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ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS
From Celt to Tudor
* * * * * *
ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS
_By Donald G. Mitchell_
I. From Celt to Tudor
II. From Elizabeth to Anne
III. Queen Anne and the Georges
IV. The Later Georges to Victoria
_Each 1 vol., 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50_
AMERICAN LANDS AND LETTERS
From the Mayflower to Rip Van Winkle
_1 vol., square 12mo, Illustrated, $2.50_
* * * * * *
ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS
From Celt to Tudor
by
DONALD G. MITCHELL
[Illustration]
New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
MDCCCXCVII
Copyright, 1889, by
Charles Scribner’S Sons
Trow’S
Printing and Bookbinding Company,
New York.
_PREFACE._
This little book is made up from the opening series of a considerable
range of “talks,” with which--during the past few years--I have
undertaken to entertain, and (if it might be) instruct a bevy of friends;
and the interest of a few outsiders who have come to the hearings has
induced me to put the matter in type. I feel somewhat awkwardly in
obtruding upon the public any such panoramic view of British writers, in
these days of specialists--when students devote half a lifetime to the
analysis of the works of a single author, and to the proper study of a
single period.
I have tried, however, to avoid bad mistakes and misleading ones, and
shall reckon my commentary only so far forth good--as it may familiarize
the average reader with the salient characteristics of the writers
brought under notice, and shall put these writers into such a swathing of
historic and geographic enwrapments as shall keep them better in mind.
When I consider the large number of books recently issued on similar
topics, and the scholarly acuteness, and the great range belonging to
so many of them, I am not a little discomforted at thought of my bold
scurry over so wide reach of ground. Indeed, I have the figure before me
now--as I hint an apology--of an old-time country doctor who has ventured
with his saddle-bags and spicy nostrums into competition with a half
score of special practitioners--with their microscopy and their _granules
dosimetriques_; but I think, consolingly, that possibly the old-time
mediciner--if not able to cure, can at the least induce a pleasurable
slumber.
EDGEWOOD, 1889.
_CONTENTS._
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY, 1
EARLY CENTURIES, 5
CELTIC LITERATURE, 7
BEGINNING OF ENGLISH LEARNING, 9
CÆDMON, 13
BEDA, 15
KING ALFRED, 17
CANUTE AND GODIVA, 22
WILLIAM THE NORMAN, 25
HAROLD THE SAXON, 29
CHAPTER II.
GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, 37
KING ARTHUR LEGENDS, 39
EARLY NORMAN KINGS, 46
RICHARD CŒUR DE LION, 50
TIMES OF KING JOHN, 53
MIXED LANGUAGE, 56
SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE, 59
EARLY BOOK-MAKING, 62
RELIGIOUS HOUSES, 66
LIFE OF A DAMOISELLE, 72
CHAPTER III.
ROGER BACON, 77
WILLIAM LANGLANDE, 84
JOHN WYCLIF, 90
CHAUCER, 97
CHAPTER IV.
OF GOWER AND FROISSART, 127
TWO HENRYS AND TWO POETS, 132
HENRY V. AND WAR TIMES, 141
JOAN OF ARC AND RICHARD III., 146
CAXTON AND FIRST ENGLISH PRINTING, 149
OLD PRIVATE LETTERS, 154
A BURST OF BALLADRY, 158
CHAPTER V.
EARLY DAYS OF HENRY VIII., 167
CARDINAL WOLSEY, AND SIR THOMAS MORE, 173
CRANMER, LATIMER, KNOX, AND OTHERS, 182
VERSE-WRITING AND PSALMODIES, 189
WYATT AND SURREY, 193
A BOY-KING, A QUEEN, AND SCHOOLMASTER, 197
CHAPTER VI.
ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND, 204
PERSONALITY OF THE QUEEN, 207
BURLEIGH AND OTHERS, 210
A GROUP OF GREAT NAMES, 214
EDMUND SPENSER, 217
THE FAERY QUEEN, 221
PHILIP SIDNEY, 230
CHAPTER VII.
JOHN LYLY, 245
FRANCIS BACON, 250
THOMAS HOBBES, 261
GEORGE CHAPMAN, 266
MARLOWE, 269
A TAVERN COTERIE, 274
CHAPTER VIII.
