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Sir Ferdinando Gorges was the head of an ancient family,
which deduced its origin, in unbroken masculine descent, from
Fulques de Gorges, a Norman Knight, who came into England
under the banner of William the Conqueror.

A younger branch of the house, swerving from its allegiance
to the red rose of Lancaster, had been ennobled in the reign of
Edward IV.

More than a century afterwards, an intermarriage had taken
place between the two principal branches of the family. Lord
Gorges of Ashford, the representative of the barony, and Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, the acknowledged head of the family, were
cousins. Both were rich, and both were devoted to the cause of
church and king. Sir Ferdinando had never been married;
Lord Gorges of Ashford had espoused, early in life, a daughter
of Hugh Gardiner, of Clopton, a Somersetshire gentleman, who
was descended from a brother of the celebrated Stephen Gardiner,
the supple and subtle Bishop of Winchester, in the
reign of Henry VIII., and of his successors.

From this marriage there had sprung several children. The
youngest, the honorable Fulk de Gorges, had been a wayward
and unmanageable creature almost from his birth. Rebellious
and yet subtle, scheming, incomprehensible, perverse, licentious,
deceitful, he had been, during his wild boyhood, a constant
source of anxiety and sorrow to his parents. At the age of
seventeen, he had quitted his paternal mansion in a fit of ungovernable
anger, and had passed a few wandering months upon the

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continent. By means of his father's powerful influence, he was at
the expiration of this time admitted, at his own ardent desire, as a
page in the order of the Knights of St. John, at Malta. Although
the order, like all other monastic institutions, had been deprived
and abolished in England, under Henry VIII., yet Englishmen of
rank were still admitted into the fraternity, and the young de
Gorges, finding no difficulty in proving the necessary four generations
of nobility, was entered in the commandery of Toulon,
of course in the language of England.

His bravery, his remarkable talents, his great skill in the profession
of arms, whether exercised upon sea or shore, soon won
him an exalted place among the Hospitallers. The impetuosity
of his temper, the mischievous restlessness of his brain, and the
licentiousness of his manners, remarkable even in an order
already signalized in its decay by extraordinary depravity, had,
however, acquired for him almost as much distinction among his
brethren, as had his nobler qualities.

In many a bloody fight with the pirates of Dalmatia, the mercenaries
of Austria, or the squadrons of the Sultan, he had led
the war galleys of his order to victory. Disappointed, however,
in his election to the post of grand master, for which he had
skilfully and almost successfully intrigued, he had abandoned
himself to an uncontrollable rage; had torn the cross from his
shoulder, trampled it under his feet, insulted his brethren, and
made his escape by a stroke of unparalleled and fortunate audacity,
before the punishment for his unpardonable conduct could
be inflicted upon him.

After this epoch he appears to have dwelt for a long time
in Venice. It is, however, quite impossible, and would be,
perhaps, irrelevant to attempt even a hurried sketch of his
adventurous life. His memoirs, could they have been given
to the world, would have formed a checkered, mysterious,
and romantic piece of biography. For the sake of

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indicating only the manner in which his fortunes had been connected
with those of several personages who have figured in our pages,
we will but briefly glance at a few points in his career. He had
dwelt long in Venice. As already hinted at in some of the
earlier chapters of this work, he had been the chief instrument
of the celebrated mock conspiracy against the republic, and real
plot against Naples, in which the Duke d'Ossuna had reposed
implicit confidence in the crafty Englishman alone. As a barefooted
monk, moving unsuspected from city to city, he had
passed to and fro between Naples and Venice, and his identity
with the brilliant and gallant Cavaliere di San Giorgio, by which
name he had been known as a celebrated commander of picked
condottieri in the service of the republic, had never been suspected.
Although the conspiracy had proved unsuccessful, the
chevalier had found no reason to regret his connection with the
Duke d'Ossuna, who was munificent in his gratitude, and who
remained always his most useful and powerful friend. He had
subsequently to these events, while employed upon a secret and
confidential mission from the republic to the court of Rome,
become acquainted with an English family of rank then residing
in Italy. Lady Clara Hoveden fell desperately in love with
the accomplished Cavaliere di San Giorgio, who accordingly
bestowed upon her his monkish hand in marriage. Perhaps he
might have obtained a dispensation from the Pope, but he
apparently did not consider it worth his while; for, after a few
brilliant years, during which his wife inherited a peerage in her
own right which added a lustre to their position, and a princely
fortune, which he demolished in princely fashion, he one fine
day decamped, nobody knew whither, leaving only a few debts,
and a letter for Lady Clara. In this epistle, remarkable for its
eloquent brevity, he informed his cara sposa, that the vows taken
at his entrance into the Hospital of St. John rendered their
mutual vows at the altar of comparatively little value. It was

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no act of generosity upon his part to absolve her from her
obligations, because, in reality, they had never existed.

