Paul Stukely lived to see the foul crime that stained the victor's
laurels on the field of Tewkesbury amply avenged upon the House of
York in the days that quickly followed.
He himself was carried away by his faithful men-at-arms, who saw
that their cause was finally lost; and when, many weeks later, the
raging fever which held him in its grasp abated, and he knew once
more the faces of those about him, and could ask what had befallen
him, he found that he had been carried away to his own small manor,
bestowed upon him by the great Earl of Warwick--which manor,
perhaps from its very obscurity and his own, was left quietly in
his hands; for its late owner had fallen upon the field of
Tewkesbury, and no claim was ever made which disturbed Paul from
peaceful possession.
When he recovered his senses it was to hear that not only the
prince was dead, but his royal father also; that the queen, as
Margaret was still called by him, had returned to France; and that
the cause of the Red Rose was hopelessly extinguished. So Paul,
with the hopefulness which is the prerogative of youth, recovered
by degrees from the depression of spirit that the memory of the
tragedy of Tewkesbury cast over him, and learned by degrees to take
a healthy interest in his little domain, which he ruled wisely and
kindly, without meddling in public matters, or taking part in the
burning questions of the day. To him Edward always was and always
must be a cruel tyrant and usurper; but as none but princes of the
House of York were left to claim the succession to the crown, there
could be no possible object in any renewal of strife.
Paul, in his quiet west-country home, watched the progress of
events, and saw in the tragedies which successively befell the
scions of the House of York the vengeance of Heaven for the foul
murder of the young Lancastrian prince.
The Duke of Clarence, who had been one of the first to strike him,
fell a victim to the displeasure of the king, his brother, and was
secretly put to death in the Tower. Although Edward himself died a
natural death, it was said that vexation at the failure of some of
his most treasured schemes for the advancement of his children cut
him off in the flower of his age. And a darker fate befell his own
young sons than he had inflicted upon the son of the rival monarch:
for Edward of Lancaster had died a soldier's death, openly slain by
the sword in the light of day; whilst the murderer's children were
done to death between the stone walls of a prison, and for years
their fate was shrouded in terrible mystery.
The next death in that ill-omened race was that of King Richard's
own son, in the tenth year of his age. As Duke of Gloucester, he
had stood by to see the death of young Edward, even if his hand had
not been raised to strike him. He had then forced into reluctant
wedlock with himself the betrothed bride of the murdered
prince--the unhappy Lady Anne. He had murdered his brother's
children to raise himself to the throne, and had committed many
other crimes to maintain himself thereon; and his own son--another
Edward, Prince of Wales--was doomed to meet a sudden death, called
by the chroniclers of the time "unhappy," as though some strange or
painful circumstance attached to it, in the absence of both his
parents: and lastly, the lonely monarch, wifeless and childless,
was called upon to reap the fruits of the bitter hostility and
distrust which his cruel and arbitrary rule had awakened in the
breasts of his own nobles and of his subjects in general.
Paul Stukely, now a married man with children of his own growing up
about him, watched with intense interest the course of public
events; and when Henry of Richmond--a lineal descendant of Edward
the Third by his son John of Gaunt--landed for the second time to
head the insurrection against the bloody tyrant, Sir Paul Stukely
and a gallant little following marched amongst the first to join
his standard, and upon the bloody field of Bosworth, Paul felt that
he saw revenged to the full the tragedy of Tewkesbury.
He was there, close beside Henry Tudor, when the last frantic
charge of the wretched monarch in his despair was made, and when
Richard, after unhorsing many amongst Henry's personal attendants
in order to come to a hand-to-hand combat with his foe, witnessed
the secession from his ranks of Sir William Stanley, and fell,
crying "Treason, treason!" with his last breath. He who had
obtained his crown by treachery, cruelty, and treason of the
blackest kind, was destined to fall a victim to the treachery of
others. As Paul saw the mangled corpse flung across a horse's back
and carried ignominiously from the field, he felt that the God of
heaven did indeed look down and visit with His vengeance those who
had set at nought His laws, and that in the miserable death of this
last son of the House of York the cause of the Red Rose was amply
avenged.
A few years later, in the bright summertide, when the politic rule
of Henry the Seventh was causing the exhausted country to recover
from the ravages of the long civil war, Sir Paul Stukely and his
two sons, fine, handsome lads of ten and twelve years old, were
making a little journey (as we should now call it, though it seemed
a long one to the excited and delighted boys) from his pleasant
manor near St. Albans through a part of the county of Essex.
Paul had prospered during these past years. The king had rewarded
his early fealty by a grant of lands and a fine manor near to St.
Albans, whither he had removed his wife and family, so as to be
within easy reach of them at such times as he was summoned by the
king to Westminster. The atmosphere of home was dearer to him than
that of courts, and he was no longer away from his own house than
his duty to his king obliged him to be. But he had been much
engaged by public duties of late, and the holiday he had promised
himself had been long in coming. It had been a promise of some
standing to his two elder sons, Edward and Paul, that he would take
them some day to visit the spots which he talked of when they
climbed upon his knee after his day's work was done to beg for the
story of "the little prince," as they still called him. Paul
himself was eager again to visit those familiar haunts, and see if
any of those who had befriended the homeless wanderer were living
still, and would recognize the bronzed and prosperous knight of
today.
