot have liked such cruelty; but then it was the fashion—everyone did it, so he thought it must be all right. King James was very fond of hunting, and while he lived the Court was always gay. But the palace was getting more and more old and inconvenient, and at last James thought he would build a new one. So he sent for his architect, a wonderful man called Inigo Jones, and ordered him to draw plans for a new palace that should be far more splendid than the old one. Inigo Jones did so. We still have copies of his plans, and we can see what a wonderful palace he meant to have built. It was to face the river on one side and to have rows of windows and high round towers, and all along the roof there were to be figures as large or larger than life standing on the parapet. It would have cost thousands and thousands of pounds. But this beautiful palace was never completed. The King died and Inigo Jones died, and the only bit of this great new palace that was ever built is still standing, and you can see it any day in London if you go down Whitehall. It is larger than an ordinary-sized house, and has pillars running up the front and two rows of windows, and is called the Banqueting Hall.

Well, when James died his son Charles became King. Charles was then twenty-five years old, and was still delicate and thin, and not very tall. His hair was long, parted in the middle, and falling on each side of his face to his collar. His little neat beard was cut to a point, and his eyes were very sad. He liked better to live quietly than to be a king.

Almost directly after his father's death he married a French Princess. She was young and gay, and if she had known she was going to marry the only King of England who was ever beheaded, I think she would have stayed in France. She was only just sixteen when she came to London, and all the strange faces and the strange language must have frightened her very much. Charles had never seen her before, and when they met he looked at her as if she was not quite so small as he had expected; and she laughed and showed him the heels of her shoes, which were quite flat, and said: 'Sir, I stand upon mine own feet. I have no helps of art. Thus high I am, and am neither higher nor lower.'

Henrietta Maria was dark, with black eyes and dark-brown hair, and was very quick and bright, and Charles loved her always to the end of his life.

After a time Henrietta was given Somerset House, a magnificent house in the Strand, for herself, and all her French attendants lived there with her. Perhaps Charles felt that the old palace at Whitehall was hardly fit for this bright little French woman, and perhaps it annoyed him to hear all the French people chattering about his own Court. Somerset House had been built by an uncle of Edward VI., the Duke of Somerset, who was such a greedy man that he had pulled down numbers of churches in order to take the stone of which they were built to make his own vast mansion. The Duke never lived there, for before it was finished he was imprisoned in the Tower, and then beheaded. When Henrietta was there the furniture was very magnificent and rich. We are told that one of the bed coverlets, of embroidered satin, was worth L1,000!

This Somerset House was pulled down when George III. was King, and another great house called by the same name was built instead. This one is still standing, and in it there are offices belonging to the Government. In one part are all the wills that people have left when they died, and if anyone wants to see a particular will he can go there and see it if he pays a shilling.

One day when Queen Henrietta Maria lived in old Somerset House, Charles came and told her he was going to send all her French attendants back to France except her lady's-maid and one other, for the French people were saying things against the King and making mischief. Henrietta was much grieved, but she had to obey the King, so she sent them back to France. Long years after the death of her husband, when her son was King, after many terrible wars, Henrietta once again came back to London and lived at her old home. Not far from Somerset House, close by Charing Cross Station, was another great house in the Strand called York House. I spoke of this before when I told you about the fine old water-gate still standing. That water-gate belonged to a handsome man called the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham had been a great favourite with the old King, James I., and he had travelled abroad with Charles when he was Prince of Wales. Charles loved him very dearly, though he knew he was an ambitious, selfish man, fond of pleasure. Charles and Henrietta had been married three years, and during that time people had grumbled against Buckingham because he was the King's favourite; but though he was disliked, no one ever guessed what would happen. Buckingham had gone down to Portsmouth to arrange some matters about shipping, and there he was stabbed to the heart by a man named Felton. When Felton was brought to London to answer for his crime, the people followed him with shouts and acclamations, so pleased were they that he had killed the hated Buckingham. But King Charles himself was very sad at the loss of his friend. He was beginning to find out that being a king was not all pleasure.

For one thing, he wanted money, and the Parliament would not give it to him. Then he asked rich people to lend him some, and many refused. Of course, he had a good deal of money; but he had very great expenses, and he wanted more. So he quarrelled with the Parliament, and that was the beginning of a long, sad contest. However, it did not get very serious all at once; but the quarrels between the King and the Parliament gradually grew worse and worse for many years.