GEORGE PEELE, 284
THOMAS DEKKER, 287
MICHAEL DRAYTON, 291
BEN JONSON, 295
SOME PROSE WRITERS, 303
THE QUEEN’S PROGRESSES, 312
_ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS._
CHAPTER I.
I have undertaken in this book a series of very familiar and informal
talks with my readers about English literary people, and the ways in
which they worked; and also about the times in which they lived and
the places where they grew up. We shall have, therefore, a good deal
of concern with English history; and with English geography too--or
rather topography: and I think that I have given a very fair and honest
descriptive title to the material which I shall set before my readers, in
calling it a book about ENGLISH LANDS AND LETTERS AND KINGS.
It appears to me that American young people have an advantage over
British-born students of our History and Literature--in the fact that the
localities consecrated by great names or events have more illuminating
power to us, who encounter them rarely and after voyage over sea, than to
the Englishman who lives and grows up beside them. Londoners pass Bolt
Court, Fleet Street, and Dr. Johnson’s tavern a hundred times a year with
no thought but of the chops and the Barclay’s ale to be had there. But
to the cultivated American these localities start a charming procession,
in which the doughty old Dictionary-maker, with his staff and long brown
coat and three cornered hat, is easily the leader.
For my own part, when my foot first struck the hard-worked pavement of
London Bridge, even the old nursery sing-song came over me with the force
of a poem,--
As I was going over London Bridge
I found a penny and bought me a kid.
So, too--once upon a time--on a bright May-day along the Tweed, I was
attracted by an old square ruin of a tower--very homely--scarcely
picturesque: I had barely curiosity enough to ask its name. A
stone-breaker on the high-road told me it was Norham Castle; and
straightway all the dash and clash of the poem of “Marmion”[1] broke
around me.
Now I do not think our cousins the Britishers, to whom the loveliest
ruins become humdrum, can be half as much alive as we, to this sort of
enjoyment.
I shall have then--as I said--a great deal to say about the topography
of England as well as about its books and writers; and shall try to tie
together your knowledge of historic facts and literary ones, with the yet
more tangible and associated geographic facts--so that on some golden
day to come (as golden days do come) the sight of a mere thread of spire
over tree-tops, or of a cliff on Yorkshire shores, or of a quaint gable
that might have covered a “Tabard Tavern,” shall set all your historic
reading on the flow again--thus extending and brightening and giving
charm to a hundred wayside experiences of Travel.
One other preliminary word:--On that great reach of ground we are to
pass over--if we make reasonable time--there must be long strides, and
skippings: we can only seize upon illustrative types--little kindling
feeders of wide-reaching flame. It may well be that I shall ignore and
pass by lines of thought or progress very lively and present to you; may
be I shall dwell on things already familiar; nay, it may well happen that
many readers--young and old--fresh from their books--shall know more of
matters touched on in our rapid survey than I know myself: never mind
that; but remember,--and let me say it once for all--that my aim is not
so much to give definite instruction as to put the reader into such ways
and starts of thought as shall make him eager to instruct himself.
_Early Centuries._
In those dreary early centuries when England was in the throes of its
beginnings, and when the Roman eagle--which had always led a half-stifled
life amongst British fogs, had gone back to its own eyrie in the
South--the old stock historians could and did find little to fasten
our regard--save the eternal welter of little wars. Indeed, those who
studied fifty years ago will remember that all early British history was
excessively meagre and stiff; some of it, I daresay, left yet in the
accredited courses of school reading; dreadfully dull--with dates piled
on dates, and battles by the page; and other pages of battle peppered
with such names as Hengist, or Ethelred and Cerdic and Cuthwulf, or
whoever could strike hardest or cut deepest.
But now, thanks to modern inquiry and to such men as Stubbs and Freeman
and Wright, and the more entertaining Green--we get new light on those
old times. We watch the ribs of that ancient land piling in distincter
shape out of the water: we see the downs and the bluffs, and the
fordable places in the rivers; we know now just where great wastes of
wood stood in the way of our piratical forefathers--the Saxons, the
Jutes, and the Angles; these latter either by greater moral weight in
them, or by the accident of numbers (which is the more probable), coming
to give a name to the new country and language which were a-making
together.
