I'm kneeling at the threshold, aweary, faint, and sore;
I'm waiting for the dawning, for the opening of the door;
I'm waiting till the Master shall bid me rise and come
To the glory of His presence, the gladness of His home.
A weary path I've travelled, mid darkness, storm, and strife,
Bearing many a burden, contending for my life;
But now the morn is breaking,--my toil will soon be o'er;
I'm kneeling at the threshold, my hand is at the door.
O Lord, I wait Thy pleasure! Thy time and way are best:
But I'm wasted, worn, and weary:--my Father, bid me rest!
_Dr Alexander_.
The full glory of summer had come at last. Over Southampton Water broke
a cloudless August day. The musical cries of the sailors who were at
work on the Saint Mary, the James, and the Catherine, in the offing--
preparing for the King's voyage to France--came pleasantly from the
distance. From the country farms, girls with baskets poised on their
heads, filled with market produce, came into the crowded sea-port town,
where the whole Court awaited a fair wind. There was no wind from any
quarter that day. Earth and sea and sky presented a dead calm: and the
only place which was not calm was the heart of fallen man. For a few
steps from the busy gates and the crowded market is Southampton Green,
and there, draped in mourning, stands the scaffold, and beside it the
state headsman.
All the Court are gathered here. It is a break in the monotony of
existence--the tiresome dead level of waiting for the wind to change.
The first victim is brought out. Trembling and timidly he comes--Henry
Le Scrope of Upsal, the luckless husband of the Duchess Dowager of York,
Treasurer of the Household, only a few days since in the highest favour.
He was arrested, tried, and sentenced in twenty-four hours, just a week
before. No voice pleads for poor Scrope,--a simple, single-minded man,
who never made an enemy till now. He dies to-day--"on suspicion of
being suspected" of high treason.
The block and the axe are wiped clean of Scrope's blood, and the
headsman stands waiting for the Sheriff to bring the second victim.
He comes forward calmly, with quiet dignity; a stately, fair-haired
man,--ready to die, because ready to meet God. And we know the face of
Richard of Conisborough, the finest and purest character of the royal
line, the fairest bud of the White Rose. He has little wish to live
longer. Life was stripped of its flowers for him four years ago, when
he heard the earth cast on the coffin of his pale desert flower. She is
in Heaven; and Christ is in Heaven; and Heaven is better than earth. So
what matter, though the passage be low and dark which leads up to the
gate of the Garden of God? Yet this is no easy nor honourable death to
die. No easy death to a man of high sense of chivalrous honour; no
light burden, thus to be led forth before the multitude, to a death of
shame,--on his part undeserved. Perhaps men will know some day how
little he deserved it. At any rate, God knows. And whatever shameful
end be decreed for the servant, it can never surpass that of the Master.
The utmost that any child of God can suffer for Christ, can never equal
what Christ has suffered for him.
And so, calm in mien, willing in heart, Richard of Conisborough went
through the dark passage, to the Garden of God. But if ever a judicial
murder were committed in this world, it was done that day on Southampton
Green, when the blood of the Lollard Prince dyed the dust of the
scaffold.
The accusation brought against the victims was high treason. The
indictment bore falsehood on its face by going too far. It asserted,
not only that they had conspired to raise March to the throne--which
might perhaps have been believed; but also that they had plotted the
assassination of King Henry--which no one who knew them could believe;
that March, taken into their counsels, had asked for an hour to consider
the matter, and had then gone straight to the King and revealed the
plot--which no one who knew March could believe. The whole accusation
was a tissue of improbabilities and inconsistencies. No evidence was
offered; the conclusion was foregone from the beginning. So they died
on Southampton Green.
Perhaps Henry's heart failed him at the last moment. For some reason,
Richard of Conisborough was spared the last and worst ignominy of a
traitor's death--the exposure of the severed head on some city gate.
Henry allowed his remains to receive quiet and honourable burial.
The next day a decree was passed, pardoning March for all crimes and
offences. The only offence which he had ever committed against the
House of Lancaster was his own existence; and for that he could scarcely
be held responsible, either in law or equity. But can we say as much
for the offence against God and man which he committed on that sixth of
August, when he suffered himself to be dragged to the judge's bench, on
which he sat with others to condemn the husband of that sister Anne who
had been his all but mother?
