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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The heat of the weather had affected his health, and he was lying on his
couch, only covered with a single garment, when a messenger approached
with letters purporting to be from the Emir of Joppa. While he was
reading them, the man suddenly drew out a poniard, and was striking at
his side, when Edward, perceiving his intention, caught the blow on his
arm, and threw him to the ground by a kick on the breast. The murderer
arose, and took aim again, but had only grazed his; forehead, when the
Prince dashed out his brains with a wooden stool. The attendants rushed
in, and were beginning to make up for their negligence by blows on the
corpse, when Edward stopped them, by sternly demanding what was the use
of striking a dead man.

It is on the authority of a Spanish chronicle that we hear that Eleanor,
apprehending that the weapon had been poisoned, at once sucked the blood
from her husband's wounds. The fear was too well founded, and Edward was
in great danger; so that his men, in their first rage, were about to put
to death all their Saracen captives, when he roused himself to prevent
them, by urging, that not only were these men innocent, but that the
enemy would retaliate upon the many Christian pilgrims absent from the
army.

The Grand Master of the Templars brought a surgeon, who gave hopes of
saving the gallant English prince by cutting out the flesh around the
wound. Edward replied by bidding him work boldly, and spare not; but
Eleanor could not restrain her lamentations, till he desired his brother
Edmund to lead her from the tent, when she was carried away, struggling
and sobbing, while Edmund roughly told her that it was better she should
scream and cry, than all England mourn and lament.

The operation was safely performed, but Edward made his will, and
resigned himself to die. In fifteen days, however, he was able to mount
his horse, and nearly at the same time Eleanor gave birth to her eldest
daughter, Joan, called of Acre, whose wild, headstrong temper was little
fitted to the child of a Crusade.

The army was weakened by sickness, and Edward decided on prolonging his
stay no longer; therefore, as soon as Eleanor had recovered, he left
the Holy Land, with keen regret, and many vows to return with a greater
force. These vows were never fulfilled, nor was it well they should
have been. Acre was a nest of corruption, filled with the scum of the
European nations, and a standing proof that the Latin Christians were
unworthy to hold a foot of the hallowed ground; and in 1291, eighteen
years after the conclusion of the seventh Crusade, it was taken by the
Sultan Keladun, after a brave defence by the Templars and Hospitallers;
and since that time Palestine has remained under the Mahometan,
dominion.

Louis and Edward were the last princely Crusaders, though the idea lived
on in almost every high-souled man through the Middle Ages. Henry V.
and Philip le Bon of Burgundy both schemed the recovery of the Holy
Sepulchre; and the hope that chiefly impelled the voyage of Columbus
was, that his Western discoveries might open a way to the redemption of
the Holy Land. "Remember the Holy Sepulchre!" is a cry that can never
pass from the ears of men.

Death had been busy in England as in the crusading host, and the tidings
met Edward in Sicily that his home was desolate. His kind and generous
uncle, Richard, his gentle, affectionate father, and his two young
children, had all died during his absence. The grief that the stern
Edward showed for his father's death was so overpowering, that Charles
of Sicily, who probably had little esteem for Henry, and thought the
kingdom a sufficient consolation, marvelled that he could grieve more
for an aged father than for two promising sons. "The Lord, who gave me
these, can give me other children," said Edward; "but a father can never
be restored!"

Before his return to England, Edward obtained from Pope Gregory X.
justice upon the murderers of Henry d'Almayne. Simon was dead, but Guy
was declared incapable of inheriting or possessing property, or of
filling any office of trust, and was excommunicated and outlawed. After
Edward had left Italy, the unhappy man ventured to meet the Pope at
Florence in his shirt, with a halter round his neck, and implored that
his sentence might be changed to imprisonment. The Pope had pity on him,
and, after a confinement of eleven years, he was liberated, and returned
to his wife's estates. He afterward was taken prisoner in the wars in
Sicily, but his subsequent fate does not appear.

The history of the last of the Crusaders must not be quitted without
mentioning that the scene of St. Louis' death is now in the hands of the
French, and that the spot has been marked by a chapel erected by his
descendant, Louis Philippe; and that our own Edward sleeps in his
father's church of Westminster, beneath a huge block, unornamented
indeed, but of the same rock as the hills of Palestine; nay, it is
believed that it is probably one of those great stones whereof it was
said; that not one should remain on another.

CAMEO XXXII.

The CYMRY.
(B.C. 66 A.D. 1269.)

In ancient times the whole of Europe seems to have been inhabited by the
Keltic nation, until they were dispossessed by the more resolute tribes
of Teuton origin, and driven to the extreme West, where the barrier
of rugged hills that guards the continent from the Atlantic waves has
likewise protected this primitive race from extinction.

