IV

Master Richard did not tell me a great deal of his welcome in the

monastery: I think that he was hardly treated and flouted, for the

professed monks like not solitaries except those that be established in

reputation; they call them self-willed and lawless and pretending to a

sanctity that is none of theirs. Such as be under obedience think that

virtue the highest of all and essential to the way of perfection. And I

think, perhaps, they were encouraged in this by what had been said of

themselves by our holy lord ten years before, for he was ever a favourer

of monks. [This may have been Eugenius IV., called _Gloriosus_. If so,

it would fix the date of Richard at about 1444.] But Master Richard did

not blame them, so I will not, but I know that he was given no cell to

be private in, but was sent to mix with the other guests in the common

guest-house. I know not what happened there, but I think there was an

uproar; there was a wound upon his head, the first wound that he

received in the house of his friends, that I saw on him a little later,

and he told me he had had it on his first coming to London. It was such

a wound as a flung bone or billet of wood might make. He had now the

_caput vulneratum_, as well as the _cor vulneratum_ [wounded head ...

wounded heart.] of the true lover of Jesus Christ.

* * * * *

He desired, after his simplicity, on the following morning, to speak

with my lord abbot, but that could not be, and he only saw my lord at

terce before mass, afar off sitting in his stall, a great prelate with

his chain, and with one who bore a silver wand to go before him and do

him service.

He prayed long in the church and at the shrine, and heard four or

five masses, and saw the new grave of the Queen in the midst of the

lady-chapel [This may have been Queen Katharine, whose body was

afterwards moved.], and did his devotions, hoping that our Lord would

show him what to speak to the King, and then went to dinner, and

after dinner set out to Westminster Hall, where he was told that the

King could be seen that day.

He passed through the little streets that lay very nastily, no better

than great gutters with all the filth of the houses poured out there,

but he said that the folks there were yet more surprising, for these

were they who had taken sanctuary here, and were dwelling round the

monastery with their wives and children. There were all sorts there,

slayers of men and deer, thieves, strikers of the clergy _suadente

diabolo_ ["at the devil's persuasion"--a technical phrase],

false-coiners, harlots, and rioters; all under the defence of Religion,

and not suffered to go out but on peril of being taken. He had a little

company following him by the time that he came to the gate, some mocking

and some silent, and all looking on him as he went.

When he came to the door of the hall the men that stood there would not

let him in until he entreated them. They told him that the King was now

going to dinner, and that the time was past, so he knew that it was not

yet his hour to give the message that he knew not. But they let him in

at last, and he stood in the crowd to see the King go by.

There was a great company there, and a vast deal of noise, for the

audiences were done, and the bill-men were pushing the folks with their

weapons to make room for the great men to go by, and the heralds were

crying out. Master Richard stood as well as he could, but he was pushed

and trampled about, and he could not see very well. They went by in

great numbers; he saw their hats and caps and their furred shoulders

between the crooked glaives that were gilded to do honour to the King,

but there was such a crying out on all sides that he could not ask which

was the King.

At last the shouting grew loud and then quiet, and men bowed down on all

sides; and he saw the man whom he knew must be the King.

He had a long face (as I saw for myself afterwards), rather sallow, with

a long straight nose and small, full mouth; his eyebrows were black and

arched high, and beneath them his sorrowful eyes looked out on the

people; he was bowing his head courteously as he came. On his head he

wore a black peaked cap of velvet; there was ermine at his collar and a

gold chain lay across his shoulders.

Now this is what Master Richard saw with the eyes of his body, but with

the eyes of his soul he saw something so strange that I know not how to

name or explain it. He told me that it was our Saviour whom he saw go by

between the gilded glaives, as He was when He went from Herod's hall. I

do not understand how this may be. The King wore no beard as did our

Saviour, he was full fourteen years younger at that time than was Jesu

Christ when He suffered His bitter passion. They were of a height, I

suppose, and perhaps the purple that the King wore was of the same

colour as that which our Lord had put on him, but that was all the

likeness that ever I could see, for the King's hair was black and his

complexion sallow, but our Lord's was corn colour, and His face white

and ruddy. [A reference, I suppose, to Cant. Cant. v. 10.] And, again,

the one was but a holy man, and the other God Almighty although made man

for our salvation.