We find that those old Romans did leave, besides their long, straight,
high-roads, and Roman villas, and store of sepulchral vases, a germ
of Roman laws, and a little nucleus of Roman words, traceable in the
institutions and--to some slight degree--in the language of to-day.
We see in the later pages of Green through what forests the rivers
ran, and can go round about the great Roman-British towns (Roman first
and then adopted by Britons) of London[2] and of York; and that other
magnificent one of Cirencester (or Sisister as the English say, with a
stout defiance of their alphabet). We can understand how and why the fat
meadows of Somersetshire should be coveted by marauders and fought for
by Celts; and we behold more clearly and distinctly than ever, under the
precise topography of modern investigators, the walls of wood and hills
which stayed Saxon pursuit of those Britons who sought shelter in Wales,
Cumberland, or the Cornish peninsula.
_Celtic Literature._
Naturally, this flight of a nation to its fastnesses was not without
clamor and lament; some of which--if we may trust current Cymric
traditions--was put into such piercing sound as has come down to our own
day in the shape of Welsh war-songs. Dates are uncertain; but without
doubt somewhat of this Celtic shrill singing was of earlier utterance
than anything of equal literary quality that came from our wrangling
Saxon or West-Saxon forefathers in the fertile plains of England.
Some of these Celtic war strains have been turned into a music by
the poet Gray[3] which our English ears love; Emerson used to find
regalement in the strains of another Welsh bard; and the Mabinogion, a
pleasant budget of old Cymric fable,[4] has come to a sort of literary
resurrection in our day under the hands of the late Sidney Lanier. If
you would know more of things Celtic, I would commend to your attention
a few lectures read at Oxford in 1864-65 by Matthew Arnold in which he
has brought a curious zeal, and his wonted acumen to an investigation
of the influences upon English literature of that old Celtic current.
It was a wild, turbulent current; it had fret and roar in it; it had
passion and splendor in it; and there are those who think that whatever
ardor of imagination, or love for brilliant color or music may belong to
our English race is due to old interfusion of British blood. Certainly
the lively plaids of the Highlander and his bagpipes show love for much
color and exuberant gush of sound; and we all understand that the Celtic
Irishman has an appetite for a shindy which demonstrates a rather lively
emotional nature.
_Beginning of English Learning._
But over that ancient England covered with its alternating fens and
forests, and grimy Saxon hamlets, and Celtic companies of huts, there
streams presently a new civilizing influence. It is in the shape of
Christian monks[5] sent by Pope Gregory the Great, who land upon the
island of Thanet near the Thames mouth (whereabout are now the bustling
little watering places of Ramsgate and Margate), and march two by
two--St. Augustine among them and towering head and shoulders above
the rest--bearing silver crosses and singing litanies, up to the halls
of Ethelbert--near to the very site where now stands, in those rich
Kentish lands, the august and beautiful Cathedral of Canterbury. There,
too, sprung up in those earlier centuries that Canterbury School, where
letters were taught, and learned men congregated, and whence emerged
that famous scholar--Aldhelm,[6] of whom the great King Alfred speaks
admiringly; who not only knew his languages but could sing a song; a
sort of early Saxon Sankey who beguiled wanderers into better ways by
his homely rhythmic utterance. I think we may safely count this old
Aldhelm, who had a strain of royal blood in him, as the first of English
ballad-mongers.
From the north of England, too, there was at almost the same date,
another gleam of crosses, coming by way of Ireland and Iona, where St.
Columba,[7] commemorated in one of Wordsworth’s Sonnets, had established
a monastery. We have the good old Irish monk’s lament at leaving his home
in Ireland for the northern wilderness; there is true Irish fervor in
it:--“From the high prow I look over the sea, and great tears are in my
gray eyes when I turn to Erin--to Erin, where the songs of the birds are
so sweet, and where the clerks sing like the birds; where the young are
so gentle, and the old so wise; where the great men are so noble to look
at, and the women so fair to wed.”
