Lady Offaley (Irish Rebellion, 1641)—Lady Arundell—Lady Bankes—Countess of Derby (Civil Wars in England)—Helena Zrinyi, Wife of Tekeli—Incident at the Coronation of William and Mary—Mademoiselle de la Charce.

"THERE are three sorts of things in the world," says the AbbÉ Brotier, "that know no kind of restraint, and are governed by passion and brutality—family quarrels, religious disputes, and civil wars." The truth of these words is undeniable, more especially as the last is very frequently brought about by its forerunners. The war between Charles I. and the Parliament was prosecuted on both sides with so much bitterness, that, in certain instances, the conduct of the officers and generals savoured more of private feud than public zeal.

The Irish Rebellion of 1641 was one of many unfortunate occurrences which precipitated the revolution at home, for not only did the Republican party take advantage of the King's difficulties to increase its own power, but the Irish rebels envenomed the bitterness between King and Commons by declaring that they were empowered, by Royal Commission, to defend his Majesty's prerogatives against a Puritanical, levelling Government.

The Irish rebels stormed many a castle belonging to English nobles or gentry. Amongst others, they beleaguered, in April, 1642, the Castle of Geashill, in King's County, the residence of Lettice Digby, Baroness of Offaley. This lady, though upwards of sixty years old, and a widow, retained all the fire and energy of youth. She closed the gates, and made a most resolute defence, refusing to hear any proposal for surrender, for the castle, being defended on all sides by bogs and woods, was very difficult of access. She was at last relieved by the approach of Viscount Lisle and Sir Charles Coote with one hundred and twenty foot and three hundred horse. The castle having been provisioned and supplied with ammunition, Lady Offaley chose to remain there for a time; but being again menaced by the rebels, she was relieved by Sir Richard Grenville, in October of the same year, when she retired to her mansion at Coles Hill, in Warwickshire, where she died, December the 1st, 1658.

On the 25th of August, 1642, King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham. He was at once joined by thousands of Cavaliers; amongst others, by the Earl of Arundell, one of his most staunch adherents. The latter made himself so troublesome to the Parliament that they determined to seize Wardour Castle, his mansion. In 1643, they sent orders to Sir Edward Hungerford, commander-in-chief of their forces in Wiltshire, to accomplish this design. He arrived before the castle on the 2nd of May, and as Lord Arundell was absent, the Puritans expected an easy conquest. But Lady Blanche, who had been left in charge, was well supplied with provisions and ammunition: and although the garrison consisted of barely twenty-five fighting men, she resolved to make a brave defence.

Sir Edward Hungerford, on the arrival of Colonel Strode with reinforcements, summoned the castle to surrender, pretending that it contained men and arms, money, and plate which he was ordered, by a warrant from Parliament, to seize. Lady Arundell declined to comply with his demands. Sir Edward immediately ordered up his heavy guns, and commenced a bombardment which lasted from Wednesday the 3rd to the following Monday. The besiegers, moreover, ran two mines under the walls, and so terrific was the explosion that the fortress was shaken to its foundations.

During the siege, Sir Edward offered again and again to grant quarter to the ladies and children if the castle would surrender; but Lady Arundell and the other ladies rejected the proposal with disdain. The latter, too, together with the women-servants, aided in the defence in various ways; they loaded the muskets, and carried round refreshments to their gallant defenders.

According as the garrison, exhausted by the continued struggle, relaxed in its efforts, the Parliamentary soldiers redoubled their attacks. They applied petards to the garden-door, they flung balls of wild-fire through the dismantled windows, causing much damage to the apartments in the castle, destroying valuable pictures, rich carvings, statuettes, costly vases, chairs and couches, mirrors, and various works of almost priceless worth.

After the siege had lasted nine days, Lady Arundell, finding the castle was no longer tenable, demanded a parley. Articles of surrender were drawn up, by which it was stipulated, firstly, that the garrison and all the inmates of the castle should be granted quarter; secondly, that the ladies and servants should have all their wearing apparel, and that sixty serving-men, chosen by the ladies themselves, should be permitted to attend them wherever they might please to retire; thirdly, that the furniture of the castle was to be saved from plunder or destruction.

The Puritans violated, without scruple, the treaty, destroyed or mutilated everything of value in the castle, and left with the inmates nothing but the clothes they wore. Lady Arundell, with the women and children, was carried prisoner to Shaftesbury. Thither, too, five van-loads of costly furniture were borne in triumph as the spoils of the vanquished.

The loss to Lord Arundell by the devastation and plunder of Wardour Castle was estimated at one hundred thousand pounds.

The Parliament, thinking their prisoners were insecure at Shaftesbury, wished to remove them to Bath. But the town was infected with small-pox and plague; and Lady Arundell refused so stubbornly to consent, that her captors left her where she was, but took her children to Dorchester.

Lady Arundell survived the siege only five years; and at her death, she was buried, with her husband, in the chapel of Wardour Castle.

