"He was a true man, this--who lived for England,
And he knew how to die."
"Sweet? There are many sweet things. Clover's sweet,
And so is liquorice, though 'tis hard to chew;
And sweetbriar--till it scratches."
"Look, Margaret! Thine aunt, Dame Marjory, is come to spend thy
birthday with thee."
"And see my new bower? [Boudoir]. O Aunt Marjory, I am so glad!"
The new bower was a very pretty room--for the thirteenth century--but
its girl-owner was the prettiest thing in it. Her age was thirteen that
day, but she was so tall that she might easily have been supposed two or
three years older. She had a very fair complexion, violet-blue eyes,
and hair exactly the colour of a cedar pencil. If physiognomy may be
trusted, the face indicated a loving and amiable disposition.
The two ladies who had just entered from the ante-room--the mother and
aunt of Margaret were both tall, finely-developed women, with shining
fair hair. They spoke French, evidently as the mother-tongue: but in
1234 that was the custom of all English nobles. These ladies had been
brought up in England from early maidenhood, but they were Scottish
Princesses--the eldest and youngest daughters of King William the Lion,
by his Norman Queen, Ermengarde de Beaumont. Both sisters were very
handsome, but the younger bore the palm of beauty in the artist's sense,
though she was not endowed with the singular charm of manner which
characterised her sister. Chroniclers tell us that the younger
Princess, Marjory, was a woman of marvellous beauty. Yet something more
attractive than mere beauty must have distinguished the Princess
Margaret, for two men of the most opposite dispositions to have borne
her image on their hearts till death, and for her husband--a man capable
of abject superstition, and with his hot-headed youth far behind him--to
have braved all the thunders of Rome, rather than put her away.
These royal sisters had a singular history. Their father, King William,
had put them for education into the hands of King John of England and
his Queen, Isabelle of Angouleme, when they were little more than
infants, in other words, he had committed his tender doves to the charge
of almost the worst man and woman whom he could have selected. There
were just two vices of which His English Majesty was not guilty, and
those were cowardice and hypocrisy. He was a plain, unvarnished
villain, and he never hesitated for a moment to let people see it.
Queen Isabelle had been termed "the Helen of the Middle Ages," alike
from her great beauty, and from the fact that her husband abducted her
when betrothed elsewhere. She can hardly be blamed for this, since she
was a mere child at the time: but as she grew up, she developed a
character quite worthy of the scoundrel to whom she was linked. To
personal profligacy she added sordid avarice, and a positive incapacity
for telling the truth. To these delightful persons the poor little
Scottish maidens, Margaret and Isabel, were consigned. At what age
Marjory joined them in England is doubtful: but it does not appear that
she was ever, as they were, an official ward of the Crown.
The exact terms on which these royal children were sent into England
were for many years the subject of sharp contention between their
brother Alexander and King Henry the Third. The memorandum drawn up
between the Kings William and John, does not appear to be extant: but
that by which, in 1220, they were afresh consigned to the care of Henry
the Third, is still in existence. Alexander strenuously maintained that
John had undertaken to marry the sisters to his own two sons. The
agreement with Henry the Third simply provides that "We will also marry
[This meant at the time, `cause to be married'] Margaret and Isabel,
sisters of the said Alexander, King of Scotland, during the space of one
full year from the feast of Saint Denis [October 8], 1220, as shall be
to our honour: and if we do not marry them within that period, we will
return them to the said Alexander, King of Scotland, safe and free, in
his own territories, within two years from the time specified." [Note
1.]
This article of the convention was honestly carried out according to the
later memorandum, so far as concerned Margaret, who was married to
Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, at York, on the twenty-fifth of June,
1221. Isabel, however, was not married (to Roger Bigod, Earl of
Norfolk) until May, 1225. [Note 2.] Still, after the latter date, the
convention having been carried out, it might have been supposed that the
Kings would have given over quarrelling about it. The Princesses were
honourably married in England, which was all that Henry the Third at
least had undertaken to do.
