HADDON HALL. HADDON HALL is situated about two miles south of the town of Bakewell, in Derbyshire, on a bold eminence which rises on the east side of the river Wye, and overlooks the pretty vale of Haddon. The park originally connected with this mansion was ploughed up and cultivated about seventy years since. The gardens consist chiefly of terraces, ranged one above another, each having a sort of stone balustrade running along it. The prospects from one or two situations are extremely beautiful, and in the vicinity of the house there is a splendid group of luxuriant old trees. The manor of Haddon became, soon after the Conquest, the property of the Avenells, by the marriage of whose co-heirs, it was divided between the families of Vernon and Basset, in the reign of Richard I.; but in the time of Henry VI. the estate had become the sole property of Sir Richard Vernon, whose last male heir, Sir George Vernon, died in the seventh year of Queen Elizabeth; a man so distinguished by his hospitality and magnificent mode of living, that he was locally called "the king of the Peak." By the marriage of one of this person's heiresses, who inherited the estate of Haddon, it came into the Manners family, in which it still remains, being the property of the Duke of Rutland, good-natured." The one is esteemed a philosopher, the other a dupe; such is human nature's opinion of itself. But though our rule would involve us in many erroneous decisions concerning individuals, though it would be manifestly unfair to found a sentence on the occasional irritability of the most gentle, or the transient submission of the most obstinate, we do not think that it will often be found to mislead us in passing a verdict on particular epochs in history. The idols which an age worships are perhaps better tests of its temper than are the deeds which it does; for the deeds are often done unconsciously, without full perception of their import and consequences or they are, yet more frequently, not done at all, in any real sense, by the age which has received the credit of them, but which truly has done no more than finish, or perhaps only proclaim and sanction, what was secretly effected by its predecessor. That would be an interesting history which should treat of realities and not names, of the spirit rather than the letter of great changes; which should shew the cruel tyranny of licence, and the perfect servility of MISS STRICKLAND'S LIVES OF THE QUEENS perfect independence; which should teach how OF ENGLAND. VOL. XI. FIRST NOTICE. "I JUDGE of character," said a wise and good man, "not by great actions, but by little escapes." Much truth and some falsehood would result from the indiscriminate application of such a rule, which indeed, like most other rules, seems to require the living spirit of a present and active judgment for the due administration of its dead letter. The question presented to this judgment for its decision, would of course be, whether the particular action or speech under consideration be indeed an indication of a whole state, a result of a long previous course of thought and habit of temper, or whether it be, as it not unfrequently is, in the case of individuals, an accident, depending upon some external and temporary cause. In quick observers of character, there seems to be an instinct leading almost unerringly to a due appreciation of this difference; those who lack the gift will be perpetually making blunders, and these will most probably be on the side of severity. For it is very observable, that the true practical definition of that quality which is popularly esteemed " quick discernment of character," is rather "a quick eye for faults and foibles." The man who nods significantly when some fair-seeming action is discussed, and tells you in confidence the low or petty motive from which he believes it to be derived, is quoted as a man of penetration; while he who draws your attention to an unsuspected good, or seeks to explain away an apparent evil, is dismissed with the half-contemptuous encomium, "Poor fellow! he is so a the very same principle which in one shape was altogether intolerable, and could drive a whole nation into the fever and frenzy of rebellion, has only to change its dress in order to be welcomed with acclamation; how the king of a country must not assume a tone of authority in offering a constitution to his subjects, while the king of a people may complete unmolested his arrangements for imprisoning those subjects in their own capital, if only he does it civilly, with his hat (or does he perchance still affect the medieval mockery of a crown ?) in his hand. If, however, there be this difficulty in distinguishing the real from the ostensible in the history of an age, so that it is well-nigh impossible to arrive at a true estimate of its spirit from a careful contemplation of its events, we encounter no such obstacles to the application of the other test already named,to wit, the idol, be it a school, a sect, or an individual, which an age has worshipped. Here is something definite and tangible; here is a result which must needs bespeak an immediate and active cause-a deed which can be nothing but the development of a thought. The conviction is as irresistible as that by which, when we see the wheat in full ear, we assure ourselves that there is the grain underground. which an age enthrones, reverences, deifies, is ever the embodiment of its own secret life and thought, the idealization, so to speak, of itself; and if there be any truth in this