CHAPTER ONE.
FATHER AND MOTHER.
"He was a true man, this--who lived for England, And he knew how to die."
"Sweet? There are many sweet things. Clover's sweet, And so is liquorice, though 'tis hard to chew; And sweetbriar--till it scratches."
"Look, Margaret! Thine aunt, Dame Marjory, is come to spend thybirthday with thee."
"And see my new bower? [Boudoir]. O Aunt Marjory, I am so glad!"
The new bower was a very pretty room--for the thirteenth century--butits girl-owner was the prettiest thing in it. Her age was thirteen thatday, but she was so tall that she might easily have been supposed two orthree years older. She had a very fair complexion, violet-blue eyes,and hair exactly the colour of a cedar pencil. If physiognomy may betrusted, the face indicated a loving and amiable disposition.
The two ladies who had just entered from the ante-room--the mother andaunt of Margaret were both tall, finely-developed women, with shiningfair hair. They spoke French, evidently as the mother-tongue: but in1234 that was the custom of all English nobles. These ladies had beenbrought up in England from early maidenhood, but they were ScottishPrincesses--the eldest and youngest daughters of King William the Lion,by his Norman Queen, Ermengarde de Beaumont. Both sisters were veryhandsome, but the younger bore the palm of beauty in the artist's sense,though she was not endowed with the singular charm of manner whichcharacterised her sister. Chroniclers tell us that the youngerPrincess, Marjory, was a woman of marvellous beauty. Yet something moreattractive than mere beauty must have distinguished the PrincessMargaret, for two men of the most opposite dispositions to have borneher image on their hearts till death, and for her husband--a man capableof abject superstition, and with his hot-headed youth far behind him--tohave braved all the thunders of Rome, rather than put her away.
These royal sisters had a singular history. Their father, King William,had put them for education into the hands of King John of England andhis Queen, Isabelle of Angouleme, when they were little more thaninfants, in other words, he had committed his tender doves to the chargeof almost the worst man and woman whom he could have selected. Therewere just two vices of which His English Majesty was not guilty, andthose were cowardice and hypocrisy. He was a plain, unvarnishedvillain, and he never hesitated for a moment to let people see it.Queen Isabelle had been termed "the Helen of the Middle Ages," alikefrom her great beauty, and from the fact that her husband abducted herwhen betrothed elsewhere. She can hardly be blamed for this, since shewas a mere child at the time: but as she grew up, she developed acharacter quite worthy of the scoundrel to whom she was linked. Topersonal profligacy she added sordid avarice, and a positive incapacityfor telling the truth. To these delightful persons the poor littleScottish maidens, Margaret and Isabel, were consigned. At what ageMarjory joined them in England is doubtful: but it does not appear thatshe was ever, as they were, an official ward of the Crown.
The exact terms on which these royal children were sent into Englandwere for many years the subject of sharp contention between theirbrother Alexander and King Henry the Third. The memorandum drawn upbetween the Kings William and John, does not appear to be extant: butthat by which, in 1220, they were afresh consigned to the care of Henrythe Third, is still in existence. Alexander strenuously maintained thatJohn had undertaken to marry the sisters to his own two sons. Theagreement with Henry the Third simply provides that "We will also marry[This meant at the time, `cause to be married'] Margaret and Isabel,sisters of the said Alexander, King of Scotland, during the space of onefull year from the feast of Saint Denis [October 8], 1220, as shall beto our honour: and if we do not marry them within that period, we willreturn them to the said Alexander, King of Scotland, safe and free, inhis own territories, within two years from the time specified." [Note1.]
This article of the convention was honestly carried out according to thelater memorandum, so far as concerned Margaret, who was married toHubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, at York, on the twenty-fifth of June,1221. Isabel, however, was not married (to Roger Bigod, Earl ofNorfolk) until May, 1225. [Note 2.] Still, after the latter date, theconvention having been carried out, it might have been supposed that theKings would have given over quarrelling about it. The Princesses werehonourably married in England, which was all that Henry the Third atleast had undertaken to do.
