The Cornet of Horse | Page 3

King
William, and the whigs desired to see George, Elector of Hanover,
ascend the throne when it again became vacant; the tories looked to the
return of the Stuarts. The princess's sympathies were with the tories, for
she, as a daughter of James the Second, would naturally have preferred
that the throne should revert to her brother, than that it should pass to a
German prince, a stranger to her, a foreigner, and ignorant even of the
language of the people. Roughly it may be said that the tories were the
descendants of the cavaliers, while the whigs inherited the principles of
the parliamentarians. Party feeling ran very high throughout the country;
and as in the civil war, the towns were for the most part whig in their

predilection, the country was tory.
Rupert Holliday had grown up in a divided house. The fortunes of
Colonel Holliday were greatly impaired in the civil war. His estates
were forfeited; and at the restoration he received his ancestral home,
Windthorpe Chace, and a small portion of the surrounding domain, but
had never been able to recover the outlying properties from the men
who had acquired them in his absence. He had married in France, the
daughter of an exile like himself; but before the "king came to his own"
his wife had died, and he returned with one son, Herbert.
Herbert had, when he arrived at manhood, restored the fortunes of the
Chace by marrying Mistress Dorothy Maynard, the daughter and
heiress of a wealthy brewer of Derby, who had taken the side of
parliament, and had thriven greatly at the expense of the royalist gentry
of the neighbourhood. After the restoration he, like many other
roundheads who had grown rich by the acquisition of forfeited estates,
felt very doubtful whether he should be allowed to retain possession,
and was glad enough to secure his daughter's fortune by marrying her
to the heir of a prominent royalist. Colonel Holliday had at first
objected strongly to the match, but the probable advantage to the
fortune of his house at last prevailed over his political bias. The fortune
which Mistress Dorothy brought into the family was eventually much
smaller than had been expected, for several of the owners of estates of
which the roundhead brewer had become possessed, made good their
claims to them.
Still Herbert Holliday was a rich man at his father-in-law's death, which
happened three years after the marriage. With a portion of his wife's
dowry most of the outlying properties which had belonged to the Chace
were purchased back from their holders; but Herbert Holliday, who was
a weak man, cared nothing for a country life, but resided in London
with his wife. There he lived for another six years, and was then killed
in a duel over a dispute at cards, having in that time managed to run
through every penny that his wife had brought him, save that invested
in the lands of the Chace.
Dorothy Holliday then, at the Colonel's earnest invitation, returned to

the Chace with her son Rupert, then five years old. There she ruled as
mistress, for her disposition was a masterful one, and she was a notable
housekeeper. The colonel gladly resigned the reins of government into
her hands. The house and surrounding land were his; the estate whose
rental enabled the household to be maintained as befitted that of a
county family, was hers; and both would in time, unless indeed
Dorothy Holliday should marry again, go to Rupert. Should she marry
again--and at the time of her husband's death she wanted two or three
years of thirty--she might divide the estate between Rupert and any
other children she might have, she having purchased the estate with her
dowry, and having right of appointment between her children as she
chose. Colonel Holliday was quite content to leave to his
daughter-in-law the management of the Chace, while he assumed that
of his grandson, on whom he doted. The boy, young as he then was,
gave every promise of a fine and courageous disposition, and the old
cavalier promised himself that he would train him to be a soldier and a
gentleman.
When the lad was eight years old, the old vicar of the little church at
the village at the gates of the Chace died, and the living being in the
colonel's gift as master of the Chace, he appointed a young man, freshly
ordained, from Oxford, who was forthwith installed as tutor to Rupert.
Three years later, Colonel Holliday heard that a French emigre had
settled in Derby, and gave lessons in his own language and in fencing.
Rupert had already made some advance in these studies, for Colonel
Holliday, from his long residence in France, spoke the language like a
native; and now,