Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
CHAPTER I SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching across the tremor of the immense ocean,-immensi tremor oceani,-as Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles,
Mr. William Kneebone was a woollen-draper of "credit and renown," whose
place of business was held at the sign of the Angel (for, in those
days, every shop had its sign), opposite Saint Clement's church in the
Strand. A native of Manchester, he was the son of Kenelm Kneebone, a
staunch Catholic, and a sergeant of dragoons, who lost his legs and his
life while fighting for James the Second at the battle of the Boyne, and
who had little to bequeath his son except his laurels and his loyalty to
the house of Stuart.
The gallant woollen-draper was now in his thirty-sixth year. He had a
handsome, jolly-looking face; stood six feet two in his stockings; and
measured more than a cloth-yard shaft across the shoulders--athletic
proportions derived from his father the dragoon. And, if it had not been
for a taste for plotting, which was continually getting him into
scrapes, he might have been accounted a respectable member of society.
Of late, however, his plotting had assumed a more dark and dangerous
complexion. The times were such that, with the opinions he entertained,
he could not remain idle. The spirit of disaffection was busy throughout
the kingdom. It was on the eve of that memorable rebellion which broke
forth, two months later, in Scotland. Since the accession of George the
First to the throne in the preceding year, every effort had been made by
the partisans of the Stuarts to shake the credit of the existing
government, and to gain supporters to their cause. Disappointed in their
CHAPTER I SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching across the tremor of the immense ocean,-immensi tremor oceani,-as Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles,