through even that unfriendly throng. For, to stand the test of a “wager
of battle,” or the “judgment of God,” as the savage contest was called,
was the last resort of any one accused of treason or of crime. It meant
no less than a “duel to the death” between the accuser and the accused
or their accepted champions, and, upon the result of the duel hung the
lives of those in dispute. And the Princess Edith’s glove lying on the
floor of the Abbey hall was her assertion that she had spoken the truth
and was willing to risk her life in proof of her innocence.
Edgar the Atheling, peace-lover, though he was, would gladly have
accepted the post of champion for his niece, but, as one also involved
in the charge of treason, such action was denied him.
For the moment, the Red King’s former admiration for this brave young
princess caused him to waver; but those were days when suspicion and
jealousy rose above all nobler traits. His face grew stern again.
“Ordgar of Oxford,” he said, “take up the glove!” and Edith knew who was
her accuser. Then the King asked: “Who standeth as champion for Edgar
the Atheling and this maid, his niece?”
Almost before the words were spoken young Robert Fitz Godwine had sprung
to Edith’s side.
“That would I, lord king, if a young squire might appear against a
belted knight!”
“Ordgar of Oxford fights not with boys!” said the accuser
contemptuously.
The king’s savage humor broke out again.
“Face him with your own page, Sir Ordgar,” he said, with a grim laugh.
“Boy against boy would be a fitting wager for a young maid’s life.” But
the Saxon knight was in no mood for sport.
“Nay, beausire; this is no child’s play,” he said. “I care naught
for this girl. I stand as champion for the king against yon traitor
Atheling, and if the maiden’s cause is his, why then against her too.
This is a man’s quarrel.”
Young Robert would have spoken yet again as his face flushed hot with
anger at the knight’s contemptuous words. But a firm hand was laid upon
his shoulder, and a strong voice said:
“Then is it mine, Sir Ordgar. If between man and man, then will I, with
the gracious permission of our lord the king, stand as champion for this
maiden here and for my good lord, the noble Atheling, whose liegeman
and whose man am I, next to you, lord king.” And, taking the mate to the
glove which the Princess Edith had flung down in defiance, he thrust it
into the guard of his cappe. line, or iron skull-cap, in token that
he, Godwine of Winchester, the father of the boy Robert, was the young
girl’s champion.
Three days after, in the tilt-yard of Gloucester Castle, the wager of
battle was fought. It was no gay tournament show with streaming banners,
gorgeous lists, gayly dressed ladies, flower-bedecked balconies, and all
the splendid display of a tourney of the knights, of which you read
in the stories of romance and chivalry. It was a solemn and sombre
gathering in which all the arrangements suggested only death and gloom,
while the accused waited in suspense, knowing that halter and fagot
were prepared for them should their champion fall. In quaint and crabbed
Latin the old chronicler, John of Fordun, tells the story of the fight,
for which there is neither need nor space here. The glove of each
contestant was flung into the lists by the judge, and the dispute
committed for settlement to the power of God and their own good swords.
It is a stirring picture of those days of daring and of might, when
force took the place of justice, and the deadliest blows were the only
convincing arguments. But, though supported by the favor of the king and
the display of splendid armor, Ordgar’s treachery had its just reward.
Virtue triumphed, and vice was punished. Even while treacherously
endeavoring (after being once disarmed) to stab the brave Godwine with
a knife which he had concealed in his boot, the false Sir Ordgar was
overcome, confessed the falsehood of his charge against Edgar the
Atheling and Edith his niece, and, as the quaint old record has it,
“The strength of his grief and the multitude of his wounds drove out his
impious soul.”
So young Edith was saved; and, as is usually the case with men of his
character, the Red King’s humor changed completely. The victorious
Godwine received the arms and lands of the dead Ordgar; Edgar the
Atheling was raised high in trust and honor; the throne of Scotland,
wrested from the Red Donald, was placed once more in the family of
King Malcolm, and King William Rufus himself became the guardian and
protector of the Princess Edith.
And when, one fatal August day, the Red King was found pierced by an
arrow under the trees of the New Forest, his younger brother, Duke
Henry, whom men called Beauclerc, “the good scholar,” for his love of
learning and of books, ascended the throne of England as King Henry I.
And the very year of his accession, on the 11th of November, 1100, he
married, in the Abbey of Westminster, the Princess Edith of Scotland,
then a fair young lady of scarce twenty-one. At the request of her
husband she took, upon her coronation day, the Norman name of Matilda,
or Maud, and by this name she is known in history and among the queens
of England.
So scarce four and thirty years after the Norman conquest, a Saxon
princess sat upon the throne of Norman England, the loving wife of the
son of the very man by whom Saxon England was conquered.
“Never, since the battle of Hastings,” says Sir Francis Palgrave, the
historian, “had there been such a joyous day as when Queen Maud was
crowned.” Victors and vanquished, Normans and Saxons, were united at
last, and the name of “Good Queen Maud” was long an honored memory among
the people of England.
And she was a good queen. In a time of bitter tyranny, when the common
people were but the serfs and slaves of the haughty and cruel barons,
this young queen labored to bring in kindlier manners and more gentle
ways. Beautiful in face, she was still more lovely in heart and life.
Her influence upon her husband, Henry the scholar, was seen in the
wise laws he made, and the “Charter of King Henry” is said to have been
gained by her intercession. This important paper was the first step
toward popular liberty. It led the way to Magna Charta, and finally
to our own Declaration of Independence. The boys and girls of America,
therefore, in common with those of England, can look back with interest
and affection upon the romantic story of “Good Queen Maud,” the
brave-hearted girl who showed herself wise and fearless both in the
perilous mist at Edinburgh, and, later still, in the yet greater dangers
of “the black lists of Gloucester.”
JACQUELINE OF HOLLAND: THE GIRL OF THE LAND OF FOGS, A.D. 1414.
Count William of Hainault, of Zealand and Friesland, Duke of Bavaria
and Sovereign Lord of Holland, held his court in the great, straggling
castle which he called his “hunting lodge,” near to the German Ocean,
and since known by the name of “The Hague.” (1)
(1) “The Hague” is a contraction of the Dutch’s Gravenhage--the haag, or
“hunting lodge,” of the Graf, or count.
Count William was a gallant and courtly knight, learned in all the ways
of chivalry, the model of the younger cavaliers, handsome in person,
noble in bearing, the surest lance in the tilting-yard, and the stoutest
arm in the foray.
Like “Jephtha, Judge of Israel,” of whom the mock-mad Hamlet sang to
Polonius, Count William had
“One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well;”
and, truth to tell, this fair young Jacqueline, the little “Lady of
Holland,” as men called her,--but whom Count William, because of her
fearless antics and boyish ways, called “Dame Jacob,” (1)--loved her
knightly father with equal fervor.
(1) Jaqueline is the French rendering of the Dutch Jakobine--the
feminine of Jakob, or James.
As she sat, that day, in the great Hall of the Knights in the massive
castle at The Hague, she could see, among all the knights and nobles
who came from far and near to join in the festivities at Count William’s
court, not one that approached her father in nobility of bearing or
manly strength--not even her husband.
Her husband? Yes. For this little maid of thirteen had been for eight
years the wife of the Dauphin of France, the young Prince John of
Touraine, to whom she had been married when she was scarce five years
old and he barely nine. Surrounded by all the pomp of an age of glitter
and display, these royal children lived in their beautiful castle of
Quesnoy, in Flanders,(1) when they were not, as at the time of our
story, residents at the court of the powerful Count William of Holland.
(1) Now Northeastern France.
Other young people were there, too,--nobles and pages and little
ladies-in-waiting; and there was much of the stately ceremonial and
flowery talk that in those days of knighthood clothed alike the fears of
cowards and the desires of heroes. For there have always been heroes and
cowards in the world.
And so, between all these young folk, there was much boastful talk and
much harmless gossip how the little Lady of Courtrai had used the wrong
corner of the towel yesterday; how the fat Duchess of Enkhuysen had
violated the laws of all etiquette by placing the wrong number of
finger-bowls upon her table on St. Jacob’s Day; and how the stout young
Hubert of Malsen had scattered the rascal merchants of Dort at their
Shrovetide fair.
Then uprose the young Lord of Arkell.
“Hold, there!” he cried hotly. “This Hubert of Malsen is but a craven,
sirs, if he doth say the merchants of Dort are rascal cowards. Had they
been fairly mated, he had no more dared to put his nose within the gates
of Dort than dare one of you here to go down yonder amid Count William’s
lions!”
“Have a care, friend Otto,” said the little Lady of Holland, with
warning finger; “there is one here, at least, who dareth to go amid the
lions--my father, sir.”
“I said nothing of him, madam,” replied Count Otto. “I did mean these
young red hats here, who do no more dare to bait your father’s lions
than to face the Cods of Dort in fair and equal fight.”
At this bold speech there was instant commotion. For the nobles and
merchants of Holland, four centuries and a half ago, were at open strife
with one another. The nobles saw in the increasing prosperity of the
merchants the end of their own feudal power and tyranny. The merchants
recognized in the arrogant nobles the only bar to the growth of
Holland’s commercial enterprise. So each faction had its leaders, its
partisans, its badges, and its followers. Many and bloody were the feuds
and fights that raged through all those low-lying lands of Holland, as
the nobles, or “Hooks,” as they were called--distinguishable by their
big red hats,--and the merchants, or “Cods,” with their slouch hats of
quiet gray, struggled for the lead in the state. And how they DID hate
one another!
Certain of the younger nobles, however, who were opposed to the reigning
house of Holland, of which Count William, young Jacqueline’s father,
was the head, had espoused the cause of the merchants, seeing in their
success greater prosperity and wealth for Holland. Among these had been
the young Lord of Arkell, now a sort of half prisoner at Count William’s
court because of certain bold attempts to favor the Cods in his
own castle of Arkell. His defiant words therefore raised a storm of
protests.
“Nay, then, Lord of Arkell,” said the Dauphin John, “you, who prate so
loudly, would better prove your words by some sign of your own valor.
You may have dared fight your lady mother, who so roundly punished you
therefor, but a lion hath not the tender ways of a woman. Face YOU
the lions, lord count, and I will warrant me they will not prove as
forbearing as did she.”
It was common talk at Count William’s court that the brave Lady of
Arkell, mother of the Count Otto, had made her way, disguised, into
we castle of her son, had herself lowered the drawbridge, admitted her
armed retainers, overpowered and driven out her rebellious son; and that
then, relenting, she had appealed to Count William to pardon the lad and
to receive him at court as hostage for his own fealty. So this fling of
the Dauphin’s cut deep.
But before the young Otto could return an angry answer, Jacqueline had
interfered.
“Nay, nay, my lord,” she said to her husband, the Dauphin; “‘t is not a
knightly act thus to impeach the honor of a noble guest.”
But now the Lord of Arkell had found his tongue.
“My lord prince,” he said, bowing low with stately courtesy, “if, as
my lady mother and good Count William would force me, I am to be loyal
vassal to you, my lieges here, I should but follow where you dare to
lead. Go YOU into the lions’ den, lord prince, and I will follow you,
though it were into old Hercules’ very teeth.”
It was a shrewd reply, and covered as good a “double-dare” as ever one
boy made to another. Some of the manlier of the young courtiers indeed
even dared to applaud. But the Dauphin John was stronger in tongue than
in heart.
“Peste!” he cried contemptuously. “‘T is a fool’s answer and a fool’s
will. And well shall we see now how you will sneak out of it all. See,
Lord of Arkell, you who can prate so loudly of Cods and lions: here
before all, I dare you to face Count William’s lions yourself!”
The young Lord of Arkell was in his rich court suit--a tight-fitting,
great-sleeved silk jacket, rich, violet chausses, or tights, and pointed
shoes. But without a word, with scarce a look toward his challenger, he
turned to his nearest neighbor, a brave Zealand lad, afterward noted in
Dutch history--Francis von Borselen.
“Lend me your gabardine, friend Franz, will you not?” he said.
The young von Borselen took from the back of the settle, over which it
was flung, his gabardine--the long, loose gray cloak that was a sort of
overcoat in those days of queer costume.
“It is here, my Otto,” he said.
The Lord of Arkell drew the loose gray cloak over his rich silk suit,
and turned toward the door.
“Otto von Arkell lets no one call him fool or coward, lord prince,” he
said. “What I have dared you all to do, _I_ dare do, if you do not. See,
now: I will face Count William’s lions!”
The Princess Jacqueline sprang up in protest.
“No, no; you shall not!” she cried. “My lord prince did but jest, as did
we all. John,” she said, turning appealingly to her young husband, who
sat sullen and unmoved, “tell him you meant no such murderous test. My
father!” she cried, turning now toward Count William, whose attention
had been drawn to the dispute, “the Lord of Arkell is pledged to face
your lions!”
Count William of Holland dearly loved pluck and nerve.