We shall see no more of Edmund Mortimer. He ended life as he began it--
as much like a vegetable as a human being could well make himself. Few
Mortimers attained old age, nor did he. He died in his thirty-fourth
year, issueless and unwept; and Richard Duke of York, the son of Anne
Mortimer and Richard of Conisborough, succeeded to the White Rose's
"heritage of woe."
A week after the execution, the King sailed for Harfleur.
The campaign was short, for those days of long campaigns; but pestilence
raged among the troops, and cut off some of the finest men. The Earl of
Suffolk died before they left Harfleur, and ere they reached Picardy,
the Earl of Arundel. But the King pressed onward, till on the night of
the 24th of October, he encamped, ready to give battle, near the little
village of Azincour, to be thenceforward for ever famous, under its
English name of Agincourt.
The army was in a very sober mood. The night was spent quietly, by the
more careless in sleep, by the more thoughtful in prayer. The Duke of
York was among the former; the King among the latter. Henry is said to
have wrestled earnestly with God that no sins of his might be remembered
against him, to lead to the discomfiture of his army. There was need
for the entreaty. Perchance, had he slept that night, some such ghostly
visions, born of his own conscience, might have disturbed his sleep, as
those which troubled one of his successors on the eve of Bosworth Field.
When morning came, and the King was at breakfast with his brother Prince
Humphrey, the Duke of York presented himself with a request that he
might be permitted to lead the vanguard.
Humphrey, who was of a sarcastic turn of mind, amused himself by a few
jokes on the obesity of the royal applicant; but the request was
granted, and York rode off well pleased.
"Stand thou at my stirrup, Calverley," said York to his squire. "I cast
no doubt thou wilt win this day thy spurs; and for me, I look to come
off covered with glory."
"How many yards of glory shall it take to cover his Grace?" whispered
one of the irreverent varlets behind them.
"Howsoe'er, little matter," pursued the Duke. "I can scantly go higher
than I am: wherefore howso I leave the field, little reck I."
Hugh Calverley looked up earnestly at his master.
"Sir Duke," he said, "hath it come into your Grace's mind that no less
yourself than your servants may leave this field dead corpses?"
"Tut, man! croak not," said York. "I have no intent to leave it other
than alive--thou canst do as it list thee."
Two months had elapsed since that August evening when, terrified by his
brother's sudden and violent death, Edward Duke of York had dictated his
will in terms of such abject penitence. The effect of that terror was
wearing away. The unseen world, which had come very near, receded into
the far distance; and the visible world returned to its usual
prominence. And York's aim had always been, not "so to pass through
things temporal that he lost not the things eternal," but so to pass
towards things eternal that he lost not the things temporal. His own
choice proved his heaviest punishment: "for he in his life-time received
his good things."
It was a terrible battle which that day witnessed at Agincourt. In one
quarter of the field Prince Humphrey lay half dead upon the sward; when
the King, riding up and recognising his brother, sprang from his saddle,
took his stand over the prostrate body, and waving his good battle-axe
in his strong firm hand, kept the enemy at bay, and saved his brother's
life. In another direction, a sudden charge of the French pressed a
little band of English officers and men close together, till not one in
the inner ranks could move hand or foot--crushed them closer, closer, as
if the object had been to compress them into a consolidated mass. At
last help came, the French were beaten off, and the living wall was free
to separate into its component atoms of human bodies. But as it did so,
from the interior of the mass one man fell to the ground, dead. No one
needed to ask who it was. The royal fleurs-de-lis and lions on the
surcoat, with an escocheon of pretence bearing the arms of Leon and
Castilla--the princely coronet surrounding the helmet--were enough to
tell the tale. Other men might come alive out of the fight of
Agincourt, but Edward Duke of York would only leave it a corpse.
He stands on the page of history, a beacon for all time. No man living
in his day better knew the way of righteousness; no man living took less
care to walk in it. During the later years of his life, it seemed as if
that dread Divine decree might have gone forth, most awful even of
Divine decrees--"Let him alone." He had refused to be troubled with
God, and the penalty was that God would not be troubled with him: He
would not force His salvation on this unwilling soul. And now, when
"behind, he heard Time's iron gates close faintly," it was too late for
renewing to repentance. He that was unholy must be unholy still.
