LITMIR.BIZ

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great part of the night in wakeful anxiety. Before he finally sank to slumber he had resolved to send Alain back at once to Jersey.

      ACT I.

      The King

      In 1649, when Charles II. was uncertain as to what steps he should take on the death of his father, it was considered that the best and safest place for his temporary residence was the Castle at S. Helier, in Jersey, known by the name of Queen Elizabeth, where he had already lived for a short time on an earlier occasion. Founded by order of the Sovereign whose name it bore, it stands on a rocky islet, once a promontory of the mainland, but long since insulated by every high tide. At low water it communicated with the town by a natural causeway of shingly rock called "The Bridge," commanded by its own guns. On the Western curve of the bay, nearly two miles off as the bird flies, was the small town of S. Aubin, guarded by a smaller fortress. The entire bay was protected, by the batteries of these two places, against the entrance of hostile shipping. Circumstances, not now entirely traceable but connected probably with defensive considerations, had taken its ancient preponderance from Gorey, on the eastern coast, which had once been the seat of administration; and thus commenced the importance of S. Helier, though in nothing like the present activity of its quays and wharves, or the throng of its streets and markets. Above the head of the "Bridge," indeed, the view from the North face of the Castle met with no buildings till it struck upon the Town Church, an ancient but plain structure of the fourteenth century, whose square central tower, although by no means of lofty elevation, formed a landmark for mariners out at sea by reason of a beacon that was always kept burning there by night. At the foot of this tower nestled a cemetery containing the tombs of "the rude forefathers" of what had been, till lately, indeed little more than a hamlet. On the southern aspect of this, facing the castle and the sea, the enclosure was marked by a strong granite breastwork armed with cannons mounted en barbette. These pieces were pointed, for the most part, on the bridge, or causeway leading to the Castle, into which they were capable of sending salvos of round-shot, as in fact they had often done a few years before. The rest of the cemetery was strongly walled, though without guns. To the north of the Church ran narrow streets, sloping gently upward from the seaside. The houses of these streets were built of the local granite, hewn and hammered flat and without projection or decoration, and with no other relief but what was afforded by small rectangular lattice-windows. They were usually of two storeys, crowned by high-pitched thatched roofs, with here and there a tiny dormer window. Some were shops or taverns, among which were interspersed the residences of the burgesses and the town houses of the rural gentry. Fronted by miry roadway, or at best an occasional strip of rough boulder pavement, over which wheeled carriages could rarely pass, these lines of houses had no form or comeliness, save what might be due to an occasional bit of small flower-garden before the few that were large and inhabited by persons in comparatively easy circumstances. Farther back the ground rose more rapidly and showed some scattered suburban houses. The "Town Hill" to the east, the "Gallows Hill" to the west, completed the amphitheatre. Up the main hollow ran a road leading due north to the Manor and Church of Trinity parish in the interior of the island, and terminating on the north coast in Boulay Bay, a fine natural harbour, which was the nearest point of embarkation for England. The whole island, scarcely less than the town, bore an appearance of defence, almost of inaccessibility; the manors, farm houses, and even many of the fields, being surrounded by granite walls, and capable of arresting the progress of an invader, unless in great force. Each of the twelve parish churches contained the arsenal of the local militia; and all things betokened a hardy population, ready to do battle against all intruders.

      The titular Governor, Lord Jermyn, was an absentee, following the fortunes of the widowed Queen, Henrietta Maria, in France. The actual administration, both civil and military, was in the hands of a naval officer of experience, Sir George Carteret, or de Carteret, cousin and brother-in-law to the Seigneur of S. Owen, a large manor on the western side of the island. This family, distinguished in island history ever since it abandoned its fief of Carteret on the coast of Normandy to follow the fortunes of John Lackland, when the Duchy was confiscated by Philip Augustus, was by far the most powerful in the island. Its only possible rival, the house of Lempriere, of Maufant, had espoused warmly the cause of the Parliament, and had consequently met with reverses when the Carterets, who were royalist, effected the revolution mentioned in our Prologue.

      It only remains to be added that the people at large were not at all warmly attached to either of the parties to the Civil War. The language of the majority was an old form of French, now reduced to the condition of a patois; the more educated classes studied the laws and language of France. The proceedings of the Courts and the services of the Church were conducted in modern French, and the sympathies of the community were divided between a mundane attachment to England, and a religious leaning to the creed of the Huguenots, of whom a great number had sought refuge on their shores. Hence the Jersey folks were indifferently submissive to royalty, the only form of English government of which, till these days, they had heard; but they by no means shared the High-Church fervour which had animated the late unfortunate King. Their ultimate motive, as is common to human nature, was for their own interests; and although the influence of the Carterets had kept them, for the most part, nominal followers of the cause of royalty, men like Michael Lempriere and Prynne had good reason for believing that they would, in the long run, favour those who seemed the best friends to Jersey. Let them not be blamed for this. Their love for England was very much founded upon fear of France. By observing the attitude of the Scottish borderers of a slightly earlier period, an Englishman of the seventeenth century could imagine the attitude of the Jersey mind towards the "Normans," by which name they were accustomed to designate their feudal and aggressive Catholic neighbours the Lords and Ministers of the French Kingdom. Even as the Grahams and Scotts of Tweedside stood at arms against each other on either bank of the dividing stream, so did the de Gruchys and Malets, the Le Feuvres and de Quettevilles, on either side the Channel. The danger that was nearest was the most formidable; and the Channel Islanders were ready to side with England much as the Saxon Scots of the Lothians came to make common cause with the Celts of the Highlands.

      These explanations may appear tedious: but the reader is implored to pardon them; for without such he could not realise the passions which are exemplified in this little story. Long exposed to invasion, the Jerseymen of the middle ages had handed down to their descendants an abhorrence of France which was fomented by the stories of persecution brought to them by Huguenot refugees; and which, indeed, has hardly yet completely died out among the rural population. Thus sentiment and interest kept the islanders attached to England by a two-fold cord; careless whether their immediate leaders were Cavaliers, as in Jersey, or Parliamentarians, as in the neighbouring island of Guernsey, where the royal Governor was beleaguered in Castle Cornet.

      For reasons arising out of this state of things, Carteret did not leave the protection of the King to the unaided loyalty of the local militia. Cooped up in the narrow limits of the Castle rock were no less than three hundred Englishmen and women attached to the Court, and, in addition, a strong force of Irish and Cornish soldiers who had been brought over by Charles on his former visit, as Prince of Wales, after the battle of Naseby. His Sacred Majesty—de jure of England, Scotland, and Ireland, King, to say nothing of France, whose lilies were blazoned on his scutcheon—was de facto monarch of this little island plot of 45 square miles; and his state was at least equal to his temporary sway. The accommodation of the Castle was, in truth, but small; but it was the best that the occasion afforded; the royal palace consisting of a suite of small apartments vacated for the King's convenience by the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir G. Carteret, who had removed to the lower ward. S. Aubin, on the other horn of the bay, was the seat of the naval power; here lived the families of the officers of the corsair-squadron then constituting the Royal Navy. The rest of the King's following was billetted on farm-houses in the parishes nearest to the town. Yet, as a warning that all was not their own, four frigates and two line-of-battle ships, with a commission from the rebel government of London, and flying the broad pennant of Admiral Batten, cruised between Jersey and Guernsey, never far from sight, although giving for the most part a wide berth to both the island castles, whose gunners watched them night and day.

      Such was the position of affairs on a Sunday towards the end of September, a few days later than the events related in the Prologue. The morning had been wet and windy, and the sacredness of the day had joined to keep the men of those

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