Love Romances of the Aristocracy written by Thornton Hall

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For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled
though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the
temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had
it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to
marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to
greatness!

No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she
flew into a towering rage. "Marry a shocking creature for money!" she
raved; "and this was what all his passionate protestations of love
amounted to!" Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her
wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.

"As for seeing you," she wrote, "I am resolved I never
will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as
for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can
order so as to be out of your way of seeing me. But
surely you must confess that you have been the falsest
creature upon earth to me. I must own that I believe I
shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it,
and give God thanks, though too late I see my error."

Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man! After spurning Churchill
for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful
shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other
divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a
man's constancy. But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing
Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have
done. He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of
battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady's anger. He broke off the
negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a
solace in the Duke of York's arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and
came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.

But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now. In vain
did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life--that he
adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.

"I vow to God," he wrote, "you do so entirely possess my
thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but
your dear self. I do not, by all that is good, say this
that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do
despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust
you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have
breath, do what you will. I do not expect in return that
you should either write or speak to me. I beg that you
will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to
adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study
how I may deserve, though not have, your love."

Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in
seeming? To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart
of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he
had merely written it to amuse himself, and to "make her think that he
had an affection for her when she was assured he had none." At last,
however, importunity tells its tale. She consents to see him; but warns
him that

"if it be only to repeat those things which you have said
so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most
ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will
be made ridiculous to the world."

Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he
wrote:

"I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so
much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
better pleased with your happiness than my own,"

she answered:

"If it were sure that you have that passion for me which
you say you have, you would find out some way to make
yourself happy--it is in your power. Therefore press me
no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour
approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to
consider who was the cause of it."

At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the
veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these--"you
would find out some way to make yourself happy--_it is in your power_."
And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the
following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the
advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room
by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in
his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it,
and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by
answering that she did it "that I may be freed from the trouble of ever
hearing from you more!"

Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated
to the shades of despair. She refused to speak to him, she avoided him
in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the Court, and brought
her lover into ridicule. To such extremity was he reduced that he
actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.

"Your mistress's usage to me is so barbarous that sure
she must be the worst woman in the world, or else she
would not be thus ill-natured. I have sent her a letter
which I desire you will give her. I do love her with all
my soul, but will not torment her; but if I cannot have
her love I shall despise her pity. For the sake of what
she has already done, let her read my letter and answer
it, and not use me thus like a footman."

In her reply to this letter Sarah assumed again an air of wounded
innocence. She had done nothing, she declared, with tears in her pen, to
deserve what he had written to her; and since he evidently had such a
poor opinion of her she was angry that she had too good a one of him.

"If I had as little love as yourself, I have been told
enough of you to make me hate you, and then I believe I
should have been more happy than I am like to be now.
However," she continued, "if you can be so well contented
never to see me, as I think you can by what you say, I
will believe you, though I have not other people."

No wonder the poor man was driven to his wits' end by such varied and
contradictory moods. After avoiding him for weeks in the most marked and
merciless manner she charges him with "being content never to see her."
Although she had never uttered or penned a syllable of love in return
for his reams of passionate protestations, she taunts him with having
less love than herself! Was ever woman so hard to woo or to understand,
or lover so patient under so much provocation?

She further accused him of laughing at her when he was "at the Duke's
side," to which he retorted "I was so far from that, that had it not
been for shame I could have cried." She even swore that it was he who
avoided _her_; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive
shadow everywhere, and had even "made his chair follow him, because I
would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none."

But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's
forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to
strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by
her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and
when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his
shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the
first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!

Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's
Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the
portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the
lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill
could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left
to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and
re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had
wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.

CHAPTER X

THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER

When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the
eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of
offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family
annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done
so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die
in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate
could sully her.

Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of
Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and
preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King,
won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish
rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it
was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever
in danger.

Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young
daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as
unscrupulous as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the
Mitchelstown nursery--one of a dozen brothers and sisters--a wholesome,
merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with
the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its
luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.

Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one
Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and
thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years
Mary's senior--indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a
married man--had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her
children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's
"big playfellow" when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover,
a young man of remarkable physical gifts--tall, of splendid figure, and
strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero
of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into
young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked.
He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at
dances--in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting
parents began to grow alarmed.

One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few
weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the
blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a note to the
effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and
friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the
missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her
bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have
overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had
ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was
soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light
on her fate.

From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the
description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a
handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together.
In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering
large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord
Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and
no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly
deed--a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the
family of the girl he had abducted.

When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his
infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far
from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the
deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been
restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from
this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the
runaway than her abductor.

For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail,
until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough,
to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant
at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in
fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a
young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing
girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below
the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.

"It must be my daughter!" exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. "But who is the
gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can." "He is tall and
handsome----" began the girl. At that moment the door opened, and in
walked Fitzgerald himself. "Why," exclaimed the servant, as with
startled eyes she looked at the intruder, "that's the very gentleman who
visits the lady!"

For once Fitzgerald's coolness deserted him. At the damning words he
turned and dashed out of the room, thus confirming the worst suspicions
against him. The rage and indignation of the injured family were
boundless. Such an outrage could only be wiped out with blood, and
within an hour Colonel King, elder brother of the wronged girl, called
on Fitzgerald, with Major Wood as second, struck him on the cheek, and
demanded a meeting on the following morning.

The next day at dawn the duellists met near the Magazine in Hyde Park,
Colonel King bringing with him his second and a surgeon. Fitzgerald came
alone. He had been unable to find a friend to accompany him. Even the
surgeon, when requested, point blank refused to undertake the
dishonourable office of second to such a miscreant. The combatants were
placed ten yards apart, and, at the signal, two shots rang out. Neither
man was touched. Again and again shots were exchanged, and both men
remained uninjured.

