Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

C >> Charlotte Mary Yonge >> Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

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"Well, you may know more law quirks. I have had something else to do,"
said the rough warrior. "No one can deny you a smooth tongue; and some
say you do not keep to what you promise--which is not kingly."

"Yes, I promise satisfaction to one party before I have heard the other,
and then am forced to take something back. It would be easy to do like
you--promise evil to all. I never hear any complaint of your not keeping
this promise to them."

"Ay, and while I made a princely voyage, you sat at home like my
father's daughter."

"There you take up the cudgel," said Eystein, merrily; "but I know how
to answer. If I did sit at home, like my father's daughter, you cannot
deny that, like a sister, I furnished you forth."

Sigurd continued: "I was in many a battle in the Saracens' land, and
always came off conqueror; I won many precious goods, the like of which
were never seen here before; and I was always the most highly esteemed
where brave men met: while yours is but a home-bred renown. I went to
Palestine, I came to Apulia; but I did not see you there, brother. I
gave Roger the Great the title of King. I won seven battles; but you
were in none of them. I was at our Lord's grave; but I did not see you
there, brother. I went to Jordan, where our Lord was baptized. I swam
across the river; but I did not see you there. A willow grew on the
bank, and I twisted the boughs into a knot, which is waiting there for
you; for I said that you should untie it, and fulfil the vow that is
bound up in it."

"I have little to set against this," said Eystein; "but if you fought
abroad, I strove to be of use at home. In the north of Vaage I built
fish-houses, so as to enable the poor people there to earn a livelihood.
I built a priest's house, and endowed a Church, where before all the
people were heathen; and therefore I think they will recollect that
Eystein was once King of Norway. The road from Drontheim goes over the
Dofrefield, and often travellers had to sleep in the open air; but
I built inns, and supported them with money, and thus wayfarers may
remember that Eystein has been King of Norway. Agdaness was a bare
waste, and no harbor, and many a ship was lost. Now, there is a good
harbor, and a Church. I raised beacons on the high ground; I built a
royal hall in Bergen, and the Church of the Apostles; I built Michael's
Church, and a Convent beside. I settled the laws, so that all may obtain
justice. The Jemteland people are again joined to our realm, and more by
kind words than by war. Now, though all these are but small doings, yet
I am not sure if the people of our land have not been better served by
them than by your killing blue men in the land of the Saracens. Your
deeds were great; yet I hope what I have done for the servants of God
may serve me no less for my soul's salvation. So, if you did tie a knot
for me, I will not go to untie it; and if I had been tying a knot for
you, you would not have been King of Norway, when with a single ship you
came into my fleet."

Eystein conferred many more benefits on his country, and on individuals
many acts of kindness--such as his undertaking by his conversation to
cheer and console one of his friends who had been disappointed in love.
This excellent King died at thirty-five, and it was said that there was
never so much mourning in Norway. Sigurd's fate was sad; the shadow
predicted in his dream fell on him. His moodiness increased to
distraction, and nothing could be more wretched in those early times
than the condition of an insane king or of his country. He grew
extremely violent, and often did fearful mischief; but he still
preserved his generous spirit, and could always, even at the worst, be
tamed by any one who would boldly resist his fury. Happily, this only
lasted six years, for he died in 1330, at the age of forty.

This has been a long digression; but as Sigurd was the last of our
Northern visitors, we hope it may be pardoned for the sake of its
interest.

Henry I. gave his only daughter Maude in marriage to Henry V., Emperor
of Germany, a rebellious son, who had taken advantage of the sentence
of excommunication on his father, to strip him of his domains, and
absolutely reduce him to beggary. Maude was married to Henry V. at
eleven years old, when she was so small that she could not stand under
the weight of her robes, and the Archbishop of Cologne was obliged
to hold her in his arms during the celebration of the wedding. The
principal favorites of the King of England were at this time the sons
of his sister Adela, three in number: Theobald, Count de Blois and
Champagne; Stephen, Count de Mortagne, whom the King married to Matilda,
heiress, of Boulogne, the niece of good Queen Maude, and Henry, whom he
made Bishop of Winchester.

Henry was persuaded to marry again, and his queen was the beautiful and
gracious Alice of Louvaine, a fair young girl of eighteen. His daughter
Maude returned from Germany in 1125; but there were strange stories that
her husband, the Emperor, was not dead, but had fled in secret from his
court, to dwell as a hermit in penance for his crimes. His funeral had,
however, been performed with full solemnity. King Henry regarded her as
in truth a widow, and was very anxious to bestow her a second time in
marriage. He caused his vassals to take an oath of fealty to her as
his heiress, and foremost in making this promise were David, King of
Scotland--as Earl of Huntingdon, in right of his wife, Waltheof's
daughter--and Stephen de Blois, Count de Mortagne and Boulogne; while
Henry engaged at the same time that she should not be married without
the consent of the Barons.

