Chapter FOUR (2)

When the body of Charles the First was discovered in 1813, (in the royal burial place at Windsor,) the hair at the back of the head appeared close cut; whereas, at the time of the decollation, the executioner twice adjusted the King’s hair under his cap. No doubt the piety of friends had severed the hair after death, in order to furnish rings and other memorials of the unhappy monarch.

A noble character was James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, who was beheaded for his loyalty to Charles the First.

As a proof of his bravery, with six hundred horse he maintained fight against three thousand foot and horse, receiving seven shots in his breast-plate, thirteen cuts in his beaver, five or six wounds on his arms and shoulders, and had two horses killed under him.

His manliness shows well in his answer to Cromwell’s demand that he should deliver up the Isle of Wight: “I scorn your proffers; I disdain your favors; I abhor your treasons; and am so far from delivering this island to your advantage, that I will keep it to the utmost of my power to your destruction. Take this final answer and forbear any further solicitations; for if you trouble me with any more messages upon this occasion, I will burn the paper and hang the bearer.”[289]

He was executed contrary to the promise of quarter for life, “an ancient and honorable plea not violated until this time.”

There is a deeply interesting account of his acts and deportment written by a Mr. Bagaley who attended on him. The Earl wrote letters to his wife, daughter and sons; a servant went and purchased all the rings he could get and lapped them up in several papers and writ within them and the Earl made Bagaley subscribe them to all his children and servants. This coupling his servants with his children in connection with these death tokens is charming. The Earl handed the letters with the rings to Bagaley and, in relation to delivering them, he used this beautiful and perfect expression--“As to them, I can say nothing: _silence and your own looks will best tell your message_.”

On quitting his prison, others confined there kissed his hand and wept; but as to himself, he told them: “You shall hear that I die like a Christian, a man and a soldier.”

He was to be beheaded at Bolton. On his way thither, Bagaley says: “His lordship, as we rode along, called me to him and bid me, when I should come into the Isle of Man, to commend him to the Archbishop there and tell him he well remembered the several discourses that had passed between them there concerning death and the manner of it; that he had often said the thoughts of death could not trouble him in fight or with a sword in hand, _but he feared it would something startle him tamely to submit to a blow on the scaffold_. But,” said his lordship, “tell the archdeacon from me that I do now find in myself an absolute change as to that opinion.”

At night when he laid him down upon the right side, with his hand under his face, he said: “Methinks I lie like a monument in a church; and to-morrow I shall really be so.”

There was a delay in his execution, for the people of Bolton refused to strike a nail in the scaffold or to give any assistance. He asked for the axe and kissed it. He forgave the headsman before he asked him. To the spectators, he said: “Good people, I thank you for your prayers and for your tears; I have heard the one and seen the other and our God sees and hears both.” He caused the block to be turned towards the church. “I will look,” cried he, “towards the sanctuary which is above for ever.” There were other interesting circumstances attending his execution. With outstretched arms he laid himself down to the block, exclaiming, “Blessed be God’s name for ever and ever. Let the whole earth be filled with his glory.” Then the executioner did his work--“_and no manner of noise was then heard but sighs and sobs_.”

We are left without any account of the way in which Bagaley delivered the rings; but, imagination can make a picture of a darkened and dismantled mansion, suffering widow and children, with terrified retainers, and Bagaley standing in the midst, weary, heart-sick, tearfully presenting the melancholy remembrances and realizing the truthfulness of the words of his brave, good and gentle master: “_Silence and your own looks will best tell your message_.”

The French woman Kerouaille, favorite mistress of Charles the Second, and created Duchess of Portsmouth, is said to have secured two valuable diamond rings from the King’s finger while the throes of death were on him. The following graphic description is worth reading:

“I should have told you, in his fits his feet were as cold as ice, and were kept rubbed with hot cloths, which were difficult to get. Some say the Queen rubbed one and washed it in tears. Pillows were brought from the Duchess of Portsmouth’s by Mrs. Roche. His Highness, the Duke of York, was the first there, and then I think the Queen, (he sent for her;) the Duchess of Portsmouth swooned in the chamber, and was carried out for air; Nelly Gwynne roared to a disturbance and was led out and lay roaring behind the door; the Duchess wept and returned; the Princess (afterwards Queen Anne) was not admitted, he was so ghastly a sight, (his eye-balls were turned that none of the blacks were seen, and his mouth drawn up to one eye,) so they feared it might affect the child she goes with. None came in at the common door, but by an odd side-door to prevent a crowd, but enough at convenient times to satisfy all. The grief of the Duchess of Portsmouth did not hinder her packing and sending many strong boxes to the French ambassador’s; and the second day of the King’s sickness, the chamber being kept dark--one who comes from the light does not see very soon, and much less one who is between them and the light there is--so she went to the side of the bed, and sat down to and taking the king’s hand in hers, felt his two great diamond rings; thinking herself alone, and asking him what he did with them on, said she would take them off, and did it at the same time, and looking up saw the Duke at the other side, steadfastly looking on her, at which she blushed much, and held them towards him, and said, ‘Here, sire, will you take them?’ ‘No, madam,’ he said, ‘they are as safe in your hands as mine. I will not touch them till I see how things will go.’ But since the King’s death she has forgot to restore them, though he has not that she took them, for he told the story.” This extract is taken from a letter written by a lady who was the wife of a person about the court at Whitehall and forms part of a curious collection of papers lately discovered at Draycot House near Chippenham, Wiltshire, England.[290]