At this epoch, he disappeared in a cloud to rise again in the
east, and although nothing was absolutely known about him, it
seems certain that he had for several years worn the turban, and
acquired much celebrity in the armies of the grand Seignior.

His oriental residence seems to have confirmed him in a natural
taste for polygamy, and accordingly, after various adventures
of flood, field, and bower, which befel him during his six or
seven years' residence in the east, we find him in the year 1623
leading a second English bride to the altar. This occurred in
Paris, where he had made his appearance as Sir Fulk de Gorges,
as suddenly as if he had been thrown there out of a volcano.
Nobody knew whence he came. Many disputed his identity
and denied his claim to the name he bore, although such freethinkers
were singularly cautious in expressing their skepticism
to his face. His father, who had not heard of him for nearly
fifteen years, had lately died, having first taken the precaution
to disinherit him of his younger brother's portion. His striking
appearance, romantic history, mysterious character, and brilliant
qualities, made a vivid impression upon the young and impressionable
mind of Edith Maudsley, whom he met at the court
of Versailles. Her father, the representative of an ancient
and wealthy family in Wiltshire, had but two children, Henry
Maudsley and herself. His consent was reluctantly gained to
the marriage of his daughter with the singular adventurer who
had fascinated her; and had not her brother been, during this
period, serving in the Low Countries and in Germany, it was
probable that the marriage, notwithstanding the satisfactory
evidences of his rank which Sir Fulk was enabled to adduce,
would have been violently set aside. Henry Maudsley, however,
was unfortunately in little communication with his family or
with any one at that time. It happened to be exactly the epoch

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of his first and unsuccessful love for Esther Ludlow, and at that
time, engrossed by his own emotions, he was fiercely courting a
soldier's grave in a foreign land.

To hurry briefly to the conclusion of this rapid sketch of the
knight's biography, the newly married couple passed a year very
happily together, partly upon the continent, and partly at Maudsley
Court and in London. During an occasional tour by himself
in the land of his nativity, it so happened that Sir Fulk fell
in with the beautiful daughter of an English clergyman, whom
he had once known in Italy. The father, who had been chaplain
to a British embassy, had resided many years in Tuscany,
and his daughter, naturally of a romantic turn, educated in a
romantic land, was both by temperament and circumstances
exactly the person to be fascinated by the graces of the all-accomplished
chevalier, with whom an acquaintance, began in
her childhood, upon the banks of the yellow Arno, was suddenly
and unexpectedly renewed in the solitude of Shropshire.

She was at the time acquainted with a worthy but eccentric
young man, a graduate of Cambridge, who had recently
taken orders in the church. Her father had been desirous that
she should have been united with him, although the young man,
who was no other than William Blaxton, afterwards the eccentric
hermit of Shawmut, does not appear to have been much
more violently inclined to the match than was the fair Magdalen
herself. They were however acquainted, and but for this accidental
visit of the adventurous Sir Fulk de Gorges at this obscure
village, the tenor of the lives of both might have been far
different.

This incident happened to occur but a few weeks previously
to a great domestic catastrophe at Maudsley Court. It so
chanced, that a certain Lady Hoveden (sometimes called di San
Georgio), one day made a pilgrimage to that retired manor
house. Although her Alpheus, reversing the ancient fable, had

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sunk, as he thought, to the bottom of the Mediterranean, to
escape his Arethusa, he had been traced through all his doublings,
and the deserted and insulted peeress, after years of
baffled pursuit, had almost come up with the traitor at last.