Ruined remnants of the Iona monastery are still to be found on that
little Western island--within hearing almost of the waves that surge
into the caves of Staffa. And from this island stand-point, the monkish
missions were established athwart Scotland; finding foothold too all down
the coast of Northumberland. Early among these and very notable, was the
famous Abbey of Lindisfarne or the Holy Isle, not far southward from
the mouth of the Tweed. You will recall the name as bouncing musically,
up and down, through Scott’s poem of “Marmion.” A little farther to
the south, upon the Yorkshire coast, came to be established, shortly
afterward, the Whitby monastery; its ruins make now one of the shows of
Whitby town--one of the favorite watering places of the eastern coast
of England, and well known for giving its name to what is called Whitby
jet--which is only a finer sort of bituminous coal, of which there are
great beds in the neighborhood.[8] The Abbey ruin is upon heights, from
which are superb views out upon the German Sea that beats with grand
uproar upon the Whitby cliffs. To the westward is the charming country of
Eskdale, and by going a few miles southward one may come to Robinhood’s
bay; and in the intervening village of Hawsker may be seen the two stones
said to mark the flight of the arrows of Robinhood and Little John, when
they tried their skill for the amusement of the monks of Whitby.
_Cædmon._
Well, in the year of our Lord 637, this Whitby Abbey was founded by
the excellent St. Hilda, and it was under her auspices, and by virtue
of her saintly encouragements, that the first true English poet,
Cædmon, began to sing his Christian song of the creation. He was but
a cattle-tender--unkempt--untaught, full of savagery, but with a fine
phrenzy in him, which made his paraphrase of Scripture a spur, and
possibly--in a certain imperfect sense, a model for the muse of John
Milton.
Of the chaos before creation, he says:--
Earth’s surface was
With grass not yet be-greened; while far and wide
The dusky ways, with black unending night
Did ocean cover.
Of the great Over-Lord God-Almighty, he says--
In Him, beginning never,
Or origin hath been; but he is aye supreme
Over heaven’s thrones, with high majesty
Righteous and mighty.
And again,--that you may make for yourselves comparison with the
treatment and method of Milton,--I quote this picture of Satan in hell:--
Within him boiled his thoughts about his heart;
Without, the wrathful fire pressed hot upon him--
He said,--‘This narrow place is most unlike
That other we once knew in heaven high,
And which my Lord gave me; tho’ own it now
We must not, but to him must cede our realm.
Yet right he hath not done to strike us down
To hell’s abyss--of heaven’s realm bereft--
Which with mankind to people, he hath planned.
Pain sorest this, that Adam, wrought of Earth
On my strong throne shall sit, enjoying Bliss
While we endure these pangs--hell torments dire,
Woe! woe is me! Could I but use my hands
And might I be from here a little time--
One winter’s space--then, with this host would I--
But these iron bands press hard--this coil of chains--
…
There is but one known MS. copy of this poem. It is probably of the
tenth, certainly not later than the eleventh century, and is in
the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It is illuminated, and some scenes
represented seem to have been taken from the old miracle plays.[9] It was
printed in 1655: in this form a copy is said to have reached the hands
of Milton, through a friend of the printer: and it may well be that the
stern old Puritan poet was moved by a hearing of it,--for he was blind at
this date,--to the prosecution of that grand task which has made his name
immortal.
_Beda._
We might, however, never have known anything of Cædmon and of Saint
Hilda and all the monasteries north and south, except for another worthy
who grew up in the hearing of the waves which beat on the cliffs of
north-eastern England. This was Beda,--respected in his own day for his
industry, piety, straightforward honesty--and so followed by the respect
of succeeding generations as to get and carry the name of the _Venerable_
Beda. Though familiar with the people’s language,[10] and with Greek,
he wrote in monkish Latin--redeemed by classic touches--and passed his
life in the monastery at Jarrow, which is on the Tyne, near the coast
of Durham, a little to the westward of South Shields. An ancient church
is still standing amid the ruins of the monastic walls, and a heavy,
straight-backed chair of oak (which would satisfy the most zealous
antiquarian by its ugliness) is still guarded in the chancel, and is
called Beda’s Chair.
Six hundred pupils gathered about him there, in the old days, to be
taught in physics, grammar, rhetoric, music, and I know not what besides.
So learned and true was he, that the Pope would have called him to
Rome; but he loved better the wooded Tyne banks, and the gray moorlands,
and the labors of his own monastery. There he lived out an honest, a
plodding, an earnest, and a hopeful life. And as I read the sympathetic
story of its end, and of how the old man--his work all done--lifted up
a broken voice--on his last day--amidst his scholars, to the _Gloria
in Excelsis_--I bethink me of his last eulogist, the young historian,
who within a few months only after sketching that tender picture of his
great forerunner in the paths of British history, laid down his brilliant
pen--his work only half done, and died, away from his home, at Mentone,
on the shores of the Mediterranean.
