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Title: A Child’s History of England

Author: Charles Dickens

Release Date: October, 1996 [eBook #699]
[Most recently updated: January 30, 2022]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHILD’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND ***




A CHILD’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

By CHARLES DICKENS

With Illustrations by F. H. Townsend and others

LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, ld.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1905


Contents

 CHAPTER I ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS
 CHAPTER II ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS
 CHAPTER III ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED
 CHAPTER IV ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS
 CHAPTER V ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE
 CHAPTER VI ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
 CHAPTER VII ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS
 CHAPTER VIII ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR
 CHAPTER IX ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS
 CHAPTER X ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR
 CHAPTER XI ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN
 CHAPTER XII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND
 CHAPTER XIII ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART
 CHAPTER XIV ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND
 CHAPTER XV ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED, OF WINCHESTER
 CHAPTER XVI ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS
 CHAPTER XVII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND
 CHAPTER XVIII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD
 CHAPTER XIX ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND
 CHAPTER XX ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE
 CHAPTER XXI ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH
 CHAPTER XXII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH
 CHAPTER XXIII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH
 CHAPTER XXIV ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH
 CHAPTER XXV ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD
 CHAPTER XXVI ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH
 CHAPTER XXVII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED BLUFF KING HAL AND BURLY KING HARRY
 CHAPTER XXVIII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH
 CHAPTER XXIX ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH
 CHAPTER XXX ENGLAND UNDER MARY
 CHAPTER XXXI ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH
 CHAPTER XXXII ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST
 CHAPTER XXXIII ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST
 CHAPTER XXXIV ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL
 CHAPTER XXXV ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH
 CHAPTER XXXVI ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND
 CHAPTER XXXVII




CHAPTER I
ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS


If you look at a Map of the World, you will see, in the left-hand upper
corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two Islands lying in the sea. They
are England and Scotland, and Ireland. England and Scotland form the
greater part of these Islands. Ireland is the next in size. The little
neighbouring islands, which are so small upon the Map as to be mere
dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland,—broken off, I dare say, in
the course of a great length of time, by the power of the restless
water.

In the old days, a long, long while ago, before Our Saviour was born on
earth and lay asleep in a manger, these Islands were in the same place,
and the stormy sea roared round them, just as it roars now. But the sea
was not alive, then, with great ships and brave sailors, sailing to and
from all parts of the world. It was very lonely. The Islands lay
solitary, in the great expanse of water. The foaming waves dashed
against their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their forests; but
the winds and waves brought no adventurers to land upon the Islands,
and the savage Islanders knew nothing of the rest of the world, and the
rest of the world knew nothing of them.

It is supposed that the Phœnicians, who were an ancient people, famous
for carrying on trade, came in ships to these Islands, and found that
they produced tin and lead; both very useful things, as you know, and
both produced to this very hour upon the sea-coast. The most celebrated
tin mines in Cornwall are, still, close to the sea. One of them, which
I have seen, is so close to it that it is hollowed out underneath the
ocean; and the miners say, that in stormy weather, when they are at
work down in that deep place, they can hear the noise of the waves
thundering above their heads. So, the Phœnicians, coasting about the
Islands, would come, without much difficulty, to where the tin and lead
were.

The Phœnicians traded with the Islanders for these metals, and gave the
Islanders some other useful things in exchange. The Islanders were, at
first, poor savages, going almost naked, or only dressed in the rough
skins of beasts, and staining their bodies, as other savages do, with
coloured earths and the juices of plants. But the Phœnicians, sailing
over to the opposite coasts of France and Belgium, and saying to the
people there, ‘We have been to those white cliffs across the water,
which you can see in fine weather, and from that country, which is
called Britain, we bring this tin and lead,’ tempted some of the French
and Belgians to come over also. These people settled themselves on the
south coast of England, which is now called Kent; and, although they
were a rough people too, they taught the savage Britons some useful
arts, and improved that part of the Islands. It is probable that other
people came over from Spain to Ireland, and settled there.

Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with the Islanders,
and the savage Britons grew into a wild, bold people; almost savage,
still, especially in the interior of the country away from the sea
where the foreign settlers seldom went; but hardy, brave, and strong.

The whole country was covered with forests, and swamps. The greater
part of it was very misty and cold. There were no roads, no bridges, no
streets, no houses that you would think deserving of the name. A town
was nothing but a collection of straw-covered huts, hidden in a thick
wood, with a ditch all round, and a low wall, made of mud, or the
trunks of trees placed one upon another. The people planted little or
no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle. They made
no coins, but used metal rings for money. They were clever in
basket-work, as savage people often are; and they could make a coarse
kind of cloth, and some very bad earthenware. But in building
fortresses they were much more clever.

They made boats of basket-work, covered with the skins of animals, but
seldom, if ever, ventured far from the shore. They made swords, of
copper mixed with tin; but, these swords were of an awkward shape, and
so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. They made light shields,
short pointed daggers, and spears—which they jerked back after they had
thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather fastened to the
stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten an enemy’s horse. The
ancient Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or forty tribes,
each commanded by its own little king, were constantly fighting with
one another, as savage people usually do; and they always fought with
these weapons.

They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent was the picture of
a white horse. They could break them in and manage them wonderfully
well. Indeed, the horses (of which they had an abundance, though they
were rather small) were so well taught in those days, that they can
scarcely be said to have improved since; though the men are so much
wiser. They understood, and obeyed, every word of command; and would
stand still by themselves, in all the din and noise of battle, while
their masters went to fight on foot. The Britons could not have
succeeded in their most remarkable art, without the aid of these
sensible and trusty animals. The art I mean, is the construction and
management of war-chariots or cars, for which they have ever been
celebrated in history. Each of the best sort of these chariots, not
quite breast high in front, and open at the back, contained one man to
drive, and two or three others to fight—all standing up. The horses who
drew them were so well trained, that they would tear, at full gallop,
over the most stony ways, and even through the woods; dashing down
their masters’ enemies beneath their hoofs, and cutting them to pieces
with the blades of swords, or scythes, which were fastened to the
wheels, and stretched out beyond the car on each side, for that cruel
purpose. In a moment, while at full speed, the horses would stop, at
the driver’s command. The men within would leap out, deal blows about
them with their swords like hail, leap on the horses, on the pole,
spring back into the chariots anyhow; and, as soon as they were safe,
the horses tore away again.

The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called the Religion of
the Druids. It seems to have been brought over, in very early times
indeed, from the opposite country of France, anciently called Gaul, and
to have mixed up the worship of the Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon,
with the worship of some of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses. Most of its
ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended
to be enchanters, and who carried magicians’ wands, and wore, each of
them, about his neck, what he told the ignorant people was a Serpent’s
egg in a golden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies
included the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some suspected
criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burning alive, in
immense wicker cages, of a number of men and animals together. The
Druid Priests had some kind of veneration for the Oak, and for the
mistletoe—the same plant that we hang up in houses at Christmas Time
now—when its white berries grew upon the Oak. They met together in dark
woods, which they called Sacred Groves; and there they instructed, in
their mysterious arts, young men who came to them as pupils, and who
sometimes stayed with them as long as twenty years.

These Druids built great Temples and altars, open to the sky, fragments
of some of which are yet remaining. Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, in
Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these. Three curious stones,
called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form
another. We know, from examination of the great blocks of which such
buildings are made, that they could not have been raised without the
aid of some ingenious machines, which are common now, but which the
ancient Britons certainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable
houses. I should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed
with them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept
the people out of sight while they made these buildings, and then
pretended that they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the
fortresses too; at all events, as they were very powerful, and very
much believed in, and as they made and executed the laws, and paid no
taxes, I don’t wonder that they liked their trade. And, as they
persuaded the people the more Druids there were, the better off the
people would be, I don’t wonder that there were a good many of them.
But it is pleasant to think that there are no Druids, _now_, who go on
in that way, and pretend to carry Enchanters’ Wands and Serpents’
Eggs—and of course there is nothing of the kind, anywhere.

Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons, fifty-five
years before the birth of Our Saviour, when the Romans, under their
great General, Julius Cæsar, were masters of all the rest of the known
world. Julius Cæsar had then just conquered Gaul; and hearing, in Gaul,
a good deal about the opposite Island with the white cliffs, and about
the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it—some of whom had been
fetched over to help the Gauls in the war against him—he resolved, as
he was so near, to come and conquer Britain next.

So, Julius Cæsar came sailing over to this Island of ours, with eighty
vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from the French coast
between Calais and Boulogne, ‘because thence was the shortest passage
into Britain;’ just for the same reason as our steam-boats now take the
same track, every day. He expected to conquer Britain easily: but it
was not such easy work as he supposed—for the bold Britons fought most
bravely; and, what with not having his horse-soldiers with him (for
they had been driven back by a storm), and what with having some of his
vessels dashed to pieces by a high tide after they were drawn ashore,
he ran great risk of being totally defeated. However, for once that the
bold Britons beat him, he beat them twice; though not so soundly but
that he was very glad to accept their proposals of peace, and go away.

But, in the spring of the next year, he came back; this time, with
eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. The British tribes
chose, as their general-in-chief, a Briton, whom the Romans in their
Latin language called Cassivellaunus, but whose British name is
supposed to have been Caswallon. A brave general he was, and well he
and his soldiers fought the Roman army! So well, that whenever in that
war the Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle
of the rapid British chariots, they trembled in their hearts. Besides a
number of smaller battles, there was a battle fought near Canterbury,
in Kent; there was a battle fought near Chertsey, in Surrey; there was
a battle fought near a marshy little town in a wood, the capital of
that part of Britain which belonged to Cassivellaunus, and which was
probably near what is now Saint Albans, in Hertfordshire. However,
brave Cassivellaunus had the worst of it, on the whole; though he and
his men always fought like lions. As the other British chiefs were
jealous of him, and were always quarrelling with him, and with one
another, he gave up, and proposed peace. Julius Cæsar was very glad to
grant peace easily, and to go away again with all his remaining ships
and men. He had expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may have
found a few for anything I know; but, at all events, he found delicious
oysters, and I am sure he found tough Britons—of whom, I dare say, he
made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the great French General
did, eighteen hundred years afterwards, when he said they were such
unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were beaten. They
never _did_ know, I believe, and never will.

Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time, there was peace in
Britain. The Britons improved their towns and mode of life: became more
civilised, travelled, and learnt a great deal from the Gauls and
Romans. At last, the Roman Emperor, Claudius, sent Aulus Plautius, a
skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue the Island, and shortly
afterwards arrived himself. They did little; and Ostorius Scapula,
another general, came. Some of the British Chiefs of Tribes submitted.
Others resolved to fight to the death. Of these brave men, the bravest
was Caractacus, or Caradoc, who gave battle to the Romans, with his
army, among the mountains of North Wales. ‘This day,’ said he to his
soldiers, ‘decides the fate of Britain! Your liberty, or your eternal
slavery, dates from this hour. Remember your brave ancestors, who drove
the great Cæsar himself across the sea!’ On hearing these words, his
men, with a great shout, rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Roman
swords and armour were too much for the weaker British weapons in close
conflict. The Britons lost the day. The wife and daughter of the brave
Caractacus were taken prisoners; his brothers delivered themselves up;
he himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by his false and
base stepmother: and they carried him, and all his family, in triumph
to Rome.

But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison, great in
chains. His noble air, and dignified endurance of distress, so touched
the Roman people who thronged the streets to see him, that he and his
family were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his great heart
broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever returned to his own dear
country. English oaks have grown up from acorns, and withered away,
when they were hundreds of years old—and other oaks have sprung up in
their places, and died too, very aged—since the rest of the history of
the brave Caractacus was forgotten.

Still, the Britons _would not_ yield. They rose again and again, and
died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose, on every possible
occasion. Suetonius, another Roman general, came, and stormed the
Island of Anglesey (then called Mona), which was supposed to be sacred,
and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by their own fires.
But, even while he was in Britain, with his victorious troops, the
Britons rose. Because Boadicea, a British queen, the widow of the King
of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her
property by the Romans who were settled in England, she was scourged,
by order of Catus a Roman officer; and her two daughters were
shamefully insulted in her presence, and her husband’s relations were
made slaves. To avenge this injury, the Britons rose, with all their
might and rage. They drove Catus into Gaul; they laid the Roman
possessions waste; they forced the Romans out of London, then a poor
little town, but a trading place; they hanged, burnt, crucified, and
slew by the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. Suetonius
strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. They
strengthened their army, and desperately attacked his, on the field
where it was strongly posted. Before the first charge of the Britons
was made, Boadicea, in a war-chariot, with her fair hair streaming in
the wind, and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among the
troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the
licentious Romans. The Britons fought to the last; but they were
vanquished with great slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison.

Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When Suetonius left
the country, they fell upon his troops, and retook the Island of
Anglesey. Agricola came, fifteen or twenty years afterwards, and retook
it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing the country,
especially that part of it which is now called Scotland; but, its
people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. They
fought the bloodiest battles with him; they killed their very wives and
children, to prevent his making prisoners of them; they fell, fighting,
in such great numbers that certain hills in Scotland are yet supposed
to be vast heaps of stones piled up above their graves. Hadrian came,
thirty years afterwards, and still they resisted him. Severus came,
nearly a hundred years afterwards, and they worried his great army like
dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by thousands, in the bogs and
swamps. Caracalla, the son and successor of Severus, did the most to
conquer them, for a time; but not by force of arms. He knew how little
that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and
gave the Britons the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There was
peace, after this, for seventy years.

Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce, sea-faring
people from the countries to the North of the Rhine, the great river of
Germany on the banks of which the best grapes grow to make the German
wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul and
Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsed by Carausius, a native
either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the
command, and under whom the Britons first began to fight upon the sea.
But, after this time, they renewed their ravages. A few years more, and
the Scots (which was then the name for the people of Ireland), and the
Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions
into the South of Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at
intervals, during two hundred years, and through a long succession of
Roman Emperors and chiefs; during all which length of time, the Britons
rose against the Romans, over and over again. At last, in the days of
the Roman Honorius, when the Roman power all over the world was fast
declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans
abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at
last, as at first, the Britons rose against them, in their old brave
manner; for, a very little while before, they had turned away the Roman
magistrates, and declared themselves an independent people.

Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Cæsar’s first invasion of
the Island, when the Romans departed from it for ever. In the course of
that time, although they had been the cause of terrible fighting and
bloodshed, they had done much to improve the condition of the Britons.
They had made great military roads; they had built forts; they had
taught them how to dress, and arm themselves, much better than they had
ever known how to do before; they had refined the whole British way of
living. Agricola had built a great wall of earth, more than seventy
miles long, extending from Newcastle to beyond Carlisle, for the
purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots; Hadrian had strengthened
it; Severus, finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of
stone.

Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by means of Roman ships, that
the Christian Religion was first brought into Britain, and its people
first taught the great lesson that, to be good in the sight of God,
they must love their neighbours as themselves, and do unto others as
they would be done by. The Druids declared that it was very wicked to
believe in any such thing, and cursed all the people who did believe
it, very heartily. But, when the people found that they were none the
better for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the
curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and the rain fell without
consulting the Druids at all, they just began to think that the Druids
were mere men, and that it signified very little whether they cursed or
blessed. After which, the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in
numbers, and the Druids took to other trades.

Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England. It is but
little that is known of those five hundred years; but some remains of
them are still found. Often, when labourers are digging up the ground,
to make foundations for houses or churches, they light on rusty money
that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which they
ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on which they
trod, are discovered among the earth that is broken by the plough, or
the dust that is crumbled by the gardener’s spade. Wells that the
Romans sunk, still yield water; roads that the Romans made, form part
of our highways. In some old battle-fields, British spear-heads and
Roman armour have been found, mingled together in decay, as they fell
in the thick pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown
with grass, and of mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of
Britons, are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the
bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of Severus, overrun with moss
and weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin; and the shepherds and their
dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain,
Stonehenge yet stands: a monument of the earlier time when the Roman
name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with their best magic
wands, could not have written it in the sands of the wild sea-shore.




CHAPTER II
ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS


The Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, when the Britons began
to wish they had never left it. For, the Romans being gone, and the
Britons being much reduced in numbers by their long wars, the Picts and
Scots came pouring in, over the broken and unguarded wall of Severus,
in swarms. They plundered the richest towns, and killed the people; and
came back so often for more booty and more slaughter, that the
unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As if the Picts and Scots
were not bad enough on land, the Saxons attacked the islanders by sea;
and, as if something more were still wanting to make them miserable,
they quarrelled bitterly among themselves as to what prayers they ought
to say, and how they ought to say them. The priests, being very angry
with one another on these questions, cursed one another in the
heartiest manner; and (uncommonly like the old Druids) cursed all the
people whom they could not persuade. So, altogether, the Britons were
very badly off, you may believe.

They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a letter to Rome
entreating help—which they called the Groans of the Britons; and in
which they said, ‘The barbarians chase us into the sea, the sea throws
us back upon the barbarians, and we have only the hard choice left us
of perishing by the sword, or perishing by the waves.’ But, the Romans
could not help them, even if they were so inclined; for they had enough
to do to defend themselves against their own enemies, who were then
very fierce and strong. At last, the Britons, unable to bear their hard
condition any longer, resolved to make peace with the Saxons, and to
invite the Saxons to come into their country, and help them to keep out
the Picts and Scots.

It was a British Prince named Vortigern who took this resolution, and
who made a treaty of friendship with Hengist and Horsa, two Saxon
chiefs. Both of these names, in the old Saxon language, signify Horse;
for the Saxons, like many other nations in a rough state, were fond of
giving men the names of animals, as Horse, Wolf, Bear, Hound. The
Indians of North America,—a very inferior people to the Saxons,
though—do the same to this day.

Hengist and Horsa drove out the Picts and Scots; and Vortigern, being
grateful to them for that service, made no opposition to their settling
themselves in that part of England which is called the Isle of Thanet,
or to their inviting over more of their countrymen to join them. But
Hengist had a beautiful daughter named Rowena; and when, at a feast,
she filled a golden goblet to the brim with wine, and gave it to
Vortigern, saying in a sweet voice, ‘Dear King, thy health!’ the King
fell in love with her. My opinion is, that the cunning Hengist meant
him to do so, in order that the Saxons might have greater influence
with him; and that the fair Rowena came to that feast, golden goblet
and all, on purpose.

At any rate, they were married; and, long afterwards, whenever the King
was angry with the Saxons, or jealous of their encroachments, Rowena
would put her beautiful arms round his neck, and softly say, ‘Dear
King, they are my people! Be favourable to them, as you loved that
Saxon girl who gave you the golden goblet of wine at the feast!’ And,
really, I don’t see how the King could help himself.

Ah! We must all die! In the course of years, Vortigern died—he was
dethroned, and put in prison, first, I am afraid; and Rowena died; and
generations of Saxons and Britons died; and events that happened during
a long, long time, would have been quite forgotten but for the tales
and songs of the old Bards, who used to go about from feast to feast,
with their white beards, recounting the deeds of their forefathers.
Among the histories of which they sang and talked, there was a famous
one, concerning the bravery and virtues of King Arthur, supposed to
have been a British Prince in those old times. But, whether such a
person really lived, or whether there were several persons whose
histories came to be confused together under that one name, or whether
all about him was invention, no one knows.

I will tell you, shortly, what is most interesting in the early Saxon
times, as they are described in these songs and stories of the Bards.

In, and long after, the days of Vortigern, fresh bodies of Saxons,
under various chiefs, came pouring into Britain. One body, conquering
the Britons in the East, and settling there, called their kingdom
Essex; another body settled in the West, and called their kingdom
Wessex; the Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established themselves in one
place; the Southfolk, or Suffolk people, established themselves in
another; and gradually seven kingdoms or states arose in England, which
were called the Saxon Heptarchy. The poor Britons, falling back before
these crowds of fighting men whom they had innocently invited over as
friends, retired into Wales and the adjacent country; into Devonshire,
and into Cornwall. Those parts of England long remained unconquered.
And in Cornwall now—where the sea-coast is very gloomy, steep, and
rugged—where, in the dark winter-time, ships have often been wrecked
close to the land, and every soul on board has perished—where the winds
and waves howl drearily and split the solid rocks into arches and
caverns—there are very ancient ruins, which the people call the ruins
of King Arthur’s Castle.

Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon kingdoms, because the
Christian religion was preached to the Saxons there (who domineered
over the Britons too much, to care for what _they_ said about their
religion, or anything else) by Augustine, a monk from Rome. King
Ethelbert, of Kent, was soon converted; and the moment he said he was a
Christian, his courtiers all said _they_ were Christians; after which,
ten thousand of his subjects said they were Christians too. Augustine
built a little church, close to this King’s palace, on the ground now
occupied by the beautiful cathedral of Canterbury. Sebert, the King’s
nephew, built on a muddy marshy place near London, where there had been
a temple to Apollo, a church dedicated to Saint Peter, which is now
Westminster Abbey. And, in London itself, on the foundation of a temple
to Diana, he built another little church which has risen up, since that
old time, to be Saint Paul’s.

After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of Northumbria, who was such
a good king that it was said a woman or child might openly carry a
purse of gold, in his reign, without fear, allowed his child to be
baptised, and held a great council to consider whether he and his
people should all be Christians or not. It was decided that they should
be. Coifi, the chief priest of the old religion, made a great speech on
the occasion. In this discourse, he told the people that he had found
out the old gods to be impostors. ‘I am quite satisfied of it,’ he
said. ‘Look at me! I have been serving them all my life, and they have
done nothing for me; whereas, if they had been really powerful, they
could not have decently done less, in return for all I have done for
them, than make my fortune. As they have never made my fortune, I am
quite convinced they are impostors!’ When this singular priest had
finished speaking, he hastily armed himself with sword and lance,
mounted a war-horse, rode at a furious gallop in sight of all the
people to the temple, and flung his lance against it as an insult. From
that time, the Christian religion spread itself among the Saxons, and
became their faith.

The next very famous prince was Egbert. He lived about a hundred and
fifty years afterwards, and claimed to have a better right to the
throne of Wessex than Beortric, another Saxon prince who was at the
head of that kingdom, and who married Edburga, the daughter of Offa,
king of another of the seven kingdoms. This Queen Edburga was a
handsome murderess, who poisoned people when they offended her. One
day, she mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble belonging to the
court; but her husband drank of it too, by mistake, and died. Upon
this, the people revolted, in great crowds; and running to the palace,
and thundering at the gates, cried, ‘Down with the wicked queen, who
poisons men!’ They drove her out of the country, and abolished the
title she had disgraced. When years had passed away, some travellers
came home from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia they had seen
a ragged beggar-woman, who had once been handsome, but was then
shrivelled, bent, and yellow, wandering about the streets, crying for
bread; and that this beggar-woman was the poisoning English queen. It
was, indeed, Edburga; and so she died, without a shelter for her
wretched head.

Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in consequence of his
having claimed the crown of Wessex (for he thought his rival might take
him prisoner and put him to death), sought refuge at the court of
Charlemagne, King of France. On the death of Beortric, so unhappily
poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to Britain; succeeded to the
throne of Wessex; conquered some of the other monarchs of the seven
kingdoms; added their territories to his own; and, for the first time,
called the country over which he ruled, England.

And now, new enemies arose, who, for a long time, troubled England
sorely. These were the Northmen, the people of Denmark and Norway, whom
the English called the Danes. They were a warlike people, quite at home
upon the sea; not Christians; very daring and cruel. They came over in
ships, and plundered and burned wheresoever they landed. Once, they
beat Egbert in battle. Once, Egbert beat them. But, they cared no more
for being beaten than the English themselves. In the four following
short reigns, of Ethelwulf, and his sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and
Ethelred, they came back, over and over again, burning and plundering,
and laying England waste. In the last-mentioned reign, they seized
Edmund, King of East England, and bound him to a tree. Then, they
proposed to him that he should change his religion; but he, being a
good Christian, steadily refused. Upon that, they beat him, made
cowardly jests upon him, all defenceless as he was, shot arrows at him,
and, finally, struck off his head. It is impossible to say whose head
they might have struck off next, but for the death of King Ethelred
from a wound he had received in fighting against them, and the
succession to his throne of the best and wisest king that ever lived in
England.




CHAPTER III
ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED


Alfred the Great was a young man, three-and-twenty years of age, when
he became king. Twice in his childhood, he had been taken to Rome,
where the Saxon nobles were in the habit of going on journeys which
they supposed to be religious; and, once, he had stayed for some time
in Paris. Learning, however, was so little cared for, then, that at
twelve years old he had not been taught to read; although, of the sons
of King Ethelwulf, he, the youngest, was the favourite. But he had—as
most men who grow up to be great and good are generally found to have
had—an excellent mother; and, one day, this lady, whose name was
Osburga, happened, as she was sitting among her sons, to read a book of
Saxon poetry. The art of printing was not known until long and long
after that period, and the book, which was written, was what is called
‘illuminated,’ with beautiful bright letters, richly painted. The
brothers admiring it very much, their mother said, ‘I will give it to
that one of you four princes who first learns to read.’ Alfred sought
out a tutor that very day, applied himself to learn with great
diligence, and soon won the book. He was proud of it, all his life.

This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought nine battles
with the Danes. He made some treaties with them too, by which the false
Danes swore they would quit the country. They pretended to consider
that they had taken a very solemn oath, in swearing this upon the holy
bracelets that they wore, and which were always buried with them when
they died; but they cared little for it, for they thought nothing of
breaking oaths and treaties too, as soon as it suited their purpose,
and coming back again to fight, plunder, and burn, as usual. One fatal
winter, in the fourth year of King Alfred’s reign, they spread
themselves in great numbers over the whole of England; and so dispersed
and routed the King’s soldiers that the King was left alone, and was
obliged to disguise himself as a common peasant, and to take refuge in
the cottage of one of his cowherds who did not know his face.

Here, King Alfred, while the Danes sought him far and near, was left
alone one day, by the cowherd’s wife, to watch some cakes which she put
to bake upon the hearth. But, being at work upon his bow and arrows,
with which he hoped to punish the false Danes when a brighter time
should come, and thinking deeply of his poor unhappy subjects whom the
Danes chased through the land, his noble mind forgot the cakes, and
they were burnt. ‘What!’ said the cowherd’s wife, who scolded him well
when she came back, and little thought she was scolding the King, ‘you
will be ready enough to eat them by-and-by, and yet you cannot watch
them, idle dog?’

At length, the Devonshire men made head against a new host of Danes who
landed on their coast; killed their chief, and captured their flag; on
which was represented the likeness of a Raven—a very fit bird for a
thievish army like that, I think. The loss of their standard troubled
the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be enchanted—woven by the
three daughters of one father in a single afternoon—and they had a
story among themselves that when they were victorious in battle, the
Raven stretched his wings and seemed to fly; and that when they were
defeated, he would droop. He had good reason to droop, now, if he could
have done anything half so sensible; for, King Alfred joined the
Devonshire men; made a camp with them on a piece of firm ground in the
midst of a bog in Somersetshire; and prepared for a great attempt for
vengeance on the Danes, and the deliverance of his oppressed people.

But, first, as it was important to know how numerous those pestilent
Danes were, and how they were fortified, King Alfred, being a good
musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or minstrel, and went, with
his harp, to the Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of
Guthrum the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they caroused.
While he seemed to think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of
their tents, their arms, their discipline, everything that he desired
to know. And right soon did this great king entertain them to a
different tune; for, summoning all his true followers to meet him at an
appointed place, where they received him with joyful shouts and tears,
as the monarch whom many of them had given up for lost or dead, he put
himself at their head, marched on the Danish camp, defeated the Danes
with great slaughter, and besieged them for fourteen days to prevent
their escape. But, being as merciful as he was good and brave, he then,
instead of killing them, proposed peace: on condition that they should
altogether depart from that Western part of England, and settle in the
East; and that Guthrum should become a Christian, in remembrance of the
Divine religion which now taught his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to
forgive the enemy who had so often injured him. This, Guthrum did. At
his baptism, King Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was an
honourable chief who well deserved that clemency; for, ever afterwards
he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes under him were
faithful too. They plundered and burned no more, but worked like honest
men. They ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good honest English
lives. And I hope the children of those Danes played, many a time, with
Saxon children in the sunny fields; and that Danish young men fell in
love with Saxon girls, and married them; and that English travellers,
benighted at the doors of Danish cottages, often went in for shelter
until morning; and that Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends,
talking of King Alfred the Great.

All the Danes were not like these under Guthrum; for, after some years,
more of them came over, in the old plundering and burning way—among
them a fierce pirate of the name of Hastings, who had the boldness to
sail up the Thames to Gravesend, with eighty ships. For three years,
there was a war with these Danes; and there was a famine in the
country, too, and a plague, both upon human creatures and beasts. But
King Alfred, whose mighty heart never failed him, built large ships
nevertheless, with which to pursue the pirates on the sea; and he
encouraged his soldiers, by his brave example, to fight valiantly
against them on the shore. At last, he drove them all away; and then
there was repose in England.

As great and good in peace, as he was great and good in war, King
Alfred never rested from his labours to improve his people. He loved to
talk with clever men, and with travellers from foreign countries, and
to write down what they told him, for his people to read. He had
studied Latin after learning to read English, and now another of his
labours was, to translate Latin books into the English-Saxon tongue,
that his people might be interested, and improved by their contents. He
made just laws, that they might live more happily and freely; he turned
away all partial judges, that no wrong might be done them; he was so
careful of their property, and punished robbers so severely, that it
was a common thing to say that under the great King Alfred, garlands of
golden chains and jewels might have hung across the streets, and no man
would have touched one. He founded schools; he patiently heard causes
himself in his Court of Justice; the great desires of his heart were,
to do right to all his subjects, and to leave England better, wiser,
happier in all ways, than he found it. His industry in these efforts
was quite astonishing. Every day he divided into certain portions, and
in each portion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might
divide his time exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were
all of the same size, were notched across at regular distances, and
were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided
the day into notches, almost as accurately as we now divide it into
hours upon the clock. But when the candles were first invented, it was
found that the wind and draughts of air, blowing into the palace
through the doors and windows, and through the chinks in the walls,
caused them to gutter and burn unequally. To prevent this, the King had
them put into cases formed of wood and white horn. And these were the
first lanthorns ever made in England.

All this time, he was afflicted with a terrible unknown disease, which
caused him violent and frequent pain that nothing could relieve. He
bore it, as he had borne all the troubles of his life, like a brave
good man, until he was fifty-three years old; and then, having reigned
thirty years, he died. He died in the year nine hundred and one; but,
long ago as that is, his fame, and the love and gratitude with which
his subjects regarded him, are freshly remembered to the present hour.

In the next reign, which was the reign of Edward, surnamed The Elder,
who was chosen in council to succeed, a nephew of King Alfred troubled
the country by trying to obtain the throne. The Danes in the East of
England took part with this usurper (perhaps because they had honoured
his uncle so much, and honoured him for his uncle’s sake), and there
was hard fighting; but, the King, with the assistance of his sister,
gained the day, and reigned in peace for four and twenty years. He
gradually extended his power over the whole of England, and so the
Seven Kingdoms were united into one.

When England thus became one kingdom, ruled over by one Saxon king, the
Saxons had been settled in the country more than four hundred and fifty
years. Great changes had taken place in its customs during that time.
The Saxons were still greedy eaters and great drinkers, and their
feasts were often of a noisy and drunken kind; but many new comforts
and even elegances had become known, and were fast increasing. Hangings
for the walls of rooms, where, in these modern days, we paste up paper,
are known to have been sometimes made of silk, ornamented with birds
and flowers in needlework. Tables and chairs were curiously carved in
different woods; were sometimes decorated with gold or silver;
sometimes even made of those precious metals. Knives and spoons were
used at table; golden ornaments were worn—with silk and cloth, and
golden tissues and embroideries; dishes were made of gold and silver,
brass and bone. There were varieties of drinking-horns, bedsteads,
musical instruments. A harp was passed round, at a feast, like the
drinking-bowl, from guest to guest; and each one usually sang or played
when his turn came. The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made, and
among them was a terrible iron hammer that gave deadly blows, and was
long remembered. The Saxons themselves were a handsome people. The men
were proud of their long fair hair, parted on the forehead; their ample
beards, their fresh complexions, and clear eyes. The beauty of the
Saxon women filled all England with a new delight and grace.

I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I stop to say this now,
because under the Great Alfred, all the best points of the
English-Saxon character were first encouraged, and in him first shown.
It has been the greatest character among the nations of the earth.
Wherever the descendants of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed, or
otherwise made their way, even to the remotest regions of the world,
they have been patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit,
never to be turned aside from enterprises on which they have resolved.
In Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the whole world over; in the desert,
in the forest, on the sea; scorched by a burning sun, or frozen by ice
that never melts; the Saxon blood remains unchanged. Wheresoever that
race goes, there, law, and industry, and safety for life and property,
and all the great results of steady perseverance, are certain to arise.

I pause to think with admiration, of the noble king who, in his single
person, possessed all the Saxon virtues. Whom misfortune could not
subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose perseverance nothing
could shake. Who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in success. Who
loved justice, freedom, truth, and knowledge. Who, in his care to
instruct his people, probably did more to preserve the beautiful old
Saxon language, than I can imagine. Without whom, the English tongue in
which I tell this story might have wanted half its meaning. As it is
said that his spirit still inspires some of our best English laws, so,
let you and I pray that it may animate our English hearts, at least to
this—to resolve, when we see any of our fellow-creatures left in
ignorance, that we will do our best, while life is in us, to have them
taught; and to tell those rulers whose duty it is to teach them, and
who neglect their duty, that they have profited very little by all the
years that have rolled away since the year nine hundred and one, and
that they are far behind the bright example of King Alfred the Great.




CHAPTER IV
ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS


Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded that king. He reigned
only fifteen years; but he remembered the glory of his grandfather, the
great Alfred, and governed England well. He reduced the turbulent
people of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute in money, and in
cattle, and to send him their best hawks and hounds. He was victorious
over the Cornish men, who were not yet quite under the Saxon
government. He restored such of the old laws as were good, and had
fallen into disuse; made some wise new laws, and took care of the poor
and weak. A strong alliance, made against him by Anlaf a Danish prince,
Constantine King of the Scots, and the people of North Wales, he broke
and defeated in one great battle, long famous for the vast numbers
slain in it. After that, he had a quiet reign; the lords and ladies
about him had leisure to become polite and agreeable; and foreign
princes were glad (as they have sometimes been since) to come to
England on visits to the English court.

When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his brother Edmund, who
was only eighteen, became king. He was the first of six boy-kings, as
you will presently know.

They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste for
improvement and refinement. But he was beset by the Danes, and had a
short and troubled reign, which came to a troubled end. One night, when
he was feasting in his hall, and had eaten much and drunk deep, he saw,
among the company, a noted robber named Leof, who had been banished
from England. Made very angry by the boldness of this man, the King
turned to his cup-bearer, and said, ‘There is a robber sitting at the
table yonder, who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land—a hunted
wolf, whose life any man may take, at any time. Command that robber to
depart!’ ‘I will not depart!’ said Leof. ‘No?’ cried the King. ‘No, by
the Lord!’ said Leof. Upon that the King rose from his seat, and,
making passionately at the robber, and seizing him by his long hair,
tried to throw him down. But the robber had a dagger underneath his
cloak, and, in the scuffle, stabbed the King to death. That done, he
set his back against the wall, and fought so desperately, that although
he was soon cut to pieces by the King’s armed men, and the wall and
pavement were splashed with his blood, yet it was not before he had
killed and wounded many of them. You may imagine what rough lives the
kings of those times led, when one of them could struggle, half drunk,
with a public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed in presence
of the company who ate and drank with him.

Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak and sickly in body, but
of a strong mind. And his armies fought the Northmen, the Danes, and
Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as they were called, and beat them for
the time. And, in nine years, Edred died, and passed away.

Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen years of age; but the real king,
who had the real power, was a monk named Dunstan—a clever priest, a
little mad, and not a little proud and cruel.

Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither the body of King
Edmund the Magnificent was carried, to be buried. While yet a boy, he
had got out of his bed one night (being then in a fever), and walked
about Glastonbury Church when it was under repair; and, because he did
not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and break his neck, it
was reported that he had been shown over the building by an angel. He
had also made a harp that was said to play of itself—which it very
likely did, as Æolian Harps, which are played by the wind, and are
understood now, always do. For these wonders he had been once denounced
by his enemies, who were jealous of his favour with the late King
Athelstan, as a magician; and he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot,
and thrown into a marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a
great deal of trouble yet.

The priests of those days were, generally, the only scholars. They were
learned in many things. Having to make their own convents and
monasteries on uncultivated grounds that were granted to them by the
Crown, it was necessary that they should be good farmers and good
gardeners, or their lands would have been too poor to support them. For
the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort of
the refectories where they ate and drank, it was necessary that there
should be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters, among them. For
their greater safety in sickness and accident, living alone by
themselves in solitary places, it was necessary that they should study
the virtues of plants and herbs, and should know how to dress cuts,
burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to set broken limbs. Accordingly,
they taught themselves, and one another, a great variety of useful
arts; and became skilful in agriculture, medicine, surgery, and
handicraft. And when they wanted the aid of any little piece of
machinery, which would be simple enough now, but was marvellous then,
to impose a trick upon the poor peasants, they knew very well how to
make it; and _did_ make it many a time and often, I have no doubt.

Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most sagacious of
these monks. He was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forge in a
little cell. This cell was made too short to admit of his lying at full
length when he went to sleep—as if _that_ did any good to anybody!—and
he used to tell the most extraordinary lies about demons and spirits,
who, he said, came there to persecute him. For instance, he related
that one day when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little
window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure;
whereupon, having his pincers in the fire, red hot, he seized the devil
by the nose, and put him to such pain, that his bellowings were heard
for miles and miles. Some people are inclined to think this nonsense a
part of Dunstan’s madness (for his head never quite recovered the
fever), but I think not. I observe that it induced the ignorant people
to consider him a holy man, and that it made him very powerful. Which
was exactly what he always wanted.

On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy-king Edwy, it was
remarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth),
that the King quietly left the coronation feast, while all the company
were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek him.
Dunstan finding him in the company of his beautiful young wife Elgiva,
and her mother Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not only grossly
abused them, but dragged the young King back into the feasting-hall by
force. Some, again, think Dunstan did this because the young King’s
fair wife was his own cousin, and the monks objected to people marrying
their own cousins; but I believe he did it, because he was an
imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned priest, who, having loved a young
lady himself before he became a sour monk, hated all love now, and
everything belonging to it.

The young King was quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstan had
been Treasurer in the last reign, and he soon charged Dunstan with
having taken some of the last king’s money. The Glastonbury Abbot fled
to Belgium (very narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent to put
out his eyes, as you will wish they had, when you read what follows),
and his abbey was given to priests who were married; whom he always,
both before and afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with his
friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the King’s young brother, Edgar, as his
rival for the throne; and, not content with this revenge, he caused the
beautiful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only seventeen or
eighteen, to be stolen from one of the Royal Palaces, branded in the
cheek with a red-hot iron, and sold into slavery in Ireland. But the
Irish people pitied and befriended her; and they said, ‘Let us restore
the girl-queen to the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy!’ and
they cured her of her cruel wound, and sent her home as beautiful as
before. But the villain Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo, caused
her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joyfully hurrying to join
her husband, and to be hacked and hewn with swords, and to be
barbarously maimed and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy the Fair (his
people called him so, because he was so young and handsome) heard of
her dreadful fate, he died of a broken heart; and so the pitiful story
of the poor young wife and husband ends! Ah! Better to be two cottagers
in these better times, than king and queen of England in those bad
days, though never so fair!

Then came the boy-king, Edgar, called the Peaceful, fifteen years old.
Dunstan, being still the real king, drove all married priests out of
the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks like
himself, of the rigid order called the Benedictines. He made himself
Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory; and exercised such
power over the neighbouring British princes, and so collected them
about the King, that once, when the King held his court at Chester, and
went on the river Dee to visit the monastery of St. John, the eight
oars of his boat were pulled (as the people used to delight in relating
in stories and songs) by eight crowned kings, and steered by the King
of England. As Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and the monks, they
took great pains to represent him as the best of kings. But he was
really profligate, debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly carried off
a young lady from the convent at Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending to be
very much shocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon his head
for seven years—no great punishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have
been a more comfortable ornament to wear, than a stewpan without a
handle. His marriage with his second wife, Elfrida, is one of the worst
events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he despatched
his favourite courtier, Athelwold, to her father’s castle in
Devonshire, to see if she were really as charming as fame reported.
Now, she was so exceedingly beautiful that Athelwold fell in love with
her himself, and married her; but he told the King that she was only
rich—not handsome. The King, suspecting the truth when they came home,
resolved to pay the newly-married couple a visit; and, suddenly, told
Athelwold to prepare for his immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified,
confessed to his young wife what he had said and done, and implored her
to disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he
might be safe from the King’s anger. She promised that she would; but
she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen than the
wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and adorned
herself with her richest jewels; and when the King came, presently, he
discovered the cheat. So, he caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be
murdered in a wood, and married his widow, this bad Elfrida. Six or
seven years afterwards, he died; and was buried, as if he had been all
that the monks said he was, in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he—or
Dunstan for him—had much enriched.

England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by wolves, which,
driven out of the open country, hid themselves in the mountains of
Wales when they were not attacking travellers and animals, that the
tribute payable by the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition of
their producing, every year, three hundred wolves’ heads. And the
Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, to save their money, that in
four years there was not a wolf left.

Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the Martyr, from the manner of
his death. Elfrida had a son, named Ethelred, for whom she claimed the
throne; but Dunstan did not choose to favour him, and he made Edward
king. The boy was hunting, one day, down in Dorsetshire, when he rode
near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see
them kindly, he rode away from his attendants and galloped to the
castle gate, where he arrived at twilight, and blew his hunting-horn.
‘You are welcome, dear King,’ said Elfrida, coming out, with her
brightest smiles. ‘Pray you dismount and enter.’ ‘Not so, dear madam,’
said the King. ‘My company will miss me, and fear that I have met with
some harm. Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here,
in the saddle, to you and to my little brother, and so ride away with
the good speed I have made in riding here.’ Elfrida, going in to bring
the wine, whispered to an armed servant, one of her attendants, who
stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the King’s
horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips, saying, ‘Health!’ to the
wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to his innocent brother whose
hand she held in hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed man
made a spring and stabbed him in the back. He dropped the cup and
spurred his horse away; but, soon fainting with loss of blood, dropped
from the saddle, and, in his fall, entangled one of his feet in the
stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on; trailing his rider’s curls
upon the ground; dragging his smooth young face through ruts, and
stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, and mud; until the hunters,
tracking the animal’s course by the King’s blood, caught his bridle,
and released the disfigured body.

Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethelred, whom Elfrida,
when he cried out at the sight of his murdered brother riding away from
the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torch which she snatched from
one of the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, on account of
his cruel mother and the murder she had done to promote him, that
Dunstan would not have had him for king, but would have made Edgitha,
the daughter of the dead King Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole out
of the convent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she would have
consented. But she knew the stories of the youthful kings too well, and
would not be persuaded from the convent where she lived in peace; so,
Dunstan put Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put there,
and gave him the nickname of The Unready—knowing that he wanted
resolution and firmness.

At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over the young King, but,
as he grew older and came of age, her influence declined. The infamous
woman, not having it in her power to do any more evil, then retired
from court, and, according, to the fashion of the time, built churches
and monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a church, with a steeple
reaching to the very stars, would have been any sign of true repentance
for the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered form was trailed at his
horse’s heels! As if she could have buried her wickedness beneath the
senseless stones of the whole world, piled up one upon another, for the
monks to live in!

About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died. He was
growing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. Two
circumstances that happened in connexion with him, in this reign of
Ethelred, made a great noise. Once, he was present at a meeting of the
Church, when the question was discussed whether priests should have
permission to marry; and, as he sat with his head hung down, apparently
thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the
room, and warn the meeting to be of his opinion. This was some juggling
of Dunstan’s, and was probably his own voice disguised. But he played
off a worse juggle than that, soon afterwards; for, another meeting
being held on the same subject, and he and his supporters being seated
on one side of a great room, and their opponents on the other, he rose
and said, ‘To Christ himself, as judge, do I commit this cause!’
Immediately on these words being spoken, the floor where the opposite
party sat gave way, and some were killed and many wounded. You may be
pretty sure that it had been weakened under Dunstan’s direction, and
that it fell at Dunstan’s signal. _His_ part of the floor did not go
down. No, no. He was too good a workman for that.

When he died, the monks settled that he was a Saint, and called him
Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well have settled
that he was a coach-horse, and could just as easily have called him
one.

Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of this
holy saint; but, left to himself, he was a poor weak king, and his
reign was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led by
Sweyn, a son of the King of Denmark who had quarrelled with his father
and had been banished from home, again came into England, and, year
after year, attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings
away, the weak Ethelred paid them money; but, the more money he paid,
the more money the Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten thousand
pounds; on their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds; on their next
invasion, four and twenty thousand pounds: to pay which large sums, the
unfortunate English people were heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still
came back and wanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to marry
into some powerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers.
So, in the year one thousand and two, he courted and married Emma, the
sister of Richard Duke of Normandy; a lady who was called the Flower of
Normandy.

And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like of which was
never done on English ground before or since. On the thirteenth of
November, in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King over the
whole country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, and
murdered all the Danes who were their neighbours.

Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and women, every Dane was
killed. No doubt there were among them many ferocious men who had done
the English great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swaggering
in the houses of the English and insulting their wives and daughters,
had become unbearable; but no doubt there were also among them many
peaceful Christian Danes who had married English women and become like
English men. They were all slain, even to Gunhilda, the sister of the
King of Denmark, married to an English lord; who was first obliged to
see the murder of her husband and her child, and then was killed
herself.

When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, he swore
that he would have a great revenge. He raised an army, and a mightier
fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to England; and in all his army
there was not a slave or an old man, but every soldier was a free man,
and the son of a free man, and in the prime of life, and sworn to be
revenged upon the English nation, for the massacre of that dread
thirteenth of November, when his countrymen and countrywomen, and the
little children whom they loved, were killed with fire and sword. And
so, the sea-kings came to England in many great ships, each bearing the
flag of its own commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins,
beasts of prey, threatened England from the prows of those ships, as
they came onward through the water; and were reflected in the shining
shields that hung upon their sides. The ship that bore the standard of
the King of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent;
and the King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he trusted might
all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs into England’s
heart.

And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from the great fleet,
near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste, and striking their
lances in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them into rivers, in
token of their making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the
black November night when the Danes were murdered, wheresoever the
invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them great
feasts; and when they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to
England with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their
Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried on
this war: burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries;
killing the labourers in the fields; preventing the seed from being
sown in the ground; causing famine and starvation; leaving only heaps
of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found rich towns. To crown
this misery, English officers and men deserted, and even the favourites
of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English
ships, turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a storm
occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English navy.

There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who was true to
his country and the feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave one. For
twenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against
its Danish besiegers; and when a traitor in the town threw the gates
open and admitted them, he said, in chains, ‘I will not buy my life
with money that must be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me
what you please!’ Again and again, he steadily refused to purchase his
release with gold wrung from the poor.

At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled at a
drunken merry-making, had him brought into the feasting-hall.

‘Now, bishop,’ they said, ‘we want gold!’

He looked round on the crowd of angry faces; from the shaggy beards
close to him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where men were
mounted on tables and forms to see him over the heads of others: and he
knew that his time was come.

‘I have no gold,’ he said.

‘Get it, bishop!’ they all thundered.

‘That, I have often told you I will not,’ said he.

They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he stood unmoved.
Then, one man struck him; then, another; then a cursing soldier picked
up from a heap in a corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely
thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which
the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran to the same heap, and
knocked him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him; until
one soldier whom he had baptised (willing, as I hope for the sake of
that soldier’s soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck
him dead with his battle-axe.

If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of this noble
archbishop, he might have done something yet. But he paid the Danes
forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained so little by the
cowardly act, that Sweyn soon afterwards came over to subdue all
England. So broken was the attachment of the English people, by this
time, to their incapable King and their forlorn country which could not
protect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a deliverer.
London faithfully stood out, as long as the King was within its walls;
but, when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the Dane. Then, all was
over; and the King took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who
had already given shelter to the King’s wife, once the Flower of that
country, and to her children.

Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could not
quite forget the great King Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died
suddenly, in little more than a month after he had been proclaimed King
of England, they generously sent to Ethelred, to say that they would
have him for their King again, ‘if he would only govern them better
than he had governed them before.’ The Unready, instead of coming
himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for him. At
last, he followed, and the English declared him King. The Danes
declared Canute, the son of Sweyn, King. Thus, direful war began again,
and lasted for three years, when the Unready died. And I know of
nothing better that he did, in all his reign of eight and thirty years.

Was Canute to be King now? Not over the Saxons, they said; they must
have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed Ironside,
because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fell
to, and fought five battles—O unhappy England, what a fighting-ground
it was!—and then Ironside, who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who
was a little man, that they two should fight it out in single combat.
If Canute had been the big man, he would probably have said yes, but,
being the little man, he decidedly said no. However, he declared that
he was willing to divide the kingdom—to take all that lay north of
Watling Street, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester
was called, and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men
being weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became
sole King of England; for Ironside died suddenly within two months.
Some think that he was killed, and killed by Canute’s orders. No one
knows.




CHAPTER V
ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE


Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless King at first. After
he had clasped the hands of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity
with which he swore to be just and good to them in return for their
acknowledging him, he denounced and slew many of them, as well as many
relations of the late King. ‘He who brings me the head of one of my
enemies,’ he used to say, ‘shall be dearer to me than a brother.’ And
he was so severe in hunting down his enemies, that he must have got
together a pretty large family of these dear brothers. He was strongly
inclined to kill Edmund and Edward, two children, sons of poor
Ironside; but, being afraid to do so in England, he sent them over to
the King of Sweden, with a request that the King would be so good as
‘dispose of them.’ If the King of Sweden had been like many, many other
men of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut; but he
was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly.

Normandy ran much in Canute’s mind. In Normandy were the two children
of the late king—Edward and Alfred by name; and their uncle the Duke
might one day claim the crown for them. But the Duke showed so little
inclination to do so now, that he proposed to Canute to marry his
sister, the widow of The Unready; who, being but a showy flower, and
caring for nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her children
and was wedded to him.

Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valour of the English in his
foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute had
a prosperous reign, and made many improvements. He was a poet and a
musician. He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at
first; and went to Rome in a Pilgrim’s dress, by way of washing it out.
He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his journey; but he took
it from the English before he started. On the whole, however, he
certainly became a far better man when he had no opposition to contend
with, and was as great a King as England had known for some time.

The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one day disgusted
with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he caused his chair to
be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to command the tide as it came up
not to wet the edge of his robe, for the land was his; how the tide
came up, of course, without regarding him; and how he then turned to
his flatterers, and rebuked them, saying, what was the might of any
earthly king, to the might of the Creator, who could say unto the sea,
‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!’ We may learn from this, I
think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king; and that
courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for
it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long before, that the
King was fond of flattery, they would have known better than to offer
it in such large doses. And if they had not known that he was vain of
this speech (anything but a wonderful speech it seems to me, if a good
child had made it), they would not have been at such great pains to
repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together; the King’s
chair sinking in the sand; the King in a mighty good humour with his
own wisdom; and the courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it!

It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go ‘thus far, and no
farther.’ The great command goes forth to all the kings upon the earth,
and went to Canute in the year one thousand and thirty-five, and
stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it, stood his Norman wife.
Perhaps, as the King looked his last upon her, he, who had so often
thought distrustfully of Normandy, long ago, thought once more of the
two exiled Princes in their uncle’s court, and of the little favour
they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and of a rising cloud in
Normandy that slowly moved towards England.




CHAPTER VI
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR


Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and Hardicanute; but his
Queen, Emma, once the Flower of Normandy, was the mother of only
Hardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions to be divided between the
three, and had wished Harold to have England; but the Saxon people in
the South of England, headed by a nobleman with great possessions,
called the powerful Earl Godwin (who is said to have been originally a
poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to have, instead, either
Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes who were over in
Normandy. It seemed so certain that there would be more bloodshed to
settle this dispute, that many people left their homes, and took refuge
in the woods and swamps. Happily, however, it was agreed to refer the
whole question to a great meeting at Oxford, which decided that Harold
should have all the country north of the Thames, with London for his
capital city, and that Hardicanute should have all the south. The
quarrel was so arranged; and, as Hardicanute was in Denmark troubling
himself very little about anything but eating and getting drunk, his
mother and Earl Godwin governed the south for him.

They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling people who had hidden
themselves were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the elder of the
two exiled Princes, came over from Normandy with a few followers, to
claim the English Crown. His mother Emma, however, who only cared for
her last son Hardicanute, instead of assisting him, as he expected,
opposed him so strongly with all her influence that he was very soon
glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred was not so fortunate.
Believing in an affectionate letter, written some time afterwards to
him and his brother, in his mother’s name (but whether really with or
without his mother’s knowledge is now uncertain), he allowed himself to
be tempted over to England, with a good force of soldiers, and landing
on the Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin,
proceeded into Surrey, as far as the town of Guildford. Here, he and
his men halted in the evening to rest, having still the Earl in their
company; who had ordered lodgings and good cheer for them. But, in the
dead of the night, when they were off their guard, being divided into
small parties sleeping soundly after a long march and a plentiful
supper in different houses, they were set upon by the King’s troops,
and taken prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in a line, to the
number of six hundred men, and were barbarously tortured and killed;
with the exception of every tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to
the wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse and
sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out of his
head, and where in a few days he miserably died. I am not sure that the
Earl had wilfully entrapped him, but I suspect it strongly.

Harold was now King all over England, though it is doubtful whether the
Archbishop of Canterbury (the greater part of the priests were Saxons,
and not friendly to the Danes) ever consented to crown him. Crowned or
uncrowned, with the Archbishop’s leave or without it, he was King for
four years: after which short reign he died, and was buried; having
never done much in life but go a hunting. He was such a fast runner at
this, his favourite sport, that the people called him Harold Harefoot.

Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting, with his mother
(who had gone over there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred), for
the invasion of England. The Danes and Saxons, finding themselves
without a King, and dreading new disputes, made common cause, and
joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne. He consented, and soon
troubled them enough; for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed
the people so insupportably to enrich those greedy favourites that
there were many insurrections, especially one at Worcester, where the
citizens rose and killed his tax-collectors; in revenge for which he
burned their city. He was a brutal King, whose first public act was to
order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and
thrown into the river. His end was worthy of such a beginning. He fell
down drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at
Lambeth, given in honour of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a Dane
named Towed the Proud. And he never spoke again.

Edward, afterwards called by the monks The Confessor, succeeded; and
his first act was to oblige his mother Emma, who had favoured him so
little, to retire into the country; where she died some ten years
afterwards. He was the exiled prince whose brother Alfred had been so
foully killed. He had been invited over from Normandy by Hardicanute,
in the course of his short reign of two years, and had been handsomely
treated at court. His cause was now favoured by the powerful Earl
Godwin, and he was soon made King. This Earl had been suspected by the
people, ever since Prince Alfred’s cruel death; he had even been tried
in the last reign for the Prince’s murder, but had been pronounced not
guilty; chiefly, as it was supposed, because of a present he had made
to the swinish King, of a gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold,
and a crew of eighty splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help
the new King with his power, if the new King would help him against the
popular distrust and hatred. So they made a bargain. Edward the
Confessor got the Throne. The Earl got more power and more land, and
his daughter Editha was made queen; for it was a part of their compact
that the King should take her for his wife.

But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be
beloved—good, beautiful, sensible, and kind—the King from the first
neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers, resenting this
cold treatment, harassed the King greatly by exerting all their power
to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he preferred
the Normans to the English. He made a Norman Archbishop, and Norman
Bishops; his great officers and favourites were all Normans; he
introduced the Norman fashions and the Norman language; in imitation of
the state custom of Normandy, he attached a great seal to his state
documents, instead of merely marking them, as the Saxon Kings had done,
with the sign of the cross—just as poor people who have never been
taught to write, now make the same mark for their names. All this, the
powerful Earl Godwin and his six proud sons represented to the people
as disfavour shown towards the English; and thus they daily increased
their own power, and daily diminished the power of the King.

They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when he had reigned
eight years. Eustace, Earl of Bologne, who had married the King’s
sister, came to England on a visit. After staying at the court some
time, he set forth, with his numerous train of attendants, to return
home. They were to embark at Dover. Entering that peaceful town in
armour, they took possession of the best houses, and noisily demanded
to be lodged and entertained without payment. One of the bold men of
Dover, who would not endure to have these domineering strangers
jingling their heavy swords and iron corselets up and down his house,
eating his meat and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway
and refused admission to the first armed man who came there. The armed
man drew, and wounded him. The man of Dover struck the armed man dead.
Intelligence of what he had done, spreading through the streets to
where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by their horses,
bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to the house,
surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors and windows being closed
when they came up), and killed the man of Dover at his own fireside.
They then clattered through the streets, cutting down and riding over
men, women, and children. This did not last long, you may believe. The
men of Dover set upon them with great fury, killed nineteen of the
foreigners, wounded many more, and, blockading the road to the port so
that they should not embark, beat them out of the town by the way they
had come. Hereupon, Count Eustace rides as hard as man can ride to
Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks and Norman
lords. ‘Justice!’ cries the Count, ‘upon the men of Dover, who have set
upon and slain my people!’ The King sends immediately for the powerful
Earl Godwin, who happens to be near; reminds him that Dover is under
his government; and orders him to repair to Dover and do military
execution on the inhabitants. ‘It does not become you,’ says the proud
Earl in reply, ‘to condemn without a hearing those whom you have sworn
to protect. I will not do it.’

The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of banishment and loss
of his titles and property, to appear before the court to answer this
disobedience. The Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold,
and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting men as their
utmost power could collect, and demanded to have Count Eustace and his
followers surrendered to the justice of the country. The King, in his
turn, refused to give them up, and raised a strong force. After some
treaty and delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons began to
fall off. The Earl, with a part of his family and abundance of
treasure, sailed to Flanders; Harold escaped to Ireland; and the power
of the great family was for that time gone in England. But, the people
did not forget them.

Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean spirit,
visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons upon the
helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom all who saw
her (her husband and his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously
upon her fortune and her jewels, and allowing her only one attendant,
confined her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his—no doubt an
unpleasant lady after his own heart—was abbess or jailer.

Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the King
favoured the Normans more than ever. He invited over William, Duke Of
Normandy, the son of that Duke who had received him and his murdered
brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner’s daughter, with whom
that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her washing
clothes in a brook. William, who was a great warrior, with a passion
for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation; and the
Normans in England, finding themselves more numerous than ever when he
arrived with his retinue, and held in still greater honour at court
than before, became more and more haughty towards the people, and were
more and more disliked by them.

The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how the people
felt; for, with part of the treasure he had carried away with him, he
kept spies and agents in his pay all over England.

Accordingly, he thought the time was come for fitting out a great
expedition against the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to the
Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallant
and brave of all his family. And so the father and son came sailing up
the Thames to Southwark; great numbers of the people declaring for
them, and shouting for the English Earl and the English Harold, against
the Norman favourites!

The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usually have been
whensoever they have been in the hands of monks. But the people rallied
so thickly round the old Earl and his son, and the old Earl was so
steady in demanding without bloodshed the restoration of himself and
his family to their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. The
Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop of London,
surrounded by their retainers, fought their way out of London, and
escaped from Essex to France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman
favourites dispersed in all directions. The old Earl and his sons
(except Sweyn, who had committed crimes against the law) were restored
to their possessions and dignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely
Queen of the insensible King, was triumphantly released from her
prison, the convent, and once more sat in her chair of state, arrayed
in the jewels of which, when she had no champion to support her rights,
her cold-blooded husband had deprived her.

The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored fortune. He fell
down in a fit at the King’s table, and died upon the third day
afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher place in
the attachment of the people than his father had ever held. By his
valour he subdued the King’s enemies in many bloody fights. He was
vigorous against rebels in Scotland—this was the time when Macbeth slew
Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of years
afterwards, wrote his great tragedy; and he killed the restless Welsh
King Griffith, and brought his head to England.

What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French coast by
a tempest, is not at all certain; nor does it at all matter. That his
ship was forced by a storm on that shore, and that he was taken
prisoner, there is no doubt. In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked
strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. So, a
certain Count Guy, who was the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold’s disaster
happened, seized him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and
Christian lord as he ought to have done, and expected to make a very
good thing of it.

But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Normandy,
complaining of this treatment; and the Duke no sooner heard of it than
he ordered Harold to be escorted to the ancient town of Rouen, where he
then was, and where he received him as an honoured guest. Now, some
writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who was by this time old and
had no children, had made a will, appointing Duke William of Normandy
his successor, and had informed the Duke of his having done so. There
is no doubt that he was anxious about his successor; because he had
even invited over, from abroad, Edward the Outlaw, a son of Ironside,
who had come to England with his wife and three children, but whom the
King had strangely refused to see when he did come, and who had died in
London suddenly (princes were terribly liable to sudden death in those
days), and had been buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The King might
possibly have made such a will; or, having always been fond of the
Normans, he might have encouraged Norman William to aspire to the
English crown, by something that he said to him when he was staying at
the English court. But, certainly William did now aspire to it; and
knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, he called together a
great assembly of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter Adele in
marriage, informed him that he meant on King Edward’s death to claim
the English crown as his own inheritance, and required Harold then and
there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the Duke’s power, took this
oath upon the Missal, or Prayer-book. It is a good example of the
superstitions of the monks, that this Missal, instead of being placed
upon a table, was placed upon a tub; which, when Harold had sworn, was
uncovered, and shown to be full of dead men’s bones—bones, as the monks
pretended, of saints. This was supposed to make Harold’s oath a great
deal more impressive and binding. As if the great name of the Creator
of Heaven and earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a
double-tooth, or a finger-nail, of Dunstan!

Within a week or two after Harold’s return to England, the dreary old
Confessor was found to be dying. After wandering in his mind like a
very weak old man, he died. As he had put himself entirely in the hands
of the monks when he was alive, they praised him lustily when he was
dead. They had gone so far, already, as to persuade him that he could
work miracles; and had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of
the skin, to him, to be touched and cured. This was called ‘touching
for the King’s Evil,’ which afterwards became a royal custom. You know,
however, Who really touched the sick, and healed them; and you know His
sacred name is not among the dusty line of human kings.




CHAPTER VII
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS


Harold was crowned King of England on the very day of the maudlin
Confessor’s funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. When the
news reached Norman William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped
his bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to council, and
presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his oath
and resign the Crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of
France leagued together round Duke William for the invasion of England.
Duke William promised freely to distribute English wealth and English
lands among them. The Pope sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a
ring containing a hair which he warranted to have grown on the head of
Saint Peter. He blessed the enterprise; and cursed Harold; and
requested that the Normans would pay ‘Peter’s Pence’—or a tax to
himself of a penny a year on every house—a little more regularly in
future, if they could make it convenient.

King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was a vassal of Harold
Hardrada, King of Norway. This brother, and this Norwegian King,
joining their forces against England, with Duke William’s help, won a
fight in which the English were commanded by two nobles; and then
besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the coast at
Hastings, with his army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the river
Derwent to give them instant battle.

He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked out by their shining
spears. Riding round this circle at a distance, to survey it, he saw a
brave figure on horseback, in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose
horse suddenly stumbled and threw him.

‘Who is that man who has fallen?’ Harold asked of one of his captains.

‘The King of Norway,’ he replied.

‘He is a tall and stately king,’ said Harold, ‘but his end is near.’

He added, in a little while, ‘Go yonder to my brother, and tell him, if
he withdraw his troops, he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich
and powerful in England.’

The captain rode away and gave the message.

‘What will he give to my friend the King of Norway?’ asked the brother.

‘Seven feet of earth for a grave,’ replied the captain.

‘No more?’ returned the brother, with a smile.

‘The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps a little more,’ replied
the captain.

‘Ride back!’ said the brother, ‘and tell King Harold to make ready for
the fight!’

He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against that
force, that his brother, and the Norwegian King, and every chief of
note in all their host, except the Norwegian King’s son, Olave, to whom
he gave honourable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The
victorious army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at the feast,
in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at the doors; and
messengers all covered with mire from riding far and fast through
broken ground came hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed
in England.

The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by contrary
winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. A part of their own
shore, to which they had been driven back, was strewn with Norman
bodies. But they had once more made sail, led by the Duke’s own galley,
a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden
boy stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner of the three
Lions of Normandy, the diverse coloured sails, the gilded vanes, the
many decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and
sunny water; by night, a light had sparkled like a star at her
mast-head. And now, encamped near Hastings, with their leader lying in
the old Roman castle of Pevensey, the English retiring in all
directions, the land for miles around scorched and smoking, fired and
pillaged, was the whole Norman power, hopeful and strong on English
ground.

Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within a week, his
army was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman strength.
William took them, caused them to be led through his whole camp, and
then dismissed. ‘The Normans,’ said these spies to Harold, ‘are not
bearded on the upper lip as we English are, but are shorn. They are
priests.’ ‘My men,’ replied Harold, with a laugh, ‘will find those
priests good soldiers!’

‘The Saxons,’ reported Duke William’s outposts of Norman soldiers, who
were instructed to retire as King Harold’s army advanced, ‘rush on us
through their pillaged country with the fury of madmen.’

‘Let them come, and come soon!’ said Duke William.

Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were soon abandoned.
In the middle of the month of October, in the year one thousand and
sixty-six, the Normans and the English came front to front. All night
the armies lay encamped before each other, in a part of the country
then called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of them) Battle. With
the first dawn of day, they arose. There, in the faint light, were the
English on a hill; a wood behind them; in their midst, the Royal
banner, representing a fighting warrior, woven in gold thread, adorned
with precious stones; beneath the banner, as it rustled in the wind,
stood King Harold on foot, with two of his remaining brothers by his
side; around them, still and silent as the dead, clustered the whole
English army—every soldier covered by his shield, and bearing in his
hand his dreaded English battle-axe.

On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, foot-soldiers, horsemen,
was the Norman force. Of a sudden, a great battle-cry, ‘God help us!’
burst from the Norman lines. The English answered with their own
battle-cry, ‘God’s Rood! Holy Rood!’ The Normans then came sweeping
down the hill to attack the English.

There was one tall Norman Knight who rode before the Norman army on a
prancing horse, throwing up his heavy sword and catching it, and
singing of the bravery of his countrymen. An English Knight, who rode
out from the English force to meet him, fell by this Knight’s hand.
Another English Knight rode out, and he fell too. But then a third rode
out, and killed the Norman. This was in the first beginning of the
fight. It soon raged everywhere.

The English, keeping side by side in a great mass, cared no more for
the showers of Norman arrows than if they had been showers of Norman
rain. When the Norman horsemen rode against them, with their
battle-axes they cut men and horses down. The Normans gave way. The
English pressed forward. A cry went forth among the Norman troops that
Duke William was killed. Duke William took off his helmet, in order
that his face might be distinctly seen, and rode along the line before
his men. This gave them courage. As they turned again to face the
English, some of their Norman horse divided the pursuing body of the
English from the rest, and thus all that foremost portion of the
English army fell, fighting bravely. The main body still remaining
firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and with their battle-axes cutting
down the crowds of horsemen when they rode up, like forests of young
trees,—Duke William pretended to retreat. The eager English followed.
The Norman army closed again, and fell upon them with great slaughter.

‘Still,’ said Duke William, ‘there are thousands of the English, firm
as rocks around their King. Shoot upward, Norman archers, that your
arrows may fall down upon their faces!’

The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle still raged. Through all
the wild October day, the clash and din resounded in the air. In the
red sunset, and in the white moonlight, heaps upon heaps of dead men
lay strewn, a dreadful spectacle, all over the ground.

King Harold, wounded with an arrow in the eye, was nearly blind. His
brothers were already killed. Twenty Norman Knights, whose battered
armour had flashed fiery and golden in the sunshine all day long, and
now looked silvery in the moonlight, dashed forward to seize the Royal
banner from the English Knights and soldiers, still faithfully
collected round their blinded King. The King received a mortal wound,
and dropped. The English broke and fled. The Normans rallied, and the
day was lost.

O what a sight beneath the moon and stars, when lights were shining in
the tent of the victorious Duke William, which was pitched near the
spot where Harold fell—and he and his knights were carousing,
within—and soldiers with torches, going slowly to and fro, without,
sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of dead—and the Warrior,
worked in golden thread and precious stones, lay low, all torn and
soiled with blood—and the three Norman Lions kept watch over the field!




CHAPTER VIII
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR


Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, William the Norman
afterwards founded an abbey, which, under the name of Battle Abbey, was
a rich and splendid place through many a troubled year, though now it
is a grey ruin overgrown with ivy. But the first work he had to do, was
to conquer the English thoroughly; and that, as you know by this time,
was hard work for any man.

He ravaged several counties; he burned and plundered many towns; he
laid waste scores upon scores of miles of pleasant country; he
destroyed innumerable lives. At length Stigand, Archbishop of
Canterbury, with other representatives of the clergy and the people,
went to his camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, the insignificant son of
Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed King by others, but nothing came of it.
He fled to Scotland afterwards, where his sister, who was young and
beautiful, married the Scottish King. Edgar himself was not important
enough for anybody to care much about him.

On Christmas Day, William was crowned in Westminster Abbey, under the
title of William the First; but he is best known as William the
Conqueror. It was a strange coronation. One of the bishops who
performed the ceremony asked the Normans, in French, if they would have
Duke William for their king? They answered Yes. Another of the bishops
put the same question to the Saxons, in English. They too answered Yes,
with a loud shout. The noise being heard by a guard of Norman
horse-soldiers outside, was mistaken for resistance on the part of the
English. The guard instantly set fire to the neighbouring houses, and a
tumult ensued; in the midst of which the King, being left alone in the
Abbey, with a few priests (and they all being in a terrible fright
together), was hurriedly crowned. When the crown was placed upon his
head, he swore to govern the English as well as the best of their own
monarchs. I dare say you think, as I do, that if we except the Great
Alfred, he might pretty easily have done that.

Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the last disastrous
battle. Their estates, and the estates of all the nobles who had fought
against him there, King William seized upon, and gave to his own Norman
knights and nobles. Many great English families of the present time
acquired their English lands in this way, and are very proud of it.

But what is got by force must be maintained by force. These nobles were
obliged to build castles all over England, to defend their new
property; and, do what he would, the King could neither soothe nor
quell the nation as he wished. He gradually introduced the Norman
language and the Norman customs; yet, for a long time the great body of
the English remained sullen and revengeful. On his going over to
Normandy, to visit his subjects there, the oppressions of his
half-brother Odo, whom he left in charge of his English kingdom, drove
the people mad. The men of Kent even invited over, to take possession
of Dover, their old enemy Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had led the
fray when the Dover man was slain at his own fireside. The men of
Hereford, aided by the Welsh, and commanded by a chief named Edric the
Wild, drove the Normans out of their country. Some of those who had
been dispossessed of their lands, banded together in the North of
England; some, in Scotland; some, in the thick woods and marshes; and
whensoever they could fall upon the Normans, or upon the English who
had submitted to the Normans, they fought, despoiled, and murdered,
like the desperate outlaws that they were. Conspiracies were set on
foot for a general massacre of the Normans, like the old massacre of
the Danes. In short, the English were in a murderous mood all through
the kingdom.

King William, fearing he might lose his conquest, came back, and tried
to pacify the London people by soft words. He then set forth to repress
the country people by stern deeds. Among the towns which he besieged,
and where he killed and maimed the inhabitants without any distinction,
sparing none, young or old, armed or unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick,
Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York. In all these places, and
in many others, fire and sword worked their utmost horrors, and made
the land dreadful to behold. The streams and rivers were discoloured
with blood; the sky was blackened with smoke; the fields were wastes of
ashes; the waysides were heaped up with dead. Such are the fatal
results of conquest and ambition! Although William was a harsh and
angry man, I do not suppose that he deliberately meant to work this
shocking ruin, when he invaded England. But what he had got by the
strong hand, he could only keep by the strong hand, and in so doing he
made England a great grave.

Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and Godwin, came over from Ireland,
with some ships, against the Normans, but were defeated. This was
scarcely done, when the outlaws in the woods so harassed York, that the
Governor sent to the King for help. The King despatched a general and a
large force to occupy the town of Durham. The Bishop of that place met
the general outside the town, and warned him not to enter, as he would
be in danger there. The general cared nothing for the warning, and went
in with all his men. That night, on every hill within sight of Durham,
signal fires were seen to blaze. When the morning dawned, the English,
who had assembled in great strength, forced the gates, rushed into the
town, and slew the Normans every one. The English afterwards besought
the Danes to come and help them. The Danes came, with two hundred and
forty ships. The outlawed nobles joined them; they captured York, and
drove the Normans out of that city. Then, William bribed the Danes to
go away; and took such vengeance on the English, that all the former
fire and sword, smoke and ashes, death and ruin, were nothing compared
with it. In melancholy songs, and doleful stories, it was still sung
and told by cottage fires on winter evenings, a hundred years
afterwards, how, in those dreadful days of the Normans, there was not,
from the River Humber to the River Tyne, one inhabited village left,
nor one cultivated field—how there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where
the human creatures and the beasts lay dead together.

The outlaws had, at this time, what they called a Camp of Refuge, in
the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. Protected by those marshy
grounds which were difficult of approach, they lay among the reeds and
rushes, and were hidden by the mists that rose up from the watery
earth. Now, there also was, at that time, over the sea in Flanders, an
Englishman named Hereward, whose father had died in his absence, and
whose property had been given to a Norman. When he heard of this wrong
that had been done him (from such of the exiled English as chanced to
wander into that country), he longed for revenge; and joining the
outlaws in their camp of refuge, became their commander. He was so good
a soldier, that the Normans supposed him to be aided by enchantment.
William, even after he had made a road three miles in length across the
Cambridgeshire marshes, on purpose to attack this supposed enchanter,
thought it necessary to engage an old lady, who pretended to be a
sorceress, to come and do a little enchantment in the royal cause. For
this purpose she was pushed on before the troops in a wooden tower; but
Hereward very soon disposed of this unfortunate sorceress, by burning
her, tower and all. The monks of the convent of Ely near at hand,
however, who were fond of good living, and who found it very
uncomfortable to have the country blockaded and their supplies of meat
and drink cut off, showed the King a secret way of surprising the camp.
So Hereward was soon defeated. Whether he afterwards died quietly, or
whether he was killed after killing sixteen of the men who attacked him
(as some old rhymes relate that he did), I cannot say. His defeat put
an end to the Camp of Refuge; and, very soon afterwards, the King,
victorious both in Scotland and in England, quelled the last rebellious
English noble. He then surrounded himself with Norman lords, enriched
by the property of English nobles; had a great survey made of all the
land in England, which was entered as the property of its new owners,
on a roll called Doomsday Book; obliged the people to put out their
fires and candles at a certain hour every night, on the ringing of a
bell which was called The Curfew; introduced the Norman dresses and
manners; made the Normans masters everywhere, and the English,
servants; turned out the English bishops, and put Normans in their
places; and showed himself to be the Conqueror indeed.

But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. They were
always hungering and thirsting for the riches of the English; and the
more he gave, the more they wanted. His priests were as greedy as his
soldiers. We know of only one Norman who plainly told his master, the
King, that he had come with him to England to do his duty as a faithful
servant, and that property taken by force from other men had no charms
for him. His name was Guilbert. We should not forget his name, for it
is good to remember and to honour honest men.

Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was troubled by
quarrels among his sons. He had three living. Robert, called Curthose,
because of his short legs; William, called Rufus or the Red, from the
colour of his hair; and Henry, fond of learning, and called, in the
Norman language, Beauclerc, or Fine-Scholar. When Robert grew up, he
asked of his father the government of Normandy, which he had nominally
possessed, as a child, under his mother, Matilda. The King refusing to
grant it, Robert became jealous and discontented; and happening one
day, while in this temper, to be ridiculed by his brothers, who threw
water on him from a balcony as he was walking before the door, he drew
his sword, rushed up-stairs, and was only prevented by the King himself
from putting them to death. That same night, he hotly departed with
some followers from his father’s court, and endeavoured to take the
Castle of Rouen by surprise. Failing in this, he shut himself up in
another Castle in Normandy, which the King besieged, and where Robert
one day unhorsed and nearly killed him without knowing who he was. His
submission when he discovered his father, and the intercession of the
queen and others, reconciled them; but not soundly; for Robert soon
strayed abroad, and went from court to court with his complaints. He
was a gay, careless, thoughtless fellow, spending all he got on
musicians and dancers; but his mother loved him, and often, against the
King’s command, supplied him with money through a messenger named
Samson. At length the incensed King swore he would tear out Samson’s
eyes; and Samson, thinking that his only hope of safety was in becoming
a monk, became one, went on such errands no more, and kept his eyes in
his head.

All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange coronation, the
Conqueror had been struggling, you see, at any cost of cruelty and
bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All his reign, he struggled
still, with the same object ever before him. He was a stern, bold man,
and he succeeded in it.

He loved money, and was particular in his eating, but he had only
leisure to indulge one other passion, and that was his love of hunting.
He carried it to such a height that he ordered whole villages and towns
to be swept away to make forests for the deer. Not satisfied with
sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an immense district, to form
another in Hampshire, called the New Forest. The many thousands of
miserable peasants who saw their little houses pulled down, and
themselves and children turned into the open country without a shelter,
detested him for his merciless addition to their many sufferings; and
when, in the twenty-first year of his reign (which proved to be the
last), he went over to Rouen, England was as full of hatred against
him, as if every leaf on every tree in all his Royal Forests had been a
curse upon his head. In the New Forest, his son Richard (for he had
four sons) had been gored to death by a Stag; and the people said that
this so cruelly-made Forest would yet be fatal to others of the
Conqueror’s race.

He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France about some
territory. While he stayed at Rouen, negotiating with that King, he
kept his bed and took medicines: being advised by his physicians to do
so, on account of having grown to an unwieldy size. Word being brought
to him that the King of France made light of this, and joked about it,
he swore in a great rage that he should rue his jests. He assembled his
army, marched into the disputed territory, burnt—his old way!—the
vines, the crops, and fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire. But,
in an evil hour; for, as he rode over the hot ruins, his horse, setting
his hoofs upon some burning embers, started, threw him forward against
the pommel of the saddle, and gave him a mortal hurt. For six weeks he
lay dying in a monastery near Rouen, and then made his will, giving
England to William, Normandy to Robert, and five thousand pounds to
Henry. And now, his violent deeds lay heavy on his mind. He ordered
money to be given to many English churches and monasteries, and—which
was much better repentance—released his prisoners of state, some of
whom had been confined in his dungeons twenty years.

It was a September morning, and the sun was rising, when the King was
awakened from slumber by the sound of a church bell. ‘What bell is
that?’ he faintly asked. They told him it was the bell of the chapel of
Saint Mary. ‘I commend my soul,’ said he, ‘to Mary!’ and died.

Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider how he lay in
death! The moment he was dead, his physicians, priests, and nobles, not
knowing what contest for the throne might now take place, or what might
happen in it, hastened away, each man for himself and his own property;
the mercenary servants of the court began to rob and plunder; the body
of the King, in the indecent strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay
alone, for hours, upon the ground. O Conqueror, of whom so many great
names are proud now, of whom so many great names thought nothing then,
it were better to have conquered one true heart, than England!

By-and-by, the priests came creeping in with prayers and candles; and a
good knight, named Herluin, undertook (which no one else would do) to
convey the body to Caen, in Normandy, in order that it might be buried
in St. Stephen’s church there, which the Conqueror had founded. But
fire, of which he had made such bad use in his life, seemed to follow
him of itself in death. A great conflagration broke out in the town
when the body was placed in the church; and those present running out
to extinguish the flames, it was once again left alone.

It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be let down, in its
Royal robes, into a tomb near the high altar, in presence of a great
concourse of people, when a loud voice in the crowd cried out, ‘This
ground is mine! Upon it, stood my father’s house. This King despoiled
me of both ground and house to build this church. In the great name of
God, I here forbid his body to be covered with the earth that is my
right!’ The priests and bishops present, knowing the speaker’s right,
and knowing that the King had often denied him justice, paid him down
sixty shillings for the grave. Even then, the corpse was not at rest.
The tomb was too small, and they tried to force it in. It broke, a
dreadful smell arose, the people hurried out into the air, and, for the
third time, it was left alone.

Where were the Conqueror’s three sons, that they were not at their
father’s burial? Robert was lounging among minstrels, dancers, and
gamesters, in France or Germany. Henry was carrying his five thousand
pounds safely away in a convenient chest he had got made. William the
Red was hurrying to England, to lay hands upon the Royal treasure and
the crown.




CHAPTER IX
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS


William the Red, in breathless haste, secured the three great forts of
Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and made with hot speed for Winchester,
where the Royal treasure was kept. The treasurer delivering him the
keys, he found that it amounted to sixty thousand pounds in silver,
besides gold and jewels. Possessed of this wealth, he soon persuaded
the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown him, and became William the
Second, King of England.

Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he ordered into prison again
the unhappy state captives whom his father had set free, and directed a
goldsmith to ornament his father’s tomb profusely with gold and silver.
It would have been more dutiful in him to have attended the sick
Conqueror when he was dying; but England itself, like this Red King,
who once governed it, has sometimes made expensive tombs for dead men
whom it treated shabbily when they were alive.

The King’s brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming quite content to be
only Duke of that country; and the King’s other brother, Fine-Scholar,
being quiet enough with his five thousand pounds in a chest; the King
flattered himself, we may suppose, with the hope of an easy reign. But
easy reigns were difficult to have in those days. The turbulent Bishop
Odo (who had blessed the Norman army at the Battle of Hastings, and
who, I dare say, took all the credit of the victory to himself) soon
began, in concert with some powerful Norman nobles, to trouble the Red
King.

The truth seems to be that this bishop and his friends, who had lands
in England and lands in Normandy, wished to hold both under one
Sovereign; and greatly preferred a thoughtless good-natured person,
such as Robert was, to Rufus; who, though far from being an amiable man
in any respect, was keen, and not to be imposed upon. They declared in
Robert’s favour, and retired to their castles (those castles were very
troublesome to kings) in a sullen humour. The Red King, seeing the
Normans thus falling from him, revenged himself upon them by appealing
to the English; to whom he made a variety of promises, which he never
meant to perform—in particular, promises to soften the cruelty of the
Forest Laws; and who, in return, so aided him with their valour, that
Odo was besieged in the Castle of Rochester, and forced to abandon it,
and to depart from England for ever: whereupon the other rebellious
Norman nobles were soon reduced and scattered.

Then, the Red King went over to Normandy, where the people suffered
greatly under the loose rule of Duke Robert. The King’s object was to
seize upon the Duke’s dominions. This, the Duke, of course, prepared to
resist; and miserable war between the two brothers seemed inevitable,
when the powerful nobles on both sides, who had seen so much of war,
interfered to prevent it. A treaty was made. Each of the two brothers
agreed to give up something of his claims, and that the longer-liver of
the two should inherit all the dominions of the other. When they had
come to this loving understanding, they embraced and joined their
forces against Fine-Scholar; who had bought some territory of Robert
with a part of his five thousand pounds, and was considered a dangerous
individual in consequence.

St. Michael’s Mount, in Normandy (there is another St. Michael’s Mount,
in Cornwall, wonderfully like it), was then, as it is now, a strong
place perched upon the top of a high rock, around which, when the tide
is in, the sea flows, leaving no road to the mainland. In this place,
Fine-Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, and here he was closely
besieged by his two brothers. At one time, when he was reduced to great
distress for want of water, the generous Robert not only permitted his
men to get water, but sent Fine-Scholar wine from his own table; and,
on being remonstrated with by the Red King, said ‘What! shall we let
our own brother die of thirst? Where shall we get another, when he is
gone?’ At another time, the Red King riding alone on the shore of the
bay, looking up at the Castle, was taken by two of Fine-Scholar’s men,
one of whom was about to kill him, when he cried out, ‘Hold, knave! I
am the King of England!’ The story says that the soldier raised him
from the ground respectfully and humbly, and that the King took him
into his service. The story may or may not be true; but at any rate it
is true that Fine-Scholar could not hold out against his united
brothers, and that he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and wandered
about—as poor and forlorn as other scholars have been sometimes known
to be.

