CHAPTER II. THE BLACK AND DARK NIGHT.
CHAPTER III. THE WEDDING OF THE HAWK AND THE DOVE.
CHAPTER IV. THE NORMAN PAGES.
CHAPTER V. A FRAY IN THE GREENWOOD.
CHAPTER VI. A REVELATION.
CHAPTER VII. FRUSTRATED.
CHAPTER VIII. VAE VICTIS.
CHAPTER IX. A HUNT IN THE WOODS.
CHAPTER X. EVEN THE TIGER LOVES ITS CUB.
CHAPTER XI. ALIVE--OR DEAD?
CHAPTER XII. THE ENIGMA SOLVED.
CHAPTER XIII. "COALS OF FIRE."
CHAPTER XIV. THE GUIDE.
CHAPTER XV. RESTORED TO LIFE.
CHAPTER XVI. RETRIBUTION.
CHAPTER XVII. THE ENGLISH HEIR TAKES POSSESSION.
CHAPTER XVIII. AT THE ABBEY OF ABINGDON.
CHAPTER XIX. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CONQUEROR.
CHAPTER XX. THE MESSENGER FROM THE CAMP OF REFUGE.
CHAPTER XXI. TWO DOCUMENTS.
CHAPTER XXII. THE CHAPTER HOUSE OF ABINGDON.
CHAPTER XXIII. "GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY."
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CASTLE OF OXFORD.
CHAPTER XXV. IN THE FOREST OF LEBANON.
CHAPTER XXVI. "QUANTUM MUTATUS AB ILLO HECTORE."
CHAPTER XXVII. THE FRIENDS WHO ONCE WERE FOES.
CHAPTER XXVIII. AESCENDUNE ONCE MORE.
PREFACE.
This little volume, now presented to the indulgence of the reader,
is the third of a series intended to illustrate the history and
manners of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, whom a great historian very
appropriately names "The Old English:" it does not claim the merit
of deep research, only of an earnest endeavour to be true to the
facts, and in harmony with the tone, of the eventful period of "The
Norman Conquest."
The origin of these tales has been mentioned in the prefaces to the
earlier volumes, but may be briefly repeated for those who have not
seen the former "Chronicles." The writer was for many years the
chaplain of a large school, and it was his desire to make the
leisure hours of Sunday bright and happy, in the absence of the
sports and pastimes of weekdays.
The expedient which best solved the difficulty was the narration of
original tales, embodying the most striking incidents in the
history of the Church and of the nation, or descriptive of the
lives of our Christian forefathers under circumstances of
difficulty and trial.
One series of these tales, of which the first was Aemilius, a tale
of the Decian and Valerian persecutions, was based on the history
of the Early Church; the second series, on early English history,
and entitled "The Chronicles of Aescendune."
The first of these Chronicles described the days of St. Dunstan,
and illustrated the story of Edwy and Elgiva; the second, the later
Danish invasions, and the struggle between the Ironside and Canute;
the third is in the hands of the reader.
The leading events in each tale are historical, and the writer has
striven most earnestly not to tamper with the facts of history; he
has but attempted to place his youthful readers, to the best of his
power, in the midst of the exciting scenes of earlier days--to make
the young of the Victorian era live in the days when the Danes
harried the shires of Old England, or the Anglo-Saxon power and
glory collapsed, for the time, under the iron grasp of the Norman
Conqueror.
Sad and terrible were those latter days to the English of every
degree, and although we cannot doubt that the England of the
present day is greatly the better for the admixture of Norman
blood, nor forget that the modern English are the descendants of
victor and vanquished alike,--yet our sympathy must be with our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers, in their crushing humiliation and bondage.
The forcible words of Thierry, in summing up the results of the
Conquest, may well be brought before the reader. He tells us that
we must not imagine a change of government, or the triumph of one
competitor over the other, but the intrusion of a whole people into
the bosom of another people, broken up by the invaders, the
scattered community being only admitted into the new social order
as personal property--"ad cripti glebae," to quote the very
language of the ancient acts; so that many, even of princely
descent, sank into the ranks of peasants and artificers--nay, of
thralls and bondsmen--compelled to till the land they once owned.
We must imagine, he adds, two nations on the surface of the same
country: the Normans, rich and free from taxes; the English (for
the term Saxon is an anachronism), poor, dependent, and oppressed
with burdens; the one living in vast mansions or embattled castles,
the other in thatched cabins or half-ruined huts; the one people
idle, happy, doing nought but fight or hunt, the other, men of
sorrow and toil--labourers and mechanics; on the one side, luxury
and insolence; on the other, misery and envy,--not the envy of the
poor at the sight of the riches of others, but of the despoiled in
presence of the spoilers.
These countries touched each other in every point, and yet were
more distinct than if the sea rolled between them. Each had its
language: in the abbeys and castles they only spoke French; in the
huts and cabins, the old English.
No words can describe the insolence and disdain of the conquerors,
which is feebly pictured in the Etienne de Malville of the present
tale. The very name of which the descendants of these Normans grew
proud, and which they adorned by their deeds on many a field of
battle--the English name--was used as a term of the utmost
contempt. "Do you think me an Englishman?" was the inquiry of
outraged pride.
Not only Normans, but Frenchmen, Bretons--nay, Continentals of all
nations, flocked into England as into an uninhabited country, slew
and took possession.
"Ignoble grooms," says an old chronicler, "did as they pleased with
the best and noblest, and left them nought to wish for but death.
These licentious knaves were amazed at themselves; they went mad
with pride and astonishment, at beholding themselves so
powerful--at having servants richer than their own fathers had been
{i}." Whatever they willed they deemed permissible to do; they
shed blood at random, tore the bread from the very mouths of the
famished people, and took everything--money, goods, lands {ii}.
Such was the fate which befell the once happy Anglo-Saxons.
And it was not till after a hundred and forty years of slavery,
that the separation of England from Normandy, in the days of the
cowardly and cruel King John, and the signing of Magna Carta, gave
any real relief to the oppressed; while it was later still, not
till after the days of Simon de Montfort, when resistance to new
foreigners had welded Norman and English into one, that the severed
races became really united, as Englishmen alike. Then the greatest
of the Plantagenets, Edward the First, the pupil of the man he slew
at Evesham, was proud to call himself an Englishman--the first
truly English king since the days of the hapless Harold; and one of
whom, in spite of the misrepresentations of Scottish historians and
novelists, English boys may be justly proud: his noble legislation
was the foundation of that modern English jurisprudence, in which
all are alike in the eyes of the law.
Not long after came the terrible "hundred years war," wherein
Englishmen, led by the descendants of their Norman and French
conquerors, retaliated upon Normandy and France the woes they had
themselves endured. Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt avenged
Hastings; the siege of Rouen under Henry the Fifth was a strange
Nemesis. During that century the state of France was almost as sad
as that of England during the earlier period; it was but a field
for English youth to learn the arts of warfare at the expense of
the wretched inhabitants.
But these events, sad or glorious, as the reader, according to his
age, may consider them, were long subsequent to the date of our
tale; they may, however, well be before the mind of the youthful
student as he sighs over the woes of the Conquest.
Two remarks which the writer has made in the prefaces to the former
Chronicles he will venture to repeat, as essential to the subject
in each case.
He has not, as is so common with authors who treat of this period,
clothed the words of his speakers in an antique phraseology. He
feels sure that men and boys spoke a language as free and easy in
the times in question as our compatriots do now. We cannot present
the Anglo-Saxon or Norman French they really used, and to load the
work with words culled from Chaucer would be simply an anachronism;
hence he has freely translated the speech of his characters into
the modern vernacular.
Secondly, he always calls the Anglo-Saxons as they called
themselves, "English;" the idea prevalent some time since, and
which even finds its place in the matchless story of Ivanhoe, or in
that striking novelette by Charles Mackay, "The Camp of Refuge,"
that they called themselves or were called "Saxons," is now utterly
exploded among historians. It is true the Welsh, the Picts, and
Scots called them by that designation, and do still; {iii} but
they had but one name for themselves, as the pages of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle make manifest--"Englishmen." Nor did their
Norman conquerors affect to call them by any other title, although
in their mouths the honoured appellation was, as we have said, but
a term of reproach {iv}.
The author has chosen his two heroes, Wilfred and Etienne, if
heroes they can be called, as types of the English and Norman youth
of the period, alike in their merits and in their vices. The
effects of adversity on the one, and of success and dominant pride
on the other--happily finally subdued in each case beneath the
Cross on Calvary--form the chief attempt at "character painting" in
the tale.