Verily, he had his reward.
The end of the struggle was now approaching. On every side the French
were hemmed in and beaten down. Prince Humphrey had been earned to the
royal tent, but the King was still in the field--here, there, and
everywhere, as nearly ubiquitous as a man could be--riding from point to
point, and now and then engaging in single-handed skirmish. A French
archer, waiting for an opportunity to distinguish himself, levelled his
crossbow at the royal warrior, while he remained for a moment
stationary. In another second the victory of Agincourt would have been
turned into a defeat, and probably a panic. But at the critical instant
a squire flung himself before the King, and received the shaft intended
for his Sovereign. He fell, but uttered no word.
"Truly, a gallant deed, Master Squire!" cried Henry. "Whatso be your
name, rise a knight banneret."
"The squire will arise no more, Sire," said the voice of the Earl of
Huntingdon behind him. "Your Highness' grace hath come too late; he is
dead."
"In good sooth, I am sorry therefor," returned the King. "Never saw I
braver deed, ne better done. Well! if he leave son or widow, they may
receive our grace in his guerdon. Who is he? Ho, archer! thou bearest
our cousin of York his livery, and so doth this squire. Win hither--
unlace his helm, and give us to wit if thou know him."
And when the helm was unlaced, and the archer had recognised the dead
face, they knew that the Lollard squire, Hugh Calverley, had saved the
life of the persecutor at the cost of his own.
He had spoken the simple truth. He could not fight, but he could die.
He could not write his name upon the world's roll of glory, but he could
do God's will.
The public opinion of earth accounts this a mean and unworthy object.
The public opinion of Heaven is probably of a different character.
Nothing was to be done for widow or child, for Hugh Calverley left
neither. He was no ascetic; he was merely a man who thought first of
how he might please the Lord, and who felt himself least fettered by
single life. So there was no love in his heart but the love of Christ,
and nothing on earth that he desired in comparison of Him.
And on earth he had no guerdon. Even the royal words of praise he did
not live to hear. But on the other side of the dark river passed so
quickly, there were the garland of honour, and the palm of victory, and
the King's "Well done, good and faithful servant!" Verily, also, he had
his reward.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The autumn was passing into winter before the news reached Constance
either of the battle of Agincourt or of the murder on Southampton Green.
At first she was utterly crushed and prostrated. The old legal leaven,
so hard to work out of the human conscience, wrought upon her with
tenfold force, and she declared that God was against her, and was
wreaking His wrath upon her for the lie which she had told in denying
the validity of her marriage. Was it not evidently so? she asked. Had
He not first bereft her of her darling, the precious boy whom her sin
had preserved to her? And now not only Edward, but the favourite
brother, Dickon, were gone likewise. Herself, her stepmother, her
widowed sisters-in-law [Note 1], and the two little children of Richard,
were alone left of the House of York. The news of Edward's death she
bore with comparative equanimity: it was the sudden and dreadful end of
Richard which so completely overpowered her.
"Hold thy peace, Maude!" she said mournfully, in answer to Maude's
tender efforts to console her. "God is against me and all mine House.
We have sinned; or rather, _I_ have sinned,--and have thus brought down
sorrow and mourning upon the hearts that were dearest to me. I owe a
debt; and it must needs be paid, even to the uttermost farthing."
"But, dear my Lady," urged Maude, not holding her peace as
requested,--"what do you, to pay so much as one farthing of that debt?
Christ our Lord hath taken the same upon Him. A debt cannot be twice
paid."
"I do verily trust," she said humbly, "that He hath paid for me the debt
eternal; yet is there a debt earthly, and this is for my paying."
"Never a whit!" cried Maude earnestly. "Dear my Lady, not one cross
[farthing] thereof! That which we suffer at the hand of our Father is
not debt, but discipline; the chastising of the son, not the work wrung
by lash from the slave. `The children are free.'"
"Ay, free from the curse and the second death," she said, still
despondingly; "but from pains and penalties of sin in this life, Maude,
not freed. An' I cut mine hand with yonder knife, God shall not heal
the wound by miracle because I am His child."