The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King’s time, and were twice
defeated—the second time, with the loss of their King, Malcolm, and his
son. The Welsh became unquiet too. Against them, Rufus was less
successful; for they fought among their native mountains, and did great
execution on the King’s troops. Robert of Normandy became unquiet too;
and, complaining that his brother the King did not faithfully perform
his part of their agreement, took up arms, and obtained assistance from
the King of France, whom Rufus, in the end, bought off with vast sums
of money. England became unquiet too. Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl
of Northumberland, headed a great conspiracy to depose the King, and to
place upon the throne, Stephen, the Conqueror’s near relative. The plot
was discovered; all the chief conspirators were seized; some were
fined, some were put in prison, some were put to death. The Earl of
Northumberland himself was shut up in a dungeon beneath Windsor Castle,
where he died, an old man, thirty long years afterwards. The Priests in
England were more unquiet than any other class or power; for the Red
King treated them with such small ceremony that he refused to appoint
new bishops or archbishops when the old ones died, but kept all the
wealth belonging to those offices in his own hands. In return for this,
the Priests wrote his life when he was dead, and abused him well. I am
inclined to think, myself, that there was little to choose between the
Priests and the Red King; that both sides were greedy and designing;
and that they were fairly matched.

The Red King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, and mean. He had a
worthy minister in his favourite, Ralph, nicknamed—for almost every
famous person had a nickname in those rough days—Flambard, or the
Firebrand. Once, the King being ill, became penitent, and made Anselm,
a foreign priest and a good man, Archbishop of Canterbury. But he no
sooner got well again than he repented of his repentance, and persisted
in wrongfully keeping to himself some of the wealth belonging to the
archbishopric. This led to violent disputes, which were aggravated by
there being in Rome at that time two rival Popes; each of whom declared
he was the only real original infallible Pope, who couldn’t make a
mistake. At last, Anselm, knowing the Red King’s character, and not
feeling himself safe in England, asked leave to return abroad. The Red
King gladly gave it; for he knew that as soon as Anselm was gone, he
could begin to store up all the Canterbury money again, for his own
use.

By such means, and by taxing and oppressing the English people in every
possible way, the Red King became very rich. When he wanted money for
any purpose, he raised it by some means or other, and cared nothing for
the injustice he did, or the misery he caused. Having the opportunity
of buying from Robert the whole duchy of Normandy for five years, he
taxed the English people more than ever, and made the very convents
sell their plate and valuables to supply him with the means to make the
purchase. But he was as quick and eager in putting down revolt as he
was in raising money; for, a part of the Norman people objecting—very
naturally, I think—to being sold in this way, he headed an army against
them with all the speed and energy of his father. He was so impatient,
that he embarked for Normandy in a great gale of wind. And when the
sailors told him it was dangerous to go to sea in such angry weather,
he replied, ‘Hoist sail and away! Did you ever hear of a king who was
drowned?’

You will wonder how it was that even the careless Robert came to sell
his dominions. It happened thus. It had long been the custom for many
English people to make journeys to Jerusalem, which were called
pilgrimages, in order that they might pray beside the tomb of Our
Saviour there. Jerusalem belonging to the Turks, and the Turks hating
Christianity, these Christian travellers were often insulted and ill
used. The Pilgrims bore it patiently for some time, but at length a
remarkable man, of great earnestness and eloquence, called Peter the
Hermit, began to preach in various places against the Turks, and to
declare that it was the duty of good Christians to drive away those
unbelievers from the tomb of Our Saviour, and to take possession of it,
and protect it. An excitement such as the world had never known before
was created. Thousands and thousands of men of all ranks and conditions
departed for Jerusalem to make war against the Turks. The war is called
in history the first Crusade, and every Crusader wore a cross marked on
his right shoulder.

All the Crusaders were not zealous Christians. Among them were vast
numbers of the restless, idle, profligate, and adventurous spirit of
the time. Some became Crusaders for the love of change; some, in the
hope of plunder; some, because they had nothing to do at home; some,
because they did what the priests told them; some, because they liked
to see foreign countries; some, because they were fond of knocking men
about, and would as soon knock a Turk about as a Christian. Robert of
Normandy may have been influenced by all these motives; and by a kind
desire, besides, to save the Christian Pilgrims from bad treatment in
future. He wanted to raise a number of armed men, and to go to the
Crusade. He could not do so without money. He had no money; and he sold
his dominions to his brother, the Red King, for five years. With the
large sum he thus obtained, he fitted out his Crusaders gallantly, and
went away to Jerusalem in martial state. The Red King, who made money
out of everything, stayed at home, busily squeezing more money out of
Normans and English.

After three years of great hardship and suffering—from shipwreck at
sea; from travel in strange lands; from hunger, thirst, and fever, upon
the burning sands of the desert; and from the fury of the Turks—the
valiant Crusaders got possession of Our Saviour’s tomb. The Turks were
still resisting and fighting bravely, but this success increased the
general desire in Europe to join the Crusade. Another great French Duke
was proposing to sell his dominions for a term to the rich Red King,
when the Red King’s reign came to a sudden and violent end.

You have not forgotten the New Forest which the Conqueror made, and
which the miserable people whose homes he had laid waste, so hated. The
cruelty of the Forest Laws, and the torture and death they brought upon
the peasantry, increased this hatred. The poor persecuted country
people believed that the New Forest was enchanted. They said that in
thunder-storms, and on dark nights, demons appeared, moving beneath the
branches of the gloomy trees. They said that a terrible spectre had
foretold to Norman hunters that the Red King should be punished there.
And now, in the pleasant season of May, when the Red King had reigned
almost thirteen years; and a second Prince of the Conqueror’s
blood—another Richard, the son of Duke Robert—was killed by an arrow in
this dreaded Forest; the people said that the second time was not the
last, and that there was another death to come.

It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people’s hearts for the wicked
deeds that had been done to make it; and no man save the King and his
Courtiers and Huntsmen, liked to stray there. But, in reality, it was
like any other forest. In the spring, the green leaves broke out of the
buds; in the summer, flourished heartily, and made deep shades; in the
winter, shrivelled and blew down, and lay in brown heaps on the moss.
Some trees were stately, and grew high and strong; some had fallen of
themselves; some were felled by the forester’s axe; some were hollow,
and the rabbits burrowed at their roots; some few were struck by
lightning, and stood white and bare. There were hill-sides covered with
rich fern, on which the morning dew so beautifully sparkled; there were
brooks, where the deer went down to drink, or over which the whole herd
bounded, flying from the arrows of the huntsmen; there were sunny
glades, and solemn places where but little light came through the
rustling leaves. The songs of the birds in the New Forest were
pleasanter to hear than the shouts of fighting men outside; and even
when the Red King and his Court came hunting through its solitudes,
cursing loud and riding hard, with a jingling of stirrups and bridles
and knives and daggers, they did much less harm there than among the
English or Normans, and the stags died (as they lived) far easier than
the people.

Upon a day in August, the Red King, now reconciled to his brother,
Fine-Scholar, came with a great train to hunt in the New Forest.
Fine-Scholar was of the party. They were a merry party, and had lain
all night at Malwood-Keep, a hunting-lodge in the forest, where they
had made good cheer, both at supper and breakfast, and had drunk a deal
of wine. The party dispersed in various directions, as the custom of
hunters then was. The King took with him only Sir Walter Tyrrel, who
was a famous sportsman, and to whom he had given, before they mounted
horse that morning, two fine arrows.

The last time the King was ever seen alive, he was riding with Sir
Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were hunting together.

It was almost night, when a poor charcoal-burner, passing through the
forest with his cart, came upon the solitary body of a dead man, shot
with an arrow in the breast, and still bleeding. He got it into his
cart. It was the body of the King. Shaken and tumbled, with its red
beard all whitened with lime and clotted with blood, it was driven in
the cart by the charcoal-burner next day to Winchester Cathedral, where
it was received and buried.

Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy, and claimed the protection
of the King of France, swore in France that the Red King was suddenly
shot dead by an arrow from an unseen hand, while they were hunting
together; that he was fearful of being suspected as the King’s
murderer; and that he instantly set spurs to his horse, and fled to the
sea-shore. Others declared that the King and Sir Walter Tyrrel were
hunting in company, a little before sunset, standing in bushes opposite
one another, when a stag came between them. That the King drew his bow
and took aim, but the string broke. That the King then cried, ‘Shoot,
Walter, in the Devil’s name!’ That Sir Walter shot. That the arrow
glanced against a tree, was turned aside from the stag, and struck the
King from his horse, dead.

By whose hand the Red King really fell, and whether that hand
despatched the arrow to his breast by accident or by design, is only
known to God. Some think his brother may have caused him to be killed;
but the Red King had made so many enemies, both among priests and
people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon a less unnatural
murderer. Men know no more than that he was found dead in the New
Forest, which the suffering people had regarded as a doomed ground for
his race.




CHAPTER X
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR


Fine-scholar, on hearing of the Red King’s death, hurried to Winchester
with as much speed as Rufus himself had made, to seize the Royal
treasure. But the keeper of the treasure who had been one of the
hunting-party in the Forest, made haste to Winchester too, and,
arriving there at about the same time, refused to yield it up. Upon
this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and threatened to kill the
treasurer; who might have paid for his fidelity with his life, but that
he knew longer resistance to be useless when he found the Prince
supported by a company of powerful barons, who declared they were
determined to make him King. The treasurer, therefore, gave up the
money and jewels of the Crown: and on the third day after the death of
the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar stood before the high altar
in Westminster Abbey, and made a solemn declaration that he would
resign the Church property which his brother had seized; that he would
do no wrong to the nobles; and that he would restore to the people the
laws of Edward the Confessor, with all the improvements of William the
Conqueror. So began the reign of King Henry the First.

The people were attached to their new King, both because he had known
distresses, and because he was an Englishman by birth and not a Norman.
To strengthen this last hold upon them, the King wished to marry an
English lady; and could think of no other wife than Maud the Good, the
daughter of the King of Scotland. Although this good Princess did not
love the King, she was so affected by the representations the nobles
made to her of the great charity it would be in her to unite the Norman
and Saxon races, and prevent hatred and bloodshed between them for the
future, that she consented to become his wife. After some disputing
among the priests, who said that as she had been in a convent in her
youth, and had worn the veil of a nun, she could not lawfully be
married—against which the Princess stated that her aunt, with whom she
had lived in her youth, had indeed sometimes thrown a piece of black
stuff over her, but for no other reason than because the nun’s veil was
the only dress the conquering Normans respected in girl or woman, and
not because she had taken the vows of a nun, which she never had—she
was declared free to marry, and was made King Henry’s Queen. A good
Queen she was; beautiful, kind-hearted, and worthy of a better husband
than the King.

For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though firm and clever. He
cared very little for his word, and took any means to gain his ends.
All this is shown in his treatment of his brother Robert—Robert, who
had suffered him to be refreshed with water, and who had sent him the
wine from his own table, when he was shut up, with the crows flying
below him, parched with thirst, in the castle on the top of St.
Michael’s Mount, where his Red brother would have let him die.

Before the King began to deal with Robert, he removed and disgraced all
the favourites of the late King; who were for the most part base
characters, much detested by the people. Flambard, or Firebrand, whom
the late King had made Bishop of Durham, of all things in the world,
Henry imprisoned in the Tower; but Firebrand was a great joker and a
jolly companion, and made himself so popular with his guards that they
pretended to know nothing about a long rope that was sent into his
prison at the bottom of a deep flagon of wine. The guards took the
wine, and Firebrand took the rope; with which, when they were fast
asleep, he let himself down from a window in the night, and so got
cleverly aboard ship and away to Normandy.

Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to the throne, was still
absent in the Holy Land. Henry pretended that Robert had been made
Sovereign of that country; and he had been away so long, that the
ignorant people believed it. But, behold, when Henry had been some time
King of England, Robert came home to Normandy; having leisurely
returned from Jerusalem through Italy, in which beautiful country he
had enjoyed himself very much, and had married a lady as beautiful as
itself! In Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge him to assert
his claim to the English crown, and declare war against King Henry.
This, after great loss of time in feasting and dancing with his
beautiful Italian wife among his Norman friends, he at last did.

The English in general were on King Henry’s side, though many of the
Normans were on Robert’s. But the English sailors deserted the King,
and took a great part of the English fleet over to Normandy; so that
Robert came to invade this country in no foreign vessels, but in
English ships. The virtuous Anselm, however, whom Henry had invited
back from abroad, and made Archbishop of Canterbury, was steadfast in
the King’s cause; and it was so well supported that the two armies,
instead of fighting, made a peace. Poor Robert, who trusted anybody and
everybody, readily trusted his brother, the King; and agreed to go home
and receive a pension from England, on condition that all his followers
were fully pardoned. This the King very faithfully promised, but Robert
was no sooner gone than he began to punish them.

Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on being summoned by the
King to answer to five-and-forty accusations, rode away to one of his
strong castles, shut himself up therein, called around him his tenants
and vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was defeated and banished.
Robert, with all his faults, was so true to his word, that when he
first heard of this nobleman having risen against his brother, he laid
waste the Earl of Shrewsbury’s estates in Normandy, to show the King
that he would favour no breach of their treaty. Finding, on better
information, afterwards, that the Earl’s only crime was having been his
friend, he came over to England, in his old thoughtless, warm-hearted
way, to intercede with the King, and remind him of the solemn promise
to pardon all his followers.

This confidence might have put the false King to the blush, but it did
not. Pretending to be very friendly, he so surrounded his brother with
spies and traps, that Robert, who was quite in his power, had nothing
for it but to renounce his pension and escape while he could. Getting
home to Normandy, and understanding the King better now, he naturally
allied himself with his old friend the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had
still thirty castles in that country. This was exactly what Henry
wanted. He immediately declared that Robert had broken the treaty, and
next year invaded Normandy.

He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at their own request,
from his brother’s misrule. There is reason to fear that his misrule
was bad enough; for his beautiful wife had died, leaving him with an
infant son, and his court was again so careless, dissipated, and
ill-regulated, that it was said he sometimes lay in bed of a day for
want of clothes to put on—his attendants having stolen all his dresses.
But he headed his army like a brave prince and a gallant soldier,
though he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with
four hundred of his Knights. Among them was poor harmless Edgar
Atheling, who loved Robert well. Edgar was not important enough to be
severe with. The King afterwards gave him a small pension, which he
lived upon and died upon, in peace, among the quiet woods and fields of
England.

And Robert—poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless Robert, with so
many faults, and yet with virtues that might have made a better and a
happier man—what was the end of him? If the King had had the
magnanimity to say with a kind air, ‘Brother, tell me, before these
noblemen, that from this time you will be my faithful follower and
friend, and never raise your hand against me or my forces more!’ he
might have trusted Robert to the death. But the King was not a
magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother to be confined for life in
one of the Royal Castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment, he was
allowed to ride out, guarded; but he one day broke away from his guard
and galloped off. He had the evil fortune to ride into a swamp, where
his horse stuck fast and he was taken. When the King heard of it he
ordered him to be blinded, which was done by putting a red-hot metal
basin on his eyes.

And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he thought of all his
past life, of the time he had wasted, of the treasure he had
squandered, of the opportunities he had lost, of the youth he had
thrown away, of the talents he had neglected. Sometimes, on fine autumn
mornings, he would sit and think of the old hunting parties in the free
Forest, where he had been the foremost and the gayest. Sometimes, in
the still nights, he would wake, and mourn for the many nights that had
stolen past him at the gaming-table; sometimes, would seem to hear,
upon the melancholy wind, the old songs of the minstrels; sometimes,
would dream, in his blindness, of the light and glitter of the Norman
Court. Many and many a time, he groped back, in his fancy, to
Jerusalem, where he had fought so well; or, at the head of his brave
companions, bowed his feathered helmet to the shouts of welcome
greeting him in Italy, and seemed again to walk among the sunny
vineyards, or on the shore of the blue sea, with his lovely wife. And
then, thinking of her grave, and of his fatherless boy, he would
stretch out his solitary arms and weep.

At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, with cruel and
disfiguring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from his jailer’s sight,
but on which the eternal Heavens looked down, a worn old man of eighty.
He had once been Robert of Normandy. Pity him!

[Illustration: Duke Robert of Normandy]

At the time when Robert of Normandy was taken prisoner by his brother,
Robert’s little son was only five years old. This child was taken, too,
and carried before the King, sobbing and crying; for, young as he was,
he knew he had good reason to be afraid of his Royal uncle. The King
was not much accustomed to pity those who were in his power, but his
cold heart seemed for the moment to soften towards the boy. He was
observed to make a great effort, as if to prevent himself from being
cruel, and ordered the child to be taken away; whereupon a certain
Baron, who had married a daughter of Duke Robert’s (by name, Helie of
Saint Saen), took charge of him, tenderly. The King’s gentleness did
not last long. Before two years were over, he sent messengers to this
lord’s Castle to seize the child and bring him away. The Baron was not
there at the time, but his servants were faithful, and carried the boy
off in his sleep and hid him. When the Baron came home, and was told
what the King had done, he took the child abroad, and, leading him by
the hand, went from King to King and from Court to Court, relating how
the child had a claim to the throne of England, and how his uncle the
King, knowing that he had that claim, would have murdered him, perhaps,
but for his escape.

The youth and innocence of the pretty little William Fitz-Robert (for
that was his name) made him many friends at that time. When he became a
young man, the King of France, uniting with the French Counts of Anjou
and Flanders, supported his cause against the King of England, and took
many of the King’s towns and castles in Normandy. But, King Henry,
artful and cunning always, bribed some of William’s friends with money,
some with promises, some with power. He bought off the Count of Anjou,
by promising to marry his eldest son, also named William, to the
Count’s daughter; and indeed the whole trust of this King’s life was in
such bargains, and he believed (as many another King has done since,
and as one King did in France a very little time ago) that every man’s
truth and honour can be bought at some price. For all this, he was so
afraid of William Fitz-Robert and his friends, that, for a long time,
he believed his life to be in danger; and never lay down to sleep, even
in his palace surrounded by his guards, without having a sword and
buckler at his bedside.

To strengthen his power, the King with great ceremony betrothed his
eldest daughter Matilda, then a child only eight years old, to be the
wife of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of Germany. To raise her
marriage-portion, he taxed the English people in a most oppressive
manner; then treated them to a great procession, to restore their good
humour; and sent Matilda away, in fine state, with the German
ambassadors, to be educated in the country of her future husband.

And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. It was a sad thought
for that gentle lady, that the only hope with which she had married a
man whom she had never loved—the hope of reconciling the Norman and
English races—had failed. At the very time of her death, Normandy and
all France was in arms against England; for, so soon as his last danger
was over, King Henry had been false to all the French powers he had
promised, bribed, and bought, and they had naturally united against
him. After some fighting, however, in which few suffered but the
unhappy common people (who always suffered, whatsoever was the matter),
he began to promise, bribe, and buy again; and by those means, and by
the help of the Pope, who exerted himself to save more bloodshed, and
by solemnly declaring, over and over again, that he really was in
earnest this time, and would keep his word, the King made peace.

One of the first consequences of this peace was, that the King went
over to Normandy with his son Prince William and a great retinue, to
have the Prince acknowledged as his successor by the Norman Nobles, and
to contract the promised marriage (this was one of the many promises
the King had broken) between him and the daughter of the Count of
Anjou. Both these things were triumphantly done, with great show and
rejoicing; and on the twenty-fifth of November, in the year one
thousand one hundred and twenty, the whole retinue prepared to embark
at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home.

On that day, and at that place, there came to the King, Fitz-Stephen, a
sea-captain, and said:

‘My liege, my father served your father all his life, upon the sea. He
steered the ship with the golden boy upon the prow, in which your
father sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to grant me the same
office. I have a fair vessel in the harbour here, called The White
Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you, Sire, to let your
servant have the honour of steering you in The White Ship to England!’

‘I am sorry, friend,’ replied the King, ‘that my vessel is already
chosen, and that I cannot (therefore) sail with the son of the man who
served my father. But the Prince and all his company shall go along
with you, in the fair White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of
renown.’

An hour or two afterwards, the King set sail in the vessel he had
chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing all night with a
fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of England in the morning.
While it was yet night, the people in some of those ships heard a faint
wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was.

Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched young man of eighteen, who
bore no love to the English, and had declared that when he came to the
throne he would yoke them to the plough like oxen. He went aboard The
White Ship, with one hundred and forty youthful Nobles like himself,
among whom were eighteen noble ladies of the highest rank. All this gay
company, with their servants and the fifty sailors, made three hundred
souls aboard the fair White Ship.

‘Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen,’ said the Prince, ‘to the
fifty sailors of renown! My father the King has sailed out of the
harbour. What time is there to make merry here, and yet reach England
with the rest?’

‘Prince!’ said Fitz-Stephen, ‘before morning, my fifty and The White
Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in attendance on your father
the King, if we sail at midnight!’

Then the Prince commanded to make merry; and the sailors drank out the
three casks of wine; and the Prince and all the noble company danced in
the moonlight on the deck of The White Ship.

When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of Barfleur, there was not a
sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set, and the oars all
going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm. The gay young nobles and the
beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of various bright colours to
protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. The Prince
encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet, for the honour of The
White Ship.

Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was the cry
the people in the distant vessels of the King heard faintly on the
water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock—was filling—going down!

Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some few Nobles.
‘Push off,’ he whispered; ‘and row to land. It is not far, and the sea
is smooth. The rest of us must die.’

But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, the Prince heard
the voice of his sister Marie, the Countess of Perche, calling for
help. He never in his life had been so good as he was then. He cried in
an agony, ‘Row back at any risk! I cannot bear to leave her!’

They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch his sister,
such numbers leaped in, that the boat was overset. And in the same
instant The White Ship went down.

Only two men floated. They both clung to the main yard of the ship,
which had broken from the mast, and now supported them. One asked the
other who he was? He said, ‘I am a nobleman, Godfrey by name, the son
of Gilbert de l’Aigle. And you?’ said he. ‘I am Berold, a poor butcher
of Rouen,’ was the answer. Then, they said together, ‘Lord be merciful
to us both!’ and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in the
cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night.

By-and-by, another man came swimming towards them, whom they knew, when
he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. ‘Where is the
Prince?’ said he. ‘Gone! Gone!’ the two cried together. ‘Neither he,
nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King’s niece, nor her brother,
nor any one of all the brave three hundred, noble or commoner, except
we three, has risen above the water!’ Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly
face, cried, ‘Woe! woe, to me!’ and sunk to the bottom.

The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length the young
noble said faintly, ‘I am exhausted, and chilled with the cold, and can
hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!’ So, he
dropped and sunk; and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor Butcher of
Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen saw him floating
in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into their boat—the sole relater of
the dismal tale.

For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King. At
length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping
bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White Ship was
lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man,
and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile.

But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and bought again,
in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed him, after all his
pains (‘The Prince will never yoke us to the plough, now!’ said the
English people), he took a second wife—Adelais or Alice, a duke’s
daughter, and the Pope’s niece. Having no more children, however, he
proposed to the Barons to swear that they would recognise as his
successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he
married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed
Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broom
(called Genêt in French) in his cap for a feather. As one false man
usually makes many, and as a false King, in particular, is pretty
certain to make a false Court, the Barons took the oath about the
succession of Matilda (and her children after her), twice over, without
in the least intending to keep it. The King was now relieved from any
remaining fears of William Fitz-Robert, by his death in the Monastery
of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in the
hand. And as Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the
succession to the throne secure.

He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled by
family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he had reigned
upward of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven years old, he died of
an indigestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he was far from
well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he had often been
cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought over to Reading
Abbey to be buried.

You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-breaking of King Henry the
First, called ‘policy’ by some people, and ‘diplomacy’ by others.
Neither of these fine words will in the least mean that it was true;
and nothing that is not true can possibly be good.

His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning—I should
have given him greater credit even for that, if it had been strong
enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet he once took
prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he ordered the poet’s eyes to
be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him in his verses; and
the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out his own brains
against his prison wall. King Henry the First was avaricious,
revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never lived whose word
was less to be relied upon.




CHAPTER XI
ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN


The King was no sooner dead than all the plans and schemes he had
laboured at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled away like a hollow
heap of sand. Stephen, whom he had never mistrusted or suspected,
started up to claim the throne.

Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror’s daughter, married to the
Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother Henry, the late King had
been liberal; making Henry Bishop of Winchester, and finding a good
marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. This did not prevent
Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, a servant of the late
King, to swear that the King had named him for his heir upon his
death-bed. On this evidence the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned him.
The new King, so suddenly made, lost not a moment in seizing the Royal
treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers with some of it to protect his
throne.

If the dead King had even done as the false witness said, he would have
had small right to will away the English people, like so many sheep or
oxen, without their consent. But he had, in fact, bequeathed all his
territory to Matilda; who, supported by Robert, Earl of Gloucester,
soon began to dispute the crown. Some of the powerful barons and
priests took her side; some took Stephen’s; all fortified their
castles; and again the miserable English people were involved in war,
from which they could never derive advantage whosoever was victorious,
and in which all parties plundered, tortured, starved, and ruined them.

Five years had passed since the death of Henry the First—and during
those five years there had been two terrible invasions by the people of
Scotland under their King, David, who was at last defeated with all his
army—when Matilda, attended by her brother Robert and a large force,
appeared in England to maintain her claim. A battle was fought between
her troops and King Stephen’s at Lincoln; in which the King himself was
taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until his battle-axe and sword
were broken, and was carried into strict confinement at Gloucester.
Matilda then submitted herself to the Priests, and the Priests crowned
her Queen of England.

She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of London had a great
affection for Stephen; many of the Barons considered it degrading to be
ruled by a woman; and the Queen’s temper was so haughty that she made
innumerable enemies. The people of London revolted; and, in alliance
with the troops of Stephen, besieged her at Winchester, where they took
her brother Robert prisoner, whom, as her best soldier and chief
general, she was glad to exchange for Stephen himself, who thus
regained his liberty. Then, the long war went on afresh. Once, she was
pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in the winter weather when the
snow lay thick upon the ground, that her only chance of escape was to
dress herself all in white, and, accompanied by no more than three
faithful Knights, dressed in like manner that their figures might not
be seen from Stephen’s camp as they passed over the snow, to steal away
on foot, cross the frozen Thames, walk a long distance, and at last
gallop away on horseback. All this she did, but to no great purpose
then; for her brother dying while the struggle was yet going on, she at
last withdrew to Normandy.

In two or three years after her withdrawal her cause appeared in
England, afresh, in the person of her son Henry, young Plantagenet,
who, at only eighteen years of age, was very powerful: not only on
account of his mother having resigned all Normandy to him, but also
from his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of the French King,
a bad woman, who had great possessions in France. Louis, the French
King, not relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace, King Stephen’s
son, to invade Normandy: but Henry drove their united forces out of
that country, and then returned here, to assist his partisans, whom the
King was then besieging at Wallingford upon the Thames. Here, for two
days, divided only by the river, the two armies lay encamped opposite
to one another—on the eve, as it seemed to all men, of another
desperate fight, when the Earl of Arundel took heart and said ‘that it
was not reasonable to prolong the unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms
to minister to the ambition of two princes.’

Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this when it was once
uttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet went down, each to his own bank
of the river, and held a conversation across it, in which they arranged
a truce; very much to the dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swaggered
away with some followers, and laid violent hands on the Abbey of St.
Edmund’s-Bury, where he presently died mad. The truce led to a solemn
council at Winchester, in which it was agreed that Stephen should
retain the crown, on condition of his declaring Henry his successor;
that William, another son of the King’s, should inherit his father’s
rightful possessions; and that all the Crown lands which Stephen had
given away should be recalled, and all the Castles he had permitted to
be built demolished. Thus terminated the bitter war, which had now
lasted fifteen years, and had again laid England waste. In the next
year Stephen died, after a troubled reign of nineteen years.

Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he lived, a humane and
moderate man, with many excellent qualities; and although nothing worse
is known of him than his usurpation of the Crown, which he probably
excused to himself by the consideration that King Henry the First was a
usurper too—which was no excuse at all; the people of England suffered
more in these dread nineteen years, than at any former period even of
their suffering history. In the division of the nobility between the
two rival claimants of the Crown, and in the growth of what is called
the Feudal System (which made the peasants the born vassals and mere
slaves of the Barons), every Noble had his strong Castle, where he
reigned the cruel king of all the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he
perpetrated whatever cruelties he chose. And never were worse cruelties
committed upon earth than in wretched England in those nineteen years.

The writers who were living then describe them fearfully. They say that
the castles were filled with devils rather than with men; that the
peasants, men and women, were put into dungeons for their gold and
silver, were tortured with fire and smoke, were hung up by the thumbs,
were hung up by the heels with great weights to their heads, were torn
with jagged irons, killed with hunger, broken to death in narrow chests
filled with sharp-pointed stones, murdered in countless fiendish ways.
In England there was no corn, no meat, no cheese, no butter, there were
no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of burnt towns, and dreary wastes,
were all that the traveller, fearful of the robbers who prowled abroad
at all hours, would see in a long day’s journey; and from sunrise until
night, he would not come upon a home.

The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from pillage, but many
of them had castles of their own, and fought in helmet and armour like
the barons, and drew lots with other fighting men for their share of
booty. The Pope (or Bishop of Rome), on King Stephen’s resisting his
ambition, laid England under an Interdict at one period of this reign;
which means that he allowed no service to be performed in the churches,
no couples to be married, no bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be
buried. Any man having the power to refuse these things, no matter
whether he were called a Pope or a Poulterer, would, of course, have
the power of afflicting numbers of innocent people. That nothing might
be wanting to the miseries of King Stephen’s time, the Pope threw in
this contribution to the public store—not very like the widow’s
contribution, as I think, when Our Saviour sat in Jerusalem
over-against the Treasury, ‘and she threw in two mites, which make a
farthing.’




CHAPTER XII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND

PART THE FIRST

Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one years old, quietly
succeeded to the throne of England, according to his agreement made
with the late King at Winchester. Six weeks after Stephen’s death, he
and his Queen, Eleanor, were crowned in that city; into which they rode
on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst much shouting and
rejoicing, and clashing of music, and strewing of flowers.

The reign of King Henry the Second began well. The King had great
possessions, and (what with his own rights, and what with those of his
wife) was lord of one-third part of France. He was a young man of
vigour, ability, and resolution, and immediately applied himself to
remove some of the evils which had arisen in the last unhappy reign. He
revoked all the grants of land that had been hastily made, on either
side, during the late struggles; he obliged numbers of disorderly
soldiers to depart from England; he reclaimed all the castles belonging
to the Crown; and he forced the wicked nobles to pull down their own
castles, to the number of eleven hundred, in which such dismal
cruelties had been inflicted on the people. The King’s brother,
Geoffrey, rose against him in France, while he was so well employed,
and rendered it necessary for him to repair to that country; where,
after he had subdued and made a friendly arrangement with his brother
(who did not live long), his ambition to increase his possessions
involved him in a war with the French King, Louis, with whom he had
been on such friendly terms just before, that to the French King’s
infant daughter, then a baby in the cradle, he had promised one of his
little sons in marriage, who was a child of five years old. However,
the war came to nothing at last, and the Pope made the two Kings
friends again.

Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last reign, had gone on very
ill indeed. There were all kinds of criminals among them—murderers,
thieves, and vagabonds; and the worst of the matter was, that the good
priests would not give up the bad priests to justice, when they
committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering and defending them. The
King, well knowing that there could be no peace or rest in England
while such things lasted, resolved to reduce the power of the clergy;
and, when he had reigned seven years, found (as he considered) a good
opportunity for doing so, in the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
‘I will have for the new Archbishop,’ thought the King, ‘a friend in
whom I can trust, who will help me to humble these rebellious priests,
and to have them dealt with, when they do wrong, as other men who do
wrong are dealt with.’ So, he resolved to make his favourite, the new
Archbishop; and this favourite was so extraordinary a man, and his
story is so curious, that I must tell you all about him.

Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, named Gilbert à Becket,
made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen
lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had one
fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; and who told him
that she wanted to become a Christian, and was willing to marry him if
they could fly to a Christian country. The merchant returned her love,
until he found an opportunity to escape, when he did not trouble
himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped with his servant Richard,
who had been taken prisoner along with him, and arrived in England and
forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was more loving than the merchant,
left her father’s house in disguise to follow him, and made her way,
under many hardships, to the sea-shore. The merchant had taught her
only two English words (for I suppose he must have learnt the Saracen
tongue himself, and made love in that language), of which London was
one, and his own name, Gilbert, the other. She went among the ships,
saying, ‘London! London!’ over and over again, until the sailors
understood that she wanted to find an English vessel that would carry
her there; so they showed her such a ship, and she paid for her passage
with some of her jewels, and sailed away. Well! The merchant was
sitting in his counting-house in London one day, when he heard a great
noise in the street; and presently Richard came running in from the
warehouse, with his eyes wide open and his breath almost gone, saying,
‘Master, master, here is the Saracen lady!’ The merchant thought
Richard was mad; but Richard said, ‘No, master! As I live, the Saracen
lady is going up and down the city, calling Gilbert! Gilbert!’ Then, he
took the merchant by the sleeve, and pointed out of window; and there
they saw her among the gables and water-spouts of the dark, dirty
street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, surrounded by a wondering
crowd, and passing slowly along, calling Gilbert, Gilbert! When the
merchant saw her, and thought of the tenderness she had shown him in
his captivity, and of her constancy, his heart was moved, and he ran
down into the street; and she saw him coming, and with a great cry
fainted in his arms. They were married without loss of time, and
Richard (who was an excellent man) danced with joy the whole day of the
wedding; and they all lived happy ever afterwards.

This merchant and this Saracen lady had one son, Thomas à Becket. He it
was who became the Favourite of King Henry the Second.

He had become Chancellor, when the King thought of making him
Archbishop. He was clever, gay, well educated, brave; had fought in
several battles in France; had defeated a French knight in single
combat, and brought his horse away as a token of the victory. He lived
in a noble palace, he was the tutor of the young Prince Henry, he was
served by one hundred and forty knights, his riches were immense. The
King once sent him as his ambassador to France; and the French people,
beholding in what state he travelled, cried out in the streets, ‘How
splendid must the King of England be, when this is only the
Chancellor!’ They had good reason to wonder at the magnificence of
Thomas à Becket, for, when he entered a French town, his procession was
headed by two hundred and fifty singing boys; then, came his hounds in
couples; then, eight waggons, each drawn by five horses driven by five
drivers: two of the waggons filled with strong ale to be given away to
the people; four, with his gold and silver plate and stately clothes;
two, with the dresses of his numerous servants. Then, came twelve
horses, each with a monkey on his back; then, a train of people bearing
shields and leading fine war-horses splendidly equipped; then,
falconers with hawks upon their wrists; then, a host of knights, and
gentlemen and priests; then, the Chancellor with his brilliant garments
flashing in the sun, and all the people capering and shouting with
delight.

The King was well pleased with all this, thinking that it only made
himself the more magnificent to have so magnificent a favourite; but he
sometimes jested with the Chancellor upon his splendour too. Once, when
they were riding together through the streets of London in hard winter
weather, they saw a shivering old man in rags. ‘Look at the poor
object!’ said the King. ‘Would it not be a charitable act to give that
aged man a comfortable warm cloak?’ ‘Undoubtedly it would,’ said Thomas
à Becket, ‘and you do well, Sir, to think of such Christian duties.’
‘Come!’ cried the King, ‘then give him your cloak!’ It was made of rich
crimson trimmed with ermine. The King tried to pull it off, the
Chancellor tried to keep it on, both were near rolling from their
saddles in the mud, when the Chancellor submitted, and the King gave
the cloak to the old beggar: much to the beggar’s astonishment, and
much to the merriment of all the courtiers in attendance. For,
courtiers are not only eager to laugh when the King laughs, but they
really do enjoy a laugh against a Favourite.

‘I will make,’ thought King Henry the second, ‘this Chancellor of mine,
Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. He will then be the head of
the Church, and, being devoted to me, will help me to correct the
Church. He has always upheld my power against the power of the clergy,
and once publicly told some bishops (I remember), that men of the
Church were equally bound to me, with men of the sword. Thomas à Becket
is the man, of all other men in England, to help me in my great
design.’ So the King, regardless of all objection, either that he was a
fighting man, or a lavish man, or a courtly man, or a man of pleasure,
or anything but a likely man for the office, made him Archbishop
accordingly.

Now, Thomas à Becket was proud and loved to be famous. He was already
famous for the pomp of his life, for his riches, his gold and silver
plate, his waggons, horses, and attendants. He could do no more in that
way than he had done; and being tired of that kind of fame (which is a
very poor one), he longed to have his name celebrated for something
else. Nothing, he knew, would render him so famous in the world, as the
setting of his utmost power and ability against the utmost power and
ability of the King. He resolved with the whole strength of his mind to
do it.

He may have had some secret grudge against the King besides. The King
may have offended his proud humour at some time or other, for anything
I know. I think it likely, because it is a common thing for Kings,
Princes, and other great people, to try the tempers of their favourites
rather severely. Even the little affair of the crimson cloak must have
been anything but a pleasant one to a haughty man. Thomas à Becket knew
better than any one in England what the King expected of him. In all
his sumptuous life, he had never yet been in a position to disappoint
the King. He could take up that proud stand now, as head of the Church;
and he determined that it should be written in history, either that he
subdued the King, or that the King subdued him.

So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole manner of his life. He
turned off all his brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank bitter
water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered with dirt and vermin (for
it was then thought very religious to be very dirty), flogged his back
to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, washed the feet of
thirteen poor people every day, and looked as miserable as he possibly
could. If he had put twelve hundred monkeys on horseback instead of
twelve, and had gone in procession with eight thousand waggons instead
of eight, he could not have half astonished the people so much as by
this great change. It soon caused him to be more talked about as an
Archbishop than he had been as a Chancellor.

The King was very angry; and was made still more so, when the new
Archbishop, claiming various estates from the nobles as being
rightfully Church property, required the King himself, for the same
reason, to give up Rochester Castle, and Rochester City too. Not
satisfied with this, he declared that no power but himself should
appoint a priest to any Church in the part of England over which he was
Archbishop; and when a certain gentleman of Kent made such an
appointment, as he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas à Becket
excommunicated him.

Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told you of at the close
of the last chapter, the great weapon of the clergy. It consisted in
declaring the person who was excommunicated, an outcast from the Church
and from all religious offices; and in cursing him all over, from the
top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether he was standing up,
lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, hopping, jumping,
gaping, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he was doing. This
unchristian nonsense would of course have made no sort of difference to
the person cursed—who could say his prayers at home if he were shut out
of church, and whom none but God could judge—but for the fears and
superstitions of the people, who avoided excommunicated persons, and
made their lives unhappy. So, the King said to the New Archbishop,
‘Take off this Excommunication from this gentleman of Kent.’ To which
the Archbishop replied, ‘I shall do no such thing.’

The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire committed a most
dreadful murder, that aroused the horror of the whole nation. The King
demanded to have this wretch delivered up, to be tried in the same
court and in the same way as any other murderer. The Archbishop
refused, and kept him in the Bishop’s prison. The King, holding a
solemn assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded that in future all
priests found guilty before their Bishops of crimes against the law of
the land should be considered priests no longer, and should be
delivered over to the law of the land for punishment. The Archbishop
again refused. The King required to know whether the clergy would obey
the ancient customs of the country? Every priest there, but one, said,
after Thomas à Becket, ‘Saving my order.’ This really meant that they
would only obey those customs when they did not interfere with their
own claims; and the King went out of the Hall in great wrath.

Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they were going too
far. Though Thomas à Becket was otherwise as unmoved as Westminster
Hall, they prevailed upon him, for the sake of their fears, to go to
the King at Woodstock, and promise to observe the ancient customs of
the country, without saying anything about his order. The King received
this submission favourably, and summoned a great council of the clergy
to meet at the Castle of Clarendon, by Salisbury. But when the council
met, the Archbishop again insisted on the words ‘saying my order;’ and
he still insisted, though lords entreated him, and priests wept before
him and knelt to him, and an adjoining room was thrown open, filled
with armed soldiers of the King, to threaten him. At length he gave
way, for that time, and the ancient customs (which included what the
King had demanded in vain) were stated in writing, and were signed and
sealed by the chief of the clergy, and were called the Constitutions of
Clarendon.

The quarrel went on, for all that. The Archbishop tried to see the
King. The King would not see him. The Archbishop tried to escape from
England. The sailors on the coast would launch no boat to take him
away. Then, he again resolved to do his worst in opposition to the
King, and began openly to set the ancient customs at defiance.

The King summoned him before a great council at Northampton, where he
accused him of high treason, and made a claim against him, which was
not a just one, for an enormous sum of money. Thomas à Becket was alone
against the whole assembly, and the very Bishops advised him to resign
his office and abandon his contest with the King. His great anxiety and
agitation stretched him on a sick-bed for two days, but he was still
undaunted. He went to the adjourned council, carrying a great cross in
his right hand, and sat down holding it erect before him. The King
angrily retired into an inner room. The whole assembly angrily retired
and left him there. But there he sat. The Bishops came out again in a
body, and renounced him as a traitor. He only said, ‘I hear!’ and sat
there still. They retired again into the inner room, and his trial
proceeded without him. By-and-by, the Earl of Leicester, heading the
barons, came out to read his sentence. He refused to hear it, denied
the power of the court, and said he would refer his cause to the Pope.
As he walked out of the hall, with the cross in his hand, some of those
present picked up rushes—rushes were strewn upon the floors in those
days by way of carpet—and threw them at him. He proudly turned his
head, and said that were he not Archbishop, he would chastise those
cowards with the sword he had known how to use in bygone days. He then
mounted his horse, and rode away, cheered and surrounded by the common
people, to whom he threw open his house that night and gave a supper,
supping with them himself. That same night he secretly departed from
the town; and so, travelling by night and hiding by day, and calling
himself ‘Brother Dearman,’ got away, not without difficulty, to
Flanders.

The struggle still went on. The angry King took possession of the
revenues of the archbishopric, and banished all the relations and
servants of Thomas à Becket, to the number of four hundred. The Pope
and the French King both protected him, and an abbey was assigned for
his residence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas à Becket, on a great
festival day, formally proceeded to a great church crowded with people,
and going up into the pulpit publicly cursed and excommunicated all who
had supported the Constitutions of Clarendon: mentioning many English
noblemen by name, and not distantly hinting at the King of England
himself.

When intelligence of this new affront was carried to the King in his
chamber, his passion was so furious that he tore his clothes, and
rolled like a madman on his bed of straw and rushes. But he was soon up
and doing. He ordered all the ports and coasts of England to be
narrowly watched, that no letters of Interdict might be brought into
the kingdom; and sent messengers and bribes to the Pope’s palace at
Rome. Meanwhile, Thomas à Becket, for his part, was not idle at Rome,
but constantly employed his utmost arts in his own behalf. Thus the
contest stood, until there was peace between France and England (which
had been for some time at war), and until the two children of the two
Kings were married in celebration of it. Then, the French King brought
about a meeting between Henry and his old favourite, so long his enemy.

Even then, though Thomas à Becket knelt before the King, he was
obstinate and immovable as to those words about his order. King Louis
of France was weak enough in his veneration for Thomas à Becket and
such men, but this was a little too much for him. He said that à Becket
‘wanted to be greater than the saints and better than St. Peter,’ and
rode away from him with the King of England. His poor French Majesty
asked à Becket’s pardon for so doing, however, soon afterwards, and cut
a very pitiful figure.

At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. There was
another meeting on French ground between King Henry and Thomas à
Becket, and it was agreed that Thomas à Becket should be Archbishop of
Canterbury, according to the customs of former Archbishops, and that
the King should put him in possession of the revenues of that post. And
now, indeed, you might suppose the struggle at an end, and Thomas à
Becket at rest. No, not even yet. For Thomas à Becket hearing, by some
means, that King Henry, when he was in dread of his kingdom being
placed under an interdict, had had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly
crowned, not only persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop of York
who had performed that ceremony, and to excommunicate the Bishops who
had assisted at it, but sent a messenger of his own into England, in
spite of all the King’s precautions along the coast, who delivered the
letters of excommunication into the Bishops’ own hands. Thomas à Becket
then came over to England himself, after an absence of seven years. He
was privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an ireful
knight, named Ranulf de Broc, had threatened that he should not live to
eat a loaf of bread in England; but he came.

The common people received him well, and marched about with him in a
soldierly way, armed with such rustic weapons as they could get. He
tried to see the young prince who had once been his pupil, but was
prevented. He hoped for some little support among the nobles and
priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants who attended
him, and feasted them, and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill,
and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on Christmas Day
preached in the Cathedral there, and told the people in his sermon that
he had come to die among them, and that it was likely he would be
murdered. He had no fear, however—or, if he had any, he had much more
obstinacy—for he, then and there, excommunicated three of his enemies,
of whom Ranulf de Broc, the ireful knight, was one.

As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in their sitting and
walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was very
natural in the persons so freely excommunicated to complain to the
King. It was equally natural in the King, who had hoped that this
troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a mighty rage
when he heard of these new affronts; and, on the Archbishop of York
telling him that he never could hope for rest while Thomas à Becket
lived, to cry out hastily before his court, ‘Have I no one here who
will deliver me from this man?’ There were four knights present, who,
hearing the King’s words, looked at one another, and went out.

The names of these knights were Reginald Fitzurse, William Tracy, Hugh
de Morville, and Richard Brito; three of whom had been in the train of
Thomas à Becket in the old days of his splendour. They rode away on
horseback, in a very secret manner, and on the third day after
Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not far from Canterbury, which
belonged to the family of Ranulf de Broc. They quietly collected some
followers here, in case they should need any; and proceeding to
Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four knights and twelve men) before
the Archbishop, in his own house, at two o’clock in the afternoon. They
neither bowed nor spoke, but sat down on the floor in silence, staring
at the Archbishop.

Thomas à Becket said, at length, ‘What do you want?’

‘We want,’ said Reginald Fitzurse, ‘the excommunication taken from the
Bishops, and you to answer for your offences to the King.’ Thomas à
Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the clergy was above the
power of the King. That it was not for such men as they were, to
threaten him. That if he were threatened by all the swords in England,
he would never yield.

‘Then we will do more than threaten!’ said the knights. And they went
out with the twelve men, and put on their armour, and drew their
shining swords, and came back.

His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred the great gate of
the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with their
battle-axes; but, being shown a window by which they could enter, they
let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While they were battering
at the door, the attendants of Thomas à Becket had implored him to take
refuge in the Cathedral; in which, as a sanctuary or sacred place, they
thought the knights would dare to do no violent deed. He told them,
again and again, that he would not stir. Hearing the distant voices of
the monks singing the evening service, however, he said it was now his
duty to attend, and therefore, and for no other reason, he would go.

There was a near way between his Palace and the Cathedral, by some
beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. He went into the
Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the Cross carried before him
as usual. When he was safely there, his servants would have fastened
the door, but he said No! it was the house of God and not a fortress.

As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared in the Cathedral
doorway, darkening the little light there was outside, on the dark
winter evening. This knight said, in a strong voice, ‘Follow me, loyal
servants of the King!’ The rattle of the armour of the other knights
echoed through the Cathedral, as they came clashing in.

It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately pillars of
the church, and there were so many hiding-places in the crypt below and
in the narrow passages above, that Thomas à Becket might even at that
pass have saved himself if he would. But he would not. He told the
monks resolutely that he would not. And though they all dispersed and
left him there with no other follower than Edward Gryme, his faithful
cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as ever he had been in his life.

The knights came on, through the darkness, making a terrible noise with
their armed tread upon the stone pavement of the church. ‘Where is the
traitor?’ they cried out. He made no answer. But when they cried,
‘Where is the Archbishop?’ he said proudly, ‘I am here!’ and came out
of the shade and stood before them.

The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid the King and
themselves of him by any other means. They told him he must either fly
or go with them. He said he would do neither; and he threw William
Tracy off with such force when he took hold of his sleeve, that Tracy
reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadiness, he so incensed
them, and exasperated their fierce humour, that Reginald Fitzurse, whom
he called by an ill name, said, ‘Then die!’ and struck at his head. But
the faithful Edward Gryme put out his arm, and there received the main
force of the blow, so that it only made his master bleed. Another voice
from among the knights again called to Thomas à Becket to fly; but,
with his blood running down his face, and his hands clasped, and his
head bent, he commanded himself to God, and stood firm. Then they
cruelly killed him close to the altar of St. Bennet; and his body fell
upon the pavement, which was dirtied with his blood and brains.

It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, who had so
showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in the church, where
a few lamps here and there were but red specks on a pall of darkness;
and to think of the guilty knights riding away on horseback, looking
over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and remembering what they
had left inside.

PART THE SECOND

When the King heard how Thomas à Becket had lost his life in Canterbury
Cathedral, through the ferocity of the four Knights, he was filled with
dismay. Some have supposed that when the King spoke those hasty words,
‘Have I no one here who will deliver me from this man?’ he wished, and
meant à Becket to be slain. But few things are more unlikely; for,
besides that the King was not naturally cruel (though very passionate),
he was wise, and must have known full well what any stupid man in his
dominions must have known, namely, that such a murder would rouse the
Pope and the whole Church against him.

He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent his innocence
(except in having uttered the hasty words); and he swore solemnly and
publicly to his innocence, and contrived in time to make his peace. As
to the four guilty Knights, who fled into Yorkshire, and never again
dared to show themselves at Court, the Pope excommunicated them; and
they lived miserably for some time, shunned by all their countrymen. At
last, they went humbly to Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and
were buried.

It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, that an
opportunity arose very soon after the murder of à Becket, for the King
to declare his power in Ireland—which was an acceptable undertaking to
the Pope, as the Irish, who had been converted to Christianity by one
Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago, before any Pope existed,
considered that the Pope had nothing at all to do with them, or they
with the Pope, and accordingly refused to pay him Peter’s Pence, or
that tax of a penny a house which I have elsewhere mentioned. The
King’s opportunity arose in this way.

The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you can well
imagine. They were continually quarrelling and fighting, cutting one
another’s throats, slicing one another’s noses, burning one another’s
houses, carrying away one another’s wives, and committing all sorts of
violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms—Desmond, Thomond,
Connaught, Ulster, and Leinster—each governed by a separate King, of
whom one claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, one of these Kings,
named Dermond Mac Murrough (a wild kind of name, spelt in more than one
wild kind of way), had carried off the wife of a friend of his, and
concealed her on an island in a bog. The friend resenting this (though
it was quite the custom of the country), complained to the chief King,
and, with the chief King’s help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of his
dominions. Dermond came over to England for revenge; and offered to
hold his realm as a vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would help him
to regain it. The King consented to these terms; but only assisted him,
then, with what were called Letters Patent, authorising any English
subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his service, and aid his
cause.

There was, at Bristol, a certain Earl Richard de Clare, called
Strongbow; of no very good character; needy and desperate, and ready
for anything that offered him a chance of improving his fortunes. There
were, in South Wales, two other broken knights of the same
good-for-nothing sort, called Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Maurice
Fitz-Gerald. These three, each with a small band of followers, took up
Dermond’s cause; and it was agreed that if it proved successful,
Strongbow should marry Dermond’s daughter Eva, and be declared his
heir.

The trained English followers of these knights were so superior in all
the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them against
immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the war, they
cut off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac Murrough; who
turned them every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and, coming to one
which was the head of a man whom he had much disliked, grasped it by
the hair and ears, and tore off the nose and lips with his teeth. You
may judge from this, what kind of a gentleman an Irish King in those
times was. The captives, all through this war, were horribly treated;
the victorious party making nothing of breaking their limbs, and
casting them into the sea from the tops of high rocks. It was in the
midst of the miseries and cruelties attendant on the taking of
Waterford, where the dead lay piled in the streets, and the filthy
gutters ran with blood, that Strongbow married Eva. An odious
marriage-company those mounds of corpses must have made, I think, and
one quite worthy of the young lady’s father.

He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, and various
successes achieved; and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now came
King Henry’s opportunity. To restrain the growing power of Strongbow,
he himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow’s Royal Master, and
deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the enjoyment of
great possessions. The King, then, holding state in Dublin, received
the homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, and so came home
again with a great addition to his reputation as Lord of Ireland, and
with a new claim on the favour of the Pope. And now, their
reconciliation was completed—more easily and mildly by the Pope, than
the King might have expected, I think.

At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so few and his
prospects so bright, those domestic miseries began which gradually made
the King the most unhappy of men, reduced his great spirit, wore away
his health, and broke his heart.

He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen—his secret crowning of whom
had given such offence to Thomas à Becket. Richard, aged sixteen;
Geoffrey, fifteen; and John, his favourite, a young boy whom the
courtiers named Lackland, because he had no inheritance, but to whom
the King meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All these misguided
boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to him, and unnatural brothers
to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the French King, and by his
bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful history.

First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the French King’s
daughter, should be crowned as well as he. His father, the King,
consented, and it was done. It was no sooner done, than he demanded to
have a part of his father’s dominions, during his father’s life. This
being refused, he made off from his father in the night, with his bad
heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the French King’s Court.
Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their
mother tried to join them—escaping in man’s clothes—but she was seized
by King Henry’s men, and immured in prison, where she lay, deservedly,
for sixteen years. Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen,
to whom the King’s protection of his people from their avarice and
oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes.
Every day he heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying
armies against him; of Prince Henry’s wearing a crown before his own
ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of
England; of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him,
their father, without the consent and approval of the Barons of France.
But, with his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the shock
of these disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He called upon
all Royal fathers who had sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs;
he hired, out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false
French King, who stirred his own blood against him; and he carried on
the war with such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a conference to
treat for peace.

The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading green elm-tree,
upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. The war recommenced. Prince
Richard began his fighting career, by leading an army against his
father; but his father beat him and his army back; and thousands of his
men would have rued the day in which they fought in such a wicked
cause, had not the King received news of an invasion of England by the
Scots, and promptly come home through a great storm to repress it. And
whether he really began to fear that he suffered these troubles because
à Becket had been murdered; or whether he wished to rise in the favour
of the Pope, who had now declared à Becket to be a saint, or in the
favour of his own people, of whom many believed that even à Becket’s
senseless tomb could work miracles, I don’t know: but the King no
sooner landed in England than he went straight to Canterbury; and when
he came within sight of the distant Cathedral, he dismounted from his
horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and bleeding feet to à
Becket’s grave. There, he lay down on the ground, lamenting, in the
presence of many people; and by-and-by he went into the Chapter House,
and, removing his clothes from his back and shoulders, submitted
himself to be beaten with knotted cords (not beaten very hard, I dare
say though) by eighty Priests, one after another. It chanced that on
the very day when the King made this curious exhibition of himself, a
complete victory was obtained over the Scots; which very much delighted
the Priests, who said that it was won because of his great example of
repentance. For the Priests in general had found out, since à Becket’s
death, that they admired him of all things—though they had hated him
very cordially when he was alive.

The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base conspiracy of the
King’s undutiful sons and their foreign friends, took the opportunity
of the King being thus employed at home, to lay siege to Rouen, the
capital of Normandy. But the King, who was extraordinarily quick and
active in all his movements, was at Rouen, too, before it was supposed
possible that he could have left England; and there he so defeated the
said Earl of Flanders, that the conspirators proposed peace, and his
bad sons Henry and Geoffrey submitted. Richard resisted for six weeks;
but, being beaten out of castle after castle, he at last submitted too,
and his father forgave him.

To forgive these unworthy princes was only to afford them
breathing-time for new faithlessness. They were so false, disloyal, and
dishonourable, that they were no more to be trusted than common
thieves. In the very next year, Prince Henry rebelled again, and was
again forgiven. In eight years more, Prince Richard rebelled against
his elder brother; and Prince Geoffrey infamously said that the
brothers could never agree well together, unless they were united
against their father. In the very next year after their reconciliation
by the King, Prince Henry again rebelled against his father; and again
submitted, swearing to be true; and was again forgiven; and again
rebelled with Geoffrey.

But the end of this perfidious Prince was come. He fell sick at a
French town; and his conscience terribly reproaching him with his
baseness, he sent messengers to the King his father, imploring him to
come and see him, and to forgive him for the last time on his bed of
death. The generous King, who had a royal and forgiving mind towards
his children always, would have gone; but this Prince had been so
unnatural, that the noblemen about the King suspected treachery, and
represented to him that he could not safely trust his life with such a
traitor, though his own eldest son. Therefore the King sent him a ring
from off his finger as a token of forgiveness; and when the Prince had
kissed it, with much grief and many tears, and had confessed to those
around him how bad, and wicked, and undutiful a son he had been; he
said to the attendant Priests: ‘O, tie a rope about my body, and draw
me out of bed, and lay me down upon a bed of ashes, that I may die with
prayers to God in a repentant manner!’ And so he died, at twenty-seven
years old.

Three years afterwards, Prince Geoffrey, being unhorsed at a
tournament, had his brains trampled out by a crowd of horses passing
over him. So, there only remained Prince Richard, and Prince John—who
had grown to be a young man now, and had solemnly sworn to be faithful
to his father. Richard soon rebelled again, encouraged by his friend
the French King, Philip the Second (son of Louis, who was dead); and
soon submitted and was again forgiven, swearing on the New Testament
never to rebel again; and in another year or so, rebelled again; and,
in the presence of his father, knelt down on his knee before the King
of France; and did the French King homage: and declared that with his
aid he would possess himself, by force, of all his father’s French
dominions.

And yet this Richard called himself a soldier of Our Saviour! And yet
this Richard wore the Cross, which the Kings of France and England had
both taken, in the previous year, at a brotherly meeting underneath the
old wide-spreading elm-tree on the plain, when they had sworn (like
him) to devote themselves to a new Crusade, for the love and honour of
the Truth!

Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of his sons, and almost
ready to lie down and die, the unhappy King who had so long stood firm,
began to fail. But the Pope, to his honour, supported him; and obliged
the French King and Richard, though successful in fight, to treat for
peace. Richard wanted to be Crowned King of England, and pretended that
he wanted to be married (which he really did not) to the French King’s
sister, his promised wife, whom King Henry detained in England. King
Henry wanted, on the other hand, that the French King’s sister should
be married to his favourite son, John: the only one of his sons (he
said) who had never rebelled against him. At last King Henry, deserted
by his nobles one by one, distressed, exhausted, broken-hearted,
consented to establish peace.

One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him, even yet. When they
brought him the proposed treaty of peace, in writing, as he lay very
ill in bed, they brought him also the list of the deserters from their
allegiance, whom he was required to pardon. The first name upon this
list was John, his favourite son, in whom he had trusted to the last.

‘O John! child of my heart!’ exclaimed the King, in a great agony of
mind. ‘O John, whom I have loved the best! O John, for whom I have
contended through these many troubles! Have you betrayed me too!’ And
then he lay down with a heavy groan, and said, ‘Now let the world go as
it will. I care for nothing more!’

After a time, he told his attendants to take him to the French town of
Chinon—a town he had been fond of, during many years. But he was fond
of no place now; it was too true that he could care for nothing more
upon this earth. He wildly cursed the hour when he was born, and cursed
the children whom he left behind him; and expired.

As, one hundred years before, the servile followers of the Court had
abandoned the Conqueror in the hour of his death, so they now abandoned
his descendant. The very body was stripped, in the plunder of the Royal
chamber; and it was not easy to find the means of carrying it for
burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud.

Richard was said in after years, by way of flattery, to have the heart
of a Lion. It would have been far better, I think, to have had the
heart of a Man. His heart, whatever it was, had cause to beat
remorsefully within his breast, when he came—as he did—into the solemn
abbey, and looked on his dead father’s uncovered face. His heart,
whatever it was, had been a black and perjured heart, in all its
dealings with the deceased King, and more deficient in a single touch
of tenderness than any wild beast’s in the forest.

There is a pretty story told of this Reign, called the story of Fair
Rosamond. It relates how the King doted on Fair Rosamond, who was the
loveliest girl in all the world; and how he had a beautiful Bower built
for her in a Park at Woodstock; and how it was erected in a labyrinth,
and could only be found by a clue of silk. How the bad Queen Eleanor,
becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond, found out the secret of the clue,
and one day, appeared before her, with a dagger and a cup of poison,
and left her to the choice between those deaths. How Fair Rosamond,
after shedding many piteous tears and offering many useless prayers to
the cruel Queen, took the poison, and fell dead in the midst of the
beautiful bower, while the unconscious birds sang gaily all around her.

Now, there _was_ a fair Rosamond, and she was (I dare say) the
loveliest girl in all the world, and the King was certainly very fond
of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made jealous. But I am
afraid—I say afraid, because I like the story so much—that there was no
bower, no labyrinth, no silken clue, no dagger, no poison. I am afraid
fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, and died there,
peaceably; her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and
often dressing it with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty
that had enchanted the King when he too was young, and when his life
lay fair before him.

It was dark and ended now; faded and gone. Henry Plantagenet lay quiet
in the abbey church of Fontevraud, in the fifty-seventh year of his
age—never to be completed—after governing England well, for nearly
thirty-five years.




CHAPTER XIII
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART


In the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty-nine,
Richard of the Lion Heart succeeded to the throne of King Henry the
Second, whose paternal heart he had done so much to break. He had been,
as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood; but, the moment he became a
king against whom others might rebel, he found out that rebellion was a
great wickedness. In the heat of this pious discovery, he punished all
the leading people who had befriended him against his father. He could
scarcely have done anything that would have been a better instance of
his real nature, or a better warning to fawners and parasites not to
trust in lion-hearted princes.

He likewise put his late father’s treasurer in chains, and locked him
up in a dungeon from which he was not set free until he had
relinquished, not only all the Crown treasure, but all his own money
too. So, Richard certainly got the Lion’s share of the wealth of this
wretched treasurer, whether he had a Lion’s heart or not.

He was crowned King of England, with great pomp, at Westminster:
walking to the Cathedral under a silken canopy stretched on the tops of
four lances, each carried by a great lord. On the day of his
coronation, a dreadful murdering of the Jews took place, which seems to
have given great delight to numbers of savage persons calling
themselves Christians. The King had issued a proclamation forbidding
the Jews (who were generally hated, though they were the most useful
merchants in England) to appear at the ceremony; but as they had
assembled in London from all parts, bringing presents to show their
respect for the new Sovereign, some of them ventured down to
Westminster Hall with their gifts; which were very readily accepted. It
is supposed, now, that some noisy fellow in the crowd, pretending to be
a very delicate Christian, set up a howl at this, and struck a Jew who
was trying to get in at the Hall door with his present. A riot arose.
The Jews who had got into the Hall, were driven forth; and some of the
rabble cried out that the new King had commanded the unbelieving race
to be put to death. Thereupon the crowd rushed through the narrow
streets of the city, slaughtering all the Jews they met; and when they
could find no more out of doors (on account of their having fled to
their houses, and fastened themselves in), they ran madly about,
breaking open all the houses where the Jews lived, rushing in and
stabbing or spearing them, sometimes even flinging old people and
children out of window into blazing fires they had lighted up below.
This great cruelty lasted four-and-twenty hours, and only three men
were punished for it. Even they forfeited their lives not for murdering
and robbing the Jews, but for burning the houses of some Christians.

King Richard, who was a strong, restless, burly man, with one idea
always in his head, and that the very troublesome idea of breaking the
heads of other men, was mightily impatient to go on a Crusade to the
Holy Land, with a great army. As great armies could not be raised to
go, even to the Holy Land, without a great deal of money, he sold the
Crown domains, and even the high offices of State; recklessly
appointing noblemen to rule over his English subjects, not because they
were fit to govern, but because they could pay high for the privilege.
In this way, and by selling pardons at a dear rate and by varieties of
avarice and oppression, he scraped together a large treasure. He then
appointed two Bishops to take care of his kingdom in his absence, and
gave great powers and possessions to his brother John, to secure his
friendship. John would rather have been made Regent of England; but he
was a sly man, and friendly to the expedition; saying to himself, no
doubt, ‘The more fighting, the more chance of my brother being killed;
and when he _is_ killed, then I become King John!’

Before the newly levied army departed from England, the recruits and
the general populace distinguished themselves by astonishing cruelties
on the unfortunate Jews: whom, in many large towns, they murdered by
hundreds in the most horrible manner.

At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in the Castle, in the absence
of its Governor, after the wives and children of many of them had been
slain before their eyes. Presently came the Governor, and demanded
admission. ‘How can we give it thee, O Governor!’ said the Jews upon
the walls, ‘when, if we open the gate by so much as the width of a
foot, the roaring crowd behind thee will press in and kill us?’

Upon this, the unjust Governor became angry, and told the people that
he approved of their killing those Jews; and a mischievous maniac of a
friar, dressed all in white, put himself at the head of the assault,
and they assaulted the Castle for three days.

Then said Jocen, the head-Jew (who was a Rabbi or Priest), to the rest,
‘Brethren, there is no hope for us with the Christians who are
hammering at the gates and walls, and who must soon break in. As we and
our wives and children must die, either by Christian hands, or by our
own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy by fire what jewels and other
treasure we have here, then fire the castle, and then perish!’

A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater part complied. They
made a blazing heap of all their valuables, and, when those were
consumed, set the castle in flames. While the flames roared and
crackled around them, and shooting up into the sky, turned it
blood-red, Jocen cut the throat of his beloved wife, and stabbed
himself. All the others who had wives or children, did the like
dreadful deed. When the populace broke in, they found (except the
trembling few, cowering in corners, whom they soon killed) only heaps
of greasy cinders, with here and there something like part of the
blackened trunk of a burnt tree, but which had lately been a human
creature, formed by the beneficent hand of the Creator as they were.

After this bad beginning, Richard and his troops went on, in no very
good manner, with the Holy Crusade. It was undertaken jointly by the
King of England and his old friend Philip of France. They commenced the
business by reviewing their forces, to the number of one hundred
thousand men. Afterwards, they severally embarked their troops for
Messina, in Sicily, which was appointed as the next place of meeting.

King Richard’s sister had married the King of this place, but he was
dead: and his uncle Tancred had usurped the crown, cast the Royal Widow
into prison, and possessed himself of her estates. Richard fiercely
demanded his sister’s release, the restoration of her lands, and
(according to the Royal custom of the Island) that she should have a
golden chair, a golden table, four-and-twenty silver cups, and
four-and-twenty silver dishes. As he was too powerful to be
successfully resisted, Tancred yielded to his demands; and then the
French King grew jealous, and complained that the English King wanted
to be absolute in the Island of Messina and everywhere else. Richard,
however, cared little or nothing for this complaint; and in
consideration of a present of twenty thousand pieces of gold, promised
his pretty little nephew Arthur, then a child of two years old, in
marriage to Tancred’s daughter. We shall hear again of pretty little
Arthur by-and-by.

This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody’s brains being knocked
out (which must have rather disappointed him), King Richard took his
sister away, and also a fair lady named Berengaria, with whom he had
fallen in love in France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor (so long
in prison, you remember, but released by Richard on his coming to the
Throne), had brought out there to be his wife; and sailed with them for
Cyprus.

He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King of the Island of Cyprus,
for allowing his subjects to pillage some of the English troops who
were shipwrecked on the shore; and easily conquering this poor monarch,
he seized his only daughter, to be a companion to the lady Berengaria,
and put the King himself into silver fetters. He then sailed away again
with his mother, sister, wife, and the captive princess; and soon
arrived before the town of Acre, which the French King with his fleet
was besieging from the sea. But the French King was in no triumphant
condition, for his army had been thinned by the swords of the Saracens,
and wasted by the plague; and Saladin, the brave Sultan of the Turks,
at the head of a numerous army, was at that time gallantly defending
the place from the hills that rise above it.

Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they agreed in few points
except in gaming, drinking, and quarrelling, in a most unholy manner;
in debauching the people among whom they tarried, whether they were
friends or foes; and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet
places. The French King was jealous of the English King, and the
English King was jealous of the French King, and the disorderly and
violent soldiers of the two nations were jealous of one another;
consequently, the two Kings could not at first agree, even upon a joint
assault on Acre; but when they did make up their quarrel for that
purpose, the Saracens promised to yield the town, to give up to the
Christians the wood of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all their
Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces of gold. All
this was to be done within forty days; but, not being done, King
Richard ordered some three thousand Saracen prisoners to be brought out
in the front of his camp, and there, in full view of their own
countrymen, to be butchered.

The French King had no part in this crime; for he was by that time
travelling homeward with the greater part of his men; being offended by
the overbearing conduct of the English King; being anxious to look
after his own dominions; and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome
air of that hot and sandy country. King Richard carried on the war
without him; and remained in the East, meeting with a variety of
adventures, nearly a year and a half. Every night when his army was on
the march, and came to a halt, the heralds cried out three times, to
remind all the soldiers of the cause in which they were engaged, ‘Save
the Holy Sepulchre!’ and then all the soldiers knelt and said ‘Amen!’
Marching or encamping, the army had continually to strive with the hot
air of the glaring desert, or with the Saracen soldiers animated and
directed by the brave Saladin, or with both together. Sickness and
death, battle and wounds, were always among them; but through every
difficulty King Richard fought like a giant, and worked like a common
labourer. Long and long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible
battle-axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel in its mighty
head, was a legend among the Saracens; and when all the Saracen and
Christian hosts had been dust for many a year, if a Saracen horse
started at any object by the wayside, his rider would exclaim, ‘What
dost thou fear, Fool? Dost thou think King Richard is behind it?’

No one admired this King’s renown for bravery more than Saladin
himself, who was a generous and gallant enemy. When Richard lay ill of
a fever, Saladin sent him fresh fruits from Damascus, and snow from the
mountain-tops. Courtly messages and compliments were frequently
exchanged between them—and then King Richard would mount his horse and
kill as many Saracens as he could; and Saladin would mount his, and
kill as many Christians as he could. In this way King Richard fought to
his heart’s content at Arsoof and at Jaffa; and finding himself with
nothing exciting to do at Ascalon, except to rebuild, for his own
defence, some fortifications there which the Saracens had destroyed, he
kicked his ally the Duke of Austria, for being too proud to work at
them.

The army at last came within sight of the Holy City of Jerusalem; but,
being then a mere nest of jealousy, and quarrelling and fighting, soon
retired, and agreed with the Saracens upon a truce for three years,
three months, three days, and three hours. Then, the English
Christians, protected by the noble Saladin from Saracen revenge,
visited Our Saviour’s tomb; and then King Richard embarked with a small
force at Acre to return home.

But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was fain to pass
through Germany, under an assumed name. Now, there were many people in
Germany who had served in the Holy Land under that proud Duke of
Austria who had been kicked; and some of them, easily recognising a man
so remarkable as King Richard, carried their intelligence to the kicked
Duke, who straightway took him prisoner at a little inn near Vienna.

The Duke’s master the Emperor of Germany, and the King of France, were
equally delighted to have so troublesome a monarch in safe keeping.
Friendships which are founded on a partnership in doing wrong, are
never true; and the King of France was now quite as heartily King
Richard’s foe, as he had ever been his friend in his unnatural conduct
to his father. He monstrously pretended that King Richard had designed
to poison him in the East; he charged him with having murdered, there,
a man whom he had in truth befriended; he bribed the Emperor of Germany
to keep him close prisoner; and, finally, through the plotting of these
two princes, Richard was brought before the German legislature, charged
with the foregoing crimes, and many others. But he defended himself so
well, that many of the assembly were moved to tears by his eloquence
and earnestness. It was decided that he should be treated, during the
rest of his captivity, in a manner more becoming his dignity than he
had been, and that he should be set free on the payment of a heavy
ransom. This ransom the English people willingly raised. When Queen
Eleanor took it over to Germany, it was at first evaded and refused.
But she appealed to the honour of all the princes of the German Empire
in behalf of her son, and appealed so well that it was accepted, and
the King released. Thereupon, the King of France wrote to Prince
John—‘Take care of thyself. The devil is unchained!’

Prince John had reason to fear his brother, for he had been a traitor
to him in his captivity. He had secretly joined the French King; had
vowed to the English nobles and people that his brother was dead; and
had vainly tried to seize the crown. He was now in France, at a place
called Evreux. Being the meanest and basest of men, he contrived a mean
and base expedient for making himself acceptable to his brother. He
invited the French officers of the garrison in that town to dinner,
murdered them all, and then took the fortress. With this recommendation
to the good will of a lion-hearted monarch, he hastened to King
Richard, fell on his knees before him, and obtained the intercession of
Queen Eleanor. ‘I forgive him,’ said the King, ‘and I hope I may forget
the injury he has done me, as easily as I know he will forget my
pardon.’

While King Richard was in Sicily, there had been trouble in his
dominions at home: one of the bishops whom he had left in charge
thereof, arresting the other; and making, in his pride and ambition, as
great a show as if he were King himself. But the King hearing of it at
Messina, and appointing a new Regency, this Longchamp (for that was his
name) had fled to France in a woman’s dress, and had there been
encouraged and supported by the French King. With all these causes of
offence against Philip in his mind, King Richard had no sooner been
welcomed home by his enthusiastic subjects with great display and
splendour, and had no sooner been crowned afresh at Winchester, than he
resolved to show the French King that the Devil was unchained indeed,
and made war against him with great fury.

There was fresh trouble at home about this time, arising out of the
discontents of the poor people, who complained that they were far more
heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a spirited champion in
William Fitz-Osbert, called Longbeard. He became the leader of a secret
society, comprising fifty thousand men; he was seized by surprise; he
stabbed the citizen who first laid hands upon him; and retreated,
bravely fighting, to a church, which he maintained four days, until he
was dislodged by fire, and run through the body as he came out. He was
not killed, though; for he was dragged, half dead, at the tail of a
horse to Smithfield, and there hanged. Death was long a favourite
remedy for silencing the people’s advocates; but as we go on with this
history, I fancy we shall find them difficult to make an end of, for
all that.

The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was still in progress
when a certain Lord named Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, chanced to find
in his ground a treasure of ancient coins. As the King’s vassal, he
sent the King half of it; but the King claimed the whole. The lord
refused to yield the whole. The King besieged the lord in his castle,
swore that he would take the castle by storm, and hang every man of its
defenders on the battlements.

There was a strange old song in that part of the country, to the effect
that in Limoges an arrow would be made by which King Richard would die.
It may be that Bertrand de Gourdon, a young man who was one of the
defenders of the castle, had often sung it or heard it sung of a winter
night, and remembered it when he saw, from his post upon the ramparts,
the King attended only by his chief officer riding below the walls
surveying the place. He drew an arrow to the head, took steady aim,
said between his teeth, ‘Now I pray God speed thee well, arrow!’
discharged it, and struck the King in the left shoulder.

Although the wound was not at first considered dangerous, it was severe
enough to cause the King to retire to his tent, and direct the assault
to be made without him. The castle was taken; and every man of its
defenders was hanged, as the King had sworn all should be, except
Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved until the royal pleasure
respecting him should be known.

By that time unskilful treatment had made the wound mortal and the King
knew that he was dying. He directed Bertrand to be brought into his
tent. The young man was brought there, heavily chained, King Richard
looked at him steadily. He looked, as steadily, at the King.

‘Knave!’ said King Richard. ‘What have I done to thee that thou
shouldest take my life?’

‘What hast thou done to me?’ replied the young man. ‘With thine own
hands thou hast killed my father and my two brothers. Myself thou
wouldest have hanged. Let me die now, by any torture that thou wilt. My
comfort is, that no torture can save Thee. Thou too must die; and,
through me, the world is quit of thee!’

Again the King looked at the young man steadily. Again the young man
looked steadily at him. Perhaps some remembrance of his generous enemy
Saladin, who was not a Christian, came into the mind of the dying King.

‘Youth!’ he said, ‘I forgive thee. Go unhurt!’ Then, turning to the
chief officer who had been riding in his company when he received the
wound, King Richard said:

‘Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let him
depart.’

He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed in his weakened eyes
to fill the tent wherein he had so often rested, and he died. His age
was forty-two; he had reigned ten years. His last command was not
obeyed; for the chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdon alive, and
hanged him.

There is an old tune yet known—a sorrowful air will sometimes outlive
many generations of strong men, and even last longer than battle-axes
with twenty pounds of steel in the head—by which this King is said to
have been discovered in his captivity. Blondel, a favourite Minstrel of
King Richard, as the story relates, faithfully seeking his Royal
master, went singing it outside the gloomy walls of many foreign
fortresses and prisons; until at last he heard it echoed from within a
dungeon, and knew the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, ‘O Richard, O my
King!’ You may believe it, if you like; it would be easy to believe
worse things. Richard was himself a Minstrel and a Poet. If he had not
been a Prince too, he might have been a better man perhaps, and might
have gone out of the world with less bloodshed and waste of life to
answer for.




CHAPTER XIV
ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND


At two-and-thirty years of age, John became King of England. His pretty
little nephew Arthur had the best claim to the throne; but John seized
the treasure, and made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself
crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his brother Richard’s
death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been put upon the
head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if England had
been searched from end to end to find him out.

The French King, Philip, refused to acknowledge the right of John to
his new dignity, and declared in favour of Arthur. You must not suppose
that he had any generosity of feeling for the fatherless boy; it merely
suited his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of England. So John and
the French King went to war about Arthur.

He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years old. He was not
born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at the
tournament; and, besides the misfortune of never having known a
father’s guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune to
have a foolish mother (Constance by name), lately married to her third
husband. She took Arthur, upon John’s accession, to the French King,
who pretended to be very much his friend, and who made him a Knight,
and promised him his daughter in marriage; but, who cared so little
about him in reality, that finding it his interest to make peace with
King John for a time, he did so without the least consideration for the
poor little Prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all his interests.

Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly; and in the
course of that time his mother died. But, the French King then finding
it his interest to quarrel with King John again, again made Arthur his
pretence, and invited the orphan boy to court. ‘You know your rights,
Prince,’ said the French King, ‘and you would like to be a King. Is it
not so?’ ‘Truly,’ said Prince Arthur, ‘I should greatly like to be a
King!’ ‘Then,’ said Philip, ‘you shall have two hundred gentlemen who
are Knights of mine, and with them you shall go to win back the
provinces belonging to you, of which your uncle, the usurping King of
England, has taken possession. I myself, meanwhile, will head a force
against him in Normandy.’ Poor Arthur was so flattered and so grateful
that he signed a treaty with the crafty French King, agreeing to
consider him his superior Lord, and that the French King should keep
for himself whatever he could take from King John.

Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip was so
perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, might as well have been a
lamb between a fox and a wolf. But, being so young, he was ardent and
flushed with hope; and, when the people of Brittany (which was his
inheritance) sent him five hundred more knights and five thousand foot
soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. The people of Brittany had
been fond of him from his birth, and had requested that he might be
called Arthur, in remembrance of that dimly-famous English Arthur, of
whom I told you early in this book, whom they believed to have been the
brave friend and companion of an old King of their own. They had tales
among them about a prophet called Merlin (of the same old time), who
had foretold that their own King should be restored to them after
hundreds of years; and they believed that the prophecy would be
fulfilled in Arthur; that the time would come when he would rule them
with a crown of Brittany upon his head; and when neither King of France
nor King of England would have any power over them. When Arthur found
himself riding in a glittering suit of armour on a richly caparisoned
horse, at the head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began to
believe this too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior prophet.

He did not know—how could he, being so innocent and inexperienced?—that
his little army was a mere nothing against the power of the King of
England. The French King knew it; but the poor boy’s fate was little to
him, so that the King of England was worried and distressed. Therefore,
King Philip went his way into Normandy and Prince Arthur went his way
towards Mirebeau, a French town near Poictiers, both very well pleased.

Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, because his
grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made her appearance in this
history (and who had always been his mother’s enemy), was living there,
and because his Knights said, ‘Prince, if you can take her prisoner,
you will be able to bring the King your uncle to terms!’ But she was
not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this time—eighty—but she
was as full of stratagem as she was full of years and wickedness.
Receiving intelligence of young Arthur’s approach, she shut herself up
in a high tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend it like men.
Prince Arthur with his little army besieged the high tower. King John,
hearing how matters stood, came up to the rescue, with _his_ army. So
here was a strange family-party! The boy-Prince besieging his
grandmother, and his uncle besieging him!

This position of affairs did not last long. One summer night King John,
by treachery, got his men into the town, surprised Prince Arthur’s
force, took two hundred of his knights, and seized the Prince himself
in his bed. The Knights were put in heavy irons, and driven away in
open carts drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons where they were most
inhumanly treated, and where some of them were starved to death. Prince
Arthur was sent to the castle of Falaise.

One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mournfully thinking it
strange that one so young should be in so much trouble, and looking out
of the small window in the deep dark wall, at the summer sky and the
birds, the door was softly opened, and he saw his uncle the King
standing in the shadow of the archway, looking very grim.

‘Arthur,’ said the King, with his wicked eyes more on the stone floor
than on his nephew, ‘will you not trust to the gentleness, the
friendship, and the truthfulness of your loving uncle?’

‘I will tell my loving uncle that,’ replied the boy, ‘when he does me
right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of England, and then come to me
and ask the question.’

The King looked at him and went out. ‘Keep that boy close prisoner,’
said he to the warden of the castle.

Then, the King took secret counsel with the worst of his nobles how the
Prince was to be got rid of. Some said, ‘Put out his eyes and keep him
in prison, as Robort of Normandy was kept.’ Others said, ‘Have him
stabbed.’ Others, ‘Have him hanged.’ Others, ‘Have him poisoned.’

King John, feeling that in any case, whatever was done afterwards, it
would be a satisfaction to his mind to have those handsome eyes burnt
out that had looked at him so proudly while his own royal eyes were
blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind
the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically entreated them,
and shed such piteous tears, and so appealed to Hubert de Bourg (or
Burgh), the warden of the castle, who had a love for him, and was an
honourable, tender man, that Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal
honour he prevented the torture from being performed, and, at his own
risk, sent the savages away.

The chafed and disappointed King bethought himself of the stabbing
suggestion next, and, with his shuffling manner and his cruel face,
proposed it to one William de Bray. ‘I am a gentleman and not an
executioner,’ said William de Bray, and left the presence with disdain.

But it was not difficult for a King to hire a murderer in those days.
King John found one for his money, and sent him down to the castle of
Falaise. ‘On what errand dost thou come?’ said Hubert to this fellow.
‘To despatch young Arthur,’ he returned. ‘Go back to him who sent
thee,’ answered Hubert, ‘and say that I will do it!’

King John very well knowing that Hubert would never do it, but that he
courageously sent this reply to save the Prince or gain time,
despatched messengers to convey the young prisoner to the castle of
Rouen.

Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert—of whom he had never stood
in greater need than then—carried away by night, and lodged in his new
prison: where, through his grated window, he could hear the deep waters
of the river Seine, rippling against the stone wall below.

One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps of rescue by those
unfortunate gentlemen who were obscurely suffering and dying in his
cause, he was roused, and bidden by his jailer to come down the
staircase to the foot of the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and
obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the winding stairs, and the
night air from the river blew upon their faces, the jailer trod upon
his torch and put it out. Then, Arthur, in the darkness, was hurriedly
drawn into a solitary boat. And in that boat, he found his uncle and
one other man.

He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder him. Deaf to his
entreaties, they stabbed him and sunk his body in the river with heavy
stones. When the spring-morning broke, the tower-door was closed, the
boat was gone, the river sparkled on its way, and never more was any
trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes.

The news of this atrocious murder being spread in England, awakened a
hatred of the King (already odious for his many vices, and for his
having stolen away and married a noble lady while his own wife was
living) that never slept again through his whole reign. In Brittany,
the indignation was intense. Arthur’s own sister Eleanor was in the
power of John and shut up in a convent at Bristol, but his half-sister
Alice was in Brittany. The people chose her, and the murdered prince’s
father-in-law, the last husband of Constance, to represent them; and
carried their fiery complaints to King Philip. King Philip summoned
King John (as the holder of territory in France) to come before him and
defend himself. King John refusing to appear, King Philip declared him
false, perjured, and guilty; and again made war. In a little time, by
conquering the greater part of his French territory, King Philip
deprived him of one-third of his dominions. And, through all the
fighting that took place, King John was always found, either to be
eating and drinking, like a gluttonous fool, when the danger was at a
distance, or to be running away, like a beaten cur, when it was near.

You might suppose that when he was losing his dominions at this rate,
and when his own nobles cared so little for him or his cause that they
plainly refused to follow his banner out of England, he had enemies
enough. But he made another enemy of the Pope, which he did in this
way.