Jeffreys, the bloody Jeffreys, whose greatest honor was to make a martyr of Sidney, while rising in royal favor and when about to depart for the circuit to give the provinces “a lick with the rough side of his tongue,” (a favorite expression of his,) experienced a mark of regard from Charles the Second. The King took a ring from his own finger and gave it to this besotted wretch of a chief justice. At the same time the monarch bestowed on him a curious piece of advice to be given by a king to a judge: it was, that, as the weather would be hot, Jeffreys should beware of drinking too much.[291] The people called the ring “_Jeffrey’s blood-stone_,” as he got it just after the execution of Sir Thomas Armstrong. Roger North says: “The king was persuaded to present him with a ring, publicly taken from his own finger, in token of his majesty’s acceptance of his most eminent services; and this by way of precursor being blazoned in the Gazette, his lordship went down into the country, as from the king _legatus a latere_.” The Lord Keeper North, who, it has been said, hated Jeffreys worse than popery,[292] speaks of the terror to others of the face and voice of the chief justice: “as if the thunder of the day of judgment broke over their heads;” and shows how Jeffreys, who, by this time, had reached the position of Lord Chancellor, was discovered by a lawyer that had been under the storm of his countenance:[293] “There was a scrivener of Wapping brought to hearing for relief against a bummery bond; the contingency of losing all being showed, the bill was going to be dismissed. But one of the plaintiff’s counsel said that he was a strange fellow and sometimes went to church, sometimes to conventicles and none could tell what to make of him and it was thought he was a trimmer. At that the Chancellor fired; and ‘A trimmer,’ said he, ‘I have heard much of that monster, but never saw one. Come forth, Mr. Trimmer, turn you round, and let us see your shape;’ and at that rate talked so long that the poor fellow was ready to drop under him; but, at last, the bill was dismissed with costs and he went his way. In the hall, one of his friends asked him how he came off? ‘Came off!’ said he, ‘I am escaped from the terrors of that man’s face, which I would scarce undergo again to save my life; and I shall certainly have the frightful impression of it as long as I live.’ Afterwards, when the Prince of Orange came and all was in confusion, this Lord Chancellor, being very obnoxious, disguised himself in order to go beyond sea. He was in a seaman’s garb and drinking a pot in a cellar. This scrivener came into the cellar after some of his clients; and his eye _caught that face_, which made him start; and the Chancellor, seeing himself eyed, feigned a cough and turned to the wall with his pot in his hand. But _Mr. Trimmer_ went out and gave notice that he was there; whereupon the mob flowed in and he was in extreme hazard of his life,” etc., etc. This term “Trimmer” seemed to be very obnoxious to Jeffreys. Once at the council and when the king was present, Jeffreys “being flaming drunk, came up to the other end of the board and (as in that condition his way was) fell to talking and staring like a madman, and, at length, bitterly inveighed against Trimmers and told the king that he had Trimmers in his court and he would never be easy so long as the Trimmers were there.”[294] North gives the interpretation of the word “Trimmer,” which was taken up to subdivide the Tory party, of whom all (however loyal and of the established church professed) who did not go into all the lengths of the new-flown party at court, were so termed.[295]

The name of the great Dundee instantly brings to mind one of the most spirited and characteristic ballads ever written:

“The Gordon demands of him which way he goes--
Where’er shall direct me the shade of Montrose!
Your Grace, in short space, shall hear tidings of me:
Or that low lies the bonnet of Bonny Dundee.
Come, fill up my cup; come, fill up my can;
Come, saddle the horses and call up the men;
Come, open your gates and let me gae free,
For it’s up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee.”[296]

All of this is gone; low lies Bonny Dundee; and the untruth of what is called history is all we have of him. There was a ring of which a description and an engraving remain containing some of Lord Dundee’s hair, with the letters V. D. surmounted by a coronet worked upon it in gold; and on the inside of the ring are engraved a skull and this poesy:

“_Great Dundee, for God and me. J. Rex._”

This ring, which belonged to the family of Graham of Duntrune, (representative of Viscount Dundee,) has, for several years, been lost or mislaid.[297]

A memorial of Nelson is left in some half-dozen of rings. In the place of a stone, each ring has a metal _basso relievo_ representation of Nelson, half bust. The metal, blackish in appearance, forming the relief, being, in reality, portions of the ball which gave the Admiral his fatal wound at Trafalgar.