Maude felt that the illustration was true, but she was not sure that it
was apposite, neither was she convinced that her own view was mistaken.
She glanced at Sir Ademar de Milford, who sat on the settle, studying
the works of Saint Augustine, as if to ask him to answer for her.
Ademar was no longer the family confessor, for the family had given over
confessing; but Archbishop Chichele, professing himself satisfied of his
orthodoxy, had revoked the now useless writ of excommunication, and the
priest had resumed his duties as chaplain. Ademar laid down his book in
answer to the appealing glance from Maude's eyes.
"Lady," he said, "how much, I pray you, is owing to your Grace from the
young ladies your daughters, for food and lodging?"
"Owing from my little maids!" exclaimed Constance.
"That is it which I would know," replied Ademar gravely.
"From my little maids!" she repeated in astonishment.
"It is written, Madam, in His book, that as one whom his mother
comforteth, He comforteth us. Wherefore, seeing that the comfort your
Grace looketh for at His hands is to have you afore the reeve for
payment of your debts, it setteth me to think that you shall needs use
your children likewise."
"Never!" cried Constance emphatically. "And so say I, Lady," returned
Ademar significantly. "But, Sir Ademar, God doth chastise His
children!"
"Truly so, Madam, as you yours. But I marvel which is the more
sufferer--yourself or the child."
He spoke pointedly, for only the day before Isabel had chosen to be very
naughty, and had imperatively required correction, which he knew had
cost far more to Constance to administer than to her refractory child to
receive.
"Then, Sir Ademar, you do think He suffereth when He chastiseth us?" she
asked, her voice faltering a little. "I cannot think, Dame, that He
loveth the rod. Only He loveth too well the child to leave him
uncorrected."
"O, Sir Ademar!" she cried suddenly--"I do trust He shall not find need
to try me yet again through these childre! I am so feared I should fail
and fall. Ah me! weak and wretched woman that I am,--I could not bear
to see these two forced from me! God help and pardon me; but me feareth
if it should come to this yet again, I would do anything to keep them!"
"The Lord can heal the waters, Lady, ere He fetch you to drink them."
"He did not this draught aforetime," she said sadly.
"Maybe," replied Ademar, "because He saw that your Ladyship's disorder
needed a bitter medicine."
There was a respite for just one year. But ever after the news of her
brother Richard's death, Constance drooped and pined; and when the fresh
storm broke, it found her an invalid almost confined to her bed. It
began with a strong manifesto from Archbishop Chichele against the
Lollards. Then came a harshly-worded order for all landed proprietors
in the Marches of South Wales to reside on their estates and "keep off
the rebels." One of these was specially directed to Constance Le
Despenser.
But who were the rebels? Owain Glyndwr had died twelve months before.
It could not mean him; and there was only one person whom it could mean.
It meant Lord Cobham, still in hiding, whom Lord Powys was in the field
to capture, and on whose head a rich reward was set. The authorities
were trembling in fear of a second outbreak under his guidance. Bertram
gave the missive to Maude, who carried it to Constance. Disobedience
was to be visited by penalty; and how it was likely to be punished in
her case, Constance knew only too well. She received it with a moan of
anguish.
"My little maids! my little, little maids!"
She said no more: she only grew worse and weaker.
Then Lord Powys, in search for the "rebels," marched up and demanded
aid. He was answered by silence: and he marched on and away, helped by
no hand or voice in Cardiff Castle.
"I must give them up!" Constance whispered to Maude, in accents so
hopelessly mournful that it wrung her tender heart to hear them. "I
cannot give Him up!"
For just then, in the eyes of every Lollard, to follow Lord Cobham was
equivalent to following Christ.
Weaker and weaker she grew now; always confined to bed; worse from day
to day.
And at last, on the 28th of November, 1416, the ominous horn sounded
without the moat, and the Sheriff of the county, armed with all the
power of the law, entered the Castle of Cardiff, to call the Lady Le
Despenser to account for her repeated and contumacious neglect of the
royal command.
"Lady mine," said Maude, tenderly, kneeling by her, "the Sheriff is
here."