In point of heroic valour, Lady Arundell was outdone by Lady Mary Bankes, wife of Sir John Bankes, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In August, 1643, Parliament despatched Sir William Earle with a strong force to reduce Corfe Castle, the family residence of Sir John, in the Isle of Purbeck. Thinking to gain possession by stratagem, Sir William sent a party of forty sailors to demand four field-pieces which were in the castle. Lady Bankes, suspecting their real object, went to the gate, and requested the sailors to show their warrant. They produced one, signed by several Parliamentary Commissioners. Thereupon Lady Bankes retired into the castle; and although there were only five men within the walls, they mounted the field-pieces with the assistance of the female servants, and having loaded one of them, fired it off, and drove the sailors away.

Sir William Earle now tried to starve the castle into a surrender. Lady Bankes affected a wish to treat for the surrender of the guns; but her real object was, that the besiegers, relaxing in their careful blockade, would give greater facilities for introducing fresh supplies to the garrison. The event justified her hopes. She also obtained the help of Captain Lawrence, commanding a company of Royalists.

The Puritans, about six hundred in number, assaulted the castle, and endeavoured to carry it by a coup de main. But the brave little garrison, sallying forth, drove away the besiegers and brought back nine oxen. Again the besiegers tried to take the castle by storm. Dividing their forces, one party attacked the middle ward, which was defended by Captain Lawrence and his company, while the other division assaulted the upper ward, held by Lady Bankes with her daughters, her female servants, and five soldiers, who hurled down huge stones and red-hot coals on the heads of the storming party. At last, after losing one hundred men in the assault, the Parliamentary forces retreated from before Corfe Castle. The blockade had lasted, altogether, six weeks.

Lady Bankes lived to see the Restoration, and died in April, 1661. She was interred in the south aisle of Rislipp church. The following inscription was placed upon her monument by her eldest son:—

"The Lady Mary Bankes, the only daughter of Rafe Hawtrey, of Rislipp, in the County of Middlesex, Esquire, the wife and widow of the Honourable Sir John Bankes, Knight, late Lord Chief Justice of his late Majesty's Court of Common Pleas, and of the Privy Council to his late Majesty King Charles the First, of blessed memory; who, having had the honour to have borne, with a constancy and courage above her sex, a noble proportion of the late calamity, and the happiness to have outlived them so far as to have seen the restitution of the government, with great peace of mind laid down her most desired life the 19th day of April, 1661. Sir Ralphe Bankes, her son and heir, hath dedicated this. She left four sonnes—first, Sir Ralphe; second, Jerome; third, Charles; fourth, William (since dead, without issue); and six daughters."

The Earl of Derby was one of the most prominent Cavalier leaders. In 1643, while awaiting a siege at Lathom House, Lancashire, his family mansion, the earl received intelligence that Parliament had despatched troops to annex his miniature kingdom, the Isle of Man. Wishing to preserve the island as a final retreat for his royal master, in case of misfortune overtaking him, he left Lathom House in charge of Charlotte, his countess, and set off to the Isle of Man.

On the 27th of May, 1643, Mr. Holland, governor of Manchester, despatched a messenger to Lathom, commanding Lady Derby either to subscribe to the propositions of Parliament or surrender the mansion. She refused compliance with either alternative; and for nearly a year contrived, though closely blockaded, to keep the enemy from coming to open hostilities. At last, on the 24th of February, 1644, Parliament despatched three colonels to Lathom House. Before their arrival, the countess hastened to lay in provisions and ammunition, and to arm a sufficient number of retainers to serve as a garrison.

The countess determined not to surrender on any terms, and rejected every proposal. "Though a woman," said she, "and a stranger divorced from her friends and robbed of her estates, she was ready to receive their utmost violence, trusting in God for protection and deliverance."

Hostilities having commenced, the Parliamentary army pushed the siege with great vigour. The countess conducted the defence in person; but, though she took the office of commander, she was not unmindful of the spiritual welfare of her people. She was present four times a day at public prayer, attended by her little daughters, Catherine and Mary.

A few days after the opening of the siege, Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Parliamentary general, received a letter from the Earl of Derby, in which the latter, dreading the extremes to which his wife and children might be reduced, requested for them a free pass through the camp of the besiegers. When this was communicated to the countess, she thanked Sir Thomas for his courtesy in forwarding the missive; but replied that "she would willingly submit to her lord's commands, and therefore willed the general to treat with her; but till she was assured that such was his lordship's pleasure, she would neither yield up the house nor desert it herself, but wait for the event according to the will of God."

She forwarded a similar message to her husband at Chester.

On the 25th of April, Colonel Rigby despatched a peremptory message, demanding the surrender of Lathom House immediately. The countess refused: and the siege was prosecuted with renewed vigour; while the garrison, animated by the presence of Lady Derby, continued to defend the house with unabated courage. At last, on the 23rd of May, they learnt, to their inexpressible relief, that Prince Rupert and the Earl of Derby were in Cheshire, marching to their aid.

When the Puritans heard of the approach of Prince Rupert, they retreated to Bolton. On the 29th, Prince Rupert "not only relieved, but revenged the most noble lady, his cousin," leaving one thousand five hundred of the besiegers dead on the field, and taking seven hundred prisoners. The next day he presented the countess with twenty-two of those standards which, three days previously, had been proudly waving before Lathom House.

