The Lion's Whelp

Then she opened the door next to the death chamber, and Jane saw lying on a great canopied bed the dying Earl. His last breaths were coming in painful sobs, but he opened his eyes and looked mournfully at Jane for a few moments. Then the physician sitting by his side motioned authoritatively to the two girls to leave the room.

"He is dying. You see that. He may live till morning – no longer," said Matilda; "he is only waiting to see Stephen, and Stephen will never come. Ben said he was with the King's horse, and the King is slain, and all is red ruin and sorrow without end. When you rise to-morrow morning, you can tell yourself Matilda de Wick is motherless, fatherless, brotherless, friendless, and homeless; and I dare say you will add piously, 'It is the Lord's doing'; but it is not the Lord's doing, it is Oliver Cromwell's work. I would walk every step of the way to London if I might see him hung when I got there!"

"Indeed, Matilda, you are cruel to say such things. You are neither friendless nor homeless."

"Indeed, I am in both cases. I will have no friends that are partners in Cromwell's crimes, and if Stephen be dead, de Wick goes only in the male line, and there is not a male left to our name. Cromwell and his Parliament may as well take house and lands; they have slain all who can hold them – all, Reginald, Roland, Stephen, my Uncle Robert, my cousins Rufus and Edward! What wonder that Julian Sacy's heart broke, and that my father only waits at the door of Death to say good-bye to Stephen."

"What can I do for you, dear? Oh, what can I do?"

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1

This house is still standing.

2

See Knight's History of England, Vol. 3, p. 464; Clarendon (royalist historian) says 50,000; Paxton Hood, Life of Cromwell, p. 141, says as high as 200,000; Church (American edition) from 50,000 to 200,000 with mutilations and torture; Imgard, the Catholic historian, in Vol. X, p. 177, admits the atrocity of the massacre. Many other authorities, notably Hickson's "Ireland in the 17th Century," which contains the depositions before Parliament relating to the massacre. These documents, printed for the first time in 1884, will cause simple wonder that a terrible massacre on a large scale could ever be questioned, nor in the 17th century was it ever questioned, nor in the face of these documents can it ever be questioned, except by those who put their personal prejudice or interest before the truth.