Take Courage (58 page)

“What is a
moredge
, think you?” said I to him.

“Why, it is a marriage, for sure,” cried Thomas laughing. “Fancy our Chris married!”

“He will want the money for his land, then,” said John crossly. “He is over-young for marriage.”

“Why, Father,” said Thomas, “he will be nineteen in September. Some woman will have great joy of him,” mused Thomas kindly.

At this my poor John's face quivered, and he raised himself in his chair, and said in a hoarse voice:

“What of this new Act?”

Thomas lost his smile at once. “The Act of Uniformity?” he said gravely.

“Aye—aye,” said John. He bent forward and stared eagerly at Thomas, craving speech from him, but he was not able to wait for it, and went on: “What shalt do?”

“I shall not conform,” said Thomas quietly.

At this John's face was illuminated with joy; and he seemed to draw himself together and become a strong steady man again—and indeed, what was very strange, his painful affliction began to recover from that moment and never returned though his rheumatism stayed by him; and he grew kindly again, and even-tempered, so that the house was pleasant.

“Why, lad, I am proud of thee,” cried John. “I am proud of thee!”

He stood up and went to Thomas and put his hand on his shoulder, caressing it.

“Why, Father,” said Thomas, looking up at him: “Surely you and my mother did not doubt me?”

“Nay, nay,” said John hastily; and I added:

“But we are glad to hear it from your own lips, Thomas.”

“If you had chosen to conform, I should not have blamed you, Thomas,” explained John carefully. “This is our cause, not yours; we had no right to expect that you should take it up.”

“Not so, Father,” said Thomas steadily. “The cause of justice and freedom is not the possession of a single generation; it is an endless patrimony.”

“You should have told us this sooner, Thomas,” I mildly reproached him.

“Why,” said Thomas: “As to conforming or not conforming, I never had any hesitation; but as to my duty after I am ejected from my parish, I have had much heart-searching.”

“The Breck is not so poor it cannot sustain my son, Thomas,” his father told him. “You can continue your studies, or perhaps become a tutor.”

“No,” said Thomas. “After much prayer, I have made my decision. I shall continue my ministry, so long as it is wished for.”

“That is against the law, son,” said John doubtfully.

“I know, I know,” said Thomas. “But it is a matter of conscience with me, Father.”

This is John and the ulnage over again, I thought; and I understood now how old Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe had felt on that matter. For Thomas's words began for me ten long years of continual anxiety—ten years during which my son was never safe.

“If you approve,” went on Thomas, “I will minister from The Breck; if you do not, I will house myself elsewhere.”

“The Breck is your home, Thomas,” said John and I together.

“There will be heavy penalties, perhaps,” said Thomas.

“I know, I know,” said John impatiently. After a moment he went on: “What think you of that clause of the Act declaring it unlawful to take arms against the King?”

“Armed rebellion against a lawfully constituted authority,” said Thomas in his clear tones very precisely, for he had plainly thought much on all these questions, “is a terrible thing, almost never to be undertaken; but to exact an oath that it shall never be undertaken is to make the mildest rule a tyranny.”

“Thou art right, lad,” said John with great satisfaction: “Thou hast hit the nail fair and square. It is our political freedom they are cutting at, as well as the religious, just as of old. The welfare of the people is the supreme law of nations, to which all other man-made laws must bow. Well!
When wilt come to The Breck, eh? The day after Black Bartholomew?”

This he said because, the day by which the conforming oath had to be sworn chancing to coincide with that Bartholomew's Day in France when so many Protestants had been massacred in the last century, those of our persuasion called this the new Bartholomew.

John and I went over to Adel to hear Thomas's last sermon as rector of his parish. He preached on a text from the Psalms:
He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him
; a very apt text which he expounded in a clear ringing voice, very beautifully and nobly. The congregation was much moved, and crowded about him at the close of the service, lamenting his departure, so that John and I felt a great if mournful pride in him.

