Colonel Brothertoft said not a word. He spurred on, and close at his heels came the troop, with the fire shining on their corselets and gleaming in the eyes of their horses.
Safe! yes; the house might go—for his dear wife was safe, and his dear son, his little namesake Edwin, was safe in her arms.
The brave lady too had beaten off the marauders. But fight fire as they would, they could rescue only one angle of the mansion. That “curious new brique fabrick, four square, with a turret at each corner, two good Courts, a fine Library, and most romantick Wildernesse; a pleasant noble seat, worthie to be noted by alle,”—so it is described in an Itinerary of 1620—had been made to bear the penalty for its master’s faith to Freedom.
“There is no service without suffering,” he quietly said, as he stood with the fair Lucy, his wife, after sunrise, before the smoking ruins.
He looked west over the green uplands of his manor, and east over his broad acres of fenny land, billowy with rank grass, and all the beloved scene seemed strange and unlovely to him. Even the three beautiful towers of Lincoln Cathedral full in view, his old companions and monitors, now emphasized the devastation of his home.
He could not dally with regrets. There was still work for him and the Brothertoft horses to do. He must leave his wife well guarded, and gallop back.
So there was a parting and a group—the fair wife, the devoted soldier, the white charger, and the child awakened to say good-bye, and scared at his father’s glinting corselet—a group such as a painter loves.
The Colonel bore westward to cross the line of march of the Parliamentary army, and by and by, as he drew nearer the three towers of Lincoln, they began to talk to him by Great Tom, the bell.
From his youth up, the Great Tom of Lincoln, then in full swing and full roar, had aroused, warned, calmed, and comforted him, singing to him, along the west wind, pious chants, merry refrains, graceful madrigals, stirring lyrics, more than could be repeated, even “if all the geese in Lincoln’s fens Produced spontaneous well-made pens,” and every pen were a writer of poetry and music.
To-day Great Tom had but one verse to repeat,
“Westward ho! A new home across the seas.”
This was its stern command to the Puritan Colonel, saddened by the harm and cruelty of war.
“Yes, my old oracle,” he replied, “if we fail, if we lose Liberty here, I will obey, and seek it in the New World.”
For a time it seemed that they had not failed. England became a Commonwealth. Brothertoft returned in peace to his dismantled home. Its ancient splendors could never be restored. Three fourths of the patriot’s estate were gone. He was too generous to require back from his party, in its success, what he had frankly given for the nation’s weal. He lived quietly and sparingly. His sole extravagance was, that, as a monument of bygone grandeur, he commissioned Sir Anthony Vandyck to paint him, his wife, his boy, and the white charger, as they stood grouped for the parting the morning of the fire.
So green ivy covered the ruins, and for years Great Tom of Lincoln never renewed its sentence of exile.
Time passed. Kingly Oliver died. There was no Protector blood in gentle Richard Cromwell. He could not wield the land. “Ho for cavaliers! hey for cavaliers!” In came the Merrie Monarch. Out Puritans, and in Nell Gwynn! Out crop-ears and in love-locks! Away sad colors! only frippery is the mode. To prison stout John Bunyan; to office slight Sam Pepys! To your blind study, John Milton, and indite Paradise Lost; to Whitehall, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and scribble your poem, “Nothing!” Yes; go Bigotry, your jackboots smell unsavory; enter Prelacy in fine linen and perfume! Procul! O procul! Libertas! for, alas! English knees bend to the King’s mistress, and English voices swear, “The King can do no wrong.” Boom sullenly, Great Tom of Lincoln, the dirge of Freedom!
Ring solemnly, Great Tom of Lincoln, to Colonel Brothertoft the stern command revived. Syllable again along the west wind the sentence of exile—
“Westward ho! A new home across the seas!”
Every day the nation cringed baser and baser. Every day the great bell, from its station high above all the land, shouted more vehemently to the lord of Brothertoft Manor to shake the dust from his feet, and withdraw himself from among a people grown utterly dastard. His young hopes were perished. His old associates were slain or silenced. He would go.
And just at this moment, when in 1665 all freedom was dead in England, Winthrop of Connecticut wrote to his friend at Brothertoft Manor: “We have conquered the Province of New Netherlands. The land is goodlie, and there is a great brave river running through the midst of it. Sell thy Manor, bring thy people, and come to us. We need thee, and the like of thee, in our new communities. We have brawn enow, and much godlinesse and singing of psalms; but gentlemen and gentlewomen be few among us.”
So farewell to England, debauched and disgraced! Great Tom of Lincoln tolled farewell, and the beautiful tower of St. Botolph’s at Boston saw the exiles out to sea.
Chapter II.
Bluff is the bow and round as a pumpkin is the stern of the Dutch brig, swinging to its anchor in the bay of New York. It is the new arrival from England, this sweet autumn day of 1665. The passengers land. Colonel Brothertoft and family! Welcome, chivalric gentleman, to this raw country! You and your class are needed here.
And now disembark a great company of Lincolnshire men, old tenants or old soldiers of the Colonel’s. Their names are thorough Lincolnshire. Here come Wrangles, Swinesheads, Timberlands, Mumbys, Bilsbys, Hogsthorpes, Swillingores, and Galsworthys, old and young, men and women.
These land, and stare about forlornly, after the manner of emigrants. They sit on their boxes, and wish they were well back in the old country. They see the town gallows, an eminent object on the beach, and are taught that where man goes, crime goes also. A frowzy Indian paddles ashore with clams to sell; at this vision, their dismayed scalps tremble on their sinciputs. A sly Dutchman, the fatter prototype of to-day’s emigrant runner, stands before them and says, seductively, “Bier, Schnapps!” They shake their heads firmly, and respond, “Nix!”
Colonel Brothertoft was received with due distinction by Governor Nicolls and Mayor Willet. Old Peter Stuyvesant was almost consoled that Hollanders were sent to their Bouweries to smoke and grow stolid, if such men as this new-comer were to succeed them in power.
The Colonel explored that “great brave river” which Connecticut Winthrop had celebrated in his letter. Its beautiful valley was “all before him where to choose.” Dutch land-patents were plenteous in market as villa sites after a modern panic. Crown grants were to be had from the new proprietary, almost for the asking.
The lord of old Brothertoft Manor selected his square leagues for the new Manor of Brothertoft at the upper end of Westchester County, bordering upon the Highlands of the Hudson. A few pioneer Dutchmen—De Witts, Van Warts, and Canadys—were already colonized there. His Lincolnshire followers soon found their places; but they came from the fens, and did not love the hills, and most of them in time dispersed to flatter country.
The new proprietor’s wealth was considerable for America. He somewhat diminished it by reproducing, as well as colonial workmen could do, that corner of the old manor-house untouched by the fire. It grew up a strange exotic, this fine mansion, in the beautiful wilderness. The “curious fabrick” of little imported bricks, with its peaked turret, its quaint gables, its square bay-window, and grand porch, showed incongruously at first, among the stumps of a clearing.
And there the exiled gentleman tried to live an exotic life. He bestowed about him the furniture of old Brothertoft Manor. He hung his Vandyck on the wall. He laid his presentation copy of Mr. John Milton’s new poem, Paradise Lost, on the table.
But