Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

JOHN INGLESANT

A Romance

by

John Henry Shorthouse

[Greek: Agapetoi, nun tekna Theou esmen, kai oupo ephanerothe ti esometha.]

VOL. I.

London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1881

_Printed by_ R & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.

_TO_

_RAWDON LEVETT, ESQ._

_MY DEAR LEVETT,_

_I dedicate these volumes to you, that I may have an opportunity of calling myself your friend._

_J. HENRY SHORTHOUSE._

_LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON,_ _May 1, 1881._

Memoirs of the Life

OF

MR. JOHN INGLESANT

SOMETIME SERVANT TO KING CHARLES I.

WITH

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND TRAINING BY THE JESUITS

AND

A PARTICULAR RELATION OF THE SECRET SERVICES IN WHICH HE WAS ENGAGED

ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE LATE IRISH REBELLION

WITH

SEVERAL OTHER REMARKABLE PASSAGES AND OCCURRENCES.

ALSO

A HISTORY OF HIS RELIGIOUS DOUBTS AND EXPERIENCES

AND OF THE MOLINISTS OR QUIETISTS IN ITALY IN WHICH COUNTRY HE RESIDED FOR MANY YEARS

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF

THE ELECTION OF THE LATE POPE

AND

MANY OTHER EVENTS AND AFFAIRS.

*JOHN INGLESANT.*

*INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.*

During my second year at Oxford I became acquainted with a Roman Catholic gentleman, the eldest son of a family long resident on the borders of Shropshire towards Wales. My friend, whose name was Fisher, invited me to his home, and early in my last long vacation I accepted his invitation. The picturesque country was seen to great advantage in the lovely summer weather. That part of Shropshire partakes somewhat of the mountain characteristics of Wales, combined with the more cultivated beauties of English rural scenery. The ranges of hills, some of which are lofty and precipitous, which intersect the country, form wide and fertile valleys which are watered by pleasant streams. The wide pastures are bordered by extensive plantations covering the more gradual ascents, and forming long lines along the level summits. We had some miles to drive even from the small station on the diminutive branch line of railway which had slowly conveyed us the last dozen miles or so of our journey. At last, just at the foot of one of the long straight hills, called Edges in that country, we came upon my friend's house, seen over a flat champaign of pasture land, surrounded by rows of lofty trees, and backed by fir and other wood, reaching to the summit of the hill behind it. It was an old and very picturesque house, jumbled together with the additions of many centuries, from the round tower-like staircase with an extinguisher turret, to a handsome addition of two or three years ago. Close by was the mutilated tower of a ruined priory, the chancel of which is used as the parish church. A handsome stone wing of one story, built in the early Gothic style, and not long completed, formed the entrance hall and dining-room, with a wide staircase at the back. The hall was profusely hung with old landscapes and family portraits. After a short introduction to my friend's family, we were soon assembled in the newly finished dining-room, with its stone walls and magnificent overhanging Gothic fireplace. The dinner party consisted of my friend's father and mother, his two sisters, and a Roman Catholic clergyman, the family chaplain and priest of a neighbouring chapel which Mr. Fisher had erected and endowed. The room was hung entirely with portraits, several of them being ecclesiastics in different religious costumes, contrasting, to my eyes, strangely with the gay cavaliers and the beautiful ladies of the Stuarts' Court, and the not less elaborately dressed portraits of the last century, and with those of my host and hostess in the costume of the Regency. I was struck with the portrait which happened to be opposite me, of a young man with a tonsured head, in what appeared to me to be a very simple monk's dress, and I asked the Priest, a beautiful and mild-looking old man, whom it was intended to represent.

"A singular story is attached to that portrait," he said, "which, it may surprise you to learn, is not that of a--a member of our communion. It is the portrait of a young Englishman named Inglesant, a servant of King Charles the First, who was very closely connected with the Roman Catholics of that day, especially abroad, and was employed in some secret negotiations between the King and the Catholic gentry; but the chief interest connected with his story consists in some very remarkable incidents which took place abroad, connected with the murderer of his only brother--incidents which exhibit this young man's character in a noble and attractive light. He is connected with Mr. Fisher's family solely through the relations of his brother's wife, but, singularly, he is buried not far from here, across the meadows. In the latter years of his life he purchased an estate in this neighbourhood, though it was not his native country, and founded an almshouse or rather hospital, for lunatics, in the chapel in which his tomb is still standing. That portrait, in which he appears in the dress of a novice," he continued, turning to the one before me, "was taken in Rome, when he was residing at the English college, where he certainly was received, as he appears to have been generally when abroad, into full communion with us. As a contrast to it, I will show you another in the drawing-room, by Vandyke, which, though it really was intended for his brother, yet may equally well represent himself, as, at that period, the two brothers are said to have been so exactly alike that they could not be known apart. On his tomb at Monk's Lydiard, as you may see if you incline to take the trouble to walk so far--and it is a pleasing walk--he is represented in his gown of bachelor of civil law, a degree which he received at Oxford during the civil war, and he is there also represented with tonsured head. I have often thought," continued the Priest, musingly, "of arranging a considerable collection of papers referring to this gentleman's story, which is at present in the library; or at least of writing out a plain statement of the facts; but it would be better done, perhaps, by a layman. I have the authority of these young ladies," he continued, with a smile, turning to the Miss Fishers, "that the story is a more entertaining and even exciting one than the sensational novels of the day, of which, I need not say, I am not a judge."

