THE TRIAL.
_Duke._ What, is Antonio here?
_Ant._ Ready, so please your grace.
_Duke._ I am sorry for thee. Thou art come to answer
A strong adversary, an inhuman wretch.
MERCHANT OF VENICE.
There is nothing in all the reign of that wise, moderate, and able
prince, as viewed according to the circumstances of his position and
the intelligence of his era, the Second Henry of England, so
remarkable, or in his character so praiseworthy, as his efforts to
establish a perfect system both of judiciary power and of justice
throughout England. In these efforts he more than mediately succeeded;
and, although some corruptions continued to exist, and some instances
of malfeasance to occur, owing in some degree to the king's own
avaricious temperament and willingness to commute punishments, and
perhaps, at times, even prosecutions, for pecuniary fines, justice was
not for many centuries more equitably administered, certainly not four
hundred years afterward, in the reign of the eighth monarch of the
same Christian name, than in the latter portion of the twelfth
century.
At this period, that justly celebrated lawyer, Ranulf de Glanville,
was High Justiciary of England, besides holding the especial duty of
administering justice, at the head of five others, in the circuit
courts of all the counties north of the Trent; and he has left it on
record "that there was not now in the King's Court one judge, who
dared swerve from the path of justice, or to pronounce an opinion
inconsistent with truth."
During the six weeks, which intervened between the liberation of
Kenric from the arrest of Sir Foulke d'Oilly, and the day appointed
for the holding of the Lancaster assizes, there was great tribulation
in the castle of Hawkshead; and it was known that Sir Yvo de
Taillebois was in constant correspondence with the High Justiciary;
flying posts were coming and going, night and day, booted and spurred,
through rain or shine, from York, the present abode of Sir Ranulf, to
the shores of Windermere.
The old chaplain was buried up to the eyes in old parchments and
genealogies; and, to complete the mystery, Clarencieux, king-at-arms,
came down to the castle, accompanied by a pursuivant, loaded with
documents from the college of heralds, a fortnight before the decisive
day, and tarried at the castle until the time came, no one knowing
especially, save Sir Yvo, his daughter, Aradas de Ratcliffe, and the
persons employed in the research, what was the matter at issue.
Necessary, however, as it was deemed, at that time, to hold the
proceedings and their cause in perfect secrecy, no such reason exists
now; and it may be stated that, the object being no other than to
bring Sir Foulke d'Oilly to justice for the murder of Sir Philip de
Morville, it was necessary to be prepared at every point.
Now, according to the criminal law of that day, no prosecutor could
put in his charge for murder, until he should have proved himself to
be of the blood of the deceased. And this it was now the object of Sir
Yvo to do, there having always been a traditionary belief in a remote
kindred between the two families, though the exact point and period
were forgotten.
At length, in the middle of the month of October, a proclamation was
issued, in the name of the King, offering a free pardon for all other
offenses, with the exception of high treason and misprision of
treason, and five hundred marks reward to any freeman, or freedom to
any serf, who, not being a principal in the deed, should appear before
the court of assize at Lancaster, on the first day of December next
ensuing, and give such evidence as should result in the conviction of
the murderer or murderers of the late Sir Philip de Morville, of
Waltheofstow, in the county of York.
At the same time, orders were issued to Kenric, and all his associate
foresters and keepers, to bring in Eadwulf, under assurance of pardon,
if he might be found in any quarter; and rewards were offered to
stimulate the men to exertion. But in vain. The foresters pushed their
way into the deepest and wildest recesses of the Cumbrian wilderness,
at the risk of some smart conflicts with the outlaws of that dark and
desolate region, who fancied that they were trespassing on their own
savage haunts, with no good or amicable intent; but of Eadwulf they
found no traces.
Kenric persisted, alone, after all the rest had resigned the
enterprise; and, relying on his Saxon origin and late servile
condition, mingled with the outlaws, told his tale, showed the
proclamation, and succeeded in interesting his auditors in his own
behalf and that of his brother; but he, no more than the others, could
find any traces of the fugitive, and he began almost to consider it
certain that the unhappy Eadwulf had perished among the hills, of the
inclemency of the weather. He too, at last, returned home, despairing
of ever seeing the unhappy outlaw more.
In the mean time, an earnest and interesting contest was going on in
the castle, between Guendolen and Aradas on the one hand, and Sir Yvo
de Taillebois on the other. For it had been discovered by the heralds,
that there did exist proofs of blood-connection between the two
families, sufficient to justify Sir Yvo in putting in a charge of his
kinsman's murder against Sir Foulke d'Oilly, on the grounds of common
rumor and hearsay, if Eadwulf should not be found; and, if he should,
then on his testimony.