Yet perhaps I did not understand Master Richard aright, and that he

meant something else and that it was only to the eyes of the soul that

the resemblance lay. If this is so, then I think I understand what it

was that he saw, though I cannot explain it to you, any more than could

he to me. There be some matters so high that no mouth can tell them,

heart only can speak to heart, but I can tell you this, that Master

Richard did not mean that our Lord was in the hall that day as He is in

heaven and in the sacrament of the altar; it was something else that he

meant.... [There follows a doctrinal disquisition.]

* * * * *

When Master Richard came out from the hall, he told me that he was in a

kind of swoon, but having his eyes open, and that he knew not how he

came back to the guest-house. It was not until he knocked upon the door

that he saw that the crowd was about him again, staring on him silently.

The porter was peevish as he pulled him in, and bade him go and cut wood

in the wood-house for his keep, so all that afternoon he toiled in his

white kirtle at the cutting with another fellow who cursed as he cut,

but was silent after a while.

Yet, when supper and bed-time came and Master Richard had assisted at

compline in the abbey-church, still he knew not what the message was to

be on Monday, when he would see the King and speak with him.

On Sunday he did no servile work, except that he waited upon the guests,

girt with an apron, and washed the dishes afterwards. He heard four

masses that day, as well as all the hours, and prayed by himself a long

while at saint Edward's shrine, hearing the folks go by to the tilting,

and that night he went to bed with the servants, still ignorant of what

he should say on the next day.

I am sure that he was not at all disquieted by his treatment, for he did

not speak of it to me, except what was necessary, and he blamed no one.

When I saw the porter afterwards he told me nothing except that Master

Richard had worked well and willingly, and had asked for other tasks

when his were done. He had asked, too, for a plenty of water to bathe

himself, which he did not get. But whether he were disquieted or no on

that Sunday, at least he was content next day, for it was on the next

day at mass that our Lord told him what was the message that he was to

deliver to the King.

There was a Cluniac monk from France who had obtained leave to say mass

at the shrine of the Confessor, and Master Richard followed him and his

fellow to the altar at five o'clock in the morning to hear mass there

and see his Maker. [This is the common mediaeval phrase. Men did not

then bow their heads at the Elevation.]

He knelt down against the wall behind the high altar, and began to

address himself to devotion, but he was distracted at first by the

splendour of the tomb, the porphyry and the glass-work below, that

Master Peter the Roman had made, and the precious shrine of gold above

where the body lay, and the golden statues of the saints on either side.

All about him, too, were such marvels that there is little wonder that

he could not pray well for thinking on them--the kings that lay here and

there and their effigies, and the paved steps on this side and that, and

the fair painted glass and the high dark roof. Near where he knelt, too,

he could see the great relic-chest, and knew what lay therein--the

girdle of our Blessed Lady herself, mirror of chastity; the piece of

stone marked by Christ's foot as He went up to heaven; a piece of the

Very Rood on which He hanged; the precious blood that He shed there, in

a crystal vase; the head of saint Benet, father of monks. [Surely not!]

All these things have I seen, too, myself, so I know that they are truly

there.

Behind him, as he kneeled on the stones, sounded the singing of the

monks, and the noise of so much praise delighted him, but they ended

soon, and at _Sanctus_ his spirit began to be rapt into silence, and the

holy things to make heaven about him.

He told me that he did not know what befell him until it came to the

elevation of the sacring: only he knew that his soul was filled with

lightness and joyousness, as when he had walked in the wood at dawn

three days before.

But as he lifted up his hands to see his God and to beat upon his

breast, it appeared to him, he said, as if his feet rested again on some

higher place: until then he had been neither on earth nor in heaven.