“Well, daughter mine,” he said, “then will he keep his pledge. Friend
Otto is a brave young gallant, else had he never dared raised spear and
banner, as he did, against his rightful liege.”
“But, my father,” persisted the gentle-hearted girl, “spear and banner
are not lions’ jaws. And surely you may not in honor permit the wilful
murder of a hostage.”
“Nay, madam, have no fear,” the Lord of Arkell said, bending in
courteous recognition of her interest; “that which I do of mine own free
will is no murder, even should it fail.”
And he hastened from the hall.
A raised gallery looked down into the spacious inclosure in which Count
William kept the living specimens of his own princely badge of the lion.
And here the company gathered to see the sport.
With the gray gabardine drawn but loosely over his silken suit, so
that he might, if need be, easily slip from it, Otto von Arkell boldly
entered the inclosure.
“Soho, Juno! up, Hercules; hollo, up, Ajax!” cried Count William,
from the balcony. “Here cometh a right royal playfellow--up, up, my
beauties!” and the great brutes, roused by the voice of their master,
pulled themselves up, shook themselves awake, and stared at the
intruder.
Boldly and without hesitation, while all the watchers had eyes but for
him alone, the young Lord of Arkell walked straight up to Hercules,
the largest of the three, and laid his hand caressingly upon the shaggy
mane. Close to his side pressed Juno, the lioness, and, so says the
record of the old Dutch chronicler, von Hildegaersberch, “the lions did
him no harm; he played with them as if they had been dogs.”
But Ajax, fiercest of the three, took no notice of the lad. Straight
across his comrades he looked to where, scarce a rod behind the daring
lad, came another figure, a light and graceful form in clinging robes of
blue and undergown of cloth of gold--the Princess Jacqueline herself!
The watchers in the gallery followed the lion’s stare, and saw, with
horror, the advancing figure of this fair young girl. A cry of terror
broke from every lip. The Dauphin John turned pale with fright, and
Count William of Holland, calling out, “Down, Ajax! back, girl, back!”
sprang to his feet as if he would have vaulted over the gallery rail.
But before he could act, Ajax himself had acted. With a bound he
cleared the intervening space and crouched at the feet of the fair young
Princess Jacqueline!
The lions must have been in remarkably good humor on that day, for, as
the records tell us, they did no harm to their visitors. Ajax slowly
rose and looked up into the girl’s calm face. Then the voice of
Jacqueline rang out fresh and clear as, standing with her hand buried in
the lion’s tawny mane, she raised her face to the startled galleries.
“You who could dare and yet dared not to do!” she cried, “it shall not
be said that in all Count William’s court none save the rebel Lord of
Arkell dared to face Count William’s lions!”
The Lord of Arkell sprang to his comrade’s side. With a hurried word of
praise he flung the gabardine about her, grasped her arm, and bade her
keep her eyes firmly fixed upon the lions; then, step by step, those two
foolhardy young persons backed slowly out of the danger into which they
had so thoughtlessly and unnecessarily forced themselves.
The lions’ gate closed behind them with a clang; the shouts of approval
and of welcome sounded from the thronging gallery, and over all they
heard the voice of the Lord of Holland mingling commendation and praise
with censure for the rashness of their action.
And it WAS a rash and foolish act. But we must remember that those
were days when such feats were esteemed as brave and valorous. For the
Princess Jaqueline of Holland was reared in the school of so-called
chivalry and romance, which in her time was fast approaching its
end. She was, indeed, as one historian declares, the last heroine
of knighthood. Her very titles suggest the days of chivalry. She was
Daughter of Holland, Countess of Ponthieu, Duchess of Berry, Lady of
Crevecoeur, of Montague and Arloeux. Brought up in the midst of tilts
and tournaments, of banquets and feasting, and all the lavish display of
the rich Bavarian court, she was, as we learn from her chroniclers,
the leader of adoring knights and vassals, the idol of her parents,
the ruler of her soft-hearted boy husband, an expert falconer, a daring
horsewoman, and a fearless descendant of those woman warriors of her
race, Margaret the Empress, and Philippa the Queen, and of a house that
traced its descent through the warlike Hohenstaufens back to Charlemagne
himself.
All girls admire bravery, even though not themselves personally
courageous. It is not, therefore, surprising that this intrepid and
romance-reared young princess, the wife of a lad for whom she never
especially cared, and whose society had for political reasons been
forced upon her, should have placed as the hero of her admiration, next
to her own fearless father, not the Dauphin John of France, but this
brave young rebel lad, Otto, the Lord of Arkell.