That d'Oilly would forthwith claim trial by wager of battle, none
might doubt, who knew the character and antecedents of that
desperately bad but dauntless man.
Now, it was the suit of Guendolen and Aradas, that Sir Yvo should
appoint his young esquire his champion to do battle for the judgment
of God--for they were irrevocably convinced--what, between their real
faith in the justice of this cause, and the zealous trust, of those
who love, in the superiority of the beloved, and the generous
confidence of youth in its own glowing and impulsive valor--that
Aradas would surely beat the traitor down, and win the spurs of gold,
to which he so passionately aspired. But the clear-headed veteran
regarded matters with a cooler and perhaps a wiser eye. He knew Sir
Foulke d'Oilly for a trained, experienced, and all-practiced soldier;
not only brave at all times, and brave among the bravest--but a
champion, such as there were few, and to be beaten only by a champion.
He knew him also desperate, and fighting his last stake. He foresaw
that, even for himself, the felon knight, unless the sense of guilt
should paralyze his heart, or the visible judgment of God be
interposed in the heat of battle--a thing in those days scarcely to be
looked for--would prove no easy bargain in the lists; and, how highly
soever he might estimate his young esquire's courage and prowess, he
yet positively refused to allow him to assume the place of appellant
in the lists; and denied utterly that such a conflict, being the most
solemn and awful of appeals to the Almighty on his judgment-seat, was
any proper occasion for the striving after spurs of gold, or aiming at
the honors of knighthood.
So the lovers were obliged to decline into hopes of some indefinite
future chance; and did decline into despondent and listless apathy,
until, two days only before that appointed for the departure of the
company into Lancashire, fortune or fate, which you will, thought fit
to take the whole matter into its own hands, and to decide the
much-vexed question of the championship by the misstep of a stumbling
palfrey.
After having ridden all day long on a stout, sure-footed cob, which he
had backed for ten years, without knowing him to make a solitary
blunder, marking trees for felling, and laying out new plantations
with his foresters, Sir Yvo was wending his way toward the castle
gates, across the great home-park, when, a small blind ditch crossing
his path, he put the pony at it in a canter.
Startled by some deer, which rose up suddenly out of the long fern,
growing thick among the oak-trees, the pony shyed, set his forefeet in
the middle of the drain, and came down on his head, throwing his heavy
rider heavily on the hard frozen ground.
A dislocated shoulder was the consequence; and, though it was speedily
reduced, and no ill consequences followed, the surgeons declared that
it was impossible that the knight should support his armor, or wield a
sword, within two months; and thus, perforce, Guendolen had her way;
and it was decided that Aradas should be admitted to the perilous
distinction of maintaining the charge, in the wager of battle.
Strange times! when to be permitted to engage in a conflict, in which
there was no alternative but victory, or infamy and death, was
esteemed a favor, and was sought for, as a boon, not by strong men and
soldiers only, but by delicate and gentle girls, in behalf of their
betrothed lovers, as a mode of winning _los_ on earth, and glory
everlasting in the heavens.
Yet so it was; and when it was told to Guendolen, that her lover was
nominated to that dreadful enterprise, a blush, indeed, mantled to her
cheek, and a thrill ran through all her quivering frame, and an
unbidden tear trembled in her beautiful clear eye; but the blush, and
the thrill, and the tear, were of pride and excitement, not of fear or
compassion; and the lady never slept sounder or more sweetly than on
that eventful night, when she learned that, beyond a peradventure, her
true love would be sleeping, within ten little days, under a bloody
and dishonorable sod, or living, the winner of those golden-spurs and
of her own peerless beauties.
There was, however, a strange mixture of simple and fervent faith in
those days, with an infinitely larger amount of coarse and open
wickedness, violence, and vice, than, perhaps, ever prevailed in any
other age. And while the moral restraint on men's conduct and actions,
arising from a sense of future responsibility and retribution, was
vastly inferior to what now exists, owing to the open sale of
indulgences, absolutions, and dispensations, and the other abominable
corruptions of the Romish church, the belief in temporal judgments,
and the present interference of divine justice in the affairs of men,
was almost universal.
Infidelity in those days was a madness utterly unknown; and an
atheist, materialist, or any phase of what we now call a free-thinker,
would have been regarded with greater wonder than the strangest
physical monster. It is not too much to say, that there were not in
that day twenty men in England, who did not believe in the real
efficacy of the ordeals, whether by water, fire, or battle, in
discovering the truth, or one in a thousand who would not be
half-defeated, before entering the lists, by the belief that God was
fighting against him, or strengthened unto victory by the confidence
that his cause was just.