Cym, or Cyn, denoting in their language "first," was the root of their
name of Cymry, applied to the original tribe, and of which we find
traces across the whole map of Europe, beginning from the Cimmerian
Bosphorus, going on to the Cimbri, conquered by Marius, while in our own
country we still possess Cumberland and Cambria, the land inhabited by
the Cymry.

The Gael, another pure Keltic tribe, who followed the Cymry, have
bestowed more names, as living more near to the civilized world, and
being better known to history. Even in Asia Minor, a settlement of them
had been called Galatians, and the whole tract from the north of Italy
to the Atlantic was, to the Romans, Gallia. The name still survives in
the Cornouailles of Brittany and the Cornwall of England (both meaning
the horn of Gallia), in Gaul, in Galles, in the Austrian and Spanish
Galicias, in the Irish Galway and the Scottish Galloway, while the Gael
themselves are still a people in the Highlands.

Mingling with the Teutons, though receding before them, there was
a third tribe, called usually by the Teuton word "_Welsh_"
meaning strange; and these, being the first to come in contact with
the Romans, were termed by them Belgae. The relics of this
appellation are found in the German "Welschland," the name given
to Italy, because the northern part of that peninsula had a Keltic
population, in Wallachia, in the Walloons of the Netherlands, who have
lately assumed the old Latinized name of Belgians, and in the Welsh of
our own Wales.

This last was the region, scarcely subdued by the Romans, where the
Cymry succeeded in maintaining their independence, whilst the Angles and
Saxons gained a footing in the whole of the eastern portion of Britain.
The Britons were for the most part Christian, and partly civilized by
the Romans; but there was a wild element in their composition, and about
the time of the departure of the Roman legions there had been a reaction
toward the ancient Druidical religion, as if the old national faith was
to revive with the national independence. The princes were extremely
savage and violent, and their contemporary historian, Gildas, gives a
melancholy account of their wickedness, not even excepting the great
Pendragon, Arthur, in spite of his twelve successful battles with the
Saxons. Merlin, the old, wild soothsayer of romance, seems to have
existed at this period under the name of Merddyn-wilt, or the Wild, and
bequeathed dark sayings ever since deemed prophetic, and often curiously
verified.

Out of the attempt to blend the Druid philosophy with Christianity arose
the Pelagian heresy, first taught by Morgan, or Pelagius, a monk of
Bangor, and which made great progress in Wales even after its refutation
by St. Jerome. It was on this account that St. Germain preached in
Wales, and produced great effect. The Pelagians gave up their errors,
and many new converts were collected to receive the rite of baptism at
Mold, in Flintshire, when a troop of marauding enemies burst, on them.
The neophytes were unarmed and in their white robes, but, borne up by
the sense of their new life, they had no fears for their body, and with
one loud cry of "Hallelujah!" turned, with the Bishop at their head, to
meet the foe. The enemy retreated in terror; and the name of Maes Garman
still marks the scene of this bloodless victory.

After this the heresy died away, but the more innocent customs of the
Druids continued, and the system of bards was carried on, setting apart
the clergy, the men of wisdom, and the poets, by rites derived from
ancient times. Be it observed, that a Christian priest was not
necessarily of one of the Druidical or Bardic orders, although this was
generally preferred. Almost all instructions were still oral, and, for
convenience of memory, were drawn up in triads, or verses of three--a
mystic number highly esteemed. Many of these convey a very deep
philosophy. For instance, the three unsuitable judgments in any person
whatsoever: The thinking himself wise--the thinking every other person
unwise--the thinking all he likes becoming in him. Or the three
requisites of poetry: An eye that can see Nature--a heart that can feel
Nature--a resolution that dares to follow Nature. And the three objects
of poetry: Increase of goodness--increase of understanding--increase
of delight.

Such maxims were committed to the keeping of the Bards, who were
admitted to their office after a severe probation and trying initiatory
rites, among which the chief was, that they should paddle alone, in
a little coracle, to a shoal at some distance from the coast of
Caernarvonshire--a most perilous voyage, supposed to be emblematic both
of the trials of Noah and of the troubles of life. Afterward the Bard
wore sky-blue robes, and was universally honored, serving as the
counsellor, the herald, and the minstrel of his patron. The domestic
Bard and the chief of song had their office at the King's court, with
many curious perquisites, among which was a chessboard from the King.
The fine for insulting the Bard was 6 cows and 120 pence; for slaying
him, 126 cows. With so much general respect, and great powers of
extemporizing, the Bards were well able to sway the passions of
the nation, and greatly contributed to keep up the fiery spirit of
independence which the Cymry cherished in their mountains.