Very soon, however, he broke his word, with the desire of conciliating
those troublesome neighbors of Normandy, the counts of Anjou. Foulques
V. showed himself so much inclined to befriend the son of Robert, that
Henry resolved to attach him to his own party, and proposed to him to
give Maude to his son Geoffrey, whom he desired should be sent at
once to Rouen, that he might see him, and confer on him the order of
knighthood.

Young Geoffrey was only fifteen, but, unlike his ancestors, was very
tall, and had also inherited the beauty and grace of his grandmother
Bertrade. King Henry was delighted with him, and after examining him
closely on all the rules of chivalry, as well as on other points, to
which Geoffrey replied with much acuteness, showing himself a good
scholar even in Latin, resolved to make him his son-in-law. His
knighthood was conferred with the greatest splendor and all the
formalities of the time. The first day he entered the bath, the emblem
of purity, and then was arrayed in fine linen, a robe woven with gold,
and a purple mantle. A Spanish horse was presented to him, and he was
armed in polished steel, and with a helmet covered with precious stones;
his gilded spurs were buckled on, and his sword and lance given to him.
He sprung on horseback without putting his foot in the stirrup, and six
days were spent in jousting with twenty-nine young nobles, who were
knighted at the same time. At the close of the tourney, Henry conferred
on him the accolade, or sword-blow, which was the chief part of the
ceremony.

Henry had great difficulty in making his daughter consent to the
marriage. Whether she believed her husband to be alive, or whether it
was from pride, or dislike to take so mere a boy as her bridegroom, her
resistance was long; and it was not till 1127 that she was brought by
her father to Mans, where the wedding took place, just before Geoffrey's
father departed for Palestine.

Maude was proud and disdainful, and treated her young husband in the
most contemptuous way; and Geoffrey avoided her in return, spending most
of his time in hunting in the woods, where he used to wear the spray of
broom that became the cognizance of his house, and caused their surname
of Plantagenet. Perhaps it was in contrast to his wife's haughtiness
that he chose to adopt this plant, considered as the emblem of humility,
and reminding her that she had married the descendant of the woodman
Torquatus.

Geoffrey seems to have been of a gay, lively temper, associating freely
with all who came in his way, and often doing kind actions. Once, as on
Christmas-day he was entering the Church of St. Julian at Mans, he met a
poor priest, meanly clad.

"What tidings?" said the Count.

"Glad tidings," returned the priest.

"What are they?"

"'To us a Child is born, to us a Son is given,'" the clerk made answer;
and Geoffrey was so struck with his appropriate manner, that he gave him
a valuable canonry.

Geoffrey was hunting in a forest, when he lost his way, and was
benighted; and, meeting a charcoal-burner, asked the road to Loches. The
man offered to become his guide, and accordingly the Count took him up
on his horse, talking gayly, and asking what people said of the Count.
The peasant answered that the Count himself was said to be friendly and
free-spoken, but his provost committed terrible exactions, of which he
gave a full account. Geoffrey listened, and in the morning rode into
the town of Loches with the charcoal-burner still _en croupe_ (if his
haughty empress was there, he must have enjoyed provoking her), and
there he summoned all his provosts, himself examined their accounts, put
an end to their exactions, and ended by making the charcoal-burner a
free man instead of a serf.

There is a report that Maude's first husband came to Angers in his
penance-garb, and on his death-bed told his confessor who he was; that
the confessor fetched the empress; and that she attended him in secret
till his death; but the truth of this tale is very uncertain. Maude had
been six years married to Geoffrey when her first child was born, Henry,
called by the Normans Fitz-Empress.

This event in some degree cheered the latter years of his grandfather,
King Henry, whose sin had found him out, in bitter remorse and fearful
dreams. Nobles, peasants, and clergy seemed in turn to be standing round
his bed, calling him to account for his misdeeds toward them. Many other
victims of his ambition might have been conjured up by his remorse--such
as the citizen of Rouen, spared by Robert, whom Henry threw from the top
of a high tower, whither he had treacherously invited him; the Norman
barons, with whom he had broken his faith; his gallant, generous
brother, so cruelly betrayed and imprisoned; his persecuted nephew,
William Clito; the unhappy troubadour, Lucas de Barre, whom he had
blinded, for writing a satire on him, and who dashed out his brains
in despair on the prison wall; and--almost the worst of all--the poor
children of his illegitimate daughter Juliana, left to the ferocious
revenge of Raoul de Harenc, by whom their eyes were put out and their
noses cut off. With such recollections as these to haunt his later
years, no wonder Henry's nights were times of agony and wakefulness.