One of these one men in a thousand it was, however, about to be the
fortune of Aradas de Ratcliffe to encounter, in the person of Sir
Foulke d'Oilly; but this he neither knew, nor would have thought of
twice, had he known it. However hardened the heart of his adversary
might be by the petrifying effects of habitual vice, however dulled
his conscience by impunity and arrogance and self-relying contumacy,
his own was so strongly panoplied in conscious honesty, so bucklered
by confidence in his own good cause, so puissant by faith in God, that
he no more feared what the might of that bad man could do against him,
than he doubted the creed of Christ and his holy apostles.
Nor less was the undoubting assurance of the lady of his love, in
whom, to her faith in divine justice, to her absolute conviction of
d'Oilly's damning guilt, was added that over-weening confidence in her
lover's absolute superiority, not only to all other men in general,
but to every other man individually, which was common to love-sick
ladies in those days of romance and chivalry.
But we must not anticipate, nor indeed is there cause to do so; for
the days flew; until, after leaving Kendal Castle, the old fortalice
of Yvo de Taillebois, who, coming in with the Conqueror, had wedded
the sister of the Earls Morcar and Edwin, whence they took their
departure as so much nearer to their destination, and journeying four
pleasant winter days round the head of Morecambe Bay, they entered the
old town of Lancaster. Sir Yvo de Taillebois was borne in a
horse-litter, in consequence of his accident, at the head of a dozen
knights, his vassals, all armed cap-à-pie; and a hundred spears of
men-at-arms followed, with thrice as many of the already famous Kendal
archers, escorting a long train of litters, conveying the lady and her
female attendants, and a yet longer array of sumpter-mules and
pack-horses.
The town was already crowded; but for a party so distinguished as that
of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, High-Sheriff of the North-western counties,
and chief local officer of the crown, apartments were prepared in the
castle, adjoining those of the high justiciary and the itinerant, or,
as we should now call them, circuit judges; while his train easily
found quarters, some among the garrison of which they formed a part,
as of right, and the rest in the vicinity of the castle.
At an early hour in the morning, preceded by trumpets and javelin men,
clad in all the magnificence of scarlet and ermine, emblematic of
judicial purity, but unencumbered by the hideous perukes of horse-hair
which later ages have devised for the disfigurement of forensic
dignitaries, the high justiciary, Ranulf de Glanville, followed by his
five associate judges, proceeded to the superb oak-wainscoted and
oak-groined hall, in which it was used to hold the sittings of "the
King's court," at that time the highest tribunal in the realm.
This noble apartment, which was above a hundred feet in length by half
that width, and measured sixty feet from the floor to the spring of
the open arches, independent of the octagon lantern in the center,
beneath which burned nearly a ton of charcoal, in a superb brazier of
carved bronze, was crowded from the floor to the light, flying
galleries, with all the flower of the Northern counties, ladies as
well as knights and nobles, attracted by one of those untraceable but
ubiquitous rumors, which so often precede remarkable events, to the
effect that something of more than ordinary moment was likely to occur
at the present assize. Among this noble assemblage, all of whom rose
to their feet, with a heavy rustle of furred and embroidered robes,
and a suppressed murmur of applause, as the judges entered,
conspicuous on the right-hand side of the nave was Sir Foulke d'Oilly,
attended by two or three barons and bannerets of his immediate train,
and not less than twenty knights, who held fiefs under him.
What, however, was the astonishment of the assembly, when, after the
guard of pensioners, in royal livery, armed with halberts, which
followed the judges, Clarencieux, king-at-arms, in his magnificent
costume, supported by six pursuivants, in their tabards, with
trumpets, made his appearance in the nave, and then two personages, no
less than Humphrey de Bohun, Lord High Constable, and William de
Warrenne, Earl Mareschal of England, indicating by their presence that
the court, about to be held, would be one of chivalry as well as of
justice. Sir Yvo de Taillebois, and other officers of the crown,
followed in the order; the justiciary and other high dignitaries took
their seats, the trumpets sounded thrice, and, with the usual
formalities, "the King's court" was declared open.
It was remarked afterward, though at the time no one noticed it, none
suspecting the cause, that when the heralds and pomp, indicating the
presence of a Court of Chivalry made their appearance, the face of Sir
Foulke d'Oilly flushed fiery-red for a moment, and then turned white
as ashes, even to the lips; and that he trembled so violently, that he
was compelled to sit down, while all the rest were standing.
During the first three days of the assize, though many causes were
tried of great local and individual interest, nothing occurred to
satisfy the secret and eager anticipations of the excited audience,
nothing to account for the unusual combination of civil and military
powers on the judicial bench; and though all manner of strange rumors
were afloat, there were none certainly that came very near the truth.