Next Lord's Day was Bartholomew, and nigh on two thousand ministers were ejected from their parishes. Of these two thousand, David Clarkson and Thomas Thorpe were two.

It was a terrible stroke to me, to think of David and Thomas, our noblest and our best, being thus driven out of usefulness and silenced; while on the other side too our brightest and most joyous, Chris, was lost to England. There is ever a great waste in strife and war, I thought, on both sides; my father and Will distraught, Francis dead, John crippled, David and Thomas persecuted, Chris as it were banished—our family hath suffered very bitterly because men could not compose their differences peaceably. But it is not possible to compose a difference between right and wrong, I thought; one can only fight evil, by one method or another: and a civil persecution can wound the spirit as much as war does the body.

David wrote that he should sustain himself chiefly by tutoring, and should study and write works of theological scholarship, ministering when it was required of him; Sam and Constance had offered him a home, which he accepted gladly. Thomas came to The Breck and prepared to begin his ministry.

I own, though I am ashamed to own it, that I was troubled at the notion of Eliza's coming to live with. us. The Breck had been her home before it had been mine—I knew this and admitted it, but found it difficult to believe it in my heart, and still more difficult to relish it. But there was naught else to be done; Thomas and Eliza both came to us, and I did my best to be a true sister to her. And, as sometimes happens, what I had dreaded proved no discomfort at all, but rather a blessing; for as it turned out, Thomas's ministry kept the house so full and busy, I was truly glad of Eliza's help in managing it. For we held worship in our house every Lord's Day, though at different hours from the Church so that believers could attend both services if they had a stomach for Mr. Corker, and on the appointed Fasting Days, and sometimes on other days as well, for godly folk flocked as doves to the window to hear the instruction of the ejected ministers. Then, too, other ministers constantly passed through our house on the way to holding services, while Thomas constantly rode about the country on religious duty. It grew very familiar to me to hear a quiet knock at our door, Thomas's clear steady voice asking what was wanted, a low-toned answer; then Thomas coming in to say he had been asked to go to Penistone, or Guiseley, or Leeds (this was a very Royalist dangerous place), or to Halifax, or Wakefield, and preparing to ride off these considerable distances no matter what the weather; sometimes he rode even into Lancashire and Cheshire and was some days absent from his home. Joseph Lister was very forward in all this business; he attended our meetings very regularly, and also when he was in other towns on his merchant trade, he told the godly folk there of our Thomas as a very helpful serviceable preacher.

“He was born the day my indentures terminated,” Lister was wont to say of Thomas, proudly.

With these frequent ridings back and forth, and with instructing Lister's boy David, and writing letters, and constant studying and preaching and composing sermons, our Thomas grew very thin and worn in looks, being so
continuously overtoiled; but he would not spare himself, and it was my part and Eliza's to keep him well clothed and fed despite his preoccupations.

When the government saw that this Act did not serve to keep us down, on the pretext of a plot against the King supposed to be wrought up by some foolish persons in Yorkshire—though we heard nothing of it—it passed another Act, forbidding more than five persons from outside a household to assemble therein for prayer. The penalties for anyone caught attending a conventicle, as any religious meeting was now called if attended by more than five strangers, were truly terrible, not only heavy fines and long imprisonment, but even transportation; Thomas, however, made no difference in his ministry. When I ventured, not without tears, to point out to him the danger he was running, he merely set his jaw as John did, and said:

“I shall minister wherever I am called, Mother.”

I remember one night especially when he was to preach at Captain Hodgson's, and we rode over with him and dined there. After we had dined, many neighbours came in to hear him, so that the house was full, and Thomas was very fervent in prayer and exhortation. But while we were on our knees, suddenly a child came in, so that we all started; a kind and godly woman, wife to one of Captain Hodgson's Royalist neighbours, had sent him to warn us that one of the magistrates was coming upon us with a troop of horse. The congregation all rose up in confusion, but Thomas set his jaw in his father's way and stood there motionless, and I believe he would have continued to conduct the service, only Captain Hodgson desired him somewhat peremptorily to put an end to it. The Captain hustled us all out of doors by the back way, and he drew out Thomas's horse and saddled it very expeditiously and bade him ride hard if he valued his own liberty and his congregation's.

