I cannot believe even half that I hear from the very best authority; therefore I set nothing down which may be overcoloured. But the following story I know to be true, because seven people have told it to me, and not any two very different. Two or three bishops and archdeacons (or deacons of arches, I know not which, at any rate high free-masons) desired to know some little more about a man in their jurisdiction eminent to that extent, and equally notorious. They meant no harm at all, but just to take a little feel of him. Because he had come to visitation, once or twice when summoned, with his huntsman and his hounds, and himself in leathern breeches. There must have been something amiss in this, or at any rate they thought so; and his lordship, a bishop just appointed, made up his mind to tackle him. He came in a coach-and-four, and wearing all his high canonicals, and they managed somehow to get up the hill, and appear at Nympton Rectory. Then a footman struck the door with a gold stick well embossed; and he struck again, and he struck again, more in dudgeon every time.
Because no man had yet been seen, nor woman on the premises; only dogs very wild and mad, but kept away from biting. “Strike again,” said his lordship, nodding under his wig, with some courtesy; “we must never be impatient. Jemmy, strike again, my lad.” Jemmy struck a thundering stroke, and out came Mrs. Steelyard. She looked at them all, and then she said, with her eyes full on the Bishop’s, “Are you robbers, or are you savages? My master in that state and you do this!” And they all saw that she could not weep, by reason of too much sorrow. “It is the Lord Bishop,” said the footman, keeping a little away from her. “Excellent female,” began his Lordship, spreading his hands in a habit learned according to his duties, “tell your master that his3 Jehoshaphat wishes to see him.” “Mr. Jehoshaphat,” she replied, “you are just in time, and no more, sir. How we have longed for a minister! You are just in time and no more, sir. Will you have the kindness to come this way, and to step as quietly as you can?” His Lordship liked not the look of this; being, however, a resolute man, he followed the stony woman up the staircase, and into a bedroom with the window-curtains three quarters drawn. And here he found a pastille burning, and a lot of medicine bottles, and a Bible on the table open, and on it a pair of spectacles. In the bed lay someone, with a face of fire heavily blotched with bungs of black, and all his body tossing with spasms and weak groaning. “What means this?” asked his Lordship, drawing considerably nearer to the door. “Only the plague,”4 said the stony woman; “he was took with it yesterday; doctor says he may last two hours more almost, particular if he can get anybody to take the symptoms off him. I expect to be down with it some time tonight, because I feel the tingling. But your Highness will stop and help us.” “I am damned if I will,” cried the Bishop, sinking both manners and dignity in the violence of alarm; and he ran down the stairs at such a pace that his apron strings burst, and he left it behind, and he jumped into the coach with his two feet foremost, and slammed up the windows, and ordered full speed. Then Parson Chowne rose, and threw off his mask, and drew back the window-curtain, and sat in his hunting-clothes, and watched with his usual bitter smile the rapid departure of his foe. And he had the Bishop’s apron framed, and hung it in the parsonage hall, from a red-deer’s antlers, with the name and date below. And so of that Bishop he heard no more.
Now a man who had beaten three bishops, and all the archdeacons in the country, was of course tenfold of a match for me; and when he rode down smoothly to me, as he did in a few days’ time, and never touched on our little skirmish, except with a sort of playful hit (so far as his haughty mind could play), and riding another horse without a word about the mischief which his favourite mare had taken, and demanded, as a matter of justice, that having quitted his service now, I should pay back seven-and-sixpence drawn in advance for wages, I was obliged to touch my hat, as if I had never made stroke at his, or put my knee upon him. He had flogged me to such purpose that I ever must admire him; for the flick of the boatswain’s lash was a tickle compared to what Chowne took out of me; and if I must tell the whole truth, I was prouder of having knocked down such a wonderful man than of all of my victories put together. But one of my weak and unreasonable views of life is this, that having thrashed a man, I feel a great power of goodwill to him, and a desire to give him quarter, and the more so the less he cries for it.
But, on the whole, I was not so young after all that was said by everybody, as to imagine for a moment that I had felt the last of him. The very highest in the land had been compelled to yield to him: as when he turned out my Lord G⸺ ’s horses from the stabling ordered at Lord G⸺ ’s inn. Would such a man accept defeat from a crazy old mariner like me? Feeling my danger, and meaning never to knock under any more, I refused, as a matter of principle, to restore so