It is not without a feeling of regret that he sends forth from his
hands the last of these "Chronicles," and bids farewell to the real
and imaginary characters who have seemed to form a part of his
world, almost as if he could grasp their hands or look into their
faces.
They are interwoven, too, with many treasured remembrances of past
days, of the listening crowd of boys, now scattered through the
world, and lost to the sight of the narrator, but who once by their
eager interest encouraged the speaker, and at whose request the
earliest of these tales was written. Happy indeed would he be,
could he hope the written page would arouse the same interest,
which the spoken narrative undoubtedly created, or the tales had
never been published.
And now the writer must leave his tale to speak for itself, only
taking this opportunity of assuring old friends, whose remembrances
of a vanished past may be quickened by the story, how dear the
memory of those days is to him; and to show this, however feebly,
he begs leave to dedicate this tale to those who first heard it, on
successive Sunday evenings, in the old schoolroom of All Saints'
School, Bloxham.
A. D. C.
CHAPTER I. THE ANGLO-SAXON HALL.
It was the evening of Thursday, the fifth of October, in year of
grace one thousand and sixty and six.
The setting sun was slowly sinking towards a dense bank of clouds,
but as yet he gladdened the woods and hills around the old hall of
Aescendune with his departing light.
The watchman on the tower gazed upon a fair scene outspread before
him; at his feet rolled the river, broad and deep, spanned by a
rude wooden bridge; behind him rose the hills, crowned with forest;
on his right hand lay the lowly habitations of the tenantry, the
farmhouses of the churls, the yet humbler dwellings of the thralls
or tillers of the soil; the barns and stables were filled with the
produce of a goodly harvest; the meadows full of sheep and oxen--a
scene of rich pastoral beauty.
On his left hand a road led to the northeast, following at first
the upward course of the river, until it left the stream and
penetrated into the thick woodland.
Just as the orb of day was descending into the dense bank of cloud
afore mentioned, the watchman marked the sheen of spear and lance,
gilded by the departing rays, where the road left the forest.
Immediately he blew the huge curved horn which he carried at his
belt; and at the blast the inhabitants of the castle and village
poured forth; loud shouts of joy rent the air--the deeper
exclamations of the aged, the glad huzzas of children--and all
hastened along the road to greet the coming warriors.
For well they knew that a glorious victory had gladdened the arms
of old England; that at Stamford Bridge the proud Danes and
Norwegians had sustained a crushing defeat, and been driven to seek
refuge in their ships, and that these warriors, now approaching,
were their own sons, husbands, or fathers, who had gone forth with
Edmund, Thane of Aescendune, to fight under the royal banner of
Harold, the hero king.
Who shall describe the meeting, the glad embraces, the
half-delirious joy with which those home-bred soldiers were
welcomed? No hirelings they, who fought for mere glory, or lust of
gold, but husbands, fathers of families--men who had left the
ploughshare and pruning hook to fight for hearth and altar.
"Home again"--home, saved from the fire and sword of the Northman,
of whom tradition told so many dread stories--stories well known at
Aescendune, where a young son of the then thane fifty years agone
had died a martyr's death, pierced through and through by arrows,
shot slowly to death because he would not save himself by denying
his Lord {v}.
At that dismal period the whole district had been devastated with
fire and sword, and there were old men amongst the crowd who well
remembered the destruction of the former hall and village by the
ferocious Danes. And now God had heard their litanies: "From the
fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us," and had averted the
scourge through the stout battle-axes and valiant swords of these
warrior peasants and their noble leaders, such as Edmund, son of
Alfgar.
Amidst all this joy the Lady Winifred of Aescendune stood upon the
steps of the great hall to receive her lord, fair as the lily, a
true Englishwoman, a loving wife and tender mother.
And by her, one on each side, stood her two children, Wilfred and
Edith. He was an English boy of the primitive type, with his brown
hair, his sunburnt yet handsome features, the fruit of country air
and woodland exercise; she, the daughter, a timid, retiring girl,
her best type the lily, the image of her mother.
And now the noble rider, the thane and father, descended from his
war steed, and threw himself into the arms of the faithful partner
of his joys and sorrows, who awaited his embrace; there was a
moment of almost reverential silence as he pressed her to his manly
breast, and then arose a cry which made the welkin ring:
"Long life to Edmund and Winifred of Aescendune!"