observation, what shall we think of the age which chose for its ideal that monstrous anomaly, a woman without natural affection, undutiful as a daughter, cold and cruel as a sister, and which celebrated as the apostle of its liberties a man of brutal That manners, violent temper, and profligate life; one too, who was emphatically an alien in blood, language, and religion? Orange; of the earth, earthy, full of unseemly It is a strange scene, this life of Mary of Miss Strickland will afford us ample matter unworthy conflicts, very wearisome to look upon. sights, low thoughts, mean standards, and to justify these descriptions. Apart from her It reminds us of Andersen's fable of the "Drop manner of narration, which, however, we should of water," wherein the multitudinous forms were be very sorry to lose, her discursive gossip (we seen to bite, devour, and persecute one another are not using the term disrespectfully,) is a most with the virulence of demons-and they were agreeable relief from the buckram of historical nothing but animalculæ after all! The total costume in general; and her hearty partizanship, absence of elevation, the death of all greatness, warm admiration and genuine disgust, springing the annihilation of the noble in man's nature,as they do from a very laborious and minute these are the characteristics that meet you on examination of facts, are exceedingly refreshing the surface of society. One wonders how the in this age of impartiality. Toleration is a miserable husk held together; how the dead fair-seeming word, but how is it when you have ashes smouldered so long, when the divine spark so effectually established yourself in your res- was withdrawn from them. The sweet memory pectable central position as to tolerate both right of Mary Beatrice comes back upon us like the and wrong with a charitable indifference which thought of childhood amid the turmoil of gives the preference to neither? We unhesitat- middle age; and the quiet spirits and separated ingly avow, that of all cants, the cant of lives of a Kenn and a Sancroft seem to us like impartiality seems to us to be the most flimsy the chime of church-bells sounding through the and inconsistent. In the first place, we do not unholy tumult of a city. believe that the thing itself is ever to be met linger by the fountain or the fragrant garden; But we must not with; and in the second place, if it be, we can only hope that we may never be so unfortunate our business is with the Actual at the farthest we must not pause in the shadow of the cloister; as to meet with it. The man who should suc-point of its removal from the Ideal, and to that ceed in convincing us that his heart never in any measure influenced the decisions of his head, would only prove thereby that he had no heart at all, and so, being deficient in one half, and that the more important, of spiritual organization, would be of all men the least likely to pronounce a true judgment in any case. It is perfectly amusing to see the shifts to which many modern writers are driven in order to avoid the imputation of being more disposed to one side than another. With what an affecting display of caution do they adjust the balance! -but who shall assure us that the one scale is not loaded already? If the unwary reader trust too implicitly to appearances, he may find that he has made but a sorry bargain after all. The straightforward old chronicler who told his story from beginning to end like a fairy tale, never once doubting or suffering you to doubt that the giant was in the wrong, and the prince in the right that the one ought to be knocked on the head, and the other quietly installed in undisputed sovereignty-was, we shrewdly suspect, the safer guide of the two. You took him as you found him, a declared enemy, or a faithful ally; if he did not agree with you, well and good,you allowed for his colouring, as the phrase is, and a pretty liberal allowance you made, we have no doubt; if on the other hand he did agree with you, he was a perpetual feast. Let then a jaundiced appetite, or a stern sense of duty, (which sounds much better) induce others to drink nothing but skimmed milk if they like; we shall take leave to prefer cream, which we must needs assure them is by far the nobler diet of the two, if only they were strong enough to bear it. we must betake ourselves. Yet let us indulge ourselves in a few brief extracts, which, like the background of a blue and cloudless sky, may throw the rest of the picture into bolder relief. The manner in which Archbishop Sancroft withstood the unfortunate James II., in the strength of conscience, is known to everybody; so also is his answer to Queen Mary when she sent to demand his blessing-he answered by silence, the most forcible of all rebukes; he calmly continued to pray for King James, as though no such person as his rebellious child were in existence. of the principle on which he had acted in his This was a triumphant vindication opposition to that monarch. Mary of Orange, however, might be emphatically designated as one who could not forgive; and the venerable primate was dispossessed and driven away, to make room for a successor of whom we will only say that the popular belief that he had never been baptized, has remained without controversy, he himself having treated it as a subject of ridicule. Miss Strickland writes :— Lambeth, taking no property but his staff and books. "The deprived Archbishop went forth from He had distributed all his revenues in charity, and would have been