Hugh Kenrick by Edward Cline Read Free Book Online Page A

taught to brook a modicum of servility, sir. It is not your prerogative to set yourself or your soul apart from the concerns and standards of your fellow men. It is disturbing to me that such a basic Christian precept has not already found a permanent cranny in your conscience. It applies to all men, humble and great. And the Marquis, regardless of his intent or purpose, is one of your fellow men.”
    His uncle’s words awakened something in Hugh’s mind, and he stared at the Earl with amazement.
    The Earl took the glance as a frown in the affirmative. After a long, withering scrutiny of the boy, he reached for a book on his desk and lifted it. “Take this,” he ordered, and when Hugh had stepped forward and obeyed, the Earl continued. “You will read that labor of your grandfather’s and write for me an essay agreeing with its thesis. This will be in addition to attending to the duties assigned you by your new tutor, whoever that may be.”
    Hugh glanced at the book in his hands. It was a richly bound tome, entitled
The Many Ways to Sainthood
, by Guy Kenrick, the 14th Earl of Danvers.
    “That is all,” said the Earl. “You may return to your room. I wish to speak to your parents.”
    Hugh’s parents placated the Earl by denying their son the liberty of the estate for a month. The Baron agreed to pay the elder Marquis of Bilbury a sum of money in compensation. The Baron and his wife were confused bytheir responses: they were secretly proud of Hugh for having defied what they both regarded as a silly, brutal tradition; yet they sensed the seed of a character trait which they were certain would eventually ostracize the boy from normal human society. They wished to see the trait corrected; but they did not possess the cruelty in themselves to crush it. They would not nurture it; but neither would they starve it. Hugh, they concluded, must make his own rules and reap their rewards and penalties. Garnet Kenrick resolved never again to advise his son on what he should do, be, or believe in.
    Hugh Kenrick read his grandfather’s work, and composed an essay on its virtues and values. It was a dry, unconvincing essay, but it satisfied the Earl, and no more was said about the incident at Eton College.

Chapter 4: The Heart of Oak
    I N M ARCH OF 1751, THE P RINCE OF W ALES DIED, AFTER A BRIEF ILLNESS, OF a burst abscess caused by a rebounding cricket ball.
    The Earl and the Baron and Baroness were having tea over a game of faro in the orangery one early spring evening when a messenger arrived at Danvers. A servant handed the Earl a sealed envelope. He opened it, read the contents, then glanced up at his brother with a face that was expressionless but for a twinkle in his eye. “It is from Hillier,” he said. “Poor Fred is dead.” Crispin Hillier was Danvers’ representative in the Commons. Not only was it his job to protect the Earl’s interests in that house of Parliament, but to gather and relay political intelligence. The Earl rang a table bell, and the servant reappeared. “Pay the man who brought this a guinea,” he said. “Put him up in the stables, and attend to his needs. I shall have a reply ready for him to take on the morrow.”
    The Earl leaned to support the king’s oldest son, Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. The Prince, he reasoned, was very likely to be the next king, or at least Regent.
    Still, the Earl, on advice of his brother, had maintained a delicate neutrality between the king’s two sons, the Prince of Wales and William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland, liking neither but ready to return overtures of friendship from either, should they occur. He forbade Handel, the king’s favorite composer, to be played at concerts and banquets at Danvers, requiring his hired musicians to learn the compositions of the Prince’s favorite, Giovanne Buononcini, who managed Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in London until he was discovered to be a plagiarist and forced to leave the