CHAPTER II. THE GRANGE OF SILKSTEDE
CHAPTER III. KINSMEN AND STRANGERS
CHAPTER IV. A HERO’S FALL
CHAPTER V. THE DRAGON COURT
CHAPTER VI. A SUNDAY IN THE CITY
CHAPTER VII. YORK HOUSE
CHAPTER VIII. QUIPSOME HAL
CHAPTER IX. ARMS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL
CHAPTER X. TWO VOCATIONS
CHAPTER XI. AY DI ME GRENADA
CHAPTER XII. A KING IN A QUAGMIRE
CHAPTER XIII. A LONDON HOLIDAY
CHAPTER XIV. THE KNIGHT OF THE BADGER
CHAPTER XV. HEAVE HALF A BRICK AT HIM
CHAPTER XVI. MAY EVE
CHAPTER XVII. ILL MAY DAY
CHAPTER XVIII. PARDON
CHAPTER XIX. AT THE ANTELOPE
CHAPTER XX. CLOTH OF GOLD ON THE SEAMY SIDE
CHAPTER XXI. SWORD OR SMITHY
CHAPTER XXII. AN INVASION
CHAPTER XXIII. UNWELCOME PREFERMENT
CHAPTER XXIV. THE SOLDIER
CHAPTER XXV. OLD HAUNTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Henry, “hast found him out, lads?”
“And see here, your Grace!”
“See there, Master Alderman”
PREFACE
I have attempted here to sketch citizen life in the early Tudor days,
aided therein by Stowe’s _Survey of London_, supplemented by Mr.
Loftie’s excellent history, and Dr. Burton’s _English Merchants_.
Stowe gives a full account of the relations of apprentices to their
masters; though I confess that I do not know whether Edmund Burgess
could have become a citizen of York after serving an apprenticeship in
London. Evil May Day is closely described in Hall’s _Chronicle_. The
ballad, said to be by Churchill, a contemporary, does not agree with it
in all respects; but the story-teller may surely have license to follow
whatever is most suitable to the purpose. The sermon is exactly as
given by Hall, who is also responsible for the description of the
King’s sports and of the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Ardres.
Knight’s admirable _Pictorial History of __England_ tells of Barlow,
the archer, dubbed by Henry VIII. the King of Shoreditch.
_Historic Winchester_ describes both St. Elizabeth College and the
Archer Monks of Hyde Abbey. The tales mentioned as told by Ambrose to
Dennet are really New Forest legends.
The Moresco’s Arabic Gospel and Breviary are mentioned in Lady
Calcott’s _History of Spain_, but she does not give her authority. Nor
can I go further than Knight’s _Pictorial History_ for the King’s
adventure in the marsh. He does not say where it happened, but as in
Stowe’s map “Dead Man’s Hole” appears in what is now Regent’s Park, the
marsh was probably deep enough in places for the adventure there.
Brand’s _Popular Antiquities_ are the authority for the nutting in St.
John’s Wood on Holy Cross Day. Indeed, in some country parishes I have
heard that boys still think they have a license to crack nuts at church
on the ensuing Sunday.
Seebohm’s _Oxford Reformers_ and the _Life of Sir Thomas More_, written
by William Roper, are my other authorities, though I touched somewhat
unwillingly on ground already lighted up by Miss Manning in her
_Household of Sir Thomas More_.
Galt’s _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_ afforded the description of his
household taken from his faithful Cavendish, and likewise the story of
Patch the Fool. In fact, a large portion of the whole book was built on
that anecdote.
I mention all this because I have so often been asked my authorities in
historical tales, that I think people prefer to have what the French
appropriately call _pièces justificatives_.
C. M. Yonge.
_August_ 1_st_, 1884
CHAPTER I.
THE VERDURER’S LODGE
“Give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament, with that I
will go buy me fortunes.”
“Get you with him, you old dog.”
_As You Like It_.
The officials of the New Forest have ever since the days of the
Conqueror enjoyed some of the pleasantest dwellings that southern
England can boast.
The home of the Birkenholt family was not one of the least delightful.
