Volume 2

The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar / edited by Robert Chambers.

  • Chambers, Robert, 1802-1871.
Date:
1879-1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The book of days : a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar / edited by Robert Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    47/856 (page 35)
    burkb's estate. JULY 8. burke's estate. fertile country bordering on the Gulf of Nicomedia, and penetrated into the mountains in the neigh- bourhood of Nicsea, where they were destroyed by the Turks. The main army of the Crusaders, who now acknowledged the nominal authority of Walter, but who paid little attention to the orders of their chieftains, hastened imprudently to revenge the Italians and Germans, and had reached the plain of Nicsea, when they found themselves unex- pectedly surrounded by the numerous and better disciplined army of the Turks, and, after a useless resistance, the whole army was put to the sword, or carried into captivity, and a vast mound of their bones was raised in the midst of the plain. • Thus disastrously ended the expedition of Peter the Hermit. Of 300,000 men who had marched from Europe in the belief that they were going to conquer the Holy Land, all had perished, either in the disasters of the route, or in the battle of Nicaea. Peter had left them before this great battle, disgusted with their vices and disorders, and had returned to Constantinople, to declaim against them as a horde of brigands, whose enormous sins had caused God to desert them. From this time the Hermit became a second- rate actor in the events of the Crusade. When the more noble army of the Crusaders, under the princes and great warriors of the West, arrived at Constantinople, he joined them, and accompanied them in their march, performing merely the part of an eloquent and zealous preacher ; but at the siege of Anticch, he attempted to escape the sufferings of the Christian camp by flight, and was pursued and overtaken by Tancred, brought back, and compelled to take an oath to remain faithful to the army. This disgrace appears to have been wiped out by his subsequent conduct; and he was among the first ranks of the Crusaders who came in sight of Jerusalem. The wearied warriors were cheered by the enthusiastic eloquence with which he addressed them on the summit of the Mount of Olives ; and in the midst of the slaughter, when the holy city was taken, the Christian soldiers crowded round him, as people had crowded round him when he first proclaimed the Crusade, and congratulated him on the fulfil- ment of his prophecies. Peter remained in the Holy Land until 1102, when he returned to Europe, with the Count of Montaign, a baron of the territory of Liege. On their way they were overtaken by a dreadful tempest, in which the Hermit made a vow to found a monastery if they escaped shipwreck. It was in fulfilment of this vow, that he founded the abbey of Neufmoutier, at Huy, on the Maas, in honour of the holy sepulchre. Here he passed the latter years of his life, and died in 1115. In the last century, his tomb was still preserved there, with a monumental inscription. BURKE'S ESTATE—HIS DAGGER-SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. It is very clear from the authentic biographies of Burke, that he entered upon literary and political life in London with little or no endow- ment beyond that which nature and a good education had given him. He wrote for his bread for several years, as many able but penniless Irishmen have since done and continue to do. At length, when several years past thirty, merging into a political career as private secretary, first to Single-speech Hamilton, and afterwards to the Marquis of Kockingham, he enters parliament for a small English burgh, and soon after— all at once—in 1767—he purchases an estate worth £23,000! In a large elegant house, furnished with all the adjuncts of a luxurious establishment, surrounded by 600 acres of his own land, driving a carriage and four, Burke henceforth appeared as a man of liberal and inde- pendent fortune. When surly but pure-hearted Samuel Johnson was shewn by him over all the splendours of Beaconsfield, he said: ' Non equidem invideo—miror magis'—I do not envy, I am only astonished; and then added, still more signifi- cantly : ' I wish you all the success which can be wished—by an honest man.' There was an unpleasant mystery here, which it was reserved for modern times to penetrate. One theory on the subject, set forth so lately as 1853, by an ingenious though anonymous writer,* was that Burke was mainly indebted for the ability to purchase his estate to successful speculations in Indian stock. In Macknight's able work, The Life and Times of Edward Burke, published in 1858, an account of the transaction is given in tolerably explicit terms, but without leaving the character of Burke in the position which his admirers might wish. 'In 1767,' says this writer, 'when Lord Bockingham refused to return again to office, and Burke, though in very straitened circumstances, adhered faithfully to his noble leader, it then occurred to the marquis that it was incumbent on him to do something for the fortune of his devoted friend. He advanced £10,000 to Burke, on a bond that it was understood would never be reclaimed. With those £10,000, £5000 raised on mortgage from a Dr Saunders in Spring Gardens, and other £8000, doubtless obtained from the successful speculations of William and Richard Burke [his brothers] in Indian stock, Burke purchased the estate of Gregories. After the reverses of his relatives in the year 1769, all the money they had advanced to him was required. Lord Rockingham again came forward. From that time through many years of opposition, as Burke's fortune, so far from increasing, actually diminished under his unvarying generosity and the requirements of his position, this noble friend was his constant and unfailing resource. The loss of the agency for New York [by which Burke had £1000 a year for a short time] the marquis endea- voured to compensate by frequent loans. At the time of Lord Rockingham's death [1782], he may, on different occasions extending over fourteen years, have perhaps advanced on bonds, which though never formally required, Burke insisted on giving, the sum of about thirty thousand pounds.' It appears, in short, that this brilliant statesman and orator maintained his high historical place for thirty years, wholly through pecuniary means drawn by him from a generous friend. The splen- did mansion, the vineries and statuary, the four- horsed carriage, even the kind-hearted patronage to such men of genius as Barry and Crabbe, were all supported in a way that implies the entire sacrifice of Burke's independence. It is very sad to think of in one whom there was so much reason * See Athenceum, Nos. 1363 and 1364.