But neither party was satisfied. Alexander never ceased to reproach
Henry for not having himself married Margaret, and united Isabel to his
brother. Henry, while he testily maintained to Alexander that he had
done all he promised, and no further claim could be established against
him, yet, as history shows, never to the last hour pardoned Hubert de
Burgh for his marriage with the Scottish Princess, and most bitterly
reproached him for depriving him of her whom he had intended to make his
Queen.
The truth seems to be that Henry the Third, who at the time of
Margaret's marriage was only a lad of thirteen years, had cherished for
her a fervent boyish passion, and that she was the only woman whom he
ever really loved. Hubert, at that time Regent, probably never imagined
any thing of the kind: while to Margaret, a stately maiden of some
twenty years, if not more, the sentimental courtship of a schoolboy of
thirteen would probably be a source of amusement rather than sympathy.
But at every turn in his after life, Henry showed that he had never
forgiven this slight put on his affections. It is true that his
affection was of a somewhat odd type, presenting no obstacle to his
aspersing the character of his lady-love, when he found it convenient to
point a moral by so doing. But of all men who ever lived, surely one of
the most consistently inconsistent was Henry the Third. In most
instances he was "constant to one thing--his inconstancy." Like his
father, he possessed two virtues: but they were not the same. Henry was
not a lover of cruelty for its own sake--which John was: and he was not
personally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty,
there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroidered
cloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents were
inherited by him. To his mother's covetous acquisitiveness and
ingrained falsehood, he joined his father's unscrupulous exactions and
wild extravagance.
I have said that Henry was not a lover of cruelty in itself: but he
could be fearfully and recklessly cruel when he had a point to gain, as
we shall see too well before the story is ended. It may be true that
John murdered his nephew Arthur with his own hands; but it was reserved
for Henry, out of the public sight and away from his own eyes, to
perpetrate a more cruel murder upon Arthur's hapless sister, "the Pearl
of Bretagne," by one of the slowest and most dreadful deaths possible to
humanity, and without any offence on her part beyond her very existence.
Stow tells us that poor Alianora was slowly starved to death; and that
she died by royal order the Issue Roll gives evidence, since one hundred
pounds were delivered to John Fitz Geoffrey as his fee for the execution
of Alianora the King's kinswoman. [Note 3.]
It is not easy to say whether John or Henry would have made the more
clever vivisector. But assuredly, while John would have kept his
laboratory door open, and have sneered at anaesthetics, Henry would have
softly administered curare [Note 4], and afterwards made a charming
speech on the platform concerning the sacrifices of their own feelings,
which physiologists are sorrowfully compelled to make for the benefit of
humanity and the exigencies of science.
Thirteen years after the marriage of Margaret of Scotland, when he was a
young man of six-and-twenty, Henry the Third made a second attempt to
win a Scottish queen. The fair Princess Marjory had now joined her
sisters in England; and in point of age she was more suitable than
Margaret. The English nobles, however, were very indignant that their
King should think of espousing a younger sister of the wife of so mere
an upstart as Hubert de Burgh. They grumbled bitterly, and the Count of
Bretagne, brother-in-law of the murdered Arthur and the disinherited
Alianora, took upon himself to dissuade the King from his purpose.
This Count of Bretagne is known as Pierre Mauclerc, or Bad-Clerk: not a
flattering epithet, but historians assure us that Pierre only too
thoroughly deserved the adjective, whatever his writing may have done.
He had, four years before, refused his own daughter to King Henry,
preferring to marry her to a son of the King of France. The Count had
undertaken no difficult task, for an easier could not be than to
persuade or dissuade Henry the Third in respect of any mortal thing. He
passed his life in acting on the advice in turn of every person who had
last spoken to him. So he gave up Marjory of Scotland.
Three years more had elapsed since that time, during which Marjory, very
sore at her rejection, had withdrawn to the Court of King Alexander her
brother. In the spring of 1234 she returned to her eldest sister, who
generally resided either in her husband's Town-house at Whitehall,--it
was probably near Scotland Yard--or at the Castle of Bury Saint
Edmund's. She was just then at the latter. Earl Hubert himself was but
rarely at home in either place, being constantly occupied elsewhere by
official duties, and not unfrequently, through some adverse turn of King
Henry's capricious favour, detained somewhere in prison.