He tried to lose the thought of these horrors in activity, and was
constantly passing between England and Normandy. It was in the latter
country that he made his fatal supper of lampreys, after he had been
fatigued with hunting all day. A violent fever came on at night, and he
died on the 1st of December, 1135.

The court of Scotland presented a far different scene. David, the
youngest of the children of St. Margaret, inherited the crown in 1124,
on the death of his brother Alexander, and was treading in the same
course as his mother, his sister Maude, and his brethren. He belonged,
indeed, to a family of saints, and brought piety, firmness, cultivation,
and a merciful temper to improve his rugged country. He was a brave
warrior: but he loved the arts of peace, and one of his favorite
amusements was gardening, budding and grafting trees.

He administered strict justice, but shed tears as he ordered an
execution; and was so tender-hearted and ready to hear the poor, that he
would take his foot out of the stirrup when just ready for the chase, to
listen to the humblest complaint. Though lively and social in temper, he
spent some hours every evening alone, in prayer and meditation.

His wife was Matilda, daughter of that Earl Waltheof who was executed by
William I. She had previously been married to a Norman knight, Simon de
St. Liz, who died on pilgrimage, leaving her with two sons, Simon and
Waltheof. Two sons were likewise born to David; but the eldest was
killed in his infancy by an accident: and shortly after David took home
as a companion to the little Henry, Aelred, the son of a Saxon priest at
Hexham.

These four boys were brought up "in the nurture of good learning," and
in godliness; but their different tempers soon showed themselves. Simon,
the little Earl of Northampton, while a child, was always playing at
building castles, and bestriding the "truncheon of a spear," as a
war-horse. Waltheof was a builder, too, but his were churches, and his
delight was in making the sign of the Cross and singing chants. It was
still the same as they grew older; Waltheof ever drew more apart, and
spent more time in reading and prayer. His stepfather, the King, would
take him to the chase, and tell him to bear his bow; but he often
found his bow in the hands of another, and, after a search, discovered
Waltheof reading or praying in a secret glade, or under a tree. "Your
boy," he said to the Queen, "will either die young, or leave us for the
cloister."

Aelred was Waltheof's chief friend; but, though very pious, he was more
of a scholar, and read both romances of King Arthur and such works
of Cicero as had found their way to Scotland. He was lively in
conversation; David was fond of him, and used to tell him stories of his
own younger days; and Aelred became the loving chronicler of this happy
court.

Prince Henry had the same holy temper, coupled with a bold spirit, that
was needed by the heir of Scotland, and showed himself full of the noble
qualities of his father and uncles. He was the true knight of the party,
as bold as a lion, yet as strict and devout as a monk, even in the camp.
Simon was no more than a rough, bold, tyrannical earl, and soon took up
his abode in England.

Ere long Aelred became a monk, and Waltheof was not slow in following
his example. Both entered the Cistercian order, and led holy lives,
avoiding all preferment--a difficult matter for Waltheof, stepson to one
king and cousin to another. His brother Simon took such offence at his
lowliness, that he actually threatened to burn down the convent of
Waldon, where Waltheof was living, because he thought it shame to see a
descendant of Siward a common monk in a poor monastery.

However, in time, promotion was thrust on them. Aelred became Abbot of
Rivaux, and Waltheof Abbot of Melrose.

Of the King and his son, more will be said in the next chapter.

CAMEO XVII.

THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD.
(1135-1138.)

_King of England.
1135. Stephen.
1137. Louis VII.

_King of Scotland_.
1124. David I.

_Kings of France_.
1107. Louis VI.

_Emperors of Germany_.
1125. Lothar II.
1138. Konrad II.

Earl Egbert of Gloucester was the son of Henry Beauclerc and of a
beautiful Welsh princess named Nesta, who had fallen into his hands in
the course of the war which he maintained for his brother William Rufus,
on the borders of Wales. Henry was much attached to the boy, and gave
him a princely education, by which he profited so as to become not only
learned, but of a far purer and more chivalrous character than was often
to be found among the great men of his time.