“Those who preach and run away, will live to preach another day,” said Captain Hodgson, laughing.

At this Thomas smiled faintly and galloped off in the direction of Halifax. The Hodgsons' neighbours had already
dispersed, walking away very rapidly, and John and I were left looking at each other.

“I am sorry to turn you out thus, old friends,” said Captain Hodgson, bringing out our horse and wheeling him to the mounting-block: “But indeed it will be best.”

So we mounted and rode off through the moonlight; and sure enough, we had hardly reached the main road before we heard the horses' hoofs, and jingling of bits and spurs, as the troop rode up from the other direction and surrounded Coley Hall. I trembled so I could hardly sit the horse, and clung to John in a very timid manner, for which I despised myself. However, we got off safe and reached The Breck without being molested.

It is a true saying that misfortunes rarely come singly, for next morning, while we were still in doubt as to whether Thomas had escaped or not, behold an angry letter from the mercer at York where Abraham was apprenticed, saying that Abraham had broken his indentures and fled. John was quite dumbfounded; I do not know which was the more intolerable to him, the idea that a child of his should break indentures, or the thought of his cherished youngest son homeless and starving, roaming the countryside. I too was surprised, for Abraham had stayed in York nigh on three years, so I thought he had settled down. But somehow I was not troubled about Abraham; people always seemed to confide in him, and he listened with a grave attention which endeared him to them, and then he did not demand much of life, asking only to be left alone to manipulate columns of figures, so that it was easy to satisfy him. Though naturally anxious, I felt sure he would fall on his feet. But for Thomas I was greatly troubled. If Thomas came into contact with soldiers nowadays, he would vex them; he had a stern and lofty air, which soldiers do not like, and was apt to be very uncompromising in his speech. I had thoughts of him being attacked and wounded, imprisoned, tried, transported to some far plantation, dying of fever or beaten and starved. John, on the other hand, though naturally concerned for
Thomas, felt a pride in him which overrode concern. To John, Thomas was his representative, carrying on the good old cause; he did not wish Thomas, for he had not wished himself, to shrink from any hardship. So John and I sat on either side of our hearth that day, each worrying over a different son. Eliza between us shook her head and sighed with both of us dolefully, sympathising with John because he was her brother and with me because it was Thomas for whom I grieved.

It was two days before we heard that Thomas had got safe to Rochdale, and two weeks before we received a neat brief note in Abraham's beautiful penmanship to tell us he had gone to Liverpool.

“Liverpool!” cried John, inflamed. “He will take a ship thence, I suppose!”

He wanted to rush off to Liverpool at once himself and fetch Abraham home, but I persuaded him to send and command Thomas, who was still in Lancashire, to go instead and take money to the boy, and after some grumbling John agreed. It was well he did so, for when Thomas returned he came alone, bringing us a brave account of Abraham's going on in Liverpool. He had opened a school, said Thomas, for the teaching of writing and accounts.

“A school!” groaned John, nevertheless not altogether displeased. “A school at his age!”

“He is seventeen, Father,” said Thomas seriously: “and you know his ability in numeration.”

Abraham was studying the science of navigation, too, said Thomas, which was why he had gone to Liverpool, and he had made the acquaintance of some merchant who knew an astronomer who lived in London.

“An astronomer!” said John, much struck.

“Yes. It seems Abraham desires to be an astronomer,” explained Thomas.

“What is an astronomer, brother?” asked Eliza mildly.

“Why, he studies the stars,” said John. “But in truth I have never met one. You have brought me some strange children, Penninah,” he grumbled, smiling at me however.
“There is not one stays peacefully at home as a sober clothier.”

“You did not stay very peacefully at home yourself, husband,” said I.

“Why, that is very true,” said John. “And so I will not grumble. And now, tell us of your own travels, Thomas.”