The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior monks of that place
wishing to get the start of the senior monks in the appointment of his
successor, met together at midnight, secretly elected a certain
Reginald, and sent him off to Rome to get the Pope’s approval. The
senior monks and the King soon finding this out, and being very angry
about it, the junior monks gave way, and all the monks together elected
the Bishop of Norwich, who was the King’s favourite. The Pope, hearing
the whole story, declared that neither election would do for him, and
that _he_ elected Stephen Langton. The monks submitting to the Pope,
the King turned them all out bodily, and banished them as traitors. The
Pope sent three bishops to the King, to threaten him with an Interdict.
The King told the bishops that if any Interdict were laid upon his
kingdom, he would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of all the
monks he could lay hold of, and send them over to Rome in that
undecorated state as a present for their master. The bishops,
nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled.

After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next step; which
was Excommunication. King John was declared excommunicated, with all
the usual ceremonies. The King was so incensed at this, and was made so
desperate by the disaffection of his Barons and the hatred of his
people, that it is said he even privately sent ambassadors to the Turks
in Spain, offering to renounce his religion and hold his kingdom of
them if they would help him. It is related that the ambassadors were
admitted to the presence of the Turkish Emir through long lines of
Moorish guards, and that they found the Emir with his eyes seriously
fixed on the pages of a large book, from which he never once looked up.
That they gave him a letter from the King containing his proposals, and
were gravely dismissed. That presently the Emir sent for one of them,
and conjured him, by his faith in his religion, to say what kind of man
the King of England truly was? That the ambassador, thus pressed,
replied that the King of England was a false tyrant, against whom his
own subjects would soon rise. And that this was quite enough for the
Emir.

Money being, in his position, the next best thing to men, King John
spared no means of getting it. He set on foot another oppressing and
torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was quite in his way), and
invented a new punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such
time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of money, the King
sentenced him to be imprisoned, and, every day, to have one tooth
violently wrenched out of his head—beginning with the double teeth. For
seven days, the oppressed man bore the daily pain and lost the daily
tooth; but, on the eighth, he paid the money. With the treasure raised
in such ways, the King made an expedition into Ireland, where some
English nobles had revolted. It was one of the very few places from
which he did not run away; because no resistance was shown. He made
another expedition into Wales—whence he _did_ run away in the end: but
not before he had got from the Welsh people, as hostages, twenty-seven
young men of the best families; every one of whom he caused to be slain
in the following year.

To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now added his last sentence;
Deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all his
subjects from their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others to
the King of France to tell him that, if he would invade England, he
should be forgiven all his sins—at least, should be forgiven them by
the Pope, if that would do.

As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to invade
England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen
hundred ships to bring them over. But the English people, however
bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to suffer invasion
quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English standard was, in such
great numbers to enrol themselves as defenders of their native land,
that there were not provisions for them, and the King could only select
and retain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his
own reasons for objecting to either King John or King Philip being too
powerful, interfered. He entrusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf,
with the easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to the English
Camp, from France, to terrify him with exaggerations of King Philip’s
power, and his own weakness in the discontent of the English Barons and
people. Pandolf discharged his commission so well, that King John, in a
wretched panic, consented to acknowledge Stephen Langton; to resign his
kingdom ‘to God, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul’—which meant the Pope; and
to hold it, ever afterwards, by the Pope’s leave, on payment of an
annual sum of money. To this shameful contract he publicly bound
himself in the church of the Knights Templars at Dover: where he laid
at the legate’s feet a part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily
trampled upon. But they _do_ say, that this was merely a genteel
flourish, and that he was afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket it.

There was an unfortunate prophet, the name of Peter, who had greatly
increased King John’s terrors by predicting that he would be unknighted
(which the King supposed to signify that he would die) before the Feast
of the Ascension should be past. That was the day after this
humiliation. When the next morning came, and the King, who had been
trembling all night, found himself alive and safe, he ordered the
prophet—and his son too—to be dragged through the streets at the tails
of horses, and then hanged, for having frightened him.

As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King Philip’s great
astonishment, took him under his protection, and informed King Philip
that he found he could not give him leave to invade England. The angry
Philip resolved to do it without his leave but he gained nothing and
lost much; for, the English, commanded by the Earl of Salisbury, went
over, in five hundred ships, to the French coast, before the French
fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly defeated the whole.

The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after another, and
empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John into the favour
of the Church again, and to ask him to dinner. The King, who hated
Langton with all his might and main—and with reason too, for he was a
great and a good man, with whom such a King could have no
sympathy—pretended to cry and to be _very_ grateful. There was a little
difficulty about settling how much the King should pay as a recompense
to the clergy for the losses he had caused them; but, the end of it
was, that the superior clergy got a good deal, and the inferior clergy
got little or nothing—which has also happened since King John’s time, I
believe.

When all these matters were arranged, the King in his triumph became
more fierce, and false, and insolent to all around him than he had ever
been. An alliance of sovereigns against King Philip, gave him an
opportunity of landing an army in France; with which he even took a
town! But, on the French King’s gaining a great victory, he ran away,
of course, and made a truce for five years.

And now the time approached when he was to be still further humbled,
and made to feel, if he could feel anything, what a wretched creature
he was. Of all men in the world, Stephen Langton seemed raised up by
Heaven to oppose and subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and destroyed
the property of his own subjects, because their Lords, the Barons,
would not serve him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and
threatened him. When he swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or
the laws of King Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood,
and pursued him through all his evasions. When the Barons met at the
abbey of Saint Edmund’s-Bury, to consider their wrongs and the King’s
oppressions, Stephen Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand
a solemn charter of rights and liberties from their perjured master,
and to swear, one by one, on the High Altar, that they would have it,
or would wage war against him to the death. When the King hid himself
in London from the Barons, and was at last obliged to receive them,
they told him roundly they would not believe him unless Stephen Langton
became a surety that he would keep his word. When he took the Cross to
invest himself with some interest, and belong to something that was
received with favour, Stephen Langton was still immovable. When he
appealed to the Pope, and the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf
of his new favourite, Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the Pope
himself, and saw before him nothing but the welfare of England and the
crimes of the English King.

At Easter-time, the Barons assembled at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, in
proud array, and, marching near to Oxford where the King was, delivered
into the hands of Stephen Langton and two others, a list of grievances.
‘And these,’ they said, ‘he must redress, or we will do it for
ourselves!’ When Stephen Langton told the King as much, and read the
list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did him no more good
than his afterwards trying to pacify the Barons with lies. They called
themselves and their followers, ‘The army of God and the Holy Church.’
Marching through the country, with the people thronging to them
everywhere (except at Northampton, where they failed in an attack upon
the castle), they at last triumphantly set up their banner in London
itself, whither the whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to
join them. Seven knights alone, of all the knights in England, remained
with the King; who, reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl of
Pembroke to the Barons to say that he approved of everything, and would
meet them to sign their charter when they would. ‘Then,’ said the
Barons, ‘let the day be the fifteenth of June, and the place,
Runny-Mead.’

On Monday, the fifteenth of June, one thousand two hundred and
fourteen, the King came from Windsor Castle, and the Barons came from
the town of Staines, and they met on Runny-Mead, which is still a
pleasant meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow in the clear water of
the winding river, and its banks are green with grass and trees. On the
side of the Barons, came the General of their army, Robert Fitz-Walter,
and a great concourse of the nobility of England. With the King, came,
in all, some four-and-twenty persons of any note, most of whom despised
him, and were merely his advisers in form. On that great day, and in
that great company, the King signed Magna Charta—the great charter of
England—by which he pledged himself to maintain the Church in its
rights; to relieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of
the Crown—of which the Barons, in their turn, pledged themselves to
relieve _their_ vassals, the people; to respect the liberties of London
and all other cities and boroughs; to protect foreign merchants who
came to England; to imprison no man without a fair trial; and to sell,
delay, or deny justice to none. As the Barons knew his falsehood well,
they further required, as their securities, that he should send out of
his kingdom all his foreign troops; that for two months they should
hold possession of the city of London, and Stephen Langton of the
Tower; and that five-and-twenty of their body, chosen by themselves,
should be a lawful committee to watch the keeping of the charter, and
to make war upon him if he broke it.

All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the charter with a smile,
and, if he could have looked agreeable, would have done so, as he
departed from the splendid assembly. When he got home to Windsor
Castle, he was quite a madman in his helpless fury. And he broke the
charter immediately afterwards.

He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to the Pope for help, and
plotted to take London by surprise, while the Barons should be holding
a great tournament at Stamford, which they had agreed to hold there as
a celebration of the charter. The Barons, however, found him out and
put it off. Then, when the Barons desired to see him and tax him with
his treachery, he made numbers of appointments with them, and kept
none, and shifted from place to place, and was constantly sneaking and
skulking about. At last he appeared at Dover, to join his foreign
soldiers, of whom numbers came into his pay; and with them he besieged
and took Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights and soldiers
of the Barons. He would have hanged them every one; but the leader of
the foreign soldiers, fearful of what the English people might
afterwards do to him, interfered to save the knights; therefore the
King was fain to satisfy his vengeance with the death of all the common
men. Then, he sent the Earl of Salisbury, with one portion of his army,
to ravage the eastern part of his own dominions, while he carried fire
and slaughter into the northern part; torturing, plundering, killing,
and inflicting every possible cruelty upon the people; and, every
morning, setting a worthy example to his men by setting fire, with his
own monster-hands, to the house where he had slept last night. Nor was
this all; for the Pope, coming to the aid of his precious friend, laid
the kingdom under an Interdict again, because the people took part with
the Barons. It did not much matter, for the people had grown so used to
it now, that they had begun to think nothing about it. It occurred to
them—perhaps to Stephen Langton too—that they could keep their churches
open, and ring their bells, without the Pope’s permission as well as
with it. So, they tried the experiment—and found that it succeeded
perfectly.

It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wilderness of
cruelty, or longer to hold any terms with such a forsworn outlaw of a
King, the Barons sent to Louis, son of the French monarch, to offer him
the English crown. Caring as little for the Pope’s excommunication of
him if he accepted the offer, as it is possible his father may have
cared for the Pope’s forgiveness of his sins, he landed at Sandwich
(King John immediately running away from Dover, where he happened to
be), and went on to London. The Scottish King, with whom many of the
Northern English Lords had taken refuge, numbers of the foreign
soldiers, numbers of the Barons, and numbers of the people went over to
him every day;—King John, the while, continually running away in all
directions.

The career of Louis was checked however, by the suspicions of the
Barons, founded on the dying declaration of a French Lord, that when
the kingdom was conquered he was sworn to banish them as traitors, and
to give their estates to some of his own Nobles. Rather than suffer
this, some of the Barons hesitated: others even went over to King John.

It seemed to be the turning-point of King John’s fortunes, for, in his
savage and murderous course, he had now taken some towns and met with
some successes. But, happily for England and humanity, his death was
near. Crossing a dangerous quicksand, called the Wash, not very far
from Wisbeach, the tide came up and nearly drowned his army. He and his
soldiers escaped; but, looking back from the shore when he was safe, he
saw the roaring water sweep down in a torrent, overturn the waggons,
horses, and men, that carried his treasure, and engulf them in a raging
whirlpool from which nothing could be delivered.

Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fingers, he went on to
Swinestead Abbey, where the monks set before him quantities of pears,
and peaches, and new cider—some say poison too, but there is very
little reason to suppose so—of which he ate and drank in an immoderate
and beastly way. All night he lay ill of a burning fever, and haunted
with horrible fears. Next day, they put him in a horse-litter, and
carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed another night of pain
and horror. Next day, they carried him, with greater difficulty than on
the day before, to the castle of Newark upon Trent; and there, on the
eighteenth of October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the
seventeenth of his vile reign, was an end of this miserable brute.




CHAPTER XV
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED, OF WINCHESTER


If any of the English Barons remembered the murdered Arthur’s sister,
Eleanor the fair maid of Brittany, shut up in her convent at Bristol,
none among them spoke of her now, or maintained her right to the Crown.
The dead Usurper’s eldest boy, Henry by name, was taken by the Earl of
Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the city of Gloucester, and there
crowned in great haste when he was only ten years old. As the Crown
itself had been lost with the King’s treasure in the raging water, and
as there was no time to make another, they put a circle of plain gold
upon his head instead. ‘We have been the enemies of this child’s
father,’ said Lord Pembroke, a good and true gentleman, to the few
Lords who were present, ‘and he merited our ill-will; but the child
himself is innocent, and his youth demands our friendship and
protection.’ Those Lords felt tenderly towards the little boy,
remembering their own young children; and they bowed their heads, and
said, ‘Long live King Henry the Third!’

Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna Charta, and made
Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector of England, as the King was too young
to reign alone. The next thing to be done, was to get rid of Prince
Louis of France, and to win over those English Barons who were still
ranged under his banner. He was strong in many parts of England, and in
London itself; and he held, among other places, a certain Castle called
the Castle of Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after
some skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid siege. Louis
despatched an army of six hundred knights and twenty thousand soldiers
to relieve it. Lord Pembroke, who was not strong enough for such a
force, retired with all his men. The army of the French Prince, which
had marched there with fire and plunder, marched away with fire and
plunder, and came, in a boastful swaggering manner, to Lincoln. The
town submitted; but the Castle in the town, held by a brave widow lady,
named Nichola de Camville (whose property it was), made such a sturdy
resistance, that the French Count in command of the army of the French
Prince found it necessary to besiege this Castle. While he was thus
engaged, word was brought to him that Lord Pembroke, with four hundred
knights, two hundred and fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force
both of horse and foot, was marching towards him. ‘What care I?’ said
the French Count. ‘The Englishman is not so mad as to attack me and my
great army in a walled town!’ But the Englishman did it for all that,
and did it—not so madly but so wisely, that he decoyed the great army
into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and byways of Lincoln, where its
horse-soldiers could not ride in any strong body; and there he made
such havoc with them, that the whole force surrendered themselves
prisoners, except the Count; who said that he would never yield to any
English traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this
victory, which the English called, for a joke, the Fair of Lincoln, was
the usual one in those times—the common men were slain without any
mercy, and the knights and gentlemen paid ransom and went home.

The wife of Louis, the fair Blanche of Castile, dutifully equipped a
fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it over from France to her
husband’s aid. An English fleet of forty ships, some good and some bad,
gallantly met them near the mouth of the Thames, and took or sunk
sixty-five in one fight. This great loss put an end to the French
Prince’s hopes. A treaty was made at Lambeth, in virtue of which the
English Barons who had remained attached to his cause returned to their
allegiance, and it was engaged on both sides that the Prince and all
his troops should retire peacefully to France. It was time to go; for
war had made him so poor that he was obliged to borrow money from the
citizens of London to pay his expenses home.

Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to governing the country
justly, and to healing the quarrels and disturbances that had arisen
among men in the days of the bad King John. He caused Magna Charta to
be still more improved, and so amended the Forest Laws that a Peasant
was no longer put to death for killing a stag in a Royal Forest, but
was only imprisoned. It would have been well for England if it could
have had so good a Protector many years longer, but that was not to be.
Within three years after the young King’s Coronation, Lord Pembroke
died; and you may see his tomb, at this day, in the old Temple Church
in London.

The Protectorship was now divided. Peter de Roches, whom King John had
made Bishop of Winchester, was entrusted with the care of the person of
the young sovereign; and the exercise of the Royal authority was
confided to Earl Hubert de Burgh. These two personages had from the
first no liking for each other, and soon became enemies. When the young
King was declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that Hubert
increased in power and favour, retired discontentedly, and went abroad.
For nearly ten years afterwards Hubert had full sway alone.

But ten years is a long time to hold the favour of a King. This King,
too, as he grew up, showed a strong resemblance to his father, in
feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution. The best that can be said
of him is that he was not cruel. De Roches coming home again, after ten
years, and being a novelty, the King began to favour him and to look
coldly on Hubert. Wanting money besides, and having made Hubert rich,
he began to dislike Hubert. At last he was made to believe, or
pretended to believe, that Hubert had misappropriated some of the Royal
treasure; and ordered him to furnish an account of all he had done in
his administration. Besides which, the foolish charge was brought
against Hubert that he had made himself the King’s favourite by magic.
Hubert very well knowing that he could never defend himself against
such nonsense, and that his old enemy must be determined on his ruin,
instead of answering the charges fled to Merton Abbey. Then the King,
in a violent passion, sent for the Mayor of London, and said to the
Mayor, ‘Take twenty thousand citizens, and drag me Hubert de Burgh out
of that abbey, and bring him here.’ The Mayor posted off to do it, but
the Archbishop of Dublin (who was a friend of Hubert’s) warning the
King that an abbey was a sacred place, and that if he committed any
violence there, he must answer for it to the Church, the King changed
his mind and called the Mayor back, and declared that Hubert should
have four months to prepare his defence, and should be safe and free
during that time.

Hubert, who relied upon the King’s word, though I think he was old
enough to have known better, came out of Merton Abbey upon these
conditions, and journeyed away to see his wife: a Scottish Princess who
was then at St. Edmund’s-Bury.

Almost as soon as he had departed from the Sanctuary, his enemies
persuaded the weak King to send out one Sir Godfrey de Crancumb, who
commanded three hundred vagabonds called the Black Band, with orders to
seize him. They came up with him at a little town in Essex, called
Brentwood, when he was in bed. He leaped out of bed, got out of the
house, fled to the church, ran up to the altar, and laid his hand upon
the cross. Sir Godfrey and the Black Band, caring neither for church,
altar, nor cross, dragged him forth to the church door, with their
drawn swords flashing round his head, and sent for a Smith to rivet a
set of chains upon him. When the Smith (I wish I knew his name!) was
brought, all dark and swarthy with the smoke of his forge, and panting
with the speed he had made; and the Black Band, falling aside to show
him the Prisoner, cried with a loud uproar, ‘Make the fetters heavy!
make them strong!’ the Smith dropped upon his knee—but not to the Black
Band—and said, ‘This is the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh, who fought at
Dover Castle, and destroyed the French fleet, and has done his country
much good service. You may kill me, if you like, but I will never make
a chain for Earl Hubert de Burgh!’

The Black Band never blushed, or they might have blushed at this. They
knocked the Smith about from one to another, and swore at him, and tied
the Earl on horseback, undressed as he was, and carried him off to the
Tower of London. The Bishops, however, were so indignant at the
violation of the Sanctuary of the Church, that the frightened King soon
ordered the Black Band to take him back again; at the same time
commanding the Sheriff of Essex to prevent his escaping out of
Brentwood Church. Well! the Sheriff dug a deep trench all round the
church, and erected a high fence, and watched the church night and day;
the Black Band and their Captain watched it too, like three hundred and
one black wolves. For thirty-nine days, Hubert de Burgh remained
within. At length, upon the fortieth day, cold and hunger were too much
for him, and he gave himself up to the Black Band, who carried him off,
for the second time, to the Tower. When his trial came on, he refused
to plead; but at last it was arranged that he should give up all the
royal lands which had been bestowed upon him, and should be kept at the
Castle of Devizes, in what was called ‘free prison,’ in charge of four
knights appointed by four lords. There, he remained almost a year,
until, learning that a follower of his old enemy the Bishop was made
Keeper of the Castle, and fearing that he might be killed by treachery,
he climbed the ramparts one dark night, dropped from the top of the
high Castle wall into the moat, and coming safely to the ground, took
refuge in another church. From this place he was delivered by a party
of horse despatched to his help by some nobles, who were by this time
in revolt against the King, and assembled in Wales. He was finally
pardoned and restored to his estates, but he lived privately, and never
more aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a high place in the
King’s favour. And thus end—more happily than the stories of many
favourites of Kings—the adventures of Earl Hubert de Burgh.

The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up to rebellion by
the overbearing conduct of the Bishop of Winchester, who, finding that
the King secretly hated the Great Charter which had been forced from
his father, did his utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and in the
preference he showed to foreigners over the English. Of this, and of
his even publicly declaring that the Barons of England were inferior to
those of France, the English Lords complained with such bitterness,
that the King, finding them well supported by the clergy, became
frightened for his throne, and sent away the Bishop and all his foreign
associates. On his marriage, however, with Eleanor, a French lady, the
daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly favoured the foreigners
again; and so many of his wife’s relations came over, and made such an
immense family-party at court, and got so many good things, and
pocketed so much money, and were so high with the English whose money
they pocketed, that the bolder English Barons murmured openly about a
clause there was in the Great Charter, which provided for the
banishment of unreasonable favourites. But, the foreigners only laughed
disdainfully, and said, ‘What are your English laws to us?’

King Philip of France had died, and had been succeeded by Prince Louis,
who had also died after a short reign of three years, and had been
succeeded by his son of the same name—so moderate and just a man that
he was not the least in the world like a King, as Kings went. Isabella,
King Henry’s mother, wished very much (for a certain spite she had)
that England should make war against this King; and, as King Henry was
a mere puppet in anybody’s hands who knew how to manage his feebleness,
she easily carried her point with him. But, the Parliament were
determined to give him no money for such a war. So, to defy the
Parliament, he packed up thirty large casks of silver—I don’t know how
he got so much; I dare say he screwed it out of the miserable Jews—and
put them aboard ship, and went away himself to carry war into France:
accompanied by his mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall,
who was rich and clever. But he only got well beaten, and came home.

The good-humour of the Parliament was not restored by this. They
reproached the King with wasting the public money to make greedy
foreigners rich, and were so stern with him, and so determined not to
let him have more of it to waste if they could help it, that he was at
his wit’s end for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all he could
from his subjects, by excuses or by force, that the people used to say
the King was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took the Cross,
thinking to get some money by that means; but, as it was very well
known that he never meant to go on a crusade, he got none. In all this
contention, the Londoners were particularly keen against the King, and
the King hated them warmly in return. Hating or loving, however, made
no difference; he continued in the same condition for nine or ten
years, when at last the Barons said that if he would solemnly confirm
their liberties afresh, the Parliament would vote him a large sum.

As he readily consented, there was a great meeting held in Westminster
Hall, one pleasant day in May, when all the clergy, dressed in their
robes and holding every one of them a burning candle in his hand, stood
up (the Barons being also there) while the Archbishop of Canterbury
read the sentence of excommunication against any man, and all men, who
should henceforth, in any way, infringe the Great Charter of the
Kingdom. When he had done, they all put out their burning candles with
a curse upon the soul of any one, and every one, who should merit that
sentence. The King concluded with an oath to keep the Charter, ‘As I am
a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a Knight, as I am a King!’

It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them; and the King did
both, as his father had done before him. He took to his old courses
again when he was supplied with money, and soon cured of their weakness
the few who had ever really trusted him. When his money was gone, and
he was once more borrowing and begging everywhere with a meanness
worthy of his nature, he got into a difficulty with the Pope respecting
the Crown of Sicily, which the Pope said he had a right to give away,
and which he offered to King Henry for his second son, Prince Edmund.
But, if you or I give away what we have not got, and what belongs to
somebody else, it is likely that the person to whom we give it, will
have some trouble in taking it. It was exactly so in this case. It was
necessary to conquer the Sicilian Crown before it could be put upon
young Edmund’s head. It could not be conquered without money. The Pope
ordered the clergy to raise money. The clergy, however, were not so
obedient to him as usual; they had been disputing with him for some
time about his unjust preference of Italian Priests in England; and
they had begun to doubt whether the King’s chaplain, whom he allowed to
be paid for preaching in seven hundred churches, could possibly be,
even by the Pope’s favour, in seven hundred places at once. ‘The Pope
and the King together,’ said the Bishop of London, ‘may take the mitre
off my head; but, if they do, they will find that I shall put on a
soldier’s helmet. I pay nothing.’ The Bishop of Worcester was as bold
as the Bishop of London, and would pay nothing either. Such sums as the
more timid or more helpless of the clergy did raise were squandered
away, without doing any good to the King, or bringing the Sicilian
Crown an inch nearer to Prince Edmund’s head. The end of the business
was, that the Pope gave the Crown to the brother of the King of France
(who conquered it for himself), and sent the King of England in, a bill
of one hundred thousand pounds for the expenses of not having won it.

The King was now so much distressed that we might almost pity him, if
it were possible to pity a King so shabby and ridiculous. His clever
brother, Richard, had bought the title of King of the Romans from the
German people, and was no longer near him, to help him with advice. The
clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in alliance with the Barons. The
Barons were headed by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, married to
King Henry’s sister, and, though a foreigner himself, the most popular
man in England against the foreign favourites. When the King next met
his Parliament, the Barons, led by this Earl, came before him, armed
from head to foot, and cased in armour. When the Parliament again
assembled, in a month’s time, at Oxford, this Earl was at their head,
and the King was obliged to consent, on oath, to what was called a
Committee of Government: consisting of twenty-four members: twelve
chosen by the Barons, and twelve chosen by himself.

But, at a good time for him, his brother Richard came back. Richard’s
first act (the Barons would not admit him into England on other terms)
was to swear to be faithful to the Committee of Government—which he
immediately began to oppose with all his might. Then, the Barons began
to quarrel among themselves; especially the proud Earl of Gloucester
with the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in disgust. Then, the
people began to be dissatisfied with the Barons, because they did not
do enough for them. The King’s chances seemed so good again at length,
that he took heart enough—or caught it from his brother—to tell the
Committee of Government that he abolished them—as to his oath, never
mind that, the Pope said!—and to seize all the money in the Mint, and
to shut himself up in the Tower of London. Here he was joined by his
eldest son, Prince Edward; and, from the Tower, he made public a letter
of the Pope’s to the world in general, informing all men that he had
been an excellent and just King for five-and-forty years.

As everybody knew he had been nothing of the sort, nobody cared much
for this document. It so chanced that the proud Earl of Gloucester
dying, was succeeded by his son; and that his son, instead of being the
enemy of the Earl of Leicester, was (for the time) his friend. It fell
out, therefore, that these two Earls joined their forces, took several
of the Royal Castles in the country, and advanced as hard as they could
on London. The London people, always opposed to the King, declared for
them with great joy. The King himself remained shut up, not at all
gloriously, in the Tower. Prince Edward made the best of his way to
Windsor Castle. His mother, the Queen, attempted to follow him by
water; but, the people seeing her barge rowing up the river, and hating
her with all their hearts, ran to London Bridge, got together a
quantity of stones and mud, and pelted the barge as it came through,
crying furiously, ‘Drown the Witch! Drown her!’ They were so near doing
it, that the Mayor took the old lady under his protection, and shut her
up in St. Paul’s until the danger was past.

It would require a great deal of writing on my part, and a great deal
of reading on yours, to follow the King through his disputes with the
Barons, and to follow the Barons through their disputes with one
another—so I will make short work of it for both of us, and only relate
the chief events that arose out of these quarrels. The good King of
France was asked to decide between them. He gave it as his opinion that
the King must maintain the Great Charter, and that the Barons must give
up the Committee of Government, and all the rest that had been done by
the Parliament at Oxford: which the Royalists, or King’s party,
scornfully called the Mad Parliament. The Barons declared that these
were not fair terms, and they would not accept them. Then they caused
the great bell of St. Paul’s to be tolled, for the purpose of rousing
up the London people, who armed themselves at the dismal sound and
formed quite an army in the streets. I am sorry to say, however, that
instead of falling upon the King’s party with whom their quarrel was,
they fell upon the miserable Jews, and killed at least five hundred of
them. They pretended that some of these Jews were on the King’s side,
and that they kept hidden in their houses, for the destruction of the
people, a certain terrible composition called Greek Fire, which could
not be put out with water, but only burnt the fiercer for it. What they
really did keep in their houses was money; and this their cruel enemies
wanted, and this their cruel enemies took, like robbers and murderers.

The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head of these Londoners and
other forces, and followed the King to Lewes in Sussex, where he lay
encamped with his army. Before giving the King’s forces battle here,
the Earl addressed his soldiers, and said that King Henry the Third had
broken so many oaths, that he had become the enemy of God, and
therefore they would wear white crosses on their breasts, as if they
were arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian, but against a Turk.
White-crossed accordingly, they rushed into the fight. They would have
lost the day—the King having on his side all the foreigners in England:
and, from Scotland, John Comyn, John Baliol, and Robert Bruce, with all
their men—but for the impatience of Prince Edward, who, in his hot
desire to have vengeance on the people of London, threw the whole of
his father’s army into confusion. He was taken Prisoner; so was the
King; so was the King’s brother the King of the Romans; and five
thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the bloody grass.

For this success, the Pope excommunicated the Earl of Leicester: which
neither the Earl nor the people cared at all about. The people loved
him and supported him, and he became the real King; having all the
power of the government in his own hands, though he was outwardly
respectful to King Henry the Third, whom he took with him wherever he
went, like a poor old limp court-card. He summoned a Parliament (in the
year one thousand two hundred and sixty-five) which was the first
Parliament in England that the people had any real share in electing;
and he grew more and more in favour with the people every day, and they
stood by him in whatever he did.

Many of the other Barons, and particularly the Earl of Gloucester, who
had become by this time as proud as his father, grew jealous of this
powerful and popular Earl, who was proud too, and began to conspire
against him. Since the battle of Lewes, Prince Edward had been kept as
a hostage, and, though he was otherwise treated like a Prince, had
never been allowed to go out without attendants appointed by the Earl
of Leicester, who watched him. The conspiring Lords found means to
propose to him, in secret, that they should assist him to escape, and
should make him their leader; to which he very heartily consented.

So, on a day that was agreed upon, he said to his attendants after
dinner (being then at Hereford), ‘I should like to ride on horseback,
this fine afternoon, a little way into the country.’ As they, too,
thought it would be very pleasant to have a canter in the sunshine,
they all rode out of the town together in a gay little troop. When they
came to a fine level piece of turf, the Prince fell to comparing their
horses one with another, and offering bets that one was faster than
another; and the attendants, suspecting no harm, rode galloping matches
until their horses were quite tired. The Prince rode no matches
himself, but looked on from his saddle, and staked his money. Thus they
passed the whole merry afternoon. Now, the sun was setting, and they
were all going slowly up a hill, the Prince’s horse very fresh and all
the other horses very weary, when a strange rider mounted on a grey
steed appeared at the top of the hill, and waved his hat. ‘What does
the fellow mean?’ said the attendants one to another. The Prince
answered on the instant by setting spurs to his horse, dashing away at
his utmost speed, joining the man, riding into the midst of a little
crowd of horsemen who were then seen waiting under some trees, and who
closed around him; and so he departed in a cloud of dust, leaving the
road empty of all but the baffled attendants, who sat looking at one
another, while their horses drooped their ears and panted.

The Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. The Earl of
Leicester, with a part of the army and the stupid old King, was at
Hereford. One of the Earl of Leicester’s sons, Simon de Montfort, with
another part of the army, was in Sussex. To prevent these two parts
from uniting was the Prince’s first object. He attacked Simon de
Montfort by night, defeated him, seized his banners and treasure, and
forced him into Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, which belonged to
his family.

His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the meanwhile, not knowing what
had happened, marched out of Hereford, with his part of the army and
the King, to meet him. He came, on a bright morning in August, to
Evesham, which is watered by the pleasant river Avon. Looking rather
anxiously across the prospect towards Kenilworth, he saw his own
banners advancing; and his face brightened with joy. But, it clouded
darkly when he presently perceived that the banners were captured, and
in the enemy’s hands; and he said, ‘It is over. The Lord have mercy on
our souls, for our bodies are Prince Edward’s!’

He fought like a true Knight, nevertheless. When his horse was killed
under him, he fought on foot. It was a fierce battle, and the dead lay
in heaps everywhere. The old King, stuck up in a suit of armour on a
big war-horse, which didn’t mind him at all, and which carried him into
all sorts of places where he didn’t want to go, got into everybody’s
way, and very nearly got knocked on the head by one of his son’s men.
But he managed to pipe out, ‘I am Harry of Winchester!’ and the Prince,
who heard him, seized his bridle, and took him out of peril. The Earl
of Leicester still fought bravely, until his best son Henry was killed,
and the bodies of his best friends choked his path; and then he fell,
still fighting, sword in hand. They mangled his body, and sent it as a
present to a noble lady—but a very unpleasant lady, I should think—who
was the wife of his worst enemy. They could not mangle his memory in
the minds of the faithful people, though. Many years afterwards, they
loved him more than ever, and regarded him as a Saint, and always spoke
of him as ‘Sir Simon the Righteous.’

And even though he was dead, the cause for which he had fought still
lived, and was strong, and forced itself upon the King in the very hour
of victory. Henry found himself obliged to respect the Great Charter,
however much he hated it, and to make laws similar to the laws of the
Great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate and forgiving towards the
people at last—even towards the people of London, who had so long
opposed him. There were more risings before all this was done, but they
were set at rest by these means, and Prince Edward did his best in all
things to restore peace. One Sir Adam de Gourdon was the last
dissatisfied knight in arms; but, the Prince vanquished him in single
combat, in a wood, and nobly gave him his life, and became his friend,
instead of slaying him. Sir Adam was not ungrateful. He ever afterwards
remained devoted to his generous conqueror.

When the troubles of the Kingdom were thus calmed, Prince Edward and
his cousin Henry took the Cross, and went away to the Holy Land, with
many English Lords and Knights. Four years afterwards the King of the
Romans died, and, next year (one thousand two hundred and seventy-two),
his brother the weak King of England died. He was sixty-eight years old
then, and had reigned fifty-six years. He was as much of a King in
death, as he had ever been in life. He was the mere pale shadow of a
King at all times.




CHAPTER XVI
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS


It was now the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and
seventy-two; and Prince Edward, the heir to the throne, being away in
the Holy Land, knew nothing of his father’s death. The Barons, however,
proclaimed him King, immediately after the Royal funeral; and the
people very willingly consented, since most men knew too well by this
time what the horrors of a contest for the crown were. So King Edward
the First, called, in a not very complimentary manner, Longshanks,
because of the slenderness of his legs, was peacefully accepted by the
English Nation.

His legs had need to be strong, however long and thin they were; for
they had to support him through many difficulties on the fiery sands of
Asia, where his small force of soldiers fainted, died, deserted, and
seemed to melt away. But his prowess made light of it, and he said, ‘I
will go on, if I go on with no other follower than my groom!’

A Prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of trouble. He stormed
Nazareth, at which place, of all places on earth, I am sorry to relate,
he made a frightful slaughter of innocent people; and then he went to
Acre, where he got a truce of ten years from the Sultan. He had very
nearly lost his life in Acre, through the treachery of a Saracen Noble,
called the Emir of Jaffa, who, making the pretence that he had some
idea of turning Christian and wanted to know all about that religion,
sent a trusty messenger to Edward very often—with a dagger in his
sleeve. At last, one Friday in Whitsun week, when it was very hot, and
all the sandy prospect lay beneath the blazing sun, burnt up like a
great overdone biscuit, and Edward was lying on a couch, dressed for
coolness in only a loose robe, the messenger, with his
chocolate-coloured face and his bright dark eyes and white teeth, came
creeping in with a letter, and kneeled down like a tame tiger. But, the
moment Edward stretched out his hand to take the letter, the tiger made
a spring at his heart. He was quick, but Edward was quick too. He
seized the traitor by his chocolate throat, threw him to the ground,
and slew him with the very dagger he had drawn. The weapon had struck
Edward in the arm, and although the wound itself was slight, it
threatened to be mortal, for the blade of the dagger had been smeared
with poison. Thanks, however, to a better surgeon than was often to be
found in those times, and to some wholesome herbs, and above all, to
his faithful wife, Eleanor, who devotedly nursed him, and is said by
some to have sucked the poison from the wound with her own red lips
(which I am very willing to believe), Edward soon recovered and was
sound again.

As the King his father had sent entreaties to him to return home, he
now began the journey. He had got as far as Italy, when he met
messengers who brought him intelligence of the King’s death. Hearing
that all was quiet at home, he made no haste to return to his own
dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in state through
various Italian Towns, where he was welcomed with acclamations as a
mighty champion of the Cross from the Holy Land, and where he received
presents of purple mantles and prancing horses, and went along in great
triumph. The shouting people little knew that he was the last English
monarch who would ever embark in a crusade, or that within twenty years
every conquest which the Christians had made in the Holy Land at the
cost of so much blood, would be won back by the Turks. But all this
came to pass.

There was, and there is, an old town standing in a plain in France,
called Châlons. When the King was coming towards this place on his way
to England, a wily French Lord, called the Count of Châlons, sent him a
polite challenge to come with his knights and hold a fair tournament
with the Count and _his_ knights, and make a day of it with sword and
lance. It was represented to the King that the Count of Châlons was not
to be trusted, and that, instead of a holiday fight for mere show and
in good humour, he secretly meant a real battle, in which the English
should be defeated by superior force.

The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the appointed place on the
appointed day with a thousand followers. When the Count came with two
thousand and attacked the English in earnest, the English rushed at
them with such valour that the Count’s men and the Count’s horses soon
began to be tumbled down all over the field. The Count himself seized
the King round the neck, but the King tumbled _him_ out of his saddle
in return for the compliment, and, jumping from his own horse, and
standing over him, beat away at his iron armour like a blacksmith
hammering on his anvil. Even when the Count owned himself defeated and
offered his sword, the King would not do him the honour to take it, but
made him yield it up to a common soldier. There had been such fury
shown in this fight, that it was afterwards called the little Battle of
Châlons.

The English were very well disposed to be proud of their King after
these adventures; so, when he landed at Dover in the year one thousand
two hundred and seventy-four (being then thirty-six years old), and
went on to Westminster where he and his good Queen were crowned with
great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took place. For the
coronation-feast there were provided, among other eatables, four
hundred oxen, four hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs, eighteen
wild boars, three hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty thousand fowls.
The fountains and conduits in the street flowed with red and white wine
instead of water; the rich citizens hung silks and cloths of the
brightest colours out of their windows to increase the beauty of the
show, and threw out gold and silver by whole handfuls to make scrambles
for the crowd. In short, there was such eating and drinking, such music
and capering, such a ringing of bells and tossing of caps, such a
shouting, and singing, and revelling, as the narrow overhanging streets
of old London City had not witnessed for many a long day. All the
people were merry except the poor Jews, who, trembling within their
houses, and scarcely daring to peep out, began to foresee that they
would have to find the money for this joviality sooner or later.

To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for the present, I am sorry to
add that in this reign they were most unmercifully pillaged. They were
hanged in great numbers, on accusations of having clipped the King’s
coin—which all kinds of people had done. They were heavily taxed; they
were disgracefully badged; they were, on one day, thirteen years after
the coronation, taken up with their wives and children and thrown into
beastly prisons, until they purchased their release by paying to the
King twelve thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of property belonging
to them was seized by the King, except so little as would defray the
charge of their taking themselves away into foreign countries. Many
years elapsed before the hope of gain induced any of their race to
return to England, where they had been treated so heartlessly and had
suffered so much.

If King Edward the First had been as bad a king to Christians as he was
to Jews, he would have been bad indeed. But he was, in general, a wise
and great monarch, under whom the country much improved. He had no love
for the Great Charter—few Kings had, through many, many years—but he
had high qualities. The first bold object which he conceived when he
came home, was, to unite under one Sovereign England, Scotland, and
Wales; the two last of which countries had each a little king of its
own, about whom the people were always quarrelling and fighting, and
making a prodigious disturbance—a great deal more than he was worth. In
the course of King Edward’s reign he was engaged, besides, in a war
with France. To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate their
histories and take them thus. Wales, first. France, second. Scotland,
third.


Llewellyn was the Prince of Wales. He had been on the side of the
Barons in the reign of the stupid old King, but had afterwards sworn
allegiance to him. When King Edward came to the throne, Llewellyn was
required to swear allegiance to him also; which he refused to do. The
King, being crowned and in his own dominions, three times more required
Llewellyn to come and do homage; and three times more Llewellyn said he
would rather not. He was going to be married to Eleanor de Montfort, a
young lady of the family mentioned in the last reign; and it chanced
that this young lady, coming from France with her youngest brother,
Emeric, was taken by an English ship, and was ordered by the English
King to be detained. Upon this, the quarrel came to a head. The King
went, with his fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so encompassing
Llewellyn, that he could only take refuge in the bleak mountain region
of Snowdon in which no provisions could reach him, he was soon starved
into an apology, and into a treaty of peace, and into paying the
expenses of the war. The King, however, forgave him some of the hardest
conditions of the treaty, and consented to his marriage. And he now
thought he had reduced Wales to obedience.

But the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, quiet, pleasant
people, who liked to receive strangers in their cottages among the
mountains, and to set before them with free hospitality whatever they
had to eat and drink, and to play to them on their harps, and sing
their native ballads to them, were a people of great spirit when their
blood was up. Englishmen, after this affair, began to be insolent in
Wales, and to assume the air of masters; and the Welsh pride could not
bear it. Moreover, they believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of
whose unlucky old prophecies somebody always seemed doomed to remember
when there was a chance of its doing harm; and just at this time some
blind old gentleman with a harp and a long white beard, who was an
excellent person, but had become of an unknown age and tedious, burst
out with a declaration that Merlin had predicted that when English
money had become round, a Prince of Wales would be crowned in London.
Now, King Edward had recently forbidden the English penny to be cut
into halves and quarters for halfpence and farthings, and had actually
introduced a round coin; therefore, the Welsh people said this was the
time Merlin meant, and rose accordingly.

King Edward had bought over Prince David, Llewellyn’s brother, by
heaping favours upon him; but he was the first to revolt, being perhaps
troubled in his conscience. One stormy night, he surprised the Castle
of Hawarden, in possession of which an English nobleman had been left;
killed the whole garrison, and carried off the nobleman a prisoner to
Snowdon. Upon this, the Welsh people rose like one man. King Edward,
with his army, marching from Worcester to the Menai Strait, crossed
it—near to where the wonderful tubular iron bridge now, in days so
different, makes a passage for railway trains—by a bridge of boats that
enabled forty men to march abreast. He subdued the Island of Anglesea,
and sent his men forward to observe the enemy. The sudden appearance of
the Welsh created a panic among them, and they fell back to the bridge.
The tide had in the meantime risen and separated the boats; the Welsh
pursuing them, they were driven into the sea, and there they sunk, in
their heavy iron armour, by thousands. After this victory Llewellyn,
helped by the severe winter-weather of Wales, gained another battle;
but the King ordering a portion of his English army to advance through
South Wales, and catch him between two foes, and Llewellyn bravely
turning to meet this new enemy, he was surprised and killed—very
meanly, for he was unarmed and defenceless. His head was struck off and
sent to London, where it was fixed upon the Tower, encircled with a
wreath, some say of ivy, some say of willow, some say of silver, to
make it look like a ghastly coin in ridicule of the prediction.

David, however, still held out for six months, though eagerly sought
after by the King, and hunted by his own countrymen. One of them
finally betrayed him with his wife and children. He was sentenced to be
hanged, drawn, and quartered; and from that time this became the
established punishment of Traitors in England—a punishment wholly
without excuse, as being revolting, vile, and cruel, after its object
is dead; and which has no sense in it, as its only real degradation
(and that nothing can blot out) is to the country that permits on any
consideration such abominable barbarity.

Wales was now subdued. The Queen giving birth to a young prince in the
Castle of Carnarvon, the King showed him to the Welsh people as their
countryman, and called him Prince of Wales; a title that has ever since
been borne by the heir-apparent to the English throne—which that little
Prince soon became, by the death of his elder brother. The King did
better things for the Welsh than that, by improving their laws and
encouraging their trade. Disturbances still took place, chiefly
occasioned by the avarice and pride of the English Lords, on whom Welsh
lands and castles had been bestowed; but they were subdued, and the
country never rose again. There is a legend that to prevent the people
from being incited to rebellion by the songs of their bards and
harpers, Edward had them all put to death. Some of them may have fallen
among other men who held out against the King; but this general
slaughter is, I think, a fancy of the harpers themselves, who, I dare
say, made a song about it many years afterwards, and sang it by the
Welsh firesides until it came to be believed.

The foreign war of the reign of Edward the First arose in this way. The
crews of two vessels, one a Norman ship, and the other an English ship,
happened to go to the same place in their boats to fill their casks
with fresh water. Being rough angry fellows, they began to quarrel, and
then to fight—the English with their fists; the Normans with their
knives—and, in the fight, a Norman was killed. The Norman crew, instead
of revenging themselves upon those English sailors with whom they had
quarrelled (who were too strong for them, I suspect), took to their
ship again in a great rage, attacked the first English ship they met,
laid hold of an unoffending merchant who happened to be on board, and
brutally hanged him in the rigging of their own vessel with a dog at
his feet. This so enraged the English sailors that there was no
restraining them; and whenever, and wherever, English sailors met
Norman sailors, they fell upon each other tooth and nail. The Irish and
Dutch sailors took part with the English; the French and Genoese
sailors helped the Normans; and thus the greater part of the mariners
sailing over the sea became, in their way, as violent and raging as the
sea itself when it is disturbed.

King Edward’s fame had been so high abroad that he had been chosen to
decide a difference between France and another foreign power, and had
lived upon the Continent three years. At first, neither he nor the
French King Philip (the good Louis had been dead some time) interfered
in these quarrels; but when a fleet of eighty English ships engaged and
utterly defeated a Norman fleet of two hundred, in a pitched battle
fought round a ship at anchor, in which no quarter was given, the
matter became too serious to be passed over. King Edward, as Duke of
Guienne, was summoned to present himself before the King of France, at
Paris, and answer for the damage done by his sailor subjects. At first,
he sent the Bishop of London as his representative, and then his
brother Edmund, who was married to the French Queen’s mother. I am
afraid Edmund was an easy man, and allowed himself to be talked over by
his charming relations, the French court ladies; at all events, he was
induced to give up his brother’s dukedom for forty days—as a mere form,
the French King said, to satisfy his honour—and he was so very much
astonished, when the time was out, to find that the French King had no
idea of giving it up again, that I should not wonder if it hastened his
death: which soon took place.

King Edward was a King to win his foreign dukedom back again, if it
could be won by energy and valour. He raised a large army, renounced
his allegiance as Duke of Guienne, and crossed the sea to carry war
into France. Before any important battle was fought, however, a truce
was agreed upon for two years; and in the course of that time, the Pope
effected a reconciliation. King Edward, who was now a widower, having
lost his affectionate and good wife, Eleanor, married the French King’s
sister, Margaret; and the Prince of Wales was contracted to the French
King’s daughter Isabella.

Out of bad things, good things sometimes arise. Out of this hanging of
the innocent merchant, and the bloodshed and strife it caused, there
came to be established one of the greatest powers that the English
people now possess. The preparations for the war being very expensive,
and King Edward greatly wanting money, and being very arbitrary in his
ways of raising it, some of the Barons began firmly to oppose him. Two
of them, in particular, Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger
Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, were so stout against him, that they maintained
he had no right to command them to head his forces in Guienne, and
flatly refused to go there. ‘By Heaven, Sir Earl,’ said the King to the
Earl of Hereford, in a great passion, ‘you shall either go or be
hanged!’ ‘By Heaven, Sir King,’ replied the Earl, ‘I will neither go
nor yet will I be hanged!’ and both he and the other Earl sturdily left
the court, attended by many Lords. The King tried every means of
raising money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of all the Pope said to
the contrary; and when they refused to pay, reduced them to submission,
by saying Very well, then they had no claim upon the government for
protection, and any man might plunder them who would—which a good many
men were very ready to do, and very readily did, and which the clergy
found too losing a game to be played at long. He seized all the wool
and leather in the hands of the merchants, promising to pay for it some
fine day; and he set a tax upon the exportation of wool, which was so
unpopular among the traders that it was called ‘The evil toll.’ But all
would not do. The Barons, led by those two great Earls, declared any
taxes imposed without the consent of Parliament, unlawful; and the
Parliament refused to impose taxes, until the King should confirm
afresh the two Great Charters, and should solemnly declare in writing,
that there was no power in the country to raise money from the people,
evermore, but the power of Parliament representing all ranks of the
people. The King was very unwilling to diminish his own power by
allowing this great privilege in the Parliament; but there was no help
for it, and he at last complied. We shall come to another King
by-and-by, who might have saved his head from rolling off, if he had
profited by this example.

The people gained other benefits in Parliament from the good sense and
wisdom of this King. Many of the laws were much improved; provision was
made for the greater safety of travellers, and the apprehension of
thieves and murderers; the priests were prevented from holding too much
land, and so becoming too powerful; and Justices of the Peace were
first appointed (though not at first under that name) in various parts
of the country.


And now we come to Scotland, which was the great and lasting trouble of
the reign of King Edward the First.

About thirteen years after King Edward’s coronation, Alexander the
Third, the King of Scotland, died of a fall from his horse. He had been
married to Margaret, King Edward’s sister. All their children being
dead, the Scottish crown became the right of a young Princess only
eight years old, the daughter of Eric, King of Norway, who had married
a daughter of the deceased sovereign. King Edward proposed, that the
Maiden of Norway, as this Princess was called, should be engaged to be
married to his eldest son; but, unfortunately, as she was coming over
to England she fell sick, and landing on one of the Orkney Islands,
died there. A great commotion immediately began in Scotland, where as
many as thirteen noisy claimants to the vacant throne started up and
made a general confusion.

King Edward being much renowned for his sagacity and justice, it seems
to have been agreed to refer the dispute to him. He accepted the trust,
and went, with an army, to the Border-land where England and Scotland
joined. There, he called upon the Scottish gentlemen to meet him at the
Castle of Norham, on the English side of the river Tweed; and to that
Castle they came. But, before he would take any step in the business,
he required those Scottish gentlemen, one and all, to do homage to him
as their superior Lord; and when they hesitated, he said, ‘By holy
Edward, whose crown I wear, I will have my rights, or I will die in
maintaining them!’ The Scottish gentlemen, who had not expected this,
were disconcerted, and asked for three weeks to think about it.

At the end of the three weeks, another meeting took place, on a green
plain on the Scottish side of the river. Of all the competitors for the
Scottish throne, there were only two who had any real claim, in right
of their near kindred to the Royal Family. These were John Baliol and
Robert Bruce: and the right was, I have no doubt, on the side of John
Baliol. At this particular meeting John Baliol was not present, but
Robert Bruce was; and on Robert Bruce being formally asked whether he
acknowledged the King of England for his superior lord, he answered,
plainly and distinctly, Yes, he did. Next day, John Baliol appeared,
and said the same. This point settled, some arrangements were made for
inquiring into their titles.

The inquiry occupied a pretty long time—more than a year. While it was
going on, King Edward took the opportunity of making a journey through
Scotland, and calling upon the Scottish people of all degrees to
acknowledge themselves his vassals, or be imprisoned until they did. In
the meanwhile, Commissioners were appointed to conduct the inquiry, a
Parliament was held at Berwick about it, the two claimants were heard
at full length, and there was a vast amount of talking. At last, in the
great hall of the Castle of Berwick, the King gave judgment in favour
of John Baliol: who, consenting to receive his crown by the King of
England’s favour and permission, was crowned at Scone, in an old stone
chair which had been used for ages in the abbey there, at the
coronations of Scottish Kings. Then, King Edward caused the great seal
of Scotland, used since the late King’s death, to be broken in four
pieces, and placed in the English Treasury; and considered that he now
had Scotland (according to the common saying) under his thumb.

Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, however. King Edward,
determined that the Scottish King should not forget he was his vassal,
summoned him repeatedly to come and defend himself and his judges
before the English Parliament when appeals from the decisions of
Scottish courts of justice were being heard. At length, John Baliol,
who had no great heart of his own, had so much heart put into him by
the brave spirit of the Scottish people, who took this as a national
insult, that he refused to come any more. Thereupon, the King further
required him to help him in his war abroad (which was then in
progress), and to give up, as security for his good behaviour in
future, the three strong Scottish Castles of Jedburgh, Roxburgh, and
Berwick. Nothing of this being done; on the contrary, the Scottish
people concealing their King among their mountains in the Highlands and
showing a determination to resist; Edward marched to Berwick with an
army of thirty thousand foot, and four thousand horse; took the Castle,
and slew its whole garrison, and the inhabitants of the town as
well—men, women, and children. Lord Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, then went
on to the Castle of Dunbar, before which a battle was fought, and the
whole Scottish army defeated with great slaughter. The victory being
complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as guardian of Scotland; the
principal offices in that kingdom were given to Englishmen; the more
powerful Scottish Nobles were obliged to come and live in England; the
Scottish crown and sceptre were brought away; and even the old stone
chair was carried off and placed in Westminster Abbey, where you may
see it now. Baliol had the Tower of London lent him for a residence,
with permission to range about within a circle of twenty miles. Three
years afterwards he was allowed to go to Normandy, where he had
estates, and where he passed the remaining six years of his life: far
more happily, I dare say, than he had lived for a long while in angry
Scotland.

Now, there was, in the West of Scotland, a gentleman of small fortune,
named William Wallace, the second son of a Scottish knight. He was a
man of great size and great strength; he was very brave and daring;
when he spoke to a body of his countrymen, he could rouse them in a
wonderful manner by the power of his burning words; he loved Scotland
dearly, and he hated England with his utmost might. The domineering
conduct of the English who now held the places of trust in Scotland
made them as intolerable to the proud Scottish people as they had been,
under similar circumstances, to the Welsh; and no man in all Scotland
regarded them with so much smothered rage as William Wallace. One day,
an Englishman in office, little knowing what he was, affronted _him_.
Wallace instantly struck him dead, and taking refuge among the rocks
and hills, and there joining with his countryman, Sir William Douglas,
who was also in arms against King Edward, became the most resolute and
undaunted champion of a people struggling for their independence that
ever lived upon the earth.

The English Guardian of the Kingdom fled before him, and, thus
encouraged, the Scottish people revolted everywhere, and fell upon the
English without mercy. The Earl of Surrey, by the King’s commands,
raised all the power of the Border-counties, and two English armies
poured into Scotland. Only one Chief, in the face of those armies,
stood by Wallace, who, with a force of forty thousand men, awaited the
invaders at a place on the river Forth, within two miles of Stirling.
Across the river there was only one poor wooden bridge, called the
bridge of Kildean—so narrow, that but two men could cross it abreast.
With his eyes upon this bridge, Wallace posted the greater part of his
men among some rising grounds, and waited calmly. When the English army
came up on the opposite bank of the river, messengers were sent forward
to offer terms. Wallace sent them back with a defiance, in the name of
the freedom of Scotland. Some of the officers of the Earl of Surrey in
command of the English, with _their_ eyes also on the bridge, advised
him to be discreet and not hasty. He, however, urged to immediate
battle by some other officers, and particularly by Cressingham, King
Edward’s treasurer, and a rash man, gave the word of command to
advance. One thousand English crossed the bridge, two abreast; the
Scottish troops were as motionless as stone images. Two thousand
English crossed; three thousand, four thousand, five. Not a feather,
all this time, had been seen to stir among the Scottish bonnets. Now,
they all fluttered. ‘Forward, one party, to the foot of the Bridge!’
cried Wallace, ‘and let no more English cross! The rest, down with me
on the five thousand who have come over, and cut them all to pieces!’
It was done, in the sight of the whole remainder of the English army,
who could give no help. Cressingham himself was killed, and the Scotch
made whips for their horses of his skin.

King Edward was abroad at this time, and during the successes on the
Scottish side which followed, and which enabled bold Wallace to win the
whole country back again, and even to ravage the English borders. But,
after a few winter months, the King returned, and took the field with
more than his usual energy. One night, when a kick from his horse as
they both lay on the ground together broke two of his ribs, and a cry
arose that he was killed, he leaped into his saddle, regardless of the
pain he suffered, and rode through the camp. Day then appearing, he
gave the word (still, of course, in that bruised and aching state)
Forward! and led his army on to near Falkirk, where the Scottish forces
were seen drawn up on some stony ground, behind a morass. Here, he
defeated Wallace, and killed fifteen thousand of his men. With the
shattered remainder, Wallace drew back to Stirling; but, being pursued,
set fire to the town that it might give no help to the English, and
escaped. The inhabitants of Perth afterwards set fire to their houses
for the same reason, and the King, unable to find provisions, was
forced to withdraw his army.

Another Robert Bruce, the grandson of him who had disputed the Scottish
crown with Baliol, was now in arms against the King (that elder Bruce
being dead), and also John Comyn, Baliol’s nephew. These two young men
might agree in opposing Edward, but could agree in nothing else, as
they were rivals for the throne of Scotland. Probably it was because
they knew this, and knew what troubles must arise even if they could
hope to get the better of the great English King, that the principal
Scottish people applied to the Pope for his interference. The Pope, on
the principle of losing nothing for want of trying to get it, very
coolly claimed that Scotland belonged to him; but this was a little too
much, and the Parliament in a friendly manner told him so.

In the spring time of the year one thousand three hundred and three,
the King sent Sir John Segrave, whom he made Governor of Scotland, with
twenty thousand men, to reduce the rebels. Sir John was not as careful
as he should have been, but encamped at Rosslyn, near Edinburgh, with
his army divided into three parts. The Scottish forces saw their
advantage; fell on each part separately; defeated each; and killed all
the prisoners. Then, came the King himself once more, as soon as a
great army could be raised; he passed through the whole north of
Scotland, laying waste whatsoever came in his way; and he took up his
winter quarters at Dunfermline. The Scottish cause now looked so
hopeless, that Comyn and the other nobles made submission and received
their pardons. Wallace alone stood out. He was invited to surrender,
though on no distinct pledge that his life should be spared; but he
still defied the ireful King, and lived among the steep crags of the
Highland glens, where the eagles made their nests, and where the
mountain torrents roared, and the white snow was deep, and the bitter
winds blew round his unsheltered head, as he lay through many a
pitch-dark night wrapped up in his plaid. Nothing could break his
spirit; nothing could lower his courage; nothing could induce him to
forget or to forgive his country’s wrongs. Even when the Castle of
Stirling, which had long held out, was besieged by the King with every
kind of military engine then in use; even when the lead upon cathedral
roofs was taken down to help to make them; even when the King, though
an old man, commanded in the siege as if he were a youth, being so
resolved to conquer; even when the brave garrison (then found with
amazement to be not two hundred people, including several ladies) were
starved and beaten out and were made to submit on their knees, and with
every form of disgrace that could aggravate their sufferings; even
then, when there was not a ray of hope in Scotland, William Wallace was
as proud and firm as if he had beheld the powerful and relentless
Edward lying dead at his feet.

Who betrayed William Wallace in the end, is not quite certain. That he
was betrayed—probably by an attendant—is too true. He was taken to the
Castle of Dumbarton, under Sir John Menteith, and thence to London,
where the great fame of his bravery and resolution attracted immense
concourses of people to behold him. He was tried in Westminster Hall,
with a crown of laurel on his head—it is supposed because he was
reported to have said that he ought to wear, or that he would wear, a
crown there and was found guilty as a robber, a murderer, and a
traitor. What they called a robber (he said to those who tried him) he
was, because he had taken spoil from the King’s men. What they called a
murderer, he was, because he had slain an insolent Englishman. What
they called a traitor, he was not, for he had never sworn allegiance to
the King, and had ever scorned to do it. He was dragged at the tails of
horses to West Smithfield, and there hanged on a high gallows, torn
open before he was dead, beheaded, and quartered. His head was set upon
a pole on London Bridge, his right arm was sent to Newcastle, his left
arm to Berwick, his legs to Perth and Aberdeen. But, if King Edward had
had his body cut into inches, and had sent every separate inch into a
separate town, he could not have dispersed it half so far and wide as
his fame. Wallace will be remembered in songs and stories, while there
are songs and stories in the English tongue, and Scotland will hold him
dear while her lakes and mountains last.

Released from this dreaded enemy, the King made a fairer plan of
Government for Scotland, divided the offices of honour among Scottish
gentlemen and English gentlemen, forgave past offences, and thought, in
his old age, that his work was done.

But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce conspired, and made an
appointment to meet at Dumfries, in the church of the Minorites. There
is a story that Comyn was false to Bruce, and had informed against him
to the King; that Bruce was warned of his danger and the necessity of
flight, by receiving, one night as he sat at supper, from his friend
the Earl of Gloucester, twelve pennies and a pair of spurs; that as he
was riding angrily to keep his appointment (through a snow-storm, with
his horse’s shoes reversed that he might not be tracked), he met an
evil-looking serving man, a messenger of Comyn, whom he killed, and
concealed in whose dress he found letters that proved Comyn’s
treachery. However this may be, they were likely enough to quarrel in
any case, being hot-headed rivals; and, whatever they quarrelled about,
they certainly did quarrel in the church where they met, and Bruce drew
his dagger and stabbed Comyn, who fell upon the pavement. When Bruce
came out, pale and disturbed, the friends who were waiting for him
asked what was the matter? ‘I think I have killed Comyn,’ said he. ‘You
only think so?’ returned one of them; ‘I will make sure!’ and going
into the church, and finding him alive, stabbed him again and again.
Knowing that the King would never forgive this new deed of violence,
the party then declared Bruce King of Scotland: got him crowned at
Scone—without the chair; and set up the rebellious standard once again.

When the King heard of it he kindled with fiercer anger than he had
ever shown yet. He caused the Prince of Wales and two hundred and
seventy of the young nobility to be knighted—the trees in the Temple
Gardens were cut down to make room for their tents, and they watched
their armour all night, according to the old usage: some in the Temple
Church: some in Westminster Abbey—and at the public Feast which then
took place, he swore, by Heaven, and by two swans covered with gold
network which his minstrels placed upon the table, that he would avenge
the death of Comyn, and would punish the false Bruce. And before all
the company, he charged the Prince his son, in case that he should die
before accomplishing his vow, not to bury him until it was fulfilled.
Next morning the Prince and the rest of the young Knights rode away to
the Border-country to join the English army; and the King, now weak and
sick, followed in a horse-litter.

Bruce, after losing a battle and undergoing many dangers and much
misery, fled to Ireland, where he lay concealed through the winter.
That winter, Edward passed in hunting down and executing Bruce’s
relations and adherents, sparing neither youth nor age, and showing no
touch of pity or sign of mercy. In the following spring, Bruce
reappeared and gained some victories. In these frays, both sides were
grievously cruel. For instance—Bruce’s two brothers, being taken
captives desperately wounded, were ordered by the King to instant
execution. Bruce’s friend Sir John Douglas, taking his own Castle of
Douglas out of the hands of an English Lord, roasted the dead bodies of
the slaughtered garrison in a great fire made of every movable within
it; which dreadful cookery his men called the Douglas Larder. Bruce,
still successful, however, drove the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of
Gloucester into the Castle of Ayr and laid siege to it.

The King, who had been laid up all the winter, but had directed the
army from his sick-bed, now advanced to Carlisle, and there, causing
the litter in which he had travelled to be placed in the Cathedral as
an offering to Heaven, mounted his horse once more, and for the last
time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and had reigned thirty-five
years. He was so ill, that in four days he could go no more than six
miles; still, even at that pace, he went on and resolutely kept his
face towards the Border. At length, he lay down at the village of
Burgh-upon-Sands; and there, telling those around him to impress upon
the Prince that he was to remember his father’s vow, and was never to
rest until he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, he yielded up his last
breath.




CHAPTER XVII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND


King Edward the Second, the first Prince of Wales, was twenty-three
years old when his father died. There was a certain favourite of his, a
young man from Gascony, named Piers Gaveston, of whom his father had so
much disapproved that he had ordered him out of England, and had made
his son swear by the side of his sick-bed, never to bring him back.
But, the Prince no sooner found himself King, than he broke his oath,
as so many other Princes and Kings did (they were far too ready to take
oaths), and sent for his dear friend immediately.

Now, this same Gaveston was handsome enough, but was a reckless,
insolent, audacious fellow. He was detested by the proud English Lords:
not only because he had such power over the King, and made the Court
such a dissipated place, but, also, because he could ride better than
they at tournaments, and was used, in his impudence, to cut very bad
jokes on them; calling one, the old hog; another, the stage-player;
another, the Jew; another, the black dog of Ardenne. This was as poor
wit as need be, but it made those Lords very wroth; and the surly Earl
of Warwick, who was the black dog, swore that the time should come when
Piers Gaveston should feel the black dog’s teeth.

It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem to be coming. The King
made him Earl of Cornwall, and gave him vast riches; and, when the King
went over to France to marry the French Princess, Isabella, daughter of
Philip le Bel: who was said to be the most beautiful woman in the
world: he made Gaveston, Regent of the Kingdom. His splendid
marriage-ceremony in the Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, where there
were four Kings and three Queens present (quite a pack of Court Cards,
for I dare say the Knaves were not wanting), being over, he seemed to
care little or nothing for his beautiful wife; but was wild with
impatience to meet Gaveston again.

When he landed at home, he paid no attention to anybody else, but ran
into the favourite’s arms before a great concourse of people, and
hugged him, and kissed him, and called him his brother. At the
coronation which soon followed, Gaveston was the richest and brightest
of all the glittering company there, and had the honour of carrying the
crown. This made the proud Lords fiercer than ever; the people, too,
despised the favourite, and would never call him Earl of Cornwall,
however much he complained to the King and asked him to punish them for
not doing so, but persisted in styling him plain Piers Gaveston.

The Barons were so unceremonious with the King in giving him to
understand that they would not bear this favourite, that the King was
obliged to send him out of the country. The favourite himself was made
to take an oath (more oaths!) that he would never come back, and the
Barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until they heard that
he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough for the
besotted King, who brought him home again in a year’s time, and not
only disgusted the Court and the people by his doting folly, but
offended his beautiful wife too, who never liked him afterwards.

He had now the old Royal want—of money—and the Barons had the new power
of positively refusing to let him raise any. He summoned a Parliament
at York; the Barons refused to make one, while the favourite was near
him. He summoned another Parliament at Westminster, and sent Gaveston
away. Then, the Barons came, completely armed, and appointed a
committee of themselves to correct abuses in the state and in the
King’s household. He got some money on these conditions, and directly
set off with Gaveston to the Border-country, where they spent it in
idling away the time, and feasting, while Bruce made ready to drive the
English out of Scotland. For, though the old King had even made this
poor weak son of his swear (as some say) that he would not bury his
bones, but would have them boiled clean in a caldron, and carried
before the English army until Scotland was entirely subdued, the second
Edward was so unlike the first that Bruce gained strength and power
every day.

The committee of Nobles, after some months of deliberation, ordained
that the King should henceforth call a Parliament together, once every
year, and even twice if necessary, instead of summoning it only when he
chose. Further, that Gaveston should once more be banished, and, this
time, on pain of death if he ever came back. The King’s tears were of
no avail; he was obliged to send his favourite to Flanders. As soon as
he had done so, however, he dissolved the Parliament, with the low
cunning of a mere fool, and set off to the North of England, thinking
to get an army about him to oppose the Nobles. And once again he
brought Gaveston home, and heaped upon him all the riches and titles of
which the Barons had deprived him.

The Lords saw, now, that there was nothing for it but to put the
favourite to death. They could have done so, legally, according to the
terms of his banishment; but they did so, I am sorry to say, in a
shabby manner. Led by the Earl of Lancaster, the King’s cousin, they
first of all attacked the King and Gaveston at Newcastle. They had time
to escape by sea, and the mean King, having his precious Gaveston with
him, was quite content to leave his lovely wife behind. When they were
comparatively safe, they separated; the King went to York to collect a
force of soldiers; and the favourite shut himself up, in the meantime,
in Scarborough Castle overlooking the sea. This was what the Barons
wanted. They knew that the Castle could not hold out; they attacked it,
and made Gaveston surrender. He delivered himself up to the Earl of
Pembroke—that Lord whom he had called the Jew—on the Earl’s pledging
his faith and knightly word, that no harm should happen to him and no
violence be done him.

Now, it was agreed with Gaveston that he should be taken to the Castle
of Wallingford, and there kept in honourable custody. They travelled as
far as Dedington, near Banbury, where, in the Castle of that place,
they stopped for a night to rest. Whether the Earl of Pembroke left his
prisoner there, knowing what would happen, or really left him thinking
no harm, and only going (as he pretended) to visit his wife, the
Countess, who was in the neighbourhood, is no great matter now; in any
case, he was bound as an honourable gentleman to protect his prisoner,
and he did not do it. In the morning, while the favourite was yet in
bed, he was required to dress himself and come down into the
court-yard. He did so without any mistrust, but started and turned pale
when he found it full of strange armed men. ‘I think you know me?’ said
their leader, also armed from head to foot. ‘I am the black dog of
Ardenne!’ The time was come when Piers Gaveston was to feel the black
dog’s teeth indeed. They set him on a mule, and carried him, in mock
state and with military music, to the black dog’s kennel—Warwick
Castle—where a hasty council, composed of some great noblemen,
considered what should be done with him. Some were for sparing him, but
one loud voice—it was the black dog’s bark, I dare say—sounded through
the Castle Hall, uttering these words: ‘You have the fox in your power.
Let him go now, and you must hunt him again.’

They sentenced him to death. He threw himself at the feet of the Earl
of Lancaster—the old hog—but the old hog was as savage as the dog. He
was taken out upon the pleasant road, leading from Warwick to Coventry,
where the beautiful river Avon, by which, long afterwards, William
Shakespeare was born and now lies buried, sparkled in the bright
landscape of the beautiful May-day; and there they struck off his
wretched head, and stained the dust with his blood.

When the King heard of this black deed, in his grief and rage he
denounced relentless war against his Barons, and both sides were in
arms for half a year. But, it then became necessary for them to join
their forces against Bruce, who had used the time well while they were
divided, and had now a great power in Scotland.

Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then besieging Stirling Castle,
and that the Governor had been obliged to pledge himself to surrender
it, unless he should be relieved before a certain day. Hereupon, the
King ordered the nobles and their fighting-men to meet him at Berwick;
but, the nobles cared so little for the King, and so neglected the
summons, and lost time, that only on the day before that appointed for
the surrender, did the King find himself at Stirling, and even then
with a smaller force than he had expected. However, he had, altogether,
a hundred thousand men, and Bruce had not more than forty thousand;
but, Bruce’s army was strongly posted in three square columns, on the
ground lying between the Burn or Brook of Bannock and the walls of
Stirling Castle.

On the very evening, when the King came up, Bruce did a brave act that
encouraged his men. He was seen by a certain Henry de Bohun, an English
Knight, riding about before his army on a little horse, with a light
battle-axe in his hand, and a crown of gold on his head. This English
Knight, who was mounted on a strong war-horse, cased in steel, strongly
armed, and able (as he thought) to overthrow Bruce by crushing him with
his mere weight, set spurs to his great charger, rode on him, and made
a thrust at him with his heavy spear. Bruce parried the thrust, and
with one blow of his battle-axe split his skull.

The Scottish men did not forget this, next day when the battle raged.
Randolph, Bruce’s valiant Nephew, rode, with the small body of men he
commanded, into such a host of the English, all shining in polished
armour in the sunlight, that they seemed to be swallowed up and lost,
as if they had plunged into the sea. But, they fought so well, and did
such dreadful execution, that the English staggered. Then came Bruce
himself upon them, with all the rest of his army. While they were thus
hard pressed and amazed, there appeared upon the hills what they
supposed to be a new Scottish army, but what were really only the camp
followers, in number fifteen thousand: whom Bruce had taught to show
themselves at that place and time. The Earl of Gloucester, commanding
the English horse, made a last rush to change the fortune of the day;
but Bruce (like Jack the Giant-killer in the story) had had pits dug in
the ground, and covered over with turfs and stakes. Into these, as they
gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders and horses rolled by
hundreds. The English were completely routed; all their treasure,
stores, and engines, were taken by the Scottish men; so many waggons
and other wheeled vehicles were seized, that it is related that they
would have reached, if they had been drawn out in a line, one hundred
and eighty miles. The fortunes of Scotland were, for the time,
completely changed; and never was a battle won, more famous upon
Scottish ground, than this great battle of Bannockburn.

Plague and famine succeeded in England; and still the powerless King
and his disdainful Lords were always in contention. Some of the
turbulent chiefs of Ireland made proposals to Bruce, to accept the rule
of that country. He sent his brother Edward to them, who was crowned
King of Ireland. He afterwards went himself to help his brother in his
Irish wars, but his brother was defeated in the end and killed. Robert
Bruce, returning to Scotland, still increased his strength there.

As the King’s ruin had begun in a favourite, so it seemed likely to end
in one. He was too poor a creature to rely at all upon himself; and his
new favourite was one Hugh le Despenser, the son of a gentleman of
ancient family. Hugh was handsome and brave, but he was the favourite
of a weak King, whom no man cared a rush for, and that was a dangerous
place to hold. The Nobles leagued against him, because the King liked
him; and they lay in wait, both for his ruin and his father’s. Now, the
King had married him to the daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester,
and had given both him and his father great possessions in Wales. In
their endeavours to extend these, they gave violent offence to an angry
Welsh gentleman, named John de Mowbray, and to divers other angry Welsh
gentlemen, who resorted to arms, took their castles, and seized their
estates. The Earl of Lancaster had first placed the favourite (who was
a poor relation of his own) at Court, and he considered his own dignity
offended by the preference he received and the honours he acquired; so
he, and the Barons who were his friends, joined the Welshmen, marched
on London, and sent a message to the King demanding to have the
favourite and his father banished. At first, the King unaccountably
took it into his head to be spirited, and to send them a bold reply;
but when they quartered themselves around Holborn and Clerkenwell, and
went down, armed, to the Parliament at Westminster, he gave way, and
complied with their demands.

His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected. It arose out of an
accidental circumstance. The beautiful Queen happening to be
travelling, came one night to one of the royal castles, and demanded to
be lodged and entertained there until morning. The governor of this
castle, who was one of the enraged lords, was away, and in his absence,
his wife refused admission to the Queen; a scuffle took place among the
common men on either side, and some of the royal attendants were
killed. The people, who cared nothing for the King, were very angry
that their beautiful Queen should be thus rudely treated in her own
dominions; and the King, taking advantage of this feeling, besieged the
castle, took it, and then called the two Despensers home. Upon this,
the confederate lords and the Welshmen went over to Bruce. The King
encountered them at Boroughbridge, gained the victory, and took a
number of distinguished prisoners; among them, the Earl of Lancaster,
now an old man, upon whose destruction he was resolved. This Earl was
taken to his own castle of Pontefract, and there tried and found guilty
by an unfair court appointed for the purpose; he was not even allowed
to speak in his own defence. He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a
starved pony without saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded.
Eight-and-twenty knights were hanged, drawn, and quartered. When the
King had despatched this bloody work, and had made a fresh and a long
truce with Bruce, he took the Despensers into greater favour than ever,
and made the father Earl of Winchester.

One prisoner, and an important one, who was taken at Boroughbridge,
made his escape, however, and turned the tide against the King. This
was Roger Mortimer, always resolutely opposed to him, who was sentenced
to death, and placed for safe custody in the Tower of London. He
treated his guards to a quantity of wine into which he had put a
sleeping potion; and, when they were insensible, broke out of his
dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the chimney, let himself down
from the roof of the building with a rope-ladder, passed the sentries,
got down to the river, and made away in a boat to where servants and
horses were waiting for him. He finally escaped to France, where
Charles le Bel, the brother of the beautiful Queen, was King. Charles
sought to quarrel with the King of England, on pretence of his not
having come to do him homage at his coronation. It was proposed that
the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange the dispute; she went,
and wrote home to the King, that as he was sick and could not come to
France himself, perhaps it would be better to send over the young
Prince, their son, who was only twelve years old, who could do homage
to her brother in his stead, and in whose company she would immediately
return. The King sent him: but, both he and the Queen remained at the
French Court, and Roger Mortimer became the Queen’s lover.

When the King wrote, again and again, to the Queen to come home, she
did not reply that she despised him too much to live with him any more
(which was the truth), but said she was afraid of the two Despensers.
In short, her design was to overthrow the favourites’ power, and the
King’s power, such as it was, and invade England. Having obtained a
French force of two thousand men, and being joined by all the English
exiles then in France, she landed, within a year, at Orewell, in
Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by the Earls of Kent and
Norfolk, the King’s two brothers; by other powerful noblemen; and
lastly, by the first English general who was despatched to check her:
who went over to her with all his men. The people of London, receiving
these tidings, would do nothing for the King, but broke open the Tower,
let out all his prisoners, and threw up their caps and hurrahed for the
beautiful Queen.

The King, with his two favourites, fled to Bristol, where he left old
Despenser in charge of the town and castle, while he went on with the
son to Wales. The Bristol men being opposed to the King, and it being
impossible to hold the town with enemies everywhere within the walls,
Despenser yielded it up on the third day, and was instantly brought to
trial for having traitorously influenced what was called ‘the King’s
mind’—though I doubt if the King ever had any. He was a venerable old
man, upwards of ninety years of age, but his age gained no respect or
mercy. He was hanged, torn open while he was yet alive, cut up into
pieces, and thrown to the dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at
Hereford before the same judge on a long series of foolish charges,
found guilty, and hanged upon a gallows fifty feet high, with a chaplet
of nettles round his head. His poor old father and he were innocent
enough of any worse crimes than the crime of having been friends of a
King, on whom, as a mere man, they would never have deigned to cast a
favourable look. It is a bad crime, I know, and leads to worse; but,
many lords and gentlemen—I even think some ladies, too, if I recollect
right—have committed it in England, who have neither been given to the
dogs, nor hanged up fifty feet high.

The wretched King was running here and there, all this time, and never
getting anywhere in particular, until he gave himself up, and was taken
off to Kenilworth Castle. When he was safely lodged there, the Queen
went to London and met the Parliament. And the Bishop of Hereford, who
was the most skilful of her friends, said, What was to be done now?
Here was an imbecile, indolent, miserable King upon the throne;
wouldn’t it be better to take him off, and put his son there instead? I
don’t know whether the Queen really pitied him at this pass, but she
began to cry; so, the Bishop said, Well, my Lords and Gentlemen, what
do you think, upon the whole, of sending down to Kenilworth, and seeing
if His Majesty (God bless him, and forbid we should depose him!) won’t
resign?

My Lords and Gentlemen thought it a good notion, so a deputation of
them went down to Kenilworth; and there the King came into the great
hall of the Castle, commonly dressed in a poor black gown; and when he
saw a certain bishop among them, fell down, poor feeble-headed man, and
made a wretched spectacle of himself. Somebody lifted him up, and then
Sir William Trussel, the Speaker of the House of Commons, almost
frightened him to death by making him a tremendous speech to the effect
that he was no longer a King, and that everybody renounced allegiance
to him. After which, Sir Thomas Blount, the Steward of the Household,
nearly finished him, by coming forward and breaking his white
wand—which was a ceremony only performed at a King’s death. Being asked
in this pressing manner what he thought of resigning, the King said he
thought it was the best thing he could do. So, he did it, and they
proclaimed his son next day.

I wish I could close his history by saying that he lived a harmless
life in the Castle and the Castle gardens at Kenilworth, many
years—that he had a favourite, and plenty to eat and drink—and, having
that, wanted nothing. But he was shamefully humiliated. He was
outraged, and slighted, and had dirty water from ditches given him to
shave with, and wept and said he would have clean warm water, and was
altogether very miserable. He was moved from this castle to that
castle, and from that castle to the other castle, because this lord or
that lord, or the other lord, was too kind to him: until at last he
came to Berkeley Castle, near the River Severn, where (the Lord
Berkeley being then ill and absent) he fell into the hands of two black
ruffians, called Thomas Gournay and William Ogle.

One night—it was the night of September the twenty-first, one thousand
three hundred and twenty-seven—dreadful screams were heard, by the
startled people in the neighbouring town, ringing through the thick
walls of the Castle, and the dark, deep night; and they said, as they
were thus horribly awakened from their sleep, ‘May Heaven be merciful
to the King; for those cries forbode that no good is being done to him
in his dismal prison!’ Next morning he was dead—not bruised, or
stabbed, or marked upon the body, but much distorted in the face; and
it was whispered afterwards, that those two villains, Gournay and Ogle,
had burnt up his inside with a red-hot iron.

If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the centre tower of its
beautiful Cathedral, with its four rich pinnacles, rising lightly in
the air; you may remember that the wretched Edward the Second was
buried in the old abbey of that ancient city, at forty-three years old,
after being for nineteen years and a half a perfectly incapable King.




CHAPTER XVIII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD


Roger Mortimer, the Queen’s lover (who escaped to France in the last
chapter), was far from profiting by the examples he had had of the fate
of favourites. Having, through the Queen’s influence, come into
possession of the estates of the two Despensers, he became extremely
proud and ambitious, and sought to be the real ruler of England. The
young King, who was crowned at fourteen years of age with all the usual
solemnities, resolved not to bear this, and soon pursued Mortimer to
his ruin.

The people themselves were not fond of Mortimer—first, because he was a
Royal favourite; secondly, because he was supposed to have helped to
make a peace with Scotland which now took place, and in virtue of which
the young King’s sister Joan, only seven years old, was promised in
marriage to David, the son and heir of Robert Bruce, who was only five
years old. The nobles hated Mortimer because of his pride, riches, and
power. They went so far as to take up arms against him; but were
obliged to submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those who did so, but who
afterwards went over to Mortimer and the Queen, was made an example of
in the following cruel manner:

He seems to have been anything but a wise old earl; and he was
persuaded by the agents of the favourite and the Queen, that poor King
Edward the Second was not really dead; and thus was betrayed into
writing letters favouring his rightful claim to the throne. This was
made out to be high treason, and he was tried, found guilty, and
sentenced to be executed. They took the poor old lord outside the town
of Winchester, and there kept him waiting some three or four hours
until they could find somebody to cut off his head. At last, a convict
said he would do it, if the government would pardon him in return; and
they gave him the pardon; and at one blow he put the Earl of Kent out
of his last suspense.

While the Queen was in France, she had found a lovely and good young
lady, named Philippa, who she thought would make an excellent wife for
her son. The young King married this lady, soon after he came to the
throne; and her first child, Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards became
celebrated, as we shall presently see, under the famous title of Edward
the Black Prince.

The young King, thinking the time ripe for the downfall of Mortimer,
took counsel with Lord Montacute how he should proceed. A Parliament
was going to be held at Nottingham, and that lord recommended that the
favourite should be seized by night in Nottingham Castle, where he was
sure to be. Now, this, like many other things, was more easily said
than done; because, to guard against treachery, the great gates of the
Castle were locked every night, and the great keys were carried
up-stairs to the Queen, who laid them under her own pillow. But the
Castle had a governor, and the governor being Lord Montacute’s friend,
confided to him how he knew of a secret passage underground, hidden
from observation by the weeds and brambles with which it was overgrown;
and how, through that passage, the conspirators might enter in the dead
of the night, and go straight to Mortimer’s room. Accordingly, upon a
certain dark night, at midnight, they made their way through this
dismal place: startling the rats, and frightening the owls and bats:
and came safely to the bottom of the main tower of the Castle, where
the King met them, and took them up a profoundly-dark staircase in a
deep silence. They soon heard the voice of Mortimer in council with
some friends; and bursting into the room with a sudden noise, took him
prisoner. The Queen cried out from her bed-chamber, ‘Oh, my sweet son,
my dear son, spare my gentle Mortimer!’ They carried him off, however;
and, before the next Parliament, accused him of having made differences
between the young King and his mother, and of having brought about the
death of the Earl of Kent, and even of the late King; for, as you know
by this time, when they wanted to get rid of a man in those old days,
they were not very particular of what they accused him. Mortimer was
found guilty of all this, and was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn. The
King shut his mother up in genteel confinement, where she passed the
rest of her life; and now he became King in earnest.

The first effort he made was to conquer Scotland. The English lords who
had lands in Scotland, finding that their rights were not respected
under the late peace, made war on their own account: choosing for their
general, Edward, the son of John Baliol, who made such a vigorous
fight, that in less than two months he won the whole Scottish Kingdom.
He was joined, when thus triumphant, by the King and Parliament; and he
and the King in person besieged the Scottish forces in Berwick. The
whole Scottish army coming to the assistance of their countrymen, such
a furious battle ensued, that thirty thousand men are said to have been
killed in it. Baliol was then crowned King of Scotland, doing homage to
the King of England; but little came of his successes after all, for
the Scottish men rose against him, within no very long time, and David
Bruce came back within ten years and took his kingdom.