But neither party was satisfied. Alexander never ceased to reproachHenry for not having himself married Margaret, and united Isabel to hisbrother. Henry, while he testily maintained to Alexander that he haddone all he promised, and no further claim could be established againsthim, yet, as history shows, never to the last hour pardoned Hubert deBurgh for his marriage with the Scottish Princess, and most bitterlyreproached him for depriving him of her whom he had intended to make hisQueen.
The truth seems to be that Henry the Third, who at the time ofMargaret's marriage was only a lad of thirteen years, had cherished forher a fervent boyish passion, and that she was the only woman whom heever really loved. Hubert, at that time Regent, probably never imaginedany thing of the kind: while to Margaret, a stately maiden of sometwenty years, if not more, the sentimental courtship of a schoolboy ofthirteen would probably be a source of amusement rather than sympathy.But at every turn in his after life, Henry showed that he had neverforgiven this slight put on his affections. It is true that hisaffection was of a somewhat odd type, presenting no obstacle to hisaspersing the character of his lady-love, when he found it convenient topoint a moral by so doing. But of all men who ever lived, surely one ofthe most consistently inconsistent was Henry the Third. In mostinstances he was "constant to one thing--his inconstancy." Like hisfather, he possessed two virtues: but they were not the same. Henry wasnot a lover of cruelty for its own sake--which John was: and he was notpersonally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty,there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroideredcloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents wereinherited by him. To his mother's covetous acquisitiveness andingrained falsehood, he joined his father's unscrupulous exactions andwild extravagance.
I have said that Henry was not a lover of cruelty in itself: but hecould be fearfully and recklessly cruel when he had a point to gain, aswe shall see too well before the story is ended. It may be true thatJohn murdered his nephew Arthur with his own hands; but it was reservedfor Henry, out of the public sight and away from his own eyes, toperpetrate a more cruel murder upon Arthur's hapless sister, "the Pearlof Bretagne," by one of the slowest and most dreadful deaths possible tohumanity, and without any offence on her part beyond her very existence.Stow tells us that poor Alianora was slowly starved to death; and thatshe died by royal order the Issue Roll gives evidence, since one hundredpounds were delivered to John Fitz Geoffrey as his fee for the executionof Alianora the King's kinswoman. [Note 3.]
It is not easy to say whether John or Henry would have made the moreclever vivisector. But assuredly, while John would have kept hislaboratory door open, and have sneered at anaesthetics, Henry would havesoftly administered curare [Note 4], and afterwards made a charmingspeech on the platform concerning the sacrifices of their own feelings,which physiologists are sorrowfully compelled to make for the benefit ofhumanity and the exigencies of science.
Thirteen years after the marriage of Margaret of Scotland, when he was ayoung man of six-and-twenty, Henry the Third made a second attempt towin a Scottish queen. The fair Princess Marjory had now joined hersisters in England; and in point of age she was more suitable thanMargaret. The English nobles, however, were very indignant that theirKing should think of espousing a younger sister of the wife of so merean upstart as Hubert de Burgh. They grumbled bitterly, and the Count ofBretagne, brother-in-law of the murdered Arthur and the disinheritedAlianora, took upon himself to dissuade the King from his purpose.
This Count of Bretagne is known as Pierre Mauclerc, or Bad-Clerk: not aflattering epithet, but historians assure us that Pierre only toothoroughly
deserved the adjective, whatever his writing may have done.He had, four years before, refused his own daughter to King Henry,preferring to marry her to a son of the King of France. The Count hadundertaken no difficult task, for an easier could not be than topersuade or dissuade Henry the Third in respect of any mortal thing. Hepassed his life in acting on the advice in turn of every person who hadlast spoken to him. So he gave up Marjory of Scotland.
Three years more had elapsed since that time, during which Marjory, verysore at her rejection, had withdrawn to the Court of King Alexander herbrother. In the spring of 1234 she returned to her eldest sister, whogenerally resided either in her husband's Town-house at Whitehall,--itwas probably near Scotland Yard--or at the Castle of Bury SaintEdmund's. She was just then at the latter. Earl Hubert himself was butrarely at home in either place, being constantly occupied elsewhere byofficial duties, and not unfrequently, through some adverse turn of KingHenry's capricious favour, detained somewhere in prison.
