“My Lady Croke has that power, it appears,” Lord Wentworth replied. “She besought her husband to dismiss all solicitude for her and her children in giving judgment. She was willing to suffer want and disgrace with him rather than that he should mispronounce the law.”
“Surely she is a noble lady!” Henrietta exclaimed.
“Surely,” said Helen, “this was a freeing, and not a binding of the conscience.”
Lord Wentworth smiled, and said it interested him to see how faithful women were in defending their sex. Sir Oliver was of opinion that a whipping all round would do them much good—all but his little Henrietta. She was too loyal to need a whipping; and, if he had his will, her father should have it instead of her. Lord Wentworth laughed; and Sir Oliver asked whether it was true that he had counselled His Majesty to punish those Buckinghamshire gentry like mutinous schoolboys.
Being obliged to answer, Lord Wentworth said, in his blandest way, that it was not precisely so. He had dropped the jesting remark that he wished Mr. Hampden and his imitators were well whipped into their right senses; and this foolish jest had got wind. But he approved all due application of reason first, as was shown by the pains he had taken to keep the judges whom he knew to the straight line. Nothing could be done with Denham, who was of a disputatious and troublesome temper; but from Sutton better things might have been hoped.
“What is his ground?” Helen asked.
“So wide a ground,” the Lord Deputy answered, “that I spent more time and ink upon him than upon many an ordinance in Ireland. I announced to him that in a time of public danger, a levy of money must be made. No man disputes that. But further, the King alone is judge of the necessity, and of the fit method of supplying it. Ordinary persons can see but the surface of events; whereas the Ruler of the State has the deepest insight of any man, and may use his pleasure in revealing or concealing his special occasions: and, for any subject to presume to set himself up as a judge of such matters, so far above his duty, is contrary to the reverence and gratitude with which so gracious a sovereign is to be regarded. This was my argument.”
“Your Lordship might have added,” said Sir Oliver, “that it is very gracious of His Majesty to relieve us all of care and trouble in such affairs. For my part, I had rather pay all I have, down to this tankard, than undergo the trouble of hearing all that perverse men say, and having to decide between this and that. If His Majesty will take care of the State, and leave us to our sport, and our own affairs, I, for one, shall thank him from the bottom of my soul.”
“But Uncle,” said Helen, “if you give the King all, down to your tankard, you will have neither affairs nor sport to occupy and amuse you. Is not this what Judge Sutton says?”
“He says,” replied the Lord Deputy, “that it is one thing to offer His Majesty one’s substance, in a spirit of love and duty, and another to have one’s substance levied, so that no room is left for grace on the one hand, nor for gratitude on the other. A low, trafficking method of speech, to my apprehension.”
“It is my father’s method,” Henrietta observed, with a flushing cheek. “And he adds that if the law is set aside in levying the taxes, no man can call anything his own.”
“And no man ought to call anything his own,” Sir Oliver broke in, “till he is first assured that His Majesty has no need of it. For my part, it would be my pleasure and delight to give all my fortune to His Majesty, if I had not spent it long ago. Here is my Lord Deputy, with his six thousand pounds a year: do you suppose the King would have to ask twice for it?”
The Lord Deputy smiled, and observed that the King was not so unreasonable as to impose on any servant the labour of governing Ireland, and then taking from him the reward of his toil.
When the young cousins had withdrawn, Helen observed that it was well for those who were about the King’s person to speak so, knowing that they had only to ask for gifts to receive whatever they desired: but to make one of them rich, a hundred meaner men were stripped of the rewards of their toil. Men were asking what was the use of law in these days: and they would ask it more fiercely now when three honest judges were contemptuously treated as disloyal for declaring the law which they were engaged to administer.
While they were discussing these high subjects, the Lord Deputy was inquiring of his host whether it was due to Lady Carlisle that Henrietta was loyal, though a Hampden, and was hearing how the pale and anxious countenance that she showed was due to that loyalty which had caused her to break off her marriage with a Puritan coxcomb, and take refuge with her uncle. The consequence was that the Lord Deputy treated her with a tenderness that evening which made it a memorable day to Henrietta, and which inspired her prayer that night with thankfulness that the King was permitted, amidst his troubles, to repose on the friendship of the most high-minded of his subjects. Helen, meantime, was praying that the protection of the law might be speedily restored to the unhappy people of England, and that the souls of their champions might be strengthened till the oppression of tyrants and the treachery of their instruments should be overpast.
In the morning, Sir Oliver had a serious word to say to his young kinswomen. The Lord Deputy had left his kind commands for them. His presence in these parts was nowhere known: he was on his way to a secret destination; and in truth, he would have appointed Sir Oliver to meet him elsewhere if he had not been informed that no guests were just now at Biggin House. He entreated the damsels to forget him, and to regard his visit as if it had never been.
They willingly promised to speak no word of it, and Helen immediately burned a long letter she had written before breakfast. But, as for forgetting the Lord Deputy, that was more than either could promise. In due time it appeared that he had not forgotten them.