"It is come, then!" replied Constance very quietly. "Bring my little
maids to me. Let me kiss them once more ere they tear them away from
me. God help me to bear the rest!"
She kissed them both, and blessed them fervently, bidding them "be good
maids and serve God." Then she lay back again in the bed, and softly
turned her face to the wall so that the intruders would not see it.
"The Sheriff may enter in," she said in a low voice. "Lord, I have left
all, and have followed Thee!"
Does it seem a small matter for which to sacrifice all? The balances of
the Sanctuary are not used with weights of earth.
The Sheriff came in. Maude stood up boldly, indignantly, and demanded
to know wherefore he had come. The answer was what she expected.
"To seize the persons of the Lady Le Despenser and her daughters,
accused of disobedience to the law, and perverse contumacy, in that she
did deny to aid with money and men the search for one John Oldcastle, a
prison-breaker convict of heresy and sedition."
"Is he taken?" said Bertram almost involuntarily.
"Nay, not so yet; but the good Lord Powys is now a-hunting after him.
He that shall take him shall net a thousand marks thereby, and twenty
marks by the year further."
Maude drew a long sigh.
"Much good do they him!" exclaimed Bertram ironically.
Maude went back to the bed and spoke to her mistress.
"Lady, heard you what he said?"
There was no answer, and Maude spoke again. Still the silence was
unbroken. She touched the shoulder, and yet no response.
"An' it like you, Madam, you must arise and come with me," said the
Sheriff bluntly, as Maude bent over the sufferer. Then, with a low
moan, she sank on her knees by the bedside, and a cry which was not all
bitterness broke from her.
"`And thus hath Christ unwemmed kept Custance'!"
"What matter, wife?" said Bertram in a tone of sudden apprehension.
"No matter any more!" replied Maude, lifting her white face. "Master
Sheriff, she was dying ere you came to prison her,--on a sendel thread
[a linen cloth of the finest quality] hung her life: but ere you touched
her, God snapped yon thread, and set her free."
Ay, what matter?--though they seized on the poor relic of mortality
which had once been Constance Le Despenser?--though the mean vengeance
was taken of leaving her coffin unburied for four dreary years? "After
that, they had no more that they could do." It was only the withered
leaves that were left in their hands; the White Rose was free.
"What shall become of the young ladies, Master Sheriff?"
"Nay," growled the surly official, "the hen being departed, I lack
nought of the chicks. They may go whither it list them; only this
Castle and all therein is confiscate."
Maude turned to Isabel, now a tall statuesque maiden of sixteen years.
"I shall send to my Lord, of force," she answered coldly, "and desire
that he come and fetch me hence."
"And your sister, the Lady Alianora?"
The child was kneeling by the side of her dead mother, wrapped in
unutterable grief. Isabel cast a contemptuous glance upon her.
"No sister of mine!" she said in the same tone. "I cannot be burdened
with nameless childre."
For an instant Maude's indignation rose above both her discretion and
her sorrow. She cried--"Girl, God pardon you those cruel words!"--but
then with a strong effort she bridled her tongue, and sitting down by
the bed, drew the sobbing child's head upon her bosom.
"My poor homeless darling! doth none want thee, my dove?--not even thine
own mother's daughter?--Bertram, good husband, thou wilt not let
[hinder] me?--Sweet, come then with us, and be our daughter--to whom
beside thee God hath given none. Meseemeth as though He now saith,
`Take this child and nurse it for Me.' Lord, so be it!"
At the end of those four years, men's revenge was satiated, and
permission was given for the funeral of the unburied coffin. But they
laid her, as they had laid her son, far from the scene of her home, and
from the graves of her beloved. The long unused royal vault in the
Benedictine Abbey of Reading, in which the latest burial had taken place
nearly two hundred years before, was opened to receive its last tenant.
There she sleeps calmly, waiting for the resurrection morning.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three historical tableaux will complete the story.
First, a quiet little village home, where a knight and his wife are
calmly passing the later half of life. The knight was rendered useless
for battle some years ago by a severe wound, resulting in permanent
lameness. In the chimney-corner, distaff in hand, sits the dame,--a
small, slight woman, with gentle dark eyes, and a meek, loving
expression, which will make her face lovely to the close of life.
