The Real America in Romance, Volume 6 | Page 8

short hour afterward the aged chieftain was treacherously wounded by his guard.
In the year 1648, John Stevens married Dorothe Collier, the daughter of a clergyman of the church of England. This naturally united him to the cavalier or church party, while his mother, brother and sister were Puritans. Sometimes John thought he had the best wife living, at others he was almost persuaded that she was intolerable. She was a beautiful brunette, with great dark eyes which smiled when the sky was fair, but in which appeared the lustre of a tigress when enraged. Love in its full strength and beauty seldom dwells in the heart of both husband and wife through all the vicissitudes of life. It was so in John's case. When the honeymoon waned and practical existence began, the wife became ambitious for a more showy manner of life and more pleasures than the husband could afford. He was prosperous; but his wife's extravagance, in which he indulged her at first, kept him poor. Poverty became a burden and marriage a mockery. He who had been insanely in love, and who was unable to live out of her presence, proved an indifferent husband before the honeymoon was over. Why? John had thought his wife an angel, and marriage had shattered his idol. His ideal woman had fallen so far below his expectations that disappointment drove him to indifference. His wife thought herself his superior, and John, to her, was more a convenience than a husband.
Gradually Dorothe grew indifferent toward her husband's mother and young sister, who idolized him, and though they bore her no thought of ill, she came to despise them. John's mother saw that her son's wife was ruining him by her extravagance, yet she dared not interpose as it would make the rupture complete. Dorothe was a haughty cavalier and despised all Puritans and, most of all, her husband's mother; but the cavaliers were in trouble. King Charles was tried, condemned and beheaded in 1649, and a protectorate (Oliver Cromwell) ruled over England a few months after the execution of the king. John Stevens' wife gave birth to a son who was named Robert for his wife's father.
Though England was a commonwealth, Virginia remained loyal to the wandering prince, who slept in oaks and had more adventures than any other man of his day. Berkeley, it is said, even invited him to come and rule over Virginia, assuring him of his support; but Parliament took notice of the saucy colony and, in 1650, ordered a fleet to conquer it. The fleet did not reach Jamestown until 1652, when, after a little fluster, Sir William Berkeley retired to Greenspring, and the government was turned over to the roundheads, who chose Richard Bennet, Esquire, to be governor of the colony for one year. On the day of Bennet's inauguration, John Steven's second child, a daughter, whom he named Rebecca, was born. These two links of love made his wife more dear to him. At times she was pleasant; but usually she studied to thwart his will. She was humbled with the cavaliers and hated the Puritans. Ann Linkon, an old woman given to gossiping, incurred the displeasure of Dorothe Stevens, because she gossiped about her extravagance. She had her arrested, condemned and ducked as we have seen. There was no open rupture between Dorothe and her husband's relatives. She still greeted them with half-smiles; but those half-smiles were cold and uncongenial, and there seemed to be a settled purpose on her part as well as theirs to dislike each other. To no one did Dorothe express this dislike save to her husband, and to him she never lost an opportunity for doing so.
In 1654, Claybourne, who was in possession of Kent Island, was threatened by the Catholics from Maryland, and John Stevens, with his friend Hugh Price and half a dozen more, went to aid in the defence of the island. They camped at the mouth of the Severn, in the vicinity of the present city of Annapolis, where they were joined by Claybourne and a body of three hundred men.
On the 25th of March, 1654, Stone sailed with a force down the river, landed and attacked Claybourne. At early dawn the sleeping Puritans were awakened by the boom of cannon and volleys of muskets. They arose, formed their lines of battle and poured a tremendous fire upon the enemy. The Marylanders landed and tried to storm their fort; but after an hour retreated, leaving twenty killed and twice as many wounded on the field. Claybourne had conquered and, for a brief space of time, was to hold sway over the Severn and Kent Island.
John Stevens returned to his home to find that his wife's extravagance had impoverished his estates and almost brought him to beggary.