_King Alfred._
A half century after the death of Beda began the Danish invasions,
under which, monasteries churches schools went down in a flood of blood
and fire. As we read of that devastation--the record covering only a
half-page of the old Saxon Chronicle (begun after Beda’s time)--it seems
an incident; yet the piratic storm, with intermittent fury, stretches
over a century and more of ruin. It was stayed effectively for a time
when the great Alfred came to full power.
I do not deal much in dates: but you should have a positive date for
this great English king: a thousand years ago (889) fairly marks the
period when he was in the prime of life--superintending, very likely,
the building of a British fleet upon the Pool, below London. He was born
at Wantage, in Berkshire, a little to the south of the Great Western
Railway; and in a glade near to the site of the old Saxon palace, is
still shown what is called Alfred’s Well. In the year 1849 his birthday
was celebrated, after the lapse of a thousand years--so keen are these
British cousins of ours to keep alive all their great memories. And
Alfred’s is a memory worth keeping. He had advantages--as we should
say--of foreign travel; as a boy he went to Rome, traversing Italy and
the Continent. If we could only get a good story of that cross-country
trip of his!
We know little more than that he came to high honor at Rome, was anointed
king there, before yet he had come to royalty at home. He makes also a
second visit in company with his father Ethelwolf: and on their return
Ethelwolf relieves the tedium of travel by marrying the twelve-year old
daughter of Charles the Bald of France. Those were times of extraordinary
daring.
The great king had throughout a most picturesque and adventurous life: he
is hard pushed by the Danes--by rivals--by his own family; one while a
wanderer on the moors--another time disguised as minstrel in the enemy’s
camp; but always high-hearted, always hopeful, always working. He is
oppressed by the pall of ignorance that overlays the lordly reach of his
kingdom: “Scarce a priest have I found,” says he, “south of the Thames
who can render Latin into English.” He is not an apt scholar himself, but
he toils at learning; his abbots help him; he revises old chronicles, and
makes people to know of Beda; he has boys taught to write in English;
gives himself with love to the rendering of Boëthius’ “Consolation of
Philosophy.” He adopts its reasoning, and plants his hope on the creed--
1st. That a wise God governs.
2d. That all suffering may be made helpful.
3d. That God is chiefest good.
4th. That only the good are happy.
5th. That the foreknowledge of God does not conflict with Free-will.
These would seem to carry even now the pith and germ of the broadest
theologic teachings.
It is a noble and a picturesque figure--that of King Alfred--which we
see, looking back over the vista of a thousand years; better it would
seem than that of King Arthur to weave tales around, and illumine with
the heat and the flame of poesy. Yet poets of those times and of all
succeeding times have strangely neglected this august and royal type of
manhood.
After him came again weary Danish wars and wild blood-letting and
ignorance surging over the land, save where a little light played
fitfully around such great religious houses as those of York and
Canterbury. It was the dreary Tenth Century, on the threshold of which
he had died--the very core and kernel of the Dark Ages, when the wisest
thought the end of things was drawing nigh, and strong men quaked with
dread at sight of an eclipse, or comet, or at sound of the rumble of an
earthquake. It was a time and a condition of gloom which made people
pardon, and even relish such a dismal poem as that of “The Grave,”
which--though bearing thirteenth century form--may well in its germ have
been a fungal outgrowth of the wide-spread hopelessness of this epoch:--
For thee was a house built
Ere thou wert born;
For thee was a mold meant
Ere thou of mother cam’st.
But it is not made ready
Nor its depth measured,
Nor is it seen
How long it shall be.
Now I bring thee
Where thou shalt be
And I shall measure thee
And the mold afterward.
Doorless is that house
And dark is it within;
There thou art fast detained
And death hath the key
Loathsome is that earth-house
And grim within to dwell,
And worms shall divide thee.
From the death of Alfred (901) to the Norman Conquest (1066) there was
monkish work done in shape of Homilies, Chronicles, grammars of Latin
and English--the language settling more and more into something like a
determined form of what is now called Anglo-Saxon. But in that lapse
of years I note only three historic incidents, which by reason of the
traditions thrown about them, carry a piquant literary flavor.