It stood at the foot of a rising ground, on which grew a grove of
magnificent beeches, their large silvery boles rising majestically like
columns into a lofty vaulting of branches, covered above with tender
green foliage. Here and there the shade beneath was broken by the
gilding of a ray of sunshine on a lower twig, or on a white trunk, but
the floor of the vast arcades was almost entirely of the russet brown
of the fallen leaves, save where a fern or holly bush made a spot of
green. At the foot of the slope lay a stretch of pasture ground, some
parts covered by “lady-smocks, all silver white,” with the course of
the little stream through the midst indicated by a perfect golden river
of shining kingcups interspersed with ferns. Beyond lay tracts of brown
heath and brilliant gorse and broom, which stretched for miles and
miles along the flats, while the dry ground was covered with holly
brake, and here and there woods of oak and beech made a sea of verdure,
purpling in the distance.
Cultivation was not attempted, but hardy little ponies, cows, goats,
sheep, and pigs were feeding, and picking their way about in the marshy
mead below, and a small garden of pot-herbs, inclosed by a strong fence
of timber, lay on the sunny side of a spacious rambling forest lodge,
only one story high, built of solid timber and roofed with shingle. It
was not without strong pretensions to beauty, as well as to
picturesqueness, for the posts of the door, the architecture of the
deep porch, the frames of the latticed windows, and the verge boards
were all richly carved in grotesque devices. Over the door was the
royal shield, between a pair of magnificent antlers, the spoils of a
deer reported to have been slain by King Edward IV., as was denoted by
the “glorious sun of York” carved beneath the shield.
In the background among the trees were ranges of stables and kennels,
and on the grass-plat in front of the windows was a row of beehives. A
tame doe lay on the little green sward, not far from a large rough
deer-hound, both close friends who could be trusted at large. There was
a mournful dispirited look about the hound, evidently an aged animal,
for the once black muzzle was touched with grey, and there was a film
over one of the keen beautiful eyes, which opened eagerly as he pricked
his ears and lifted his head at the rattle of the door latch. Then, as
two boys came out, he rose, and with a slowly waving tail, and a
wistful appealing air, came and laid his head against one of the pair
who had appeared in the porch. They were lads of fourteen and fifteen,
clad in suits of new mourning, with the short belted doublet, puffed
hose, small ruffs and little round caps of early Tudor times. They had
dark eyes and hair, and honest open faces, the younger ruddy and
sunburnt, the elder thinner and more intellectual—and they were so much
the same size that the advantage of age was always supposed to be on
the side of Stephen, though he was really the junior by nearly a year.
Both were sad and grave, and the eyes and cheeks of Stephen showed
traces of recent floods of tears, though there was more settled
dejection on the countenance of his brother.
“Ay, Spring,” said the lad, “’tis winter with thee now. A poor old
rogue! Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his
teeth when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him? Nay, old
Spring, thou shalt share thy master’s fortunes, changed though they be.
Oh, father! father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy boys!”
And throwing himself on the grass, he hid his face against the dog and
sobbed.
“Come, Stephen, Stephen; ’tis time to play the man! What are we to do
out in the world if you weep and wail?”
“She might have let us stay for the month’s mind,” was heard from
Stephen.
“Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer
thoughts along with us. Better be done with it at once, say I.”
“There would still be the Forest! And I saw the moorhen sitting yester
eve! And the wild ducklings are out on the pool, and the woods are full
of song. Oh! Ambrose! I never knew how hard it is to part—”
“Nay, now, Steve, where be all your plots for bravery? You always meant
to seek your fortune—not bide here like an acorn for ever.”
“I never thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor father’s
burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, and a base narrow-souled—”
“Hist! hist!” said the more prudent Ambrose.
“Let him hear who will! He cannot do worse for us than he has done! All
the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to turn
his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold in his
grave,” cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in his
passionate sense of wrong.
“That’s womanish,” said Ambrose.
“Who’ll be the woman when the time comes for drawing cold steel?” cried
Stephen, sitting up.
At that moment there came through the porch a man, a few years over
thirty, likewise in mourning, with a paler, sharper countenance than
the brothers, and an uncomfortable pleading expression of
self-justification.
“How now, lads!” he said, “what means this passion? You have taken the
matter too hastily. There was no thought that ye should part till you
had some purpose in view. Nay, we should be fain for Ambrose to bide on
here, so he would leave his portion for me to deal with, and teach
little Will his primer and accidence. You are a quiet lad, Ambrose, and
can rule your tongue better than Stephen.”
“Thanks, brother John,” said Ambrose, somewhat sarcastically, “but
where Stephen goes I go.”
“I would—I would have found Stephen a place among the prickers or
rangers, if—” hesitated John. “In sooth, I would yet do it, if he would
make it up with the housewife.”
“My father looked higher for his son than a pricker’s office,” returned
Ambrose.
“That do I wot,” said John, “and therefore, ’tis for his own good that
I would send him forth. His godfather, our uncle Birkenholt, he will
assuredly provide for him, and set him forth—”
The door of the house was opened, and a shrewish voice cried, “Mr.
Birkenholt—here, husband! You are wanted. Here’s little Kate crying to
have yonder smooth pouch to stroke, and I cannot reach it for her.”
“Father set store by that otter-skin pouch, for poor Prince Arthur slew
the otter,” cried Stephen. “Surely, John, you’ll not let the babes make
a toy of that?”
John made a helpless gesture, and at a renewed call, went indoors.
“You are right, Ambrose,” said Stephen, “this is no place for us. Why
should we tarry any longer to see everything moiled and set at nought?
I have couched in the forest before, and ’tis summer time.”
“Nay,” said Ambrose, “we must make up our fardels and have our money in
our pouches before we can depart. We must tarry the night, and call
John to his reckoning, and so might we set forth early enough in the
morning to lie at Winchester that night and take counsel with our uncle
Birkenholt.”
“I would not stop short at Winchester,” said Stephen. “London for me,
where uncle Randall will find us preferment!”
“And what wilt do for Spring!”
“Take him with me, of course!” exclaimed Stephen. “What! would I leave
him to be kicked and pinched by Will, and hanged belike by Mistress
Maud?”
“I doubt me whether the poor old hound will brook the journey.”
“Then I’ll carry him!”
Ambrose looked at the big dog as if he thought it would be a serious
undertaking, but he had known and loved Spring as his brother’s
property ever since his memory began, and he scarcely felt that they
could be separable for weal or woe.
The verdurers of the New Forest were of gentle blood, and their office
was well-nigh hereditary. The Birkenholts had held it for many
generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to the
eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the burial
ground of Beaulieu Abbey. John Birkenholt, whose mother had been of
knightly lineage, had resented his father’s second marriage with the
daughter of a yeoman on the verge of the Forest, suspected of a strain
of gipsy blood, and had lived little at home, becoming a sort of agent
at Southampton for business connected with the timber which was yearly
cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded
the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and
had only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of
his stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in
his sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu
Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though
for the last few months Stephen had assisted his father in his forest
duties.
Death had come suddenly to break up the household in the early spring
of 1515, and John Birkenholt had returned as if to a patrimony,
bringing his wife and children with him. The funeral ceremonies had
been conducted at Beaulieu Abbey on the extensive scale of the
sixteenth century, the requiem, the feast, and the dole, all taking
place there, leaving the Forest lodge in its ordinary quiet.
It had always been understood that on their father’s death the two
younger sons must make their own way in the world; but he had hoped to
live until they were a little older, when he might himself have started
them in life, or expressed his wishes respecting them to their elder
brother. As it was, however, there was no commendation of them, nothing
but a strip of parchment, drawn up by one of the monks of Beaulieu,
leaving each of them twenty crowns, with a few small jewels and
properties left by their own mother, while everything else went to
their brother.
There might have been some jealousy excited by the estimation in which
Stephen’s efficiency—boy as he was—was evidently held by the
plain-spoken underlings of the verdurer; and this added to Mistress
Birkenholt’s dislike to the presence of her husband’s half-brothers,
whom she regarded as interlopers without a right to exist. Matters were
brought to a climax by old Spring’s resentment at being roughly teased
by her spoilt children. He had done nothing worse than growl and show
his teeth, but the town-bred dame had taken alarm, and half in terror,
half in spite, had insisted on his instant execution, since he was too
old to be valuable. Stephen, who loved the dog only less than he loved
his brother Ambrose, had come to high words with her; and the end of
the altercation had been that she had declared that she would suffer no
great lubbers of the half-blood to devour her children’s inheritance,
and teach them ill manners, and that go they must, and that instantly.
John had muttered a little about “not so fast, dame,” and “for very
shame,” but she had turned on him, and rated him with a violence that
demonstrated who was ruler in the house, and took away all disposition
to tarry long under the new dynasty.
The boys possessed two uncles, one on each side of the house. Their
father’s elder brother had been a man-at-arms, having preferred a
stirring life to the Forest, and had fought in the last surges of the
Wars of the Roses. Having become disabled and infirm, he had taken
advantage of a corrody, or right of maintenance, as being of kin to a
benefactor of Hyde Abbey at Winchester, to which Birkenholt some
generations back had presented a few roods of land, in right of which,
one descendant at a time might be maintained in the Abbey. Intelligence
of his brother’s death had been sent to Richard Birkenholt, but answer
had been returned that he was too evil-disposed with the gout to attend
the burial.