France was a far richer country than Scotland, and the King had a much
greater mind to conquer it. So, he let Scotland alone, and pretended
that he had a claim to the French throne in right of his mother. He
had, in reality, no claim at all; but that mattered little in those
times. He brought over to his cause many little princes and sovereigns,
and even courted the alliance of the people of Flanders—a busy, working
community, who had very small respect for kings, and whose head man was
a brewer. With such forces as he raised by these means, Edward invaded
France; but he did little by that, except run into debt in carrying on
the war to the extent of three hundred thousand pounds. The next year
he did better; gaining a great sea-fight in the harbour of Sluys. This
success, however, was very shortlived, for the Flemings took fright at
the siege of Saint Omer and ran away, leaving their weapons and baggage
behind them. Philip, the French King, coming up with his army, and
Edward being very anxious to decide the war, proposed to settle the
difference by single combat with him, or by a fight of one hundred
knights on each side. The French King said, he thanked him; but being
very well as he was, he would rather not. So, after some skirmishing
and talking, a short peace was made.

It was soon broken by King Edward’s favouring the cause of John, Earl
of Montford; a French nobleman, who asserted a claim of his own against
the French King, and offered to do homage to England for the Crown of
France, if he could obtain it through England’s help. This French lord,
himself, was soon defeated by the French King’s son, and shut up in a
tower in Paris; but his wife, a courageous and beautiful woman, who is
said to have had the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion,
assembled the people of Brittany, where she then was; and, showing them
her infant son, made many pathetic entreaties to them not to desert her
and their young Lord. They took fire at this appeal, and rallied round
her in the strong castle of Hennebon. Here she was not only besieged
without by the French under Charles de Blois, but was endangered within
by a dreary old bishop, who was always representing to the people what
horrors they must undergo if they were faithful—first from famine, and
afterwards from fire and sword. But this noble lady, whose heart never
failed her, encouraged her soldiers by her own example; went from post
to post like a great general; even mounted on horseback fully armed,
and, issuing from the castle by a by-path, fell upon the French camp,
set fire to the tents, and threw the whole force into disorder. This
done, she got safely back to Hennebon again, and was received with loud
shouts of joy by the defenders of the castle, who had given her up for
lost. As they were now very short of provisions, however, and as they
could not dine off enthusiasm, and as the old bishop was always saying,
‘I told you what it would come to!’ they began to lose heart, and to
talk of yielding the castle up. The brave Countess retiring to an upper
room and looking with great grief out to sea, where she expected relief
from England, saw, at this very time, the English ships in the
distance, and was relieved and rescued! Sir Walter Manning, the English
commander, so admired her courage, that, being come into the castle
with the English knights, and having made a feast there, he assaulted
the French by way of dessert, and beat them off triumphantly. Then he
and the knights came back to the castle with great joy; and the
Countess who had watched them from a high tower, thanked them with all
her heart, and kissed them every one.

This noble lady distinguished herself afterwards in a sea-fight with
the French off Guernsey, when she was on her way to England to ask for
more troops. Her great spirit roused another lady, the wife of another
French lord (whom the French King very barbarously murdered), to
distinguish herself scarcely less. The time was fast coming, however,
when Edward, Prince of Wales, was to be the great star of this French
and English war.

It was in the month of July, in the year one thousand three hundred and
forty-six, when the King embarked at Southampton for France, with an
army of about thirty thousand men in all, attended by the Prince of
Wales and by several of the chief nobles. He landed at La Hogue in
Normandy; and, burning and destroying as he went, according to custom,
advanced up the left bank of the River Seine, and fired the small towns
even close to Paris; but, being watched from the right bank of the
river by the French King and all his army, it came to this at last,
that Edward found himself, on Saturday the twenty-sixth of August, one
thousand three hundred and forty-six, on a rising ground behind the
little French village of Crecy, face to face with the French King’s
force. And, although the French King had an enormous army—in number
more than eight times his—he there resolved to beat him or be beaten.

The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of
Warwick, led the first division of the English army; two other great
Earls led the second; and the King, the third. When the morning dawned,
the King received the sacrament, and heard prayers, and then, mounted
on horseback with a white wand in his hand, rode from company to
company, and rank to rank, cheering and encouraging both officers and
men. Then the whole army breakfasted, each man sitting on the ground
where he had stood; and then they remained quietly on the ground with
their weapons ready.

Up came the French King with all his great force. It was dark and angry
weather; there was an eclipse of the sun; there was a thunder-storm,
accompanied with tremendous rain; the frightened birds flew screaming
above the soldiers’ heads. A certain captain in the French army advised
the French King, who was by no means cheerful, not to begin the battle
until the morrow. The King, taking this advice, gave the word to halt.
But, those behind not understanding it, or desiring to be foremost with
the rest, came pressing on. The roads for a great distance were covered
with this immense army, and with the common people from the villages,
who were flourishing their rude weapons, and making a great noise.
Owing to these circumstances, the French army advanced in the greatest
confusion; every French lord doing what he liked with his own men, and
putting out the men of every other French lord.

Now, their King relied strongly upon a great body of cross-bowmen from
Genoa; and these he ordered to the front to begin the battle, on
finding that he could not stop it. They shouted once, they shouted
twice, they shouted three times, to alarm the English archers; but, the
English would have heard them shout three thousand times and would have
never moved. At last the cross-bowmen went forward a little, and began
to discharge their bolts; upon which, the English let fly such a hail
of arrows, that the Genoese speedily made off—for their cross-bows,
besides being heavy to carry, required to be wound up with a handle,
and consequently took time to re-load; the English, on the other hand,
could discharge their arrows almost as fast as the arrows could fly.

When the French King saw the Genoese turning, he cried out to his men
to kill those scoundrels, who were doing harm instead of service. This
increased the confusion. Meanwhile the English archers, continuing to
shoot as fast as ever, shot down great numbers of the French soldiers
and knights; whom certain sly Cornish-men and Welshmen, from the
English army, creeping along the ground, despatched with great knives.

The Prince and his division were at this time so hard-pressed, that the
Earl of Warwick sent a message to the King, who was overlooking the
battle from a windmill, beseeching him to send more aid.

‘Is my son killed?’ said the King.

‘No, sire, please God,’ returned the messenger.

‘Is he wounded?’ said the King.

‘No, sire.’

‘Is he thrown to the ground?’ said the King.

‘No, sire, not so; but, he is very hard-pressed.’

‘Then,’ said the King, ‘go back to those who sent you, and tell them I
shall send no aid; because I set my heart upon my son proving himself
this day a brave knight, and because I am resolved, please God, that
the honour of a great victory shall be his!’

These bold words, being reported to the Prince and his division, so
raised their spirits, that they fought better than ever. The King of
France charged gallantly with his men many times; but it was of no use.
Night closing in, his horse was killed under him by an English arrow,
and the knights and nobles who had clustered thick about him early in
the day, were now completely scattered. At last, some of his few
remaining followers led him off the field by force since he would not
retire of himself, and they journeyed away to Amiens. The victorious
English, lighting their watch-fires, made merry on the field, and the
King, riding to meet his gallant son, took him in his arms, kissed him,
and told him that he had acted nobly, and proved himself worthy of the
day and of the crown. While it was yet night, King Edward was hardly
aware of the great victory he had gained; but, next day, it was
discovered that eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and thirty
thousand common men lay dead upon the French side. Among these was the
King of Bohemia, an old blind man; who, having been told that his son
was wounded in the battle, and that no force could stand against the
Black Prince, called to him two knights, put himself on horse-back
between them, fastened the three bridles together, and dashed in among
the English, where he was presently slain. He bore as his crest three
white ostrich feathers, with the motto _Ich dien_, signifying in
English ‘I serve.’ This crest and motto were taken by the Prince of
Wales in remembrance of that famous day, and have been borne by the
Prince of Wales ever since.

Five days after this great battle, the King laid siege to Calais. This
siege—ever afterwards memorable—lasted nearly a year. In order to
starve the inhabitants out, King Edward built so many wooden houses for
the lodgings of his troops, that it is said their quarters looked like
a second Calais suddenly sprung around the first. Early in the siege,
the governor of the town drove out what he called the useless mouths,
to the number of seventeen hundred persons, men and women, young and
old. King Edward allowed them to pass through his lines, and even fed
them, and dismissed them with money; but, later in the siege, he was
not so merciful—five hundred more, who were afterwards driven out,
dying of starvation and misery. The garrison were so hard-pressed at
last, that they sent a letter to King Philip, telling him that they had
eaten all the horses, all the dogs, and all the rats and mice that
could be found in the place; and, that if he did not relieve them, they
must either surrender to the English, or eat one another. Philip made
one effort to give them relief; but they were so hemmed in by the
English power, that he could not succeed, and was fain to leave the
place. Upon this they hoisted the English flag, and surrendered to King
Edward. ‘Tell your general,’ said he to the humble messengers who came
out of the town, ‘that I require to have sent here, six of the most
distinguished citizens, bare-legged, and in their shirts, with ropes
about their necks; and let those six men bring with them the keys of
the castle and the town.’

When the Governor of Calais related this to the people in the
Market-place, there was great weeping and distress; in the midst of
which, one worthy citizen, named Eustace de Saint Pierre, rose up and
said, that if the six men required were not sacrificed, the whole
population would be; therefore, he offered himself as the first.
Encouraged by this bright example, five other worthy citizens rose up
one after another, and offered themselves to save the rest. The
Governor, who was too badly wounded to be able to walk, mounted a poor
old horse that had not been eaten, and conducted these good men to the
gate, while all the people cried and mourned.

Edward received them wrathfully, and ordered the heads of the whole six
to be struck off. However, the good Queen fell upon her knees, and
besought the King to give them up to her. The King replied, ‘I wish you
had been somewhere else; but I cannot refuse you.’ So she had them
properly dressed, made a feast for them, and sent them back with a
handsome present, to the great rejoicing of the whole camp. I hope the
people of Calais loved the daughter to whom she gave birth soon
afterwards, for her gentle mother’s sake.

Now came that terrible disease, the Plague, into Europe, hurrying from
the heart of China; and killed the wretched people—especially the
poor—in such enormous numbers, that one-half of the inhabitants of
England are related to have died of it. It killed the cattle, in great
numbers, too; and so few working men remained alive, that there were
not enough left to till the ground.

After eight years of differing and quarrelling, the Prince of Wales
again invaded France with an army of sixty thousand men. He went
through the south of the country, burning and plundering wheresoever he
went; while his father, who had still the Scottish war upon his hands,
did the like in Scotland, but was harassed and worried in his retreat
from that country by the Scottish men, who repaid his cruelties with
interest.

The French King, Philip, was now dead, and was succeeded by his son
John. The Black Prince, called by that name from the colour of the
armour he wore to set off his fair complexion, continuing to burn and
destroy in France, roused John into determined opposition; and so cruel
had the Black Prince been in his campaign, and so severely had the
French peasants suffered, that he could not find one who, for love, or
money, or the fear of death, would tell him what the French King was
doing, or where he was. Thus it happened that he came upon the French
King’s forces, all of a sudden, near the town of Poitiers, and found
that the whole neighbouring country was occupied by a vast French army.
‘God help us!’ said the Black Prince, ‘we must make the best of it.’

So, on a Sunday morning, the eighteenth of September, the Prince whose
army was now reduced to ten thousand men in all—prepared to give battle
to the French King, who had sixty thousand horse alone. While he was so
engaged, there came riding from the French camp, a Cardinal, who had
persuaded John to let him offer terms, and try to save the shedding of
Christian blood. ‘Save my honour,’ said the Prince to this good priest,
‘and save the honour of my army, and I will make any reasonable terms.’
He offered to give up all the towns, castles, and prisoners, he had
taken, and to swear to make no war in France for seven years; but, as
John would hear of nothing but his surrender, with a hundred of his
chief knights, the treaty was broken off, and the Prince said
quietly—‘God defend the right; we shall fight to-morrow.’

Therefore, on the Monday morning, at break of day, the two armies
prepared for battle. The English were posted in a strong place, which
could only be approached by one narrow lane, skirted by hedges on both
sides. The French attacked them by this lane; but were so galled and
slain by English arrows from behind the hedges, that they were forced
to retreat. Then went six hundred English bowmen round about, and,
coming upon the rear of the French army, rained arrows on them thick
and fast. The French knights, thrown into confusion, quitted their
banners and dispersed in all directions. Said Sir John Chandos to the
Prince, ‘Ride forward, noble Prince, and the day is yours. The King of
France is so valiant a gentleman, that I know he will never fly, and
may be taken prisoner.’ Said the Prince to this, ‘Advance, English
banners, in the name of God and St. George!’ and on they pressed until
they came up with the French King, fighting fiercely with his
battle-axe, and, when all his nobles had forsaken him, attended
faithfully to the last by his youngest son Philip, only sixteen years
of age. Father and son fought well, and the King had already two wounds
in his face, and had been beaten down, when he at last delivered
himself to a banished French knight, and gave him his right-hand glove
in token that he had done so.

The Black Prince was generous as well as brave, and he invited his
royal prisoner to supper in his tent, and waited upon him at table,
and, when they afterwards rode into London in a gorgeous procession,
mounted the French King on a fine cream-coloured horse, and rode at his
side on a little pony. This was all very kind, but I think it was,
perhaps, a little theatrical too, and has been made more meritorious
than it deserved to be; especially as I am inclined to think that the
greatest kindness to the King of France would have been not to have
shown him to the people at all. However, it must be said, for these
acts of politeness, that, in course of time, they did much to soften
the horrors of war and the passions of conquerors. It was a long, long
time before the common soldiers began to have the benefit of such
courtly deeds; but they did at last; and thus it is possible that a
poor soldier who asked for quarter at the battle of Waterloo, or any
other such great fight, may have owed his life indirectly to Edward the
Black Prince.

At this time there stood in the Strand, in London, a palace called the
Savoy, which was given up to the captive King of France and his son for
their residence. As the King of Scotland had now been King Edward’s
captive for eleven years too, his success was, at this time, tolerably
complete. The Scottish business was settled by the prisoner being
released under the title of Sir David, King of Scotland, and by his
engaging to pay a large ransom. The state of France encouraged England
to propose harder terms to that country, where the people rose against
the unspeakable cruelty and barbarity of its nobles; where the nobles
rose in turn against the people; where the most frightful outrages were
committed on all sides; and where the insurrection of the peasants,
called the insurrection of the Jacquerie, from Jacques, a common
Christian name among the country people of France, awakened terrors and
hatreds that have scarcely yet passed away. A treaty called the Great
Peace, was at last signed, under which King Edward agreed to give up
the greater part of his conquests, and King John to pay, within six
years, a ransom of three million crowns of gold. He was so beset by his
own nobles and courtiers for having yielded to these conditions—though
they could help him to no better—that he came back of his own will to
his old palace-prison of the Savoy, and there died.

There was a Sovereign of Castile at that time, called Pedro the Cruel,
who deserved the name remarkably well: having committed, among other
cruelties, a variety of murders. This amiable monarch being driven from
his throne for his crimes, went to the province of Bordeaux, where the
Black Prince—now married to his cousin Joan, a pretty widow—was
residing, and besought his help. The Prince, who took to him much more
kindly than a prince of such fame ought to have taken to such a
ruffian, readily listened to his fair promises, and agreeing to help
him, sent secret orders to some troublesome disbanded soldiers of his
and his father’s, who called themselves the Free Companions, and who
had been a pest to the French people, for some time, to aid this Pedro.
The Prince, himself, going into Spain to head the army of relief, soon
set Pedro on his throne again—where he no sooner found himself, than,
of course, he behaved like the villain he was, broke his word without
the least shame, and abandoned all the promises he had made to the
Black Prince.

Now, it had cost the Prince a good deal of money to pay soldiers to
support this murderous King; and finding himself, when he came back
disgusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad health, but deeply in debt, he
began to tax his French subjects to pay his creditors. They appealed to
the French King, Charles; war again broke out; and the French town of
Limoges, which the Prince had greatly benefited, went over to the
French King. Upon this he ravaged the province of which it was the
capital; burnt, and plundered, and killed in the old sickening way; and
refused mercy to the prisoners, men, women, and children taken in the
offending town, though he was so ill and so much in need of pity
himself from Heaven, that he was carried in a litter. He lived to come
home and make himself popular with the people and Parliament, and he
died on Trinity Sunday, the eighth of June, one thousand three hundred
and seventy-six, at forty-six years old.

The whole nation mourned for him as one of the most renowned and
beloved princes it had ever had; and he was buried with great
lamentations in Canterbury Cathedral. Near to the tomb of Edward the
Confessor, his monument, with his figure, carved in stone, and
represented in the old black armour, lying on its back, may be seen at
this day, with an ancient coat of mail, a helmet, and a pair of
gauntlets hanging from a beam above it, which most people like to
believe were once worn by the Black Prince.

King Edward did not outlive his renowned son, long. He was old, and one
Alice Perrers, a beautiful lady, had contrived to make him so fond of
her in his old age, that he could refuse her nothing, and made himself
ridiculous. She little deserved his love, or—what I dare say she valued
a great deal more—the jewels of the late Queen, which he gave her among
other rich presents. She took the very ring from his finger on the
morning of the day when he died, and left him to be pillaged by his
faithless servants. Only one good priest was true to him, and attended
him to the last.

Besides being famous for the great victories I have related, the reign
of King Edward the Third was rendered memorable in better ways, by the
growth of architecture and the erection of Windsor Castle. In better
ways still, by the rising up of Wickliffe, originally a poor parish
priest: who devoted himself to exposing, with wonderful power and
success, the ambition and corruption of the Pope, and of the whole
church of which he was the head.

Some of those Flemings were induced to come to England in this reign
too, and to settle in Norfolk, where they made better woollen cloths
than the English had ever had before. The Order of the Garter (a very
fine thing in its way, but hardly so important as good clothes for the
nation) also dates from this period. The King is said to have picked
‘up a lady’s garter at a ball, and to have said, _Honi soit qui mal y
pense_—in English, ‘Evil be to him who evil thinks of it.’ The
courtiers were usually glad to imitate what the King said or did, and
hence from a slight incident the Order of the Garter was instituted,
and became a great dignity. So the story goes.




CHAPTER XIX
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND


Richard, son of the Black Prince, a boy eleven years of age, succeeded
to the Crown under the title of King Richard the Second. The whole
English nation were ready to admire him for the sake of his brave
father. As to the lords and ladies about the Court, they declared him
to be the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best—even of princes—whom
the lords and ladies about the Court, generally declare to be the most
beautiful, the wisest, and the best of mankind. To flatter a poor boy
in this base manner was not a very likely way to develop whatever good
was in him; and it brought him to anything but a good or happy end.

The Duke of Lancaster, the young King’s uncle—commonly called John of
Gaunt, from having been born at Ghent, which the common people so
pronounced—was supposed to have some thoughts of the throne himself;
but, as he was not popular, and the memory of the Black Prince was, he
submitted to his nephew.

The war with France being still unsettled, the Government of England
wanted money to provide for the expenses that might arise out of it;
accordingly a certain tax, called the Poll-tax, which had originated in
the last reign, was ordered to be levied on the people. This was a tax
on every person in the kingdom, male and female, above the age of
fourteen, of three groats (or three four-penny pieces) a year;
clergymen were charged more, and only beggars were exempt.

I have no need to repeat that the common people of England had long
been suffering under great oppression. They were still the mere slaves
of the lords of the land on which they lived, and were on most
occasions harshly and unjustly treated. But, they had begun by this
time to think very seriously of not bearing quite so much; and,
probably, were emboldened by that French insurrection I mentioned in
the last chapter.

The people of Essex rose against the Poll-tax, and being severely
handled by the government officers, killed some of them. At this very
time one of the tax-collectors, going his rounds from house to house,
at Dartford in Kent came to the cottage of one Wat, a tiler by trade,
and claimed the tax upon his daughter. Her mother, who was at home,
declared that she was under the age of fourteen; upon that, the
collector (as other collectors had already done in different parts of
England) behaved in a savage way, and brutally insulted Wat Tyler’s
daughter. The daughter screamed, the mother screamed. Wat the Tiler,
who was at work not far off, ran to the spot, and did what any honest
father under such provocation might have done—struck the collector dead
at a blow.

Instantly the people of that town uprose as one man. They made Wat
Tyler their leader; they joined with the people of Essex, who were in
arms under a priest called Jack Straw; they took out of prison another
priest named John Ball; and gathering in numbers as they went along,
advanced, in a great confused army of poor men, to Blackheath. It is
said that they wanted to abolish all property, and to declare all men
equal. I do not think this very likely; because they stopped the
travellers on the roads and made them swear to be true to King Richard
and the people. Nor were they at all disposed to injure those who had
done them no harm, merely because they were of high station; for, the
King’s mother, who had to pass through their camp at Blackheath, on her
way to her young son, lying for safety in the Tower of London, had
merely to kiss a few dirty-faced rough-bearded men who were noisily
fond of royalty, and so got away in perfect safety. Next day the whole
mass marched on to London Bridge.

There was a drawbridge in the middle, which William Walworth the Mayor
caused to be raised to prevent their coming into the city; but they
soon terrified the citizens into lowering it again, and spread
themselves, with great uproar, over the streets. They broke open the
prisons; they burned the papers in Lambeth Palace; they destroyed the
Duke of Lancaster’s Palace, the Savoy, in the Strand, said to be the
most beautiful and splendid in England; they set fire to the books and
documents in the Temple; and made a great riot. Many of these outrages
were committed in drunkenness; since those citizens, who had
well-filled cellars, were only too glad to throw them open to save the
rest of their property; but even the drunken rioters were very careful
to steal nothing. They were so angry with one man, who was seen to take
a silver cup at the Savoy Palace, and put it in his breast, that they
drowned him in the river, cup and all.

The young King had been taken out to treat with them before they
committed these excesses; but, he and the people about him were so
frightened by the riotous shouts, that they got back to the Tower in
the best way they could. This made the insurgents bolder; so they went
on rioting away, striking off the heads of those who did not, at a
moment’s notice, declare for King Richard and the people; and killing
as many of the unpopular persons whom they supposed to be their enemies
as they could by any means lay hold of. In this manner they passed one
very violent day, and then proclamation was made that the King would
meet them at Mile-end, and grant their requests.

The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty thousand, and the
King met them there, and to the King the rioters peaceably proposed
four conditions. First, that neither they, nor their children, nor any
coming after them, should be made slaves any more. Secondly, that the
rent of land should be fixed at a certain price in money, instead of
being paid in service. Thirdly, that they should have liberty to buy
and sell in all markets and public places, like other free men.
Fourthly, that they should be pardoned for past offences. Heaven knows,
there was nothing very unreasonable in these proposals! The young King
deceitfully pretended to think so, and kept thirty clerks up, all
night, writing out a charter accordingly.

Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this. He wanted the entire
abolition of the forest laws. He was not at Mile-end with the rest,
but, while that meeting was being held, broke into the Tower of London
and slew the archbishop and the treasurer, for whose heads the people
had cried out loudly the day before. He and his men even thrust their
swords into the bed of the Princess of Wales while the Princess was in
it, to make certain that none of their enemies were concealed there.

So, Wat and his men still continued armed, and rode about the city.
Next morning, the King with a small train of some sixty gentlemen—among
whom was Walworth the Mayor—rode into Smithfield, and saw Wat and his
people at a little distance. Says Wat to his men, ‘There is the King. I
will go speak with him, and tell him what we want.’

Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began to talk. ‘King,’ says Wat,
‘dost thou see all my men there?’

‘Ah,’ says the King. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ says Wat, ‘they are all at my command, and have sworn to do
whatever I bid them.’

Some declared afterwards that as Wat said this, he laid his hand on the
King’s bridle. Others declared that he was seen to play with his own
dagger. I think, myself, that he just spoke to the King like a rough,
angry man as he was, and did nothing more. At any rate he was expecting
no attack, and preparing for no resistance, when Walworth the Mayor did
the not very valiant deed of drawing a short sword and stabbing him in
the throat. He dropped from his horse, and one of the King’s people
speedily finished him. So fell Wat Tyler. Fawners and flatterers made a
mighty triumph of it, and set up a cry which will occasionally find an
echo to this day. But Wat was a hard-working man, who had suffered
much, and had been foully outraged; and it is probable that he was a
man of a much higher nature and a much braver spirit than any of the
parasites who exulted then, or have exulted since, over his defeat.

Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bows to avenge his
fall. If the young King had not had presence of mind at that dangerous
moment, both he and the Mayor to boot, might have followed Tyler pretty
fast. But the King riding up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler was a
traitor, and that he would be their leader. They were so taken by
surprise, that they set up a great shouting, and followed the boy until
he was met at Islington by a large body of soldiers.

The end of this rising was the then usual end. As soon as the King
found himself safe, he unsaid all he had said, and undid all he had
done; some fifteen hundred of the rioters were tried (mostly in Essex)
with great rigour, and executed with great cruelty. Many of them were
hanged on gibbets, and left there as a terror to the country people;
and, because their miserable friends took some of the bodies down to
bury, the King ordered the rest to be chained up—which was the
beginning of the barbarous custom of hanging in chains. The King’s
falsehood in this business makes such a pitiful figure, that I think
Wat Tyler appears in history as beyond comparison the truer and more
respectable man of the two.

Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married Anne of Bohemia, an
excellent princess, who was called ‘the good Queen Anne.’ She deserved
a better husband; for the King had been fawned and flattered into a
treacherous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man.

There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not enough!), and
their quarrels involved Europe in a great deal of trouble. Scotland was
still troublesome too; and at home there was much jealousy and
distrust, and plotting and counter-plotting, because the King feared
the ambition of his relations, and particularly of his uncle, the Duke
of Lancaster, and the duke had his party against the King, and the King
had his party against the duke. Nor were these home troubles lessened
when the duke went to Castile to urge his claim to the crown of that
kingdom; for then the Duke of Gloucester, another of Richard’s uncles,
opposed him, and influenced the Parliament to demand the dismissal of
the King’s favourite ministers. The King said in reply, that he would
not for such men dismiss the meanest servant in his kitchen. But, it
had begun to signify little what a King said when a Parliament was
determined; so Richard was at last obliged to give way, and to agree to
another Government of the kingdom, under a commission of fourteen
nobles, for a year. His uncle of Gloucester was at the head of this
commission, and, in fact, appointed everybody composing it.

Having done all this, the King declared as soon as he saw an
opportunity that he had never meant to do it, and that it was all
illegal; and he got the judges secretly to sign a declaration to that
effect. The secret oozed out directly, and was carried to the Duke of
Gloucester. The Duke of Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand men,
met the King on his entering into London to enforce his authority; the
King was helpless against him; his favourites and ministers were
impeached and were mercilessly executed. Among them were two men whom
the people regarded with very different feelings; one, Robert
Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was hated for having made what was called
‘the bloody circuit’ to try the rioters; the other, Sir Simon Burley,
an honourable knight, who had been the dear friend of the Black Prince,
and the governor and guardian of the King. For this gentleman’s life
the good Queen even begged of Gloucester on her knees; but Gloucester
(with or without reason) feared and hated him, and replied, that if she
valued her husband’s crown, she had better beg no more. All this was
done under what was called by some the wonderful—and by others, with
better reason, the merciless—Parliament.

But Gloucester’s power was not to last for ever. He held it for only a
year longer; in which year the famous battle of Otterbourne, sung in
the old ballad of Chevy Chase, was fought. When the year was out, the
King, turning suddenly to Gloucester, in the midst of a great council
said, ‘Uncle, how old am I?’ ‘Your highness,’ returned the Duke, ‘is in
your twenty-second year.’ ‘Am I so much?’ said the King; ‘then I will
manage my own affairs! I am much obliged to you, my good lords, for
your past services, but I need them no more.’ He followed this up, by
appointing a new Chancellor and a new Treasurer, and announced to the
people that he had resumed the Government. He held it for eight years
without opposition. Through all that time, he kept his determination to
revenge himself some day upon his uncle Gloucester, in his own breast.

At last the good Queen died, and then the King, desiring to take a
second wife, proposed to his council that he should marry Isabella, of
France, the daughter of Charles the Sixth: who, the French courtiers
said (as the English courtiers had said of Richard), was a marvel of
beauty and wit, and quite a phenomenon—of seven years old. The council
were divided about this marriage, but it took place. It secured peace
between England and France for a quarter of a century; but it was
strongly opposed to the prejudices of the English people. The Duke of
Gloucester, who was anxious to take the occasion of making himself
popular, declaimed against it loudly, and this at length decided the
King to execute the vengeance he had been nursing so long.

He went with a gay company to the Duke of Gloucester’s house, Pleshey
Castle, in Essex, where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came out into the
court-yard to receive his royal visitor. While the King conversed in a
friendly manner with the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized, hurried
away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the castle there. His friends,
the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were taken in the same treacherous
manner, and confined to their castles. A few days after, at Nottingham,
they were impeached of high treason. The Earl of Arundel was condemned
and beheaded, and the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ was
sent by a messenger to the Governor of Calais, requiring him to send
the Duke of Gloucester over to be tried. In three days he returned an
answer that he could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester had
died in prison. The Duke was declared a traitor, his property was
confiscated to the King, a real or pretended confession he had made in
prison to one of the Justices of the Common Pleas was produced against
him, and there was an end of the matter. How the unfortunate duke died,
very few cared to know. Whether he really died naturally; whether he
killed himself; whether, by the King’s order, he was strangled, or
smothered between two beds (as a serving-man of the Governor’s named
Hall, did afterwards declare), cannot be discovered. There is not much
doubt that he was killed, somehow or other, by his nephew’s orders.
Among the most active nobles in these proceedings were the King’s
cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the King had made Duke of Hereford to
smooth down the old family quarrels, and some others: who had in the
family-plotting times done just such acts themselves as they now
condemned in the duke. They seem to have been a corrupt set of men; but
such men were easily found about the court in such days.

The people murmured at all this, and were still very sore about the
French marriage. The nobles saw how little the King cared for law, and
how crafty he was, and began to be somewhat afraid for themselves. The
King’s life was a life of continued feasting and excess; his retinue,
down to the meanest servants, were dressed in the most costly manner,
and caroused at his tables, it is related, to the number of ten
thousand persons every day. He himself, surrounded by a body of ten
thousand archers, and enriched by a duty on wool which the Commons had
granted him for life, saw no danger of ever being otherwise than
powerful and absolute, and was as fierce and haughty as a King could
be.

He had two of his old enemies left, in the persons of the Dukes of
Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no more than the others, he
tampered with the Duke of Hereford until he got him to declare before
the Council that the Duke of Norfolk had lately held some treasonable
talk with him, as he was riding near Brentford; and that he had told
him, among other things, that he could not believe the King’s
oath—which nobody could, I should think. For this treachery he obtained
a pardon, and the Duke of Norfolk was summoned to appear and defend
himself. As he denied the charge and said his accuser was a liar and a
traitor, both noblemen, according to the manner of those times, were
held in custody, and the truth was ordered to be decided by wager of
battle at Coventry. This wager of battle meant that whosoever won the
combat was to be considered in the right; which nonsense meant in
effect, that no strong man could ever be wrong. A great holiday was
made; a great crowd assembled, with much parade and show; and the two
combatants were about to rush at each other with their lances, when the
King, sitting in a pavilion to see fair, threw down the truncheon he
carried in his hand, and forbade the battle. The Duke of Hereford was
to be banished for ten years, and the Duke of Norfolk was to be
banished for life. So said the King. The Duke of Hereford went to
France, and went no farther. The Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, and afterwards died at Venice of a broken heart.

Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went on in his career. The
Duke of Lancaster, who was the father of the Duke of Hereford, died
soon after the departure of his son; and, the King, although he had
solemnly granted to that son leave to inherit his father’s property, if
it should come to him during his banishment, immediately seized it all,
like a robber. The judges were so afraid of him, that they disgraced
themselves by declaring this theft to be just and lawful. His avarice
knew no bounds. He outlawed seventeen counties at once, on a frivolous
pretence, merely to raise money by way of fines for misconduct. In
short, he did as many dishonest things as he could; and cared so little
for the discontent of his subjects—though even the spaniel favourites
began to whisper to him that there was such a thing as discontent
afloat—that he took that time, of all others, for leaving England and
making an expedition against the Irish.

He was scarcely gone, leaving the Duke of York Regent in his absence,
when his cousin, Henry of Hereford, came over from France to claim the
rights of which he had been so monstrously deprived. He was immediately
joined by the two great Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; and
his uncle, the Regent, finding the King’s cause unpopular, and the
disinclination of the army to act against Henry, very strong, withdrew
with the Royal forces towards Bristol. Henry, at the head of an army,
came from Yorkshire (where he had landed) to London and followed him.
They joined their forces—how they brought that about, is not distinctly
understood—and proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noblemen had
taken the young Queen. The castle surrendering, they presently put
those three noblemen to death. The Regent then remained there, and
Henry went on to Chester.

All this time, the boisterous weather had prevented the King from
receiving intelligence of what had occurred. At length it was conveyed
to him in Ireland, and he sent over the Earl of Salisbury, who, landing
at Conway, rallied the Welshmen, and waited for the King a whole
fortnight; at the end of that time the Welshmen, who were perhaps not
very warm for him in the beginning, quite cooled down and went home.
When the King did land on the coast at last, he came with a pretty good
power, but his men cared nothing for him, and quickly deserted.
Supposing the Welshmen to be still at Conway, he disguised himself as a
priest, and made for that place in company with his two brothers and
some few of their adherents. But, there were no Welshmen left—only
Salisbury and a hundred soldiers. In this distress, the King’s two
brothers, Exeter and Surrey, offered to go to Henry to learn what his
intentions were. Surrey, who was true to Richard, was put into prison.
Exeter, who was false, took the royal badge, which was a hart, off his
shield, and assumed the rose, the badge of Henry. After this, it was
pretty plain to the King what Henry’s intentions were, without sending
any more messengers to ask.

The fallen King, thus deserted—hemmed in on all sides, and pressed with
hunger—rode here and rode there, and went to this castle, and went to
that castle, endeavouring to obtain some provisions, but could find
none. He rode wretchedly back to Conway, and there surrendered himself
to the Earl of Northumberland, who came from Henry, in reality to take
him prisoner, but in appearance to offer terms; and whose men were
hidden not far off. By this earl he was conducted to the castle of
Flint, where his cousin Henry met him, and dropped on his knee as if he
were still respectful to his sovereign.

‘Fair cousin of Lancaster,’ said the King, ‘you are very welcome’ (very
welcome, no doubt; but he would have been more so, in chains or without
a head).

‘My lord,’ replied Henry, ‘I am come a little before my time; but, with
your good pleasure, I will show you the reason. Your people complain
with some bitterness, that you have ruled them rigorously for
two-and-twenty years. Now, if it please God, I will help you to govern
them better in future.’

‘Fair cousin,’ replied the abject King, ‘since it pleaseth you, it
pleaseth me mightily.’

After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King was stuck on a wretched
horse, and carried prisoner to Chester, where he was made to issue a
proclamation, calling a Parliament. From Chester he was taken on
towards London. At Lichfield he tried to escape by getting out of a
window and letting himself down into a garden; it was all in vain,
however, and he was carried on and shut up in the Tower, where no one
pitied him, and where the whole people, whose patience he had quite
tired out, reproached him without mercy. Before he got there, it is
related, that his very dog left him and departed from his side to lick
the hand of Henry.

The day before the Parliament met, a deputation went to this wrecked
King, and told him that he had promised the Earl of Northumberland at
Conway Castle to resign the crown. He said he was quite ready to do it,
and signed a paper in which he renounced his authority and absolved his
people from their allegiance to him. He had so little spirit left that
he gave his royal ring to his triumphant cousin Henry with his own
hand, and said, that if he could have had leave to appoint a successor,
that same Henry was the man of all others whom he would have named.
Next day, the Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat
at the side of the throne, which was empty and covered with a cloth of
gold. The paper just signed by the King was read to the multitude amid
shouts of joy, which were echoed through all the streets; when some of
the noise had died away, the King was formally deposed. Then Henry
arose, and, making the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast,
challenged the realm of England as his right; the archbishops of
Canterbury and York seated him on the throne.

The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed throughout all
the streets. No one remembered, now, that Richard the Second had ever
been the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of princes; and he
now made living (to my thinking) a far more sorry spectacle in the
Tower of London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying dead, among the hoofs
of the royal horses in Smithfield.

The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the King and Royal Family,
could make no chains in which the King could hang the people’s
recollection of him; so the Poll-tax was never collected.




CHAPTER XX
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE


During the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe against the pride and
cunning of the Pope and all his men, had made a great noise in England.
Whether the new King wished to be in favour with the priests, or
whether he hoped, by pretending to be very religious, to cheat Heaven
itself into the belief that he was not a usurper, I don’t know. Both
suppositions are likely enough. It is certain that he began his reign
by making a strong show against the followers of Wickliffe, who were
called Lollards, or heretics—although his father, John of Gaunt, had
been of that way of thinking, as he himself had been more than
suspected of being. It is no less certain that he first established in
England the detestable and atrocious custom, brought from abroad, of
burning those people as a punishment for their opinions. It was the
importation into England of one of the practices of what was called the
Holy Inquisition: which was the most _un_holy and the most infamous
tribunal that ever disgraced mankind, and made men more like demons
than followers of Our Saviour.

No real right to the crown, as you know, was in this King. Edward
Mortimer, the young Earl of March—who was only eight or nine years old,
and who was descended from the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of
Henry’s father—was, by succession, the real heir to the throne.
However, the King got his son declared Prince of Wales; and, obtaining
possession of the young Earl of March and his little brother, kept them
in confinement (but not severely) in Windsor Castle. He then required
the Parliament to decide what was to be done with the deposed King, who
was quiet enough, and who only said that he hoped his cousin Henry
would be ‘a good lord’ to him. The Parliament replied that they would
recommend his being kept in some secret place where the people could
not resort, and where his friends could not be admitted to see him.
Henry accordingly passed this sentence upon him, and it now began to be
pretty clear to the nation that Richard the Second would not live very
long.

It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an unprincipled one, and the Lords
quarrelled so violently among themselves as to which of them had been
loyal and which disloyal, and which consistent and which inconsistent,
that forty gauntlets are said to have been thrown upon the floor at one
time as challenges to as many battles: the truth being that they were
all false and base together, and had been, at one time with the old
King, and at another time with the new one, and seldom true for any
length of time to any one. They soon began to plot again. A conspiracy
was formed to invite the King to a tournament at Oxford, and then to
take him by surprise and kill him. This murderous enterprise, which was
agreed upon at secret meetings in the house of the Abbot of
Westminster, was betrayed by the Earl of Rutland—one of the
conspirators. The King, instead of going to the tournament or staying
at Windsor (where the conspirators suddenly went, on finding themselves
discovered, with the hope of seizing him), retired to London,
proclaimed them all traitors, and advanced upon them with a great
force. They retired into the west of England, proclaiming Richard King;
but, the people rose against them, and they were all slain. Their
treason hastened the death of the deposed monarch. Whether he was
killed by hired assassins, or whether he was starved to death, or
whether he refused food on hearing of his brothers being killed (who
were in that plot), is very doubtful. He met his death somehow; and his
body was publicly shown at St. Paul’s Cathedral with only the lower
part of the face uncovered. I can scarcely doubt that he was killed by
the King’s orders.

The French wife of the miserable Richard was now only ten years old;
and, when her father, Charles of France, heard of her misfortunes and
of her lonely condition in England, he went mad: as he had several
times done before, during the last five or six years. The French Dukes
of Burgundy and Bourbon took up the poor girl’s cause, without caring
much about it, but on the chance of getting something out of England.
The people of Bordeaux, who had a sort of superstitious attachment to
the memory of Richard, because he was born there, swore by the Lord
that he had been the best man in all his kingdom—which was going rather
far—and promised to do great things against the English. Nevertheless,
when they came to consider that they, and the whole people of France,
were ruined by their own nobles, and that the English rule was much the
better of the two, they cooled down again; and the two dukes, although
they were very great men, could do nothing without them. Then, began
negotiations between France and England for the sending home to Paris
of the poor little Queen with all her jewels and her fortune of two
hundred thousand francs in gold. The King was quite willing to restore
the young lady, and even the jewels; but he said he really could not
part with the money. So, at last she was safely deposited at Paris
without her fortune, and then the Duke of Burgundy (who was cousin to
the French King) began to quarrel with the Duke of Orleans (who was
brother to the French King) about the whole matter; and those two dukes
made France even more wretched than ever.

As the idea of conquering Scotland was still popular at home, the King
marched to the river Tyne and demanded homage of the King of that
country. This being refused, he advanced to Edinburgh, but did little
there; for, his army being in want of provisions, and the Scotch being
very careful to hold him in check without giving battle, he was obliged
to retire. It is to his immortal honour that in this sally he burnt no
villages and slaughtered no people, but was particularly careful that
his army should be merciful and harmless. It was a great example in
those ruthless times.

A war among the border people of England and Scotland went on for
twelve months, and then the Earl of Northumberland, the nobleman who
had helped Henry to the crown, began to rebel against him—probably
because nothing that Henry could do for him would satisfy his
extravagant expectations. There was a certain Welsh gentleman, named
Owen Glendower, who had been a student in one of the Inns of Court, and
had afterwards been in the service of the late King, whose Welsh
property was taken from him by a powerful lord related to the present
King, who was his neighbour. Appealing for redress, and getting none,
he took up arms, was made an outlaw, and declared himself sovereign of
Wales. He pretended to be a magician; and not only were the Welsh
people stupid enough to believe him, but, even Henry believed him too;
for, making three expeditions into Wales, and being three times driven
back by the wildness of the country, the bad weather, and the skill of
Glendower, he thought he was defeated by the Welshman’s magic arts.
However, he took Lord Grey and Sir Edmund Mortimer, prisoners, and
allowed the relatives of Lord Grey to ransom him, but would not extend
such favour to Sir Edmund Mortimer. Now, Henry Percy, called Hotspur,
son of the Earl of Northumberland, who was married to Mortimer’s
sister, is supposed to have taken offence at this; and, therefore, in
conjunction with his father and some others, to have joined Owen
Glendower, and risen against Henry. It is by no means clear that this
was the real cause of the conspiracy; but perhaps it was made the
pretext. It was formed, and was very powerful; including Scroop,
Archbishop of York, and the Earl of Douglas, a powerful and brave
Scottish nobleman. The King was prompt and active, and the two armies
met at Shrewsbury.

There were about fourteen thousand men in each. The old Earl of
Northumberland being sick, the rebel forces were led by his son. The
King wore plain armour to deceive the enemy; and four noblemen, with
the same object, wore the royal arms. The rebel charge was so furious,
that every one of those gentlemen was killed, the royal standard was
beaten down, and the young Prince of Wales was severely wounded in the
face. But he was one of the bravest and best soldiers that ever lived,
and he fought so well, and the King’s troops were so encouraged by his
bold example, that they rallied immediately, and cut the enemy’s forces
all to pieces. Hotspur was killed by an arrow in the brain, and the
rout was so complete that the whole rebellion was struck down by this
one blow. The Earl of Northumberland surrendered himself soon after
hearing of the death of his son, and received a pardon for all his
offences.

There were some lingerings of rebellion yet: Owen Glendower being
retired to Wales, and a preposterous story being spread among the
ignorant people that King Richard was still alive. How they could have
believed such nonsense it is difficult to imagine; but they certainly
did suppose that the Court fool of the late King, who was something
like him, was he, himself; so that it seemed as if, after giving so
much trouble to the country in his life, he was still to trouble it
after his death. This was not the worst. The young Earl of March and
his brother were stolen out of Windsor Castle. Being retaken, and being
found to have been spirited away by one Lady Spencer, she accused her
own brother, that Earl of Rutland who was in the former conspiracy and
was now Duke of York, of being in the plot. For this he was ruined in
fortune, though not put to death; and then another plot arose among the
old Earl of Northumberland, some other lords, and that same Scroop,
Archbishop of York, who was with the rebels before. These conspirators
caused a writing to be posted on the church doors, accusing the King of
a variety of crimes; but, the King being eager and vigilant to oppose
them, they were all taken, and the Archbishop was executed. This was
the first time that a great churchman had been slain by the law in
England; but the King was resolved that it should be done, and done it
was.

The next most remarkable event of this time was the seizure, by Henry,
of the heir to the Scottish throne—James, a boy of nine years old. He
had been put aboard-ship by his father, the Scottish King Robert, to
save him from the designs of his uncle, when, on his way to France, he
was accidentally taken by some English cruisers. He remained a prisoner
in England for nineteen years, and became in his prison a student and a
famous poet.

With the exception of occasional troubles with the Welsh and with the
French, the rest of King Henry’s reign was quiet enough. But, the King
was far from happy, and probably was troubled in his conscience by
knowing that he had usurped the crown, and had occasioned the death of
his miserable cousin. The Prince of Wales, though brave and generous,
is said to have been wild and dissipated, and even to have drawn his
sword on Gascoigne, the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, because he
was firm in dealing impartially with one of his dissolute companions.
Upon this the Chief Justice is said to have ordered him immediately to
prison; the Prince of Wales is said to have submitted with a good
grace; and the King is said to have exclaimed, ‘Happy is the monarch
who has so just a judge, and a son so willing to obey the laws.’ This
is all very doubtful, and so is another story (of which Shakespeare has
made beautiful use), that the Prince once took the crown out of his
father’s chamber as he was sleeping, and tried it on his own head.

The King’s health sank more and more, and he became subject to violent
eruptions on the face and to bad epileptic fits, and his spirits sank
every day. At last, as he was praying before the shrine of St. Edward
at Westminster Abbey, he was seized with a terrible fit, and was
carried into the Abbot’s chamber, where he presently died. It had been
foretold that he would die at Jerusalem, which certainly is not, and
never was, Westminster. But, as the Abbot’s room had long been called
the Jerusalem chamber, people said it was all the same thing, and were
quite satisfied with the prediction.

The King died on the 20th of March, 1413, in the forty-seventh year of
his age, and the fourteenth of his reign. He was buried in Canterbury
Cathedral. He had been twice married, and had, by his first wife, a
family of four sons and two daughters. Considering his duplicity before
he came to the throne, his unjust seizure of it, and above all, his
making that monstrous law for the burning of what the priests called
heretics, he was a reasonably good king, as kings went.




CHAPTER XXI
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH

FIRST PART

The Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous and honest man. He
set the young Earl of March free; he restored their estates and their
honours to the Percy family, who had lost them by their rebellion
against his father; he ordered the imbecile and unfortunate Richard to
be honourably buried among the Kings of England; and he dismissed all
his wild companions, with assurances that they should not want, if they
would resolve to be steady, faithful, and true.

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions; and those of
the Lollards were spreading every day. The Lollards were represented by
the priests—probably falsely for the most part—to entertain treasonable
designs against the new King; and Henry, suffering himself to be worked
upon by these representations, sacrificed his friend Sir John
Oldcastle, the Lord Cobham, to them, after trying in vain to convert
him by arguments. He was declared guilty, as the head of the sect, and
sentenced to the flames; but he escaped from the Tower before the day
of execution (postponed for fifty days by the King himself), and
summoned the Lollards to meet him near London on a certain day. So the
priests told the King, at least. I doubt whether there was any
conspiracy beyond such as was got up by their agents. On the day
appointed, instead of five-and-twenty thousand men, under the command
of Sir John Oldcastle, in the meadows of St. Giles, the King found only
eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There was, in another place, an
addle-headed brewer, who had gold trappings to his horses, and a pair
of gilt spurs in his breast—expecting to be made a knight next day by
Sir John, and so to gain the right to wear them—but there was no Sir
John, nor did anybody give information respecting him, though the King
offered great rewards for such intelligence. Thirty of these
unfortunate Lollards were hanged and drawn immediately, and were then
burnt, gallows and all; and the various prisons in and around London
were crammed full of others. Some of these unfortunate men made various
confessions of treasonable designs; but, such confessions were easily
got, under torture and the fear of fire, and are very little to be
trusted. To finish the sad story of Sir John Oldcastle at once, I may
mention that he escaped into Wales, and remained there safely, for four
years. When discovered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would
have been taken alive—so great was the old soldier’s bravery—if a
miserable old woman had not come behind him and broken his legs with a
stool. He was carried to London in a horse-litter, was fastened by an
iron chain to a gibbet, and so roasted to death.

To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few words, I should
tell you that the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Burgundy, commonly
called ‘John without fear,’ had had a grand reconciliation of their
quarrel in the last reign, and had appeared to be quite in a heavenly
state of mind. Immediately after which, on a Sunday, in the public
streets of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was murdered by a party of twenty
men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy—according to his own deliberate
confession. The widow of King Richard had been married in France to the
eldest son of the Duke of Orleans. The poor mad King was quite
powerless to help her, and the Duke of Burgundy became the real master
of France. Isabella dying, her husband (Duke of Orleans since the death
of his father) married the daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who,
being a much abler man than his young son-in-law, headed his party;
thence called after him Armagnacs. Thus, France was now in this
terrible condition, that it had in it the party of the King’s son, the
Dauphin Louis; the party of the Duke of Burgundy, who was the father of
the Dauphin’s ill-used wife; and the party of the Armagnacs; all hating
each other; all fighting together; all composed of the most depraved
nobles that the earth has ever known; and all tearing unhappy France to
pieces.

The late King had watched these dissensions from England, sensible
(like the French people) that no enemy of France could injure her more
than her own nobility. The present King now advanced a claim to the
French throne. His demand being, of course, refused, he reduced his
proposal to a certain large amount of French territory, and to
demanding the French princess, Catherine, in marriage, with a fortune
of two millions of golden crowns. He was offered less territory and
fewer crowns, and no princess; but he called his ambassadors home and
prepared for war. Then, he proposed to take the princess with one
million of crowns. The French Court replied that he should have the
princess with two hundred thousand crowns less; he said this would not
do (he had never seen the princess in his life), and assembled his army
at Southampton. There was a short plot at home just at that time, for
deposing him, and making the Earl of March king; but the conspirators
were all speedily condemned and executed, and the King embarked for
France.

It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will be followed; but,
it is encouraging to know that a good example is never thrown away. The
King’s first act on disembarking at the mouth of the river Seine, three
miles from Harfleur, was to imitate his father, and to proclaim his
solemn orders that the lives and property of the peaceable inhabitants
should be respected on pain of death. It is agreed by French writers,
to his lasting renown, that even while his soldiers were suffering the
greatest distress from want of food, these commands were rigidly
obeyed.

With an army in all of thirty thousand men, he besieged the town of
Harfleur both by sea and land for five weeks; at the end of which time
the town surrendered, and the inhabitants were allowed to depart with
only fivepence each, and a part of their clothes. All the rest of their
possessions was divided amongst the English army. But, that army
suffered so much, in spite of its successes, from disease and
privation, that it was already reduced one half. Still, the King was
determined not to retire until he had struck a greater blow. Therefore,
against the advice of all his counsellors, he moved on with his little
force towards Calais. When he came up to the river Somme he was unable
to cross, in consequence of the fort being fortified; and, as the
English moved up the left bank of the river looking for a crossing, the
French, who had broken all the bridges, moved up the right bank,
watching them, and waiting to attack them when they should try to pass
it. At last the English found a crossing and got safely over. The
French held a council of war at Rouen, resolved to give the English
battle, and sent heralds to King Henry to know by which road he was
going. ‘By the road that will take me straight to Calais!’ said the
King, and sent them away with a present of a hundred crowns.

The English moved on, until they beheld the French, and then the King
gave orders to form in line of battle. The French not coming on, the
army broke up after remaining in battle array till night, and got good
rest and refreshment at a neighbouring village. The French were now all
lying in another village, through which they knew the English must
pass. They were resolved that the English should begin the battle. The
English had no means of retreat, if their King had any such intention;
and so the two armies passed the night, close together.

To understand these armies well, you must bear in mind that the immense
French army had, among its notable persons, almost the whole of that
wicked nobility, whose debauchery had made France a desert; and so
besotted were they by pride, and by contempt for the common people,
that they had scarcely any bowmen (if indeed they had any at all) in
their whole enormous number: which, compared with the English army, was
at least as six to one. For these proud fools had said that the bow was
not a fit weapon for knightly hands, and that France must be defended
by gentlemen only. We shall see, presently, what hand the gentlemen
made of it.

Now, on the English side, among the little force, there was a good
proportion of men who were not gentlemen by any means, but who were
good stout archers for all that. Among them, in the morning—having
slept little at night, while the French were carousing and making sure
of victory—the King rode, on a grey horse; wearing on his head a helmet
of shining steel, surmounted by a crown of gold, sparkling with
precious stones; and bearing over his armour, embroidered together, the
arms of England and the arms of France. The archers looked at the
shining helmet and the crown of gold and the sparkling jewels, and
admired them all; but, what they admired most was the King’s cheerful
face, and his bright blue eye, as he told them that, for himself, he
had made up his mind to conquer there or to die there, and that England
should never have a ransom to pay for _him_. There was one brave knight
who chanced to say that he wished some of the many gallant gentlemen
and good soldiers, who were then idle at home in England, were there to
increase their numbers. But the King told him that, for his part, he
did not wish for one more man. ‘The fewer we have,’ said he, ‘the
greater will be the honour we shall win!’ His men, being now all in
good heart, were refreshed with bread and wine, and heard prayers, and
waited quietly for the French. The King waited for the French, because
they were drawn up thirty deep (the little English force was only three
deep), on very difficult and heavy ground; and he knew that when they
moved, there must be confusion among them.

As they did not move, he sent off two parties:—one to lie concealed in
a wood on the left of the French: the other, to set fire to some houses
behind the French after the battle should be begun. This was scarcely
done, when three of the proud French gentlemen, who were to defend
their country without any help from the base peasants, came riding out,
calling upon the English to surrender. The King warned those gentlemen
himself to retire with all speed if they cared for their lives, and
ordered the English banners to advance. Upon that, Sir Thomas
Erpingham, a great English general, who commanded the archers, threw
his truncheon into the air, joyfully, and all the English men, kneeling
down upon the ground and biting it as if they took possession of the
country, rose up with a great shout and fell upon the French.

Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped with iron; and his
orders were, to thrust this stake into the ground, to discharge his
arrow, and then to fall back, when the French horsemen came on. As the
haughty French gentlemen, who were to break the English archers and
utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, came riding up, they
were received with such a blinding storm of arrows, that they broke and
turned. Horses and men rolled over one another, and the confusion was
terrific. Those who rallied and charged the archers got among the
stakes on slippery and boggy ground, and were so bewildered that the
English archers—who wore no armour, and even took off their leathern
coats to be more active—cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three
French horsemen got within the stakes, and those were instantly
despatched. All this time the dense French army, being in armour, were
sinking knee-deep into the mire; while the light English archers,
half-naked, were as fresh and active as if they were fighting on a
marble floor.

But now, the second division of the French coming to the relief of the
first, closed up in a firm mass; the English, headed by the King,
attacked them; and the deadliest part of the battle began. The King’s
brother, the Duke of Clarence, was struck down, and numbers of the
French surrounded him; but, King Henry, standing over the body, fought
like a lion until they were beaten off.

Presently, came up a band of eighteen French knights, bearing the
banner of a certain French lord, who had sworn to kill or take the
English King. One of them struck him such a blow with a battle-axe that
he reeled and fell upon his knees; but, his faithful men, immediately
closing round him, killed every one of those eighteen knights, and so
that French lord never kept his oath.

The French Duke of Alençon, seeing this, made a desperate charge, and
cut his way close up to the Royal Standard of England. He beat down the
Duke of York, who was standing near it; and, when the King came to his
rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore. But, he never struck
another blow in this world; for, even as he was in the act of saying
who he was, and that he surrendered to the King; and even as the King
stretched out his hand to give him a safe and honourable acceptance of
the offer; he fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds.

The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The third division of
the French army, which had never struck a blow yet, and which was, in
itself, more than double the whole English power, broke and fled. At
this time of the fight, the English, who as yet had made no prisoners,
began to take them in immense numbers, and were still occupied in doing
so, or in killing those who would not surrender, when a great noise
arose in the rear of the French—their flying banners were seen to
stop—and King Henry, supposing a great reinforcement to have arrived,
gave orders that all the prisoners should be put to death. As soon,
however, as it was found that the noise was only occasioned by a body
of plundering peasants, the terrible massacre was stopped.

Then King Henry called to him the French herald, and asked him to whom
the victory belonged.

The herald replied, ‘To the King of England.’

‘_We_ have not made this havoc and slaughter,’ said the King. ‘It is
the wrath of Heaven on the sins of France. What is the name of that
castle yonder?’

The herald answered him, ‘My lord, it is the castle of Azincourt.’ Said
the King, ‘From henceforth this battle shall be known to posterity, by
the name of the battle of Azincourt.’

Our English historians have made it Agincourt; but, under that name, it
will ever be famous in English annals.

The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three Dukes were killed,
two more were taken prisoners, seven Counts were killed, three more
were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights and gentlemen were slain
upon the field. The English loss amounted to sixteen hundred men, among
whom were the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk.

War is a dreadful thing; and it is appalling to know how the English
were obliged, next morning, to kill those prisoners mortally wounded,
who yet writhed in agony upon the ground; how the dead upon the French
side were stripped by their own countrymen and countrywomen, and
afterwards buried in great pits; how the dead upon the English side
were piled up in a great barn, and how their bodies and the barn were
all burned together. It is in such things, and in many more much too
horrible to relate, that the real desolation and wickedness of war
consist. Nothing can make war otherwise than horrible. But the dark
side of it was little thought of and soon forgotten; and it cast no
shade of trouble on the English people, except on those who had lost
friends or relations in the fight. They welcomed their King home with
shouts of rejoicing, and plunged into the water to bear him ashore on
their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every town
through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and tapestries out of
the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and made the
fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt had run with
blood.

SECOND PART

That proud and wicked French nobility who dragged their country to
destruction, and who were every day and every year regarded with deeper
hatred and detestation in the hearts of the French people, learnt
nothing, even from the defeat of Agincourt. So far from uniting against
the common enemy, they became, among themselves, more violent, more
bloody, and more false—if that were possible—than they had been before.
The Count of Armagnac persuaded the French king to plunder of her
treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and to make her a prisoner. She,
who had hitherto been the bitter enemy of the Duke of Burgundy,
proposed to join him, in revenge. He carried her off to Troyes, where
she proclaimed herself Regent of France, and made him her lieutenant.
The Armagnac party were at that time possessed of Paris; but, one of
the gates of the city being secretly opened on a certain night to a
party of the duke’s men, they got into Paris, threw into the prisons
all the Armagnacs upon whom they could lay their hands, and, a few
nights afterwards, with the aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand
people, broke the prisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin
was now dead, and the King’s third son bore the title. Him, in the
height of this murderous scene, a French knight hurried out of bed,
wrapped in a sheet, and bore away to Poitiers. So, when the revengeful
Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered Paris in triumph after the
slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin was proclaimed at Poitiers as
the real Regent.

King Henry had not been idle since his victory of Agincourt, but had
repulsed a brave attempt of the French to recover Harfleur; had
gradually conquered a great part of Normandy; and, at this crisis of
affairs, took the important town of Rouen, after a siege of half a
year. This great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke of Burgundy
proposed that a meeting to treat of peace should be held between the
French and the English kings in a plain by the river Seine. On the
appointed day, King Henry appeared there, with his two brothers,
Clarence and Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortunate French
King, being more mad than usual that day, could not come; but the Queen
came, and with her the Princess Catherine: who was a very lovely
creature, and who made a real impression on King Henry, now that he saw
her for the first time. This was the most important circumstance that
arose out of the meeting.

As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of that time to be true
to his word of honour in anything, Henry discovered that the Duke of
Burgundy was, at that very moment, in secret treaty with the Dauphin;
and he therefore abandoned the negotiation.

The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each of whom with the best reason
distrusted the other as a noble ruffian surrounded by a party of noble
ruffians, were rather at a loss how to proceed after this; but, at
length they agreed to meet, on a bridge over the river Yonne, where it
was arranged that there should be two strong gates put up, with an
empty space between them; and that the Duke of Burgundy should come
into that space by one gate, with ten men only; and that the Dauphin
should come into that space by the other gate, also with ten men, and
no more.

So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no farther. When the Duke of
Burgundy was on his knee before him in the act of speaking, one of the
Dauphin’s noble ruffians cut the said duke down with a small axe, and
others speedily finished him.

It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that this base murder was not
done with his consent; it was too bad, even for France, and caused a
general horror. The duke’s heir hastened to make a treaty with King
Henry, and the French Queen engaged that her husband should consent to
it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on condition of receiving the
Princess Catherine in marriage, and being made Regent of France during
the rest of the King’s lifetime, and succeeding to the French crown at
his death. He was soon married to the beautiful Princess, and took her
proudly home to England, where she was crowned with great honour and
glory.

This peace was called the Perpetual Peace; we shall soon see how long
it lasted. It gave great satisfaction to the French people, although
they were so poor and miserable, that, at the time of the celebration
of the Royal marriage, numbers of them were dying with starvation, on
the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There was some resistance on the
part of the Dauphin in some few parts of France, but King Henry beat it
all down.

And now, with his great possessions in France secured, and his
beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son born to give him greater
happiness, all appeared bright before him. But, in the fulness of his
triumph and the height of his power, Death came upon him, and his day
was done. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that he could not
recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke serenely to those who
wept around his bed. His wife and child, he said, he left to the loving
care of his brother the Duke of Bedford, and his other faithful nobles.
He gave them his advice that England should establish a friendship with
the new Duke of Burgundy, and offer him the regency of France; that it
should not set free the royal princes who had been taken at Agincourt;
and that, whatever quarrel might arise with France, England should
never make peace without holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head,
and asked the attendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid
which solemn sounds, on the thirty-first of August, one thousand four
hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age and
the tenth of his reign, King Henry the Fifth passed away.

Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in a procession of
great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen where his Queen was: from
whom the sad intelligence of his death was concealed until he had been
dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and gold, with a
golden crown upon the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying in the
nerveless hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a great retinue
as seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted as chief
mourner, all the Royal Household followed, the knights wore black
armour and black plumes of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making
the night as light as day; and the widowed Princess followed last of
all. At Calais there was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to
Dover. And so, by way of London Bridge, where the service for the dead
was chanted as it passed along, they brought the body to Westminster
Abbey, and there buried it with great respect.




CHAPTER XXII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH

PART THE FIRST

It had been the wish of the late King, that while his infant son King
Henry the Sixth, at this time only nine months old, was under age, the
Duke of Gloucester should be appointed Regent. The English Parliament,
however, preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, with the Duke of
Bedford at its head: to be represented, in his absence only, by the
Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament would seem to have been wise in
this, for Gloucester soon showed himself to be ambitious and
troublesome, and, in the gratification of his own personal schemes,
gave dangerous offence to the Duke of Burgundy, which was with
difficulty adjusted.

As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was bestowed by the
poor French King upon the Duke of Bedford. But, the French King dying
within two months, the Dauphin instantly asserted his claim to the
French throne, and was actually crowned under the title of Charles the
Seventh. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match for him, entered into a
friendly league with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, and gave them
his two sisters in marriage. War with France was immediately renewed,
and the Perpetual Peace came to an untimely end.

In the first campaign, the English, aided by this alliance, were
speedily successful. As Scotland, however, had sent the French five
thousand men, and might send more, or attack the North of England while
England was busy with France, it was considered that it would be a good
thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had been so long
imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand pounds for his
board and lodging during nineteen years, and engaging to forbid his
subjects from serving under the flag of France. It is pleasant to know,
not only that the amiable captive at last regained his freedom upon
these terms, but, that he married a noble English lady, with whom he
had been long in love, and became an excellent King. I am afraid we
have met with some Kings in this history, and shall meet with some
more, who would have been very much the better, and would have left the
world much happier, if they had been imprisoned nineteen years too.

In the second campaign, the English gained a considerable victory at
Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly remarkable, otherwise, for
their resorting to the odd expedient of tying their baggage-horses
together by the heads and tails, and jumbling them up with the baggage,
so as to convert them into a sort of live fortification—which was found
useful to the troops, but which I should think was not agreeable to the
horses. For three years afterwards very little was done, owing to both
sides being too poor for war, which is a very expensive entertainment;
but, a council was then held in Paris, in which it was decided to lay
siege to the town of Orleans, which was a place of great importance to
the Dauphin’s cause. An English army of ten thousand men was despatched
on this service, under the command of the Earl of Salisbury, a general
of fame. He being unfortunately killed early in the siege, the Earl of
Suffolk took his place; under whom (reinforced by Sir John Falstaff,
who brought up four hundred waggons laden with salt herrings and other
provisions for the troops, and, beating off the French who tried to
intercept him, came victorious out of a hot skirmish, which was
afterwards called in jest the Battle of the Herrings) the town of
Orleans was so completely hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to
yield it up to their countryman the Duke of Burgundy. The English
general, however, replied that his English men had won it, so far, by
their blood and valour, and that his English men must have it. There
seemed to be no hope for the town, or for the Dauphin, who was so
dismayed that he even thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain—when a
peasant girl rose up and changed the whole state of affairs.

The story of this peasant girl I have now to tell.

PART THE SECOND: THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC

In a remote village among some wild hills in the province of Lorraine,
there lived a countryman whose name was Jacques d’Arc. He had a
daughter, Joan of Arc, who was at this time in her twentieth year. She
had been a solitary girl from her childhood; she had often tended sheep
and cattle for whole days where no human figure was seen or human voice
heard; and she had often knelt, for hours together, in the gloomy,
empty, little village chapel, looking up at the altar and at the dim
lamp burning before it, until she fancied that she saw shadowy figures
standing there, and even that she heard them speak to her. The people
in that part of France were very ignorant and superstitious, and they
had many ghostly tales to tell about what they had dreamed, and what
they saw among the lonely hills when the clouds and the mists were
resting on them. So, they easily believed that Joan saw strange sights,
and they whispered among themselves that angels and spirits talked to
her.

At last, Joan told her father that she had one day been surprised by a
great unearthly light, and had afterwards heard a solemn voice, which
said it was Saint Michael’s voice, telling her that she was to go and
help the Dauphin. Soon after this (she said), Saint Catherine and Saint
Margaret had appeared to her with sparkling crowns upon their heads,
and had encouraged her to be virtuous and resolute. These visions had
returned sometimes; but the Voices very often; and the voices always
said, ‘Joan, thou art appointed by Heaven to go and help the Dauphin!’
She almost always heard them while the chapel bells were ringing.

There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed she saw and heard these
things. It is very well known that such delusions are a disease which
is not by any means uncommon. It is probable enough that there were
figures of Saint Michael, and Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, in
the little chapel (where they would be very likely to have shining
crowns upon their heads), and that they first gave Joan the idea of
those three personages. She had long been a moping, fanciful girl, and,
though she was a very good girl, I dare say she was a little vain, and
wishful for notoriety.

Her father, something wiser than his neighbours, said, ‘I tell thee,
Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better have a kind husband to take
care of thee, girl, and work to employ thy mind!’ But Joan told him in
reply, that she had taken a vow never to have a husband, and that she
must go as Heaven directed her, to help the Dauphin.

It happened, unfortunately for her father’s persuasions, and most
unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that a party of the Dauphin’s
enemies found their way into the village while Joan’s disorder was at
this point, and burnt the chapel, and drove out the inhabitants. The
cruelties she saw committed, touched Joan’s heart and made her worse.
She said that the voices and the figures were now continually with her;
that they told her she was the girl who, according to an old prophecy,
was to deliver France; and she must go and help the Dauphin, and must
remain with him until he should be crowned at Rheims: and that she must
travel a long way to a certain lord named Baudricourt, who could and
would, bring her into the Dauphin’s presence.

As her father still said, ‘I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy,’ she set
off to find out this lord, accompanied by an uncle, a poor village
wheelwright and cart-maker, who believed in the reality of her visions.
They travelled a long way and went on and on, over a rough country,
full of the Duke of Burgundy’s men, and of all kinds of robbers and
marauders, until they came to where this lord was.

When his servants told him that there was a poor peasant girl named
Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but an old village wheelwright and
cart-maker, who wished to see him because she was commanded to help the
Dauphin and save France, Baudricourt burst out a-laughing, and bade
them send the girl away. But, he soon heard so much about her lingering
in the town, and praying in the churches, and seeing visions, and doing
harm to no one, that he sent for her, and questioned her. As she said
the same things after she had been well sprinkled with holy water as
she had said before the sprinkling, Baudricourt began to think there
might be something in it. At all events, he thought it worth while to
send her on to the town of Chinon, where the Dauphin was. So, he bought
her a horse, and a sword, and gave her two squires to conduct her. As
the Voices had told Joan that she was to wear a man’s dress, now, she
put one on, and girded her sword to her side, and bound spurs to her
heels, and mounted her horse and rode away with her two squires. As to
her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at his niece in wonder
until she was out of sight—as well he might—and then went home again.
The best place, too.

Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they came to Chinon,
where she was, after some doubt, admitted into the Dauphin’s presence.
Picking him out immediately from all his court, she told him that she
came commanded by Heaven to subdue his enemies and conduct him to his
coronation at Rheims. She also told him (or he pretended so afterwards,
to make the greater impression upon his soldiers) a number of his
secrets known only to himself, and, furthermore, she said there was an
old, old sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine at Fierbois, marked
with five old crosses on the blade, which Saint Catherine had ordered
her to wear.

[Illustration: Joan of Arc]

Now, nobody knew anything about this old, old sword, but when the
cathedral came to be examined—which was immediately done—there, sure
enough, the sword was found! The Dauphin then required a number of
grave priests and bishops to give him their opinion whether the girl
derived her power from good spirits or from evil spirits, which they
held prodigiously long debates about, in the course of which several
learned men fell fast asleep and snored loudly. At last, when one gruff
old gentleman had said to Joan, ‘What language do your Voices speak?’
and when Joan had replied to the gruff old gentleman, ‘A pleasanter
language than yours,’ they agreed that it was all correct, and that
Joan of Arc was inspired from Heaven. This wonderful circumstance put
new heart into the Dauphin’s soldiers when they heard of it, and
dispirited the English army, who took Joan for a witch.

So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and on, until she came
to Orleans. But she rode now, as never peasant girl had ridden yet. She
rode upon a white war-horse, in a suit of glittering armour; with the
old, old sword from the cathedral, newly burnished, in her belt; with a
white flag carried before her, upon which were a picture of God, and
the words Jesus Maria. In this splendid state, at the head of a great
body of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for the starving
inhabitants of Orleans, she appeared before that beleaguered city.

When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried out ‘The Maid is
come! The Maid of the Prophecy is come to deliver us!’ And this, and
the sight of the Maid fighting at the head of their men, made the
French so bold, and made the English so fearful, that the English line
of forts was soon broken, the troops and provisions were got into the
town, and Orleans was saved.

Joan, henceforth called The Maid of Orleans, remained within the walls
for a few days, and caused letters to be thrown over, ordering Lord
Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from before the town according to
the will of Heaven. As the English general very positively declined to
believe that Joan knew anything about the will of Heaven (which did not
mend the matter with his soldiers, for they stupidly said if she were
not inspired she was a witch, and it was of no use to fight against a
witch), she mounted her white war-horse again, and ordered her white
banner to advance.

The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong towers upon the bridge;
and here the Maid of Orleans attacked them. The fight was fourteen
hours long. She planted a scaling ladder with her own hands, and
mounted a tower wall, but was struck by an English arrow in the neck,
and fell into the trench. She was carried away and the arrow was taken
out, during which operation she screamed and cried with the pain, as
any other girl might have done; but presently she said that the Voices
were speaking to her and soothing her to rest. After a while, she got
up, and was again foremost in the fight. When the English who had seen
her fall and supposed her dead, saw this, they were troubled with the
strangest fears, and some of them cried out that they beheld Saint
Michael on a white horse (probably Joan herself) fighting for the
French. They lost the bridge, and lost the towers, and next day set
their chain of forts on fire, and left the place.

But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than the town of
Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, the Maid of Orleans besieged
him there, and he was taken prisoner. As the white banner scaled the
wall, she was struck upon the head with a stone, and was again tumbled
down into the ditch; but, she only cried all the more, as she lay
there, ‘On, on, my countrymen! And fear nothing, for the Lord hath
delivered them into our hands!’ After this new success of the Maid’s,
several other fortresses and places which had previously held out
against the Dauphin were delivered up without a battle; and at Patay
she defeated the remainder of the English army, and set up her
victorious white banner on a field where twelve hundred Englishmen lay
dead.

She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept out of the way when there
was any fighting) to proceed to Rheims, as the first part of her
mission was accomplished; and to complete the whole by being crowned
there. The Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do this, as Rheims was
a long way off, and the English and the Duke of Burgundy were still
strong in the country through which the road lay. However, they set
forth, with ten thousand men, and again the Maid of Orleans rode on and
on, upon her white war-horse, and in her shining armour. Whenever they
came to a town which yielded readily, the soldiers believed in her;
but, whenever they came to a town which gave them any trouble, they
began to murmur that she was an impostor. The latter was particularly
the case at Troyes, which finally yielded, however, through the
persuasion of one Richard, a friar of the place. Friar Richard was in
the old doubt about the Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her
well with holy water, and had also well sprinkled the threshold of the
gate by which she came into the city. Finding that it made no change in
her or the gate, he said, as the other grave old gentlemen had said,
that it was all right, and became her great ally.

So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid of Orleans, and the
Dauphin, and the ten thousand sometimes believing and sometimes
unbelieving men, came to Rheims. And in the great cathedral of Rheims,
the Dauphin actually was crowned Charles the Seventh in a great
assembly of the people. Then, the Maid, who with her white banner stood
beside the King in that hour of his triumph, kneeled down upon the
pavement at his feet, and said, with tears, that what she had been
inspired to do, was done, and that the only recompense she asked for,
was, that she should now have leave to go back to her distant home, and
her sturdily incredulous father, and her first simple escort the
village wheelwright and cart-maker. But the King said ‘No!’ and made
her and her family as noble as a King could, and settled upon her the
income of a Count.

Ah! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans, if she had resumed her
rustic dress that day, and had gone home to the little chapel and the
wild hills, and had forgotten all these things, and had been a good
man’s wife, and had heard no stranger voices than the voices of little
children!

It was not to be, and she continued helping the King (she did a world
for him, in alliance with Friar Richard), and trying to improve the
lives of the coarse soldiers, and leading a religious, an unselfish,
and a modest life, herself, beyond any doubt. Still, many times she
prayed the King to let her go home; and once she even took off her
bright armour and hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear it
more. But, the King always won her back again—while she was of any use
to him—and so she went on and on and on, to her doom.

When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very able man, began to be active
for England, and, by bringing the war back into France and by holding
the Duke of Burgundy to his faith, to distress and disturb Charles very
much, Charles sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the Voices said
about it? But, the Voices had become (very like ordinary voices in
perplexed times) contradictory and confused, so that now they said one
thing, and now said another, and the Maid lost credit every day.
Charles marched on Paris, which was opposed to him, and attacked the
suburb of Saint Honoré. In this fight, being again struck down into the
ditch, she was abandoned by the whole army. She lay unaided among a
heap of dead, and crawled out how she could. Then, some of her
believers went over to an opposition Maid, Catherine of La Rochelle,
who said she was inspired to tell where there were treasures of buried
money—though she never did—and then Joan accidentally broke the old,
old sword, and others said that her power was broken with it. Finally,
at the siege of Compiègne, held by the Duke of Burgundy, where she did
valiant service, she was basely left alone in a retreat, though facing
about and fighting to the last; and an archer pulled her off her horse.

O the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that were sung, about
the capture of this one poor country-girl! O the way in which she was
demanded to be tried for sorcery and heresy, and anything else you
like, by the Inquisitor-General of France, and by this great man, and
by that great man, until it is wearisome to think of! She was bought at
last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and was shut up
in her narrow prison: plain Joan of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no
more.

I should never have done if I were to tell you how they had Joan out to
examine her, and cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and worry her
into saying anything and everything; and how all sorts of scholars and
doctors bestowed their utmost tediousness upon her. Sixteen times she
was brought out and shut up again, and worried, and entrapped, and
argued with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary business. On the
last occasion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place at
Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and faggots, and
the executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, and an awful sermon
ready. It is very affecting to know that even at that pass the poor
girl honoured the mean vermin of a King, who had so used her for his
purposes and so abandoned her; and, that while she had been regardless
of reproaches heaped upon herself, she spoke out courageously for him.

It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save her life, she
signed a declaration prepared for her—signed it with a cross, for she
couldn’t write—that all her visions and Voices had come from the Devil.
Upon her recanting the past, and protesting that she would never wear a
man’s dress in future, she was condemned to imprisonment for life, ‘on
the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction.’

But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, the visions
and the Voices soon returned. It was quite natural that they should do
so, for that kind of disease is much aggravated by fasting, loneliness,
and anxiety of mind. It was not only got out of Joan that she
considered herself inspired again, but, she was taken in a man’s dress,
which had been left—to entrap her—in her prison, and which she put on,
in her solitude; perhaps, in remembrance of her past glories, perhaps,
because the imaginary Voices told her. For this relapse into the
sorcery and heresy and anything else you like, she was sentenced to be
burnt to death. And, in the market-place of Rouen, in the hideous dress
which the monks had invented for such spectacles; with priests and
bishops sitting in a gallery looking on, though some had the Christian
grace to go away, unable to endure the infamous scene; this shrieking
girl—last seen amidst the smoke and fire, holding a crucifix between
her hands; last heard, calling upon Christ—was burnt to ashes. They
threw her ashes into the river Seine; but they will rise against her
murderers on the last day.

From the moment of her capture, neither the French King nor one single
man in all his court raised a finger to save her. It is no defence of
them that they may have never really believed in her, or that they may
have won her victories by their skill and bravery. The more they
pretended to believe in her, the more they had caused her to believe in
herself; and she had ever been true to them, ever brave, ever nobly
devoted. But, it is no wonder, that they, who were in all things false
to themselves, false to one another, false to their country, false to
Heaven, false to Earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and treachery
to a helpless peasant girl.

In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds and grass grow high
on the cathedral towers, and the venerable Norman streets are still
warm in the blessed sunlight though the monkish fires that once gleamed
horribly upon them have long grown cold, there is a statue of Joan of
Arc, in the scene of her last agony, the square to which she has given
its present name. I know some statues of modern times—even in the
World’s metropolis, I think—which commemorate less constancy, less
earnestness, smaller claims upon the world’s attention, and much
greater impostors.

PART THE THIRD

Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind; and the English cause
gained no advantage from the cruel death of Joan of Arc. For a long
time, the war went heavily on. The Duke of Bedford died; the alliance
with the Duke of Burgundy was broken; and Lord Talbot became a great
general on the English side in France. But, two of the consequences of
wars are, Famine—because the people cannot peacefully cultivate the
ground—and Pestilence, which comes of want, misery, and suffering. Both
these horrors broke out in both countries, and lasted for two wretched
years. Then, the war went on again, and came by slow degrees to be so
badly conducted by the English government, that, within twenty years
from the execution of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French
conquests, the town of Calais alone remained in English hands.

While these victories and defeats were taking place in the course of
time, many strange things happened at home. The young King, as he grew
up, proved to be very unlike his great father, and showed himself a
miserable puny creature. There was no harm in him—he had a great
aversion to shedding blood: which was something—but, he was a weak,
silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great lordly
battledores about the Court.

Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the King, and
the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most powerful. The Duke of
Gloucester had a wife, who was nonsensically accused of practising
witchcraft to cause the King’s death and lead to her husband’s coming
to the throne, he being the next heir. She was charged with having, by
the help of a ridiculous old woman named Margery (who was called a
witch), made a little waxen doll in the King’s likeness, and put it
before a slow fire that it might gradually melt away. It was supposed,
in such cases, that the death of the person whom the doll was made to
represent, was sure to happen. Whether the duchess was as ignorant as
the rest of them, and really did make such a doll with such an
intention, I don’t know; but, you and I know very well that she might
have made a thousand dolls, if she had been stupid enough, and might
have melted them all, without hurting the King or anybody else.
However, she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, and so was one
of the duke’s chaplains, who was charged with having assisted them.
Both he and Margery were put to death, and the duchess, after being
taken on foot and bearing a lighted candle, three times round the City,
as a penance, was imprisoned for life. The duke, himself, took all this
pretty quietly, and made as little stir about the matter as if he were
rather glad to be rid of the duchess.

But, he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble long. The royal
shuttlecock being three-and-twenty, the battledores were very anxious
to get him married. The Duke of Gloucester wanted him to marry a
daughter of the Count of Armagnac; but, the Cardinal and the Earl of
Suffolk were all for Margaret, the daughter of the King of Sicily, who
they knew was a resolute, ambitious woman and would govern the King as
she chose. To make friends with this lady, the Earl of Suffolk, who
went over to arrange the match, consented to accept her for the King’s
wife without any fortune, and even to give up the two most valuable
possessions England then had in France. So, the marriage was arranged,
on terms very advantageous to the lady; and Lord Suffolk brought her to
England, and she was married at Westminster. On what pretence this
queen and her party charged the Duke of Gloucester with high treason
within a couple of years, it is impossible to make out, the matter is
so confused; but, they pretended that the King’s life was in danger,
and they took the duke prisoner. A fortnight afterwards, he was found
dead in bed (they said), and his body was shown to the people, and Lord
Suffolk came in for the best part of his estates. You know by this time
how strangely liable state prisoners were to sudden death.

If Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it did him no good,
for he died within six weeks; thinking it very hard and curious—at
eighty years old!—that he could not live to be Pope.

This was the time when England had completed her loss of all her great
French conquests. The people charged the loss principally upon the Earl
of Suffolk, now a duke, who had made those easy terms about the Royal
Marriage, and who, they believed, had even been bought by France. So he
was impeached as a traitor, on a great number of charges, but chiefly
on accusations of having aided the French King, and of designing to
make his own son King of England. The Commons and the people being
violent against him, the King was made (by his friends) to interpose to
save him, by banishing him for five years, and proroguing the
Parliament. The duke had much ado to escape from a London mob, two
thousand strong, who lay in wait for him in St. Giles’s fields; but, he
got down to his own estates in Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich.
Sailing across the Channel, he sent into Calais to know if he might
land there; but, they kept his boat and men in the harbour, until an
English ship, carrying a hundred and fifty men and called the Nicholas
of the Tower, came alongside his little vessel, and ordered him on
board. ‘Welcome, traitor, as men say,’ was the captain’s grim and not
very respectful salutation. He was kept on board, a prisoner, for
eight-and-forty hours, and then a small boat appeared rowing toward the
ship. As this boat came nearer, it was seen to have in it a block, a
rusty sword, and an executioner in a black mask. The duke was handed
down into it, and there his head was cut off with six strokes of the
rusty sword. Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover beach, where the
body was cast out, and left until the duchess claimed it. By whom, high
in authority, this murder was committed, has never appeared. No one was
ever punished for it.

There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave himself the name of
Mortimer, but whose real name was Jack Cade. Jack, in imitation of Wat
Tyler, though he was a very different and inferior sort of man,
addressed the Kentish men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad
government of England, among so many battledores and such a poor
shuttlecock; and the Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty
thousand. Their place of assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by
Jack, they put forth two papers, which they called ‘The Complaint of
the Commons of Kent,’ and ‘The Requests of the Captain of the Great
Assembly in Kent.’ They then retired to Sevenoaks. The royal army
coming up with them here, they beat it and killed their general. Then,
Jack dressed himself in the dead general’s armour, and led his men to
London.

Jack passed into the City from Southwark, over the bridge, and entered
it in triumph, giving the strictest orders to his men not to plunder.
Having made a show of his forces there, while the citizens looked on
quietly, he went back into Southwark in good order, and passed the
night. Next day, he came back again, having got hold in the meantime of
Lord Say, an unpopular nobleman. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor and
judges: ‘Will you be so good as to make a tribunal in Guildhall, and
try me this nobleman?’ The court being hastily made, he was found
guilty, and Jack and his men cut his head off on Cornhill. They also
cut off the head of his son-in-law, and then went back in good order to
Southwark again.

But, although the citizens could bear the beheading of an unpopular
lord, they could not bear to have their houses pillaged. And it did so
happen that Jack, after dinner—perhaps he had drunk a little too
much—began to plunder the house where he lodged; upon which, of course,
his men began to imitate him. Wherefore, the Londoners took counsel
with Lord Scales, who had a thousand soldiers in the Tower; and
defended London Bridge, and kept Jack and his people out. This
advantage gained, it was resolved by divers great men to divide Jack’s
army in the old way, by making a great many promises on behalf of the
state, that were never intended to be performed. This _did_ divide
them; some of Jack’s men saying that they ought to take the conditions
which were offered, and others saying that they ought not, for they
were only a snare; some going home at once; others staying where they
were; and all doubting and quarrelling among themselves.

Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accepting a pardon, and
who indeed did both, saw at last that there was nothing to expect from
his men, and that it was very likely some of them would deliver him up
and get a reward of a thousand marks, which was offered for his
apprehension. So, after they had travelled and quarrelled all the way
from Southwark to Blackheath, and from Blackheath to Rochester, he
mounted a good horse and galloped away into Sussex. But, there galloped
after him, on a better horse, one Alexander Iden, who came up with him,
had a hard fight with him, and killed him. Jack’s head was set aloft on
London Bridge, with the face looking towards Blackheath, where he had
raised his flag; and Alexander Iden got the thousand marks.

It is supposed by some, that the Duke of York, who had been removed
from a high post abroad through the Queen’s influence, and sent out of
the way, to govern Ireland, was at the bottom of this rising of Jack
and his men, because he wanted to trouble the government. He claimed
(though not yet publicly) to have a better right to the throne than
Henry of Lancaster, as one of the family of the Earl of March, whom
Henry the Fourth had set aside. Touching this claim, which, being
through female relationship, was not according to the usual descent, it
is enough to say that Henry the Fourth was the free choice of the
people and the Parliament, and that his family had now reigned
undisputed for sixty years. The memory of Henry the Fifth was so
famous, and the English people loved it so much, that the Duke of
York’s claim would, perhaps, never have been thought of (it would have
been so hopeless) but for the unfortunate circumstance of the present
King’s being by this time quite an idiot, and the country very ill
governed. These two circumstances gave the Duke of York a power he
could not otherwise have had.

Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack Cade, or not, he came over from
Ireland while Jack’s head was on London Bridge; being secretly advised
that the Queen was setting up his enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against
him. He went to Westminster, at the head of four thousand men, and on
his knees before the King, represented to him the bad state of the
country, and petitioned him to summon a Parliament to consider it. This
the King promised. When the Parliament was summoned, the Duke of York
accused the Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Somerset accused the Duke
of York; and, both in and out of Parliament, the followers of each
party were full of violence and hatred towards the other. At length the
Duke of York put himself at the head of a large force of his tenants,
and, in arms, demanded the reformation of the Government. Being shut
out of London, he encamped at Dartford, and the royal army encamped at
Blackheath. According as either side triumphed, the Duke of York was
arrested, or the Duke of Somerset was arrested. The trouble ended, for
the moment, in the Duke of York renewing his oath of allegiance, and
going in peace to one of his own castles.

Half a year afterwards the Queen gave birth to a son, who was very ill
received by the people, and not believed to be the son of the King. It
shows the Duke of York to have been a moderate man, unwilling to
involve England in new troubles, that he did not take advantage of the
general discontent at this time, but really acted for the public good.
He was made a member of the cabinet, and the King being now so much
worse that he could not be carried about and shown to the people with
any decency, the duke was made Lord Protector of the kingdom, until the
King should recover, or the Prince should come of age. At the same time
the Duke of Somerset was committed to the Tower. So, now the Duke of
Somerset was down, and the Duke of York was up. By the end of the year,
however, the King recovered his memory and some spark of sense; upon
which the Queen used her power—which recovered with him—to get the
Protector disgraced, and her favourite released. So now the Duke of
York was down, and the Duke of Somerset was up.

These ducal ups and downs gradually separated the whole nation into the
two parties of York and Lancaster, and led to those terrible civil wars
long known as the Wars of the Red and White Roses, because the red rose
was the badge of the House of Lancaster, and the white rose was the
badge of the House of York.

The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful noblemen of the White
Rose party, and leading a small army, met the King with another small
army at St. Alban’s, and demanded that the Duke of Somerset should be
given up. The poor King, being made to say in answer that he would
sooner die, was instantly attacked. The Duke of Somerset was killed,
and the King himself was wounded in the neck, and took refuge in the
house of a poor tanner. Whereupon, the Duke of York went to him, led
him with great submission to the Abbey, and said he was very sorry for
what had happened. Having now the King in his possession, he got a
Parliament summoned and himself once more made Protector, but, only for
a few months; for, on the King getting a little better again, the Queen
and her party got him into their possession, and disgraced the Duke
once more. So, now the Duke of York was down again.

Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of these constant
changes, tried even then to prevent the Red and the White Rose Wars.
They brought about a great council in London between the two parties.
The White Roses assembled in Blackfriars, the Red Roses in Whitefriars;
and some good priests communicated between them, and made the
proceedings known at evening to the King and the judges. They ended in
a peaceful agreement that there should be no more quarrelling; and
there was a great royal procession to St. Paul’s, in which the Queen
walked arm-in-arm with her old enemy, the Duke of York, to show the
people how comfortable they all were. This state of peace lasted half a
year, when a dispute between the Earl of Warwick (one of the Duke’s
powerful friends) and some of the King’s servants at Court, led to an
attack upon that Earl—who was a White Rose—and to a sudden breaking out
of all old animosities. So, here were greater ups and downs than ever.

There were even greater ups and downs than these, soon after. After
various battles, the Duke of York fled to Ireland, and his son the Earl
of March to Calais, with their friends the Earls of Salisbury and
Warwick; and a Parliament was held declaring them all traitors. Little
the worse for this, the Earl of Warwick presently came back, landed in
Kent, was joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other powerful
noblemen and gentlemen, engaged the King’s forces at Northampton,
signally defeated them, and took the King himself prisoner, who was
found in his tent. Warwick would have been glad, I dare say, to have
taken the Queen and Prince too, but they escaped into Wales and thence
into Scotland.

The King was carried by the victorious force straight to London, and
made to call a new Parliament, which immediately declared that the Duke
of York and those other noblemen were not traitors, but excellent
subjects. Then, back comes the Duke from Ireland at the head of five
hundred horsemen, rides from London to Westminster, and enters the
House of Lords. There, he laid his hand upon the cloth of gold which
covered the empty throne, as if he had half a mind to sit down in
it—but he did not. On the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him if he
would visit the King, who was in his palace close by, he replied, ‘I
know no one in this country, my lord, who ought not to visit _me_.’
None of the lords present spoke a single word; so, the duke went out as
he had come in, established himself royally in the King’s palace, and,
six days afterwards, sent in to the Lords a formal statement of his
claim to the throne. The lords went to the King on this momentous
subject, and after a great deal of discussion, in which the judges and
the other law officers were afraid to give an opinion on either side,
the question was compromised. It was agreed that the present King
should retain the crown for his life, and that it should then pass to
the Duke of York and his heirs.

But, the resolute Queen, determined on asserting her son’s right, would
hear of no such thing. She came from Scotland to the north of England,
where several powerful lords armed in her cause. The Duke of York, for
his part, set off with some five thousand men, a little time before
Christmas Day, one thousand four hundred and sixty, to give her battle.
He lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and the Red Roses defied
him to come out on Wakefield Green, and fight them then and there. His
generals said, he had best wait until his gallant son, the Earl of
March, came up with his power; but, he was determined to accept the
challenge. He did so, in an evil hour. He was hotly pressed on all
sides, two thousand of his men lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he
himself was taken prisoner. They set him down in mock state on an
ant-hill, and twisted grass about his head, and pretended to pay court
to him on their knees, saying, ‘O King, without a kingdom, and Prince
without a people, we hope your gracious Majesty is very well and
happy!’ They did worse than this; they cut his head off, and handed it
on a pole to the Queen, who laughed with delight when she saw it (you
recollect their walking so religiously and comfortably to St. Paul’s!),
and had it fixed, with a paper crown upon its head, on the walls of
York. The Earl of Salisbury lost his head, too; and the Duke of York’s
second son, a handsome boy who was flying with his tutor over Wakefield
Bridge, was stabbed in the heart by a murderous, lord—Lord Clifford by
name—whose father had been killed by the White Roses in the fight at
St. Alban’s. There was awful sacrifice of life in this battle, for no
quarter was given, and the Queen was wild for revenge. When men
unnaturally fight against their own countrymen, they are always
observed to be more unnaturally cruel and filled with rage than they
are against any other enemy.

But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the Duke of York—not
the first. The eldest son, Edward Earl of March, was at Gloucester;
and, vowing vengeance for the death of his father, his brother, and
their faithful friends, he began to march against the Queen. He had to
turn and fight a great body of Welsh and Irish first, who worried his
advance. These he defeated in a great fight at Mortimer’s Cross, near
Hereford, where he beheaded a number of the Red Roses taken in battle,
in retaliation for the beheading of the White Roses at Wakefield. The
Queen had the next turn of beheading. Having moved towards London, and
falling in, between St. Alban’s and Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick
and the Duke of Norfolk, White Roses both, who were there with an army
to oppose her, and had got the King with them; she defeated them with
great loss, and struck off the heads of two prisoners of note, who were
in the King’s tent with him, and to whom the King had promised his
protection. Her triumph, however, was very short. She had no treasure,
and her army subsisted by plunder. This caused them to be hated and
dreaded by the people, and particularly by the London people, who were
wealthy. As soon as the Londoners heard that Edward, Earl of March,
united with the Earl of Warwick, was advancing towards the city, they
refused to send the Queen supplies, and made a great rejoicing.

The Queen and her men retreated with all speed, and Edward and Warwick
came on, greeted with loud acclamations on every side. The courage,
beauty, and virtues of young Edward could not be sufficiently praised
by the whole people. He rode into London like a conqueror, and met with
an enthusiastic welcome. A few days afterwards, Lord Falconbridge and
the Bishop of Exeter assembled the citizens in St. John’s Field,
Clerkenwell, and asked them if they would have Henry of Lancaster for
their King? To this they all roared, ‘No, no, no!’ and ‘King Edward!
King Edward!’ Then, said those noblemen, would they love and serve
young Edward? To this they all cried, ‘Yes, yes!’ and threw up their
caps and clapped their hands, and cheered tremendously.

Therefore, it was declared that by joining the Queen and not protecting
those two prisoners of note, Henry of Lancaster had forfeited the
crown; and Edward of York was proclaimed King. He made a great speech
to the applauding people at Westminster, and sat down as sovereign of
England on that throne, on the golden covering of which his
father—worthy of a better fate than the bloody axe which cut the thread
of so many lives in England, through so many years—had laid his hand.




CHAPTER XXIII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH


King Edward the Fourth was not quite twenty-one years of age when he
took that unquiet seat upon the throne of England. The Lancaster party,
the Red Roses, were then assembling in great numbers near York, and it
was necessary to give them battle instantly. But, the stout Earl of
Warwick leading for the young King, and the young King himself closely
following him, and the English people crowding round the Royal
standard, the White and the Red Roses met, on a wild March day when the
snow was falling heavily, at Towton; and there such a furious battle
raged between them, that the total loss amounted to forty thousand
men—all Englishmen, fighting, upon English ground, against one another.
The young King gained the day, took down the heads of his father and
brother from the walls of York, and put up the heads of some of the
most famous noblemen engaged in the battle on the other side. Then, he
went to London and was crowned with great splendour.

A new Parliament met. No fewer than one hundred and fifty of the
principal noblemen and gentlemen on the Lancaster side were declared
traitors, and the King—who had very little humanity, though he was
handsome in person and agreeable in manners—resolved to do all he
could, to pluck up the Red Rose root and branch.

Queen Margaret, however, was still active for her young son. She
obtained help from Scotland and from Normandy, and took several
important English castles. But, Warwick soon retook them; the Queen
lost all her treasure on board ship in a great storm; and both she and
her son suffered great misfortunes. Once, in the winter weather, as
they were riding through a forest, they were attacked and plundered by
a party of robbers; and, when they had escaped from these men and were
passing alone and on foot through a thick dark part of the wood, they
came, all at once, upon another robber. So the Queen, with a stout
heart, took the little Prince by the hand, and going straight up to
that robber, said to him, ‘My friend, this is the young son of your
lawful King! I confide him to your care.’ The robber was surprised, but
took the boy in his arms, and faithfully restored him and his mother to
their friends. In the end, the Queen’s soldiers being beaten and
dispersed, she went abroad again, and kept quiet for the present.

Now, all this time, the deposed King Henry was concealed by a Welsh
knight, who kept him close in his castle. But, next year, the Lancaster
party recovering their spirits, raised a large body of men, and called
him out of his retirement, to put him at their head. They were joined
by some powerful noblemen who had sworn fidelity to the new King, but
who were ready, as usual, to break their oaths, whenever they thought
there was anything to be got by it. One of the worst things in the
history of the war of the Red and White Roses, is the ease with which
these noblemen, who should have set an example of honour to the people,
left either side as they took slight offence, or were disappointed in
their greedy expectations, and joined the other. Well! Warwick’s
brother soon beat the Lancastrians, and the false noblemen, being
taken, were beheaded without a moment’s loss of time. The deposed King
had a narrow escape; three of his servants were taken, and one of them
bore his cap of estate, which was set with pearls and embroidered with
two golden crowns. However, the head to which the cap belonged, got
safely into Lancashire, and lay pretty quietly there (the people in the
secret being very true) for more than a year. At length, an old monk
gave such intelligence as led to Henry’s being taken while he was
sitting at dinner in a place called Waddington Hall. He was immediately
sent to London, and met at Islington by the Earl of Warwick, by whose
directions he was put upon a horse, with his legs tied under it, and
paraded three times round the pillory. Then, he was carried off to the
Tower, where they treated him well enough.

The White Rose being so triumphant, the young King abandoned himself
entirely to pleasure, and led a jovial life. But, thorns were springing
up under his bed of roses, as he soon found out. For, having been
privately married to Elizabeth Woodville, a young widow lady, very
beautiful and very captivating; and at last resolving to make his
secret known, and to declare her his Queen; he gave some offence to the
Earl of Warwick, who was usually called the King-Maker, because of his
power and influence, and because of his having lent such great help to
placing Edward on the throne. This offence was not lessened by the
jealousy with which the Nevil family (the Earl of Warwick’s) regarded
the promotion of the Woodville family. For, the young Queen was so bent
on providing for her relations, that she made her father an earl and a
great officer of state; married her five sisters to young noblemen of
the highest rank; and provided for her younger brother, a young man of
twenty, by marrying him to an immensely rich old duchess of eighty. The
Earl of Warwick took all this pretty graciously for a man of his proud
temper, until the question arose to whom the King’s sister, Margaret,
should be married. The Earl of Warwick said, ‘To one of the French
King’s sons,’ and was allowed to go over to the French King to make
friendly proposals for that purpose, and to hold all manner of friendly
interviews with him. But, while he was so engaged, the Woodville party
married the young lady to the Duke of Burgundy! Upon this he came back
in great rage and scorn, and shut himself up discontented, in his
Castle of Middleham.

A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was patched up between
the Earl of Warwick and the King, and lasted until the Earl married his
daughter, against the King’s wishes, to the Duke of Clarence. While the
marriage was being celebrated at Calais, the people in the north of
England, where the influence of the Nevil family was strongest, broke
out into rebellion; their complaint was, that England was oppressed and
plundered by the Woodville family, whom they demanded to have removed
from power. As they were joined by great numbers of people, and as they
openly declared that they were supported by the Earl of Warwick, the
King did not know what to do. At last, as he wrote to the earl
beseeching his aid, he and his new son-in-law came over to England, and
began to arrange the business by shutting the King up in Middleham
Castle in the safe keeping of the Archbishop of York; so England was
not only in the strange position of having two kings at once, but they
were both prisoners at the same time.

Even as yet, however, the King-Maker was so far true to the King, that
he dispersed a new rising of the Lancastrians, took their leader
prisoner, and brought him to the King, who ordered him to be
immediately executed. He presently allowed the King to return to
London, and there innumerable pledges of forgiveness and friendship
were exchanged between them, and between the Nevils and the Woodvilles;
the King’s eldest daughter was promised in marriage to the heir of the
Nevil family; and more friendly oaths were sworn, and more friendly
promises made, than this book would hold.

They lasted about three months. At the end of that time, the Archbishop
of York made a feast for the King, the Earl of Warwick, and the Duke of
Clarence, at his house, the Moor, in Hertfordshire. The King was
washing his hands before supper, when some one whispered him that a
body of a hundred men were lying in ambush outside the house. Whether
this were true or untrue, the King took fright, mounted his horse, and
rode through the dark night to Windsor Castle. Another reconciliation
was patched up between him and the King-Maker, but it was a short one,
and it was the last. A new rising took place in Lincolnshire, and the
King marched to repress it. Having done so, he proclaimed that both the
Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence were traitors, who had
secretly assisted it, and who had been prepared publicly to join it on
the following day. In these dangerous circumstances they both took ship
and sailed away to the French court.

And here a meeting took place between the Earl of Warwick and his old
enemy, the Dowager Queen Margaret, through whom his father had had his
head struck off, and to whom he had been a bitter foe. But, now, when
he said that he had done with the ungrateful and perfidious Edward of
York, and that henceforth he devoted himself to the restoration of the
House of Lancaster, either in the person of her husband or of her
little son, she embraced him as if he had ever been her dearest friend.
She did more than that; she married her son to his second daughter, the
Lady Anne. However agreeable this marriage was to the new friends, it
was very disagreeable to the Duke of Clarence, who perceived that his
father-in-law, the King-Maker, would never make _him_ King, now. So,
being but a weak-minded young traitor, possessed of very little worth
or sense, he readily listened to an artful court lady sent over for the
purpose, and promised to turn traitor once more, and go over to his
brother, King Edward, when a fitting opportunity should come.

The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of this, soon redeemed his promise
to the Dowager Queen Margaret, by invading England and landing at
Plymouth, where he instantly proclaimed King Henry, and summoned all
Englishmen between the ages of sixteen and sixty, to join his banner.
Then, with his army increasing as he marched along, he went northward,
and came so near King Edward, who was in that part of the country, that
Edward had to ride hard for it to the coast of Norfolk, and thence to
get away in such ships as he could find, to Holland. Thereupon, the
triumphant King-Maker and his false son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence,
went to London, took the old King out of the Tower, and walked him in a
great procession to Saint Paul’s Cathedral with the crown upon his
head. This did not improve the temper of the Duke of Clarence, who saw
himself farther off from being King than ever; but he kept his secret,
and said nothing. The Nevil family were restored to all their honours
and glories, and the Woodvilles and the rest were disgraced. The
King-Maker, less sanguinary than the King, shed no blood except that of
the Earl of Worcester, who had been so cruel to the people as to have
gained the title of the Butcher. Him they caught hidden in a tree, and
him they tried and executed. No other death stained the King-Maker’s
triumph.

To dispute this triumph, back came King Edward again, next year,
landing at Ravenspur, coming on to York, causing all his men to cry
‘Long live King Henry!’ and swearing on the altar, without a blush,
that he came to lay no claim to the crown. Now was the time for the
Duke of Clarence, who ordered his men to assume the White Rose, and
declare for his brother. The Marquis of Montague, though the Earl of
Warwick’s brother, also declining to fight against King Edward, he went
on successfully to London, where the Archbishop of York let him into
the City, and where the people made great demonstrations in his favour.
For this they had four reasons. Firstly, there were great numbers of
the King’s adherents hiding in the City and ready to break out;
secondly, the King owed them a great deal of money, which they could
never hope to get if he were unsuccessful; thirdly, there was a young
prince to inherit the crown; and fourthly, the King was gay and
handsome, and more popular than a better man might have been with the
City ladies. After a stay of only two days with these worthy
supporters, the King marched out to Barnet Common, to give the Earl of
Warwick battle. And now it was to be seen, for the last time, whether
the King or the King-Maker was to carry the day.

While the battle was yet pending, the fainthearted Duke of Clarence
began to repent, and sent over secret messages to his father-in-law,
offering his services in mediation with the King. But, the Earl of
Warwick disdainfully rejected them, and replied that Clarence was false
and perjured, and that he would settle the quarrel by the sword. The
battle began at four o’clock in the morning and lasted until ten, and
during the greater part of the time it was fought in a thick
mist—absurdly supposed to be raised by a magician. The loss of life was
very great, for the hatred was strong on both sides. The King-Maker was
defeated, and the King triumphed. Both the Earl of Warwick and his
brother were slain, and their bodies lay in St. Paul’s, for some days,
as a spectacle to the people.

Margaret’s spirit was not broken even by this great blow. Within five
days she was in arms again, and raised her standard in Bath, whence she
set off with her army, to try and join Lord Pembroke, who had a force
in Wales. But, the King, coming up with her outside the town of
Tewkesbury, and ordering his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who was a
brave soldier, to attack her men, she sustained an entire defeat, and
was taken prisoner, together with her son, now only eighteen years of
age. The conduct of the King to this poor youth was worthy of his cruel
character. He ordered him to be led into his tent. ‘And what,’ said he,
‘brought _you_ to England?’ ‘I came to England,’ replied the prisoner,
with a spirit which a man of spirit might have admired in a captive,
‘to recover my father’s kingdom, which descended to him as his right,
and from him descends to me, as mine.’ The King, drawing off his iron
gauntlet, struck him with it in the face; and the Duke of Clarence and
some other lords, who were there, drew their noble swords, and killed
him.

His mother survived him, a prisoner, for five years; after her ransom
by the King of France, she survived for six years more. Within three
weeks of this murder, Henry died one of those convenient sudden deaths
which were so common in the Tower; in plainer words, he was murdered by
the King’s order.

Having no particular excitement on his hands after this great defeat of
the Lancaster party, and being perhaps desirous to get rid of some of
his fat (for he was now getting too corpulent to be handsome), the King
thought of making war on France. As he wanted more money for this
purpose than the Parliament could give him, though they were usually
ready enough for war, he invented a new way of raising it, by sending
for the principal citizens of London, and telling them, with a grave
face, that he was very much in want of cash, and would take it very
kind in them if they would lend him some. It being impossible for them
safely to refuse, they complied, and the moneys thus forced from them
were called—no doubt to the great amusement of the King and the
Court—as if they were free gifts, ‘Benevolences.’ What with grants from
Parliament, and what with Benevolences, the King raised an army and
passed over to Calais. As nobody wanted war, however, the French King
made proposals of peace, which were accepted, and a truce was concluded
for seven long years. The proceedings between the Kings of France and
England on this occasion, were very friendly, very splendid, and very
distrustful. They finished with a meeting between the two Kings, on a
temporary bridge over the river Somme, where they embraced through two
holes in a strong wooden grating like a lion’s cage, and made several
bows and fine speeches to one another.

It was time, now, that the Duke of Clarence should be punished for his
treacheries; and Fate had his punishment in store. He was, probably,
not trusted by the King—for who could trust him who knew him!—and he
had certainly a powerful opponent in his brother Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, who, being avaricious and ambitious, wanted to marry that
widowed daughter of the Earl of Warwick’s who had been espoused to the
deceased young Prince, at Calais. Clarence, who wanted all the family
wealth for himself, secreted this lady, whom Richard found disguised as
a servant in the City of London, and whom he married; arbitrators
appointed by the King, then divided the property between the brothers.
This led to ill-will and mistrust between them. Clarence’s wife dying,
and he wishing to make another marriage, which was obnoxious to the
King, his ruin was hurried by that means, too. At first, the Court
struck at his retainers and dependents, and accused some of them of
magic and witchcraft, and similar nonsense. Successful against this
small game, it then mounted to the Duke himself, who was impeached by
his brother the King, in person, on a variety of such charges. He was
found guilty, and sentenced to be publicly executed. He never was
publicly executed, but he met his death somehow, in the Tower, and, no
doubt, through some agency of the King or his brother Gloucester, or
both. It was supposed at the time that he was told to choose the manner
of his death, and that he chose to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey
wine. I hope the story may be true, for it would have been a becoming
death for such a miserable creature.

The King survived him some five years. He died in the forty-second year
of his life, and the twenty-third of his reign. He had a very good
capacity and some good points, but he was selfish, careless, sensual,
and cruel. He was a favourite with the people for his showy manners;
and the people were a good example to him in the constancy of their
attachment. He was penitent on his death-bed for his ‘benevolences,’
and other extortions, and ordered restitution to be made to the people
who had suffered from them. He also called about his bed the enriched
members of the Woodville family, and the proud lords whose honours were
of older date, and endeavoured to reconcile them, for the sake of the
peaceful succession of his son and the tranquillity of England.




CHAPTER XXIV
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH


The late King’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales, called Edward after
him, was only thirteen years of age at his father’s death. He was at
Ludlow Castle with his uncle, the Earl of Rivers. The prince’s brother,
the Duke of York, only eleven years of age, was in London with his
mother. The boldest, most crafty, and most dreaded nobleman in England
at that time was their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and everybody
wondered how the two poor boys would fare with such an uncle for a
friend or a foe.

The Queen, their mother, being exceedingly uneasy about this, was
anxious that instructions should be sent to Lord Rivers to raise an
army to escort the young King safely to London. But, Lord Hastings, who
was of the Court party opposed to the Woodvilles, and who disliked the
thought of giving them that power, argued against the proposal, and
obliged the Queen to be satisfied with an escort of two thousand horse.
The Duke of Gloucester did nothing, at first, to justify suspicion. He
came from Scotland (where he was commanding an army) to York, and was
there the first to swear allegiance to his nephew. He then wrote a
condoling letter to the Queen-Mother, and set off to be present at the
coronation in London.

Now, the young King, journeying towards London too, with Lord Rivers
and Lord Gray, came to Stony Stratford, as his uncle came to
Northampton, about ten miles distant; and when those two lords heard
that the Duke of Gloucester was so near, they proposed to the young
King that they should go back and greet him in his name. The boy being
very willing that they should do so, they rode off and were received
with great friendliness, and asked by the Duke of Gloucester to stay
and dine with him. In the evening, while they were merry together, up
came the Duke of Buckingham with three hundred horsemen; and next
morning the two lords and the two dukes, and the three hundred
horsemen, rode away together to rejoin the King. Just as they were
entering Stony Stratford, the Duke of Gloucester, checking his horse,
turned suddenly on the two lords, charged them with alienating from him
the affections of his sweet nephew, and caused them to be arrested by
the three hundred horsemen and taken back. Then, he and the Duke of
Buckingham went straight to the King (whom they had now in their
power), to whom they made a show of kneeling down, and offering great
love and submission; and then they ordered his attendants to disperse,
and took him, alone with them, to Northampton.

A few days afterwards they conducted him to London, and lodged him in
the Bishop’s Palace. But, he did not remain there long; for, the Duke
of Buckingham with a tender face made a speech expressing how anxious
he was for the Royal boy’s safety, and how much safer he would be in
the Tower until his coronation, than he could be anywhere else. So, to
the Tower he was taken, very carefully, and the Duke of Gloucester was
named Protector of the State.

Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a very smooth
countenance—and although he was a clever man, fair of speech, and not
ill-looking, in spite of one of his shoulders being something higher
than the other—and although he had come into the City riding
bare-headed at the King’s side, and looking very fond of him—he had
made the King’s mother more uneasy yet; and when the Royal boy was
taken to the Tower, she became so alarmed that she took sanctuary in
Westminster with her five daughters.

Nor did she do this without reason, for, the Duke of Gloucester,
finding that the lords who were opposed to the Woodville family were
faithful to the young King nevertheless, quickly resolved to strike a
blow for himself. Accordingly, while those lords met in council at the
Tower, he and those who were in his interest met in separate council at
his own residence, Crosby Palace, in Bishopsgate Street. Being at last
quite prepared, he one day appeared unexpectedly at the council in the
Tower, and appeared to be very jocular and merry. He was particularly
gay with the Bishop of Ely: praising the strawberries that grew in his
garden on Holborn Hill, and asking him to have some gathered that he
might eat them at dinner. The Bishop, quite proud of the honour, sent
one of his men to fetch some; and the Duke, still very jocular and gay,
went out; and the council all said what a very agreeable duke he was!
In a little time, however, he came back quite altered—not at all
jocular—frowning and fierce—and suddenly said,—

‘What do those persons deserve who have compassed my destruction; I
being the King’s lawful, as well as natural, protector?’

To this strange question, Lord Hastings replied, that they deserved
death, whosoever they were.

‘Then,’ said the Duke, ‘I tell you that they are that sorceress my
brother’s wife;’ meaning the Queen: ‘and that other sorceress, Jane
Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have withered my body, and caused my arm to
shrink as I now show you.’

He then pulled up his sleeve and showed them his arm, which was
shrunken, it is true, but which had been so, as they all very well
knew, from the hour of his birth.

Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord Hastings, as she had formerly
been of the late King, that lord knew that he himself was attacked. So,
he said, in some confusion, ‘Certainly, my Lord, if they have done
this, they be worthy of punishment.’

‘If?’ said the Duke of Gloucester; ‘do you talk to me of ifs? I tell
you that they _have_ so done, and I will make it good upon thy body,
thou traitor!’

With that, he struck the table a great blow with his fist. This was a
signal to some of his people outside to cry ‘Treason!’ They immediately
did so, and there was a rush into the chamber of so many armed men that
it was filled in a moment.

‘First,’ said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hastings, ‘I arrest thee,
traitor! And let him,’ he added to the armed men who took him, ‘have a
priest at once, for by St. Paul I will not dine until I have seen his
head of!’

Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower chapel, and there
beheaded on a log of wood that happened to be lying on the ground.
Then, the Duke dined with a good appetite, and after dinner summoning
the principal citizens to attend him, told them that Lord Hastings and
the rest had designed to murder both himself and the Duke if
Buckingham, who stood by his side, if he had not providentially
discovered their design. He requested them to be so obliging as to
inform their fellow-citizens of the truth of what he said, and issued a
proclamation (prepared and neatly copied out beforehand) to the same
effect.

On the same day that the Duke did these things in the Tower, Sir
Richard Ratcliffe, the boldest and most undaunted of his men, went down
to Pontefract; arrested Lord Rivers, Lord Gray, and two other
gentlemen; and publicly executed them on the scaffold, without any
trial, for having intended the Duke’s death. Three days afterwards the
Duke, not to lose time, went down the river to Westminster in his
barge, attended by divers bishops, lords, and soldiers, and demanded
that the Queen should deliver her second son, the Duke of York, into
his safe keeping. The Queen, being obliged to comply, resigned the
child after she had wept over him; and Richard of Gloucester placed him
with his brother in the Tower. Then, he seized Jane Shore, and, because
she had been the lover of the late King, confiscated her property, and
got her sentenced to do public penance in the streets by walking in a
scanty dress, with bare feet, and carrying a lighted candle, to St.
Paul’s Cathedral, through the most crowded part of the City.

Having now all things ready for his own advancement, he caused a friar
to preach a sermon at the cross which stood in front of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, in which he dwelt upon the profligate manners of the late
King, and upon the late shame of Jane Shore, and hinted that the
princes were not his children. ‘Whereas, good people,’ said the friar,
whose name was Shaw, ‘my Lord the Protector, the noble Duke of
Gloucester, that sweet prince, the pattern of all the noblest virtues,
is the perfect image and express likeness of his father.’ There had
been a little plot between the Duke and the friar, that the Duke should
appear in the crowd at this moment, when it was expected that the
people would cry ‘Long live King Richard!’ But, either through the
friar saying the words too soon, or through the Duke’s coming too late,
the Duke and the words did not come together, and the people only
laughed, and the friar sneaked off ashamed.

The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand at such business than the
friar, so he went to the Guildhall the next day, and addressed the
citizens in the Lord Protector’s behalf. A few dirty men, who had been
hired and stationed there for the purpose, crying when he had done,
‘God save King Richard!’ he made them a great bow, and thanked them
with all his heart. Next day, to make an end of it, he went with the
mayor and some lords and citizens to Bayard Castle, by the river, where
Richard then was, and read an address, humbly entreating him to accept
the Crown of England. Richard, who looked down upon them out of a
window and pretended to be in great uneasiness and alarm, assured them
there was nothing he desired less, and that his deep affection for his
nephews forbade him to think of it. To this the Duke of Buckingham
replied, with pretended warmth, that the free people of England would
never submit to his nephew’s rule, and that if Richard, who was the
lawful heir, refused the Crown, why then they must find some one else
to wear it. The Duke of Gloucester returned, that since he used that
strong language, it became his painful duty to think no more of
himself, and to accept the Crown.

Upon that, the people cheered and dispersed; and the Duke of Gloucester
and the Duke of Buckingham passed a pleasant evening, talking over the
play they had just acted with so much success, and every word of which
they had prepared together.




CHAPTER XXV
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD


King Richard the Third was up betimes in the morning, and went to
Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a marble seat, upon which he sat
himself down between two great noblemen, and told the people that he
began the new reign in that place, because the first duty of a
sovereign was to administer the laws equally to all, and to maintain
justice. He then mounted his horse and rode back to the City, where he
was received by the clergy and the crowd as if he really had a right to
the throne, and really were a just man. The clergy and the crowd must
have been rather ashamed of themselves in secret, I think, for being
such poor-spirited knaves.

The new King and his Queen were soon crowned with a great deal of show
and noise, which the people liked very much; and then the King set
forth on a royal progress through his dominions. He was crowned a
second time at York, in order that the people might have show and noise
enough; and wherever he went was received with shouts of rejoicing—from
a good many people of strong lungs, who were paid to strain their
throats in crying, ‘God save King Richard!’ The plan was so successful
that I am told it has been imitated since, by other usurpers, in other
progresses through other dominions.

While he was on this journey, King Richard stayed a week at Warwick.
And from Warwick he sent instructions home for one of the wickedest
murders that ever was done—the murder of the two young princes, his
nephews, who were shut up in the Tower of London.

Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of the Tower. To him,
by the hands of a messenger named John Green, did King Richard send a
letter, ordering him by some means to put the two young princes to
death. But Sir Robert—I hope because he had children of his own, and
loved them—sent John Green back again, riding and spurring along the
dusty roads, with the answer that he could not do so horrible a piece
of work. The King, having frowningly considered a little, called to him
Sir James Tyrrel, his master of the horse, and to him gave authority to
take command of the Tower, whenever he would, for twenty-four hours,
and to keep all the keys of the Tower during that space of time.
Tyrrel, well knowing what was wanted, looked about him for two hardened
ruffians, and chose John Dighton, one of his own grooms, and Miles
Forest, who was a murderer by trade. Having secured these two
assistants, he went, upon a day in August, to the Tower, showed his
authority from the King, took the command for four-and-twenty hours,
and obtained possession of the keys. And when the black night came he
went creeping, creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, up the dark,
stone winding stairs, and along the dark stone passages, until he came
to the door of the room where the two young princes, having said their
prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in each other’s arms. And while he
watched and listened at the door, he sent in those evil demons, John
Dighton and Miles Forest, who smothered the two princes with the bed
and pillows, and carried their bodies down the stairs, and buried them
under a great heap of stones at the staircase foot. And when the day
came, he gave up the command of the Tower, and restored the keys, and
hurried away without once looking behind him; and Sir Robert
Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to the princes’ room, and found
the princes gone for ever.

You know, through all this history, how true it is that traitors are
never true, and you will not be surprised to learn that the Duke of
Buckingham soon turned against King Richard, and joined a great
conspiracy that was formed to dethrone him, and to place the crown upon
its rightful owner’s head. Richard had meant to keep the murder secret;
but when he heard through his spies that this conspiracy existed, and
that many lords and gentlemen drank in secret to the healths of the two
young princes in the Tower, he made it known that they were dead. The
conspirators, though thwarted for a moment, soon resolved to set up for
the crown against the murderous Richard, Henry Earl of Richmond,
grandson of Catherine: that widow of Henry the Fifth who married Owen
Tudor. And as Henry was of the house of Lancaster, they proposed that
he should marry the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late
King, now the heiress of the house of York, and thus by uniting the
rival families put an end to the fatal wars of the Red and White Roses.
All being settled, a time was appointed for Henry to come over from
Brittany, and for a great rising against Richard to take place in
several parts of England at the same hour. On a certain day, therefore,
in October, the revolt took place; but unsuccessfully. Richard was
prepared, Henry was driven back at sea by a storm, his followers in
England were dispersed, and the Duke of Buckingham was taken, and at
once beheaded in the market-place at Salisbury.

The time of his success was a good time, Richard thought, for summoning
a Parliament and getting some money. So, a Parliament was called, and
it flattered and fawned upon him as much as he could possibly desire,
and declared him to be the rightful King of England, and his only son
Edward, then eleven years of age, the next heir to the throne.

Richard knew full well that, let the Parliament say what it would, the
Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people as the heiress of the house
of York; and having accurate information besides, of its being designed
by the conspirators to marry her to Henry of Richmond, he felt that it
would much strengthen him and weaken them, to be beforehand with them,
and marry her to his son. With this view he went to the Sanctuary at
Westminster, where the late King’s widow and her daughter still were,
and besought them to come to Court: where (he swore by anything and
everything) they should be safely and honourably entertained. They
came, accordingly, but had scarcely been at Court a month when his son
died suddenly—or was poisoned—and his plan was crushed to pieces.

In this extremity, King Richard, always active, thought, ‘I must make
another plan.’ And he made the plan of marrying the Princess Elizabeth
himself, although she was his niece. There was one difficulty in the
way: his wife, the Queen Anne, was alive. But, he knew (remembering his
nephews) how to remove that obstacle, and he made love to the Princess
Elizabeth, telling her he felt perfectly confident that the Queen would
die in February. The Princess was not a very scrupulous young lady,
for, instead of rejecting the murderer of her brothers with scorn and
hatred, she openly declared she loved him dearly; and, when February
came and the Queen did not die, she expressed her impatient opinion
that she was too long about it. However, King Richard was not so far
out in his prediction, but, that she died in March—he took good care of
that—and then this precious pair hoped to be married. But they were
disappointed, for the idea of such a marriage was so unpopular in the
country, that the King’s chief counsellors, Ratcliffe and Catesby,
would by no means undertake to propose it, and the King was even
obliged to declare in public that he had never thought of such a thing.

He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes of his subjects.
His nobles deserted every day to Henry’s side; he dared not call
another Parliament, lest his crimes should be denounced there; and for
want of money, he was obliged to get Benevolences from the citizens,
which exasperated them all against him. It was said too, that, being
stricken by his conscience, he dreamed frightful dreams, and started up
in the night-time, wild with terror and remorse. Active to the last,
through all this, he issued vigorous proclamations against Henry of
Richmond and all his followers, when he heard that they were coming
against him with a Fleet from France; and took the field as fierce and
savage as a wild boar—the animal represented on his shield.

Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at Milford Haven, and
came on against King Richard, then encamped at Leicester with an army
twice as great, through North Wales. On Bosworth Field the two armies
met; and Richard, looking along Henry’s ranks, and seeing them crowded
with the English nobles who had abandoned him, turned pale when he
beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom he had tried hard to
retain) among them. But, he was as brave as he was wicked, and plunged
into the thickest of the fight. He was riding hither and thither,
laying about him in all directions, when he observed the Earl of
Northumberland—one of his few great allies—to stand inactive, and the
main body of his troops to hesitate. At the same moment, his desperate
glance caught Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights.
Riding hard at him, and crying ‘Treason!’ he killed his
standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, and aimed a
powerful stroke at Henry himself, to cut him down. But, Sir William
Stanley parried it as it fell, and before Richard could raise his arm
again, he was borne down in a press of numbers, unhorsed, and killed.
Lord Stanley picked up the crown, all bruised and trampled, and stained
with blood, and put it upon Richmond’s head, amid loud and rejoicing
cries of ‘Long live King Henry!’

That night, a horse was led up to the church of the Grey Friars at
Leicester; across whose back was tied, like some worthless sack, a
naked body brought there for burial. It was the body of the last of the
Plantagenet line, King Richard the Third, usurper and murderer, slain
at the battle of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year of his age,
after a reign of two years.




CHAPTER XXVI
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH


King Henry the Seventh did not turn out to be as fine a fellow as the
nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of their deliverance from
Richard the Third. He was very cold, crafty, and calculating, and would
do almost anything for money. He possessed considerable ability, but
his chief merit appears to have been that he was not cruel when there
was nothing to be got by it.

The new King had promised the nobles who had espoused his cause that he
would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The first thing he did, was, to
direct her to be removed from the castle of Sheriff Hutton in
Yorkshire, where Richard had placed her, and restored to the care of
her mother in London. The young Earl of Warwick, Edward Plantagenet,
son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had been kept a prisoner in
the same old Yorkshire Castle with her. This boy, who was now fifteen,
the new King placed in the Tower for safety. Then he came to London in
great state, and gratified the people with a fine procession; on which
kind of show he often very much relied for keeping them in good humour.
The sports and feasts which took place were followed by a terrible
fever, called the Sweating Sickness; of which great numbers of people
died. Lord Mayors and Aldermen are thought to have suffered most from
it; whether, because they were in the habit of over-eating themselves,
or because they were very jealous of preserving filth and nuisances in
the City (as they have been since), I don’t know.

The King’s coronation was postponed on account of the general
ill-health, and he afterwards deferred his marriage, as if he were not
very anxious that it should take place: and, even after that, deferred
the Queen’s coronation so long that he gave offence to the York party.
However, he set these things right in the end, by hanging some men and
seizing on the rich possessions of others; by granting more popular
pardons to the followers of the late King than could, at first, be got
from him; and, by employing about his Court, some very scrupulous
persons who had been employed in the previous reign.

As this reign was principally remarkable for two very curious
impostures which have become famous in history, we will make those two
stories its principal feature.

There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, who had for a pupil
a handsome boy named Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker. Partly to
gratify his own ambitious ends, and partly to carry out the designs of
a secret party formed against the King, this priest declared that his
pupil, the boy, was no other than the young Earl of Warwick; who (as
everybody might have known) was safely locked up in the Tower of
London. The priest and the boy went over to Ireland; and, at Dublin,
enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people: who seem to have been
generous enough, but exceedingly irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the
governor of Ireland, declared that he believed the boy to be what the
priest represented; and the boy, who had been well tutored by the
priest, told them such things of his childhood, and gave them so many
descriptions of the Royal Family, that they were perpetually shouting
and hurrahing, and drinking his health, and making all kinds of noisy
and thirsty demonstrations, to express their belief in him. Nor was
this feeling confined to Ireland alone, for the Earl of Lincoln—whom
the late usurper had named as his successor—went over to the young
Pretender; and, after holding a secret correspondence with the Dowager
Duchess of Burgundy—the sister of Edward the Fourth, who detested the
present King and all his race—sailed to Dublin with two thousand German
soldiers of her providing. In this promising state of the boy’s
fortunes, he was crowned there, with a crown taken off the head of a
statue of the Virgin Mary; and was then, according to the Irish custom
of those days, carried home on the shoulders of a big chieftain
possessing a great deal more strength than sense. Father Simons, you
may be sure, was mighty busy at the coronation.

Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and the priest, and
the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to invade
England. The King, who had good intelligence of their movements, set up
his standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers resorted to him every
day; while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but very few. With his small
force he tried to make for the town of Newark; but the King’s army
getting between him and that place, he had no choice but to risk a
battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the complete destruction of the
Pretender’s forces, one half of whom were killed; among them, the Earl
himself. The priest and the baker’s boy were taken prisoners. The
priest, after confessing the trick, was shut up in prison, where he
afterwards died—suddenly perhaps. The boy was taken into the King’s
kitchen and made a turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the station of
one of the King’s falconers; and so ended this strange imposition.

There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen—always a restless
and busy woman—had had some share in tutoring the baker’s son. The King
was very angry with her, whether or no. He seized upon her property,
and shut her up in a convent at Bermondsey.

One might suppose that the end of this story would have put the Irish
people on their guard; but they were quite ready to receive a second
impostor, as they had received the first, and that same troublesome
Duchess of Burgundy soon gave them the opportunity. All of a sudden
there appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving from Portugal, a young man
of excellent abilities, of very handsome appearance and most winning
manners, who declared himself to be Richard, Duke of York, the second
son of King Edward the Fourth. ‘O,’ said some, even of those ready
Irish believers, ‘but surely that young Prince was murdered by his
uncle in the Tower!’—‘It _is_ supposed so,’ said the engaging young
man; ‘and my brother _was_ killed in that gloomy prison; but I
escaped—it don’t matter how, at present—and have been wandering about
the world for seven long years.’ This explanation being quite
satisfactory to numbers of the Irish people, they began again to shout
and to hurrah, and to drink his health, and to make the noisy and
thirsty demonstrations all over again. And the big chieftain in Dublin
began to look out for another coronation, and another young King to be
carried home on his back.

Now, King Henry being then on bad terms with France, the French King,
Charles the Eighth, saw that, by pretending to believe in the handsome
young man, he could trouble his enemy sorely. So, he invited him over
to the French Court, and appointed him a body-guard, and treated him in
all respects as if he really were the Duke of York. Peace, however,
being soon concluded between the two Kings, the pretended Duke was
turned adrift, and wandered for protection to the Duchess of Burgundy.
She, after feigning to inquire into the reality of his claims, declared
him to be the very picture of her dear departed brother; gave him a
body-guard at her Court, of thirty halberdiers; and called him by the
sounding name of the White Rose of England.

The leading members of the White Rose party in England sent over an
agent, named Sir Robert Clifford, to ascertain whether the White Rose’s
claims were good: the King also sent over his agents to inquire into
the Rose’s history. The White Roses declared the young man to be really
the Duke of York; the King declared him to be Perkin Warbeck, the son
of a merchant of the city of Tournay, who had acquired his knowledge of
England, its language and manners, from the English merchants who
traded in Flanders; it was also stated by the Royal agents that he had
been in the service of Lady Brompton, the wife of an exiled English
nobleman, and that the Duchess of Burgundy had caused him to be trained
and taught, expressly for this deception. The King then required the
Archduke Philip—who was the sovereign of Burgundy—to banish this new
Pretender, or to deliver him up; but, as the Archduke replied that he
could not control the Duchess in her own land, the King, in revenge,
took the market of English cloth away from Antwerp, and prevented all
commercial intercourse between the two countries.

He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert Clifford to betray
his employers; and he denouncing several famous English noblemen as
being secretly the friends of Perkin Warbeck, the King had three of the
foremost executed at once. Whether he pardoned the remainder because
they were poor, I do not know; but it is only too probable that he
refused to pardon one famous nobleman against whom the same Clifford
soon afterwards informed separately, because he was rich. This was no
other than Sir William Stanley, who had saved the King’s life at the
battle of Bosworth Field. It is very doubtful whether his treason
amounted to much more than his having said, that if he were sure the
young man was the Duke of York, he would not take arms against him.
Whatever he had done he admitted, like an honourable spirit; and he
lost his head for it, and the covetous King gained all his wealth.

Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years; but, as the Flemings began
to complain heavily of the loss of their trade by the stoppage of the
Antwerp market on his account, and as it was not unlikely that they
might even go so far as to take his life, or give him up, he found it
necessary to do something. Accordingly he made a desperate sally, and
landed, with only a few hundred men, on the coast of Deal. But he was
soon glad to get back to the place from whence he came; for the country
people rose against his followers, killed a great many, and took a
hundred and fifty prisoners: who were all driven to London, tied
together with ropes, like a team of cattle. Every one of them was
hanged on some part or other of the sea-shore; in order, that if any
more men should come over with Perkin Warbeck, they might see the
bodies as a warning before they landed.

Then the wary King, by making a treaty of commerce with the Flemings,
drove Perkin Warbeck out of that country; and, by completely gaining
over the Irish to his side, deprived him of that asylum too. He
wandered away to Scotland, and told his story at that Court. King James
the Fourth of Scotland, who was no friend to King Henry, and had no
reason to be (for King Henry had bribed his Scotch lords to betray him
more than once; but had never succeeded in his plots), gave him a great
reception, called him his cousin, and gave him in marriage the Lady
Catherine Gordon, a beautiful and charming creature related to the
royal house of Stuart.

Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pretender, the King
still undermined, and bought, and bribed, and kept his doings and
Perkin Warbeck’s story in the dark, when he might, one would imagine,
have rendered the matter clear to all England. But, for all this
bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King’s Court, he could not
procure the Pretender to be delivered up to him. James, though not very
particular in many respects, would not betray him; and the ever-busy
Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms, and good soldiers, and
with money besides, that he had soon a little army of fifteen hundred
men of various nations. With these, and aided by the Scottish King in
person, he crossed the border into England, and made a proclamation to
the people, in which he called the King ‘Henry Tudor;’ offered large
rewards to any who should take or distress him; and announced himself
as King Richard the Fourth come to receive the homage of his faithful
subjects. His faithful subjects, however, cared nothing for him, and
hated his faithful troops: who, being of different nations, quarrelled
also among themselves. Worse than this, if worse were possible, they
began to plunder the country; upon which the White Rose said, that he
would rather lose his rights, than gain them through the miseries of
the English people. The Scottish King made a jest of his scruples; but
they and their whole force went back again without fighting a battle.

The worst consequence of this attempt was, that a rising took place
among the people of Cornwall, who considered themselves too heavily
taxed to meet the charges of the expected war. Stimulated by Flammock,
a lawyer, and Joseph, a blacksmith, and joined by Lord Audley and some
other country gentlemen, they marched on all the way to Deptford
Bridge, where they fought a battle with the King’s army. They were
defeated—though the Cornish men fought with great bravery—and the lord
was beheaded, and the lawyer and the blacksmith were hanged, drawn, and
quartered. The rest were pardoned. The King, who believed every man to
be as avaricious as himself, and thought that money could settle
anything, allowed them to make bargains for their liberty with the
soldiers who had taken them.

Perkin Warbeck, doomed to wander up and down, and never to find rest
anywhere—a sad fate: almost a sufficient punishment for an imposture,
which he seems in time to have half believed himself—lost his Scottish
refuge through a truce being made between the two Kings; and found
himself, once more, without a country before him in which he could lay
his head. But James (always honourable and true to him, alike when he
melted down his plate, and even the great gold chain he had been used
to wear, to pay soldiers in his cause; and now, when that cause was
lost and hopeless) did not conclude the treaty, until he had safely
departed out of the Scottish dominions. He, and his beautiful wife, who
was faithful to him under all reverses, and left her state and home to
follow his poor fortunes, were put aboard ship with everything
necessary for their comfort and protection, and sailed for Ireland.

But, the Irish people had had enough of counterfeit Earls of Warwick
and Dukes of York, for one while; and would give the White Rose no aid.
So, the White Rose—encircled by thorns indeed—resolved to go with his
beautiful wife to Cornwall as a forlorn resource, and see what might be
made of the Cornish men, who had risen so valiantly a little while
before, and who had fought so bravely at Deptford Bridge.

To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, came Perkin Warbeck and his
wife; and the lovely lady he shut up for safety in the Castle of St.
Michael’s Mount, and then marched into Devonshire at the head of three
thousand Cornishmen. These were increased to six thousand by the time
of his arrival in Exeter; but, there the people made a stout
resistance, and he went on to Taunton, where he came in sight of the
King’s army. The stout Cornish men, although they were few in number,
and badly armed, were so bold, that they never thought of retreating;
but bravely looked forward to a battle on the morrow. Unhappily for
them, the man who was possessed of so many engaging qualities, and who
attracted so many people to his side when he had nothing else with
which to tempt them, was not as brave as they. In the night, when the
two armies lay opposite to each other, he mounted a swift horse and
fled. When morning dawned, the poor confiding Cornish men, discovering
that they had no leader, surrendered to the King’s power. Some of them
were hanged, and the rest were pardoned and went miserably home.

Before the King pursued Perkin Warbeck to the sanctuary of Beaulieu in
the New Forest, where it was soon known that he had taken refuge, he
sent a body of horsemen to St. Michael’s Mount, to seize his wife. She
was soon taken and brought as a captive before the King. But she was so
beautiful, and so good, and so devoted to the man in whom she believed,
that the King regarded her with compassion, treated her with great
respect, and placed her at Court, near the Queen’s person. And many
years after Perkin Warbeck was no more, and when his strange story had
become like a nursery tale, _she_ was called the White Rose, by the
people, in remembrance of her beauty.

The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon surrounded by the King’s men; and
the King, pursuing his usual dark, artful ways, sent pretended friends
to Perkin Warbeck to persuade him to come out and surrender himself.
This he soon did; the King having taken a good look at the man of whom
he had heard so much—from behind a screen—directed him to be well
mounted, and to ride behind him at a little distance, guarded, but not
bound in any way. So they entered London with the King’s favourite
show—a procession; and some of the people hooted as the Pretender rode
slowly through the streets to the Tower; but the greater part were
quiet, and very curious to see him. From the Tower, he was taken to the
Palace at Westminster, and there lodged like a gentleman, though
closely watched. He was examined every now and then as to his
imposture; but the King was so secret in all he did, that even then he
gave it a consequence, which it cannot be supposed to have in itself
deserved.

At last Perkin Warbeck ran away, and took refuge in another sanctuary
near Richmond in Surrey. From this he was again persuaded to deliver
himself up; and, being conveyed to London, he stood in the stocks for a
whole day, outside Westminster Hall, and there read a paper purporting
to be his full confession, and relating his history as the King’s
agents had originally described it. He was then shut up in the Tower
again, in the company of the Earl of Warwick, who had now been there
for fourteen years: ever since his removal out of Yorkshire, except
when the King had had him at Court, and had shown him to the people, to
prove the imposture of the Baker’s boy. It is but too probable, when we
consider the crafty character of Henry the Seventh, that these two were
brought together for a cruel purpose. A plot was soon discovered
between them and the keepers, to murder the Governor, get possession of
the keys, and proclaim Perkin Warbeck as King Richard the Fourth. That
there was some such plot, is likely; that they were tempted into it, is
at least as likely; that the unfortunate Earl of Warwick—last male of
the Plantagenet line—was too unused to the world, and too ignorant and
simple to know much about it, whatever it was, is perfectly certain;
and that it was the King’s interest to get rid of him, is no less so.
He was beheaded on Tower Hill, and Perkin Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn.

Such was the end of the pretended Duke of York, whose shadowy history
was made more shadowy—and ever will be—by the mystery and craft of the
King. If he had turned his great natural advantages to a more honest
account, he might have lived a happy and respected life, even in those
days. But he died upon a gallows at Tyburn, leaving the Scottish lady,
who had loved him so well, kindly protected at the Queen’s Court. After
some time she forgot her old loves and troubles, as many people do with
Time’s merciful assistance, and married a Welsh gentleman. Her second
husband, Sir Matthew Cradoc, more honest and more happy than her first,
lies beside her in a tomb in the old church of Swansea.

The ill-blood between France and England in this reign, arose out of
the continued plotting of the Duchess of Burgundy, and disputes
respecting the affairs of Brittany. The King feigned to be very
patriotic, indignant, and warlike; but he always contrived so as never
to make war in reality, and always to make money. His taxation of the
people, on pretence of war with France, involved, at one time, a very
dangerous insurrection, headed by Sir John Egremont, and a common man
called John à Chambre. But it was subdued by the royal forces, under
the command of the Earl of Surrey. The knighted John escaped to the
Duchess of Burgundy, who was ever ready to receive any one who gave the
King trouble; and the plain John was hanged at York, in the midst of a
number of his men, but on a much higher gibbet, as being a greater
traitor. Hung high or hung low, however, hanging is much the same to
the person hung.

Within a year after her marriage, the Queen had given birth to a son,
who was called Prince Arthur, in remembrance of the old British prince
of romance and story; and who, when all these events had happened,
being then in his fifteenth year, was married to Catherine, the
daughter of the Spanish monarch, with great rejoicings and bright
prospects; but in a very few months he sickened and died. As soon as
the King had recovered from his grief, he thought it a pity that the
fortune of the Spanish Princess, amounting to two hundred thousand
crowns, should go out of the family; and therefore arranged that the
young widow should marry his second son Henry, then twelve years of
age, when he too should be fifteen. There were objections to this
marriage on the part of the clergy; but, as the infallible Pope was
gained over, and, as he _must_ be right, that settled the business for
the time. The King’s eldest daughter was provided for, and a long
course of disturbance was considered to be set at rest, by her being
married to the Scottish King.

And now the Queen died. When the King had got over that grief too, his
mind once more reverted to his darling money for consolation, and he
thought of marrying the Dowager Queen of Naples, who was immensely
rich: but, as it turned out not to be practicable to gain the money
however practicable it might have been to gain the lady, he gave up the
idea. He was not so fond of her but that he soon proposed to marry the
Dowager Duchess of Savoy; and, soon afterwards, the widow of the King
of Castile, who was raving mad. But he made a money-bargain instead,
and married neither.

The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other discontented people to whom
she had given refuge, had sheltered Edmund de la Pole (younger brother
of that Earl of Lincoln who was killed at Stoke), now Earl of Suffolk.
The King had prevailed upon him to return to the marriage of Prince
Arthur; but, he soon afterwards went away again; and then the King,
suspecting a conspiracy, resorted to his favourite plan of sending him
some treacherous friends, and buying of those scoundrels the secrets
they disclosed or invented. Some arrests and executions took place in
consequence. In the end, the King, on a promise of not taking his life,
obtained possession of the person of Edmund de la Pole, and shut him up
in the Tower.

This was his last enemy. If he had lived much longer he would have made
many more among the people, by the grinding exaction to which he
constantly exposed them, and by the tyrannical acts of his two prime
favourites in all money-raising matters, Edmund Dudley and Richard
Empson. But Death—the enemy who is not to be bought off or deceived,
and on whom no money, and no treachery has any effect—presented himself
at this juncture, and ended the King’s reign. He died of the gout, on
the twenty-second of April, one thousand five hundred and nine, and in
the fifty-third year of his age, after reigning twenty-four years; he
was buried in the beautiful Chapel of Westminster Abbey, which he had
himself founded, and which still bears his name.

It was in this reign that the great Christopher Columbus, on behalf of
Spain, discovered what was then called The New World. Great wonder,
interest, and hope of wealth being awakened in England thereby, the
King and the merchants of London and Bristol fitted out an English
expedition for further discoveries in the New World, and entrusted it
to Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, the son of a Venetian pilot there. He
was very successful in his voyage, and gained high reputation, both for
himself and England.




CHAPTER XXVII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED BLUFF KING HAL AND BURLY KING
HARRY

PART THE FIRST

We now come to King Henry the Eighth, whom it has been too much the
fashion to call ‘Bluff King Hal,’ and ‘Burly King Harry,’ and other
fine names; but whom I shall take the liberty to call, plainly, one of
the most detestable villains that ever drew breath. You will be able to
judge, long before we come to the end of his life, whether he deserves
the character.

He was just eighteen years of age when he came to the throne. People
said he was handsome then; but I don’t believe it. He was a big, burly,
noisy, small-eyed, large-faced, double-chinned, swinish-looking fellow
in later life (as we know from the likenesses of him, painted by the
famous Hans Holbein), and it is not easy to believe that so bad a
character can ever have been veiled under a prepossessing appearance.

He was anxious to make himself popular; and the people, who had long
disliked the late King, were very willing to believe that he deserved
to be so. He was extremely fond of show and display, and so were they.
Therefore there was great rejoicing when he married the Princess
Catherine, and when they were both crowned. And the King fought at
tournaments and always came off victorious—for the courtiers took care
of that—and there was a general outcry that he was a wonderful man.
Empson, Dudley, and their supporters were accused of a variety of
crimes they had never committed, instead of the offences of which they
really had been guilty; and they were pilloried, and set upon horses
with their faces to the tails, and knocked about and beheaded, to the
satisfaction of the people, and the enrichment of the King.

The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world into trouble, had mixed
himself up in a war on the continent of Europe, occasioned by the
reigning Princes of little quarrelling states in Italy having at
various times married into other Royal families, and so led to _their_
claiming a share in those petty Governments. The King, who discovered
that he was very fond of the Pope, sent a herald to the King of France,
to say that he must not make war upon that holy personage, because he
was the father of all Christians. As the French King did not mind this
relationship in the least, and also refused to admit a claim King Henry
made to certain lands in France, war was declared between the two
countries. Not to perplex this story with an account of the tricks and
designs of all the sovereigns who were engaged in it, it is enough to
say that England made a blundering alliance with Spain, and got
stupidly taken in by that country; which made its own terms with France
when it could and left England in the lurch. Sir Edward Howard, a bold
admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey, distinguished himself by his
bravery against the French in this business; but, unfortunately, he was
more brave than wise, for, skimming into the French harbour of Brest
with only a few row-boats, he attempted (in revenge for the defeat and
death of Sir Thomas Knyvett, another bold English admiral) to take some
strong French ships, well defended with batteries of cannon. The upshot
was, that he was left on board of one of them (in consequence of its
shooting away from his own boat), with not more than about a dozen men,
and was thrown into the sea and drowned: though not until he had taken
from his breast his gold chain and gold whistle, which were the signs
of his office, and had cast them into the sea to prevent their being
made a boast of by the enemy. After this defeat—which was a great one,
for Sir Edward Howard was a man of valour and fame—the King took it
into his head to invade France in person; first executing that
dangerous Earl of Suffolk whom his father had left in the Tower, and
appointing Queen Catherine to the charge of his kingdom in his absence.
He sailed to Calais, where he was joined by Maximilian, Emperor of
Germany, who pretended to be his soldier, and who took pay in his
service: with a good deal of nonsense of that sort, flattering enough
to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The King might be successful enough
in sham fights; but his idea of real battles chiefly consisted in
pitching silken tents of bright colours that were ignominiously blown
down by the wind, and in making a vast display of gaudy flags and
golden curtains. Fortune, however, favoured him better than he
deserved; for, after much waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying,
gold curtaining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French battle
at a place called Guinegate: where they took such an unaccountable
panic, and fled with such swiftness, that it was ever afterwards called
by the English the Battle of Spurs. Instead of following up his
advantage, the King, finding that he had had enough of real fighting,
came home again.

The Scottish King, though nearly related to Henry by marriage, had
taken part against him in this war. The Earl of Surrey, as the English
general, advanced to meet him when he came out of his own dominions and
crossed the river Tweed. The two armies came up with one another when
the Scottish King had also crossed the river Till, and was encamped
upon the last of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill of Flodden. Along
the plain below it, the English, when the hour of battle came,
advanced. The Scottish army, which had been drawn up in five great
bodies, then came steadily down in perfect silence. So they, in their
turn, advanced to meet the English army, which came on in one long
line; and they attacked it with a body of spearmen, under Lord Home. At
first they had the best of it; but the English recovered themselves so
bravely, and fought with such valour, that, when the Scottish King had
almost made his way up to the Royal Standard, he was slain, and the
whole Scottish power routed. Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that
day on Flodden Field; and among them, numbers of the nobility and
gentry. For a long time afterwards, the Scottish peasantry used to
believe that their King had not been really killed in this battle,
because no Englishman had found an iron belt he wore about his body as
a penance for having been an unnatural and undutiful son. But, whatever
became of his belt, the English had his sword and dagger, and the ring
from his finger, and his body too, covered with wounds. There is no
doubt of it; for it was seen and recognised by English gentlemen who
had known the Scottish King well.

When King Henry was making ready to renew the war in France, the French
King was contemplating peace. His queen, dying at this time, he
proposed, though he was upwards of fifty years old, to marry King
Henry’s sister, the Princess Mary, who, besides being only sixteen, was
betrothed to the Duke of Suffolk. As the inclinations of young
Princesses were not much considered in such matters, the marriage was
concluded, and the poor girl was escorted to France, where she was
immediately left as the French King’s bride, with only one of all her
English attendants. That one was a pretty young girl named Anne Boleyn,
niece of the Earl of Surrey, who had been made Duke of Norfolk, after
the victory of Flodden Field. Anne Boleyn’s is a name to be remembered,
as you will presently find.

And now the French King, who was very proud of his young wife, was
preparing for many years of happiness, and she was looking forward, I
dare say, to many years of misery, when he died within three months,
and left her a young widow. The new French monarch, Francis the First,
seeing how important it was to his interests that she should take for
her second husband no one but an Englishman, advised her first lover,
the Duke of Suffolk, when King Henry sent him over to France to fetch
her home, to marry her. The Princess being herself so fond of that
Duke, as to tell him that he must either do so then, or for ever lose
her, they were wedded; and Henry afterwards forgave them. In making
interest with the King, the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his most
powerful favourite and adviser, Thomas Wolsey—a name very famous in
history for its rise and downfall.

Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ipswich, in Suffolk and
received so excellent an education that he became a tutor to the family
of the Marquis of Dorset, who afterwards got him appointed one of the
late King’s chaplains. On the accession of Henry the Eighth, he was
promoted and taken into great favour. He was now Archbishop of York;
the Pope had made him a Cardinal besides; and whoever wanted influence
in England or favour with the King—whether he were a foreign monarch or
an English nobleman—was obliged to make a friend of the great Cardinal
Wolsey.

He was a gay man, who could dance and jest, and sing and drink; and
those were the roads to so much, or rather so little, of a heart as
King Henry had. He was wonderfully fond of pomp and glitter, and so was
the King. He knew a good deal of the Church learning of that time; much
of which consisted in finding artful excuses and pretences for almost
any wrong thing, and in arguing that black was white, or any other
colour. This kind of learning pleased the King too. For many such
reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation with the King; and, being
a man of far greater ability, knew as well how to manage him, as a
clever keeper may know how to manage a wolf or a tiger, or any other
cruel and uncertain beast, that may turn upon him and tear him any day.
Never had there been seen in England such state as my Lord Cardinal
kept. His wealth was enormous; equal, it was reckoned, to the riches of
the Crown. His palaces were as splendid as the King’s, and his retinue
was eight hundred strong. He held his Court, dressed out from top to
toe in flaming scarlet; and his very shoes were golden, set with
precious stones. His followers rode on blood horses; while he, with a
wonderful affectation of humility in the midst of his great splendour,
ambled on a mule with a red velvet saddle and bridle and golden
stirrups.

Through the influence of this stately priest, a grand meeting was
arranged to take place between the French and English Kings in France;
but on ground belonging to England. A prodigious show of friendship and
rejoicing was to be made on the occasion; and heralds were sent to
proclaim with brazen trumpets through all the principal cities of
Europe, that, on a certain day, the Kings of France and England, as
companions and brothers in arms, each attended by eighteen followers,
would hold a tournament against all knights who might choose to come.

Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old one being dead), wanted to
prevent too cordial an alliance between these sovereigns, and came over
to England before the King could repair to the place of meeting; and,
besides making an agreeable impression upon him, secured Wolsey’s
interest by promising that his influence should make him Pope when the
next vacancy occurred. On the day when the Emperor left England, the
King and all the Court went over to Calais, and thence to the place of
meeting, between Ardres and Guisnes, commonly called the Field of the
Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of expense and prodigality was lavished
on the decorations of the show; many of the knights and gentlemen being
so superbly dressed that it was said they carried their whole estates
upon their shoulders.

There were sham castles, temporary chapels, fountains running wine,
great cellars full of wine free as water to all comers, silk tents,
gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and such things without end; and, in
the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-shone and out-glittered all the
noblemen and gentlemen assembled. After a treaty made between the two
Kings with as much solemnity as if they had intended to keep it, the
lists—nine hundred feet long, and three hundred and twenty broad—were
opened for the tournament; the Queens of France and England looking on
with great array of lords and ladies. Then, for ten days, the two
sovereigns fought five combats every day, and always beat their polite
adversaries; though they _do_ write that the King of England, being
thrown in a wrestle one day by the King of France, lost his kingly
temper with his brother-in-arms, and wanted to make a quarrel of it.
Then, there is a great story belonging to this Field of the Cloth of
Gold, showing how the English were distrustful of the French, and the
French of the English, until Francis rode alone one morning to Henry’s
tent; and, going in before he was out of bed, told him in joke that he
was his prisoner; and how Henry jumped out of bed and embraced Francis;
and how Francis helped Henry to dress, and warmed his linen for him;
and how Henry gave Francis a splendid jewelled collar, and how Francis
gave Henry, in return, a costly bracelet. All this and a great deal
more was so written about, and sung about, and talked about at that
time (and, indeed, since that time too), that the world has had good
cause to be sick of it, for ever.

Of course, nothing came of all these fine doings but a speedy renewal
of the war between England and France, in which the two Royal
companions and brothers in arms longed very earnestly to damage one
another. But, before it broke out again, the Duke of Buckingham was
shamefully executed on Tower Hill, on the evidence of a discharged
servant—really for nothing, except the folly of having believed in a
friar of the name of Hopkins, who had pretended to be a prophet, and
who had mumbled and jumbled out some nonsense about the Duke’s son
being destined to be very great in the land. It was believed that the
unfortunate Duke had given offence to the great Cardinal by expressing
his mind freely about the expense and absurdity of the whole business
of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At any rate, he was beheaded, as I
have said, for nothing. And the people who saw it done were very angry,
and cried out that it was the work of ‘the butcher’s son!’

The new war was a short one, though the Earl of Surrey invaded France
again, and did some injury to that country. It ended in another treaty
of peace between the two kingdoms, and in the discovery that the
Emperor of Germany was not such a good friend to England in reality, as
he pretended to be. Neither did he keep his promise to Wolsey to make
him Pope, though the King urged him. Two Popes died in pretty quick
succession; but the foreign priests were too much for the Cardinal, and
kept him out of the post. So the Cardinal and King together found out
that the Emperor of Germany was not a man to keep faith with; broke off
a projected marriage between the King’s daughter Mary, Princess of
Wales, and that sovereign; and began to consider whether it might not
be well to marry the young lady, either to Francis himself, or to his
eldest son.

There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, the great leader of the
mighty change in England which is called The Reformation, and which set
the people free from their slavery to the priests. This was a learned
Doctor, named Martin Luther, who knew all about them, for he had been a
priest, and even a monk, himself. The preaching and writing of
Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking on this subject; and Luther,
finding one day to his great surprise, that there really was a book
called the New Testament which the priests did not allow to be read,
and which contained truths that they suppressed, began to be very
vigorous against the whole body, from the Pope downward. It happened,
while he was yet only beginning his vast work of awakening the nation,
that an impudent fellow named Tetzel, a friar of very bad character,
came into his neighbourhood selling what were called Indulgences, by
wholesale, to raise money for beautifying the great Cathedral of St.
Peter’s, at Rome. Whoever bought an Indulgence of the Pope was supposed
to buy himself off from the punishment of Heaven for his offences.
Luther told the people that these Indulgences were worthless bits of
paper, before God, and that Tetzel and his masters were a crew of
impostors in selling them.

The King and the Cardinal were mightily indignant at this presumption;
and the King (with the help of Sir Thomas More, a wise man, whom he
afterwards repaid by striking off his head) even wrote a book about it,
with which the Pope was so well pleased that he gave the King the title
of Defender of the Faith. The King and the Cardinal also issued flaming
warnings to the people not to read Luther’s books, on pain of
excommunication. But they did read them for all that; and the rumour of
what was in them spread far and wide.

When this great change was thus going on, the King began to show
himself in his truest and worst colours. Anne Boleyn, the pretty little
girl who had gone abroad to France with his sister, was by this time
grown up to be very beautiful, and was one of the ladies in attendance
on Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was no longer young or
handsome, and it is likely that she was not particularly good-tempered;
having been always rather melancholy, and having been made more so by
the deaths of four of her children when they were very young. So, the
King fell in love with the fair Anne Boleyn, and said to himself, ‘How
can I be best rid of my own troublesome wife whom I am tired of, and
marry Anne?’

[Illustration: Catherine was old, so he fell in love with Anne Boleyn]

You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife of Henry’s
brother. What does the King do, after thinking it over, but calls his
favourite priests about him, and says, O! his mind is in such a
dreadful state, and he is so frightfully uneasy, because he is afraid
it was not lawful for him to marry the Queen! Not one of those priests
had the courage to hint that it was rather curious he had never thought
of that before, and that his mind seemed to have been in a tolerably
jolly condition during a great many years, in which he certainly had
not fretted himself thin; but, they all said, Ah! that was very true,
and it was a serious business; and perhaps the best way to make it
right, would be for his Majesty to be divorced! The King replied, Yes,
he thought that would be the best way, certainly; so they all went to
work.

If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that took place in
the endeavour to get this divorce, you would think the History of
England the most tiresome book in the world. So I shall say no more,
than that after a vast deal of negotiation and evasion, the Pope issued
a commission to Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio (whom he sent
over from Italy for the purpose), to try the whole case in England. It
is supposed—and I think with reason—that Wolsey was the Queen’s enemy,
because she had reproved him for his proud and gorgeous manner of life.
But, he did not at first know that the King wanted to marry Anne
Boleyn; and when he did know it, he even went down on his knees, in the
endeavour to dissuade him.

The Cardinals opened their court in the Convent of the Black Friars,
near to where the bridge of that name in London now stands; and the
King and Queen, that they might be near it, took up their lodgings at
the adjoining palace of Bridewell, of which nothing now remains but a
bad prison. On the opening of the court, when the King and Queen were
called on to appear, that poor ill-used lady, with a dignity and
firmness and yet with a womanly affection worthy to be always admired,
went and kneeled at the King’s feet, and said that she had come, a
stranger, to his dominions; that she had been a good and true wife to
him for twenty years; and that she could acknowledge no power in those
Cardinals to try whether she should be considered his wife after all
that time, or should be put away. With that, she got up and left the
court, and would never afterwards come back to it.

The King pretended to be very much overcome, and said, O! my lords and
gentlemen, what a good woman she was to be sure, and how delighted he
would be to live with her unto death, but for that terrible uneasiness
in his mind which was quite wearing him away! So, the case went on, and
there was nothing but talk for two months. Then Cardinal Campeggio,
who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted nothing so much as delay, adjourned
it for two more months; and before that time was elapsed, the Pope
himself adjourned it indefinitely, by requiring the King and Queen to
come to Rome and have it tried there. But by good luck for the King,
word was brought to him by some of his people, that they had happened
to meet at supper, Thomas Cranmer, a learned Doctor of Cambridge, who
had proposed to urge the Pope on, by referring the case to all the
learned doctors and bishops, here and there and everywhere, and getting
their opinions that the King’s marriage was unlawful. The King, who was
now in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn, thought this such a good idea,
that he sent for Cranmer, post haste, and said to Lord Rochfort, Anne
Boleyn’s father, ‘Take this learned Doctor down to your country-house,
and there let him have a good room for a study, and no end of books out
of which to prove that I may marry your daughter.’ Lord Rochfort, not
at all reluctant, made the learned Doctor as comfortable as he could;
and the learned Doctor went to work to prove his case. All this time,
the King and Anne Boleyn were writing letters to one another almost
daily, full of impatience to have the case settled; and Anne Boleyn was
showing herself (as I think) very worthy of the fate which afterwards
befel her.

It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had left Cranmer to render this
help. It was worse for him that he had tried to dissuade the King from
marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a servant as he, to such a master as Henry,
would probably have fallen in any case; but, between the hatred of the
party of the Queen that was, and the hatred of the party of the Queen
that was to be, he fell suddenly and heavily. Going down one day to the
Court of Chancery, where he now presided, he was waited upon by the
Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who told him that they brought an order
to him to resign that office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he had
at Esher, in Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off to the King;
and next day came back with a letter from him, on reading which, the
Cardinal submitted. An inventory was made out of all the riches in his
palace at York Place (now Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully up the
river, in his barge, to Putney. An abject man he was, in spite of his
pride; for being overtaken, riding out of that place towards Esher, by
one of the King’s chamberlains who brought him a kind message and a
ring, he alighted from his mule, took off his cap, and kneeled down in
the dirt. His poor Fool, whom in his prosperous days he had always kept
in his palace to entertain him, cut a far better figure than he; for,
when the Cardinal said to the chamberlain that he had nothing to send
to his lord the King as a present, but that jester who was a most
excellent one, it took six strong yeomen to remove the faithful fool
from his master.

The once proud Cardinal was soon further disgraced, and wrote the most
abject letters to his vile sovereign; who humbled him one day and
encouraged him the next, according to his humour, until he was at last
ordered to go and reside in his diocese of York. He said he was too
poor; but I don’t know how he made that out, for he took a hundred and
sixty servants with him, and seventy-two cart-loads of furniture, food,
and wine. He remained in that part of the country for the best part of
a year, and showed himself so improved by his misfortunes, and was so
mild and so conciliating, that he won all hearts. And indeed, even in
his proud days, he had done some magnificent things for learning and
education. At last, he was arrested for high treason; and, coming
slowly on his journey towards London, got as far as Leicester. Arriving
at Leicester Abbey after dark, and very ill, he said—when the monks
came out at the gate with lighted torches to receive him—that he had
come to lay his bones among them. He had indeed; for he was taken to a
bed, from which he never rose again. His last words were, ‘Had I but
served God as diligently as I have served the King, He would not have
given me over, in my grey hairs. Howbeit, this is my just reward for my
pains and diligence, not regarding my service to God, but only my duty
to my prince.’ The news of his death was quickly carried to the King,
who was amusing himself with archery in the garden of the magnificent
Palace at Hampton Court, which that very Wolsey had presented to him.
The greatest emotion his royal mind displayed at the loss of a servant
so faithful and so ruined, was a particular desire to lay hold of
fifteen hundred pounds which the Cardinal was reported to have hidden
somewhere.

The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned doctors and bishops
and others, being at last collected, and being generally in the King’s
favour, were forwarded to the Pope, with an entreaty that he would now
grant it. The unfortunate Pope, who was a timid man, was half
distracted between his fear of his authority being set aside in England
if he did not do as he was asked, and his dread of offending the
Emperor of Germany, who was Queen Catherine’s nephew. In this state of
mind he still evaded and did nothing. Then, Thomas Cromwell, who had
been one of Wolsey’s faithful attendants, and had remained so even in
his decline, advised the King to take the matter into his own hands,
and make himself the head of the whole Church. This, the King by
various artful means, began to do; but he recompensed the clergy by
allowing them to burn as many people as they pleased, for holding
Luther’s opinions. You must understand that Sir Thomas More, the wise
man who had helped the King with his book, had been made Chancellor in
Wolsey’s place. But, as he was truly attached to the Church as it was
even in its abuses, he, in this state of things, resigned.

Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine, and to marry
Anne Boleyn without more ado, the King made Cranmer Archbishop of
Canterbury, and directed Queen Catherine to leave the Court. She
obeyed; but replied that wherever she went, she was Queen of England
still, and would remain so, to the last. The King then married Anne
Boleyn privately; and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, within half a
year, declared his marriage with Queen Catherine void, and crowned Anne
Boleyn Queen.

She might have known that no good could ever come from such wrong, and
that the corpulent brute who had been so faithless and so cruel to his
first wife, could be more faithless and more cruel to his second. She
might have known that, even when he was in love with her, he had been a
mean and selfish coward, running away, like a frightened cur, from her
society and her house, when a dangerous sickness broke out in it, and
when she might easily have taken it and died, as several of the
household did. But, Anne Boleyn arrived at all this knowledge too late,
and bought it at a dear price. Her bad marriage with a worse man came
to its natural end. Its natural end was not, as we shall too soon see,
a natural death for her.




CHAPTER XXVIII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH

PART THE SECOND

The Pope was thrown into a very angry state of mind when he heard of
the King’s marriage, and fumed exceedingly. Many of the English monks
and friars, seeing that their order was in danger, did the same; some
even declaimed against the King in church before his face, and were not
to be stopped until he himself roared out ‘Silence!’ The King, not much
the worse for this, took it pretty quietly; and was very glad when his
Queen gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Elizabeth, and
declared Princess of Wales as her sister Mary had already been.

One of the most atrocious features of this reign was that Henry the
Eighth was always trimming between the reformed religion and the
unreformed one; so that the more he quarrelled with the Pope, the more
of his own subjects he roasted alive for not holding the Pope’s
opinions. Thus, an unfortunate student named John Frith, and a poor
simple tailor named Andrew Hewet who loved him very much, and said that
whatever John Frith believed _he_ believed, were burnt in Smithfield—to
show what a capital Christian the King was.

But, these were speedily followed by two much greater victims, Sir
Thomas More, and John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester. The latter, who
was a good and amiable old man, had committed no greater offence than
believing in Elizabeth Barton, called the Maid of Kent—another of those
ridiculous women who pretended to be inspired, and to make all sorts of
heavenly revelations, though they indeed uttered nothing but evil
nonsense. For this offence—as it was pretended, but really for denying
the King to be the supreme Head of the Church—he got into trouble, and
was put in prison; but, even then, he might have been suffered to die
naturally (short work having been made of executing the Kentish Maid
and her principal followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King,
resolved to make him a cardinal. Upon that the King made a ferocious
joke to the effect that the Pope might send Fisher a red hat—which is
the way they make a cardinal—but he should have no head on which to
wear it; and he was tried with all unfairness and injustice, and
sentenced to death. He died like a noble and virtuous old man, and left
a worthy name behind him. The King supposed, I dare say, that Sir
Thomas More would be frightened by this example; but, as he was not to
be easily terrified, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope, had made up
his mind that the King was not the rightful Head of the Church, he
positively refused to say that he was. For this crime he too was tried
and sentenced, after having been in prison a whole year. When he was
doomed to death, and came away from his trial with the edge of the
executioner’s axe turned towards him—as was always done in those times
when a state prisoner came to that hopeless pass—he bore it quite
serenely, and gave his blessing to his son, who pressed through the
crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled down to receive it. But, when he
got to the Tower Wharf on his way back to his prison, and his favourite
daughter, Margaret Roper, a very good woman, rushed through the guards
again and again, to kiss him and to weep upon his neck, he was overcome
at last. He soon recovered, and never more showed any feeling but
cheerfulness and courage. When he was going up the steps of the
scaffold to his death, he said jokingly to the Lieutenant of the Tower,
observing that they were weak and shook beneath his tread, ‘I pray you,
master Lieutenant, see me safe up; and, for my coming down, I can shift
for myself.’ Also he said to the executioner, after he had laid his
head upon the block, ‘Let me put my beard out of the way; for that, at
least, has never committed any treason.’ Then his head was struck off
at a blow. These two executions were worthy of King Henry the Eighth.
Sir Thomas More was one of the most virtuous men in his dominions, and
the Bishop was one of his oldest and truest friends. But to be a friend
of that fellow was almost as dangerous as to be his wife.

When the news of these two murders got to Rome, the Pope raged against
the murderer more than ever Pope raged since the world began, and
prepared a Bull, ordering his subjects to take arms against him and
dethrone him. The King took all possible precautions to keep that
document out of his dominions, and set to work in return to suppress a
great number of the English monasteries and abbeys.

This destruction was begun by a body of commissioners, of whom Cromwell
(whom the King had taken into great favour) was the head; and was
carried on through some few years to its entire completion. There is no
doubt that many of these religious establishments were religious in
nothing but in name, and were crammed with lazy, indolent, and sensual
monks. There is no doubt that they imposed upon the people in every
possible way; that they had images moved by wires, which they pretended
were miraculously moved by Heaven; that they had among them a whole tun
measure full of teeth, all purporting to have come out of the head of
one saint, who must indeed have been a very extraordinary person with
that enormous allowance of grinders; that they had bits of coal which
they said had fried Saint Lawrence, and bits of toe-nails which they
said belonged to other famous saints; penknives, and boots, and
girdles, which they said belonged to others; and that all these bits of
rubbish were called Relics, and adored by the ignorant people. But, on
the other hand, there is no doubt either, that the King’s officers and
men punished the good monks with the bad; did great injustice;
demolished many beautiful things and many valuable libraries; destroyed
numbers of paintings, stained glass windows, fine pavements, and
carvings; and that the whole court were ravenously greedy and rapacious
for the division of this great spoil among them. The King seems to have
grown almost mad in the ardour of this pursuit; for he declared Thomas
à Becket a traitor, though he had been dead so many years, and had his
body dug up out of his grave. He must have been as miraculous as the
monks pretended, if they had told the truth, for he was found with one
head on his shoulders, and they had shown another as his undoubted and
genuine head ever since his death; it had brought them vast sums of
money, too. The gold and jewels on his shrine filled two great chests,
and eight men tottered as they carried them away. How rich the
monasteries were you may infer from the fact that, when they were all
suppressed, one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year—in those days
an immense sum—came to the Crown.

These things were not done without causing great discontent among the
people. The monks had been good landlords and hospitable entertainers
of all travellers, and had been accustomed to give away a great deal of
corn, and fruit, and meat, and other things. In those days it was
difficult to change goods into money, in consequence of the roads being
very few and very bad, and the carts, and waggons of the worst
description; and they must either have given away some of the good
things they possessed in enormous quantities, or have suffered them to
spoil and moulder. So, many of the people missed what it was more
agreeable to get idly than to work for; and the monks who were driven
out of their homes and wandered about encouraged their discontent; and
there were, consequently, great risings in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
These were put down by terrific executions, from which the monks
themselves did not escape, and the King went on grunting and growling
in his own fat way, like a Royal pig.