Opposite to her, occupied with another distaff, is a tall, fair, queenly
girl, who can surely be no daughter of the dame. By the knight's chair,
in hunting costume, stands a young man with a very open, pleasant
countenance, who is evidently pleading for some favour which the knight
and dame are a little reluctant to grant.
"Sir Bertram, not one word would she hear me, but bade me betake me
directly unto yourself. So here behold me to beseech your gentleness in
favour of my suit."
"Lord de Audley," said the knight, quietly, "this is not the first time
by many that I have heard of your name, neither of your goodness. You
seek to wed my daughter. But I would have you well aware that she hath
no portion: and what, I pray you, shall all your friends and lovers say
unto your wedding of a poor knight's portionless daughter?"
"Say! Let them say as they list!" cried the young man. "For portion, I
do account Mistress Nell portion and lineage in herself. And they be
sorry friends of mine that desire not my best welfare. Her do I love,
and only her will I wed."
Bertram looked across at his wife with a smile.
"Must we tell him, Dame?"
"I think we may, husband."
"Then know, Lord James de Audley, that you have asked more than you
wist. This maid is no daughter of mine. Wedding her, you should wed
not Nell Lyngern, a poor knight's daughter; but the Lady Alianora de
Holand, Countess of Kent, of the royal line, whose mother was daughter
unto a son of King Edward. Now what say you?"
The young man's face changed painfully.
"Sir, I thank you," he said in a low voice. "I am no man fit to mate
with the blood royal. Lady Countess, I cry you mercy for mine ignorance
and mine unwisdom."
"Tarry yet a moment, Lord de Audley," said Bertram, smiling again; for
the girl's colour came and went, the distaff trembled in her hand, and
her eyes sought his with a look of troubled entreaty. "Well, Nell?--
speak out, maiden mine!"
"Father!" she said in an agitated voice, "he loved Nell Lyngern!"
"Come, Lord James," said Bertram, laughing, "methinks you be not going
empty away. God bless you, man and maid!--only, good knight and true,
see thou leave not to love Nell Lyngern."
The picture fades away, and another comes on the scene.
The bar of the House of Lords. Peers in their Parliament robes fill all
the benches, and at their head sits the Regent,--Prince Humphrey, Duke
of Gloucester, the representative Rationalist of the fifteenth century.
He was no Papist, for he disliked and despised Romish superstitions; yet
no Lollard, for he was utterly incapable of receiving the things of the
Spirit of God. Henry the Fifth now lies entombed at Westminster, and on
the throne is his little son of nine years old, for whom his uncle
Humphrey reigns and rules. There comes forward to the bar a
fair-haired, stately woman, robed in the ermine and velvet of a
countess. She is asked to state her name and her business. The reply
comes in a clear voice.
"My name is Alianora Touchet, Lady de Audley; and I am the only daughter
and heir of Sir Edmund de Holand, sometime Earl of Kent, and of Custance
his wife, daughter unto Sir Edmund of Langley, Duke of York. I claim
the lands and coronets of this my father--the earldom of Kent, and the
barony of Wake de Lydel."
Her evidences are received and examined. The case shall be considered,
and the petitioner shall receive her answer that day month. She bows
and retires.
And then down from her eyrie, like a vengeful eagle, swoops the old
Duchess Joan of York--the sister of Kent, the step-mother of Constance--
who has two passions to gratify, her hatred to the memory of the one,
and her desire to retain her share of the estates of the other. She
draws up her answer to the claim,--astutely disappearing into the
background, and pushing forward her simpler sister Margaret, entirely
governed by her influence, as the prominent objector. She forgets
nothing. She urges the assent and consent of Henry the Fourth to the
marriage of Lucia, the presence of Constance at the ceremony, and every
point which can give weight to her objection. She prays, therefore--or
Margaret does for her--that the claim of the aforesaid Alianora may be
adjudged invalid, and the earldom of Kent extinct.
Lady Audley reappears on the day appointed. It is the same scene again,
with Duke Humphrey as president; who informs her, with calm judicial
impartiality, that her petition is rejected, her claim disallowed, and
her name branded with the bar sinister for ever. But as she leaves the
bar, denied and humiliated, her hand is drawn gently into another hand,
and a voice softly asks her--"Am not I better to thee than ten
coronets?"