"And how long hast thou nestled in this sweet new bower, my bird?" said
Marjory caressingly to her niece.
"To-day, Aunt Marjory! It is a birthday present from my Lord and
father. Is it not pretty? Only look at the walls, and the windows, and
my beautiful velvet settle. Now, did you ever see any thing so
charming?"
Marjory glanced at her sister, and they exchanged smiles.
"Well, I cannot quite say No to that question, Magot. [Note 5.] But
lead me round this wonderful chamber, and show me all its beauties."
The wonderful chamber in question was not very spacious, being about
sixteen feet in length by twelve in width. It had a wide fireplace at
one end--there was no fire, for the spring was just passing into
summer--and two arched windows on one of its longer sides. The
fireplace was filled with a grotto-like erection of fir-cones, moss, and
rosemary: the windows, as Margaret triumphantly pointed out, were of
that rare and precious material, glass. Three doors led into other
rooms. One, opposite the fireplace, gave access to a small private
oratory; two others, opposite the windows, communicated respectively
with the wardrobe and the ante-chamber. These four rooms together, with
the narrow spiral staircase which led to them, occupied the whole floor
of one of the square towers of the Castle. The walls of the bower were
painted green, relieved by golden stars; and on every wall-space between
the doors and windows was a painted "history"--namely, a medallion of
some Biblical, historical, or legendary subject. The subjects in this
room had evidently been chosen with reference to the tastes of a girl.
They were,--the Virgin and Child; the legend of Saint Margaret; the
Wheel of Fortune; Saint Agnes, with her lamb; a fountain with doves
perched upon the edge; and Saint Martin dividing his cloak with the
beggar. The window-shutters were of fir-wood, bound with iron. Meagre
indeed we should think the furniture, but it was sumptuous for the date.
A tent-bed, hung with green curtains, stood between the two doors. A
green velvet settle stretched across the window side of the room. By
the fireplace was a leaf-table; round the walls were wooden brackets,
with iron sockets for the reception of torches; and at the foot of the
bed, which stood with its side to the wall, was a fine chest of carved
ebony. There were only three pieces of movable furniture, two
footstools, and a curule chair, also of ebony, with a green velvet
cushion. As nobody could sit in the last who had not had a king and
queen for his or her parents, it may be supposed that more than one was
not likely to be often wanted.
The Countess of Kent, as the elder sister, took the curule chair, while
her sister Marjory, when the inspection was finished, sat down on the
velvet settle. Margaret drew a footstool to her aunt's side, and took
up her position there, resting her head caressingly on Marjory's knee.
"Three whole years, Aunt Marjory, that you have not been near us! What
could make you stay away so long?"
"There were reasons, Magot."
The two Princesses exchanged smiles again, but there was some amusement
in that of the Countess, while the expression of her sister was rather
sad.
Margaret looked from one to the other, as if she would have liked to
understand what they meant.
"Don't trouble that little head," said her mother, with a laugh. "Thy
time will come soon enough. Thou art too short to be told state
secrets."
"I shall be as tall as you some day, Lady," responded Margaret archly.
"And then," said Marjory, stroking the girl's hair, "thou wilt wish
thyself back again, little Magot."
"Nay!--under your good leave, fair Aunt, never!"
"Ah, we know better, don't we, Madge?" asked the Countess, laughing.
"Well, I will leave you two maidens together. There is the month's wash
to be seen to, and if I am not there, that Alditha is as likely to put
the linen in the chests without a sprig of rosemary, as she is to look
in the mirror every time she passes it. We shall meet at supper.
Adieu!"
