Shrewsbury: A Romance — A Closer Reading

She looked directly at me.

In an instant I was on the other side of the fence.

Stole down the stairs and into the garden.

My companion seized my wrist.

The constable led me out of the crowd.

"When my back is turned go through that window."

He wore a dingy morning-gown and had laid aside his wig.

"Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried.

He pressed the ring of cold steel.

In the great chair sat an elderly lady leaning on an ebony stick.

I heard a light foot following me.

With a gesture between contempt and impatience the duke removed his hat.

I flung my arms round him from behind, and with my right hand jerked up the pistol.

A slight gentleman ambled and paced in front of a child.

"Now we will have that letter, if you please."

I saw a man had come to a stand before the door.

The place was nothing more than a concealed cupboard.

And turning from me, he began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him.

She came a step nearer to me, and peered at me.

Sir John ... stared at me a moment.

She listened in silence, standing over me with something of the severity of a judge.

He shut himself in with his trouble.

I stood there at last ... the faces at the table all turned towards me.

She was making marks on the turf with a stick.

That the untimely death at the age of fifty-eight of that great prince, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my most noble and generous patron, has afflicted me with a sorrow which I may truly call _acerbus et ingens_, is nothing to the world; which from one in my situation could expect no other, and, on the briefest relation of the benefits I had at his hands, might look for more. Were this all, therefore, or my task confined to such a relation, I should supererogate indeed in making this appearance. But I am informed that my lord Duke's death has revived in certain quarters those rumours to his prejudice which were so industriously put about at the time of his first retirement; and which, refuted as they were at the moment by the express declaration of his Sovereign, and at leisure by his own behaviour, as well as by the support which at two great crises he gave to the Protestant succession, formed always a proof of the malice, as now of the persistence, of his enemies.

Still, such as they are, and though, not these circumstances only, but a thousand others have time after time exposed them, I am instructed that they are again afloat; and find favour in circles where to think ill of public men is held the first test of experience. And this being the case, and my affection for my lord such as is natural, I perceive a clear duty. I do not indeed suppose that anyone can at this time of day effect that which the sense of all good men failed to effect while he lived--I mean the final killing of those rumours; nor is a plain tale likely to persuade those, with whom idle reports, constantly furbished up, of letters seen in France, weigh more than a consistent life. But my lord's case is now, as I take it, removed to the Appeal Court of Posterity; which nevertheless, a lie constantly iterated may mislead. To provide somewhat to correct this, and wherefrom future historians may draw, I who knew him well, and was in his confidence and in a manner in his employment at the time of Sir John Fenwick's case--of which these calumnies were always compact--propose to set down my evidence here; shrinking from no fulness, at times even venturing on prolixity, and always remembering a saying of Lord Somers', that often the most material part of testimony is that on which the witness values himself least. To adventure on this fulness, which in the case of many, and perhaps the bulk of writers, might issue in the surfeit of their readers, I feel myself emboldened by the possession of a brief and concise manner of writing; which, acquired in the first place in the circumstances presently to appear, was later improved by constant practice in the composition of my lord's papers.