A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess.

Chapter One.

How I saw my Queen.

Every story, whether wise or foolish, grave or gay, must needs have a beginning. How it comes to pass that my story begins on a certain day in May, in the year of our Lord 1585, I can never, although I am far on in life now, properly explain.

For that was not the day on which I was born. That adventure had befallen me eighteen years before, at the parson’s little house in Felton Regis. Most people who write their histories have a pride in dragging their readers back to the moment when they first hallooed defiance to this wicked world; but I, since I have clean forgotten the event, must e’en confess that my story does not begin there. A like adventure chanced often at the parsonage, and, at nine years of age, I reigned king absolute over a nursery full of her Majesty’s subjects who called me brother, and quailed before my nod like Helots before the crest of a Spartan. But, as I say, all that is neither here nor there in my story.

Nor, in truth, is that grey September day, when, on the tail of a country hay-cart, I rode tremulously at my dear father’s side into London; where, with much pomp and taking of oaths, I was bound apprentice, body and soul, to Master Robert Walgrave, the printer, in the presence of the worshipful Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Company of Stationers, who enriched themselves by 2 shillings 6 pence at my father’s cost, and looked upon me in a hungry way that made me tremble in my bones, and long to be out of their sight before they should order the bill of fare for their next feast. That was a day in my life truly, but it was ancient history when my story begins. I had grown a big lad since then, and was the king of Clubs without Temple Bar, and the terror of all young ’prentices for a mile round, who looked up with white cheeks when I swaggered by, and ran with their tails between their legs to hide behind counters and doorposts till I was out of sight.

No; nor yet does my story begin even at that sad day—alack!—when I stood by my widowed mother at the open grave of him who had been the pillar of our house and the pride of our lives. “Humphrey, my boy,” she had said as she placed her hand on my arm and led me, like one in a dream, from the place, “it is God who has taken—He will surely also give. Shall I count all lost, with a stalwart arm like this to lean upon?” Then she kissed me, and I, for very shame, dried my eyes and held up my head. Ah me! that was but a year before; the world had still moved on, the grass covered his grave, and still my story lacked a beginning.

How comes it, then, that this day in May, of all others, should stand up like a wall, as I look back over my life, and seem to me the beginning of all things? Perhaps this history may show—or, perhaps, he who reads it may come to see that I was right when I said I could not explain it.

It was a great day in London, within and without Temple Bar; and for me, if for no other reason, it was famous, because on that day, for the first and last time, I saw the great Queen Elizabeth. About eight o’clock, while I stood, as was my wont, setting types in my master’s shop, I looked from the window (as was also my wont), and spied two falconers in their green coats, with a trumpeter riding in the midst, ambling citywards. In a moment I dropped my stick (and with it, alack! a pieful of my master’s types), and was out, cap and club, in the Strand, shouting till I was hoarse, “God save her Majesty!”

On the instant, from every shop far and near, darted ’prentices and journeymen, shouting and waving caps—some because they saw me do so, some because they guessed what was afoot, some because they saw, even now, the flutter of approaching pennons, and caught the winding of the royal huntsmen’s horns along the Strand.

The Queen was coming!

I went mad that day with loyalty. I kicked my fellows for not shouting louder, and such as shouted not at all, I made to shout in a way they least expected. Through the open door of Master Straw’s, the horologer’s, I spied his two ’prentices, deaf to all the clamour, basely gorging a hasty pudding behind the bench.

“What!” shouted I, bursting in upon them, and seizing each by his cropped head, “what, ye gluttonous pair of porkers, is this the way you welcome her Majesty into our duchy? Is this a time for greasy pudding and smacking of lips? Come outside and shout, or I’ll brain you with your own spoons.”

Whereupon, forgetting what I did, I dipped the white face of each in his own mess, and dragged them forth, where, to do them justice, they shouted and howled as loud as any one.

And now the Strand overflowed from end to end with loyal citizens. From the windows above, the faces of the city madams beamed, and the white necks of their daughters craned; while behind, with half an eye on us clubs below, peeped, on tiptoe, the maids. At each shop-door stood the grave forms of our masters, thinking, perhaps, of a lost day’s profits, and setting the cost thereof against the blessings of her Majesty’s happy reign. At the roadside, beggar, scholar, yokel, knight, and noble jostled in a motley throng. But the sight of all that crowd was the ’prentices, who swarmed out into the road, and raised our shouts above the clanging of Saint Clement’s bells and the trumpets of the Royal servants. ’Twas no pageant we had come out to see. Giants, and whales, and bottomless pits, and salvage men, and the like we could see to our hearts’ content on Lord Mayor’s Day; and the gilded barges and smoking cannon on the river’s side. But it was not every day her Majesty ambled through the city on her hunting horse, and passed our way with her gallants for a day’s sport in Epping woods.

As for me, I had no eyes or throat for any but that queenly woman, as she cantered boldly on her white palfrey, a pace or more ahead of her glittering courtiers. Had any one said to me that Elizabeth was that day neither young nor lovely—had anyone even dared to whisper that she was not divine—I would have brained him with my club where he stood. For a moment her head turned my way, she waved her hand—it had a little whip in it—and her lips moved to some words. Then as I rent the air with a “God save your Majesty!” she was past.

At Temple Bar, the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, arrayed for the hunt, with buglers and dogs attending, stood across the way, and with mighty ceremony and palaver admitted her to the City. Woe betide them, for all their gold collars and maces, had they kept her out!

But the halt, short as it was, served our purpose. For there was no more going back to work on a day like this.

“To the front, clubs, and lead the way,” shouted I, with what voice was left me.

It was enough for the lads without Temple Bar. They closed on me with a cheer, and followed me at the run, past the gaping Court ushers, past the royal jockeys, past the Queen herself (Heaven bless her!) past Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and yapping beagles, through the echoing gates of Temple Bar, till we stood at the head of the procession, and longed, with a mighty longing, that someone might dispute the way with us.

But we had no work for our clubs that morning. As we moved forward, our body, like a growing snowball, was swelled by the ’prentices of each ward, shouting as lustily as we, “Make way!” and hurling defiance, like us, on all the Queen’s foes by land and by sea. Even the gay sparks of the Temple gave us no handle for a sally, for they shouted with the best of us.

And so, down Fleet Street and in at the Ludgate, past the square tower of Saint Paul’s, and along merry Cheap, we passed; our numbers swelling at every