CHAPTER XX

A PEASANT COUNTESS

In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna, which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.

He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly, pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay handsomely. "I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on," added the weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation to offer him.

" Very well," said the farmer, relenting. "Come in, and we'll do the best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that." And a few minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.

Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story of the British Peerage. As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman. His voice and bearing proclaimed that fact. But the farmer little suspected the true rank of the man he was thus "entertaining unawares," or all that was to come from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and so entertaining.

Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in the land. Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire; and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held their heads among the highest. One of them was none other than the famous Lord Burleigh, one of England's greatest statesmen, favourite Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters. So great was my Lord Burleigh's wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,

Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both raised to Earldoms—of Exeter and Salisbury—on the same day.

Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms—that of Exeter—and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates, although the knowledge gave him little pleasure. His parents had died in his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir, the lad was left to his own devices. In good time he had wooed and married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a Miss Vernon, who proved as wayward as she was winsome. His wedded life was indeed so far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.

Courts and coronets had no attractions for him. His marriage had proved a bitter draught. He was a disappointed and disillusioned man, and he determined that if ever he took another wife she should be "a plain, homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever sphere of life I find her. Then I swear with King Cophetua, 'This beggar-maid shall be my Queen.'"

Full of this romantic, if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the "beggar-maid" who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could not discover her, at least to find some place of retirement where he could lead a simple life, remote from the empty splendours and vanities of the world to which he was born, and in which he had sought happiness in vain.

And thus it was that in his wanderings his steps led him to the little village in Shropshire, and to the hospitable roof of Farmer Hoggins and his good wife, whose hearts he had won before the humble supper-table was cleared on that stormy July night. No doubt the stranger's enjoyment of the farmer's hospitality was enhanced by the glimpses he had caught of his host's daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of seventeen summers, with a complexion of "cream and roses," with a wealth of brown hair, and lovely blue eyes which from time to time glanced shyly at the good-looking stranger.

No doubt, too, it was the wish to see more of pretty Miss Sarah that was responsible for the stranger's reluctance to resume his journey on the following morning, which dawned bright and beautiful. So far from showing any anxiety to continue his tramping, Cecil begged his host's and hostess's permission to spend a few days with them. He was, he said, a painter by profession; it would give him the greatest pleasure to spend a few days sketching in such a beautiful district; and he would pay well for the hospitality.

The farmer and his wife, who had already grown attached to their pleasant guest, were by no means unwilling to accept the offer; nor did they raise any protest when the days grew into weeks and months. These were halcyon days for the world-weary man—delightful days of sketching in the open air in an environment of natural beauty; peaceful evenings spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all, the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their heads in glory.

To Sarah he was known as "Mr Jones"; and to her innocent mind it never occurred that he could be other than the painter he professed to be. The villagers, however, were sceptical. True, the stranger was a pleasant man who always gave them a cheery "good-day," and gossiped with them in the friendliest manner. But that there was some mystery connected with him, all agreed. "Painter chaps" were notoriously poor, and this man always seemed to have plenty of money to fling about. Then, he would disappear periodically, and always returned with more money. Where did he go, and how did he get his gold? There could be little doubt about it. This handsome, mysterious, pleasant-tongued stranger must be a highwayman; for it was a fact that every time he was absent, a coach or a chaise was held up in the neighbourhood and its occupants relieved of their valuables.

Suspicion became certainty when Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a "mint o' money." But Mr Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable than ever. He loved the farmer's daughter, and she made no concealment of her love for him, and nothing else mattered. He had won his "beggar-maid," and happiness was at last within his grasp.

When he asked his hosts for the hand of their daughter in marriage, the good lady was indignant. "Marry Sarah!" she exclaimed. "What, to a fine gentleman? No, indeed; no happiness can come from such a marriage!"

But the farmer for once put his foot down. "Yes," he said, "he shall marry her. The lass loves him dearly; and has he not house and land, too, and plenty of money to keep her?" And thus it came to pass that one October day the church-bells of Bolas rang a merry peal; the villagers put on their gala clothes; and, amid general rejoicing, qualified by not a few dark hints and forebodings, Sarah Hoggins was led to the rustic altar by her "highwayman" bridegroom.

For two ideally happy years Mr Jones lived with his humble bride in the fine new house which he had built for her, and which he called Burleigh Villa. He had lived down his character of highwayman, and was regarded, and respected, as the most important man in the village. He was even appointed to the honourable offices of churchwarden and overseer; while under his tuition his peasant-wife was becoming, in the words of the village gossips, "quite the lady."

One day towards the end of December, 1793, after two years of this idyllic life, Mr Jones chanced to read in a country paper news which he had dreaded, for it meant a revolution in his life, the return to the world he had so gladly forsaken. His dream of the simple life, of peaceful days, was at an end. His uncle, the old Earl, was dead, and the coronet and large estates had devolved on him. Should he refuse to take them, and end his days in this idyllic obscurity, or should he claim the "baubles," and return to the hollow splendour of a life on which he had turned his back?

The struggle between duty and inclination was long and bitter; but in the end duty carried the day. He would go to "Burghley House by Stamford Town," and fill his place on the roll of the Earls of Exeter. To his wife he merely said: "To-morrow we must start on a journey to Lincolnshire. Business calls me there, and we will go together," a proposal to which she gladly consented, for it meant that she would see something of the great outside world with the husband she loved.

At daybreak next morning "Mr Jones" said good-bye to his kind hosts and relatives and to the scene of so much peaceful happiness, and, mounting his wife behind him on a pillion, started on the journey to distant Lincolnshire. Through Cannock Chase, by Lichfield and Leicester, they rode, finding hospitality at many a great house on the way, rather to the dismay of Sarah, who would have preferred the accommodation of some modest inn, and who marvelled not a little that her husband, the obscure artist, should be known to and welcomed by such great folk. But was he not her hero, one of "Nature's gentlemen," and as such the equal of any man in the land?

At last, after days of happy journeying through the cold December days, they came within view of a stately mansion placed in a lordly park, at sight of which Sarah exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, "Oh, what a beautiful house!" "Yes," answered her husband, reining in his horse to enjoy the view; "it is a lovely place. How would you like, my dear Sally, to be its mistress?" Sally broke into a merry peal of laughter. "Only fancy me ," she said, " mistress of such a noble house! It's too funny for words. But how I should love it if we were only rich enough to live in it!" "I am so glad you like it, darling," answered her husband, as he turned in the saddle and placed an arm around her waist; "for it is yours. I am the Earl of Exeter, its owner, and you—well, you are my Countess—and my Queen."

He did not, like the hero of Moore's ballad, "blow his horn with a lordly air"; but with his Countess he presented himself at the door of Burleigh to receive the homage and welcome due to its lord.

Thus did Sarah Hoggins, the peasant-girl, blossom into a Countess, chatelaine of three lordly pleasure-houses, and Lady Bountiful to an army of dependents. The news of the romantic story flashed through the county, indeed through the whole of England; and great lords and ladies by the score flocked to Burleigh to welcome and pay homage to its heroine.

For a few too brief years Countess Sarah was happy in her new and splendid environment, though it is said she often sighed for the dear dead days when her husband was a landscape painter, and she his humble bride in their village home. The modest primrose did not bear well the transplanting to the lordly hot-house. Her cheeks began to lose their roses. She bore to her husband three children; and then, "like a lily drooping, she bowed down her head and died," tenderly and lovingly nursed to the last breath by the husband whose heart, it is said, died with her.

Of her two sons, the elder succeeded to his father's Earldom, and was promoted to a Marquisate. The younger, Lord Thomas Cecil, married a daughter of the fourth Duke of Richmond—thus mingling the peasant blood of Hoggins with the Royal strain of the "Merrie Monarch,"—and survived until the year 1873. Her daughter had for husband the Right Honourable Henry Manvers Pierrepoint, and became grandmother to the present Duke of Wellington, who thus has for great-grandmother Sarah Hoggins, the rustic beauty who milked cows and was wooed in the Shropshire orchard by "Mr Jones, the highwayman," when George the Third was King. Eo8UD4OOjAxF2ThguP0XuD23HcRwfWa3pTGz2t/C4SI1FB3LoiaZC8RfEkoEltaw

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