The other uncle, Harry Randall, had disappeared from the country under
a cloud connected with the king’s deer, leaving behind him the
reputation of a careless, thriftless, jovial fellow, the best company
in all the Forest, and capable of doing every one’s work save his own.
The two brothers, who were about seven and six years old at the time of
his flight, had a lively recollection of his charms as a playmate, and
of their mother’s grief for him, and refusal to believe any ill of her
Hal. Rumours had come of his attainment to vague and unknown greatness
at court, under the patronage of the Lord Archbishop of York, which the
Verdurer laughed to scorn, though his wife gave credit to them. Gifts
had come from time to time, passed through a succession of servants and
officials of the king, such as a coral and silver rosary, a jewelled
bodkin, an agate carved with St. Catherine, an ivory pouncet box with a
pierced gold coin as the lid; but no letter with them, as indeed Hal
Randall had never been induced to learn to read or write. Master
Birkenholt looked doubtfully at the tokens and hoped Hal had come
honestly by them; but his wife had thoroughly imbued her sons with the
belief that Uncle Hal was shining in his proper sphere, where he was
better appreciated than at home. Thus their one plan was to go to
London to find Uncle Hal, who was sure to put Stephen on the road to
fortune, and enable Ambrose to become a great scholar, his favourite
ambition.
His gifts would, as Ambrose observed, serve them as tokens, and with
the purpose of claiming them, they re-entered the hall, a long low
room, with a handsome open roof, and walls tapestried with dressed
skins, interspersed with antlers, hung with weapons of the chase. At
one end of the hall was a small polished barrel, always replenished
with beer, at the other a hearth with a wood fire constantly burning,
and there was a table running the whole length of the room; at one end
of this was laid a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups,
surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper
being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats
which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a
trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble,
rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking
woman, was warming her child’s feet at the fire, before putting him to
bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle at a little
distance.
“Brother,” said Stephen, “we have thought on what you said. We will put
our stuff together, and if you will count us out our portions, we will
be afoot by sunrise to-morrow.”
“Nay, nay, lad, I said not there was such haste; did I, mistress
housewife?”—(she snorted); “only that thou art a well-grown lusty
fellow, and ’tis time thou wentest forth. For thee, Ambrose, thou
wottest I made thee a fair offer of bed and board.”
“That is,” called out the wife, “if thou wilt make a fair scholar of
little Will. ’Tis a mighty good offer. There are not many who would let
their child be taught by a mere stripling like thee!”
“Nay,” said Ambrose, who could not bring himself to thank her, “I go
with Stephen, mistress; I would mend my scholarship ere I teach.”
“As you please,” said Mistress Maud, shrugging her shoulders, “only
never say that a fair offer was not made to you.”
“And,” said Stephen, “so please you, brother John, hand us over our
portions, and the jewels as bequeathed to us, and we will be gone.”
“Portions, quotha?” returned John. “Boy, they be not due to you till
you be come to years of discretion.”
The brothers looked at one another, and Stephen said, “Nay, now,
brother, I know not how that may be, but I do know that you cannot
drive us from our father’s house without maintenance, and detain what
belongs to us.”
And Ambrose muttered something about “my Lord of Beaulieu.”
“Look you, now,” said John, “did I ever speak of driving you from home
without maintenance? Hath not Ambrose had his choice of staying here,
and Stephen of waiting till some office be found for him? As for
putting forty crowns into the hands of striplings like you, it were
mere throwing it to the robbers.”
“That being so,” said Ambrose turning to Stephen, “we will to Beaulieu,
and see what counsel my lord will give us.”
“Yea, do, like the vipers ye are, and embroil us with my Lord of
Beaulieu,” cried Maud from the fire.
“See,” said John, in his more caressing fashion, “it is not well to
carry family tales to strangers, and—and—”
He was disconcerted by a laugh from the old nurse, “Ho! John
Birkenholt, thou wast ever a lad of smooth tongue, but an thou, or
madam here, think that thy brothers can be put forth from thy father’s
door without their due before the good man be cold in his grave, and
the Forest not ring with it, thou art mightily out in thy reckoning!”