The bonfires blazed and illuminated the night; the bells (there
were three at S. Wilfred's priory hard by) rang with somewhat
dissonant clamour; strains of music, which would seem very rough
now, greeted the ears; but none the less hearty was the joy.
"The comet--what do you say of the comet now?" said one.
"That it boded ill to the Northmen," was the reply of his
neighbour.
They referred to that baleful visitor, the comet of 1066, which had
turned night into day with its lurid and ghastly light, so that the
very waves of the sea seemed molten in its beams, while the beasts
of the field howled as if they scented the coming banquet of flesh
afar off. Well might they stand aghast who gazed upon this awful
portent, which had seemed to set the southern heavens on fire.
The banquet was spread in the great hall, and the returned warriors
supped with their lord ere they retired to gladden their own
families. Little was said till the desire for eating and drinking
was appeased. But the minstrels sang many a song of the glories of
the English race, particularly of the thanes of Aescendune, and of
the best and noblest warrior amongst them--Alfgar, the companion of
the Ironside, the father of the present earl, who had been borne to
his grave full of years and honour amidst the tears of his people,
in the very last year of the Confessor.
But when the boards were removed, the thanks rendered to the God
who had given all, the huge fire replenished, the wine and mead
handed round, then Edmund the Thane rose amidst the expectant
silence of his retainers.
"The health of Harold, our noble king, elected to that post by the
suffrages of all true Englishmen! Nobler title no king on earth may
claim."
It was drunk with acclamation.
"The memory of our brethren who went forth with us from Aescendune,
and have left their bones at Stamford Bridge. Weep not for them,
they have fallen in no unjust war, but for hearth and altar, for
their country and their God; and this I swear, that while I rule at
Aescendune, their souls shall never lack a mass at St. Wilfred's
altar, nor their widows and orphans food and shelter."
This toast was drunk in solemn silence, and Edmund continued:
"Our toils are not yet over; we have one more battle to fight, and
that may serve to free us from further need of fighting for the
rest of our lives. William the Norman landed with sixty thousand
men in Sussex, as many of you already know, while we were in
Northumbria, or I trow he had never landed at all. The day after
tomorrow we don our harness again to meet this new foe, but it will
be child's play compared with that which is past. Shall we, who
have conquered the awful Harold Hardrada, the victor of a hundred
fights, fear these puny Frenchmen? They have come in a large fleet;
a fishing boat will be too roomy to take them back; their bones
will whiten and enrich the fields of Sussex for generations."
"The day after tomorrow!--start again the day after tomorrow, oh,
my lord!" said a gentle, pleading voice.
"It must be so, my love; but why doubt that the God who has already
given us such an earnest of victory will protect us still, and
preserve us to each other?"
All the charm of the banquet was gone to the devoted wife, but
young Wilfred pressed to his father's side.
"Thou wilt take me this time, father."
"Why, my boy, thou art barely fifteen, not old enough or strong
enough yet to cope with men."
"But these Normans are hardly men."
"I fear me too much for thy tender age."
"Oh, father, let me go."
"Nay, thy mother needs thy care."
"But I must begin some day, and what day better than this? I can
fight by thy side."
"There is really little danger, my wife," he said, in reply to the
pleading looks of the mother; "I would not take him to meet the
Danes, but there is less danger in these dainty Frenchmen. The
grandson of Alfgar should be encouraged, not restrained, when he
seeks to play the man, even as we repress not, but stimulate the
first feeble attempts of the young falcon to strike its prey."
The Lady Winifred said no more at the time, for the duties of a
host demanded her lord's care. The moon was high in the heavens ere
the last song was sung, the last tale told, and the guests
dismissed with these parting words:
"And now, my merry men all, your own homes claim your presence. One
day ye may safely give to rest; the day after tomorrow we march
again; for Harold will complete his levies on the 10th, and we must
not be behind. Goodnight! Saints and angels guard your well-deserved
rest."
The brief period of rest passed rapidly away, and the last night
came--the last before departure for the fatal field of Senlac. Oh,
how little did the Englishmen who left their homes with such
confidence dream of the fatal collapse of their fame and glory
which awaited them! They fell into the fatal error of underestimating
their foe. Had it been otherwise, a host had assembled which had crushed
the foreign invader; whereas there were few thanes in the midlands, and
scarce any in the northern shires, who thought it worth while to follow
Harold to Sussex.