On the fourth morning, however, the crier, at command of the court,
called Sir Foulke d'Oilly; who, presently appearing, stated that he
was there, in pursuance of the king's order, to prosecute his claim to
the possession of one Eadwulf the Red, alias Kenric, a fugitive
villeyn, who had fled from his manor of Waltheofstow, within the
precincts of Sherwood Forest, against his, Sir Foulke d'Oilly's, will;
and who was now in the custody of the sheriff of the county. He
concluded by appointing Geoffrey Fitz Peter and William of Tichborne,
two sergeants, learned in the law, as his counsel.
The sheriff of the county was then called into court, to produce the
body of the person at issue, and Kenric was placed at the bar, his
bondsmen surrendering him to take his trial.
Sir Yvo de Taillebois then stated the preliminary proceedings, the
arrest of Kenric by seizure, his purchasing a writ _de libertate
probanda_; and that, whereas he, the Sheriff, might not try that
question in his court, it was now brought up before the Eyre of
justices for trial.
Kenric was then called upon to plead, which he did, by claiming to be
a free man, and desiring liberty to prove the same before God and a
jury of his countrymen.
The sheriff was thereupon commanded to impannel a jury; and this was
speedily accomplished, twelve men being selected and sworn, six of
whom were belted knights, two esquires of Norman birth, and four Saxon
franklins, as they were now termed, who would have been thanes under
their ancient dynasty, all free and lawful men, and sufficient to form
a jury.
Then, the defendant in the suit being a poor man, and of no substance,
counsel, skilled in the law, were assigned him by the court, Thomas de
Curthose, and Matthew Gourlay, that he might have fair show of
justice; and so the trial was ordered to proceed.
Then Geoffrey Fitz Peter rose and opened the case by stating that
they should prove the person at the bar to be a serf, known as
"Eadwulf the Red," who has escaped from the manor of his lord at
Waltheofstow, in Sherwood Forest, against his lord's will, on the
13th day of July last passed--that he had killed a deer, with a
cross-bolt, on that same day, in the forest between Thurgoland and
Bolterstone--and afterward murdered the bailiff of the manor of
Waltheofstow, as aforesaid, with a similar weapon, at or near the same
place, which weapons would be produced in court, and identified by
comparison with corresponding weapons, and the arbalast to which they
belong, found in the possession of the prisoner, when taken at
Kentmere in Westmoreland--that he had been hunted hot-foot, with
bloodhounds, through the forest, and across the moors to the Lancaster
sands, when he had escaped only by the aid of the fatal and furious
tide which had overwhelmed the pursuing horsemen--that he had been
seen to land on the shore of Westmoreland, by a party of the pursuers,
who had escaped the flood-tide by skirting the coastline, and had been
traced, foot by foot, by report of the natives of the country, who had
heard of the arrival of a fugitive serf in the neighborhood, until he
was captured in a cottage beside Kentmere, on the 10th day of October
of this present year. And to prove this, he called Sir Foulke d'Oilly.
He, being sworn, testified that he knew, and had often seen, his serf
"Eadwulf the Red," on the manor of Waltheofstow, and fully believed
the person at the bar to be the man in question. He had joined the
pursuers of the fugitive on the day after the catastrophe of the
sands, had been engaged in tracing him to the cottage on Kentmere, and
fully believed the person captured to be the same who was traced
upward from the sands. Positively identified and swore to the person
at the bar, as the man captured on the 10th day of October, and to the
crossbow and bolts produced in court, and branded with the name
"Kenric," as taken in his possession.
Being cross-examined--he could not swear positively to any personal
recollection of the features of "Eadwulf the Red," or that the person
at the bar _was_ the man, or _resembled_ the man, in question.
Believed him to be the man Eadwulf, because it was the general
impression of his people that he was so.
Thomas de Curthose said--"This, my lords, is mere hearsay, and stands
for naught." And Sir Ranulf de Glanville bowed his head, and
replied--"Merely for naught."
Then Sir Foulke d'Oilly, being asked how, when he assumed this
person's name to be Eadwulf, he ascribed to him the ownership of
weapons stamped "Kenric," he replied, that "Kenric" was a name
prepared aforehand, to avert suspicion, and assumed by Eadwulf, so to
avoid suspicion.
Being asked where he showed that Eadwulf had assumed such other name,
or that the name "Kenric" had ever been assumed by one truly named
"Eadwulf," he replied, that "It was probable."
Thomas de Curthose said--"That is mere conjecture."
And, again, the justiciary assented.