you must know, such of us as were not orators had to sustain those who were. We had to cheer Knightley; and he so spoke that we could not but do it with all our hearts, and with all our strength.”
Edmund related how the gentry and farmers were riding in every direction to inform the people that something was now to be done about the ship-money, and about guarding the seas. It was a proud hearing for the family when Edmund told how the very name of Mr. Hampden put spirit into every man present; or, if there were any there who took the other side, they held their peace.
“So far well,” Lady Carewe observed. “But will any action follow? Will these Cornishmen take a part from this day forward? or will they only hold their voices, ready to shout for the next patriot that they may chance to see?”
“Richard says he never saw men in earnest, if these are not.”
“In earnest to do what?” Alice asked. “What would they do next?”
“They will insist on a parliament.”
“What is a parliament?” Nathanael wanted to know.
Lady Carewe shook her head, and sighed forth her sorrow that there should be an English boy,—a boy of such a family as the Hampdens,—that had not heard at least as much of Parliament as of the Court, and who did not even know what a parliament was.
“But what is it?” Nathanael demanded. “Is it”
He was stopped by a pair of hands laid on his mouth from behind. It was Henrietta; and as the boy struggled, she whispered in his ear, and let him go.
“What does she say?” asked Edmund in great surprise.
“She says I must not ask that question,—about a parliament. Yes,—about a parliament,” the boy repeated in a defiant way. “If Edmund speaks of a parliament here, and Richard down in the town, why may not I?”
“Because it is unlawful and wrong: the King has forbidden it,” Henrietta replied.
“Aunt Carewe, is that true?” asked Lucy and Kitty.
“It is true that the King has made a proclamation that no person in the kingdom shall even speak of a parliament: but it does not follow that you may not ask what a parliament is, nor that Richard may not advise the Cornishmen to get another parliament if they can.”
“But aunt, how can that be?”
“How indeed?” murmured Henrietta, as she stood with face averted.
“In the first place,” Lady Carewe explained, “the King could hardly mean that any institution of the country should not be spoken of as a historical fact: and, in the next place, the King may have been led into a mistake in issuing such an order.”
“There, Henrietta, what do you say to that?” asked Alice.
“I say,” she replied, “that I think we have nothing to do but to obey the King’s command, whatever it means.”
“And whether he has a right to issue it or not?” Harry inquired.
“Yes, Harry,” she replied, looking up with heightened colour. “Who can possibly have any right to suppose the King wrong, and disobey him for that reason?”
“Who can judge?” Nathanael asked of his aunt. “Does anybody know better than the King what he should order?”
“The wisest and best men in parliament,—in the country,” Lady Carewe continued, remembering that the boy did not know the significance of a citizen being in parliament—“the wisest men now living in England consider the King to be misled. They have for years been hoping to bring him to reason by inducing him to call together the great national council,—that is, the parliament: and he is so vexed at their steadiness in asking this, that he now forbids that the subject shall be discussed by anybody.”
“But who are the wise men who tease the King?”
“Your father is one of them: and some persons consider him the wisest of them all.”
“But, aunt,” Lucy broke in, “I am sure my papa never teases anybody.”
“That is true, my dear. Your father is a gentleman of an even and sweet temper, and of such noble and gentle manners that not even the Queen, with her foreign prejudices and her foreign papists about her, can frown upon Mr. Hampden. But your father is as steady as he is gentle: he never gives up, and he never will give up the demand that the people of England shall be governed by the law: and, as the King chooses to make his own will the law, there can be no agreement between him and the wise men who think and say what your father thinks and says.”
Who were these wise men? the children desired to know. John Eliot was too young, they supposed; but if his father had been alive, would he have been one?
There could be no doubt about that, as the children would see when they came to understand why their father’s best friend had died in prison,—full of virtues as he was, and without any fault. Nathanael and his sisters saw that Edmund’s eyes were full of tears, and they hastened from the subject. They went over the names of all their father’s best-known friends. Was Dr. Giles, the rector at home, one of the wise men? Was Sir Richard Knightley? Was Mr. Pym? Was Mr. Hyde?”
Henrietta advised them to ask whether Sir Thomas Wentworth—(they remembered Sir Thomas Wentworth?)—was he one of the wise men of the nation?
Edmund replied that he had once been so; but that his backsliding was now known to all the kingdom.
“He is a dutiful subject,” exclaimed Henrietta, “and a hero for his bold faithfulness to his sovereign. If ever a man was thorough, it is he.”
“You have taken up his own word, Henrietta,” said Harry. “He will have everything ‘thorough.’”