Now there was no visible imagination that came to him then; he said

expressly that it was not so. There was none to be seen there but the

priest in the vestment with his hood on his shoulders, and the _frater

conversus_ [that is, the lay brother.] who held the skirt and shook the

bell. Only it appeared to him that the priest held up the Body for a

great space, and in that long time Master Richard understood many things

that had been dark to him before. Of some of the things I have neither

room nor wit to write; but they were such as these.

He understood how it was that souls might go to hell, and yet that it

was good that they should go; how it was that our Saviour was born of

His blessed Mother without any breaking of her virginity; how it is that

all things subsist in God; in what manner it is that God comes into the

species of the bread. But he could not tell me how these things were so,

nor what it was that was shewed him.... [There follow a few confused

remarks on the relations of faith to spiritual sight.]

There were two more things that were shewed him: the first, that he

should not return home alive, but that his dead corpse should be carried

there, and the second, what was the tidings that he should bear to the

King.

Then he fell forward on his face, and so lay until the ending of the

mass.

How Master Richard cried out in Westminster Hall: and of his coming to

a Privy Parlour

_Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum: dico ego opera mea regi._

My heart hath uttered a good word: I speak my works to the king.--_Ps.

xliv. 1._

V

It would be about half an hour before the King's dinner-time, which was

ten o'clock, that Master Richard came again to the hall.

There was not so great a press that day, and the holy youth was able to

make his way near to the barrier that held back the common folk, and to

see the King plainly. He was upon his seat beneath the cloth-of-estate

that was quartered with the leopards and lilies, and had his hat upon

his head. About him, beneath the scaffold on which he sat were the great

nobles, and my lord cardinal had a chair set for him upon the right-hand

side, on the step below the King's.

All was very fair and fine, said Master Richard, with pieces of rich

stuff hanging upon the walls on this side and that beneath the windows,

and, finest of all were the colours of the robes, and the steel and the

gold and the white fur and the feathers, and the gilded glaives and

trumpets, and coat-armour of the heralds.

There was a matter about to be concluded, but Master Richard could not

tell what it was, for there was a din of talking all about him, and he

saw many clerks and Religious very busy together in the crowd, shaking

their fingers, lifting their brows, and clacking like rooks at

sunset--so the young man related it. There were two fellows with their

backs to him, standing in an open space before the scaffold with guards

about them. One of the two was a clerk, and wore his square cap upon

his head, and the other was not.

The King looked sick; he was but a young man at that time, not two years

older than Master Richard. He was listening with his head down, to a

clerk who whispered in his ear, kneeling by his side with papers and a

great quill in his hand, and the King's eyes roved as he listened, now

up, now down, and his fingers with rings upon them were arched at his

ear. My lord cardinal had a ruddy face and bright holy eyes, and sat in

his sanguine robes with his cap on his head, looking out with his lips

pursed at the clerks and monks that babbled together beyond the barrier.

He was an old man at this time, but wondrous strong and hearty.

At the end the King sat up, and there was a silence, but he spoke so low

and quick, with his eyes cast down, and the shouting followed so hard

upon his words, that Master Richard could not hear what was said. But it

seemed to content the clerks and the Religious [King Henry VI. was a

great favourer of ecclesiastics.], for they roared and clamoured and one

flung up his cap so that it fell beyond the barrier and he could not

come at it again. Then the two prisoners louted to the King, and went

away with their guards about them; and the King stood up, and the

cardinal.

Now this was the time on which Master Richard had determined for

himself, but for a moment he could not cry out: it seemed as if the

fiend had gripped him by the throat and were hammering in his bowels.

The King turned to the steps, and at that sight Master Richard was

enabled to speak.

He had not resolved what to say, but to leave that to what God should

put in his mouth, and this is what he cried, in a voice that all could

hear.

"News from our Lord! News from our Lord, your grace."