The consequences of an interview between Lady de Gorges
first and second, may be imagined. The gentle Edith Maudsley,
learning that she had not only been married to a monk, but
that the monk had already another wife, was wholly unable to
survive the blow. The fearful intelligence was like fire to
her brain, and she died in a delirious fever within a few
weeks. Her father, old as he was, went forth to seek his
daughter's destroyer, who, as already stated, was then absent.
A fearful mystery, and one that was never fathomed, hung over
the old man's fate. All which was known, was, that he had been
last seen in the presence of Sir Fulk de Gorges. Nothing more
was known, nothing more could ever be proved; but the old
man, living or dead, was never seen again. When Henry
Maudsley returned to his father's house, he found it desolate.
His sister was laid in a dishonored grave, and his father had
perished by an unknown fate. He had searched long, and in
vain, for the miscreant whose fearful crimes had entailed so
much misery upon a happy fireside, so much disgrace upon an
ancient house.

Sir Fulk's person was unknown to him, although he had a
vague impression of having seen him, when he himself was but
a child. It was, therefore, rather the awakening of a vanished
sensation, than a pure antipathy, which, as we have seen, occasioned
him to doubt and suspect the unknown adventurer when
he first met him in New England.

Maudsley, however, sought for the fugitive in vain. Sir Fulk,
fortunately for himself, had been, as we have before stated, absent
from home at the memorable interview between his two
wives; and after a frantic and prolonged search in England and

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on the continent, Henry Maudsley had been obliged for a
season to desist from the pursuit.

In the mean time Sir Fulk, assuming the name of his
maternal family, had appeared in Madrid as Sir Christopher
Gardiner. His friend, the Duke d'Ossuna, who, better than any
one else, was aware of the frequency with which he assumed a
variety of characters, and the ability with which he supported
them, was not at all surprised or unwilling to recognise, in the
English Chevalier Gardiner, his old and trusty acquaintance,
the Cavaliere di San Giorgio, and proved as well disposed
towards his former confidant as ever.

It was observed by the curious impertinents of Madrid, that
the chevalier was attended by a young and very handsome
page, who appeared exceedingly attached to his master, and
desirous of avoiding the acquaintance of others. Magdalen
Groves had, in fact, fallen an easy victim to the inconstant and
capricious knight, who, at the very moment when the two noble
dames, whom he had led to the altar, were disputing the priority
of their claims to his hand, found it excessively amusing to
carry off this romantic damsel, in the very face of the furious
pursuit which he knew would be opened upon him.

Deceived by a false marriage ceremony, the unfortunate girl
had willingly followed the fortunes of the mysterious object of
her idolatry. Unlike the two other dames, to whom his troth
had been plighted, Magdalen, upon being frankly informed,
upon their arrival at Madrid, of the true position of matters,
asked but a single question. She was born to be the slave of
passion, and all she worshipped in the world, was love. If she
was loved, a Puritan could not have looked upon wedlock's
symbols with greater indifference, than she did both upon
symbols and reality. She felt no resentment for the treachery
which had been practised upon her, because she still allowed
herself to be persuaded that love, imperishable love, the

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golden treasure for which she was willing to sacrifice her all on
earth, and all her hopes of heaven, had been the cause of all,
and that it still remained unchanged, unchangeable. To her
the whole world was henceforth nothing, and she would rather
have lived the slave of that unworthy knight, than the wife of
an emperor. Without a murmur, therefore, at the intolerable
deceit to which she had been a victim, and which she was now
called upon to practise with regard to others, she allowed a
fictitious and circumstantial account of her death to be reported
in her native village. The tale, supported by forged testimonials,
was made to appear so credible, that her few relatives
and friends were entirely deceived. A simple monument,
recording her virtues and her early doom, was erected in the
obscure church-yard at Boirdly, and many a prayer for the repose
of Magdalen Groves was uttered by sincere but deluded lips.

The other adventures of Sir Fulk de Gorges, or, as we prefer
still to designate him, Sir Christopher Gardiner, we pass over
in silence. We would simply observe that, some two years after
his flight from England, his first interview with Sir Ferdinando
Gorges occurred in Madrid, and that after a certain time spent
in studying the old knight's character, and in discussing his
New England schemes, Sir Christopher decided upon revealing
himself to his kinsman, after first exacting from him a pledge
of secrecy. Sir Ferdinando found that he had, at last, discovered
exactly the man for his purpose. Sir Christopher
found an inexpressible charm in these projects of enterprise,
in a new and untried field. His adventurous temperament
and intriguing disposition, were all excited by the vigorous
conceptions of his kinsman. It was an age of romance and
adventure. Their deliberations were held in Spain, the land
of chivalry, their projects were to be carried out in the fabulous
El Dorado of the West. Bent upon rivaling Cortes and
Pizarro, Sir Walter Raleigh, and John Smith himself, Sir