And so they pass away.
The second dissolving view has disappeared; and the last slowly grows
before our sight.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A dungeon in the Tower of London. There is only a solitary prisoner,--a
man of fifty years of age, moderate in stature, but very slightly built,
with hands and feet which would be small even in a woman. His face has
never been handsome; there are deep furrows in the forehead, and
something more than time has turned the brown hair grey, and given to
the strongly-marked features that pensive, weary look, which his
countenance always wears when in repose. Ask his name of his gaolers,
and they will say it is "Sir Henry of Lancaster, the usurper;" but ask
it of himself, and a momentary flash lights up the sunken eyes as he
answers, "I am the King."
Neither Pharisee nor Sadducee is Henry the Sixth. He is not a Lollard,
simply because he never knew what Lollardism was. During his reign it
lay dormant--the old Wycliffite plant violently uprooted, the new
Lutheran shoots not yet visible above the ground. He was one of the
very few men divinely taught without ostensible human agency,--within
whom God is pleased to dwell by His Spirit at an age so early that the
dawn of the heavenly instinct cannot be perceived. From the follies,
the cruelties, and the iniquities of Romanism he shrank with that
Heaven-born instinct; and by the dim flickering light which he had, he
walked with God. His way led over very rough ground, full of rugged
stones, on which his weary feet were bruised and torn. But it was the
way Home.
And now, to-night, on the 22nd of May, 1471, the prisoner is very worn
and weary. He sits with a book before him--a small square volume, in
illuminated Latin, with delicately-wrought borders, and occasional
full-page illuminations; a Psalter, which came into his hands from those
of another prisoner in like case with himself, for the book once
belonged to Richard of Bordeaux [Note 2]. He turns slowly over the
leaves, now and then reading a sentence aloud:--sentences all of which
indicate a longing for home and rest.
"`My soul is also sore vexed; but Thou, O Lord, how long?'
"`Lord, how long wilt Thou look on? Rescue my soul from their
destructions, mine only one from the lions.'
"`And now, Lord, what wait I for?'
"`Who shall give me wings like a dove?--and I will flee away, and be at
rest!'" [Vulgate version].
At last the prisoner closed the book, and spoke in his own words to his
heavenly Friend--the only friend whom he had in all the world, except
the wife who was a helpless prisoner like himself.
"Lord God, Thy will be done! Grant unto me patience to await Thy time;
but, O fair Father, I lack rest!"
And just as his voice ceased, the heavy door rolled back, and the
messenger of rest came in.
He did not look like a messenger of rest. But all God's messengers are
not angels. And there was little indeed of the angel in this man's
composition. His figure would have been tall but for a deformity which
his enemies called a hump back, and his friends merely an overgrown
shoulder; and his face would have been handsome but for its morose,
scowling expression, which by no means betokened an amiable character.
The two cousins stood and looked at each other. The prisoner was the
grandson of Henry of Bolingbroke, and the visitor was the grandson of
Richard of Conisborough.
There were a few words on each side--contemptuous taunts, and sharp
accusations, on the one side,--low, patient replies on the other. Then
came a gleam of something flashing in the dim light, and the dagger of
the visitor was sheathed in the pale prisoner's heart.
At rest, at last: safe, and saved, and with God.
It was a cruel, brutal, cold-blooded murder. But was it nothing else?
Was there in it no operation of those Divine wheels which "grind slowly,
yet exceeding small?"--no visitation, by Him to whom vengeance
belongeth, of the sins of the guilty fathers upon the guiltless son--
vengeance for the broken heart of Richard of Bordeaux, for the judicial
murder of Richard of Conisborough, for the dreary imprisoned girlhood of
Anne Mortimer, and--last, not least--for the long, slow years of moral
torture, ending with the bitter cup forced into the dying hand of the
White Rose of Langley?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. Richard of Conisborough married secondly, and probably chiefly
with the view of securing a mother for his children, Maude Clifford, a
daughter of the great Lollard House of Clifford of Cumberland. She
survived him many years.
Note 2. The Psalter is still extant, in the British Museum: Cott. Ms.
Domit. A. xvii.