He said that when he cried that, that was first silence, and then such a

clamour as he had never heard nor thought to hear. He was pushed this

way and that; one tore at his shoulder from behind; one struck him on

the head: he heard himself named madman, feeble-wit, knave, fond fellow.

The guards in front turned themselves about, and made as though they

would run at the crowd with their weapons, and at that the men left off

heaving at Master Richard, and went back, babbling and crying out.

Then he cried out again with all his might.

"I bring tidings from my Lord God to my lord the King," and went forward

to the barrier, still looking at the King who had turned and looked back

at him with sick, troubled eyes, not knowing what to do.

A fellow seized Master Richard by the throat and pulled him against the

barrier, menacing him with his glaive, but the King said something,

raising his hand, and there fell a silence.

"What is your business, sir?" asked the King.

The fellow released Master Richard and stood aside.

"I bring tidings from our Lord," said the young man. He was all out of

breath, he told me, with the pushing and striking, and held on to the

red-painted barrier with both hands.

The King stooped and whispered with at cardinal, who was plucking him by

the sleeve, for the space of a _paternoster_, and the murmuring began to

break out again. Then he turned, and lifted his hand once more for

silence.

"What are the tidings, sir?"

"They are for your private ear, your grace."

"Nay," said the King, "we have no private ear but for God's Word."

"This is God's Word," said Master Richard.

There was laughter at that, and the crowd came nearer again, but the

King did not laugh. He stood still, looking this way and that, now on

Master Richard, and now on the cardinal, who was pulling again at

sleeve. It seemed as if he could not determine what to do.

Then he spoke again.

"Who are you, sir?"

"I am a solitary, named Richard Raynal," said the young man. "I come

from the country, from ... [It is most annoying that the name of the

village is wanting.] Sir John Chaldfield, the parson, will

undertake for me, your grace."

"Is Sir John here?" asked my lord cardinal, smiling at the clerks.

"No, my lord," said Master Richard, "he has his sheep in the wilderness.

He cannot run about to Court."

There was again a noise of laughter and dissent from the crowd of

clerks, and my lord cardinal smiled more than ever, shewing his white

teeth in the midst of his ruddy face.

"This is a witty fellow, your grace," said my lord cardinal aloud to the

King. "Will your grace be pleased to hear him in private?"

The King looked at Master Richard again, as if he knew not what to do.

"Will you not tell us here, sir?" he asked.

"I will not, your grace."

"Have you weapons upon you?" said my lord cardinal, still smiling.

Master Richard pointed to the linen upon his breast.

"I bear wounds, not weapons," he answered; which was a brave and shrewd

answer, and one that would please the King.

His grace smiled a little at that, but the smile passed again like the

sunshine between clouds on a dark and windy day, and the crowd crept up

nearer, so that Master Richard could feel hot breath upon his bare neck

behind. He committed his soul again to our Lady's tuition, for he knew

not what might be the end if he were not heard out.

* * * * *

Well, the end of it was as you know, it was not possible for any man

with a heart in his body to look long upon Master Richard and not love

him, and the King's face grew softer as he looked upon that fair young

man with his nut-brown hair and the clear pallour of his face and his

pure simple eyes, and then at the coarse red faces behind him that crept

up like devils after holy Job. It was not hard to know which was in the

right, and besides the brave words that had stung the clerks to anger

had stung the King to pity and pleasure; so the end was that the guards

were bidden to let Master Richard through, and that he was to follow on

in the procession, and be gently treated, and admitted to see the King

when dinner was done.

* * * * *

So that, my children, is the manner in which it came about that my name

was cried aloud before the King's presence, and the cardinals and the

nobles, in Westminster Hall on the Monday after _Deus qui nobis_.

[So the collect of Corpus Christi begins. It was a common method, even

among the laity, of defining dates.]

Of Master Richard's speaking with the King's Grace: and how he was

taken for it

_Et nunc reges intelligite: erudimini qui judicatis terram._

And now, O ye kings, understand: receive instruction, ye that judge the

earth.--_Ps. ii. 10._