Charles and Henrietta had been married about five years when a little son came to them, and they called him Charles after his father. He was not long without a playfellow; for a year after there was a daughter called Mary, and then another son called James. There is still in existence a letter which his mother, the Queen, wrote to Prince Charles when he was a very little boy and was naughty, and would not take his medicine. Here it is:

'CHARLES,

'I am sure that I must begin my first letter by chiding you, because I hear that you will not take physic. I hope it was only for this day, and to-morrow you will do it; for if you will not I must come to you and make you take it, for it is for your health. I have given order to my Lord Newcastle to send me word whether you will or not, therefore I hope you will not give me the pains to go.

'Your affectionate, 'MOTHER.

'To my dear son the Prince.'

I do not know where Henrietta was when she wrote that letter; perhaps she was staying away at one of the palaces in the country. In London King Charles still lived in Whitehall Palace, though he had another, of which you have heard, called St. James's Palace, in St. James's Park, quite near. In either of these he was not far from the Houses of Parliament, and it was to the members of Parliament he applied for money. When they would not give him any more he dissolved Parliament, and sent all the members away; but when he found he could not get money any other way, he called them together again.

After these wretched quarrels it must have been a pleasure to him to go back to the royal nursery, and forget about being a king for a time in playing with his children. When little Charles was five years old there came another little daughter, Elizabeth, and she, as she grew up, was the favourite of her sad, gentle father.

Mary was a good girl, affectionate and warm-hearted; but she was not clever like Elizabeth. I think Charles must have been a nice boy; but his brother James was such a horrid man when he came to be King years afterwards that he cannot ever have been nice at all, even as a boy.

When Mary was ten a great event happened: she was married to a boy prince, the Prince of Orange, who lived in Holland. She still lived with her father and mother; but she knew when she grew up she would be Princess of Orange—would have to go to live in Holland with her husband. Her son, who married his cousin Mary, daughter of James II., became King of England, as William III., many years after.

It was not very long after this that the quarrels between King and Parliament grew so bad that Charles was afraid, and had to fly for his life. Little Charles, Prince of Wales, was twelve, and Elizabeth, the younger girl, was seven, and there was a younger boy, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, only four years old. Henry was far the nicest of the boys, and it was a pity he could not be King; but you shall hear more of him afterwards.

Henrietta, the Queen, fled to France and afterwards to Holland, where she sold her jewels to raise money to pay soldiers to fight for the King her husband. The two eldest boys were sent over to France too. Princess Mary went to her husband's family in Holland, and little Elizabeth and Henry were taken prisoners by the Parliament.

The story of the battles between Charles and the Parliament can be read in history, and does not belong particularly to London. The end was very sad. The King was taken prisoner by the Parliamentarians, who were now led by a man called Oliver Cromwell.

Queen Henrietta had gone back to France, leaving a little baby named after herself in England. When this baby was two years old the Countess of Dorset, who had charge of her, wanted to take her over to her mother in France, and she was afraid that the little Princess would be recognised and seized by Cromwell's men, so she dressed her in a coarse stuff frock instead of the pretty laces and ribbons she had been accustomed to wear. But when they started on the journey the little child carefully explained, in her lisping, baby way, to everyone who spoke to her that she was generally dressed very differently, and the poor Countess was much afraid that people would find out she was a little princess. In spite of this they got safely over to France. When Henrietta grew up she was a gay, frivolous girl, very fond of clothes, as one might judge she would be from this story; and she married a Frenchman.

To return to Charles and his two younger children, Elizabeth and Henry, who were now left in London. The King was taken to Westminster, and then for many days there was what the Parliamentarians called a 'trial.' They accused their King of breaking laws, of trying to hinder the liberty of the people, and of many other things. Through it all Charles was patient and gentle, and even at the end, when they condemned him to death, he showed no fear or horror. Some day you can go to Westminster and walk into that great hall where this mock trial took place, and imagine the scene. It is all bare now, a great empty place with a stone floor and stone walls and no seats, and it is not used for anything; but when the King was there it was filled with eager, bustling crowds all gone mad for a time, and willing to kill their King. Then Charles was told to prepare for death, but told also that he might see his children once again to bid them good-bye.