The young ladies confirmed this as far as their knowledge went; but they had heard only fragments of the story, and were urgent with the clergyman to set about the task. He, however, replied to their entreaties only by a shake of the head; and the ladies soon after left the room.

When we went into the drawing-room, I was eager to see the Vandyke, and was shown a magnificent picture at one end of the room, representing a singularly handsome young man, in a gorgeous satin court dress of the reign of Charles the First, whose long hair and profusion of lace and ornament would probably, in the work of another artist, have produced an unpleasing impression, but, softened by the peculiar genius of Vandyke, the picture possessed that combination of splendour and pathos which we are in the habit of associating only with his paintings. His satin shoes and silk stockings contrasted curiously with the grass on which the cavalier stood, and the sylvan scene around him; and still more so with his dogs and two horses, which were held at some little distance by a page. His face was high and noble, but on closely comparing it--as I did several times--with that of the Monk in the dining-room, I arrived at the conclusion that either the likeness between the brothers was exaggerated, or the expression of the survivor must have altered greatly in after years; for no difference in dress, great as was the contrast between the coarse serge of the novice and the satin of the cavalier, and between the close-cropped tonsured head and the flowing love locks, would account for the greater strength and resolve of the portrait in the dining-room, combined, strangely, as this expression was, with a slightly wild and abstracted look, indicating either religious enthusiasm, or perhaps unsettlement of the reason within; this latter expression being totally wanting in the face of the cavalier.

The next day was Sunday, and I opened my window on a lovely prospect of lawn and water, with the fir woods sweeping up the hill-sides beyond. Walking out in the avenue when I was dressed, I met the family returning from low mass at the chapel. I attended high mass with them at eleven o'clock. The Chapel was picturesquely built higher up in the wood than the house. It had a light and graceful interior, and the coverings of the altar were delicate and white. The exquisite plaintive music, the pale glimmer of the tapers in the morning sunlight, the soothing perfume of the incense, the sense of pathetic pleading and of mysterious awe, as if of the possibility of a Divine Presence, produced its effect on me, as it does, I imagine, on most educated Churchmen; but this effect failed in convincing me (then, as at other times) that there was more under that gorgeous ceremonial than may be found under the simpler Anglican ritual of the Blessed Sacrament. After church, my friend, who had some engagement with the Priest, accepted my assurance that I was fond of solitary walks; and I set off alone on my quest of the tomb of John Inglesant.

I followed a footpath which led direct from the ruined Church near the house, across the small park-like enclosure, into the flat meadows beyond. The shadows of the great trees lay on the grass, the wild roses and honeysuckle covered the hedges, a thousand butterflies fluttered over the fields. That Sunday stillness which is, possibly, but the echo of our own hearts, but which we fancy marks the day, especially in the country, soothed the sense. The service in the morning had not supplied the sacrament to me, but it had been far from being without the sense of worship; and the quiet country in the lovely summer weather, in connection with it, seemed to me then, as often, the nearest foretaste we can gain of what the blissful life will be. As I went on the distant murmur of Church bells came across the meadows, and following a footpath for a couple of miles, I came to the Hospital or Almshouse, standing amid rows of elms, and having a small village attached to it, built probably since its erection. The bells which I had heard, and which ceased a little before I reached the place, were in a curious turret or cupola attached to the Chapel, which formed one side of the court. The buildings were of red brick, faced with stone, in the latest style of the Stuart architecture. The door of the Chapel was wide open, and I entered and dropped into a seat just as the Psalms began. The room was fitted in a style exactly corresponding to the outside; a circular recess at the upper end took the place of chancel, lighted with three windows, which were filled with innumerable small panes of glass. The altar was richly draped; and on it, besides vases of flowers, were two massive candlesticks of an antique pattern, and an old painting, apparently of the Virgin and Child. The lower walls of the chancel and of the whole Chapel were panelled, and the whole had a flat ceiling of panelled oak, painted in the centre with a sun with rays. Partly in the chancel, and partly in the Chapel, the surpliced choir was accommodated in stalls or pews, and the organ and pulpit, in elaborate carved mahogany, completed the interior. There was a good congregation; and from this, and from many tablets on the walls, I gathered that the Chapel was used by the neighbourhood as probably being nearer than the Parish Churches. The soft afternoon light filled the place, gilding the old brass-work, and lighting up the dark carving and the sombre narrow pews. The music was of a very high class, deliciously sung, and I found afterwards that there was an endowment especially for the choir, and that the chaplains were required to be musical. The service bore comparison favourably with the morning's mass, and a short sermon followed. When all was over, and the people were gone out into the sunshine, I began to look for the tomb I had come to see, and the chaplain, having come out of the vestry, and seeming to expect it, I went up and spoke to him. I told him I had walked from Lydiard--my friend's house--to see the tomb of the founder, to which I had been directed by the Roman Catholic gentleman who resided there. He was well acquainted with Father Arnold, he told me, and took me at once to the tomb, which was in a recess by the altar, screened from view by the choir seats. There he lay, sure enough, just as the Priest had told me, carved from head to foot in alabaster, in his gown of bachelor of civil law, and his tonsured head. The sculptor had understood his work; the face was life-like, and the likeness to the portrait was quite perceptible. The inscription was curious--"sub marmore isto Johannes Inglesant, Peccator, usque ad judicium latet, expectans revelationem filiorum Dei."