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Christopher engaged enthusiastically in the projects of Sir
Ferdinando. It was, moreover, especially convenient for him
to absent himself, for a term of years, from Europe. He had
exhausted the golden Orient already, the West was full of
new and enticing adventure. After considerable delays, the
necessary arrangements were made, and Sir Christopher, accompanied
by his page and a few servants, among whom was
Skettwarroes the Indian, who had been captured in America,
sold as a slave in Spain, and rescued by Sir Ferdinando, made
his first appearance in the Massachusetts.

The rest of his adventures the reader knows. How all his
plans were baffled, how his gorgeous visions faded before the
obscure and repulsive reality, how the enthusiast of worldly
pomp and power, saw with bitterness the foundations of an
empire laid before his eyes, by enthusiasts of a deeper and
a sterner sort, while his own energies were doomed to rust
in the most harassing inactivity, all this has sufficiently appeared.

If this early chapter of New England annals has any
meaning in it, it certainly illustrates the peculiar character
of the Massachusetts settlement. Colonies of every other
variety had been sent to that inhospitable region, but not an
impression had been made upon its iron bosom. It was
reserved for exalted, unflinching, self-sacrificing, iron-handed,
despotic, stern, truculent, bigoted, religious enthusiasts, men
who were inspired by one idea, but that a great idea, and
who were willing to go through fire and water, and to hew
down with axes all material, animal, or human obstacles, in the
path which led to the development of their idea; it was reserved
for such men to accomplish what neither trading companies, nor
fishing companies, nor land companies, nor schemers of satrapsies,
nor dreamers of palatinates, were able to effect. It was a
great movement, not a military, nor a philanthropic, nor a

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democratic movement, but a religious, perhaps a fanatical movement,
but the movers were in earnest, and the result was an empire.
The iron character of these early founders left an impression
upon their wilderness-world, which has not yet been effaced; and
the character of their institutions, containing much that is
admirable, mingled with many objectionable features, has diffused
an influence, upon the whole, healthy and conservative,
throughout the length and breadth of the continent.

We have witnessed, moreover, the singular manner in which
the fortunes of Gardiner became entangled with that of the other
leading characters who have figured in these pages, and the
striking fatality by which he was so suddenly brought face to
face, in that lonely desert, with the avenger of his crimes.
Hardly less singular was the re-appearance, to the eyes of the
dreaming Blaxton, of one whom he had known in her innocent
youth, who, he thought, had long been consigned to the
tomb, and for the repose of whose soul he had himself offered
many a prayer. It was no wonder that the vision had at first
appalled him, and that he had found it difficult, for a long time,
to shake off the impression that he had been in communion with
a visitant from the spiritual world.

As for Henry Maudsley, at the moment when he left the
shores of New England, believing that the mysterious knight
had found the means of ingrtiating himself in the affections
both of Walter Ludlow and his sister, he had received but a
clue only to the character of the adventurer, by the papers
brought to him by Cakebread. It was impossible for him to
resist the sacred voice which seemed to cry out to him from the
tomb, to lose no time, and to omit no possible step which might
lead to the unravelling of these dark mysteries. Convinced,
however, as we have seen, that the heart of Esther was irrevocably
lost to him, he had not trusted himself to see her before
his departure; and moreover, even if a full and free

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understanding had taken place between them, which might easily have
happened, he would have felt under a no less imperious necessity
to hasten across the sea, without delay, to commence at
once an investigation into matters of such deep import.

We have seen how the very first letter from him which
reached the Ludlows, opened the way for a full and candid explanation
of all causes of difference between himself and Esther.
Thereafter, the interchange of letters was as frequent as in those
days was possible between the old world and the wilderness; but
Maudsley, in the prosecution of his inquiries, was obliged to
consume more time, and to traverse a greater space than he had
at first anticipated. When he at last made his appearance
again at so opportune a moment, in New England, he had fortified
himself with the necessary proofs and documents to warrant
the apprehension of Gardiner, and his transportation to England
for trial. His chagrin at the evasion of the knight at a moment
when he was himself so busily occupied in sustaining his
long-lost Esther, may be easily imagined.

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