"And how long hast thou nestled in this sweet new bower, my bird?" saidMarjory caressingly to her niece.
"To-day, Aunt Marjory! It is a birthday present from my Lord andfather. Is it not pretty? Only look at the walls, and the windows, andmy beautiful velvet settle. Now, did you ever see any thing socharming?"
Marjory glanced at her sister, and they exchanged smiles.
"Well, I cannot quite say No to that question, Magot. [Note 5.] Butlead me round this wonderful chamber, and show me all its beauties."
The wonderful chamber in question was not very spacious, being aboutsixteen feet in length by twelve in width. It had a wide fireplace atone end--there was no fire, for the spring was just passing intosummer--and two arched windows on one of its longer sides. Thefireplace was filled with a grotto-like erection of fir-cones, moss, androsemary: the windows, as Margaret triumphantly pointed out, were ofthat rare and precious material, glass. Three doors led into otherrooms. One, opposite the fireplace, gave access to a small privateoratory; two others, opposite the windows, communicated respectivelywith the wardrobe and the ante-chamber. These four rooms together, withthe narrow spiral staircase which led to them, occupied the whole floorof one of the square towers of the Castle. The walls of the bower werepainted green, relieved by golden stars; and on every wall-space betweenthe doors and windows was a painted "history"--namely, a medallion ofsome Biblical, historical, or legendary subject. The subjects in thisroom had evidently been chosen with reference to the tastes of a girl.They were,--the Virgin and Child; the legend of Saint Margaret; theWheel of Fortune; Saint Agnes, with her lamb; a fountain with dovesperched upon the edge; and Saint Martin dividing his cloak with thebeggar. The window-shutters were of fir-wood, bound with iron. Meagreindeed we should think the furniture, but it was sumptuous for the date.A tent-bed, hung with green curtains, stood between the two doors. Agreen velvet settle stretched across the window side of the room. Bythe fireplace was a leaf-table; round the walls were wooden brackets,with iron sockets for the reception of torches; and at the foot of thebed, which stood with its side to the wall, was a fine chest of carvedebony. There were only three pieces of movable furniture, twofootstools, and a curule chair, also of ebony, with a green velvetcushion. As nobody could sit in the last who had not had a king andqueen for his or her parents, it may be supposed that more than one wasnot likely to be often wanted.
The Countess of Kent, as the elder sister, took the curule chair, whileher sister Marjory, when the inspection was finished, sat down on thevelvet settle. Margaret drew a footstool to her aunt's side, and tookup her position there, resting her head caressingly on Marjory's knee.
"Three whole years, Aunt Marjory, that you have not been near us! Whatcould make you stay away so long?"
"There were reasons, Magot."
The two Princesses exchanged smiles again, but there was some amusementin that of the Countess, while the expression of her sister was rathersad.
Margaret looked from one to the other, as if she would have liked tounderstand what they meant.
"Don't trouble that little head," said her mother, with a laugh. "Thytime will come soon enough. Thou art too short to be told statesecrets."
"I shall be as tall as you some day, Lady," responded Margaret archly.
"And then," said Marjory, stroking the girl's hair, "thou wilt wishthyself back again, little Magot."
"Nay!--under your good leave, fair Aunt, never!"
"Ah, we know better, don't we, Madge?" asked the Countess, laughing."Well, I will leave you two maidens together. There is the month's washto be seen to, and if I am not there, that Alditha is as likely to putthe linen in the chests without a sprig of rosemary, as she is to lookin the mirror every time she passes it. We shall meet at supper.Adieu!"