I told the chaplain what Father Arnold had told me of this man's story, and of the materials that existed for writing it. He had heard of them too, and even examined them.

"The Priest will never write it," he said.

"Why do not you?" I asked.

He laughed. "I am a musician," he said, "not an author. You seem more interested in it than most people; you had better do it."

As I came back across the fields I pondered over this advice; and after dinner I asked the Priest the story. He told me the outline, and the next morning took me into the library, and showed me the papers.

The library at Lydiard is a very curious room below the level of the ground, and in the oldest part of the house. It adjoins the tower with the extinguisher turret, by which there is communication with the bed chambers, and with the leads and garrets at the top of the house. The room was large, and had several closets besides a smaller room beyond, which had no visible communication except into the library; but the Priest showed me a secret doorway and staircase, which, he said, descended into the cellars. Both these rooms and the closets were crammed with books, the accumulation of four hundred years--most of them first editions, and clean as when they came from the binder, but browned and mellowed with age. Early works of the German press, a Caxton, the scarce literature of the sixteenth century--all the books which had once been fashionable--Cornelius Agrippa, and Cardan, two or three editions of the Euphues, folios of Shakespeare and the dramatists, and choice editions of the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, down to our own day. Besides this general literature, there was a large collection of Roman Catholic works and pamphlets, many privately printed at home or published abroad; biographies of Seminary Priests who had suffered death in England, reports of trials, private instructions, and even volumes of private letters, for Lydiard had always been a secure hiding-place for the hunted priests, and more than one had died there, leaving all his papers in the library. No fitter place could exist in which to attempt the task I had already determined to undertake, and I obtained leave of the Priest, promising to make nothing public without his approval. I had the whole vacation before me; too idle and desultory to read for honours, I had always been fond of literature and the classics, and was safe for my degree, and I gave myself up unreservedly to my task. I have endeavoured, as Father Arnold said, to tell a plain story. I have no pretensions to dramatic talent, and I deprecate the reader's criticism. If I have caught anything of the religious and social tone of the seventeenth century, I am more than content.

GEOFFREY MONK, M.A.

*CHAPTER I.*

When Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was in the zenith of his power, and was engaged in completing the suppression of the smaller monasteries before commencing on the greater,--he had in his service a young gentleman named Richard Inglesant, the son of a knight, and descended from a knightly family, originally of Flanders, who had come into England with the Princess of Hainault. This young man was of an attractive person, a scholar, active and useful in many ways, and therefore a favourite with his master. One evening in the end of June 1537, he was sent for by Cromwell into the great gallery of his magnificent house in Throgmorton Street, where he found his master walking up and down in thought.