_Canute and Godiva._
The _first_ is when the famous Canute, king of both England and Denmark,
and having strong taste for song and music and letters, rows by the
towers of a great East-England religious house, and as he drifts with the
tide, composes (if we may trust tradition) a snatch of verse which has
come down to us in a thirteenth century form, about the pleasant singing
of the Monks of Ely. Wordsworth has embalmed the matter in one of his
Ecclesiastic Sonnets (xxx.):
A pleasant music floats along the mere,
From monks in Ely chanting service high,
While as Canute the king is rowing by;
My oarsman, quoth the mighty king, draw near
That we the sweet songs of the monks may hear.
He listens (all past conquests and all schemes
Of future vanishing like empty dreams)
Heart-touched, and haply not without a tear,
The royal minstrel, ere the Choir is still,
While his free barge skims the smooth flood along
Gives to the rapture an accordant Rhyme
O suffering Earth! be thankful; sternest Clime
And rudest Age are subject to the thrill
Of heaven-descended piety and song.
I think you will never go under the wondrous arches of Ely Cathedral--and
you should go there if you ever travel into the eastern counties of
England--without thinking of King Canute and of that wondrous singing of
the monks, eight hundred years ago.
The _second_ historic incident of which I spoke, is the murder of King
Duncan by Macbeth in the year 1039, some twenty-five years before the
Norman Conquest. I don’t think you want any refreshing about Macbeth.
The _third_ incident is of humbler tone, yet it went to show great
womanly devotion, and lifted a tax from the heads of a whole
towns-people. I refer to the tradition of Earl Leofric of Mercia and the
Lady Godiva of Coventry, based in the main, without doubt, upon actual
occurrence, and the subject for centuries of annual commemoration.[11]
Tennyson tells, in his always witching way, how
She rode forth clothéd on with chastity:
The deep air listened round her as she rode,
----the barking cur
Made her cheek flame; her palfry’s foot-fall shot
Light horror thro’ her pulses:
One low churl compact of thankless earth
Peep’d--but his eyes, before they had their will
Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,
And she, that knew not, pass’d; and all at once
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clash’d and hammered from a hundred towers,
One after one: But even then she gained
Her bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crowned,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name.
Observe--that I call up these modern writers and their language, out of
their turn as may seem to you, only that I may plant more distinctly in
your thought the old incidents to which their words relate. It is as
if I were speaking to you of some long-gone line of ancestors, and on a
sudden should call up some delicate blond child and say--This one is in
the line of direct descent; she bears the same old name, she murmurs the
same old tunes; and this shimmer of gold in her hair is what shone on the
heads of the good Saxon foreparents.
_William the Norman._
We now come to a date to be remembered, and in the neighborhood of which
our first morning’s talk will come to an end. It is the date of the
Norman Conquest--1066--that being the year of the Battle of Hastings,
when the brave Harold, last of the Saxon kings went down, shot through
the eye; and the lithe, clean-faced, smirking William of Normandy “gat
him” the throne of England. These new-comers were not far-away cousins of
our Saxon and Danish forefathers; only so recently as the reign of Alfred
had they taken permanent foothold in that pleasant Norman country.
But they have not brought the Norse speech of the old home land with
them: they have taken to a Frankish language--we will call it Norman
French--which is thenceforth to blend with the Saxonism of Alfred,
until two centuries or more later, our own mother English--the English
of Chaucer and of Shakespeare--is evolved out of the union. Not only
a new tongue, do these conquerors bring with them, but madrigals and
ballads and rhyming histories; they have great contempt for the stolid,
lazy-going Latin records of the Saxon Chroniclers; they love a song
better. In the very face of the armies at Hastings, their great minstrel
_Taillefer_ had lifted up his voice to chant the glories of Roland, about
which all the histories of the time will tell you.
It was a new civilization (not altogether Christian) out-topping the
old. These Normans knew more of war--knew more of courts--knew more of
affairs. They loved money and they loved conquest. To love one in those
days, was to love the other. King William swept the monasteries clean of
those ignorant priests who had dozed there, from the time of Alfred, and
put in Norman Monks with nicely clipped hair, who could construe Latin
after latest Norman rules. He new parcelled the lands, and gave estates
to those who could hold and manage them. It was as if a new, sharp eager
man of business had on a sudden come to the handling of some old sleepily
conducted counting-room; he cuts off the useless heads; he squares the
books; he stops waste; pity or tenderness have no hearing in his shop.