And the Countess departed, on housekeeping thoughts intent. For a fewminutes the two girls--for the aunt was only about twelve years thesenior--sat silent, Margaret having drawn her aunt's hand down andrested her cheek upon it. They were very fond of one another: and beingso near in age, they had been brought up so much like sisters, thatexcept in one or two items they treated each other as such, and did notassume the respective authority and reverence usual between suchrelations at that time. Beyond the employment of the deferential _you_by Margaret, and the familiar _thou_ by Marjory, they chatted to eachother as any other girls might have done. But just then, for a fewminutes, neither spoke.
"Well, Magot!" said Marjory, breaking the silence at last, "have wenought to say to each other? Thou art forgetting, I think, that I wanta full account of all these three years since I came to see thee before.They have not been empty of events, I know."
Margaret's answer was a groan.
"Empty!" she said. "Fair Aunt, I would they had been, rather than fullof such events as they were. Father Nicholas saith that the oldRomans--or Greeks, I don't know which--used to say the man was happy whohad no history. I am sure we should have been happier, lately, if wehad not had any."
"`Don't know which!' What a heedless Magot!"
"Why, fair Aunt, surely you don't expect people to recollect lessons.Did you ever remember yours?"
Marjory laughed. "Sufficiently so, I hope, to know the differencebetween Greeks and Romans. But, however,--for the last three years.Tell me all about them."
"Am I to begin with the Flood, like a professional chronicler?"
"Well, no. I think the Conquest would be soon enough."
"Delicious Aunt Marjory! How many weary centuries you excuse me!"
"_How_ many, Magot?"
"Oh, please don't! How can I possibly tell? If you really want toknow, I will send for Father Nicholas."
Marjory laughed, and kissed the lively face turned up to her.
"Idle Magot! Well, go on."
"I don't think I am idle, fair Aunt. But I do detest learning dates.--Well, now,--was it in April you left us? I know it was very soon aftermy Lady of Cornwall was married, but I do not remember exactly whatmonth."
"It was in May," said Marjory, shortly.
"May, was it? Oh, I know! It was the eve of Saint Helen's Day. Well,things went on right enough, till my Lord of Canterbury took it into hishead that my Lord and father had no business to detain TunbridgeCastle,--it all began with that. It was about July, I think."
"I thought Tunbridge Castle belonged to my Lord of Gloucester. What hadeither to do with it?"
"O Aunt Marjory! Have you forgotten that my young Lord of Gloucester isin ward to my Lord and father? The Lord King gave him first to my Lordthe Bishop of Winchester, when his father died; and then, about a yearafter, he took him away from the Bishop, and gave him to my fair father.Don't you remember him?--such a pretty boy! I think you knew all aboutit at the time."
"Very likely I did, Magot. One forgets things, sometimes."
And Margaret, looking up into the fair face, saw, and did notunderstand, the hidden pain behind the smile.
"So my Lord of Canterbury complained of my fair father to the L
ord King.(I wonder he could not attend to his own business.) But the Lord Kingsaid that as my Lord of Gloucester held in chief of the Crown, allvacant trusts were his, to give as it pleased him. And then--AuntMarjory, do you like priests?"
"Magot, what a question!"
"But do you?"
"All priests are not alike, my dear child. They are like other people--some good, and some bad."
"But surely all priests ought to be good."
"Art thou always what thou oughtest to be, Magot?"
Margaret's answer was a sudden spring from the stool and a fervent hugof Marjory.
"Aunt Marjory," she said, when she had sat down again, "I just hate thatBishop of Winchester." [Peter de Rievaulx, always one of the two chiefenemies of Margaret's father.]
"Shocking, Magot!"
"Oh yes, of course it is extremely wicked. But I do."
"I wish he were here, to set thee a penance for such a naughty speech.However, go on with thy story."
"Well, what do you think, fair Aunt, that my Lord's Grace of Canterbury[Richard Grant, consecrated in 1229] did? He actually excommunicatedall intruders on the lands of his jurisdiction, and all who should holdcommunication with them, the King only excepted; and away he went toRome, to lay the matter before the holy Father. Of course he would tellhis tale from his own point of view."
"The Archbishop went to Rome!"