"You must be ready to depart at once, Richard," he said, "into Wiltshire. I have in this commission appointed you Visitor of the Priory of Westacre, six miles south of Malmsbury, on the way into Somerset, which they call the Priory in the Wood. The King's Grace is resolved on the suppression of this house, as a priory; but note very carefully what I tell you;--it will be for your guidance. Great interest has been made to his Grace's Highness on behalf of this house, both by many of the gentry dwelling thereabout, and also by the common people by the mouth of the Mayor of Malmsbury. They say the house is without any slander or evil fame; that it stands in a waste ground, very solitary, keeping such hospitality, that except with singular good management it could not be maintained though it had half as much land again as it has, such a number of the poor inhabitants nigh thereunto are daily relieved. The Prior is a right honest man, and well beloved of all the inhabitants therewith adjoining, having with him, in the house, eight religious persons, being priests of right good conversation, and living religiously. They spend their time in writing books with a very fair hand, in making garments for the poor people, in printing or graving. Now the prayer of these people is that the King's Highness shall translate this priory into a college, and so continue as many of the priests as the lands will maintain for the benefit of the neighbours; and the King is much inclined to do this. Now, on the other hand, this house has a proper lodging, where the Prior lay, with a fair garden and an orchard, very mete to be bestowed on some friend of mine, and some faithful servant of the King's Grace. There is no small number of acres ready sown with wheat, the tilthes ordered for barley; the house and grounds are well furnished with plate, stuff, corn, cattle; the woods well saved, and the hedgerows full of timber, as though the Prior had looked for no alteration of his house. I had set mine hand on this house for a friend of mine, but the King's Grace is determined upon this:--if the Prior will surrender the house in a discreet and frank manner, and will moreover, on Sunday next, which is the Feast of the most Precious Blood, after mass, to which all the neighbouring people shall have been called, in his sermon, make mention of the King's title of Supreme Head, and submit himself wholly, in all matters spiritual, to the King's Grace, under Christ, the house shall be continued as a college, and no man therein disturbed, and not so much as an ounce of plate taken, that they may pray God Almighty to preserve the King's Grace with his blessed pleasure. Now I send you on this mission because, if things go as I think they may, I mean this house for you; and there is so much clamour about this business that I will have no more hands in it than I can help. Take two or three of the men with you whom you can trust; but see you fail not in one jot in the course you take with the Prior, for should it come to the King's ears that you had deceived the Prior--and it surely would so come to his Grace--your head would not be your own for an hour, and I should doubt, even, of my own favour with the King."

Richard Inglesant was on horseback before daylight the next morning; and riding by easy stages, arrived at Malmsbury at last, and slept a night there, making inquiries about the way to Westacre. At Malmsbury, and at all the villages where he stopped, he heard nothing but what agreed with what Cromwell had told him; and what he heard seemed to make him loiter still more, for he slept at Malmsbury a second night, and then did not go forward to Westacre till noonday. In the middle of the summer afternoon he crossed the brow of the hilly common, and saw the roofs of the Priory beneath him surrounded by its woods. The country all about lay peaceful in the soft, mellow sunlight; wide slopes of wood, intermixed with shining water, and the quiet russet downs stretching beyond. Richard had sent on a man the day before to warn the Prior, who had been expecting his coming all day. The house stood with a little walled court in front of it, and a gate-house; and consisted of three buildings--a chapel, a large hall, and another building containing the Prior's parlour and other rooms on the ground floor, and a long gallery or dormitory above, out of which opened other chambers; the kitchens and stables were near the latter building, on the right side of the court. The Prior received Inglesant with deference, and took him over the house and gardens, pointing out the well-stocked fish-ponds and other conveniences, with no apparent wish of concealing anything. Richard was astonished at the number of books, not only in the book-room, but also in the Prior's own chamber; these latter the Prior seemed anxious he should not examine. As far as Richard could see, they were, many of them, chemical and magical books. He supped with the Prior in Hall, with the rest of the household, and retired with him to the parlour afterwards, where cakes and spiced wine were served to them, and they remained long together. Inglesant delivered his commission fairly to his host, dwelling, again and again, on every particular, while the Prior sat silent or made but short and inconclusive replies. At last Inglesant betook himself to rest in the guest-chamber, a room hung with arras, opening from the gallery where the monks slept, towards the west; one of his servants slept also in the dormitory near his door. The Prior's care had ordered a fire of wood on the great hearth that lighted up the carved bed and the hunting scene upon the walls. He lay long and could not sleep. All night long, at intervals, came the sound of chanting along the great hall and up the stairs into the dormitory, as the monks sung the service of matins, lauds, and prime. His mind was ill at ease. A scholar, and brought up from boyhood at the Court, he had little sympathy with the new doctrines, and held the simple and illiterate people who mostly followed them in small esteem. He was strongly influenced by that mysterious awe which the Romish system inspires in the most careless, even when it is not strong enough to influence their lives. The mission he had undertaken, and the probable destruction of this religious house, and the expulsion of its inmates for his benefit, frightened him, and threatened him with unknown penalties and terrors hereafter which he dared not face. He lay listlessly on his bed listening to the summer wind, and when at last he fell asleep, it was but a light fitful slumber, out of which he woke ever and anon to hear the distant chanting of the monks, and see by the flickering fire-light the great hounds coursing each other over the walls of his room.