I have told all this story of the religious houses at one time, to make
it plainer, and to get back to the King’s domestic affairs.

The unfortunate Queen Catherine was by this time dead; and the King was
by this time as tired of his second Queen as he had been of his first.
As he had fallen in love with Anne when she was in the service of
Catherine, so he now fell in love with another lady in the service of
Anne. See how wicked deeds are punished, and how bitterly and
self-reproachfully the Queen must now have thought of her own rise to
the throne! The new fancy was a Lady Jane Seymour; and the King no
sooner set his mind on her, than he resolved to have Anne Boleyn’s
head. So, he brought a number of charges against Anne, accusing her of
dreadful crimes which she had never committed, and implicating in them
her own brother and certain gentlemen in her service: among whom one
Norris, and Mark Smeaton a musician, are best remembered. As the lords
and councillors were as afraid of the King and as subservient to him as
the meanest peasant in England was, they brought in Anne Boleyn guilty,
and the other unfortunate persons accused with her, guilty too. Those
gentlemen died like men, with the exception of Smeaton, who had been
tempted by the King into telling lies, which he called confessions, and
who had expected to be pardoned; but who, I am very glad to say, was
not. There was then only the Queen to dispose of. She had been
surrounded in the Tower with women spies; had been monstrously
persecuted and foully slandered; and had received no justice. But her
spirit rose with her afflictions; and, after having in vain tried to
soften the King by writing an affecting letter to him which still
exists, ‘from her doleful prison in the Tower,’ she resigned herself to
death. She said to those about her, very cheerfully, that she had heard
say the executioner was a good one, and that she had a little neck (she
laughed and clasped it with her hands as she said that), and would soon
be out of her pain. And she _was_ soon out of her pain, poor creature,
on the Green inside the Tower, and her body was flung into an old box
and put away in the ground under the chapel.

There is a story that the King sat in his palace listening very
anxiously for the sound of the cannon which was to announce this new
murder; and that, when he heard it come booming on the air, he rose up
in great spirits and ordered out his dogs to go a-hunting. He was bad
enough to do it; but whether he did it or not, it is certain that he
married Jane Seymour the very next day.

I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived just long enough
to give birth to a son who was christened Edward, and then to die of a
fever: for, I cannot but think that any woman who married such a
ruffian, and knew what innocent blood was on his hands, deserved the
axe that would assuredly have fallen on the neck of Jane Seymour, if
she had lived much longer.

Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the Church property for
purposes of religion and education; but, the great families had been so
hungry to get hold of it, that very little could be rescued for such
objects. Even Miles Coverdale, who did the people the inestimable
service of translating the Bible into English (which the unreformed
religion never permitted to be done), was left in poverty while the
great families clutched the Church lands and money. The people had been
told that when the Crown came into possession of these funds, it would
not be necessary to tax them; but they were taxed afresh directly
afterwards. It was fortunate for them, indeed, that so many nobles were
so greedy for this wealth; since, if it had remained with the Crown,
there might have been no end to tyranny for hundreds of years. One of
the most active writers on the Church’s side against the King was a
member of his own family—a sort of distant cousin, Reginald Pole by
name—who attacked him in the most violent manner (though he received a
pension from him all the time), and fought for the Church with his pen,
day and night. As he was beyond the King’s reach—being in Italy—the
King politely invited him over to discuss the subject; but he, knowing
better than to come, and wisely staying where he was, the King’s rage
fell upon his brother Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, and some
other gentlemen: who were tried for high treason in corresponding with
him and aiding him—which they probably did—and were all executed. The
Pope made Reginald Pole a cardinal; but, so much against his will, that
it is thought he even aspired in his own mind to the vacant throne of
England, and had hopes of marrying the Princess Mary. His being made a
high priest, however, put an end to all that. His mother, the venerable
Countess of Salisbury—who was, unfortunately for herself, within the
tyrant’s reach—was the last of his relatives on whom his wrath fell.
When she was told to lay her grey head upon the block, she answered the
executioner, ‘No! My head never committed treason, and if you want it,
you shall seize it.’ So, she ran round and round the scaffold with the
executioner striking at her, and her grey hair bedabbled with blood;
and even when they held her down upon the block she moved her head
about to the last, resolved to be no party to her own barbarous murder.
All this the people bore, as they had borne everything else.

Indeed they bore much more; for the slow fires of Smithfield were
continually burning, and people were constantly being roasted to
death—still to show what a good Christian the King was. He defied the
Pope and his Bull, which was now issued, and had come into England; but
he burned innumerable people whose only offence was that they differed
from the Pope’s religious opinions. There was a wretched man named
Lambert, among others, who was tried for this before the King, and with
whom six bishops argued one after another. When he was quite exhausted
(as well he might be, after six bishops), he threw himself on the
King’s mercy; but the King blustered out that he had no mercy for
heretics. So, _he_ too fed the fire.

All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. The national
spirit seems to have been banished from the kingdom at this time. The
very people who were executed for treason, the very wives and friends
of the ‘bluff’ King, spoke of him on the scaffold as a good prince, and
a gentle prince—just as serfs in similar circumstances have been known
to do, under the Sultan and Bashaws of the East, or under the fierce
old tyrants of Russia, who poured boiling and freezing water on them
alternately, until they died. The Parliament were as bad as the rest,
and gave the King whatever he wanted; among other vile accommodations,
they gave him new powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure, any
one whom he might choose to call a traitor. But the worst measure they
passed was an Act of Six Articles, commonly called at the time ‘the
whip with six strings;’ which punished offences against the Pope’s
opinions, without mercy, and enforced the very worst parts of the
monkish religion. Cranmer would have modified it, if he could; but,
being overborne by the Romish party, had not the power. As one of the
articles declared that priests should not marry, and as he was married
himself, he sent his wife and children into Germany, and began to
tremble at his danger; none the less because he was, and had long been,
the King’s friend. This whip of six strings was made under the King’s
own eye. It should never be forgotten of him how cruelly he supported
the worst of the Popish doctrines when there was nothing to be got by
opposing them.

This amiable monarch now thought of taking another wife. He proposed to
the French King to have some of the ladies of the French Court
exhibited before him, that he might make his Royal choice; but the
French King answered that he would rather not have his ladies trotted
out to be shown like horses at a fair. He proposed to the Dowager
Duchess of Milan, who replied that she might have thought of such a
match if she had had two heads; but, that only owning one, she must beg
to keep it safe. At last Cromwell represented that there was a
Protestant Princess in Germany—those who held the reformed religion
were called Protestants, because their leaders had Protested against
the abuses and impositions of the unreformed Church—named Anne of
Cleves, who was beautiful, and would answer the purpose admirably. The
King said was she a large woman, because he must have a fat wife? ‘O
yes,’ said Cromwell; ‘she was very large, just the thing.’ On hearing
this the King sent over his famous painter, Hans Holbein, to take her
portrait. Hans made her out to be so good-looking that the King was
satisfied, and the marriage was arranged. But, whether anybody had paid
Hans to touch up the picture; or whether Hans, like one or two other
painters, flattered a princess in the ordinary way of business, I
cannot say: all I know is, that when Anne came over and the King went
to Rochester to meet her, and first saw her without her seeing him, he
swore she was ‘a great Flanders mare,’ and said he would never marry
her. Being obliged to do it now matters had gone so far, he would not
give her the presents he had prepared, and would never notice her. He
never forgave Cromwell his part in the affair. His downfall dates from
that time.

It was quickened by his enemies, in the interests of the unreformed
religion, putting in the King’s way, at a state dinner, a niece of the
Duke of Norfolk, Catherine Howard, a young lady of fascinating manners,
though small in stature and not particularly beautiful. Falling in love
with her on the spot, the King soon divorced Anne of Cleves after
making her the subject of much brutal talk, on pretence that she had
been previously betrothed to some one else—which would never do for one
of his dignity—and married Catherine. It is probable that on his
wedding day, of all days in the year, he sent his faithful Cromwell to
the scaffold, and had his head struck off. He further celebrated the
occasion by burning at one time, and causing to be drawn to the fire on
the same hurdles, some Protestant prisoners for denying the Pope’s
doctrines, and some Roman Catholic prisoners for denying his own
supremacy. Still the people bore it, and not a gentleman in England
raised his hand.

But, by a just retribution, it soon came out that Catherine Howard,
before her marriage, had been really guilty of such crimes as the King
had falsely attributed to his second wife Anne Boleyn; so, again the
dreadful axe made the King a widower, and this Queen passed away as so
many in that reign had passed away before her. As an appropriate
pursuit under the circumstances, Henry then applied himself to
superintending the composition of a religious book called ‘A necessary
doctrine for any Christian Man.’ He must have been a little confused in
his mind, I think, at about this period; for he was so false to himself
as to be true to some one: that some one being Cranmer, whom the Duke
of Norfolk and others of his enemies tried to ruin; but to whom the
King was steadfast, and to whom he one night gave his ring, charging
him when he should find himself, next day, accused of treason, to show
it to the council board. This Cranmer did to the confusion of his
enemies. I suppose the King thought he might want him a little longer.

He married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he found in England
another woman who would become his wife, and she was Catherine Parr,
widow of Lord Latimer. She leaned towards the reformed religion; and it
is some comfort to know, that she tormented the King considerably by
arguing a variety of doctrinal points with him on all possible
occasions. She had very nearly done this to her own destruction. After
one of these conversations the King in a very black mood actually
instructed Gardiner, one of his Bishops who favoured the Popish
opinions, to draw a bill of accusation against her, which would have
inevitably brought her to the scaffold where her predecessors had died,
but that one of her friends picked up the paper of instructions which
had been dropped in the palace, and gave her timely notice. She fell
ill with terror; but managed the King so well when he came to entrap
her into further statements—by saying that she had only spoken on such
points to divert his mind and to get some information from his
extraordinary wisdom—that he gave her a kiss and called her his
sweetheart. And, when the Chancellor came next day actually to take her
to the Tower, the King sent him about his business, and honoured him
with the epithets of a beast, a knave, and a fool. So near was
Catherine Parr to the block, and so narrow was her escape!

There was war with Scotland in this reign, and a short clumsy war with
France for favouring Scotland; but, the events at home were so
dreadful, and leave such an enduring stain on the country, that I need
say no more of what happened abroad.

A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There was a lady, Anne
Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the Protestant opinions, and
whose husband being a fierce Catholic, turned her out of his house. She
came to London, and was considered as offending against the six
articles, and was taken to the Tower, and put upon the rack—probably
because it was hoped that she might, in her agony, criminate some
obnoxious persons; if falsely, so much the better. She was tortured
without uttering a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would suffer
his men to torture her no more; and then two priests who were present
actually pulled off their robes, and turned the wheels of the rack with
their own hands, so rending and twisting and breaking her that she was
afterwards carried to the fire in a chair. She was burned with three
others, a gentleman, a clergyman, and a tailor; and so the world went
on.

Either the King became afraid of the power of the Duke of Norfolk, and
his son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave him some offence, but he
resolved to pull _them_ down, to follow all the rest who were gone. The
son was tried first—of course for nothing—and defended himself bravely;
but of course he was found guilty, and of course he was executed. Then
his father was laid hold of, and left for death too.

But the King himself was left for death by a Greater King, and the
earth was to be rid of him at last. He was now a swollen, hideous
spectacle, with a great hole in his leg, and so odious to every sense
that it was dreadful to approach him. When he was found to be dying,
Cranmer was sent for from his palace at Croydon, and came with all
speed, but found him speechless. Happily, in that hour he perished. He
was in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his
reign.

Henry the Eighth has been favoured by some Protestant writers, because
the Reformation was achieved in his time. But the mighty merit of it
lies with other men and not with him; and it can be rendered none the
worse by this monster’s crimes, and none the better by any defence of
them. The plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a
disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the
History of England.




CHAPTER XXIX
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH


Henry the Eighth had made a will, appointing a council of sixteen to
govern the kingdom for his son while he was under age (he was now only
ten years old), and another council of twelve to help them. The most
powerful of the first council was the Earl of Hertford, the young
King’s uncle, who lost no time in bringing his nephew with great state
up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower. It was considered at the time a
striking proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry for his
father’s death; but, as common subjects have that virtue too,
sometimes, we will say no more about it.

There was a curious part of the late King’s will, requiring his
executors to fulfil whatever promises he had made. Some of the court
wondering what these might be, the Earl of Hertford and the other
noblemen interested, said that they were promises to advance and enrich
_them_. So, the Earl of Hertford made himself Duke of Somerset, and
made his brother Edward Seymour a baron; and there were various similar
promotions, all very agreeable to the parties concerned, and very
dutiful, no doubt, to the late King’s memory. To be more dutiful still,
they made themselves rich out of the Church lands, and were very
comfortable. The new Duke of Somerset caused himself to be declared
Protector of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the King.

As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the principles of the
Protestant religion, everybody knew that they would be maintained. But
Cranmer, to whom they were chiefly entrusted, advanced them steadily
and temperately. Many superstitious and ridiculous practices were
stopped; but practices which were harmless were not interfered with.

The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was anxious to have the young King
engaged in marriage to the young Queen of Scotland, in order to prevent
that princess from making an alliance with any foreign power; but, as a
large party in Scotland were unfavourable to this plan, he invaded that
country. His excuse for doing so was, that the Border men—that is, the
Scotch who lived in that part of the country where England and Scotland
joined—troubled the English very much. But there were two sides to this
question; for the English Border men troubled the Scotch too; and,
through many long years, there were perpetual border quarrels which
gave rise to numbers of old tales and songs. However, the Protector
invaded Scotland; and Arran, the Scottish Regent, with an army twice as
large as his, advanced to meet him. They encountered on the banks of
the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh; and there, after a
little skirmish, the Protector made such moderate proposals, in
offering to retire if the Scotch would only engage not to marry their
princess to any foreign prince, that the Regent thought the English
were afraid. But in this he made a horrible mistake; for the English
soldiers on land, and the English sailors on the water, so set upon the
Scotch, that they broke and fled, and more than ten thousand of them
were killed. It was a dreadful battle, for the fugitives were slain
without mercy. The ground for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was
strewn with dead men, and with arms, and legs, and heads. Some hid
themselves in streams and were drowned; some threw away their armour
and were killed running, almost naked; but in this battle of Pinkey the
English lost only two or three hundred men. They were much better
clothed than the Scotch; at the poverty of whose appearance and country
they were exceedingly astonished.

A Parliament was called when Somerset came back, and it repealed the
whip with six strings, and did one or two other good things; though it
unhappily retained the punishment of burning for those people who did
not make believe to believe, in all religious matters, what the
Government had declared that they must and should believe. It also made
a foolish law (meant to put down beggars), that any man who lived idly
and loitered about for three days together, should be burned with a hot
iron, made a slave, and wear an iron fetter. But this savage absurdity
soon came to an end, and went the way of a great many other foolish
laws.

The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parliament before all the
nobles, on the right hand of the throne. Many other noblemen, who only
wanted to be as proud if they could get a chance, became his enemies of
course; and it is supposed that he came back suddenly from Scotland
because he had received news that his brother, Lord Seymour, was
becoming dangerous to him. This lord was now High Admiral of England; a
very handsome man, and a great favourite with the Court ladies—even
with the young Princess Elizabeth, who romped with him a little more
than young princesses in these times do with any one. He had married
Catherine Parr, the late King’s widow, who was now dead; and, to
strengthen his power, he secretly supplied the young King with money.
He may even have engaged with some of his brother’s enemies in a plot
to carry the boy off. On these and other accusations, at any rate, he
was confined in the Tower, impeached, and found guilty; his own
brother’s name being—unnatural and sad to tell—the first signed to the
warrant of his execution. He was executed on Tower Hill, and died
denying his treason. One of his last proceedings in this world was to
write two letters, one to the Princess Elizabeth, and one to the
Princess Mary, which a servant of his took charge of, and concealed in
his shoe. These letters are supposed to have urged them against his
brother, and to revenge his death. What they truly contained is not
known; but there is no doubt that he had, at one time, obtained great
influence over the Princess Elizabeth.

All this while, the Protestant religion was making progress. The images
which the people had gradually come to worship, were removed from the
churches; the people were informed that they need not confess
themselves to priests unless they chose; a common prayer-book was drawn
up in the English language, which all could understand, and many other
improvements were made; still moderately. For Cranmer was a very
moderate man, and even restrained the Protestant clergy from violently
abusing the unreformed religion—as they very often did, and which was
not a good example. But the people were at this time in great distress.
The rapacious nobility who had come into possession of the Church
lands, were very bad landlords. They enclosed great quantities of
ground for the feeding of sheep, which was then more profitable than
the growing of crops; and this increased the general distress. So the
people, who still understood little of what was going on about them,
and still readily believed what the homeless monks told them—many of
whom had been their good friends in their better days—took it into
their heads that all this was owing to the reformed religion, and
therefore rose, in many parts of the country.

The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and Norfolk. In
Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that ten thousand men united
within a few days, and even laid siege to Exeter. But Lord Russell,
coming to the assistance of the citizens who defended that town,
defeated the rebels; and, not only hanged the Mayor of one place, but
hanged the vicar of another from his own church steeple. What with
hanging and killing by the sword, four thousand of the rebels are
supposed to have fallen in that one county. In Norfolk (where the
rising was more against the enclosure of open lands than against the
reformed religion), the popular leader was a man named Robert Ket, a
tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, in the first instance, excited
against the tanner by one John Flowerdew, a gentleman who owed him a
grudge: but the tanner was more than a match for the gentleman, since
he soon got the people on his side, and established himself near
Norwich with quite an army. There was a large oak-tree in that place,
on a spot called Moushold Hill, which Ket named the Tree of
Reformation; and under its green boughs, he and his men sat, in the
midsummer weather, holding courts of justice, and debating affairs of
state. They were even impartial enough to allow some rather tiresome
public speakers to get up into this Tree of Reformation, and point out
their errors to them, in long discourses, while they lay listening (not
always without some grumbling and growling) in the shade below. At
last, one sunny July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and
proclaimed Ket and all his men traitors, unless from that moment they
dispersed and went home: in which case they were to receive a pardon.
But, Ket and his men made light of the herald and became stronger than
ever, until the Earl of Warwick went after them with a sufficient
force, and cut them all to pieces. A few were hanged, drawn, and
quartered, as traitors, and their limbs were sent into various country
places to be a terror to the people. Nine of them were hanged upon nine
green branches of the Oak of Reformation; and so, for the time, that
tree may be said to have withered away.

The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion for the real
distresses of the common people, and a sincere desire to help them. But
he was too proud and too high in degree to hold even their favour
steadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated him, because
they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time building
a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up
church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops’ houses: thus
making himself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the
Earl of Warwick—Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made
himself so odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh—joined
with seven other members of the Council against him, formed a separate
Council; and, becoming stronger in a few days, sent him to the Tower
under twenty-nine articles of accusation. After being sentenced by the
Council to the forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was
liberated and pardoned, on making a very humble submission. He was even
taken back into the Council again, after having suffered this fall, and
married his daughter, Lady Anne Seymour, to Warwick’s eldest son. But
such a reconciliation was little likely to last, and did not outlive a
year. Warwick, having got himself made Duke of Northumberland, and
having advanced the more important of his friends, then finished the
history by causing the Duke of Somerset and his friend Lord Grey, and
others, to be arrested for treason, in having conspired to seize and
dethrone the King. They were also accused of having intended to seize
the new Duke of Northumberland, with his friends Lord Northampton and
Lord Pembroke; to murder them if they found need; and to raise the City
to revolt. All this the fallen Protector positively denied; except that
he confessed to having spoken of the murder of those three noblemen,
but having never designed it. He was acquitted of the charge of
treason, and found guilty of the other charges; so when the people—who
remembered his having been their friend, now that he was disgraced and
in danger, saw him come out from his trial with the axe turned from
him—they thought he was altogether acquitted, and sent up a loud shout
of joy.

But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on Tower Hill, at
eight o’clock in the morning, and proclamations were issued bidding the
citizens keep at home until after ten. They filled the streets,
however, and crowded the place of execution as soon as it was light;
and, with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once powerful Protector
ascend the scaffold to lay his head upon the dreadful block. While he
was yet saying his last words to them with manly courage, and telling
them, in particular, how it comforted him, at that pass, to have
assisted in reforming the national religion, a member of the Council
was seen riding up on horseback. They again thought that the Duke was
saved by his bringing a reprieve, and again shouted for joy. But the
Duke himself told them they were mistaken, and laid down his head and
had it struck off at a blow.

Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped their handkerchiefs
in his blood, as a mark of their affection. He had, indeed, been
capable of many good acts, and one of them was discovered after he was
no more. The Bishop of Durham, a very good man, had been informed
against to the Council, when the Duke was in power, as having answered
a treacherous letter proposing a rebellion against the reformed
religion. As the answer could not be found, he could not be declared
guilty; but it was now discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among
some private papers, in his regard for that good man. The Bishop lost
his office, and was deprived of his possessions.

It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle lay in prison
under sentence of death, the young King was being vastly entertained by
plays, and dances, and sham fights: but there is no doubt of it, for he
kept a journal himself. It is pleasanter to know that not a single
Roman Catholic was burnt in this reign for holding that religion;
though two wretched victims suffered for heresy. One, a woman named
Joan Bocher, for professing some opinions that even she could only
explain in unintelligible jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named Von
Paris, who practised as a surgeon in London. Edward was, to his credit,
exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant for the woman’s execution:
shedding tears before he did so, and telling Cranmer, who urged him to
do it (though Cranmer really would have spared the woman at first, but
for her own determined obstinacy), that the guilt was not his, but that
of the man who so strongly urged the dreadful act. We shall see, too
soon, whether the time ever came when Cranmer is likely to have
remembered this with sorrow and remorse.

Cranmer and Ridley (at first Bishop of Rochester, and afterwards Bishop
of London) were the most powerful of the clergy of this reign. Others
were imprisoned and deprived of their property for still adhering to
the unreformed religion; the most important among whom were Gardiner
Bishop of Winchester, Heath Bishop of Worcester, Day Bishop of
Chichester, and Bonner that Bishop of London who was superseded by
Ridley. The Princess Mary, who inherited her mother’s gloomy temper,
and hated the reformed religion as connected with her mother’s wrongs
and sorrows—she knew nothing else about it, always refusing to read a
single book in which it was truly described—held by the unreformed
religion too, and was the only person in the kingdom for whom the old
Mass was allowed to be performed; nor would the young King have made
that exception even in her favour, but for the strong persuasions of
Cranmer and Ridley. He always viewed it with horror; and when he fell
into a sickly condition, after having been very ill, first of the
measles and then of the small-pox, he was greatly troubled in mind to
think that if he died, and she, the next heir to the throne, succeeded,
the Roman Catholic religion would be set up again.

This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was not slow to encourage:
for, if the Princess Mary came to the throne, he, who had taken part
with the Protestants, was sure to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of
Suffolk was descended from King Henry the Seventh; and, if she resigned
what little or no right she had, in favour of her daughter Lady Jane
Grey, that would be the succession to promote the Duke’s greatness;
because Lord Guilford Dudley, one of his sons, was, at this very time,
newly married to her. So, he worked upon the King’s fears, and
persuaded him to set aside both the Princess Mary and the Princess
Elizabeth, and assert his right to appoint his successor. Accordingly
the young King handed to the Crown lawyers a writing signed half a
dozen times over by himself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to
the Crown, and requiring them to have his will made out according to
law. They were much against it at first, and told the King so; but the
Duke of Northumberland—being so violent about it that the lawyers even
expected him to beat them, and hotly declaring that, stripped to his
shirt, he would fight any man in such a quarrel—they yielded. Cranmer,
also, at first hesitated; pleading that he had sworn to maintain the
succession of the Crown to the Princess Mary; but, he was a weak man in
his resolutions, and afterwards signed the document with the rest of
the council.

It was completed none too soon; for Edward was now sinking in a rapid
decline; and, by way of making him better, they handed him over to a
woman-doctor who pretended to be able to cure it. He speedily got
worse. On the sixth of July, in the year one thousand five hundred and
fifty-three, he died, very peaceably and piously, praying God, with his
last breath, to protect the reformed religion.

This King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in the seventh of
his reign. It is difficult to judge what the character of one so young
might afterwards have become among so many bad, ambitious, quarrelling
nobles. But, he was an amiable boy, of very good abilities, and had
nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition—which in the son
of such a father is rather surprising.




CHAPTER XXX
ENGLAND UNDER MARY


The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to keep the young King’s
death a secret, in order that he might get the two Princesses into his
power. But, the Princess Mary, being informed of that event as she was
on her way to London to see her sick brother, turned her horse’s head,
and rode away into Norfolk. The Earl of Arundel was her friend, and it
was he who sent her warning of what had happened.

As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northumberland and the
council sent for the Lord Mayor of London and some of the aldermen, and
made a merit of telling it to them. Then, they made it known to the
people, and set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was to be Queen.

She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, learned, and
clever. When the lords who came to her, fell on their knees before her,
and told her what tidings they brought, she was so astonished that she
fainted. On recovering, she expressed her sorrow for the young King’s
death, and said that she knew she was unfit to govern the kingdom; but
that if she must be Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was then
at Sion House, near Brentford; and the lords took her down the river in
state to the Tower, that she might remain there (as the custom was)
until she was crowned. But the people were not at all favourable to
Lady Jane, considering that the right to be Queen was Mary’s, and
greatly disliking the Duke of Northumberland. They were not put into a
better humour by the Duke’s causing a vintner’s servant, one Gabriel
Pot, to be taken up for expressing his dissatisfaction among the crowd,
and to have his ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off. Some powerful
men among the nobility declared on Mary’s side. They raised troops to
support her cause, had her proclaimed Queen at Norwich, and gathered
around her at the castle of Framlingham, which belonged to the Duke of
Norfolk. For, she was not considered so safe as yet, but that it was
best to keep her in a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she might be
sent abroad, if necessary.

The Council would have despatched Lady Jane’s father, the Duke of
Suffolk, as the general of the army against this force; but, as Lady
Jane implored that her father might remain with her, and as he was
known to be but a weak man, they told the Duke of Northumberland that
he must take the command himself. He was not very ready to do so, as he
mistrusted the Council much; but there was no help for it, and he set
forth with a heavy heart, observing to a lord who rode beside him
through Shoreditch at the head of the troops, that, although the people
pressed in great numbers to look at them, they were terribly silent.

And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded. While he was
waiting at Cambridge for further help from the Council, the Council
took it into their heads to turn their backs on Lady Jane’s cause, and
to take up the Princess Mary’s. This was chiefly owing to the
before-mentioned Earl of Arundel, who represented to the Lord Mayor and
aldermen, in a second interview with those sagacious persons, that, as
for himself, he did not perceive the Reformed religion to be in much
danger—which Lord Pembroke backed by flourishing his sword as another
kind of persuasion. The Lord Mayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, said
there could be no doubt that the Princess Mary ought to be Queen. So,
she was proclaimed at the Cross by St. Paul’s, and barrels of wine were
given to the people, and they got very drunk, and danced round blazing
bonfires—little thinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would soon
be blazing in Queen Mary’s name.

After a ten days’ dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey resigned the Crown
with great willingness, saying that she had only accepted it in
obedience to her father and mother; and went gladly back to her
pleasant house by the river, and her books. Mary then came on towards
London; and at Wanstead in Essex, was joined by her half-sister, the
Princess Elizabeth. They passed through the streets of London to the
Tower, and there the new Queen met some eminent prisoners then confined
in it, kissed them, and gave them their liberty. Among these was that
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had been imprisoned in the last
reign for holding to the unreformed religion. Him she soon made
chancellor.

The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, and, together with
his son and five others, was quickly brought before the Council. He,
not unnaturally, asked that Council, in his defence, whether it was
treason to obey orders that had been issued under the great seal; and,
if it were, whether they, who had obeyed them too, ought to be his
judges? But they made light of these points; and, being resolved to
have him out of the way, soon sentenced him to death. He had risen into
power upon the death of another man, and made but a poor show (as might
be expected) when he himself lay low. He entreated Gardiner to let him
live, if it were only in a mouse’s hole; and, when he ascended the
scaffold to be beheaded on Tower Hill, addressed the people in a
miserable way, saying that he had been incited by others, and exhorting
them to return to the unreformed religion, which he told them was his
faith. There seems reason to suppose that he expected a pardon even
then, in return for this confession; but it matters little whether he
did or not. His head was struck off.

Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven years of age, short
and thin, wrinkled in the face, and very unhealthy. But she had a great
liking for show and for bright colours, and all the ladies of her Court
were magnificently dressed. She had a great liking too for old customs,
without much sense in them; and she was oiled in the oldest way, and
blessed in the oldest way, and done all manner of things to in the
oldest way, at her coronation. I hope they did her good.

She soon began to show her desire to put down the Reformed religion,
and put up the unreformed one: though it was dangerous work as yet, the
people being something wiser than they used to be. They even cast a
shower of stones—and among them a dagger—at one of the royal chaplains
who attacked the Reformed religion in a public sermon. But the Queen
and her priests went steadily on. Ridley, the powerful bishop of the
last reign, was seized and sent to the Tower. Latimer, also celebrated
among the Clergy of the last reign, was likewise sent to the Tower, and
Cranmer speedily followed. Latimer was an aged man; and, as his guards
took him through Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, ‘This is a
place that hath long groaned for me.’ For he knew well, what kind of
bonfires would soon be burning. Nor was the knowledge confined to him.
The prisons were fast filled with the chief Protestants, who were there
left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and separation from their
friends; many, who had time left them for escape, fled from the
kingdom; and the dullest of the people began, now, to see what was
coming.

It came on fast. A Parliament was got together; not without strong
suspicion of unfairness; and they annulled the divorce, formerly
pronounced by Cranmer between the Queen’s mother and King Henry the
Eighth, and unmade all the laws on the subject of religion that had
been made in the last King Edward’s reign. They began their
proceedings, in violation of the law, by having the old mass said
before them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who would not kneel
down. They also declared guilty of treason, Lady Jane Grey for aspiring
to the Crown; her husband, for being her husband; and Cranmer, for not
believing in the mass aforesaid. They then prayed the Queen graciously
to choose a husband for herself, as soon as might be.

Now, the question who should be the Queen’s husband had given rise to a
great deal of discussion, and to several contending parties. Some said
Cardinal Pole was the man—but the Queen was of opinion that he was
_not_ the man, he being too old and too much of a student. Others said
that the gallant young Courtenay, whom the Queen had made Earl of
Devonshire, was the man—and the Queen thought so too, for a while; but
she changed her mind. At last it appeared that Philip, Prince of Spain,
was certainly the man—though certainly not the people’s man; for they
detested the idea of such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and
murmured that the Spaniard would establish in England, by the aid of
foreign soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even the
terrible Inquisition itself.

These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying young
Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and setting them up, with popular
tumults all over the kingdom, against the Queen. This was discovered in
time by Gardiner; but in Kent, the old bold county, the people rose in
their old bold way. Sir Thomas Wyat, a man of great daring, was their
leader. He raised his standard at Maidstone, marched on to Rochester,
established himself in the old castle there, and prepared to hold out
against the Duke of Norfolk, who came against him with a party of the
Queen’s guards, and a body of five hundred London men. The London men,
however, were all for Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They
declared, under the castle walls, for Wyat; the Duke retreated; and
Wyat came on to Deptford, at the head of fifteen thousand men.

But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to Southwark, there
were only two thousand left. Not dismayed by finding the London
citizens in arms, and the guns at the Tower ready to oppose his
crossing the river there, Wyat led them off to Kingston-upon-Thames,
intending to cross the bridge that he knew to be in that place, and so
to work his way round to Ludgate, one of the old gates of the City. He
found the bridge broken down, but mended it, came across, and bravely
fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. Finding the gate closed
against him, he fought his way back again, sword in hand, to Temple
Bar. Here, being overpowered, he surrendered himself, and three or four
hundred of his men were taken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a
moment of weakness (and perhaps of torture) was afterwards made to
accuse the Princess Elizabeth as his accomplice to some very small
extent. But his manhood soon returned to him, and he refused to save
his life by making any more false confessions. He was quartered and
distributed in the usual brutal way, and from fifty to a hundred of his
followers were hanged. The rest were led out, with halters round their
necks, to be pardoned, and to make a parade of crying out, ‘God save
Queen Mary!’

In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself to be a woman
of courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat to any place of safety,
and went down to the Guildhall, sceptre in hand, and made a gallant
speech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on the day after Wyat’s
defeat, she did the most cruel act, even of her cruel reign, in signing
the warrant for the execution of Lady Jane Grey.

They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion; but
she steadily refused. On the morning when she was to die, she saw from
her window the bleeding and headless body of her husband brought back
in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill where he had laid down his
life. But, as she had declined to see him before his execution, lest
she should be overpowered and not make a good end, so, she even now
showed a constancy and calmness that will never be forgotten. She came
up to the scaffold with a firm step and a quiet face, and addressed the
bystanders in a steady voice. They were not numerous; for she was too
young, too innocent and fair, to be murdered before the people on Tower
Hill, as her husband had just been; so, the place of her execution was
within the Tower itself. She said that she had done an unlawful act in
taking what was Queen Mary’s right; but that she had done so with no
bad intent, and that she died a humble Christian. She begged the
executioner to despatch her quickly, and she asked him, ‘Will you take
my head off before I lay me down?’ He answered, ‘No, Madam,’ and then
she was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. Being blinded, and
unable to see the block on which she was to lay her young head, she was
seen to feel about for it with her hands, and was heard to say,
confused, ‘O what shall I do! Where is it?’ Then they guided her to the
right place, and the executioner struck off her head. You know too
well, now, what dreadful deeds the executioner did in England, through
many, many years, and how his axe descended on the hateful block
through the necks of some of the bravest, wisest, and best in the land.
But it never struck so cruel and so vile a blow as this.

The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little pitied. Queen
Mary’s next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth, and this was pursued
with great eagerness. Five hundred men were sent to her retired house
at Ashridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring her up, alive or
dead. They got there at ten at night, when she was sick in bed. But,
their leaders followed her lady into her bedchamber, whence she was
brought out betimes next morning, and put into a litter to be conveyed
to London. She was so weak and ill, that she was five days on the road;
still, she was so resolved to be seen by the people that she had the
curtains of the litter opened; and so, very pale and sickly, passed
through the streets. She wrote to her sister, saying she was innocent
of any crime, and asking why she was made a prisoner; but she got no
answer, and was ordered to the Tower. They took her in by the Traitor’s
Gate, to which she objected, but in vain. One of the lords who conveyed
her offered to cover her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she put
it away from her, proudly and scornfully, and passed into the Tower,
and sat down in a court-yard on a stone. They besought her to come in
out of the wet; but she answered that it was better sitting there, than
in a worse place. At length she went to her apartment, where she was
kept a prisoner, though not so close a prisoner as at Woodstock,
whither she was afterwards removed, and where she is said to have one
day envied a milkmaid whom she heard singing in the sunshine as she
went through the green fields. Gardiner, than whom there were not many
worse men among the fierce and sullen priests, cared little to keep
secret his stern desire for her death: being used to say that it was of
little service to shake off the leaves, and lop the branches of the
tree of heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were left. He
failed, however, in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was, at length,
released; and Hatfield House was assigned to her as a residence, under
the care of one Sir Thomas Pope.

It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main cause of
this change in Elizabeth’s fortunes. He was not an amiable man, being,
on the contrary, proud, overbearing, and gloomy; but he and the Spanish
lords who came over with him, assuredly did discountenance the idea of
doing any violence to the Princess. It may have been mere prudence, but
we will hope it was manhood and honour. The Queen had been expecting
her husband with great impatience, and at length he came, to her great
joy, though he never cared much for her. They were married by Gardiner,
at Winchester, and there was more holiday-making among the people; but
they had their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in which even the
Parliament shared. Though the members of that Parliament were far from
honest, and were strongly suspected to have been bought with Spanish
money, they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to set aside the
Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own successor.

Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the darker one
of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, he went on at a great pace in
the revival of the unreformed religion. A new Parliament was packed, in
which there were no Protestants. Preparations were made to receive
Cardinal Pole in England as the Pope’s messenger, bringing his holy
declaration that all the nobility who had acquired Church property,
should keep it—which was done to enlist their selfish interest on the
Pope’s side. Then a great scene was enacted, which was the triumph of
the Queen’s plans. Cardinal Pole arrived in great splendour and
dignity, and was received with great pomp. The Parliament joined in a
petition expressive of their sorrow at the change in the national
religion, and praying him to receive the country again into the Popish
Church. With the Queen sitting on her throne, and the King on one side
of her, and the Cardinal on the other, and the Parliament present,
Gardiner read the petition aloud. The Cardinal then made a great
speech, and was so obliging as to say that all was forgotten and
forgiven, and that the kingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.

Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible bonfires. The
Queen having declared to the Council, in writing, that she would wish
none of her subjects to be burnt without some of the Council being
present, and that she would particularly wish there to be good sermons
at all burnings, the Council knew pretty well what was to be done next.
So, after the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as a preface to the
burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner opened a High Court at Saint Mary
Overy, on the Southwark side of London Bridge, for the trial of
heretics. Here, two of the late Protestant clergymen, Hooper, Bishop of
Gloucester, and Rogers, a Prebendary of St. Paul’s, were brought to be
tried. Hooper was tried first for being married, though a priest, and
for not believing in the mass. He admitted both of these accusations,
and said that the mass was a wicked imposition. Then they tried Rogers,
who said the same. Next morning the two were brought up to be
sentenced; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, being a German
woman and a stranger in the land, he hoped might be allowed to come to
speak to him before he died. To this the inhuman Gardiner replied, that
she was not his wife. ‘Yea, but she is, my lord,’ said Rogers, ‘and she
hath been my wife these eighteen years.’ His request was still refused,
and they were both sent to Newgate; all those who stood in the streets
to sell things, being ordered to put out their lights that the people
might not see them. But, the people stood at their doors with candles
in their hands, and prayed for them as they went by. Soon afterwards,
Rogers was taken out of jail to be burnt in Smithfield; and, in the
crowd as he went along, he saw his poor wife and his ten children, of
whom the youngest was a little baby. And so he was burnt to death.

The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester, was brought
out to take his last journey, and was made to wear a hood over his face
that he might not be known by the people. But, they did know him for
all that, down in his own part of the country; and, when he came near
Gloucester, they lined the road, making prayers and lamentations. His
guards took him to a lodging, where he slept soundly all night. At nine
o’clock next morning, he was brought forth leaning on a staff; for he
had taken cold in prison, and was infirm. The iron stake, and the iron
chain which was to bind him to it, were fixed up near a great elm-tree
in a pleasant open place before the cathedral, where, on peaceful
Sundays, he had been accustomed to preach and to pray, when he was
bishop of Gloucester. This tree, which had no leaves then, it being
February, was filled with people; and the priests of Gloucester College
were looking complacently on from a window, and there was a great
concourse of spectators in every spot from which a glimpse of the
dreadful sight could be beheld. When the old man kneeled down on the
small platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed aloud, the nearest
people were observed to be so attentive to his prayers that they were
ordered to stand farther back; for it did not suit the Romish Church to
have those Protestant words heard. His prayers concluded, he went up to
the stake and was stripped to his shirt, and chained ready for the
fire. One of his guards had such compassion on him that, to shorten his
agonies, he tied some packets of gunpowder about him. Then they heaped
up wood and straw and reeds, and set them all alight. But, unhappily,
the wood was green and damp, and there was a wind blowing that blew
what flame there was, away. Thus, through three-quarters of an hour,
the good old man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as the fire rose
and sank; and all that time they saw him, as he burned, moving his lips
in prayer, and beating his breast with one hand, even after the other
was burnt away and had fallen off.

Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to dispute with a
commission of priests and doctors about the mass. They were shamefully
treated; and it is recorded that the Oxford scholars hissed and howled
and groaned, and misconducted themselves in an anything but a scholarly
way. The prisoners were taken back to jail, and afterwards tried in St.
Mary’s Church. They were all found guilty. On the sixteenth of the
month of October, Ridley and Latimer were brought out, to make another
of the dreadful bonfires.

The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant men was in the
City ditch, near Baliol College. On coming to the dreadful spot, they
kissed the stakes, and then embraced each other. And then a learned
doctor got up into a pulpit which was placed there, and preached a
sermon from the text, ‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have not
charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ When you think of the charity of
burning men alive, you may imagine that this learned doctor had a
rather brazen face. Ridley would have answered his sermon when it came
to an end, but was not allowed. When Latimer was stripped, it appeared
that he had dressed himself under his other clothes, in a new shroud;
and, as he stood in it before all the people, it was noted of him, and
long remembered, that, whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a
few minutes before, he now stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge
that he was dying for a just and a great cause. Ridley’s brother-in-law
was there with bags of gunpowder; and when they were both chained up,
he tied them round their bodies. Then, a light was thrown upon the pile
to fire it. ‘Be of good comfort, Master Ridley,’ said Latimer, at that
awful moment, ‘and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle,
by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’ And
then he was seen to make motions with his hands as if he were washing
them in the flames, and to stroke his aged face with them, and was
heard to cry, ‘Father of Heaven, receive my soul!’ He died quickly, but
the fire, after having burned the legs of Ridley, sunk. There he
lingered, chained to the iron post, and crying, ‘O! I cannot burn! O!
for Christ’s sake let the fire come unto me!’ And still, when his
brother-in-law had heaped on more wood, he was heard through the
blinding smoke, still dismally crying, ‘O! I cannot burn, I cannot
burn!’ At last, the gunpowder caught fire, and ended his miseries.

Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his tremendous
account before God, for the cruelties he had so much assisted in
committing.

Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was brought out again in
February, for more examining and trying, by Bonner, Bishop of London:
another man of blood, who had succeeded to Gardiner’s work, even in his
lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer was now degraded as a
priest, and left for death; but, if the Queen hated any one on earth,
she hated him, and it was resolved that he should be ruined and
disgraced to the utmost. There is no doubt that the Queen and her
husband personally urged on these deeds, because they wrote to the
Council, urging them to be active in the kindling of the fearful fires.
As Cranmer was known not to be a firm man, a plan was laid for
surrounding him with artful people, and inducing him to recant to the
unreformed religion. Deans and friars visited him, played at bowls with
him, showed him various attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave
him money for his prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as
many as six recantations. But when, after all, he was taken out to be
burnt, he was nobly true to his better self, and made a glorious end.

After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the day (who had
been one of the artful priests about Cranmer in prison), required him
to make a public confession of his faith before the people. This, Cole
did, expecting that he would declare himself a Roman Catholic. ‘I will
make a profession of my faith,’ said Cranmer, ‘and with a good will
too.’

Then, he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve of his robe a
written prayer and read it aloud. That done, he kneeled and said the
Lord’s Prayer, all the people joining; and then he arose again and told
them that he believed in the Bible, and that in what he had lately
written, he had written what was not the truth, and that, because his
right hand had signed those papers, he would burn his right hand first
when he came to the fire. As for the Pope, he did refuse him and
denounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon the pious Dr. Cole cried
out to the guards to stop that heretic’s mouth and take him away.

So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, where he hastily
took off his own clothes to make ready for the flames. And he stood
before the people with a bald head and a white and flowing beard. He
was so firm now when the worst was come, that he again declared against
his recantation, and was so impressive and so undismayed, that a
certain lord, who was one of the directors of the execution, called out
to the men to make haste! When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true to
his latest word, stretched out his right hand, and crying out, ‘This
hand hath offended!’ held it among the flames, until it blazed and
burned away. His heart was found entire among his ashes, and he left at
last a memorable name in English history. Cardinal Pole celebrated the
day by saying his first mass, and next day he was made Archbishop of
Canterbury in Cranmer’s place.

The Queen’s husband, who was now mostly abroad in his own dominions,
and generally made a coarse jest of her to his more familiar courtiers,
was at war with France, and came over to seek the assistance of
England. England was very unwilling to engage in a French war for his
sake; but it happened that the King of France, at this very time, aided
a descent upon the English coast. Hence, war was declared, greatly to
Philip’s satisfaction; and the Queen raised a sum of money with which
to carry it on, by every unjustifiable means in her power. It met with
no profitable return, for the French Duke of Guise surprised Calais,
and the English sustained a complete defeat. The losses they met with
in France greatly mortified the national pride, and the Queen never
recovered the blow.

There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, and I am glad to
write that the Queen took it, and the hour of her death came. ‘When I
am dead and my body is opened,’ she said to those around those around
her, ‘ye shall find Calais written on my heart.’ I should have thought,
if anything were written on it, they would have found the words—Jane
Grey, Hooper, Rogers, Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and three hundred
people burnt alive within four years of my wicked reign, including
sixty women and forty little children. But it is enough that their
deaths were written in Heaven.

The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred and
fifty-eight, after reigning not quite five years and a half, and in the
forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal Pole died of the same fever next
day.

As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has become famous, and as Bloody Queen
Mary, she will ever be justly remembered with horror and detestation in
Great Britain. Her memory has been held in such abhorrence that some
writers have arisen in later years to take her part, and to show that
she was, upon the whole, quite an amiable and cheerful sovereign! ‘By
their fruits ye shall know them,’ said Our Saviour. The stake and the
fire were the fruits of this reign, and you will judge this Queen by
nothing else.




CHAPTER XXXI
ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH


There was great rejoicing all over the land when the Lords of the
Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the Princess Elizabeth as the
new Queen of England. Weary of the barbarities of Mary’s reign, the
people looked with hope and gladness to the new Sovereign. The nation
seemed to wake from a horrible dream; and Heaven, so long hidden by the
smoke of the fires that roasted men and women to death, appeared to
brighten once more.

Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when she rode through
the streets of London, from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, to be
crowned. Her countenance was strongly marked, but on the whole,
commanding and dignified; her hair was red, and her nose something too
long and sharp for a woman’s. She was not the beautiful creature her
courtiers made out; but she was well enough, and no doubt looked all
the better for coming after the dark and gloomy Mary. She was well
educated, but a roundabout writer, and rather a hard swearer and coarse
talker. She was clever, but cunning and deceitful, and inherited much
of her father’s violent temper. I mention this now, because she has
been so over-praised by one party, and so over-abused by another, that
it is hardly possible to understand the greater part of her reign
without first understanding what kind of woman she really was.

She began her reign with the great advantage of having a very wise and
careful Minister, Sir William Cecil, whom she afterwards made Lord
Burleigh. Altogether, the people had greater reason for rejoicing than
they usually had, when there were processions in the streets; and they
were happy with some reason. All kinds of shows and images were set up;
Gog and Magog were hoisted to the top of Temple Bar, and (which was
more to the purpose) the Corporation dutifully presented the young
Queen with the sum of a thousand marks in gold—so heavy a present, that
she was obliged to take it into her carriage with both hands. The
coronation was a great success; and, on the next day, one of the
courtiers presented a petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was
the custom to release some prisoners on such occasions, she would have
the goodness to release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, and also the Apostle Saint Paul, who had been for some time shut
up in a strange language so that the people could not get at them.

To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first to inquire of
themselves whether they desired to be released or not; and, as a means
of finding out, a great public discussion—a sort of religious
tournament—was appointed to take place between certain champions of the
two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may suppose that it was soon
made pretty clear to common sense, that for people to benefit by what
they repeat or read, it is rather necessary they should understand
something about it. Accordingly, a Church Service in plain English was
settled, and other laws and regulations were made, completely
establishing the great work of the Reformation. The Romish bishops and
champions were not harshly dealt with, all things considered; and the
Queen’s Ministers were both prudent and merciful.

The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortunate cause of the
greater part of such turmoil and bloodshed as occurred in it, was Mary
Stuart, Queen of Scots. We will try to understand, in as few words as
possible, who Mary was, what she was, and how she came to be a thorn in
the royal pillow of Elizabeth.

She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland, Mary of Guise.
She had been married, when a mere child, to the Dauphin, the son and
heir of the King of France. The Pope, who pretended that no one could
rightfully wear the crown of England without his gracious permission,
was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, who had not asked for the said
gracious permission. And as Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited
the English crown in right of her birth, supposing the English
Parliament not to have altered the succession, the Pope himself, and
most of the discontented who were followers of his, maintained that
Mary was the rightful Queen of England, and Elizabeth the wrongful
Queen. Mary being so closely connected with France, and France being
jealous of England, there was far greater danger in this than there
would have been if she had had no alliance with that great power. And
when her young husband, on the death of his father, became Francis the
Second, King of France, the matter grew very serious. For, the young
couple styled themselves King and Queen of England, and the Pope was
disposed to help them by doing all the mischief he could.

Now, the reformed religion, under the guidance of a stern and powerful
preacher, named John Knox, and other such men, had been making fierce
progress in Scotland. It was still a half savage country, where there
was a great deal of murdering and rioting continually going on; and the
Reformers, instead of reforming those evils as they should have done,
went to work in the ferocious old Scottish spirit, laying churches and
chapels waste, pulling down pictures and altars, and knocking about the
Grey Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White Friars, and the friars
of all sorts of colours, in all directions. This obdurate and harsh
spirit of the Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always been rather a
sullen and frowning people in religious matters) put up the blood of
the Romish French court, and caused France to send troops over to
Scotland, with the hope of setting the friars of all sorts of colours
on their legs again; of conquering that country first, and England
afterwards; and so crushing the Reformation all to pieces. The Scottish
Reformers, who had formed a great league which they called The
Congregation of the Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth that, if
the reformed religion got the worst of it with them, it would be likely
to get the worst of it in England too; and thus, Elizabeth, though she
had a high notion of the rights of Kings and Queens to do anything they
liked, sent an army to Scotland to support the Reformers, who were in
arms against their sovereign. All these proceedings led to a treaty of
peace at Edinburgh, under which the French consented to depart from the
kingdom. By a separate treaty, Mary and her young husband engaged to
renounce their assumed title of King and Queen of England. But this
treaty they never fulfilled.

It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, that the young
French King died, leaving Mary a young widow. She was then invited by
her Scottish subjects to return home and reign over them; and as she
was not now happy where she was, she, after a little time, complied.

Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary Queen of Scots embarked
at Calais for her own rough, quarrelling country. As she came out of
the harbour, a vessel was lost before her eyes, and she said, ‘O! good
God! what an omen this is for such a voyage!’ She was very fond of
France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it and weeping, until it
was quite dark. When she went to bed, she directed to be called at
daybreak, if the French coast were still visible, that she might behold
it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear morning, this was
done, and she again wept for the country she was leaving, and said many
times, ‘Farewell, France! Farewell, France! I shall never see thee
again!’ All this was long remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and
interesting in a fair young princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid
it gradually came, together with her other distresses, to surround her
with greater sympathy than she deserved.

When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode at the palace of
Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself among uncouth strangers and
wild uncomfortable customs very different from her experiences in the
court of France. The very people who were disposed to love her, made
her head ache when she was tired out by her voyage, with a serenade of
discordant music—a fearful concert of bagpipes, I suppose—and brought
her and her train home to her palace on miserable little Scotch horses
that appeared to be half starved. Among the people who were not
disposed to love her, she found the powerful leaders of the Reformed
Church, who were bitter upon her amusements, however innocent, and
denounced music and dancing as works of the devil. John Knox himself
often lectured her, violently and angrily, and did much to make her
life unhappy. All these reasons confirmed her old attachment to the
Romish religion, and caused her, there is no doubt, most imprudently
and dangerously both for herself and for England too, to give a solemn
pledge to the heads of the Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to
the English crown, she would set up that religion again. In reading her
unhappy history, you must always remember this; and also that during
her whole life she was constantly put forward against the Queen, in
some form or other, by the Romish party.

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to like her, is
pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and jealous, and had an
extraordinary dislike to people being married. She treated Lady
Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful
severity, for no other reason than her being secretly married, that she
died and her husband was ruined; so, when a second marriage for Mary
began to be talked about, probably Elizabeth disliked her more. Not
that Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own, for they started up from
Spain, Austria, Sweden, and England. Her English lover at this time,
and one whom she much favoured too, was Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester—himself secretly married to Amy Robsart, the daughter of an
English gentleman, whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be
murdered, down at his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he
might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great writer,
Sir Walter Scott, has founded one of his best romances. But if
Elizabeth knew how to lead her handsome favourite on, for her own
vanity and pleasure, she knew how to stop him for her own pride; and
his love, and all the other proposals, came to nothing. The Queen
always declared in good set speeches, that she would never be married
at all, but would live and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very pleasant
and meritorious declaration, I suppose; but it has been puffed and
trumpeted so much, that I am rather tired of it myself.

Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English court had
reasons for being jealous of them all, and even proposed as a matter of
policy that she should marry that very Earl of Leicester who had
aspired to be the husband of Elizabeth. At last, Lord Darnley, son of
the Earl of Lennox, and himself descended from the Royal Family of
Scotland, went over with Elizabeth’s consent to try his fortune at
Holyrood. He was a tall simpleton; and could dance and play the guitar;
but I know of nothing else he could do, unless it were to get very
drunk, and eat gluttonously, and make a contemptible spectacle of
himself in many mean and vain ways. However, he gained Mary’s heart,
not disdaining in the pursuit of his object to ally himself with one of
her secretaries, David Rizzio, who had great influence with her. He
soon married the Queen. This marriage does not say much for her, but
what followed will presently say less.

Mary’s brother, the Earl of Murray, and head of the Protestant party in
Scotland, had opposed this marriage, partly on religious grounds, and
partly perhaps from personal dislike of the very contemptible
bridegroom. When it had taken place, through Mary’s gaining over to it
the more powerful of the lords about her, she banished Murray for his
pains; and, when he and some other nobles rose in arms to support the
reformed religion, she herself, within a month of her wedding day, rode
against them in armour with loaded pistols in her saddle. Driven out of
Scotland, they presented themselves before Elizabeth—who called them
traitors in public, and assisted them in private, according to her
crafty nature.

Mary had been married but a little while, when she began to hate her
husband, who, in his turn, began to hate that David Rizzio, with whom
he had leagued to gain her favour, and whom he now believed to be her
lover. He hated Rizzio to that extent, that he made a compact with Lord
Ruthven and three other lords to get rid of him by murder. This wicked
agreement they made in solemn secrecy upon the first of March, fifteen
hundred and sixty-six, and on the night of Saturday the ninth, the
conspirators were brought by Darnley up a private staircase, dark and
steep, into a range of rooms where they knew that Mary was sitting at
supper with her sister, Lady Argyle, and this doomed man. When they
went into the room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist, and Lord
Ruthven, who had risen from a bed of sickness to do this murder, came
in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning on two men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen
for shelter and protection. ‘Let him come out of the room,’ said
Ruthven. ‘He shall not leave the room,’ replied the Queen; ‘I read his
danger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here.’ They then
set upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table, dragged him
out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When the Queen heard that he
was dead, she said, ‘No more tears. I will think now of revenge!’

Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and prevailed on the
tall idiot to abandon the conspirators and fly with her to Dunbar.
There, he issued a proclamation, audaciously and falsely denying that
he had any knowledge of the late bloody business; and there they were
joined by the Earl Bothwell and some other nobles. With their help,
they raised eight thousand men; returned to Edinburgh, and drove the
assassins into England. Mary soon afterwards gave birth to a son—still
thinking of revenge.

That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband after his late
cowardice and treachery than she had had before, was natural enough.
There is little doubt that she now began to love Bothwell instead, and
to plan with him means of getting rid of Darnley. Bothwell had such
power over her that he induced her even to pardon the assassins of
Rizzio. The arrangements for the Christening of the young Prince were
entrusted to him, and he was one of the most important people at the
ceremony, where the child was named James: Elizabeth being his
godmother, though not present on the occasion. A week afterwards,
Darnley, who had left Mary and gone to his father’s house at Glasgow,
being taken ill with the small-pox, she sent her own physician to
attend him. But there is reason to apprehend that this was merely a
show and a pretence, and that she knew what was doing, when Bothwell
within another month proposed to one of the late conspirators against
Rizzio, to murder Darnley, ‘for that it was the Queen’s mind that he
should be taken away.’ It is certain that on that very day she wrote to
her ambassador in France, complaining of him, and yet went immediately
to Glasgow, feigning to be very anxious about him, and to love him very
much. If she wanted to get him in her power, she succeeded to her
heart’s content; for she induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh,
and to occupy, instead of the palace, a lone house outside the city
called the Kirk of Field. Here, he lived for about a week. One Sunday
night, she remained with him until ten o’clock, and then left him, to
go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given in celebration
of the marriage of one of her favourite servants. At two o’clock in the
morning the city was shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk of Field
was blown to atoms.

Darnley’s body was found next day lying under a tree at some distance.
How it came there, undisfigured and unscorched by gunpowder, and how
this crime came to be so clumsily and strangely committed, it is
impossible to discover. The deceitful character of Mary, and the
deceitful character of Elizabeth, have rendered almost every part of
their joint history uncertain and obscure. But, I fear that Mary was
unquestionably a party to her husband’s murder, and that this was the
revenge she had threatened. The Scotch people universally believed it.
Voices cried out in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night,
for justice on the murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in
the public places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as
his accomplice; and, when he afterwards married her (though himself
already married), previously making a show of taking her prisoner by
force, the indignation of the people knew no bounds. The women
particularly are described as having been quite frantic against the
Queen, and to have hooted and cried after her in the streets with
terrific vehemence.

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife had lived
together but a month, when they were separated for ever by the
successes of a band of Scotch nobles who associated against them for
the protection of the young Prince: whom Bothwell had vainly
endeavoured to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have murdered,
if the Earl of Mar, in whose hands the boy was, had not been firmly and
honourably faithful to his trust. Before this angry power, Bothwell
fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and mad, nine miserable years
afterwards. Mary being found by the associated lords to deceive them at
every turn, was sent a prisoner to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood
in the midst of a lake, could only be approached by boat. Here, one
Lord Lindsay, who was so much of a brute that the nobles would have
done better if they had chosen a mere gentleman for their messenger,
made her sign her abdication, and appoint Murray, Regent of Scotland.
Here, too, Murray saw her in a sorrowing and humbled state.

She had better have remained in the castle of Lochleven, dull prison as
it was, with the rippling of the lake against it, and the moving
shadows of the water on the room walls; but she could not rest there,
and more than once tried to escape. The first time she had nearly
succeeded, dressed in the clothes of her own washer-woman, but, putting
up her hand to prevent one of the boatmen from lifting her veil, the
men suspected her, seeing how white it was, and rowed her back again. A
short time afterwards, her fascinating manners enlisted in her cause a
boy in the Castle, called the little Douglas, who, while the family
were at supper, stole the keys of the great gate, went softly out with
the Queen, locked the gate on the outside, and rowed her away across
the lake, sinking the keys as they went along. On the opposite shore
she was met by another Douglas, and some few lords; and, so
accompanied, rode away on horseback to Hamilton, where they raised
three thousand men. Here, she issued a proclamation declaring that the
abdication she had signed in her prison was illegal, and requiring the
Regent to yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier, and in no
way discomposed although he was without an army, Murray pretended to
treat with her, until he had collected a force about half equal to her
own, and then he gave her battle. In one quarter of an hour he cut down
all her hopes. She had another weary ride on horse-back of sixty long
Scotch miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, whence she fled for
safety to Elizabeth’s dominions.

Mary Queen of Scots came to England—to her own ruin, the trouble of the
kingdom, and the misery and death of many—in the year one thousand five
hundred and sixty-eight. How she left it and the world, nineteen years
afterwards, we have now to see.

SECOND PART

When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, without money and even
without any other clothes than those she wore, she wrote to Elizabeth,
representing herself as an innocent and injured piece of Royalty, and
entreating her assistance to oblige her Scottish subjects to take her
back again and obey her. But, as her character was already known in
England to be a very different one from what she made it out to be, she
was told in answer that she must first clear herself. Made uneasy by
this condition, Mary, rather than stay in England, would have gone to
Spain, or to France, or would even have gone back to Scotland. But, as
her doing either would have been likely to trouble England afresh, it
was decided that she should be detained here. She first came to
Carlisle, and, after that, was moved about from castle to castle, as
was considered necessary; but England she never left again.

After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of clearing herself,
Mary, advised by Lord Herries, her best friend in England, agreed to
answer the charges against her, if the Scottish noblemen who made them
would attend to maintain them before such English noblemen as Elizabeth
might appoint for that purpose. Accordingly, such an assembly, under
the name of a conference, met, first at York, and afterwards at Hampton
Court. In its presence Lord Lennox, Darnley’s father, openly charged
Mary with the murder of his son; and whatever Mary’s friends may now
say or write in her behalf, there is no doubt that, when her brother
Murray produced against her a casket containing certain guilty letters
and verses which he stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, she
withdrew from the inquiry. Consequently, it is to be supposed that she
was then considered guilty by those who had the best opportunities of
judging of the truth, and that the feeling which afterwards arose in
her behalf was a very generous but not a very reasonable one.

However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honourable but rather weak nobleman,
partly because Mary was captivating, partly because he was ambitious,
partly because he was over-persuaded by artful plotters against
Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea that he would like to marry the
Queen of Scots—though he was a little frightened, too, by the letters
in the casket. This idea being secretly encouraged by some of the
noblemen of Elizabeth’s court, and even by the favourite Earl of
Leicester (because it was objected to by other favourites who were his
rivals), Mary expressed her approval of it, and the King of France and
the King of Spain are supposed to have done the same. It was not so
quietly planned, though, but that it came to Elizabeth’s ears, who
warned the Duke ‘to be careful what sort of pillow he was going to lay
his head upon.’ He made a humble reply at the time; but turned sulky
soon afterwards, and, being considered dangerous, was sent to the
Tower.

Thus, from the moment of Mary’s coming to England she began to be the
centre of plots and miseries.

A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of these, and it was
only checked by many executions and much bloodshed. It was followed by
a great conspiracy of the Pope and some of the Catholic sovereigns of
Europe to depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne, and restore the
unreformed religion. It is almost impossible to doubt that Mary knew
and approved of this; and the Pope himself was so hot in the matter
that he issued a bull, in which he openly called Elizabeth the
‘pretended Queen’ of England, excommunicated her, and excommunicated
all her subjects who should continue to obey her. A copy of this
miserable paper got into London, and was found one morning publicly
posted on the Bishop of London’s gate. A great hue and cry being
raised, another copy was found in the chamber of a student of Lincoln’s
Inn, who confessed, being put upon the rack, that he had received it
from one John Felton, a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames,
near Southwark. This John Felton, being put upon the rack too,
confessed that he had posted the placard on the Bishop’s gate. For this
offence he was, within four days, taken to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and
there hanged and quartered. As to the Pope’s bull, the people by the
reformation having thrown off the Pope, did not care much, you may
suppose, for the Pope’s throwing off them. It was a mere dirty piece of
paper, and not half so powerful as a street ballad.

On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, the poor Duke of
Norfolk was released. It would have been well for him if he had kept
away from the Tower evermore, and from the snares that had taken him
there. But, even while he was in that dismal place he corresponded with
Mary, and as soon as he was out of it, he began to plot again. Being
discovered in correspondence with the Pope, with a view to a rising in
England which should force Elizabeth to consent to his marriage with
Mary and to repeal the laws against the Catholics, he was re-committed
to the Tower and brought to trial. He was found guilty by the unanimous
verdict of the Lords who tried him, and was sentenced to the block.

It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of time, and between
opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth really was a humane woman, or
desired to appear so, or was fearful of shedding the blood of people of
great name who were popular in the country. Twice she commanded and
countermanded the execution of this Duke, and it did not take place
until five months after his trial. The scaffold was erected on Tower
Hill, and there he died like a brave man. He refused to have his eyes
bandaged, saying that he was not at all afraid of death; and he
admitted the justice of his sentence, and was much regretted by the
people.

Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time from disproving her
guilt, she was very careful never to do anything that would admit it.
All such proposals as were made to her by Elizabeth for her release,
required that admission in some form or other, and therefore came to
nothing. Moreover, both women being artful and treacherous, and neither
ever trusting the other, it was not likely that they could ever make an
agreement. So, the Parliament, aggravated by what the Pope had done,
made new and strong laws against the spreading of the Catholic religion
in England, and declared it treason in any one to say that the Queen
and her successors were not the lawful sovereigns of England. It would
have done more than this, but for Elizabeth’s moderation.

Since the Reformation, there had come to be three great sects of
religious people—or people who called themselves so—in England; that is
to say, those who belonged to the Reformed Church, those who belonged
to the Unreformed Church, and those who were called the Puritans,
because they said that they wanted to have everything very pure and
plain in all the Church service. These last were for the most part an
uncomfortable people, who thought it highly meritorious to dress in a
hideous manner, talk through their noses, and oppose all harmless
enjoyments. But they were powerful too, and very much in earnest, and
they were one and all the determined enemies of the Queen of Scots. The
Protestant feeling in England was further strengthened by the
tremendous cruelties to which Protestants were exposed in France and in
the Netherlands. Scores of thousands of them were put to death in those
countries with every cruelty that can be imagined, and at last, in the
autumn of the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, one of
the greatest barbarities ever committed in the world took place at
Paris.

It is called in history, The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, because it
took place on Saint Bartholomew’s Eve. The day fell on Saturday the
twenty-third of August. On that day all the great leaders of the
Protestants (who were there called Huguenots) were assembled together,
for the purpose, as was represented to them, of doing honour to the
marriage of their chief, the young King of Navarre, with the sister of
Charles the Ninth: a miserable young King who then occupied the French
throne. This dull creature was made to believe by his mother and other
fierce Catholics about him that the Huguenots meant to take his life;
and he was persuaded to give secret orders that, on the tolling of a
great bell, they should be fallen upon by an overpowering force of
armed men, and slaughtered wherever they could be found. When the
appointed hour was close at hand, the stupid wretch, trembling from
head to foot, was taken into a balcony by his mother to see the
atrocious work begun. The moment the bell tolled, the murderers broke
forth. During all that night and the two next days, they broke into the
houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants, men, women,
and children, and flung their bodies into the streets. They were shot
at in the streets as they passed along, and their blood ran down the
gutters. Upwards of ten thousand Protestants were killed in Paris
alone; in all France four or five times that number. To return thanks
to Heaven for these diabolical murders, the Pope and his train actually
went in public procession at Rome, and as if this were not shame enough
for them, they had a medal struck to commemorate the event. But,
however comfortable the wholesale murders were to these high
authorities, they had not that soothing effect upon the doll-King. I am
happy to state that he never knew a moment’s peace afterwards; that he
was continually crying out that he saw the Huguenots covered with blood
and wounds falling dead before him; and that he died within a year,
shrieking and yelling and raving to that degree, that if all the Popes
who had ever lived had been rolled into one, they would not have
afforded His guilty Majesty the slightest consolation.

When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in England, it made a
powerful impression indeed upon the people. If they began to run a
little wild against the Catholics at about this time, this fearful
reason for it, coming so soon after the days of bloody Queen Mary, must
be remembered in their excuse. The Court was not quite so honest as the
people—but perhaps it sometimes is not. It received the French
ambassador, with all the lords and ladies dressed in deep mourning, and
keeping a profound silence. Nevertheless, a proposal of marriage which
he had made to Elizabeth only two days before the eve of Saint
Bartholomew, on behalf of the Duke of Alençon, the French King’s
brother, a boy of seventeen, still went on; while on the other hand, in
her usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied the Huguenots with
money and weapons.

I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine speeches, of which
I have confessed myself to be rather tired, about living and dying a
Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was ‘going’ to be married pretty often. Besides
always having some English favourite or other whom she by turns
encouraged and swore at and knocked about—for the maiden Queen was very
free with her fists—she held this French Duke off and on through
several years. When he at last came over to England, the marriage
articles were actually drawn up, and it was settled that the wedding
should take place in six weeks. The Queen was then so bent upon it,
that she prosecuted a poor Puritan named Stubbs, and a poor bookseller
named Page, for writing and publishing a pamphlet against it. Their
right hands were chopped off for this crime; and poor Stubbs—more loyal
than I should have been myself under the circumstances—immediately
pulled off his hat with his left hand, and cried, ‘God save the Queen!’
Stubbs was cruelly treated; for the marriage never took place after
all, though the Queen pledged herself to the Duke with a ring from her
own finger. He went away, no better than he came, when the courtship
had lasted some ten years altogether; and he died a couple of years
afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to have been really fond
of him. It is not much to her credit, for he was a bad enough member of
a bad family.

To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of priests, who were
very busy in England, and who were much dreaded. These were the Jesuits
(who were everywhere in all sorts of disguises), and the Seminary
Priests. The people had a great horror of the first, because they were
known to have taught that murder was lawful if it were done with an
object of which they approved; and they had a great horror of the
second, because they came to teach the old religion, and to be the
successors of ‘Queen Mary’s priests,’ as those yet lingering in England
were called, when they should die out. The severest laws were made
against them, and were most unmercifully executed. Those who sheltered
them in their houses often suffered heavily for what was an act of
humanity; and the rack, that cruel torture which tore men’s limbs
asunder, was constantly kept going. What these unhappy men confessed,
or what was ever confessed by any one under that agony, must always be
received with great doubt, as it is certain that people have frequently
owned to the most absurd and impossible crimes to escape such dreadful
suffering. But I cannot doubt it to have been proved by papers, that
there were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and with France, and
with Scotland, and with Spain, for the destruction of Queen Elizabeth,
for the placing of Mary on the throne, and for the revival of the old
religion.

If the English people were too ready to believe in plots, there were,
as I have said, good reasons for it. When the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew was yet fresh in their recollection, a great Protestant
Dutch hero, the Prince of Orange, was shot by an assassin, who
confessed that he had been kept and trained for the purpose in a
college of Jesuits. The Dutch, in this surprise and distress, offered
to make Elizabeth their sovereign, but she declined the honour, and
sent them a small army instead, under the command of the Earl of
Leicester, who, although a capital Court favourite, was not much of a
general. He did so little in Holland, that his campaign there would
probably have been forgotten, but for its occasioning the death of one
of the best writers, the best knights, and the best gentlemen, of that
or any age. This was Sir Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a musket
ball in the thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, after having had his own
killed under him. He had to ride back wounded, a long distance, and was
very faint with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for which
he had eagerly asked, was handed to him. But he was so good and gentle
even then, that seeing a poor badly wounded common soldier lying on the
ground, looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, ‘Thy necessity
is greater than mine,’ and gave it up to him. This touching action of a
noble heart is perhaps as well known as any incident in history—is as
famous far and wide as the blood-stained Tower of London, with its axe,
and block, and murders out of number. So delightful is an act of true
humanity, and so glad are mankind to remember it.

At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every day. I suppose
the people never did live under such continual terrors as those by
which they were possessed now, of Catholic risings, and burnings, and
poisonings, and I don’t know what. Still, we must always remember that
they lived near and close to awful realities of that kind, and that
with their experience it was not difficult to believe in any enormity.
The government had the same fear, and did not take the best means of
discovering the truth—for, besides torturing the suspected, it employed
paid spies, who will always lie for their own profit. It even made some
of the conspiracies it brought to light, by sending false letters to
disaffected people, inviting them to join in pretended plots, which
they too readily did.

But, one great real plot was at length discovered, and it ended the
career of Mary, Queen of Scots. A seminary priest named Ballard, and a
Spanish soldier named Savage, set on and encouraged by certain French
priests, imparted a design to one Antony Babington—a gentleman of
fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for some time a secret agent of
Mary’s—for murdering the Queen. Babington then confided the scheme to
some other Catholic gentlemen who were his friends, and they joined in
it heartily. They were vain, weak-headed young men, ridiculously
confident, and preposterously proud of their plan; for they got a
gimcrack painting made, of the six choice spirits who were to murder
Elizabeth, with Babington in an attitude for the centre figure. Two of
their number, however, one of whom was a priest, kept Elizabeth’s
wisest minister, Sir Francis Walsingham, acquainted with the whole
project from the first. The conspirators were completely deceived to
the final point, when Babington gave Savage, because he was shabby, a
ring from his finger, and some money from his purse, wherewith to buy
himself new clothes in which to kill the Queen. Walsingham, having then
full evidence against the whole band, and two letters of Mary’s
besides, resolved to seize them. Suspecting something wrong, they stole
out of the city, one by one, and hid themselves in St. John’s Wood, and
other places which really were hiding places then; but they were all
taken, and all executed. When they were seized, a gentleman was sent
from Court to inform Mary of the fact, and of her being involved in the
discovery. Her friends have complained that she was kept in very hard
and severe custody. It does not appear very likely, for she was going
out a hunting that very morning.

Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one in France who had good
information of what was secretly doing, that in holding Mary alive, she
held ‘the wolf who would devour her.’ The Bishop of London had, more
lately, given the Queen’s favourite minister the advice in writing,
‘forthwith to cut off the Scottish Queen’s head.’ The question now was,
what to do with her? The Earl of Leicester wrote a little note home
from Holland, recommending that she should be quietly poisoned; that
noble favourite having accustomed his mind, it is possible, to remedies
of that nature. His black advice, however, was disregarded, and she was
brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire, before a
tribunal of forty, composed of both religions. There, and in the Star
Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended
herself with great ability, but could only deny the confessions that
had been made by Babington and others; could only call her own letters,
produced against her by her own secretaries, forgeries; and, in short,
could only deny everything. She was found guilty, and declared to have
incurred the penalty of death. The Parliament met, approved the
sentence, and prayed the Queen to have it executed. The Queen replied
that she requested them to consider whether no means could be found of
saving Mary’s life without endangering her own. The Parliament
rejoined, No; and the citizens illuminated their houses and lighted
bonfires, in token of their joy that all these plots and troubles were
to be ended by the death of the Queen of Scots.

[Illustration: Mary Queen of Scots Reading the death warrant]

She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a letter to the
Queen of England, making three entreaties; first, that she might be
buried in France; secondly, that she might not be executed in secret,
but before her servants and some others; thirdly, that after her death,
her servants should not be molested, but should be suffered to go home
with the legacies she left them. It was an affecting letter, and
Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent no answer. Then came a special
ambassador from France, and another from Scotland, to intercede for
Mary’s life; and then the nation began to clamour, more and more, for
her death.

What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, can never be
known now; but I strongly suspect her of only wishing one thing more
than Mary’s death, and that was to keep free of the blame of it. On the
first of February, one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, Lord
Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the execution, the Queen sent
to the secretary Davison to bring it to her, that she might sign it:
which she did. Next day, when Davison told her it was sealed, she
angrily asked him why such haste was necessary? Next day but one, she
joked about it, and swore a little. Again, next day but one, she seemed
to complain that it was not yet done, but still she would not be plain
with those about her. So, on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and
Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, came with the warrant
to Fotheringay, to tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for death.

When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary made a frugal supper,
drank to her servants, read over her will, went to bed, slept for some
hours, and then arose and passed the remainder of the night saying
prayers. In the morning she dressed herself in her best clothes; and,
at eight o’clock when the sheriff came for her to her chapel, took
leave of her servants who were there assembled praying with her, and
went down-stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the
other. Two of her women and four of her men were allowed to be present
in the hall; where a low scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was
erected and covered with black; and where the executioner from the
Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed in black velvet. The hall was
full of people. While the sentence was being read she sat upon a stool;
and, when it was finished, she again denied her guilt, as she had done
before. The Earl of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough, in their
Protestant zeal, made some very unnecessary speeches to her; to which
she replied that she died in the Catholic religion, and they need not
trouble themselves about that matter. When her head and neck were
uncovered by the executioners, she said that she had not been used to
be undressed by such hands, or before so much company. Finally, one of
her women fastened a cloth over her face, and she laid her neck upon
the block, and repeated more than once in Latin, ‘Into thy hands, O
Lord, I commend my spirit!’ Some say her head was struck off in two
blows, some say in three. However that be, when it was held up,
streaming with blood, the real hair beneath the false hair she had long
worn was seen to be as grey as that of a woman of seventy, though she
was at that time only in her forty-sixth year. All her beauty was gone.

But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who cowered under her
dress, frightened, when she went upon the scaffold, and who lay down
beside her headless body when all her earthly sorrows were over.

THIRD PART

On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that the sentence had
been executed on the Queen of Scots, she showed the utmost grief and
rage, drove her favourites from her with violent indignation, and sent
Davison to the Tower; from which place he was only released in the end
by paying an immense fine which completely ruined him. Elizabeth not
only over-acted her part in making these pretences, but most basely
reduced to poverty one of her faithful servants for no other fault than
obeying her commands.

James, King of Scotland, Mary’s son, made a show likewise of being very
angry on the occasion; but he was a pensioner of England to the amount
of five thousand pounds a year, and he had known very little of his
mother, and he possibly regarded her as the murderer of his father, and
he soon took it quietly.

Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater things than
ever had been done yet, to set up the Catholic religion and punish
Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing that he and the Prince of Parma
were making great preparations for this purpose, in order to be
beforehand with them sent out Admiral Drake (a famous navigator, who
had sailed about the world, and had already brought great plunder from
Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where he burnt a hundred vessels full of
stores. This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off the invasion
for a year; but it was none the less formidable for that, amounting to
one hundred and thirty ships, nineteen thousand soldiers, eight
thousand sailors, two thousand slaves, and between two and three
thousand great guns. England was not idle in making ready to resist
this great force. All the men between sixteen years old and sixty, were
trained and drilled; the national fleet of ships (in number only
thirty-four at first) was enlarged by public contributions and by
private ships, fitted out by noblemen; the city of London, of its own
accord, furnished double the number of ships and men that it was
required to provide; and, if ever the national spirit was up in
England, it was up all through the country to resist the Spaniards.
Some of the Queen’s advisers were for seizing the principal English
Catholics, and putting them to death; but the Queen—who, to her honour,
used to say, that she would never believe any ill of her subjects,
which a parent would not believe of her own children—rejected the
advice, and only confined a few of those who were the most suspected,
in the fens in Lincolnshire. The great body of Catholics deserved this
confidence; for they behaved most loyally, nobly, and bravely.

So, with all England firing up like one strong, angry man, and with
both sides of the Thames fortified, and with the soldiers under arms,
and with the sailors in their ships, the country waited for the coming
of the proud Spanish fleet, which was called The Invincible Armada. The
Queen herself, riding in armour on a white horse, and the Earl of Essex
and the Earl of Leicester holding her bridal rein, made a brave speech
to the troops at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravesend, which was received
with such enthusiasm as is seldom known. Then came the Spanish Armada
into the English Channel, sailing along in the form of a half moon, of
such great size that it was seven miles broad. But the English were
quickly upon it, and woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped a
little out of the half moon, for the English took them instantly! And
it soon appeared that the great Armada was anything but invincible, for
on a summer night, bold Drake sent eight blazing fire-ships right into
the midst of it. In terrible consternation the Spaniards tried to get
out to sea, and so became dispersed; the English pursued them at a
great advantage; a storm came on, and drove the Spaniards among rocks
and shoals; and the swift end of the Invincible fleet was, that it lost
thirty great ships and ten thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced,
sailed home again. Being afraid to go by the English Channel, it sailed
all round Scotland and Ireland; some of the ships getting cast away on
the latter coast in bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages,
plundered those vessels and killed their crews. So ended this great
attempt to invade and conquer England. And I think it will be a long
time before any other invincible fleet coming to England with the same
object, will fare much better than the Spanish Armada.

Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of English bravery,
he was so little the wiser for it, as still to entertain his old
designs, and even to conceive the absurd idea of placing his daughter
on the English throne. But the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir
Thomas Howard, and some other distinguished leaders, put to sea from
Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz once more, obtained a complete
victory over the shipping assembled there, and got possession of the
town. In obedience to the Queen’s express instructions, they behaved
with great humanity; and the principal loss of the Spaniards was a vast
sum of money which they had to pay for ransom. This was one of many
gallant achievements on the sea, effected in this reign. Sir Walter
Raleigh himself, after marrying a maid of honour and giving offence to
the Maiden Queen thereby, had already sailed to South America in search
of gold.

The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir Thomas Walsingham,
whom Lord Burleigh was soon to follow. The principal favourite was the
Earl of Essex, a spirited and handsome man, a favourite with the people
too as well as with the Queen, and possessed of many admirable
qualities. It was much debated at Court whether there should be peace
with Spain or no, and he was very urgent for war. He also tried hard to
have his own way in the appointment of a deputy to govern in Ireland.
One day, while this question was in dispute, he hastily took offence,
and turned his back upon the Queen; as a gentle reminder of which
impropriety, the Queen gave him a tremendous box on the ear, and told
him to go to the devil. He went home instead, and did not reappear at
Court for half a year or so, when he and the Queen were reconciled,
though never (as some suppose) thoroughly.

From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that of the Queen
seemed to be blended together. The Irish were still perpetually
quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and he went over to Ireland
as Lord Lieutenant, to the great joy of his enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh
among the rest), who were glad to have so dangerous a rival far off.
Not being by any means successful there, and knowing that his enemies
would take advantage of that circumstance to injure him with the Queen,
he came home again, though against her orders. The Queen being taken by
surprise when he appeared before her, gave him her hand to kiss, and he
was overjoyed—though it was not a very lovely hand by this time—but in
the course of the same day she ordered him to confine himself to his
room, and two or three days afterwards had him taken into custody. With
the same sort of caprice—and as capricious an old woman she now was, as
ever wore a crown or a head either—she sent him broth from her own
table on his falling ill from anxiety, and cried about him.

He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in his books, and he
did so for a time; not the least happy time, I dare say, of his life.
But it happened unfortunately for him, that he held a monopoly in sweet
wines: which means that nobody could sell them without purchasing his
permission. This right, which was only for a term, expiring, he applied
to have it renewed. The Queen refused, with the rather strong
observation—but she _did_ make strong observations—that an unruly beast
must be stinted in his food. Upon this, the angry Earl, who had been
already deprived of many offices, thought himself in danger of complete
ruin, and turned against the Queen, whom he called a vain old woman who
had grown as crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. These
uncomplimentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately snapped
up and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put in a better tempter,
you may believe. The same Court ladies, when they had beautiful dark
hair of their own, used to wear false red hair, to be like the Queen.
So they were not very high-spirited ladies, however high in rank.

The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends of his who used
to meet at Lord Southampton’s house, was to obtain possession of the
Queen, and oblige her by force to dismiss her ministers and change her
favourites. On Saturday the seventh of February, one thousand six
hundred and one, the council suspecting this, summoned the Earl to come
before them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it was then settled
among his friends, that as the next day would be Sunday, when many of
the citizens usually assembled at the Cross by St. Paul’s Cathedral, he
should make one bold effort to induce them to rise and follow him to
the Palace.

So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of adherents started out
of his house—Essex House by the Strand, with steps to the river—having
first shut up in it, as prisoners, some members of the council who came
to examine him—and hurried into the City with the Earl at their head
crying out ‘For the Queen! For the Queen! A plot is laid for my life!’
No one heeded them, however, and when they came to St. Paul’s there
were no citizens there. In the meantime the prisoners at Essex House
had been released by one of the Earl’s own friends; he had been
promptly proclaimed a traitor in the City itself; and the streets were
barricaded with carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back to his
house by water, with difficulty, and after an attempt to defend his
house against the troops and cannon by which it was soon surrounded,
gave himself up that night. He was brought to trial on the nineteenth,
and found guilty; on the twenty-fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill,
where he died, at thirty-four years old, both courageously and
penitently. His step-father suffered with him. His enemy, Sir Walter
Raleigh, stood near the scaffold all the time—but not so near it as we
shall see him stand, before we finish his history.

In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of
Scots, the Queen had commanded, and countermanded, and again commanded,
the execution. It is probable that the death of her young and gallant
favourite in the prime of his good qualities, was never off her mind
afterwards, but she held out, the same vain, obstinate and capricious
woman, for another year. Then she danced before her Court on a state
occasion—and cut, I should think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so
in an immense ruff, stomacher and wig, at seventy years old. For
another year still, she held out, but, without any more dancing, and as
a moody, sorrowful, broken creature. At last, on the tenth of March,
one thousand six hundred and three, having been ill of a very bad cold,
and made worse by the death of the Countess of Nottingham who was her
intimate friend, she fell into a stupor and was supposed to be dead.
She recovered her consciousness, however, and then nothing would induce
her to go to bed; for she said that she knew that if she did, she
should never get up again. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on
the floor, without any food, until the Lord Admiral got her into bed at
last, partly by persuasions and partly by main force. When they asked
her who should succeed her, she replied that her seat had been the seat
of Kings, and that she would have for her successor, ‘No rascal’s son,
but a King’s.’ Upon this, the lords present stared at one another, and
took the liberty of asking whom she meant; to which she replied, ‘Whom
should I mean, but our cousin of Scotland!’ This was on the
twenty-third of March. They asked her once again that day, after she
was speechless, whether she was still in the same mind? She struggled
up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in the form of a crown,
as the only reply she could make. At three o’clock next morning, she
very quietly died, in the forty-fifth year of her reign.