"Indeed he did, Aunt Marjory. My fair father was very indignant. `Thatthe head of the English Church could not stand by himself, but must seekthe approbation of a foreign Bishop!' That was what he said, and Ithink my fair mother agreed with him."
Perhaps in this nineteenth century we scarcely realise the gallant fightmade by the Church of England to retain her independence of Rome. Itdid not begin at the Reformation, as people are apt to suppose. It wasas old as the Church herself, and she was as old as the Apostles. Someof her clergy were perpetually trying to force and to rivet the chainsof Rome upon her: but the body of the laity, who are really the Church,resisted this attempt almost to the death. There was a perpetualstruggle, greater or smaller according to circumstances, between theKing of England and the Papacy, Pope after Pope endeavoured to fillEnglish sees and benefices with Italian priests: King after King bravedhis wrath by refusing to confirm his appointments. Apostle, they wereready to allow the Pope to be: sovereign or legislator, never. Doctrinethey would accept at his hands; but he should not rule over theirsecular or ecclesiastical liberties. The quarrel between Henry theSecond and Becket was entirely on this point. No wonder that Romecanonised the man who thus exalted her. The Kings who stood out mostfirmly for the liberties of England were Henry the Second, John, Edwardthe First and Second, and Richard the Second. This partly explains thereason why history (of which monks were mainly the authors) has solittle good to say of any of them, Edward the First only excepted. Itis not easy to say why the exception was made, unless it were because hewas too firmly rooted in popular admiration, and perhaps a little toomunificent to the monastic Orders, for much evil to be discreetly saidof him. Coeur-de-Lion was a Gallio who cared for none of those things:Henry the Third played into the hands of the Pope to-day, and of theAnglican Church to-morrow. Edward the Third held the balance as nearlyeven as possible. The struggle revived faintly during the reign ofHenry the Sixth, but the Wars of the Roses turned men's minds to homeaffairs, and Henry the Seventh was the obedient servant of His Holiness.So the battle went on, till it culminated in the Reformation. Thosewho have never entered into this question, and who assume that allEnglishmen were "Papists" until 1530, have no idea how gallantly theChurch fought for her independent life, and how often she flung from offher the iron grasp of the oppressor. It was not probable that aPrincess whose fathers had followed the rule of Columba, and lay buriedin Protestant Iona, should have any Roman tendencies on this question.Marjory was as warm as any one could have wished her.
"Well, then," Margaret went on, "that horrid Bishop of Winchester--"
"Oh, fie!" said her aunt.
"--Came back to England in August. Aunt Marjory, it is no use,--he ishorrid, and I hate him! He hates my fair father. Do you expect me tolove him?"
"Well done, Magot!" said another voice. "When I want a lawyer to pleadmy cause, I will send for thee.--Christ save you, fair Sister! I heardyou were here, with this piece of enthusiasm."
Both the girls rose to greet the Earl, Margaret courtesying low asbeseemed a daughter.
It was very evident that, so far as outside appearance went, Margaretwas "only the child of her mother." Earl Hubert was scarcely so tall ashis wife, and he had a bronzed, swarthy complexion, with dark hair.Though short, he was strongly-built and well-proportioned. His eyeswere dark, small, but quick and exceedingly bright. He had, whenneedful, a ready, eloquent tongue and a very pleasant smile. Yeteloquent as undoubtedly he could be, he was not usually a man of manywords; and capable as he was of very deep and lasting affection, he wasnot demonstrative.
The soft, caressing manners of the Princess Margaret were not in herhusband's line at all. He was given to calling a spade a spade wheneverhe had occasion to mention the article: and if she preferred to alludeto it as "an agricultural implement for the trituration of the soil," hewas disposed to laugh good-humouredly at the epithet, though he dearlyloved the silver voice which used it.