Henry I. provided for him, by giving to him the hand of the Lady Amabel
Fitzaymon, heiress of Glamorgan, and a ward at the disposal of the
crown, in whose right he became Earl of Gloucester.

Robert and his cousin, Stephen de Blois, both attended the death-bed of
Henry I., and heard his dying words: "I leave to my children whatever I
have gained. Let them do justice to those I have injured."

No sooner had the King expired, than Stephen set off for England, where
he was already very popular, partly on account of his courteous manners
and goodly person, partly for the sake of his wife, Matilda of Boulogne,
who was treading in the steps of her aunt, the good Queen Maude. He
landed at Dover in the midst of a frightful thunder-storm, and though he
found that city and Canterbury closed against him, he met with a joyful
reception in London and Winchester. He bribed Hugh Bigod, the late
King's seneschal, to swear that Henry had on his deathbed disinherited
Maude, and left the kingdom to him; and the Archbishop, William de
Corboil, was credulous enough to believe the tale, and crown the
usurper; but discovery of the falsehood hastened the old man's death.

While this was passing, Robert of Gloucester was conducting the funeral
of his father; causing his body to be _salted_, instead of embalmed, and
bringing it to England to be buried at Reading, an abbey that Henry had
built and endowed for his burial-place. It is now completely ruined, and
few vestiges remain to show what the buildings were, far less any trace
of the tomb of the scholarly and cruel son of the Conqueror.

The Empress Maude was at the same time attending her husband, Geoffrey
Plantagenet, in a dangerous illness; and thus Stephen was enabled
to obtain possession of both England and Normandy, and received
the submission of all the nobles. The Earl of Gloucester, thinking
resistance vain, took the oath of fealty; reserving, however, the right
of recalling it if any injury was offered to him or to his property.

The next year Geoffrey de Bel raised an army, and entered Normandy; but
was met there by Stephen, wounded, and forced to retreat, leaving only
a few castles still holding out for the Empress. Stephen was besieging
that of Bertran, with an army composed partly of Normans and partly of
natives of his wife's county of Boulogne, when, while he was taking
his mid-day sleep, a quarrel arose between the two brothers. Waking in
haste, and alarmed for his Boulognais, he took part against the Normans,
calling out, "Down with the traitors!" The Normans were greatly
offended, and, having retired to their tents, they held a council
together, and ended by making him the following plain-spoken address:

"Sir, a folly is better ended than continued. By ill advice, we took you
for our lord for a little while. If you blame us for it, you will not be
wrong. You have beaten our men, and called us traitors. Certes, we were
traitors when we left our rightful lady for a stranger. We have held
with you against our lady the Empress, and we repent, for we have sinned
against God and man: but we will no longer continue in the sin; and
therefore we bid you mount, and leave this host, for we will not suffer
you to remain in this country, unless it be the will of our lady the
Empress."

Stephen begged them to let him remain till the next day but they swore
that, if he did, it should be the worse for him, and immediately
escorted him beyond the bounds of Normandy. They then brought back
Maude, with her husband and children; and the dukedom continued in the
hands of Geoffrey as long as he lived.

At the same time David, King of Scotland, recollecting the oath to
Maude, which he and Stephen had together sworn, took up arms in her
cause, and invaded England, forcing the inhabitants to take the oath
of allegiance. His troops were a fearfully wild, untamed race,
undisciplined and cruel, and it was a dreadful thing to let loose such
a host of savage marauders without any possibility of restraining them.
The Galwegians, Picts by race, were the worst; but the Highlanders and
Borderers were also dreadfully cruel: and the English armed to protect
themselves against the inroad of their ancient foes.