And the Countess departed, on housekeeping thoughts intent. For a few
minutes the two girls--for the aunt was only about twelve years the
senior--sat silent, Margaret having drawn her aunt's hand down and
rested her cheek upon it. They were very fond of one another: and being
so near in age, they had been brought up so much like sisters, that
except in one or two items they treated each other as such, and did not
assume the respective authority and reverence usual between such
relations at that time. Beyond the employment of the deferential _you_
by Margaret, and the familiar _thou_ by Marjory, they chatted to each
other as any other girls might have done. But just then, for a few
minutes, neither spoke.
"Well, Magot!" said Marjory, breaking the silence at last, "have we
nought to say to each other? Thou art forgetting, I think, that I want
a full account of all these three years since I came to see thee before.
They have not been empty of events, I know."
Margaret's answer was a groan.
"Empty!" she said. "Fair Aunt, I would they had been, rather than full
of such events as they were. Father Nicholas saith that the old
Romans--or Greeks, I don't know which--used to say the man was happy who
had no history. I am sure we should have been happier, lately, if we
had not had any."
"`Don't know which!' What a heedless Magot!"
"Why, fair Aunt, surely you don't expect people to recollect lessons.
Did you ever remember yours?"
Marjory laughed. "Sufficiently so, I hope, to know the difference
between Greeks and Romans. But, however,--for the last three years.
Tell me all about them."
"Am I to begin with the Flood, like a professional chronicler?"
"Well, no. I think the Conquest would be soon enough."
"Delicious Aunt Marjory! How many weary centuries you excuse me!"
"_How_ many, Magot?"
"Oh, please don't! How can I possibly tell? If you really want to
know, I will send for Father Nicholas."
Marjory laughed, and kissed the lively face turned up to her.
"Idle Magot! Well, go on."
"I don't think I am idle, fair Aunt. But I do detest learning dates.--
Well, now,--was it in April you left us? I know it was very soon after
my Lady of Cornwall was married, but I do not remember exactly what
month."
"It was in May," said Marjory, shortly.
"May, was it? Oh, I know! It was the eve of Saint Helen's Day. Well,
things went on right enough, till my Lord of Canterbury took it into his
head that my Lord and father had no business to detain Tunbridge
Castle,--it all began with that. It was about July, I think."
"I thought Tunbridge Castle belonged to my Lord of Gloucester. What had
either to do with it?"
"O Aunt Marjory! Have you forgotten that my young Lord of Gloucester is
in ward to my Lord and father? The Lord King gave him first to my Lord
the Bishop of Winchester, when his father died; and then, about a year
after, he took him away from the Bishop, and gave him to my fair father.
Don't you remember him?--such a pretty boy! I think you knew all about
it at the time."
"Very likely I did, Magot. One forgets things, sometimes."
And Margaret, looking up into the fair face, saw, and did not
understand, the hidden pain behind the smile.
"So my Lord of Canterbury complained of my fair father to the Lord King.
(I wonder he could not attend to his own business.) But the Lord King
said that as my Lord of Gloucester held in chief of the Crown, all
vacant trusts were his, to give as it pleased him. And then--Aunt
Marjory, do you like priests?"
"Magot, what a question!"
"But do you?"
"All priests are not alike, my dear child. They are like other people--
some good, and some bad."
"But surely all priests ought to be good."
"Art thou always what thou oughtest to be, Magot?"
Margaret's answer was a sudden spring from the stool and a fervent hug
of Marjory.
"Aunt Marjory," she said, when she had sat down again, "I just hate that
Bishop of Winchester." [Peter de Rievaulx, always one of the two chief
enemies of Margaret's father.]
"Shocking, Magot!"
"Oh yes, of course it is extremely wicked. But I do."
"I wish he were here, to set thee a penance for such a naughty speech.
However, go on with thy story."
"Well, what do you think, fair Aunt, that my Lord's Grace of Canterbury
[Richard Grant, consecrated in 1229] did? He actually excommunicated
all intruders on the lands of his jurisdiction, and all who should hold
communication with them, the King only excepted; and away he went to
Rome, to lay the matter before the holy Father. Of course he would tell
his tale from his own point of view."
"The Archbishop went to Rome!"