These two children had been taken from one place to another by their enemies, and not treated at all like a prince and princess. Elizabeth was now fourteen and Henry ten. They had been called plain Master and Miss instead of Prince and Princess, and had lived very plainly in the houses of persons who were supposed to take care of them.

When they saw their father and heard what he had to tell them, they were very unhappy. Charles said to his little boy: 'Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head. Mark, child, what I say—they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee King; but mark what I say, you must not be a king so long as your brothers Charles and James do live, for they will cut off your brothers' heads (if they can catch them), and cut off thy head, too, at the last; and therefore I charge you, do not be made a king by them.' At which the child, sighing, said: 'I will be torn in pieces first.'

Charles thought that the Parliamentarians might make Henry King because he was a little boy, and they could force him to do as they liked; but they did not do that.



Then Charles went on to say that the two children must always be Protestants, and never become Roman Catholics. Their mother Henrietta was a Roman Catholic, and he was afraid she might try to make them change their religion. And he was quite right; for afterwards, when Henry went across to France, the Queen did everything in her power to make him change. She was very cruel to him, took away his dinner, and would not let him play or ride, and at last was going to send him to a Roman Catholic school. But Henry's brother Charles, who was still wandering about on the Continent, and had not then regained the throne, wrote to her saying that his brother must come to him, and he would take care of him. So brave little Henry was rescued. He lived to be nineteen, and to see his brother an English King, and then he died of small-pox.

King Charles, after telling both the children they must never be Roman Catholics, turned to Elizabeth, and told her what books she must read so as to understand about the Protestant religion, and very difficult books they were for a little girl of fourteen; and he told her many other things, and that she must give his love to the other children. Then he said: 'Sweetheart, you will forget this?' And she answered: 'No, I shall never forget it while I live.'

It must have been awful for those poor children to tear themselves away, knowing that their father, the King of all England and Scotland and Ireland, was to be killed. However, at last it was over, and Elizabeth and her brother were taken down to be kept in Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. Here the little girl pined away, and died when she was only fifteen. She was found kneeling before her open Bible with her head lying on the text 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,' and she had passed into her rest.

When King Charles had said good-bye to them, he tried to fix his thoughts on the other world, and to forget all his wicked enemies. He slept that night at St. James's Palace, where our present Prince and Princess of Wales lived with their children until a short time ago. In the morning Charles walked across the Park and Spring Gardens, where, as he passed, he pointed out a tree that had been planted by his own elder brother Henry, who had died young. Then he went across to the Banqueting Hall.

Hundreds and hundreds of people were waiting in Whitehall. They cannot all have been wicked, but they must all have been cowards, for not one dared to shout out and say, 'They must not, shall not, do this fearful wrong.' If anyone had, perhaps others would have joined in and helped to save their King. But no, all were silent. Perhaps they felt to the last minute that it could not be true, that something would happen to prevent it.

King Charles walked right through the Banqueting Hall under a beautiful ceiling which he himself had paid a great painter to paint. You can walk there yourself now under the same ceiling, for the place is a museum, and anyone can go to see it.

Then he went through one of the windows upstairs—no one is quite sure which, but it is supposed to be the second one from one end—and when he stepped out on to the scaffold there was the dreadful executioner, with his black mask on and his sharp axe. It was the custom for the executioner to wear a mask, and I think he must have been glad of it that day. The scaffold was all draped in black, and on it was a block, at which the King must kneel, and on which he must rest his head. He said gently the block was very low, and he had expected it to be higher; but they told him it must be so, and he said no more.

Then he took off a beautiful star he wore, the decoration of an order, which he handed to a captain in the army, a friend of his own, in whose family it still remains, and some other things, which he gave to Bishop Juxon, who stood by, and as he did so he said: 'Remember.' No one has ever quite known what he meant by that, for the Bishop never told. It is supposed either he meant that Bishop Juxon was to remember to give these things to his son Prince Charles, or that he was to tell Prince Charles to remember to forgive his father's murderers.