When the Saxons began to embrace Christianity, and Augustine came on
his mission from Rome, the Welsh clergy, who had made no attempts at
converting their enemies, looked on him with no friendly eyes. He
brought claims, sanctioned by Gregory the Great, to an authority over
them inconsistent with that of the Archbishop of Caerleon; and the
period for observing Easter was, with them, derived from the East, and
differed by some weeks from that ordained by the Roman Church. An old
hermit advised the British clergy, who went to meet Augustine, to try
him by the test of humility, and according as he should rise to greet
them, or remain seated, to listen to his proposals favorably or
otherwise. Unfortunately, Augustine retained his seat: they rejected his
plans of union; and he told them that, because they would not preach to
the Angles the way of life, they would surely at their hands suffer death.

Shortly after, the heathen king, Ethelfrith, attacked Brocmail, the
Welsh prince of Powys, who brought to the field 1,200 monks of Bangor
to pray for his success. The heathens fell at once on the priests, and,
before they could be protected, slew all except fifty; and this, though
the Welsh gained the victory, was regarded by the Saxon Church as a
judgment, and by the Welsh, unhappily, as a consequence of Augustine's
throat. The hatred became more bitter than ever, and the Welsh would not
even enter the same church with the Saxons, nor eat of a meal of which
they had partaken.

Cadwallader, the last of the Pendragons, was a terrible enemy to the
kings of Mercia and Northumbria, and with him the Cymry consider that
their glory ended. Looking on themselves for generation after generation
as the lawful owners of the soil, and on the Saxons as robbers, they
showed no mercy in their forays, and inflicted frightful cruelties on
their neighbors on the Marches. Offa's curious dyke, still existing in
Shropshire, was a bulwark raised in the hope of confining them within
their own bounds:

"That Offa (when he saw his countries go to wrack), From bick'ring with
his folk, to keep the Britons back, Cast up that mightly mound of eighty
miles in length, Athwart from sea to sea."

The Danish invasions, by ruining the Saxons, favored the Welsh; and
contemporary with Alfred lived Roderic Mawr, or the Great, who had his
domains in so peaceful a state, that Alfred turned thither for aid in
his revival of learning, and invited thence to his court his bosom
friend Asser, the excellent monk and bard. Roderic divided his
dominions--Aberfraw, or North Wales, Dinasvawr, or South Wales, and
Powys, or Shropshire--between his three sons; but they became united
again under his grandson, Howell Dha, the lawgiver of Wales.

Actuated perhaps by the example of Alfred, Howell collected his clergy
and bards at his hunting-lodge at Tenby, a palace built of peeled rods,
and there, after fasting and praying for inspiration, the collective
wisdom of the kingdom compiled a body of laws, which the King afterward
carried in person to Rome to receive the confirmation of the Pope; and
much edified must the Romans have been if they chanced to glance over
the code, since, besides many wise and good laws, it regulated the
minute etiquettes and perquisites of the royal household. If any one
should insult the King, the fine was to be, among other valuables, a
golden dish as broad as the royal face, and as thick as the nail of
a husbandman who has been a husbandman, seven years. Each officer's
distance from the royal fire was regulated, and even the precedence of
each officer's horse in the stable--proving plainly the old saying, that
the poorer and more fiery is a nation, the more precise is their point
of honor. It seems to have been in his time, as a more enlightened
prince, that the Welsh conformed their time of keeping Easter to that of
the rest of the Western Church. But Howell was no longer independent of
the English: he had begun to pay a yearly tribute of dogs, horses, and
hawks, to Ethelstane, and the disputes that followed his death brought
the Welsh so much lower, that Edgar the Peaceable easily exacted his
toll of wolves' heads; and Howell of North Wales was one of the eight
royal oarsmen who rowed the Emperor of Britain to the Minster of St.
John, on the river Dee.

The Welsh had destroyed all their wolves before the close of Dunstan's
regency, and Ethelred the Unready not being likely to obtain much
respect, the tribute was discontinued, until the marauding Danes again
exacted it under another form and title of "Tribute of the Black Army."

Fierce quarrels of their own prevented the Welsh from often taking
advantage of the disturbances of England. As in Ireland, the right of
gavelkind was recognized; yet primogeniture was also so far regarded as
to make both claims uncertain; and the three divisions of Wales were
constantly being first partitioned, and then united, by some prince who
ruled by the right of the strongest, till dethroned by another, who, to
prove his right of birth, carried half his genealogy in his patronymic.

