Micah Clarke | Page 6

was
proof against every attempt to turn her from it. I imagine that at one
time her husband had argued much with her upon Arminianism and the
sin of simony, but finding his exhortations useless, he bad abandoned
the subject save on very rare occasions. In spite of her Episcopacy,
however, she remained a staunch Whig, and never allowed her loyalty
to the throne to cloud her judgment as to the doings of the monarch
who sat upon it.
Women were good housekeepers fitly years ago, but she was
conspicuous among the best. To see her spotless cuffs and snowy kirtle
one would scarce credit how hard she laboured. It was only the well
ordered house and the dustless rooms which proclaimed her constant
industry. She made salves and eyewaters, powders and confects,
cordials and persico, orangeflower water and cherry brandy, each in its
due season, and all of the best. She was wise, too, in herbs and simples.
The villagers and the farm labourers would rather any day have her
advice upon their ailments than that of Dr. Jackson of Purbrook, who
never mixed a draught under a silver crown. Over the whole

countryside there was no woman more deservedly respected and more
esteemed both by those above her and by those beneath.
Such were my parents as I remember them in my childhood. As to
myself, I shall let my story explain the growth of my own nature. My
brothers and my sister were all brownfaced, sturdy little country
children, with no very marked traits save a love of mischief controlled
by the fear of their father. These, with Martha the serving-maid, formed
our whole household during those boyish years when the pliant soul of
the child is hardening into the settled character of the man. How these
influences affected me I shall leave for a future sitting, and if I weary
you by recording them, you must remember that I am telling these
things rather for your profit than for your amusement; that it may assist
you in your journey through life to know how another has picked out
the path before you.

Chapter II
Of my going to school and of my coming thence.
With the home influences which I have described, it may be readily
imagined that my young mind turned very much upon the subject of
religion, the more so as my father and mother took different views
upon it. The old Puritan soldier held that the bible alone contained all
things essential to salvation, and that though it might be advisable that
those who were gifted with wisdom or eloquence should expound the
Scriptures to their brethren, it was by no means necessary, but rather
hurtful and degrading, that any organised body of ministers or of
bishops should claim special prerogatives, or take the place of
mediators between the creature and the Creator. For the wealthy
dignitaries of the Church, rolling in their carriages to their cathedrals,
in order to preach the doctrines of their Master, who wore His sandals
out in tramping over the countryside, he professed the most bitter
contempt; nor was he more lenient to those poorer members of the
clergy who winked at the vices of their patrons that they might secure a

seat at their table, and who would sit through a long evening of
profanity rather than bid good-bye to the cheesecakes and the wine
flask. That such men represented religious truth was abhorrent to his
mind, nor would he even give his adhesion to that form of church
government dear to the Presbyterians, where a general council of the
ministers directed the affairs of their church. Every man was, in his
opinion, equal in the eyes of the Almighty, and none had a right to
claim any precedence over his neighbour in matters of religion. The
book was written for all, and all were equally able to read it, provided
that their minds were enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
My mother, on the other hand, held that the very essence of a church
was that it should have a hierarchy and a graduated government within
itself, with the king at the apex, the archbishops beneath him, the
bishops under their control, and so down through the ministry to the
common folk. Such was, in her opinion, the Church as established in
the beginning, and no religion without these characteristics could lay
any claim to being the true one. Ritual was to her of as great
importance as morality, and if every tradesman and farmer were
allowed to invent prayers, and change the service as the fancy seized
him, it would be impossible to preserve the purity of the Christian
creed. She agreed that religion was based upon the Bible, but the Bible
was a book which contained