destitute if he had not inherited a little estate in Suffolk. To an ancient, but lowly residence, the place of his birth, at Fressingfield, where his ancestors had dwelt respectably from father to son for three centuries, Archbishop Sancroft retired to live on his private patrimony of fifty pounds per annum. On this modicum he subsisted for the remainder of his days, leading a holy and contented life, venerated by his contemporaries, but almost adored by the simple country-folk of Suffolk for his | replete with mighty energy, and sorely goaded by personal merits." She proceeds to inform us that the sums which Sancroft saved out of his archiepiscopal income (by personal self-denial, for his charities were never restricted) were devoted to increasing the income of the poorer livings of the church, seven of which he thus endowed ere he was dis- "The queen signed (during her regency), warrants for the arrest of the deprived bishop of Ely, and Lord Dartmouth. The latter, soon after, died in the prison of the tower. She likewise molested the deprived primate by sending a commission to his cottage, in Suffolk, to inquire into his proceedings. One of her messengers could scarcely refrain from tears, when he found that the venerable archbishop himself came to the door when he knocked, because his only attendant, an old woman, who took care of his cottage, happened to be ill." Do we not long, as we read, to have made Queen Mary his housemaid!-only that such service would have graced her too far. And now for the close : "The venerable Primate of England, William Sancroft, died Nov. 23, 1693, in his humble paternal cottage at Fressingfield, in Suffolk, where he led a holy, but not altogether peaceful life. Ever and anon, on the rumours of Jacobite insurrections, the queen's messengers were sent to harass the old man with inquisitions regarding his politics. The queen gained little more from her inquiries than information of his devotions, his ascetic abstemiousness, and his walks in a bowery orchard, where he spent his days in study or meditation. Death laid a welcome and gentle hand on the deprived archbishop, at the age of seventy-seven years. Far from the pomps of Lambeth, he rests beneath the humble green sod of a Suffolk churchyard. There is a tablet raised to his memory on the outside of the porch of Fressingfield church, which is still shown with pride and affection by the inhabitants of his native village." want and impatience of dependence, Swift nevertheless resolved to swim with the current of events, and float uppermost on the stream of politics, howsoever corrupt the surface might be. He took his farewell, in his Ode to Sancroft,' of all that was beautiful and glorious in the animus of his art, to devote himself to the foulest and fiercest phase of satire."1 We know how far he sank. This trait seems to us painfully instructive. How many irregular. and erratic minds, possessing within themselves the seeds of a nobler life than they are able to develope, have bound their faith upon a single idol, and with its dethronement perished utterly! Here, however, there was less excuse, for the idol, though dethroned, preserved its divinity untarnished: where the worshipper finds that he has been deceived, and that he was prostrating himself before a shape of clay, whose only life the subsequent self-abandonment, though not, was the gift of his own imaginative reverence, of course, justifiable, seems at least intelligible. And now for a brief view of the age, and the persons by whom Sancroft was persecuted. Our business is with personal characters, not with political results. Let these latter be as glorious as you please, still we have a right to inquire how far the individuals who have received the credit of them deserved the halo which has thus been cast around their name; and we can scarcely be censured if, when we have ascertained the worthlessness of the individuals, we begin to question a little the value of the boons which they procured for us. Liberty is the watchword of the partizans of William and Mary. By the revolution which placed them on the throne, our civil and religious liberties (those who thus reason invariably place civil before religious) were secured. So be it. We dispute not the fact. But it is curious to notice a few of the enactments of that reign of liberty. Corporal punishment in the army was then first introduced; the horrible ordinance of blood-money, by force of which more innocent persons suffered, and more crime was sanctioned, and, so to speak, organized, than by any other modern legislative blunder, was Queen Mary's pet measure. By it a fixed sum of money was offered as a reward to every man who should succeed in the capture and conviction of a highwayman. It would be difficult to calculate the amount of perjury, and of judicial murders thereupon ensuing, which was the result of this unhappy error. alone, the notorious Jonathan Wild, boasted that he had received rewards for the hanging of sixtyseven highwaymen and returned convicts. Drunk"All hope and trust in the possibility of the pro-enness, as being eminently and shamefully the sperity of goodness forsook him. Every vision of virtue, purity, and divine ideality which haunts the intellect of a young poet, was violently repudiated by him in an access of misanthropic despair. Ambitious, and It is good that we remember a bishop who withstood two sovereigns, and died in poverty, not unworthy to be associated with the noble army of martyrs. We cannot leave this subject without noticing