Thus Llewellyn ap Sithfylht, under whom "the earth brought forth double,
the cattle increased in great number, and there was neither beggar nor
poor man from the South to the North Sea," was slain in battle, in 1021,
by Howell ap Edwin ap Eneon ap Owayn ap Howell Dha, who reigned over
South Wales till the son of Llewellyn, or, rather, Gryflyth ap Llewellyn
ap Sithfylht ap, &c., coming to age, dispossessed him, and gained all
Wales. It was this Gryffyth who received and sheltered Fleance, the
son of Banquo, when flying from Macbeth, and gave him in marriage his
daughter Nesta, who became the mother of Walter, the ancestor of the
line of kings shadowed in Macbeth's mirror.

In the early part of Gryffyth's reign, the Welsh flourished greatly.
Earl Godwin, in his banishment, made friends with him, and, favored by
Saxon treachery, he overran Herefordshire, and pillaged the cathedral.
But, after Godwin's death, Harold, as Earl of Wessex, deemed it time
to repress these inroads, and, training his men to habits of diet and
methods of warfare that rendered them as light and dexterous as the wild
mountaineers, he pursued them into their own country, and burnt the
palace and ships at Rhuddlan, while Gryffyth was forced to take refuge
in one of his vessels.

Harold set up a pillar with the inscription, "Here Harold conquered;"
and the Welsh gave hostages, and promised to pay tribute, while Harold
erected a hunting-seat in Monmouthshire, and made an ordinance that any
Welshman seen bearing weapons beyond Offa's dyke should lose his right
hand. Welshwomen might marry Englishmen, but none of the highborn Cymry
might aspire to wed an Englishwoman. Hating the prince under whom
they had come to so much disgrace, the Welsh themselves captured poor
Gryffyth, and sent his head, his hands, and the beak of his ship, to
Edward the Confessor, from whom they accepted the appointment of three
of their native princes to the three provinces.

Thus the strength of Wales was so far broken, that William the Conqueror
had only to bring a force with him, under pretext of a pilgrimage to the
shrine of St. David, to obtain the submission of the princes; and, in
fact, the Cymry found the Norman nobles far more aggressive neighbors
than the Angles had been since their first arrival in Britain.

The mark, or frontier, once the kingdom of Mercia, was now called the
March of Wales, where the Norman knights began to effect settlements, by
the right of the strongest, setting up their impregnable castles, round
which the utmost efforts of the Welsh were lost. Martin de Tours was one
of the first, and his glittering host of mail-clad men so overawed the
inhabitants of Whitchurch that they readily submitted, and he quietly
established himself in their bounds, treating them, as it appears, with
more fairness and friendliness than was then usual. He was a great
chess-player, and the sport descended from father to son, even among the
peasantry of Whitchurch, who long after were most skilful in the game.

Hugh Lupus, the fierce old Earl of Chester, was likewise a Lord Marcher,
and had, like the Bishop of Durham, the almost royal powers of a Count
Palatine, because, dwelling on the frontier, it was necessary that
the executive power should be prompt and absolute. Indeed, the Lords
Marchers, as these border barons were called, lived necessarily in a
state of warfare, which made it needful to entrust them with greater
powers than their neighbors, around whom they formed a sort of _cordon_,
to protect them from the forays of the half-savage Welsh.

Twenty-one baronies were formed in this manner along the March of Wales,
which constantly travelled toward the west. Robert Fitzaymon, by an
alliance with one Welsh chief, dispossessed another of Glamorgan, which
he left to his daughter Amabel, the wife of Earl Robert of Gloucester;
and Gilbert de Clare, commonly called Strongbow (the father of the Irish
Conqueror), obtained a grant from Henry I. of Chepstow and Pembroke, but
had to fight hard for the lands which had more lawful owners. In and
out among these Lords Marchers, and making common cause with them,
were settlements of Flemings. Flanders, that commercial state where
cloth-weaving first flourished as a manufacture, had suffered greatly
from the inundations of the sea, and the near connection subsisting
between the native princes and the sons of the Conqueror had led to an
intercourse, which ended in the weavers, who had lost their all, being
invited by Henry I. to take up their abode in Pembrokeshire, where they
carried on their trade while defending themselves against the Welsh,
and thus first commenced the manufactures of England. Resolute in
resistance, though not rash nor aggressive, and of industrious habits,
they acted as a great protection to the English counties, and down even
to the time of Charles I. they had a language of their own.