That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for ever memorable by
the distinguished men who flourished in it. Apart from the great
voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, whom it produced, the names of
Bacon, Spenser, and Shakespeare, will always be remembered with pride
and veneration by the civilised world, and will always impart (though
with no great reason, perhaps) some portion of their lustre to the name
of Elizabeth herself. It was a great reign for discovery, for commerce,
and for English enterprise and spirit in general. It was a great reign
for the Protestant religion and for the Reformation which made England
free. The Queen was very popular, and in her progresses, or journeys
about her dominions, was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I
think the truth is, that she was not half so good as she has been made
out, and not half so bad as she has been made out. She had her fine
qualities, but she was coarse, capricious, and treacherous, and had all
the faults of an excessively vain young woman long after she was an old
one. On the whole, she had a great deal too much of her father in her,
to please me.

Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the course of these
five-and-forty years in the general manner of living; but
cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were still the national
amusements; and a coach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and
cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen herself, on
many high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion behind the Lord
Chancellor.




CHAPTER XXXII
ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST


‘Our cousin of Scotland’ was ugly, awkward, and shuffling both in mind
and person. His tongue was much too large for his mouth, his legs were
much too weak for his body, and his dull goggle-eyes stared and rolled
like an idiot’s. He was cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken,
greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearer, and the most conceited man on
earth. His figure—what is commonly called rickety from his
birth—presented a most ridiculous appearance, dressed in thick padded
clothes, as a safeguard against being stabbed (of which he lived in
continual fear), of a grass-green colour from head to foot, with a
hunting-horn dangling at his side instead of a sword, and his hat and
feather sticking over one eye, or hanging on the back of his head, as
he happened to toss it on. He used to loll on the necks of his
favourite courtiers, and slobber their faces, and kiss and pinch their
cheeks; and the greatest favourite he ever had, used to sign himself in
his letters to his royal master, His Majesty’s ‘dog and slave,’ and
used to address his majesty as ‘his Sowship.’ His majesty was the worst
rider ever seen, and thought himself the best. He was one of the most
impertinent talkers (in the broadest Scotch) ever heard, and boasted of
being unanswerable in all manner of argument. He wrote some of the most
wearisome treatises ever read—among others, a book upon witchcraft, in
which he was a devout believer—and thought himself a prodigy of
authorship. He thought, and wrote, and said, that a king had a right to
make and unmake what laws he pleased, and ought to be accountable to
nobody on earth. This is the plain, true character of the personage
whom the greatest men about the court praised and flattered to that
degree, that I doubt if there be anything much more shameful in the
annals of human nature.

He came to the English throne with great ease. The miseries of a
disputed succession had been felt so long, and so dreadfully, that he
was proclaimed within a few hours of Elizabeth’s death, and was
accepted by the nation, even without being asked to give any pledge
that he would govern well, or that he would redress crying grievances.
He took a month to come from Edinburgh to London; and, by way of
exercising his new power, hanged a pickpocket on the journey without
any trial, and knighted everybody he could lay hold of. He made two
hundred knights before he got to his palace in London, and seven
hundred before he had been in it three months. He also shovelled
sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords—and there was a pretty
large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them, you may believe.

His Sowship’s prime Minister, Cecil (for I cannot do better than call
his majesty what his favourite called him), was the enemy of Sir Walter
Raleigh, and also of Sir Walter’s political friend, Lord Cobham; and
his Sowship’s first trouble was a plot originated by these two, and
entered into by some others, with the old object of seizing the King
and keeping him in imprisonment until he should change his ministers.
There were Catholic priests in the plot, and there were Puritan
noblemen too; for, although the Catholics and Puritans were strongly
opposed to each other, they united at this time against his Sowship,
because they knew that he had a design against both, after pretending
to be friendly to each; this design being to have only one high and
convenient form of the Protestant religion, which everybody should be
bound to belong to, whether they liked it or not. This plot was mixed
up with another, which may or may not have had some reference to
placing on the throne, at some time, the Lady Arabella Stuart; whose
misfortune it was, to be the daughter of the younger brother of his
Sowship’s father, but who was quite innocent of any part in the scheme.
Sir Walter Raleigh was accused on the confession of Lord Cobham—a
miserable creature, who said one thing at one time, and another thing
at another time, and could be relied upon in nothing. The trial of Sir
Walter Raleigh lasted from eight in the morning until nearly midnight;
he defended himself with such eloquence, genius, and spirit against all
accusations, and against the insults of Coke, the Attorney-General—who,
according to the custom of the time, foully abused him—that those who
went there detesting the prisoner, came away admiring him, and
declaring that anything so wonderful and so captivating was never
heard. He was found guilty, nevertheless, and sentenced to death.
Execution was deferred, and he was taken to the Tower. The two Catholic
priests, less fortunate, were executed with the usual atrocity; and
Lord Cobham and two others were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship
thought it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by
pardoning these three at the very block; but, blundering, and bungling,
as usual, he had very nearly overreached himself. For, the messenger on
horseback who brought the pardon, came so late, that he was pushed to
the outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout and roar out what he
came for. The miserable Cobham did not gain much by being spared that
day. He lived, both as a prisoner and a beggar, utterly despised, and
miserably poor, for thirteen years, and then died in an old outhouse
belonging to one of his former servants.

This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up in the
Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puritans on their
presenting a petition to him, and had it all his own way—not so very
wonderful, as he would talk continually, and would not hear anybody
else—and filled the Bishops with admiration. It was comfortably settled
that there was to be only one form of religion, and that all men were
to think exactly alike. But, although this was arranged two centuries
and a half ago, and although the arrangement was supported by much
fining and imprisonment, I do not find that it is quite successful,
even yet.

His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of himself as a king,
had a very low opinion of Parliament as a power that audaciously wanted
to control him. When he called his first Parliament after he had been
king a year, he accordingly thought he would take pretty high ground
with them, and told them that he commanded them ‘as an absolute king.’
The Parliament thought those strong words, and saw the necessity of
upholding their authority. His Sowship had three children: Prince
Henry, Prince Charles, and the Princess Elizabeth. It would have been
well for one of these, and we shall too soon see which, if he had
learnt a little wisdom concerning Parliaments from his father’s
obstinacy.

Now, the people still labouring under their old dread of the Catholic
religion, this Parliament revived and strengthened the severe laws
against it. And this so angered Robert Catesby, a restless Catholic
gentleman of an old family, that he formed one of the most desperate
and terrible designs ever conceived in the mind of man; no less a
scheme than the Gunpowder Plot.

His object was, when the King, lords, and commons, should be assembled
at the next opening of Parliament, to blow them up, one and all, with a
great mine of gunpowder. The first person to whom he confided this
horrible idea was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire gentleman who had
served in the army abroad, and had been secretly employed in Catholic
projects. While Winter was yet undecided, and when he had gone over to
the Netherlands, to learn from the Spanish Ambassador there whether
there was any hope of Catholics being relieved through the intercession
of the King of Spain with his Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark,
daring man, whom he had known when they were both soldiers abroad, and
whose name was Guido—or Guy—Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, he
proposed it to this man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate
deed, and they two came back to England together. Here, they admitted
two other conspirators; Thomas Percy, related to the Earl of
Northumberland, and John Wright, his brother-in-law. All these met
together in a solitary house in the open fields which were then near
Clement’s Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of London; and when they
had all taken a great oath of secrecy, Catesby told the rest what his
plan was. They then went up-stairs into a garret, and received the
Sacrament from Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said not to have known
actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I think, must have had his
suspicions that there was something desperate afoot.

Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had occasional duties to
perform about the Court, then kept at Whitehall, there would be nothing
suspicious in his living at Westminster. So, having looked well about
him, and having found a house to let, the back of which joined the
Parliament House, he hired it of a person named Ferris, for the purpose
of undermining the wall. Having got possession of this house, the
conspirators hired another on the Lambeth side of the Thames, which
they used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder, and other combustible
matters. These were to be removed at night (and afterwards were
removed), bit by bit, to the house at Westminster; and, that there
might be some trusty person to keep watch over the Lambeth stores, they
admitted another conspirator, by name Robert Kay, a very poor Catholic
gentleman.

All these arrangements had been made some months, and it was a dark,
wintry, December night, when the conspirators, who had been in the
meantime dispersed to avoid observation, met in the house at
Westminster, and began to dig. They had laid in a good stock of
eatables, to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug with great
ardour. But, the wall being tremendously thick, and the work very
severe, they took into their plot Christopher Wright, a younger brother
of John Wright, that they might have a new pair of hands to help. And
Christopher Wright fell to like a fresh man, and they dug and dug by
night and by day, and Fawkes stood sentinel all the time. And if any
man’s heart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes said, ‘Gentlemen, we have
abundance of powder and shot here, and there is no fear of our being
taken alive, even if discovered.’ The same Fawkes, who, in the capacity
of sentinel, was always prowling about, soon picked up the intelligence
that the King had prorogued the Parliament again, from the seventh of
February, the day first fixed upon, until the third of October. When
the conspirators knew this, they agreed to separate until after the
Christmas holidays, and to take no notice of each other in the
meanwhile, and never to write letters to one another on any account.
So, the house in Westminster was shut up again, and I suppose the
neighbours thought that those strange-looking men who lived there so
gloomily, and went out so seldom, were gone away to have a merry
Christmas somewhere.

It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and five, when
Catesby met his fellow-conspirators again at this Westminster house. He
had now admitted three more; John Grant, a Warwickshire gentleman of a
melancholy temper, who lived in a doleful house near
Stratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning wall all round it, and a deep
moat; Robert Winter, eldest brother of Thomas; and Catesby’s own
servant, Thomas Bates, who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicion of
what his master was about. These three had all suffered more or less
for their religion in Elizabeth’s time. And now, they all began to dig
again, and they dug and dug by night and by day.

They found it dismal work alone there, underground, with such a fearful
secret on their minds, and so many murders before them. They were
filled with wild fancies. Sometimes, they thought they heard a great
bell tolling, deep down in the earth under the Parliament House;
sometimes, they thought they heard low voices muttering about the
Gunpowder Plot; once in the morning, they really did hear a great
rumbling noise over their heads, as they dug and sweated in their mine.
Every man stopped and looked aghast at his neighbour, wondering what
had happened, when that bold prowler, Fawkes, who had been out to look,
came in and told them that it was only a dealer in coals who had
occupied a cellar under the Parliament House, removing his stock in
trade to some other place. Upon this, the conspirators, who with all
their digging and digging had not yet dug through the tremendously
thick wall, changed their plan; hired that cellar, which was directly
under the House of Lords; put six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in
it, and covered them over with fagots and coals. Then they all
dispersed again till September, when the following new conspirators
were admitted; Sir Edward Baynham, of Gloucestershire; Sir Everard
Digby, of Rutlandshire; Ambrose Rookwood, of Suffolk; Francis Tresham,
of Northamptonshire. Most of these were rich, and were to assist the
plot, some with money and some with horses on which the conspirators
were to ride through the country and rouse the Catholics after the
Parliament should be blown into air.

Parliament being again prorogued from the third of October to the fifth
of November, and the conspirators being uneasy lest their design should
have been found out, Thomas Winter said he would go up into the House
of Lords on the day of the prorogation, and see how matters looked.
Nothing could be better. The unconscious Commissioners were walking
about and talking to one another, just over the six-and-thirty barrels
of gunpowder. He came back and told the rest so, and they went on with
their preparations. They hired a ship, and kept it ready in the Thames,
in which Fawkes was to sail for Flanders after firing with a slow match
the train that was to explode the powder. A number of Catholic
gentlemen not in the secret, were invited, on pretence of a hunting
party, to meet Sir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the fatal day, that
they might be ready to act together. And now all was ready.

But, now, the great wickedness and danger which had been all along at
the bottom of this wicked plot, began to show itself. As the fifth of
November drew near, most of the conspirators, remembering that they had
friends and relations who would be in the House of Lords that day, felt
some natural relenting, and a wish to warn them to keep away. They were
not much comforted by Catesby’s declaring that in such a cause he would
blow up his own son. Lord Mounteagle, Tresham’s brother-in-law, was
certain to be in the house; and when Tresham found that he could not
prevail upon the rest to devise any means of sparing their friends, he
wrote a mysterious letter to this lord and left it at his lodging in
the dusk, urging him to keep away from the opening of Parliament,
‘since God and man had concurred to punish the wickedness of the
times.’ It contained the words ‘that the Parliament should receive a
terrible blow, and yet should not see who hurt them.’ And it added,
‘the danger is past, as soon as you have burnt the letter.’

The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship, by a direct
miracle from Heaven, found out what this letter meant. The truth is,
that they were not long (as few men would be) in finding out for
themselves; and it was decided to let the conspirators alone, until the
very day before the opening of Parliament. That the conspirators had
their fears, is certain; for, Tresham himself said before them all,
that they were every one dead men; and, although even he did not take
flight, there is reason to suppose that he had warned other persons
besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they were all firm; and Fawkes, who
was a man of iron, went down every day and night to keep watch in the
cellar as usual. He was there about two in the afternoon of the fourth,
when the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Mounteagle threw open the door and
looked in. ‘Who are you, friend?’ said they. ‘Why,’ said Fawkes, ‘I am
Mr. Percy’s servant, and am looking after his store of fuel here.’
‘Your master has laid in a pretty good store,’ they returned, and shut
the door, and went away. Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other
conspirators to tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut himself
up in the dark, black cellar again, where he heard the bell go twelve
o’clock and usher in the fifth of November. About two hours afterwards,
he slowly opened the door, and came out to look about him, in his old
prowling way. He was instantly seized and bound, by a party of soldiers
under Sir Thomas Knevett. He had a watch upon him, some touchwood, some
tinder, some slow matches; and there was a dark lantern with a candle
in it, lighted, behind the door. He had his boots and spurs on—to ride
to the ship, I suppose—and it was well for the soldiers that they took
him so suddenly. If they had left him but a moment’s time to light a
match, he certainly would have tossed it in among the powder, and blown
up himself and them.

They took him to the King’s bed-chamber first of all, and there the
King (causing him to be held very tight, and keeping a good way off),
asked him how he could have the heart to intend to destroy so many
innocent people? ‘Because,’ said Guy Fawkes, ‘desperate diseases need
desperate remedies.’ To a little Scotch favourite, with a face like a
terrier, who asked him (with no particular wisdom) why he had collected
so much gunpowder, he replied, because he had meant to blow Scotchmen
back to Scotland, and it would take a deal of powder to do that. Next
day he was carried to the Tower, but would make no confession. Even
after being horribly tortured, he confessed nothing that the Government
did not already know; though he must have been in a fearful state—as
his signature, still preserved, in contrast with his natural
hand-writing before he was put upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully
shows. Bates, a very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do
with the plot, and probably, under the torture, would as readily have
said anything. Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, made
confessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that was heavy upon
him. Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his own horses all the way
to Dunchurch, did not mount to escape until the middle of the day, when
the news of the plot was all over London. On the road, he came up with
the two Wrights, Catesby, and Percy; and they all galloped together
into Northamptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch, where they found the
proposed party assembled. Finding, however, that there had been a plot,
and that it had been discovered, the party disappeared in the course of
the night, and left them alone with Sir Everard Digby. Away they all
rode again, through Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to a house called
Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire. They tried to raise the
Catholics on their way, but were indignantly driven off by them. All
this time they were hotly pursued by the sheriff of Worcester, and a
fast increasing concourse of riders. At last, resolving to defend
themselves at Holbeach, they shut themselves up in the house, and put
some wet powder before the fire to dry. But it blew up, and Catesby was
singed and blackened, and almost killed, and some of the others were
sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die, they resolved to die
there, and with only their swords in their hands appeared at the
windows to be shot at by the sheriff and his assistants. Catesby said
to Thomas Winter, after Thomas had been hit in the right arm which
dropped powerless by his side, ‘Stand by me, Tom, and we will die
together!’—which they did, being shot through the body by two bullets
from one gun. John Wright, and Christopher Wright, and Percy, were also
shot. Rookwood and Digby were taken: the former with a broken arm and a
wound in his body too.

It was the fifteenth of January, before the trial of Guy Fawkes, and
such of the other conspirators as were left alive, came on. They were
all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and quartered: some, in St. Paul’s
Churchyard, on the top of Ludgate-hill; some, before the Parliament
House. A Jesuit priest, named Henry Garnet, to whom the dreadful design
was said to have been communicated, was taken and tried; and two of his
servants, as well as a poor priest who was taken with him, were
tortured without mercy. He himself was not tortured, but was surrounded
in the Tower by tamperers and traitors, and so was made unfairly to
convict himself out of his own mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he
had done all he could to prevent the deed, and that he could not make
public what had been told him in confession—though I am afraid he knew
of the plot in other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after a
manful defence, and the Catholic Church made a saint of him; some rich
and powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with the project, were
fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber; the Catholics, in
general, who had recoiled with horror from the idea of the infernal
contrivance, were unjustly put under more severe laws than before; and
this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot.

SECOND PART

His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown the House of
Commons into the air himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it knew no
bounds all through his reign. When he was hard pressed for money he was
obliged to order it to meet, as he could get no money without it; and
when it asked him first to abolish some of the monopolies in
necessaries of life which were a great grievance to the people, and to
redress other public wrongs, he flew into a rage and got rid of it
again. At one time he wanted it to consent to the Union of England with
Scotland, and quarrelled about that. At another time it wanted him to
put down a most infamous Church abuse, called the High Commission
Court, and he quarrelled with it about that. At another time it
entreated him not to be quite so fond of his archbishops and bishops
who made speeches in his praise too awful to be related, but to have
some little consideration for the poor Puritan clergy who were
persecuted for preaching in their own way, and not according to the
archbishops and bishops; and they quarrelled about that. In short, what
with hating the House of Commons, and pretending not to hate it; and
what with now sending some of its members who opposed him, to Newgate
or to the Tower, and now telling the rest that they must not presume to
make speeches about the public affairs which could not possibly concern
them; and what with cajoling, and bullying, and fighting, and being
frightened; the House of Commons was the plague of his Sowship’s
existence. It was pretty firm, however, in maintaining its rights, and
insisting that the Parliament should make the laws, and not the King by
his own single proclamations (which he tried hard to do); and his
Sowship was so often distressed for money, in consequence, that he sold
every sort of title and public office as if they were merchandise, and
even invented a new dignity called a Baronetcy, which anybody could buy
for a thousand pounds.

These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and his drinking,
and his lying in bed—for he was a great sluggard—occupied his Sowship
pretty well. The rest of his time he chiefly passed in hugging and
slobbering his favourites. The first of these was Sir Philip Herbert,
who had no knowledge whatever, except of dogs, and horses, and hunting,
but whom he soon made Earl of Montgomery. The next, and a much more
famous one, was Robert Carr, or Ker (for it is not certain which was
his right name), who came from the Border country, and whom he soon
made Viscount Rochester, and afterwards, Earl of Somerset. The way in
which his Sowship doted on this handsome young man, is even more odious
to think of, than the way in which the really great men of England
condescended to bow down before him. The favourite’s great friend was a
certain Sir Thomas Overbury, who wrote his love-letters for him, and
assisted him in the duties of his many high places, which his own
ignorance prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomas
having just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wicked
marriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a divorce
from her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in her rage, got
Sir Thomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned him. Then the
favourite and this bad woman were publicly married by the King’s pet
bishop, with as much to-do and rejoicing, as if he had been the best
man, and she the best woman, upon the face of the earth.

But, after a longer sunshine than might have been expected—of seven
years or so, that is to say—another handsome young man started up and
eclipsed the Earl of Somerset. This was George Villiers, the youngest
son of a Leicestershire gentleman: who came to Court with all the Paris
fashions on him, and could dance as well as the best mountebank that
ever was seen. He soon danced himself into the good graces of his
Sowship, and danced the other favourite out of favour. Then, it was all
at once discovered that the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not
deserved all those great promotions and mighty rejoicings, and they
were separately tried for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for
other crimes. But, the King was so afraid of his late favourite’s
publicly telling some disgraceful things he knew of him—which he darkly
threatened to do—that he was even examined with two men standing, one
on either side of him, each with a cloak in his hand, ready to throw it
over his head and stop his mouth if he should break out with what he
had it in his power to tell. So, a very lame affair was purposely made
of the trial, and his punishment was an allowance of four thousand
pounds a year in retirement, while the Countess was pardoned, and
allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated one another by this
time, and lived to revile and torment each other some years.

While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship was making
such an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from year to year,
as is not often seen in any sty, three remarkable deaths took place in
England. The first was that of the Minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of
Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been strong, being
deformed from his birth. He said at last that he had no wish to live;
and no Minister need have had, with his experience of the meanness and
wickedness of those disgraceful times. The second was that of the Lady
Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship mightily, by privately
marrying William Seymour, son of Lord Beauchamp, who was a descendant
of King Henry the Seventh, and who, his Sowship thought, might
consequently increase and strengthen any claim she might one day set up
to the throne. She was separated from her husband (who was put in the
Tower) and thrust into a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in
a man’s dress to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to France,
but unhappily missed her husband, who had escaped too, and was soon
taken. She went raving mad in the miserable Tower, and died there after
four years. The last, and the most important of these three deaths, was
that of Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth year of
his age. He was a promising young prince, and greatly liked; a quiet,
well-conducted youth, of whom two very good things are known: first,
that his father was jealous of him; secondly, that he was the friend of
Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing through all those years in the Tower,
and often said that no man but his father would keep such a bird in
such a cage. On the occasion of the preparations for the marriage of
his sister the Princess Elizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy
marriage it turned out), he came from Richmond, where he had been very
ill, to greet his new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There
he played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though it was very cold
weather, and was seized with an alarming illness, and died within a
fortnight of a putrid fever. For this young prince Sir Walter Raleigh
wrote, in his prison in the Tower, the beginning of a History of the
World: a wonderful instance how little his Sowship could do to confine
a great man’s mind, however long he might imprison his body.

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but who
never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity, may bring me
at once to the end of his sad story. After an imprisonment in the Tower
of twelve long years, he proposed to resume those old sea voyages of
his, and to go to South America in search of gold. His Sowship, divided
between his wish to be on good terms with the Spaniards through whose
territory Sir Walter must pass (he had long had an idea of marrying
Prince Henry to a Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to
get hold of the gold, did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set
Sir Walter free, taking securities for his return; and Sir Walter
fitted out an expedition at his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth of
March, one thousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed away in command
of one of its ships, which he ominously called the Destiny. The
expedition failed; the common men, not finding the gold they had
expected, mutinied; a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and the
Spaniards, who hated him for old successes of his against them; and he
took and burnt a little town called Saint Thomas. For this he was
denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish Ambassador as a pirate; and
returning almost broken-hearted, with his hopes and fortunes shattered,
his company of friends dispersed, and his brave son (who had been one
of them) killed, he was taken—through the treachery of Sir Lewis
Stukely, his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral—and was once
again immured in his prison-home of so many years.

His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting any gold, Sir
Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as many lies and
evasions as the judges and law officers and every other authority in
Church and State habitually practised under such a King. After a great
deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it was declared that he
must die under his former sentence, now fifteen years old. So, on the
twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six hundred and eighteen, he was
shut up in the Gate House at Westminster to pass his late night on
earth, and there he took leave of his good and faithful lady who was
worthy to have lived in better days. At eight o’clock next morning,
after a cheerful breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was
taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold was set up,
and where so many people of high degree were assembled to see him die,
that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him through the crowd.
He behaved most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his mind, it was
that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off; and he solemnly
said that he had had no hand in bringing him to the block, and that he
had shed tears for him when he died. As the morning was very cold, the
Sheriff said, would he come down to a fire for a little space, and warm
himself? But Sir Walter thanked him, and said no, he would rather it
were done at once, for he was ill of fever and ague, and in another
quarter of an hour his shaking fit would come upon him if he were still
alive, and his enemies might then suppose that he trembled for fear.
With that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Christian prayer.
Before he laid his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, and
said, with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine, but
would cure the worst disease. When he was bent down ready for death, he
said to the executioner, finding that he hesitated, ‘What dost thou
fear? Strike, man!’ So, the axe came down and struck his head off, in
the sixty-sixth year of his age.

The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount, he was made Duke
of Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he was made Master of the Horse,
he was made Lord High Admiral—and the Chief Commander of the gallant
English forces that had dispersed the Spanish Armada, was displaced to
make room for him. He had the whole kingdom at his disposal, and his
mother sold all the profits and honours of the State, as if she had
kept a shop. He blazed all over with diamonds and other precious
stones, from his hatband and his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an
ignorant presumptuous, swaggering compound of knave and fool, with
nothing but his beauty and his dancing to recommend him. This is the
gentleman who called himself his Majesty’s dog and slave, and called
his Majesty Your Sowship. His Sowship called him Steenie; it is
supposed, because that was a nickname for Stephen, and because St.
Stephen was generally represented in pictures as a handsome saint.

His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits’-end by his trimming
between the general dislike of the Catholic religion at home, and his
desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as his only means of getting a
rich princess for his son’s wife: a part of whose fortune he might cram
into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles—or as his Sowship called him,
Baby Charles—being now Prince of Wales, the old project of a marriage
with the Spanish King’s daughter had been revived for him; and as she
could not marry a Protestant without leave from the Pope, his Sowship
himself secretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it.
The negotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in
great books, than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is, that
when it had been held off by the Spanish Court for a long time, Baby
Charles and Steenie set off in disguise as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr.
John Smith, to see the Spanish Princess; that Baby Charles pretended to
be desperately in love with her, and jumped off walls to look at her,
and made a considerable fool of himself in a good many ways; that she
was called Princess of Wales and that the whole Spanish Court believed
Baby Charles to be all but dying for her sake, as he expressly told
them he was; that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to England, and
were received with as much rapture as if they had been a blessing to
it; that Baby Charles had actually fallen in love with Henrietta Maria,
the French King’s sister, whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it
a wonderfully fine and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards,
all through; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon as he was
safe and sound at home again, that the Spaniards were great fools to
have believed him.

Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite complained that
the people whom they had deluded were dishonest. They made such
misrepresentations of the treachery of the Spaniards in this business
of the Spanish match, that the English nation became eager for a war
with them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the idea of his
Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament granted money for the
beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spain were publicly
declared to be at an end. The Spanish ambassador in London—probably
with the help of the fallen favourite, the Earl of Somerset—being
unable to obtain speech with his Sowship, slipped a paper into his
hand, declaring that he was a prisoner in his own house, and was
entirely governed by Buckingham and his creatures. The first effect of
this letter was that his Sowship began to cry and whine, and took Baby
Charles away from Steenie, and went down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts
of nonsense. The end of it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and
slave, and said he was quite satisfied.

He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited power to
settle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish marriage; and he now,
with a view to the French one, signed a treaty that all Roman Catholics
in England should exercise their religion freely, and should never be
required to take any oath contrary thereto. In return for this, and for
other concessions much less to be defended, Henrietta Maria was to
become the Prince’s wife, and was to bring him a fortune of eight
hundred thousand crowns.

His Sowship’s eyes were getting red with eagerly looking for the money,
when the end of a gluttonous life came upon him; and, after a
fortnight’s illness, on Sunday the twenty-seventh of March, one
thousand six hundred and twenty-five, he died. He had reigned
twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing more
abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished on this
King, and the vice and corruption that such a barefaced habit of lying
produced in his court. It is much to be doubted whether one man of
honour, and not utterly self-disgraced, kept his place near James the
First. Lord Bacon, that able and wise philosopher, as the First Judge
in the Kingdom in this reign, became a public spectacle of dishonesty
and corruption; and in his base flattery of his Sowship, and in his
crawling servility to his dog and slave, disgraced himself even more.
But, a creature like his Sowship set upon a throne is like the Plague,
and everybody receives infection from him.




CHAPTER XXXIII
ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST


Baby Charles became King Charles the First, in the twenty-fifth year of
his age. Unlike his father, he was usually amiable in his private
character, and grave and dignified in his bearing; but, like his
father, he had monstrously exaggerated notions of the rights of a king,
and was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could have been
relied upon, his history might have had a different end.

His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, Buckingham, to
bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his Queen; upon which occasion
Buckingham—with his usual audacity—made love to the young Queen of
Austria, and was very indignant indeed with Cardinal Richelieu, the
French Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The English people were
very well disposed to like their new Queen, and to receive her with
great favour when she came among them as a stranger. But, she held the
Protestant religion in great dislike, and brought over a crowd of
unpleasant priests, who made her do some very ridiculous things, and
forced themselves upon the public notice in many disagreeable ways.
Hence, the people soon came to dislike her, and she soon came to
dislike them; and she did so much all through this reign in setting the
King (who was dotingly fond of her) against his subjects, that it would
have been better for him if she had never been born.

Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First—of his own
determination to be a high and mighty King not to be called to account
by anybody, and urged on by his Queen besides—deliberately set himself
to put his Parliament down and to put himself up. You are also to
understand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in itself
to have ruined any king) he never took a straight course, but always
took a crooked one.

He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the House of Commons
nor the people were quite clear as to the justice of that war, now that
they began to think a little more about the story of the Spanish match.
But the King rushed into it hotly, raised money by illegal means to
meet its expenses, and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz, in the
very first year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz had been made in
the hope of plunder, but as it was not successful, it was necessary to
get a grant of money from the Parliament; and when they met, in no very
complying humour, the King told them, ‘to make haste to let him have
it, or it would be the worse for themselves.’ Not put in a more
complying humour by this, they impeached the King’s favourite, the Duke
of Buckingham, as the cause (which he undoubtedly was) of many great
public grievances and wrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the
Parliament without getting the money he wanted; and when the Lords
implored him to consider and grant a little delay, he replied, ‘No, not
one minute.’ He then began to raise money for himself by the following
means among others.

He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage which had not been
granted by the Parliament, and could lawfully be levied by no other
power; he called upon the seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all the
cost for three months of, a fleet of armed ships; and he required the
people to unite in lending him large sums of money, the repayment of
which was very doubtful. If the poor people refused, they were pressed
as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry refused, they were sent to
prison. Five gentlemen, named Sir Thomas Darnel, John Corbet, Walter
Earl, John Heveningham, and Everard Hampden, for refusing were taken up
by a warrant of the King’s privy council, and were sent to prison
without any cause but the King’s pleasure being stated for their
imprisonment. Then the question came to be solemnly tried, whether this
was not a violation of Magna Charta, and an encroachment by the King on
the highest rights of the English people. His lawyers contended No,
because to encroach upon the rights of the English people would be to
do wrong, and the King could do no wrong. The accommodating judges
decided in favour of this wicked nonsense; and here was a fatal
division between the King and the people.

For all this, it became necessary to call another Parliament. The
people, sensible of the danger in which their liberties were, chose for
it those who were best known for their determined opposition to the
King; but still the King, quite blinded by his determination to carry
everything before him, addressed them when they met, in a contemptuous
manner, and just told them in so many words that he had only called
them together because he wanted money. The Parliament, strong enough
and resolute enough to know that they would lower his tone, cared
little for what he said, and laid before him one of the great documents
of history, which is called the Petition of Right, requiring that the
free men of England should no longer be called upon to lend the King
money, and should no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do
so; further, that the free men of England should no longer be seized by
the King’s special mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their
rights and liberties and the laws of their country. At first the King
returned an answer to this petition, in which he tried to shirk it
altogether; but, the House of Commons then showing their determination
to go on with the impeachment of Buckingham, the King in alarm returned
an answer, giving his consent to all that was required of him. He not
only afterwards departed from his word and honour on these points, over
and over again, but, at this very time, he did the mean and dissembling
act of publishing his first answer and not his second—merely that the
people might suppose that the Parliament had not got the better of him.

That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded vanity, had by
this time involved the country in war with France, as well as with
Spain. For such miserable causes and such miserable creatures are wars
sometimes made! But he was destined to do little more mischief in this
world. One morning, as he was going out of his house to his carriage,
he turned to speak to a certain Colonel Fryer who was with him; and he
was violently stabbed with a knife, which the murderer left sticking in
his heart. This happened in his hall. He had had angry words up-stairs,
just before, with some French gentlemen, who were immediately suspected
by his servants, and had a close escape from being set upon and killed.
In the midst of the noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the
kitchen and might easily have got away, drew his sword and cried out,
‘I am the man!’ His name was John Felton, a Protestant and a retired
officer in the army. He said he had had no personal ill-will to the
Duke, but had killed him as a curse to the country. He had aimed his
blow well, for Buckingham had only had time to cry out, ‘Villain!’ and
then he drew out the knife, fell against a table, and died.

The council made a mighty business of examining John Felton about this
murder, though it was a plain case enough, one would think. He had come
seventy miles to do it, he told them, and he did it for the reason he
had declared; if they put him upon the rack, as that noble Marquis of
Dorset whom he saw before him, had the goodness to threaten, he gave
that marquis warning, that he would accuse _him_ as his accomplice! The
King was unpleasantly anxious to have him racked, nevertheless; but as
the judges now found out that torture was contrary to the law of
England—it is a pity they did not make the discovery a little
sooner—John Felton was simply executed for the murder he had done. A
murder it undoubtedly was, and not in the least to be defended: though
he had freed England from one of the most profligate, contemptible, and
base court favourites to whom it has ever yielded.

A very different man now arose. This was Sir Thomas Wentworth, a
Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parliament for a long time, and who
had favoured arbitrary and haughty principles, but who had gone over to
the people’s side on receiving offence from Buckingham. The King, much
wanting such a man—for, besides being naturally favourable to the
King’s cause, he had great abilities—made him first a Baron, and then a
Viscount, and gave him high employment, and won him most completely.

A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was _not_ to be won.
On the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine,
Sir John Eliot, a great man who had been active in the Petition of
Right, brought forward other strong resolutions against the King’s
chief instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them to the vote.
To this the Speaker answered, ‘he was commanded otherwise by the King,’
and got up to leave the chair—which, according to the rules of the
House of Commons would have obliged it to adjourn without doing
anything more—when two members, named Mr. Hollis and Mr. Valentine,
held him down. A scene of great confusion arose among the members; and
while many swords were drawn and flashing about, the King, who was kept
informed of all that was going on, told the captain of his guard to go
down to the House and force the doors. The resolutions were by that
time, however, voted, and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those
two members who had held the Speaker down, were quickly summoned before
the council. As they claimed it to be their privilege not to answer out
of Parliament for anything they had said in it, they were committed to
the Tower. The King then went down and dissolved the Parliament, in a
speech wherein he made mention of these gentlemen as ‘Vipers’—which did
not do him much good that ever I have heard of.

As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were sorry for
what they had done, the King, always remarkably unforgiving, never
overlooked their offence. When they demanded to be brought up before
the court of King’s Bench, he even resorted to the meanness of having
them moved about from prison to prison, so that the writs issued for
that purpose should not legally find them. At last they came before the
court and were sentenced to heavy fines, and to be imprisoned during
the King’s pleasure. When Sir John Eliot’s health had quite given way,
and he so longed for change of air and scene as to petition for his
release, the King sent back the answer (worthy of his Sowship himself)
that the petition was not humble enough. When he sent another petition
by his young son, in which he pathetically offered to go back to prison
when his health was restored, if he might be released for its recovery,
the King still disregarded it. When he died in the Tower, and his
children petitioned to be allowed to take his body down to Cornwall,
there to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the King returned
for answer, ‘Let Sir John Eliot’s body be buried in the church of that
parish where he died.’ All this was like a very little King indeed, I
think.

And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his design of setting
himself up and putting the people down, the King called no Parliament;
but ruled without one. If twelve thousand volumes were written in his
praise (as a good many have been) it would still remain a fact,
impossible to be denied, that for twelve years King Charles the First
reigned in England unlawfully and despotically, seized upon his
subjects’ goods and money at his pleasure, and punished according to
his unbridled will all who ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion with
some people to think that this King’s career was cut short; but I must
say myself that I think he ran a pretty long one.

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King’s right-hand man
in the religious part of the putting down of the people’s liberties.
Laud, who was a sincere man, of large learning but small sense—for the
two things sometimes go together in very different quantities—though a
Protestant, held opinions so near those of the Catholics, that the Pope
wanted to make a Cardinal of him, if he would have accepted that
favour. He looked upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, and so
forth, as amazingly important in religious ceremonies; and he brought
in an immensity of bowing and candle-snuffing. He also regarded
archbishops and bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, and was
inveterate in the last degree against any who thought otherwise.
Accordingly, he offered up thanks to Heaven, and was in a state of much
pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman, named Leighton, was pilloried,
whipped, branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears cut off and one
of his nostrils slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the inventions
of men. He originated on a Sunday morning the prosecution of William
Prynne, a barrister who was of similar opinions, and who was fined a
thousand pounds; who was pilloried; who had his ears cut off on two
occasions—one ear at a time—and who was imprisoned for life. He highly
approved of the punishment of Doctor Bastwick, a physician; who was
also fined a thousand pounds; and who afterwards had _his_ ears cut
off, and was imprisoned for life. These were gentle methods of
persuasion, some will tell you: I think, they were rather calculated to
be alarming to the people.

In the money part of the putting down of the people’s liberties, the
King was equally gentle, as some will tell you: as I think, equally
alarming. He levied those duties of tonnage and poundage, and increased
them as he thought fit. He granted monopolies to companies of merchants
on their paying him for them, notwithstanding the great complaints that
had, for years and years, been made on the subject of monopolies. He
fined the people for disobeying proclamations issued by his Sowship in
direct violation of law. He revived the detested Forest laws, and took
private property to himself as his forest right. Above all, he
determined to have what was called Ship Money; that is to say, money
for the support of the fleet—not only from the seaports, but from all
the counties of England: having found out that, in some ancient time or
other, all the counties paid it. The grievance of this ship money being
somewhat too strong, John Chambers, a citizen of London, refused to pay
his part of it. For this the Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to
prison, and for that John Chambers brought a suit against the Lord
Mayor. Lord Say, also, behaved like a real nobleman, and declared he
would not pay. But, the sturdiest and best opponent of the ship money
was John Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the
‘vipers’ in the House of Commons when there was such a thing, and who
had been the bosom friend of Sir John Eliot. This case was tried before
the twelve judges in the Court of Exchequer, and again the King’s
lawyers said it was impossible that ship money could be wrong, because
the King could do no wrong, however hard he tried—and he really did try
very hard during these twelve years. Seven of the judges said that was
quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to pay: five of the judges said
that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden was not bound to pay. So, the
King triumphed (as he thought), by making Hampden the most popular man
in England; where matters were getting to that height now, that many
honest Englishmen could not endure their country, and sailed away
across the seas to found a colony in Massachusetts Bay in America. It
is said that Hampden himself and his relation Oliver Cromwell were
going with a company of such voyagers, and were actually on board ship,
when they were stopped by a proclamation, prohibiting sea captains to
carry out such passengers without the royal license. But O! it would
have been well for the King if he had let them go! This was the state
of England. If Laud had been a madman just broke loose, he could not
have done more mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavours (in
which he was seconded by the King, then in person in that part of his
dominions) to force his own ideas of bishops, and his own religious
forms and ceremonies upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a
perfect frenzy. They formed a solemn league, which they called The
Covenant, for the preservation of their own religious forms; they rose
in arms throughout the whole country; they summoned all their men to
prayers and sermons twice a day by beat of drum; they sang psalms, in
which they compared their enemies to all the evil spirits that ever
were heard of; and they solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. At
first the King tried force, then treaty, then a Scottish Parliament
which did not answer at all. Then he tried the Earl of Strafford,
formerly Sir Thomas Wentworth; who, as Lord Wentworth, had been
governing Ireland. He, too, had carried it with a very high hand there,
though to the benefit and prosperity of that country.

Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish people by force of
arms. Other lords who were taken into council, recommended that a
Parliament should at last be called; to which the King unwillingly
consented. So, on the thirteenth of April, one thousand six hundred and
forty, that then strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at Westminster.
It is called the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very little while.
While the members were all looking at one another, doubtful who would
dare to speak, Mr. Pym arose and set forth all that the King had done
unlawfully during the past twelve years, and what was the position to
which England was reduced. This great example set, other members took
courage and spoke the truth freely, though with great patience and
moderation. The King, a little frightened, sent to say that if they
would grant him a certain sum on certain terms, no more ship money
should be raised. They debated the matter for two days; and then, as
they would not give him all he asked without promise or inquiry, he
dissolved them.

But they knew very well that he must have a Parliament now; and he
began to make that discovery too, though rather late in the day.
Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of September, being then at York with
an army collected against the Scottish people, but his own men sullen
and discontented like the rest of the nation, the King told the great
council of the Lords, whom he had called to meet him there, that he
would summon another Parliament to assemble on the third of November.
The soldiers of the Covenant had now forced their way into England and
had taken possession of the northern counties, where the coals are got.
As it would never do to be without coals, and as the King’s troops
could make no head against the Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a
truce was made, and a treaty with Scotland was taken into
consideration. Meanwhile the northern counties paid the Covenanters to
leave the coals alone, and keep quiet.

We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We have next to see what
memorable things were done by the Long one.

SECOND PART

The Long Parliament assembled on the third of November, one thousand
six hundred and forty-one. That day week the Earl of Strafford arrived
from York, very sensible that the spirited and determined men who
formed that Parliament were no friends towards him, who had not only
deserted the cause of the people, but who had on all occasions opposed
himself to their liberties. The King told him, for his comfort, that
the Parliament ‘should not hurt one hair of his head.’ But, on the very
next day Mr. Pym, in the House of Commons, and with great solemnity,
impeached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. He was immediately taken
into custody and fell from his proud height.

It was the twenty-second of March before he was brought to trial in
Westminster Hall; where, although he was very ill and suffered great
pain, he defended himself with such ability and majesty, that it was
doubtful whether he would not get the best of it. But on the thirteenth
day of the trial, Pym produced in the House of Commons a copy of some
notes of a council, found by young Sir Harry Vane in a red velvet
cabinet belonging to his father (Secretary Vane, who sat at the
council-table with the Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly told
the King that he was free from all rules and obligations of government,
and might do with his people whatever he liked; and in which he had
added—‘You have an army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this
kingdom to obedience.’ It was not clear whether by the words ‘this
kingdom,’ he had really meant England or Scotland; but the Parliament
contended that he meant England, and this was treason. At the same
sitting of the House of Commons it was resolved to bring in a bill of
attainder declaring the treason to have been committed: in preference
to proceeding with the trial by impeachment, which would have required
the treason to be proved.

So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried through the House of
Commons by a large majority, and was sent up to the House of Lords.
While it was still uncertain whether the House of Lords would pass it
and the King consent to it, Pym disclosed to the House of Commons that
the King and Queen had both been plotting with the officers of the army
to bring up the soldiers and control the Parliament, and also to
introduce two hundred soldiers into the Tower of London to effect the
Earl’s escape. The plotting with the army was revealed by one George
Goring, the son of a lord of that name: a bad fellow who was one of the
original plotters, and turned traitor. The King had actually given his
warrant for the admission of the two hundred men into the Tower, and
they would have got in too, but for the refusal of the governor—a
sturdy Scotchman of the name of Balfour—to admit them. These matters
being made public, great numbers of people began to riot outside the
Houses of Parliament, and to cry out for the execution of the Earl of
Strafford, as one of the King’s chief instruments against them. The
bill passed the House of Lords while the people were in this state of
agitation, and was laid before the King for his assent, together with
another bill declaring that the Parliament then assembled should not be
dissolved or adjourned without their own consent. The King—not
unwilling to save a faithful servant, though he had no great attachment
for him—was in some doubt what to do; but he gave his consent to both
bills, although he in his heart believed that the bill against the Earl
of Strafford was unlawful and unjust. The Earl had written to him,
telling him that he was willing to die for his sake. But he had not
expected that his royal master would take him at his word quite so
readily; for, when he heard his doom, he laid his hand upon his heart,
and said, ‘Put not your trust in Princes!’

The King, who never could be straightforward and plain, through one
single day or through one single sheet of paper, wrote a letter to the
Lords, and sent it by the young Prince of Wales, entreating them to
prevail with the Commons that ‘that unfortunate man should fulfil the
natural course of his life in a close imprisonment.’ In a postscript to
the very same letter, he added, ‘If he must die, it were charity to
reprieve him till Saturday.’ If there had been any doubt of his fate,
this weakness and meanness would have settled it. The very next day,
which was the twelfth of May, he was brought out to be beheaded on
Tower Hill.

Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having people’s ears cropped
off and their noses slit, was now confined in the Tower too; and when
the Earl went by his window to his death, he was there, at his request,
to give him his blessing. They had been great friends in the King’s
cause, and the Earl had written to him in the days of their power that
he thought it would be an admirable thing to have Mr. Hampden publicly
whipped for refusing to pay the ship money. However, those high and
mighty doings were over now, and the Earl went his way to death with
dignity and heroism. The governor wished him to get into a coach at the
Tower gate, for fear the people should tear him to pieces; but he said
it was all one to him whether he died by the axe or by the people’s
hands. So, he walked, with a firm tread and a stately look, and
sometimes pulled off his hat to them as he passed along. They were
profoundly quiet. He made a speech on the scaffold from some notes he
had prepared (the paper was found lying there after his head was struck
off), and one blow of the axe killed him, in the forty-ninth year of
his age.

This bold and daring act, the Parliament accompanied by other famous
measures, all originating (as even this did) in the King’s having so
grossly and so long abused his power. The name of Delinquents was
applied to all sheriffs and other officers who had been concerned in
raising the ship money, or any other money, from the people, in an
unlawful manner; the Hampden judgment was reversed; the judges who had
decided against Hampden were called upon to give large securities that
they would take such consequences as Parliament might impose upon them;
and one was arrested as he sat in High Court, and carried off to
prison. Laud was impeached; the unfortunate victims whose ears had been
cropped and whose noses had been slit, were brought out of prison in
triumph; and a bill was passed declaring that a Parliament should be
called every third year, and that if the King and the King’s officers
did not call it, the people should assemble of themselves and summon
it, as of their own right and power. Great illuminations and rejoicings
took place over all these things, and the country was wildly excited.
That the Parliament took advantage of this excitement and stirred them
up by every means, there is no doubt; but you are always to remember
those twelve long years, during which the King had tried so hard
whether he really could do any wrong or not.

All this time there was a great religious outcry against the right of
the Bishops to sit in Parliament; to which the Scottish people
particularly objected. The English were divided on this subject, and,
partly on this account and partly because they had had foolish
expectations that the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all
the taxes, numbers of them sometimes wavered and inclined towards the
King.

I believe myself, that if, at this or almost any other period of his
life, the King could have been trusted by any man not out of his
senses, he might have saved himself and kept his throne. But, on the
English army being disbanded, he plotted with the officers again, as he
had done before, and established the fact beyond all doubt by putting
his signature of approval to a petition against the Parliamentary
leaders, which was drawn up by certain officers. When the Scottish army
was disbanded, he went to Edinburgh in four days—which was going very
fast at that time—to plot again, and so darkly too, that it is
difficult to decide what his whole object was. Some suppose that he
wanted to gain over the Scottish Parliament, as he did in fact gain
over, by presents and favours, many Scottish lords and men of power.
Some think that he went to get proofs against the Parliamentary leaders
in England of their having treasonably invited the Scottish people to
come and help them. With whatever object he went to Scotland, he did
little good by going. At the instigation of the Earl of Montrose, a
desperate man who was then in prison for plotting, he tried to kidnap
three Scottish lords who escaped. A committee of the Parliament at
home, who had followed to watch him, writing an account of this
Incident, as it was called, to the Parliament, the Parliament made a
fresh stir about it; were, or feigned to be, much alarmed for
themselves; and wrote to the Earl of Essex, the commander-in-chief, for
a guard to protect them.

It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in Ireland besides,
but it is very probable that he did, and that the Queen did, and that
he had some wild hope of gaining the Irish people over to his side by
favouring a rise among them. Whether or no, they did rise in a most
brutal and savage rebellion; in which, encouraged by their priests,
they committed such atrocities upon numbers of the English, of both
sexes and of all ages, as nobody could believe, but for their being
related on oath by eye-witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or two
hundred thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak, is
uncertain; but, that it was as ruthless and barbarous an outbreak as
ever was known among any savage people, is certain.

The King came home from Scotland, determined to make a great struggle
for his lost power. He believed that, through his presents and favours,
Scotland would take no part against him; and the Lord Mayor of London
received him with such a magnificent dinner that he thought he must
have become popular again in England. It would take a good many Lord
Mayors, however, to make a people, and the King soon found himself
mistaken.

Not so soon, though, but that there was a great opposition in the
Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth by Pym and Hampden and the
rest, called ‘The Remonstrance,’ which set forth all the illegal acts
that the King had ever done, but politely laid the blame of them on his
bad advisers. Even when it was passed and presented to him, the King
still thought himself strong enough to discharge Balfour from his
command in the Tower, and to put in his place a man of bad character;
to whom the Commons instantly objected, and whom he was obliged to
abandon. At this time, the old outcry about the Bishops became louder
than ever, and the old Archbishop of York was so near being murdered as
he went down to the House of Lords—being laid hold of by the mob and
violently knocked about, in return for very foolishly scolding a shrill
boy who was yelping out ‘No Bishops!’—that he sent for all the Bishops
who were in town, and proposed to them to sign a declaration that, as
they could no longer without danger to their lives attend their duty in
Parliament, they protested against the lawfulness of everything done in
their absence. This they asked the King to send to the House of Lords,
which he did. Then the House of Commons impeached the whole party of
Bishops and sent them off to the Tower:

Taking no warning from this; but encouraged by there being a moderate
party in the Parliament who objected to these strong measures, the
King, on the third of January, one thousand six hundred and forty-two,
took the rashest step that ever was taken by mortal man.

Of his own accord and without advice, he sent the Attorney-General to
the House of Lords, to accuse of treason certain members of Parliament
who as popular leaders were the most obnoxious to him; Lord Kimbolton,
Sir Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Hollis, John Pym (they used to call him
King Pym, he possessed such power and looked so big), John Hampden, and
William Strode. The houses of those members he caused to be entered,
and their papers to be sealed up. At the same time, he sent a messenger
to the House of Commons demanding to have the five gentlemen who were
members of that House immediately produced. To this the House replied
that they should appear as soon as there was any legal charge against
them, and immediately adjourned.

Next day, the House of Commons send into the City to let the Lord Mayor
know that their privileges are invaded by the King, and that there is
no safety for anybody or anything. Then, when the five members are gone
out of the way, down comes the King himself, with all his guard and
from two to three hundred gentlemen and soldiers, of whom the greater
part were armed. These he leaves in the hall; and then, with his nephew
at his side, goes into the House, takes off his hat, and walks up to
the Speaker’s chair. The Speaker leaves it, the King stands in front of
it, looks about him steadily for a little while, and says he has come
for those five members. No one speaks, and then he calls John Pym by
name. No one speaks, and then he calls Denzil Hollis by name. No one
speaks, and then he asks the Speaker of the House where those five
members are? The Speaker, answering on his knee, nobly replies that he
is the servant of that House, and that he has neither eyes to see, nor
tongue to speak, anything but what the House commands him. Upon this,
the King, beaten from that time evermore, replies that he will seek
them himself, for they have committed treason; and goes out, with his
hat in his hand, amid some audible murmurs from the members.

No words can describe the hurry that arose out of doors when all this
was known. The five members had gone for safety to a house in
Coleman-street, in the City, where they were guarded all night; and
indeed the whole city watched in arms like an army. At ten o’clock in
the morning, the King, already frightened at what he had done, came to
the Guildhall, with only half a dozen lords, and made a speech to the
people, hoping they would not shelter those whom he accused of treason.
Next day, he issued a proclamation for the apprehension of the five
members; but the Parliament minded it so little that they made great
arrangements for having them brought down to Westminster in great
state, five days afterwards. The King was so alarmed now at his own
imprudence, if not for his own safety, that he left his palace at
Whitehall, and went away with his Queen and children to Hampton Court.

It was the eleventh of May, when the five members were carried in state
and triumph to Westminster. They were taken by water. The river could
not be seen for the boats on it; and the five members were hemmed in by
barges full of men and great guns, ready to protect them, at any cost.
Along the Strand a large body of the train-bands of London, under their
commander, Skippon, marched to be ready to assist the little fleet.
Beyond them, came a crowd who choked the streets, roaring incessantly
about the Bishops and the Papists, and crying out contemptuously as
they passed Whitehall, ‘What has become of the King?’ With this great
noise outside the House of Commons, and with great silence within, Mr.
Pym rose and informed the House of the great kindness with which they
had been received in the City. Upon that, the House called the sheriffs
in and thanked them, and requested the train-bands, under their
commander Skippon, to guard the House of Commons every day. Then, came
four thousand men on horseback out of Buckinghamshire, offering their
services as a guard too, and bearing a petition to the King,
complaining of the injury that had been done to Mr. Hampden, who was
their county man and much beloved and honoured.

When the King set off for Hampton Court, the gentlemen and soldiers who
had been with him followed him out of town as far as
Kingston-upon-Thames; next day, Lord Digby came to them from the King
at Hampton Court, in his coach and six, to inform them that the King
accepted their protection. This, the Parliament said, was making war
against the kingdom, and Lord Digby fled abroad. The Parliament then
immediately applied themselves to getting hold of the military power of
the country, well knowing that the King was already trying hard to use
it against them, and that he had secretly sent the Earl of Newcastle to
Hull, to secure a valuable magazine of arms and gunpowder that was
there. In those times, every county had its own magazines of arms and
powder, for its own train-bands or militia; so, the Parliament brought
in a bill claiming the right (which up to this time had belonged to the
King) of appointing the Lord Lieutenants of counties, who commanded
these train-bands; also, of having all the forts, castles, and
garrisons in the kingdom, put into the hands of such governors as they,
the Parliament, could confide in. It also passed a law depriving the
Bishops of their votes. The King gave his assent to that bill, but
would not abandon the right of appointing the Lord Lieutenants, though
he said he was willing to appoint such as might be suggested to him by
the Parliament. When the Earl of Pembroke asked him whether he would
not give way on that question for a time, he said, ‘By God! not for one
hour!’ and upon this he and the Parliament went to war.

His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of Orange. On pretence
of taking her to the country of her future husband, the Queen was
already got safely away to Holland, there to pawn the Crown jewels for
money to raise an army on the King’s side. The Lord Admiral being sick,
the House of Commons now named the Earl of Warwick to hold his place
for a year. The King named another gentleman; the House of Commons took
its own way, and the Earl of Warwick became Lord Admiral without the
King’s consent. The Parliament sent orders down to Hull to have that
magazine removed to London; the King went down to Hull to take it
himself. The citizens would not admit him into the town, and the
governor would not admit him into the castle. The Parliament resolved
that whatever the two Houses passed, and the King would not consent to,
should be called an Ordinance, and should be as much a law as if he did
consent to it. The King protested against this, and gave notice that
these ordinances were not to be obeyed. The King, attended by the
majority of the House of Peers, and by many members of the House of
Commons, established himself at York. The Chancellor went to him with
the Great Seal, and the Parliament made a new Great Seal. The Queen
sent over a ship full of arms and ammunition, and the King issued
letters to borrow money at high interest. The Parliament raised twenty
regiments of foot and seventy-five troops of horse; and the people
willingly aided them with their money, plate, jewellery, and
trinkets—the married women even with their wedding-rings. Every member
of Parliament who could raise a troop or a regiment in his own part of
the country, dressed it according to his taste and in his own colours,
and commanded it. Foremost among them all, Oliver Cromwell raised a
troop of horse—thoroughly in earnest and thoroughly well armed—who
were, perhaps, the best soldiers that ever were seen.

In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament passed the bounds
of previous law and custom, yielded to and favoured riotous assemblages
of the people, and acted tyrannically in imprisoning some who differed
from the popular leaders. But again, you are always to remember that
the twelve years during which the King had had his own wilful way, had
gone before; and that nothing could make the times what they might,
could, would, or should have been, if those twelve years had never
rolled away.

THIRD PART

I shall not try to relate the particulars of the great civil war
between King Charles the First and the Long Parliament, which lasted
nearly four years, and a full account of which would fill many large
books. It was a sad thing that Englishmen should once more be fighting
against Englishmen on English ground; but, it is some consolation to
know that on both sides there was great humanity, forbearance, and
honour. The soldiers of the Parliament were far more remarkable for
these good qualities than the soldiers of the King (many of whom fought
for mere pay without much caring for the cause); but those of the
nobility and gentry who were on the King’s side were so brave, and so
faithful to him, that their conduct cannot but command our highest
admiration. Among them were great numbers of Catholics, who took the
royal side because the Queen was so strongly of their persuasion.

The King might have distinguished some of these gallant spirits, if he
had been as generous a spirit himself, by giving them the command of
his army. Instead of that, however, true to his old high notions of
royalty, he entrusted it to his two nephews, Prince Rupert and Prince
Maurice, who were of royal blood and came over from abroad to help him.
It might have been better for him if they had stayed away; since Prince
Rupert was an impetuous, hot-headed fellow, whose only idea was to dash
into battle at all times and seasons, and lay about him.

The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was the Earl of Essex, a
gentleman of honour and an excellent soldier. A little while before the
war broke out, there had been some rioting at Westminster between
certain officious law students and noisy soldiers, and the shopkeepers
and their apprentices, and the general people in the streets. At that
time the King’s friends called the crowd, Roundheads, because the
apprentices wore short hair; the crowd, in return, called their
opponents Cavaliers, meaning that they were a blustering set, who
pretended to be very military. These two words now began to be used to
distinguish the two sides in the civil war. The Royalists also called
the Parliamentary men Rebels and Rogues, while the Parliamentary men
called _them_ Malignants, and spoke of themselves as the Godly, the
Honest, and so forth.

The war broke out at Portsmouth, where that double traitor Goring had
again gone over to the King and was besieged by the Parliamentary
troops. Upon this, the King proclaimed the Earl of Essex and the
officers serving under him, traitors, and called upon his loyal
subjects to meet him in arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of
August. But his loyal subjects came about him in scanty numbers, and it
was a windy, gloomy day, and the Royal Standard got blown down, and the
whole affair was very melancholy. The chief engagements after this,
took place in the vale of the Red Horse near Banbury, at Brentford, at
Devizes, at Chalgrave Field (where Mr. Hampden was so sorely wounded
while fighting at the head of his men, that he died within a week), at
Newbury (in which battle Lord Falkland, one of the best noblemen on the
King’s side, was killed), at Leicester, at Naseby, at Winchester, at
Marston Moor near York, at Newcastle, and in many other parts of
England and Scotland. These battles were attended with various
successes. At one time, the King was victorious; at another time, the
Parliament. But almost all the great and busy towns were against the
King; and when it was considered necessary to fortify London, all ranks
of people, from labouring men and women, up to lords and ladies, worked
hard together with heartiness and good will. The most distinguished
leaders on the Parliamentary side were Hampden, Sir Thomas Fairfax,
and, above all, Oliver Cromwell, and his son-in-law Ireton.

During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it was very expensive
and irksome, and to whom it was made the more distressing by almost
every family being divided—some of its members attaching themselves to
one side and some to the other—were over and over again most anxious
for peace. So were some of the best men in each cause. Accordingly,
treaties of peace were discussed between commissioners from the
Parliament and the King; at York, at Oxford (where the King held a
little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. But they came to
nothing. In all these negotiations, and in all his difficulties, the
King showed himself at his best. He was courageous, cool,
self-possessed, and clever; but, the old taint of his character was
always in him, and he was never for one single moment to be trusted.
Lord Clarendon, the historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes
that he had unhappily promised the Queen never to make peace without
her consent, and that this must often be taken as his excuse. He never
kept his word from night to morning. He signed a cessation of
hostilities with the blood-stained Irish rebels for a sum of money, and
invited the Irish regiments over, to help him against the Parliament.
In the battle of Naseby, his cabinet was seized and was found to
contain a correspondence with the Queen, in which he expressly told her
that he had deceived the Parliament—a mongrel Parliament, he called it
now, as an improvement on his old term of vipers—in pretending to
recognise it and to treat with it; and from which it further appeared
that he had long been in secret treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a
foreign army of ten thousand men. Disappointed in this, he sent a most
devoted friend of his, the Earl of Glamorgan, to Ireland, to conclude a
secret treaty with the Catholic powers, to send him an Irish army of
ten thousand men; in return for which he was to bestow great favours on
the Catholic religion. And, when this treaty was discovered in the
carriage of a fighting Irish Archbishop who was killed in one of the
many skirmishes of those days, he basely denied and deserted his
attached friend, the Earl, on his being charged with high treason;
and—even worse than this—had left blanks in the secret instructions he
gave him with his own kingly hand, expressly that he might thus save
himself.

At last, on the twenty-seventh day of April, one thousand six hundred
and forty-six, the King found himself in the city of Oxford, so
surrounded by the Parliamentary army who were closing in upon him on
all sides that he felt that if he would escape he must delay no longer.
So, that night, having altered the cut of his hair and beard, he was
dressed up as a servant and put upon a horse with a cloak strapped
behind him, and rode out of the town behind one of his own faithful
followers, with a clergyman of that country who knew the road well, for
a guide. He rode towards London as far as Harrow, and then altered his
plans and resolved, it would seem, to go to the Scottish camp. The
Scottish men had been invited over to help the Parliamentary army, and
had a large force then in England. The King was so desperately
intriguing in everything he did, that it is doubtful what he exactly
meant by this step. He took it, anyhow, and delivered himself up to the
Earl of Leven, the Scottish general-in-chief, who treated him as an
honourable prisoner. Negotiations between the Parliament on the one
hand and the Scottish authorities on the other, as to what should be
done with him, lasted until the following February. Then, when the King
had refused to the Parliament the concession of that old militia point
for twenty years, and had refused to Scotland the recognition of its
Solemn League and Covenant, Scotland got a handsome sum for its army
and its help, and the King into the bargain. He was taken, by certain
Parliamentary commissioners appointed to receive him, to one of his own
houses, called Holmby House, near Althorpe, in Northamptonshire.

While the Civil War was still in progress, John Pym died, and was
buried with great honour in Westminster Abbey—not with greater honour
than he deserved, for the liberties of Englishmen owe a mighty debt to
Pym and Hampden. The war was but newly over when the Earl of Essex
died, of an illness brought on by his having overheated himself in a
stag hunt in Windsor Forest. He, too, was buried in Westminster Abbey,
with great state. I wish it were not necessary to add that Archbishop
Laud died upon the scaffold when the war was not yet done. His trial
lasted in all nearly a year, and, it being doubtful even then whether
the charges brought against him amounted to treason, the odious old
contrivance of the worst kings was resorted to, and a bill of attainder
was brought in against him. He was a violently prejudiced and
mischievous person; had had strong ear-cropping and nose-splitting
propensities, as you know; and had done a world of harm. But he died
peaceably, and like a brave old man.

FOURTH PART

When the Parliament had got the King into their hands, they became very
anxious to get rid of their army, in which Oliver Cromwell had begun to
acquire great power; not only because of his courage and high
abilities, but because he professed to be very sincere in the Scottish
sort of Puritan religion that was then exceedingly popular among the
soldiers. They were as much opposed to the Bishops as to the Pope
himself; and the very privates, drummers, and trumpeters, had such an
inconvenient habit of starting up and preaching long-winded discourses,
that I would not have belonged to that army on any account.

So, the Parliament, being far from sure but that the army might begin
to preach and fight against them now it had nothing else to do,
proposed to disband the greater part of it, to send another part to
serve in Ireland against the rebels, and to keep only a small force in
England. But, the army would not consent to be broken up, except upon
its own conditions; and, when the Parliament showed an intention of
compelling it, it acted for itself in an unexpected manner. A certain
cornet, of the name of Joice, arrived at Holmby House one night,
attended by four hundred horsemen, went into the King’s room with his
hat in one hand and a pistol in the other, and told the King that he
had come to take him away. The King was willing enough to go, and only
stipulated that he should be publicly required to do so next morning.
Next morning, accordingly, he appeared on the top of the steps of the
house, and asked Comet Joice before his men and the guard set there by
the Parliament, what authority he had for taking him away? To this
Cornet Joice replied, ‘The authority of the army.’ ‘Have you a written
commission?’ said the King. Joice, pointing to his four hundred men on
horseback, replied, ‘That is my commission.’ ‘Well,’ said the King,
smiling, as if he were pleased, ‘I never before read such a commission;
but it is written in fair and legible characters. This is a company of
as handsome proper gentlemen as I have seen a long while.’ He was asked
where he would like to live, and he said at Newmarket. So, to Newmarket
he and Cornet Joice and the four hundred horsemen rode; the King
remarking, in the same smiling way, that he could ride as far at a
spell as Cornet Joice, or any man there.

The King quite believed, I think, that the army were his friends. He
said as much to Fairfax when that general, Oliver Cromwell, and Ireton,
went to persuade him to return to the custody of the Parliament. He
preferred to remain as he was, and resolved to remain as he was. And
when the army moved nearer and nearer London to frighten the Parliament
into yielding to their demands, they took the King with them. It was a
deplorable thing that England should be at the mercy of a great body of
soldiers with arms in their hands; but the King certainly favoured them
at this important time of his life, as compared with the more lawful
power that tried to control him. It must be added, however, that they
treated him, as yet, more respectfully and kindly than the Parliament
had done. They allowed him to be attended by his own servants, to be
splendidly entertained at various houses, and to see his children—at
Cavesham House, near Reading—for two days. Whereas, the Parliament had
been rather hard with him, and had only allowed him to ride out and
play at bowls.

It is much to be believed that if the King could have been trusted,
even at this time, he might have been saved. Even Oliver Cromwell
expressly said that he did believe that no man could enjoy his
possessions in peace, unless the King had his rights. He was not
unfriendly towards the King; he had been present when he received his
children, and had been much affected by the pitiable nature of the
scene; he saw the King often; he frequently walked and talked with him
in the long galleries and pleasant gardens of the Palace at Hampton
Court, whither he was now removed; and in all this risked something of
his influence with the army. But, the King was in secret hopes of help
from the Scottish people; and the moment he was encouraged to join them
he began to be cool to his new friends, the army, and to tell the
officers that they could not possibly do without him. At the very time,
too, when he was promising to make Cromwell and Ireton noblemen, if
they would help him up to his old height, he was writing to the Queen
that he meant to hang them. They both afterwards declared that they had
been privately informed that such a letter would be found, on a certain
evening, sewed up in a saddle which would be taken to the Blue Boar in
Holborn to be sent to Dover; and that they went there, disguised as
common soldiers, and sat drinking in the inn-yard until a man came with
the saddle, which they ripped up with their knives, and therein found
the letter. I see little reason to doubt the story. It is certain that
Oliver Cromwell told one of the King’s most faithful followers that the
King could not be trusted, and that he would not be answerable if
anything amiss were to happen to him. Still, even after that, he kept a
promise he had made to the King, by letting him know that there was a
plot with a certain portion of the army to seize him. I believe that,
in fact, he sincerely wanted the King to escape abroad, and so to be
got rid of without more trouble or danger. That Oliver himself had work
enough with the army is pretty plain; for some of the troops were so
mutinous against him, and against those who acted with him at this
time, that he found it necessary to have one man shot at the head of
his regiment to overawe the rest.

The King, when he received Oliver’s warning, made his escape from
Hampton Court; after some indecision and uncertainty, he went to
Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. At first, he was pretty free
there; but, even there, he carried on a pretended treaty with the
Parliament, while he was really treating with commissioners from
Scotland to send an army into England to take his part. When he broke
off this treaty with the Parliament (having settled with Scotland) and
was treated as a prisoner, his treatment was not changed too soon, for
he had plotted to escape that very night to a ship sent by the Queen,
which was lying off the island.

He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from Scotland. The
agreement he had made with the Scottish Commissioners was not
favourable enough to the religion of that country to please the
Scottish clergy; and they preached against it. The consequence was,
that the army raised in Scotland and sent over, was too small to do
much; and that, although it was helped by a rising of the Royalists in
England and by good soldiers from Ireland, it could make no head
against the Parliamentary army under such men as Cromwell and Fairfax.
The King’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales, came over from Holland with
nineteen ships (a part of the English fleet having gone over to him) to
help his father; but nothing came of his voyage, and he was fain to
return. The most remarkable event of this second civil war was the
cruel execution by the Parliamentary General, of Sir Charles Lucas and
Sir George Lisle, two grand Royalist generals, who had bravely defended
Colchester under every disadvantage of famine and distress for nearly
three months. When Sir Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed
his body, and said to the soldiers who were to shoot him, ‘Come nearer,
and make sure of me.’ ‘I warrant you, Sir George,’ said one of the
soldiers, ‘we shall hit you.’ ‘Ay?’ he returned with a smile, ‘but I
have been nearer to you, my friends, many a time, and you have missed
me.’

The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the army—who demanded
to have seven members whom they disliked given up to them—had voted
that they would have nothing more to do with the King. On the
conclusion, however, of this second civil war (which did not last more
than six months), they appointed commissioners to treat with him. The
King, then so far released again as to be allowed to live in a private
house at Newport in the Isle of Wight, managed his own part of the
negotiation with a sense that was admired by all who saw him, and gave
up, in the end, all that was asked of him—even yielding (which he had
steadily refused, so far) to the temporary abolition of the bishops,
and the transfer of their church land to the Crown. Still, with his old
fatal vice upon him, when his best friends joined the commissioners in
beseeching him to yield all those points as the only means of saving
himself from the army, he was plotting to escape from the island; he
was holding correspondence with his friends and the Catholics in
Ireland, though declaring that he was not; and he was writing, with his
own hand, that in what he yielded he meant nothing but to get time to
escape.

Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to defy the
Parliament, marched up to London. The Parliament, not afraid of them
now, and boldly led by Hollis, voted that the King’s concessions were
sufficient ground for settling the peace of the kingdom. Upon that,
Colonel Rich and Colonel Pride went down to the House of Commons with a
regiment of horse soldiers and a regiment of foot; and Colonel Pride,
standing in the lobby with a list of the members who were obnoxious to
the army in his hand, had them pointed out to him as they came through,
and took them all into custody. This proceeding was afterwards called
by the people, for a joke, Pride’s Purge. Cromwell was in the North, at
the head of his men, at the time, but when he came home, approved of
what had been done.

What with imprisoning some members and causing others to stay away, the
army had now reduced the House of Commons to some fifty or so. These
soon voted that it was treason in a king to make war against his
parliament and his people, and sent an ordinance up to the House of
Lords for the King’s being tried as a traitor. The House of Lords, then
sixteen in number, to a man rejected it. Thereupon, the Commons made an
ordinance of their own, that they were the supreme government of the
country, and would bring the King to trial.

The King had been taken for security to a place called Hurst Castle: a
lonely house on a rock in the sea, connected with the coast of
Hampshire by a rough road two miles long at low water. Thence, he was
ordered to be removed to Windsor; thence, after being but rudely used
there, and having none but soldiers to wait upon him at table, he was
brought up to St. James’s Palace in London, and told that his trial was
appointed for next day.

On Saturday, the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and
forty-nine, this memorable trial began. The House of Commons had
settled that one hundred and thirty-five persons should form the Court,
and these were taken from the House itself, from among the officers of
the army, and from among the lawyers and citizens. John Bradshaw,
serjeant-at-law, was appointed president. The place was Westminster
Hall. At the upper end, in a red velvet chair, sat the president, with
his hat (lined with plates of iron for his protection) on his head. The
rest of the Court sat on side benches, also wearing their hats. The
King’s seat was covered with velvet, like that of the president, and
was opposite to it. He was brought from St. James’s to Whitehall, and
from Whitehall he came by water to his trial.

When he came in, he looked round very steadily on the Court, and on the
great number of spectators, and then sat down: presently he got up and
looked round again. On the indictment ‘against Charles Stuart, for high
treason,’ being read, he smiled several times, and he denied the
authority of the Court, saying that there could be no parliament
without a House of Lords, and that he saw no House of Lords there.
Also, that the King ought to be there, and that he saw no King in the
King’s right place. Bradshaw replied, that the Court was satisfied with
its authority, and that its authority was God’s authority and the
kingdom’s. He then adjourned the Court to the following Monday. On that
day, the trial was resumed, and went on all the week. When the Saturday
came, as the King passed forward to his place in the Hall, some
soldiers and others cried for ‘justice!’ and execution on him. That
day, too, Bradshaw, like an angry Sultan, wore a red robe, instead of
the black robe he had worn before. The King was sentenced to death that
day. As he went out, one solitary soldier said, ‘God bless you, Sir!’
For this, his officer struck him. The King said he thought the
punishment exceeded the offence. The silver head of his walking-stick
had fallen off while he leaned upon it, at one time of the trial. The
accident seemed to disturb him, as if he thought it ominous of the
falling of his own head; and he admitted as much, now it was all over.

Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the House of Commons, saying
that as the time of his execution might be nigh, he wished he might be
allowed to see his darling children. It was granted. On the Monday he
was taken back to St. James’s; and his two children then in England,
the Princess Elizabeth thirteen years old, and the Duke Of Gloucester
nine years old, were brought to take leave of him, from Sion House,
near Brentford. It was a sad and touching scene, when he kissed and
fondled those poor children, and made a little present of two diamond
seals to the Princess, and gave them tender messages to their mother
(who little deserved them, for she had a lover of her own whom she
married soon afterwards), and told them that he died ‘for the laws and
liberties of the land.’ I am bound to say that I don’t think he did,
but I dare say he believed so.

There were ambassadors from Holland that day, to intercede for the
unhappy King, whom you and I both wish the Parliament had spared; but
they got no answer. The Scottish Commissioners interceded too; so did
the Prince of Wales, by a letter in which he offered as the next heir
to the throne, to accept any conditions from the Parliament; so did the
Queen, by letter likewise.

Notwithstanding all, the warrant for the execution was this day signed.
There is a story that as Oliver Cromwell went to the table with the pen
in his hand to put his signature to it, he drew his pen across the face
of one of the commissioners, who was standing near, and marked it with
ink. That commissioner had not signed his own name yet, and the story
adds that when he came to do it he marked Cromwell’s face with ink in
the same way.

The King slept well, untroubled by the knowledge that it was his last
night on earth, and rose on the thirtieth of January, two hours before
day, and dressed himself carefully. He put on two shirts lest he should
tremble with the cold, and had his hair very carefully combed. The
warrant had been directed to three officers of the army, Colonel
Hacker, Colonel Hunks, and Colonel Phayer. At ten o’clock, the first of
these came to the door and said it was time to go to Whitehall. The
King, who had always been a quick walker, walked at his usual speed
through the Park, and called out to the guard, with his accustomed
voice of command, ‘March on apace!’ When he came to Whitehall, he was
taken to his own bedroom, where a breakfast was set forth. As he had
taken the Sacrament, he would eat nothing more; but, at about the time
when the church bells struck twelve at noon (for he had to wait,
through the scaffold not being ready), he took the advice of the good
Bishop Juxon who was with him, and ate a little bread and drank a glass
of claret. Soon after he had taken this refreshment, Colonel Hacker
came to the chamber with the warrant in his hand, and called for
Charles Stuart.

And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace, which he had
often seen light and gay and merry and crowded, in very different
times, the fallen King passed along, until he came to the centre window
of the Banqueting House, through which he emerged upon the scaffold,
which was hung with black. He looked at the two executioners, who were
dressed in black and masked; he looked at the troops of soldiers on
horseback and on foot, and all looked up at him in silence; he looked
at the vast array of spectators, filling up the view beyond, and
turning all their faces upon him; he looked at his old Palace of St.
James’s; and he looked at the block. He seemed a little troubled to
find that it was so low, and asked, ‘if there were no place higher?’
Then, to those upon the scaffold, he said, ‘that it was the Parliament
who had begun the war, and not he; but he hoped they might be guiltless
too, as ill instruments had gone between them. In one respect,’ he
said, ‘he suffered justly; and that was because he had permitted an
unjust sentence to be executed on another.’ In this he referred to the
Earl of Strafford.

He was not at all afraid to die; but he was anxious to die easily. When
some one touched the axe while he was speaking, he broke off and called
out, ‘Take heed of the axe! take heed of the axe!’ He also said to
Colonel Hacker, ‘Take care that they do not put me to pain.’ He told
the executioner, ‘I shall say but very short prayers, and then thrust
out my hands’—as the sign to strike.

He put his hair up, under a white satin cap which the bishop had
carried, and said, ‘I have a good cause and a gracious God on my side.’
The bishop told him that he had but one stage more to travel in this
weary world, and that, though it was a turbulent and troublesome stage,
it was a short one, and would carry him a great way—all the way from
earth to Heaven. The King’s last word, as he gave his cloak and the
George—the decoration from his breast—to the bishop, was, ‘Remember!’
He then kneeled down, laid his head on the block, spread out his hands,
and was instantly killed. One universal groan broke from the crowd; and
the soldiers, who had sat on their horses and stood in their ranks
immovable as statues, were of a sudden all in motion, clearing the
streets.

Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the same time of
his career as Strafford had fallen in his, perished Charles the First.
With all my sorrow for him, I cannot agree with him that he died ‘the
martyr of the people;’ for the people had been martyrs to him, and to
his ideas of a King’s rights, long before. Indeed, I am afraid that he
was but a bad judge of martyrs; for he had called that infamous Duke of
Buckingham ‘the Martyr of his Sovereign.’




CHAPTER XXXIV
ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL


Before sunset on the memorable day on which King Charles the First was
executed, the House of Commons passed an act declaring it treason in
any one to proclaim the Prince of Wales—or anybody else—King of
England. Soon afterwards, it declared that the House of Lords was
useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished; and directed that the
late King’s statue should be taken down from the Royal Exchange in the
City and other public places. Having laid hold of some famous Royalists
who had escaped from prison, and having beheaded the Duke Of Hamilton,
Lord Holland, and Lord Capel, in Palace Yard (all of whom died very
courageously), they then appointed a Council of State to govern the
country. It consisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers.
Bradshaw was made president. The House of Commons also re-admitted
members who had opposed the King’s death, and made up its numbers to
about a hundred and fifty.

But, it still had an army of more than forty thousand men to deal with,
and a very hard task it was to manage them. Before the King’s
execution, the army had appointed some of its officers to remonstrate
between them and the Parliament; and now the common soldiers began to
take that office upon themselves. The regiments under orders for
Ireland mutinied; one troop of horse in the city of London seized their
own flag, and refused to obey orders. For this, the ringleader was
shot: which did not mend the matter, for, both his comrades and the
people made a public funeral for him, and accompanied the body to the
grave with sound of trumpets and with a gloomy procession of persons
carrying bundles of rosemary steeped in blood. Oliver was the only man
to deal with such difficulties as these, and he soon cut them short by
bursting at midnight into the town of Burford, near Salisbury, where
the mutineers were sheltered, taking four hundred of them prisoners,
and shooting a number of them by sentence of court-martial. The
soldiers soon found, as all men did, that Oliver was not a man to be
trifled with. And there was an end of the mutiny.

The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet; so, on hearing of the
King’s execution, it proclaimed the Prince of Wales King Charles the
Second, on condition of his respecting the Solemn League and Covenant.
Charles was abroad at that time, and so was Montrose, from whose help
he had hopes enough to keep him holding on and off with commissioners
from Scotland, just as his father might have done. These hopes were
soon at an end; for, Montrose, having raised a few hundred exiles in
Germany, and landed with them in Scotland, found that the people there,
instead of joining him, deserted the country at his approach. He was
soon taken prisoner and carried to Edinburgh. There he was received
with every possible insult, and carried to prison in a cart, his
officers going two and two before him. He was sentenced by the
Parliament to be hanged on a gallows thirty feet high, to have his head
set on a spike in Edinburgh, and his limbs distributed in other places,
according to the old barbarous manner. He said he had always acted
under the Royal orders, and only wished he had limbs enough to be
distributed through Christendom, that it might be the more widely known
how loyal he had been. He went to the scaffold in a bright and
brilliant dress, and made a bold end at thirty-eight years of age. The
breath was scarcely out of his body when Charles abandoned his memory,
and denied that he had ever given him orders to rise in his behalf. O
the family failing was strong in that Charles then!

Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to command the army in
Ireland, where he took a terrible vengeance for the sanguinary
rebellion, and made tremendous havoc, particularly in the siege of
Drogheda, where no quarter was given, and where he found at least a
thousand of the inhabitants shut up together in the great church: every
one of whom was killed by his soldiers, usually known as Oliver’s
Ironsides. There were numbers of friars and priests among them, and
Oliver gruffly wrote home in his despatch that these were ‘knocked on
the head’ like the rest.

But, Charles having got over to Scotland where the men of the Solemn
League and Covenant led him a prodigiously dull life and made him very
weary with long sermons and grim Sundays, the Parliament called the
redoubtable Oliver home to knock the Scottish men on the head for
setting up that Prince. Oliver left his son-in-law, Ireton, as general
in Ireland in his stead (he died there afterwards), and he imitated the
example of his father-in-law with such good will that he brought the
country to subjection, and laid it at the feet of the Parliament. In
the end, they passed an act for the settlement of Ireland, generally
pardoning all the common people, but exempting from this grace such of
the wealthier sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, or in any
killing of Protestants, or who refused to lay down their arms. Great
numbers of Irish were got out of the country to serve under Catholic
powers abroad, and a quantity of land was declared to have been
forfeited by past offences, and was given to people who had lent money
to the Parliament early in the war. These were sweeping measures; but,
if Oliver Cromwell had had his own way fully, and had stayed in
Ireland, he would have done more yet.

However, as I have said, the Parliament wanted Oliver for Scotland; so,
home Oliver came, and was made Commander of all the Forces of the
Commonwealth of England, and in three days away he went with sixteen
thousand soldiers to fight the Scottish men. Now, the Scottish men,
being then—as you will generally find them now—mighty cautious,
reflected that the troops they had were not used to war like the
Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open fight. Therefore they said,
‘If we live quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here, and if all the
farmers come into the town and desert the country, the Ironsides will
be driven out by iron hunger and be forced to go away.’ This was, no
doubt, the wisest plan; but as the Scottish clergy _would_ interfere
with what they knew nothing about, and would perpetually preach long
sermons exhorting the soldiers to come out and fight, the soldiers got
it in their heads that they absolutely must come out and fight.
Accordingly, in an evil hour for themselves, they came out of their
safe position. Oliver fell upon them instantly, and killed three
thousand, and took ten thousand prisoners.

To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and preserve their favour, Charles
had signed a declaration they laid before him, reproaching the memory
of his father and mother, and representing himself as a most religious
Prince, to whom the Solemn League and Covenant was as dear as life. He
meant no sort of truth in this, and soon afterwards galloped away on
horseback to join some tiresome Highland friends, who were always
flourishing dirks and broadswords. He was overtaken and induced to
return; but this attempt, which was called ‘The Start,’ did him just so
much service, that they did not preach quite such long sermons at him
afterwards as they had done before.

On the first of January, one thousand six hundred and fifty-one, the
Scottish people crowned him at Scone. He immediately took the chief
command of an army of twenty thousand men, and marched to Stirling. His
hopes were heightened, I dare say, by the redoubtable Oliver being ill
of an ague; but Oliver scrambled out of bed in no time, and went to
work with such energy that he got behind the Royalist army and cut it
off from all communication with Scotland. There was nothing for it
then, but to go on to England; so it went on as far as Worcester, where
the mayor and some of the gentry proclaimed King Charles the Second
straightway. His proclamation, however, was of little use to him, for
very few Royalists appeared; and, on the very same day, two people were
publicly beheaded on Tower Hill for espousing his cause. Up came Oliver
to Worcester too, at double quick speed, and he and his Ironsides so
laid about them in the great battle which was fought there, that they
completely beat the Scottish men, and destroyed the Royalist army;
though the Scottish men fought so gallantly that it took five hours to
do.