the effect which the fate of Sancroft had upon the powerful but utterly undisciplined mind of Swift, then first rising into vigour : One man national vice of the English, dates from this (1) Miss Strickland's metaphorical language invites a little criticism. Taking farewell of an animus in order to devote oneself to a phase, seems rather allegorical than otherwise, and we crave an interpreter. reign. Besides the encouragement which it taken refuge in the sanctuary of a church. Yet it seems scarcely possible that any refinement of logic should account satisfactorily to William's admirers for his order (charitably called by Miss Strickland "a peevish expletive"), after the raising of the siege of Waterford, when he was asked how he meant to dispose of the sick and wounded prisoners. "Burn them!" was his rejoinder. And shortly afterwards the place wherein "one thousand of these unfortunates were penned," burst into flames, and they all perished miserably! Queen Mary's easy freedom from all importunate sensibilities is attested by almost every event of her life. The glee with which she ran over the chambers of Whitehall, for her so populous with solemn and "There was no real evidence against him, nothing reproachful memories-rising, after a night of but deductions; and the jury refused to bring in a sound sleep on the pillows which so short a verdict of high treason. They were, however, reviled while before had been pressed by the fair cheek and reprimanded by Judge Treby, till they brought of Mary Beatrice-appropriating, with jocund in Anderton guilty, most reluctantly. The mercy rapacity, every toy and trifle which that gentle of Queen Mary was invoked in this case; but she stepmother had left behind her in her flight,was perfectly inexorable; and he suffered death at ransacking drawers and closets with the eagerness Tyburn, under her warrant the man solemnly pro- of a child, haunted by no intrusive recollection testing against the proceedings of the court. of the father who had been driven out to make John Dunton, a fanatic bookseller, who wrote a journal, room for her, begins the history. It is approthus comments on his publication of the History of priately continued by her unrelenting persecuthe Edict of Nantes: It was a wonderful pleasure tion of all the adherents of that unhappy father. to Queen Mary to see this history made English. It They were tortured and put to death without was the only book to which she granted her royal mercy during the periods of her regencies. But, licence in 1693.' Whether John Dunton means leave perhaps, no example of her masculine superiority of dedication, or whether the liberty of the press was to the softer emotions appears so strong and so really under such stringent restrictions as his words unanswerable as her personal harshness to her imply, is not entirely certain; but the doleful fate of sister, under circumstances demanding peculiar Anderton gives authenticity to the latter opinion." tenderness, and which seldom fail to excite the sympathy of one woman for another. She visited the bedside of the princess Anne on the evening of the day on which a son was born to her, who, to the inexpressible grief of his mother, died almost immediately after his baptism. visit, we suppose, was one of condolence. The queen, however, did not take her sister's hand, made no inquiry after her health, expressed no pity for her sorrow. She sate down by the pale and trembling mourner, and exclaimed, imperiously, "I have made the first step by coming to you, and I now expect that you should make the next by dismissing Lady Marlborough." And on hearing the humble and deprecatory reply of Anne, Queen Mary arose without another word, and departed. A dangerous fever was, naturally enough, the result of such an interview at such a time, and for several days the princess Anne was on the verge of the grave; but the queen did not think it necessary to pay her a second visit; and, in fact, this was the last interview that ever took place between the sisters. The words of Cordelia naturally rise to our lips, This year, 1693, was rendered further memorable by the striking of a medal, " unique," says Miss Strickland," among artistical productions," which was plentifully distributed throughout England by Queen Mary. It represented the death, by horrible tortures, of a man named Grandval, who was convicted of conspiracy against the life of the king, and executed according to the letter of the barbarous law against high treason, as it then existed. For the terms of the law, as Miss Strickland justly observes, it would be to the last degree unfair to make William and Mary responsible; but for the temper which induced them so ruthlessly to adopt, so triumphantly to proclaim its ferocity, it would be difficult to express too strong an abhorrence. But in hardness of heart the royal couple were well matched. The cruelties sanctioned by William in unhappy Ireland, remind us of the worst atrocities of Cromwell. The latter, it is true, has found a devoted panegyrist, who, while vindicating the claims of his hero to humanity and sincere piety, is not ashamed to print a letter wherein he thanks the Lord for enabling him to burn a hundred persons, men, women, and children, who had The "Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters ?" In point of talent, there was less equality between Mary and her lord. Her abilities | sedulously frequented the performance of their were of a very high order, while his do not comedies, and diligently encouraged