Owayn ap Gwynned, King of Aberfraw, or North Wales, had many wars
with Henry II.; and, uniting with the bard king, Owayn Cyvelioc, of
Powysland, did fearful damage to the English, which Henry attempted to
revenge by an incursion into Merionethshire; but though he gained a
battle at Ceiroc, he was forced to retreat through the inhospitable
country, his troops harassed by the weather, and cut off by the Welsh,
who swarmed on the mountains, so that his army arrived at Chester in
a miserable state. He had many unfortunate hostages in his hands, the
children of the noblest families, and on these he wreaked a cowardly
vengeance, cutting off the noses and ears of the maidens, and putting
out the eyes of the boys.

Well might Becket, in his banishment, exclaim, on hearing such tidings,
"His wise men are become fools; England reels and stagers like a drunken
man."

"You will never subdue Wales, unless Heaven be against them," said an
old hermit to the King.

However, Henry had been carried by a frightened horse over a ford, of
which the old prophecies declared that, when it should be crossed by a
freckled king, the power of the Cymry should fall, and this superstition
took away greatly from satisfaction in the victory. The Welsh princes
were becoming habituated to the tribute, and in 1188, under pretext of
preaching a Crusade, Archbishop Baldwin came into Wales, and asserted
the long-disputed supremacy of Canterbury over the Welsh bishopries.
He was attended by Gerald Barry, or Giraldus Cambrensis, a half-Norman
half-Welsh ecclesiastic, who was one of the chief historians of the
period, and had the ungracious office of tutor to Prince John.

When Owayn ap Gwynned died, in 1169, the kingdom of Aberfraw, or North
Wales, was reduced to the isle of Anglesea and the counties of Merioneth
and Caernarvon, with parts of Denbigh and Cardigan. A great dispute
broke out for the succession. Jorwarth, the oldest son, was set aside
because he had a broken nose; and Davydd, the eldest son by a second
wife, seized the inheritance, and slew all the brethren save one, named
Madoc, who sailed away to the West in search of new regions. Several
years after, he again made his appearance in Aberfraw, declaring that he
had found a pleasant country, and was come to collect colonists, with
whom, accordingly, he departed, and returned no more. Many have believed
that his Western Land was no other than America, and on this supposition
Drayton speaks of him, in the "Polyolbion," as having reached the great
continent "Ere the Iberian powers had found her long-sought bay,
or any western ear had heard the sound of Florida."

Southey has, in his poem, made Madoc combine with the Aztecs in the
settlement of Mexico, but traces were said to be found of habits and
countenances resembling those of the Welsh among the Indians of the
Missouri; and, in our own days, the traveller Mr. Buxton was struck by
finding the Indians of the Rocky Mountains weaving a fabric resembling
the old Welsh blanket. If this be so, Christianity and civilization must
have died out among Madoc's descendants: but the story is one of the
exciting riddles of history, such as the similar one of the early
Norwegian discovery of America.

CAMEO XXXIII.

THE ENGLISH JUSTINIAN.
(1272-1292.)

_King of England_.
1272. Edward I.

_Kings of Scotland_.
1249. Alexander III.
1285. Margaret.

_Kings of France_.
1270. Philippe III.
1235. Philippe IV.

_Emperor of Germany_.
1273. Rodolph I.

_Popes_.
1271. Gregory X.
1276. Innocent V.
1277. John XXI.
1277. Nicholas III.
1281. Martin IV.
1288. Nicholas IV.

Never was coronation attended by more outward splendor or more heartfelt
joy than was that of Edward I. and Eleanor of Castile, when, fresh from
the glory of their Crusade, they returned to their kingdom.

Edward was the restorer of peace after a lengthened civil strife; his
prowess was a just subject of national pride, and the affection of his
subjects was further excited by the perils he had encountered. Not only
had he narrowly escaped the dagger of the Eastern assassin, but while at
Bordeaux, during his return, while the royal pair were sitting on the
same couch, a flash of lightning had passed between them, leaving
them uninjured, but killing two attendants who stood behind them.
At Chalons-sur-Marne he had likewise been placed in great danger by
treachery. The Count de Chalons had invited him to a tournament, and he
had accepted, contrary to the advice of the Pope, who warned him of evil
designs; but he declared that no king ever refused such a challenge, and
arrived at Chalons with a gallant following. The Pope's suspicions
were verified; the Count, after breaking a lance with the King, made a
sudden, unchivalrous attack on him, throwing his arms round his body,
and striving to hurl him from the saddle; but Edward sat firm as a rock,
and, touching his horse with his spur, caused it to bound forward,
dragging the Count to the ground, where he lay, encumbered with his heavy
armor; and Edward, after harmlessly ringing on the steel with his sword,
forced him to surrender to an archer, as one unworthy to be reckoned a
knight. A fight had, in the meantime, taken place between the attendants
on either side, and so many of the men of the French party were killed,
that the fray was termed the Little Battle of Chalons.