I mentioned not far back an old Saxon Chronicle, which all down the
years, from shortly after Beda’s day, had been kept alive--sometimes
under the hands of one monastery, sometimes of another; here is what its
Saxon Scribe of the eleventh century says of this new-come and conquering
Norman King: It is good Saxon history, and in good Saxon style:--
“King William was a very wise man, and very rich, more
worshipful and strong than any of his foregangers. He was mild
to good men who loved God; and stark beyond all bounds to those
who withsaid his will. He had Earls in his bonds who had done
against his will; Bishops he set off their bishoprics; Abbots
off their abbotries, and thanes in prison. By his cunning he
was so thoroughly acquainted with England, that there is not
a hide of land of which he did not know, both who had it, and
what was its worth. He planted a great preserve for deer, and
he laid down laws therewith, that whoever should slay hart or
hind should be blinded. He forbade the harts and also the
boars to be killed. As greatly did he love the tall deer as if
he were their father.… He took from his subjects many marks
of gold, and many hundred pounds of silver; and _that_ he
took--some by right, and some by mickle might for very little
need. He had fallen into avarice; and greediness he loved
withal. Among other things is not to be forgotten the good
peace that he made in this land; so that a man who had any
confidence in himself might go over his realm, with his bosom
full of gold, unhurt. Nor durst any man slay another man had he
done ever so great evil to the other.… Brytland (Wales) was in
his power, and he therein wrought castles, and completely ruled
over that race of men.… Certainly in his time men had great
hardship, and very many injuries.… His rich men moaned, and
the poor men murmured; but he was so hard that he recked not
the hatred of them all. For it was need they should follow the
King’s will, if they wished to live, or to have lands or goods.
Alas, that any man should be so moody, and should so puff up
himself, and think himself above all other men! May Almighty
God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his
sins.”
There are other contemporary Anglo-Saxon annalists, and there are the
rhyming chroniclers of Norman blood, who put a better color upon the
qualities of King William; but I think there is no one of them, who even
in moments of rhetorical exaltation, thinks of putting William’s sense of
justice, or his kindness of heart, before his greed or his self-love.
_Harold the Saxon._
The late Lord Lytton (Bulwer) gave to this period and to the closing
years of Harold one of the most elaborate of his Historic Studies. He
availed himself shrewdly of all the most picturesque aspects (and they
were very many) in the career of Harold, and found startling historic
facts enough to supply to the full his passion for exaggerated melodrama.
There are brilliant passages in his book,[12] and a great wealth of
archæologic material; he shows us the remnants of old Roman villas--the
crude homeliness of Saxon house surroundings--the assemblage of old
Palace Councils. Danish battle-axes, and long-bearded Saxon thanes, and
fiery-headed Welshmen contrast with the polished and insidious Normans.
Nor is there lacking a heavy and much over-weighted quota of love-making
and misfortune, and joy and death. Tennyson has taken the same subject,
using the same skeleton of story for his play of Harold. It would seem
that he has depended on the romance of Bulwer for his archæology; and
indeed the book is dedicated to the younger Lord Lytton (better known in
the literary world as “Owen Meredith”). As a working play, it is counted,
like all of Tennyson’s--a failure; but there are passages of exceeding
beauty.
He pictures the King Harold--the hero that he is--but with a veil of
true Saxon gloom lowering over him: he tells the story of his brother
Tostig’s jealous wrath,--always in arms against Harold: he tells of
the hasty oath, which the king in young days had sworn to William in
Normandy, never to claim England’s throne: and this oath hangs like a
cloud over the current of Harold’s story. The grief, and noble devotion
of poor Edith, the betrothed bride of the king, whom he is compelled by
a devilish diplomacy to discard--is woven like a golden thread into the
woof of the tale: and Aldwyth, the queen, whom Harold did not and can
never love, is set off against Edith--in Tennyson’s own unmatchable way
in the last scenes of the tragedy.
We are in the camp at Hastings: the battle waits; a vision of Norman
saints, on whose bones Harold had sworn that dreadful oath, comes to him
in his trance:--They say--(these wraiths of saints)--
O hapless Harold! king but for an hour!