the authors, seem to have been above mediocrity. He was the former of whom had not even the poor famous for the number of his defeats, and he apology of talent. utterly failed in his one great object,-that of conciliating the opposite factions during his reign. The queen's conduct of government during the trying and perilous seasons of her various regencies, is proof that she possessed a clear, far-seeing intellect, an inexorable determination, and an invincible calmness. She was also refined in her deportment, so that her husband's vulgarities must have somewhat distressed though they could not offend her. It is ludicrous, but humiliating, to observe the uncontrolled vagaries of our "great deliverer;" to see men, for whom the stately courtesy of the Stuarts had been a burden too grievous to be borne, keeping cautiously out of the way of the Dutch master whom they had chosen for themselves, on the morning after a debauch, because, in the irritation and depression which are the natural penalties of excess, his cane was apt to fall too freely about the shoulders of his English nobles! Verily there was some change from the days when the high spirit of an Essex brooked not a pettish box on the ear from the hand of an angry woman! We are, however, forced by the testimony of the reluctant William himself to believe that all the virtue and honour of the country had withdrawn itself from him, and that the dregs or society had, for the time, risen to its surface. "Do you believe," said the Earl of Portland to the King, when with grief and dismay they were discussing the utter corruption and systematic peculation which prevailed in all branches of the public service, causing the Duke of Schomberg to exclaim that he had never seen a nation so willing to steal as the English (!), "Do you believe that there is one honest man in the whole of Great Britain ?" "Yes," replied King William; "there are as many men of high honour in this country as in any other-perhaps more: but, my lord Portland, they are not my friends." Let us now turn for a moment to the brighter side of Queen Mary's character; to the one feeling of her heart, to the point wherein the whole womanhood of her nature was, so to speak, concentrated,-her love for her husband. Strangely indeed would her character as deduced from her letters to him, contrast with the view of her which is obtained by a comparison of all other parts of her mental history. Those letters abound in delicate and playful tenderness, and breathe throughout a spirit of profound and devoted submission; she is in them the very ideal of a wife. When his safety or happiness are in question, her coldness is at once transformed into the most sensitive timidity. We read wonderingly the expressions of anxious love, sympathy, and gentleness, and could almost fancy them the outpourings of a heart as warm, as tender, as self-forgetful as that of Mary Beatrice herself; though, to be sure, the comparison does savour a little of profaneness. But the transformation is indeed marvellous, and deserves consideration. We must give a few extracts, though we fear this article has already exceeded its due limits: "I have the same complaint to make that I have not time to cry, which would a little ease my heart; but I hope in God I shall have such news from you as will give me no reason, yet your absence is enough; but since it pleases God, I must have patience. Do but continue to love me, and I can bear all things with ease."...“ Adieu, do but love me and I can bear all." ." I confess I deserve such a stop to my joy" (her joy was caused by her husband's victory over her father; it was " stopped" by the unexpected delay of that husband's return,) "since maybe it was too great, and I not thankful enough to God, and we are here apt to be too vain upon so quick a success. But I have mortification enough to think that your dear person may be again exposed at the passage of the Shannon as it was at that of the Boyne; this is what Of Queen Mary's mental refinement it is goes to my heart; but yet I see the reasons for it so more difficult to judge than of the outward good that I will not murmur," &c. "Upon these conpolish of her manners. If the lighter literature siderations I ought to be satisfied, and I will endeaof a country be any criterion of the taste of vour as much as may be to submit to the will of God its ruler and one would fancy that in such and your judgment; but you must forgive a poor wife matters a female ruler of cultivated mind must who loves you so dearly, if I can't do it with dry eyes." possess some influence-we must pronounce un-..." Judge, then, what a joy it was for me to have your favourably. The whole of the light literature approbation of my behaviour; the kind way you of this age is, according to Miss Strick- express it in, is the only comfort I can possibly have land, "too atrociously wicked to bear examin- in your absence. What other people say, ation." The queen's constant patronage of the suspect; but when you tell me I have done well, I worst specimens of the worst class of these could be almost vain upon it."... "I have so many abominations, as embodied in the dramas of several things to say to you, if I live to see you, that Shadwell (her especial protégé) and Congreve, I fear you will never have patience to hear half; but must certainly be received as an indication of you will not wonder if I am surprised at things which, the temper of her mind in these respects. She though you are used to, are quite new to me. I ever I am |