"Indeed he did, Aunt Marjory. My fair father was very indignant. `That
the head of the English Church could not stand by himself, but must seek
the approbation of a foreign Bishop!' That was what he said, and I
think my fair mother agreed with him."
Perhaps in this nineteenth century we scarcely realise the gallant fight
made by the Church of England to retain her independence of Rome. It
did not begin at the Reformation, as people are apt to suppose. It was
as old as the Church herself, and she was as old as the Apostles. Some
of her clergy were perpetually trying to force and to rivet the chains
of Rome upon her: but the body of the laity, who are really the Church,
resisted this attempt almost to the death. There was a perpetual
struggle, greater or smaller according to circumstances, between the
King of England and the Papacy, Pope after Pope endeavoured to fill
English sees and benefices with Italian priests: King after King braved
his wrath by refusing to confirm his appointments. Apostle, they were
ready to allow the Pope to be: sovereign or legislator, never. Doctrine
they would accept at his hands; but he should not rule over their
secular or ecclesiastical liberties. The quarrel between Henry the
Second and Becket was entirely on this point. No wonder that Rome
canonised the man who thus exalted her. The Kings who stood out most
firmly for the liberties of England were Henry the Second, John, Edward
the First and Second, and Richard the Second. This partly explains the
reason why history (of which monks were mainly the authors) has so
little good to say of any of them, Edward the First only excepted. It
is not easy to say why the exception was made, unless it were because he
was too firmly rooted in popular admiration, and perhaps a little too
munificent to the monastic Orders, for much evil to be discreetly said
of him. Coeur-de-Lion was a Gallio who cared for none of those things:
Henry the Third played into the hands of the Pope to-day, and of the
Anglican Church to-morrow. Edward the Third held the balance as nearly
even as possible. The struggle revived faintly during the reign of
Henry the Sixth, but the Wars of the Roses turned men's minds to home
affairs, and Henry the Seventh was the obedient servant of His Holiness.
So the battle went on, till it culminated in the Reformation. Those
who have never entered into this question, and who assume that all
Englishmen were "Papists" until 1530, have no idea how gallantly the
Church fought for her independent life, and how often she flung from off
her the iron grasp of the oppressor. It was not probable that a
Princess whose fathers had followed the rule of Columba, and lay buried
in Protestant Iona, should have any Roman tendencies on this question.
Marjory was as warm as any one could have wished her.
"Well, then," Margaret went on, "that horrid Bishop of Winchester--"
"Oh, fie!" said her aunt.
"--Came back to England in August. Aunt Marjory, it is no use,--he is
horrid, and I hate him! He hates my fair father. Do you expect me to
love him?"
"Well done, Magot!" said another voice. "When I want a lawyer to plead
my cause, I will send for thee.--Christ save you, fair Sister! I heard
you were here, with this piece of enthusiasm."
Both the girls rose to greet the Earl, Margaret courtesying low as
beseemed a daughter.
It was very evident that, so far as outside appearance went, Margaret
was "only the child of her mother." Earl Hubert was scarcely so tall as
his wife, and he had a bronzed, swarthy complexion, with dark hair.
Though short, he was strongly-built and well-proportioned. His eyes
were dark, small, but quick and exceedingly bright. He had, when
needful, a ready, eloquent tongue and a very pleasant smile. Yet
eloquent as undoubtedly he could be, he was not usually a man of many
words; and capable as he was of very deep and lasting affection, he was
not demonstrative.
The soft, caressing manners of the Princess Margaret were not in her
husband's line at all. He was given to calling a spade a spade whenever
he had occasion to mention the article: and if she preferred to allude
to it as "an agricultural implement for the trituration of the soil," he
was disposed to laugh good-humouredly at the epithet, though he dearly
loved the silver voice which used it.
A thoroughly representative man of his time was Hubert de Burgh, Earl of
Kent; and he was one of those persons who leave a deep mark upon their
age. He was a purely self-made man. He had no pedigree: indeed, we do
not know with absolute certainty who was his father, though modern
genealogists have amused themselves by making a pedigree for him, to
which there is no real evidence that he had the least claim. Yet of his
wives--for he was four times married--the first was an heiress, the
second a baron's widow, the third a countess in her own right and a
divorced queen, and the last a princess. His public life had begun by
his conducting a negotiation to the satisfaction of Coeur-de-Lion, in
the first year of his reign, 1189, when in all probability Hubert was
little over twenty years of age. From that moment he rose rapidly.