Thou swarest falsely by our blessed bones,
We give our voice against thee out of Heaven!
And warn him against the fatal _arrow_.
And Harold--waking--says--
Away!
My battle-axe against your voices!
And then--remembering that old Edward the Confessor had told him on his
deathbed that he should die by an arrow--his hope faints.
The king’s last word--“the arrow,” I shall die:
I die for England then, who lived for England.
What nobler? Man must die.
I cannot fall into a falser world--
I have done no man wrong.…
Edith (his betrothed) comes in--
Edith!--Edith!
Get thou into thy cloister, as the king
Will’d it: … There, the great God of Truth
Fill all thine hours with peace! A lying Devil
Hath haunted me--mine oath--my wife--I fain
Had made my marriage not a lie; I could not:
Thou art my bride! and thou, in after years,
Praying perchance for this poor soul of mine
In cold, white cells, beneath an icy moon.
This memory to thee!--and this to England,
My legacy of war against the Pope,
From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from Age to Age,
Till the sea wash her level with her shores,
Or till the Pope be Christ’s.
Aldwyth, the queen, glides in, and seeing Edith, says--
Away from him! Away!
Edith says (we can imagine her sweet plaintiveness)--
I will.… I have not spoken to the king
One word: and one I must. Farewell!
And she offers to go.
But Harold, beckoning with a grand gesture of authority--
Not yet!
Stay! The king commands thee, woman!
And he turns to Aldwyth, from whose kinsmen he had expected aid--
Have thy two brethren sent their forces in?
_Aldwyth_--Nay, I fear not.
And Harold blazes upon her--
Then there’s no force in thee!
Thou didst possess thyself of Edward’s ear
To part me from the woman that I loved.
…
Thou hast been false to England and to me!
As--in some sort--I have been false to thee.
Leave me. No more.--Pardon on both sides.--Go!
_Aldwyth_--Alas, my lord, I loved thee!
O Harold! husband! Shall we meet again?
_Harold_--After the battle--after the battle. Go.
_Aldwyth_--I go. (_Aside._) That I could stab her standing there!
(_Exit Aldwyth._)
_Edith_--Alas, my lord, she loved thee.
_Harold_-- Never! never!
_Edith_--I saw it in her eyes!
_Harold_-- I see it in thine!
And not on thee--nor England--fall God’s doom!
_Edith_--On _thee_? on me. And thou art England! Alfred
Was England. Ethelred was nothing. England
Is but her king, as thou art Harold!
_Harold_-- Edith,
The sign in Heaven--the sudden blast at sea--
My fatal oath--the dead saints--the dark dreams--
The Pope’s Anathema--the Holy Rood
That bow’d to me at Waltham--Edith, if
I, the last English King of England----
_Edith_-- No,
First of a line that coming from the people,
And chosen by the people----
_Harold_-- And fighting for
And dying for the people----
Look, I will bear thy blessing into the battle
And front the doom of God.
And he did affront it bravely; and the arrow did slay him, near to the
spot where the Saxon standard flew to the breeze on that fateful day.
The play from which I have quoted may have excess of elaboration and an
over-finesse in respect of details: but there are great bold reaches of
descriptive power, a nobility of sentiment, and everywhere tender and
winning touches, which will be very sure to give to the drama of Tennyson
permanence and historic dignity, and keep it always a literary way-mark
in the fields we have gone over. The scene of that decisive contest
is less than a two hours’ ride away from London (by the Southeastern
Railway) at a village called Battle--seven miles from the coast line at
Hastings--in the midst of a beautiful rolling country, with scattered
copses of ancient wood and a great wealth of wild flowers--(for which the
district is remarkable) sparkling over the fields.
The Conqueror built a great abbey there--Battle Abbey--whose ruins are
visited by hundreds every year. A large portion of the old religious
house, kept in excellent repair, and very charming with its growth of ivy
and its embowering shade, is held in private hands--being the occasional
residence of the Duke of Cleveland. Amid the ruins the usher will guide
one to a crypt of the ancient chapel--whose solid Norman arches date back
to the time of the Conqueror, and which is said to mark the very spot
on which Harold fell, wounded to the death, on that memorable day of
Hastings.