But the joyous days of fete and pleasure at Quesnoy, at Paris, and The
Hague were fast drawing to a close. On the fourth of April, 1417, the
Dauphin John died by poisoning, in his father’s castle at Compiegne--the
victim of those terrible and relentless feuds that were then disgracing
and endangering the feeble throne of France.
The dream of future power and greatness as Queen of France, in which the
girl wife of the Dauphin had often indulged, was thus rudely dispelled,
and Jacqueline returned to her father’s court in Holland, no longer
crown princess and heiress to a throne, but simply “Lady of Holland.”
But in Holland, too, sorrow was in store for her. Swiftly following the
loss of her husband, the Dauphin, came the still heavier blow of her
father’s death. On the thirtieth of May, 1417, Count William died in his
castle of Bouchain, in Hainault, and his sorrowing daughter Jacqueline,
now a beautiful girl of sixteen, succeeded to his titles and lordship as
Countess and Lady Supreme of Hainault, of Holland, and of Zealand.
For years, however, there had been throughout the Low Countries a strong
objection to the rule of a woman. The death of Count William showed the
Cods a way toward greater liberty. Rebellion followed rebellion, and the
rule of the Countess Jacqueline was by no means a restful one.
And chief among the rebellious spirits, as leader and counsellor among
the Cods, appeared the brave lad who had once been the companion of the
princess in danger, the young Lord of Arkell.
It was he who lifted the standard of revolt against her regency. Placing
the welfare of Holland above personal friendship, and sinking, in his
desire for glory, even the chivalry of that day, which should have
prompted him to aid rather than annoy this beautiful girl, he raised a
considerable army among the knights of the Cods, or liberal party, and
the warlike merchants of the cities, took possession of many strong
positions in Holland, and occupied, among other places, the important
town of Gorkum on the Maas. The stout citadel of the town, was, however,
garrisoned with loyal troops. This the Lord of Arkell beseiged, and,
demanding its surrender, sent also a haughty challenge to the young
countess, who was hastening to the relief of her beleaguered town.
Jacqueline’s answer was swift and unmistakable. With three hundred ships
and six thousand knights and men-at-arms, she sailed from the old harbor
of Rotterdam, and the lion-flag of her house soon floated above the
loyal citadel of Gorkum.
Her doughty Dutch general, von Brederode, counselled immediate attack,
but the girl countess, though full of enthusiasm and determination,
hesitated.
From her station in the citadel she looked over the scene before her.
Here, along the low bank of the river Maas, stretched the camp of her
own followers, and the little gayly colored boats that had brought her
army up the river from the red roofs of Rotterdam. There, stretching out
into the flat country beyond the straggling streets of Gorkum, lay the
tents of the rebels. And yet they were all her countrymen--rebels and
retainers alike. Hollanders all, they were ever ready to combine for
the defence of their homeland when threatened by foreign foes or by the
destroying ocean floods.
Jacqueline’s eye caught the flutter of the broad banner of the house of
Arkell that waved over the rebel camp.
Again she saw the brave lad who alone of all her father’s court, save
she, had dared to face Count William’s lions; again the remembrance of
how his daring had made him one of her heroes, filled her heart, and
a dream of what might be possessed her. Her boy husband, the French
Dauphin, was dead, and she was pledged by her dying father’s command to
marry her cousin, whom she detested, Duke John of Brabant. But how much
better, so she reasoned, that the name and might of her house as rulers
of Holland should be upheld by a brave and fearless knight. On the
impulse of this thought she summoned a loyal and trusted vassal to her
aid.
“Von Leyenburg,” she said, “go you in haste and in secret to the Lord of
Arkell, and bear from me this message for his ear alone. Thus says the
Lady of Holland: ‘Were it not better, Otto of Arkell, that we join hands
in marriage before the altar, than that we spill the blood of faithful
followers and vassals in a cruel fight?’”
It was a singular, and perhaps, to our modern ears, a most unladylike
proposal; but it shows how, even in the heart of a sovereign countess
and a girl general, warlike desires may give place to gentler thoughts.
To the Lord Arkell, however, this unexpected proposition came as an
indication of weakness.
“My lady countess fears to face my determined followers,” he thought.
“Let me but force this fight and the victory is mine. In that is greater
glory and more of power than being husband to the Lady of Holland.”
And so he returned a most ungracious answer: