The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees | Page 7

a lady of this house was sought in marriage
by Charles the Second, in spite of the fact that a Capulet-Montague
feud must ever have existed between the line of Cromwell and that of
Charles Stuart.
Young Harry, too, was clever as well as handsome. The eldest of his
father's seven sons, he was educated as befitted the heir to the title and
to the family estate at Thirkleby and Mattersea. He knew the French
and Latin languages well, and, what is more to the point, used his
mother tongue with grace and elegance. Botany and
landscape-gardening were his chief amusements, while with the great
literature of the day he was as familiar as with the great men who made
it.

As early as 1738, when he was twenty-two, he had come into
possession of an ample fortune, but when opportunity offered to go to
America with Shirley, his friend, he accepted the opening with avidity.
Both young men, therefore, entered the same year (1741) on their
offices, the one as Collector of the Port, and the other as Governor of
the Colony. And both represented socially the highest rank of that day
in America.
"A baronet," says Reverend Elias Nason, from whose admirable picture
of Boston in Frankland's time all writers must draw for reliable data
concerning our hero,--"a baronet was then approached with greatest
deference; a coach and four, with an armorial bearing and liveried
servants, was a munition against indignity; in those dignitaries who, in
brocade vest, gold lace coat, broad ruffled sleeves, and small-clothes,
who, with three-cornered hat and powdered wig, side-arms and silver
shoe buckles, promenaded Queen Street and the Mall, spread
themselves through the King's Chapel, or discussed the measures of the
Pelhams, Walpole, and Pitt at the Rose and Crown, as much of
aristocratic pride, as much of courtly consequence displayed itself as in
the frequenters of Hyde Park or Regent Street."
This, then, was the manner of man who, to transact some business
connected with Marblehead's picturesque Fort Sewall, then just
a-building, came riding down to the rock-bound coast on the day our
story opens, and lost his heart at the Fountain Inn, where he had paused
for a long draught of cooling ale.
For lo! scrubbing the tavern floor there knelt before him a beautiful
child-girl of sixteen, with black curling hair, dark eyes, and a voice
which proved to be of bird-like sweetness when the maiden, glancing
up, gave her good-day to the gallant's greeting. The girl's feet were bare,
and this so moved Frankland's compassion that he gently gave her a
piece of gold with which to buy shoes and stockings, and rode
thoughtfully away to conduct his business at the fort.
Yet he did not forget that charming child just budding into winsome
womanhood whom he had seen performing with patience and grace the
duties that fell to her lot as the poor daughter of some honest,

hard-working fisherfolk of the town. When he happened again to be in
Marblehead on business, he inquired at once for her, and then, seeing
her feet still without shoes and stockings, asked a bit teasingly what she
had done with the money he gave her. Quite frankly she replied,
blushing the while, that the shoes and stockings were bought, but that
she kept them to wear to meeting. Soon after this the young collector
went to search out Agnes's parents, Edward and Mary Surriage, from
whom he succeeded in obtaining permission to remove their daughter
to Boston to be educated as his ward.
When one reads in the old records the entries for Frankland's salary,
and finds that they mount up to not more than £100 sterling a year, one
wonders that the young nobleman should have been so ready to take
upon himself the expenses of a girl's elegant education. But it must be
remembered that the gallant Harry had money in his own right, besides
many perquisites of office, which made his income a really splendid
one. Certainly he spared no expense upon his ward. She was taught
reading, writing, grammar, music, and embroidery by the best tutors the
town could provide, and she grew daily, we are told, in beauty and
maidenly charm.
Yet in acquiring these gifts and graces she did not lose her childish
sweetness and simplicity, nor the pious counsel of her mother, and the
careful care of her Marblehead pastor. Thus several years passed by,
years in which Agnes often visited with her gentle guardian the
residence in Roxbury of Governor Shirley and his gifted wife, as well
as the stately Royall place out on the Medford road.
The reader who is familiar with Mr. Bynner's story of Agnes Surriage
will recall how delightfully Mrs. Shirley, the wife of the governor, is
introduced into his romance,