“Peace, thou old hag; what matter is’t of thine?” began Mistress Maud,
but again came the harsh laugh. “Matter of mine! Why, whose matter
should it be but mine, that have nursed all three of the lads, ay, and
their father before them, besides four more that lie in the graveyard
at Beaulieu? Rest their sweet souls! And I tell thee, Master John, an
thou do not righteously by these thy brothers, thou mayst back to thy
parchments at Southampton, for not a man or beast in the Forest will
give thee good day.”
They all felt the old woman’s authority. She was able and spirited in
her homely way, and more mistress of the house than Mrs. Birkenholt
herself; and such were the terms of domestic service, that there was no
peril of losing her place. Even Maud knew that to turn her out was an
impossibility, and that she must be accepted like the loneliness, damp,
and other evils of Forest life. John had been under her dominion, and
proceeded to persuade her. “Good now, Nurse Joan, what have I denied
these rash striplings that my father would have granted them? Wouldst
thou have them carry all their portion in their hands, to be cozened of
it at the first ale-house, or robbed on the next heath?”
“I would have thee do a brother’s honest part, John Birkenholt. A
loving part I say not. Thou wert always like a very popple for
hardness, and smoothness, ay, and slipperiness. Heigh ho! But what is
right by the lads, thou _shalt_ do.”
John cowered under her eye as he had done at six years old, and
faltered, “I only seek to do them right, nurse.”
Nurse Joan uttered an emphatic grunt, but Mistress Maud broke in, “They
are not to hang about here in idleness, eating my poor child’s
substance, and teaching him ill manners.”
“We would not stay here if you paid us for it,” returned Stephen.
“And whither would you go?” asked John.
“To Winchester first, to seek counsel with our uncle Birkenholt. Then
to London, where uncle Randall will help us to our fortunes.”
“Gipsy Hal! He is more like to help you to a halter,” sneered John,
_sotto voce_, and Joan herself observed, “Their uncle at Winchester
will show them better than to run after that there go-by-chance.”
However, as no one wished to keep the youths, and they were equally
determined to go, an accommodation was come to at last. John was
induced to give them three crowns apiece and to yield them up the five
small trinkets specified, though not without some murmurs from his
wife. It was no doubt safer to leave the rest of the money in his hands
than to carry it with them, and he undertook that it should be
forthcoming, if needed for any fit purpose, such as the purchase of an
office, an apprentice’s fee, or an outfit as a squire. It was a vague
promise that cost him nothing just then, and thus could be readily
made, and John’s great desire was to get them away so that he could
aver that they had gone by their own free will, without any hardship,
for he had seen enough at his father’s obsequies to show him that the
love and sympathy of all the scanty dwellers in the Forest was with
them.
Nurse Joan had fought their battles, but with the sore heart of one who
was parting with her darlings never to see them again. She bade them
doff their suits of mourning that she might make up their fardels, as
they would travel in their Lincoln-green suits. To take these she
repaired to the little rough shed-like chamber where the two brothers
lay for the last time on their pallet bed, awake, and watching for her,
with Spring at their feet. The poor old woman stood over them, as over
the motherless nurslings whom she had tended, and she should probably
never see more, but she was a woman of shrewd sense, and perceived that
“with the new madam in the hall” it was better that they should be gone
before worse ensued.
She advised leaving their valuables sealed up in the hands of my Lord
Abbot, but they were averse to this—for they said their uncle Randall,
who had not seen them since they were little children, would not know
them without some pledge.
She shook her head. “The less you deal with Hal Randall the better,”
she said. “Come now, lads, be advised and go no farther than
Winchester, where Master Ambrose may get all the book-learning he is
ever craving for, and you, Master Steevie, may prentice yourself to
some good trade.”
“Prentice!” cried Stephen, scornfully.
“Ay, ay. As good blood as thine has been prenticed,” returned Joan.
“Better so than be a cut-throat sword-and-buckler fellow, ever slaying
some one else or getting thyself slain—a terror to all peaceful folk.
But thine uncle will see to that—a steady-minded lad always was he—was
Master Dick.”
Consoling herself with this hope, the old woman rolled up their new
suits with some linen into two neat knapsacks; sighing over the thought
that unaccustomed fingers would deal with the shirts she had spun,
bleached, and sewn. But she had confidence in “Master Dick,” and
concluded that to send his nephews to him at Winchester gave a far
better chance of their being cared for, than letting them be flouted
into ill-doing by their grudging brother and his wife.