Then King Charles said to the executioner that he would put his head on the block, and when he stretched out his hands he might strike. In a few minutes he finished praying, and stretched out his hands. Down fell the sharp axe, and a deep groan rose up from all the multitude as King Charles was beheaded. Now every day hundreds of people walk up and down on the pavement before the Banqueting Hall, but hardly one thinks of that awful day when a King's blood was shed on this very place.

The old palace of Whitehall has quite gone. Over the place where it was are houses and gardens; some of the houses are large and some are quite old. Only the Banqueting Hall remains, that part of the magnificent palace that Inigo Jones meant to build for James I.

At the top of Whitehall at Charing Cross there is a statue of King Charles on a horse, as if he were riding down toward the place where he died. On the very spot where it stands, before it was put up, the worst of the men who murdered Charles were themselves executed only a short distance from the place of the King's execution. For after Cromwell's death England realized her wickedness, and Charles's son came back to reign. But never, never can be forgotten the dreadful deed that happened in Whitehall more than two hundred and fifty years ago.



CHAPTER XVII

THE GREAT PLAGUE AND FIRE

Of all the awful calamities that have befallen London, there is none more awful than the Great Plague, which happened when Charles II., son of King Charles I., was on the throne. He had been restored to his kingdom for less than five years when it happened. Two people died quite suddenly in Westminster, and men looked grave and said it was the plague. But at first they did not think much of it, for the plague had often visited England before. But this time it was to be far, far worse than anything anyone had ever known. It is said that the infection was brought over from the Continent in some bales of goods that merchants were bringing to sell in London, but this was never known for certain. All at once two more people died unaccountably, and then it seemed as if the plague leaped out from every corner, and people began dying all over London. There had been a hard frost, and it was when the frost thawed that the plague seemed to gain fresh strength. Everybody began to ask questions. What were they to do? Couldn't they go away at once? What were others doing to stop the spread of the infection? The awful suddenness of it terrified everyone. Persons who had been talking gaily and feeling quite well complained of feeling a swelling on the throat or a little sickness, and in an hour they were dead. Sometimes it began by a swelling that came under the arm (this was a sure sign), and sometimes by swellings on the neck. As the plague grew worse men dropped down in the streets seized with it, and before their friends could be found they were dead. All sorts of odd things were offered in order to keep away the infection. One, that a great many foolish people believed in, was a dried toad strung on a string round the neck—as if that could have made anyone safe!

Very soon all the rich people left London and fled away into the country, though, of course, the country people did not want them, for fear that they had brought the infection. But there were hundreds and hundreds of people who stayed in London and even tried to carry on their business. At first they struggled bravely and pretended nothing was the matter, but very soon this was impossible.

You could not imagine what London looked like then. No one drove in the streets, no one walked there if he could help it; grass grew up between the cobble-stones, and nearly all the houses had shutters up, showing that their inhabitants had gone away. A nurse would come quickly along holding a little red staff in her hand to show she had been nursing a plague patient, and that other people had better avoid her. Then slowly down the street would come a cart, with a man walking beside the horse, and he would call out: 'Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!' just as if he were shouting to sell coals. And in the cart were the bodies of the people who had died of the plague. It was extraordinary that any man could be found to drive that cart, and he had to have very high wages; and even then he must have been a low sort of man, without any imagination, a man who did not mind much what his work was so long as he had some money to spend in drink. One of these men was sitting on his cart one day when it was noticed that he seemed to be ill, and the next moment he fell off dead, having caught the plague.

When people were dying by hundreds and hundreds there was no time to bury them properly: and yet they had to be buried, or the dead bodies would make it impossible for anyone to live at all. So great pits were dug many yards wide, and into these the bodies of men, women, and children were put in rows and rows, one row on the top of another, and the whole covered in with stuff called quicklime. Whenever anyone began with the plague, it was the duty of the head of the household to see that a red cross was marked on his door as a warning to others to keep away, and it must have been very sad to see these long red crosses on so many doors, with the grass-grown street in front of the houses, and the slow plague-cart going down the street.

Another rule was that if anyone had a case of the plague within his house, he and all his household must be shut up indoors for forty days for fear of carrying the infection; but many people hated this so much that they used to hide the cases of the plague when they happened, and pretend that everyone was alive and well in their houses. When the police-officers found this out they used to visit the houses, and if they found anyone sick in one of them they would carry him or her off to a hospital called a pest-house, where all the sick could be together. If it is true what we read of these houses, it must have been almost worse to go there than to die. The smells and sights were so awful, and the shrieks of the poor wretches who had been seized with the plague were so terrifying, that there was not much chance of anyone who went there recovering.