And now they were entering a familiar tract; and the father told
his boys to keep their eyes well open, for the village of Much
Waltham could not be far off and every pathway in this part of the
forest had been traversed by him and the prince in the days that
had gone by.
"I hear the sound of hammering," cried the younger Paul in great
excitement soon. "O father, we must be getting very near! It is
like a smith's forge. I am sure it must be Will Ives or his father.
Oh, do let us ride on quickly and see!"
The riders pressed onward through the widening forest path, and,
sure enough, found themselves quickly in the little clearing which
surrounded the village of Much Waltham. How well the elder Paul
remembered it all! the village church, the smithy, and the low
thatched cottages, the small gardens, now brighter than he had seen
them in the dreary winter months; the whole place wearing an air of
increased comfort and prosperity.
The flame within the forge burned cheerily, and revealed an active
figure within, hard at work over some glowing metal, which emitted
showers of brilliant sparks. Sir Paul rode forward and paused at
the door with a smile of recognition on his face. The smith came
forward to see if the traveller required any service of him, but
was somewhat taken aback by the greeting he received.
"Well, worthy Will Ives, time has dealt more kindly with you than
with me, I trow. You are scarce a whit changed from the day,
seventeen years back come November, when I first stopped in sorry
plight at this forge, with your pretty wife as my companion, to get
your assistance as far as Figeon's Farm. Why, and here is Mistress
Joan herself; and I warrant that that fine lad is the son of both
of you.
"Good Even to you, fair mistress!--Last time we met we scarce
thought that so many years would roll by before I should pay these
parts a visit. But fortune's wheel has many strange turns, and I
have been dwelling in regions far remote from here. But these lads
of mine have given me no peace until I should bring them on a visit
to Much Waltham and Figeon's Farm. I trust that I shall find all
the dwellers there hale and hearty as of yore, and that death has
passed this peaceful place by, whilst he has been so busy
elsewhere."
Great was the excitement of the place when it was realized by the
inhabitants that this fine knight, who rode with half-a-dozen
men-at-arms in his company, and two beautiful boys at his side, was
none other than the Paul Stukely that the men and women of the
place remembered, and the children spoke of as of the hero of some
romance dear to their hearts. The news flew like wildfire through
the village, and old and young came flocking out to see, till the
knight was the centre of quite a little crowd, and the excited and
delighted boys were hearing the familiar story again and again from
the lips of these friendly strangers.
When at length the little cavalcade moved up the gentle slope
toward Figeon's Farm, quite a large bodyguard accompanied it. Joan
herself walked proudly beside the knight, who had given his horse
in charge to his servant, and was on foot as he trod the familiar
track; and she was listening with flushing and paling cheek to the
tale of Tewkesbury, whilst the boys were asking questions of
everybody in the little crowd, and eagerly pushing on ahead to get
the first sight of the farm that had twice sheltered their father
in the hour of his need.
The old people were living yet, though infirm and feeble, and more
disposed to spend the day in the armchairs, beside the blazing fire
in the inglenook, than to stir abroad or carry on any active
occupation at home. Jack Devenish and his wife, Eva, managed the
house and farm, and brought up their sturdy and numerous family so
as to be a credit to the old name. It was Jack himself who came
hurrying out to meet his guests--a rumour of their approach having
gone on before--whilst his smiling wife stood in the door way to
welcome in the bronzed knight, whom once she had rescued from such
pitiful plight and from deadly danger.
What a welcome it was that they got from all at Figeon's Farm! and
how delightful to the boys to run all over the house--to see the
room in which their father had slept, the window from which he had
flung the robber who had come to carry away Mistress Joan, and the
little sliding panel behind which the recess lay that had been so
luckily emptied of its treasure before the search party came!
Then, on the next day, there was the Priory to visit, and Brother
Lawrence to claim acquaintance with, and a long ride through the
forest to be made to visit the cave at Black Notley, where Paul had
once been dragged a prisoner, and had been so roughly handled by
the robbers. The days were full of excitement and pleasure to the
two lads, and scarcely less so to Paul himself, save for the faint
flavour of melancholy which could not but at times assail him in
recalling the episode of his romantic friendship with Edward,
Prince of Wales.
And when they returned home at last to tell their adventures to
wife and mother, they left behind them in Much Waltham many
substantial proofs of the gratitude the Stukelys must ever feel for
the protection accorded by its inhabitants in past days to the head
of the house; and round the firesides in cottage and farm there was
for many long years no more favourite story told by the old folks
to the eager children than the tale of adventure, peril, and
devotion in the days of the Wars of the Roses, which went by the
name, in that place, of "The Story of Paul and the Prince."
Notes.
{1} Lichfield had the right in these days of calling itself a county.