The clergy of the North even deemed it a sacred war, and, by the
authority of Thurstan, Archbishop of York, gathered their flocks, and
came, each priest at the head of his parishioners, to the place of
assembly at York, where three days were spent in prayer and fasting; and
then the old Archbishop administered to them an oath never to desert
each other, and dismissed them with his blessing. Raoul, Bishop of
Durham, was deputed by him to take the lead, and to have the charge of
the consecrated standards of St. Cuthbert of Durham, St. Peter of York,
St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfred of Ripon. These were all suspended
from one pole, like the mast of a vessel, surmounted by a cross, in the
centre of which was fixed a silver casket, containing the consecrated
wafer of the Holy Sacrament. The pole was fixed into a four-wheeled car,
on which the Bishop stood. Such cars were much used in Italy, where
each city had its own consecrated Gonfalone, on its caroccio, hung with
scarlet cloth and drawn by oxen. The English collected under this sacred
standard were the stout peasants of the North, the bowmen of Yorkshire
and Nottinghamshire; each with a bow of his own height, and a sheaf of
arrows two cubits long; and there were also many barons of Norman birth,
of whom Walter L'Espee was the leader. Some of these barons held their
lands under David of Scotland, as Earl of Cumberland, and two of them,
Bernard Baliol and Robert Bruce, the last an old friend of the King,
went to the Scottish camp, to remonstrate with him. Bruce begged him to
retreat, described the horrors committed by his wild Scots, told him of
the strength of the English force, and ended by declaring with tears
that it would now become his duty to renounce his allegiance, and array
himself against his beloved prince. Good King David shed tears, but
William Macdonochie, the fierce lord of Galloway, burst out with the
exclamation, "Bruce, thou art a false traitor!" and the insulted baron
renounced all he held in Scotland, gave up his allegiance, and rode back
to the English army, at Northampton, bringing tidings that the Scots
were coming.

The host arrayed itself around their car, where the sacred standard
waved above their head, and the Bishop of Durham addressed them from
beneath it, reminding them of former victories. Walter L'Espee was
the first to respond. Grasping the hand of the Earl of Albemarle, he
exclaimed, "I pledge thee my troth that to-day I will overcome the
Scots, or die!" "So swear we all," cried the other barons; and the
whole host knelt down, the Bishop pronounced over them the words of
absolution, they replied with one mighty sound of united voices, "Amen!"
and arose. The knights and squires sat with gathered reins and knees in
rest, the yeomen stood each with his good yew bow ready strung, awaiting
the onslaught.

Less union was there in the hostile army, where it might be said that
there was no authority, for David was unable to restrain his wild
subjects from the North and West. The men of Galloway insisted on
beginning the attack; but as they wore no defensive armor, and had no
weapons but long, thin pikes, besides being more fierce than steady,
the king hesitated. "Why trust to a plate of steel or rings of iron?"
exclaimed Malise of Strathern. "I, who wear no armor, will go as far as
any one with breastplate of mail." "You brag of what you dare not do!"
said the Norman Alan de Percy. But the King found himself obliged to
yield the precedence to the Galwegians, trusting far more to the lowland
knights and men-at-arms, whom he arrayed under his gallant son, Prince
Henry, while he himself commanded the reserve of Northern Scots.

The fierce Kelts of Galloway, guided by a tall spear, wreathed with
heather blossom, and shouting, "Albin! Albin!" with harsh, dissonant
cries like the roar of a tempest, fell headlong on the English ranks,
and at first their fury carried them on so that they burst through them
as if they had been a spider's web. But the Norman chivalry round the
standard stood firm, and hewed down the undefended Galwegians, nor could
the long claymores of the Highland clans, who next attacked them, break
through their steel armor. The charge of Prince Henry's horsemen had
more effect, and at one time the youth had almost won his way to the
standard, when some traitor in the rear raised a bloody head on the
point of a lance, shouting that the King was slain. In consternation the
Scots gave back; the English saw their advantage, and pressed upon them:
and though David rode forward and displayed the dragon standard which
marked his presence (inherited from the Saxon kings), he could not rally
them, and but just succeeded in protecting their flight to Carlisle,
which then belonged to him as Earl of Cumberland.

This first of the long series of Scottish defeats was called the Battle
of the Standard, from the banner of St. Cuthbert, which was always
thought to bring success. It came forth at the battle of Nevil's Cross,
and was again victorious, and it was preserved with great reverence till
the Reformation, when, in 1549, Catherine Whittingham, the wife of the
Dean of Durham, burnt it, out of zeal against Popery. It is some comfort
that she was a Frenchwoman.

Stephen had left his Northern subjects to take care of themselves,
because he was full of perplexities in the South. He had tried to please
all parties, and by no means succeeded. He was a humane, kind-hearted
man, and really wished to befriend the unfortunate Saxons; but, on the
other hand, he was afraid to affront their Norman oppressors, whom he
had allowed to build castles, and strengthen themselves in the very way
which it had been Henry Beauclerc's policy to prevent. Almost every
spot where green mounds and blocks of massive masonry remain within an
ancient moat, is said by tradition to have been "a castle in Stephen's
time," and we wonder, considering that he reigned but nine years, how
such immense works could have been effected. Dens of thieves they seem
to have been, and misery and destruction reigned round them; while the
least attempt on the King's part to restrain the ferocity of their
owners was requited by a threat of bringing in our lady the Empress.