the ’prentice boys of London had captured and imprisoned the bishops; but on the whole there was a truer notion of the state of London than could afterwards be at all accounted for.
There were not many travellers on the roads at such a season; but a coachful of ladies, well escorted by horsemen, was approaching London from Buckinghamshire as fast as circumstances would admit. Lady Carewe was taking her nieces up to town, to spend the rest of the winter, as there was now no chance of Mr. Hampden being able to return home; and he was so worn by anxiety,—or his family thought that he must be,—that it was a duty to make a home for him where his duty lay. A house had therefore been engaged for the family in the Strand: and on the 10th of December the Hampden family coach entered London.
It took a longer time to reach their house, after passing Tyburn, than had been required by the same space of road in the most obstructed part of the journey. It had been easier to dig through the snow-drifts than it now was to penetrate the crowds that were collected before every great house, and from the Haymarket onwards, it was said, to St. Paul’s. At Charing Cross there was a long detention. A string of coaches from the City was passing, very slowly, down towards Westminster; and it seemed as if the procession would never end. After sixty coaches, which contained the Corporation of London, there was a long marching train. The London apprentices, including the city shopmen, walked five abreast, to the number of many thousands, the foremost ranks exhibiting a vast parchment, on which their petition was inscribed. On they tramped, more and more and more of these young men coming into view, till the children asked whether it was possible that even London could have so many apprentices as these. Again and again the march was stopped for awhile, and then resumed, while a tremendous roar of laughter or shout of wrath astonished distant hearers. The Hampden grooms became interested and excited, and they made their way down to Whitehall or further, and brought back news of what was doing. The people were making game of the bishops. One bishop had entered Palace Yard amidst jeers and angry threats; and several had been prevented from coming out. At length there was such a roar of rage from that direction, and the passions of the crowd were so evidently rising, that Lady Carewe gave orders to the coachman to draw out of the throng in any direction that was possible. The getting into the Strand was a question to be considered afterwards.
The irritable crowd was not disposed to be incommoded by the passage of the great family coach; and some began to be abusive. A voice shouted that this was a party of the Queen’s friends come to count the apprentices; and Alice looked at her aunt in dismay at the cries and gestures of some of the angry people. In a moment the mood was marvellously changed. Somebody recognised the livery; and when the news spread that this was Mr. Hampden’s coach, the crowd not only parted to let it pass, but hundreds turned to escort it wherever it might be going. When the young people alighted, it was amidst the cheers of a crowd; and as each of the City processions passed, its members caught up the cheer, so that before it was done, the young people were satisfied that their father was the greatest man in England.
“Is he not so, Aunt Carewe?” asked Nathanael.
“Perhaps you and I, and a good many more people, may think so,” she answered: “but there is a much greater number who consider another gentleman,—a friend of your father’s,—to be a greater and more important man.”
“Cousin Oliver?” asked Lucy. “They call him Lord of the Fens.”
“But Aunt Carewe said ‘another gentleman,’” observed Nathanael; “and Cousin Oliver is not a gentleman.”
“It is Mr. Pym,” Alice said. “Dr. Giles told me that he is called King Pym in London.”
“Mr. Pym is the most powerful man in this kingdom,” Lady Carewe declared; “or perhaps in any country in Europe. But he would not be so powerful, if your father were not so close a friend. It will never be forgotten that, three weeks since, there would have been bloodshed in the House of Parliament, and a failure of the hopes of the nation, but for Mr. Hampden’s gentleness and prudence and winning manners.”
“About the Grand Remonstrance, you mean?”
“Yes: it requires the most solemn patience of a religious nation to relate such a story of injuries received from the Government as that Remonstrance shows forth; and the telling such a tale of wrongs cannot but be dangerous to the King and his friends. No wonder, therefore, that his partisans in the House were angry, and provoking to the friends of the people. The fury was so great that there would have been fighting, but for the effect of one man’s noble temper and religious prudence.”
“And that gentleman was my father,” said Lucy to herself, very proudly.
Till dark the young people could not be drawn from the windows, even to eat or warm themselves; and several friends who came in by the backway, when there was not room at the front, told them that such a day had never before been seen in London. It seemed as if the whole kingdom was petitioning Parliament on the same day. It was true, there were processions still going after dark: and the flare of the torches which they carried, and the lights which were hung out from every house along the Strand, shone upon faces which were never to be forgotten. In the processions some were angry and loud, some resolute and silent, and more indifferent. At the windows and along the causeways the spectators were alarmed, or animated, or amused, according to their natures; but all were under the one solemn impression that such a day would begin a new period in England.
Lady Carewe’s brother, Sir Amyas Denton, came in at dusk. He said that the bishops had overthrown the Church that day, to a certainty. One of them went into a passion at being jeered in Palace Yard: and he hurried eleven of his brethren into a foolish revenge. They sent in a protest to their own House, not only against their being hin-