So there were many who cried, "We have defended the northern shores
and beaten the Danes; let the men of Sussex take their turn with
these puny Frenchmen; we will turn out fast enough if they be
beaten."
Alas! it was too late to "turn out" when the only Englishman whose
genius equalled that of William lay dead on the fatal field, and
there was no king in Israel.
Amidst the general confidence begotten of the victory at Stamford
Bridge there were some upon whom the dread shadow of the future had
fallen, and who realised the crisis; foremost amongst these was the
patriot king himself. He knew the foe, and was perhaps the only man
in the country who did; he knew that civilisation had only
sharpened the genius of the descendants of Rollo, without abating
one jot of their prowess; that they were more terrible now than
when they ravaged Normandy, two centuries earlier.
Yet he flinched not from the struggle.
And amidst all the confidence of her dependants, some such shadow
seemed to have fallen on the Lady Winifred. An unaccountable
presentiment of evil weighed upon her spirits. She could not leave
her husband one moment while he was yet spared to her; ever and
anon she was surprised into tender words of endearment, foreign to
the general tenor of her daily life, which partook of the reserve
of an unemotional age.
She begged hard that Wilfred might remain at home, but only
prevailed so far as to obtain a promise that he should not actually
enter the battle, and with this she was forced to rest content, to
the great delight of the boy.
That last night--how brief it seemed! How frequent the repetition
of the same loving words! How fervent the aspiration for the day of
their happy reunion, the danger over!--how chilling the
unexpressed, unspoken doubt, whether it would ever take place! Yet
it seemed folly to doubt, after Stamford Bridge.
The supper, ordinarily, in those times, the social meal of the day,
was comparatively a silent one. The very tones of the harp seemed
modulated in a minor key, contrasting strongly with the jubilant
notes of the previous night; and at an early hour, the husband and
wife retired to their bower, to sit long in the narrow embrasure of
the window, looking out on the familiar moonlit scene, her head on
his breast, ere they retired to rest.
"Dear heart, thou seemest dull tonight, and yet thou wert not so
when we parted for the last fight. Thou didst thy best then to
cheer thy lord."
"I know not why it is, but a chill foreboding seems to distress my
spirits now, my Edmund; it must be mere weakness, but I feel as if
I should never sit by thy dear side again."
"We are in God's hands, my dear one, and must trust all to Him. I
go forth at the call of duty, and thou couldst not bid me to stay
at home that men may call me 'niddering.'"
"Nay, nay, my lord, forgive thy wife's weakness; but why take
Wilfred too?"
"He will be in no danger; he shall tarry with old Guthlac by the
stuff. There will be many present like him, and whatever may chance
to me or others, there can be no danger to them, for victory must
follow our Harold. Hadst thou seen him at the Bridge thou couldst
not doubt; he is the Ironside alive again, and as great as a
general as a warrior.
"And now, dearest, a faint heart is faithlessness to God; let us
commit ourselves in prayer to Him, and sleep together in peace."
The eastern sky was aglow with the coming dawn when they arose.
Soon all was bustle in the precincts, the neighing of horses, the
clatter of arms; then came the hasty meal, the long lingering
farewell; and the husband and father rode away with his faithful
retainers; his boy, full of spirits, by his side, waving his plumed
cap to mother and sister as they watched the retiring band until
lost in the distance.
They retired, the Lady Winifred and her daughter Edith, to the
summit of the solitary tower, which arose over the entrance gate of
the hall; there, with eyes fast filling with tears, they watched
the departing band as it entered into the forest, then gorgeous
with all the tints of autumn, the golden tints of the ash and elm,
the reddish-brown of the beech--all combining to make a picture,
exceeding even the tender hues of spring in beauty.
But all this loveliness was the beauty of decay, the prelude to the
fall of the leaf; the forests were but arrayed in their richest
garb for the coming death of winter.
Into these forests, prophetic in their hues of decay, glided the
brilliant train of Edmund, the last English lord of Aescendune.
Farewell, noble hearts! Happier far ye who go forth to die for your
country than they who shall live to witness her captivity.