The countess and her children accompanied the earl to the Isle of Man, leaving the mansion in charge of Colonel Rawstone. The latter defended it till the following December, when the decline of the Royal cause obliged him to open negotiations with Fairfax. Before they were brought to a satisfactory conclusion, the house was treacherously surrendered by an Irish soldier.

The earl and countess, in the midst of their devoted adherents in the Isle of Man, defied the threats of Parliament. The earl was one of the first to join the standard of Charles II. in 1651. Captured on the borders of Cheshire, he was carried to his own town of Bolton-le-Moors, where he was beheaded, October 15th. Misfortune never comes unaccompanied. The bereaved countess was betrayed, with her children, by a false friend, and thrown into prison. She regained her liberty at the Restoration; and for the rest of her life dwelt, with her remaining children, at Knowsley, near Lathom, where she died in 1663.

Although the Turks were expelled from Hungary in the sixteenth century, they by no means gave up their ambitious designs on that country. Taking advantage of the cruelty and oppression exercised by Austria towards the Hungarians, they secretly stirred up the nobles to revolt against their harsh masters. In 1678, an able leader was found in Emeric Tekeli, or Tokolyi, who, weary of vainly soliciting the Emperor Leopold to restore his paternal estates, resolved to take them for himself, together with the crown of Hungary. Setting up his standard in Transylvania, he was soon joined by thousands of malcontents. Day by day the revolt gathered strength; and had not the Emperor resorted to the arts of cunning and bribery, it is probable the rebellion would have terminated in a revolution.

Tekeli was husband of Helena, widow of Francis Ragotsky (who died in 1667), and daughter of Peter, Count Zrinyi, Ban of Croatia, who, with others, lost his head in 1671 for conspiring against Leopold. Helena was as brave as she was beautiful. By her first husband she had two sons, of whom the eldest, Francis, afterwards took a conspicuous part in the affairs of Hungary.

Tekeli commenced the war in 1678, and in 1682 he entered Buda in triumph, where he was inaugurated Prince of Upper Hungary by the nobles and the Turkish Bashaw. In the following year, the Turks, following up these successes, advanced to Vienna, which would have fallen, but for John Sobiesky and his Poles. Leopold took care to foment the growing jealousies between Tekeli and the Turks; and on the failure of the Hungarian leader in an attack on Cassau, the Bashaw of Great Waradin sent the hero in chains to Constantinople. He was released the following year; but during his imprisonment the Turks were driven from Hungary and the rebellion crushed. Helena continued to defend the rock-fortress of Mongatz (or Munkacs) with great courage for two years after the arrest of her husband; but in 1688 she was overpowered by superior numbers, and reduced to capitulate and throw herself with her sons under the protection of the Emperor.

Helena was thrown into a convent, while her children were educated under the auspices of Leopold. After a time she was exchanged for an Austrian general, and permitted to join her husband in Turkey. The Sultan, Mustapha, conferred upon Tekeli, Widdin, and some other districts, as a sort of feudal sovereignty; but he was afterwards neglected by the Turkish government, and compelled to start as a vintner in Constantinople, where he died in 1705, in his fiftieth year. Helena, after sharing the misfortunes and vicissitudes of his life, died two years before him, in 1703.

A somewhat ludicrous affair happened at the coronation of William and Mary, April 23rd, 1689. The champion of England, according to custom, entered Westminster Hall, and throwing down his mailed glove, gave the customary challenge to any one who should dare to dispute their Majesty's claim to the crown. An old woman came in on crutches (which she left behind her), snatched up the gauntlet, laid her own glove in its place, and made off as fast as she could, before any one was able to stop her. In the glove was found a challenge for the champion to meet her the following day in Hyde Park. This matter occasioned much merriment at the lower end of the hall.

Next day an old woman, similarly dressed, was seen waiting at the appointed ground, and was conjectured by those who saw her, to be a soldier in disguise. The champion, however, wisely declining any warlike contest with one of the fair sex, refused to keep the appointment.

Madlle. de la Tour du Pin Gouvernail, better known as Madlle. de la Charce, heroine of the war between Louis Quatorze and the Duke of Savoy, was the daughter of Pierre de la Tour du Pin, Marquis de la Charce, lieutenant-general of the king's armies. In 1692 the Piedmontese invaded DauphinÉ. Madlle. de la Charce, arming the villagers on her estates, placed herself at their head, and harassed the enemy in the mountains; her mother, meanwhile, addressed the people in the plains, exhorting them to remain faithful. The sister of Madlle. de la Charce caused the cables of the enemy's vessels to be cut. This brave family contributed so greatly towards driving the Duke of Savoy from DauphinÉ, that Louis XIV. granted Philis a pension, the same as he would have given to a brave general, and allowed her to place her sword and armour in the treasury of St. Denis.

Madlle. de la Charce was fond of literature, and composed some very pretty verses. An anonymous work appeared in 1731, under the title of "MÉmoires de Madlle. de la Charce." This little romance, says Langlet-Dufresnoy, is well written, and contains many historical anecdotes connected with the reign of the Grand-Monarque.