Come Rack! Come Rope!

Come Rack! Come Rope!

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Title: Come Rack! Come Rope!
Author: Robert Hugh Benson
Release Date: June 5, 2005 [EBook #15992]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Come Rack! Come Rope!
BY
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
_Author of "By What Authority?" "The King's Achievement," "Lord of

the World," etc._
New York P.J. Kenedy & Sons

PREFACE
Very nearly the whole of this book is sober historical fact; and by far
the greater number of the personages named in it once lived and acted
in the manner in which I have presented them. My hero and my heroine
are fictitious; so also are the parents of my heroine, the father of my
hero, one lawyer, one woman, two servants, a farmer and his wife, the
landlord of an inn, and a few other entirely negligible characters. But
the family of the FitzHerberts passed precisely through the fortunes
which I have described; they had their confessors and their one traitor
(as I have said). Mr. Anthony Babington plotted, and fell, in the manner
that is related; Mary languished in Chartley under Sir Amyas Paulet;
was assisted by Mr. Bourgoign; was betrayed by her secretary and Mr.
Gifford, and died at Fotheringay; Mr. Garlick and Mr. Ludlam and Mr.
Simpson received their vocations, passed through their adventures;
were captured at Padley, and died in Derby. Father Campion (from
whose speech after torture the title of the book is taken) suffered on the
rack and was executed at Tyburn. Mr. Topcliffe tormented the
Catholics that fell into his hands; plotted with Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert,
and bargained for Padley (which he subsequently lost again) on the
terms here drawn out. My Lord Shrewsbury rode about Derbyshire,
directed the search for recusants and presided at their deaths; priests of
all kinds came and went in disguise; Mr. Owen went about constructing
hiding-holes; Mr. Bassett lived defiantly at Langleys, and dabbled a
little (I am afraid) in occultism; Mr. Fenton was often to be found in
Hathersage--all these things took place as nearly as I have had the
power of relating them. Two localities only, I think, are disguised under
their names--Booth's Edge and Matstead. Padley, or rather the chapel in
which the last mass was said under the circumstances described in this
book, remains, to this day, close to Grindleford Station. A Catholic
pilgrimage is made there every year; and I have myself once had the
honour of preaching on such an occasion, leaning against the wall of

the old hall that is immediately beneath the chapel where Mr. Garlick
and Mr. Ludlam said their last masses, and were captured. If the book
is too sensational, it is no more sensational than life itself was to
Derbyshire folk between 1579 and 1588.
It remains only, first, to express my extreme indebtedness to Dom Bede
Camm's erudite book--"Forgotten Shrines"--from which I have taken
immense quantities of information, and to a pile of some twenty to
thirty other books that are before me as I write these words; and,
secondly, to ask forgiveness from the distinguished family that takes its
name from the FitzHerberts and is descended from them directly; and
to assure its members that old Sir Thomas, Mr. John, Mr. Anthony, and
all the rest, down to the present day, outweigh a thousand times over
(to the minds of all decent people) the stigma of Mr. Thomas' name.
Even the apostles numbered one Judas!
ROBERT HUGH BENSON.
_Feast of the Blessed Thomas More, 1912. Hare Street House,
Buntingford._


CHAPTER I
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PART I
CHAPTER I
I
There should be no sight more happy than a young man riding to meet
his love. His eyes should shine, his lips should sing; he should slap his
mare upon her shoulder and call her his darling. The puddles upon his

way should be turned to pure gold, and the stream that runs beside him
should chatter her name.
Yet, as Robin rode to Marjorie none of these things were done. It was a
still day of frost; the sky was arched above him, across the high hills,
like that terrible crystal which is the vault above which sits God--hard
blue from horizon to horizon; the fringe of feathery birches stood like
filigree-work above him on his left; on his right ran the Derwent,
sucking softly among his sedges; on this side