Cardinal York, the last of the Stuart family, left as a legacy to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Fourth, a valuable ring which was worn by the kings of Scotland on the day of their coronation.[298]

We have met with but one case where, in a college disputation, the successful contestant was rewarded with a ring. James Crichton, who obtained the appellation of the “Admirable Crichton,” had volunteered--it was at a time when he was only twenty years of age--to dispute with any one in Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, English, Dutch, Flemish and Sclavonian; and this, either in verse or prose. He did not seem to prepare himself, but occupied his time in hunting, hawking, tilting, vaulting, tossing a pike, handling a musket and other military feats. Crichton duly appeared in the College of Navarre and acquitted himself beyond expression in the disputation, which lasted from nine o’clock in the morning until six at night. At length, the President, after extolling him highly for the many rare and excellent endowments which God and nature had bestowed upon him, rose from his chair and, accompanied by four of the most eminent professors of the University, gave him a diamond ring (with a purse full of money) as a testimony of regard and favor.[299]

In England, during the year 1815, a tooth of Sir Isaac Newton was sold for seven hundred and twenty pounds to a nobleman who had it set in a ring.

The elder Kean used to wear, to the hour of his death, a gold snake ring, with ruby head and emerald eyes. At the sale of his effects, it fetched four guineas and an half.[300]

On the day of the arrival of Miss Milbankes’ answer to Lord Byron’s offer of marriage, he was sitting at dinner in Newstead Abbey, when his gardener came and presented him with his mother’s ring, which she had lost and which the gardener had just found in digging up the mould under her window. Almost at the same moment, the letter from Miss Milbankes arrived; and Lord Byron exclaimed, “If it contains a consent, I will be married with this very ring.”[301] It does not appear whether it was really used. Strange, if it were! and singular that his lordship, so full of powerful superstition, should have suggested it. His mother’s temper had been, in part, his bane; her marriage was a most unhappy one; the poet’s father notoriously wedded for money and was separated from his wife--while, the poet’s offer, at a time when he was greatly embarrassed, coupled with his own mysterious after-separation, would make this ring appear a fatal talisman if it were really placed upon Miss Milbankes’ finger. It was in his after-bitterness, in his desolate state and dissoluteness that Byron called the wedding-ring “the damn’dest part of matrimony.”

§ 5. In the last Polish struggle, the matrons of Warsaw sent their marriage rings to coin into ducats.[302]

A few years ago the signet-ring of the famous Turlough Lynnoch was found at Charlemont in the county of Armagh, Ireland. It bears the bloody hand of the O’Neils and initials T. O. The signet part of the ring is circular and the whole of it silver. O’Neils had been kings of Ireland and were also Earls of Ulster. The symbol of the province of Ulster was a bloody hand. Fergus, the first King of Scotland, was descended from the O’Neils. King James the First made this bloody hand the distinguishing badge of a new order of baronets and they were created to aid by service or money for forces in subduing the O’Neils.[303]

During the years 1813, 1814 and 1815, when Prussia had collected all her resources, in the hope of freeing herself from the yoke which France had laid upon her, the most extraordinary feelings of patriotism burst forth. Every thought was centred in the struggle; every coffer was drained; all gave willingly. In town and village altars were erected, on which ornaments of gold, silver and precious stones were offered up. Massive plate was replaced in palaces by dishes, platters and spoons of wood. Ladies wore no other ornaments than those made of iron, upon which was engraved: “_We gave gold for the freedom of our country; and, like her, wear an iron yoke._” One evening, a party had assembled in the house of an inhabitant of Breslau. Among them, was a beautiful though poor maiden. Her companions were boasting what each had contributed towards the freedom of their country. Alas! she had no offering to proclaim--none to give. With a heavy heart she took her leave. While unrobing for the night, she thought she could dispose of her hair and, so, add to the public fund. With the dawn, she went to a hairdresser’s; related her simple tale; and parted with her tresses for a trifling sum, which she instantly deposited on an altar and returned to her quiet home. This reached the ears of the officers appointed each day to collect the various offerings; and the President received a confirmation from the hairdresser, who proposed to resign the beautiful hair, provided it was resold for the benefit of fatherland. The offer was accepted; iron rings were made, each containing a portion of hair; and these produced far more than their weight in gold.[304]