The people who were forced to stay in London, either because they had no money to go away or nowhere else to go to, used to meet in St. Paul's Cathedral and ask one another the news. This was not the same cathedral that is standing now, but one that was afterwards burnt in the Great Fire. The long aisle was called Paul's walk, and here in better times there were stalls for the sale of ribbons and laces and many other things, and people laughed and talked and strolled up and down, just as if it were a street and not a church at all. Now, in the plague time most of the stalls were shut, and the people no longer came to buy, but to ask in hushed voices how many had died last week, and if there were any sign that this awful disease was going to stop. It is almost impossible to believe, but it is true, that thieves were very busy then. They used actually to go into the houses deserted by their owners, or left because someone had died there of the plague, and steal things, without minding the risk of infection.

The country people soon stopped bringing in fresh milk and vegetables, butter and eggs from the country, because they dared not come into the town; and so it was difficult to get these things at all, and those who were in London were worse off than ever, and in danger of starving.

We can imagine children crying for bread, and their mother going out at last to try to find something for them to eat, and never coming back. Then the eldest boy would begin to be afraid that she had caught the plague and had died in the streets, and he would leave his little sisters and brothers and creep along the streets until he met the awful death-cart; and then he would ask, and perhaps the man would tell him where to go to find out about his mother, and someone might be able to describe a woman who had fallen down in the street seized by the plague, and had at once been carried off and buried. The boy would guess that that must have been his mother; and yet he could never be quite certain, for she had been buried in a plague-pit with dozens of others, and he would never see her. Perhaps he would beg a little oatmeal, and run back hastily to his brothers and sisters, and when he got there find them all frightened and crying, for the eldest girl was very sick. He might turn down her dress, and see on her neck the awful plague-spot, and know that she, too, would die. And very likely by the next day the whole of that family would be dead. Many people must have died of starvation, for all work was stopped, but for the money given by charitable persons. The King himself gave L1,000 a week.

There is a story of a man who had a good deal of money, and he shut himself and his household up in his house, and allowed no member of his family to go out. The doors and windows were closed, so that it was all dark, and food was only got by tying a basket to a string and letting it down at a certain time each day, when a person who had been paid to do so filled it with food. In the morning the whole family had breakfast together in a lower room, and afterwards the children were sent up to play in the garret. In this way the greatest danger of infection was escaped.

Of course, so soon as foreign nations heard of the plague they sent no more ships to England, and instead of being covered with vessels from all lands, the Thames was deserted and silent. Worse than that, numbers of people threw the dead bodies of their friends who had died into the water, and these floated down with the tide, or, catching in some pier or beside some boat, hung there until the air was filled with the dreadful smell of the rotting bodies. Cats and dogs were drowned, too, for fear that they should carry the infection, and their dead bodies made the river loathsome. Everywhere there were awful sights and sounds and smells; not even by the water could anyone escape. When the hot weather came in summer the plague grew worse; in one week four thousand persons died of it. Four thousand! It is difficult to imagine. But this was not the worst: the deaths went on until London was a city of the dead, and the living were very few. Fathers had lost children, husbands wives, children parents; there was no household that had not suffered from the plague. A preacher who used to go about the streets dressed only in a rough garment of fur like John the Baptist had prophesied that the grass should grow in the streets, and that the living should not be able to bury the dead. It was long since the first part of this had been true, and now the second became true, too. The people who were left were not enough to bury those who died, and even in the streets the bodies lay unburied. St. Paul's itself was used as a pest-house—that is to say, as a hospital for the plague-stricken. We can imagine that the people who were left alive felt as if they were living in some nightmare dream from which they could not awake. They must have lost all hope of ever seeing London restored to itself, and the streets clean and bright once more. It was not until the summer was past and the cold weather began that the deaths were fewer, and when the number was only one thousand a week everyone began to get hopeful again. People who had fled into the country began to come back, a few shopkeepers opened their shops, the country people came timidly to bring vegetables for sale, and so gradually things got a little better.