The escape of Charles after this battle of Worcester did him good
service long afterwards, for it induced many of the generous English
people to take a romantic interest in him, and to think much better of
him than he ever deserved. He fled in the night, with not more than
sixty followers, to the house of a Catholic lady in Staffordshire.
There, for his greater safety, the whole sixty left him. He cropped his
hair, stained his face and hands brown as if they were sunburnt, put on
the clothes of a labouring countryman, and went out in the morning with
his axe in his hand, accompanied by four wood-cutters who were
brothers, and another man who was their brother-in-law. These good
fellows made a bed for him under a tree, as the weather was very bad;
and the wife of one of them brought him food to eat; and the old mother
of the four brothers came and fell down on her knees before him in the
wood, and thanked God that her sons were engaged in saving his life. At
night, he came out of the forest and went on to another house which was
near the river Severn, with the intention of passing into Wales; but
the place swarmed with soldiers, and the bridges were guarded, and all
the boats were made fast. So, after lying in a hayloft covered over
with hay, for some time, he came out of his place, attended by Colonel
Careless, a Catholic gentleman who had met him there, and with whom he
lay hid, all next day, up in the shady branches of a fine old oak. It
was lucky for the King that it was September-time, and that the leaves
had not begun to fall, since he and the Colonel, perched up in this
tree, could catch glimpses of the soldiers riding about below, and
could hear the crash in the wood as they went about beating the boughs.

After this, he walked and walked until his feet were all blistered;
and, having been concealed all one day in a house which was searched by
the troopers while he was there, went with Lord Wilmot, another of his
good friends, to a place called Bentley, where one Miss Lane, a
Protestant lady, had obtained a pass to be allowed to ride through the
guards to see a relation of hers near Bristol. Disguised as a servant,
he rode in the saddle before this young lady to the house of Sir John
Winter, while Lord Wilmot rode there boldly, like a plain country
gentleman, with dogs at his heels. It happened that Sir John Winter’s
butler had been servant in Richmond Palace, and knew Charles the moment
he set eyes upon him; but, the butler was faithful and kept the secret.
As no ship could be found to carry him abroad, it was planned that he
should go—still travelling with Miss Lane as her servant—to another
house, at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire; and then Miss Lane and
her cousin, Mr. Lascelles, who had gone on horseback beside her all the
way, went home. I hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin, for I
am sure she must have been a brave, kind girl. If I had been that
cousin, I should certainly have loved Miss Lane.

When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was safe at Trent, a
ship was hired at Lyme, the master of which engaged to take two
gentlemen to France. In the evening of the same day, the King—now
riding as servant before another young lady—set off for a public-house
at a place called Charmouth, where the captain of the vessel was to
take him on board. But, the captain’s wife, being afraid of her husband
getting into trouble, locked him up and would not let him sail. Then
they went away to Bridport; and, coming to the inn there, found the
stable-yard full of soldiers who were on the look-out for Charles, and
who talked about him while they drank. He had such presence of mind,
that he led the horses of his party through the yard as any other
servant might have done, and said, ‘Come out of the way, you soldiers;
let us have room to pass here!’ As he went along, he met a half-tipsy
ostler, who rubbed his eyes and said to him, ‘Why, I was formerly
servant to Mr. Potter at Exeter, and surely I have sometimes seen you
there, young man?’ He certainly had, for Charles had lodged there. His
ready answer was, ‘Ah, I did live with him once; but I have no time to
talk now. We’ll have a pot of beer together when I come back.’

From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and lay there concealed
several days. Then he escaped to Heale, near Salisbury; where, in the
house of a widow lady, he was hidden five days, until the master of a
collier lying off Shoreham in Sussex, undertook to convey a ‘gentleman’
to France. On the night of the fifteenth of October, accompanied by two
colonels and a merchant, the King rode to Brighton, then a little
fishing village, to give the captain of the ship a supper before going
on board; but, so many people knew him, that this captain knew him too,
and not only he, but the landlord and landlady also. Before he went
away, the landlord came behind his chair, kissed his hand, and said he
hoped to live to be a lord and to see his wife a lady; at which Charles
laughed. They had had a good supper by this time, and plenty of smoking
and drinking, at which the King was a first-rate hand; so, the captain
assured him that he would stand by him, and he did. It was agreed that
the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles should
address the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who was running
away from his creditors, and that he hoped they would join him in
persuading the captain to put him ashore in France. As the King acted
his part very well indeed, and gave the sailors twenty shillings to
drink, they begged the captain to do what such a worthy gentleman
asked. He pretended to yield to their entreaties, and the King got safe
to Normandy.

Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by plenty of forts
and soldiers put there by Oliver, the Parliament would have gone on
quietly enough, as far as fighting with any foreign enemy went, but for
getting into trouble with the Dutch, who in the spring of the year one
thousand six hundred and fifty-one sent a fleet into the Downs under
their Admiral Van Tromp, to call upon the bold English Admiral Blake
(who was there with half as many ships as the Dutch) to strike his
flag. Blake fired a raging broadside instead, and beat off Van Tromp;
who, in the autumn, came back again with seventy ships, and challenged
the bold Blake—who still was only half as strong—to fight him. Blake
fought him all day; but, finding that the Dutch were too many for him,
got quietly off at night. What does Van Tromp upon this, but goes
cruising and boasting about the Channel, between the North Foreland and
the Isle of Wight, with a great Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a
sign that he could and would sweep the English of the sea! Within three
months, Blake lowered his tone though, and his broom too; for, he and
two other bold commanders, Dean and Monk, fought him three whole days,
took twenty-three of his ships, shivered his broom to pieces, and
settled his business.

Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army began to complain to
the Parliament that they were not governing the nation properly, and to
hint that they thought they could do it better themselves. Oliver, who
had now made up his mind to be the head of the state, or nothing at
all, supported them in this, and called a meeting of officers and his
own Parliamentary friends, at his lodgings in Whitehall, to consider
the best way of getting rid of the Parliament. It had now lasted just
as many years as the King’s unbridled power had lasted, before it came
into existence. The end of the deliberation was, that Oliver went down
to the House in his usual plain black dress, with his usual grey
worsted stockings, but with an unusual party of soldiers behind him.
These last he left in the lobby, and then went in and sat down.
Presently he got up, made the Parliament a speech, told them that the
Lord had done with them, stamped his foot and said, ‘You are no
Parliament. Bring them in! Bring them in!’ At this signal the door flew
open, and the soldiers appeared. ‘This is not honest,’ said Sir Harry
Vane, one of the members. ‘Sir Harry Vane!’ cried Cromwell; ‘O, Sir
Harry Vane! The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!’ Then he pointed
out members one by one, and said this man was a drunkard, and that man
a dissipated fellow, and that man a liar, and so on. Then he caused the
Speaker to be walked out of his chair, told the guard to clear the
House, called the mace upon the table—which is a sign that the House is
sitting—‘a fool’s bauble,’ and said, ‘here, carry it away!’ Being
obeyed in all these orders, he quietly locked the door, put the key in
his pocket, walked back to Whitehall again, and told his friends, who
were still assembled there, what he had done.

They formed a new Council of State after this extraordinary proceeding,
and got a new Parliament together in their own way: which Oliver
himself opened in a sort of sermon, and which he said was the beginning
of a perfect heaven upon earth. In this Parliament there sat a
well-known leather-seller, who had taken the singular name of Praise
God Barebones, and from whom it was called, for a joke, Barebones’s
Parliament, though its general name was the Little Parliament. As it
soon appeared that it was not going to put Oliver in the first place,
it turned out to be not at all like the beginning of heaven upon earth,
and Oliver said it really was not to be borne with. So he cleared off
that Parliament in much the same way as he had disposed of the other;
and then the council of officers decided that he must be made the
supreme authority of the kingdom, under the title of the Lord Protector
of the Commonwealth.

So, on the sixteenth of December, one thousand six hundred and
fifty-three, a great procession was formed at Oliver’s door, and he
came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair of boots, and got into
his coach and went down to Westminster, attended by the judges, and the
lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all the other great and wonderful
personages of the country. There, in the Court of Chancery, he publicly
accepted the office of Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, and the City
sword was handed to him, and the seal was handed to him, and all the
other things were handed to him which are usually handed to Kings and
Queens on state occasions. When Oliver had handed them all back, he was
quite made and completely finished off as Lord Protector; and several
of the Ironsides preached about it at great length, all the evening.

SECOND PART

Oliver Cromwell—whom the people long called Old Noll—in accepting the
office of Protector, had bound himself by a certain paper which was
handed to him, called ‘the Instrument,’ to summon a Parliament,
consisting of between four and five hundred members, in the election of
which neither the Royalists nor the Catholics were to have any share.
He had also pledged himself that this Parliament should not be
dissolved without its own consent until it had sat five months.

When this Parliament met, Oliver made a speech to them of three hours
long, very wisely advising them what to do for the credit and happiness
of the country. To keep down the more violent members, he required them
to sign a recognition of what they were forbidden by ‘the Instrument’
to do; which was, chiefly, to take the power from one single person at
the head of the state or to command the army. Then he dismissed them to
go to work. With his usual vigour and resolution he went to work
himself with some frantic preachers—who were rather overdoing their
sermons in calling him a villain and a tyrant—by shutting up their
chapels, and sending a few of them off to prison.

There was not at that time, in England or anywhere else, a man so able
to govern the country as Oliver Cromwell. Although he ruled with a
strong hand, and levied a very heavy tax on the Royalists (but not
until they had plotted against his life), he ruled wisely, and as the
times required. He caused England to be so respected abroad, that I
wish some lords and gentlemen who have governed it under kings and
queens in later days would have taken a leaf out of Oliver Cromwell’s
book. He sent bold Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean Sea, to make the
Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand pounds for injuries he had done to
British subjects, and spoliation he had committed on English merchants.
He further despatched him and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli,
to have every English ship and every English man delivered up to him
that had been taken by pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously
done; and it began to be thoroughly well known, all over the world,
that England was governed by a man in earnest, who would not allow the
English name to be insulted or slighted anywhere.

These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a fleet to sea against
the Dutch; and the two powers, each with one hundred ships upon its
side, met in the English Channel off the North Foreland, where the
fight lasted all day long. Dean was killed in this fight; but Monk, who
commanded in the same ship with him, threw his cloak over his body,
that the sailors might not know of his death, and be disheartened. Nor
were they. The English broadsides so exceedingly astonished the Dutch
that they sheered off at last, though the redoubtable Van Tromp fired
upon them with his own guns for deserting their flag. Soon afterwards,
the two fleets engaged again, off the coast of Holland. There, the
valiant Van Tromp was shot through the heart, and the Dutch gave in,
and peace was made.

Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the domineering and
bigoted conduct of Spain, which country not only claimed a right to all
the gold and silver that could be found in South America, and treated
the ships of all other countries who visited those regions, as pirates,
but put English subjects into the horrible Spanish prisons of the
Inquisition. So, Oliver told the Spanish ambassador that English ships
must be free to go wherever they would, and that English merchants must
not be thrown into those same dungeons, no, not for the pleasure of all
the priests in Spain. To this, the Spanish ambassador replied that the
gold and silver country, and the Holy Inquisition, were his King’s two
eyes, neither of which he could submit to have put out. Very well, said
Oliver, then he was afraid he (Oliver) must damage those two eyes
directly.

So, another fleet was despatched under two commanders, Penn and
Venables, for Hispaniola; where, however, the Spaniards got the better
of the fight. Consequently, the fleet came home again, after taking
Jamaica on the way. Oliver, indignant with the two commanders who had
not done what bold Admiral Blake would have done, clapped them both
into prison, declared war against Spain, and made a treaty with France,
in virtue of which it was to shelter the King and his brother the Duke
of York no longer. Then, he sent a fleet abroad under bold Admiral
Blake, which brought the King of Portugal to his senses—just to keep
its hand in—and then engaged a Spanish fleet, sunk four great ships,
and took two more, laden with silver to the value of two millions of
pounds: which dazzling prize was brought from Portsmouth to London in
waggons, with the populace of all the towns and villages through which
the waggons passed, shouting with all their might. After this victory,
bold Admiral Blake sailed away to the port of Santa Cruz to cut off the
Spanish treasure-ships coming from Mexico. There, he found them, ten in
number, with seven others to take care of them, and a big castle, and
seven batteries, all roaring and blazing away at him with great guns.
Blake cared no more for great guns than for pop-guns—no more for their
hot iron balls than for snow-balls. He dashed into the harbour,
captured and burnt every one of the ships, and came sailing out again
triumphantly, with the victorious English flag flying at his masthead.
This was the last triumph of this great commander, who had sailed and
fought until he was quite worn out. He died, as his successful ship was
coming into Plymouth Harbour amidst the joyful acclamations of the
people, and was buried in state in Westminster Abbey. Not to lie there,
long.

Over and above all this, Oliver found that the Vaudois, or Protestant
people of the valleys of Lucerne, were insolently treated by the
Catholic powers, and were even put to death for their religion, in an
audacious and bloody manner. Instantly, he informed those powers that
this was a thing which Protestant England would not allow; and he
speedily carried his point, through the might of his great name, and
established their right to worship God in peace after their own
harmless manner.

Lastly, his English army won such admiration in fighting with the
French against the Spaniards, that, after they had assaulted the town
of Dunkirk together, the French King in person gave it up to the
English, that it might be a token to them of their might and valour.

There were plots enough against Oliver among the frantic religionists
(who called themselves Fifth Monarchy Men), and among the disappointed
Republicans. He had a difficult game to play, for the Royalists were
always ready to side with either party against him. The ‘King over the
water,’ too, as Charles was called, had no scruples about plotting with
any one against his life; although there is reason to suppose that he
would willingly have married one of his daughters, if Oliver would have
had such a son-in-law. There was a certain Colonel Saxby of the army,
once a great supporter of Oliver’s but now turned against him, who was
a grievous trouble to him through all this part of his career; and who
came and went between the discontented in England and Spain, and
Charles who put himself in alliance with Spain on being thrown off by
France. This man died in prison at last; but not until there had been
very serious plots between the Royalists and Republicans, and an actual
rising of them in England, when they burst into the city of Salisbury,
on a Sunday night, seized the judges who were going to hold the assizes
there next day, and would have hanged them but for the merciful
objections of the more temperate of their number. Oliver was so
vigorous and shrewd that he soon put this revolt down, as he did most
other conspiracies; and it was well for one of its chief managers—that
same Lord Wilmot who had assisted in Charles’s flight, and was now Earl
of Rochester—that he made his escape. Oliver seemed to have eyes and
ears everywhere, and secured such sources of information as his enemies
little dreamed of. There was a chosen body of six persons, called the
Sealed Knot, who were in the closest and most secret confidence of
Charles. One of the foremost of these very men, a Sir Richard Willis,
reported to Oliver everything that passed among them, and had two
hundred a year for it.

Miles Syndarcomb, also of the old army, was another conspirator against
the Protector. He and a man named Cecil, bribed one of his Life Guards
to let them have good notice when he was going out—intending to shoot
him from a window. But, owing either to his caution or his good
fortune, they could never get an aim at him. Disappointed in this
design, they got into the chapel in Whitehall, with a basketful of
combustibles, which were to explode by means of a slow match in six
hours; then, in the noise and confusion of the fire, they hoped to kill
Oliver. But, the Life Guardsman himself disclosed this plot; and they
were seized, and Miles died (or killed himself in prison) a little
while before he was ordered for execution. A few such plotters Oliver
caused to be beheaded, a few more to be hanged, and many more,
including those who rose in arms against him, to be sent as slaves to
the West Indies. If he were rigid, he was impartial too, in asserting
the laws of England. When a Portuguese nobleman, the brother of the
Portuguese ambassador, killed a London citizen in mistake for another
man with whom he had had a quarrel, Oliver caused him to be tried
before a jury of Englishmen and foreigners, and had him executed in
spite of the entreaties of all the ambassadors in London.

One of Oliver’s own friends, the Duke of Oldenburgh, in sending him a
present of six fine coach-horses, was very near doing more to please
the Royalists than all the plotters put together. One day, Oliver went
with his coach, drawn by these six horses, into Hyde Park, to dine with
his secretary and some of his other gentlemen under the trees there.
After dinner, being merry, he took it into his head to put his friends
inside and to drive them home: a postillion riding one of the foremost
horses, as the custom was. On account of Oliver’s being too free with
the whip, the six fine horses went off at a gallop, the postillion got
thrown, and Oliver fell upon the coach-pole and narrowly escaped being
shot by his own pistol, which got entangled with his clothes in the
harness, and went off. He was dragged some distance by the foot, until
his foot came out of the shoe, and then he came safely to the ground
under the broad body of the coach, and was very little the worse. The
gentlemen inside were only bruised, and the discontented people of all
parties were much disappointed.

The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell is a
history of his Parliaments. His first one not pleasing him at all, he
waited until the five months were out, and then dissolved it. The next
was better suited to his views; and from that he desired to get—if he
could with safety to himself—the title of King. He had had this in his
mind some time: whether because he thought that the English people,
being more used to the title, were more likely to obey it; or whether
because he really wished to be a king himself, and to leave the
succession to that title in his family, is far from clear. He was
already as high, in England and in all the world, as he would ever be,
and I doubt if he cared for the mere name. However, a paper, called the
‘Humble Petition and Advice,’ was presented to him by the House of
Commons, praying him to take a high title and to appoint his successor.
That he would have taken the title of King there is no doubt, but for
the strong opposition of the army. This induced him to forbear, and to
assent only to the other points of the petition. Upon which occasion
there was another grand show in Westminster Hall, when the Speaker of
the House of Commons formally invested him with a purple robe lined
with ermine, and presented him with a splendidly bound Bible, and put a
golden sceptre in his hand. The next time the Parliament met, he called
a House of Lords of sixty members, as the petition gave him power to
do; but as that Parliament did not please him either, and would not
proceed to the business of the country, he jumped into a coach one
morning, took six Guards with him, and sent them to the right-about. I
wish this had been a warning to Parliaments to avoid long speeches, and
do more work.

It was the month of August, one thousand six hundred and fifty-eight,
when Oliver Cromwell’s favourite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole (who had
lately lost her youngest son), lay very ill, and his mind was greatly
troubled, because he loved her dearly. Another of his daughters was
married to Lord Falconberg, another to the grandson of the Earl of
Warwick, and he had made his son Richard one of the Members of the
Upper House. He was very kind and loving to them all, being a good
father and a good husband; but he loved this daughter the best of the
family, and went down to Hampton Court to see her, and could hardly be
induced to stir from her sick room until she died. Although his
religion had been of a gloomy kind, his disposition had been always
cheerful. He had been fond of music in his home, and had kept open
table once a week for all officers of the army not below the rank of
captain, and had always preserved in his house a quiet, sensible
dignity. He encouraged men of genius and learning, and loved to have
them about him. Milton was one of his great friends. He was good
humoured too, with the nobility, whose dresses and manners were very
different from his; and to show them what good information he had, he
would sometimes jokingly tell them when they were his guests, where
they had last drunk the health of the ‘King over the water,’ and would
recommend them to be more private (if they could) another time. But he
had lived in busy times, had borne the weight of heavy State affairs,
and had often gone in fear of his life. He was ill of the gout and
ague; and when the death of his beloved child came upon him in
addition, he sank, never to raise his head again. He told his
physicians on the twenty-fourth of August that the Lord had assured him
that he was not to die in that illness, and that he would certainly get
better. This was only his sick fancy, for on the third of September,
which was the anniversary of the great battle of Worcester, and the day
of the year which he called his fortunate day, he died, in the sixtieth
year of his age. He had been delirious, and had lain insensible some
hours, but he had been overheard to murmur a very good prayer the day
before. The whole country lamented his death. If you want to know the
real worth of Oliver Cromwell, and his real services to his country,
you can hardly do better than compare England under him, with England
under Charles the Second.

He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him, and after there had
been, at Somerset House in the Strand, a lying in state more splendid
than sensible—as all such vanities after death are, I think—Richard
became Lord Protector. He was an amiable country gentleman, but had
none of his father’s great genius, and was quite unfit for such a post
in such a storm of parties. Richard’s Protectorate, which only lasted a
year and a half, is a history of quarrels between the officers of the
army and the Parliament, and between the officers among themselves; and
of a growing discontent among the people, who had far too many long
sermons and far too few amusements, and wanted a change. At last,
General Monk got the army well into his own hands, and then in
pursuance of a secret plan he seems to have entertained from the time
of Oliver’s death, declared for the King’s cause. He did not do this
openly; but, in his place in the House of Commons, as one of the
members for Devonshire, strongly advocated the proposals of one Sir
John Greenville, who came to the House with a letter from Charles,
dated from Breda, and with whom he had previously been in secret
communication. There had been plots and counterplots, and a recall of
the last members of the Long Parliament, and an end of the Long
Parliament, and risings of the Royalists that were made too soon; and
most men being tired out, and there being no one to head the country
now great Oliver was dead, it was readily agreed to welcome Charles
Stuart. Some of the wiser and better members said—what was most
true—that in the letter from Breda, he gave no real promise to govern
well, and that it would be best to make him pledge himself beforehand
as to what he should be bound to do for the benefit of the kingdom.
Monk said, however, it would be all right when he came, and he could
not come too soon.

So, everybody found out all in a moment that the country _must_ be
prosperous and happy, having another Stuart to condescend to reign over
it; and there was a prodigious firing off of guns, lighting of
bonfires, ringing of bells, and throwing up of caps. The people drank
the King’s health by thousands in the open streets, and everybody
rejoiced. Down came the Arms of the Commonwealth, up went the Royal
Arms instead, and out came the public money. Fifty thousand pounds for
the King, ten thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of York, five
thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of Gloucester. Prayers for
these gracious Stuarts were put up in all the churches; commissioners
were sent to Holland (which suddenly found out that Charles was a great
man, and that it loved him) to invite the King home; Monk and the
Kentish grandees went to Dover, to kneel down before him as he landed.
He kissed and embraced Monk, made him ride in the coach with himself
and his brothers, came on to London amid wonderful shoutings, and
passed through the army at Blackheath on the twenty-ninth of May (his
birthday), in the year one thousand six hundred and sixty. Greeted by
splendid dinners under tents, by flags and tapestry streaming from all
the houses, by delighted crowds in all the streets, by troops of
noblemen and gentlemen in rich dresses, by City companies, train-bands,
drummers, trumpeters, the great Lord Mayor, and the majestic Aldermen,
the King went on to Whitehall. On entering it, he commemorated his
Restoration with the joke that it really would seem to have been his
own fault that he had not come long ago, since everybody told him that
he had always wished for him with all his heart.




CHAPTER XXXV
ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH


There never were such profligate times in England as under Charles the
Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with his swarthy, ill-looking
face and great nose, you may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall,
surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though
they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling, indulging in vicious
conversation, and committing every kind of profligate excess. It has
been a fashion to call Charles the Second ‘The Merry Monarch.’ Let me
try to give you a general idea of some of the merry things that were
done, in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat upon his merry
throne, in merry England.

The first merry proceeding was—of course—to declare that he was one of
the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings that ever shone, like
the blessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. The next merry and
pleasant piece of business was, for the Parliament, in the humblest
manner, to give him one million two hundred thousand pounds a year, and
to settle upon him for life that old disputed tonnage and poundage
which had been so bravely fought for. Then, General Monk being made
Earl of Albemarle, and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the
law went to work to see what was to be done to those persons (they were
called Regicides) who had been concerned in making a martyr of the late
King. Ten of these were merrily executed; that is to say, six of the
judges, one of the council, Colonel Hacker and another officer who had
commanded the Guards, and Hugh Peters, a preacher who had preached
against the martyr with all his heart. These executions were so
extremely merry, that every horrible circumstance which Cromwell had
abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. The hearts of the
sufferers were torn out of their living bodies; their bowels were
burned before their faces; the executioner cut jokes to the next
victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together, that were reeking with
the blood of the last; and the heads of the dead were drawn on sledges
with the living to the place of suffering. Still, even so merry a
monarch could not force one of these dying men to say that he was sorry
for what he had done. Nay, the most memorable thing said among them
was, that if the thing were to do again they would do it.

Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against Strafford, and
was one of the most staunch of the Republicans, was also tried, found
guilty, and ordered for execution. When he came upon the scaffold on
Tower Hill, after conducting his own defence with great power, his
notes of what he had meant to say to the people were torn away from
him, and the drums and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown
his voice; for, the people had been so much impressed by what the
Regicides had calmly said with their last breath, that it was the
custom now, to have the drums and trumpets always under the scaffold,
ready to strike up. Vane said no more than this: ‘It is a bad cause
which cannot bear the words of a dying man:’ and bravely died.

These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps even merrier. On
the anniversary of the late King’s death, the bodies of Oliver
Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were torn out of their graves in
Westminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day
long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a
pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom would have
dared to look the living Oliver in the face for half a moment! Think,
after you have read this reign, what England was under Oliver Cromwell
who was torn out of his grave, and what it was under this merry monarch
who sold it, like a merry Judas, over and over again.

Of course, the remains of Oliver’s wife and daughter were not to be
spared either, though they had been most excellent women. The base
clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried in the
Abbey, and—to the eternal disgrace of England—they were thrown into a
pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym and of the brave and
bold old Admiral Blake.

The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to get the
nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly put down in this reign, and
to have but one prayer-book and one service for all kinds of people, no
matter what their private opinions were. This was pretty well, I think,
for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the Romish Church because
people had a right to their own opinions in religious matters. However,
they carried it with a high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon, in
which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. An
Act was passed, too, preventing any dissenter from holding any office
under any corporation. So, the regular clergy in their triumph were
soon as merry as the King. The army being by this time disbanded, and
the King crowned, everything was to go on easily for evermore.

I must say a word here about the King’s family. He had not been long
upon the throne when his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and his sister
the Princess of Orange, died within a few months of each other, of
small-pox. His remaining sister, the Princess Henrietta, married the
Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis the Fourteenth, King of France.
His brother James, Duke of York, was made High Admiral, and by-and-by
became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious sort of man, with a
remarkable partiality for the ugliest women in the country. He married,
under very discreditable circumstances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord
Clarendon, then the King’s principal Minister—not at all a delicate
minister either, but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty
palace. It became important now that the King himself should be
married; and divers foreign Monarchs, not very particular about the
character of their son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. The
King of Portugal offered his daughter, Catherine of Braganza, and fifty
thousand pounds: in addition to which, the French King, who was
favourable to that match, offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The
King of Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen of
Princesses, and other hopes of gain. But the ready money carried the
day, and Catherine came over in state to her merry marriage.

The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched men and
shameless women; and Catherine’s merry husband insulted and outraged
her in every possible way, until she consented to receive those
worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade herself by
their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the King made Lady
Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most
powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great influence with
the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry lady named Moll
Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards her rival. So was Nell
Gwyn, first an orange girl and then an actress, who really had good in
her, and of whom one of the worst things I know is, that actually she
does seem to have been fond of the King. The first Duke of St. Albans
was this orange girl’s child. In like manner the son of a merry
waiting-lady, whom the King created Duchess Of Portsmouth, became the
Duke of Richmond. Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to be a
commoner.

The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these merry ladies,
and some equally merry (and equally infamous) lords and gentlemen, that
he soon got through his hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of
raising a little pocket-money, made a merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to
the French King for five millions of livres. When I think of the
dignity to which Oliver Cromwell raised England in the eyes of foreign
powers, and when I think of the manner in which he gained for England
this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined to consider that if the Merry
Monarch had been made to follow his father for this action, he would
have received his just deserts.

Though he was like his father in none of that father’s greater
qualities, he was like him in being worthy of no trust. When he sent
that letter to the Parliament, from Breda, he did expressly promise
that all sincere religious opinions should be respected. Yet he was no
sooner firm in his power than he consented to one of the worst Acts of
Parliament ever passed. Under this law, every minister who should not
give his solemn assent to the Prayer-Book by a certain day, was
declared to be a minister no longer, and to be deprived of his church.
The consequence of this was that some two thousand honest men were
taken from their congregations, and reduced to dire poverty and
distress. It was followed by another outrageous law, called the
Conventicle Act, by which any person above the age of sixteen who was
present at any religious service not according to the Prayer-Book, was
to be imprisoned three months for the first offence, six for the
second, and to be transported for the third. This Act alone filled the
prisons, which were then most dreadful dungeons, to overflowing.

The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no better. A base
Parliament, usually known as the Drunken Parliament, in consequence of
its principal members being seldom sober, had been got together to make
laws against the Covenanters, and to force all men to be of one mind in
religious matters. The Marquis of Argyle, relying on the King’s honour,
had given himself up to him; but, he was wealthy, and his enemies
wanted his wealth. He was tried for treason, on the evidence of some
private letters in which he had expressed opinions—as well he
might—more favourable to the government of the late Lord Protector than
of the present merry and religious King. He was executed, as were two
men of mark among the Covenanters; and Sharp, a traitor who had once
been the friend of the Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made
Archbishop of St. Andrew’s, to teach the Scotch how to like bishops.

Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry Monarch undertook a
war with the Dutch; principally because they interfered with an African
company, established with the two objects of buying gold-dust and
slaves, of which the Duke of York was a leading member. After some
preliminary hostilities, the said Duke sailed to the coast of Holland
with a fleet of ninety-eight vessels of war, and four fire-ships. This
engaged with the Dutch fleet, of no fewer than one hundred and thirteen
ships. In the great battle between the two forces, the Dutch lost
eighteen ships, four admirals, and seven thousand men. But, the English
on shore were in no mood of exultation when they heard the news.

For, this was the year and the time of the Great Plague in London.
During the winter of one thousand six hundred and sixty-four it had
been whispered about, that some few people had died here and there of
the disease called the Plague, in some of the unwholesome suburbs
around London. News was not published at that time as it is now, and
some people believed these rumours, and some disbelieved them, and they
were soon forgotten. But, in the month of May, one thousand six hundred
and sixty-five, it began to be said all over the town that the disease
had burst out with great violence in St. Giles’s, and that the people
were dying in great numbers. This soon turned out to be awfully true.
The roads out of London were choked up by people endeavouring to escape
from the infected city, and large sums were paid for any kind of
conveyance. The disease soon spread so fast, that it was necessary to
shut up the houses in which sick people were, and to cut them off from
communication with the living. Every one of these houses was marked on
the outside of the door with a red cross, and the words, Lord, have
mercy upon us! The streets were all deserted, grass grew in the public
ways, and there was a dreadful silence in the air. When night came on,
dismal rumblings used to be heard, and these were the wheels of the
death-carts, attended by men with veiled faces and holding cloths to
their mouths, who rang doleful bells and cried in a loud and solemn
voice, ‘Bring out your dead!’ The corpses put into these carts were
buried by torchlight in great pits; no service being performed over
them; all men being afraid to stay for a moment on the brink of the
ghastly graves. In the general fear, children ran away from their
parents, and parents from their children. Some who were taken ill, died
alone, and without any help. Some were stabbed or strangled by hired
nurses who robbed them of all their money, and stole the very beds on
which they lay. Some went mad, dropped from the windows, ran through
the streets, and in their pain and frenzy flung themselves into the
river.

These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked and dissolute,
in wild desperation, sat in the taverns singing roaring songs, and were
stricken as they drank, and went out and died. The fearful and
superstitious persuaded themselves that they saw supernatural
sights—burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms and darts. Others
pretended that at nights vast crowds of ghosts walked round and round
the dismal pits. One madman, naked, and carrying a brazier full of
burning coals upon his head, stalked through the streets, crying out
that he was a Prophet, commissioned to denounce the vengeance of the
Lord on wicked London. Another always went to and fro, exclaiming, ‘Yet
forty days, and London shall be destroyed!’ A third awoke the echoes in
the dismal streets, by night and by day, and made the blood of the sick
run cold, by calling out incessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, ‘O, the
great and dreadful God!’

Through the months of July and August and September, the Great Plague
raged more and more. Great fires were lighted in the streets, in the
hope of stopping the infection; but there was a plague of rain too, and
it beat the fires out. At last, the winds which usually arise at that
time of the year which is called the equinox, when day and night are of
equal length all over the world, began to blow, and to purify the
wretched town. The deaths began to decrease, the red crosses slowly to
disappear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, pale frightened
faces to be seen in the streets. The Plague had been in every part of
England, but in close and unwholesome London it had killed one hundred
thousand people.

All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, and as worthless
as ever. All this time, the debauched lords and gentlemen and the
shameless ladies danced and gamed and drank, and loved and hated one
another, according to their merry ways.

So little humanity did the government learn from the late affliction,
that one of the first things the Parliament did when it met at Oxford
(being as yet afraid to come to London), was to make a law, called the
Five Mile Act, expressly directed against those poor ministers who, in
the time of the Plague, had manfully come back to comfort the unhappy
people. This infamous law, by forbidding them to teach in any school,
or to come within five miles of any city, town, or village, doomed them
to starvation and death.

The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of France was now in
alliance with the Dutch, though his navy was chiefly employed in
looking on while the English and Dutch fought. The Dutch gained one
victory; and the English gained another and a greater; and Prince
Rupert, one of the English admirals, was out in the Channel one windy
night, looking for the French Admiral, with the intention of giving him
something more to do than he had had yet, when the gale increased to a
storm, and blew him into Saint Helen’s. That night was the third of
September, one thousand six hundred and sixty-six, and that wind fanned
the Great Fire of London.

It broke out at a baker’s shop near London Bridge, on the spot on which
the Monument now stands as a remembrance of those raging flames. It
spread and spread, and burned and burned, for three days. The nights
were lighter than the days; in the daytime there was an immense cloud
of smoke, and in the night-time there was a great tower of fire
mounting up into the sky, which lighted the whole country landscape for
ten miles round. Showers of hot ashes rose into the air and fell on
distant places; flying sparks carried the conflagration to great
distances, and kindled it in twenty new spots at a time; church
steeples fell down with tremendous crashes; houses crumbled into
cinders by the hundred and the thousand. The summer had been intensely
hot and dry, the streets were very narrow, and the houses mostly built
of wood and plaster. Nothing could stop the tremendous fire, but the
want of more houses to burn; nor did it stop until the whole way from
the Tower to Temple Bar was a desert, composed of the ashes of thirteen
thousand houses and eighty-nine churches.

This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occasioned great loss
and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out people, who were
obliged to lie in the fields under the open night sky, or in
hastily-made huts of mud and straw, while the lanes and roads were
rendered impassable by carts which had broken down as they tried to
save their goods. But the Fire was a great blessing to the City
afterwards, for it arose from its ruins very much improved—built more
regularly, more widely, more cleanly and carefully, and therefore much
more healthily. It might be far more healthy than it is, but there are
some people in it still—even now, at this time, nearly two hundred
years later—so selfish, so pig-headed, and so ignorant, that I doubt if
even another Great Fire would warm them up to do their duty.

The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London in flames; one
poor Frenchman, who had been mad for years, even accused himself of
having with his own hand fired the first house. There is no reasonable
doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. An inscription on the
Monument long attributed it to the Catholics; but it is removed now,
and was always a malicious and stupid untruth.

SECOND PART

That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, in the merry times
when his people were suffering under pestilence and fire, he drank and
gambled and flung away among his favourites the money which the
Parliament had voted for the war. The consequence of this was that the
stout-hearted English sailors were merrily starving of want, and dying
in the streets; while the Dutch, under their admirals De Witt and De
Ruyter, came into the River Thames, and up the River Medway as far as
Upnor, burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak batteries, and did
what they would to the English coast for six whole weeks. Most of the
English ships that could have prevented them had neither powder nor
shot on board; in this merry reign, public officers made themselves as
merry as the King did with the public money; and when it was entrusted
to them to spend in national defences or preparations, they put it into
their own pockets with the merriest grace in the world.

Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a course as is usually
allotted to the unscrupulous ministers of bad kings. He was impeached
by his political opponents, but unsuccessfully. The King then commanded
him to withdraw from England and retire to France, which he did, after
defending himself in writing. He was no great loss at home, and died
abroad some seven years afterwards.

There then came into power a ministry called the Cabal Ministry,
because it was composed of Lord Clifford, the Earl of Arlington, the
Duke of Buckingham (a great rascal, and the King’s most powerful
favourite), Lord Ashley, and the Duke of Lauderdale, c. a. b. a. l. As
the French were making conquests in Flanders, the first Cabal
proceeding was to make a treaty with the Dutch, for uniting with Spain
to oppose the French. It was no sooner made than the Merry Monarch, who
always wanted to get money without being accountable to a Parliament
for his expenditure, apologised to the King of France for having had
anything to do with it, and concluded a secret treaty with him, making
himself his infamous pensioner to the amount of two millions of livres
down, and three millions more a year; and engaging to desert that very
Spain, to make war against those very Dutch, and to declare himself a
Catholic when a convenient time should arrive. This religious king had
lately been crying to his Catholic brother on the subject of his strong
desire to be a Catholic; and now he merrily concluded this treasonable
conspiracy against the country he governed, by undertaking to become
one as soon as he safely could. For all of which, though he had had ten
merry heads instead of one, he richly deserved to lose them by the
headsman’s axe.

As his one merry head might have been far from safe, if these things
had been known, they were kept very quiet, and war was declared by
France and England against the Dutch. But, a very uncommon man,
afterwards most important to English history and to the religion and
liberty of this land, arose among them, and for many long years
defeated the whole projects of France. This was William of Nassau,
Prince of Orange, son of the last Prince of Orange of the same name,
who married the daughter of Charles the First of England. He was a
young man at this time, only just of age; but he was brave, cool,
intrepid, and wise. His father had been so detested that, upon his
death, the Dutch had abolished the authority to which this son would
have otherwise succeeded (Stadtholder it was called), and placed the
chief power in the hands of John de Witt, who educated this young
prince. Now, the Prince became very popular, and John de Witt’s brother
Cornelius was sentenced to banishment on a false accusation of
conspiring to kill him. John went to the prison where he was, to take
him away to exile, in his coach; and a great mob who collected on the
occasion, then and there cruelly murdered both the brothers. This left
the government in the hands of the Prince, who was really the choice of
the nation; and from this time he exercised it with the greatest
vigour, against the whole power of France, under its famous generals
Condé and Turenne, and in support of the Protestant religion. It was
full seven years before this war ended in a treaty of peace made at
Nimeguen, and its details would occupy a very considerable space. It is
enough to say that William of Orange established a famous character
with the whole world; and that the Merry Monarch, adding to and
improving on his former baseness, bound himself to do everything the
King of France liked, and nothing the King of France did not like, for
a pension of one hundred thousand pounds a year, which was afterwards
doubled. Besides this, the King of France, by means of his corrupt
ambassador—who wrote accounts of his proceedings in England, which are
not always to be believed, I think—bought our English members of
Parliament, as he wanted them. So, in point of fact, during a
considerable portion of this merry reign, the King of France was the
real King of this country.

But there was a better time to come, and it was to come (though his
royal uncle little thought so) through that very William, Prince of
Orange. He came over to England, saw Mary, the elder daughter of the
Duke of York, and married her. We shall see by-and-by what came of that
marriage, and why it is never to be forgotten.

This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a Catholic. She and
her sister Anne, also a Protestant, were the only survivors of eight
children. Anne afterwards married George, Prince of Denmark, brother to
the King of that country.

Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of supposing that he
was even good humoured (except when he had everything his own way), or
that he was high spirited and honourable, I will mention here what was
done to a member of the House of Commons, Sir John Coventry. He made a
remark in a debate about taxing the theatres, which gave the King
offence. The King agreed with his illegitimate son, who had been born
abroad, and whom he had made Duke of Monmouth, to take the following
merry vengeance. To waylay him at night, fifteen armed men to one, and
to slit his nose with a penknife. Like master, like man. The King’s
favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, was strongly suspected of setting on
an assassin to murder the Duke of Ormond as he was returning home from
a dinner; and that Duke’s spirited son, Lord Ossory, was so persuaded
of his guilt, that he said to him at Court, even as he stood beside the
King, ‘My lord, I know very well that you are at the bottom of this
late attempt upon my father. But I give you warning, if he ever come to
a violent end, his blood shall be upon you, and wherever I meet you I
will pistol you! I will do so, though I find you standing behind the
King’s chair; and I tell you this in his Majesty’s presence, that you
may be quite sure of my doing what I threaten.’ Those were merry times
indeed.

There was a fellow named Blood, who was seized for making, with two
companions, an audacious attempt to steal the crown, the globe, and
sceptre, from the place where the jewels were kept in the Tower. This
robber, who was a swaggering ruffian, being taken, declared that he was
the man who had endeavoured to kill the Duke of Ormond, and that he had
meant to kill the King too, but was overawed by the majesty of his
appearance, when he might otherwise have done it, as he was bathing at
Battersea. The King being but an ill-looking fellow, I don’t believe a
word of this. Whether he was flattered, or whether he knew that
Buckingham had really set Blood on to murder the Duke, is uncertain.
But it is quite certain that he pardoned this thief, gave him an estate
of five hundred a year in Ireland (which had had the honour of giving
him birth), and presented him at Court to the debauched lords and the
shameless ladies, who made a great deal of him—as I have no doubt they
would have made of the Devil himself, if the King had introduced him.

Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted money, and
consequently was obliged to call Parliaments. In these, the great
object of the Protestants was to thwart the Catholic Duke of York, who
married a second time; his new wife being a young lady only fifteen
years old, the Catholic sister of the Duke of Modena. In this they were
seconded by the Protestant Dissenters, though to their own
disadvantage: since, to exclude Catholics from power, they were even
willing to exclude themselves. The King’s object was to pretend to be a
Protestant, while he was really a Catholic; to swear to the bishops
that he was devoutly attached to the English Church, while he knew he
had bargained it away to the King of France; and by cheating and
deceiving them, and all who were attached to royalty, to become
despotic and be powerful enough to confess what a rascal he was.
Meantime, the King of France, knowing his merry pensioner well,
intrigued with the King’s opponents in Parliament, as well as with the
King and his friends.

The fears that the country had of the Catholic religion being restored,
if the Duke of York should come to the throne, and the low cunning of
the King in pretending to share their alarms, led to some very terrible
results. A certain Dr. Tonge, a dull clergyman in the City, fell into
the hands of a certain Titus Oates, a most infamous character, who
pretended to have acquired among the Jesuits abroad a knowledge of a
great plot for the murder of the King, and the re-establishment of the
Catholic religion. Titus Oates, being produced by this unlucky Dr.
Tonge and solemnly examined before the council, contradicted himself in
a thousand ways, told the most ridiculous and improbable stories, and
implicated Coleman, the Secretary of the Duchess of York. Now, although
what he charged against Coleman was not true, and although you and I
know very well that the real dangerous Catholic plot was that one with
the King of France of which the Merry Monarch was himself the head,
there happened to be found among Coleman’s papers, some letters, in
which he did praise the days of Bloody Queen Mary, and abuse the
Protestant religion. This was great good fortune for Titus, as it
seemed to confirm him; but better still was in store. Sir Edmundbury
Godfrey, the magistrate who had first examined him, being unexpectedly
found dead near Primrose Hill, was confidently believed to have been
killed by the Catholics. I think there is no doubt that he had been
melancholy mad, and that he killed himself; but he had a great
Protestant funeral, and Titus was called the Saver of the Nation, and
received a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year.

As soon as Oates’s wickedness had met with this success, up started
another villain, named William Bedloe, who, attracted by a reward of
five hundred pounds offered for the apprehension of the murderers of
Godfrey, came forward and charged two Jesuits and some other persons
with having committed it at the Queen’s desire. Oates, going into
partnership with this new informer, had the audacity to accuse the poor
Queen herself of high treason. Then appeared a third informer, as bad
as either of the two, and accused a Catholic banker named Stayley of
having said that the King was the greatest rogue in the world (which
would not have been far from the truth), and that he would kill him
with his own hand. This banker, being at once tried and executed,
Coleman and two others were tried and executed. Then, a miserable
wretch named Prance, a Catholic silversmith, being accused by Bedloe,
was tortured into confessing that he had taken part in Godfrey’s
murder, and into accusing three other men of having committed it. Then,
five Jesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, and Prance together, and
were all found guilty, and executed on the same kind of contradictory
and absurd evidence. The Queen’s physician and three monks were next
put on their trial; but Oates and Bedloe had for the time gone far
enough and these four were acquitted. The public mind, however, was so
full of a Catholic plot, and so strong against the Duke of York, that
James consented to obey a written order from his brother, and to go
with his family to Brussels, provided that his rights should never be
sacrificed in his absence to the Duke of Monmouth. The House of
Commons, not satisfied with this as the King hoped, passed a bill to
exclude the Duke from ever succeeding to the throne. In return, the
King dissolved the Parliament. He had deserted his old favourite, the
Duke of Buckingham, who was now in the opposition.

To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in this merry
reign, would occupy a hundred pages. Because the people would not have
bishops, and were resolved to stand by their solemn League and
Covenant, such cruelties were inflicted upon them as make the blood run
cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through the country to punish the
peasants for deserting the churches; sons were hanged up at their
fathers’ doors for refusing to disclose where their fathers were
concealed; wives were tortured to death for not betraying their
husbands; people were taken out of their fields and gardens, and shot
on the public roads without trial; lighted matches were tied to the
fingers of prisoners, and a most horrible torment called the Boot was
invented, and constantly applied, which ground and mashed the victims’
legs with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as well as prisoners.
All the prisons were full; all the gibbets were heavy with bodies;
murder and plunder devastated the whole country. In spite of all, the
Covenanters were by no means to be dragged into the churches, and
persisted in worshipping God as they thought right. A body of ferocious
Highlanders, turned upon them from the mountains of their own country,
had no greater effect than the English dragoons under Grahame of
Claverhouse, the most cruel and rapacious of all their enemies, whose
name will ever be cursed through the length and breadth of Scotland.
Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abetted all these outrages. But he
fell at last; for, when the injuries of the Scottish people were at
their height, he was seen, in his coach-and-six coming across a moor,
by a body of men, headed by one John Balfour, who were waiting for
another of their oppressors. Upon this they cried out that Heaven had
delivered him into their hands, and killed him with many wounds. If
ever a man deserved such a death, I think Archbishop Sharp did.

It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch—strongly
suspected of having goaded the Scottish people on, that he might have
an excuse for a greater army than the Parliament were willing to give
him—sent down his son, the Duke of Monmouth, as commander-in-chief,
with instructions to attack the Scottish rebels, or Whigs as they were
called, whenever he came up with them. Marching with ten thousand men
from Edinburgh, he found them, in number four or five thousand, drawn
up at Bothwell Bridge, by the Clyde. They were soon dispersed; and
Monmouth showed a more humane character towards them, than he had shown
towards that Member of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit
with a penknife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their bitter foe, and
sent Claverhouse to finish them.

As the Duke of York became more and more unpopular, the Duke of
Monmouth became more and more popular. It would have been decent in the
latter not to have voted in favour of the renewed bill for the
exclusion of James from the throne; but he did so, much to the King’s
amusement, who used to sit in the House of Lords by the fire, hearing
the debates, which he said were as good as a play. The House of Commons
passed the bill by a large majority, and it was carried up to the House
of Lords by Lord Russell, one of the best of the leaders on the
Protestant side. It was rejected there, chiefly because the bishops
helped the King to get rid of it; and the fear of Catholic plots
revived again. There had been another got up, by a fellow out of
Newgate, named Dangerfield, which is more famous than it deserves to
be, under the name of the Meal-Tub Plot. This jail-bird having been got
out of Newgate by a Mrs. Cellier, a Catholic nurse, had turned Catholic
himself, and pretended that he knew of a plot among the Presbyterians
against the King’s life. This was very pleasant to the Duke of York,
who hated the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. He gave
Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the King his brother. But
Dangerfield, breaking down altogether in his charge, and being sent
back to Newgate, almost astonished the Duke out of his five senses by
suddenly swearing that the Catholic nurse had put that false design
into his head, and that what he really knew about, was, a Catholic plot
against the King; the evidence of which would be found in some papers,
concealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier’s house. There they were, of
course—for he had put them there himself—and so the tub gave the name
to the plot. But, the nurse was acquitted on her trial, and it came to
nothing.

Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and was strong
against the succession of the Duke of York. The House of Commons,
aggravated to the utmost extent, as we may well suppose, by suspicions
of the King’s conspiracy with the King of France, made a desperate
point of the exclusion, still, and were bitter against the Catholics
generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve to say, that they
impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catholic nobleman seventy
years old, of a design to kill the King. The witnesses were that
atrocious Oates and two other birds of the same feather. He was found
guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as it was false, and was beheaded
on Tower Hill. The people were opposed to him when he first appeared
upon the scaffold; but, when he had addressed them and shown them how
innocent he was and how wickedly he was sent there, their better nature
was aroused, and they said, ‘We believe you, my Lord. God bless you, my
Lord!’

The House of Commons refused to let the King have any money until he
should consent to the Exclusion Bill; but, as he could get it and did
get it from his master the King of France, he could afford to hold them
very cheap. He called a Parliament at Oxford, to which he went down
with a great show of being armed and protected as if he were in danger
of his life, and to which the opposition members also went armed and
protected, alleging that they were in fear of the Papists, who were
numerous among the King’s guards. However, they went on with the
Exclusion Bill, and were so earnest upon it that they would have
carried it again, if the King had not popped his crown and state robes
into a sedan-chair, bundled himself into it along with them, hurried
down to the chamber where the House of Lords met, and dissolved the
Parliament. After which he scampered home, and the members of
Parliament scampered home too, as fast as their legs could carry them.

The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under the law which
excluded Catholics from public trust, no right whatever to public
employment. Nevertheless, he was openly employed as the King’s
representative in Scotland, and there gratified his sullen and cruel
nature to his heart’s content by directing the dreadful cruelties
against the Covenanters. There were two ministers named Cargill and
Cameron who had escaped from the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and who
returned to Scotland, and raised the miserable but still brave and
unsubdued Covenanters afresh, under the name of Cameronians. As Cameron
publicly posted a declaration that the King was a forsworn tyrant, no
mercy was shown to his unhappy followers after he was slain in battle.
The Duke of York, who was particularly fond of the Boot and derived
great pleasure from having it applied, offered their lives to some of
these people, if they would cry on the scaffold ‘God save the King!’
But their relations, friends, and countrymen, had been so barbarously
tortured and murdered in this merry reign, that they preferred to die,
and did die. The Duke then obtained his merry brother’s permission to
hold a Parliament in Scotland, which first, with most shameless deceit,
confirmed the laws for securing the Protestant religion against Popery,
and then declared that nothing must or should prevent the succession of
the Popish Duke. After this double-faced beginning, it established an
oath which no human being could understand, but which everybody was to
take, as a proof that his religion was the lawful religion. The Earl of
Argyle, taking it with the explanation that he did not consider it to
prevent him from favouring any alteration either in the Church or State
which was not inconsistent with the Protestant religion or with his
loyalty, was tried for high treason before a Scottish jury of which the
Marquis of Montrose was foreman, and was found guilty. He escaped the
scaffold, for that time, by getting away, in the disguise of a page, in
the train of his daughter, Lady Sophia Lindsay. It was absolutely
proposed, by certain members of the Scottish Council, that this lady
should be whipped through the streets of Edinburgh. But this was too
much even for the Duke, who had the manliness then (he had very little
at most times) to remark that Englishmen were not accustomed to treat
ladies in that manner. In those merry times nothing could equal the
brutal servility of the Scottish fawners, but the conduct of similar
degraded beings in England.

After the settlement of these little affairs, the Duke returned to
England, and soon resumed his place at the Council, and his office of
High Admiral—all this by his brother’s favour, and in open defiance of
the law. It would have been no loss to the country, if he had been
drowned when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his family, struck
on a sand-bank, and was lost with two hundred souls on board. But he
escaped in a boat with some friends; and the sailors were so brave and
unselfish, that, when they saw him rowing away, they gave three cheers,
while they themselves were going down for ever.

The Merry Monarch, having got rid of his Parliament, went to work to
make himself despotic, with all speed. Having had the villainy to order
the execution of Oliver Plunket, Bishop of Armagh, falsely accused of a
plot to establish Popery in that country by means of a French army—the
very thing this royal traitor was himself trying to do at home—and
having tried to ruin Lord Shaftesbury, and failed—he turned his hand to
controlling the corporations all over the country; because, if he could
only do that, he could get what juries he chose, to bring in perjured
verdicts, and could get what members he chose returned to Parliament.
These merry times produced, and made Chief Justice of the Court of
King’s Bench, a drunken ruffian of the name of Jeffreys; a red-faced,
swollen, bloated, horrible creature, with a bullying, roaring voice,
and a more savage nature perhaps than was ever lodged in any human
breast. This monster was the Merry Monarch’s especial favourite, and he
testified his admiration of him by giving him a ring from his own
finger, which the people used to call Judge Jeffreys’s Bloodstone. Him
the King employed to go about and bully the corporations, beginning
with London; or, as Jeffreys himself elegantly called it, ‘to give them
a lick with the rough side of his tongue.’ And he did it so thoroughly,
that they soon became the basest and most sycophantic bodies in the
kingdom—except the University of Oxford, which, in that respect, was
quite pre-eminent and unapproachable.

Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the King’s failure against him),
Lord William Russell, the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Howard, Lord Jersey,
Algernon Sidney, John Hampden (grandson of the great Hampden), and some
others, used to hold a council together after the dissolution of the
Parliament, arranging what it might be necessary to do, if the King
carried his Popish plot to the utmost height. Lord Shaftesbury having
been much the most violent of this party, brought two violent men into
their secrets—Rumsey, who had been a soldier in the Republican army;
and West, a lawyer. These two knew an old officer of Cromwell’s, called
Rumbold, who had married a maltster’s widow, and so had come into
possession of a solitary dwelling called the Rye House, near Hoddesdon,
in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said to them what a capital place this house
of his would be from which to shoot at the King, who often passed there
going to and fro from Newmarket. They liked the idea, and entertained
it. But, one of their body gave information; and they, together with
Shepherd a wine merchant, Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, Lord Essex,
Lord Howard, and Hampden, were all arrested.

Lord Russell might have easily escaped, but scorned to do so, being
innocent of any wrong; Lord Essex might have easily escaped, but
scorned to do so, lest his flight should prejudice Lord Russell. But it
weighed upon his mind that he had brought into their council, Lord
Howard—who now turned a miserable traitor—against a great dislike Lord
Russell had always had of him. He could not bear the reflection, and
destroyed himself before Lord Russell was brought to trial at the Old
Bailey.

He knew very well that he had nothing to hope, having always been
manful in the Protestant cause against the two false brothers, the one
on the throne, and the other standing next to it. He had a wife, one of
the noblest and best of women, who acted as his secretary on his trial,
who comforted him in his prison, who supped with him on the night
before he died, and whose love and virtue and devotion have made her
name imperishable. Of course, he was found guilty, and was sentenced to
be beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn-fields, not many yards from his own house.
When he had parted from his children on the evening before his death,
his wife still stayed with him until ten o’clock at night; and when
their final separation in this world was over, and he had kissed her
many times, he still sat for a long while in his prison, talking of her
goodness. Hearing the rain fall fast at that time, he calmly said,
‘Such a rain to-morrow will spoil a great show, which is a dull thing
on a rainy day.’ At midnight he went to bed, and slept till four; even
when his servant called him, he fell asleep again while his clothes
were being made ready. He rode to the scaffold in his own carriage,
attended by two famous clergymen, Tillotson and Burnet, and sang a
psalm to himself very softly, as he went along. He was as quiet and as
steady as if he had been going out for an ordinary ride. After saying
that he was surprised to see so great a crowd, he laid down his head
upon the block, as if upon the pillow of his bed, and had it struck off
at the second blow. His noble wife was busy for him even then; for that
true-hearted lady printed and widely circulated his last words, of
which he had given her a copy. They made the blood of all the honest
men in England boil.

The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the very same day by
pretending to believe that the accusation against Lord Russell was
true, and by calling the King, in a written paper, the Breath of their
Nostrils and the Anointed of the Lord. This paper the Parliament
afterwards caused to be burned by the common hangman; which I am sorry
for, as I wish it had been framed and glazed and hung up in some public
place, as a monument of baseness for the scorn of mankind.

Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreys presided,
like a great crimson toad, sweltering and swelling with rage. ‘I pray
God, Mr. Sidney,’ said this Chief Justice of a merry reign, after
passing sentence, ‘to work in you a temper fit to go to the other
world, for I see you are not fit for this.’ ‘My lord,’ said the
prisoner, composedly holding out his arm, ‘feel my pulse, and see if I
be disordered. I thank Heaven I never was in better temper than I am
now.’ Algernon Sidney was executed on Tower Hill, on the seventh of
December, one thousand six hundred and eighty-three. He died a hero,
and died, in his own words, ‘For that good old cause in which he had
been engaged from his youth, and for which God had so often and so
wonderfully declared himself.’

The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the Duke of York, very
jealous, by going about the country in a royal sort of way, playing at
the people’s games, becoming godfather to their children, and even
touching for the King’s evil, or stroking the faces of the sick to cure
them—though, for the matter of that, I should say he did them about as
much good as any crowned king could have done. His father had got him
to write a letter, confessing his having had a part in the conspiracy,
for which Lord Russell had been beheaded; but he was ever a weak man,
and as soon as he had written it, he was ashamed of it and got it back
again. For this, he was banished to the Netherlands; but he soon
returned and had an interview with his father, unknown to his uncle. It
would seem that he was coming into the Merry Monarch’s favour again,
and that the Duke of York was sliding out of it, when Death appeared to
the merry galleries at Whitehall, and astonished the debauched lords
and gentlemen, and the shameless ladies, very considerably.

On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six hundred and
eighty-five, the merry pensioner and servant of the King of France fell
down in a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday his case was hopeless, and
on the Thursday he was told so. As he made a difficulty about taking
the sacrament from the Protestant Bishop of Bath, the Duke of York got
all who were present away from the bed, and asked his brother, in a
whisper, if he should send for a Catholic priest? The King replied,
‘For God’s sake, brother, do!’ The Duke smuggled in, up the back
stairs, disguised in a wig and gown, a priest named Huddleston, who had
saved the King’s life after the battle of Worcester: telling him that
this worthy man in the wig had once saved his body, and was now come to
save his soul.

The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died before noon on the
next day, which was Friday, the sixth. Two of the last things he said
were of a human sort, and your remembrance will give him the full
benefit of them. When the Queen sent to say she was too unwell to
attend him and to ask his pardon, he said, ‘Alas! poor woman, _she_ beg
_my_ pardon! I beg hers with all my heart. Take back that answer to
her.’ And he also said, in reference to Nell Gwyn, ‘Do not let poor
Nelly starve.’

He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his
reign.




CHAPTER XXXVI
ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND


King James the Second was a man so very disagreeable, that even the
best of historians has favoured his brother Charles, as becoming, by
comparison, quite a pleasant character. The one object of his short
reign was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England; and this he
doggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy, that his career very
soon came to a close.

The first thing he did, was, to assure his council that he would make
it his endeavour to preserve the Government, both in Church and State,
as it was by law established; and that he would always take care to
defend and support the Church. Great public acclamations were raised
over this fair speech, and a great deal was said, from the pulpits and
elsewhere, about the word of a King which was never broken, by
credulous people who little supposed that he had formed a secret
council for Catholic affairs, of which a mischievous Jesuit, called
Father Petre, was one of the chief members. With tears of joy in his
eyes, he received, as the beginning of _his_ pension from the King of
France, five hundred thousand livres; yet, with a mixture of meanness
and arrogance that belonged to his contemptible character, he was
always jealous of making some show of being independent of the King of
France, while he pocketed his money. As—notwithstanding his publishing
two papers in favour of Popery (and not likely to do it much service, I
should think) written by the King, his brother, and found in his
strong-box; and his open display of himself attending mass—the
Parliament was very obsequious, and granted him a large sum of money,
he began his reign with a belief that he could do what he pleased, and
with a determination to do it.

Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose of Titus
Oates. He was tried for perjury, a fortnight after the coronation, and
besides being very heavily fined, was sentenced to stand twice in the
pillory, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from
Newgate to Tyburn two days afterwards, and to stand in the pillory five
times a year as long as he lived. This fearful sentence was actually
inflicted on the rascal. Being unable to stand after his first
flogging, he was dragged on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and
flogged as he was drawn along. He was so strong a villain that he did
not die under the torture, but lived to be afterwards pardoned and
rewarded, though not to be ever believed in any more. Dangerfield, the
only other one of that crew left alive, was not so fortunate. He was
almost killed by a whipping from Newgate to Tyburn, and, as if that
were not punishment enough, a ferocious barrister of Gray’s Inn gave
him a poke in the eye with his cane, which caused his death; for which
the ferocious barrister was deservedly tried and executed.

As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Monmouth went from
Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended a meeting of Scottish exiles held
there, to concert measures for a rising in England. It was agreed that
Argyle should effect a landing in Scotland, and Monmouth in England;
and that two Englishmen should be sent with Argyle to be in his
confidence, and two Scotchmen with the Duke of Monmouth.

Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But, two of his men
being taken prisoners at the Orkney Islands, the Government became
aware of his intention, and was able to act against him with such
vigour as to prevent his raising more than two or three thousand
Highlanders, although he sent a fiery cross, by trusty messengers, from
clan to clan and from glen to glen, as the custom then was when those
wild people were to be excited by their chiefs. As he was moving
towards Glasgow with his small force, he was betrayed by some of his
followers, taken, and carried, with his hands tied behind his back, to
his old prison in Edinburgh Castle. James ordered him to be executed,
on his old shamefully unjust sentence, within three days; and he
appears to have been anxious that his legs should have been pounded
with his old favourite the boot. However, the boot was not applied; he
was simply beheaded, and his head was set upon the top of Edinburgh
Jail. One of those Englishmen who had been assigned to him was that old
soldier Rumbold, the master of the Rye House. He was sorely wounded,
and within a week after Argyle had suffered with great courage, was
brought up for trial, lest he should die and disappoint the King. He,
too, was executed, after defending himself with great spirit, and
saying that he did not believe that God had made the greater part of
mankind to carry saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths,
and to be ridden by a few, booted and spurred for the purpose—in which
I thoroughly agree with Rumbold.

The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained and partly through
idling his time away, was five or six weeks behind his friend when he
landed at Lyme, in Dorset: having at his right hand an unlucky nobleman
called Lord Grey of Werk, who of himself would have ruined a far more
promising expedition. He immediately set up his standard in the
market-place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant, and a Popish usurper,
and I know not what else; charging him, not only with what he had done,
which was bad enough, but with what neither he nor anybody else had
done, such as setting fire to London, and poisoning the late King.
Raising some four thousand men by these means, he marched on to
Taunton, where there were many Protestant dissenters who were strongly
opposed to the Catholics. Here, both the rich and poor turned out to
receive him, ladies waved a welcome to him from all the windows as he
passed along the streets, flowers were strewn in his way, and every
compliment and honour that could be devised was showered upon him.
Among the rest, twenty young ladies came forward, in their best
clothes, and in their brightest beauty, and gave him a Bible ornamented
with their own fair hands, together with other presents.

Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself King, and went on to
Bridgewater. But, here the Government troops, under the Earl of
Feversham, were close at hand; and he was so dispirited at finding that
he made but few powerful friends after all, that it was a question
whether he should disband his army and endeavour to escape. It was
resolved, at the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, to make a night
attack on the King’s army, as it lay encamped on the edge of a morass
called Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded by the same unlucky lord,
who was not a brave man. He gave up the battle almost at the first
obstacle—which was a deep drain; and although the poor countrymen, who
had turned out for Monmouth, fought bravely with scythes, poles,
pitchforks, and such poor weapons as they had, they were soon dispersed
by the trained soldiers, and fled in all directions. When the Duke of
Monmouth himself fled, was not known in the confusion; but the unlucky
Lord Grey was taken early next day, and then another of the party was
taken, who confessed that he had parted from the Duke only four hours
before. Strict search being made, he was found disguised as a peasant,
hidden in a ditch under fern and nettles, with a few peas in his pocket
which he had gathered in the fields to eat. The only other articles he
had upon him were a few papers and little books: one of the latter
being a strange jumble, in his own writing, of charms, songs, recipes,
and prayers. He was completely broken. He wrote a miserable letter to
the King, beseeching and entreating to be allowed to see him. When he
was taken to London, and conveyed bound into the King’s presence, he
crawled to him on his knees, and made a most degrading exhibition. As
James never forgave or relented towards anybody, he was not likely to
soften towards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation, so he told the
suppliant to prepare for death.

On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six hundred and eighty-five,
this unfortunate favourite of the people was brought out to die on
Tower Hill. The crowd was immense, and the tops of all the houses were
covered with gazers. He had seen his wife, the daughter of the Duke of
Buccleuch, in the Tower, and had talked much of a lady whom he loved
far better—the Lady Harriet Wentworth—who was one of the last persons
he remembered in this life. Before laying down his head upon the block
he felt the edge of the axe, and told the executioner that he feared it
was not sharp enough, and that the axe was not heavy enough. On the
executioner replying that it was of the proper kind, the Duke said, ‘I
pray you have a care, and do not use me so awkwardly as you used my
Lord Russell.’ The executioner, made nervous by this, and trembling,
struck once and merely gashed him in the neck. Upon this, the Duke of
Monmouth raised his head and looked the man reproachfully in the face.
Then he struck twice, and then thrice, and then threw down the axe, and
cried out in a voice of horror that he could not finish that work. The
sheriffs, however, threatening him with what should be done to himself
if he did not, he took it up again and struck a fourth time and a fifth
time. Then the wretched head at last fell off, and James, Duke of
Monmouth, was dead, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. He was a
showy, graceful man, with many popular qualities, and had found much
favour in the open hearts of the English.

The atrocities, committed by the Government, which followed this
Monmouth rebellion, form the blackest and most lamentable page in
English history. The poor peasants, having been dispersed with great
loss, and their leaders having been taken, one would think that the
implacable King might have been satisfied. But no; he let loose upon
them, among other intolerable monsters, a Colonel Kirk, who had served
against the Moors, and whose soldiers—called by the people Kirk’s
lambs, because they bore a lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of
Christianity—were worthy of their leader. The atrocities committed by
these demons in human shape are far too horrible to be related here. It
is enough to say, that besides most ruthlessly murdering and robbing
them, and ruining them by making them buy their pardons at the price of
all they possessed, it was one of Kirk’s favourite amusements, as he
and his officers sat drinking after dinner, and toasting the King, to
have batches of prisoners hanged outside the windows for the company’s
diversion; and that when their feet quivered in the convulsions of
death, he used to swear that they should have music to their dancing,
and would order the drums to beat and the trumpets to play. The
detestable King informed him, as an acknowledgment of these services,
that he was ‘very well satisfied with his proceedings.’ But the King’s
great delight was in the proceedings of Jeffreys, now a peer, who went
down into the west, with four other judges, to try persons accused of
having had any share in the rebellion. The King pleasantly called this
‘Jeffreys’s campaign.’ The people down in that part of the country
remember it to this day as The Bloody Assize.

It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady, Mrs. Alicia Lisle,
the widow of one of the judges of Charles the First (who had been
murdered abroad by some Royalist assassins), was charged with having
given shelter in her house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three times
the jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied and
frightened them into that false verdict. When he had extorted it from
them, he said, ‘Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she had been
my own mother, I would have found her guilty;’—as I dare say he would.
He sentenced her to be burned alive, that very afternoon. The clergy of
the cathedral and some others interfered in her favour, and she was
beheaded within a week. As a high mark of his approbation, the King
made Jeffreys Lord Chancellor; and he then went on to Dorchester, to
Exeter, to Taunton, and to Wells. It is astonishing, when we read of
the enormous injustice and barbarity of this beast, to know that no one
struck him dead on the judgment-seat. It was enough for any man or
woman to be accused by an enemy, before Jeffreys, to be found guilty of
high treason. One man who pleaded not guilty, he ordered to be taken
out of court upon the instant, and hanged; and this so terrified the
prisoners in general that they mostly pleaded guilty at once. At
Dorchester alone, in the course of a few days, Jeffreys hanged eighty
people; besides whipping, transporting, imprisoning, and selling as
slaves, great numbers. He executed, in all, two hundred and fifty, or
three hundred.

These executions took place, among the neighbours and friends of the
sentenced, in thirty-six towns and villages. Their bodies were mangled,
steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch and tar, and hung up by the
roadsides, in the streets, over the very churches. The sight and smell
of heads and limbs, the hissing and bubbling of the infernal caldrons,
and the tears and terrors of the people, were dreadful beyond all
description. One rustic, who was forced to steep the remains in the
black pot, was ever afterwards called ‘Tom Boilman.’ The hangman has
ever since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name went
hanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys. You will
hear much of the horrors of the great French Revolution. Many and
terrible they were, there is no doubt; but I know of nothing worse,
done by the maddened people of France in that awful time, than was done
by the highest judge in England, with the express approval of the King
of England, in The Bloody Assize.

Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money for himself as of
misery for others, and he sold pardons wholesale to fill his pockets.
The King ordered, at one time, a thousand prisoners to be given to
certain of his favourites, in order that they might bargain with them
for their pardons. The young ladies of Taunton who had presented the
Bible, were bestowed upon the maids of honour at court; and those
precious ladies made very hard bargains with them indeed. When The
Bloody Assize was at its most dismal height, the King was diverting
himself with horse-races in the very place where Mrs. Lisle had been
executed. When Jeffreys had done his worst, and came home again, he was
particularly complimented in the Royal Gazette; and when the King heard
that through drunkenness and raging he was very ill, his odious Majesty
remarked that such another man could not easily be found in England.
Besides all this, a former sheriff of London, named Cornish, was hanged
within sight of his own house, after an abominably conducted trial, for
having had a share in the Rye House Plot, on evidence given by Rumsey,
which that villain was obliged to confess was directly opposed to the
evidence he had given on the trial of Lord Russell. And on the very
same day, a worthy widow, named Elizabeth Gaunt, was burned alive at
Tyburn, for having sheltered a wretch who himself gave evidence against
her. She settled the fuel about herself with her own hands, so that the
flames should reach her quickly: and nobly said, with her last breath,
that she had obeyed the sacred command of God, to give refuge to the
outcast, and not to betray the wanderer.

After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, mutilating,
exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling into slavery, of his
unhappy subjects, the King not unnaturally thought that he could do
whatever he would. So, he went to work to change the religion of the
country with all possible speed; and what he did was this.

He first of all tried to get rid of what was called the Test Act—which
prevented the Catholics from holding public employments—by his own
power of dispensing with the penalties. He tried it in one case, and,
eleven of the twelve judges deciding in his favour, he exercised it in
three others, being those of three dignitaries of University College,
Oxford, who had become Papists, and whom he kept in their places and
sanctioned. He revived the hated Ecclesiastical Commission, to get rid
of Compton, Bishop of London, who manfully opposed him. He solicited
the Pope to favour England with an ambassador, which the Pope (who was
a sensible man then) rather unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre
before the eyes of the people on all possible occasions. He favoured
the establishment of convents in several parts of London. He was
delighted to have the streets, and even the court itself, filled with
Monks and Friars in the habits of their orders. He constantly
endeavoured to make Catholics of the Protestants about him. He held
private interviews, which he called ‘closetings,’ with those Members of
Parliament who held offices, to persuade them to consent to the design
he had in view. When they did not consent, they were removed, or
resigned of themselves, and their places were given to Catholics. He
displaced Protestant officers from the army, by every means in his
power, and got Catholics into their places too. He tried the same thing
with the corporations, and also (though not so successfully) with the
Lord Lieutenants of counties. To terrify the people into the endurance
of all these measures, he kept an army of fifteen thousand men encamped
on Hounslow Heath, where mass was openly performed in the General’s
tent, and where priests went among the soldiers endeavouring to
persuade them to become Catholics. For circulating a paper among those
men advising them to be true to their religion, a Protestant clergyman,
named Johnson, the chaplain of the late Lord Russell, was actually
sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, and was actually whipped
from Newgate to Tyburn. He dismissed his own brother-in-law from his
Council because he was a Protestant, and made a Privy Councillor of the
before-mentioned Father Petre. He handed Ireland over to Richard
Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, a worthless, dissolute knave, who played
the same game there for his master, and who played the deeper game for
himself of one day putting it under the protection of the French King.
In going to these extremities, every man of sense and judgment among
the Catholics, from the Pope to a porter, knew that the King was a mere
bigoted fool, who would undo himself and the cause he sought to
advance; but he was deaf to all reason, and, happily for England ever
afterwards, went tumbling off his throne in his own blind way.

A spirit began to arise in the country, which the besotted blunderer
little expected. He first found it out in the University of Cambridge.
Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford without any opposition, he
tried to make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge: which attempt the
University resisted, and defeated him. He then went back to his
favourite Oxford. On the death of the President of Magdalen College, he
commanded that there should be elected to succeed him, one Mr. Anthony
Farmer, whose only recommendation was, that he was of the King’s
religion. The University plucked up courage at last, and refused. The
King substituted another man, and it still refused, resolving to stand
by its own election of a Mr. Hough. The dull tyrant, upon this,
punished Mr. Hough, and five-and-twenty more, by causing them to be
expelled and declared incapable of holding any church preferment; then
he proceeded to what he supposed to be his highest step, but to what
was, in fact, his last plunge head-foremost in his tumble off his
throne.

He had issued a declaration that there should be no religious tests or
penal laws, in order to let in the Catholics more easily; but the
Protestant dissenters, unmindful of themselves, had gallantly joined
the regular church in opposing it tooth and nail. The King and Father
Petre now resolved to have this read, on a certain Sunday, in all the
churches, and to order it to be circulated for that purpose by the
bishops. The latter took counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
was in disgrace; and they resolved that the declaration should not be
read, and that they would petition the King against it. The Archbishop
himself wrote out the petition, and six bishops went into the King’s
bedchamber the same night to present it, to his infinite astonishment.
Next day was the Sunday fixed for the reading, and it was only read by
two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand. The King resolved against
all advice to prosecute the bishops in the Court of King’s Bench, and
within three weeks they were summoned before the Privy Council, and
committed to the Tower. As the six bishops were taken to that dismal
place, by water, the people who were assembled in immense numbers fell
upon their knees, and wept for them, and prayed for them. When they got
to the Tower, the officers and soldiers on guard besought them for
their blessing. While they were confined there, the soldiers every day
drank to their release with loud shouts. When they were brought up to
the Court of King’s Bench for their trial, which the Attorney-General
said was for the high offence of censuring the Government, and giving
their opinion about affairs of state, they were attended by similar
multitudes, and surrounded by a throng of noblemen and gentlemen. When
the jury went out at seven o’clock at night to consider of their
verdict, everybody (except the King) knew that they would rather starve
than yield to the King’s brewer, who was one of them, and wanted a
verdict for his customer. When they came into court next morning, after
resisting the brewer all night, and gave a verdict of not guilty, such
a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as it had never heard before; and
it was passed on among the people away to Temple Bar, and away again to
the Tower. It did not pass only to the east, but passed to the west
too, until it reached the camp at Hounslow, where the fifteen thousand
soldiers took it up and echoed it. And still, when the dull King, who
was then with Lord Feversham, heard the mighty roar, asked in alarm
what it was, and was told that it was ‘nothing but the acquittal of the
bishops,’ he said, in his dogged way, ‘Call you that nothing? It is so
much the worse for them.’

Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given birth to a son,
which Father Petre rather thought was owing to Saint Winifred. But I
doubt if Saint Winifred had much to do with it as the King’s friend,
inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic successor (for both
the King’s daughters were Protestants) determined the Earls of
Shrewsbury, Danby, and Devonshire, Lord Lumley, the Bishop of London,
Admiral Russell, and Colonel Sidney, to invite the Prince of Orange
over to England. The Royal Mole, seeing his danger at last, made, in
his fright, many great concessions, besides raising an army of forty
thousand men; but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the
Second to cope with. His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous,
and his mind was resolved.

For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for England, a great
wind from the west prevented the departure of his fleet. Even when the
wind lulled, and it did sail, it was dispersed by a storm, and was
obliged to put back to refit. At last, on the first of November, one
thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the Protestant east wind, as it
was long called, began to blow; and on the third, the people of Dover
and the people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing
gallantly by, between the two places. On Monday, the fifth, it anchored
at Torbay in Devonshire, and the Prince, with a splendid retinue of
officers and men, marched into Exeter. But the people in that western
part of the country had suffered so much in The Bloody Assize, that
they had lost heart. Few people joined him; and he began to think of
returning, and publishing the invitation he had received from those
lords, as his justification for having come at all. At this crisis,
some of the gentry joined him; the Royal army began to falter; an
engagement was signed, by which all who set their hand to it declared
that they would support one another in defence of the laws and
liberties of the three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and of the
Prince of Orange. From that time, the cause received no check; the
greatest towns in England began, one after another, to declare for the
Prince; and he knew that it was all safe with him when the University
of Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if he wanted any money.

By this time the King was running about in a pitiable way, touching
people for the King’s evil in one place, reviewing his troops in
another, and bleeding from the nose in a third. The young Prince was
sent to Portsmouth, Father Petre went off like a shot to France, and
there was a general and swift dispersal of all the priests and friars.
One after another, the King’s most important officers and friends
deserted him and went over to the Prince. In the night, his daughter
Anne fled from Whitehall Palace; and the Bishop of London, who had once
been a soldier, rode before her with a drawn sword in his hand, and
pistols at his saddle. ‘God help me,’ cried the miserable King: ‘my
very children have forsaken me!’ In his wildness, after debating with
such lords as were in London, whether he should or should not call a
Parliament, and after naming three of them to negotiate with the
Prince, he resolved to fly to France. He had the little Prince of Wales
brought back from Portsmouth; and the child and the Queen crossed the
river to Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable wet night, and got
safely away. This was on the night of the ninth of December.

At one o’clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King, who had, in
the meantime, received a letter from the Prince of Orange, stating his
objects, got out of bed, told Lord Northumberland who lay in his room
not to open the door until the usual hour in the morning, and went down
the back stairs (the same, I suppose, by which the priest in the wig
and gown had come up to his brother) and crossed the river in a small
boat: sinking the great seal of England by the way. Horses having been
provided, he rode, accompanied by Sir Edward Hales, to Feversham, where
he embarked in a Custom House Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting more
ballast, ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fishermen and
smugglers crowded about the boat, and informed the King of their
suspicions that he was a ‘hatchet-faced Jesuit.’ As they took his money
and would not let him go, he told them who he was, and that the Prince
of Orange wanted to take his life; and he began to scream for a
boat—and then to cry, because he had lost a piece of wood on his ride
which he called a fragment of Our Saviour’s cross. He put himself into
the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, and his detention was
made known to the Prince of Orange at Windsor—who, only wanting to get
rid of him, and not caring where he went, so that he went away, was
very much disconcerted that they did not let him go. However, there was
nothing for it but to have him brought back, with some state in the way
of Life Guards, to Whitehall. And as soon as he got there, in his
infatuation, he heard mass, and set a Jesuit to say grace at his public
dinner.

The people had been thrown into the strangest state of confusion by his
flight, and had taken it into their heads that the Irish part of the
army were going to murder the Protestants. Therefore, they set the
bells a ringing, and lighted watch-fires, and burned Catholic Chapels,
and looked about in all directions for Father Petre and the Jesuits,
while the Pope’s ambassador was running away in the dress of a footman.
They found no Jesuits; but a man, who had once been a frightened
witness before Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen, drunken face looking
through a window down at Wapping, which he well remembered. The face
was in a sailor’s dress, but he knew it to be the face of that accursed
judge, and he seized him. The people, to their lasting honour, did not
tear him to pieces. After knocking him about a little, they took him,
in the basest agonies of terror, to the Lord Mayor, who sent him, at
his own shrieking petition, to the Tower for safety. There, he died.

Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted bonfires and made
rejoicings, as if they had any reason to be glad to have the King back
again. But, his stay was very short, for the English guards were
removed from Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched up to it, and he was
told by one of his late ministers that the Prince would enter London,
next day, and he had better go to Ham. He said, Ham was a cold, damp
place, and he would rather go to Rochester. He thought himself very
cunning in this, as he meant to escape from Rochester to France. The
Prince of Orange and his friends knew that, perfectly well, and desired
nothing more. So, he went to Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by
certain lords, and watched by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous
people, who were far more forgiving than he had ever been, when they
saw him in his humiliation. On the night of the twenty-third of
December, not even then understanding that everybody wanted to get rid
of him, he went out, absurdly, through his Rochester garden, down to
the Medway, and got away to France, where he rejoined the Queen.

There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, and the
authorities of London. When the Prince came, on the day after the
King’s departure, he summoned the Lords to meet him, and soon
afterwards, all those who had served in any of the Parliaments of King
Charles the Second. It was finally resolved by these authorities that
the throne was vacant by the conduct of King James the Second; that it
was inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant
kingdom, to be governed by a Popish prince; that the Prince and
Princess of Orange should be King and Queen during their lives and the
life of the survivor of them; and that their children should succeed
them, if they had any. That if they had none, the Princess Anne and her
children should succeed; that if she had none, the heirs of the Prince
of Orange should succeed.

On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine,
the Prince and Princess, sitting on a throne in Whitehall, bound
themselves to these conditions. The Protestant religion was established
in England, and England’s great and glorious Revolution was complete.




CHAPTER XXXVII


I have now arrived at the close of my little history. The events which
succeeded the famous Revolution of one thousand six hundred and
eighty-eight, would neither be easily related nor easily understood in
such a book as this.

William and Mary reigned together, five years. After the death of his
good wife, William occupied the throne, alone, for seven years longer.
During his reign, on the sixteenth of September, one thousand seven
hundred and one, the poor weak creature who had once been James the
Second of England, died in France. In the meantime he had done his
utmost (which was not much) to cause William to be assassinated, and to
regain his lost dominions. James’s son was declared, by the French
King, the rightful King of England; and was called in France The
Chevalier Saint George, and in England The Pretender. Some infatuated
people in England, and particularly in Scotland, took up the
Pretender’s cause from time to time—as if the country had not had
Stuarts enough!—and many lives were sacrificed, and much misery was
occasioned. King William died on Sunday, the seventh of March, one
thousand seven hundred and two, of the consequences of an accident
occasioned by his horse stumbling with him. He was always a brave,
patriotic Prince, and a man of remarkable abilities. His manner was
cold, and he made but few friends; but he had truly loved his queen.
When he was dead, a lock of her hair, in a ring, was found tied with a
black ribbon round his left arm.

He was succeeded by the Princess Anne, a popular Queen, who reigned
twelve years. In her reign, in the month of May, one thousand seven
hundred and seven, the Union between England and Scotland was effected,
and the two countries were incorporated under the name of Great
Britain. Then, from the year one thousand seven hundred and fourteen to
the year one thousand, eight hundred and thirty, reigned the four
Georges.

It was in the reign of George the Second, one thousand seven hundred
and forty-five, that the Pretender did his last mischief, and made his
last appearance. Being an old man by that time, he and the Jacobites—as
his friends were called—put forward his son, Charles Edward, known as
the young Chevalier. The Highlanders of Scotland, an extremely
troublesome and wrong-headed race on the subject of the Stuarts,
espoused his cause, and he joined them, and there was a Scottish
rebellion to make him king, in which many gallant and devoted gentlemen
lost their lives. It was a hard matter for Charles Edward to escape
abroad again, with a high price on his head; but the Scottish people
were extraordinarily faithful to him, and, after undergoing many
romantic adventures, not unlike those of Charles the Second, he escaped
to France. A number of charming stories and delightful songs arose out
of the Jacobite feelings, and belong to the Jacobite times. Otherwise I
think the Stuarts were a public nuisance altogether.

It was in the reign of George the Third that England lost North
America, by persisting in taxing her without her own consent. That
immense country, made independent under Washington, and left to itself,
became the United States; one of the greatest nations of the earth. In
these times in which I write, it is honourably remarkable for
protecting its subjects, wherever they may travel, with a dignity and a
determination which is a model for England. Between you and me, England
has rather lost ground in this respect since the days of Oliver
Cromwell.

The Union of Great Britain with Ireland—which had been getting on very
ill by itself—took place in the reign of George the Third, on the
second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight.

William the Fourth succeeded George the Fourth, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and thirty, and reigned seven years. Queen
Victoria, his niece, the only child of the Duke of Kent, the fourth son
of George the Third, came to the throne on the twentieth of June, one
thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven. She was married to Prince
Albert of Saxe Gotha on the tenth of February, one thousand eight
hundred and forty. She is very good, and much beloved. So I end, like
the crier, with

God Save the Queen!




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