After the fourth ineffectual exchange Major Wood tried to make peace
between the duellists. But Colonel King turned a deaf ear alike to his
second and to Fitzgerald, to whom he said: "You are a ---- villain, and
I will not hear a word you have to offer!" Once more the duellists took
up their positions, three more shots were exchanged without the least
effect, and, as Fitzgerald's ammunition was now exhausted, the
combatants left the ground, after making another appointment for the
next day. The next day, however, both were placed temporarily under lock
and key, to prevent a further breach of the peace.

Meanwhile, the unhappy girl had been rescued from the Kennington
lodging-house, and taken back to the family seat at Mitchelstown, where
at least she ought to be safe from further harm from the scoundrelly
Fitzgerald. The Kings, however, had not reckoned on the desperate,
vindictive nature of the man, who was now more resolute than ever to get
Mary into his power.

Disguising himself, he journeyed to Cork, carrying the fight into the
enemy's camp. He took up his quarters at the Mitchelstown Inn to develop
his plans for a second abduction. But in his scheming Fitzgerald had
literally "bargained without his host," who chanced to be an old trusted
retainer of the King family, and who from the first was not a little
suspicious of the strange guest, who kept so mysteriously indoors all
day and walked abroad at night.

No honest man would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had
been strange "goings-on" lately; and the least he could do was to
communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be
"up to some mischief." His lordship, who was away from home, hurried
back to Mitchelstown, convinced, from the description, that the
suspected man was none other than Fitzgerald himself, and arrived at the
inn only to discover that the bird had already flown.

Luckily, it was no difficult matter to trace the fugitive in the wilds
of County Cork. The postboy who had driven him was easily found, and
from him it was learnt that the stranger had been put down at the
Kilworth Hotel. There was no time to be lost. Jumping on to his horse,
Lord Kingsborough accompanied by his son, the Colonel, raced as fast as
spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the
newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's
room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that
he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the
voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.

Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs
and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with
oaths, they broke in the door--and found themselves face to face with a
brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King,
stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was
at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the
combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into
play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at
last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's
head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he
fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his
daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.

The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the
distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth.
But wherever it travelled--from the shebeens of Connemara to the
coffee-houses of Cheapside--it carried with it a wave of compassion for
the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he
confessed to a friend: "God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish
it had been done by some other hand than mine!"

As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of
murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a
salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord
Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. Before he could be
brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and
the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his
rank--including that of trial by his Peers.

In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial
took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony
appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in
Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a
small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately
procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl
of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.

Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and
Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded "Not Guilty," and claimed to be tried
"by God and my Peers." But the trial, which drew thousands to
Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that "all manner of
persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth,"
no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared.
One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, "Not Guilty, upon my
honour"; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of
congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.

And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all
this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was
important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had
subsided; and with this object she was sent, under an assumed name, to
join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of
her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment,
she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth
is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she
made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of
mind.

Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled
many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of
her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious
names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and
pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for
the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.

Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had
produced, she exclaimed: "I, myself, am the person for whom you express
such sorrow." Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: "And now,
I suppose, you will drive me from your home." But such was not to be
Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost
lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest
complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King
became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was
no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who
had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.

CHAPTER XI

A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT

In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England
better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the
Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had
raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.

From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London
in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently
on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to
succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few
years of emerging from his 'prentice days he was a master of men, with a
business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth.
Everything he touched seemed to "turn to gold"; before he had reached
middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as "Rich Spencer"; and
by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself
in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall,
which a century earlier Stow had described as "very large and
beautiful, and the highest at that time in London."

Indeed, Crosby Hall, ever since the worthy alderman, whose name it bore,
had raised its walls late in the fifteenth century, had been the most
stately mansion in the city, and had had a succession of famous tenants.
When Sir John Crosby left it for his splendid tomb in the Church of St
Helen's, it was for a time the palace of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in
which, to quote Sir Thomas More, "he lodged himself, and little by
little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's Court was
crowded and King Henry's left desolate"; and it was in one of its
magnificent rooms that Richard was offered, and was pleased to accept,
the Crown of England.

Shakespeare, who lived in St Helen's in 1598, knew Crosby Hall well, and
has immortalised it in "Richard III."; Queen Elizabeth was feasted more
than once within its hospitable walls, and trod more than one measure
there with Raleigh. For seven years it was the home of Sir Thomas More
when he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; and, to his friend and successor
as tenant, More sent that affecting farewell letter, written in the
Tower with a piece of charcoal, the night before his execution. Such was
the historic and splendid home in which "Rich Spencer" dispensed
hospitality as Lord Mayor of London in the year 1594.

Not content with the lordliest mansion in London Sir John must also have
his house in the country, to which he could repair for periods of
leisure and rest from his money-making; and this he found in Canonbury
Tower, which he purchased, together with the manor, from Lord Wentworth.
It is said that Sir John had a bargain in his purchase; but, in the
event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that
the news of "Rich Spencer's" wealth had travelled as far as the
Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate,
who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him
to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it
failed is told by Papillon.

"Rich men," says this chronicler, "are commonly the prey
of thieves; for where store of gold and silver is, there
spirits never leave haunting, for wheresoever the carcass
is, there will eagles be gathered together. In Queen
Elizabeth's days, a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot with
twelve of his mates to carry away Sir John Spencer,
which, if he had done, L50,000 ransom had not redeemed
him. He came over the sea in a shallop with twelve
musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and
left the shallop in the custody of six of his men; and
with the other six came as far as Islington, and there
hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John
came always to his house. But by the providence of God--I
have this from a private record--Sir John, upon some
extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that
night; otherwise they had taken him away; and they,
fearing they should be discovered, in the night-time came
to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again.
This," adds Papillon, "was a desperate attempt."

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