Merely to enumerate all the titles he bore would almost take a page. He
was by turns a very rich man and a very poor one, according as his royal
and capricious master made or revoked his grants.
The religious character of Hubert is not a matter of speculation, but of
certainty. It was--what his contemporaries considered elevated piety--a
most singular mixture of the barest and basest superstition with some
very strong plain common-sense. The superstition was of the style set
forth in the famous Spanish drama entitled "The Devotion of the Cross"--
the true Roman type of piety, though to Protestant minds of the
nineteenth century it seems almost inconceivable. The hero of this
play, who is represented as tinctured with nearly every crime which
humanity can commit, has a miracle performed in his favour, and goes
comfortably to Heaven after it, on account of his devotion to the cross.
The innocent reader must not suspect the least connection between this
devotion and the atonement wrought upon the cross. It simply means,
that whenever Eusebio sees the shape of a cross--in the hilt of his
sword, the pattern of a woman's dress, two sticks thrown upon one
another,--he stops in the midst of whatever sin he may be committing,
and in some form, by word or gesture, expresses his "devotion."
Of this type was Hubert's religion. His notion of spirituality was to
grasp the pix with one hand, and to hold the crucifix in the other. He
kept a nicely-balanced account at the Bank of Heaven, in which--this is
historical--the heaviest deposit was the fact that he had many years
before saved a large crucifix from the flames. The idea that this
action was not most pious and meritorious would have been in Hubert's
eyes rank heresy. Yet he might have known better. The Psalter lay open
to him, which, had he been acquainted with no other syllable of
revelation, should alone have given him a very different conception of
spiritual religion.
Athwart these singular notions of excellence, Hubert's good common-sense
was perpetually gleaming, like the lightning across a dark moor.
Whatever else this man was, he was no slave of Rome. It was supported
by him, and probably at his instigation, that King John had sent his
lofty message to the Pope, that--
"No Italian priest
Should tithe or toll in his dominions."
It was when the administration lay in his hands that Parliament refused
to comply with the demands of the Pope till it was seen what other
kingdoms would do: and no Papal aggressions were successful in England
so long as Hubert was in power. To reverse the famous phrase of Lord
Denbigh, Hubert was "a Catholic, if you please; but an Englishman
first."
Truer Englishman, at once loyalist and patriot, never man was than he--
well described by one of the English people as "that most faithful and
noble Hubert, who so often saved England from the ravages of the
foreigner, and restored England to herself." He stood by the Throne,
bearing aloft the banner of England, in three especially dark and
perilous days, when no man stood there but himself. To him alone, under
Providence, we owe it that England did not become a vassal province of
France. Most amply was his fidelity put to the test; most unspotted it
emerged from the ordeal: most heavy was the debt of gratitude owed alike
by England and her King.
That debt was paid, in a sense, to the uttermost farthing. In what
manner of coin it was discharged, we are about to see.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. Patent Roll, 4 Henry Third; dated York, June 15 1220.
Note 2. "In the octave of Holy Trinity" [May 25--June 1], at Alnwick.--
Roberts' Extracts from Fines Rolls, 1225.
Note 3. This terrible fact has been strangely ignored by many modern
historians.--_Rot. Exit., Michs_., 25-6 Henry Third.
Note 4. A drug which deadens the sensibilities--of the vivisector--by
rendering the victim incapable of sound or motion, but not affecting the
nerves of sensation in the least.
Note 5. This was in 1234, when our story begins, the English diminutive
of Margaret, and was doubtless derived from the French Margot.
Note 6. Any reader who is inclined to doubt this is requested to
consult Acts fifteen, 4, 22. It is unquestionably the teaching of the
New Testament. The clergy form part of the Church merely as individual
Christians.