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WHILST the true king wandered about the land, poorly clad,
poorly fed, cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with
thieves and murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor
by all impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed a quite
different experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a
bright side for him. This bright side went on brightening more and
more every day; in a very little while it was become almost all
sunshine and delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings faded
out and died; his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy
and confident bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to
ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his
presence when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he
was done with them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed to
such performances. It no longer confused him to have these lofty
personages kiss his hand at parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and
dressed with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came
to be a proud pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering
procession of officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch,
indeed, that he doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made
them a hundred. He liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long
corridors, and the distant voices responding, 'Way for the King!'
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council,
and seeming to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece.
He liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and
listen to the affectionate messages they brought from illustrious
monarchs who called him 'brother.' Oh, happy Tom Canty, late of
Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more; he found his
four hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled
them. The adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to
his ears. He remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined
champion of all that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon
unjust laws; yet upon occasion, being offended, he could turn upon
an earl, or even a duke, and give him a look that would make him
tremble. Once, when his royal 'sister,' the grimly holy Lady Mary, set
herself to reason with him against the wisdom of his course in
pardoning so many people who would otherwise be jailed, or hanged,
or burned, and reminded him that their august late father's prisons
had sometimes contained as high as sixty thousand convicts at one
time, and that during his admirable reign he had delivered seventy-two
thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the executioner,*(21)
the boy was filled with generous indignation, and commanded her to
go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the stone that was in
her breast, and give her a human heart.
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful
prince who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal
to avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace gate? Yes;
his first royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with
painful thoughts about the lost prince, and with sincere longings
for his return and happy restoration to his native rights and
splendors. But as time wore on, and the prince did not come, Tom's
mind became more and more occupied with his new and enchanting
experiences, and by little and little the vanished monarch faded
almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he did intrude upon them
at intervals, he was become an unwelcome specter, for he made Tom feel
guilty and ashamed.
Tom's poor mother and sisters traveled the same road out of his
mind. At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see
them; but later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags
and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down
from his lofty place and dragging him back to penury and degradation
and the slums, made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his
thoughts almost wholly. And he was content, even glad; for, whenever
their mournful and accusing faces did rise before him now, they made
him feel more despicable than the worms that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to
sleep in his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and
surrounded by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for to-morrow was the
day appointed for his solemn crowning as king of England. At that same
hour, Edward, the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and
draggled, worn with travel, and clothed in rags and shreds- his
share of the results of the riot- was wedged in among a crowd of
people who were watching with deep interest certain hurrying gangs
of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster Abbey, busy as ants;
they were making the last preparation for the royal coronation.
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