A thoroughly representative man of his time was Hubert de Burgh, Earl ofKent; and he was one of those persons who leave a deep mark upon theirage. He was a purely self-made man. He had no pedigree: indeed, we donot know with absolute certainty who was his father, though moderngenealogists have amused themselves by making a pedigree for him, towhich there is no real evidence that he had the least claim. Yet of hiswives--for he was four times married--the first was an heiress, thesecond a baron's widow, the third a countess in her own right and adivorced queen, and the last a princess. His public life had begun byhis conducting a negotiation to the satisfaction of Coeur-de-Lion, inthe first year of his reign, 1189, when in all probability Hubert waslittle over twenty years of age. From that moment he rose rapidly.Merely to enumerate all the titles he bore would almost take a page. Hewas by turns a very rich man and a very poor one, according as his royaland capricious master made or revoked his grants.
The religious character of Hubert is not a matter of speculation, but ofcertainty. It was--what his contemporaries considered elevated piety--amost singular mixture of the barest and basest superstition with somevery strong plain common-sense. The superstition was of the style setforth in the famous Spanish drama entitled "The Devotion of the Cross"--the true Roman type of piety, though to Protestant minds of thenineteenth century it seems almost inconceivable. The hero of thisplay, who is represented as tinctured with nearly every crime whichhumanity can commit, has a miracle performed in his favour, and goescomfortably to Heaven after it, on account of his devotion to the cross.The innocent reader must not suspect the least connection between thisdevotion and the atonement wrought upon the cross. It simply means,that whenever Eusebio sees the shape of a cross--in the hilt of hissword, the pattern of a woman's dress, two sticks thrown upon oneanother,--he stops in the midst of whatever sin he may be committing,and in some form, by word or gesture, expresses his "devotion."
Of this type was Hubert's religion. His notion of spirituality was tograsp the pix with one hand, and to hold the crucifix in the other. Hekept a nicely-balanced account at the Bank of Heaven, in which--this ishistorical--the heaviest deposit was the fact that he had many yearsbefore saved a large crucifix from the flames. The idea that thisaction was not most pious and meritorious would have been in Hubert'seyes rank heresy. Yet he might have known better. The Psalter lay opento him, which, had he been acquainted with no other syllable ofrevelation, should alone have given him a very different conception ofspiritual religion.
Athwart these singular notions of excellence, Hubert's good common-sensewas perpetually gleaming, like the lightning across a dark moor.Whatever else this man was, he was
no slave of Rome. It was supportedby him, and probably at his instigation, that King John had sent hislofty message to the Pope, that--
"No Italian priest Should tithe or toll in his dominions."
It was when the administration lay in his hands that Parliament refusedto comply with the demands of the Pope till it was seen what otherkingdoms would do: and no Papal aggressions were successful in Englandso long as Hubert was in power. To reverse the famous phrase of LordDenbigh, Hubert was "a Catholic, if you please; but an Englishmanfirst."
Truer Englishman, at once loyalist and patriot, never man was than he--well described by one of the English people as "that most faithful andnoble Hubert, who so often saved England from the ravages of theforeigner, and restored England to herself." He stood by the Throne,bearing aloft the banner of England, in three especially dark andperilous days, when no man stood there but himself. To him alone, underProvidence, we owe it that England did not become a vassal province ofFrance. Most amply was his fidelity put to the test; most unspotted itemerged from the ordeal: most heavy was the debt of gratitude owed alikeby England and her King.
That debt was paid, in a sense, to the uttermost farthing. In whatmanner of coin it was discharged, we are about to see.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. Patent Roll, 4 Henry Third; dated York, June 15 1220.
Note 2. "In the octave of Holy Trinity" [May 25--June 1], at Alnwick.--Roberts' Extracts from Fines Rolls, 1225.
Note 3. This terrible fact has been strangely ignored by many modernhistorians.--_Rot. Exit., Michs_., 25-6 Henry Third.
Note 4. A drug which deadens the sensibilities--of the vivisector--byrendering the victim incapable of sound or motion, but not affecting thenerves of sensation in the least.
Note 5. This was in 1234, when our story begins, the English diminutiveof Margaret, and was doubtless derived from the French Margot.
Note 6. Any reader who is inclined to doubt this is requested toconsult Acts fifteen, 4, 22. It is unquestionably the teaching of theNew Testament. The clergy form part of the Church merely as individualChristians.