The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Letter 45
These Fourteen Letters, touching slightly on public affairs, with one or two glimpses into private, must carry us, without commentary, in a very dim way, across to the next stage in Oliver’s History and England’s: the Flight of the King from Hampton Court and the Army, soon followed by the actual breaking-out of the Second Civil War.
Williams, Archbishop of York, ‘hasty hot Welsh Williams,’—whom we once saw, seven years ago, as Bishop of Lincoln, getting jostled in Palaceyard, protesting thereupon, and straightway getting lodged in the Tower,[1]—is to concern us again for one moment. A man once very radiant to men, as obscure as he has now grown: a most high-riding far-shining, Solar Luminary in that epoch; obscure to no man in England for thirty years last past! A man of restless mercurial vivacity, of endless superficial dexterity and ingenuity, of next to no real wisdom;—very fit to have swift promotions and sudden eclipses in a Stuart Court; not worthy of much memory otherwise. Of his rapid rises, culminations, miraculous faculties and destinies, to us all useless, indifferent and extinct, let there be silence here,—reference to Bishop Hacket and the Futile Ingenuities.[2]
Archbishop Williams,—for he got delivered from the Tower at that time, and recovered favour, and was ‘enthroned Archbishop at York’ while his Majesty was raising his War-standard there,—found, after a while, that there was little good to be got of his Archbishophood; that his best weapon would be, not the crosier, but the linstock and cannon-rammer, at present: he went to his Welsh estate of Aberconway, and ‘procuring a Commission from his Majesty,’ fortified Conway Castle ‘at his own expense,’ and invited the neighbouring gentry to lodge their plate and valuables there, as in a place of security. Good;—for the space of a year or two. But now, some time ago in the death-throes of the late War, while North Wales was bestirring itself as in last-agony for his Majesty’s behoof,—there came a certain Colonel Sir John Owen, of whom we shall hear again: he, this Owen, came before Castle Conway with large tumultuary force; demanded the same in his Majesty’s name, to be governed by him Sir John Owen, as essential for his Majesty’s occasions at that time. High-sniffing, indignant refusal on the part of Williams: impetuous capture and forcible possession on the part of Owen. Hot Williams, blown all to flame hereby, applied to Colonel Mitton, the Parliamentary Colonel of those parts; said to him, ‘Expel me this intolerable Owen; Owen out, I will hold this Castle for the Parliament and you,—his Majesty seems nearly done with fighting now.’ A thing difficult to explain completely to the Royalist mind: Bishop Hacket has his own ados with it; and in stupid Saunderson[3] and others it is one loud howl, ‘Son of the morning, how art thou fallen!’—
Explained or not, ‘my Lord of York’ does hold Conway Castle, on those terms, at this date; is taking a certain charge of North Wales in his busy way; and has even been corresponding with Cromwell on the subject. They had known one another in old years: Buckden, the Bishop of Lincoln’s House, is in the neighbourhood of Huntingdon; where Cromwell, it is understood, used occasionally to wait upon him; pleading for oppressed Lecturers and the like,—the Bishop having, from political or other biases, a kind of lenity for Puritans.
Cromwell is very brief with him here; courteous as to an old neighbour rather in eclipse; but evidently wishing to have no unnecessary business with the Governor of Conway. We see he could on occasion jocosely claim ‘kindred’ with him, as himself a ‘Williams’: and that perhaps is the chief interest of this small Document, which the reader will now abundantly understand.
FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MY LORD OF YORK: THESE
My Lord,—Your Advices will be seriously considered by us. We shall endeavour, to our uttermost, so to settle the affairs of North Wales as, to the best of our understandings, does most conduce to the public good thereof and of the whole. And that without private respect, or to the satisfaction of any humour,—which has been too much practised on the occasion of our Troubles.
The Drover you mentioned will be secured, as far as we are able, in his affairs, if he come to ask it. Your Kinsman shall be very welcome: I shall study to serve him for Kindred’s sake; among whom let not be forgotten, my Lord, your cousin and servant,
My Lord of York still lived some year or two in Conway Castle; saw his enemy Sir John Owen in trouble enough; but died before long,—chiefly of broken heart for the fate of his Majesty, thinks Bishop Hacket. A long farewell to him.